by G. R. Cooper
“Is that why your people are moving into the light king’s area?” he asked. The king looked up at him and nodded.
“Aye. We’re being forced by the wet incursion,” he turned back to the wet king and spat, “invasion of our territory. It is without precedent and unwarranted. We have done nothing to instigate this fight.”
Wulfgar looked back to the wet king and waited.
“We have no choice, cousin,” pleaded the wet king, “we’re being forced out of our rightful place,” he looked up at Wulfgar, pleading, “we have no choice,” he repeated, “it’s the Aos Si.”
Wulfgar was confused. It sounded like the wet king said “ace shee”, and he had no idea what that meant - but he didn’t want to lower his standing with the two by pleading ignorance.
He nodded thoughtfully, “The Aos Si, eh?”
“Aye. They showed up without warning, invading from one of their islands to the east. Their blades and their magic are too much for us to withstand,” it looked back to its cousin and repeated, “we had no choice.”
Wulfgar thought for a moment, then looked to Lauren. She shrugged and raised her eyebrows. He frowned.
“Oh well,” he thought, “in for a penny …”
“Is there anything,” he said looking back and forth between the kings, “that I can do to help?”
The wet king bared his fangs, “Kill them! Kill them all!”
Wulfgar shook his head - the mention of blades and magic made the Aos Si, whatever they were, sound like a bit much for a second level rogue and fifth level artisan to handle.
“I’m afraid I would be of no use in that fight.”
“You have rejected the quest Total War II from the Rat Kings of Dark and the Rat King of Wet.”
“Perhaps,” he continued, “I might be able to talk to them. To find out what they want.”
“You have accepted the quest Balancing Dark and Wet II from the Rat King of Dark and the Rat King of Wet!”
“You have gained in reputation with the Rat folk. They now respect you!”
He looked back to Lauren, unsure of what to do. She again shrugged.
Wulfgar looked back to the kings and bowed, “I will, by your leave, now seek out the Aos Si and try to determine why they have attacked you.”
He turned and called for Bear, who followed him and Lauren out of the catacombs. The dog still limped, but only slightly so. As they got a few caves away, Wulfgar looked down at Lauren.
“OK. By my reckoning, we now have two quests. Levels one and two of Balancing. What does that mean?”
“They could be, you know, linked or something. I’m not sure of the word to use. But, maybe, completing one will complete both,” she shrugged, “that would be my guess, anyway.”
He nodded. That made sense.
“What do we do now?” she asked, “head to the docks? Try to find the Aos Si?”
He shook his head.
“Not yet. Not ‘til tomorrow, at the earliest. We have some preparations to make, not least of which is,” he laughed, looking down at her, “finding out what the hell the Aos Si are.”
Wulfgar downed the rest of his pint of black beer and smacked his lips, then held up the empty mug to get the waitress’s attention.
“Tell me, Narri,” he said, stifling a burp, “do you know anything of the Aos Si?”
“The folk?” she asked, wiping beer foam off of her navel length beard, “A bit. A bit.”
Wulfgar looked to Lauren and they exchanged smiles.
“Anything you can tell us would be of great help.”
“Well,” she began, looking thoughtfully up at the humans, “first of all, they’re tiny. About knee-high to you. And they’re beautiful. One of the most beautiful, if relatively hairless, of the peoples of the world. Only the elven folk compare,” she paused, “indeed, they look to be elves in many ways, only smaller.”
Narri brushed her mustaches off her top lip and nodded, “Yes, I believe they are at least partly elven, but without the elven animosity toward my people.”
Wulfgar nodded, smiled. A friendly people was good news.
“At least, they don’t hate us because of who we are,” she smiled, “they hate all of the peoples equally.”
Wulfgar frowned, his hopes dashed.
“That said, they can be dealt with,” she raised one eyebrow and wagged a chicken leg at Wulfgar, “they tend to treat others as they’re treated. And they never, ever, forget a slight, however small.”
She looked up at the ceiling in thought, “What else? Oh,” she looked back to Wulfgar, “they’re barrow dwellers. They live in mounds.” Narri started counting off on her short, chubby fingers, “They’re strong in magic. They’re found all over the world. They like green places. Why do you ask?”
“We have to go see some. Tomorrow. Apparently, a number of them have moved into the docks.”
“Here? In Edonis?”
Wulfgar nodded, Narri frowned.
“Then they’re unlikely to be in a very good mood,” she said. Wulfgar and Lauren exchanged glances. Narri continued, “If they’re away from their greenswards and mounds, well, it can’t be for any reason that would make them happy.”
“What would make them happy?” asked Lauren.
Narri shrugged, “Going home?”
Wulfgar chewed on a turkey leg in thought. Narri, having left an hour earlier, had given him a lot to think about. Finishing the meat, he dropped the bone underneath the table and heard Bear begin to tear it apart. The smoky atmosphere of the Gilded Pumpkin shifted as the door opened and closed, letting the evening breeze flow through the room.
“I’ve got a feeling that tomorrow won’t be simply a case of asking the Aos Si to play nice with the rats.”
Lauren nodded, “Me too.” She thought for a moment, “I predict we’ll be leaving the city tomorrow.”
Wulfgar nodded, then looked up as a man took the seat next to Lauren.
“What’s up, newbies?”
Lauren looked up and smiled, “Hiya Snorri,” then looked back across the table, “Wulfgar this is …”
“We’ve met!” beamed Snorri.
Wulfgar nodded, smiled, “I thought you were off adventuring.”
“I was, I was. Gar, Nop and me fixed a little dire wolf problem for a local village,” he shrugged, “then I made a joke about them killing their cousins, and they got pissed at me,” he shrugged again, “so they’re boycotting my friendship for the moment,” he laughed, “but they’ll get over it. They always do. Hey,” he added to Wulfgar, “sorry about us not taking you on the quest. Gar and Nop are kind of picky about who they adventure with. I’m a whore,” he laughed, “I’ll hook up with just about anyone.”
Lauren looked up at Wulfgar, raised one eyebrow as an unspoken question. He nodded.
“We currently have an opening in our roster,” said Lauren looking back up at the blond Viking.
He stood again, “Great! Where are we off to?”
She laughed, dragging him back down onto the bench, then signaled the waitress for another round of beers.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, you big knucklehead,” she laughed.
Snorri smiled, accepted the mug from the waitress, and quaffed the brew in one long draw before handing it back to the waitress, “Another please, darlin’, if you don’t mind.” Then he looked back to Wulfgar, then Lauren.
“So, where are we off to tomorrow?”
They spent the next hour bringing Snorri up to speed on the quests as well as their thoughts on what was coming. He nodded thoughtfully at the end .
“I think Lauren’s right. Tomorrow will likely see us heading off to wherever the Aos Si come from,” he looked up at Wulfgar. “The islands, did you say?”
“I didn’t, I think the Rat King of Wet did.”
Snorri’s brow furrowed, “That means a sea voyage. That means we’ll need to be equipped for,” he raised his arms and shoulders in question, “whatever we run across.” He frowned, then he smiled, “Sounds like fu
n. I’m in.”
Wulfgar pondered that. They needed to be equipped for whatever. That meant, he assumed, combat. He thought back on the fight that morning, to something that had been bothering him since.
“What happens when we die here?”
“I haven’t died yet,” Snorri knocked on the wooden table, “but when you do, you’re resurrected at the last holy site you bound yourself to.”
“Holy site?”
“Churches and the like. Depends on the religion.”
“Religion? Really?” Wulfgar looked to the two blonds, both were nodding.
“There’s all kinds, and the one you choose can have an effect on your development.”
“Can?”
“Ayeah,” nodded Snorri. “As you may have guessed, I’m an Odinist. Thor’s hammer and all that shit,” he laughed. “That gives me the Berserkergang ability. Once per day, I can call on Odin if I’m low on health and in battle and he’ll give me a nice big to-hit and damage bonus.”
“And I’m an Hephaestean, god of blacksmiths,” added Lauren, “that increases my smithy leveling by ten percent.”
Snorri took another drink, “And, as I said, there’s all kinds, but you’ll want to do some research before you pick. If you switch sides, you become apostate for that religion. That can increase the hostility level of its followers. Permanently.”
“You said ‘can’, that implies some don’t.”
“Yup,” said Lauren, “there are even some religions that don’t do anything at all, within the game. They’re started by players. I guess you could call them ‘real’ religions,” she looked up at Snorri who shrugged, “in that the followers follow them on faith. There’s even one that was created based on the Omegaverse and, well, us.”
Wulfgar raised one eyebrow in question.
Lauren nodded, “It’s the Church of the Sacred Self. Its followers believe that they are personally connected to the divine, since they are, after all, really dead. That our manifestation in this world,” she spread her hands, indicating the Omegaverse, “is only a reflection of our true self, which is in heaven at the right hand of God.”
“They pray to themselves?”
Snorri nodded, “Yep, it was started a couple of years back by some crazy broad.”
Lauren snorted and elbowed Snorri in the ribs, “Broad? Really?”
“Dame, skirt, whatever it is you chicks like to be called,” Snorri winked at Wulfgar, who had the sense not to laugh out loud. He drank on his pint instead, hiding his smile in the frothy head.
“In any case,” continued Snorri, “you don’t have to follow a religion, and you don’t have to be a believer to bind yourself at a holy site. Anyone can do that.”
They spoke for a few more hours, making plans for the following day. Snorri, the most experienced adventurer of the group, would be in charge of provisions and preparation. They also agreed that Lauren, with the highest Personality attribute of the group, would do all of the talking with the Aos Si. That left Wulfgar feeling a bit like a useless limb, but he was sure that would pass. There was likely to be plenty of work for all.
As they settled the bill for the evening, Lauren picking up the tab this time, Snorri leaned over and nudged her then nodded toward Wulfgar.
“Does he miss it yet?”
She shook her head, “Nope. Not yet. I asked him this morning.”
Snorri laughed.
“He will.”
Wulfgar, Bear and Lauren walked through the late night streets of Edonis toward her shop. Snorri would be sleeping the night at the Gilded Pumpkin, and they agreed to meet there in the morning. As they walked through the quieting city, Wulfgar thought about the differences between his previous self and his current incarnation.
“I’ve noticed that I don’t need nearly as much sleep as I did before.”
Lauren nodded, “Me too. We can actually go for days now without needing to sleep, really. It’s more of a comfort thing. Habit, really.”
“I used to sometimes need a good nine or ten hours of sleep,” he shrugged, “when I got really worn out.”
He looked down at her.
“Is it just me, or is this transition really kind of bizarre in some ways, but fairly normal in others.”
She pulled ahead as they reached her shop and pulled open the door.
“It is,” she agreed, “but you’ll get used to it.” She shut the door after they all entered, then turned up a lantern hanging near the entrance, bathing the shop in light.
“I do still wonder about it sometimes,” she said as she began to pull off her armor pieces, laying them on a small table next to her forge. She looked up at him, “Let me see your knife.”
He pulled the blade and handed it to her, handle first.
“Forty-nine out of fifty,” she said, then bent and began tapping the blade with a small hammer.
“What?”
“It’s a measurement of how worn the blade is. It has, like, fifty hit points total, and it was down one. Hardly worn at all, but I’ll go ahead and top you off, as it were. Who knows when I’ll be able to tend to it again?”
“How can you tell?” The blade looked brand new to him.
She laughed, “It comes with the blacksmithing skill. I think it was at level two or three. Fairly standard. I mean, you have to be able to diagnose the patient before you can cure it, right?” She stood back up, and handed the blade back to Wulfgar before beginning a similar routine with her own sword and armor, “As you gain in experience with item identification, you can begin to identify magical items and their properties as well. I can for some low level stuff, mainly common and a few uncommon items.”
“Anyway, like I was saying,” she continued as she worked into a rhythm between hammer, anvil and armor piece, “I still wonder about the differences between my old life and my new one.”
She stood up, looking appraisingly at one of her greaves, newly refurbished, then nodded, satisfied, before returning the piece to her armor rack and selecting the next to be repaired.
“There is a lot I don’t know. Like how I died. There are times I want to know and times that I don’t, you know?” she looked up at Wulfgar, who nodded but said nothing. “I think it’s pretty wise that the folks in charge of the transition process refuse to tell you, but make it known that you can find out from them later, after you’ve had a chance to acclimate.”
She put the last of her repaired armor pieces back onto its display rack, then twisted left, then right, and stretched her arms toward the ceiling.
“I suppose,” she said, “that I could now look into it. To find out how my previous life ended. But I think it’s still too fresh. There’s so much else that I won’t be able to find out, I think. Like, what happened to my dog after I died? Did someone take care of her?”
“You had a pup?”
She smiled, “Yeah, I miss her. We used to go hiking a lot.”
“Where at?”
“Upstate New York. Where I’m from,” her smile became sad, “I suppose that I could grind to level fifty, so that I could exit back into the bigger Omegaverse, and go through all of my old social media. Figure out what happened to Binny. See how my family is,” she laughed, “and see who went to my funeral and what nice things everyone said about me. See if my boyfriend is seeing someone else.”
Wulfgar tried to conceal his shock. He didn’t know that you could exit out of this world at fiftieth level with no penalty. There was so much information that other players took for granted that he just didn’t know because he came into this world without going through Clive’s indoctrination process. Of course, he also had a great deal of information about this world, and the Omegaverse, that no other player had.
“There’s no hurry,” he prompted her.
“Yah, I know. Time moves much faster here than outside. Or slower,” she laughed, “I never remember how I’m supposed to describe it, just that a year in here is nowhere near a year out there.” She laughed, “For all I know, they haven’t even
had my funeral yet.”
“For all I know,” she continued with a low, evil laugh, “they haven’t even found my body yet! Maybe my serial killer hid me extremely well!”
Wulfgar raised one eyebrow.
“For all I know,” she shrugged, “I stepped in front of a bus.” She shrugged again, “For all I know …”
Chapter 4
“I think I know what you mean,” Wulfgar nodded to Lauren as he left his little room. He stretched the sleep away and rubbed his eyes then pulled on his leather shirt, happy that body odor didn’t seem to be an issue in this world. He hadn’t bathed since arriving - and indeed had showered in urine twice - and still he couldn’t smell himself.
“What’s that?” Lauren asked, looking up from a foot powered stone wheel where she was sharpening her sword, her right foot rhythmically pushing down on a pedal which spun the wheel at a high rate. Sparks flew as she moved the blade’s length along the surface.
“What I miss. And I do miss it.”
Her mouth broke into a full toothy grin.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. My, uhm, morning constitutional.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Uhm, moving my bowels.”
She laughed.
“Yup. That’s it. Weird, isn’t it? How that was such a normal part of the daily routine that you never would have thought you’d miss. Hell, if asked, I’d probably have said that I’d be glad not to have to bother with that anymore.” She stood, sheathing her sword; the scabbard hanging from a hook on the wall. She began to pull on her armor.
“Need any help with that?”
“Nope! Thanks,” she twisted into her breastplate and cinched and latched the leather straps, tightening the front and rear pieces, “I got good at doing this myself a while ago.”
He nodded, then began to get ready himself. He pulled on his backpack, then his belt, shifting it until his short sword nestled comfortably against his lower back. He looked up once he was situated, to Lauren’s smiling face.