by Brian Simons
The boy sighed. “Excuse me,” he said. He got up to walk toward the girl that had plummeted from the garuda’s grasp.
Timothy. It was a common enough name, but still…
The little girl screamed as Timothy used his fire magic to staunch her bleeding. He returned a few minutes later.
“As I was saying,” he said, “we don’t want you here. We don’t want a hungry garuda hunting us down. The simple solution is to feed you to the garuda and buy us a little peace.”
“You wouldn’t really do that,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. “We’re not just part of the landscape, we’re players too. We’re real people.”
“Real people die all the time here,” he said. “What makes you any different?”
“Timothy,” I said, “I think I knew your mother.” Drew’s head snapped around. He must have thought this was a strange gambit. Maybe it was.
Timothy looked interested at first, excited even, but then he narrowed his eyes at me in distrust. “Shut up,” he said. “You’re full of it.”
“She wants to see you again,” I said.
His eyes started to get glassy. “She’s dead, I’ll never get to see her again.”
So he already knew she had died. He must not have realized she landed in Ripcord like the rest of us. “I know she’s dead,” I said, “that’s precisely why you’ll get to see her again.”
Timothy grabbed his spear and shoved the point into my neck. “You have some nerve. So what, you’ll kill me and erase my data the same way as my mother’s was erased from this hellhole? I should dig this into your throat so you can’t yell and then dump your bleeding corpse outside for the garuda to find.”
“Mary’s not gone,” I said, “she’s still in Cortina. She wants to leave, but she’s not as brave as you. She just needs time.”
“No,” Timothy said, lowering his spear. “No, I know she’s gone. I’ve been to the desert, I heard the harbingers. I heard them say that she was dead. That’s all I heard before I ran, but it was enough. Hearing the rest of it would destroy me.”
“Oh, Timothy, the harbingers are full of half-truths and lies. They told me my wife didn’t survive this place, but they were wrong.”
“How do you know they were wrong?” he asked.
“Because they said things about her life that I knew were incorrect,” I said.
“But they could still be right,” he said, “about her death, couldn’t they?”
“I refuse to believe that,” I said. “I begged Mary to come with me out of Cortina, but she turned back at the last second. She’ll come though, eventually.”
“So you were my mother’s friend?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And him?” Timothy said, glancing at Drew.
“He’s my friend,” I said. I looked at Drew and he nodded.
Timothy walked away and deliberated with his fellow mountain-dwellers.
“Is any of that true?” Drew asked.
“All of it,” I replied.
Timothy returned and untied the ropes that bound us. The other children, however, had their weapons ready. “Come with me,” he said.
We followed him out of the cave, wary of the resident bird of prey, but finding the skies empty for the time being. Drew and I had already taken in the view from the mesa’s western edge. Timothy led us to a spot on the southern side with another panoramic view, broken only by the mountain peak directly to our south.
“Do you see that?” he asked.
I peered across the mountains at the hills beyond. I vaguely saw grasslands pocked with shadows cast by occasional clouds. One dark mark was darker than the rest. “I see it,” I said.
“That’s the Stricken,” Timothy said. “Right now he’s wandering the former farmlands looking for any stray players. He does this periodically. Then he’ll try the city again, and continue to sweep through the continent. We’re lucky he doesn’t come up here, or maybe it’s only a matter of time.”
“What city?” I asked.
“Navia,” Timothy said, pointing to a series of gray shapes that rose against the sky. “The city was the first to fall after the Stricken showed up. We wait here for the day the lights come back on in the castle. Then we’ll know things are finally getting better.”
“But with the garuda here attacking you, this can’t be a safe,” I said.
“Between the stampedes on one side, and the rainforest on the other, there’s no place safer,” Timothy said. “We’ve learned to outmaneuver the garuda. Mostly.”
“What do you know about the rainforest?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said. “There’s a woman that lives there. She seems to have staked the whole place out for herself. We don’t mess with her.” Surely he didn’t mean Nadine.
“What does she look like?” I asked.
“Old,” he said. “Gray hair, pale skin.”
“I was hoping to find my wife out there,” I said. “Nadine Cross. She’s got shoulder length black hair and tan skin, a little darker than mine.” At least, she did the last time I saw her, at the funeral.
“We don’t get a lot of people passing through here,” Timothy said, “but I’ve seen a woman fitting that description before. That was back when we let people cross into the rainforest without giving them a hard time. Before we had some visitors that gave us a hard time.”
“So she’s in the rainforest then?” I asked.
“If it’s the same woman, which it might not be,” he said, “she headed in that direction. The rainforest is inhospitable though, and the gray-haired woman tends to chase people away.”
I nodded. It wasn’t confirmation of life, but I would take what I could get.
“You said you can outmaneuver the garuda,” Drew said. “Is that what you call what happened earlier, where the bird almost scooped up that little girl?”
“We got her back,” Timothy said.
“What if you could kill the garuda?” Drew asked.
“It would respawn,” Timothy said.
“But think of the XP,” Drew said. “You would eventually get stronger than that bird brain.”
“Or die trying,” he said.
“Let us give it a shot,” I said. In the very least it would get the children off our backs.
Timothy arched an eyebrow. “Fine,” he said. “It’s your funeral.”
“You sure about this, Cale?” Drew asked.
“Worst comes to worst,” I said, “we make a run for it.”
17
“So what’s our way out of this if it goes sideways?” Drew asked. His back was pressed against mine. We stood in the middle of the mesa, weapons ready. My hand was a little sticky from the sap that continued to sweat through the handle of my wood katana, but I ignored it.
“Do you have enough stamina to run to the western edge?” I asked.
Drew nodded.
“Good,” I said. “We need a code word. If either of us shouts it, we run full speed and start climbing down into the rainforest.”
“How about flee?” Drew asked.
“Done,” I said.
We stood in the open for a long time watching the skies for any sign of movement. We were on edge, so there were a few false alarms. Then Drew pointed to the north.
A bird of unlikely size soared through the air, rust-red feathers covering its entire body except its head and neck, which were pure white. Its long golden beak curved down to a sharp point. The animal had its eyes trained on us.
Let’s see what we’ve got, I thought, staring hard at the oncoming bird. It was a Level 29 Garuda. We could handle that.
When it got close, I activated Pollen. The bird was distracted, but not blinded. I was disappointed that my noxious yellow cloud hadn’t inflicted its signature debuff. Drew shot arrows at the bird, but its HP bar hardly shrank.
The bird swooped past us, soaring back up in the air and circling around for another dive. “Water!” I yelled.
An eleven year old boy in tattered blue clothing stood in the c
ave’s mouth. He provided a trickle of water that I used to Grow a row of spring ivy plants. I pulled them back from their stalks and waited.
Drew’s arrows flooded the air as the bird came toward us. I let the ivy go and it whipped through the air coiling itself back up. As it did, its tendrils slapped the bird’s face and wings, lashing it with a quick stinging force.
That took a sliver of HP away. The bird crashed into the mesa nearby, so I ran toward it, conjuring another Pollen cloud that seemed to do nothing. I jabbed my sword into the bird’s side.
The garuda flapped its wings in a panic as it got to its feet and lunged its beak toward me. It stabbed me in the stomach and halved my HP in one hit. It reared back its head for another peck at my abdomen as I curled into a ball, immobilized by pain.
Drew yelled, “Fire!” A fire bolt snaked its way through the air and flared out in a burst of red orange flame in the garuda’s face. It shrieked and jumped into the air, allowing me to crawl back to where Drew stood, aiming arrows at the retreating bird.
“Flee?” he asked.
“No,” I said. I couldn’t just run away from this bird and leave it to keep preying on these kids. There had to be a way to defeat it. “Let’s rest and regroup.”
I watched Drew’s temples pulse as he ground his teeth for a moment before nodding assent. He hadn’t joined for a hunt. I promised to team up with him to get him to the ocean.
I hobbled back toward the cave entrance as the bird swooped back down from behind. Another fire bolt sent the bird backwards as Drew and I sought safety in the cave.
“You’re back,” Timothy said. “But the garuda’s still out there. Have you tried defeating it?”
“It’s one tough bird,” I said, wincing from the pain cutting across my stomach. My green clothes were dark brown with blood. “We just need some time to heal up, and maybe form a better plan.”
“Let me know when you’re ready to try again,” Timothy said, “but I’m not sending my people out there to help you. Assistance from inside the cave is all you get.” He walked toward the back of the cave, not even offering to cauterize my wounds. Not that I wanted to add third degree burns to my list of injuries.
I laid my head down on the hard cave floor and waited for my HP and MP to regenerate. And, of course, for divine inspiration to strike with a plan.
“I can’t believe they live like this,” Drew said in a low voice. “They don’t even have proper beds.”
“How are there this many children in Ripcord?” I asked. “Mary said Timothy died of leukemia, but some huge pharmaceutical company paid to install Ripcord as a backup in case the treatment was what killed him. There can’t be that many kids in situations like that, can there?”
“It’s fucked up,” Drew said. “All of it. These kids never got to grow up before they died. They never had a choice. At least I made the decision to come here.”
“You did?” I asked. Drew and I had more in common than I realized.
“I ran an investment fund, and a damn good one,” Drew said. “But they say you can’t take the money with you when you die. So I decided to use the money to take me with me. I walked around for a few years with Ripcord dangling from the back of my neck like a doll with a pull string.” He laughed and tilted his head back.
“The insurance companies, the pharma companies, they probably get a discount for bulk signups,” Drew continued. “Not me. I paid through the nose for this. Caveat emptor, I guess. One day I was at work late, which was pretty normal for me, and I had a heart attack. I was thirty-fucking-nine. Now I’ll be thirty-nine for all eternity.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Thankfully Drew did too. It wasn’t every day you got to say that to the person who died. “I chose this too.”
“Get out!” Drew said.
“Not the same way you did. I couldn’t afford to do it on my own. I went skydiving and sabotaged my parachute. I thought I’d land here and reunite with my dead wife. So far the only time I’ve seen her has been in lite-induced hallucinations.”
“What is that stuff anyway?” Drew asked. “Do you smoke it or what?”
“I think it works like chewing tobacco,” I said. “You don’t smoke it.”
“What happens if you try?” Drew asked. “You can smoke tobacco.”
“We should find out,” I said, jumping to my feet. I was missing a lot of HP, but most of my MP had come back.
“Cale, now’s not the time to experiment with drugs.”
“Oh, but it is,” I said, and walked toward the back of the cave to find Timothy. He sat on a large rock, holding court with a few younger children.
“Timothy,” I said, “do you have any green mages?”
“One,” he said, “why?”
“It’s time for a little gardening.”
18
I made three separate runs to the middle of the mesa. Each time, a small water mage provided the base I would need to sprout bamboo. I grew as many small shoots as I could before the garuda caught sight of me, then dashed back to the cave. Without having improved my Speed a few times before this, I’d never make it there and back safely.
Inside the cave, the blue mage and I teamed up to start Growing lite bushes. I warned the children not to chew the leaves and had no choice but to trust that they would obey. It’s not like anyone could call child protective services on me here. If my plan worked, these plants would allow Timothy’s squad to keep fighting garuda after we left.
Drew sat cross-legged on the cave floor and waited for me to finish the setup. It took the rest of the afternoon. I ran out to the mesa, used my knife to whittle bamboo tips to a fine point, and then Grew them until they were six feet tall. In the end, I had a round patch of spiked bamboo ten feet in diameter.
I also taught my green mage protégé how to Grow bamboo, and promised that she would learn to raise her own lite at higher levels.
“Ok,” I said. Timothy and the other children stood around the cave listening to my plan. “I’m going to take these lite leaves,” I said, holding up the wad of leaves from my inventory, “and scatter them around the base of the bamboo. Then Timothy is going to lite them on fire when the garuda shows up.
“I am?” Timothy asked. “Why would I do that?”
“Because the smoke from the drug will disorient the bird and it will come crashing down on the bamboo spikes, impaling itself. At least, that’s the plan.”
“When do we try this out?” Timothy asked.
“Now,” I said. The sun was starting to set and I was too eager to wait until the next day. “Once the bird is incapacitated, we’ll finish it off by arrow and sword.” I flourished my wooden katana, hoping to inspire a little confidence.
“You’re a green mage,” Timothy said, “where did you get a sword?”
“I made it,” I said.
“Let me see that,” Timothy said, reaching his hand out.
I passed it to him, but warned, “It’s sticky from sap.”
He held the wooden sword up and looked at it closely. Then he put it on the ground and aimed a torrent of fire at it with one hand. I leapt at him, but the other children held me back. In a few moments, Timothy handed the sword back to me.
It was a darker color now, chocolate with a reddish tinge. I expected it to be charred into oblivion, but it wasn’t damaged. It was actually stronger than ever, and lacked its characteristic stickiness.
Æmberwood Sword: Power +10. Bonus +8 to Power for sword fighters.
“I hardened the resin leaking from the wood,” Timothy said. He looked proud of himself.
“How did you know that would work?” I asked.
“I’ve been in Ripcord for a long time,” he said. “I’ve learned a thing or two. Good luck with the bird.”
Drew and I ran out toward the bamboo spikes and I sprinkled all of my lite leaves onto the ground. Well, all but one. I couldn’t bring myself to give up my last leaf. We hung back until the bird returned for another c
hance at dining on player flesh.
“Now!” I yelled. Timothy shot flames toward the base of the bamboo stalks, igniting the lite leaves. Drew and I hung back and covered our faces as smoke rose from the ground. The bird dove toward us, flying face first into the lite cloud.
We held our breath and waited. The garuda seemed to waver midair, aiming right toward the spikes I had spent the afternoon carving. Then, at the last possible moment, it righted itself and ascended again, flapping its giant wings into a few of the sharp bamboo poles. It took only the slightest damage from that encounter and knocked a few of the plants over.
