by Elliot Burns
Dagger
Base attack: 7
Fortified steel hilt: 3
Total attack: 10
This was going to be fun. His dagger had seemed such a basic weapon at first, but now he saw its potential. Who knew what kind of upgrades were out there? Better blades, better hilts, and maybe even things that could add elemental damage to it.
It was only a small thing, but getting a gift from the peasant showed that Jack had managed to win him over. It made him feel like he could do this, that maybe he had what it took to be a lord. Nothing could break his good mood.
“I have unwelcome news, Lord.”
He turned to see Elena stood at the side of the field, fresh from her impromptu autopsy on the horse. She greeted Jack with wide eyes. Her surcoat was stained by Molde growth from the horse’s side, and her knees were covered in dust from the path.
“Let’s have it then,” said Jack.
“The horse was saddled, as you saw,” said Elena. “But the rider was nowhere to be seen. Only, the saddle had Lord Veik’s sigil on it.”
“Did it escape from his stables or something?”
“No lord in his right mind would keep a diseased horse within a mile of his land. Lord Veik has more resources and a tighter guard than us. No beast carrying Molde would make it into his city unless he wanted it to.”
“Are you saying he did this on purpose?”
“I believe he contrived to have the infected horse set on course for your lands. He left it saddled with his sigil so that you would know it was him. This was an attack, Lord.”
So, Lord Henry Veik knew that Jack was here. It was only a matter of time until they’d need to meet on the battlefield. Despite that, he felt satisfied. It hadn’t been the worst day he’d ever had. He’d levelled up, learned the Truespeech skill, he’d upgraded his dagger, and he’d managed to get the peasants on side a little. Lord Veik could send his infected horses all day, and it wouldn’t worry him. He could do this.
Chapter Nine
Two days later, Jack and Elena walked along the dust-covered road toward the peasant village. Bluntfang trailed at the tacher’s side, and every so often she fed him treats from one of her pockets. They decided to walk rather than take their horses because Jack wanted to see a little more of his lands. There was a cold snap to the air. The chill seemed to complement Elena’s milky white skin. Her red hair was tied back tight so that not an inch could blow out of place. The sunlight hit her face and highlighted its angles, and she had a pixie-ish look in her eyes.
Starting on day four, he and Elena had decided to make a daily ritual of walking together so that he could see more of Holuum, and so that she could inform him about Royaume. She was an excellent teacher, since she never lectured him and always tried to make it a discussion. He learned a lot about the geography of the world from her.
He discovered that Royaume was an amazingly large and varied land. The hub of it was taken up by the territories of the lords, most of whom were AI characters who his uncle had designed as placeholders. If a human joined the game, one of the computer lords would disappear. While they were controlled by AI, the other lords weren’t involved in the battle for each other’s kingdom stones.
Beyond the civilized lands were outlier territories that didn’t belong to the lords. Instead, they were claimed by various races. Some of them just wanted to be left alone, while others desired to grow their power to match the lords. Unfortunately for them, the outlier territories were often barren. This meant these races lacked the resources of the mainland powers.
He and Elena carried on beyond the peasant houses and further along the dirt road. Perhaps ‘road’ was too grand a term for it. The only thing that separated it from the land around was that it was worn by footfall. This network of roads spread all over Jack’s land, connecting the houses and fields together. Much of the land was bare, since the buildings that once existed were gone, and Jack had yet to rebuild them.
Jack was in such a rush to explore as much of his land as possible, that he kept speeding up and leaving Elena behind. He felt an energy inside him, and he needed to expend it. Walking at Elena’s casual pace made him tense. I need to see it all. I need to see everything now, he thought.
Every so often, Elena took deep breaths. “I like the smell out here,” she said.
He sniffed. “It smells a lot like dung.”
“Spend decades cooped in Tacher Halls and you’d appreciate any scent that isn’t a dusty book or ancient stone. But I asked you to walk with me for a reason.”
“What is it?”
Elena stopped walking and looked at him. “Have you realized where flek comes from yet?”
“It’s a currency. Where I’m from, it's printed. I don’t know where it comes from here.”
“Flek comes from the ground. It is mined from flek fields, and then refined from its raw state into currency.”
“There must be flek fields somewhere around here, right?” said Jack. “Otherwise it’d be a shitty place to build a kingdom.”
Elena nodded. “Yes, there are flek fields here.”
The tone of her voice made him sense there was more to it than that. “I’m guessing there’s a but…”
“You have to understand. After the last lord went, the game restarted, and the soldiers disappeared. There was nobody to defend your lands.”
“What are you saying?”
“Raiders occupy your flek fields. Until the raiders are gone, you can’t earn flek from them.”
The path ahead of them forked in three directions. Elena took the left trail. This one began to rise on a hill, and before long they reached the top of it. It was a gentle trek, yet the hill was high enough to give him a better view of Halberd’s Holuum. Even so, the flek fields were blocked from sight by a series of mounds in the earth. Smoke rose from beyond one of them.
“The smoke is coming from the raider camp,” said Elena. “They arrived half a year ago. I wanted to root them out earlier, but the soldiers had all left by then.”
“If the fields are on my land, then they belong to me. Let’s kick these bozos off and then start sucking up some flek,” said Jack.
“It won’t be that simple. You have me, a watchman, and Mav. I know that the thief has a certain fighting skill, and I can handle myself too if needs be. But you, and forgive me for saying this, need work before you are taking anything from anyone.”
“Who are these raiders, then? Where are they from?”
“These raiders in particular? I don’t know, but they don’t bow to any lord.”
The truth of his task dawned on him, and it put him in a bitter mood. “So, unless I take back the flek fields, I’m cut off at the source. I’ll be down to my last flek within days.”
“It seems that way,” said Elena. “One way or another, you will need to take the flek fields back. In the meantime, you have the right to claim a portion of the peasant harvest, but you won’t be popular if you do that.”
“I might not have a choice. Let’s go, I need to get back to the building room and see if I can start claiming harvests.”
Jack descended the hill so quickly that he almost leapt down it. More than once he came within an inch of snagging his foot on rocks that stuck out from the mud. He could see Castle Halberd from there, but it looked miles away.
“Slow down, Lord,” said Elena. “Breaking a leg won’t help you.”
He reached the bottom a minute before Elena. She took wary steps around the jutted rocks, clearly in no mood to match his pace. He fixed his sights on Castle Halberd and started to walk.
They walked for barely a minute when the path in front of them began to change. A faint mist gathered on it, as if conjured out of nowhere. As it became thicker and thicker, it started to move in a spiral fifteen feet wide. The edges of the spiral were colored different shades of purple. They started crimson, before becoming lighter at the centre. Round and round the mist went, getting denser with each rotation.
Elena put her
hand on his shoulder as if to stop him moving. Jack already had no desire to walk toward whatever this was. “We need to leave,” she said. “Come, this way.”
She headed back toward the hill, but Jack didn’t follow her. The centre of the mist spiral turned black. Orange, flame-like light seeped out of it. The air filled with the stench of burned wood. The earth around the mist began to crack as if shaken by a mini-earthquake. “Lord, come on,” said Elena.
He followed her toward the hill. “What’s going on?”
“That is a portal,” she said. “It could be harmless, or it could be…something else. Either way, we must watch from a safe distance.”
He only took a few more steps before he walked into something. He felt a stinging pain in his nose as if he’d smashed into a wall, yet there was nothing in front of him. Behind them, the portal began to emit a dull vibrating sound.
“This way,” said Elena. She grabbed him, and they darted to the left. This time it was his forehead that made contact with an invisible wall.
“We’re trapped,” he said. “Whoever it is, they’ve got us by the balls.”
The vibrating stopped. The mist ceased spinning. The orange flames died, and a figure emerged from the centre of the portal.
Jack pulled out his dagger. The handle still felt awkward to grip, but it was better than nothing.
“Where’s your sword?” he asked.
“Back at the castle,” said Elena.
The figure fully emerged from the portal and onto the dirt path. It was a man. He wore an amber robe so thick that it looked like it was carved out of marble. Coupled with the three dozen loops that were sewn into it, the garment looked too heavy to wear. He took three paces to the left. Three more figures emerged from the portal, all wearing similar loop-covered robes.
“Tachers,” said Elena. “I should have realized. Not many people can create a portal like this.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Of all the people who could conjure such a portal, tachers are the best to see. Trust me. Put away your dagger.”
“They have us trapped, Elena. Nobody does that if they want to make friends.”
“Trust me, Jack. I am a tacher myself, after all. Let me see what they want.”
Elena strode forward to talk to the other tachers. They spoke too quietly for Jack to hear. One of the tachers pinched Elena’s surcoat between his index finger and thumb as if he was inspecting it.
Without hearing their words, Jack was forced to try and discern meaning from their tones. They spoke in hushed words and clipped sentences, and there was little about their expressions to show how they felt.
Elena beckoned him over. When Jack stood by her, he could smell the pungent burning aroma of the portal. It was behind the tachers, as large as before. It still spun, but at a much slower rotation. There was in the centre of it except a flicker of orange light.
“Is this how you say hello?” asked Jack, eyeing the tachers.
Despite Elena’s request, he hadn’t put his dagger away. He gripped it tighter, even though that it was useless against four people. One of the tachers opened his robe an inch to reveal a long, curved blade.
Jack knew that as a lord, part of his role was knowing how to deal with people. The way you spoke to others affected how they treated you. He needed to show these people that he wouldn’t be bullied.
“You’re in Holuum,” Jack said, sounding more confident than he felt right now. “This is my neighborhood, buddy. Maybe you’re lost.”
After saying this, smoke-text drifted in front of him.
Truespeech increased by 50%!
[50% toward level 1]
Great, it was working! It seemed that in order to level his Truespeech skill, and learn his first Trueword, he had to think carefully about how he spoke to people. If he did it in the right way, then he improved his skill.
The tacher in the centre, taller than the rest, seemed to be the leader. He had the pale face of a man who barely saw sunlight. Despite that, his cheeks were fleshy. There wasn’t a hint of hair on his jaw or above his lips, neither was there any on the part of his scalp that his hood didn’t cover.
“There is no need for weaponry, Lord Halberd. Not only is it useless, but it is quite unnecessary.”
Jack supposed that he was right, given that Elena was unarmed and they were outnumbered. He put his dagger back in his sheath.
“When a portal appears out of nowhere and traps me, my hand gets itchy for my dagger,” he said.
“A dagger isn’t much use when words are sharper,” said the Tacher.
“How about I show you how sharp my dagger is by sticking it up your ass?”
Jack hadn’t thought that his come-back was particularly witty, but the game seemed to disagree. No sooner had he said it, then smoke-text appeared.
Truespeech levelled up to level 1!
Trueword learned: Modus
[Modus is the Trueword of moods. When spoken to the right person in the right context, Modus can affect how people are disposed toward you. To use Modus, simply imagine the mood you want a person to have, and speak the word to them.]
Now he was getting somewhere. It was time to test it out. He looked at the tachers. Right now, they seemed incredibly smug, and a little hostile. Jack decided it would have been much better if they showed some fear. He imagined the four of them looking at him with wide eyes and being scared of him. With that image in mind, he spoke.
“Modus,” he said, and he imagined the emotion transferring across to them
Modus failed!
The lead tacher grinned. “You should know better than to try word tricks on a tacher, boy,” he said. The four tachers all gave him unbreaking stares. Jack wondered whether they were trying to unnerve him. Whatever they planned, he had to try and control the conversation.
“Your toy looks like it’s going to break,” he said, gesturing at the wildly flickering portal. “Maybe you better get out of here. First, tell me who you are and what you want.”
“I am sure you realize that we are tachers, of Tacher Halls.”
He could see that intimidation wasn’t working with them, so he tried a new tactic. “Lose the forcefield and we’ll talk normally. I’m sure we have some beer at the castle, unless Mav found the bottles that I hid.”
“We can’t do that.”
“Really? Then I’ll have to break your forcefield. You’re not caging me up like a…” he grasping for a witty word to use, without success. “…like a cat.”
He walked to the edge of the forcefield where he’d hit the invisible wall. He drew his dagger, turned it so that the hilt faced out, and then struck where he judged the wall to be. There was a flash of light, and he was knocked onto the floor.
10HP lost!
[19 ATT – 9DEF]
[HP: 287/297]
He stood up, rubbed the arch of his back, and then joined the tachers. “Fine. Just what the hell do you want?”
“We need you to take this.” The lead tacher drew a scroll of parchment out of a pocket in his robe. Jack took three steps toward him, before another flash blinded him. Something hit his chest, knocking the wind out of him, and he found himself back on the floor again.
11HP lost!
[20 ATT – 9DEF]
[HP: 276/297]
He started to feel his cheeks burn. This wasn’t good. He was getting angry, and he was prone to losing his head when that happened.
“We have been ordered not to harm you, but that doesn’t mean we won’t defend ourselves,” said the tacher, as if sensing his growing anger.
“I was trying to grab the little present you asked me to take,” said Jack. “Jeez, you guys are jumpy.”
“Here,” said the tacher, and threw the parchment onto the floor. Elena picked it up and passed it to him.
“Where are your manners?” asked Jack.
The tacher spoke to Elena in hushed voices. It seemed as if Jack had suddenly ceased to exist. After a few brief words, the tachers head
ed back into their portal. The spirals spun faster and began to vibrate. Up close it was much louder, akin to a pneumatic drill. When the last tacher had passed through it, the portal closed and disappeared. It left nothing behind but cracks in the earth and the remnants of a burning aroma.
“What the hell was their problem?” he asked.
“The tachers aren’t the most courteous of people. Most of them spend their lives in the halls. They aren’t accustomed to exchanging pleasantries with strangers.”
“Maybe one of your loops should be earned for learning how to talk nice, then.”
“What does the scroll say?” asked Elena.