by Eric Nylund
So I turned.
Slowly.
Very, very slowly.
And then the island came back in my sights. It was definitely farther away.
No more time to think. I aimed, prayed, and tossed Shé liàn.
The bladed end flew true, chain unfurling behind… and I rotated out of view.
With extreme care I passed the weighted end from one hand to another, so the chain wouldn’t tangle about me. I’d need every inch of its reach.
The toss, though, along with my other motions started me tumbling, head over heels, but thankfully nothing too fast to make a difference one way or the other.
I waited. My pulse thundered in my ears.
Catch, I urged the semi-living weapon. You got this.
The island came back.
The blade was still on target.
My toss, however, had increased my backward velocity (thanks for nothing, Sir Isaac Newton and your, For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). Along with pushing me back, since I held one end of the chain, I was also shortening its effective range.
I used my last Spiritual Regeneration and then my mana tank was dry.
I had a bit over half my health. That wouldn’t last long.
One more half rotation… and I saw that little extra push had shoved me closer to the Chaos Knight.
She smiled as her hands clutched in anticipation of catching me.
Back around once more.
Shé liàn’s blade was going to hit exactly where I had aimed, a nice knobby stone.
The chain, however, pulled up short by three feet.
Stretch!
I sensed it had already elongated as far as it could, but Shé liàn tried anyway to go farther. I felt the effort make the metal ping and groan with stress.
If it snapped, I’d be just as dead as if I’d missed.
My momentum the other way continued to pull the blade back.
Dread chilled my already hypothermic core.
That was it.
Nice try, Marine. Close. Two out of three points for effort. Sorry, still KIA.
A bloody dwarven face peeked over the edge of the island, eyes widened, and Elmac then disappeared back to solid ground.
He returned a moment later and pushed—what was that… a tree branch?—over the edge and clambered down its length. He had his battle axe held between clenched gold teeth.
That wasn’t a branch; it was the spined tail of Morgana’s new form.
Elmac got to the end, let go with one hand, took his axe and used it to try and reach Shé liàn’s blade.
He stretched.
As did Shé liàn.
I felt a link pop (but saw just one side of the link had broken). The chain precariously held together.
The two blades caught… but the ninja chain still had my momentum pulling it away, so it slid up the curve of Elmac’s axe.
Elmac twisted the haft.
Shé liàn caught. Held.
I jerked to a stop.
My heart hammered so hard I thought it would explode (which wasn’t so far-fetched, considering the difference in pressure inside versus outside my chest).
Elmac grabbed Shé liàn and gave the chain a yank.
I flew forward.
Elmac climbed up the tail and then was once more beyond my view.
Thank you, my friends!
But no one tried to reel me in, and neither Elmac or Morgana so much as glanced over the edge to check on me.
What was going on up there?
The chain went slack and floated uselessly between me and the only breathable atmosphere for light-years.
My new forward momentum, however, kept me moving toward salvation.
I would make it… if I could hold out a few more seconds.
I checked my health: twenty-nine points.
I stopped thinking about my life or death. There was nothing I could do about it. It came down to the “cold equations” of my momentum and position.
Instead, I found myself perversely curious enough to risk a glance back.
The Grand Imperial Champion of Disorder, Her Greatness, Dominota Koroleva, was thirty feet distant, growing darker as she drifted away from the island in-between worlds.
She’d given up trying to grab me… now just tumbling, a few hands reflexively stretching toward the land.
If she could have shifted shape to a form capable of getting back, she most certainly would have by now. In a few hours, the island would be a speck to her, lost among all the other specks in infinite space.
She was doomed to coast forever, alone, in the dark and cold.
I felt sorry for her.
Not that I regretted my actions. I just wished I could have given her a cleaner end.
I turned my head back.
I flew up and over the edge of the island.
Gravity took hold.
I fell to the ground.
And inhaled.
It tasted as sweet and warm as my first kiss (Elisabeth Warden, 6th-grade, in the library if you wanted to know).
I clawed at my eyes to clear the ice that had frozen them open and squeezed my bruised lids shut until the tears returned.
“Thanks—you—two,” I panted. “I was—”
I opened my eyes and saw then why my friends hadn’t bothered to reel me in.
A corpse-pale Elmac lay face down on the grass.
Morgana, or rather a pile of rock and hardening lava, sprawled next to him. She then reverted to her human form, and blood pumped freely from her many wounds… mingling with Elmac’s.
I hadn’t thought I’d ever feel any colder than I had been in outer space. I was wrong.
I crawled to them and checked pulses.
Gone. No… there, but very weak. Fading.
Elmac had dozens of nasty cuts with chunks of his armor and flesh missing. Morgana had wicked slashes on her back and that one on her front had practically gutted her.
How had they stayed conscious long enough to save me?
I wouldn’t be able to return the favor.
Hang on. I had healing potions!
I opened my inventory, got all six vials I’d purchased at Lordren’s, and poured the contents into their mouths—three into Morgana’s—three into Elmac’s.
They didn’t stir.
I focused on the empty vial in my shaking hand.
Mother Henpeck’s All-Purpose Vitamin Extract Formula (berry flavor)
(Tier-IV alchemical, rare)
DESCRIPTION: This healing potion is considered one of the best and most economical among adventurers wanting “life insurance.” Taste and smell vary by batch and expiration date, but it is never even close to “berry.”
SPECIAL ABILITIES: Heals any physical damage short of severed limbs or complete disembowelments and the like. Mends bones, repairs organs, reverses some forms of brain damage, even temporarily relieves the imbiber of common acne and dandruff. Absolutely guaranteed to heal 10% of one’s maximum health or double your money back (provided potion is not regurgitated).
WARNING: A maximum of five doses per month may be safely used without causing irreversible liver damage.
Value: 1,000 golden quins.
No indication of how long it took to work. Figured.
It wasn’t like most other games where you could chug gallons of healing potions in the middle of combat and instantly mend without missing a beat or needing a bio break.
But then, thank all the gods, Morgana’s bones pulled back together, her flesh and viscera knit, and her chalk-white pallor pinked.
And Elmac? I wasn’t sure there was any blood left in him. His flesh was more hamburger than dwarf. Nonetheless, bits started to come back together as well.
His eyes fluttered open and he took a breath.
“Gah!” He sat up and spat out blood clots, then reached for his weapon… groaned and fell back onto the grass.
“We won,” I said.
“Aye. Kind of figured that out for myself.�
� He gingerly pushed on his ribs and they snapped into place.
Morgana stirred. “Feels like my insides been bloody replumbed,” she whispered. “Ugh. What’d you give us?”
“Mother Henpeck’s healing potions.”
“I hate those things,” Elmac rasped. “Lordren dinna have any Green Field’s spearmint-flavored—ach, nevermind. We’ll be tasting rancid fish for ’bout a week.” He cast about on the ground around him. “Where be my flasks?”
His gear lay scattered across the grass. I found a stoppered bottle shaped like a mermaid and grabbed it.
“Here.” I set it in his hand.
He pulled the cork and smoke wafted out. He took a nip. “Ahh. Better. A bit.”
Elmac dragged himself to Morgana and gingerly passed her the bottle. He took in her face like seeing her alive was all the healing he’d ever need.
Morgana didn’t notice (or if she did, she didn’t let on).
She took a sip, then another. “Good,” she whispered. Morgana glanced at me and her nose wrinkled. “Oi. You look like hell.”
I had four points of health left.
“That doesn’t matter,” I told her. “For a moment, I thought you two were…”
I couldn’t say the words.
Me dying? I’d come to terms with that in San Quentin. Every day I was talking, walking, and breathing was all gravy as far as I was concerned.
Them dying? I don’t know what I would have done—maybe quit, and just chucked the whole Game out the window. Maybe not. I was just glad that today wasn’t the day I had to figure that out.
I then noticed the bridges, or rather the lack of them. The one back to Thera was still gone. So was the one the Chaos Knight had used to make her entrance.
Elmac saw too.
“But we defeated the guardian,” he said. “That shoulda brought them back.”
“What if we had to kill her to win?” Morgana squinted at the stars, fished her spyglass out, and searched the night.
“Oh, that be just dandy,” Elmac muttered. “We be running out ’o food, and more important, liquor, before too long.”
Leave it to Elmac to make sure we had the important things covered.
“Hang on,” I said. “Where’s that fairy?”
There was no sign of the little punk.
Elmac searched under his pack.
Morgana cached her spyglass, sniffed, then nudged me and nodded at a rock.
I strolled along the perimeter of the island… then snuck a look that way.
Nothing was there, at least nothing normal eyes might see, but thanks to Azramath’s Headband of Grim and Fateful Insights, I discerned in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum a crouching fairy-shaped outline.
I meandered that way, never looking directly at the rock—then kicked him.
The fairy landed five feet away, bounced, and became visible. “Ow!”
“Let me slice him up a piece at a time,” Elmac said, getting to his feet with a grunt.
“Don’t be cruel,” Morgana told him. “If you’re going to kill him, just slit his throat and be done with it. No, wait.” She turned to me. “Weren’t you two gents in the middle of a riddle?”
“Indeed we were.” A smile flickered over my lips. “Well, fairy? Your time’s more than up. What’s your answer?”
He cast about as if help might be forthcoming, or he’d find some sudden inspiration among the stars. “Uh, let me see… zero divided by zero. Is it zero?”
I savored the moment. Sweet, sweet victory.
“No,” I said. “You actually had the answer before. Zero, one, and infinity. All and none of them.”
He looked like he’d been hit with the flat of Elmac’s axe.
“Since there are three different arguments one can make based on the method and assumption one uses,” I explained, “and three correspondingly different answers obtained by using those arguments, then that particular mathematical equation is technically undefined.”
“Undefined?” he whispered, then declared louder, “why—why that’s a trick question!”
“As many riddles are,” I said. “Any self-proclaimed ‘riddle master’ should have known that.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but quickly regained his composure. “Well played, wandering elf. You have bested me fair and square. You are free to go about your way.”
With a wave of his hand, the bridges to Thera and the Ojawbi Far Fields reappeared.
“’Bout time,” Elmac said. “Let’s get off this ruddy rock while we can.”
“Not so fast,” I said to the fairy. “We had reciprocal conditions. You lost, so as I recall, you have to be my servant for a year.”
He froze in his tiny tracks. “I don’t recall…”
“Oh yes,” Morgana added. “Those were the terms.”
“But,” the fairy blubbered and fat tears streamed down his cheeks, “I have a family to support. Sixteen mouths to feed. A balloon payment due on my mushroom cottage. My band is set to start their tour. I just can’t—”
I shook my head. “A deal’s a deal.”
His crocodile tears vanished. He frowned and took a very deep breath. “Very well, master.” He said this last word as if he’d been force-fed Mother Henpeck’s liver-dissolving healing potion and was barely holding it down. “How might I serve you?”
“Very good, uh, what’s your name?”
“Oswald. Oswald Ottercakes.”
“Well, Ozzie, you can start by gathering up Elmac’s gear and neatly put it back in his pack. Then, you’ll carry it for him.”
“Carry it?” Oswald sputtered. “But I’m—it’s—”
“Tut-tut,” I told him. “No excuses. Be quick about it.”
Morgana smirked and gave me a wink.
Elmac nodded his approval.
I waited and watched, most satisfied with my clever and cruel revenge.
QUEST ALERT!
“A THOUSAND DRUNKEN MONKEYS”—BONUS SEGMENT
(“ONE LITTLE COMPLICATION”)
COMPLETED
You have bested the fairy at his own game.
Reward: Passage is granted to the Ojawbi Far Fields.
Bonus: As you have also nullified the gate guardian,
this causeway to and from Thera is now free and open
for all travelers, and extra experience points are awarded.
Bouquets of virtual fireworks popped about me.
Congratulations!
You are LEVEL FIVE
You have the experience to reach the next level in your Spirit Warrior class.
You have stat points to assign.
You have skill points to assign.
There are new skills available to buy.
CHAPTER 18
We stepped off the footbridge from the island in-between
—and into the Ojawbi Far Fields.
It was a savannah reminiscent of my Earth’s Kenya a century before my time—tall wild grasses and rivers, clusters of thorn-covered trees, and patches of lavender. Herds of gazelle, zebra, and wildebeests (their colors more Dr. Seuss than camouflage) grazed and warily watched us as we tromped along.
The sun was orange and larger than Thera’s. It was wondrously hot on my skin (which, after swimming in the frigid vacuum of outer space, was a real plus).
Behind us the well-worn footbridge that spanned worlds was half overgrown with grass and vines, I suppose because none ever travel but half its length before vanishing. Such great magic concealed in such an ordinary-looking thing…
Did magic work the same in this realm as in Thera? Specifically, were there ley lines for me to use?
I peered into the aether.
A wave of force and sensation swept away my astral form like a bit of flotsam. Ley lines thundered and churned about me—rainbows of elemental forces with their overlapping heat and cold and static and gurgling water and odor of freshly turned soil; there were darker ultraviolet threads that shot through me like shards of glass and filled me with revul
sion and a desperate desire to curl into a ball and cease to exist; there were also pinks that pulsed with a million heartbeats and I remembered my mothers, elf and human, and longed for the lost homes I’d never see again; still other lines were multidimensional, inexplicable jumbles that screamed through my mind and the merest glimpse of those pushed my sanity to the shattering point.
I surfaced from this torrent—a split second—just long enough to regain my wits to step back into normal space-time.
The silence… the sudden lack of sensation and color and memory… it was almost as disorienting.
I breathed in, out, three times to quell my racing heart and banished the afterimage impressions that no human mind, no matter how well trained, was meant to comprehend.
That had been extremely dumb.
I’d phased right into a trunk line of energies powering a gateway between worlds, strong enough to blast my astral form to subatomic particles if I’d stayed longer.
I glanced at Elmac and Morgana.
They hadn’t even noticed my brush with mental annihilation and death.
Why should they have? From their perspective, no time had passed and nothing had happened.
Okay. Well, at least I knew there were ley lines if I needed them. I’d chalk the experience off to “lesson learned,” and take extreme care the next time I was near galactic-spanning magical constructs.
Back to the business at hand; namely, how to find Karkanal’s barbarian tribe?
No obvious clue awaited us. I supposed that’s why it was called a “quest” rather than a guided tour, right?
I asked my comrades if they had suggestions.
By way of a reply, Morgana halted, cast a minor healing spell on me, and then cast another spell that called a pink hummingbird.
It alighted on her finger and twittered.
She whistled back.
The bird continued with a string of non-stop peeps.
She translated for us: “He says he’s seen ‘herds’ of humans recently, but not sure of where or which direction.” With a flick, she sent the still-chirping bird on its way. “All I could coax out of him. That one has a brain the size of a grape seed.”
“If we go east for a day or two,” Elmac said, “there be a wee trading outpost most of the Far Field folk come to. ’Least there was a few years ago. Ought to be still standing. Someone there’s bound to know where Karkanal’s people be.”
