The Eighth Excalibur Read online

  “Am I hallucinating again,” the old man croaked in a voice that suggested long bouts of disuse even beyond the troubled sleep he’d just been yanked out of by the commotion across the way, “or are you referring to that jittery runt down there?”

  He glanced up at the overcast sky, back down to the boy in question, then smirked, as if someone had said something amusingly naïve.

  “You do remember what they are meant to do, don’t you?”

  He cocked his head, listening, but no one was there. Just an old, ragged-robed man, and his cup of ale, mysteriously full, though he’d only just pulled it from his pocket.

  “Very well, very well,” he grumbled, taking a long pull from the cup and shaking his mangy gray mane in reserved exasperation. “Insufferable spirit.”

  He stood, and very nearly pitched off of the rooftop when his head went spinning harder than expected. He sniffed, gathering his balance and taking another swig. Something told him there’d be significantly less commotion were he to go falling from a rooftop. No lovely blonde lasses pampering him. But then again, he also wasn’t quite so fragile as to worry about a little fall.

  “Are you certain about this?” the old man asked, watching the boy limp out of sight in the distance and knowing even as he spoke the words aloud that it was pointless to question the way of things—that this was exactly why her infernally unerring whispers had led him here, to this happiest of valleys.

  He listened intently to the silence, and added his own sigh to the stirring wind once she’d made her reply. It was time, then.

  “Very well...” He downed the remainder of his ale breakfast. “But I’m going to need a drink first, M’lady.”

  2

  Just Another Friday

  “Catch, Broku Brodinson!” was the first thing Nate heard when he arrived home and cracked open the door. He caught the strong waft of fresh pizza next. And the shiny rim of a beer can lofting straight for his chest.

  Nate tried to stow his phone, fumbled the catch, and ended up juggling phone, beer can, and backpack for what seemed like a logically impossible amount of time before finally tripping off of the shoe mat and straight onto the faux wood floor between the couch and their extensive gaming setup.

  By sheer nerd reflex, they all gasped and whirled around, all having experienced one too many times the horror of a console yanked from the shelves or a controller yanked from the hand by the clumsy idiot who decided to go tripping over the cables. Only their nerd reflexes were outdated.

  “Ahh,” Zach purred when the inevitable crash didn’t come, his eyes returning to his round of Battle Royale. “The joy of wireless controllers.”

  “Tomorrow,” Kyle added, adopting an ambiguous fantasy accent from where he was perched on the back of the couch like a sage, albeit overweight, sword master, “you will catch the beer.”

  “I thought we all agreed not to join a frat,” Nate groaned from the floor.

  “Bro…” Kyle said.

  “Bro!” Zach agreed, not looking away from his game.

  “You guys are starting to freak me out now.”

  Marty, as he so often did, stepped in to restore balance to the Force. Emerging from the kitchen in typical Meek Marty manner, he scooped the jostled beer can up, went to restock it safely in the fridge, then leaned back out, hefting a fresh beer in one hand and a bottled water in the other, a silent question written on his brow.

  Nate pointed at the beer.

  “Bad day?” Kyle asked as Marty shelved the water and brought Nate his first round.

  “Give him a break,” Marty said, handing Nate the can. “It’s Friday. And you’re already four deep. At 5 PM.”

  By way of reply, Kyle burped and cracked open the new can he’d had ready and waiting. “Five, brochacho.”

  Marty just shook his head, then added to Nate, in a conspiratorially low voice, “Bad day?”

  Kyle splayed his meaty hands in dramatic indignation. “We’re sitting right here, Marty.”

  “And speaking of which…” Zach said in the flat tone that told Nate without even looking at the TV that his friend had just entered the thick of digital combat, and was now too occupied to finish his request.

  Not needing any clarification, Nate rose and followed Marty out of the gamer’s critical line of sight and into the adjoined kitchen and dining space of their happy little Penn State house.

  “So what happened, brohan?” Kyle asked through the wooden framework that acted as both Lo-Fi shelf and honorary divider between the living room and their cramped dining area.

  Nate set his bag down on the table and cracked open his beer, absentmindedly watching Zach shoot it out with some random online opponent while he thought about where to begin. He took a sip of his drink, tasted the welcome bite of hops, and finally looked at the can. Founder’s All Day IPA. Collectively—with the exception of Marty, whose parents were loaded—they probably couldn’t rightly afford to be drinking anything better than the finest discount pilsners. But they’d come to the agreement that they were a household of marginally higher taste, as evidenced by the extensive and varied collection of empty craft bottles lining the divider wall and the other shelves throughout the living room.

  If they couldn’t get the girls, they figured, they might as well get the good beer, at least.

  Nate took another sip, a sip that turned into a long pull and maybe even a bit of a glug, as he reflected on the day’s steady-fire stream of injustices.

  “Goddamn Todd,” he finally gasped at the end of his glug.

  His roommates traded a dark look. Zach even looked away from the TV for a moment, only to be rewarded with a swift in-game death.

  “Goddamn Todd!” he shouted, tossing the controller down on the couch beside him. “It was down to the final five!” Then, remembering himself, he grabbed his own beer off the coffee table and turned to Nate. “So, what happened?”

  “Copernicus got on the roof this morning.”

  “Again?” Zach asked.

  “Dude,” Kyle said, extending beer hand and open palm like he was fixing to reveal the mind-blowing secrets of the universe. “Ladders. Just sayin.”

  “Isn’t that like the fourth time this week?” Zach asked.

  “Second,” Nate corrected, “but he’s definitely seemed kind of… I dunno, agitated lately.”

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. “Because of the alien mind control rays.”

  “That’s not a thing,” Marty said.

  Kyle rocked back on his couch perch, eyebrows reaching for the ceiling.

  “Not again,” Marty muttered, opening the fridge to grab a beer.

  From his couch back perch, Kyle held up three thick fingers.

  “He’s doing it,” Zach said before taking a long sip of his own drink.

  “Here we go,” Marty said, cracking open his can.

  “Three weeks,” Kyle said, wiggling his raised fingers for emphasis. “Three weeks since NASA, CNSA, and no less than eight major observatories around the world all started reporting”—he made dramatic air quotes—“‘peculiar activity’ in the ‘background radiation.’”

  “Yeah?” Zach asked. “What else, Dr. Evil?”

  “At the same time,” Kyle said, jabbing a finger at Zach. “Namor and the oceanographers pop up to tell us there’s some strange seismic activity going down in the great blue yonder, and no one’s sure why. Meanwhile, reports of odd and unusual animal behavior are on, and I quote, ‘an unprecedented rise,’ according to the National Wildlife Federation.”

  At that point in the speech, Kyle paused to take a hearty swig of his beer. “This isn’t just another ‘storm Area 51 now’ poseur-fest, gentlemen. Three weeks.” Another swig. “Three batshit weird signs.” Another swig.

  “Now I ask you, gentlemen…” Zach picked up in a decent imitation of Kyle’s throaty voice.

  “If that doesn’t sound like aliens to you…” Marty added, his imitation passable if not quite as good.

  Kyle unleashed a mighty burp and cru
shed his finished can. “Then what the fuck would?”

  Nate took another sip of his beer, feeling oddly perturbed by his friend’s bogus conspiracy theory. Chalk it up to too much doom and gloom in one day.

  Kyle turned back to him. “So what happened with Copernicus?”

  “I fell off the roof trying to get him.”

  Zach’s eyes widened mid-sip.

  “Dude…” Kyle said.

  “Are you okay?” Marty asked.

  “Is the dog?” Zach added.

  “Oh, Copernicus is great,” Nate said, smiling a little at the memory of the corgi, then quickly sobering. “But I landed on my backpack and crushed the Promethean…”

  “Nooo,” Marty groaned.

  “… And Gwen and Todd just happened to be walking by in time to see the whole thing.”

  “No!” Zach said.

  “So, yeah,” Nate said. “I got to play helpless invalid to Gwen. Meanwhile, Todd’s all but getting it on with Emily Atherton right behind her back.” He shook his head, too frustrated to find adequate words.

  “Sounds like good news to me,” Marty said. “Todd is obviously a dick, and Gwen obviously cares about you. Win-win.”

  Nate sipped his beer, considering Marty’s wisdom. “She did offer to drop everything and take me to the hospital.”

  “See?” Marty said, cracking a smile. “That’s great, man. She cares.”

  “Yeah, because we’re fucking BFFs,” Nate muttered, but he found himself smiling too. Maybe it was partly thanks to the beer he’d downed rather hastily, but Marty’s smile always seemed to have that effect on him.

  “Sooo,” Kyle said, leaning forward excitedly. “Was Atherton wearing the bathrobe again?”

  “Dude,” Zach said, elbowing Kyle’s knee. “Not important right now.”

  “Emily was wearing the bathrobe, yes,” Nate said, glad for the chance to turn the spotlight off of his own public embarrassment. “Pink and skimpy. Practically falling out of it.”

  “See?” Kyle said, splaying his hands at Zack. “How is that not important? Imagine…” He ran his hands through the air, tracing unseen curves, then cracked open a fresh beer and took a sip, shaking his head longingly. “Almost makes me wanna start waking up before noon.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Emphasis on the almost, right?”

  Kyle shrugged and sipped his beer.

  “Dude, have some pizza and forget about the whole thing,” Marty said to Nate, flipping open the topmost box of the Bell’s pizza stack on the table.

  “We’ve got noobs to slay and beers aplenty!” Kyle agreed, raising his can in cheers.

  Stomach rumbling at the sight of cheesy goodness, Nate took a slice and dug in without argument.

  “What did Hillman have to say about the Promethean?” Marty asked.

  Nate shook his head and tried to talk around a full bite. “I think I’m dropping his class.”

  That caused another round of startled looks.

  “It’s just too much to juggle,” Nate said, immediately feeling defensive. “It’s an elective anyway.”

  Zach cocked his head. “But it’s like…”

  “The only class he cares about?” Kyle asked.

  “Yeah, that.”

  Nate shrugged. “No software firm is gonna care if I took some art classes.”

  Merciful Sith, he sounded like his dad.

  “I don’t need the credits anyway,” he added to wash the thought away, but his roommates’ skeptical stares persisted. He turned and found the same look mirrored on Marty’s face.

  “What?” He pushed past Marty to grab a plate from the kitchen cupboard and returned to the table to load on a few more slices. “I can just make useless shit on my own time, can’t I?”

  “That he can,” Kyle said with a clap of his hands. “Now get your beers and start your rigs, ladies and gentlemen,” he added, pointing first to Marty, then to Nate, then to the bottom two flat screens of their Cartesian quadrant style Mother of All Gaming Shrines.

  “Tonight, we game!”

  A few hours and a few beers later, Nate was finally starting to feel comfortable with the idea that normalcy had returned. Sure, it had been a shit day. And sure, he might’ve nixed what little bit of his prematurely failed art career he had left—not to mention further buried his chances with Gwen. But he had his friends, and he always would. And they had their games. And he had his buzz.

  Things could’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse.

  In fact, he decided, after another beer and an unexpectedly spectacular Battle Royale victory, he wasn’t really sure they could’ve been any better than they were just like this. Things were exactly as they were supposed to be. He was sure of it. So sure that he was preparing to make it known via a grand—and possibly slightly drunken—declaration when his phone vibrated on the floor ahead of him.

  He traded an arched eyebrow with Marty, who was sitting cross legged on the floor beside him, as was their custom—Zach and Kyle both perched on the couch behind them where they could see over their heads.

  “Hold up,” Nate said, ducking his in-game character safely into a corner and reaching for his phone. His heart fluttered at the name on the screen.

  Gwen: “How are you feeling?”

  He unlocked the phone, game temporarily forgotten as he tried to compose an adequately cool response.

  “Who dat?” Zach asked, craning curiously from the couch.

  “It’s Gwen,” Marty said with a knowing smile. “That’s the Gwen face.”

  “Ah, She of the Many Cliques,” Kyle said. “How is ol’ Gwenneth?”

  “I don’t know why you insist on calling her that,” Marty said. “Having other friends isn’t a crime, you know.”

  “Other friends?” Kyle asked. “I’m sorry, did I miss the part where she’s still our friend?”

  Nate swiped out his reply and hit send.

  Nate: “Feeling great… but sorry, who is this again?”

  He wasn’t surprised at the bitterness in his friend’s tone. Once upon a freshman dorm, Gwen had been their on-again, off-again fifth controller jockey, and Kyle in particular had never seemed to forgive her for having slowly vanished into the college ether.

  “She still asks about you guys,” Nate said, returning to the ongoing game. He didn’t mention the part where his own chances to see her had grown decidedly less and less frequent with each passing semester. “And to answer your original question, Kyle, aside from having caught a bad case of steroid fever, I think she’s pretty—”

  The phone vibrated in Nate’s lap.

  That was fast.

  “Yeah, we know you think she’s pretty, buddy,” Zach said. “Now if you could kindly hide the erection, we’ve got an enemy team at…”

  But Nate was already glancing down at the phone with a single-mindedness that would’ve made Pavlov proud.

  Gwen: “Har har, Mr. Concussion. I probably shouldn’t encourage you to drink, considering, but come hang out tonight if you’re up for it?”

  Excitement rose in Nate’s chest, tinged with a twist of apprehension and joined shortly by the churn of guilt in his gut. Did he really want to—

  “Nate!” Kyle cried, snapping him back to the war room. “Get your rockets out here and—Well, shit. Never mind. Because now we’re dead. Go team.”

  Nate looked up from his phone and vibrating controller just in time to watch the enemy team finish sweeping the floor with their digital bodies. “Sorry, guys,” he said with a guilty grin, brandishing his phone. “But yeah. She’s good, I think.”

  The look on his face must’ve said the rest, because Zach and Kyle both went from looks of suspicion to ones of accusation in a flash.

  “Dude, it’s Friday night squads,” Kyle said. “You can’t bail to go hang out with the original squad bailer. She of the…” He frowned, having apparently stumped his drunken self.

  “You need to stop with the nicknames,” Marty said.

  “And every night is squads ni
ght for us,” Nate added.

  Kyle shook his head, holding up a single meaty finger. “Not true. Zach and I totally played duos the other night when you and Marty were”—he made air quotes—“watching Prometheus.”

  “So spooky,” Zach said in a mock whisper. “Hold my hand!”

  “Well…” Nate said, swiping out a reply to Gwen.

  Nate: “Might have jumped the gun on the drinking thing. Where would I find you if I were up for it?”

  “… Maybe you guys have a Battle Royale problem,” he concluded, looking up at Kyle and Zach.

  “And that was also three weeks ago,” Marty pointed out. “Just for the record. Pretty sure we haven’t missed a night since.”

  Kyle and Zach shared a look of genuine surprise.

  “Out-nerded?” Zach murmured.

  “Three weeks,” Kyle echoed, looking moderately disturbed by that news. “Goddamn aliens.” He shook his head clear, his usual vigor returning. “Well in that case, I should probably make sure I fed Hector.”

  Gwen: “Follow signs of troglodytes. Big, big footprints. Many keg tracks.”

  Nate smiled down at his phone then almost dropped it as the couch creaked and Kyle thudded down to the floor. Their plus-sized roommate stopped to catch his balance, clearly feeling the effects of the innumerable beers he’d pounded since he’d last left his seat, then he steadied and jabbed a finger at Nate.

  “And once I’m sure Hector’s not dead, then it’s Friday night squads! You wouldn’t wanna make your pals go dropping in with some rando fourth, would ya?”

  When Nate wasn’t quick with a response, Kyle marched off down the hallway, muttering something about randos and kids these days and the humanity, gods the humanity! They listened to him bang open the metal door and thump into his room down the hall.

  “If you’re gonna go,” Marty said, “could you come have a look at my Arduino first? I hit a little snag.”

  Zach, who’d been watching the two of them expectantly, took that as a sign to fire up a solo round. “Yeah, go look at his Arduino, Nate,” he said, smirking a little drunkenly and looking at a sincere loss between finishing his pizza or his beer while the game loaded.