The Iron Veil

  It’s not a game. It’s a nightmare.

  25 year-old Justin Boone has been waiting his entire life for an adventure like this.

  Breakthrough technology developed at a government sleep study program allows participants to interact with each other in the OmniWorld, a shared dream state that resembles an online role-playing game.

  2.3 million people applied to participate in the first public test. 1000 were chosen. And Justin is one of them.

  But he soon finds that he’s not one of the lucky ones. Not by a long shot.

  Now he must face legendary monsters, murderous assassins, and other players bent on his destruction--as well as a diabolical AI game controller who has plans of its own...

  The Iron Veil

  An OmniWorld Adventure

  Randy Nargi

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Review Request

  Free Short Story

  Also by Randy Nargi

  Prologue

  “All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” ~Edgar Allan Poe

  The last hour of Iniya Kintala’s life went like this.

  Her party had recently finished clearing the third and final level of the Temple of Xyurn, which was supposed to house a significant clue to the location of the artifact The Fellowship of Wood and Silence had been seeking for the past three months, the object of the world quest: the Shadow Lance. This last chamber was the throne room, and according to her sage Tolman, the clue should have been here.

  But there were no signs of any clues. None at all. No scrolls, no journals, nothing etched into a wall, not even a gargoyle with a riddle.

  “Check again,” Iniya said.

  Tolman shook his head. “I checked my notes three times. This is the spot. It has to be. This is the only freaking throne room in here.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Wainwright.”

  The scout had been wiping his short sword clean on a tapestry. But now he looked up. “You want me to inspect the whole room again?”

  “Yes.”

  “That will take another hour,” he whined.

  “You have someplace else you’d rather be?”

  “Matter of fact, yes. The Scarlet Pig is supposed to unveil its new brew tonight.”

  Iniya sighed. “You guys think this is another dead end?”

  “Seems like it.” Andi prodded the corpse of the gigantic centaur boss they had just dispatched. Black blood pooled around the corpse and reflected the light of their torches.

  “What about the rest of you?” Iniya looked over at Callum, her enchanter, and Mariel, her healer, who were lounging around sitting on their backpacks. “Are we wasting our time here?”

  They didn’t respond, and Iniya wondered if she was coming off as too much of a bitch. The memory of her last performance review from Lazarus was still fresh. He hadn’t described it as ‘bitchiness’ per se, but still…

  “I never said we were wasting our time,” Wainwright muttered. “I just think your information might be wrong.”

  Tolman’s eyes flashed. “It’s not. And I’m not. There should be something here. A treasure room with the next clues. My lore’s at 211.”

  “So you keep reminding us,” Wainwright said.

  “You have any skill over 200, bro? Huh?”

  Andi walked over to the sage.

  Iniya knew she and Wainwright were pretty close and the big warrior was kind of protective.

  “My asshole detection is at 250 and it’s pinging like hell right now.” Andi gave Tolman a playful shove.

  “Knock it off, guys,” Iniya said. “Executive decision. We search for thirty more minutes. All of us.”

  Everyone grumbled, but they all reluctantly got to their feet.

  The throne room was made of carved stone and was easily forty feet by forty feet. The only way in or out was through the double doors to the south. Close to the north wall was a dais upon which stood the throne itself, a blocky oversized seat made of metal that looked like it had come from a meteorite. It was square and tall with all sorts of sharp angles.

  Andi called over to Callum. “Yo, perhaps you could light us up, so we’re not having to juggle torches while we look.”

  “Uh, sure.” The enchanter looked around the room for a suitable target for his illumination spell. “What about on that pillar?”

  “Whatever, dude.”

  Callum spoke the incantation and gestured at the top of one of the half dozen floor-to-ceiling carved stone pillars that ringed the dais. A glowing sphere of light the size of a softball winked into existence and then floated through the air and attached itself to the top of one of the pillars. Callum spoke another word and glowing sphere grew to the size of a basketball and became so bright it was hard to look at.

  “Better,” Andi said.

  Everyone extinguished their torches and Mariel collected them all and wrapped them in a leather bundle. In addition to being their healer, she was the party’s torch-bearer, a job that no one ever wanted.

  “Uh, do we want to keep these?” Mariel asked in her low, gravelly voice which never ceased to irritate Iniya. Vocal fry, it was called. Ugh. How could anyone talk like that?

  “Yeah, we do,” Iniya said.

  Now that there was some better light, they all spread out to search the room properly, although Iniya knew that Wainwright was the only one who had a decent inspect skill. The chances of anyone else finding anything were slim.

  Suddenly, Iniya felt the floor rumble beneath her. A deep muffled sound echoed throughout the throne room, like some ancient creaking machinery set in motion.

  “I just touched it…” Mariel said. She backed away from the throne which trembled, shedding dust and shards of black stone. The rumbling got louder as the throne sunk into the ground.

  They all crowded around the hole in the middle of the dais. It was more of a pit or a shaft, six feet wide, and pitch-black inside. Callum’s illumination spell didn’t light up more than a few feet down.

  “Good one, Mariel,” Iniya said.

  “It would have been nice if our scout had bothered to check the throne in the first place,” Andi said.

  Wainwright ignored her. He got down on his hands and knees and felt around the perimeter of the pit.

  “I’m not detecting any traps. This could be it.” He looked up at Tolman.

  The sage just shrugged. “I told you guys.”

  “Callum, throw some light down there,” Iniya said. “We’re going down, kids.”

  The enchanter cast another illumination spell. This time the glowing ball floated down the shaft.

  Wainwright squinted, following the orb’s progress. Iniya knew that he had the bes
t vision of all of them.

  “Twenty-five… thirty-five…”

  “That’s one deep mo-fo,” Andi said.

  “I think I see spikes,” Wainwright said. “Yeah. Definitely spikes. At the bottom.”

  “Makes sense,” Tolman said. “Typical trap construction.”

  “Where did the throne go?” asked Mariel.

  Wainwright said, “There’s a passage down there. The throne must have slid to one side.”

  “Pretty intricate,” Callum said. “I can float you down if you want. I’ve got a little spell power left.”

  Wainwright looked over at Iniya for his orders.

  She shrugged at him. “Go ahead, take a look. But rope up. Just in case there’s an anti-magic plate down there. I don’t want to have to pick your guts off those spikes.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “And don’t touch anything.”

  “I never do. Not in my job description.”

  Andi helped secure a hundred-foot-long silken line around Wainwright’s waist and then she tied the other end around one of the pillars.

  “I’ll feed your line,” she said.

  “Ready?” Callum asked.

  “Let’s do this,” Wainwright said.

  As Iniya watched, the enchanter cast his float spell on Wainwright who grinned like an idiot, saluted her, then stepped off the edge of the shaft. The spell allowed the scout to drift down into the shaft at a safe rate, like he was falling in slow motion.

  “Wuss,” Andi called after him. “In the old days you would have climbed down yourself. Blindfolded.” She fed out the line as he sunk lower into the shaft.

  A minute later, Wainwright called up. “I’m in!”

  “What do you see?” Iniya called.

  “Just as I thought. East/west passage. Throne’s blocking the west. East is clear for as far as I can see—which isn’t far.”

  “Ok. Don’t move. We’re all coming down.”

  “I’ll spike the rope.”

  The sound of clanging and banging echoed up from the depths of the shaft. It went on for what seemed like ten minutes. Finally, Wainwright announced that the rope was secure at his end.

  “Do I have to go?” Mariel asked, in her Mariel voice. “My climbing skill, uh, sucks.”

  “I have enough for one more float,” Callum said. “But then I’ll be totally tapped out. How long are we going to be hanging out here?”

  Iniya glared at him. “Until we find the freaking clue, Callum. You okay with that?”

  “Just asking.”

  “No floating. Mariel you stay. But keep your eyes open for wanderers.”

  “What about me?” Tolman asked. “I don’t have great climbing either.”

  “Well, then be careful. We need you down there to identify crap.”

  Andi said, “You can follow me. That way if you fall I can grab you. Maybe.” She laughed.

  One by one they roped up and made their way down the shaft. Iniya first, then Andi, Tolman, and then finally Callum.

  They all huddled in the passage way while Wainwright fished in his bag for some glowstones. Stupidly, they forgot to bring down the torches. The scout offered to climb back up, but Iniya was eager to get going. She could tell everyone was kind of worn out.

  “Let’s do this. Standard order,” Iniya said.

  They all got in position. Wainwright up front, checking for traps. Iniya next with a few glowstones looped to her staff for light. Then Callum, Tolman, and Andi bringing up the rear.

  The passage was narrower than all the other ones in this dungeon, maybe just six feet wide and six feet tall, but the walls and floor and ceiling were perfectly smooth, like they had been polished. It reminded Iniya of something, but she didn’t know what.

  Tolman ran his fingers along the wall. He noticed something too.

  “Good thing we don’t have torches,” he said. “I think this is oil.”

  “Fire trap?” she asked Wainwright.

  The scout took a few tentative steps forward. “I don’t think so. There would be more combustibles.”

  “Are we moving or what?” Andi called from the back. “I’m getting claustrophobic.”

  “Yeah, hang on a sec…” Something was definitely off here, Iniya thought.

  And then she felt the rumbling again. And an image popped into her head: the barrel of her father’s shotgun.

  “Run!” she screamed.

  She didn’t get more than a few steps before the massive metal throne slammed into her like a locomotive.

  And then everything went black.

  Chapter One

  Justin Boone woke up.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly right. He was still asleep; he knew that. Dreaming.

  But now he was conscious. Consciously dreaming.

  He saw the ceiling above his head. White. Textured paint. It smelled freshly painted.

  He heard the low hum of air conditioning. Felt the sheets against his skin. They were cool and smooth. Expensive, probably.

  But simulated.

  That’s something else he knew. Everything here was simulated. The room, the sheets, the air conditioning, the new paint smell, even he himself was simulated. All by a building full of OmniWorld’s computers.

  It was a bizarre feeling to know that. Really bizarre.

  Slowly, gradually, Justin sat up in the bed.

  In the real world, he might have experienced some dizziness sitting up too quickly. That had happened a bunch of times with him. Could they simulate that? A momentary loss of blood pressure? He had read that the BerylBlue mega-qubit processors OmniWorld ran on could simulate just about anything. Why not body sensations?

  He looked around.

  He was sitting in a bed in what looked like your generic hotel room. Nothing too fancy. There was one window with the curtains drawn. A loveseat, a coffee table, and a nightstand. Carpeting on the floor and some unremarkable paintings on the wall. All in all, pretty underwhelming in real life.

  But this wasn’t real life.

  At least, he didn’t think it was.

  For one thing, the last thing he remembered was leaving his room at the Loneskum-Alexander campus and being escorted to a hospital room where he got his first glimpse of the stim-pod that he’d be spending the next year of his life in. There were nearly two hours of final tests and calibration and then they sealed him in.

  When he awoke he was here. Inside OmniWorld. Or a janky hotel room. He wasn’t sure which yet.

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. Without thinking, Justin swung his legs out of the bed and got up.

  Then he realized that he was standing in the simulation. For the first time. He also noticed that he was wearing soft cotton shorts and a blank t-shirt. Beneath his feet he felt the low-pile carpet, and he scrunched his toes up, taking in all the sensations.

  This was pretty incredible.

  Another polite knock.

  Maybe it was room service.

  He walked to the door and noticed that, unlike old school hotel doors, there was no peephole or video screen. And no lock.

  So he pulled the door open.

  Standing in the hallway was a guy about his own age. He had a pleasant face and was dressed in jeans and an untucked button-down shirt.

  “What’s up?” The guy smiled at him. “You acclimated yet?”

  “I just woke up,” Justin said.

  “Cool. Well, my name is Wyatt and I’m supposed to take you down to the testing lounge.”

  “Wait, we’re inside OmniWorld, right?”

  “We are.”

  “And are you, like, an NPC?”

  Wyatt made a face. “Rule #1. Don’t refer to anyone as an NPC. I work here.”

  “But you’re an NPC?”

  “I’m an intern.”

  “Are you human? A player?”

  “You’re getting kind of personal, aren’t you?”

  Justin felt a flush of anger. “I command you to answer me!”

  Wy
att laughed. “Take it easy. It doesn’t work like that. Remember your briefing sessions?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. That’s what the testing lounge is for.”

  Wyatt led him down the corridor and into an elevator. Then he told it to take them to the lobby.

  “Are we the only ones in this hotel?” Justin asked.

  “It’s not really a hotel, although everyone calls it that. Its official name is the ‘transition zone.’ It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re in a familiar environment. We didn’t want you waking up in a starship or a saloon or on in a foxhole. Too jarring.”

  “I’m going to Greystrand,” Justin said.

  He had the choice to spend his first OmniWorld life in one of several game worlds: Star Rim Empire, Spurshot, Eagle’s Bridge, Highland Moor, Mosaica, and a few others he couldn’t remember. Each one was a different milieu, from sci-fi to superhero to western. There was even an old school cyberpunk world and a 18th century Scottish world. But he would choose Greystrand, the medieval fantasy world.

  “Yeah, that’s the one most people go for,” Wyatt said. “But I heard that Spurshot’s pretty cool. Old West. Gunfights. They’ve been doing a lot of work on the story lines there and they’re putting in an old steam train.”

  “I’m not really into cowboys and Indians.”

  “You’re more of a knights and dragons type, huh? That’s cool.”

  Justin had read that Loneskum-Alexander bought the IP for the old Caves & Beasts pen and paper role-playing game from the 1980s and based Greystrand on that.