by Vic Connor
Blood pours from Iku’s left shin. He stands still as the old woman draws closer and caresses the wound with her fingertips as dark, smoky tendrils rise from the slash to her hand…
…the bleeding stops.
The combat resumes. Some taunts and jokes from the crowd take a toll on the warrior, who looks more and more frustrated with the whirling silk flower avoiding his spear. His lunges and thrusts grow careless. He hurls himself forward…
…quick as a cobra, Miyu leaps forward, too, only to find Iku’s carelessness was a ruse. With a vicious strike, the spear bites deep into the samurai’s left shoulder. Cheers erupt from one part of the crowd while the others gasp in horror.
Miyu’s blood gushes after Iku pulls the spear out. Then, a bright glow appears, green and yellow, as the old woman places both hands over the wound. With a businesslike nod, Miyu returns to the fight.
This time, she doesn’t move. Rather than wielding the naginata as a lance or spear, she raises it straight over her head, as if it were a long sword. Iku dances around her; she moves the bare minimum to continually face him. He leaps forward, feints a strike, leaps back. Still as a statue, the samurai stands her ground. He rushes at her again, feints, leaps back: nothing happens. He jumps forward, now raising his shield to meet a descending blow from the naginata while his spear’s tip searches for Miyu’s chest…
…she strikes downward—not toward Iku and his shield, but to his spear, close to the wrist. She bellows a feral war cry that would make demons flee. Iku loses the grip on his weapon, and for a heartbeat, there’s a gap in his guard…
Savage Tsuki:
Hit!
…Miyu’s blade finds his sternum, sending the tower-like warrior reeling backward, then dropping to the ground.
The crowd roars as the old woman hurries to Iku’s side, closely followed by Torunn and Ayelén.
Hendricks laughs happily. “Godverdomme! Our dame is one tough dance partner.”
Iku stands up, rubbing his chest while he receives cheers and pats in the back from the girls and some Aztecs. Others mumble and groan as they calculate the gold and obsidian they’ve lost. The warrior approaches Miyu, nodding gravely. He seems unsure of how to present his respects, until Miyu bows and Iku mirrors her gesture.
After the entertainment finishes and lost bets are paid, the crowd disperses. Hendricks looks happy with himself even though I’ve seen no money exchanging hands in his case; he smiles mysteriously and tells me I’ll soon find out.
I sigh. “What I’d like to find out is how are our friends doing.”
We spend the rest of the evening outside the walls. Ayelén introduces me to Quetzalli, the elderly healer, who warms up to me when she learns that—despite my ostrich-plumed hat—I’m not only not Spanish, but was born in the American continent rather in the sunrise lands. With Ayelén as translator, I ask her if she would honor me with improving my poor understanding of healing magicks. Quetzalli has Ayelén repeat my request a few times, as if wanting to make sure the girl is translating correctly. The old woman seems partly surprised, partly amused, and if I had to guess, partly intrigued, like she isn’t entirely sure her magicks would even work for someone like me.
She pricks her own left thumb with an obsidian needle and tells me to pay attention to how she moves her right fingers, and how she caresses the air around the wound. Then, she pricks her thumb again and asks me to repeat her motions.
“Pain is an outcast,” Ayelén translates, “Pain is a pariah with no home. Pain is a squatter, wishing to call any home its own. Pain is always shunned, avoided, rejected, recoiled from.” Quetzalli pricks her thumb again and makes me go through the motions once again. “Give Pain lodging. Give Pain a home where it’s welcomed. Make Pain leave from where it’s not wanted.” A faint, yellow-green glow surrounds Quetzalli’s thumb as a sharp pain pierces my own…
Skill Upgraded!
Tetsoliui
Promising Apprentice
-1VP; 1 hour spent
…her rugged, old flesh now shows no trace of a wound.
Quetzalli’s flappy lips curve in a smile. “She says it pleases her to see a warm heart wrapped in white skin,” Ayelén translates. The old woman puts her stained hand over my chest. “She says beneath your sunrise shell beats a sunset heart.” Quetzalli removes one of her many golden bracelets and gives it to me. It’s way too small for my own wrists, but I press the gift against my chest and thank her kindly for it.
Seemingly tired by our exchange, the old woman grabs Ayelén’s arm and trudges back to town.
We return to the Durojaiye Inn just before sunset, when the main gates are to be closed. The square is lit with torches, and Kokumo has placed candles around the common room, giving it a much cozier look than during daytime.
Hendricks’ promise turns out to be true. I find out what his bet with the Spaniards was all about when I learn we have rooms and food paid at their expense.
“What if our lance lady had lost?” I ask him.
He shrugs and smiles. “We haven fought side to side,” he says. “We cannot bet on een other horse.”
That’s …well, that’s loyalty, I guess?
Although she’s earned us the hearty meal Torunn brings to the table, Miyu sticks to her diet of plain air. The Dutchman and I wolf down what must be the forefather of taco filling and maize tortillas—and yet again, I mentally tip my wide-brim hat off to Maneesh, the brilliantly obsessive nerd, for getting our food so damn right.
When Axolotl enters the room, my heart skips a heartbeat. He briefly joins us to let us know that High Priest Tlaloc has agreed to not sacrifice Uitzli just yet (that’s good to hear), has agreed to let Juanita attempt a cure (that’s good news, too), and has decreed that the brown-skinned witch and the hairy white-skinned foreigner she has brought with her will be sacrificed by noon tomorrow, along with the albino healer, if his little girl doesn’t recover by then.
“That … we can’t let it happen,” I stammer.
Axolotl leaves us to our now considerably gloomier dinner.
Iku joins us when Kokumo brings us wooden mugs with steamy, blissfully bittersweet Turkish-style coffee. He does his best to fold his huge frame by our table. He seems to be as sparse for words as our samurai is, so it’s mostly Hendricks and I comparing notes about how to best pack our pistols for optimal drawing and shooting, basically to keep our minds busy until sleep arrives.
Hendricks and Miyu have their rooms upstairs; Kokumo has made the nice gesture of lodging me downstairs, to spare me battling the steps with my crutches.
I plop down on a mat stretched on what seems to be hay and close my eyes…
24
Break a Leg
Maneesh had joined Sveta and me for his coffee break. In a manner of speaking, at least: His face floated on a screen to Sveta’s left, like a portrait that had grown wings.
He was an Assam kind of guy. “How can anyone drink coffee?” he asked, sipping his tea. “Bitter acid in a cup.”
“That’s because you’ve never had the good fortune of Sveta serving you an espresso,” I informed him, my own tiny porcelain cup in hand. “There’s no going back, after a drop of her heavenly brew touches your lips.”
He smiled. “Then again, I could claim it was me who brewed the coffee you are drinking. Not me, personally, but one of my coders did.”
“My congratulations to them, too,” I said. “And my eternal thanks. Though I’d counter-claim that the barista’s hands—” I nodded toward Sveta “—must have had something to do with how good this coffee tastes.”
“Gee, boss!” She giggled. “You seem in an especially cheerful mood today.”
I looked at her for a few seconds. “As I said, Svetty dear, you spoil me too much in here.” I turned back to Maneesh. “I guess you’re with us not only to discuss Arabica versus Assam? With Engineering working their socks off to have Istoria run smoothly and all, I’d bet you’re too busy for a simple social visit?”
“This is the busiest time in our live
s,” he admitted. He seemed pleased, even if dead tired. “Few opportunities these days for a five-minute break with my Assam, that’s true. And you’re correct: I wanted to make sure everything goes smoothly in your case.”
“In my case. You mean, as a mouse in your Hardcore lab.”
He smiled meekly, as if saying, “it’s just my job.”
“I’ve seen quite a few bugs flying around since we last met, if that’s what you were wondering,” I added
“Oh, I know, I know,” he said. “Svetlana sent me some footage of your fights, and the skill of your witchy NPC, what’s her name…” He fumbled with his keyboard, his tea dangerously close to spilling all over.
“Juanita.”
“Right, right.” He nodded. “That shape-shifting skill of hers is interesting.”
I frowned. “You say it as if her skill was news to you.”
“It is, it is. We have, let me see…” He fumbled with his keyboard some more. “Those bloody numbers were right here…” He cursed at something under his breath in frustration. “About a third or something…”
I glanced at Sveta, who wrinkled her nose as if to say, “nerds…”
“A third of what?” I asked.
“Shapeshifters,” he clarified. He pushed his keyboard away in frustration, apparently unable to find his notes. “I remember it was less than half, but not by much…”
“Maneesh… I can call you Maneesh, right?”
“Indeed!” He smiled. “Indeed.”
“A third of what, my friend? A third of the shapeshifters are bugs?”
His smile grew into a content laugh. “Ah, no! About a…” He typed something off screen. “About a third of the players weaved shapeshifters into their starting campaigns, but usually involving wolves, big cats, and a few bears. Some furry mammal, in all cases, when you think about it…”
“You mean Juanita shape-shifting into bugs is rare?”
“Not just rare, but unique,” he admitted.
“And you think it may be a bug? Literally, bug-in-the-code kinda bug?”
“No, no.” He shook his head, once again causing a storm in his tea cup that threatened to make a mess all around him. “But it’s interesting that our bees, I mean, those in the Pain Tutorial—”
Sveta sneered. “You mean that flawed tutorial in which Mr. Russel got trapped?”
He offered us an apologetic grin. “We’ve thoroughly squashed that safe words bug, I promise.” He looked at me while banging his tea cup like an imaginary hammer. “You experienced no further problems, right?”
“I can’t say I have, fortunately…”
“Good, good.” He nodded. “Our bees themselves weren’t the problem, only the safe words were bugged—”
“Mr. Russel still had an awful time in there.”
“C’mon, Svetty dear.” I smiled. “Water under the bridge. A bridge which brought us a handful of VPs, too, so be your usual sweet self and cut our friend Maneesh some slack, will you?”
“As you say, boss,” she said, but her eyes remained somewhat defiant.
“You were saying, my friend?”
“The safe words were bugged, yes,” Maneesh continued. “But the bees were not. I’m sorry you had to go through it, but it’s interesting that you gave Juanita the skill to shape-shift—”
The poor guy seemed fated to never end a sentence today; it was I who cut him off this time. “I didn’t give her anything,” I said. “In fact, it was she who helped me learn my healing skill.”
“Right, correct. I didn’t mean you as in you, I meant…” He looked at Svetla, pleading for help.
“He means the storytailors,” she explained. “The algorithms that collaborate with your mind to create the single-player world you’re playing in.”
“Really? You call them storytailors?”
“Told you, boss.” She sighed. “I don’t choose the names; I just work here.”
Maneesh looked happier than ever. “But it’s a good name! That’s what happens while your mind merges with Istoria for the first time. Your thoughts are the fabric, and our storytailors shape it into a world, according to our design parameters.”
“What parameters?”
“He won’t tell you, boss,” Sveta said. “It would be cheating if you knew.”
“Broadly speaking,” I said to Maneesh, “you set how big the world should be, how many NPCs, maybe how tough the Final Boss I gotta beat needs to be…”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
“But then things like the specific skills of the NPCs, that is something… What, that’s something I came up with?”
“Our systems did,” he said, sounding like a man who would defend before the entire world the fact that his children are all geniuses. “With your thoughts as raw material, yes.”
I rubbed my temples. “And Sveta said this part of the process is running in my brain, correct?”
“I’m not so certain about that part,” he said hesitantly. “Software is my area of expertise, not hardware, let alone bioware—”
“It does,” Sveta interjected. “Broadly speaking.”
“I see. And now you all are wondering if subjecting me to a furious bee swarm in the Pain Tutorial inspired your storytailoring algorithms to craft a bespoke NPC who shape-shifts into bees. Right?”
His eyebrows arched in agreement. “Nicely put.”
Sveta grinned. “Told you, Maneesh. If he isn’t a millionaire when the Tournament is over, maybe Marketing should give our friend Jake a job around here. He has a way with words and compressing big ideas into crisp concepts.”
“Meh,” he sneered. “Those turd peddlers…”
I couldn’t help laughing. “I’d peddle all the turd in the world for a job at NozGames. But winning that million, though,” I said, “that’s still priority número uno. So, if you don’t mind—” I glanced downward, where my avatar lay asleep on a hay mattress in the room inside the Durojaiye Inn, waiting for me to skip time and make it daylight “—is there anything else we need to discuss? Or have we all agreed coffee is far superior to tea?”
“If you can jump back and forth into the game without a glitch,” Maneesh said, “then that is all I need to hear.”
“You have nothing else you wish to discuss with us?” Sveta asked.
“Unless there’s something you yourself would like to talk about…”
“Actually,” I said, “there is. Does Chediak-Higashi ring any bell to you?”
Yes, it did. They exchanged glances again, a mute negotiation about who would answer my question.
Maneesh took the lead. “It’s a genetic disorder, Jake,” he said. “And a syndrome you have the potential to develop.”
“By potential,” I clarified, “you mean my chances of it triggering before I die from natural causes are lower than fifty-fifty; so odds are on my side in that regard.”
He nodded while studying something in the bottom of his cup, almost as if reading some portentous omen in the tea leaves.
I pushed my left sleeve up to uncover the green-and-blue hummingbird flying above the branch blossoming with white bleeding hearts. “I’m what they call a late-onset,” I said, as if talking to the little bird. “Did you know the majority of those with Chediak-Higashi syndrome aren’t so lucky?”
Maneesh kept staring at the bottom of his teacup.
“You’ve already told me this, yes,” Sveta replied. “About the nasty effects, other than albinism, that somebody with the syndrome active at birth will suffer.”
I caressed the white flowers in my arm. “And?”
“And they almost always die during their first few years,” she finished.
“So, all in all, I guess you could call me lucky, couldn’t you?”
She raised one eyebrow, as if saying, “all things considered…”
“But Erika wasn’t,” I said.
Sveta’s fingers touched her parted lips. It was clear she didn’t know who I was talking about.
Man
eesh, still reading his tea leaves, apparently did: his face darkened, and his mouth formed a thin line.
“Who is Erika?” Sveta asked.
“Was,” I corrected. “She was. My little sister.”
Her mouth set in a tight line as her surprise seemed to turn into something close to cold anger. “I swear I didn’t know, Jake.” She turned to Maneesh’s screen. “They never told me this.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “Not your fault. Hell, nobody’s fault, really, although Dad and … well, never mind. Not your fault, and not the fault of anybody in here, so quit looking at Maneesh as if you’d like to boil him in radioactive soup, will you?”
“Yeah…” she said slowly, her attention back at me. “A soup like that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I’m sorry to hear about your baby sister, Jake. That must’ve been tough.”
“You could say that, yeah.”
“How old was she?”
“Four. And I was five years older; I was nine.”
“That’s … odd,” she said. “In your avatar’s memories—”
“Yeah. That’s when, in-game, they killed my character’s father. Is that a coincidence, Maneesh?”
“Unlikely,” he said without raising his eyes. “We know what our storytailors do, and we know how they do it—I was one of the lead programmers, so I should know—but it’s not always clear why they do it while they’re doing it.
“It’s like coding a program that beats you in chess. After you finish the game and study all the moves, it usually becomes obvious what the program did to defeat you. But it’s not always obvious what it’s attempting to do while you’re still mid-match, and harder still to predict its future moves since, well, that’s why your program is better than you at playing chess. It can predict your moves better than you can predict its countermoves.
“But there’s nothing random about the moves, so whatever the reason our algorithms may have to tailor your game’s backstory in a certain way, it’s not coincidence, I can assure you.”