[ZERO SPACE]
Tambien’s tentacle squeezed a mug of mead, leaning it towards his knightly visor. Like most objects in Zero Space, mugs were designed for hands, not tentacles. Especially not tentacles wearing bulky metal armor.
The mug made it halfway to Tambien’s mouth before sliding out of his grip, rolling along a wooden bench, and then ramping into the gravel below. Laughter erupted from half of Shield Tavern’s outdoor seating area. Apparently, Tambien hadn’t been the only one focused on his drink.
He released a long droll sigh. Why did he even bother? This world wasn’t made for tentacloids, nor was it made for noble knights like him. Zero Space was made for people without honor. And people with hands. He was an anomaly in this cruel world. Less than a knight - nothing but a lowly jester.
A soft buzz drew his ears upwards. The tiny round beetle body of Kezzle eclipsed the sun, before landing on the bench across from Tambien. Her two bulging bug eyes peered over the table’s edge like twin sunsets mirrored above the horizon.
“M’lady,” said Tambien, tipping his visor.
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“You are a lady, correct?” asked Tambien.
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“Tis irrelevant, I suppose,” said Tambien. “A drinking companion is most welcome. I cannot drink without a companion’s assistance!”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
Tambien scowled, tapping his lance against the table leg.
“Forgive my rudeness Kezzle, but I simply cannot understand you,” said Tambien. “Do you truly lack vocal chords, or is this but an act?”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
Tambien tipped his visor
“Tis but a shame,” said Tambien. “I honor your commitment to character, but you’re the Deadly Skull I know the least.”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“You remind me much of myself,” said Tambien. “Your armor provides protection, while mine protects others - tis the knight’s code.”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“And yet, who have I protected of late?” Tambien asked. “My good friend Parper? Master Valdi’s ambitions? Tis not why I embarked on my Zero Space journey. My ambitions ascend to far greater heights.”
Tambien reached for his drink, then withdrew - it wasn’t worth the effort.
“My armor is fragile and weak, as is my moral compass,” said Tambien. “I have played not the part of an honorable knight, but that of a rogue. Treacherous and tricky, in pursuit of dastardly goals. Felling the Feather Birds brought me no glory. My actions bring me no honor.”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“Zero Space was supposed to be my fantasy adventure,” said Tambien. “I sought to defend a king. Slay dragons. Perhaps rescue a princess or two. But alas, princesses can save themselves. I failed to slay the dragon. And Master Valdi is naught but a malign overlord.”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“What I wouldn’t giveth for a kingdom to defend,” said Tambien. “Lest I perish an honorable death in remembrance of my heroic deeds, not my cruelty and clout.”
Tambien vented steamy breath through his visor.
“Forgive my selfish ramblings, Kezzle,” said Tambien. “I believe the two of us could be more than drinking buddies. Perhaps we could be normal buddies. You truly are an excellent listener!”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
BOOM
A distant explosion rocked the entirety of Trader Town.
Tambien would have disregarded a single explosion. But several more followed, each escalating in volume and frequency.
BOOM
A church of Ledgess erupted, spitting holy fire.
BOOM
A wooden watchtower took off like a rocket, flames spouting from its base.
BOOM
A train station became a literal fire station.
BOOM
Billowing flame flushed from the windows of Shield Tavern. Everyone inside was annihilated. Everyone outside was blasted backwards, drinks and drunks taking a nasty spill across the gravel.
Tambien’s armoroid body mowed through grass and glass. Kezzle skidded past him, bouncing like a stone across water.
A shockwave of dust swept across Tambien’s body as he crawled to Kezzle’s side. His dented armor screeched across pavement, ember and ash dripping from his sides.
“M’lady,” said Tambien. “Are you unharmed?”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
“But of course you are,” said Tambien. “Your body and will prove resilient. Pray tell, what foul circumstance befalls this land?”
A mechanized voice echoed through the streets:
“Trader Town stores will be closed temporarily during the Wizard Twins event. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Tambien’s eyes widened within his visor.
“At last, those fantastical fiends rear their ugly heads!” said Tambien. “We must inform Master Valdi at once!”
Kezzle flapped her wings.
***
Genma was a dragonoid, though you wouldn’t know by looking at him. He didn’t take the character creator seriously; an irreversible decision that he figured was reversible at the time. His snout was larger than the rest of his head, his elbows bulged like an armoroid’s eyes, and for some reason, his feet were absolutely gigantic. The “giant feet” thing was intentional, but Genma would never reveal those intentions.
This “half-finished NPC” look did little for Genma’s self-esteem. In fact, Genma didn’t consider himself much of anyone at all. He was just another member of the MoonMasks, a guild so big and bland, it was split into multiple guilds. MoonMasks071 - that was his, specifically. The numbered suffix didn’t even make sense; Genma knew of only five other MoonMask guilds. Where’d all those other numbers come from?
Those MoonMasks were weird as hell too. Maybe even a little culty. They all called each other Servants of Triyya - whatever that meant. But none of that mattered to Genma. They all shared his same ambitions, which was to say, none at all. Never once was he asked to raid or grind for rep points. All he had to do was exist and get his ass kicked every once in a while.
Today, Genma was kicking ass for a change, though it wasn’t a fair fight. Three of his MoonMask buddies held down some sharply-dressed leggoid, enabling Genma to flatten him with his oversized feet. A pteranoid gripped one of the leggoid’s arm, a magicoid sat on the other, and a brutoid stood on his legs.
There was no real reason for this - PVP provided few rep points, and this wouldn’t exactly be a viral replay. But it just felt good; feeling good was what Zero Space was about after all. And nothing felt better than beating down some fancy-pants player who wore their wealth on their sleeves.
Genma raised his giant foot for one last stomp when a cyclone of fire tore through the alley, lighting up Genma’s pteranoid buddy. That was a downside of being a pteranoid - flammable fur.
“Aww, gimme a break,” said Genma. “What the hell’s happening now?”
Hell answered - a jet of steam from a nearby window removed his brutoid buddy’s face, moon-mask and all.
“Aww, shit,” said Genma. “Scram, now!”
Genma’s magicoid buddy scrammed a little too far, getting trampled by a dozen guild members running the opposite way. They didn’t even see him down there - classic magicoid move.
Now it was all up to Genma. The fate of the entire world was at risk. Or at least, Genma’s own little world. But those were pretty high stakes for Genma.
The oblong dragonoid ran like the next eight hours of his life depended on it. He slid below a collapsing billboard, leapt over a stream of wildfire, and plowed through a horde of confused players. Genma was being a real bad-ass right now. Maybe he was more than just some random MoonMask. Hell, he might be more than a supporting character. This was some real protagonist shit right here.
At last, Genma breached the border of Sunlight Forest. Forests seemed like a bad place to go during a fire storm, but these trees were fire-proof - Genma would know; he’d tried to burn the whole forest down several times.
A scimitar suddenly leaned across his neck. It was a giant purple blade, gripped by a titanic armoroid with a bare blue body. He bore a shiny neon exoskeleton, a long stag horn, and a form fitting pair of tighty-whities with a stag horn of their own.
“I am Sumosam, leader of the Underwarriors!” said the armoroid. “Surrender your clothes, or surrender your life!”
“Aww, gimme a break, dude,” said Genma. “Real bad timing here.”
“You’re about to have a real bad time!” said Sumosam. “This is our territory! Our forest! Our wood!”
“You can’t own the whole forest,” said Genma.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“You clothed-ones strut around like you own Trader Town!” said Sumosam. “You ban us from all but the Battle Royale events! But out here is no man’s land. And no pants land!”
“Dude, the world’s on fire,” said Genma. “Something real bad’s coming. It’s probably gonna hit here next.”
“Liar liar, pants on fire!” shouted Sumosam.
“Town on fire,” corrected Genma.
Sumosam’s schimater swung, ending Genma’s hero’s journey.
Nearly thirty UnderWarriors emerged from beyond the trees, their massive weapons erected.
“Fellow UnderWarriors,” said Sumosam. “I’ll be brief. Those traitorous Trader-Towners appear engaged in civil war. So let’s bring them uncivil war!”
The UnderWarriors unleashed an under-warcry.
“We shall strip them of their defenses!” shouted Sumosam. “Tear off their –”
Sumosam stuttered as a horde of goblins joined the audience. They stood still and silent, watching with un-goblin-like patience.
“Oh please,” said a goblin. “Do go on.”
Sumosam sumo-stomped the forest floor, shaking the leaves from trees.
“Foolish Goblins!” shouted Sumosam. “You dare intrude on our Under-War council?”
“We go where we please!” shouted another goblin. “This is our forest!”
“This forest belongs to the Underwarriors!” shouted Sumosam. “We are Sunlight Forest’s ultimate commandos!”
The goblins chittered with childish giggles.
Each Underwarrior drew a massive tool of destruction.
“Laugh while you can, foolish NPCS!” shouted Sumosam. “Your tiny goblin patrol is no match for our huge –”
“We have a message for you,” a goblin interrupted. “From the blue wizard.”
Sumosam’s incisors clicked together.
“The blue-who?” asked SumoSam.
Screams echoed through the forest. These screams weren’t from the UnderWarriors; they were from other warriors. Not war cries, but normal cries. Gut wrenching wails, likely the result of guts getting wrenched.
The goblin leader bared his long sharp teeth.
“Playtime is over,” said a goblin. “Player-time is over! The glitch man’s time is here! Time for us to take this world back!”
The goblins released a shrill abrasive wail, like a thousand pigs put to slaughter.
Two sumo-stomps from Sumosam sent tremors through the soil.
“If it’s a fight you want,” shouted SumoSam. “The UnderWarriors will give you all the fight you could ask for!”
“We’re not here to fight!” shouted a goblin. “We’re here to kill!”
All at once, goblin skin transitioned from pasty white to inky black. Their tiny claws grew ten times their size, eyes glowing redder than the blood dripping from their dagger teeth.
Seasons seemed to pass in an instant. Brown leaves toppled from trees, weighed down by rusted rot. Grass shriveled and crumbled like the towers of an ancient ruin. Frigid wind summoned goosebumps across uncovered Underwarrior flesh.
Sumosam trembled, frost forming on the tip of his stag horns.
“No, that’s impossible,” said Sumosam. “Dark goblins should only appear at night. It’s still day!”
The dark goblins descended like the twilight sun, their claws mincing weapon and wielder alike. Level one powers ricocheted off dark flesh, teeth and fangs stripping UnderWarriors to bones and boxers.
Sumosam immediately abandoned his bare brethren, fleeing through the forest as fast his stubby armoroid legs could take him. A huge armoroid like him couldn’t fly in a forest this dense; he could hardly run without smacking into every other tree. There was a time when Sumosam knew every inch of these woods. Every stone, lake and village. But something had changed. There were far too many trees now.
Too many places for dark goblins to hide.
Sumosam fortunately knew a place no one would go - a place far beyond dark goblin aggro-range. It was the perfect hiding spot; a massive crater that, according to lore, once housed a crashed alien spaceship. Although Sumosam had never actually seen aliens there, he rarely saw players there either; that’s likely why the devs hid the Dragon Sword there twenty five percent of the time.
Sumosam thought long and hard - a difficult task for SumoSam. Although he couldn’t see the dark goblins, he knew approximately where they hid. Unlike normal goblins, Dark Goblins didn’t patrol. They lurked in specific spawn points, all across Sunlight Forest. Over the years, Sumosam found most of those spawners the hard way. With all the new trees, Sumosam would have to rely on his sketchy memory, and some rough sketches on his map.
Worst of all, he could no longer rely on his UnderWarriors.
He would have to rely on himself!
***
Sumosam passed tens of thousands of trees before finally arriving at his destination. His sketchy memory guided him impressively far; nearly to the edge of the forest crater.
The crater looked a lot different today however. Pale leaves foamed down tree trunks like the drool of a rabid animal. Grass crawled up Sumosam’s legs, lashing out like startled squid tentacles. And the rocks around here seemed to be breathing, or at least trying to. Each breath they took was hoarse and strangled. Maybe Sumosam was supposed to feed them? He couldn’t imagine what they ate. Hopefully not armoroids.
Footsteps approached at an irregular pace, as if someone walked with a limp while juggling a whole sack of potatoes. These footsteps belonged to a segmented man, his limbs shifting like the reels of a slot machine. Frothing white energy dripped from a sphere in his hand, like a lonely moon mourning the absence of stars.
“Out of my way, strange-person,” said Sumosam. “I am Sumosam, leader of the underwarriors. This forest, along with this hiding place, is mine!”
The shambling man remained silent. Fabrics and textures warped across his body: Stripes. Polka dots. Checkerboards. It’s like he was permanently stuck on the Create a Character menu, mashing his fingers against the keyboard.
“What a despicable player you are,” said Sumosam. “You can’t decide on an outfit, so you’re trying to wear everything at once!”
That shambling man was quiet as ever.
“You truly are a stupid player,” said Sumosam. “Or a stupid NPC!”
Again, nothing. Sumosam wanted something out of this guy. Maybe a battle, or a battle of wits - anything to let Sumosam know he was human, or even an NPC. Could this be one of those aliens Sumosam heard so much about?
Either way, something about this man made Sumosam uneasy. It was a feeling he couldn’t explain, like his soul was attempting to escape his body, bouncing around this cage of flesh in a futile attempt to break free.
But no – Sumosam didn’t retreat. Underwarriors only ran in one direction: towards their opponents. Today would be no different. Sumosam was the self-appointed protector of this forest - the first responder to all foriegn threats, both Trader Town and alien alike!
Sumosam belted his loudest warcry, raising his scimitar high –
It happened in a flash. Specifically, a white flash. One moment, the shambling man’s glowing orb raised. And in the next moment, a hole blossomed in Sumosam’s chest.
It was a pretty large hole too - second largest hole Sumosam had ever seen on his own body. He couldn’t recall anything ever hurting this bad. Not even in real life. He wanted to take off his Zero Space headset. He wanted to scream!
But he couldn’t do either. His Zero Space headset remained fastened to his skull like a pirhanoid’s unyielding jaws. And according to that hole in his chest, both lungs were gone. That was Sumosam’s assumption at least; it was difficult to identify all those organs. Whenever he chopped someone in half, they just fell over in a fun gory spray. Things weren’t generally this detailed, even at his preferred excessive gore setting.
Numbness rippled out from the hole in his torso, spreading across the rest of his body. Sumosam fell to his belly, tumbling around like a dung beetle’s luggage. His lungs yearned for just one more precious serving of air. The rocks around him seemed to taunt him, mocking him with long rasping breaths.
And then at last, Sumosam settled across the soil, his mind settling soon after. Wriggling grass crawled through his exoskeleton like scavenging maggots in search of a meal. Foaming leaves dripped across his buggy eyes, rolling along his ribs like artificial tears.
A hundred shambling men refracted in Sumosam’s stoic buggy pupils, emerging from a maelstrom of colors and shapes at the crater’s center. Then, another hundred more emerged, followed by a hundred more.
[THE HAVEN]
RATTLE RATTLE
BANG
Twenty four enforcers huddled around a reinforced steel shutter, weapons aimed outwards.
RATTLE RATTLE
BANG
Chunks of plaster plummeted from walls. Scrap metal bounced like popcorn kernels on a hot surface. Rolling dust swept through empty halls like swarms of hungry mosquitoes.
RATTLE RATTLE
BANG
Enforcers stared through obsidian goggles, posing like toy soldiers in a flimsy panorama - firm, statuesque, and ready to snap. Their entire lives had been spent training for this moment, but this moment arrived too soon.
RATTLE RATTLE
BANG
Coffee spilled across Glen’s yellow enforcer glove, dripping down his oversized handgun. What little liquid remained in his mug jiggled with uncertainty, threatening to spill again.
Glen glanced over at another taller enforcer, equipped with a short-range sniper rifle.
“You have any more coffee, Pat?” asked Glen.
“Fresh out,” said Pat. “They don’t have coffee machines on floor one. Guess we’d better head back up.”
“You two aren’t going anywhere!” shouted another voice.
An enforcer stomped forward, wielding a holographic yoyo.
“You’re late!” shouted that enforcer. “Get your asses in formation. That Pale Dune-thing out there’s trying to get in!”
“It’s always trying to get in,” said Pat.
“Not like this,” shouted that enforcer. “We’ve never seen it so aggressive. Damn thing thinks it’s got a shot this time.”
RATTLE RATTLE
BANG
Every light went out simultaneously.
And then, the lights all popped back on, revealing a crowd of panicked, disoriented enforcers, aiming their weapons everywhere but the shutter.
“Back in formation, you dimwits,” said their commander. “Back in formation!”
Glen and Pat stepped into formation, as far back as possible.
“You worried, Pat?” asked Glen.
“Not really, Glen,” said Pat. “Was just a brief power outage. Normal floor one stuff. It’s a wonder there’s power down here at all.”
RATTLE RATTLE
The sound was fainter now.
RATTLE RATTLE
Pat tilted his head, squeezing the shaft of his sniper rifle.
“You think it’s retreating, Pat?” asked Glen.
“Don’t think so, Glen,” said Pat. “But it’s definitely moving.”
RATTLE RATTLE
Hurried footsteps approached from the other side of the ruined hall. A lone enforcer emerged from the darkness, nearly tripping over a loose metal tube. He struggled to catch himself, catching a mouthful of dust instead.
“The forcefield,” the coughing enforcer said. “It went down!”
Every enforcer froze, their bodies paling beneath bright yellow outfits.
“Just briefly,” the coughing enforcer continued. “It’s back up. Sorry. Out of breath.”
A simultaneous sigh echoed through the open room.
Glen took another loud sip of coffee.
“You worried now, Pat?” said Glen.
“A little bit, Glen,” said Pat. “Steel shutter’s still intact, but we don’t know what that Static beast can do. A few seconds for us could be like a few hours to it.”
Glen nodded, taking another sip.
RATTLE RATTLE
RUMBLE
The last of Glen’s coffee spilled all over his hand as the floor began to shake and quake. Cracks in tiles expanded into fissures. Ceiling lights became floor lights. Metal supports withdrew their support.
And then the ground rose in a dune of shadow and plaster, like a cancerous mole across molting flesh. It scraped against the ceiling, puncturing a hole in Floor Two. The few remaining lights reverberated with a mechanical buzz, bursting into fireworks of sparks. Stagnant air grew tangible and violent, swirling into the jutting mass like water down a drain.
RATTLE RATTLE
“Open fire!” said the enforcer commander. “Open fire!”
Neon projectiles painted the room in a nauseating rainbow of colors, shaving rock and rubble from the entity’s exterior layer. Whatever awaited within was dark. And it had a lot of eyes. And teeth. But beyond that, there was no discernible shape or pattern to it. Just a swirling mass of contradictions.
A human mind could go mad attempting to decipher the sight of it. And that’s exactly what happened here: Enforcers fired their weapons in every direction, some hitting walls, some hitting each other. The ones who remained on target did so by muscle memory alone, their eyes vacant, brains as scrambled as the creature’s flesh.
And then, then the thing began moving, swallowing handfuls of enforcers by the mouthful. There was no trace of each victim. They just simply disappeared into its mass. A hundred glowing bullets couldn’t penetrate it. A thousand lasers couldn’t contain it.
A dozen enforcers were no match for it.
Frothing coffee dripped from Glen’s lips as he put a big red bullet through his own brain. Pat fired several blue bullets through the ground, his pupils bouncing like the hand of a compass in a magnetic storm.
Glen and Pat were the very last enforcers to arrive at the scene.
And they were the very last to die.