Infinity Legends

Chapter 16: The Ice Mage

Into the belly of the beast. Into the halls of doom. Into the lair of the evil overlord. Those were just a few ways to embellish and translate the knot in Barry’s gut as he approached the Kappa Kappa Delta sorority house. The supreme beings in the university caste system, the ones on top of the food chain. A food chain in which Barry was at very bottom.

He would not be surprised if a sentinel hiding on the trees yelled “NERD!” and he got immediately shot by a sniper for desecrating the popularity of that property with his presence.

But there was no sentinel. No sniper. He made it to the door safely. A massive, ancient door, sided by a golden doorbell.

He pressed the button, half expecting a trapdoor to spring open beneath his feet.

No trapdoor. Just a melodic ding-dong.

He waited for a moment, looking around at the grand work of architecture that was the century-old house. He could not help but wonder if whoever built that gorgeous structure ever contemplated the possibility of having it wasted in house-parties.

With a clunk, the door swung open, and then came the dragon. Her eyes green as cursed emeralds, her hair straight and bright like streams of fire, her skin thick with creams made of enslaved animals, her fluffy vest of the most devious shade of pink possible: hot pink! Barry gawked at the being before him. Evil incarnate!

“What do you want?” she asked, her high-pitched voice an amalgamation of the dying cries of all the hundreds of squirrels she must have died for her coat.

“I… uh…” Barry gagged.

“Whatever you’re selling, we ain’t buying,” the girl said and proceeded to shut the door.

At that moment, Barry snapped back to it and wedged a foot in to stop the door from shutting on his face.

“Wait! I’m here to talk to Sarah,” Barry said.

“What makes you think Sarah wants to talk to you?” the sorority sister asked, placing a hand on her corked hip.

“I…” Barry ran his tongue through his dry lips. He should have thought about it sooner. Sarah had made it clear, when they first met, that she would rather not be seen on Barry’s company, let alone have it linked to the fact that she played Fantasy Stars. “I’m helping her on a paper!”

“A paper?”

“Yes. Tell her it’s Barry, and I have some news on our paper about…” Barry choked again. He didn’t even know what Sarah studied, and that made the whole ruse much harder. He would need to settle for a code. “Hypothermia! I’m here to help her on her paper on hypothermia!”

The girl rolled her green eyes, wrinkles forming around her nose as if the word hypothermia stunk. Ultimately, however, the girl leaned back inside the house and screamed like a banshee: “Sarah! A dork’s here to see you.”

“I’m busy!” Sarah’s voice replied from the second floor.

“He says it’s about a paper! A paper on hippopotamus!”

“Hypothermia,” Barry corrected.

“Hypothermia!”

Less than thirty second later, Sarah appeared behind the other girl wearing sweatpants, an old university shirt and sandals. Her eyes glowed once she saw Barry.

Not the good glow, though. Something more along the lines of an intense death stare.

“Thank you, Carly,” Sarah said as she barged past the other girl and slammed the heavy door on her way out. Immediately after, she pushed Barry away from the house, out of the porch and all the way across the garden until they were standing on the sidewalk across the street, well away from the den of gloss and flattery that was the sorority house.

“Hypothermia?” Sarah threw her hands up. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“I wanted to send you the message that I know who you are,” Barry replied flatly, not letting his embarrassment show. “Apparently you got it.”

“I did, but I study business administration, you dork! Why would I be doing a paper on hypothermia?”

“I did not know what you studied,” Barry answered. “And no offense, but I had a feeling your friend Carly wouldn’t know the meaning of hypothermia.”

“Eh, good guess,” the stress lines on Sarah’s tanned face eased significantly. “Now why are you here?”

“I thought about what you said the other day, at the pool. I decided to give Fantasy Stars Legends another shot.”

“Glad to hear it,” Sarah smiled briefly. “Are you back with the Star Rangers?”

“No. I am creating my own team…” Barry deliberately paused as he paced around, then spun on his heels to face Sarah. “And I want you to be part of it.”

She giggled, then chuckled, then laughed. Barry, however, maintained a solid, impassive, poker face. He had to be taken seriously, because he was being absolutely serious, and as he remained unflinching at the face of her amusement, she slowly realized there was no joke being told.

“You really mean it?” Sarah asked.

Barry nodded.

“Why?”

“I realized who you were when Luca told me about how you met at Silver Creek,” Barry started pacing again. “You had his notebook, so you knew where to find him, for whatever reason. Then I… connected dots… When you first told me we had played against each other, I dismissed it as just another opponent, because I did not know you were Serry Frost. But I remember you.”

“You do?” Sarah’s vice threatened to break as her lips shook with anticipation, pride and unbearable curiosity. “But you beat me so quickly!”

“That’s because I was worried,” Barry admitted, causing the corners of Sarah’s mouth to unwillingly twist into a smile. “I had seen your fights. People usually underestimated you, focusing on your cyborg friends who had shiny lasers and huge metal fists. Few people actually paid attention to what you were doing a few feet back.”

“But you did,” Sarah concluded.

“Evidently.” Barry grinned. “You didn’t just freeze enemies who got past the front lines, you raised ice barriers to provide your team with cover, you closed off important routes with snow…”

“Everyone saw that,” Sarah interrupted. “People just didn’t give enough importance to the impact these little changes in scenario had on the battle. But did you see the other thing I used to do?”

“Of course,” Barry smiled. “The reason your cyborgs called so much attention is because they were always firing. Always. Their weapons never overheated.”

Sarah did not say anything, but her smile grew much wider, a cute shy wrinkle forming on his left cheek. Her eyes shined, even though she was facing the ground. It was the first time in years, maybe ever, that someone actually recognized her role in her old, now long disbanded, team.

“Go on,” she asked Barry.

“Most people thought your friends had really high-grade weapons and implants, paired with high-level skills to reduce cooldown and avoid overheating, but I tried replicating their reload speed with my System,” Barry crossed his arms and looked deep into Sarah’s brown eyes. “It was impossible. No build, no gear, no upgrades could keep a fire rate that high. Unless someone else was actually cooling their weapons.”

“Guilty as charged,” Sarah confessed with a sheepish smile.

“I knew in order to beat you, I had to separate you from the cyborgs…”

“And that’s what you did,” Sarah said. “Sent a swarm of cheap troops to make me seal off the mountain overpass with ice and snow, then spawned a Magnet-Mecha to drag the cyborgs into the same overpass I had just sealed.”

“Where my combat players were waiting,” Barry concluded. “Our tank, Arlak, died taking your friends’ first salvo, but then they overheated, and my other teammates finished them off.”

“By that time,” Sarah picked the story back up, “I was done melting the blockade to come and help my buddies. And that’s when you used the Mecha’s overload attack. The ground was all wet from the melted ice, so the electric discharge fried all of our own NPCs…”

“And you,” Barry completed.

“And me,” Sarah giggled. “Good times. Great times…”

“You can bring them back,” Barry said. “What do you say?”

Sarah did not reply. She simply looked at the sorority house across the street. There was no privacy inside those walls, and she knew videogames would be an unforgivable sin against the sorority. The others would never let it go, they would shun her for her passion, maybe even expel her from the group, and then would come the widespread gossip. That harmless hobby had almost ruined Luca’s reputation, and he had his whole athlete background to support him. She would be just labeled a fraud and turned into an outcast. But still… Why did that matter when not for a day she felt as alive as she did in the skin of Serry Frost?

“I can’t play in there,” she said, still looking at the house. “If we do this, you have to promise me no one will ever know.”

“I promise.”

“Hey hey hey!” a deep voice boomed across the street as a man in a tight polo and dark jeans left a polished red car and approached them. His hair and beard were perfectly trimmed, his jaw was sharp and squared and his shoulders intimidatingly broad. “If it’s not my girl!”

“Oh no…” Sarah whispered.

“What?” Barry asked.

“Nothing. Just play along,” she said, taking a step away from Barry and turning to face the newly arrived man. Once she looked at him, she plastered a smile to her face. A smile not nearly as genuine as the one she had displayed seconds prior. “Hey Charles!” Sarah’s voice had also changed. Shallower, forcefully high-pitched, even a hint of an accent suppression could be picked now and again. Then she took off running and jumped at Charles’ wide neck, her arms wrapping around it as they kissed in the middle of the street.

“Who’s that?” Charles looked at Barry once they were done sucking each other’s face out. “Got yourself a pet nerd?”

“Nah, that’s just Barry,” Sarah waved a dismissive hand at Barry. “He’s helping me out on a project for class.”

“Oh, really?” Charles crossed his arms over his chest—his massive, solid, scary chest—then approached Barry. “What’s this project about, nerd?”

“Hypothermia,” Sarah answered. Standing behind her boyfriend, she winked at Barry over Charles’ shoulder.

“Oh! Neat!” Charles raised his eyebrows. “Did you know they’re the deadliest animals in Africa?”

“I did not,” Barry used all his might to suppress the urge to burst out in laughter.

“You’re so smart, Charlie!” Sarah hugged Charles’ arm, looking up at him with googly eyes that made Barry want to puke over the two of them.

“You’re the smart one, honey,” Charles kissed the top of Sarah’s head, then turned to Barry. “Okay, then, nerd, you can go back to your hypos, Sarah and I will be going for ride.”

Barry pierced his lips, then redirected his gaze and nodded. Assholes like Charles were nothing new on the life of Barry Watson. It was Sarah’s passiveness that hurt the most. As Barry paced away, his head hanging low, Sarah yelled to him, her voice still the modulated aberration she spawned at the presence of her boyfriend, but her words…

“Hey, Barry! When’s the paper due, again?”

He looked back, a tiny smile stamping his lips.

“Friday, 9PM. Just email it to Mr. Takol.”

“Okeedokee!” Sarah screamed, still hugging her boyfriend’s arm. As both her and Charles turned to head into his car, she glanced over her shoulder, and once her eyes met Barry’s she winked.

She would be there.

Barry walked away, chin up. Three players down.

Six to go.