I was about to respond, but Aech was already in motion, running toward the green end of the tunnel.
“Come on!” she shouted back over her shoulder. “This way!”
Shoto and I both sprinted after her.
Once we emerged from the mouth of the tunnel, I saw that it was actually a culvert running beneath a four-lane highway bridge over a dry riverbed. The name BULL CREEK ROAD was engraved above the tunnel entrance.
We followed Aech as she took a sharp right, onto a worn dirt path skirting the black chain-link fence to our left, which appeared to run all the way around the perimeter of the forested property beyond it. The fence had a bunch of notes, purple flowers, and purple ribbons tied to it. They seemed to grow in number and density the farther along it we ran.
I glanced upward, then swiveled my head all the way around to scan the entire horizon. It was hard to tell what time of day it was supposed to be. The sky was a dozen different shades of purple and was filled with luminous storm clouds that drifted rapidly across it.
Eventually, the trees on the other side of the fence began to thin out, and beyond them I could see a circular white building, like an ivory tower, rising from a sprawling field of green grass. Beyond the white tower was a much larger building, also white, which looked like it was constructed out of cube-shaped building blocks of polished white marble. There were floodlights encircling the whole structure, bathing it in a brilliant, otherworldly light.
The image-recognition software running on my HUD informed me that we were approaching the entrance of Paisley Park, Prince’s famous home and creative compound. A moment later, we finally arrived at the property’s front gates, which were wrought iron and covered in purple chrome.
Without saying anything, Aech walked up to the gates and grabbed one of the bars with her right hand. When she did, this action triggered our first needle drop, and churchlike organ music filled our ears. The song-identification software running on my HUD identified it as the opening of a song called “Let’s Go Crazy.” It seemed to emanate from somewhere high above us, as if the sky itself were one giant speaker. A second later, we heard the voice of the Purple One himself, booming down from the sky like the voice of God Almighty, as Prince recited an excerpt of the song’s spoken intro:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called “life”…
But I’m here to tell you, there’s something else—the Afterworld!
As soon as he said “The Afterworld!” there was a deafening crash of thunder that shook my bones, and a second later, tines of purple lightning arced across the sky. Then the rolling purple clouds parted for a moment, revealing a cherry-shaped moon (complete with stem), sitting high in the eastern sky.
I turned to look in the opposite direction and realized that I could also see the sun, hanging motionless just above the western horizon. I found myself wondering why the Afterworld had been designed this way—just before I heard the man himself explain that it was “a world of never-ending happiness, you can always see the sun, day or night.”
As the song continued to play, the gates of Paisley Park began to open before us. Once they’d opened up all the way, Aech turned to address me.
“OK,” she said. “Opening the gates activates all of the local quests, and since we’re clanned up, they should be activated for you now too. So let’s have another look at that Fourth Shard….”
I took the Fourth Shard out of my inventory and held it up. Prince’s Love Symbol was still etched into its surface, but as we watched, seven more symbols appeared on either side of it, along with a capital letter V.
At first, I thought the V was a Roman numeral for the number five, to indicate the Fifth Shard. But then, because of its size and placement relative to the other eight symbols, it occurred to me that it might also be an abbreviation for the word “versus.”
The first seven symbols to the left of the V looked like variations of the familiar Prince Love Symbol. But the eighth and final symbol was very different. I didn’t recognize it at all. It looked like a number 7 placed off-center inside a circular diagram of an orbiting electron. Or maybe the face of an old analog timepiece, with the number 7 forming the big and little hands of a clock at around 8:35.
As soon as Aech saw this string of strange symbols appear on the shard, her smile vanished and her eyes went wide.
“This isn’t a quest, Z,” she said, looking over at me. “It’s a fucking suicide mission!”
A split second after Aech dropped the F-bomb, we heard a loud buzzer sound, and then a large empty glass jar suddenly appeared, floating in the air beside her, with a label on it that said “Spud’s Swear Jar.”
Aech scowled at it, then she let out an annoyed sigh and dropped a single gold coin into the jar. When she did, it vanished. I decided not to ask. Instead, I pointed down at the row of symbols on the shard.
“Aech,” I said. “Do you know what these symbols mean?”
She nodded and took a deep breath.
“I think they mean that to obtain the Fifth Shard, we have to battle the Seven,” Aech replied, pointing to the seven love symbols on the left. “By joining forces with ‘The Original 7ven.’ ”
Shoto and I exchanged confused looks. Aech continued. “The Seven are a team of seven different NPC incarnations of the Purple One. Each from a different stage of his career. Each with godlike powers.”
“Have you done battle with any of them before?” Shoto asked, innocently enough.
“Of course not!” Aech replied, clearly offended by the question. “You’re asking for serious trouble if you attack any incarnation of His Royal Badness on the Afterworld. Facing down seven at once is suicide. Would you visit Mount Olympus or go to Asgard to pick a fight with all of the gods? Only non-fan, level-grinding tourists ever even attempt to do battle with the Seven, and every last one of them gets zeroed out as a reward for their insolence and hubris.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “But that was probably because none of them were true Prince fans. But you are. You know everything about him, and about this planet. Come on, Aech.” I pointed down at the symbols on the shard. “If we have to fight the Seven, where do we find them?”
Aech hesitated before answering. Then she sighed and nodded toward the southern horizon.
“There’s a temple out in the desert, seven miles south of the city,” she said. “The Temple of Seven. In the center of its courtyard is an arena, and if you set foot inside it, the seven incarnations of Prince are summoned there from all over the Afterworld to do battle with you.”
Aech took off running again, through the open gates of Paisley Park, once again motioning for us to follow her.
“Why are we going in there?” I yelled after Aech. “I thought you said the arena was in a desert outside of town?”
“We can’t go to the arena yet,” she replied. “First we gotta collect a few weapons. And power-ups. Like, a lot of them…”
“I’m already carrying plenty of weapons in my inventory,” Shoto said. “And so are you. We can loan Parzival anything he needs.”
Aech shook her head.
“Conventional weapons won’t work against his Royal Badness,” Aech said. “In any of his seven incarnations. Only locally forged sonic, percussive, and musical weapons can affect the Seven and their familiars. All of them are armed with deadly sonic weapons, too, and some of them are powerful artifacts that can deal enough damage to kill your avatar with one attack. That’s why we need to gear up before we attempt to face them, OK? And boy, do I love wasting precious seconds myself, because y’all don’t trust me to know what I’m doing!”