The spiky-haired youth smirked at us as we exited her majesty’s library. The last glimpse I caught of her as they closed the great wooden door behind us was a wisp of her starlight-colored gown disappearing past the archway, back upon the balcony.
We descended the alternately dark and illuminated sections of the tower once more. I will not tire you by describing it a second time, although it was much easier to descend than to climb. (Helmgarth was dangled by his pack and swung across the gap that had caused so much trouble on the way up.) Once we were all safely down the stairs, the youth took their position at the foot of the staircase and we were sent away from the tower, scattering beneath its base in the manner of roaches.
The tower had been constructed, in a flagrant defiance of nature, directly in the path of the great river of which I knew not the name at that time. It had been diverted around the foundation—such as it was—in a perfect loop, each droplet of water deciding whether to go left or right around the obstacle. I describe this with only a little bit of hindsight, because at the time, the river itself was as dry as the moat. A deep groove seemed to have been hollowed through the center of the city, dug up with one of Lisa’s ice cream scoops on an unimaginable scale. A dry, cracked bed of clay and stone lie exposed. Clumps of graying algae and tendrils of river weeds curled in the sunlight, bowing roughly in the direction the former current had flowed.
“Well,” said Kriegsgeswinnler, “it’s been real.”
I wasn’t so sure.
“Where will you go, master merchant?” asked Helmgarth.
The hooded man patted his chest and sides down, taking inventory.
“There’s a festival on,” he said. “I’ve got a fortune to make! Thanks for the rescue.” He chuckled to himself and walked across the street, disappearing into the marble maze of city streets.
“I respect it,” said Commander Zideo. “Get that bag, bro.”
“We must go too, I suppose,” said Helmgarth, with a glance at me and my human.
“Yeah,” Zideo bit. “I’m under house arrest. Better get comfortable.”
Helmgarth looked at Addrion, a couple heads taller than the man. “I am glad you found us. Albja keep you.”
By way of farewell, Addrion crossed her arms. Helmgarth sighed. Zideo made what I think of as a what are we even doing right now gesture, following his so-called prison warden with his palms on his cheeks. The two went a different direction from the merchant, following the dry river, and I followed. I do not think anyone but myself noticed her turn and walk back toward the tower base.
“But first,” said Helmgarth as they walked, “begging m’lord’s pardon, we must find a safe place for our friends.”
“Huh?” he asked. “What friends?”
The mouse leaned out of a pocket of the pack, waving obnoxiously. In my irritation, I nearly ate him. We three (or however many we were, considering the creatures hitching a ride on Helmgarth) crossed a bridge northward. The skeletons of fish, cartoonish in their proportion and rendering, blanched on the dry bed below, mouths gaping. More than one human skeleton rested there as well, an iron ball affixed to the ankle. I wondered about the state of organized crime here in the city—or whether this was rather a royal punishment. Its proximity to the tower gave me pause.
“Wah,” rasped a dry voice, “water.” A man appeared to have been wadded up like one of my human’s résumés and dropped on the bridge. His arms hung longingly over the edge toward the river that was not there. His clothes had once come been those of our world’s, a ragged button-up shirt, slacks and one boot.
Beside him, an anthropomorphic cactus leaned diagonally, patting the man’s back. “He’s fine,” said the cactus, who seemed to be in a hurry even though he was going nowhere.
“Your boy looks thirsty asf,” observed Zideo. “What happened to your river?”
Helmgarth shuddered. “In the event we spoke of… the Total Conversion… our enemies wrought destruction upon our world… in every world.
They shattered our planet. They pulled our towers to dust. Not satisfied with that, they came back and dried our river, our source of life-giving water. Our moat is useless. Our farms are drying up. It is dire indeed.”
“Hold up,” said Zideo. “You’ve got the Princess sitting up there in her tower while your people are running out of water?”
The man reached a hand out toward us, and I stepped in between him and Zideo, just to be safe. His hair was disheveled and he made no move to stand up.
“It affects the citizens in different ways,” said Helmgarth, arching his arm to reach an awkwardly located pocket in the pack without removing it. “This one clearly hails from the Shard known as Survival Zone, where water is a resource. A necessary mechanic. As m’lord knows, I come from a… place with a relative rudimentary daily routines.”
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“Oh yeah…” said Zideo, then he stage-whispered, “Gleam’Blade (20ǂ1).”
“When you… experienced the place I come from, you may have noticed all of my friends and peers walking about their daily lives.”
Zideo gritted his teeth and scratched at his neck, thinking hard. “Yeah, uhh… the intro place. Where they’re teaching you the mechanics. Wait, don’t tell me.” He closed his eyes. “Thindark. Than…drank.”
“Thendrac,” said Helmgarth, swelling with pride. “In the center of our town-”
“A well,” Zideo said, snapping his fingers. “I remember. I threw all my trash down there.”
Helmgarth was openly horrified. “Well… I see. That… was the city’s source of water. But, the truth is that we did not need the water. We walked to the water, we distributed it, but did we ever truly drink it?”
“Of course not,” said Zideo. “You were made in 20ǂ1. You went through the motions for the benefit of the player.”
“Water… puh… player?” The thirsty man stood up. He spat on the street, a considerable gob of liquid surrounded by a halo of dark droplets from his spray. Zideo jumped back. The beggar stormed off, his cactus friend shaking his head.
Zideo’s face was a picture of outrage. “Man, what!”
“Let us quit this place,” said Helmgarth. I lingered a moment to watch the man and cactus leave, and thought I saw a flash of white fabric whipping on the side of a place of business, just above its sign. Was it one of the many flags displayed here in Ludopolis? Or had I caught a glimpse of a crisp, white cloak?
Through twists and turns, I lost our track, but the tower served as a giant sextant, helping me determine roughly our relative position. The stained glass window helped me discern north.
The streets were crowded, not only by people walking the streets and shouting to and at one another, but the buildings themselves seemed to excuse themselves past one another. The streets, some stone, some paved, some broken brick, seemingly built at different times with different materials and—presumably—under different rules and administrations, felt constricted to me, half as wide as they were meant to be. It was a while before I realized that on one side of the road the buildings were stone: clothiers, galleries, lending houses lined with beautiful columns and cornices, possibly ancient. On the other side, wooden housing bulged under the density of its inhabitants. The street had been sliced in half lengthwise to accommodate its burgeoning citizenry, creating two cramped, parallel streets out of one. Rows of uneven residences draped over one another, several stories high.
Half the city seemed to be a workspace. There were more construction sites than builders. Still, the rubble pile that we passed nearby struck me with its size, a mountain of stone fragments as high as the apartments down the street. Construction workers of various origins (a gnome with a pink beard and a monocle attended by a tall frog wearing sunglasses and little else, as well as others) crawled across it like ants over abandoned food, chiseling and hammering stone to be manageable enough to carry off. Slabs, broken and strewn, served as tables and roofs for squatters. A flat, bearded man with a bulging beer belly, wearing in a purple tunic, huddled beneath the jagged rise of one segment of wall that had not yet been taken away. His beefy arms were around his knees, and I heard him informing anyone who passed, “I am Error.”
“Zamn,” said my human. “What happened here?”
Helmgarth did not seem to have heard him. “The animal sanctuary is just a little further, m’lord.”
“Was this a whole other tower that collapsed?”
Helmgarth again did not answer. The animal sanctuary reminded me of the pet store that Lisa had brought me to on occasion. Through its windows I could see birds, rodents, and things I did not fully grasp that looked like animals but seemed unclassifiable by my (admittedly limited) taxonomy. The smells were too much for me, and I opted to wait outside. I also did not want to risk a misunderstanding and be taken into this place. There was a sign with something crossed out, and something written over it—I took that to mean that they had once sold these creatures as pets, but now were helping them get back on their feet, however many feet that may be.
While I waited, I surveyed the area. I cannot help it. All dogs have a keen sense of their own ancestry, and I sensed in my bloodline the ever-vigilant canines bred to be guardians. They spoke to me in situations like this, admonished my laziness.
An unattended pallet of straw caught my attention. Something had disturbed it—pebbles bouncing off of it, falling from above.
“Oop!” came a voice, and a white cloak plummeted into the straw, launching its fluffed extremities into the air and sending straw flying in patches. Two boots kicked helplessly as I heard the shuffle of straw beneath.
The man in the white cloak and hood righted himself. I growled at him, knowing he had followed us. It was supposed to be an interrogation, but I frightened him away. In a whirl of white, he somersaulted out of the straw and walked behind a trio of chanting monks, impersonating their posture. I presume he believed himself to have blended in, which was ridiculous to me. I barked at him until Zideo and Helmgarth returned, but he ran away and I was loathe to leave Zideo alone in this unusual and dangerous city.
They pressed me for details, but I could only answer in barks. I did my best to point in the direction he had gone, but they did not understand the urgency or the message. Eventually, Zideo calmed me with back rubs. I hate that such a treatment is always effective against my alarms, but I challenge any of you—dog or otherwise—to resist the extremely good rubs doled out by the greatest human in the world.
“Don’t worry, bud,” said Zideo. “We’ll find a way out of this place.” He did not mean the city. Helmgarth looked dubious.
“For now, we must rest,” said Helmgarth. “Let us return to my home… our home, if m’lord prisoner is ready.”
Zideo made a face, but complied. It was not the first time I had heard Helmgarth gently direct him without giving up his subservient demeanor, but this time it had the authority of the Princess’s command behind it. I knew Zideo would try to escape, and I readied myself for when the time came.
“Boo!” shouted a small boy whose skin was knitted canvas. A zipper rose from his navel to his chest, and he wore a goat mask. Reacting instantly, Commander Zideo reared back one of his Jordan-shoes, and kicked the sack child into a dried-up marble fountain. Then he threw his hands over his mouth and ran to apologize to the being, who seemed dazed but uninjured.