by John L. Monk
Thinking of all the times this ring would have helped me—with the raft, with the monkeys who’d stolen my gear—I felt happier about those idiots attacking me. At the same time, I knew they wouldn’t be content to let me keep it and the other stuff, and were probably heading back as fast as possible. I’d been too far away to squint their levels, but sensed they were more formidable than my easy victory suggested. Next time, they’d be ready with their best defenses and deadliest attacks.
Halfway to full mana, I cast Major Shield and continued waiting.
I worried those guys had a magical way to travel quickly, like Jaddow and his dimensional doorway thing. Unlike me, they seemed better prepared for adventuring, what with their ropes and tents and other things. No food, of course.
Damn you Jaddow and your stupid ideas.
Impatient to do something, I got up and approached the gong. About ten paces wide, the enormous wooden gantry holding it was sunk solidly into the mudpack. How it fit with the swamp setting, I had no idea. As with the coconuts, spear-wielding swamp monkeys, and swamp octopuses, the designers’ vision was a mystery.
Using my new ring, I took down the hammer. I took a few practice swings to see if I could use it without falling over. Yes, but just barely.
“Now or nothing,” I said and slammed it into the gong.
Its deep tone sounded far louder than my puny whack should have warranted, and it was immediately followed by howls, hoots, and roars from the denizens of the swamp. Of far more interest, though, was the appearance of a tunnel leading down into the mud, which had opened like a relaxed sphincter.
Something made me look downhill, and I fell back in shock. Halfway down, on all sides, the mud was glopping together into ten human-shaped protrusions.
Now I knew why those adventurers had attacked me. They’d been banging the gong for two days and thought I was one of the mud things. They’d probably been killing them for XP.
Groaning with arms outstretched, the creatures plodded steadily up the hill. Slow as they were, I could probably bust through their line—that or jump in the hole and take my chances.
To see what happened, I quickly fired Greater Lightning Bolt at a random target. The monster shuddered, and a goopy, bucket-sized glob of mud flew off it. When the blob hit the ground, another mudman quickly formed from the impact.
By now, the circle had closed to about thirty feet on any side. Another development: the hole in the ground was slowly clenching shut.
“Ninety-nine lives,” I said—and jumped in.
There was a time, many years ago, when sliding down a long, winding mud tunnel to regions unknown would have been an absolute blast. But I was much older now—almost seventy, despite my younger body. Which meant my harrowing journey into almost certain death wasn’t fun at all. So un-fun was the experience that my cheeks ached from the rictus grin I held for the roughly one-minute ride down.
“Geeeeranimooooo…!” I yelled as I fell from the tube through open air.
Cartwheeling into darkness, I wondered if my enemies were still at the binding stone. If so, they’d almost certainly murder me when I appeared.
All thought scattered when I splashed head-first not into the ground, but cool clean water. It shot down my throat and up my nose, and the top of my head hurt from the water smack. It could have been worse. During the plunge, I’d lost my staff. A good thing. Had I been carrying it, I might have been knocked out.
Unable to tell which way was up, I gulped in yet more water and flailed around. When that didn’t work, I forced myself to calm … and noticed the bubbles were floating this way and not that way—visible by a faint blue light.
My face broke the surface and I sucked in huge lungfuls of air. Way out across the black water, a torch of ghostly blue flame flickered atop a golden pole.
Tamping down a sudden worry about muck monsters, I began kicking in the direction of the torch. Nearly impossible in my heavy robes. Even harder when I bumped into my errant staff and had to carry that while swimming.
When I scrambled up the sandy blue-lit shore, a game message appeared:
DUNGEON FOUND: Trial of Pain, 10,000 POINTS
QUEST STARTED: Trial of Pain
Chapter Sixteen
The strange blue torch flickered eerily, banishing the darkness but not its oppressiveness. No heat or smoke came off it. No scent of spent fuel. Intrigued, I quickly swiped my hand through it, then snatched it back as severe cold sapped away a single health point.
I worked the feeling back into my fingers and took in my surroundings. Ahead of me, a vertical wall of black rock spanned left, right, and up toward the cavern ceiling, lost in the gloom. Carved through the middle of this stretched a long sandy road.
Another interesting detail: along the beach a ways, just inside the perimeter of the torchlight, was a binding stone.
Currently, if I messed up and died, I’d appear at the stone just outside the swamp. Considering the Trial was likely dangerous, I decided to bind myself rather than risk the walk of shame.
Precautions taken, I turned my attention to the road. Obviously, I was meant to walk down it. Almost certainly there’d be monsters to fight. Big ones, likely. Now I regretted not spending enough time in the swamp leveling up.
I started down the road with an eye out for monsters, but nothing attacked me. If not for my wet robes, the going would have been pleasant. The cool dry air, lack of insects, and hard-packed sand was a welcome change.
“Hey, hey!” I called loudly and noticed a slight echo from the featureless walls, about twenty feet to either side.
Other than the blue torch back by the water, there was no other light source, so the way should have gotten darker. When it didn’t, I chalked it up to Mythian’s predictable need to offer light in every dark place. Minutes later, when nothing dangerous or painful happened, I looked back and saw I hadn’t traveled very far. In fact, I was only about sixty feet from the shore.
“That’s annoying,” I said.
It seemed there was a degree of time/space trickery going on. But at least I wasn’t in pain.
I walked back to the blue torch for another look: brass pole in the sand, its top engulfed in flickering blue flames. I ran my hand through it again and lost 2 health points.
“Okay, fine.”
I stuck my hand in and forced myself to hold it a few seconds longer. This attempt lost me 15 health points at 5 per second, with no visible damage to my hand.
Something else happened: the flame turned yellow, like a normal torch. Three seconds later, the color reverted to its original blue color.
“All right, thirty seconds. Go!”
Like an idiot who couldn’t stop hurting himself, I touched the flame and held it there as shivering cold spread through my body. The pain built steadily, from something like a bee sting to needles being shoved into all my nerve endings. Twenty seconds in and I had to let go.
After two more tries, I noticed my health was draining quicker with each attempt.
I checked the game log. My very first pass had lost me a single point in one second. The next had lost me 2, then 5 a second. After that, 10 a second, then 15, and this last time 20 a second. I knew if I tried again, it’d be 25 a second.
The torch had turned yellow for longer on that last try. Now, when I looked along the sandy road, there was a difference. About five hundred feet down, the way abruptly ended in a towering wall of fog that disappeared into the blackness above.
Not wasting a moment, I dashed toward it as fast as I could. Pretty fast, given my improved strength and agility. Before I got to the end, the wall evaporated in front of me. Once again, I stood on the blue-lit road to nowhere.
On a hunch, I used my telekinesis ring and tried touching the flame remotely but felt nothing. When I reached for the pole, it felt like a pole. I couldn’t cheat the game, at least not this way.
What I needed to do was burn my hand just a little bit longer. Easy enough, now that I knew the trick. Right?
&
nbsp; No, as I quickly learned. There was a catch, and a nasty one.
Each time I touched the flame, the duration it stayed yellow shortened inversely with the pain, which increased in step with the damage per second. Thus, to reach the fog, I’d need to hold on even longer—something I seemed incapable of doing without pulling away too soon.
In a masterstroke of cruelty, the game had perfectly simulated my body’s natural instinct not to hurt myself. Which didn’t stop me from trying.
And trying.
And trying.
After a while, the health loss per attempt grew so high, I accidentally killed myself, dropping me to 98 lives.
One good thing about dying was the damage per second had reverted back to normal. This was offset by yet another catch: the pain now began at an even higher intensity than before.
For the first time since entering the game, I grew truly frightened. If I couldn’t hold on for thirty seconds before, how the heck could I do so now? Also, I’d bound myself down here. If I couldn’t overcome this, how would I ever get out?
My next two days were spent in absolute agony. In total, I ended up dying five times before finding a way to beat the awful thing.
What I did was put on a suit of chainmail looted from the adventurers, then wrap myself in rope so tightly it couldn’t be removed without careful effort. I then touched the flame for 1 point of damage and let go. I did it again for 2 points and let go, knowing full well the rate would jump to 5 a second next time. And that’s where the chainmail came in.
“You’re a fool and a moron,” I said tightly. “And Melody’s worth it. That’s all that matters. Do it. Do it. Do it!”
I took a running jump with the bottom of my chain shirt pulled out and ran the torch along the inside, lodging the flame against the bare skin of my chest.
Screaming…
Thrashing…
Hellish torment…
As intended, I was completely incapable of pulling myself off. And because of the health boost from the mail and other gear, my maximum health was 950—the highest it had ever been. This guaranteed a long and agonizing death.
Working in my favor for once, the torch’s 5-per-second damage multiplier took a little longer than three minutes to kill me. After resurrecting free of pain, the torch was still yellow from all the time I’d put on it. The wall of fog was back and would stay for at least another two minutes. Enough time to walk up and casually step through…
To hell with that.
I grabbed my bag of gear, sprinted for the fog, and dove through headfirst.
Chapter Seventeen
From a full run, I fell, rolled, and banged my elbow hard enough to numb my arm all the way to my hand.
The disembodied voice of Ruth, our house persona from years ago, said, “Ethan, are you okay? Do you need me to call a paramedic? If you don’t respond in ten seconds, I’ll do so anyway.”
Ruth?
I issued a wordless howl of confusion and pushed away from the … the sink? Our sink? In our old apartment?
Clambering painfully to my feet, I stared at everything like a frightened tourist: the plant hanging in the corner by the happy-face clock, the stainless-steel island where we did our food prep, Gramma’s antique kitchen table, purchased a hundred years ago from a place called Macy’s. My gaze moved from the jumble of spices on the counter to the open pantry, bursting with baking supplies. We’d taken the doors off to extend the shelves out further…
“What the hell is this?” I said in a rough voice that sounded nothing like the strong young tenor I’d had in Heroes of Mythian. This voice sounded thirty-five years older, deeper, and craggy from a lifetime of use.
“Ethan, I don’t understand,” Ruth said.
I held up my hand, turning it in wonder at the sight of aged skin lightly covered in tiny silver hairs.
“Okay, I’m calling them now,” she said. “Try not to move.”
“Cancel that!” I croaked.
“All right,” she said. “If you’re sure…”
“I’m fine!”
Desperate to understand what was happening, I mentally reached for my character sheet and … well, nothing happened. I reached again—really focusing this time—and still nothing happened. My character sheet, it seemed, was missing.
“This can’t be real,” I said quietly.
“Do you need help, Ethan?”
“I said shut up!”
Something was blinking in the corner of my vision. Faster than thought, my old reflexes kicked in and I opened the message from Ruth: Is this better, Ethan?
“Oh, shit…,” I said, stumbling against the sink. “Shit, shit, shit, shit…”
It couldn’t be. Not this. Our kitchen? My old, dead body? Smart lenses and everything … Exactly as I remembered it. Life. All except…
“Ethan?” Melody said from deeper in the house. “Why are you yelling? What’s wrong?”
It had been just over five years since my wife died. When she walked in from the family room alive and as old as the day I’d last seen her, well…
“Ethan!” Melody shouted, rushing to catch me.
“I’m fine,” I said, holding onto her.
“You most certainly are not,” she said.
As she guided me to a chair, I said something about slipping and banging my arm. I was a little shaky, that’s all. No, I hadn’t hit my head, and yes, I’d love some water.
She got me water.
“I’m taking you in,” Melody said in a matter-of-fact tone I’d never succeeded in arguing with.
I tried anyway.
“I really am fine,” I said. “I told you, I slipped.”
“Then why are you staring at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.
I looked away, shaking my head in denial. “I just can’t.”
“What?” she said.
“I … I can’t believe how beautiful you are,” I said in a trembling voice while tears streamed down my face.
Needless to say, that didn’t go over well.
Melody and I spent the next few hours in a doctor’s office somewhere. You never knew exactly where an emergency flitter took you. For medical services, they routed to any location with capacity. Also, as usual, there wasn’t a human available to see me. Routine medicine was handled by lucids these days.
With no template in my experience to draw upon, I simply went through the motions, reacted, and did my best to keep from crying again. Just barely, I managed.
The lucid doctor said there was nothing wrong with me. All I needed was rest.
On the flight back, Melody said, “We’re not getting any younger. Whatever we break today stays weak for the rest of our lives.”
I glanced sideways at her. “Long, happy lives?”
Melody nodded. “If we’re lucky.”
Had she hesitated ever-so fractionally?
When we got to our two-bedroom unit, Melody put me to bed. I didn’t sleep, though. No, I used the time alone to quietly fall to pieces.
My character sheet’s gone!
The game’s gone!
Melody’s alive!
Though I doubted my new reality with a sort of paranoid skepticism, I couldn’t argue with how it felt. The artificial aches and pains of Hard Mode paled in comparison to a lifetime of wear and tear on my sixty-five-year-old body.
Melody was old too. On the way home, she’d made small talk to fill the uncomfortable silence. Her sister, she said, had a new job doing quality assurance somewhere. She was on a management track and making good money. Six percent above the base citizen salary.
All this had happened years ago. But here we were going over it again as if for the first time. Or maybe this was the first time, and I’d simply gone crazy. Could I ever have been so stupid as to retire to a game world called Heroes of Mythian? At the prompting of a letter from a stranger named Cipher?
With everything in me, I hoped this was real. My
thian seemed so long ago and far away. Burning myself on purpose in a … what? Trial of Pain? Fighting coconut-wielding swamp monkeys?
Rita?
I found myself thinking about her, wondering what she was up to. Would have been up to, had any of that been real.
Mistaken, that’s what I was. I’d suffered an episode. The brain was a mystery, after all. There were people who thought they’d seen ghosts. Others believed they’d been abducted by aliens.
“And I still can’t see my character sheet,” I said quietly.
Sleep, when it came, stole over me in the natural human way, cradling my embattled psyche for the remainder of the evening and into the next morning.
Chapter Eighteen
The next few days passed in a marital bliss I hadn’t experienced in so long I’d forgotten what it was like.
A normal marriage, over time, sets into a comfortable routine sustained by the myth that the person we’ve spent our lives with will still be there in the morning. In short, we take our spouses for granted. With Melody returned to me, the false certainty of her eternal presence had been shattered. Repeatedly, I found myself engaging in “small talk” and looking for reasons to be around her when normal-me would have been doing something else.
“You don’t have to be in here, you know,” Melody said in a slightly annoyed tone. She was in the kitchen repotting a plant that had outgrown the pot she’d purchased it in. I was sitting with her. Watching her.
Like a lunatic.
“But if I go somewhere else,” I said, “how will I witness your glorious beauty?”
Melody snorted. “You are a nut in a hut, Ethan Crane. If you’re gonna be in here, hold this.”
I held the plant straight while she packed soil around it. She assumed I was teasing, and I was a little. She was beautiful, and I liked looking at her.
