Page 83 of Nexus
“You’ve only been to one realm of the underworld so far,” she mused. “Maybe things will be different in the next one we visit.”
“We?” I asked as I prepared more coffee for us both.
“I’ll be going with you, of course,” she said with a smirk. “How will you find the scroll fragments without me?” Some of the burden that I would be going alone lifted from me. “Ruen will no doubt be coming as well,” she added, which tarnished some of my joy.
“Oh, goodie,” I said drolly, clapping my hands and rolling my eyes. “We’ll get to see him turn into a psycho eight more times, if we manage to survive long enough to make it all the way to the ninth realm.”
She snickered and poured cream and sugar into our mugs. “He’s funny when he’s happy,” she said.
“The only time he’s ever happy is after he’s murdered something,” I pointed out.
“At least he gets to experience some joy,” she said with a shrug. “Some people never get to know what happiness feels like.”
“What did you mean when you said maybe things will be different for me in the next realm?” I asked as we took a seat on the couch again.
She cut a look at me as if she was reluctant to tell me. “I can sense magic,” she said.
“Yeah. So?”
“I can sense magic in you.”
I looked at her in fresh confusion. “Ogres aren’t magical. We’re just huge, strong and dumb.”
“Didn’t you say your ancestors had sex with all different types of beings from the underworld?” I nodded and she made a gesture as if I’d made her point. “You have lots of different monsters mixed in your genes. Ogres aren’t magical, so you have something else inside you that is.”
Her logic couldn’t be denied, but I still wasn’t convinced. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens when Drake sends us to the next realm,” I figured.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the machine sitting on my coffee table, just noticing it for the first time.
“That is the most magical device in all of existence,” I told her and her eyes widened in delight. “It can take you to worlds where you can kill hordes of zombies, become whatever type of being you want and save countless people from doom.”
“I can’t sense any magic in it,” she said, still willing to believe me.
“It’s a gaming console,” I said and pointed at the videogames on my shelves. “Each disk has a different game on it. I’ve played them all dozens of times and I never grow tired of them.”
“Will you teach me how to play them?” she asked.
My affection for her grew at her request. “Aurora, by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be an expert gamer,” I declared.
She clapped in glee and anticipation as I fired up my TV and gaming console. Not only had I gained a friend, I now had someone to share my love of gaming with. Together, we could defeat our foes both electronically and in the underworld. Ruen would be our vampiric sidekick and we would carve our way through the nine realms to complete the quest the dragon had sent us on.
“I’m starting to feel like I’m actually living in a game,” I muttered, unsure whether to be happy about it, or to curse Fate for giving me such an impossible and dangerous task.