Jacob’s eyes found mine and I saw in his face an expression I hadn’t seen before. Whatever attitude he’d had when we first met was gone, replaced by something more akin to…pity?
“Rand,” he said, his voice barely audible over the chatter around him. Throwing his hands into the air, he roared, “Quiet!”
And it worked. Somehow, Jacob had managed to establish himself as some sort of authority figure in the Weeping Hills, and within seconds, a silence fell over the town. The icy moonlight felt like a spotlight beaming down on me as the Seekers turned to face me. I felt like the odd man out, someone not included in something everyone else knew.
“Where is…Adele?” I asked him. He didn’t answer right away, and when I saw the look in his eyes, I started to really worry. I repeated myself. “Where is she?”
“I—I don’t know how to say this, Rand, but—”
“She lost it!” someone spat. “Killed me and ran off!”
“Shut up, Corlin!” Jacob bellowed.
“What are you talking about?!” I roared, a tension rising in my chest.
“She’s infected, Rand,” Jacob said sadly. “She’s one of the Bloodless now.”
“Would you stop calling them that?!” someone scoffed beside him. “Stop making this so dramatic.”
“Oh, you think this isn’t serious?” Jacob asked, turning angrily to face him. “Did you not see what happened?”
“What happened?!” I shouted, stepping forward to snatch Jacob by the sleeve and turn him to face me. “Tell me!”
My heart was a pounding piston inside my chest. Seeing Rey and her parents on her stream had shaken me up more than I realized, and the hysteria in town wasn’t doing a thing for my nerves. If I didn’t get some answers soon, I was going to lose it.
“The same thing that happened to Konrad,” Jacob finally replied, his voice weak, uncertain. “She just—froze, stood there…staring vacantly at the ground…”
“No…”
“Her eyes turned red—”
“And then she killed me!” Corlin screeched, his voice a terrible whine like a crying baby’s. I glanced at him and saw that indeed his health bar was much lower than it should have been, indicating a present death penalty.
“It can’t be…” I muttered, more to myself than anything, but Jacob answered me.
“I saw it happen, Rand. We had to fight her off. She just went berserk...we got her down to low health and she ran off faster than any of us could keep up with her.”
“But—why?” I stammered. “Why would she do that? Do you think it has anything to do with the monolith?”
“What monolith?”
“The monolith!” I shouted back to dumbstruck faces. “None—none of you saw the monolith?” Jacob shook his head. So did the others.
“Because she’s one of th—th—them…” Corlin tried to reply, but as he spoke, his voice seemed to catch in his throat like he was speaking over a weak connection with clogged bandwidth. I glanced over at him, and saw he was standing awkwardly, with one hand raised in the air in front of him like he was gesturing as he spoke.
“Corlin…?” Jacob said cautiously, taking a step away from him. The rest of the Seekers did the same, forming a ring around the frozen player.
A choppy shiver ran through his body, shaking him like a video skipping frames. He let out a strange grunt as his eyes gazed down at the ground in front of him, vacant and unfocused.
“It’s happening!” someone shouted. The sound of steel being drawn rang out through the town square. I took another step back and raised my axe. What happened next sent buckets of ice water through my veins.
It started with his pupils—which were blue. Flecks of red appeared like slashes an axe might make in a slab of wood. They grew rapidly, expanded out, invading the whites of his eyes like an eyedropper full of blood squirted into a mug of milk. Within seconds, nothing was left but red.
Is that what happened to her? I glanced over at Jacob, who stood beside me at the ready. He nodded slowly—sadly, as if he understood what I was thinking.
Corlin’s inhuman scream tore through the town square like sheets of metal being ripped apart by a giant. I jumped back as he lunged forward, brandishing a Butcher’s Blade, its cutting edge aimed straight for my face.
He swung wildly, as though his arm wasn’t part of his body but instead was a long slab of meat with a weapon attached to the end. I blocked the blow and stepped aside as he flailed out again, shrieking like a bat, snapping his teeth at me like a rabid animal.
“Don’t let him bite you!” Jacob shouted as he aimed his casting bone at Corlin and fired. A bright golden arrow appeared and slapped through the air before embedding itself in Corlin’s gut, chiseling off a quarter of his health bar.
Someone stabbed him from behind with a Bloodletter, and I followed up with a heavy two-handed blow that scattered awkwardly across both of his arms, but was enough to get him down to half. Then, the rest of the Seekers joined in, unleashing a flurry of attacks on Corlin, who swung madly at the center of the mob.
Blows rained down on him and his health plummeted. Raising my axe, I delivered the final, finishing blow. With a furious roar, Corlin’s health vanished and he died. His body went limp like a rag doll and landed on the cobblestone with a heavy thud of bone against stone. Ethereal wisps emerged from his corpse, twisted and danced out of existence. Behind us, at the lamppost, he was already respawning.
“Get ready!” someone shouted.
“Relax,” Jacob snapped, silencing him. “He’s white for 5 minutes.”
“Oh, right…”
We all relaxed slightly as Corlin rematerialized. He was no longer an immediate threat, but just the sight of him was terrifying. Moments ago, he’d been just like the rest of us. Then, all of a sudden, something changed—a madness hit him, and he was transformed.
He stood there vacantly again, looking at everything and nothing at the same time. Then he twitched, dropping frames, an uncanny jittery tinge to his movements, and without warning, spun on his heels and sprinted away. His speed was incredible, much faster than should have been possible, and I watched as his silhouette disappeared into the mists of the withered fields.
For a moment, no one spoke. My head was full of cotton. I could feel it fighting to push through my eye sockets as I tried to snatch a single thought from my mind and focus on it.
“Jesus…” someone whispered. I glanced over at Jacob, whose brow was twisted in concentration.
“Why did you say not to let him touch me?” I asked. He turned to me, but didn’t answer right away. “Do you—do you think it’s contagious?”
He didn’t have to nod or respond. His eyes said it all.
That would make sense. If Rey had been…infected, and then killed Corlin, that could be a reason why he turned, but why? It couldn’t be a real game mechanic—one that somehow took over a person’s mind and turned them into nothing more than a wild animal. Even for Mizaguchi that would be too much, and most definitely illegal.
My thoughts went to Rey and I felt a stab of dread as an image of her flashed through my mind—eyes red, face contorted with rage as she cut down Corlin with her Mortician’s Scalpel.
It is said that sane men went mad once they felt the sweet cutting sensations of steel flaying open the flesh of a recently diseased corpse…
I shuddered at the thought as a spiteful rain began to fall, the first few drops spattering down on the shoulders of my shirt like lardish swollen marbles, sending a deep chill through my body, right down to the marrow of my bones.
I thought of her out there, my one and only friend, raging aimlessly through the dangerous world, lashing out at anyone who got in her way, and felt my hand tighten around the handle of my axe. I knew I had to find her, but what would I do when I did? After seeing Corlin in the grips of this mysterious madness, I felt more lost than I’d felt seeing Rey lying motionless on her bed, her terrified parents frantically trying to wake her.
Had I ma
de a mistake coming back here? I didn’t even have a plan when I logged in—I just raced forward like I was the one to save the world. I was a level 1 Meat Sack for Christ’s sake! What was I going to do?
The black squid clouds above me dripped their inky mess upon us, causing a sullen mist to gather at our feet. Remembering something I’d heard when I logged back in, I opened my character sheet and saw the logout button was gone. Not greyed out, not impossible to select—gone. For whatever reason, we were stuck here.
Whatever, I thought, biting my lip as a fresh dose of anger rose within me. That may have mattered to the rest of them, but not me. I’d come back to find my friend, and even if I was able, I wasn’t leaving without her.
13
The World Renowned Alastor Cook
“The strange wine/water bath seems to nourish him physically, allowing him to survive without food or drink, but his strange craving for Quintessence puzzles me. What does he get from it? Is it simply a drug to him?”
—from “The Queer and the Curious,” by J.P Cornish
The town square felt poisoned, scarred like an infected wound. I turned away and marched toward the woods where I’d first gone hunting with Rey. One thing was for sure; if I was going to get anywhere in this world, I’d need some levels to do it.
“Hey!” Jacob called out to me. “Hey, where are you going?”
“Leveling,” I growled back, not stopping.
I heard him race up behind me. When he grabbed my arm I spun around with my axe raised. It wasn’t him I was angry at, and I knew that, but I felt myself right on the edge of a precipice, and if he didn’t ease up, he was about to push me too far.
“Back off!” I roared. He let go instantly and raised both hands in the air like I was about to blow his head off.
“Okay, easy!” he said quickly. “I just thought you might want some help. Ya know, make friends?”
Images of Colin, Brad and Jordan flashed through my mind, causing me to bite my teeth.
“No thank you,” I told him firmly. He didn’t reply as I turned my back on him, and I felt a bit bad as I strode away.
He’ll get over it, I thought as I eyed the hard-lined shadows of the woods. But as I passed the last cottage at the edge of town, I heard a tired voice call out to me.
“Hey, sonny! Sonny, over here!”
I stopped and turned, looking for the source of the voice. But there was no one there—at least as far as I could see.
“Sonny!” the voice hissed again. “Bring yourself over here!”
My eyes traced a line through the shadows beneath the slanted, almost collapsing eave of the crumbling shanty beside me, and then I finally saw him.
A pale, fetal skeleton of a man, with a head swollen like a soaked mushroom and a body so frail his arms looked as though they would snap under the slightest pressure, lay awkwardly in a stone tub overflowing with a slick, pale liquid. He wore nothing but a tattered loincloth, and his skin was wrinkled and so thin I could see his veins as they wrapped and twisted around his atrophied flesh.
“Yes, yes!” he chattered. “Closer, closer!”
I fixed my eyes on him and his name appeared.
Alastor Cook—Level 45.
I was greeted by the stench of alcohol as I approached the bath where he lay. From the pruning on his skin I guessed he’d never left the tub. There wasn’t a single hair on his body, and his mouth held less than a handful of teeth, scattered about his jaw with no real care.
“Ahhhh, a young Seeker!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together in a way that sent sinewy driblets of whatever vile substance he was laying in spilling over the edge of the stone to splash down beside my boots. “Come for great adventure, eh? Fanfare and virtue? Your name carved into stone?”
He cackled like a boy whose mind had betrayed him. I saw that he had no eyelids.
“Allow me to introduce myself!” he said with glee, trying and failing to hoist himself into a more stoic position. “I am the most regal, the most rakish, ravishing and radical, remorseless yet reliable, world renowned Alastor Cook!”
My lips were forced into a smile. “That’s a mouthful.”
“A mouthful of truth, my dear Seeker! Tell me, know you of the history of the Weeping Hills?”
“I don’t have time for this—” I said, turning away.
“The plague!” Alastor bleated out. “The plague took us! Left me like this! The villagers fled, but I swear I hear the Smithy’s hammer when the moon is full and the wind is brisk!”
What’s this? I thought, looking back at the strange little man. A quest?
“Nice axe you’ve got there,” he smiled, eyeing my weapon. “A smithy could make it even nicer.”
“A blacksmith?” I asked. Alastor’s eyes said yes. “Where do I find him?”
“I hear the sound of his hammer from the woods,” Alastor replied, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched his mind for memories. “You tell him Alastor Cook says it’s time to come back to town. Tell him the plague is ended!”
The frail little fellow smiled his broken smile at me. All I could do was nod back. My mood was sour and strange, a mix of anger and introversion with all of my focus on finding Rey. But there was something about Alastor that held my attention, and if finding his smithy meant upgrades to my axe, I was definitely going to keep an eye out.
“I’ve got you, Reggie.” I smiled. He frowned at my nickname, thought about it for a second, then gave me a nod of approval.
“Oh! And, Seeker? I just delight in the taste of Quintessence. Bring me some and I will show you my wares!”
“Wares?”
“But of course!” he chortled. It was a wonder his eyes didn’t fall out of his head. “I am the town’s Blood Merchant! Come and see, come and see!”
I took a step forward and eyed him, and a trade icon appeared in the corner of my vision. When I opened it, a shop window appeared with a list of everything Alastor had for sale:
Alastor Cook—Blood Merchant
90 Soothing Syrup
160 Blunder Slugs
160 Six-Shooter Rounds
160 Rifle Rounds
200 Firebomb
715 Gas Can
95 Throwing Star of the Orient
2,600 Cursed Parchment
900 Bottle of Madness
3,100 Flint
“These all cost Quintessence?” I asked him.
“Wonderful, tasty Quintessence!” He nodded, licking his lips with a fleshy grey tongue. “Bring it to me! Best deals in all the Hills!”
I wanted to stick around and go through each item and inspect it, especially the Cursed Parchment and Bottle of Madness, whose purposes I couldn’t deduce by their name, but I didn’t have enough Quintessence to buy anything anyway. Besides, I had leveling to do.
“Sounds good, Reggie,” I said, closing the window. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go do some leveling.”
“Very good, young Seeker,” Alastor replied, slinking back into the murky waters of his bath. “Remember—tell the Smithy the plague has ended!”
“Don’t work too hard,” I called back to him as I strode toward the trees. I heard his mad cackle ring out through the night before I stepped into the shadows and the sound was swallowed up by the silence of the wood.
I walked with a renewed sense of vigor and kept my eyes peeled for the scattered light of a torch that I knew I’d find. After a moment, a Corrupted Villager came into view. I strode forward without hesitation, giving him no time to react, and slammed my axe into his chest.
35
Before he had a chance to counter, I speared him with the pointed tip of my blade, spun, and set a carving slash across his thighs, spraying blood against the trees and sere.
42—47
His health was dropping and my Rally bar was growing. I ducked and rolled out of the way of his downward attack with his torch, and brought my axe up in an oblique assault against his right side. My blade cut his elbow, missing the vital flesh hidi
ng his organs.
27
But my rally bar was about 75% full.
Come on! I screamed at myself, dodging nimbly to the side as he swung out with a backhand. His ashen fist whiffed the air and I struck out again.
29—33
My bar was almost full, and more than half of his health was gone. But as I drew back for another swing, the sickly man unleashed a cry that rang out through the woods like a farm bell. More voices called back in response, and I saw the flickering of more torches approaching from the shadows. I remembered the group of men I’d seen with Rey and taken such care to avoid.
Shit!
I drove my axe into his guts, and with one more strike, watched as my Rally meter filled. It flared with light and my axe burst with a gleeful red glow. I stepped back to dodge the villagers’ incoming attack, then brought my blade down across his chest with everything I had.
A wet sound like swollen flesh being slapped against cold stone sang out as my blade carved into him.
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“Oh, Hell yeah!” I cried out, shocked by the increase in damage given to me by Rally. I slashed up again with a backhanded stroke that obliterated the remaining sliver of health on his bar. He fell, but there was no time for celebration.
Out of the trees came an angry throng of villagers, some wielding torches and others pitchforks. I counted four of them. Under normal circumstances, I’d be in deep shit. But I had my Rally meter full, and the crimson glow of my axe fueled me with unwavering confidence. I took a deep step forward and swept a long carving strike into the two men in the front.
Half of their health vanished instantly, and a follow up attack finished off the one on the left. Rusted spikes tore towards me from another, and I just barely managed to swat the blow away with my axe and maintain my Rally. I spun and let the falling man glance off my back as he collapsed to the forest floor, and brought my blade up in a rising attack to finish off the other.
“Come on!” I roared. But as I turned to the other two, I saw an iron shovel coming straight down at my face. There was no time to block, but my left hand seemed to move instinctively, and I raised my Blunderbuss and fired.
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