by Andrew Novak
"Hey, what's with your housekeeper?"
"Lord Sartorius placed a magical spell of fossilization on her. In order to practice his skill in the magical arts, and so she could not distract with her obtrusive behavior. Please, follow me."
The suite of rooms that the doorman led Jack through weren't overwhelming with an abundance of gilt and ornate stuff, like at Egghead's place, but there was a sense of solidity and dignity here. It was immediately obvious that this home belonged to an alpha. The furniture was massive, colors subdued, but overall looked very impressive. A wide hall, illuminated by dozens of candles, filled with shelves of books – an entire gallery of thick, gilded book spines, dulled from antiquity.
There was a table littered with scrolls, a huge map on the wall of Alterra stuck with pins, many pins, decorated with little tiny multicolored stripes. For the most part, the little pennants were grouped around Maxitown. It didn't look like Lord Sartorius traveled much.
It was also clear that he played a mage, not a warrior; otherwise the walls wouldn't be full of shelves with books, but weapons and coats of arms.
This room served as something of a drawing room, a staircase led from here to the second floor, where the owner, probably, was entertaining a different visitor at the moment. Jack looked around and thought that he wouldn't be able to wait long here. Here, he would easily be able to sprawl out on the soft sofa, while at the same time in reality, Carl might have fallen asleep or be deep in thought. Vince would be rolling in his beloved microchips. He wouldn't even notice that a pack of wild dogs was already creeping up on their camp. The hounds of the Blighted Wasteland didn't yap at nothing like the dogs in the ghetto. They crept up silently on their prey. Would Carl notice the danger?
"Tell you what, my good man," he told Malvey, "I, of course, understand that Sartorius must chat with his other guest without interruption. But I am short on time. If he is busy, I'll stop by tomorrow at the same time."
"If you would, your grace," the doorman answered in a dignified voice, "my lord has been eagerly awaiting your visit. I will inform him of your arrival. Kindly wait here."
And the NPC left up the stairs to the second floor. However, he displayed a commendable haste. That was a good sign. Malvey understood his master's moods. He would not risk disturbing the mage had he not exhibited some interest. If the NPC had worked up the nerve to interrupt the meeting with the other guest, then Sartorius had clearly expressed a desire to see Jack.
Sure enough, soon voices sounded overhead. The lord himself was hurrying toward the drawing room with his guest, hastily ushering him out. Or rather, her, because Jack heard a woman's voice answering the mage. As Sartorius and the woman approached the stairs, the voices became more distinct.
"No, no, and there won't be any talk," Sartorius explained. "I really was going to buy, but why would I want an artifact that cannot be used?"
"But you promised!"
"Yes, I promised, but the thing is useless! I mean, it isn't worth two thousand. In truth, I don't need it at all! I could buy it as a fun bauble for my collection, but at a quite different price..."
Two pairs of feet were coming down the steps, a Jack jumped to his feet and went out to meet Sartorius and his guest at the foot of the stairs. The mage was descending first and he abruptly threw over his shoulder:
"Find a way to read the book, and you'll have your money. Otherwise, it's pointless, understand? After all, your master was going to read it, correct? Which means he knows a way! Find out from him!"
"He doesn't know, and now I can't return to him," the interlocutor snapped half-heartedly, her voice familiar to Jack.
And not just her voice. When she followed the mage down into the drawing room, Jack recognized everything else. It wasn't difficult. Another scrawny, pale creature, like the little necromancer Eloise, didn't exist. And this was she, in the flesh.
The mage Sartorius, on the contrary, had a rather ordinary appearance. Average height, medium build, with an unremarkable, round face. He had a thick, gray beard stuck to his face, which he apparently had selected to fit the image of his chosen mage class. A waste, in Jack's opinion.
In fact, Jack was wholly disappointed. This soft, innocuous creature – this was an alpha? An alpha from New Atrium?
Sartorius, Scand
Expertise: 48
Health: 50
Jack was trying to find something, anything in the image of the mage Sartorius that would distinguish him from the common folk. This was an alpha! One might say, a higher being. Jack wondered, where was his body right now? Where did he log into the game? He wasn't lying on a saggy cot in a dirty trailer but... but what was it like there, behind the Barrier? Sartorius probably didn't use a basic, cheap console, like what could be found in a consignments container. Most likely, he was lying right now in a swanky capsule, and the capsule stood in a lavish apartment, like the ones Jack saw in the old advertising magazines. Sometimes they could be found, if he dug around in the ruins.
And all this splendid luxury, just so that he could be a plain, level forty-eight light mage in Alterra.
Jack switched his gaze from the mage to the girl. Even she looked more mysterious, although she certainly wasn't an alpha. And even more than that, she was obviously from the very bottom, or she wouldn't have to play an Areut. Areuts in Alterra were the descendants of the vanquished. Even in the game they lived in the ghettos. This race gave the least opportunity to level any talent, with one exception: the ability to hide and remain invisible was incredibly important for Areuts, and concealment stats for all Areuts were leveled to the max. Although, even this was done with difficulty.
When entering the game for the first time, it was free to register as an Areut, but all the other races required payment: a Scand cost one hundred coins, an Achaean was seventy, Lahittes and Taunites were both fifty. If someone played an Areut, it meant they couldn't afford the registration for a more prestigious race. The fate of an Areut was to farm for a master. Eloise just got lucky enough that she was able to insinuate herself into the personal retinue of a powerful necromancer, but with such a leader, she had only reached level twenty-two.
She had gotten rid of the black robe and was now dressed like a peasant, in a wide brown skirt, white blouse, and blue vest. The wide-brimmed hat was necessary, in all likelihood, to hide her unnaturally pale face.
"Hello, Eloise," Jack nodded to her.
The little necromancer jerked her head up, quickly glanced at him from under her hat, recognized him and gasped, missing a step. Jack carefully supported her by the arm, so she didn't fall of the lower steps.
"Er... Jack?" said Sartorius. "Jack the Tramp? Egghead wrote that you... er..."
"I have demon relics, and these you can use," Jack said quickly. The mage was taking too long to gather his wits and Jack didn't want to wait for him to make up his mind on what to say. "It's for sure, I already checked. I wanted to talk with a specialist about them. Egghead recommended you. Sound interesting to you at all?"
"Yes, yes!" Sartorius nodded vigorously. "Very interesting!"
"Okay. Except right now, I'm not free. Short on time. I just popped in to, how to put it... make your acquaintance, that's it. At the moment, in reality, I'm in a place where it is, let's say, inconvenient to enter Alterra. I'll be back in a couple of days, then we can talk."
"Well, alright, if now doesn't work, then of course..." Sartorius, it seemed, was at a loss. "In a couple of days. I'm in-game in the evenings. I'll be glad to see you... But at least tell me, what kind of relics are they? Maybe I should check the guides and descriptions? To prepare for your visit?"
Jack thought for a minute, then decided:
"It's connected with the King of Demons."
"With Azeroth? Incredible!" Sartorius brightened even further. He was absolutely delighted. "Well, tell me! Tell me!"
"I found something linked to the King himself. I brought it to the temple of Necta, the priestess gave me a quest, and I followed the quest chain, did a c
ouple of stages... true, the last one was cut short. Her master interfered," Jack indicated Eloise with a nod. "By the way, thanks for not ratting me out."
"Yes, I..."
But Sartorius interrupted the girl:
"What do you mean, it was cut short?"
"My next step in the quest was to read the Corrupted Book of Bacchus, and the book was taken by the necromancer."
"I have the book! Here, with me" Eloise exclaimed excitedly. Then she turned to Sartorius, "So, do you want to buy it? Now you can find out what it's for! It's not useless, understand?"
Excitement had gripped the three of them, and Jack felt that something very important was going on. Something that only happens once in a lifetime and he shouldn’t pass this chance by! And also realized that Sartorius was feeling the same. It was burning in his eyes. Was there a romantic hidden under his unremarkable exterior? And then, Jack reminded himself that this was an alpha from New Atrium. Who knew who he was, how people lived there, what their dreams and aspirations were?
Yes, of course. That explained Eloise's presence. At first, Jack was surprised to meet her here, but now it was clear. She had brought the book to Sartorius to sell as an dark artifact. He had an interest in such things, it was no surprise that these sorts of things flocked to him.
"Yes, but I can't read the book!" repeated Sartorius. "Just Bacchus's opening remarks. Eloise, show him."
The girl pulled out the book. Jack only now got a good look at his lost quarry. It was a thin book, bound in black leather with tarnished copper clasps. The leather along the edges had worn through, and the black had faded to gray. It was understandable that the developers drew it to look like it's supposed to be an antique. Eloise flipped the book open and showed him the first page.
Ornately drawn letters formed an inscription:
This book recounts the deeds of the great and terrible. About the war of my Master, the great King Azeroth, about my service to the Master, about the last days and the fall of our kingdom. Read this, child, through a tear, just as I wrote it.
Jack nodded, said he had read it, and the necromancer opened the second page. The text here was impossible to decode. The letters, lines, and words all looked identical to the first page, but when he tried to understand the meaning, they rippled in his vision and the page ran... strange, very strange. What could this mean?
"Through a tear," Sartorius murmured. "Ridiculous! What tears are there in the game? This is nonsense!"
"Pinch yourself in reality, or ask someone to stick a pin in your ass, then you'll have your tears," Eloise advised.
Sartorius frowned and looked like he was going to say something surly, but at that moment it dawned on Jack. Through a tear! He had at least one tear! Well, the Shadowslayer, which evolved into the Shadow of the King, had guided him on this quest so far. But the Tear didn't seem to be involved in any way. That wasn’t right! Wasn't it logical that the Tear was more important than the dagger? This meant that he had reached the place in the quest that required the more important artifact.
He pulled the Tear out and brought it to the page so he could view the text through it. And right away, the lines stopped dancing and the text became clear:
My name is Bacchus. I am an Achaean from Gaerthon. In violation of the will of the gods, I entered Stoglav, the forbidden continent, the domain of Chaos. I encountered King Azeroth, supreme and most splendid of all on the land of Alterra. And I swore allegiance to my King. He opened the secrets of magic to me, shared his incredible knowledge...
"Tear of the King of Demons?" Sartorius exclaimed. "The Tear of Azeroth?"
Jack looked up from the book. The mage's gaze was fixed on the Tear, his excitement at its limits. So, he'd read the entry in the information window floating above the Tear – and had wrapped his head around it. Excellent, it was immediately clear that the conversation with him would be interesting.
"The very one," Jack confirmed. "This is one of the demon relics that I mentioned."
"One! So there are others? Jack, we absolutely must talk!"
"Oh, we'll talk," Jack assured the alpha. "This is why I came."
And then the image shook before his eyes. From somewhere under the fabric of the universe, a voice called out: "Jack, Jack, come out of there! Log out!"
Shit, it was Carl. Something was going down in the real world.
"Carl, what's up?" Jack said loudly, so it would be heard from under the helmet. "Are they attacking us?"
"Not yet, but... It's just better if you log out of the game!" his muffled voice carried over the border of reality.
Carl was his usual laconic self. A good sign. It meant that he was keeping calm. But he wouldn't have called him for nothing, that's for sure.
"Got to go now," Jack announced hurriedly to Sartorius and Eloise. "I need to get back to the real world immediately. Ugh, now I'll be fined five gold..."
"No, no, follow me!" Sartorius pulled Jack toward the exit. "You can log out through the private chapel. This is my home, it’s possible to do it here... but we must talk! Later you'll come into the game right here. Just accept the request I sent you in your PM!"
"Jack, but I...!" Eloise shouted after him. "Why? I have to talk to you! It's important! I only did all this just to..."
"Later, later! When I come back!"
Jack confirmed the contact request sent by the alpha while on the move. Messages flashed reading that the player Sartorius had given permission to use his personal game entry point.
They ran across the drawing room, whipped into the corridor, and Sartorius shoved Jack toward the door... This is what it meant to live large and own a house in Alterra. You got all kinds of nice bonuses here, even a private chapel to exit the game.
Jack raced into a cramped little room, lit sparingly by lamplight, and left Alterra. Reality was deafening. When Jack yanked off the helmet, he was struck by the absence of everything – no bright colors, no loud voices filled with emotion, no life, imagery or sound. The only thing in reality that surpassed Alterra was the smell. It stunk of burning plastic, decomposition, and death.
The Blighted Wasteland was the exact opposite of Alterra. Jack rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was sitting above the basin in which the light of a flashlight moved slowly as Vince was tinkering with the airship wreckage.
Carl was standing beside him, peering into the darkness. Perhaps, if he strained his ear, he could hear the sounds here. Jack heard howling and yelping in the distance, alternating with a low, hoarse snarling. Predators were fighting over the dog corpses, but this hadn’t put Carl on alert. He lifted his hand and pointed at the dark, distant steppe.
"Look, there!"
And Jack saw it. Over the black plain, above the earth and below the star-sprinkled sky, something gleamed. The cold, bluish lights crept upwards and vanished as if they had dissolved into the night. Haze from the geysers prevented him from seeing it clearly.
"It's where that building is," Jack muttered and reached into his pocket for his binoculars.
Sure enough, it was on the roof, where Jack had noticed the strange metal structures. Now, trails of sparks were running along the curved bars, and lightning skipped between different units of the unknown construction.
"Call Vince over, let him take a look," he said to Carl.
Vince stared for a long time at the mysterious thing before answering. Then he thoughtfully suggested:
"It looks like there's an accumulator on the building, and it's getting rid of excess electricity."
"There are people there?" Jack asked, surprised. "Because I don't believe that our new, hairy goblin friends could produce electricity."
“More like there's an automated energy source – solar batteries, for example – on the roof, and they're still in working condition. Everything else is automatic. During the day, it collects energy, the excess is constantly discharged into the atmosphere. Only, when it was light, we didn't see it. I can't tell you exactly how it works, but that seems to be the basic concept."
Jack would have further asked what their technical genius thought about the mysterious lightning, but he suddenly felt a strange coldness in the pit of his stomach. This was how his sense of danger made itself known, and he'd grown accustomed to trusting it.
"Quiet!" he whispered. "Get down, shut up, and try not to move."
They all fell silent, peering into the nighttime gloom. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then Jack heard a noise approaching. The dogs were still gnawing at the carrion, but aside from their snarling and yelping, Jack heard something else. A whisper, light steps, the unmistakable rustle of dry grass... And the sound was growing louder.
A dog, gaunt and rangy, like all creatures in the Wasteland, trotted slowly out of the darkness into the light cast by Vince's flashlight. It ambled around, not looking at the people. Hanging from its jaws was a long, slowly curling body covered in scales that glistened dully in the moonlight. The dog was dragging a half-throttled snake. A hefty one. Its tail dragged behind the hound, the tip still lost in the darkness.
The dog staggered, then wandered on. The light of the flashlight and unfamiliar scents did not scare it away, for some reason. Before it was about 60 feet away from the concealed people, the animal stopped. Jack could see its eyes. They were dull as if covered with a semi-transparent film. Its legs buckled and the dog slowly sank to the ground, collapsing to one side. The snake, however, began sliding energetically and soon managed to get out of the gripping jaws. The long body slipped out of the darkness, as the snake began to wind itself around the dog in rows of coils.
Jack gripped the spear more comfortably and walked towards the Wasteland spawn, interlocked in their deadly embrace. The dog, it seemed, was dying. Its shaggy body shook with weak convulsions and the snake was tightening and constricting its endlessly long body, coiling around its opponent. It was so engrossed in this that it failed to see the approach of a new enemy. Jack struck it. The knife strapped to the stick pierced the serpent's body, nailing it to the side of the shaggy dog, and penetrated deeply between the hound's ribs.