Polyglot

by D Richardson

  We hurried past, up a spiraling staircase, past a group of terrified butlers and maids, and burst through the door of the throne room. We stumbled upon a scene. Inside, groups of people and players stared mouths agape with wide eyes, an old man knelt beside the throne, presenting a glittering ring atop a black cushion, and a devil sat to receive it.

  "Smith."

  Chapter 46

  The Black Lion

  Smith sat upon his throne, grinning down at us with wolf's eyes. "Oh, hey guys, it's been a while." He was adorned with black and gold robes and the fancy jewelry of royalty. On his head, a lacy crown caught the torchlight.

  Beside him, the kneeling old man kept his head lowered, and the gift held high. On the other side, stood Abdul the messenger. His eyes were empty, reaching toward me, but faltered. A group of high-level players, nearly twenty in total, stood against the other wall, staring the same daggers into us as we did into Smith.

  "I told her everything," Simone announced. "How you treat these people, how you—"

  "People?" he laughed. "They're NPCs. How many fucking times do we need to argue about this?"

  "We are people," I demanded. "Every nipsy carries within them the soul of a person from your side. For all you know, Abdul there could've once been your grandfather."

  "Oh, how poetic," he sang. "The lost souls of stolen minds locked away in a video game." His player comrades laughed in their groups. He reflected their smiles before turning his cold gaze back at me. "First of all, who gives a shit? Second, the people who scanned themselves in consented, you dumbass bitch," he yelled. He leaned back and took a deep breath before shooing away the old man who offered him the ring.

  "Damn dude," Relce said. "What happened? You used to be cool."

  "Suck my dick," he spat.

  Relce shook his head once and went back to fiddling with his rifle. "I'm gonna be honest with ya dude, the shit you spew sounds awfully like racism." He slammed the bolt shut. "I've been on the ass-end of racism before."

  "Oh whoop-de-fuck," Smith said. "They're NPCs. They're no more people than a piece of furniture. Next thing you'll say is that my fuckin' microwave should be respected."

  "Does your microwave have sapience?" Tae asked. "You know, I'll answer that for you since you've apparently decided to lock your mind shut." He slammed his spear into the floor and crossed his arms. "The fact alone that you are having an argument with these people attests to their intelligence."

  "And I can have the same arguments with any shuttle between here and Phobos, but you don't see spaceships bitching about rights."

  The players along the wall were whispering among themselves, some passing quick glances at us and nodding at different directions. They started to disperse along the room, hands on their weapons. A few more knights showed up at the doorway but stopped on their guard at the sight of us. Dull thumping came from outside, pops and cracks of gunfire. There was a slight rumble, and the chandeliers rattled. People and players alike took nervous glances through nearby windows at the carnage.

  Tae spoke with authority. "You have the exact colonial mindset that is unbecoming of a child of Mars. Tell me, Smith," he said with anger bleeding into his voice, "is this the same way you and your friends thought of the ‘backward savages’ on Earth? Do you see these people within the uncharted lands of the simulations as beneath you? Something that you can just exploit to your heart's content?"

  Smith paused. The windows rattled, the chandeliers shook, the floors vibrated. He turned to Simone. "Is that what this is? You brought them all here to guilt trip me? And here I thought you came to deliver them as an apology."

  Simone ripped the blade from her scabbard. "We're history, Jay. I've made friends with them all - Alex, Yun, Willow, Greg, and James - countless more. The only thing you've ever done was take from others."

  "And that's what you've come to do," he smiled, then looked at me. "You've come to take from me everything."

  "And I will." I gripped the staff in my hand and thrust it at him. In an instant, his player comrades dashed in front to protect him.

  "Vanguard 3(holy)!" the gruff knight yelled.

  "Gravity 20," I uttered.

  The knight slammed into the floor, his armor and bones crumpling under its weight. A pool of blood spilled out from underneath.

  "Provoke," Simone yelled. Gunshots plinked off her shield, casting lines of sparks around her. She lowered it just in time to parry a samurai's attack.

  The battle had just begun, yet I didn't pull my dead stare away from Smith. He only returned it with a grin while he rested his head on his hand.

  Gunshots, swords clashing, spells.

  Relce had flipped over a nearby table and was having a nice time exchanging shots with the other riflemen. Willow stood beside me unmoving, not needing to. Bullets, arrows, streams of fire lashed at us to only be halted by an effortless counter - shimmers of reflect, tungsten walls just big enough to catch a bullet, mana blades to swat away the swordsmen.

  Simone might've only been level 60, but she fought with the spirit of a hero. She parried, rammed the edge of her shield into the samurai's neck, and ran him through with her blade. She flung the blood from her sword. "Answer me, Jay," she shouted against the noise. "Why the balance council?" Another swordsman challenged her, but she swatted him away.

  "To enslave the nipsies, of course."

  "They're people!" she shouted back. "They have lives, Jay, as human as any of us. They’re literally the same as the people within the garden." A barrage of arrows screamed toward her, thumping into the wings of her aura. She clicked off the spell, and the arrows fell to tap against the floor.

  "This isn’t the garden," he said. "This is just a game. And as I've repeated time and time again - these NPCs are no more real than the spells they cast. They're just code."

  I was already bored with his voice. I whispered the command, "Silence."

  "Reflect," he ordered. A nearby torch blinked and sizzled out.

  I furrowed my brow. We were too late.

  "So that's why," Willow said. "You kept the council hostage to cheat your way to victory."

  He scoffed. "You're the ones to talk, using hacks to your own advantages. Why do you think I needed to do all this? The game is broken. It's shit. The magic is unbalanced, NPCs are running around hacking, even the leveling system doesn't make sense." He raised up his hand and admired the rings that glowed around his fingers. "With this power, I will fuck up the game so much that the developers will be forced to return."

  "Not happening," Relce said. He hung behind the far pillar as he reloaded his rifle. "The developer is dead."

  Smith burst into laughter. "Then the world belongs to the players!"

  Relce rolled away from the pillar and fired. The shot thumped into Smith, no, his magic shield that pulsed to absorb the static lightning that came with the bullet. It arced and buzzed before fizzing out.

  Tae pulled his lance from another fallen foe. His cuts and bruises healing as instantly as he sustained them. "Alex, we'll leave him to you."

  "Thank you, friend."

  "Abdul," Smith said. "She isn't worth my time. Kill her."

  "No."

  The entire battle came to a halt at the sound of his voice. Even I had to break my gaze to bear witness of a dog defying its master.

  Smith took a deep, deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You see, this is why the nipsies need to be controlled - there's just no discipline. In other games, they just form up into their units and do as their told. But here, we have this shit." He rubbed his temples. "Daimyo squad, kill Abdul the idiot, then focus the rest."

  Abdul was too fast, even for me to see. He flashed amid the enemy party and ran his fist through a mage's back - and out his chest. Before they could respond, he was gone again.

  "Regen, 100," I whispered. The spell would make him damn near invincible, but to my amusement, he didn't need it.

  Abdul, the man whose eyes once bore into my own and struck fear into m
y heart, had shaken off the shackles of his player overlords and was now using the knife edge of his hand to slice through max-level armor. Who could blame him, when even his owners had wished him death.

  I turned to Willow. "Protect them."

  She nodded and brought up an encompassing aura around our party. I thrust my hand in the air and clicked.

  A pause - a devilish grin ripped across my face. Then, the world itself erupted.

  The floor beneath us jolted up and down, throwing those unprepared across the room like ragdolls. The roof cracked open, the walls caved, the cold wind swept in and took the warmth away. The castle cracked and crumbled and the world was breaking apart. Smith had undoubtedly given himself loads of protection spells and magic counters, but nothing could stop the scale of magic at my fingertips - not even armies. The castle buckled at its core, and the entire thing was toppling over. My party struggled to brace themselves against the sliding debris and bodies, Smith himself losing his composure - yet I stood proud, unaffected.

  Above us, the clouds swirled against the change of pressure, the snow rattling against the vibrating wind. The castle city was on fire, and the battle was still in full swing. As we fell into freefall, I bolted into Smith's manashield. "Armor(greaves, steel)." In a flash of a moment, scales of steel wrapped across my legs just in time to connect my knee into his pulsing shield, shattering right through and into his torso. I felt his ribs crack at the force.

  Smith's body shot like a bullet into the streets below, snow and dust trailing behind as his body slid against the dirt where he belonged. I flew after him, the cold wind smelled like gunsmoke as it rushed past. He pulsed green, then blue. A massive bolt of lightning shot toward me as I approached, but I swatted it away, drew its essence into single javelin, and sent it back. Sparks as he summoned his own mana swords to knock away the attack.

  "You can't blame me," he said as I landed before him. "I'm only trying to make this world a better game." A number of enemy players had stopped at the sight and turned to aid their leader, to protect him from me.

  "You can make it better by dying." I eased up my open hand and clenched it to a fist. The players doubled over in pain with a juicy, snapping noise, then blood spewing out every orifice of their bodies.

  A staff snapped into existence in front of him, he snatched it, then slammed it into the snow. A black wind radiated outwards, bounced off my mana shield, then dissipated. The players groaned and struggled to their feet, eyes vacant and mouths murmuring. "Wh-what the fu-fug," one said.

  "You're my zombies now," he said, clearly proud of himself.

  I diced them with a gust of wind. Their bodies thumped back into the snow in meaty cubes. Smith looked at me, nodded, then flashed just before my face. A glowing sword ripped through the snowfall and down at me. It slammed against my own, showering me in sparks. He countered my counter with another sword, but that too clanked against another sword I conjured.

  A crown of spears snapped in, circling above his head. He noticed too soon and farstepped back, yanking up an earthen shield to soak the damage. Rattling thumps as they made contact. By the time he dropped it, I pulled the trigger. The gun in my hands popped and roared and flashed, the bullet slamming into his chest, and from it, a mountain of cockroaches spewed forth.

  "Ah shit, shit!" He struggled to top off his health and to wish away the spell.

  I tossed the gun aside, letting it vanish before it touched the snow. Airships were battling overhead, the Black Lions' air force had since been scrambled, but even still they were being crushed. Smith wrapped himself in a dome to regenerate his MP, and I still wasn't having the fun I had been promised. I searched the sky for the perfect one, found it, then beckoned it over.

  The enemy airship was soaring along, getting pelted and shredded by broadsides and autocannons, but before it could flare out into a fiery wreck, it was yanked toward us, roaring against the wind and snow. A ring of white bloomed around it, then an earth-shaking boom. It slammed against Smith's puny dome and erupted into splinters and fire and smoke. I relished the heat of the flame and the rush of hot air that blew through my hair.

  I spun on my heels to look behind me. He was face to face with me, donned in heavy armor and glistening sword in a swing. He's been cross-training.

  Smith swung his blade, but it slipped right through me as I blinked in and out of reality. He stared in shock, then in horror as he felt the sting of a dozen spears spike up through the snow and into him. While he was still impaled, I grasped his struggling arm, ripped off its armor, spawned a small knife, and raked it up the length. He vanished, just when we were getting started.

  I felt his presence far to the left of me, bursting through the door of a burning tavern. I walked after, kicked open the door, and felt the heat of the roaring flames that rose up the walls and licked the ceiling. "Are you ready to admit defeat?" I asked.

  Glass shattered behind the counter. I spun over and thrust my hand at it. A wave of ice crashed against the bar, freezing everything solid - but he wasn't there. I turned to the beat of armor thumping against the creaky floor and caught sight of him mid-swing. I waved out my hand, and the entire building shifted over, the wall splitting off at my shield, his body crushed against the force.

  The entire block toppled over like dominos, now only a mountain of debris and ruin. Smith yelled from underneath the mess. "Fire 10!"

  A massive wall of flame sparked out and flashed across the battlefield, hot enough to melt the street poles, incinerate the pile of wood, and turn the rock molten. I flew above and watched from the air as the ring of fire blinked out and left behind a circle of ash. In its center, Smith knelt to catch his breath, his armor blinking away. His mana was low.

  I thrust my staff toward the heavens. "Solar lance!" The skies carried my echo far, and Smith spotted me. He heard the command and cast a mana shield above him. A magic circle of letters and words and designs that rotated around him, pulsing blue and white and violet, yet even the highest level shield would not save him.

  A deep hum, the skies darkened, the clouds above glowed red, then a crack of lightning as a beam of light slammed over him, pulsing and cracking and radiating sweltering heat. The nearby snow boiled into steam, the air itself electrified. As quickly as it came, it vanished. The wind rushed back in, the clouds swirled to cover up the hole in the atmosphere, and beneath, a field of glass.

  The ground cracked and shattered beneath my heels as I landed. In front of me, the smoldering carcass that was once Smith. "Revive," I said. "Regen."

  The charred flesh broke off, muscles and tendons reforming, rewrapping the ash of his bones. Hair, eyes, armor, breath. He coughed, then looked up at me to see my sword coming down on his neck. Blood spewed out, his head rolled and tapped against the glassy surface of the ground.

  I've won.

  ***

  I tossed him into the mud and slush. Around us stood my army, officers and generals who stood tired, but victorious. Some of Smith's surviving generals stood impatiently, refusing to stare at their fearless leader as he struggled to stand in the muck.

  A table and some chairs were brought out and set between us, a few slips of paper politely stared back at us. "It's about time we end this war," I said. "In my sue for peace, we demand the entire annexation of the Black Lions empire."

  He scoffed. "Oh? You win one battle, and you think you've won the war?" He brushed off the mud from his sleeves.

  "What choice do you have?" I said.

  He flashed me with a grin. "Fine. Take it. I don't need it anymore."

  "Then sign," I ordered.

  He thrust up his hand and shouted. "Kneel!"

  A cold wind came from him and swept across the fields, into my friends and my army. Silence, then a chorus of rattling armor. Rows and rows of my soldiers heard the command and got on their knees. I wanted to rage at them for the insult, but I was stopped at the sight of even Willow dropping into the snow.

  And then I felt it.

  It wa
s like a cold draft slipping in from an open window, pulling goosebumps from my neck as it traveled up my body. The spell gripped my mind with invisible claws, forcing me to obey its command. I struggled against it. My knee went limp, I lost control, my body shook as every fiber of my being tried to give in to the command, and every instinct I had within myself tried to deny it.

  I was infuriated, terrified, vulnerable. I felt the madness pulse against the submission. I felt the black mana of the spell wash over me, choke me, suffocate my reason. I could only see the white of the snow as I heard my player friends rush in.

  “Slaves!” Smith commanded. “Kill them!”

  “Provoke!” Simone yelled.

  Ten thousand pairs of eyes yanked over to her, ten thousand rifles aimed. I could only stare helplessly as the words escaped her lips a fraction of a second before the guns fired. “Vanguard 5(holy).”

  Flashes, deafening blasts, gun smoke. When the haze dissipated, I stared in horror.

  My arm was lifted in her direction. Beneath her, a dozen spears sticking out of the snow and into her. She was lifted up, impaled countless times, scarlet dripping from her wounds to stain the snow beneath. My eyes widened at the realization at what I had done. “Simone,” I whispered in terror.

  “Run,” she whispered back.

  There was a shout, a struggle, a warcry. Tae threw his spear like a javelin at Smith, but one of our soldiers dove in to protect him. Relce took aim to blow off his head, but the soldiers were rushing him, launching themselves to take a bullet. He grabbed a black stone from his pouch, lifted it high, and slammed it to the ground. Fwooph. A thick, black smoke raced out and blackened our vision.

  Gunshots, grunting, the sounds of a struggle.

  I couldn’t let it end like this. I couldn’t allow everything I worked for to be pissed away by a shitty overpowered spell. I raced within my mind’s eye to look for the enslave magic within my own repertoire, raced to find a way to undo its power.