You’re dead no escape nowhere to go. The whisper in her head becomes a desperate scream, which she silences by pulling against the iron binding her wrists until they’re red raw. Remy glances at the pointy implements laid on a table in the corner of the dark metal room and cycles through a variety of grim scenarios in which they might be used to extract the crystal from her hand. But hell, she’ll tear her arm off first if she has to, whatever it takes to escape.
At once, nerve-shredding pain lances through her right hand and down her arm. She curls her toes in her soles and howls wildly, stretching her fingers to try and keep her muscles from going haywire. Glancing up through tears, she watches as pale eldritch light pulses from within her hand, and it feels like her arm is splitting in two. Then as quickly and suddenly as it appeared, the agony subsides and fades to a dull ache. What the shit was that?! she wonders. Undoubtedly this was something to do with the crystal shard, but what caused it? And what did it mean?
She hangs in the dark by her wrists and catches her breath as her hair falls over her face. The iron door opposite her swings open, and the light behind Grimoirh casts an intimidating silhouette as he looms in the doorway. Remy watches him with eyes ablaze as he approaches her.
“Let me go!” She lunges towards him, stopping inches short as her chains pull taut. “Well? Say something!” she hisses.
“Who are you?”
His cold voice reverberates from behind the iron mask, which unnerves her, but damned if she’ll show it.
“Piss off,” she spits.
Then, unexpectedly, he lifts the horned helmet from his head to assure her that he’s no monster, but a man. Her curious eyes study his gaunt face, scrutinising every detail – the deep scar across his nose and the dark bags under his eyes. Strangely he looks familiar to her, but she can’t place why.
“You played the game?” he asks.
Game? How does he know it’s a game? None of the other characters have. Her eyes dart back and forth as she tries to fathom what this could mean. “You know about—?”
“Of course. I created it.”
For one of the few occasions in her life, Remy Winters finds herself lost for words. She wasn’t expecting Grimoirh to be entirely human, let alone the creator of Ultimate Adventure VII.
“Created it? You mean—?”
“I’m as real as you.” He glances up at her hand. “The crystal, you have it?”
She keeps her gaze locked on him and clenches her fist. He looks deep into her eyes and notices glimmers of teal. Strange, he’s sure they were brown before.
“I wonder… can you help me?”
“Help you? Help you?” she scoffs.
“Help me save the world, Remy.”
Her eyes snap wide on hearing her name from his lips. How the hell does he know my name? Doesn’t matter, don’t let on that you’re bricking it. You’re tough. Be tough.
“Isn’t Grimoirh supposed to end the world?”
“The irony isn’t lost on me,” he replies. “You’ve played the game, then you know the power those crystal shards hold. To retrieve it that monster had to be destroyed. I was right to think it was only a matter of time until one of us would do it.”
“One of us?” Remy pulls defiantly on her chains. “I’m nothing like you!”
“We’re both stuck here and if we want to change that we’ll need to work together. I’m sure by now you know, this world is very, very dangerous.”
Her eyes narrow to a bitter glare.
“Those shards contain unfathomable power, and if I can gather them all then maybe I can fix this mess.”
“Why would I trust you? You tried to kill us! Hunted us through the woods! Chained me up like an animal! You almost got my sister killed!”
“No, that was you. I warned you to stay away from the giganeye. I locked you all up to protect you. If you had stayed put things might have gone differently.” He turns towards the doorway. “Bring her in!”
At his command, one of his odorous underlings shoves Jessica into the room and onto her knees.
“Rude!” She pokes her tongue out at the goblin, then her eyes sparkle as she sets them on her sister. “Remy?!” She throws her arms around her and squeezes tight.
“Jess?! You’re… you?! Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” Jessica replies. “They just locked me up, alone. It wouldn’t kill you to find a magazine or something!” she hisses at Grimoirh, who signals to the goblin to remove her.
Its clumpy hands grab her arm and drag her away. “Get off me, you ugly son of a—!”
The door slams behind them, but Jessica’s muffled insults echo as she’s dragged kicking and screaming back to her cell.
Remy eyes him with murderous intent. “I swear to God if you hurt her—”
“Hurt her? I saved her. I could’ve left her in that pit like you did, but I didn’t. This isn’t a game anymore. I’m not some evil villain, and you’re not some plucky heroine. I’m trying to put an end to all of this before it gets any worse.” His tone darkens. “There’s more at stake here than you think. Sinister forces are at work. Your sister has got fire in her, just like you, but do you think you can keep her safe for long in a world like this? You’ve already lost her once…” He leans closer. “… Not all of us are capable of surviving this unforgiving place. So help me, help yourself, help your sister, and you might both survive what’s ahead.”
“And what’s that?” she asks.
“Tell me, are you afraid?”
She looks scornful, and tries as hard as she can not to show even a flicker of fear.
A smirk plays on his lips. “Good, that fear will keep you alive.”
With a frustrated sigh, she relents, knowing this is a decision she’ll surely regret. “Do I have a choice?” she asks, feeling as helpless and out of control of her life as ever.
“There’s only one choice.” Grimoirh unshackles her wrists, and lets them down, “Adapt or die.”
*
Lauren bursts to the surface with a gasp. Her heart races at the ocean surrounding her, frigid waves pummelling her as she fights to keep her head above the water.
“This way!” Valentine cries.
She spins around, and her chest flutters at the sight of land and Valentine swimming towards it. She focuses all her attention on the beach ahead as she battles her way ashore. It takes all she’s got not to get swept out further.
The detective gasps for breath as he drags himself onto the bleak sand, while Lauren wades out of the water behind him and falls on her knees. She looks to the dawn sky and savours sweet air, her aching arms and legs shivering in the sea breeze. She scans this alien place and wonders how the bloody hell she got here.
The sun isn’t the only thing crawling over the horizon. An airship sails overhead, and the morning light gleams off the slender metal hull, blinding her as it passes. The hairs on her neck prickle like a hedgehog’s spines. She recognises that ship – but that can’t be possible.
Hunched on all fours, the detective has his head literally buried in the sand and misses the floating ship entirely. “What… Where are we?” he asks, spitting seawater and sand out of his mouth. “Hey, you alright? Shit, what was her name again?” he mutters. “What’s the last thing you remember? The fire and then… Hey, you with me?” He waves a hand in front of her face, snapping her out of her trance.
“Ye-yes,” she shivers.
He shoots her a crooked smile before pulling his mobile phone from his pocket. “You’d think these things would be waterproof by now,” he curses, tapping the screen aggressively. “Can’t call for help… Keep it together, Scott, get a lay of the land…” His incoherent mumbling is mired by the squelching of his shoes with each step further inland.
They cross the beach and stagger over the ridge into a sprawling meadow of swaying grass. All the while the detective impatiently taps his phone screen. Lauren checks hers too, praising herself for buying the waterproof case, but it makes little difference, no signal – not that she expected any.
“I don’t think that’s going to work here,” she says.
He tuts and stuffs his phone back into his pocket. “Where is here exactly? Don’t see any roads. Penzance? Dungeness maybe? But how did we get to the coast? How the hell could we be in a burning apartment one minute, then in the ocean? Where did all that water come from? What’s going on?!” The detective rubs his head as he tries to make sense of what doesn’t. “Maybe we’re dead.”
He laughs while Lauren quietly tries to subdue her swelling anxiety with steady breaths.
“Maybe this is just a dream?” He examines his hands and wiggles his fingers. “Doesn’t feel like a dream, though.” He slaps himself across the face. “Definitely not a dream.”
Lauren shudders as something whips past her leg and the grass rustles around her, as though a shark were circling its prey.
“Uh… he-hey! De-Detective!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think there’s something in here with us.” She looks white as a ghost.
“Like a dog?” he asks.
Lauren catches a glimpse of whatever is lurking in the grass – a leathery tail with a barbed stinger.
“Not a dog!” she whimpers.
A blur leaps at her, and she ducks in the nick of time before the creature flies overhead and tumbles onto the ground, sharply rolling onto its paws. She gets a good look at it now – a sizeable, blueish, panther-looking thing. Two long tendrils writhe from its shoulders while its menacing tail sways behind.
“Christ, what the hell is that?!” Valentine’s shaking hand reaches for his telescopic baton, which he draws on the creature as it takes a run at him, and whomps it in the face as it leaps. The beast tumbles over in the grass.
He prods the limp carcass. “What the ever loving…?! You ever seen anything like this?”
“Random encounter… random encounter!” Lauren cries as the reality – for lack of a better word – of her situation dawns on her.
“Random what?” he asks, unnerved by the look of dread plastered across her face.
“We have to get out of this field, right now!”
“You think there’s more?”
Lauren gulps. “A lot more.”
The rustling grass indicates packs of creatures stalking towards them.
Valentine looks warily about the field. “On three, we’ll run together. One. Two. Thr—!”
A gelatinous blob with two black button eyes rises from the grass behind him, and Lauren recognises the creature immediately – a blobkin, a common monster that has appeared in all the Ultimate Adventure games, often found dripping from dungeon walls or lurking in damp areas. It’s comprised of a bright-coloured ooze which swallows Valentine’s baton as he strikes it. The detective stumbles backwards, watching his baton dissolve inside the creature’s acidic body, then it bounces towards him like a malevolent space hopper.
“Run!” He takes off through the meadow like a shot.
Lauren bolts too and quickly catches up to the aged detective who wheezes like a sick dog as he clumsily hurls himself through the long grass which bleeds into a marsh scattered with crooked black trees.
More blobkins give chase and cut them off, their black button eyes staring with a cold unwavering hunger to kill. Valentine stumbles through the bog and picks up a rock then hurls it, striking one of the oozes, which retreats with a wobble.
“Watch out!” Lauren shrieks as a walking corpse rises from the water. Valentine turns as the creature lunges and clocks it hard, knocking its head clean off.
“What is going on? What are these things, and why are they after us?!” He looks aghast at the decapitated body thrashing in the water.
“Random encounters,” Lauren replies.
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“It’s part of the game. Monsters show up to battle when you’re in the wilderness.”
“Part of the game?” He looks at her like she’s crazy or high or both.
She points up at the airship hovering in the distance, far above the rising fog that swathes over the murky water. “There, we need to get to it and out of the wild!”
Valentine’s jaw drops at the stark sight of the floating ship. “Maybe we are dead…” he gulps.
*
Remy trudges behind Grimoirh through the veiled bog. With every step the airship fades further into the mist, which washes everything in pale grey. She watches him cautiously, and the thought of trying to escape crosses her mind, but there’s nowhere to go, and he still has Jessica prisoner. She examines her right hand and rubs her palm softly. The faint glow of the jewel resonates from under her skin. If only she knew how to wield its power, if only she knew how to get herself home.
Her mind swells with questions. Who is he? A player like me? He said he created the game. He does look a little familiar. How is that possible? What if he wants to be here? What if he’s living out some sad fantasy? What if this is a trap? If he wants the crystal why didn’t he just take it? She winces as the icy water swilling around her legs trickles into her boots, then asks for the umpteenth time, “What are we doing here and where are we going?” She thinks back to the original game, but the boxy 16-bit graphics hardly translate to the realism of her experience now, and there are dozens of swamps in the game that all reused similar tilesets. She jolts at the caw of a crow perched atop the husk of a dead tree, and its beady eyes follow her as she passes it by.
“I feel like that bird is watch—”
“Shh!” Grimoirh snaps and grabs the hilt of his sword. “We’re not alone.”
Remy can’t make out much through the fog, but a foreboding groan unsettles her. She tightens her eyes and peers through the mist at a humanoid silhouette shambling closer. She edges backwards, keeping her attention fixated on who or what is before her. A decrepit wet hand suddenly clasps her shoulder from behind. She shrieks and wrestles with a walking corpse until Grimoirh buries a dagger in its head and it topples back into the marsh.
“Undead!” He draws the God Cleaver from his back, which erupts with an enchanted yellow flame, and the fire spits and crackles across the black iron blade as dozens more silhouettes sprint out of the mist. Snarling, hissing, shrieking wights – bald, festering and sunken-eyed – charge the Dread Knight who swings his sword with great gusto, cutting them into pieces that plop into the water. Remy’s heart races as one corpse after another hurls itself at her, but she manages to evade their advances and spots a worn longsword impaling one of the dead. Determined to reach it, she ducks and dives her way through clambering hands and clasps its hilt. She pulls at the sword, but it’s lodged too deep in the wight’s breastbone to budge. Thinking fast, Remy shoves the sword further through its guts and runs another through as it comes towards her. Wielding the sword like a giant shish kebab, she swings the skewered creatures into their kin while desperately trying to break it free.
“Oh for God’s sake!” She lifts her foot against the corpse and kicks. One big tug and the sword finally breaks loose from its chest cavity, spraying her head to toe with rotting bodily fluids as she trips backwards into the bog. She wipes her eyes clean and swings the blade around as she stands, beheading the monster in front of her. Its gnashing head splashes at Grimoirh’s feet, and he crushes it with his boot then brings his flaming sword down on another, splitting it like a log. Remy covers her mouth and retches at the rotting guts spilling into the marsh.
“There’s no end to them!” Grimoirh cries. “Stick close to me.” He cuts a path through the biting abominations, and together they wade through the mist and shallow water while the horde relentlessly pursues them. More and more dead rise feverishly from their watery graves, each as starved of flesh as the last.
The shape of a towering ruin appears through the fog as they advance, but hundreds more undead surround them from every direction. Grimoirh cleaves ten corpses in half with one broad slash. He stands firm, back to back with Remy, and in a flurry of fire and steel, they slice and dice the wights to ribbons. Body parts and putrid guts litter the murky water, tainting it brownish red, but the endless rush overwhelms them.
“Brace yourself!” the Dread Knight warns.
“For what?!” yelps Remy.
Gripping his sword in both hands, Grimoirh raises it high, then shunts the blade into the earth and drops to one knee. With all his might, he twists the sword in the ground, unleashing a burst of enchanted fire, which forms a wheel of flame around them.
Remy looks amazed as the fervent dead hurl themselves into the fire and explode into clouds of ash. As he tears the sword out of the earth, a gaping sinkhole crumbles beneath their feet and they slip through muck and bones into a long-forgotten ruin buried beneath the marshland.
Dust litters the air. Rancid water pours in from above and splashes against the cold stone floor. Remy picks herself up after a rough landing and leans against an old sarcophagus to catch her breath. She watches Grimoirh while he busies himself with prising open an ancient chest in the corner of the room.
“That was mental!” she gasps. He ignores her yet again. At least he doesn’t see her rolling her eyes. “Anything in there?”
He lifts a small black stone out of the chest and holds it up to her. “Something that might prove useful.”
“More magic rocks, great.”
“It’s a ferry stone.” He almost smiles as he admires its perfectly smooth edge. It looks more like glass than stone, and its core glows amber.
“Ferry stone?”
“I thought you played the game? They’re used to fast travel across the map to locations you’ve already visited. It only works once, but it’ll help if we can’t find a way out.”
“Well, I didn’t get very far before being dragged through my parents’ flat screen and I don’t remember any ferry stones in the original game.”
“We needed a way to encourage players to avoid shortcuts. We wanted you to experience the world as if you were there. Ferry stones are rare, and we can’t exactly purchase more on the Game Station network.”
“I think I’ve ‘experienced’ enough.” Remy massages her sore ribs.
“You’re hurt?” It almost sounds like he’s genuinely concerned for her wellbeing.
“What do you care?”
“Let me see.” Grimoirh moves his hand towards her, but she swats it away.
“Back off, don’t touch me,” she hisses.
“You’re no good to me dead,” he says coldly then turns his attention to the large stone door on the far side of the chamber. “We should keep moving.”
Judging by the stone sarcophagi spaced evenly throughout the room, Remy surmises they’re in a crypt of some kind. Its tall bricked walls are obviously ancient and were swallowed by the marshland and lost to unforgiving time. The musty, damp scent is a little reminiscent of her grandfather’s house, which provides her with the tiniest comfort.
“Another dungeon…” she mutters under her breath.
“Give me a hand with this.” Grimoirh presses against the door, and together they push with everything they’ve got, but it’s sealed shut.
“There’s got to be a switch or something. Isn’t there always a switch? Or a puzzle?” she says.
“Stand back.” Grimoirh picks up his sword and Remy ducks for cover and cups her hands over her ears while he hacks and smashes the ancient door to rubble.
“It’s open now,” he says.
“You want to let the whole dungeon know we’re here?”
“Let’s push on then.” Resting his blade on his shoulder he ducks through the hole in the door.
Remy shakes her head and warily follows him into the deep, still none the wiser about where they’re going or why.
*
Above ground, Lauren and Valentine sprint through the mire. The fog grows thicker as they draw closer to Grimoirh’s airship, and the roaming corpses rise in greater numbers.
“It’s okay, I don’t think they’ve spotted us,” Lauren reassures the detective, who gasps for air as he struggles to keep up. He spies a structure through the fog – the very same dilapidated ruin, half sunken into the marsh.
“Quickly!” He takes Lauren’s arm and leads her to its crumbling walls, then points at the ship floating above them. “How the hell are we supposed to get up there? What is that thing?”
Lauren points to a tall crooked spire atop the ruin. “Maybe we can signal for help from there?”
“Not a bad idea.” Valentine composes himself and points to the crumbly entrance of the ruin. “Let’s go.”
Lauren glances back at the ship, which glimmers in the morning light breaking through the fog. It’s too high to make out the insignia on the hull, so she prays that whatever is on board isn’t worse than out here.
*
Jessica clasps the iron bars of her cell and stares at the sliver of light illuminating a patch of the dark empty room around her.
“Let me out of here!” She rattles against the cage hoping to loosen the bars, but she’s far too puny ever to accomplish such a feat.
“You can’t treat me like this. It’s, like, inhumane!” she sobs.
The iron door on the far side of the room blasts open and a husky figure approaches her cage. She backs away as the wretched goblin hisses at her to shut up and takes a bite out of something in its hand.
“I’m hungry!” Jessica assertively stomps her foot.
The goblin grins with spite and tosses the rancid slab of meat into her cage.
Her teary eyes regard it with disgust. “You don’t expect me to eat that?”
The henchman lets out a belly laugh and slams the door behind it, leaving her alone in the dark once more. She hugs her knees and stares at the strange meat.
“This is a nightmare. It has to be. Wake up! Come on, Jess, wake up!” She slaps herself across the face. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” again and again, harder each time, until her cheeks turn pink.
“What are you doing?” a little voice squeaks from the darkness.
She jumps out of her skin and retreats to the far corner of her cage. “Who’s there?”
Bracing herself for the worst, her wide eyes fixate on a small shadow emerging from a grate in the wall. Nothing she has seen in this world has been anything but horrifying beyond all recognition. As the little creature steps into the light, she realises it’s not a creature at all, but a young boy wearing grubby denim dungarees and a yellow T-shirt. Inadvertently he’s dressed like a DreamWorks minion, which Jessica has never been fond of, nevertheless his appearance is a welcome sight. She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever see anyone nice again.
“Why are you slapping yourself?” the boy asks.
She looks him up and down a second time to make certain she’s not imagining him. “Who…?! What are you doing here?”
“Escaping,” he says rather nonchalantly and squeezes through the bars of her cell. “I’ve been crawling through the vents trying to find a way out without those goblins seeing me.”
“You’re all by yourself? How long have you been here?” she asks.
The boy shrugs. “Dunno. A few days, maybe.” It’s been a few hours tops.
“You poor thing.” Jessica’s maternal instincts kick in. The boy reminds her of Newt from Aliens – a film that traumatised her after Remy made her watch it at far too young an age – but that makes her Ripley, which if she remembers correctly is somewhat of a silver lining because she survives until the end.
She throws her arms around the boy, constricting him. The kid stands limp and confused. Honestly, she’s scaring him more than the monsters.
“Please stop.” He wriggles free of her death grip.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“George. George Baker.”
“George. I’m Jess,” she smiles. “Can you help me get out of here?”
He slips back through the bars of her cage with ease. “Can’t you squeeze through?”
Jessica tries to slide her arm out, but her head and hips get stuck.
“Your butt’s too big,” George says. Savage.
“Watch it! I’m a size six, you know!” She wriggles and squirms, but it’s no use. “We need the key.”
“But that monster has it…” He shakes his head fearfully.
“I know. They scare me too, but you know what? I bet you’re really brave! You must be to have survived on your own in here. Once I’m out, we can find my sister, she’ll know how to get us home.”
“Home?” George’s eyes twinkle. Jessica’s warmth reminds him of his own sister.
“Yeah, I bet your mum and dad are worried. Mine are gonna flip out when I get back.” She looks doleful and wonders how her parents are coping with her disappearance.
“It’s just my mum,” he says.
“Your dad’s not around?” she asks.
George shakes his head and looks downcast.
“Well, then we’ve got to get you back to her, haven’t we?” Determined to rescue this boy, with a devious grin she hatches a plan. “So you’re good at hiding, huh?”
Down the corridor the goblin jailer is busy picking muck from between his crooked toes. He gets a good chunk loose and sniffs it when a scream startles him.
Jessica lets out a howling cry, a tantrum worthy of legend. “I demand to speak to whoever is in charge! If you think I’ll get bored and stop you’re wrong! I’m told I can be very, very annoying!” She kicks the bars and shrieks at the top of her lungs. “I know you’re out there, you meatball-headed arsehole!”
Outside the door the goblin carefully feels the shape of its head, looking insecure.
“Meatball head! Meaaaaatbaaaaall head!” she shouts until the door slams against the wall, startling her.
The guard storms over and reaches through the bars to grab her, while George creeps out of the duct and pinches the key hanging from its belt. He’s almost home free when the goblin spots him out of the corner of its lazy eye. It hisses with spite and lunges for the boy, but Jessica wraps her arms around its head and with all her might pulls backwards, pressing against the bars with her feet for extra support. She slowly chokes the goblin until it passes out and collapses in a heap. She and George look at each other, both amazed that they actually pulled it off.
The kid tosses her the keys, and she unlocks the cell door. Together they drag the unconscious monster inside and lock him in.
“Let’s go.” She beams like sunshine.
Years of sneaking out of the house to attend band practice have unwittingly granted Jessica the stealth of a seasoned sneak-thief. She takes George by the hand and silently sprints through the winding corridors of the airship. A gleam of light at the end of the long hallway calls to her, and she bolts towards it. Halfway there, another goblin bursts out of a room to their left. Jessica and George dart behind the door as it swings open and the goblin wanders down the dark end of the corridor seemingly clueless to their presence. They tiptoe quietly to the end of the corridor and force open the metal bulk hatch, flooding the dark corridor with white-hot daylight. It feels like forever since Jessica has seen the sun. Desperate to breathe fresh air, she practically leaps outside. After her eyes adjust to the brightness she takes in her surroundings, and her jaw drops. Leaning over the railing of the airship’s deck she sees nothing but clouds and swathing mist below. All this time, she had assumed she was underground.
“What the actual fuck?!” she cries, spiralling with despair. Her knees tremble like jelly. She’s trapped on a flying ship full of monsters, stranded hundreds of feet in the air.
*
Deep underground Remy and Grimoirh traverse the crypt in silence, which she of course finds tortuously boring. But she’s also burning to question him and doesn’t know where to start, so she enacts a plan to gauge more information about her captor, under the guise of honest conversation. ‘Killing with kindness’ as Ed put it.
“So how did you end up in the game?” she asks.
Grimoirh glances back at her, over the gigantic blade rested on his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, if you really did create the remake then shouldn’t you have some idea about how this is possible? Were you the first of us to get stuck here? What’s your plan to get us back? And you still haven’t told me what we’re doing here.”
His patience wears thin, and her voice grates on his ear, but he remains quiet.
“If you’re not going to contribute I’ll keep talking, and we both know you don’t want that.” A sly grin creeps across her face. If there’s one thing she and Jessica share, it’s their ability to gnaw away at someone’s patience. “So how’d you end up stuck in your own creation?”
“I found myself in a small mountain village. Monsters came in the night and killed everyone. I froze up and I got cornered.”
“So how did you get away?”
“I didn’t. I thought I was done for, then it came to me. This cursed plate mail and the magic sword.”
“It came to you?” she asks as a dismembered carcass springs to life and seizes her ankle. She gasps and Grimoirh swiftly crushes its head with a firm stomp.
“Th-thanks.” She nods appreciatively, and kicks the husk to make sure it’s dead. “What’s with all the corpses anyway? You couldn’t have filled the dungeon with chickens or something?”
“It’s the shard. Its power perverts death.”
“You don’t have to explain it, I played the classic. I just meant you changed a bunch of other stuff, so—”
“Like what?”
“Well, the midgey merchants should be taller, and a man-eating forest? That wasn’t in the old game and—”
The sound of stone grinding churns her stomach, and she feels the slab beneath her foot click into place. Grimoirh turns back to her with a look that says, ‘you can’t be serious’.
“Please don’t say we’re gonna die, because if I die due to my own reckless abandon, then my last thought will be that my mother was right, and I don’t think I can rest in peace if that’s the case.”
“Just don’t move!” Grimoirh snaps.
“Why would you say that? Now I can’t not move!”
He shoots her a look of absolute disdain.
“Shouldn’t something have happened by now? Maybe it’s broken?” She gingerly shifts her weight onto her other leg.
“No! Don’t mo—!”
Her foot is barely an inch off the plate when the ground crumbles, sending them both cascading through a hidden tunnel, deeper into the crypt. Remy covers her face as she glides through thick cobwebs until she’s thrown out of the loathsome slide onto a huge pile of bones. Grimoirh crashes down shortly after her.
“My bad.” She brushes cakes of dust off herself as she sits up.
“I’m starting to think I was wrong about you,” the Dread Knight growls.
They find themselves in a buried ritual hall littered with empty sarcophagi, and towering stone pillars prop up the high ceiling. The slabbed floor is cracked at the centre, where a large pit is filled with piles of rotted corpses – possibly the former residents of the ruin or maybe ill-fated adventurers that fell prey to whatever abominable creature resides here.
A single undesecrated coffin stands out, much bigger than the others. Remy’s chest spikes, and she remembers, just as a deep bellowing roar emanates from within the coffin, what foe she is about to face.
The stone lid cracks open, and a hulking suit of armour rises from the sarcophagus. The screech of metal against stone sets her teeth on edge as the dungeon boss drags its clunky body from its resting place. The armour looms above them appearing to move by itself, possessed by some transcendental force. From beneath its battle-scarred helmet two points of crimson light burn, like flaming ghostly eyes. The entity throws back its tattered brown cape and drags a colossal greatsword from the coffin. Its gargantuan bloodstained blade dwarfs them both.
Remy turns pale as it finally dawns on her what they’re doing in this hell hole. “Nope! Hell nope! I’m out.” She scrambles onto her feet to turn tail and leg it, but Grimoirh pulls her back.
“There.” He points to the glowing green shard embedded in the armour’s breastplate. “We have to hit the—”
“The shard. Yeah, I know.” The Spectre Knight was a soul-crushing boss battle that took Remy weeks to best in the summer of 2002. She spent days grinding in the underground ruins to level her party up enough to withstand the monster’s devastating attacks.
Grimoirh charges in while she scrambles amongst the bones in search of her sword. Taking it up in both hands, she whispers words of encouragement to herself.
“Don’t die. Just don’t die.”
She approaches while Grimoirh has the spectre’s attention and strikes the monster’s leg, her blow recoiling off its armour, and she trips backwards.
Grimoirh lands a heavy blow but barely blemishes the spectre’s armour. The Spectre Knight, in turn, launches a brutal assault. Again and again its tremendous blade comes crashing down on him. He parries a downward strike and counters. The creature howls as the jewel reverberates in its chest, and by no coincidence, a searing, nerve-shredding pain courses through Remy’s hand. Her muscles writhe in a silent scream, and she tightens her fist and clenches her jaw until it subsides.
“Two more should do it!” Grimoirh cries. The rule of three always applies in a video game after all.
Shaking the pain off her hand, she nods determinedly and waits for an opening as the wraith obliterates a stone pillar, bringing down part of the ceiling with it.
Whoosh! Grimoirh narrowly avoids the blade soaring by him. He strikes the wraith’s sword-wielding arm, knocking it off balance, then spins and sweeps its leg with his sword causing the spectral armour to come crashing down.
“Now!” he cries.
Remy seizes the opportunity and hammers her sword against the shard in its chest. A wave of pale green energy knocks her off her feet and the shard in her hand glows like a red-hot coal. She screams as the unbearable pain returns, only far greater this time, and grapples her arm as it contorts beyond her control. She could swear her flesh is moving in ways it couldn’t possibly be.
“What is this?!” she howls as tears roll down her reddening face.
“The shards are connected, fractured pieces of a single living entity. You hurt one, they all feel it.” Grimoirh stares at her hand with great interest. “You’ll have to push through it.”
“Easy for you to say.” She grimaces as the pain subsides, and switches her sword to her left hand as she stands.
The dungeon boss too regains its footing and erupts in a frenzy, swinging blindly in all directions.
“How are we supposed to get near it now?” Remy asks.
“I’ll distract it. If you see an opening, take it!”
Remy nods affirmatively and Grimoirh charges at the spectre again. His first strike prangs off the armour, then he unleashes a flurry of slashes and swipes, beating the dungeon boss back towards the pit filled with corpses. The God Cleaver bursts ablaze and he thrusts it forward to guard against the wraith’s mighty blow. His blade’s enchanted hellfire sears through the dungeon boss’s weapon like a blowtorch, rending it in two. The top end hits the stone floor with a resounding clang, and as the spectre examines its broken weapon, Grimoirh plunges his sword through its right leg guard and with a twist, brings the dungeon boss to its knees.
“Hurry!” he shouts, before the wraith tosses aside its broken sword and grabs hold of his arms. He releases a roaring scream as it tries to tear his limbs from their sockets.
A profound breath summons courage, and Remy charges. Springing off the wraith’s knee, she leaps and thrusts her sword into the shard with every ounce of might. Pure fiery energy bursts from the armoured shell, and the creature releases Grimoirh as it haemorrhages in pain. Remy reaches out with her right hand and grips the shard tightly. At her touch it resonates with the piece inside her, and the jewel glows bright as she prises it from the spectre’s chest plate. The spirit beneath the plate mail vanishes with a bang that hurls Grimoirh across the room. Piece by piece the armour crashes to the floor, along with Remy, who clutches her right hand tightly while her muscles slither like serpents around her bones. She clenches her jaw and shuts her eyes until her suffering lessens. Her arm jolts forward as though possessed and reaches for the crystal shard lying amongst the heap of armour. She seizes her right hand in her left and squeezes it until she regains control over its movements. Letting out a thankful breath, she stares worriedly at her hand, and her pinky finger twitches, then her hand jerks again and snatches up the shard they’ve won.
She stares into its shimmering core, which throbs in her palm like a gentle heartbeat and resonates with her own pulse. She winces as the jewel bores into her flesh and her fingers seize up as the shards fuse beneath her skin. She shakes her hand, and balls and opens her fist to ensure that it still works like it should.
What was that? she wonders. My arm moved like it had a mind of its own…
She wiggles her fingers as the thought of going home and putting an end to this nightmare fills her with hope. “So how does this whole crystal thing work?” she asks. “If we have two now, can we use them to get home yet? Or do we need all three?”
“Where is home?” he asks.
“London, at least for now,” she sighs.
“You don’t like it?”
Remy shrugs. “Sometimes. It’s crowded and expensive. Everyone that lives there acts like it’s this amazing place to be, but it’s not. It’s suffocating and lonely all at the same time. If you don’t have money then you’re always fighting to stay above water. I hated living my life that way, but what else can you do? All the work is there. I guess I’m just sick of feeling like I don’t matter.”
“You matter now,” he says.
“I don’t know about that. Whatever these shards actually do, they don’t seem to work for me.”
“Maybe you lack conviction,” he replies. “Only an unyielding will can command its power. You’re too unsure of yourself. We survived that by the skin of our teeth. You need to be better if you’re going to endure what’s ahead.”
She looks at his worn, scarred face and wonders, what did he have to become to survive, and was it worth it?
“What happened to you?” she asks.
He looks doleful as he recalls something he’d rather forget.
“Why are you pretending to be Grimoirh? You said you locked us up to protect us. If that’s true then why not come with us? Together we’d all have a better shot at finding a way back. Don’t you want to go home too?”
“What if…” he pauses, thinking on how to soften the blow of cold, hard truth, “… what if we couldn’t go back?”
“But we can’t stay here, this place isn’t real, I mean, is it? I don’t know anymore.”
“It’s all too real, and that’s why this world has to end. What happened to me, to you and the others, can never happen again.”
“But if this place is real then what happens to all the people that live here if you end it?”
“It doesn’t matter. Ending the game world is the only way to stop all of this. If we don’t act fast, more players will keep coming. We’re only the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“Your sister told me a lot about you. You seem frustrated and lost. Your life lacks purpose and direction. Well, I’m offering you one. Help me. Help me destroy this abominable world.”
“But if we can’t go back… what happens to us?”
Grimoirh smiles sadly and reaches out, offering his hand to her. “Help me.”
She takes a step back. “I don’t understand.”
Sensing her growing hesitance, he reaches out further. “This world is anything but a fantasy, Remy, it’s a nightmare. It’s cruel and rotten and very, very dangerous. It was never supposed to exist. So I’m asking you, forget the past. There’s no going back for any of us, but together we can stop this from happening to anyone else. I’m offering you a choice. Isn’t it better to die with purpose than live a meaningless life?”
“Die? You’d throw your life away? Just like that?” Noticing his eyes are locked on her right hand, she balls her fist.
“Do you really believe the crystal will help you? That thing is evil, it brings only death and ruin.”
“From what I’ve seen, the only thing that brings death and ruin is you.”
A moment’s silence feels like an eternity. The cold look in his eyes makes plain there’s no getting through to him, and her heart races as his intent dawns on her.
“You were never going to help us get home, were you?”
“No.”
The word hits her with precision and sends a shiver down her spine. Her eyes dart to her sword discarded on the floor. She knows she’ll never reach it before he reaches her, but maybe, just maybe, she could call on the crystal’s power. Like he said, all it would take is a little conviction, and nothing breeds conviction like staring death in the face.
She thrusts her hand at the sword, and her palm shimmers with pale eldritch light, and, like magic, her sword flies towards her. Before she can catch it, Grimoirh’s blade ignites with a roaring flame, and he strikes in a flash. Her right hand hits the floor with a thud. Spitting, hoarse screams swell from Remy’s throat. She clutches her burning forearm, her bulging eyes fixed on the smoke rising from where her hand should be. She stumbles backwards in a desperate attempt to flee and tumbles into the pit of withered corpses.
Grimoirh takes her severed hand in his and looks regretfully at her stumbling around over the dead, which begin to wake up. He abandons her to her grim fate. The haunting scent of burnt flesh stings his nostrils, and her inhuman wails echo through the dungeon as he turns his back.
Hundreds of wights awaken around her. Clambering from every direction, they drag her into a lake of undead. Her jagged cries fall quiet as she’s submerged, like a baptism of death.