“Jack!” I shouted, turning to her and hearing the whoosh of Spectral Energy as I moved. “My name is not Iron Jack! Iron Jack is some fake, made-up loser with a magic sword and a chin that could cut glass. I’m not him! I’m a loser dropout with a pissed-off sister and a nephew he’ll probably never see again. Oh yeah, and I don’t know how the fuck to stuff my ass into this body!”
Hecate listened to me patiently, actually nodding along as I went on my diatribe. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I thought I might actually be getting through to her. Maybe she’d get the idea that she’d made a mistake. She didn’t need me. She needed, like, Chuck Norris or something. Maybe Stallone in a squeeze, but either way I certainly wasn’t an acceptable substitute, even if I did know my way around this particular setting.
My hope faded as quickly as it came though because Hecate stopped nodding and responded, “Well, you better figure it out, Iron Jack,” she said, putting an intentionally thick amount of English on the name. “Because I’ve got a cute little ogre's nose, and we both know how good ogre noses are at smelling things.” She leaned closer. “Would you like to know what my ogre's nose is smelling right now, Iron Jack? Would you like to know what is -- at this very moment – rushing toward us in an attempt to literally eat your ghost ass alive?”
I sighed loudly. I didn’t need to ask what she was smelling. We both knew there was only one thing in the entire game (or, I guess, world) that gave a damn about floating spirits. They were the same things that nearly did me in any time I thought it was a good idea to haunt my friends or the rest of my guild in game. They were the chain-wearing, fang-bearing, hooded black-and-white specters of death who ranked below only the Jackal as my most hated members of Kingdom of Heaven.
“Wraiths?” I asked, deadpan as I looked over at my ogre guide. “Are they wraiths, Hecate?”
I thought about the many times I had come face to spirit face with these things. Though they bothered me, they didn’t scare me much while I was playing. I was already dead. The worst these creatures could do was send me back to my last save point. It meant I’d likely have to deal with the forest and the Jackal again, but it wasn’t as big an inconvenience as other enemies could dish out. Which was to say, bosses, they were not.
It didn’t matter if they were bosses anymore, though. I had one life in this place, one chance at getting this right and getting back to my family. If I couldn’t get into this body before they got here, I’d have wasted that chance and the only life I had left on some irritating and low-level baddies.
Suddenly, the wraiths seemed a lot scarier.
As if Fate itself was pulling its pants down and dropping a deuce right on my head, the moment the words left my mouth, I heard them. The rattling chains of the wraith echoed throughout the valley. Underneath it, there was a low and constant wail.
“The Banshee?” I said, my eyes growing wide. “The freaking Banshee is with them?” I asked, my heart racing as I thought about the bigger wraith who served as their queen and was basically an unstoppable powerhouse of fanged death. “But the Banshee is never with them. She never comes out of her cave.”
“That statement would appear to be inaccurate,” Hecate said, turning away from me.
There, over the end of the valley, they came into view. Dozens and dozens of Wraiths, clad in black hoods and floating toward me with their mouths open and fangs dripping with green venom. They looked like flying grim reapers, shadows of something that was once alive and could never be again. They were hungry lions, and I was the only gazelle in town, which wasn’t exactly something I was comfortable with.
In front of them, leading the charge, was the Banshee. She glowed blue, and the sound of her shriek sent shivers through the place where my spine should have been.
Hecate looked back at me. “Did I mention you need to figure out how to get back into this body?” She took a deep breath and took a step back away from the approaching creatures. “Because if you were waiting to find the proper time, now would be good.”
6
Watching the horde of wraiths moving toward me, floating in the air a few feet off the ground like me, a renewed sense of panic shot through me. These things had ripped me apart more times than I could count in game. Of course, I wasn’t actually inside the game when it had happened. Their fangs, dripping with venom, were the only things in the entire realm I was aware of that cut into spirits, and boy had they ever. There was this one time when – rushing to get into my body – the damned things jumped on top of me and literally ripped my ghost head off my ghost neck.
It looked like it had really hurt. Now that I was in a position to feel that pain for real, a brand new urgency settled over me.
I swallowed hard. They were moving quickly. So quickly, they would be here in just a few moments time.
“Run,” I said, trying to keep my voice as even and calm as I could. I was freaking out, don’t get me wrong. If I’d have had an actual bladder and actual pants on, I’d have probably wet myself. Still, if playing had taught me anything, it was that losing your cool never did any good. I had never made more mistakes and gotten myself killed more times in any game than I did when I lost focus. This place was like one “gotcha” after another. If you didn’t keep your eyes open and your mind clear, you didn’t stand a chance. So, to that end, I figured it was better to at least try to keep myself together.
It’s just a game, I said to myself; a mantra meant to make myself feel better. It wasn’t true, of course. This game had apparently always been real. The things I’d done had affected these people and these species in ways I could never have imagined. In fact, had I known the creatures on the other end of the screen had real feelings and were really invested in what was going on in what I had assumed was a make believe world, I probably wouldn’t have done half the crap I did. I certainly wouldn’t have slaughtered the entire contents of a Moonstone Temple to gain experience points, I’ll tell you that much.
The truth was, I had been playing for keeps this entire time, and I’d had no idea.
Well, now I knew. Now I was in it. So what the hell was I going to do about it?
“Run?” Hecate asked, her eyes focused on the wraiths and the screaming Banshee leading the charge. She wasn’t in any sort of immediate danger. Wraiths fed on Spirit Energy, souls as it were. Ogres, demons, grounded angels; basically, anything wrapped up in a convenient meat suit was immune to the terrors of the wraiths. If I was in my body, I’d be free from this, but I wasn’t. So I was basically bait dangling in the water.
In fact, most living species couldn’t even see them. That was a gift reserved for the dead, for the likes of me. The fact that Hecate could smell them only spoke to the nature of her ogre senses, which would have been pretty cool if they hadn’t warned me I was about to get my ass eaten.
“Run where?” she asked, his voice a little higher than my own. Though she faced no physical threat, it was obvious she was invested in keeping me alive (or reanimating me, as it were). She needed me for that Skull Throne thing, and that meant she was a hair away from full blown panic too. “Run where, Iro-Just Jack.”
“No,” I shook my head. “That’s a Will and Grace thing. Don’t call me that either. You know what,” I swallowed, coming to the realization that I didn’t have any choice in this. I was where I was and – whether I liked it or not – I was going to have to go along if I wanted a chance at seeing my family again.
If I wanted to survive this, I was going to have to play the game dammit. Luckily for both of us, there was probably nobody better at that in any realm Hecate could have traveled to. “Iron Jack is fine.” I watched as they neared. I could make out details on the Banshee as her mouth twisted open in a scream. That’s how close she was. “Iron Jack is perfect.”
I spun to Hecate. “I need you to stay here, brandish that excuse for an axe you’ve got across your back and keep this body safe.”
“My axe is a splendid example of destruction incarnate,” she responded.
“Please,” I scoffed in return. “You can get it for five thousand coins from any low-rank blacksmith. Don’t flatter yourself. Now the body has to stay here. I’ve never moved it out of this valley before. I have no idea what would happen if I did. The wraiths won’t bother it, but that doesn’t mean some demon or mystic looking to sell my scalp for potions won’t come by. You keep me safe until I get back.”
“Back?” she asked, pulling his axe out and giving it a once over, as though she was trying to convince herself I was wrong about the nature of the cheap thing. “Where in the kingdom are you going off to, and why in the realm would you think you could do it by yourself? You just told me you didn’t know what you were doing.”
I shrugged. The wail of the Banshee was loud now, so loud, it was cutting through our words and making it impossible for me to hear myself, let alone Hecate. Fear trickled into me and then started pouring like a turned on faucet.
“Wanna know a secret about Iron Jack, Hecate?” I asked, winking at the ogre. “He basically never knows what he’s doing.”
“Well, I wish I would have known that before I bet the future of the entire realm on him.” Hecate shot back as I spun away from her.
Pushing myself upward, I shot off into the sky. Specters could fly in this realm, just like wraiths, but unlike wraiths, specters weren’t connected to the energy in the ground. As a sub-sect Nature species, Wraiths were most powerful when surrounded by nature. Woods, trees, water, all that crap gave them life. They might have to feed on Spiritual Energy, but that didn’t mean it was all they ran on.
The official KOH guidebook-which my sister had surprised me with in the days before she thought of me as a put-upon martyr with a penchant for computer screens and a “within my reach” bag of Cheetos – told the history of the wraiths. They were druids to start with, hence the affiliation with the Banshee. They all got killed though, wiped out by mystics and science dealers who traded up in energy and technology, basically making their tree hugging brand of earth loving parlor tricks a thing of the past.
Things didn’t really get interesting until they died out. The same earth that had let them down before had twisted them into something different, something darker.
This history and the knowledge of it was the only shot I had in taking these things out. Shooting further and further up into the air, I turned my neck just enough to look back. Smiling, I saw they were all following me, a wave of floating death monsters right on my tail.
Why, you might ask, would I think of that as a good thing? In any other world (and most of the time in this one) failing to elude an army of creatures literally chomping at the bit to kill me would have been frowned upon. This was different though. This was my plan.
I strained myself, traveling further and further up into the sky, which also meant I was traveling further and further away from the ground and all its wraith-sustaining energy.
As a specter, I ran on Spiritual Energy and would until I found a way to jam myself back into the body Hecate was guarding down there. Spiritual Energy was all around though. It was every bit as plentiful in the air as it was on the ground or even below the ground. The same couldn’t be said for the natural energy holding the wraiths together. If I could go fast enough, if I could go far enough, then these bastards would disintegrate in midair. If I couldn’t, they would absolutely destroy me. So, you know, pluses and minuses.
I took deep breaths, unsure of whether the air was actually helping me or not. I had never taken the time to think too much about the physics of this particular way of being.
The wail of the Banshee – a thin, ghostly woman with white hair and a stretched out and hollow face – got louder and louder behind (and now under) me. She was getting closer. I could practically feel her, as the chains hanging from her cloak jangled, chains she would use to bind me and hold me in place while each of her people took a bite out of me.
Pushing myself as hard as I could, I shot forward, propelled by sheer force of will like a rocket gaining momentum as it broke free of the atmosphere.
But I wasn’t free of the atmosphere. As far as I knew, there was nothing beyond this sheen of bright sky, no space outside of it, and certainly no planets floating out there beyond my line of sight. This was all there was, and that meant I needed to keep flying until that wail went silent.
Heat, like flames over a stove, started licking at my feet. Suddenly, I started to feel like Easy Mac, bubbling and cooking as the things on my tail prepared to scarf me down for dinner.
Closing my eyes, I thought of my little family back home. I thought of Amanda and the first time I saw her. My mom was doing well back then. She had kicked the drugs and had been with a firefighter who had promised to make a real family out of us.
When they brought Amanda home, I felt a responsibility I had never imagined before. Here was this little girl, a person who was made up of a lot of the same things I was. I knew I had to keep her safe. Unfortunately, months later, the firefighter found out Amanda was not his child, No, she was the product of a yearlong affair my mom had been having with her sober partner. He’d bolted, causing the desire to protect her to grow. When Mom finally left for good, it grew even more, and when Amanda looked at me with mascara running down her face and a pee stick with a plus sign on it, it reached its apex.
Hopefully, I thought as something clamped against my spirit feet, she’d find someone who could pick up the slack I left, someone who could make her happy and raise John like he was his own. Hopefully, with me gone, they’d be better off. The hope was all I had left because it certainly didn’t seem like I was going to survive this. If I didn’t, they needed to at least. They needed to have a good life. It would mean mine wasn’t wasted.
A rush of red-hot energy flared up my legs and into my chest. I shuddered and fell backward. I had failed. It was as clear as the sky I had been rushing toward.
Falling backward, unable to keep myself afloat, much less moving, I saw the Banshee and what was left of the wraith pack. They had thinned out in number, letting me know I had been right in my thought process. Being this far away from the ground must have been enough to destroy some of them. Still, there were more than enough to take me out, and hey, now they’d each get bigger pieces of me to split.
I fell backward, the Banshee taking point as she rushed downward toward me, glowing fangs glistening in the sun.
I wished I would have been a prayer. You know, the kind of person who went to church on days other than those that start with “Christ” or “East.” Maybe then, I’d be able to find some peace in all of this. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so damned scared of what was going to happen. Maybe then, I might even be saved.
Like the answer to a prayer I never actually got around to praying, a bright light appeared off in the distance. It flew toward me with a speed I would never be able to match. It flew much faster than I fell and even faster than the Banshee and wraiths could travel.
The light made a beeline for me, bright blinding energy touching the wraiths, ripping them into small shreds of nothingness as it did. Their bodies pulled apart, leaving them shreds of themselves floating in the air. The Banshee screamed, looking back at the blinding entity.
She pulled up, flying away from me and taking the remnants of her pack with her.
They were leaving. They were heading for the hills, both figuratively and literally, and it was all thanks to this blinding light.
I pulled to a stop, instinctively aware it was because I was under the power of this glowing thing.
Breathing heavy, I did my best to keep looking at the thing as it neared me. Still, the light was so bright. Before long, I had to shut my watering eyes. By the time I was able to open them again, the light had died down, and I was staring up at an extremely familiar figure.
Before me, looking down at me with bright shining eyes, flapping angel wings, and an iron-clad body that I had looked at more than I cared to admit, was the last straw in what might have been the last fight I’d ever have with
my sister.
Orgina, the “angel with her tits hanging out” looked down at me, her face a mask of both beauty and confusion. She was actually here, right in front of me. Suddenly, and for whatever reason, I felt better.
“You?” she said, face twisted in confusion. “You are Iron Jack? Our great hope?” She took a deep breath like she couldn’t believe what was happening. “We are…what’s the word…screwed.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, near speechless as I stared up at a woman who was so beautiful, so enchanting, I’d fantasized about her before bedtime on a near daily basis. “Sounds about right.”
7
It took Orgina one swift movement of her angel hand to stuff me inside the Iron Jack body. It was disorienting at first, a bit like coming off a roller coaster; all queasy with the world spinning around me. Still, I did my best to settle myself and, when my eyes regained their focus, I noticed a stark difference.
Now that I was officially inside my avatar, the world looked more familiar than it had while I was all ghost like. Thankfully, in this form, my eyes worked the way my screen had back when I thought this place was little more than an amazingly intricate distraction.
At the top of my vision was my notification bar, blinking frantically to let me know something had changed since my last sojourn in game. Feeling a lot more like my old self (or the self I had been in game), I mentally ticked up to the bar and clicked it. It was strange, moving things around with my mind as opposed to my mouse or fingers. Still, the interface was shockingly identical. Where before it felt as though I had fallen into a strange and different world, now it really seemed like I was inside the game.
The notification bar expanded into my line of site, revealing the reason for the blinking message symbol.
Message from Ice:
Dude, you went AWOL the other day. Where the hell are you? Glimmer’s pissed and Ember says if your ass isn’t back online by the quest on Saturday, he’s looking for a new hand-to-hand guy.
The Skull Throne: A LitRPG novel (Kingdom of Heaven Book 1) Page 5
