Couch Potato Chaos- Gamebound

by Erik Rounds

  The fight continued for what seemed like hours, but in actuality it amounted to about forty minutes. As the fight drew on, neither side gained a significant advantage.

  Finally, the inevitable happened. The queen got a lucky hit in and killed Slimon in a single shot. After that, the tide of battle turned to Murderjoy’s advantage. Pan tried to steal the Orb of Fire a second time, but this time the queen kept a strong grasp on it. Flaming lances appeared in the air above her and struck the girl in the heart, killing her. Ari, who had no existence outside of Pan’s imagination, vanished into mist.

  The only remaining fighters were Tasha and Kiwi. The fight belonged to Queen Murderjoy; it was only a matter of time. The queen’s level was just too far beyond them.

  Gradually, the light from the Orb of Life began to diminish. The life spells were not as potent as they had been at the beginning of the battle.

  Queen Murderjoy approached, a flaming dagger appearing in her hand. Tasha slashed at the queen, but her gunblade was deflected by the queen’s shield. Murderjoy stabbed Tasha in the gut, bringing her down to four hearts. This time her hearts didn’t recover, and the defense buffs were no longer in effect.

  The queen sneered at the princess. “So, you’ve reached your limit. Foolish princess, you used too much power too quickly. Your weak elven body can’t keep up with the orb’s power. It takes years of training to master the kind of control needed to wield orbs as I do.

  “Your friends lie dead and defeated at my feet. You’ve lost, completely and utterly.”

  The queen retracted the sword from Tasha’s gut and plunged her flaming sword into Kiwi’s chest. The princess coughed up blood, the Orb of Life falling from her hands and dropping to the ground as her body fell limp.

  Tasha was the only party member left alive. The queen was at full health and the player had only four hearts remaining. There was a bleeding debuff in effect—in minutes she would be dead.

  “Huh. I hadn’t meant to kill her,” said the queen, “but it doesn’t matter. I assume she registered at the save point at the base of this tower. I’ll just capture her when she respawns.”

  Queen Murderjoy turned away from Tasha and made to leave.

  “Aren’t you going to finish me off?” croaked Tasha.

  “There is no need,” said the queen. “I only came here to collect the princess and the Orb of Life. I couldn’t care less what happens to you.”

  The fairy Trista Twinklebottom flew up at the queen from where she’d been hiding. “Hi, boss. So I caught the princess for you like you asked. Our bill will be in the mail. Do you suppose you could give me a ride out of here? This place sucks.”

  A look of momentary surprise appeared on the queen’s face. She hadn’t realized that anyone else was present.

  “Ah, yes. I remember you now. You’re that ninja we hired to capture the princess. Your hidden village failed me repeatedly. I’ll have it burned to ashes. As for you, you can share the princess’s fate. Fairies go for a premium on the Zhakaran market. We’ll drain you of your levels and make you someone’s pet. How does that sound?”

  “But that wasn’t part of our contract,” said the fairy.

  “Zhakarans are not bound by contracts or any other form of obligation. I’ve decided that your only value to me is as a slave. If you are unsatisfied, feel free to curse whatever gods you believe in.”

  This was a troubling turn of events for Trista, to say the least. She looked at the player where she lay on the ground, beaten and defeated. Her companions were all dead and lay scattered around the top of the tower.

  Trista Twinklebottom hated each and every one of them. First the princess had the nerve to get rescued after all the trouble Trista had gone through to capture her. Then that human had the audacity to spare her life as though she wasn’t even worth the effort of finishing off. Finally they had captured her and kept her in that damn jar for months. She hated that jar almost as much as she hated the player, and she hated the player almost as much as she hated the princess.

  Trista considered her situation. On one hand, she was glad that her enemies were all lying dead at her feet. On the other hand, she really didn’t want to be captured by the mad queen and turned into someone’s pet. Trista had a hard decision to make.

  In all of Etheria, there was no magic that could bring back someone from the dead. There were no revive spells. At least that’s what everyone believed. Her kind, the fairies, knew of a secret art that could resurrect an entire party and bring them back to full strength, but at the cost of the fairy’s own life.

  If Trista wanted to escape the queen and the dark fate that was in store for her, she had no choice but to use her ace in the hole.

  Trista Twinklebottom began to laugh. It started as a soft chuckle but rose in intensity and ended in a bout of maniacal laughter.

  “Why are you laughing, little bug?” demanded the queen. “Stop it at once!”

  “You foolish human. You would burn down the Hidden Smog village? You couldn’t even find us. Do you even know what ‘hidden’ means?

  “And I won’t be your pet or anyone else’s. You think you’re winning, but you’re not. Though this detestable human may be the one who defeats you, your defeat will be by my hands.”

  A fireball formed in the queen’s hand. “You silly little insect. What possible power can you wield against me?”

  The fairy rose into the air, her eyes luminous in anticipation of her racial ability. She spoke her final words to Tasha the player.

  “Just so you and I understand each other: I hate each and every one of you bastards. PRETTY FAIRY GLITTER MAGIC!”

  The fairy’s body exploded into glitterbugs, which flew into the bodies of each slain party member. Light filled their eyes. Tasha’s health and mana were fully restored.

  Elven hands grasped the Orb of Life. Kiwi got back to her feet and looked at the queen. She put one hand out and shouted, “Tuathá sûm!”

  The queen flew back far away from the party, landing at the far end of the arena but otherwise took no damage.

  “What happened?” said Pan.

  “Wasn’t I… dead?” said Kiwi.

  “I saw what happened,” said Tasha. “It was Twinklebottom. She sacrificed herself for us. Well, actually, for herself, but the end result is the same. We have another chance to win.”

  Queen Murderjoy got to her feet. “What foolishness. The end result will be the same, no matter how many times you attack me.”

  “Okay, everybody, turtle formation!” Tasha said.

  Pan, Slimon, and Tasha moved into Kiwi’s spell of protection.

  “The queen is right,” Tasha said. “We can’t win. Her level is just too high. We need to change our strategy.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Kiwi asked.

  “We have to stop trying to win. In this situation, escape is the same as victory. Our objective has to be to protect Kiwi and the Orb of Life.”

  Ari appeared beside Pan. “How can we do that?”

  Tasha thought for a bit. “We stay in a turtle formation around Kiwi. If we can make it to the ground, we could lose Murderjoy in the bog. Kiwi can resist its confusing miasma, but the queen can’t.”

  Ari smiled. “That’s actually a good plan borne of clear thinking. I’m impressed. How do we get to the ground, though?”

  Tasha thought back to that terrible idea. “Maybe we could base-jump the save point? If we land on it, we would be healed instantly, right?”

  Kiwi looked doubtful. “I’m not sure that would work. I mean, it might, but it’s never been tried before.”

  While they were debating this, Queen Murderjoy was shooting fireballs, one after another, at Kiwi, but each one impacted the invisible dome around her, fizzling into nothing.

  “I don’t think we could make it down using the parachutes. Not unless we had a way to distract the queen for a few seconds.”

  Pan raised her hand. Kiwi turned to her. “Pan, you don’t need to raise your hand. If you have somethin
g to say, just say it.”

  “I… have an idea… for a d-distraction”

  Tasha turned to her. “What kind of distraction?”

  Before Pan could offer any reply, a missile impacted the queen’s fire shield, knocking her to the ground. A jet of ice struck her, followed by a ball made out of lightning.

  Tasha looked to the sky and gasped. The sky was full of dragons. There were hundreds of them, with more arriving each second.

  “Yeah!” Tasha cried. “This is even better than flying eagles!”

  Ari shook his head at her with an amused look on his face.

  The largest of them was a great red dragon who wreathed Murderjoy in flames, blasting her for a good ten seconds before relenting. When the flames let up, there was a circle of melted stone around the queen, who was herself unharmed. As the bearer of the Orb of Fire, it was doubtful that any amount of flame would be able to harm her.

  The red dragon landed beside the princess. He lowered his head to the ground, and a single dragon rider dismounted. Hermes leapt to the ground and ran to the princess. Kaze landed alongside the red dragon and joined Hermes.

  “Hey, Princess, I thought you might need a hand, so I brought a few friends of mine.”

  Kiwi turned to the newcomers. “Hermes! Kaze! I don’t understand. Where did you come from?”

  It was Kaze who answered. We knew that you would eventually reach the top of the Spiral Tower and waited nearby to offer you aid.

  “I’m glad you did,” said Kiwi. She looked Hermes in amazement. “But why did the great red dragon let you ride him?”

  Penryth approached the princess. Through his actions and sacrifice, he has proven himself a friend of dragons. Now quickly, get on. Just this once, we will allow ourselves to be ridden.

  “You have my thanks.”

  There are 430 dragons in my company. With the short amount of time we had to prepare, that was the best we could arrange. Most are levels 20 through 40, with nine of them being of levels 55 and above. I am level 83. Despite our numbers and levels, we cannot hope to prevail against an orb bearer.

  A battle raged in the skies above. Some of the dragons were engaged in aerial combat with flying monkeys, who themselves were no longer idle observers. The remaining dragons were engaging the queen directly, either pelting her with projectile attacks or diving at her, swiping at her as they passed.

  Queen Murderjoy got to her feet. There were jets of flame and ice striking her from all directions, most dissipating on the translucent red shield that surrounded her.

  “Enough!” she yelled. “You think you are a match for my power? Not one of you is my equal. I’ll destroy this pitiful army.”

  She launched dozens of fireballs at once, each finding a target. Some dragons died, others fell out of the sky, injured and unable to fly. Every one of her fireballs hit their mark.

  Get on, quickly!

  Kiwi started to climb up on Penryth, but a blast of fire struck the giant red dragon. The fiery projectile penetrated the dragon’s chest and came out the other side, flying off into the distance.

  It would have been the dragon’s end, but for the power of the Orb of Life. Kiwi healed Penryth and started casting buffs just as another fireball impacted him.

  The queen was dividing her attention between the dragons in the air and the princess. Every second that passed, another dragon fell from the sky, struck by one of the queen’s attacks.

  “This isn’t working,” Tasha said. “We won’t be able to get away as long as she keeps attacking us.” She turned to Pan. “Pan, I don’t know what kind of distraction you had in mind, but now might be a good time to use it.”

  Pan nodded and threw on her cloak of invisibility. She ran toward the stairwell that gave ingress to the tower below. From her pocket, she removed the folded-up Portable Hole. Ignoring the intense sounds of the battle which raged less than a few dozen feet away, she pulled the hole apart, expanding its size, and placed it upon the wall.

  Moments later, the Omnihare that she had encountered and trapped in the hole hopped out, its red eyes glowing with malevolence. The level 240 out-of-depth mob had joined the combat arena.

  Something in its rule-based brain caused it to recognize Queen Murderjoy as the preferred target of aggression. Maybe it was from all the spells she was casting. Whatever the case, it ran straight at the queen and bit her on the neck for ten hearts of damage. The queen screamed, and her absurd headpiece fell to the ground, destroyed.

  Blood was flowing from the wound, but she had the presence of mind to shoot it with one fireball after another. The mob’s health decreased by about five hearts per second, but the queen was clearly outmatched. She might be the most powerful mortal alive, but there were still monsters far more powerful than her.

  It attacked her another two times, bringing her down to half of her original health. The rabbit wasn’t faring well against her continual onslaught of fire, however. It had been reduced to 30%. The power of the Orb of Fire was enough to make up the significant level difference.

  “Let’s go, quickly!” Hermes yelled, having already gotten on the dragon.

  “Just one moment. I’m going to buy us a few more seconds,” said Kiwi, who extended the orb toward the Omnihare, healing it and casting health buffs upon it. She quickly mounted up along with Tasha, Ari, Pan, and Slimon. The dragon dove off the tower and flew off into the distance.

  As the dragon flew away, the battle between the Queen of Zhakara and the high-level rabbit mob continued. The battle HUD had disappeared, and Tasha had no way of knowing whether the queen survived.

  Several dozen dragons joined them for the return journey. Of the original attacking force of 420 dragons, less than fifty had survived. The rest had fallen either to the queen or to the flying monkeys.

  The return trip to Questgivrian territory was much faster than traveling by foot, the journey measured in days rather than months. The dragons were forced to engage intermittent mobs, but there were no attacks of Zhakaran origin.

  From her place atop one of the dragons, she could see another dragon ahead of her carrying a small cage that contained Denver. She waved but wasn’t sure that her dinosaur companion could see her.

  By the morning of the fourth day, they had crossed into Questgivria, and by midafternoon, Brightwind Keep was finally in view. The dragons who bore the princess and her party landed. It had been over five months since Princess Kiwistafel had left Brightwind Keep, but at last she had returned home.

  Epilogue

  A major incident occurred late last Moonday evening atop the Spiral Tower, located deep within the Bog of Most Likely Death. According to our witness, who prefers to go unnamed, Aralynn Murderjoy, the Queen of Zhakara, engaged in a battle with the Princess Kiwistafel Questgiver. Also involved was the now infamous Tasha Singleton, best known as the good twin of the perpetrator of the Marketplace Massacre those many months ago.

  The battle was joined by an army of dragons, who assisted the princess and her party in their escape. Since then, we have received confirmation that the Spiral Tower has gone dark and no longer emits its own light.

  Eyewitness reports confirm that Queen Murderjoy respawned at a save point deep within Zhakara. When asked for comment, Queen Murderjoy incinerated our correspondent, who has since been resurrected. The Questgivrian crown confirms that they are now in possession of the Orb of Life but would not comment beyond that.

  Tasha Singleton had this to say about the incident in question: “Get away from me, you paparazzi bastards!” Her strange otherworldly vernacular confirms the popular rumor that she is, in fact, the player of legend. More on this story as it develops.

  The Brightwind Tribune, Snickerdoodle 14th, 3205 3E

  Tasha set the newspaper aside and took a sip from her afternoon coffee. She was sitting at a pub with her friends Ari and Pan. “Pan, are you done with the funnies yet?”

  “Nope.”

  Ari was drinking a local ale while Pan indulged in a strawberry milkshake. Th
e pub wasn’t crowded—there were only a few other patrons.

  Pan was no longer wearing her thief outfit. Her cloak and baggy clothing had been replaced by the blue-and-green robes of a summoner, complete with a floppy hat and a beanie on top. When Tasha had scanned her earlier that day, Pan was revealed to be a level 5 Summoner.

  Tasha asked the question that had been on her tongue. “So, Pan, what made you want to switch classes?”

  Pan took another drink of her milkshake, still reading the funny pages. “I… wanted to see how far I c-can get.” She looked at Ari, who finished her thought. “She means that she wants to level summoner as much as possible with the short amount of time that we both have left.”

  Ari took a sip of his drink. “No summoner in history has ever reached a level higher than 23. We don’t know what kind of abilities can be unlocked at the higher levels. Maybe there’s something that can grant permanence to figments like myself.

  “But even if there isn’t, even if I stop existing one day, I don’t have any regrets. It was enough to be part of your grand adventure.”

  Tasha set her coffee aside. “Well, I think leveling summoner is a great idea. I’ll help you power level as soon as possible. After that, we still have four more orbs to find. Murderjoy has the Orb of Fire, nobody knows where the Orb of Water is, King Dourmal has the Orb of Earth, and apparently the Orb of Death is on the moon. Unfortunately, I have this dumb war meeting to get to after lunch, so let’s meet up later on.”

  They finished their drinks in silence. The pub had grown less crowded as patrons finished up their meals and left the establishment. Soon the proprietor would start prep work for dinner.

  Ari and Pan both excused themselves and left. They had training to do, and Tasha had business back at the castle. Everyone was busy deciding what they should do next, and as the player, she had some part of that decision-making process.

  Prince Hermes was in negotiation with the Dragon Kingdom. It seemed as though he had come to an agreement with them. It was time to liberate the Laundry Mountain from his father. Hermes hadn’t wanted to seize power in this manner, but their need for the orbs had grown desperate. His father, King Dourmal, had outright refused to turn over his orb, even after Entropy had become visible in the night sky.