Hope Engine Read online

  ‘But… but I’m your master. You poisoned me.’

  ‘Your noble sacrifice shall be remembered by your followers for a long time to come, master. No more dissent among the ranks from all those who may have doubted your commitment in the past.’ He brushed my hair out of my face with a robed hand. ‘Plus, you’ll respawn. No loot lost, master, as I’ll place your robe next to your Altar.’

  I tried to complain, but I just dribbled a bit, and the only reason I wasn’t on the floor was because Horace was holding me upright.

  ‘You’ve set them against us, Horace. The Eastern Shadow will drown Thanis in blood. I… I can’t stop them. You’ve doomed everyone here. I’m not… enough.

  ‘Do you know why I chose to follow you that day in the woods, master?’

  He laid me gently on the cracked ground.

  ‘I pretended to be a dark god.’

  ‘You did, master. But your followers are not stupid. I chose to rally them around you because I saw in you a guardian. One that would do everything they could to protect those that look up to him. And so I looked up.’

  ‘That’s not me. Maybe in another life, but I haven’t done any–’ I tried to say more about my inaction, reasonable odds, and everything having a limit, but I just gasped as the poison began its work on my lungs.

  ‘Then you do not know yourself. We would not have followed one that thought us disposable, master.’

  The dead wind took me.

  Chapter 26: Is This The Real Life

  Horace wasn’t real.

  The receptor pads retracted from my body, and the familiar buzz against my temple let me know the screen had disconnected.

  It wasn’t that I had to leave Tulgatha when I died. It was just a convenient time. Things needed to be reflected upon. You know, like, where did I go so wrong that my lead cultist felt it was a-okay to poison me?

  Was it all pre-programmed? Was I dancing to HOPE’s fiddle, exactly as they wanted? Or was Horace an individual, and everything that happened between us unique?

  I looked down at my exposed forearms and noticed the harsh light reflecting from them. I must have exited in the middle of a workout routine. Might as well shower, check the supps, then get back in.

  My bare feet touched the pleasantly warm floor, joints popping as my weight settled. I turned back to my pod to check on my supps. They looked gross, they tasted nasty, but they were pretty resistant to getting poisoned by any nearby acolytes. I patted the canister lovingly.

  ‘Good job, supps.’

  Plenty left. But wait, a blinking light on my pod’s external screen. A notification. I gestured with my receptor gloves, and opened the message. It was from Daniel, of course.

  “Haven’t heard from you for a while! I think. Hard to tell with the time dilation, right? Anyway, things here are interesting. I left the military. Yeah, the guns were lasers, the swords were lasers, there were a lot of lasers, and lasers are cool, but I felt like I wasn’t having an impact, you know? I mean, once you’ve figured out the takedown combo against an enemy, you basically just spam it over and over. Too much of a grind for me. Swapped over to bureaucracy, because nothing’s cooler than paperwork, and… oh, super cool system actually, all the paperwork I’m doing is real paperwork. I’m auditing real companies accounts. They’re crowdsourcing real life jobs in here. Anyway, worked my way up to planetary senator, you know, as you do! More fun than it sounds, I promise. Intergalactic war slowly growing closer to my sector, but exciting news from there too. Rumours about the epicentre being discovered. Anyway, what’s up with you? Ruling the world yet?”

  No, Daniel, not quite. I responded, “Daniel! That sounds awesome! Will get back to you properly soon. Got my village on the go, but a bit of dissent in the ranks. Poisoned by second in command, but he gave a pretty compelling reason for it, so hard to know what to do. Village about to be wiped out by enemy that doesn’t understand light. Chat soon!”

  Planetary senator. Blimey. He was really going for it. How had he become the ruler of a planet, and I had only just built an inn for my village? Had I missed something, or was it just a wildly different game progression system?

  Thoughts for another day.

  I headed to shower and thought of my companions. Bri had been called away by her dad. Bri had a family. I mean, I knew that was still a thing. The majority, even. Only about 40% of newborns were orphans, so meeting someone with parents wasn’t weird, but… it was hard to put my finger on why it threw me so much.

  The hot water scoured my body, and took away the sweat with it. I lowered the temperature with my gloves.

  ‘I just thought having a family would make you nicer,’ I said aloud to myself. ‘Never met someone with such a chip on her shoulder. Getting a bit ridiculous.’

  I stopped the shower with a twitch of my gloves, and began the tornado drying system.

  And Ixly from Norway. Interesting. Not because Norway was interesting, but because he spoke English. I couldn’t understand why anyone would learn another language. Pick one, get good at it, let HOPE’s translator handle the rest. And he had a job in the capital. Very interesting. That must mean he had a portal set up in his temple. I wonder what he does. Maybe he’s a merchant selling trinkets from his dinosaur land. A barkeep, possibly. Oh, wait, he’s a bard, he probably plays hits his drum and shouts loudly. He said he needed to work again now that he lost his full village, so would Bri be running short of money? I’m sure some sort of profit sharing contract would need to be written soon.

  I got dressed in the black and yellow pod suit this time. A bit edgy, but I was playing a warlock, so it made sense.

  Talking of playing a warlock, that Emissary had mentioned my sacrifice. What would I sacrifice to protect my followers? What would I sacrifice to gain power? Where was Angie?

  Shower thoughts.

  I shook my head to clear them, but it was no good.

  ‘A walk,’ I muttered. ‘Yeah, I’ll go for a walk.’

  From across the room I pointed my glove at the door to my apartment, and…

  A voice came through hidden speakers in the ceiling. “Internal error. Please hold for support.”

  Wow. It had been years since I’d heard that. In fact, when had I last heard it? Things almost never failed in this place, but yeah, the last time it had been the door. Probably because I never use it so it seizes up.

  “Hello, how can I help you today?”

  I cleared my throat, and fell into a brief coughing fit. ‘Hi. Uhh, the door’s stuck.’

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How did you discover this?”

  ‘I was going to go for a walk, but it wouldn’t open.’

  “A walk? Are you missing something in your apartment?”

  ‘Uhh, no. Just… thought I’d clear my head a bit, that’s all.’

  “Good news, I’ve sent a technician out to fix your door. Would you like them to bring anything else for you?”

  ‘That’s okay, thanks.’

  “Great. He’ll be there as soon as he can. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to contact us.”

  ‘Okay, th–’ I heard the speaker click off before I finished. ‘Ahh, government. What a service.’

  Maybe it was the gloves that didn’t work. I walked to the door and tried the handle.

  Nothing.

  I’d try again after the engineer had been. See what the outside world looked like. Not sure I really cared, though.

  But for now, I re-entered my pod.

  Chapter 27: A Plan

  The dead wind whipped my hair into my face with its last breath.

  I sat up and got dressed. Horace, the gentleman turned occasional poisoner, had left the Dirty Robe next to my Altar as promised. Next to the robe were two small black rocks. When I looked at them, they identified as “minor shadow gem”. I’d never taken them out of my pockets after the fight at Hursh’s field. Eyes, that felt like a lifetime ago! I picked them up and read the tooltip: “Unidentified”. How illuminating. I dropped them b
ack into my pockets and left my hut. I’d meant to ask Angie what they did when I returned from that fiasco, but she’d left me.

  Unsurprisingly, as soon as I stepped outside, I caught a flash of blue in the corner of my eye. A Geeko running back to the swamp.

  ‘If he wants to talk, he can…’ I stopped shouting after the running lizard and muttered to myself. ‘It’s just weird. If he wants to know I’m up, he could leave a note or something.’

  Now, the Geeko I had expected. What I didn’t expect was the half deer, half woman Fawn directly in front of me. She looked nervous, like a deer in the headlights, and suddenly turned and sprang back towards the grove. Bri’s little messengers were less stealthy, but were also easier on the eyes.

  Now to find Horace, who would no doubt be skulking around somewhere, knowing full well I was going to be pissed off.

  ‘Hello, master.’

  I just about screamed, but managed to play it off rather deftly. ‘Ahhhhello Horace! I didn’t see you standing behind me.’

  ‘Indeed. Only Brots from the Northern Caps have eyes in the backs of their heads, master.’

  Don’t get thrown off. Stay on target. He’s your minion, and he just killed you. There must be repercussions!

  ‘We need to have a serious talk. You kill–’

  ‘Correct, as always, master. I have already taken steps to have the guilty parties punished.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I publicly shamed myself, and administered ten lashes to myself in front of the inn. I ensured that everyone knew the punishment for such disobedience.’

  ‘You… whipped yourself?’

  ‘I felt I was the only one with enough righteous indignation at your treatment. Anyone else would have taken it easy on me, master.’

  I’ll admit, I was stumped for a second.

  ‘No! No, Horace. Enough of this. I am the leader here. No more manipulating. If you want to be in my village, then you tell me your plans first. I’m not saying the poison was a bad idea, but you don’t damn well poison me without running it by me first.’

  The dark hood stayed motionless for a moment, but slowly it nodded assent. ‘Understood.’

  ‘No. No, not just “understood”! This is real. You made the choice for me that set us in the path of The Eastern Shadow. You forced this on us. But now, you are with me, or you are against me. You are your own man, but you are also my man. I am the leader.’

  He started to speak, but stopped. What was he going to do? After all his talk of never bowing to players again, was I pushing too far? Despite the fact he’d just killed me, I still liked the guy, and didn’t want to lose him. But this was my life, my game, my village, and my followers. It was time to stop letting others make my choices for me, and to take control.

  Horace dropped to one knee. ‘You are the leader. You are my leader, master.’

  I placed my hand on his hood. ‘And you, remarkably, are more than just a follower. Just… if killing me is a large part of the plan, maybe rethink, yeah?’

  Horace returned to his feet and nodded.

  ‘Now. Let’s try and make this crushing defeat into, at the very least, a pyrrhic victory.’

  ‘Shall I bring cultist Pyrrhic?’

  Now that he mentioned it, I did vaguely recall one of them having that name. ‘Not quite what I mean.’

  ‘Akuma Severo!’

  The shriek of Bri was unmistakable, but I didn’t know what I had done to deserve my full name. I whirled on her.

  ‘Briar of Bark! How lovely to see you back, how was the real life family?’

  ‘Ornery crumpet lickers, the lot of them. But still, they aren’t as annoying as you.’

  An insult I decided to steal for the future.

  ‘Now, Bri let’s–’

  She was stalking towards me, in a very liquidy way, waving a piece of paper above her head. ‘Why the fuck–’ This was not going to be good. ‘When I logged in, did I have an Eyes be damned–’ Horace gasped at the blasphemous words. ‘Declaration of motherfucking war in my inbox–’ I cast my defensive spell, Shadow Clone. ‘From The limp-dicked Eastern shitfaced Shadow?’

  Her hand had transformed into a bestial claw with red fur winding up her arm, and it was poised ready to strike. But she was just angry, she wouldn’t–

  Bri swung at my shadow form, making it wink out of existence.

  The shadow I had been shrouded in, slightly behind and to the side of my defensive image, dropped, and I threw my hands up in a futile gesture. ‘I didn’t mean to declare war on anyone. It just kind of happened. It was a sequence of events, all very logical, really.’

  ‘Oh, who cares about declaring war. Shit, I declared war on a single tree the other week so that I could cut it down without losing rep with The Grove. I care about who you declared it against!’

  ‘Put the claw away, and we can talk about this.’

  She was inches from my face, and her claw was only slightly less terrifying than her stare.

  ‘I’ll put the claw away inside your body, edgy warlock boy.’

  ‘No need for name calling. Look, I understand this isn’t exactly what you signed up for, so if you want to leaf, you can.’ I grinned.

  Her face turned red with anger. ‘Did you just make a fucking leaf pun?’

  I stepped back as she surged forward. ‘I suddenly realise that was a mistake. Error of my ways. No more nature puns, understood.’

  She leaned back and looked at me incredulously. ‘How dare you? No more nature puns? Severo, you dumbass, no one rolls a druid to not use puns. My name is a pun, for Eyes sake!’

  ‘I believe you have him flustered,’ Ixly called from close by. He had managed to sneak up and stand next to Horace during this little disagreement.

  ‘I can explain the war thing,’ I said.

  ‘Can you explain why it took you this long to make a nature joke?’

  ‘I think we’re getting a bit off track. What are you annoyed about again?’

  ‘Our imminent deaths,’ Ixly answered calmly.

  ‘Well said, Ixly,’ said Bri. Why was she only ever annoyed at me and not him? ‘Now, explain why you’ve fucked not just me, but everyone here.’

  So I did. I explained the Emissary, the poison, what joining them would have meant, everything they missed. By the end, they were looking more at Horace than me, and it wasn’t with anger, but interest.

  Once I’d finished, all four of us sat in thoughtful silence.

  Eventually Bri pointed a claw that slowly turned back into a finger at the entrance to Thanis. ‘Is that why She Who Slays is wearing what I had assumed were curtains but no, a black robe, over her branches?’

  I cleared my throat as Horace looked away sheepishly. ‘Yes. Sorry about that. We got a touch carried away. The thought of The Eastern Shadow had our notion of freedom feeling rather attacked. But what’s done is done.’

  Ixly let out a deep guttural murmur of agreement.

  ‘Exactly. So, we need to focus. We have a village to defend. Agreed?’

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘We could always abandon it,’ Bri said, but quickly changed her tune. ‘We won’t, of course. Then we’d be just like every other refugee on the road. Delaying the inevitable. I’m just saying, all of the options should be considered.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘No suggestion is off the table. Whatever’s happening is something new. None of us have dealt with this before, so we’re all as experienced as each other. If we pull together, then we can…’

  ‘Defeat the entire Eastern Shadow faction,’ Ixly finished for me.

  A chorus of sceptical agreements.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the minor shadow gems. ‘Look. These are from two of them that I killed. Whatever the Shadows are, they’re not invincible. I’ve killed them in battle. They’re just another enemy.’

  ‘What even are those gems?’ Bri asked.

  ‘I’m actually not sure, but they dropped from Mobs I killed when I was fighting The Ea
stern Shadow under that high level player, Hursh.’

  Ixly leaned forward to look at them. ‘Interesting. Might I suggest we have them properly inspected?’

  ‘Okay, yeah. How?’

  ‘I have just the mystic in mind.’ He reached over and took the minor shadow gems from me. A few whispers to his honour guard later, and a Geeko wearing a small pointy hat ran in, took the stones, and ran out. ‘Not many Geeko can wield magic, but that one is an arcane user,’ Ixly said proudly.

  What an odd little Geeko. Thoroughly charming and cute, though.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bri said. ‘My concern is more to do with the number of enemy, even if they can be killed.’

  ‘They’re not infinite. And they’re not mindless, either. They aren’t going to divert their entire army to attack this little village. They’ll hit us with a force they consider to be overwhelming for the size of this village, yes, but we have a chance.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Ixly asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but I can make an educated guess. The way the Emissary spoke of his Lord made him sound like a very powerful person. Which means at some level, he’s still just a person, and so will think like a person. He’s going to follow standard tactics for laying siege to a village. The overwhelming force he used against Hursh’s army must have been a last resort. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise.’ Silence for a moment. ‘They have an objective, whatever that might be, and we are only a tiny footnote, surely.’

  Ixly nodded slowly, but I could see his concern went unvoiced.

  Bri had no such filter. ‘And if we don’t assume all of this, then what’s the point, we’ll be wiped out and might as well not even try.’

  ‘Yes. That too.’ I hadn’t wanted to say it, but it was true. If The Eastern Shadow waged war on everyone the same way they had on Hursh, then Thanis didn’t stand a chance, no matter how cunning a plan we might devise. ‘We’re going to fight a war, but it starts with a battle. And you know what? This is a problem that everyone is facing. Win a battle, and who knows how many other players might rally to our cause. One battle, and we could be the ones that turn the tide.’