Fattah winked, clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation. We weren’t close, and it would have been hard to call us friends, but still, we’d fought together, had mutual acquaintances… Although there really aren’t any of those mutual acquaintances left.
“No,” he answered, looking away. “Not anymore. I bought out my contract.”
The portal flashed, and I let out a relieved sigh—I didn’t want the quintet to kill Lane as well as me. I knew I was doomed and wouldn’t be leaving the field alive. That wasn’t even a big deal since everybody dies in the game. I just wished I wasn’t looking at losing my sword and runes…
“Well, we kept our word,” Miurat said, clasping his arms behind his back and rocking on his heels.
“Thanks,” I said with complete sincerity. “Really—thanks. So who turned on me? Ping and Pong?”
“Do you even have to ask? You know their kind.” Miurat clearly had no desire to explain the obvious.
“It wasn’t even that expensive,” Fattah added unexpectedly. “Just a thousand gold.”
“Depends on what you compare that to,” I answered willingly. “A thousand from you, 1200 from me. When did you cut your deal with them?”
“Right away, pretty much as soon as I got to the base,” Fattah said with a grin. “They were the best choice in our squad, and I even made sure nothing happened to them in battle. It would have been a shame to have to find someone else.”
So he’s been after me from the very beginning?
“Wait, Miurat,” I said, my forehead creasing, “so you’ve been working me since the North?
“Yep.” Miurat looked at me proudly. “We actually started keeping an eye on you to see what we could find out about the Hounds; you were just an afterthought. But then you turned out to be quite the complicated character. And your friends are, too, NPCs and players alike. Take Wanderer, for starters. You’re obviously doing a quest that interests us greatly, though we haven’t actually been able to figure out which. And that was when I got involved. I chatted with a few players, did some digging, and started to put together such a fascinating picture that I decided to assign a personal guardian to you. He just recently started a new character—that happens with us sometimes. And that paid off.
You came here to the Temple of Hannuman, a bit of a mysterious, unknown spot. To get in, you had to get a hidden quest, and they’re variable; sometimes you get them, sometimes you don’t, and there’s no way of telling in advance. But it’s so long and difficult that a lot of people just give up as soon as they read the quest description. It’s true! Then you have to walk out of the temple on your own two feet, which is no mean trick in its own right. But they say the reward you get is incredible, and sometimes even unique. It used to be that a lot of people would hang around the temple hoping to ambush whoever came out, though they all gave up eventually—only rarely do people go in, and it’s even rarer that they come back out again. But you, you lucky duck, came out, and you clearly have something to show for it. With that in mind, my dear friend, give it to us, join our clan, and you’ll live happily ever after. You don’t even have to join if you don’t want to, but you do have to give us whatever you got.”
“Miurat, I really didn’t get anything I can hand over. I hate it, but you can even throw some powder in my face if you want.”
“Nah,” he replied, rubbing his palms together. “The powder might not work here since there’s a margin of error. Let me ask you to do the smart thing one more time—give us what you got in the temple and go live your life.”
I took a deep breath. “I really don’t know how to prove to you that I don’t have anything. It’s a shame the brothers ran off in the temple; they would have been able to tell you.”
“If they hadn’t run off, we wouldn’t have known anything about you,” Miurat noted. “They always had a scroll with them for exactly that purpose; Fattah gave it to them right at the beginning. I guessed where you’d be going, though, true, I couldn’t figure out when it would be.”
If you only knew where I’m actually going… It was a good thing he didn’t.
“There are quite a few abandoned temples here in the South, and most quests send you to one or another of them, but you visited two in one day. It was a matter of logic to guess which one would be next,” Romuil chimed in. “And that’s how it happened. You went into the temple, and here you are coming back out…”
“As soon as you went in, they ran off to Maykong to give us the news,” explained Miurat. “We made sure we always had someone waiting in the pub.”
“All that for me?” I was flattered by their attention. Apparently, I’m really going places. But the brothers…what bastards. I involuntarily pursed my lips.
“Mad at the brothers?” Fattah laughed shortly. “If it makes you feel any better, they’re as dead as Judas Iscariot.”
“You didn’t happen to string them up from a tree so you wouldn’t have to pay them, did you?” I quipped.
“Rats like that don’t need a tree,” Drang said, opening his mouth for the first time. “They’re lying in the grass over there to the left of the temple.”
I glanced over to see two charred shapes on the ground bearing a vague resemblance to human bodies. If nobody had said anything, I wouldn’t have noticed them.
“Are you kidding me?” I stared at the Double Shield.
“What are you talking about?” Miurat’s finger drew circles around his temple. “Who do you think we are? They did that to themselves!”
“We had no idea why they wanted to come back here with us, but they headed for the roof as soon as they stepped out of the portal,” Fattah explained. “They wanted to pull the gold statue off to sell it. Once they got to the top and grabbed hold of the statue, lightning struck and fried them. They fell right off onto the grass.”
“Sure did the job,” Romuil said appreciatively. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“At least there’s some justice in the world,” I said with a smile. “Maybe not everywhere, for everyone, or all the time, but there’s some.”
“And common sense?” Miurat wasn’t smiling anymore. “I imagine there’s some of that, no? Give us the reward, tell us about the quest, and we’ll all be happy. If not…”
“Then what?” I shrugged. “You’ll kill me? You’ll kill me either way. Ronin can barely control himself, he wants to tear into me so badly.”
“He won’t lay a finger on you without my order,” Miurat promised. “But if you’re going to be stubborn…”
“Miurat, I don’t know what I can swear on, but I don’t have anything. I just don’t.” I sighed tiredly. “If I could, I’d dump everything in my bag out for you to look through. I give you my word. I didn’t get anything in the temple. Sure, there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, but I didn’t get anything unique or even rare.”
“He doesn’t want to do this the easy way,” Drang said.
“That he doesn’t,” echoed Fattah.
“Then it’ll be the hard way.” Ronin pulled an axe with a massive blade out from behind his back.
“Come on, Hagen, you’re a smart guy,” Miurat said, holding up a hand in Ronin’s direction. The latter silently reslung his axe. “This isn’t the end here by the temple. In case you didn’t realize it, over there on the other side of the Crisna, the Double Shields have come out of the shadows. We have big plans for the game and quite a bit of support outside of it. Big changes are about to happen, both for the clans and the players in them—you can be sure of that. And the players are going to have to decide whose side they’re on. Some of them, in fact, won’t have a choice; you do.”
“Miurat, seriously!” I burst out at him. “Why the hell would I lie to you? I don’t have anything—really! Yes, I had a hidden quest, it was for a sleeping beauty.”
“For what?” Miurat was taken aback.
“In one of the rooms in the temple, there’s a crystal coffin hanging from some chains, and there’s a princess sleeping
in it. Just like in Pushkin[7] or whatever…”
“Oh, please,” Fattah said, waving a hand dismissively at me. “You’re kidding.”
“Seriously!” I wouldn’t have believed me either, but I was in too deep to stop there. Where did that story come from? The coffin and the chains were there, sure, but the quest? “I failed the quest, though, so I didn’t get anything.”
“You’re a bad kisser?” Miurat asked darkly.
He was obviously trying to figure out if he should believe me or not.
“No, you’re supposed to put some things in a particular order, and I’m not good at logic puzzles. And you only get one shot, since you can only go into the temple once. So there you go.”
“He’s lying. I mean, he’s right that you can only go in once, though he’s lying about the quest,” Drang said shortly.
Fattah and the others were quiet.
“Okay, fine, let’s do this.” I knew it was a bluff, but I wanted to get as far away from that field as I could. I wasn’t risking the gong, after all, since it was a quest item and wouldn’t go anywhere. The runes, however… “Miurat, go ahead and kill me. You can do it, you can have Fattah do it, whatever. Then look through my things, and you’ll see for yourself that there isn’t anything like that.”
“Yeah, right,” Drang grunted. “What if it’s something that stays with you when you die?”
“Doubtful.” Miurat looked closely at me. “There aren’t many items like that in the game. Set items are, but you have to have almost the full set to unlock that ability. You can’t get quest items from dead people, and he was finishing a quest there anyway, and not getting one, so he probably wouldn’t have gotten a quest item anyway. But there’s one other thing—we don’t need your permission to kill you.”
“That doesn’t keep me from getting even one day,” I said with an impudent smile. “You know better than the rest, yes?”
Miurat smiled thinly, as if to say that yes, he did know a thing or two about me. Maybe he did; maybe he was trying to pull one over on me.
“I’m obviously nobody important, and just a tiny player in the game, but it’s still better to have more friends than enemies,” I replied, throwing a hand in the air. “So here’s what I propose: you kill me and see for yourself that I really don’t have anything, and then you return my things to me. We’ll part friends, and maybe we’ll even help each other out in the future. If not, then we won’t.”
Ronin laughed. “I love the nerve this guy has. Seriously! We’re going to—”
“Agreed,” Miurat interrupted, looking me in the eye. “If I don’t find anything in your things, I’ll send them back to you. I have one condition, however.”
“I’m all ears.” I was already staring at him.
“When the time comes, you’ll go to the Gray Witch and pass on what I tell you to give or say to her. Sound good?”
“Yep.”
The conditions weren’t great, and they were designed to cover just about anything. Still, taking the deal was better than losing everything I had with me.
“Miurat, let me kill him.” Ronin pulled his axe out one more time.
Miurat glanced at me, and I looked over at Ronin with a smile on my face. Come on, you rotten villain, kill the great and honest hero. It was like a movie.
“I won’t say I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” Ronin said as he walked over with an evil smile on his face. “I actually forgot about you almost immediately, though I remembered the whole thing as soon as I saw you. To be honest, I’m going to enjoy doing this.”
“Wipe the drool off your mouth,” I said squeamishly. “You’re getting it on me, and that’s disgusting.”
Ronin, who had jumped all the way up to Level 85, pulled back his axe and slammed it into me sideways.
The sensation was unpleasant, to say the least. The blow knocked me off my feet, and I noticed the foul grin on Romuil’s face and sympathy in Fattah’s eyes as I rolled across the grass. I didn’t have time to see what emotions Miurat and Drang were feeling, as Ronin, annoyed that he hadn’t killed me with one strike, brought his axe down on my head with a roar. I flew out of the field by the temple all the way back to the base.
I was met with an indignant cry that I didn’t recognize in the least. “Private, what are you doing looking like that?”
Underwear flashing in the sun, I turned and found myself nose to nose with a Lieutenant Trott I didn’t know. He was apparently one of the newly appointed officers, at least judging by the fact that his uniform didn’t have a spot of dirt on it. His face looked young, as well.
“I just got back from a mission,” I said jauntily, just as befits a veteran. “It happens, Lieutenant, it happens…”
“Yes, I understand,” the lieutenant replied quietly. “But you still shouldn’t be running around with your butt hanging out, soldier.”
“Lieutenant,” I replied, hoping he knew something about my friend. “A soldier should have dropped by through a portal recently—Lane, from the Seventh Company.”
“Yes, he was here.” He stroked his faded mustache. “He’s in the infirmary, though he’ll live.”
Thank God. That’s one less stain on my conscience.
I sighed happily and headed over to the barracks. The lieutenant was right, but I didn’t have much choice. If Miurat wasn’t an idiot or a complete rat, and I hadn’t noticed either that or greed on his part, my things would be arriving in the mail very soon. If not, well…I’d have to beg for a pass so I could fly back to Maykong, drop by the hotel, and head to the auction.
About ten minutes later, my things did, indeed, arrive, and they came with a letter from Miurat. Once I pulled everything out of the mailbox, I noticed that my gold and portal scrolls were missing. Whatever. Although, those scrolls are expensive. Worse, so were my runes—all three of them. That was taking things too far. The gold and scrolls I could just write off, but the runes… I was interested to see what he wrote and how he’d try to play off stealing them.
Strictly speaking, you weren’t lying. Strictly speaking. But I’m sure there’s something you didn’t tell me—I can feel it. Sadly, that isn’t something I can prove.
In keeping with our agreement, I’m returning your things, although, and I’m sorry, not all of them. Ronin said the gold and scrolls were his spoils, seeing as how he killed you. Barbarians, you know? Don’t be too hard on him. Anyway, we were talking about things, not gold and scrolls, and I’m sending you back all your things. Well, almost all of them.
I hope you won’t consider what Ronin didn’t a violation of our agreement—he wasn’t part of it, after all. I held up my end of the bargain, so I’ll consider you responsible for holding up your end.
Sincerely your friend, Miurat
P.S. It would be great to have you in our clan. Believe me, it’s not an offer you should refuse. M.
Well, that was interesting. I knew it wouldn’t have been right to push Miurat for my gold—he was right that he hadn’t promised to return it. But the letter… It was written half tongue-in-cheek, with plenty left unsaid between the lines. He was feeling me out to see what I’d do next. It certainly wasn’t that he needed my runes and gold.
It wasn’t that I was angry. I was more confused than anything, really, since I hadn’t expected that. He’d agreed to my terms, violated the agreement, pretended that nothing had happened, told me what a sincere friend he was, and underlined that he expected me to fulfill my part of the agreement. I was especially touched by his story about the out-of-control warrior. Sure, it was all him…
Miurat was anything but an idiot. He did exactly what he wanted and thought. Even if I didn’t understand what was going on, I did know one thing—there was a reason for it. He was just moving toward his objective, leaving bodies in his wake. But now it’s my move.
I did say I’d get even. And I’ll keep my word, though there’s no sense rushing things. I decided not to reply immediately, figuring that I could ask people smarter than me to
decide what I should do. At the end of the day, it wasn’t my war, though the runes were a grudge I was going to hold on to...
Good afternoon,
I’d rather not bother you, though I think you should know that I was killed maybe twenty minutes ago by Miurat—I’m sure you remember him. Before he did it, he offered me a deal that has to do with you. If you’d like to hear the details, I can come tell you the whole story right now.
Just send me a portal scroll, please. He robbed me blind.
Best, Hagen
I sent the letter to the Gray Witch, who was online, and sat down on the steps to await her reply. It wouldn’t be that long of a wait, I thought, since she wasn’t that kind of person. She liked to get things done.
Three minutes later five portal scrolls arrived in my mailbox, which cheered me up. It was some kind of compensation, at least. That was one thing I liked about the Hounds. They didn’t count pennies like some other clans I knew.
Flavius, the Gray Witch’s perpetual gofer, was waiting to take me to her when I arrived.
“So, it was Miurat?” The mistress didn’t bother with a greeting, preferring to take the bull by the horns.
I was very surprised to find neither Fredegar nor Milly Re in her office. There was, however, an unassuming halfling named Radius blinking in one of the corners. I didn’t know him, and the fact that he was only Level 14 was odd, to say the least.
“He’s an animal,” I said. “He killed me and robbed me, though, to be fair, he didn’t take everything. Just my gold, my scrolls, and, most importantly, my runes. Bastard!”
“What runes?” Radius asked in a rustling tone of voice. “Were they valuable?”
“I have no idea how much they were worth,” I replied, “though they were certainly valuable to me. I got two of them for quests, and a good friend gave me the third. I can’t believe it.”
“Yes, that’s unpleasant,” said the Gray Witch. I could tell from the expression on her face that, even if it was unpleasant, the loss of my belongings mattered much less to her than hearing what had happened. “I hear you, and we’ll think about compensation later. In the meantime, tell me everything that happened, down to the last detail. Don’t skip a thing.”
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