Cronica Acadia Read online

  CRONICA ACADIA: BEND SINISTER

  by

  C. J. Deering

  Copyright © 2017 by C. J. Deering

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition

  ISBN: 069289991X

  ISBN 13: 9780692899915

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909095

  CRONICA ACADIA : BEND SINISTER, Los Angeles, CA

  cronicaacadia.com

  Cover by Bukovero

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Go I know not whither and fetch I know not what.

  —Russian fairy tale

  I put on my robe and wizard hat.

  —bloodninja

  The dwarves recount their history in drunken song that owes more to melody than to fidelity. But this is a human history, and we will tell it faithfully.

  The elves begin their stories in the middle and meander back and forth before coming out at the end. But this is a human story, and we will tell it in the human tradition, from the beginning.

  —Cronica Acadia

  I

  If Dangalf had known it was his last ever commute home from work, it might not have seemed so bad. But he didn’t know that, and so as he sat in traffic waiting to get home to the game, it felt interminable. It’s not important from what job Dangalf was driving home; he was like millions in the modern world spending too many of their waking hours doing something that gave them no satisfaction and barely paid the bills, which included ever-increasing student-loan payments for a degree that had no bearing whatsoever on his present occupation. Still he had a photocopy of that degree displayed in his cubicle to remind himself that he was better than his circumstances, even if it was a source of amusement for his less educated but equally paid coworkers. And though the nature of his particular unrewarding method of making a living is unimportant, he in fact worked for the state employment office.

  Don’t ask him how he had gone from a prestigious program at an expensive university to being a government employee. He was not sure himself. He could only recall the speed bumps of the descent: professional rejection, unemployment, a broken heart, more professional rejection, more unemployment, financial difficulties. During one bout of unemployment, he began testing for government jobs, which fulfilled the required work search for his unemployment benefits. He was subsequently hired by the same agency that administered these benefits and had since remained gainfully employed. Unemployment, after all, was a booming industry.

  But this full-time employment only met his basic needs and at a dreadful cost. His hope and confidence withered. It seemed apparent he would not escape his lower-middle-class existence. He would not be celebrated or successful. His father, who had worked his way up from the working poor into the lower middle class, had summed up his son’s aspirations perfectly: Dangalf had expected the unexpected, and the expected had happened.

  Life was cruel. Real life was cruel, he corrected himself. There was still the game.

  Dangalf felt that if there were a meter on his desk, showing how much he was earning, after taxes, after gasoline and time spent commuting, if there were such a meter on his desk slowly turning over a penny at a time, showing how little he was earning, it would be all he needed to quit. Life was too precious. Work bought his life from him for a pittance. It gave him no creative outlet and robbed him of his individuality. It forced him to be with people he didn’t like and took him away from those he did like. All his current existence proved to him was that not everyone whose life went tragically wrong ended up on the street. Or on the ledge.

  If there was a plus side to his menial, unchallenging job, it was that he could practically do it on autopilot. Even most of the conversations he had during the workday were by rote. And that meant he could devote the higher functions of his brain to thinking about the game. He would plan new strategy to overcome present challenges, and he would even crack a rare smile when he thought back to recent triumphs. Thinking about the game was almost as good as playing it.

  He wanted to quit his job before he was too old to do something else—but perhaps he was too old already? Talking to a steady stream of unemployed people each day sapped his desire to join their ranks. What could he do that would provide him accomplishment and a paycheck? Hero, seeker, mercenary, and adventurer were viable occupations only in the game.

  Dangalf made it home after it was already dark. In his too-small apartment were two mismatched desks, back to back, each laden with overclocked CPUs and dual monitors with a tangle of peripheral devices. It was a gross violation of feng shui and probably several fire codes. His gangly roommate, Doppelganger, was already playing the game on one of the computers. (Dangalf and Doppelganger were not their birth names, of course, but are the names most fitting for this story. These are the names of their avatars in the game, the names they chose for themselves.)

  Doppelganger was his oldest and dearest friend, and Dangalf was learning to despise him. He resented that Doppelganger could play the game all day while Dangalf went to work. He knew that Doppelganger’s continued unemployment, his use of credit cards and other people’s money to finance himself, and his protracted absence from the job market were hurting Doppelganger most of all, and Dangalf only incidentally, but Dangalf still decided to take it personally.

  Doppelganger barely left his computer, and too
few of those excursions were into the shower. Dangalf was certain the reason that none of his sexy, female neighbors ever showed up at his door with a bottle of wine and asked him if he wanted to hang out was because of Doppelganger. Dangalf had wanted Doppelganger to move out for months now, and tonight he was determined to speak his mind.

  Dangalf did not rush to join his friend at the opposite computer. He instead took care of only the most rudimentary of housekeeping and hygiene so that he could devote the rest of the night to the game.

  Doppelganger played at the computer with the History Channel on TV and with music playing on his iPod speakers. Multitasking, he called it. Dangalf turned the music and TV off.

  “How’d the job search go?”

  “Great. I didn’t find anything.”

  “Did you look?”

  “And it’s your business how?”

  “Because,” Dangalf said, “you’re committed to paying half the rent. Just how much more unemployment do you have?”

  If you can lie a question, that’s what Dangalf had done. He had quite illegally looked up his friend’s status in the state’s computers and knew Doppelganger had just gotten an extension for six months more of unemployment compensation. That was bad news for Dangalf. He wanted Doppelganger to become gainfully employed so that he could kick him out with a clear conscience. He knew Doppelganger would never get a job as long as he was being paid to play the game.

  Doppelganger shouted with excitement because of something that happened in the game or because he didn’t want to answer Dangalf.

  Dangalf sat down to the game with a bottle of beer and a can of chili and popped the top off of both. The chili looked like dog food. He stuck a plastic spoon into its solid, greasy mass. Cooking and dishwashing took precious game time, and the chili would only be minimally improved by warmth. Dangalf slipped on his earphones and mic as he logged on. The insults and drudgery of the day faded as the game loaded. The developer’s bouncy cinematic finished, the screen darkened, and the orchestral music rose. The words faded in and out on screen: Hearken back to a simpler time…when all your problems could be solved with an axe.

  The game was Cronica, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG. There were millions of paying subscribers who logged on to the Internet to play with and against other subscribers in a medieval world of swords and sorcery based on a pulp-fiction novel.

  The loading screen featured a map of the game world Acadia. There were the free northern kingdoms of Vinlandia, Hybernia, and Albinia (human, dwarf, and elf lands, respectively) and to the south, Palusia, Sylvania, and Brimstone (orc, troll, and goblin lands, respectively). At the center of all the lands was the neutral Nemetia, home of the sprites, gnomes, and other magical creatures.

  Dangalf was a human mage and Doppelganger, a human warrior. The other founding members of their group had been Regicide, another human warrior, and Elftrap the she-elf druid. Though Elftrap was male, he played a beautiful she-elf. Regicide had been the best player of them all, maybe the best player in the entire virtual world. But about six months ago, it seemed he had dropped off the face of the earth. (That description would be more accurate than any of them could imagine.)

  Game dynamics required that players form complimentary groups to complete many of the quests. And these groups took names that were usually pretentious or vulgar. They had gone the pretentious route and called themselves the Keepers of the Broken Blade—Dangalf had spontaneously come up with the name, and it was agreed by the other founding members that it was a nice mixture of the mystical and the martial. Or to use game terminology, it was of the White School and of the Red School.

  After Regicide had disappeared, the remaining Keepers had to replace him, and the dwarf blackguard Nerdraaage replied to their online post. Elftrap had a problem with Nerdraaage. First and foremost, he was playing against type. Dwarves were not the best blackguards, a class that required stealth and agility. Second, Elftrap thought that the name Nerdraaage showed a complete lack of creativity as he should have gone a different direction when he found the names Nerdrage and Nerdraage already taken by other players. Nerdraaage countered that his name was better than the other versions because it “Sounded angrier.” His spunky defense of his name won over Dangalf and Doppelganger and, with Elftrap’s grudging consent, the dwarf became the fourth member of the Keepers. It was a good grouping, and they had become like family even though none of them, save Dangalf and Doppelganger, had ever met in person. But they spent almost every night and weekend in the virtual world together. Even their arguments were familial in nature. When the smart and sarcastic Elftrap would cut down the naïve Nerdraaage, he would respond angrily, “Shut up, girl!” or some other gender-based insult for their only member with a female avatar.

  She-elf avatars all had beautiful faces and gravity-defying bodies. And they wore the skimpiest of outfits. Clearly the game makers realized that the vast majority of their players were horny men and boys desperate to get a glimpse of even avatar cleavage.

  The Keepers’ races dictated that they play for the Acadian Alliance of Righteous Races (AARR), the alliance of humans, elves, and dwarves. They were the good guys (or “puritans” or “vanilla” as the AARR was flamed on message boards by opposing players). Their adversary was the Legion Pangaea, or just Legion, comprised of orcs, goblins, and trolls, and the players of these races reveled in their role as the bad guys. They were the “uglies” or “RGB” (for the red, green, and blue skin colors of the orcs, goblins, and trolls respectively) as Alliance posters flamed back.

  Cronica provided a fully realized virtual world that offered camaraderie, discovery, conquest, and honor. All elements that Dangalf, and he suspected most players, found lacking IRL. The rewards were only virtual, but there was no denying the rush players felt when victorious. With victory came gold and reputation gains, and, unlike IRL, reputation meant everything.

  Dangalf sometimes wondered if he was addicted to the game, but if so he was a functional addict. Doppelganger had told him stories about the Far East where Cronica players were sent to boot camps to break their addiction. Some players were reported to have committed suicide over setbacks in the game.

  Though the Keepers were separated by thousands of virtual miles, it was only a matter of tossing a coin into a nearby water well and instantly teleporting from that one to any other well in Acadia. (Usually to the well to which you had intended to teleport.) Tonight that destination well was at the Temple of the Red Rose, where the Keepers gathered in preparation for an attack on the Witchfinder General. He had defeated them several times before, but they had been close to defeating him during their last attempt, and now they were convinced that they had the gear and the strategy to finally dispatch him.

  The Witchfinder General was an NPC, or nonplayer character. More than that he was a boss, an especially powerful NPC designed to defeat all but the best groups of players playing their best game. Game lore explained that he was once one of the greatest enemies of the Legion until his zealotry turned him against all forms of magic and ultimately led to his corruption by black magic. Now holed up in his temple fortress, he was the most difficult and rewarding quest for only the most advanced players. Sadly, he also represented the endgame, the last and greatest quest available to players and the literal end of the game according to game lore.

  An expansion of Cronica, adding new lands, quests, and (most exciting of all!) flying mounts, was already announced. Doppelganger was especially eager as the expansion meant he would be able to promote to Dragoon, a dragon-riding warrior. Though the expansion was promoted vigorously by Journeyman, the makers of Cronica, the release date was still not set. Veteran players like the Keepers were running desperately short of new experiences in the game. There were very few blank spots left on Dangalf’s virtual world map.

  The Witchfinder General did not disappoint. It was a glorious battle that required all of the skill and teamwork honed over their years of play. Doppelganger, the tank, with his
metal armor, engaged the general at close range and took the brunt of the damage as his class was intended to do. Dangalf, the damage dealer, stood on a balcony and blasted the general with high-damage fireballs and frost bolts. Nerdraaage, the other damage dealer, would stab the general in the back with poisoned daggers, only to disappear when the general turned his rage toward him.

  Blackguards were expert at evasion, even to the point of turning invisible (unappear they called it unapologetically), which was a necessity. Nerdraaage in his leather armor could not survive even one direct blow from the general. And if he died, he would have to buy back his soul from the ferryman, and by the time he returned to the battle, the other Keepers would probably be dead as well.

  Elftrap used his druid powers to heal Doppelganger, who, even with his armor and warrior resilience, would have died a dozen times while battling the general.

  Everyone knew their roles so well it was as if the team-chat feature was unnecessary. They slew the Witchfinder General in under twenty minutes, and he gave a dying soliloquy that lasted half that long, but they were too busy celebrating to pay attention. Dangalf and Elftrap even danced. (Their avatars appeared to dance with each other after they each typed the dance command.) They all took part in some cheering and bragging, and so the team-chat feature had not gone to waste after all.

  Dangalf did not have to work the next day (or later today since it was already past midnight) but he knew he had to go to bed at some point. As his computer powered down, he still felt good from the play tonight. Was it possible that Cronica could actually lead to the release of endorphins? He only knew that the game made him feel good when nothing else did.

  In his good spirits, he looked upon Doppelganger with pity. He wasn’t such a bad sort. Yes, his hygiene wasn’t great. He didn’t wash his dishes and left dirty clothes all about. But Dangalf was suddenly overcome with a great sympathy for the fragile human being sitting at the desk across from him. Doppelganger had nowhere else and more importantly no one else. How could he ask him to leave?

  “I was watching the military channel earlier today,” said Doppelganger excitedly. “And they were saying that paratroopers yell, ‘Geronimo!’ because the guy who started it saw the movie Geronimo the night before he jumped. And that had me thinking, what if he had seen a different movie from 1939? Paratroopers could be jumping out of planes yelling, ‘Gunga Din!’ Or ‘The Wizard of Oz!’ Or ‘Beau Geste!’ It could have changed the course of the war if, when they jumped, our paratroopers yelled ‘Good-bye, Mr. Chips!’”