by Rachel Ford
They kept marching upward, until they were among the clouds. A gray shroud veiled the world from their sight.
“We are close, Sir Knight,” Migli said. “I can feel it in my bones.”
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Finally. Hopefully I’ll be going home soon, Migli.”
“We’ll see the castle before long.”
“Awesome.”
“Then we –” Migli cut off, turning his eyes to the sky. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“We’re not alone, Jack.”
Jack groaned. “What the heather? More monkeys?”
Then a sound like thunder rolled across the horizon, loud and fierce and terrible. Migli turned as pale as the moonlight. “Dragons. Dragons, Jack.”
“Dragons?” Jack perked up at that. Not that he wanted to stretch the game out any longer than necessary. But he figured he had at least one big boss fight left before the credits rolled. Either Iaxiabor was going to get out of the knife, somehow, and he’d fight him, or he’d have to fight off some minion of his. And a dragon would certainly be an interesting opponent. “Cool.”
The thunder continued, rolling down the mountainside. Now and then a burst of red lit up the night sky. “Sugar. We’re missing the good stuff,” Jack realized.
“We should take cover,” Migli advised.
“Piddle on that. I’m going to go fight a dragon.” He stopped, scrunched up his nose, and physically recoiled. “Piddle?” How the hell that was better than “piss,” he couldn’t imagine.
But the thought of a dragon and a final boss fight pushed the idea from his mind. He raced up the mountainside, with Migli’s protests drifting up after him.
He heard roaring and shouting, and the rush of flame and whoosh of fire. He heard a dire tempo on the horizon, and he felt a nervous sweat slick his brow. The clouds hadn’t thinned at all. He could only see a few feet in front of himself, and then an endless gray world in every direction. He kept running.
Then, all at once, the veil of clouds parted. He stood at the base of a great castle rising up from the jagged stone. It seemed to be carved right into the mountain, taking the shape of rock. The trees all around blazed like living torches, and a heavy, sulfurous odor hung in the air. Smoke rolled across the ground and charred and flaming bodies littered the ground. He glanced up toward the heavens, throwing a furtive gaze in every direction.
The dragon was nowhere to be seen, though. The sky was clear and blue and empty.
Migli’s voice sounded behind him. The dwarf seemed to have materialized out of thin air, and Jack yelped at the unexpectedness of his arrival. “We just missed them. The knaves seem to have fled.”
“Fled?” Jack frowned. “Is this not the end mission, then?”
“We should go in search of the keeper, Sir Knight.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Right. Keeper.” He kept his sword drawn, just in case any of the attackers yet lingered.
But he didn’t need it. There was no one waiting for him. There was no one at all in the lower halls.
No one alive, anyway. The castle and its grounds were littered with dead bodies – bodies of men and orcs and strange, humanoid demon creatures. Some of the men seemed to be defenders. They were dressed in gray robes and carried no weapons. Mages. They were mages.
The others had been attackers. Jack paused to loot a few of them. He got some gold, and a slab of demon meat – the latter of which almost made him throw up. It was one thing to eat demon boar meat. The Susmala looked like pigs, so he could rationalize that their flesh was just enchanted pork.
But these things? They looked entirely human, except for their horns and leathery skin.
Then again, the game told him that their flesh would restore fifteen hit points and five magicka points if eaten raw, and fully restore health and magicka if cooked.
He hesitated by the next demon he came across, a great, burly man-like creature. He stared down at its golden eyes. They looked up at him lifelessly – lifelessly, but very humanlike. Could he really eat a slab of this thing’s flesh, cooked or otherwise?
Then, he remembered how much healing potions cost, and how much magicka potions cost; and he reminded himself that this meat was the equivalent of one of each. So he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and harvested the demon meat. Then he slipped it into his pocket, eyes still closed, and only opened them when the offending flesh was safely out of sight.
They continued in this way through the wide, sprawling hewn-stone halls of the castle, and up the grand staircase. Like everything else, it seemed to have been carved directly into the mountain. It was seamless, built of the same gray stone, and ran on and on without any visible delineations or marks.
“The keeper will be in the tower,” Migli told him.
So Jack kept climbing, up to a third and then a fourth story, and then up a long, seemingly endless winding staircase. This had been built of stone blocks. It was the only part of the castle so far that hadn’t been cut out of the mountain.
They went on. Finally, they reached a stone block landing, and beyond it, a large, circular chamber.
Furniture lined the walls. An artificial alcove had been constructed with a dresser and a bookcase on either side of a bed. A dining table and a few prayer niches sat elsewhere. But in the center of all of this, an old man in long, silver robes lay unmoving. Blood pooled all around him, staining his light robes crimson. He clutched a shattered box in one still hand.
“The keeper,” Migli whispered, his tone low and solemn. “They got to him before we did.”
“Sugar,” Jack said with feeling. The scene, and all that had led up to it, hit him hard. It felt like he was really there, like this old man was more than pixels and energy. Like he was someone real, some self-sacrificing guardian of mankind. And now he’d been murdered.
Except, he wasn’t dead. Not yet. The old man stirred at the sound of Jack’s voice. “What do you want, demons? You’ve already taken your master’s soul.”
“We are not demons, Keeper,” Migli said. “I am Migli, Prince of Dwarves. And this is Sir Jack, guardian of the key.”
The old man stared at them with dark eyes. “Guardian of the key?”
Jack nodded, producing the key from his endless pocket.
The game switched to a cutscene. Jack’s character moved over and cradled the old man’s head. “Let me help you, Reverend Father,” he said.
“Alas.” The keeper shook his head. “I am beyond help. And you are too late, my young friend. Iaxiabor’s minions arrived first. I did my best to hold them off, but they’ve taken the artifact.”
“Ach. This is ill news indeed.”
“I fear so, my dwarven friend. I fear it may be the end of all.”
Jack’s avatar shook his head, a determined light coming into his eyes. “No. No, Reverend Father. Iaxiabor was defeated once. We will defeat him again.”
“Ah, they were different days then. Days when men and elves and dwarves could work together.”
Jack shook his head again. “No, Keeper. I will find the dagger again, and even if they have freed him, I will defeat him. I will imprison him again.”
“You will not be able to do it alone. The ancient heroes relied on each other. You too will need to assemble a team of mighty heroes if you are to defeat Iaxiabor.”
“What about the monsters who attacked you? Where did they flee?”
The keeper turned to Migli. “That I do not know, noble dwarf. But seek the wizard of Ieon’s Spire. You will find your answers there, in the seeing stone.”
Migli nodded, and his beard bobbed with the motion. “We shall do so, Keeper.”
“But beware. Your foe is Kalbidor, a prince among demons, and he rides a pitch-black dragon whose very breath is a poisonous fume, whose fire can melt the skin and flesh off bones. If you seek to stop the return of Iaxiabor, you must first defeat Kalbidor and his dragon.”
Jack – real Jack – sighed. Multiple boss fights. Great.
>
Jack in the game nodded gravely. “Kalbidor will rue the day he turned his wicked eyes to the seven realms, Keeper.”
The keeper reached out a blood-soaked hand to each of the two men. “Remember: in unity lies your strength. The demons know this. All the great, evil houses have put aside their old grievances, and aligned in this one, terrible cause.
“If the races of earth are to survive, they too must put aside their grievances, and work together – lest we are all crushed under the might of the united demon front.”
Jack and Migli looked at each other and nodded gravely. “For my part, I will make peace with the races of men and even elves,” the dwarf said, “if it means putting an end to Iaxiabor.”
“You speak for me as well, my friend. I have one enemy, and one alone: Iaxiabor.”
“Good.” The old man coughed and nodded. “Then I may die in the hopes that my life’s work is not in vain.”
Game Jack nodded again and started to inquire if the keeper was certain he was beyond help. Real Jack sighed. Marshfield Studio loves their freaking extended cinematics…
The keeper started to answer, and then he coughed again. He sagged back against Jack and Migli, and the dwarf shook his head. “He’s dead, Jack.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Well,” Jack sighed as he returned from the cutscene, “I guess I’m not quite at the end of the game yet.”
Migli threw a glance around the room. “We should see if there’s anything here that could aid our adventures, Sir Knight.”
Jack nodded glumly. It was a fair point. They were about to make their way to some place called Ieon’s Spire, to consult with some kind of wizard – Ieon, presumably. It was too much to hope that the spire was anywhere near, much less on the island.
Which meant they had to figure out how to get off the island, how to cross the sea, and how to get to wherever it was they were going. Which, in turn, meant bad guys. Lots and lots of bad guys, probably.
He scouted the keeper’s chamber. There were several chests, most of them smashed and looted. He found a few coins here and there. With what he’d already scavenged, that brought him up to seventy-two gold pieces.
He found a scroll of healing tucked behind the headboard of the keeper’s bed and breathed a sigh of relief. He finally had the healing spell that been eluding him all this time.
In an undisturbed chest he found a pair of enchanted leather greaves that boosted his overall magicka by twenty-five points. He slipped those on posthaste.
Apparently, that was all there was to find, because after he grabbed the greaves, Migli said, “Our first step is figuring out how to get off the island.”
“Do you know where we can find Ieon’s Spire?”
“No. But I know who can tell us where to find it.”
“Who?”
“Ieon.”
Jack sighed. “Okay. And where will we find Ieon?”
“In Ieon’s Valley.”
He stared daggers at the dwarf. “And that would be where now?”
“North of here, several days by sea, in the northernmost realm.”
“Great. So I take it Ieon is the wizard?”
“Ieon is a wizard, yes.”
“So presumably his tower –”
“Spire.”
“Whatever. His spire is presumably in his valley. Right?”
“I do not know. I only know that Ieon resides in the valley that bears his name, and that is north of here.”
“Great. So before we can even get to the MacGuffin, we need to find the guy who can tell us about the tower, that can give us the stone, that can tell us where to find the demons. I am not getting home any time soon.” He sat there for a long moment, considering all the bleak aspects of this new information.
After a minute of inactivity, Migli said, “Our first step is figuring out how to get off the island.”
He frowned at the dwarf. Then, he wondered if Jordan was back on shift yet. If he had more of this – heaven forbid, days more of this – he figured questing alongside her would be a lot more tolerable than dealing with the annoying AI. “Speak to supervisor.”
A moment later, Migli turned a broad grin his way. “Yo, Jack. What can I do for you, my man?”
He grimaced. “Richard. It’s you.”
“Ouch. Geez, dude. Good to see you too.”
Jack bit back his annoyance. His tone had been a little more disappointed than he’d intended. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just…I was hoping Jordan was in.”
“Oh.” Then, Richard’s own tone took on an edge – something like suspicion. “Oh. I guess you two are buddies now?”
“I have some questions for her, about what just happened.”
“Oh. Well, her shift doesn’t start for another half hour. But, if you have questions, maybe I can answer them.”
Jack snorted. “I thought you couldn’t help me? I thought you were ‘just the intern’?”
The other man laughed sheepishly. “Well, you know what Mr. Callaghan says: we’re all family here. Which makes us like…siblings or something.”
“Great. Well, sibling, am I anywhere near the end of this blessed game?”
Richard laughed. “I’m thinking you meant something like the opposite of blessed.”
“Yeah, Richard, I did. Condemned for all eternity to the hot place kind of opposite.”
He laughed again. “I figured. But no, sorry, Jack, you’ve got a long ways to go yet. You’re only about a quarter of the way done.”
Jack groaned and sank to the ground again. “You’ve got to be pulling my leg.”
“Ha. I’m guessing –”
He cut off the other man’s merriment. “Of course that wasn’t what I was saying, Richard. Obviously. No one goes around saying ‘pulling my leg.’”
Richard whistled. “Woah. So, uh, I guess that didn’t go the way you wanted, then?”
“What do you think? I want to go home. I don’t want to spend days or weeks in a videogame.”
The other man was silent for a long minute. Then he said, “I’m sorry, dude. For real. I mean, to be honest, being stuck in a videogame kind of sounds like a dream come true. But everyone’s different, right? So I guess that’s not the case for you. And I’m sorry about that.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Look, maybe when Jordan comes in, she can do something to help you out, yeah? Maybe power you up again or something so you can just cruise on through the levels.”
“Maybe.”
“Alright. Cool. Good thing we talked. I’ll let her know, too, you’re a little down in the dumps. See if I can’t get her to help you out, you know? We go back a ways – heck, back to June. That’s got to count for something, right?”
Jack demurred that he was sure his few month acquaintance would be more than sufficient to persuade Jordan to do something. “But there’s probably nothing anyway. If there was, I’m sure Avery would have done it already.”
“Ain’t that the truth? He’s been sweating bullets about corporate liabilities. He’s going to be almost as happy to see you out of that machine as you are.”
“Right. Well, since I have a long, long play ahead of me, Richard, I should probably get back to the game.”
“Oh, yup. Makes sense. Alright. Well, I’ll let you go then. Hang in there, man. Richard out.”
Jack sighed as Migli returned to his normal, AI self. “Well, Migli, I guess we should get going.”
The dwarf nodded. “Our first step is figuring out how to get off the island.”
Jack just groaned. It was going to be a long half hour before Jordan got on.
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for reading The Great MacGuffin. I’d love to hear your thoughts – please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Bookbub and/or Goodreads. Thank you very much!
Want to find out what happens next? Books two and three are available on Amazon.
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Book 2: UFOs & Unpaid Taxes (ebook & paperback, and audiobook)
Book 3: MarvelousCon & Tax Cons (ebook & paperback, audiobook)
Book 4: Time Slips & Tax Thieves (ebook & paperback, audiobook)
Book 5: Mob Bosses & Tax Losses (ebook & paperback, audiobook)
Book 6: Gullibe’s Travels & Taxing Rabble
Book 7: Underwater & Overtaxed
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Book 2: Mountain Witch
Book 3: High Protector
Book 4: Blood Succession
Sellswords & Spellweavers (fantasy):
Book 1: Bone Traders
Book 2: The Necromancer
Book 3: Transmogrification Games
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Black Flag series (space opera sci-fi):
Book 1: Black Flag
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The Dragonland Saga (fantasy):
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The Tribari Freedom Chronicles series (dystopian sci-fi):
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