“Is that helpful?” I shouted back. I glanced up and saw that Microphone Gun Prince seemed transfixed by the golden light too. His attacks forgotten, he just hovered above us, staring, and the arena fell silent for the first time since we’d stepped into it.
A second later, I heard a woman begin to sing, in a clear, beautiful voice. The voice went on singing for several more seconds before I realized that it was Aech. She was singing a cappella. The lyrics were to a song I had never heard before.
All seven and we’ll watch them fall
They stand in the way of love
And we will smoke them all…
One day all seven will die
As she sang, the two incarnations of Prince joined in. Somehow, their collective voices instantly resurrected the other five Princes, and they all joined too.
When the song was over, the seven incarnations of Prince all floated down and joined hands in front of Aech. She looked surprised. And elated.
Then the Seven Princes morphed and merged, coalescing into one single incarnation of Prince—the one wearing the black mesh mask. A split second later, he transformed into a glowing Love Symbol, which then melted and morphed into the Fifth Shard—a purple crystal spinning in the air.
I felt no sense of victory, because I had no idea what had just happened. All I felt were waves of exhaustion and amazement as I walked over and wrapped my right hand around the shard, bracing myself to relive another piece of Kira Underwood’s life….
* * *
I was Kira once again, and a now-middle-aged Ogden Morrow was standing next to me, holding my hand. We were in some sort of small theater or rock club, standing in front of a small, dark, empty stage, which was filled with a cloud of white smoke or fog, possibly created by a smoke machine or dry-ice condenser offstage. Hanging over this mist-covered stage was a small automated lighting rig, with a banner suspended from it that said HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY, KIRA!
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see James Halliday, dressed in an ill-fitting tuxedo, sitting alone in a corner, staring back at me forlornly. I could also hear what sounded like a large crowd of excited, whispering people behind me, but they were just beyond my peripheral vision, and Kira didn’t turn her head to look back at them.
A split-second after I clocked my surroundings, I felt Og squeeze my hand, and a dozen ultra-bright purple spotlights switched on, all converging on a lone figure standing on the stage directly in front of us. It was Prince, dressed in a glittering sequined purple suit. When she saw him, I felt Kira’s heart begin to beat so rapidly I worried she might pass out. I could feel myself swaying ever so slightly, and felt unsteady on my feet, because before I knew what was happening, the Purple One himself was approaching me. Then he was kneeling down on the stage in front of me, just a few feet away.
He raised a golden microphone and sang “Happy Birthday, Kira” to me, or rather—her.
* * *
And then I was back on the Afterworld, in the center of the courtyard arena in front of the Temple of the Seven, holding the Fifth Shard in my outstretched hand. I resisted the urge to immediately check it for an inscription. Shoto was more important. I pulled up my HUD and called Faisal, adding Aech to the call just before Faisal’s face appeared in front of us. We both began to bark questions at him, asking about Shoto’s condition. Once Faisal got us to quiet down, he told us that Shoto appeared to be fine, at least as far as they could tell.
“It’s the same as the rest,” Faisal explained. “All vital signs are normal, and he’s still logged in to his OASIS account. But we can’t locate his avatar anywhere in the simulation.”
Faisal shook his head and shrugged. “He appears to be stuck in limbo, just like all the other ONI hostages whose avatars have died.”
“What will happen when he hits his ONI usage limit?” I asked. “Will he still start to suffer the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome?”
Faisal nodded. “Yes. Our engineers think so, anyway. It seems likely that Anorak would have written his infirmware to ensure that all of his ONI hostages remain his captives, even after their avatars die.”
“But why doesn’t he just let their avatars respawn?” Aech asked. “They would still be his hostages.”
“We’re not sure,” Faisal said. “Perhaps he’s doing it to scare all of us? To keep all of his hostages in line, by making avatar death permanent? If so, it’s working. At least on me.”
Faisal told us that Shoto’s pregnant wife, Kiki, and the rest of his extended family were still standing vigil beside his OIV at his home in Hokkaido. They could see his sleeping body on his immersion vault’s internal cameras, which were linked to a video monitor mounted on the wall above it. There was nothing GSS’s engineers could do for him. They weren’t even trying to cut him out of his OIV, because they knew they couldn’t get him out in time. And even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. As long as Shoto remained logged in to the OASIS, his ONI headset would stay locked into place around his head. And until we managed to free Shoto’s mind from the OASIS, his comatose body would continue to be locked inside his OIV, just a few feet away from his family, but totally out of reach.
When Faisal finished answering our questions about Shoto, he couldn’t help himself. In a panicked voice, he began to ask us how close we were to finding the Sixth Shard. I hung up on him without answering. Then I closed my HUD and looked down at the Fifth Shard, which I was still clutching in my right hand. I turned it over until I found an inscription on one of its facets. I held the shard out so that Aech could read it too.
Win her hand through a feat of dark renown
The last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown
When I saw the last two words of the inscription, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I tried to think of a worse place for the last two shards to be hidden. There wasn’t one. Halliday had put them in the deepest, darkest, and deadliest dungeon fortress in the entire OASIS, in the possession of one of the most ridiculously overpowered—and evil—NPCs ever created. An NPC who was immortal, nigh invulnerable, and capable of killing most ninety-ninth-level avatars with his breath.
For all intents and purposes, the last two shards were located in the depths of hell, set into the crown of Satan himself.
I started to laugh.
It was just a rapid-fire giggle at first. But then I couldn’t stop, and it quickly grew into the loud, uncontrolled laughter of a sane soul pushed to the brink of madness by cruel chance, just before fate drop-kicked them over the edge of a cliff.
I checked my ONI usage countdown and I still had over an hour remaining, so I couldn’t be experiencing the onset of SOS. Not yet. Which meant I was just starting to lose it.
Aech stared at me with an uncertain look on her face until I managed to get my laughter under control.
“OK, Chuckles,” she said. “Now are you gonna tell me what’s so funny? I take it you know where we need to go next?”
I took a deep breath. Then I wiped away the tears at the corners of my eyes and nodded.
“Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately, I do, Aech.”
“Well?” Aech said. “Don’t make me look it up. Who the hell is Morgoth?”
I studied her face. I could see that she wasn’t joking. She really didn’t know. And this realization nearly set me off again. But I managed to keep a lid on it.
“Morgoth Bauglir,” I said. “The Dark Lord formerly known as Melkor?”
Aech’s eyes lit up.
“Melkor?” she repeated. “Vin Diesel’s avatar? Named after his old D&D character?”
“Vin borrowed that name from the Silmarillion,” I replied. “Melkor, who later became known as Morgoth, was the most powerful—and evil—being ever to roam the face of Arda. Also known as Middle-earth…”
When she heard the words “Middle-earth,” Aech inhaled sharply.
I shook my head.
“All the Hobbit NPCs live on Arda III.” I pointed to the name etched into the Fifth Shard. “Morgoth only resided on Arda during the First Age of Middle-earth. Which means we need to teleport to Arda I, and that planet is a completely Hobbit-free zone.”
“No Hobbits?” she said. “Seriously?”
“No Hobbits,” I replied. “Just Elves, Humans, and Dwarves.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “They’re all white, right? White Elves. White Men. And White Dwarves. I bet everyone we encounter on this Tolkien planet is gonna be white, right? Except, of course, for the bad guys! The black-skinned Orcs.”
“Saruman the White was a bad guy!” I replied, losing my temper. “We don’t have time for literary criticism right now, Aech, valid though it may be! OK?”
“OK, Z,” she replied, holding up both of her hands. “Jeez. Cool your tool. We’ll table that discussion until later.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just exhausted. And I’m scared. For Shoto—and Og and everyone else.”
“I know,” she replied. “I am too. It’s OK, Z.”
She gave my shoulder a squeeze, then nodded at me. I nodded back.
“Any word from L0hengrin yet?” Aech asked. “Or Arty?”
I checked my messages and shook my head.
“Not yet.”
Aech took a deep breath.
“OK, I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”
I nodded. Then I teleported both of us directly to the surface of Arda I, and into the First Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Like Shermer and the Afterworld, Arda I had a limited number of designated teleportation arrival and departure points scattered across its surface. Unfortunately, all but one of them was grayed out for me, because I hadn’t completed any of the quests required to gain access to them. So I selected the only arrival point I could, which was located in the middle of a frozen wasteland called the Helcaraxë. On the map, the same region was also labeled as “The Grinding Ice.”
But when the teleportation process completed, and our avatars rematerialized on the surface of Arda I, we didn’t find ourselves in the environment we were expecting. There wasn’t any ice or snow in sight. Aech and I were standing beside a small lake located somewhere high in the mountains. The star-filled sky over our heads was reflected in the water’s still, smooth surface, creating the illusion that there was a blanket of stars both above and below us. It was quiet, save for the singing of crickets, and the distant howl of wind whipping over the dark hills that loomed all around us.
It was a beautiful scene. But I had absolutely no idea where the hell we were.
When I pulled up my map of Arda to check our location, I discovered that we were nowhere near the Helcaraxë. We were over four hundred miles east, up in the Dorthonion highlands, standing on the shores of a lake called Tarn Aeluin.
This wasn’t one of Arda’s designated arrival points, so it shouldn’t even have been possible for us to teleport to this location. It had to be the shards that’d brought us here—but I didn’t have the first clue as to why.
I continued to scan my map of Arda, looking for the name Udûn. I knew that was once the name of Morgoth’s fortress, because in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf faces off against the Balrog of Morgoth at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, he calls it the “flame of Udûn.” But I couldn’t find any sign of it on my map—nor was there a label for its Sindarin equivalent, Utumno. And when I searched the index, it confirmed that there was no location known by either of those names anywhere on the planet.
I cursed myself once again for never bothering to study the First Age. Then I bit the bullet and opened Gunterpedia in a browser window in front of me and pulled up the entry on Utumno. I immediately saw my mistake. Utumno was the name of Melkor’s original dungeon stronghold. But it was completely destroyed just before the First Age began. So it wasn’t located on Arda I at all, but on the Springtime of Arda, another, much smaller, disk-shaped planet, located directly beneath Arda I, II, and III. Most gunters referred to it as Arda Zero. It was a simulation of Arda during the Years of the Trees, which took place before the First Age. I’d never even bothered to visit Arda Zero, because it was impossible to complete any of the quests there unless you had already completed every single quest on Arda I, Arda II, and Arda III.
I let out a heavy sigh, thinking I was going to have to suffer the embarrassment of telling Aech that I’d teleported both of us to the wrong planet. But after searching my memory, I recalled something Aragorn said in The Fellowship of the Ring, when he was telling the story of Beren and Lúthien to the Hobbits.
In those days, the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant, dwelt in Angband in the North….
I checked my map again, looked to the north, and located Angband right away. It was in the middle of the Ered Engrin, a vast mountain range that stretched across the northern reaches of the continent. In the common tongue, they were called the Iron Mountains. And Angband was also known as the Iron Prison.
That was one of the many things that made navigating Middle-earth difficult—everything and everyone had at least two or three different names, each in a different made-up language. It got confusing, even for a massive geek like me.
I pulled up my digital copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and located the sentence where Aragorn first mentions Angband. A few paragraphs beneath it, I found the passage I was looking for….
Tinúviel rescued Beren from the dungeons of Sauron, and together they passed through great dangers, and cast down even the Great Enemy from his throne, and took from his iron crown one of the three Silmarils, brightest of all jewels, to be the bride-price of Lúthien to Thingol her father.
That seemed to confirm my theory—here on this iteration of Arda, Morgoth’s throne was located in his dungeon fortress of Angband. And it was just eighty miles to the north of our current location. Bingo! That had to be why the shards had brought us here….
I turned toward Aech.
“We’re headed to Angband, Morgoth’s dungeon fortress, about eighty miles north of here.”
I pointed out over the lake and the dark hills beyond it, to the growing mass of dark clouds roiling above the distant northern horizon. They were lit by eruptions of red lightning from within, and by the enormous silver globe of the moon, shining high in the eastern sky, which cast a pale glow over everything beneath it.
Aech looked out over the lake, toward those dark clouds on the northern horizon.
“Eighty miles?” Aech repeated.
“Yeah,” I said. “And magic items or spells that give you the ability to fly won’t function here. Since we can’t teleport there either, we’ll have to travel by land.”
Aech reached down and tapped the stripes on the sides of the white Adidas she was wearing. When she did, the stripes changed color, from blue and black to yellow and green, and the shoes themselves began to glow and crackle with bolts of energy that were the same combination of colors.
“Got blue and black ’cause I like to chill,” Aech recited. “And yellow and green when it’s time to get ill.” She pointed down at her glowing, crackling sneakers. “My Adidas give me the ability to run at three times the normal speed. Do you want me to cast Mordenkainen’s Mojo on you, so you can keep up with me?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got a better idea.”
From my own inventory, I removed two small glass figurines shaped like horses. Both were silver-gray in color. I set them gently on the ground in front of us and backed away several steps.
“Figurines of Wondrous Power?” Aech asked.
I nodded and she immediately to
ok several steps backward too. Once she was clear, I spoke the activation words.
“Felaróf!” I shouted. “Shadowfax!”
Both figurines instantly grew and morphed into a pair of full-size horses, which abruptly came to life, snorting and whinnying as they reared back on their mighty hind legs. They were stunningly beautiful creatures, with nearly identical silver-gray coats. They were both decked out in Mithril plate armor that I’d purchased for them, along with custom-made saddles carved from dark-green Elven wood, inlaid with bands of gold that were engraved with their names in Fëanorian script.
“These are the two fastest land animals ever to roam Middle-earth,” I said. “I obtained them by completing quests on Arda III, but they should have the same speed and abilities here. Just make sure to hold on tight. They can really move, OK?”
Aech nodded and powered down her Adidas. Then she put one of them in Felaróf’s stirrups and swung herself up into the saddle on his back. I walked over to Shadowfax and patted him gently on the neck and told him it was good to see him again in Sindarin. Then I pulled myself up into his saddle and moved him alongside Aech and Felaróf.
I removed two magic swords that I’d acquired on Arda III from my inventory. One was the ithilnaur broadsword named Glamdring wielded by Gandalf during the War of the Ring, and I equipped it in the scabbard on my avatar’s back. The other was a two-handed sword, and I took hold of it by its blade and held it out to Aech, hilt-first.
“Here,” I said. “You’re gonna need this. Andúril, the Flame of the West. Reforged from the shards of Narsil by—”
Aech waved the sword away.
“No thanks, Z,” Aech said. “I’ve already got plenty of swords of my own.”
I continued to hold the sword out to her.
“Take it,” I said. “Only magical weapons forged by the Elves of Middle-earth can affect the servants of Morgoth, OK? I do know one or two things about this place.”
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