Free You by Austin Grossman

never heard the word
guile
used in a conversation, either.
    “Russell, we entreat your help,” intoned the magus. “Our worlds are in great danger, and only you can save them.” His cloak stiff with whorls of gold thread, Lorac spoke with a theatrical old-guy quaver.He was an Arabian Nights character, an exotic older man with a Levantine cast, a thin, crooked nose, and a neatly trimmed beard. His staff was too long, and he brushed the dusty lighting fixture with it. “Sorry.”
    “But you’re the Heroes,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense for you to talk to humans.”
    “We’re all in the game, Russell,” Leira said. “We’re characters, but you’re the player. We need you.”
    “A great danger is coming,” said Brennan. “Greater than any we have ever faced.”
    “Beware Adric! Beware the grieving blade!” Leira whispered breathlessly.
    “Just play the game, asshole,” Prendar snapped, and drew on a cigarette.
    “Wait… what game?” I said. “
Realms VI
?
VII
?”
    “The Ultimate Game,” sing-songed Lorac. He began to laugh. They must have gotten a really good voice actor. Looking closer, I saw that his staff had a small animal skull on the end of it. It might have been a ferret’s. The ferret’s eyes glowed.
    I fell asleep again, and this time dreamed I was still at work but there was an extra office marked Secret Projects, and I went in and found Simon there where he’d been all along and he told me how he’d built the Ultimate Game and it was just a golden ring, and he said he’d already spoken the wish and tomorrow the five of us would wake up and be fantasy adventurers together like I’d always wanted. I’d get to be the elf. I started crying right then and there, I just thought, what a relief, because I remembered now how much I wanted it. How had I forgotten that?

Chapter Nine
    H ey, Matt, are there any magic swords in the
Realms
universe?” I asked.
    There was no reason for preamble; Matt got thrown these questions. Black Arts didn’t have an archivist. The closest we had was Matt. He did the research to find out what make of Soviet tanks rolled into Berlin in 1945, and what breed of horse a Knight Templar might have ridden. He was consistently cheerful, and he was Black Arts’ biggest fan. He’d read every comic book and novel adaptation and was an authority on the past and future histories of the Black Arts multiverse. Although for all I knew, he made up the answers on the spot.
    “Oh! Well.” Matt thought a moment, then drew a breath. “I mean, there’s the usual ones, plus one, plus two, that kind of thing. There’s flaming swords, ice swords, vorpal. Silver, not really magic, but it interacts with those systems. There’s Sunshard, pluses against undead. Daemonsbane—obviously—a bunch of other… banes, giants, and stuff. You can make one out of star metal if you have the right equipment, that’s pretty good. There was a place you could find a vibro-sword from
Solar Empires,
that was just in as a joke. And, well, there’s the Rainbow Blade, has a bunch of different effects.”
    I was impressed, by his humility, if nothing else. He always talked as if he were ticking off the obvious points everyone knew.
    “Are there any evil swords?”
    “Evil… swords…. Nothing comes to mind, not swords, anyway.Staff of the Ancients turned out evil, obviously. The DireSpear. At high level, antipaladins manifest burning swords as a class attribute. I don’t think the blades themselves are aligned, but I can check.”
    “Huh. Where would I start looking? Like,
Realms I
?”
    “Oh, man… oh, man. I don’t even know if you could. I don’t know if even Simon and Darren had a copy, or one that would run, anyway. The thing was written in COBOL.”
    Black Arts had a game library of sorts, three gray metal bookshelves bolted to the wall between the
Realms
art pit and the kitchen. They were stacked unevenly with all the collected debris of four or five insular, feverish