Soda Pop Soldier (34 page)

Above us, a wide winding staircase climbs the rim of the tower walls. What lies above is unknown.

“Great, but what happens here in the tower?” I ask, meaning, tell me what monsters we face next.

“There's a demon-possessed witch named Razor Maiden, hiding above. She'll try to enslave us.”

“Your character, what's his story in the books?”

“Morgax died at the Battle of Vezengom in the swamp, saving your life.”

“Well, at least we've got that going for us; you're not dead yet. So just the demon witch?”

“No, there are other demons here, if we go by the books.”

“What kind of weapons do they have?” I ask.

“The demons . . . um . . . I think swords, flaming swords. Yeah, it was flaming swords. But, oh . . . this is important. The demons are crazy. We can use that against them.”

“How?”

“In the book they weren't smarmy, ultraintelligent supervillains. They were base . . . crazy, rash, jealous, envious, temperamental.”

“Not totally sure how we can use that in-game, but it's good to know. And this Razor Maiden, she has some sort of blade attack, I'm guessing?”

“The Razor Maiden is an enemy who recurs in several of the novels. In the book that takes place here in Zandsabad, she survives this battle but is badly wounded. In the novels afterward she is depicted as a scarred old crone who eventually gets burned at the stake.”

“Her attack style?”

“Curses.”

“Such as?”

“She could make you blind, fall in love with the wrong person, slow down. All kinds of stuff.”

Great. I check the Samurai's resistances. Nothing seems extraordinary, and
Deathefeather
doesn't seem to boost anything.

“Well, we'll just have to be ready for whatever comes,” I whisper. Unsure why exactly I'm whispering.

In the gloom, we proceed forward across a stone floor littered with dust and fire-blackened debris. We approach the stairs, watching them curve up and away into the murk above.

At the first landing, we meet two demons. They're little more than shadows gliding silently down from the blue-dark recesses above, their flaming swords guttering like oily torches in a strong wind, making a low rumbling sound.

“Two from above,” says Morgax over chat as his Minotaur rears back to fling a javelin upward. The javelin speeds away and shoots straight through the ethereal body of one of the two demons without harming it in any way. The demon drops toward us suddenly as its green eyes widen greedily. He brings his smoking sword down, imbedding it in the stone floor of the landing we've arrived at. Its twin follows suit and slams its flaming sword into the stone steps it's just landed on.

Morgax draws a huge double-bladed battle-axe. I select
Kendo
under fighting styles, and the Samurai raises
Deathefeather
into the ready position.

The demons solidify. They're wearing cobalt-colored armor. Tortured disembodied faces swim upward to scream or moan across the darkly shining surfaces of the breastplate and greaves. They draw their swords from the ground and advance.

When the demon opposite me is just feet away, I hit
Iron Hurricane
and let loose with a series of power attacks. The demon spins his sword left then right quickly, parrying everything. On the seventh parry, the demon heaves the sword over its back and brings it speeding back down on me. It's all I can do to get out of the way as I roll right to the edge of a crumbling balustrade, a three-story drop to the debris-littered floor just beyond. Immediately, the demon is up and on me with a series of short slashes that leave a thick trail of oily smoke in their wake, obscuring my screen with each pass. I parry, exchange positions, our swords crossed, and give ground, retreating to the edge of the landing. Then I whirl using a double-tap left command and strike out with a quick backstroke from
Deathefeather
. The demon barely parries and gives ground as we exchange places. I drive him down the stairs with four serious high cuts. When I'm almost on the verge of getting one slash past its twirling, smoking sword, the demon backflips and lands farther down the stairs.

I select
Harvest
from the hot keys and race down the stairs before the demon can recover. Superimposed autumn leaves fall across my screen as a scythe sweeps winter wheat in a brief transparent cut-scene. The image fades, and I bear down on the slavering demon . . .

. . . I should have made it to him already. The soundtrack has changed, slowed down. I wonder if I've drunk a little too much of the airline's highbrow scotch. I check the nearby tumbler and realize I haven't drunk any. I'm staring hard into the screen, trying to figure out what's going on. The muscles in the back of my neck ache. I urge the Samurai forward, his blade horizontally placed between himself and the enemy, one hand gripping the hilt, the other bracing the blade.

For a moment I see Sancerré.

I blink.

The demon at the bottom of the stairs draws his blade back with both claws, preparing a massive downstroke once I arrive.

Sancerré appears again on the screen. Her face is a mask of pleasure. I know the look. I'd been there more than a few times.

I blink rapidly.

I step within the demon's downstroke and deliver a good cut to its armored midsection. The image of Sancerré returns. The demon nuzzles her neck. Her eyes close as she surrenders to him, shuddering. The demon looks back across the screen, directly at me, and smiles through yellow fangs.

I'm gone. I'm thinking of her and what the world's greatest photographer does to her and how it makes her feel and how, if I've harbored any hope that she thinks of me and misses me, how that's just a lie I've been telling myself all along. I'm gone to that no good place . . .

. . . of jade-colored jealousy.

And . . .

I'm back.

The demon is gone, and I am speeding down the stairs.
Harvest
runs out. As I turn, the demon is right behind me, laughing evilly over ambient and cutting hard for the kill. I'm in full parry mode now.

Over my demon's shoulder I can see the Minotaur trading blows with the other demon. But the rate of exchange is coming out two to one for the demon.

I scroll the defensive submenu, find a
Disarm
attack and set it up in standby. I wait until the demon gets close enough for it to go active. Once it does, I execute and the demon receives a quick strike from
Deathefeather
at its wrist. The flaming sword whirls away, smoking, skittering across the stone floor of the landing.

“Morgax, how's it going?” I call out over chat.

No reply.

“Morgax, I need to know what's going on.”

“I don't want to say.”

“Let me guess . . . your wife or someone you love?”

“Yeah . . . how'd . . . ?”

“It's some sort of subliminal algorithm running through the graphics. They use this kind of stuff for combat training, but it's top secret. The military won't even admit to it.”

This was how the name
Wu
had suddenly appeared in my head back in the dungeon. How could I have known that was the real name of the character unless someone suggested it to me? The visions of the Harpies and all the skill descriptions. This game was full of hidden content. I wonder what other things it's been telling me.

The demon chases me up the stairs, its roar thundering out across ambient.

“My kids . . . ,” mumbles Morgax over chat.

“Hang on, be there in a sec,” I tell him.

I charge up the stairs toward Morgax and the demon, scrolling through the attack submenu. I find what I'd seen before.
Execution
.

“As soon as your demon's down, take mine out, okay?” I yell.

I activate
Execution
and cut loose with the Samurai's premier finishing attack on Morgax's demon. A totally offensive strike with two hands that will leave the Samurai temporarily defenseless for a moment. Up close I can see that the Minotaur is cut up and bleeding badly. He barely waves his battle-axe in defense as the demon hacks and slashes away at him.

Whatever Morgax is seeing is too real for him to deal with.

A moment later, using
Deathefeather
, I strike his demon's long neck. The camera backs away to the killcam view, the Samurai striking hard at the exposed, taut neck of the horned demon. Everything turns to black silhouette against red sky background. Flutes trill on ambient sound as the demon's head comes away, trailing inky blood that covers and then washes out the screen to black for two very long seconds.

Execution
stamps itself in gold Japanese-themed lettering across the screen, as a reedy flute trills in martial triumph.

“Get mine now,” I tell Morgax over chat. “I won't be able to attack it!”

I look away from the screen a moment too late. The demon and Sancerré. Everything I've imagined and didn't want to . . . was happening to the girl I once loved.

Love.

Then it's over. When I look back to the screen, the other demon is cut almost in two and has fallen backward down the stairs as its inky blood pumps out like a volcano erupting from a black smoking heart, sending small waterfalls of blood ahead of it, down the stairs. The other headless demon that I'd executed remains where it had dropped to its knees, leaning on the steps. Still holding its smoking sword.

In-game, we're each rewarded with $10,000 dollars and a free credit-score hack by a private profile hacking corporation that guarantees not only repair, but brand-new ratings. A gothic march of music returns to the soundtrack: pounding drums, blurred acoustic guitars, tolling bells. We stand for a moment amid the carnage on the stairs, gathering ourselves.

“You're pretty cut up,” I tell Morgax. “Better bandage. It's all we can do right now.”

“I . . . uh . . . ,” he starts, then doesn't finish.

“Listen,” I say sharply. “Snap out of it. Whatever it was that you saw, it wasn't true. It was an algorithm subroutine designed to run through the graphics and suggest that you imagine the worst possible thing and integrate it with elements of the game. There was probably some sort of focusing action that set us up for the suggestion. That's why they took their time getting ready with the whole sword-in-the-floor thing. The longer we watched, the better the program worked.”

“My kids . . . ,” he mumbles.

“It's not real. Forget it, Morgax. Let's get to the top of the tower. Also, check your axe, it looks finished.”

After a moment, the Minotaur bends down and picks up one of the smoking swords.

“If the programmers were faithful to the book, the demons' two swords might be useful.” He pauses to examine the blade.

“Amatazx,” he pronounces.

He picks up the other.

“Xergunnil.” Then, “These are blades of renown in the books.”

“So which one are you gonna use?” I ask.

“Both,” his character rumbles, then smiles. “Let's go kill us a witch.” Both blades emit a guttering torchlight effect as the Minotaur leads the way up the crumbling stairs, the swords trailing black oily smoke in the blue midnight gloom that shines through the fractured remains of the massive stained-glass windows.

“Something's about to happen,” I whisper over chat.

There is no sign of any other players. No other enemies. No traps. Nothing. Then the music changes. The gothic march that repeated again and again, building, growing louder as we move up the once-grand staircase, now turns to something else. Primitive horns ring out across the distance as though issuing a challenge. Then the march resumes, this time louder and faster.

“What should we do?” says the Minotaur.

“Nothing,” I whisper. “Keep moving forward.”

I watch the broken stairs behind us in the polished reflection of
Deathefeather
. The clear light of the swollen moon peeks through the stained glass and jagged openings in the tower wall that look out on the silent city far below and the desert waste beyond.

The first of the next three demons announces itself with a cluster of thrown spikes that hit the Minotaur as though suddenly springing from his back. I scan his Vitality. He's lower than me.

This is not good.

The demon lands like a cat on the stairs ahead of us, its four hands gripping more throwing spikes.

At that moment, a second demon steps from the shadows and wraps a whip around the thick neck of the Minotaur, jerking it hard like a noose, biting into Morgax's bleeding hide. Instantly the Minotaur spins around on me, its animal eyes gone, only the whites showing. One flaming sword sweeps high above me while the other comes in fast from the side, low. I back away as the possessed Minotaur lumbers forward hacking away at me, his two guttering swords leaving great smoking trails.

It's then that the third demon, a giant, tears away a section of the wall, ripping out the stairs below me with its gargantuan clawed hand. From the gaping midnight hole, its lone angry cat's eye peers in at me from outside the tower. Running, I hit Spacebar and launch the Samurai out across a crumbling void and grab a support beam jutting from the far side of the gap.

Three demons, one of which is a giant. Me, clinging to the outside of the tower, and a possessed Minotaur trying to kill me.

Great!

“Morgax, what's going on?” I call out over chat.

“I've got some kind of minigame going on. I'm locked out until I solve it.”

“You gotta solve it quickly! I mean it.”

“I'm trying, but it's gonna take time . . .” Then he says the words I dread hearing, “I'm not very good at these things.”

Hurled spikes clatter against the tower wall all around me. One nails me for 10 percent damage. I sheath
Deathefeather
and set my stance to
Free Climb
. I leap for the gaping crack in the wall beyond the giant demon's mouth, open and drooling, waiting for me. Barely hanging from the torn-away gap in the side of the tower, I begin to scale the outside wall, upward, heading for the top of the tower. Across the chasm of disintegrating stairs, the demon with the whip jerks on it, and the Minotaur starts climbing the steps to intercept me somewhere above.