The Monolith

by Stephen Roark

  Mickey shook his head. “Nothing on the web or the news. They still don’t even know where he is.”

  “How is that possible?” Fujiko growled. “All the equipment we have, cameras and I.D. chips, and they can’t find the guy?”

  “He is a tech savvy dude,” Mickey reminded her. “Going off the grid wouldn’t be too hard for a guy like him.”

  “Yes, but why would he do that?”

  “We have to figure this out,” I told them. “I—I have to find Rey. I can’t be gone from my mom’s for too long before she starts to worry, reports me missing or something. We need to go back now. Someone has to know where this city is.”

  “If it’s a high level zone like you think,” Altarus replied. “We won’t be able to reach it.”

  “Maybe it’s not. Maybe it just looks high level. And if it is, then we grind like no one’s ever grinded before, and we get there. Maybe the monolith can help us find…them.”

  “Or maybe it’s a trap,” Fujiko said.

  “No,” I shook my head. “Someone wants me to find it, and there must be a reason why!”

  “I don’t know, Rand…” Fujiko replied slowly. “I think we need to be careful of this monolith until we know what it is.”

  “Well, we won’t know what it is until we find it,” I snapped. I was angry. Confused. I felt helpless, like my mind wasn’t mine and was open to invasion whenever the person or thing calling out to me decided to do so. Rey was possessed, taken by the mysterious corruption and had been labeled one of the Bloodless, and I was no closer to finding her and helping her than I was when this all first started. Sure, I could get myself out of the game, but how was that helping anybody?

  “Is it morning yet, Mickey?”

  “No,” Mickey replied. “Still a few more hours.”

  “Okay,” I said, leaning back on the chair-table and getting comfortable again. I’ll go back and see Mom later. But not yet.

  “Do you intend to go back in now?” Altarus asked.

  “Damn right I do,” I replied as I reached for the Fount. “We’re just wasting time here.”

  My head was still killing me. But maybe if I went back into the game world, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Rand, wait,” Fujiko protested. But I didn’t. I pressed the button on the Fount and closed my eyes.

  36

  Bone Soup is Good for the Soul

  “Many people believe in the world below. I for one do not. An entire civilization beneath the earth? Preposterous! Only the dead belong beneath the ground—that is why we put them there!”

  —Gravekeeper Boucher, before the madness took him

  There was no lamppost. Not this time. Instead, my eyes opened to the site of cold stone and dead earth as I found myself lying on the edge of the Swollen Cemetery where I’d fallen. My head still felt like a fishbowl filled with carnivorous swamp beasts hunting their prey, which just so happened to be my brain tissue, but compared to the disaster it had been back in the real world, it was bearable.

  I had a moment to myself before the rest of my party portaled in around me, and gazed out through the massive trees, telling myself over and over—

  You can do this. You can do this. You can do this…

  A lingering strand of doubt still clung to the inside of my skull the way a piece of a spider web blown across your face seems to resist your every attempt of brushing it away.

  You Will Die!

  That was the promise made to us when logging into this game, and that was back when this game was only a game. It was more now. There were real stakes on the line now. If I didn’t find Rey, what would happen to her? What was happening to her mind while she was out there? Would the monolith really provide answers, or just lead to more questions?

  “Jacob!” I shouted as Altarus and Fujiko materialized behind me. “Jacob, where are you?”

  “Rand,” Fujiko said, obviously wanting to continue our conversation from the lab. I ignored her and walked quickly away from her and found the path that led back to the bridge where Victoria was waiting.

  “Jacob!” I shouted, not worried about attracting monsters or any other PKs. I’d taken Doom and his friends once, and I’d do it again. Try me.

  I heard Fujiko behind me open her mouth to speak, but Altarus silenced her somehow. I was thankful for that. He was a wise man and knew that I was about as eager as I was to hand over my cape cloak to a random stranger as I was to chat more about our current situation. I was a ship in the ocean without a compass, map or any land in sight. I had to pick a direction and follow it, and right now, my direction was whatever would take me to the monolith.

  The walk back to the bridge was uneventful, thankfully, and as we approached, I heard hushed voices emanating from below.

  “This is just so great!” someone said—that someone was Jacob.

  “I am glad for you,” Victoria replied as I came down the slope and found them talking beneath the shadows.

  “There you are!” I said to Jacob. In our absence, Jacob had reached level 6. He grinned as we walked toward him and Victoria raised her eyes and smiled.

  “Hello, Seekers,” she said softly, her voice like butterfly wings on an air current. “Have you brought more bones for me?”

  “That’s it?” I asked as I stepped up to her. “No, hello or good to see you or glad to see you’re not dead?”

  Victoria looked at me quizzically and cocked her head to the side—then smiled gently. “Glad to see you’re not dead.”

  “Uh huh,” I replied sardonically as I opened a trade window with her and slid my 20 Old Bones into an open slot.

  “Twenty!” Victoria exclaimed happily, quickly accepting them. Again, the sound of drums and bright white victorious letters.

  Task Complete!

  An enormous wave of Quintessence splashed up my body and I heard the satisfying sound of yet another level up as I reached level 9. Finally, I thought. Progress. But not fast enough.

  Victoria began humming to herself as she got to her feet, revealing a black iron cauldron that had been hidden in the shadows behind her. She reached out with a gentle caress and ran the backs of her fingers across its bulwark. Presently, steam appeared from the vat of greenish liquid swirling within.

  “Old bones, old bones…” she muttered as she began dropping the collection of corpse pieces I’d handed over to her into the enormous kettle. For the first time since returning, I glanced back at Fujiko, who had her nose wrinkled up again as she watched Victoria’s gruesome cooking.

  The bones found their place, vanishing into the steam with a sickly plopping sound as they sank beneath the bizarre broth. Victoria, seemingly oblivious to the heat of the bubbling mixture, reached in with an index finger and began to stir.

  “Is she cooking those?” Fujiko asked, not hiding the disgust in her voice.

  “Yup,” Jacob chuckled. “And it’s for you!”

  An unexpected puff of steam burst from the surface of the turning stew, as though the Old Bones contained mini-explosives or some form of gun powder within their marrow. I couldn’t help but twist up my face as I watched her cooking. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jacob eyeing me with a funny, expectant expression on his face. Finally, Victoria plucked a glass mason jar from a small stack beside the cauldron, dipped it into the vile looking sludge, filled it to the brim and closed it. She repeated this a second time, then turned back to me and presented them happily, like a child who had just drawn something and was proudly displaying it to their parents.

  “This will aid you in your travels,” she said simply. Not wanting to offend her, I took the jars, which were warm from the contents within. Still, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to consume them—I mean, had she really just cooked up a soup from the bones of those rotted old corpses and dogs? Still, I opened my inventory and inspected them.

  Victoria’s Bone Soup (2)—Made from the Old Bones of Rotted Corpses and Corpse Eaters, Victoria’s skillful hands as a chef have transformed these heinous material
s into something strong and delicious.

  +10% Toughness for 5 minutes

  +15% Vitality for 5 minutes

  +20% to Frenzy

  “Wow, this is pretty great, Victoria,” I remarked happily. “How’s it taste though?”

  “Like mother’s chicken soup,” she said with a smile, but I could see by the look on her face that she was joking and I was in no hurry to gulp down the mixture that she’d made from the bones of reanimated corpses and horrible beasts. Hell, I didn’t even like eating clam chowder.

  Altarus and Fujiko stepped up to repeat the turn in process of their tasks, and I realized I hadn’t taken the time to spend my Quintessence since reaching level 9. I was actually closing in on level 10 already, and figured less than a half hour of hunting would get me there with ease. I raised my Toughness another 2 points, just in case the mobs started hitting harder, completely neglected Skill, as I was focusing on a Strength build, threw another 3 into Viletaint and 2 into Strength. I felt confident in my health at the moment, and if I could keep pumping up the damage of my axe and gun, I’d chop down my enemies before they even had a chance of killing me.

  Rand—Level 9

  Vitality: 15 HP = 378

  Toughness: 12

  Strength: 26

  Skill: 5

  Viletaint: 17

  Intellect: 5

  “Almost level 10,” I said, more to myself than anybody else, but Fujiko heard me and responded.

  “I just hit 7.”

  “As did I,” Altarus added.

  “Movin’ on up.” I grinned as they took their soups from Victoria.

  “Many thanks, Seekers,” she cooed, her voice like warm silk resting on gently moving water. “I will be here if you wish to return with more bones for more of my soup. I hope it aids you on your travels.”

  “Thanks, Victoria,” I told her. I still couldn’t help but feel for her, though, squatting beneath a bridge like a homeless person, beside a cauldron of boiling body parts. What was her story? Did she have a family? She claimed to not be from the Hills, but for some reason I didn’t think that was the truth. Where else would she be from if not there? Maybe this was just a mystery that was not for me to solve. After all, Mizaguchi had intended for this to be a fully living, breathing world, so it would make sense there would still be pieces that would remain elusive to me. The oddly beautiful girl nodded her head and we made our way back up the slope to the road.

  “Well, that was quite worth it.” Fujiko smiled.

  “Where did you guys go earlier by the way?” Jacob asked. I could hear the slight envy and indignation in his voice and understood completely. He was unable to log out, like the rest of the server (as far as I knew), and had witnessed his entire group vanish right before his eyes, leaving him alone in a terrible graveyard with no idea when, or if we would return.

  “I had another…attack.” Attack? Is that what it is? It seemed like the best way to describe it—after all, it wasn’t anything that I controlled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I—I don’t know how to explain it,” I replied, trying my best not to let the image of the monolith invade my mind. But the more I tried, the more it did just that. I saw it standing there, tall, triumphant, but also somehow supremely evil, surrounded by the enormous, incomprehensible city that towered around it on all sides.

  “The monolith?” he asked. I nodded, frustrated by just how impossible it was to explain any of it to anyone. “Do you have any idea what it is yet?”

  I shook my head, fought to suppress the raw, thick embers of burning rage that swelled within me at his question. It’s not his fault, I reminded myself. He’s just asking the same questions as you. “No. I just know I have to find it.”

  Jacob nodded but didn’t reply. I could see he had more on his mind, more questions to ask, but someone behind me was giving him the signal to keep quiet—probably Altarus.

  “I’m almost level 10,” I told the group. “I’m gonna kill a bit more at the cemetery. You guys are free to join me.”

  Of course they would, but in a way, I almost wished they wouldn’t. I needed time to clear my head and a little solo grinding would probably be the best way to do that. But they came along, and we kept to the edge of the graveyard, cutting down corpses and beasts until I hit level 10 and the others had gained a level too. I put another 2 points into Toughness.

  Rand—Level 10

  Vitality: 15 HP = 378

  Toughness: 14

  Strength: 26

  Skill: 5

  Viletaint: 17

  Intellect: 5

  I trained my new skill, which I thought would come in handy for simple sheer damage output:

  Crippling Blow: 10 second cooldown. 150% damage. Requires a Strength weapon.

  I should have felt pure joy and excitement at the acquisition of my new skill, but I didn’t. In fact, it almost pissed me off, as I knew that under normal circumstances this would have been a minor victory, but with the way things were, with the real things I had to do, it was going to take a lot more than simple game progression to cheer me up.

  Altarus and Fujiko both hit level 8 and Jacob reached 7, which had him absolutely beaming as we made our way back to the road and headed back to the Weeping Hills. I told them I needed to restock, but I still had a stack of Soothing Syrup and plenty of slugs for my Blunderbuss. Really, what I wanted to do was find some answers. Someone, somewhere had to know more about the monolith. Maybe Rathborne or Alastor, but either way, what we found when we returned to town was nothing I could have expected.

  37

  The Opposite of Complete and Utter Betrayal

  “The spider drives fear into my heart like nothing else in this world, for he does not belong here. I know not how I know this, but I do. His tortured speech garners no pity from my soul. I know better than to put my trust in something so vile!”

  —from the journals of Preston Willis, explorer

  I’d never seen a warzone, but I didn’t need to to know that the Weeping Hills had become one in our absence. The desperate and terrified screams rang out like off key musical notes sounding out through the air as Death slammed his skeletal hands against the strings of a rotten old harpsichord. Our weapons were in our hands as we came out of the trees and gazed out upon the mayhem.

  The Bloodless!

  There were countless of them—swarming across the village like wasps attacking invaders that had ventured into their nest. A group of Seekers were doing their best to hold them off at the edge of town, but more of them were spilling into the town square behind them, their lifeless eyes seeing everything and nothing at once as they clawed and fought their way toward the players, scrambling over each other with no regard.

  Wilhelm had emerged from his hut and was swinging his mallet wildly into the fray. A head snapped back and the Bloodless (once a player—but now?) hit the ground and stopped moving. Teeth snapped at the pale man but he moved quickly and beat the thing away with a backhand. They seemed to move like a singular organism, a wave of screaming flesh intent on only one thing—destruction.

  My group was stunned. For a second, no one moved, and I knew why. We were all searching the horde for a familiar face, someone we once knew. But I didn’t see her. Rey, as far as I could tell, was not among them. I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t. A thick cloud of depression wrapped its tentacles around me and squeezed. All it meant was she was farther away from me than I thought.

  “They need our help,” I said as I started off toward the town, axe in hand and ready for battle.

  A Seeker cried out as one of the Bloodless sank its teeth into her neck. Blood fountained in a jelly-like spurt like a cluster of vessels beneath the skin had all burst at once. Three more Bloodless leapt onto her and attacked. I heard a gunshot fire, in vain, and watched as the Seeker stopped moving. Seconds later, she began to reappear at the lamppost.

  What happens when we kill them? I thought as I drove my axe into the back of one of the frantic,
howling once-men.

  MASSIVE!

  236

  The thing whirled to face me, but I was ready with my next strike. It was true, found a deadly spot where the neck met the torso, and caused blood to spray like a burst pipe—but as I stared into the cold, lifeless, black eyes of the thing that had once been a player, just like me, I was gripped by a sense of dread like I’d never known.

  What am I looking at?! I thought as my heart began to race and that horrible tingling panic sensation crashed through my limbs.

  They weren’t the eyes of a person. Not the eyes of an NPC. They were barely even eyes at all. More like a void, a portal into a shared blackness that stretched like threads of dark matter between the Bloodless, controlling them, sucking their life’s essence away from them to be fed to a hungry God lurking behind the curtain of reality.

  The thing fell as it died, but the feeling stayed with me, even as I sidestepped another attacker and let my Blunderbuss howl. Slugs chattered across its face, and I followed up the riposte with a heavy attack and two more to finish it off. My Rally meter bloomed as I danced my dance of death through the unholy swarm, cutting a swath of destruction through the bodies of once-players that seemed intent on nothing but pure destruction.

  “Don’t let them bite you!” Jacob shouted again, repeating his original warning.

  Contagious. That was his hypothesis. Like zombie movies. Like the plague that had swept through the Weeping Hills before our arrival. And when I glanced over at the dead Seeker who’d just respawned at the lamppost, I was sure Jacob was correct.

  The Seeker I’d seen go down was standing there, clutching her Butcher’s Blade and staring down at the ground like she was experiencing a vision that none of us were privy to. I moved like a whirlwind through the Bloodless, lashing out with full Rally and hacking them down as I focused on her, watched as whatever it was that had a grip on them began to take her too. The life fell from her eyes, but her body stood strong. A shudder shook her as though a current had run through her body. She twitched, her jaw snapped open and hung, and I half expected a torrent of vomit to spill forth. Instead, she glanced up, spun, and dashed away from town at top speed.