Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (37 page)

“Old coot.” He snorted while failing to stay upright. I put an arm under his shoulder to help lift. “I thought he was stubborn enough to live forever. He was an old man even when I was young. Figured he’d keep right on going.”

“I’m really bad with first aid,” I told Wyl while bypassing talk of William Carver.

“I may die, from these wounds. Like your buddy, that snake eyed fellow, he died too. Right after the quake that double soulless bastard shattered to pieces.”

“He had two sons and a wife.” Those were the same words I had yelled at the Voices in my Atrium. They came out again with less venom than before. Wyl didn’t know, to this wounded man we were all people who had visited some sort of crime upon his world.

“Why come to this hell if you’ve got a family?” Each word came out faintly with a drag. He looked pale from blood loss. “Why taint our world with more problems?”

How on earth could I tell this man that he suffered because we were playing a game? NPCs were my last real hang up about this universe, even knowing they had an afterlife like William Carver did. That river of forgetfulness where memories which plagued the living might be gradually scrubbed clean.

I felt the scar on my neck then shook my head.

“Wyl, I’ll figure out something, we can get you home to Dayl.” The man needed something to hang onto. “He’ll be helpless without you. Your son did nothing but repeat what you told him.”

The man’s eyes blinked slowly. Wyl lay there against the tree and stared off into the middle distance. The former guard captain’s chest rose and fell slowly. For a moment, the movement stopped.

“I miss my boy,” he said gently.

Session Eighty One - Gotta Have Faith

Tonight’s moon sat at nearly full and hung high above. The sun had gone down long ago. Continue Online’s time compression screwed me up, but the in-game clock showed slightly after midnight.

“Just a little further, I see lights ahead.” I helped Wyl limp along. Part of me desperately hoped it was the journey and not my lack of first aid skills. His leg actually looked worse after my attempted bandaging but we had also traveled miles to the west.

Dusk chirped once ahead of us. The
[Messenger’s Pet]
had single-handedly bathed three wolves and sixteen bats in flames. Wyl raised an eyebrow at the path of dead smaller beasts but otherwise said little.

“Come on,” I said as Wyl groaned. Jostling him around might not be helpful “I didn’t drag you six miles to have you die now.”

The exact total probably reached double that. I had carried Wyl in my arms like a four-year-old until the guard captain woke up and demanded to be let down. Emasculation wasn’t allowed, but it meant he was alive enough to care.

I was concerned about getting help. That Voice, Balance, had told me that Mother’s plan would be based on our natures. Mine said help friends and find Xin. Wyl was Carver’s friend and had been mine for nearly four weeks.

“Almost there.”

The endless reassurances felt hollow. Wyl’s attitude felt indifferent toward eventual death. It was an air I knew, which made me dread getting back to
[Haven Valley]
. We still had thousands of miles to traverse and doing it by foot with him limping would be unmanageable.

My
[Messenger’s Pet]
chirped once more. There was a blast of fire accompanied by vines rustling in retreat. The screeches of nasty little bats with hook hands faded as the critter destroying creature moved around. Dusk’s presence was enough to scare away all creatures smaller.

There was a swath of waist high grass between us and the building. There were a few faint lights on inside the large steeple topped structure. People must be home. I huffed and tried to ping with
[Sight of Mercari]
and came up with a nameless dot.

Nameless dots worried me. The blue color implied indifference which was positive. Dusk wouldn’t lead us toward a trap in most situations.

“Come on. A few more steps. There’s gotta be something in here to help,” I said.

The building was two stories and at least fifteen hundred square feet. There were multiple tiny shacks all about but looked like places to bed down. I could see the edge of a livestock area too. This biggest building had to be a town hall to the abandoned village.

Wyl’s right leg hung limply as we walked the last mile. Color had left most of the guard’s body. I got to the door and bumped into it with my back. Only one person was inside and I didn’t have time to knock. The doors opened then slammed into walls.

“I need help!” I hadn’t meant to shout. Wyl worked his legs unevenly the last few feet to a resting point.

I made sure he would stay upright then looked around with my mouth hanging wide open. The inside was filled with church pews. Pillars held up a high ceiling. There was an overhead walkway on one side which led to a slanted window in the roof. Water leaked through the ceiling’s opening into a bucket.

Dusk loped by like a giant bunny off toward adventure. The sound of his paws stomping around mixed in with the dripping and Wyl’s labored breathing.

“Voices, tell me there’s something to heal with in here,” I muttered while walking up to the other church goer. “Dusk! Don’t eat anything that can help Wyl!”

An excited noise came out from between rows of seats. He looked to be headed toward the one room in this place.

“Excuse me, sir. Is there anything here that can help my friend?” Heavy panting made it difficult to talk. My legs felt like burning lead and there were multiple status icons explaining how worn out this avatar was.

“Help is all around, Messenger,” the person said. His voice sounded oddly calm and drowsy.

My eyes tried not to roll. Exhaustion and irritation made politeness difficult. I pulled through with years of experience. I managed to stagger up to his body and sit across the small aisle.

“Please, do you have anything that can heal a body? He’s in bad shape, and I want to help him get home.”

“In the end, death returns us all home,” the man said after another long pause. His eyes closed and hands clasped together. Forearms rested on legs with thin knees. Both shoulders tried to stay held back but were failing.

He looked sad and tired. The clothes were oddly out of place in Continue Online. The black clothes with a white color would have been at home in a real church, not a video game one. I tried not to sigh. This man even had a hat sitting next to him that could have belonged to a bishop on television.

“Have we met?” I squinted in confusion.
[Identification]
came into view and all I got was a message.

“You’re a Voice.” I backed up a step while trying to remember if this one had ever interacted with me. The name didn’t sound familiar. Any Voice with such a long name would have easily been in my brain. He didn’t look like a Michelangelo.

“We are all Voices, Hermes,” the Voice of Faith and Sanctuary said.

That didn’t help me at all. “What does that mean?”

“You are born with a Voice, as was I. As were your companions though they may express themselves differently.”

That sounded like a long series of platitudes that didn’t help me right now. I took a breath and rocked back to my feet. Eyes cast about looking for anything that might heal. Potions or bandages that weren’t dirty. Aloe or a fantasy version of it would be welcome as well. Anything to help Wyl. Maybe I could tear up part of his clothing. I could go topless myself and make a toga bandage.

There was nothing behind me or up on the pulpit. I looked in drawers and behind tables. Most things were empty. A few books were scattered around. Flipping through revealed nothing of immediate use. The luxury to read was not mine to have this week.

I turned back to the Voice and tilted my head briefly. “You aren’t the Voice of Healing or anything close, are you?”

There was a pause while the man’s hands trembled a bit. He brought them together and looked up toward the ceiling then closed his eyes. I wasn’t sure who Voices prayed to.

Thankfully Wyl was fading in and out. I couldn’t imagine the blasphemy he might consider a Voice sitting down here would bring. To me it felt like visiting a cousin I didn’t know about yet. This man hadn’t tried to throw me out into a reckless skydive while choking me, or suggested I kill a man, so we were off to a good start.

“I am what I am, Hermes. As are you, as are we all,” he answered after a long pause.

I turned over another pile of books along with each chair. No one had left anything. Maybe the room Dusk was in had something.

“Dusk! Did you find anything?” I shouted to him.

A frowning face popped up with its tail pointing toward the doorway. I took that to be a no based on the emoticon and Dusk’s grumble of discontentment.

“I meant something to help Wyl!” My clarification came after realizing Dusk might be searching for snacks. The
[Messenger’s Pet]
got distracted frequently.

Another frowning face showed up with a double sized huff. Things were nosed out into the doorway. I went back to Wyl and checked on him. He pushed me away and kept taking slow labored breaths.

I tried to calmly walk back to the Voice but ended up shuffling. “My friend, one of your people, could really use help. Is there anything you can do?”

Michelangelo put his hands back down to their resting spot and kept his eyes forward. The Voice looked to be trying to connect with a higher power after every question.

My cheek twitched in thought. Teeth wrapped around the lower lip and chewed. I couldn’t tell if there would be anything gained from him at all.

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” he finally uttered the latest unhelpful line.

“I want to help him, is there a way?” I opted to be direct. If people asked me questions then I answered them. Those lost in their own woes I attempted to help. Each step forward was one closer to Xin, but leaving behind Wyl to die would have been a betrayal of all I had done.

Even if he was William Carver’s friend, and not really mine, I owed him and liked the man I had known.

“You were right with your faith, Messenger,” he said. “There was a plan. It flowed forth right under our noses until James attracted our attention.”

“What plan? It’s only been a few days, you guys looked lost.” I don’t think it had been more than two days of game time since my return. Time passed in weird clumps with the ARC. Both eyes drifted to the hole in this building’s roof to check for moonlight.

“We do not see time the same, Messenger.” Michelangelo put his hands down and grabbed the hat. He smiled softly but nothing reached the man’s cheeks. “There is a plan. She moves in mysterious ways, but we’ve caught edges of the pattern from our seats upon high.”

My eyes blinked and head shook in confusion. What in
[Arcadia]
was he talking about? I felt insanely out of the loop. Being trapped in that dungeon, kicked out of the game for two weeks, and restricted from any system tell messages from this stupid
[Convict Brand]
were limiting me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“An exodus has begun. A march toward the ocean, our Mayflower.” His smiled faded for a moment then came back.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“In your reality, there is a river, the mighty Mississippi.”

“Yeah.” I nodded and felt annoyed at the same time. Wyl looked terrible. Being sacrilegious wasn’t in my nature but desperation could make sinners of saints. I turned the pews upside down trying to shake out anything that might heal.

If this was a house of the Voices, then there had to be something to help people here. There just had to be. Four rows later and I was still coming up empty.

“And like that stream all Mother’s creations shall join together and travel down the mighty river until we reach the ocean,” the Voice continued speaking after a long pause.

There was a tapping noise again beneath my feet. I looked down at the floor of Continue Online and wondered exactly what it meant. Roughly once every hour the two thuds would occur. The noise hadn’t started until returning to the ARC from my mom’s.

He turned his head and stared directly into my eyes. There was a depth there that startled me as if I were looking at something buried deep under a whirlpool of blues. “You can hear it, can’t you?” the Voice asked.

“Yes.” No one else had heard the damned knocking so far.

“To expand upon my prior analogy, those knocks are from a force seeking to destroy our river.”

“What!?” My heartbeat jumped. Why could I hear them?

“Shortly, this place will be consumed by the deathblow that struck our maker. The essence of its attack upon her systems will materialize and proceed to engulf all it can,” the Voice said calmly. “Then you’ll have to flee like a fish to another portion of the river, or be lost in a void.”