Gameplay (24 page)

He had pondered all day about how to get around the monster army. Though the weapon would cause immense havoc when it detonated, he still wanted to get it as close to Scartaris as possible. No sense taking chances, especially far from Sitnalta where the world worked so differently.

Verne jotted down his last thoughts in his journal and tucked the book inside his woolen jacket. He didn’t know if he would ever return to Sitnalta, or if his memoirs would ever be published, but he felt an obligation to record his thoughts and observations.

He tugged at his full beard and straightened it. He wished he had brought his pipe along—he could use a relaxing smoke right now. He blew through his lips instead. He felt queasy inside. “Great Maxwell, what have I gotten myself into?”

Steam-pressure gauges on the car’s boiler rose. The vehicle was almost ready to move. Darkness had fallen.

When a great roar went up from the monster horde, Verne jumped, startled, and looked to see an army of human characters advancing down the slope a partial hexagon away. Verne blinked his eyes in amazement. He had seen no indications of an approaching army. How could all those fighters appear with no warning at all? No doubt they were that type of Gamearth character who thrived on military campaigns, went on quests. He hoped they wouldn’t be too near the blast when his weapon went off.

He climbed aboard the steam-engine car and sat back in his seat. He could investigate the identity of the army later. For now he would take advantage of the diversion. He made sure the doomsday weapon was firmly strapped in the back seat, safe from any jostling; the timer was ready to be set.

Professor Verne took a deep breath. He straightened his jacket one last time, out of habit, then released the locks on the gears. He held onto the steering levers.

The steam-engine car rattled down the slope toward the mountains of Scartaris.

* * *

Mindar slashed the air with her rippled sword. Dark blood dripped off its serrated edges. Her hair was tangled. She swept it back away from her eyes, then shouted her outrage at the monster army. “Why won’t you fight me!”

She turned back and forth, but Scartaris’s monsters ignored her. They would not meet her eyes. Mindar charged into a mass of goblins, but they swirled around her and moved on. They did not strike back.

“Fight me!”

Scartaris was doing this to taunt her, to have
fun
. He knew that the greatest damage he could do to Mindar was to ignore her, to refuse to acknowledge her efforts against him.

She ran at one of the towering Slac fighters and swung her sword, but the Slac lifted a Tairan-made shield and deflected her blow. Then the monster punched her with a balled scaly fist, knocking her out of the way.

She wheezed, felt the pain from her bruised ribs, and stood up. Bryl’s illusion soldiers fought all around her.

Mindar stood up and glared at the jagged lair of Scartaris on the far edge of the battlefield. That was where she could strike her blow. She had lost Delrael and the others, but they were fighting, moving toward Scartaris. She belonged there too.

Mindar strode through the battle, wading into blood and fallen bodies. The other fighters did not turn to face her.

* * *

The flying creature beat its taut wings with a sound like a man gasping for breath. Delrael felt as though its claws were ripping his shoulders off.

The bat-creature rose higher. Delrael grabbed the sword in his hand, though his fingers grew cold and numb. He still ached from his battle with the Slave of the Serpent two days before, exhausted now from fighting through Scartaris’s army.

Veins laced the wings of the bat-creature, visible through skin as thin as fine fabric, pulsing and rippling in the breeze. The flying thing had deep pits for eyes, blank and pupilless, and a long jagged snout in an arrow-shaped head. Its cry was so high-pitched that Delrael’s ears felt ready to burst.

His feet dangled below him. He felt nothing, only air beneath his boots. The battlefield lay fifty feet below. Distinct sounds drifted up. He saw the swirling fighters, the movements of the ranks, flashes of exploding pots of firepowder. The giant manticore dominated the battle scene.

Delrael squirmed in the grip of the bat-creature. His own blood poured from gashes in his leather armor where the claws sank into him. The pain sent fire through his chest.

Scartaris’s grotto lay closer than ever now. The hex-line broke the last section of desolation from the rocky, mountain terrain.

He didn’t know what was happening, where the creature was taking him. But when it drifted over the sharp air currents when the terrain changed from flatland to mountains, he saw the rocks below like spears pointed up at him.

He felt the bat-creature tighten its knobby claws just for a moment—and then Delrael knew what it intended. The creature had taken him high aloft.…now it was going to drop him.

Delrael ignored the daggers of pain in his shoulder. He winced, but knew what he had to do. He lunged upward with his free hand, grabbing onto the bat-creature’s leg just as it released its claws. He gripped hard, digging his fingernails into the rough hide. The sharp rocks seemed a long, long drop below.

The bat-creature flapped its wings in surprise and screamed a high-pitched noise. Its claws extended and retracted as it tried to grab onto something to fight back. Delrael would not let go. The bat-creature hissed and bobbed its sharp head down, but the fighter was out of its reach.

Feeling as if he were lifting a gigantic weight, Delrael heaved his sword up with one hand and thrust it through the thin membrane of a wing, ripping a gash. He had to get down. Air whistled through the cut, and the bat-creature flailed but it could not get away.

The flying creature dropped lower. Delrael poked with the sword again. As the creature beat its immense wings, the wind and the air ripped the gash wider.

The ground rushed up at them. He had caused too much damage. They would crash and both be killed.

But then the bat-creature pumped its wings with renewed strength. It spun in a tight circle as one wing drove harder than the other, but still ascended.

Delrael grew dizzy. The ground below him spun with the crazy spiral flight. Hot tears of pain streamed down Delrael’s cheeks. The strain of holding on with one hand, holding his entire weight against the long drop drove nails into the wounds in his shoulders.

He had to get down. He wanted to scream.

Delrael reached up with the sword one more time and chopped at the other wing. The creature dropped again, hissing, but Delrael would not let go. The ground rushed up.

He tried to swing the bat-creature’s body around, to direct it toward a clear spot in the foothills of the mountain terrain, but he didn’t know how. The creature’s fangs glistened in the starlight, and it bore a vicious expression behind the pupilless eyes. Once they struck the ground, it would attack him.

The rocks came closer—Delrael could survive now, though the fall might hurt him. He swung the sword up awkwardly. He hit the main strut of the creature’s wing, chopping at its shoulder.

The rocks came up. He stabbed the creature in the abdomen and then let go, dropping the last ten feet to the ground.

The bat-creature crashed next to him. Delrael heard the dry-wood
snap
of the bones in its wings as it fell. The creature lay on the rocks, flapping and hissing, trying to get at him. It elbowed forward on the jagged splinters of its wings, but Delrael slipped in past the hissing mouth. He struck the arrow-shaped head with his sword. The creature’s wings flopped and twitched, then lay still.

Blood streamed down Delrael’s shoulders—his own blood—and he took ten steps away from the dead creature, up the path toward the grotto of Scartaris.

Delrael slumped down to rest on a boulder. Everything grew fuzzy. His pain, exhaustion, and hopelessness welled up. He could not find the strength to stand.

The bat-creature had carried him over most of the army. The monster hordes lay below him, fighting against Bryl’s illusion soldiers. Ahead and to the right, a curved spike of rock swept up from the main mountainous mass, one of the horns bracketing Scartaris’s grotto.

Delrael breathed the cool night air and saw mist rising inside the giant mouthlike opening in the mountain. Strange lights flashed, many different colors. It seemed close to him, but now he felt all alone. He didn’t know where Mindar was, or Vailret or Journeyman. He had come this far.

But he couldn’t make the last effort.

“You must move on,” the voice of the Earthspirits said from his belt. He felt a throb of energy creep up his spine, a warmth filling his veins like molten sunshine. The pain in his shoulders lessened.

Delrael stood up, feeling vibrant. He could function now. Then an ominous thought crossed his mind. “I hope you’ll still have enough energy now to defeat Scartaris.”

The long pause made him feel uncomfortable even before the Earthspirits answered. “We have
never
had enough energy to defeat Scartaris.”

He stumbled backward. His ears burned, and he stared at the turmoil of battle below him. All they had done, the characters who had died … Sadic, Tallin, the entire city of Tairé—“What do you mean?”

“Scartaris is too powerful. That is one of the other reasons we had you carry us across the map. Physical travel is …
difficult
for us, now that we are only marginally connected with the map of Gamearth. We can move
you
, like a player moving a piece on a gameboard. But the hex-lines are great stumbling blocks for us. We are outside the Rules, and yet trapped by them.”

The silver belt felt cold and tingling at his waist. Delrael didn’t want to touch it. The Spirits continued.

“But still, according to those same Rules, when an evil adversary threatens, good characters must do their best to fight. Regardless of their chances. Therefore, we will fight. Though Scartaris is much more powerful, nothing is absolute on Gamearth. We must hold on to that chance.”

“You mean, you hope that Mindar’s Stranger Unlooked-For shows up?” Delrael tried to keep the scorn out of his voice.

“We know nothing of that. We must fight and do our best—as
you
must, Delrael. And your sworn quest is to take us to Scartaris. Now finish your quest!”

His heart felt like a lead brick inside him, but he plodded toward the grotto. If the Earthspirits couldn’t destroy Scartaris, maybe they could at least weaken him, buy time for the magic of Gamearth to find another way on its own.

Scartaris had few defenses this far behind the ranks, probably to show his overconfidence. Several minor demons wandered among the rocks where they had fled. They fought without enthusiasm, and Delrael defeated them or chased them away. He still felt new energy from the Earthspirits, along with a growing anger at the futility of it all. He stalked toward the opening and the many-colored lights inside.

Rocks crunched under his boots as he climbed up the slope. Jagged boulders stood beside the opening that led deep into the mountain. He could not see the source of the lights, but weird shadows played on the wall and spilled out onto the quest-path.

Weariness crept up on him as he approached the end of the journey. He needed only to get to Scartaris, throw down the silver belt.

Panting, he strode up to the opening and he saw a figure inside, backlit against the grotto. She stood staring, looking devastated. The
S
-scar on her forehead glowed with its own bloody light. She slumped against one of the tall rocks beside the opening.

“Mindar!” Delrael said. “You’re safe.”

He saw a flicker of happiness when she looked at him, but that too was swallowed by the gulf of despair behind her eyes. “Of course I survived. I had to. Scartaris won’t let me die.” Her misery seemed to be tearing her apart.

“What’s wrong? We’re almost there. We can destroy Scartaris!” The lie came out, but he had to say it for her.

She glared at him with a wasteland of expression. The rippled sword rested against her leg, stained with dark blood. Her entire body trembled. “I’m the only thing left to stop you, Delrael.”

He took a step back; his thoughts churned. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes averted. He couldn’t imagine she would do anything to harm him. “What are you talking about?”

Mindar hung her head. “I lied to you.”

A black shadow-form oozed out of the dark rocks beside the opening and stood silhouetted next to her. Its silver claws gleamed from the reflected light.

“I didn’t know until now, but it’s true,” Mindar said. “
I
am the Cailee!”

***

21. Threshold of Scartaris

“Do you enjoy these battles, these Wars? Are they fun? Look what they have cost you!”

—Stilvess Peacemaker

Delrael’s heart stumbled a beat, and his breath came in ragged gasps. He wanted to reach out for Mindar, to take her arm, but he felt stunned.

“Scartaris kept the truth from me. The Cailee is my shadow, a darker part of me than I knew I had,” Mindar said. A sigh hissed through her teeth.

“It splits from me each night to cause its harm. We cannot live without each other. And Scartaris won’t let us die. It was part of his Game. He made me hate the Cailee, despise it—but I was only hating myself! Scartaris thinks of it as fun!”

She bit back an outcry as something forced her to take a lurching step toward the Cailee. The shadow thing moved closer to her, blotting out the flickering light from the grotto. They touched each other, overlapping.

The darkness of the Cailee flooded over Mindar’s body like a blanket of tar. Long silver claws hung down from her fingers, wrapped around the hilt of her rippled sword. Shadows masked her face, but Delrael could see her features silhouetted—the high cheekbones, the angry mouth. Mindar’s eyes became misty yellow and pupilless. The red
S
-scar burned through.

Delrael stood transfixed. This was too much. The Cailee took one step, powerful and deadly, blocking the way. But it was Mindar, too. When the hybrid woman/shadow spoke, her voice had grown huskier.

“We know of your quest, Delrael. Scartaris is—” Mindar/Cailee tossed her head, as if fighting with herself. Something snapped inside, and she let out a strangled roar, lunging with her rippled sword.

Delrael gave a yelp of surprise and sprang back ward, exhausted but still tense with battle reflexes. Mindar/Cailee slashed at him, rippled sword in one hand and silver claws in the other.

He tried to back away, unwilling to fight her, but she struck again. He stumbled on a loose rock and slid away from her blade.

“Mindar!” he said, but her eyes remained pupilless. The Cailee held her entirely now, though Delrael saw flickers of something behind her gaze.

He staggered back to his feet and swung his own sword, but it was only to deflect her. Mindar/Cailee defended herself, and Delrael ran around and pushed past into the uncertain light of Scartaris’s grotto.

Mindar/Cailee bounded after him. Delrael had to stop, panting. His arms and legs ached. He could barely move. She slashed out, and Delrael brought up his blade to block the blow. The force knocked his arm aside, clanging his sword against the rock wall of the cave.

He pleaded with the woman trapped within the Cailee. “Mindar, listen to me! Can’t you see Scartaris wants this?” He wheezed his words, but the angered Cailee drove at him with renewed force.

“Mindar—you’ve turned into the thing you hate the most! You’re a creature of Scartaris!”

Delrael fought against Mindar/Cailee’s growing fury. His arms felt like stone, heavy and unresponsive. He managed to fend off the blows that flashed at him, but his body trembled with exhaustion. He had used up all his adrenaline.

“Mindar, remember your daughter. Remember the tannery. Remember Taire!” His throat was raw.

Delrael gazed into the Cailee’s yellow eyes. Dark pupils flickered on the verge of appearing. Mindar/ Cailee hesitated, wincing her silhouetted features and struggling with herself. “We’re inseparable now,” she gasped. Then the Cailee howled and slashed at the air with a fistful of silver claws. Her pupils faded again.

She struck and slashed in a storm of blows with the rippled sword. Delrael’s arm seared with pain. He stumbled as he fought with the last of his strength. His sword sliced up and nicked Mindar/Cailee’s arm, drawing a strange mixture of shadow-smoke and bright blood.

The Cailee howled and surged back at him with such vehemence that Delrael had no hope of de fending himself. She knocked his arm aside, smashing his wrist against the rock wall. His own sword clattered to the floor.

Mindar/Cailee raised her blade to cleave Delrael’s head.

“Mindar …” he whispered.

Her sword swung down, but Mindar’s pupils flickered back for an instant. In her downstroke, she twisted her wrist sideways and struck him on the head with the flat of the blade.

Bright light exploded behind Delrael’s eyes, then it all turned black. He slid to the floor.

Professor Verne’s steam-engine car clanked down the slope toward Scartaris’s mountain, skirting the edge of the battlefield. The ratcheting noise was not noticeable over the shouts of fighting monsters and human soldiers.

He stoked the fires under the boiler as high as they would go. The car picked up steam and chugged along faster than a man could run. The hex-line separated him from the rocky terrain, but he also saw the clear path leading up to the grotto.

Verne swallowed and blinked his eyes. He checked to make sure his journal was carefully secured with him. He didn’t know what indignities he would have to bear on his long walk back to Sitnalta. If he survived at all.

He carried one tiny galvanic cell that powered a detector he had mounted next to the car’s steering levers. It was one of the instruments he and Frankenstein had used to detect Scartaris’s presence all the way from Sitnalta.

He switched the device on and saw the needle move, then fall dead, move, then fall dead. He was too far beyond the influence of Sitnaltan technology, regardless of how arbitrary he had proven the concept of the technological fringe to be. But even given the worst of situations, the Rules of Probability made the detector certain to work some of the time. The homing mechanism would need to function only at infrequent intervals to steady the course of the car along the straight path to Scartaris.

Verne knew his weapon was so powerful he needed only to get near the grotto.

For a moment he wondered in terror if the weapon itself might fail to work. But then he brushed that thought aside. The Sitnaltan weapon was powered by the force that had driven the Outsiders’ ship. It would work anywhere on Gamearth—it had to. The Outsiders set up their own exceptions to the Rules, and they would follow them.

But this weapon combined the power of the Outsiders with the resourcefulness of Gamearth. What if he and Frankenstein had forged a destructive power greater than either world had seen before?

As the car chugged along, Verne watched the ground pass under the rattling wheels. He set his mouth in a firm line, thrusting out his beard. This was close enough for him.

He turned to the weapon and found the timer knob as the car jostled over the terrain, steering itself. Verne twisted the timer knob to a red mark on the dial and released it.

A rapid ticking came out of the weapon as the spring-driven timer began its countdown to detonation.

Verne had heard of a prophesied hero from some of the other human settlements outside the fringe, some unknown savior who would come out of nowhere and rescue them from great peril.

They called him the Unseen Stranger, or something like that. Not that Verne put much stock in prophesies, since they had no scientific basis. But after he unexpectedly used his weapon to destroy Scartaris, no doubt the storytellers would make him out to be their Stranger. He clucked his tongue in disapproval.

Suddenly, a gigantic bare-footed ogre bounded away from the battlefield toward the car, drooling down his chin. The ogre tripped twice and regained his feet to stumble after Verne. He limped from a deep wound on his ankle.

Verne had nothing with which to fight this ogre. He felt a flash of fear, but the ogre seemed more intent on the speeding car itself than on its driver. Gairoth hopped forward, clutched the side, and scrambled aboard, heaving himself over the low door. He grabbed Verne by the collar of his woolen coat.

“One moment, monsieur!” Verne stammered.

But Gairoth was not interested in him. “Haw!” he said, spraying spittle in Verne’s face. With an expression of dismissal, he tossed the Professor over the side.

Verne landed in a tumble, bruised and hurt. He stood up, brushed himself off, and scowled. He watched the steam-engine car move on, homing in toward Scartaris.

Gairoth sat in the seat and bounced with delight as the car sped automatically toward the mountain.

“I don’t think you wanted to do that,” Verne muttered.

In the front of the car, the Sitnaltan weapon continued to tick.

Mindar stared at Delrael’s unconscious form against the rocks. Weird lights flashed on and off in the background, bathing him in strange colors. A spot of blood blossomed on his forehead and trickled alongside his nose, into his eyes.

Mindar had forced herself to the front of her mind, but she had to grit her teeth and concentrate, not letting her thoughts lapse for a second. The Cailee gibbered in the back of her head, making her ears ring. Her anger surged, but she had to keep it directed away from the Cailee. She would gain nothing by that.

Scartaris. Scartaris was her enemy.

The Cailee was part of herself. She had to accept it, dominate it, turn it to her own advantage.

Mindar felt blackness slough away from her face and shoulders as she grew stronger. In one arm she held her sword, and curved silver claws stuck out of her other hand—but she could see her own skin appearing in patches through the inky blackness. She was growing stronger. She knew what she could do.

Part of her felt appalled at what she had done to Delrael, but she knew he would forgive her. Mindar would never be able to forgive herself, though, not unless she finished Delrael’s quest for him.

She knelt down, and with the clumsy claws on her hand she worked the silver belt free from around his waist. She stared at it in the light, letting it dangle in front of her. The silver felt cold and slippery, tingling with power.

The Earthspirits lived in the belt. She held them, vulnerable, in her own hand—but they could destroy Scartaris. They could wipe him from the map. She cast her rippled sword on the floor. It clanged on the rock and landed near Delrael’s blade.

“You won’t make me cause any more harm, Scartaris!” The belt glittered in the weird light. “This is all the weapon I need to destroy you.”

Heavy footfalls sounded outside the entrance to the grotto. She turned. Her black form was liquid and cast no shadow of its own.

She saw the blocky form of a huge Slac general. It dragged its feet on the rocks with scattering sounds, and the clank of a chain rattled in the silence. The monster let a needle-spiked ball dangle at its side.

“Scartaris has grown bored with you,” the Slac said in its husky, grating voice. The pupilless pits of its eyes were filled with emerald fire.

Mindar/Cailee coughed out a laugh and held the silver belt as she strode recklessly toward the Slac. She held the belt between her two hands. “I’m bored with him, too. Earthspirits, destroy this thing of Scartaris!”

She squeezed the belt with her shadow-stained hands and held it, waiting for some explosion of power that would whisk the Slac out of the Game entirely.

But instead the Slac lashed down with his heavy spiked ball and smashed one of Mindar’s wrists. She screamed in shock. The wrist bones snapped, and her fingers spread out as blood sprayed in the air. She backed away in agony. The silver belt fell to the floor.

The Cailee’s furious presence clamored in the back of her head and tried to surge into dominance again. She pushed it away. The shadow-stain dripped from her body.

The Slac general said, “Scartaris wants you dead. You’re no fun anymore.”

Wincing the pain away, blind to what she was doing, Mindar/Cailee laughed again. “I can’t die!”

She leaped at the reptilian creature, spreading the claws of her uninjured hand. In the back of her mind, she drove the Cailee further away with her determination and victory. The blackness faded from her arms, and she made a savage slash at the Slac’s throat.

But the long silver claws snapped off and dissolved as she struck. Her hand became her own again—human and weak.

“All characters can die,” the Slac said. He wrapped his spiked ball and chain around her throat, yanking it from one end to strangle her and driving the ball’s spikes into the back of her head. The Slac jerked again, and Mindar’s neck snapped before she felt any more pain.

The Slac let her body unravel from the chain and fall to the floor. Then the monster twirled the spiked ball in the air to clean droplets of blood from his weapon.

Delrael groaned on the floor and stirred.

The Slac general strode to him. The ball clanked at his side. Breath hissed through needle-like teeth as the Slac leaned over Delrael.

“Well, excuuuuuuse me!” Journeyman said from the opening of the grotto.

The Slac general snapped his head up and turned, hissing.

The golem looked at Vailret beside him and grinned with flexible clay lips. “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” Journeyman swaggered in, and the Slac general faced him, dangling the spiked ball.

Vailret saw Delrael’s motionless form and Mindar lying dead. He stood behind and to the right of Journeyman, waiting and anxious. When he saw an opportunity, he slipped around and ran to Delrael.

“This here town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” Journeyman said. The Slac’s green eyes blazed brighter.

Vailret cradled Delrael’s head and wiped blood away from his eyes. The fighter mumbled and moaned. The bump on his head looked serious, but far less severe than Vailret had feared.

He glared up at the Slac general facing Journey man. The golem did not appear frightened at all, but Delrael lay injured, Mindar murdered. Delrael’s silver belt lay beside her. Vailret did not know what had happened.

The Slac general stood tall and dark and filled with all the evil of Scartaris.

As he saw the Slac, Vailret remembered the training Drodanis had put him through back at the Strong hold, the role-playing game where Vailret was captured by Slac while his imaginary comrades were tortured and slain. An imaginary general like this one had ordered Vailret’s execution, but Vailret managed to kill the Slac general before other arrows struck him down. It had felt so real to him, the terror, the helplessness, the failure. But it was only a game within the Game; this Slac battle was happening now.