by Deck Davis
“I’m never, ever using fast-travel again,” he said.
“Huh?”
He explained to me what had happened. That fast-travel had bugged out and trapped him in some dark hell for eight hours. It was a problem he’d never considered about full-immersion games; technical bugs weren’t just annoyances, they could be downright terrifying.
“That doesn’t sound right,” said Bee. “You should still have been able to contact the technical team. And the place you were in; you shouldn’t have been there.”
“Do you know where I was?”
“I have an idea,” said Bee.
“Where?”
A dialogue box appeared in front of him then.
Message from: Soulboxe Technical Support
Subject: Help Requests
Dear Player, our records show that you requested technical assistance thirty-eight times but did not respond to any return messages.
Please be advised that our goal is to make Soulboxe a satisfying experience for each player, and misuse of technical resources can impact fellow gamers.
If you have a genuine technical issue, please feel free to contact us. Have a good day.
- Helen, Soulboxe Technical Support
“You see that?” said Tripp. “Thirty-eight times, and they’re saying they responded to each of my support requests. I didn’t get a single one. Do you think I just couldn’t read the writing in the darkness or something?”
Bee shook her head. “Soulboxe notifications are set so that you can read them no matter where you are.”
“You told me you know where I was?”
“I have an idea. It sounds like you were in a loading area for NPC creatures.”
“I thought mobs didn’t just randomly spawn, that there’s lore surrounding everything.”
“Sure, you players only see the lore. But there’s a whole technical engine under Soulboxe that you never know about. Somehow, you were sent to where creatures are generated before they are released into the game world in a lore-friendly way.”
Tripp thought about the creatures with their horrible limbs, and he never wanted to see them again.
He resolved to never, ever fast sleep. If he needed to wait something out, then he was just going to have to wait. As well as deciding on that, he replied to Helen and told her everything that had happened to him.
“Good morning to you, my orcish friend,” said Konrad, when Tripp walked into his shop. His face was flushed red like he’d had a few beers the night before. “What a lovely day, huh? The sky’s redder than a smacked baby’s bottom. My mom always said that was a sign that spring was coming early. Open your ears; I have some good news.”
“Me too,” said Tripp, showing his right gauntlet.
“Your big sausage fingers made that?”
He nodded. “It took me all day, but yeah. It’s from the crafting card you gave me. It completed my armor set.”
“Well, how about that? I mean, I could make one of those in my feckin’ sleep, but still, that’s good work.”
“What was your news?”
“Milo got the job! He starts at the library tomorrow. Who’d have thought it? A lug like me spawning a lad with brains as big as his? Now I’ve just gotta wait for my other two boys to grow up and get out of the house, and then me and Glora can retire. I’ve always wanted to see the Auzue isles.”
“That’s awesome.”
“Me and Glora had a few drinks to celebrate last night, as you can probably tell.”
“Aren’t you disappointed Milo didn’t want to be a crafter like you?”
“What? No way. I couldn’t be happier. Sure, if my other lads, Welby and Sepp, want to learn my skills then I’ll teach ‘em, but artificery isn’t for everyone. Long hours, hard and sometimes dangerous work, all to sell swords and armor to folks who don’t know how to use ‘em. I love it, but it ain’t everyone’s cup of tea. Just go to the guild and you’ll see that some crafter folks there frown so much their bone has structure changed. A man should take happiness where he finds it, but some people want to look the other way when they sense it getting close.”
The guild. Tripp remembered what the man had told him about them planning to try to vote Konrad out of it.
Konrad seemed so happy about Milo that he didn’t want to give him the bad news. But then, he wasn’t much of an apprentice if he hid it from him, was he?
He either shattered Konrad’s mood, or he let him go on unaware that people were plotting about him. Then he remembered something Uncle James had told him. ‘You won’t always make perfect choices, but at least you can make the right ones.’
That made him wonder about his decision to help the woman. Had it been perfect? No. Had it been right? That was what he couldn’t decide. Maybe Dr. Benner had hit the money; it would have been better for the woman to lose her handbag, than Tripp to lose his sight. A balanced conscience wasn’t much comfort against the prospect of blindness.
Now wasn’t the time to think about that. He was supposed to use Soulboxe to take his mind off it. At least he’d made up his mind about Konrad.
“There’s something that I needed to bring up,” said Tripp. “It’s a mood-sourer.”
“If you’re gonna tell me that you went all that way to get a tentacle and now you’ve changed your mind and you’re taking up feckin’ leatherwork or something, we’re gonna have harsh words.”
“It’s not that. I went to the guild yesterday.”
“And Winthrop gave you a warm welcome, I imagine?”
“The stick insect? You might say that.”
“Ignore him,” said Konrad. “He’s been through some crap lately. If you can’t forgive a man for his bad side when he needs to show it, you’re never going to see his good side.”
“It wasn’t him I wanted to talk about. I met a guy; short hair, rough-looking. Definitely a crafter by the state of his hands.”
“That describes everyone you’ll find drinking in there most days of the week.”
“This one told me that they’re planning on having a vote to get you out of the guild,” said Tripp. “They’re just waiting for the right moment because apparently once they call the vote, then if they lose they can’t hold it again for five years. They want to make sure they win.”
Konrad smiled. “Right. Sounds like a good plan.”
“You’re not bothered?”
“Think about this; if they were plannin’ on some secret vote and they wanted to hide it from me, would they start blabbing to the first new guy to walk into the guild? Would they see your big, green arse and think ‘hey, that feckin’ tin orc sure looks like the kind of guy to spurt my conspiracy to?’”
Tripp nodded. “Well put. I get your point; they were using me to give you a message.”
“It sounds like it.”
“You’re a master crafter and you love your work. Why wouldn’t the guild need a guy like you?”
Konrad leaned against the workbench. “Two reasons. One is that I had a little luck recently. Not enough to make up for what happened to my eyes, but karma is a lost, three-legged dog looking for its way home. Slow, but she always gets there in the end.”
“I was going to ask about your eyes. Something happened to me, too. I-”
Konrad acted as if he hadn’t heard him. “I have a goblin crew who mine my part of Old Kimby, which is what we call the giant, rocky tit that looms over Mountmend. Lovely guys, as dependable as morning wood. A few months back, they came running out of the mountain as if their arses were on fire. They were so worked up that they were screeching at each other like chimps.”
“Old Kimby is the mountain?” asked Tripp. He remembered the note he’d found when he first got to Soulboxe. Old Kimby calls your name, it said. Had Boxe intended him to get to Mountmend all along?
Konrad nodded. “That’s what folks call her. The origin of her name is lost, though. Names and stuff get that way; sooner or later your forget why they were given. Ask some older folks in the town and they mi
ght know.”
“You own land inside the mountain?”
“Sure, my family is one of the Mountmend originals. My great-great-great-times-ten uncle settled here with a bunch of other lads, and they divided up the mountainside and inner chambers between them. Eventually, my uncle’s land wound its way down to me.”
It made sense. Tripp thought about the steel he’d had to buy just for one gauntlet, and he could only imagine the amount of material Konrad needed to use every day. It made sense he’d have a mining operation.
“So your goblins found something?”
He nodded. “Old Kimby’s teats are full of copper and iron, along with other stuff, which means I can make steel. I have a forge out back, and the goblin lads are handy at using it.”
Tripp was impressed. “You mine your own materials and make your own weapons. Completely self-sufficient.”
“You’ve gotta be in this business. When you need to buy your raw materials from a trader, you’re snared. Make yourself beholden to a man and he’ll test how long he can make you dance.”
Tripp nodded. “There was a cyclops who didn’t seem too enamored with me being there. He wouldn’t give me guild prices.”
“You’re still a Nickel, that’s all. You won’t need to pay for your stuff anymore,” said Konrad, jerking his thumb to the back-shop window where Tripp could see Old Kimby the mountain.
“I can use your materials?”
“Only if you mine them yourself,” said Konrad. “Don’t be asking my goblins to do the hard work for you, they’ve got enough work as it is. You’ll pay for your materials with sweat.”
“Thanks. What did your goblins find that was so lucky?” asked Bee.
“Some hellbrick.”
Konrad said this with awe in his voice. The name sounded impressive to Tripp, but he hadn’t heard of it. The brick part of the word didn’t sound too exciting.
“And that’s good?”
“Have you ever seen a man use a sword artificed with hellbrick?”
“Sounds like the sort of thing that I’d remember,” said Tripp.
“Hellbrick will cleave through steel, through anything. No lie, if the right master artificed the right weapon with it, you could use a sword to smash through a goddamn castle.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this now. That stuff’s dangerous, right? So the guild doesn’t want you to craft anything with it,” said Tripp.
“No, the opposite. They want me to take it down south, out of Godden’s Reach and to the Red Forge. It’s the biggest smelt in the land and the smithy there - Brickhands Haley, they call him – is a genius. They want me to get the hellbrick melted down into pieces and to give a little piece to every crafting master in the guild.”
“Why, when it came from your mine?”
“Because it’s so rare. They think it’s so unusual to find some that they have a claim to it.”
“So they’re threatening you with expulsion from the guild.”
“Right,” said Konrad. “It’s not just the crafters they’re roping into their scheme; they have influence outside the guild, and it’s giving me an arse ache of problems. Please don’t tell Milo this, but I had to pay Jayson – the guy who runs the library – a visit. The guild had gotten wind of Milo’s interview, you see, and they applied a little pressure to the old owl to reject him. So I had to go and apply a little more.”
“You forced him to give Milo the job?”
“Nope, but that’s why you can’t tell my boy, because he’ll think I did. All I really did was make him forget whatever the guild’s gold had made him promise him to do. Milo’s interview was still a fair one. My boy got the job on merit.”
“They sound like a real set of bastards.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” said Konrad. “Tell me; if you were in my position, would you give them some hellbrick?”
Tripp thought about it. There were two factors in play – the rarity of the material, and the means the guild were using to get it. The fact was, they didn’t have any claim to it. There was nothing wrong in them asking Konrad to share, but they should have backed off when he refused.
“I’d tell them to go fuck themselves,” said Tripp.
Konrad laughed. “That’s why we’re gonna get along just fine. C’mon, it's time I showed you how you’re gonna learn to craft.”
“Wait,” said Tripp. “You were gonna tell me about the guy I was supposed to ask about. Birch Hailey?”
“Later.”
“What about teaching me artificery?”
“Later.”
“That’s how it’s going to be, huh? Everything on your terms?”
“Until you become master and can make something better than that gauntlet. A man writes his own music once he’s mastered his instruments. Until then, he’s gotta dance to other people’s songs.”
Tripp stood closer to Konrad’s workbench. He was a little disappointed he wasn’t going to learn artificery yet, but whenever Konrad wanted to teach him, he was ready.
He was glad about his choice of master now, if you could call it a choice. Konrad seemed to have principles, he was a family guy, and more importantly, he knew how to make beautiful weapons.
The fact that the crafter’s guild was putting pressure on him didn’t put Tripp off – with his own mining operation and his skills, Konrad wouldn’t need them, and that meant Tripp didn’t.
So now, he stood by Konrad’s bench and waited to see what the dwarf would show him about crafting.
Instead of getting out his tools, Konrad walked out of the shop door and began taking a path that would up toward Old Kimby, who loomed over them as a rocky sentinel.
Tripp followed, with Bee swooping beside him.
“I thought you were going to show me some crafting?”
“I told you I was going to show you how you’d learn to craft. Nothing about me teaching you,” called Konrad.
He followed him up the path and to the mountain where Konrad walked through a darkened mouth-shaped hole. The darkness was thick and promised danger, but he reminded himself that Konrad wasn’t likely to walk into trouble every day just to get materials. Tripp followed him through, letting the mouth swallow him, and soon they were walking into the dark belly of the Old Kimby.
The inner mountain had a surprising chill, like ice water splashing over his face but without the wetness. It was like stepping into another dimension, into the shadow realm with the sunlight had to wait at the door. He’d only taken a few steps inside before Old Kimby had devoured him completely, and the town outside, illuminated by early morning daylight, was just a nostalgic memory.
Soon, Tripp’s orc night vision kicked in and he saw Old Kimby’s innards in detail; the tracks in the ground where mine carts had rolled over it dozens of times a day, torch lamps fixed to the walls with some flickering, some dead. He saw glowing shapes on the mine walls, and a closer look showed their tags, naming them as mine limpets.
“This way,” said Konrad, and the walls took his words and bounced them off one another like a pinball, and the sound traveled as an echo until Tripp heard way, way, way.
They went by two turnings; one to the left which was blocked off by a pile of black stones a few meters in, and another that rang with the sound of pickaxes and crumbling rock somewhere along where it twisted and turned.
“Arvie and his crew are working down there,” said Konrad, jerking his thumb. “No more hellbrick, but he thinks he smells copper.”
“He smells copper?”
“Arvie got clubbed over the head when he was a little goblin kid. A bunch of Tridents raided his village. They killed the adults, took anything valuable, and turned the rest to ash.”
“I never heard of Tridents.”
“That’s the name of a bunch of cowardly bastards based out west. Started as an adventurers’ guild, but pretty soon the mission statement changed from questing and looting to seeking out every goblin clan and wiping them out. Arvie managed to get away
when they hit his clan, but a club blow to the skull jolted his brain. He can smell certain metals in the mines now.”
That was some ability to have, especially for someone whose job was mining. Then again, it was hardly a chicken-egg scenario. Tripp guessed Arvie became a miner because of his unique ability.
“Just up here, not far now,” said Konrad.
He took him up a calve-achingly steep hill, so slanted that it almost needed a ladder. Tripp cursed his steel armor, cursed his big orc body, and saved the biggest curse for Bee, who floated up with ease.
When he reached the top and let the burning in his legs ease off, he saw a tunnel that stretched out fifty meters. At the end of it, there was a small, wooden door.
That was it; just a wooden door. Nothing special about it at all.
So why did looking at it send a ghost of a chill through Tripp’s chest, almost like a hand pushing him back, telling him to leave?
CHAPTER 28
“Men have died trying to open this door,” said Konrad, his voice grave, face solemn. “Literally. I locked myself out once, and the locksmith I paid to open it tripped and fell throat-first on his pliers. Blood everywhere.”
“What’s behind it?”
Konrad met his stare and smiled. “Feeling tense? Like there’s something in the air? Something waiting?”
“It’s hard to describe,” said Tripp. “Maybe it’s a little like that.”
“Most mountains used to have hearts, and most were darker than charcoal hidden in an arsehole. That was millions of years ago, mind you. They’re just stone now, but the heartbeats still echo. Not in a way you can hear, but the way it makes you feel. That’s why we never mine too far into the ground. Go too deep, and there’s no way of coming back. Your body might, but you won’t.”
Konrad took a key as big as his fist from his shoulder bag. The keyhole, set in the middle of the door, was just as large. The clanking sound it made when the lock pins turned echoed out through Old Kimby and into the tunnels behind them.