Shade's First Rule

by A F Kay

  Description: The tip of a Clasper limb. Will adhere to any surface. Squeeze to release. Will not improve vision.

  He picked them up and tried to drop them in his Void Band, but the three disks adhered to his hand. With a groan, he attempted to pull them off with his other hand but only succeeded in getting that hand stuck as well.

  Ruwen held up his hands, which were stuck together. “Ugh, she is killing me.”

  “She will definitely try to do that,” Sift said. He studied Ruwen’s stuck hands. “Those look like the sticky part of a Thrasher arm.”

  “She calls them Floating Claspers.”

  Sift, careful to only touch the edges, pinched the disks. The suckers released their hold on Ruwen’s hands and fell to the table. Ruwen carefully picked them up by their sides and dropped them in his Void Band.

  “Okay, let’s go get your first attempt out of the way,” Sift said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Sift started for the doors, but Ruwen paused and took a good look around the room. There were actually a lot of books still here, but they were scattered all over the floor. He loved books and had spent the last year living in a library, which made the sight painful to look at. It seemed overwhelming to fix, though.

  “Hey, if I put some of these books on a shelf, would Blapy leave them? Or is all this carefully staged by her?” Ruwen asked.

  Sift turned around. “I don’t know.”

  Ruwen walked to the corner near the door, picked up a few books, and placed them on a shelf. “I want to try something.”

  After a couple of seconds, Sift came over and helped Ruwen. It took them five minutes, but they cleared a small section around the corner.

  “Assuming Blapy allows this change, I’ll have to figure out a way to fix the shelves,” Ruwen said. “Once I do, I’ll get all the books off the floor. Then organize them somehow. I just can’t leave them like this.”

  “You are a strange one. But, I’ll help if you want.”

  “Thanks, that would be great.”

  The two left the room and started for the far wall. As they got closer, what Ruwen had thought was a bar was actually a wall full of balances. Each scale had items placed on its pans. There had to be a few hundred of them, and almost none of them were balanced. Each had a recipe at its base. The map showed him directly over one of his quest markers, so he opened his quests.

  The Taking out the Trash quest pulsed yellow now that he’d completed it. He ignored it for now and opened the quest his map indicated he’d arrived at:

  Killer Recipes for the Busy Shade

  Not every task requires a dagger. A healthy Shade relies on the proper proportions of the Pyramid, with results to die for. Use your mind to discover the appropriate balance.

  Restriction: One attempt per day.

  Reward: Black Pyramid cipher (Level 1)

  Reward: Five-Minute Fare to Die For, Volume 1

  Reward: 500 experience

  Ruwen looked at Sift.

  “I can’t help. All I’ll say is this usually takes people a few weeks, so we shouldn’t spend all day here. The priority is leveling you,” Sift said.

  “Okay, can I have a few minutes to study it?”

  “Of course.”

  Sift pulled out Io and walked to the closest intact chair. He sat and placed Io on his lap. Sift laughed at something Io said, and Ruwen turned back to the wall of scales.

  The scales varied in size and fanciness, but most were about as large as his head. He strode to the ones directly in front of him and studied them. All three had their own recipes. The first had eight ingredients with six on one plate and two on the other. The scale leaned a little to the six-ingredient side. The next scale was similar but only had three ingredients and leaned to the right. The third had a crossbow bolt on one side and five ingredients on the other. Every recipe was different.

  Ruwen stepped back and glanced at the wall. The sheer magnitude of the choices overwhelmed him. He could only choose once per day, so if he guessed, it might be a year before he finished this quest. There had to be a clue in the quest itself. He studied the text again.

  Killer Recipes for the Busy Shade

  Not every task requires a dagger. A healthy Shade relies on the proper proportions of the Pyramid, with results to die for. Use your mind to discover the appropriate balance.

  The first line made him think he should avoid all the scales with weapons. He walked up and down the wall and was disappointed to see that weapons were in very few of the scales. The vast majority just had ingredients.

  The second line was the most confusing. It seemed to be saying that the recipe was some sort of poison, but Ruwen had never studied poisons, so he wouldn’t recognize a real recipe if he read it. The “healthy” and “pyramid” words were probably a play on the food pyramid everyone learned was necessary for a healthy diet, except the word proportions was used instead of portions. Was that because proportions made more sense in the context of a recipe?

  The last line probably just meant he needed to think about it and not blindly pick one. It was interesting that the quest used the word “balance” instead of “scale.” Was that on purpose?

  He paced back and forth in front of the wall again. A surprisingly large number of scales were out of balance. In fact, there were only thirty in perfect balance, and ten of those had weapons. He studied the twenty without weapons but couldn’t see any recipe that he was confident enough to choose.

  The more he thought about it, though, the more he was convinced that “balance” was a clue. In frustration, he looked at the ten with weapons. Seven had daggers, one had a crossbow bolt, and two had darts. Why so many daggers? And all on balanced scales.

  He felt pressure in his brain as his subconscious made connections that his mind hadn’t seen yet. These daggers were important. Only seven daggers on the whole wall and each were on balanced scales. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe he had been wrong about weapons being excluded. He reread the quest.

  Killer Recipes for the Busy Shade

  Not every task requires a dagger. A healthy Shade relies on the proper proportions of the Pyramid, with results to die for. Use your mind to discover the appropriate balance.

  The quest might be trying to say that a successful Shade would have to use other methods than just a dagger. That their skills would have to be balanced. In that light, the daggers made sense. Ruwen studied the recipes associated with each of the scales with daggers. Again, they varied wildly.

  The quest mentioned “the proper proportions of the Pyramid.” But none of the ingredients of the seven scales were piled into the shape of a pyramid. His brain hurt as a headache arced through his forehead. He rubbed his head to ease the pain.

  “Are you okay?” Sift asked.

  Ruwen walked between the seven scales. “Yes, just give me another minute.”

  “Sure.”

  Why the word “proportion”? It seemed out of place. His head felt like it might explode. This was definitely important. What did proportion and pyramid have in common? A burst of light flashed in his mind and then immediate relief as he finally understood: math.

  He closed his eyes and remembered his lessons. His memory was almost flawless, and he pictured his advanced math textbook. Mentally flipping pages until he found the section on pyramids, he studied the various calculations associated with them. Two numbers jumped out at him. Numbers that were everywhere in nature and architecture: 22/7 and 196/121. He felt stupid for not recognizing them in the recipes.

  He found the correct recipe at the third scale:

  Begin with 196 drops of purified water

  Add 22 drops of Spit Viper venom

  Crush Dusk Mold into a fine powder and add 7 pinches to the solution

  Rapidly bring to a boil and then simmer for 121 seconds

  Remove from heat and let cool

  Ruwen reached out and touched the scale. “This is it.”

  “Hey Si
fty, who’s your friend?”

  Ruwen jumped at the voice and his heart raced. A young girl, maybe seven, sat on a table to his right. She had blonde pigtails tied with black ribbon, and she wore a white dress. Her legs dangled off the table, and she swung them back and forth as she stared at Ruwen. She held a stuffed centipede to her chest. It was a bigger version of the one he’d just received.

  “Oh, hi, Blapy. This is Ruwen. He’s new,” Sift said.

  Did Sift just call her Blapy? As in the Black Pyramid Blapy? Was the dungeon able to actually manifest itself as a person? This had to be the aftereffect of the Giant Centipede poison, or maybe a trick Sift was pulling on him. Or maybe something they did to all the new people as some sort of hazing initiation.

  “No one has ever gotten it right on the first try,” Blapy said to Ruwen. Then she looked over at the dagger on Sift’s lap. “I know, Io. It makes me curious about her plans.”

  Blapy could talk to Io, too? Was Ruwen the only one who couldn’t?

  “Who knows what Ky’s plans are, she –” Sift started.

  “No, I mean Uru’s,” Blapy interrupted.

  “Oh,” Sift said.

  “You know Uru?” Ruwen asked.

  “She was always the cleverest of them, and she’s trying to drag me into that mess,” Blapy said.

  “A Tier One dungeon on your side would be a huge advantage,” Ruwen said.

  Blapy giggled. “I passed that eons ago. The gods themselves adventured here.” Blapy looked at the wall. “There is no scale for me.”

  Ruwen’s mouth dropped open. If Blapy could pose a challenge to groups of gods, her power must be beyond comprehension.

  “You’re more powerful than the gods?” Ruwen asked.

  Blapy shrugged. “On this plane I have some advantages they don’t. Like you, Kysandra belongs to Uru, and I should have known when Kysandra bonded with me that we were all dancing to Uru’s music. You are the first Root Class of any of the gods to enter my halls. Another example of Uru’s ability to shape events. You really have to admire that young woman.”

  “Before yesterday I’d never heard of this Class,” Ruwen said.

  “Well, that bunch really likes two things: secrets and rules. So many rules. Take how much total magic their followers consume, for example, they put a cap on it. Some gods chose large populations with low magic, and some went with fewer followers that could do powerful magic. Many interesting strategies. The only wild card is every hundred years, each Deity can pick a Champion that can multiclass and is outside the normal power restrictions. You are Uru’s choice.”

  “Every hundred years? What if Ruwen is still alive?” Sift asked.

  Blapy shook her head. “Roots never last that long. They’re too dangerous, and the gods spend vast amounts of energy getting rid of them.”

  Ruwen’s stomach turned. “Setting aside the fact I’m probably going to die soon, are you saying my whole world is just a big game to the gods?”

  “That would be a simplistic way of looking at it. Your world is important. If a single entity controlled it, they would have the power to affect the entire universe. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Uru has placed her hopes in you.”

  Ruwen thought he might puke.

  “Io tells me you’ve already been discovered.” Blapy raised her eyebrows. “On your first day.”

  “Why can’t I talk to Io?” Ruwen asked.

  “Their rules, of course. I remember the day I created Io. An epic treasure for a triumphant Uru when she completed level one hundred thirty-one.”

  Sift looked at Io. “You belonged to a goddess! Why didn’t you tell me those stories?”

  Blapy faced Ruwen again. “Well?”

  Ruwen shifted his weight from one foot to the other and wiped the sweat off his forehead. As uncomfortable as the truth was, he didn’t like lying, so he just admitted it. “Yes, they already found me.”

  “Well, Ruwen Starfield, I see a portion of the potential Uru sees in you. I hope you don’t disappoint her,” Blapy said.

  Ruwen took a deep breath. “Me, too.”

  “That won’t stop me from trying to kill you, which you are making easy by the way. It’s like you want to die,” Blapy said.

  Ruwen ran a hand through his hair. “I know. I’m a terrible fighter.”

  “I’ll have him up to speed in no time,” Sift said.

  Blapy turned to Sift. “You haven’t ventured very deep lately. I’m beginning to think you don’t like me anymore.”

  “Nothing like that, Blapy. My parents have been trying all these new things to break through my blockage. Thank goodness Ruwen arrived and provided a distraction. Those two are going to kill me.”

  Blapy laughed mischievously. “They’re on the right path.” She turned to Ruwen. “I can’t wait to see what his parents do with you. Those two serene souls are about to have cognitive dissonance like nothing they’ve ever experienced. Uru took a great risk in allowing her Champion to bear my mark, and to come here and risk dying. But things are finally moving, and the drama is palpable. I haven’t had this much fun in millennia.” Blapy jumped off the table, kissed her stuffed centipede, and then stared up at Ruwen. “But that bunch suckered me into playing by their rules. They didn’t want me picking favorites. So, you better give me your best, Ruwen Starfield, and even then, I’ll still likely kill you.”

  “I can be your favorite,” Sift said. “I don’t belong to any of them.”

  Blapy smiled at Sift. “You might be, except my favorites must know how to whistle.”

  Blapy giggled and then disappeared. No smoke, bang, or slow fade, she just disappeared in a blink. Two books appeared on the table.

  “I knew it. Io, we have to try harder,” Sift said.

  “You’re learning to whistle from something without a mouth?”

  Sift picked up Io and pointed him at Ruwen. “Good point. You’ll need to teach me.”

  Chapter 22

  Ruwen shook his head, walked over to the table, and looked at the two books. He thought there should be tokens as well, and he checked his notifications to refresh his memory.

  Ting!

  You have completed the Black Pyramid Quest – Taking out the Trash (Level 1).

  You have received 1,000 experience.

  You have received 5 Black Pyramid tokens.

  It had been the Taking out the Trash quest that had the tokens. Ruwen turned to Sift. “I never received any tokens for the Taking out the Trash quest.”

  “Blapy automatically updates Fluffy’s log with your earnings.”

  “Oh.”

  Since he already had them open, he went through the rest of his notifications.

  Ding!

  Uru’s Blessings, Worker! You have reached level 3.

  You have gained +1 to Strength!

  You have gained +1 to Stamina!

  You have 2 unassigned points.

  Uru’s Blessings, Root! You have reached level 3.

  You have 2 unassigned points.

  New Spells and Abilities are available to you. Choose wisely.

  Ruwen grew excited. He had been in shock after the last fight and missed the fact that he’d leveled up. He immediately opened his Profile.

  Strength and Stamina had increases automatically. He immediately added a point to Wisdom and Dexterity and with the +1 modifiers from his dagger and staff it brought him back up to 10. With great satisfaction, he watched the Foolish and Clumsy debuffs disappear. He was finally getting closer to where he’d started at yesterday before his death.

  He had two points left to distribute. He could add another point to Dexterity and Wisdom, but he didn’t plan on giving up these weapons in the near future, so he wasn’t concerned about losing the modifiers. What really bothered him were his looks. Not giving himself time to consider it, he added both points to Charisma. He was being vain, as really only Merchants needed a high Charisma value. But it had bothered him enough that it was worth fixing.

  Now he appeared like he had wh
en Hamma had first seen him. But, he was most certainly not doing this because of her. He pushed thoughts of the priestess out of his head. It just made sense to get his attributes back to where they’d started.

  At level four, he would add a point to Dexterity and Wisdom and finally be back to his original attributes. Three levels to completely recover from that first death. It hurt his head thinking about it. He opened his last notification.

  Ting!

  You have completed the Quest – Killer Recipes for the Busy Shade

  You have received Black Pyramid cipher (Level 1)

  You have received Five-Minute Fare to Die For, Volume 1

  You have received 500 experience

  He had new abilities and spells to look at, but he wasn’t as sure how to distribute those, so he decided to do it later. Opening his Profile tab, he glanced at the major things that had changed since the last time he’d looked. He ignored the attributes the public saw and focused on his actual values.

  Level: 3

  Experience: 1130/6000

  Strength: 11

  Stamina: 11

  Dexterity: 10

  Intelligence: 17

  Wisdom: 10

  Charisma: 12

  Health: 110/110

  Mana: 170/170

  Energy: 213/213

  Health Regen: 0.22

  Mana Regen: 0.43

  Energy Regen: 2.13

  The Giant Centipedes and Floating Claspers must have been around sixty experience apiece. Ruwen was almost 20% of the way to level four, and he still had today and tomorrow to get to level five. Maybe this would be possible.

  He looked down at the two books, both of which were about the size of his palm. The book on the left was made of paper and had a painted black pyramid on the cover along with a stylized number one. The brown leather book had a title burned into the cover, but Ruwen couldn’t read it. Just like in the Blood Gate, his Hey You Ability didn’t allow him to read ciphered writing.