Game Play

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Delrael gave a yelp of surprise and sprang back ward, exhausted but still tense with battle reflexes. Mindar/Cailee slashed at him, rippled sword in one hand and silver claws in the other. He tried to back away, unwilling to fight her, but she struck again. He stumbled on a loose rock and slid away from her blade.

  "Mindar!" he said, but her eyes remained pupilless. The Cailee held her entirely now, though Delrael saw flickers of something behind her gaze.

  He staggered back to his feet and swung his own sword, but it was only to deflect her. Mindar/Cailee defended herself, and Delrael ran around and pushed past into the uncertain light of Scartaris's grotto.

  Mindar/Cailee bounded after him. Delrael had to stop, panting. His arms and legs ached. He could barely move. She slashed out, and Delrael brought up his blade to block the blow. The force knocked his arm aside, clanging his sword against the rock wall of the cave.

  He pleaded with the woman trapped within the Cailee. "Mindar, listen to me! Can't you see Scartaris wants this?" He wheezed his words, but the angered Cailee drove at him with renewed force.

  "Mindar ― you've turned into the thing you hate the most! You're a creature of Scartaris!"

  Delrael fought against Mindar/Cailee's growing fury. His arms felt like stone, heavy and unresponsive. He managed to fend off the blows that flashed at him, but his body trembled with exhaustion. He had used up all his adrenaline.

  "Mindar, remember your daughter. Remember the tannery. Remember Taire!"

  His throat was raw.

  Delrael gazed into the Cailee's yellow eyes. Dark pupils flickered on the verge of appearing. Mindar/ Cailee hesitated, wincing her silhouetted features and struggling with herself. "We're inseparable now," she gasped.

  Then the Cailee howled and slashed at the air with a fistful of silver claws.

  Her pupils faded again.

  She struck and slashed in a storm of blows with the rippled sword.

  Delrael's arm seared with pain. He stumbled as he fought with the last of his strength. His sword sliced up and nicked Mindar/Cailee's arm, drawing a strange mixture of shadow-smoke and bright blood.

  The Cailee howled and surged back at him with such vehemence that Delrael had no hope of de fending himself. She knocked his arm aside, smashing his wrist against the rock wall. His own sword clattered to the floor.

  Mindar/Cailee raised her blade to cleave Delrael's head.

  "Mindar..." he whispered.

  Her sword swung down, but Mindar's pupils flickered back for an instant. In her downstroke, she twisted her wrist sideways and struck him on the head with the flat of the blade.

  Bright light exploded behind Delrael's eyes, then it all turned black.

  He slid to the floor.

  Professor Verne's steam-engine car clanked down the slope toward Scartaris's mountain, skirting the edge of the battlefield. The ratcheting noise was not noticeable over the shouts of fighting monsters and human soldiers.

  He stoked the fires under the boiler as high as they would go. The car picked up steam and chugged along faster than a man could run. The hex-line separated him from the rocky terrain, but he also saw the clear path leading up to the grotto.

  Verne swallowed and blinked his eyes. He checked to make sure his journal was carefully secured with him. He didn't know what indignities he would have to bear on his long walk back to Sitnalta. If he survived at all.

  He carried one tiny galvanic cell that powered a detector he had mounted next to the car's steering levers. It was one of the instruments he and Frankenstein had used to detect Scartaris's presence all the way from Sitnalta.

  He switched the device on and saw the needle move, then fall dead, move, then fall dead. He was too far beyond the influence of Sitnaltan technology, regardless of how arbitrary he had proven the concept of the technological fringe to be. But even given the worst of situations, the Rules of Probability made the detector certain to work some of the time. The homing mechanism would need to function only at infrequent intervals to steady the course of the car along the straight path to Scartaris.

  Verne knew his weapon was so powerful he needed only to get near the grotto.

  For a moment he wondered in terror if the weapon itself might fail to work. But then he brushed that thought aside. The Sitnaltan weapon was powered by the force that had driven the Outsiders' ship. It would work anywhere on Gamearth ― it had to. The Outsiders set up their own exceptions to the Rules, and they would follow them.

  But this weapon combined the power of the Outsiders with the resourcefulness of Gamearth. What if he and Frankenstein had forged a destructive power greater than either world had seen before?

  As the car chugged along, Verne watched the ground pass under the rattling wheels. He set his mouth in a firm line, thrusting out his beard.

  This was close enough for him.

  He turned to the weapon and found the timer knob as the car jostled over the terrain, steering itself. Verne twisted the timer knob to a red mark on the dial and released it.

  A rapid ticking came out of the weapon as the spring-driven timer began its countdown to detonation.

  Verne had heard of a prophesied hero from some of the other human settlements outside the fringe, some unknown savior who would come out of no where and rescue them from great peril. They called him the Unseen Stranger, or something like that. Not that Verne put much stock in prophesies, since they had no scientific basis. But after he unexpectedly used his weapon to destroy Scartaris, no doubt the storytellers would make him out to be their Stranger. He clucked his tongue in disapproval.

  Suddenly, a gigantic barefooted ogre bounded away from the battlefield toward the car, drooling down his chin. The ogre tripped twice and regained his feet to stumble after Verne. He limped from a deep wound on his ankle.

  Verne had nothing with which to fight this ogre. He felt a flash of fear, but the ogre seemed more intent on the speeding car itself than on its driver. Gairoth hopped forward, clutched the side, and scrambled aboard, heaving himself over the low door. He grabbed Verne by the collar of his woolen coat.

  "One moment, monsieur!" Verne stammered.

  But Gairoth was not interested in him. "Haw!" he said, spraying spittle in Verne's face. With an expression of dismissal, he tossed the Professor over the side.

  Verne landed in a tumble, bruised and hurt. He stood up, brushed himself off, and scowled. He watched the steam-engine car move on, homing in toward Scartaris.

  Gairoth sat in the seat and bounced with delight as the car sped automatically toward the mountain.

  "I don't think you wanted to do that," Verne muttered.

  In the front of the car, the Sitnaltan weapon continued to tick.

  Mindar stared at Delrael's unconscious form against the rocks. Weird lights flashed on and off in the background, bathing him in strange colors. A spot of blood blossomed on his forehead and trickled alongside his nose, into his eyes.

  Mindar had forced herself to the front of her mind, but she had to grit her teeth and concentrate, not letting her thoughts lapse for a second. The Cailee gibbered in the back of her head, making her ears ring. Her anger surged, but she had to keep it directed away from the Cailee. She would gain nothing by that.

  Scartaris. Scartaris was her enemy.

  The Cailee was part of herself. She had to accept it, dominate it, turn it to her own advantage.

  Mindar felt blackness slough away from her face and shoulders as she grew stronger. In one arm she held her sword, and curved silver claws stuck out of her other hand ― but she could see her own skin appearing in patches through the inky blackness. She was growing stronger. She knew what she could do.

  Part of her felt appalled at what she had done to Delrael, but she knew he would forgive her. Mindar would never be able to forgive herself, though, not unless she finished Delrael's quest for him.

  She knelt down, and with the clumsy claws on her hand she worked the silver belt free from around his waist. She stared at it in the light, lettin
g it dangle in front of her. The silver felt cold and slippery, tingling with power.

  The Earthspirits lived in the belt. She held them, vulnerable, in her own hand ― but they could destroy Scartaris. They could wipe him from the map. She cast her rippled sword on the floor. It clanged on the rock and landed near Delrael's blade.

  "You won't make me cause any more harm, Scartaris!" The belt glittered in the weird light. "This is all the weapon I need to destroy you."

  Heavy footfalls sounded outside the entrance to the grotto. She turned.

  Her black form was liquid and cast no shadow of its own.

  She saw the blocky form of a huge Slac general. It dragged its feet on the rocks with scattering sounds, and the clank of a chain rattled in the silence. The monster let a needle-spiked ball dangle at its side.

  "Scartaris has grown bored with you," the Slac said in its husky, grating voice. The pupilless pits of its eyes were filled with emerald fire.

  Mindar/Cailee coughed out a laugh and held the silver belt as she strode recklessly toward the Slac. She held the belt between her two hands.

  "I'm bored with him, too. Earthspirits, destroy this thing of Scartaris!"

  She squeezed the belt with her shadow-stained hands and held it, waiting for some explosion of power that would whisk the Slac out of the Game entirely.

  But instead the Slac lashed down with his heavy spiked ball and smashed one of Mindar's wrists. She screamed in shock. The wrist bones snapped, and her fingers spread out as blood sprayed in the air. She backed away in agony.

  The silver belt fell to the floor.

  The Cailee's furious presence clamored in the back of her head and tried to surge into dominance again. She pushed it away. The shadow-stain dripped from her body.

  The Slac general said, "Scartaris wants you dead. You're no fun anymore."

  Wincing the pain away, blind to what she was doing, Mindar/Cailee laughed again. "I can't die!"

  She leaped at the reptilian creature, spreading the claws of her uninjured hand. In the back of her mind, she drove the Cailee further away with her determination and victory. The blackness faded from her arms, and she made a savage slash at the Slac's throat.

  But the long silver claws snapped off and dissolved as she struck. Her hand became her own again ― human and weak.

  "All characters can die," the Slac said. He wrapped his spiked ball and chain around her throat, yanking it from one end to strangle her and driving the ball's spikes into the back of her head. The Slac jerked again, and Mindar's neck snapped before she felt any more pain.

  The Slac let her body unravel from the chain and fall to the floor.

  Then the monster twirled the spiked ball in the air to clean droplets of blood from his weapon.

  Delrael groaned on the floor and stirred.

  The Slac general strode to him. The ball clanked at his side. Breath hissed through needle-like teeth as the Slac leaned over Delrael.

  "Well, excuuuuuuse me!" Journeyman said from the opening of the grotto.

  The Slac general snapped his head up and turned, hissing.

  The golem looked at Vailret beside him and grinned with flexible clay lips. "He likes it! Hey Mikey!" Journeyman swaggered in, and the Slac general faced him, dangling the spiked ball.

  Vailret saw Delrael's motionless form and Mindar lying dead. He stood behind and to the right of Journeyman, waiting and anxious. When he saw an opportunity, he slipped around and ran to Delrael.

  "This here town ain't big enough for the both of us," Journeyman said.

  The Slac's green eyes blazed brighter.

  Vailret cradled Delrael's head and wiped blood away from his eyes. The fighter mumbled and moaned. The bump on his head looked serious, but far less severe than Vailret had feared.

  He glared up at the Slac general facing Journey man. The golem did not appear frightened at all, but Delrael lay injured, Mindar murdered. Delrael's silver belt lay beside her. Vailret did not know what had happened.

  The Slac general stood tall and dark and filled with all the evil of Scartaris.

  As he saw the Slac, Vailret remembered the training Drodanis had put him through back at the Strong hold, the role-playing game where Vailret was captured by Slac while his imaginary comrades were tortured and slain. An imaginary general like this one had ordered Vailret's execution, but Vailret managed to kill the Slac general before other arrows struck him down. It had felt so real to him, the terror, the helplessness, the failure. But it was only a game within the Game; this Slac battle was happening now.

  He stood up as anger filled his features. He held his short sword.

  The Slac general twirled his spiked ball. Journey man waited for the monster to make the first move.

  Instead, Vailret did.

  In true Game spirit he should have bellowed out a cry of challenge, but Vailret moved silently as he leaped forward. He jammed his short sword all the way up to its hilt, through the back plates of the Slac, into its kidney, and up into its pulsing heart. The tip of the sword pushed out through the reptilian chest. The Slac general gurgled in surprise and sprayed black blood out of its mouth.

  "Stabbing in the back may not be fair," Vailret said, "but since when have Slac ever fought fair?"

  The monster bellowed as it weakened, trying to jab backward with its elbows. But Vailret let go of his sword and stepped away. With a bestial grunt, the Slac fell to its knees. Journeyman bashed a rock-hard fist into its forehead. "Bah, humbug!"

  Vailret blinked in shock. The hot Slac blood burned his hands, and he tried to wipe it on his pants and tunic, leaving dark stains there.

  Delrael groaned again. Journeyman glanced from him to Vailret, then squared his shoulders. The golem stared down the tunnel to the center of the mountain. "I must go on ahead now," he said. "Take Delrael and get out of here."

  Vailret looked up. "What are you going to do?"

  Journeyman's lumpy clay brows twitched and knitted together. "I'm going to destroy Scartaris, as I was always meant to do. I'm glad I was created for this purpose. I'm glad I knew you. I will not be coming back."

  "What do you mean? Will it destroy you?"

  Journeyman didn't answer. Distressed, Vailret stood up. Delrael blinked and moved his head. He groaned.

  "Wait ― let Del take the Earthspirits. They'll destroy Scartaris and you can stay here. You don't need to sacrifice yourself."

  The golem squared his shoulders. "It is what I am. I was made for this task. I must sacrifice myself."

  "But it makes no sense!"

  Journeyman stared with cavernous eyes. The clay eyelids blinked together, and he answered stiffly. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one."

  Vailret pulled his short sword from the dead Slac general, but looked at it, not knowing what to do. He couldn't fight Journeyman.

  The golem sighed. "Don't you know yet who I am?" He cocked his head.

  "My predecessor was Apprentice, many turns ago. I am Journeyman." He let the words hang in the air. The lights from deep in the grotto flashed weird patterns on the ceiling.

  "I am the Stranger Unlooked-For."

  Gairoth jammed his knees in the cramped seat of Professor Verne's steam-engine car. The vehicle toiled along up the hill toward Scartaris. He had seen the bat-creature take Delroth toward the mountain. The car moved faster than he could run.

  Gairoth let his spiked club dangle outside the vehicle, pinging against rocks that bounced up from the ground. He saw the great cavern on the mountain face and knew that Delroth would have gone there.

  "Haw!" he said. His arms were tired. His legs were tired. His feet were sore. He had traveled across the map to get Delroth. He would bash Delroth's head in for causing him so much trouble.

  He shifted his knees, banging against the steering levers, and squirmed. The seat was uncomfortable, soft and human, and the space too confined for his bulky arms and legs.

  The vehicle rolled up the slope, paused as if to gather its bearings, and
then moved on its preset course.

  Beside him, the Sitnaltan weapon continued to tick.

  Gairoth bounced up and down, anxious to see any sign of Delroth. But then the steam-engine vehicle caught its wheels against the strewn boulders and stopped halfway up the side of the mountain on a blind switchback. The steam engine hissed and belched curls of gray smoke out its stack, but it could not move forward.

  Gairoth fumed and tried to stand up in the cramped front of the car. He banged his knee. He roared in wordless rage and waved his club in the air. He couldn't even see the cave; one of the curved rock spires blocked his view.

  He hopped out and tugged at the wheel, trying to get the vehicle to move on and find Delroth. He hollered at the useless car. When the vehicle made no response, Gairoth lashed out and kicked it with one big, bare foot.

  The Sitnaltan weapon jarred on its seat, tipping over against the side of the car. The timer mechanism smashed and jammed. The ticking fell silent only seconds before its detonation was to occur.

  Gairoth grumbled at the immobile vehicle and strode up the hill on foot.

  Journeyman marched down the low-ceilinged path, heading deep into the mountain where Scartaris controlled his armies. The golem's soft clay feet slapped on the stone floor. The temperature grew hotter around him.

  His quest and his reason for existence had almost reached its end. He knew he would succeed.

  "Please," Journeyman had told Vailret, "I have enjoyed knowing you. I don't want to overcome you by force. Take Delrael and head for the hills! I ... don't know exactly what I'm about to do or what will happen."

  Vailret had finally agreed to take Delrael with him, leaving the golem alone to face Scartaris.

  Journeyman felt a buzzing around him, power flickering unseen in the air. His body tingled when he moved ahead. Lights and echoes and frightening images floated around him, as if Scartaris was trying to frighten him away.

  But nothing could stop him now. He molded a determined expression on his face, squaring his shoulders.

  The prospect of fulfilling his purpose brought him to a peak of ecstasy he had not known before. He felt his secret weapon growing inside, pulsing, ready to be released.