Battle Pass 04


    Trampled to death by a pack of waist-high lizard beasts was not how I imagined dying. Ever. I spun and ran.


    Glancing back, I could see they were much faster than me, gaining on me quickly. The only way I could avoid being run down was to go up. I aimed for a tree and practically sprinted up it. I hadn’t done any tree climbing since childhood, but it all returned quickly. It also helped that the branches seemed perfectly spaced, allowing me to rocket up the tree like a ladder.


    When I got a comfortable dozen feet up, I looked back down to see that the lizards were not looking up at me but milling around. They seemed more interested in munching on the shrubs than hunting after me.


    As my breathing returned to normal, I noticed the branch at my hands seemed flatter along the top and a bit wider than the other branches. Hefting myself up made for a good perch as the critters below continued circling the tree and nibbling on other foliage. I wondered how long I’d have to sit here before they got bored and wandered off.


    Looking around, I noticed the other trees had similar flat-topped branches, which seemed to connect. Pulling myself up to stand on the branch, I could see that if I walked along this one, I could step onto the branches of another tree and then another.


    Using other branches as handholds, I walked the length of the flattened branch. Sure enough, it was sturdy and strong enough to carefully walk my way to where two of these branches met. I stepped to the other and continued walking to the next tree trunk.


    There was a maze of connecting walking branches along the canopy. At first, I moved along them at a slow walk, using other branches hand over hand to steady myself. It became apparent quickly that navigating the branches and walking along them was easy. In no time, I was jogging, feeling giddy that I had discovered something I would have absolutely loved as a child. I was a Hunter and a tree walker.


    I returned to the glade where I’d left the rest of our group. Slade and Emma were done, but Max was still buried in menus, reading. I ran down a series of branches that seemed to have been placed like crude steps, allowing me to return almost to the ground. There was a small drop of about five feet. I grabbed a branch and swung down smoothly as Slade and Emma watched.


    “Where’d you go?” Slade asked, obviously not impressed that I’d just come running from the canopy.


    “Checking out the rest of the woods. Don’t worry, I’m fine, and there are no more goblins.”


    Emma walked across the glade to where I’d come down from the tree. She looked up inquisitively. “How’d you do that?”


    “Come on, climb up,” I said, excited to show off what I’d discovered. “There''s a whole series of squashed branches that are perfect for walking along.”


    I once again marveled that the branches were nearly a perfect ladder for climbing up, spaced perfectly like a spiral staircase. I scrambled up past Emma and then looked back down at her. She struggled to make her way up, climbing like a small child and stopping at every branch.


    Moving back down to her, I pointed, “Grab here… step here…”


    She wasn’t catching on and continued struggling as she climbed. Slade watched as we climbed slowly up about twelve feet.


    “See this branch?” I slapped it a few times. It''s flat on top, making a perfect beam for walking on.”


    Emma stared at it, “No. It’s not flat on top.”


    “What?” I said incredulously. “No, really, look.”


    “It''s not flat at all. It''s rounded. And covered in knots and bends.”


    I pulled myself atop the walking branch, “See Emma, perfect for walking on. This one right here, that I’m standing on.”


    She shook her head. “No… Be careful, Victoria.”


    It dawned on me. We were in the game. Maybe our experiences were different. Perhaps she saw things altogether differently than I did. Without even bothering to use the guiding hand-holder branches, I returned to her and crouched down. Touching the branch next to my foot, I asked, “So, this branch, the one I’m standing on, it isn’t flat on the top?”


    “I swear, it''s round and crooked. Not flat at all.”


    Swinging my legs around, I sat down, looking down at Emma. “We’re seeing different things. I wonder what the world looks like through your eyes?”


    We climbed down in silence. I was thinking hard about how we’d navigate this world as players if we weren’t speaking the same language. Obviously, we were speaking English to each other, but if we were all seeing different things… how could I trust anything the others told me?


    “Emma,” I said as we crossed the glade back to the fire. “We’re going to need to communicate a lot. A lot more than usual. Like about everything. Know what I mean?”The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    “Not really,” she said.


    Slade had gotten bored while we were up in the tree. He was now busy piling branches onto the fire the goblins had left. It was quickly becoming a bonfire, which might not be the smartest thing to do in the middle of the woods. More importantly, I needed Emma to understand.


    I stopped and turned to her, “We are seeing different things. In order to have all the info we need, we’re going to have to tell each other everything. If you think it''s important, just tell me, even if it seems mundane or redundant. Promise you’ll tell me everything you see.”


    “How am I going to know?” She said. “I see the same woods you do. I see the same dirt. The same fire. Even the same shapes in the clouds above. How can I tell what you see is different?”


    I started walking towards the fire again, thinking about what she asked. We could turn spotting the differences into a game.


    “Let’s make a game of it,” I said. “Let''s grab a seat by the fire and start describing things to each other.”


    “You’re going to do what?” Slade asked.


    “We’re going to play I Spy, only with some homebrewed rules,” I told him.


    “Why?” Slade asked.


    “I think we are experiencing the game differently. Each of us sees things a little off-kilter.”


    Slade scratched his noggin. I’d already classified this habit of his akin to a dog tilting its head. If I showed him a magic trick, he’d scratch. If I said something he didn’t follow - scratch, scratch.


    “Is that even possible?” Max asked. He was no longer buried in the menus of his mind’s-eye.


    “What isn’t possible here? You faded to shadow. Emma healed all of us with a touch. Is it much more of a stretch that we might be seeing completely different things at the same time?”


    “The processing power needed would be astronomical,” Max said, considering the idea.


    “Let’s see if it''s true. We’ll gather around the fire and describe something we see.” I said, looking around.


    Max sat and pointed, “Why not the fire?”


    “Okay,” I said nodding as I took a seat on the fallen log a couple of the goblins had originally been sitting on.


    Slade plopped down right next to me, so close I could feel his body heat. He said, “I see a fire.”


    “And?” I asked, scooting away.


    “Yeah. A fire.”


    “Huge help,” I said with an eye roll that could flip a shopping mall.


    “I see a fire that casts very distinct shadows,” Max said. “If I move into the shadows, a bar appears to the side of my vision. The more this bar is filled in, the harder it is to fade to shadows.”


    I looked at the shadows the fire was casting. They didn’t seem all that special to me at all. I got up and moved over to stand in the flickering shadows, but a bar never appeared in my vision. When I looked up everyone was stepping back and forth, trying to stand on a shadow to see what would happen.


    When we all returned to the fire, I took a good long look at it. As I watched, tendrils of grey color snaked out from its base. When Slade thrust a stick into the fire, however, the stick was covered with a dull orange color. When he pulled the stick away, the orange faded away to nothing.


    “I’m seeing something different,” I said. “There’s this grey color on the ground around the fire. It''s like a graphics overlay, just a color masking the ground. But when Slade puts his stick in the fire, the stick is covered in an orangish glow.”


    “No. I don’t see anything.” Slade said. He pushed the end of the stick into the fire again and sat there watching it. After a moment, the stick caught on fire. He yanked it away from the flames, but it was alight like a giant match.


    “Hey!” I shouted. “This time, it''s different. The orange is still there, on the stick even though he pulled it away. I can see the flame at its end, but the stick is still orange.”


    The flame began to crawl up the stick, catching the whole thing on fire, as sticks in the real world also do. Slade whipped the stick hard, causing the flame to sputter and die.


    “And now the orange is fading. It’s gone back to grey, and now nothing.”


    “You know what this means?” Max said. “You can see how fire spreads.”


    “Cool,” was all I could muster.


    “How about you, Emma?” Max asked.


    Emma looked at the fire, “I just see a big fire. Beautiful colors, oranges, and yellows, with a little blue in the middle.”


    “Anything else?” I said.


    She leaned forward, peering at it. “There’s something in the center. It keeps changing shapes. It''s like there’s a person at the heart of the flames, waving their arms.”


    I looked into the fire, trying to see what she’d seen. There were plenty of oranges and yellows, with just a hint of blue in the middle, but I didn’t see shapes in the fire. Just dancing flames and little else.


    “They have too many arms,” Emma continued. “There''s like six, maybe. She’s waving all of them at me. I think she’s trying to call me to her, gesturing for me to join her. But… there''s something wrong with her. She’s not human. Her shape is all wrong. And she keeps waving at me…”


    “Emma!” I barked. I didn’t like her growing obsession with the images in the fire. Maybe it was a skill she hadn’t learned to master yet. Perhaps in a few levels, she’ll figure it out. Like my pet skill, someday I had to figure that one out.


    Emma blinked and looked around the fire at all of us, “I don’t think I want to play this game any longer.”


    “Not a problem,” I said. “I think the point was proven.”


    “Oh yeah?” said Slade. “What point is that?”


    I held out my hands and arched my eyebrows in the most obvious ‘duh’ gesture I could think of, “That we’re seeing different things, genius.”


    “And? Isn’t that exactly what we did back in the real world too? Everybody sees things their own way.”


    Slade trying to be smart, ladies and gentlemen. I foolishly thought explaining it might help. “You’re talking about a perceptive difference. What we are seeing here is an actual cognitive difference. We are not seeing the same thing. That’s totally different than seeing the same thing and having a difference of opinion on the important elements of a thing.”


    “You say potato; I say potato.”


    Max snickered as I struggled to find the words, “No… it’s potatoe, potatto.”


    “There’s no such thing as a potatto.”


    I stared at him, mouth open, “Who did you sleep with to get this gig?”


    “Your mom.”


    Max was outright laughing at this point. Slade thought it was a union of the brotherhood of men type things. I was certain Max was just laughing at him. “I can’t. I literally don’t have the capacity for this conversation.”


    “Like I said,” Slade continued. “I see a perfectly normal fire. You see a fire, but get your panties scrunched about it catching the forest up. Max sees how he can use it to hide. And crazy here, sees just that, crazy. It''s no different than back in the real world.”


    Thankfully, Max cleared his throat. Looking up through the glade opening, he said, “Have you looked at the sky?”


    “I don’t think I can play anymore,” I said, replaying the last few moments of insanity back in my head.


    “No,” Max said. “The sun is going down. It’ll be dark soon, and we don’t know what happens at night.”


    Looking up, I realized he was right. And that was the exact moment to queue something out there howling.