Scrambled Lives
Page 31
“No!” Jenner cried, his saber snapping into his fist.
“No,” Dan the Troll said much more calmly. “It is all right, my friend Jenner. Amarelle and I have fought in many battles together over many lives, and we have given one another mercy blows more than once.” A hint of pique touched his eyes. “It was not a mercy blow when you killed me as a sea monster, though.”
“It was for my own mercy that I slew you!” Amarelle retorted with an identical hint of pique. “Do you know what it was like, living on that damn houseboat you kept overturning because you were so excited to see me every time you surfaced?”
“She was a demon then,” Dan the Troll explained. “A witch. I suppose I should have expected it.”
In accusation, Rosy said to Amarelle, “Did you know? Did you know what those dick-holes were planning to do to us?”
“No,” she said, and Jenner believed her. His sword vanished.
“Hmph,” the teacup growled, and hopped off Jenner’s shoulder to hang out with Ocelo and the dragonling.
Dan the Troll breathed in and out meditatively. “Many battles,” he repeated to the waving fronds of grass. “Yes, many battles, many quests. We have seen the world within and the world without, Amarelle and I. But never have we seen what we saw today, Jenner. To use a thousand game children as troll bait . . . This was the decision of hearts made of ice.”
Amarelle made an annoyed sound, staring at something they couldn’t see and mumbling about shitty Portal Purses. “You should be able to just pluck out what you want without having to search!”
“You can. You just have to pay extra,” Dan the Troll replied. “You pinch pennies when we have tens of thousands in game gold!”
“You’re one to talk about paying extra. Why don’t you carry a health potion?”
“I gave mine away to injured players.”
“Of course you did. Dammit, Dan Zucchio!” She glowered at an invisible screen all the more intently.
“Zucchio?” Jenner repeated.
“Ah, yes,” Dan the Troll said after seconds spent in reflection. “My outer-world name was Daniel Mark Zucchio. I forget it now and then, spending so long as just Dan, or Dan the Troll. I was the first perma-added character in the game.”
“Really?”
“I arrived for good a few months after Opening Day. Yes. Yes, I was sixty years old out there, but sixty was eighty upon my shoulders. I was a very sick old man who lived in Florida. We could not get control of my diabetes, Amarelle and I.”
“So you knew each other out there?”
“We were married,” Dan said. “Married for forty years.”
“We still are married, you big lug, and now it’s fifty years,” Amarelle said crossly, although her avatar looked not a day over thirty. “You’re alive in here, whether the law recognizes it or not. I have half a mind not to upload myself to this game at all when it’s time. I’ll upload into something like Beach Blanket Bingo or Alien Hot Air Balloon Race and transfer your code along with me.”
She cried out in victory and an ampoule snapped into existence.
“Chloe won’t let you!” Dan rumbled. “Our daughter, Jenner. She and her two children visit me here. Eternity in Beach Blanket Bingo! That would be a fate worse than death.”
Nearby, the mermaid was playing with the dragonling. It flew up behind her to tap her on the shoulder, and then flew away fast when she turned to catch it for a hug. The tiny dragon found this to be a wonderful game, chortling smoke as it zipped around with Rosy riding on its back.
Dawn was tipping the eastern treetops with pink. A soft breeze blew past, rustling the grass, as Jenner walked over the hilltop to see Galadras. Below the hill were fields full of tidy rows of produce, snug farmhouses and barns sitting upon each plot of land. Herds of sheep were bedded down in the tall grass of fenced pastures.
Beyond the farmland was the city. The breeze was all that stirred among those silent, abandoned streets. His vision was not enhanced enough to make out the Rundown, but he spotted the tops of the gladiator rings, and iridescent white towers that must belong to the Palace of Light.
“I’ll have to take the baby to the shifter foundling home,” Amarelle said.
“The demon patrols likely raided the foundling home yesterday, so I may have to keep this little scaly girl child with me for now,” Dan the Troll warned. “I heard them bragging at Sundown Castle about den raids. They scrambled the parents who put up a fight.”
“But the game should call up NPCs for den parents in the lack of player parents, and in the foundling home, too, I would imagine,” Amarelle said. “You can’t have all the shifter dens of Talvenor crawling with unsupervised newborns-”
Jenner dropped to the grass.
His fall was so sudden that it got everyone’s attention. In a boneless heap, he blinked as their heads hovered above him. Their voices stretched out like accordions. “Jeeeennnnnnerrr-”
He had forgotten that he was still dying out there.
He blinked and he was on the hill, blinked and he was within a pod, staring out the view window, blinked to the hill and blinked back to the pod as strangers looked in to him in worry.
“Jeeennnnneeerrrr . . .”
“Code blue!”
“ . . . he’s flickering . . .”
“ . . . the code team is . . .”
“ . . . open the pod and move that net aside! Give him the . . .”
“Good! Good! Stay with us, son, just stay with us!”
“We got him!”
He breathed and opened his eyes to the hill.
Hours had passed, and the hovering heads were gone, but he heard the murmur of voices. The delicate, early morning light was now the full sunny blast of afternoon. “Ch . . . character upload per-percentage,” he whispered.
Permanent Character Addition
You are being uploaded to the game. Check in at any time for an update.
Current Upload: 69.5%
What was his percentage at the last time he checked yesterday afternoon? A little over 41%? He called up the screen again, positive that he had seen the number wrong. 69.6%.
You have a text message from Ruvina Roggio. ‘Honey? Honey, you have to hang on just a little bit longer! You’re uploading so fast, Jenner, so fast. A man flew on a red-eye from Seattle to LAX with an ACT3, a brand new ACT3 with all the latest modifications, someone who saw you in the game and heard you needed one right away. A complete stranger who paid for his own plane ticket to bring it here and wouldn’t take a cent. He just walked in with it before dawn this morning and we got rid of that last ACT1.
He owns a repair shop and he’s had this net just lying around in its box for months. A customer ordered it but never picked it up. I said God sent him to us and he said something about a teacup? I didn’t understand that part, but he said your teacup made him laugh. This game sounds very strange. So hang on. You have to keep hanging on. You fight as hard as you can. All you need to do is fight for a few more hours. Hours, baby, they tell me it’s just a couple of hours now. And if you can’t, if you just can’t keep going, then know that I love you. Just know that. I’m so proud of you, and I love you so much, and you’re always in my heart. Always.’
There was a spot of wetness on his cheek. He rubbed it away.
A player in this game did that for him. The man hadn’t even rung Jenner to ask for anything in return. A total stranger did it out of the kindness of his own heart. And after what Jenner had just gone through on the battlefield, and with what he remembered of his cog in the machine, unnoticed life in the outer-world, he knew to treasure it.
Someone was whispering in his ear, the hissed words too low to understand.
He sat up and turned. Nobody was there.
A blanket was spread out at his side. From somewhere food and drink had come, and a heap of steaming stones. Jenner felt the warmth of them on his leg. He helped himself to a piece of cheese and shifted to see the others.
His companions were standing at t
he edge of the hill to look north. The emerald dragonling had leveled up in the time Jenner slept. Now a little larger, it was wrapped around Dan the Troll’s leg. Aware in her strange way that Jenner was back, though he’d made no noise, Ocelo motioned him over.
He pried himself out of the grass and rubbed at his eyes. With one ACT2 and two ACT3s at work on his dying brain, he had to make it.
“ . . . awaken you will a- . . .”
He whirled around at the whisper to waving grass.
EMERGENCY ALERT: One thousand Blue Mountain Trolls are heading south to Galadras. If you have just spawned within the city, evacuate immediately. For the demon players who have spawned in the SOUTH QUARTER (in the Whittler), follow Road of Warriors to the Pockets where horses are waiting. For the human players who have spawned in the WEST QUARTER (in the Rundown), follow Road of Royals to the dock and board a boat.
For the new shifter players in the NORTH QUARTER, evacuate to the rooftops where NPC dragons will fly you to the Highlands. Elves are building dens suitable for the young of each species. For the newly spawned dwarf players in the EAST QUARTER, evacuate to your nearest bolt-hole (consult your cave maps for the location) and go deeper underground.
For the young wizard players in the STRONGHOLDS, find your closest dungeon and remain within the arrival cavern. More experienced players will come when they can to guide you through. (If you are a newly spawned wizard player in the STRONGHOLD of TREMAINE, DO NOT unblock and hide in the dungeon. Report to the university immediately, where a Portal will transport you to the STRONGHOLD of VERELAYNE, which has graciously offered its dungeons for your protection.)
For the other new players spawning within Galadras (succubi, incubi, shadow jumpers, miniature trolls, miniature centaurs, changelings, fairies, pixies, assassins -humanoid/animal/vines-, wraiths, leprechauns, angels -dark/light/other-, gargoyles, skin-walkers, punishers, and any else, follow the directions above by quarter.
Do not pack. Do not loot. Do not dally. Evacuate now. They are coming.
“What are you looking at?” Jenner asked, stepping up between Ocelo and Dan the Troll. Hands clapped upon his shoulders in welcome, and Rosy nodded its handle from the top of a rock.
“The trolls,” Ocelo said. “Can you see anything yet? With that blessing, you can probably see the farthest of any of us.”
He stared over miles of trees, which were overlaid upon the softly rolling hills like a thick green blanket. “No.”
“I can carry you up for a better look,” Amarelle offered, and then she was an onyx dragon.
Jenner and Ocelo climbed onto her back, but as Dan the Troll attempted to board, the dragonling wailed. He dropped back to the grass with the baby. “I’ll stay here and put her down for a nap,” he said, Rosy hopping after them to the blanket where Dan the Troll set the dragonling down on the steaming stones.
Amarelle beat her wings and flew upwards, but still Jenner didn’t see anything. The terrain to the north did little to aid him, the hills growing taller and wider and thicker in vegetation. The canopy was unbroken save for a few quiet villages in the valleys. “Nothing!” he called.
“She’s going to fly over Galadras and then we’ll look again,” Ocelo said, plucking the thought effortlessly from the dragon’s mind.
The dragon circled over to the northernmost point of the city, the mermaid’s long hair flowing back in the rush of air. The shifter players of Galadras were responding hastily to the emergency alert: NPC dragon mounts awaited upon rooftops as baskets of werekittens and werepups and large eggs were loaded up. To the west, streams of humans flowed down the roads in the Rundown to the sea. There was the Halvas, pulling away from the dock, and fishing boats rode low in the water with crowded decks.
In the south were floods of new demonic players, rushing out of inns and alleys and storm drains, coursing along side streets to Road of Warriors. Shop windows crashed, doors were battered open, some demons looting along the way and pushing wheelbarrows of pilfered goods. Jenner could not blame the looting on these players being demons when human players were doing the same thing along Road of Royals.
He saw nothing when they passed over the wizarding strongholds within the city. Even with the Zerotte blessing, his eyes could not penetrate the magical shields over their lands. Blotches of gray with little feature, they were scattered throughout the bright rooftops of Galadras.
“. . . rise you will rise . . .”
“Did you hear that?” Jenner called over his shoulder.
“Hear what?” Ocelo asked.
Nothing. It was just the wind.
Amarelle soared over the eastern side of the city, dragon NPCs pushing on to the Highlands and the Palace of Light dazzling in the sun’s rays. It was a glorious sight of white stone and ornate windows, fancy courtyards enclosed within the multitude of buildings and gardens outside them. It made Sundown Castle seem tiny, and all the shabbier in comparison. An imposing wall surrounded the palace on all four sides, as did a far less imposing moat. It reminded him of the lazy river at a waterpark, ebbing along minus the inner tubes and swim suits. The moat was just there for show. Guards in red-and-white livery stood atop and beneath the wall, their heads following Amarelle warily, and the NPC dragons, too.
Ocelo labeled the parts of the palace for him, since she had taken the tour. The ten-story Great Tower was where the High Council lived, each of the nine having a floor to call home, and upon the first story was the Royal Court. Close by was the Little Tower, which was a maximum-security prison of six stories with few windows. A dragon guard was perched upon the rooftop. A huge hedge maze framed that tower, so even if a prisoner managed to escape the tower itself, he or she would have a devil of a time getting further at any speed.
On the other side of the hedge maze was the Feast Hall, where high-ranking players involved in Talvenor’s politics dined and plotted at meals and galas. There was a grand library and museum, and two guest homes that were mirror images of one another separated by a pond. The less grand buildings tucked away in the trees were servants’ quarters.
Nobody was evacuating from the palace. They were just pulling up the pair of drawbridges on opposite sides of the wall. People were still strolling through the gardens, and servants on ladders washed the windows of the Feast Hall and Great Tower. Scholars ferried books between the library and museum like this was a regular old day.
“Aren’t they leaving?” Jenner asked.
“Portals,” Ocelo explained. “They can leave anytime.”
Then they were past the palace, Amarelle circling back to where Dan the Troll was sitting on the blanket by the sleeping dragonling. They waved down to him and Amarelle flew again over the hills north of Galadras.
The wind was picking up and swaying the trees. The sound of drums caught Jenner’s hearing, and he glanced back to the city in the belief that it was an alarm being raised to encourage players to get the hell out.
No. The drumming was not from that direction.
Nor was it the wind making the trees sway.
It was the trolls! They were invisible beneath the canopy as they ran, their footfalls creating the cacophonous drumbeat. They were the wind, their passage knocking into trees that knocked into other trees, waves rippling out through the green. Occasionally a tree was brought down in whole, shaking and disappearing and thinning the canopy so that Jenner could make out a huge face or a swinging arm.
Far away, a line of chariots was flying after the trolls. Wizards were firing their wands down to them. Where the spells struck, the trees turned to stone. To Jenner, it looked like a move borne of pure desperation. The wizards didn’t have a clear view through the canopy, but they were firing away in the hopes of picking off a few trolls.
Amarelle swooped back to the hilltop and they dismounted. “They’re coming,” she called to Dan the Troll.
“ . . . obey, you will obey . . .”
Awaken. Rise. Obey.
Awaken. Rise. Obey.
Awaken. Rise. Obey.
Not from now. From before.
“And all bonds will be broken. The succubi and their brothers are stirred from their beds, and the children shall be lifted up as offerings, and the darkest wizards have won the fight to wield the worst of their magics. The High Council has snapped the yoke, and thus snapped itself in two.”
Awaken.
Rise.
Obey.
He did not understand.
He stared down to the city, and then he did.
Chapter Thirty-Five
He had seen so few soulless since arriving in the game world. There was that man along Road of Royals one evening, walking so weirdly, the woman in the alley that he couldn’t even be sure was soulless since he didn’t go closer to see. And then there was the lanky-haired man from yesterday at Sundown Castle.
Two, maybe three. That was all.
Awaken.
Rise.
Obey.
The necromancers were summoning the soulless. He was hearing their whispered incantations in the wind.
And the soulless were responding.
Down in the streets, they twisted around corners and scuttled out of windows like spiders. They straightened on rooftops and climbed down from trees. Two ashy hands stretched from a chimney, gripping and straining at the bricks, and then a body wriggled out like a worm to fall upon the roof tiles. They lurched out of doorways and stumbled into the roads, jostling into one another without reaction.
The streets filled with them. And although they stood in a tattered legion, each one was wholly alone in the world.
They were humans.
They were demons.
They were elves and dwarves.
Some had died in their shifted states, wolves and cats and bears and small dragons, their bodies as gray as the rest. There was even a merman in their company, his hair a faded blue and green and caked with mud, and succubi in ragged gowns, still charismatic in their beauty, but their lovely faces slack.