Beyond the Boss

by Drew Seren

  “Here.” Bigdaddybear thrust a bag to Theodore. “Half of the mana potions. Use them as you need them. You’ve got healers, but you’ll need the mana.”

  Theodore nodded. “Thanks, man. Appreciate it. If we make it through these Ice Trolls, we’ll come to give you guys a hand.”

  “We’ll appreciate that.” Horc looked at Miranda, Tufkakes, Baladara, and Bigdaddybear.

  “I hear them coming,” Jamica said, then vanished into the shadows.

  “I’ll keep scouting ahead.” Tufkakes did the same move, fading from view.

  “Where do you guys want me to leave you a light?” Baladara said as her hands began glowing white.

  Stanoran glanced around. “Over one of us, or on the wall there.”

  “You’ll be the light of the party, Stanoran.” Baladara cast the spell and a ball of light appeared over Stanoran. It was the twin to the one over her head.

  Horc pointed down the tunnel. “Let’s get moving. Good luck guys.” He hated splitting the party again, and hoped it wasn’t going to be too long. There was a finite number of Ice Trolls, unless the AI was making more on the fly. Eventually they had to run out, and the three would be able to follow them.

  As the sounds of battle reached them, Horc and company picked up their pace to a fast jog without any communication between them. Horc hoped the cave would wind around and lead them in the direction they needed to go to find the hostages and defeat the dragon. According to the arrow, they were heading parallel to the direction they needed to go. At least they weren’t heading away from it.

  16

  The tunnel wound around. Horc had to force himself to pay attention to where they were going and not watch the others’ icons in his view. Their health and mana went up and down as they fought, drank potions, and struggled to guard the party’s rear.

  “We just have to tell ourselves that they’re going to be fine,” Baladara said as they rounded a corner.

  Horc frowned. “I know. I hate splitting the party like this. It doesn’t end well.”

  “Maybe this time will be different,” Tufkakes said. “If we’re successful and knock the AI out, we’ll all be safe and sound back in our pods.”

  They rounded a curve and everyone came to a stop. Ahead of them was a vast cavern full of multicolored crystals, many of them larger around than Horc was. They were all different colors and when the light from Baladara’s spell hit them, it fractured and created rainbows in hues Horc had never seen before.

  “Wow.” Horc stared at the beauty of it all.

  “This isn’t right.” Miranda shook her head, then looked like she was accessing something on her screen. “Yeah, definitely not right. This shouldn’t be here. None of this should. I was giving allowances for the tunnel, but this crystal cavern. No way.”

  “Do you think the AI did this?” Bigdaddybear asked as he walked over and ran a hand over one of the crystals. “They feel real enough.”

  Miranda walked over and tapped one. A soft chime rang out in the cavern. “If the AI did this, it’s continuing to reach beyond its base programming. It wasn’t supposed to be creating environments. Well outside of things like making it rain or snow in certain areas.”

  Horc walked over to one of the huge crystals that was in a shade of dark blue he’d never seen in the real world before. It was almost like someone had taken the color of the ocean and merged it with a twilight sky. He was surprised it was solid and not liquid. “It was building a wall around the arena. Isn’t that creating an environment?”

  “I think I understand what she’s getting at,” Bigdaddybear said. “That was a manipulation of an environment, adding buildings and walls is something a human would do.”

  “But to build a crystal cavern…” Tufkakes looked around and his voice trailed off for a second.

  “That would take a god,” Titanya finished for him. “Wow. This AI is full of itself, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one way to put it.” Horc stepped away from the dark blue crystal. “Let’s keep moving so we can shut this thing down.” With Wolf at his side, he headed down the curving path covered in small crystal shards that pricked at his boots.

  After a minute Baladara stopped and glared down at the trail as she shook her foot, like she was trying to get pain to go away. “This isn’t cool.” She looked back at Bigdaddybear. “This isn’t in my mage spell book. Do you have anything?”

  Bigdaddybear got the faraway look they all got when they were accessing their gaming data. After a moment, he pursed his lips and huffed. “Maybe. It takes a lot of heat to melt crystals, depending on what they’re made of. We don’t know what these things are. And we’re in a cavern. This could be a major mistake.”

  “Or it could make our going easier.” Tufkakes leaned against one of the crystals and pulled off his boot to rub his foot.

  “Worth the chance,” Horc agreed. He hadn’t had one of the crystals make it all the way through the leather soles of his boots to go through his socks and into his skin, but he didn’t want it to reach that point. He glanced over where Wolf was sitting, licking his bleeding paws. There had to be something he could do to make his companion more comfortable, but he didn’t know what people IRL did for hot sidewalks or rough rocks to make it easier for their dogs.

  Bigdaddybear nodded and without another word, started the spell. His hands glowed brown, the slowly changed to red as he worked the magic. When he thrust his paw-like hands out, energy rippled off them.

  For a second it felt like nothing was going to happen. Then the cavern began to shake. Crystals tinkled. The refracted light from Baladara’s spell danced through the crystals.

  A gust of warm air started light and built up intensity as the chamber rocked.

  “An earthquake?” Horc muttered. “I don’t think an earthquake was a good idea.” He shifted to a wide stance in an effort to keep his balance and remain standing.

  “It’s not a quake.” Bigdaddybear corrected him. “It’s supposed to be a Volcanic Earth spell. It’s supposed to make the ground molten for a few seconds.”

  The crystals began rocking hard, some of them cracking and splintering as they crashed to the ground around the party.

  Titanya lifted her shield over her head and looked braced for impact.

  “I’ve got this,” Baladara said and cast a shield around them.

  “You know if you just brought this cavern down around our ears, you’re not as smart as you think you are,” Miranda said, gripping her club and looking worried.

  Horc didn’t want to get insulting, be he was thinking it might’ve been a better idea to not just try out a new spell in a situation where unforeseen effects might get them all killed. The way the cavern was shifting around them, he wasn’t sure any of the beautiful crystals would be left when the spell was over.

  Then the heat multiplied a thousandfold. Horc gasped for breath and reached into his pack for a canteen. His health flashed and began to drop.

  The floor of the cavern glowed and bubbled.

  “Not good, big guy,” Tufkakes said. “This AOE is hitting us too.”

  Everyone’s health bars were dropping as Horc looked at the icons on his screen. It wasn’t massive drops, but it was so much that if they had been lower level toons, they’d be in trouble fast. He hoped the spell wouldn’t go on too long; that would also be bad.

  Then as subtly as it had started, the rumbling and shaking stopped.

  Horc’s health had only taken about a ten percent drop. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

  Baladara glared at Bigdaddybear. “Okay. Is it done?”

  Bigdaddybear nodded, then pointed to the ground. “Done and it worked.”

  “Good.” Baladara dropped her spell and a few more small crystals fell down on the party. They’d obviously been sitting on top of the shield.

  There was a ring of more crystals laying around the edge of the shield. In spots they formed a short wall about two feet tall. Lying on the cavern floor like that, they looked
more like pretty rocks than crystals. Just beyond the wall, the floor of the cavern gleamed, looking like a highly polished stone floor. As Horc watched, a few last molten bubbles rose up, popped and then the floor stopped moving.

  Titanya went to the edge of the area that had been protected by the magical shield, bent over and tapped the path with the tip of her sword. “Seems solid enough.”

  “Definitely.” Tufkakes did a graceful jump above the wall and then rolled across the floor until he ended up against one of the crystals that had fallen.

  Taking it as everything was going to be fine, Horc stepped over the short wall. “Good, then let’s get moving.”

  Something scratched against a crystal not far away from him. He stopped walking and stared toward the sound.

  Wolf growled a warning.

  “Now what?” Baladara asked just as a swarm of clear spiders scampered over the crystals and rushed them.

  “You had to ask, didn’t you?” Tufkakes said and started tossing knives at the arachnids that were slightly larger than some of the wolf spiders Horc used to find IRL.

  The knives impaled the spiders, but there were a lot more of the almost crystal-clear arachnids than Tufkakes had knives.

  Horc pulled his bow from his shoulder and started hitting spiders with arrows.

  Baladara yelped and the spell she’d been about to cast fizzled in her hands as she yanked a spider off her skirt and hurled it toward the nearest crystal. “AOE people, AOE. Single attacks aren’t going to help us much.”

  “Working on it.” Bigdaddybear’s hands glowed almost white right before lightning erupted around them. The electrical assault knocked some of the spiders back and fried others.

  Horc tossed a Fire Pit Trap out. Almost instantly, the trap went off, incinerating a group of bugs, but more kept coming, pausing at the edge of the flaming pit to form a living chain of spiders to get across the pit.

  “Yeah, this isn’t good.” Miranda swung her club, and a swath of flame shot out of the tip of it, taking out the spiders who made it across the pit.

  Titanya frowned at her. “What’s with that club of yours? Doesn’t look like standard issue.”

  Miranda shrugged. “I’m one of the support staff, why should I have standard issue anything?”

  “To put you on the same level as the rest of us,” Horc said as he threw out an Explosive Trap at the same time Baladara managed to get an AOE fire spell off. It irritated him that Miranda had set herself up as better than the rest of them just because she could. Sure it was a rescue job and they needed every option they could, but it set off his personal sensibilities. He hated overpowered characters, and Miranda had created herself to be just that. After she’d interfered with the Gnoll King kill, she’d pissed him off, but now she was really working his nerves. Of course, it made things easier, but it took some of the fun of the game away. He had to keep telling himself that she was useful and not just a buzz-kill.

  “Not my thing.” She shook her head and took out another group of spiders.

  “We need to try to keep moving,” Titanya said as she did some kind of blast spell by striking the ground hard with her sword. Concussive force rolled out from her, bowling spiders back from the path.

  “Good point.” Horc pointed toward her. “Let’s form up and keep going. Hopefully these things won’t chase us too far.”

  Baladara let out a laugh as she did another large area of fire. “Like those damned Trolls didn’t agro train the hell out of us.”

  “If we can get through the cavern, I think I may have an idea,” Bigdaddybear said as he sent a swarm rolling away from them in a magical gust of wind.

  “It won’t work now?” Horc asked as he loosed a Multiple Shot barrage before starting his next trap spell. He was going through mana like crazy and hoped he wouldn’t run out too soon.

  Bigdaddybear shook his head as they fell in behind Titanya. “Don’t want to risk it here, we might end up trapped.”

  If it hadn’t been for the spiders and the crystals they had destroyed, Horc could think of uglier places to be trapped, but that didn’t really matter. They didn’t have time to get trapped somewhere. They needed to get to the hostages and get everyone free of the game.

  They made slow progress, working their way across the cavern with the spiders around them at every step. The second any of them stopped their assaults to get a mana potion, or even take a breath, the spiders came through the hole in their defenses. During those times, Wolf managed to kill his share of spiders, although he tended to bear the brunt of the attack then. Luckily, Horc was there with healing spells for him after the nastier assaults.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, they reached the edge of the cavern and the tunnel leading onward. Horc was surprised they were actually going in the direction the map arrow wanted them to go.

  “Alright, Bigdaddybear, here’s your opportunity.” Horc stepped out of the cavern with its floor of molten crystal onto the dirt of the tunnel beyond it.

  “Everyone get back. Horc, Baladara, if I could get a couple of explosions to hold them off.” Bigdaddybear shook out his hands, then stopped and downed a mana potion. “If things keep up like this, we’re going to run out of these.” He slipped the vial back into his bag.

  Miranda shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’ve got an everfull bottle of both mana and health potions. We’ll be fine.”

  Horc was torn between saying something, and or just rolling his eyes. He opted to keep his mouth shut and tossed a Fire Pit spell out into the narrow spot where the cavern met the tunnel. Seconds later, it went up. Spiders died and then Baladara’s spell went off frying the ones on the other side.

  “This won’t hold them long,” Tufkakes said, looking despondently at his bandolier that was missing half of his daggers.

  “Doesn’t have to.” Bigdaddybear started his spell. “Just get ready to take out the stragglers.”

  Horc had enough mana for a Multiple Shot barrage and he readied it as Bigdaddybear unleashed his spell. Like the volcano spell. Nothing happened at first. Spiders started forming a living chain to get across the pit Horc’s trap had left in the floor.

  The mountain shook. It was more violent than the volcano spell had been. Try as he might, Horc couldn’t maintain his feet as the ground moved under him.

  In the cavern, the crystals tremored and shattered. The sound was beautiful at first, then the tones became painful as the crystals broke apart, sending shards flying in all directions. Spiders were impaled on fragments of crystal. Some were crushed under the weight of the huge ones that fell before exploding into glittering shrapnel.

  Dirt and dust from the tunnel sifted down on the party as the mountain continued to shimmy and shake.

  From the ground next to Horc, Baladara started a spell then shook her head. “I don’t have the mana for a shield. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry.” Horc had failed to cast his Multiple Shot barrage when he’d been knocked off his feet, but it didn’t matter. There were no spiders rushing toward them any longer. A pair of massive crystals had fallen across the mouth of the tunnel, blocking them off from the way they’d come, and stopping any aggressive mobs from coming at them.

  “Looks like we’re not going out that way,” Miranda said with a frown. “Good work, Bearboy.”

  “Didn’t see you and your magic club coming up with anything better,” Bigdaddybear grumbled back.

  Although Horc could understand the urge to put the woman in her place, he put a hand on Bigdaddybear’s furry shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.” He nodded on down the tunnel.

  Bigdaddybear nodded. “Definitely.”

  “I’ll scout ahead again,” Tufkakes said, then melted into the shadows.

  They fell back into their normal formation with Titanya in front, as they headed down the tunnel. Although everyone but himself and Baladara had made massive changes to their toons’ race and or class, and they had Miranda with them instead of Slasher, Horc flashed back to their adventure in th
e Gnoll King’s dungeon. They’d prowled the levels of that adventure in much the same formation. The dangers there had been just as real, but they’d been a little clumsier as they’d been figuring out what their toons could do. They had most things figured out. But he wasn’t sure it was going to be enough, particularly as the AI had figured out how to create whole environments.

  17

  The tunnel they were in ended at the shore of a huge underground lake. Light from glowing crystals bathed the place in an eerie quiet beauty. The water on the lake was perfectly still. There didn’t appear to be anything in the massive cave to stir the water, although the far shore was completely out of sight.

  “And now we need another boat,” Baladara muttered as they all stood there looking across the surface.

  The cave walls reached the edge of the water, at least where they were standing at the edge of the tunnel. There didn’t appear to be any way around, or over the lake.

  Horc sighed. “I’m not liking the idea of swimming across this lake.”

  Miranda shrugged. “We don’t get tired driving our toons, what’s the problem?”

  “Haven’t you noticed that we do start taking damage when we start over exerting ourselves?” Horc glared at her. As much as he wanted to, the edge of a massive underground lake wasn’t the place to have a big fight with the woman.

  “Was that what was happening?” Tufkakes asked. “That last fight with the spiders. Even when they weren’t hitting and I had no indication of poison, I was still taking damage. I thought the crystals were doing something to me.”

  Bigdaddybear shook his head. “No. We think it’s the AI manipulating game play. It’s like the thing is trying to make our toons more human or something.”

  “Could it be trying to become more human?” Titanya mused. “I know that’s more likely to happen in science fiction stories, the robots wanting to be human. But what if something they used to program the thing is making it want to be more like us?”