Aku’a just looked at us with confusion. “I am not sure, Adept. Probably Heku once he is done with his shift.”
She paused for a second in case there were any follow up questions and left as soon as I indicated I had none.
Mika shook his head. “You’re a bit obsessed with this chariot thing, man.”
Kjara nodded. “Yeah, what’s the deal?”
“My dad used to watch this old-time movie called Ben Hur when I was little. The special effects were crap, and the quality was… well, 1950’s cinema. But I always loved the chariot scenes.”
I smiled a bit and continued. “So, nostalgia I guess? Plus, chariots are just awesome.”
Mika snorted. “As long as you don’t drive one like you did the boat.”
Kjara gave me a sympathetic look but couldn’t help laughing along with the dýrafólk.
“Yeah, I deserve that.” I said, performing a flourishing bow to the rogue in acknowledgement of his victory.
A man dressed in plain clothing with a small badge showing some sort of tree and moon symbols approached from the hallway and bowed. “Your suite is ready, my lord,” he said and led the way from the main hall to a second floor apartment that was just beginning to feel warm.
“Please make yourself comfortable, and if there is anything that you need please tug on the rope near the door and someone will attend you at once,” the man said with another bow, and then headed for the door.
“One second,” I said, causing the man to pause. “Please ask guard Heka to come see me at sunrise tomorrow morning. He will know why. And thank you.”
The man nodded and then made his way out of the room, closing the heavy door behind him.
We explored the suite and found three chambers and an adjoining kitchen had been opened up and had fires started in their hearths. Mika tried to claim the main suite but quickly relinquished that claim when Kjara and I reminded him that I wouldn’t be logging out and should therefore have the most comfortable bed.
It was early evening, but since we wouldn’t be moving on to the Vale until morning when I’d be learning how to drive our ride, Mika decided to log out and catch up on some things in the real world after binding in his room, leaving Kjara and me to our own devices.
Kjara looked up at me and smiled as we headed into my room and dropped off our equipment and set our bind points. “What would you like to do this evening, oh great and powerful future charioteer?” she asked.
I chuckled. “I don’t know, it’s strange that this whole thing is a game, but I find myself having very little downtime at all. I don’t know how people could do all this with only a couple of hours a day.”
She shrugged. “Not everyone is taking on large scale global world quests. Some just want to stab rats and get their ‘phat loots.’ ”
I shook my head and removed my armor, placing it on a stand made for that purpose set against one wall. There was even a nice cotton night gown waiting for me which was surprisingly comfortable as I sprawled onto the bed and sank into the soft feathery goodness.
Kjara removed her armor as well and then snuggled up next to me, resting her head on my shoulder.
I lay there enjoying the closeness, curling one arm around the lithe moon elf as I let the tensions of the day fade away.
“James?” Kjara said softly.
“Hmm?”
“I, uh. I know we’ve only known each other for a short time, but I was wondering…” she said shyly.
“What? You can ask me anything.”
“Well, did you, you know, want to go out with me? Like, in the flesh? Once you’re all healed up of course,” she replied.
I reached down and looked into her eyes. “I would love to go out with you.”
Her smile reached all the way to her eyes. She beamed up at me, and we shared a long and passionate kiss.
We were both out of breath when our lips parted again, and once I was able to speak again, I asked, “We don’t have to go boating do we?”
Sha laughed. “No. We can do something else. Dinner? A movie? Mini golf?”
I grinned. “I do love me some putt-putt.”
She opened her mouth to respond but her eyes went unfocused for a second and then she frowned.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. “I think so. I just got a message from my father. I’ve got to log out and get home as he refuses to talk about whatever it is over chat.”
I was a bit disappointed. I was enjoying our alone time, especially when things were going so well, but family was definitely more important than some more smoochy time.
Smiling at her, I said, “Guess we’ll have to plan out our first flesh date when you get back.”
She cringed. “I know what you meant, but ‘flesh date’ just sounds so… ug.”
I chuckled. “Yeah…. Consider it stricken from my vocabulary. I shall henceforth refer to is as a non-digital interpersonal endeavor.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Okay. Well, I guess I am off for the evening,” she said and gave me another deep kiss before logging out.
The system clock said it was 8PM, giving me a little time to be productive. I headed into the kitchen we’d discovered during our initial exploration of the suite and started searching for anything I could use to replenish my food stocks.
The kitchen was almost as well equipped as the Plucky Goose’s, with a large brick oven, a stove, and racks holding all sorts of pots and pans. A second rack held long knives, forks and an assortment of spoons of various shapes and sizes. Where is the food?
Opposite the stove was a wall filled with wooden cabinets. Most of the cabinets had plain wooden doors, but one was slightly different. Around the edging of the cabinet was an engraving of interlocked glyphs that formed a contiguous chain around the border.
I focused in on the runes, trying to find some sort of pattern or familiar symbols. I wanted to see what was in the cabinet but didn’t want to trigger some sort of explosive ward in the process.
*** Spellcrafting check… partially successful! ***
The spell in its entirety eluded me, but the tidbits that flowed into my mind from the game database gave me enough info to understand its function: To preserve the contents of the cabinet.
I opened the enchanted cabinet and smiled. Within were shelves full of herbs and spices of various sorts, as well as small boxes labeled as lentils, beans, rice, and flour. Underneath it all were small baskets full of various root vegetables: carrots, onions, turnips, taro root, potatoes, and sitting on top of one of the baskets was perhaps the most glorious part: A small book labeled “A Taste of the Divine”.
I laughed at the name and skimmed through it. Unfortunately, most of the recipes within were way beyond my current cooking skill and required several ingredients that I didn’t have.
There was a recipe in the book called Colcass that sounded a lot like the stew I’d loved at the temple, so before doing anything else I copied that recipe into my recipe book. I would have loved to make the dish then and there, but unfortunately, fresh was not a word that could be used to describe the ingredients in the cupboard, and the recipe required fresh chard and cilantro.
I couldn’t craft any of the new recipes, but since there were onions in the cupboard I could use the slabs of meat from the crocodile battle to restock my meat skewers.
I got to work transforming the giant slabs of crocodile meat into easily transported and buff-providing meat skewers.
It took me a few minutes to remember all the nuances of the cooking mini-games, resulting in the loss of a few potential meals from my final tally, but in the end my buff store was back in business… at least in the meat department.
And I raised my Cooking skill to rank six in the process. The fifth rank boon gave some additional leeway in the preparation staged of each recipe, offering a slight chance to recover some materials that would have otherwise been wasted. It wasn’t much, but it did let me salvage one or two chunks of gator meat w
hen my knife wasn’t exactly on target.
I searched the cupboards for any of the dried fruit and nut bits the travel cakes required but had no luck in that regard.
Finished with my current culinary adventures, I cleaned up the grill and my tools and returned everything to its proper place. I packed up my new store of skewers and checked the clock.
For a change I’d finished up most of what I needed to do for the day before 10PM. If I was lucky, I’d be able to catch my mother before she went to bed for the night.
Popping open the app, I selected the entry for my home phone and hit call. Ringing filled the room and the video window and camera appeared, waiting for an answer on the other side.
The screen flickered and then rotated to show the couch in my family room where my mother was sitting, bundled up in a blanket with a bowl of half-eaten popcorn sitting on her lap.
“James! I thought you’d never call! Your sister said we shouldn’t call you since you could get hurt if you’re distracted. I thought she was full of it but then your father told me about his call,” she said and then yelled into the other room, “Amber! Get out here, your brother is on the phone!”
I grinned. “It’s good to see you, mom,” I said, the beginnings of tears in my eyes. “I know I always thought that being able to live in a game would be the most amazing thing, but at the end of the day, no matter how fun playing these games is, I always loved being able to come home and see you guys.”
Tears began to flow down her cheeks as well. “Don’t worry honey, the doctors say that things are going well. Before you know it, you’ll be home again, locked in your bedroom playing games instead of across the river in a hospital.”
I laughed at that, wiping away my tears just as my sister arrived in the room, leaping over the couch and sending the popcorn flying.
“Hey bro! How are things going in the desert? You make a move on that elf hottie yet? I know you’re into her and watching your feed I think she’s into you too so don’t screw it up!” she said with a grin.
“Amber!” my mother said. “I told you not to tease your brother. He’s got enough to worry about.”
I coughed to try and cover up my blush. My sister saw and pointed at the screen. “Look ma! I was right! He’s blushing!”
My mother gave me a knowing smile. “I guess that means that I should tell James about Corey then, hmm?” she said, giving my sister a look.
Amber’s eyes widened like a deer caught in the headlights as she stared at my mom. “Oh mother, whatever do you mean. Corey is a friend, that’s all.”
With a raised eyebrow my mom said, “Do you all your friends sneak out of here in the middle of the night and get a kiss at the door?”
It was my sister’s turn to blush, stammering, “Uh. What? How did you… uh…”
I just laughed as my mom replied, “A mother knows all,” and turned her gaze back to me. “Don’t think you were any better at her age. Please.”
I choked on my own laughter and joined my sister in her sputtering as my mother took turns giving us each a very mom-like look.
After that things felt almost normal, and we spent an hour or so catching up. My sister had apparently been watching my stream to keep tabs on me, watching my adventures and antics in the dungeon, and even admitting that the whole thing didn’t seem too nerdy after all.
When we said our goodbyes, they both made me promise to call more often. It felt good to get that little bit of normalcy back in my life, but made me miss it all the more when it was over.
By the time the call was over I was still wide awake, but it had been a long day so I decided to get my streaming work done and then get some extra rest before I needed to be up by sunrise.
I tossed the nightgown to the side and crawled beneath the covers and got to work.
…
38
I awoke at dawn. Tired.
It had taken me a lot longer to cut together the videos than normal since there were so many individual fights. I wanted to keep things flowing, so in the end just separated each of the “missions” we’d been assigned into their own episode, with a separate video for our time in the temple and the brief skirmish with the elite.
I made the executive decision to stop the video as we entered the Moon-gate, ending the current set of videos with the mystery as to where we had gone.
The part that had taken the longest was removing all mentions of the Vale of Dreams from the videos. I stored the uncut versions with the conversations intact in a backup folder for release after we were done with the current quest with the video of our arrival at Va’pu.
I felt a little bad for keeping my viewers hanging, but it was definitely better to be safe than sorry.
On a positive note, the first thing that greeted me in the morning after my alarm was a notification that I had received a message from the devs. I flicked my mail program open and read.
=RE: Bug 1.14:33-8z—Aspect of Light
=Thank you for your report. We have examined the materials provided
and determined that the current interaction of the Aspect of Light skill
with spell damage is a bug. In addition, the defensive component of the
skill was missing from the skill description. These items will be addressed
in the next server patch.
=Classification: Moderate, First Reporter.
=Bounty: 25 credits.
Awesome, I thought. Another bug down… at least once they patch the server. I’d have to hold off using that skill again, especially if I intended to do any offensive spell casting, or healing for that matter. Didn’t want to burn my companions or use a piece of the skill that was bugged.
Shaking off the last of the grogginess, I headed out of my bedroom and into the common area where I discovered that someone had delivered a warm bowl of water for washing and a tray of fruit and… I sniffed once again to make sure I wasn’t dreaming… coffee!
I ignored the wash water and rushed over to the breakfast tray and picked up the small cup of steaming black gold and brought it to my nose. It wasn’t the same coffee I was used to from my local breakfast spot. It smelled much stronger and somehow sweet.
*** Saa Racial Knowledge check successful. ***
The game database kicked in and cleared up the mystery. They called it Turkish coffee at the corner shawarma place near where I grew up. Instead of taking grounds and brewing the sweet black gold from it, folks in the Middle East, or Saa empire in this case, mixed powdered coffee with sugar in the serving cup and then let the grounds settle to the bottom before drinking it.
I took a sip and the strong taste filled my mouth. I drank the rest of the cup way too quickly and ended up with a mouth of bitter sediment which I quickly washed out with a nearby pitcher of water.
*** Ghava: +1 Intelligence. Duration (8hrs) ***
I prepared another cup, mixing the powdered coffee and sugar in the right proportions and then poured in the boiling water, savoring the godly smell that resulted. The second cup I savored, enjoying every sip, and silently said a prayer for whatever developer had managed to distill the flavor of coffee into a series of ones and zeros. May they have a long, prosperous life.
I filled my stomach with some mixed fruits and a flatbread of some sort, and then headed down to the common hall, ready to begin my chariot training.
As soon as I entered the room, I spotted Heku standing near the door in his freshly polished armor. I headed over and greeted him.
“Good morning, guardsman. I’m told you are the man to speak to about learning the fine art of charioteering,” I said.
He bowed low and nodded. “Yes, Adept. I am well versed in the art and it would be a pleasure to instruct you.”
“Have you eaten?” I asked, gesturing to the tables where his squad mates were currently eating their breakfasts and doing a poor job of pretending to not listen in.
“Yes, Adept. I made sure to do so before you arrived.”
“Well then, let’s
get started!” I said excitedly, earning a few muffled snickers from the peanut gallery behind me which I chose to ignore.
Heku led me out of the main room and through the outpost gates into a wide open field where there, before my very eyes, was a bona fide chariot.
The chariot itself was a beautiful work of art. Its wooden frame and wheels were edged in polished bronze, adding to both its strength and badass look. The carriage portion was larger than I expected and could probably hold the driver and two additional crew if they weren’t afraid of rubbing cheeks.
The front panels were thicker than the rest and covered in bronze etched with the crest of Va’pu. Mounted to the left of the driver’s position was a brace of javelins, and opposite that was a quiver full of arrows, complete with an unstrung horn bow.
Harnessed to the front of the chariot was a pair of small, yet powerful-looking horses, their white hair showing through the dust that filled the air. They fidgeted within their traces, snorting and stomping with pent up energy.
Heku stepped up into the carriage and motioned for me to follow. Pointing towards the left rail, he said, “Please take that position for now as it will allow me to show you how to control the team without interfering. Normally a warrior would take that position and use the javelins or a spear to strike their foes. There are braces on the inside of the chariot to hold your shield, so you can still benefit from its protection while having a hand to hold onto the chariot and fighting with the other.”
I nodded along and slid my shield into the indicated brackets.
*** Equip Shield of the Jackal to Va’pu Chariot? (Y/N) ***
I confirmed my choice. With a slight flash and a click the shield became firmly locked in place.
“Good,” Heku said and then gestured to the opposite side. “Were we riding into battle, we would have another with us. Someone skilled with the bow. In some instances, the javelins are replaced by a second quiver, and the chariot’s ability to perform quick hit-and-run attacks becomes second to none.”
Heart of the Void: Sosaku Online - Book 2 Page 28