Hexomancy (3 page)

More coughing. Ree grabbed Eastwood’s hand, trying to hold him still. A few moments later, he recovered, still flushed.

“Lucretia’s going to go long-distance, I can just about guarantee. The way you move, you’ll want to close, use utility spells that will let you keep your troops alive and close the distance.” He pulled a piece of grease-spotted thermal paper from his coat and started scribbling notes.

“Here’re your options for spell selection. Your troops will respawn on a timer.”

Eastwood tried to keep going, but the Auctioneer coughed audibly. Ree took her seat.

“Kick her ass, okay?” Eastwood added. “Let’s be done with this
yen su de go-se
.”

Ree squeezed Eastwood’s hand once more, then stepped toward Lucretia, seated a few paces away. “I catch you cheating, and I’ll pull your organs out through your nose and parade you around as a crinoline mummy. You get me?”

“Armor yourself with all of the smugness you can muster, child. The game doesn’t care about how angry you are. Besides, you’re the hotshot Geekomancer—this should be easy for you, yes?” Lucretia held out the blue orb.

Ree grabbed the orb, then passed it between her hands, feeling its heft. “I’ve been around this scene long enough to know that you’d never pick a battleground you didn’t know by heart, Lucretia. But I’ve spent more time behind an FPS HUD than some pro gamers,” she said, stretching the truth like taffy. “Let’s do this.”

A few folks stepped out of the crowd and pulled the tables away, leaving two chairs facing the crowd. Shade, recovered from the injuries he sustained during Lucretia’s attack, worked a control pad, and above, a massive projection screen descended on the far wall, behind the Auctioneer.

“Why don’t we use this to watch movies all the fucking time?” Ree asked.

Grognard chuckled. “The bulbs to work these cost about a thousand dollars apiece in alchemical components, and last two hours.”

“Only two grand? I’d kick in,” Ree said, all bluster and no moolah. She took her seat, Lucretia beside her. If it weren’t for the mounting pressure, the fear of unfamiliarity, and the dead certainty that Lucretia was about to cheat worse than a hungover frat boy in Chem 101 with answers printed on the inside of his vitaminwater label, she’d be excited. She’d dreamed of going inside a video game ever since her dad had shown her
Tron
as a kid.

The Auctioneer stepped in front of them, holding a yellow globe of her own, half again as big as the other two. “Red player, are you ready?”

“Ready,” Lucretia said.

“Blue player, are you ready?”

“Ready,” Ree lied.

The Auctioneer raised her arms. “Prepare for Incarnation.”

The orb in her hand grew hot, and she felt crushed inward and expanded outward at the same time.

“Game on!” she shouted as her world went blue.

Chapter Three

Would You Like to Play a Game?

Blue-black faded to sapphire, then faded again into a volcanic landscape. They were on the crags of Valos, the battlefield where the ragtag Cohort makes their final stand against the Starii Federation in the game’s campaign mode.

Ree looked down to see herself in the badass robes of a high-level Cohort mage, leather and silks wrapped together in an outfit that managed to be powerful without being featureless. Too often the outfits for female avatars in games came in two flavors: 1) three-quarters-naked sex kitten, or 2) matronly robes. This one actually split the difference in a way that she could get excited about. In her right hand she had her twisted ash staff, and her left hand glowed with faint blue light.

As she stood still, a menu popped up, dominating her vision. She had three choices of Incarnation spells, the massive Spirit constructs that gave the game its name: Stalwart (the tank), Guardian (the all-arounder), and Doombringer (the artillery).

Remembering Eastwood’s advice, she took the middle path, choosing the Guardian.

Next was the spell list. All characters got a levitation spell for free, plus four spell slots.

She chose Shield, Haste, Fireballs, and Mana Sink. Defense, a buff, damage, and a counterspell.

Those selections done, the menu disappeared, showing her the world again. When the displays popped back up again, they were as a heads-up display at the edges of her vision: Mini-map, spell list, mana pools, and health bar.

A squadron of foot soldiers charged past her on the left, and to her right a trio of Treefolk shook the ground as they marched.

The Auctioneer appeared in the sky, half-transparent and three times larger than the sky-dominating moon.

“Prepare for Incarnation!” her voice boomed like thunder, then she disappeared, and the chaos took off.

With NPCs, there were a hundred entities per side. The game had elements of a MOBA, since in some modes, you could quite happily rack up the score by mowing down enemy minions without ever crossing the opposing casters or Incarnates. But this was Deathmatch, so everyone else was just an obstacle. Only caster kills would count. Get Lucretia three times before the Strega got her. The whole thing would take maybe twenty minutes. A really, really intense twenty minutes with life-long implications. No pressure.

“You better run, Lucretia,” Ree said as she set off, boots crunching the loose volcanic rock. She oriented herself toward the red dot that indicated Lucretia’s position.
Thank you, mini-map gods
, she thought.

The field sloped up toward a crevasse.

She had two options:

1) Bear right and head down through the inside of this volcano, dodging lava flows but with cover from archer fire from above.

2) Take the long way around to the left and get the higher ground so she could rain death down on Lucretia and her troops, but take archer fire along the way.

She decided on the second choice as she fell in with a squad of fast-moving skirmishers. Their leader raised his sword to salute her, a feature she hadn’t remembered from the beta.

“Friendly caster with us! Deliver her to the enemy, blades!” the woman’s voice called.

Ree smiled, excitement finally bubbling over, worry temporarily forgotten.

“Forward!” she shouted, pointing toward Lucretia’s dot with her staff. The group charged ahead, moving even faster.

As they rounded the hill, exposed as they headed to high ground, a wave of arrows arced up toward them. Ree thrust her staff forward, casting her Shield spell. Blue mana coursed through the staff, flowing out to create a dome over the skirmishers. The arrows snapped and shattered on the shield, raining detritus down on all sides.

“Go!” she yelled, dropping the shield. That had tapped a chunk of her mana, down payment on the Incarnation spell.

The field beyond was spotted with skirmishes—cavalry and pikemen, archers and infantry. The units were small, ten to fifteen each, but they added up to a messy melee right quick.

Lucretia was still a ways off, standing on a ledge above a lava flow, red contrails of magic swirling around her like a music visualizer.

A squadron of heavy infantry stepped into their way, two-handed weapons ready. Her skirmishers wouldn’t last long against the armored opponents. It was her turn again.

“Step aside!” she said and took her staff in both hands like a lance. She tapped out her barely-recovered mana pool to toss a trio of fireballs. A couple of the soldiers dove out of the way, but the blasts caught the rest of the squad, setting them alight.

In the game, they’d just burn up and drop to the floor. Here, she could smell burned flesh and slagged steel. And hear their screams.

“Fucking hell,” Ree said, terrified of what she’d done even as she knew that the soldiers were nothing more than magical constructs. She’d been killing digital men for decades, but never had it felt quite so real as now.

Focus, kid
, she heard in Eastwood’s voice, her mind internalizing his advice. Her skirmishers dove on the remaining heavy infantry and put them out in moments.

They regrouped and pushed on. “We need to get to that caster. Cut me a path!” she said.

Lightning split the air, and when the flash receded, Lucretia’s Incarnate form loomed over the field, thirty feet tall, glowing red. It looked like a cross between Lucretia and a Fade spirit out of
Dragon Age
. Lucretia had chosen the artillery-esque Doombringer, surprising absolutely no one.

The Incarnate reached forward, and a red vortex formed, charging with the sound of a thousand stones grinding against a thousand mills.

That’s my cue to take cover
, Ree admitted, jumping behind a rough outcropping of volcanic rock. According to video game logic, the cover should protect her, even if a real explosion would still envelop the area. To be safe, she cast her Shield spell again as the blast hit.

Her mana pool gave out as the blast faded. She was two-thirds of the way to her Incarnate spell, and she’d been casting almost all-out. Lucretia must have used an artifact to charge her spell this fast. Or she’d cheated. Same difference. The likelihood that the Auctioneer was going to step in, even if Lucretia cheated, was about zero.

Reassuringly, this wasn’t too different from being a late twenty-something with two jobs and a life trying to play an FPS with teenagers who basically lived on the multiplayer queues. She just assumed everyone knew more and had more stick time, and she made do.

Ree peeked out from the rock formation to see Lucretia Sauron-ing her way through Ree’s army, knocking cavalry and Treefolk aside like they were LEGOs.

She called up her Mana Sink spell, designed to damage Incarnates, and saw that her pool was still empty. She needed to rack up some minion kills to speed her mana recharge, or find another way to take on Lucretia.

Neither option seemed terribly viable with her Doombringer dominating the field. Ree snuck around through cover, hoping that Lucretia was focused enough on rampaging that she wouldn’t notice one little sorceress wandering around.

A searing bolt vaporizing a pillar in front of Ree told her that those hopes were entirely, head-deskingly unrealistic. She broke into a sprint, slaloming her way between rocks, trying to make it harder for Lucretia to aim her blasts. The detonation of a fire burst seared her left side before Ree could dive between the seams in one of the mini-volcanoes.

Falling down toward the lava, Ree activated a levitation spell (which was blessedly free, mana-wise, unless you wanted to ramp up the speed), which let her drop back onto the ledge. The heat was nearly overwhelming, but Ree forced herself to remember that it was all special effects. Spectral effects, maybe, but still not really real.

But real or not, it wouldn’t take long for Lucretia’s Incarnate to close the distance and fire down at Ree, fish-in-a-very-hot-barrel-style.
Keep moving. That armor’s around here somewhere, right?
Ree pulled up the details from the last time she and Charlie had talked about the game during a Café Xombi shift a couple weeks back.

Ree searched the volcano cavern, looking for the golden chest that would contain the level’s best artifact, a suit of lava armor able to turn aside both fire damage and the attacks of an Incarnate.

“But it only shows up after a hundred minion deaths, so you can’t just go sprinting for the loot,” Charlie had said. The memory shook loose as she jumped over a chasm, bubbling lava just feet from her boots.

With Lucretia’s rampage, it might not take long for the kill counter to grow that high. The sound of charging magic echoed down the cavern, and Ree looked up to see the chasm filling with fire. Ree raised her staff for another Shield spell.

The protective dome turned aside Lucretia’s magic.

For a second.

The spell’s upkeep zeroed out Ree’s mana pool, and then fizzled with the pathetic sound of spent carbonation.

She felt a moment of intense heat, and then nothing.

The world reset after a flash of white.

First point went to Lucretia.

1–0.

Ree respawned at another part of the battlefield, away from her original muster point. She stood on the bloodied field, beside a freshly-spawned group of cavalry.

“Friendly caster!” their leader said, acknowledging her as the skirmishers had done before.

Ree made for the head of the column. “We have an enemy Incarnate, which means we need to fight smart!” Her Incarnation pool was two-thirds full, close enough to shape how she could play this life.

Ree paid into the pool again with Haste spells, increasing the cavalry’s speed even more. Then she levitated her way up to a horse, riding behind one of the cavalrywomen.

“Up and to the right—we’re going to come at her from behind and above, charge down that hill!” Cavalry had limited usefulness on this level, since the ground was so uneven. But there were a couple of pathways where they could build up to charging speed, and that hill was one of them.

Ree looked at her mini-map and saw two other squads on that path, along with an enemy unit. In the distance, Lucretia and her armies dominated the center of the battleground.

The cavalry charged their way through the narrow path, each step carrying them farther and faster than it should, thanks to her buff. Her mana pool refilled, slowly. She needed to rack up some kills if she was going to keep up these buffs.

Around the corner was a unit of pikemen.

“Fucking great,” Ree said. Pikemen were the rock to the cavalry’s scissors in the balancing act of the game.

Again, it’d be up to Ree to lead. She had the chance to strike first, since the pikemen needed to be dug in to properly break the cavalry’s charge.

Ree tapped out her mana pool for another burst of fireballs, crisping nearly half the pikemen and clearing the way for her unit. Their numbers reduced and the remaining ones flailing around in DoT-land, the cavalry broke the pikemen with only a few casualties.

Beyond, they met up with a trio of Treefolk, freshly respawned. The Treefolk gave a
Harrooo!
in greeting and fell into step. Ree cast Haste again, bringing the molasses-slow elementals up to human infantry speed.

With two strong units now at her back, Ree forged ahead, making her way to the center of the field. Her Incarnate spell was almost ready.

Payback time
, Ree thought, urging the cavalry forward.

Ree charged down
the hill with her troops, Treefolk forming a wedge at the front, which her cavalry split around to strike at the corners. Her cavalry trampled over a unit of skirmishers, and was plowing their way through heavy infantry when Lucretia turned her attention to this side of the battle. She dissolved the ground beneath the cavalry. Horses and riders alike fell, breaking legs and shattering spears. Ree jumped off her horse, landing softly thanks to her Levitation spell.

Next, Lucretia turned to the Treefolk. Ree activated her Mana Sink spell, which shot out with a fat
twhorp
sound. The Mana Sink took a motorcycle-size chunk out of the Incarnate, and all of a sudden, the Treefolk were forgotten, the Strega turning her attention directly to Ree.

Ree slid to the side, using another rock outcropping for cover as Lucretia retaliated. Ree pumped some mana into her Levitation spell to get limited flight, taking to the sky and firing the Mana Sink again. Lucretia tried to slide her Incarnate out of the way, but the Artillery form was the slowest.

The burst of counter-magic took another chunk out of the Incarnate, and Ree plunged back down to the battlefield. Ree fired one more Mana Sink, but this time Lucretia didn’t move, pressed from the other side by a team of Elephant riders, a rare unit span.

At last, some luck on my side.

The ground rushed up at her, as Ree dropped down on Lucretia’s Incarnate. She kicked on her Levitation spell to avoid going splat, and landed on the back of the Incarnate. Lucretia’s magical form clawed at its back, trying to tear Ree off its vulnerable neck.

“Take this!” Ree shouted, charging up a final Mana Sink spell, and unloading it into the back of the Incarnate’s head. The spirit exploded, sending Ree flying back and up onto the ledge.

She’d taken a beating, but beaten wasn’t dead. Ree pulled herself up with her staff and saw that Lucretia was gone.

1–1.

“Form up!” Ree shouted to her forces, which were making short work of the opposing units, no longer bolstered by the Incarnate.

The Mana Sink spells hadn’t filled her Incarnate pool at all, since it was magic used to cancel magic, so she waited for her pool to refill and then applied buffs to the Elephant riders.

The sky went redder than normal as the big volcano nearby erupted. Soot grew thicker in the air, and bursts of lava started raining from the sky.

“Cool!” Ree said, dodging the burning hail. The battlefield hadn’t done
this
in the beta.

Out of the volcano, riding a flow of lava, came Lucretia, already in her Incarnate again.

“How the hell?” Ree said as the crimson-and-molten-red spirit came crashing down at her, reversing her mass-driver maneuver.