Mortal Quest 3

Mortal Quest 3

By Alex Johnson

CHAPTER ONE - Damage Control

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Jackie had made sure of it. As Head Developer for Gauntlet Games’ newest release, ‘Mortal Quest 3’, Jackie had scrutinized every element of the fantasy game before it’s launch. For the past three years in fact, her every waking- and often even sleeping- moments had been consumed with designing and building the game’s virtual reality experience with meticulous detail. Jackie designed all of the game’s beautiful and vast landscapes, every one of the complex atmospheric conditions, and the authentic architecture of multiple castles and villages. She created all of the game’s non-player characters and creatures, crafting customized artificial intelligence for each one. She invented all of the game’s weapons, imagined all of the game’s magic spells, and wrote all of the game’s storylines. Jackie had even learned medieval music theory in order to write the game’s entire score. There wasn’t a single aspect of Mortal Quest 3 that Jackie hadn’t built and examined ad nauseum. So when she learned that players were reporting a massive glitch in her game, that dragons had been spotted in the Valley, Jackie was incredulous. Tim, one of the VPs at Gauntlet Games and Jackie’s closest ally at the company, was the first to notify her of the reports.

“It’s not just one person reporting this, Jackie. It’s several.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense, Tim. Nothing like what they’re reporting is showing up in the back-end code. I’ve gone through all of it, hundreds, if not thousands of times.”

“I know, but-“

“I need to talk to them,” Jackie interrupted. “Every single person claiming to have seen a dragon in the Valley. I need them on the phone immediately.”

“I just want to let you know that the Board has been made aware of these reports and well, they’re not happy.”

The Board. A group of shareholders that knew nothing about designing video games, but had invested enough money to give them unlimited power over everyone at Gauntlet. It was the Board’s decision to lay off nearly the entire team that produced ‘Mortal Quest 2’ after the game didn’t meet the astronomical bar of success set by the original ‘Mortal Quest’. The team attributed the game’s uninspired outcome to the Board’s impractical demands of a nine-month turnaround time. The Board wouldn’t tolerate such insubordination, and heads were lined up on the chopping block. Though she was on that team, somehow Jackie was one of the few that were spared. After that, she kept her head down and focused on learning to design games for the rapidly expanding VR platforms. It had been five years since the disappointing release of ‘Mortal Quest 2’ when the Board notified Jackie that she was being promoted to Head Developer in charge of creating the triumphant return to the Mortal Quest saga, now in VR.

“Just get me those phone numbers.”

Jackie reached out to the players reporting to have seen dragons in the Valley, desperately trying to get an understanding of what they’d seen.

“Besides the dragon, was anything else out of the ordinary?” she probed. “Did it seem like there were any glitches in the animation at all? Anything like black patches? Any visible code appearing? Did gameplay freeze at all?” Jackie tried to offer every possible indicator of other faults in the game’s coding, but despite her efforts, the calls provided little value to her investigation.

“I’d never seen a dragon before,” one of the players responded. “I mean, on the TV commercials is one thing, but seeing one in VR is totally different. Honestly, as soon as I saw it, I freaked out and ran right into my kitchen table. Kudos to the graphics department over there.”

“I didn’t actually get much of a look at it,” another player said to Jackie’s disappointment. “It was kind of behind a building and I didn’t even see it until it had taken off and was flying away from me.”

“I was coming back from a quest when I saw a dragon flying out of the Valley,” a more experienced player reported. “I thought I was seeing things because dragons aren’t supposed to be able to get into the Valley, you know? I’d seen one once before on a quest and it was terrifying. With the amount of damage those things can do, I figured the whole village would be on fire when I got there.”

None of it helped explain how dragons had gotten into the Valley. Jackie had specifically designed the Valley as a safe area for players to convene before and after quests, to trade supplies, and to enjoy the merry happenings of Stoneground Village without worry of attack. She programmed player’s Battle and Magic abilities to automatically deactivate as soon as they entered the Valley parameters so that there could be absolutely zero possibility of fights breaking out. And most importantly, Jackie had designed the dragons to be unable to enter the Valley while players were at their most vulnerable. What these players were claiming defied the concrete logic of the game’s code and had begun to cause Jackie’s left eye to twitch. She rubbed the back of her palm into her eye and tried to focus on something positive. Cookies. She surprised herself by believing she could actually smell cookies baking. But… she actually did smell cookies baking! Jackie rolled her chair to the doorway of the spare bedroom which she used as her home office and stuck her head into the hallway.

“Murph?” she called. “Is that you? What’s that smell?”

“Hey Jax!” a voice called from the kitchen. Jackie’s boyfriend, Murph, popped his head into the hallway and flashed her a toothy smile. “Almond bars are almost done. I’m bringing them to the nursing home in an hour or so, but I’ll leave some out on the counter for you.” Oh Murph. He’d been Jackie’s rock for the past few years while she spent all of her time staring at code on a laptop or in some distant land inside her VR headset. When Gauntlet awarded her a considerable bonus upon the release of Mortal Quest 3, Jackie used the money to move her and Murph out of their tiny apartment and into a luxurious condo, hoping the gesture would help convey her extreme gratitude of Murph’s love and patience during the past few years.

Before she could even ask when Murph expected to be home that night, her phone began vibrating on her desk. She rolled back into the office and looked at the display. Tim again.

“Jackie.” She heard him say her name with the same severe tone that her parents used to use, referring to her as “Jaqueline”, when she was in trouble. Jackie braced for impact. “This situation has now gone nuclear. I’ve just been informed that at least three separate players have been hospitalized from seizures induced while they were in the game. One of them is a twelve-year-old kid. My phone’s been ringing nonstop with calls from lawyers, Jackie. Witnesses are all claiming that the players were being attacked by a dragon in the Valley when they started having seizures. What the hell is going on with our game?” Jackie felt her body instantly drench in an icy sweat.

“Seizures?! How is this possible? This has got to be some kind of scam, right? Some phony lawsuit to get money from us? I just don’t…” Jackie trailed off as her mind poured over endless lines of the game’s code.

“Jackie. The Board. At this point, they’re almost certainly going to pull the plug on the entire game. I called you first, but chances are they already know about these incidents. At this hour, I doubt they’ll make any large decisions, but you can bet they’ll be conferencing first thing tomorrow morning. I’m sorry to say, I think our game is as good as dead.”

“No! Tim! You can’t let them do that! Please! I can figure this out. I can fix this!”

“I sure hope so, Jackie. You created a truly remarkable game, but I don’t know what else can be done. The way I see it, you have until dawn to save it.”

“I just don’t understand why you have to actually go into the game,” Murph pined over the phone. “If there’s nothing irregular on the back end, then all these claims of seizures have to be some kind of coordinated hoax. Has anyone even confirmed that these people actually had seizures? Jax, your code is good. It’s solid. Mortal Quest 3 is a masterpiece.”

“If it’s all just a hoax, then there’s no danger of me going in there, right?” Jackie’s autopilot was managing her end of the call while she slurped an energy drink and pulled her hair into a low ponytail.

“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s a smart bet for us, you know?”

Jackie finished the drink and tried to stifle the inevitable burp that followed. “Murph, I love you, but I have to do this. If I don’t figure this out, they’re going to recall the entire game first thing in the morning. And if that happens, then the past three years of my life have all been for nothing. I may even go to jail.”

“Jackie, I-“

“There’s got to be something I’m missing that’s not showing up in the code. If I can just go to where the attacks happened, I might be able to find some type of clue, or just anything that looks out of the ordinary. It won’t take long, I promise. I’ll be ok. I love you.” Jackie hung up the phone before Murph could protest anymore and immediately felt a pain in her heart. He was so good to her and she hated disrespecting and disregarding his sound logic. As she pulled the sleek VR headset over her face, she silently promised to find a way to make this up to him. And then, everything went black.

Jackie’s eyes relaxed in the darkness, waiting for the game to load. Somewhere in the black, the sounds of a whimsical mandolin playing a medieval melody grew in the speakers over Jackie’s ears. The darkness softened into light, and as a second mandolin began to weave a new melody into the first, Jackie found herself soaring through puffy, white clouds. The clouds parted to reveal a lush and mountainous land below while pounding drums entered the music in her headphones, echoing Jackie’s rising heart rate. Though she had built the entire opening sequence, experiencing it countless times, she still felt an exhilarating rush from the first glimpses of her virtual world. She descended between two mountain ranges and into the Valley, flying over Stoneground Village and finally coming to rest at the foot of a castle in ruins. The music had come to its crescendo and the title, “Mortal Quest 3”, appeared before her eyes in its old English font. Jackie took a deep and proud breath, momentarily forgetting the catastrophe happening in the real-world. She simply delighted in the game’s beauty. But the moment passed as prompts to begin a new or existing appeared where the title had been and Jackie regained her focus. Selecting her existing character, Lesula the Overseer, Jackie entered the world of Mortal Quest 3.

Lesula spawned beside the river where Jackie had last been fine-tuning graphics in the water. Again, Jackie found herself appreciating her own craftsmanship. The river was as real as real; wet, mossy rocks jutted above the surface of the shallow water by Jackie’s feet. Small, white caps formed and disappeared in the fast current further out in the middle of the river. Layered sounds of gurgling water and a breeze gently moving through tree branches caressed her ears. Birds flying over the river were reflected flawlessly in the calm, shallow water. Its beauty was remarkable. No wonder Virtual Gamer Magazine had named ‘Mortal Quest 3’ their “Most Immersive Game of the Year”, Jackie mused. A mosquito buzzed around her left ear and Jackie instinctively swatted it away.

“A drink from these waters can restore even the weariest of travelers,” a tiny voice said behind her. She turned and, at first, saw no one. A small movement near the ground drew her gaze down, and she found herself looking into the big, brown eyes of an adorable Guiding Gnome. She recognized her creation in its crumbled hat, blunt nose, saucer eyes, and clunky shoes.

“Oh hello,” she said, laughing at her knee-jerk politeness towards even a computer-generated character running on artificial intelligence.

“My name is Bund. If you’re looking to cross the river, I can show you were to find a skiff.”

“Oh, no thank you. I’m going into the village.”

“I will show you the way then.” Guiding Gnomes. Like a proud parent, Jackie let Bund lead her on the path towards Stoneground Village.

Jackie was surprised to see so many active players in the village. News of the game’s real-life consequences didn’t seem to have much effect, apparently. She assumed a portion of them were there precisely because of the news, hoping to spot a rogue dragon in the Valley.

“Would you like to stop in the tavern for an ale?” Bund asked. “Perhaps you need to restock your supplies in the armory?” He was coded to be eager to help in any way possible.

“No, I’m headed to the cobbler hut. Apparently, someone was attacked by a dragon on the hill behind it.”

“A noble quest of danger and intrigue! You must be very brave! I am very brave too. I will help you on your quest.”

The pair arrived at the cobbler hut and Jackie remarked at how realistic the hut’s dilapidated window frames looked. It took her a full week to code those frames, she recalled. On the small green hill behind the hut, Jackie found the spot where one of the attacks took place. To her dismay, she saw nothing that would indicate anything had ever happened at the spot, except for a small patch of scorched, black earth.

“It seems that someone met a fiery fate here,” Bund chirped. Jackie looked at the gnome and tried to remember if such a comment was something within the confines of it’s AI. She decided it wasn’t worth worrying about now, and focused on getting to the location of the next attack.

They came to the mill over one of the river’s small distributaries. Jackie walked around the modest mill until she found another small patch of scorched earth.

“Do you think they suffered?” Bund asked. Jackie was appalled that her AI would allow the gnome to produce such a remark.

“Be quiet!” she commanded him, and wished she had installed an easier way to get rid of a Guiding Gnome. Bund seemed insistent on inserting himself into the entire investigation. She considered requesting that he fetch her a bunch of herbs from the far side of the Valley, a task that provide at least a few minutes of peace and quiet, but stopped when she saw a silver knight walking directly towards her. There were many knights walking around the game, but this specific one wore armor on only it’s upper body. The knight’s legs were adorned in the checkered tights of a court jester, making the character a uniquely ridiculous sight. Jackie recognized him immediately.

“Murph, what are you doing in here?”

“Mom went to bed, so I’m playing from the rec room in the nursing home. And use my character name! I’m Sir Dongdon of Girth.”

“Please don’t use that-“

“What kind of knight is going to let his baby walk into a dragon patch all alone? I’m here to protect you, m’lady. Who’s this?”

“A dragon patch? Seriously, Murph? I don’t even…” Jackie struggled to put thoughts together. “This is Bund, a gnome.”

“Well, I can see that.”

“You know I created this entire game. Everything from the texture of the grass we’re standing on to the bees in that hive. I even created this dwarf, although it seems to be on an unusual AI setting right now. Murph, I know this world better than anyone. Do you really think I need protection and, even if I did, that you’d the one to offer it? Besides creating this absurd character, you’ve barely ever even played the game!”

“Come on, let me help.”

“We are now a trio!” Bund squealed. “What a marvelous quest we are on, indeed. Come, I will show you the way to the quarry.”

The quarry. Jackie hadn’t mentioned that the third attack had happened there. How could the gnome possibly know that information?

“I like this little guy,” Murph laughed. “He’s super helpful. They don’t have these in real life, do they?”

The quarry was at the far end of the Valley and Jackie used her map to quickly transport herself there. Bund immediately spawned beside her and Murph’s knight appeared just after that. They stood on the edge of the quarry cliff and peered down into the vast space below. Though a switchback trail zig-zagged down the side of the quarry wall, Jackie could see everything she needed to from here. Far below, at the bottom of the quarry, a small black spot on the ground.

“Well, that’s that, right?” Murph seemed eager to be done with the investigation.

Jackie hesitated, unsure if she should voice the thoughts she was having.

“There’s something else,” she blurted. “The attacks. They’re different.”

“Yeah, we know. They’re in the Valley.”

“No. I mean the way the dragon actually attacked-“

“You mean, dragons. Plural.”

“Well… That may be another thing. Look, I designed dragons to inflict a massive amount of damage across a wide space. These attacks have all been acutely focused on individual players. How is that possible? There isn’t any collateral damage on any of the nearby buildings or landscape, and I even looked into the profiles of the players that had been close to the attacks. None of their characters sustained any injuries! It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost as if a dragon has turned into a…” Jackie shook her head in refusal to complete the sentence.

“Turned into what, Jackie? A serial killer? Really? A serial killing dragon?”

“I don’t know! I’m trying to figure this out! Where did Bund go? He was just here a second ago. A Guiding Gnome may be able to provide some information.”

“Look, Jax, this whole thing is ludicrous,” Murph said as he wandered up the side of a hill above the quarry, being sure to kick every log and swat every butterfly that he passed. “You’re proposing that a dragon is selecting individual players like it’s got some grudge to settle. And that somehow this massive beast has been able to stalk these players without them noticing. And then, if that wasn’t enough, the dragon has learned how to control and focus its damage on a target as small as a single player?! Oh, and I almost forgot the best part! After this dragon has selected, stalked, and hunted specific targets, it has somehow managed to make its attacks break the fourth wall and cause real-life damage!” Murph had reached the top of the hill and was now looking back down at Jackie. “And that still doesn’t even explain how the dragon entered the Valley in the first place!” An icicle shot down Jackie’s spine. “I mean, damnit Jackie. Isn’t it easier to just accept that those people are making the whole thing up?”

“Unless the dragon didn’t enter the Valley…” Jackie whispered.

“What?”

“The dragon wouldn’t have to enter the Valley… if it’s been here the entire time.”

And as they both considered this new possibility, an immense shadow grew rapidly over their small hill. Jackie watched in horror as the monster she had drawn from memories of her childhood nightmares, with featherlike scales that shined metallic and wings wider than airplane’s bristling with dagger-like spikes, eyes that burned in swirls of red and yellow behind deathly black pupils and claws big enough to crush a redwood, swooped over the hill and hovered directly above Murph’s character. The knight looked up into the dragon’s widening jaws and before she could hear Murph scream, Jackie ripped the VR headset off her face.

End of Chapter One.