by Ramy Vance
The end of the tunnel opened up, and there was indeed light. The tunnel had led to an open cavern, much larger than the one the writers had woken up in. The rocks and walls were different shades of gray and brown and geodes protruded from the cavern walls and ground, some of them cracked open so the crystals inside could be seen. In the middle of the cavern was a large lake with the clearest water any of the writers had ever seen. A waterfall that seemed to be suspended in midair without a visible source of water poured into the underground lake. It was as ideal a resting spot as Dawn could have imagined.
Dakota took off running toward the lake, much to the chagrin of the other writers. He dunked his head in the water and started drinking as fast as he could.
Dawn hadn’t realized until she saw Dakota that she was practically dying of thirst. She squatted next to the lake and dipped her hands into the water to cup some for herself, hoping she looked somewhat more dignified than Dakota.
No one else seemed to care.
Lindsay and Robyn had already dunked their heads into the water as well. Dawn hadn’t noticed in the dark, but nearly all the writers had blood on them. Since none of them were injured, there were only a couple of places the blood could have come from. Dawn thought it might be a good idea for her to wash off whatever was on her as well.
Once the writers were satisfied with their cleanliness, they leaned back and enjoyed the closest thing to relaxation they had experienced since they had found themselves in the cave. The little bit of light in the room was coming from the ceiling, where there was a small crack in the rock. It was enough to illuminate the lake but not much else. All the authors appreciated the respite from the darkness.
In the silence of the cave, four simultaneous beeps went off. They sounded like the sort of noise you hear when your computer starts up. All of the writers looked around, confused.
Robyn snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “The HUDs!”
Each of the writers pulled up their HUD. The machines had finally finished updating and were spewing more information at them than they could process. There were percentages lining the side of the HUD, then status updates started flashing. Inventory counts zipped by.
Dawn tried to slow down the information displaying on her HUD, but she could hardly tell what was what. Then, suddenly, her HUD read, Class Chosen. “Are you fucking kidding me,” Dawn whined. “I don’t even get to choose my own? Did you guys?”
Robyn shook his head, and Dawn noticed for the first time just how much taller he was than the rest of them. The man stood an easy 6’5”, and was very muscular. He looked like the kind of person who would have been more comfortable in one of the Middang3ard books than sitting behind a desk, punching keys. “Looks like my class was already chosen for me, too,” he grumbled as he scrolled through his HUD menus. “Well, at least we know they’re working.”
Dawn’s HUD beeped once, and a message flashed across it. DANGER IMMINENT. 10% CHANCE OF SUCCESS. “Hey, guys?” Dawn asked. “Did anybody else get—”
Dakota grabbed Dawn by the wrists and pulled her away from the lake. “I got it too,” Dakota whispered as he looked around, trying to find the source of the danger. “Let’s get out of the light.”
Dakota dragged Dawn behind Robyn and Lindsay as they headed toward the shadows away from the water. They hid behind four large boulders, making sure the rocks were large enough to hide the top of Robyn’s head. Lindsay poked her head out to see exactly what it was they were running from. They had all just followed Dakota’s lead.
Granted, they had all gotten the same ominous message, but none of them had observed anything. Now, they waited to see what had a 90% chance of killing them.
Near the cavern’s lake, four albino creatures roughly the size of VW Bugs stalked out of the darkness.
The karuikagis, as the HUDS identified them, had four legs and looked very similar to spiders, but nothing like any spiders the writers had seen at home. The closest Dawn could come was giant wolf spiders. Their front legs didn’t look like they were meant for walking as much as ripping prey apart. Their eyes were beady and could be seen from afar as the spiders moved together to climb above the lake. They began to spin a vast and intricate web. Dawn would have thought it was beautiful if she hadn’t been standing exactly where it was being built a few minutes ago. The writers had been one scenario away from death.
Talk about a lucky break.
The calm Lindsay had shown earlier when they had been stuck in the tunnel was gone. Now she was freaking out, and she was freaking out hard. She was struggling to keep her voice at a whisper, and it trembled terribly.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” she whimpered. “Do you see those things? They’re going to kill us! There’s no way we can take anything that big without a gun or something. They’re gonna roll us up and suck our blood out.”
Dakota seemed oddly calm and rational in the situation. “Spiders don’t suck your blood. They’re not vampires. And spiders aren’t straight-up hunters. They’re not gonna come looking for us. They’re opportunists.”
“Those aren’t spiders, though,” Robyn said. “Those are karuikagi! Haven’t you seen them in Pathfinder?”
Lindsay backed away from the rock she was hiding behind, and something happened that none of the writers were prepared for. Lindsay’s body flickered as if she were an afterimage of herself and then shimmered out of existence.
Dawn’s eyes went wide as she grabbed her hair. “Holy shit, they already got Lindsay! What the fuck are those things?” Dawn exclaimed.
Lindsay’s voice came from nowhere. “No one got me,” Lindsay replied. “I’m right here, guys.”
“No, you most definitely are not right fucking here.”
“Uh, where am I? Did I… I’m invisible, aren’t I?”
“If you’re still here, you sure as fuck must be.”
Dawn leaned forward, looking for Lindsay. She reached out and tried to grab the other author. When she closed her hand, she felt Lindsay’s wrist in her palm. “Whoa,” Dawn said. “You are invisible.”
When Dakota spoke, it was hardly above a squeak, as if he were afraid of what he was seeing. “Uh, Dawn? You might want to look at yourself,” Dakota suggested.
Dawn looked at her own hand. There was nothing interesting about it, but then she noticed her leg. Even though her leg was directly beneath her, it was invisible. She was standing half in and out of the shadow of the boulder. When she looked at the rest of her body, she noted that every part of her that was under the shadow was invisible, like Lindsay. “Holy…fucking…shit,” Dawn whispered, trying to keep the giddiness out of her voice. “Are these are class powers?”
Dakota clapped his hands. “Oh, I want to see if I can do anything!” he squealed. He stepped into the shadows next to Dawn, but nothing happened. “Hold on, let me try to go invisible.” He closed his eyes tightly and scrunched his face as concentrated, but when he opened his eyes, he was still visible. “Oh, this fucking sucks. I didn’t get anything.” Dakota turned back around. Then he squealed with joy. “Never mind! I got Ranger vision. I can see almost everything, and I can tell you that there are weapons and armor over in a web behind the karuikagi. Talk about lucky!”
Robyn crouched lower, still very paranoid about being caught. “You have a pretty fucked-up idea of ‘lucky.’”
“I’m just saying, it’s better than if there weren’t any weapons in here. At least we can put them to good use.”
“Exactly what are you suggesting we should do?” Dawn asked.
“We should go get those weapons and fight our way out of here!”
“There’s gotta be another solution,” Lindsay said, unseen. “We don’t have to go killing everything that gets in our way.”
Dakota shook his head. “Would you rather wait until they come and kill us? If those are the same things as in Pathfinder, they’re not gonna be satisfied just waiting for us to come to them. This whole cavern is their den. The moment they hear us or get a whiff of us, they’r
e going to come and wrap us up and suck out our guts.”
“Didn’t you say that—”
“I said spiders don’t suck out your blood. These things suck out your guts. Big difference. So, I could sneak over there and try to get the shit for us…”
Dawn shook her head. “No, that’s a terrible idea. Lindsay and I should do it. We’re the ones who can go undetected. You and Robyn wait here. We’ll go get the gear and suit up. How’s that sound?”
Lindsay’s head popped into visibility for a second so she could nod in agreement. “Did you guys check what your HUD’s chance of success is?” she asked. “Mine is pretty high.”
Dawn checked her HUD. “Yeah, same with mine. I got 80%. What about you guys?”
Robyn and Dakota looked at their rate of success on their HUDs. “Not looking too good,” Dakota said.
“All right. It’s decided, then. We’ll get the gear while trying not to die and then come back. You guys try not to die too, okay? Now, let’s get this over with and get to the action!”
Chapter Four
Dawn and Lindsay crept around the boulders they had been hiding behind. Lindsay hugged the wall as tightly as she could, and Dawn kept to the shadows, taking note that her feet shimmered back into visibility the moment that she was out from behind their protection. She was glad activating this perk wasn’t something she had to think about or concentrate hard on. That made focusing on the task at hand much easier.
They were nearly twenty feet from the albino karuikagis, which was not close enough to make out where their auxiliary webs were. It was easy enough to see their primary web since the karuikagis were lazily lying on them. The second, possibly more important, web would have to be searched out. Hopefully, the karuikagis didn’t have a great sense of smell. From what Dawn could remember from biology classes, most arachnids didn’t have pronounced senses of smell. They hunted mostly through feeling the vibrations of the earth or other subtleties humans weren’t lucky enough to experience. Hopefully, as long as the two writers stayed out of the karuikagis’ line of sight, they would survive the ordeal.
Along the side of the wall they crept, Lindsay taking point since she was more difficult to see and Dawn following her, trying to keep pace so she didn’t fall too far behind. They were not going very fast, though. Lindsay was taking her time, most likely still uncertain about how well she could sneak past the spiders. Dawn was following a similar train of thought. If turning invisible was a passive skill she had, it was likely the class the HUD had chosen for her was thief or rogue. If that were the case, there were probably other passive perks and skills that had been activated when the HUDs had started working. Right now probably wasn’t the best time to try to figure those perks out, though.
By now, the karuikagis no longer looked like distant threats to be easily avoided. Dawn and Lindsay were close enough to get a grasp on how large and terrifying the creatures truly were. Each was easily the size of any of the writers, not including Robyn, who was something of a giant. If one of the spiders decided to pounce on Dawn, it would be the end of her. The sheer force of the spider’s attack would probably be enough to instantly knock her out, if not kill her. She remembered seeing a video of a tarantula pouncing on a victim roughly its own size. It didn’t end well for the victim. Dawn swallowed as she imagined herself in the same situation. Bones crunching. Being wrapped up in a cocoon of silk (she knew tarantulas didn’t encase their prey, but she had already let her imagination get the best of her) and hung out while the spiders injected her with fluids to make her organs turn into a slushie. Yeah, I’ll stick as close to the wall as possible, Dawn thought.
The two writers slowly inched their way past the karuikagis’ webs until Dawn could hear that Lindsay was no longer holding her breath. Just a little farther away, Dawn could make out the intricate pattern of a spider’s web. It would not have been difficult to find, even if she hadn’t spotted the web due to the bodies that were hanging from it.
They would have been a dead giveaway.
There were six bodies of what looked like humans, but it was difficult to say. Their skin was all shriveled up, and their bodies were flat. Just as Dawn had assumed, these were the kind of arachnids that sucked all your juices out. A shudder went down Dawn’s spine as she imagined what she would look like hanging from one of those webs. Don’t think about it, Dawn thought. Just keep focused on what you have to do.
The bodies were close enough to touch, which was important because that was exactly what Lindsay and Dawn were about to do. They froze and looked at each other.
“Have you ever touched a dead body before?” Lindsay asked.
Dawn shook her head and tried to avoid looking at the corpses. She was close enough to smell the bodies’ decomposition, the almost sweet, noxious smell of decay. “I’ve never even seen a dead body before.”
“Come on, we just got to get it over with. Just grab what we need.”
“What the hell do we need? Are we supposed to take their armor?” Dawn asked.
“And weapons, I guess. Let’s just do it.”
Lindsay pulled on one of the corpses, and its HUD fell from its head. The armor the corpse wore suddenly vanished, as did the weapons. “What in the world?” Lindsay asked as she stepped back, clasping her hands over her mouth after realizing how loud she had spoken.
Dawn leaned over and scooped the fallen HUD up. The side of the HUD popped open and revealed a series of SD slots, one of which was in use. Dawn removed the SD card and pulled off her HUD. The SD slots in her HUD were all empty.
Lindsay leaned closer to Dawn and whispered in her ear, “What are you doing?”
Dawn shoved the SD card into her HUD. “Trying to figure things out,” she snapped. “Do you really want to try to drag all four of these bodies back to everyone else?” Dawn put her HUD back on and scrolled through the menus that popped up. One of them read New Inventory Detected. Downloading.
Leather gloves appeared over Dawn’s fingers as if thousands of pixels had just come into focus over her skin. A snug leather chest piece and leather pants pixelated onto her as well. She also felt something on her back, and a considerable weight on her waist. When she looked down at her waist, she saw two long daggers strapped to her leather belt. “The HUDs must store the armor!” Dawn exclaimed. “Let’s just grab the SD cards and get the hell out of here.”
Lindsay was already reaching over one of the corpses to peel off its HUD. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” Once Lindsay and Dawn had removed the SD cards, they started to make their way back to the other two writers, being very careful to stay as close to the walls and shadows as possible They made the trip faster this time, and quickly opened their palms to show their friends what they had retrieved. Dawn explained what they were supposed to do with the cards and then demonstrated. She handed one to each of the writers, who in turn took off their HUDs and inserted the cards.
Each of the writers’ HUDs, excluding Dawn’s, displayed the same message she had seen. In a couple of seconds, the HUDs were finished loading their new information and began to download the writer’s armor based on their assigned class.
A black cloak conjured itself over Lindsay, although it was not the flowing garb of the wizards that she had grown up reading about—and writing about—in high fantasy books. Instead, the robe was perfectly tailored to her body, fitting loosely yet very authoritatively, as if it had been created for military use. The robe was all fine, sharp edges that gave the impression Lindsay had been cut from a rose bush. A thin, wispy wand hung from the belt at Lindsay’s waist.
Robyn’s armor was much more straightforward. A light steel chest piece appeared over his chest, accompanied by similar outfitting for his legs. The steel even managed to shine in the darkness of the underground cavern. A sturdy longsword hung at his side, and a kite shield was strapped to his back. A helm with large ram horns that swirled around his ears was the final addition. Robyn unsheathed his sword and sighed. “Guess that makes me a warrior.”
Dakota was the last to receive his armor. Much like Dawn’s, it was snug leather, but instead of being broken into chest- and leg-pieces, Dakota’s was in one piece. A cape flowed down his back, giving him a look similar to Dawn’s, yet much more regal and focused.
Two daggers appeared in Dakota’s hand as a bow and quiver appeared on his back.
Dawn clicked her tongue at Dakota as she walked around and appraised her friend’s armor. “So, what…are we both Rogues or something?” she asked.
Dakota smiled, his grin as teasing as a sly cat’s. “Nope, not quite,” he said. “Judging by my very large bow and your very small bow, I’d take it that I’m a ranger. You’re just a thief. Maybe a strider.”
“What’s the difference? We both have daggers.”
“Actually, you have a bow, too. You probably just didn’t notice it because it’s so small.”
Dawn reached around and grabbed her bow. It was indeed a short bow. Compared to the masterfully crafted bow hanging beside Dakota’s quiver, it hardly looked like a bow at all. The short bow could have easily been confused for a child’s toy.
Dakota smugly pulled out his bow, trying not to look too satisfied. “You see, rangers tend to be much more…I don’t know…admirable as a class. Thieves and striders are rangers in training, at least narratively. Maybe one day, you’ll grow up to be a big, strong ranger like me.”
“You know, sometimes you are insufferable.”
“Some would say extremely charming, endearing, and fun to be around. But everyone is entitled to their own opinions.”
Lindsay leaned over the boulder to check and see if the coast was clear for them to sneak out of the cavern. She hadn’t noticed a discernable path earlier when they had been lounging in the cavern, but if they were going to keep from becoming spider food, they were going to have to find a way out of the cavern sooner rather than later. What she saw made her pause for a moment before she could put it into words. “Hey, guys,” she started. “You know those giant karuikagis we’ve been hiding from?”