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  What had the journals outlined? Vague recollections of various adventures passed through my mind. I had scanned them all recently, looking for details of William Carver’s past life in order to send out farewells.

  “I’ve slain many different monsters in defense of those who needed it. I’ve been across the oceans and battled on the high seas. I’ve chased a creature born of flame and nightmare across the swamps only to tame the beast.” Carver’s form gave an involuntary cough, and my chest started to hurt.

  “Treasures, women, I did all this in order to train myself for the greatest adventure I thought one could have.” The pain slowly faded and came under control after another cough.

  “The dragon?” Awesome Jr. asked with hugely excited eyes.

  “That very one.” And I was unsure how that journey had gone. The mystery of its absence was a puzzle for another day. I applied all my WWCD instincts toward the end of my speech.

  “I reached my summit and knew that there was still so much more to be done for this world. So much that I could never hope to accomplish alone.”

  “Is that—”

  SweetPea shoved a hand over Awesome Jr.’s mouth and nodded at me to keep going.

  “I became a guide to new Travelers. Not because these old bones wanted to rest.” The faintest sensation of pain had started to wash through my body. It was like the edge of a heart attack coming on.

  “Not because I’d grown weary of raising my sword, but because the torch must be passed. Every Traveler I send on their way is another legend in the making.” HotPants looked misty-eyed as I spoke. “But I’m too hard headed to die without one last adventure of my own.”

  I swear to the Voices above that if there had been a progress bar still, it would have shot right through the roof. My WWCD had fired to its maximum. Validation was further received from a giant notice that appeared in front of all four players. Beyond super neat. The message wasn’t visible from my angle, but it was likely some sort of system pop-up about William Carver’s legacy. Or a quest change.

  “Jesus. I’m going to start crying over here.” HotPants looked as though she meant it. Strange, I would have expected SweetPea to crack first.

  “This is…”

  “Awesome, yeah, we get it.”

  “Awesome’s my father.”

  HotPants weakly gave Awesome Jr. a whack over the head for repeating his catchphrase again. I kept my smile inside and let the players do what they would. Next to us, a path to the maze’s center lay open. Inside would contain challenges for us all. Most especially for me. Carver’s last adventure was close.

  Here was hoping the old man enjoyed the ride. What had I said to him in the mirror? Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

  Session Seventeen — “Leeroy”

  Clearing the monsters proved to be the right choice. Bushes had returned to normal all around us and were far less cranky about being cut down. In the distance, ink-riddled colors swam and waved to an unseen breeze.

  “Careful. I think there’re more of those things out there,” one of the players said.

  “A lot more.” SweetPea was huddled near the back again.

  HotPants stood guard while Shadow used both knives to cut away a path.

  “Okay, I declare these hedges trimmed. HotPants, you’re first,” Awesome Jr. said.

  “All right.” She tilted her staff and squeezed into the narrow path we’d cleared out.

  I followed, being the old man in need of an escort.

  Inside was nothing close to what a maze should have.

  Were those people lining the outer edge of a giant square? Not standard individuals but weird ghostly outlines. I squinted old eyes and looked into the distance. A small army of people was standing around. Each of them was female. Even my poor vision couldn’t disguise some of those curves. They became less ghostly and more real the longer we stood there watching.

  Oh no.

  “What’s this?” Shadow asked.

  “Memory lane,” I answered while trying not to feel my gut drop. Being praised for another man’s actions was bad enough. This would be far more awkward. Carver may have been a brave warrior, but he was also a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” type. This whole setup was a gallery of ex-lovers.

  “Is that music?” SweetPea asked as a series of string instruments filled the air.

  “Are those all women?” Awesome Jr. had focused on the important prospects in front of him.

  SweetPea and he were almost a couple, but a varying amount of flesh was on display. Teenage males were notorious for being confused in these situations. Nearsightedness saved me from the same mistake.

  “William. Did you think you could sneak off and leave without so much as a good-bye?” That sweet voice stood out among all the others I had heard. Carver’s personally most compromised Priestess.

  “High Priestess.”

  “After all these years, and all we’ve been through, you can’t call me Peach?”

  “She’s named Peach?” Awesome Jr. seemed more concerned with the cut of Peach’s dress than anything else.

  “She’s a High Priestess for Selena. Up on the cliff over town,” HotPants muttered. “Not my style of Voice, but still, she’s done good.”

  “Yes, I am Peach, and yes, young Traveler, that is music,” she answered the questions with her falsely sweet words.

  “How are you here?” I asked.

  “I’m not, not really. None of us are.” Priestess Peach gestured to the area around her. “To us, this is a dream granted to us by the Voices. I thank Selena for this.”

  “I’m sorry, Peach.” My words tasted bitter. Peach had been among the few I’d ignored over the course of this last day. She seemed genuinely fond of the old man, and I’d discarded all that in my rush of letters. Her note had been poorly written for such a serious acquaintance.

  “As if I’d let you escape without at least trying to gain your pledge,” Peach responded.

  “How about one last dance?” I questioned, putting a few things together.

  “I guess that will have to do.” She smiled, and though her pitch and tone were a practiced facade, everything else she was looked pleased.

  “Are you sure? My hips aren’t what they used to be you know.” I tried to joke with her. Priestess Peach had been one of the first to point out Old Man Carver’s shortcomings.

  “For this, I think the Voices can shed some forgiveness.”

  “What are we supposta to do, Priestess?” Shadow asked.

  “You do whatever it is you Travelers do.” She waved them off. To her, none of this was real. Why should she care what happened to other people in a dream?

  “Huh?”

  Priestess Peach was proof positive that computers were not required to care about human beings. I said a fervent prayer to our future overlords in hopes there would be room in the metal polishing market. Or maybe I could move up to the hills where the Internet was still a myth.

  “Come on, William.” Priestess Peach put out a hand, waiting for me.

  I reached out and felt a pleasant energy wash from head to toe.

  “Ehh.” Moving felt a bit easier again. My joints became a bit more limber. Behind me, I heard the others exclaim in surprise about something. My hearing hadn’t improved with everything else.

  Gift Received: [Age Reduction]

  Description: Each successful dance and wave of [Ink Nightmares] will reduce William Carver’s age. Statistics lost as a result of [Old Age] will be returned for the duration of this gift. This gift is temporary.

  A small box displayed information for me that was thankfully useful. I couldn’t be expected to cut a rug as an old man, not one who spent too much time being sedentary. The music was a slow, general theme. We were both lucky in how well this challenge fit my own personal skills. William Carver had no dance traits or abilities that I had ever seen. This was pure me in his body.

  And High Priestess Peach felt almost sinful. If my body had been that of a mu
ch younger man, I might have reacted quite differently. As it was, we turned in time to the beat. Our dance was a slow spin that still managed to lift her dress a tiny amount. Were I able to go faster, the other players might get a glimpse of her birthmark.

  The song went on, and with each step, I felt a little better, a little straighter, and the ache in my shoulder wasn’t as sharp. Our dance ended with a bow and another woman stepped up from the audience.

  “Good-bye, you old goat,” Priestess Peach said with a single tear. “Good-bye.”

  She faded away, leaving me facing a new partner who looked a little hurt.

  “Where are my manners?” I tried to turn on all of Carver’s lady-killing charm. “May I have this dance?”

  “My wild man, I’ve been waiting for this dance for years.” This woman looked familiar from Carver’s sometimes extremely vivid descriptions.

  Each woman was familiar in some form or another. In the background over each woman’s shoulder, there were visible signs of a struggle. The players were busy fending off waves of other creatures like the ones from outside the maze, only smaller and more numerous. Probably the [Ink Nightmare]s mentioned in my gift description.

  Screaming was muted by the sound of music and each partner’s movements. They followed better than Maud had, likely assisted by the machine. My brain couldn’t wrap itself around each one of these NPCs practicing dancing, just waiting for Carver to kick the bucket. In their minds, this was all a dream. Which answered one of the age-old questions—do robots dream? They do indeed—of Old Man Carver sweeping them across the dance floor.

  I chuckled as partners exchanged again. Moving had grown far easier. My eyesight had recently approached real-world clarity. Each dance partner was further and further along Carver’s time line here in Continue.

  Another, and another, until finally I was standing with an elf of some sort. She was rather good-looking. Her neck was long and shoulders slender. There was a litheness to her form that indicated a ballet dancer. It was easy to see why William Carver might have done any mission she ever requested.

  “Is it almost over?” HotPants’s yelling had grown far clearer now.

  “I think so. This is the last one!”

  “Hold on a little longer!” SweetPea was busy pressing her hands over a wounded Shadow. He lay gasping for breath off to one side of the dance floor.

  “You heard the lady—one last dance,” I said softly to the elf.

  No amount of time reversals could bring Carver back to perfect. He’d started this game physically worn out and kept right on going. Regardless, my back was much better. Only now did I truly appreciate the kind of stones he had. He played a game where everything felt almost too real and risked it all to achieve his dream here in a fantasy world.

  “And here we are, back to your first in our world.” My nameless elven partner smiled as we moved across the floor. She was a bit more talkative than the others had been.

  “I remember.” I didn’t, but William had.

  “You know, if you’d danced as well back then as you do now, I might never have let you leave.”

  “I had adventures to go on.” William Carver did. Who could say what I myself might have done?

  “I waited, you know. I’m still waiting.” She was sad.

  The other ladies had all worn different expressions. Some were full of joy; others were nearly possessive. Two went so far as to give Carver a firm smack on the ass, which meant I bore their aggressive tactics in his stead.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever make it back.”

  “I knew you never would.” She sighed, and it felt as if the wind moved through us softly. “You were the first Traveler I’d ever seen you know.”

  I took her hand and stepped into a dance. The music sounded a bit more aggressive, and I treated the motions as such, confident that the machine could keep up. Her commentary was difficult to respond to. This elf, a woman whose name I’d never learned from Carver’s journals, knew he wasn’t a Local.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Our steps were wide movements, bringing us from one end of the labyrinth’s dance hall to the other. Walls of inky purple had grown to nearly nothing over the course of many partners.

  “Hold it!”

  “SweetPea, tell me you got more of those heals!”

  “Yes!”

  “Get HotPants back together.”

  There was a crash of flame off to the side that had grown much more obvious as my avatar in the game improved. My eyesight could see where streams of tiny creatures had fallen. The players were torn, blood dripping everywhere. Horror crossed my face as I realized that they were in trouble while I had been enjoying a myriad of beautiful women. Not only trouble—they were getting beat senseless.

  “Thank you, Grant, for giving me one last moment with him.”

  Her commentary was enough to be the final straw on my fragmented attention. My well-practiced steps completely fell apart.

  I twisted a foot and lost myself. The cane, which had somehow been tucked into a rope of my clothing, fell loose with a clatter. From the ground, I turned and looked at the woman who had used my real name, both worried and hopeful that I might see my deceased fiancée. No such luck. She was a slender thing with none of the same facial features.

  “Good-bye, William. May whatever passes for Voices in your world be kind in their judgments.”

  Then she too faded away.

  “It’s done!” one of the players shouted.

  “They’ve stopped spawning!” SweetPea was really into it now. No longer did she hide. In fact, she was fiercely participating in the fight now.

  Awesome Jr. was cradling an arm and eying a pile of dead monsters. Glass was everywhere and parts of bushes were on fire.

  “Melissa, use whatever you’ve got left to heal the others.” Awesome Jr. was huffing and waved SweetPea off to the other players.

  I watched all of this while confusion racked my mind. The ground looked far more normal. Above us, a hint of dawn pushed back the inky darkness. The ground started to rumble.

  “Oh, good god.” HotPants was trying to push herself back up with the staff.

  SweetPea’s hands glowed with a faint blue over HotPants’s back and sent some lights spiraling into her back.

  “I don’t know how much I have left…”

  “It’s okay, I think. Carver’s done.” Awesome Jr. was rubbing SweetPea’s back, trying to reassure her.

  “Jesus wept. Look at him,” HotPants said. “That’s not the same guy. Robot. Not the same robot.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  I looked down and took stock of the differences. Not only was the robe I had come to love completely gone, but I was wearing some sort of scale mail. Heavy, but this armor was flexible enough to move around in.

  One hand went for the cane out of habit, and I managed to get both feet under me. Nearby, the flashing inky colors that lingered about [Maze of Midnight] shuddered. Suddenly blacks, purples, and blues dripped off the plants and crawled toward the dance floor. My band-filled background was gone. If I were a betting man, this event called for some epic boss music. Sure enough, almost in time with my standing, the inks swarmed together, forming a larger mass.

  “Voices have mercy,” I swore.

  More vein-like collections of ink poured in from around us. Globs reached up toward the sky, stacking on top of each other and forming a giant creature. Almost as though it was pulling up from the depths of some artist’s nightmare. First a giant leg, then a forearm. The shape looked dreadfully familiar.

  “Is that…?” Awesome Jr. asked.

  “Oh no. No, no, no. I’m not nearly strong enough for that. I want to hit stuff, not be pummeled senselessly. I don’t need that in here.”

  “It’s not a real one,” Shadow protested with a hint of doubt in his tone.

  The cane was a giant sword again, the tip much easier to keep up with Carver’s improved grip. Behind me, the other players were gathering in a huddle. Whis
pers went back and forth about what to do next. Meanwhile, our enemy grew even bigger, taller, thicker until we faced a creature that took up a huge chunk of the room.

  “That’s a nope.”

  “Complete nope,” SweetPea agreed. “So gross.”

  SweetPea was dead-on with her assessment. We weren’t looking at a normal dragon-shaped creature. This had no wings on its back. Littered all over the claws, shoulders, spine, and down to the tail’s tip were little tentacles. Like the monsters we had been fighting before.

  “What do we do?” HotPants whispered a very good question.

  “The door behind us is closed,” SweetPea said with a note of panic.

  There was only one thing to do. Only one choice William Carver would make. I readied the blade to my side, took the stance Peg had trained me in, then pulled up every ounce of foolish courage available. A welling of energy rushed up my arms and to the top of my head. A mad sort of grin lifted my ears.

  “LEEERRROOOYYYYYYYYYYY!” The sheer silliness of my battle cry counteracted my terror. That, and the giant sword—something about it was a great equalizer.

  I got in one good swing, slashing across the giant monstrosity’s leg. A tail came, and my arm automatically moved to use the flat edge of the sword for a block. There was enough time for a prayer of thanks to the Voices above for giving me an assist. Carver’s skills, not mine, would carry the majority of this fight.

  “If he’s going, I’m going.” Shadow was much easier to hear now that I wasn’t completely enfeebled by virtual old age.

  “Right,” Awesome Jr. agreed. “It’s only a game…”

  I got another good swipe in before a giant paw came down from above to crush me. This one was slow enough that I could move out of the way. If dance had taught me one thing, it was how to get across space in one or two easy steps.

  Grasping tentacles reached out of the giant leg and clawed at the parts of me that were too close. Health points shaved off in bits. I stepped farther back and swung the lightened blade. Where my sword passed, globs of inky monsters came apart.

  “Carver!” a player cried.

  “Old Man!”

  “To hell with this. If he can do it, I can.” HotPants charged in from the side of his right leg and gave a stab.