“Your dog.”
“Oh,” Jack said, scratching the wolf behind the ear absently. “I don’t know. Got a name, boy?”
The wolf looked up at him expectantly.
“Not much of a talker, huh?” Jack said. “Why don’t we call you Silence for now, then, huh?”
The wolf seemed indifferent at best, trotting off in search of tracks.
They reached the back of the house, just below Madsin’s window, and Cordelia let out a long sigh.
“I don’t need hunter’s intuition to know that’s a bad sign,” she said. The wooden outer wall below the window had been abraded with deep scratches in the stone. She touched the scratch marks with her fingertips. “Something climbed in through that window.”
“Something with claws,” Jack said. He knelt in the mud. “Look.”
Cordelia saw what he gestured toward—a deep impression in the mud, foot-shaped, broad with sharp nails. Cordelia let her axe slide down in her hand, ready to swing.
“That is so alarming,” she said.
“Signs of a struggle,” Eriko said, leaning out the bedroom window above them. “Hink, do you have a dog or any animal your little would spend time around?”
“We have some cows,” he said. “Why?”
“Just a hunch,” Eriko said. She dropped out the window, splashing in the mud. Inside, footsteps echoed as Tobias left the way they came in.
The wolf growled in the darkness. Jack and Eriko exchanged glances and both drew their weapons. Behind them, Hink raised a makeshift club. Creeping toward a copse of trees along the edge of the property, they found the wolf already there, staring into the dense shadows.
“Together,” Jack said. They walked in a triangle formation toward the thicket.
And then a child’s voice cried and a massive shadow lashed out, sending Jack sprawling on the ground. Everything seemed to slow then; Cordelia saw blood fly from Jack’s face, purple in the rainy moonlight. She charged at the shadow, her axe above her head, but as she swung downward, she hit nothing but earth, toppling forward. Two of Eriko’s knives whiffed by with a distinctive snap-hiss as they spun, striking nothing.
Cordelia pursued, aware of Eriko close on her heels. They reached the fence on the edge of town just in time to see the dark figure vault the wall, climbing one-armed, the other stuffed with the squirming figure of a child under its arm. But in seconds, it was up, over, and gone.
And then it was over. Hink felt to his knees bellowing into the air. The others, Morgan, Tamsin, and Tobias, came running, only to see their friends scattered and defeated. Morgan quickly looked to Jack’s face, who pulled himself away, rushing to the wall.
“What happened?” Morgan barked, war hammer in hand.
“Dammit,” Jack said, hands pressed against the wall, looking up.
“We need to get around,” Eriko said. “How do we get over the wall?”
Hink remained on his knees, fists clenched with rage. Morgan knelt down in front of him.
“Hink. Look at me,” Morgan said. “Look at me. How do we get outside the wall?”
“The south gate’s the closest,” Hink said softly. “It’s too late, it’ll take you a half hour to get around the town line from there…”
And then the air lit up like morning. Cordelia recoiled from the light, feeling a wave of heat wash over her, blinded by the sudden flash. Eriko swore in an overlapping combination of English and Japanese, the combination somehow making the cursing seem even more vulgar.
“We’ll fix it later,” Tamsin said.
Cordelia blinked until her vision returned to normal. When she could see clearly again, she watched as Tamsin, her hands steaming in the rain like hot pavement, walked through a scorching hole in the town’s barrier, the gap just a little taller than Tamsin’s full height.
“Come on,” Tamsin said, looking back. “I made the door. One of you needs to lead the way. I don’t know where we’re going.”
Tobias trotted past the group, putting a hand on Morgan’s shoulder as he did.
“Aren’t you glad my sister picked the wizard?” he said.
Morgan’s jaw hung open at the scorched hole in the wall. Shaking his head, he looked to Hink.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’m sure the blast will bring the guards. Explain to them what happened, and we’ll leave signs for you and the guards to follow. Okay?”
The man nodded, dragging himself to his feet.
“We’ll be back soon,” Morgan said reassuringly.
Cordelia stepped through the damaged wall and into the damp forest beyond. She looked over her shoulder at the mourning father watching them as they left. And she had a sense, in her heart, that Morgan’s reassurances would soon be proven hollow.
Chapter 11: Pursuit
Tamsin couldn’t believe the rage she felt inside herself.
This isn’t real, she thought, stomping through the wet brush and mud, cursing when her wizard robes got caught on branches and brambles. None of this is real. Why am I so angry that something stole this child? It’s all hallucinatory.
But we don’t know that for sure, she corrected. She felt the heat from her fireball on her face. The rain in her hair was cold, raising goosebumps on her skin. And that child’s cry had sounded as real as could be. This might not be our reality, but it’s real enough, she thought.
And so she powered on.
Jack and Eriko ranged ahead, almost out of sight, staying just close enough that the rest of the group could keep them visible. Jack turned to look back at them, and he seemed little more than an abstract painting, a green-cloaked figure in watercolor.
“Great game night, huh?” Tobias said, catching up beside her. He’d wrapped his own cloak all around him like a poncho. “Next time Morgan and Cordelia invite us along, let’s say no.”
“Little late for that, Tobias,” she said.
He laughed, hopping nimbly over a branch. Her brother moved with an easy grace here, she noticed. He wasn’t what you’d call oafish at home, but neither was he anything like this.
“You almost look like you’re having fun,” she said, circumventing a large tree.
“Oh, absolutely,” Tobias said. “Catching pneumonia while chasing a monster was exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night.”
Something cried out in the darkness, sharp and inhuman. The whole group came to a halt.
“What was that,” Tobias said.
Cordelia brushed past them, axe ready.
“I think we’ll find out soon enough,” Cordie said.
Morgan unslung his hammer and held it with both hands.
“Do either of you have any light spells?” Jack yelled back to them.
Morgan and Tamsin exchanged hesitant looks.
“Do I?” she asked.
“Maybe?” Morgan said. He closed his eyes and held a hand over the head of his hammer. The weapon began to glow faintly with a warm, golden glow. He opened his eyes and held the weapon aloft like a torch.
Tamsin concentrated, looking for the words to the right spell in her mind. Arcane sigils materialized behind her eyes, and she spoke them aloud in a language she didn’t understand. A small globe of light materialized next to her.
Morgan headed for Jack’s position, and Tamsin, unsure what else to do, followed. Her light had a flashlight-like quality to it, unlike the warm fireside feel of Morgan’s.
Tamsin discovered she could direct her globe of light with her mind, and so she caused it to drift around the edge of the group, illuminating the forest floor.
“What are we looking for?” she asked.
“Anything,” Jack said, wandering out of the light and once again becoming a blurry shadow. “The trail stops here.”
In the darkness, Tamsin heard Jack slowly draw a sword. She heard the same noise again, closer, and saw her brother had done the same. Weirdly, with the rain-matted cloak and now-messy bard’s clothes, Tobias looked less like a performer and more like a dandy from a Shakespearean play, the sort of br
avo who wore finery but knew his way around a blade. He held it out in front of him like a fencer.
“Well you’re full of surprises,” she said.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said. “It’s all about the presentation.”
Cordelia made a silent gesture for them to stop talking. She cocked her head to one side, listening.
Then Eriko yelled.
“There!” Eriko said, pointing.
For just a split second, Tamsin could make out a grotesque face, fleshy and pink, with yellow teeth and red eyes, huddled in a branch ten feet above. It screamed at them with an inhuman wail and darted off, a silent bundle under one arm.
Eriko broke into a run without hesitation.
“Wait!” Morgan yelled, but Eriko’s dark red cloak disappeared into the darkness. And, inexplicably, Tamsin found herself running as well.
“Tam, stop!” she heard Tobias hell, but she held tight in her mind the bundle in that creature’s arm, because it breathed. She saw the rise and fall beneath the fabric that held it tight. The stolen girl still lived.
Trees and leaves rushed by in a blur of black, brown, and green. The rain spattered against her face as debris from the forest stuck to her robes and skin. She saw Eriko ahead of her, the bouncing of the cloak as her friend ran full speed, dodging stumps and stones sticking up out of the ground. Tamsin used Eriko’s movements to her own benefit, letting her friend’s sharper vision spot obstacles for them both to avoid.
Too late, she realized she could barely hear the sound of the others behind them. There as a distant clanging she knew had to be Morgan’s armor, and Tobias called out her name, but the darkness seemed to swallow his voice.
“Eriko, the others,” Tamsin started to say.
Then Eriko disappeared.
One second Eriko was running, and the next her cloak flipped up, the dark-haired woman seemingly dropping out of existence. She wasn’t completely gone, Tamsin knew, because she heard her swear every curse word ever created, in between grunts of frustration and pain.
“Eriko?” Tamsin said.
And then the earth gave out beneath her and she found herself falling, falling, rocks digging into her arms and legs, root tugging at her wizard robes. Her head banged against something that must’ve been a tree root. Dirt kicked up and into her mouth, nose, eyes. She heard Eriko again, a solid bark of air being forced from her body, and then a few seconds later, Tamsin made a similar noise as she slammed into the ground.
Tamsin rolled over onto her back and looked up. Above her, a dark tunnel led up to the night sky, just a pinhole of midnight blue far above.
“I think we made a mistake,” she said, before darkness overtook her.
Chapter 12: The den
Well, now I know we’re really in a game, Eriko thought as she pushed herself up onto her knees at the bottom of the cave she’d fallen into. In real life I’d have two broken legs and internal bleeding. I must’ve succeeded my saving throw on the fall.
She took in her surroundings slowly, listening as rocks and earth fell from above. She was underground, she could tell that much; and it wasn’t so much a cave as it was a tunnel, clearly dug out of dirt rather than stone, with roots from trees visible in the walls. The ground, aside from where it had been torn up by her fall, was densely packed as if often traversed. The smell was staggering, somewhere between a men’s restroom and a cat’s litter box. It made her eyes water. She could see, which confused her at first, until she realized the light came from Tamsin’s glowing orb, which had followed them down the hole.
Tamsin. Ugh, Eriko thought. Not my first choice to have stuck down here with me. Better to have someone who could at least pretend they’d been in a situation like this before. Cordelia was notorious for rushing in to bail Eriko’s character out when she split the party. They had tactics together. Just please don’t panic, Tamsin, she thought.
Eriko crawled over to her friend and brushed the dirt out of her face.
“Tam,” she said.
“I hate this stupid game,” Tamsin said.
“Yeah, me too,” Eriko said. “You okay?”
“I feel like I felt down a laundry chute,” Tamsin said. “What is that smell?”
Eriko looked around and saw a single tunnel leading out of the open space where they’d landed.
“I’m just going to make a wild guess,” Eriko said. “That’s what a predator might smell like.”
“Like the movie monster, or just like, a carnivore?” Tamsin said.
“The latter,” Eriko said. She stood up and then helped Tamsin back to her feet as well. “Why’d you follow me?”
“I thought you knew where you were going,” Tamsin said.
“Okay, if we survive this, here’s a good rule to live by,” Eriko said. “I am Captain Bad Decisions in these games. It’s sort of my thing.”
“So you’re saying don’t follow you,” Tamsin said.
“Stick with Morgan. He’s the planner.”
“I really wish you’d told me that back at the dining room table.”
“Yeah, me too,” Eriko said. Slowly, she started toward the tunnel.
“Where are you going?”
“Might as well see where we are,” Eriko said. She spat on the floor to get the grit off her tongue. Tamsin followed close by, her light at her side.
The tunnel curved to the left, a rough pathway with a well-worn floor and crumbling walls. They came across a pile of blankets and furs, almost a bed, and a collection of odds and ends from the surface. Children’s toys, a dagger, a pie tin.
“Eriko,” Tamsin said.
Eriko looked to where Tamsin pointed. Hanging from the wall was a set of blades, all serrated and cruel, filthy with rust and dried blood. Some looked like torture devices; others, food preparatory instruments.
“Stay close to me,” Eriko said, pulling a pair of daggers from her belt.
The women explored deeper into the tunnel, making their way around another curved path. Eriko saw a block of stone that might have been used as a table, a fire pit, currently cold, and a…
“Tamsin, don’t look,” Eriko said.
“What?” Tamsin said.
“Don’t come in here.”
“Why,” Tamsin said, ignoring Eriko’s warning and striding into the room. She gasped, and Eriko slapped her palm across Tamsin’s mouth to stop her from screaming as she stared at the pile of bones in the corner.
Small bones. Delicate. Human. Scored with a knife’s edge.
“It eats…” Tamsin whispered.
“Stop,” Eriko said. She grabbed her friend by the shoulders and shook her. “Look at me, Ravenclaw. Are you listening? You’re a badass magician who throws fire from her hands and I’m a stabbity stabby stab killer rogue. You got that? Whatever this thing is, we can take it. Nothing steals children unless it’s afraid of badasses like us.”
“Like us,” Tamsin said.
“Right?”
“Yeah,” Tamsin said. She looked at the pile of bones again and sneered. “I want to kill the shit out of this monster.”
“Then let’s be ready. You ready?”
“I hope so.”
“Okay then,” Eriko said. “The first thing I need you to do is figure out how to shut that light off.”
“And then?”
“Make sure you know how to throw another fireball,” Eriko said.
Chapter 13: Not the game I was expecting
Morgan ran through the brush like a bull, his armored frame smashing through branches and knocking down small trees. So much for a dungeon crawl he thought. This has turned into some sort of survival horror situation. Not the game I was expecting, that’s for sure.
Tobias was easy to spot ahead of him in his bright cloak, yelling for his sister. He’d lost sight of Jack entirely, but he could hear Cordelia parallel to him, running in the same direction.
“Where’d they go?” he heard her day. “Tobias, wait!”
“Where is she?” Tobias said, turn
ing back to look at both of them, throwing his arms up in frustration. “They weren’t that far ahead of us.”
“I heard Eriko swearing again,” Morgan said, stopping to catch his breath. The armor wasn’t as heavy as it should be—he couldn’t run in real life mail armor, not like this, so the fictional facets of the world included a little bit of suspension of disbelief with things like armor, he guessed. He raised his hammer—also not as heavy as something twice the size of his head made of solid metal should be—and used the mystical light shining from it to look around.
The forest was too dense, he thought. They’d lost sight of Modest Expectations, and the trees above them were so thick they wouldn’t have been able to see the moon even if they hadn’t run out in a downpour.
“Where the fuck is Jack,” Cordelia said. “Did we lose him too?”
“You don’t think that thing is… picking us off one by one,” Tobias said. He’d lowered his sword to the ground, his hair plastered to his face, eyes wide with worry. “I mean, is that what’s happening?”
“It steals kids, Tobias,” Morgan said. “Something that hunts babies isn’t going to want to tangle with us.”
“Right,” Tobias said. “Morgan, none of us has even been in a bar brawl in the real world. We’re not scary.”
“Listen to me,” Morgan said. “Here, we’re what we have to be. Are you listening? I don’t know how we got here or why it happened, but right now, we’re not Morgan the student teacher or Tobias the guy who didn’t get the gig for the car commercial at his audition the other day. Got me? If we’re going to survive in this reality, we have to be what we need to be.”
“I’m a minstrel,” Tobias said, his head bobbling in resignation.
“After we find your sister, I’m going to tell you about some of the stuff I’ve seen bards do in games like this,” Cordelia said. “You’re so much more capable than you know.”
“Shit,” Tobias said, a nervous, wry smile crossing his face. “And to think I picked the bard because I wanted to hang back and sing songs while you guys did all the hard stuff.”
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