by J. A. Hunter
Dark woods lay to the north and south, but lush green plains stretched out to the east and west—off in the distance, farms dotted the landscape, growing crops or tending to placid herds of sheep. It was the kind of idyllic spot they used to show on travel brochures back IRL, and a small part of me felt bad that we’d invaded this place and co-opted it so quickly. At first, the residents hadn’t been happy about our arrival. The mayor, a gruff man with an enormous belly, put up quite the fight until Anton showed up with a chest full of Imperial gold marks.
With enough money—and the aid of our new Patriotism perk—the inhabitants had changed their tune in a hurry. In less than an hour, they’d packed their bags, turned over the keys, and headed out of town for a few weeks, their pockets bulging with coins.
I headed down a narrow side street, past several houses—now accommodating our troops—and an open-fronted bakery, where the heady scent of freshly baked bread loitered in the air, enticing my nostrils. I ignored the delicious aroma, and the grumble of protest in my stomach, and hooked a left onto the main street. Up ahead, miners and engineers were busy at work, digging a deep trench into the main boulevard—a dust cloud hung above them, marking their position like a spotlight even against the dark of the night.
Unfortunately, most of the work needed to be done under the blanket of darkness, since working in broad daylight would almost certainly be noticed by Imperial aerial scouts.
Cutter and I dragged the timber over to a whip-thin Dawn Elf with wispy brown hair, who perched on a wobbly three-legged stool. He had a hatchet beside him, a razor-sharp dagger in one hand, and a wrist-thick tree trunk running across his lap. “Just drop it there,” he said, not bothering to look up from his work, his blade busy whittling the trunk into a sharpened point. “And I think we’re good on wood for now. Go report to Logistics Officer Black for more work.”
He finished cutting off one last chunk of wood, then pushed the log into a pile of similarly carved stakes. “Well, don’t just stand there,” he snapped, finally looking up. The blood immediately drained from his bronzed face. He shot to his feet so fast the stool toppled over. “Lord Grim Jack, I am so sorry. I, I, I didn’t think you would … that you’d be … well, working like the rest of us ...” He trailed off, clearly mortified, his feet shuffling uncertainly in the dirt.
“What’s your bloody name, eh?” Cutter growled from beside me, fishing out one of his black blades, then giving it an elaborate twirl. He could be awfully intimidating when he wanted to.
“Richard Antonia, from Vermont,” the Elf said with a wince, as though admitting some high crime.
“Cut it out,” I said, glancing at Cutter then slapping his shoulder with the back of one hand. “Richard, don’t pay any attention to him.” I jerked my head at the thief. “He just likes to get a rise out of people. And don’t sweat it, we’re all working a lot of long hours with minimal rest. Tensions are understandably high. But we’re all in this together.” I offered him a wide smile and a handshake.
“Thank you,” he called out as we turned and headed for the clanging forge a few streets over.
“So where to now?” Cutter hedged, a hopeful edge in his voice. I was half convinced the thief was allergic to hard labor. “After all that wood chopping, I feel like we should reward ourselves with a hot meal, a cold draft, and a game of cards.”
“In your dreams,” I replied, setting off down a connecting side street. “Now we need to go check in with Vlad, see how things are going with him—find out if he made any sense of the wagon we captured in West Viridia. Then after that …” I paused and shrugged. “I guess we find Anton and see what else needs to get done around here.”
“You know there are other people better suited to digging ditches and chopping down trees, right?” Cutter asked. “I mean, we’re bloody faction officers, Jack. You’re the High Commander of the Crimson Alliance. You shouldn’t be getting your hands dirty. No, correction, we shouldn’t be getting our hands dirty.”
I grinned. “Of course there are people better suited for this, but it’s good for everyone to see us contributing to the cause. We’ll jet off back to Rowanheath later to check in with Abby, but for now, it’s important everyone knows that I’m not Osmark. That we’re not like Osmark or the Imperials. They need to know I’m here in the trenches with them until the end. That I don’t think I’m better than they are. Now, come on,” I said, slinging an arm around his shoulders and pulling him along.
Men and women bustled around us as we walked, despite the late hour. Lowbies and new recruits—marked by their shoddy gear or the bright red apprentice patches sewn onto their cloaks—sprinted about. They carried items and ran errands, fear and worry carved into every movement. Many wore leather aprons stamped with an elaborate hammer crossed with a pair of tongs, a sign of the Crafter’s Guild inside of the Crimson Alliance. Vlad’s crew. Word on the street was that Vlad was a hard taskmaster, both unforgiving with subordinates and addicted to work.
Other travelers and citizens were busy updating and renovating homes for the battle to come.
One pair of nearby crafters kneeled in front of a plaster house, reinforcing a crude wooden door with a sheet of metal inscribed with elaborate runes of power. When that door went back in place, it would provide a formidable barrier against would-be Imperial invaders. And best of all, from the outside of the house, no one would be able to tell the difference.
We passed another home filled with a crew of bearded Dwarves busy digging out a deep trench directly into the living room floor, which would eventually connect to an emergency exit. By the time the engineers finished, there would be a whole series of interconnected tunnels running beneath the surface of the village, linking most of the houses and shops together. That way, when one position fell, the fighters could dip into the escape tunnels and scurry off to a new spot, ready to start the battle again.
My steps faltered as I spotted one of the Dwarves wiggling a small metal box into the tunnel wall, before securing it with a bit of chalky gray mud. That was interesting. The odd contraption had a glass vial full of viscous red liquid in its center and a smaller tube, filled with blue liquid, protruding from the top.
“They’re alchemic bombs,” Cutter offered, noticing my gaze. “Vlad was prattling on about ’em like a git the last time I saw him. From what I understand, once the position gets overrun, our guys hurry off and break the little blue bubble as they go by. Then boom, it explodes and collapses the entrance so the Imperials can’t follow. Pretty smart”—he tapped at his temple—“even if Vlad puts off smugness like the sun puts off heat.”
Up ahead was a sprawling wood-framed building with a sign hanging over the front door, The Burning Anvil. If the sign wasn’t enough confirmation, the clang of metal on metal announced to everyone in a two-block radius that this was the forge. The front door—a thick slab of metal riddled with rivets—was propped open, spilling a pool of flickering orange light onto the street. As I stepped inside, I instantly understood why the door was open.
The brutal heat from the forge and the smelter hit me in the face like an openhanded slap, and instantly, sweat rolled down my forehead and between my shoulder blades. I shifted uncomfortably for a beat, readjusting my armor, trying to ignore the godawful temperature—not wanting to complain in front of all the unfortunate souls doomed to work there.
“Holy bollocks, it’s hot in here,” Cutter said, slipping in behind me. “What kind of monsters would ever enjoy working in a place like this?” He planted one hand on the hilt of his dagger and took a long look around. “Fire everywhere. As hot as a volcano fart. And not a sign of mead or gambling anywhere. Sadists, each and every one of these blokes.” He scrunched his nose in distaste, lips twisting into a grimace. “Plus, it smells like the inside of a sweaty boot. Never have I been so glad to be a dashing, handsome rogue instead of some smelly, ugly crafter.”
I bit back laughter. His remarks were rude, arrogant, and ridiculous, but sort of funny too, mostly because t
hey were true. Fighting monsters wasn’t a walk in the park, but for me, it was better than beating the crap out of red-hot steel inside a furnace.
I glanced around, expecting his comments to earn him some nasty glances, but the crafters inside were so absorbed in their work that they hardly seemed to notice our entrance. A brick forge, shaped like a bell, sprawled against the right-hand wall, belching out heat and dancing firelight. Not far off were huge steel-ribbed barrels filled with water for quenching hot metal. Metal-topped workstations, stone grinding wheels, and heavy anvils were scattered through the rest of the space, and each was presided over by a crafter.
A beefy Risi warrior, who could’ve passed for Forge’s brother, was bent over an anvil, a blunt hammer slamming down against a piece of red-hot metal that had the rudimentary look of a sword. A Dawn Elf woman covered in a sheen of glistening perspiration worked the forge, her arms pumping at the giant leather bellows, stoking the flames. A stout Dwarf with a beard as thick as a lawn bush carefully inscribed a metal breastplate with a bulbous, wood-handled awl.
No sign of Vlad, though there was an adjoining room at the back.
I edged past the crafters consumed by their work and made for the door.
I rounded the corner and finally caught sight of our chief engineer and Alchemic Weaponeer. He was a Dawn Elf with golden skin and a sheet of platinum hair; he wore black armor and a work apron, wrapped snuggly around his front. A bandolier, covered in pockets and pouches, crammed full of alchemist concoctions, ran diagonally across his chest. He also had on a heavy tool belt slung low around his waist, which held gloves and hammers, calipers and rasps, tongs and chisels.
Honestly, he looked like a walking laboratory.
This part of the smithy had been hastily converted into an alchemy lab. Shelves lined the walls, loaded down with miscellaneous ingredients—vials of amber sap, powdered dragon scales, fetid swamp water—hefty leather tomes, and scattered papers covered in hastily scrawled designs. A large metal-topped table dominated the center of the room, covered in glass beakers, jerry-rigged Bunsen burners, rumpled blueprints, and scale models of several different siege weapons.
“U tebya cho ruki iz jopi rastut?” Vlad scolded, jabbing a finger at a slim Wode woman clad in an identical work apron and a pair of heavy leather gloves. She used a beefy pair of metal tongs to maneuver a glass vial filled with a bubbling golden liquid. “If you drop that, Tanya,” Vlad said, “we all go boom. And with the supplies in this workshop, it will take out half the village, too.”
Carefully, slowly, she poured the substance into a curling length of tubing, which connected with a beaker filled with iron flecks.
“Vlad,” Cutter began.
The Alchemist shot one hand into the air, his eyes never wavering from his assistant. Hold. The golden fluid trickled into the tubing, pulled along by gravity into the second vessel. The iron shavings sizzled on contact, glowing first red, then white. In seconds, I had to shield my eyes from the intensity of the glow filling the room. When the light finally faded enough for me to drop my hand, the golden liquid was gone, and a shimmering silver substance like mercury filled the second beaker.
“Monitor the solution for ten minutes,” Vlad barked, his voice stern, “then add the ground Krossea Leaf, da?” The woman nodded her reply as she crouched down and surveyed the quicksilver liquid, carefully scrutinizing it for any sign of imperfection.
“Sorry about the rudeness,” Vlad said, turning on us with a wide grin. “This is delicate work.” He waved toward the woman and the flask. “That is the base ingredient for port-scrolls. Very difficult to make. Time intensive. Any wrong move and boom, we create a black hole that will kill everyone in fifteen meters.” He opened a leather bag at his hip and pulled out a scroll bound with a golden ribbon. “But it is worth it. The first batch is already done,” he said, pushing the scroll toward me. “This, it is for Ravenkirk.”
I grinned and accepted. The Mystica Ordo was great and port-stones were infinitely useful, but nothing beat travel by a custom port-scroll. No dizziness. No nausea. No vertigo. Just quick, easy, and painless. Up until now, they’d been prohibitively expensive to use, but as always, Vlad had found a way to beat the system.
“But what am I saying,” Vlad said, slapping a hand against the side of his head before I could get a word in. “You are not here to speak of port-scrolls. You are here to find out about the wagon you captured in West Viridia, da?” Vlad pulled off a pair of gloves, then crammed them unceremoniously into the back of his belt. He looked about as hot and sweaty as I felt. His hair was slick with perspiration, and fat streaks of black ash covered his face and cheeks.
“Bingo,” I replied with a nod.
He took one furtive glance around, then nodded toward a back door leading out to an alleyway. “Let us have a little break, I think. Please, this way.”
SEVEN_
Defenses
Curious about the cloak and dagger secrecy, Cutter and I followed Vlad into the alley—I said a silent prayer of thanks for the cool breeze—then pushed the door shut with a thunk. “So what can you tell us?” I asked, stealing a look left, then right to make sure no one else was close enough to hear.
“What I can tell you,” Vlad replied stoically, folding his arms and leaning against the shop wall, “is that we might be in trouble. It is a sizeable cup of worms, as you Americans say.” Can of worms, I thought with a grin, though I didn’t bother to correct him. In all the time I’d known Vlad, I don’t think he’d ever gotten an American idiom right.
“The items you discovered are weapon components,” Vlad continued. “I had to scour the wikis, but from what I have learned, there are three classes of Weaponeers, and each uses different means and skills to craft weapons. Alchemic Weaponeers, such as myself, utilize the power of potions and ingredients to augment and enhance existing weapons. Runic Weaponeers, they use the power of deep magic and ancient sigils of power. And then?” He faltered, glancing up and down the alley as though searching for any sign that someone might be watching us. “Then there are the Artificers. Very rare. So rare that we don’t have a single Artificer in the whole faction.”
For a moment, I couldn’t talk. That didn’t make any sense—even super rare classes weren’t that uncommon. Vlad was our best Alchemic Weaponeer by a mile, but he wasn’t the only one.
“That can’t be right. It doesn’t make any sense,” Cutter said, beating me to the punch. “The Alliance is huge—not as big as the Empire, but bigger than any other bloody faction in Eldgard. How’s it possible we don’t have a single Artificer?”
“It seems impossible, but it is true,” Vlad replied with a noncommittal shrug. “Once I knew what to look for, I had Intel dig. Osmark, he has been hunting down every Artificer in Eldgard. Every. Single. One. All of them. He has placed substantial open contracts in every major mercenary guild—any Artificer is to be captured on sight and delivered directly to West Viridia. One thousand gold per head.” I whistled under my breath—that was more than 100K, IRL. “From there,” Vlad said, “either they join the Empire, or disappear.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. And no one knows what happens to those that refuse. It is all very hush-hush. More secretive than the KGB.”
“But what could that mean?” I asked, mostly for myself, not expecting an answer.
“It means he’s bloody taking out his competition,” Cutter said. “Probably doesn’t want us to know whatever he has planned.”
That was a deeply troubling thought. I didn’t know much about Osmark, except that he was a genius and the man who’d single-handedly made V.G.O. a reality. Could we really hope to win against someone like that? I wasn’t sure. “So, what exactly are the Artificers?” I asked, pushing away the doubt blooming in my chest like the first buds in springtime.
“Well,” Vlad said, fishing a hefty pipe from his inventory, “they use the power of science and Divine Geometry to create unique and deadly clockwork weapons. Of all the Weaponeers, they are the most different. Perhaps,
the most deadly.” He paused, slipped the pipe between his lips, then coaxed a flame to life with a sprinkle of some black dust. The pipe flared, and a plume of pungent smoke wafted up. “And if Osmark has acquired the services of every Artificer, then we might be in very big trouble, Jack. Pizdets, nam pizdets, which roughly translates to we are screwed.”
We talked with Vlad for a few more minutes, discussing the rest of the preparations, then excused ourselves, heading for the frontlines to find Anton. We headed back toward the main boulevard but ended up stopping by a plump Wode vendor in a thick fur cloak, who was tending to a wooden pushcart near an open fire pit. Skewers of questionable-looking meat twirled lazily above the flames, grease and fat dripping down into the dancing blaze.
Stress and anxiety beat at me like a hammer, and there was so much to do yet, but my stomach sent out an angry burble at the delicious scent of the meat. Reluctantly, I stopped, dug a handful of coppers from my Inventory, and handed them over to the hawker with a few muttered words, which earned Cutter and me three spits apiece. The meat-on-a-stick was probably rat, or something else equally gross—spider and forest beetle were surprisingly common in these parts—but I was so hungry I didn’t even care. Besides, in V.G.O., no matter how gross the food sounded, it always tasted like heaven.
I’d been in the game for almost two months, and I still hadn’t had a bad meal. Not once.
I passed Cutter his meal, then took a huge bite, savoring the tender meat and the smoky flavor you only get when cooking over an open flame. I chewed loudly, letting a bit of grease dribble down my chin as a buff appeared in the corner of my eye, informing me that the [Mutton Skewer] was restoring 75 HP over 60 seconds. Huh, lamb. That was a nice change of pace. Sweet relief flooded through my body, easing sore muscles, and temporarily banishing the fatigue settling over me, even though my HP was currently maxed out.