by Robin Bootle
What the hell are you doing here? he thought, any hint of the bravado that had brought him here long gone. An untrained teenager alone in a hostile world that had as good as destroyed his brother and father.
You’re here now, came a calm voice buried deep beneath the terror. Better to die trying than to suffer a life of regret.
Besides, a life with the Holloughbys was hardly a life at all, he thought, and somehow he managed the smallest of smiles. Where were they now? Sitting on the sofa at home, arguing over some game show. And he would have been in his room, playing a computer game as he tried to keep himself distracted from one day to the next. Life out there seemed so pointless now.
It was that last thought that made him turn with purpose towards the table. Elizabeth and Oriel would be staring, infuriated, at the screen on his port, wondering what to do next. He felt certain they had never intended to come but there was only one way to be sure.
He lowered his finger to the table and scrawled the password in the thick layer of dust. Then two more words that might drive them into immediate action.
Someone outside!
But what if they didn’t know about the Tartarus Stone? No matter what he might think of them, could he really draw one of them in here without them knowing there was no way to exit?
He lifted his finger, ready to place it once more in the dust. But his finger never touched down. He stared at the table, finger frozen, as he pictured Elizabeth memorising the password.
Then arriving, only to learn she was trapped forever.
He shuddered with guilt, and his finger dropped to the dust.
No way back!
And now, seeing those words for himself, he became more certain that neither of them would come. No one had done anything for him since the accident, so why would a pair of strangers risk their lives for him? It’s just you now, he thought, as the emotion stewing beneath the surface engulfed his sinuses and seized up his throat.
The horn sounded again, louder this time. He didn’t know who was out there. Possibly it was just one man deep in the woods. But he couldn’t fight the paranoia – what if they were everywhere, zombie-like computer characters closing in on the hut and ready to attack?
He needed a weapon. He scanned the shelves by the fireplace. Only wooden pots and spoons, odds and ends. Surely there would be something here – every game like this began with at least some kind of tools stashed nearby. Something to ease the player into the game.
Below the shelves were four drawers. He hurried over. Hidden near the back of the first drawer was a wooden telescope. He took it without hesitation. If it was here it was because the game-makers, Dad and James, intended him to need it. He opened the drawer below. The sight of a small rucksack brought him an ounce of confidence; the game so far really did bear some similarities to those he’d played in the past.
In the next drawer were three torches, hollow wooden cones with some kind of woven fabric stuffed inside. Four flasks that would each hold a litre of fluid. He took one torch and one flask, and yanked the last drawer open.
The air filled with dust and mould, forcing him to reel backwards. Once it had settled he looked inside and pulled out a cardboard ring. Imprinted on its side were the words,
CAT’S CAKE
Happy Birthday Mum!
Instantly, he dropped to his knees, the cardboard gripped against his chest as all the tension of the past few hours overflowed in a river of tears. Dad and James had designed a cake for them to enjoy on their arrival. Now there was nothing left but the remnants of its decay. He thought of all the times he’d accused them of not caring, of how he’d thought he was the only one who’d been upset by her passing. He knew already how wrong he’d been, and now here was all the evidence he’d ever need.
Dad’s words came to him: Later, I’ll even show you. Dad had planned to show him Extropia, to sit and have cake on Mum’s birthday.
Why? Why did it all have to go so horribly wrong? Why couldn’t they just have gone to Windermere? None of this would have happened!
He dragged himself to his feet, the now crumpled piece of cardboard dropping to the floor. He picked up the rucksack, slung it over his back and trudged towards the ladder. He hauled himself up one rung at a time. Several beds lay next to one another with tatty brown blankets tucked neatly under the mattresses. They too were covered in dust, like they’d never been used. Opposite the beds and against the wooden railing was a chest braced with weathered brass. It was huge, five feet wide and three feet high. Finally, a trace of hope returned to his heart.
He gripped the lid of the chest. As he lifted it, an orange glow spilled from the chest onto his white t-shirt. It reached his eyes, lighting his pupils and drawing a smile across his face.
Inside was an assortment of bows and metal blades.
Something was darting across the surface of each one. He leant in closer. Short, glowing worms of fiery light, like some glittery effect to add mystery to the game. He flicked through the chest for something he might be able to use. Two axes, one sword, two bows. None of them would be much use. They all required experience. He’d used them in games before, but that had just involved waving his arms about in front of a screen.
The smile was wiped from his face as something moved in the room below. He ducked down and peered around the side of the chest. In the centre of the room was a circle of distorted space no more than a few inches wide. His head filled with fear as the circle exploded outwards to form an eight-foot black sphere. Then a deafening crack as the sphere imploded, and he ducked again beside the chest.
A lock of auburn hair appeared in view and he leapt to his feet. ‘Elizabeth?’
Standing in her white blouse and black skirt, she didn’t seem to hear him. She looked dazed, knocked sideways by the same mind-jacking jump he’d experienced only moments before. When she at last opened her eyes her face descended into fury.
‘Up here,’ he said timidly.
She stormed towards the ladder and up to the mezzanine. He could tell all she wanted to do was scream at him but she held back, ‘First things first, Edward. You said you saw someone outside?’
‘I heard a horn or something.’
‘How far off?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere in the distance.’
‘Christ! You’ve really gone and done it, you know that?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he stuttered. ‘I just… I didn’t think either of you would come.’
‘Why, because of what Vanderboom told you? Never did I think you’d be so stupid as to listen to him!’
‘I just… when he told me he was dying, I couldn’t understand why he would lie.’
‘Maybe he holds some bizarre grudge against the Founder family, who knows? You should know Vanderboom can’t be trusted.’
She was right. He did know. He’d told himself a hundred times not to trust Vanderboom. And yet that was exactly what he’d done. Vanderboom had been so plausible. His face flushed in a wave of regret. Oriel could have been in here with her, not some hot-headed teenager without an ounce of training.
She drew a calming breath. ‘Look, my orders are to keep you here until the reinforcements arrive. Oriel’s updating his boss. With us both in here there’s a chance he can force Vanderboom to give us more ports.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘I don’t know. It might only be a matter of days.’
‘You saw the state of my brother, he doesn’t have days!’
‘You won’t last five minutes out there!’
‘Maybe not, but I won’t sit around while my brother dies!’
‘We’ll see about that.’ She stepped forward as if to grab him.
He grabbed the handle of the nearest weapon. ‘Stay back!’
She stopped, and instead of rage in her eyes there was somethi
ng else. Fear? Confusion?
The same feelings overcame Edward. The world was turning hazy. And white. Some kind of light was swirling around his head. His arms were crawling with the same fiery worms that darted about the weapon in his hand. He couldn’t even see far enough to know what it was he was holding.
An ecstatic tingle shot through his body, starting in his stomach and rocketing out to his fingers and toes. He glanced down. Through the sparkling haze he could see that his torso and legs were now teeming with tiny worms of light moving just below the surface of his skin.
The sparkle and the worms slithered down into the woodwork, and as soon as it had all begun, it was over.
‘What the hell was that?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘And what on earth are you wearing?’
He looked himself up and down. Where his t-shirt and jeans had been, a heavy black robe reached down to the soft leather boots on his feet. And at last he could tell what was in his hands: some kind of wooden staff, perfectly smooth all the way up to its swirling tip. He reached up and felt above his head. The robe had a hood.
‘Are you okay?’ Elizabeth took a step towards him.
‘Stay where you are,’ he blurted out, struggling to sound firm as he waved the staff from side to side to ward her off, all the while conscious of how hopeless he must have looked.
‘Listen to me! We have to wait. We don’t know who’s out there, how many of them, or how well armed they are. Oriel is planning to bring a whole team of NCCU agents.’
‘Maybe, but I bet I know more about Extropia than any of them! James and I spent hours playing games like this. It’s a role-playing game, an RPG. There’s not likely to be any significant enemy force near the player’s start location. And more likely than not, there’ll be a friendly force nearby – characters who are actually designed to help the player of the game, who know this world better than any of us. It’s how all these games begin. They don’t just throw you straight into the enemy’s lair. You have to build up your skill and power. Only when you’re near invincible is an otherwise overwhelming enemy thrown at you.’
‘Then what happened to your brother and father?’ she said, placing her hands on her hips.
It brought him straight back down to earth. In theory, what he’d said made sense, but Extropia had never been finished. What was there to say Extropia was anything like all those other games? ‘I don’t for a moment expect you to come with me,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I still can’t believe you’re even here at all. But I have to try.’
She looked up to the thatched ceiling, grunting in frustration, then turned and paced to the far wall. She shook her head, muttering to herself. Finally, she turned back, flustered. ‘Fine. Just don’t do anything stupid. I need to know you have my back, with every single step.’
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You mean… you’ll come with me?’
‘It’s not like you’re giving me much choice, is it? What am I going to do? Sit around and hide while a young boy goes off and gets himself killed? But if, no, when we get out of here, you’re going to answer to Oriel. Understand?’
He nodded, so certain it must be a trick that as Elizabeth walked over he backed towards the wall, staff still raised.
‘So what kind of place needs weapons like these?’ She peered into the chest and the orange glow lit up her pale skin and blouse.
‘We must be in some kind of medieval fantasy world. Archers, warriors, that kind of thing. I picked the staff so now I’m a mage.’
‘A mage?’
‘You know, a wizard. Like Gandalf, Harry Potter, Merlin.’
‘So you can do magic?’
‘I… I don’t know. Normally, you have to acquire spells as you go.’
‘Fine, but you’d better take something else as well until you know how to use that stick.’ She looked at him, still standing there with his staff raised, and added, ‘And can you stop pointing that thing at me now? You look ridiculous.’
He lowered the staff and cautiously approached the chest, motioning for her to give him some space in case she tried to take hold of him. With a roll of her eyes, she lifted her hands to the side and took a step back.
There was nothing else in there he knew how to use. Maybe he could carry an axe, but it would be cumbersome to have both hands burdened with such heavy weapons. He knew he didn’t want to lose the staff. A mage could be the most powerful player in these kinds of games.
Just then he noticed two daggers hooked onto either side of the chest, glowing orange but partially obscured behind the other weapons. He grabbed one, and as he made contact the orange light immediately faded, revealing a symbol etched into the dagger’s handle: a circle inside a diamond.
‘My turn then,’ said Elizabeth, and he edged away again, still not ready to trust her fully; for all he knew, she was just waiting for the right moment to grab him. She rummaged around in the chest, searching for a moment before pulling out a bow and a quiver of arrows. ‘I always wanted to learn how to use one of these.’ Her face descended into squeamish horror as the wriggly orange worms dashed from the bow, spreading through her palms and up her arms. Her body was covered within seconds. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, her voice quivering.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘You’ve chosen your character. It’ll pass in a moment.’
A swirling bar of white light formed above her head before shooting down. Her blouse disappeared in its wake, replaced by some kind of black fabric, embroidered with silvery blue. A moment later, the light had reached her feet and was disappearing through the floor, taking the fiery worms with it.
‘You okay?’
‘I… I think so.’ She stroked the cotton of the hooded tunic that now covered her from her head to just above her knees. ‘It felt kind of good, actually.’
‘I felt something too. A rush of energy, or something.’
‘So what kind of character am I then, oh game master?’
‘An archer.’ A half-smile crept across his lips but when she didn’t smile back, he added, ‘In some games you might be called a woodsman. A ranger.’
‘And do I have special powers like you?’
For some reason he couldn’t think. What character attributes did a ranger have? Accuracy with a bow? But how would they know that wasn’t just Elizabeth being good at using a bow? ‘We’ll just have to keep an eye out.’
Outside, a horn sounded again through the noise of the storm.
‘That’s what I heard before,’ he said, glancing towards the window.
‘We should get out of here.’ Elizabeth was also watching the window. ‘If anyone finds us in here we’ll be trapped.’
‘I don’t know.’ Just thinking about leaving was enough to remind him of his father’s stern words on the night of the accident. The door stays shut. ‘What if someone’s out there?’
She reached into the chest again and pulled out a two-foot sword in its sheath. As she touched it, the orange worms disappeared. ‘Even more reason to get out of here while we still can, particularly after the light show we’ve just put on. The storm will help conceal us. We can find cover outside and get a view of what’s happening around us.’
‘Wait,’ he said, climbing down the ladder after her. ‘Don’t you think I should at least explain a few things about these kinds of games before we head out there?’
‘Well, go on then,’ she replied as she heaved up against the oak bar lodged across the door.
‘Right,’ he said, trying to decide where to start. ‘The aim is usually to beat some kind of mega bad guy, to free someone, find some kind of object, that kind of thing. Either way, there’ll be some good guys, and some bad guys. Some people may appear good who aren’t. There may be quests, each one somehow strengthening us or giving us new equipment. Places can change, people who weren’t there befor
e can suddenly appear if you return to the same place under a different set of circumstances. Whole new areas of the map can be opened up depending on what you know or where you’ve been.’ He sensed his words weren’t really sinking in. ‘Basically, we need to find someone who appears to be on our side, and ask them if they know where James is.’
‘I’d guessed that last bit already. And if they’re not on our side, we’ll ask them the same question, just with a knife to their throat. Now give me a hand.’
They knelt down at either end of the oak bar, and pushed up with all their strength. The bar didn’t so much as wobble under their efforts.
‘For God’s sake!’ Elizabeth sounded exasperated.
‘Look.’ Edward pointed towards the far end of the bar where an age-browned note was hanging, a white feather tied beneath it. ‘Perhaps it’s some kind of welcome note.’
She tore it off and read it aloud,
Ready to leave but not ready to die?
Arm yourselves up on high.
Give to your mage this feather’s barbs smooth,
Their blood will change. Will things to move.
‘Ready to leave but not ready to die?’ she repeated. ‘Some welcome.’
‘It’s not meant to scare us. It’s a clue, to help us get off to a good start in the game. We have our weapons,’ he said as he tried to think it through. ‘Pass me the feather.’
He lifted the feather to his face and studied its patterns. Three rings ran parallel on either side of the feather’s spine. As he flicked it between his fingers, more markings began to appear, bright red and yellow. The etching of a hand appeared across the bottom, and hovering above the hand was a mountain.
The feather itself seemed to glow a faint shade of orange as something shimmied up the spine. His head recoiled as the little orange worms of light erupted from the spine, scurrying down its barbs, turning the feather into a dazzling blade of brilliant orange light.
