by Rachel Ford
DLC
Beta Tester, Book 4
By Rachel Ford
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow.
- From In the Bleak Midwinter
Chapter One
Jack woke spluttering. A great, icy snowflake had fallen on his nose, and sent such a shiver through him that he could not sleep through it. It wasn’t just the snowflake, though. He seemed to hear a voice, low and soft and faraway.
It was singing. He stared up at the gray sky, and the snowflakes falling fast and hard toward him.
“Frosty wind made moan,” the voice said. “Earth stood hard as iron.”
Jack pushed himself to a half sitting position and glanced around. He could see nothing but gray morning and endless, white snow.
The voice went on. “Water like a stone…”
Jack blinked. Water. Where the hell is the water? He’d been at sea on a raft for a day and a half. When he’d closed his eyes to sleep, he and his companions had been far from land. He had seen only water in every direction.
“Snow had fallen, snow on snow…”
He stared out at a snow-covered coast. Now and then, half frozen water slushed against the raft, rocking it slightly. Jack got to his feet abruptly, pushing away any hints of sleepiness. He’d been headed for a land of warm plains. Before him, he saw neither warmth nor plains. Mountains stretched up, and snow tumbled down in great, wet flakes. “What the…”
Migli the dwarf shook his head. Of Jack’s six companions, only Migli was awake. “A strange wind, Sir Jack,” he said. “A very strange wind. It came in the night, while you all slept, and blew us off course. I know not where we are. But there is something odd about this place.”
Jack nodded slowly. The voice went on singing about snow and bleak midwinters. The raft, he saw, had been half buried under snow and ice. He thought about jumping into the ankle-deep water to try to push it out. But something told him it wouldn’t be that easy.
This was a videogame, after all. If he’d been blown off course, there must be a reason for it. But, more importantly, this was not just any videogame. This was Dagger of Doom: Iaxiabor’s Revenge, the latest and greatest virtual reality world from Marshfield Studio. And he was playing from – and stuck inside – a state of the art virtual reality unit. So if he plunged into those waters, he would have more than the visual experience of seeing water and ice around his legs. This would feel like real life. The same signals his real body’s nerves would send would flood his brain now, from the in-game body.
It would make no difference that his actual body was safe and secure in a Marshfield Studio lab. As far as his brain was concerned, he would have just plunged into icy water; and he would feel every bit of the discomfort associated with that.
So Jack stood there for a moment, peering into the icy water. As if sensing his hesitation, Migli said, “We should head inland. We won’t move this boat on our own. But there may be someone nearby who can help us.”
Jack’s long and mostly unwilling association with Migli had taught him a good deal about the dwarf. It had taught him that depending on him in a fight was a deadly mistake, for instance. But it had also taught that, in a pinch, Migli could be counted on to offer a hint about what direction to take next.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
“Oi,” Migli called, “wake, my friends. We must be on our way.”
Five sleepy heads rose and turned his way: four humanoids and one animal. The only actual human of the group was Arath the ranger, who cursed under his breath at having been disturbed. The only animal in their midst lay near him: Shimmerfax the battlecorn. A huge, glittering unicorn, Shimmerfax followed Arath.
Ceinwen the elf yawned into her hand, and Er’c the orc mumbled, “Where are we?”
Karag the giant, though, groaned. “I know this place.”
“You do?”
“Aye. It’s an ancient land, full of strange and foolish creatures. Once, the Obsidian Isles went to war with them.”
Jack’s ears perked up at that. The giant didn’t talk much about his homeland, or his shadowy past as some sort of imperial enforcer or assassin. “Really? What happened?”
“They lost, obviously.”
“Well, was that it?”
Karag shrugged. “What else is there? They picked a fight they could not win, and they lost. Now, they cower behind a wall of unbroken winter.”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” Ceinwen snorted. “This place is called Pleasant Vale, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. “But it doesn’t look very pleasant to me.”
“Once it was: a great, green land, full of happiness and joy. Until the Obsidian Isles got involved, anyway.”
“They attacked us,” Karag put in.
“I don’t care who attacked who,” Arath said. “I’m freezing my jingle bells off. Let’s move.”
The giant pushed hastily to his feet. “I agree. This is no time to be debating foreign policy. We must find shelter, or we will freeze.” He added with a measure of distaste, “Jingle bells and all.”
The wind picked that particular moment to shriek, and Jack shivered. “Right. Let’s go, then.” He leaped from the side of the raft onto a snowy shore. As soon as his feet touched the ground, the game alerted him that the main quest had been updated.
Your vessel has blown off course. To continue your pursuit of Iaxiabor, find out where you are.
New Quest Started: Shipwrecked
Objective added: Find the town of Pleasant Vale
Objective added: Find a way off the island
Jack groaned. He needed to finish the game before he could get out. Marshfield Studio’s experts had all been clear on that point: the bug that trapped him would – should – release him as soon as he’d played through the main quest.
So every one of these pointless delays grated on him. Of course, there was nothing he could do about it except play through the obstacles, one after another.
So he glanced around, peering through the falling snow. He could see nothing at all – no town, no people, and no way out.
“Look,” Ceinwen said, pointing past Jack’s shoulder. “A road.”
Jack couldn’t see it, but elves were supposed to have extraordinary vision. So if she said there was a road ahead, well, he was going to take her at her word. “Right. Let’s go then.” He walked for half a minute in the direction she pointed, until he pulled himself over a particularly high snowbank and landed on a cobblestone road. “Nice going, Ceinwen.”
Now, he glanced up and down the stretch of road. He could see nothing differentiating one direction from the other, so he had no way of knowing if he should go right or left.
“I reckon,” Migli said, “the town’s going to be inland. I don’t think anyone would build on a coast like this one.”
Jack thought of all the coastal towns in real life that built on vicious stretches of ocean, or along the brutal shores of the Great Lakes. Bad weather rarely deterred people. Not with all the opportunities that came with water – transport, commerce and fishing. But, he reminded himself, this was a videogame, and not real life. Migli had dropped a hint. “Inland it is,” he decided, turning left.
The road, somehow, stayed mostly clear of snow. A few minor drifts crossed it here and there, but nothing to obscure it. They trudged for a good twenty minutes through the cold and whipping snow, seeing no one and nothing.
Arath began to grumble about his freezing jingle bells again. Ceinwen observed that no one wanted to hear about his jingle bells. �
��Not that we wouldn’t mind roasting your chestnuts over an open fire,” the giant agreed. “But otherwise, I don’t think we need to dwell on the topic.”
Jack had no idea where these strange metaphors were coming from, but he shook his head. “Come on, guys. I don’t want to hear fighting. Especially – well, weird stuff.”
Arath nodded emphatically, declaring that he wholeheartedly agreed: no one wanted to hear from Karag.
Er’c remained quiet, staring at his companions in a troubled way.
The ranger apparently took the expression to be personal criticism, because he said, “Don’t look at me like that, boy. He started it.”
“I wasn’t, Mister Arath. I wasn’t looking at anyone, I mean. Only, aren’t we all fighting for the same cause? Aren’t we all here for the same reason: to aid Sir Jack in his quest to bring an end to a great evil?”
The ranger grunted.
“It troubles me that we are so fresh on our way, and so much at odds. How will we ever prevail against Iaxiabor and his minions if we are at war with one another?”
Jack nodded, and not just because the kid was right. He nodded because he didn’t want to spend the rest of the game listening to them sniping back and forth. If he wanted to deal with toddlers, he would have gotten into childcare or politics. He liked videogames precisely because of the escape they provided.
Karag stopped suddenly, pointing off path. For a fleeting moment, Jack worried that he was going to carry on the argument. But the giant said, “What’s that?”
Jack screwed up his eyes, peering into the falling snow. He saw nothing. But, no, that wasn’t true. Deep in the gray and gloom, a light glowed. He squinted harder. Not one light; two. One was red, and one was green; and both glowed so faintly that he could barely make them out. They lay at perhaps fifteen-degree angles apart from each other. “A downed stoplight?” he asked of no one in particular. His NPC companions wouldn’t know what a stoplight was. Which put a frown on his face – for the same reason they wouldn’t recognize the lights, it seemed an unlikely answer. What would stoplights be doing in a medieval fantasy game?
“We should check it out,” Migli said. “Someone might need our assistance.”
Jack nodded, making a note of the lights and their position relative to the road. He didn’t want to lose his way on some misguided mission of mercy. Then, though, he headed off the beaten path, into knee deep snow.
His companions followed, with Arath grumbling about the cold. “I hope no one has come to harm on this lonely stretch,” Ceinwen said. “They will not long last in such weather.”
“Nor shall we,” the ranger grunted. “We should be looking for shelter.”
Which spawned a second argument, this time pitting Er’c, Ceinwen and Karag against Arath. Jack was glad when the wind picked up, howling with a ferocity that drowned their bickering.
Glad, until an eerie voice rolled over the land, singing,
The night is darker now,
and the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how;
I can go no longer.
“Uh…guys? Did you hear that?”
His companions made no reply, though. The four were too busy fighting, and Migli seemed lost in thought. As Jack stopped, though, he said, “We should check those lights out, Sir Jack. Someone might need our assistance.”
Jack sighed. “Fine, fine. I can take a hint.”
He pressed on. The lights grew brighter, and more distinct, until he could see that they were not a single red and a single green light, but a whole slew of tiny points of color. Almost like…a string of Christmas lights. He had no idea what they actually were, but certainly they weren’t traffic lights.
They got a little closer, and he could just make out a dark, boxy shape beyond the lights. “Boil my buns and call me a figgy pudding,” Arath said. “It looks like some kind of carriage.”
Jack frowned at him. He knew the game’s profanity filter prevented any real swears from getting through, even from the player’s lips. But it seemed the substitutions were getting more ridiculous by the moment.
Migli, to his credit, focused on more practical matters. “How in thunder did it get all the way over here?”
“I guess someone had a little too much spiced wine before getting behind the reins,” the ranger laughed.
“We should make haste,” Ceinwen said. “They must be in distress.”
“We should leave it,” Karag advised.
“Agreed,” Arath said. “Not our elves, not our toy factory.”
“I told you: there’s evil magic in this place.”
Ceinwen snorted. “You only call it evil because it defeated your murdering armies.”
“I call it evil because it is: strange and unnatural.”
“Someone could be dying,” Er’c said. “We must help.”
Jack had stood there, vacillating between positions with each argument. Well, most arguments. Arath’s discomfort hadn’t been particularly persuasive. But he really didn’t want to get mixed up in any dark magic or weird distractions. He just wanted to be on his way, toward the end of the game. But Er’c’s words shamed him a little, and he nodded. “Come on. Let’s check it out.”
They forged on. Jack could see the carriage more fully. Then, they got closer yet, and he realized it wasn’t a carriage at all, but a sleigh.
Migli started to sing in low tones.
Lean your ear this way;
Don't you tell a single soul
What I'm going to say.
The lyrics seemed oddly familiar to Jack, but the tune was so dark and grim it sent a shiver up his spine altogether disconnected from the temperature.
They reached the sleigh, but not before Jack tripped over something large and solid in the snow. He didn’t see what it was; he was too busy looking for signs of survivors by the overturned vehicle. Migli went on singing about a mysterious death.
The sleigh had turned on its side. The lights he’d seen earlier were a strand of red and green lights blazing by the vehicle’s runners.
The animals who pulled it, a pair of huge, white reindeer, stomped and snorted uneasily. Jack couldn’t blame them. He figured that whoever had crashed had wandered off and left them here to freeze. He felt for his dagger. The least he could do, he figured, was free them from their bonds.
Then, though, Karag’s voice sounded. “Oi, look here.”
He spun around. The giant was kneeling near where Jack had tripped. He’d cleared a patch of snow, exposing the thing that tripped him. Jack’s blood went cold.
It wasn’t a thing, but a man. An old man, from the look of it, dressed in long robes of green with thick fur accents. A dead man. His skin had a bluish tint to him, and ice clung to strands of white hair, and hung from his mustache and beard.
Jack headed over to the body, and Migli kept on singing.
Now you dead old man,
Whisper what happened to thee;
Tell me if you can.
When the clock has struck out for you
Now forever sleep
In the earth cold and black
Lost to the eternal deep.
“Who is he?” Jack asked, kneeling beside the giant.
“I don’t know. But look.” Karag pointed to a red welt on the old man’s forehead. “I don’t think he crashed by accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone shot him, Jack.”
“How can you tell? How do you know that that –” He gestured toward the injury, and the now frozen blood trickling down from it. “Wasn’t just something he got when he crashed?”
Karag raised an eyebrow in a fashion obviously intended to remind Jack that he was talking to an accomplished assassin – and to make him feel very foolish indeed for the question. All without actually saying it. It was a classic Karag response. Aloud, though, he offered only a mild, “I know, Jack.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Seems to me we should get out of here, then,”
Arath said, “before whoever offed this guy comes looking for us. Or, worse, whatever provincial mob passes for the law here finds us, and tries to finger us for the old guy’s death.”
“We should stay,” Ceinwen said, “and look for clues that will lead us to the culprit.”
“We should avenge his death,” Er’c agreed.
“Sugar my plums,” Arath sighed. “You people are going to get us all killed.”
Jack frowned at the metaphor that sounded, somehow vaguely sexual. “I really don’t want to get involved,” he decided. “Let’s just free the reindeer and get out of here.”
“Free them? We could eat them,” the ranger suggested. “Not like this geezer’s going to come looking for them.”
Jack considered for a moment, but then shook his head. If his goal was to get out of the area as soon as possible, staying around to butcher reindeer seemed like a bad call. Anyway, these weren’t wild animals, but domesticated ones. Not that it made any difference from the reindeer’s perspective, he figured; but he couldn’t bring himself to kill a domestic animal. “No. We’ll free them and go.”
Chapter Two
Jack had to climb over part of the sleigh to get to the reindeer harness, the act of which apparently triggered some kind of proximity sensor. All at once, the game alerted him,
You have found a strange sleigh full of mysterious boxes, and a murdered old man.
New Quest Started: Trouble in Pleasant Vale
Objective added: Investigate the sleigh
Now, Jack hesitated. He had no more desire than before to get wrapped up in useless side quests. But this wasn’t a side quest. If it had been, it would have said so. Instead, the game designated it as nothing more or less than a quest, which was how it denoted the main quests.
“Shit,” he said, which the profanity filter promptly translated as, “Sugar plums.”
But, since it was a primary quest, he changed course and headed for the sleigh. The seat was indeed covered in boxes, some of which were tied together with twine and some of which sat in a great, brown sack. They’d shifted position a little but had mostly stayed inside the vehicle.
Jack glanced at the boxes. They had names written on them in a neat, careful script: “Timothy C., Marley Way,” and, “Fred S., Veck Way,” and, “Lilian F., Tackleton Road,” and so on. There were dozens of boxes, and dozens of names, none of which meant anything to him. Nor could he do anything more than examine them. He found that out when he tried to open one; and, when that failed, when he tried to slip it into his own inventory. The box stayed where it was, wrapped in brown paper with a neat little label addressed to a Meg somebody.