CA Chapter Twenty-eight

The next morning, Alpha woke to find herself alone with Toggle. She sat up, rubbing her gritty eyes, and looked at the gnome, who had rekindled the fire and was cooking some kind of eggs on top of a thin, flat rock.

“Toggle?” she asked, her mind chugging slowly as she tried to figure out what was wrong. Vexxx and Tess had school and work. Amythyst was… probably furious, or hurt, or both. Still, there was something else bothering her. What was it?

Throwing back the covers, Alpha jumped out of her bed. Her feet tangled in the fuzzy nest, and only her high Dexterity kept her from falling on her face. “Toggle! Where’s Amy?”

Toggle looked up, blinking his bulbous eyes blankly. “She was gone when I woke, Mistress. I thought she must be feeling better. Is that not right? You and Lord Myles are always saying-”

Alpha sliced a hand through the air, cutting him off. He flinched, and she cursed inwardly. She’d have to apologize later, though. “How long ago was that? Do you know when she left?”

“I woke up when the sun rose, Mistress. That was… not quite an hour ago? I heard birds singing, so I climbed a tree and found some eggs-” The gnome shrank back as Alpha summoned her sword from her inventory and whirled around, eyes wild.

“Tracks,” she mumbled. “Surely there are tracks. Why don’t I have the [Tracking] skill?” Looking back at Toggle, Alpha urgently said, “Toggle, do you have [Tracking]? We have to find her!” Looking up at the sky, she shouted, “Amythyst! Myles?”

“She’s fine,” Myles said, and Alpha whirled, instinctively swinging her sword at the man who had appeared behind her. The Sword Reaper swayed back, easily avoiding the trailing point of Alpha’s blade, and even smiled slightly as he looked at her. If the smile was a little cooler than usual, only someone as familiar with the AI’s expressions as Alpha would have noticed.

“We should hurry, though. She’s close to the farm,” he said when he saw Alpha was listening. Turning, he strode away, boots silent in the dew-soaked grass.

Alpha started after him, then hesitated, glancing back at Toggle. “Toggle, I’m sorry. I… Just stay here, all right? We’ll be back soon.” Though he was obviously perplexed, the gnome nodded obediently, and Alpha hurried after Myles. He’d already vanished into the stand of trees where he’d found the wood for their fire, however, and she found herself casting around any clues as to where he had gone. A half-oval pressed into the soft ground ahead of her might be part of a footprint…

Congratulations! You have learned the skill, [Tracking]!

[Tracking] is now Level 1.

“Awesome,” she muttered as she swiped away the notification. “So helpful.” Still, as she headed that way, a few other, similar marks were easily visible, and soon she broke through the other side of the copse of trees, then came to a complete halt, staring at the valley below.

“What… is that?”

Myles, who was a few feet ahead of her and to her right, glanced over his shoulder. A ghost of his usual grin crossed his face. “It’s a cube farm.”

Alpha frowned and squinted into the distance. Rolling hills descended gently into fields of lush green grass. Wooden posts that probably held up wire fences that couldn’t be seen from this far away surrounded the fields. Colorful crops vanished into the distance, and in the closer fields - pastures? - animals roamed. Even from here, however, she could tell there was something very strange about the creatures.

“Are those cows?” She tried to focus on the black and white blobs moving slowly through one field. In the next area over, pink bumps lay in pools of wetly glistening brown. There was a little red house that might be a chicken coop, though she couldn’t make out any chickens, and beyond it all was a sprawling farmhouse with a covered porch.

Myles shrugged. “You can see for yourself. Let’s go.” With that, he took off down the hill, seeming to all but fly as he used the slope to gain momentum.

Alpha ran after him, though she didn’t give herself over to gravity quite as willingly. When Myles reached the first fence and vaulted over it, she was still halfway up the valley side, though she nearly tripped and rolled the rest of the way when her brain finally processed what it was seeing.

The cows were cubes.

In fact, all of the animals were cubes. They had no faces, legs, or tails, though they were the right size and color to be the animals they seemed to represent. The ‘cows’ were furry, the ‘pigs’ smooth and covered in mud, and the chickens, now that she was close enough to see their small forms, were probably covered in feathers. But they were also perfectly cuboid.

As she watched, a cube-cow seemed to notice Myles, who was cutting through their pasture. Ponderously, it began moving toward him, letting out a wet-sounding ‘Moo’ as it went. One by one, each of the other thirty-odd creatures followed suit, until Myles was leading a slow parade of black and white cubes about five feet long on each side. Occasionally, one would bump into another, and their surfaces would jiggle, almost like gelatin, until their sides settled back into smooth, furry planes.

“What the halite?” Alpha muttered, shaking her head. She lifted a hand to the fencepost ahead of her, planning to jump the fence, just like Myles had, when something else caught her eye.

It was Amy. She was staggering around the outside of the field. Her left leg dragged behind her, but she was moving surprisingly quickly. It looked like she hadn’t been able to go over or through the fence, but she was walking toward the corner of the pig pen, where Alpha could just see what looked like a gate.

Glancing from Myles to Amy, Alpha saw that the Sword Reaper would reach Amy long before Alpha could, so she decided not to go into the pasture with the cows. In spite of the fact that they looked harmless, as long as you didn’t manage to get smashed in between them, there was something about them that sent a chill down her spine.

Turning, Alpha raced along the outside of the fence, following the same path Amy probably had. Now that she was on relatively flat ground, she was able to pick up speed without fear of falling, so by the time Myles caught up to Amy, Alpha was close enough to hear their conversation.

“Amy!” Myles called. He reached out and grasped her arm, just above the elbow, catching and turning her so her unsteady legs started to fall out from under her. Judging by the grass-stained and muddy state of her clothes, it would be far from the first time she fell. Myles caught her, however, and lifted her into his arms like a knight rescuing a princess.

Then he shouted and jerked, nearly dropping Amy’s thrashing form, as she pulled an arrow from her inventory and stabbed at him with it. Her grip was weak and unsteady, and after creating a few shallow cuts, the arrowhead caught in Myles’ clothes and pulled from her fingers. A moment later, she had another one, though, and she was wielding it with a fierce determination that had Myles oozing blood from a dozen small wounds.

“Myles! Put her down!” Alpha yelled, putting on a last burst of speed and grabbing at Amy’s arm.

If anything, Myles held Amy even closer as Alpha tugged the weapon from the woman’s feeble grasp.

“No,” he said, expression grim. “She’s trying to get into the pen with the pigs. They’ll kill her.”

Horrified, Alpha looked at Amy. Indeed, the woman’s eyes were locked on the simple latch that closed the pen, and she reached out a hand toward it as Myles struggled to hold her back without hurting her or being hurt in turn. Alpha opened her inventory, looking for rope, twine, or something else to restrain the frenzied woman, before realizing that she had a much simpler way of handling the situation. How effective it would be in the long run, she wasn’t sure, but it was worth a try.

Looking straight at Amy, Alpha said, “Amy, stop fighting. Stand up and hold still.”

Instantly, Amy froze, her status as Alpha’s ‘servant’ circumventing her free will. Yet another arrow fell from her hand and clattered to the ground with the other half dozen that were already there. She twisted in Myles’ arms, but this time she did seem to be trying to stand, rather than just escape. Cautiously, Myles lowered her to her feet.

Alpha stepped forward, staring into the unfocused gaze of Amythyst’s doppelganger. “Amy,” she said, gently. “It’s all right. We’re here to help you. You’re in Veritas Online right now. Do you remember Veritas?”

Amy twitched convulsively, and her chin jerked sideways and down. Did her eyes look a little calmer? Was there some kind of comprehension there?

Reaching out slowly, Alpha laid a gentle hand on Amy’s arm. She felt the tense muscles beneath the fine green leather of the bracer on the other woman’s forearm, and said, as soothingly as she could, “My name is Ava. You were in an accident, and you’re recovering now, but you’re in Veritas because your body… needs more time. I’m - we’re - here to keep you safe and help you get better.”

Amy blinked. Once, and again, like someone trying to wake up from a deep sleep. Her eyes turned to Myles. Her lips tried several times to form words, and when she finally succeeded, she said, “No… man…”

Alpha frowned. “No man? You don’t want a man to help you?” She shot a look at Myles, and he reluctantly stepped back, though he stayed between the two women and the gate of the pig pen. The pink cubes inside the pen, like the ‘cows’, seemed to have somehow noticed the three people, though they had no visible sensory organs. All of the things were pressed up against the wooden fence, and for the first time, Alpha heard a soft hiss from the wood where they were leaning on it. Glancing down, she saw that the white picket fence was turning dark, and the paint was peeling away. Narrowing her eyes, she used [Identify] on the jiggling thing.

Porkcube - Acid. Level 80.

“Ah, I think we need to go.” Looking behind her, she saw that the cows, too, were crowding close, and both cows and pigs were ‘mooing’ and ‘oinking’ hungrily. The wire that corralled the cows looked corroded and black.

“Yeah. We need to go right now.” She took a step back. “Amy, I’m sorry to do this, but you need to follow me.” She thought for a moment as one of the fence posts on the pasture began to angle out in a way that she suddenly found deeply concerning. “Um, Amy, follow five steps behind me until we get back to camp.”

Amy’s body stiffened, and her expression turned from one of confusion to frustration and anger. Alpha grimaced, knowing she’d probably just destroyed any goodwill she’d built, but ignored it as the wood of the pigpen fence cracked threateningly. Turning, she took off back up the hill, pausing just long enough to be certain that Amy was five steps behind, and Myles was following close behind Amy.

The journey back up the hillside was much more difficult than it had been going down. Alpha had five hundred points of Stamina, but even though she didn’t use a single skill, it was down by over a hundred before she stood under the sheltering branches of the trees again. Her lungs and calves burned, and though Amy wasn’t bent over or breathing faster, Alpha knew that she, too, would be experiencing the all-too-realistic effects of over-exerting herself. Myles, of course, looked completely comfortable, though he hovered near Amy and kept reaching out a hand as if to take her elbow, then snatched it back.

Alpha was leaning over, hands braced on her knees, gasping for air as she looked down the hill. Some of the black and white cow-cubes had escaped their confinement and made it halfway up the hillside, but now seemed to have lost interest and were simply oozing their way across the grass at random.

Glaring up at Myles, Alpha said, “What did you do this time?”

Myles, who had all but admitted that he created this dungeon specifically for them, cleared his throat, glancing away. “It’s a cube farm,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Alpha stood and pointed a trembling finger down the hill. “A gelatinous cube farm? Are you kidding me?”

He shrugged a little sheepishly, and as angry as she was at him, she was glad he sounded more like himself when he said, “It was funny.”

Alpha rubbed her temples. “Vexxx is a lightning mage. Lightning does almost nothing to gelatinous cubes. You, Tess, and I are all physical combat types. Tess has her fancy fire axe, but not enough Stamina to take out fifty mobs by herself. How well do physical attacks work on gelatinous cubes?”

One corner of Myles’ mouth ticked up. “Not well?”

“Not well?” she all but shouted. “How about not at all? Or close enough! How are we supposed to beat acid with lightning, fire, and pointy pieces of metal that melt on contact?”

The response came from a completely unexpected direction, and Alpha turned to stare at Amy as she spoke again. While the word might have been slow and slurred, it was clear enough.

“Base,” Amy said.

Myles looked at her and grinned.