An Unfriendly Manor - Kate & Beastie Adventure #2

Chapter 7

Bradley returned, breathing heavily, and looked exhilarated. His fine clothing was ripped and torn, and several long cuts in the fabric had blood seeping through them. "That was awesome! I never expected to have to fight my own creations, but all of them had scripts that were triggered by the items I placed, and it didn't seem to matter who exactly was placing them. They all fought against me exactly as if I was you!"

His health was dangerously low, but was inching upward as each second passed.

"I've been building scenarios for so long, I'd really forgotten how much fun it is just to play them. When acid started pouring out of the pot, and then started melting the witches, it smelled like.. victory!" he wheezed, bent over and gasping for air with his hands on his knees.

Yeah, that didn't happen, but I refused to get pulled into the trap of arguing about cause and effect, or split timelines, or all the other complete crap that made me hate time travel so deeply in the first place. "Sounds like you need to get out more," I replied.

"I should! It's a totally different way of looking at combat. I lost most of the advantages of a zone boss, like the astonishingly high health or the resistances that were outside the normal scale of an avatar. But the choices of attacks.. and utility spells.. and the buffs! They can all work together if you read all the text, and I never had to do that before!" He seemed a bit distracted, as though he was still reading some documentation, and his health was almost out of the red danger zone and back into a less-critical orange.

"So you were able to correct all the paradoxes by placing the items?" I asked. "The rock, the lizard, all of them?"

"I think so. I couldn't find that stupid lizard. I think he may have crawled off somewhere. But when I went to the goblin cave there was a lizard already there, so I just used that one, and it seemed to work. Even if it didn't really fix the paradox, that's only one left unrepaired, as opposed to five. I can easily pay for it with all the credits that are going to roll in when word of this perfect scenario gets out, and hundreds of players start to visit. Everything else was put right where you needed them to be, and right when you needed them, also."

"Good," I said, unloading the contents of two fully-charged blast pistols and an elemental whirlwind into his defenseless avatar. Any of the attacks could potentially have killed him, all of them did so quite easily. The sheer number of rewards filled my avatar's log faster than I could read; a boss kill, a scenario solution, shorthanded victory, achievements for avoiding all damage, and many other combinations that I couldn't make out as the log entries flew past. The credit reward was substantial.

His corpse fell to the ground, a confused expression permanently transfixed there. "Why did you do that?" a hollow voice said from around the room. "You seemed so.. nice?"

"I am usually quite nice, but everything has its limits." I holstered my pistols with a double spin, Old West style. "You see that spotted beast over there, still glaring at you?"

His corpse didn't look, but the voice said, "Yes?"

"He's not my pet."

Beastie nodded sharply, emphasizing the point with a snort, and a loud stomp of one hoof on the porcelain tile of the floor

"He's my friend."

A low gasp came from the gathered audience. I think I just burned a corpse. Without any additional words, a path was cleared to the opened drapes where I had entered the room. I guess they figured we had earned a safe and uneventful exit. Where's the fun in that?

"Beastie, shall we go?" I said, as I offered my arm to him. His hoof curled inside my elbow, and we set out... towards the front door, a direction completely opposite of the path made for us, causing many guards to shuffle panickedly out of our way.

That's right, boys. Move aside. Kate and Beastie go where they want.

It was a long walk through many lovely rooms, our steps echoing under the highest of ceilings. The decor in each was immaculate, and there was an incredible by-play between the accent and contrast wall colors. I have to admit, dead Brad, you really know how to bring a room together.

Once we were at, and then through, the ornate front door, Beastie pulled away from my arm. He had something in mind. The lizard popped his head out of my jacket, wanting to see where the bovosaur had gone, so I stopped and turned to watch with him.

Aware of the numerous eyes upon him. Beastie gave everyone inside the manor a mischievous wave goodbye, reached to one side of the door, and rang the front bell.