by Ramy Vance
“The spoils of war are yours to keep. And these are not the spoils of your game. You will see realms and treasures that you could never imagine. Amulets which extend your life. Your real life. Not an HP gauge in a VR simulation. Armor which could show you the future. Gloves that can let you read the mind of your enemies. And all of it is for your taking. There is only one rule.”
“And what’s that?”
“Only fight the armies of the Dark One. There is no other law.”
Suzuki thought back to the image of the dead soldiers and realized that Manny wasn’t pulling any punches. The perspective that he was giving was vastly different than what Grimpston and Myrddin had hinted.
It wasn’t that the others had lied or anything. But no one had mentioned death. Sure, things had hurt during training, but the thought of death had never really crossed his mind.
Listening to a gnome give grand speeches about missing or destroyed realms was not the same as seeing the destruction left by the Dark One. There had been so many bodies.
How many more were there going to be?
What would keep Suzuki from becoming one of them?
And Beth…she was in the same danger as those who lay dead and forgotten in that bloody field had been. Her assurances that she was safe meant something now. Truly none of this was a game.
Suzuki stood and paced back and forth, trying to calm himself enough so he could think clearly.
“Why did you come to me?” Suzuki asked. “I failed the basic exams. I couldn’t even make it. Do you just pick up rejects to catch arrows?”
Manny smiled and laughed that screeching, inhuman sound. “You have so little faith in yourself. The MERCs are not rejects. We came for you because they missed a chance to have one of the best strategists that the Middang3ard game has ever seen.”
“Flattery isn’t going to help.”
“You are looking for reasons not to come.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you fear death?”
Suzuki didn’t answer. His teeth were clenched tight.
“Now tell me, Robert Suzuki Fletcher. Are you ready to face your destiny?”
“What if my destiny is to die?”
The image on the scroll changed again. Beth stared at Suzuki. She was frowning, and she looked extremely annoyed.
“Beth?”
“Are you fucking serious?” Beth shouted. “Get your shit together, Suzuki!”
“Have you been listening the whole time?”
“Just to the part where you started acting like a little bitch. You and the rest of the Mundanes were so butt-hurt to get sent back home, and now you’re afraid of coming back because something bad might happen? This is war, Suzuki. Real, scary, and fucking dangerous. And a shit ton of people are out here risking our lives so that people can be safe. You can sit at home and be scared shitless. Or you can come out here and do something great. We’ll be on the same side. You’d get a freedom that I would kill to have. And who knows…we could even end up meeting. The MERCs go everywhere, and we work with them sometimes. We need you out here, Suzuki. Don’t punk out.”
Beth’s image wavered in and out of focus until it vanished. Suzuki’s own reflection stared back at him. He was wearing warrior-mage grade light armor. He raised his hand. His reflection did the same.
“There’s only one rule?” Suzuki muttered.
Manny nodded, a bizarre and almost laughable image, the floating head rocking back and forth. “Only one rule,” Manny repeated.
“Do you know where she is?”
“I have seen. And you will as well.”
“I’m in.”
“Good. Ready yourself.”
Suzuki felt the now familiar hook of pain in his stomach and he lurched forward. A vortex opened beneath him and he felt the world flip upside down as he sank into the vortex, his body stretching, unraveling, and disintegrating. He didn’t know where he was going, but it didn’t matter.
Beth was somewhere out there, and that was all that mattered.
The ground was hard, and Suzuki hit it with a tremendous amount of force. He looked around, but couldn’t make sense of what he saw. The world was still spinning, and he could hardly feel his legs. When he tried to stand, he fell to his knees. He immediately vomited.
Above Suzuki, the Beholder floated. “On your feet, MERC. Knees are meant for begging. And MERCs never beg.”
Chapter Eleven
When the fog in Suzuki’s mind finally cleared, he pulled himself up and looked around at a disconcerting forest. The tree trunks were a bright, even red, the leaves various shades of pink and blue. Coupled with the almost neon green grass, the forest looked like something out of a cotton candy dream. The more that Suzuki looked around, the more unreal the place seemed. When he drew in a breath, it was sweet, almost like honey. Manny was floating beside him. He casually yawned as Suzuki took in the atmosphere of this new realm.
“Where are we?”
Manny’s eye tentacles spread out as if he were using them to gesticulate. “It’s an in-between realm. Not quite here nor there. Yet we are here. A pocket dimension within a pocket dimension. It is where our familiars are kept.”
Suzuki followed Manny as he started to float away. “What familiars? I mean, I know what they were in the game. Creatures that kind of acted like sidekicks. But when Beth showed up with that messed-up giant bee, she made it sound like familiars have much more significance in Middang3ard. Middang3ard the real place, as opposed to the VR game.”
“Humans require a familiar to use magic,” Manny answered. “The children of dust were able to use magic many years ago when our realms were freshly born. Humans were actually some of the most devout and skillful practitioners of magic. You and the elves. But the elves tended to use magic for themselves, predominately to extend their lives. Humans, on the other hand, seemed to have no overall purpose for magic. Each individual used it differently, based on individual needs or desires. This caused an explosion of magical creativity that humans became known for. Dwarves smithed, gnomes played, and elves studied. Humans, on the other hand, they experimented.”
“What happened?”
Manny closed his many eyes. “Humans forgot how to use magic.”
Suzuki eyed the Beholder, unsure. There was something about the shortness of Manny’s answer that made Suzuki doubtful. The Beholder had already proved himself to be wordy. Why such a simple answer? Even more so, how could humans just forget how to use magic? Something didn’t add up, but Suzuki could see by the look on Manny’s gray face that he wasn’t going to get an answer right now.
Maybe there would be a better time to try and dig the truth out of Manny.
The two travelers from separate realms walked farther and farther into the forest. Even though the trees had started to grow thickly together, the sun still shone harshly through the leaves.
As they walked through the forest, Suzuki could hear voices ahead. He wasn’t certain how many people were there, but it sounded like more than a handful. The prospect of meeting more MERCs made Suzuki’s heart race with excitement.
Seriously, Suzuki, he scolded himself, not the best time for your social anxiety to kick in.
There was a part of him that just assumed that this whole thing was one big scam. The magical equivalent of a Nigerian Prince scam or something similar. If there were people trying to take care of the different realms, there were bound to be individuals who were going to try and take advantage.
Suzuki wondered if the MERCs actually were doing just that. He knew enough about mercenaries from Earth’s history. Mercenaries worked for coin, and anyone who worked for coin was loyal only to payment. That’s probably why the MERCs had just one rule: fight the Dark One only. That left a lot of wiggle room for other kinds of illicit activities.
Manny and Suzuki passed a thin outcrop of trees and Suzuki could see that there were at least a hundred people in the small clearing ahead. Some of them were wearing armor, but most were wearing stree
t clothes.
The ones in armor were something to behold. There was no uniformity among them. Instead, there was a wild diversity among the armored MERCs.
One soldier wore a gold-threaded chainmail armor that seemed to change length and visibility as he moved. The soldier himself dipped in and out of sight as he talked. His face was covered with small, intricate tattoos and a massive ax hung on his back.
One of the mages wore a finely-tailored three-piece suit. The collar of her suit was popped, and her sleeves were rolled up to show her gauntlets, delicate little things that were inscribed with elven runes. Her HUD was sleek and glowed with a dull white light. The armored MERCs were intermingling with the street-clothed MERC recruits.
They must be veterans, Suzuki thought. Manny wasn’t joking about the spoils of war.
The older MERCs didn’t seem to notice Manny and Suzuki as they walked past.
Good. Suzuki felt extremely underdressed. He was, after all, still wearing his pajamas. His mom had been right when she told him he should at least put on pants if he was going to play video games all day.
Manny led Suzuki to a small group of people, and as Suzuki got closer, he made out Sandy and Stew. Sandy’s face beamed when she saw Suzuki and she rushed over to him, nearly knocking him over as she threw her arms around him.
“You made it too.” She giggled as she let Suzuki go. “We were worried when we didn’t see you here.”
Stew sauntered up to Suzuki and put his arm around the man’s shoulder. “Yeah, I thought it’d be a little fucked if I made it in, but not you,” Stew joked. “Did eyeball give you the whole spiel? “
“He sure as hell did. Kind of a talker, that one.”
“You’d think he had as many mouths as he does eyes,” Sandy added.
Manny floated closer to the Mundanes, his eyes whirling about as he moved. “Just because I do not have ears does not mean that I cannot hear. I stand by what I have said about humans and humor, Suzuki. You and your friend Sandy are exceptional.” Manny left out another one of his high-pitched, horrific laughs.
Stew leaned closer to Sandy. “Figures the only person who’d get your sense of humor is a monster from another realm.”
“My humor is multi-dimensional and beyond you,” Sandy fired back. “I think that’s what you’re trying to say.”
Manny cleared his throat, and the older MERCs left the groups they had been speaking with and surrounded him. Being flanked by fully-upgraded MERCs provided Manny with an even greater sense of authority, and the whole scene looked like a MERC propaganda photo-op.
Doubt kept creeping into Suzuki’s head.
This was illegal.
They were unsanctioned.
What was the catch?
But whatever the catch was, he was in now. They all were.
“Now that we have gathered you all here,” Manny shouted above the murmurs of newb cadets, “we can begin. You should have had the nature of your human inadequacies explained to you by now. Farther into this forest is a place called The Garden of Familiars. Many of the familiars of the realms gather here to drink from its lake. I do not know why. Do not ask me. We will be going to the garden, and you will all pick or be picked by a familiar. This is an important step of your initiation into the MERCs. Without a familiar, you will continue to be cut off from magic. You will not enter Middang3ard. So I will emphasize this one point: choose carefully. Your time in Middang3ard is extremely dependent on your familiar. Try to choose a companion who will compliment you, rather than tear you down. Are there any questions?”
A middle-aged man with a short beard and heavy brow freckles raised his hand.
“Yes, you,” Manny boomed.
“What if we can’t find a familiar?”
“You will. They want to get out of this place just as badly as you want to get into Middang3ard. Now follow me.”
Manny floated away, followed by the veteran MERCs. The newbs followed as close behind as they dared, while Suzuki and the Mundanes took up the rear.
Suzuki wanted to watch the other MERCs trying to figure things out as best he could before wading into the thick of it all.
Stew nudged Suzuki in the side. “Are you doing that thing you do?”
“What thing that I do?”
“The one where you overthink everything so much you can’t enjoy an amazing experience. You know, like you did with that easy raid on Shoyenguard. Or the whole Beth thing.”
“What whole Beth thing?”
Stew turned to Sandy, who was absentmindedly staring at the leaves overhead. “Hey, babe, how long has Suzuki been obsessing over how he feels about Beth?”
Sandy scrunched up her face as she thought. “Two years and seven months.”
“Two years and seven months,” Stew repeated. “Almost as long as we’ve all been playing together.”
“I have not been obsessing,” Suzuki countered. “I just like to understand things. Some of us like to know what’s going on. We can’t all just live in a testosterone-filled haze. Shit, and who are you to talk? I don’t even know if you and Sandy are dating half the time.”
“Babe, are we still dating?”
Sandy cheerfully nodded her head as she skipped to catch up with Stew and Suzuki. “Yep,” she chimed. “First-year anniversary next week.”
Stew cracked his knuckles and smiled in a way that made him look like a wet salamander. “See my point.”
“Do you really need me to point out the sheer stupidity of you giving me love advice? That’s like asking Jar-Jar Binks about the finer points of galaxy politics. Or asking the Punisher to give a lecture on the proper use of police or military force in overseas diplomacy. Or—”
“All right, all right,” Stew butted in as he waved away Suzuki’s rant. “I get it. You have a Netflix account, too much time on your hands, and your virginity’s still intact. All I’m saying is let’s give this a chance. This could be something that blows our minds right out of the fucking realm.”
“You’ve been practicing your MERC lingo,” Sandy quipped.
“Gotta talk the talk before you walk the walk.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Suzuki said. “I get it’s exciting and shit, but this isn’t a game. None of this is. And none of us asked to be a part of this. I got a message from Beth earlier.”
Suzuki looked over his shoulders to see if anyone was listening. Most of the other newbs were a good distance away. He couldn’t see Manny anywhere.
“She said people were dying, not getting sent home. Dying. And just think about this whole thing. We were playing a video game with no indication that it was anything other than a game. We won. Then we got whisked off to another fucking dimension without even being asked. Myrddin laid all of this shit on us, and we just jumped into playing soldier as soon as possible. Then they started shipping people off without even asking a fucking question. Even the military doesn’t do that. And there’s all this shit that still makes it seem like a game sometimes. The HUDs and junk. No one’s even asking what’s going on. We’re just taking it at face value. And we’re taking it from someone who’s already tricked us once.”
“But this isn’t Myrddin,” Sandy argued. “These are the MERCs.”
“Yeah, but do we really know the difference?”
The crowd of new and old recruits, led by Manny, came to the Garden of Familiars.
The garden was a more open section of the forest with a large lake in the center of the clearing, the water as clear as glass. It was surrounded by a grove of roses and other plants that Suzuki didn’t have a name for.
There were so many kinds of multicolored foliage that the garden looked to be nothing other than a rainbow grounded onto the earth. Yet these paled in comparison to what was causing every new recruit’s jaw to drop.
The garden was filled with an assortment of creatures, many of them crowded around the lake. Some of the creatures were obviously from Earth. Or at least similar to those on Earth. Deer, bears, falcons…a litany of different animals. Th
ey stood near each other as if they were conversing.
Then there were the creatures that Suzuki could not take his eyes off. Creatures that he had only seen in books, comics, video games, and monster manuals: fantastical creatures on par with anything that had ever been dreamed in Middang3ard. Most of them were vaguely familiar from different myths or media.
The Mundanes stopped in their tracks. A giant deer had walked directly in front of them. Yet there was something off about the deer. It was noticeably taller, its legs long and spindly. Light seemed to pass directly through the deer so that it had the look of embodying water. Its antlers stretched up and out to the sky, ending with a bloom of wildflowers. The deer also stopped. It stared at the Mundanes.
“Hmm.” The deer sighed. “More humans.”
The deer trotted away, leaving the Mundanes speechless. Suzuki eventually brought himself back to attention and went to join the crowd of other recruits.
Everyone was crowding around Manny. “There’s not much which can be explained about this process. Please…go make a friend.”
The recruits looked around, with few of them able to meet the eyes of the creatures who walked around this bizarre garden of Eden. Suzuki’s heart was racing. Everywhere he looked, there was a fantastical beast he’d never seen before. Between his feet, five pink mice scurried, stopping for a moment to look up at Suzuki before chasing each other off.
Stew nudged Suzuki and motioned at a few nymphs bathing in the lake. “I heard from one of the older guys that you have to get very acquainted with your familiars.”
“Jesus Christ.” Suzuki sighed. “Sandy’s right there, you dick.”
Sandy shrugged as she looked around the garden. “He’s just kidding. He’s like a dog chasing a car, he wouldn’t know what to do if he ever caught one. Besides, he knows I’d find someone with a lot of tentacles to crawl up into me.”
Stew’s eyes widened in reaction.
Sandy smiled and kissed Stew on his cheek. “Now who do you think is right for me?” And before Stew could answer, Sandy walked into the trees.
