Before she could take a step forward, the air around her whirled with golden light. Everything lurched, the walls bowing inward, then out. Spark squeezed her eyes closed, fighting the sudden nausea. Now was not the best time for the game to decide to transport her to the next level. Though she could log out there, and hopefully return to the same place when she got another chance to play.
But when would that be? Vonda wouldn’t let her sneak another session on the FullD, and then there was the little problem of her wrist. Spark doubted VirtuMax would allow her to sim until it healed—which would thrill the Terabins. No, she had to finish this now.
Biting her lip hard to distract herself from the pain, Spark opened her eyes.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Thomas,” Aran said, ducking out of his room.
The bard looked up from the low couch and left off strumming his guitar.
“What is it?”
“I need to see the place where the game interfaces with the Realm of Faerie,” Aran said. “If you know where that is.”
Time for him to get started on his assignment for the queen—and figure out if he could actually succeed.#p#分页标题#e#
Thomas plucked out a melancholy chord, then set his guitar aside and rose.
“Very well. I am honor-bound to aid you, though I like it not. Although I doubt you will be able to accomplish this task you’ve accepted so foolishly.”
Aran gave him a close look. “Since you’re the one responsible for hooking the game up to the realm in the first place, why doesn’t the queen get you to do this reverse-hacking?”
“My connection with the mortal world is broken. Even had I wanted to, I could not do this thing for her.”
“Fair enough. Don’t sound so excited about it, though.” Aran let the edge of sarcasm in his voice mask his anxiety. He still had zero idea how he was going to pull this off.
“Come,” Thomas said, holding the tent flap open. “Though I urge you to consider returning to the mortal world. You will see soon enough how impossible the queen’s request is.”
Aran followed him out into the constant night. “Maybe.”
Was the bard only helping because he was certain Aran would fail? Well, he’d prove Thomas wrong. Somehow.
They walked silently through the dark oak forest surrounding the court. When they ran out of trapped-faerie lights, Thomas raised his hand and conjured a ball of silvery-blue radiance. It reflected eerily off the branches and points of light in the bushes that looked like watching eyes.
“I don’t suppose you have any advice for me?” Aran asked. “You know, being the lead programmer and everything.”
“No.”
Thomas did not elaborate, and Aran supposed he was lucky the bard was even helping him at all.
Soon, the oaks were replaced by pale-barked trees with shimmering leaves. Everything was washed of color, the trees and leaves rendered in black and gray. Moonlight slanted down into a clearing ahead. At the edge of the trees, Thomas halted.
“Step into the faerie ring,” he said, pointing to the circle of mushrooms at the center of the glade. “When you reach your destination, mark well the location of the clearing, so that you may come back to this place.”
“Wait—you’re not coming?” A splinter of panic lodged in Aran’s throat.
“This is your quest, BlackWing, not mine. I shall await your return.”
A million scared questions clamored in Aran’s mind, but he refused to ask any of them. Thomas had made it clear he was on his own, and totally expected Aran to tweak it. Swallowing back his fear, he strode past the bard and into the moonlit clearing.
When he stepped into the center of the mushroom-bounded circle, a cold wind pricked his skin. The air wavered, and the wind increased, buffeting him furiously. Aran hunched his shoulders against the gusts. After a few moments the air quieted. Shaking his hair out of his face, he looked up and saw that he still stood in the center of the faerie ring. But everything else had changed.
Twilight deepened the air, the last light of sunset tipping over the horizon, and the world held more color. The moss under his feet was a deep, velvety green. The mushrooms surrounding him shone like small moons, and the pale-barked trees did, in fact, have silvery leaves.
In front of him, like a mirror image, stood another clearing. Unlike his, the late afternoon sun illuminated the rich colors of flowers surrounding the faerie ring. And the mushrooms were different, a mix of the pale ones surrounding him and bright red ones, speckled with white.