She turned back towards me and smiled.
"I'm going to turn in," I said as I climbed up onto the top bunk.
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," Ellie said.
As I settled down, I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't see much of her from the shoulders down on account of the edge of the bunk. She took off her pauldrons, and the breastplate soon followed, leaving her wearing only a tight outfit of dark cloth. I turned back and looked up at the ceiling as she blew out all but one of the candles in the wall sconces and climbed into the bunk below me.
"Goodnight," I said.
"Night," she replied, and then all was silent.
I stared at the ceiling for some time. The moving flame made the shadows on the roof shimmer. I watched them for what felt like hours, and I knew that sleep wasn't going to find me any time soon. It didn't sound like Ellie was asleep. Her breathing hadn't yet slipped into the long, deep breaths of slumber, so I had a feeling that she was fighting insomnia just like I was.
"Hey Ellie," I said, keeping my voice quiet. "Are you awake?"
She took a second to answer. "Yeah. I'm awake. Can't sleep either?"
"Nope. Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure. I can't guarantee that I'm going to answer it though." She yawned.
"Fair enough. Why did you pre-order Crematoria Online?"
I couldn't tell whether Ellie sighed or just took a deep breath. "I like video games. Always have."
"Thirty grand is a lot for a video game, no matter how much you love them."
"Yeah. But I've always been good with my money, too. So when I had a chance at playing this, the first leap into something truly new, I had to be a part of it. I made sure I had enough extra money saved to justify spending the thirty grand, and I was lucky enough to get picked in the lottery. So here I am."
"Wow. You just had an extra thirty grand sitting around?"
"No, it wasn't just sitting around. I save my money, and I put it into different accounts, so I know exactly how much is coming out for anything at any given time. The thirty thousand was in my rainy-day fund, accruing interest."
I thought about my money, sitting there in my account, accumulating enough interest every year that I could live comfortably on it for the rest of my life. I never had to worry about not being able to afford what I wanted. Saving and siloing my money like that was a foreign concept.
"What about you? What made you decide to play?" Ellie asked.
I shrugged.
"I just wanted to play. I thought it sounded like an incredible opportunity. When I got the invitation I pre-ordered immediately."
"Wait, you got an invitation?"
"Yeah, I did. Why? Didn't you?"
"No. I had to sign up for the pre-order like everyone else and hope. Why were you invited to play?"
"I don't know. I had to put the deposit down just like everyone else, so I assumed I went into the lottery like everyone else. Come to think of it, I didn't actually sign up for anything. Yet Everdark Entertainment still emailed me, inviting me to play. Personally."
I heard Ellie shift on her mattress below. "That's really strange."
"Yeah. It is," I agreed.
Had they planned this? Had I been targeted for some reason? The thought that I might have been invited into this game just to get trapped inside of it made my simmering anger threaten to boil over.
"Why do you think you were invited?" Ellie asked.
"I have no idea. I'm nobody special."
"Was there anything that you might have done to warrant an invitation? Were you a pro gamer, vidstreamer or influencer or something?"
"No. I've always been good at games, but I never wanted to play them for a living. That would take all the fun out of it. The moment you turn a hobby into a job it takes all the joy out of it, doesn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know about that."
"For me, it would have. I play games to relax. To escape from the shitty world our parents and grandparents left us with. I wouldn't want to be a vidstreamer, stripping or screaming into a camera for views. I wouldn't want to be a completionist or a reviewer. I play games just to play them, you know?"
"Yeah, I'm the same. I mean, I don't really get much time to play these days, but when I do, I only do it to relax. And..." Ellie trailed off.
"And what?" I asked.
"Nothing. Don't worry about it."
"Is that why you were saying that you had to get out of the game when I first ran into you? Because you didn't have the time to play, and you got trapped? You had something else going on in real life?"
"Yeah."
"Is the thing you needed to do going to wait for you?"
"No, it couldn't wait, but it's not life or death. Going back to my last question - just who are you? Really?"
"Seriously, I'm no-one. I made some money from an app a few years ago, bought myself an apartment, and now I pretty much just do coding gigs when I'm bored. I live off an ongoing fee for those who use my platform, so I don't need to take coding gigs very often."
"What kind of app did you make?"
"It was something that helped with disaster management. With all the terrible things that were going on in the world I figured out a way that I might be able to help. It let people check in to say they were safe whenever something bad happened, connect to emergency and support services, and allowed people to rally around local problems that needed to be solved. Like helping fix a school damaged in an earthquake or pushing notifications out to everyone in a certain area telling them to stay away if there was an active shooter. That kind of thing."
"You know what? I think I have that app on my phone. I used it to find shelter last time there was a chemical attack," Ellie said.
"I'm really glad it helped. I haven't really done much that mattered since." I shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy mattress.
It was true. Ever since I sold the platform, all I had done was exist. I got to do what made me happy so often that it didn't make me happy any more.
"You actually saved my life. If I hadn't gotten the message from that app, I would have been running errands in the city right when the attack happened," Ellie said.
"I didn't send that message," I said. "Someone from emergency services would have sent it once they identified what was going on. I just built the platform."
"All of the most important people of the last 30 years built platforms. Think of all the different apps and websites that you can go to now to do things that you would have had to do yourself. Think about how easily you can connect with someone who has the skills that you don't. That's what makes this world great. Borders don't matter anymore, except to those who want to enforce them. Now there is no difference between getting someone in your city to work for you and getting someone on the other side of the planet to work for you. And it's all because of platforms and systems like yours."
I got the feeling that there was something deeper behind Ellie's words. She spoke like someone who was passionate about this kind of thing.
"What is it that you did in the real world before logging in to Crematoria Online?" I asked.
I heard Ellie take a breath.
"It's okay," I said. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"No, it's fine. I'm a freelancer. I do photo manipulation, graphic design and concept art mostly. I made a bit of a name for myself making movie posters."
"No shit! Did you do any I might know about?"
"Probably. Dirtworld came close to getting an Oscar."
"That was that documentary about the heavy metal band that started a cult, right? The one where all of those girls disappeared?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"I did see that one. That was intense."
"I do a lot of work with horror movies, science fiction, fantasy. Anything genre related, really."
"So that's why you were spouting off lines from Aliens while we were killing the Roach Hound Matriarch. You're a film nerd."
"Ju
st genre stuff, really. Anything that takes me out of the real world, you know?"
"Yeah, I get it."
"Anyway, making movie posters and concept art is what keeps my bank account full, but that's not my most important job. I'm... I'm a mother."
I heard Ellie's voice break as she said that final word. It was like an admission of guilt. Silence followed, then the sound of sobbing.
"Oh man, I'm so sorry," I said as everything started to make sense. "That's why you need to get out of Crematoria Online, isn't it?"
"Yes," she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"You didn't realize that you'd get stuck here. None of us did. There was no way you could have known."
"Just because I can justify it, doesn't mean that I can live with it. I know someone would have picked her up from the child care center when I wasn't there to pick her up, and by now someone would have found me at home in that damned coffin."
I hadn't even considered that Ellie might have had a child outside of Crematoria Online.
Ellie slammed something into the wall beneath us. Probably a fist. When she spoke again, she sounded angry. "When I finally get out of here, if I manage to get out of here, then I'm going to spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I'm going to have to explain to her why this stupid video game was more important to me than she was."
Ellie inhaled a deep rattling breath, then let it out again. I didn't know what to say, but I got the feeling that there was way more to this situation. I never had kids, and whenever I was in a situation where a baby was thrust into my arms, I always felt like I was going to drop them. I always found an excuse to hand them back as soon as I could. I couldn't imagine what it would have felt like for Ellie being trapped here in this game, away from her daughter.
"There's no way you could have known," I repeated.
"No, but that's not the point. The point is that my daughter would have been waiting to be picked up by her Mom, and then I never showed up. It's just another in a long line of the inevitable screw-ups of Eleanor Rooker."
"She's safe, isn't she? That's a silver lining at least."
Ellie sighed, and she sounded frustrated. "This isn't your concern. This is my problem to deal with. I'm not looking for solutions right now, so don't try to fix this problem. Let me be angry with myself. Let me be sad about disappointing my daughter."
"I'm sorry," I said.
Ellie didn't reply for the longest time, then she took a breath. When she spoke, her voice was tinged with barely restrained fury.
"I would burn this whole world to the ground if it meant that I could see my daughter again," she said.
I believed her. I wanted to get down off my bunk and try to help in some way, but I got the feeling that no matter what I tried I would just make things worse. I stayed on my bunk and gazed up at the dark ceiling.
"If there's anything I can do, please let me know. I want to help you, but I don't know how," I said.
"Tomorrow is another day," she said. Her voice wavered. The anger she had held so closely only moments before now sounded like it was a stranger to her. "Tomorrow we're going to leave Dregswyk and report what's going on to the Judiciary. They'll throw their whole weight behind this problem, and then, hopefully, we can find a way out of this game. Maybe they'll give me a Celestial Offering of my own. I might even just ask for one. Until then, can we just pretend that this conversation never happened?"
"Sure," I lied.
"Thank you," Ellie said.
I kept staring up at the ceiling for a long time after that. Ellie's breathing eventually grew deep and even, and I could tell that she had fallen asleep. It felt like sleep was going to elude me. A whirlwind of thoughts burned through my mind, demanding my attention. What would happen to Ellie's daughter if we couldn't get back to the real world?
Ellie had said that this wasn't my problem, but damn it, it was something that I might be able to help with. The Celestial Offering sat in my Quest Log like a promise. A way out. Neither Ellie or I could finish our quests by ourselves, and those quests put us on the same path. She helped me, and now it was my turn to help her. It was lucky that we found each other. She was standoffish at times, but now I felt like I understood why. She's a Mom, and family always comes first.
The Celestial Offering was a way out. But maybe not a way out for me. What if I could give it to her?
I didn't have half of those problems, and I still used video games as an escape from my life. I couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of things she needed an escape from.
"Hey, Ellie?" I asked, but there was no answer. The time would come later to talk about what we did once I got the Celestial Offering.
Eventually sleep found me, and I succumbed.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Crimson Order Strikes
I was awoken by the sound of Dagwood barking. The little roach hound pup was in our chamber somehow. I'd never heard him angry, but his tiny little barks had a furious edge to them. Immediately I reached for the blade that I had kept by my side as I slept. The doorway into our room was standing ajar. Below me, I heard movement. Glancing over the edge of the bed I saw a shape crouched next to Ellie, hunched over her.
Ellie's eyes met mine. A tear rolled down her cheek as she mouthed something, but I couldn't tell what. There was something stuck to the side of her neck coming out of the robed figure crouched beside her. It was muscular and lean, like a snake missing its scales, and it pulsed as though it was sucking something out of Ellie as she lay vulnerable.
I pulled my sword from its scabbard and leapt from the top bunk onto the floor, still only wearing my boxers and tattered shirt. On my way down my feet connected with the robed figure. The assailant cried out in pain and recoiled. The thing that had been stuck to Ellie's neck disappeared, leaving behind a bite mark in the shape of the symbol of the Crimson Order.
"Ellie! Are you okay?" I cried out.
Ellie didn't answer. She wasn't dead, that much was sure. She moved about under the covers, as though she was only just waking up, or moments from falling asleep. She wasn't lucid. The side of her neck was slick with blood.
I spun on my heels and saw not a creature, but a man rising to his feet. His lips were covered in Ellie's blood. His mouth was just about the only part of his face that was not obscured. The rest of it was covered in a deliberately featureless mask. Whoever this person was, he obviously didn't want his identity revealed.
"What are you? Some kind of vampire or something?" I asked.
"Or something," the person said, their voice thick and cloying.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He answered me by drawing a blade from a sheath on his belt.
"Who sent you?"
He licked his lips, looking down at Ellie as she recovered from what he had done to her.
"Answer me, damn it!"
The blood-soaked man just looked at me and sighed. "You're sticking your nose in business that doesn't concern you. The Crimson Queen knows your faces now, and she knows that you hunt us. You would do well to turn around and scurry back above the streets you came from, or your end will come soon."
"I'm not leaving without John Byrne," I said.
The bloodsucker quirked his head to the side. "Is that name supposed to mean something to me?"
"The child. The one that you took from the Allurian orphanage. Release him, and I won't be forced to kill you."
My grip tightened on the hilt of my sword as I readied myself for battle. I wasn't quite sure how this was going to work in this confined space, but I would find a way.
The bloodsucker smiled. Blood dripped down his chin.
"I'd like to see you try," he said.
I swung my sword at the fiend, who deftly dodged my strike while making for the door. I followed the bloodsucker out into the hallway, but they had not turned to face me. They ran. At the end of the hallway I saw that same mark that I'd seen in John Byrne's cell in the orphanage, the same symbol I had seen in the room belo
w the cell, and the same as the fresh bite mark on Ellie's neck.
If I let the bloodsucker get to that symbol, they would be able to open it and disappear. I couldn't let that happen.
I sprinted down the hallway after them, using my time to awkwardly load my flintlock pistol. I activated my Expose Weakness ability, but an unexpected message appeared at the bottom of my view.
The level of your Expose Weakness ability is not high enough to use on other player characters.
I stopped in my tracks as I realized what just happened. He was another player! If Dagwood hadn't woken me when he did, Ellie would probably have been dead.
My brain worked overtime, and my body struggled to keep up. The bloodsucker, the assassin, the other player, was almost at the end of the hallway. Their means of escape was waiting for them. All they had to do was reach out and touch it.
I ran as fast as my legs would take me. But the bloodsucking assassin was already out-pacing me. They would reach the symbol before I would have a chance to catch up with them. Then, it would be all over. We'd have no answers at all.
Something flew past my head at incredible speed. I turned without breaking stride, craning my neck to see where it came from. Ellie stood in the doorway of our chamber. Her face was white. She was breathing hard. Blood flowed freely from the wound in her neck. She raised a hand to cover the wound and reached out with her other hand to grab the door frame to steady herself.
She had used everything that she had left to launch one final attack at the assassin, and now she was on the verge of unconsciousness.
I turned back around just in time to see Ellie's hammer slam into the back of the bloodsucking assassin's shoulders. It landed with a heavy crack, which sounded like a thunderclap. The hammer didn't return to Ellie. It bounced off the assassin's back and fell to the floor nearby. Unconsciousness must have taken her, but I didn't have time to do anything about it. My sword was in my hand as I ran towards the prone assassin.
He rose and turned to face me. The assassin's face was split into a maniacal grin. The blood still dripped down over his lips, chin, and down his neck. He lowered himself into a fighting stance, drawing the other daggers he had strapped to his hip. The blade of each dagger was subtly curved. They looked cruel. Wicked. Designed to cause pain and suffering before ending the life of the target.
Rise of the Crimson Order: A Crematoria Online LitRPG Novel Page 28
