Star Divers- Dungeons of Bane

by Stephen Landry

  Stage 2 - When several dozen Hollows gather in mass they fuse together to take a new form. They are able to manipulate their bodies fusing what little lifeforce they have together to create a stronger creature.

  Stage 3 - Two or more Hollow Mass versions can form together to create a Leviathan that turns from a creature of energy to a strange beast of flesh and bone. These creatures are also able to absorb the elements around them as they form.

  Cass and Chaz were a safe distance away but they were going in the wrong direction. Kira, Gorge and I regrouped with Aiko as the Hollow appeared stunned, sitting silently in the ruins. We knew it was recharging but without all seven of us firing at once our weapons weren’t enough to damage it. Not to mention we could hear more Hollow Mass creatures forming in the city blocks around us. Several dozen starships were attempting to flee the planet. Some were being shot down but it wasn’t clear who was doing the shooting. Flares of light came from the sky above while bolts of lightning erupted from the ground.

  ‘This is our fault,’ I said looking at Gorge and Kira.

  ‘This was inevitable,’ Gorge said.

  ‘You blew up the Spire, pissed off the Chel, started a war,’ I was angry. This wasn’t a part of the plan.

  ‘That doesn’t explain what happened, this battle we walked into began before we blew up the basement,’ Gorge pointed out. I knew he was right. Something outside our circle of influence had started all of this and it just happened we were caught in the middle. I suppose I wanted to blame someone, anyone, for what was happening.

  ‘It’s not Gorge’s fault; not yours either,’ said Kira.

  ‘Thank you, wasn’t sure if you were on my side or not,’ Gorge said.

  ‘If you hadn’t blown up the Spire dungeon, I would have,’ she said back.

  Gorge looked at me. I was trying to understand. ‘I know,’ he said putting his good hand on my shoulder, ‘if anyone is to blame it is the Skull-Faced man. We are pawns in a game of chess. Lady Gray, the Crimson Kings, humanity, Chel, and the man in the skull mask. The game is advancing faster and we have to move forward. We need to move ourselves. Adapt. Evolve. Right now we are a block away from the rendezvous point and the Leviathan is going to be back up soon. Shiru sacrificed himself already, let’s not waste his effort.’ Gorge gave me an encouraging smile and turned towards Kira who nodded back towards the both of us. I smiled.

  The Leviathan stood up quicker than any of us expected. It was already upright, looking straight ahead, over us, as we began to move again. Yet the Leviathan looked frozen, as if it was null. Its eyes were big, empty. From the ground it looked soulless, like a statue that had been carved from black ivory. I focused again, letting the shadows and time overtake me. It was beginning to feel like a drug. I felt all my pain dissipate as time slowed and I fired destroying another red orb. The Leviathan lashed out turning its attention back towards us. I knew I had scored a critical hit and it wouldn’t take much more to kill it. We cleared the corner hoping to see the Ibanez pointing its forward gun our way, just high enough so that it would take out the creature.

  We rounded the corner and the blade of a massive guardian swung overhead, cracking against the Leviathan. The disfigured form of Shiru vanished into a digital cloud of dust. The guardian was an old friend, alive and well, remodelled but still much the same minus a few upgrades. It stood 45 ft off the ground with a sword that looked part battle-axe in one hand and a hammer in the other.

  Guardian Aegialeus

  Level: 300

  Very Hostile

  26.

  Down

  Location: Outside the Tower

  The Spire

  ‘RUN,’ I screamed as loud as I could. We were frozen. It would not have mattered if we ran anyway. The guardian ignored us. Instead, the unexpected occurred as it turned and ran towards another Hollow Leviathan that was beginning to form. We ducked down behind more ruins and waited several minutes until we could hear the Hollow Mass Leviathan and guardian fighting one another in the distance. Whether it was the same one that had distracted Aegialeus from us or yet a third Leviathan which had entered the battle, it didn’t matter. We knew that for the time being we were out of harm’s way.

  The Ibanez landed, with Cass and Chaz in their mech suits, the Pilgrim and Radagast waiting for us in the hangar. Pierce was controlling the ship. All guns were active and ready to fire. Although Nel had taken serious damage, she would be all right after a few hours, thanks to the help of self-repairing nanites. Gorge’s arm too would be repaired shortly. It had been thirteen hours since we descended into the Spire’s atmosphere and began our mission but none of us could logout, not yet. At Eternity was waiting for us just at the edge of the system. So close to the finish line we had to see this through, not just for us, but for those we had lost. There were even people like Gorge and Lady Gray who depended on Bane wanting our mission to succeed. Damien’s death; Kira’s brother; their deaths would be meaningless if we didn’t succeed. Even if we broke Bane.

  As we rose up away from the city, I could still see the guardian. This time it was in battle against two Leviathans. Each one looked just as dangerous as the one it had slain saving our lives. It was hard to believe. Without knowing it, the Chel had actually helped us.

  Nel gathered us together at once. ‘We have a problem,’ her voice still sounded worried.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, wondering how could we still have a problem when we were exiting the planet’s atmosphere. Away from the guardian, away from the Hollows and the Chel. What more could be going wrong?

  There was a slight pause, three words I never thought I would hear: ‘you have died.’

  ‘What do you mean, I’m dead?’ I asked. I was shaking when I looked over at Kira. She was crying, watching something. At first I couldn’t make it out. Maybe my mind didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Bane had to be playing tricks. On the holo feed I saw Skull-Faced Man holding a gun. The same one used to kill Damien. Holding it to Aiden’s head…to my head. A moment later Aiden was gone.

  The feed was thirty minutes old. Playing in a loop.

  ‘When Aiden died your location became publicly available,’ Kira began, ‘everyone knew we were inside the Spire. The Titans that crashed, the dead in the streets, the war against the Chel that started. Lady Gray was cleaning up. The Titan we shrugged off as belonging to a random player. Lady Gray had bought and paid someone to crash it. Everyone, the whole damn system, was attempting to come after us so she killed as many as she could. She made the Hollows. The Hollow Mass. The Leviathan. The guardian didn’t attack us because it still couldn’t see passed our disguises. The Crimson Kings, Lady Gray and the man in the skull mask, they can all see us, my feed, my camera, its hacked.’ Kira was crying but I could tell she wasn’t done speaking, ‘they are all waiting for us at At Eternity.’

  27.

  Mek

  Location: Deep Space

  30 minutes from At Eternity

  I watched the video over and over again. Rewinding backwards I watched it all from the beginning to end. It began with Aiden and Eli inside the Crimson Killer in Quadrant 12. They had just finished fighting a horde of Wraiths on a planet called Quala. Aiden, wearing my face, looked like he was having the time of his life. It was surreal watching him play me. His body, his eyes, all identical. The only difference was that he was a better player and it was obvious. The way he moved with such agility, endurance. I was surprised so many could be fooled thinking he was me.

  After clearing the Wraiths, Aiden was showing off his newest mech suit. A light unit called the Bright Wind of Eternal Night. It looked identical to Naomi’s Grace, including sword and battle rifle. Just like Naomi’s Grace it was custom modded and blue. On the side were dozens of decals, courtesy of the dozen sponsors. More money for the company. At least they were making the best of it. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t want the fame. I hated it. The penthouse suite. Being watched in the real world. The thought of being watched twenty-four/seven made me
feel uncomfortable. Taking control of my career and letting me go covert was the kindest thing Lady Gray and Aiden had done for me. Now…now it was all my fault. I had made Aiden a target. My face led to his death. His blood was on my hands.

  Inside the Crimson Killer Aiden had received a message from Lady Gray calling for assistance at Quadrant 1 near At Eternity. The message was fake. Lady Gray’s face and voice were convincing but it wasn’t her. Kira had cleared that up almost immediately. Lady Gray hadn’t arrived until after Aiden and Eli, when she saw the trouble they were being led into. Aiden, being the hero, had powered up the STL and jumped. He was there before anyone, having jumped into the quadrant just a few hours after us. According to the time stamp on the footage it would have been about the time I was inside the Chel dungeon. Minutes after entering Quadrant 1 and approaching the vicinity of At Eternity, Skull-Faced Man’s starship appeared. The cameras had managed to good to get a good shot of it. I felt like I was watching an alien invasion film. The way the masked man’s ship appeared was like something from a caffeine-fuelled nightmare.

  ‘What do we have here?’ Aiden asked. He already knew the answer. He had just as much intel as the rest of us to look at after hours and he had been following our progress since the beginning, keeping up to date on everything. Even promising us his support should we need it. Maybe that was another reason he had jumped so quickly. The message from Lady Gray, the thought that we were in danger. Like Damien, he wasn’t one to hesitate. Like Damien he was just as dead and there was nothing I could do.

  I was helpless: watching the video made me sick BUT I had to watch. I had to see it all the way through. I wasn’t the only one. This was the only source we had for Skull-Faced Man’s defences, maybe even his weaknesses, if there were any. Kira and Gorge studied other parts of the video as I watched on. The Crimson Killer was fired upon. Skull-Faced Man’s ship disabled their engines and then his soldiers boarded. Not just the masked man but several dozen soldiers dressed in solid black armour that made them look like they had all been copied and pasted from the same source. Autons? No, they moved like players. NPCs.

  Eli was injured first. Wounded badly, he logged out and his avatar stood helpless as Skull-Faced Man came into view. Brand was the next to fall. He was knocked so hard against a wall he died almost instantly, all the while Eli’s avatar stood like a statue. The masked man didn’t destroy the avatar with his gun, instead summoning a blade of white light that stretched three feet out from the top of his wrist. It was blinding at first, until the camera adjusted, focusing in on the weapon. With the blade he shattered Eli’s avatar and it disappeared like it was never there. It was the first time I had seen an energy weapon used that way. While it was possible, it was not common. The weapon, if not unique to him, had to either be an artefact or ultra-rare.

  Skull-Faced Man then grabbed one of the cameras and shot Aiden in the knee as he attempted to logout. There was no injury. Yet it was as if the wound had caused some kind of glitch in the system and Aiden was unable to log out of the game. Skull-Faced Man slowly walked towards him, carrying the camera, filming from his own point of view.

  ‘Careless are those that trespass. Careless are those who believe they are free. Careless are those that seek to escape that which the fates have bound them,’ Skull-Faced Man spoke in a deep, smooth voice, ‘careless are the pretenders.’ And Aiden was gone. A moment later the feed went black before switching to Kira’s feed and at the same time revealing my true location to everyone watching. As the feed continued, quick clips of Aiden’s death were replayed, cutting in and out with our own exploits as we began to exit the first dungeon. The interruptions stopped when we made it to the courtyard, about the time Nel contacted us telling us about the ‘urgent transmission’.

  Kira managed to data mine several pieces of information from the video, relaying them to us from outside the game, sending us intel via messages from a terminal at Moonrain Media in the real world. Skull-Faced Man had no visible player data and neither did any of the soldiers. That in itself was a form of intel. The second and most valuable piece of information she found was the name of the gun he was using to kill players. It was an artefact. Player made. It had been designed to block a player from being able to logout by fragmenting player in-game commands and overloading the player’s neural interface, blocking pathways in the player’s real body, causing cardiac arrest by starving the brain of oxygen.

  Two shots. The first shot disabled the players’ in-game commands and the second shot destroyed their neural pathways like a virus.

  M.E.K.

  Description: Master Encyption Key

  Level: 100

  Damage: Fatal

  Weight: 7 Ibs

  Weapon Type: M7-7 Ki Rifle w/ Battle Rifle support

  Rarity: One of a kind

  Impact: 10

  Range: 10

  Stability: 10

  Reload Speed: 9

  RPM (rounds per minute): 20 bursts

  Affinity: 10

  Sharpness: 10

  Elemental: Shadow

  Critical Chance: 98%

  Modifiers: Sniper Scope 3x Zoom

  On our way out from the first dungeon and the Chel tower, a mass of bounty hunters had gathered waiting for us. That was when Lady Gray had taken quick action, paying a new player to crash a Titan and attacking the surface of the Spire with everything she had. The city was decimated and our guild had officially declared war on the Spire, war on the Chel. There was no way we could have known. No way we could have stopped any of it. How many had to die before they just let me be? It was our mission, our job to stop the Skull-Faced Man before something like this happened, but Kira confirmed it. While Eli and Brand were alive in the real, Aiden had passed away.

  To everyone else, we were in the middle of the biggest scam in gaming history and the price on my head had doubled. This time, it seemed even Keen Industries were offering a reward.

  ‘I just bought you out!’ Kira shouted, as she logged back in.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘The company, Keen Industries, they just turned their back on you. All of you. Even Lady Gray. I just bought out your contract, the penthouse, Reynolds, everything. You, along with the Corpse Divers, are now a part of Moonrain Media.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Everything was all happening so fast, but it was that easy…the switching of hands. Keen Industries wanted to be as far away from all of this as possible. Knowing what could happen. Knowing it could all go south. This was their contingency plan. A deal made in the dark between Lady Gray, Moonrain Media and Keen Industries.

  Waving her arms excitedly, Kira continued, ‘you don’t have to do this; we can all logout, go home. I can cash it all in and we can all be free of this, this world. We don’t have to risk our lives. Keen Industries were happy to let you go. You are absolved of all debt. The penthouse is yours. You aren’t going to be under watch anymore,’ she was about to continue but I couldn’t let her.

  ‘If we stop now it’s all in vain, that isn’t what my brother, your brother, that isn’t what anyone who has died would want. Whatever happens, whatever it takes. No matter how big the crisis. We have to go on.’ I couldn’t help it. Something had changed in me. Something had grown. To everyone else I was now Bane’s number one villain. In the real world I was part of the weirdest conspiracy theory ever but here I was thinking myself some kind of avenging hero.

  I wasn’t. And truth, every story needs a monster.

  28.

  Catharsis

  TO: Hannah

  FROM: Breq

  SUBJECT: Endgame

  After our attack on the Spire I succeeded in clearing the bottom level of the tower and the first dungeon. I made it. Level 51. Not that it was necessary. It wasn’t easy either. I’ve lost parts of me in this game. Memories. Something isn’t quite right and I can feel it. The world both inside and out is changing. Skull-Faced Man isn’t in the Cold Zone anymore. He’s here…right now raging a battle against Lady Gray and
the rest of the Corpse Divers near the world gate At Eternity. That’s not all though. The gun, the MEK. It was made by a player. My world has turned upside down. One moment I feel like I’m a hero and the next I’m destroying starships with only a slight hesitation. A few weeks ago I was a nobody and now I’m being followed by more than a million viewers, while Kira once again streams everything we do. In this case we want the world to know. This isn’t a game anymore. At least not one in which we are in control.

  We’re moments away from joining the battle and I’m scared. I’m scared I’m not going to come back, that I may never see you again.

  Since I lost my parents I thought I would never find happiness again. I thought the world was broken. I thought I was broken. You made me see the world for the better. You, Damien, Kira, Gorge, Aiden, Eli, Pierce…you made me feel like I was a part of a family again and I’m scared that all of this will be for nothing.

  The back guns on the Ibanez are firing. Players are dying. Not at the hands of Skull-Faced Man but by orders I gave. One after another. I can feel the warmth on the walls around me. The shields are taking heavy damage. We’re being followed and attacked from behind. Bounty hunters, assassins, players looking to make a name for themselves and others thinking we are easy prey. I can’t help but wonder if you are back there with them maybe trying to slow them down or, worse, on the surface of the Spire buried among the ruins.

  I’ve already erased half this message. Trying to write it to you. To put into words all the right things I want you to know. To leave behind a record of what happened. We have so little time left. I hope this is enough. I want you to know that I didn’t just do this for you or the rest of my team. I didn’t do this for Damien or for the paycheck. Kira gave the others and I an out. All of us refused. I’m here now on my own accord. My own free will. My destiny is mine. Please be safe. Skull-Faced Man has used the MEK twice so far that we know of and there are a dozen more rumours of death circling his appearance. I’m not going to tell you to stop playing. I know even if I did it probably wouldn’t stop you. Some have no choice. Others like myself have chosen to stand for those who have adopted this world.