I turned and ran, sheathing my sword as I went. Probably people were yelling at me, but I didn’t listen. Why should I? The sun had almost set, turning the puddles gold and orange and purple. It seemed just right, the last moments of a warm evening before it gets chilly and you think of going home. It was, in fact, an excellent moment to shred.
Yes, my board had no back wheels, but not all the moves needed them. In point of fact, the lack of back wheels just made me more hard-core. I reached the fountain and tried a little minigrind, balancing on the board as it slid along the rim. It worked just fine. In fact, the camera even knew to run a 180-degree pan to show off the move—which, incidentally, revealed that Adric was closing in, runesword ready to strike. Brennan landed and transitioned, prepping the move I had in mind. It was one of those moments when you’re good enough to forget there’s even a controller. I got into the handplant, feet up, one hand on the rim, and the point of view revolved around me to catch the setting sun, a beautifully thoughtful piece of programming. I triggered the second stage, and Brendan whipped his sword out with his free hand. As he came down, he swept it in a showy circle. It even did the sound effect, a surf-guitar sting and a deep-voiced, heavy-reverb roar as the true king struck home.
ENDORIAN ANOMALY:
GAME MASTER’S SUPPLEMENT
1) If Adric is killed and the game is saved out, a new version of the world-state will be exported and further playthroughs of all WAFFLE games will include the Tomb of Destiny in its revised state. In games that import this state, Adric will no longer be a character in the Black Arts universe, and Mournblade will no longer menace this or any other world, ever (note that these effects may be reversed by the use of the Wish, Limited Wish, or Resurrection spell. We’re just saying).
2) Adric’s inventory contains the following items, available upon his death:
a) An antique suit of chain mail
b) 495,000 gold pieces, contained in (one assumes) a Bag of Holding
c) The First Age Artifact-class greatsword named Mournblade (+10 to hit, ignores dodge attempts, force fields, intangibility, and other varieties of magical, technological, and psychic protection. Successful hit destroys target creature or object with no possibility of resurrection; Mournblade’s wielder receives bonus hit points equal to the target’s at time of death. Wielder invulnerable to sorceries, enchantments, glamours, conjurations. Hit points decrement by 5% each minute held. Once wielded, Mournblade cannot be dropped).
d) A crown, but you find it is not the one you expected, not the Crown of Winter at all. It’s the Crown of Summer. It is, quite simply, the last crown anybody in Endoria really, truly cared about, but you forgot that, didn’t you? What it felt like when the long summer ended and you had to go home to the life you planned for yourself, the one that didn’t work out the way you planned. But for a brief moment the crown existed, to honor the King of KidBits Camp for Young Achievers for 1983. [“He wanted you to have it,” Lisa whispered to Darren. “He really did.”]
e) Finally, there is the secret of the ultimate game, inscribed on a series of crumbling scrolls in a language that is no longer well understood. But partial translations suggest that the secret of the ultimate game is that you’re already in the ultimate game, all the time, forever. That the secret of the ultimate game is that the ultimate game is a paradox, because there’s no way to play a game without knowing you’re playing it. That games are already awesome, or else why are we making such a fuss? That the secret of the ultimate game is that at the very least we’re going to have voice recognition and 3-D body-sensing interfaces and augmented reality and generated narrative and, really, much better writing, and that it would help if people would just notice that it’s going to be pretty fucking great. And the secret is also that you’ve always been fatally slow on the uptake, and that you’re sitting with a girl who is smarter than you and almost anyone else you’ve ever met, and that she’s spent eighteen months in your company without completely despising you, and in fact was willing to stay up till four in the morning with you watching you