Chapter 18: A [Bard]’s last stand

“CORE RULES:

BEWARE SPOILERS. Don't read ahead.

Write the journal in your own words, don't copy. This will keep things less rigid and prevent predetermination (Don't worry, whatever you write will wind up being the original words anyways. Just don't copy.)

Verify your identity with the passphrase

Don't let anyone read the book, even other selves, even if you remember needing it and your future self not giving it to you. You know why we have this rule.

Don't read journals from branched selves, you may predetermine an undesirable future.

Don't lose this journal.

(You will fail this one, we're still figuring out the consequences of that)1

1See: time travel phenomena; The effects of belief on predetermination.”

–Excerpt from page 1 of Horatio “Cyclops or Cy” Bergmann's [Traveler’s Journal], pre tier-4 edition

***

“Just— just drink it!” I shout, wrestling to get Mato to drink a drop of the blackout juice from a small dropper included in the alchemy gear from my satchel.

“Son I thought you were a lil’ screwy before but— you've lost it!” Mato says, holding tight to both of my arms in a vice grip.

Demarcus tries to pry us apart, and shouts over the two of us. His huge body lends itself to a very loud voice when he speaks from his chest.

“HEY! Calm the hell down! Cy what the fuck are you tryna make him drink?”

I look Mato dead in the eyes with a scowl as I stop wriggling, let my arms go slack, and open my hands in a relenting gesture. He lets go, and I rub my wrists.

“You just saw me drink it. It's safe. It's called ‘blackout juice’ and a drop of it knocks you out for 3 seconds so you can level without sleeping. We don't have time for this!”

“And where in the hell didya get it?” Mato asks, I can see his hand, desperate and tense, as he resists the urge to wrap it around the handle of his knife.

“I told you! Myself from the future! Is that so hard to believe? After everything else so far? Magic is real, why not time travel?” I explain.

“Maybe cuz you haven't really proved that or anything.” Demarcus says, timidly playing devil's advocate against his friend. “And we're just a little hesitant after you started bleeding out your nose and just disappeared after nearly passing out. Didn't you tell me not to touch stuff you hadn't identified? You might just be cursed or brainwashed or some shit!”

I groan aggressively and smack my hand to my face. I don't want to yell at Demarcus, but I don't quite have a firm grip on my volume and tone right now.

“I disappeared cuz I didn't have time, just like I don't have time to prove it to you! Like how I don't have time to read the book full of the fucking future! And like how we don't have time to argue about this cuz that poor girl will die!”

A little underhanded, I tug on Mato's heartstrings and his soft spot for doing the right thing at the end there. He mutters invectives under his breath as he seems to make up his mind that even if I've lost it, it's not worth risking someone else's life.

“Alright!” Mato shouts, uncharacteristically. “Where is this person?”

I hold out the dropper.

“First ya gotta drink this.”

“We don't have time to argue but we got time for me to pass out?” Mato argues.

Looking for the right page, my hand shifts and instinctually flips to the information needed. I then explain.

“Apparently you'll get a skill we’ll need to find her in time. So, yes, kanpai motherfucker.”

He snatches the dropper from me and begins to lay down on the ground, grumpily. Immediately after the drop touches his tongue, he's out like a light.

Demarcus looks back up to me, worry and doubt etched into his face beyond the helmet.

“Are you sure about this C?” He asks me.

“D.” I say, and I have to stand on my tippy toes to hold either side of his face.

“Ya gotta trust me.”

As Mato sits up with a gasp, Demarcus nods.

Mato gets to his knees with some grandpa grunts, and then says to me:

“Alright, I got [Targeted Quarry]. I get the feeling that the more I know ‘bout her, the better I can follow. So tell me, who is this girl?”

I look for information about her, and my fingers instinctually interpose themselves between several different pages, allowing me to flip between them as needed. It seems that inherently knowing where to find information you're looking for is part of the [Traveler’s Journal] skill.

“Isabella Castillo, [Bard] that carries an electric guitar and has a skill called [I Am The Amp] that lets her play it. 17 year old Mexican girl from a small town outside Guadalajara, jeez that next bit’s personal, skipping ahead. She's… Southeast!” I say, amazed at the sheer amount of detail inside this binder and just how scattered it all is.

“I've got the sense of her. Let's go.” Mato says, taking off out the door to the vault, kicking aside the rolling helmets of the enchanted armor.

We sprint after him, Demarcus snagging the double-headed axe and green boots on the way out the vault.

Running through the halls, I begin flipping through the journal and then begin reading the step by step list for this moment.

Get Mato to put on the boots of tree-climbing while you scoop out the venom from the spider queen

Cut here, and be quick. >>diagram depicting the spider queens fangs and where to cut to get to the venom<<

Have Demarcus stow the helmet in his bag. It won't help and the sound will only rattle it.

Head southeast and keep low to avoid the smoke. Demarcus will wield the axe for the fight but Mato has to carry it there so Demarcus doesn't slow down.

Ignore the cowboy

The music is haunting but block your ears, you'll need to to get close.

Her eyes will be closed. When you reach her, cover her mouth with one hand and shoot a [Firebolt] at the jumping spider behind you and then immediately at the tree with the broken branches in front of you.

Have Mato cover you while you drug Isabella and Demarcus with the blackout juice. You'll have to force her to drink, but ask politely and try to explain first. This is necessary for a later argument and for her to eventually trust you.

Yell at Mato to close his eyes, and close yours. Open them when the temperature cools off and you stop hearing fire.

Congrats. Welcome to the 3rd floor. Good luck, kid.

I yell for us to turn down a specific hall, and we return to the room where the spider queen died.

I snatch the green boots from Demarcus and toss them to Mato.

“Put these on. Demarcus, put the helmet in your bag and give the axe a few test swings. Then, give it to Mato. Mato, you'll be carrying it but Demarcus will use it for the fight.”

I quickly rattle off the instructions as I throw open my satchel, pouring out a few bottles of unimportant ingredients and grabbing my shortsword.

“I thought we didn't have time?! What's this?” Mato yells up to me as he puts on his boots and I surgically open up the queen's fang.

“The book says to do it so just do it!” I yell back.

I quickly step over to Demarcus, but before I take the axe from him, I ask “how ya feeling big guy?”

He chuckles dryly, and answers “fuckin’ tired. But I can keep going.”

“Just a little further man, then you can sleep. You found me.” I reassure him.

I take the axe with an “oof” from the weight, and hand it off to Mato.

“You good to run with this the whole way?” I ask.

“I've carried a lot heavier a lot farther.” He responds.

Everything ready so far, we run off into the dwindling wildfire, my nose deep in the binder, drunk on knowledge of the future.

***

Running while trying to stay low as we dash into a smoking and smoldering forest has me essentially Naruto running; leaning forward at the waist with my arms out behind me.

Mato and Demarcus are running with their weapons held in front of them, and I suppose I could do the same with the Pokin’ Stick but im enjoying the bit for the time being.

I feel the earth thrum with every impact of my steps. The burning in my lungs from running and the burning from the smoke wage war in my throat, coughing mortars tearing up flesh like dirt on the Somme.

My eyes, shut from the heat and smoke, slam open as I impact with Mato's outstretched arm. Rhythmic beating against the singed ground grows closer from ahead. I tear open the binder to see what this might be, but before I could find anything, it's already upon us.

A deep chestnut horse and saddled rider come tearing through the woods past us. I look up from the binder to meet the masked rider's look of confusion with my own. He wears a shawl much like Mato's, but this one is a light brown, and closer to a poncho. He has some strip of red cloth like a scarf tied up around his nose and mouth, like a bandit.

Mato and Demarcus stay staring and I can see Mato wants to say something but I start shoving their shoulders to move and shout.

“Ignore the cowboy!”

I take off running ahead of them, but they quickly catch up.

Demarcus, exhausted as he may be, through loping, trudging steps asks:

“But, where did he get the horse?”

“Ignore it!”

***

It's not obvious at first, disguised by the heavy breathing, our pounding footsteps, and the sheer focus of the moment, but the thrumming beneath our feet steadily grows.

As we reach a small plain that acted as a firebreak and the unburnt forest beyond it, I can feel the rhythm behind it. 4 powerful hits before the reverberation changes ever so slightly.

Soon, we begin to hear it. Though in a relatively open space like this, physics would say we should hear it first— I suspect some magical fuckery is at play here, some enhancement of the sound waves that allows them to impact her assailants with actual concussive force and let her fight back.

Regardless, we hear it.

Riotous, thrumming power chords, on a 4/4 beat and an 8 bar progression with a few embellishing chords to transition between sections. They're not strummed so much as slammed, any energy to play a tighter rhythm would have left her arms long ago, but the way she hits these chords and lets them ring still shakes the very air.

Mato has to raise his voice to be heard, and my feet begin to grow numb from the vibrating ground.

“The spiders hunt by vibration! They're sensitive to it! This is probably killing them up close! But with the fire pushing ‘em this way and the absolute lighthouse of sound she's gotta be surrounded!”

“What?!”

We hit the first spiders soon after that.

Disoriented, stumbling, we hack and slash through the throng of spiders. The absolute sound has them barely standing but we still have to struggle through them from sheer numbers.

Pushing closer, seeing the blurry forms of dead or dying spiders with blood being shaken from between their joints as my very eye vibrates, I go to cover my ears to stumble even closer.

But, I can't. Not yet. Because now… now— I am close enough to hear her sing.

They are barely words, and they remain untranslated from the original Spanish— as if the magical translation of The Great Work falls short in the face of them. As if it is too afraid to defile them with some cheap knock-off in English. As if it wouldn't dare leave the nuance and context of her desperate singing on the cutting room floor.

Not to mention it would lose the rhyme.

But they are barely words. Because by now, however long she has played out here, however long she has been fighting— by now her voice is too shredded for her to even sing. So, with the last of it, she screams.

She screams like she's Freddie Mercury singing his final show.

Like she's Jeff Buckley scream-sobbing a ‘Hallelujah!’, holding on long enough to sing one last song before the curtains call her home.

She sings the song of someone who knows they're gonna die and decides to leave it all on stage, slamming every beat her heart has left to the ghosts of drums, and every emotion, every ounce of love and hate she's ever felt pours from her mouth.

It turns the very air into magic.

A [Bard]’s last stand.

I stick my fingers deep into my ears, and trudge forward until I can't even see through my vibrating eye. I follow the sound.

When I finally bump into something that swings back with the force of a power chord's elbow, I find her. Then, I do the kindest deed and the greatest sin I’ve ever done.

I cover her mouth.

She struggles, kicking and biting, and though both of us are definitely near deaf, I scream to her.

“It's alright! It's okay! You can stop playing, we've got you!”

Then I remember the steps from the binder.

I quickly spin and shoot a [Firebolt] into the jumping spider behind us, the impact throws it just off course and it falls dead to the ground. Then, I turn back and find the tree with all the broken branches ahead of us, and light it aflame.

“Mato! Cover us!”

Mato and Demarcus come swinging from the forest, Demarcus swinging with wild sweeps with the axe and Mato taking measured, precise shots on specific targets.

I lean back over to Isabella. Her eyes are wide from adrenaline, her body jitters and jerks as that same adrenaline wages a war against exhaustion and shock.

She is a short and skinny Mexican girl with her long black hair loose and matted around her. Her face is long and narrow, exaggerated by her attempts to keep screaming until the end. She wears the red and brown floofy clothing of a bard, though she has clearly tried to adjust it to her style, cutting bits and pieces here and there.

Her fingers bleed heavily, torn raw from the metal strings of the electric guitar.

I try to explain things to her.

“We're gonna take you to the third floor! But please, you have to drink this! You need to be level 5 for us to leave!” I shout, attempting to be polite and pulling the blackout juice from the top of my satchel. Isabella takes the opportunity to try and kick out from beneath me, and bites hard on my hand again.

“Gah! Fuck! I'm tryna save you here! Can you even hear me?! Ah fuck it!”

“Demarcus! Get over here!”

Demarcus breaks free of a cluster of spiders, kicking and swinging his way to us. I hand the bottle of blackout juice to him and yell “just a drop! Dip a pinkie!”

He dips a gauntleted pinkie, covered in disgusting substances, grimaces as he hands the bottle back, then sucks the potion from the tip of his finger and promptly flops over, unconscious.

Isabella breathes hard and struggles in my grip.

Probably should have had her take it first. Having Demarcus fall like a corpse isn’t a good look.

“Mato! Pull back!”

Mato begins a fighting retreat as I wrestle with the in-shock girl, trying to get her to drink the blackout juice like getting a cat to take medicine. I squish her cheeks to get her lips open and tilt the bottle to pour just a drop, but her flailing arm knocks my elbow and she quickly goes limp.

That was a lot more than a drop.

Drugging a 17 year old girl into unconsciousness is probably my lowest moment. I am absolutely not proud of that, and it is barely salvaged by the fact that it was to save her life. I don't have time to think if there was a better way to do it than what the journal said, but if I did I would have had several doubts about this.

I look up to find Mato, and shout

“Mato! We're clear! Time to go!”

With one last slash he starts sprinting back to me, and boy can that geezer run. But with a snapping symphony of Cracks, the branchless tree I set alight earlier falls, blocking his, and the horde of spiders behind him's, path.

We both look about frantically as Mato turns to face the horde, and I remember what my [Traveler’s Journal] said.

“Mato! Your boots! They're boots of tree-climbing! Climb a fuckin’ tree!”

Mato turns, looks, and leaps up to grab a hanging limb. As soon as his feet graze the bark however, it is as if gravity shifts and his feet are sucked to the side of the tree.

He wobbily stands, now sideways on the tree, and shakily jumps from limb to limb like stepping stones. When he is past the growing fire, he bends down… up? He bends and grabs the tree limb he stands upside down beneath, and holding onto it he lifts his legs and gravity reasserts itself. He drops to the ground with a stumble and runs over to me.

“How do we get outta here?!” He yells to me.

“Close your eyes!” I yell.

“What?!”

“Just close ‘em!” I yell, angrily, and quickly slam mine shut.

...

After a heavy second, I realize that the heat has abated, and I can no longer hear the popping fire.

I open my eye to find that we now sit in a wide field of wild grasses. I look over to find Mato leaning over our unconscious friends, shielding them with his body, eyes screwed shut.

“We're good. We made it.” I say, almost disbelieving.

Mato opens his eyes and looks about, while I hold the binder up in a moment of awe. I feel excitement and the sheer potential of it all build up within me, and jump up with a “Woo! HaHA!”

I find myself actually hugging Mato as I cheer, and quickly correct myself as he pats me with a small, adrenaline filled chuckle. He shakes a little bit as his veins slow, and I hear him take a shuddering breath.

Shielding his eyes, he looks about, and then points.

“There's a town yonder. ‘Bout a day's hike, slightly downhill.”

I jump up a bit but still can’t see it. Damned [Eagle-eyed].

“So,” Mato continues. “Ya wanna carry these two several miles or d'ya wanna sleep with the ticks.”

“Ticks.” I instantly decide. I haven’t really slept in a bit either.

We make camp, and bed down. As I ravenously and confusedly begin reading ‘the effects of belief on predestination’, Mato turns over, and looks at me over the drooling and crumpled forms of our compatriots.

“So,” he starts, quietly in the dim night. “That book really tells the future?”

“Oho-ho yeah.” I confirm, trying to get the magnitude of it all through.

“And not just things that are going to happen, but information like maps and spells and secrets I wouldn't have learned about for a long time.” I say, an audible grin tinting my words.

“Wow. That's… yeah, that's useful alright.” Mato says, audibly apprehensive.

I glance over.

“What? What are you thinking?” I ask.

“Nothin’. Just, does the information appear when ya need it or… is it all just laid out there for you to read through.”

“The latter, why?”

Mato sighs deeply. “Just– be careful. Sometimes the future should stay a mystery, ya know?”

“Yeah.” I say. “I know.”

“I'm reading an entire thesis on why that's the case right now. It's fascinating. Turns out free will does exist even in the face of time travel!”

Mato grunts noncommittally, and turns back over.

“That's great, son. So make sure ya make good choices.”

And shortly, he's asleep.

Fine then, I'll be the one reacting with the proper amount of excitement for time travel and he can be all superstitious and stubborn about it. He's probably not looking forward to me saying ‘told you so’ when I tell him exactly when he's wrong and he's too stubborn to listen to the future.

Eventually the exhaustion, the thought of finally making it to the 3rd floor, and the level awaiting me are the only things able to peel my eye from the journal and get me to sleep.

For the first time in a long time, I have a future.

***

Level up!

Tier 1 [Half-baked Time Traveler], level 5 — Tier 1 [Half-baked Time Traveler], Level 6

…

I guess not all levels give skills?

Wow, that's a disappointment.

***

Level up!

Tier 1 [Warrior], level 3 — Tier 1 [Warrior], level 5

Skill earned: [Power Strike] (active)

Skill earned: [Push Through] (active)

Skill earned: [Lesser Endurance] (passive, upgradeable)

***

Level up!

Tier 1 [Bard], level 3 — Tier 1 [Bard], level 6

Skill learned: [Disorienting Wail] (active)

Skill earned: [The Show Must Go On] (active)

Skill learned: [Wall Of Sound] (active)

Skill earned: [When There's Nothing Left To Sing, Scream] (active)