Jacson in Hrpg-World 04

I

"You need to go to the Mountain of Monsters. The princess is being held on the hundredth floor by a . . ." The barkeep paused for dramatic effect. ". . . dragon."

"A dragon, huh?" Ian Jackson said.

The barkeep nodded, his expression grave.

He must have fallen into a really old game, Jackson thought. Everything around him seemed a little blocky, as if the resolution had been turned down low. It was too bright and colourful. He was standing in what should be a dingy pub and it was so bright he practically needed shades. No realism at all.

Which was to be expected, given that this was a computer game and all that. Jackson couldn't remember how it had happened, but he'd been sucked into his computer. Now he was trapped, forced to play out one random game after another in a futile hope of finding the exit to the real world.

If Jeff Bridges showed up he was so bottling that fucker.

"You'd think they'd come up with something more original," Jackson said.

The barkeep stared at him and blinked round, owlish eyes as Jackson took a sip of his beer. Jackson immediately regretted it. Whatever was in the mug wasn't beer, or even vaguely alcoholic. It tasted like someone had melted a toffee apple into a glass and thrown in a few spoonfuls of sugar for good measure.

"I mean, dragon. Come on," Jackson said.

"It is a fearsome beast," the barkeep said.

"I don't doubt it is," Jackson said. "At least until it comes back later in the game with a dye job and new role of generic wandering mook."

The barkeep looked at him blankly.

It did seem a little early to throw a dragon at him. He'd only just arrived in this game world. Big critters like dragons didn't normally show up until later. That was assuming this was an RPG. The game did seem a little primitive.

Slay the dragon, rescue the princess. Maybe that was the whole game.

"So this princess, where is she princess of?" Jackson asked.

The barkeep looked at him blankly.

"I mean she has to be princess of somewhere."

The barkeep blinked. He said nothing.

"Country?" Jackson asked. "Which country is she princess of? Who's the king . . . queen? Where's their palace?"

"She is a princess," the barkeep stated as if that was answer enough.

And it probably was. The princess might as well have been an inanimate chest of treasure for all the difference she made to the plot.

"Okay, so where is this . . ." he sighed, ". . . Mountain of Monsters."

"It's right outside the village," the barkeep said, clearly happy to be on more familiar ground. "To the south."

Yeah, right, because when settling a new village the perfect place to locate it was right next to somewhere called the 'Mountain of Monsters', Jackson thought as he left the sorry collection of huts behind.

Hi, welcome to the village of Dullasshit. To the north, east and west are miles of lovely rolling countryside. To the south is the Mountain of Monsters, complete with terrifying fire-breathing dragon.

It was not like they'd bothered to put any distance between them and the mountain either. Straight out of the back gate and—wham!—there it was: ugly great spike rising up out of the ground like a rusty nail sticking out of a quilt.

What was it with the ludicrously overly dramatic names in these games anyway? The Bridge of Stolen Sighs, the Mire of Misery, the Dark Forest of Doomy Doom . . . Who came up with these names? What was wrong with something simple like Firetop Mountain?

And what was the betting the entrance was a cave that looked like a giant mouth with two scary eyeholes above it. Never any damn originality. Slay the dragon. Rescue the princess. Enter the creepy cave that looked like a screaming mouth. They could at least vary the orifice. How about a cave entrance that looked like a nostril. Or—if they were especially daring—a vagina. Haha, a cave entrance that looked like a vagina, that would be sure to wind up the moral guardians.

He was smiling at that thought when something fell out of the sky and smashed into the ground a couple of metres away with a sound like shattering glass. It was followed by a screaming person waving their arms in the desperate manner of someone hoping it would enable them to fly. Jackson caught a glimpse of a rotund boy in Lederhosen before the falling figure hit the ground with a sickening thump.

What. The. Fuck.

Jackson saw right away there was nothing he could do. The figure lay face down and unmoving. A steady trickle of blood formed pools beneath shards of brightly coloured glass. A rainbow, Jackson thought. A glass rainbow and a fat kid had fallen out of the sky.

He looked up. Nothing but blue skies and white fluffy clouds. The poor kid really had fallen out of nowhere.

Jackson turned his gaze to the mountain. There were objects floating around the fang-like peak. They looked like large, brightly coloured balloons.

You'd better not go all

Half-Life

with some shitty platform levels near the top, Jackson thought. He hated platform games.

He left the fallen boy and continued on. The entrance was on the other side of the mountain. It did not look like a giant screaming mouth with scary eyeholes.

Jackson paused in stunned surprise. Then he laughed.

Damn thing looked like a giant stone vagina.

* * * *

An unseen figure brushed away the layer of dust covering the glass screen with a scaly hand. Revealed beneath was the image of a tiny figure standing before a slit-like opening in the side of a mountain. The unseen observer turned a dial on the side of the wooden cabinet. The picture zoomed in until Jackson's face expanded to fill the whole screen.

"Oh yes, you'll do just fine."

II

Oh great, Jackson thought as he stepped through the vagina-shaped opening and into the mountain, more of the stupid organ-grinder music playing in the background. Another damn earworm that was going to be stuck in his head for the next week. Other games had moved on to atmospheric doom chords and blasts of heavy metal. JRPGs were still stuck in the land of rainbows and unicorn farts.

And whoa.

Okay, so that was impressive. The mountain was hollow inside. A cross section was revealed to him like the glass wall of an ant farm. Or termite farm, he supposed, given the shape of the mountain. It was a complex mass of scaffolding arranged in a stack of blocky rooms that extended up the inside of the mountain. They went up a long way, too far for Jackson to see the top. Each 'room' was illuminated with different coloured lamps. They all teemed with monsters.

Fuck. That was a shit load of levels, Jackson thought. Do not be another fucking Blighttown. Once through there was enough.

He spotted a stone archway at the base of the tower. Looked as good an entrance as any, he thought, walking towards it. To the right of the archway was a small pedestal. Sitting on top, under a glass dome, was a giant bubblegum sweet in a garish, stripy wrapper. On top of the dome was a folded note with the words '

Eat Me

' written on it in large letters.

Yeah right, did they really think he was that gullible? Jackson thought.

He ignored it and walked through the stone archway. There followed a strange feeling of dislocation, as if the universe had been turned sideways and passed through a funhouse mirror. The world on the other side looked different. Jackson thought one of his eyes might be playing up, but a hand over each revealed both were working fine.

Which was more than could be said for the world around him. Three slabs of coloured concrete floated in the centre of the room. They formed three floors, each separated by a height of around seven feet. Nothing appeared to be holding them in place. Or maybe they were attached to the back . . . side wall. Jackson shook his head in an attempt to fix his screwed up vision. Nothing appeared to have any width. Not even the outcroppings above his head. There were three of them, all on the same level as the platforms in the centre of the room. That Jackson could currently see all three of them despite standing under the lower one said a lot for how the perspectives were all fucked up in here.

A trapdoor in the far ceiling opened and three unusual monsters dropped onto the top platform and started running towards him. They looked like giant wind-up toys—nothing more than metal heads on oversize clown feet. They had a chin a boxer would be proud of and their metallic jaws clanked up and down as they marched across the top platform.

Typical JRPG, Jackson thought. Commonplace orcs and goblins were clearly too passé. Let's throw cutesy giant clockwork robot heads at the player instead. They even had bowtie-shaped keys turning in their sides as they walked.

The lead monster dropped down off the top platform and landed on the same level as Jackson. Despite a three-floor fall the thing didn't break apart or—more likely given it seemed to be made out of solid metal—bust a hole through the floor. It landed smoothly on the floor and continued marching towards Jackson.

Okay, come and get it, Jackson said, drawing his sword. He took up a fighting stance and waited for the battle music to announce the beginning of turn-based combat.

The lead clockwork head didn't instigate turn-base combat. It carried on marching forward and trampled Jackson into the floor. Then it rebounded off the far wall and trampled him again on the way back.

* * * *

Far above, the unseen figure watched events on a dusty screen. It watched Jackson get trampled into the floor and let off an imaginative and probably anatomically impossible curse.

"Do they always have to be so stupid?"

* * * *

Jackson stood back up.

Okay, so this game was a little more active in the combat department than the other games. There wasn't much time to think about it as the third one was already right on top of him.

Jackson swung his sword at it, which was obviously really stupid in hindsight—what was a sword going to do against a giant metal head? Or would have been stupid had the sword not passed straight through it. Jackson was still pondering that oddity when the clockwork head marched through him and he didn't feel a thing.

Like it was a ghost or hologram, Jackson thought.

No,

he

was the ghost, he realised. He looked at his arms and saw they were flickering.

The third clockwork head rebounded off the back wall and marched back through Jackson's flickering form. He stopped flickering after the thing had passed and watched the clanking metal head walk away from him.

Solid now and with the thing showing its back to him, Jackson looked at his sword.

Fuck honour and fair play and all of that shit.

He charged forwards and swung the sword down with all his strength. It rebounded off the metal head with bone-jarring force. The blade broke off, leaving Jackson with a hilt and about half an inch of broken blade.

Well, d'uh. What did you expect was going to happen?

And now the first one was coming back for him. Jackson panicked and jumped upwards, hoping to maybe catch hold of the ledge above him. He was surprised when his jump catapulted him far higher than he expected. Crap, he was going to bang his head on the platform above.

It didn't happen. Somehow he passed straight by it. And then landed perfectly on it as he came back down, which made absolutely no topological sense at all.

Unless . . .

He bent his knees and jumped again. It was like being on the moon. He sprang upwards through the second platform, which mysteriously returned to being solid the moment he came back down to land on it.

Of course. It made sense now. No wonder all the perspectives seemed screwed up, like the world had lost a dimension. He was such a moron.

This wasn't a RPG; it was an old arcade-style 2D platformer.

Jackson hated old arcade-style 2D platformers.

He looked down and watched the clockwork head crouch and then jump up to the level below him. He ran to the end of the outcropping and bounded across to the central platform. The monsters followed him.

It had been years since he'd played a game like this. How did they work again?

Jackson watched one of the clockwork heads pass by on the lowest level.

Oh yeah, that was right. You had to jump on top of them. He waited for the monster to rebound off the far wall and come back.

Geronimo!

Jackson dropped down on top of the marching head. The clockwork head did not squish. Instead Jackson's foot slipped out sideways, twisting his ankle. He fell off and landed in an ungainly heap right in front of the advancing clockwork metal head. It did not stop. Heavy metal feet crunched down on Jackson, first breaking his legs, then crushing his vertebrae to powder, before finally shattering his skull like an egg.

It was as painful as it sounded.

III

The unseen figure slapped a scaly hand against its forehead.

"Oh my, you really are stupid," it said. "Looks like you're going to need some help."

It rummaged through a collection of items in a bowl on the table to the right of the cabinet and plucked out a small cross made out of bright red metal. It pulled out a tray beneath the screen and dropped the cross inside.

* * * *

Jackson had just rematerialized back at the starting point, thankfully with his bones fully intact, when an object appeared in the air above him and bonked him on the top of his head.

Huh?

He looked down and picked up a metal gothic cross about a foot high. The metal was black everywhere apart from the edges, where the cross appeared to be picked out with a flame-red outline. Jackson wondered what he was supposed to do with it.

Oh crap, one of those clanking clockwork heads was already bearing down on him. More in hope than anything, he thrust out the cross as if warding off a vampire.

A fireball erupted from the centre of the cross and blasted the oncoming head into a shower of bolts, springs and shards of twisted metal. They faded away leaving behind a ruby as big as Jackson's fist.

Sweet!

The jewel was a piece of abstract treasure. Jackson couldn't even pick it up. The moment he reached down, the giant ruby vanished and

700

floated up from where it had been. A bonus to his score, although he had no idea what that score represented in real terms.

The other two heads dropped down from the level above. Jackson pointed the metal cross at them and blasted them into glowing shards.

All right!

Following a pause after the last monster had faded away Jackson was hit by a sudden bout of disorientation. It felt like he had been snipped out of the world. The room fell away like the turn of a fruit machine reel while Jackson stayed in place. Another room moved down to take its place. Jackson saw a pyramid structure with four of the clockwork metal heads sitting at the top. And then he was in the room and the clanking monsters were marching down towards him.

Jackson lifted up the cross and blasted them into showers of cogs and springs.

He did the same for the next three levels and was beginning to think the game might be a little too easy when the cross suddenly crumbled away in his hand.

Oh shit. What now, Jackson thought as he was forced to take hasty evasive action.

* * * *

The unseen onlooker watched Jackson's antics on screen with mounting irritation.

"Okay, that's enough. I'm not watching you fumble your way through another ninety-five levels. It's been too fucking long."

They reached into the bowl sitting next to the cabinet and pulled out a vividly patterned umbrella. It was about the same size as a cocktail umbrella, but far more detailed, like a doll's house miniature. They opened the tray and dropped it in.

* * * *

Jackson saw an umbrella appear on the top platform.

An umbrella? What kind of a weapon was that?

He wouldn't have expected a cross to spit out fireballs either.

He jumped up and put his hand around the handle of the umbrella. The umbrella opened and the world froze. He felt that strange dislocation again as if he'd been snipped out of reality. The room fell away and was replaced by another. Jackson saw a new type of monster, creepy little hooded spooks, had joined the clockwork heads. He didn't get a chance to observe them for long. He'd barely stepped back into the game before he was plucked out again and the world was moving up to the next level.

This happened for the next level, and the one after.

The umbrella was a shortcut, he realised, a level skip. But how many? Ten rooms went by, twenty, fifty . . . He was halfway up the tower now, floating up on the open umbrella like a regular Mary Poppins. Floating wasn't the right word. All his senses told him he was stationary and it was the world around him that was moving.

. . . sixty . . . seventy . . .

Was he supposed to let go or something? What kind of game dropped a bonus that skipped the entire game? It didn't make any sense.

It was what happened. The world finally stopped moving as the umbrella deposited him in a much larger room near the top of the tower. His feet touched the ground and the umbrella closed before vanishing with a poof.

Jackson glanced around. The third dimension had returned; he was standing in a room rather than a rectangle. What type of room though? Judging from the walls and fittings it looked like a fancy waiting room in a posh mansion or palace. At least originally. Now it more resembled a workshop. The centre of the room was turned over to a large workbench covered in wires, springs, nuts, bolts, cogs, metal plates . . .

Jackson jumped as he saw another of the clockwork heads. He needn't have worried. The thing was upside down and inert. Its jaw had been removed. Lying on the floor next to it was a large ball of purple fur with a wide mouth and blank eyes. It was inert too. A hatch was opened up in the top of its head and wires trailed out to dangling green circuit boards. Overall, it looked like someone had taken a sumptuous palace lounge and turned it into a grease monkey's paradise.

"There you are," a feminine voice called out.

Jackson turned around.

He'd found the dragon.

IV

The dragon was not the dinosaur-proportioned fire-breathing monster he'd expected. She was a hottie of a different kind. He watched her descend a curved staircase at the far end of the room. She was naked and actually kind of fit. Well, if you ignored the scales . . . and the thick tail . . . and the leathery wings folded behind her back . . . or the long quills she had instead of hair.

To be honest, Jackson thought, she was a bit of a babe even with those. It was the face. Aside from a few scales and the hair that wasn't actually hair, you could almost trick yourself into thinking she was human. A very cute human, even if her pink skin tended more to lilac than fleshy tones. The vivid skin tone only added to her exoticism.

Nice pair of boobs as well. Big, round, totally naked . . . it wasn't really a surprise they caught his eye. It was her face that held his attention, though. She had big bright eyes and a wide, expressive smile. It was the face of a girl that was both beautiful and fun to be with. Jackson could really fancy a girl with a face like that.

Which made it all the more soul-crushing she was obviously the dragon.

"I've come to rescue the . . . princess." Jackson tailed off. An uncomfortable suspicion was settling in his gut like a bad balti.

"Oh, that's so sweet," the naked dragon girl said. "You battled all the way up here for that. I don't really need the help," she partially extended her wings to show the top of a mountain didn't exactly qualify as a prison for her, "but the thought is very touching."

"You're the princess," he said.

The dragon girl nodded, a wide smile on her full lips.

"Princess Babelixiafukiona the forty-eighth. Seventh in line to the throne of Tay-e-tow."