Historia Online

by Rae Nantes

  A handful of priests stared down with expectant eyes.

  “Wait,” she said. “What’s this about? Aren’t we going to fight off the Spaniards?”

  Ediha walked up the steps. “Come on.”

  Rika hesitated, then followed.

  At the top, she saw the scale of their foes. Thousands upon thousands of Spanish surrounded them on the banks of the lake, heavy ships had been brought in to wait idly outside of the defenders’ range. The causeways across the lake had been scorched and dismantled at parts, but a squad of conquistadors was repairing the gaps. On the far edges of the city, countless bodies had been strewn about. One Spaniard for ten Aztecs.

  The fighting spirit drained from her. Stef was right. This wasn’t a siege so much as it was a mercy killing. The Aztecs had already lost, meaning that the Spanish attacked weeks ago.

  When she reached the top, she found a raised platform of stone surrounded by the priests. Behind them in the center, Montezuma, the Aztec king stood with crossed arms and resolve in his eyes.

  “Rika,” Ediha said. “It’s time.” He handed her a ceremonial knife - primitive in shape with a wide blade made of obsidian glass.

  She took it, confused, but when she looked up to see where he was moving, her heart dropped.

  Ediha laid atop the marble slab and waited.

  Rika wasn’t prepared for this. She stared down at the knife in her hands, the knife that had beckoned for Ediha’s blood, but she could not find her resolve. “Why?” she asked him.

  “To appease the gods,” the old priest said. “This is the only way to give us the power to fight out the invaders. It is the boy’s fate, known to him by birth.” He paused and stared into her. “Perhaps it was your fate to see it done.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ediha said. “You will have your pay once we finish.”

  She looked at the knife again. There was an obvious cultural event happening here, and it seemed Ediha had even consented to his sacrifice, but she couldn’t rationalize it. He was just a kid, a teenager. Sure, it was a video game, and they were all video game characters, pieces of code without wills or souls, but—

  Perhaps that was the answer she needed. She had killed nipsies before, it never mattered, and it never would matter. At the end of the day, this was just a game, and beyond that, they were nothing but entertainment.

  She gripped the knife and stepped forward. She looked down at Ediha. He closed his eyes. She raised the knife, then her arms went limp. The knife slipped from her grip and tapped against the stone.

  “Why,” the old priest uttered. “Why do you refuse this boy his greatest honor?”

  “It won’t be his greatest,” she said.

  Then, she felt it. A cold wind from behind her, pulling goosebumps from her skin. A crackle of static electricity that popped in and faded out as quickly as it came - a portal, the kind that only tryhard players used.

  Before she could turn and brandish her spear against this challenging player, a voice spoke out. It was deep, strangely alluring, and worst of all, familiar. “If she doesn’t, then I will."

  Black robes with gold accents. Black eyepatch over his left eye. Pale blond hair. Handsome face. Sultry, dangerous, taunting smile. It was Mondego.

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight at the sight of not just him, but several more of his cult members. Among them was the spooky clown guy she had killed the other night. “Hello, old friend,” Mondego said.

  A small gust of pale wind was manifesting around the tip of her spear. “Mondego,” she growled.

  Mondego smiled. Rika knew that she was at a huge disadvantage. The corrupt friar was more than a capable caster because, after all, they once worked together. She could hold her own against him without too much of an issue, but the other cultists behind him were all once acolytes of hers, and it stung seeing them take the darker path.

  He stepped forward, but she gripped her spear and readied herself. He paused.

  “It’s alright,” Ediha said.

  “No,” Rika said. “I’m keeping this one.”

  Mondego waited. A sudden war cry hit them from the causeways. The Spanish had reformed for another push, and the Aztecs struggled against them before breaking. Countless soldiers in metal armor poured through the Aztec lines and into the city.

  He sighed with a smile. Then, his cultists stepped toward her. It was a challenge, not to fight, but to drive home that she couldn’t. The spooky clown-faced player grinned and pulled back his fist to channel a spell. Rika swung her spear, launching her Wind Blade to slap against the clown. When his aura shattered, he stumbled off balance.

  The priests, the king, and even Ediha scrambled back to stay out of the mage's battle.

  Another cultist charged her with a knife. She lunged forward, swiped it out of the cultist’s hands, chambered for a killing thrust, and—

  —she froze in agony.

  Dozens of thin black threads had shot into her, grinding sparks against her aura, gripping her against the spell. She followed the black tethers to its source — Mondego, with a single hand raised.

  Something snapped, her body shook, her aura shattered like glass. The threads whipped her against the ceremonial slab.

  The war around them was raging, louder, the air thick with gunsmoke and the heavy smell of blood. Even in the golden sunlight, this close to the sky and above everything, the world seemed to darken.

  The fate of the Aztecs could not be changed, it seemed.

  “Wait,” one of the cultists said. “Where’s the boy?”

  “It matters not,” Mondego said. He stood over Rika with a tilted head. “We have a substitution.”

  Rika stared up at his taunting grin, unsure of what he meant. Blood magic hadn’t been tested on a player yet, but had he done it already? She noticed the air beside Mondego blur - an invisibility spell! A human figure faded into view. Spanish armor with a rifle pressed against Mondego’s side.

  It was Stef.

  A flash, a deafening blast, and Mondego stumbled a few meters away. Unscathed. Stef took Rika’s arm and threw her off the temple. She tumbled down the edge, her half-limp body slamming on each level, rolling, grunting, cracking before she thumped against the welcome softness of grass.

  She could see just barely the heads of those who were still up there. Gunshots were exchanged, flashes of colors zipping past in every direction, a cultist tumbling off, then Stef jumping after.

  Mondego stood at the ledge laughing, gripping the Aztec king with a knife at his throat. “Bear witness, witch!” he shouted over the noise of war. “This is the power of Blood Magic, the power of royal blood!” He slammed his dagger into the king’s chest and began to carve through.

  Royal blood, she thought. “Then Ediha was—”

  “Forget about it!” Stef ordered. “Let’s go!” He pulled Rika to her feet, and they rushed away from the temple. The skies darkened, the air electrified. They found Nick hiding behind a nearby house with Ediha bound and gagged.

  “He wasn’t cooperating,” Nick explained.

  Stef pinched the bridge of his nose as Rika caught her breath. “I dunno what the hell was goin’ on up there, but we’re about to play hell trying to break out of this siege.”

  Rika stared in awe at the temple. A pale beam of violet light thrust up from it into the heavens. The Earth itself seemed to rattle with a deep hum, and her instincts screamed at her to flee from this unknown danger. “We’re too late,” she said.

  The Spanish army had just fought their way to the temple square, and the clashes between them and the Aztecs slowed to a halt. The entire war now an audience to the unbelievable.

  A deep thunder cracked through the Earth. Tentacles of lightning arced out from the temple like tree branches, blinking and winding and gripping at anything nearby with clacks and pops. A horrible laugh - Mondego’s laugh - echoed from it.

  “Get inside!” Stef yelled. “Pile on Ediha!”

  Rika stood frozen, staring at the birth of a g
od. Stef yanked her inside.

  The world flashed white. She writhed in pain as her skin sizzled, burned, broiled. Her clothes burst into flames and the world roared and the roof caved in and she shrieked in panic and—

  She died.

  2: The Raven

  2:1

  The veil of darkness lifted from her, and she found herself standing in what was once the temple square. The ground was crystal, reflective and cracked in spots, dusted with pale ash. Her feet tapped across the smooth surface, crunching and shattering as she walked.

  Outside, the skies were overcast, threatening to rain, droplets prodding at the charred remains of people and houses, loosening and scattering ash into dust and mud.

  It was cold.

  Before her was an apocalyptic landscape, a scene pulled right from the horrors of the Last War of Earth. The city was almost flat now. Beyond the temples, no other structure survived. All that remained was glass and ash, broken stone, and the blackened bones of skeletons.

  It stung her nostrils.

  The temples glittered underneath a passing sliver of light from the clouds. The broken stone slabs of ruined buildings glimmered in the light - no doubt from the sand and dirt that melted from the heat to reform into glass. It was beautiful, in its own morbid way.

  She moved on in a daze.

  This was an atrocity, a genocide. Did Spain plan this, or was it only the work of Mondego? Did he even plan this? She felt a twinge of guilt that maybe, just maybe, things could have turned out differently. Maybe she could have been more welcoming to his interests in forbidden magic. Maybe she could have killed him when she had the chance. Were the lives lost hers to bear? How many, she thought. Thirty thousand, forty thousand, one hundred thousand dead?

  It didn't matter. The only harm done here was to nipsies. They didn't matter. Right?

  She looked around for Ediha. She looked around for Stef. She looked around for anyone or anything that could’ve been left alive here. Yet there was nothing but silence and the distant wind.

  As she moved beyond the temple square, the ground turned soft beneath her, cracking and mushing as she walked over layers of white and grey. A ring of ash radiated out from the epicenter. Beyond the once-city limits, the lake remained, and beyond that, the empty forests. Where was the Spanish army?

  Her spear was gone. Her clothes were torn and burned. She was vulnerable. There was no guarantee that Mondego wasn’t still around somewhere. She looked around for a weapon to loot, anything to defend herself with.

  She found the corpse of a knight. Metal slag, melted armor that seemed like it was poured over the poor man. The body laid frozen to the temple steps, stuck against it as the metal had poured into the cracks to lock him in place. The cuirass had pooled beneath the skeleton, dangling from its ribcage. She would not find a sword here worth using.

  A noise. A scraping sound like a fingernail dragging on leather. It was coming from the other side of a crumbled wall, so she sauntered over as quietly as she could.

  She peered around the corner. A girl was crouched over some mass of lumps on the ground, her hands were moving up and down the length of it. She was turned away from Rika, whistling to herself.

  Rika eased closer. Her foot crunched on a castaway bone.

  The girl stopped and turned to her.

  They froze as they stared into each other. The girl stood up, bloody knife in hand, and said, "Who are you?"

  It was a boy. He had a youthful appearance, roughly Rika’s age, with long brown hair and sleepy eyes. He was short, just a tad taller than her, and had they been further from each other, she would've thought he was a girl with that feminine face. The faintest of silhouettes shined around him as the clouds overhead moved and shifted the light. He was a player.

  Rika shrugged and showed her empty palms. "How are you alive?"

  He didn't reply. He only stood, tensed up at her presence, unblinking, unmoving, unsettling. The knife dangled in his hands. At his feet, the carcass of an animal.

  No.

  It was a person. He was in the middle of skinning a human corpse.

  "Welp," Rika let out. "You seem to be, uh, busy, so I'll be on my way—"

  "Halt," he ordered with as much authority his girly voice could conjure. He stepped forward, once, twice, then paused. He tilted his head. His eyes were glazed over. "Are you a player?"

  Rika could probably outrun him, and she was certain she had the mana to spam her Lightweight skill to just dart away. "I died here recently."

  He chuckled. "Oh, you were here? I was in the village over. The whole damn country lit up in a blaze, we thought it was a nuke."

  "We?"

  "Me and a friend of mine."

  "Your friend," she repeated. Rika needed to take stock of the situation here because after all, she had no intention to trust this guy, especially a player who might've been close to Mondego. If there were even a hint of more people around, she needed to know.

  He nodded up at her when he saw her tattered clothes. "You want some leather armor?"

  "I'm good.”

  He bent back down to the body and returned to his work. "Genuine human leathers," he sang. "The name’s Valgus, and I'm a master of my craft. Some friends and I are making a business of it. We're calling it Abra Cadaver Outfitters.” He laughed. “Makin’ a killing!"

  "So you move around murdering random people? Just to take their skin?"

  He scoffed. "Okay, hold on. Are you gonna tell me it’s wrong to do this?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?" she countered. "Yeah, sure, it's a video game, and these people here are just video game characters, but that doesn't mean we can just murder and kill to our heart's content."

  "Sure we can," he said. "It's inconsequential. If they wanted, the developers could just snip the code that amounted to the nipsy's identity and recreate them. Even then, it's not like they're entirely dead.” He gestured with a severed hand as he spoke. “I read somewhere that their code gets reused again and again to save on CPU."

  Rika was unamused. "It's not about whether its right or wrong to kill nipsies. I get it - it doesn't matter. But treating people like shit in these games isn't good for your mental health. It can really fuck up your head psychologically, and there have been countless studies—"

  "Oh, come on," he groaned. "I know the difference between fantasy and reality. And you and I both know that having an outlet to do bad things keeps us from doing it in our world." He tossed the hand aside to thud into the ash. "Stella Vallis is a goddamn utopia. We all get our heads checked, we all get our health taken care of, nobody is gonna end up crazy just because of a video game."

  "And if they do?"

  He shrugged. "You ever wonder why 90% of our entertainment revolves around conflict? You'd be hard-pressed to find any game or movie or story that doesn't involve killing somebody somehow. It's in our nature. It's in our blood."

  She crossed her arms at him. "You've really convinced yourself, haven't you?"

  "And you're still clinging on to desperate science." He shook his head and knelt back down to the corpse.

  A voice hit them from around the corner. "Freeze." It was a figure in a poncho and a scarf mask - Nick - with a rifle cradled in his arms. "Oh, it’s just you, Rika," he said.

  The skinner stood up from his work and stared daggers into Nick. "Great. Now what do you want?"

  "Are you with him?" Nick asked with a nod.

  “No, I just found him,” she said. “We can leave him alone. He’s just a weirdo.”

  "More than just weird," Nick said. "I was watching from afar and saw him literally eat a corpse."

  "What?"

  "Like a dog."

  She narrowed her eyes at Valgus the skinner. "You are fucked up."

  He laughed. "You never once thought about what a person tasted like? We make stews and jerky, too."

  She groaned and looked at Nick. "Where is Stef?"

  "Searching for Ediha," he replied.
>
  The mention of that kid pulled at her heart, and she was already starting to worry. Was I even able to save him? "Let's get out of here."

  They started off, but Valgus jumped up to pause them. "Wait, wait, do you guys need party members? I was following the conquistadors, but they're all gone now. I can just follow you until we reach civilization."

  "Or we can get you arrested," she said. "For crimes against humanity."

  "Come on!" he whined. "This is medical science! We're learning about anatomy in a near-atomic level simulation! This is the same thing the doctors and researchers do. That is good science."

  The guy had a point, but she still wasn't ready to just trust this possible serial killer. When she glanced him over, she realized how non-threatening he looked. Sure, a guy with a knife and bloody hands would be creepy in any dark alleyway, but in an MMO, he was just an unarmored and lowbie-geared noob.

  Nick answered for her. "Fine, come on."

  A child-like grin ripped across his face. He shoved the skins into his bag and joined them on their walk out of the city.

  The causeways and streets still had the scars of battle beneath the ash. A haze was pulling over the lake, a fog that obscured the causeway that ran out from the city and toward the distant bank. It had been damaged, burned at places, broken off. A few corpses drifted in the water, some Spanish, some Aztec.

  There was no longer a reason to stay here, and with the defeat of the natives along with the conquistadors, it seemed this chapter of her playthrough was over. Mondego didn't seem to be around, and she was already anxious to chase him to the next temple.

  Once she had a better plan, at least.

  On the shore of the lake, a couple of figures appeared through the mist. It was a native teenager, no, it was Ediha. He was ramming a spear into someone, pinning him against the sand, watching the man writhe and struggle and die.

  It was Stef.

  2:2

  "Get off me you lil shit!" Stef gripped the spear that was ramming into his chest and kicked and flailed at Ediha.