by Rue Vespers
The cave lurker was unimpressed, to say the least. What was a dagger going to do against it? But it was all Jenner had, so he whipped it around and yelled his fool head off. His yell turned into a yelp as the frills sprayed out acid, burning droplets striking his wrist.
And then Jenner’s foot got stuck in something.
He knew what had happened just as his knee buckled beneath him. Rosy fell off his shoulder. Sprawling down on his backside, Jenner jerked futilely to get his left foot out of the small patch of sticky sand. His boot had sunk in past the ankle.
“Get out of there!” Rosy hollered, hopping in terror at the edge of the tar-sand pool.
While Jenner wasn’t sinking in any further, the tar-sand wasn’t letting go of him either. He wrenched at his leg, hoping to slide his foot out of the boot.
Advancing, the cave lurker’s frill rippled as its claws snapped in anticipation. Then the monster stretched out, one terrible claw opening and aiming for Jenner’s waist. It was going to snap him in half and drag off the pieces of his corpse.
He screamed and struggled against the tar-sand.
Just as the claw reached him, Master Tosco yelled within the cave.
It was not the delighted yell of someone discovering a vast store of treasure in gold or jewels, magical flowers or rare potatoes. It was a yell of profound terror and pain, edged with the hopelessness of someone caught in a trap. The yell was so horrible and despairing that Jenner almost felt sorry for him, but not quite.
The lurker’s claw paused, its razor-sharp edges inches away from Jenner. That horrifying head jerked to the cave.
Then the monster ran right over Jenner, who flattened himself to the sand as the gigantic creature passed overhead. It vanished through the rocky gash in the cliffs.
Jenner sat up, his chest heaving. “What the . . .”
“I don’t care, you don’t care, we don’t care, no one cares!” Rosy exclaimed. “Get your fucking foot out of that fucking tar puddle and let’s get the fuck out of here!”
It was impossible to brace yourself in sand. Jenner buried his fists deep in it and pulled hard. “You . . . were . . . right . . . about . . . him,” he grunted.
“Of course I was right!” the cup shouted. “It was written all over his stupid handsome face! He wined you and dined you with a free dagger and a basic sword lesson, and that was all it took to buy you, you cheap slut. Now pull!”
Jenner did so, groaning and bending back. The tar-sand gave a little.
Something stung his shoulder-blade.
He looked behind him, and his heart stopped.
Ten feet away, the sand was bubbling up with red scorpions. One of those scorpions was inches behind Jenner, withdrawing its stinger from his skin.
Rosy howled and leaped into the air, coming down upon the creature and squashing it flat. “Kid, we have to run!”
Jenner gritted his teeth and tugged ferociously, prizing his leg millimeter by millimeter out of the tar-sand. Hopping upon the scorpions as they patted down all around Jenner, the teacup squashed one after another.
But there were too many for Rosy to squish. Two evaded the cup and scuttled around to Jenner’s left side. He punched one down into the sand and the other lashed out, digging its stinger into the flesh of his arm. Venom squirted into him, moving in painful waves down to his hand and up to his elbow. More waves were radiating outward from his shoulder-blade.
His body began to feel heavy. Like weights were replacing his muscles. He was getting sleepy, too.
He had to get back to the boat.
He had to . . .
With one last explosion of energy, driven by the need to survive, he jerked at his leg.
It came free.
He turned over and got up. Rosy was screaming and jumping around, the teacup’s voice coming at a great distance that distorted the words. Jenner took a step and staggered, unable to get his legs to work, unable to keep his eyes open.
He fell onto his face.
“Kid! KID!”
He was going to die. If he didn’t get away from here, it was curtains.
He kicked feebly and went still.
Chapter Twelve
“Come on, kid, wake up!”
He opened his eyes. A pink-and-white blur was bouncing hysterically beside his face.
Jenner didn’t have the strength to raise his head. Gravity had increased exponentially, holding him fast to the sand.
“The health potion! You have to drink that health potion, kid! The island is sinking!”
The health potion? “Ch . . . ca . . . huh . . .” he mumbled.
It meant nothing, but the game interpreted the nonsensical syllables as Jenner requesting his current status. The blocks flew together.
Your Current Status
Name: Jenner
Age: 21 years
Race: Human
Sub-Race: None
Job: Janitor (former); weapons caddy (current)
Level: 2
Health: 1/12
Stamina: 7
Intelligence: 5
Agility: 4
Dexterity: 5
Perception: 4
Charisma: 3
Special Skills: Basic Sword-fighting (1)
Advanced Options: see more
Weren’t his health points at ten the first time he saw this screen? They hadn’t been bolded back then, or blinking like they were right now.
Of course. He had gone up to Level 2, so his health points must have increased by two points from ten to twelve. Now he was down to one. Just one.
And he felt it.
He felt like how someone would feel with exactly one point of health remaining. Like death warmed over. One more sting, one more injury, hell, if he stubbed his toe on a damn rock then he was scrambled. He had nothing left to lose.
Something hit his nose.
It was the spoon. Rosy was whacking him with the spoon. “The health potion!” it screamed in his face.
What health potion?
The health potion! Rosy had made Master Tosco give over a health potion. It wasn’t wizard-grade, only demon-grade.
His fingers slid slowly to his pocket. He dragged out his purse and nudged it open. The search for the potion commenced, Rosy yelling at him to stay awake while he fumbled through his coins for the ampoule.
There.
He pulled it out. Prying out the cork, he tipped the ampoule to his lips and drank clumsily.
Congrats! You have ingested a Health Potion.
Whoops! This demon-grade Health Potion is rather poor quality. You have only gained five of your health points back.
Uh-oh! This demon-grade Health Potion has been corrupted by a defensive Scale Charm. Next time use wizard-grade to guarantee a clean potion!
A wash of lightness rapidly suffused his arms and legs, and cleared the fog from his mind. He sat up, still a little disoriented, but far more present in the world. There were tiny rips in his sleeves where stingers had gone in, and small scorpion bodies littered the sand in a circle around him.
Rosy jumped onto his shoulder. “The boat!” the cup demanded. “You’ve been asleep for hours. The boat!”
“Oh, shit!” Jenner exclaimed, scrambling up to his feet. The sea was already creeping in on the island of Hard Mode, a wave spilling much higher on the shore than the waves from earlier.
He broke into a run past the cliffs. His legs started to ache almost at once, as if he had undergone a long run already. That was due to his current state of half-health. His run slipped to a jog no matter how hard he pushed himself for speed.
The heavy pouch of troggets was weighing him down. He loosed it from his belt and let it fall: dozens of sand potatoes weren’t going to do him any good if he drowned. The reduction in weight increased his speed. Somewhat.
The island rocked beneath his feet.
He stumbled but stopped himself from falling. The cliffs fell behind him; he looked ahead for the dock but retrained his eyes to the sand immediately in fron
t of his feet. If he stepped in tar-sand now, he would waste minutes in getting free. Minutes that he didn’t have.
“Scorpions!” Rosy warned.
Jenner swerved down to the packed sand. It was easier to run on packed sand than loose, so he stayed there and ran past multiple bubbles testifying to nests below.
A bell rang in the distance.
He knew that bell. It was the same bell to ring when the Halvas first pulled away from the dock in the Rundown. “GO!” Rosy shouted. “GOGOGO!”
“I’m going as fast as I can!” Jenner cried.
“Go faster anyway!”
Jenner wasn’t the only one racing against the clock to get back to the boat. The golden dragon twisted and fought in the sky above the trees, swarmed by gray-skinned, shrieking harpies. Fire spurted from the dragon’s mouth and two harpies went down like fireballs, flames crackling through their wings.
The dragon was closer to the dock than Jenner. Dismayingly so. Much farther away was the wizards’ chariot drawn by the winged horses.
The island rocked again, harder this time.
Thrown off-balance, Jenner’s boots came down in the water. He pushed on stubbornly, now able to see the boat at the dock. The crew was pulling up the bumpers along the sides. Cheers lifted from those on board. “Come on, guys! Faster!” they called.
The dragon bucked off the last of the harpies and shot downwards to the boat. Seconds later, Jenner leaped from the sand to the planks of the dock and pivoted sharply. The Halvas was pulling away.
The passengers cried out and pointed to the sky. Jenner threw a glance over his shoulder, afraid that a harpy was flying up behind him. But they were pointing to the chariot. The wizards had just pushed their troll over the side. The huge creature toppled down towards the trees.
“Faster, fuckface!” Rosy shrieked.
Jenner ran as fast as his health would permit, his long strides eating up the dock. The Halvas was fully away from the end of the planks now, the strip of blue increasing by the second between the boards and the back of the boat. The passengers yelled for him, banging their fists on the railing.
“Faster!”
“Go, caddy! Go!”
At the end of the dock, he leaped wildly into the air.
And he made it.
Crashing against the hull, Rosy flipping off his shoulder to the deck, Jenner grasped the railing for all he was worth. So much adrenaline was pumping through his body that he didn’t feel the rib-crunching collision of flesh to wood. Hands seized him by the belt and the fortune hunters hauled him in.
He collapsed in a heap upon the deck.
Congrats! You have earned a merit trophy for Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Hard Mode?
Congrats! You are now Level 3!
Then he was . . . fine. Great! His level-up restored him to full health.
Clambering to his feet, Jenner looked back to the chariot. It was coming along faster now without the troll’s weight. However, they were still a considerable distance from the boat with the island rocking harder and harder below, waves crashing up over the shore.
“Can’t they just fly the chariot all the way back to Galadras?” a caddy asked.
“No, the spell won’t last that long,” someone answered.
Suddenly, a winged gray figure streaked up from the trees and grabbed onto one of the flying horses. The wizards fired their wands, sending the harpy tumbling back, but more zoomed out of the canopy to attack the chariot. The passengers cried out in encouragement, though the wizards couldn’t possibly have heard from so far away.
There was a meaner edge to the cheers than there had been for Jenner or the golden dragon. “You can do it, or can you?” “What use is all of that magic if you can’t make it to the boat on time?” “Welcome to Hotel Hard Mode! Have a nice night!” The chariot veered crazily about the sky as the island veered just as crazily below.
The Halvas pushed on towards the bobbing buoys. The boats for Easy Street and Normal were already past them. The wake kicked up by the rocking islands slapped hard into the Halvas, which bounced up and down and tossed about any fortune hunter or crew member not holding onto a table or the railing. Worried that he would be thrown over the side at the sheer violence of the bouncing, Jenner wrapped himself around a post with Rosy’s handle hooked in his finger.
“It’s going down!” a woman shouted about the chariot.
Lightning spurted upwards from the seething mass of harpies, which were bringing the chariot down slowly but surely. A bolt went wild and severed the reins, the winged horses breaking free and the chariot going into free-fall. Down and down it spun until it crashed through the seesawing tree canopy.
A colossal boom rang out, fire roaring up into the sky as the horses flew away.
The Halvas slipped through the buoys with the boat for Extreme lengths behind. The wakes grew even more tremendous, battering the Triton as it sailed away from Unlockable. Figures dashed around upon the deck until a few robed wizards were clustered together with their wands pointing over the back of the boat.
A huge shield shimmered and grew, the waves slamming into it instead of the Triton. With the sea less disturbed, the boat sped up to the buoys.
Jenner’s eyes went from the rocking islands to the other boats. The one from Easy Street was nearly as crowded as it was when they arrived; the number of passengers from Normal was noticeably diminished. There was much more open deck space on the Halvas as well, and Extreme was returning with less than half of its passengers.
He hadn’t taken this voyage to the Fortune Islands seriously. Not at all. He should have gotten back into the scuttle pen this morning instead of boarding this boat. Saved up his silvers and pennies and gone to Easy Street instead of leaping ahead of himself. So easily had he forgotten Dan the Troll’s advice about taking a cautious approach as a human player.
The islands retreated into the water, the mountains last to disappear.
He peeled himself off the post and sat down at a free table to reclaim his cloak. “I should have pocketed a few of the troggets, Rosy.” Just a few wouldn’t have made a difference.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Rosy scolded. “One extra ounce and we’d be swimming with the fishes.”
“So, what happened to your precious Master Tosco?”
The questioner was the guy with the beard who gave the shoddy sword lesson to his caddy on the trip to the islands. Standing over Jenner, the man wore a tight, nasty smile. A shallow gash was on his neck, blood staining the collar of his shirt.
“I don’t know what happened to him. We got separated,” Jenner replied, disliking this man, but disliking Master Tosco far more. This guy’s caddy was alive and whole and present on the boat, seated at another table and organizing ampoules in a leather case.
Snorting, the master said, “Well, where did you lose him? Did you two go to the mountain?”
“No,” Jenner said. “We were on the beach. He sneaked past a lurker at the cliffs to see what the monster was protecting in its cave. I heard him yell and never saw him again.”
The man’s mouth flapped, and then he laughed uproariously. “That Dallas-damned idiot! Do you know what a cave lurker is protecting so dearly in its cave?”
Jenner shook his head.
“A nest. A nest of baby cave lurkers! That’s all. There’s no treasure to be found in a lurker’s cave! No jewels or blessings, nothing but more monsters. There went your pay, didn’t it?” Still laughing, he went away to scold his caddy for putting potions in the wrong order.
“What a waste of a day,” Jenner grumbled.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Rosy said. “Another day, another chance to earn some dough.”
Fun Fact Time! To be a ‘Dallas-damned idiot’ is a common epithet within Talvenor. The saying harkens back to Dallas3X, the player with the dubious distinction of dying the most since the release of Scrambled Lives. It was a point of pride to Dallas to never let the sun rise thrice upon the same head. In his six years o
f playing the game, Dallas never rose above Level 3 in any race/sub-race due to his careless explorations and/or idiotic actions.
“Very fascinating, thank you,” Jenner said sarcastically.
“You should see a game doctor,” Rosy suggested.
“What? Why? I’m fine. I leveled-up a few minutes ago.”
“Gramma, you were snoozing like a little old lady in the sand for a lot longer than you should have.” The teacup was staring up to him in concern. “Flickering in and out of sight. There’s something going on with your upload process. Something wrong. What percent are you at now? Check.”
Jenner checked. “Current upload is 8.1%. No, 8.2%. It just changed.”
The teacup looked pensive.
“What?” Jenner asked.
“I’ve only ever seen one person flicker, kid, and that chick was in a coma in the outer-world. Taking a turn for the worse.”
“Did she . . . upload in time?”
The teacup shook its handle. “Nowhere close. She was at 18% when her body bit the big one.”
Even eighteen percent was a lifetime away. Frustrated, Jenner said, “I need to upload faster! How do I do that?”
“That’s why you need to see a game doctor. The wizards brought one to the college when they were trying to save that girl. A game doctor can tell you what to do.”
“Do they cost money?”
“I don’t know.”
Jenner glared out to the sea. “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Rosy agreed. A crewmember offered Jenner a mug of ale, and he drained it dry.
Chapter Thirteen
“Where’s the vegan cat food?”
The woman was the very picture of madness before him in the aisle at Zoomies. Greasy hair stuck up in messy, gray-blonde tufts all over her head, and she had the tanned, deeply cracked skin of an overcooked hot dog. Purplish-red lipstick stained her teeth and bled into the wrinkles around her lips, which were pinched together like a cat’s butthole. Around her neck was a truly baffling array of religious symbols hanging from a gold chain, everything from a cross to a Star of David to a pentagram to the flying spaghetti monster and more.
