“What are your other questions?”
“I guess I should have started with this one, considering we haven’t seen each other for a couple days. How are you doing?”
She looked away from Lucian. “Why do you ask that?”
“Hey, no reason, and I’m not trying to bother you or anything. I thought it was rude for me to show up and just start asking questions.”
Yoshimi returned her gaze to Lucian, her eyes sparkling for a moment then turning dark. “I am doing fine. I have mostly stayed here. I thought you came here to ask questions related to your journey, not mine.”
“I didn’t want to be selfish,” Lucian said. “And I thought that maybe you have had something going on as well.”
“I haven’t, and I don’t consider you selfish.”
Another spell of silence stretched between them, Lucian eventually speaking.
“Okay then, moving on. Here’s a question I’ve been wondering. How are people finding me?”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems like Death Hunters can just appear wherever I am, angels too. How are they finding me?” Lucian exhaled audibly. “And before you answer that, I should probably let you know that I killed another Death Hunter, one known as the Spaniard. Familiar with him?”
Yoshimi nodded. “And you are growing stronger?”
“I am, but as I told you before, I’m not trying to go after regular Deaths.”
“You’re going to paint a target on your back if you keep killing our own kind,” she said. “But that is something you have to deal with on your own. Let’s put it this way: new Deaths and old Deaths alike put off a scent. Those that know how to tap into that scent can find them quite readily. I can’t explain to you how to tap into this, as this wasn’t something that came suddenly to me. It was only after years that I was able to notice it.”
“So, I have to smell it.”
“It’s not that kind of scent. It is something that you feel, something that can take a while to recognize. I’m sorry I don’t have a better explanation than that.”
“That’s fine, at least it gives me something. Now, another question.” Lucian ate a piece of sashimi that had a tangy burst of flavor in its center.
“You like that one, yes?”
“I do,” he said, going for another.
“It’s something I came up with.”
Lucian finished eating and continued. “Long story short, I tried to make an elixir and ended up blowing my arms off. What I’m looking to do is to create like a potion—or elixir, as you call it—that increases my strength, or makes me twice as fast. Something like that.”
“It blew off your arms?”
“Yeah. Kind of funny, now that I think about it. My first attempt was basically me trying to pour my energy into…” He thought again about what he had attempted to do with the water in the lake. “Actually, it wasn’t as much me bottling my power as me trying to enhance something with my power.”
Yoshimi offered Lucian an honest grin. “You really are going to pry all my secrets out of me, aren’t you?”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Lucian said, bowing his head. “But everything you do tell me, just know that I really appreciate it, and that I take it to heart.”
“Aside from the hunting Deaths part.”
“You never told me that I shouldn’t hunt them; you only said that it wasn’t a great idea, and that you don’t consider us honorable creatures anyway.”
“Good, so you are listening.”
“I’m trying,” Lucian told her.
“I’m glad you came,” Yoshimi said as she went for another piece of chocolate. “I was wondering when you would call me.”
“You can always show up uninvited, if you’d like.”
“I think I would be more of a third wheel if I did that.”
Lucian swallowed hard. “Third wheel?”
“You said you had a friend, right?” she asked, Lucian not able to tell if Yoshimi was teasing him, or being serious.
“I guess you could say that,” he finally said. “I’m just trying to make sense of all of this.”
“We all are,” she assured him, “except that some of us have realized that sense can’t be made of our situation, and it is best just to exist.”
“I’m not there yet, which brings me to my last question.”
“Yes?”
Lucian recalled killing his brother’s parasite, and the anger he had felt a bit earlier when he’d seen his brother still using, even though his parasite was gone. He quickly explained the situation to Yoshimi, the mysterious woman listening intently and never stopping him to ask questions.
“So you did it,” she said after he’d finished.
“I did, but I just don’t know what to do now. It is still affecting him; he’s going to hurt himself or someone else. And if that is the case, he’s going to blow through his family’s finances, or get caught somehow and bring embarrassment to himself. You see the dilemma here.”
“I do,” she said. “Perhaps it is time that you stopped checking on him for a while. I have had to do that before with people I cared about. I...” A dark look came over Yoshimi’s face. “Let’s leave it at that.”
“Stop checking on my family?”
“It may be the only way.”
Lucian considered this for a moment, finally shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Yoshimi, I just don’t think I can do that.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Demon Goat
Lucian smiled at Ezra as the cat weaved between his legs.
“I need to practice conjuring milk,” he said under his breath as Ezra purred. Remembering that the cat seemed to like chocolate too, Lucian created a small rectangular plate, akin to the plates that Yoshimi had used, and set several pieces of chocolate on it.
He placed the plate on the ground and crouched next to Ezra as he petted him. “That’s a good kitty. We’re going to make this easy. Are you willing to work with me?”
Ezra arched his back as Hugin took interest in the cat. The compartment on Hugin’s back opened, the retractable claw coming out and slowly lowering onto Ezra.
“Hey…” Lucian started to say.
Hugin started petting the cat gently, looking up to Lucian for confirmation. Once Munin saw what Hugin was doing, it lowered as well, petting the cat too, Ezra loving it.
“You’ve got your chocolate, you’re getting your pets, now tell me: where is he?”
Ezra paused. The cat looked to Lucian, something flickering behind his eyes.
Or at least Lucian thought something had flickered.
“That’s right, kitty, I’m asking you directly. You’re clearly some kind of magical cat, or better, a cat made from magic. So where is he? I’ve got to talk to him. The Committee is going to be coming for me soon if I don’t.”
Ezra returned to the piece of chocolate.
“Now come on; don’t be like that. I’m just asking for you to show me, to show us,” he said, motioning to Hugin and Munin, “where Old Death is. Cuthbert. Boy, is that a weird name to say. Cuddy. Didn’t he call himself that? Stop staring at me like that. These people are going to come after me and do some terrible shit, or force me to do some terrible shit, if I don’t find him.”
It took Lucian twenty minutes of trying to coax Ezra into helping him before he finally gave up.
If that cat somehow knew where his predecessor was, he wasn’t going to tell him.
“Some help you are,” Lucian said as he turned his attention to the giant mecha he was creating. He floated over to it and quickly checked his Soul Points, seeing how much he had to work with.
“Definitely enough,” he said to himself as he started to cycle more energy into his creation. Grimzilla was done, but Lucian wanted to be sure that it was as powerful as he could make it before turning it on.
This got him wondering if he could do the same thing to other items he’d created.
To test this theory, he equipped his lava sword and c
ycled power into it the same way he’d cycled power into Grimzilla. To his surprise, a soft sheen cascaded down the weapon, its lava core igniting and settling. It didn’t look any different after the sheen died down.
“So it works on my weapons as well, or at least it makes them shinier,” he said to himself as he returned his attention to Grimzilla.
Once Lucian was down to about two thousand Soul Points or so, he stopped cycling and powered his creation on.
Grimzilla’s purple eyes flashed once.
His mecha abruptly sat up, a whirring noise meeting Lucian’s ears as he floated before his creation.
“Welcome,” he said, not able to contain his smile.
Grimzilla pressed to his feet, the ground quaking a bit as he took a step forward. The giant mecha looked at his hand and flexed his fingers, nodding as he did the same to his other hand. The retractable blades in his forearms popped out, the sharp ends rimmed in energy.
Unlike Grim Mecha, who had a blade arm, Lucian had decided to give Grimzilla full dexterity. This would allow him to do things like pick up an opponent and slam the enemy to the ground, lift things, or simply do what he was doing now.
Grimzilla wiggled his fingers as if he were playing an air piano. He squeezed his hands into fists and took a few practice swings.
“Easy, big guy,” Lucian said as Grimzilla nearly stomped Ezra, the cat curious as to what Lucian had created. Ezra bolted away, Munin following after him.
“Ready to go for a spin?” Lucian asked.
Grimzilla nodded. The heavily armored cockpit on the front of his body opened and Lucian floated up to it. He had trusted his instinct fully when designing the giant mecha, and as he settled in the cockpit, Lucian was glad for his active, yet architecturally sound, imagination.
The cockpit was comfortable, the seat made of plush leather with enough room to move around that he didn’t feel cramped. Due to the design, Lucian sat at a forward-facing angle, which would allow him to be ejected if that’s what needed to happen.
Once he was in, the hatch began to close, a series of lights powering on and displaying information. Lucian saw his Soul Points appear alongside Grimzilla’s power levels, noting the two were tied together.
With a swipe of his hand, he rearranged the information, moving the data he probably wasn’t going to use much, like trajectory and RPMs, off to the side. Once he was set, his pane of vision changed as a variety of feeds were cast into the cockpit.
They painted across the back of the hatch, Lucian able to select which angle he wanted to go with. With this feature, he’d be able to see what was behind him and below, depending on which feed he switched to, reticles on the screen zipping to the left and right as he cycled through feeds.
Lucian chose the simplest feed, the one coming from Grimzilla’s eyes. Once that was set, Lucian whispered the words, “Let’s go.”
Everything shook around him for a moment as Grimzilla lifted into the air. The mecha now felt like an extension of Lucian’s body as he flew forward, stopped, and backpedaled, Lucian using, of all things, a video game controller to control his creation.
Lucian had considered ways to control him, and while it would have been cool to have something like a haptic response suit to completely mirror his movements, in the end, he’d gone with what he knew, video games, an FPS-style controller layout in particular.
And the controller response was pretty good.
He could easily trail left and right, there was a boost, and there were options as to which weapon he equipped, and ways to force fire. Since Lucian wouldn’t always be in the cockpit, Grimzilla was fully autonomous as well. The self-autonomy also would allow him to use his own AI to fight while Lucian was in the craft, controlling some of the energy weapons hidden away in compartments along his craft’s body.
“Time to test you out,” Lucian said, giant boulders rising from the lake.
He shot through them, the air filling with debris. He then grew pillars of stone from the lake, which he raced toward, cutting through them with his energy blades.
Lucian practiced for nearly thirty minutes, getting familiar with using his creation’s weapons. The meter on his Soul Points flashed once he reached a thousand.
“Shit,” he said, wishing he had more juice. “Let’s wrap it up for now. It’s exploring time.”
Grimzilla lifted higher into the air than Lucian had ever flown in Old Death’s world. The cliff below shrank in size as Lucian moved toward the empty city, which he took a lap around before noticing a spark in the distance, something past the forest.
He hit the jets; Grimzilla blasted away toward the spark, eventually clearing the forest and coming to an endless desert filled with soft dunes, a slight breeze moving through the sand.
“Hold here,” Lucian said. The hatch opened on the cockpit and he floated up to Grimzilla’s shoulder. “That’s some desert,” he said, once he could get a better view of just how far the dunes stretched.
From his current vantage point, it almost looked like an ocean, the sun setting, its dark pink rays reflecting off the sand.
Lucian turned back in the direction of the forest, which seemed far away now, a black line on the horizon.
“You can really book it, can’t you?” he asked Grimzilla as he settled onto his creation’s shoulder. Lucian snapped his fingers and Hugin and Munin appeared, both looking tired. “Trying to keep up?”
Hugin nodded.
“Sorry about that. Okay, so Old Death likes deserts, and this world, that he made with his mantle, is apparently surrounded by a desert. So maybe this is where we should look for him. Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking here?” Lucian asked as he lowered Grimzilla down.
His giant mecha kicked up a lot of sand, but eventually he found solid ground.
Lucian checked his Soul Points again.
“That should be enough,” he said as he created several dozen crow replicas, all about twice Hugin’s size. “Don’t get jealous,” he told Hugin and Munin as they watched the replicas line up. “These ones are for surveillance.”
The surveillance crows took off and Lucian settled into the increasingly large shadow created by his mecha’s body.
He conjured a bed, and once that was set, a flat-screen television appeared in the air, Zero Enigma already loading.
“Let’s call it a night,” he told Hugin and Munin once they lowered onto their cushion. “We’ll let the surveillance crows do some searching and we’ll see what we can figure out in the morning.”
After the loading screen, which reminded Lucian that he had a skill tree available for each of the powers he learned, his avatar formed. He was still in the fur he’d equipped last time he played, and rather than run around looking like an idiot, Lucian re-equipped his robes.
“Yeah, it’s not as cool,” he told Hugin, who seemed to be watching what Lucian was doing. “But my robes are enchanted.”
Lucian opened the map and selected an area known as Rejnar Canyon.
Another loading screen started up as he fast traveled there, this one reminding Lucian that different items have different effects.
“Duh.”
His avatar appeared at the start of the canyon, Danira at his side.
“That’s right,” Lucian said, recalling that he’d gotten a bottle of onion wine and that he hadn’t tried it yet. Since its attributes were only listed as [???], Lucian quicksaved before throwing the potion back.
Everything went dark; the music that indicated a character had died played.
“Um, okay,” Lucian said as he loaded his save file.
A breeze picked up, one that he hadn’t caused himself, whipping up grains of sand. Lucian had the notion to put aside his video game controller and enjoy the desert, but there would be plenty of time for that after he did a little grinding in the canyon.
The load screen started up again, this time reminding him that looted items could be stripped of their component powers.
“Thanks for the reminder,” he sa
id as his avatar reformed, Danira at his side. “Not going to try the onion wine again,” Lucian said under his breath as his character started running. “Fool me once…”
Lucian noticed a random NPC standing in the shade of the canyon, and as he approached her, a scene started up.
“Mister? Can you help me, mister?”
[Depends on what you need.]
“Please, mister, my goat ran off.”
[You want me to find a goat? I have better things to do.]
“This isn’t any goat; it’s a magical goat!”
[Does it taste better than a regular goat?]
“How could you say something like that?” she asked, frowning. The NPC moved awkwardly before continuing. “Do you think you could help me?”
[I’m not really in the livestock business.]
“Please!”
[Sure, I’ll help.]
Lucian grinned. There was no other dialogue option by that point; he’d been cornered into helping.
“Thank you!” the young girl said, suddenly smiling. “My goat’s name is Marlena. I think she should be close by. I can hear her bell. You can always call her name, if that helps.”
A prompt appeared.
To call the young girl’s goat, press [L3] and [R3] at the same time.
Lucian’s avatar began moving through the canyon, occasionally coming across enemies as he listened for the bell.
Pressing [L3] and [R3] made the screen flash, but as always, they never played his avatar’s voice. This was likely due to the amount of voice-over work they’d need due to the wide selection of avatars available, from male to female, elf to goblin.
Lucian had started the game as a goblin, but had later gone to one of the temples to change his race once he discovered that the goblin always had trust issues at the villages, leading townspeople to constantly challenge him or accuse him of stealing something.
The screen flashed again as Lucian called the girl’s goat.
Something moved on the screen and he took off toward the movement, coming to a dead end.
“There you are,” Lucian said as he cornered the goat named Marlena. And he thought that was going to be easy too; the cut scene would play, he’d return the goat to the girl, and the girl would give him some type of reward.
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