Game Play (2 page)

Enrod despised them
for it. The Spirits had abandoned Gamearth, when they could have been so much
help. Perhaps they could even stand against the whims of the Outsiders.

Enrod spent his
life in Taire helping the human characters to build their city, to heal the
land. First came small garden plots, nurturing the soil, growing outward,
expanding to cover the hills with grass again. Plants sprouted on their own.
Stands of trees grew on some of the hills. Living things took another foothold
in the desolation. Enrod saw his life's work coming to fruition.

Though he had the
Fire Stone
―
one of the four most powerful magical items in the
Game
―
Enrod needed it little. He used the power of his own sweat
and effort. Characters working together made their own kind of magic....

Then it all
changed. The plants withered and died. Enrod began to have nightmares, sensing
something terrible growing in the mountains near the eastern edge of the map.

The new-planted
forests became skeletal black sticks on the hills. The ground cracked, and the
windswept dust scoured the nearby hexagons clean. The characters in Taire
became listless. Their life seemed to drain away from them along with their
free will, their hopes. The city fell silent in the midst of its desolation.

Desolation.

As the land across
the River would be.

Enrod stepped back
away from the edge of the water into the forest.

Despite his sense
of urgency and the need to unleash his anger, he forced himself to work with
care. He selected appropriate trees, all about the same size and thickness.

Holding onto the thin,
straight trunk of an oak, he looked at the Fire Stone. Each facet of the ruby
showed a number from one through eight. Enrod concentrated, then tossed the
Fire Stone on the scattered dead leaves at his feet.

The ruby came to
rest against a moss-covered rock. The number "7" faced up. If Enrod
had rolled a "1", his spell would have failed
―
but
instead, he summoned nearly as much magic as the eight-sided Stone could
command. He hated to waste so much power on such an insignificant task.

Glowing red spangles
filled his hand. The power awakened in him, eager, dancing at his fingertips.

He gestured and
sent the sorcerous fire into the earth, incinerating the roots of a tree and
severing it neatly from the ground. Smoke and powdered dirt spurted into the
air. The smell of burning sap and green wood stung his nostrils.

Enrod contained the
fire in his fist and braced himself, pressing the bark against his shoulder. He
let the trunk slide down against a larger tree until it thumped against other
bushes and came to rest.

Enrod directed the
burning spell at the fallen trunk, stripping the side branches away. The curls
of flame peeled off the bark, leaving a steaming naked log on the forest floor,
blanketed on each side by damp leaves. The spicy scent of charred wood reminded
him of more peaceful days in Taire, as characters gathered around bonfires in
the harvested fields....

The birds in the
forest fell silent. He could hear the motion of the Barrier River as it poured
along its course, bounded by the sharp hex-line.

For a moment Enrod
hesitated. What was he doing here? He couldn't remember. He blinked his eyes
and turned to look behind him into the forest terrain.

But then the
throbbing power of the Fire Stone in his hand distracted him, and the black
buzzing came roaring back into his head, like a storm through his thoughts. The
buzzing left only one idea untouched. Destruction.

Devastation. Get
across the River and make things
right
. Burn them clean.

Start everything
new and fresh, after a white-hot cleansing fire...

He wrapped his
fingers around the corners of the Fire Stone and directed the hot power at
another tree, and another, until he had a line of neat logs scattered in the
forest, seared clean of bark and branches. Steam and gray smoke made his eyes
water. His vision grew blurry.

Night fell.

Dawn came.

Enrod swam up out
of a dream sea of hypnotic blackness and chaotic thoughts to see that he was
standing barefoot in the rough mud of the riverbank. His hands were raw and
bleeding, studded with splinters from the logs, from the vines he had used to
lash the logs together to form a raft. He had woven thin green tendrils into
strong ropes, then coated them with oozing sap to seal them. After lashing the
logs together, he had coated the ropes, the knots, with a thicker layer of
pitch and baked it into a glassy varnish with the Fire Stone.

Enrod didn't
remember doing any of it.

He wondered if it
had really been only a day. Smears of mud and ash stood out on his tattered
white robe. Far from the powerful Sentinel of Taire, he looked like a man who
had been crumpled, badly used, and poked back to life again.

His back cried out
with pain as he hauled the heavy raft to the water.

Enrod stepped over
the black hex-line and sank up to his knees in the cold river. The mud soothed
his torn and blistered feet. The hem of his robe soaked up the water.

He rocked the logs
of the raft, pulling, dragging. It slid partway over the hex-line and became
easier to move. Enrod climbed back onto the shore and used a thin pole to lever
the raft over the edge. He hopped onto the smooth logs, picked up the pole
again and gave a push that strained his ribs, shoving the raft over the
hex-line and into the grip of the river.

Enrod sat down on
the raft, smelling the water and letting it carry him downstream. Before long,
he stood up again and pushed the pole into the riverbed, gaining leverage and
inching the raft across the current.

He had an
appointment to keep. He had to destroy the other half of the world.

Fallen trees thrust
up from the surface like the fingers of drowning men. The water itself roiled
brown and muddy, still cutting its channel and bearing debris from its journey.
Beneath the current, Enrod imagined forests, houses, the skeletons of
travelers, wandering monsters, all who had been caught in the flood. According
to the map of Gamearth, the new course of the Barrier River had swallowed up an
entire village.

The current
brushing against the sides of his raft seemed to whisper to him, all the dead
voices gurgling up from the river bottom begging Enrod for revenge. How could
any character dare to do this? What right did they have?

He would lay waste
to the land, turn hexagon after hexagon to flames and ash. He would destroy it
all, level it.

The raft lurched,
as if it struck an unseen bump in the River. Enrod swayed and regained his
balance. The brown silty water flattened out like glass in front of him. A
streak of light, yellow and searing, shot back and forth beneath the surface.
The smell of ozone, like the air after a thunderstorm, drifted up to him.

Everything grew
quiet, deathly quiet, but the air seemed charged with crackling power. Enrod
tensed, confused.

Deep beneath the
water foam bubbled up, disturbing the smooth surface.

The churning
increased until spray gushed to the sky. Mist appeared from nowhere, swathing
the horizon and leaving him isolated in the middle of the River.

Enrod pulled up his
wooden staff, holding it in his hands like a weapon. He let the raft drift, but
it remained in place, anchored invisibly from below.

The bubbles gushed
higher, then opened up like a gigantic mouth, a trap door letting something
emerge
.

A triple shadow
lifted itself from the depths of the water, rising ... and kept rising, filling
Enrod with awe. Three forms, hooded and spectral, clad in black tattered
cloaks, pouring upward into the sky. His bones vibrated with thunder beyond the
range of his hearing.

The three figures
surged with dark power until they towered over the Sentinel, impossibly high.
Their attention focused down on him like sharpened spears.

Enrod could not
move.

He had seen them
once before, two centuries ago, on the field of the Transition. They had not
spoken then, but hung in the air surrounded by fallen empty bodies of the
Sorcerers and grass and mountains in the distance. In silence, they had
departed with their three white counterparts, the Earthspirits. Enrod thought
they would never come back. All the characters on Gamearth had given up on
them.

The Deathspirits.

The buzzing dark
presence suddenly left Enrod's head, deserting him entirely. Without the
driving force, he was disoriented, like a marionette with severed strings. He
couldn't remember anything for a moment. He looked at the Fire Stone in his
hand and realized what he had been about to do. He couldn't understand what had
been possessing him.

The ruby Stone
leaped out of his hand, wrenched away with such force that its sharp corners
sliced his fingers. He felt blood running down his palm, but he could not take
his eyes away from the immense Spirits. The Fire Stone rose in the air,
spinning and glittering far out of reach.

All three
Deathspirits spoke in unison. The words echoed on the wind with such power that
Enrod felt his bones humming, his eardrums straining.

"We created
the Fire Stone to
protect
Gamearth and our half-breed children. We
cannot allow the Stone to be turned to such destruction."

Enrod collapsed to
his knees, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. He felt on fire,
under the intensity of a magnifying lens focused on the sun.

"You would
have abused your great power, Enrod. Unforgiveable.

"You will
never
cross this River.

"You will
never
go back to your home until the end of the Game.

"You must take
this raft back and forth forever, at the mercy of any other character who
intends to help the world. Not once to rest, not once to reach shore."

Enrod could not
move. He wanted to hide, he wanted to beg forgiveness, he wanted to jump off
the raft and drown himself in the River. But his muscles locked him in place.

"Gamearth
faces a threat from Outside that could destroy everything.

And so we have
returned. Our world may not yet be doomed.

"But you have
doomed yourself."

With a howl of cold
wind, the cloaked figures sank beneath the River.

The water gurgled,
then became glassy smooth. The Fire Stone vanished with a
pop
into thin
air.

Milky mist rose up
in front of Enrod, blocking the far shore of the River. He turned, and the
opposite shore had also vanished. He stared, wide-eyed in shock and dismay.

I didn't mean it! I
don't know what happened!

But the
Deathspirits were gone. He could not argue with them. He would never be able to
argue again.

Enrod's muscles
locked up. His blood turned to ice as the horror struck him, growing from the
pit of his stomach until he wanted to crumble and die.

All the work he had
done for Taire, for Gamearth
―
he couldn't understand what had
come over him, what possessed him. Even now he was appalled by what he had
thought of doing.

Enrod felt himself
drawing deeper and deeper into his own mind, filling the emptiness where the
black buzzing had once been. From now on, it would be his only refuge.

His body took
control of itself. His arms lifted the pole and thrust it into the water,
pushing down and seeking the bottom of the River.

Enrod looked
straight ahead. His jaws ground together. His eyes widened. He could not move.
He could only push his raft along, moving nowhere.

With aching arms,
Enrod began his endless journey.

SPIRITS IN THE NIGHT

"The six
Spirits have gone from Gamearth and they will never return.

Why have they
abandoned us? Are our lives so trivial to them? How soon they forget everything
they once were."

―
Sardun's memoirs

Delrael plodded to
his bedchambers in the main building of the Stronghold. His head ached, his
body felt stiff, and he wanted to explode from inactivity.

Once again he and
the other characters had resolved nothing
―
another day wasted,
and they still had thought of no way to fight Scartaris, the Outsiders' evil
creature growing in the east.

He hated all this
talking and planning. He wanted to
go
somewhere.

Delrael had
returned to the Stronghold two weeks before with Vailret and Bryl, successful
in their quest to create a Barrier River and to rescue the Sentinel Sardun's
daughter, Tareah. But then they had learned from blind Paenar that the Barrier
River would not stop Scartaris after all....

Every day, Vailret
insisted that they meet with other characters to discuss the problem, to
brainstorm. There had to be a way, Vailret said, there always had to be a way.
He usually knew about things like that. To be fair, the Outsiders had to play
by their own Rules, they needed to provide some solution to every problem they
posed.