Such as the fact that they really should find other jobs before association with him turned them into pariahs.
Chapter Forty-Two
Justin slept fitfully. He woke constantly with a start, hoping he would see his mother return, but he had no such luck. While he couldn’t help but be worried by the way she had disappeared, he told himself the game was still running so the issues surely couldn’t be that bad.
Toward dawn, he walked a short distance away from the camp and recorded a brief message. “Mom, Dad—it was good to see Mom yesterday. I hope you’re both well, and I also hope to see you both soon, in here or out there. Let me know if anything is wrong, I’m worried after Mom disappeared so quickly. I promise I’m well here. I love you.” He shut the recorder off before he could start babbling.
Their breakfast with the blacksmith was a hasty meal of leftover flatbread and meat from the night before, and the three of them then watched the cart trundle away. The donkey clomped along behind, now docile.
“Well,” he said finally, “I guess we should head to the ruins.”
He swore that not a single word would disturb his thoughts, but Zaara and Lyle swung into a well-concerted effort to cheer him up. The banter flowed, jokes both good and bad were exchanged, and despite himself, he began to laugh at a song about a young dwarf stuck in a mine and the bargains he struck with the rock spirits to get out.
The change in the landscape around them was gradual. The rolling plains gave way to forests until the trees were packed so tightly that full sunlight reached the road only rarely. Acorns and leaves crunched underfoot. Birds chirped, squirrels skittered over the branches, and deer and foxes could sometimes be seen in clearings.
After a while, it changed again but wasn’t noticeable at first. Every tree had dead branches, after all. There were always fallen leaves, and it wasn’t uncommon to see the corpse of a small mammal. No matter how idyllic the surroundings, a forest had both life and death.
The death, however, began to grow stronger. Bare branches became more prevalent. The patches of shadow on the road vanished, but neither the blue sky nor the sunlight seemed particularly warm. Ahead of them, the ruins loomed large and they could now see that the dirt there was as gray as ash.
Gradually, his companions stopped joking and their heads turned at every crack of a branch. They still saw deer but the animals seemed gaunter now. At some point, the birdsong had stopped. Even the blue of the sky seemed faded.
“I don’t like this,” Zaara said finally. “Ruins are fine. I don’t mind ruins. But this? It looks like what my father described right after Sephith defeated Kural. This isn’t from a fire. It’s not dark enough, and even sickness in plants doesn’t kill everything.”
Indeed, there was not a living thing in sight. Trees had toppled yet did not seem to be rotting. Bushes stood sparse and prickly. Leaves coated the ground, settled over time but not eaten away by animals or fungus. On the other side of the road, some areas seemed dank and swamp-like, although the expected decay usually found in moist, water-logged areas was absent.
“Nothing is rotting,” Justin said slowly. “It’s like the cycle stopped at death without going on to new life.”
His words sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness but less so than Lyle’s snort.
“What are you, a poet? Come on, lad, the place is cursed. Let’s leave it at that.”
He threw his hands up and caught Zaara’s good-natured grin. She jerked her head at the dwarf and shrugged, and he could only nod. Besides that, it helped to have someone to keep him from getting too philosophical about all this. He continued to trudge forward and tried to emulate Lyle’s wary acceptance of the place, but she stopped them both.
She didn’t speak. The location seemed to discourage speaking. Instead, she gestured to where a little shack had almost fallen apart with age. It leaned precariously, the wood so weathered that its colors merged with the gray and brown forest.
Justin pointed at the shack, then at their packs. For all they knew, there might be supplies in there. In the real world, a place like this wouldn’t have a mysterious sword or a helm with plus-five strength, but video games were not the real world.
The other two nodded and they inched off the road. He had many half-memories of stories where you weren’t supposed to leave the road under any circumstances, but a few glances over his shoulder showed it remained where it had been. It didn’t seem to be vanishing like a mirage, nor did the forest seem to close up around them.
The little house looked like it might have been a storage shed at one point, although he wasn’t quite sure why one would build one in the middle of a swamp. Perhaps it was for fish, he thought. Still, there was no chimney and nothing except the four walls and the roof, all leaning on the unstable ground. The door had creaked off its hinges as the building slid and now stood ajar.
He held a hand out to indicate to his friends to wait as he pried the door open. Common sense suggested he make sure it wasn’t the only thing holding the building up, so he waited a few seconds to see if there were any ominous creaks. There weren’t, so he shrugged and stepped inside.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust but he made out several objects in the darkness. This would be a place to restock, he thought in excitement. There was a table, a mortar and pestle, a stool, a broom—
And a woman. She muttered a single word, rough against his ears, and blinding light burst into his eyes. He staggered back as she uttered a second word and froze the three of them where they stood.
“Justin?” Lyle called. “Zaara?”
“I’m here,” Zaara responded. “Damned light. What is this?”
“There’s a witch,” he told her wearily.
The woman laughed. He couldn’t see her, not with the light still blazing, but she could have been any age judging by those muttered words and her laugh. “A witch. A good enough assessment, I suppose. And you three are those who slew Sephith, which means I have a task for you.”
“Oh?” Justin raised an eyebrow. He was able to move his face, it seemed, but none of the rest of him. Fortunately, given the fact that he’d been in the middle of a step, the spell also seemed to be holding him up. Still, every muscle strained uselessly to avoid falling.
“I’d wager you’ll have heard about the wolves,” the witch said. “In fact, I’d wager you’ve fought one or two. You have that smell.”
This was the witch the werewolf had mentioned. The realization flashed through Justin’s mind and it must have shown on his face.
“Ah, so you did. And you spoke to one, I assume.”
“They told us to free them from the spell,” he said. “They’re hunting livestock because they have no choice. They don’t know how to be wolves. They asked us to kill you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t advise that,” she said simply. “You won’t succeed. It would be stupid to try, as you can plainly see.”
“So will you turn us into werewolves, too?” Zaara panted and it sounded as if she tried to wrench herself free of the spell.
“No. And don’t strain yourself trying to undo the spell, girl. I can see what you’re using, and nothing you know will free you from this.” The woman muttered another harsh word and the light dimmed. To Justin’s surprise, seeing her did not make her age any clearer. She wore robes that obscured her hair, and her face was not young but not old either. Her expression emotionless, she studied them for a moment. “I am glad you came to me. Tracking you was…surprisingly difficult.”
Justin had some theories about that and decided to keep them to himself.
“I hope we don’t have to remain enemies,” the witch said pleasantly.
He snorted before he could help himself. Although he couldn’t see Zaara, he could hear that she’d made a similar noise.
“You’ve trapped us,” he pointed out.
“Indeed I have. You’ll find it’s wise to take precautions when three well-armed individuals stumble into your house without warning.” She pulled the stool out and sat. Wit
h her fingers laced around her knees, she could be any woman sitting in the sun on a nice day.
Except, of course, that she had them all captive and was apparently responsible for wreaking havoc all across this forest.
“Besides,” she pointed out, “you’ve already taken a job to kill me.”
“We haven’t taken a job,” Zaara said, precisely. “We heard the plea of a dying man who was spelled as a wolf.”
“A dying bandit,” the witch corrected. “He and his pack would have taken everything I had and probably killed me into the bargain, so I won’t trouble my conscience over their fate. Now, I would like you to do a favor for me. I would like you to kill the werewolves.”
Justin’s stomach twisted. He could only move his head but he made full use of that. His head shook emphatically. “No. I refuse.”
“You see the forest around this place,” the woman told them. “The wolves are poisoning it. Their very essence is turning the place sickly. Parts are already a swamp.”
“So why’d ye make them?” Lyle asked.
She did not answer and merely looked at all three of them in turn. “Will you help?”
“I won’t hunt a whole pack of them and kill them,” he said. “I don’t…hunt humans.” He remembered the dying man on the ground. “I killed Sephith for a reason. Being a bandit isn’t a good enough reason.”
“Oh?” Their captor extended one hand casually and where there had been nothing, a key now glittered with a triangular handle, almost identical to the key Sephith had waved in front of the group only two weeks earlier. “Perhaps this will shift the equation. I had hoped you would aid me for the sake of the forest and that this would be an unexpected reward. But if you will not do that, perhaps seeing your true reward now will help to change your mind.”
Justin’s breath caught.
“Ah.” She had seen the change. “Very interesting. I suspected this was what you were searching for, and it seems I was right. Do we have ourselves a deal, adventurers? You do this one thing—for me, and for the forest—and in return, you get this key, which you so clearly want.” Her eyes were very bright and very watchful. “You don’t want it for the coin, I can see that much. So why? Are you three secretly scholars? The girl, I could see. But you two?”
Justin said nothing. He had a hunch only, and nothing more.
“I guess I shall see if it is incentive enough.” She shrugged. “I should teach you a spell. It will aid you on your quest.”
“You’re teaching us spells?” Justin asked incredulously. “What’s to stop us from coming back to kill you?”
The witch looked at the three of them, all frozen in midair.
“Okay, good point,” he said.
SLOW ON THE UPTAKE, Level 1, the game told him.
“What, I didn’t get any levels from the tank business?”
“Ah, a self burn. Those are rare.”
The woman paid no attention to Justin’s muttered words. She moved her hand slightly and the spell relaxed enough to allow him and the others to stand upright. She placed a plain wooden bowl on the ground and she looked hard at all three of them.
“You two—you have magic. Pay attention. Look at the bowl and imagine, in your mind’s eye, something being revealed. It could be anything—light falling across a room, a covering drawn away from a statue, the lid rising from a box. Imagine it and let your magic twist in with the imagining.”
So she was serious about teaching them spells. Justin stared at the bowl until his eyes crossed. He thought of cutting box lids open, pulling covers off furniture, and of everything he could until he groaned in frustration. He finally gave up but, out of nowhere, an apple appeared in the bowl.
“Did I do it?”
“No.” Their captor pointed. “She did.”
“I did it!” Zaara sounded incredulous. “I thought of a candle in a dark room and…there it was.”
“Good. Now, practice.” The witch snapped her fingers and the rest of the spell relaxed. “All of you, go now. You, boy, keep thinking of different ways to visualize. I promise you, there are many things in those ruins to see if you get it right. Go now.” She watched them as they approached the door warily. Her head was tilted to the side. “You know, I’m interested to see if you come back.”
Chapter Forty-Three
They were barely outside the shack before Lyle announced, “We shouldn’t trust ʼer.”
“Shhh,” Justin hissed.
“What, ye think she doesn’t know how ye feel?” The dwarf gave him a scornful look. “No one who strings people up can think they’re well-liked. Plus, she’s too clean.”
“I’m clean,” Zaara protested.
“Who said I trusted you?” He gave her a look but grinned after a moment. “Nah, I’ve forgiven you for that.”
“You’ve forgiven me for…not smelling…” She sounded like she couldn’t believe her ears. With a frown, she looked at Justin, who shrugged.
“Yeah. Yer handy with a blade.” Lyle seemed oblivious to the absurdity. “Anyway, I say we don’t trust her and we don’t trust those wolves, neither.”
“Now, hang on.” He tripped over a bush and barely saved himself from an ignominious fall in the mud. His stamina was increasing, thankfully faster than it would in real life, but he still wasn’t entirely used to the weight. “I thought you’d chosen a side.”
“Common sense, lad.” Lyle chewed meditatively on a stalk of grass. “When two sides are pointin’ fingers, it’s wisest not to trust either of ʼem.”
“I suppose that makes—wait, are you chewing on something you found in a swamp?” Justin felt slightly queasy. “That’s terrifying.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with—ohhhh, I can’t.” He struggled up the bank and onto the road. “Finally. I hate mud. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Not to mention that it looks stupid on plate armor.”
“That’s what looks stupid?” Zaara asked. When he gave her a sharp look, she raised an eyebrow. “You don’t exactly look like a berserker.”
“I’m not a berserker, I’m a…knight.”
“When were you knighted?”
“Not literally.”
“That makes no sense.” She rolled her eyes. “But, to return to the matter at hand, I think Lyle has a good point. We need more information. Also, we need dinner.”
“I’m on it.” He drew his sword, turned, and slashed at a rabbit.
BUNNY SLAYER, Level 4!
“Hey, I’m getting better at that.”
“You used a four hundred damage ultimate on a level-two bunny.”
“I like my food dead, what can I say?” He clanked stiffly to the other side of the road where he’d seen several other rabbits take shelter in the tufts of grass.
A few deadly swipes later, the group had a set of rabbits for the next few nights’ worth of dinner. Lyle began to skin them while Justin made sure to look away and Zaara made another drying rack.
Justin climbed the tumbled remains of a stone wall. He could almost forget he was in a game when he did anything like this. As things progressed and he became more attuned to the signals the game sent, he could feel the stones under his feet and the shift of the rocks when he stepped.
Either that or this was all his imagination. The thought was sobering. What if the game was only the most basic polygons and he simply built up more and more of it in his head? Worse, what if the game had truly crashed when his mother disappeared and everything since then had been a fever-dream constructed by a brain that was locked in the dark?
And how did he know his mother had been there at all? Sure, she knew about him falling and breaking his arm, but he knew about that, too.
He stopped and stared at nothing.
“Justin?” Zaara studied him carefully, a branch held in one hand and a knife in the other. “Are you sick? Do you…see something? Oh, are you practicing the spell?”
“I’m—yes. Yes, that’s what I’m doing.” He forced a smile
. Just for kicks, he tried the spell again but nothing happened. The problem, of course, was that he didn’t know if there was nothing to find or if he hadn’t done the spell correctly.
With a shrug, he began to climb again.
What would he say to everyone when he got back? When he found all the keys, he assumed there would be a door—and that door would wake him up. He hoped so, anyway. Perhaps the quest for each key would teach him something new. He would wake and—would he be able to tell anyone on his YouTube channel what he’d been up to?
He had to, after all. A thing like this would be wildly popular. People would clamor to have their loved ones transferred to pods like this. His followers would definitely want to hear about it.
Those who still cared by then, of course. He hadn’t put content out for weeks now so it was possible no one remembered him at all. His ad revenue would be shot to hell and he’d be behind on all the expansions.
And it wasn’t like he even had friends to miss him. College had been a mess of people he didn’t like and didn’t fit in with. There had only been one or two people he liked reasonably well, and they hadn’t kept in contact since everyone graduated. Without having anything close to the means to rent an apartment in the Bay Area, Justin had stayed at home, so he hadn’t had roommates or work friends, only the few friends who came back for holidays, and that was it.
“Justin.” Zaara stood in front of him, her hands on her hips. She looked at him with a disapproving expression. “You’re doing it again. Be honest, are you sick? Did the witch do something to you?”
“No. No, I’m only thinking. Oh…you were joking.” His brain caught up with him and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry. I’m a little out of it today.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Come on, we’ve hung the rabbit pelts out to dry and we’ll get them on the way back. Speaking of which…” She walked him to a vantage point. “Lyle’s seen motion in the ruins. We should be fairly well hidden here, but there’s smoke drifting up, birds circling, and everything to suggest people are there.”
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