It toppled like a sack of bricks and she rolled free before she limped closer to yank her dagger out of the large ear.
“Why,” she panted, “didn’t you open the door yourself?”
“You know,” Justin told her, “you’d think I would have thought of that.”
“Yeah. I would. Now, where’s all that useful stuff?”
“Um.” He waited for the body to disappear, then triumphantly held a bracelet up. “Ha! It’s good for magic—I suppose you should have this.”
“Thank you.” Zaara slipped it on. “You know, I do feel like I could throw more spells. Maybe it’s all in my head.”
He grinned and stepped onto the stairs.
“Oh, by the way, there are patrols.” She caught up with him and whispered the words. “Lyle and I figured it out. Follow me.” She cleared her throat and wiggled her fingers, then slouched her shoulders, let her face go slack, and marched up the stairs like a zombie.
Justin had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. A glance behind him showed Lyle doing the same thing and he almost lost it but he managed to keep it together enough to clomp along behind Zaara. They passed another patrol and the members grunted. The dwarf grunted in return.
SNEAK, LEVEL 11, the game told Justin. FOOLISH BRAVADO, LEVEL 1.
He couldn’t argue with that.
The stairs ended soon after and a door led them deeper into the interior of the tower. Lyle looked at the others to see if they were ready and stood aside to let Zaara work her lock magic. The door swung open silently.
Kural’s work lasted.
The room beyond was furnished like a living room. A large hearth held a fire that crackled merrily, a sideboard was laid with delicious food and pitchers of wine, and long couches made Justin ache to sleep. His mouth watered and he groaned.
“It’s all poisoned, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” Lyle said gruffly.
The food looked so tasty that it took them a moment to realize that what floated above their heads wasn’t some kind of airy, shimmering gauze but a spell instead. Justin looked sharply at it with a curse, but it didn’t seem to come any closer. It billowed toward the ceiling and was anchored to the wall at four points. A stairway wound into the interior of the tower and vanished through the spell as it ascended.
“What do you think it is?” he asked Zaara.
Before they could stop him, Lyle picked up a little bauble from one of the side tables and threw it directly at the force field. It bounced off, returned at high velocity, and shattered on the floor when the dwarf ducked.
“What are you doing?” Zaara hissed at him.
“He’ll hear us,” Justin added in a furious whisper.
“Relax.” The dwarf shrugged. “I think if he didn’t notice the guards dying with a fireball and the troll demolishing that door, he won’t notice this, right?”
“Your reasoning is somewhat flawed, but…acceptable.” He looked at the shards of glass. They didn’t seem to be burned. “Do you think it’s only a shield?”
“It looks like it,” Zaara agreed. “That’s what those sigils are—they anchor it.” She pointed to the four points on the wall. Each glowed a different color.
“Okay, so how do we take it down?” He approached the staircase cautiously and walked up to it until he was close enough to touch the barrier. All three of them winced when his fingers drew close to it, but it didn’t shock or burn him. It merely gave slightly when he touched it like the surface of a trampoline.
Justin unsheathed his sword, tried to brace himself on the stairs as well as he could, crouched, and drove the blade up. The shield gave but immediately snapped back and jerked the weapon out of his hands. It bounced hilt-first off the stairs a few times. He threw himself against the wall to avoid it and the sword clattered to the floor below.
“My turn.” Zaara marched up the stairs and motioned for him to descend. She readied herself, seemed to consider a few different options, and finally chose a jet of water.
A moment later, she turned to look at the others. Her hair and cloak were sopping wet.
“My turn,” Lyle said.
“You already tried.” She walked down the stairs, wiping her wet hair out of her eyes.
“Not with my fists,” the dwarf argued. He approached the barrier without slowing and began to punch it furiously. His fists bounced off, but he planted his legs and gave a war cry as he continued.
“He doesn’t do subtle, does he?” Zaara asked Justin in an undertone.
“He does not, no.”
“Good to know.” She folded her hands and watched their companion.
It took him longer to tire than Justin expected but eventually, the dwarf stumbled down the stairs with a sullen expression.
“Wizards,” he said and sounded grumpy.
“It turns out you can punch a spell, though,” he pointed out. “Which was one of your main objections at the start of this.”
Lyle harrumphed his displeasure. “Yeah, yeah, make your jokes. But I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas.”
Justin tilted his head back to look at the barrier. Its surface was a deep blood-red that rippled slightly when he looked at it, and he sincerely hoped there wasn’t actual blood in it. He had to admit it was a strong possibility, however, as he turned to look at each of the sigils. They glowed the same pale gold as the lamps.
And beneath each, only faintly visible, was a dwarven door.
“It’s a puzzle,” he said and pointed to the doors. “Lyle, look. Four doors, four sigils. Behind each door must be whatever guards that anchor point.”
“Ahhh,” Zaara said, with satisfaction. She gave a longing look at the food. “I wish we could eat.”
“We can,” Justin said, “but not any of that. Everyone sit and rest for a moment. We have some fights ahead of us, I think.”
“What are you doing?” she asked as he pulled the book out of his inventory.
“I’m learning another spell or two,” he told her. “I think we’ll need them.”
Chapter Thirty
Without any indication of which door to select, they chose one at random. It was sticky enough that Justin began to doubt himself, but a particularly hard headbutt from Lyle opened it with a bang.
“You could have used your foot,” he told the dwarf.
“What’s the fun in that?”
“What, indeed,” Zaara said philosophically. “Also, I don’t mean to distract you two, but there appears to be something in the dark.”
When Justin looked closely, he discerned a faint blue glow in the darkness. He threw a fireball, which illuminated a giant, bear-shaped creature before it connected with the back wall and plunged the room into darkness again.
“Yes,” he told her, “I think you’re right.”
“Oh, for—” She gave him a look and charged past him at a sprint. “For Riverbend!” She drew her dagger, only recently cleaned of troll blood, vaulted upward, and brought the point of the blade straight down. “Ow, fuck!”
With a burst of white sparks, her dagger slid off the beast, which rose to its feet with a growl. Its fur now shone the same blood red as the magical veil. It lowered its head and snarled at Justin.
“For—San Francisco!” He threw a fireball without even a moment’s hesitation. It was better, he decided, to strike before it started to charge and with that in mind, he grasped Lyle and dragged him sideways out of the doorway. In their wake, the door banged closed and locked them in the room. “Typical,” he muttered.
The fireball, however, also had no effect. The bear’s fur took on a sickly green hue and he began to worry that it was gaining power.
“Lyle, don’t!”
It was too late. The dwarf was gone and the bear thrashed and twisted to try to reach him while he kicked and punched. None of his attacks—like those of his teammates—seemed to have an effect on the animal’s health bar.
Its fur began to glow blue again and Zaara readied herself.
“Zaara, wait!” Justin called. “Use a spell this time. And Lyle, punch it.”
“If ye say so,” the dwarf called enthusiastically. A moment later, Lyle yelled, “Ow! Still nothing.”
Zaara’s fireball, however, had done the trick. The bear bellowed in pain and sparks skittered across its fur. It rolled on the floor to try to put the fire out and heaved itself to its feet. The fur glowed red and Justin aligned the colors with their style of attacks.
“Lyle, I think it’s you now.”
“You said that last time,” the dwarf complained but that didn’t stop him. He took two running steps and, with more balls than Justin could imagine having in five lifetimes, punched the bear in the face. The creature reared with a shriek and its fur changed to green.
“Now, Justin!” Zaara yelled.
This time, when he attacked, he knew there was only a short window. The animal had begun to sway on its feet as he sprinted. Only a few more steps, only a few more, he told himself desperately. It began to sag and he stabbed his sword forward and up with every ounce of strength in his body.
His pixelated body, of course. Although he’d be pleasantly surprised if he woke up and found out that he’d somehow become ripped from his e-workouts.
He had no more time to think about that as the bear fell and he was thrown to the floor with a clatter of teeth. The creature pinned his legs as its fur faded to black and he couldn’t squirm free. It took both Zaara and Lyle to heave the carcass to the side enough for him to get out, and when he did, his legs were covered with blood.
“Ew,” he said with vehement distaste. The door clicked open and he limped to it.
“What, you’ve never butchered an animal before?” Zaara looked at him like he was crazy.
“I thought you were in training to be a noble lady,” he told her grumpily.
“A lady can’t cure ham? Skin a rabbit?”
“This world is weird.” Justin shook his legs on the expensive carpet, pleased to see Sephith’s riches getting ruined, and smiled at the ceiling. “Well, the good news is that one of the anchors is gone.”
With a rumble and a crash, the door collapsed and was replaced by a blank wall. All members of the party stared at it for a moment, thankful that they’d stepped clear moments before.
“Huh,” Lyle said finally. “I’ve never seen a dwarven door do that before.”
“You don’t say. Okay, which next?” Justin covered his eyes, spun in a circle, and pointed. “Eeny, meeny, miny…whoops, pointing at the fireplace. Moe.” He strode to the door he’d selected. “Is everyone ready?”
“Ready.” Zaara nodded. “Blue for magic, red for fists, green for blades.”
But when he opened the next door, all they encountered was a wall of shimmering peach fire. A click and a creak behind him made him whirl as the door on the opposite wall also opened to reveal the same fire inside.
“Zaara, can I borrow your spare dagger?”
She handed it over silently and he stretched gingerly to poke the dagger into the flames. As he had expected, the tip protruded through the opposite door. He withdrew it and handed it to her. “So it’s a portal.”
“It’s a portal to nowhere,” she said. “And if two of the points are in there, how are we supposed to get there? You can’t go through either door…well, maybe if you go the other way?” She went to the other door and repeated the trick, but it worked the same. “Now what?”
“Stand away from it,” Justin said. He readied a fireball.
“Maybe a small one,” Zaara suggested.
“Oh, good call.” He knelt and pictured a tiny fireball. When it skittered from his palm, it rolled across the floor like a mini bowling ball and into the blaze, only to roll out the other side unscathed.
Zaara tried the same with water and wind, he tried his new ice spell, and for good measure, Lyle attempted to punch the spell. None of the techniques achieved anything at all. The three of them sank to the floor to think and every once in a while, turned to watch as the tiny fireball rolled past again.
“There’s no way to drain magic, is there?” Justin asked.
“Not that I know of,” Zaara said. “And all of ours seem to go right through.”
“Wait.” He scrambled up. “Go to that door, I’ll go to this one.”
“Okay.” She hurried to stand across the room from him and raised her foot to allow the fireball to roll past again. “Now what?”
“Now, you use a water spell and I use a fire spell,” he said.
“Ohhh.” She nodded. “Okay, on the count of three—and we’d better go at the same time or one of us will take a spell to the face.”
Lyle chortled. He’d found a safe place on the stairs and seemed to be enjoying this immensely.
“Does that mean, one, two, three, go, or one, two, three?” Justin asked.
“On the three. That’s why I said, on the count of three. It’s in the phrase.”
“Well, you can’t simply expect—”
“One, two, three,” Zaara cut in.
With a hasty oath, he delivered a fireball. The two magic attacks met with a hiss and a puff of steam, and the peach fire seemed to weaken. He almost thought he could see her through it now.
“It’s working! Go again.”
It took four rounds, but the magical blaze disappeared and with a rumble, both doors vanished and the anchors winked out of existence. Only one still glowed and the veil began to look awfully weak.
“Ha,” Justin said. “All right, is everyone ready for one last challenge?” When both his companions nodded, he opened the door.
“You will face my wrath,” a figure in a black cloak announced as it swung its arms up to cast a spell.
Justin promptly stabbed it in the chest. It fell with a scream and the door disappeared with a crash. When he turned, Zaara had her face hidden in her hands and she shook with silent laughter.
“That was amazing,” she managed. “Truly amazing. Oh, gods.”
He chortled as well. When he looked up, the staircase now faded into the gloom with no veil to block their path. “Let’s rest again before we move on. I’d say we have a wizard to kill.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Justin sat on the floor and gnawed on a rabbit leg with little enthusiasm. It was hard to be content with the same old thing when he stared at the most delicious looking meal he had ever seen. He half-expected to reach Sephith’s inner sanctum and have the wizard tell them nothing had been poisoned.
Zaara and Lyle spoke in low voices. She had tended to a scratch behind one of his ears and he had cleaned and wrapped a cut on one of her hands. The white bandage stood out vividly against her black cloak and armor. Once, Justin thought he saw them look at him, but he might have imagined it.
Finally, she came to sit beside him. She withdrew a piece of bread from her pack, broke it in half, and offered him one of the two pieces.
“Is that your last bread?” he asked.
“It won’t do anyone any good if one of us dies from being weak, right?” She waited for him to take it. “Lyle gave me one of the rabbit legs. I only wish I had wine to wash it down with. Not that it would help in the fight at all—I’d simply be less worried.”
He laughed.
“What about you?” she asked and fixed him with a curious look.
“What about me?”
“Are you scared?”
“Kind of,” Justin told her. “Yes. I am. But it doesn’t matter.”
She waited, looped her arms around her knees, and looked at him as she chewed.
“I spent my whole life playing it safe,” he said. “The stories I heard were supposed to inspire me to do great things and I never did.”
“You’re here now,” Zaara pointed out. “You’re saving people from a wizard. Don’t you think that’s a great thing to do?”
He smiled bitterly. “It isn’t real, Zaara.”
“What do you mean?” She crossed her legs and straightened to peer curiously at him.
Justin took a moment to wonder if it would kill him to break away from the game entirely. He was surprised to find that he was more worried to lose the friendship of Zaara and Lyle than he was to break the game. He didn’t remember being in the coma before it had started. If he went back to sleep, that wouldn’t hurt him.
This might.
“I come from another world,” he told her. “Not another valley or a faraway city, a whole different world.”
She gave a disbelieving laugh.
“Magic isn’t real where I come from,” he told her. “I only know about it because people tell stories about it. I was…I guess you’d call me a noble. Or a mayor’s son. I wanted to make my living telling other people’s stories. One day, when I was out with a woman, a cart crashed in the road and I was injured. Badly. All of this is a dream my brain is telling me while I lie asleep.”
Zaara considered this. She took a bite of bread.
“I suppose you think I’m crazy,” Justin said. Who am I kidding—she’s not real. She doesn’t think at all.
“I do think you’re crazy,” she agreed. She chewed, swallowed, and stared into the middle distance for a moment. “A little, anyway. But many people are a little crazy, aren’t they? People say that all wizards are mad and that’s what allows them to reach beyond the veil and bring their powers back. Maybe your soul is only wandering.” She looked at him.
“But none of this is real,” Justin told her desperately. “It’s all in my head. You don’t exist, Zaara. None of this exists.” Panic welled in his throat. Why should he care about convincing a part of the AI in this game?
“If it’s in your head and you’re real, then it’s real,” she countered.
“That’s—I can’t…that doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes as much sense as what you said.” She took another huge bite of bread. “And how do you know it’s even in your head, anyway? You could be dead in the other world but alive here.”
“Well, that’s truly terrifying.” He looked away and swallowed. “What…frightens me…is that, even though this isn’t real, what if I die facing Sephith and that somehow kills me in my world?”
Too Young to Die Page 21
