by Mia Archer
Though oddly she didn’t order any of the guards to pull their weapons and kill us as she got closer. Maybe she was going for the long con. Trying to get us somewhere nice and private where she could have her way with us and not draw the wrong sort of attention.
There were a lot of players and NPCs moving through here, after all. It might be bad for whatever business they were running to be too nakedly open about the world domination they were going for.
“How the hell did you get out of there?” she hissed when she got close.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Why aren’t you trying to kill us?” I asked. “You’re like Chelsey’s loyal stooge or something.”
“I am not her loyal stooge,” Tori hissed. “But you have no idea what it’s like being around her all the time. You have no idea what she does to people if she doesn’t think you’re towing the line.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea,” I said with as dry a tone as I could manage. “She did just threaten to make me her sex slave in the game world and then kill me in the real world because I have an embarrassing picture of her.”
“Oh,” Tori said. “I guess she did do that. And she used that magic on you! What the hell are you doing up here? I’ve never seen that magic not work on anyone!”
I figured this was another gamble, but I’d been doing nothing but tossing the dice and seeing what happened lately, so why not toss the dice again?
I put my hand on her cheek. I wasn’t sure why I was putting my hand on her cheek other than I got the feeling it was what I was supposed to do. I leaned in close. Close enough that I could’ve kissed her if I wanted to, and believe you me the temptation was there even if I didn’t act on it.
Instead I whispered to her.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything she wants you to do. Any of you.”
I turned away from her for that last bit. Faced all the NPC guards who’d come along, presumably with intentions to really ruin my day. Again their eyes flashed, and again the animation was a reverse of the animation that showed they were being mind controlled in the first place. They blinked, and then slowly all the guards moved to stand behind me.
Leaving only Tori standing there staring in disbelief. I knew this was the moment where she’d probably shout and raise the alarm. It’d be the last thing she ever did before getting a free trip to the respawn point, but it could really fuck us over if she did that while I only had a few guards at my disposal.
Finally she smiled. A single tear trickled down from her cheek.
“Free,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it. I’m free!”
Then she really surprised me. She walked over to one of the gaudy statues featuring Chelsey in her in-game form. She gave the thing a good shove. At first it didn’t seem to be moving, but it wasn’t long before the thing was toppling over. It landed on the floor with a loud crunch as bits and pieces went flying across the floor.
Which must’ve been really cathartic for her, but it had the unfortunate and unintended side effect of drawing everyone’s attention towards us. Lots of people looked on in disapproval, but even more, particularly players and NPCs who looked like they were armed to the teeth and ready to do Chelsey’s bidding, were looking at us as though they were looking forward to roughing up the idiots who’d been audacious enough to knock over a statue to their mistress in the middle of her lair.
A cheer erupted from the guards, which drew the attention of even more of Chelsey’s soldiers who started moving towards us.
That was just fine with me. I knew how to deal with them. It was like a zombie movie where I was breaking a spell instead of turning them to the undead, and all I had to do was touch them and I knew most of them would be joining my army.
It looked like there was a flaw in Chelsey’s plan for raising an army, and I was about to exploit the fuck out of it!
36
Storm the Lair
I held my fist up and was about to knock on the door when Tori reached a hand out to stop me. I hit her with an irritated glance, but she shook her head.
“She might have some idea of what’s coming for her,” Tori said. “I’m sure a bunch of the players we just offed are sending angry messages while they try to get back here.”
“Oh,” I said.
I honestly hadn’t thought of that. It was a little difficult coming up with tactics when you were making those tactics for a video game where people were only temporarily inconvenienced when they went to meet their eternal reward.
“Let me go in first,” Tori said. “She isn’t likely to want to kill me. At least she might stop and think about it before she does anything we both might regret.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked.
“She was enslaving people and forcing them to attend those terrible parties in that screenshot you took,” Tori said. “You bet your ass I want to do this. If it puts a stop to her then it’s worth it.”
“Your funeral,” I said.
“Thanks for that,” Tori replied. “But it’s just a game. Death is a temporary inconvenience.”
I stood back and motioned for the large army of characters we’d put together to do the same. The last thing I wanted was for one of them to get hit by anything Chelsey might fire out at us when that door opened.
They obliged by pressing themselves up against the walls where, hopefully, they wouldn’t be seen right away. Tori took a couple of deep breaths.
I admired her spunk. She really was putting herself out there. Of course she might be preparing a double cross after she’d made her way through the doors and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Not that there was anything I could do to prevent a double cross short of not letting her in there in the first place.
Tori stepped inside and the door swung shut behind her. I listened at the door intently, wondering if this was going to end as poorly as it was going in my mind. There was some shouting and the sound of some sort of magic going off.
I frowned. It would appear Tori had been correct and Chelsey was willing to do terrible things to anyone who crossed her. Tori included. I held my breath and waited for the sound of Tori saying something, anything, that would let me know she was still alive in there.
Because if she wasn’t still alive in there then we were going to have to go in with guns blazing. The only problem with that being we didn’t have any guns to blaze, so we’d be using melee weapons while she hit us with magic attacks and tried to take over my little military.
“What do you mean you captured her?” Chelsey’s voice rang out, clear as day and loud enough that she had to be using some sort of spell enhancement to get her point across.
“I’m telling you I’ve captured her in an escape attempt,” Tori said, her voice a lot weaker than Chelsey’s.
Tori appeared at the door. She looked just a little flushed.
“What’s going on in there?” I asked.
“I need you to come in here,” she said. “And you need to come alone so she doesn’t suspect anything.”
I glanced at all the guards. Then I looked to Caitee. Finally I turned to the guard who’d first let me out of my cell down below.
“Caitee is leading the charge if things go wrong in there,” I said.
“You can’t seriously be thinking about going in there alone,” Caitee said. “This is such an obvious trap that the Trojans would probably stop and give it a quick inspect before they let it through their gates!”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But if it turns out that’s the case then you can lead a gallant attack against Chelsey and teach her what it means to cross you. I need to go in there first if we’re gonna have even a prayer of stopping her from using her magical powers.”
“Your funeral,” Caitee muttered.
“Exactly,” I said.
Caitee glared at me, but at this point I was immune to those glares. She could hate me al
l she wanted, but it wasn’t going to change the fact that I was going in there and doing my thing one on one. I had to defeat her magic if we were going to have any hope of defeating her.
It didn’t make much sense from a tactical point of view, but it did make sense from a gaming point of view. She was the ultimate boss. The bad guy we had to take out if we were going to make it through this. That meant it was time for me to take her on, damn it.
“Wish me luck,” I said.
“You’ll need these since she thinks I captured you,” Tori said, holding up the set of irons I’d been wearing when we first came out of the dungeon and were trying to avoid arousing too much suspicion.
“Be gentle with those,” I said as she put them on. “And we’re not locking them.”
“Of course not,” Tori said, locking eyes with me. “Do you think I’m going to double cross you or something?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” I said once they were around my wrists. “Now come on.”
We stepped through the door and I found myself face to face with Chelsey again. She was leaning back on the throne she’d made for herself and regarding me with the sort of look people usually reserved for a piece of shit they’ve accidentally stepped in.
“So you decided to make an ill-advised escape attempt,” she said. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but I suppose this does mean that I’m going to have to do something to take care of you in the real world since the magic obviously isn’t working on you like it should be.”
“Funny how that works,” I said. “But with a little luck you won’t get a chance to work your magic on me in the real world.”
“And what makes you think I wouldn’t get a chance to do that?” she asked.
“Simple,” I said, looking at the statue behind her and nodding at it. “She’s on my side now.”
Chelsey paused. Her tail stopped swishing this way and that as she turned to look at the statue behind her, then turned to me. Then she threw her head back and let out a laugh that was pure sex. It was the kind of laugh that had me feeling all tingly down in my gut and down between my legs, and I knew if I was going to make it through this damned thing then I was going to have to ignore that laugh and power through this.
“She’s on your side?” Chelsey asked. “What are you even talking about? It’s just a statue I use to channel my considerable powers, and you’re about to be on the wrong side of those powers.”
“We both know I’m not lying,” I said, moving closer to her. That had Tori scrambling to keep up with me. She hissed out a warning that I didn’t listen to.
I didn’t care at this point. That pissed off feeling I’d had through this all was hitting me again, and the one thing I really wanted to do right about now was rip Chelsey’s head off in the game world. I also hoped she felt every moment of pain too!
Chelsey seemed genuinely nervous for the first time this had all started. Her eyes went wide as she looked at something behind me. I turned and saw that my little army of guards she’d used her mind control mojo on had started streaming into the room against orders, Caitee at their head, and they were all eyeing her like they couldn’t wait to use some of their weapons on her.
“You can’t do this,” she said. “You can’t stop me! I rule everything in here!”
“Correction,” I said. “You ruled everything in here. I broke your spell. None of them are going to do jack or shit to help you out.”
“You can’t do this!” she said, stomping her foot. “I won’t let you!”
She held her hand up and the goddess statue behind her started to glow. At first I thought maybe she was going for me. That she was going to try and hit me and mind control me or something, but then the light shot out from the goddess and slammed into the crowd behind me, and I realized what she was trying to do.
She wasn’t going to try and attack me directly. Not when she could control all the nice people standing behind us and take away the army I’d stolen from her fair and square.
“Oh no you don’t!” I said.
I could see something odd. There was light that was streaming from the statue to Chelsey. I hadn’t seen it before, but then again the last time this had happened I hadn’t had my second conversation with the goddess where she made it clear I was the new champion.
Maybe it was time for me to take that power.
So I reached into the light. Pulled it towards me. Chelsey let out a frustrated scream as she realized what I was doing. She turned and stared daggers at me, but then she must’ve done something to pull the magic to her because more of it was pulsing at her.
Shouts were filling the room too. Shouts and the clear sound of people fighting. I turned to see that a large chunk of the army I’d brought in here was fighting a smaller half, and I had a feeling that the larger chunk was the chunk that was currently under Chelsey’s control.
Well if she thought she was going to do that then she had another thing coming. I pulled at that light, tried to wrestle the power free from her.
More and more of the light started pulsing to me, but it still wasn’t enough. I looked behind me. To the people fighting one another. They didn’t have to be doing this. They didn’t have to kill each other like that, damn it!
I had to end this quickly. Chelsey was smiling. Because she knew she only had to prolong this long enough for the people I’d killed on my way in here to show up. This was going to be my only chance to take care of business.
So I did something that might not be fair considering we were trying to fight magic with magic, but it’s not like I had any reason to fight fair if it didn’t look like I was going to win in a fair fight.
I stalked over to her. There was only maybe ten feet between us. Her eyes went wide as she saw me approach. She held her hands up like she was getting ready to use another magic spell of some sort, but before she could get anything off I’d wheeled back and slammed my fist in her face.
It landed with a satisfying crunch. Almost as satisfying as hitting her in the real world. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she crumpled to the ground, which was exactly what I was hoping for. The moment that happened the light from the statue stopped hitting her, and a moment later it was slamming into me and I felt like I was about to be burnt to a crisp.
The light lifted me in the air even as the sounds of fighting trailed off. They were staring up at me with their mouths hanging open.
Which was pretty damn funny, when you thought about it. I must’ve been a sight to see floating here with all this light surrounding me.
“Behold my new champion!” the goddess’ voice rang out. “Go forth and conquer in my name!”
The voice boomed through the room that had been, until very recently, Chelsey’s lair. Now that this had happened and I’d finished the fight I figured that meant this was my room. I couldn’t help but grin.
I’d started this gaming session in a dungeon, and I’d ended it by kicking some ass and doing exactly what the hot goddess lady had asked me to do. How about that?
Then the light was gone and I was descending to the ground. It was nice to know that the goddess was nice enough to keep me from falling on my ass. That could’ve seriously hurt.
I hit the ground and wobbled. After everything that’d just happened I needed a moment to take everything in. Like I seriously thought I was on the verge of fainting or something.
“Are you okay?” Caitee asked.
She approached me with her giant two-hander held in front of her. Like maybe she thought I was going to attack her or something now that I had the same power Chelsey had been wielding. She had a couple of nasty gashes here and there, but if the blood on her sword was anything to go on it looked like whoever had been stupid enough to attack her had gotten the worst of it.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m me. You don’t have to wave that massive letter opener at me.”
She looked at her sword and blushed. “Sorry about that. So do you want to explain to me what the hell just h
appened?”
“She was abusing the power the goddess gave her,” I said, nodding to Chelsey. Only when I nodded to her and looked down I realized she wasn’t there. No, there was a blank spot where she’d been.
I frowned. “That didn’t kill her, did it? I thought she was still alive.”
“She might’ve logged out when she realized she wasn’t going to win this fight,” Caitee said. “Wouldn’t surprise me that she’d do something like that.”
“Damn,” I said.
“So you’re sure we don’t have anything to worry about from you?” Caitee asked. I didn’t miss the way her grip tightened on her sword even though she was trying to keep her voice light. Like she’d be more than willing to do what needed to be done, namely taking me out, if it meant taking out a new Chelsey before I had a chance to really cause some trouble.
Even though that was ridiculous. This was a game. Even if she killed me I’d respawn. The only way to stop someone with the power of a god or goddess in this game, apparently, was to wrestle that power from them. Besides, it’s not like I was going to do anything to hurt her or anyone else I’d just freed.
I was about to tell her as much when the world around me started to swirl and glitch. Like we’re talking one moment it looked like everything was perfect all around me, and the next moment it looked like I was staring at the world through the sort of pixelated filter that made everything look like an ancient PC game from the 1990s or something.
“Whoa,” I said, not sure what the fuck just happened.
“What’s going on?”
“Something weird is happening here,” I said, stumbling forward and trying to catch myself, but I fell to the ground as the world glitched out around me again. “Everything’s making like I’m in some ancient PC game from the 1980s or something.”
It was right about then that everything started to melt away around me.
