Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  Roark stepped out into the room, and Ryken and I reluctantly followed. We stood opposite the five men, and I got a good look at the fifth man, the one who had spoken.

  He was chubby and had salt and pepper stubble covering his lower face, as well as white-dusted cropped hair. He had watery blue eyes and a weak chin. As he stood there, proud and confident even though I felt sure that was unearned, I got the overwhelming urge to punch him right in the face.

  Hendrix

  Level 18 Human

  Falchion Advisor

  What the fuck? This was him! This was the guy Xanthe said had killed me. I felt my fists simultaneously begin to sweat, and clench up tight. How the hell was he Level 18 already? That was impossible; he must have had access to some actual cheat codes to get that far. And his rank within the Falchion looked really high to me. How had he done all of this so quickly? Who the hell was he, really?

  “Where is the girl?” Ryken spoke up, clearly realising from my silence that I wasn’t willing to reveal myself, or expend energy that would reveal Moro. I appreciated it.

  “Ha!” he cried. “The bitch put out a hit on me. She’s not going anywhere until I figure out how to dispose of her, body and mind.”

  Shit. My theories about her kidnapping had mostly been incorrect, then.

  I opened my mouth to argue, but figured that would achieve nothing. I would have to come up with a plan later. For now, I would have to survive this encounter. I grazed my eyes across the swords of every man there. Hendrix had a crazy, gnarly-looking sheath at his waist, and I swallowed hard. Was that Maledictus? I couldn’t inspect it while it was equipped by him.

  I was shaking, I realised, and I had to force myself to stop it while still cloaking Moro’s appearance. I was so exhausted. I was completely done with this day. I just had to play this next few minutes right, and maybe I could fuck off back to bed. If only.

  “Why do you need this?” Ryken asked, pointing his thumb sideways to the limp, worn bag that Roark held up. “It’s not exactly what we were picturing when we thought ‘treasure’.”

  “Are you disappointed that the treasure you stole from us isn’t satisfactory?” Hendrix laughed. “What a hoot!” Who talked like that?

  “Where is the girl?” I growled, channeling my best Christian Bale. It was the mask; it was making me feel way more like Batman than I actually was.

  “I made myself perfectly clear!” Hendrix cried. “It’s a bit rich of you to ask why we haven’t held up our end of the bargain when you haven’t either.”

  “We will swap the bag for the girl,” I stated, my voice low. “As agreed.”

  Hendrix tapped on his ugly chin a few times, and then his mouth split into a grin. “Or,” he said, “we’ll win this fight while you’re still a whelp.”

  “What?” I just about had time to say, before the four armoured men clanked towards me in formation. “What?” I said again.

  “She told me a lot about you, you know,” Hendrix said. “I just had to get the non-players to slap her around a little.” He laughed, and it was hollow. “I feel so alive here, don’t you? I knew her. I knew her before her name was Xanthe. It was something boring like … Karen, or Trish.” He laughed again. “But she still looked the same. I thought about her every day. She would go on and on about her useless bloody degrees,” he said, eyes wide and manic, “but in the same breath she would be wearing tops that had her tits spilling out all over the place! Imagine! Feminism gone mad.”

  The guy was making no sense. Really no sense at all. It was freaking me out.

  “But here, it isn’t like there. Here we can do what we like. You understand?”

  I said nothing.

  “Of course you do. She told me what you two got up to. I wouldn’t have been able to resist, either. We’re all men here.” That sentiment made me shudder. “That stupid little bitch. She sends a message out telling everyone in the world to kill me, and then tells us where she is? Of course we went straight to the city and took her. But then we heard she’d been running her whore mouth all over town about blackmail and bribes and trades and the map. No One’s Burden. Can I have it?” He stormed over and went to take it from Roark’s hand, but the rogue snatched it back and glared.

  “This wasn’t the deal, Artur,” he growled to the man beside Hendrix. “The girl. The cash. You give yours first, and then I will give you my end of the deal.”

  Cash? Sounded like old Roark had been making some extra deals of his own, without telling us. I couldn’t bring myself to mind if he got some extra coin, though. He was who he was. I just wanted Xanthe safe, away from this dickhead. And I really wanted myself safe, too, and preferably asleep. Sooner rather than later.

  “Why do you want it so bad?” Ryken clearly couldn’t help but ask.

  “Ah, that’s a great question. I came up with this all by myself when our ears in Dawnspire found that Xanthe had been talking about a secret map,” Hendrix said. “It’s really quite clever. As you know, in this game—”

  “In this what?” Ryken and Roark interrupted, which just had Hendrix erupt into hideous schoolgirlish giggles.

  “In this game,” he repeated, stressing the word — what a tool, “you can cast a spell to control a lesser mind and have it fight foes with you, or for you. It is limited, however, by your Intelligence. You have to concentrate hard to control a minion, and you can control one for every three points of Intelligence you have. Incendia has an Intelligence of 30, and she currently has rings and pendants and armour equalling an extra 40 points. That’s twenty-three disciples she can control to fight for her. That’s not exactly a frightening number, is it? Well, there are orbs all around the world that, when simply held in one’s pack, they increase a certain stat. Clever little thing that Brandon … Brendon…”

  “Bryson?” I asked.

  “Yes! That the little frog man himself added to the game.” He looked at Roark with a mock pout of sympathy. “That’s the world creator, to you.” Roark looked puzzled but said nothing. “There are twenty Intelligence orbs in Ilyria, and they add twenty points to Intelligence. Can anyone tell me how many minds that will control?”

  “A hundred...” I said quietly. “One hundred and fifty-six.”

  “Then at the Greater spell level, that’s double. Then double that again at its freed spell level. And that’s not to mention the orbs that are on other land masses. They are very heavy, but with the Burden, she can hold them all in her possession.” Hendrix grinned. “That’s a starting army of hundreds of disposable, powerful disciples willing to fight and die for her. They will raze Dawnspire, and we will win.”

  “This is sounding a lot like a villain’s monologue,” I pointed out, knowing that Hendrix would understand my reference to the real world, at least. “Doesn’t it bother you knowing that what you’re suggesting is inherently evil?”

  He looked me up and down. “Why is it any more evil than what you are doing?” he asked. “My people have nothing. I was ‘born’,” he said, with air quotes, “into a faction that has nothing. The men that I bonded with … some have gone mad from the Blight. Some have been killed by starving, crazed wild animals. Some have been killed by desperate refugees. And you, over there in your golden towers — the spire is literally built with magical gemstones! — you laugh at the rest of us, lying out here and awaiting death, while you eat your bread and drink your wine!” He was red-faced and spitting now. “I refuse to be the underdog. I refuse to be the downtrodden. I refuse! I was born on Earth as a nothing and a nobody and I rose to become the most powerful person in the world! I did it there. I will do it here. You do not deserve to keep what you have just because you already have it. That’s not how this works. That’s not how it works!” He stamped his foot like a child, almost undercutting the seriousness of his words.

  “So you are going to destroy the Collective?” I asked quietly.

  “We are going to burn your kind to the ground,” he growled, “and then build it up again in our image. Because I am
the god here. Nobody else! No Titania, no No One. No bloody anything! It’s all fiction! It’s all fiction!”

  Wow. I sucked in a breath and tried to figure out how to reply. I just wanted Xanthe back, or at least to walk away from this peacefully.

  But he continued. There was no shutting him up now. “You know what we have to do,” he said, the colour and animation draining slowly from his face and his eyelids growing heavy, as if he was bored. “If the Falchion stands a chance at ridding the world of the evil that is the Collective … Titania’s chosen must first be defeated.” He waved his hand around as he spoke.

  For the Collective to be destroyed, I had to die? That made my ultimate goal seem horribly ironic and kind of a bitchy jab from the game, then. Jesus.

  “So step forward. Accept it like a man, and maybe they won’t write songs about your cowardice. That’s all you can hope for,” Hendrix finished with a wide smile.

  He was looking right at me. How did he know it was me? Xanthe might have explained what I looked like, even my name, but that was all obscured by the cowl. My heart was hammering. Ryken was staring at me wide-eyed, but Roark was staring resolutely at the ground.

  What the fuck, guys?

  Then I looked to my heels. “Moro,” I muttered. The wolf looked up at me, glowing and plain as anything else in the room. Somewhere in his bizarre tirade I had forgotten to concentrate hard on concealing her, and she had popped back up and stepped up to sit beside me.

  I guess you’re going to die beside me now, too, I thought.

  I was pretty bummed out, to be honest. I really didn’t want to die.

  “Step forward!” Hendrix yelled. “We will tell the world that you died bravely. Don’t you understand that that’s all you can ask?”

  For some reason ... I did it. I stepped forward to stand between my party and the Falchion members.

  “Brother and brother,” he said slowly, raising his hands to press them together, as if in prayer, or in glee. “Spectres and skin.”

  But he didn’t draw his sword. Instead, at the corner of my eye, I saw that one of the armoured men was drawing his. I turned around as if in slow motion — or he was just moving impossibly fast — and noted the incredible detail on the most fucking frightening-looking sword I had ever seen in my life.

  It was long, thick, and the blade was made up of grey shades, swirling and mesmerising like damascus steel. One of the edges was serrated and curved like the world’s most intense breadknife. The hilt was adorned with a dozen tiny gemstones that glittered and glowed rhythmically, like it was breathing. It was as long as my arm, and I could almost feel the power ripple through the air when it was drawn. Like a soundwave.

  There was no way, no way at all, that this sword was anything less than the one that was supposed to end my life.

  “It’s not you?” I managed to say to Hendrix, just as I fruitlessly raised the dagger in my left hand to attempt to block the incoming strike.

  The sword arced and cut cleanly through my wrist, as if there was no bone there to stop it. I let out a howl of disbelief, more than pain, when I saw the blood fountain from the brand new stump. The armoured man tossed the sword to his other hand, and swung it around his head, ready to bring it down to split my skull.

  “Moro,” I managed to say. Why was no one coming to help me? If I strained my senses, it felt like Ryken was screaming in the background. But I didn’t know what he was saying. I felt … calm. Everything was moving slowly, and I felt slow too, and light.

  This was it. Life or death. My mana was full.

  Let’s see how he likes our trump card, I thought to my spectre. Maledictus plunged through his own chest…

  A shudder ran through me.

  Lesser Domination has failed.

  What?

  Moro stared at me, her amber eyes glowing with emotion. She cared. She didn’t want me to die.

  Lesser Domination has failed.

  No.

  A crack sounded and I looked up to see why the wielder hadn’t connected the sword with my head. He staggered back two steps, sword still raised. A rock had connected with his head and stunned him, just for a second. Ryken! Yes!

  I nodded to the wolf, and she leapt into a different action, tearing at the man’s face. She connected with pure steel, and his HP only fell by a fraction. I nodded again and she crunched her jaws against his throat, again just connecting with armour and coming away with no torn flesh; no blood. Barely any damage done at all.

  And he had recovered from the stun. “Roark,” I croaked, hearing Ryken yell the same thing behind me. My HP was draining fast, and the blood from my stump was slowing. At first I thought that was a good thing … but it wasn’t, was it? It was a bad thing. Really it just meant that I was running out of blood.

  The rogue made no move behind me. I didn’t dare to turn and try to make eye contact. Moro had one last Bite in her, and she launched at my silent command and tore at his dominant arm, tearing away his wrist guard and exposing his flesh … but too late. I had nothing left in me. I fell to my knees.

  “Just make it quick,” I heard Roark mutter. I heard the clink of a heavy coinpurse sail through the air and into his hands. I heard Ryken scream ‘No!’ and I watched as the arm raised up high — not unlike Azhul’s had — and I willed myself to dodge, to no avail, as Maledictus came crashing down.

  I was split in two. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, my vision separated into two halves. And then into nothing. Blackness.

  I felt nothing. No pain, no exhaustion. Nothing. I wondered if I would see through my own eyes again if I reanimated. I wondered if I would even be able to return as a Glitched player with my brain in two halves.

  I wondered how Dawnspire would fare without me. Without a champion. I wondered how Ryken would deal under the Falchion’s iron fist. I wondered if Dareth was dead. I wondered if Pollux would still take the resources to Freehill if he got word that I had died. Would Alina and Lucius die, or figure something out?

  Were the farmers around Dawnspire happier for having met me? How would the Father feel about my death? Was Ryken sad, or was he secretly glad it wasn’t him in my place? I wondered all these things and more, but I felt completely at peace. I had no more to do. I had done, genuinely, all I could. I could do no more. I could finally sleep, and let Ilyria figure out its problems on its own. Without my help.

  It wasn’t my destiny to be an important person after all. That realisation was … comforting. In my death I would serve as a warning to people like me: stay behind. Stay in the shadows. Stay away from the real heroes and let them do their thing. I am not one.

  I never will be.

  As I faded, I thought about the futures of everyone I had met here. Hendrix. Xanthe. Roark. Had he really betrayed me? It didn’t matter, really.

  But most of all, I wondered about something I had seen just before my vision had cracked in two. The wrist that had killed me had a tattoo on it.

  A really familiar tattoo.

  Good luck to him, I thought, and then there was nothing.

  And then there was something.

  It wasn’t Carl’s face or the Meyer Corporation’s anteroom. It wasn’t a VR pod. It wasn’t the world through the eyes of a Glitched zombie.

  It was a wooden ceiling, it was dusty rafters. Spiderwebs. I had stared at this ceiling before.

  I looked down. Clenched and unclenched my fists, of which I had two. I was wearing my same armour, still had everything that was equipped, but I had nothing in my pack. No money.

  Roark will have picked up everything I dropped. That fuck.

  My vitals were all full. I felt nothing bad, except a fairly extreme thirst.

  I sat up. The spire. My bedroom. Collective HQ.

  Attention!

  You have chosen to stay in Spectres & Skin for the maximum allotted time. We hope you enjoy your stay!

  Attention!

  You have unlocked a Specialization: Champion.

  When something is achieved that
pertains to your specialization, you may receive experience, abilities, and perks.

  I was alive. I was definitely still alive.

  Shit.