“Here’s the thing,” said Commander Zideo, opening with that phrase he uses when he wants to sound particularly professorial. Helmgarth had a hard look on his face, uninterested in hearing any case for not taking the suspension bridge across. “Look around, bro. You noticed it, right?”
Helmgarth did not look anywhere but at Zideo. His eyebrows pinched together. He held the soggy rope taut between two hands, as though he might at any second throw it around my human to restrain him.
“It’s like… at first glance, this is just a cold, shitty, freezing… shitty cold place! But the longer you look at anything, you start to see it. The path. The platforms. The thing you’re supposed to do.”
Tension left the seneschal’s shoulders, and he allowed himself a glance at their surroundings. “I see nothing,” he said, “but frozen wastes.”
“Yeah, well, when I look, I see the g-word. You said this is the platformer Shard, right?”
Helmgarth dropped one side of the rope and rubbed his stubbly cheekbone. “Quite right.”
“Well, I see the platforms. They all tie together, one after another. Don’t you see it?”
Helmgarth shook his head. “These are the bones of other worlds, my good man,” he said. “I see no purpose in this chaos.”
“Well, I do,” insisted Zideo. “Maybe it’s a player thing. But I think this place wants to be a good g-word.” The wind resumed its noisy work of slowly filing down sharp edges and hurling snow into the abyss. “You can’t have a platformer without good level design, right? This place is… it’s trying. And why shouldn’t it? It’s got the DNA of every good platformer that ever existed.”
Helmgarth was silent. His hair and shredded coat wavered in the wind. I knew my human was right. I could see it too in every step I wanted to take. Every hill, every turn, each drop and climb.
“That right there,” he said, pointing to the end of the floating crust of ice with the question mark rune, “is a power-up. Don’t you get it? A challenge and a reward. It’s supposed to be there.” He stared over the fissure, and I could see the gears turning, so to speak. In his mind, he was working out distances, jumps, speeds, tractions… “Somebody put it there. Left it for us… for me.”
Helmgarth released a long breath. “It certainly works with my particular persuasion… as though there were any doubt that you were what I said you were.” He coiled the rope and attached it to his belt. “Alright, then. Fine. No sense in dragging it out.” He took up his cane and clasped what buttons remained on his coat. “I could really use my hat about now, with or without the hole. See you on the other side, old bean. Don’t waste any more lives—we don’t know how many you’ve got left.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess. It’s such bullshit that we started with the ice level. You never start on the ice level.”
Zideo went left, and Helmgarth went right. To his credit, it was Zideo who first noticed that I followed him.
“No, Cormac,” he said. “Go with HG.” I sat pretty in the snow and put on the most viciously sweet puppy dog eyes I could manage. I dipped my head just so, effecting embarrassment and capitulation, deferring to the human in charge. Through a series of tactical muscle squeezes in my head, I routed some tears into my eyes, making them extra glossy. “Aw, don’t do that,” he said. “C’mon, bud.” He knelt down and gave me some frankly electrifying cheek rubs. “You can’t go this way. It’s too dangerous for dogs.”
I remained, swashing away snow with my tail.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. He patted my chest encouragingly. “Go with HG. I’ll meet you over there.” He pointed to the auburn ridge beyond the fissure. “Just watch your step, okay guy?”
I made no move.
“Oh!” said Helmgarth from the entrance to the bridge, with one hand in his pocket. “How about that? I’ve found another jerky.”
Of course no silly emotions were going to stop me from a snack. I trotted over to Helmgarth, double-time. He promised to give it to me on the other side. I did not smell the treat outright, and sensed human chicanery, but that was a risk I was willing to take. Helmgarth put his hands on the guide ropes, taut cords of braided fiber that frayed nearly to snapping at entirely too many points. He put his first shoe on bridge, sending a sine wave disturbance along its body, which threw off piles of snow and at least one rotting wooden plank.
“Albja’s eyes upon us,” he prayed. I do not think he meant to do so out loud.
He made his way out over the bridge, with a halting rhythm of checking his next step, then looking forward to gauge the distance, then looking down again. It rocked like a boat. I, without the benefit of hands to hold onto the ropes, cut an unflattering figure, my four legs splayed for balance and my tail whipping in the wind. The wind picked up almost as though in response to our attempt at crossing. I felt ice gathering on my nose, and the sound was that of being inside the mouth of a titan who never ceased bellowing.
We took the bridge on plank by unsteady plank, stopping frequently to hang on tightly while the bridge bucked and kicked. More than once, the wood disintegrated beneath my foot, and my quick canine reflexes were the only thing between me and falling death. Zideo had the benefit of “extra lives,” because he was a Player—the Player, according to Helmgarth—but I had never played a video game in my life and still wasn’t entirely certain what they were. Philosophy aside, seeing a hole form beneath one’s foot and watching wooden fragments fall into an infinite gloom below was more than enough to underscore the danger to me.
We made a rhythm out of it, and when we were nearly halfway across the bridge, I ran into Helmgarth, losing my traction and nearly falling when I did. He had stopped, and although gripping the braided ropes on either side, stared to our left to see Commander Zideo’s progress across the mysteriously floating ice blocks. We were positioned such that we had a perfect view of him walking from left to right. It was harrowing. First, his feet slipped on the icy surface as he tried the first standing jump, only a couple feet to the next surface, a cluster of solid cubes that dripped in the morning light. He was fortunate enough to begin flailing before he slid all the way off, and caught something that allowed him to haul himself back up, but not before his feet dangled precariously over the chasm. My heart pounded as he tried the jump again, sliding a little when he landed this time. With nothing to steady himself against, he flapped his arms not unlike a bird and finagled his momentum to stop before he went over another edge.
Emboldened, he leaped, mantled and slid over a few more floating obstacles, picking up coins as he went. They stood in a perfect line, perpendicular to our vantage point. It very much reminded me of some of the programs that Zideo had so often had on his medium glowing rectangle, in which the little shapes made a little man—at least, that is how I interpreted it—who jumped over similar gaps, making his way from block to block. Perhaps this was the “platformer” to which he kept referring.
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These had often been on when he Did A Stream, and nine times out of ten (a conservative estimate) resulted in the little man falling into some pit or colliding with dangerous beings and then falling off of the screen.
“Oh no,” said Helmgarth.
Something white and ragged slipped across the floating ice course behind him, scrabbling with spider legs on the underside of the dripping ice. A misshapen snow head, from which protruded stones and a broken carrot.
“I rather thought we melted that old villain,” said Helmgarth.
I had to go back. I had to warn him. I had to jump across, do something that would get his attention. I barked, startling Helmgarth, who nearly slid off. But all the noise I could make was swallowed up by that titan-shrieking wind, like reeling ghosts carrying it off to quieter and more shadowy lands below. I filled my lungs and howled my loudest. Zideo, crawling belly-first on a thin gangway of pure ice, turned his head. Thank God, I thought, and howled my most articulate dog speech: Enemy, danger, behind you! S. Man has returned! Kick him, run away!
My human made eye contact with, and slowly lifted a hand. He gave us the thumbs up.
“Oh no,” said Helmgarth.
The white spider-head made of snow closed the gap, hiding behind pillars of ice whenever Zideo glanced back, or pivoting to the underside of the platforms by some unknown means.
“Come on,” said Helmgarth to me. “Let’s get to the other side. Maybe we can find some way to warn him.”
We pushed forward, although we were too cold and fearful to hurry. One false step and all was lost. With frequent glances back over to Zideo, who was taking on every frigid obstacle on the ice course of the Harder Way with caution, we made slow progress indeed. He had entered the final stretch and would have the question mark rune soon, if the snow-spider did not catch him first. Oh, that creep! My body yearned to be over there on the ice, to grab him by one of his twiggy legs, to shake him apart in my jaws. I could see him rub his little wooden hands together in anticipation of his fulfilled vengeance against my human.
We were more than halfway to the auburn ridge at the other end of the B.O.P.O.D. when we heard the sound of a snap.
The tremor shot through the bridge like the plucked string of a cello, and the boards half-sank on the left side. Helmgarth grabbed one of the hand rests, sagging below them and unable to stand. Without the advantage of hands, I grasped the supporting ropes as well as I could.
“Hurry, chum!” shouted Helmgarth. He began to shuffle forward, although there was nowhere to plant his feet. “We have to get off of this thing!”
I myself felt like a spider, bearing my body forward through the leverage of the ropes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my human taking stock of the final series ice blocks that led to the question mark rune–nothing more than a few singular blocks that he was certain to slide off of. He would have to measure his jumps carefully. With fear gripping my body, I saw the white blob open its mouth and lunge at him.
It collided with his back, slashing with its spiderleg twigs, biting with the remaining stone teeth. He went down, and by some miracle spun himself so that he did not go over the edge. The awful little creature exulted on top of his back, stomping and tearing. My mouth watered with fury and I barely noticed as the third and forth tremors snapped through the bridge, one handhold and the other foot support going slack. The fourth and final tremor never came, not exactly–for the bridge itself began to plummet.
In that moment of freefall, it seemed that Commander Zideo and his obstacle course rose into the air. My heart turned itself inside out at the thought that this was the last I would see of him–worse that he, too, might meet his end here.
Our trajectory took us sideways. Helmgarth’s bloodless knuckles held tight to the slackening ropes of the bridge, and I grabbed onto the material of his black pinstriped vest. It went tight, and I knew we were swinging. The opposite cliff rushed toward us, and he had the presence of mind to warn me. “Hold on tight!”
The hanging bridge hit the cliff beneath the auburn ridge; Helmgarth hit the bridge boards, and I hit Helmgarth’s leg. Wood and stones clattered past us into the pit. Above, I could see the translucent squares of the ice blocks like smoked glass. A tie-dye blur moved beyond one–then jumped through the air, landing on one of the final steps. My chest heaved with the hope that Commander Zideo might make it across after all.
There was a tearing sound from my jaws, and at first I was afraid that my teeth had been ripped out of my mouth by my weight. It was Helmgarth’s vest, the shred I gripped in my jaws tearing bit by bit. With each sound, I sank with another jerk, falling an inch, another….
“Don’t let go!” shouted Helmgarth. What a ridiculous suggestion. Why would I? “I’ll climb!”
Unable to turn my head, I could only watch Zideo’s final attempt at the Harder Way crossing. He jumped to the last ice block, and I could see his palms far above as he held them to either side for balance. S. Man was a couple ice blocks behind, flailing his twigs for traction on a floating object no bigger than his entire body. I did not see how Zideo had escaped his grasp, but it clearly infuriated the fiend.
The bridge slid upward, shearing against the cliffside with the sound of sandpaper on sandpaper. As though it reeled us in, we ascended in two- or three-foot jumps. As I dangled, I saw a bulbous green visor peer over the top of the ridge at us. Addrion! We were saved–she was strong enough to pull us up, and could perhaps deal with the snowman-head-spider hounding Zideo’s steps. She couldn’t do both at once, however, and focused on pulling us up.
There was hope now, which was why it struck me as odd when Helmgarth muttered “Oh no, not now” in a way that I think I was not supposed to hear.
His body began to jerk and spasm. He kicked his legs out straight, flapping them like a child learning to swim. The shred of vest in my mouth did so much as rip out as vanish entirely, my teeth clenched against nothing but one another. I fell.
But only for moment. Helmgarth dropped past me and put an arm around my torso. He was different. He had shoulder-length hair now, a thin beard or a long stubble (however you want to look at it). He wore a loose cotton shirt that only buttoned together just above his wide belt. Gone were pinstripes and lapels, best and dress shoes. He was clad in clothing that did not restrict his movement–and, strangest of all, his backpack had returned.
He held onto me, and his teeth flashed in the light. Above us, Commander Zideo was jumping across to the ridge. Not nearly far enough. He flapped his arms and legs, and burst into a red-orange glow.
I did not know what I was looking at. He burned, flame jetting out in all directions, and he rocketed forward, his movements not unlike one of the fireworks that so aggravated me on one specific summer night each year. The fire vanished, but he sliced through the air with newfound momentum. He stretched his hands out to grab the mild ridge above.
He would make it!
He didn’t make it.
He slammed into the hanging bridge above us like a bug against the windshield of a Honda Micro-Commuter EV. He slid, grasping at ropes, stripping wooden boards off as he fell–toward us.
His feet dangled above my head but did not hit us. “Close one, love!” shouted Helmgarth, a broad triangle grin splitting his pleasantly angular jaw. We slid upward again, foot by foot.
“Hey, guess what?” shouted Zideo, hanging above us. “I think I can Air Dash now.” The dirt from his feet got in my eye and I blinked to remove it. As I was doing this, I heard the doppler shrieking of S. Man fall past us into the pit. Good riddance to the cold-hearted abomination, and may his ice-brains shatter where he landed… if he landed.
Slide, slide, up we went, until the cold metal grip of Addrion’s gauntlets hurled us over the edge into a clearing on the ridge. I rolled to my feet in a very unwieldy way, but at least I was safe. Warm morning light poured over us.
Her helmet split open, unfurling the green waves of her hair, the two halves retracting into her ax-shaped pauldrons. “Helmgarth?” she said, her emerald eyes narrowed.
He stood and dusted himself off. He was taller, although still not as tall as the space exterminator. His shirt blew in a breeze, where a plunging v-shape of his hairless chest shone as though oiled.
“Oh,” said Addrion. “Oh.” I am afraid the subtle intonations of human conversation was lost on me at the time, but something was different.
“I’m OK,” said Zideo. “Don’t worry about m–whoa there.” He, too, goggled at the new Helmgarth. “You got another mod?” He whistled. “HG, you’re fully Chadded now, tbh.”
“I do not know what that means,” said Helmgarth, an octave lower. “But I’ve seen this one before. I think it’s called Boyfriend Helmgarth.”
“No shit,” said Zideo and Addrion at the same time. They looked at one another, then pointedly looked away.