by Matt Vancil
trekked across the lunar landscape towards the First God’s tomb.
A set of stairs scaled for giants dropped down into the pyramid. At the base of the steps, a long corridor extended into a great stone maze. The walls were smooth with no visible joins, as if the maze had been carved directly into the landscape. Eddies of gray sand from the surface filled the hall, and rose in puffs from the footsteps of the clockwork automatons patrolling the corridors.
Noob toed a tiny sand dune. “This is weirdly familiar.”
Bandaid looked worried. “This dungeon’s way beyond us,” she said. “Look at the monster levels. We’re like twenty below the least of them.”
“This place is meant to be raided, with heavy losses,” said Mansex. “Fifty people might have a chance.
“Or Chuck Norris,” added Bandaid.
“You’re damned right.”
The Truth didn’t look so sure.
“Even then, a direct approach might not work,” said Yanker. She was speaking in a whisper even though the patrols couldn’t hear them. “A raid made it this far a month back. Found the Moonchart, took the door from the bottom of Black Chasm. They bulldozed in fifty-strong but wound up wiping ‘cause their main healer got DC’d in the middle of a fight. Personally, I bet they made up that last part to save face.” She looked over, and stopped. “Noob? You with us? Shit, you didn’t get DC’d again, did you?”
Noob had gone rigid, staring at the sand in a corner. “She was here.” That’s where he’d seen it—the gray sand, the featureless stone architecture. We’ve been in this ass-damn maze for twelve hours. This was where she’d been when he cut the cable. He had cost her the Godsword.
No wonder she hated him. No wonder she had left.
“Who was here?” asked Yanker. “Are we missing something?”
“Alert!” yelled the game’s narrator. “Server reset in one hour!”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” said Mansex.
“It’s a Wednesday,” said Bandaid. “Did we all forget it’s a Wednesday?”
“Fuck!” Mansex stomped a small rage circle. “The door opens on the half-night? Seriously? There’s hard, and then there’s impossible!”
“I’ll bet they did that intentionally,” said Yanker.
“You think?”
“After last month? Absolutely. Gotta keep people playing.”
“If we get booted with the reset,” asked Noob, “will we still be in here when the servers come back online?”
“Do you want to wait and find out?” asked Yanker. “We’ve got an hour.”
Great, thought Reid. “No pressure.”
“Plan hasn’t changed,” said Yanker. She eyed the automatons. “We can’t fight these fuckers, so we won’t. Noob stealths to a safe spot past the patrols, Mansex teleports us to his new location. All the way to the end.”
“That assumes he can find a spot without overlapping aggro,” said Mansex.
“And how do we defeat whatever boss is at the end?” asked Noob.
“One thing at a time, Reid. Noob. Sorry.”
“The fuck is Reid?” asked Mansex.
“Last month’s raid put a map of the place on their website,” said Bandaid. “I’m linking to it in chat.”
“Wow,” said Mansex. “When you fall off the RP wagon, you fall hard.”
“It’s incomplete—they didn’t finish it what with getting killed and all. But it should help us for a while. Noob, go straight, then take the first left.”
Noob nodded, dropped into stealth. A month ago, I was condemning Astrid for this. He snuck past the first of the giant clock-men.
Some time later, after a number of dead ends and wrong turns, Noob broke stealth in yet another five-way intersection. “Looks clear,” he said. A second later, the guild teeped to him in a puff of pixels.
Mansex slammed her spellbook shut. “I’m almost out of mats.”
“I thought you loaded before we left,” Yanker said.
“I can carry 99 of a thing in my inventory. Each casting uses five, one for each of us. I’ve got four castings left. And I wouldn’t need them if Bandy could read a fucking map.”
“You know, what I really need right now is to be judged, so thank you,” said Bandaid. “This map! It hasn’t been right since the entrance.”
“Yeah, hard to believe you couldn’t trust something you found on the internet.”
“It’s like this is an entirely different dungeon!”
“Maybe it is,” said Noob.
“We’re running out of time!”
“You don’t think I know that?”
“Alert! Server reset in thirty minutes!”
Mansex screamed in frustration. Bandaid cried.
“Hold it together, guys,” said Yanker shakily. “We haven’t come this far just to give up now. And… well, there’s always next month.”
In the darkness of the conference room, Reid studied the map Bandaid had linked to in guild chat. Come on, Reid. Patterns, that’s what you do, numbers and patterns. What am I missing?
He flipped back to the game tab and pulled up the map there. “I’m looking at the map right now,” he said as Noob, “last month’s, and what we’ve scouted here, and Bandy’s right. It’s not the same dungeon. It’s a chaotic, crisscrossing maze. It doesn’t match.”
“See?” said Bandaid. They all heard something being crumpled up and thrown. “Fuck you, map.”
“Bandy,” Reid asked, “What month is it?”
“March.”
“In game, dumb-buns,” said Mansex.
“Oh, uh… it would be… Dracinar. Month of the Dragon.”
The Dragon. That rang a bell. In the month he’d been playing, it seemed like he’d been seeing a dragon everywhere, not just the glade. But where?
Reid pulled a marker from the drawer and drew dots on the desk, every place they’d encountered one of these five-way intersections—star-shaped intersections, it struck Reid. He connected the dots between them. The pattern was maddeningly familiar. He blinked, and when he finally saw it, he couldn’t see anything else.
“It’s the constellation.”
The guild turned to Noob.
“The hallways, the intersections,” Noob said, “they’re the Dragon! The constellation, I mean. We’ve been seeing it everywhere, right? The tapestries in Ord-Anmuhr, frigging right outside, right there in the sky, just staring at us. Everything related to this dungeon has had an astronomical theme, right? Moon maps and all? Why not clues in the stars?”
“Different month, different constellation. The map was wrong.” Bandy said with relief.
“So if this month is the dragon, and the first star intersection by the entrance was his mouth, then I’m assuming his tail is the destination.”
“Why not his balls?”
“Shut up, Mansex. So that means we go…” He dropped into stealth, headed down the corridor corresponding to the dragon’s spine.
Yanker grinned after him and elbowed Bandaid. “So misnamed. Am I right?”
Seven turns and three teleports later,
Bandaid spotted an inscribed tablet by the entrance taller than she was. “Behold the tomb of the First God,” she read, “betrayed by his children in the Godswar. Ever watchful sits His Ghost upon the Sundered Throne.” She looked up. “I thought the First God was dead.”
“He is,” said Yanker.
“Then who’s that on the throne?”
“I think we’ll probably have to find out.”
They padded into the chamber. Beyond the sarcophagus, in the darkened nook upon the split-backed throne sat the Ghost of the First God. Sticking out of His chest was a great sword.
“There it is,” Jodie whispered. “The Godsword.”
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nbsp; “Buried in the chest of a Level 1,000 elite,” said Mansex. “Forecast tonight calls for pain.”
“Right,” said Yanker. “Okay. Man. He is big.”
“And we’re gonna kill him… how?” asked Bandaid. “We total half his level. This is a raid dungeon, and there’s only five of us?”
“I didn’t say we were gonna kill him.” Yanker looked slyly at Noob. “We’re just gonna distract him. While Noob picks his pocket.”
Noob blinked. “I’m gonna what?”
Yanker grinned. “That’s always been the plan. It’s why I’ve groomed you the way I have,” she said. “Purple Ninja Armor, maxed out on stealth and stealing. No one’s ever seen what was at the back of this dungeon, so no one knows how to prepare for it… but unless they did a special tech request just for this encounter, then the Godsword is in his drop table, which means a rogue maxed for thieving has a chance of getting his sticky fingers on it.”
“You hope,” said Mansex.
“That’s… kind of a crazy gamble,” said Bandaid.
Yanker nodded. “I put the chances of it actually working in the ten to twenty percent range… which is way higher than if we’d come in here with a raid. Fifty toons, probably from different guilds, all with an equal claim to the Godsword? This is our best shot, believe me.”
“Impossible,” said Mansex.
Yanker nodded. “Maybe.”
“Sometimes,” quoted Noob, “I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Yanker grinned.
“Well,” said Mansex, “if we do fail, at least we’re gonna fail spectacularly, and that’s cool ‘cause I don’t do anything half-assed.”
Noob clapped Mansex on the back, then turned to Yanker. “How do you want to do this, Captain?”
Yanker took in the pillars holding the ceiling aloft. “Okay. We’ll use the terrain, these pillars here—stay out of arm’s length. I’ll peg him with frost arrows and glue traps. Mansex, ice-blasts. Bandy, dot him, then stay back and heal. You die, we can’t rez.”
“I have done this before, you know.”
“Truth? You just keep doing your thing, man.”
The Truth cracked his knuckles.
“And Noob? Stay behind him and keep spamming Pickpocket every time it refreshes. Just don’t draw his aggro, ‘cause I don’t know that we could save you.”
“I won’t let you down.” Reid hoped that was true.
Yanker beamed. “I hope you all realize that we’re the first players to make it this far. Just let that sink in.”
“Alert! Server reset in ten minutes!”
“But not for too long.” She unslung her bow, nocked a pair of glue arrows. “All right, mates. Let’s make histor—.”
A whistle behind them.
A little baffled—but for the Ghost of the First God, the chamber appeared empty—Noob and the guild turned around.
Greef waved at them. Behind him were fifty leering members of
“No.” Yanker couldn’t believe it. “How?”
“Illegal mod,” said Mansex. “Has to be.”
A wave from Greef, and the Wickeds attacked.
A stray arrow pierced the First God’s aggro range. He looked up.
“Well, shit,” said Yanker.
The First God bellowed a chamber-shaking roar and charged the raid.
The Truth leapt in front of the rampaging god, shield held high. With a single punch, the First God crushed him like an aluminum can under a sledgehammer, killing him instantly.
“Holy crapping Christ!” Mansex started casting, but Greef’s net caught her and Bandaid and anchored both in place. Wickeds swarmed them. They screamed and died in tandem.
“Get the sword!” yelled Yanker. She ran from the Wickeds, straight at the First God.
The Ghost hurled a floor-splitting punch at her. Yanker darted aside, ran up his arm, and jumped to grab hold of the hilt of the sword jutting out of His chest.
Greef shrieked and pointed at Yanker. As one, the Wickeds swung their attention her way.
Yanker planted her feet on the First God’s chest and heaved. “Come on!” It moved not an inch. “Come on! We got here first! It’s ours!” The First God grabbed her in His fist and plucked her away. “Not fai—!”
He pulped Yanker against the floor.
“Jodie!” Noob flew to her side, but Yanker was dead.
“Reid, move!” Yanker’s lips hadn’t moved, but Jodie’s message came through over guild chat. He rolled to the side.
A trunk-thick fist exploded the floor around him and splattered Yanker’s body like an overripe watermelon. Noob bounced to his feet, hurled down a shadow pellet, and vanished into stealth.
Arrows and spells punched into side of the First God’s head. With
Still stealthed, Noob dodged flying dead Wickeds and wall-jumped onto the tablet by the entrance for a better view. The surviving Wickeds were attacking the First God in ranks, striking and retreating, losing at least one toon every time He counterattacked. Healers ran darting through the dead, raising what fallen they could. With thirty curses and dots over his head, the First God’s health bar was slowly but steadily shrinking.
“What the fucking no! How can they be here?” Yanker was melting down over the GroupSpeak line. “How could they follow us?”
The Wickeds had eclipsed the player loss to damage ratio—the First God was shedding hit points faster than He could kill His attackers. The math was on their side, Reid realized. They were going to win. “They’re gonna drop him. When can you get back here?”
“The door’s closed and our healer’s dead,” said Yanker. “It’s up to you.”
“To do what? What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was scarcely a whisper.
A row of Wicked wizards hit the First God with a salvo of ice spells, slowing Him to a complete stop. Greef ran past a pair of necromancers—both tagged his blade with black energy charges as he passed—and backstabbed the Ghost.
The scream shook house-sized chunks of stone from the roof and sent them exploding into the floor. Few Wickeds survived the impact, or the shrapnel. The Ghost of the First God arched, lurched, and collapsed on His back. Dead.
Greef—one of six Wickeds left alive—leapt up onto the First God’s chest and grabbed the Godsword with both hands.
“Oh, no,” said Yanker. It was like hearing her dream slip away. “No, no, no, no, NO!”
Greef heaved on the sword. It didn’t budge. He screamed and tried again.
So focused was Greef on dislodging the Sword that he didn’t hear the warning shouts from his own guildies. A dozen automatons summoned by the First God’s dying shout stormed into the room. With mechanical precision, the remaining Wickeds—Greef included—died on whirling articulated blades.
It was suddenly eerily quiet. Everything in the room but Noob was dead. “I’m still here,” he said, as much to confirm it for himself as to the guild. A trio of relieved sighs answered him.
He slid off the tablet and stealthed between patrolling automatons to the First God’s body. It wasn’t glowing the way a body did when there was treasure to be looted. Reid right-clicked it. A treasure window opened.
“Is it there? What is it?” asked Mansex.
“What’s it look like?” Bandaid asked.
“It’s empty,” said Reid. It was—the treasure menu was bare. “There’s nothing here.”
“How can it not be there?” said Yanker. “I can see it in His chest!”
“It’s not here,” Noob repeated. “I don’t think it ever was. The sword in the chest… I think it’s part of the character model. Like a lure. Like the light on an anglerfish.”
“Well then where’s the Godsword?”
“I don’t know!”
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nbsp; “Warning! Server reset in five minutes!”
Noob looked around for something, anything. What was the answer? What was the puzzle? If this wasn’t the Godsword, then what was?
His eyes went from the Sword-that-wasn’t-the-Godsword to the stone sarcophagus in the pillar of light. And he noticed, for the first time, that the sarcophagus was sized for a normal person—the First God wouldn’t have fit in it. He stealthed over for a better look.
Twelve designs were inscribed in the lid in silver filigree, with gems inlaid at points along their outlines. One matched the constellation of the dragon. “What’s in there, do you think?”
“You open that, you break stealth,” said Yanker. “What the hell. Go for it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Noob put his shoulder to the sarcophagus lid and pushed. It slid open with ease, and Noob became visible.
Inside was a shimmering membrane dark as jet—a black circle.
“Another instance,” said Noob.
“Another one?”
The automatons buzzed in alarm and surged towards Reid, blades spinning. Noob vaulted into the casket and through the black circle.
Reid’s computer screen darkened to a slate gray and pulsed as if breathing. A loading bar filled, unaccompanied by any graphic. There was no picture, no name to indicate where he was going.
He stared into the gray of the screen. His senior year, the night after he’d lost his virginity to Astrid, he had driven out to Owen Beach—a tiny stretch of stony shore in Point Defiance his grandparents had liked to take him to as a child.
It had been 2:00am when he snuck into the park, walking down into the grass bowl from a street that ran perpendicular to the closed gate. It had been foggy that night, so foggy that he couldn’t see the massive sentinel trees around the duck ponds until he could nearly touch them. By memory more than sight, he had stumbled his way through the park’s interior roads and found the fenced, wooded cliff that ran around the rim of the park.
By the time he had arrived at the beach, the fog had grown so thick that the only lights he could see were from the ferry dock on Vashon Island. Then the fog had thickened and swallowed those, too, and the gray of the clouds blended in with the gray of the water until he couldn’t tell where sky ended and sea began. It was a vast expanse of gray nothing, a blank canvas. He had reached the end of the world.
