Openings

by Thomas Davidsmeier

  “Just Light Armor I hope,” explained Yorick. “A Mage of the Light spell. Could be high level, not sure.”

  Nonchalance returning to his voice, Jeremy managed to say, “Oh, ok.” He took his hand down and tried to see the girl wearing the armor. The light was more bearable after a few moments. But to Jeremy’s great disappointment, she was wearing a full helm.

  A sweet but stern voice sang out from somewhere inside the blinding armor. “Approach if ye desire parley. Ask for the terms ye desire to give for your surrender, and we will judge if they be sufficient. Perhaps we shall be merciful to ye, though ye be a vile desecrater of the dead.”

  “Yeah, her voice is even better in person.” Jeremy actually sighed.

  Teeth clattering in annoyance and a hint of fear, Yorick tried to address his student respectfully. “You’re joking, aren’t you, Lord Mayor? She is the same class as the Paladin’s tutor. You remember, the one who almost killed me?”

  Jeremy moved out from behind the rubble pile his skeletons had put in place for the expected siege. He looked up at Yorick as he began to walk toward the shining girl. “Joking about what exactly, Yorick?” Jeremy had been a little distracted while Yorick had been talking.

  Carefully picking his words as they came closer and closer to the Mage of the Light in her brilliant armor, Yorick hissed in a whisper, “Are you so smitten that you will risk your plans of conquest? Most especially in a world where underclothes are a permanent fixture about your body?”

  “That is not what love is all about, man. That’s just so... Ugh. Ok, I probably would have agreed with you a day or two ago. But, just look at her! And, listen to how she talks!”

  Necromancer and skull became silent as they approached the waiting mage. She was dressed in the armor one would expect of a medieval knight on parade, except that it was glowing brightly. In her left hand was a slender spear crowned with a pennant that was whipping in the wind. In her right was an elegant scepter, her token of Leadership for a side in the Game.

  “Come no further,” she commanded, still with a sweet voice.

  Jeremy took one more step and had a spear pointed at his chest for his trouble. “Woah, no need for that, Theo. And, you don’t need the helmet either. Why don’t you ditch it so we can talk like people.”

  “Ye dare to make a claim of our common humanity? Ye who rob the graves of the peacefully slumbering and turn them into poor imitations of soldiers in this wretched mob ye call an army?”

  Dreamily, Jeremy agreed wholeheartedly. “Yeah. Totally. Except my army has Captain Samwell and a couple of other warm bodies.” He was smiling far too broadly for the situation.

  With one deft motion, Theodora slid her scepter into her inventory pouch and ripped off her helmet. Jeremy’s sigh was clearly audible. She blushed at the obviousness of his admiration.

  Rivers of red curls cascaded down past her shoulders. Theodora’s very pale cheeks were flush with the embarrassment that came naturally to her with Jeremy’s attention. The color rushing to her face almost hid the freckles that were sprinkled across her cheeks and nose. She looked like an exemplar of the Celtic village lass she had been on the Earth. Recovering after a moment, Theodora’s bright green eyes narrowed as she glared at the lanky necromancer.

  “What business do ye have to conduct? Do ye wish to parley or to be pierced through?” Theodora glared at the purple clad necromancer who looked to be just into his twenties like her.

  “I was thinking, maybe, dinner and a movie? Do you like Thai food?”

  Yorick was desperate to shake some sense into his student’s love smitten skull. He interrupted with what he considered a helpful reminder. “They all turn out to be like your mother. Trying to change you, never satisfied with who you are. They, and this one in particular, are not worth it. You’ve got...”

  “Silence, abomination! You bear no scepter to this parley and represent no side in this negotiation. No side except the Devil’s, we would say. We would be most honored to have an end like that of our royal mother. She endured great hardship, but she was loyal, faithful, honorable, and a fount of justice to the end for the sake of her subjects. So too shall I be.”

  Yorick muttered, “This one is Trouble with a capital T. Maybe even all CAPS. Steer clear if you...”

  “Must I silence you, foul spawn of Hell?” The spear raised from Jeremy’s chest up to point at the skull.

  With an audible click, Yorick’s jaws snapped shut.

  “So, about that dinner and a movie...”

  Theodora wrinkled her pert, freckled nose in an expression of disgust that was brutally adorable in Jeremy’s eyes.

  The young woman’s gaze was downcast for a moment before she brought it back up to glare at Jeremy. “We could never accept such an alliance, by marriage or otherwise. Ye use the dead in an unnatural way. Ye contravene the laws of our Lord and Savior. Ye...”

  “Oooo, a church girl. I usually don’t like those.” Jeremy’s face took on a look of confusion.

  Theodora gave a sigh of relief and spoke suddenly much faster. “Thank God Almighty then. If ye have no other proposals for this parley, may we return to our subjects and prepare for the attack of this repugnant horde ye have for a military?”

  “Oh no. I said I usually don’t like church girls. You’re different. I think most of them are just faking it. You really, really mean it. I can tell. I really appreciate that passion, know what I mean? Everybody has got to be passionate about something, right?”

  Theodora’s eyes widened. This necromancer was certainly persistent. She set her feet wide and decided on her course of action.

  “Yorick, let’s take us a pretty, pretty prisoner and then demolish her village’s defenses.”

  “Only because you’re in charge, boss. RIGOR MORTIS!”

  Theodora shrugged violently like someone had tried to grab her and she was escaping their grasp.

  Glaring at Jeremy, she raised her fist up.

  As she opened her hand and spread her fingers wide, she shouted, “DEO GLORIA!”

  Like a bomb blast, a disc of light exploded out from Theodora’s hand. It flew out parallel to the ground and seemingly evaporated every undead it touched. She turned and dashed back to the gate of the village Pius.

  Jeremy had guessed right and dove to the ground a moment before the spell cast. He called out after the retreating Queen of Pius, “I guess this means dinner and a movie is off for now? How about a rain check?”

  ***

  The Light spell had obliterated a good hunk of Jeremy’s forces. He had only enough skeletons left over to form a single troop with Captain Samwell at the head. That amount was not going to cut it in an assault on a fortified town like Pius. Looking at his only human soldier at the moment, Jeremy ordered, “Build a wall around it. Nothing goes in or comes out. We’ll starve them until dinner and a movie with me sounds like a irresistible offer. I’m counting on you to keep your eyes and ears open since I can’t take over an undead unit yet.”

  Captain Samwell saluted and headed off with the skeletons to get to work.

  Yorick’s teeth clattered. “That’s one way to get a date.”

  Chapter 10

  “Love potions?” asked the bald apothecary in confusion. He was the villager who had first met Chris at the ford. He had introduced himself and brought him Chris back to his hut in the village.

  Ruefully, Chris shook his head in the fading light. His cheeks were flush with embarrassment. It had been a long day. “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean a potion or ointment or something that I can use to make an enemy be my friend. Like a ‘Charm’ spell?”

  “You mean to say that you want a potion which mimics the Enchantment skill of Wizards?” The apothecary’s name was Marcus. He set his mortar and pestle down on the doorstep of his hut where he had been sitting. All of the excitement of the skeletons’ attack had faded with the setting sun. The villagers had been a buzz at first, but then they had all drifted off to their respective huts. Chris had made
his way to the apothecary to discuss potions and alchemy.

  “Hmmm, let me think a bit. I’m not sure I know of anyway to do that. But, I’m only a journeyman. And, I’ve got fewer recipes than I ought to. Not being able to trade with the towns across the fen has made things difficult lately.” Marcus was a fifty-something man with clear blue eyes.

  He was bald, but as Chris observed to himself, not quite Jean Luc Picard bald. A half ring of curly salt and pepper hair circled the back of his head and then looped over his ears and formed a neatly trimmed beard and mustache.

  The older man sat for a little while with a far away look in his eye. Chris guessed that apothecary was reviewing info from the Game on his personal display. Finally, he looked back to Chris and spoke gruffly.

  “I’ve got recipes and ingredients for health and mana potions. I can also make a couple of minor stat buffs, but those are more expensive.” Marcus seemed to look Chris and Nathanael up and down in appraisal. “Experts, Masters, and Legends can do more than me, I’m sure. I’ve got an expert recipe I can’t make called Transmogrifying Tea. It’s supposed to do what the Wizard’s Alteration skill does. But, I haven’t ever come across any potions to make a fellow more charming with the ladies...”

  Marcus scowled as he seemed to continue thinking about something while he scooped his mortar back up.

  Chris looked around at the village of Fenton for a moment. He was happy none of the farmers had heard his conversation. They were thankfully in their huts for dinner. The huts were close to the river bank but on higher, flat ground. Surrounding them were perhaps a dozen fields in a surreal mixture of stages. Some looked like they were just fresh turned earth planted that day. Others looked like plants had sprouted and had a good start. Still others had stands of ripening grain that looked almost ready to harvest. The last couple looked like they were just the stubble of freshly harvested fields. It reminded him of one of the Age of Empires games that he and Jack had played. But, this was so very different and so very real.

  This world was so wide open that Chris was having trouble settling on a strategy. The Charm idea had been a bit of a lark anyway. Reluctantly, Chris abandoned the idea of getting a magic meat shield besides himself. Chris fell back to the business at hand. He had to become the leader of a side, and if he was going to be the meat shield, he needed rapid healing. Fighting against groups had shown that his aura was just too slow to rely on. He decided to figure out how to become the leader of Fenton first. That might tell him how much healing he would need.

  Turning back to Marcus, Chris said, “So, everyone said that you don’t have a mayor in Fenton, but you’re the man to talk to.”

  Marcus kept grinding away at something in his mortar and pestle without looking up. “If everyone said it, I guess it must be so.”

  “I, ah..., I’m trying to find out how to become the mayor of Fenton, actually.”

  A savory, slightly fishy aroma drifted out of the apothecary’s hut. Chris assumed it was a potion brewing or something of the sort. He had no skill percent in Alchemy and could not tell what it was.

  Marcus grabbed a little more of what looked like a white carrot sliced into circles. He sniffed the ingredient for a moment and dropped it into his rough, stone mortar. “Hmmm, I’d guess you’d better get popular with everyone then. We’ll have a vote if enough folks want to.”

  Chris wished that the apothecary would look up from whatever it was that he was grinding. He wanted to gauge the man’s reaction to his wanting to become the leader of the town.

  “Well... Is there a task or something that I might be able to do that would convince everyone that I was a good leader for the village?”

  Marcus took his pestle out and dabbed a little of the slurry off of it onto a wooden dish. He brought the dish up to his nose and waved back and forth. Sticking out his tongue, he slowly brought the mixture up to taste a little. A smile of satisfaction lit his face.

  Curiosity got the better of Chris. “What are you making? Healing potion?”

  “Dinner.”

  Awkward silence ensued as Marcus went back to the boiling pot in his hut and dumped the contents of his mortar in it.

  The time to think seemed to have jogged the apothecary’s mind into motion. “We’ve got a mess of goblins infesting the fenlands to the south of here. The fenlands are pretty big. About eight or nine miles wide, and about four or five miles through the middle where the road runs. We used to trade plenty with the villages on the other side, but since the goblins started making trouble, we’ve been pretty much cut off.”

  Tamping down his excitement, Chris calmly nodded, liking the way this seemed to be headed.

  “If you could take care of our goblin problem, I’m sure that it would make you popular around here. I know I could use an upgrade to my alchemy equipment from one of the merchants over there. With this cheap, old stuff, some of my potions come up duds and barely have any effect. The farmers would like to have something besides wheat berry mush and milk for dinner sometimes. No meat from the forest lately either. We used to get real wine from across the fen, not just sour berry juice I’ve been making.”

  “Goblins you say? Just a minute...”

  Chris reached into his inventory pouch and thought of the Bestiary book from Brother Aleksandr’s library. It appeared in his hand, and the pouch disgorged it like a python in reverse. Flipping pages, he settled about a third of the way through the book.

  “Says they’re a Level 1/2 creature. We can handle that. We could even handle a few of them together, I’d bet. There’s actually a pretty long entry in here about them. Huh. I’ll have to read that later.”

  Marcus’s eyes flickered with interest for the first time in the entire conversation. He licked his lips, and his manner seemed transformed. “What a very interesting book you have, good Sir Paladin. Could I, perchance, borrow it?”

  “No, sorry. I really need it if I’m going into the fen to get rid of the goblin problem.”

  “They are only Level 1/2 creatures as you have just said. What more could you need to know? They will be no challenge at all for you in your armor! I should say deep water will be a bigger bit of trouble for you.”

  The apothecary paused and read the doubt still on Chris’s face. Marcus tried again, “You see, I must improve my knowledge of ingredients and their sources to continue advancing in Alchemy. I can do this by increasing either my Herbalist or Monster Lore skill. I have already identified all the plants around the village here, so my Herbalist skill is quite stuck. I am sure this book would help my Monster Lore skill, would it not? I could give you a free potion or two in exchange if would let me read it for a couple of days?

  “I really can’t, sorry. I mean, not tonight. I mean... well, it isn’t even mine to loan. I’ll ask Brother Aleksandr about it, if you want?”

  “Oh, no, no, don’t bother the good Brother about it at all. Perhaps some other time or something.”

  “Well, if I’m going to be fighting goblins tomorrow, I’ll almost certainly need some healing potions. Do you have any available?”

  Chris was surprised by the apothecary’s response. “No, I’ve got none ready now. Farmers sip them to restore Stamina while they work. Get more done that way.”

  “Well,” stumbled Chris, “Is there anyway you could make any?”

  “By tomorrow? I guess I will have to burn the midnight oil tonight. They’re going to be more expensive. Sorry about the love, er, charm potion. Remember, gold upon delivery. I give no credit or loans.”

  Chris nodded, hoping he had not offended the apothecary too much by refusing to loan the book to him. “I understand no credit. My mom only has one credit card and just uses it for... Nevermind. ‘Owe nothing to any man’ is somewhere in the Bible, right?”

  Marcus gave a smile with a shadow of a grimace in it and nodded stiffly. “So, you are going to solve our problem, good Paladin?”

  Chris waited for a quest prompt to pop up to allow him to accept it. Nothing happened. Mumbling t
o Nathaniel, he asked, “What’s up with the Game’s quest engine? We didn’t get one with the wolf and we’re not getting one now...”

  Nathaniel, who had been standing a step behind Chris and letting his leader do the talking, just shrugged. “I’ve never gotten or done a quest, so I don’t know anything about it.”

  Chris turned back to Marcus and extended his hand.

  Smiling, the paladin shook with the older man. Christopher McKnight said excitedly, “Get rid of the goblins, get popular, be elected Mayor. Sounds like a plan!”

  ***

  “Cooking over a hot stove? Why doesn’t this sexist Game just tell me to make it a ‘sammich’ already? Misogynistic developers always trying to enforce the Patriarchy on grrl gamers...” Emma had her robe’s sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her jet black hair tied back out of the way. She was stirring a cauldron that was hanging over a low fire. The stick she was using was particularly gnarled and twisted.

  Another shadow elf woman with a pointed hat was sitting on a log beside her. This other Witch was preparing ingredients. After a particularly loud squeerch, she answered Emma’s concerns. “Do not worry, my lovely Emma. We shall not dirty our beautiful hands long. Toil is for the peasants and the stupid. We are Witches, sister. I shall teach you all the ways you need to know so that others will do the slaving over a hot fire for you.”

  Emma did not realize how true that statement was. Katrina, the other witch, had already gotten Emma to do the potion brewing for her.

  Nodding in self-satisfaction, Emma agreed with her new teacher. “You’re so much smarter than the E. A. Jessup guy the Game tried to stick on me. I’m so glad I sent him away. Girls gotta stick together, don’t we?”

  “Yes, we do, my dearie. Now, you need to cast that spell called Witch’s Brew and say what kind of potion you want to make.”

  Making a disgusted face, Emma held up a string of frog’s intestines. “If I’m doing it by magic, why do we have to mess with all these icky ingredients?”

  “The Patriarchy, my love. They have it in for us witches.”