by Andrew Novak
Jack drew his sword and swung it in front of himself to cloak himself and Lisa under a curtain of darkness. The beast raised its head, looking around. The light coming from it easily penetrated the veil created by the Shadow of the King. Those eyes flashed and the fiery beast, crouching, made for the pair of players.
There was the sound of wings flapping in the night sky and a tight stream of glowing green flashed in the darkness. It struck the creature, engulfed its head, and swirled down its body. The beast roared again, shaking its head. Jack shoved Lisa toward the trail downhill and ran toward the burning monster.
Ruger streaked by on his black gryphon, shrouded by magic, and began regaining altitude. The green glow dissipated into a weightless, colorless vapor. The monstrosity let out another roar and jerked its head toward the night sky, where Beelzebub hovered. But Jack was already next to it. He swung his sword and slashed at the flaming creature’s side. The blade passed harmlessly through it. It was woven from fire! What was a blow from steel supposed to do?!
The creature turned to face Jack and he jumped away, swinging Shadow of the King to hide himself in the darkness that flowed from the blade.
He was lucky the beast was more interested in its flying opponent. The enormous wings unfolded with a crackle, shedding sparks and dashing Jack against the rocks in a fiery hurricane.
You receive damage!
You lose 6 hit points!
As the beast shot into the sky, the light radiating from it was so bright, Jack had to squint. The fire soared, snatching the black rider on the black gryphon from the darkness. The two flying creatures began to spin in the sky. Ruger cast green fire over his enemy again and sent Beelzebub into a steep turn. Whether due to his pet’s lost speed after the blow from the giant’s cudgel, or the fire beast was simply faster and unaffected by the necro-fire, but it was the clear favorite in this match. Its fire damaged the necromancer, who trying not to engage the beast. Instead, the gryphon pitched from side to side, trying to escape.
Backing away from the battle, Jack barely had the sense to take a few screenshots. It was a feature he rarely used. The ability to take screenies, or “magic pictures”, as they liked to call them in Alterra, was part of the mystical arts, which he had never really developed… but the feature was incredibly useful when you were standing witness to a battle between a great necromancer and an arcane beast. Jack had certainly never seen anything like it and wasn’t sure he would be able to describe it. The fiery creature seemed invincible. They needed more information, but how to obtain it if the monster was unprecedented and, frankly, indescribable?
Lisa bobbed up behind him, grabbed his arm and pulled, forcing them off the trail to take cover behind the rocks.
Ruger swept upwards along the mountain. The burning creature overtook him, beating the gryphon over and over with its wings and snapping with its teeth. First, smoke billowed from Ruger’s dark form and then his cloak burst into flames. The gryphon was soon engulfed by the fire and, shedding burning feathers, crashed to the ground. The bundle of fire, wings folded, descended on the fallen enemy, and the mountainside was covered in smoke.
When the smoke cleared, the fiery beast spread its wings again with a victorious roar, preparing to take to the air. Jack did one more screengrab. It turned out to be the best one, no motion blur. The wings, maw, the blazing fire — it was all visible.
“Let’s go, let’s get out of here,” Lisa was tugging Jack toward a scattering of boulders, where they could slip away from the mountaintop unnoticed. “What is that thing?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Those wings! And that fire!”
“Yeah, a strange brute.”
The scree ended and a view opened of the mountaintop, where they could see the fiery glow prowling.
“What’s it doing, hanging out at the top?” Jack mumbled. “What, it’s not going to fly away?”
“That’s good!” Lisa said, her voice forceful.
“That’s bad,” countered Jack. “I mean, good that the thing isn’t chasing us, but bad that we can’t get into the city now. Personal experience tells me that if we aren’t allowed somewhere, then that’s exactly where we need to go, no matter what. Now we have a new puzzle to add to the collection.”
Chapter Three
Relic Hunters
THIS TIME, they were able to leave the game legally, through the cabin on the Dead Wind. Jack, before exiting back to reality, commanded the schooner to set a course for the nearest port on Stoglav, then he logged into the Shell. He had a letter waiting from Egghead.
There was a public announcement that someone had reached Gaerthon. Did you make it to the shore? Do they give quests there? Did your quest update? Eager for your reply. I’m already warming buyers up for your loot.
Jack was too tired to describe all the details and understood too little to clearly articulate their problems. So, he didn’t bother explaining anything and logged out.
“And I thought we were going to really dig into Gaerthon,” Lisa remarked disappointedly when he removed the virt-helm.
“Ruger’s dug in deeper than anyone. That fire beast killed his pet,” Jack said. “Now, if we try to press farther, we’ll just be sticking our heads in a noose. We need to sleep, and then go back home. First, we need to settle matters in reality.”
“And later?”
“I set the Dead Wind on a course for Stoglav. I’ll drop in on Egghead and dump all our discoveries on him. Let him deal with the headache. My brain already can’t handle it. Why did that flaming monstrosity attack us? Why can’t we trust the minor gods? What’s the meaning of Theokrist’s quest? Egghead loves riddles, so let him deal with it. All while he pushes our loot, too.”
“Are you going to sell Theokrist’s Cloak?”
“Not right now. We don’t need money that badly. And what if we need this guy’s full set later on in the quest?”
“But Ruger took the sword.”
Lisa gave a little shiver at the mention of her former master’s name and added:
“Oh, I bet he’s in a nasty mood right now.”
“It’s fine, we’ll play it by ear. But the cloak stays with me for now.”
“It’s black,” Lisa blurted.
Jack thought about that for a minute, then understood. She loved black clothes.
“All right. You can have the cloak.”
What did it matter? Jack never bothered with stealth and he hadn’t leveled concealment. It was of no importance to a Scand. But Areuts, who lived in oppression on Stoglav, relied on concealment. And Lisa was an Areut. Let the cloak with concealment bonuses sit in her inventory. Perhaps it would come in handy sometime.
In the morning, before they left Simon’s House, he removed the antenna from the roof, coiled the cable, and they painstakingly sprinkled dust over the floor in front of the doorway to hide their tracks.
Along the way, Jack began to speculate on the quests they’d gotten. How was Theokrist connected to Service to the Dark? There was seemingly no correlation between them. Then there was that fiery monster, which killed Ruger. Where had it come from?
It flew out from the Skyfort, right?
The flying fortress, incidentally, had always been a mystery to the players in Alterra. It simply hovered over everything and never meddled in affairs on the ground. Celestial beings dwelling in the sky, disdaining the little people.
Even the fact that the Skyfort reacted to the discovery of Gaerthon was in itself an astonishing thing. Curious, how closely were they watching the lost continent? What else would they send out if they felt the players from Stoglav were in the way? Questions and more questions…
On the outskirts of the ghetto, Jack checked his revolver and told Lisa to keep her eyes peeled. Regardless of what Ruger said, best to stay on guard. Just in case.
But no one stopped them, nobody even called out to them. Jack didn’t even notice any sidelong glances. Just another confirmation of how Ruger persu
asive could be.
A familiar man was milling around the front of the trailer. It seemed to Jack that they had met recently, but he didn’t recognize the man’s face. He didn’t recognize the trailer door, either. Now, another stood in place of the old, shabby — but solid — door. It appeared to be sturdy as well, but new. The hinges gleamed with fresh grease.
The vaguely familiar man sauntered toward Jack and Lisa with apparent reluctance.
“I… I’m supposed to give you a message,” he mumbled. “To apologize.”
Apologies in the ghetto were no less rare than epic artifacts in Alterra.
“Do I know you?” Jack asked, to be sure.
“We met a couple days ago.”
“Hmm,” Jack searched his memory. But he still couldn’t place the man’s face.
He was unassuming man of average height, wearing a battered jacket and cap pulled down over his eyes.
“And in what circumstances?”
“Well, I’m the one… who jumped on you from the wall. And missed. Then you kicked me across the alley.”
“Ahh, that’s right. There was something about your face I didn’t recognize.”
Seeing that Jack was in a good mood, the old acquaintance perked up a little.
“Customary practice, I was covering my face. So, can I give you the message?”
“Go on,” Jack nodded.
He didn’t hold any grudges against the goon. You never knew who you’d meet in similar fashion. If he got irritated at everyone for this sort of thing, then he would lose his mind.
“Romeo said that the door is a replacement for the one we broke. Our mistake, sorry about that. This door is just as good as the old one, though. Here are the keys.”
“All right. What’s your name?”
“Mike.”
“Mike, and why exactly did they send you? As punishment for something? Or what?”
“No, it was Romeo’s decision. He said, ‘He’s already kicked you around, so maybe he won’t get too angry. You’ve already been punished. If we send someone new, he might kick their ass.’ Something like that. Anyway, we’re sorry, we were in the wrong. That’s what Romeo said to pass on.”
“He’s a sensible guy, sending you,” Jack admitted. “Well, tell Romeo, no hard feelings. But now he owes me. One door doesn’t make us square. That whole thing seriously upset me. Damaged my self-esteem. Got me?”
“Not really,” Mike confessed.
“I thought I had a good reputation. And people with a good reputation don’t get their doors kicked down. So, now I think a little less of myself. Yeah, okay, don’t get too worked up over this. Just tell Romeo that he owes me.”
There were traces inside of strangers’ presence, but at first glance, he could see nothing was missing. There weren’t even many dirty prints on the floor. Jack thought maybe this Romeo wasn’t such a bad guy after all. And Ruger turned out to be really cool.
Lisa didn’t engage in conversation with Mike, but after he left, she began making a fuss over the break-in. She grumbled that now they would have to put everything back in order.
“The door lock will have to be changed,” said Jack. “Who knows what these keys are. But that’ll be later. Now I want to check where the Dead Wind ended up.”
The schooner was still at sea, but they could already make out the shoreline on the horizon. Another few hours and the ship would reach Stoglav. Jack ordered the schooner to keep to the course for the coast of Maxitor.
“Before we do anything else, I’m going to take you to Egghead’s. Have you ever been to his place?”
“No, we didn’t meet in Maxitown. I was still in the necromancers’ guild and it was too dangerous for me to cross the border into the kingdom.”
“Ah! All the more reason to go, then. You’ll like it,” he promised Lisa. “There’s so many lace ruffles gathered in one place, you can’t help but appreciate it. But we need to deal with the door first, so we’ll have to forgo our sea voyage.”
* * *
The Dead Wind pulled into a Maxitorian port called Leuven. It was a small, unremarkable town. The important thing was that there was a temple of Astra with a portal here and Jack had stocked up on teleport scrolls on previous adventures. To be on the safe side, Lisa hid her stats with a “wipe”, but it soon became clear that it was an unnecessary precaution.
On the road leading from the port to the main square, passers-by only talked about how the war with the necromancers had ended so unexpectedly. Nightmare and Maxitor had reached a truce, and Eckerhart announced that anyone daring enough to offend his former servant, Eloise, would become his mortal enemy. Essentially the same story as in reality. Now Lisa was out of danger. She was protected, even.
“I feel a little weird,” she told Jack, “I’d gotten used to the need to be afraid.”
“I’m surprised, too,” he replied. “But something tells me that this calm won’t last for long.”
Near Astra’s temple, he stopped to listen to a conversation between two players. One, it seemed, had just spoken with the priestess.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “The NPC always used to be friendly. I come here sometimes just to chat and get a blessing. She’s so hot, it’s a shame that she’s not a real person.”
Wasn’t that the truth. Jack had already noticed that the priestesses of the gentle goddess were young and cute.
“But this time, she just attacked me,” the distressed player continued. “What a blessing! Sin, a bleeping sin on you! Repent! And I only asked if it were possible to use a portal to Gaerthon. It’s been discovered, you know!”
“That’s right. The first player set foot on Gaerthon, all right.”
“Well, I thought, if that’s the case, then maybe the player opened a portal there? Astra would know. It’s her job to manage the portals. But the little priestess began to shout at me that it was a sin. I’m just glad she didn’t hit me with a debuff.”
The player sighed and finished:
“I mean, even when she’s angry, she’s still a babe… Too bad there aren’t chicks like that in real life.”
Jack led Lisa to Sapphire Shields road and pointed out the green-roofed mansion.
“Take a look at how successful players live.”
“Our castle is cooler,” Lisa snipped, thought Jack could see she that Egghead’s home intrigued her.
It was one thing to stroll the streets of Svetlograd or Maxitor and see all the facades of the buildings. They were a natural part of the environment, an element of a beautiful game. Similarly, it’s how players perceived a darkly beautiful cliff overlooking the sea or the emerald green woodland. Just part of the picture.
It was quite different to look at this kind of luxury when you know that it belongs to someone you’ve spoken, argued, and closed deals with. Someone like you, but look at how much better his toy is. You don’t have one like it.
“Of course, our castle is quite another matter,” agreed Jack. “We aren’t ordinary players. We’re the super cool discoverers of the lost continent. But for a regular guy from the ghetto, Egghead’s done well for himself.”
Jack tapped on the door. The same doorman recited the same script, word for word, as he had on the previous visit:
“I shall inform the master, please wait here.”
Lisa began to explore the tiny, prim garden Egghead built in his courtyard and Jack was already worrying that she would demand that something in the same vein be constructed at Dagon castle. But Lisa wrinkled her nose and commented that it was too variegated. Not enough black.
However, the return of the doorman prevented her from expanding on this thought. The status of the guests, as set in his program, had clearly increased. Without stopping to bow, the servant invited them inside.
Egghead ran into the drawing room, rubbing his hand together:
“Well? Tell me! You should have plenty of news! What about Gaerthon? Did you do a lot? What kinds of quests do they give out? Oh, you’ve gained levels! How
did you raise your XP?”
There was nothing of his previous, languid calm in his behavior. Jack couldn’t resist:
“Stop. This is all backwards. You’re supposed to invite your guests to sit, then fiddle with your cuffs… Okay, Listen.”
Jack briefly related their first adventures on Nevil’s island. He wasn’t eager to reveal all his cards, but Egghead wouldn’t be able to help if he didn’t know all the details. Finally, he laid out the most intriguing tidbit — the fiery, winged creature.
“I’m sending you a screenshot of that marvel. Take a look. I can’t get into the ruins of the old city to locate the temple and restore the fire. If I go to another temple on Stoglav, that damn thing might follow me. It has wings, it can fly from the island after me.”
“Mmm, yes…” Egghead murmured, staring into space. He was examining the screenshots. “I can’t recall anything like it. What kind of stats did it have?”
“No stats that I could see, even when I was standing right next to it, hacking at the thing with my sword. The sword did nothing and there were no stats.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“You keep saying that, but I also saw there were no stats on Shadow of the King. This is the same thing. I’m constantly surrounded by things that ‘don’t work that way’. And we have to deal with this thing somehow. The Shadowslayer dagger helped me with the Shadow. Maybe there’s an artifact called Fiery Winged Beastie Slayer?”
Egghead was lost in thought. It was evident that he wasn’t dissembling, but was in fact thinking it over. Finally, he said it just wasn’t enough information.
“Now, if you were to continue on Theokrist’s questline… And could see the beast in action a couple of times… Hey, can I look at the beads?”
Jack showed him and added:
“They aren’t for sale. I would like to put the Cords of Strength on the market, though. Two, for sure, maybe three. I still haven’t decided. They have hidden properties and look pretty unusual. I didn’t have a ‘descrier’ on me, but the question marks over the inventory icons are red. I don’t know if a standard Eye of Zaile would even work.”