The Dead Rogue

by Pavel Kornev

  The boy chattered away without stopping as his scrawny arms easily rowed the oars and the boat quietly floated along the quiet river, getting further and further away from the unfortunate village. What was interesting was that our guide showed no sign of getting tired, while me and Isabella would have long run out of strength had we decided to row instead. I was sure I would have.

  Sun! Light! Burning!

  I pulled the cloak tighter around myself and squinted due to the unbearable brilliance of the ripples on the water. All I wanted was to go overboard and down to the bottom, into the dark and cold quietness.

  Unfortunately I had no chance, if I even tried.

  Even though Isabella adopted one seductive pose after another, I was completely sure that she would get me with her staff much faster than I could get into the river. What would I do on the bottom among the waterweeds anyway?

  I would grin and bear it.

  “So, Kitten, any movement in your pants yet?” the priestess asked, catching my eye.

  “There’s a child here, by the way,” I reminded.

  “He will be a well-behaved boy and turned away. So, then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Useless piece of corpseflesh,” the dark elven priestess swore. Immediately, rolling thunder came from somewhere far away and there was such a bright flash from behind us that it outshone the sun for a moment.

  I shivered and hunched over even more.

  “We got out of there just in time,” Isabella said, the dark elven woman’s voice only showing relief instead of the usual irony.

  Yes, it wouldn’t have been too good to be the target of a strike by the Order of the Fiery Hand, considering our complex relations. They would burn us and let the ashes fly in the wind. They would do that to me several times, too.

  How did we get into this situation?

  I barely stopped a foreboding sigh. Being stuck in virtual reality was already bad enough, but being in the body of a dead man was beyond good and evil!

  The wind blew part of the sleeve of my cloak back and even though I quickly pulled it in place, my wrist still started to hiss and smoke when revealed to the sunlight.

  Damn it! This was just what I needed.

  At least any feelings of pain were at a minimum. Otherwise I would have definitely gone completely mad.

  However... Had my former boss hired a sniper, I would have already been taken to the morgue, but I was still moving. Once I got out of here, I wouldn’t just testify, I would even invent something of my own to add. Financing Bin Laden? Oh, yes. Something like that!

  “Do we still have far to go?” Isabella asked suddenly.

  “Are you in a hurry?” I snorted.

  “Imagine that!” the priestess gave me an angry look. “My game time limit has almost run out!”

  “Aww,” I shook my head. “That’s a shame.”

  Isabella looked at the skull at the top of her staff and gave me a nasty smile.

  “Roger,” she asked her weapon. “Am I wrong, or is this foul-smelling corpse making fun of me?”

  I only snorted in reply. Starting a fight on a boat was a surefire way of ending up in the river. That would have been no problem for me, but dark elves are definitely not taught to breathe underwater.

  “We’ll get there in about fifteen minutes,” the boy reported, without stopping rowing for a single moment. “We can’t stop anywhere here, it’s a bad place. They’ll eat us.”

  The whiteness of the sunlight drowned all around us. All I could see was the blinding smooth surface of the river, so I trusted the word of the boy. And why not? The developers could well have surrounded the entrance to the Kingdom of the Dead with unpleasant surprises. It wasn’t even a question of them being able to do this — they definitely would have done that to make sure that random wanderers couldn’t get through.

  It felt like we were on a boat trip — floating and floating along. Suspiciously easily. Did we really draw a blank?

  I didn’t share my suspicions with Isabella though. The priestess was only worried about one thing — to get to the location before she was forcibly kicked from the game when her time ran out.

  I decided to use the time usefully and took out the dagger which I took from the infiltrator of the Order that I had cut down. The blade, which had seemed to be entirely black in the darkness was actually red and black. Dark and crimson tongues of flame changed their shapes under the rays of the sun.

  I couldn’t determine the properties of the weapon and the handle kept slipping from my fingers, no matter how comfortably I tried to grip the hilt.

  “What’s that you have there, Kitten?” Isabella asked with interest.

  “Some loot,” I replied, “I took it off an infiltrator.”

  “Throw it away!” Isabella advised. “None apart from the initiates can use the weapons of the Order.”

  “What about selling it?” I offered, sounding rather unsure.

  “Have you lost your mind?” the dark elf got angry. “Want your head to get torn off?”

  I snorted.

  “I have “Enemy of the Order” status.”

  “A tiger may have many enemies, but it will first tear apart those that pull it by the whiskers!”

  There was a certain reason in the priestess’ words, which was why I decided against arguing with her and threw the dagger in the river. There was a quiet splash of water and the weapon sank to the bottom.

  “There!” the boy suddenly shouted. “That riverbank! Look! Do you see that dark gap? That’s the cave!”

  I couldn’t make anything out, but the elf sitting at the front turned around and took a breath of relief.

  “Boy!” she asked our guide. “Get on with it!”

  By the way, the boy had no name. When I looked at him, the only tag that came up was “boy”. A description that was way too short for a key character in a rather important quest.

  Damn it! If there was no portal to the Kingdom of the Dead in the cave, Isabella would go berserk and tear my head off. I should lean closer to the river. If all else fails, I’ll go to the bottom and sit it out there. I was definitely no opponent for a fury. There was no guarantee that I would manage to hide in the shadows either. And that damn sun! Well, there was no need to talk of sad things in advance...

  WHEN THE BOAT started to scrape its bottom on the gravel and its bow hit the sand, Isabella was the first to jump out and walk away from the water, but she didn’t approach the dark mouth of the cave. Instead, she started to draw some sort of complex sign on the wet sand with the end of her staff. A circle, a star and some mysterious symbols...

  “Let’s go, uncle John!” the boy pulled on the sleeve of my robe. “It’s here!”

  “Can’t you wait?” I pulled my hand away and asked the priestess, “What are you doing?”

  “I am building a portable altar,” she explained as she took a glass bottle out of her bag and started to pour some kind of red liquid on the lines in the sand. They immediately lit up with an unpleasant crimson light.

  A portable altar was something serious. Players that wanted to make a resurrection point at a place different from the last Tower of Power they visited used single use scrolls or carried raid altars, but highly ranked priests had the ability to address their supernatural patrons personally. This made their lives far easier.

  “Dead one, should I include you?” Isabella asked me as she finished off the altar.

  “There’s no need!” I quickly replied.

  The priestess considered me with an intense look and asked, “Will you be able to return to the game in ten hours?”

  “I will.”

  “Right here?”

  “Right here,” I confirmed.

  Isabella whistled.

  “You’re good at making me intrigued, Kitten! How are you going to get resurrected here, if I may ask? Using a scroll? You should keep it for the future.”

  “The dead have their own secrets,” I chuckled and went into the shadow of the steep ri
verside.

  The sunlight immediately died down and stopped dampening my Perception with its white overexposure. I could hear the quiet splashing of the river, the rustle of the reeds in the wind and the calls of the larks flying over head. The blue sky, the yellow sand and the green leaves.

  Ah, that was way better!

  “I have ten minutes left,” Isabella warned as she left the magic circle. “Shall we look around?”

  “Wait,” I stopped the priestess. “Take a look at my status.”

  “What now?” Isabella frowned.

  “Is it hard for you?”

  Isabella rolled her eyes and read.

  “John Doe, Undead.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Level 25 Executioner,” then she added. “But that comes after.”

  “Great!” I went into Incognito mode.

  Incognito: Active

  Energy: -2 [160/162]

  “And now?”

  “John Doe, Undead,” Isabella repeated.

  “Seriously?” I exclaimed and then angrily asked, “Read it again!”

  “Ooh,” the priestess let out. “Now you’re just undead! With no name! But I know that you are you.”

  “What sort of shit is this!” I cursed and stepped into the deep shadows. The darkness embraced it with its soft cloak, cooling the heat of the day and making the world full of half-tones.

  “Unknown!” Isabella shouted, from a distance of at least twenty paces. “How did you manage that, Kitten?”

  “It’s shit!” I swore as I returned to the elf. “What’s the use of this skill if I can’t fool a human in the light of day? It’s not guaranteed to work at night either!”

  The priestess laughed.

  “Did I say something funny?” I asked angrily.

  “How long has it been since you last looked in the mirror?” she snorted. “Go and take a look at your reflection in the river, deadface!”

  “What’d you mean?” at first I didn’t understand, but then put my palm to my face.

  Incognito didn’t create illusions — at least not at the initial level! All it did was close my status and any player that met me saw a dead man, so he would consider me undead. What a complication.

  Isabella dug through her bag and gave me Venetian carnival mask covered in green and black squares.

  “Try that on!” she offered.

  I didn’t refuse and put the mask on my face.

  “How do I look?”

  “Undead,” Isabella read out my status. Then she told me, “Hide your hands!”

  One of my deaths had put paid to my gloves, so my hands with their livid spots spoiled all of my camouflage. I closed my cloak and hid my hands underneath.

  “And now?”

  “Unknown!” Isabella replied. Then she stepped up close to me, took a sniff, smiled ruefully and declared “Undead!”

  “Oh, whatever!”

  The priestess laughed and spoke to her staff, “Roger, the Kitten is offended!”

  I took off the mask, but Isabella stopped me immediately.

  “Take it!” she allowed. “I can’t stand to look at your bloated face anymore! I won’t give you any gloves though, sorry. I have none to spare. I would advise finding some quickly, otherwise all you try will be in vain. You should also get some cologne. You still smell like a corpse.”

  There was no point in getting offended at the sarcastic elf, I just winced in disappointment and put the mask back on my face. It didn’t confer any bonuses and it was only decorative, so it can’t have been worth much.

  The skill had taken ten units of Energy from me, but it was partially restored by the Silver Deadman’s Amulet. I went through some math calculations and figured out that I could count on and hour and forty five minutes of anonymity. That also begged the question whether I should invest in Perception instead of Strength and Agility.

  The situation could be fixed with vials of Energy Restoration Potion, but both of the unused elixirs had disappeared from my inventory during one of my most recent deaths.

  “Kitten!” Isabella snapped me out of my reverie. “Let’s go!”

  “My name is John,” I sighed in reply.

  “As you say, Kitten,” the dark elf carelessly dismissed me, as she deftly ran across the rocks by the entrance to the cave and looked inside. “Are you coming?”

  I swore under my breath and followed Isabella.

  Dark elves had night sight, while the deepest darkness seemed to be gray to me as opposed to impenetrably black, so we had no need of torches. After we took a few steps, the intricate stalactites were replaced by roughly worked stone while the tall ceiling was lost in the darkness above as echoes started to reflect from the walls of the spacious dungeon.

  When the black space of a gate started to be seen up ahead, Isabella carefully approached its fallen doors and stopped, without walking on ahead.

  “They look like they were broken from inside out,” she supposed.

  “I am sure that we know the one who did this.”

  The priestess retreated and said, “You know, Kitten, we should come back here tomorrow. It’s time for me to leave the game.”

  We came out onto the riverbank, where Isabella stood in the circle of the altar and immediately disintegrated in a cloud of gray dust that fell to the ground. The lines drawn upon the ground just blinked with a red light.

  The sun gradually lowered towards the horizon, but that didn’t make its rays burn me any less painfully. To add to that, they kept trying to reach under my hood and poke at my eyes. I returned to the cave and sat in the shadow of the sheer riverbank on one of the fallen stones.

  Our guide hadn’t gone anywhere and still sat in the boat, catching fish. The boy was held in place by the incomplete quest. But what was it that held me here?

  My word?

  Why am I waiting for the return of the elf, instead of setting off to the Kingdom of the Dead right now? Was I unsure of my own power? What about undead neutrality?

  I still stopped myself from doing something in the heat of the moment. Even though I didn’t entirely trust the restless priestess, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I might need her help in the future. It didn’t matter if it would be in real life or in-game. Yes, the lesson with the money-hungry necromancer cost me dear, but an important quest connected me to Isabella and she had a direct interest in my rebirth. It would be stupid to lose an ally like that. Stupid and reckless.

  As for that ten hour wait... Who said that I’d have to spend that time for nothing?

  I didn’t want to go through the bushes on the riverside on my own, which was why I pulled the flamberge out of the baldric on my back, took it by the hilt with one hand and by the ricasso with the other. The ricasso was the part of the blade between the cross-guard and sharpened waves of the blade. I tried to do a short thrust, then tried one or two slashes and then swept the blade in a semicircle while activating Sweeping Strike.

  Stamina: -100 [450/550]

  The hilt nearly flew out of my hands and the point dipped downwards, digging itself into the sand. Damn it!

  The two-handed weapon swordfighting skill didn’t make me a skilled warrior. I was far better than before, I had a feel for the flamberge, but this was not enough to be the winner in a fight with a relatively experienced opponent. I would have ideally added at least one, or a few points to this skill but I wouldn’t be able to improve my profession specific skills due to my undead nature.

  I sighed, took a more comfortable grip on the flamberge and repeated the swing. I did it again and again. I didn’t activate the special moves anymore, I just tried to choose the correct grip. I soon started to understand how to hold the sword properly, but this intuitive understanding was similar to a feeling of deja vu and was definitely the result of game mechanics. In practice, things didn’t always end up best, as weapon skills were developed painfully slowly.

  Step, thrust! Stance change, swing! Position change, parry!

  A dead character never felt
tired, so I was happy to fill my tortuous wait up with something. Especially because I did better and better every time I tried. At least that was how I felt.

  Step, feint! Dodge, block! Leap, strike!

  I had to control both my hands and the position of my feet and body. The sand around me was soon pitted with the marks of my heavy boots.

  Darkness gradually fell. The red-haired boy started up a small fire, put the fish he’d caught upon sticks and started to fry them on the fire.

  “Uncle John,” he called out to me. “Do you want to have dinner?”

  “No,” I replied. I made sure that the fire was out of sight of the river behind the rocks and returned to my exercises.

  Step, lunge! Turn, diagonal cut! Hand on ricasso, block, hilt push and an immediate short thrust!

  The dusk sank into the night and countless stars lit up the black sky. Their cold light didn’t burn me with fire, but gave me strength instead. For a while I simply felt myself separate from the reality of the game and got myself into a trance as I hacked, stabbed and dodged. The sand whispered under my feet, the air whooshed as I sliced through it and my head was empty. No thoughts, only reflexes.

  The darkness of the night started to clear gradually and the stars became dimmer as the edge of the sky was painted in shades of light pink. And not a hint of tiredness. The dead never tire.

  A system message suddenly came up before my eyes. I flinched and the sword went aside, clinked on a stone and bounced, almost flying out of my hand.

  What the hell?

  You earned the Tenacious: Flamberge achievement!

  I opened the description and chuckled. My exercises with the weapon hadn’t gone unnoticed by the game mechanics and gave me a rather perceptible bonus in addition to being more confident with my sword.