by A. J. Markam
“Yes, Baba!” I yelled out. “I’ll be in in just a second!” Then I looked at my brother. “Are you going to let me in?”
He glared at me silently but stepped aside. I walked into the house.
My grandmother shuffled over and put her hands on my face, like you would squeeze the cheeks on a little kid.
“Why do you make us worry so much?” she asked in Russian. “Why do you break your mother’s heart?”
“Baba – ”
“I told you one thing,” she said angrily. “One thing: be a good boy for once. You do this to your family? Nothing’s changed. You haven’t learned a thing.”
One thing about Russian women: when they get angry, they get pissed. They can be as cold as Russian winters, or they can explode like volcanos. Sometimes both at the same time.
I was shocked. I’d seen my grandmother act like this before, but never towards me. Not even when I went away to prison.
“Baba…”
“Unca Jimmy!” two little voices screamed from the kitchen, and my niece and nephew ran out and hugged me hard around my kneecaps.
“Hey, guys!” I said happily, and pulled them up into my arms. At least someone was happy to see me.
“Hey Jimmy,” my sister-in-law said shyly from the kitchen.
“Hey Denise!”
“It’s good to see you… but we were just leaving.”
I saw the frightened look she exchanged with my brother. I couldn’t tell if she was more scared of staying and incurring his anger, or having her children be around the good-for-nothing ex-con brother-in-law.
“Sure, sure… I understand,” I said gently, and hugged the kids and put them back on the ground.
“Get your coats, kids,” she said. They complained bitterly until she said it again with an unaccustomed harshness in her voice, and then they hustled. My sister-in-law didn’t speak sharply to them often, so when she did, they knew she meant business.
My mom came into the room from the back of the house. I could tell she had been crying. Eyes all red, face puffy.
“…Jimmy?” she asked, almost like she couldn’t believe it was me.
“Hey Mom,” I said.
My grandmother muttered angrily in Russian, then shuffled back over to her easy chair and sank down in it.
“Bye, Jimmy,” Denise said.
“Bye Unca Jimmy!” the kids called out – and then they were gone.
The silence after they left was unsettling.
I kind of wished I was hanging out with Oktar and his goons again. That would have been less nerve-racking.
“What are you doing here?” Mom finally asked.
“I came to see you guys!”
“After you disappear for three weeks?” she asked, her voice hard-edged.
“Mom, come on… I just got out of prison – ”
“Yes, I know – and silly me, I would’ve thought you would want to spend some time with your family instead of running off to Vegas.”
“Mom, it’s been a really rough couple of weeks. I promise I’ll explain more someday, but I can’t stay too long – ”
“Of course not,” she interrupted with a bitter laugh. “Why would you want to stay with your family when you can go screw a bunch of whores?”
“Mom!” I said, shocked. My mother didn’t use language like that.
Suddenly her voice trembled with sadness. “Why do you break our hearts like this, Jimmy? You swore to me before you got out of prison that you would go straight – ”
“I am! I’m not doing anything illegal, I promise!”
I was conveniently leaving out the heist that had landed me in my current predicament, but everything since that night had been legal, so it was technically true. Hell, I was even working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How much more law-abiding could you get than that?
Only problem was, I couldn’t tell them.
“Do you think we’re stupid, Jimmy?” my mom shouted. “Where would you get the money for three weeks in Vegas?”
“I told you, she’s paying for everything – ”
She shook her head in disgust. “You be a lot of things, Jimmy, but a man who gets rich women to pay your way isn’t one of them.”
I laughed in disbelief. “What are you saying, I can’t get a rich girlfriend?”
“An ex-con straight out of prison, who never worked a day in his life if it wasn’t stealing cars or robbing safes? Yeah, you’re the pick of the litter.”
“Thanks for believing in me, Mom,” I snapped. Her words cut me to the bone – mostly because they were true. Or had been, up until three weeks ago.
“Just out of prison, and you go right back to your old life – ”
“I told you, I’m not doing anything illegal!”
“I think you better leave,” Danny interrupted angrily. “And don’t come back until you’re ready to clean up your act.”
I glared at him. Son of a bitch was telling me this while he was running a sports book out of the auto shop? Endangering the entire family to make some money on the side, and he had the balls to lecture me?
“You don’t get a say in this,” I snarled. “I’m part of the family.”
“Not if you treat your family like you treat us,” my mother said.
“Mom!” I said, shocked.
“This is it, Jimmy,” she said, and broke down crying. “If you stay here, and you don’t go back, then we’ll put you up and help you. But if you walk out that door and go see that girl and go back off to do God knows what… I won’t go through that again.” She shook her head, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I’ve cried enough over you the last fifteen years, I’m not going to do it anymore. So what’s it going to be, Jimmy? Are you staying?”
Seeing my mother cry was like a cold knife in my heart.
And knowing I couldn’t stay was like another one in my gut.
“Mom… I wish I could, but…”
“If you walk out that door, don’t come back,” she said. “I’m tired of worrying about you. I’m tired of worrying about if you’ll wind up dead.”
Actually, that was closer to the truth than I was comfortable with.
“Mom, please, if you’ll just trust me – ”
“But I can’t trust you, because I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know who you are anymore. Certainly not my son. Because a son who loved his family would never do this to them.”
I looked around at all of them – Mom, Baba, even Danny – with tears in my eyes. “Guys… please, I’m begging you – I really need you right now – ”
“And we needed you. But you left us. So go ahead and leave again, but don’t come back until you’re ready to give up whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Mom, please…”
She broke down crying again. “Just go.”
I glanced over at my grandmother, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye. Her expression was both sad and angry – but she just stared at the floor.
I felt my brother’s rough hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s – ”
“Get off me,” I snarled.
“Do I have to kick your ass to get you out of this house?” he growled.
I thought about making him try it. I’d always been somebody who ran from a fight in the real world. I would knock over a safe, sure, but then I’d run out the back door. I never stood up and fought for myself. That was one thing the game had taught me over the last three weeks – how to fight.
But you still had to know when to fight, and when to walk away.
“I’m going,” I muttered.
No matter how much I wanted to kick my brother’s ass, I knew a brawl and a phone call to the police wouldn’t go over well with Arkova or the FBI. Now wasn’t the time.
“Goodbye, Baba. Goodbye, Mom,” I said sadly, then walked out the front door without another word.
My brother followed me, I guess to make sure that I didn’t try to get back in. Or something.
“Danny,” I said as
soon as we were both on the front porch.
“What?” he said, his voice full of all the contempt and holier-than-thou bullshit I’d been getting from him my entire life.
“Lose the sports book,” I said angrily.
His eyes widened in shock. One thing about my brother – he might have been a tough guy, but he had a terrible poker face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, with way too much fear in his voice to be believable.
“Get rid of it,” I hissed.
As much as I wanted him to get what was coming to him, I didn’t want anybody else screwing over my family. One black sheep in the flock was enough.
Then I walked away and disappeared into the night.
50
Back in Sillomar the next day, the group could see I wasn’t in the greatest of moods. They didn’t ask me about it, although there were some stray jokes about baby mama drama from Russell and Slothfart.
When I didn’t join in the laughter, though, they let it slide.
We picked up a new quest that morning in the area known as the Dark District, the underbelly of the city frequented by thieves and assassins. We were on the way back from my lock-picking trainer when we came across a shifty-looking dark elf in tattered robes who had a golden ‘!’ above his head.
“I have seen you in action over the last few weeks, my friends,” the dark elf said to us. Which was probably just the computer spouting crap, since we’d been outside the city walls for most of that time. “I know you for honorable adventurers, so I need to pass along this information: conspirators are plotting a coup against the king of Sillomar.”
“A coup?” Slothfart asked, impressed. “Like a political thing?”
“Or like a Beatles thing? ‘Coup-coup-kachoo’?” Richard asked, very pleased with his little joke.
The entire group stared at him.
“I Am The Walrus? No? Really?” he said, incensed that no one knew what he was talking about. “Never mind. Next time I’ll make a Taylor Swift reference.”
“Hey – don’t knock T-Swift,” Slothfart grumbled.
The dark elf ignored us and kept talking. “There are powers behind the throne who wish to kill the king, then seize power for themselves. They have contracted with a group of assassins to murder the king by midnight. I am a criminal, and the workings of kings and aristocrats normally have no interest to me. But if the conspirators succeed in this, all of Sillomar and the rest of the region will be thrown into chaos. More than anything, I fear the conspirators’ hatred of our kind.”
“Who, night elves?”
“It is not just night elves the conspirators detest. The men behind the coup are all humans, and they despise orcs, goblins, Revenants, and trolls as well.” The night elf looked at Jen. “Not to mention frost elves.”
“How are we supposed to stop a coup against the king?” Jennifer asked.
“Go and talk to Counselor Parendelius of the King’s Court. He is often in the public gardens near the Mages Quarter. He is an old man with a white beard – you will know him by the red rose that he pins every day to his robes.”
“And the yellow question mark above his head,” Russell joked to the rest of us.
The night elf looked around like he was being followed. “I must go.”
“Wait – what do we tell this guy?” Jen asked.
“Tell him to seek the answer where the ravens nest. I have already said too much.” And then he disappeared into the darkness of the underground caverns.
A window appeared.
A Coup in Sillomar
Shadowy forces are plotting to overthrow the king and undermine the peace and stability of Sillomar. Go and talk to Counselor Parendelius in the public gardens of the Mage Quarter.
Experience points: 500 XP
“‘Seek the answer where the ravens nest?’ Dude, this is some freaky cloak and dagger shit!” Slothfart enthused.
“All right,” Jen said, “let’s go talk to this… ‘Parent deli us’ guy.”
“Well, Jimmy,” Richard said, “I am herewith revising my opinion. It seems we might actually benefit from your stubborn refusal to leave the city.”
“Yeah, well, that remains to be seen,” Jen grumbled as we set off through the Dark Quarter back to the surface.
“No, this is a perfect quest. We will be dealing with palace intrigue instead of grubby miners. We will be talking to perfumed courtiers rather than sweaty dwarves. And we will be inside beautiful halls instead of underground caverns with talking rats.”
“Plus there’s nudie bars!” Russell said.
“Plus there are nudie bars,” Richard repeated.
“You guys need to chill with the nudie bars,” Jen said. “Didn’t you hear? We’re on a mission to save the king.”
“I’m sure he’d love to go to a nudie bar with us!” Russell shouted.
“Dude, he’s the king – he probably has, like, harems and shit,” Slothfart rhapsodized. “Like, private nudie bars. Like, the best nudie bars ever.”
“Maybe if we save him, he’ll invite us!” Russell cheered.
“Hell yeah – save the king and his nudie bars!” Slothfart yelled in a rallying cry.
They were still making jokes as we came out of the Dark District from underneath the city’s main bridge.
I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t see them until the same moment they saw me:
Oktar and two of his henchmen.
Our eyes locked.
“Oh crap,” I muttered, and went into Stealth. Not that the orcs hadn’t already seen me, but at least they wouldn’t see where I ran to.
Jen looked over at where I’d been. “Jimmy, what’s – ”
I turned to run back into the Dark District.
Suddenly Oktar roared, flashed out an arm, and a chain with a barbed spike on the end flew through the air and impaled itself through my shoulder. I was in Stealth, so I’m guessing he was using that damn necklace of his to see me.
Anyway, now I wasn’t in Stealth anymore.
I felt a giant yank. Suddenly I was hurtling backwards through the air – and then I crashed onto my back on the cobblestones.
I found myself looking up at Oktar – upside-down, since the top of my head was at the tip of his boots.
“I told you what I do if I ever catch you in Sillomar again,” he snarled in his Russian accent.
I raised one finger. “Technically, you only said the Thieves Market – ”
Oktar growled, then lifted one of his massive boots to stomp my head in.
Before I could move, a blast of ice slammed Oktar upside the head and sent him toppling over onto the ground.
As happy as I was to see that – and not be dead – my stomach clenched. My friends didn’t realize that this wasn’t part of the game. This was real.
And they were taking on Level 50 players.
“No!” I yelled, sitting up and holding out my hand –
But Russell had already vaulted into the fight, using his shield to slam into the nearest orc thug.
“Is this part of the quest?” Slothfart asked in confusion as he whipped out his scimitar and made for second henchman. “I thought we were supposed to go talk to some old dude in some gardens!”
Russell’s target roared in rage, punched Russell, and sent the goblin crashing into the underside of the bridge, immediately costing him half his hit points.
That’s what happened when a level 50 character hit a level 27.
Richard immediately shot a wave of purple magic into Russell and me as well.
I tried running away again – but unfortunately, I still had the barbed hook embedded in my back.
Oktar just yanked the chain and slammed me into the ground again.
Jen hit Oktar with a Ray of Frost. Not that it did much to him.
Oktar roared, “You have signed your death warrants!” Then he yelled at the other orcs in Russian, “Kill them – slowly!”
I screamed at my friends, “RUN!
”
Jen looked at me in shock. “Who are these guys?”
“JUST RUN!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Unfortunately, they didn’t follow my orders.
Russell leapt in again and threw his shield. It ricocheted amongst the three orcs, slamming them all in their faces. I think it might’ve shaved off 2% of their hit points – but it definitely pissed them off.
Oktar pulled out a battle ax, roared, and met Slothfart’s scimitar head-on.
“Oh shit,” Slothfart yelled as they clashed in battle, “Oh Shit, OH SHIT, OH SHIT – ”
Three slashes later, and Slothfart was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. The only thing that saved him was Richard pumping as much healing energy into his body as possible.
“Russell,” I screamed, “break the chain!”
Russell glanced at the barb in my back, leapt six feet in the air, and pounded the chain between his hammer and the cobblestones.
CLANK!
The chain broke, and I got to my feet. I still had three feet of chain dangling off me, but that was least of my worries.
Oktar turned towards me and raised his battle ax.
I made a calculated gamble. If I ran, I was betting that Oktar would chase me.
Especially if I insulted him horribly.
I flipped him the bird and screamed, “Bye, you Russian dipshit!”
Then I hit Fleet Foot.
The second before I hurtled off down the street, I saw Jen’s face. Her expression was somewhere between horror and betrayal.
“RUN!” I screamed at her as I took off.
I wanted to add, I’m trying to give you guys a fighting chance! Of course, that was way too long a sentence to say in time – I was already gone by that point.
If I stuck around, the orcs would kill us all. Maybe, just maybe they would follow me and leave my friends alone.
Turned out Oktar followed me, thank God. (Well – thank God he was running away from my friends, anyway.) He raced through the crowded streets yelling in Russian, “Brothers – get the Rogue Revenant! Don’t kill him – I want him alive!”
Seemingly out of nowhere, two more orcs jumped out into the street. They started running after me, but I still had Fleet Foot active –
For about three more seconds.
I pulled 100 feet in front of them, and then my speed ran out.
