Gameplay (11 page)

Ryx appeared stunned, driven against her chair. She leaned forward and drummed her amber wings. Springing up with her powerful hind legs, the queen launched herself into the air. Her eyeless head turned from side to side, but with no other Anteds in the chamber, she could not see around her.

Her wings thrummed as Ryx rose toward the exit hole in the ceiling. “I thought I would keep one of you as my new Consort, but it would not be the same. He is dead. You killed him.”

No other Anteds had pushed their way into the chamber yet. Delrael felt a calmness inside, a confidence in the approaching victory.

Ryx veered away and winged upward, to escape. She could not defend herself, she could not see. Disoriented and relying on her memory, the queen Anted misjudged the exit hole above. Powerful wings brought her crashing into the jagged ceiling of the grotto. Stunned, Ryx reeled downward.

In the tunnels outside the throne chamber, other approaching Anteds froze in their tracks with no guiding force. They swayed on their feet while Ryx tried to overcome her dizziness. Delrael saw his chance.

Ryx flopped her wings to keep aloft. A thin crack showed in the polished black head. Ryx ascended again, laboring with her wings to circle around the throne room in an uncertain spiral, hoping to stumble upon the way out.

Delrael fitted his blood-tipped arrow into the crossbow.

Disregarding the approaching Anteds, ignoring everything else except for the memory of Tallin and the sight of the ylvan’s death, he lifted the crossbow and pulled at the small trigger. “This is for you, Tallin.”

In her circling flight, Ryx turned to face the fighter without knowing it. She did not see him, or his arrow.

Delrael shot the crossbow.

* * *

Gairoth covered his ears against the insane chirping and roared in annoyance. Spittle sprayed from his thick lips. He swung his club, breaking one of the attacking Anteds into pieces. Others crawled out of their hexagonal openings and swarmed toward him.

“Go away!” The ogre smashed another, then tripped on one that lay dead at his feet. “Stupid bugs!”

He had followed Delroth’s easy trail across the barren soil, but then the tracks disappeared near one of the holes. Gairoth searched for hours, muttering in frustration. He couldn’t follow the mixed-up insect tracks, and he couldn’t see anything down in the dark holes. He didn’t want to climb down there. He sat down in the dirt and imagined the things he could do to Delroth.

And then the Anteds came.

Gairoth’s club dripped clotting ooze. He pursed his lips and dared the insects to come closer.

The Anteds were unimpressed and took the dare. Gairoth roared his best battle cry and smashed black chitin. Gairoth wished his dragon Rognoth were there to help.

The ogre’s arm began to tire, and he could not knock the Anteds away as quickly as they rushed at him. They swarmed over piles of twitching bodies, pulling him down.

“Stupid bugs!” Gairoth battered at hard chitin with his clumsy hands, but he could not throw the giant creatures off him, could not break the grip of the jaws that wrapped themselves around his thick neck, legs and arms, like scissors ready to cut him to pieces.

* * *

Delrael watched his arrow as it passed through the air in a perfect arc. Ryx’s mandibles spread wide as if to receive a gift.

The arrow plunged through her mouth, deep into the soft membranes and delicate tissues. The tip embedded itself in the most vital organ, the brain controlling the Anted colony. The small point of the arrow protruded through the chitin at the back of Ryx’s head.

Green blood squirted out of her mouth, mixed with the queen’s whitish-gold jelly. The brittle armor of her body shattered on the rock floor.

The Anteds in the tunnels collapsed in their tracks.

Bryl panted, then slumped down to sit on the floor. He held the Fire Stone in pale, trembling hands. Journeyman stood in front of the ranks of dead Anteds, nudging and smoothing the gouges in his clay skin. Vailret brushed off his tunic, then leaned against a curved wall, propping the blade of his short sword against his leg. He blinked again and again, but his eyes remained wide, unable to believe how he had fought.

Delrael stared at the dead hulk of Ryx lying on the floor like a broken toy, but his eyes saw nothing. “For you, Tallin,” he whispered. Delrael rolled his tongue around his mouth, trying to discover some pleasure in the slaughter. Somehow, this hadn’t held the thrill and fun that adventures were supposed to have. Was he breaking the primary Rule now? Wasn’t this supposed to be fun?

The Game had changed all at once, like a slap in the face. Delrael had always assumed that he would survive, that the Game would go on forever, and the characters would keep playing. He had lived through difficult adventures—against the dragon Tryos, against Gairoth and his illusion army, even against the forest fire and the Cyclops that had destroyed Delrael’s leg.

But Tallin had not survived.

He raised his eyes to the ceiling of the grotto and lifted the empty crossbow in salute. His mouth was a grim line, making the muscles of his neck stand out. Turning, he spat at the queen Anted’s broken body.

* * *

Delrael stood with a stiff back and rigid limbs beside Tallin’s body. He molded his emotions into a flat mask. Slaughtered Anteds lay as they had fallen, but Delrael paid no attention. A thick, wet smell of death hung in the air.

The others stayed by the wall, watching Delrael. He looked into the ylvan’s motionless, pale face. Blood and Anted grease caked his own clothes and hands. The heavy air made him sick to his stomach.

Delrael drew his sword, scribing a rectangle on the floor. He began chipping away at the fused sand, scooping hunks away into a pile. The sand underneath was a brighter, fresher color than the packed floor.

Vailret came forward. “Can we help?”

Lost in his thoughts, Delrael jumped and stared at him, disoriented, before answering. “No. This is for me to do.”

He went to Tallin’s body, removing the small quiver from the ylvan’s back, and set it with Tallin’s crossbow next to the newly cut grave. He picked up the body, trembling as he touched the cold skin. He laid Tallin in the shallow hole, then straightened his arms and legs.

“He would rather have been buried in a forest somewhere, I think.” Delrael fought back anger and despair once more. He stared a long moment, thinking. He placed the crossbow across Tallin’s chest, then reached for the quiver, removing the two longest arrow fragments.

Tears brimmed on his eyelids, but Delrael had already been through enough sorrow to last him for the rest of the Game. They had a mission to accomplish, a quest to finish.

He turned away without looking at the ylvan again and scooped dirt back into the grave. When he had finished, he patted the hard mound with his hands. He sat still, exhausted and aching both inside and out, before he made himself stand again. He pushed the two broken arrows into the head of the mound, where the arrowheads pointed up at the Gamearth sky.

Delrael turned his back on the mound. The light from the opening above had slanted, showing the approach of sunset. He motioned the others to follow him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Together, they managed to climb through the hexagonal opening. Delrael stood on the lip, reaching down to help the others.

“Beam me up, Scotty!” Journeyman jumped up and stood on the rocky ground, flexing his gray-brown arms. The sky had an orange cast of sunset.

They had been underground an entire day.

* * *

The sun set behind Gairoth, and his shadow stretched out across the flat terrain, pointing which way he should go. He plodded along, stomping dust with his ponderous bare feet.

The Anteds had stopped attacking him and dropped dead. Gairoth decided he must have frightened the Anteds into surrender. They had all fallen motionless together, leaving him unharmed but buried under them. By the time he crawled out from under the tangle of black bodies and jointed legs, he could find no trace of Delroth.

The ogre began to believe he might have been outsmarted, again. His fingers gripped his club so tightly that the ridges from the wood made marks on his calloused hand.

The ogre looked at the sprawling terrain ahead, then he grinned as far as his thick lips could stretch. Four figures emerged from one of the distant holes and set off toward the next hexagon. They were far from his sight, but at least they were visible. He had the trail again.

“I’ll bash your head in, Delroth! BAM!”

Gairoth charged across the desolation before night could take his quarry from him.

***

Interlude: Outside

Melanie turned her head to blink her eyes furiously. The tears stung. She walked into Tyrone’s kitchen before anyone could see the wet tracks on her cheeks. She clinked the ice cubes in her glass to emphasize that she was really just going to get more soda.

The others remained quiet, exhausted from the game. No one else seemed to get so close to their characters. David sat flushed from his victory.

Melanie could still feel where the sharp corners of the dice had bit into her palms.
Damn!,
she kept thinking. All that rolling for combat, engagement after engagement. She had saved four of them.

But Tallin had died.

“Sorry, Mel,” Scott said. She turned around to look at him, reacting a little too quickly. Behind Scott’s glasses she could see concern in his eyes. He alone had not taken part in the Anted battle, preferring to set up the details for his own turn.

“Wow, wasn’t that a great combat!” Tyrone grinned from ear to ear, excited Then he noticed the wounded look on Melanie’s face. “What’s the matter? Don’t be pissed off just because one of your characters got killed.”

Melanie glared at him with such intensity that Tyrone shrugged and lowered his voice. “Well, we could always change the rules if you want. Plenty of game systems let you bring characters back after they’ve been killed once—”

“No!” David snapped. He remained at the table, studying the map and his notes, as if he didn’t want to take a break between turns. “We decided against that a long time ago. We’re not going to change the rules just because she wants to pout. Besides, Tallin was the second character Melanie introduced tonight. It was fair combat, and I won.”

“
We
won,” Tyrone said. “I played, too.”

“David is right,” Melanie said. Her voice was so quiet she couldn’t believe she was agreeing with him. “I don’t want complete power over life and death. We played by the rules. My character lost his combat rolls.” She swallowed, but found her hands shaking as she filled the glass.

Just because one of your characters got killed
, Tyrone had said.

Melanie kept her lips pressed together. That’s all it was to them—disposable characters, names and scores they rolled. Puppets to fight and find treasure and get killed. No wonder David found it boring. He had no emotional stake. He didn’t care about anything but ending the game. Melanie cared about the rest of it.

The death of Tallin was a sharp ache in her.

“At least I learned what Melanie’s trying to do with her characters and her secret quest,” David said. He smiled and leaned back in the chair. “But hiding the Earthspirits in a belt? Don’t know where you came up with that idea, Mel, but it isn’t going to work. I’m not sure we should even allow it.” He took off his black denim jacket and draped it over the arm rest, then reached forward to scoop up more of Tyrone’s dip.

“If it won’t work anyway, then why bother complaining about it?” Scott said with a half smile. “You’re the one who keeps wishing the game would get more interesting—let Mel take a few more risks.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” Tyrone said. David scowled, trapped by his own complaints.

Melanie stopped herself from saying that she had nothing to do with the Earthspirits in Delrael’s belt—any more than she had conjured up the Deathspirits to stop Enrod.

It was the game playing itself again.

That sent a thrill up her spine, pushing aside some of her sadness at Tallin’s death. She knew something strange was happening with Gamearth. They all knew it. The characters were doing things with their lives outside of the Sunday gaming sessions.

Melanie made a smile of her own, hard and businesslike. She sat back down at the table. “Your
characters
don’t know about the Earthspirits, David, so you can’t do anything about it. Ryx is the only one who knew, and she’s dead.”

“Good point.” Scott joined them, slouching down in his chair.

“In fact, David, you can’t even prepare for my characters, because you officially don’t know about their quest. Because of Tarne, Scartaris thinks Delrael is dead and the Fire Stone is still hidden somewhere at the Stronghold.”

David drummed his fingers on the table. “I have so many armies camped around Scartaris that nothing could ever get through. I’ve gathered all the Slac, I’ve teamed up all the wandering monsters, stirred up some old antagonisms. There’s a larger pool of monster fighters here—” he tapped the painted map over the mountains of Scartaris, “than we ever brought together for the old Sorcerer wars.”

He cracked his knuckles. “Your characters will never get through, Mel. I have no doubt of that.”

Melanie glared at him, but to her surprise Scott was the one who made a comment. “Well, David, we’ll just have to wait and see. We’ve got other characters in this game, you know, not just the ones Melanie’s playing.”

He picked up the dice and pointed at one of the hexagonal map sections near the city of Sitnalta. “I’m starting there. It’s my turn.”

***

9. The Outsiders’ Ship

“We must continue to learn, continue to study. As Sitnaltans, our quest is to understand everything about the Rules and how they affect our lives. With such an intimate knowledge perhaps we can defeat the Outsiders and free ourselves from this Game.”

—Professor Verne, speech to the Sitnaltan Council of Patent Givers

Mountain air whistled around the empty turrets of the ancient Slac fortress. The sky above the excavation site was clear and cold and painfully blue.

Professor Verne rubbed his hands together and pushed them deep into his pockets as he walked back and forth outside the fortress. The other Sitnaltan engineers worked meticulously on the Outsiders’ ship. When Verne blew steam from his mouth, clumps of frost made his full beard spiky.

Overhead the wide, blind wall of the citadel was dotted with black spikes and narrow windows from which the Slac could fire down on visitors. Moss crept up the walls, brown and green. A pool of stagnant water half filled a pitted cistern.

The bulk of the Outsiders’ vessel lay half buried in the dirt of the courtyard. Boulders and fallen stone blocks from the abandoned fortress had dropped around it.

Vailret and blind Paenar had told Verne and his colleague Professor Frankenstein about the ruined ship. Apparently, the Outsiders David and Tyrone had used it to travel to Gamearth, bringing with them a destructive monster to plant in the east. In exchange for this information, Verne and Frankenstein had constructed new mechanical eyes for Paenar.

“Did you find anything else?” Verne shouted down. He sucked on his lips, making his gray beard protrude. The tip of his nose felt numb in the cold mountain air.

“We don’t know,” Frankenstein called back from below. He cocked his head up at the other professor. “We haven’t figured out what most of this is yet.”

Frankenstein had a flushed face and close-cropped dark hair. His eyes bore a fiery, obsessive look, part of his impatient temperament. But Verne found Frankenstein’s ideas exciting, and the two professors collaborated well together.

The two of them held more patents than any other inventors in Sitnalta’s history. Verne himself didn’t even know the total number anymore—nor did he care. The main point was inventing things, creating things, bettering life for the characters in Sitnalta. Some said the two professors were inspired directly by the Outsider Scott, who watched over the technological city.

In the barren courtyard, the Outsiders’ ship had crumbled after many turns of disuse. Twisted ribs of metal and cross girders outlined the great size of the fallen hulk. The controls and engines were hidden and difficult to decipher, buried deep beneath the ground. Verne urged the other Sitnaltan workers not to experiment with any devices they found around the ship. He didn’t want someone opening up an uncontrolled vortex to
reality
, where they would all be annihilated in an instant.

Professor Verne brushed off his knees and walked down the path into the wreckage of the ship. Around him, remnants of the hull looked as fragile as an eggshell, but patches of the metal gleamed pure and uncorroded, with rainbow colors that Verne had not seen in any alloy produced in Sitnalta. He stood beside the other professor.

“Some of our analytical machines still won’t work,” Frankenstein snorted. “The electrical ones are the worst.”

“We are standing on the technological fringe, Victor. What else can we expect?” Verne bent over to inspect the place where tiny perfect rivets joined two metal sections together. “I am surprised even the mechanical instruments function as well as they do.”

Verne drummed his fingers on his chest. In Sitnalta the characters had developed science and technology enough to overthrow the Rules of magic that held sway for the rest of Gamearth. As the Sitnaltans used their technology more and more, they expanded the radius in which it worked out to a point where science and magic held each other uneasily at bay. Verne called this point the “technological fringe.”

The Outsiders’ ship lay squarely on the boundary.

A team of three Sitnaltan women in work clothes and lab coats sat concentrating on their sketch pads, measuring and recording detailed portions of the ship. Two other Sitnaltan workers used fine brushes to remove dust and debris from the wreckage.

One burly man, sweating and exhausted, was put to work moving rocks and some of the fallen girders. His face was flushed in the cold air, and he looked put upon because of his strength. Verne smiled encouragement at him.

“Can’t we rig up some pulleys and a winch over here to help this man?” Frankenstein called.

“Come on, you’re supposed to be engineers!” Two of the technicians hurried to implement the scheme.

Just the presence of the ship itself awed Verne. So alien, so unlike anything else he had seen before. He always had a sense of wonder at how things worked. But this ship was tangible evidence of a visit from the Outsiders. What they would learn just from the shapes of things, the construction, the way the metal was held together—it would give the characters of Sitnalta many turns of intense study.

If they had many turns left in the Game.

Vailret and his companions had brought news of how the Outsiders planned to end the Game. Most of the other Sitnaltans scoffed at the idea. But Frankenstein and Verne had picked up the energy readings of something powerful, something malignant, growing in the eastern section of the map. Only Vailret had been able to explain this anomaly to the professors’ satisfaction.

Gamearth would be doomed if they did not find some way to destroy this monster from the Outside. The ship was the key, Verne felt. Perhaps with what they learned from it, the Sitnaltans could find some solution, or some escape. Maybe they could develop a weapon with which to fight back, or maybe, if they could discover how the vehicle worked, they could all escape to a different world.

It had always been a Sitnaltan dream to find a way for human characters to make a Transition of their own, as the old Sorcerer race had done with magic. Human characters should be able to do the same thing—with science. Verne had never heard of a spell yet that could not be imitated by properly developed technology.

“Professors! Come here, we’ve found something,” a woman’s voice called. Verne squinted into the shadows of the wreckage and recognized Mayer, the daughter of the Sitnaltan inventor-cum-bureaucrat Dirac. The tone in her voice suggested something important, and Verne and Frankenstein hurried.

They passed through a broken doorway down a tilted metal staircase into a chamber that had been buried in the dirt. Over the past three days, Mayer’s team had excavated the room. Dust and dirt still caked the controls and equipment, but a team of men and women used gloves, trowels, and heavy brushes to clean the area. An older woman technician scrambled past the professors, carrying a bucket filled with debris up the groaning stairs to dump it in the courtyard.

Mayer stood there, her short dark hair mussed. Dirty handprints covered her lab coat, but she indicated a polished bulkhead with gleaming panels of buttons and dials. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched the reactions of the two professors, allowing the discovery to speak for itself for a moment. Then she could restrain herself no longer.

“These are the
controls
,” she said. Her bright eyes gleamed with awe. “My hypothesis is that this system connects directly to the power source. If you touch the bulkhead, it is still warm after all this time. And there’s another sealed compartment directly underneath.”

Verne opened his eyes wide and went forward. Frankenstein also looked amazed. “This could be it,” he said.

Verne let his imagination wander. He had his best ideas that way. Possibilities sprang into his head, ideas and applications with such an intensity that he wondered if he was indeed inspired by the Outsider Scott.

This ship had an awesome power source, even if it was just imaginary to the Outsiders David and Tyrone, even if they had only created this artificial ship as a prop to act out their games—regardless, it existed here on Gamearth. And it had to do what the Players imagined it would do.

Verne thought of what incredible energies could power such a ship, of the danger and the potential those energies would have if applied in a constructive—or destructive—manner.

“You must be very
very
careful with it,” Verne said. “Treat it as if it were the most hazardous laboratory substance we have ever investigated.”

“And indeed it is,” Frankenstein added. His dark eyes shone with an unfathomable excitement.

Verne turned to Frankenstein and lowered his voice. “It will take some testing, but this could be the key to the most awesome weapon ever introduced on Gamearth.”

He took a deep breath. “We could stop Scartaris.”

Frankenstein allowed his thin lips to curl up in a smile. “This could be a way for us to prove the superiority of Sitnaltan technology once and for all.”

He and Professor Verne shook hands.

***