Glitch Kingdom

by Sheena Boekweg

  She drew her legs into mine.

  Each step the Devout priest took thudded in my ears like my pulse. I peered over the bin edge and saw his wide shoulders.

  I tucked Lady Tomlinson in my arms, folding in as small as possible. She stiffened against me, but kept quiet. I didn’t dare whisper a warning.

  I didn’t think I could heal without my head. I did not know the limits of these strange recurrences. I’d died five times in the last twelve days. Each time, surprised as ever, to breathe once more.

  The hilt of her sword pressed into my ribs, and our breaths echoed in my ears. Too loudly. Even our heartbeats might give us away. The back of her warm neck pressed against my nose, her hair brushing against my eyes. She smelled of fresh soap. I inhaled. How could anything smell clean right now? She moved and I could feel her pulse against my cheek, thudding slower than my own. Steady. I matched my breathing with hers. Inhale. Exhale. My rising chest pressed against her back.

  We were in danger, so I should not be enjoying this.

  The priest took his time patrolling the street. He seemed unsettled, his pace unfocused and wandering, his eyes sharp, but not looking to the side where we hid. He didn’t seem to be looking for us in the garbage. A pulse of ghostwind shot forward again, swinging a few clay pots toward us.

  Dagney startled in my arms, shaking like a leaf as those footsteps crept past us.

  Her shoulder brushed against my nose as she peeked over the bins.

  “The priest and the Historian have gone,” she whispered.

  I let out a large breath and dropped my head back in relief.

  “He might come back.” I moved my grip from her arms to her waist. “We could stay here for a few minutes, if you’d like? To be safe.”

  The point of her lips tipped up but she shoved my shoulder. “You smell like fish guts.”

  She climbed out of our hiding spot and my side went cold.

  I picked at my borrowed shirt and sniffed. Oh. I recoiled from the smell. “You’re not wrong.”

  I wiped off my hands as she searched the streets. All clear.

  “You should have tried to charm him to our side,” she said as I picked out a path.

  Dead fish. Dead fish. I stepped around filth until I reached the clean cobblestones.

  “So you think I’m charming?”

  The sky flickered with an odd blue light, like lightning, but all along the edges. I stared at the sky and tried to find a logical reason. The sky was not ripping apart at the horizon, it was simply lightning striking. Again and again. At the same spot.

  That was all.

  She tapped my neck as if she were annoyed I wasn’t paying her attention. “I’m not flirting. Your ability is charisma. You’re so ridiculously pretty everyone just wants to help you, protect you. Haven’t you noticed that people give you more time to make decisions? You can add members to our party. I can’t be the only one to do everything.”

  I tapped a finger right back into her collarbone, see how she liked it. “You were squirming so much you’d likely have gotten us both caught if I hadn’t held you still.”

  “I know how to be quiet.”

  “I was only trying to protect you.”

  She clenched her jaw. “That’s benevolent sexism.”

  I narrowed my eyes and waited for the perfect retort to come, but the well of witty retorts had run dry. “I try.”

  Her dimple dipped.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “Fine. I’ll recruit the next guard we see.”

  “Make it an Everstrider. We need a warrior to balance out our party and their start weapons should be better. Ooh. Bluebird of death is playing as a Warrior class, she’d be excellent.” She spun on one foot and made her way into the market.

  Bluebird of death? Who was that?

  Dagney moved quickly, but I didn’t follow right away. Instead I watched the sky as lightning struck again. Three quick times. Same location, right over the mountain’s edge by the Biallo border. There was a pause, and then three slow strikes. Each one timed with a drummer’s precision. A pause, before the sky sent three bright flashes again.

  “Did you see that?” Dagney asked.

  “The lightning that brightened the entire night sky? No, I missed it.”

  “SOS.” She squinted. “It’s Morse code. I wonder if that’s another player.”

  I caught up. “Morse code? Is that the corrupting code?”

  “No, that was the source code. Morse code is something completely different.”

  “Of course. How silly of me to be confused.”

  She raised her hands. “Let’s just not talk.”

  “Fine by me.”

  I kept behind her. I’d have preferred to be in the lead, in order to stop any attack before it came. But I wasn’t going to complain about the view of her plump backside.

  I lowered my hood over my face as we entered the market square. A few traders were still packing up their wares. They glanced up when we entered the Fools Walk, the path in front of the stalls where buyers traded.

  “I need every healing blossom you’ve got,” Dagney announced. “Who has hibisi brew or blossoms to trade?” A few traders raised their hands, and she reached into her pockets.

  I scanned for swords or threats and stepped in her shadow as she traded most of our food.

  My stomach rumbled. “Won’t we need food for our journey?”

  “We can hunt, and I’ll craft some things.” She glanced above my head. “Your health is fading. When was the last time you ate?”

  I couldn’t remember. “Days,” I admitted.

  She handed me a salmon.

  A raw, pocket-warmed, whole fish she’d found inside a wooden box. The thing still had a head. She mimed taking a bite.

  Disgusting. “Am I a bear?”

  She snorted. “I’m sure you’ve eaten raw salmon before, you’re Japanese.”

  Her words tugged at a memory I could not see. I shot her a look. “I highly doubt this was the preparation.”

  “Fine.” She turned to a trader, a man with a jerkin and a careful gaze standing behind a pile of cheeses and baked bread. Oh lost saints, the smell of fresh bread.

  I grabbed a loaf. Still warm.

  She made a face. “You can’t take things from a trader, what’s your problem?”

  “So now we can’t steal, because someone is looking? Fascinating how your morality is based on observation.”

  She tossed the baker a few coins and gave him the salmon from my hand. “Sorry. My friend is from far away. He doesn’t understand how trading works.”

  The gall. “Explain the rules, then,” I said with my mouth full.

  “Drink your seer water, then.” She smiled at the baker. “Just the one he grabbed. I’m looking for weapons and armor, and no, I’m not going to hunt down a goat for you to make leather. No side quests or barters, I’m trading with food or coin only.”

  Dagney traded quickly, sometimes smiling to get her way, sometimes coldly calculating. She was clever. And useful, I could admit, albeit grudgingly.

  A trader near the entrance watched me. My mouth went dry. I crossed to Dagney’s side and lowered my voice. “We need to go.”

  A Historian stepped into the market.

  Dagney swore and then led us out through a back route. Carefully we stayed in the shadows of the buildings as she led us in a strange path through the city. She’d duck low whenever a Whirligig sped past, and then break open more boxes, which drew more to us. I said nothing of her thievery, though I noted each occurrence, in case there was ever a chance to repay.

  She stopped suddenly, eyeing a corner of a roof, moving back and forth to try to get a better angle.

  “Is it a threat?” I ducked low.

  Her eyes lit up. “There’s definitely something glowing up there.”

  I peered up, but could see nothing that warranted a positive reaction.

  Her footsteps creaked against a table as she pulled herself up to the top of a wall and then
toward the corner of the roof. She reached up, but unable to reach, she turned to me. “A little help.”

  Honestly. I made my way toward her, searched the streets for any spies, Whirligig or Devout, then bridged my fingers for a footstool. She held my shoulders and stepped up, her soft stomach pressing against my cheek as she retrieved a box hidden at the roof’s edge.

  Her skin was so warm, her curves so close. She was trying to torture me by pressing herself against me, I just knew it.

  She found something shiny. A pair of silver boots, of all things. On a wall.

  I very much doubted they belonged to her.

  She stepped back down, and I moved away quickly, not staring at the large curves I liked so much, especially now that I knew how they felt, not staring at the way her cheeks had turned pink with exertion, or the way her joy at discovering these new shoes took every trace of scowl from those plump lips, and the way the crease between her expressive eyebrows had disappeared.

  When she laced them up, moons-light flared upon her face, and afterward each step she took was quicker and muffled. “Boots of sneaking.” She grinned at me with so much light, I could not help but smile back. I’d never seen a wolf smile like hers. You’d think it would be a cold thing, a baring of teeth, a warning accompanied with a low growl.

  But when Dagney smiled, her whole face changed. Perhaps it was the dimple near her lip, or the spark of light in her green eyes, but she no longer seemed like a wolf cornered, she seemed like a wild wolf running free.

  It was disarming.

  And I was not staring.

  Every step she took from then on seemed quieter. Softer. My own steps still echoed as I followed the rest of the way to the Abbey of the Undergod. I crossed into the gates and looked up at the glowing bones of the chapel.

  I touched a spot on my neck.

  Edvarg was dead. I knew it. He couldn’t hurt me again.

  But every person in this Abbey was loyal to Edvarg, and might take my life. Our lives. I held the gate but didn’t step any farther. Dagney slipped under my arm and hit me again, but softer this time, with her bag.

  I followed her in and the gates closed with a heavy clink.

  I started down the manicured path toward the chapel’s large arched entrance, but she snapped once to get my attention and cocked her head toward the back. I’d hoped Grigfen would be in the chapel, with the newly Devout. But of course Grigfen would be in the catacombs, the tunnels dug into the hillside leading to the great pits, the very mouth of the Undergod himself. I’d lost all my good luck when I lost my family.

  We took the Death Walk, the paved path my people used to carry their dead to burial, moving toward the catacomb doors behind the grand chapel. I licked my lips. We’d been lucky, so far, not to run into anyone, but our luck was ending. I could feel it like the pulse in my new heart. As high priest of the Undergod, Edvarg had ruled the dark tunnels and the holy chapel. There was no telling how many of the Devout were loyal to him.

  “I wish we could press save,” Dagney whispered.

  But I was no longer sure salvation waited within. I crossed to the catacomb entrance and pried opened a door made of bones leading into my uncle’s territory.

  I put on a smile she couldn’t see. I didn’t do it for her. It was my own fear I couldn’t show.

  Then we walked into the place of my nightmares.

  8

  DAGNEY

  I hated exactly two things: entitled boys and haunted houses.

  So guess how happy I was to be stuck in a dungeon level with Ryo.

  The catacombs of the Undergod were a classic labyrinth level, so I knew to look out for traps or ghouls hiding in the dark tunnels. Didn’t mean I liked it.

  I looked for a flicker of a candle or some kind of sign ghosts were near, but the two torches lighting the bone walls near the entrance kept a steady wave. I grabbed one from the wall, and Ryo stood behind me, his sword twitching at each dark echo.

  He’d gone suspiciously quiet, but maybe that was because the soundtrack had increased in volume. When I drank the seer water, it gave me game vision, which included a music score. The undercurrent traveling music had been light and bouncing, but now the soundtrack had turned ominous, like the thudding of a heartbeat mixed with the bass of thunder.

  It was as annoying as Ryo himself, although the compass behind my eyes was worth the cost of the accompaniment. Each time we reached a fork the arrow would spin and settle on a tunnel. Most often the darkest tunnel.

  Just flicker for me, torch. Give me some kind of warning.

  Three left turns and one right later, I stopped.

  A body in shapeless robes lay on the ground. An aura of green mist surrounded him. My heart lurched. Was it Grig? The arrow in my mind pushed past him. No, it was an NPC. With his throat cut. I looted through his coat, the few coins I found not worth the look of disgust that crossed Ryo’s face. We crept around him, only to discover another body, this one covered in a black mist. From the bloody knife in his hand, and the spear in his gut, it looked like they’d taken each other out and died in the process.

  The Devout were fighting each other?

  A skitter of bones fell.

  Footsteps.

  The flame from my torch spluttered, and a damp wind shoved through my hair.

  “I hate this,” I muttered. “I hate this.” I drew my sword, so now I held the sword and the torch ready to smack the spooky out of this level.

  I take it back. Warnings made it worse.

  “You hear that?” Ryo asked. Drums thudded in the distance.

  I’d thought it part of the soundtrack. But if Ryo heard it, it must be part of the regular game play since he didn’t have his game vision yet.

  A tunnel opened to the right, but the arrow in my mind said to keep going straight, toward the sound. This game was the literal worst. We tiptoed forward. I saw a flash of ghostlight in a dark tunnel to the left of us.

  Where a bone-dry horse’s skeleton shot out at us.

  We screamed. I sliced the thing with my sword. Again. And again. The skeleton was in splinters, but I hit it once more for good measure.

  Ryo wiped a shard of bone from his shoulder. “Feel better?”

  “A little.” I checked the damage level. Crap. This sword was one hit from shattering. I tossed it to the ground. The tunnel where the Devout who’d tossed the dead horse bones at us was empty.

  If I was playing this level at home I’d be a pint deep into mint chocolate chip ice cream by now.

  Ryo shuddered. “Why would he use the Undergod’s power to scare us not kill us?”

  “Who cares, at least it wasn’t a trap.”

  Ryo took my hand.

  I narrowed my eyes. I was scared, but that didn’t mean I needed comforting.

  “So we don’t get separated,” he said. His jaw pulsed as he looked away. The torchlight found shadows beneath his cheekbones and lined the curve of his nose.

  I dropped my glare. I wasn’t the only one who’d screamed. He was scared too. Maybe he wasn’t trying to give me something I didn’t need, maybe he was asking for something I could give.

  I was a strong confident person so I didn’t need a man to hold my hand because this place was all kinds of creepy, but …

  I liked his hand in mine. It made me braver to hold his racing pulse against mine. I squeezed his hand and held on.

  Together we crept through the tunnels, following the drums and the arrow in the top left corner of my game vision. We found more bodies, covered in green or black auras, casualties of a battle already fought.

  The tunnel led to an open cavern lit by torches and a soft green ghostlight. About fifteen men and women with shaved heads and faces marked with red paint were in the midst of a fight, but not with swords. The Devout and the high priests dueled against one another with ghosts I couldn’t see. I could only see the evidence, a Devout shoved several feet back by an invisible wind, bones drawn from the tunnels to create barriers, and hear hymns sung as battle cri
es. They fought against one another, my game vision marking a glowing aura on every Devout, green marking one side, black the other.

  We ducked against a rocky outcropping. I snuffed the torch’s flame into the dirt.

  The arrow in my mind disappeared as the catacomb surrendered to the darkness. We’d reached our destination. Grigfen314 was in there somewhere.

  A cascade of bones slammed into the boulder I’d hidden behind.

  “Poor Grig,” Ryo whispered as he let go of my hand. “I did this to him.”

  “We’ll get him out.” A green diamond floated above a crowd of Devout surrounded in green. A player indicator. Finally. “There! He’s with the green group.”

  “The what?”

  “You don’t see the auras?”

  “What’s an aura?”

  “It’s like a cloak on their back. The group around him is mostly all green.” I gasped. Of course. “They’re marked by their loyalties. Grig’s in the green, and the other half is in black.”

  “Like a tournament,” Ryo said, a strange look on his face.

  “Exactly.” I drew my dagger. “The green must mean they are loyal to Grig, and the black … I don’t know, maybe loyal to Edvarg.”

  Ryo peered over the edge. He ducked back behind the rock. “Erm. It seems I have forgotten how good-looking I am, because someone just made a remark about my face when they saw me just now.”

  “They spotted you?” Honestly.

  Well, then, I hoped they’d see the knife in my hands. I stood. A Devout cloaked in black widened his eyes as Ryo stood at my back. “It was the prince,” he hissed. He raised his hands. “For the Holiest!”

  A slimy wind pushed us forward, away from the shelter of the rocks and out into the open. I crouched and braced against the wind, but Ryo was taken unprepared and fell backward. A wave of dusty bones whipped around us, circling like a tornado, trapping us in the eye of this storm.

  Ryo scrambled to his feet and attacked the bones, smashing and slicing with his sword, but the only damage he inflicted was to the sword’s stats. The cyclone kept spinning around us, pulling at my dress and thrashing my hair against my face. I flipped my dagger in my palm and waited for an opening. It’d be a waste of time to go after the attack. If I killed the magic wielder, the spinning bones would drop.