Expedition- Summerlands

by Nathaniel Webb

  “Shouldn’t we count it?” Magpie asked.

  “In a minute, haircut,” replied Cass.

  “I’ll count it.” Magpie dove a hand into the box and began to make neat stacks with the coins he pulled out.

  “Noah, how does your hand feel?” I asked. He was staring at it, closing and opening it in front of his face.

  “Tight,” he said.

  “Tight?” I cocked my head.

  “Like new shoes.” Noah put his hand in his lap.

  “We’ll do some passes tonight to break it in,” I offered, and he nodded.

  “Anybody need seconds? Thirds?” Naila called from the back counter. Noah and I shook our heads, and Cass just put a hand on her stomach and groaned. Naila smiled. “Just leave the dishes. I’ll get ’em after.”

  “Two hundred fourteen coppers and three silvers,” Magpie announced. “They were hiding at the bottom.”

  “Not bad for our first day, Hearthammer,” said Cass. “You too, Magpie.”

  “What’s that worth on Earth?” I asked. “I never got a clear sense of the exchange rate. Noah?”

  “I don’t know,” Noah said. “There doesn’t seem to be a clean exchange. I think Expedition takes a cut if you don’t spend the money in the Summerlands.”

  “It’s like company scrip,” I said. “That’s devious.”

  “Golden Apple are obviously doing just fine, the assholes,” Cass said. “We could’ve used that extra coin. Anybody get that on stream?”

  “You’re the only one who kept your camera on,” Magpie said.

  “Seriously?” Cass rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

  “He really healed me,” said Noah. “It would have cost a lot more at the White Magic Guild.”

  “I think they knew, though,” I said. “You can tell if a drone is filming by how it moves, right?”

  “Wolfheart did seem to stay back from Jessamine,” Magpie agreed.

  “I’ve certainly never seen them act like that on the feeds,” I continued. “It was the same thing when we first bumped into them here at Open Seasoning. All our feeds were off then.”

  “Public image,” said Cass with a sneer. “I bet you’re right. In fact, I know you are. Okay, Hammers, new rule. Whenever we run into GA, everyone’s camera stays on.”

  We nodded. Life in the Summerlands was turning out to be a lot more complicated than we’d expected. Out of everything we’d had to navigate so far, the sortie to the White Chasm had been the simplest of our challenges, even if it was the most terrifying and painful. There was clearly a whole thicket of unwritten rules here to be navigated and despite Cass’s righteous anger, I was a bit relieved that we hadn’t made enemies of Golden Apple.

  “Okay,” said Cass, leaning forward. “We don’t know how much this treasure would be worth to my dad, but we’re set for food and lodging for now. I say we enjoy the cash. We’re gonna need a hell of a lot more, so let’s use this to get set up while we look for a bigger score.”

  “Do you mean—” I said.

  “That’s right.” Cass grinned. “Shopping montage.”

  ***

  I stepped out into the scented evening, absorbing the sights, sounds, and smells of Meat Street at night. During the day, it was like a market, crowded and bustling with shoving, shouting vendors. After nightfall—9:07 pm sharp, just like every day in the Summerlands—it became more like a public square. The lanterns and windows of the restaurants cast a golden glow on the sidewalks, where adventurers sat long into the night, sipping coffee and swapping stories. This was the time when the walls between rival adventuring parties broke down and the humans in the Summerlands, the daring and the wild, the rich and the famous, joined together in awe of what they’d accomplished by coming here and surviving.

  I already loved it.

  But there was a sour note in the melody the beautiful Summerlands were weaving around me. Jason was missing. I’d been able to put the pain away temporarily in the whirlwind of our arrival, but his absence had been painfully obvious at Athan’s Rest. He’d been our heavy fighter, our tank; he should have been up front with a sword and armor, not Noah. Maybe then Noah wouldn’t have gotten hurt. And as far as whose fault that really was, I had no illusions.

  “Hey.” Cass put a hand on my arm. She’d come up behind me while I was lost in my reverie, moving more softly than usual.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  “We need to talk,” she said. She glanced down the street, to where Noah and Magpie were chatting with a couple of female adventurers. One of them pointed to an empty wooden cup on their table; Noah passed his hand over it and when I could see it again it was full of water. “Just us.”

  “I know what this is about,” I said, “and I’m really sorry.” Cass’s brow furrowed, so I plunged on. “I really sucked today. I was useless—worse than useless. I understand if you’re pissed. Do you think Noah is mad at me?”

  “Noah—Sepharad, shit—couldn’t hold a grudge if you put it in a bucket for him,” Cass said. “Actually, I think he’s too excited about getting healing from Wolfheart.” She gave me a tired half-smile. “But you’re right. You sucked today. I love you, but that was awful. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to find your bell after you dropped it.”

  “I know, I just—”

  “Don’t.” Cass sighed. “Em, you’re my best friend. You’re my sister. But I’m also your party leader and I need you to step it up, okay? This isn’t us practicing out in the dust field. Noah was really hurt today.” She looked back at the boys, who were laughing. Magpie had pulled up a chair, though Noah still stood stiff-backed like a soldier under review. “I’ll admit Magpie came through, though. Who knew he was as obsessed with old books as Noah?”

  I looked at my boots, which were spattered with brown dots of dried blood. There was a strange feeling fluttering in my chest and I discarded a few hypotheses before pinning it down: I was annoyed at the attitude Cass was putting on.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d messed up against the harpies: Cass was supposed to be party leader, but when I’d asked for orders, she wasn’t there. The boys and I had stumbled all over each other as a result. She was acting the part now, which is what had triggered my irritation, but in the White Chasm she’d been like a solo player.

  I took a breath, trying to figure out how to tell her without breaking her heart. When I looked up, she was gone.

  ***

  Bad Luck Alley was empty and silent under a blue-tinged midnight moon. I stifled a yawn as I surveyed the implements set out on the sidewalk in front of me. Two simple bells of dull iron, a tiny red gem, Wayland’s dagger, and three copper coins: all the tools of a real red wizard.

  It was time to see what I could do.

  I was determined not to screw up like I had at the White Chasm, but more than that, it was high time I figured out what spells I actually knew. I’d spent five years reading and practicing, but that didn’t mean I could just toss out magic at will. For one thing, I’d already discovered that casting spells in the Summerlands went deeper than just making the motions and saying the words. There was also the matter of fake spells.

  It was an unavoidable side effect of the market. Any Summerlands spellbook that wanted to sell had to either offer something new or collect from sources that had. Sometimes this meant a licensing deal with a player who’d actually discovered or mastered an unknown spell, but less scrupulous publishers were happy to pad out their books with spells born in the imaginations of writers who’d never set foot in the Summerlands.

  Most fake spells were easy to spot. For one thing, they tended to make lurid promises, like a series of bell passes from The Real Red Book that would supposedly fill any listener with unsuppressable lust. Others fooled even the hardcore fans for at least a little while; one notorious video claimed to show a red wizard summon an invisible servant to open a locked door for him and that player’s stream rocketed up the charts until somebody noticed the tip of a wand making the telltale motions of the white magic
spell for levitation in the corner of the frame.

  I picked up the dagger and got to work.

  The first spell I tried went off with gratifying ease: with the right grip, a few taps with my fingers, and a murmured word in Elvish, the weapon began to glow with a pulsing white light. I gave it a few waves and it left an afterglow that hung in the air for a few seconds, illuminating the implements by my feet.

  The other light spell I knew involved rolling the little red gem quickly over my fingers, muttering to it until it gave off sparks. It took me a few tries to get the movements right, but when I did, the jewel spat lights like a firework. The glowing white motes danced before my eyes and when I blew on them, they flitted out over the narrow street, where they reflected in a puddle until they faded into the blue night.

  I wasted the next half hour on two spells that simply wouldn’t go. One, which claimed to shoot a beam of fire from the face of a coin, was probably fake: no matter how exactly I performed the motions and spoke the words, I couldn’t feel even a flicker of heat in my stomach. The other had to be real, because I’d seen it in action: a spell to create an illusion from a jewel similarly to how I’d drawn out the light. That spell, or some more advanced version of it, probably explained the trick Belphegor had pulled on me at the Guild Hall. But try as I might, I couldn’t make it happen on even a small scale, and eventually I resigned myself to the thought that I simply had the words or motions wrong.

  I was burning with curiosity about the freezing spell I’d watched Dr Agony perform over and over in the clip from his feed, but I had no monster to test it on. Instead I turned to the last spell on my mental list, the signature of every red wizard and probably the most beloved piece of magic ever seen in the Summerlands.

  Fireball.

  All it took was a copper coin. I plucked one from the ground and began to roll it over my fingers like I’d practiced so many times in the dust field behind our apartment block. The coinage of the Summerlands was thicker and heavier than the quarters I’d used, but it was still easier to manage than the little jewel. Soon I had the copper piece moving smoothly back and forth across my knuckles.

  With the motion down, it was time to add a little Elvish. The words had been etched into my memory for years, and they came easily when paired with the familiar motions of the coin.

  I gasped and almost dropped the copper piece: it was drawing lines of warmth on my fingers as it passed over them, and its growing red glow stood out sharply against the night. My nostrils flared as I willed myself to ignore the stinging heat. Soon the coin was nearly burning my skin and I had to squint against its light.

  It was time.

  The last motion of the spell was to flick the coin away, hopefully at some target that you wanted to blow up. Casting around in rising panic as the copper piece scorched my fingers, I saw a wooden barrel tucked between two narrow stone buildings at my back. I sent the glowing coin spinning toward it without a second thought and I almost hit it, but the coin pulled to the right at the last second and smacked into the stone corner next to the barrel.

  There was a flash of fire and a much louder whump than I expected as the coin burst into a blossoming ball of blue-and-white flame that lit up the night for a single glorious moment.

  Three stories above the scorched and smoking corner of the building, a window slammed open to reveal a scowling, bearded face.

  “Shut the hell up! People are trying to sleep!”

  ***

  We were all up early the next morning. It was like Christmas. We had money and we meant to spend it.

  Well, the others had money. I knew I’d done the right thing by paying for Noah’s healing; insisting on using my cut of the treasure had been a balm to my conscience, but it was hard not to feel a pang of jealousy as Cass and Noah compared notes on what to buy. Magpie was as quiet as I was, though, which somehow made me feel better.

  Our first visit was to Wayland, the scrap dealer. My immediate impression as we walked through the door, the dead adventurers’ gear split between us, was that he was surprised to see us, but he quickly covered that with a brisk, professional demeanor that was miles more accommodating than his edge the day before. As agreed, he let us keep the gear he’d lent us, which in the light of morning was clearly not as nice as the stuff we’d retrieved for him.

  From there we split up to do our own shopping, agreeing to meet back at the Expedition Hall on Portal Square at lunchtime. With only a few coppers to my name, I headed back in the direction of Coin Street, thinking it might be fun to torture myself by watching the high-end blacksmiths hammer away at weapons I could never afford. I had my camera on again and I was talking about the quality of the sunlight as I walked backwards through the winding alleys off Meat Street. So I wasn’t paying attention at all when I collided with someone in a crash that sent us both tumbling to the cobblestones.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry!” I said, getting to my knees and dusting off my armor. My drone buzzed around my head to keep my face in focus and I could feel a blush rising in my cheeks. “Good thing nobody is watching this.”

  “You never know,” said Naila, who was picking up vegetables from the street, brushing them off, and returning them to a big wicker basket.

  “Naila!” I said stupidly. “Hey! Uh, sorry about that. Here.” I began grabbing vegetables and trying to clean them on my pants.

  “That’s okay,” she laughed. “By the way, I heard about what happened at Athan’s Rest yesterday. You should have said something at dinner.”

  “Oh, we’re fine,” I said. “Sepharad got healed by Wolfheart, did you hear that?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Naila said. “I think your boy told everybody on the street last night. Classic newbie motormouth. Come on, help me up.”

  I did, and once we were both standing she slapped me on the shoulder in thanks.

  “Hey, if anything like that ever happens again, let me know, okay?”

  “What do you mean?” I felt my brow furrow.

  “If anybody gets hurt,” she said. Her eyes flickered up over my shoulder and I realized she was looking at my drone. I made a snap decision, snagged it out of the air, and hit the Stream button to shut it off. Naila sighed dramatically.

  “Much better,” she said. “I hate those things, no offense. I always feel like they’re watching me even when they’re not.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. Naila’s mouth quirked in a little smile.

  “You’re sharp, you know that?” She shook her head, a little gesture of resignation. “Come on, I want to introduce you to someone.”

  ***

  “Wayland’s all right, as far as it goes, but he’s an ex,” Naila said as she led me down a long alley between Meat Street and Coin Street, where most of the shops were. We’d dropped off the basket of vegetables at Open Seasoning before setting out for whatever introductions she wanted to make, and with her hands free, she gestured expansively as she talked.

  “Ex?” I asked. “Did you guys…?”

  “Ha!” Naila laughed. “Not an ex ex. An ex-adventurer. Shopkeeps in Wellpoint are split between NPCs like me and retired players like Wayland. And by retired here, I definitely mean failed. Folks who couldn’t hack it, got injured, whatever, but for whatever reason didn’t want to go back to the real world. Not that I can blame them. Who would want to leave all this?”

  The sun was just cresting the roofs above us, warming the morning shadows of the alleyway for what promised to be another perfect day.

  “Better to serve in Heaven than rule in Hell,” I ventured and Naila laughed again.

  “Exactly! Anyway, the exes, they don’t really get it, you know? They tend to be bitter and they take it out on noobs like you. They can’t give up the Summerlands, but they still feel like failures.”

  “Unlike the NPCs?”

  “Unlike the NPCs,” Naila agreed. “We actually appreciate being here, you know? Even the ones who came here hoping to earn tickets are happier than the exes who went
the other way. But hey, enough about your poor choices in shopping. What brought you to the Summerlands?”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about Jason and Keats yet, but at the same time, I liked Naila and didn’t want to lie to her. “We have a friend back home who needs money.”

  “Trying to save up, huh? Well shit, good luck. Enjoy the exchange rates.”

  We walked on in silence for a while, pushing our way past workers hauling crates of food and hungover adventurers stumbling home.

  “Earn tickets?” I asked. This was all totally new to me. Expedition Games didn’t exactly advertise the mechanics of their player support systems.

  “Sure,” said Naila. “That was the promise Expedition made to the first round of NPCs. We came here for free and they helped us set up shop. Then, if we saved up enough for a ticket, we could buy in and become players.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “How does Expedition make money off that? Aren’t they paying you, too?”

  “Hell no!” Naila stopped in the middle of the narrow alley, forcing the other early-morning shoppers and workers to split around us. “Being here is payment enough, that’s what they said, and honestly I don’t disagree with that part. But did I say they ‘helped us’ get set up? What I mean is they leased us land and sold us equipment on credit. Extended by them. At interest rates that they set. Of course as a restaurant owner, I need to get my supplies somewhere, and guess who’s ready to sell me fresh meat and veg from their factory farms back on Earth?”

  “I had no idea!” I said. “Wait, what about fetch quests? NPCs pay adventurers to go get them herbs for potions and sunstone for smithing and stuff.”

  “Oh yeah, we’re not allowed to go get it ourselves. Gives the players something to do, and gets our coin back in circulation. There are a ton of rules like that.” Naila made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snort. I was starting to get the distinct impression that she’d kept all this bottled up for years. “Really they just want to keep the money moving around. The whole thing is a little bottle economy other than the money that flows up to Expedition.”