Historia Online

by Rae Nantes

  "Stef!" Nick yelled. "Ediha!"

  "Watch out," Stef ordered. "He's lost his damn mind!"

  Ediha spotted them, yanked the spear out of Stef, and dashed at them. He lifted the weapon high, a blue flame exploded out from its tip, and it slammed down against Nick's rifle barrel.

  “What in the hell are you?” Ediha shouted.

  Rika ran in and kicked Ediha hard enough to push him away. “We’re your friends,” she shouted back. “We are the ones who saved you.”

  Ediha found his balance and aimed his spear - this time at Rika. “I’ve watched you die! I’ve already buried your bones, and now you’re back!” His eyes were wild, and he spoke with madness. “Are you spirits? Are you gods?”

  “Calm down.” She raised her fists at him. “We’re just… sorcerers.”

  “No,” he growled. “You are something else, something worse. What makes you any different than that devil who destroyed the city, my city?”

  His lunged his spear at her center mass, but she was agile. She dipped and dodged and juked every thrust and swing, and soon she stepped close enough to connect a right hook into his jaw. He thumped into the dirt like a ragdoll, his legs half in the water. He was unmoving, yet his chest rose and fell with every breath.

  She shook off the pain in her hand. "You okay?" she asked Stef.

  Stef grunted as he tried to patch his wounds. "Yeah."

  Ediha groaned and struggled to his feet, but he fell back onto his knees. They watched, half on guard and half in sympathy for him. After a few breathless moments, he spoke. “Why?”

  “Why what?” Rika said.

  “Why did you save me?”

  “We like you.”

  “Why couldn’t you save the city?” he asked. "My city. My home. My people. My family."

  “Because we aren’t gods,” she answered.

  He buried his face into his hands. The silence returned, the breeze came, and they relaxed.

  “Alright,” Stef said. “What in the hell blew up the damn city?” He looked at Rika, expecting an answer. "The hell was that?"

  “Blood magic,” she said. “Like most things in the game - or world - there wasn’t any documentation on it. All I know is that consuming the hearts of certain people—”

  “Hearts?” Stef squinted his eyes at her.

  “I don’t know much else.”

  "Coulda fooled me," he spat. "Seems like you knew that guy."

  "Mondego?"

  "The guy I shot," he added. "The guy who is apparently immune to bullets."

  "Mondego," she said. "We've met before. That's all."

  Stef eyed the forests around. “Should, uh, we expect him nearby? I dunno if he left or not.”

  She shook her head. “He’s long gone by now.” Just as she knew that Mondego was coming to Mexico, she knew that he would continue on to the next temple. It wasn’t like him to waste time after another successful tragedy.

  "And how the hell would you know that?"

  "I know what he's after," she said. "At least I think I do. It was the same thing I was after until we... met."

  Stef narrowed his eyes at her. "Do me a favor and stop bein' an edgy punk for at least a second. Just give it to me straight. Is that dude gonna show up here again? We can't fight the colonizers if Lightning Larry keeps nukin' our asses."

  "You'll be fine," she said. "He's gone."

  "Now what?" Nick asked. "For all intents and purposes, there is no more Aztec empire, no more conquistadors to conquer it, and nothing to even conquer for at least a few more years."

  "The plan doesn't change." Stef grunted to his feet. "Well, maybe it does a little. We're still gonna modernize the natives, we're still gonna create a superpower, we're still gonna fuck over Spain, maybe France and England, too."

  Nick and Rika both looked at him with suspicion, looked back at the smoking wreck of what was once a bustling lake-city, and back at him. He took the hint. "Man, I don't fuckin' know. They'll need a new king at least." He and Nick looked over at Ediha.

  He had since come to and was holding his jaw in pain. Tears had raced down his cheeks, either at the reality that was crashing down on him, or the fact that he was likely the next in line to the throne - a line that should've been hundreds long.

  "I can't," he said. His voice was pale and defeated. "It was never my fate to take the throne. That was my brother’s fate." His eyes fell to the sand in front of him. "Leave me. And let me die with my family."

  The breeze came and slid its fingers over the lake water and the treetops and ran its chilly hands through Rika's hair. "Are you going to sit around and wait for fate to kick in, or are you going to do something with yourself? Are you going to be somebody?” Her voice was cutting. “Maybe it wasn’t even your fate. Maybe your fate is yours to decide.”

  ***

  The campfire crackled, offering glowing embers to float skyward, pulsing heat to fend off the setting winter. It lit their faces with a warm, fluttering glow. Stef idly snapped a twig and tossed it in. "So how's that for a plan?" he said.

  "Hunting down Mondego isn't as easy as it sounds," Rika said.

  "He needs legitimacy," Stef said. "If there's any Aztec in Mexico who should kill the one dude who committed genocide against them, it should be Ediha. Every person from the gulf to the pacific would kneel to that type of hero."

  "Like I said. It's not gonna be easy."

  "Then figure it out."

  Rika scoffed and crossed her arms. "He's more likely to get killed." A spark of a memory reached out to her, that moment when she stood above him before granting him the killing strike. Then of him above her, when he curved his weapon away at the last second.

  "Then make sure he doesn't," Stef said.

  She knew Ediha wasn't entirely weak in a fight, but even together, they might not be able to challenge Mondego. It seemed that demon was getting stronger by the day. The only way it could work was if—

  "Fine," she said. "I'll do it."

  Ediha looked away in shame, and she almost felt bad by her harsh words. "Thank you," he said. "For everything. And sorry."

  Stef tossed another twig into the fire. "By the end of it," Stef said, "we'll probably be the ones thanking you."

  His words seemed to cheer Ediha up, but the mood didn't stick. The sadness crept back into his face, and his eyes looked impossibly deep into the campfire.

  Valgus laughed it off. "So about that temple of gold..." He was fiddling with a leather jacket, working handcrafted buttons into their slots.

  "The Fire Temple is ruined," Nick said. "It would take years for a crew to dig it back up."

  "Some gold surely remains," Ediha said without looking away from the fire. "Is that the cost of your companionship?"

  Rika tilted her head at him. "I don't think this guy was coming with us."

  Valgus tossed the leather jacket over her face. "No, no, my king," he said. "It's dead bodies. I require dead people. Gold is just a bonus."

  Ediha feigned a smile. "Join us and consume the bodies of our enemies. The devils who took from me everything."

  The flames popped and danced against the breeze. The trees whispered.

  Rika realized that maybe what they weren't about to make was a hero. Maybe they were about to create a villain, a tyrant. Regardless, the boy's transformation was something they all wanted to see. The end result of him, the path he would find himself on, his destiny, was entirely his decision. Her job was only to give him the power to make those choices.

  If the rumors were true, then just finishing the World Quest would be more than enough to give him that power.

  2:3

  While the night was still young, Rika and Nick went out to scavenge the ruined city. With nearly everything burned or melted or turned to ash, there was little that could be usable for an upcoming expedition. They sifted through the dust into collapsed basements, ashen warehouses, dusty corpses. They needed as much iron and gold and obsidian as they could find.

  Nick grunted as he
plopped another bag into the street. It clapped and echoed across the rubble of the city, now vacant of all light and life except for two lonely torches and two figures with armfuls of sparkling loot. "We'll just split what we can carry for now," he explained, "and we should leave the rest for when we need it."

  The sight of it all was starting to make her drool. "Is that enough to bring us to level cap?"

  "Doubt it," he said. "By the looks of it, I'd say it's about one hundred thousand XP per bag. It’s probably only five level’s worth."

  She nodded in satisfaction. She knew better than to be greedy, especially when she was about to receive a ton of free gold. They buried most of it in a marked spot and loaded up what they could carry back to their camp.

  Because this was the last night they would be logged in, they hurried to get everything ready. Stef had spent a few points into the Fire spell, so he was able to smelt the gold into bite-size chunks while Nick worked to make new weapons and armor.

  He salvaged what he could from the hardened slag and pools of once-molten iron from the ruins, and after smelting them down, he forged plates of armor inserts. Rika thought it was wonderful watching him work, seeing the skill in his precise movements, the gracefulness of the magic welding flame as he slipped it across at perfect intervals. Was this the result of his character build? "It should be enough for now," he explained. "Give me a few months, and we'll probably have Kevlar here."

  Valgus took the first opportunity he had to provide them with leather armor. They all knew what type of leather it was, and they each had varying reactions to it. Rika was both intrigued yet disgusted. Stef burst into laughter at the sight of a human leather backpack and immediately claimed it for himself. Nick outright refused until he was given a leather cowboy hat with a matching long coat. Rika found it absolutely disgusting, but something about it just felt so right. These were the skins of their enemies, after all.

  Originally, Rika refused to wear someone else's skin, except for the small things - like bracers, belts, backpacks, hats, boots, pants, gloves, jackets. She found it absolutely horrid how easily they would fall on her, and she hoped it wouldn't awaken something within her. She was starting to really enjoy it.

  When the gold cooled down, they all took their share and gobbled it down like a Thanksgiving dinner, at least, the closest thing they understood to be Thanksgiving.

  After the last of her gold marbles were gulped down, Rika waited for the system to calculate her gain.

  +24,127 XP

  It was a bit of a dopamine rush, and she savored it. Now she just needed to log out to get the rest of her XP from the game session and level up her abilities.

  With sunrise just a few hours away, she figured she could spare a few minutes to handle it now.

  ***

  Gold: +24,980 XP

  Combat: +571 XP

  Deaths: -5000 XP

  Other: 0 XP

  Total XP Gain: +20,551 XP

  Level up! +6

  You are now level 25.

  You have 5 unused ability points.

  In the darkness of the game lobby, only her avatar existed in a void of black, standing on some scarcely visible tiled floor. It always unnerved her - a fear of dark, infinite places probably - and so she swiped open her screen to change the view.

  Her virtual home faded in, populating with furniture and manifesting decorations taken from other game worlds or purchased with simCash. She plopped down and sank into a pink bean bag chair - taken from Kittie Cutie Kingslayer 2, no less - and went through her player screen.

  To her endless delight, she was able to gain 6 levels from all the gold, giving her an additional 5 ability points. It would’ve been more, but she had lost a level when she died. Unfortunate, but it seemed to somehow work out in the end.

  She swiped over to her character sheet.

  Rika, 25 MageKnight

  Water [2]

  Walk on Water — 2/5

  Wind [10]

  Gust — 5/5

  Wind Blade — 5/5

  Fire [0] +2

  Flame — 0/5 +2

  Utility [8] +3

  Lightweight — 1/5

  Defense Aura — 2/5 +3

  Lesser Invisibility — 5/5

  There wasn’t much to invest in other than fire – for campfires, obviously, and to max out her defensive aura. Now that she had an excuse to actually finish the World Quest, she looked forward to unlocking the other elements for their own skill trees.

  Feeling satisfied with herself, she logged back in to see what the others had done.

  Nick had invested most of his skills into the Utility trees, anything that could be used for engineering apparently.

  Stef put skills here and there, but he explained over and over how only tryhards used magic and that the "real buckaroos go straight swordplay."

  "Sounds like real buckaroos get stomped on."

  "Sometimes," he countered, "but when I win, it feels even better."

  When she spoke to the weirdo Valgus, she found that he had actually maxed out his Teleportation skill, which enabled him to travel 760 kilometers at the cost of his maximum base mana. Taking the cooldown and mana regeneration into account, they would need to wait around for about an hour after each teleport. It was a tough price to pay for traveling across continents, but it seemed balanced.

  Rika regretted not investing in Teleportation sooner, but she knew it would drastically reduce her fighting skills. Valgus had spent nearly 20 skill points to get it that far, which was something she'd never be able to stomach.

  By the time they were all finished, morning had broken in the game, and the night in the real world was setting in. Rika yawned against the crisp morning air and went over to nudge Ediha awake. The poor kid slept all night, past the banging of metalwork, past the laughs of the sorcerers, past the looming memory of his destroyed life. She considered that maybe it was wrong of them to string him along, maybe it was wrong to have taken his gold. Were we doing the right thing? The kid lost everything in his life, and they were playing a video game without any hint of empathy to this nipsy teenager.

  "Ediha," she whispered. He rolled over at her and wiped the sleep from his eyes. "Are you okay with all this? We're going far away, across the world, and there's no guarantee—"

  "I have to," he croaked out. "I must take revenge for my people, for my family."

  "In a few hours,” Rika said, “I’ll be logging out - I mean - I will be in spiritual rest for another two and a half weeks. Do you want to stay here, or should we go ahead and start the journey?"

  He considered it for a moment, letting his eyes trace the blades of grass in thought. When he found his answer, he looked up at her and let his eyes speak for him. He was ready.

  Valgus stepped over to join them. "I'll still be on for a few more days," he said. "It'll be enough for me to make sure Ediha is safe and sound."

  Rika narrowed her eyes at him. "Little fucker, if I return to find that you ate him, I will cut your balls off in our world."

  "Relax," he said. "He's gonna be the next king, right? This is me doing favors for future business options. Trade is bigger than it seems." He stared into her with sly, beckoning eyes. Though he was a devil, Rika thought him cute in a feminine way.

  She sighed. "Then load up. Let's move out so I can get some rest."

  Stef tossed Ediha a pouch filled with rations, probably jerky or granola bars or the like. He looked down into Ediha's eyes, almost like a big brother, and said, "We'll make the country. You make the legend."

  They bumped fists, and for the first time in what felt like a month, Ediha smiled. "I'll return to you as a demon slayer."

  2:4

  The portal hummed and pulsed. It was a large, door-shaped black mist that spun the air around it for needless dramatic effect, taking dead leaves and bits of grass and dust to swirl. It stuck to their clothes and got in their eyes and was just generally annoying. She hated to imagine opening a portal in a library or a desert.

&nb
sp; Rika was the first to walk in, both to calm Ediha's panicking nerves and to quell her own endless excitement of finally getting to experience it. It was cool to the touch, almost silk-like, except for the static sensation that crawled up her arms. She took a deep breath and rammed her face in.

  Maybe it was how the spell worked, maybe to ensure players didn't toe the threshold and stay half in and half out because what felt like formless hands grabbed her wrists and yanked her the rest of the way in. She toppled over onto the ground and felt the soft grass against her face.

  Crows cawed, the wind blew, something thudded beside her as she regained her balance. It was Ediha and Valgus. They each looked around in awe at the sight that greeted them.

  A fresh battlefield in the grassy plains, littered with bodies and spears stuck in the ground. A fat vulture was already digging into a far carcass, and now the crows were taking sight. It seemed that if they were just an hour earlier, they would've found themselves in the middle of all the drama.

  "Plains Indians," Valgus said as he crouched over a body. He poked at the dead warrior's wounds. "Probably just a clash between tribes. They do this sort of thing, I hear."

  Ediha overlooked the mess with empty eyes. Native warriors in feathers, leathers, and cloth, not too entirely different than the ones that he had always seen. "Tribal warfare," he said to himself.

  "Well, anyway," Rika said to pull the conversation toward happier things, "we have an hour until the next jump. I guess we can loot them."

  Valgus flicked out his knife. "I have a better idea."

  Rika found his devilish smile contagious, and it shamed her. Though it was probably morally reprehensible, it wasn’t as if she killed any of these warriors, and even then, could she consider them innocent?

  It didn’t matter.

  The oath she made to herself would not be broken here, and if there were ever a time to learn more of Mondego’s power, it would be now.

  +17XP