The metal gate slides open with a rusty creak to reveal the shadowy corridor that lies beyond. “Right,” Kayla says. “Warriors in front, mages in back. Archers, I suggest climbing up to the turrets. You'll need to defend the castle in case any invaders come by to pick off hiders.”
Jade hefts his bow over his shoulder and heads for the staircase by the far wall. One of the female Marks follows him. Kayla and the other warriors rush out the gate and the echoes of their gregarious chatter seem to pulse and waver. That leaves her, Caleb, Bastien, the whiny male Mark, two other male Marks, and a girl who hasn't spoken since the round began. Vol glances at her, curious, and the girl looks away.
Well, then.
Loose stones and grit crunch beneath their boots as they make their way through the narrow corridor. They are the second wave, the secondary line of defense. It's necessary to put some space between themselves and the warriors.
“I'm taking stalk,” Bastien says. “How many of you are warriors?” He raises his hand and so do two of the Marks. “Mages?” Caleb and Vol raise their hands. So does a male Mark. “Of course.” The girl Mark clears her throat. “Druid?”
The girl nods.
Vol studies the girl's sheath dress and is grateful that she stuck with her choice as magi. The girl looks defenseless. And yet, there is something strange about her. Formidable, almost. She looks familiar.
I wonder if I've played against her before in another game.
Hopefully she isn't a jerk, though her behavior isn't promising.
It's eerily silent. After Caleb's inventory, nobody speaks. Vol takes an inventory of her own. It occurs to her that she has absolutely no idea how her magic is even supposed to work. Her robes have no pockets to conceal runes or wands and she doesn't have a staff.
Vol turns towards Caleb, intending to ask if he has any idea, but the words stick in her throat. His face is drawn and he doesn't look like he would be receptive to questioning. This is the first time she's ever seen him alone, without his sister. Kayla usually does the talking for both of them, from what she's seen. In fact, this is the most Vol has ever heard him speak all at once. Funny, how she's never noticed until now.
A blast of cold air rushes through the hall, extinguishing a few of the torches and causing the rest to dance and throw wild shadows over ceiling and floor. Bastien grunts in surprise as his sword falls from his hand and his gauntleted fingers cramp spasmodically. The clatter of his sword hitting stone makes Vol jump and reach instinctively for a weapon she doesn't have.
Gods damn.
“I can't move my arm,” the whiny Mark whines, holding the useless appendage at the elbow.
“Looks like all the warriors are incapacitated,” Bastien scoffs. “Great. Now we're completely helpless.”
“Helpless?” says Vol. “What about the mages? You still have us.”
“Like I said, sweet cheeks,” Bastien sneers. “We're defenseless. Mages have no defense.” Caleb growls, prompting Bastien to say, “Go ahead. Take one for the team — the other team. Did you read the files? The team with the most kills wins. You'll be doing them a favor.”
“I'm sure the spell is temporary,” the girl drawls. “It would be stupid if it lasted the whole game.”
“Can you fix it?” Vol asks. “I thought the druid classes have healing abilities.”
Without examining any of the warriors, the girl shakes her head. “I don't see any physical damage. Sorry.”
She doesn't sound sorry. But she is a Mark, so complaining about it does nothing; the Marks supply the tokens and tokens buy correctness.
Caleb fires off some green flashes of magic that make the textured walls look hewn from moss. A cry sounds in the distance and Caleb says, “Hit the floor!” as another debilitating wave of dark magic washes over them. Vol can feel the chill of it.
“How are you doing that?” she asks him, shivering.
“Doing what?”
“The magic.”
“You access the character status and equip the spell. There's a charging period. There's always a charging period.” He looks down at his gloved hands. “I'm pretty much down for the count right now.”
“Stop talking,” Bastien says, cradling his arm. “I need to think.”
“There's no time for that,” Caleb says.
Vol accesses the archives, ignoring the two men. Her eyes keep flicking nervously to the darkened hallway, searching for the functional warriors of the other team and their magi entourage. Fire spell. That seems promising. She equips it, smiling fiercely as her gloved hands begin to radiate a sinister orange light. She drops into a fighting stance, ready to take down as many of them as she can —
And right as the two teams are about to collide the female Mark looks at her and her eyes seem to be shooting silver sparks, they are shining so brightly. Vol's cry of surprise is swallowed up in the violent boom of rock on rock as a stone wall slams down between her and the startled warriors.
Vol slams the wall with her fist. It's solid. She presses her ear against the wall. She can hear the others, their voices distant and muffled by the stone. Soon even that fades and Vol is left in the thick, swirling silence of a tomb. Even the glow from her gloves has died. She raises her eyes to the ceiling.
It is as if the wall has always been there.
This is insane. Walls don't just drop out of nowhere.
And yet here it is. Here she is.
Vol hesitates, then heads back down the hallway to the dungeon where she and Caleb and the others came from. There has to be another way out of the fortress and even if there isn't, she can join the archers on the turrets and do some sniping. Yes. This is a good plan. Vol rounds the corner and heads —
Right into another wall.
“What — ”
She turns around — and sees yet another wall blocking the entryway she just passed through. Her heart begins to pound. She is standing in a square-shaped space small enough that she can reach out and touch all four of the walls from where she stands.
She's in a casket.
Well. Almost a casket. The ceiling, at least, is still open, and appears to go up quite a ways. Can she climb? No. The stones are too smooth and she doesn't see any hand-holds. She wouldn't have much of a grip. But maybe she can shimmy her way up. If she stretches out her legs and pushes against opposite walls with feet and shoulders she might be able to walk her way up the ceiling.
The bluish light is naught but a tiny pinprick. If it turns out there's nothing up there, it's going to be a long way back down. She could easily fall to her death.
It's not real.
(Real enough, wouldn't you say?)
Vol's feet slide against the floor as her stance is destabilized. When she hears the slow grind of stone, she realize what's happening. The walls are moving again and with her between them.
No! Vol presses herself against the wall. Not like this. She tries not to think about how realistic the pain simulators are going to be. Tries not to imagine the air beings squeezed from her lungs like cheap Bastani synthetic from a tube. Tries not to picture what kind of Afterlife the sadistic Weaver for this game has got in mind.
Falling to death is beginning to look like a tantalizing option.
And then —
She gets her wish.
The floor drops out beneath her like a gunshot and Vol is tumbling through the darkness, too shocked even to scream as her world goes entirely black.
If silence were capable of having volume, this one would be aloud silence; it is a silence poised on the brink of explosion, on a scale that can make or break entire worlds. The silence that preceded the creation of the universe was such a silence, and so, too, is this one.
The sound of Vol's frantic breathing fills the air and the tension crackling around her like a cocoon of static subsides. The downy blonde hairs on her arms are standing at attention. She doesn't feel cold. She doesn't feel anything at all. Everything is dark, but not black — black implies an absence of light, and this is
a place where light does not exist.
Am I dead?
She can hear nothing but her own quick pants.
Her brain is alarmed by the lack of stimulation and her own sense of rising panic. Neurons give in to the hysteria to which she, herself, refuses to acquiesce, and begin firing off random swatches of colored luminescence in her peripheral vision. A sense of vertigo overwhelms her — nausea, dizziness, ringing ears — and she gulps back a couple of dry heaves that leave the stark taste of bile coating the back of her throat in a greasy film.
“Very realistic,” she hisses, hating this Weaver with a sudden vengeance that surprises her. What kind of sadistic creep designs a game so frighteningly real? Isn't the point of a game to escape?
A light flickers on, and the moment Vol's eyes shift towards it, her world is instantly drowned in color. Vol's pupils contract and she winces at the tingly sting of tears that turn her vision into a varicolored kaleidoscope.
Very, very realistic.
When she can see again, she realizes she is kneeling on some kind of platform. The material is the color of shadows, and glossy. Unidentifiable, though the surface is cold and slippery to the touch, like black ice. The platform is suspended in midair. A separate entity, distinct from the two warring castles and, she suspects, any part of the gamescape, although she is still wearing her magi robes. The blue skirt is dusty and has ripped at the hem. It is the only sign of her close escape from the walls.
Surrounding the platform are a series of flat, white screens, also devoid of any supporting structure. Vol crawls towards the edge of the platform — at this point, she does not trust herself to stand on two feet — and sees nothing but blackness below. Shuddering, she scoots back into the center of the structure.
The platform is suspended in midair.
Vol stares into the darkness. At least it's quiet here, peaceful. She hasn't had much time for solace. Life at the Tower is always hectic, with new members coming and going out all the time, in addition to the constant ebb and flow of the Marks. When Vol first began, she averaged about one game per day. Now she often finds herself doing three, even four, games — and it never seems to be enough.
She is going to burn out quickly and soon at this rate. Especially if they keep cutting her pay. Which is bound to happen again considering all the times she's managed to get herself killed in various stupid ways this week. She wonders if Caleb and Bastien have even realized that she's missing. Possibly only as a loss.
A number.
Who am I kidding? We're all selfish. We'd sell each other out if we thought we could profit from it.
And what about before? What did she do before she came to Karagh? Has she always been as jaded as this? Having time for introspection suddenly seems more of a curse than a blessing.
Vol tilts her head back.
No wonder the Marks complain about being called m00bs. It's a strong incentive against carelessness, dying like this, but also discriminates selectively against weaker players. She'll have to talk to Jillain about this. It's wrong to blame the Players for slowing cash flow when the losers have to spend the gaming equivalent of eternity in purgatory. Who knows? If the change rakes in some extra tokens, Jillain may decide not to dock her pay after all.
Though, on second thought, maybe not.
The monitors flash. Vol bolts upright, remembering the flash in the stone halls that disabled her teammates. Images flood the white surfaces. In one, she sees the menacing silhouette of a castle crafted from black stone. It stands out like a storm cloud in relief against the watery sky.
The other castle is squatter, crafted from grayish-white stone instead of black, and the towers are coned turrets instead of the blocky cylinders that grace her own team's fortress. A tangle of trees surrounds the gray castle. A group of players is navigating through it, the green of the leaves in stark contrast to the red insignia on the warriors' suits of armor and the mages' bright red robes.
Vol wonders if her teammates know that the team's second wave is advancing. She looks for them on the monitors, but they are nowhere to be found. Have the walls swallowed them up, too? Are they in another place like this?
If only I could communicate, even just be heard —
“ — get down form that tower and fight me, or you're a dead man — ”
“ — take down their mages first. Our armor acts as a conduit for — ”
“ — piece of shit! I'll kill you!”
“ — get off me, you little m00bs — ”
“ — Frag them!”
Vol takes a step back from the images — there are so many of them, she feels like she's in the multifaceted eye of a large, mechanical spider, and paired with the audio it is so much as to be completely overwhelming — and abruptly runs out of ground.
Her arms windmill as she struggles to correct her balance, but her weight is already shifted against her favor. She begins to scream, bracing her body for a fall that will last forever — a fall that never comes.
Her body is suspended, frozen, at an impossible angle. From the waist up, she is hanging over the yawning abyss. “My gods,” she whispers, and her voice trembles. She can't move, can't save herself, and her limbs are paralyzed, bolted fast to —
“Yes,” an amused voice whispers into her ear. “I suppose I am. Your god.”
Her body jerks, or wants to, but she can't complete the reflex. An ineffectual tautness seeps through her arms and legs, like slow-acting poison, and she is left with the disconcerting and frightening sensation of being poised to run, but unable to act.
Now she can feel a hand, warm and steady against her back, and warmer breath on her face. But nobody is there. Gently, she is pulled to a standing position by the phantom. Vol wastes no time backing away, not sure which scares her more: the ledge or the one who saved her from it.
“Who's there?”
It is a silly question. She is almost certain she knows who her so-called rescuer is. But she wants to hear him say it.
Silence greets her query. She looks over her shoulder. All the monitors have reverted to their original white blankness. Vol waits, quivering from adrenaline and panic, and screams when she feels the fingers brush ever-so-slightly against the nape of her neck.
Now quiet laughter floods the platform and somehow, instead of being swallowed up by the darkness, it is amplified. Without becoming any less frightened she starts to get angry as well, and scratches against her tingling skin and shouts, “Stop it — stop it, stop it! Don't touch me!”
“Technically, I'm not.”
“You know very well what I mean. I'm not going to argue about semantics with you.” Vol skirts away from the direction of the voice and again feels the sinister touch of the invisible hands as they pull her away from the edge, which she has edged perilously close to.
“You're going to fall if you aren't careful — and I might not be able to catch you this time.”
“Let me fall then,” she states boldly. “Kill me, like you did in the forest.”
Her shaky breath is the only thing that breaks the heartbeat of silence. At any moment, she might start sobbing. If not for his grip around her wrists, he might have vanished into the gloom — and this only adds to her terror. He can do as he likes here.
“I'm very sorry about that,” he says, and to his credit, he does sound contrite. But then his voice becomes diamond hard. “I was merely repaying a grievance. I'm surprised you remember, actually.”
“Remember? It happened a few days ago.”
She isn't quite sure how to describe what happens next. It's as if he melts back into existence, starting with his feathery black hair and ending with roughshod leather boots. Black pants tuck into the boots and he is wearing some kind of plate armor: an armor that glitters with thousands of colors as he shifts his movements, and reminds her of the alien ship that caused her game death and concussion in Space Crusaders.
“Yes,” he says, and his eyes reflect the colors of his armor for a moment, before reverting to
the cat-like amber. “It did.” And she is aware of his hands, encased in gauntlets of the same material, and how they are still wrapped firmly around hers, and of the large sword that hangs rather prominently from his left hip.
Overcompensating for something are we?
She doesn't speak the taunt, knowing he is capable of far worse. “Why are you doing this to me? The dress — the knife — the walls — the alien mother ship. You say you want to help me, to save me, but as far as I can tell, you're the only one whom I'm in any real danger of.” She pauses, giving him a chances to deny it, to defend himself, but he says nothing. Quietly, she says, “You could have killed me.” At his continued silence, she says, “You want to kill me.”
“The walls wouldn't have killed you unless you wanted them to.”
“What does that even mean? The walls won't kill me unless I want them to? Are you insane? Are you saying I brought this on myself?”
“I'm saying that I'm only as evil as you make me, darling.”
“Do not,” she hisses, “blame this one me. Ever. And do not call me 'darling.' Ever. This is not in any way my fault, and I am sure as hell not your darling. Now answer my questions! I've waited long enough!”
“Have you? And what, pray tell, do you know about waiting?” He radiates danger. “Do you think you are the only one here who knows how to play games, Volera? Because you are not.” His face becomes pleasant and congenial once more, like a mask slipping into place, but the thaw has yet to reach his eyes. “My intentions are benign, whether you believe me or not.”
“You're a psychopath, if you truly believe that.”
“I know you're curious about these,” — he makes an expansive gesture, letting go of her wrists, — “bootlegged games. Who makes them, and all the associated hows and whys. I can take you to the Weaver and Spinner who designed them. They are one and the same.”
This is all being done by one person? “Everybody's curious,” she snaps. “Not just me.”
“And yet, don't the games seem to call to you, Volera?”
A chill ripples down her spine. “No. They don't. You want to make that bargain, talk to Kira.”
Endgame (Voluntary Eradicators) Page 12
