by Ramy Vance
At the camp, Sandy was stepping out of her tent. She apparently had just woken up and was fiddling with her robes. She tripped over the pile of wood near their dead fire from the night before. Her hair was a mess, sticking up on one side, and she tried to pat it down to no effect.
Stew came out of the tent a little after Sandy. He dropped to the ground almost instantly and started doing pushups. He powered through more than a dozen, and when he was done, he flipped over and resumed with sit-ups.
Sandy took a seat on a dead tree trunk near Stew, pulled out a book, and read.
Suzuki gave them a little time with their morning routine and then approached. “Morning,” Suzuki called.
Sandy waved at Suzuki as he walked up. Stew continued with his work out. Squats now. He nodded at Suzuki but, other than that, didn’t acknowledge him.
“How’d you guys sleep?”
“Good…once we got to it,” Sandy bragged. “How about you?”
“Ground was surprisingly comfortable.”
“So what now, O Fearless Leader?” Stew asked.
“Well, I was looking at the map last night before I went to sleep and drew a pretty clear path to where we’re going. Should take a couple of more hours and we’ll be there. You guys ready for a walk?”
Sandy shook her head and looked in the direction of Suzuki’s abandoned fire. “Not yet,” she answered. “I could do with a little bit more campfire before I get going. It’s freezing. And I want to finish this chapter.”
“What are you reading?”
“Niv suggested that I grab the book that was in our room. It’s a book on spellcraft. It’s kind of confusing, but I like it. It’s like building your own spells or something.”
“All right, you guys should eat anyway. But we gotta get going soon.”
Sandy and Suzuki went over to the fire, while Stew finished up his morning workout. They both sat, and Suzuki tossed Sandy some salted meat, which she ate while she kept reading.
Suzuki read through a couple of his HUD’s tutorials to kill time. They were mostly basic instructions -- nothing that he couldn’t have figured out on his own. He wished he had brought something to read like Sandy, but he hadn’t assumed there would be any downtime.
It made sense, though. Half of the Lord of the Rings movies were shots of halflings and elves walking for miles. After a half an hour or so, Stew came over and sat at the fire. He grabbed some meat and ate in silence.
After he finished eating, Stew smiled and looked up at Suzuki. “Morning, dude.”
“Morning,” Suzuki replied. “I was beginning to think you’d become a mute.”
“Nope. Just gotta start the day right. Sandy, you still reading that thing?”
“Until I’m done,” she answered. “That’s usually the way that a book works. You start it and read it until you’re done.”
“I know how books work. I just meant that we have other things to do. Like killing stuff things to do.”
“I’m aware that we’re going to be killing things today. Just trying to make sure I don’t disappoint myself with a lack of style.”
“Any tips?” Suzuki asked.
“Not for you. It looks like magic is pretty specific here. Like everything in the book is geared toward a specific type of magic. It’s all offensive shit. Mostly elemental. I haven’t come across anything healing based. Makes me wonder if they have any necromantic tomes out there. That would be wild. I never got into necromancy before, but I figure now is as good a time as any.”
“Sandy, are you saying that you actually want to raise the dead?”
“No, I’m saying that I want to raise an army of the dead.”
Sandy walked Suzuki and Stew through some of the things she had picked up from her reading. The way she was understanding magic was that it wasn’t based on incantations, not for humans at least.
Elves still relied on incantations for their casting, but that was because elves were more formal in all aspects of life.
Humans, on the other hand, could “free-flow,” as the book put it. That meant that they only needed to have a general idea of what it was that they were casting. The spell work was more about intention and less about rules.
As a result, humans could get more creative with their spell work. Sandy showed them how there were instructions for how to cast a flaming icicle. The book was full of examples like that.
Stew took out his sword and started sharpening it. “What does that mean for someone like me?”
“Well, you know the barbarian spells better than I. I guess you’d have to figure out what you were casting, commit to it, and then use your familiar to cast it. You should probably be talking to GB about that. I’ve been talking to Niv all day.”
Suzuki wondered what it was like to have a familiar that actually wanted to talk. There were scores of questions Suzuki had, and he knew that Fred probably had the answers. He hadn’t wanted to ask any of them, though.
Every time Fred opened his mouth, his words were coated with such a heavy layer of condescension that Suzuki didn’t even want to bother talking to him. But he knew the imp probably was aware of secrets in Middang3ard that they couldn’t even dream of. What was the point of being an eldritch creature if you didn’t have eldritch knowledge?
Suzuki made a mental note to work on his relationship with Fred. I wonder if there’s familiar/ human counseling on Middang3ard?
“Come on, guys.” Suzuki stepped on the fire. “We should get going.”
The Mundanes tore down their camp and headed farther into the marshlands. They were making better time than they had yesterday. There was a level of confidence that had been lacking.
Maybe it was just having spent their first real night out on a quest, but the Mundanes were trekking through the forest as if they’d been doing it their entire life.
Even Stew was starting to get into it. He would sometimes stop and point to interesting plants as they passed by, wondering if they could use them for potions or alchemy.
Suzuki didn’t have the heart to tell Stew that whatever potion-making looked like in Middang3ard, it was probably much more labor-intensive than clicking a few buttons. It would be better to let Stew have his enthusiasm while it lasted.
“Hey, Fred,” Suzuki asked tentatively. “How do I use magic?”
Suzuki could feel Fred rolling his eyes. “Simple, human. You think of what you’d like to accomplish and I facilitate it for you. Your HUD is already set up for the spells of a warrior-mage. When you imagine what you would like, I will do a rough estimate of the spell, and help you cast something that will have the desired effect.”
There might have been a tone of condescension in his voice, but at least Fred had answered him in a direct, simple way.
Maybe that is the key. Direct questions get direct answers, Suzuki thought as he brushed a low hanging branch out of his way.
“Thanks,” Suzuki offered. Fred didn’t reply.
The Mundanes continued on their way through the marsh until they came to a large clearing where the marsh’s water dried up and the ground was more solid, albeit muddy.
The air was full of buzzing. Thousands of wings were beating, and it sounded like a swarm of bees.
Suzuki couldn’t locate the source of the noise, but he knew that the black flies were close by.
As the Mundanes walked farther into the clearing, Sandy pointed ahead.
There was a small swarm of black flies moving in between the trees. It looked like a black cloud of moving bodies. The flies were going somewhere in a hurry.
“Maybe there’s a hive,” Stew suggested.
“Flies don’t have hives,” Sandy countered. “Bees have hives. Flies are attracted to things.”
“Let’s find what these flies think are attractive then.”
Suzuki sighed. “Not that kind of attractive, Stew.”
They followed the swarm as the flies meandered through the swamp. The flies didn’t seem to notice. Despite his worries that everything in Middang3ard might w
ant to kill him, the black flies seemed to be more of an obvious irritation than a threat. Maybe he was a little bit too gung-ho about the whole quest. Milos probably wouldn’t have sent them to take care of something that was way out of their league.
The worst thing that the MERCs had done so far was drop them off at an office without explaining how much paperwork they were going to have to finish.
The flies flew behind some trees and Suzuki raised his hand for the Mundanes to stop. Up ahead, where the flies were congregating, there were dozens of animal carcasses laid out on the ground. Their entrails had been ripped out and piled high. That was what the flies were swarming to.
Maggots covered the entrails, and there was the rank smell of putrefaction. It was hard to tell what the animals were at this advanced stage of decomposition.
As the Mundanes watched, a pair of goblins stumbled from the woods, holding some four-legged game between the pair of them. The goblins were short and squat, which was unsurprising. But they were oddly muscular, and they chatted with each other in hoarse, loud voices. Swords hung from their waists.
The goblins threw the fresh game down and set upon it with their knives. Bits of the animal were cut off and placed to the side as the entrails and other unmentionables were tossed into the large pile of viscera.
Once the goblins were finished, they picked up the parts of meat they wished to keep and went back into the darker part of the forests.
Suzuki spoke. Or at least he tried to, but every time he opened his mouth, he gagged, and he had to use every ounce of willpower to not throw up. Finally, on his third attempt, he managed to whisper, “I guess that’s where the flies are coming from.”
Stew covered his nose. “We could just go in there and take out the goblins. Then torch the flies.”
“We don’t know how many there are,” Sandy countered. “I doubt they need that much meat just for a couple of goblins.”
“True,” Suzuki agreed. “There’s probably a handful of them.”
“So we’re goblin hunting?” Stew asked.
“Yeah, but slowly. We gotta take this slowly and not get in over our heads.”
Stew looked at the goblins like a lion watching grazing gazelles. “The only ones who are gonna be over their heads are these goblins. If they still have heads when I’m done with them.”
Sandy rested her hand on Stew’s shoulder and smiled sweetly at him. “Babe, you really gotta work on your pre-fight trash talking.”
Suzuki stood. “Whatever we do, we need to find their camp first and see exactly how many we’re up against.”
The Mundanes followed the goblins, who carried their butchered meat back to camp. There they saw at least twenty of the gray imp-like creatures gathered around a fire.
They were roasting strips of recently-butchered flesh, talking and grunting quietly among themselves. They wore warpaint which varied in color from goblin to goblin. Some of them were covered from head to toe in a dark, inky black color, others with delicate, intricate patterns of blues and blood red. Their sloped foreheads shined with sweat from the heat of the fire.
Two of them were snapping at each other over what looked to be a goat’s leg, before a third larger goblin stabbed the two fighting goblins with his cutlass, taking the meat for himself. This seemed a completely acceptable thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that the rest of the goblins ignored the screams of the two smaller goblins, who eventually scampered off to tend their wounds.
Suzuki considered just charging in, Leeroy Jenkinsing the situation. He ran the plan, or rather total lack of one, through his HUD. The percentage of success read at only twelve percent.
Stew poked his head over the bushes he was crouched behind. “These guys do not look friendly. If they’re ready to kill each other, what do you think they’re gonna do to us? Maybe we should just take care of the flies.”
Suzuki scrolled through his HUD. There was nothing there to help him. Just the glaring twelve percent chance of success. “No.” Suzuki sighed. “We got contracted to take care of the black fly problem. It looks like the goblins are causing that. So we have to take care of the goblin problem.”
“Any ideas on how to get started?”
Suzuki wracked his brain. Nothing was coming to him. He was freezing up.
“I know exactly what to do,” Stew broke in, ruining Suzuki’s concentration. “We Leeroy this shit.” Stew was already standing, unsheathing his sword, and preparing to launch a full-scale attack.
Suzuki shook his head. “Already ran that scenario through the HUD. twelve percent, dude. Way too low to risk it.”
“No Leeroying here, Stew,” Sandy scolded. “We fuck this up and we’re dead. And not the kind of dead where you order a pizza and jerk off to make yourself feel better. We’re dead, dead here. Don’t forget that.”
Stew lowered his eyes. “I was kidding. Sorta.”
“All right,” Suzuki said finally. “We can do this. We just gotta take it slow. First thing…first thing….uh…” But Suzuki couldn’t think of what to do next. He just stammered, his hand shaking.
What the fuck is wrong with me? he thought.
You’re scared, Fred’s voice chimed in his head.
Private thoughts here, Suzuki silently shot back.
Pish posh. I’m literally in your head. Any hope of privacy was lost when you agreed to that infernal contract and let me in. Or did you not read the fine print?
No one reads the User’s Terms and Services, Suzuki lamented.
A failing of your species. But as I was saying, you’re frightened. As well you should be. The wrong decision will be the death of you and your friends. But there is one decision that you are making right now that will most certainly lead to your doom.
What? Suzuki thought, imagining himself throwing up his arms in frustration. I haven’t decided anything.
Exactly, Fred said. Not making a decision is making a very big and dangerous decision. This is Middang3ard. You must act to survive. A moment spent not acting is a moment in which your enemy can impale you on a sword. Or a horn. Or whatever sharp object’s available.
So, what should I do?
I cannot decide for you. But let me put this in human terms. Pull up your big boy pants and do something.
Thanks for the pep talk, Suzuki thought, in the most menacing voice he could imagine.
Anytime. Fred disappeared into the recesses of his mind.
Sandy took Suzuki’s hand and held it tight. “Hey, where are you, bud? We need you. Here. Now. You got this.”
Stew nodded his agreement and put his hand on top of Sandy’s. “Yeah. Give us the plan, Oh Fearless Leader.”
Suzuki clenched his fists. They needed a decision. They needed action. Fine. He’d give them both.
“We gotta scatter them. If they’re all together, they’re gonna overwhelm us. If we split them up, get ‘em running around and off-balance, we can take ‘em. They aren’t that big. And if they’re anything like the goblins we’ve come across before, they shouldn’t be too strong. Although everything seems to be stronger in Middang3ard. Or maybe that’s just us.”
“So how are we going to scatter them?”
“Uh…Sandy…can you blow their fire up?”
“You mean make it explode?”
“I don’t know. Shit, this is harder in real-time…yeah…do something with the fire. Stick to crowd control. Keep everyone from getting too close. I want you up above, raining death down, all right?”
“Can do.”
“Stew, you and me are gonna tank and knock ‘em down while they’re scurrying.”
Stew shook his head. “Dude, Beth is the Tank. You’re support.”
“Beth isn’t here. And that’s why I’m gonna need you to watch my back. Just make sure I don’t get swarmed. You guys ready?”
“As ready as we’ll be.”
“For honor.”
“For glory.”
“For XP,” they all whispered.
“Again, there’s n
o XP,” Stew lamented.
“Shut up,” Sandy said as she closed her eyes tightly, her brow furrowing with concentration. Her feet slowly lifted off the ground. She opened her eyes and almost burst into giddy laughter. “I’m doing it,” she softly exclaimed. “Oh my God, I’m flying. I’m actually flying.”
“Floating,” Stew corrected.
“Really? You’re gonna be the semantics police right now?”
“Sorry.”
“Stop fucking around,” Suzuki broke in. “Let’s get going.”
Sandy nodded, floating higher and higher, until she was a good ten feet above them. A blue aura covered her body as her robes flared out, sparks of electricity jumping off her body.
Suzuki held his breath. “On my call.”
This was it. It was now or never.
Raising his voice for all to hear, Suzuki cried out, “Today we find out if we deserve to be in Middang3ard. Go!”
Sandy exploded forward, swooping into the goblin camp. She raised her hand. There was a spark in her palm, large and dense, and she tossed it onto the goblin fire.
A few goblins instantly were ablaze. They screeched and ran around the camp, fanning themselves, trying to put out the fire. Sandy twisted her hand, and the flame started to take shape. Tendrils stretched out and snapped at the goblins.
Sandy laughed maniacally as Stew and Suzuki jumped over the bushes and ran into the fray.
Suzuki ran as fast as he could while sliding forward through the mud, unsheathing his sword before he swung up his shield, taking out the legs of the goblin in front of him. The goblin went down and Suzuki brought his sword down on its skull, cracking it instantly and sending blood everywhere, splashing up in Suzuki’s face. He wiped it away, whirling around with horror.
The blood was so warm, so wet.
Suzuki hit his HUD, and his helmet phased over his face. He spun around to see Stew squaring off with two goblins as the rest of the goblins rushed to try and put out the fire Sandy had started.
A goblin jumped forward at Suzuki, and his HUD flashed twenty percent. Suzuki raised his shield and the goblin hit him, sending both of them falling to the ground. The goblin scrambled faster than Suzuki could have imagined and was instantly on his feet. He brought his scimitar down hard on Suzuki, who was barely able to raise his shield in time.
