Hee haw go the centaurs and har har har go the hopped up warlocks and the penguin-suited orc. I slip through the crowd, past the spidery woman with creepy peepers, around the conman using his legerdemain to try to unlatch a young vixen’s chastity belt, towards the fermented milk vendor side of the banquet hall. I know there isn’t a lot of time for scheming, and I’ll still have to keep my eyes on the crowd around me. The Thulean She-Hulk is out to get me, no matter where I spawn or what I do.
“I’ll have two, please,” I tell the full-bosomed milkmaid.
“The limit is one at a time per customer,” she says with a thin smile.
I almost equip my 7-Eleven 128 oz. Super Mega Triple Gulp, item 85, and tell her to fill ‘er up, but I decide to keep things copacetic. “Then I’ll take one.”
She hands me the frothy white dragon’s milk and down my neck it goes. I almost toss the glass over my shoulder but I reconsider and waggle it towards her.
“And I’ll take another,” I tell her.
She raises an eyebrow at me. “You have to use a new mug; Tritania health standards.”
“Let me guess, DRAIDS or the Corrupted Blood Incident?”
The milkmaid seems genuinely surprised. “A combination of both. How did you know?”
“It’s what I do: I drink and I know things,” I say as I down my second mug and return my focus to the situation at hand. The fermented milk adds a touch of blurriness to the corners of my vision pane, but it does nothing to calm my nerves.
Frances Euphoria: Are you done drinking? Empress Thun will be coming soon!
I note how Frances does not refer to the Empress as Dolly. There will be a time to address this in the future, but now isn’t the time for any sort of relationship drama. Back to Strata: it’s abundantly clear to me that I need to kill him. If I kill him, I’ll save Dolly and I’ll solve the puzzle. Bada bing, bada boom.
“You just gonna stand there at the front of the table, mister?” the milkmaid asks.
Maybe I’m supposed to kill the milkmaid. Likely not, but it would be satisfying.
Murmuring at the front of the crowd tells me that the Dolly’s attendants have started to arrive. The baby griffins will be next, followed by Dolly, then Strata and his suicide squad. My mind returns to the thought of a little kablooey; or better, a lot of kablooey.
I got no shortage of booby traps and command detonated explodey things that’d take care of Strata and Co, but they’d also take care of Dolly too, and I’m pretty sure I have to keep Dolly alive. Nope, Strata has to die, and seeing how he quickly turns to smoke once he’s come out his portal, I’d better get over there fast.
I calculate my trajectory as Dolly takes her throne. Only one item in my list could get me over in the blink of an eye. It’ll be bulky, and anyone in my path will be dunzilla by the time I cut past them, but it should do the trick.
The portal begins to open and item 205, my red Akira motorcycle, appears between my legs. I had this one souped-up by an associate of Dirty Dave; 0 to 60 in 0.5 seconds is as fast as he could make it.
“Holy trolls and goblins!” The milkmaid eyes go wide and she covers her mouth with her hands.
I rev the bike and lean backwards to pop me the mother of all wheelies.
~*~
The banquet hall blurs by as I speed to the front of the room.
I activate my AA bar and the front wheel comes down. Off I go, sideways firing my SWD Street Sweeper, item 110, in my right hand and Blain Cooper’s M134 minigun, item 198, in my left.
The Reapers fall out of the portal like turds from a horse’s ass and my bike skids right into them. The saddlebags pop open and half-a-dozen chunks of item 342, upsydaisyium, wrapped with item 341, fullerene doped boomex, zoom up into the portal and detonate just as Chief Turd makes his advent.
The blast converts the bike into high-dollar shrapnel and vaporizes those closest to it; those on the fringes soak up horrific injuries. The White Nights pig-piled Dolly when the first Reapers opened up, and they shielded her from the worst of it.
Strata doesn’t even have to shake off the blast and shrapnel – it has no effect, and he moves on Dolly as if nothing has happened. His evil black cloud morphing thing starts right on cue, starting at his extremities and working its way in.
A Reaper decides to try me on for size and suddenly discovers that he’s not ready for the Men’s Department after all when I send him on his way with an offhand three-second minigun burst right in his painted Killer Klown kisser. I barely contain my berserker rage; my Furor Quantumicus at the game, the game-within-the-game, the Sage, the Quest – all of it, especially anyone who dares gets in my way.
AA bar again.
I swim through the air like Michael Phelps on cat salts, and with a face-hugger’s tenacity, I latch onto what’s left of Strata. The big guns go away, I hook one hand under the edge of his mask and item 33 appears in my other hand. Our momentum carries us into one of the not-Peter Griffin drapes and straight down to the floor. I ram the Bowie blade up under his chin again and again and he doesn’t resist as I go all Knifey Knifepecker on his ass. Tendrils of smoke shot through with dark energy dance in my peripheral vision. His limbs have all but disappeared, but his torso is still sufficiently solid for me to straddle and the blade meets resistance every time I thrust it into him.
With an antler in either hand, I twist his head from the remains of his body.
The mask peels from his face and the mug that stares back at me is the same one that I see in the mirror every morning. The eyes – my eyes – move and meet my disbelieving gaze; the mouth – my mouth – twists into a crooked grin, and I curse as I throw the head as far from me as I can.
I drop the antler mask and stumble away.
“Well? Now what?” I ask the sky, and the sky doesn’t answer. “Oh Come ON! Wasn’t that it?”
Sudden shock as my heart explodes in my chest and the tips of a dozen witchblades protrude through the front of my dragonscale armor. Dolly lifts me in the air and turns me to face her; my lifebar drops past 12% as she dispassionately examines me. Vision pane flashes red, lifebar at 9% and falling fast, but I can’t focus on that – all I see now are Dolly’s orange eyes burning a hole in my soul.
Fade to black.
~*~
I keep my mouth shut and my weapons down this time around. The Sage waits for a moment for me to say something and begins to fade away.
~*~
The crowd forms around me. I don’t got beef with none of ‘em, but isn’t going to stop me from doing what I plan to do next. A quick scroll through my list and my Reason Railgun, item 459, forms in front of me. People start moving away real quick-like as I load and lock.
“See, I told you they’d listen to Reason.”
Frances Euphoria: What are you doing!?
The weapon whirs and I train it at the front of the room; the blast tears the polished floor as it travels to the front of the room. The people in range disintegrate; the screams that follow don’t please me as much as I’d though they would. The wall explodes outward; a vortex forms at the blast point and sucks in the surrounding snacks, drinks, furniture, anyone in the vicinity.
Wind racing out of the banquet hall whips at the griffin flags hanging from the ceiling until they too tear off. Bodies cartwheel through the air towards the hole and a few of the larger fellas – I’m looking at you, orcs – smack into the perimeter of the blast hole and make it even bigger.
Me? I’m feeling relatively stable in my half-ton of replica Carmagnolle Atmospheric Diving Suit, item 416, which means Mr. Legendary Quantum Hughes isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but it also means that I’m not really able to move my arms. Inigo Toyota, defender of Princess Renata’s honor, is sucked past me and swipes at me with her serrated scimitar – there is just no quit in that gal.
Frances Euphoria: You look like a robot.
Me: Danger Will Robinson!
Frances Euphoria: Stop playing around and solve the puzzle!
Me
: I am trying to solve it!
Frances Euphoria: How is what you’re doing trying to solve the puzzle?
Me: Maybe I’m supposed to kill everyone, even Dolly. This will be the easiest way to do so. Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting a vortex to open up once I blasted the front of the room, but I’m not one to look a gift hole in the mouth, glory or not. Do some camera work and tell me what’s out there. There’s too much smoke and chaos for me to really get a good sense of what’s going on out there.
Frances Euphoria: It’s the OMIB out there.
Me: Sweetness. Are they people dying once they get out there or are they just floating?
Frances Euphoria: It looks like they’re dying.
Me: Then maybe it’s not the OMIB.
I hold my ground until everyone in the banquet hall has been sucked out of the hole. No Strata, no Reapers, no royal procession, no Dolly. There goes my plan.
“Well, Sage?” I ask. “Did I solve your stupid little puzzle?”
Nope, nada, zero, zilch, zip.
I don’t know how long I stand there in my atmospheric diving suit waiting for something to happen, but it’s enough time for me to get thinking about the solution to this puzzle. Sometimes the best action is inaction.
I take one last deep breath, the suit goes back to inventory and I let the vortex sweep me away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Sage of Gotha does the inscrutable, mysterious ancient thing again. His whiskers twitch as he gives me a serious grimace, as light shines through his branches and a digital zephyr swirls around his trunk.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s get on with it. I think I know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Do you indeed?”
“Time will tell.”
He chuckles, his low voice booming all around me. “Yes, it most certainly will.”
~*~
As soon as the crowd forms around me – card guy, spider lady, centaurs and warlocks – I move to the far wall, behind the milkmaid again, who gives me some shit for climbing on top of her crate but is pretty much quiet after I simply ignore her. With my back to the wall, I am safe from any chance encounters. It’s all about the impending moment, and what I do next.
I just need to make it there in one piece.
“Mug of magic dragon milk, toots,” I tell the milkmaid.
“Just because I’m compelled to wear a form-fitting fantasy costume that makes me look like one who presents herself as a commodity allotment within a business doctrine doesn’t mean that you can treat me like one, you dim-witted, ill-mannered, disembiggening misogynistic pig!”
“Excellent point. I really need to do things differently. But what can I say? I yam what I yam and that’s all I yam.” I bow my head. “But please, excuse my couthlessness, fair lady.”
She huffs, crosses her arms beneath her overlarge chestal attributes that I in no way take sexist notice of, and squints at me in semi-disbelief. I hop down from the crate and get on my knees in front of the spout, wrap my lips around it and suck down the fermented dragon’s milk until I mistime my breathing and snort the foamy white brew out of my nostrils. Frances comments on my behavior, but I ignore her too. I figure the nose spurting is a pretty good sign that I’ve got enough on board, so I turn off the spigot, daintily dab my lips with the table cloth and take a seat on the crate.
The milkmaid slaps the back of my head and hisses, “Get out of here! Some of us still have to work, asshole!” The slap barely registers, my vision pane is a little bit blurred and slightly out of focus and I’m feeling not too bad, which is exactly what I was going for.
Trumpets ring out and the miniature griffins make their advent, or at least I think they do – I can’t really see much from where I’m sitting. The crowd grows quiet as the Empress – Dolly comes; I also can’t see her aside from the top of her hairdo. The audience reactions change from awe to horror as the portal opens up in the ceilings and Reapers pour out.
I toss my bear trap in front of me, item 250, and equip my Darth Maul lightsaber, item 251, just in case one of the murder guild kids gets close, but the mayhem at the front of the room is enough to keep them occupied. Right on cue, the head douche canoe drains out of the Reaper hole, and it takes everything I have – everything – to not to zip forward all AAed up with lightsaber out for some serious sliceage and hackage.
Nope. I stay right where I am, even though I know Strata is in the process of killing Dolly.
It’s hard, and the screams and weapons fire and twisted bedlam all around me only makes my inaction that much more difficult. Eventually, I stand up on the crate just see how he’s doing it, only to find that at the very last moment, just as he uses his black smoke appendages to choke the life out of her, Dolly witchblades the shit out of him. Up under the chin and out the nose, the witchblade shatters Strata’s mask, revealing my face again, just as his smoky hand forms a blade and he lops her head off.
Strata falls forward and Dolly falls backwards, both dead for good. The room begins to twist and constrict, the windows shatter and the almost OMIB spills prickly stars into the room.
~*~
The Sage of Gotha smiles warmly as his form takes shape. “Congratulations, Steamboy,” he says in his low rumbly voice. “I hope you learned something about yourself. You may not yet realize what you’ve learned now, but hopefully, in time, you’ll recognize the significance of this puzzle. For solving the puzzle, you’ll now receive part of a riddle.” His branches rattle. “Are you ready?”
I barely nod.
Frances Euphoria: Cheer up, you did it! Plus, it wasn’t that hard – all you had to do was, well, nothing.
A slip of parchment no larger than a fortune cookie’s fortune takes shape in the space in front of me. It does a few spins, snaps tight and floats over to me like a snowflake. I read it before I add it to my list, item 582.
“May you do as well with the riddle.” he says as his arboreal form dematerializes.
~*~
The End of Time has that certain OMIBish je ne sais quoi, but not exactly. Three platforms connected by a set of stairs float in the middle of nowhere. No stars, no neurons sparking in the distance, just a jet black backdrop and a single ornate streetlamp in the center platform, beneath which a man stands sleeping; a snot bubble on his nostril expands and contracts as he breathes – nice touch.
It’s gonna take me a minute to get over the bullshit I’ve just experienced. I’m glad that Dolly got Strata even as he got her, but seeing my face on Strata was just a little too ‘Luke, I am your Father’ for me. Yeah, yeah – symbolism, got it. And as for what I’ve learned? I’ve learned that I’m not saying ‘yes’ to any more quests – ever!
Rocket burbles with excitement and bounces around me like a shelter puppy with a full bladder on visitors’ day. After I fend off his great big bear hug attempt, he has to know what ethereal bullshit my mystical magical piece of the crypto-parchment has to impart. “C’mon, Q-Mag, what does yours say?”
“Any idea what all this means?” I ask Rocket as I step away from a portal made from pixelated 8-bit light.
“Yup, we’ve already figured that out. It’s in reference to a classic RPG called Chrono Trigger,” he explains, “Pretty much every JRPG since, be it on Steam-Itch or now released through iNet, has been inspired by this one. Final Fantasy too. That’s another big one.”
“Of course.” I hand Rocket the slip of parchment and Sophia snatches it away with her mind magic. Mood I’m in right now, I seriously consider grabbing Rocket by the ankles and beating her to death with him, but I get a handle on it.
“Sophia, please, please do me a solid and don’t do your magical grabbing shit away thing, please.”
“Okay, okay.” She waves me off, does some more oogly-boogly hand jiving, and a billboard-sized AppleSoft™ MACSurface™ scroll appears with each line of our riddle pieces as enlarged text.
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
“Where’s Frank Gorshin when you need him?” A quick look to my compadres tells me they don’t get my question. “Jim Carrey?”
Rocket shakes his head.
“All right, already.” I wave my childhood nostalgia away. “So we got these three lines … ”
Frances Euphoria: Hero of Alexandria was the inventor of the steam engine like two thousand years ago. The other lines, I can’t really help you with on my end.
“So we have an inventor,” I say as I make my way down the small flight of stairs and over to the man that is sleeping upright beneath the single streetlamp, “and we have two pretty much useless lines. Who’s this guy, by the way?” I ask.
Rocket to the rescue. “That’s Gaspar, can’t you read his handle?”
“Yeah, I guess I could have. I’m just not in the mood.”
“To read?” Sophia asks skeptically.
“To anything. I don’t know about you two, but my little puzzle was pretty darned unpleasant if you ask me.”
“Unpleasant?” Sophia guffaws. “A goblin literally bit off my nipple in one go-around, I was vomited on, beaten up, spit on, thrashed, shat upon, until I finally snapped. None of my spells worked, I couldn’t equip any tools or devices, so I killed every goblin child I was responsible for with my bare hands. I wrung their necks, just like you’d wring the neck of a chicken – a stinky, green, scaly, ugly, flatulent, uncooperative, loathsome chicke … um, never mind. They were just children, and they’re even more endangered than the Yoshis. For all I know, now I’m wanted for ethnic cleansing and crimes against … um, goblinhood, or something.”
“No doubt you’ll be getting a summons from the ICC Make Believe Crimes Division, Kodos,” I tell her.
“Oh yeah?” Rocket clears his throat. “I hope the two of you are never tasked with pleasuring a Tardigrade. Can you even begin to imagine what that was like? Let alone the unicorn? And Pip – I’ll never be able to look at him the same way again – and his sheep Pippa? Well, no – she was actually nice, so friendly and soft and fluffy … but the poo pixie … Eww! And the list goes on.” He crosses his arms over his chest, shudders. “I feel so used and violated.”
The Feedback Loop (Books 4-6): Sci-fi LitRPG Series (The Feedback Loop Box Set Book 2) Page 47
