by John L. Monk
Rita snorted. “Why only men? Seems sort of sexist.”
“Myrialla is a dryad,” he said. “She appeals to men in a way no real woman ever could. All men, of all sexualities. She’s the key to our lock, as it were. Once she has you, there’s no escaping.”
That seemed strange. “She has a dungeon?”
“You are the dungeon,” he said. “She is the key. And she can turn that key any which way she chooses. Adventuring males who go there looking for millions of points are never heard from again. Women can’t find her, of course. All they see is the mist, like Rita.”
“But they can just give up!” Rita said. “We all can … I mean, if we’re not Hard Mode we can.”
Jaddow nodded. “That’s true. Which makes the dryad that much scarier given that they never do. Doesn’t it?”
He sipped his drink while we watched him. Rita looked like she wanted to argue.
“So that’s why you asked if I loved my wife,” I said. “Because if I loved her too much I’d go for the dryad. Well, I do love her too much, dammit. I—”
Jaddow said, “No need to decide now. You might feel differently in the morning.” He smiled. “That’s right, we’re staying here tonight. My Gate spell can only be used three times a day and is now on cooldown. Some things never change, no matter what level you are. In the meantime, I’ve secured rooms for us to sleep in.” He placed two keys on the table and stood up. There were numbers stamped into the flat side of each key. “It’s been a long day, and I still have some reading to do.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed for the stairs.
Falling asleep came with added difficulty as I pondered everything I’d heard.
A dryad, I knew, was a mythological being, like goblins and dragons. One with sex appeal, according to the stories. And that was about the extent of my knowledge. In the real world, I would have looked up more information, but the real world these days had become its own sort of mythology.
I’d never been a lech in life. Never coveted my neighbor’s wife, or cheated, or even seriously considered it. Which isn’t to say I didn’t appreciate beauty. I’d just never felt tempted enough to break what I considered a sacred bond.
Rita.
Okay, fine, I liked her. Quite a bit, actually. We’d spent several months together now, working closely as we ground out the levels. Sure, she’d made herself more attractive, but not to tempt me. She simply wanted to look good—and not necessarily to attract men, either. Just like brushing my hair in the morning wasn’t done to attract women.
And yet…
Sometimes around the campfire at night, or on chilly mornings as we sipped our coffee … sometimes she’d look at me. Always innocently, no hint of invitation. And yet, deep down, something in me wished it were otherwise. This something knew our friendship could change on a dime if I wanted it to. Return a glance and hold it … sit marginally closer to her … pop a point or two of my own into comeliness … Any signal would do, and just like that, I’d be a cheat.
So I always looked away. Our conversations stayed light and unimportant. And I passed the test, like a good and faithful husband.
Morning came, and along with it, bitter disappointment.
Before leaving town, we’d had a one-sided argument with Jaddow about game mechanics—specifically on the topic of fairness and karma. “The Forest of Lost Souls” was a week’s ride by horseback. We’d assumed he was planning to open a portal and zoom us there, but he said no—that by doing things for ourselves we’d positively affect our karma, whereas getting help from someone of his power would not.
“The reality,” he said, “is that mortals like us know very little about how karma works. Flying you everywhere like a taxi could end up biting you in the end one day.”
His truth orb when he said this was golden. Ever since acquiring the Kenning Man perk, I’d never caught him in a lie.
Before I could argue more, the wind picked up and he gusted twenty feet into the air in a cloud of dust and bits of hay.
“Good luck!” he called down. “You’re gonna need it!” Then he called up his portal and disappeared.
Rita turned her head so I wouldn’t see her spitting out grit.
“That guy sure is hard to like,” she said.
There wasn’t much I could add to that, so I nodded, climbed on my horse, and together we left.
Chapter Thirty-Five
From what I’d seen, Ward 1 was a strange nonsensical mix of differing terrains jammed together without rhyme or reason. Deserts, mountains, forests, steppes, swamps, tundra, jungle … Almost as if the designers wanted to fit as many types in as possible.
The day before, we’d been in a desert. Before that a semi-tropical area reminiscent of southern Florida. Currently, we were trotting our obedient horses along the outskirts of a massive lake in the middle of a wide grassland. I’d been half-dozing in my saddle when the attack came.
My horse stumbled beneath me, sending me flying. Rita leaped from her mount into a summersault, only to fall with something shiny lodged in her forehead.
“Grof! Grof!” I shouted, using something called a spell alias—once to set the target, the second time to trigger the effect.
Greater Rain of Fire would burn multiple enemies for 1000 health points each. My most powerful area spell, it would kill most monsters our level or lower, but at considerable mana cost: 2500.
As I reached to call up one of my new demons (tested once along the way, to Rita’s delight), I gaped in shock: my mana was gone!
“Hard to cast spells with no mana, huh?” someone said behind me.
I whirled to face an odd-looking man with spiky orange hair, red-and-green pantaloons, and a rich red-and-green checkered doublet with tiny silver bells dangling along the hem. Both the man and his ridiculous outfit were scorched and smoking in places, and his expression was a pained grimace.
“Quick with a spell, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Burns like hell. I’m suppressing it.” He shook his head in frustration. “Man, I hate pain. But who loves it, right? Just my luck, I forgot to stock healing potions before leaving, and … Hey, where you going?”
I’d run over to check on Rita. There was a pointy ninja star lodged in her forehead. Her dull eyes stared at nothing—her first death since converting to Hard Mode, and I’d never felt more guilty. Because of me, she had 99 lives left.
As if reading my thoughts, the man said, “Three hard modes in one spot, would you look at us? Oh, don’t seem so shocked that I knew. I’m definitely higher level than you, but I can’t tell your level. Oh ho, but I can do this…”
He waggled his fingers at me and a faint tickle coursed through my body.
“Sorcerer, diviner, diabolist,” he said matter-of-factly. “You might have been something one day, but you went and pissed off the wrong people.”
“What people?”
“The Crimson Sigil people, ya big nut. They put out a contract on you, and I accepted it.” He bent low in a mocking bow. “Greenie Red, professional killer, how do you do?”
The Crimson Sigil…
My eyes widened in brief remembrance. “Oh, them. You’re saying they hired someone? To come after me?”
“Not just someone. They hired me—Greenie Red, greatest assassin in the lower two. I tinkle through the shadows and strike when least expected!”
An odd thing to say, no matter who you were.
“Even if they hated me enough,” I said, “I mean … to send someone after me … Wouldn’t that cost a whole lot? Or do you get quest points for it?”
As I said this, I noticed my mana steadily creeping back up. At the same time, his damaged outfit was slowly stitching itself together.
“Points, yes,” he said, “and lots of money. The Sigil’s a guild, by the way. A big one, too. Thousands strong, and you pissed them off. Killing you sends a message to everyone not to mess with them—or in your case, rob them.” He laughed and made a waving-off motion. “Don’t worry, I
’ll leave your stuff here. They didn’t pay me to rob it back, and I don’t travel with bottomless bags. Too easy to get lazy and let ’em fill up. If I were you, I’d wait a few years before leveling again. Give them time to cool down. Who knows, maybe they’ll drop the contract.”
“What’s leveling have to do with it?”
“They paid me to keep tabs on you,” he said. “If you level again, I’ll know. Got a spell that tells me. Lucky for you, I’m only paid to kill you once per level and not three times. That costs more. Okay, ready?”
“Hold on!” I shouted, hands raised defensively.
Greenie Red’s face clouded with faint annoyance. “This shit itches, man, and I wanna get in that nice cool lake over there. What?”
I had enough mana now to cast Lightning Bolt, which wouldn’t do a thing to help me. Instead of that, I silent-cast Discern and read my game log.
NAME: Michael Wilson, a.k.a “Greenie Red”
CLASS: Assassin 191 / Swordmaster 100 / Diviner 25
LEVEL: 316
FLAGS: Hard Mode (71 Lives)
BASE DAMAGE: N/A
HEALTH POINTS: 10,175 (9215)
LANGUAGES: Hero, Orc, Goblin, Pixie
PERKS: Summon Gingerbread, Mana Swipe (Remaining Cooldown: 23 hours, 56 minutes, 28 seconds), Kenning Man
A diviner, like me. He’d put 5 skill points into it, on top of the 20 the Trial gave free. He’d put the majority of his non-assassin skills in swordmaster, one of the Normal Mode classes offered by Bite.
Mana swipe?
A twinkishly powerful perk in an assassin’s hands…
“You idiot,” Greenie said. “And here I thought you were quality people. I was gonna spare you the bonus they paid me to torture you, but hey, you asked for it.”
Greenie reached in his pocket and pulled out a shiny silver pocket watch. When he opened it, the world turned sickly green and the whole of my being burned.
Later, I’d be hard-pressed to say which hurt more, Greenie’s spell or that torch in the Trial of Pain. My agony seemed to go on forever. Very nearly, I gave up. Instead, I focused on Melody—her plight, the unfairness of it. Love and rage shored me up, and I endured.
From faraway, Greenie said I deserved what I got, that his hands were clean. He added that if I told anyone his ranks and perks, he’d set his watch to an hour next time, and not five minutes.
When my five minutes were up, the pain disappeared. And me too, briefly.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rita and I had a policy: whenever we found a binding stone, we used it. They were scattered all over Mythian, detectable by the beaten paths adventurers made to them. Until now, we’d managed to survive what battles we’d had and never needed one. But we’d kept up the practice, and it paid off by resurrecting us thirty miles from our corpses.
“Noob tunics,” Rita said bitterly. “I hate noob tunics.”
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said.
“Not your fault. It’s those horrible designers. No taste at all.”
“I mean for getting you killed.”
“You can cut that out now,” she said. “I knew what I was doing when I flipped my switch. If I wanted safety, I’d have stayed in Heroes’ Landing.”
Rita’s words did nothing to diminish my guilt. She had a crummy 99 lives now. Cut it however you liked, my actions had brought her closer to death eternal.
She asked why I hadn’t died immediately, and I told her about Greenie Red.
“He says he’ll kill me again if I level.”
Rita snorted. “Like to see him try. We’ll be ready next time.”
“He sucked away all my mana.”
She pursed her lips, thinking it over. “Well, obviously I don’t use mana. Also, maybe travel with a demon? You know—that really big one?”
Many demons, like Buzilag, the Life Eater, were guardian demons. Buzilag would hover nearby and invisible, waiting with a 3,000-point slash against anything that attacked me. It would then disappear. In addition to needing a rare gem of any type, it also required a lock of hair from each person protected, which the caster had to burn. The upside was Buzilag would stay around forever until used, with no mana cost until triggered.
I said, “I won’t be summoning anything without gems. Anyway, I can’t see us leveling before the dryad.”
“You’re still gonna do it,” she said bitterly. “You heard what Jaddow said: nobody beats her. Mythian doesn’t play around. Talk about false advertising! A real game would have balance. Look, you’re not the worst player, but you’re definitely not the best. This is suicide. There has to be another way.”
“Let’s just get our corpses,” I said and started walking.
Later, while moving through a hilly area home to ogres, she asked if I was still angry. No, I wasn’t angry. I simply didn’t know what to tell her.
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me,” I said. “It never did. The real Melody is dead. The real me is, too. And yet, whoever I am now still cares for my wife … or who I think my wife is. It hurts my head just thinking about it. But I can’t do nothing and still stay sane.”
I thought back to my time in the Trial—how the game fooled me into thinking she’d never died, only to make me relive the nightmare of her death again.
“I never had an opportunity to save her,” I said quietly, “because that’s not how life works. She got in a flitter one day, and then she was gone. If I’d asked her to stick around a while—eat something, go somewhere fun—we’d be living our golden years together right now. You don’t have to help, but that won’t stop me. I’ll search that forest inch by inch if that’s what it takes.”
Rita’s hand fell into mine, and for a while, I held it. Her message was clear: she was with me, even if she didn’t agree.
A week after gathering our gear and buying new horses in another adventurers’ town, we arrived on the outskirts of The Forest of Lost Souls, the closest forest to Heroes’ Landing.
“Is the spot still on your map?” I said.
Rita nodded. “Yep. Seems there’s no time limit for encounters.”
A helpful thing about our internal maps was they auto-marked every location where we’d had an encounter. For example, our one-sided fight with that assassin was marked “Ambushed: Greenie Red.” My battles in the swamp with the monkeys, muck monsters, and the Crimson Sigil were also marked.
“How far is it?” I said.
“About two hours if we make a straight line and don’t run into something nasty.”
“We can beat anything in this forest.”
Rita didn’t reply.
“You know what I mean,” I said.
We were standing at the edge of a clearing with an enormous tree at the center of it. Oak, I supposed. I wasn’t good at trees.
Rita said it was too dark when she was last here, so she hadn’t noticed it before.
“And I was running from bugbears at the time,” she added.
“So where’s the purple mist?”
She shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe we need to be closer.”
“We?”
“Jaddow said women are safe here.”
I forced a laugh. “Sort of one-sided. Men get an opportunity for amazing power, and women get nothing.”
Rita snorted. “Obliteration is an opportunity I can do without, thank you very much.”
“This shouldn’t take long,” I said lightly. “I’ll go in blasting. Probably be back in a couple of—”
Rita grabbed me in a crushing hug and quietly cried. I returned the hug stiffly, aware of how she felt in my arms and hating myself for it.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, patting her back awkwardly.
We stood like that for half a minute before I pulled away, said something equally insufficient, and then strode into the clearing.
The tree was at least a hundred feet tall, and as fat around as the floor space of my old apartment. Coppery brown bark with silvery highlights. The dark leaves were broad and shiny l
ike pregnant teardrops, and a massive root system spread everywhere like veins in the forest floor.
In a break from normal treelike behavior, a cloud of billowing purple mist whooshed out of a hollow in the base of the trunk. It quickly reached my knees, then my neck, and soon the once-clear sky became dark and tinted purple.
A glance back showed Rita nowhere to be seen. When I looked at the tree, someone was standing in front of it. A woman. But no, not just any woman. Quite simply, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen or ever would for as long as I lived. How I knew this was a mystery, just that it was so.
She had long black hair, mirth-filled eyes bluer than any of the pebbles in my gem bag, and a mouth so captivating it transcended anatomy. I hardly noticed that she was naked … at first. As she strode toward me—hips swaying like a bell, breasts high and firm, as if riding a wave—my eyes slipped down her shining skin to the dark declivity of her sex. When I looked up she stood whisper close, gazing into my eyes—lovingly, longingly.
In a deep, intimate voice that teased like a riddle with no clues, she said, “Have you really come to kill me, Ethan Crane?”
“You’re Myrialla,” I said lamely. “The dryad.”
At the sound of her name, she smiled agelessly, searing my soul in the heat of a hundred thousand sunrises. Her beauty … it took something out of me both precious and irreplaceable, and I didn’t mind at all. She was the key to every lock inside me. No need for struggle. No longer would I fear disappointment or pain.
Come into my tree with me, she said, though her mouth didn’t move. There’s food for the hungry, rest for the weary.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
My days in the tree passed without demarcation, and I’d never been happier in my unimportant life. My most cherished moments were but shadows to the tiniest glances from Myrialla.
