by C. M. Carney
I even got to know Vonn a bit too. Apart from the frequent stabbings, he was a pretty stand-up guy. Truth be told, he was my only friend in the Realms. Gryph had abandoned me. My god was dead. I think I just needed a sympathetic ear. He even told me a bit of his story. Perhaps that was why I gave his crazy religion a chance.
“I was in a bad way,” Vonn said. “There were bounties on my head and obligations to some very bad people that I knew I could not keep. I was a dead man walking in the strictest sense of the phrase. The worst thing was, I knew it to be true. I was desperate and alone, and one day as I left the pub where I liked to drown my sorrows, I was murdered.”
“Wait, wait, wait, what?” I said, leaning forward and sloshing some of the fine Eldarian fire wine onto the table. “Hold on, are you a Player?”
“No.”
“But you were murdered, and we’re talking?”
“The Source,” Vonn said simply, hands held wide. “I cannot explain it any other way.”
How potent is this shit? I thought and eyeballed the glass of brandy I held at a very precarious angle as I sought evidence of foul play. Seraphine was an assassin after all, maybe she dosed me with something less acidic and more hallucinogenic.
“We’ll continue this next time,” he said.
That’s when the Agent tapped me on the shoulder. With a sigh, I went for a walk, killed a thrall with Order Bolt, jumped off the bridge and died.
☠☠☠☠☠
Vonn and I had a few more speed dates and then, abruptly, he told me our time was up. I was devastated, like when football season ends or that cute and quirky girl on The Bachelor doesn’t get a rose. He stood and walked towards the door. As he got close, he turned back to me.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asked.
“Um, yeah, it was right here,” I said pointing at the table that would always be our table.
“Wrong,” he said with a grin. “How do you think you came by that extremely rare spell stone?”
My mind flashed back to the beginning of the day. I was lying in the dust after Aluran’s energy Tourette’s had jacked me up, with a half dozen villagers looking down upon me. Amidst that sea of missing teeth and crossed eyes, was Vonn. In my memory he smiled and snapped an ‘atta boy’ at me, but I’m pretty sure that was a fiction created by my need.
“You gave me the Commune stone,” I said in awe as the memory broke.
“I do as the Source bids,” he said, and turned towards the door. He pushed it open and stopped. He glanced back at me. “It is the gift that keeps on giving.”
“Will I see you again?” I asked, and immediately felt desperate, alone and stupid. I’d see the dude in a few minutes, when this fuck-all loop began again.
“If the Source wills,” he said and turned away. He held the door open for someone who turned out to be the Agent.
What a gentleman? I thought. What a prick?
I felt alone and confused. I’d become so used to the complete freedom of my actions having no consequences that I think I may have lost my humanity. But my actions had consequences, perhaps not for the endlessly reborn people that shared my world, but for me, for my mind, perhaps even for my soul. Assuming a one-time AI even had a soul.
These thoughts filled my mind as the Agent arrived. I was so lost in my own world of regret that I let the Agent take me to the bridge without complaint. A few times I mumbled “Uh huh,” or “Yeah,” to the questions the Agent asked me. My mind was absent, and when I saw the bridge, I ran and dove off.
Death was a relief.
☠☠☠☠☠
I was back at the table across from Gaarm. I looked across the room to Vonn’s spot. He wasn’t there. A knot twisted at the center of my stomach, a combination of fear and desperate sadness. My only friend had gone. How? Why?
“Sir, the gentleman has called,” the dealer said in his nasally voice.
“I fold,” I said in a small voice and just sat there staring at Vonn’s empty seat. I have no idea how long I sat there when Gaarm kicked my chair under the table.
“Hey dwarf, what’s the matter with you?”
I jumped and stared at the Eldarian. “I’m Ordonian,” I muttered. Like a flash inspiration came in the form of Vonn’s voice.
I knew what needed to be done. Everything I’d been through since I’d first landed flat on my ass in that dusty street had been leading to this. It had all been part of some grand plan, a crazy conspiracy. Vonn’s words trilled through my mind.
“It is the gift that keeps on giving.”
Yeah, yeah, you were expecting ‘If the Source wills,’ weren’t you? I wasn’t quite convinced of all that religious mumbo jumbo, not yet anyway, but I’d take inspiration from wherever it came. Why can’t these religious assholes ever just say what they mean? I grumbled, but I knew what must be done.
It was time to talk to Rubik again. I cast Commune and was thrilled to see my six-sided pal float towards me. Vonn had given me an idea for a fantastic question, one I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked before.
“Hey Rubik, can you give me a Boon that will help me defeat and escape the Agent?” Apparently, I was getting better at phrasing proper questions as the cubic creature’s thoughts invaded my mind with the best YES of my life. It grabbed my head with its rubbery hands, and then the Boon of new knowledge filled my brain. I would have collapsed to my knees, but Rubik’s noodle arms possessed far more strength than expected. My mind expanded in a nova of potential and then shrank into a singularity of possibility. It exploded and reformed a thousand upon a thousand times. Just as I knew my very being would burn away it was over.
I collapsed to the ground as drool dribbled from my suddenly parched mouth. I dry heaved and choked and fell onto my face. A new prompt was blinking in my vision.
You have been granted the Boon Accelerated Learning.
Accelerated Learning gives you a 500% increase to learning or training of one skill of your choice.
This Accelerated Learning will last for one full day.
Any Stamina cost associated with the skill chosen is negated for the duration of the Boon.
“Rubik, you are the man, or… whatever,” I said as I opened my desert dry eyes and stood. Normally, Rubik would have already floated away, but once again he was ogling me with his unblinking up and down stare. “Oh, right I said, payment.” I dug into my pack and pulled out the Writ of Cerrunos again. Rubik looked at the book and back to me, and somehow, I knew it was no longer interested in the book. Perhaps time moved differently for it as well.
I rustled through my pack, seeking something else to offer it, when I felt it grab my head again. This time he held me in a single hand that was far stronger than logic suggested it should be. It brought its other hand up and the three stumpy digits I thought of as fingers thinned out into points and moved slowly towards my face.
“Um,” I said in alarm as the now very thin and very sharp fingers came directly at my eye. I tried to pull back, but the square bastard was incredibly strong. It felt like my head was in a vice. Rubik sunk its talons into the flesh around my eye and I screamed.
The pain went on for many long seconds and then with a pop and a squelch I felt my eye being pulled from its socket. Rubik pulled the eye close and looked at it from many angles as I continued to scream. It didn’t seem to notice my distress. Just as I didn’t think things could get worse, the creature’s giant mouth opened again.
“No, no, no, do not do that,” I yelled as it moved my stolen eyeball towards the razor-toothed maw. It tossed it inside and the teeth came down with a sickening slurping pop. This fucking cube just ate my eyeball, my mind screamed in terror.
Rubik let me go and I fell to the ground, weeping in pain and horror. An odd ripple flowed over the surface of the cube and its eye shrank to the size of a grapefruit and shifted to the left. Then a small dot appeared in the space on the right side of the cube’s face and expanded into another eye. It was my eye, just much larger and now it was star
ing unblinking back at me.
“Aaaaggghhh!” I screamed, and the cube stared at me for a moment, before turning and floating away. The mists faded and time returned to normal. I was back in the inn.
“Aaaaggghhh!”
“Shut up dwarf,” Gaarm grumbled. “Hey what happened to your eye?”
“Aaaaggghhh!”
I jumped up and ran towards the front door. I was seriously freaked out, and my peripheral vision was shot. I bumped into people, tables and chairs. People I knew and hated all stared at me in shock and alarm, some complaining, some screaming in shock. Apparently, a man suddenly having no eye was not a normal occurrence, even in this shithole inn.
I finally reached the door and yanked it open to see the Agent standing there. I screamed again, slammed the door in her face and tried to run to the back door. With my vision so jacked up she and her goon were on me in moments.
A bit later I jumped off the bridge again and as I drowned a horrid thought went through my head. What if I come back still missing the eye?
Then I died.
☠☠☠☠☠
9
I set my empty mug down onto the table with a hollow thunk, releasing an unexpected spark of energy that would have made me jump, as it had innumerable times before, but I was a bit preoccupied. My vision seemed normal, but I brought a tentative hand up to my face to make sure. My fingers touched my eye and I let out a whimper of relief.
“Quit crying dwarf,” Gaarm said. I looked up to see he and the dealer both waiting for me to decide what to do. Anger surged up inside me and I decided that this time I was going all in. I pushed my coins into the middle of the table. “All in,” I said and tossed my card atop the pile.
Gaarm’s eyes widened in shock and then suspicion. I could almost see the misfiring neurons in his small brain sending the word cheater to his mouth, but I beat him to the punch.
“Cheater!” I yelled, pointing at the doofus Eldarian. His mouth dropped open to reveal that too often seen gaggle of rotten teeth, but no words came out. Apparently, I’d stumped the bastard.
I opened the prompt that had been blinking since that cubic prick Rubik had torn my eye out.
You have been granted the Boon Accelerated Learning.
Which skill do you wish to Accelerate?
I looked directly at Gaarm and said Analyze. A torrent of warm energy rushed into my mind, and into my eyes. I saw things in a way I never had before. Every photon of light brought information to my brain. Every breath brought enlightenment.
I turned Analyze on and left it on. Normally Analyze worked in short bursts. You’d stare all creepy like at someone and activate the skill. Your Stamina bar would go down a few ticks and you’d either learn some stuff about your target or you wouldn’t.
With no Stamina cost, there was no reason to turn it off. The amount of information that poured into my mind was incredible, and for the first time in an unknowable amount of days I wished I wasn’t drunk.
I cast my gaze around the room and drank in the information. Now, most of it I already knew from previous trips through the rabbit hole, but this time a tidal wave of prompts came at me and I had to shut them down. At this point I really wasn’t trying to glean information from them. I just wanted to grind.
I lived and died dozens of times as I upped Analyze. Eventually I grew bored ogling my fellow inn-mates and wandered the town. The first few times I only got about five minutes of staring and ogling in before I came across the Agent, but I soon discovered that if I went the opposite direction from her, I gained another five to ten minutes. That much time was like a vacation in heaven.
I won’t bore you with several dozen prompts that poured into my brain over my many lives but suffice to say the folks of Harlan’s Watch were as odd a mix of people as you’d encounter anywhere. Some had secret desires that got me feeling’ all randy, while others made me blanch and grow queasy.
Several citizens had skills I desired, and I had knowledge I could trade.
You have reached Level 1 in Air Magic.
You have reached Level 1 in Unarmed.
You have reached Level 1 in Small Blades.
You have reached Level 1 in Divination.
You have reached Level 1 in Alchemy.
You have reached Level 1 in Disarm Traps.
You have reached Level 2 in Smithing.
Several townsfolk helped me up my skills, some unwilling.
You have reached Level 19 in Stealth.
You have reached Level 18 in Dodge
You have reached Level 13 in Pickpocket.
I even helped a few people.
You have been awarded 100 XP for the secret quest Teach a Boy to Pilfer.
You have taught the street urchin Furrick how to Pickpocket. He will now be able to steal enough to feed himself and his young sister Ariaan. You have made him promise to only steal from “douche bags and asshats.”
Pay it forward I say.
The sheer amount of information my brain was taking in gifted me with an ever-present headache, but I pushed through. I’d paid a heavy price for this Boon and I was gonna make the most of it. Soon I earned my reward.
You have reached Level 50 in Analyze.
You have reached Journeyman Tier in Analyze.
You can now see the Strengths and Immunities of anyone successfully Analyzed.
At Journeyman Tier the Stamina requirement for Analyze is reduced to 10 points.
Decision time was upon me. I had a whopping 8 Perk Points to spend, and a whole slew of new Skills to tempt my consumerism. But, I had been working towards one goal since I first checked out the Analyze Perk Tree. Without hesitation I put points into the Know Falsehoods, False Report 2 and Spell Osmosis. That left me with 5 Perk Points and many levels to go in Analyze. It was time to grind.
My new Perks led me to discover a kinder, gentler, less psycho and bloody way to level. My Know Falsehoods Perk really opened some questing opportunities. Most of them were simple enough, delivering love letters, making subtle threats, crafting iron daggers and the like. Quite a few of the folks about town had bounties on their heads, so I became friendly with the local constables.
You have been awarded 2,000 XP for completing the quest Teach a Boy to Pilfer (x20).
You have been awarded 10,000 XP for completing the quest A Lovely Letter (x20).
You have been awarded 20,000 XP for completing the quest A Night to Remember (x20).
You have been awarded 1,000 XP for completing the quest Craft an Iron Dagger (x20).
You have been awarded 200,000 XP for completing the choice quest Meddle in the Gang War (x20).
You have been awarded 100,000 XP for completing the quest Bounty for the Pyromaniac (x20).
You have been awarded 100,000 XP for completing the quest Bounty for the Beast Humper (x20).
You have been awarded 100,000 XP for completing the quest Bounty for the Grave Robber (x20).
You have been awarded 100,000 XP for completing the quest The Mayor is Corrupt (x20).
And all the while, my Analyze skill kept improving. Accelerated Learning was an insanely powerful Boon, and despite the horrific price I’d paid, I would almost be willing to pay it again. Maybe. Fuck you Rubik, you creepy-ass cube.
While I was enjoying my vacation minutes outside the Shining Unicorn Inn, I still had to face off against the Agent and her thralls over and over and over. My Order Magic skill kept leveling even though the spells still didn’t damage the Agent. It was time to find out why?
The Agent: Level 41 H: 678/S: 534/M: 367/SP: 1,000 - Specialty: Agent
The Agent is a servant of the High God Aluran.
Strengths: Small Blades Master. Analyze Master.
Immunities: Complete resistance to all magic cast by opponents of Journeyman or lower level. (Ring). Weaknesses: Unknown.
The Agent was a complete badass. Not only was she a way higher level than I, she was also a Master in at least two skills. Even if she was using False Reports on me, I kn
ew that her Strengths were legit as my own False Reports 2 made me immune to any falsehoods she could have masked her Strengths with.
I would have been less certain about her Immunities, knowing that she could False Report me, but anecdotal evidence suggested that her Immunities were accurate. And even more interesting, they apparently came from a ring she wore. I would do my damned best to get my hands on that ring before this day was done.
Why wouldn’t she create a False Report on her Immunities? Did she believe that nobody could have a high enough Analyze skill to peer through her veils of secrecy? Was she that arrogant and cocksure? Perhaps that would be her undoing.
Another possibility went through my mind. Perhaps she had spent all her Perk Points on the more aggressive skills. She clearly had bolstered her Short Blades skill with a variety of Perks. Maybe she didn’t have all the Analyze Perks that I did.
I noted, that like Vonn, she had a specialty. She was an Agent. That one was a giant no duh, but I had no idea what it meant. Maybe, before I killed her I’d ask, real nice like.
I still needed to up my Analyze skill. If I could become a Master, I might steal some useful skills from her. Just for fun I blasted her with an Order Bolt. As expected it did nothing to her, but the effects on the thralls was another thing altogether. I loved killing those mute bastards.
You have earned 152,300 XP for slaying the Agent’s Thrall (x100)
You have reached Level 26 in Order Magic.
Yet, I still had a long way to go. I know, I know; I’m getting a bit sick of it too, trust me. But one can’t hack the Game Mechanics. Let’s just say I kept plugging away, grinding, completing quests, meeting the townsfolk of Harlan’s Watch and finding new and fun ways to kill the Agent’s pals. After a lot of sweat, tears, blood, vomit, headaches, screams, squeals, occasional baby talk and many, many deaths, I earned the most amazing prompt of my life.