by Wolfe Locke
“Lirai,” I prompted. “What are those things?”
Notification – Query – “What are those things?”
Details: The player is in an area infested with Imps. An Imp is a tiny fiend with leathery bat wings and sharp, twisted horns. Its barbed tail carries a poison sting. Be careful of their fire attacks. They can come out of nowhere and carry great destructive power.
“Imps?” I said. “Like, demons from Hell? Do you mean those kinds of Imps?”
Notification – Query – “Like, demons from Hell?”
Details: Hell does not exist. Imps come through intra-dimensional portals from their home dimension, the Hollow Realm.
“Okay, Lirai,” I said. “Thanks for the lecture on religion.”
I don’t know why I felt the need to antagonize her. I really don’t.
I’d captured an Imp’s attention, and it shook its butt in my direction. Then, it launched a surprisingly vicious bolt of fire at me. I ducked, and it left a black scorch mark on the sidewalk.
“Gah!” I screamed. “That thing is terrifying. I should have invested some points in fire protection when I had the chance.”
Notification – Comment – “That thing is terrifying.”
Details: The player was warned.
Okay, she gave as good as she got.
The Imp seemed mad that it hadn’t burned me to death and turned on me. Its eyes were blazing with unholy fire, and it started rapidly shooting fireballs at us. Napoleon squealed with fear, ducking behind me for cover.
“Don’t worry, buddy!” I shouted. “I won’t let it barbecue you!”
He didn’t seem convinced. I tore off in the opposite direction with the Imp in hot pursuit. Get it, hot? It periodically shot more fire at me just to keep me on my toes. I really hated that thing. Its barbed tail was nasty-looking, too. Poison dripped from its stinger, and I had no intention of letting it get close enough to see what it could do to me.
“Lirai, how do we get out of here? Are we close to Hastings Bookstore? Can we go see the Prophet already?”
Notification – Query – “Are we close to Hastings Bookstore?”
Details: Player is around the corner from Hastings. He might find, though, that what’s inside is not what he expects.
Okay, well, I didn’t have time for Lirai’s riddles. I had to get out of the way of this Imp, and fast. I sprinted around the corner with the Imp hot on my heels.
There it was. A peeling, dilapidated sign on the roof that read: H— TINGS B-OKSTO—. I got enough to know what it was trying to say.
“Napoleon, should we go in?” I asked my trusty companion.
He growled at me, and I took it as a yes. Another fireball streaked past my head, so I sprinted toward the bookstore, ripped the door open, and slammed it hard behind me. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder why the door was unlocked.
Chapter Twenty: Chain Reaction
* * *
If there was one thing I’d learned so far, it was that there was a reason for everything... and that the reason was probably bad. Napoleon and I had escaped the Imps, but what was waiting for us inside Hastings Bookstore was far worse.
Opening the door had set off an elaborate chain reaction throughout the store. The door handle was attached to a rope, which led up the stairs to the second floor and connected to a bucket holding a bowling ball. When the rope was pulled, the bucket overturned, launching the ball down the stairs and directly at my head. It bounced once, twice... I barely had time to look up before it hit me right in the right eye.
I woke up on the floor a few minutes later to find Napoleon licking my face. My sight was blurry in my injured eye, and the bowling ball was sitting next to my head.
“Okay,” I said, forcing myself back onto my feet. “Let’s try this again.”
Joke’s on me. The entire floor was covered in enormous thumbtacks, the extra-long, extra-sharp kind. I don’t know where the Prophet got them. I only know that three of them ended up buried deep in my left foot after I took my first step. Six of them ended up in my butt after I shrieked and fell over. Four of them ended up in my hand when I tried to get up, eliciting another pained scream.
“Who is this guy?” I asked Napoleon through clenched teeth. “Some kind of sadist?”
The little bear didn’t respond. He was too busy threading his way through the maze of tacks and onto the staircase. If only it were so easy for all of us.
The rest of my journey toward the stairs was a nightmare. It was kind of like that movie where the kid’s home all by himself and sets a ton of booby traps for a pair of robbers. Except in the movie, the robbers don’t really get hurt. It’s basically a cartoon. However, in real life, I ended up with a bunch of pretty serious injuries.
And no, I don’t want to talk about what they were.
After getting through the bowling ball, the tacks, the flamethrower... who has a flamethrower? Back on topic, there were also extremely heavy paint cans that came flying toward me out of nowhere. That wasn’t even the icing on the cake. Shards of blazing hot metal lined the top step of the staircase. After passing all of that, I finally crawled to the second floor. Napoleon was already there waiting for me.
“Thanks for looking out for me, buddy,” I said wearily. He burped in my face. What a nice guy, Napoleon.
“Prophet?” I cautiously called, sitting down heavily on the top step. “Are you here? We made it through your series of horrific traps.”
“Oh, yeah,” someone said nonchalantly from the hallway above me. “I was watching. You did pretty good. I wasn’t expecting you to make it this far.”
He sounded surprisingly young, and I turned to see a scrawny kid with messy hair and glasses sitting with his back against the wall across from us. His skin was terrible, worse than mine when I was that age.
And that’s saying something.
“Don’t tell me, you’re the Prophet,” I said, putting my face in my hands.
“Sure am,” he quipped back with a cheesy grin.
Dumbstruck, I had to ask, “How old are you?”
“I was fourteen when the Apocalypse hit. I don’t know how old I am now. I’ve kind of lost track of time since then,” he answered with a shrug.
“It’s only been a few weeks.”
“Oh…” He tilted his head. “Then yeah, I’m fourteen.”
“And you built all this?” I asked. I had to admit, I was very impressed. “The traps and everything?”
“Well, kind of. Most of it was magic. The only magic I’m really good at is making booby traps.” He shrugged again, like all of the traps weren’t a terrifying death trap that had left me injured over and over again. He pointed toward a door. “Do you want to go on the roof?”
“What?” I asked numbly, staring at him. Internally, I seethed. Can he just tell me what I need to know so I can leave?!
“This store has a really cool roof,” he explained, pausing so long that I didn’t think he would speak again. When I opened my mouth to talk, he spoke. “You can see the entire city from up there. Also, I’m gonna be blunt here, your mimic is creeping me out. Like, he’s making me really uncomfortable.”
I looked over at Napoleon. I was used to him, but it did make sense that a tiny meat-bear might not be the most appealing thing to sit next to. That was doubly so if the one in question was only a fourteen year old boy.
“Can you sit tight here, buddy?” I asked, hoping that he wasn’t insistent on coming with us. “Just for a little bit.”
He growled. I took that as a yes and followed the Prophet upstairs. When we got to the roof, I took a second to look around. It really hit me at that moment how shitty this world was. Seriously, everything was terrible. In just a few weeks, all the skyscrapers around us had turned into burned-out husks full of Imps.
Also, my house had been destroyed. To add insult to injury, my entire subdivision was now full of obnoxious super soldiers.
Standing there, a lot of things came back to me from before all of t
his. The apocalypse was so romanticized, played up as this great opportunity, some grand adventure to be had. But there was death everywhere.
You always think that the apocalypse is going to be your time to shine, to become some superhero, but I’m here to tell you that it probably isn’t. Your big zombie destruction plan? It probably won’t work. Or if it does, you’ll probably get torn to pieces in the middle of it. Sorry, I can’t be more positive. They didn’t exactly vote me for Little Miss Sunshine in my high school yearbook.
“So,” I finally said, breaking myself out of the funk. I looked at the boy, the teenager, and grinned wryly. “You’re a Prophet?”
“Oh,” he muttered, shrugging for the third time, “that.”
I looked around at the rooftop, the city below, and then the boy again. “Do you get a lot of visitors or something?”
He sighed. “Yep. Every time those guys want something, they come talk to me. That’s part of why I set up the traps. If they’re going to demand I tell them their fortune, they should at least have to figure out how to get to me.”
It sounds like he’s less of an anointed spiritual leader and more of a pawn or consultant… rough. From what he said, it sounded like they forgot he was still a young teen. “How many times have the Crusaders come here?”
“Since the Apocalypse started?” he asked, counting on his fingers. He ran out before he finished. “Uh, at least ten times. I’m not sure beyond that. They keep coming back, over and over again.”
I almost felt sorry for the kid. He didn’t seem like he wanted to be in this position at all nor the responsibility that came with it. It was probably weird to be treated like some infallible voice of the future. But he was a prophet. Nobody really asked for their post-apocalypse job. I definitely didn’t envision myself becoming a Crusader.
“You know what the crazy thing is?” the kid asked, but I could tell it was rhetorical. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Huh?” I instantly grunted.
“Everyone thinks I can see the future,” he said, turning to me with a grin. “But the truth is, I can’t. I’m just a really good guesser, I guess?”
I tried to stay calm. “You just... guessed?”
After spending all day sprinting from Imps and fighting with who knows how many Satyrs, it was pretty much the last thing I wanted to hear. I’d come all this way to visit a kid who didn’t know any more about the future than I did?
To say that Edgar was going to hear it from me was an understatement. There were so many things wrong with all of this, and I had a hard time stopping myself from losing my cool right then and there.
“Yeah,” the kid muttered. He rolled his shoulders and popped his neck, spitting a glob of mucus over the edge of the roof. Again, he only spoke when I opened my mouth to do so. “When the Apocalypse came, I was granted the Prophet class because I read so much, apparently my knowledge of story structure is near supernatural. But it didn’t actually give me any prophet abilities. Like, I don’t know if they forgot or what, but yeah. Now look. Here we are...” His gaze returned to the far landscape as his voice trailed off. I knew he had more to say, so I didn’t even try to speak this time around. Sure enough, he turned toward me, frowning. “Everyone keeps coming to me for help. I don’t know what to tell them. I have no answers for the questions they have, so I just make something up and send them on their way.”
“Oh...” I was honestly beside myself.
He continued to explain, sounding a bit more defensive, “But they keep coming back, so they must have got what they wanted. They seem happy, so I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“What’s your name, kid?” I asked wearily, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
“Matt.”
“Hey, Matt. I’m Dan,” I said, making more formal introductions. “The bear downstairs is Napoleon.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, looking uncomfortable at the mention of the mimic. “Could you maybe keep that one away from me. Like, far, far away?”
“He’s my friend, but yeah, sure.” I took a deep breath. “Look, the Crusaders sent me, so I have to go back to them with some kind of prediction or they’ll just make me come visit you again. So, do you think you can just make something up again?”
“I’m not a total idiot,” he said, a little defensively. He looked me deep in the eyes, his brown irises like melted chocolate. “I know a lot about story structure. I watched a lot of movies, I read all the screenplays because I want to be a screenwriter... well, I wanted to. You know, before all of this,” he said, waving his hand toward the city. “I’ve got a draft of a script, if you want to read it…?"
“No.” Instant rejection, firm and resolute.
“Okay…” His eyes misted over slightly and he looked away. He rubbed them, sniffling once, then turned back to me. “That’s... okay. Sorry, my allergies are acting up. But anyways, I just use all of that knowledge to predict what’s going to happen. Most games are pretty predictable, anyways. They’re all trope-based. I have a concept, if you—”
“No.” Again.
“Sure, sure.” He huffed out a frustrated breath, shaking his head.
Matt looked a little deflated, but I knew I’d done the right thing. It’s a harsh world out there, and at some point, you have to learn that no one actually wants to hear your elevator pitch.
“So,” I started again, sitting back on the edge of the roof, “what’s your prediction? Lay it on me.”
“Well,” Matt said, looking out over the ruined city. “I think you’re going to have to find some kind of savior.”
The words caught in my throat, but I forced them out,“I’m not the savior?”
That was rich. After everything I’d done, too.
“No, a real savior. Someone who’s a total badass. Someone who can take down real monsters, like, totally rip them apart with his bare hands.” He looked me up and down, raising his brows after his appraisal found me lacking.
“I take down real monsters,” I said, defending my honor. “I take them down all the time.”
Okay, I didn’t exactly “rip them apart with my bare hands”, but I was working on it. Maybe after a few more “first light’ daily workouts.
“No, see, your role in the story is to find this guy. You’re the normal, relatable hero that the audience really connects with.” He leaned back against the edge of the roof with me, crossing his arms and looking up at the sky. “It’s through you, they learn the rules of the world and see what would happen if they were magically transported into a post-apocalyptic hellscape,” he explained, snapping his fingers. “Here, maybe this will make sense. So, let me guess... you died a bunch at the start of all this and were kind of a crappy fighter.”
“I was okay, not crappy,” I refuted. “I... got there eventually.”
“And you’re a little better now, but still not that good?” he asked, but we both knew the answer.
I started to get a bit peeved, my face turning red from the indignant feeling growing in my chest. “I’m good! I killed some Satyrs right before I came here. I even escaped from an Imp!”
He nodded along, giving a know-it-all smirk that I just wanted to— no assaulting minors, Dan. You’re better than that. “But you’re basically a conduit for the audience to meet more interesting characters. Like, take the Crusaders for example.”
“Hey,” I said, resenting that. “Those guys are not interesting. All they do is work out and yell at each other. At least I have jokes and pizzazz.”
“I’m just saying, I think we know where you stand. You don’t have to like it.” He did that same half-shrug. Who knew I could get used to, and then absolutely hate, a mannerism in such a short amount of time? He kicked his legs, leaning back on the roof’s edge. It made my eyes go wide, but he looked at me grinning. “Something you’re missing, Dan. I’m the Prophet, so maybe you might at least want to consider what I’m saying.”
“Didn’t you just say you make all of this up, and you don’t really kn
ow anything?”
He didn’t respond to that, but then again, why would he? He had zero reason to.
“As I was saying,” he started again, raising a brow as I opened my mouth to speak. Instead of doing so, I clamped my mouth shut and let the boy speak. “To get through this, you’re going to have to find a savior. He’s going to be the toughest guy you’re ever met. Actually, he’s going to be more than tough. Think of the stereotypical battle-hardened, scarred both physically and emotionally, protagonist in almost any action movie, ever.” He put a hand on his chin, looking as though he was deep in thought. His face lit up once he found whatever thought it was he had searched for. “This is why you’re important, though. He’s not going to want to join your fight. Like, not at all, so you’re going to have to persuade him to do it. Use all your skills, flatter him, make him incapable of saying no.”
