"I can't believe I didn't notice that huge ass knight was Galehaut," Merlin replied."I'm so sorry.Wewillget him back.Leave it to Maleagant to lock down your greatest weakness."
"He is my greatest strength," Lancelot replied softly.
"The two aren't mutually exclusive, and oft go hand in hand.Come on, I think there's a dragon not far from here, and the prize for defeating it is supposed to be barnon."
Barnon.Bar none.That wasn't a piece of slang he'd heard yet.He must be getting old.Impressed he'd figured it out so quickly."Sure, why not.Fighting a monster that actually exists in-game will be a nice change of pace.Though I always really hate killing dragons."
"Don't think you have to kill it," Merlin said thoughtfully as they mounted their horses and headed off at a leisurely pace."I mean, that's an option, but my impression reading up on it is that there are multiple solutions and different prizes based on whether your choice was one of strength, wisdom, cleverness, on and on.I certainly don't want to go around killing dragons.No dragon ever hurt me except when I was asking for it."
Lancelot laughed.He'd once startled a dragon and gotten whacked in the chest by its tail and sent right off a cliff.Luckily, the landing had been a lake.Dragons, real dragons anyway, preferred to keep to themselves, protecting their troves of whatever had become their deep, abiding obsession.He'd met a dragon that liked to collect bones, another that had a hoard of shoes… and one dragon, mad with age, who had decided to start collecting children.That had been a sad day.
The sky was a beautiful blue, nothing at all like the dull gray of the real sky, but more like pictures of the world before they'd had to release a special gas that mitigated global warming.Supposedly in about a hundred years or so the problem would be fixed and the gas could be destroyed, but Lancelot wasn't all that convinced the ruling houses would do anything that risked the status quo.
Gradually at first, and then sharply, the foothills rose in height and then were absorbed by the craggy mountains.He brought up his map."So where is the dragon?"
"Somewhere in this area," Merlin replied, calling up his own map and sharing the location.
"Not much further then."Lancelot pulled up his stats, but he'd been out of the game long enough that everything had fully recharged.He'd need to get his sword into a smithy for repairs soon, but not quite yet.The benefits of having shelled out for a super fancy, if grossly historically inaccurate, sword.
Off in the distance, he could just barely see another group of players, four of them."Surprised we haven't seen more people.Thought we'd already be inundated."
"I think the game has something to prevent that kind of Mt.Everest nightmare."Merlin made a face, and Lancelot agreed whole heartedly.Back in the earliest days of full-immersive games, people would form long ass lines to get their turn at various quests.Even with all kinds of fixes, it could still be a problem in many games.The trend had been named after some old-school tendency to climb stupid ass mountains, to the point that a line had formed on the most famous ones, people lining up to freeze to death or suffer oxygen deprivation or vanish into the void from a terrible fall.
Edge of Knighthad accounted for that, though, apparently."They really meant it when they said this would be a whole new level of gaming.If only turning off the pain sensors actually worked.Not enjoying that we lack the one good thing about virtual ass-kickings.Doesn't seem fair."
"I wish I'd had more control over how this would all come to pass, but the spell I used…" Merlin swallowed and looked away.
A chill ran down Lance's spine."I remember.I was distracted by everything else, but you said the cost will be great.What does that mean?What price did we pay—or will we pay?"
Merlin's mouth set into a grim line, and he stared off into the distance, silent for several minutes before at last saying, "I don't know, exactly.The spell I used was called, in short,Second Chance.But to reclaim a fate that was forced awry, delay something as pivotal as our last stand against Maleagant…we will lose something important.Split between us, it will not be as bad as it would have been if I had done it alone, but I am still sorry for the likely pain that will befall us.I'll try to learn more, now that I am back, though it will take me time to locate all my old resources."He brightened."But I can get my garden back!Even if it's only digital, it will suffice."
At that, Lancelot laughed."Yourgarden?I'm pretty certain that garden belonged to Morgan and Guinevere and no one else."
"I started it!"Merlin said, heaving a sigh."Maybe I can get to work on that after we've seen what this dragon has to offer.Should have thought of that sooner; Morgan willkillme if I don't have her spell components already growing."
"Especially the deadly ones," Lancelot said with a laugh."Morgan without her nightshade and hemlock and everything else is a danger to us all.Well, everyone but Gwen."Because despite their drastically different upbringings, the daughter of a harlot who grew up on the streets and the daughter of a powerful lord who'd spent most of her life in a convent, they had been thick as thieves.At any given moment, when they weren't needed elsewhere, Morgan and Gwen would be in their beloved garden.Morgan had loved Arthur and Merlin, and Gwen had loved Elaine, but they would have committed atrocities for each other without hesitation.They were as close as Merlin and Lancelot.
The road turned from difficult to dangerous, a narrow strip along a cliff face, where one wrong move would send them plummeting right off the edge.It wouldn't kill them, as game mechanics seemed to hold when they weren't battling Maleagant's forces."Camelot mode."
"What?"
Lancelot replied over his shoulder, "At the moment we're just playing a game, right?The whole 'the game stops responding to commands and pain is way too real' never seems to activate until we're in battle, or at least in danger from Maleagant's goons.Like we go into a special mode.Camelot Mode."
Merlin laughed from behind him."I should try to track when that does in fact kick in.I was focused entirely on if I could track them, be alerted before they show, but I didn't think to track the game itself.I was focused on Maleagant's particular energies.Hmm…"
It wasn't hard to tell he was lost in coding or something after that, the same way it had once been easy to tell when he was lost to his books and scrolls.Lancelot left him to it, putting his own attention on their surroundings, which were growing increasingly treacherous.
Eventually, the road fell away entirely.Literally, right before their eyes.The group that had once been far in the distance collapsed with the road, and there was fuck all Lancelot could do about it as they vanished into the valley far, far below."That's gonna suck.Hope they have what they need to heal up."
"Environmental deaths drop your stats by at least one fifth, all the way up to half, and then they continue to decrease by one percent an hour until you either reach a healer or create the healing components yourself."Merlin pulled up what looked like a guidebook."That valley has plenty of everything they'll need to heal up.And this particular hazard will reset in an hour.We can either wait for the bridge to reappear or find another way."
"May as well find another way.It's not like we're on a schedule, and the more we know about the game, the better."Lancelot scanned the environment, the back of his neck prickling all of a sudden."We're being watched."He called up his master control screen and tried to turn down the pain sensor—to no avail.Like it had seized."Hope you're ready, because we're in Camelot Mode."
Merlin swore softly."I need to pin down how they find us, because we're walking into an ambush every time we log in."
A booming roar, loud enough to shake the mountains, snapped their gazes to the sky.
"Guess we found the dragon," Lancelot said grimly."We can't fight here, and if we go back the way we came, we'll get pinned or worse."
