A World Called Memory

by M J Sweeney

  “I don’t care about that,” Hagard grunted, but he stopped pushing forward. He looked at Lilac, then at me, then at Marcus. It must have dawned on him that Marcus had not left the group. That meant if it was a fight, it was two on two. Clearly, he didn’t like those odds. “Fuck it, then. I’m just leaving. Ruins look useless anyway.” He started walking off. “You coming, Lilac?” She scurried after him. “And you, healer? You’re not staying with this loser, are you?”

  Marcus smiled thinly. “I don’t see why not.”

  The dwarf glared at him for a moment and then snorted in disgust. “Your funeral.”

  We waited while they got on their horses and rode back the way they had come, the dwarf muttering the whole time.

  I sighed. “That went well.”

  “I wondered how this would turn out,” Marcus said mildly.

  “You know Hagard?”

  “Not really. I got to know him a little these last days, maybe more than I would’ve liked.”

  “You suspected something like this?”

  “It seemed possible. He was constantly ordering everyone around, myself included. He’s not stupid, exactly, just wants to be in charge a little too badly.”

  “Thanks for staying,” I responded.

  “No problem.”

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked.

  “Stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to see these ruins. I’m still curious. Anyway, Hagard is a dick. He called me ‘healer’ the whole way, never once used my name. You called me Marcus straight away.” He smiled briefly, so I smiled back.

  “Ha. Well, Marcus, let’s go sit by the tree over yonder and have a nice cup of elven tea and discuss matters.”

  I made some of my precious tea (which I was almost out of) and told him of the respawn and my thoughts on that.

  “A perpetual dungeon? Cool. Really cool. Guilds who find these try to monopolise their use for training, experience, loot, coins. Shit. And you’ve been farming here solo?”

  “Yes, it’s been interesting… no, on second thought, mostly boring work these days. But I did level…” I counted, “… six times.”

  “Shit. That’s good. Wait, six times? That means you were taking on level ten creatures when you were level eight. That can’t have been easy on your own.”

  “It was touch and go while I discovered the best strategy. But at that point, levelling was quick, so once I hit a rhythm it was easy enough.”

  “So what do you suggest now?”

  “Can I ask about your, ah, abilities, and your build? I’d actually like to try the ruins, at least in a while, but it would be good to work on our teamwork first, no?”

  He nodded agreeably. “Yup, good idea. I’m only level ten, so if the mobs are level ten to thirteen out here, they’re likely to be thirteen to fifteen inside, which might be a bit beyond me at this stage. Now, about me—I’m Marcus Pollonius, human, male, Priest of Aras.” He fingered his holy symbol, a miniature crossed axe and longsword hung on a leather thong. Aras was the God of War, but also the God of Soldiers, Armies, and Martial Excellence.

  He looked at me, and I nodded for him to go on. “I’m not part of a guild or anything yet; can’t join those till I’m level twenty anyway… but I am a full-fledged member of Aras’ church in Geras Anandiel. I’ve been training as a knight-priest, aiming for the divine knight specialisation, even though I started as full priest class. I’ve been splitting my points between intellect and vitality mostly. I get some strength bonuses from my human heritage. My current spells are… here let me link them for you.”

  He reached out and touched my arm. His abilities then showed on my interface:

  Tier I

  Restore Health 2

  Holy Smite 1

  Light 1

  Shield Bash 1 (free)

  Holy Aura 1 (free)

  “I haven’t had much need for Light so far, but I’ve used all the others, so I’m familiar with their mechanics. Now, let’s see… as a ‘Church-man’ growing up in Geras Anandiel, I get an extra bonus to mana and healing. Aras’s power, in combat at least, grants me better skill with most weapons, and I took the free Shield Bash ability.

  At level twenty, I’ll get Shield Charge also, which I’m looking forward to—bit of a dream at the moment, as levelling has slowed down, but one can hope, no? I’ve also been training with my war-horse. Cost me a fortune; it’s why a lot of my other gear is incomplete. Eventually, I want to add the lance to my weapon mastery and be able to charge into battle that way too.”

  I smiled. He seemed a nice chap. You win some, you lose some, I thought, recalling the cranky dwarf. It seemed odd that the God of War had healing priests, instead of just warriors, but I guessed almost all the gods would. I wondered if Baeloth, the God of Murder, did too.

  To be fair, I linked my abilities for him to see. “Here’s mine.”

  Tier I

  Frenzy 1

  Breath of Life 2

  Holy Smite 1

  Heart of Oak 1 (free)

  Holy Aura 1 (free)

  He looked at that for a moment, his eyes going glassy as he read from his interface. “Nice. Two heal-over-time. Interesting strategy. Does it use much mana?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “At the moment, it’s two-hundred per pop for Breath of Life, but Heart of Oak is only fifty or so. But they’re also fire and forget, so I don’t need mana for anything else… can’t complain. I like the sound of Holy Might; what does that do?”

  “It is nice,” he agreed. “Gives me fifteen point stat increases to strength, vitality, and agility, but only for sixty seconds, and it has a cooldown of fifteen minutes.”

  “Sounds good. Okay then, you up for smashing some undead?”

  He grinned. “That I am, that I am.”

  He stood and swung his arms to loosen up and jogged on the spot a moment, clanking a little. I got my gear sorted—a familiar pattern by now. Spear, check, cloak and knives, check, potion belt and balms, check. Money belt, check. Leather skull cap and cloak and long hair pinned down, check. I didn’t like any of that getting in the way. My long grey hair I had taken to tucking into my armour, all the way down to my potion belt at the back. I was becoming vain about my hair—did that mean I was becoming more elf-like? My remaining health cakes had been put away, as I didn’t want to keep using up too many of those; I had only a few left.

  Marcus unlimbered his shield and swung his hammer. His gear seemed quite good, but it wasn’t a matching set like mine. He was missing shoulder guards, and his helmet was a simple chain coif that went over his head like a tight hoodie. His shield had a blue hammer emblazoned on the front, while the rest was all white. With a white cloak and silver shield clasp in front, he looked quite the “noble knight” figure. I’d have to ask him about his beast of a horse at some point, too.

  After I explained the strategy I had devised, he agreed to help. Once Holy Aura was activated—silver footprints a la alfar—Marcus activated his own, a subtle electric-blue aura that rimmed his feet in a half-metre radius. Looked cool, too. We climbed onto the stone block, though I had to give him a hand up due to his armour. “Not sure if I could climb that on my own,” he grunted.

  Next I demonstrated to him the fish in a barrel routine. He soon got the hang of it. Although his hammer did not have the reach of my spear, he could extend the range by the thick leather thong on its haft and take great sweeping swings with the thing. I had to get out of his way when he did that, else he’d brain me with it. After a minute or two, I just stood back while he smashed in a few skulls, laughing as he did.

  “Fish in a barrel indeed!” he called, shouting with each strike, “Take that! Risen foulness! Back to the grave with you!”

  Killing the archers was a breeze with two of us. After throwing a stone, I would wait for two or three to approach around the wall; then we would both strike and they’d be down in a couple of seconds. The sergeants were also a lot easier. Marcus would wait off
to the side while I would run at the first one. Once another engaged me, he would then run at the remaining archer while it tried to shoot me. Easy.

  We were cautious about going down into the ruins at first, as we wanted to build a bit of synergy. He said he had time, so we spent that first day waiting for respawn, chatting, and killing. A walk in the park, as they say. He showed me Holy Might and Turn Undead. The first one wasn’t too visually obvious, other than giving him faster and stronger swings of his hammer. With Turn Undead, he pointed at one creature and caused it to wander off. He had to repeat this a few times on different skeletons, and eventually one of them “charmed” fully and began attacking its brethren. This caused havoc for a moment, though the remaining swordsmen soon mobbed the single creature. That could be very useful.

  Chapter 13

  We camped by the tree that first night and woke early the next morning. “So I thought about a few things,” I said.

  He nodded. “Go on.”

  “I think you’re probably too low-level for us to go below, particularly with only two of us.”

  He nodded glumly.

  “And at this stage, with my level and the three-hour respawn, it’s going to be too slow to level you up here.”

  He nodded again.

  “But if we ungroup, and you start solo-killing the mobs here, you’ll level up fast, just like I did. I’ll be nearby, ready to add healing or support if you get into trouble. There’ll be no risk of you dying. Easy as cake. But it will likely take a couple of weeks or so. Do you have the time?”

  He looked at me oddly. “You’d do that for me?”

  “It’s no skin off my nose. It would mean you’d be able to help better when we go below.”

  “It’ll be boring while you’re just sitting around.”

  “I’ll catch up on some light reading.”

  He grinned. “Cool. Sounds awesome.”

  “All righty, then let’s get to it.”

  ***

  There was plenty of reading to do through the interface, though it wasn’t always ‘light.’ I read up on the Divines and some of their qualities and areas of influence.

  Although there was a large pantheon of Gods—39 of them!—there was also some kind of over-soul, like an overseer. She was Andromeda, the galaxy in which I now found myself. The interface had a number of definitions of her name, I found them curious. Andromeda variously meant: “the ruler of men,” or “to remember man,” or “to be mindful of man,” and lastly “to be wary of men.” I found that last particularly interesting, given that I was an elf. Did it mean human, or just men in general?

  I also found an odd passage that was often debated by players from Earth.

  Is Memory real or imagined? Like any memory, how far can you trust a fictitious past that the devs probably made up? Have we been conned, are we just floating around as some kind of electronic coding, getting manipulated by their specialised multi-level AI?

  Don’t forget that Memory was the love-child of Harris Jean-Pierre, who had been an avid fan of some of the greats from the fantasy genre—from The Lord of the Rings to Baldur’s Gate to The Elder Scrolls. And since he disappeared quite some time ago, how can we be sure this is not just some AI project run wild, and about to go off the rails? HJP is even rumoured to be living here in paradise, in his own game…

  What followed was whole bunch of conjecture, and wildly varied responses. Some, like me, believed the game to be real, how else could it feel so tangible? Others believed it was an advanced AI gone rogue, and we were all infinitesimal bits of code within the Memory main-frame back on Earth. And others seemed indifferent. If the shit weren’t broke, why try and fix it? Stuff like that. It made me think on it some more, but I was still convinced I was right. Call it a gut feeling.

  I also did my best to pay attention to Marcus, and took plenty of breaks from my research.

  It was easy enough for Marcus to smash the initial undead swordsman, and with the archers, if he used the same tactics with the cover of the wall, they were too stupid to back up and take pot-shots, so he avoided the worst of that. With the three sergeants, he usually needed my help, as the archer would find his mark more often than not, and if two of them started shooting, he was in a too much danger.

  Marcus didn’t have the DPS or movement speed to be able to pin all three of them down, or evade and take cover. I would often hear him mutter, “Fucking archers, don’t like fucking archers.” I would step in and spear one of the shooters, usually from behind, while Marcus healed himself and pummelled the first. Then we would take care of the last one together. Finally we would collect all the gear and repeat.

  With some trust, I showed him the fisherman’s hut and all the weapons I had collected. It was all outside now and starting to rust, as there wasn’t enough room inside. He went to his pack mule and retrieved a large canvas tarpaulin, and we wrapped the better items in that.

  As he levelled up, he improved, though the sergeants usually remained too tough for him to solo. Even if he did manage to Turn one, the other two would whittle him down. On occasion, he managed to get a critical Turn and the undead would fight for him. In those moments, he would manage to kill all three and cheer, “Aras loves me!”

  In the hours in between respawn, we sparred and trained with each other. I showed him a few of my tricks with the spear. He had trouble not getting brained or skewered when I activated Frenzy—it was too fast for his shield arm to be able to deflect or avoid particularly when either end of my spear could come in almost any unexpected direction. I knackered him a few times, but with his plate codpiece, I didn’t do any irreparable harm. He had brutal impact with his hammer; I would suffer broken limbs easily if he really let fly with that thing.

  Marcus also had a Bash ability with his shield, extra damage and with a chance to stun. It didn’t always proc, but when it did, he could usually get the better of me, tapping me on the head with his fat beast of a hammer while I was reeling from the stun.

  My levelling had slowed, with the combination of being level 14 and letting him do all the work. I was just waiting, but I didn’t waste my time.

  Trying my hand at a bit of calligraphy, I took a few sketches of the elven symbols carved into the large circular front door of the ruins, and did some reading and research on that. It was slow going, as most of the stuff in the forums was incomplete or just guesswork. As I knew the standard elf script as a wood elf, I was able to piece some runes together. At least I could read the title of the ruins—Eragdas Alfar—and a few other words. Eragdas meant “Fourth Moon” and Alfar was “True Elf,” but also could mean “Home” or “Abode,” so it roughly translated as “House of the Fourth Moon.” I also found that the fourth month of the year, Bourndas in the trade tongue, was a time when Lindane was considered to be at his lowest ebb and Ulgorrim (the Goddess of Necromancy) was at her highest. That was interesting.

  When I got sick of that, I played my lute, feet swinging on the stone block while Marcus brained the undead. He complimented me on my playing, but I don’t think he was that serious. I spoke out a freshly created limerick, loud enough for Marcus to hear.

  “There was a young man from Geras,

  Who broke an undead impasse,

  He had a hammer to swing,

  And a shield that went ding,

  But no girl to put it up her…”

  I trailed off, leaving the last word unsaid. He stared at me for a moment, smiling and shaking his head. “Crude.”

  He had taken a pause from smashing undead archers. “At least I didn’t try singing it; no need to torture everyone,” I explained.

  “That was almost funny,” he commented. “Almost.”

  “What else rhymes with ass?” I asked.

  “Bass, has, gas, surpass…”

  “Hmm, I think gas will go nicely.”

  He groaned. “Of course you pick that one.”

  We kept to this routine for a couple of weeks until Marcus levelled to 14. The days and nights were getti
ng colder; my summer time in Ell’Escow had definitely passed, and after the weeks here, autumn was also starting to fade. We foraged for food by laying traps for rabbits and birds and managed to kill a couple of wild pigs, and supplemented the meat with some wild greens and dried herbs from our packs. Marcus was both a good forager and a good cook, so I was more than appreciative. We had to do this a couple of times per week, and stored the extra food in our hut.

  I spent a lot of this in-between time sewing and washing clothes, including some of Marcus’s as he seemed indifferent to that task. I hated being untidy, nor did I appreciate his body odour, insisting that we both wash in the lake a few times a week. He only grumbled briefly, but complied like a child being chastised by his mother. Was I turning into a bit of a mother hen? Too bad. Good hygiene was important.

  Chapter 14

  We finally ventured inside the deeper ruins. I took other gear besides my weapons, including my small pick-hammer, some rolled up paper and pencils, the oh-shit, and my water flask and health balm. I gave half a health-cake to Marcus and ate the other half myself. Other than that, my pack was largely empty, so I could stash some loot in it. I was hopeful. Marcus also carried a mostly empty backpack under his white cloak. On this run, we smashed through the undead up top in less than forty minutes to allow as much time inside as possible.

  As Marcus had the Light spell, I didn’t need my lantern. He set it on the middle of his shield, and set it for low level. That was on my request—I wanted to avoid disturbing any inhabitants at first. We crept inside and I pointed out the bones layered on the floor. I had also warned Marcus about the curse—that we shouldn’t take anything from inside, at least not straight away. He looked grim and determined.

  I got out my oh-shit and extended it. I took point, with that in one hand and my staff in the other, tapping the walls and floors. Marcus looked on curiously at first, frowning a little, then nodded acceptance. “Right, smart,” he murmured softly. I was ready to drop the oh-shit and use my spear at the first sign of trouble.