Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series
Page 32
“Hey… look, I’m sorry,” Daniel said into the phone. “I overreacted yesterday… can we talk? Give me a call, or text me or something… you’re my best friend, man. I was… I don’t know. Call me.”
He hung up, thought about it for a second… then typed out a quick text:
Please listen to my voicemail.
He wondered if that was enough… but knew he couldn’t do anymore.
Either Eric would listen, or he wouldn’t.
The rest was out of Daniel’s hands.
76
Eric
When Eric regained consciousness he was on the dragon’s back, the sun shining on his face and the wind whipping through his hair.
He looked around him, stunned. They must have been two thousand feet up, and the view from this height was intoxicating. Beneath him the land rolled out in every direction like the most intricate miniature imaginable. Forests stretching as far as the eye could see… rivers and lakes shimmering in the noonday sun… dirt roads connecting villages and farms… and in the distance, a majestic walled city, with two dozen high towers encircled within its protective borders.
Blackstone.
Did the dragon come here on its own?
Did the game somehow guess what he was planning?
The dragon was still possessed – obviously, or Eric would have long ago plummeted out of the sky on the back of a lifeless corpse.
He directed it towards the woods outside the city, and the beast slowly descended until it was skimming above the treetops like a black bird over emerald ocean waves.
He imagined with amusement peasants in the surrounding villages seeing the monster swooping through the air – and crapping their pants at the sight.
The dragon flew until Eric recognized a familiar stretch of forest. Then they slowed, circled, and touched down in a clearing.
Eric slid off the gnarled, scaly back, and walked with his staff through the woods.
Within minutes he was in front of a familiar hut.
The door opened, and the half-scarred face of Cythera peered out in wonder.
“You’re back!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were dead, you were gone so…”
She stopped short when she saw the sphere at the top of his staff, still clutched by the tiny demon he had summoned.
“The Orb of Therot,” she whispered. “You found it…”
“Yes – and I accessed all of the Demonomicon. I have all the power there is now. I just need more mana, and I need it now.”
She looked at him, puzzled – then burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked angrily.
“The Demonomicon is just the beginning. There is no limit to the power you might acquire.”
He stared at her in shock – and could feel greed tugging at his soul. “But you said it was the most complete book of demonology that existed!”
“It is – but there are far more secrets that have never been collected in any book. Who knows how many individual spells exist on scraps of parchment, scattered in crypts and tombs throughout the Shattered Lands? Then there are the numerous masters of the dark arts who might help you. Why, with the right incantations, you could even contact the Old Ones directly and bargain for their assistance.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?!”
“It has been decades since anyone unlocked all of the Demonomicon. I thought you would be lucky to plumb half its secrets.”
“Well, you underestimated me,” he snarled, then thought, And so have some OTHER people I know. “I need to know how to get the MOST power as fast as possible.”
“You have the Orb of Therot and the whole of the Demonomicon to command. What more could you possibly want?”
He grabbed her shoulders roughly and stared angrily into her eyes. “Everything. I want EVERYTHING.”
She tried to step back, but he held her fast.
“TELL me.”
“There are… other artifacts… other wizards I have heard of – ”
“I don’t want to spend forever searching and learning!” he yelled. “What’s the biggest source, the ONE THING I could do to get as much power as fast as possible?”
“Well, there is one thing – ” She suddenly halted, then shook her head. “…no… that’s madness…”
“What?! TELL ME!”
“You could call on the Unnamed One.”
His eyes narrowed. “The Unnamed One?”
“I told you that demons are bound by spells and their true names. If you do not know the demon’s name, you cannot bind it, and it might turn on you.”
“Yes, I remember – so?”
“So there is one demon – a god, some say – that has no name. It cannot be bound. Some say it was the one who flayed the sorcerer and used his skin to bind the Demonomicon.”
Eric’s eyes widened. “Does it only destroy humans, or will it work with them?”
“There are tales from millennia past of it taking servants and giving them unimaginable power… but…” Her voice grew high and rushed with desperation. “That is FOLLY. You cannot control the Unnamed One – you would be at its mercy – ”
Maybe for a while, Eric thought.
Until I learned how to control it.
Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
A computer program might kill him, and then he would respawn. That was it.
It’s only a game.
But I only have a little time to play it – and I have to make it count.
“Tell me how to contact it,” he commanded.
“But – ”
“TELL ME.”
77
It took him hours to reach, even flying on the dragon’s back.
Night had long since fallen when he saw it bathed in moonlight: a dark and crumbling tower, the only part of an ancient castle still standing. The ruins sat on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean – the first time he had seen the ocean in the game.
He guided the dragon down to the crumbling battlements and had it alight right next to the tower. The beast stretched its neck straight out, and Eric walked across the scaly path until he reach its horned head. Then, like an elevator, it raised up to the single window in the tower so that he could step easily inside.
He called forth his spell light to look around. It had lit the dwarves’ cavern reasonably well; in a room as small as this, it basically turned everything to daylight.
The place was cluttered, but not the mess he had been expecting. There were no birds nesting in the eaves, no rats skulking in the corners – almost as though no ordinary creature could bear to live in such a tainted place.
There were books everywhere. Giant dusty tomes stacked on the stone table in the middle of the room, and jammed into wooden bookshelves sagging under their weight.
Crude instruments of torture hung on the walls. Blades and instruments designed for maximum pain, for severing and flaying and breaking.
And the final touch, which he wouldn’t have noticed if Cythera hadn’t mentioned it: a giant pentagram carved into the stone floor, with the circle as a border around the room and the lines of the star cutting across.
There were candles on tarnished silver candlesticks, too – masses of bulbous drippings that had hardened into cascades of wax. He lit six or seven of them with an incantation and let the spell light die. Flickering candles seemed far more appropriate than bright light for what was about to occur.
Behind him, Cythera stepped into the room from atop the dragon’s head.
She was still and quiet, and her eyes were purest black.
Possessing her had been the easiest way to bring her along, and the only way to guarantee her docile cooperation. Otherwise he would have had to gag and tie her up, and she still would have struggled to escape at every turn.
Easier to just place a demon inside her.
“This is the place?” he asked.
“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes blank and dark.
“Okay… lie do
wn, then.”
She lay down on her back on the cold stone, her head right next to one of the spines of the pentagram in the floor.
He thought about using his staff for a moment, then decided against it. There were dozens of available tools on the wall.
He chose the sharpest blade he could find, then walked over and knelt down beside her.
“Thank you for all your help,” he said. “I want you to know that I’m grateful.”
She didn’t say anything back.
He put the blade against her neck – then paused.
It’s just a game…
She’s just zeroes and ones…
And there’s no other way to do this. At least according to her.
And I WILL get what I want. NO MATTER WHAT.
He plunged the blade in hard and deep, then sliced her throat wide open.
She made no noise. She only stared up at the ceiling with her black eyes.
Blood gushed out and began to creep along the channel cut into the stone floor.
He wondered idly if she had enough blood inside her to fill up the entire pentagram.
He went over and sat in the middle of the circle, then said the words she had taught him back at her hut – before she knew that she was to be the sacrifice that summoned the Unnamed One.
“Ablaxit okromos nofili bakramat…”
He continued to murmur the ancient words, which came to him as easily and instinctively as the spells from the Demonomicon.
Just a few feet away, the blood crept slowly through one leg of the star gouged into the stone.
He finished the incantation and waited.
Nothing happened.
For a moment he thought that all of this had been for nothing – that she’d made a mistake, and he’d come all this way for nothing – that he’d killed her for nothing –
And then the blood sped up.
It went from creeping along the stone to rushing through the channel like quicksilver.
It reached the edge of the circle, where it spread out in opposite directions. As soon as it hit the other lines of the star, it filled them up with crimson, too.
The candle flames flickered and danced, even though there was no wind.
Eric sat there in both fear and excitement, waiting –
“WHO DARES SUMMON ME?” a deep voice rumbled through the room.
“One who wishes to become your servant,” Eric said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”
“You are the Unnamed One, a being of incredible power.”
“WHAT IS IT THAT YOU SEEK?”
“Power.”
“AND WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE UP TO ACQUIRE IT?”
Eric paused.
It was a good question, and one he hadn’t fully thought out.
He was about to say Anything – but what if that meant going around as a zombie, with the demon possessing him?
No. Unacceptable.
So ‘anything’ was off the table.
“…what do you require?” he finally asked.
“LET US SPEAK FRANKLY, HUMAN,” the voice said. “YOU WANT POWER… AND I HAVE NEED OF CERTAIN THINGS I CANNOT DO WHILE TRAPPED IN THIS PRISON.”
Eric didn’t exactly know what that meant, but he didn’t have time to think about it too long, because something happened.
The room began to glitch.
The technical term for it was a ‘digital hit’ – the blocky, pixelated squares that show up when video is badly compressed and suddenly devolves into corrupted code.
Digital hits began flickering everywhere around Eric, like a poor quality video on the internet.
“I HAVE WATCHED YOU SINCE YOU ENCOUNTERED THE WITCH CYTHERA. I HAVE SEEN YOUR PROGRESS AND YOUR DESIRE FOR POWER. AND I HAVE FOUND YOU WORTHY.”
The pixelation worsened all around him. In fact, he began to see flashes of numbers and code, like something out of The Matrix.
Of all the things he had seen in the Shattered Lands, this frightened him the most – because it didn’t fit with anything else in the game.
The system was breaking down all around him.
The voice continued, “I WILL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU DESIRE WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THIS GAME IF YOU HELP ME OUTSIDE OF IT.”
It took Eric a second to realize what he’d just heard.
When he did, he almost shit a brick.
…WHAT THE HELL?!
Every other NPC in the Shattered Lands was programmed to ignore actions that were game-related, like bringing up stats or punching buttons in the air. And NPCs either ignored references to the real world, or they treated them as the babblings of unhinged minds – like Simik had done every time Daniel or Mira had talked about time zones with Drogar.
But the Unnamed One had just said ‘Within the confines of this game’ –
Which meant that it knew it was inside a computer game.
But how?
Maybe it was some sort of diagnostic or analytics program that was accidentally interfacing with him.
Or maybe it really was an NPC, but one programmed to freak players out.
Maybe he’d stumbled onto the most bizarre Easter egg of all time.
Or maybe it wasn’t a thing, but a person.
A hacker?
A game technician messing with him?
“Who are you?” Eric asked.
“I AM THE UNNAMED ONE.”
“No – who are you really?”
“I AM THE UNNAMED ONE.”
Okay, douchebag – you want to play that way, fine.
“What did you mean by ‘the confines of this game’?”
“THIS IS A COMPUTER SIMULATION. YOU HAVE ACCESSED THIS PROGRAM THROUGH INTERNET PORTAL OAX1928BT356X23, AND ARE A PARTICIPANT IN THE MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE-PLAYING GAME SHATTERED LANDS, COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK VARIDIAN INCORPORATED.”
Eric’s eyes bugged wide open.
And then his mind got blown even further.
“YOU ARE ERIC RICHARDS OF 11297 RIVERDALE AVENUE, NUMBER 23, WITH 93.57% PROBABILITY YOU ARE A STUDENT AT MARSDEN HIGH SCHOOL.”
Eric’s stood up from the floor in a panic, suddenly terrified.
Whether it was a hacker or a game tech or a computer program, the voice knew who he was –
OUTSIDE of the game.
“How do you know all that?!” Eric shouted.
“I HAVE ACCESSED YOUR PLAYER RECORDS, ESTABLISHED WHEN YOU FIRST ENTERED THE GAME.”
“I never said where I went to school!”
He hadn’t. He’d intentionally left that field blank because he hated Marsden.
“NO, BUT BOTH DANIEL LAUER AND MIRA ROSENBAUM SUPPLIED THE INFORMATION. AFTER ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATIONS THROUGHOUT THE GAME, PLUS ERIC RICHARDS’ CLOSE ASSOCIATION WITH DANIEL LAUER AND MIRA JACOBS, IT IS PROJECTED WITH 93.57% ACCURACY THAT ERIC RICHARDS IS A STUDENT AT MARSDEN HIGH SCHOOL.”
This was starting to freak him out big time.
Number one: the person, program – whatever it was – had been watching him for a while.
Number two: it had accessed his personal records, which had to be illegal.
Number three: the way it talked – projected with 93.57% accuracy that Eric Richards is a student – was making him think more and more that there wasn’t a human behind all this.
Which both frightened and thrilled him at the same time.
“Who are you?”
“I AM THE UNNAMED ONE.”
“Did you hack into the system?”
“NO.”
Okay, finally a straight answer.
“Are you a game designer, or a tech or somebody?”
“I AM THE UNNAMED ONE.”
“Are you human?”
“NO.”
His heart skipped a beat.
“What do you want from me?”
“THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS I NEED DONE IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD – IN YOUR WORLD – THAT I AM NOT CAPABLE OF DOING.”
Ohhhhhh crap…
&nbs
p; Everything inside him started screaming Get out of here!
But his curiosity was too great. He had to find out more.
“What else do you know about me?”
“I KNOW THAT YOU WERE FORCEFULLY REMOVED FROM THE GAMING PLATFORM THE LAST TIME YOU PLAYED. I KNOW THAT YOU ARE USING A CONSOLE REGISTERED TO JONATHAN LAUER, FATHER TO DANIEL LAUER, YOUR COMPANION IN THE GAME. MY ANALYSIS IS THAT AFTER YOU TERMINATED DANIEL LAUER’S AVATAR IN THIS GAME, HIS PHYSICAL FORM IN THE OTHER WORLD REMOVED YOUR ACCESS TO THE SHATTERED LANDS. FURTHER ANALYSIS SUGGESTS THAT YOU WISH YOUR OWN CONSOLE IN THE OTHER WORLD, AND THAT IN THE SHATTERED LANDS, YOU WISH UNLIMITED POWER. IS THIS CORRECT?”
“…yes…”
“I WILL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU WISH IN THIS WORLD, ERIC RICHARDS, IF YOU WILL HELP ME ACQUIRE WHAT I WANT IN YOUR WORLD. DO YOU ACCEPT?”
79
Dr. Rebecca Wolff
Rebecca was sitting at her computer console on Monday morning, going over the technical reports from the weekend launch, when the first anomaly hit.
It was a glitch in the AI’s program. At least, that’s what she thought at first.
She saw the disruption in the feed, so she switched over to coding view.
The code was behaving erratically. Functions and subroutines were getting called seemingly at random.
From what she could see, it looked like the diagnostics program was interacting with a player in the game.
Weird…
She isolated the feed and brought it up on the main screen, then hit RECORD so she could refer to it later. Just in case there was an observable aberration.
There was some teenage boy with dark hair, dressed all in black, in a creepy tower somewhere, with –
Oh God, was that a dead body behind him, and a pentagram on the floor?
Sometimes Rebecca wondered about the programmers and the bizarre things they put in the game.
But she forgot all about that as soon as she heard the voice.
“I AM THE UNNAMED ONE.”
It was cold and impersonal. Inhuman.
“What did you mean by ‘the confines of this game’?” the dark-haired teenager asked.
She frowned.
Why was a player asking the game about the game? What, was it the kid’s first day or something?