Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3)

by Andrei Livadny

  “Who are you calling a talking plant?” Forrest snapped. He had excellent hearing. “That’s a bit rich, coming from a talking lizard! Quit staring! Even better, go your own way! I have things to do. Or... do you think you could help me? Listen, Lizard, think you could bring me a few broken branches from the woods?” Forrest wearily perched himself on a hillock on the opposite side of the crater, casting wary glances at Charon. “You could also bring some water from the river to fill this in,” he added. “What, so you’re not interested in doing social work, are you? How typical. Everybody’s happy to smoke an old man. But once he needs a bit of help, there’s never anyone around!”

  Completely confused, Charon shook his head, then forwarded me a screenshot of his interface. “Zander, please translate this. I don’t understand it.”

  No wonder. Why would the Haash know our language? The Dargian semantic processor wasn’t much help here.

  Curious, I hurried to read.

  Quest alert! New quest available: Help the Forest Sprite

  The marsh which used to be Forrest’s habitat has dried out as a result of the battle. Bring some gnarly branches from the forest and fetch some water from the river to rebuild his home.

  Reward: 100 pt. Experience and a Rusty Sword.

  PS. Personally from Forrest:

  If you fill the crater one-third or more, I’ll share with you my Happy Days neurogram.

  Neurogram description: the scent of swamp mud, the aroma of the woods, the taste of stagnant water and a touch of warm sunshine.

  PPS. If you manage to fetch thirty gnarly branches, I’ll throw in some mushroom smells and a neurogram of peace and tranquility.

  My blood ran cold. Arbido, Jurgen and Foggs froze too as they read the quest specifications.

  A low-level Crystal Sphere NPC dealing in neurograms on the side?

  “And?” Forrest creaked his gnarly joints to look more miserable. “Will you do it, son?”

  Charon sniffed in confusion.

  Forrest kept casting wary glances at me filled with hungry anticipation. I didn’t like it. He was apparently sizing me up as a potential opponent.

  “Hi Forrest,” I said, trying to defuse the atmosphere. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  “Do I have to? There’re too many of you coming here, and you all look the same. Everybody’s happy to smoke old Forrest. But when it comes to fetching a bit of water-“

  “Hey, come on, quit creaking. Better tell us what happened here.”

  “Yeah right. As if you don’t know! Or... have you come from afar? I don’t recognize the gear your lizard is wearing,” he cast another wary glance at Charon in his onboard suit, then backed off a little just in case.

  His speech sounded strange. He seemed to have picked up some gaming slang somewhere. Also, he was sort of jittery. We really should put the heat on him and question him properly. Or... wouldn’t it be easier to just fetch him some branches?

  I motioned Foggs and Jurgen to flank the old man. I just didn’t like the whole situation.

  “So that’s how it is, then?” Forrest yelled, noticing the danger. Immediately the earth parted, sending up new shoots which tried to entangle our feet. Still, the debuff didn’t work.

  “Forrest, wait! All I need is to talk! No one’s going to touch you, I promise! Just tell us what happened here, then we’ll part ways.”

  The creature cast an evil look around. “So it’s five against one, is it?”

  “We’re not touching you!”

  “I see. You want the neurograms?” he assumed a combat stance.

  “No! We need to talk, that’s all!”

  The thorny shoots managed to ensnare my leg, the thorns sinking deep into my skin. It hurt. I had to use one of the scrolls as a warning. The clingy growth crumbled to dust.

  Forrest panicked. “All right, all right, ask me already!”

  He'd always been afraid of fire. Newb wizards loved nothing better than use him for fire practice, forcing him more than once to duck into his swamp to put out smoldering flakes of his bark-like skin.

  “Who was fighting here and with whom?”

  “Yeah right! As if you don’t know! The Neuros were defending their lands here, is that clear enough? Only how did they want to overcome the Reapers? It was so scary! So scary! Flames rose high in the sky! The river turned to ice! Riders galloping right across as if it were firm ground! Those cack-handed wizards, they fired a sky stone right into my swamp! It was so, so scary,” he whimpered. “The Warbler, our sweet river, boiled in places and froze in others!”

  “Slow down,” Foggs interrupted him, puzzled. Who are the Neuros?”

  “Quit playing dumb,” Forrest twisted his creaky torso and pointed his gnarly arm at me. “Look at him, isn’t he a Neuro?”

  “By Neuros he probably means players,” Arbido suggested.

  “Looks like it,” I agreed.

  “Those Neuros, are they the ones with neurograms?” Jurgen specified.

  “That’s right!” Forrest nodded enthusiastically. “The Reapers didn’t kill them at once. First they sucked out their neurograms. The screams — my blood still curdles when I remember!”

  “And you, where did you get those neurograms from?” Arbido asked matter-of-factly.

  “Don’t you know? We had a Holy Update! It affected everyone who wasn’t a Neuro.”

  “When did that happen?” Arbido kept pressing him.

  “A couple of days before the battle!” Forrest kept casting glances my way. “I received those smells. And the tranquility. And the taste of swamp water.”

  “And those Reapers, did they come from afar?” I asked. This story and the looters’ conversation we’d overheard earlier suggested that this might have been a glitch at the testing grounds.

  “From the other bank,” Forrest confirmed my suspicion. “No idea how far. I’m too scared to go there. They might take the neurograms away from me. I need them. I really need them. I can’t survive without warmth and sunshine!”

  “The weather seems okay,” Foggs tried to reassure him. “Why are you scared of cold in the middle of summer?”

  “You are stupid, aren’t you?” Forrest snapped back. “You may be a Neuro but you aren’t that bright! The Reapers said clearly: we are entering the era of the Black Sun!” he stopped short, noticing Charon startle.

  “Say it again!” Charon bellowed, so that even I jumped.

  “Black... Black Sun,” Forrest shrank. “That’s what they said. There’ll be no sunshine anymore. Cold and darkness will rule for eternity. But those who collect enough neurograms might be able to occasionally remember the old times and warm themselves with the memory. What times are we living in! Will this place really freeze over? If I could only get some branches and fetch a bit of water... while the sun’s still shining... I have to do it... I have to make it...”

  “Was it the Reapers who told you that?” Jurgen asked. “Who the hell are they?”

  “I’ve no idea who they are or where they came from. They kill Neuros where they see them. But they don’t touch us locals yet.”

  My head span with his confused explanations. A recent update? Which had apparently granted NPCs the ability of sensory perception? Then some monsters had arrived from the Corporation’s testing grounds and started slaying players?

  “They told us to catch whatever Neuros we could find and throw them down the wells. For doing this, they promised us a reward: neurograms. They said, whatever neurograms we managed to stock up on now, would have to last us for eternity. That’s something I don’t understand. It’s something new. And scary.”

  He began to ramble, mumbling and creaking, as we stepped aside for a talk.

  Charon was shaking.

  “Charon, you sure you’re all right?” Arbido asked, anxious.

  “The Black Sun!” he finally uttered. “Your world will die as did ours!”

  His eyes filled with desperate fear. I tried to make him tell us more about it but he didn’t make sense. He hunche
d up and fell silent.

  “Leave him alone,” Jurgen came to his defense. “Let him calm down a bit, then he’ll tell us,” he paused, then announced, “We need to go to the testing grounds. The answers are there.”

  “I agree,” Foggs said.

  “Should we maybe try and find out more about these Reapers?” Arbido offered tentatively. “I’m pretty sure those looters are still hiding somewhere around.”

  “We’ll only waste time,” Jurgen said. “I suggest we cross over and see for ourselves.”

  I nodded. But when I glanced at Charon and Forrest who’d perched himself next to him I realized we needed a breather. It’s not that we were going to waste much time. We could always make up for it later.

  “Don’t you worry so, poor soul,” the old NPC creaked in an attempt to comfort Charon. “The sun’s still out, isn’t it? No need to get so pale. They might be telling us fibs, the lying bastards. I know, I know that you lizards need to stay warm to survive.”

  We were within a stone’s throw of the woods. “Foggs,” I looked around until I saw an old pile of broken branches overgrown with moss. “Let’s go fetch him a few bits of wood. It’s not as if it’ll cost us anything.”

  “Why do you think we came here? To complete some stupid community-work quests or to rescue our in-modes?”

  “One doesn’t affect the other,” I snapped.

  * * *

  The Chrystal Sphere

  The old forest sprite got all emotional. We’d refused to take his neurograms and his rusty sword, so he accompanied us all the way back to the river bank.

  “There’re no boats left,” he said ruefully. “Those cack-handed wizards burned everything in sight. You’ll have to swim, I’m afraid. We should have taken a few floaty branches with us,” he said with regret.

  “Leave it,” I said. “We’ll manage. You’d better tell us: have they killed all the Neuros? Has no one survived at all?”

  “No idea! From what I heard, a few castles are still holding,” his outstretched hand pointed at the wisps of mist floating over the water. “Beware of the gray mist. Our village men said if you die from it, you’ll never respawn again. What do you need in the land of the Reapers?”

  “We need to get a few friends out,” I said in all honesty.

  “You’d better take this, then,” Forrest offered me a scroll. “Only break the seal when there’s no other way.”

  “Thanks.”

  While we were talking, Foggs had decided to set an example and had begun swimming across.

  “Your turn,” I nudged Arbido to the water edge.

  He cast a fearful glance at the rippling waters, took a deep breath and stepped in. Immediately he lost his footing and sank shoulder-deep.

  He panicked. “Zander, I can’t swim!”

  “We should have found him a horse,” Forrest creaked, “only there’re none left, are there?”

  Arbido struggled, splashing about right next to the bank. I was forced to get in the water too. The steep sides of the bank plunged into a clay bottom. “Grab at my belt! Stop freaking out!”

  With a splash, Charon jumped in the water. After about half a minute, his head finally resurfaced. He had a very peculiar way of swimming, his arms pressed to his body, his legs kicking. He looked perfectly at home in the water.

  By now, Foggs was already halfway to the other bank, struggling with the current.

  “Zander, don’t leave me!” Arbido kept flapping his arms around, preventing me from saving him.

  “Stop it! No one’s gonna drown!”

  “Water is getting inside my armor!”

  I kept swimming, trying to pace myself. You had to be really down on your luck to drown in a digital river located in a virtual world. Still, I couldn’t help the realism of the experience. Before those neuroimplants came about, I’d had no problem whatsoever swimming in full knight’s armor.

  My Physical Energy indicator began to fade. My vision blurred, my arms refused to move. I was drowning.

  Charon hurried to my aid. He supported me with one hand and grabbed Arbido with the other, all the while battling the current. He dragged us out onto the shallow bank and went back to get an equally exhausted Jurgen.

  We sat on the bank, gasping. Water poured from under our armor. Wet clothes clung to our shuddering bodies.

  It was taking us too long to restore our strength. Which was bad news: apparently, our in-game abilities couldn’t help us much. When I’d picked up the scrolls though, a new tab containing a few simple spells had appeared in my interface. I tried Healing and Vigor but neither worked. Our lives continued to dwindle.

  Groaning, Jurgen collapsed onto the wet sand next to me. He lay sprawled there for a while, staring at the sky. Then he propped himself up on an elbow.

  “It’s only going to get worse,” he said. “We don’t even know how far we have to walk. What if we have to fight?”

  I kept thinking about that too. Whoever it was, they weren’t likely to let us through without a struggle. “Can’t we block the data coming from our in-mods?”

  “Too risky, isn’t it? At these authenticity levels... The in-mode feedback prevents us from overexerting ourselves. Feeling sick is basically a fuse. If we switch it off, our bodies might burn out, it’s as simple as that.”

  “So you’d rather drown in a virtual river, would you?” Arbido snapped.

  Foggs walked over to us. “It’s all frozen over there,” he pointed in the direction where we were about to head.

  “Jurgen, I’d like you to disconnect my in-mode’s sensors,” I wrote access codes for him in the sand. “Don’t touch yours for the moment. Three of us is enough.”

  Foggs nodded his approval. His Physical Energy levels were fine, and so were Charon’s. We still had to find out why.

  “If you wish,” Jurgen grudgingly complied. “Just remember that-“

  “It’s my decision. Here, take my navigator.”

  * * *

  The energy surge was incredible. It felt as if someone had breathed life back into me.

  While Jurgen was busy with my hyperspace navigator disabling some of my in-mode functions, Foggs did a quick recon of the area. I couldn’t agree more with Forrest: the defenders’ wizards had done a very sloppy job. Then again, how much could they see in this weird mist? The whole bank was pockmarked with deep craters; it was singed in some places and frozen in others. The wizards must have used blanket attacks wasting inordinate amounts of mana with virtually nothing to show for it.

  “Are you two done?” Foggs sat down next to me.

  “We are,” I replied. “I feel much better now.”

  “Then you’d better come with me. I want to show you something.”

  He took me to a very unusual group of statues. Three goblins, a couple of orcs and five armed peasants had been caught in a Frost spell. The mist enveloping the shore had conserved its effect.

  “Could these be the Reapers?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Foggs replied. “More like their cannon fodder.”

  We walked on. Soon we emerged into a large burned-out glade strewn with the bodies of mobs disfigured by fire.

  “Could this mist block their respawning?” Foggs wondered.

  “I think so. Forrest told us so, didn’t he?

  I noticed a dead ogre. A direct hit from a ballista had pinned him to the log wall of a squat hastily built fortification. A spiked club had fallen from the giant’s stiff fingers. It might actually make a nice weapon for Charon. The magic oak it was made of was as strong as steel.

  “Heavy!” Foggs struggled to lift it. “Let’s go give it to Charon to cheer him up a bit.”

  Indeed, Charon was sitting all hunched up on the river bank.

  “Here, take this. It’s for you. Perfect, don’t you think?”

  Charon cast a disinterested glance over the weapon.

  “Hey, man, whassup?” Foggs crouched next to him. “You shouldn’t get so worked up. Forrest loves telling stories j
ust to scare people. You believed him, didn’t you?”

  My mnemonic chat icon suddenly blinked. Things were definitely different on this bank. My interface seemed to be waking up. It must have had something to do with the proximity of the Corporation’s testing grounds.

  Arbido startled and swung round. The door of a fisherman’s hut creaked open, letting out Jurgen. He was holding a harpoon and an expired torch.

  “Mnemonic communications are back up,” he squinted at the light. “Who activated them?”

  “I did,” Charon said.

  “Why, what did you want? Why did you call me?”

  “Zander asked me about my world,” Charon gasped hotly. “I couldn’t explain it with words. I want you to see for yourselves! This is what happened a thousand years ago,” he closed his eyes and froze, wheezing.

  The mental images he forwarded to us felt like a very old faded memory. They transported me to an alien setting. Glaciers rose all around. I could see craters encircled by ice ridges and an occasional cliff — the lifeless landscape of an ice-bound planet devoid of any atmosphere. I could just make out the dark skyline of a city lying far ahead. Its architecture was dominated by oblong shapes; most buildings looked like the yet unopened buds of some fantastical flowers encrusted with frost, immobilized by an abrupt ice age.

  The picture shifted as if Charon had raised his head to look up at the sky.

  Deep space gaped overhead, studded with bright clusters of unblinking stars. In one place their pattern seemed to be overlapped by an invisible spherical object. I couldn’t make out any details: I could at best compare it to a blob of darkness against a backdrop of gloom. But as I’ve mentioned already, the Haash are capable of seeing part of the infrared spectrum so the longer he looked, the clearer the various shades of temperature appeared.

  There was a source of energy lurking within the mysterious dark celestial body!

  “Our star,” Charon wheezed.

  Their sun had gone out? Was that how their planet had lost its atmosphere?

  No, that couldn’t be right. A dead star looked totally different. Its surface was obliged to emit a weak reddish light. The agony of a star normally lasts billions of years, but Charon had just mentioned a millennium.