by Eric Nylund
“Soon,” I told Elmac. “I’m close.”
The experience from defeating Bill and his army of demons had nearly pushed me up two levels… if I hadn’t made a detour along the way with my new Mage of the Line class and its surprising buy-in cost.
“One more good battle should do it,” I said.
And speaking of leveling up, I just now noticed Morgana’s player placard.
Morgana Nox
DRUID (Mischief Maker) LEVEL 4 / THIEF LEVEL 3
League of Tricksters, LLC
Nice. A total of seven levels. And, I bet, well on her way to eighth.
There was a slight twist of jealousy in my gut. I guess I still had a hangup about coming in second place from all those years playing with my brother.
But Morgana wasn’t Bill, and I refused to feel anything but happiness for her. Besides, she’d had a three-week head start on me in the Game.
What was a little competition between friends?
Is that what we were? Friends?
I hadn’t considered anything more. Don’t get me wrong, Morgana was gorgeous, smart, funny… but I didn’t want to mess up our adventuring group by adding romantic and cross-clan complications. And, more importantly, I’d never gotten a hint that she was interested.
This might be a problem for Elmac, though. The old dwarf had a crush on her and had it bad. I’d better have a talk with him before he embarrassed himself and got his ego steamrolled.
“You’ll be getting that battle soon enough,” Elmac told me, snapping me back from my thoughts. He poured three espressos into tin cups and passed them out. “The path to the Ojawbi Far Fields, where the Far Field barbarians be, from the Far Fields of Thera—uh, that all be a tad confusing with the two places having near the same names… but that often be the case with these adjacent worlds—well, that path has a gate guardian.”
“Tell me that guardian is not a hellfire demon,” Morgana said.
“Worse,” he whispered. “Years ago I escorted a caravan through and lost them all to a giant seven-headed horse that breathed clouds of venomous insects. ’Twas a Chaos Knight.”
I paused mid-sip of espresso. “This knight of chaos rides the horse?”
I recalled how murderously effective my comrade, Sir Pendric Ragnivald, had been on his terrifying steed, Bell Ringer, and shuddered.
“No,” Elmac said. “The seven-headed horse was the Champion for the Lords ’o Chaos. She takes a new shape every time you see her. Sometimes a wee butterfly, other times an undead dragon, or like when I saw her, that nightmare mutation.”
So we might have to face something like a plutonium golem? But hey, defeating it would put me over the top to the next level… even if it was posthumously.
“We’ll figure it out,” Morgana said. “We always have. But I’m knackered. Someone take first watch, yeah?”
“I’ve gotcha covered,” Elmac said. He rummaged through his pack, found a tiny pillow and offered it to Morgana. I kid you not—he’d brought a silk pillow with him.
She brightened and took it. “Thanks, mate. Much appreciated.”
“Sweet dreams, lass.”
“Hang on,” I said. “It entirely slipped my mind with…”
I’d almost said “what with all the fire and blood we’d waded through in the last twelve hours,” but caught myself. Elmac didn’t need to be reminded of that.
“…with everything going on,” I amended. “The side quest we’re on? Here—”
I shared out the Drunken Monkey quest to Morgana and took a moment to re-read it myself.
“A THOUSAND DRUNKEN MONKEYS”
Find the old martial artist among the Far Field barbarian tribes.
Reward(s): Bonus experience and new bonus skill.
Suggested Party: N/A
It seemed perfectly straightforward.
Morgana scanned it and accepted. “Drunken monkeys and barbarians, huh? Pencil me in. Sounds like a riot.”
She then yawned, stretched, and midway turned into a black panther. The cat circled around once, lay with the pillow tucked between her front paws, and kneaded it (in the process puncturing Elmac’s pillow many times with her claws). She conked out, purring.
“As soon as you’re in the Game,” I told Elmac, “I’ll be able to share it out to you too.”
He nodded, found his clay pipe, stuffed the bowl, and lit up.
It was getting dark. As an elf, I could see a bit by the glow of the heat rock… but I thought I might be able to do much better. It was as good a time as any to try Azramath’s Headband of Grim and Fateful Insights.
I slipped it over my brow—and it was like someone had flipped on stadium lighting and cranked the color setting up to ultra-vivid.
Very nice. No buyer’s remorse here.
Elmac meanwhile puffed merrily away on his pipe.
“I was wondering something…”
One of his bushy eyebrows arched.
“At Lordren’s I was talking to my personal assistant, and something called a ‘Mage of the Line’ came up. She changed the subject quick. Is it a taboo subject in Thera?”
That wasn’t a lie. It had come up. I’d just never articulated the subject, you know, in actual words.
I did want to tell Elmac the whole story, but my gypsy elf family had been slaughtered because of the mere suspicion that my father was a Mage of the Line. I had to play this close to the vest until I understood why.
Elmac snorted smoke. “By Odin’s balls, lad, why were you talking ’bout them?”
“Just discussing magic items? I don’t know.”
Elmac glared at me, relaxed, and took another puff. “Well, don’t know much. Just that there be no more.”
“They left Thera?”
“Oh, aye, they left—right into the ground. ’Twas centuries before my time, but if I recall, there was, and believe there still be, a royal sanction on the whole lot.”
It took all my Spirit Warrior discipline not to go white with shock.
What the hell had I done?
Oh sure, now the “secret and restricted” class thing made perfect sense… because Mage of the Line was an outlawed, kill on sight class—in a world, mind you, where assassination was legal.
I whispered, “What did they do to deserve that?”
“Best ask Delacroix,” Elmac said. “She was around to help hunt the last of ’em down.”
Right. Colonel Delacroix, who had blasted an army of shadows to ashes with her nuclear-power magical eye beams. The solar sorceress who didn’t trust or like me. She’d be the last person I asked.
Elmac gazed at the stars just making their evening entrance. “I’ll take first watch. Don’t worry, nothing’ll get by me. Get some rest.”
He fished out the assassin’s coded note, a pencil stub, and started scribbling. His gaze was laser-intense.
I wrapped my wool cloak about my shoulders and tried to sleep. It took a long time for me to drift off… and when I did, there were only nightmares of being trapped in Elmac’s vault, and Delacroix melting the door to get to me.
CHAPTER 13
The next morning, we hiked through farmlands, meadows, and then across fields of tall wild grass punctuated by the occasional honey mesquite and meandering creek.
“Watch your step,” Elmac said. “Not quite the season for ’em, but the place sometimes be crawling with virescene vipers. Three-headed beasties. Venom dissolves the flesh off your bones.”
Ah, just another casual stroll through Thera. I was mildly surprised the grass here wasn’t carnivorous or floating on seas of quicksand.
Elmac led us along game trails, changing from one to another seemingly at random. He looked confident, but I swear we headed west half the day, and then back east until late afternoon.
“So, we’re looking for… what did you call it this morning?” Morgana asked. “A trans-dimensional causeway?”
“Aye,” Elmac replied.
“Uh, for us slackers who were still asleep two hours before su
nrise?” I said. “Trans-dimensional causeway? That’s just a gateway to another world, right?”
“There be all sort ’o gates,” Elmac told me. “Temporal. Truncated. One way. Helical. But this one has an in-between spot from here to there.” He waved his hands about as if that made his explanation more comprehensible.
“And that’s where this Chaos Knight will be?” I asked.
Elmac nodded. “Try not to be worrying, lad. There be plenty ’o time before we be dealing with her. Relax and enjoy the scenery.”
Relax, he says. Just watch out for flesh-dissolving three-headed serpents of death.
And yet, that’s exactly what he and Morgana did. They got a little ahead of me, chatting, and Morgana occasionally tried to tickle him with a stalk of long grass.
Was I the only adult here?
“Hey,” I said, interrupting their fun, “didn’t Pendric say that there were no more Far Field barbarians? How can that be when the first step in our Drunken Monkey quest is to find them?”
“I think,” Elmac said, pausing to brush pollen from his beard, “what Pendric meant is that there be no more ’o them traveling to Thera. ’Bout ten years ago the drunken louts stopped coming to the Fall Festival to drink the town dry and—”
“—find worthy brides,” I finished for him. “I know. The barbarian ghost who gave me the quest, Karkanal, told me as much.”
“Oh, they be looking for worthy husbands too, mind you,” Elmac said. “The Far Field folk use group marriages, chains, and uh, looser, more polygamous arrangements.” He blushed.
“Really?” Morgana said with a lurid grin. “You ever try anything like that?”
Elmac sputtered and blushed a shade deeper.
“So, you’re suggesting this gate guardian has prevented the Far Field barbarians from coming to Thera?” I asked, trying to steer us back to the relevant topic. “It—she can shift shape. What other powers does she have?”
“Killjoy…” Morgana muttered.
I wondered if Morgana was embracing her Trickster side a bit too much? I’d have to have a private chat about her leading Elmac along. If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny.
“I think that depends on the form she be taking,” Elmac answered me. “Few survive long enough to be making a study ’o the eight Champions of Chaos.”
Elmac scrutinized several game trails that branched out before us, picked the leftmost and kept going. “The funny thing about gate guardians, especially for them camping the in-between places, is that they not always be there. More often than not, this particular gate be left unguarded.” He halted, considered, then added, “Guess I ought to have mentioned that.”
I liked Elmac. A lot. After you’ve been through battles together, such comrades became like your brothers and sisters… and like siblings, you also occasionally felt the urge to strangle them.
I let it go.
We walked on and Morgana regaled us with stories of her namesake, the greatest hero-queen in the history of Britannia, Morgana le fey.
Hero-queen? I didn’t interrupt to ask. Different Earth, obviously different legends.
“…Then Princess Morgana had to go to war with her half-brother and his thug wizard henchman, Merlin the Bastard, to take her throne back,” she told us, waving her hands about to demonstrate their combats. “She and her lover, Lance du lac, fought all the buggers off at Avalon, signed a peace treaty with the fairy folk, and put an end to that nonsense about searching for a holy grail. When all her foes lay dead at her feet, she and Lance founded the Round Table of noble women and men—and that eventually became our modern Parliament. Right straight head on that woman, I tell you.”
She went on like this for a time—spinning tales of court romances, betrayals, and a few more wars for good measure. Morgana le fey and Lance du lac ended up having a passel of young princesses and princes that were the progenitors of Britannia’s modern royals.
Seemed like a better deal than my Arthurian legends.
The sun set and two of Thera’s moons—the cracked and ever-erratic Joslue, and his sister, the unblemished golden and glowing Mimolette—stepped upon the starry dance floor to waltz. (In case your wondering, Thera supposedly has thirteen moons. I’ve only ever seen twelve myself. I suspected the thirteen never-seen satellite is a myth).
Elmac halted and whispered. “It be just ahead.”
A tiny footbridge spanned a creek.
“All that bloody build up for this?” Morgana asked.
Elmac shrugged out of his pack.
“Looks ordinary on this side,” he said, “but just over be the in-between spot I told you ’bout. It be a tiny island in the middle ’o interstellar space. And if the Chaos Knight be there, she won’t be letting us pass ’cause ’o our good looks.” He gave us a dead serious look. “Best be prepared.”
That, I agreed with. I unwound Shé liàn from the sash about my waist. The ninja chain tensed and flexed as it readied for combat.
I also tapped the demon bone knuckles in my inventory and they appeared on my right hand.
Might as well bond with it now.
I gave the thing the mental go ahead and hoped it didn’t hurt too much.
It heated and grew so heavy I could barely keep my hand raised.
The blackened bones seeped into my skin… burning hotter as they went deeper—not so much pain, but that on the edge of torture/pleasure thing you got from a professional massage.
Then it was gone.
I flexed the hand. My double-knuckles popped and cracked as it all settled into place. My fist was a little bigger, especially the knuckles, but nothing anyone would notice with a casual glance.
Morgana’s eyes were wide and she gave me an appreciative nod.
She then pulled up and cinched tight the hood of her battle suit. As she did so, her edges blurred and it was hard to see her (even with my headband on). Impressive.
Elmac unslung his battle axe and whispered the magic words that made the blade come alive with crackles of lightning.
“You be ready?” he asked.
Morgana and I nodded.
Elmac led the way; I followed. Morgana? She was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Well, she was a trickster thief, after all. No real surprise there. I’m sure she had our backs.
As I stepped over the crest of the footbridge, it felt as if I passed through a door. The temperature dropped a few degrees. My ears popped.
The other side of the little bridge suddenly ended in another place.
It was an island floating in outer space.
The thing was fifty feet across, covered with a mossy lawn and dotted with a few worn river stones. A tiny spring fed a stream that snaked across the island—and fell off the edge, becoming a glittering tail of ice crystals in the star-filled void.
Important safety tip: Stay on the island.
On the opposite side was another footbridge like the one we had just crossed.
Sitting on a rock in the center of the island was what I assumed was the Chaos Knight.
It had taken the form of… a fairy?
He was a foot tall and wore a black trench coat, black tee shirt, black leather pants, and tiny mud-encrusted platform Doc Martens boots. Rose-colored sunglasses covered anime-sized eyes that were ringed with melting mascara. He could have just stepped off the stage of a heavy metal concert.
The little guy tossed aside the Sandman comic book he’d been reading. His dragonfly wings ruffled, and he leapt to the ground.
Elmac whispered, “Be looking a wee bit different than last time.”
With arms akimbo, the fairy declared, “Halt, unworthy travelers! Return whence you came or dare to win passage by a test of wits or force of arms!”
CHAPTER 14
“Uh, no offense,” I said, “but you are the Chaos Knight guarding this gate, aren’t you?”
The fairy looked around as if he was unsure I was addressing him, then blinked, and said, “Of course not, cretin. Do I look like the Grand Imperial Champion of Diso
rder and Slayer of the Seven Sovereign Justices of Elysium, Her Greatness, Dominota Koroleva?”
He huffed. “But I see how you might make that mistake. My power can overwhelm simple-minded riffraff such as yourself. Rest assured, however, I am more than capable of dispatching your likes.” He rolled his neck, cleared his throat. “However, if you wish to wait for her Ladyship, she is presently on her coffee break and will be back in… in… uh, later. I’m not sure precisely when. Time can get a bit tricky in the in-between.”
My mouth opened to reply, but honestly, the little guy had me stumped. Was he for real?
“What will it be then?” he asked and tapped his boot. “Wait for the Grand Imperial Champion to kill you? Try your luck with me by honorable combat, or” —he chuckled— “trial by riddle? Or take the most prudent option, depart and live to tell the tale of how you cheated fate this day.”
He glanced to his discarded comic book as if all he really wanted was to get back to his reading.
Suddenly by my side, Morgana said to the fairy, “One moment please, good sir.”
She then huddled with me and Elmac.
“This guy is full of it,” I whispered. “I say just dropkick the runt into outer space.”
Elmac paled and Morgana shook her head.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Fairy magic is right tricky. You go and kick him and that starts his test by ‘honorable’ combat. He wouldn’t have offered that without something up his sleeves.”
“And riddles…” Elmac shivered. “I’d rather fight another hellfire demon than try a fairy riddle. They not be known for losing.”
“Quite right,” the fairy said.
The creep had better hearing than I realized. I looked up.
A stupid grin was plastered across his sharp features.
His gaze locked on Morgana, and he sobered and bowed. “My pardon, lady. I didn’t see until just now that you are a distant cousin to the fey. Please accept my apologies and profound wishes for your continued good health.”