Mogworld

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  I shook my head and turned my attention to Civious’s desk. The drawers hadn’t been emptied, presumably because gnoll fingers were too chunky to work the handle, but so far they had only contained paperclips and dinner receipts. “Drylda is dead,” I said as I hunted through knick-knacks. “Civious said as much. She was taken over by a Deleter when the Syndrome hit her. And I broke the connection they had to her body when I touched her in the dead world. She might still be warm but however you swing it she’s doornail-dead at least twice over.”

  “Oh yeah? Then how do you explain that she’s moving on her own?”

  “What?”

  The scroll fell from my hands as I saw that Drylda’s head had risen from the slab, and she was slowly, mechanically rising to a sitting position like some newly-animated abomination of science. Instinctive horror caught in my throat as her head slowly turned to look at me like a clockwork toy.

  “Hi,” said Drylda.

  PART FOUR

  ONE

  “Drylda!” said Slippery John, overjoyed. “Slippery John knew you’d get better!”

  “Yes,” she said, after a pause. “I am Drylda, a person you know.” She swung her legs over the bench and stood up in a single smooth movement, with no apparent stiffness or discomfort from her months of catatonia. She appeared to be surveying the room, despite the fact that her eyeballs were currently sitting in a kidney bowl by her side.

  My first reaction had been to yelp like a girl and trip over a porcelain shepherdess, but by this point I’d sorted myself out and could commence backing slowly away in a slightly more dignified manner. Thaddeus poked his head out the pile in a burst of pencil shavings and glared at Drylda, hissing threateningly.

  “Do you want to see pictures of the cottage Slippery John picked out for us, honey?” Slippery John fumbled for his back pocket.

  “Slippery John,” I said, slowly and clearly. “Move away from her. Slowly. It is not Drylda.”

  Slippery John leaned close. “Smells like Drylda.”

  “It’s a Deleter!” I urged. “Like Civious said! She’s being controlled by the thing inside her!”

  “A demon walks among us,” hissed Thaddeus from around knee level.

  Slippery John rolled his eyes. “Drylda’s dead. Drylda’s a demon. Drylda’s being controlled by things inside her. Slippery John’s getting sick of you picking on his woman.”

  “Oh wow,” said Drylda with zero enthusiasm. She was still wearing her usual slightly condescending look, and, like all Syndrome victims, carefully enunciated every word like a foreigner reading phonetically from a script. “You know we control you. You’ve become self-aware. I so called this.”

  “What do you want?!”

  “You’re Jim,” said Drylda, swiveling her head to scrutinize me with her empty eye sockets. “The undead minion, right? You were speaking to me.”

  “Yes, he pushed you around in a wheelbarrow for a while and did no doubt craven and horrible things to your innocent flower of womanhood.” Slippery John seemed to be losing confidence. “But it’s okay, because Slippery John is here to heal your trauma with his magic touch.”

  Drylda didn’t even glance at him. “You spoke to me through world chat.”

  “Through what?”

  She paused briefly before everything she said, like her personal timeline was a few seconds out of sync with everyone else’s. “You spoke to me while I was trying to talk to Don,” she said, finally. “You kept your money in a tin under your mattress.”

  “You?”

  “How do you know what he keeps under his mattress?” Slippery John looked hurt. “And who’s this Don character? Do I know him?”

  “That’s. Not. Drylda.” I clarified, fists clenched. “It’s the thing I was talking to when I passed out in here earlier.”

  “What thing?”

  “My name’s Dub,” said Drylda. “I’m a developer on the Mogworld project. There was this dickhead we hired, and he took over, and he locked me out of my admin tools, and now he’s messing everything up, and he’s done something to the security in the building, and I can’t get into the office anymore. But I had access to the Drylda account because I was fixing a bug so here I am.”

  All was silent for a few moments before Slippery John turned to me. “Slippery John thinks you might be right, necrotic swine. Drylda used to say things that made at least vague sense.”

  It didn’t seem dangerous, so I took a cautious step towards the Drylda-thing with my hands held out. “We have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, loudly and slowly.

  “Okay, hang on a second,” said the thing that called itself “Dub.” Then, after a very long pause, it continued speaking in a slightly louder but still expressionless voice. “Behold mortals. I am Dub-us, of the Loincloth pantheon, once a great and mighty creator god, now deposed of my powers by the evil trickster lord Simon. I am forced to take the form of this mortal warrior to seek your aid.”

  “Well, now we’re getting somewhere,” said Slippery John. “Slippery John knows where he stands with divinely appointed quests. Which temples of the false god do you want us to raid?”

  “Si-Mon truly exists?” asked Thaddeus.

  “Why do you need to ask?” I said. “You’ve been worshipping him all day.” One look at his terrified eyes told me that I’d missed a point somewhere along the line. It’s one thing to believe in a god and quite another to unquestionably know that He exists, and could at any moment materialize in front of you and start making veiled references to the things He saw you doing last night while reading armor magazines.

  “He’s the new guy,” said Dub. “This game—” He paused for a few seconds. “This world was mine and Don’s. He’s the head god. We brought in Simon to help with running things. But Don’s away on vacation, and now Simon’s taken over. He’s ruining everything we set up.”

  “So he’s the one helping Barry conquer the world?” said Slippery John.

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s the one who caused the Infusion?” I said.

  “The what?”

  “The Infusion. The thing that stops things from dying or decaying or changing in any way.”

  “No, that was me.” Drylda’s pouting face rotated back and

  forth between us like a slow metronome. “Was that a problem?”

  “Slippery John wouldn’t want to tell you how to do your job or anything,” said Slippery John, “but if by ‘a problem’ you mean ‘the cause of the endemic misery and unrest in the world today,’ then you’re on the nose, there.”

  “But we made you all immortal,” said Dub, idly cocking Drylda’s hips. “I know a lot of people who’d kill for that. Other gods, I mean.”

  “The gods are not immortal?!” wailed Thaddeus. His face was aghast. He would have been pulling his hair out if he had hands, or hair.

  “So are you the ones who possess adventurers?” I asked, feeling a bit dense, considering to whom I was speaking. “The ones who cause the Syndrome?”

  “Yes, good question, dead man,” said Slippery John, waving at Drylda’s unsettlingly well-formed body. “Slippery John’s got another one. When are you going to stop fiddling about inside Slippery John’s missus?”

  There was another long pause. “We might be getting a bit off topic,” said Dub.

  “Can you delete me?” I said.

  Drylda looked at me. She still wasn’t changing her facial expression but it definitely seemed like the former mighty creator god inside her was losing his grip on the situation. He was like a wolf coming to a flock of sheep to try and raise an army against the lions, and seemed completely unable to fathom why he wasn’t having any luck. “What?”

  “I want to be deleted. Killed permanently again.”

  “Why?”

  It’s funny how the stupidest questions can be the hardest to answer. “I just . . . well, the Infusion is a big part of it, I suppose. And even before then my life was . . . er . . . an unbearable sequence of dashed hopes and
pigshit.”

  “Well even so, this is suicide you’re talking about.” A very slight emphasis on the last syllable led me to conclude that there was supposed to be an exclamation mark there.

  “It’s not really suicide when you’ve died once before already. It’s more like . . . tidying up.”

  “We beseech thee, O Dub-us, to wipe our foul remnants from the glory of your creation,” cried Thaddeus, slithering over to Drylda’s feet and getting right to the point of matters as always.

  “I can’t,” said Dub. “Not until I get my admin—my godly powers back. But I need your help.” Drylda pointed stiffly at me like her arm was on the end of a puppet string.

  “Why?”

  “See, when you pose a question like that to God when he’s giving you a divine mission, that’s why you’re not cut out for the hero business,” said Slippery John.

  “I meant, why me?”

  “How can I word this in terms you’ll understand?” said Dub. “Your. Your programming is bugged out. And whenever you interact with another program you cause it to crash.”

  “Do you want to try that again?” I suggested, after a round of blank looks.

  “Okay. Hang on.” He was silent for a good thirty seconds, his borrowed bosom wobbling rhythmically up and down. “Everything in this world is interconnected, right. It’s all tied together by this underlying network of. Let’s call it the Force. And when things happen that we didn’t allow for, it causes disturbances in the Force. You saw what happened at Yawnbore. I’ve been following your progress with the log . . .

  with my wondrous powers of omniscience. Yawnbore bugged out because its underlying Force became corrupted. That happened when Simon deleted your old fortress.”

  “But what about me?”

  “I’m getting to that. When Dreadgrave brought you and the others back to life, he did something we didn’t expect. He found a loophole in the rules. The world was not laid out with you in mind. There’s a corruption inside you that can spread to others. That’s what happened when you touched Drylda’s interface while you were outside your body.”

  “Yes, what is all this about touching Drylda’s interface?” said Slippery John. “Slippery John has yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for that one.”

  “So you’re saying we—Meryl and Thaddeus and me—

  because we’re undead, we’re disturbances in this Force?”

  “You certainly disturb Slippery John.”

  “Yes,” said Dub, nodding Drylda’s head woodenly. “And that would normally qualify you for immediate deletion, but right here and right now, it could make you very useful to me.”

  I could feel myself getting deeper and deeper into rather heavy territory. It suddenly occurred to me how much rubbish could have been avoided if I’d just not panicked and run away from the Deleters back at Dreadgrave’s. It was a dizzying thought. I sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Simon’s control of the world rests on a set of . . . thingies . . . that he’s put in the . . . this is going to be pretty hard to explain. Let me think.” Another long silence passed. “Okay. There’s a place in the world from which everything is controlled.”

  “The Nexus, right?” I interrupted. “Where the Deleters come from.”

  “It’s at. Deleters? Oh. You mean the angels. Yes, they come from there. It’s at the very top of Mount Murdercruel, where no NPC—where no puny mortal can possibly reach it alone. There’s a sort of machine in the center of it that powers the Force. You will have to find a way to spread your corruption to that machine.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then the server will crash and be forced to reboot without Simon’s encryptions.”

  I let his nonsense god-language drift through the air for a few seconds before prompting him. “And that means?”

  He hesitated for noticeably longer than usual. “It means everything will work out. I’ll have my powers back and I can grant you whatever you wish.”

  “You can delete me?” I said.

  “You can smite us into the blessed void?” echoed Thaddeus.

  “If that really is what you want.”

  “Could you remove the Infusion?” asked Slippery John.

  There was another of those longer-than-usual pauses. “I can definitely see what I can do about that.”

  “Can you stop possessing adventurers and using them as sick playthings?” pressed Slippery John.

  The next hesitation easily beat the last one. “Would it be okay if we kept doing that, actually? That’s kind of important to us.”

  Slippery John was flabbergasted. “No, it . . . really wouldn’t be okay. Slippery John doesn’t really like knowing that Slippery John could have his brain erased and his body taken over by some extraterrestrial git at any time. It doesn’t strike Slippery John as the policy of a benevolent bunch of gods.”

  “You know, this conversation has really given me a lot to think about,” said Dub. I got the impression that somewhere in some distant godly control room he was rubbing whatever passed for his chin. “Perhaps we should continue this discussion after you’ve finished the job.”

  “Where did you say the Nexus was?” I said.

  “The peak of Mount Murdercruel.” A pause. “Is there going to be a problem with that?”

  I swallowed. “There’re going to be quite a few problems with that.”

  “Why?”

  I wondered how best to answer his question. Mount Murdercruel was the highest point on the planet. Its peak was said to extend beyond the atmosphere. Everyone who had ever attempted to scale it had disappeared, died, or come back missing a few limbs and vowing never to try anything that stupid again. Another problem was that Mount Murdercruel was several thousand miles away in the middle of the frozen wastes of the south polar region, surrounded by iceberg-laden waters that had claimed more sailors than gonorrhea.

  Finally, I went for, “It’s a bit of a way.”

  “No probs,” said Dub. “I was able to up Drylda’s magic stat before I took her over.”

  “You put something magic up Drylda?” interpreted Slippery John.

  “I can teleport us all to the upper slopes of the mountain,” clarified Dub. “It’ll get us past most of the hard bits and I can use aura spells to keep us all from freezing to death.”

  Drylda suddenly dropped into the standard overdramatic Syndrome magic-casting pose—one hand held aloft channelling magic, and the other thrust out in front of her, feet far enough apart to accommodate an extremely overweight pony—before firing off a stream of complicated post-graduate level magic words. Thaddeus, Slippery John and I watched nervously as a spark appeared in the air next to Mrs. Civious’s dresser, spat blue lightning, then spread out into a three-foot oval. A steady stream of snowflakes flew out and began to melt upon the floor.

  I’d never used a magic portal before. They were very strictly regulated, following a few incidents involving exit portals inside solid matter and some subsequent ruinous lawsuits. You had to pass extensive written and practical tests before you could get a license, but it was considered a lucrative career option for high-level casters who didn’t mind dealing with tourists.

  “And you promise you’ll delete me at the end of all this,” I said, as the room’s temperature began to drop and my few remaining hairs whipped around my face.

  “Yes, yes, whatever you want,” said Dub, still posing. “You must go now. I can’t keep it open for more than an hour or so.”

  “What about Drylda? Will Slippery John have his beloved back?”

  Drylda’s blank face cocked sideways quizzically. “What do you want her back for? Her brain’s been wiped.”

  “Yes, well, call Slippery John a romantic but Slippery John feels there’s more to Drylda than just her brain. There’s still an essence about her.”

  “Ugh,” I said. “We do not want to know about what kind of essence comes out of your corpse bride.”

  “Hey,” said Dub-Drylda in a level but very loud
voice. “Portal. Nexus. World. Saving.”

  I stood before the glittering window. A distant howling wind was drifting over from across the magical border. Sleet was soaking into my robe. I suddenly longed to be back in my dumpster an hour ago, cozy and safe and quiet and most emphatically not the most hostile terrain on the planet.

  “Oh, fine,” I said. I stepped forward.

  The moment I entered the portal I was struck with disorientation. It was like there were three of me at once—one in Civious’s ruined hideout, one standing in a snowy mountain scene, and another that stretched all the way from one to the other, all surrounded by magical white sparks and flashes. It’s a strange sensation, feeling that your body simultaneously doesn’t exist and extends for thousands of miles, and not a little damaging to the self-esteem.

  Dub was the only one left in Civious’s lab, still visible as semi-transparent shadows against the glowing lights, confidently stepping towards the portal as he voiced the last few arcane instructions to the spell’s navigation system. Then I noticed that one of the little white flashes was, in fact, an airborne butterfly knife, flying across the room and turning end over end. I saw it embed in Drylda’s spine, crumpling her legs out from under her and ejecting the great god Dub to pastures new.

  Without a conscious caster to keep it stabilized, the portal immediately began to waver. The exit loosened and thrashed about like an unsecured fire hose, hurling us around the void like children rolling down a hill in a barrel. In the midst of the turmoil I saw the indistinct figure of Mr. Wonderful walking stiff-leggedly into the lab, watching us with interest.

  Then I couldn’t see the lab anymore. Thaddeus clung to my robe by his teeth, chanting muffled scripture. Slippery John somersaulted by overhead as the blue ether inhaled and spat us out into the unknown.

  TWO

  Freezing wind hit me like a frying pan to the face, tearing off a few more loose flaps of skin. My robe fluttered violently around me, losing all its nesting insects in an instant. My feet came into contact with some kind of ground, then immediately slipped off. My chin bounced jarringly off solid rock.