Lost in Revery

by Matthew Phillion

  It was fun. I’m somewhere between Assassins Creed and Kevin in Home Alone right now, Eriko thought.

  Two more entered the building, which she lured into a dark pantry area and dispatched deftly. Another three, and she was able to jump out of the shadows and dance among them until their heads were mostly separated from their bodies. It all felt so natural, so easy, that Eriko wondered if the class she’d taken on here in the game wasn’t a rogue so much as an actual assassin.

  “I am a ninja,” she said, plunking a throwing knife into the throat of yet another ghoul.

  The bodies were piling up on first floor, though, so she darted up to the second to lay in wait for them. They were more alert now, seeing the bodies of their compatriots, but they also didn’t seem particularly bright, or at least not very interested in self-preservation, she thought.

  She stole a second to glance out the window her stomach turned to acid. The streets were filled with ghouls, all that same drab grayish white, all with the same emaciated bodies and catlike ears, the bared yellow teeth and red eyes, looking for her.

  “I messed up real bad,” Eriko said. “This was a stupid plan. I’m not a ninja. What was I thinking?”

  She heard more of the ghouls creeping ungracefully up the stairs. She caught one in the neck from behind, separating its spinal column, and another she almost brained, but the third proved too quick, blocking Eriko’s vicious strike aimed at its eye, knocking her to the floor. She kicked it with both feet and the undead creature fell backwards and all the way down the entire flight of stairs, but she could already hear it scrambling to its feet.

  The building was rapidly filling with smoke and flames. And ghouls, Eriko hoped. Come on in and burn, she thought. I’ll just bail.

  She yanked on the window pane, intending to crawl out onto the awning just outside the window.

  The pane stuck.

  She yanked again, putting her full, if not particularly significant, weight into it. Nope. Window was stuck. Totally stuck. She heard more ghoul claws exploring the house below and darted to the next window, which opened on the first try.

  Okay, get them in the house, bar them inside, let them burn to death, or undeath, or whatever, and game over, I win, level up, get those sweet, sweet experience points…

  Out in the street, there were simply too many ghouls to count.

  This is exactly not the way I wanted to die, Eriko thought. A whole fictional world full of ways I could get myself killed and I end up on the roof of a burning building surrounded by dozens of flesh-eating undead. This sucks.

  And then she saw an impossible flash of light.

  Striding down the street, swinging his glowing hammer with a grim, professional efficiency, Morgan easily put down ghoul after ghoul with ease. His hammer seemed to burn the undead energy out of them, leaving the bodies inert on the cobblestones. He was surrounded, though, as the creatures turned on him, the burning building no longer the focus of their attention. He’s going to be swarmed, Eriko thought. Seeing the ghouls begin to turn their attention away from the house, she dropped down to the street below, letting out an undignified grunt as she landed, not on her feet, but in a sloppy barrel role, thumping her head off the stones as she tried to regain her balance. Popping back onto her feet, she slammed the door of the building shut, trapping whatever ghouls remained inside with the fire. Drawing both daggers, she prepared to run to Morgan’s side, knowing the only reason he was here was to save her.

  Why is he alone? She thought. Did things go that badly underground? What happened?

  The ghouls overwhelmed Morgan, paying the rogue behind them no mind. Seeing her friend about to fall, Eriko leapt into action, stabbing two ghouls in the back simultaneously, which unfortunately then drew the attention of a half dozen more, who began to encroach upon her space slowly, like hunting predators.

  I can’t get to Morgan in time, she thought. I got my friend killed trying to help me. This is my fault.

  She only had seconds for the guilt to sink in before she found herself surrounded as well, lashing out defensively as the ghouls reached for her. But her daggers weren’t the right weapons for this kind of work, and she could find no cover, nowhere to run or hide…

  One of the ghouls fell to the ground, smashing its face against the street, and then was yanked backward viciously. There as a growl, a roar, and the snapping of bone, and then a dark, furry shadow pounced on another ghoul.

  Silence, Eriko thought. That stupid wolf is actually good for something. This is unbelievable. She watched as Jack’s oversized wolf companion tore another ghoul apart. The others began to focus their ire on him, but that just opened them up to Eriko’s blades while they were distracted.

  She took a split second to look for Morgan, and for a moment she thought he was gone, unable to see him in the crowd of undead.

  And then a bomb of radiant light went off in the middle of the street.

  Emanating from where she’d lost sight of the cleric, a glowing orb of gold and white appeared, like a bubble. It grew, and grew, expanding, but wavering, unstable and impermanent. Eriko shielded her eyes against the brightness, not unlike looking at the sun, and then a massive sound—not a boom, not a detonation, something else, like a voice crying out in the night—reverberated throughout the town center. Windows shattered. Glass fell from the sky.

  And when the light faded, Morgan stood in the center of the street, surrounded by dozens of destroyed ghouls, covered in gore, his hammer still glowing bright.

  The ghouls still standing began to scatter. Eriko destroyed one with another throwing knife; Silence took one down like he would a wounded deer. But the others ran in too many directions, too quickly to catch.

  Eriko limped toward Morgan, only now realizing she’d turned her ankle jumping off the roof. Behind her, a desperate ghoul climbed out of the burning building, dropping like a piece of cooked meat on to the street from a second-story window. Silence casually ripped the ghoul’s throat out and padded over to Eriko’s side.

  Morgan looked at her with eyes that no longer had pupils. They glowed with that same golden light his spells gave off. Eriko pretended not to notice as she saw the light begin to fade, his normal dark irises returning.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Can you please stop running off?” Morgan said. “I’d really like to make sure we all get home together.”

  “I’ll try,” Eriko said. “Where’s everyone else?”

  Morgan glanced at the well a few hundred feet back.

  “Down there,” he said.

  “Then I guess we’re headed down there too,” Eriko said.

  Together, they looked at Silence. The wolf stared back up at them expectantly.

  “I don’t know how we’re getting a wolf down a well,” Morgan said.

  “I was really hoping you had an idea, because I don’t,” Eriko said.

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  Chapter 21: I come bearing gifts

  “For the record,” Cordelia said. “We didn’t just split the party tonight, Jack. We divided it up into little pieces and put them all in different boxes and mailed those boxes in three different directions.”

  “Possibly four,” Jack said. Cordelia considered punching him. Jack flinched like he read her mind and her intentions. “Sorry.”

  “What I want to know is,” Cordelia said as they turned yet another corner in this ridiculous labyrinth. “Did the town build these tunnels, or were they always here?”

  “I believe they are an ancient ruin,” Murtok said. He and Jack both held their bows at the ready in a way so similar it made Cordelia’s anxiety spike, as if watching this undead being was somehow a preview of a terrible future for her friend. “The townsfolk themselves never even seemed aware that it was here. And the glyphs and wards on the walls are not human.”

  Jack and Cordelia both stopped walking simultaneously, and, also simultaneously, blurted out: “Not human?”

  Murtok seemed genuinely taken aback
by the reaction.

  “You’re a half-orc,” he said, his tone legitimately confused. “You know ‘not human’ is a relatively common feature in these parts, yes?”

  “Sorry, where we come from it’s…” Cordelia said, gesturing back and forth between herself and Jack.

  “We’re a little more homogeneous back home,” Jack said.

  Murtok shook his head as if he couldn’t grasp what they were saying, but didn’t particularly care to, which was the default reaction they always received when they talked about their lives before the game here.

  “Old dark elven script,” he said. “The dark elves weren’t uncommon in these parts hundreds of years ago, though they’ve since migrated. The tunnels were abandoned. Perfect for a ghoul nest.”

  “Right. Exactly. Put out a few throw pillows, maybe some window treatments, and it’s a perfect fixer-upper,” Cordelia said.

  “You grow stranger the longer we talk, warrior,” Murtok said. “Perhaps we should focus on finding your friend.”

  “Perhaps we should,” Cordelia said, giving Jack the side eye.

  “Which friend are you looking for?” a familiar voice said.

  “Tobias, you idiot, don’t tell me you rescued yourself before we could rescue you,” Cordelia said, her voice an awkward combination of relieved and legitimately angry.

  “Ta-da!” Tobias said, striding out of the shadows, brushing his pale blue hair from his face. “Oh, shit. You’re a ghoul!”

  Murtok shrugged.

  “You’re an elf,” he said.

  “I’m a tasty treat,” Tobias said. “I take it this one’s on our side?”

  “This is Murtok,” Jack said. “We’re helping him cut down on the ghoul population in exchange for finding you—Toby, where’s your sister?”

  “I was really hoping you knew,” the bard said. “I helped her escape first, and I’m pretty sure she’s walking around here with her invisibility spell up so we’re never going to find her and that’s really distressing. Also, I figure yelling her name in an echo-prone hall filled with the undead is a bad idea.”

  “Most of the undead are aboveground, trying to kill Eriko,” Cordelia said.

  “What?” Tobias said. “Where’s Morgan?”

  “Trying to save Eriko,” Cordelia said.

  “Could we split the party any worse?” Tobias said. “First rule of these stupid games! Don’t split the party!”

  “You’re the one who got captured,” Cordelia said. “You sort of started it.”

  “No, Eriko started it, and can we please find my sister and go save Eriko and Morgan? Because we love them, but also games like this are horrible if you don’t have a rogue or a cleric in your party, so I’d rather not replace either of them if we can avoid it.”

  “Wait, hang on, so Tamsin is just walking around down here invisible?” Jack said.

  “Unless she found her way out,” Tobias said.

  “I have never met anyone with a worse sense of direction than Tamsin,” Cordelia said. “Remember that time she got lost in my grandmother’s house? She’s still down here.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that out loud, but that was my main concern,” Tobias said. “So, if we could—”

  Before Tobias could finish, Cordelia caught a flash of metal out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see the larger ghoul, Urfang, taking aim at Tobias with a long polearm, wide and vicious enough that he could cut the bard in half if the blade connected. Cordelia tried to leap into action, but she was too far away. She knew she’d never make it. Visions of two halves of Tobias falling to the floor bubbled up into her mind’s eye like a nightmare.

  And then a pale blue cape wrapped itself around Tobias’ head and slammed him to the floor.

  The polearm passed over Tobias’ body easily, whistling through the air with a sharp squeal. It crashed into the wall behind him, sending sparks and stone flying.

  “I see you,” Urfang said, once again raising his weapon for a killing blow.

  This time Cordelia was ready for him, though—she caught the blade with her own, sparks flying again, metal on metal screeching and reverberating through the tunnels. She kicked the massive ghoul in the gut, staggering him back. He growled, swinging his huge weapon as if it weighed nothing. He attacked again, and Cordelia barely ducked out of the way. He’s fast, she realized, superhumanly fast, and I don’t know if I can take him. She waited for the whistle of one of Jack’s or even Murtok’s arrows, but she noticed that the ghoul champion had deliberately maneuvered himself to put Cordelia’s back between himself and the archers—maybe they’d miss her, both being marksmen, but she knew Jack wouldn’t risk hitting her with that magic bow and its catastrophic damage. I’m on my own, she thought.

  The air in the tunnel grew intensely hot and Urfang went flying into the stone wall behind him. Cordelia fell backward to get away from the heat, shielding her eyes, but the furious explosion had one very specific target.

  “Stop trying to kill my friends, jackass,” Tamsin said, holding a wand out in front of her like a fencing sword.

  Where the hell did she get a wand? Cordelia thought. But before she could ask, Tamsin flicked her wrist, and the air flashed hot again. Urfang was flung down the hallway, afire and smelling of burning flesh, bouncing along the stone floor like an unwanted package.

  “Please tell me one of you knows how to get out of here,” Tamsin said.

  Tobias popped up into a sitting position, his face still obscured by the cloak, which seemed to have a life and a will all its own. It crawled around his shoulders like a particularly attentive housecat before settling onto his frame perfectly.

  “Great. I find a magic cape and it likes you better,” Tamsin said. “I come bearing gifts, by the way.”

  Wordlessly, Jack walked right up to Tamsin, slung his bow onto his shoulder, and threw his arms around her. Cordelia almost laughed as Tamsin went from mortified to concerned and then to realizing what was happening, planting a kiss on Jack’s lips in return.

  “Do we have to do this now?” Tobias said, still sitting on the floor. He tried to stand up, but before he could fully right himself, Cordelia watched as Tobias was slammed back onto the ground by an invisible force.

  “We had a deal, bard,” a new voice said. Cordelia gripped her axe and watched as another ghoul stepped out of the darkness, this one clear-eyed, like Murtok, rather than feral and out of control like the others. He had a regal way of walking and speaking, immediately authoritative, and he instantly reminded Cordelia of several people she couldn’t stand back in the real world.

  “And technically, I think we still do,” Tobias said. “You know, I really was looking forward to telling the world your story, but the whole threatening my sister thing never really sat well with me. You could’ve just asked, y’know?”

  The gaunt patriarch cast a quick spell, gesturing violently at Tobias with his hand. A wave of blue-black energy struck the bard, but turned to pale sparkles of light as it touched the cloak on his shoulders.

  “Ha-ha! Magic cape! I have a magic cape!” Tobias said. “My sister gives the best presents.”

  “Technically that’s a loaner,” Tamsin said. “I want that back.”

  “Try me,” Tobias said.

  The ghoul lord hissed at both of them, then turned his ire on Murtok.

  “You,” he said. “You never leave well enough alone. I don’t know why you haven’t just killed yourself already with your insufferable guilt.”

  Murtok folded his arms and stared at his fellow ghoul calmly, almost passively.

  “I don’t get to leave until you do, Constian,” he said.

  “And are you here to kill me?” Constian said. “Traitor. I can hear my children dying up above. This is all your fault.”

  “They’re not your children, they’re your monsters,” Murtok said. “You know you let it go too far. You know I only intervene when you let it get out of hand.”

  “This world deserves out of hand,” Constian said. �
��You know as well as I do we have little time left. And this is how you spend it? Betraying your brother?”

  “Time and time again, Constian, I’ve asked you not to do this. And time and time again, you fill the world with the damned,” Murtok said. “I am so very tired.”

  “Then perhaps you need a hobby,” Constian said. “A companion. A plaything of your own. Something to occupy your petty attention so you leave me to my work. Which one of these would you like to nanny for half a millennium until they regain their humanity?”

  Constian pointed at each member of the group in turn.

  “Perhaps a pet wizard who can’t remember her spells. Or an orc barbarian stronger than you’ll ever be. I’ll even turn the bard, despite what I wanted of him. We remember everything when we come back. Perhaps a few centuries of raiding open graves for corpse meat will add gravitas to his song when he sings of us,” Constian said.

  “Seriously, big guy, I’m happy to start writing that song now,” Tobias said. “There’s no need to threaten. I’m practically already on your payroll.”

  Constian ignored him, continuing to lock eyes with Murtok.

  “Oh, I know,” Constian said. “I’ll turn the ranger and give him our curse. Watch you spend the next five hundred years staring at a creature just like you, so you can be reminded of all the terrible things you did yourself before you regained your sense of shame.”

  Constian raised one clawed hand and began uttering an incantation. Before he could finish, a flash of firelight filled the hallway, and Constian cried out in pain. He clutched his wrist, staring at the palm of his hand, where one of Jack’s arrows, still aflame from the enchanted bow, went straight through the palm, bursting out the back of Constian’s hand.

  “Monologuing?” Jack said. “Man, you guys were so much cooler before, and you’ve sunk to monologuing? That’s so boring.”

  Constian began preparing another spell, but Jack interrupted him with a second arrow, this time through the opposing shoulder. The ghoul lord looked from Jack to Murtok.