by M J Sweeney
Chapter 27
Our arrival back in the city was rather uneventful, which was almost disappointing. I don’t know why I was expecting assassins to leap out from any and every dark corner, but could you blame me for my paranoia?
I stepped back into my city routine. Big Nose thanked me for helping the miners, and Ligan paid me for my wage—despite trying to decline, as I felt responsible for them losing their loot. He received a good price for the heavy eggs from a collector—my share of that amounted to four zorb and twelve dran, which included my daily wage. I asked Big Nose to mind most of it for me, and after I explained my second mugging and subsequent death, he nodded sadly and took care of it. I decided it would probably be a good idea to bury a bunch of spare gear at my tree just in case something similar happened again—and better sooner than later.
Once I gave the vials of tunnel-worm blood to Drognad, I got some more of each of the health-cakes and health-balm in return. He told me that Marcus had been out questing and had also supplied him with ingredients. Drognad would be returning south to Zahnholme once the spring melt had ended and the rivers could be forded, but I could keep supplying one of his cousins in the Enclave.
I ended up buying the gelding from the Bard’s College and got a few rudimentary lessons from Sharisse, but was told I would never make a great rider. From what I understood, elves actually didn’t ride horses so much, wood elves in particular, as riding in dense forest was rarely practical or safe for the horse. Humans were the experts there, their cavalry feared by most other races.
When Ascard showed me a sheaf of papers entitled “The Ballad of Marcus and Cordaen,” I groaned.
“What? How?” I asked confusedly.
“One of our young lads is known to frequent the dwarf pubs, looking out for just such stories. We write them down, collate them, and put them to song or other variations. Most of the dwarf musical and storytelling traditions are all oral lore, so they just do it from memory. When I saw this one, I was surprised to note the two heroes of the tale.”
His expression seemed halfway between amused and glaring, so I couldn’t decide if what I had done was bad and breaking some kind of bardic law.
“Sorry about that, sir. Is it allowed?”
He laughed fully and clapped his hands. “Allowed! Allowed! Boy, it’s encouraged! I wish I had a dozen like you, damaged vocals or no.”
“Really?”
“I was just teasing you. Keep doing it. I found it a good tale. Needed a bit more drama… like a love interest, or some pending tragedy, but overall a good arc. What I found most gratifying was that you didn’t put yourself in the limelight.” He looked at me sharply. “So, what I would like to know is why.” He continued to look at me, waiting.
I gulped. “Well, sir—Ascard, sorry—I’m not a warrior of Aras or Ker-Mordann. Putting me in the limelight would be asking for trouble. I’d rather cast someone else in the role of hero… I don’t need to be one myself.”
“Nicely put.” He nodded acceptance. “Now, here’s the next stanza of that alfar riddle of yours. I translated it while you were gone, as I was getting a little impatient.” He waved another parchment under my nose.
“Thank you, s—Ascard.”
We had gathered a number of books from the college library on arhun alfar. There was no language primer for it, so it took wading through dense scholarly books explaining some of the history and some definition of terms as compared to low and high elvish, called ‘ilya’ and ‘alya’ respectively.
In total, it read:
May the Five Seelie Races Beware
With Maor on the Rise and Iss at Lowest (ebb) ?
On the (?) Day that Ei is Cast in (shadow) (darkness) (turmoil) ??
Shall the Fallen Rise and go Forth
As the Seasons (turn) (change) (grow) ?? and the Stars Align,
Then Maor’s Power shall Shine Down more Powerful than Before,
And the Fallen Shall Rise in their Multitudes
From the Altar of the Fourth House, from the Burial Chamber of Bronze,
From the Valley of Death, and from the Arch of Agrippa,
Shall the Fallen Arise and be Victorious
We looked that over for a time. “So, the first stanza seems to be a specific time. With Maor high in the sky, possibly eclipsing Ei, and Iss not to be seen?”
Ascard nodded yes. “We get eclipses such as this every year, mostly partial, and a full eclipse every few years. Now, the reference there, I think, is also a link to the last stanza—the Altar of the Fourth House. This would be the very ruins you spoke of, the Eragdas Alfar?”
“Yes; the rune is the same as what we have here, no?” I pointed at the appropriate line on the parchment—Fourth House.
Ascard agreed. “So, your next task would be to find the Chamber of Bronze or one of the others, I am guessing.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “I have a niggling suspicion…” I paused. “All right, more than just niggling. I feel certain there’s more to it than that.”
“Good,” said Ascard. “Trust your instinct. Leave no stone unturned.”
Ascard didn’t really teach in the normal sense. Mostly, he just prompted me down a particular line of thinking and let me run with it. If it didn’t bear fruit, he would point out something else and let me run with that. He was not that interested in me learning everything by rote, as he said, “What would be the fun in that?”
“So what about the second stanza?” I asked.
“What about it?” he replied calmly.
I almost groaned. “The change of season thing. That seems significant somehow.”
“Then it probably is.”
“Well… more powerful than before. I mean…” It slipped away. I felt I had something, and then it was gone.
He patted me on the back. “It will come. A riddle is good for the mind and soul. It stretches both. Now, enough of the brain-drain. Time for some exercise; let’s go down to the training yard.”
We went downstairs and limbered up, then took up training gloves and helmets. Ascard usually deigned to wear body armour. He was fast and sprightly for a fairly old half-elf, though it was hard to guess his age.
This time, he had me use my personal weapon, saying he would be using his. As I didn’t see anything placed by the weapon racks, I was a bit confused until he took the old hilt from around his neck and gave it a few practice swipes. A rusty basket-hilt? Really?
Confused, I nodded anyway when he motioned me to take guard. We lined up, and when he made an imaginary lunge at me, I instinctively dropped my spear-head to point and felt a sudden resistance and clang, as if I had deflected his blade. An invisible blade? What?
He smirked at me with a nod, clearly pleased that I had defended. “Don’t trust your eyes,” he advised, “trust your instinct. Don’t look for my sword; it’s not there.” He smirked again. “Look at my hands, my hips, and my feet. That will tell you everything you need to know about my attack. Of the three, the hips are best. They cannot lie, whereas the hands and feet can sometimes deceive.”
He began a complicated series of movements that indeed seemed to deceive my eyes, and more than once I felt the invisible tip of his blade push into my training helm or leather armour. He told me to widen my peripheral vision and use all my senses, not just my eyes. “Hear it, feel it, smell it. Keep high-guard and keep v-stepping when you can. Don’t just dodge backwards and forwards. Use the advantage of the reach of your spear, then its power. Batta-bam. Oh no, you’re too slow.” He tapped me on the chest a couple of times. He did not wear a shield, but he was super-fast and efficient with the weapon. No wasted movements; everything tight and controlled. I was definitely no match for him. With each of his strikes, I seemed to get slower and slower and more and more tired, and he somehow seemed to get faster. He was a lot older than me; how did he do it?
I collected a few more bruises, but enjoyed the rather one-sided contest anyway. When we sat for a break, one of the younger students gave us w
ater and asked if we wanted lunch. He would have been sent by Georg, to check that the “old man” was getting properly fed and not skipping his lunch-time meal, which was known to happen. Ascard waved the young man off. “Thank you, young Paland, but a little later. I’ll come up for it as usual.” The boy smiled, clearly pleased the master had remembered his name, and scampered off.
I kept looking at Ascard’s old hilt of a weapon, now back around his neck. It was an ugly-looking piece, rust and all, but perhaps that was the point. Ascard looked down at me through his blond eyelashes, eyes squinting a little. I glanced away. “Sorry, just curious.”
“That’s really fine, old chap,” he replied with another smirk. “Here, knock yourself out.” He handed me the hilt, so I took it gingerly. Not sure what to expect, I was unable to ascertain its statistics until I activated Identify. The weapon glowed briefly in my hand, its rusty exterior suddenly replaced with a beautiful gold and white metal hilt. I could see a ghostly blade shimmering to a needle point.
/ Ghostly Rapier of the Unseen Strike / Legendary Ghost-Steel
[+15 Agility, Quick Draw +1, -20% dodge/def from foe, +10% Attack Speed, +10% Armour Piercing, Every successful strike removes 10% Agility from foe and gives it to user, stacks up to 5 times, each stack lasts 10 seconds]
Lore:
[There are only three of these peculiar items known in the world, all swords: a rapier, a broadsword, and a cutlass. Made by the human master-smith Gurgaoun early in the third age, his work is known for its devious quality of taking abilities from a foe and granting them to the user. Gurgaoun was said to have studied his craft from the Dark Elves deep in one of their underground lairs, though this rumour has never been substantiated]
What a nice item, legendary too. It didn’t do much in the way of bonus damage, but the agility drain effect would give a decent gain in accuracy and attack speed and reduce an opponent’s chance to dodge. Amazing. A little jealous, I handed it back.
“You could see its particulars?” he asked.
I nodded. “An amazing item.”
“It has been useful over the years. A lucky find in the wars down south. It’s good you could read its statistics. It is a particular gift of Anthul that should come in handy for you in future, no?”
I nodded again.
“I know traveling souls such as you come here with certain gifts to fight and respawn. It’s important, however, that you don’t take any of it for granted, even the blessing of resurrection. Keep learning and studying and looking.” He patted me on the back.
What? I thought. Wait… “You know we are… we come from another place, another world?”
“Yes. You call yourself players, no?”
“Yes.”
“It always reminded me of players in a play, actors. Similar, no?”
He wasn’t a player, but somehow he could recognise those that were. Another bardic gift, perhaps? “Yes. I have been thinking that it’s a bit of a deficit, seeing this world through the eyes of a game that we’re playing,” I said. “It doesn’t do it justice, nor the people within it.” I don’t know at what point that had changed for me, but it had. It wasn’t a game anymore, that was for sure.
“Good, this is good.”
I heard a ding from my interface.
/ Friend Request Sent /
/ From Ascard “Swift-Hands” Artana /
/ Accept Y / N /
Wow, that was strange—NPCs could also be “friends.” Interesting. Of course I blinked on yes. I also decided then and there to stop referring to them as NPCs. They were people, like anyone else.
Chapter 28
That night in my room, I roamed the forums, looking at different information on the risen and perpetual dungeons. I took a few notes as I went.
Quest for Quadrinity involves four locations, as per stanza three.
I need to find four holy artefacts, as per Priestess I’Daon’s instructions.
I need to free four ancient elven spirits trapped by some evil, behind some veil.
I thought about those for a moment, then wrote:
Eragdas Alfar is definitely part of it somehow; it must be the “altar of the fourth house.”
That being the case, the artefact must be there or nearby, but hidden.
Perhaps the final boss—wherever it is hidden—should have it.
Where would the boss be? On another hidden level? Or does it show up randomly?
The risen there seemed rather weak for a high-powered quest-chain like this.
Something nagged at me when I wrote that. The alchemy lab in the ruins had jars of different organs… some seelie and some unseelie. These things didn’t just grow on trees so to speak. Whoever collected them must be able to get outside.
I started looking up entries for undead rampages in the area between Geras Anandiel and Bolgas Dizzini. I found a couple of vague entries in the forums of reports of villagers being attacked by undead to the south of the area a couple of years ago. As I kept looking, I found one specific entry dated ten years ago, when Memory had been first launched from Earth.
It was a report from a traveling healer, who had spent some time helping and relocating survivors from a decimated goblin and human village. The village had been wiped out to all but a handful—five goblins and a lone human survivor—the rest slain by an undead elven necromancer and a small army of skeletal warriors and zombies. It then dissected the dead, and before retaliation could be mounted, it just disappeared. No one knew where it had come from.
Bingo! Evidence, even if it was scanty. The attack had been dated twenty-fourth day of Bourndas in the year 2040. That was exactly ten years ago. That took me down another line of thinking. Bourndas was the fourth month, and these undead elves were from the fourth house. Not a coincidence.
I had first arrived at the Eragdas site in Pargun, the ninth month, in the middle of autumn. It was now Dray, the second month and mid-spring. The necromancer probably went on these rampages every year in Bourndas, the first month of summer and storms—when it was said the last winds of spring spread illness, disease, and decay. That time of the year symbolised a common theme: Ulgorrim was at her strongest, and other Gods, such as Lindane, at their weakest. The month after that, Inzan, and beginning with the Festival of Joy, Ulgorrim was at her weakest again.
After more reading, I learned that there was an ongoing war—almost twenty years old—going on far to the south-east of us, from an ancient human city called Bann Orath. Apparently it was overun with undead, with most of humankind there having fled to either Bann Arden to the west, or to the warmer territories to the south around Asadeena Bay. It seemed to be one reason why the risen were winning a slow war of attrition against the living—they kept coming back, and the living mostly stayed dead.
There was also an interesting debate called the “riddle of unlife.” Various scholars had posed the question as to why or how the risen stayed animated at all—for this energy, the twisted animus of life, did not come from nowhere. It could not be created out of nothing. When it inhabited a body, dead or alive, it caused corruption; chaos and the essence of Memory mixing with unpredictable, violent results. Alien desire, madness, and corruption. It was chilling, like an entity from the beyond that hungered to devour us all in its pitiless maw.
13 Months per year:
1 Argun Spring
2 Dray Spring
3 Dolce Spring—Festival of Masks
4 Bourndas Summer
5 Inzan Summer—Festival of Joy
6 Courpea Summer
7 Felicitas Monsoon
8 Aspen Autumn
9 Pargun Autumn—Festival of Plenty
10 Imago Autumn
11 Okraithe Winter
12 Yurgen Winter
13 Twill Winter—Festival of Lights
Coming back to the task at hand, the other point I latched onto was the nature of the seasons; every year, the moons waxed and waned and eclipsed each other. These monthly, yearly, and decade-long cycles clearly affected
all beings in Memory. So if the risen kept spawning over time, the time and duration of that spawning had been changing. Something that had been bothering me was why no one had found the site and discovered the massive value of the respawn. It would be all over the forums if it had—other perpetual dungeons were farmed by guilds for this purpose.
It seemed that over the last ten years, the risen had been steadily increasing in power. It was written that this was likely to peak in the year 2055, only five years from now. A couple of years ago, the respawn would likely have been only once every week or every month at most. A bunch of adventurers stumbling onto the ruins were unlikely to stay when the undead stayed down and didn’t soon respawn. Another thing I found odd about that was the year. How was it possible that Memory had adopted the rather arbitrary annual numbers of Earth? How did they both coincide, and have even a remotely similar orbit around their respective suns? Plus, why would they adopt the Earth version rather than keep their own? Research for another time, however.
Back to the topic at hand. My guess was that the undead were increasing in respawn frequency just over the last year or so, as the moons’ conjunction (Red Maor and White Ei, in this case) drew closer. Within the cycle of the year, this should mean that the undead were going to increase in power until Bourndas, the fourth month. Suddenly I just knew I had to get back to the ruins and see if I was correct. The month of Bourndas hid the secrets I wanted to possess.
Now I needed a reality check. I had little way to confirm any of this. What if I was wrong, and it was just my mad imagination? I had another hunch and checked back over my quest log.
/ Quest of the Elven Quadrinity /
/ Part One (of Four) /