“Can’t you though?” I narrowed my eyes. “Isn’t that what that stupid flute is for?”

  “My flute is very impressive in both size and stamina, thank you very much,” - his hand moved to the silver instrument - “and that’s not how it works. Sure, I can summon the wind and all that. I can even manage a whirlwind if I really threw my all into the damn thing but to conjure a tornado big enough to carry the two of us where we need to go and being able to keep it from swallowing us up once it’s made is something completely different.” He smiled at me. “I know you sword-slingers think magic is easy, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not.”

  “Please,” I balked.

  I couldn’t care less about bards or the stigma they faced as being some of the lamest characters in the whole of KOH. Though, off the top of my head, maybe if they stopped dressing like they were about to go to an open casting call for a Broadway revival of Annie people’s perception of them might change.

  He was wrong though. Ivan wasn’t here to tell me anything. He was here to make right what he messed up. Sure, he didn’t know that what he was doing was putting an entire world in danger, but he had done so nonetheless. His selfishness had put everyone in danger, and the only reason I hadn’t run him through with my sword was that I needed him. If it turned out that he couldn’t even do what he promised, nothing in any of the levels would stop me from acquainting him with the business end of my sword.

  Of course, he didn’t need to know that right now.

  “So, what the hell are we supposed to do about it?” I huffed. “You said yourself that we won’t be able to catch Ember and the others on foot, even if we knew where Barry and Blackthorne were, which we don’t.”

  “Yeah. No. I get it,” Ivan sighed. “We’re not in the best position right now, and it’s arguably my fault.”

  “It’s not arguably your fault,” I growled, anger still bubbling up in my chest. “That’s like saying it was arguably Spiderman’s fault when Uncle Ben died. This, like that situation, is completely one-hundred percent absolutely your fault.” I cut my eyes over to him. “I’d like to know how you’re going to make good on your end of the bargain in terms of fixing it.”

  Ivan came to a stop, breathing loudly and looking at me. “You know what? You’re not a lot of fun, dude, and I have to get up in the morning. So how about we put a pin in this and pick it back up when we’ve both had a little bit of time to cool down?”

  I grabbed my sword again. Unsheathing it, I watched it glow with energy as I pressed it against him. “How about not?”

  Ivan could go days without logging back onto this game, and what was I supposed to do in the meantime? Ember and Glimmer sure as hell weren’t going to stop, not when they were this close to getting out of here. The Shadow could have done anything in the time it took Ivan to ‘cool down.' Ori’s pain wasn’t going to wait. So, I wasn’t either.

  “Are you serious?” he gasped, obviously exhausted and over this entire thing. “You are taking this whole thing way too seriously. Have you thought about fucking therapy or something?” He shook his head. “You know what? I’ll just log off. You can’t kill me if I log off, bro.”

  “That’s true,” I said, not moving my blade from his neck, “but we’re not waiting and that means that by the time you get back on, we’ll probably be gone and your stupid ass will be stuck here forever.” I swallowed hard. “You can’t get through the portal without the other Angels and you sure as shit can’t take out a banshee without me. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone through the whole ordeal you did back there. Face it. Unless you want to lose the character you just went through all the trouble to make normal again, you need me. So, if you want me, you’d better figure out a way to get us out of here and do it right now.”

  “I’m guessing waiting for a tornado to turn up wouldn’t work for you,” he muttered sarcastically.

  “You guess right, jackass.” I pressed my blade harder against his throat. He didn’t seem to notice, which made sense, I guess. It wasn't like he could feel the tip of my sword against his flesh.

  “There’s one way, I guess,” he said reluctantly, “though I really don’t want to do it.”

  “Let me check and see if I give a damn about whether or not you want to do it.” I paused a beat for effect. “Nope. Don’t think I do.”

  “There’s this guy,” Ivan shrugged. “He can do things. He can give you stuff. I saw him with my boys when we first got here, and he offered to help us find a way out.”

  “You’re not talking about the Mountain, are you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “Because I already dealt with that lying bitch.”

  “No,” Ivan said, shaking his head. “We tangled with that lady too, but that’s the thing. This guy didn’t strike me as being much more reliable. He was kind of fidgety and obviously out for himself. Still, his Level was off the charts, and I’m pretty sure that, if he wanted to, he could create a tornado where we stood. From there, I could easily control it to take us where we needed to go.”

  I didn’t hesitate a moment. “Where do we find him?”

  “Okay, but he’s really not trustworthy,” Ivan reiterated.

  “It’s not like we’re swimming in options,” I answered. “Where do we find him?”

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “We don’t find him. He finds us. I saw him before I turned into a spider and lost access to my flute, but the dude taught me a couple chords and said that if I played it, he’d come.”

  “Play,” I said.

  “Okay, but this guy is trouble. So just know that-”

  “Play it,” I demanded, stepping back and dropping my sword just a little to allow Ivan to pull out his flute.

  “Your funeral, cowboy,” he said and played a tune on his flute.

  The melody didn’t sound too impressive to me; pretty basic actually.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “I don’t think that worked. I don’t see anybo-”

  “Hey there, best friend,” a hauntingly familiar voice sounded from behind me.

  My entire body froze. “Oh… oh no.”

  It was him. I had just convinced Ivan to bring me face to face with the Jackal.

  26

  I spun, my entire body shaking as I drove my sword through the air. I barely had a chance to look at the Jackal, at his hunched-over body and horrible grin. I didn’t need to see him though, not until he was bleeding and dying on the ground.

  “Dude!” I heard Ivan yell from behind me.

  My sword hurtled toward the imp, but he leaped out of the way, chuckling as he did backward cartwheels away from me.

  “Not happy to see me, best friend?” the Jackal taunted. I could hear the smugness in his voice, and it made my skin crawl. This trickster, this beast of lies and lewdness, was part of the reason I was where I was. He lied to me and led me down a path that brought me face to face with the Shadow. He made sure I wasn’t really prepared and was enough of a ‘Loki’ about the whole thing for me not to be able to clearly see what I was doing. His lies and manipulations brought me closer to the Shadow. They tricked me into murdering an innocent man, and they were instrumental in tossing me down here and separating me from Ori and Hecate.

  Anger filled my heart as I looked at him. No. It wasn’t anger. Anger wasn’t a strong enough emotion. This was pure, unadulterated hate, and I was going to act on it.

  Ivan had other ideas though. Throwing himself in front of me, he huffed loudly. “What are you, like, the weirdest person in the entire world? That’s the guy who was supposed to help us. You forced me to call him up and now you want to kill him?”

  Ivan’s eyes drifted up to my Energy bar, blazing proudly with my intent to kill the Jackal.

  “You’re a damn piece of work, man.”

  “He’s not here to help us,” I said, running around Ivan and toward the backward skipping Jackal.

  “What? Hold up!” Ivan started running after me. “Didn’t your momma ever tell you not to run with magical swords?”

  I huffed as I bridged the gap between the still moving Jackal and me. “He tricked you,” I growled without breaking stride. I didn’t need to be near Ivan for him to hear me clearly, just close enough to not cut off the public channel as the Lower Level tended to do. “He set you up on the off chance that you’d come into contact with me. Who knows? He might have even had a hand in shrinking Ember down in the first place.”

  “He wants you?” Ivan sounded like he didn’t trust me one bit as he tried to keep pace. “He’s an NPC, dude. Why would he see you as more important than me or the rest of us? We’re all just players.”

  The Jackal stopped quickly, landing on his feet and looking up at me with beady and disturbing eyes. “Because, you brainless dud, you’re not my best friend like good old Jack here.”

  I hated it when the Jackal did that. Maybe he thought referring to me as his ‘best friend’ or ‘closest pal’ or whatever other garbage came out of that lying mouth was funny. Maybe he thought it got under my skin. Whatever the reason, he was wrong, and it wouldn’t help him now. He wasn’t going to get in my head. Nothing he said was going to give me pause. I was killing him. I was going to put an end to him and hopefully get a step closer to the Shadow in the process.

  “I can help you,” the Jackal said, grinning wide. “I can get you back to the Surface. I don’t even need a storm to do it. All you have to do is listen to me. All you have to do is what I tell you to. All you have to-”

  “You’re wasting your time,” I snarled. Reaching him, I swung at him twice in quick succession. The Jackal was fast though. He dodged once and then again. “Nothing you have to say to me is going to save you from this. You deserve to die, and nothing you can offer me is going to stay my hand.

  “Oh, I know that, Iron Jack,” the Jackal said, flipping onto a tree and scuttling up to a high branch. “That’s why I wasn’t talking to you.”

  My heart sputtered to a stop as I realized what he was talking about.

  “Ivan,” I muttered.

  Turning around, I saw Ivan standing there, wind flute in hand. “I’m sorry, Jack, but you don’t get it.”

  “Ivan!” I yelled, but I was too late. With a huff, he blew into the flute, more forcefully and with more Power than before.

  A gust of wind took me off my feet instantly. I slammed hard into the tree the Jackal had climbed on. That wind encircled me again, pushing me hard against the tree and encasing me in a whirlwind of air.

  “Ivan!” I screamed. “Ivan, stop this!”

  “All you have to do is kill him, my boy,” the Jackal crooned from above. “Kill him, and I’ll take you out of here. You can have your life back.”

  His life back? What did that mean?

  Before I could even consider that question, Ivan pulled a small silver ball out of his pocket, and I immediately recognized it as a Hail Sphere, another Ability in the Bard toolbox. I swallowed hard, remembering how effective a Hail Sphere was the last time I dealt with a bard who could control the wind. Of course, I had the rest of the Avenging Angels with me then, and I was all alone now.

  “Ivan!” I screamed. “Stop this! The Jackal only lies! He won’t help you!”

  He tossed the Hail Sphere into the whirlwind and, as its name suggests, it started dancing around the whirlwind before slamming into me like a hail stone. It stung like a bitch and, worse than that, every time it hit me, it split into two. There were two of them, then four, then eight, and so on. Before long, I was inside a raging storm of pain and hurt. It slammed into my armor so hard that the Dwarf-steel dented and started to fold onto itself.

  My Energy kept waning, getting smaller and smaller with each hit.

  Finally, Ivan stopped his song of horror and lowered his flute. My Energy was once again low and blinking red. As I fell to the ground, weak and in agony, I could taste blood and sweat soaked my hair.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head as he walked over to me. He pulled a long, thin-bladed dagger from his pocket, preparing for the death blow. “I’ve been lying to you this whole time. I know who you are, Iron Jack. I know what you are” - he took a deep breath - “because I’m like you.”

  I couldn’t believe it, even though it started to make sense as he continued, “I got pulled into this damn game ages ago. My entire team was. My four best friends in the world and I watched all of them die after the Shadow sunk us here. This isn’t about some stupid character for me. This is my life, the only life I have left. I know you’re going through the same thing, but it’s survival of the fittest down here, dude.”

  Ivan gestured to the Jackal next. “So, when the Jackal came to me, I tried to kill him too, but then he made a good point. What good would it do? I’d still be down here. I’d still be stuck. But if I helped him get you, if I lied to you and helped separate you from your friends and bring you here, he promised to bring me back. I wouldn’t get back to earth, but I’d get out of this hell, and that’s worth something to me.”

  So, it was true. I knew it in my bones. He was like me. He was like Aaron. Ivan was actually here, lost in this world. Only, where I had done a horrible job of pretending I was like everyone else, Ivan had me fooled. He never let on, even once, that he was feeling the pain, that he was really standing in front of me. Now, he was about to kill me just to get out of here.

  “The banshee?” I asked, trying to delay what seemed to be inevitable long enough to try to figure a way out of it. “Was that even true?”

  “Theoretically,” he admitted. “Though it didn't matter. I was never going to let you try it out. The minute you freed her energy, I snapped it up. It wasn’t even about transforming me. I just knew I couldn’t let you get away. Getting my old body back was just an added bonus.”

  “And the tornado?” I asked, looking down at his flute.

  “Obviously, I’m very powerful. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to put the great Iron Jack on his ass. I could have created the tornado if I wanted. It wouldn’t have gotten me home though.”

  “It would have,” I corrected. “It still can. We can meet the rest of the Angels. We can use them to get through the portal.”

  “Don’t you get it by now?” Ivan shot back, shaking his head. “The Shadow is always a couple of steps ahead of you. He didn’t send the Jackal here alone. There’s an army waiting at the fountain for your team. If they’re there, they’re already dead. Or, I mean, their characters are.” He shook his head. “And so are you, I’m sorry to say.”

  He tightened his grip on the dagger. “This isn’t personal. It’s not that I’m a fan of the Shadow and what he’s up to, but I know when I’m licked, cowboy. I can’t beat him and neither can you. My team gave their lives so I could learn that lesson. Don’t let yours do the same. Let me kill you and this will be over. No one else has to die.”

  “No one else will die,” I spit back. “My friends aren’t really here. You can’t touch them.”

  “One of them is,” Ivan said mournfully. “The one who came here for you and they’ll kill her, Jack. They’ll kill her if you insist on this going on any longer.”

  “Who?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat. “Who came down here for me? Who is she?”

  Before Ivan could answer, a battle axe collided with his chest, knocking the bard backward and the dagger out of his hands.

  “I am,” a familiar voice said. Looking over, my soul got a lot lighter. Hope returned to me because standing there against all reason was Hecate.

  27

  I looked up at Hecate and thanked my lucky stars. I remembered the first time I saw her. She was wearing the guise of an overweight man in a hotel bar, offering me advice and a shoulder to cry on. I would never have imagined she would come to mean so much to me and I certainly wouldn’t have thought she’d change my life in the way she did. Knowing her and being pulled into this world made me a different person in every way imaginable.

  And here she was, saving my ass yet again.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, looking at my curvy, green-skinned, friend. The hottest ogre I’d ever seen turned to me, her eyes softening as she took me in.

  “Your Energy is low,” she said by way of a reunion. “Take this.”

  Two crystal vials filled with red liquid appeared in her outstretched hand.

  Hecate offers you two Elixirs of Life.

  Do you accept? Y/N

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I muttered, mentally agreeing and watching my energy fill back up. Elixirs of Life were serious mojo, tons stronger than your usual Healing Potions. Two of them were more than enough to restore even my enormous supply of Energy.

  It was a cool sensation to be yanked from death’s door to full health in a moment, though it didn’t have the same kind of delicious awesomeness that filled me every time Glimmer healed me. Either way, it was still better than how things worked in the real world.

  “How did you get here?” I asked again, sighing with satisfaction.

  “No time for that,” Hecate said as she turned her attention back to the stricken Ivan who still had her axe sticking out of his chest. “I’ll answer all your questions after I kill this moron.”

  “No!” I said instinctively, standing up and feeling the blood rush to my head. “You can’t kill him, Hecate. He’s a real person.”

  Her eyes narrowed at me. “Everyone is a real person,” was her only response as she bolted toward Ivan.

  A pang of guilt shot through me. I hadn’t realized it, but I was valuing human life over the lives of those here in the Kingdom of Heaven. Still, it didn’t change the truth of things. Regardless of who or what had suffered and died down here, it didn’t justify Ivan having to go through the same thing.

  He might have betrayed me. He might have lied to me and been in league with the Jackal and (by proxy) the Shadow, but I could see where he was coming from. He was desperate. He was a person, trapped here like me. Perhaps he had a family of his own. Maybe he had his own Amanda, his own John. Maybe he even had his own Ori up on the Surface.

 

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