We arrived in Lacunae, me with my arms wrapped firmly around Gobnet’s neck. It went a lot faster than if we’d walked. The district sprawled before us, and from this side of the mountain, we could see the great pyramids of Giza and the shimmering gleam of the sun glinting off the Nile on the horizon.

  The little farming town looked exactly like a conglomeration of every adventuring village ever made since the beginning of time. There was a tavern, there was a blacksmith, there was a farmer’s market, tilled fields, and a robust forest surrounding it.

  We rode into the village itself, teeming with people from every race and kind. I sat up, not wanting to look like an idiot in front of everyone. It was the perfect setup for the phooka to take advantage of. I was relieved that it didn’t.

  “Thanks for the ride, Gobnet,” I murmured as it loped to a stop.

  Elora slid off the unicorn, somehow managing to keep her skirt from sliding up over her ass in the process. Respect. She waved goodbye to the unicorn and darted over to our friends, who’d gathered around a food stand. Where else would they gather?

  “My pleasure.” With a wicked glint in its hourglass eye, it said, “A favor for a favor, Dathai. I won’t forget.”

  “I didn’t agree to….”

  “What’s wrong with a favor, friend?” It said, its voice purring a soothing rumble.

  Fuck. I sighed and nodded, as it was only fair. “I won’t harm anyone, directly or indirectly, and one favor for one favor, no add-ons.”

  “Very well,” Gobnet replied, waiting for me to dismount.

  I bowed to the phooka again. It and the unicorn ran off side by side down the road until the forest hid them from sight. When I turned back around, I noted a few stares. Some were openly jealous, which I understood. Others were whispering, eyes alight with wonder. If they hadn’t been to Heartland Park, that also made sense.

  An urge to growl and bare my teeth at the attention came and passed. I went to join the others, choking down the inner bristle. Jake held up what looked like a doughnut of some kind and waved it. When I caught up, I took in the stand, with its rough-hewn charm and very modern-looking fryer. The cat-eared girl making the apple fritters curled her clawed fingers at me in a come-hither manner. She handed me a fritter, warm and fragrant with cinnamon and sugar crusting the golden dough.

  “I bought you one.” Jake smirked. Taller than the rest of us thanks to his gangly goat legs, he looked over our heads at the market crowd. “This is where the cosplayers end up. The ones that want to look cool but don’t actually fight.”

  Couldn’t help but agree with what I’d already seen. People were anachronistic as hell, here. It got me to thinking about the rest of the city. In Bauring Tok Kraup Patarshan, people were cultural, traditional, and homogenous, besides me. In 1925 NYC, people tended to be the same: human. The roaring twenties fashion was mostly in, with a few exceptions. Higyashiama, on the other hand, had some variants in style. The Labyrinth? That was a mashup of the most sweaty, loud, and degenerate types you could find. Lacunae appeared to be the city’s version of an ongoing renaissance fair.

  I ate the fritter as the others discussed what kind of battleground we’d be going into next. Not gonna lie, it was on my mind. Standing around talking wasn’t my thing, so after waiting politely for a lull in the conversation, I broke in.

  “Let’s go find a spot for this thing before the Arena pulls us away.”

  “Work, work, work,” Fig joked, rolling her eyes.

  “Zugt,” I replied in orcish. “You know your way around here, yeah? Where should we plant it?”

  Fig tapped her fingers together, making me think of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, then pointed toward a field past the town’s sprawling businesses and homes. “Follow me!”

  She started marching in the direction she pointed. With a shrug, Akilah fell in beside her. The rest of us wandered along, down a little lane with rows of quirky houses decorated with fanciful woodwork and paint. Angled roofs, thatched roofs, a house that was more a tree fort than a house, built in levels around the massive trunk of the great oak it encircled.

  A field just sprouting with plants—no idea what kind of crop it was—lay in the direction Fig led us. She walked out into the center of it and pointed at the ground, between two little sprouting leaves.

  “Here should be good.”

  I glanced at Elora, who stepped forward and knelt to dig a hole with her hands. The loamy soil parted easily in thick, dark crumbles. She pulled the bone idol out of her inventory and pushed it in, then covered it up.

  We stood there for a moment, looking at the dug-up earth, then at each other. I read the quest notes, which were always spare and often inadequate. For a super-genius AI DNA thief, Archive sure didn’t like to fill in a lot of blanks. I hoped it wasn’t on purpose. I’d already thought of it as an asshole, but choosing to omit information? Diabolical.

  “What happens next?” Akilah asked.

  Elora’s shoulder lifted in a half-hearted shrug. “Beats me. Oh well. Let’s go back and explore the tow…”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The loading screen appeared.

  Relief and panic hit me in waves. Finally, the waiting was over, followed by ‘fuck my life, what are we going into,’ and then the battle hunger reared its head with an eagerness that overwhelmed the other feelings.

  As I was forced into bodiless idle time, I considered my situation. What was I? Memories? Thoughts informed by memories? Where was my old body? Was this my real state of being? How could I feel emotions without a body? I contemplated all that I was without physical form while stuck witnessing a static image of a spaceship floating in the darkest void, pinpricks of stars and the occasional galaxy in the vast distance of black. Was this life?

  The ship tilted as debris drifted around it, revealing a gaping hole in the front and a glowing yellow mist hovering at the stern. While I waited, I made up a story as to how it ended up there; some collision with a stupid comet tore a hole in it, spilling contents and passengers out into space. Yellow fumes glittered. Frozen fuel, possibly flammable. A plasma shot could blow the whole thing. Could fire behave similarly to water in the zero-gravity atmosphere, dribbling along the hull and drifting like flickering globules until it was extinguished by cold airless space?

  My boots clanged on metal grating. I lurched, turned, and summoned my spear before I even got a sense of where I was. Nothing beat having a body, even the wrong one, and a relieved breath escaped me as I spotted the rest of my team. Being able to move was precious beyond words.

  We had arrived in a small metal tube of a room, with doors at both ends.

  Armor went on as I blinked: Frag’s new chestplate, Fig’s bodysuit, Elora’s hardened hide leathers, Jake’s matte black OCP tacticals, and Akilah’s purple tactical vest. I observed them, stolidly checking weapons and testing buckles, and felt the warmth of pride.

  The minimap was all fog except for the tiny tube we were in. My aspect screen popped up, and the System’s message scrolled by, giving notes on the scenario.

  [System Alert: The escape pod can only carry 6 survivors. Be the first to escape before the ship implodes. T minus 20 minutes starting 3…2…1… Now]

  The doors opened. I pointed Ro’Fatoft’s business end toward the door closest to me.

  “Watch the map and let us know when the objective is revealed.”

  “We should split up,” Akilah suggested.

  I hated that idea, but we’d cover more ground that way. The fog would clear faster. I looked back at her and said, “Let’s get a handle on where we are first.”

  Before she could argue her case, I slid out the door in a crouch. A hall ran in either direction beside similar open tubes. I crossed to the wall and cautiously touched the surface. It was like touching the inside of a metal refrigerator. My fingers almost stuck. I yanked them back quickly. A glance down either direction gave nothing but walls at each end of the corridor.

  With a soft huff of breath, I hustled to the end, slowing before I got to the junction. I cringed at the clickety-clack of Jake’s hooves on the grating. Tan’Fukshan, I kept forgetting to get him those damn muffling booties I thought of every time we were in this kind of situation. Fuck.

  I glanced around the corner quickly, crouching again. At the end of one side of the hall, a railing hung out over open space. It looked like that was part of the ship that had been sheared away. The other side had an elevator door that emitted a spark as I watched it. Nice choices.

  Elora squeaked and whispered something about the cold. I smirked briefly and checked my map. We’d cleared a fraction of it. We had to split up. “Climbers and fliers with me. The rest of you go the other way.”

  Akilah snorted and waved at Frag and Fig to follow. Straightening from my crouch, I moved to the railing and looked down. Below, another floor was situated with a pile of plastic-y looking crates and boxes. The bay floor dropped off into space a good fifty feet from the drop I was contemplating. The railing support braces ran down to the floor. My stupid gloves were fingerless, of course, so it might hurt a bit, but we’d get to the lower level fast.

  “Dude, how is this place not a whistling vacuum?” Jake asked, clomping up beside me.

  “Magnets,” I deadpanned, shrugging at him. I pointed at the hole in the hull. “Can you fly down there without slipping into that?”

  “Sure,” he said, taking a few steps back. A few long-legged bounds and he jumped, a hoof kicking off the railing. His wings boomed out and flapped. It sounded like someone was shaking out a blanket, and he flew in a lazy spiral downwards. I shot Elora a look, but she was tugging gloves on.

  My jaw dropped, and I blurted, “Where did you get those?”

  She rolled her eyes and said smartly, “Dur, at the store where I got my bikini armor.”

  “Of course,” I chuckled. She would have accessorized. It was her way.

  She bounced over the rail and grabbed a post, sliding down it. I followed, going down the other post, the icy metal stinging my fingers all the way down.

  Jake was already rummaging in boxes while we were sliding down. “Dude! Check it!”

  He’d flung a handful of things on the ground. As I looked at the items, their identifier tags showed up. Explosives. Nice. Another tactical vest, not useful. Plasma cores, very useful. Jake found a schematic and waved it excitedly. “Akilah’s gonna love this!”

  “Good deal,” I muttered, facing away from the hole in the hull, into the dimness of the cargo hold. A riot of boxes and canisters lay on the floor, some of them massive. I didn’t sense anything in the area, couldn’t smell anything, but I had a looming feeling, like a pressure building in my head.

  [System Alert: Toxic gases are closing in. Ten… nine…]

  “Run!” Elora cried, pointing beyond the hull. The glowing stuff that had been floating around outside was drifting inwards.

  Flashbacks to every FPS game I ever played with this scenario ran through my head. It wasn’t scary, just—motivation to move closer to the action. Elora sprinted past me, and Jake, grinning like a kid on Christmas day, dashed after her. I loped along behind, watching the shadows as Elora skidded to a stop beside a yellow door. A keypad on the wall blinked.

  “Where’s the open on this thing?” She shouted, whirling around to face us.

  Jake clamored up and said, “Un momento.”

  His black-clawed fingers tapped rapidly at the pad, running combinations. I turned to watch the incoming tide of neon yellow mist rolling towards us. Call me incurious, but I just didn’t want to find out what kind of fresh horror that stuff would do to us. I growled, “Faster, Jake.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said.

  The door hissed open as the cloud roiled closely enough for me to touch it.

  “Oh fuck!” Jake yelped.

  I whipped around, seeing the size of Elora’s eyes before I saw what was on the other side. It didn’t matter. I rushed the door, shoving them through.

  From the frying pan and into the fire, as they say.

  -ARCHIVE-

  Sci-Fi ? Tragedy ? Short Story

  by Tequilama