by Marc Robert
The sprite had been shorter than him by at least a foot and had fair skin and a tiny, pouty mouth. Extending from her bony little shoulder blades was a huge pair of wings much like a butterfly’s wings — or that of a night-moth — gossamer-thin and finely powdered and adorned with a purplish-white Rorschach-blot-pattern that had caused Osman to think of caves and skulls and his future to come.
What was it that she had said to him?
“When you’re at your lowest, do not despair. Come and find me!”
Osman gazed around at the cavernous room, confirming again that he was all alone. Where was she then? he wondered. Wasn’t she supposed to be here??? He had read in one of Simulah Corp.’s “Lore Of Legends” monster manuals that such sprites were specially-bred to assist dungeon cores (i.e. dungeon lords and masters) in the designing and construction of their death mazes and labyrinths and that all cores were meant to have a helper sprite. So … where was his now?!
But before he could wonder any further about that, he felt a pang of hunger in his belly. And then another pang, and another. When was the last time he had actually eaten any food? He wasn’t totally sure … The pangs were coming in waves now, each new one slightly more aggressive than the last. His stomach grumbled rather loudly. That WAS weird! Usually the game wasn’t so insistent about making players feel such basic needs, unless …
Oh no …
Osman didn’t know much about being a dungeon, not yet anyway, but he did know one thing for sure: dungeons needed to feed!
And then he felt it: The Hunger erupted in the pit of his being, a craving so perilous and deep that it rocked his soul. A raging inferno in the shape of an infinity symbol blazed in his mind’s eye: a fiery figure-eight turned on its side, burning ungodly bright. Osman had never experienced anything quite like it before, neither in the real world — nor here, in Other Earth — and it scared him half-to-hell.
He needed mana!
Like now!!
RIGHT NOW!!!
Mana, and more mana, and EVEN MORE MANA STILL!!!!!
Like some addict or feral beast, he began frantically searching around the cavernous room for something, anything, any living thing — anything at all that he could consume! Cockroaches, rats, worms … really anything would do, any small morsel that he could devour the soul of.
This was DEFINITELY NOT what Osman had imagined when he wished that he had become a dungeon core just before he died.
Yet: here he was, hungry as fuck, and ready to chow down on …
… just about anything!!!
Just a few hours ago, he had been a good guy. A decent guy. Probably not so different than you. Not a pacifist, no. And not a total bookworm either. Perhaps a little bit too ambitious for his own good when it came to gaming, sure. But relatively good. Idealistic. Optimistic! Aaaaand … totally in love.
Which was exactly what got him into this whole damn mess to begin with.
And maybe, just maybe — before we go any further — you should know about that … about who Osman was, and what Osman was just before he ended up inside this cursed core. Before he became something of a … a monster.
Maybe then, if you knew a little bit more about the events leading up to his death, you’d understand better all the infernal things that The Hunger was about to make him do.
Maybe …
Forged In A Falling Star
∆∆∆
A Few Hours Ago
∆∆∆
The fire-demon’s blazing war-hammer came crashing down in a burst of flames on the exact spot where Osman Spar had stood only a split second before. For such a huge creature, it was incredibly nimble. If Osman hadn’t dodged its attack, he would have been smashed to a pulp.
The young man clenched his jaw at the thought of it. Then he gripped the hilt of his rune-sword, ready to unsheath the weapon.
The demon turned to face him, hefting up its massive, flaming hammer. It had a spiky crown of burning embers for hair, its face concealed by a death’s head mask, the hardened magma of its skin doubling as a kind of organic suit of black armor.
Where had it come from? Osman wondered. It seemed to have spawned out of nowhere — with no warning — just as he was about to log out of Other Earth. That’s the first time the game had ever done something like that to him. Usually, just after completing a quest, the AI would let Osman wander around in whatever town or village was nearby without him having to worry about encountering any significant threats.
The demon glowered at him through the eye-slits of its mask — obviously, it was unaware of this rule!
Osman shook his head. Fully-immersive, virtual-reality-based online roleplaying games were still pretty new on the market, and constantly subject to a multitude of real-time updates and patches to debug faulty code and increase immersion. And so maybe that’s what this was? Maybe that’s what had spawned the demon …
Simulah Corp., the makers of Other Earth — as well as dozens of other bestselling full-dive VR-MMORPGs — ceaselessly catalogued a mind-boggling amount of user data from each and every player’s gaming sessions. That was millions and millions of gamers all over the world, all logged in and playing out their virtual adventures while simultaneously downloading their every thought and feeling about those adventures into Simulah’s “Hive.” The company maintained that this hive archiving was absolutely necessary in order to “better evolve the brain-bot of the world’s penultimate thinking machine, to create the most intimate and life-affecting simulation experience EVER, for you: the end-user.”
That kind of ad-speak definitely betrayed some Matrix-level bullshit, Osman thought. Although maybe it was that — or, well, some minuscule part of all that data mining — that had caused this boss-level monster to turn up just now, just as he was about to call it quits for the day.
Or maybe it was something else entirely …
Who knows?
And it didn’t really matter anyway. Osman had just completed a big quest and was feeling pretty damn good about himself. And frankly he couldn’t wait to get back to the real world and tell Kendall all about it.
Kendall Raines was totally the girl for him. And it wasn’t just the way she looked in her workout clothes, which showcased her magnificent breasts and tight butt, but how she could geek out with him for hours about Other Earth and all kinds of gaming cheats and tricks while also being part of the cool kids’ clique at school, co-captain of the girls’ lacrosse team, and third in their class academically when they had graduated a couple months ago. Plus, she was a volunteer at the local homeless shelter and clinic, ran a successful dog-walking business on the weekends, and still went to church with her dad every Sunday.
But, alas … she and Osman were only friends.
Good friends: but friends!
Lab partners. Gaming buddies. Sometimes Osman would walk the dogs with her on weekends just to keep her company. Stuff like that.
However, at school, Kendall was usually surrounded by tons of people from the in-crowd. She hung out with — and ate lunch with — the other lacrosse girls and the hot girls from the cheer squad and student council. She had even dated the captain of the football team for most of their senior year and, while she never actively ignored Osman in class or in the halls or anything like that, she never actually invited him to join The Inner Circle either.
Osman’s best friend, Bock, had warned him more than once NOT to get hung up on someone like Kendall Raines. “Goody-goody’s like that have dark secrets and skeletons in their closet, Os” he had said.
But Osman didn’t listen.
He was certain that, sooner or later, Kendall would realize that he was The One for her and accept him as more than just a friend. And maybe, just maybe, him recounting how he had just single-handedly completed the quest of The Thief Of Souls and slayed a super-powerful goblin shaman would finally push her over the edge into agreeing to go out on a date with him. A real date, not meeting up to play Other Earth together, but a date-date: dinner and a movie and mayb
e some making out afterwards. They were just starting college and Osman was determined for it to be anything other than high school all over again.
So, despite the fire-demon’s sudden, unexpected appearance and the obvious potential mana goldmine that the creature represented, Osman was just gonna go ahead and log out anyway.
Until he heard it …
… the faint sound of laughter in the distance, drawing nearer by the second …
Small children!
Three or four of them, at least: running all around, laughing and playing without a care in the world. They appeared atop a nearby hill, but then grew suddenly silent, having caught sight of the huge fire-demon and of Osman himself.
More likely than not, the children were from the bustling little market town that Osman knew was not far off, and he shook his head: “No!” He was a Paladin-Apprentice Of The Order Of The Morning Star, sworn to become an Emissary Of The Light — a protector of this realm and all those who dwelled within it — and he would not abandon those kids, nor that town, to this … this: Thing!
(Plus, such an act of selfless bravery was sure to impress Kendall, right? Maybe even more than killing a goblin shaman … maybe).
Osman grinned to himself at the thought of finally being able to impress her properly, then angled his body so as to make himself a smaller target in the fight he knew was about to erupt. He sized up the creature and drew his sword — “Light-Bringer,” his mentor had confided in him its true name, one of the last of the Angelic Blades, forged in a falling star.
He twirled the sword around in his hand, then pointed the gleaming tip of the blade at the demon and prepared to charge into battle …
The fire-demon snarled at the sight of Osman’s rune-sword. It eyed the young man warily now, tilting its head to one side. It was gripping the handle of its ginormous war-hammer with both of its craggy black hands, but did not raise the weapon to attack.
Osman narrowed his eyes: “What do you want here, fiend?” he asked.
“Spaaaaaaaaaaaaar …” it hissed.
Oh shit, Osman thought, it knows my name!
The creature suddenly moved in a feral way, rushing forward …
Osman whispered a word of power, causing the rune-spell inscribed along his sword to ignite and glow an icy blue.
… the fire-demon lifted its flaming hammer high above its head to strike …
But — in that same instant — Osman lunged forward, driving his shimmering blade straight through the jagged black magma of the Thing’s skin into its chest. The demon screeched like a Ring-Wraith, so high-pitched and abhorrent that it almost deafened the young paladin, or scattered his mind to the four winds. He gritted his teeth against the malignant sound and twisted the blade, pushing it deeper in.
{-13 Mana Points} appeared above the creature’s head in a puffy yellow font and floated there for several seconds before swirling away accompanied by a little “gust of wind” sound effect.
The fire-demon screeched again and swung its hammer, the sword sticking from its chest altering its attack trajectory. It struck the paladin, not on the top of the young man’s head — as it had intended to — but in the shoulder, batting him away like some bothersome fly.
Osman flew through the air, {-27 Health Points} appearing above his body and tracking with him as he flew. That was MORE than 25% of his HP gone in one shot! he thought, totally surprised. Sure, he had leveled up as a result of completing The Thief Of Souls quest and was an Apprentice now with 100 Health Points to his name, but a couple more blows like that one and he’d be X’d out for sure.
He hit the muddy ground hard, but tumbled and rolled, popping back up onto his feet in a different place so as to avoid the demon’s follow-up attack.
The creature’s flaming hammer struck only the mud where Osman had just been, getting mired there for a moment and giving the young man the few precious seconds he needed to duck nimbly in under the demon’s massive armored arms and grab the hilt of his rune-sword (still lodged in its chest) and yank the blade free.
The fire-demon roared, {-9 MP} appearing above the burning embers of its hair even as Osman spun away, glowing sword in hand.
It could be that the two of them were quite evenly matched after all, despite the creature’s hulking appearance. That would be pretty typical for Other Earth, even if the demon’s sudden, unexpected appearance was not. And if that were the case — and the demon WAS just a low-level Apprentice (like Osman himself) — then it could be that he could still best the creature.
But even as he was thinking that through, and starting to feel pretty sure of himself again, the Thing’s blazing hammer struck him square in the chest, knocking him onto his ass. {-31 HP} appeared above his head, before gusting away.
And it was then that the fire-demon did something WHOLLY out-of-character. Instead of delivering a killing blow, it cocked its head and stared down at Osman, waiting for the paladin to make the next move.
It’s MESSING with me! the young man thought, getting a little angry. (Well, on the one hand angry, but on the other hand: super-glad that he wasn’t being bludgeoned to death!!!)
Osman grinned and popped back up onto his feet, swinging his blade through the air a couple of times for good measure.
The demon took a few steps back, eyeing the glowing rune-sword intensely. But it made no move to launch another attack, nor even to defend itself, which was odd. Terribly odd! Osman had seen cats play with mice this same way once or twice before, and thinking about that really got his ire up.
He hated the idea of being toyed with, even just a little bit!
Emitting a fierce war-cry, the paladin leapt forward, hoping he had not just been lured into some sort of trap, and plunged the tip of his icy blue blade directly into the wound that he had previously made in the demon’s chest. The creature screeched, louder and even more abhorrent than before, and Osman suddenly wondered if it maybe liked this sort of … sparring.
Maybe it was TURNED ON by such stuff?!
It WAS a demon after all!
{-5 MP} appeared above the creature’s head, then swirled away even as the Thing squared its stance and eyed the paladin expectantly.
Osman had wounded its infernal soul three times now, which was exactly the kind of thing that his rune-sword had been forged to do, and exactly what he — as a paladin — was charged with doing. But, somehow, something didn’t feel quite right.
In Other Earth, both real-world players (like Osman himself) and NPCs (Non-Player Characters who were generated and controlled by the game’s AI, like this fire-demon, for example) had both Health Points (HP) and Mana Points (MP). Health Points indicated the constitution of a player’s or NPC’s physical body whereas Mana Points indicated the constitution of their innate magic or soul. Almost every being in Other Earth had both. It was one of the features that made the game so unique, and so popular.
But it seemed as if this demon had no regard for its own soul … or, perhaps, it was using its MP as some kind of bait, to egg the paladin on?
Osman wasn’t sure which one it was.
He knew that you could zero out a character’s Mana Points, essentially destroying — or, if you were an infernal monster, devouring — their soul. However, if you hadn’t zeroed out their HP as well, then their body would live on as some kind of undead being or mana-eater.
Alternately, you could wound a character’s body, or even kill their body by reducing their HP count to zero, but their soul — their mana — would live on. Their flesh and bones, all their items and clothes, would all dematerialize, leaving behind only their tiny, little mana core (the seed of their being), which housed their soul.
Typically, these mana cores appeared in the form of brightly-colored gemstones and were one of the most sought after pieces of loot in the whole of the game. Their uses were legion, which made the cores a fiat currency of the realm whose value was rated higher than that of silver and even of gold. Some in the upper echelons of power in the great city of Esk we
re prone to whisper: “Those who control the cores, control the kingdom.”
But Osman wasn’t a murder-hobo.
Nor was he a soul-killer.
He just didn’t want to die here, at the hands of some rando fire-demon.
Almost as if on cue, the creature screeched and threw down its war-hammer in what appeared to be … disgust? Then it clutched at the wound in its chest, peering down at the gash. The young man’s sword had pierced it where its heart should be, if such a Thing even had a heart.
A trickle of lava leaked from the wound. And the demon screeched again! Osman wanted so bad to cover his ears, but he did not. He stood his ground, his glowing sword at the ready.
The Thing looked from the gash in its chest to Osman’s face, utterly dumbfounded that this … this paladin in mud-stained white robes had actually GIVEN UP on trying to defeat it! It angled its head down like a bull about to charge: “Spaaaaaaaaaaaaar …” it hissed again.