New Eden Royale

by Deck Davis

  Hearing him mention my family sent a shot of hot, glowing anger flowing through me. “My family were nothing but good to you,” I said.

  “Really? You do have an atrocious memory.”

  “Tell me then,” I said. “Explain what’s going on in that hateful head of yours.”

  He crossed his arms. His sneer had dropped now, and it was replaced by an expression of anger that seemed to match my own. When he spoke, he almost frothed at the mouth. “There are three reasons I hate your family, and you know them well. Don’t insult me by acting ignorant.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know what my parents could have done that was so bad you’d ruin their lives. How about you stop being a little boy and face up to things? Or are your reasons so pathetic that you can’t even say them?”

  “The rabbit and the quarry,” said Lucas.

  I scoffed. “So, you let your rabbit out of its hutch and it got killed. And you tripped and fell into a damn quarry. So what? You were okay, weren’t you? It was an accident.”

  “Accident, indeed. A push is a push,” he said. And then, he spoke in a snarl. “I closed the damn rabbit hutch.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All of this over two accidents? What kind of petty, twisted mind would have done everything Lucas had done over something like that? That couldn’t have been the reason. It was so ridiculous that I couldn’t even comprehend it.

  “Hang on,” I said. “You said three reasons. You only named two; the quarry and the rabbit. What else happened?”

  With this, Lucas’s face softened a little, and I thought that I saw in his expression the same one he’d always worn as a child. He looked like his young self again; shy and nervous.

  “Think about it, Harry.”

  I racked my brains, and I came up empty. What could I, my parents, or Bill possibly have done? “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Lucas rubbed his hand over his face. He wasn’t crying, but his skin was red and puffy. “I always knew that I wasn’t a real part of your family. Oh, sure, your father always treated me well. They knew where I’d come from, they knew what I’d suffered as a child, and they were nice to me.”

  “Then what was your problem?”

  “He never told you about it, did he?” said Lucas.

  “About what?”

  “Do you remember one evening when your father, your mother, and I went into the living room and shut the door?”

  “You were in there for hours,” I answered.

  “And he never told you what happened?”

  I remembered the night clearly. I remembered that Lucas had been in trouble for stealing from us, and that Mom and Dad had talked to him alone. I remembered standing by the living room door with my ear pressed against the wood, but I couldn’t hear anything. Then, when Dad came out, all he had said was “Things are going to change, but everything will be A-Okay from now on, kiddo.”

  “He never told me anything about it,” I said.

  Lucas sighed. It wasn’t a sigh of annoyance, but more a world-weary one. As if all the hate and sourness that had rushed through his veins had left him tired. “When your parents sat me down and asked why I was stealing, I didn’t answer at first. The truth is, that I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know why I was doing it. It was just a compulsion. Then, your father asked me what I thought about before I stole something. When I considered it, I realized that I always thought about my parents before I took something that wasn’t mine. My real parents, and what they used to do to me. The pain, the bruises.”

  He stopped for a second. He crossed his arms and gripped his shoulders tightly with his hands, as though he was focusing all his energy on holding in an emotion. For a split second, I felt sorry for him. I didn’t say anything.

  “That was when I asked your parents something,” continued Lucas. “I asked them if I could live at the ranch permanently. If I could become a real member of the family, and not just a foster child. I wanted something permanent. I craved it, and I stupidly thought that your parents might consider it.”

  This floored me. I never knew Lucas had asked that; I had always thought that he’d hated living with us. Suddenly, I became all too aware that we were in the middle of a VBR, that the fighting had stopped, and that with no other fighters on the map, every single spectator would be watching and listening to this. I didn’t care.

  “What did Dad say?”

  The sadness left his expression. Anger spread over Lucas’s face as rapid as fire eating through dry bush. “Your father told me that I was such a special child that your parents weren’t the right fit for me anymore. That there were other parents out there who were more suited to helping me. That was how he phrased it, but, of course, I knew the truth. They didn’t want me. I wasn’t welcome in your family. There was only room for their precious Harry and Bill. Your father told me that he was going to find somewhere else for me to live. He said it would be somewhere where I would learn to be happier and overcome my problems, but I knew that he just wanted rid of me.”

  “And that’s when you started the rumors,” I said.

  Lucas nodded. “It was only what they deserved. Both of them. All of you.”

  “All this?” I said, the rage booming in my voice. “All this because they tried to help you? Damn it, Lucas, I know that you were a kid then. You couldn’t have read between the lines and known Dad only wanted what was best for you, but what about all those years later? You never, ever, put the record straight.”

  “The record?”

  “The rumors, asshole. The ones that you spread about my dad.”

  Lucas was silent for a second. He seemed to be considering what I had said. Finally, he looked at me. “It never happened,” he said.

  “You’re admitting it?”

  “Your father never touched me.”

  I couldn’t believe that I had finally heard him admit it. Not just to me personally, either. His admission was being broadcast all over the country. That didn’t put things straight, though, not by a long shot. For years, Dad had been out of work. He’d started drinking more than he used to. He had tried his best, but he couldn’t hide the effect that the rumors had on him. Eventually, that made him more distant with me and Bill. Although Lucas couldn’t be blamed for a plane crashing, if it weren’t for his lies then Dad would have never had to take the job in the town in the south. My family would never have been on the plane in the first place. Lucas might have finally admitted that he had lied, but that solved nothing. He was going to pay for it.

  I held my arcane broadsword in an attack stance and started to walk toward him. Images flashed through my mind; Dad looking dejected after yet again getting rejected for a job, and then sighing as he stared at the mounting invoices on his holo-screen. Mom having her hopes dashed after failing to get another part. The images skipped forward to Team Wolfhound betraying me, and then to the prot-generator on my ranch getting worse and worse. Everything blurred into one, into one horrible clash of pictures, sounds and colors that was murky and dark. It transformed from pictures into a bitter feeling that settled deep inside my chest and burned. I could only think of one thing; of making Lucas suffer the way he’d made my family suffer. Hurting him in a VBR was the only way I’d get that satisfaction without going to jail.

  I ran at him. I reached him before he had time to react, and then I swung my sword. The air buzzed with arcane energy as my blade cut through it, and the tip dragged along Lucas’s unprotected sleeve. He flinched and stepped back. I stabbed forward with the blade again, this time hearing it clink against his gold chest armor.

  Lucas reached for the hilt of a sword that hung in a sheath on his belt. The sheath was long and made of leather, and it covered the weapon completely. When he drew it, I saw that he held a sword that shone as gold as honey. The edges were perfectly sharp, enough so that they could probably cut atoms. I knew what the sword was, because I had held it in my hand once before, here on this very map.

  “Recognize this?”
said Lucas, grinning. He held the golden sword aloft. “The programmers will do anything an overseer tells them to.”

  With a speed I didn’t expect and couldn’t counter, Lucas swung the blade at me. I had just enough time to pivot to the right, but the blade slashed my thigh. Pain, hotter and worse than I could have imagined, burned through my leg.

  90HP lost!

  Ninety hitpoints gone from one swipe? And that wasn’t even the worse hit he could have done. If he’d sliced my neck or stuck it in my chest…

  He swung at me again, aiming higher this time. I lifted my arcane sword and managed to deflect the blow. The clang of the metal rang in my ears. The force of Lucas’s strike was so tremendous that it jolted my hand, and the force shook all the way up my arm. This wasn’t going to end well. There was no way I could match him. What was I supposed to do?

  He struck at my again. I stepped aside, but the golden sword caught my left arm, sending tremors of pain through me.

  75HP lost!

  Two of his attacks - not even critical hits - had sent my hitpoints plummeting to 135. A couple more of those, or one more better-aimed hit, would end me. I needed to heal, but I knew I didn’t have any potions. So, what could I use?

  Then I remembered my dad’s rune. It was a single-use rune of lesser healing. Single-use runes were supposed to be the most powerful, yet all this would do was heal some of my hitpoints. Still, it was all I had, and it would buy me enough time to absorb at least one more blow while I thought of something else. I touched the rune on my wrist. The bronze circle glowed yellow, and then a light flashed up my arm.

  69 hitpoints gained!

  Okay, I was back at 204 hitpoints. Not great, but something. What good would that do me, though, if I couldn’t defend against Lucas’s attacks? Then, I noticed something. The yellow rune light hadn’t stopped when it spread up my arm. Instead, it reached my shoulders, then went across my chest, before coating my whole body.

  - Defence increased by 250!

  - Attack increased by 250!

  What was going on? It was the effect of the rune, no doubt, but how? It was supposed to be a rune of lesser healing; there was no way it could do this.

  With that thought, I realized something, and I smiled. This was Dad and his easter eggs, his little secrets. It hadn’t made sense that a single-use rune would heal a measly 69 hitpoints. Rather, as an extra bonus surprise, Dad had made the rune do so much more. Now, with my increased attack and defence bonuses, I was almost a match for Lucas. Almost, but not quite, I quickly found out. Lucas didn’t lunge for me this time. Instead, he started turning on the spot. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster. Soon he was spinning so fast that I couldn’t make out his features. All I could see was the gold blade of his sword rotating like it was caught in a tornado.

  The realization hit me like a slap in the face. I knew what Lucas’s class was. I had thought that the angry wolfhounds were his last surprise for me, but they weren’t. His final surprise was this; Lucas had chosen Storm Knight as his avatar class. He knew that it was the class that I’d used for years, and now he was going to use it to destroy me.

  With his Tornado Strike activated, he started moving toward me as a whirling wind of golden death. If he so much as touched me, he’d hit me with a dozen strikes in one go, and then I’d be gone. There was no coming back from that.

  Think, I told myself. Panic rose inside me, but I fought it down. I forced myself to be calm, to think more clearly and more logically, like the way Clyde would think.

  How much mana did I have? I checked and saw that I had just 45 mana points left. Not enough to trap him in a stone prison, like I had with Sera and the others. Even so, I cast Terrain Drain, and I focused on the ground in front of me. I raised it just enough so that as Lucas spun toward me with his sword moving at a sickening speed, a small part of the stone road popped up. Lucas spun right into it and lost his balance.

  This stopped his Tornado Strike, but I knew that he could just as easily get up and start it again. I needed to end this. I lurched forward with my arcane sword and swung it at him. Lucas looked up just as the blade reached him. The sword sliced into neck. Blood sprayed. Lucas groaned, and he spat, and he stumbled back.

  Critical hit!

  I’d damaged him. That was a start. Now, I just had to hope that I had hurt him enough. If I hadn’t, and I tried what I was going to do next, this could end badly for me. Without giving him chance to get his bearings, I ran forward. I gripped him by the shoulder and used Skill Steal.

  Skill Steal activated!

  [Choose a skill to steal]

  -Wind Hands

  - Tornado Strike

  - Gale Rush

  - Mana Swirl

  I had to be quick. Luckily, I knew the Storm Knight skills better than any other class. Wind Hands and Tornado Strike were offensive skills. I could steal one of them from him, but that would still leave the other one free. Not only that, but he’d be able to use Gale Rush to quickly dart out of reach if I tried to hurt him again. I needed to nullify him completely.

  As Lucas got himself together, I stole the Mana Swirl skill from him. For most Storm Knight fighters, and a lot of spectators, it was the weakest Storm Knight ability. I knew that a lot of people would be sat at home watching me, and they’d think ‘what the hell is he doing?’ All the same, I was certain that I had made the right choice.

  Lucas began to spin again. He was going to use Tornado Strike for a second time. All it would take was one hit. As he started moving forward toward me, a spinning tornado of destruction with a golden blade, I used Mana Swirl and chose Lucas as my target.

  Blue light began to seep away from Lucas. It drifted through the air until it reached me, where it coated my body. I felt my mana bar begin to top up. Similarly, I knew that Lucas’s bar would be emptying. The blue light poured out of him like smoke from the exhaust of an old-style car, covering me until my mana bar hit full capacity.

  Just as Lucas came within an inch of being able to hit me, he suddenly stopped. He fell back. Now, lacking mana after my Mana Swirl had drained it from him, he couldn’t use his skills.

  “Clever, he said, looking at me. “But it won’t be enough. I hope you realize-”

  I didn’t give him chance to finish his sentence. Instead I rushed at him, my sword held high. I bellowed a war cry. I let all of my anger and fury build inside me. It grew and grew, becoming hotter and hotter. My sword trembled in my hand, such as was the energy stored inside me. I focused on Lucas’s neck. As I reached him, I swung my blade. Every single rune-boosted attack point combined in that anger-fueled, powerful swing of my sword. The metal met Lucas’s neck, and this time it didn’t just cause a minor wound. Instead, it sliced all the way through, cleaving his head from his shoulders. It didn’t fall but seemed to plop instead, and when it landed on the road it made a thudding sound. His limp body followed soon after, and with his corpse collapsing beside his decapitated head, Lucas was done.

  I breathed out. It was a long, trailing breath, as if I’d been holding the air in my lungs for ten minutes. With it went all the fury, the anger, the adrenaline, and a tiredness began to soak through me.

  I dropped my sword. It clanged as it hit the road. I soon joined it, slumping down onto the tarmac. My armor was covered in blood, my arms ached, and my head throbbed. Yet, above all my tiredness and pains, I felt exhilaration. I looked at Lucas’s headless body and I imagined him waking up in his gel-capsule outside of the battle, and I smiled. It was the biggest smile I had ever done, one so wide I felt the corners of my lips stretch.

  The battle was over. Everyone was gone. It was just me and my sword, joined by the distant beeps of birds and billows of wind and bursts of rain. Now that I was alone, I did the only thing that seemed right at the time. I lay with my back on the blood-stained road, and I took a breath and held it in, and I looked up at the Autumn Steampunk sky.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Six months later

  There was so much gel
spread on the walls that I felt the heat of the glow on my cheeks. All around me, the dozen would-be members of Team Perlshaw were strapped into their gel capsules. In front of each of them was a gel-screen showing how the VBR world they were in looked through their eyes. The crystal-clear picture displayed a land of swirling desert sands and rabid sand-dogs.

  I took a second to appreciate the facilities around me. Extending the VBR studio and investing in new tech had cost around five percent of the Eden prize money. We’d had to quibble with Elder Arin for every percentage, but it had been worth it. Given enough time, and if I was any good as a teacher, Perlshaw could soon have two or three teams competing on the VBR circuit, bringing in a steady stream of income for the town.

  “Time’s up,” I said.

  I knew my words would filter through into the game world. They would sound distant, almost like someone whispering in your ear while you slept, but the fighters would hear them. I accessed my holo-face and brought up my command menu. Here, I selected ‘easy transition’. Gradually, the desert on the VBR screens began to fade. The gel capsules whirred to life, gently stimulating the twelve teenagers’ bodies so that when their minds returned to their rightful place, it wouldn’t be jarring.