MyFortress
The fortress sprawled over Andy’s bed. It descended to the floor in a series of dicey switchback stairways, and sent exploratory roots into the darkness under the bed. There, the fort’s citizens might find untold treasure — or something much worse. He had started the game on the bed, the game engine interpreting the watercolour floral bedspread as a vast desert. Underneath was the darkest of dark mysteries: perhaps ancient magical artefacts, or perhaps demons older than time. Amusingly, the bathroom had been designated a Poisonous Biome. That fact had scored him thirty-seven faves when he posted a screenshot to MyFortress.com.
He hadn’t bothered getting out of bed yet. He’d just woken up, reached for the VR glasses from the unused pillow where he’d thrown them last night, put them on and re-started the game. Now he was propped up, watching the action. Citizens of the fort scurried about, avoiding the heat of the desert. Vultures lazily circled around the ceiling light, waiting for something to drop dead. Sandworms big enough to devour citizens whole occasionally swam beneath the sand, their undulating forms giving them away. The top of the fort was marked by a pyramid made of glass. Inside was the home of the Vampire Duchess, sealed off from the outside world to forever balance the accounts of the fortress. Only a parasol protected her from the sun streaming through the glass.
Below the pyramid was a hive of industry. Miners, farmers, metalworkers, glassblowers, clothiers. Any refugees who could cross the searing desert of the bed, unswallowed by sandworms and unscavenged by the vultures, were welcome. Humans, dwarves, elves, cat people, lizard people, giant floating eyes… They were all fed, housed and put to work.
But there were rumours of what lay deep beneath the bed, and greed called to the citizens. Or, really, to Andy, who instructed them to pick away at the darkness underneath. It was a dangerous endeavour that required the careful setting of traps and the vigilance of the Fortress’s most hardened soldiers — in case something came out of the dark…
The phone rang and the game world disappeared. Being thrown back into reality was always brutal, but now there was a picture of Mum’s face waiting for the call to be accepted. Andy prepared himself, and then accepted the call.
“Hi Mum,” he said, opting out of video mode.
As always, Mum took a couple of seconds to realise the call had connected.
“Oh, hi Andrew!”
And then another voice, his dad’s, from somewhere off-camera: “Hi Andy!”
“That was your father. You’re on speaker.” They were always on speaker. “Listen, we were wondering if you’d seen this new Dragon Breaker movie—” She enunciated the name carefully as if she was reading it from a cue card.
This is an attempt to get me out of the house, Andy thought.
“—with us—”
Yep.
“There’s a showing on Tuesday night — tight arse Tuesday! — Greg!” Andy could see his Mum reach out to hit at his Dad off camera. “It’s screening at 8:30pm, and we could go to dinner first… we’re not sure where yet…”
“Uh huh,” was all he said, though he could sense Mum wanted a little more engagement.
“You like those films, right? Dragon Breaker? They’re very popular with young people.”
Andy cringed.
Personally, he was feeling less and less “young.” There was also no way that Olivia and Greg wanted to see Dragon Breaker 3: Scales of Valour. Andy himself didn’t particularly want to see it. None of this was organic, like they had seen the trailer, the one with a village on fire, peasants screaming their heads off, the titanic Beyond-Class Archdragon looming over them spewing fire into the night, and then the dun… dun… dun…, closed out by the approaching silhouette of a returning character, long thought dead, her familiar legendary blade, Deathkiss, trailing sparks behind her… They hadn’t seen the trailer online and suddenly wanted to see a dragon movie. No. This was all engineered. Andy surprised himself by deciding to tell them so.
“This is kinda transparent, Mum.”
She blinked, visibly trying to rescue her plan. “Well, we’re just worried about you since the break up…”
Oh God, she said the words. He closed his eyes and tried to formulate a way out of this awkward mess. It was time for a concession, if nothing else but to get them off the phone. “Never mind the movie, let’s just have dinner. I heard it’s awful anyway.” He could see palpable relief washing over his mum’s face.
“Oh, excellent! Do you have any ideas on where?”
“How about the Corner Inn at about seven?”
Now she was beaming. “Fantastic! We’ll see you then! Love you, bye!”
“Love you too,” he said, and hung up before they had a chance to set him up on a date with so-and-so’s daughter, or suggest he join a pottery class, because you ‘never knew who you might meet.’ It felt like now every conversation they had was weighed down by the topic of her and if there was anyone yet to replace her.
The overlay of the fortress returned, with an avalanche of dire pop-up messages. “Oh shit!” He’d forgotten to pause the game. He flipped through all the notifications in a panic.
While he’d been chatting, the miners under the bed had encountered something called the Undermarket: a trans-dimensional Fae-market, said to be full of delightful horrors and horrible delights. The miners had unknowingly breached it, releasing a Cursed Iron Triceratops into the fort.
He madly gestured at the game, trying to assemble his best soldiers to subdue it. He watched, horrified, as the beast swatted them away like insects with its armoured head. He desperately fired off orders to collapse the downwards passage – anyone stuck down there would have to be sacrificed. But the order was being ignored. Panic had spread. Citizens were fleeing, holing up in their rooms, or simply drinking the tavern dry.
He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, trying to think of any miracle he happened to have at his disposal. He peeked under the bed to see what had inspired the Undermarket in the first place. The game had interpreted a suitcase as the fae-market. He blinked at the suitcase, unable to remember why it was there or what was in it. He opened it to remind himself. It wasn’t his at all, and it was still full of her things. He felt the free-fall of his heart, as he had hundreds of times since she left. He put the glasses back on.
Back in the game time was ticking away, but he thought of nothing that could save his fort. Perhaps it was time to shut off the game and go for a walk, catch up with some friends, take up pottery… You never knew who you might meet…
But suddenly he remembered something. The Vampire Duchess. She was the only thing in the fort that could remotely match up to the Cursed Iron Triceratops. He released her from her glass pyramid containment. She tossed the parasol aside, and sped down the shafts of the fort, as if she sensed the beast in the depths and relished the fight. He wasn’t sure if it would work, but the battle sure would net him far more than thirty-seven faves on MyFortress.
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