Expedition- Summerlands

by Nathaniel Webb

  ***

  I started Hearthammer on a strict schedule of risking our lives the very next day. Noah had made an exhaustive list of all the least popular adventuring locales near Wellpoint, and we hit them one by one. Our feeds followed a programming schedule that fit neatly with prime time in the major world markets on Earth: seven a.m. in the Summerlands was also seven a.m. in the New England Regional Command District, perfect for morning commuters, as well as 9 pm in Tokyo, right when the automated curfew was locking doors citywide. That meant we had to be up with the sun at 5:14 every day and on our way out of Wellpoint by 6, since even the nearby adventure sites were a few miles distant.

  It turned out that if you ignored the ranger-approved paths and well-worn treasure spots like the White Chasm and the Battle Plains, the Summerlands were completely lousy with danger. The better part of the wilderness around Wellpoint was forest and field, but a half-hour’s walk to the southeast was the edge of a swamp that absolutely stank with the stomach-turning stench of rotten meat. The elves had obviously had the common sense to stay away from this place, which was overrun with monsters and totally devoid of treasure. It was perfect.

  We spent a few days testing the strength of a gang of creatures we quickly nicknamed swamp porcupines. They were reminiscent of the boar-like things we’d fought on our first day through the portal, but they were covered in needle-sharp spines that they could shoot a shockingly long way when threatened. Cass was happy to retaliate with arrows and a few choice curse words, but soon enough we discovered that they were highly susceptible to fire. My skill with exploding copper pieces grew accordingly.

  One benefit of working ourselves to exhaustion was that we had no energy for arguments about the party pecking order. I found the boys looking to me for orders both in and out of combat and it was growing rarer and rarer to see a smile on Cass’s face. When she did speak, it was often to disagree with me during our planning sessions, but when a fight broke out she shut her mouth and sent arrows where I pointed.

  The swamp porcupines learned to avoid us, which made sorties into the marsh dull, and our rankings slumped. I aimed Hearthammer at the next item on Noah’s list: the Thing Cave. The notorious monster called the Thing had only been sighted once, by the single surviving member of an early adventuring party called the Duke’s Own. Players had avoided its domain ever since.

  We knew better than to actually fight the Thing, but we wanted to get it on camera for the first time since it had eaten the Duke’s Own’s drones along with their weapons, armor, and corpses. We succeeded after three days spent making suicidal amounts of noise at the mouth of the Thing Cave. It finally woke up and came out to see whether its harassers could be made into breakfast, roaring from three lizard-like heads as its tentacles tried to grab us and get us in reach of its mouths. The monster proved as impervious as a gold dog to my fire magic and Cass’s arrows were equally useless. She and Magpie were well out of reach by the time Noah and I dashed up the long slope that led from the cave mouth and we scattered among the trees of the surrounding forest, leaving the Thing roaring in impotent hunger.

  That one got us back in the top ten.

  ***

  The next day, I gave my first lecture. We’d discovered the remains of an amphitheatre not far from Wellpoint, little more than grassed-over stone benches rising in shallow tiers from a small central yard, but perfect for my purposes. I advertised on my feed every chance I got, making sure to remind my viewers that if they couldn’t catch the lecture live, there would always be video-on-demand after the fact.

  I showed up to the amphitheatre an hour early, unsure of what to expect. I’d tried to spread the word locally as well, but none of the other players I’d talked to had seemed particularly interested. I reminded myself firmly that the lectures weren’t for them, but it was hard not to be disappointed. Speaking to an invisible audience was lonely work.

  Five minutes before my scheduled start time, as I paced my thousandth circle around my makeshift stage, a far-off movement caught my eye. My heart leapt in excitement; then I realized it was just Cass, Noah, and Magpie come to support me. Still, having them there made me feel brave. I flipped through my notes one last time and turned on my camera.

  “Hey fans!” I forced my voice to sound chipper. “Just five minutes until the first of Linnaea’s Lectures! Don’t miss it!”

  “Thank God, there are still a few seats!” I turned to see Naila smiling at me, Seidenberg scowling at her side. A long double line made by his wheelchair cut through the grass, leading roughly east back towards Wellpoint.

  “You came!” I said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” said Naila.

  “This place really needs an access ramp,” said Seidenberg.

  “I’ll tell the manager,” I laughed. I glanced up at the sun. “Oh, shit, time to start!”

  Five friends made a paltry audience, but it sure beat being alone. I stepped out onto the grass stage, cleared my throat, double-checked my notes, made sure my camera had a good view, and dove in.

  “Listen to my words,” I began. “What do you hear? If you’re at home, you’re hearing me speaking in English. And that makes sense—I’m American, after all. But would you believe me if I told you that that’s not what my audience here in the Summerlands is hearing?”

  My tiny little audience, said a little voice in my brain, but I told it to shut up.

  “As streamers, we talk so much that I think we forgot how to listen. Well, I’ve been listening, and get this: I’m not speaking English right now.”

  On the first tier of seating, Cass raised her eyebrows and Naila cocked her head. Noah wore a look of fierce concentration. Magpie lounged back on the row behind him, but his eyes were on me.

  “One of the big questions of the Summerlands has always been how we talk to each other. Adventurers from America, the EU, and Japan come here and the language barrier just disappears. But how?”

  I waved to Magpie, who looked a bit surprised. I hadn’t run this part by him.

  “Magpie, can I get a hand?” He stood and joined me onstage, within view of my camera. “Thanks! Okay, say something, anything.”

  “What should I say?” he said.

  “Perfect, thanks,” I told him. “Everybody on Earth just heard a sentence in Greek. But I understood him perfectly—he just asked me what I wanted him to say, by the way. But here’s the thing. That wasn’t English.”

  “No, it was Greek,” said Magpie.

  “No it wasn’t,” I said. He squinted at me like I’d just told him the sky was pink. “Listen to what I’m saying. Not the meaning, that doesn’t matter. Listen to the words—you need to hear them as they hit your ears, before your brain gets a chance to process them. We’re speaking Elvish.”

  ***

  The lecture was a hit. The feed itself was a bit of a dud, but the VOD numbers were crazy. I had no way of checking, but I could imagine the recording spreading on the same forums and chatrooms I’d once frequented as a fan. When I gave my second lecture a few days later, I immediately jumped back into the top hundred feeds. My third made the top forty.

  I was feeling pretty good as Hearthammer strolled into Portal Square after my latest talk, where I’d demonstrated the paralysis spell I’d used on the gold dogs. Heading for my accustomed seat on a bench near the Expedition Hall, I caught a glimpse of Donna Markan watching me from her apartment window. Our eyes met for a moment before she dropped the curtain, but my curiosity was interrupted as a handful of players from my most recent audience shouted my name and waved from across the square. I smiled and waved back, Donna already forgotten.

  “Little Miss Popular,” Cass said. “Check the ratings.”

  As I pulled it out, the handheld pinged, and a cheerful green alert popped up on the screen: I had a new message from Dave Davies. I tapped it.

  Linnaea-

  Not bad. Save some for the book! I like these numbers but my bosses are still focused on that #1 spot. The forums want to see more flashy
magic. Help me out here! Let’s get this thing to the top. What have you got for me?

  Dave

  “Is that from UC? What’s it say?” Magpie peered shamelessly over my shoulder.

  “Dave wants me to do flashy magic,” I said. “I think people are starting to get bored.”

  “Or they just love the way you roll those coins,” said Magpie. “Well, what’ve you got?”

  “For flash?” I glanced at Hearthammer’s drones one by one, double-checking that they were off. “Not much. Fireballs are kind of old news.”

  “You said Seidenberg could hook you up, though, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. “I’ll ask him again. But I think we have to step it up. We’ve only broken the top ten once since Wyatt Falls and it wasn’t with lectures.”

  “I’m not fighting the Thing, if that’s what you mean,” said Cass.

  I laughed. “Don’t worry, I like living as much as you do. They want to see magic? I think we should try for Hero’s Bane.”

  “That’s suicide,” Noah said.

  “Not if we survive.”

  Hero’s Bane

  The arching stone bridge between us and the sword was littered with corpses. Noah knew every one of their names: Shekto, Tarquin, Talon, Daerloth, Gamblewise. Adventurers, every one of them, lured by the promise of the glittering silver blade that stood plunged halfway into a black stone, killed by the traps that guarded the bridge.

  “Are we sure about this?” asked Cass.

  “Noah, numbers?” I said. He checked the handheld.

  “We’re in seventh place,” he said.

  “Just waiting for the action to start,” I said. “Come on, Cass. For your dad.”

  She blew out a breath and set her eyes on the bridge.

  “It’s magic time.” I stuck my arm straight out. Pinched between my fingers was my little red gem. I began to murmur in Elvish, wondering what the words meant. It was strange to think that I was hearing Elvish all the time, yet when it was actually spoken I couldn’t understand it. Pushing that little mystery out of my head, I focused on the spell. Unlike so many others, it required no fancy sleight of hand, just the right words and the confidence that it would work.

  The bridge spanned a chasm whose murky deeps were untouched by the faint light from my dagger. In that black, something stirred. Soon, a wind picked up, ruffling our hair and moving the dust on the bridge.

  “We’re on,” I said. “Magpie, you’re up.”

  Magpie nodded and stepped forward. At the foot of the bridge he adjusted his belt and cracked his neck. Noah put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Remember,” I said, “ignore the arrows. Don’t step on copper. And keep count.”

  “Okay,” Magpie said.

  “Go!”

  Magpie set out at a sprint, running up the long arc of the bridge. The arrows, heralded by a series of swift clicks, started just as he dodged around the first of the corpses. I threw my gem straight out toward the bridge as a dozen arrows soared towards Magpie from either side. The breeze from the chasm became a roar, and my hair flew around my face as the air in the cavern swept after the gem in an invisible vortex. Magpie stumbled, buffeted by the sudden rush, but righted himself. The arrows flew in all directions, scattered by the wind. Magpie kept running.

  I had Seidenberg to thank for that spell; it was one I’d seen performed on feeds, but I’d never been able to make out all the terms to vocalise. I’d hoped to learn it from Belphegor at the Red Wizards’ Guild, but instead an eyepatched Japanese man had taught it to me in the back room of his ramen joint.

  A second flight of arrows met the same fate as the first, spinning away into the chasm as they faltered against my spell. Magpie passed the third and fourth bodies, moving on tiptoe like a dancer as he picked his way among swirling arabesques of copper embedded in the stone of the bridge. It had taken freeze-frame analysis of the video of two deaths to figure that trap out: stepping on any of the copper decorations triggered booming fireballs, an apparent variation of the spell I was so familiar with.

  Magpie reached the apex of the bridge and started down the other side. Even from here I could see his lips moving as he counted the seconds since he’d reached the top. Beside me, Noah was doing the same thing under his breath.

  “Jump!” Noah yelled, a split second after Magpie kicked off from the bridge, leaping forward into open air. The next moment the far half of the bridge simply disappeared. The last of the corpses—Tarquin, I thought—hung half off the lip where the top of the arch had been, then suddenly slumped over and slid off into the waiting darkness.

  The missing half of the bridge reappeared just as Magpie came down. He hit it at a run, stumbled a few steps still at full speed, then jumped again as the stone blinked back out of existence.

  This time he landed on the solid earth on the far side of the chasm. He skidded to a stop only a few feet from the black stone where Hero’s Bane, the silver sword that had cost so many players their lives, stood glittering in the gloom.

  Magpie looked back at us, raised his eyebrows, and waved.

  There was a moment of absolute stillness. I let out the breath I’d been holding since Magpie put his first foot on the bridge. On the other side, he took the last step toward the stone, put his hand on the hilt of Hero’s Bane, and pulled.

  The sword slid out in total silence. Magpie turned back to us, holding the sword up, a massive grin splitting his face.

  “Got it!” he called.

  “No shit!” I yelled back. “Now get back here in one piece!”

  The black stone unfolded like a toy robot until it stood in the rough shape of a human, but seven feet tall and totally featureless. It raised a boxy arm and brought it down at Magpie, who must have spotted the horror on our faces and threw himself blindly to one side as the golem’s black fist crashed into the earth inches away, shaking a shower of dust from the bridge and sending a spiderweb of cracks down the wall of the chasm.

  As the golem recovered, Magpie ducked around it and onto the bridge. The sword waved wildly in his hand as he began to run up the far slope.

  “Jump!” Noah yelled, the only one who’d thought to keep count. Magpie looked up, his eyes white circles, and made a stumbling jump towards us just as the bridge flickered out under him. It came back a moment later and he hit it chest-first, slipped halfway over the side, and let his feet fall as he wrestled both arms onto the flat of the bridge. The sword skidded a foot back down toward the golem, which was now advancing.

  Magpie’s drone swooped in for a dramatic closeup of his face as the stone automaton took a step onto the bridge.

  “Jump!” Noah screamed. Magpie made a helpless sort of lurch with his arms, then the bridge disappeared. Hero’s Bane flashed once in the light as it tumbled spinning into the chasm. The golem followed it, falling in silent stupidity to shatter somewhere in the darkness below. Magpie fell, too…

  And grabbed his drone, which lurched a few feet into the depths before it righted itself under its new burden. It began to spin slowly, trying to track Magpie’s implant without understanding that he was hanging off it.

  “Sepharad!” he called as he came around to face us. “Handheld!”

  Noah stared at Magpie blankly for a second, then understanding dawned on his face. He began tapping at the handheld with a look of fierce concentration.

  “Drop it!”

  We all spun at the voice behind us. Three men in black leather armor, their faces hidden by bandanas, stalked towards us from the gloom: the same men who’d attacked us in the tomb at the top of Hard Pass. If we’d hurt them in our last fight, it wasn’t apparent; the one I’d blasted with a fireball even had shiny new armor.

  “You again?” I shouted back. “Didn’t get enough last time? Sepharad, do your thing. We’ll handle these guys.”

  They came toward us slowly and I thought with satisfaction that maybe they’d learned a hard lesson in our first fight. Something was bugging me, though.

  “How
’d you find us?” I called, expecting they’d ignore me, but to my surprise the lead fighter caught my gaze. His eyes crinkled as he smiled under his bandana.

  “You should be more careful where you open your big mouth.”

  With that, the men in black charged, but I had just the thing. I pulled both bells from my pouch and began to swing them in opposite directions as I spoke the words of the spell. After using it on the gold dogs, it was easy to find the spell’s rhythm again, and I quickly had the bells’ ringing interlocked with my chanting.

  Our attackers kept coming. They didn’t seem to notice that I was using powerful magic on them. Cass sent an arrow at the lead fighter, but he slapped it out of the air with his sword. I kept chanting and swinging the bells, but the spell just wasn’t working; the sensation of slowed time that I’d felt when I froze the gold dogs wasn’t there.

  “Any time now, Linnaea!” said Cass. She shot another arrow that scored a white line across the leader’s armor as it deflected away into the shadows.

  “It’s not working!” I gasped. My arms were burning again. I let the bells clatter uselessly to the cavern floor and pulled out a copper piece. The attackers were a few feet away now; Cass was backing up as she pulled another arrow from her quiver, but there was only so much space between her and the lip of the chasm.

  I backpedaled as well as I started rolling the coin over my fingers, willing it to heat up. The fighter on my right noticed and sprinted forward, his sword up. It was hard to tell, but I thought he was the one I’d scorched last time. My coin was barely warm, but I threw it anyway, and my attacker flinched away as the copper piece bounced harmlessly off his armor without even a puff of smoke.

  I pulled my dagger from my belt, trying to steel myself for a real fight. The man coming after me was a few inches taller than me and had a sword, but maybe I could trick him into falling into the chasm or running into the traps on the bridge.

  He realized he hadn’t been hurt and came at me even faster, one hand out to grab me and the other bringing his sword back for a lethal overhand chop. A glance to my left showed the other two fighters advancing on Cass, who had an arrow nocked but couldn’t choose where to send it. I couldn’t see Noah or Magpie.