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  “I’m afraid it’s too far away for me to get a feel for it. And while it’s interesting, I don’t think there’s any need for us to get closer.”

  “I agree,” said Athena. “Let’s just work our way around it and carry on. I have a feeling this is the kind of place we don’t want to mess around with.”

  Gunnar nodded. “Seconded.”

  “Right then. We’re all agreed?” Cindella put her glove back on and gestured to their left. “After you, Anonemuss.”

  The scout disappeared, and one by one they resumed their march, keeping a few trees between their line and the clearing. Long after they had left the tower behind, Ghost found herself looking over her shoulder, as uneasy as Athena had been about the entire structure. These fantasy worlds could be genuinely creepy.

  An hour later, they were gathered before the clearing again, looking out at the tower.

  “Is that the same place?” asked B.E. glumly. “Or another one that looks just like it?”

  Milan shifted his rifle to his shoulder. “Tell you what. Why don’t I blow the head off one of those doorpost guys. That way we’ll know if it comes around again.”

  “Did it move? Or did we?” Athena was looking at her handset with a frown. “I think it was probably us. It’s hard to tell at this scale, but we aren’t quite as close to our target as we were a few minutes ago.”

  “So if this was Epic, what would be going on?” Ghost’s question was for any of the humans, but it was no surprise to her that it was Erik who answered. Although he was the youngest of them, he seemed to have the most knowledge of that former world.

  “There would be a high-level curse cast by the castle owner upon all those who come to the vicinity of the tower. And a lot of quest lines would run through here, to bring players close enough to be caught in the curse. Probably local rumors tell of knights who go into the forest, never to return.”

  “And who would the owner of the tower be?” she asked.

  Cindella looked across at the other humans. “I don’t know, really. A very powerful sorcerer? A monster along the lines of that creature at the pool? Perhaps a lich: an undead wizard.”

  No one had anything to add.

  “And what do you advise?”

  “Well . . .” Cindella turned to look at the tower, and even though she was only an avatar for Erik, Ghost could almost see the expression of calculation. “In a game, you would have to enter the tower to break the curse. After surviving the traps and guardian monsters, you would meet the castle owners and either slay them or release someone from a curse or something like that.”

  “No one would have attempted a quest like that, though,” interjected Gunnar. “It would have been far too reckless, back in the days when if you lost your avatar, you lost your wealth.”

  Acknowledging Gunnar with a quick nod, Ghost nevertheless kept her attention on Cindella. “You think we have to go inside before we can journey past the tower?”

  “I don’t think Milan and Athena should go anywhere near it. Probably you should stay clear, too. But I’ve a feeling that we’re caught in its spell, and the rest of us probably should go in, yeah.”

  “If you all got killed, though,” observed Athena with a troubled expression, “imagine where that would leave us: stuck in the vicinity of this tower until we either fight at worse odds or we starve out here.”

  “How about this then?” Cindella turned about, as Erik checked that he had everyone’s attention. “We could go into the tower very slowly, searching at every stage for traps and so on. Or we could try a different approach. Seeing as we have weapons that are far more powerful than expected for this world, we could try blasting our way in as fast as possible and taking what is thrown at us on the half-volley.”

  “There’s another option.” Anonemuss held up the ring of invisibility. “I could try to sneak around inside there and gather intelligence.”

  “And we could try leaving in a different direction, to see if we get away from the glade. Although I admit I’m not optimistic about that,” said Gunnar.

  “We could,” Erik replied dubiously, before turning Cindella to face B.E. “What do you think?”

  “Go in fast.”

  “Anonemuss?”

  “Same.”

  “Gunnar?”

  “Thank you. One more attempt to get away from here, then attempt the tower, I suppose.”

  “Ghost?”

  “If it’s a particular area of land that is sending us back, like we were crossing some kind of portal, then I might be able to control the effect. Let’s avoid the tower if we can.”

  “Right. We’ll give that a go; it’s definitely worth a try.”

  This time they set out northward from the clearing instead of eastward. It was afternoon and the hues of the forest were bright: shades of green and copper. After about an hour of walking, Ghost took the lead at a slow pace. Her eyes were closed as she felt for the inner workings of the world around her.

  The wrench came suddenly, a whirlwind of suction that whisked them all the way back as though they were no more than tissues of paper in a storm. Ghost felt that there was a moment where she could have strained against it, holding herself in place, though she would have had to exert herself to the utmost. But it was pointless. All the others would have been pulled away.

  “Blood and thunder!” B.E. was the first to see the tower ahead of them.

  “Sorry, everyone. It wasn’t like we walked into a region I could change; it was more like we were all small pieces of iron and someone switched on a powerful magnet.”

  “It’s not your fault, Ghost.” While Cindella gave a smile, it was a superficial one, because Ghost could hear a very distinct tone of worry in his next words. “Right then. Fast it is. How about Athena and Milan stay here, each aiming at one of those gargoyles. Fire when we reach the drawbridge. B.E., blaze away at the door and then cover the rest of us as we run through. Anonemuss and Gunnar, hang back about five or six paces. Hopefully Cindella’s abilities and magic gear will handle the physical traps, while your weapons can take care of the other guards in there.”

  “What about me?” asked Ghost.

  Cindella shrugged. “Your abilities are amazing, and it would be good to have you with us. But there are a lot of unknowns about what we are going to do. We could take casualties from all sorts of magic and physical traps. And if you were one of them . . .”

  “I’ll stay back with Milan and Athena for now and judge for myself about whether to come in.”

  “All right then. Are we set?”

  A series of clicks and high-pitched whining sounds answered him. Their weapons were charged.

  “Good luck,” said Ghost.

  Cindella set off toward the tower, with B.E. beside her and Gunnar and Anonemuss a few paces back. Just before they reached the drawbridge, B.E. dropped to a crouch and a streak of pink light crashed into the door. At more or less the same time, Milan and Athena, both standing steady and sighting down their rifles, let loose a barrage of orange energy onto the gargoyles, whose heads and torsos were soon shattered, pieces of stone whistling through the glade.

  The door was destroyed, too, smoke rising from its remains, obscuring Cindella as she dived into the tower and rolled out of view, followed by B.E., Gunnar, and Anonemuss. Strange muffled sounds came from within: crashes, blasts of energy from pulse weapons, and the staccato beat of the rapid-firing Higgs. The sounds moved up the tower, accompanied by flashes of color from the narrow arrow slits of the first floor.

  “So far, so good,” said Milan optimistically.

  Soon the noises of battle and the glow of pulse weapon fire came from the second floor.

  “Still good.”

  As they lifted their gaze to the third and final floor, however, there came just one distinct flash and then silence. A very ominous silence.

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  Ghost stepped resolutely onto her airboard, kicked on the power switch, and pulled out her handguns
. “Here goes. Death and defiance!”

  Chapter 11

  CRUEL FINGERS

  Although she was thundering across the drawbridge at nearly maximum speed, Ghost’s senses were so heightened that she could take in all that she saw. Beyond the ruined door was a chamber, with stairs at the far side. On the stone floor lay spent darts and spears. Six suits of armor bore the marks of energy weapons; large portions of their breastplates or their entire helmets were melted, revealing their hollow interiors. They must once have been animate, though, for they held weapons in a variety of poses.

  Tipping up the nose of her board, Ghost used the impact of her collision with a tapestry and the wall at the top of the stairs to swerve up to another, larger landing. This was, effectively, a wide balcony that looked down on the hall below. Again, as she rushed around the landing, her whole being shivering with the anticipation of battle, she rode over the strewn remains of traps: spent crossbow bolts, acid holes in the carpet, and a section that was covered with ice. There were doors along the landing, all open, through which humanoid statues armed with sword and shield had evidently attempted to attack Erik’s team. They, like the armored figures below, had been destroyed by the impact of energy weapons.

  A stone staircase on the far side of the balcony led up to the second story. Slowing down in order to maneuver the board up the tight angle at the beginning of the staircase, Ghost nevertheless had enough momentum to reach the room above, guns held out ready to fire. It was a chamber that occupied the whole second floor of the tower, lit by lanterns and the pale afternoon light that spread from a number of arrow slits. Right at the center of the room was a curved, highly decorated iron staircase that ascended through a hole in the roof. The others must have climbed up, for there was no sign of their bodies here, just scorch marks and torn-up carpet and tapestry to indicate conflict had taken place.

  As it would be impossible to get the airboard up the circular stairwell, Ghost jumped to the ground at a sprint. Below her there came sound of the footfalls: presumably Milan and Athena entering the tower. They must have decided there was no point waiting uselessly at the edge of the clearing. It was admirable and brave of them. But if Ghost could not deal with whatever was in the top chamber, at the top of that staircase, it would be unlikely that they could.

  Ghost took the stairs at a run, two at a time, then launched herself into the room from the very top stair, adding impetus to her jump by concentrating upon the environment immediately surrounding her body and altering it. The final iron step became elastic, the air above her almost a vacuum to draw her upward. Even before she had been taught how to use her skills to the fullest, Ghost had been intuitively altering the passage of time while performing dangerous airboard stunts, slowing it to give herself more room to think and to move. She did so now, pushing herself to the very limit of her ability so that the scene was frozen in between distinct moments, frame after frame.

  Her leap took her into the center of a well-lit chamber similar to the floor below, filling the entire third story of the tower. And it was something of a horror show. Still swaying from his final convulsions, B.E. was dead, hanging from a great beam by a rope around his neck, his hands and feet tied together. Inside a ball made of metal hoops, Cindella was being slowly crushed to death; as the frames of Ghost’s vision ticked over, each jerk through time saw the machine noticeably shrink more tightly around her. Gunnar was dying from the opposite process, being stretched on an X-shaped rack, his arms already dislocated from their shoulders and his legs straining to avoid being pulled from his pelvis. Anonemuss was there, too: tied across a bed of spikes with a heavy metal plate resting on the length of his body, pressing him down, to increase the pressure until his clothes, skin, and muscle parted and he died on the spikes.

  There was only one other person in the room, clearly the guiding intelligence behind this torture show, and even as Ghost attempted to understand what she was seeing, she fired burst after burst of explosive rounds into the creature. Sitting facing Ghost was a tall woman in a velvet dress the color of dried blood. “Facing” was not quite the right word, for she had no face, just a pale oval disk that nevertheless expressed wickedness and sin. Her hands were inhuman, too, with bony fingers twice as long as seemed natural. This fearsome woman was surrounded by piles of parchment; quills made from long, shiny black feathers; bottles of ink; and tall, waxy candles.

  The blasts of energy from Ghost’s gun smashed into the fiend. Not one strand of her long black hair moved. Not one thread on her dress was burned. As the next frame jerked the scene forward, the demonic woman’s hands leaped forward to pick up parchment and quill. If time were flowing normally, it would seem like she was moving at astonishing speed, the motion of her knowing fingers barely discernible. The torturer began to draw. Draw? She was immune to weapons fire. Should Ghost try to stab her with a dagger? As she landed and ran toward the sinister monster, Ghost desperately looked for an answer to the mystery of this chamber. A part of her knew, perhaps from the subliminal information she was getting from the vicinity of the creature, that the dagger would be no more effective than the gun. As each jerk of motion took her a stride closer to her enemy, Ghost noticed that the floor was strewn with pieces of parchment on which there were drawings. She used up a frame to look more carefully at them.

  The nearest one was skillfully done. It showed Cindella and Gunnar—with everyone behind them in outline at least—at the edge of the forest looking toward the tower and the viewpoint of the picture. Another parchment was visible, too, this time much more crudely done. But the outlined figure was distinct enough; it was B.E. swaying with a rope around his neck.

  This was the source of the magic that had captured the others! Another frame advanced, and with a feeling of dread, Ghost studied the picture under the monster’s hand. Her cruel fingers had made extraordinary progress on a sketch in which a figure was pinned onto a torture board by spikes along its arms and legs. Another frame and the figure’s hair was drawn, a silhouette that showed dozens of short braids held up by a headband. All at once Ghost felt the same pull that had seized her earlier, outside, when the entire group had been swept back to the tower. There was no need to look over her shoulder; she knew that a tall board and a set of spikes had come into existence and that they were now tugging at her. Already it felt as if she had been seized by ten pairs of hands around her arms and legs, and it was absolutely clear that the more she let this creature complete the drawing, the tougher it would be to keep moving. Clenching her teeth, Ghost tore a path onward toward the fearsome woman, fighting with all her strength against the suction of the magic. There, horribly close to that evil, faceless oval, Ghost grabbed a bottle of ink and, with the next frame advancing, poured it over the sketch, obscuring all the details on the parchment. Instantly, the pressure upon her eased.

  Ever since the echoes of Ghost’s gunfire had died away, the room had been filled with a disconcerting silence. But if the pulses that swept across the blank features of the creature now leaning close to Ghost could have been vocalized, they would have created a horrific scream of rage and hate. Both of them reached for a blank sheet and quill. Because she was still operating within a slowed time rate, Ghost was the quicker of the two.

  If Milan or Athena had been watching, they would have seen two people drawing on parchment at speeds so fast that their hands were a blur. But for Ghost every movement was quite distinct. It helped, too, that Ghost’s sketch was the simpler. It was easy to draw the woman, with flames rushing up over her: her head, her shoulders, her arms. And while a huge blade, pushing through the torso of a body, was already quite visible on the woman’s parchment, the figure was not yet that of Ghost and the tug of the magic only weak.

  A blaze roared up right in front of her, causing Ghost to throw her hands over her eyes and recoil. With her concentration broken, time was flowing smoothly again. The woman was an inferno; her mouthless face an inaudible scream. As the torturer staggered about in visible distress, drapes
and piles of parchment caught fire, too. It was easy enough to keep clear of the monster. The more the flames took hold of her hair and dress, the slower her movements became. At last, with a shudder, the demonic woman fell to the ground, still giving an occasional twitch, but otherwise destroyed.

  Everyone in the room was in jeopardy from the flames, but how to free them? Ghost had to concentrate on breathing and the need to filter the air coming into her lungs due to the thickening tendrils of smoke. A loud crash made her jump; B.E.’s body had suddenly fallen to the floor. The flames on the beams that made up the roof and floor were creating loud cracking sounds.

  The nearest of the humans was Gunnar and Ghost tried to use her knife to cut him down from the torture rack, but the magic still remained, despite the death of its creator, for the fibers of the rope showed no marks at all after precious moments spent savaging them with her blade. It had to be the pictures then. On hands and knees, coughing despite her efforts to fill her lungs with clean air, Ghost crawled around the floor, skirting the lump of black matter that was the former monster, picking up drawings. These she fed to the flames and when the last of them was done, she hurried back to the nearest human: Anonemuss.

  “Just in time. I’m on less than five percent life points.” As he rose from the spikes, Ghost could see the bloody pattern on his back.

  “Get out now.” She pulled him to the stairwell, where Cindella was crawling toward them. Gunnar, however, because of his dislocated limbs, had not moved from where the rack had been, even though the whole apparatus had disappeared. For a moment it crossed Ghost’s mind that this would be a good time to discreetly get rid of Gunnar, in a way that could not be blamed on her. But she dismissed the idea; with B.E. gone now, there were just three avatars left, and even Gunnar might provide valuable aid at some point.