Chapter 23

A Dire Situation

 

 

A light snow was falling when Darshana emerged from the Wolfsburg Gate. The large flakes floated down from the gray sky unperturbed by even the hint of a breeze. They settled on the cobblestones of the gate road and promptly melted. It was still summer. Too early for snow, even there in the shadow of the northern face of the White Mountains. She guessed the flakes were refugees from the snowcap of the towering Zugspitze Massif, carried by the swirling winds of the storm perpetually raging on its summit. It was the tallest and most foreboding mountain in the range, and it loomed over the gate. On the rare clear day, when the clouds released their hold, its granite and ice peaks resembled the fangs of the fierce, dire wolves that roamed the boreal forest, crouching at its sheer face.

The gate road ran north into the wilderness and south to the Bavarian-style village of Wolfsburg. The collection of cream-colored bauernhaus buildings with brown, high-pitched roofs and wood trim looked like something out of a German travel blog. The snowglobe-like scene was made complete by an enormous fairytale fortress that rose above the town like a lesser bookend to the Zugspitze.

Darshana was admiring the view when Falin appeared. He trudged up beside her, stroked his ridiculous beard, and said, “Ah. Would you look at that? It’s Neuschwanstein.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The castle. It’s the spitting image of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. You know, the one Disney modeled Cinderella’s castle after.”

“How do you know that, Boston?”

“I’ve been there. In the Real-Real.” He used a mocking tone when he said Real-Real.

She eyed him. “Go with your parents or was it something you did with your high school German class?”

He laughed and coughed. “Something like that.”

“So, is he still in here or are you wasting my time again?”

Falin looked up at her and frowned. “You seem cranky today. What gives?”

“What gives? Nine thousand dollars. That’s what gives. I had to give that party I left behind yesterday all their money back.”

He looked down at his boots. “I told you I was sorry about that.” He looked up and smiled. “Nine thousand is chicken feed compared to what we’ll get when we get the fucker.”

The mention of the bounty aggravated her even more. Only Em and this obnoxious dwarf seemed to know anything about it. She’d spent hours searching gaming sites and cheater blogs for any reference to it and found nothing. The whole thing was beginning to feel like a scam or maybe a stupid wizard test. She glared at Falin. “I haven’t been able to find this bounty posting anywhere on the net or in the Verse.”

He shrugged. “Well, well, imagine that. The legendary Darshana doesn’t know everything.”

“Kiss my ass, Boston. Tell me where I can find the posting, or I’m going home.”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad. I’ll send you a link when we’re done. Not that it’ll matter, though. We’re going to get him tonight, and then we’ll be rich.” He retrieved the mirror from his pack. “You’ll see,” Falin said while he studied the device. “He’s still in here.” He turned around and pointed through the arch to the forest. “Somewhere in there. Last event hit was twenty minutes ago in a location called Wolfwood.”

“Wolfwood? You have any idea what that is?”

“A woods with wolves,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Big ones with big teeth.”

“All the better to eat you with, Little Red Riding Hood,” he chuckled.

“We shall see,” she said, gesturing for him to take the lead. “After you.”

He moved toward the gate, and she pulled him back.

“What?”

“These wolves are tough. They’ll be a challenge even for me. Are you ready for this?”

“Fucking-ay. Let’s get bangin’.”

He took off toward the forest again. This time, she stuck out her boot and tripped him. As he did in the Hunter’s Horn, he toppled over like a felled tree and immediately returned to his feet looking confused and angry.

He pushed her. “Enough of that shit.”

Darshana grabbed his beard. “You’re not in a rig. You promised you’d find one.”

He pulled his beard from her grasp and took a step back. “Yeah, well it’s not that friggin easy for me.”

She shook her head. “You can’t fight as a half-in. Especially these wolves. I’m going to burn up lifeforce fighting your battles and then I’ll have to face this monster.”

“I’ll try not to let that happen,” he said. Then he began to cough. It took several seconds for his fit to subside.

“Are you okay?” she asked, genuinely concerned.

“Yes,” he rasped. “Just a cough. Let’s go.”

The cobblestone road plunged into the forest. Unlike the Jade Gate road, no magic or community of wood cutters kept the trees from spreading their boughs over its span. It was like trekking through a tunnel. The sun was still up, hidden somewhere behind the thick clouds, but beneath the evergreen canopy, it was night. After more than thirty minutes spent inside the gloom, they stepped into a clearing. The snow had stopped, but the thick clouds were closer and darker than they were at the gate. Even so, the open sky seemed bright and cheery compared to the tunnel. The massif was right on top of them. They caught glimpses of its ominous presence in the shifting clouds.

Midway through the clearing, the road ran under a stone arch. This one was much smaller than any gate. It was no more than twenty feet tall and barely wider than the road itself. A carving of a snarling wolf’s head looked down on them from its keystone. The wolf’s eyes and mouth were painted red. The cobblestones came to an end beneath it and a dirt path continued out of the clearing into the trees beyond. A polished steel helmet rested on the ground directly below the wolf’s stare.

“Is this a gate?” Falin asked.

Darshana shook her head. “It’s a border marker.”

“What does it mark?”

“The start of Wolfwood.”

“The start? I thought we just walked through it.”

She laughed and said, “No,” then glanced at him and added, “you still have all your limbs.” Darshana stepped under the arch and bent to pick up the helmet. As she did, she noticed the bodies and gear scattered about the field. She tossed the helmet aside and looked back at Falin. “He was here.”

Falin took out his mirror and checked. Then he glanced nervously around the clearing. “Yep. Not too long ago either. How did you know?”

“Come look.”

The dwarf came through the arch and stood gaping at the carnage. “Looks like what happened to us on Jade Mountain.” He coughed again and gagged.

Darshana studied him. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, but this is fucking gruesome; way too much photo realism for my taste.”

“No one really died here,” she said. “Right now, the players who owned these characters are exiting their rigs and heading for the bar. Probably mad as hell to have been red-screened.”

She knelt near one of the bodies. It was clad in polished metal armor, still clutching a longsword. Its severed head, missing both ears, was laying a few feet away. “The owner of the helmet,” she said. “His player must be really pissed. He was a high-level warrior—probably a forty. Lot of lost rig time.” She eyed his torn pack, “Probably a lot of lost coin too.” She ran a finger through the bloodstained grass and looked at it. Still wet.

Falin was examining another body. “I think this one was a warrior too. How long will the bodies stay here?”

“Until they rot or are eaten. Remember the vultures in the white woods. They clean up the Land.”

“Those Xperion people are just fuckin’ mad about the realism, aren’t they?”

A loud “ayyyoooh” erupted from somewhere nearby, followed by a second, and then a third.

Darshana studied the trees. “It won’t be vultures that get these,” she said as she bent over the headless body of a midlevel magic user.

The mage lay in a large circular patch of burned grass. Similar circles were scattered throughout the field. Darshana flipped the mage over and located her spell pouch. It was empty except for a single, small golden orb. “Looks like they put up a good fight. She threw everything she had at him.” Darshana picked the spell out of the pouch and stood.

“Is that one of those health spells?” Falin asked.

“Yeah. It will come in handy.” She stared at the trees. “Soon.”

As if to confirm what she said, another series of loud ayyyoooh sounds echoed off the hidden cliff face.

Darshana tucked the orb inside her own spell pouch. “These were no helpless càiniǎo. They were all mid- to high-level characters. This thing slaughtered them and took whatever coin and treasure they had. No way to be certain, but I doubt any of them got out by burying their Shēngmìnglì.” She nodded toward the trees. “You still want to go in there after him?”

“Fuck, yeah. Like you said, no one really dies.”

“Okay. Well, lead on, Dwarf. And get your axe ready.”

They followed the path back into the forest. They hadn’t gone more than two hundred yards when the first wolf attacked. It sprang out of the trees without warning and landed on Falin, snapping at his throat. It was as big as a grizzly bear with red eyes and fur the color of the clouds.

Darshana killed it with one strike from her longsword and pushed its carcass off the prostrate dwarf.

“Still want to keep going, little man?” she said.

“Yes. No one really dies,” he repeated, this time as if reassuring himself.

The ground rose as they drew nearer to the massif’s vertical face. The mountain’s unimaginable size was no longer concealed by the clouds. Huge boulders peppered the landscape as if giants had hurled them down from the precipice above, and the trees that had been so dense, had thinned as they had increased in height and circumference.

“These would be redwoods in the Real-Real,” Falin said.

“Sequoiadendron giganteum,” she said.

“Show off.”

About a mile from the clearing, the path made a sharp right turn and climbed onto the first tier of a two-tiered rock terrace that resembled enormous steps leading to the base of the massif. The path continued along the first step for several hundred yards, rising eight to ten feet above the forest floor. They had gone about a third of the way when an enormous black wolf appeared on the second tier above them. It let out a deafening aaaayooh.

The alpha, Darshana thought as she drew her crossbow, but before she could let loose a bolt, an equally large gray wolf fell from the sky and knocked her to the ground. For a moment, Darshana was pinned beneath it, but she’d managed to hold on to her crossbow, and just as snapping jaws closed in on her throat, she pressed it into the wolf’s chest and fired. The beast went limp, and she pushed it off with enough force to send it careening over the ledge.

As Darshana got to her feet, more wolves, some black and some gray, all bear-sized, dropped from the second tier. Holstering her crossbow, she drew her sword, and cut and slashed through them with tornadic fury. Their fangs found her arms and legs, and though each individual bite inflicted little damage to her, they were adding up. Her lifeforce was falling as the dead wolves piled up around her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Darshana spotted Falin swatting at several wolves with his axe in the stunted jerky motions of a player using cyberglove controls instead of the full body motion system of a rig. It was like watching an arthritic fat man dance to fast music.

Damn half-in, she thought.

At some point, she lost sight of the dwarf when he fell beneath a roiling mass of gray and black fur. She hacked her way over to where she’d seen him fall and found him under two large wolves in the process of ripping him apart. Darshana barreled into the nearest one like a battering ram, driving it into the other. The three of them tumbled off the ledge and down into the trees, where they bounced along the forest floor until they came to rest against a building-sized sequoia. Darshana regained her footing before the wolves regained theirs and slashed at them with her sword until they were both dead. Then she sprang back up the hill and onto the ledge.

The wolves were gone, and the dwarf was on his back, covered in blood. She assumed he was dead, and they’d have to start over—something she was not certain she wanted to do—when he let out a loud cough.

“Whata fuck’n pissah. Spend all this time just to be killed by a pack of dawgs.”

“You’re not dead yet, Boston,” she said as she dug in her pouch for a healing spell.

“Yeah, well my lifeforce meter is flashing like a spastic stoplight, and when I try to move, the lady in my head says I’ve been critically damaged. If the bitch only knew.”

Darshana held up a gold orb. “Told you this would come in handy.” Then she said the elvish invocation words, crushed it in her hand, and blew its golden dust on Falin. A gold glow enveloped the dwarf, and a second later he popped up on his feet like an over-wound jack-in-the-box.

“That’s two you owe me,” she said as she counted her remaining health spells. Three left. Her own lifeforce was down to 70 percent. Nothing urgent, but she’d need to be 100 percent to face the monster that took out the party in the clearing. She retrieved another gold orb from her pouch and broke it over her head.

Fully restored, they resumed the trek along the ledge. They had made it another fifty yards when a vibration in Darshana’s right temple alerted her to an incoming projectile. She twisted, but not in time to avoid the iron-tipped arrow that slammed into her right breast with a thud and a red flash. Her lifeforce meter registered an immediate 25 percent hit. One arrow had done as much damage as the pack of dire wolves.

It took her less than a second to spot the arrow’s source. About a hundred yards away, at the point where the terrace disappeared around a bend, the Gray Warrior sat perched atop his demonic stallion with his great bow drawn for another shot. He let fly his arrow, but Darshana was faster this time, and it whistled past. She responded with three bolts from her crossbow, but even if the high trajectory she’d sent them on ended on target, the distance would rob them of the power needed to pierce the monster’s armor or even its hide.

One of the bolts must have found the horse, because the animal let out a terrible scream that seemed as loud as the howls from the wolves. Despite its pain filled wail though, the bolt hadn’t brought the animal down. On the contrary, it began to charge.

“Shit,” she said. “Time to run, dwarf.”

“No way,” Falin said as he pulled out his mirror.

“What are you doing?” she said as she fired another volley of bolts at the rapidly approaching rider.

“Collecting data.”

“Data?”

“Yeah. Even if he kills us, this is how we’re going to get him.”

A vibration at her temple told her another arrow was about to strike—on the left this time. Darshana turned, but once again, she was too late. This one punched through her breast plate and knocked her to the ground. Her lifeforce meter fell below 50 percent, and a voice in her ear said, “Serious damage sustained.”

Fuck.

She sprang to her feet and pushed the dwarf back. “Run!”

They bolted back the way they’d come. The horse and rider had already halved the distance to them. One more arrow, and it would be red-screen for Darshana. Shea was not about to let that happen, no matter what data the fucking dwarf needed to collect. She dug in her spell pouch as she ran and drew out an iridescent red orb emblazoned with a fiery orange rune.

She checked her life meter. The spell would take its toll, but she should have enough. Darshana balled the orb in her fist and shouted, “Inectius Nuvium Su, Lovem.” Then she closed her fist, spun, and thrust her open hand at the ledge above them. An instant later, the mountainside exploded in a flash of blue light and a deafening thunderclap that was followed by the roar of tumbling boulders and snapping trees. The avalanche buried the path under a fifty-foot mound of debris. The voice in her ear said, “Alert! life force below 10 percent.”

“Holy fuck!” Falin exclaimed.

Darshana grabbed him by his pack and threw him off the ledge, then jumped down after him. At the bottom, she pulled him to his feet and dragged him farther down the slope.

They huddled behind one of the enormous trees. She dug out her remaining health spells while he fiddled with the mirror.

“God, I hope he didn’t exit,” he said.

“Are you kidding me?” she said as she crushed one of her two remaining gold orbs over her head. The arrows in her shoulder and chest disappeared in a golden flash. She put the remaining health spell in a pocket for quick retrieval and located the orb Em had given her at Staghead.

“I’m almost afraid to ask what that one does,” Falin said.

“Hopefully calls Em.”

He swatted at it with his hand. “Don’t do that,” he said.

“Why the hell not?” She motioned to the pile of debris above them. “You think that’s going to stop that monster?”

“I’m hoping it won’t,” Falin said. “I almost have what I need, and I can’t have the wizard learn about this.” He held up the mirror.

“Need? What the hell does that mean?” she asked. Darshana grabbed his beard and pulled his face close to hers. “You and that wizard are up to something.”

“If I was working with the wizard, I’d let you call him.”

Darshana released her hold. “Maybe you’re not working with him, but there’s something going on and it has nothing to do with a bounty. What is it?”

Before the dwarf could answer, a vibration in her right temple told her to dodge left, and she did, just in time. An arrow grazed her right cheek. Close. She rolled to her feet and let loose six bolts in the direction of the arrow’s flight. The horse let out another terrifying scream, and this time it was followed by the loud sound of it crashing down into the trees. She’d hit it. The arrow that slammed into her heart stopped her from celebrating.

Her view flashed red, and the voice in her ear declared, “Character death imminent.”

Tossing aside Em’s orb, she ripped the last health spell from her pocket and broke it over her head just as her life meter tipped to zero.

“He’s coming,” she heard the dwarf say as the imminent death alerts in her ear subsided.

Darshana grabbed the dwarf and rolled farther down the hill. They tumbled together until they slammed into a boulder. She pushed him behind it. A great roar came from somewhere above them, followed by the sound of something heavy running through the tangled scrub and pine straw.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered as she retrieved a shovel from her pack.

“What are you doing?” Falin asked.

“Burying my Shēngmìnglì. If you don’t want to start back at zero, you better do the same.”

The crashing grew louder.

“We’ll never make it,” he said as he pushed the mirror back into his pack and searched for his shovel.

Darshana reached into her spell pouch and pulled out a dark green orb with a silver rune.

“You going to blow up the hillside again?”

“No. Dig,” she said. Then she closed her fist around the orb and said the invocation phrase followed by the elvish word for conceal.

The whole world turned a filmy green as if they were inside a bubble.

“What’s going on?” Falin said.

“Concealment spell. We’re hidden, but it will wear off quickly,” she said as she continued to dig.

She was returning her shovel to her pack when the blurry form of the Gray Warrior approached.

“Can he see us?” Falin said over his shoulder as he dug.

“No. But he will soon.” She stood and peered out at the monster. He came closer still, until they were almost face-to-face. “I’m going to make you pay for this, scumbag.” She turned to Falin. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She bent down and grabbed his beard again, drawing him close. “You and Em are playing some kind of game, and I’m done. This is humiliating. Don’t contact me again.”

She released him. Then she made the hand motions to open the game menu, and selected abort from the list. A glowing red ball emerged from her chest, her aura, and a voice in her head said, “You have ten seconds to bury your Shēngmìnglì.” The voice counted down as she placed the glowing ball in the hole she’d dug and covered it with the loose dirt.

When the countdown reached zero, her visual field turned red, and a message window opened announcing, YOUR CHARACTER HAS DIED! A prompt appeared giving her three options, QUIT, RESPAWN NEW, or RESTORE AT POINT OF DEATH.

She fought back an angry tear and selected QUIT.