by S. R. Witt
All that stuff about dying in the Game killing you in the World was pretty much bullshit, but that didn't mean dying wouldn’t hurt. I couldn’t stop thinking about just how much it would hurt.
Bastion threw himself at the first thug, his right hand extended like an eagle's claw. He raked his fingers at the man's face and went for the eyes, while also swinging a clumsy, but effective, punch with his left arm.
The big man jerked back from my brother's outstretched hand, but didn't notice the punch until Bastion’s knuckles landed squarely in his nutsack.
The bruiser went down so fast his friends didn't even realize what had happened. A guttural wail ripped free of the downed man’s lips and echoed around the alleyway like a shrieking bat caught in a closed room. I couldn't help but grin, and wondered what my avatar looked like with a smile on his face. Did he look like me? Was there a little gap in his front teeth that made him look alternately a little bit crazy or a lot stupid? Or did the simulation smooth out the rough edges and leave him looking far more perfect than I ever had?
Did I mention how often my wandering thoughts almost got me killed in the early days?
Chapter Ten
Punching somebody in the manberries takes the wind out of his sails, but it won’t keep him from trying to kill you once the brain-locking anguish recedes enough for him to get back on his feet. The screaming man was out of the fight for the next minute or two, but then he’d want to return the favor to Bastion. He also had two buddies who were not going to wait and see if their friend recovered before they got their murder on.
One of them decided that he'd had about enough of our foolishness and moved to smash Bastion’s head in with a heavy, studded truncheon. The last remaining thug picked the course of least resistance and came at me. This one had an axe that looked like he used it to chop up everything from firewood to his neighbor’s corpses. Even if it didn't kill me, the red-black gore crusting its surface would almost assuredly give me some hideous fantasy version of lockjaw. I bet they called it something like, “Great Wound Clap”, or “Herpetic Hemorrhaging.”
I was still chasing my thoughts down rabbit holes when the axe came whistling at my face.
Cowardice saved my life. I didn’t try to defend myself or block the attack, just fell flat on the ground and rolled around like a dazed hedgehog. The axe screamed through the space I’d only recently vacated and buried its blade in the side of a building. I took advantage of my attacker’s stuck weapon and scrambled to my feet.
The thug roared and ripped his weapon free. Splinters sprayed my face and arms as the axe came at me again.
I shouted and leaped away from the attack.
SUCCESS! You have learned the rudiments of the Evade skill. (Rank 1)
The axe-man kept up the chase, sweeping his axe from side to side as he pursued me.
Fortunately for my strategical brother, this was all part of his plan. I dodged another attack and put some distance between me and the thug. Once I was out of his reach, I turned and ran away as fast as I dared. The slick cobblestones were teachers and I almost lost it skidding around the corner out of the alleyway, but I needed to get moving if this plan was going to work.
These guys were big, they didn't look very smart, and I was banking on the fact that they didn't really have any skills aside from “chase” and “smash”.
I, on the other hand, had a brilliant tactical mind, the dexterity of a Capuchin monkey, and the combat skills of—
Who am I kidding? I was a very small step up from these apes. I ran like my ass was on fire and I didn't want the rest of me to catch. The big guy was on my heels, but he was a little slower and a lot clumsier. His heavy boots slipped and slid on the ice and more than once he had to catch himself against the frosted side of buildings we passed.
I didn't know how the village was laid out, but I knew it wasn't very big from my earlier trip to the church. I could lead this guy away from the fight, then lose him and run back to help Bastion deal with the other two before Mr. Broken Balls got back on his feet.
It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the best I had.
I ran another 50 yards and then looked back over my shoulder. The guy with the ax was nowhere in sight. “What the hell?”
That was not how this was supposed to work. The plan would fall apart if contestant number three ignored me and went back to join the Stomp Bastion party.
I had to fix this. Now. If Bastion got killed because I screwed up my part of the plan, I would never, ever hear the end of it.
I scrambled back the way I’d come, ready to reverse direction and take off like the weak-hearted rabbit I really am deep down inside, but the big guy wasn’t waiting for me. I ran back further, and finally caught sight of him.
He was strolling back to the alley, shuffling along through the snow with the axe slung up over his shoulder like he'd forgotten how important it was for him to catch and kill me.
Oh. That’s what Bastion meant.
“Don't lose aggro,” he’d said. “If you get too far ahead of him or get out of his sight for more than a few seconds, he’ll return to his spawn point.”
In my panic, I hadn’t thought about anything but getting away from that axe and its wielder.
I am an idiot.
At least the thug was walking. That gave my brother another minute or so before this guy showed up and cut him in half.
I told you I'm not very good at these games.
Without a proper weapon, I resorted to an attack that was very familiar.
The snow was damp and the temperature was just above freezing. It felt perfect in my hands and packed into a smooth, round missile. One, two, three steps and I let the snowball fly.
SUCCESS! You have learned the rudiments of the Thrown Missiles skill. (Rank 1)
The icy sphere crashed into the back of the thug’s head, just above his left ear. It splattered through his greasy hair and sent frost shrapnel flying in all directions. It looked very impressive, but its effects were limited to pissing off the thug.
He stopped and turned like a marionnette controlled by an arthritic amputee. His feet shifted in awkward little steps until he faced me.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Catch me if you can!”
The thug shambled forward, gaining speed as he built to a full-tilt charge.
I backed away, making sure he didn’t lose sight of me. I’d already screwed this up once, I didn’t want to blow it again.
He followed me to the end of the street and around the corner, face growing redder by the second. I stayed a few yards ahead of him and he kept swinging that axe like a serial killer turned loose at a summer camp. “Stop. Running.”
That was a surprise. I hadn’t expected the thug to talk. Why would the Devs waste time building speech routines into a pre-scripted quest in the beginner area? Even rudimentary artificial intelligence would cost a fortune if it ran during every character creation sequence.
Interesting.
The putrid smell of the big man’s breath reminded me to keep moving. I’d drifted off again.
Less thinking, more running, I thought.
We were a couple hundred yards away from the alley when I head Bastion yell.
“Saint!” His panicked voice rose over the winter wind. “Get back here! Now!”
I had to get better at this. If I kept screwing things up, I’d never get the cash together to help my mother.
Chapter Eleven
Maybe this way was better. The thug didn’t rush to his spawn point, he walked at a leisurely place. If I lost him now, it would take him at least five minutes to return to the fight. With any luck, he’d find Bastion and I waiting for him with his dead buddies at our feet.
But that was only going to work if I got back to Bastion, pronto.
I ran, dodging around corners to put as much distance between myself and the ax man as I could. I wanted him to forget I existed and start his long, slow walk to the alley.
I kept running and praying my plan w
ould work. And it did. Pretty much. Kind of. I reached the alley just in time to see Bastion threw a looping punch into the side of the his enemy’s head. My brother dodged around a wild truncheon swing and drove another punch into the big man’s ribs. The thug grunted, took a step back, and smacked his truncheon into the palm of his hand. He was hurt, but a long way from out.
Black Balls was still on the ground, which was a good sign. He was not, however, screaming anymore, which was a bad sign.
An even worse sign was Bastion’s face. It was one big bruise streaked with blood. His left eye was swollen closed and his right wasn’t far behind. He couldn’t take much more of this.
“The potion!” He shouted. “Use the potion on me!”
I compared Bastion’s health bar with the red line over his opponent’s head. I could heal him, probably, but it wouldn’t fix the problem. The real solution was to take the thug out so we could finish what we’d started with Captain Busted Nuts.
But if I got involved in the fight, then Bastion and I might both end up in dire straits. I only had the one potion.
I leaned back against the wall and let the shadows close around me.
SUCCESS! You have learned the rudiments of the Hide in Shadows skill. (Rank 1)
Go, me!
Bastion ducked and just avoided having the side of his head caved in by his enemy’s truncheon. I was going to hear about this later. “Heal!”
No, I’ve got my own ideas, I thought. Why slap a bandage on a problem if you could just cut it out by the roots?
The end of the alley was littered with refuse and old junk nobody wanted or needed.
I found a slab of wood a couple feet long and a few inches around. It wasn’t a sword, but it was a serviceable club.
I slipped forward, careful not to expose myself to our enemy, and swung my makeshift bat for all it was worth.
The wood whistled through the air and gave the thug just enough warning to start turning toward me. Bad move on his part. Instead of taking the blow across the dome of his skull, he offered up a perfect profile shot.
SNEAK ATTACK!
Critical hit!
Blunt melee damage x3!
The disposable club’s rough end clipped the big guy across the mouth and nose. There was a sound like crunching popcorn kernels and something hot and wet splashed into my eyes. I stumbled away, screaming, scrubbing at my face with the back of one hand while flailing my club around the other.
“Wow. I mean, wow.” Bastion sounded impressed and horrified.
“What?” I shouted. “What the hell? What's in my eyes?”
Bastion gave me a grim little chuckle. “Blood. A lot of blood.”
My stomach churned. “Is it mine? Tell me it’s not mine.”
“It’s not yours.”
“Then get it off me!”
“Just a second,” Bastion said. He grunted and Blackballs started with the screaming again. It sounded like that must've really hurt.
Bastion grunted again and the thug’s noises went up a couple of octaves, and then became so high-pitched I couldn’t really hear them anymore. “That'll hold him,” Bastion growled.
And then, to me, “Open your eyes. You're fine.”
I opened one eye. Something hot and sticky blurred my vision. That other guy's blood was on me. It was inside my eyelids now. Whatever he had, whatever weird fantasy diseases were crawling around in his bloodstream like demented bugs, they were crawling around inside me.
That was the last straw. I yakked into a corner of the alley and pressed my forehead against the cold stone wall until my stomach stopped heaving. When I was sure I wasn’t going to endure another round of vomiting, I washed my face with dirty snow.
I didn’t watch Bastion finish off Blackballs. It's one thing to know that your brother has a bit of a violent streak, it's another to watch him stomp the virtual guts out of a virtual man with his virtual boots.
Not that what I’d done was much better. Mr. Truncheon was down in the snow with a halo of blood spilling out of his face. The crimson moat around his skull didn't distract me from the wreckage of his face. Someone, let's not point any fingers here because I was blinded and really it could've been anybody, had torn away the guy’s nose and most of his lower jaw. Puking once again became a very real possibility when I saw the gaping crater in the center of his face.
I don't know what I was expecting, but this level of hyperrealistic violence seemed way over the top.
Bastion, on the other hand, wasn’t having a problem with the gore. He grinned at me as he shoved his bloody hands into the pockets of the man he’d just killed. “Go ahead. Get to looting.”
My stomach did a little rolling flip to let me know it didn't approve of handling the dead, but my brain told my gut to pipe down. My mother needed her boys to make some money.
That's the only reason we were in the Game. It was the only way my brother and I had to drum up the scratch needed for the surgery that would keep our only decent parent alive. No, don't look at me like that. I know you're going to ask about Karl's professional gaming stint. That part of his life was over and behind him when we entered Dragon Web Online. I never did find out what went wrong there, but it was a sore spot with Karl and it's a sore spot with me. Leave it alone.
The dead man's pockets were still warm. I don't know how accurate it is for medieval dudes to have cloth-lined pockets in their armored pants, and I don't really care. Sometimes you have to forgo realism for convenience and familiarity. After a few moments of sifting through his pockets to separate the good stuff from the junk I had a fairly tidy little sum.
You looted: 16 copper pieces, a polished bezoar, 15 inches of stout twine, a pair of clay tiles, and a leather sack from the Unruly Thug.
Unruly Thug seemed like a pretty generous description of the guy. You call a student who won’t sit down in class unruly. Unruly does not apply to a full-grown giant of a man carrying a studded truncheon while looking for someone to murder. Just thug would have made more sense than “Unruly Thug.”
Bastion joined me by the dead body and asked, “How’d do you do?”
I opened the sack and showed him its contents. “All right, I guess. I mean, we aren’t even out of the starter area yet right? We’ve already got fresh clothes, these snazzy capes, and now some coins.”
“Should we take their armor?” Bastion asked, nudging the dead man with the toe of his boot.
I measured the corpses with my eyes. “I don’t think it will fit. I mean, that guy was a foot taller than me. He’s even bigger than you.”
Bastion gave me a short nod and a shrug. “You’re right. It doesn’t even look good enough to sell.”
“What did you get?” I asked. I’d seen him sifting through the other man’s belongings. Why wasn’t he flashing his loot in my face?
“Huh? Oh. Nothing.” Bastion walked to the mouth of the alley.
“You're right about the starting area. This character creation is taking forever. We need to keep on moving and figure out how to wrap this up and find the real adventure.”
I stood up and walked to join him. But before I could reach the mouth of the alley, Bastion let out a pained grunt and came flying back down the alley toward me.
Chapter Twelve
About that last Unruly Thug…
While Bastion and I were looting his buddies, the thug had made his way back to the alley. Seeing Bastion in the alley’s mouth put him back into kick-ass mode, and he’d kicked my brother’s ass.
Bastion was down, but I couldn’t tell if he was out. I didn’t have the leisure time to worry about him, either, because the thug’s axe was coming at my face. I threw myself prone and the axe plowed through the corner of the building. Chunks of stone sprayed down on me like jagged hail and I knew if I didn't keep moving I was going to die.
I rolled away and the axe clanged off the icy cobblestones of the alley. Tiny darts of ice stung my cheeks and forehead. The pain was startling and so vivid I had to marvel at its fid
elity.
Moments later, the stinging in my face was eclipsed by agony in my ribs. The thug kicked me hard, tossing me against the wall. Then he kicked me again and stomped on my chest for good measure. My hit point bar shrank by an alarming amount.
Ouch.
The heavy blade fell again and I had no room to retreat. Desperate to keep the axe from separating my head from my shoulders, I flung myself into my attacker's legs. I'm not large, but I was big enough to throw the maniac off balance. The thug squawked in protest and took a half a step back to catch his balance. The momentum of his attack wrenched the weapon free of his grip and the axe clattered along the stones as he stumbled away.
If he retrieved his weapon, my odds of survival went way down. Rather than try to stand, I lunged at him and tangled my arms around his legs. He kicked and stomped, and I wriggled around his boots. I got one arm wrapped around his ankles, and pinned them together.
He was big and he was strong, but he lacked the leverage to do anything about the annoyance currently tangling his legs.
I, on the other hand, am not very strong nor very large, but my ankles weren’t the ones tangled up. I tightened my grip and rolled up onto my knees, using my body as a lever against his legs.
The thug recognized the problem a few seconds too late to do anything about it. He flopped onto his back and his skull bounced off the frost-coated cobblestones with a hollow knock.
I stood up and threw my weight forward, pressing my advantage. The thug’s legs folded in and back, two directions they were most definitely not intended to bend.
His knees gave way with two liquid pops. There was an awful grinding noise and then a tearing sound that reminded me of garbage bags ripping open. I was no longer hanging on to legs, but floppy meat socks filled with nerveless bones and twitching muscle.
