Darkness Named

by Riley S. Keene

  There was also a herd of sleipdeer off to her right. They were the normal version of the creature she’d hunted what seemed like ages ago. Much less garishly colored, too. There were four or five of them in the small group, and the six-legged creatures appeared to be grazing. It was an appealing scene, and one that Tanisha would have loved to stop and watch. But she was afraid of losing track of where she was going. Without the compass, there was no way to really be certain she was heading in the right direction otherwise. There weren’t exactly a lot of good landmarks around her.

  After around another five hundred feet or so, Tanisha stopped her chair and stilled herself to listen out into the woods. There was a cacophony of sound, and a creature cried out. Combat. Was there someone else out there, attacking something? Would they be friend or foe?

  Tanisha opened her inventory and grabbed her axe. She wasn’t sure what to expect. If there was someone else out there in these woods, would they see her as a competitor for resources, or as a friend to share work with? There was no way to predict, and so she had to be ready for anything.

  Through the trees, Tanisha saw the flailing of a beast. She urged her chair in that direction. It looked like a sleipdeer was going berserk, and Tanisha knew from experience how much of a challenge those could be at lower levels. Especially for a newer player who might not know those attacks could be dodged.

  Emerging through the trees, however, Tanisha was stilled by the sight. In the game version of dARkness, the monsters didn’t really interact with each other. They couldn’t be damaged by each other’s attack patterns, so unless they were spawned together, you never saw them at the same time. But that didn’t seem to apply here. Instead, the sleipdeer was being attacked by both regular and soldier bees.

  It made sense. Sleipdeer would graze on grass items, which counted as plants. And therefore could be a place of protection for the bees. And the bees would then become aggressive towards the sleipdeer. If the deer-like creature defended itself, and the hive was nearby, soldier bees would rush to defend the weaker bees.

  The soldier bees were impressive, and a bit terrifying. They were around the size of mini-fridges, both in height and bulk. The soldier bees hovered around the sleipdeer, menacing it with their arm-length stingers. Tanisha was amazed—the creature was actually holding its own against the bees, with four or five worker bees littering the ground at its feet. The sleipdeer was injured, but no more or less than the soldier bees it was engaged with.

  Tanisha didn’t really want to join in the combat. She had no stake in this fight, and nothing good would come of her trying to save one or the other. Instead, she’d likely become the next target of whomever she saved. But the combat was also taking place right in her path, and she didn’t want to lose her trajectory on Otekah’s trail.

  With no real good options available, Tanisha just decided to sit tight and watch the battle. From a distance, of course. Soldier bees were aggressive even if they weren’t protecting the workers, so she hoped that, by staying in the nearby treeline, whoever won the fight would just wander off and she could continue on her way.

  It seemed as if she had arrived at the tail end of the fight, though. With all three parties injured, the delay between their attacks was sizable. But eventually, the two types of bee outweighed the one deer, and it performed the overly dramatic death animation. The bees hovered there for a moment, and Tanisha feared that they would turn and come for her. But they eventually retreated, bobbing away through the air towards the rightmost end of the clearing.

  When they vanished into the trees, Tanisha waited a moment longer. Underequipped as she was—and with such few hit points—she didn’t want to get involved in combat against multiple foes. But when they didn’t patrol back into the clearing, she made her way out into the open to continue on her path. However, as she passed over the site of the battle, she paused. What if there was something here she could use? Materials she wouldn’t have to fight for would be nice. And perhaps she could use them to bribe Otekah, to act as if she’d made an attempt at playing the game.

  Tanisha lowered her chair and reached out towards one of the dead bees. She didn’t like touching dead bugs to get them out of her house, and those she didn’t have to butcher for parts. But she pushed past the initial bout of squeamishness by remembering how easy things had been after she’d de-shelled the crabstrosity. Everything was sectioned off and clean. There was no reason to assume things wouldn’t be like that here.

  It took her a moment to figure out where to grip the dead bee. The creature was hairy and gross, and touching it made her skin crawl. But she gritted her teeth and followed through, wrenching the insect corpse until it cracked loudly and split open. Blissfully, she was right about the innards. Instead of being splattered with bug guts, there were four items inside the bee’s now hollow abdomen. Three of them were hardened yellow lumps that Tanisha recognized as beeswax. The last was a comically oversized section of honeycomb. Tanisha put both items in her inventory, stacking the beeswax together.

  She tossed the husk of the first bee aside and climbed down out of the chair to get to another. If she left her chair where it was, she reasoned, then it would still be in the position and heading she needed to continue on. She could use it as a marker for her path, but still move around on her own and forage freely.

  Tanisha grabbed a few fistfulls of grass to clear the area around the second bee. She tucked them into her inventory before grabbing the dead insect and opening it up. Her herbalism skill increased to Level 3, but she ignored that notification to focus on tearing the bee apart. There were four lumps in this one, although only two of them were beeswax. The other two were honeycomb, which was the real prize. She stacked these with what she already had, and then moved on to the sleipdeer.

  Once she was in front of it, however, she didn’t know how to go about butchering it. She didn’t have a knife to gut and skin it properly. But she assumed that wouldn’t be necessary. It should just pop open somehow and deposit cleanly-cut fresh meat into her hands.

  Tanisha frowned. Her actual knowledge of dressing a dead deer was interfering with her ability to figure out how she would manage this. She had to slow down, clear her mind, and approach butchering like some city-raised moron instead of an educated outdoorswoman.

  But before she could even try, a buzzing noise filled the air. Tanisha watched in horror as she saw the two injured soldier bees approaching through the trees. They weren’t just patrolling, however. The soldier bees were heading right towards her, with their bodies arched to present their stingers as they came. She recognized this as their signature combat stance from dARkness.

  Apparently, they didn’t just come to the defense of living worker bees.

  It made sense, in a way that irritated her. She was butchering one of their kind, after all.

  Tanisha yelped, although she wasn’t really sure how that was supposed to help her. Instead, she made the smarter move and flailed herself backwards towards her chair. She snatched up the axe she left on the arm of the chair before clambering back up into her seat. The axe was a poor weapon—both because of its durability, and because of the fact that it was classified as a tool and not a weapon—but if the bees were already injured from the fight with the sleipdeer, she might have a chance. But any fight would take time and energy, and it would throw her off-kilter in her chase. There was no way she could dodge attacks and keep her same heading.

  Her options considered, Tanisha dropped her hands down and channeled her fear of the oncoming arm-length stingers into her chair. The skittering legs blurred as she took off at speed, practically zooming out of the clearing and back into the trees. Behind her, the bees pursued, but they were falling behind rapidly.

  The speed of the chair forced Tanisha to hold on tightly. She was surprised by what it was capable of, though when she looked at the fuel bar she could see it was visibly draining, as opposed to the previously imperceptible rate. With a sigh, she reached down and righted the machine to a more
normal speed.

  “Didn’t know you could do that, buddy,” she said, guiding the chair to a walking pace. “I guess maybe I’m getting better with you? If I stayed here a while, I bet we would do all sorts of stuff.” She looked over her shoulder to confirm the giant flying fridges weren’t following. “Real shame.”

  Chapter 18

  Pushing through the forest, ignoring all other concerns, made Tanisha feel guilty. Here was every gamers dream—a world derived from, and based on, a video game she loved to play, created specifically for her to enjoy—but she was ignoring it. All because she wanted to go home. And not for any discernible reason, either. She just didn’t like being kidnapped. The tactics Otekah used were deplorable, and Tanisha feared for her own life, as well as the others the AI might have stashed around the False Lands. How many missing posters were folks just like her, who were roped into this little experiment without provocation?

  Home was the goal, though, and she had a clear path to getting there. In theory.

  As she traveled, Tanisha kept alert for threats. She wasn’t convinced that she had seen her last saladmander, and she knew there were other things to fear in the False Lands. But the forest she hurried through was relatively peaceful, and Tanisha mostly enjoyed her romp through it.

  That was, of course, until the sun started to go down.

  The change was drastic—not to the lighting of the place, but to the ambiance. There was a shift to the air, as if daytime were physically retiring so that night could take over. The sky was still bright, but the sun itself vanished behind the canopy of trees to Tanisha’s right. Logically, this meant that that direction was likely west, but Tanisha dismissed the thought. This was the False Lands, not Earth. There was no guarantee. It could be that the sun rose and set in different positions every day—it was a video game. Rules need not apply.

  “Probably just a crappy skybox, anyway,” Tanisha muttered to herself as she urged her chair on. It made Tanisha realize she’d never actually interacted with the sky in dARkness: Online. There weren’t any flying monsters who didn’t just glide along the ground. How did the mobile game handle the skybox? “Maybe I’ll have to check it out after I get out of here.”

  But that thought brought about a cold dose of reality. If Tanisha escaped Otekah’s experiment with her life intact, would she actually continue playing dARkness? How could she? Every fight would remind her of those frightening moments against the saladmanders. Each time she crafted something, she would relive the tutorial, being forced to play along just so she could escape.

  “I swear to whomever, if Otekah ruined video games for me, I’m going to be really ticked off.” She spoke mostly to her chair, as the forest was uncaring and didn’t stick around for long anyway. “But this brings up a lot of questions. Do I get to sue DeKR? Will I get… I don’t know… financial compensation? What about therapy?”

  That last question hung in the air, and Tanisha stared down at her lap. Therapy was a good idea no matter what. Not that a therapist would take her experiences seriously, but Tanisha was sure she could spin things in a way to ensure she didn’t end up institutionalized.

  By the time she looked up again, the world around her had changed. The sky had taken on a faded orange hue, and gloom unnaturally settled around Tanisha. It was definitely the arrival of twilight, and she turned in her seat to try to spot through the trees how low the sun was on the horizon. She was careful to not change her chair’s heading, however. It still moved in the direction that she’d last seen Otekah however long ago.

  How long had it been, really? Was it hours? It had to have been. Didn’t feel like it, though.

  Tanisha looked at her resource bars in the corner and saw—with some chagrin—that there wasn’t any sort of passive regen. Her health was still the same as before, and her stability had actually drained slightly over time, and seemed to be actively draining now. Was it because she was fretting? She had noticed the drain rate seemed to be related to her mental state. Or, at least, she’d noticed it going down when she felt out of sorts. So, she’d just need to try to stay calm and confident. Easy, right?

  Her stamina was also still about the same after her mad scramble away from the bees, just below two-thirds of her maximum. It didn’t seem to be draining much, which Tanisha attributed to her chair. The chair’s fuel level was even doing well, at just above three quarters. Her walking pace wasn’t a serious drain on the fuel reserves. As long as she didn’t have to run anywhere it’d be fine.

  But her immediate concern was for her hunger bar. It was more than half depleted, and was dropping pretty rapidly.

  “Guess it’s time to eat?” Tanisha halted the chair and opened her inventory before fetching one of the chunks of crab meat she’d collected during the tutorial. She remembered the quest text had told her food had to be cooked before it could be eaten, but the meat looked like cooked crab. It had that solid white look to the flesh, and it was firm to the touch. Maybe the tutorial had taken pity on her and cooked it.

  Tanisha gave the meat a sniff. It smelled fine, or at least it smelled much better than one would expect for unrefrigerated crab that had been sitting in an invisible box for an amount of time that might have been hours. “I guess there’s one way to find out…” Breaking off a small chunk of meat, Tanisha gathered her courage, said a small prayer, and shoved the flesh in her mouth.

  There was an immediate regret.

  It tasted like filth—cold and slimy, as if raw. “Ugh,” she said, and her face screwed up reflexively. “Gross.” She turned her head and spat the pinch of meat onto the ground. “Nope. Definitely not cooked.” There was a rising urge to throw the whole chunk of meat away, as if it were all contaminated, but Tanisha knew better. She would just need to cook it.

  As she scraped her tongue against the roof of her mouth like she could somehow shed the taste of the uncooked crab, Tanisha opened up the crafting menu. She was disappointed to see that she didn’t have enough materials for a campfire. Stopping and gathering would just slow her down, and then she’d also potentially lose her heading.

  But… would the game be so picky as to require her to need a campfire? A torch was just as much of a fire, right? She scrolled up through the crafting menu. The torch was under the same category, and it only took three grass and a stick. She had that. And really, wasn’t it her right to test all aspects of this world in an attempt to fulfill Otekah’s desire for survival?

  It was also better to test now, while she still had plenty of crab meat left to make up the difference, rather than learn later if she had to sacrifice a rare mushroom in the name of science.

  With her mind made up, Tanisha set about crafting the torch. It was simple—she braided three handfuls of grass around the top of a stick like a basket. And she didn’t even need to light it on fire herself. Just like the campfire, it burst into a low flame when the craft was completed. Tanisha held the torch away from herself, worried about how unsafe it seemed. But the stick seemed to resist catching fire, and so she relaxed a bit.

  It took way longer than Tanisha wanted to admit before she could figure out how to cook the crab meat without just sticking her bare hand over the flame of the torch. It wasn’t just a free-standing campfire that she could leave unattended while she futzed with the meal. Eventually, she discovered that she could put the torch into her inventory without harming anything. With both hands free, she was able to pull out another stick and spear the crab meat with it. Once the crab meat was ready, she retrieved the torch and set about experimenting.

  After a few grueling moments, the meat began to make a quiet sizzling noise, and the air became fragrant with a pleasant generic aroma of cooking meat. After another minute or so, the lump of meat began to turn brown around the edges. It wasn’t a thing Tanisha had ever seen crab meat do, but she didn’t know enough about crab to know if it was fine. She wasn’t a seafood chef. And rules didn’t apply to the False Lands, anyway.

  When Tanisha was satisfied with the doneness of the
crab meat, she tucked the torch back in her inventory and dug into the chunk of food. It was good, although it felt somewhat light and fluffy, like some sort of savory puff pastry. The adjustment to her hunger bar matched how light it felt, as the bar only ticked up a small amount after the chunk of crab was gone. Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, Tanisha dug into her inventory and prepared a second chunk of crab meat.

  And the third. Then the fourth.

  It was about fifteen minutes later when she put her torch away for good and devoured the final chunk of crab meat. With all four eaten, her hunger bar was nearly full. On top of that, her health had topped up little by little, and the bar was now almost completely red. It was weird how such a thing made her feel so much better.

  But now she was out of food. And as twilight was falling around her, she wondered if she’d be able to find Otekah’s castle before her hunger bar got too low again. Tanisha peered out into the forest ahead of her. There was no sign of the castle, and still no sign of the AI’s path through the world. But she had to believe. Otherwise, there was no hope.

  Tanisha resumed her march. It was absolutely boring, but she couldn’t exactly do anything to make it more interesting. Playing “I Spy” alone was just a recipe for depression.

  An hour after her meal, Tanisha began to notice the shadows grow long and the sky darkened at an accelerated rate. Through the trees, she could see the sparkle of strange stars that flickered into existence as the sun vanished on the horizon. Tanisha ignored it. She didn’t feel tired—a miracle of the barely lowered stamina bar—and so she wasn’t afraid to just keep walking throughout the night. As long as she didn’t alter the course of the chair, she didn’t need to worry about finding her way.