Chapter 37: Fred “The Frog” Woggins

We drifted through the air, dangling from the massive bat, struggling to climb onto its back against its sinewy flapping. I think mayhap the mage had the wind knocked from his lungs, because he spent several minutes wheezing and moaning.

Once up on the bat’s stringy pelt, we found Fred “The Frog” Woggins piloting, but he paid us no heed. Perhaps he was no longer under Telemoon control, but if so, why was he not at his Bayou Bunker post? NPCs do not roam unless they are programmed to.

When Azwold had regained his voice, he rasped; “I have to get my Gremlin back. What are they gonna do to my baby? If there’s a single tear on the seats…”

The second thing he said was; “Gods these riding bats smell funky.”

“Telemoon technology helped you build that motorcar, did it not?” I asked. “I am sorry. We shall build a new one, yes?”

“Impossible,” he said, eyes watering. He might blame it on the gales rushing by, but I suspected sadness.

To change the subject, I asked what the bats smelled like.

“Well,” he said, “weird: like... fuzzy old orange peels mixed with corn tortillas, and pickled fish.”

“Ah, vivid.”

The tendrils of [Spell: Umbral Veil] were falling away from us now as the spell’s duration came to an end. We could see three more bat riders following ours, but at some distance. Two Telemoon players occupied each.

“The Frog” was our only other rider. Azwold took out his NPC scanner and ran the lasers over him again. And again he got the displeased beep report. Still, the NPC ignored us.

“We need to remove that device from his back,” said Azwold. I saw it, like the stun devices the Covert Operatives had stuck on Berem and Medett to incapacitate them.

“Is he being controlled, or disabled?” I asked.

“Good question. Telemoon wouldn’t need direct control of him if their goal was to keep us ground-bound. Did you ever try interacting with him at the bunker?”

“No. Most I saw was his idle animation, I think.”

“Do you have your [Spell: Levitate] off cooldown yet?”

“It is outside of my normal magic school,” I said. “I imagine it has a longer cooldown than your [Spell: Umbral Veil]. Do you intend to jump? Give me my [Shadow-Wise] back if so.”

“No, I intend to deactivate this device and I’m not sure what’ll happen.”

“That seems unwise to attempt mid air.”

“Why is this NPC here?” he asked. “It lacks purpose. If they have no intention of deviating from the flightpath, why bring a useless NPC along? They didn’t recruit him to fight us, clearly.”

We had been talking behind Fred Woggins’s back with zero acknowledgement. It stood to reason that the device was an inhibitor, not a controller.

“What is your thought?” I asked.

“Maybe he’s like Berem or Medett? Maybe Telemoon tagged him to stop him from helping us?”

I contemplated.

“I’m gonna remove it,” he said. “Worst-case scenario, we fall to our deaths.”

“Oh, only that?”

“I bet we could rez and start climbing the stair before the ground troops catch up.”

I had experimented enough to know that death in-game would not cause me much harm in my freed form. Still, falling to my doom was an unsavory prospect. Visions of bone shard explosions and viney splatterings plagued my imagination, thanks to Azwold’s early explanations of [Hive Scepter] mechanics.

“Why not wait until we reach a flight hub?”

“Because Telemoon knows where we’re headed,” he said. “If this guy’s friendly, there may be time to alter course.”

“Alright,” I said. “Do it.”

He grinned, then got to work with a set of precision tools. I watched his clumsy progress in the face of forceful wind currents. He looked behind us often and ahead just as often, as if calculating the right moment to deactivate it.

A creepy déjà vu—more like a premonition—came upon me. I recalled falling before, in nearly this same spot; Trojainous had swung his black scythe to send me reeling down to the mesa rocks. I did not want to end up as a pile of bundled bones again.

And then with a click, audible above the winds, the circular device pulled free of Fred’s back. His head spun around toward us, eyes wide in shock, mouth open as if to warn us of something...

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Then he despawned in a whoosh of green pixels. A bioluminescent dragonfly or small bird appeared where his head had been. Something. The wind blew the thing away before I could determine its nature. But to me, in that brief instant, it looked like the escaped robo-arm faerie.

Our riding bat despawned in a screech of leathery fuzz, and we were tumbling through open air. Acrophos Stair was fast approaching my feet. I stole a glance behind and saw that with Fred “The Frog” Woggins’s disappearance, so too went the Telemoon riders’ Bayou Bats. They, too, were tumbling in open air.

Camp Starshot zoomed closer and closer as we fell forward beyond the rim of Soleus Mesa’s easternmost cliff face. In mere moments, Azwold and I would splat onto the mesa top. Foreboding permeated my bones. But as I looked back, I saw no Telemoon goons. Less than a dozen seconds behind us, they appeared to have met Acrophos Stair in a much more face-to-face manner than I had the pleasure to yet.

I faced forward to a confusing view; a spider’s web stretched wide. We slammed into it, ripping the threads clean through; tumbling, sliding, scratching horribly across the ground.

I felt my health bar weep to nearly nothing. But I was not dead.

Unsure if my bones were still connected, I looked to the side. I saw Azwold’s corpse laying across a brown flagstone courtyard. I glanced back to where we had fallen from.

The white mesh fencing of Camp Starshot.

I staggered to my feet, wrist bones broken and askew, but still attached via vineworks. Reasonably certain that most of my parts were within vine radius, I cast [Spell: Regen III], and sat cross-legged as my health ticked back up into the yellow.

I waited for the mage to return from the nearest graveyard as a small group of curious players formed around me.

I had the presence of mind to pretend to be a player minion, mimicking things I had seen other minions do. I assumed the meditative, idle pose of a minion with a dead player, ostensibly rendering me impossible to interact with as far as nosy players were concerned.

As I awaited the Mage’s revival, I observed my surroundings. The thing that struck me first was a constant, flowing haze; ultrafine dust, I suspected. Camp Starshot looked as if built with frequent wind in mind. From the spindly windmills I had seen elsewhere on the Mesa to the unique, bendy fence, to the rounded and open construction of the huts and shops, everything seemed built to accommodate air currents as a feature of the place.

Gusts sent the dust swirling one moment, then tearing across the landscape the next. I had no need for comforts, but guessed it was a harsh locale for fleshlings.

I noticed several telescopes—on roofs, in the camp’s common areas, atop guard towers—suggesting the dust settled often enough for stargazing.

Azwold sat up from his corpse-like repose, his dreadlocks rattling against a gust.

He stood to join me. “Have you seen any Telemoon yet?”

“Strangely, no,” I said.

“Remember, they might not be in uniform anymore. Vick5 suggested possible adaptation.”

“Are you telling me that anyone could be an enemy now?”

“Until we figure out a method of surefire detection,” he said, “we should avoid areas where people gather, is what I’m saying.”

“Aye, pressing on seems best.”

“I’m gonna go scan the flight master here,” he said, and strode off.

Realizing I was untethered and did not have to follow, I went to examine the fence webbing our fall had torn apart. Two Outpost guards were there, already repairing it, neither questioning nor accusing; simply fixing.

Neither NPC had a name, unlike Fred Woggins, but had a more generic title: Starshot Lookout. They possessed random avatar configurations based on Soleus Mesa guard fashion and common mesa magic schools; air, light, earth.

The Starshot Lookouts were replanting one of the hardy and flexible trees which made up most of the strange fence’s posts. But when the tree was only diagonal, I thought I saw something sparkly and luminescent buzz at one of their heads amidst a dusty gust.

The wind died as suddenly as it had gusted and I watched the Lookout become glitchy. I observed his companion, but that one continued erecting the tree as if nothing had changed. I bet the fence could fix itself if it had been coded to. The Lookouts served to keep up appearances. But was the fence coded to account for the manner in which it had broken?

The glitchy Lookout turned toward me. Its mouth moved in ways an abstract painter might appreciate, whispering unintelligible words intermingled with gurgles and fizzles.

I wanted to beckon Azwold, thinking he should probably witness this too, but the flight master was not within sight.

I moved closer to the NPC, trying to decipher its words.

“Te-te-ter..” it muttered.

Perhaps it was lamenting the torn fencing.

It struggled to enunciate, “Terr...ible.”

“My apologies,” I said. “I would have preferred a smoother landing as well.”

“Mis-take,” it said, face contorting like a bit actor on an ancient VHS tape.

“I am sorry,” I repeated, but I knew it was not talking about the fence. “What are you trying to tell me?”

The Lookout’s eyebrows contorted in exaggerated frustration, then the NPC entered into a dying animation, fell to the floor, and despawned in a splatter of pixels.

He reappeared three seconds later and returned to the fence mending work as if nothing had happened.

But thin lines, like long strands of helixing spider’s silk, undulated toward the other NPC and into her ear hole.

Now that one turned to me, ignoring her work and letting the other one do it all.

“Te-te-te..” again, this one stuttered too.

“Terrible mistake?” I asked her. “Yes, I heard that part.”

“Te-te-tele-m-moon,” she whispered through an awful, glitchy neck bend. Then she straightened, exerting control. “Telemoon. Terrible Mistake.”

“Ah,” I said. “Now you’re making sense.”

“Eld! Come! Hurry!” I heard Azwold’s shouts and turned to see, but visibility was low.

I returned my attention to the NPC, but she was wrapped up in another tumultuous spasm of avant garde electricals. Beyond the fence, through a brief dust lull, I spotted men appearing from below the distant cliff edge. The ground force had made it up Acrophos Stair. If that was not the reason for Azwold’s hollering, I was nervous to learn what else it could be.

Instead of walking toward us with slow certainty, the Telemoon goons were were blazing up trails of dust, employing every speed-enhancing device or ability they possessed. If they caught us it would not matter if their abilities were on cooldown.

I shook my head and ran in the direction of Azwold’s voice. I stole glances at the NPC who, I was sure, had not imparted all she had to tell me yet.

I glimpsed an unsavory display as the nearest Telemoon player, only 50 feet from the fence now, fired off an arm cannon. A missile twisted through the air, aided by a dusty breeze, and struck the Lookout. She zapped out of existence, then reappeared three seconds later and resumed the fence fixing with her partner.

I strained, scanning for little lights flying away from the blast, but if there were any the haze obscured my perception.

In my confusion, there was a firm hand on my shoulder.

“Come on,” said Azwold. “I scanned the flight master. He’s clean. We need to go. Now.”