Game Alive: A Science Fiction Adventure Novel (21 page)

Alys lowered her daggers slightly, staring at Jake. He pressed on. “We can help you, Alys. We can help Ryden. He said himself that none of you have completed the Path yet, including himself. That’s why he needs Kari. But we can help, too.
I
built Xaloria, not Kari.
I
can help.”

Alys considered, and the daggers in her hands fell even lower as realization spread over her face. Hope swelled in Jake’s heart. Just then, an arrow zinged past her ear, whistling as it narrowly missed her head. The light in her eyes vanished, replaced by cold determination.

“You are a threat,” she said coldly. “I will remove you from the structure.”

In a flash, she brought the daggers back up and snapped the blades together. A massive ball of golden light burst, blasting Jake full in the chest and hurling him away in a high arc. His arm rang loudly as he struck the ground, and he lay still.

“Jake!” shouted Des. Another flurry of tiny blue darts flashed toward the thief, but he dodged them nimbly. “Jake, get up!”

She won’t listen. She can’t understand.

Shaking off his stupor, Jake struggled to his feet just as another golden fireball flashed toward him. Instinctively, he threw up his left arm to shield himself. His muscles tensed. He braced himself against the jolt. But instead, the blinding light bounced crazily off his buckler and flashed past Des before blasting a shower of rubble from the wall of boulders.

“Watch it!” complained Des, launching another three-arrow volley toward Alys.

Jake looked down and his heart leapt in his chest. When she had thrown him back, Alys had done him a favor. He had landed right next to his discarded sword. Grabbing it up, he barreled across the field, bearing down on the sorceress. Alys’s motions flowed into one another as she directed another fireball at Des and a barrage of blue darts directly at Jake. The force of dozens of tiny, burning impacts pushed Jake back but he fought through the assault with his sword held high.

Alys whipped her daggers through an intricate pattern, teleporting to the wall above the false symbol just before Jake reached the spot where she had stood. He howled in frustration.

“Get her down, Des!”

Alys’s arms seemed to blur as she directed a lightning bolt, a yellow fireball, and then a blue flurry of darts in rapid succession. Jake watched Des dodge the attack, and found himself raising his shield in preparation. The lightning bolt ricocheted from his buckler and burned itself out on the ground. Jake realized he’d lifted the shield
before
Alys threw the lightning.

She’s following a pattern!

Jake dropped and rolled to the side as a fireball shot past him, then threw himself flat to avoid the blue darts. Leaping back to his feet, he called to Des.

“Keep her attention! I have an idea.”

Des nodded once. Dashing sideways across the field, he loosed arrow after arrow winging toward the sorceress. Several snagged at the edges of her robe, tearing the fabric. Alys wove a protective shield of pinkish light that expanded before her and deflected the next volley of arrows. Alys stepped out from behind her shield just long enough to return fire before ducking back. Her magic darts struck Des and he cried out as wisps of smoke rose from his singed leather armor. Alys peeped out for another attack, this time directing her lightning bolt at Jake.

Jake braced his flat, round shield, trying to judge the angle that the lightning bolt would take when it reflected. It bounced wildly to the left. He’d have to tip the shield more to the right for the next strike if he wanted to reflect it straight back.

Jake eyed the sorceress’s position. He’d need to hit her from the side in order to get behind her magic shield. While she fired again on Des, Jake shuffled his feet sideways until he could get a clear view of her crouching behind the flat, shield-like barrier.

“Here!” he called.

Lowering his bow, Des sprinted across the field to where Jake stood defiantly. Alys tracked the thief with her eyes, targeting her next attack. As Des leapt behind Jake, Alys crossed her daggers. Jake positioned his shield, squaring it toward the sorceress’s position.

It has to be perfect. She won’t make the same mistake twice.

A brilliant white bolt burst from the intersection of the silver knives, soaring across the space with impossible speed. Jake steeled himself for the force of the assault. It stuck the little shield head on, reflecting back along itself like a spring. Jake’s eyes widened as the energy reached the sorceress. She shrieked as it blasted her from the top of the wall to the beach beyond.

Jake and Des stood frozen, holding their breath as they strained their ears. They could only hear the wind sighing through the trees and the waves lapping against the nearby shore.

“I think it worked,” Des whispered.

Jake nodded slowly. He ran across the clearing and through the boulders to the beach. Several yards from the jumble of stones, Alys lay in a crumpled heap, smoke rising slowly from her still form. Jake approached her and knelt beside her smoldering body. He smoothed her robe, his heart aching as Des joined him.

“I told you to stop shooting, Des,” Jake said bitterly. “She would have listened to me.”

“She was just an NPC, Jake.”

“No, she wasn’t ‘just an NPC.’” Jake retorted angrily. “She was
alive
somehow. I don’t know how he did it, but Ryden made these NPCs self-aware. She had hopes and dreams. She wanted so badly to be real and…” He remembered the look Alys and Ryden had shared, not fifteen minutes earlier. “And she was in love,” he finished.

Des looked at the sorceress’s body and it finally seemed to get through to him. His shoulders sagged and the triumphant gleam fled his eyes.

“She was
alive,
” Jake said again, his voice falling to a sad whisper. He thought back to Indigo Fjord and Torin. He’d killed Torin without a thought. But he hadn’t known then. Even so, Jake was filled with shame by the realization that he and Des were real killers.

Des reached out hesitantly and put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “But we didn’t have much choice. She was trying to kill us…”

Jake turned baleful eyes on his friend, and Des shut up. After a moment, Jake looked back at Alys sadly. He knew Des was right, but he couldn’t help but feel that there must have been some other way. Some way that wasn’t murder. Alys had been alive, but now she was dead and she would never respawn. Jake kept thinking about that look she had shared with Ryden, when he’d realized they were in love. Something about it tugged at his memory.

“Look,” said Des, clearing his throat. “I know Ryden thinks he’s doing what he has to do. But we can’t stay in Xaloria, Jake, and neither can Kari. We have to do
something.
”

“You’re right. We have to rescue her,” Jake said. He turned away at last from Alys, pulling out the map. “Let’s get going. The last ankh should be appearing at…” Jake broke off in surprise.

“Where?” prodded Des.

“Myrrordom,” Jake told him, looking up from the map. “The ruins of Ryden’s castle. It figures. How long do we have?”

Des checked the list of times he still carried. “Three hours, forty-one minutes.”

“We can make it, but we have to go right now.
Sunflower!
”

The yellow dragon looked up from where she was still lounging in the surf. Jake ran toward her, shaking his leather pouch full of marks. This time, the dragon didn’t hesitate. In a handful of minutes, they were airborne and sailing across the sky high over Xaloria. Jake looked back at the island for a long time, thinking about Alys’s body just lying there on the beach. Tears welled up in his eyes.

“What’s the plan?” asked Des, breaking rudely into his thoughts. Jake shook himself. It was too late for Alys, he reminded himself. He had to worry about Kari now.

“No time for a trap,” he said, racking his brain. “And I don’t want to kill him. He deserves to live, same as you or me. I’m going to try and reason with Ryden, but if he won’t listen or if he just attacks us immediately, we’ll have no choice but to fight.”

“I don’t think he’s going to listen to you,” Des said. “And we don’t have any idea how powerful he’s made himself…”

“I know,” interrupted Jake. “It could be real bad. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to beat him. That’s another reason I’ve got to try and make him understand. He doesn’t understand right from wrong, but I do.”

Des looked into Jake’s eyes and saw his friend’s determination. He relented, putting up his hands in surrender. “Talk to him then,” he said. “But as soon as he starts casting spells, I start shooting. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Jake reluctantly agreed. The rest of their journey passed in silence.

Sunflower descended toward the gravelly shore of a narrow river, near the turbulent base of a tall cascade. Spray filled the air, each tiny droplet filtering and reflecting the bright sunlight. The thunder of the falls was deafening. A natural bridge of slick, wet stones crossed the river fifty yards from the violently churning base of the waterfall. The river flowed between the rocks and sometimes over them, the water churning white and rapid as it flowed past the slippery bridge.

As the golden dragon settled on the shore, Ryden and Kari appeared on the opposite bank.

“They’re here!” Des shouted over the deafening noise.

Jake, already clambering down to the pebbled bank, opened his mouth to reply. Before he could speak, the glistening cliff face to either side of the falling water shimmered and began to change. Jake’s answer died in his throat and he stood beside the dragon and stared. The entire cliff was changing before their eyes. The rocks behind the waterfall shifted, grinding across one another loudly enough to be heard over the thundering water. The ground shook beneath Jake’s feet. He braced himself, catching at Des’s shoulder as the thief stumbled.

The cliff twisted, new outcroppings stabbing outward through the tumbling water and diverting the flow. Jake’s eyes widened slowly as the water reshaped itself, falling around the newly projected rocks. The new shape of the cascade forced the water to fall in intricate paths that formed the entire cascade into the shape of a massive ankh – a thousand feet tall and sparkling in the radiant sunshine.

Jake tore his eyes from the miraculous symbol and looked across the rushing river to where Ryden still stood. The Prime held Kari casually by one arm, completely unconcerned that she might try to escape. He looked calmly back at Jake.

“Hurry,” Jake said, tugging Des to the water’s edge. He was afraid Ryden and Kari would disappear again, but as the two boys cautiously made their way over the treacherous stepping stones he merely watched their progress and smiled indulgently. When Jake and Des reached the far shore, he pulled Kari by the arm and walked over to meet them at the bank.

“You have to get away,” said Kari as they approached. She was discouraged and fearful, and with her free arm she waved them frantically back. “Just go! You don’t know him anymore.”

“I see you’ve defeated Alys,” said Ryden, speaking over Kari and giving her arm a sharp tug to silence her. He spoke amicably, but Jake saw a hard light enter the wizard’s eyes. He thought again of that meaningful look Ryden and Alys had exchanged on the island, the obvious love they had shared. Ryden’s apparent friendliness surprised him. Combined with Kari’s warning, the whole thing unsettled Jake.

“Yes,” he said, biting his lip in thought before he went on. “I…we’re sorry. We didn’t want to kill her. I tried to explain but she wouldn’t listen.”

“We’re sorry about Torin, too,” added Des. “We wouldn’t have killed him if we’d known you were all…well, alive.”

For the first time ever, Ryden seemed perplexed. He blinked. “I don’t care about Torin,” he told them. Brief pain mixed with the confusion in his expression. “I shall miss Alys, but I do not understand your apology. Destroying these foes was essential to your quest. I could not have expected you to take any other course.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” Jake said at once. Ryden was talking to them, and that at least was good. Now he had to make the wizard see. “It isn’t right to hurt other living creatures just because they don’t know enough not to hurt you.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ryden. “You must defend yourself.”

“I know you don’t understand,” Jake persisted. The urgency of his voice and posture made the wizard pause, and Jake continued. “That’s why you’ve got to stop this. You don’t understand what you’re doing. Please. You have to let us – all of us – go home.”

Ryden’s tongue flicked over his bottom lip in thought, and the wizard started pacing. The Prime was so absorbed by his thoughts that he forgot Kari, releasing her arm. She rushed forward, briefly hugging Jake and Des before spinning around to stand by them for the inevitable attack. But Ryden seemed to have forgotten all of them.

“The structure requires a player,” the Prime muttered. “Someone from the Next must complete a quest. Residents of Xaloria cannot complete quests.” He looked up at them as if suddenly remembering their presence. “One of you
must
be present in order to complete the Path to the Next. The quest
must
be completed in order to free the people of Xaloria. Kari has traveled furthest along the quest-line and is therefore closest to completing it. She must remain here.”

“I just want to go home.” Kari’s voice was small, almost a whimper. Hearing her desperation, Jake hardened his resolve and faced the wizard menacingly. If Ryden would not listen to reason…

“Jake is capable of altering the structure,” Ryden continued, oblivious to the knight’s threatening posture. “He is capable of destroying Xaloria entirely. But he can only use these powers from the Next, so he too must remain here.”

“Jake.” Des’s warning was a low, protracted whisper as he backed away and readied his bow.

“No, wait,” Jake snapped, though he was beginning to fear there would be no other choice. “Ryden, wait. You have to listen to me.”

Ryden ignored him. “Des understands that both Jake and Kari must remain. In the past, he has consistently acted to protect both Jake and Kari. Allowed to leave, he will seek help from others in order to free Jake and Kari. Therefore, Des also must remain.”