Free Game Over by Andrew Klavan Page B

But there was just no way for Rick to get to him.
    Rick turned in every direction. On every side, the screaming creatures closed in.
    A thought came to him.
    In video games, as your character advances, he acquirespowers and weapons along the way. You might start out with just the Blade of Nastiness, say, but pretty soon, if you kill enough monsters, you acquire the Fire Sword of Genuine Incredibleness and then the Lightning Sword of Really Cool Headsplitting Greatness until finally you have the most powerful weapon of all, the Death Blade of All-Around Awesomeness . . . or whatever.
    This same thing had happened to Rick here in the MindWar Realm. When he had first met Mariel, she had given him a sort of rusty iron sword that he could just barely thrust through the body of the wounded Spider-Snake. But by the time he had to do real, desperate battle against Kurodar’s security forces, she had coated the sword in steel, strengthening its blade and perfecting its design until it was a master weapon he could wield against the Realm’s most powerful security bots.
    But weapons weren’t the only thing that got better in a video game. There were also powers—they also got upgraded as you went along. And that also happened here in MindWar. In his first trips into the Realm, Rick had used his concentration to turn himself into the likeness of one of the Alligator Guards who patrolled Kurodar’s forces. Later, he could not only take the shape of a soldier Boar, but, if he focused well enough, he could even sometimes flash around like Favian.
    So if the video-game analogy continued . . .
    As the dead Harpies and Cobras and Boars closed in on him, slashing with claws and fangs and swords, closerand closer to tearing him to pieces, Rick shifted his focus to the silver blade of Mariel’s sword. Maybe if he could charge it with the energy of his spirit . . .
    It was hard—so hard—to focus with that horde of death-dealing monsters closing in on him. But then, as a quarterback, he’d often had to focus with a horde of three-hundred-pound linemen thundering at him, so . . . he recalled that experience. He steadied his mind. He steadied his heart. He focused his spirit on the blade.
    Almost immediately, the blade began to glow, and then glow brighter. It surrounded itself with a nimbus of bright yellow light. Rick focused hard and the metal of the sword actually began to pulse and throb with his inner energy.
    A Harpy shrieked and dove at him out of the sky.
    Do it! Rick thought.
    He released the energy of the sword. It was like setting off an explosion. The spirit energy he had pumped into the sword burst out of it. The yellow glow flashed white, expanding in one great and sudden blast.
    The dead creatures never saw it coming. They were all charging, closing, striking when the blast hit. It caught them mid-attack and hurled them backward. The Harpy that was in the midst of dropping down on top of him was thrown upward, sailing all the way to the church ceiling, where it smacked into a mosaic and then dropped down thunk at Rick’s feet like a stone. The other monsters—Boars and Harpies and Cobras, all of them—went tumbling intoone another, some dropping to the mosaic floor, others stumbling on their heels, their arms pinwheeling for balance.
    But Rick never lost his focus, not for a moment. He never stopped working the Realm with his spirit. The moment the ring of monsters was blown back, he dissolved himself into a Favian-like flash and streaked away. A split second later, he was standing beside his blue friend at the open door at the rear of the church.
    â€œThat was AMAZING!” Favian cried out with wild excitement. “That was . . . that was . . .”
    â€œTell me what it was later,” said Rick. “Now, let’s bounce!”
    â€œOh, right, smart idea,” said Favian—and good thing, too, because even now some of the dead were clambering to get their balance