by C E Keene
Again it felt like a stretch. Just because Paul was comically bad about keeping his NDA didn’t meant there was something fishy going on. But apparently those few tweets weren’t the actual basis for the creator’s theory—just the establishing evidence.
“Over the next several months, Paul’s account looks fairly normal. He tweets about movies, books, games, and what is obviously his time with Apex: Untamed. Only a handful of people interact with his tweets—it’s no more attention than he’s gotten from past tweets. But on August 11th, something seems to change. Looking at the analytics, you can see a noticeable spike in the activity surrounding Paul’s account.”
A line graph appeared, plotted in a way that showed a massive increase right around that date. Paul had apparently gone from having a maximum of five or so likes on his tweets to suddenly skyrocketing into the triple digits and beyond.
“Digging deeper into this activity, we see that Paul’s account was followed by over a thousand other ‘people’ on that same day. People with generic usernames made up of random words and numbers. People with only a few, sporadic tweets, stock photo profile pictures, and a long history of liking and retweeting Apex content. There’s no question Paul Larson was suddenly followed by an army of bots, but why?”
Why indeed. It was strange, sure, but Simon had been followed by a dozen different bots in the span of a few minutes after tweeting something politically charged, so it wasn’t exactly unprecedented. He also had no idea where this guy was going with all of this, and he barely listened to the next several minutes of “evidence gathering” that turned out to be the same sorts of metrics relayed in different ways.
“It’s easy to see Paul was being watched.” Was it? Was it really? Simon rolled his eyes. “He’d drawn attention to himself, but at this point, the reason for that attention was still unclear. That was until August 28th, when Paul posted this thread:”
Paul Larson @pauliebeast93
I know this is going to sound lame. Maybe it is. I don’t know. I just… I’ve never felt like this before.
Paul Larson @pauliebeast93
I used to be one of those guys who mocked my idiot friends and their “best waifu” bullshit, and I still think it’s lame as hell to fall for a pair of tits that are all computer code and 3D modeling.
Paul Larson @pauliebeast93
But what happens when the tech goes beyond that? If you can reach out and touch someone, feel their skin under your fingertips, is that real? If you can smell the soap they use, taste the meal they made just for you, is that real? If you watch them get hurt and you feel like your heart is being ripped from your body… is that real?
Paul Larson @pauliebeast93
I don’t know anymore. I just know going back to all this shit feels so empty after what I’ve experienced. Maybe I have a problem, but I’m not really inclined to get help.
Those were deeply personal tweets, and despite Simon’s own clash with Paul, he felt oddly protective of the man and angry that someone had just exposed these thoughts for the world to see. But they’d obviously been public. Paul had done that himself; he’d felt compelled to do it because of something he’d experienced in Untamed.
Instantly Simon thought of Mira. Not just the few moments they’d spent alone in that inn room, but the battle with the Nepondus Queen where she’d been in obvious danger. Whatever—whoever—Paul was posting about, it seemed like he had an even deeper connection, and Simon was officially intrigued.
“We can’t be sure who or what Paul was talking about in these tweets, but we can extrapolate from the countless reams of data of people forming deep, lasting connections with other players in online games. I could be wrong. It’s always possible. But I think what we’re seeing is Paul falling in love with one of his fellow beta testers.”
Simon’s lips twisted into something halfway between a frown and a grimace. No, it wasn’t another player. The proof was there if you knew to look for it. But then, Simon would have assumed the same if he hadn’t experienced the very real NPCs that populated Untamed’s world.
He tried to keep listening, but the theorist went off the deep end after that assertion. He seemed to believe that Paul had somehow broken the terms of service along with the NDA, and that was why the bots started following him. He also posited that it was because the proprietary hardware he was testing was still in its early stages and wasn’t meant to simulate those kinds of emotions, and so they were essentially using Paul as a guinea pig.
That might have been true in some respects, but the guy completely lost Simon when he started to “connect the dots.”
“Whoever this mysterious person was, it’s obvious the developers of Apex didn’t want the public finding out any more details of Paul’s relationship with them. This was Paul’s last tweet before everything—including his account—was deleted:”
Paul Larson @pauliebeast93
I guess this is the last you’ll hear from me. I’ve made my decision. I can’t leave her now.
Of course the creator took that as the result of the developers threatening Paul, but that tweet—more than anything else he’d read—brought about an epiphany Simon wasn’t sure he was prepared to deal with:
Paul’s choice had been to stay in the world of Estalia for someone he’d obviously loved. And immediately after he’d made it, he just… disappeared.
The video played out in the background, but Simon wasn’t listening anymore. He sat back in his chair, open pizza box on his lap, the piece he’d had in his mouth turning to ash. His mind leapt between pieces of information, processing all of this at a million miles an hour. And despite his best intentions, it kept landing on one answer to this whole mystery:
Paul Larson didn’t exist in the real world anymore. He was Higrem now, and no one else.
Even the idea of that seemed so crazy it was hard for him to wrap his mind around. Every time he did, he felt a stab of panic that he had to rationalize himself out of. No. Paul wasn’t gone. Higrem was just a character in a game; the representation of a man who still existed somewhere. A man police and conspiracy theorists alike hadn’t found after months of searching.
It was too much. Simon couldn’t even process everything he’d read and seen, let alone how he felt about it. And before he got a chance to let anything other than his lizard brain get ahold of the information, he was bombarded by yet another instance of sensory overload as the NeuroJak began to beep like a bomb ticking down its last seconds, a strobe light flashing from the LED display, covering the room in a way that was impossible to ignore.
Something was happening in Estalia—that much was clear. But Simon stared at the device for what felt like an eternity, trying to decide whether he should even put it on. He needed time to process all of this. Time to think it through and come to a rational conclusion.
He also needed answers, and he knew he wasn’t going to get them from secondhand sources who each had their own outlandish theories. He had to go to the source, and that meant getting back into Estalia and forcing Higrem to talk. Maybe he’d make progress this time, now that he was armed with so much more information.
Either way, it felt like the only active thing Simon could do at the moment. Closing up the pizza box and setting it off to the side, he returned the NeuroJak to his temple and logged back in.
10
He was awoken by the feeling of falling, and opened his eyes to find that he actually was.
The floor was perilously close and Arheis couldn’t catch himself before he slammed into it, his body apparently having been thrown out of the cot. He groaned and tried to take a moment to get his bearings, but the game didn’t let him. The ship he’d been sleeping on rocked violently to one side, buffeted about by what must have been some insanely powerful waves.
Grabbing onto the bunk for support—a bunk he realized was already empty, with neither Galen nor Zindar anywhere in the small cabin—Arheis pulled himself to his feet and held on for dear life as the Lady Katherine lurched hard enough t
o upend his pack from its place near the foot of his cot.
“What the hell is going on?” he called out, not expecting an answer.
And while he didn’t get one immediately, a familiar figure suddenly appeared in the doorway of his cabin, her hands braced against the wooden frame.
“Thank the Gods,” Mira said, letting out a heavy breath of obvious relief. “When Zindar said you wouldn’t wake up…”
“What’s happening?” Arheis asked, taking a tentative step closer.
The ship lurched again, hard, and he was thrown against the wall nearest to the door, his arms barely coming out in time to catch him. If this was a storm, it had to be an unbelievably impressive one. The kind that could easily sink ships three times the Lady Katherine’s size. But Arheis hadn’t heard a single crack of lightning, or the sound of rain hitting the decks above them.
“We’re being attacked. Get your gear and meet us topside.” Her words were hurried, and halfway through she looked worriedly toward the stairs before turning her attention back to him. “And be careful.”
“Attacked by what—”
She was gone before he could even finish the question. Arheis hadn’t noticed the fact that she was dressed in full armor before, but he noticed it now, along with the crossbow she hoisted in one arm, her other hand gripping the railing so she could make it up the stairs without being thrown around.
He supposed it didn’t really matter who or what was attacking them. He needed to prepare, and quickly, before whatever it was sunk them.
Fighting against gravity and the unpredictable attack patterns of whatever it was, Arheis pulled on his armor, grabbed his spear and shield, and fit as many potions and other items into his belt and pouches as he could carry. He raced up the stairs, managing to make it to the top before he had to brace himself, his head ducked down just in time to avoid a crate that went flying by.
When he looked up again, the answer to his question was right in front of him.
A massive beast bigger than the Lady Katherine itself rose out of the water, sending waves crashing against the hull as it threw its giant head about. It was dark, the light of the moon and a few sconces that hadn’t yet succumbed to the deluge the only things illuminating the creature, but even in the middle of the day Arheis would have had a hard time making it out.
Every sea monster he’d ever seen was usually some kind of cephalopod or maybe a fish derivative. Dragons and dinosaurs were common too, if people wanted to be slightly creative with it. This beast was a terrifying amalgamation of so many different things that he didn’t even know where to begin, a fact the creature saw fit to help him with as it swiped at the boat with a long, bony arm that came down hard on the deck, smashing through the wooden planks and leaving a splintered crater in its wake.
Arheis followed the point of impact, finding the creature had almost humanoid hands with three gnarled, barnacle-crusted fingers and webbing in between each. Hard, yellow fingernails clawed through the deck as it drew its arm back to itself, two sailors narrowly avoiding getting swept along with it. The creature made a shrill sound that pierced the night sky, and Arheis’ attention was drawn to its face.
There were some distinctly dragon angles there, from the sharp line of its snout to the scaled ridges above its eyes. Like its hand, the creature’s face was gaunt, the bones of its cheeks and jaw jutting out, a large crest formed like a cowl appearing as little more than thin, translucent skin stretched over bone.
“Arheis!” he heard Zindar call from across the deck.
All three of them—Zindar, Mira, and Galen—were on the other side of the hole the beast had created in the deck, causing Arheis to have to jump to get over there. The creature seemed to know instinctively when he was most vulnerable, because its long fingers curled around the railing and it literally shook the boat, sending Arheis toward the deck in a sprawling tangle of limbs.
He grabbed for his spear and got back to his feet as gracefully as he could manage, only to see another bony appendage—like a squid’s tentacle, but with hardly any flesh—lifting out of the depths and slamming down less than a foot away from him. He didn’t have enough time to react, only enough to see Zindar leap in to get a few slices, a viscous black fluid flying from the creature as he did so.
“What the hell is this thing?” Arheis called.
“It’s an Exsetus.” That was Bren, the first mate. She was standing at the stern near Treyous and several other members of their crew, armed with a spear and shield. “I told you we shouldn’t have gone out this far.”
“And if we make it through this, I’ll happily eat my words, but let’s focus on staying alive,” Treyous yelled over the Exsetus’ ear-shattering cries.
Arheis had no idea how to fight this thing, but he tried to use Hunter’s Perception to take note of the enemy’s attack patterns. So far it had slammed the ship with a hand and some other limb, but it also had two long tusks that almost looked like a walrus’, and the fluid that had seeped out when Zindar cut the creature up was sizzling on the deck, burning a hole through it that Arheis avoided.
The Exsetus let go of the ship and drew back, its mouth opening to reveal a pit of blackness that Arheis realized wasn’t just its throat.
“Get out of the way!” he warned the sailors who were drawing close to the edge, leveling swords and spears at the beast.
None of them heard him, and only two of the three reacted quickly enough to get out of the way as the Exsetus expelled a thick, tar-like blob toward the ship. The third sailor was covered in it, the black goo smacking against him with a sickening sound. For a moment Arheis held his breath, thinking maybe it was just tar. Sticky and annoying, but only capable of slowing someone down in this state.
But no. The creature’s cries were rivaled by the agonized, animal screams coming from the man as the substance first ate through his skin, then deeper.
Arheis was forced to look away. By the time he looked back, the man was gone, and only the black sludge remained, continuing to eat through the deck.
“God damn,” came a breathless voice from behind him.
He turned to see Higrem kitted out in his full armor, that massive greatsword held out before him. The man actually looked apprehensive for once, seemingly humbled by the size of the Exsetus. And why shouldn’t he be? They were dealing with something that was bigger even than the vessel they were on, was ripping said vessel apart, and could apparently dissolve grown men like a vat of acid.
They were outmatched. That was obvious even from the start. And unlike their experience with the Nepondus Queen, this time Arheis doubted they were going to get multiple opportunities to discover the beast’s weaknesses and tailor their fighting to them. They’d have to figure it out quick, or they were all going to end up like that sailor.
“We need to find its weaknesses,” Arheis called, taking charge despite the overwhelming sense of dread that wanted to claim him after witnessing a man’s gruesome demise. “Attacking the arm didn’t seem to do much.”
The ship groaned, the creature’s weight threatening to capsize the thing. It was almost impossible for Arheis to keep his footing while still holding his weapons, but what choice did he have?
“No,” Zindar agreed, crouching low on the deck, “all it did was release whatever that fluid is.”
Which they definitely didn’t need more of.
“Can you summon your spirit?”
The Pruvari nodded, holding up the arm clad in his special bracer. Clouds suddenly gathered and lightning surged through the night sky, casting an otherworldly glow for miles in every direction. The Exsetus screeched in response, and this time slammed two of those bony appendages over the hull. Arheis had to jump out of the way as one of them crashed toward the mast, but the sound of a loud shot ringing out from Treyous’ cannon filled the air first, the superheated metal ball ripping through the back of the creature’s shoulders, one of the only places it seemed to have a significant amount of flesh.
“That did s
omething!” he yelled encouragingly.
His gamer’s mind began to analyze the stage set before him, looking for any way he could platform up there and strike at the back of the beast. From this angle it just seemed unbelievably risky. They’d have to bait it into throwing its entire body forward, and by that point there might not be a ship to launch off of.
“Mira, Galen, try and flank it on the other side.”
They fanned out without question, with Treyous on one side of the ship and the other two ranged users on the other. To his right, Arheis saw a flash of orange light, felt the heat of sudden flames as a fireball was conjured by one of the crew who’d planted her feet near Bren. Garbed in practical robes rather than the tunic and trousers the rest of the crew wore, she seemed to be the only resident wizard type, and while Arheis doubted the effectiveness of fire, he’d take everything they could get.
As the mage sent the fireball toward the back of the beast’s head—an area Arheis couldn’t even see thanks to the crest—he advanced toward the edge of the ship. His shield was thrust out in front of him, and he held that position until the moment the fireball impacted. The beast reeled, letting go of the side of the boat. Arheis planted his feet, bent his knees, and sprang up when the boat stabilized, driving his spear in the fleshy space between one of its arms and its body.
> You pierce Exsetus for 5 points of damage. (44 deflected)
Dammit. It wasn’t just the fleshy bits, then, and considering how huge the thing was, Arheis guessed that was a negligible amount of damage. Pushing himself backward, he narrowly avoided the creature’s flailing arms as it reacted not only to the fireball and his attack, but also to another shot from Treyous.
“Now, while it’s still recovering! Aim for the back!”