by Natalie Grey
The rest of the team was online by the time Caspian logged in.
“Callista?” His voice was uncertain.
“Do they know you’re online?” Gracie asked immediately.
“Yes, but not that I’m meeting with you. I said I was going to go wait for you and try to lay some groundwork with the rest of the team so they’d back me up when I suggested a weird team layout later.”
“Okay. Any way they’re going to see you?”
“There’s a chance.” Caspian sounded like he was frowning. “But I did the best I could.”
“Okay.” Gracie shrugged. It was this or nothing. “We’re running the Haunt now. Come join us.”
“WHAT?” He lowered his voice. “What?”
“Come on. Now.”
“I wish I’d known to pee.”
“Too late,” Gracie said unsympathetically. He deserved far more discomfort than a full bladder in her opinion. “We have a limited timeframe.”
“Uh…” Caspian waffled, but she heard him heave a sigh a moment later. “Okay, one sec. Let me try something.” There was a pause and a scuffling noise, and then he came back. “I told them you have a date tonight, and you’ll be online in a few hours. They won’t be looking for you for a bit.”
“Thanks,” Gracie said cautiously. The party invite flashed up from Jay, and she accepted it.
“Can I say something?” Caspian asked her privately.
“Make it quick.” She wasn’t in a mood for protestations of innocence right now.
Caspian must have sensed that because he broke off in the middle of whatever he had been about to say. “I think we can make it,” he told her finally.
“Sure.” Gracie had never been one to ice people out before—that was her mother’s move—but right now, she was just angry enough to try it. The last thing she wanted to do was be polite to Caspian. Even if he was firmly on their side now, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to forgive what he’d done. She didn’t need spies and backstabbing in her life.
Still… She sighed.
Despite everything, she just wasn’t comfortable punishing people and letting them stew.
“Cas?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll talk about the rest of it later.” That was about as nice as she could manage.
“Okay.” He sounded relieved. “Um…it may have to be a bit after the run. I’m probably getting fired right after, so I’ll have to move out.” To her surprise, he was laughing.
“That’s funny?”
“I mean, kinda, right?” He was still laughing. “It’s ridiculous.”
“It really is,” Gracie said. A smile was tugging at her mouth. “Okay, fine. Let’s do the run, and then we’ll, uh, we’ll figure out the rest.”
“Roger that.” He echoed the team’s normal terminology easily.
The team loaded into Yesuan’s Haunt and skipped the intro. Gracie hated doing that, but they didn’t have much time for lore right now. When the aether cleared, though, everyone did take a moment to gasp.
Yesuan had become immortal through his own healing powers, but even he could die by violence—and those who had imprisoned him had wanted him to remember it. Yesuan’s Haunt was a fortress, dank and cold. A prison with no windows or balconies, but to reach it, one had to walk across a windy expanse of stone, a single spear that disappeared into utter darkness below. Wind howled around them as they traversed it.
“What is it with these people and heights?” Gracie asked rhetorically.
“One of our team members quit the game after this one,” Caspian said. “He dropped out of the run, and then he quit about a week later.”
“You’re kidding,” Alex said, dumbstruck.
“Your old team?” Lakhesis asked, confused.
“Long story,” Gracie cut in. “We’ll talk about it after. For now, just assume Caspian knows what he’s talking about on this run, okay?”
“Okay.” Lakhesis sounded like she had a lot of questions, but she didn’t ask any of them, to Gracie’s relief.
The whispers began when they were halfway across the bridge. Screams echoed in the wind, half-heard, half-remembered. Pleading, begging, crying out for mercy.
They had imprisoned him within a wall of his own cruelty. Gracie knew that these were the voices of the people Yesuan had slaughtered, the echoes of his destruction. Gracie could only think that if their goal had been to make Yesuan sane, this hadn’t been the best way to do it.
Even she was beginning to wince every time the wind rose. How could she possibly have lasted hundreds of years? Part of her wanted to run, but she squared her shoulders and narrowed her eyes. She had passed all of Harry’s tests so far.
She would pass this one too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After the windswept walk, Gracie had expected Yesuan’s Haunt to be drafty, filled with the same moaning winds, the castle stones damp and chilled. The sort of place you could never feel comfortable or warm.
Instead, the place was claustrophobic in the extreme. What had looked like a castle in the distance was actually a gigantic hunk of rock, like a piece of a mountain that had been unearthed and then hung precariously on a spire of stone. Runes skittered over the outside of it, clearly shoring up the rock’s strength so Yesuan could not break out.
Inside, tunnels had been scraped out of the rock, so small and close that the team had to walk single file. The sounds of their footsteps echoed back at them sharply since there was nowhere for the sound to go.
“Can you imagine being trapped here for centuries?” Dathok asked quietly. “Pacing these hallways, learning every inch of them, and never feeling like you could stand up straight or even take a deep breath?”
No one answered. Their agreement was plain enough in their silent horror, even though their characters’ faces were blank.
They weren’t far along the corridors when they heard the scream. It was a howl of anguish; not the sort of thing one would hear if someone were being tortured or killed, but the sort of scream that built inside someone until they could not hold it in any longer.
Yesuan. They knew without having to ask. The game had wanted them to feel his captivity before fighting them. That was why they were running through these corridors without fighting anything. They were meant to feel the desperation and confinement.
Gracie ran in silence. She was fighting her disdain to understand why Harry had chosen this place for the end of his quest. This was how he saw himself—a superior being, understanding the world in a way no one else could, uniting people against him.
And hated for it. He had turned others’ derision and anger into his very purpose. Turning it around like a toddler, telling himself that he wanted them to hate him. That it was part of some master plan.
He hadn’t expected people to like him while he led this world.
In his heart, Harry saw leaders as people who must on some level be despised. He had wanted to bring out the best in everyone else, whether or not he brought out the best in himself.
“What are you thinking about?” To her surprise, it was Caspian who asked the question, not Jay. Jay, she thought, knew her well enough to know that she would tell him when she wanted to share her thoughts. She stole a glance at Anders before answering Caspian. He was walking a few characters back, chainmail glinting dully in the light.
“Thinking about leadership,” Gracie told Caspian after a while. “Thinking about whether Yesuan was right.”
Caspian made a soft noise, like he was going to protest, but said nothing.
“It’s crazy, right?” Gracie asked him. “Doing terrible things, destroying lives to unite people against him—but what if he was right? It makes you wonder. If your goal isn’t to do bad things or be cruel or hurt people, if your goal is really to bring people together, is there a way to ethically do evil things? To serve the greater good and bring people together by being the thing they unite against?”
Caspian, to his credit, actually seemed to think about it. When he spoke
again, he sounded pensive. “I imagine you’d hate everyone else in the world if you did that. It doesn’t matter if your goal is to do ‘good’ or not, you’re trying to control people. Run them through a maze like a rat. And people are unpredictable, so you end up pitting yourself against them. After a while, I think you’d begin to become evil, no matter how you started.”
“Thank you,” Gracie said after a moment.
“Huh?” Caspian sounded like he thought she might be setting him up for an insult.
“I know this isn’t the real world, but they made this place really convincing,” she said softly. “It’s enough to make you wonder if you’d do the same thing as Yesuan if you had the chance.”
“I don’t think any of us will ever have to worry about that,” Caspian replied wryly.
“Mmm.”
But he was wrong, and she knew it. Harry had intended to be Yesuan; Gracie was sure of that. That meant that if she passed this final test, she would have the option to become that person in the game. Whatever powers Harry had granted himself—powers meant to control other players—she would have.
Caspian had reminded her not to fall into the same trap Harry had. It was impossible to control people benevolently. Even if she started out playing a part, sooner or later she would find herself believing the role, and embracing it.
In the end, people like Yesuan—like Harry—always ended up in a place like this, reviled and powerless. If she wanted to rule, she would need to find a different path.
The game did not allow her to wallow, however. They heard chittering and maniacal laughter ahead, and Gracie held up a hand to stop the group. Though their enemies could not hear them, she still initiated the ready check in silence, and no one spoke while they responded to it. A series of green check marks appeared along the left edge of her screen next to each player’s name.
Scuffling sounds let her know that people were changing order, all the melee fighters moving to the front of the group.
Gracie gestured to keep them back and crept along the corridor. From the next bend, she could see torchlight flickering. The laughter was stronger here, as were some of the screams Gracie had heard outside the prison. Frowning, she peered around the bend—and froze in horror.
Oryxa stood at the far end of the cavern. It was impossible to miss her; her naked body shone so pale a gold it was almost white. Long hair blew artfully in a breeze no one else could see, and she walked to and fro as if she knew that everyone’s eyes were drawn to her. Gracie shuddered as she looked. Oryxa was truly unsettling, and beautiful in a way that seemed to hint at more.
A moment later, she understood why. Under the perfect mask was a demon who had ruined countless lives, and the character designers had allowed that second form to flicker through. Every once in a while, just for a split-second, you could see the true face behind Oryxa’s perfection.
It was horrifying. Blood dripped from long claws, fire lit her flesh from the inside, and her teeth stretched into fangs. The eyes, which were lambent and long-lashed in her human form, were pits of blackness. Imps tumbled around her, fire trailing in their wake.
“Oryxa shouldn’t pull until we’ve cleared the room,” Gracie said to the group, “but I don’t see any barrier for the boss fight the way there would normally be. We know that they patched this instance, so everyone be on your toes. Stay as far back as you can, and send out a team alert if you think Oryxa has aggroed.”
A yes came back in a chorus.
“If she pulls,” Gracie said, her mind racing, “Lakhesis, I want you to main-tank her for the first little bit. Do you feel okay with that?”
“Sure,” Lakhesis said.
“I’ll use AoE to grab the rest of the room, and Ushanas, Freon, and Fys, you’ll use your AoE to burn them down as quickly as possible. Caspian, you’ll keep Lakhesis alive, and Lakhesis, you’ll kite Oryxa at the end of the room until we have the rest of the mobs killed.”
“Got it,” Lakhesis replied at the same time Caspian agreed, “Will do.” They both sounded resolute.
“Pulling the first group now,” Gracie said. She waited for the rest of the melee team to approach and fan out nearby, then she used a shield-throw to get an imp’s attention.
Its head whipped around, and it and its two companions came hopping toward her at high speed, already throwing fireballs. Gracie stood firm as they approached, then ran a few yards out to meet them, slamming her fist on the ground to do damage to all of them. With their attention firmly fixed on her, she chose one and began to focus on it in particular. The melee group followed suit, and when it reached ten percent health, she switched to her next target so that she could keep its attention focused on her when they began hitting it as well.
If Caspian hadn’t given her a heads-up, she would never have known that Yesuan’s Haunt had changed, but with the warning, she could see the faint signs of it. The imps and incubi, which should be relatively quick to kill, took a bit longer than usual, and Gracie could see that her team members were getting critical hits less often than they usually would.
She felt a grudging respect for Dan and Dhruv. They knew how little it would take to make an instance too difficult, and they had done a good job of being subtle.
They were halfway across the room when Oryxa noticed them, and Gracie swore internally. She had been hoping against hope that they weren’t going to change a boss fight that way, but they had.
She allowed herself one moment to wonder if they would even make it to Yesuan, then shook her head angrily and focused her attention on the trash mobs around her. She’d be damned if she let them take her down this early in the fight.
She was going to fucking win.
“I’m on her!” Lakhesis called. “Cas?”
“I’ve gotcha,” Caspian called back. He was circling the edge of the room, out of the range of the trash mobs Gracie was taking on. “Kite away.”
“Here.” Freon sent an ice spear at Oryxa. “Let me know if you want any more of those, okay? It’ll help you kite.”
Gracie smiled. She was in the middle of a huge group of trash mobs now and Alan was barely able to keep up with the healing, but it was awesome to see her team improvising and helping one another on the fly.
She lost herself in the mechanics of surviving the fight, only tracking Lakhesis and Caspian via their voices. They were laughing, which let her know that things weren’t going too crazy, so Gracie took a moment to heal back to full health when she finished her cleanup of the room.
“Alan, you good for the boss fight?”
“As good as I will be.” Alan, thankfully, sounded amused. “Go for it.”
“Awesome. Caspian, find the other healers, and Lakhesis, you’ve got backup!”
“Woot!” Lakhesis sounded amused. “Glad someone else is here to give this bitch a piece of their mind. She keeps turning into a bloody zombie while she chases me, and it’s freaking me the fuck out.”
Gracie snorted. “You didn’t find it even a little worrisome to have a naked supermodel trying to kill you?” She reached Oryxa and threw her shield, sending the beautiful woman staggering sideways and whipping around to face her. “’Sup, bitch? Heard you want to destroy the world.” She saw the flash of Oryxa’s true form. “Oh, crap, that’s terrifying.”
“Yeah, and the rest of the time she’s so pretty and sweet that it feels like she’s probably right to kill you.” Lakhesis was laughing. “Wait ’til she starts talking. She has this melodious voice, telling you to rest a while and come closer like she hasn’t even noticed you’re trying to kill her—then bam, zombie crazy-eyes.”
“Young men, take note,” Alan said wryly. “A pretty face can hide a lot of crazy.” He laid down a group heal. “Gracie, be careful. That poison effect she has is pretty nasty.”
“Thanks,” Gracie called back.
“The crazy thing goes for dudes, too,” Kevin chimed in. His amarok leapt at Oryxa and slashed with its claws.
“Agreed,” chorused Gracie, Lakhesis,
and Ushanas.
“Why must we fight?” Oryxa asked, her voice echoing through the room. “Stay a while, and let me make the hurt go away.”
“Creepy,” Gracie said.
“Come, let me tend to your wounds.” Oryxa stretched out long, pale fingers, an eerie smile playing around her lips. There was a flash of darkness in her eyes, and then it was gone again, and there was only her unsettling beauty.
Gracie didn’t answer. She was surprised to find herself responding to Oryxa, feeling the fury and annoyance she always felt around women who were beautifully made up. Oryxa was better than she was, part of her mind said. Oryxa was ladylike and polite, and Gracie was a sweaty mess with straggly hair and a dirty face. She was thirteen again, trying to figure out which shade of lipstick to wear while her crushes drooled after her older sister.
Goddammit.
Oryxa’s flashes of her true form were becoming more frequent, however.
“Do you think you can save him?” she hissed, and her voice was now hoarser. “He thought he was using us, but we’ve had centuries to turn him into one of our own. There is no light left in him.”
Gracie felt a chill. She had wondered why Oryxa would ally herself with someone whose true goal had been to create goodness and light in the world, and now she understood. Oryxa had known that over the centuries, Yesuan’s heart would become dark and twisted. She had hoped that when he broke out, he would become an agent of the demons.
How many sweet, twisted words had Oryxa murmured in Yesuan’s ears over the years? She was immortal so she could play the long game.
“You’re nothing,” Gracie told her. “You thrive off the pain mortals cause each other. You stoke the fire, but you’re nothing on your own, and when your cruelty doesn’t take root, you die.”
She swept her sword down in an angled stroke, and Oryxa stumbled back. The beautiful mask flickered again.
“You’re nothing,” Gracie told her again.
“You’ll never turn him!” Oryxa’s shriek was furious. “You’ll have to destroy him.”
This, Gracie realized, was the true cruelty of Oryxa. The player came to Yesuan’s Haunt, thinking that they would kill him, and Oryxa reminded them that they had not even tried to save him first.
