by Ramy Vance
Behind Suzuki, Diana and Sandy were talking to each other in low whispers. Stew and José were also speaking with each other. Whatever Stew was saying was cracking up José. The tunnels were filling with José’s deep boyish laughter. The others had coupled up, except for Chip.
The little bit of light in the cave was fading. Sandy pulled out her wand and cast an Illumination spell. A small orb of light floated up overhead and cast a dull blue hue over the adventurers.
“You gotta start stretching yourself,” Diana said as she gently nudged Sandy’s side. “We can sit down with Chip later and go over some of your SD cards. See how we can get your spells to be a little more…inspired.”
Diana waved her wand, and the ceiling sprouted thousands of eyes that dazzled and flickered until they turned into what looked like tiny stars. The cave was nearly as bright as daylight now.
“That is so fucking sick,” Sandy whispered as she stared up at the constellations painted on the cave’s ceiling.
Diana nodded. “Creativity is the highlight of human magic. It’s what sets us apart from the elves, dwarves, and halflings. You don’t have to restrict yourself to what you read in books. All you need is a general idea and ‘bam’! I’ll show you all about it.”
At Suzuki’s side, Stew and José were talking softly to each other. From what Suzuki could gather, they were exchanging stories. He couldn’t tell if they were talking about fighting or fucking, but whatever the topic, they both seemed riveted. Suzuki hadn’t heard José laugh that much outside of a poker game or a battle. And it had been a battle. There was a part of Suzuki that had been worried that everything he had heard about José was nothing more than myth, the self-proclaimed greatness of one MERC telling stories that grew out of control.
Now, after seeing José fight, every doubt had left Suzuki’s mind. The man had moved so calmly and seemed to delight in fighting. There was obvious joy, but it was different from what Suzuki saw light up Sandy’s face. Sandy liked to make a mess and feed some part of her personality that she couldn’t on Earth. Stew got excited because he liked to prove himself, at least that was what Suzuki suspected. José, though? Suzuki couldn’t figure out what it was that made José a superhero on the battlefield.
Suzuki looked at José, whose hair was pulled back in a long ponytail, his scruffy beard with specks of dried blood. He could see why people called the guy Christ. He had the look of a prophet down, and he carried himself like he knew he was a savior. Suzuki assumed that was where the similarities ended. There weren’t many stories in the Bible that involved orcs or magic-casting mages. Still, it didn’t really matter. José was on their side regardless of what he was.
The adventurers continued to make their way through the star-covered cave, their shadows dancing like wild children across the flint stone. Farther and farther into the cave they descended. Finally, they came to an opening.
The slope of the ground they walked on had been worn into a kind of staircase. They descended and the cave opened up to an underground cavern. Stalagmites taller than José nearly touched the ceiling, which opened up in some parts and let sparse rays of sunlight shoot down and dance on the ground. There was an underground spring in the middle of the cavern. The water was clear as glass.
José walked over to the water and dipped his finger in. “This looks like as good of a place for a break as I think we’re going to get,” he said as he sat down on a rock nearby. “What do you think, kid?”
Suzuki didn’t answer at first. He still wasn’t used to being addressed as an equal. Even if he was being called “kid” all the time. Does José even remember my name?
“Does this match up to your high standards, Suzuki?” José repeated.
That snapped Suzuki out of his thoughts. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, caught off-guard by seemingly having his mind read. “This is a good spot.”
José stood, walked over to Suzuki, and flicked the water on his fingers in Suzuki’s face. The warrior-mage stepped back and batted his eyes furiously.
Caught off-guard again.
Before they left the Red Lion, Suzuki had felt that José treated him like an irritating, brown-nosing student, and he couldn’t blame him. Even when José was talking shit, it was hard for Suzuki not to gush with excitement at being spoken to.
Now Suzuki felt he was being treated like a brother. The change had been almost instantaneous.
Suzuki wandered around the cave, separating from the rest of the two parties for a bit. He wanted to see if there were any other entrances into the cavern. More entrances meant that the tunnels that they had seen before could connect. There were obviously entrances from above, the openings where the light streamed from, but they were a good way away from the opening of the cave. Unless the orcs had scouted the area already, they probably didn’t know that there was direct access from above.
Still…something could probably be done about that.
Across the cave, Diana was waving her wand, which was shooting out small red sparks. “Come on,” she shouted, “Lunch is on.” She waved her wand and a few boulders nearby levitated toward her. A tablecloth spread out over the boulders. Plates and cups appeared. Then she scrolled through her HUD inventory, selected an option, and food materialized onto the plates: a selection of various dried meats, cheeses, and fruits. The cups filled with ale.
Suzuki grabbed a plate and popped one of the pieces of cheese into his mouth. The cheese was funky, flavorful, and a little bitter. It smelled like old t-shirts, but Suzuki couldn’t get enough of it. He rolled some of the cheese up in a few slices of cured goat and dug in. The cured meat was savory and melted in Suzuki’s mouth. Something about the meat reminded him of waking up early in the morning, watching the sun rise over a green hill, the smell of fresh dew and past rains.
Whatever Diana had packed was substantially better than the morsels that Wendy, the barkeep of the Red Lion, had sent out with the Mundanes on their last few missions.
Stew said what everyone was thinking. “Hey, what gives? This is a shit ton better than the shit that Wendy sends us with. I mean, I can make it work. My culinary skills are…let’s just say, bat-shit crazy. But this…this shit is amazing.”
Candles appeared on the table as Diana waved her wand again. “Wendy is a saint,” Diana explained, “who works her ass off. She’s—”
“If she had an arse,” Chip interrupted as she downed her ale.
“Shut it, Chip.”
The brash warrior just smiled. “Just saying she don’t have much of a storage compartment toward the rear. Ain’t nothing wrong with a flat-butted vixen. My own arse leaves a little to the imagination, if you’ve ever taken a gander. Which I know you have.”
“Anyways, I don’t get my food from Wendy,” Diana said. “The Red Lion is more like a hub for the newbies. Granted, we all like to get trashed there, but it’s mostly to see what’s going on with everyone else. There are MERC hubs all throughout the realm. Hell, you saw that we had two inns at the encampment. But like I was saying, they’re mostly for the newbies. Wendy sends everyone off with some top tier shit. But we’ve been at this for a while. Long enough to know that we can do our own grocery shopping and take some of the work off of Wendy. We mostly get our food from elvish markets. José’s partial to the food enchantments.”
“Enchantments?” Suzuki asked.
“Yeah, you know how every bit reminds you of something, even if you aren’t sure that you’re actually remembering anything. That’s the enchantment. Kind of like their wine but less…hardcore, I guess.”
Suzuki took another bite of the cured meat. For a few seconds, the stress of being chased by the Dark One’s forces dissolved. All that Suzuki was left with was a warm feeling in his stomach as a brief vision of himself sitting on a beach next to a windmill filled his mind. He could almost smell the salty sea breeze tickling his nose while he leaned back and felt the coarse, warm sand on his palms.
The vision vanished and Suzuki was back in the cavern. The feelings of con
tentment and comfort remained, though. Suzuki reached for a piece of fruit as José took a sip from his ale.
“Helps keeps the nerves steady,” José explained. “All the near-death experiences have a habit of causing paranoia. Surprisingly, there’s nothing worse than being stressed while you’re trying to stay alive. This way you keep up your energy and morale. The elves were on to something. Been trying to get Wendy to start giving it a try. The recruits could use it. Most of you guys burn out after the first month. How long’ve you been here?”
Suzuki shrugged his shoulders. Time had practically lost all meaning since he’d come to Middang3ard. He didn’t have a calendar. Besides that, so much had happened that he felt caught in a whirlwind. He had no idea when he had been whisked off to Middang3ard. His first mission hadn’t been long after that. The only period of time that had stood out was Beth’s capture. That was a little over two weeks ago.
Beth hadn’t drifted into Suzuki’s mind in a while. Or was it that she never left his mind? Since Beth had been drafted into the army, she had existed only as regular voice and video messages. When Suzuki joined MERC, it was only so he could get closer to Beth. Then she had been captured. Since then, everything that Suzuki had done was to save Beth. That’s why the Mundanes and the Horsemen were sitting in a cave, hiding from orcs, decompressing with an elvish charcuterie plate.
It was all to save Beth.
The rest of the meal continued in relative silence. Each of the adventurers was caught up in the mini false memories, far off gazes resting on their faces. Suzuki wondered what each of them was imagining. Back when he had first tried Elvish wine, the stories that were crafted into the wine were the same for everyone. This felt a little different. This felt like it had been tailored just for him.
Once they were finished eating, Diana waved away the food. “All right,” she said, “equipment check.”
Diana pulled off her HUD, as did José, and handed them to Chip, who took a seat on a rock before taking out a pair of pliers and a soldering iron.
Suzuki had been trying to peg the Chipmaster down since José had told him that she was coming on the quest as well.
Spending any time around José, it was obvious what his role in his party was: tank. It wasn’t often you saw a party leader tanking, but José seemed to have worked out a system.
Diana was also pretty obvious. She was the party’s mage. She didn’t seem to deal with buffing so much as strategic offense.
The Mundanes party was fairly straightforward in that way as well. Suzuki was a battle mage. He tried to blend his melee approach with offensive magic. He’d taken a special liking to fire magic.
Stew was a tank. All Stew had ever been was a tank, stretching all the way back to their first time playing with Beth, before Sandy had joined the party.
And Sandy was a mage. She hadn’t seemed too excited for the role when they had first started gaming together and Suzuki always assumed that she had only accepted it because it was the role that the party needed her to play. That had changed since they had come to Middang3ard. Not only did Sandy seem to have a knack for magic, but she was compulsively reading and expanding her understanding of the craft.
All that being said, Suzuki couldn’t place Chip. He’d only seen her a handful of times, usually when the rest of her party was out on a quest. She was usually at the Red Lion, huddled in some corner, tearing apart HUDs or other electronic devices.
Technology wasn’t a huge part of Middang3ard: almost everything was done magically. That’s why Suzuki had been surprised that Chip always had her hands on a new piece of tech. Other than upgrading her party’s equipment, it was difficult to tell exactly what she did. She didn’t seem all that comfortable in a fight.
It didn’t take Chip long to finish working on her party’s HUDs. She tossed them back to José and Diana and then motioned for Sandy and Stew to hand theirs over.
Stew removed his HUD and gave it to Chip. “I don’t think you have to worry about ours,” Stew said. “We haven’t really got shit on them.”
Chip removed the HUD’s paneling and hit a button that caused the HUD’s SD cards, the upgrade nodules for the HUDs, to pop out.
“I take a kind liking to your professional musings,” Chip murmured, “but I do think that your headpieces have a little bit of personality that could be brought out.”
Chip pulled down her goggles and peered into the inner mechanics of the HUD.
Sandy came up and stood next to Suzuki as she watched Chip work. “A little bit odd, isn’t she?” Sandy asked.
A spark popped from Stew’s HUD and a giant geyser of fire spouted out for a second before Chip was able to pat the flames down.
Suzuki instinctively touched the side of his HUD, imagining his exploding from something Chip had done to it. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Just a little bit.”
Chip turned Stew’s HUD upside down and welded something into the visor. Then she shut up the HUD and handed it back to Stew.
“It looks like you got a pretty standard Critical Hit SD in there,” she explained. “Now these standard pieces are a wee bit underwhelming, to say the least. Ye already know where the pointy part goes, aye?”
Stew tried not to look too confused as he fumbled for his words. “Uh…yeah…the sharp point goes in the body,” he said.
“Exactly. Heads have brains. Big knives work really well, with the pointy part to get to them good ol’ gray parts. So, I found a way to make your upgrade all nice and shiny. A good and proper upgrade. Now, I got this piece set up so it’ll give you a nice little peek at unknown crits. When you hit one of these little buggers, it’ll over clock the HUD, send a jolt to your already impressive muscles and whamo! You’ll be stabbing twice as hard. Read out will pop up on your HUD to give you a good idea of where to get stabby. Sound manageable?”
“Uh…yeah, that sounds pretty fucking great.”
“Get ye swing on, chap. Just pay attention to the readings. It’ll be all bright and hot where you supposed to get all killy. All right, tall, dark, and murderous, step right up.”
Sandy couldn’t seem to tell if Chip was talking to her, so she approached cautiously. She removed her HUD and handed it to Chip gingerly as if she were afraid that Chip were going to do some irreparable damage.
The way that Chip handled the HUD was frightening. She tossed it into the air, caught it with her pliers, and through some kind of mechanical wizardry, broke the HUD into a thousand pieces that floated, suspended in the air.
Sandy’s eyes widened as she marveled at the artistic display of gears, microchips, and microscopic pieces.
Chip peered at the gutted HUD and hummed to herself. She walked a few circles around the HUD and prodded a gear or microchip here and there. Then she prodded a few microchips, reached into the floating galaxy of technology and started to rearrange the whole thing by hand.
The process hardly took any time, and she handed the HUD back to Sandy when she was done.
“All right,” Chip said. “Your SD cards are already on the up and up. I popped open your little guy and reset your mana usage. You have been blowing through a fair amount of it a little too quickly. Gotta little trick you might like. Switching between your staff, wand, and hands will give you a little bump on the ol’ recharge. Chain ‘em together and you’ll get some nice synergy. Extend your mana as long as you’re chaining your magic usage. Sound spiffy?”
Sandy accepted her HUD back from Chip. “Holy shit,” she exclaimed. “That sounds amazing!”
“Figured it’d be similar enough to your VR tricks, am I right?”
Sandy was positively beaming with the upgrade. “Thanks! I’ll really be able to fuck some shit up with this.”
“Yes, indeed, the shit will be properly fucked. All right, O Fearless Leader, bring it on in.”
Suzuki removed his HUD, walked over to Chip, and handed it to her. He was curious to know what she was going to give him. It was Chip initially who had installed his Smell Altering SD. When he first receiv
ed the upgrade from Beth in the mail, he had thought it was going to be completely useless despite the fact that he had initially been rejected from the army for his English blood. Giants had a particular hatred of British blood, and they could smell it through skin. After Chip had taken a look at the SD card, she had made a few alterations that had given him a versatile tool. He was more than a little excited to see what Chip was going to give him now.
The HUD sat in Chip’s hands for a few moments as she turned it over, looking through her goggles with a puzzled look on her face.
“Hmm…” she murmured. “This should about do it.” Chip popped open the SD slot and took out the Clairvoyance card. She crushed the card in between her fingers.
Suzuki instinctively reached out to stop Chip. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.
“My job, no, please and thank you, shut your word hole.”
Chip took the pieces of the card and rolled them in her hand, crushing them up further. Suzuki hadn’t noticed, but it had to take a tremendous amount of strength to break one of those cards with only two fingers, and Chip hadn’t stopped there. She was pounding the pieces of the card with her index fingers, reducing it to a fine powder. Once the card was thoroughly pulverized, she poured the glittering dust back into the SD slot. Then she welded the slot closed. She handed the HUD back to Suzuki.
“Let’s take it for a spin.”
Chip pulled out a USB cord, plugged it into her HUD, and linked her HUD to Suzuki’s. “Cast Clairvoyance,” Chip commanded as she shut her eyes tight.
The familiar portal opened in front of her and Suzuki. Chip reached out and grabbed the edges of the portal. She pulled fast and hard and the portal extended, consuming the entire cave. It happened so quickly that Suzuki couldn’t at first make sense of what had happened.
