The Medieval Delusion
Chapter 12
"Jeremy, don't let William die. I can handle things on this end, just make sure Frazier Pohonp doesn't kill William."
"All right, Aelita. Hey! Pohonp! Look at this!"
"All right, Sir Milo," said Frederick after a long wait. "You can pass. If you're in the next town over within three hours, I never saw you. Go." Nobody waited to thank him, and they all dashed down the path. They didn't see Frederick pull out a spell book and start a communication link. "Xana? Milo is going to the town closest to where I am. My belief is that the man called Xx is leaving something there for them to pick up. I suggest you set up an ambush immediately."
"Very good," came a smooth, seductive voice out of the binary code. "Rally the troops. I shall give Milo and his friends a welcome they will never forget."
Milo was running like he had never run before. He felt like he was flying. Aelita was keeping up a constant audio feed. He could hear Jeremy and William fighting Frazier Pohonp.
"There's a Checkpoint coming up," said Xanite. "I used to wonder why they called it that, but now I know we're in a video game, it makes more sense."
"So if we die we go back to the Checkpoint?" asked Odd.
"If this were a normal video game, that would be the case. But since we're in the game, I imagine that it would be more like our corpses returning to the Checkpoint. See, Xana had even modified it. It's normally a floating eye, but now it's a floating Eye of Xana." It was. The mark was yellow and rotated in midair. It was about as tall as Odd or Xanite, the shortest of the group.
"That's creepy," said Yumi, shuddering. "I always hated that symbol, but seeing a giant one flying? That's really creepy." Everyone else felt it too, as if they had been dunked into a bucket of cold water.
"It's because Xana's power is so strong here," said Xanite. "He warped this game like he warped Lyoko. And Xanadu and Troy, before it."
"I hate him," said Milo. "He ruins everything! Even when we've beaten him for good and lived six months of being normal kids, he reveals that it was too good to be true. He will always come back, won't he? We're condemned. We can never leave school, because if we do, Xana will come back and we won't be there to stop him."
"No. You're going to have normal lives after this one. This is the last adventure for you guys," said Xanite. "I swear." They were past the Checkpoint. They just ran for a few more hours, no one saying anything. Finally, at eleven forty-five, they were in the town square. It was quaint, with cobblestones and wood buildings galore. A man stood in the shadows, leading five horses.
"Good to see you," Xx said, his voice gravelly. "Here are your horses."
"Thanks, Xx," said Xanite.
"Don't mention it. Now hurry. You have two days," said Xx. And he vanished in a swirl of binary code. Everyone quickly jumped onto their horses and shot off. They were only a day away.
Aelita was still programming. After the baseball, she had proceeded to a football, then a pumpkin. Finally, she had managed to program a living thing. A chipmunk. It was in the corner, eating the pumpkin. The little hole in the game's reality was now permanent. Numbers floated out practically at random. Aelita was trying to shape them into futuristic weapons. She focused, and the numbers formed into a pizza. Well, it was from the future. Now she just had to figure out the weapon bit. In the mean time, she did love pizza.
"William, if I die, tell Milo to eat his heart out."
"Jeremy, if I die, tell Ulrich to eat his heart out."
"What if you both die?"
"Then everyone else will probably be dead shortly anyway. Hey, look! A thing!"
"Where? Ow! Damn!"
"I can't believe he fell for that."
"Believe me, William, being a genius is not all it's cracked up to be."