by Edwin McRae
“On that note,” said Vari as she gently pushed him away, “I’m not sure leaving me with Arix is what I would call safe.”
“I shall be here too,” offered Citadel.
“True, and thank you, Sid. No offense though, but Arix is a little more corporeal than you are and therefore more dangerous.”
“Point taken.”
“What is it about Arix that worries you, Vari?” asked Mark.
He felt like he already knew the answer. It was clear that Arix thought of Vari as an NPC, nothing more. Just a bunch of code and dialogue scripts. He didn’t know this world yet, not like Mark did. Coupled with the fact that Arix was more of a hardcore gamer than a roleplayer, it meant that the executioner wasn’t going to change his attitude anytime soon. Still, he wanted to hear what Vari had to say before he jumped in with his own opinions. He stayed quiet while she formulated the right words.
“It’s hard to explain,” began Vari, “but it’s like he thinks I’m no different to the monsters, the ‘mobs’ as you call them. And it’s not personal, I know that much. He was the same with Braemar and with the villagers back at Citadel. I watched him when he was exploring the place and talking to people. He didn’t really chat to the villagers like you or I would. His manner was...I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“He asked very direct questions and then cut the conversation short as soon as he found out what he needed to know?”
“You heard him too?”
“Yes, and I’ve also seen that kind of behavior before.”
He’s the sort of gamer who just wants the quest brief info and clicks through everything else. As much as he wanted to, Mark couldn’t think of a way to share this knowledge with Vari and Citadel, not without depicting Reign of Blood as the game it actually was.
“I have to concur with Vari’s observations,” said Citadel. “He asked me many questions about the fortress and Garland, and did exactly as you say, cut my answers short and moved onto the next question. It was more of an interrogation than a conversation. To be frank, I find the man quite unnerving.”
“I felt the difference between you and him straight away, Mark,” Vari continued. “You actually want to connect with people.”
“I second that,” added Citadel. “You’re really quite engaging, if I may be so bold.”
“Thank you, Sid.” Mark felt genuinely touched by that.
“Yes, and Braemar felt it too. Even Dayna, though she seemed determined to make it an uphill battle for you.”
Mark nodded sadly. “We had enough of a connection to dislike each other, so I get what you’re saying.”
Vari looked at the executioner on the other side of the chasm. He hadn’t moved, seeming content to rest and observe the pulsating mass below. “Arix seems to neither like me nor dislike me. Yes, he teases and provokes, but it’s like he’s playing with a toy rather than a person. I’m with Sid. He unnerves me. He lacks any regard for anyone but himself and you. The rest of us…”
She left the sentence unfinished but Mark knew where she was going with it. Vari was worried that Arix would turn on her and Citadel as soon as it made sense for him to do so. And she was probably right. It would be nothing for Arix to kill Vari and destroy Citadel. He’d seen plenty of instances where players had slaughtered whole villages of NPCs for the sheer brutal ‘fun’ of it.
In fact, many a FIVR had become famous by allowing you to play the bad guy, mowing down civilians with a car or machine gun like they were pins in a bowling alley. He’d been guilty of it himself, gunning down cops in a mall to try for a ‘berzerk kill streak’ or flattening a line of chanting hari krishnas with his stolen car to complete the relevant achievement. That part of gaming hadn’t changed since Space Invaders. Virtual characters were there for the gamer’s entertainment, nothing more.
But here, Mark could feel the difference. He didn’t know how, but Vari felt truly alive to him. So did Citadel, Calder and everyone else he’d met here in Reign of Blood. Even the reivers. Yes, they had killed him and he had killed them, but it was far deeper than shooting space invaders. He wished Arix could see that, would take a moment to look more closely at this world. His mother had told him, almost every day, that he was too sensitive, a dreamer, an ‘over thinker’ who would stress himself into an early grave. His ex-wife had echoed that sentiment. Maybe, or maybe he could just feel things that other people couldn’t. There was something intuitively alive about this virtual world, more than any other he’d experienced, and he sorely wanted Arix to understand that.
“This is going to sound strange, guys, especially since we’re having this conversation beside that thing.” He jerked his thumb at the monstrosity below. “Do you remember your childhood?”
Vari raised a dark eyebrow at him but it was Citadel who spoke up first. “In fact, I do remember a few bits and pieces. It’s patchy, but I recall growing up in Garland, in a small village called Oakdale. My parents grew wheat for the local flour mill. I had a sister.” His voice took on the slightest tremor. “She drowned in the river that ran through our farm.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that, Sid.”
“Thank you, Mark.”
“So how did you go from being a wheat farmer to a warlock?”
“Head too high in the clouds to feel the dirt under his feet. I believe my father used to say that. Or perhaps my mother? I don’t know. Neither do I recall how I came to live in the Citadel. Ivara of the Dancing flame was the resident warlock at the time. Eccentric woman. I must have wandered there somehow and she took me under her wing.”
Mark nodded in recognition. It sounded all very plausible, and all too like something a narrative designer would write into a character profile, so he decided to try something.
“Okay, you totally don’t have to answer this, but here goes.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to cool the heat of embarrassment that was fast spreading across his face. “Who was the first girl you fantasized about while masturbating?”
“Mark!” It was the first time Mark had seen Vari look genuinely shocked. It was a seriously endearing expression.
Citadel laughed. “It’s alright, and I think I see the point of the question. Sorting reality from illusion are we Mark?”
“Trying to, yes Sid.”
“In that case, his name was Albert. He had beautifully smooth skin that tanned to a luscious gold in the summer, a mane of gorgeous blond curls, an adorable lopsided smile and buttocks that could crack walnuts.”
“Right, thank you, Sid.”
“My pleasure, actually. I haven’t thought of him in decades. I should frolic with that memory more often.”
“Did you and he…”
“No, alas not. I quickly learned to despise the term ‘just friends’ with a passion.”
“Yeah, it’s not one of my favorites either, Sid.”
“I gave a boy a blow job in return for a puppy,” blurted Vari.
“What?!” exclaimed Mark and Citadel at the same time.
“She was a really cute puppy,” she added, looking suitably abashed. “We were inseparable for six years, she and I. I buried her a few days before I was captured by the reivers. Dogpox. If she’d been alive that day, those reivers wouldn’t have got anywhere near us. Tulip’s nose was amazing, even for a dog, and reivers aren’t renowned for their cleanliness.”
“And the boy?”
Vari shrugged. “I caught him doing another puppy trade the next day, so I put highland senna in his morning goat’s milk. Perhaps a little bit too much. The poor boy barely left the privy for two days.”
Mark grinned. “Interested in alchemy from an early age, were we?”
“Of course,” said Vari with a wry smile on her dark lips.
Mark folded his arms and looked across the chasm at Arix. He was on his way back to them, crawling across the inside of the basilica like a spider. The stories Citadel and Vari had shared wouldn’t prove a thing to the executioner. This was just a game to him and he would di
smiss it all as a far more intuitive narrative system than most, but a system all the same. Mark wasn’t buying it. He’d read a bit about developments in AI, about machine learning. Google’s AlphaZero beat the world’s best chess computer after teaching itself to play chess for a mere four hours. Therefore, it was possible that Citadel, Vari and everyone else in Reign of Blood had lived their entire virtual lives in a matter of weeks of processing time. Days even. His mind boggled at the complexity of a system like that. It was no wonder the Reign of Blood developers had kept this version of their game a secret. It was a breakthrough that would be copied by every big game company in the world once it went public.
And if Citadel and Vari had indeed lived complete lives within this virtual environment, had lived, loved and lost just like people in RL, there was no reason to treat them any different. Their flesh and blood was made out of digits instead of cells but that was all that set them apart from Arix. In fact, he and Arix weren’t all that different right now either. Though his body felt real, and certainly hurt like it was real, it was just a digital representation interacting with his own neural network.
It was at this point Mark wished he’d read more than the first chapter of that book on Cartesian Philosophy. Cogito, ergo sum. “I think, therefore I am.” If it was good enough for Descartes, it was good enough for Vari and Citadel. Arix could go fuck himself.
“Okay, my friends, here’s what we do,” announced Mark. “We cleanse this chasm. Then we help Arix hunt down his inquisitor and make her send him home before he does this world of ours a serious mischief. In the meantime, we trust him about as far as we can throw him.”
“I’d like to throw him into the chasm with that thing,” said Vari with a wicked smile.
“He’d just resurrect and demand that we help him retrieve his gear.”
“I know,” she shrugged. “But it’d still be worth it.”
Mark laughed as he gestured for Vari to give Citadel and Volcanic Bastard back to him. She obliged, clearly happy to be relieved of the dual responsibility.
“You guys are with me. Sid, are we okay to forget that statue over here? Will the roof fall be enough without it?”
“If you’re happy to tidy up with Ivara’s Ignited Exhalation and Volcanic Bastard,” Citadel supposed.
“With you two helping me, no problem.”
It was Vari’s turn to give him a rib-cracking hug. Mark smiled to himself as he luxuriated in her embrace. He had no proof. Everything he’d just theorized was just that, a bunch of theories. But it felt real and right, and that’s all that mattered to him now. He didn’t care if he stayed in a coma for the rest of his days in RL. Maybe, one day, they’d pull the plug on him or he’d die of some hospital infection. In RL he was just as likely to die of cancer or a car crash anyway.
At least here he could make something of whatever life he had left to him.
In here, he could be alive.
15
[Karina]
The descent into the temple’s bowels proved to be an intestinal labyrinth of twists and turns.
The journey left Karina doubly glad of Maribella’s choice of scout. Colik had an almost supernatural knack for picking out subtleties in architecture, air movement and water flow. It was a faultless performance, marred only by the loss of Kravel. For all his skills of concentration and deduction, Colik was a little neglectful of his companions. He didn’t think to point out the pressure plate that he intuitively avoided until Kravel stomped on it with his own oversized boot. The floor beneath the man-at-arms parted, dropping him several meters onto a bed of iron spikes. His meaty bulk, having served Karina so admirably as a human shield, worked against Kravel this time. His own weight drove the spikes through both armor and flesh, leaving him impaled and squealing like a stuck pig.
To the captain’s credit, the woman didn’t hesitate. She ordered Tris to put an arrow through Kravel’s throat. It saved them all from the shrill screams and mercifully hastened Kravel’s death. Karina decided she needed to deter Colik from further negligence by subjecting him to a bit of Brain Seeding. It was a technique she’d gained at Level 4.
Seed of Doubt
The caster may plant a vivid false memory in the subject’s mind, one that causes compulsive rumination and exaggerates the associated emotions.
Tier 3: The memory causes a strong involuntary physical response in the subject, such as terror or euphoria.
“Rumination is the mill that grinds us into dust.”
- Kerisk Bloodfinger
She glared into his bloodshot eyes and planted a memory of a particularly creative torture. It involved honey, fire ants, and a particularly sensitive orifice. Colik’s face took on a taut cast and he could no longer look Karina in the eyes. But it had the desired effect. He pointed out every potential hazard from then on with almost painful eagerness.
Colik’s fearful guidance eventually brought them to an immense underground chamber. Luminescent fungi lit the place with a pallid hue. The walls were decorated with bones and skulls, formed into swirling patterns of conflict and violence. Agrovesh presided over it all from the far end of the chamber, fierce and foreboding. At her feet sat an altar stained almost black with centuries of sacrificial blood.
Karina ordered the others to wait and muttered, “Sparks of Sentience”. Low cunning twinkled among the luminescence. Camouflaged predators lay in wait.
“Captain. We have company. Seven creatures, hiding among the fungus.”
Maribella acknowledged the intel with a nod and ordered the archers to her flanks. Tris and Dez readied their bows as the captain took it upon herself to be the bait. Sword in hand, she moved towards the altar with the grace of a cat stalking an unwitting rat.
The chamber’s denizens reacted before Maribella got within a few meters of her target, bursting from their fungal hideaways in a shower of spores. At first glance, Karina took them for moths. Their velvety wings and fluffy abdomens gave that impression, but the likeness ended in long rows of jagged teeth and scythe-like claws.
They were quick too, but not as quick as Tris and Dez. Arms became a blur as the archers fired arrow after arrow in quick succession, intercepting each creature before it could lay a talon on their captain. The animals shrieked and fell to the stones where Maribella proceeded to separate heads from thoraxes with surgical precision.
Your party has slain seven Level 3 Mushraptors.
Your XP reward per party member = 35 XP
Your party currently consists of six members.
Silence fell as Tris and Dez advanced into the chamber, arrows nocked, their wary eyes searching. Had the mushraptors made a sound as they plummeted from the ceiling, the archers might have stood a chance. But clearly the monsters had learned from the sacrifice of their fellow broodlings. They came down like a velvet curtain, unfurling their wings at the last moment to convert their falls into swoops so sharp and low that Karina heard the dry shriek of their claws scraping across the stone floor. Dez got one arrow away before the mushraptor hit him with claws fully extended. He went down hard, his assailant latched to his chest. The mushraptor ripped the bow from him with two claws while digging in deep with its remaining four. Teeth closed around his throat, silencing his screams with a crunch and a gout of blood. Tris did a little better, felling two mushraptors in mid-swoop before a third took her legs out from under her. The archer’s head hit the stones hard enough to knock her out. Unconsciousness spared the tender agonies of being torn limb from limb.
Captain Maribella fared the best, ducking, diving and rolling her way across the chamber. Karina watched with quiet fascination as the warrior woman maintained a steady pattern of dodge and counterattack. She seemed to have a knack for judging the creatures’ flight patterns, putting herself between the lines and then cutting those lines with a swift strike of her sword. Several flying monstrosities tumbled to the ground before one got lucky, raking Maribella across the back of the legs with its claws. The captain crashed to the ground, and when she tri
ed to stand it was clear that the attack had severed one of her hamstrings.
“Durk. Go get her.”
The man-at-arms saluted, his long face split by a grin of innocent pride, and charged into the fray. He was an easy target for the Mushraptors but his armor proved impervious to their talons. Keeping his head down to protect his face, he scooped the captain up like she was no heavier than a child. In moments he was back, and as a group they retreated from the chamber and slammed the heavy door behind them.
Your party has slain six Level 3 Mushraptors.
Your XP reward per party member = 45 XP
Your party currently consists of four members.
Karina knelt beside Maribella and inspected her leg wound. The gash was already knitting together at the corners.
“What’s your tier in Vigorous Healing, Captain?”
“Four.”
“Then you’ll be right as rain by the time we’ve had lunch.”
“Lunch,” grinned Durk. “Good idea, madam.”
Karina shrugged. “It’ll give me time to consider our options. We’re not leaving without that altar.”
“I’ll eat on the go then,” suggested Colik as he took a strap of dried meat out of his pack. “See if I can find us another way in, one that those beasties won’t be expecting.”
“Thank you, Colik. That would be splendid.”
Colik scampered off down the passageway. Beside them Durk was already tucking into his rations with childish gusto. Karina had allowed him to recover and keep Kravel’s share, so there was plenty to go around. She sat down beside Maribella and helped the woman remove her backpack. They ate together to the sounds of Durk’s noisy chewing and gulping.
Karina mulled over the options in her mind. They could return to their main camp for reinforcements and take the chamber by force. Her men-at-arms could draw the creatures into attacking while her archers picked them off from the relative safety of the arched doorway. Yet that would all take time, and she wasn’t sure that time was on her side. The demon knew she was after the altars and might have enlisted the warlock’s help in tracking them down first. She had the advantage still, having studied the historical tomes and deduced where in this dead city the altars might reside. But the demon could always follow her trail. Out here they were sitting ducks to the likes of him. No. They needed to clear the chamber, find all of the entrances, and hold them while Colik went back to the camp.
