Battle For The Nine Realms

by Ramy Vance

  “Transmogrification is complete,” his new evaluator said. “You are a resilient human. You pass.”

  Suzuki picked himself up and dusted himself off, feeling his arms and his back and then his legs, moving them around, as he made sure everything worked the way it should. Everything seemed to be back to normal, and he sighed in relief.

  “Anything else that you want to do to my body?” Suzuki groaned with anxiety at the fifty shades of horror these guys could inflict on him. “Going to turn me into a fish or something now? Give me gills, then waterboard me?”

  The dwarf looked up at Suzuki and without a hint of humor, shook her head. “All we have left is a brief questionnaire.”

  “Does it change me into anything?”

  “Only into an official cadet or a reject. Shall we begin?”

  Suzuki nodded.

  “Good. Blood type?”

  “B positive.”

  “Age?”

  “22.”

  “Sex.”

  “Isn’t that one obvious?”

  “Your species is hideous by dwarf standards. No offense. And you are completely hairless. I honestly can’t tell if you are a man, woman, or child. So I’ll ask again: sex?”

  “Male.”

  “English ancestry?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you have any English ancestry?”

  “Well, my grandfather was English, but he immigrated to the States something like fifty years ago.”

  The dwarf pulled a stamp from her pocket. She slammed it on the clipboard. The stamp read “Rejected” in bright red font.

  “Wait, what,” Suzuki shouted.

  “Blood of Englishman. Giants will smell you from miles away.”

  “It was my grandfather! I’m not English!”

  “Any more than twenty-five percent is too much. Please exit the gym. We’ll be sending you home shortly.”

  Suzuki didn’t know what to say. He wanted to fight, to argue, to find some way that he could stay, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. And before he could simply launch into a rambling rant, the dwarf turned and walked away, leaving him with a sinking feeling of loss and remorse in his gut.

  How could something this amazing just be snatched away from him? He hadn’t had a chance to prove himself. Now he was letting everyone down. First Stew, now himself. The party hadn’t even had a chance to make it to the wilds of Middang3ard, and everything was already falling apart.

  Suzuki looked around the gymnasium. It was completely empty. He made his way outside, trying not to hang his head. Outside, there was a small group of, what Suzuki could only imagine, were other rejected cadets. It didn’t seem like any of them could meet each other’s eyes, and Suzuki sensed the cloud of failure that hung over them, not wanting to be anywhere near it.

  “Hey, Suzuki,” someone shouted.

  Suzuki looked up and saw Sandy waving him over. He walked over to her. Her mascara was running, and she dabbed her eyes with a tissue that she then crumpled and put in her pocket.

  “You too, huh?” Sandy said.

  “Blood of an Englishman.” Suzuki shook his head. He couldn’t believe that his grandfather—a man he hardly knew—was the reason he’d never get to go to Middang3ard. “Apparently giants can smell it. What about you?”

  Sandy blushed bright red and shrugged her shoulders. “They didn’t tell me.”

  “This is fucking great, right? Chance of a lifetime and we didn’t even make it out the gate.”

  A few feet from where Sandy and Suzuki stood, there was a loud crack of electricity. Suzuki looked at the source of the sound and watched in amazement as the field nearby folded over on itself, then unfolded again creating what looked like a massive, magical crease.

  Then the crease split up, and a multicolored hole opened into a tunnel.

  Beth and a few others walked out of the tunnel, each of them wearing what Suzuki assumed to be cadet uniforms.

  And they weren’t alone, each one of them paired with some kind of creature that Suzuki had only ever seen in Monster Manuals or when jacked into the VR game.

  And they were all smiling.

  As soon as Beth saw them, she waved at Suzuki and Sandy, crossing the field to join them. As she got closer, Suzuki saw what looked like a giant bee the size of a house cat sitting on her shoulder.

  The insectoid had razor-sharp mandibles that seemed far too intimidating for its face and a stinger that hung low, more like that of a wasp than a honeybee.

  Up-close now, Suzuki could see his reflection in its thousands of eyes. He looked pathetic even by his standards.

  “What the hell is that?” Sandy asked.

  “My familiar.” Beth pointed to the creature on her shoulder. “You need it to do magic or get into Middang3ard proper. I guess this place is kind of an in-between plane.”

  “So, you made it?” Suzuki asked.

  “You guys didn’t?”

  Suzuki nodded. The sense of guilt was overbearing. If it were just guilt, that was something he could have dealt with. But the shame he also felt was something far more difficult to bear.

  Beth shook her head in disbelief. “This is fucking bullshit. First Stew, now you guys. I’m out. I’m out. I’m going to turn this down and head back with you guys,” she growled as rage slowly took over.

  “No, you can’t,” Suzuki said. “This is what you want. Middang3ard, fighting the good fight.”

  “Not without you.”

  Not without you? Had he heard her right?

  Then she added, “Not without the Mundanes. We’re meant to be together.”

  Suzuki nodded. “Maybe, but you can’t quit.”

  “I can. Watch me,” Beth started to turn on her heels when the large bee-like creature started nibbling on her ear. “What? Stop that…what?”

  “What’s going on?” Sandy asked. It was weird watching the insectoid do that.

  What was even weirder was when Beth growled, “You’re fucking kidding me. There’s got to be a way—”

  Beth nodded, her eyes narrowing like she was listening intently.

  “You’re fucking kidding me. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. What? That can’t be legal!”

  “What are you doing?” Suzuki asked, taking a step closer to her.

  Beth lifted a hand, indicating that she needed a minute, nodded, and said, “Uh-huh,” a few more times before her shoulders slumped.

  Then she turned back to Suzuki and Sandy. “Fuck me, guys.”

  “What just happened?” Sandy asked.

  “My familiar.” She gestured to the insect. It was looking at them now, no longer chewing on her ear. “I can’t quit. I signed a contract.”

  “You did?”

  “Except I didn’t. I just agreed to go to Middang3ard three times. Apparently, in this place, that’s like signing a contract and its serious shit. I break it, and I get cursed.”

  “Cursed?” Suzuki asked. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Ros’ten isn’t sure, but he said it usually involves losing teeth, boils, and leprosy.”

  “Fuck me,” Suzuki muttered.

  “Fuck me, indeed,” Beth agreed. “I’m in now. No going back.” She looked over her shoulder at the other successful cadets. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and cleared her throat.

  A siren sounded, accompanied by a voice that said, “All recruits to the transportation deck.”

  “I can’t fucking believe this!” Beth exclaimed.

  “Go,” Suzuki said. “Go. We’ll find a way to Middang3ard, and when we do…”

  “Yeah,” Beth agreed. “We’ll get the party back together.”

  “You bet,” Suzuki replied. “We’ll show these guys that the Mundanes are meant to be together.”

  “Promise?” Beth stuck out her hand. Suzuki and Sandy put their hands on hers.

  “Promise.”

  Another siren. “Fuck. I got to go.”

  Sandy stuck out her hand, and Beth shook it. “It was good to meet you.”


  “We’ll meet again. And soon.” Beth took Sandy’s hand and pulled her in for a hug. “Glad to finally see your makeup in person. The pics don’t do you justice.”

  Sandy nodded again, wiped her face with her hands, sighed, and walked off, leaving Beth and Suzuki alone.

  Beth started, “You know, it’s not understandable. The Mundanes might be a pack of douche nozzles, but we aren’t anything without you.”

  Suzuki didn’t say anything, just stared into her impossibly beautiful blue eyes.

  “See you on the other side?”

  “Yeah.” Suzuki nodded. “See you on the other side.”

  Beth touched the side of his face, and they stood together for what felt like an eternity.

  A blissful, perfect eternity.

  Suzuki wanted to reach out and hold her. To tell her he’d always be thinking of her. To ask her to be safe.

  But no words came out. Instead, he just looked at his feet. Then he felt Beth’s other hand on his chin, gently lifting it so his eyes would meet hers.

  Her green eyes flashed brightly and she leaned close to him, her lips only a few inches away from his.

  “Watch it, human,” the dwarf examiner grumbled as she pushed past Beth and Suzuki. She stopped and cast a disgusted glance at Beth. “Aren’t you supposed to be shipping out?”

  “Yeah.” Beth straightened up, adjusting invisible creases in her uniform. “I should get going.”

  “Yeah. I guess you should.”

  Beth hugged Suzuki before hurriedly turning to leave. Suzuki stood there, helpless as he watched her go.

  The dwarf who had interrupted what had promised to be their moment grumbled at Suzuki, “You should count yourself lucky. I can smell your blood from here.”

  Chapter Nine

  Suzuki wasn’t happy about it, but life went back to normal. Quickly, as well. One day he was training to be a part of Earth’s last hope, then two months later, he was on his bed, plugged back into the VR. His blinds were drawn so that very little light could get into the room. He preferred it this way. When there was less light, there was less of the world to block out.

  In the dark, he could lose himself to the VR and his imagination. Suzuki needed all the help he could get. He had stood toe to toe with a troll, been transformed into shapes he could never have imagined, met dwarves, and seen magic—real magic—first-hand.

  The VR wasn’t a substitute. It was just something to do to kill time while he tried to figure out a way back to Middang3ard to get the party back together. He knew it was one hell of a mission, but he was going to get that done, come hell or high water.

  After a few weeks of dead ends, however, he was wondering if either hell or high water was ever going to make its way to his rural home.

  When he got home, there had been rumors that Middang3ard would be pulled. Turned out to be bullshit. There were more people than ever online now. After the first wave of failed cadets returned to Earth, their story spread across the internet and news sources, and suddenly everyone wanted to be an adventurer on Middang3ard.

  Also, with the steady flow of rejects blogging about what they had seen, people wanted in.

  Into the real Middang3ard, that was, and they saw the VR game as their gateway. The result was that the game was full of newbs.

  The world was waking up to the fact that Myrddin was telling the truth, so the secret wasn’t so secret anymore. Sure, he and the other rejects had been forced to sign gruesome NDAs with both legal and magical consequences to keep what they had seen secret.

  But that only meant that anything they leaked had to be kept vague.

  And it was the vagueness of the rejects’ reports that seemed to be driving curiosity to a frenzy. Suzuki wondered if that had been part of Myrddin’s plan all along.

  Sure, there were still some stragglers who refused to believe, but for the most part, the world had started to sing a different tune.

  And now there were even rumors that the first batch of recent cadets was going to be coming home on leave in a little bit.

  Suzuki tried to find out if Beth would be among those coming home, but information was hard to come by. Turns out communicating between realms wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Suzuki had been waiting to hear from Beth for weeks. Three months, to be exact. He had the dates crossed out on a calendar hanging next to his bed.

  So it was Middang3ard VR for now, while he tried to figure out a way to get back in…to get the party back together.

  He was playing with Sandy and Stew as usual. They hadn’t found a fourth to fill the party out, and Suzuki didn’t think they ever were going to.

  No one would ever be as good as Beth.

  Beth.

  Suzuki wished he had told Beth earlier; let her know how important she was to the party. Now all he had were regrets and unspoken words.

  “Dude, could you please get your shit together?” Stew’s avatar put its face right into Suzuki’s view, breaking him from his thoughts.

  “Ahh, sorry,” Suzuki said, taking note of where they were.

  Their avatars stood in the middle of an underground cavern. It was dark, the only light coming from their torches. Usually Sandy would be lighting the cave with a spell, but she had changed classes and refused to use magic. When Suzuki asked her why, she had told him it just wasn’t the same.

  VR couldn’t compare to the real thing.

  Suzuki was silently thankful he had never gotten a chance to use magic, and that he could still enjoy the basic mage and cleric spells since he’d never enjoyed the real thing. He would have hated for that to have been taken from him as well.

  “Let’s get this over with.” Stew pushed farther into the cavern. It sounded as if it were a chore to him. Suzuki couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Stew throw himself into the fray. He was a by-the-book player now.

  Hell, he wasn’t even that. Stew played like he was filing paperwork or finishing a paint-by-numbers artwork.

  To most gamers, the dungeon would have been interesting. There were goblin mobs that would spawn sporadically, based on how many players were wielding certain kinds of weapons.

  The traps in-game were all built around what kind of magic spells you were equipped with. The game had gone into overdrive since the initial recruiting of cadets.

  No doubt to make the selection process harder, Suzuki thought.

  The problem was that it wasn’t getting any harder for the Mundanes. They were flying through each expansion without breaking a sweat, even with a three-person party.

  Stew stomped a goblin into the ground and blood flew into his face. He didn’t bother wiping it off.

  Sandy impaled the goblin through the skull, spreading brain matter everywhere.

  Suzuki took care of a few goblins with two effortless swings. “Stew, any news from your guy?” He didn’t need to say more. They knew exactly what he was talking about. When the three of them weren’t playing, they were trying to find a way back inside. And Suzuki, ever the strategist, was coordinating their research and efforts.

  And part of that effort was Stew’s guy-who-knew-a-guy lead.

  Stew shook his head. “No.”

  “No, there’s no lead, or ‘no,’ you didn’t reach out to him yet?”

  “I didn’t reach out to him yet.”

  Suzuki slammed a goblin against a wall harder than he needed to. “Goddamn it, Stew, we agreed you’d get it done this week.”

  “Hey, I tried, but no dice, O great leader. And what about you? Any leads from your end?”

  Suzuki pursed his lips. “You guys heard of the MERCs?”

  “Everyone’s heard of MERC,” Sandy’s character shot two arrows in rapid succession, felling a goblin. “Nobody’s heard about how to get in, though.”

  “I heard that’s where the real shit is going down. Not any of that army “jump through this hoop, weigh this much” type of bullshit…and I think I might know a guy.” Suzuki’s character took three more swings, killing two goblins who were
foolish enough to get close to him.

  For the first time in months, Suzuki saw Sandy’s face light up. She threw a knife into a goblin who was sneaking up on Stew as she ran over to him.

  “Are you serious?” Sandy’s voice was filled with irritation. Then again, Sandy’s voice was always filled with irritation these days. “How could you not have told us about this? How do we get in?”

  “It’s nothing solid yet.”

  “Still, it’s something.”

  Suzuki nodded. “Maybe, but people are always saying that they know how to get into MERC. I mean, I’ve lost track of how many players claim they have a way to bypass the whole military bullshit and go straight for the glory and the loot.”

  “And Beth,” Sandy added. It wasn’t a jab at Suzuki. She was just as into getting the party back together as he was.

  What Suzuki didn’t add was that he wasn’t sure the MERCs even existed. Still it was a lead and he was going to explore all possibilities.

  It felt too much like some sad story that the losers were telling themselves. A consolation prize to help them sleep at night. What good would a mercenary group be when Earth was already having a hard enough time finding cadets who could go toe-to-toe with the Dark One?

  Still, it was a lead, and he was determined to get back in. And get the party back together.

  “So how do you get in?” Stew asked. “You know a guy.”

  Suzuki’s avatar ran a nervous hand through his digital hair, obviously imitating what he was doing in his VR suit. “Y-yeah, I know a guy. A couple of guys actually.”

  “So who’s your in?”

  “Yeah,” Sandy chimed in. “Who is it?”

  “Just some guys I’ve been messaging on the forums.”

  “What are their names?” Stew asked.

  “Like you know every player of Middang3ard? Come on. Let’s finish up this dungeon.” Suzuki was getting defensive. Truth was, he seriously doubted his leads.

  “Look, it’s a long shot, but these guys on Reddit said—”

  “Dude, Reddit? Seriously,” Stew growled. “You know that’s just a bunch of bullshitters. They don’t shit.”