by Natalie Grey
“Good idea,” Jay said instantly. “Keep it under your hat for now.”
Gracie wondered briefly about that. Jay had had very strong opinions about this quest from the start, but he didn’t seem willing to explain. She was just making a mental note to ask him when the lake monster shrieked and began to convulse. Its health bar had gotten low, and its head flopped to the ground as its body contracted into coils and then opened again.
“Everybody out!” Gracie called, but people had already begun to run away, demonstrating an excellent sense of self-preservation.
They stood back as the beast convulsed in its death throes and at last melted away into lake water. All that was left after it died was a blue jewel.
“No way,” Gracie muttered. She exchanged a look with Jay and headed toward it, kneeling to touch the jewel she had left in the kobold tomb. “How did this get to—”
The shield that sprang up around her swirled with colors like the surface of a soap bubble. Gracie looked around, hearing the calls from her teammates, and cursed her stupidity. She shouldn’t have gone to touch this alone.
Then her teammates’ words caught up with her and she whirled.
She hadn’t seen anything in the lore about giants, but that was indisputably what this thing was. It was easily twice her character’s height, and hulking across the shoulders. His face was lost in a tangle of kelp that served both as long, tangled hair and an unkempt beard. The skin carried a greenish unhealthy tinge.
“Who are you?”
The question made no sense. The bosses were programmed with dialogue, but they didn’t answer questions. Gracie knew that.
He said nothing. He was both dead and not, something claimed by the lake.
“You were a sacrifice,” Gracie said on a hunch. This being had been tossed away—or had it run—and found an ally in the lake monster.
His huge head nodded once, and she thought he would drop the shield or tell her his story, But then, with a snarl, he produced a whip made of flame, and she felt the tingle of threat. Her hands clenched. For a moment, she almost believed she could feel the heft of the sword and the sweat in her palms.
“I’m not your enemy,” Gracie told him. “But if you fight me, I will fight back.”
To her surprise, the giant laughed. “Then let us fight, claimant. Let us fight.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The giant did not leave her so much as a moment to catch her breath. He charged at once, swinging the whip in one hand; a knife made of flame appeared in the other. His heavy footsteps shook the island, and Gracie heard screams from outside the shield.
“Everyone okay?” she called. The giant was on her, and she rolled sideways at the last minute. She knew this was a video game, but physics was physics, right? Big things didn’t stop fast.
He obeyed that law at least, stumbling heavily in his original direction as she scrambled to safety. He was laughing as he turned, however.
“They can’t hear you, claimant.”
“What does that even mean?” Gracie demanded furiously. “And what do you mean, they can’t hear me?”
In the real world, she felt Alex’s groping hands catch one of her arms. She swung toward him, her character careening wildly, and felt his fingers clasp hers. The side of her helmet came up.
“Gracie?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay! Got a duel with this prick, though.” Gracie saw Alex nod, and he released her helmet and stepped back.
When she looked at him, the giant was watching her a bit too shrewdly. She felt almost as if he knew she’d been speaking to someone outside the shield.
He had to have known. Otherwise, how would he have known to give her that response when she asked if everyone was okay? Her mind raced. Programming him to anticipate any variant on that sentiment would be far too complex. Either there was some sort of language learning—
No. There was someone in this boss; someone fighting her, which meant it was someone who was inside the game’s programming.
Which meant someone was fucking with her.
The realization flashed through her, and Gracie’s eyes narrowed. But as much as she wanted to run this person through with her serrated sword, she wasn’t going to show all of her cards just yet. She circled, settling into a fighting stance and watching the giant.
He wanted to play using lore? Then that’s how they would play.
“So,” she said evenly. “A claimant? What does that mean? Answer me.”
The giant laughed and attacked again. He was quicker on his feet than she would have expected, launching into motion with a feral sort of grace. Gracie’s character ran into the shield this time as she tried to get away from him.
Trapped and gasping despite herself at the sight of something so huge bearing down on her, she brought her sword up on instinct, angled down and slashing up, aimed to catch the vulnerable places below armor. Something must have connected, because the giant bellowed and his overhand strike went wild, hitting the shield while Gracie ran for freedom.
This time she didn’t wait for him to attack or taunt her. She whirled to attack at once, and her sword connected again with the outside of his leg. Then, even as he turned, she closed on him. You didn’t want to be within striking range of your opponent, of course, but that could just as easily mean staying inside his range as outside it.
And armed as he was with a whip, his range encompassed everything from the tips of his fingers to the edges of the shield—meaning inside was pretty much her only bet.
He was laughing, a sound like a death rattle that made her want to hack her lungs out.
“Clever,” he rasped. “She’s so clever, the girl who would be queen.”
Well, at least now she knew what she was supposed to be the claimant for—a crown, presumably.
Or maybe an even bigger sword that the team could make new dick jokes about.
This time she was the one who didn’t waste time with answers. She fought for all she was worth, hacking and slashing, and once or twice slamming her sword down to generate threat simply by habit. She had never fought a duel in this world, instead working with party members she tried to shield from enemy attacks.
“Come on, Gracie.” She muttered it aloud. “Get it together. It’s not a party, it’s just you.”
Which, unfortunately, meant it was just her and her piddly DPS. She was made to survive, not take down enemies on her own, and her usual strategy of having more hit points than any solo opponent clearly wasn’t going to work here.
Not for the first time, she wished that video games allowed her to make one perfect hit; sever an Achilles tendon, for instance, or open the femoral artery. It just seemed unfair that she was less than waist-high on this opponent and she couldn’t take him out at the knees.
It was just a good thing she wasn’t a Piskie, or she’d be resorting to chopping off his toes one by one.
“Clever,” her opponent said again. The sound echoed, not unlike her own voice. “A queen should be clever.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. What’s this about being a queen?” His compliments were tinged with mockery, and she was in no mood to listen to them. “‘Long May She Reign,’ right? What does that mean?” Answer me. Whoever you are behind those pixels, answer me, goddammit!
“It means your reign will be unshakeable…if you can take the throne.” The giant had drawn back.
“What throne?” Gracie went to charge him, then thought better of it. She could just picture that flaming knife cutting through her armor like butter. “Answer me, damn you!”
He laughed again, and she was sure that this was no program. There was someone in there, and they were amused beyond measure.
“So angry. Not a good trait in a—”
“Oh, shut up!” Gracie attacked in a whirl before they could recover. Now that she knew they were human, whoever they were, she was going to exploit that as much as she could. This fight didn’t run on trip switches, with the reflexes faster and better honed than any hu
man could match.
No, this opponent could be outsmarted.
“If I win,” Gracie panted as she drove her opponent back, “you’ll tell me who you are.”
The laugh was delighted this time. “I might.”
“You will,” Gracie ground out. “Or I’m going to log out and you can flop around here by yourself, making up mysterious-sounding prophecies for your own amusement.”
“No, you won’t.” The tone was sly, and far too familiar for a hulking giant. “You like to win, claimant. You like to win far too much to give up now.”
“Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘The only winning move is not to play’?” Gracie’s arms were on fire, but she couldn’t have stopped fighting if her apartment was on fire around her. Whoever was running this, they knew at least that much about her. She wasn’t about to let this asshole win.
They were fucking with her, and she was going to make them pay for that.
She spared a glance outside the bubble and saw that the rest of the team had pressed close, watching the battle as well as they could.
“I can show you,” the giant whispered now, “what chaos you have wrought in the world. I can show you your mistakes. I can let you undo them.”
Gracie backed away, her chest heaving. She was so tired, and she didn’t know what of this was lore or who this person was or what they wanted with her.
“Don’t you want to know?” the giant whispered. He stood, waiting. “This is a place at the crossroads of Death, and it knows how much you’ve given to the underworld.”
Gracie waited. Again, Alex’s hands found hers. Again, she squeezed them.
I’m okay for now. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to admit how creeped out she was by this. That felt like a defeat of sorts.
“Didn’t you wonder what would happen when you restarted the war?” the giant asked.
Gracie’s shoulders slumped. She was too tired, genuinely too exhausted, to have this fight. “What war?” she asked wearily.
The giant laughed. He waved a hand and disappeared in the shimmer of the vision he showed her. War flashed across the wavering dream images, magic coming in flashes and arrows of brilliant color and rising from the ground like specters and nightmares. Wraiths howled between the combatants, seeking souls and whistling angrily like the very wind, making Gracie question just what force made the windows shudder during storms. Perhaps her child-self had been right, and it had been monsters coming to eat her.
But that thought was fleeting because the ones she saw fighting were kobolds, wielding magic of water and earth, and the fae, with their bright colors like sunshine and spring flowers—and their sharp, sharp teeth. This might be a battle between the lesser races, as the Aosi had named them, but it was no less vicious for all that. The two armies were hell-bent on destroying one another.
As unbearable as it was, the image faded too soon. In its place was the silent battlefield.
And silent was worse. Now, the demons who had waited here at the altars could be seen drifting among the dead bodies, blood trailing from their half-formed mouths, long fingers reaching inside armor and flesh to pull out still-warm hearts.
“The war was over,” the giant’s voice said. It rumbled deep in her bones. “It was done, and there was peace. Then you gave the kobolds a weapon.”
Gracie shook. It was a game, she told herself. It was a game; it wasn’t real. None of this was real.
But it felt terribly real. She remembered the kobolds hanging back outside the door of the tomb, and the fae waiting inside. She had thought she was helping them, and instead, she had given them…what?
This. This war.
The vision followed a demon. This one did not stop to eat. It prowled, swinging its head back and forth like a blind, half-aware predator. It made the hair stand up on her arms. Onward it quested, and onward…until it came to the form of a kobold dressed in embroidered robes. Something glittered, held loosely in one limp hand.
The jewel. Gracie bit back a cry. That was how it had come to be here in the temple.
“Now you see,” the giant whispered.
“Wait.” Gracie grasped at straws. “This is a lie. It’s been only days since I returned that jewel.”
The vision vanished without a trace and the giant was back, the two of them still hidden inside their shield.
“Time moves strangely in the hills, just as it moves strangely here. If the gods had been wise, they might have used it to keep the races apart for longer. But they failed, and now the mortals will pay for it. Just as the kobolds paid for your failure.”
Gracie stared at him wordlessly.
“Go on,” the giant urged softly. “Ask. Ask the question.”
“Can I undo it?” Gracie fumbled over the words. The death and destruction she’d seen were too much to bear. She knew it was just pixels, but that didn’t matter to her right now.
“Yes.” The giant was smiling now. “Yes. In this place, anything is possible. In this place, you can turn souls away from the realms of the dead. You can undo what was done.”
“Then I want to—”
Gracie stopped. She shook her head, trying to think. She was so tired. Sweat was drying on her skin, making her shiver. Was it her, or was this too easy?
The images kept playing in her mind, blood running over the battlefield, but—
“Has the war actually happened, then?” The question came out slowly. She wasn’t sure if this was the right question, but it was close. This was her feeling her way around a darkened room.
The giant said nothing.
“Has it?” Gracie pressed.
“You exist out of time now.”
“So what you showed me was a possibility, nothing more.” She had the answer now, and it beat hot in her blood. Anger was rising. “If I can take back the jewel, I could do something else, too, couldn’t I? That future isn’t fixed.”
“Those are your choices. Only those.” The giant looked at her, eyes glittering behind the trailing kelp of his hair.
“I don’t believe you,” Gracie said. Then, straightening up, she said simply, “And I stand by what I did.”
The giant laughed. “A murderer, then. A war-bringer. Enemy of peace.”
“If you know so much, you saw how the kobolds were living,” Gracie said. “You saw. So you know that the absence of war is not peace. You know that an armistice is not freedom. They’d been beaten down to nothing. There was no war because they were too broken for it. That’s not peace. All I gave them was a possibility.”
“And they used it to wreak vengeance,” the giant said. “Hundreds of their own, thousands, died because they could not see any farther than their need for revenge. A need you fulfilled.”
“I won’t leave them broken!” Gracie’s voice echoed so loud that she winced. “You’re giving me false choices.”
There was a long pause, and then a laugh. “Good. Very good. You pass the test…Aosi.”
If they’d meant to calm her, they’d done the worst thing for that. Gracie would have thrown the sword if she’d actually been holding one. As it was, her hands jerked into fists. “And are you done messing with us, then? Whoever you are, hiding behind there?”
“Messing with you?” The voice sounded amused. “What do you think this is?”
“A game!” Gracie spat.
There was another pause, so long that she thought the game might have frozen. That would cap off this night, she thought bitterly.
Then the giant spoke again, and his voice was quiet. “Nothing is just a game. No virtue is wasted, and no cruelty is either. I warned them.” He turned to leave but glanced back. “And no,” he said. “I’m not done with you yet.”
He vanished, as did the shield, and Gracie looked around. A triumphant sound and a swirl of golden particles announced her victory, such as it was, and the completion of several new achievements. Everyone was staring at her.
“Gracie?” Jay asked.
“That was weird,” G
racie said.
“If even you think that, it really must have been,” Kevin joked. “You’ll have to tell me what happened so I can write it up.”
Gracie looked toward where the giant had stood. “I don’t even know what happened. But, guys, it seemed like there was actually someone behind that giant. It was a human talking to me.”
“What did he say?” Jay asked urgently.
Before Gracie could answer, Ushanas made a sudden exclamation.
“Callista—Gracie?”
“Yeah?” Gracie didn’t think she could take another surprise just now.
“Your rank just climbed,” Ushanas said. “You’re number seven now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Thanks.” Jay gave a smile and a nod to the deliveryman and headed back into his apartment, balancing the pizza as he grabbed a roll of paper towels. It was 10PM—hardly a reasonable time to be eating.
He smiled bitterly. It wasn't like he needed to keep a normal schedule for anything.
He sighed. With that reminder, the pizza didn't look quite as appetizing. He rubbed his forehead before picking up a piece and mechanically taking a bite. He hadn't eaten all day, and he knew he needed to.
On the other side of the room, his headset was blinking. He put down the pizza and went over to put the heads up back on.
“Hey again.”
“Are you already done?" Gracie asked in surprise.
“Well, no.” Jay looked in the direction of the pizza box, but all he could see was a vista of gently waving tall grass. “I'll, uh, I'll eat later.”
“Come on,” Gracie said sternly. “You have to eat.”
"Are you normally this much of a slave-driver?” Jay joked.
“Of course. Haven't you seen me in raids? I'm always ordering people around.” Gracie’s character made finger quotes as she mockingly imitated herself. “‘Don’t stand in the fire.’ ‘Make sure you stay close enough to Mirra to get healed.’ ‘Don't draw all the threat, you're squishy.’ I'm the worst.”
Despite himself, Jay laughed.
