Plane of Twilight, page 5
part #5 of Gamemakers Online Series
"Does the name Hayden mean anything to you?" she asked.
"No," he said. "If it helps, I remember my name was Jack, I played some game involving a ball, and I think I was good at it."
"Wow," said Alex, "I wouldn't have guessed. You're a jock."
"I feel maligned by your assumptions, as mystifying as they sound," he said.
"What about Sophia? Do you...is she?"
"Not from our world, I think," said Blaze, shaking his head. "Or at least that she can remember. She's like Reggie, I believe." He gestured behind them to the hobgoblin, who had mastered the art of walking while reading. "Occasionally, she has nightmares, her whole body twitches like she's running, and sometimes she wakes with a scream, but then it's over, and she doesn't remember anything. Wherever they came from, it was a bad place."
"Anywhere in the realms, I assume," said Alex.
The river curved, bringing them to a spot overlooking the lower section. Alex stumbled to a stop, and Reggie ran right into her.
"What the Abyss?" she exclaimed as she tried to fathom the amount of stone that was piled onto the river.
"This is not good," said Blaze.
When she'd set off on the journey, Alex had thought that the blockage was something on the magnitude of a beaver dam or levee. But the pile of rocks looked like an enormous hill ripped from the guts of the mountain.
The river stretched wide, forming a lake before the dam in the hollow of the valley. The water filled the jungle, which had been partially covered by rock, making the next section of the journey difficult.
"How the hell are we getting around this?" she asked as a boom echoed across the valley.
Alex looked up in time to see a boulder the size of a train car hurtling towards them like a meteor.
Chapter Ten
The scree beneath her boots made escape difficult. For a few seconds, Alex thought she'd get creamed by the speeding boulder, Wily Coyote style, but Reggie grabbed her by the shoulder and teleported them a dozen feet away right as it landed.
The impact threw rocks and dirt over them, knocking them on their asses as it bounced into the jungle, tearing apart trees as if they were toothpicks. The section of trees to their left looked like it'd been mauled by a mountain-sized bear.
When they returned to their feet, dusting themselves off, Alex checked the sky again for falling boulders. Instead, she saw a jolly boat near the edge of the avalanche. Though the distance was great, Alex spied the arch of a Mohawk on the figure standing in the boat.
"Hey! It's Alex!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, hoping to get his notice before he accidentally lobbed another boulder at them.
The figure in the boat turned toward them and waved.
"I take it you know this guy," said Blaze, arms crossed as he squinted across the artificial lake.
"Sanjay," said Alex. "He's one of Bucket's companions. He's a Telekinetic Thaumaturge."
"He can throw rocks," said Blaze. "Interesting."
"He is a most excellent companion," said Reggie, closing his book. "We had many conversations about the nature of this reality during your absence last year."
The jolly boat sped towards them at a good clip, which confused Alex since no other people were with Sanjay, until she remembered his class.
"Alex! Reggie! It's so lovely to see you again," said Sanjay with his hands on his hips as he stood on the middle bench of the jolly boat as if he were on flat land. "Sorry about the boulder. I was trying some things on this side. I didn't see you guys coming."
"No worries," said Alex, squinting, as the sun had broken out and reflected off the water. "This is Blaze, one of my friends."
"Well met, Blaze," said Sanjay, glancing up river. "Is this everyone? Or are you the advance guard?"
"Just us," said Alex. "I left the army back on the plateau."
The news seemed to disappoint Sanjay, who looked longingly up the river. He sighed before saying, "They probably couldn't help that much anyway. That bloody Marzio left us with quite a conundrum here."
"Looks that way," said Alex. "Any luck on the other side?"
Sanjay narrowed his gaze and the jolly boat surged to the shore, sliding up the rocky scree, but not tipping over.
"Climb in," said Sanjay. "I'll take us back to the fleet side. I wasn't making any headway anyway."
Sanjay propelled them along the edge of the lake, heading into the trees for a good way. He was clearly tracing back through a passage he'd made, which was marked by trees snapped in half using his telekinetic abilities.
The journey through the watery jungle was much longer than Alex expected, revealing the difficulty of the problem. She was beginning to wonder if they'd ever come out of the trees, when they exited into a rushing stream that led to the lower lake beneath the enormous dam.
Makeshift docks had been built along the curve of the lake. Alex counted fifteen boats, some of which she recognized from the bay at Dreadbone Castle. A small tent village had been constructed in the fields near the docks.
"We had to make our own lake below so we could park our boats," said Sanjay.
"Park your boat?" asked Alex, chuckling.
"This boat stuff is Bucket's thing," said Sanjay, gesturing towards the far side, where hundreds of pirate constructs were digging out a small section of the dam, funneling the material into a series of chutes that went downriver.
"That's Martina's doing," said Sanjay. "It's working, but it'll take another two years to clear this out."
"We don't have two years," said Alex.
Sanjay nodded. "We're aware, but until we have a better idea…"
They found Bucket behind the main tent, sitting on a pile of cushions while automatons wearing colorful pirate clothing attended to him. He was busy eating a handful of purplish fruit shaped like a lemon when they approached. The pirate automaton at his side was peeling the strange fruits and handing him the gooey flesh in the center, which he greedily devoured.
"Hey," said Bucket with his mouth half full as he spied them coming around the corner. He quickly chewed, holding his sticky hands out while another automaton brought a bowl of clean water. When he was finished dunking his hands—and swallowing the fruit—a third automaton handed him a towel.
"Alex. Reggie. It's so good to see you," said Bucket, climbing to his feet for a round of hugs. "You must be Blaze. Welcome to Lake Where-Did-This-Mountain-Fucking-Come-From."
Alex raised an eyebrow at the attendant automatons. "Enjoying yourself?"
"No reason not to," he said. "Care for some purple fruit? It's like a cross between a strawberry and a kiwi, but laced with narcotics. I've been eating myself sick on them."
"We came here to help," said Alex as the start of a migraine coated the edges of her vision, forcing her to squint. For a moment, a hazy double of a shadow appeared next to Reggie, but when she blinked it disappeared.
"Feel free," said Bucket, leaning against a table covered in what appeared to be local foods. He tilted his head at her pause, but said nothing about it. "Everything we've tried so far has barely made a difference. We're trying to empty the ocean with a leaky bucket."
"Where's Martina?" asked Reggie.
Bucket gestured in the vague direction of the dam. "Trying to optimize the automatons, build more chutes. Might as well be trying to engineer an earthquake to clear it out."
"Better than what you're doing," said Blaze, crossing his arms.
"I utilize my puppets for the pointless tasks I'd rather not bother with so I can focus on the bigger problem, Mr. Blaze," said Bucket, furrowing his brow.
"It's okay, Bucket, I know you've been working. It's not an easy problem, though I'd hoped it was when I headed here," said Alex, cupping her chin.
Bucket blew out a breath. "You know I can always abandon the fleet and march my automatons to the plateau. It's not my favorite idea, but we have to consider it."
"We need your ships to bypass the Mountains of Agony without a long and difficult march," said Alex. "But it's a good thought."
"Trust me," said Bucket, spreading his hands towards the luxuries assembled, "I'd much rather ride on the Mistress of Puppets than march through the jungle and catch crotch rot."
As they were talking, Martina strolled up.
"I saw the jolly boat full of people. I hoped it was you. Good to have you back," she said.
"Since we're all here, might I suggest, with permission from Mister Poopypants, that we have a feast in your honor," said Bucket. "We can use the time to discuss how we might improve our circumstances."
Blaze rolled his eyes. "You have Mister Poopypants' permission."
Bucket showed his teeth, shooting Blaze a wink for playing along.
"Shall I have the automatons put up tents for you?" asked Bucket.
"Yes, but don't overdo it, we really can't stay that long," said Alex.
"Yeah, yeah," said Bucket, nodding his head far too enthusiastically for Alex's liking. "We'll move that pile of rocks, really quick."
While Alex and her traveling companions unloaded their gear and washed off, a bevy of automatons scurried around the camp, setting up a bonfire, dragging large squealing pig-like creatures from the jungle, and making a feasting area.
By the time the sun had set, the bonfire and scattered torches, along with the brightly clothed automatons, made Alex feel like she was on an expensive vacation she couldn't afford. The majority of her time in the game had been spent grinding levels and surviving harrowing encounters, but Bucket looked like distracted royalty who happened to be an adventurer on the side.
As automatons served greasy, delicious meat, along with other delicacies Bucket had rescued from the jungle, and they washed it down with copious amounts of ale, Alex had to remind herself that she didn't have to pay for any of it.
"I feel like my time in Gamemakers has been completely misspent," said Alex, covering a light belch with her forearm, then reaching for her mug of ale, which was always full because of the observant automatons.
Bucket lifted his mug. "Being a Puppet Master brings a certain amount of luxury with it. I can't say I really enjoy getting hit in the face with a warhammer or having wyverns stab me through the chest."
"Can't say I enjoyed it either," said Alex, reaching for another of those purple fruits—Bucket had been right about the addictive quality—before forcing her hand back down. She was going to have a stomachache in the morning as it was. "On a different subject, can you tell me about what you found on the river near the Fall of Azathus?"
"You have a funny way of saying that I ran into a big, invisible wall with my ship," said Bucket, putting his feet on the table and his hands behind his head. "On policy, I avoid that zone, but once we encountered the interdiction, we experimented with our available magics to see if we could get past it. Martina grew gills and tried to swim underneath, but the damn wall completely blocks entry into the zone."
"Telekinesis didn't work?" she asked Sanjay.
He was busy levitating his mug to his lips, but let it rest on the table while answering. "Nothing to grab. It's like the wall keeping us out didn't even exist. It was the strangest thing."
Reggie, sitting straight backed against his chair, raised his hand tentatively. "Lord Bucket. Did you ever manage to contact the other pirates?"
Alex silently admonished herself for not remembering her former friends. She sat up, enthralled by the potential answer. Even though Admiral Femi had betrayed her, a longing to rekindle their friendship lingered in her gut.
Bucket's brief inhalation fooled Alex in thinking he had good news, but it turned to a sigh. "No, sorry. I sent ships to find them, even sent a messenger to Malmorte Bay, but the place was abandoned when they arrived. It seems every pirate in the Isles of Dread had made for somewhere else."
"Maybe they found the Final Booty," said Alex hopefully.
With the reminder of her friends haunting her thoughts, the edge of the ale mug tipped faster and farther, until she returned to her tent—with no remembrance of how she got there—and collapsed into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Eleven
The next few days were spent inspecting the dam, climbing over the massive pile of rocks, looking for ways to destroy even a part of it so they could take the fleet up the river. But the scale of the problem dwarfed any ideas Alex had about removing the mountain's worth of boulders.
She was standing on the far shore with Martina, watching the automatons smash the boulders into smaller, jagged chunks, which could be thrown into a long chute that tumbled the pieces to a lower part of the river.
"Won't you just form a new dam below after a while?" said Alex.
"Eventually, but I can always extend the chute," said Martina, biting her lower lip. "I really want Bucket to make me an army of Juggernauts, but he doesn't think it'll matter."
"I have to agree with him, sorry." Alex screwed up her face. "We need to be thinking about this differently. Moving the rocks one at a time isn't going to work."
Silence intruded, followed by a vibration in her heels and a sound like bees buzzing in her ears. Alex threw her hands out for balance as she stared up at the section of mountain that hadn't fallen with wide eyes.
"What was that?" she asked.
Martina had a flat gaze. "Just a tremor. We get them all the time as the rocks and dirt settle, or shift."
"What if that section up there fell?" asked Alex.
"I checked it out the first day," said Martina, blocking the sunlight from her eyes with her hand as she craned her neck upward. "It's holding on pretty tight. Would have to be another big one to break it loose."
"What about using it to knock this dam out of the way?" asked Alex.
"If we could create that kind of force, we would have long ago blown the dam from the water. No, this is just hydrostatic pressure from the upstream water pushing on the rocks.
"I'm sorry I don’t have better news. I know we need to get the ships up river, and to do that, we need to remove this obstacle. It's not like I can haul the ships around the dam."
Alex had only been half paying attention, but the way Martina froze on the word dam, staring wide eyed at her chutes as if the answer was hidden in the tumbling rocks, there was no doubt that she had an idea.
"That's it," said Martina, stalking away, shaking her head. "I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Duh. Don't move the rocks, move the ships."
With a furrowed brow, Alex looked back to the ships in the makeshift bay. "You've got a few five-masters in the fleet. How are you going to move them upstream?"
Martina was practically vibrating with this new idea. "I mean, we could dig a big trench, Panama Canal style, but that would take too long. Instead we can make a big chute, like a waterslide for boats. It's perfect. Sanjay can help get them up there."
"I have only an inkling of what you're talking about, but based on your reaction, I'm going to assume that it's possible," said Alex.
"I was studying to be a civil engineer before I joined the Hall, so I know a little bit about moving large objects," said Martina. "I need to talk to Bucket. We need to completely change what we're doing."
The whole ride across the lake, Martina looked ready to jump into the water and swim across, but eventually they made it to the tent city. It took a few tries before Bucket understood—he kept having her go back to the beginning and explain again—but by the end, he said, "It's better than moving rocks. I'll repurpose the automatons right away."
Building the ship chutes was going to take a lot of wood, so the automatons turned to the jungle, chopping down every tree within a half mile. They didn't have a sawmill, but the artificial creatures were up for the job, and it wasn't like they needed precision.
While the work continued, Alex realized she had little to offer, so she went to Bucket with a request.
"I need a boat," she said. "One of the smaller ones, and with a crew to get me to the interdiction and back."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"I have nothing to offer here," said Alex. "And you three each have a role. Let me work on getting our other friends back while you fix this problem."
The part she didn't want to say was that she didn't think they had a chance against Marzio's army without the high-level, flying angelic army. It was the only thing that would make the fight even close to even.
"We don't know if it's going to work," said Bucket, skewing his mouth to the side. "I'm half convinced the chute will collapse under the weight of the first ship."
"I have faith in Martina," said Alex. "She seems to know what she's doing."
"It's not Martina I'm worried about," said Bucket, gesturing with his eyes towards the mountain.
"Hopefully he's busy with his army or thinks we're sufficiently screwed, so he doesn't bother with us anymore," said Alex.
"I'll get you a ship and crew. If you can free the angelic army, maybe they can help keep my ships from crashing into the jungle." He looked away for a moment. "I'll captain you. Martina has control of my automatons, so she doesn't need me."
By the next morning, the Black Strings had been made available for their use with Bucket as their captain. They left right away, the sounds of hammers following them long after the dam was no longer in sight.
Chapter Twelve
On the second day after they left the dam, the landscape to the south changed from dense jungle to misty forest. Whenever Alex stared into the mist, a chill went down her spine as she got the feeling something was staring back.
"The zone is Castle Mistfall," said Bucket. "Somewhere in the middle of a mess of undead is a big, dreary old castle. It's a midlevel zone, so nothing we have to worry about."
Alex nodded in acknowledgement, but didn't feel as confident about the last statement as Bucket did, especially because they had a week of travel on the river before they reached the Fall of Azathus.
At times during the journey, Alex tried to check the stats on the New Alexandrian army, but the information had a notation explaining that it wasn't updated, probably due to the enormous distance between them.
