DoucheMage

by Damien Hanson

  Finally the whole genre was clean of guests; they’d all traveled through the hideous smoking flaming door to the extra dimensional plane of Hades. Tandy, clad in an Amazon’s skimpy leather armor and holding a bow that had reportedly destroyed a god, strode up next to her. Like this, they were nearly the same height, or at least the game was portraying Nicole at six feet and Tandy at maybe six two.

  “You think this is going to work?” her friend asked.

  She tried to conceal the worst of her unease, but said simply. “The IT people had fits over this.” They seemed to think this might crash the entire system and leave them all out in the desert with plain white blocks and baking alive in their haptic suits.

  “They said this will be the biggest single congregate of AR they’ve ever done.”

  Prestige was gathering hundreds of acres of its game blocks to support this entire endeavor, much larger than your average game party. This whole thing might be big enough to see from space.

  Nicole took a deep breath and stepped through the door to Hades.

  ***

  The going was treacherous. Every step cost him in terms of his horde and his Spell Points. All the ashen monsters, whether they were dead souls commanded to come attack him, the harpies shrieking down and attempting to make off with his army, or the more formless things, all of them were malevolent and all of them appeared ready to fight to the death. Not a single one went ‘all right, I’ve had enough, I guess escape is a good option here.’ Not a single Confederate soldier, in other words.

  The tentacled things from beyond comprehension, once the weird spawn of Lovecraft’s twisted mind, were now passe and came at him one after another, each with another added mouth, tentacle, or extra few name syllables. C’thagua? Ithaqua? Shub-Niggurath? Faqua-mathla-fockyamominthebutt? It didn’t matter. He blasted them apart into great gooey gobbets of gore, and eventually was forced to level up, to erase any wounds and refill his Spell Points. Not to worry; he had several more level ups in the bank.

  Some of these, like the acid-vomiting ones that exploded and dealt Level 3 Harm, you couldn’t bring back to life. Other ones, like the demons on all fours that vomited up little copies of themselves, you could. So that was a plus. Plus, although their mini-me vomit bundles weren’t much good for anything other than biting ankles, they were particularly useful at drawing aggro. He sent them on ahead, the Cthulhu demon hybrid wannabes exploded out of the black desert sand, or swooped in from on high, or the darkness snatched them up and munched on their bones.

  Maybe Nicole had lied about the multi-genre rollout and it was already here. To her credit though, she hadn’t lied yet, and this wasn’t the least bit terrifying.

  A bluish star of light led him onwards, as well as a similar arrow of magic floating at chest level. It was growing in size. He ventured further out into the featureless hell, and drew nearer to the literal all-powerful Holy Bible.

  ***

  Tandy drew Nicole aside, while the armies formed up ranks and got into position. Everyone was getting protective spells cast on them against the ashy stuff hovering everywhere in the air that made breathing a chore, and hardened skin capable of handling the waves of heat this place let in from actual New Mexico. Basically it turned on the air conditioning.

  With a wave of the hand and a flash of rune-infused light, Tandy imbued Nicole with the same angel wings she had on, and leapt into the sky. Nicole jumped after her, and a few powerful flaps later, was at her friend’s level of shortness.

  “Check this out,” Tandy said, and pointed.

  A literal swath of dead bodies ran like a river out into the distance. The tracks were a clear indication of where Brian had been, but worse were the splattered remains of creatures that had exploded, along with the broken remains of other figures. These had to be Brian’s hordes taken out by the Hades denizens.”

  Nicole couldn’t help herself; she moaned and swore at the same time. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”

  “Yeah. We have to walk a whole bunch of guests through that.” And deal with the doubt and fear. Morale was something she understood instinctively, which was why she’d been hired in the first place.

  “It’s, what… it’s either that or try and flank him, but fight through more of that?”

  Tandy didn’t reply, but didn’t have to. Both options were utter shit.

  “Can we fly through?”

  Tandy considered. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure some of the monsters here fly, but we can avoid at least half by not being on the ground. For the guests at least.”

  Disgraced lead coder Reed Schmidt (with the handprint on one cheek) had given some of the VIP services people crowns of leveling, but he’d been hesitant to give them too many charges, mostly because of the way Brian had screwed the entire system with magic items. Tandy made use of them, first by imbuing as many guests as possible with wings, then restoring her own Spell Points with a level up. Some of the guests already had flight chosen as part of their super powered Gear, and were doing loop de loops like they weren’t in hell and about to assault the most powerful user the system had ever seen.

  All the NPCs had to deal on their own. They, at least, could have their morale manipulated by Nicole’s clerical spell or the bards singing battle hymns among them.

  She hovered near Reed Schmidt, who was busy touching the sides of his head while in conference with Kyoko and several of the other Swords & Sorcerers coders. They were staring at Reed’s tablet.

  “We’re holding steady. We’ve allocated an extra fifteen percent of the servers’ processing power, operating at sixty-seven percent toal with all the other genres. I don’t need to remind you how bad this can get, even if we get up around eighty-five. For now, so far, so good. Alan, you’ll be on this.” Alan was an eight foot centaur spider, a female curiously, with a gleaming red hourglass on their abdomen and huge breasts barely restrained by a custom built steel plate bikini top. “If we get up around eighty, you tell me. With luck, the NPCs who get the axe will lighten the load.”

  On the left side of the tablet, a thermometer style readout was green but shifting up towards yellow, and read 67% at the top. Beside that she noted a chat window and a steady stream of code packets scrolling by at an astonishing rate.

  As much as she hated the idea of acceptable losses, it appeared they were going to need some to survive.

  ***

  Morelon the Learned found himself between a rock and an amassed army not thirty minutes later. The rock: a citadel carved into the deep charcoal colored stone that formed the first of a series of impenetrable mountains. The army: one he’d been half-expecting. What he hadn’t been expecting: for the damn army to be so huge.

  He peered up at the Everbolt’s citadel and wondered why it didn’t have an image of a huge pair of tits engraved on it. The coders apparently had an ounce of seriousness in them after all. To be perfectly honest, he admired the place. It had the look and feel he’d come to expect out of a boss’s lair, and he desperately hoped this one didn’t just want to get a breast implant full of porn. On the other hand, it was indestructible.

  “Supposedly,” he told his zombie army.

  And… was that a white patch in the distant, sooty mountain? He squinted, and thought he could make out the regular geometric pattern of blocks stacked together, blocks that would have to be at least a good three feet square.

  He had to make this quick. Somewhere in that fortress above him was Nicole’s holy tome. Somewhere behind him was a probably-angry and deservedly-so Nicole, in that orderly mass of the oncoming army, whether in the specks flying above it, or the phalanxes trundling along below.

  Morelon threw back his head, felt his beard tickle at his neck, and roared up.

  Something huge, crackling with red and white lightning, and with two burning black pits for eyes leaned out of the citadel high above.

  “WHO HAS COME TO DIE AT THE HANDS OF THE EVERBOLT?” it boomed down at him.

  “That’s more like it,” he said, and re
adied several spells in his HUD.

  The first was just a test, and he barely had enough time to fire off the jet of water in the direction of the Everbolt before it was on him. A clock appeared with sixteen or twenty segments, with The Everbolt Withdraws above it, and the water jet dealt two segments of damage, but by the time he’d gotten off the second spell and it reached the ground, one of those segments had flashed and disappeared. It wasn’t the first regenerating enemy he’d fought, but the trolls had instantly died from the sudden display of sunlight he’d brought forth. Their regeneration hadn’t even come into play. This thing absorbed his first spell, changed directions four or five times in a second, and like a bolt of lightning crashed into the biggest of his zombies.

  A flash of light was followed by a crash of thunder that threw Morelon off his feet. He and a dozen of his zombies were swept backwards by the force of the shockwave. The others rushed in and moaned their zombie moans before attempting to attack this ball of lightning. They got roughly half of nowhere.

  A new clock appeared in his HUD and for the first time he could feel doubt shiver up his spine. Morelon the Learned is erased from existence, it read, and 20 slivers marked its dial.

  No no no Morelon shook his head. Nicole hadn’t said anything about this! He scanned his enemy and for the first time noticed that it was covered in an orange-red aura that was intensifying as they fought. He thought of fire extinguishers and pictured a fountain of potassium bicarbonate spraying forth from both of his palms. He showered the Everbolt in it, head to toe, watching his spell points tick down slowly even as the beast’s damage clock rose. The Everbolt howled.

  “DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE BESTED ME MAGE? DO YOU THINK YOU CAN DEFEAT ME?!”

  The monster snapped its fingers and turned into a golem of hardened quartz crystal. Morelon’s mouth dropped as it began to suck in his white spattering spray, clearing its damage clock and instantly healing.

  He saw that his existence clock had filled in two slivers as well. This was no good. Change of tac time, he thought. He got to his feet, called up a new spell, and flashed up into the sky, where the thing had come from.

  “Don’t need to fight you,” he muttered to himself, and he sighed relief when the non-existence clock faded from his HUD. Streaking through the sky he gained access to the huge window the Everbolt had come out of.

  He arrived in a massive, cavernous and circular room consisting purely of ashy stone. In the center, however, was a circular pedestal, maybe five feet across, and atop it the biggest, thickest glass jar he’d ever seen. This room continued out, and had at least three exits, but the forces at work gave him no time to dilly dally.

  The great black dragon flapping before him could be none other than the lead coder for Swords & Sorcerers, Reed Schmidt. “Morelon the Learned, discoverer of Loopholes, master of the System, vanquisher of Nicole’s Prestige Performance Rating, we demand you put an end to this insanity at once.”

  “Fuck off, Reed!” Nicole called. She too was flapping in, but on angelic white wings, while Tandy behind her had black feathered wings. And behind them, dozens more winged and flying enemies.

  “WIZARD!” the call came from the Everbolt below. “FACE ME, COWARD.”

  Chapter 19- Morelon Vs. Absolutely Everyone

  Morelon turned, and rattled off spell after spell. These weren’t NPCs, and they wouldn’t be restricted to taking actions based on actions he took; they’d go and go and go as fast as their reflexes would allow, but the game would slow their effects to one per game turn. The language in the LUBE was very slippery though, concerning how long a game turn lasted.

  He showered them all with blinding spray for 10 Spell Points, for a Sway roll of 4 and 2, which he nudged over to 10. Instantly many of them freaked out and gained altitude. He rained a storm of meteors down on them (and hopefully the Everbolt) for a Wreck of 6 and 6; decent enough.

  In seconds, the dark sky began belching down lava boulders. They fired down with such great force that they whistled as they came. Fwheee they screamed, ending in loud explosions that dealt fire damage, impact damage, and concussive damage to all who were within range. Most of them pounded into the great black dragon, Reed Schmidt, though. The beast dropped to the floor, both wings broken and a leg hobbled.

  “Jesus Christ!” a man yelled, his avatar’s arm broken and flopping at his side. A scattering of dead PCs lay ragdolled about him.

  Another man, armored as a holy warrior, was trying to rally a clot of damaged PCs. “Are we men or are we mice?” he was asking, waving his arms about beseechingly.

  Morelon hit him with a ray of polymorph, transforming the screaming soldier into a giant rat. Rolling an opposed but nudged Lore roll of 4, 7, and 9 he took control of the monstrous beast and turned it on his former party, who screamed and ran. But more PCs ran up to take their place, high-level characters who had just arrived to battle.

  Morelon began to remember the Everbolt’s disintegration circle with fondness. This was going to be the end of him. He remembered back to the rules on death, about how your rebirth would reboot your character to the new edition. How you’d lose any of your grandfathered abilities or items that no longer fit the ruleset of the new edition. And he realized that they would make damn sure not to let him respawn until after the new update rolled on through the park. His face turned hot and he screamed a long and hard animalistic growl.

  “Damn you, Musky!” Morelon bellowed, throwing an orb of pain around his body, and pushing back the newest wave of attackers. He turned on them. “What are you all fighting me for? They’re the ones trying to nerf the place and keep us in check.”

  “You are a quest, mate,” a dwarven warrior informed him. “They gave us free magic items and level ups that we all get to keep when we finish ya.”

  “Hey– I didn’t know you were a Player Character man. All I was told was ultimate quest, big bad end boss. Yeah that seems kinda wrong,” a coquettish fairy princess said. She turned and flew out the window.

  “Hey, if you’re a baddy but also a PC, does that mean I can join your side?” asked a chucky doll looking halfling covered head to toe in small sharp blades. “I always kinda liked the evil characters better anyways.”

  There came a roar from outside, the scream of lower-level PC footsoldiers finally reaching the ragged zombie army and engaging in combat. Then came a more ominous sound.

  “YOUR ARMY FOUND NEW FRIENDS TO PLAY WITH, MAGE. NOW I WILL COME TO PLAY WITH YOU,” the Everbolt boomed from without. Everyone in the chamber shared glances.

  “Nicole, heal me, kill him, get this over with,” the black dragon called from its position. Then it started to flame the entire room. PCs screamed and died while Morelon staggered backward under an onslaught of damage. The Five Army survivors marched grimly forward.

  There were just too many. He threw spell after spell, he leveled up, healed himself, killed them off, and still they came. Even with the halfling blade master at his side for all of ten or fifteen seconds, they were no match for fifty guests all wielding magic items, shooting enchanted arrows, countering his spells with spells of their own. He took Harm, stepped it down, took more, stepped that down again, and then lost a die on all his attacks. More spells went out: a spell to make several of them dance uncontrollably, a spell to coat one of them in ice. And still he took the damage: an arrow to the shoulder, a maul to the nuts. That one must’ve been enchanted to cause extra pain, because his haptic settings suddenly spiked, and he doubled over, leveled up, demolished the maul-bearer with a spell of Giant’s Flick, and sent him flying ten miles away with a Command roll of 7and 10.

  A little person bit him on the shin, and he screamed out, only to have a jet of water slam into his face and cut off his air. He fell back.

  You have been incapacitated - the HUD warned Brian, and he went into a sort of astral projection. His avatar, Morelon, lay disheveled and on fire in the corner of the chamber. He barely clung to life. He still had another level-up, but it was pointless. There was
just too much. They were just too much. I might as well just accept it. I’m no Alpha, I’m no Musky. No matter what I do I’m always gonna be second-rate and awful, he thought, staring ahead over the mess of burning and broken bodies. He saw Nicole hovering there, healing her boss, soon to end his existence in this game world, and he sighed. It wasn’t fair.

  “Hurry the fuck up, Nicole,” the dragon boomed as she restored his health and regenerated his limbs.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” Nicole belted back, frustrated. “Goddamn Reed, we should have just let him have his fun. It’s just a game.”

  “It’s my fucking department and my fucking game,” Reed the dragon fired back, with tendrils of smoke curling around his mouth any time he spoke. “And because of you this dipshit almost broke it. After this is all over I want you to pack your shit Nicole. Pack all of your desk and dorm shit into a bunch of cardboard boxes, and get the hell out of this state.”

  Nicole stared, her eyes burning. Her face went from stony to grim in the space of an instant, and she turned her attention back to Morelon… and blew him a kiss.

  What the hell? But he knew what the hell, didn’t he? She’d only been doing her job under duress; she’d never actually hindered him from having the fun he wanted to have. He nodded and threw his last level up into place, bringing him up to maximum health and spell points.

  “Reed, you can go to hell,” Nicole yelled into the dragon’s face. Her healing beams turned crimson and suddenly the limbs cracked and broke as Harm and Stress began to pile up. Reed tried to blaze fire, but only managed wisps of smoke, his cool down from the last special attack not yet complete.

  Nicole stood and put her hands high over her head, chanting in what he understood to be high elvish. Jesus, had she actually learned Tolkien’s language? A great white light flashed, and a moment later, all the other PCs had been thrown out of the tower. Many had lost their wings and were now tumbling down to the ground far below.

  Morelon jumped back to his feet, dice rolling as he tried to Finesse it into something super sexy and heroic. He rolled a 1, desperately bumped it over to a 3, and fell on his face.