Part III -- Wormhole
Jenny and Vader were thoroughly tired by now -- Jenny exhausted by the trek, Vader simply sick and tired of the weirdness around him. Whoever designed this game must have been a spice addict. No normal person could conceive such bizarre concepts as the ass-ass-in droids, tangle trees, or firecracker plants.
I'M ALMOST AFRAID TO ASK, BUT WHAT PLANT IS THAT?
"Oh, just a thyme plant," she replied casually.
NOTHING HERE IS 'JUST' SOMETHING.
"Well, thyme is a special plant, one no one ever seems to have enough of. The closer you get to a thyme plant, the more things around you speed up while you slow down.
EXCUSE ME?
"To you it will look as if everything around you has sped up. But to others you will seem to be moving slowly. Unless, of course, it was dried thyme. Then everything around you will appear to move slowly while you're actually going faster. Then, of course, there's reverse wood..."
REVERSE WHAT?
"Reverse wood. It reverses the magical effects of something or someone. So reverse wood would make fresh thyme act like dry thyme and dry thyme act like fresh thyme."
Vader's head was reeling with this strange information. Was the game made to so thoroughly baffle its player that they would give up before finishing, thus protecting the sealed data within?
WHERE ARE WE? he typed. They had been traveling uneventfully for over an hour.
"Just outside the Ogre-fen Ogre-fen. Soon we'll be going past the Regions of the Elements -- Void, Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. They're all very dangerous except the Region of Water, so its best to stay on course and not venture near them."
They continued onward, down the path Sammy had pointed out. Along the way Jenny had paused to show him different plants and animals and explain their usefulness or dangers. He took note of the information that seemed significant enough. It could prove useful in a later game puzzle.
"We get most of our food from trees and bushes," Jenny explained, pointing to an unassuming tree -- except for the fact that it had slices of bread growing on it instead of fruit. "This is a breadfruit tree. Are you hungry at all?"
NO. AND EVEN IF I WERE, HOW CAN I EAT THE FOOD OF YOUR WORLD WHEN THE COMPUTER SCREEN SEPARATES US?
She blushed. "Good point. Sorry." She helped herself to the bread.
An ominous rumbling caught Vader's attention, and he spotted some sort of beast approaching.
JENNY, BEHIND YOU...
She turned and gasped. "An ant lion!"
DANGEROUS?
"Yes! We'd better run for it!"
The ant lion's feline head grimaced in a snarl as it scuttled after them on six exoskeletoned legs. Jenny and Sammy ran across an open plain, Vader following via screen. Scuffling and roars indicated the monster was still after them.
Abruptly the ground before them gaped open in a deep crater. It was all Jenny could do to stop herself in time to avoid falling in. Hideous masses of slick, gray-pink worms slithered out of the crater by the thousands.
WHAT IN THE GALAXY?!
"Wormhole!" Jenny replied, backing away. "I forgot these things are common near the Void. We'd better stay away. We don't know where it leads."
Vader groaned. Of course. In real life, wormholes were rips or buckles in the fabric of space. Occasionally ships, asteroids, and other objects would fall into these rips or buckles and be transported hundreds of light years away. Here in the game, of course, a wormhole would be a groan-inducing visual pun, even if it operated along a similar principle.
The ant lion bellowed in rage as another wormhole popped open between it and its prey. Its rage became terror, however, as it slipped on the slimy bodies of worms and slid into the crater. One less thing to worry about, Vader figured.
But his Companion was staring at the creature in terror. "No!" she screamed, running for the edge of the wormhole.
JENNY, DON'T TRY TO RESCUE IT! he ordered. IT WOULD HAVE KILLED US ANYWAY! Was he going to lose his Companion this early in the game? Perhaps the program was rigged against him.
"Sammy!" she cried, and he saw she was heading, not for the ant lion, but for her cat, who was scrabbling madly away from the gaping hole. He kept losing his footing on the slick carpet of worms, though. Jenny bent to pick him up and whisk him to safety, but she tripped and screamed as she slid into the crater.
Vader swore loudly. Without his Companion, he had practically no chance of navigating this insane game.
She looked sadly at him through the screen. "I'm sorry, Lord Vader. I failed you. I tried to be a good Companion, but maybe if you play again, another Companion will help you better than I could."
That expression... that imploring tone... somehow they stirred something deep within him he'd long thought dead. For one insane, inexplicable moment he entirely forgot that Jenny and the wormhole were fictional, that a computer screen separated their worlds. He instinctively stretched out a hand, as if trying to grab the elf girl and pull her back from the brink...
She clung to his arm, wild hope flashing in her eyes. The squirming bodies of worms writhed beneath him, and he involuntarily flinched at the sight and feel of them. The two of them slipped inexorably toward the blackness of the wormhole's depths.
"Sammy!" she cried.
He extended his free arm and used the Force to draw the cat to him. Sammy yowled in fright and scrambled to his shoulder, clutching on for dear life. Grabbing Jenny's arms, he wrapped them around his neck to free up his own arms. Then he set to climbing out of the wormhole to safety. It was slippery going, and there was one heart-stopping moment when his foot landed in a patch of squashed worm and they nearly slipped straight into the center of the wormhole. Gritting his teeth, he found secure footing and continued to climb.
At last, on solid ground again, he collapsed, covered in worm slime and drained from the intensity of the situation. Jenny was still pretty shaken and wouldn't let go of him, but Sammy recovered almost instantly and set to cleaning his mussed fur.
"Lord Vader?" Jenny said at last.
He sat up. "Release me, Jenny," he ordered.
"You're in the game!" she exclaimed, obeying.
"What do you mean?"
"You're in Xanth! Before you were just a screen, but now... you're a person! You were able to suspend your disbelief and enter Xanth!" She smiled broadly. "I must say you're very impressive-looking in person."
He stared at her. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be. But Jenny certainly looked like a flesh-and-blood girl to him. He slowly turned his head to view the surroundings. He was no longer sitting in a chair before his computer in his private quarters, but on a rocky plain. To one side was the indefinite, hazy darkness of the Void. On the other was thick jungle, alive with unfamiliar insects and birds. He was covered in dirt and muck, there were claw marks up his sleeve courtesy of Sammy, and the shoulder of his cloak was shredded, also thanks to the cat. Even worse, there were what felt like disturbances in the Force absolutely everywhere, most likely a result of Xanth's magic.
Vader released his confusion and frustration in the most efficient manner possible. "Sithspawn!"
The grass sprouting from between the stones around him yellowed and wilted in response.
"Lord Vader!" Jenny exclaimed, dismayed. "You can't swear here!"
"And why not?" he demanded.
"Aside from the fact that it kills plants, it also violates the Adult Conspiracy."
"The what?!"
"The Adult Conspiracy To Keep Interesting Things From Children," she clarified. "It's a set of rules applying to anyone in Xanth under the age of sixteen. Under these rules, children aren't allowed to hear or speak curses, view anyone's panties, or learn how to summon the stork."
"Summon the what?" It seemed "what" was becoming the word of the day.
"The stork. It's the bird that brings babies to mothers. There's a ritual a mother and father need to enact before it will deliver a child to them, but I'm not sure what it is." She shrugged. "In reality I was inducted into the Conspiracy when I was fourteen, but I was put back under it for the game purposes."
Vader nearly swore again but caught himself. Instead he buried his mask in his hands. "This is terrible."
"No, it's wonderful!" she countered cheerfully. "Now we can truly play the game!"
"I don't have time for games!" he bellowed. "I have a war to fight against the Rebel Alliance! I can't stay here! I want out of this... this... blasted psychotic land!"
Startled by his outburst, Sammy ducked behind his mistress.
"If you don't have time for games," Jenny asked, puzzled, "why did you start playing in the first place?"
He couldn't explain the entire Galactic Civil War to her, nor could he tell her his now-ridiculous-sounding theory that the game had been an elaborate code securing information about the Alliance. She probably wouldn't understand. After all, Xanth was so outlandishly bizarre that its inhabitants would probably reject the ideas of space travel and the Force.
"How did I get here anyway?" he asked instead.
"You must have believed that Xanth was real," she replied. "At any rate, you must have believed I was real -- enough to try to save me. And once you believed, you could cross into Xanth from Mundania."
"I'm a Dark Lord of the Sith," he replied firmly. "As such, I am not one given to nonsense and idiotic puns. I don't know why I tried to save you, but now I firmly regret the action."
"I don't think you'll regret it once you've explored a little more of Xanth. It's truly a wonderful place. Most Mundanians who come here don't want to go back, and many do choose to stay."
"Just tell me how to get out of here," he snarled.
"Aside from winning the game, there's..." She stopped abruptly, as if someone had kicked her to silence her. "There's supposed to be a way to pause the game and come back, but I don't know what it is."
"Grundy did tell me how to exit the game, but I need my keyboard to do it," he growled.
Sammy hissed.
"Something's coming," Jenny observed. She pointed at a sinuous form that was approaching them quite rapidly. "It looks like a diggle."
"Is it dangerous?"
"Normally not. They're a type of vole, which are burrowing animals that include wiggles, squiggles, diggles, and land voles. The diggles are the largest and stupidest. They eat stone and can phase through rock and earth without damaging themselves, the stone, or anyone riding them. In fact, this one may give us a ride. They'll give anyone who sings to them a ride..."
"Someone's already riding this one," Vader noted, spotting a form on the creature's back. He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to get a better look at the beast's rider. The Force was strong with him. Strange. He'd only felt one other aura like this one. And the classic gray Rebel jumpsuit and sandy hair further betrayed the man's identity.
A slow grin spread across his mouth beneath his mask. Perhaps this journey wouldn't be in vain after all.
***
HOW MUCH FARTHER? Luke typed.
"We have a ways to go, Skyrunner," Metria replied. "Be patent."
He decided not to correct her. Her problem with words was slightly annoying, but he could work around it. After all, he'd chosen her as a Companion and had no right to complain. And he really wanted to win this game.
The landscape whirled by at a dizzying rate, trees and flowers and birds and animals merging into one green blur smudged here and there with color. Occasionally he would spot an individual plant or animal and inquire about it, and Metria would give a more or less straight answer. He had to admit the creators of this game were pretty imaginative. Pincushion plants, barrel cacti, secretary birds, and club moss each resembled their names quite cleverly, while creatures like griffons, tangle trees, and dryads simply fascinated him.
"Up ahead is the Void," Metria told him. "Nothing that goes in ever comes out. We'll change around it."
He knew she meant "turn around it" but didn't say anything about it. LIKE A BLACK HOLE?
"Yup. There're also wormholes around the Void, sucking things from one end of Xanth to the other."
AND I SUPPOSE GIANT WORMS LIVE IN THE WORMHOLES, DON'T THEY? He was starting to get the hang of all these puns.
"Just small ones. Lots of them."
He could make out a fuzzy area ahead, no doubt the Void she spoke of. Deftly she angled her body in order to bypass the area. Idly Luke wondered when the next game challenge would appear. This was starting to get kind of boring.
Something screamed, making him jump in his chair. It took him a moment to realize it was coming from the game.
WHAT WAS THAT?
"Ant lion." She stopped in her tracks -- so to speak, for diggles left no tracks. "Close by. I'll have to fight it."
WHERE IS IT?
"How should I know?"
They both knew in a few seconds. A wormhole burst open just to their right, spitting out a plethora of worms -- and a very slimy, very shaken, very irritated giant bug with a vicious feline head. It took one look at Metria's diggle form and roared, charging.
Metria responded to the threat impressively, changing into a huge green-and-scarlet dragon spouting flame. The ant lion's fangs squealed against her scales like fingernails on a slate. The images on the screen jolted and thrashed about as if Luke were riding a rampant dewback. It was almost enough to make him sick.
Suddenly Metria roared in pain, the ant lion's fangs latching onto her throat. Luke almost screamed himself. Wasn't she a demoness, unable to be injured in conventional manners? But the blood streaming down her neck and chest seemed real enough.
Quite involuntarily Luke leaped forward, forgetting about the game, intent on helping Metria...
...and landing smack on the ant lion's nose.
The beast's eyes crossed as it tried to get a good look at him. Luke realized he'd just done something pretty stupid and jumped to the ground, running to the ant lion's side to avoid its jaws. It let go of the dragon and turned to take a bite out of him instead.
"Move, Skytrotter!"
Luke took Metria's advice and rolled away as the ant lion was swallowed up in a great gout of flame. There was a final screech of terror, and the flames died away, leaving a black smudge and a haze of smoke where the creature had been. Metria, however, looked fit to kill, though she had abandoned her dragon form for a conventional, if badly disheveled, human form.
"What'd you do that for?" she demanded. "I had it handled!"
"Sorry," Luke replied.
"I had it all planned out," she snapped. "Play dead, let him chomp me, then steak him when he least expected it..."
"Do what to him?"
"Ribs, chops, loin, barbecue, crisp, scorch..."
"Roast?"
"Whatever. Then you had to go and... and..." Her cross expression became a stunned look. "You're in the game!"
"Say what?"
"You're in the game! You're not on the other side of a screen anymore! You must have suspended your disbelief!"
He stared at her. Then he realized he was actually staring at Metria, not a computer image of her. Real smoke hung lazily in the air from the battle, a real jungle surrounded him on three sides while a real Void waited ahead, and the real stench of charred bug clogged his nose and throat. Somehow, impossibly, he was in Xanth!
How could he believe in it? How had he done it? Had it been in trying to save Metria? Of course. For an instant he'd forgotten she was fictional and wanted to save her. And in that instant, he had penetrated the barrier separating them. He'd done that before while reading a particularly engaging book or watching a good holovid, but this sort of thing had never come of it, of course.
"Whoa," he breathed. "This is incredible."
"It sure is," Metria agreed. She inhaled, stretching the seams of her dress dangerously. "And now that you're here, we can have some true demonly fun. How about it, Skyscraper?"
"Just call me Luke," he told her, keeping his eyes on her face.
"Oh, who cares? You're of age, aren't you? You know about summoning the stork."
"Summoning what?"
"Oh, I forget, you do things differently in Mundania. Storks don't bring babies. But your ritual for getting a baby is the same. But don't worry. Demonesses don't have to worry about the signal actually reaching the stork if they don't want it to."
He was getting the gist of what she was suggesting. "No, Metria... I'd rather not."
"Fine, if you're going to be that way," she huffed. "Though you're the first male I've met who's turned the offer down. But if you change your mind..." She winked.
He groaned. One of the down sides of Metria not having a soul was that she didn't consider the moral ramifications of her choices. Well, he'd just keep a tight watch on her.
"Um, the Good Magician's castle?" he asked.
"Yeah, I suppose you want to go there." She turned diggle again. "Whatever you say, Duke. You're the boss."
He sat astride her back as she slithered through the ground. This game was turning out to be far different than he'd expected, but it still intrigued him greatly. And he was still quite willing to keep playing, as long as there was a way out eventually. Maybe he had to win the game to escape.
"Oh look, more travelers," Metria noted. "There's Jenny Elf -- one of the other Companion choices. But you didn't want her anyway. She's not even old enough to know about the Adult Conspiracy. And I see she has a Player with her -- a very tall one who's dressed like he's going to a funeral."
Luke's stomach turned a somersault when he saw the pair. Vader was in Xanth!
Jenny and Vader were thoroughly tired by now -- Jenny exhausted by the trek, Vader simply sick and tired of the weirdness around him. Whoever designed this game must have been a spice addict. No normal person could conceive such bizarre concepts as the ass-ass-in droids, tangle trees, or firecracker plants.
I'M ALMOST AFRAID TO ASK, BUT WHAT PLANT IS THAT?
"Oh, just a thyme plant," she replied casually.
NOTHING HERE IS 'JUST' SOMETHING.
"Well, thyme is a special plant, one no one ever seems to have enough of. The closer you get to a thyme plant, the more things around you speed up while you slow down.
EXCUSE ME?
"To you it will look as if everything around you has sped up. But to others you will seem to be moving slowly. Unless, of course, it was dried thyme. Then everything around you will appear to move slowly while you're actually going faster. Then, of course, there's reverse wood..."
REVERSE WHAT?
"Reverse wood. It reverses the magical effects of something or someone. So reverse wood would make fresh thyme act like dry thyme and dry thyme act like fresh thyme."
Vader's head was reeling with this strange information. Was the game made to so thoroughly baffle its player that they would give up before finishing, thus protecting the sealed data within?
WHERE ARE WE? he typed. They had been traveling uneventfully for over an hour.
"Just outside the Ogre-fen Ogre-fen. Soon we'll be going past the Regions of the Elements -- Void, Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. They're all very dangerous except the Region of Water, so its best to stay on course and not venture near them."
They continued onward, down the path Sammy had pointed out. Along the way Jenny had paused to show him different plants and animals and explain their usefulness or dangers. He took note of the information that seemed significant enough. It could prove useful in a later game puzzle.
"We get most of our food from trees and bushes," Jenny explained, pointing to an unassuming tree -- except for the fact that it had slices of bread growing on it instead of fruit. "This is a breadfruit tree. Are you hungry at all?"
NO. AND EVEN IF I WERE, HOW CAN I EAT THE FOOD OF YOUR WORLD WHEN THE COMPUTER SCREEN SEPARATES US?
She blushed. "Good point. Sorry." She helped herself to the bread.
An ominous rumbling caught Vader's attention, and he spotted some sort of beast approaching.
JENNY, BEHIND YOU...
She turned and gasped. "An ant lion!"
DANGEROUS?
"Yes! We'd better run for it!"
The ant lion's feline head grimaced in a snarl as it scuttled after them on six exoskeletoned legs. Jenny and Sammy ran across an open plain, Vader following via screen. Scuffling and roars indicated the monster was still after them.
Abruptly the ground before them gaped open in a deep crater. It was all Jenny could do to stop herself in time to avoid falling in. Hideous masses of slick, gray-pink worms slithered out of the crater by the thousands.
WHAT IN THE GALAXY?!
"Wormhole!" Jenny replied, backing away. "I forgot these things are common near the Void. We'd better stay away. We don't know where it leads."
Vader groaned. Of course. In real life, wormholes were rips or buckles in the fabric of space. Occasionally ships, asteroids, and other objects would fall into these rips or buckles and be transported hundreds of light years away. Here in the game, of course, a wormhole would be a groan-inducing visual pun, even if it operated along a similar principle.
The ant lion bellowed in rage as another wormhole popped open between it and its prey. Its rage became terror, however, as it slipped on the slimy bodies of worms and slid into the crater. One less thing to worry about, Vader figured.
But his Companion was staring at the creature in terror. "No!" she screamed, running for the edge of the wormhole.
JENNY, DON'T TRY TO RESCUE IT! he ordered. IT WOULD HAVE KILLED US ANYWAY! Was he going to lose his Companion this early in the game? Perhaps the program was rigged against him.
"Sammy!" she cried, and he saw she was heading, not for the ant lion, but for her cat, who was scrabbling madly away from the gaping hole. He kept losing his footing on the slick carpet of worms, though. Jenny bent to pick him up and whisk him to safety, but she tripped and screamed as she slid into the crater.
Vader swore loudly. Without his Companion, he had practically no chance of navigating this insane game.
She looked sadly at him through the screen. "I'm sorry, Lord Vader. I failed you. I tried to be a good Companion, but maybe if you play again, another Companion will help you better than I could."
That expression... that imploring tone... somehow they stirred something deep within him he'd long thought dead. For one insane, inexplicable moment he entirely forgot that Jenny and the wormhole were fictional, that a computer screen separated their worlds. He instinctively stretched out a hand, as if trying to grab the elf girl and pull her back from the brink...
She clung to his arm, wild hope flashing in her eyes. The squirming bodies of worms writhed beneath him, and he involuntarily flinched at the sight and feel of them. The two of them slipped inexorably toward the blackness of the wormhole's depths.
"Sammy!" she cried.
He extended his free arm and used the Force to draw the cat to him. Sammy yowled in fright and scrambled to his shoulder, clutching on for dear life. Grabbing Jenny's arms, he wrapped them around his neck to free up his own arms. Then he set to climbing out of the wormhole to safety. It was slippery going, and there was one heart-stopping moment when his foot landed in a patch of squashed worm and they nearly slipped straight into the center of the wormhole. Gritting his teeth, he found secure footing and continued to climb.
At last, on solid ground again, he collapsed, covered in worm slime and drained from the intensity of the situation. Jenny was still pretty shaken and wouldn't let go of him, but Sammy recovered almost instantly and set to cleaning his mussed fur.
"Lord Vader?" Jenny said at last.
He sat up. "Release me, Jenny," he ordered.
"You're in the game!" she exclaimed, obeying.
"What do you mean?"
"You're in Xanth! Before you were just a screen, but now... you're a person! You were able to suspend your disbelief and enter Xanth!" She smiled broadly. "I must say you're very impressive-looking in person."
He stared at her. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be. But Jenny certainly looked like a flesh-and-blood girl to him. He slowly turned his head to view the surroundings. He was no longer sitting in a chair before his computer in his private quarters, but on a rocky plain. To one side was the indefinite, hazy darkness of the Void. On the other was thick jungle, alive with unfamiliar insects and birds. He was covered in dirt and muck, there were claw marks up his sleeve courtesy of Sammy, and the shoulder of his cloak was shredded, also thanks to the cat. Even worse, there were what felt like disturbances in the Force absolutely everywhere, most likely a result of Xanth's magic.
Vader released his confusion and frustration in the most efficient manner possible. "Sithspawn!"
The grass sprouting from between the stones around him yellowed and wilted in response.
"Lord Vader!" Jenny exclaimed, dismayed. "You can't swear here!"
"And why not?" he demanded.
"Aside from the fact that it kills plants, it also violates the Adult Conspiracy."
"The what?!"
"The Adult Conspiracy To Keep Interesting Things From Children," she clarified. "It's a set of rules applying to anyone in Xanth under the age of sixteen. Under these rules, children aren't allowed to hear or speak curses, view anyone's panties, or learn how to summon the stork."
"Summon the what?" It seemed "what" was becoming the word of the day.
"The stork. It's the bird that brings babies to mothers. There's a ritual a mother and father need to enact before it will deliver a child to them, but I'm not sure what it is." She shrugged. "In reality I was inducted into the Conspiracy when I was fourteen, but I was put back under it for the game purposes."
Vader nearly swore again but caught himself. Instead he buried his mask in his hands. "This is terrible."
"No, it's wonderful!" she countered cheerfully. "Now we can truly play the game!"
"I don't have time for games!" he bellowed. "I have a war to fight against the Rebel Alliance! I can't stay here! I want out of this... this... blasted psychotic land!"
Startled by his outburst, Sammy ducked behind his mistress.
"If you don't have time for games," Jenny asked, puzzled, "why did you start playing in the first place?"
He couldn't explain the entire Galactic Civil War to her, nor could he tell her his now-ridiculous-sounding theory that the game had been an elaborate code securing information about the Alliance. She probably wouldn't understand. After all, Xanth was so outlandishly bizarre that its inhabitants would probably reject the ideas of space travel and the Force.
"How did I get here anyway?" he asked instead.
"You must have believed that Xanth was real," she replied. "At any rate, you must have believed I was real -- enough to try to save me. And once you believed, you could cross into Xanth from Mundania."
"I'm a Dark Lord of the Sith," he replied firmly. "As such, I am not one given to nonsense and idiotic puns. I don't know why I tried to save you, but now I firmly regret the action."
"I don't think you'll regret it once you've explored a little more of Xanth. It's truly a wonderful place. Most Mundanians who come here don't want to go back, and many do choose to stay."
"Just tell me how to get out of here," he snarled.
"Aside from winning the game, there's..." She stopped abruptly, as if someone had kicked her to silence her. "There's supposed to be a way to pause the game and come back, but I don't know what it is."
"Grundy did tell me how to exit the game, but I need my keyboard to do it," he growled.
Sammy hissed.
"Something's coming," Jenny observed. She pointed at a sinuous form that was approaching them quite rapidly. "It looks like a diggle."
"Is it dangerous?"
"Normally not. They're a type of vole, which are burrowing animals that include wiggles, squiggles, diggles, and land voles. The diggles are the largest and stupidest. They eat stone and can phase through rock and earth without damaging themselves, the stone, or anyone riding them. In fact, this one may give us a ride. They'll give anyone who sings to them a ride..."
"Someone's already riding this one," Vader noted, spotting a form on the creature's back. He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to get a better look at the beast's rider. The Force was strong with him. Strange. He'd only felt one other aura like this one. And the classic gray Rebel jumpsuit and sandy hair further betrayed the man's identity.
A slow grin spread across his mouth beneath his mask. Perhaps this journey wouldn't be in vain after all.
***
HOW MUCH FARTHER? Luke typed.
"We have a ways to go, Skyrunner," Metria replied. "Be patent."
He decided not to correct her. Her problem with words was slightly annoying, but he could work around it. After all, he'd chosen her as a Companion and had no right to complain. And he really wanted to win this game.
The landscape whirled by at a dizzying rate, trees and flowers and birds and animals merging into one green blur smudged here and there with color. Occasionally he would spot an individual plant or animal and inquire about it, and Metria would give a more or less straight answer. He had to admit the creators of this game were pretty imaginative. Pincushion plants, barrel cacti, secretary birds, and club moss each resembled their names quite cleverly, while creatures like griffons, tangle trees, and dryads simply fascinated him.
"Up ahead is the Void," Metria told him. "Nothing that goes in ever comes out. We'll change around it."
He knew she meant "turn around it" but didn't say anything about it. LIKE A BLACK HOLE?
"Yup. There're also wormholes around the Void, sucking things from one end of Xanth to the other."
AND I SUPPOSE GIANT WORMS LIVE IN THE WORMHOLES, DON'T THEY? He was starting to get the hang of all these puns.
"Just small ones. Lots of them."
He could make out a fuzzy area ahead, no doubt the Void she spoke of. Deftly she angled her body in order to bypass the area. Idly Luke wondered when the next game challenge would appear. This was starting to get kind of boring.
Something screamed, making him jump in his chair. It took him a moment to realize it was coming from the game.
WHAT WAS THAT?
"Ant lion." She stopped in her tracks -- so to speak, for diggles left no tracks. "Close by. I'll have to fight it."
WHERE IS IT?
"How should I know?"
They both knew in a few seconds. A wormhole burst open just to their right, spitting out a plethora of worms -- and a very slimy, very shaken, very irritated giant bug with a vicious feline head. It took one look at Metria's diggle form and roared, charging.
Metria responded to the threat impressively, changing into a huge green-and-scarlet dragon spouting flame. The ant lion's fangs squealed against her scales like fingernails on a slate. The images on the screen jolted and thrashed about as if Luke were riding a rampant dewback. It was almost enough to make him sick.
Suddenly Metria roared in pain, the ant lion's fangs latching onto her throat. Luke almost screamed himself. Wasn't she a demoness, unable to be injured in conventional manners? But the blood streaming down her neck and chest seemed real enough.
Quite involuntarily Luke leaped forward, forgetting about the game, intent on helping Metria...
...and landing smack on the ant lion's nose.
The beast's eyes crossed as it tried to get a good look at him. Luke realized he'd just done something pretty stupid and jumped to the ground, running to the ant lion's side to avoid its jaws. It let go of the dragon and turned to take a bite out of him instead.
"Move, Skytrotter!"
Luke took Metria's advice and rolled away as the ant lion was swallowed up in a great gout of flame. There was a final screech of terror, and the flames died away, leaving a black smudge and a haze of smoke where the creature had been. Metria, however, looked fit to kill, though she had abandoned her dragon form for a conventional, if badly disheveled, human form.
"What'd you do that for?" she demanded. "I had it handled!"
"Sorry," Luke replied.
"I had it all planned out," she snapped. "Play dead, let him chomp me, then steak him when he least expected it..."
"Do what to him?"
"Ribs, chops, loin, barbecue, crisp, scorch..."
"Roast?"
"Whatever. Then you had to go and... and..." Her cross expression became a stunned look. "You're in the game!"
"Say what?"
"You're in the game! You're not on the other side of a screen anymore! You must have suspended your disbelief!"
He stared at her. Then he realized he was actually staring at Metria, not a computer image of her. Real smoke hung lazily in the air from the battle, a real jungle surrounded him on three sides while a real Void waited ahead, and the real stench of charred bug clogged his nose and throat. Somehow, impossibly, he was in Xanth!
How could he believe in it? How had he done it? Had it been in trying to save Metria? Of course. For an instant he'd forgotten she was fictional and wanted to save her. And in that instant, he had penetrated the barrier separating them. He'd done that before while reading a particularly engaging book or watching a good holovid, but this sort of thing had never come of it, of course.
"Whoa," he breathed. "This is incredible."
"It sure is," Metria agreed. She inhaled, stretching the seams of her dress dangerously. "And now that you're here, we can have some true demonly fun. How about it, Skyscraper?"
"Just call me Luke," he told her, keeping his eyes on her face.
"Oh, who cares? You're of age, aren't you? You know about summoning the stork."
"Summoning what?"
"Oh, I forget, you do things differently in Mundania. Storks don't bring babies. But your ritual for getting a baby is the same. But don't worry. Demonesses don't have to worry about the signal actually reaching the stork if they don't want it to."
He was getting the gist of what she was suggesting. "No, Metria... I'd rather not."
"Fine, if you're going to be that way," she huffed. "Though you're the first male I've met who's turned the offer down. But if you change your mind..." She winked.
He groaned. One of the down sides of Metria not having a soul was that she didn't consider the moral ramifications of her choices. Well, he'd just keep a tight watch on her.
"Um, the Good Magician's castle?" he asked.
"Yeah, I suppose you want to go there." She turned diggle again. "Whatever you say, Duke. You're the boss."
He sat astride her back as she slithered through the ground. This game was turning out to be far different than he'd expected, but it still intrigued him greatly. And he was still quite willing to keep playing, as long as there was a way out eventually. Maybe he had to win the game to escape.
"Oh look, more travelers," Metria noted. "There's Jenny Elf -- one of the other Companion choices. But you didn't want her anyway. She's not even old enough to know about the Adult Conspiracy. And I see she has a Player with her -- a very tall one who's dressed like he's going to a funeral."
Luke's stomach turned a somersault when he saw the pair. Vader was in Xanth!