The High Priestess laughed at this: “Water? What an idea! That’ll be a real picture—Earl Mahan carrying water for the pigs. I could sell tickets to such a show. No, Mahan, you won’t need to carry any water; the serfs can take care of that. As for the battle against Shadow beyond the borders of Armard…” The High Priestess’s eyes fogged over as if she was downloading information, but then went clear a moment later and Elsa continued sadly: “Of course, I have one assignment! There’s been a tragedy on our side!”
“A tragedy? Let me help,” I immediately offered. If the old man was right and there would be an investigation into how the Tears of Harrashess were obtained, then giving me the coordinates to the Dungeon directly was impossible and I had to receive them through standard gameplay. So first I would be issued a quest in the course of which I would stumble across the Dungeon I needed. Or, if I skip it, I’d receive a hint about its location. The important thing was to be in the right place at the right time.
“That would be wonderful of you. We recently sent a mission to the famed city of Klarg in the Free Lands. My priests took up residence on the city’s outskirts, several kilometers from the village of Blue Mosses and began to bring the light of Eluna to the inhabitants of that Dukedom, when something odd began to happen—they began to lose their cows. The priests are worried and afraid that there’s something in the woods! A huge favor—go there and find out what’s making the livestock disappear. I’m worried about my subjects—they have hardly become adepts and already I’ve had to send them on such a serious mission.”
Quest available: ‘Lost Cows.’ Description: Cows have begun to vanish in the woods outside of the village of Blue Mosses. Find out what is happening. Quest type: Common. Reward: +100 Reputation with the Priests of Eluna and 30 silver. Penalty for failing or refusing the quest: –100 Reputation with the Priests of Eluna.
I have to confess that I couldn’t help but smile as I read the quest description—a reward of 30 silver coins was quite the bounty! Accepting the quest and glancing at the map to see where these Blue Mosses were located, my smile grew wider—a portal would have cost me several thousand gold, were I not a Harbinger.
“You find this funny?” Elsa asked, misunderstanding my grin. “People are suffering, they’re afraid, they have to spend money they don’t have, and you’re happy as if nothing’s going on?”
“No, not at all!” I had to hide my smile and provide explanations—when you have a very high Attractiveness level with an NPC, you’re constantly forced to be careful because they can find fault in any trifle. The developers find it advantageous to keep the players working for Attractiveness, so they try to lower it any chance they get. “I simply recalled a moment—you remember when we traveled to Krispa recently, the town on the border with Kartoss. Well, we encountered an enormous mob of Free Citizens from Kartoss there! Your quest simply reminded me of that happy battle, so I smiled…”
“No but I’d know for certain if there was a mob of Kartossians in Mosses,” Elsa assured me. “I talk to the head of the mission every day over my amulet and she hasn’t mentioned anything of the kind. When will you go?”
“Today—why waste time? I’ll go to Blue Mosses and find out what’s going on with your cattle there. I figure I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“It’s decided then! I’ll be waiting for your report tomorrow evening to see what you’ve managed to accomplish. For now, forgive me, I have to run. Business awaits!”
I emerged from the temple, looked at the small square with its pretty fountain, at the players darting here and there and suddenly a wondrous idea occurred to me. Retrieving one of my many amulets, I made a call.
“Speaking!”
“What’s up, Evolett? This is Mahan troubling you. Do you have a moment?”
“You know yourself that for a partner I always do,” came Evolett’s immediate reply, but I cut him off.
“Let’s skip the idealistic stuff for now. I’m calling because I remember you once offered me two tickets to the celebration of Tavia’s and Trediol’s wedding. I understand that the deadlines have long since expired, but you wouldn’t be able to arrange a tour of the Dark Lord’s castle for a partner? I don’t even need to see the Dark Lord—I just want to see what the designers cooked up in the Nameless City. Can you do it?”
A silence ensued in the amulet, forcing me to smirk. The idea of calling Evolett had been so spontaneous that I couldn’t restrain myself. It was difficult to admit it, but I liked this person and at the moment, I wanted to clarify what our relations would be like in the future. Since I was no longer going to disband my clan, there’d be a life for me in Barliona after my revenge and Evolett was one of the few clan leaders who had respectable clan resources at his disposal. It was a bit dumb of me to do this of course, but something told me that I had to do it this way. Call him up and ask him directly.
“The celebration was called off due to the Heart of Chaos stuff,” the answer came at last. “If you decide to visit our Empire, I’ll be happy to give you two tickets.”
“Oh really? And when has the celebration been rescheduled to?”
“Either right after the Heart is destroyed, or never—what’s the point of celebrating when the world’s been destroyed? The NPCs aren’t fond of feasts during times of plague…So in other words, it’ll happen in a month and a half, no sooner.”
“Wonderful! Save two tickets for me and I’ll make sure to swing by for them,” I assured the Priest, delicately skirting around the topic of what had happened to me on the plateau. I need Evolett for his resources and he’s just made it plain that if I ask him, he’ll help me out. That’s enough for me.
Hanging up, I placed the amulet aside and decided to check one more thing that wouldn’t leave me alone. I wouldn’t have my Shamanic powers back for another week and a half, but this didn’t prevent me from speaking with Kornik. I wonder if the same channel would work if I wanted to get in touch with Fleita.
“Student?” I sent a telepathic message into nowhere, imagining the Zombie. I have no idea how this works, so I’ll just do what I know—and all I know is how to send the messages.
“AAAAAAHHH!” Fleita’s terrified and savage scream erupted in my head. A second later my amulet began to vibrate.
“Hello!” I answered happily, knowing full well who was on the other end of the ‘line.’
“Mahan! You scared me! How’d you do that?! You entered my head! I could hear your thoughts! That was cool! Let’s do it again!”
A torrent of random requests began to pour from the amulet, then Fleita hung up and thoughts began to appear in my head as if I were speaking to Anastaria:
“OLD MAHAN, HE’S NO FUN! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
Perhaps ‘appear’ is an understatement. The thoughts filled everything around me, stifling the noise of the city and forcing me to fall to my knees with my hands clapped to my ears. I felt as if I had two megaphones screaming in both ears, amplifying the sound by hundreds of decibels.
“You’re right—old Mahan ain’t much fun,” I replied to Fleita, still shaking from the clamor in my head, and added: “Now stop yelling. I can hear you just fine. If you keep this up, I’ll get tinnitus!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Fleita replied quietly. “Can we really communicate this way?”
“Well theoretically not, but it’s not like anyone will overhear us,” I quipped sarcastically. “Now I’ll be able to read all your secret thoughts and find out where you were last night.”
“WHAAAT?!” An angry roar filled my head, forcing me to grab onto my ears again. A notification popped up informing me that I’d just received the ‘Dazed’ debuff, and giving me pause for thought—maybe I could do the same to Anastaria? It’d be mean of me of course, but hey, it’s fun to be mean too. “Don’t you dare dig around my head!”
“Calm down. No one’s going to dig around your head. That was a joke! I didn’t think you’d react this way. Tell me, where are you and what are you up to?”
“Wh
at, you don’t know?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”
“I…” Fleita began and our link broke off. I guess the girl’s Energy had run out, since mine was halfway depleted, and so now my student was lying on the ground somewhere, croaking something incomprehensible and scaring innocent bystanders. One major downside of exhausting your Energy was that signing out to reality and re-entering the game didn’t restore it. You either had to wait or drink water. There was no other option.
“Mahan, such conversations really take a lot out of me,” Fleita wheezed through the amulet five minutes later, simultaneously telling me two things. The first was that she had restored her Energy the natural way—which meant there hadn’t been anyone around her with water—and second that Fleita had her sensory filter turned off. This is what surprised me the most, since underage players in Barliona weren’t allowed to do this.
“Tell me, dear, how high is your sensory filter set to?” I asked the question that concerned me.
“It’s at ninety per…Oh! That’s not fair!” Fleita all but screamed in a bitter voice. “I wanted to surprise you!”
“I’m sick and tired of surprises,” I smiled. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Where are you and what are you doing?”
“I’m outside of the Nameless City, gathering mushrooms. Evolett told me that it’s not fitting for a Raider to go where he shouldn’t be and sent me to training. He thinks that if I’m busy picking mushrooms I won’t send a Spirit of Eavesdropping to their meeting.”
“Erm, what for?”
“Well I’m curious! They discuss all kinds of things there! For example, before they noticed my Spirit, I managed to hear that the Dark Legion is getting ready to attack one of the cities of the Free Lands, that they plan on expanding and become a true competitor to Phoenix, knocking them off their throne, that…Oh, I think I’m spilling clan secrets here…Mahan, don’t ask me about this—I only found this stuff out by accident and in fact have forgotten all of it. By the way, did you know that Evolett has three scrolls of Armageddon? They were talking about this right before they found my Spirit, so I remember it clearly…”
“When were they talking?” I inquired, pricking up my ears.
“This morning. After that they caught me and sent me to gather mushrooms. Forty forest toadstools…Which grow at a probability rate of 3%. I’ve only found three so far…”
“Okay, I see. All right, once you’ve caught them all, call me and I’ll take you with me. We’ll go kill some monsters.”
“Cool. With who?” Fleita wondered, but I hung up and reached for the previous amulet. So you have three scrolls of Armageddon and you just happen to mention them several moments before some Rogue or Assassin, with high level Detection, noticed Fleita’s Spirit? Well, well…
“Evolett, this is Mahan again. I imagine you know why I’m calling.”
“About the tickets?”
“That’s right, the tickets. Three tickets to a big old fireworks show. You know, aside from all the other stuff, I’m curious how you obtained these tickets. You didn’t have them only a couple weeks ago. I remember that very well—when we were on our sailing expedition, your tickets would’ve come in very handy.”
No doubt Evolett is not alone at the moment and therefore I didn’t want to speak about the scrolls of Armageddon openly. But I couldn’t not ask either—we’d almost died out there on the seas. Something wasn’t tallying here.
“You’re right. I do have three tickets, and I am ready to share them,” came the reply. “I won’t tell you how I acquired them, but I will say that I had to make new friends with some interesting people to do it. The tickets are theirs, not mine. I’m sure you want to relax a bit, so I’ll be happy to give you the three invitations as a partner. Use them wisely. Write down these coordinates—I can meet you in ten minutes.”
The amulet fell silent, giving me the chance to consider the news I’d just heard. Why does it have to be so complicated with everyone? Evolett had seen Fleita’s Spirit from the get go, and used her to tell me that he wants to hurt Phoenix. He’d mentioned the scrolls and, if I understand correctly, the chance to take part in a small raid. And what’s more is that, judging by my first call, he had expected it. Hmm…yeah…Considering that Evolett and Ehkiller were family, I’m having trouble understanding the motives of the Kartossian. Doesn’t he know perfectly well what I’d use the scrolls for…Is there a dispute between the brothers then? Damn! I may as well head back to the mines and never worry about anything but ore and rats for the rest of my life…
“Have a seat,” Evolett indicated an unoccupied seat. I looked around and automatically opened my map in order to figure out exactly where I was. I opened it and froze, for the normal locale map had been replaced by a three dimensional projection of the castle. The system had determined where I was and adjusted the locale representation. And because I was a Harbinger and in a castle, I had to have the option of blinking to any part of the building. I had assumed that this only worked in Altameda, but….
“The main hall of the Dark Legion castle?” I asked with surprise, realizing where I had been invited. “Open for teleportation?”
“Certainly not, but that wouldn’t stop a Harbinger or a god.” The Priest smiled meaningfully. I suppose that in the intervening ten minutes between his invitation and my arrival, he had told the hobgoblins, who were supposed to block my Blink, to go take a walk.
“So what’s up with the tickets?” Accepting the invitation, I sat down in the armchair. “And why three at once?”
“Three clans, three tickets,” Evolett shrugged. “It’s a bit easier in Kartoss than in Malabar when it comes to these things. Everyone tries to work together here.”
“Okay, I’ll put it a different way—why? I know that you know how these tickets will be used. You know that I know what your relationship is with Ehkiller. Why?”
“Would you like some wine maybe?” asked the leader of the Dark Legion as if he hadn’t heard my question. “The best vintage from the Golden Horseshoe, presented to me by the owner himself. What I like about Barliona is its fantasy. You enter it in order to feel like a hero saving little children. I love children very much, Mahan. I’m already almost sixty and, trust me, my appearance in-game doesn’t match the one in real life—this one is heavily modified. Back in reality, Evolett is an ordinary old man who wants only one thing—grandchildren. Children are more than just little people. They’re what makes life worth living.”
“I don’t understand,” I shook my head. Either I’m dumb or Evolett has confused me with someone.
“In real life my job is to help orphans find their new families. I don’t place them in some orphanage somewhere, no—I find families for them, facilitate the adoption process, help them adapt and return to life. I even got a job in the mayor’s office in order to obtain the power to punish abusive parents who do such terrible things to their children that…” Evolett checked himself as if it was difficult for him to even remember this, let alone speak of it. “I was very concerned about the fate of one girl in particular. I won’t mention what her father did to her, but it was so bad that even the mines weren’t a sufficient punishment. The girl had been broken so completely that she had become a vegetable. She was shut up within herself. The only time she showed any signs of life was when she’d panic at the approach of a man…I know what my brother and my niece did to you and can imagine how you feel at the moment. But I also know what you did for Rastilana. In real life, her name is Julia. Even if all she does now is babble about Dragons, at least she came back to life. Uncertainly and tentatively at first, but she has begun to get in touch with the doctors and has stopped trembling when they are near her…It was her flight on the Dragon…”
Evolett poured himself some wine and drained the glass in one go, as if it were filled with eighty-proof vodka. For a short while he fixed me with a distant stare and then finally went on:
“Yesterday I found out that you had retu
rned to Barliona. One doesn’t have to be a genius to know why you came back. No one would forgive what they did to you. You don’t have the resources to exact your revenge, but I did want to thank you for helping Rastilana. I’ll deal with my brother myself. That’s all I have to say.”
“A campaign to the Free Lands?” I asked another question, accepting three scrolls with the most destructive spell in Barliona from the Priest.
“Tell Clutzer to get in touch with Zlatan to hammer out the details. I want to capture a city that has nothing to do with our empires, so there shouldn’t be any issues with reputation.”
A silence ensued which I was afraid to disturb. On the one hand, I had nothing left to do in Kartoss and it was time to go back to Anhurs. On the other hand, I felt like a gift such as this called for some words from me. A present of three scrolls with a nominal value of six to eight million gold kind of begged for some statement of gratitude, but what exactly…so I remained silent, staring into the blazing fireplace.
“In three weeks, it’ll be Allie’s birthday,” Evolett said all of a sudden.
“Allie?”
“Barsina. They plan on celebrating in the game as well as in reality—in Vengard. All of the Phoenix leadership should be there, as well as the leaders of their affiliated clans. Everyone will come dressed in their best clothes. Everyone will do their best to show off their status, their riches, their success…No one knows about these tickets and I hope very much no one will know until the very end. I’ll be there too. I’m going to ask my Tailor to make me the best suit possible today. Do we understand each other?”
“We understand each other,” I confirmed, shook the Priest’s hand and entered the coordinates for the village of Blue Mosses. It’s hard not to understand a person who offers you the chance to destroy the belle monde of Malabar with all its unique items. After all, Armageddon doesn’t work any other way.
I imagine that if this celebration goes off the way I want it to, Anastaria will be a little vexed…
The Way of the Shaman [06] Shaman's Revenge Page 11