My mind filled with thoughts of the creature that had attacked Lana. Its howl had caused a clammy sensation to erupt on my skin. I stood there, my gaze fixed upon the gnarled tree trunks, scanning the horizon for any sign of the beast responsible for that spine-chilling sound. As the mist thickened, painting the forest in a shroud of mystery, an involuntary shiver coursed through my body. I clenched my fists and took a step back.
I imagined wolves the size of horses one minute, then considered that given how crazy this place was, it could be something much worse.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” I mumbled.
Lana looked at me with wide eyes as a creak sounded on our left. We both startled and turned toward the noise. My eyes narrowed as I attempted to peer into the distance. The fog continued to thicken so that nearby tree trunks and clumps of underbrush vanished into the white abyss.
“This fog is so pretty,” Lana said. “It makes me feel like we’re walking in a cloud.”
I took a step back, then another before my eyes noted a blanket of tall grass beneath the thick layer of haze. It was moving. Shifting. Parting!
“RUN!” I shouted, then bolted.
Before I could even give it another thought, I had spun and was sprinting with all I had, Lana right on my heels. It took me until we had run a few minutes and I was starting to gasp for breath before I realized that whatever we were running from couldn’t have been taller than the grass, which had been at most up to my knees.
“Stop, stop,” I called out, slowing.
Lana turned to me, trotting in place, and to my surprise she was smiling wide.
“That was fun,” she said.
“What?”
“Don’t you just love a good trot? I mean, the fresh air, the exhilaration of the—”
“We were running for our lives!”
She finally stopped moving, considered me with a frown, then grinned again. “Hmm, seems safe enough for now. It’s so good to not be alone anymore. I hate being alone. Let’s keep going, together. Um… this way.”
The tiny unicorn pranced up and over a nearby hill. After a quick glance around, I shrugged, then followed her.
At least there was no more sign of anything following us, and we didn’t hear anymore howling.
Soon the mist began to fade and I could better see my surroundings. Blotches of faint sunlight pierced the thick forest canopy. As moisture evaporated, dank steam wafted off the thick bark of the forest’s trees. The transparent, white swirls lifted into the sky, slowly ascending toward the heavens. Only, it wasn’t steam. It wasn’t coming off of a tree, and I wasn’t walking through a dense forest.
I had to keep reminding myself that this entire environment was all comprised of nanotech. Even the baby unicorn trotting alongside me was only code, controlled and driven by a game. Yet, I still felt compelled to address her as if she was real. Maybe having what I thought was a normal interaction with what my eyes saw, and what my body could feel, was my brain’s way of trying to keep my sanity.
This place is so flipping weird, I thought.
Despite the implausibility of my surroundings, one thing was clear; the cut on my foot was undeniably real.
“Hold up for a minute,” I told Lana, as I stopped and leaned my back against a tree. “I need to check my wound.”
Lana stopped and looked up at me, raising her eyebrows in concern. “Wound? Do you want me to lick it for you?”
My lip curled involuntarily. “No... I don’t.”
With my weight balanced, I lifted my foot into the air, then removed my slipper. Red inflamed flesh poked out between the parts of my purple tights that had been stitched into the top of my foot.
I grimaced. “I need to wrap some gauze around this so it stops rubbing against the inside of my stupid slipper.”
“Wow.” Lana leaned in and stared at my wound. “I love how you stitched everything together. Those purple strips of fabric look super cute.”
I didn’t bother trying to explain what had really happened. Instead, I turned my head to the sky and called out, “Inventory box.”
Lana pulled her head back. “Oh silly Reeve, you don’t need to say the word to access your inventory, you just need to think about it really, really hard.”
“How would that work?” I exhaled. “Are you trying to tell me that this new nanotech can read my mind?”
“Of course it can’t read your mind, that wouldn’t make any sense.” She rolled her eyes. “There is a microscopic layer of AI nanotech coating the majority of your skin right now, relaying information about every aspect of your biomechanics back to the game engine. It interprets electrical impulses and any other biometric changes in your body to determine what action it should take.”
My eyes went wide, driven open by a mixture of confusion and fear. “That stuff is on my skin?”
I dropped my shoe and looked at my hands, then realized that even if Lana was right, I’d never be able to see the nanotech if it was only a thin layer.
“How do you know all that?”
“I know because my brain told me.” Lana smiled. “Try, you’ll see. Just concentrate on your inventory, really picture the box in your mind.”
As part of the modified code, it made sense that she could have some innate sense of how the programming worked. I took a deep breath, then decided that the only way to find out if she was right would be to do a test.
I pictured the box, what it looked like, focusing on visualizing every detail I could remember.
Thwump.
My inventory box appeared before me, hovering at shoulder height. Lana stood up on her hind legs, clapped her front hooves together, then yelled, “Hooray! Super great job, Reeve.”
I couldn’t believe it had worked, but I’d lost track of how many times this place had dumbfounded me. I made a mental note to not dwell on any more of the weird shit in this place that didn’t make any sense. I needed to keep all my attention focused on staying alive, so I could get the hell out of here and save Mace.
A moment later, I had accessed one of my gauze and wrapped it around my wound.
I was about to put my impractical shoe back on, when I noticed something slither into it.
“Did you see that?” I turned to Lana and scrunched my nose in confusion. She wore a terrified expression. A quick scan of our surroundings didn’t reveal any other reason for her fright, so I leaned down closer to the shoe to try and have a look inside.
Sure enough, a tail shifted. Something was in my slipper!
“Dammit,” I muttered, then reached for the tip of my shoe, picked it up, and shook it. What looked like a snake with the face of a reptilian pitbull went flying out, landing right at Lana’s hooves. Its large jaw muscles twitched as it showed the glistening, translucent teeth lining its mouth. Tiny, iridescent blue feathers covered its body, accented by three yellow rings near its tail.
As it squirmed on the ground in front of her, Lana screamed bloody murder, retreating so fast that she stumbled over herself and fell to the ground.
My instincts and survival training took over and I launched myself forward. Raising my shoe-covered foot, I brought it down onto the snake-dog.
CRUNCH.
I pulled my foot back and stared at the strange corpse.
Lana was still on the ground, legs awkwardly intertwined, staring at the spot where the creature had been.
“That–that was a snog!” she finally managed to spit out. “I soooo hate snogs!”
“Snog?” My mind put together the combination of snake and dog, but it sounded so dumb I had to laugh. “At least it’s dead now.”
“There is nothing funny about snogs. They love to crawl up your nose when you’re sleeping.” Lana’s hair shook as shivers coursed down her back.
“Why does that not surprise me?”
Her smile returned and she turned, trotting a few steps away before turning back to look over her shoulder at me. “But when it comes to snogs… just understand that I don’t like them.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
She smiled, then nodded at the ground. “Oh, don’t forget to loot the corpse.”
I eyed the small body of the snog, then reached for it.
“Don’t touch it!” Lana shouted. Then, in a calmer voice, she added, “Just reach your hand out for it and think ‘loot.’ Simple as that.”
I tried, and sure enough, the animal shook, then compressed slightly, as if it had just expelled its last breath. As the small creature pixelated and disappeared, words floated up that read Two XP and Acquired: Snog Skin.
“What am I going to do with Snog Skin?” I asked. “Something tells me this isn’t going to help me get out of here.”
“Everything has a purpose.”
“And that XP thing? Is that Experience Points, just like in a real video game?”
“Exactly.”
My mind connected the dots, just like when I’d smooshed the rat under my heel during the fight with the troll. “So every time I kill some creature here, I get XP?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
She nodded. “You got it! Getting XP is how you level up and get stronger so you can defeat bigger enemies.”
“Until I get out of this game,” I said, checking my shoe again for other snogs, or maybe even snog eggs, “my main goal is to avoid all the enemies.”
Turning it upside down, I gave my slipper one last shake. It was clear, so I shoved it back onto my foot.
We continued on, pushing our way through the forest. The woods opened onto a dirt pathway large enough to accommodate two people standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Wagon wheel ruts cut into the ground, forming long, overlapping lines that trailed off into the distance in both directions.
“This is called a road.” Lana stepped onto the dry, dirt path, then clomped her hoof against the ground. “You walk on them. This is the one we’ve been looking for. It leads right to the crossroads of Grimm.”
“I know what a road is.” With a quick glance in both directions, I inspected the path for signs of movement. At the very least, I knew the beast that had attacked Lana was still out there. The thought of coming across another troll also crossed my mind. Not to mention the fact that there were potentially dozens of other creatures roaming around this game, ready to rip my head off if given the chance.
Lana looked at me, then lowered her head. “I just thought, since you didn’t know how to open your inventory box, maybe there were other things you might not know about.”
“It’s fine. I know about things in this game that are the same as things in my world, it’s all the new, weird shit that worries me.” I looked down at her and she lifted her head. “I’m sure that some of your knowledge about this game will be helpful.”
“Unicorns love being helpful, especially to their best friend.”
“If you want to be really helpful, tell me which way we need to go on this road.”
Lana bent her front legs and lowered her head toward the ground. She scrunched her nose in concentration, then her tail ruffled as a stream of sparkles passed through it.
“Did you just... fart?” I turned my head to the side and tried not to breathe.
“I did,” Lana replied in an excited tone. “That’s how I know which direction to go.”
The sparkles blew toward me. A second later, the saccharin smell of sweet strawberries bombarded my nostrils. I coughed a little.
Lana lifted her head again. “On this road, the wind always blows toward the crossroads.”
I paused for a moment, then felt a light breeze blow across my face. “I could have told you which way the wind was blowing without inhaling any of your fart.”
As the large, wafting fart-cloud passed by, green, purple, and pink sparkles stuck to my armored vest. Those that didn’t stick continued down the road, slowly losing altitude. The majority of them came to a stop in front of what looked like a small wooden hutch on the right side of the road.
“I know what that is.” Lana smiled at me, then trotted over to the hutch. “It holds a side-quest announcement.”
“A what?” I walked over and stood by her side.
The small hutch looked like a doorless outhouse—minus the toilet. An A-shaped frame adorned with thick wooden shingles formed its roof, and rough, gray timbers framed its sides. Yellow paint covered the boards that framed its front.
“It’s an announcement for a side-quest.” Lana looked up at me and blinked. “I can’t think of a better way for new besties to form lifelong memories.”
“We are not doing a side-quest. I’m not even doing the main quest.”
“I’ve never seen a hutch painted yellow before. And the announcement inside it is different from any others I’ve seen, too. Isn’t it beautiful?” She nodded, motioning to the inside of the hutch. Before I could stop myself, I peered inside. At chest height, a single nail protruded from the back wall. It held a piece of gilded paper with two columns of ornately scribed symbols I didn’t recognize. The shapes and linework looked different than anything I’d ever seen before. Above the left column, an illustration of what looked to be a sad, humanoid rat shed streams of blue tears. Aside from the rat-guy and strange writing, it reminded me of a page from an old medieval bible you’d see in a museum.
Another out of place element caught my attention. Five tabs hung from the bottom of the page, reminding me of one of those fliers on a bulletin board. The kind people put up when they’re trying to sell something. On each tab, instead of a number to call, an odd symbol sat at its center.
“What are those symbols?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” Lana put her nose close to the paper. “I don’t think they’re from Castle Crawl.”
“How is that possible?” I inspected the rest of the page, looking for some kind of clue. As I leaned closer, the rat-guy’s crying increased. “Why is that guy blubbering?”
“I’m not sure why he’s so sad,” she sighed. “But I bet we could help him by accepting this side-quest. We should do it, right?”
“If you’re asking me if I want to do something with you, other than go straight to the exit—the answer is hell no.”
“But my sparkles never lie.” Lana tapped her foot on the glitter-covered dirt in front of the hutch. “They always guide me to do what is righteous in the ways of the unicorn.”
“I’m not taking suggestions from anything that came out of your butthole.” I turned and began to walk down the dirt road.
Lana stayed in place, then lowered her head. “I’ve always listened to my sparkles before, but if you don’t want to... that’s okay. I want you to be happy. Loving someone is about making sacrifices for them.”
She batted her doe-like eyes. Sure, she was cute, but with my brother’s life on the line, I scowled in her direction, then motioned for her to follow me. “Let’s go.”
Lana nodded complacently, then looked back at the hutch.
“Just a sec.” She thrust her head inside the structure.
“What are you doing?”
Her head re-emerged from the hutch, one of the small tabs from the bottom of the paper dangling in her mouth. “How can I create a scrapbook of our adventures without collecting fun keepsakes to highlight our relationship milestones?”
Before I could tell her to drop the thing, a familiar rumbling erupted, vibrating up from the ground. “Oh crap.”
I tried to step to my right. Once again, the ground spun like a conveyor belt. Then it jostled, and with a fast rolling motion, took me back to the hutch.
Lana’s ears went erect as more boisterous music rang out. But this time, it wasn’t music. At least it wasn’t like any music I had ever heard before. I could tell that instruments were producing the sounds, but I couldn’t identify the type of instruments that were playing. These were entirely new sounds. Sounds I didn’t even know existed.
As the noise subsided, the paper announcement fluttered, then ripped off of the nail and exited the hutch. It spun around like a leaf caught in a whirlwind updraft, then came to a stop directly in front of us.
I took a step back, and Gloptar’s familiar voice echoed out overhead.
Congratulations castlers. In Spite of being incredibly unskilled, you have chosen to attempt a side-quest.
“We didn’t choose anything,” I barked.
Lana’s head swiveled. “That’s not the Elder Wizard. Whoever that voice belongs to sounds like a meanie-weenie.”
“His name is Gloptar and he replaced that Elder guy.” I raised an eyebrow and looked down at the tiny unicorn. “And you are correct. He is one hundred percent, a meanie-weenie-asshole.”
Some say asshole... others say realist. Now gaze upon the quest announcement so you may begin the journey that will hopefully end in your agonizing death.
I turned to Lana and grunted. “When you ripped that tab off, you must have started the damn quest.”
“I’m so sorry. I really didn’t know. I’ve never done a side-quest before.”
The paper announcement vibrated, then its contents began to shift on the page.
In the illustration, a treasure chest appeared in front of the crying rat guy. Intricately carved gold reliefs covered its sides, glistening in spectacular shimmers of yellow light. Kneeling on its top, two winged creatures faced each other, their wings folded forward over their heads with the tips of their feathers overlapping slightly.
“This means the quest involves a treasure hunt.” Lana jumped up and down. “I love treasures.”
The illustration continued to animate. In one fluid motion, the lid lifted off of the chest, exposing its contents.
“OMG.” Lana’s mouth fell open and her tongue flopped out. “Look at all those gorgeous, sparkly things.”
Rubies, ingots, coins, and golden chalices filled the chest. One large scroll tied with a satin ribbon rested atop the precious metal objects.
“I’m not interested in a treasure hunt.” I grunted. “There has to be a way out of it.”
I Gloptar, am compelled to tell you that there is a way to bypass the side-quest. But it involves solving a riddle, then choosing the right course of action. I must say, it’s unlike any other challenge I’ve encountered in Castle Crawl. Regardless, I doubt you have the intelligence to decipher it and move forward.
I considered the asshole’s statement, then realized that some of the items in the illustration of the treasure chest had patterns on them. They were little dots with light flares, like… stars.
As I reached for the page, about to trace the pattern to better visualize it, a light formed, from my pointer finger to the image, and one of the golden chalices shifted. Startled, I pulled my hand away and the light disappeared.
Instinctively, I rubbed my thumb across my finger where the light had emerged and inspected it for damage. I couldn’t feel any pain and everything seemed normal.
After taking in a deep breath, I cautiously aimed my finger at the page again. The light reappeared, glowing yellow where it emanated from my flesh. The beam fell on the same challice, and the gentle motion of my finger made the golden cup move.
“That’s so amazing,” Lana said. “It’s like your finger turned into the butt of a beautiful firefly. And your glowing-butt-finger moved the chalice.”
“Having a glowing finger and using it to move images on a picture is pretty damn weird to me,” I countered.
Eyeing the image, I noted the patterns of the star-like dots covering each chalice. Letting my eye draw connections between the dots, I realized that one formed a tight curve, one looked like an open arc, and one resembled the tip of an arrow. I’d seen this before, but where?
“Those remind me of the beautiful stars that come out at night,” Lana said, sparkles from the glowing dots glinting in her eyes.
“Let me try something.” Inspired by Lana’s statement, I started rearranging the positions of the chalices in the image based on their glowing patterns.
First I moved the one with the arrow to the left, but that felt wrong. Then to the bottom right, with the looped pattern on the upper left. That was it! And to my relief, the pattern pulsed, telling me I had done something right. In this configuration, the three symbols aligned to form an object, and instantly I recognized it from my brief, middle grade fascination with astronomy–it was the constellation of Scorpio! Indeed, an image like a scorpion lit up, glowing above the page.
“Oooh, constellations are super cool!” Lana exclaimed.
I nodded, focused on the glowing image before it faded away. The scroll in the image of the treasure chest unfurled to reveal an elaborate map. Situated at the end of a long ridge of snow-covered mountains, an intricate “X” dominated the illustrated landscape.
“You found a treasure map inside a hidden treasure.” Lana said. “How did you know that the constellation was the key to the riddle?”
“I really didn’t.”
She eyed the map then turned to face me with an eager excitement in her eyes. “Can you believe we get to go on a treasure hunt together, then, once we find that treasure, use a map to go on another treasure hunt?”
“We’re not going on any treasure hunt. I’m solving this riddle so we can get out of this damn side-quest.” Turning my gaze to the sky, I added, “I’m getting closer. Right, Gloptar?”
Your feeble mind lacks the discipline to succeed. The only thing left to do is shove a stick into your ear and poke your brain to punish it for being so stupid and useless.
“He’s stepping up his insults, so I’m probably getting closer.”
“On the bright side,” Lana began with a large grin, “if we do have to go on the side-quest, it will make a wonderful story for our grandchildren.”
“What?” I stared into her eyes, flabbergasted. “You and I are not having grandchildren.”
“Not together, silly Reeve. I mean your future grandchildren and my future grandchildren. They’re going to play together all the time.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have time for any of this shit. My brother, and other “real” people are trapped in a dungeon, inside this suicidal game that could kill them at any minute. There’s no way I’m going after a treasure.”
Lana gasped. “You have a little brother? They’re the best. Is he a baby human? They have the cutest little feet. Every time I see those tiny toes I just want to give each one a thousand kisses.”
“He’s human, and eighteen... and a big pain in my ass. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to do anything to save the little shit.” I put my hand on my chin. “I’m done wasting time on this treasure hunt crap.”
Congratulations. You are now officially locked in. By solving the riddle, then turning down the chance to retrieve the treasure in pursuit of helping a fellow castler, you have proven your worthiness to begin the side-quest.
I craned my neck to the sky. “Wait, what? Are you telling me that if I would have wanted to go after the treasure, then I could have gotten out of going on the stupid side-quest?”
Precisely. Ironic, isn’t it. A second ago, you could have made a different choice and walked away. But clearly, as I had noted earlier, you are too stupid. Oh, and both of you have earned one advancement in Decoding the Language of the Ancients, whatever that means.
“I don’t know what it means either, but I’m so happy you decided to go on this side-quest with me,” Lana said, taking a deep breath. “I knew you would change your mind.”
Dammit. What a shit show. Everything about this game seemed to be stacked against me.
“Fuck!” I balled my hands into fists. “Why do I get the feeling there will be something that wants me dead standing between us and that treasure?”
Now, the side-quest will begin. Your foe will be unimaginably disgusting, and you will peer into its blackened eyes as it rips open your torso and slowly devours your intestines... or something gruesome like that. The point is, a castler as inept and ugly as you are will never survive this side-quest.
Thinking I’d give it one last shot, I tried to sprint down the road. It spun beneath my feet, shooting pebbles and chunks of dirt into the forest as I stayed in place. “Dammit.”