by P. J. Frost
“We never asked you to tag along with us!” I retorted. “We didn't even want you around! You just kept showing up and making a pest of yourself!”
“You nerds should have felt honored to have me around,” he said. “I'm a YouTube celebrity with a quarter of a million followers, and you're just a couple of pathetic nobodies! Who the hell would want to watch you two poke around this game cluelessly for hours at a time, huh? You're boring and sad!”
We were being led to a large, free-standing metal cage with rust on the bars and heaps of straw on the ground. One of the Chameleons unlocked the door and opened it, and several others jabbed at us with their spears to push us inside.
Then they locked up behind us and strode away.
We weren't alone – there were two other players in the cage with us. One was a hulking gray Level Three Orcish Barbarian, and the other was a Level Two Halfling Bard.
“New prisoners!” The Orc spoke with the voice of a boy who couldn't have been older than five. “Can I kill them, Grandma?”
“Now, you play nice with the other gamers, Devon,” the Halfling answered. She sounded like a kindly woman in her sixties who might have been distracted by a few other open tabs in her browser – probably reading a news article or shopping for something on Amazon while she spent time with her grandson.
“Grandma! Not 'Devon!'” the kid protested.
“Oh, right, sorry,” the woman replied absently. “I meant 'Gorkak, Breaker of Bodies.'”
“I'm glad you two are here,” I said. “I have to ask you about something.”
“Oh, give it a rest, will you, Sid?” Donal groaned. “No one wants to hear it.”
I ignored him, stepping a bit closer to the Orc and Halfling. “You're both players, right? Just, like, regular gamers?”
They exchanged a puzzled glance. “Yeah,” the kid answered. “Why?”
“So there's nothing... weird or different about the game for you guys today?” I pressed. “Everything's just like it always is here?”
“Young man, what are you talking about?” the Halfling asked. “My grandson is just trying to play his game. Why don't you leave him alone and let him have his fun?”
“Ugh, here we go,” Donal muttered.
“Because something extremely peculiar is happening to me today,” I continued resolutely. “This is going to sound crazy, but I'm not just playing the game right now. I'm inside it. I'm experiencing it, for real.”
“Grandma? What's he talking about?” The child's voice was trembling, and his Orcish eyes were wide. “What does he mean he's inside the game? That can't really happen, can it? Is it gonna happen to me?”
“Of course not, De-- I mean, Gorkak,” the Halfling said comfortingly. “This is only a game, remember? Make-believe and pretend, like I told you before. This person is just being silly, that's all. Aren't you?” she added pointedly.
“Lady, I really wish I were, believe me,” I answered. “But I'm being serious. I've been stuck in here since last night.”
The Orc opened his tusked mouth wide... and, improbably, started bawling uncontrollably. “But I don't wanna be stuck in here! There's scary things in here!”
“Hey, didn't you hear me?” The Halfling stepped between me and the Orc. “What's the matter with you, huh? A grown man like you, going around making up stupid stories to scare little kids! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“I promise, I'm not!” I insisted. “I'm just trying to get out of here, and I'm looking for any clues that will help me do that! Look, Can you tell me if you've experienced anything out of the ordinary since you logged in to play today? Can you at least do that?”
The Orc was sobbing louder than ever. “I don't wanna play this game anymore! I don't wanna, I don't wanna! I just wanna watch TV an' have a snack!”
“Thanks a lot, you jerk!” the Halfling yelled at me. “His grandfather and I spent a lot of money on a new computer for him just so he could play this game, and now he doesn't even want to! I hope you're happy! Come on, Devon,” she cooed, “let's go make you a sandwich, and then you can watch all of your favorite cartoons! How does that sound?”
“P-Peanut butter and banana?” the Orc sniffled.
“Absolutely,” she assured him. “And I'll cut the crust off, just like you like it. Here, I'll log you out, okay?”
The Orc disappeared, and the Halfling gave me the finger before doing likewise.
“Making friends wherever you go, huh, dweeb?” Donal jeered at me.
“Won't you please give him a break?” Quorull admonished. “It's not his fault! If I thought I was trapped in a computer game, I'd be terrified too, and doing everything I possibly could to find clues to get myself out!”
“I keep telling you,” I moaned, “I don't just think I'm trapped in here, I am trapped in here!”
“I know, Sid,” Quorull answered quietly. “And I'm going to do whatever I can to help you, okay? I promise.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully. “Nice to know someone's on my side.”
"Great." Donal shrugged angrily. "You're both nuts. I'm stuck in a cage with a couple of nuts like I'm someone's fucking pet squirrel."
Quorull wrinkled her nose. “With jokes that bad, you really have that many followers? Hard to believe.”
Before he could answer, the lock on the door of the cage clicked, and we all turned to look as the door swung open.
Erinye swaggered in, her emerald mammaries jiggling. More and more, I was starting to agree with Coral: The character design on her was sexist and cringeworthy, to say the least.
“I have welcome news for you, interlopers!” she announced, jutting her shapely hips suggestively. “Today...”
“Wait, hang on,” I cut in. “There were two other prisoners in here with us, right? An Orc and a Halfling? So where are they now?”
Erinye scowled and stepped forward, slapping me across the face. It stung a little, but it barely took anything off my health meter. “Silence, you brazen fool! No one interrupts the Empress of the Furies with impunity!”
“But come on, you don't remember them?” I prodded. I was intimidated, but I still needed answers. “Ask your guards! They were standing right there when we were brought in! You're not even a little curious about what happened to them, or how they could have just disappeared without a trace?”
Erinye bared her sharp teeth menacingly. “Wizard, you amused me earlier with outlandish musings about games and being ensnared in worlds not your own. For that reason only, I have chosen to allow you to live. But if you show me such rudeness again, I will have all three of you executed. Do you understand?”
So much for making her see reason or getting any answers out of her, then. I nodded, lowering my eyes in contrition – it worked with dogs who were trying to establish dominance, so I figured it might work on her too. “I apologize, Empress. It won't happen again.”
“Good.” She favored me with a haughty smile, then tousled my hair playfully with her long talons. “It would be a shame to take the life of one so... intriguing.”
“Him?” Donal said incredulously. “Really? I'm, like... right here. I'm way more interesting than he is. Do you know how many followers I have?”
Erinye raised an eyebrow at Donal, then made a show of looking around. “Oh? How many? Funny, I only see two people 'following' you, and that doesn't seem like very many at all. My followers, on the other hand... well...”
The Furies milled around the cage in droves, snarling and snapping their jaws at us as they climbed the outer bars hungrily.
“Now, as I was saying before your pitiful bit of bravado,” the Empress went on, “I am giving you a chance to secure your freedom. There is a fearsome creature near the edge of the woods... the Bograh.”
I wasn't surprised by this opening. Frequently, this was how the game worked – a lot of the time, it wasn't so much about fighting someone to get what you wanted as it was fighting for someone else to get what they wanted, and then waiting for them to r
eward you richly in return. It made a lot of sense. I could tell that the Empress had a lot of experience points, but the real threat wasn't her, it was her minions... all of whom had lesser experience points by far but could outnumber and overpower us easily.
So this "Bograh" was bound to be more powerful than any of the monsters individually but less powerful than all of them collectively.
In short, just powerful enough to give any one of us a serious hard time.
Great.
Chapter Six
"Many of my loyal subjects have not returned from their evening hunts," Erinye continued. "No doubt the Bograh has consumed them. My empire of monsters cannot continue to expand – as it must – as long as this entity menaces us. It must be destroyed. With that in mind: I shall allow you to choose a champion among yourselves, to be sent in search of the fiend. The other two shall remain behind to ensure that the chosen champion does not simply run off. If the Bograh is eliminated, you shall all be freed and granted whatever you desire from me. Anything that is mine to give shall be yours. What say you, mortals?"
“And what if we say no?” Donal demanded.
Erinye gave him a toothy grin. “Then come nightfall, you will all be eaten alive.”
“I thought you'd jump at the chance for something like this,” Quorull said to Donal. “You're the highest level player among us, you've got all the coolest weapons and armor, and it'll give you a shot with Erinye like you wanted, right? So what's the problem?”
Donal stretched, cracking his knuckles. “The problem is that this quest is lame, okay? First of all, Erinye is clearly just a re-skinned version of the Porcelain Princess of Paragria, except with different hair and bigger tits. Second, the writers and developers are totally repeating themselves with these missions. 'Go fight this guy for me?' How is that different from the Corsairs of Crystal Cove thing they released a few months ago, or the plot of the Mad Morlock of the Misty Moors they put out last year? No, screw this, I'm not doing it.”
“If it's so much like those other quests,” Quorull pointed out, “then it should be easy for you, shouldn't it?”
"Yeah, except the only X-factor in this equation is this 'Bograh' thing," Donal retorted. "I don't know what it is. As far as I know, no one's commented about it on any message boards or come up with any clues on how to defeat it. And I always check that stuff before doing battle with some new creature because I'm not an idiot and don't feel like losing all the experience points and awesome shit I've accumulated by walking into a fight unprepared."
“Wow.” Quorull shook her head. “All that big talk, and you're basically just a coward who only wins games when they're on the 'Easy As Hell' setting.”
He snickered. “Spoken like someone who has no audience. Viewers want to see me win, not bite the dust over a mission that's mid at best.”
“So you're just going to, what, stay here?” Quorull challenged.
“Might as well for now,” Donal shot back. “Sundown is still a ways away, and there could be any number of other chances to get free between now and then. And if not, I can always go back to an earlier saved point in my game, keep all my shit, and go do something else instead of restarting this moronic mission.”
“You're not supposed to be able to do that,” I observed. “Go back to an earlier point, I mean.”
"Haven't you learned anything from me by now, dork?" he smirked. "If you've got enough money and you know enough code monkeys, you can do anything you damn well please, and people will love you for it. They'll even give you free shit! This headset? Free!" Suddenly, a loud crunching sound came from his digitally-rendered mouth. "These sriracha pork rinds? Free! I get free shit all the time, just for being cooler than people like you!"
“But what about us?” Quorull asked. “We can't go back to a saved point. What are we supposed to do?”
“Get eaten by the local monsters, I guess,” he replied, sucking the pork dust from his teeth and yawning. “Probably for the best. I was getting sick of having you two around anyway.”
“That's some sense of chivalry you've got there,” she said dryly. “'Donal the Pure,' right, more like 'Donal the Purely-For-Selfish-Reasons.'”
As they had this exchange, I glanced over at Erinye to see if any of what they were saying was registering with her. But no. Her expression was patient and blankly inquisitive, as though she weren't even hearing their words – just waiting for someone to give her an answer to her challenge.
Of course, I thought. Because that's what she's programmed to do: Answer specific responses to what she says, not get caught up in a lot of senseless cross-chatter. Otherwise, she'd end up spending all of her time and adaptive algorithms responding to pre-pubescent boys calling each other “penis-breath” and “cock-farter.” That's why she also wasn't interested in the fact that the other prisoners vanished.
So how far does all this self-denial go? What would happen if someone pushed against it hard enough?
I wanted answers to those questions, and I had a pretty good idea of how to get them.
But first things first.
“If Donal is too chickenshit to go fight the Bograh,” I said, “then I guess that makes me our champion, doesn't it?”
Donal laughed harshly. “Don't be an idiot, Sid. If that thing is big and mean enough to make the Queen of the Monsters here hire outside help, then there's zero chance you'll be able to make a dent in it. You just don't have the experience points or the arsenal.”
“Yeah, except it's not about that anymore, is it?” I replied. “Not for me, anyway. I'm fighting for a lot more than experience points, gold coins, or magic items. I'll be fighting for my life... and for answers to what the hell is happening to me. So I'll just have to risk it, won't I? No matter what is waiting for me out there in the jungle.”
I hoped all of Donal's followers were watching. Not just because I relished the idea of calling him out as a poser and a poltroon in front of them... although admittedly, that was a satisfying notion.
But also because maybe – just maybe – some of them might have encountered hints of what I was talking about. Maybe they had encountered anomalies in the game recently as well. I knew it was a stretch, but if even a handful of them believed me enough to look into the code for the “Valley of the Monsters” update, perhaps it could lead to me getting out of there and back into the real world.
Again, I knew it was a stretch. But what choice did I have?
“Dude, let's face it, you just aren't as good at this game as I am,” Donal pressed. “I know you're trying to impress your chick here, but I know what I'm talking about here, and I'm flat-out telling you: You don't have a chance in hell. Your best bet is to hang tight here and wait for me to find us a way out of this.”
“And if you can't, and you ditch us?”
“Still better odds than what you're planning,” he snapped. “Think it through.”
“I have,” I said, turning to Erinye. “I'll do it. I'll best the Bograh for you.”
Erinye curled her green lip in an expression that seemed somewhere between contempt and mocking admiration. “Impressive bravery from a rambling madman such as you. I applaud you, Wizard. May I know your name?”
“Sydnar,” I replied, bowing to her. “Sorcerer of Soggoth-Nur.”
She nodded. “I shall remember that moniker, Sydnar. Come nightfall, we shall sing your praises... either with you, or over the gnawed corpses of your friends!”
The Furies, Chameleons, and other assorted fiends and ghouls cackled with glee. I mustered up a half-hearted chuckle as I stepped out of the cage.
“Be careful, Sid,” Quorull urged. “If you really are... you know... actually in the game, then there's no telling what will happen to you if something kills you here.”
I smiled weakly. "Maybe I'll get really lucky, and it'll send me back to the real world, huh?"
"Yeah," Donal said, "or maybe the rest of us will get lucky, and it'll croak you for real. Have fun finding that out, pal! Say hi to Booger fo
r me, or whatever its name is!"
I tried not to listen to him, but the truth was, I was scared out of my wits. I knew so little about what had happened to me that there was no reason to believe this Bograh thing wouldn't actually kill me.
No, I have to believe that isn't true, I assured myself. This game may seem real down to the smallest detail, but it's still all just computer-generated sensory input... and that's just another world for VR, which definitely does exist. So this must be a hyper-advanced version of that technology, and somehow, my senses have been plugged into it.
But there's no conceivable way to transport my real body into an artificial world. Which must mean my physical self still exists somewhere, and washing out of the game will almost certainly restore me to it.
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to, more than anything.
How could I possibly be sure, though?
“Before you go to face the Bograh,” Erinye said, “I have a special item that may aid you in defeating the beast.”
Again, there was a certain welcome predictability to this. Usually, in quests where a player is tasked with saving a town (or a farm, or a princess, or whatever), the NPCs who have enlisted that player almost always give them a trinket that ended up coming in handy later on.
Still, I was relieved, and ready to accept any advantage I could get.
Erinye produced a magical green flash, and a long metal rod with a large emerald set into the head appeared in her hands. She offered it to me. “This is the Staff of Suffering, forged from the purest Fiendsteel. It increases the effectiveness of all magic spells five-fold. A fit weapon for a wizard, wouldn't you say, Sydnar?”
“I would,” I agreed, taking the staff with another small bow. “You are most generous, Empress Erinye. Thank you.”
I hefted it, feeling the energy crackling and pulsing within the dark metal. It felt good in my hands, like it was something that had always been meant for me to hold. Then again, I supposed that was true, to a certain degree – my avatar's class was Wizard, and this was a weapon specifically for Wizards to use. If I had been a Barbarian, Erinye probably would have conjured a broadsword for me. If I had been a Hunter, it would have been a longbow.
