Choruses occur in nature. Many birds put their voices together to create the song of dawn. Cicadas and crickets illustrate are tasks with singing in the dusk. Even dogs are known to sing in unison, and our more noble and feral cousins make effective use of the same techniques in the night.
The disharmonic composition of the denizens of the Purple Deeps was a cacophony for the ages. Shrieks, whoops, howls (and not the good kind), roars and wretches, calls and coughs, clicking, clamoring. Their talons on slate like nails on a blackboard. Their number was uncertain, as they were hidden behind the inconsistent stones and jagged minarets, but its putrid trumpeting filled the caverns, brimming, spilling into arachnid splintering vines and piping from nearby fissures. Their presence was felt from all directions.
We still had no sight of them, only a glimpse between stone surfaces, a distant and frantic movement beneath faint purple light.
“It sounds like a lot of them,” said Zideo.
Nereus tilted his head to each side, toward each shoulder, in turn producing a series of cracks.
“Ισως…”
Their numbers echoed in the ground beneath my paws. The rumbling rock gave me a sense of contamination to know that they created vibrations that I felt in my own body. I wished then and there to retire to a dark corner and lick myself clean, which, for our human readers, is equivalent to the compulsion to flee to a bathroom and wash your hands.
Addrion stepped out to the drawbridge. “This is our chokepoint,” she said. “We’ll hold them off here.”
“With what?” said Zideo. “Isn’t your blaster busted?”
She sealed her helmet shut over her head, and peered at him through the laser-green visor. “Not the only weapon.”
“Θα πηδήξω στο κεφάλι τους!”
Zideo glanced around to see who was understanding him. “Um… amigo! My Spanish rusty as hell, but uh… necesitamos, um, luchar los monsteros!”
The old philosopher blinked in confusion. “Ε?”
“Hoo boy. Okay, those high school semesters are gonna pay off here. ¡Hay moo-chos monsteros! Wait, is it ‘monsteros’ or—”
Nereus seemed to remember the purple light. “Α, η ακτίνα.” He palmed the top of Zideo’s head for upward leverage, and jumped, casting off from a nearby calcite column, spinning with a flourish, and landing on his sandaled feet. The Purple Radian was in his hand, and he tucked it into an unseen pocket of the toga, plunging the cavern into darkness but for the blinking pseudo-stars above us and creeping lichen.
I could feel Commander Zideo’s frown. The gravity at the corners of his mouth was tangible even in the dark. The terrible sounds from the approaching horde snapped him out of it, but he still looked around for a weapon in the dim light of the cavern.
“What are we gonna do?” he said. “I’m not a fighter. I’m just a bag of skin and blood and stuff. I shouldn’t even be here!”
“They’ll probably give you a pass,” suggested Addrion.
“What? Why?”
“They work for a Boss who works for the Bosses, right? If a Boss brought you into this world…”
“Not possible, love,” said Helmgarth.
Zideo looked offended and said nothing. “You got any equippable weapons in there?” he asked. “Even if they’re broken. A two by four? Silverware? Anything at all that’s better than bare human hands?”
This sparked something in the seneschal, and he began hurried releasing clasps and straps, and whirled the backpack onto the rock floor in front of him, leaning it against a stalacmite.
“Maybe,” he said.
His arms disappeared into the bag’s compartments—now past the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder, now sticking his entire head in and pushing things around. It sounded less like he was sorting items in a bag and more like moving furniture.
“Ελα,” said Nereus. “Κάνε οτι κάνω.”
“Listen, lo siento, pero… español dificil, bro!”
The philosopher tutted and dismissed him with a two-handed wave, then joined Addrion on the drawbridge. The wall of sound, barely less physical than the auto-scrolling wall force which had pursued us through the outskirts of the Golden Plains, bellowed from behind a nearby ridge of ragged rock. They were near. It was time.
Helmgarth continued to rummage. Zideo sat down beside me.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, though the fear for his own wellbeing was very present. He rubbed my cheeks. “Just look at them.” He nodded to the bridge. “Addrion and Nereus making a last stand on a bridge in the dark. Straight out of FUNP.R.O. fan art.” The words meant less than nothing to me, but I accepted the cheek rubs. They felt good, reminded me what I fought for (as though any dog ever needs reminding). I would not have backed away from a fight, but my body felt energized with a protective spirit. “What are we doing here, Cormac? How did we get here?” He scritched and scratched, then dropped his hands to the stone, and asked in a quiet voice, “Do you really think we were summoned by Bosses? Do we have to do what they say? Are we here to make a big mess of what’s left of the world?” Howls from beyond punctuated his speculation darkly. “I dunno. Maybe me. But not you.” He stood.
I raised my fur and joined Addrion and Nereus by the bridge. The beasts poured around several corners, a flowing mass so expansive it might have been poured from an unseen titan’s basin. They rushed with liquid properties, spilling into every open space, filling all available paths.
It was too dark to make out what they looked like, and they moved too quickly, but the horde of Blunderworlders seemed just as much of a patchwork as the rest of the Shard. It was true, they belonged in a cave. Their colorations were neutral and vague, like the gray and toneless creatures that dwell in the deepest fathoms of the sea. They were monster and plant and stone, they were farcical imitations of humans running on their knuckles, they were everything you could dream in a nightmare set off by, say, a stolen slice of cheese that Lisa had dropped.
Gray-skinned mushroom men hobbled on brown leather shoes. Onyx-black beetle shells reflected Addrion’s suit lights. Scarecrows in robes reached for our souls. Phalanxes of armored worms slid down slopes. One guy was just a bullet. Just a huge angry bullet with eyes.
“Huh,” said Zideo. “I just noticed this place has coins.” He pointed across the fissure. Sure enough, coins spun on high ridges, barely noticeable but for the lights cavern’s natural lights. While I failed to see the relevance at a moment when our impending death rushed toward us, I had to hand it to him. My human’s got eyes like a hawk.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“There!” called Helmgarth, pulling his head out of his backpack. With some effort, he began pulling something out with both hands, elbowing aside invisible cargo. It was a board, perhaps, of dull metal, and reminded me of one of the other glowing rectangles I had sometimes seen Lisa use–the medium-sized, unfoldable glowing rectangle. Lisa often sat at her kitchen table on weekends as though her fingertips were glued to the glyphs beneath the glowing segment, but unlike the other glowing rectangles it had a permanent crease and could be folded into half its size, concealing its light.
Sure enough, Helmgarth pried apart its edges in an act of human dexterity that I will never comprehend, and a glowing rectangle flickered to life above an array of human glyphs, but not the same ones Lisa had.
Zideo was gobsmacked. “You have a whole-ass laptop in there? You can use computers?”
Helmgarth informed him in a voice that sounded like he thought it should be obvious that it came from a gameworld other than his own, and not his own. The use of the word sent furious shockwaves through the Blunderworlders, a sine wave ripple of rage that traveled from those nearest us and arced toward their rear lines–and only the gods knew how far back where those might be. These beasts did not appreciate the g-word.
The seneschal tapped and typed, clicking away and making different squares and rectangles of light and color bloom on the screen.
The Blunderworlders attacked. They flooded the drawbridge as one enormous entity, a dark water undammed, thundering across the planks and swirling dust clouds to either side. Their voracity was purely animal; they operated not as a pack, but each individual making a beeline for its prey. In this manner, they jostled dozens of their own numbers off the thin bridge, the echoes of their chirps and screeches muffled in the abyss below.
They say that a dog’s bark is worse than his bite. For a few of the denizens of the Purple Depths, this was true. The vanguard, a wall of raging, polygonal teeth and eyes, crashed over us like a wave of dark water. I barked and railed, unleashing a sound of such ferocity as to make proud the Duamutef, Wepwewat, even Cerberus themselves. My bark crashed into the creatures foolhardy enough to make up the front line as hard as any strike from hand or claw. They heaved themselves back and to either side, leaning away and dropping into the fissure. I hurled myself then into the attack.
In a way, it was a release. Here was no Lisa to jerk me back by my collar, no fence to stop me. Cormac McBarky, king of a human house, was gone. My true beast rear its nasty head. I was, quite literally, unleashed upon them.
I snapped, snatched, bit and flung. I rent and tore polygonal flesh, chitin, shell, stem and leaf. There is a reason human English has a whole vocabulary around the term “dogfight.” When you’re a dog, the general approach to combat is all approaches, all the time: Strike first, strike fast, strike a lot, and stay mad.
Nereus was a flash of white beard and white sheet, hopping from head to head like popcorn on a hot skillet. His sandals smashed and flattened enemies one by one, causing them to blink out of existence. I recalled the poor, hapless fool I myself had done this to as I entered this world. Nereus left nothing but a trail of numbers like the “100” I had seen that day, but growing higher.
Addition was right about one thing: she was by no means weaponless. She swung fists, elbows, knees and feet. She shouldered Blunderworlders off the edge of the bridge. She used their numbers as weapons against them, bowling them over with their own comrades. Still we gave ground, inch by inch.
Zideo ran to join us, emulating Nereus in jumping as high as he could, and stomping the creatures into the next life. They became two dimensional beneath his Jordan-shoes–one down, another, another.
“That’s too slow,” shouted Addrion through her speaker. “Bigger attacks. Multiple at a time!”
“I can only do what I can do,” said Zideo.
“You’re the Player,” she urged him. Make a mess!”
He thought, and jumped. Flame burst from the bridge, and the creatures went sprawling in every direction, some trailing flames. It took me precious nanoseconds before I grasped that Zideo had air dashed directly into the horde, scattering and stunning them. They swarmed over him, biting and clawing, and I ran to him shaking the foundation of the world with my barking.
“Your Majesty,” I heard Helmgarth say into the unfolded glowing rectangle. “We need you! We need your power, or all is lost!”
And suddenly, the Blunderworlders halted their attacks. They stepped back from us, gave no fight as they inched away. As I snapped at one unusual critter, I noticed I could not see its eyes, but the back of its malformed head. Indeed, all had turned, their attention arrested by something at the far end of the cave.
The ground shook. Footsteps–enormous, pulverizing footsteps of something coming this way in the dark. The Blunderworlders shrieked and terror and welcome. The thousand false stars speckling the stone above us awoke and whirled, leathery wings slapping at one another. The darkness was filled with the squealing alarm of bats and other things that dwelt upside down, living in reverse at the tops of caverns in a mockery of creation.
The thing that had woken them stirred the darkness like cake batter. Tattered veils and draping scarves fluttered from its head and shoulders against unearthly drafts I could not feel. Metal dragged and sparked, shrill even against the sonorant trills of the cloud of winged beasts.
“Anything,” said Helmgarth into the foldable glowing rectangle. “Endless runner! Cooking sim! Musou! Anything at all!”
A spear three times Zideo’s height appeared in his hands, a thick haft with red beads and tassels and a wicked-looking point.
“O…kay?” he said.
A similar change came over the other Game Fellows. Addrion bore a short, straight blade that flashed in the dark, Nereus a barbed trident, and Helmgarth a long staff of hard wood. Something pressed against my teeth, and I found that I myself gripped in my jaws a sort of short spear with wide blades at either side.
“Go!” shouted Addrion, swinging her sword. It parted several Blunderworlders like knife through wrapping paper, and knocked half a dozen more onto their backs. Zideo tried his spear, which seemed like it would require someone of at least DuChamp’s strength to wield. I was wrong–he carved out a swath of enemies with one easy stroke. They went flying into the air, voicing impotent rage before landing and knocking over others, or vanishing entirely.
My sense of a critical path was gone. All I saw was a battlefield, or as Addrion had once said, a “target-rich environment.” Nereus thrusted, and I swung my head from side to side like the boar-thing in the Screenwilds bog, killing sideways like a pawn in a chess game.
We hacked, chopped, slashed. We tossed Blunderworlders into the air by the handful, the armful, the truckload. Their forces withered rank before our gleaming steel and whistling wood. We pressed them back into the greater cavern.
“Where?” shouted Addrion. “We have no exit strategy!”
“We have no exit, period!” said Zideo, batting the slow, angry-faced bullet out of the air.
“Loves, we cannot let ourselves be pinned by… him!” said Helmgarth, pointing to the towering creature in the darkness, trailing cloths and dragging something metal from its hands.
Mortal, thrummed the worst voice I have ever heard. Weapon of clay. Thy gardener beckons.
“That’s him!” said Zideo. “That’s Sourgorge!” He swashed and swiped. “Scourging Bane–”
“We know!” interrupted Addrion. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here! Come on, help me carve a path!”
His voice planted thee in this soil. Now must thou answer him. Clasping claws reached out of that pitch dark for Zideo, but not, I felt inexplicably, for his body.
For every hundred of the horde we sent to meet their maker, another hundred dripped in from the crevices and cracks in the stone. I might as well have scooped a cup of the ocean out and expected it not to flow back over and fill the missing volume. There was no end to them, possibly in a very literal sense. Sourgorge knew this, or else knew something. He laughed to himself, his breath parting the macabre veils hanging in front of his mouth, where a decaying tongue licked against the rot of dead teeth. The renewed attack by the Blunderworlders came like rain.
My head was in someone’s hands, and I dropped my weapon. Zideo held forced me to look into his wild, heterochromic eyes. I jerked my neck to get away and rejoin the fight, but he held fast. “You’re a good boy, Cormac,” he said, panic clear in his voice. I pulled to save him from the creatures swarming the bridge. “No–stay.” He gave me the first cheek rub that didn’t feel good. His fingers clawed against my bones and poked into the pressure points behind my jaw. I tried for a third time to escape his grip. “Don’t. I hate having something snatched out of my hands.”
I stilled. “Good boy,” he said. I did not like the tone in his voice. “This shouldn’t have happened to you, buddy. It’s my fault.” A gray and black turtle-bird shrieked at us and charged. “If I could get you out of here….”
The creature stretched into a vertical beam of light. So did everything else. There was stone, and then grass, then clouds, then daylight, then infinite night.