Soda Pop Soldier (20 page)

“What . . .” I'm beginning to wonder when I might get a break. “Who or what is Plague and how did they buy in, and why do they want to kill me?”

“Ah, the tale of Plague is one that goes back many centuries, wandering Samurai. To begin . . .”

“Hold up a sec, Callard! I want to know why someone bought in just for the pleasure of eliminating me, an unknown player. Or is it some kind of special buy-in for bounty hunter players and I've been randomly assigned?”

“No, Samurai. This participant requested you personally and even now is riding toward your location. The client paid a high price, unusual but not unheard of in Black games, for the privilege of tracking you down and killing you.”

The mirror swirls with smoke and now the dim image of a horseback rider is seen descending between two dunes. The black horse lathers and froths, its eyes rolling and wild, as it makes its way up the near dune filling the mirror. The dark horse and cloaked rider stop. A bloated and swollen moon, corpulently leering, its detail rendered by in-game graphics, hangs over the rider's shoulder. The rider carries no visible weapons, and his face is covered in tattered dirty gray rags. He wears a dusty, weathered, wide-brimmed hat.

“Don't I have a right to complain? I mean, come on, Callard, this isn't fair. I bought in and I've had nothing but trouble since this game started.”

The mirror clears as Plague fades from view, returning to the smiling face of the wizened Callard.

“Oh, simple Samurai. I would caution you that there are forces beyond your comprehension at work here. I might suggest that you get moving and get back to the tower.”

“Still, this isn't fair. I mean, this is like the worst Black game I've ever played. I'm getting nothing but the short end of the stick.”

“You could fill out a complaint form,” says Callard dryly. “But we don't really have a complaint department as this is a highly illegal enterprise and we don't really feel anyone will do much complaining to the authorities. But if it's any consolation, I'm helping you. I warned you about Plague and the skeletons, didn't I?”

“Skeletons?!”

“Oh my . . . I forgot about the skeletons.”

The flap in the tent parts and in shambles a wobbly skeleton holding a scimitar and bronze shield. The shiny surface of the bronze shield reflects the flickering torchlight within the tent. I equip my axe and swing, missing the skeleton by a yard as the clever thing nimbly hops backward and rattles its grinning teeth at me. Apparently the AI is set to “pretty good.”

The skeleton takes a cautious swipe at my exposed position and rewards me with a slice that costs me 15 percent health.

“Oh, at least I didn't forget to tell you about this,” says Callard the Sage from the mirror. “There's an underground passage beneath the Pool of Sorrows. If you can get it open before Plague arrives, you may be able to get back to the tower rather swiftly.”

I raise the axe and swing again, cutting down from above my head, directly onto the skeleton's chalky skull, or at least that's my intention. Instead, the skeleton raises its battered bronze shield and deflects the blow, even though its force brings him down on one bony knee. He cuts wickedly with his jagged scimitar at my legs, but a light touch on the keyboard gives me a nice little hop, timed to miss the blade.

“I'm telling you now, wayward Samurai. Open the gate to the Halls of the Damned and you'll get back to the tower. Once there, we may meet again. Also, I may try to contact you in real life.”

“Wait? Aren't you an NPC?!”

I capitalize on the skeleton being low and missing with his attack. I crash the axe downward onto the kneeling skeleton. The shield collapses like cheap aluminum. It does little to deflect the axe's true course, which ends in a fine powdery spray of the skeleton's disintegrating skull.

“No time, Samurai, all will be explained. Hurry to the gate and get gone before your mortal enemy, Plague, arrives.”

Chapter 15

I
n the moonlight, clickety-clack skeletons, with scimitars and spears, always shields, close in a circle about the oasis. If they weren't out to kill my Samurai, the whole scene might be strangely beautiful. The moonlit dunes, the bone-white skeletons hobbling down them and across the sands and into the night-made indigo of the Pool of Sorrows, water softly rippling in the moonlight. I grab one of the torches from outside the tent and wade the Samurai into the pool, looking for the gate Callard mentioned. The gate to the Halls of the Damned; it would lead back to the tower, the Marrow Spike.

Painted figures, typical tomb burial scenes I've seen in other games, decorate the submerged green-and-gold paving stones. I move to the center of the pool as the first of the skeletons reaches the water's edge. I look down into the clear water, searching for some sign or clue as to how to unlock the hidden gate. An approaching skeleton makes little noise as its slender shinbones barely disturb the waters of the pool. Instead, its chattering teeth and mumbling bony rattle tell me of its approach.

All I can see beneath the water are depictions of tiny inky figures harvesting, planting, living, and dying. Their painted skin is ochre and their hair black. They all wear white linen kilts except for one.

That's my first clue.

I try to fix the spot in my mind where I've seen the one figure different from the others, but the skeleton is on me, chattering and slicing through the air, making windy passes with its rusty weapon. I retaliate in full force with a sideways swipe of the axe and hear the satisfying crunch of a skelie's rib cage. The blow from the silver-skulled axe sends the skeleton soaring off onto the sandy banks outside the pool as though an unusual amount of force has acted in coercion with my swing. Either that or the Samurai has an extremely high strength rating.

I've shifted position with the force of my attack and now I scramble to recover the lost pictoglyph, the one different from all the rest. The ripples of my frantic wake are obscuring the shifting pictoglyphs beneath my Samurai's feet.

Two more skeletons enter the Pool of Sorrows.

At last I find the figure I'm looking for. The difference is only marginally noticeable from the hundreds of others. It's a figure wearing a gold tiara, a woman rather than a man, a queen rather than a peasant or a priest. Her eyes are thin slits, like a serpent's.

A skeleton jabs my backside with his spear, reducing my health by 10 percent. The water of the Pool of Sorrows is restoring some of my lost health points but not as quickly as I'd like. Another skeleton circles behind me, making small back-and-forth movements with a rusty bronze scimitar.

I study the Queen figure, as I choose to call the tiara-wearing serpent-eyed woman. She points toward a different portion of the pool. The circling scimitar skelie blocks me from getting there. Now, spear skelie jabs again and I sidestep and chop down quickly at the haft of its spear. The blow drives the spear down onto the sandstone pavement below the water, disintegrating the Queen figure and a large surrounding portion of the submerged mural.

Now I either know where the Queen was pointing, or I don't.

I execute a spinning attack, using the axe's relativistic force in combination with my backward spin, and land a blow directly onto the spear skelie's shield. The blow splinters the shield and smashes the skeleton in two.

Now, scimitar skelie is on me, chopping from above, ravaging my dwindling health bar.

Just when I'd gotten it back up again. Oh well.

If it worked once, it'll work again. I execute another spinning attack and send that skeleton off into the far end of the pool with a splash.

I race to where I hope the Queen was pointing and scan the pictoglyph-covered flagstones beneath the shifting water as I move in circles. Behind me, the skeleton I'd cut in two drag-crawls its way toward me through the water, muttering revenge and death through chattery teeth. He's using his broken spear for leverage.

Now the paving stones tell a different story. One of judgment and suffering as the Queen, now attired in a reaper's cloak, hews her way through an army of cowering peasants. Below them opens a yawning dark chasm as the peasants and sometimes just their body parts disappear into a black sun that is an abyss.

The skeletons, all of them now, have reached the pool. Nearby thundering hooves, drumlike and hollow on the desert sands, tell me of Plague's approach.

The pool is as good as any place to fight. Its healing effects might mitigate some of the damage received, and the axe seems to be a formidable weapon. But this Plague player, whoever it is, that's the unknown variable.

A leaping black Arabian crashes into the pool. Plague, coal-dust-gray cloak and rags, draws an antiquated blunderbuss and fires at me. At my Samurai. The weapon's more hand cannon than pistol. A spray of water from its near miss erupts in a plume at my feet. Then Plague on horseback tries to run me down. I dodge and issue a quick swipe at the nightmare's flank, barely missing. Around me the motley collection of skelies are closing in—grinning, rattling, and chattering. Weapons ready.

I hear a slight sucking noise over ambient.

Beneath my feet, where Plague's smoking blunderbuss ball barely missed me, a small whirlpool has formed, sucking the water of the Pool of Sorrows into its event horizon.

To where?

At the far end of the pool, the black rider, Plague, coughs and mutters to himself as he reloads the blunderbuss. The skelies close. There is no time and no choice other than the one I make. I raise the axe high over my head, mark the spot where the whirlpool drains beneath my feet, and slam the
Axe of Skaarwulfe
down onto the paved stones where all the little pictoglyph people had gone to hell.

The crash is deafening, and everything on ambient gives way.

Plague's coughing, the rattling bones of the skelies, the tribal drums, the flute, and the keening moan of the desert woman.

I fall into darkness.

Again.

I fall, bumping and sliding along the edges of a widening pit. A spiral stairway just beyond the reach of my Samurai's fingertips winds its way upward and down into the darkness as I fall past it.

I open a menu under
Actions
and scroll quickly for something I'd seen before.

Free Climb.

It was disabled when I'd first seen it, but that was back when the Samurai had only one hand. Now it's active. I click it and the Samurai's fingers splay outward, the axe either returning to inventory or dropping off into the darkness. Sooner than I expect, the Samurai's fingers find purchase, and a quick assault of rapid damage shotguns my health bar. But the Samurai's fall stops. In the dark of the pit, the Samurai hangs precariously from the jutting lip of a carved and leering demon, similar, vaguely, to the one I'd seen on my last fall from the ledge where I'd fought Creepy.

I look up. The hole above me is raining paving tiles and water from the pool. A lone skeleton tumbles past me, falling off into the blackness below. I see Plague's dark outline against the moonlit night above. He stands among the burnt matchstick silhouettes of the skeletons and the night and the moon.

Part of the stone staircase spirals down through the demon's head, out one eye, in through the other and out the mouth just below my handhold. My movement keys bring the Samurai liquidly up onto the rotting stone staircase that spirals through the demon's head. Again, I check above and see Plague, torch in hand, being followed by a collection of ancient bony warriors, descending the staircase, which must have begun right below where I'd stood in the Pool of Sorrows.

I could fight them on the stairs one at a time, maybe two, but they'd have the advantage of numbers and attacking from above. Not the best position to defend.

I start down the staircase, into the unknown.

The stairs weave down into the pit, dancing sharply inward then darting out crazily over dizzying drops into misty nothingness. There are flickering shadows at every turn as lonely drips and mournful disembodied moans resound over ambient. The torchlight of my pursuers makes me nervous. At times I see it high above, winding down along the precarious rocky stairway. At others, not at all. I experience a sense of vertigo as I move downward quicker than I probably should, occasionally striking out at shadows I suspect of being something more.

At last I reach the bottom. Above me, I hear the thump of Plague's hobnailed boots and an occasional wet gurgling cough coming down the well after me. Behind those sounds, I hear the clickety-clack of the skelies, their bony feet scurrying down the stony staircase. In front of me a wide hall stretches off into misty nether. A sickly green iridescence washes the darkness all about me. I can see the outlines of canted tombstones and crosses standing out against the gloom, leading off into nothing. The ambient soundtrack begins with an abrupt twang from an electrified bass guitar. It's disturbing and lonely. Then it's joined by runs of descending minor scales from a Hammond B3 organ.

This hall does not bode well for my Samurai if the ambient soundtrack is any indicator.

I move forward, equipping the axe from inventory. I move cautiously, one step at a time. There's danger here, a trap of some sort, but from where and how, I don't know. In the back of my head a voice screams for me to move faster and get as far away as I can from Plague and the skelies, but now, with my spider sense on overdrive, I have to find the trap first. Otherwise . . .

It comes quickly, maybe thirty feet down the hall with no end in sight. From the walls and the floor, hands, necrosis dark, oozing green, patches of white bone underneath, erupt like an explosion.

Everywhere bony hands are reaching for me.

The simulated undead crawl from beneath the programmer's vision of a rocky and forgotten tomb tunnel. I run forward fast, moving quickly, hoping the end of the passage lies somewhere shortly ahead. A zombie, gap toothed and grinning through green patches of ragged flesh, rises up, shambling and abrupt. I crush its head with one terrific blow of the axe. Already two more shamble after me, moaning like burning paper scraps consumed in a fire. I step back, raise the axe, then smash it down on the first, almost cutting it in two. The other swipes at me for a paltry amount of damage. He gets it next with a twirling blow from my axe. Beyond these, the hall stretches out over ground that's becomes like a sea of waving grass. Except it's not waving grass. There's no breeze down here.