Notes: Written for Cinnamongirl for Yuletide 2023.
Don't Hate the Player (Hate the Game)
It was about the time the pirates kicked him out of their airship with nothing but an inner tube to help him drift ashore that Kyle started to wonder whether it had really been all that wise to accept this assignment. Perhaps a more cautious man would have stopped to ask more questions when the request for a replacement guide had come in with the reason filled out as 'spontaneous combustion'.
Still, the guides were sworn to go wherever their knowledge was needed - and while he didn't want to accuse his predecessor of falling behind on the job, it was pretty clear this place was more dangerous than Steve had informed them in his reports. The whole eastern side of the island was so heavily corrupted that even the rough mob of pirates who'd ferried him here had refused to approach. If it hadn't been for the drifting sky lanterns that proved someone here was still alive and even finding things to celebrate, he doubted he'd have convinced them to take a second pass.
The western beach, thankfully, seemed to a bit more peaceful. Kyle paddled his way in at dawn without having to deal with much worse than a few pink jellyfish. Not that firing a bow while floating along in an inner tube was precisely easy, but at least the glowing residue they left behind gave him some idea of the depth of the water.
And, as a bonus, no one was around to witness the brief but intense period he spent in pitched battle with what turned out to be a drifting release lantern that had fallen in the sea. In his defence, it was still pretty dark.
There were signs of habitation, though, in the shape of the bamboo dock that he hauled himself out onto. Further up the beach he saw a palm wood hut, built up on stilts to keep the critters out. Kyle squelched his way over to it and knocked on the trapdoor floor. "Greetings! Did someone call for a replacement guide?"
A grinning little gremlin face poked out through the hatch. On closer inspection, it turned out to belong to a boy in a fishing hat. "Hey! The position of errand monkey is filled," he said. "And I don't need a guide! I know where to find all the fish."
"Let him in, Spencer." A face crowned by a waterfall of candy pink hair appeared over the boy's shoulder, and immediately creased in sympathy. "Oh, honey. Wet look may be in, but salt-encrusted never did anyone any favours. Come on, come to Petra. Let me make it all better."
Somehow, Kyle found himself sitting at a table having his hair teased and trimmed while the stylist sighed and tutted in despair, and the kid cooked up some fish in an iron pot outside.
"It's red snapper," he said. "And if you don't like it, there's always the bomb fish!" He cackled with gleeful nastiness.
Kyle had a feeling Petra might be the more reliable source of local gossip. He turned his attention to her. "So, I, er..." there was really no graceful way to introduce the topic, "hear that your last guide spontaneously combusted?"
"That's what I heard, love," Petra said, slightly muffled by the comb she had tucked in her mouth. "Well, it was bound to happen, wasn't it? I told him enough times, I said, 'You don't want to go using that slime gel in your hair. Absolute accident waiting to happen,' I said. But, oh, nobody listens to me, I'm just the stylist. They're all as bad as each other. Apart from old helmet-hair - he's the worst of the bunch."
In the brief pause as she retrieved the comb from her mouth, Kyle realised that Spencer's shrill tones had been joined by another voice outside.
"There you go, speak of the red devil," she said. "He's almost as obsessed with fish as that terrible boy. You'd think he'd have better things to do with this nonsense that's erupted everywhere lately, but no, rain, shine or zombie invasion he's back here delivering fish. And the absolute state of his hair!"
Kyle finally escaped Petra's attentions, in time to just catch a quick glimpse of the visitor before he teleported away. He was wearing a mismatched set of armour, a battle-scarred molten breastplate and greaves topped off with a much newer-looking cobalt helmet. Also, rather more bafflingly, a double set of boots, rocket boots wedged on over a pair of obsidian water-walkers. Talk about being prepared for all eventualities.
"Who was that?" he asked Spencer.
"That was my errand monkey!" the kid said. "It's all going according to plan." He held up some kind of cave fish with entirely too many legs that flopped around dangerously as he shook it. "I'm gonna put this down the back of Petra's neck!"
Possibly as a responsible adult Kyle should stop this, but, well, he didn't know these people yet. He pointed vaguely towards the pylon at the back of the house. "Okay. Well, I'm just gonna... go check in, I guess," he said.
The first pylon stop deposited him on a bridge in the middle of the jungle, where he narrowly avoided being flattened by a whirling giant tortoise. Even flaming arrows just glanced off the spinning shell, and he had to take a desperate dive through a door set into the nearby cliff. To his surprise, despite the mud brick walls, he found himself inside a rather fancy banquet hall with a long table and mahogany chandeliers.
"Things are grim indeed," came a woman's sombre voice from behind him. "The ancient spirits of light and dark have been released. Corruption spreads throughout the land, and the twisted fantasyland of the Hallow emerges." Her tone dropped into something more conversational. "Also, I don't know if you've heard, but your predecessor randomly burst into flames the other day."
"It's come up a few times, yeah," Kyle said. As he turned to face her, he was surprised to see the green-haired figure of a dryad. They were said to only emerge from the trees and join human society when significant battles were waged against the forces of evil.
He was really starting to think he should have asked for a few more details about this job.
"A noble sacrifice, to take his place," the dryad said.
"Er... sacrifice?" Kyle said.
"To take up the mantle of guide and link one's soul irrevocably with this world's guardian forces, knowing that they must be brought to an end to usher in a new age of balance." She smiled and gave him a cheery little wave. "Anyway, hi, I'm Nissa!"
"Kyle," he said weakly, and gestured over his shoulder towards the door. "I'm just gonna, er, see if that giant tortoise has gone." There had been a certain amount of scuffling and splashing going on outside while they had this disturbing talk.
It turned out the tortoise hadn't so much left as joined a rather alarming pile of empty shells and derpling corpses being savaged by seething piranhas down in the water below. As Kyle stared, another decapitated derpling splashed down beside the others. He spun around to look up at the top of the cliff, and saw the man in the cobalt helmet up above, driving back the deadly swarms with violent sweeping blows from... was that a pink crystal yoyo?
Kyle waited for a brief lull in the fighting before he risked calling up. "Uh, hi, I'm the new guide, Kyle," he shouted through his cupped hands. "Need any help up there?"
The stranger shook his head. "Just came back to get this." He held up a wooden cross grave marker. "Left it here yesterday. Oh, by the way, watch out for ghosts."
"Okay," Kyle said, nodding and smiling.
And wondered, not for the first time, just what kind of weirdoes he'd signed up to work with here.
His next pylon stop was more of a flying visit, since he landed in the desert to find a sandstorm in progress. There were more than just the usual angry tumblers flying around - something seemed to have driven the sand sharks up to the surface.
"How long has this been going on?" he yelled out to the local arms dealer, who was taking the opportunity to test out some of his merchandise.
"Coupla hours," the man said with a careless shrug. "Suits me - free materials for making more of these babies!" Indeed, the weapon he was wielding had a definite shark-like outline. Kyle didn't think they'd covered that one on the official guild crafting list.
In the spirit of cooperation, he spanged a few flaming arrows into the fray, but they were no match for the minishark's rate of fire - or the whirling sands. He ducked away as the mighty form of a dune splicer broke the surface.
"Woohoo! This worm's gonna be worm food!" The arms dealer pumped countless rounds into it as it arced overhead. As he stood scanning the sands, waiting for the beast to re-emerge, he jerked his head impatiently in Kyle's direction. "Buddy, if you're not buying, then you're target practice, capisce?"
Kyle took the hint and left.
The next pylon stop thankfully deposited him in the peace of the forest. In fact, while he'd certainly never been one to object to unspoilt wilderness, he was rather relieved to find that he'd touched down in front of an elaborate fortress constructed of stone slabs and boreal wood.
At least, it looked elaborate from the outside. When Joseph, the local representative of the merchants' guild, let him in through the tall gate - albeit only after a half-hearted attempt to sell him an angel statue - Kyle was slightly taken aback to find the vast central workshop had no actual side walls.
"Oh, yeah," Joseph said, as if he'd grown too used to this state of affairs to have noticed it much in a while. "The kid never got round to putting those in, since no one actually sleeps down in here."
"Right," Kyle said slowly. He supposed that... well, no, it didn't particularly make sense, but he was at least willing to pretend.
The fortress turned out to be dubiously designed for habitation all round. He had to hop his way along shelves full of chests and workstations to make it up to the living quarters on the top level. No one had mentioned he was going to need to bring his own grappling hook.
At least the upstairs rooms were much nicer, with wooden beams and even purple stained glass windows. Slightly erratic approach to furnishing, though. The one Kyle was shown to, for instance, had a lovely old boreal wood grandfather clock, and yet no actual bed.
Also, he couldn't help noticing, something of a lingering burnt smell. Unfortunately, it looked like there would be no chance to swap rooms, since his arrival was enough to make it a full house. His neighbour, an elderly clothier named Rodney, explained that a group of them had recently been driven out of the underground when it was overtaken by corruption.
"Cursed flames and vile spit everywhere you turned. And it wasn't as if I didn't have enough mending to do already, what with Dolgen coming back singed from head to toe every couple of days. He and Knogs went off to stay in the tundra with their mechanic friend, but I just can't stand that woman." His expression grew vaguely distant and haunted. "Wish I could remember why..."
Maybe it was that slightly dazed air of confusion as to quite how he'd ended up here, but Kyle felt an immediate sense of kinship with the man.
Rodney was also the first one to offer a plausible theory on Steve's spontaneous combustion.
"It's amazing how easy it is to end up under a curse," he said authoritatively. "One moment you're wondering if something leapt up and bit you, the next thing you know you're tying women up and throwing them in dungeons. I'd stay away from those lavaflies in the bait box if I was you." He surveyed the shelves full of chests with a faint frown. "Whichever one that was. There's supposed to be a system, but honestly, they've got a chest down there that's just filled up with blocks of dirt."
"You wouldn't believe what they go for overseas, apparently," Kyle parroted. Then a thought struck him. "Hey, do they have an alchemy table around here? A few herbs might help to freshen the air in my room." He considered. "Well. Maybe not fireblossom."
Rodney was a little vague about exactly which chest they were after, but recommended just checking them all. "They're not locked," he said. His gaze went unfocused again. "Why do I have this feeling that chests are supposed to be locked...?"
Kyle soon saw he hadn't been exaggerating about the dirt blocks. The residents here seemed to keep everything, in semi-organised fashion. He found one chest full of paintings, and another, paradoxically, of other chests. It was the contents of an ornate ash wood chest, however, that gave him pause. Tucked inside he found an identical pair of dolls dressed in miniature guide uniforms. He guessed they were meant to represent Steve, but their features were vague enough that they could just as easily have been Kyle himself. Lifting one out of the box gave his stomach an uneasy swoop, a bit like when the pirates had kicked him out of the airship.
He showed it to the clothier. "Um...?"
"Oh, those." Rodney gave a nostalgic sort of smile, exposing cracked and yellowed teeth. "There's one of me in there somewhere. Let me see if I can dig it out..." He hunted around in the chest and giggled as he pulled out another doll. "Oop, tickles!" He held it up to flop, puppet-like, in front of Kyle's face. "I made these, I think. Well, not much else to do when you're roaming a dungeon under a curse and you know how to sew. Maybe I made those ones of you as well?" He seemed less certain of his facts on that, squinting at the dolls questioningly.
"Funny thing, though," he added as he carefully settled the little clothier doll back inside the chest next to the two guides. "Could have sworn that there used to be three of those before. Wonder what happened to the other one? Maybe it burst into flames as well." He gave a wheezy little laugh, then cut off as he noted Kyle's expression. "Sorry. Poor taste?"
He was saved from having to answer that as a figure appeared on the floor above in a blaze of recall sparks. It was the man in the cobalt helmet, who at some point seemed to have found the time to complete the set with a breastplate and greaves and even a matching cobalt pickaxe.
With barely a grunt of acknowledgement, he dropped down to join them on their shelf, reaching between them to rummage around in the ash chest. Kyle felt an unpleasant sensation like something scraping over his nerves as the man's clawed gloves brushed against one of the guide dolls.
Finally he yanked out something that looked like a mechanical worm. He immediately turned around to leave again.
"Plans?" Rodney called after him.
"Can't hang around. It's nearly seven-thirty," he shouted back to them as he dashed off.
"Handy lad to have about, that one," the clothier said. "Freed me from my curse. Not much of a talker, though. Always got to be on the go."
"What did he want with that mechanical worm?" Kyle wondered as he closed up the chest.
"Oh, probably something for his fancy new battle arena he's been building next to the house. Lots of platforms, heart lanterns and the like. He's been working on that since before this latest bout of trouble started. Lucky, eh?"
"Mm," he said absently. He was trying to remember... "You know, I don't think you can actually craft anything with a mechanical worm."
"No?" Rodney said. "Well, you'd be the expert, of course. Me, I just do clothes."
Kyle gradually became conscious of a subtle rumbling rattling the lids of all the chests. He turned to the clothier beside him. "Did that feel like a vibration from deep below to you?" he asked.
"Could be, could be," Rodney allowed. He gave a shrug. "Might still be settling after that trouble we had a few days back that brought all these new monsters up to the surface. Probably nothing to worry about."
There was a faint metallic screech in the distance that sounded as if it was getting steadily closer.
"Right," Kyle said uneasily. "Yeah."
Probably nothing to worry about.