Chapter Thirteen - Words Go Unheard

I got back to Variak around the twenty fifth cycle. The sun was lowering in the west and it would be dark soon.

Unfortunately, neither Iron nor Amy were in this world. They tried to be, but typically they could only be on for two or three cycles every twelve. Four or five hours a day, they insisted on calling it. Sometimes they didn’t come at all. I hadn’t seen North Cross ever since my first meeting with her and sometimes Amy would log in looking distraught.

I didn’t know if she was the reason but… I was pretty sure.

I wish I knew what had happened to split them apart so viciously but... what could I do? I didn’t even live in their world, and every time I asked Iron or Amy they would both clam up like they’d done something terrible.

I sighed, setting aside that problem for later. Fortunately, my newest friend Akwa_Lavanaya was online, and if I didn’t talk to someone about this I might burst.

I opened my messaging interface and sent a quick message to the other girl, hoping against hope she might be willing to help me. Bugbear was out there all alone, lost in Tread the Sky with players ready and willing to kill him at every turn.

I didn’t know how hard it had been for him to leave Dungeon Home. Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible without outside intervention like I’d had from Francis. Had they perhaps changed him like they’d done to me?

Worse, had they removed him from the game?

While I was waiting for Akwa to reply, I pulled out the flute Francis had given me. I couldn’t imagine being more “In a pinch” than I was right now. If I found out he’d deleted Bugbear I’d…

I didn’t know what I would do. Cry. Scream. Experience had shown I could do nothing to hurt Francis but… maybe that wasn’t true. I thought about Miss Tutorial and how she had compromised the developers enough that I had been allowed back into this world. That might be as detrimental to me as it was to the false gods, but at least I had options of retaliation.

If he had been… deleted…

I clenched my fist around the flute and blew.

I didn’t have to wait long before the telltale sound of a teleportation warp occurred. In a few moments a man stood next to the table I now sat in at the adventurers guild.

The man was short with curly black hair. He had the same sort of strange clothes on that Francis wore but he looked much younger than the lead developer. His skin was a mix between the dark of Iron’s and the bright pale color of Amy’s, coming up somewhere in the middle. He was… I struggled to find the words but I immediately liked him and didn’t really know why.

“Who… who are you?” I asked.

“Tyrone. I’m a Software Developer one. I’m the one tasked with watching you for today and I saw you called. Whats up?” he asked flippantly. He sounded young but unlike a lot of other players who seemed to sound much younger than their fully grown bodies, this boy’s voice seemed to fit him. I suspected he looked the same in his world as he did here.

His words were a little strange as if each of them were emphasized in the wrong places. An… accent? Either way, I enjoyed the sound of his voice.

“Uhm,” I flushed for some reason, my gaze lingering on his arms, bare from the shoulders down. “You… you guys took down the world for a week. Francis said that was to… to clean up problems I’d caused.”

“Yeah. Your code affected a lot of things. NPCs mostly. As it turned out, most of the effort was wasted though since the Tutorial was a bigger problem than any of that,” he replied, pulling out a seat and taking it. He waved his hand and a strange cup appeared that read Starbucks on the side and had a lid that seemed to be scooped to make it easier to drink whatever was inside.

He held up the unusual cup and proffered it to me. “Coffee?”

I eyed the cup warily. “Uhm. Is that… anything like the stuff Francis carries? Because he killed me with that once.”

He laughed, and I scowled trying to figure out why the sound appealed to me so much as he responded. “Yeah, Francis does that. Thinks killing people with a coffee mug is funny. But no, coffee in general is just great. It helps keep you awake in our world. Here it’s just a buff to dexterity and charisma for an hour but it tastes so good.”

I took the cup gingerly. I hadn’t yet been truly disappointed in any new food or drink I’d been given. I put the rim to my lips and titled the cup back.

“Whoa you don’t want to–!” He exclaimed horrified as the liquid in the cup touched my lips. It was bitter. I grimaced and looked at him strangely before taking another swig.

“I don’t really know if I like or dislike this. It’s… kinda gross but I like the warm feeling,” I said.

He blinked at me, owlishly.

“You… didn’t burn your tongue? Can I see that?” he asked, gesturing for the cup while staring at it like it had done something wrong.

“Sure. I’m not sure if I like it,” I replied, smacking my lips, still unsure if I wanted more of the taste or if I wanted it gone immediately. Somewhere in the middle.

“It grows on you. It should be lava hot though. Should’ve burned your tongue,” he replied before tilting his head up and taking a drink of his own. He jumped, slamming the cup down with a splash and wincing his face scrunched into a dissatisfied grimace.

I giggled as he squawked. “Wh-what the hell! It’s on fire! How did you drink that?”

“Oh, I’m immune to fire! And coffee I guess?” I told him brightly. “Do it again! The thing with your face! I wanna see it!”

He glared at me before turning the glare on his own drink. “Why did we make everything so damn realistic!? Agghhh!” he groaned, making the silly face again to my delight.

After recovering, he grinned back at me before reaching up and holding his hand aloft. A flash of blue and green lights cascaded around him and he shook himself off. A healing spell, though not one I’d seen before. Usually regular heals were just green.

He turned back to me and grinned. “Right. Fire immunity. Forgot about that.”

Yes. I did like this other false god. But…

“So… about my question. Those NPCs I affected, specifically the ones in my Dungeon Home; did you delete them?” I asked quietly.

He blanched. “I… no. We didn’t. But we did clear out the extraneous code. The things you added to them had to be removed. They would’ve grown too much, too fast. Sooner or later each of them might’ve broken the game the same way you did. We… Gell we can’t let that happen.”

“S-so… so all of them are gone?” I asked quietly. “All seven Bugbears? Skeleton and Skeledog?”

He blinked. “I only remember six bugbears that had been affected actually inside the dungeon. The unicorn. The wolves. The NPCs in Bluebell. Most of them we found by examining NPCs along near your coordinate history. Yeah. Definitely six bugbears and the bone hound. Are you saying there was a seventh?”

“Six… only six?” I asked hopefully, grabbing at the man’s clothes and staring into his eyes.

“Yeah. I remember they were easy to detect because the affected ones all had strange names,” he said defensively.

“S-so! So there’s a chance you didn’t delete him!?” I exclaimed, excited.

“Uh.. I… I guess so? But I’ll probably have to get to him in the next maintenanc–!”

“Don’t you touch him!” I screamed, glaring at him.

“Whoa! Whoa! What’s going on? I…” he asked, backing fully away now. We were drawing the eyes of other people in the adventurer’s guild but I didn’t care as I stared daggers into the false god’s fearful eyes.

Suddenly I realized just what I was doing. This boy wasn’t Francis but he apparently had the same sort of powers. And I was threatening him.

I relaxed, only then realizing that I’d been clenching his shirt tight in both fists. In reality, I had no power to stop them.

“P-please. If you find him, please don’t delete him. He… B–” I almost slipped and gave his name, but it seemed like giving him such an uncreative name might’ve been the only thing that had saved him the first time around. “He’s my friend. They were all my friends but he was… special to me. Please don’t hurt him. S-surely the world can support two of us, if it can handle me? Right?”

The boy seemed overwhelmed. “I-I can’t make that decision Gell. I’ll bring it up with Francis though. If there’s another one of you out there, a Bugbear even, it might… suffer. Like you did. It’ll be killed like you were. Are you sure you want that?”

“He’s not an it. He’s Bugbear. He saved me. You can’t hurt him. I… I don’t know what I would do. If he dies, he’ll survive it just like I did, but if you erase him… Please, just, don’t. Coming back and saving him was all I had once,” I said softly.

“Gell, I’ll put in a word with Francis. If he’s that important to you I think we might be able to make an exception for him. Maybe. I think,” he stammered.

I let out an annoyed huff, “If your board lets you, you mean. For gods, you developers sure don’t seem very powerful.”

“We’re…” He sighed, letting the response drop. “I guess we’re not. We can create, but we can’t really choose what we create. People who pay us decide what they want from us. We just build.”

“Just… another profession. Just a job?” I asked.

I didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

“He was in the dungeon with you, right?” Tyrone asked, putting a hand on my shoulder as I folded in on myself.

“I won’t help you find him if you’re going to delete him,” I said.

Bugbear. Where could he have possibly gone? And how? Was the instinct that prevented him from leaving somehow weaker? Or was… was I just not very strong? I was so small compared to Bugbear, even in my human form. Maybe it was as simple as that?

“Gell, we can’t do anything until we can find him. It’ll look better for you and him if you tell us what you know. We’re going to find him sooner or later anyway.”

I grit my teeth. “He… used to be in Dungeon Home with me. I think he escaped but I also thought maybe you’d taken him to one of your little box rooms. That’s why I called. He wasn’t there. I went back to try and find him and he wasn’t there. I don’t know where he is.”

“Shit… so there’s another you running loose is what you’re telling me?”

I blinked. “Another me? No. Bugbear is nothing like me. He’s… simple. Nothing is ever complicated with Bugbear like it is with you humans.”

“I… no that’s not what I–nevermind.” Tyrone said. “We’ll try to find him, Gell. And I promise we won’t do anything to him without at least telling you what’s happening and why first, okay?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” I said, my voice as bitter as the coffee had been while I let my head sink into my hands. Why had I even brought this up to them? They were responsible for deleting the others. Busterbear. Overbear… Buggy. They were all gone. They’d never been nearly as real as Bugbear had been but now they didn’t even have a chance.

I slowly turned back up to him. “Don’t hurt him, if you find him? Please? He’ll be scared. Even more than I was…”

Tyrone gave me a sympathetic smile. “We won’t, Gell. Don’t worry.”

His assurance was small comfort as he stood, so I didn’t say anything.

He grew visibly uncomfortable as he stepped away from the table. “I’ll… go talk to Francis about this right now, okay?”

“Okay,” I said softly. “While you’re talking with him. Can you maybe ask him to explain how your job works? How… how do you build worlds? If I knew that… maybe I could help?”

His eyes widened at that, and I watched him actually gulp. Was he afraid? “Uhh. I… I’ll ask him, but I certainly can’t tell you that.”

It seemed as if he wanted to say more, biting his lip with his own sort of worried tension. Instead though, he lifted into the air, beginning the start up sequence for logging out of this world. Before leaving he smiled at me and gave a sort of sad wave.

“I’ll see you around, Gell. It was nice to meet you,” he said before vanishing.

“You too,” I said to the empty air, hoping I hadn’t just made a huge mistake.