Absalom’s Fate

by J. D. L. Rosell

  Absalom’s Fate

  The Everlands: Book I

  J.D.L. Rosell

  Contents

  If you like epic fantasy...

  Can’t Get Out

  1. Entering the Everlands

  2. Misty Arrival

  3. A Guide in the Temple

  4. Three-Horned

  5. Sewer Scrubber

  6. Into the Dungeon

  7. Angel or Devil

  8. Round 2

  9. The Night Sisters

  10. Fealty

  11. The Tipsy Navigator

  12. An Auspicious Embarkment

  13. Ambush

  14. Halduran

  15. Sanctuary

  16. Crumble

  17. An Incomplete Explanation

  18. The Barrow

  19. The Autumn Prince

  20. Homecoming

  21. Merriment in Maluwae

  22. J’anteau

  23. Consequences

  24. Ascension

  25. The Sky Citadel

  26. Beyond

  27. Absalom’s Fate

  28. Everfolk

  I hope you enjoyed Absalom’s Fate!

  Books By J.D.L. Rosell

  Absalom’s Trials: Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  If you like epic fantasy...

  Then I have an offer for you! For a limited time, you can get the first book in my epic fantasy series, In the Shadow of the Rook, for free! Mozy on over here to snatch it up while you can!

  Now, good folks, I hope you enjoy Absalom’s Fate.

  - Josiah

  Can’t Get Out

  Ali’s chin slipped from his hand, his head nearly plunking against the keyboard. Waking up with a jolt, he checked if his fellow technicians had seen, but it looked like he was in the clear. That was one good thing about working as tech help for a virtual reality game — the visors hid the judgmental stares.

  He’d stayed up too late last night playing the game, The Everlands, himself, and now he was nodding off on the job again. Slapping his face as subtly as he could, he focused again on his screen and took the next available logged issue.

  It was a text submission with a single line: They won’t let me out.

  Ali blinked. That was a bit out of the ordinary. He quickly typed back. Hello, Gorget. Thanks for contacting Tech Support. Can you be more specific about the issue you’re encountering today?

  He received a response back quickly. The Valyn. The gods. I don’t know anymore. But they won’t let me out.

  Ali’s heart was starting to thump harder. Are you saying that your log off feature isn’t functioning?

  I can’t leave this dungeon. I can’t leave the game. They say I’ll destroy Absalom. I’ve told them I won’t touch him. I just wanted to see. Now, I just want to leave.

  Ali read the message twice, then glanced at the open door to the office of his manager, Mr. Henderson. Mr Henderson had told everyone in Tech Support that The Everlands couldn’t afford a PR disaster. With VR gaming at this level of sophistication being a completely new thing, any hitch could mean disaster for the future of the company. And no job for Ali. Hang in there, he typed back to the player Gorget. We’ll get you out soon. Then he took a deep breath. It was time to dive in.

  Copying the player’s in-game coordinates — and only staring at them, impressed, for a moment — Ali put on his portable VR headset. He was logged in within moments, and the darkness of the dungeon filled his screen. He could barely see the outline of Gorget’s avatar curled up in the corner of the cell.

  “Hello, Gorget. I’m here to assist you. You've had issues logging out?”

  The avatar’s head snapped up. “Behind you!” he screamed.

  An ear-splitting sound boomed through Ali’s headphones, and his vision fuzzed. He tore off the headset with a cry. The other techs were definitely looking now, but Ali didn’t care. Chills ran down his spine. “Nothing to see here, folks,” he said with a nervous laugh, but he hadn’t needed bother. They were already returning to their screens and visors. barely acknowledging they’d been disturbed.

  Sitting back down, his fingers flew as he diagnosed the problem. But he kept running into wall after wall. He glanced at the headset. He had to go back in.

  As soon as he put them back on, he knew they were dead. Ali took the headset off again with a sigh. That’d be a serious tick on his record.

  But he had more important things to worry about. Something had fried his headset. Something was keeping that player Gorget trapped in The Everlands. This was a serious glitch, big enough that he had to report it to the manager.

  He swallowed. Out of the “frying” pan and into the fire, you might say.

  He rose and walked to the door — which was open, since management had “an open door policy” — and tapped on the frame. “Come in,” Mr. Henderson said wearily from within.

  Ali came in. “Hello, sir.”

  The manager blinked up at him. “Ah, Aaron. What can I do for you?”

  Ali gave a nervous laugh and didn’t bother correcting him on his name. Mr. Henderson never seemed able to get it right, even though it was about as simple as they came. “I, uh, have a pretty serious glitch on my hands that I need to run by you. A player says he’s stuck.”

  Mr. Henderson stared owlishly at him. “Stuck?”

  “Er, yes sir. He can’t log off.”

  His manager shifted back in his chair, eyes unfocused for a moment. “Are you sure? Did he tell you that?”

  Ali tried not to fidget with his hands. “Not directly, actually—”

  “Oh. Well.” Mr. Henderson smiled. “Do ask him then. Maybe it’s a simple misunderstanding.”

  Much as he didn’t want to, Ali knew he had to push this. “I don’t think it’s just that. I think he’s actually stuck.”

  The manager sighed. “If he can’t log off, send me the specs of the issue log. I’ll address it myself.”

  “Yes, sir.” But as Ali left the office, he didn’t feel any easier about the situation. There was nothing his manager could do that any tech couldn’t; in fact, he could probably do quite a bit less. And besides, that wasn’t the way The Everlands was designed. The game was run, maintained, and innovated by AIs that doubled as in-game gods. Theoretically, bugs like this would be caught and patched by the AIs as soon as they occurred. He and his coworkers of Tech Support were mostly there to lend a human face to helping with player problems.

  But this — this felt like it went beyond a simple glitch. This was the sort of game-breaking error that the AI-gods were supposed to stop in the first place. And with mention of this Absalom — a name Ali had never heard before, and he knew the game well — he was getting a bad feeling about this.

  The proper channels weren’t going to address this. They couldn’t; they weren’t made for it. So he’d just have to go via the improper ones.

  Going back to his computer, he pulled up a private chat window. Hey. I have something I need you to get to the bottom of.

  The reply came a minute later. You know I don’t want anything that isn’t crucial to the game.

  This is crucial, Ali said with a smile. Sheika, his friend and already an in-game expert, was always like that. But once he told her about this, she’d be all over it like a kid with a candy. He didn’t know anybody who loved the game as much as her.

  Fine. Lay it on me.

  Ali stretched his fingers, glanced at his manager’s office, and began to type.

  1

  Entering the Everlands

  I stared up at the holographic sign, mounted on a building that was the diametrical opposite of it. While the sign was sleek and popped with colors and eye-catching detail, the building looked like it had been tr
ansported from a medieval German town, with half-timbering, a faux-thatched roof, and all the other works. I grinned to myself, not caring how stupid I looked to passersby.

  Today was the day I was getting inside.

  I wasn’t the first person to stop and stare. The new, first fully VR MMORPG had everyone looking like nutcrackers with their jaws hanging open, and I was no different. Popping out from the sign were the slew of races I’d read up on that frequented the game. Above them were the Pantheon, the in-game gods who not only maintained the game to keep everything perfect and bug-free, but also played a role in the The Everlands itself. Under the sign, text scrolled by like an old-timey marquee:

  The Adventure of a Thousand Lifetimes! Limitless Quests, Storylines, and Characters, Ever-changing and Always Fascinating! Play The Everlands Today!

  I knew it was no exaggeration, and was frothing at the bit to try it.

  But there was a problem. You had to be 21 to enter the parlors where you could play it, it being too sophisticated for personal systems. I was just 17.

  My friends, geeks and nerds down to the last of them, had all resigned themselves to waiting until they “came of age,” as you will, to try it. I, however, had tried everything I could to enter. I’d hunted down that one guy every school seems to have who makes fake IDs for all the jocks and cheerleaders and got one myself, but the bouncer caught me at the front. I’d gotten my older brother, who was 22, to try and “escort” me in, but we got turned away then as well. I would have tried pretending to be my older brother but, well, I’m skinny and he’s fat, so that wouldn’t pan out too well.

  But after staking out the place for a week, I finally had a way. Today, I would finally get into the parlor, and I’d log in to the huge, wide world of the Everlands. I’d explore a new (read: better) reality, and become someone badass and awesome.

  It wasn’t that I hated my life. Sure, I was having a bad run with the ladies at the moment: Karen, my girlfriend of a ten months — ex-girlfriend now — had wanted me to say the big “L” word, but I wasn’t ready for that. How the hell was I supposed to say I loved her when more than half the time I’d rather kick it with the guys and bust aliens with the Needler on Halo? To make matters worse, Karen was part of our friend group, one of three gamer chicks in our high school, and she played the same instrument as me in band, the saxophone. So there was no escaping her anywhere I went.

  And sure, my home life could be better. My brother was causing waves by moving in with his girlfriend after they’d only been dating six months. My parents — divorced, by the way — had started squabbling about it every chance they could get. Somehow, my own issues got thrown into the mix: my plummeting grades, my lack of initiative in applying to colleges (I’d skipped a year of school in grade school), and, of course, the main problem of all: my so-called video game addiction.

  What they didn’t understand was that video games weren’t just an addiction, like they were a disease or something you caught and cured. They were a way of life. Maybe it bothered me a little bit, sometimes, when I was struggling to sleep (I’m a diagnosed insomniac, so there’s that). But mostly, I was having the time of my life.

  Suffice to say, I was ready to have the best time of my life playing The Everlands.

  Everything I’d heard made it out to be just as epic as I’d imagined. While the original code was architected by humans, the world was maintained, changed, and innovated now by limited AIs. Sure, they’d have their coders’ biases, but otherwise they wouldn’t have the limitations a human would have. They could work tirelessly and execute flawlessly an infinite number of possibilities, making the virtual reality, as their advertising went, truly unlimited, as well as free of overbearing hands. How it developed from here was truly in the hands of the players and their choices within the world.

  I was literally sweating with eagerness to get started. Gross, I know. But wouldn’t you be?

  But first, I had to do the infiltration. I moved around to the back of the building through a narrow alley where the dumpster behind the parlor was. Ducking behind the dumpster, I put down my backpack and quickly took out the kitchen outfit I’d pilfered from the trash a few days ago and put it on over my clothes. It had a stain down the front of the shirt and was a size too large, but I just cinched my belt and set my resolve. I couldn’t fail, or I’d never get to play. Or as close to never as counted — three and a half years was a lifetime in terms of gaming. I didn’t want to be playing irrelevant dinosaurs while the sleek starship was just out of grasp.

  So I walked up to the backdoor and took a deep breath. This led to the kitchens, I knew from my week of stakeout. I didn’t have a key, but people regularly came out back for smoke breaks and tossing out the trash. I took out the pack of cigarettes I’d snuck from Dad’s supply at home, knocked one into my hand, then clumsily set to lighting the end. I didn’t smoke, but I pretended to be lazily doing so, leaning against the parlor wall, until someone finally came out the door.

  It was a heavyset older woman, who immediately spotted me and donned a scowl. “What are doing back here? Get back to work, or I’ll make sure you don’t work another day of your life!”

  I sneered a little, as I thought my cover character might, then slouched inside the door the woman held open for me, her eyes scrutinizing me the whole way. “And tomorrow,” she said to my back, “come with a clean shirt!”

  I hid my smile as I pressed through the swinging door and into the bustling kitchen. People moved everywhere, and steaming smells assaulted my nose. Some of the food was the same as could be found at any bar, but there was a specialty line for the more hardcore gamers. A whole wall of the kitchen had rows upon rows of blenders and food processors. This was for making sure those people who stayed under longer than a day (the recommended limit was 24 hours, but the parlor wouldn’t cut them off until 72 hours had passed) still had the sustenance to keep them alive and relatively healthy. Same went for water and bathroom business. I sympathized, but I couldn’t see myself going that far. I mean, it might be the best game ever made, but in the end, The Everlands was still just a game. Have some self-respect, people!

  At least, that was what I was saying from this side of it.

  Everyone was so busy that people barely glanced at me, except to note my stain with a disdainful look. I ignored them and passed through, my stomach a jangle of nerves and excitement. It was working. I couldn’t believe this was so easy.

  “Hey, man, where you going?”

  My blood suddenly ran cold. I slowly turned around to see a long-faced, long-haired twenty-something guy staring at me with bloodshot eyes.

  “Just to the bathroom,” I said as casually as I could. I gestured to my shirt. “Spilled a little something.”

  The guy slowly looked down at my stain. I swear a whole minute passed before a slow smile spread across his face. “Yeah, man. Get that cleaned up. Then I could use a hand on Station 6, you know?”

  “Yeah, man,” I said, imitating his slow drawl. The guy was so out of his mind baked, he had to have smoked something in the last five minutes. “I’ll see you there.”

  He gave a slow nod, then made his way back towards the kitchens. I had just turned around myself when he said, “Oh. Bathroom’s that way.”

  I grinned, hoping I didn’t look too guilty. “Right. Still kind of new here.”

  The guy just nodded and walked as slow as if he were on the moon. I shook my head and followed the hallway he’d pointed down to the bathroom. There, I slipped off the kitchen clothes and stuffed them in the trash can, revealing my regular street clothes underneath. If need be, I could always come back and retrieve them to leave. Hopefully there wouldn’t be anything more too gross on them, but I was willing to take the risk.

  Taking another deep breath to calm my bubbling excitement, I stepped out of the bathroom and followed the signs to the hubs. There, extending on both sides of a hallways, I saw the terminal rooms for The Everlands. They extended all the way to the back, then curled aro
und out of sight. There were at least twenty in this first hallway. I walked down it, itching to get a look at the system, but all the doors were closed and the windows tinted black. No peepshow for outsiders; you got complete privacy, other than the services you requested.

  All of the first hall terminals were full, so I turned the corner to the second. As I did, I saw a big hulking man coming down the way in a black polo. Clearly security. Alarm bells ringing in my head and worst-case scenarios flashing by like a video in fast-forward, I put on a friendly smile as I glanced at the man, while the corner of my eye spied an open room. I quickly ducked into it, but the security guy caught up to me first, stopping in front of my door, silently demanding an explanation.

  I put on an apologetic grin. “Just going for a quick whiz.”

  The ape’s eyes darted to the door, and I suddenly realized the others had had something displayed there. No doubt a digital timecard or something like that, telling the staff how long the person had left to play. The one on my door, of course, was blank. I thought quickly. “Oh yeah, that,” I said with a little laugh. “The guy that helped me said that this one wasn’t working properly. He was getting a tech to fix it.”

  The man stared at me unblinking a little longer so that I couldn’t help but shift my feet a little. Finally, though, he turned and continued stalking down the hall.