by Galen Wolf
I sigh in relief. It’s not far. There’s no sign of the guards either. My heart races. I just need those berries.
I get to the berry field and can see well enough now by their light. I snatch at the extra berries and it doesn’t take me any time. I check my Inventory.
102 Treacle Berries
That’s that then. Now, all I need is to get back to the witches and hand the quest in, then we’re done.
Then I hear the strangest sound. It’s like the rushing of a wind, but accompanied by a low rumble as if the ground is shifting in an earthquake. And there’s a sudden rush of heat on the breeze, smelling of electricity and sugar.
What the hell is this? I’m suddenly nervous. I try to reassure myself. Maybe it’s just some normal thing that happens down here. Who knows?
One thing I do know is that I have to make my way out of the Treacle Mine. If I meet the enemy players now, I’m happy to fight because I have the berries safely in my Inventory.
My feet crunch the stray sugar underfoot as I step up from the field onto the path. Even with the berry light, it’s so dark that I wish for Fitheach and his bag of spiders.
But the rumbling grows louder and the heat increases and the wind grows hot and stinking like it heralds an oncoming train down the tunnel.
Really, what the hell is this?
I’m standing in the cavern when he oozes his way in. He’s enormous — man-shaped, but huge, bigger than an elephant. He seems to squeeze his way down the tunnel, filling it up, soft and malleable as if he was made of treacle.
From what I can see, he’s dressed in black, with a cape like the Phantom of the Opera and a top hat. He stands sniffing at the entrance of the cavern like a dog testing the air.
His big brown face is sculpted from soft, sweet treacle. ‘My, my, what do we have here?’ he says, his voice sweet and sticky.
I feel suddenly sick like I’ve eaten too many candies. I can smell his sweetness in the cavern.
‘I think you’re a thief,’ he says. ‘And I will punish you.’
Bollocks to this. I draw my sword. As I rush him I get a message.
I look at my hands and arms, and they are becoming clear and crystalline like table sugar. A second ticks by, then another.
I try to move forward, but I stumble and my legs won’t obey me. They are turning into sugar too. Another second.
What? What can I do? I can hardly move now.
That was quick.
As I stand there, dissipating into a ghost, I hear Mr Treacle say, ‘Out of the Strong Came Forth Sweetness.’
And then I’m at Clitheroe again, standing by the milestone. I shake my head. That whole Mr Treacle thing was very strange. As I look around at King Arthur’s devastated realm of Logres, I can’t help but think that whatever the end of this story is, Mr Treacle will have something to do with it.
20
Tying Up and Moving On
I look around Clitheroe; it’s still depressing, burned and damp. There is no sign of my compadres and they must have hurried back to the mine. I send a message.
Gorrow: I’m back at Clitheroe.
Fitheach: Oh no! You died?
Bernard: Me and Tye are nearly back at the Treacle Mine. Did you get the berries? Do we need to go in again?
Gorrow: No, it’s cool. I got enough.
Tye: Yippeee! We done the quest!
Gorrow: Yes. See you back at the witches’ cottage. I will be quick as I can be.
Bernard: We’ll turn round. See you soon.
As I leave the Clitheroe milestone, I see the sign for Ned Ludd’s mine. If the Pendle Witches’ stick to their side of the deal, we will soon have the adamantine bikinis for Mr Ludd, and then we can get the crystals, and then we can be off to the siege of Caer.
I just hope the place is still standing.
I use Whistle Mount for Spirit and he comes running from up the trail. He’s pleased to see me and snorts and stamps the ground. I mount quickly, then we’re off at a gallop up from Clitheroe to Pendle.
And then I see a dark figure ahead of me on the trail, just short of the Witches’ Cottage clearing. It’s night; it always is here, but even in the gloom, I’m sure this is a player lurking in the undergrowth. He looks decidedly shifty. I even think I recognise him. Then he stops, turns and sees me, and in an instant he’s into the wood. This must be the rogue that’s stalking us and there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s one of Satanus’s boys trying to figure out what we’re up to. I can only hope he ventured into the mine after me and got sugarified by Mr Treacle. Even so, he’s not just any rogue. There’s something familiar about him and I’m sure I’ve seen him before somewhere.
When I arrive at the clearing with the pond outside the Gingerbread House, they’re all there with their mounts. Tye is leaning out from his saddle, over the wall looking longingly at the treasure at the bottom of the pond. Bernard is sitting on Henry with his hand ready to grab Tye in case he falls into the water and endless sleep again.
Fitheach hails me. ‘Gorrow! How wonderful to see you. Even more wonderful that you got all the Treacle Berries we needed.’
I nod and smile. I’m feeling pleased with myself too. ‘I got a hundred and two,’ I say.
Bernard says, ‘We only need a hundred, right?’
Tye butts in. ‘Can I have the extra two?’
I shake my head. ‘No. Why?’
He looks sheepish. ‘I thought if I gave some extra to Amazonia, she’d like me more.’
Bernard rolls his eyes and Fitheach laughs. He’s close enough to lean down from his mare and ruffle Tye’s ginger hair. Tye jumps back with a yelp. ‘Get off me, grandad.’
That just makes Fitheach laugh more.
‘Let’s go see the witches,’ I say, dismounting Spirit in one smooth movement.
I knock on the door, the my party members crowding behind me.
Morgana answers, her curly blonde hair cascading over her shapely shoulders. ‘Well, hey, boys. Nice to see you. Do you want to come in?’
‘Is Amazonia around?’ Tye asks.
Morgana gives him a knowing look. ‘Sure, little boy. But be careful she doesn’t eat you for breakfast.’
Tye looks puzzled. ‘Why? Hasn’t she had her breakfast yet? It’s night here.’
Morgana smiles indulgently at Tye’s idiocy. She says, ‘Come in.’ As we walk through the door, she asks if we want a cup of tea. I shake my head; I remember the seed cake and want to get done with this quest and move on to Ned Ludd. Fitheach however, asks for an Earl Grey which Morgana doesn’t have. ‘We have Assam and Darjeeling, and I think Dystonia has some Lap-sang Souchong somewhere.’
I shake my head. ‘Guys, we don’t have time for this.’
Tye has gone over to the brunette Amazonia and sat on her lap where she’s stroking his head and looking down at him as if he’s a puppy. He doesn’t seem to mind her touching his head as much as he did Fitheach doing it, in fact he has a stupid grin on his face.
‘So you failed?’ Morgana says. ‘and you’ve come to see if we’ll give you the bikinis anyway? Well, the answer’s no. You could have guessed that…’
I say, ‘We succeeded.’
She looks taken aback. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
Fitheach says, ‘Yes, you will, you harlot.’
She ignores him. She looks amazed. ‘So, really — you got the Treacle Berries?’
‘Yep.’
‘A hundred? Not just ten or twenty, because—’
I interrupt her. ‘A hundred.’
Amazonia stands up from the sofa, leaving Tye to tumble from her lap. ‘You got them?’ she says. ‘The enchantment boosting berries?’
I nod.
Morgana says, ‘Well,
well, well, Sir Gorrow of the Bloody Field. There’s more to you than meets the eye. Give them to me.’
I click on my trade window and select Morgana. I say, ‘Put the bikinis in the slot so we can trade?’
She looks at Amazonia. ‘Call the girls.’ Amazonia briefly disappears and returns with Dystonia and Celestria. All four are wearing their adamantine bikinis.
‘I’m going to enjoy this.’ Bernard leers.
‘Hey! That’s my girlfriend, you creep,’ Tye says. Then he flashes and apologetic look at Amazonia. ‘Kinda girlfriend maybe.’
‘Bikinis, girls. We promised the man,’ Morgana says to the other witches. All four of them disrobe. The graphic shows them getting naked but their lady parts both top and bottom are tastefully pixilated.
‘Damn,’ Bernard says.
‘Oh, shucks, I was hoping…’ Tye says, his voice tailing off. Fitheach is staring fiery-eyed in condemnation at them all in their, albeit blurred, nakedness.
The trade is done. They have a hundred Treacle Berries and I have four sets of adamantine bikinis in my inventory.
All four witches are now dressed in conventional ankle-length tattered black Halloween witch costumes. ‘Pleasure doing business with you, Sir Gorrow,’ Morgana says.
As we prepare to head out of the clearing, leaving the Gingerbread House behind, with Tye giving a feeble wave at Amazonia, Morgana says, ‘Can’t believe you made it actually. I’m taking it Mr Treacle wasn’t home.’
I say, ‘No, he was. I met him.’
‘And survived? Wow!’
‘Not survived.’
‘Ah well. No surprise there. Mr Treacle is one weird individual. They say he’s not even a real player. I was told that he’s some kind of super Artificial Intelligence that’s invaded the game.’
I smile. I leave. I don’t care. Maybe I will one day.
We get to Clitheroe and go down the overgrown path to Ned Ludd’s Diamond Mine. The dwarf is shovelling ore into a metal box and he looks up when he sees us coming, leading our animals behind us.
‘Well, well, well, if it ain’t old Sir Gorrow of the Bloody Field. I must admit, I didn’t think I’d see you again in a hurry.’
‘We’ve got the bikinis,’ Tye blurts.
Ned Ludd looks at Tye then at me, wide-eyed. ‘You what? You got the bikinis? How the hell did you manage that? How did you…?’
I say, ‘Doesn’t matter how. We want the smoky crystals in return.’
Ned Ludd scratches his head. ‘I still don’t know why you want that load of old crap. I’ve got some lovely aquamarine, and of course I’ve got diamonds too. Good quality, big carat diamonds. Maybe you’d like to take a look?’
I say, ‘No, we want the smoky crystals.’
He shrugs. ‘Well, you can’t help being stupid I guess. I tried to help you out.’
‘Shut up, dwarf and give us the crystals,’ Fitheach snaps.
Ned Ludd glares at him and then says to me, ‘How many do you want?’
‘Two hundred.’
‘Really? I can get you a thousand if you want. If you really have the bikinis. Let me see them first.’
I open the trade window between us and place the bikinis in there so he can examine them but I don’t hit the
He whistles. ‘They’re the real thing, all right. My own handiwork.’
Tye says, ‘They say they paid you in dirty pictures.’
Ned Ludd says, ‘You mind your own business, sonny. That’s between me and the girls. But let me tell you they let me down on their side of the bargain. They was naked all right. But they was damn-well pixilated! I couldn’t see the good parts.’
‘Enough,’ I say. ‘Get the crystals and we’ll be gone.’
With the aid of his space rocker miners, Bob, Nik, Lemmy and Dave, and his super high mining skills, Ned Ludd brings back a thousand smoky crystals and trades me them for the bikinis. ‘You’re welcome to that load of tat,’ he says.
I nod. I check but we haven’t been cheated. We now have a thousand smoky crystals. We still need Jabberwock poop but that can be something to solve down the line once we get to Caer. We ride off leaving Ned Ludd and when we’re back at Clitheroe, Fitheach is showing Bernard his bag of glowing sugar spiders.
‘Oh, they’re really cool,’ Bernard says, poking the spiders through the mesh of the string bag. ‘You know, I bet I can extract the essence of those spiders and put light damage on weapons.’
Tye nods. ‘Yeah, you should be able to do that with the Enchantment skillset.’
Fitheach isn’t listening. He says, ‘So, back to Clitheroe then Pendle, then Caer?’
But I am. ‘What did you say?’ I ask Bernard.
He looks puzzled. ‘Like, just that I could extract the glow from the spiders now I have their essence.’
‘And put it on weapons?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘To give them light damage?’
‘Yeah, it might be useful.’
It might be useful indeed. I say, ‘You remember the Crystal Dragon?’
‘How could I forget. I whupped our asses.’
‘Yes, and none of our damage could get through except light damage.’
He plays with his straggly beard. ‘My flasks, and Fitheach’s spells…’
I continue, ‘The problem was one of DPS. If we could have done more damage faster while it regenerated we could maybe have killed it.’
Light dawns in Bernard’s eyes. ‘So if I put light damage on your and my swords, you think we could maybe beat the dragon?’
I nod. ‘And if we beat the dragon, we get our wagons of crystals and Jabberwock poop back from Robin Hood.’
‘But we’ve got crystals,’ Tye says.
‘But no poop,’ Bernard says.
Finally, Tye, dim as he is, realises too. ‘Oh, right. Well, that’s just Jim Dandy, Uncle Bernard.’
Bernard growls. ‘I’m not your damn uncle.’
‘And I’m not your grandpa,’ Fitheach adds for good measure, then, turning to me, he says, ‘Good idea. Let’s go see Robin Hood.’
Even though it’s back down the trail the way we came, it’s worth heading back to Robin Hood to get the gear and maybe arrive at King Arthur’s court with the vorpal capability we had always intended.
We’re riding back down the trail and almost at the Forest of Bowland where the Merry Men have their den, when Tye says, ‘I saw that rogue again, the one who’s following us.’
I turn in my saddle. ‘What? Now?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, before. Just before you turned up at the witches’ cottage.’
‘Oh, right. Yeah, I saw him skulking around.’
‘You know who he is don’t you?’ Fitheach says.’I’ve realised.’
I say, ‘No. Who is he?’
Then a lot of tennis ball shapes come flying out of the air from somewhere in the trees. They burst on my and I’m covered in sticky goo, making it hard to move or draw my sword.
‘It’s Morgan’s Adhesive Balls again,’ Tye yells. ‘That mage must be somewhere.’
And then I see the half-ogre mage that was with Robin Hood’s Band of Merry Men. Two dozen masked rangers appear from the trees all around us and in the lead is a one-eyed dwarf.
‘Hello, boys,’ Robin Hood says. ‘I guess you got scared and turned round again, eh?’
‘Scared! Us?’ Fitheach is trying his best to be fierce, but he has goo in his beard and all down his saintly robe and he looks a mess.
‘Not scared then,’ Robin Hood says. ‘I thought when you heard that Satanus had broken the walls of Caer, you must have turned tail and run. But you must have just remembered something important to do somewhere else.’
I sit forward in the saddle as best I can. ‘Satanus has broken the walls of Caer?’
Robin Hood nods. ‘Yeah, it’s nearly all over.’
21
Glow
‘Can you get this goo off us?’ Tye asks Robin Hood,
the sticky slime plastering down the fire mage’s ginger hair and running down his face onto his blue robe. ‘Like, it’s really unpleasant.’
The ogre mage who works for Robin and who has conjured these Adhesive Balls stands sniggering beside his boss.
Fitheach’s hands drip thickly with the stuff, and his robe is stuck to his right hand. He mutters, ‘I’d like to meet this Morgan and give him a piece of my mind.’
‘Morgan?’ Bernard asks.
‘Morgan’s Adhesive Balls. These are Morgan’s balls, apparently.’
Bernard is plucking slime from his beard, ineffectively. ‘Morgan can keep his balls,’ he mutters darkly.
I put up a hand. ‘Did you guys just hear what Robin said?’
They nod. I continue, ‘Satanus has broken into Caer.’ I turn back to Robin. ‘So this is true? Like, really true?’
‘Scout’s honour.’
‘I doubt you were a scout,’ Fitheach says.
‘So is the King defeated?’ I can’t imagine Satanus would let him live. His usual trick would be to kill him and re-kill him every time King Arthur resurrected. The same for the Knights of the Round Table.
Robin shrugs. ‘I don’t have the detail. Word just came out that the Enemy is in Caer.’
I have been maintaining strict radio silence. I haven’t wanted to go on the Knights of the Round Table bulletin board because I know there are treacherous eyes there reporting everything back to Satanus. But now I have to know. I retreat from the Forest of Bowland still covered in slime and I open up the board page on my HUD.
Gorrow: Hey, is it true? Caer is broken into?
Bors: Sure is, buddy.
Gorrow: Satanus is in the city?
Gawain: Yes, indeed. Gorrow, long time no hear. Thought you weren’t playing any more.
Gorrow: Been busy.
Kay: Yeah, too busy to lend a hand.