Shyft Read online
Book One – Defender of Gallowind
By
J. Donald and M. Kraus
© 2019 Muonic Press Inc
www.muonic.com
www.JustinBellAuthor.com
www.facebook.com/WolfsHeadPublishing
www.MikeKrausBooks.com
[email protected]
www.facebook.com/MikeKrausBooks
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 01 - Meet the Players
Chapter 02 - Version 2.0
Chapter 03 - Research and Development
Chapter 04 - Service Interruption
Chapter 05 - It's a Beautiful World
Chapter 06 - New Friends
Chapter 07 - Lapine Village
Chapter 08 - A Culture of Learning
Chapter 09 - Honorary Lapine
Chapter 10 - The Quest Begins
Chapter 11 - A Dangerous Road
Chapter 12 - The Tomb
Chapter 13 - Face to Face with Evil
Chapter 14 - Into the Tunnel
Chapter 15 - The Scales of Vengeance
Chapter 16 - The Crypt Awaits
Chapter 17 - Deeper into the Wood
Chapter 18 - Rude Awakening
Chapter 19 - Glimmer of Hope
Chapter 20 - Deeper into the Wood
Chapter 21 - Pools of Darkness
Chapter 22 - Armored Insects
Chapter 23 - Reunion
Chapter 24 - Travel to Thorathon
Chapter 25 - Enemy Territory
Chapter 26 - Training with Amazons
Chapter 27 - Amazon Magic
Chapter 28 - The Power of Firelight
Chapter 29 - Preparations
Chapter 30 - The Hunt Begins
Chapter 31 - Old Friends
Chapter 32 - Deeper into Gallowind
Chapter 33 - Boss Battle
Chapter 34 - Pit Fiend: Fight or Die
Chapter 35 - Ramifications
Chapter 36 - Mixed Blessings
Chapter 37 - The Long Road Home
Chapter 38 - Convoy to the Temple
Chapter 39 - No Rest for the Weary
Chapter 40 - Last Preparations
Chapter 41 - Attack from the Shadows
Chapter 42 - The White
Chapter 43 - Bring Down the Tomb
Chapter 44 - Hard as Stone
Chapter 45 - Demon's Birth
Chapter 46 - The Inner Chamber
Chapter 47 - Secrets of the Tomb
Chapter 48 - A Job Unfinished
Chapter 49 - The Long Road Home
Chapter 50 - The Party Returns
Chapter 01 - Meet the Players
Day or night it didn’t seem to matter, the world outside Solomon Herrick’s makeshift apartment was always cast in various shades of gray. Sol wondered sometimes if the entire world was one lump of compressed, gray coal, the planet a chunk of granite floating through space, surrounded by soot-soaked atmosphere. He crouched on the top of the barricade, the long, tall fence running the entire perimeter of his community, and looked toward the sky, or what passed for it, anyway. Up above all he could see was a broiling fog, opaque gray, like cotton dipped in tar. It was thick, like soup, not the soup of today—the milky water the Conglomerate of the Americas liked to pass off as soup—but the soup his mother used to tell him about, the kind that clung to the spoon, the kind that had actual meat and vegetables in it.
The good old days.
The good old days of chunks in your soup.
On the other side of the corrugated steel barrier, which separated his community from the elevated highway beyond, cars moved west to east, mostly at the same pace, the automated rail system keeping traffic neat and organized, although still nose-to-nose. Each vehicle was moving no more than around twenty-five miles per hour, with carefully monitored distance between each self-driving car, some sort of twisted, manufactured traffic jam that gave Solomon the skeevies just by looking at it. Rows upon rows of automatons bringing lifeless drone employees to their lifeless humdrum jobs, day in and day out, non-stop, a repetition to their daily lives that Sol found physically sickening.
His head followed the track of the vehicles as he crouched there, the lights reflecting in his glistening eyes, narrowed slits carefully tracking the speed and direction of the vehicles’ movements. He was dressed in a long, brown trench coat, which clung to his curved back but dangled free behind his bent legs, an oversized leather hood pulled up over his face. In the low light and framed against a fog-soaked sky he was nearly invisible.
Just how he liked it.
Solomon had lived the majority of his life in the shadows, and he preferred it that way, nobody noticing him, nobody commenting on his clothes, his haircut, his choice of friends, just him doing what he wanted, a life in obscurity.
“Hey, Solomon Derrick! That you?”
Well, semi-obscurity, anyway.
Red and blue lights snapped on behind him, washing over him in an almost nauseating circular pattern. Red, then blue, then red, then blue. Sol rolled his eyes and turned to look over his shoulder, seeing the narrowly contoured black and white car ease up on his side of the barricade. One of the few vehicles not locked into the rail system, the CoA Law Enforcement Division had the latest model Crown Victoria, a twenty-third century improvement on the ancient vehicle design, with sleek, sloped armor, embedded roof-mounted lights, and the optional hover kit allowing it to travel the roads as well as the skies.
“Officer Shmirnick,” Sol said, nodding. “Top of the morning to ya.”
Shmirnick looked up at the sky through narrowed eyes. “Is it morning?”
“Who can tell?”
“Pretty sure I’m working third shift tonight, Sol,” Shmirnick said, though Sol couldn’t actually tell if he was being serious.
“What do you need, sir?” Sol asked, trying to keep his voice serious and respectful, though he clearly didn’t mean it.
“Some people are calling. They don’t like the way you’re crouched up there. They think you’re waiting to start trouble or something.”
Sol adjusted his crouch on the barricade so he was spun around and facing the officer.
“Does it look like I’m starting trouble, sir?”
Shmirnick shrugged. “I… I don’t know. But why don’t you come down from there? It’s past curfew.”
Sol turned over his arm to glance at his wrist—there was no watch there.
“Oh, I must have lost track of the time.”
“Sol, don’t be a smart ass, okay?”
“It’s all right,” Solomon replied. “I was just leaving.” He turned on the balls of his feet, tightening his legs, then launched forward, off the barricade and into the night.
“Hey!” shouted Shmirnick, but he was already barking at an empty section of corrugated steel.
Solomon arced gracefully through the air, then angled down, striking the roof of an automated taxi with tightly coiled legs, his jacket flapping around behind him. As soon as he struck the roof, he punched his legs straight, throwing himself into a secondary jump, clearing the barricade on the other side of the two-lane elevated highway in a single jump. Using his hand, he caught the top of the fence and swung his legs over, dropping down onto the pedestrian walkway on the other side, nearly vanishing into the shadows. Behind him, on the opposite side of the fence, he could hear the low throttle of endless streams of vehicles, moving along the highway at the exact same rate of speed, driving in the exact same direction, most of them going to the exact same place. The very definition of monotony.
Turning left, he walked along the pedestrian walkway for a sho
rt distance, remaining close to the fence to keep concealed, though this late after curfew, nobody else had ventured out anyway. He picked up his pace. He didn’t have a watch, but he could tell he was running late. That was one benefit to living in a city so full of regimented monotony, you could easily tell what time it was.
A shrill buzz sliced in his left ear, and he tapped the small nugget of plastic wedged inside.
“I know, I know,” he said before the person on the other end could talk. “I’m late.”
“C’mon, Solomon,” the female voice replied on the other side. “You know how dangerous this is. We can’t just be sitting around waiting for you.”
“Sorry, Megyn,” he replied hastily. “I had to get Shmirnick off my back.” He broke into a run, though he stayed low, letting his feet move softly and swiftly along the concrete walkway.
“Shmirnick? That dope? What did you do, point behind him and say ‘look at that!’?”
“Damn, Meg, that’s clever. I’ll remember that for the next time I run into him.”
He angled right, jumping up onto a stair railing, then leaped over it, into the darkness, falling for a moment before he struck the gentle downward slope of ground heading under the elevated highway, which had curved around upon itself. Looking up ahead, he saw the mass of concrete and steel, a manufactured bridge carrying dozens of slowly rolling vehicles along it. Flanked behind the bridge were a quartet of towering, massive skyscrapers, tall buildings that truly lived up to their name, the top floors vanishing within the chunky broth of the thick, soup fog. For a brief snap of time, he wondered what was going on in those top floors right now, what kinds of unilateral decisions the Conglomerate leaders were making, what ways of life they were forcing upon them.
Not that he really paid attention to what they told him, anyway. His feet slid on the soft ground and he caught himself, then turned left, jumping from the sloping grass, landing smoothly on the concrete ground underneath the overpass. At one point one of the major throughways of North Samford, once the elevated highways and rail systems came into play, this means of travel had been largely abandoned and forgotten.
That was all well and good for Solomon, it made his life a lot easier.
Picking up the pace, he broke into a run, dashing down the concrete, legs pumping.
“I can hear you out there,” another female voice crackled in his ear. “You’re as quiet and delicate as a herd of rhinoceros!”
“Rhino-what?” Solomon asked as he ran. He could almost hear the girl’s eyes rolling on the other side of the call.
“Seriously, Sol… don’t you ever pay attention in biological history? We just did a whole module on extinct species.”
“I must have slept through the rhinosperus lecture.”
“Rhinoceros, you dumb ass.”
“Yeah, yeah, Ella, I get it, okay? Just get the game ready, I’m almost there.”
“Game’s been ready,” a male voice barked in his ear.
“C’mon!” Sol replied. “How many of you chumps are on this channel?”
“All of us,” the boy replied. “We’ve been waiting for you for twenty minutes.”
“I know, I know,” he sighed.
“I mean seriously, Sol,” the boy continued. “You’re the only one of the group without any parents at home, why are you always the last one here?”
“Brockton!” Megyn shouted back. “That was not cool!”
Solomon’s face twisted into a look of forced stoicism from within the contours of his canvas hood, trying not to show emotion, even though nobody was in the immediate area to see it.
“Sol,” Megyn said softly, “I’m sorry. My brother is such a jerk sometimes.”
“Whatever,” Sol replied. “They’ve been gone a while. I’m over it.” His voice was subdued, though he tried to elevate it at the end to show how much he didn’t care. The end result was a strange warble of language.
He continued running, the former interstate curling into a rounded tunnel system, trash littering the pavement ground, with scattered metal barrels set along each rounded edge of the tunnel. At one point a haven for homeless and drifters, once the Conglomerates started drafting them into their personal wage slave legion, the tunnel systems were now mostly vacated, a myriad connective passage, linking many of the different urban centers. The tunnels were Solomon’s favorite method of travel. The best way to remain undetected.
Up ahead, the tunnel curved a slight right, angling into a sharp bend, and he picked up his pace even more, breaking into a low run. As he rounded the corner, he could see a metal door easing its way open, a small form sticking her head out. She waved her hand and he tossed a wave back, then shifted his direction to head toward her.
“Ellison!” he said. “How’s it going?”
Ellison “Ella” Draken smiled warmly, the squat, stocky young blonde-haired girl shaking her head at him as he moved past her into the darkened room.
“Doing fine, Sol, though a bit sick of waiting for you.”
“No kidding,” the boy named Brockton said, emerging from the shadows. He was taller and older than Ella, quite a bit older actually, and he ran a hand through his thick mop of dark brown hair. The start of a raggedy beard had formed on his jaw, and his teeth were an almost strange, pearly white.
“Be nice, Brockton,” Megyn interrupted, coming up from behind her brother. She stood nearly as tall as he did, though she was a few years younger, her light brown hair spilling down over her slender shoulders. She wore a nicely tailored blue sweater and denim pants, looking the epitome of classic high schooler.
“Seriously,” Brockton replied. “We’re not supposed to be down here. If Dad found out, I’d get fired! He’d probably make you quit the lightball team.”
“No freaking way,” Megyn replied. “He knows lightball’s my life. And without me, the team’s never getting to states.”
Sol rolled his eyes. “Can we talk about how good you are at sportsball later? I’m here to play!”
“Yeah, and we’ve been here to play for like half an hour,” Ella interjected.
Sol turned to reply, but drew his head back suddenly. “What the holy heck is that?”
Ella stood there, flanked by shadows, a small, fur-covered creature coiled up on her shoulder, a long, leathery tail draped over her and around her neck. She smiled.
“It’s a possum,” she replied, pure joy in her voice. “Animals love me, what can I say? Isn’t he cool?”
“He’s a dog-sized rat,” Sol replied, tilting his head.
“You’re such a tool,” Ella replied, petting the possum’s head with her opposite hand.
“All right, all right,” Brockton interrupted. “Before we get started, Megyn and I actually have an announcement.”
Ella and Solomon looked at each other.
“I know,” Brockton said, “we brought you guys here to play Shyft.”
Solomon’s eyes narrowed as the boy talked. Yes, they had. They’d come here to play Shyft. They’d risked arrest, breaking curfew, all sorts of potential punishments, just to play the next generation VR game. The single only good thing the Conglomerate of the Americas had ever put together, a fully immersive virtual platform that was, quite simply, the best game that Solomon had ever played.
The only problem? It was available for beta testers only, and he wasn’t one. For that reason, he relied on Brockton, and to a lesser degree Megyn, to get access to the game. Growing up as poor as he had been, Solomon had never had the opportunity to own his own gaming system, but he’d spent hours upon hours at friends’ houses, and when he wasn’t able to play VR, he was creating and playing tabletop games, sometimes just with himself. He would create these vast and wide universes, intricately connected characters, build out complex timelines and ways for an entire world to communicate, all living within the caverns of his vast imagination. He’d visited every single remaining library within a thirty-mile radius and read every book on classic and modern games, included many of those rules and t
heories into his own designs, and he’d filled up an entire government funded residential apartment with reams of paper detailing every story element.
The first time Megyn had invited him to play Shyft, it was as if he had been drawn into one of those pieces of paper and was now living in it. Surrounded by a massive playable gaming environment, he’d been able to create his character, interact with NPCs, design and find items and had even gotten to the point of discovering and casting spells. It was, quite literally, the only thing he looked forward to in any given week. The only thing he found joy or solace in.
Now, he was standing there, listening to Brockton, and he was already not liking what he was saying.
“We brought you guys here to play Shyft,” he repeated. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to be doing that.”
“What?” Sol asked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Brockton continued, “We’re going to do this one better. Tonight I’m going to introduce you to Shyft 2.0.”
Chapter 02 - Version 2.0
Solomon blinked. He stared out at Brockton through the flicking back side of his eyelids, not quite believing what he was hearing. Shyft was just in Beta. It wasn’t even in production yet. If the rumors were to be believed, it likely never would be. The Conglomerate of the Americas had begun development of Shyft several years previously for a few different reasons. First and foremost, they wanted to find a way to test their next generation artificial intelligence by using it to build complex worlds in which they could simulate combat. Solomon wasn’t sure how true that rumor was, though he certainly wouldn’t put it past them. As the years went on, the rumors persisted, only they morphed somewhat into the Conglomerate wanting to find a system of entertainment for the masses to try and coax them into obedience. This was also something that Solomon could easily believe.
At the end of the day, however, Shyft continued on in its beta state, never really moving much closer to production. Megyn and Brockton’s father was one of the lead developers for the game, and had involved them in some of the beta testing a few years back. When it became clear that the game was in no rush to move forward, they stopped official beta trials, however, Megyn and Brockton secretly kept some of the gear.