Death Of An Author: A Middang3ard Novella

by Ramy Vance

The balor cracked its whip again as it walked farther into the room, the legions of doom at their heel. It grabbed Brazee as it pulled out its sword and shoved it down Jonathan’s throat.

  Jonathan Brazee’s mouth was still moving around the blade of the sword. “S…s…sick…d…d…death.”

  The orcs continued to storm the room, and the writers turned and tried to get out. One of the beasts grabbed Gerald M. Kilby and threw him into the bookcase, completing its destruction and spilling science fiction books everywhere. Gerald stood and squared up, raising his fists, and glared at the orc. “When I die, it’s going to be rocketing out of an airlock, not by some contrived, classicist metaphor of an orc. I’m a hard science fiction writer!”

  The orc’s blade fell true and heavy, splitting Gerald in half. His body fell to the ground, leaking blood and internal organs all over the cashmere shag rug.

  An explosion arrived with the first wave of orcs. It cut through the conference room, sending bodies flying, their limbs ripping from their torsos, a bizarrely beautiful smattering of organs and teeth and offal flying through the air and hitting the wall, leaving stains which would have seemed right in a Jackson Pollock exhibit.

  The orcs were tossing bombs, throwing spears, and cutting down whatever was in front of them. Books, furniture, or bodies—it didn’t matter. One of the bodies belonged to John P. Logsdon. A blade cut through his throat, and he fell to the floor as he tried to hit the orc responsible for his demise.

  As the life faded from his face, Logsdon looked skyward and sighed. “Makes sense to kill so many of us in Chapter One. Too many heavy hitters in one place. Needed to cull the characters to make this a more manageable story…” With those last words, he died.

  Another explosion hit the conference room as more orcs poured in. The remaining writers screamed and blindly ran. There was no more pretense of trying to play hero. The vast majority of them had been slaughtered in the preliminary section of the first act. Running was the best bet. Jonathan Yanez said it as eloquently as possible in such a dire situation. “Run! There’s fucking tentacle monsters and orcs.” His voice came out more like a wolf’s howl, warning the rest of the pack.

  A pair of tentacles stretched out from beyond the black void of the portals and wrapped around Jonathan’s mouth, forcing themselves down his throat. Jonathan took hold of the tentacles and ripped them from his mouth. “I’m not gonna be killed by some half-ass Cthulhu reject!” he shouted. “You’d think that the Dark One would at least have original monsters!”

  Jonathan pulled the tentacled creature from the portal as he ducked to avoid a spear heading his way. “It goes against my better judgment, but I think we need to split up!” he exclaimed.

  “Oh, fuck…” Jonathan muttered as the orcs and tentacles surrounded him and began to rip the poor wordsmith to shreds, then howled like the wolf he was.

  As he howled, four giants stormed through the portals, slaughtering writers as they barreled through with their clubs.

  The rest of the writers bolted and the conference room was quickly overrun by orcs, giants, and an unreasonable number of tentacles.

  Craig Martelle pulled a wand from his hand and aimed it at the monsters in the room. The entire room seemed to breathe and then the door opened, sending all the monsters flying down the hallway and shutting the door dramatically when he was done. Craig then turned to the open portal, stuck his wand in it, and watched the portal change colors. He withdrew his wand when he was satisfied.

  Since most of the writers were, ummm, more lovers than fighters, they had fled the room to hide. The only writers left in the room were Lindsay Buroker, Robyn Wideman, Dakota Kraut, and Dawn Chapman. They were standing side by side near the portal.

  The door burst open, and Tao Wong sprinted into the room. He was covered with blood and panting hard, trying to catch his breath. He stood, confused when he saw the writers and Craig. “How the hell did I get back here? I thought I just left here. And where are the orcs? Why don’t any of you seem upset about what’s going on? Why do I have so many questions?”

  Craig motioned Tao over to join the four other writers. “Thank God you survived, Tao,” Craig exclaimed. “I can’t imagine that was easy.”

  Tao laughed nervously as he took a step forward. “Uh…what’s going on here?”

  “Time-travel paradox. It would be too much to explain right now. We’re are attempting to right a very serious wrong. The more hands we have on deck, the better. Here, take this.”

  Tao reached out to grab whatever Craig was handing him and suddenly stopped, yelping with pain. He pulled down his pants and saw he was bleeding from a wound in his thigh. “The pencil.” He groaned as he fell over.

  Craig leaned over Tao and examined the wound. “Hm…looks like it was lead poisoning that got him,” Craig explained. “One more reason why drafts should be done in pen, not pencil. We’ll mourn him later. You four will have to be our heroes. Here, take these.”

  Craig waved his hand, and four HUDs appeared in front of the four writers. The HUDs looked like technologically advanced visors, and when the writers grabbed them, the HUDs automatically attached to their faces, shimmering in and out of existence. They were still on the writers’ faces, but seemed also to be immaterial.

  A jumble of letters and readouts appeared in front of each of the writers. “What the hell is all of this?” Dakota asked.

  “No time to explain! Get through this portal, choose your classes, and find whatever you need to reverse what happened here. Now, go!”

  Craig herded the writers into the portal. They vanished instantly. Craig turned back to the door, waiting for the Dark One’s forces to break through. The last thing the four wayward authors saw was Craig Martelle’s head suddenly sprout long gray hair as he stood before the portal crying, “You shall not pass!”

  “Gandalf the Grey’s last words, just before the balrog killed him with his whip—” Dawn started as the balor walked in and lashed out his fiery whip, decapitating Martelle.

  “How predictable. Seriously, Craig deserved a less cliché death.” Lindsay groaned as the portal shimmered and the four authors were whisked to Middang3ard.

  Chapter Two

  The four writers sat in a dark cavern. Only two of them were awake, Lindsay and Dakota. Dawn and Robyn were unconscious. Lindsay stood up and looked around the cavern. There was hardly any light, and it was difficult to see where they had come from. Dakota went straight for the two other writers. He tried to shake them awake.

  Robyn woke up almost instantly and sat bolt upright, his eyes widening with terror. He held his hands up in front of him and tried to push Dakota off. “Get away, get away,” he shouted as he scrambled backward.

  Dakota reached out to Robyn and grabbed his hands. “Hey, calm down. It’s just me. Remember? Dakota?” he asked.

  Robyn eyed Dakota suspiciously. “How the hell did we get here?” he asked. “Last thing I remember was…well, I’m pretty sure it’s the last thing all of you saw as well.”

  Lindsay was still poking around the cavern. She walked slowly and methodically, holding her hands out in front of her in case something jumped out at her. It looked like she had explored a cave before, or she was just used to waking up in unfamiliar, dangerous situations. Either way, her face was composed and in control. “Craig gave us those HUD things and told us to pick our classes. That’s the last thing I remember. Where do you think we are?”

  Dawn yawned and sat up. She rubbed her eyes as she stretched, taking time to touch her fingers to her toes. “Uh, I’m gonna guess Middang3ard,” she suggested.

  “Why the hell would Craig send us to Middang3ard?”

  “I’m gonna be straight up and say we probably don’t know what the hell Craig is thinking. Like, did any of you know that he had a magical cottage? I thought the guy just worked on books for Myrddin and knew a couple of parlor tricks and shit. I didn’t know he was getting all Dr. Strange on us. Which, by the way, I’m so jealous of. This guy is sitting on a bu
nch of magic and doesn’t say anything to us, even though we’re all working on this whole Middang3ard project. Anyways, if it’s not Middang3ard, we should be able to figure it out soon enough. I mean, we all helped Ramy with his notes and stuff. We should have a good enough idea of what Middang3ard is like to be able to tell.”

  Dawn stood up and offered her hand to Robyn, who took it begrudgingly. “You’re in a good mood for someone who just watched a bunch of their friends get slaughtered by orcs,” Robyn said.

  “Yeah, that was pretty fucked up, but honestly, I’ve been writing this shit for years. Now I get to actually live it? I can’t help but be a little excited.”

  “That’s if we’re even on Middang3ard. Craig could have just sent us to a panic room.”

  “A panic room that happens to be in a cave?”

  “Of all the things that happened today, that’s the one you have an issue with?”

  “Noted. So, how do we pick a class?”

  “Maybe the HUDs?”

  Dawn and Robyn brought up their HUD screens. One word appeared on the screen: Loading. “Figures,” Lindsay said. “We would get janky, first-generation tech.”

  Lindsay walked back over to the rest of the writers. “Hey, I think I found something,” she said. “Come check it out.”

  The three writers followed Lindsay to one of the cave’s walls. Lindsay pressed her face against the rocky walls as the rest of the writers watched. The rocks did not seem to be part of the cave, though. They looked to have been stacked in a pile some time ago. “Do you guys feel that?” Lindsey asked.

  Dakota leaned forward so that his face was near Lindsay’s. “I think so…” Dakota murmured. “It’s a breeze, right?”

  “Yep. That means there’s fresh air coming in, which means we have a way out of here. Just gotta move these rocks out of the way.”

  The writers got to work. They talked a little while they removed the rocks from the hidden passageway, trying to avoid the obvious topics.

  The cottage.

  Their friends.

  Their current situation.

  Instead, they talked about how Lindsay had figured out the whole breeze thing. She explained she was never really much of an outdoors person, but after you have to write enough scenes were adventurers are trapped in caves, you start getting creative about how to get them out.

  After an hour or so of lugging rocks around, the writers sat down to take a break. All of them were tired. Dakota was the first to bring up that they should have been a lot more tired. “Yeah, it’s not like I’m in terrible shape,” he said. “But I spend more time hitting the keyboard than I do arm day at the gym. If I’d tried to do this yesterday, I would have been wrecked.”

  Dawn was sitting on one of the larger rocks, dangling her legs. “Maybe the atmosphere is thinner here or something,” she suggested. “Like the whole John Carter thing. We should try jumping around when we get a little space. And we should make that soon because I am officially tired of being underground. Claustrophobic doesn’t even begin to put into words how unhappy this place is making me.”

  “Yeah, that little bit of breeze really got me going. All I want to do is get some fresh air.”

  “Guess we better start lifting, then.”

  They went back to the task at hand. It took them nearly another hour to remove all of the rocks from the passageway, but once they were done, they could see that the rock in the cavern had been cut neatly to allow the safe passage for anyone up to eight feet tall. The rock next to what had been cut away was covered in runic etchings. They looked to be Norse, but none of the authors were familiar with the intricacies of Nordic runes, so they weren’t sure. Either way, the runes were beautifully written, weaving into each other in a fashion that was almost elvish.

  Dawn smirked as she stared down the tunnel. “Looks pretty dark down there, and it’s the only way. That’s some good, strong writing, am I right?”

  The writers chuckled as they walked across the threshold of the cave. “You know, I do kinda like a good, straightforward path. Takes a lot of effort to make a pathway game look like a sandbox, you know. There’s a little bit—”

  “It was a joke, Dakota. I’ve written my share of single-hallway chase scenes. Come on, let’s figure out where this leads. Lindsay, you wanna take point? I feel like you’re probably the most qualified in a fight.”

  Lindsay raised her eyebrow and gazed at Dawn. “Why would you say that?”

  “You’ve got ‘tough girl written all over your face.”

  Dakota laughed but caught himself, then put on his best encouraging face. “Come on, guys, we got this. It’ll be a breeze. Get it?”

  Dawn shook her head as she face-palmed. “We’re gonna have to give you a limit on puns. I will not be able to handle this if Craig sent us on more than just a fetch quest. Now, let’s see where this long, creepy tunnel takes us.”

  Chapter Three

  The tunnel the writers found themselves walking through stretched farther than any of them had expected. It did not open up to a larger room, but rather, opened into a series of tunnels. Following Lindsay’s lead, the writers followed the occasional breeze they could feel flowing down the tunnels. Whichever tunnel had the stronger breeze was the tunnel they chose. It was slow going.

  The tunnels were pitch-black. The only light came from a Zippo lighter Dawn had brought with her. Every so often, they would check their HUDs to see if they could produce more light, but the HUDs were still unresponsive.

  The four writers huddled around the miniscule flame, which flickered and cast odd, stretched shadows on the cavern walls, showing each writer as an elongated version of themselves. Perhaps they felt as if they were as fragile as that light. They were still trying not to talk about what had happened in Craig’s cottage, and the silence was becoming almost unbearable for Dawn. She knew something fucked up had happened, and walking through a dark cavern and trying to pretend otherwise wasn’t helping anyone. They had all tried to put up a brave front when they had first arrived…wherever the hell they were.

  But now, in the darkness, lost in tunnels that felt as if they were constricting like blood vessels, maybe talking would keep them from freaking out.

  Dawn cleared her throat and held the lighter up a little higher, so it cast more light on the faces of those around her. “Did you guys ever read Ramy’s books?” she asked.

  Dakota shook his head as he tried not to stumble over the rocky ground. “No. Like I said, I just read the outlines for him. I didn’t have a chance to pick any of them up. Still on a deadline, you know? You know…dead—”

  “Seriously, Dakota?”

  “Sorry. Why were you asking, though?”

  “I don’t know, I remember reading his first drafts. He had something about HUDs in there. I was just wondering if anyone else had read anything.”

  “Wish he was here to ask.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Robyn used the wall to keep his balance as he stepped over a gash in the ground. “We lost…a lot of people back there. Like, actually lost. Never thought I would be saying that about a writing conference.”

  Lindsay nodded in agreement as she crouched to avoid the low-hanging ceiling. “Same here,” she sympathized. “The worst thing that happened at the last conference I went to was someone got food poisoning. That and the lecture. Who wants to listen to a four-hour presentation on outsourcing for book covers? Two hours, max. But four?”

  The writers chuckled as they continued to make their way down the tunnels. Dawn was the first to bring the conversation back. There was something on her mind, and she wanted to see how the rest of the writers felt about her thoughts. “You guys know why we were attacked, don’t you?” Dawn asked.

  Robyn tripped over a rock and bumped into Dakota, who helped keep him from falling over. “Guess the Dark One is a fucking coward,” he spat. “It’s not like he came after heavily armored warriors or something. He attacked a bunch of nerds drinking tea. Typical of someone who wants
to take over the whole fucking universe.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it. I think he came after us because we were working.”

  Robyn tilted his head. “You mean, prepping everyone through books?”

  “Yeah. Why else would he waste the resources? That was why we got attacked. Because these books are serving their purpose. I mean, they must be. How many of us are writing just because of what we read before? They’re the same stories we were inspired to believe, and now we’re inspiring other people to believe.”

  Dakota smiled, and it was bright enough to be seen in the dimly-lit tunnel. “You mean, the art of storytelling is changing the world? Like, our work is snaking into the collective uncon—”

  “Okay, Dakota, I wasn’t going that far. I was just saying that whatever we did, it was important enough to get the Dark One’s attention. So, maybe we’re not too fucked in this situation, you know? We might be able to make it.”

  Up ahead, a little light was visible at the end of the tunnel. Robyn exclaimed in joy, as did Dakota. Lindsay and Dawn were warier, Lindsay going so far as to remind everyone not to get their hopes up. They didn’t know what was at the end of the tunnel. For all they knew, they could be walking into an orc trap. No one knew what was at stake. No one knew exactly where they were. The only known was that they were unarmed, so slow and steady was going to win the race.

  There was more than just light coming from the end of the tunnel. The writers could smell the fresh air.

  Well, not fresh, exactly.

  Fresher than the dark, stagnant air they had all been breathing for the last few hours. Dawn was never one to complain, but she had to admit to herself that she’d been pretty miserable since the conference started. She hadn’t been paying much attention to begin with, having stayed up way too late the night before. Then there was the slaughtering of all of her peers. That would have put anyone in a bad mood. Now she was meandering down dark tunnels, hoping nothing popped out and killed her. Yeah, she had definitely been in better moods, but at least there might be some light now.