by Taj McCoy El
“Shall we meet them halfway?” Josh asked them.
"I think we shall,” Grax responded in a poor replication of a posh accent, making Margaret chuckle.
“Hey, guys.” Mayah strolled up, "I would like to introduce you to the progenitors of the greatness known as Fluff. In my right hand, I hold the incubator of wonders, who’s so wonderful herself, Brenda Butler. In my left hand, I hold the great spark of awesomeness, who gets cranky if he’s hungry, Gyasi Butler. Together, we form three quarters of the world-renowned Butler family!!!!” Mayah bowed for her audience.
“Mom, Dad, this is Grax and Margaret, my friends and trusted companions in Majesta.”
“What, I don’t get a show stopping introduction?” Grax complained. "I think I deserve it.”
“If you thought more you might have gotten one.” Margaret stretched out a hand in greeting. “Margaret Crenshaw, septuagenarian, grandmother, and now a ranger thanks to your daughter.”
It’s a pleasure to meet you, Margaret,” Brenda said as she pulled her into a hug. “That’s how we treat family around here.”
Grax jumped onto Mayah’s shoulder and stood at his full height. “Alejandro Raimundo Guillermo Estevan Diaz at your service.” He bowed to the Butlers, “Just call me Grax, though.” He finished with a large flourish and jumped back to the ground.
“Yup, that’s Grax. We call him Grax the Flea-bitten or Grax the Whiner Cat,” Mayah teased.
“Hey!” Grax yelped.
“Or Grax of the Sniveling Swords,” Margaret continued with Mayah’s taunts, laughing at the abashed cat’s sneering face. If he had skin showing, he would be red with rage.
“Why are you guys always picking on me?”
“First of all, we’re ladies. I thought we covered this already,” Margaret sniggered. “And, speaking for myself, it’s an archer’s goal to hit smaller and smaller targets.”
“One day, Margaret, I’m gonna challenge you to a duel and make you pay for that.”
“Mayah?” Gyasi said sternly.
Mayah froze with her shoulders hunched, and she quickly said, “Yeah, Dad?”
“What have we told you about treating people that way?” He was trying to hide his amusement behind a mask of fatherly sternness but was only doing an okay job of it. “Take care of it.”
“Yes, sir.” Mayah solemnly turned to Grax. “I’m sorry for treating you in a manner unbefitting our level of friendship.”
Grax stood flabbergasted having never seen Mayah so cowed and good-mannered.
“Well, I guess it’s okay.” He turned to Gyasi his eyes pleading. “Can we stop now? I like her better the other way. This is kind of sad and creepy.”
Josh broke in, “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you all, especially you, Mayah. But there are a lot of things to do, like dungeons with timed prizes. We don’t want to create ripples in Majesta.” He winked at Mayah, and her eyes went wide.
“That’s right. I forgot all that with my parents being here.” She ran over to Josh and gave him a giant hug around the middle. “Thank you for bringing my parents,” she said into his stomach.
He patted her on the back. “Anything I can do to help.”
Mayah turned around and said, “Okay, last order of business.”
“Uh-oh, the boss is back.” Grax received a scathing look from Mayah.
“Fine, I won’t cut you into the livestream funds.”
“Yes, you will, young lady,” Gyasi said quickly.
“Yes, I will,” Mayah quickly said, looking at Grax. Then she turned to her father and pouted. “But you just ruined my negotiations.” She stared at her father, who threw his head back with a roar of laughter.
"I apologize,” Gyasi finally got out.
“So now, let’s get down to it. We’ve been offered one thousand dollars a week for one video every seven days IRL. I’m going to suggest that we counter with exclusive daily content for four thousand. That will give each of us $1,335 per week as base income. Then we sell memberships to our own private streams for even more content. We’ll use the streaming service as an advertisement for our member’s only views, which we’ll split evenly. How does that sound to you?”
“How did you come up with that time span?” Grax fished for information.
“Instead of one video every week IRL, I say we give them a video every Majestan week.”
“A Majestan week? What’s that?” Josh asked
“Every day is six Majestan days so it’s easier to call it a Majestan week and create a calendar around that at least for paladins.”
“That’s ingenious,” Josh agreed. He began typing into his interface.
“So, we’ll get less per video, but we’ll get paid to funnel everyone over to our private streams.” I’m gonna stockpile so many videos and get all the monies, Mayah thought. "I would also like to see if we can get a viewing bonus if our videos go above a certain amount of views.”
“Well, that’s fine till I go back to school on Monday,” Grax complained.
Josh helpfully offered, "I may have a solution for you if you’d want to give me your parents crysweb accounts.”
"I would love to.” Grax immediately typed in his interface. “Who do I send it to?”
“J.Bannon@Majestaweb.”
“Sending now.” He hit the send key with a flourish.
“Margaret would you like to send me your information, too? I may be able to help out with your situation, as well.”
“Well, it couldn’t hurt. And by the way, you’re much handsomer in person than in the holo-news.” Margaret blushed slightly.
“Why, thank you, Margaret, but this isn’t my true face. It was made especially for me by a team of digital artists and a PR department. If you saw my real face, you’d see all the dark circles under my eyes. I haven’t been getting much sleep working on Mayah’s situation.”
“Well, thank you for taking care of my little girl,” Brenda said. “Once this is all over, I’m going to have to cook you all dinner.”
“Where do you live?” Grax asked.
Mayah responded, “In Philadelphia. You?”
“Austin Texas originally. My father is on assignment, building an energy plant outside of Knoxville at the moment. So, I’m there for now.”
“And you, Margaret?” Brenda continued the line of questioning.
“Saginaw, Michigan. Right in the crotch of the mitten.”
“Okay, well, that’s quite some distance.” Brenda looked put out, trying to figure out how to get them all together.
Josh jumped back in, “Let me handle the logistics on that. I can get everyone together with two hours’ notice.”
“That would be amazing!” Brenda exclaimed. She relaxed looking like a weight dropped off her shoulders
“Besides, we should have the party at my house. I mean, there’s a beach and tons of places to sleep, and I rarely ever get visitors. I’ll talk to Susan over at stream masters—that one thousand a week offer was an extreme lowball for the level of content I know you’re going to generate. We’ll get you taken care of.”
Grax sat down on the grass as if his body had gone limp. “What did I ever do to be blessed with such fortunate circumstances? This is way too amazing.” Everyone watched, smiling as Grax had his moment. His head suddenly popped up, eyes intensely trained on Josh. “One last thing, Mr. Bannon,”
“Just call me Josh.”
“Okay, Josh, when you talk to my parents, can you please ask them about my sister. Fluff said you might be able to help her.”
“How could I do that?”
“Well, long story short, my sister was in an accident that left her in a coma. The big problem is her neural activity level keeps falling. If you could find a way to stimulate her brain so she has a chance at waking up, I would give you anything in the world and be forever grateful.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Josh smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Well, I’ve stretched my no interference policy way out of
sorts just pulling you guys out of the game. You ready to get back to it?” Josh rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
Mayah nodded and turned to her parents and hugged them with all her might. They returned the hug, matching her intensity, and then she turned and walked over to Margaret and Grax. She wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye.
“Ready.”
“Me too.”
“Meow three.”
“Well, here goes.” Josh started tapping on his interface. The same purplish portal opened up out of nowhere in front of them. Mayah looked back over her shoulder one last time. Her father was staring right at her with pride on his face. His arms were around her mother who yelled “Make ’em pay, Cupcake!!!!”
She raised her fist and walked through the portal.
✽✽✽
As they exited the portal, without any of the violence to it this time, they looked around and saw that they were in a small grassy clearing backed up against a sheer rock cliff. It was so tall she wondered if it stopped at the edge of her vision or rolled back and became a mountain. There was a dark and dangerous looking cave right in front of them. There was also a stone plinth with a glowing orb floating on top of it. As they walked closer a notification popped up in all their interfaces.
Welcome to Specter’s Keep dungeon.
This is an instanced dungeon that was generated using the qualities of all participants that won their respective tournaments. This is a bind point. If you do not bind here and die in the dungeon, you will respawn outside of the dungeon. The dungeon will be available as long as one team member remains inside the dungeon or in the safe zone surrounding this bind point. If all members log out, that will be considered leaving the dungeon. If all party members die in the dungeon, they will all respawn at an external point of their choosing. To leave this dungeon, either complete it and exit the portal or leave the safe zone around the bind point, 1 mile past the tree line.
Would you like to set your bind point?
Y/N?
Of course, I’m setting my bind point here. Duh…
“Margaret did you set this as your bind point?” she asked of the noob.
“Yes…”
“Why?” Mayah shrieked with irritation.
“Because…I thought… Oh no…” Margaret flustered.
“Just kidding. Good job.” Mayah chuckled.
“Stop it, Fluff. I’m already nervous enough.”
"I know. I wanted you to get rid of those pre-game jitters.”
Grax waved an aroma into his nose. “Do you smell that Margaret?”
“Smell what?”
He continued fanning it in luxuriating in the smell. “The smell of farming!”
“Why would we be farming?” Margaret asked with an apprehensive sneer.
With the spell broken Grax turned to her and said, “Granny you’re a total noob.” He shook his head.
“Granny???” Margaret asked in exasperation.
Grax held up a hand to stop her rant before it even started. “Before you make a fuss, you made your deal with Fluff. I never said I would stop calling you anything.”
Margaret huffed and turned to Mayah. “Fluff, I’m beginning to understand why you want to duel him so bad.”
“Took ya this long, did it?” Mayah snorted.
“I’m not sure why, but yes it took this long. I suppose I was caught off guard by the cute cat thing. But once you strip off the fur, he’s just a rude teenage boy, isn’t he?”
“Now you’re getting it,” Mayah encouraged.
“So, anyway, what is this farming?” Margaret inquired.
“Well, it’s not planting vegetables. It is repeatedly, fighting enemies. repeatedly… to gain levels, also known as grinding mobs.”
“Good. I’m a city girl and I hate dirt under my nails.”
“Okay so we’re gonna be camping here and fighting there.” Mayah pointed at the cave. “Anybody got problems with that?”
“Not I.”
“Me neither.”
“Okay so let’s take a shot at the first couple of sections. If it gets harder, we’ll come back and break for a meal.”
Margaret and Grax armed themselves and checked their gear. Mayah did the same and wolfed down a ration to up her regeneration, and they entered the mouth of the cave.
8.3 Specter’s Keep
The cave opening rose high overhead letting light spill into the depths of the crack. At first there was sparse plant life and the sun made it easy to see. As they moved forward the ground turned to a mix of gravel and packed earth. They could walk side by side quite easily. After fifty feet the ceiling dropped to about thirty feet and the floor sloped downward. After another twenty, it narrowed. Grax and Margaret pulled out torches in the rear, while Mayah’s shadow vision gave her a pretty clear picture of what was twenty feet down the tunnel.
The smell of dirt surrounded them as they made their way further in. Dampness crept in, and the tunnel would dip down from time to time blocking her view of what lay ahead. The only sounds were their footsteps and the sputtering of the torches. At the point where Mayah was about to activate Torch on Happiness a sickly purple glow filled the walls in front of them. They continued to move forward as the walls receded. The tunnel quickly opened in front of them as it turned around a bend. Grax hurried forward to see where the light was coming from.
“Holy…” Grax didn’t finish his thought before his covered his opened mouth. His wide eyes stared at the sight before him like the headlights on deer.
Mayah ran after him to see what could cause his expression. Her jaw dropped as well. The tableau displayed below her was the vastest dungeon that she had ever laid her eyes on. It was an enormous cavern with a diameter of at least eight or nine miles. The dark walls reflected the putrescent purple light creating an eldritch feel to the environment. The source of the light came from a gigantic fireball glowing on top of three towers that rose from a keep atop a walled plateau. The flames roiled a nauseous purple and muddy brown looking like a demonic embryo. The keep was situated at the back end of a three-mile-wide plateau that rose from its surroundings like the head of a ragged nail that some evil god hadn’t driven flush. The plateau by itself took up two thirds of the cavern. A path of white wove between a few dead trees on the plateau but there was nothing else that her eye could see. She traced the path back and it led to a gate that was right in line with the Royal Death Claws, but it was at least five miles away.
The ground in front of them was made of a pale, whitish sand that matched the path leading to the keep. The sand curved downward leading them deeper into the dungeon—towards the gate. It was a vast wasteland where nothing grew. Small dunes rose and fell like an ocean and sinister shadows filled the voids in the lee of the flame. This whole vista was their dungeon waiting for them to explore and conquer.
Mayah sniffed. She had always thought it was an instinctual habit, bred into her by the evolutionary tale of human survival. The tales that led back to before mammals, back to when brains had scales. Her lizard brain was warning her. She looked around checking her 9 o’clock her 3 o’clock and finally her 6.
“You guys ready to do this?” Mayah said hefting Happiness.
“And the prizes are somewhere in there?” Margaret asked without looking away from the sinister view.
“Not just in there…” Grax majestically waved a hand across the view. “Everything the light touches is our dungeon.
“Wow…” Margaret sighed.
“And one day it will all be ours.”
“Really Grax?” Mayah sneered. She shook her head, and then sighed. “This is why I wind up going to dark places,”
“Hakuna matata, princess.” Grax waved a dismissive hand.
Mayah pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head slowly.
I could kill him, but he’d just come back.
“Let’s go. Before you start talking about scars.”
“In that case, that role would fall to you.” Grax point
ed a finger.
“Stop talking and start walking. Margaret, you’re on point. It’ll be good to activate your paranoia.
“What do you mean activate my paranoia?” Margaret asked.
“Are you scared?”
“No… maybe? Should I be?” Margaret stuttered.
“And that’s why you need to activate your paranoia.”
“And all this is a dungeon?” she asked as the reality settled in.
“Depends on your definition of dungeon.” Mayah’s eyes were still roving over the scenery in front of them soaking up details and trying to find landmarks. “A dungeon could be underground in a cave, like we have here, but in gamer terms any area filled with monsters and leading to a specific boss is also a dungeon. I hate to jinx us, but I have a feeling we’ll be underground in the underground before we reach those towers.”
“As long as it’s not sewers.” Margaret huffed.
“Just had to Jinx us, didn’t you Mags?” Grax blamed her. He shook his head in disbelief.
“Well, time to crawl through sewers and get money.” Mayah cut in and took a practice swing with Happiness. “You two ready?”
“Always.” Grax looked up and smirked.
“Me too,” Margaret said nocking an arrow on her bow. She rolled her shoulders putting on the Crenshaw game face.
“Mags you’re on point,” Margaret straightened up and looked at her questioningly. Mayah shrugged. “Paranoia is a useful skill. I’ll follow her, Grax you range in stealth.”
“Che…” he responded skulking off and quickly fading into the shadows.
They walked across the field towards the base of the plateau. Margaret was giving her upper body a workout, twisting from her left to right and occasionally checking their 6. The grayed-out form of Grax was slipping into any cover he could find and exploring both sides of the trail for any mobs.
I guess paranoia is a good thing, Mayah thought as she also swept her vision across the field trying to use each eye independently like a chameleon. After a half hour, they were three quarters of the way there. The gate loomed ahead of them and an Image of a keyhole was imprinted across the center of the door. The slope had continued to steepen and what looked like a short cliff was now looming over them as they stood in the depths of the steep escarpment. she called a stop and gathered everyone.
