by Shiloh Hunt
DASHING_WILLIAM_19: VOICES GETTING LOUDER. SOUND ANGRY AND WEIRD. HOW CLOSE RU?
Kitty snapped her mouth shut and thought out a reply.
BAD_KITTY_69: ALMOST THERE. I THINK
There was a pause.
DASHING_WILLIAM_19: U THINK?
Kitty grimaced.
BAD_KITTY_69: GTG
She closed her console. “If he’s not here, where is he?”
“How should I know?” Lucy asked. He pushed open the door. “You ready?”
“For wh—?”
There was a hiss like steam escaping a seam under pressure. Rose coloured smoke filled Kitty’s vision and then the hungry suck of gravity made all thought impossible.
She was still screaming when she struck a smooth surface minutes later. The impact drove her mind into the purest of night.
5
“Rissse, my darling…”
Kitty groaned. Her head felt muzzy. She pushed herself to her feet, blinking furiously to disentangle shape from shadow. Around her, soft pillows of pink cloud blossomed. It looked like a time-lapse of those fluffy clouds you got in summer: mushrooming up, simultaneously delicate and forceful. A setting sun tinted them peach.
“Lucy?” Kitty whispered. “Where are we?”
There was no reply. Twisting, Kitty scanned the area around her, but from all appearances she was alone in the blissfully serene bank of clouds.
“I’ve been waiting for you…” the sinuous voice continued. “It’ssss been sssoooo long…”
Kitty’s skin began crawling, eager to be away from the sinister echoes surrounding her.
“It’s so lonely here, in the sssky…”
She swung around, convinced that the lisping voice had been spoken right behind her. Her movement stirred a knob of cloud, dissipating it into mist.
“Who are you?” Kitty called out. “Where are you?”
“You’ve forgotten me already, my darling? You’ve forgotten your lover?”
Ahead, the clouds bulged around a tall, lithe shape. They parted reluctantly, tendrils clinging to Miss Tilly's hips. The spectre slid forward, the movement apparently not requiring the need for any of her muscles to move.
“I… uh…” Kitty swallowed and tried to work moisture back into the desert of her mouth.
Miss Tilly slid to a graceful halt. White hair, shimmering in pearlescent hues, coiled lazily around her shoulders and arms, embracing her limbs as she tipped her head to the side and studied Kitty.
“Griffin got your tongue, my lovely?” Miss Tilly stabbed out a finger. A sharp, bone-white nail pierced the air, striking sparks off an innocuous puff of cloud as it passed.
A roar shredded their pink cocoon. Kitty lurched back, eyes wild in their hurried scan of what the departing clouds revealed.
The jagged bones of some long-dead monster’s ribcage ensnared Kitty. Strips of decaying flesh still clung to some of the impossibly thick bones. Kitty leapt back as Miss Tilly stabbed toward her again, her plump lips parting with unhindered glee.
Kitty’s shoulder crashed into a bone. She tried to wriggle out between two of the bones, but the architecture of the game had insured that they were about an inch too close together to allow her through. Maybe if she took off her armour—
There was a slap of sound: a mixture of noise and pressure slammed into her.
If she hadn’t been wedged between two bones, she might have been pushed off her feet by the shock wave.
A griffin landed on the spine fastening the rib cage above her. Its sharp, curving beak reflected a shard of distant light, source unknown, as it squawked. It began pecking at the rib cage, beady eyes flickering over Kitty’s body as if wondering what she tasted like.
Kitty screamed and renewed her efforts to escape. Behind her, Miss Tilly began giggling.
“Don’t struggle, my darling.” The creature slid forward, reaching for Kitty. “In but a moment, your soul will be mine.”
Rosy clouds crept back inside Kitty’s prison, obscuring the furthest end of the cage.
“Lucy!” Kitty's hands scrabbled over the slippery bone in front of her as she tried to force apart the two ribs she was wedged between. “Help me!”
“Such a pretty soul too…” Miss Tilly crooned as she slid closer. Kitty stiffened, eyes flashing between the sorceress and her griffin fiend above. “It will look so lovely with the othersss…”
A billow of cloud puffed out beside Miss Tilly. The sorceress reached out, stroking the fog with a slim hand. For a moment, the cloud resolved itself into the shape of a face, screaming in eternal agony. The yawning mouth fell open, widening further and further as a tumour of cloud bulged from the gaping maw. The new protuberance expanded into a shape: another face, similar in terror, dissimilar in features.
And, as if sight of those two faces had unlocked within Kitty some previously unknown talent for spotting the ghosts of tortured souls, the clouds around her began writhing with them. Kitty screamed, abandoning her efforts to force herself through the ribcage and instead drawing her bow.
Miss Tilly tossed back her head, pearlescent hair gleaming as she cackled. Her hand lifted, and the bow melted into sticky threads of gold. Kitty yelped and tried to unsheathe it, but the threads clung to her regardless, slithering up her arm and twining around her neck.
“So lovely, your soul…” Miss Tilly simpered. “So lovely, my darling girl.”
From above came a pained squawk. A fountain of red washed over the sorceress, her startled blue eyes blinking out from behind a garish mask of blood. Miss Tilly’s face swivelled up. A heap of steaming entrails slapped into it, knocking her to the ground. The sorceress snapped out of existence, reappearing a few feet away from the griffin’s digestive tract and other squishy organs.
Kitty’s head fell back.
Lucy clung with one hand to the griffin’s neck, struggling to reclaim his sword from the griffin’s sternum with the other. His armour was gone; he wore the same clothes as those he’d worn on the row-boat. Dyed red now, and clinging wetly to him as he fought to stay attached to the mortally injured monster.
The griffin shrieked with a wet, torn sound.
It leapt into the air, but streamers of blood and intestines bound it to the spine it had perched on. It snapped back down, crashing into the cage of bones with enough force to splinter them apart.
Miss Tilly shrieked. She collapsed to her knees, blood-soaked hair now devoid of life, hanging in clumps around her face. Kitty drew her old hunter’s bow from her inventory, an arrow striking Miss Tilly’s shoulder.
Another, her throat.
The third buried itself deep into the sorceress’s left eye.
Lucy dropped down from the remains of the cage, his feet crunching on the shards of bone littering the desolate ridge they stood on. The clouds began thinning. Kitty could hear myriads of voices whispering praises for their bravery, some of those trapped souls now grinning with joy as they dispersed.
Soon, Kitty and Lucy were alone, their only companion the whistle of a breeze as it flirted with their hair. Lucy’s armour was back on, but he’d left off his helmet this time.
The wind whipped his hair into fantastical shapes as he turned to face her.
“That’s it, mate,” Lucy said.
“So that was Chimera,” Kitty mused, lifting her eyebrows. “Wasn’t too bad.”
Lucy laughed. The sound was surprising rich and deep and Kitty spun to face him, eyes wide.
“I lost two lives the first time round,” Lucy said. “When I eventually figured out the griffin could be killed, he got me down to almost zero health points before I figured out where his weak spot was.”
Kitty dropped her gaze to the blood-muddied ground, using the toe of her boot to push away a coil of intestine.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No worries. Anyway, you served as the perfect distraction. Miss Tilly was simply overcome.”
Kitty glanced up at Lucy. He had a faint smile on his lips.
“You used me as bait?” Her voice was shriller than she’d intended. Kitty cleared her throat. “You didn’t think that maybe you should have warned me? You know, something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry, Kitty. I know how to kill the ferocious griffin. I’ll get you out before it eats you!’”
Lucy lifted a shoulder, his smile growing a fraction. “I’m not yet certain of the extent of your acting abilities. I couldn’t risk you being anything less than one hundred percent gen-u-ine.” The last word rolled off his tongue, heavily painted with his accent.
“You’re sick,” she said.
“And you’re still alive.”
Kitty looked away from an expression that was smugger than it should have been.
She shook her head. “You were right about Will.” The words came grudgingly.
“I’ve been here before,” Lucy said. “There was a decided lack of prisons the last time I was here. Doubted they’d have added them.”
Kitty’s shoulders drooped. “How am I going to find him?”
“He’s no doubt in the sheriff’s prison in Helical.”
“You think?”
It was Lucy’s turn to shrug. “If not, then he has to be in another rift.” Lucy’s eyes grew solemn. “We’ll find him, Kitty.”
“But what if he’s glitched out? Like, stuck somewhere between here and planet earth?”
Lucy’s head swivelled away from her as he scanned the mountains crowning Chimera. The sun was setting, bleeding tangerine lifeblood into the sky. A sliver of a dragon, nothing but a silhouette at this distance, briefly smudged the spectacular vista.
“I hope for your sake that’s not it,” he said.
“And if it is? What happens then? What happens to Will?”
She heard Lucy inhale a slow, steady breath.
“I wish I knew. He can’t get back to terra firma, and the game can’t release him.” Lucy shrugged. “He’ll probably starve to death, unless someone finds the two of you and unplugs him.”
Kitty stared out over Chimera’s sparkling waters. Here, the storm they’d coasted into was nothing but a dark swathe of electrified condensation and the shore where she’d met Lucy nothing but a strip of gray sand.
“Excrementi,” Kitty whispered.
“That’s a pretty accurate description,” Lucy said.
Level 2
A Fan & And Some Smelling Salts
“Stay a while…and listen.”
Deckard Cain - Diablo
6
The exit shimmered in hues of green and purple. Spanned across a gap between two tall, jagged rocks, it looked too much like a vertical oil slick for Kitty’s liking. It had taken them a few minutes to find the well-hidden cleft that led them to the tiny rock shelf. Kitty tried to avoid looking at the voracious drop inches away from her right foot.
“So… we just walk through it?” Kitty asked.
Lucy glanced back at her. He’d taken off his helmet again, but a small, quick smile smoothed out the frown between his brows.
“I guess so.” He took a step forward, touching the toe of his avatar’s suit of armour against the surface. It vibrated, clinging to him when he jerked his foot back.
“And that’s where Will’s got to be, right?”
“We going or what, mate?” Lucy lifted his eyebrows at her.
“Going.” Kitty gave him a quick nod. “Let’s go.”
“Ladies first.” He stepped back, giving her a mock bow.
Kitty pushed back her shoulders and took two quick steps toward the barrier. She paused, twisting to Lucy, rearing back when she realized how close she was to him.
“I can come back this way if William’s not there?” she asked.
Lucy’s dark eyes stared at her without expression. “Sure. Why not?”
Kitty took a breath, and walked through the barrier. It struck her in the face before sliding over the rest of her avatar.
The difference in temperature made going through the barrier feel like getting into a hot bath. The membrane drew over Kitty’s flesh, clinging as if reluctant to part. A sweltering heat pounded at her. White light blinded her, and she stumbled as her feet sank into a soft, yielding surface.
Kitty was still blinking in the glare of two unwavering suns when Lucy crunched out of the barrier beside her. He gripped her arm, his weight nearly tugging her to the ground. She tried wrenching her arm free, but the man didn’t seem to notice, blinking furiously and shaking his head.
“What—?” Kitty began.
Lucy released her and started forward. Okay, swaggered forward. He looked as he had when she’d first seen him Chimera: dressed in dark, tight leather, his avatar decked with shoulder-length black hair. Kitty stared for a few moments before dropping her gaze to her own avatar’s preposterously endowed body.
She groaned. “I don’t do skirts!” she yelled after Lucy’s retreating back. “Like, ever!”
“In Helical you do.” He didn’t bother slowing, throwing her a sneering smile over his shoulder. “And you’ll keep your tongue, too. Nothing gets these folks in a lather like a woman speaking out of turn.”
“I—what?” Kitty surged forward, inventory flashing open for her to find her sword, intent on sliding it into Lucy’s back—
She stumbled to a halt, skirts tangling around her legs. “What in the name of tarnation is this?”
Lucy swung around and gave her a tight-lipped grin. “That, sweetheart, is a fan. With feathers on it.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with it?” She waved it around in the air. “I couldn’t beat someone to death with this if I tried!”
“Stop bagbiting. You’ll get used to it.”
“Where’s all my stuff?”
“Your inventory’s been reset,” Lucy said, giving her an expressionless sidelong glance. “Same as your character. You’re running the default avatar, with a newb’s stash in your pocket. S’pose it’s ‘cos we came in the way we did, ‘stead of accessing a save game or switching rifts via the menu.”
“Wait… did you say Helical?” Kitty spun around, eyes flashing over sandy dunes and distant, wavering peaks.
She tipped her head back, eyes narrowing in protest at the glare thrown down from blazing twin suns. Then her eyes snapped down again, doing another quick scan at the sweltering map behind them.
“The exit’s gone!” Kitty glanced at Lucy over her shoulder.
He kept walking, seeming oblivious to her panic. She clenched her fists and ran after him. All right, she tottered after him: trapped as she was in her voluminous skirts.
“Lucy, the exit’s not there anymore. How are we—?”
“Not the smartest of daddy’s girls, are we?” Lucy’s deep-throated chuckles brought even more heat to her already flaming cheeks. “It was obviously a one-way ticket. But no worries: I’ll find your Will.”
She realized she was fanning her face and slammed the ridiculous feather fan back into her inventory. All her clothing and weapons from the previous rift had been removed. All she had was the stupid dress with its stupid cinched waist and prostitute-height bodice, a feathered fan, and smelling salts.
“Coming?” Lucy called.
Kitty gripped her skirts in two white-knuckled fists and stormed after Lucy, breath huffing through engorged nostrils. When her eyes eventually adjusted to the glare of Helical, she did a quick scan.
The rift was enormous. Admittedly, Life: Online had boasted it had the largest player environments of any game ever created, but this was ridiculous. The scenery disappeared behind a heat haze after a quarter mile, but further still rose the blunt peaks of slab-like mountains, some dusted with a hint of dark green foliage.
Her tiny, pointy boots sank into the sand with every step. The white shapes of clean-picked bones protruded from the desert floor, regularly interspersed with cactus and tumble weed.
“Not very original,” Kitty said when she’d caught up with Lucy.
He was in the process of tying a bandanna across his mouth. He turned to her
, eyes dark slits above the faded red fabric, and lifted an eyebrow.
“Neither was Chimera,” he said.
“At least it had like, I don’t know, unicorns and stuff.”
“Helical’s not what it seems,” Lucy said.
“So it’s not a massive desert?”
Lucy dipped his head slightly. “No… it’s pretty much a massive desert.”
“So, it’s not filled with cactus and tumbleweed?”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll admit Helical has more than the average desert’s quota of tumbleweed.”
“So…” Kitty went on with a wide grin, “It’s really, super-duper unique then.”
Lucy glanced at her. “That fan suits you.”
Kitty gave her hand a sidelong glance. It waved the feathered fan with quick little flicks, sending cool air over her cheeks. She made it stop. “It’s hot as a blowfly’s crotch out here.”
“That’s why I’m finding us a carriage to get us to Tumbleweed.”
“What, that tumbleweed?” Kitty indicated a not-so-lonely tumbleweed drifting across their path.
“Tumbleweed town.”
She groaned. “Wow, so original. And why in tarnation are we here anyhow? I thought we were supposed to be in the Arena.”
Kitty plucked the moderators’s bulletin from her inventory. It had transformed into a leather bound book tawdry with gold leaf. Inside, the message was pretty much the same as before: the game had experienced some vague, unforeseen programming error which they were working hard to remedy at this very moment. In the meantime, all menu functions had been disabled. Any players that wished to exit the game had to reach the Arena, where moderators were waiting with breathless anticipation to assist them exiting. Then it listed the points for each rift where a player could fast-travel to the Arena, starting with Chimera.
“I mean, the Arena is part of… what’s it called again?”
“Bang-Bang Island?”
“Yeah…” Kitty said. “That’s the lame-ass name I couldn’t remember. So we’re here why?”
“You got me, mate. I was expecting Bang-Bang as much as you were. But if we arrived here, I reckon there’s a good chance so did your Will.”
