Black boxes popped up and flickered away as my old antivirus strobed—connected, updated, failed.
The voice changed. Accent and language rapidly switching.
<アラン?> <阿兰?>
So many voices, so quickly, all layered atop one another in a confusing mess. I couldn’t have understood them, even if I knew more than English.
<Аллан?>
Then, just as abruptly as it had began, the watch went cold and the voices cut out.
“Allan?” said Priorita. Her voice was still deep and throaty. I could feel whatever alien sense she used for vision crawling over my body, drinking in the sight of me and the stupid cat costume I’d been forced to wear. “So… do you like it?”
What was I supposed to do? I’d tried brute force, blown a hole in the jelly freak and achieved exactly fuck-all.
She doing that creepy, deep breathing thing and I finally realised what what the sound was. She wasn’t breathing, but instead she was rhythmically contracting her jelly, wafting out great billows of stink that filled the air.
Disgusting.
I let out a deep sigh and closed my eyes. What could I do? She had me this time, and she knew it. I felt completely off balance. So many things had happened so quickly—the boss battle, Tyler’s death, Priorita’s arrival, and now this thing with the watch. I just needed five bloody minutes to myself. Five minutes in which nobody asked me stupid questions, tried to manipulate me, or kill me.
But this game was life and death. Not just for me, but for my whole planet, and nobody was going to give me one minute, let alone five.
Still… this was a game. And sometimes, even when it feels like you’re giving up a part of yourself, you’ve gotta play.
I was a real bastard at board games—always had been. My competitive streak, mixed with a natural penchant for Aussie banter, helped me keep my mates off-kilter to dominate games night.
And now, as my mind raced, I realised I was playing this game too straight.
Following the rules, rather than working them.
So, I plastered a big old grin on my face and slapped Priorita right on the jiggly, jelly side. The sound of a wet smack echoed around the temple, it felt like slapping a damn christmas ham.
“Not bad, Preeyareeta,” I drawled in my most obnoxious Aussie accent. “I’ve gotta admit, I’m a little confused here. I thought you wanted warriors… but this outfit makes me feel like a bit of a… pussy.”
I roared with laughter.
Beneath my hand, I felt the jelly cube begin to thrum, a little squirt of sweet gas leaking from her.
“Don’t tell me you’re holding out on me.” I dropped my voice into a stage whisper. “C’mon, Priorita, where’s the good shit?”
??
“The good… shit?” she asked, the curse sounding incongruous in her schoolteacher voice.
“Yeah, you know,” I said, searching through Seth’s memories. He’d loved this stuff. “Roman legionaries, Samurai, Spartans, Crusader knights, Shinobi, Persian Immortals! Forget the cat suits—that’s the good shit. That’s what people want to see.”
That’s what I want to see. I didn’t say. The edge we need if we want to win this shit-show.
My hand was still on her side and I felt her jelly freeze for an almost imperceptible amount of time.
A flash of red kindled in her green core.
“Oh my…” she said.
“Oh goodness…” Her voice dropped an octave.
“OH YEAH!”
??
A deep, rumbling giggle reverberated through her, making her jelly tremble and filling the temple with an echoing thrum.
There was a ping, and my mini-map popped up. Previously, it had mostly been obscured by the fog of war—only areas I’d walked were revealed in detail—but now six locations appeared, each marked with the Wargame Vault symbol.
Jackpot.
Priorita could do whatever she wanted. Bend or break the rules as she saw fit. I just to… motivate her.
My antivirus flashed up for a second, strobed, and vanished. I felt… something being pulled into me as Victor’s watch grew hot. Then a voice spoke in heavily accented Chinese.
When the map appeared again, hundreds of points had been revealed. I ran a mental finger over one of them, and a tooltip appeared.
Indigenous Ruin ???
Classification: Forward Position
Claimable: Yes / No
I zoomed out and saw that not only our quadrant—the Human sector—was displayed. The whole damn cavern had been mapped for me. My eyes flickered to the three other sectors.
Gosporian
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
U’l Ciacco
Lutantha
I could see their castles and fortifications. Their forward positions and scouting posts. There was no way this was intentional—or fair.
Priorita quivered beneath my hand. I closed my map. The emoji on her screen narrowed its eyes in suspicion. My map began to open again, without my prompting, but my antivirus strobed, Victor’s watch grew hot, and the map dissolved in a spray of static.
Her eyes narrowed further.
Had she just tried to control my HUD—and been rejected?
Had the watch, and whatever was hidden within it, stolen information from Priorita?
Priorita slimed away, heading for the nearest wall. The suspicious emoji nowhere to be see. The entire exchange happening so quickly I half thought I’d imagined it.
“Goodness! Look at how excited Allan is, everyone. As a bonus reward, I have revealed to him the locations of the remaining Vaults in the human sector!” She continued up the vertical wall of the temple. “Why, I hear you ask, my dear viewers! Stay tuned for a special segment on Human warrior cultures!”
She continued along the roof, totally ignoring the laws of physics, until she hung right above Ariel and me.
Ariel eyed her suspiciously and waddled away a little. From the corner of my eye, I saw her use the inventory system to swap out the trousers she had peed in. She looked ready to run.
“Believe me…” Priorita said with a high, delighted giggle. “You won’t want to miss this fascinating deep dive! These humans are utterly delicious!”
And then, without any warning whatsoever, she popped like a water balloon full of green jelly, spraying us—and the whole damn temple—with a layer of viscous slime.
“Encule de fils de pute!” swore Ariel, shaking a little fist at the ceiling. She caught my eye and spat out a wad of green. “These are my last pair of pants!”
I laughed.
Probably shouldn’t have.
But I did—deep belly laughs I couldn’t stop.
***
We left the temple soon after. The place was creepy as shit, and nobody wanted to stay any longer than necessary. I introduced Zephyra to Ariel and Paddy, but the Lutantha stayed aloof and avoided them.
Ariel was deeply mistrustful, I couldnt blame her.
Paddy was a different story.
I didn’t know what he was into—and it wasn’t my place to judge—but the man’s eyes almost popped out of his damn skull at the sight of her. He couldn’t string together a sentence in her presence and I caught him whispering, “sexy elf” when he thought nobody was paying attention. Guess he thought the alien girl was a bit of alright.
It was early morning when we entered the jungle. Vines hanging from the cavern ceiling glowed pale blue and green, the air slightly cooler, less humid, and reeking less of spoiled hamburger meat.
That was a relief. I hadn’t forgotten about the infection in my black-veined arm—or how it reacted to the red light of night in this underground world.
I led my team more or less back the way we’d come. We had to get back to the castle, or else the rewards from the Vault wouldn’t be applied. As much of a bastard as I was—and as much as I couldn’t bloody stand the people in charge of our civilisation—I needed us strong.
We had to win this.
Plus, I was looking forward to seeing the expression on Victor’s face when I returned in triumph and stronger than ever. I opened my character page and looked at the stats. Level 13. I was a god damn powerhouse.
Still, we didn’t have to go back right away. There was still a week or so until the barriers between civilisations came down and I was curious about what was out there.
As we retraced our steps back to the castle, I pretended to see something through the fungal trees and led my team on a slight detour. One of the ruins my map now showed was just a short distance from our path—so close we’d almost stumbled upon it on our way to the Vault.
I smelled it before I saw it. The stench of rotten meat stronger than I’d ever before.
“Sorry guys, what can I say. Mexican food doesn’t agree with me!” I laughed, patting my stomach.
Ariel groaned, “it was a Mayan temple, Allan,” she said, a sleeve held over her nose.
“Spoilsport,” I replied.
The ruins were strange: hollow, tube-like structures as large as human houses, rising from tiled terraces and long-abandoned garden beds.
Back in my early twenties, I’d worked an electrical job in a town called Bonnie Doon. Some old-timer had tried to fix his A/C unit and somehow turned his whole tin roof live. I spent days in the scorching sun rewiring his house, sweating buckets and dodging these big bastard wasps—daubers—that built mud-tube nests that hung from the eaves.
The dauber tubes looked a lot like these ruins.
Made me nervous.
I shook my head, snapping out of my reverie. Most of the memories my implant had suppressed had returned by now, but every now and then one would catch me by surprise.
“Look at the tiles, lad,” said Paddy, coming up beside me. He pointed at the terrace underfoot, where blue geometric tiles formed endless patterns. “My wife…” He cleared his throat and flicked a glance at Zephyra. “Ex-wife, I mean. She tiled our bathroom with zellige—real ones from Marrakech. Cost a pretty penny, make no mistake.” He kicked debris aside, revealing more tiles. “Looked damn near exactly like these.”
“Oui,” said Ariel softly. “Who were these people that made art so like ours? How similar were we?”
I looked around at the colossal earthen tubes rising haphazardly all around us—singles and clusters, many broken, half-collapsed to reveal narrow vertical tunnels within, the walls pocked with fist-sized nubs. No floors that I could see.
It was bloody unsettling.
Remembering those wasps—and looking at the scale of this place—I didn’t fancy ever meeting whatever had lived here.
“Yeah, I dunno, guys. Something tells me they weren’t all that much like us. Who knows—maybe they just crapped out this flooring,” I said. “Might be walking on shit right now.”
I forced a laugh.
Ariel gave me a withering look and muttered, “Le cochon.” I was pretty sure that meant, pig. I chuckled, a real one this time. Fair enough.
After killing Tyler, I’d been trying to put them at ease with ridiculous banter. That one might’ve been a step too far.
At the centre of the ruins stood a tube far larger than the others. The big bugger had to be five or six stories high. As we approached, a notification pinged from my interface.
Forward Position Discovered
Owner: None
Claim? YES / NO
I flicked a glance at Ariel, hoping she might know what that meant, but her eyes were flashing as she spoke with her people back home.
Paddy was crouched down, looking at the patterns.
Zephyra hung back, near the old, broken down tubes.
A circular entrance—about twice my height—gaped at the base of the tube. It was rimmed with a thick stone border, like a pool noodle made from clay, carved with writing in an alien alphabet.
I reached out and ran my fingers over the old, dusty stone, tracing the characters.
“What does it say?” I muttered.
Heat surged from the watch at my wrist. Tiny electrical impulses raced up my arm and slammed into my brain. A moment later, a blizzard of static and glitched subtitles blurred my vision. Through them, I caught words.
“A library?” I muttered.
“Eh, lad?”
“Nothing, mate,” I said, stepping through the opening.
I clicked YES and claimed the Forward Position, barely flinching as fireworks exploded around me. I knew Priorita’s style by now.
Forward Position: UNNAMED
Production: 200 BP per day
Special Structure: Library (+10% research speed).
Allows INT Special Production +1
Parlay Parlour Access: Yes
“Two hundred BP per day. Is that good?” asked Paddy. They must have received the same notification.
“Oui. Our castle produces two thousand,” replied Ariel. “A ten percent increase is magnifique.”
“And there are hundreds of them,” I said without thinking.
Ariel shot me a sharp look. “Hundreds? What makes you think that?”
I shrugged. “Makes sense. Whole civilisation lived down here, right? You reckon they only had a couple of mud tubes? If this floor isn’t made of shit—” Ariel gave me a flat look. “—and I don’t think it is, then they must’ve had pretty sophisticated manufacturing capabilities.”
“Christ, lad. Look at you,” Paddy said, adopting a terrible Aussie accent. “‘Sophisticated manufacturing capabilities.’ They’ve got to be the biggest words I’ve ever heard you use.”
“Oui,” said Ariel, nodding sagely.
“Hey! I use big words all the time. And anyway, it’s not the size—it’s how you use it, eh, Paddy?”
Paddy chuckled. Ariel groaned.
But Zephyra laughed.
She’d stayed at the fringe of the group, not contributing, not interacting. Easy to forget she was there. Now, hands braced on her knees, she laughed and laughed.
We all turned to stare.
“A sex joke! It is a sex joke!” she gasped. “This, I understand!”
I shared a glance with the others and shrugged, smiling despite myself. The girl had an infectious laugh.
I almost turned to leave when a blinking notification caught my eye.
Parlay Parlour Open
Enter? Yes / No
Inside the mud tube, a flag had appeared—a smaller version of the one in our throne room. Beside it, a doorway glowed gold.
Ariel coughed, drawing my attention. Then, she tilted her head towards the portal and gave a tiny nod.
“Who’s up for a side quest?” I asked, stepping towards the glowing door without waiting for a response.
I liked getting the last word, always had, and I felt pretty good about that one. But just before I stepped through the glowing portal that lead to the parlour, I hear a slight scoff.
"A side quest?" said Zephyra. "Yeah, not in this game."