by J. R. Ford
“You and me both, buddy.”
“You seem to be doing fine.”
“I got lucky with Heather. If you’d seen me in high school, you’d have a very different opinion.”
“You get rejected a lot?”
I laughed and grabbed my javelin. “Not outright as much.”
He raised a thick eyebrow at me.
“For lack of trying,” I said. “Every time I’d get a crush on a girl, she’d make it clear she wasn’t interested. Saved my pride.”
“Do you regret not asking any of them?”
“Not really. The result would’ve been the same. If there’s anything I trust about myself, it’s my ability to predict my own failure. Just watch.” I threw the javelin as hard as I could, hoping for the millionth time to prove myself wrong. Another miss, my millionth validation. “See?”
“At least you tried.”
“‘Try’ is a word the pitiful use to make failure taste better.”
Farrukh looked pensive.
“What about you? Any high school sweethearts?”
“One girl, once.” His poleax hit the target hard, but its weight prevented it from sticking fast.
“I need details.”
“Her name was Aditi. She was sullen, and pretty.”
“Sounds like a match.”
He snorted. “I offered to help her with a maths assignment one day, on the condition she’d help me with English. We ended up just copying each other’s work.”
“You dog!” I said. “Offer to help an innocent maiden with her homework, and what? Spend the whole time making out?”
His mustache perked. “She was easy to talk to. I felt like she listened, like she understood me. She was easy to kiss, too. But she was also Hindu.”
“Does that matter?” I asked.
“She taught me it didn’t. But her parents thought otherwise. Or maybe it was just her and she said it was her parents. Either way, it was a mistake.”
“Better to have loved and lost,” I said, feeling the words hang above me like a guillotine. My heart clenched in anticipation of that million-and-first failure.
He shook his head, and we retrieved our weapons from the dirt. “The English teacher saw we’d made the same mistakes on the assignment and handed us zeroes. I’d only asked for help in the first place because I was on the border between marks. One mark — not much, but maybe it was the difference between getting a scholarship and wasting my life away on Standard. I should’ve just accepted her help and moved on.”
I would’ve argued that Standard Income was not inherently shameful, but the way my well-recited argument reminded me of my parents’ urgings to find a career defeated my words before they reached my lips. “We’ll have to make up for it in points,” I said instead. Guilt fluttered in my stomach. Heather and I were two of the top scorers from leveling up, while he had to subsist on orc scraps and whatever viewership he pulled in.
He grunted as he hurled the ax. Miss.
“You can have my winnings,” I said. “I’d just waste them on video games, and I would’ve been dead day one without you.”
He gave me a hard look. “I can earn my own points. Besides, visiting Heather? You’re lotto too. You told me you were destined for Standard. You need the boost.”
“Yeah, can’t.” Don’t know why I was still throwing that damn thing, when every time was a miss.
“And maybe one day you can. Money is freedom, and I won’t deprive you of yours. But thanks for the sentiment.”
“How many viewers you got, anyway?”
“A few million, usually,” he said. “About doubles when we’re on the hunt.” His ax embedded itself the entire spike’s length.
My jaw dropped. “How? I hover around 200k.” Though I’d been checking less often lately. I didn’t need reminders that my family, and old gaming buddies I hadn’t spoken to in years, and all my classmates I never got along with, and way too many more pairs of eyes were watching me.
“Talking to them helps,” he said. “I do it every night — tell them how I’m feeling, what my plans are. I’ve moaned to them enough about my romantic situation. I’d imagine a lot of them are Indian though, since I speak to them in Telugu. They’re probably rooting for me to ask Priyanka out.”
I laughed, though the idea of addressing my own viewers like that made me cringe. “I always thought you were just praying out loud. You aren’t concerned about what they think of you?”
“I’m not ashamed of my emotions. If anything, it’s therapeutic.”
“And here you’re obsessed with points! You’ll be rich off stream revenue alone.”
“Will I? We have no idea what the rates are. I can’t take chances. I need all I can get.”
We retrieved our weapons in silence. I broke it by steering the topic back into safer waters — safer for me, anyway. “So, going to ask Priyanka out, when we see her?”
I could’ve sworn he blushed, though it was hard to tell with his dark skin and beard. “Well, for one, I’m not sure I like her that way,” he said. “And even if I did, there are plenty of reasons I shouldn’t.”
“Name one.”
“What if she has a boyfriend?”
“You won’t know until you ask.”
“What if she says no?”
“It’s not like you see her often enough for it to be awkward.”
“What if she says yes?” He threw his ax. It went wide.
I paused. “I don’t know. Guess it depends on what you ask her.”
“What would I ask?”
“Take her to dinner.”
“In a city where we’re both wanted?”
“Tell her to visit us here.”
He furrowed his brow.
I held the javelin. “I’ll take Heather and Ana off somewhere. Y’all can fish, and you can make biryani.”
“Are you going to throw that?”
I took my shot. It struck the target at foot height.
“I don’t want to tread on any toes,” he said. “This is your home, too.”
“You’re making excuses. It would be your perfect date, and you know it.”
“Like I said, I don’t even know if I like her that way.”
“What’s not to like? She’s cheerful, cute, and even lives near you in real life! Even if you died, it wouldn’t be the end.” I tried to keep the jealousy from my voice.
“I must admit a weakness for women in saris, but… Imagine two fish in a river, but they like different kinds of bait. I probably won’t catch the one I bait for, but I definitely won’t catch the other.”
“Oh, shit! You like Ana!”
He turned to look at the cabin, then back. “Cool it. I told you, I don’t know.”
“Oh, this is too juicy!” I said. “I’ll keep your secret.”
“Even from Heather?”
“Yeah. If she caught wind, she’d tell Ana in a heartbeat. But I don’t get it. You don’t seem to get along with her.”
“Have you seen her?”
“So hot.”
He nodded sagely. “So hot. Beyond that, it’s her confidence. But even for that, I hate her, a bit. She makes it look so easy. Every scrap of confidence I have, I had to claw out of those who didn’t think I could have a good life.”
“You were there when she started going slug. She still came to rescue Heather. That took confidence, even if I had to pep talk her into it.”
“Confidence in you. I guess I can see why that’s impressive.”
“Hey!”
He chuckled. “You know the feeling, don’t you? Enough people say you can’t make it, you wonder if it’s true.”
I laughed out loud. “Just takes me, really. Same effect though.” Then I shook my head. “Don’t try to deflect. Why don’t you ask her out?”
He sighed. “The past month has been a dream come true for me. Hunting, fishing, training…and you three are the best friends I've ever had. I don't think I show that often enough. But I can’t afford to make
mistakes. This isn’t just a game for me.”
Nor for me, not when game over meant game over with Heather. “Is there no other way you could afford tuition?”
“I tried getting scholarships, but no matter how hard I worked, there was always another kid brighter than me and working just as hard. Or with the money to afford tutors, I don’t know. Maybe it really was that one English mark. But I don’t have anything. It’s this or bust. I can’t afford mistakes.”
“What does this have to do with Ana?”
“Asking her out would be a mistake, a much bigger one than asking Priyanka. Things would be awkward if she refused. I don’t know if I’d stay in the party. I don’t know if I could stand it.” He planted his ax in the ground. “I guess I should roll the bones with Priyanka, huh? It’s not like I’d ask Ana out anyway.”
“Sure,” I said, entirely unsure.
“Chili’s ready!” Heather called from the threshold. It had gotten dark and we hadn’t noticed.
7
The cave entrance yawned, a maw of hungry earth. Teeth-like ferns bristled. Its gullet was pitch dark.
It had taken us most of the day to travel here, where Ha-Jun’s directions back to their hideout started. Ana held a lantern aloft and led the way, Heather behind her, then me with another lantern, and Farrukh as the caboose.
Ana, Farrukh, and I had to stoop to enter. Our lanterns cast long shadows. On the way, I’d mostly entertained myself by watching how Heather’s dress swished a little whenever her butt moved. Now I watched the darkness.
Much as I hated the journey, it was preferable to the destination. We hadn’t encountered any orcs on our way, but this dungeon would be stuffed with monsters and Enlightened.
The lantern light glittered on the honed point of my gauntlet-dagger. I just had to kill our enemies before they killed us. It had worked this far, hadn’t it?
The cave’s throat tightened even further, until all of us were on our knees. If we hadn’t known there would be a passage, we might’ve turned back. The cave walls pressed in on all sides, damp, salivating. Farrukh was muttering in Telugu — probably curses.
Tighter still. We had to continue on our bellies. I shoved the lantern before myself awkwardly until, after a few body-lengths, the cavern opened up again.
I brushed myself off but left the lantern on the ground to guide Farrukh. He emerged with a groan, sweat-sheen glistening on his forehead. “I hate caves,” he grumbled. “Let’s go fight our way past the walls instead.”
“There are a thousand players with orders to shoot in that city,” I said. Was why I’d again foregone my green cloak for ugly desaturated brown.
The cavern twisted in multiple directions. The walls were obscured by a forest of ferns and an orange semicircular fungus that cascaded in bright staircases. Beneath the flora, dark soil was held fast by creepers and roots. Farrukh, wielding an arrow like a pencil, scratched a symbol in the plant life next to the passage we’d emerged from.
Ana said, “We take the second-from-the-left passage and cross the gap. What gap?”
We waded through the ferns for a few minutes. “That gap,” Heather said.
The passage dropped off into darkness, ferns clinging as far as we could see. About eight feet ahead of us and six feet down, it returned from the void and climbed up at a more reasonable angle.
“Your friends say anything about how to cross this?” Farrukh asked.
Ana rummaged around in the ferns and came up with a rope, attached to a stake driven into the soil. It dangled over the edge unhelpfully. “I get the feeling that this is for the way back more than the way there. I guess we jump. Who’s first?”
“The slope on the other side is nothing to discount,” I said. “If you land badly, you might just slide into the crevice. Let’s think about this.”
“I’ll go,” Heather said, and before I could object, she was a black panther. She wiggled, muscles rippling beneath her fur, then leapt. She landed forepaws-first in the ferns, then bounded up to the top of the slope and transformed back.
“Okay, but I had an idea too,” I said, handing Farrukh the lantern. “I can nullify momentum, remember?”
I took a couple steps, frowned as ferns tugged at my feet, and stamped down those close to the edge. Then I bunched up, cycled through my symbols — ping, ping, ping — and launched myself across.
I flailed my arms in midair as the void surrounded me, bent my ring and pinky, and slapped my thigh just before I landed at the lip of the chasm. I stopped suddenly, my cloak suspended in air behind me.
It wasn’t as if I’d landed. There was no shock. One moment I was falling, and the next I wasn’t. My mana bar pulsed, a vibrant purple liquid sloshing at 20/100. I stepped lightly onto the slope, then looked up at Heather and spread my arms wide. See, I can do cool stuff, too. I turned back to Ana and Farrukh. “I’ll catch you,” I said.
I prepared the symbols while Farrukh readied himself. As he leapt, the fluid ring poured into existence before my palm. He stopped midair when I touched him, and after a moment, he dropped to the slope. He wobbled a bit, and I reached out to stabilize him, remembering just in time that my left hand was a dagger. He grabbed the gauntlet for support, secured his footing, and crawled up the slope.
Ana came next. I nullified her on the stomach, 60 mana of 100 now. She brushed past, and together we climbed the last of the slope.
“Next time, don’t just jump ahead,” I told Heather. “It’s quicker for me to discharge mana than it is for yours to refill.”
“I’m already back to full,” she said.
Ana resumed the lead through the winding passage. “Keep your eyes out for another junction.” The ferns rustled beneath us, but as the passage led deeper down, the carpet changed to a miniature forest of bright fungi stalks that squelched underfoot.
Time stretched. Our lanterns warded away darkness, but I kept my gaze where their light didn’t reach. There were monsters down here.
We reached another chamber with multiple exits. Ana said, “Stay here,” and started poking down some of the passages.
Farrukh followed her hurriedly. “You’ve gotten us lost,” he said. “Let me see the directions.”
“We’re not lost,” she insisted. “I think it’s this way. I’m just making sure.”
Their words made unease simmer in my stomach. But Ana put on a strong front for my benefit near-constantly. I patted Farrukh on the back, which made him jump. “Farrukh, buddy, deep breaths. We know how to get out. You’ve been marking it.”
His breathing steadied a bit. “Let me see the directions.”
“Let him see them,” Heather said. “If you’re sure we’ve been going the right way, he’ll see that too.”
Ana scowled but handed them over.
Farrukh studied them a moment. “Okay, I think you’re right. Here.” He handed them back, shaking his head. “Sorry. It’s just the caves getting to me.”
Ana led us into a large chamber. A few sunrays shone through gaps in the ceiling. The walls cried, their tears pooling into a black, mirror-still pond. Huge water lotuses covered the surface. The flowers, bright pink and yellow and white, were starting to close. The pads seemed big enough to walk across, but a tentative foot revealed they would sink under the weight.
An echoing rumble resounded around us. Halfway across the chamber, the pond waterfalled over a twenty-foot cliff. The path forward rose again from the pool at the base of the waterfall.
“The directions say not to tarry here,” Ana said and began splashing across. “And don’t touch the flowers.”
We followed. The water was two feet deep and poured into my boots immediately. Sharp cold. At least there was no current. The mud sank beneath my feet, and trying to step out, I nearly tripped on a tangle of lotus roots. After that, I tried staying on top of the roots, as they seemed fairly stable. The pads rustled as we pushed through them, keeping wide of the flowers.
As I approached the waterfall, there was a splash behind me
. I turned to see Farrukh on one knee, apparently having tripped.
About ten feet behind him, a yellow-robed apprentice stood. I let out a strangled cry and dropped the lantern, which the water extinguished. But I only had one hand, and I’d rather hold my rapier.
Ana charged him. The apprentice barely reacted, not going for his sword, just limping into the pool. I looked down. His leg was crooked. He looked despondent.
“Something’s wrong!” I said.
As Ana neared, the apprentice shuddered, and a spray of tiny particles erupted from his head. Not his head, I realized: a yellow mushroom sprouting from his scalp.
Ana drew herself short, nearly toppling into the water, then turned and scrambled away. She tripped but kept her lantern above the surface, and Farrukh went to help her up.
Looking at the apprentice, really looking, his skin had a jaundice-yellow pallor. No, it was tiny fungi, sprouting over all exposed skin. The definition beneath was loose, the flesh half-decayed, giving it a misshapen silhouette. The fungus had been gnawing at its feast, and the second course had just waltzed in.
“Farrukh, fire!” Heather cried.
He obliged. The arrow pierced its chest, to no effect.
“No, sorry, don’t shoot, just…here!” She grabbed an arrow and dipped it in the pool. He drew it, and she symbolled transmute water to fire. When one outstretched finger touched the arrow-tip, it burst alight. Farrukh let fly.
It took the zombie in the chest, but I didn’t see what happened next. The roots beneath me shifted suddenly, and I fell backwards. My companions were too preoccupied with the zombie to pay any attention to me. I gasped in air before I went under.
The water enveloped me, shocking me with its coldness. This close to the waterfall, the current was powerful, ripping me toward the edge. Roots slithered away from my grasp, and the muddy bed offered no purchase. My perspective pitched as I was swept down the waterfall headfirst, then I had to close my eyes against the pounding water.
I splashed down among lotuses and mud. I felt no pain, just disorientation as I tried to surface, unable to tell down from up.
