information that they understood at a subconscious level in a way that they would respond to. It was even the way they each saw Robin with vastly different kinds of wings, to explain how they flew. Gwen’s perception of magic was put into a platform that she understood. When she couldn’t do a thing, she got a response that her mind would interpret, in her case a video game noise.
Blat, indeed.
It was a lot to take in, and for a moment, Gwen stood there and poked the unfortunate man with the bat. She couldn’t manipulate him directly, she decided, so what could she do? Could she somehow release him from the darkness riding him, in this weird out-of-step moment?
Blat, blat, blat…
Gwen finally left him in peace and circled the room. She could touch things, but not move them. She could not adjust any of the player positions, and she could not arm anyone. She frowned, assessing the scene from a tactical point of view, no longer simply reacting to a nearby threat, but looking out over the whole thing as a complete game board.
There weren’t actually that many of the superdours. They were just persistent, and her friends were handicapped by their desire not to actually harm any of the hosts. It took all three of the knights to release a host from their evil rider, and it was only a temporary respite. Their current tactic was just keeping their enemy at bay; if they wanted to actually win, they had to group together and actively protect the hosts they freed.
They had to change their strategy. Gwen could feel the pause button under her thumb as she wandered the room. The moment she released it, everything would jolt forward again, with the same momentum as before. She had to change that momentum, somehow.
In a game, she’d be able to direct her avatars. In games where she controlled a lot of people, she could assign them tasks, set them a queue of commands to work through. How would she do that here?
Stop thinking in a box, Gwen scolded herself. How would you do it in a game? She closed her eyes, thinking about how to queue up commands. There would be a menu…
When she opened her eyes, she almost laughed again. Over every head was a status bar, her friends edged in green, her enemies in red. All she had to do was select a player and add to their actions list…or target the correct enemies, as if they were weapons she was controlling.
Blat.
No, she didn’t think she’d be able to manipulate the ridden humans.
But when she tried with Daniella, the same thing happened. Blat.
Free will, perhaps? What if she couldn’t affect anything at all?
Gwen frowned. Okay, so what if it was a multi-player game? Maybe she couldn’t affect the other players, but she could...send them a text, coordinate things behind the screen? Could she suggest something? She stood in front of Daniella and concentrated. There was a man swinging a heavy club at her from behind. The first thing she’d have Daniella do was...duck.
A sudden chatbox appeared above Daniella’s head, floating ridiculously in space over her. Duck! it said.
It’s just my brain trying to make sense of what the magic is doing, Gwen reminded herself. It’s not really as literal as this.
She circled the room, adding chatboxes to all of her friends with the first things she wanted them to do. She paused at Henrik, caught in mid-air as he dodged back from a swinging chain. His energy bars were dangerously low, with warning arrows.
How do I fix that?
Was there a backup power source she could apply? A healing potion? A bonus energy booster?
Blat. Blat. Blat.
Nope. Gwen looked up, suddenly curious to see whether she had her own energy bar.
It wasn’t over her, it was over the space where she’d been standing, but sure enough, she was fully charged. And she wasn’t the critical one in this battle, the knights were the ones who had the ability to remove the superdours and defeat their enemies. She had to figure a way to transfer that energy from her, to Henrik.
Ding.
Her power bar went down, Henrik’s rose.
Ding, ding, ding, ding! How much did she dare transfer? If she emptied herself, did it mean actual death? Was there a spare life tucked away in this crazy magic game? She had to assume that death was final, and there wasn’t a save point she could go back to.
She emptied her power bar down to