Rune Waker

by Jamie Hawke

  The goblins were moving closer, but Arturo still didn’t look convinced. “You think the rift, or the program from our side—this infection… can create random monsters?”

  “No clue, but they’re going to try to kill us, so we might as well level up when we get an opportunity.”

  Then she was gone, appearing behind one of the goblins and slitting its throat. While I got Arturo’s point, the minute one of those goblins came at me—human jawbone axe in hand—I didn’t give a shit what it had once been. My sword was at the ready, my mind only for a second remembering that it had once been a toothbrush. That thought gave me a laugh.

  My former toothbrush cut right through the wanna-be axe, lodging into the meat of the goblin’s arm. I kicked it off, turning at the explosion of a rifle to see Brad filling two of them with rounds, and then Arturo said, “Fuck it,” and was in the fight.

  Each movement of mine was awkward, not what I expected after fighting as a level fifty-two angel earlier. This was me, wielding a blade and fighting goblins. What a strange situation to be in. Another goblin appeared at my side, knife coming at my gut. I pulled back, hollowing out, and then came back at it with a push kick that sent the little bastard to the ground, knife clattering away.

  A spray of blood hit it across the face from one of his friends falling, and then I came in, sword to the chest, finishing him off. More XP, and what was interesting was that I could actually feel the advancement. Like when you have a cold coming on and you just know it, you can almost feel it infiltrating your body, but in this case it was movement toward a level-up.

  Talk about a high.

  This, mixed with natural adrenaline, sent me charging for the next goblin almost gleefully. Arturo stepped aside, chuckling as he said, “Your kill, bro, your kill.”

  My kill was right. I might have only been a level two human, but dammit, I wasn’t going to stay low-ranked for long. The goblin met my blow though, surprising me with its strength and pushing me back so that I fell on my ass. Brad looked like he was about to step in, but I held up a hand, gripped my sword tight with my other, and faced the goblin as it laughed.

  “In case you didn’t notice, I’m the last one standing on my side,” the goblin growled.

  “Shouldn’t that be something that would frighten you?” I asked, regaining my footing and moving toward him, slowly.

  “Maybe a human would think that way, but me? It just means I have less to fear. So… FUCK YOU!”

  He charged me, baring his teeth and snarling, hulking out a bit it looked like—or maybe I just let fear corrupt my vision—and then he was leaping with his mini-sword. The first strike knocked me back, the next I barely parried. He started spinning, like a little tornado of knife jabs, and then he was laughing! Laughing at me.

  “If you want—” Varena started, but I grunted and thrust at the goblin.

  “I got this!” I said, and then fell back out of the way of more strikes, cursing as the blade caught at the edge of my pants. It didn’t do any damage other than to my pride, but reminded me that I wasn’t the badass I’d been as an angel.

  That was fine, though. I simply needed to adapt.

  When the goblin sidestepped to fake an attack and then tried to come at me from the other side, I stole his move by faking a fall back. He took the bait, lunging. I swept out his forward leg so that he spun around, and then I slammed my shoulder into his head, pushing him against the wall. His struggling didn’t do shit once I had my sword in a well-placed swipe as I stepped away.

  He turned right into the blade, catching it across the face and chest. The next attack got him with a thrust into his midsection, then a spinning slice to his throat. Judging by the laugh that escaped my lips, I might’ve been enjoying it all a tad too much.

  But hey, there’s something special about killing a goblin for real, not through the overpowered, over-muscled avatar of an angel. As the body flopped to the ground in a pile of black blood, a screen showed I’d reached level three.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Brad said, clapping me on the shoulder.

  It caught me off guard and I spun, sword at the ready, but laughed and shook my head, lowering the sword. “Sorry about that. A bit jumpy.”

  “You earned it, man, jump away.”

  I nodded, turning to see Varena eyeing me with interest.

  “How come hit points don’t work the same as in the game?” I asked, cleaning my sword on the goblin’s body.

  “Because, as much as this might be hard to understand, this is the real world in some ways. It was a real world before, and I don’t imagine it’ll be ever completely changed, although it could in theory be a slow-acting full infection.”

  Having nearly forgotten that I’d leveled up, I brought the screen back up in the same mental way I’d done in the game, and it worked. Sure enough, level three. The screen was there, but I ignored it at first.

  “Was leveling up always this easy?” I asked, looking at the screen and my options.

  “At lower levels, almost,” Brad replied. “Plus, these guys are probably worth some heavy XP.”

  “That, and your association with me is giving you an XP bonus,” Varena said with a wide grin.

  “I’m liking you more and more,” I replied, then turned to my screen, assigning the three points it gave me this time to defense, speed, and mana. It read:

  Level: 3

  Class: Human Hybrid

  Attack: 4

  Defense: 2

  Speed: 4

  Mana: 3

  Spells

  Blue: Psychic Shield Level 1.

  Apparently, I couldn’t add points to magic resistance or alignment, so figured those were more like gauges of my status, not ones that could be affected purposefully. A quick scan of the magic circles showed I still didn’t have much available, but Varena told me I’d need a green, next. So I went to the green circle and found that all I could select for now was a level one healing spell or something called Detox. At this point, healing would probably be more helpful, so I went for that, so that my spells now read:

  Spells

  Blue: Psychic Shield Level 1

  Green: Healing Level 1

  What interested me was how all of this worked in this adapted real-world setting. Meaning, I could attack in accordance with my size and actual strength, so did my attack skill here show an added bonus? Or was it really a gauge of my strength and skill as a human? I looked forward to having more chances to experiment with it.

  Brad took the lead next, which was perfectly fine by me, considering how close the last fight could’ve been. He’d check back, looking at Varena from time to time to ensure we were going the right way, but mostly it was a simple matter of moving along through dark corridors and going up when stairs presented themselves.

  More than once we encountered roving monsters, a couple of which Varena explained were likely lost spirits. Once there was a man who walked past like a zombie, not even bothering to notice us as he drifted by. He had patches of skin hanging off and as he passed, the stench of death lingered. Scanning him, she nodded and said, “On this side of the spectrum, but… he’s not convinced this is real yet.”

  “He thinks it’s a dream,” I said, intrigued.

  “Perhaps.” She watched him disappear around a corner. “It could even be that he is dreaming and not here at all. I’ve had interactions with some like him that lead me to believe some have crossed over while sleeping, only to take on forms like spirits here or, on occasion, to occupy a fallen corpse. He could wake at any moment, and the corpse would simply fall, dead again.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Arturo said, eyes wide at the thought.

  “But we don’t always.” Brad scratched his head, face scrunched as he tried to process that. “I mean, dreams aren’t always in the afterlife, right? It’s not… like that?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so, no. Maybe dreams are just in your head, or maybe they take you to alternate realities. As far as I
know, the rift opening is the first instance of them taking you here, and only likely for people within a certain proximity to opened rift portals. Then again, it’s largely speculation. If I could go into your world and investigate…”

  “You’d want to go to… Earth?” I stopped, taking a second to process this. “Can a demon go to Earth?”

  “Am I a demon now?”

  “Aren’t you?” Brad asked, turning to join the conversation.

  “Let’s not get into semantics, but… Not exactly. Kind of. I could be, in time.” She winked my way, as if that was all supposed to mean something to me, and then we were moving on again. That got me thinking, though.

  “On my screen, it says ‘Human Hybrid,’” I said. “But last I checked, I was pure human.”

  “Not true,” Brad argued. “You were an angel.”

  “I mean in real life. And since I’m not here as my avatar…”

  “Actually, that’s part of it,” Varena said. “That, and our bond.”

  Brad arched an eyebrow. “You two have a bond? When did this ‘bond’ happen?”

  “It’s not like that,” I countered. His hands up in surrender didn’t take away from the fact that his grin expressed his real thoughts on the matter. My mind, however, was focused on what Varena had said. If I was somehow being changed here, due to my previous avatar and my bond with her, what did that mean? Was I going to have the option to add attributes of angel and demon (or whatever she was)? Maybe that had to do with the alignment bar in my stats screen.

  I’d figure it out, in time, I supposed. But now that the floodgates had been opened, all sorts of questions were popping up in my head. Better than focusing on the creepy, dark tunnels, I supposed.

  “If everyone can level up in here,” I asked, voice low, cautious as I addressed Varena, “what level are you?”

  She winced at the question. “The level I am now is… complicated.”

  “Meaning, you can’t see your levels?”

  “I can, same as you.” She pulled up a screen, the light at the edges moving like purple flames. I noticed the colored orbs, same as mine, but much more involved, including linking strands between some. “At the moment, I have started over, in a sense. Not from scratch, mind you, but… see here?”

  She indicated part of the screen that showed an overlap with another, and when she swiped, it wouldn’t let her. “That’s ‘locked,’ I guess you would say. It’s my full power potential, from when I was leveled at over one hundred, with my full range of soul binding. As it currently stands, I don’t have access to much of it, which is why I require your help, your… sacrifices.”

  “The blood back there…”

  “On a basic level, I need to be restored. A curse trapped me, sucked away my ability to fully operate. But in the course of helping you, you’re going to help me.”

  “And then what? You go on your way, I go on mine?”

  Her eyes met mine, taking on a humored gleam. “I don’t know how this fiancée of yours would feel about me sticking around.”

  I had to chuckle at that. True, it didn’t make sense that Varena would still be with us after finding Katie, but the idea of her going away now felt odd, for some reason. We barely knew each other, had really only just met, and yet… it was like we were bound together. Maybe we were, what with the ‘sacrifices’ she spoke of, and me wearing the amulet. I imagined that once I removed it, much of that would change.

  One ledge we came to was guarded by a sleeping imp—short, gray, and shriveled. Varena led us right past it, hand snaking in between its arm and side, finding keys, and then turning with a grin. She got the gate opened and we were through before she locked it and pocketed the keys.

  “Could come in useful, later,” she whispered as we moved on. “Or at the very least, it will be fun to mess with old Scrot back there.”

  “You know him?”

  “The imp?” She shook her head. “I call all of them Scrot. Just… seems to fit.”

  I frowned, but didn’t get it so shrugged and moved along without question. Only, we found ourselves in a large, empty room. The walls glistened with an oily, black substance, but Varena walked along them, fingers gently touching the stones.

  “It should be right around here,” Varena said.

  “A secret entrance?” Arturo asked, already starting to follow suit.

  “Her G-spot.” Varena stopped, moving her hand up and down on a specific stone. When we turned to her in horror, she laughed. “Yes, a secret entrance, you dolts.”

  Sure enough, the stone pressed in and a section of the wall moved back and out of the way, leading us into a wider passage with slits to an outside far up and at a diagonal. There was actually natural light coming through!

  “We’re close,” Varena confirmed.

  “I remember reading a book that reminds me of this,” Arturo said, staff up and glowing as he went. “Don’t remember what it was, but… something about a prison break. Gave me hope.”

  “Hope?” Brad gave me a confused look, and I shrugged. “Arturo, did you do time?”

  Arturo chuckled. “Does a bee shit honey?” His face scrunched up. “Actually, I’m not sure how that works. Answer is… yeah. You didn’t know?”

  Brad shook his head.

  “Anything we should be worried about?” I asked.

  “I’m reformed.” Arturo waved his staff as we turned back into darkness. An arch of light formed. “Basically, selling amps. You know, in-game illegal amplifiers—as bullshit as that is. I’ll never understand how they could sentence me to time in the real world for selling amps in the virtual one.”

  “Fuck, man.” Brad tsked. “Still, better to not risk it in the first place.”

  “Lesson learned,” Arturo replied.

  “Sorry,” I offered.

  “Yeah, I almost lost my family over it, but what can you do. My lady never understood the gaming world, too caught up in her lawyer bullshit. You want to talk about fake lives? That was the fakest.”

  We paused then, as the tunnel led off in several directions. All dark.

  “This way,” Varena said, indicating a barred-off section of the fortress that didn’t look the least bit inviting.

  “You’re sure?” Arturo said. He glanced up the hall, much broader, less threatening.

  “Before I was… cast aside.” She glanced my way again, eyes on the amulet under my shirt, and I knew she meant before they’d trapped her. “I’d been in a bit of a position of power around here. Trust me.”

  “Hold the fuck up,” Brad said, pulling back. “If this place is controlled by the enemy, occupied by goblins and all sorts of worse creatures, how does that work? You’re going to both tell us you were in charge, and that we should trust you? Sorry, but those two contradict each other a bit.”

  “Do they?” she scowled. “Here’s the gist of it—shut the fuck up and follow me, because… something’s coming.”

  She wasn’t lying. Even I had sensed a dark presence, and now that she mentioned it, there was a deep, gasping-for-air style breathing growing as that something approached.

  “So, we fight it, and—” Brad started, but I stepped over to Varena’s side. He frowned. “You’re with her?”

  “We all need to be.”

  His nose scrunched as he considered this, then threw his hands in the air. “Dude, she’s got a nice ass. Truth. I mean, fuckkkk me. But—”

  “Thanks,” she interrupted, deadpan.

  “That’s not it,” I added, certain I was blushing.

  “Yeah, I hope not. I mean…” His eyes roamed over her body.

  “Can we go now?” She pressed out her chest, not hiding under his stare, but also clearly annoyed.

  He didn’t even seem to hear her, turning back to me. “If ever there was a body to be tempted by, that’s it. Right there. But that’s how it works, man. You’re here for Katie, right? Focus.”

  “First of all, fuck you,” I countered, trying very hard not to think of Varena’s perfect body,
now that he’d made it the focus of attention. “There’s more here than the physical. Some sort of mental connection. And you know what it says?”

  “Do tell.” He didn’t hide his skepticism.

  “It says sure, maybe she’s not lawful good. Maybe she’s a bit of a chaotic neutral, or maybe there’s some evil in there. I don’t know and don’t care. What I’m concerned with is the part that tells me she’s made a promise, and she’ll see it through.”

  “Promise?” Arturo asked.

  “This whole thing we’re doing!” I nearly lost it. “Going to the top so that we can do a tracking spell and find Katie. Is that not fucking clear enough?”

  The two guys were frowning, but not arguing. When I turned to Varena she was smiling.

  “Something I said funny?” I asked.

  “No, it’s just—I made that thing we’re about to fight,” she pointed behind me, continuing to talk as I turned, “and as much as watching it kill your friends would suck, I’ve always been curious just how powerful it is.”

  What rose to fill the entire passageway looked like a cross between an ogre and the thing from the swamp. Instead of swamp nastiness hanging off of it though, it had shimmering dark tendrils, moving like cloth blown in the wind, but darting about at times as if a program was glitching out. It moved in a disjointed stride. A stutter step, then a quick series of strides that brought it closer. There was no running from this thing, I knew the moment I saw it.

  “That thing… is hideous,” Arturo said, grinning wide and taking up a defensive stance, glowing staff at the ready. “I think I’m in love.”

  It was hard not to laugh, even knowing that our next move would be to either defeat the monster, or die at its hands.

  14

  Going up against this thing, I had no problem not taking the lead. Still, I had my part to play in the fight, and took up a position with sword at the ready, gripped with both hands.