Game Alive: A Science Fiction Adventure Novel (5 page)

“Listen!” It was Kari, who had grabbed Des by the arm and wore a look of alarm. Everyone held their breath, even Ixus Rites where he lay on the stretcher. Jake strained his ears for the sound that had alerted Kari, but heard nothing at first. On their right, the roadside rose up in a high embankment topped by patches of untended, wild grass. Without warning, five enormous shapes appeared on that ridge line, dark muzzles nosing forward through the long blades of grass.

The dread wolves bared their dripping fangs and the largest of them threw back its head to roar an unmistakable, predatory challenge.

“Get back!” shouted Jake. He had put away his sword, but drew it again now in one smooth motion. The blade sang metallically as he freed it from the leather scabbard, already striding forward to meet the snarling dread wolves. From the corner of his eye, he saw Des fit a medium-sized stone into the netted cup of his short staff and step back to swing.

Des wound up, keeping his eye locked on one of the nearest of the five dread wolves. He wanted to hit it right between the eyes. He swung his sling, letting fly the stone he’d picked up from the roadside. The fist-sized chunk of rock hissed as it cut through the air, Des’s aim deadly true. The stone struck the lean and monstrous wolf square in the forehead, dazing the creature but not downing it. It shook itself and roared angrily.

Jake waved his friend’s back, shouting at Des and Kari to stay behind him. They were both clad in light-weight garments, hardly any armor at all. They were going to run out of life points pretty quickly unless Jake took the brunt of the battle on himself.

“Keep shooting,” he yelled over his shoulder to Des. “And Kari, if you can think of any kind of attack spells that would be nice!”

“That’s Lady Alista,” Kari retorted shortly, emphasizing the words with a short burst of crackling electricity that discharged from the ruby atop her onyx staff.

Jake could spare no further thought for his friends. Flinging himself into the faces of the five roaring dread wolves, he swung his sword in a long arc. Steel bit deeply into the side of the nearest of the monsters. It howled, jaws snapping at Jake’s arm. He deflected the lunging head with his buckler, a ten-inch wide miniature shield strapped to his left forearm. Another wolf leapt into the air, trying to clamp down its jaws on his side just beneath the shoulder. The savage teeth skidded over his chainmail armor with a piercing ring, and the dread wolf whimpered as it shot past without causing Jake injury. The word
Miss
appeared over Jake’s head in hazy, yellow letters.

Swinging again, Jake struck a third creature that had started to dart past. Since he wore the strongest armor, he wanted the dread wolves all to focus on him rather than the others. His armor would protect him. Jake knew if he could hit each one, the AI directing the wolves should focus all of their retaliatory attacks on him. He nicked the fourth wolf with the tip of his blade, but the fifth slipped by him and launched itself snarling through the air toward Kari and Des.

“Look out,” shouted Jake. “That one got past me!” He didn’t have a chance to look back and see how they did. Swinging his buckler, Jake blocked another attack from one of the four wolves remaining around him. A red
-25
appeared over his head. His block had only been partially successful.

A loud humming sound came from behind him, and Jake heard the escaped dread wolf yelp in surprised pain. Des must have flung another rock with that peculiar sling of his. He heard sizzling sounds coming from Kari’s staff as well, and guessed his friends were doing just fine.

Jake lunged at the nearest dread wolf, swinging his sword around in a brutal arc. The blade sliced a deep gash into the wolf’s shoulder and a large, green
-190
shimmered momentarily over the creature’s head. Jake pumped his left fist triumphantly and shouted, “Critical hit!”

“Nice,” Des yelled back over the sharp humming of his sling releasing another rocky missile.

“Yeah, why don’t you let us have a couple more?” Kari complained breathlessly, slinging a small ball of fire from her ruby-tipped staff. The fireball struck and enveloped one of the largest dread wolves, which had been just about to fling itself claws-first onto Jake’s back. He felt the heat through his heavy armor, and stepped hastily away from the howling wolf as it rolled in the dirt, fighting to extinguish the flames spreading through its filthy pelt.

“Sorry,” said Kari, wincing. “Is there friendly fire?”

“No, shoot away,” Jake told her. He could hurt himself if he wandered into the flames now, but Kari’s magical attacks would do no direct harm. He flashed her a thumbs up before turning back to the remaining wolves. Even as he raised his sword to chop at his next opponent, blue lightning bolts began hammering the earth all around him. The surging shafts of crackling, blue fire stabbed down again and again in rapid, thundering succession. The wolves shrieked in terror, their feral yellow eyes going wide with mindless fear. Electric bolts seemed to seek them out especially, tendrils of raw power wrapping around the dread wolves’bodies and constricting. A steady stream of green numbers superimposed themselves one over the next, flashing over the monsters’heads.

“Oh, that’s a good one!” shouted Kari, laughing proudly. “Storm surge, ultra cool!”

Jake joined her in the laughter as he blocked the renewed attacks of the three dread wolves still on their feet. They leapt at him as one, biting and clawing. Red numbers flashed above Jake’s head, and he spared a quick glance to the horizon. High above the furthest visible rim of the earth, three long green bars hung horizontally in the sky. They represented the life points Jake and his friends had remaining. His was still over three-quarters full, but dropping; Des’s and Kari’s were virtually untouched, he noticed with a spike of irritation.

Behind him, he heard Des’s sling again. The wolf circling the thief and the sorcerer-princess let out a long, agonized how and dropped with a heavy thud. It did not get up this time, but lay in the earth and eventually began to fade out of existence as though it had never been there.

“Got him,” crowed Des, really enjoying himself now. He looked around, searching for another target even as he packed another fist-sized stone into his sling’s cup. “Next!”

A brilliant beam of purplish light shot past Jake’s ear, making him jerk involuntarily away from it even though he knew it couldn’t hurt him. The ray of power struck the wolf to Jake’s left, blasting it up and backwards. The smoking corpse fell fifteen feet away, shuddered once, and lay still where it had fallen in the tall grass. After a moment, it faded as the others had done.

The final dread wolf was also the largest. Blood ran down its haunches from a dozen small cuts from Jake’s sword, but it showed no signs of defeat. It opened its massive jaws wide and roared its howling fury before lowering its huge head and charging straight for Jake.

He chopped for the wolf’s neck, but the creature dodged his strike and bolted to one side as it tried to get around him. The wolf snapped and bit wickedly at Jake’s arms, but the knight turned away snap after snap with his sturdy buckler. Turning in place, he tried to keep his front to the beast so he could see its ferocious attacks coming. Spittle flung from the monster’s jowls as it snarled and hissed at him. Its eyes burned with a demonic hatred and hunger so real that Jake very nearly forgot this was all just VR.

With a roar of his own, a ringing wordless battle cry, Jake plunged forward and struck the dread wolf repeatedly with his buckler. The painful impacts juddered up and down Jake’s arm, but he slapped the wolf back again and again until it suddenly reared up on its hind paws with an enraged and feral yowl. Jake saw his chance, and pivoted at the hips quickly to thrust the length of his unadorned steel blade deep into the belly of the weakened dread wolf.

It howled in agony as
248
shimmered above its head. Jake ripped his sword free with a wet, tugging sound and stepped back as the giant wolf collapsed to the ground, dead before it had even fallen. He stood over it, panting for breath, until the bloodied carcass faded away.

“Yeah!” he shouted exultantly when he’d caught his breath. Turning around, he started back toward his friends and the immobile Ixus Rites on the stretcher. They had better see about getting him into town. Jake paused to wipe the thick blood from his sword and re-sheathe it, then went up to Des and Kari.

“How about it, guys?” he started to ask, grinning broadly. But just then, a previously unseen dread wolf hurled itself over the top of the overturned wagon. Streaking through the air toward Kari.

Des had already fitted another stone in his cup, and hurled it toward the wolf, just clipping the tip of its left ear as the stone whizzed past. Distracted by the sound, the dread wolf landed in the middle of the road, and began bounding forward again with saliva streaking back over its coat from the gaping maw full of jagged razor teeth.

Kari leveled her staff at the charging monster, steadying herself with a wide stance. A red, laser-like beam burst from the ruby on her staff, scorching through the air toward the dread wolf. The burning light struck it right between the eyes and its long, loud howl filled the air as it slammed into the dirt and slid forward, coming to rest at Kari’s feet.

In the meantime, three more of the beasts circled out from behind the overturned wagon. Jake thought they must be respawning almost immediately, which certainly didn’t make any sense. But where else would the wolves be coming from? Something was very wrong indeed, but he had no time to give the matter further thought as he drew his sword yet again and rejoined the fray he’d thought they had won.

It was over several minutes later, and the three friends stood together in the center of the road breathing hard. Kari leaned heavily on her tall, onyx staff. Des leaned forward, bracing his hands just above slightly bent knees, and stared up at a winded Jake with accusation in his eyes.

“You need to turn down the difficulty,” he said, sounding angry. “That was really hard. For a minute there, I thought we were going to wipe out on the mission and have to start over from the spawn point.”

“It’s on normal,” answered Jake, shaking his head in confusion. “This should have been a Level One battle. It should have been easy, especially with all
three
of us here. Des, it should have been a piece of cake.”

“Yeah, sure.” Des shook his lacrosse-stick-slash-slingshot at Jake. “Don’t these things always start out with
little
monsters? You know, rats or maybe half-starved bandits or something? Not a pack great big snarling wolves that select their targets individually?”

Jake started to reply, but bit off what he had been about to say. “You noticed that too, huh?” He sounded more worried than ever.

“Hey, guys? We won, didn’t we?” Kari came up and gave Jake a hearty slap on the back, still grinning. “I don’t get what you two are complaining about. That was freaking
epic!
If the rest of Xaloria is anything like Everheart, I’ll play it every day.”

Des straightened up at that, sensing he had lost another member of his VR lacrosse team. Still, angry as he was about how hard this first bout had been, Des had to admit to himself that Jake’s game was an incredible achievement. He nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I guess I will too. Though I’m definitely trading out the lacrosse stick for something a little more realistic.” He grinned sheepishly at that last.

Jake nodded in agreement, smiling with the others. He was really glad they liked the game and wanted to come back. He had worked so hard on Xaloria. It was fantastic that his friends were enjoying themselves. They loved it! Beneath his joy, his concerns over the peculiar AI behavior were still a niggling doubt, but for the moment he allowed himself to just be happy. Whatever it was, he could fix it later.

“We’re playing again tonight, right?” Kari leaned across the lunch table eagerly, eyes hopeful. Jake felt his cheeks warming as he smiled broadly.

“If you want,” he told her, feeling another surge of joy. His friends had fallen in love with Xaloria, and they had played every day this week. This evening would be the group’s sixth straight night in his VR kingdom. “I made some changes last night after we logged off, but everything should have finished compiling before we get home. Hopefully it’ll fix your connection issue, too.”

Kari had been having trouble logging in to Xaloria each day. Yesterday, she had told Jake it was getting worse. She had said it felt weird, too, as if something were tugging at every inch of her skin all at once in the last second before the connection went through and she appeared at the load point in Everheart. Jake still had no idea what that was about, which was why he had spent half the night at the editor controls.

“You fixed all that goo-goo eyes nonsense, right?” Des leaned in from Jake’s other side, speaking anxiously. Mirabel had not left Des alone on any of their visits to the Watering Hole, and her father was beginning to take note of it. Des the Hand was gaining quite the reputation in Everheart, though it was not quite as the dashing rogue he’d hoped to be seen as.

“I’m serious,” he said now in a low voice. “No more fluttering eyelashes and‘aren’t you cute’and all that crap, right?”

“What?” asked Kari, giggling at Des’s obvious discomfort. “You don’t like being one of Everheart’s most eligible bachelors?”

“Not that eligible,” Des complained. “It takes half an hour to earn the coin for one of those ciders.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jake, laughing. “I turned down the Romance Initiator.”

“Good.” Des leaned back in his chair, pretending to be relaxed. He eyed Jake suspiciously, though, not entirely sure he trusted him. “Five days of that was enough.”

“Hey, I agree,” said Jake. “It was just a bit out of control. I think you were this close to being engaged.” He held up his hand, two fingers extended close together.

“You sure about the login problem?” Kari asked. “I thought I’d never get in yesterday.”

“I’m still not sure what’s causing the problem,” Jake admitted. “I’ve added a protected ID for your network, though, and even set you up with a developer account so your VR room can access my system completely. It shouldn’t even put you through the verification process this time. If there’s a problem today, it has to be something on your end.”