by Skyler Grant
I explained, not sparing any details. I wasn’t trusting myself to be impartial at the moment. Yvera wasn’t wrong, I wanted her. In our short encounter she’d struck me as brilliant, crazy, and thoroughly selfish. I was fairly sure the sane and rational response was to have nothing to do with her—but I desperately wanted to bring a smile to those divine lips once more.
“Bitch,” Ashley growled. A glazed look suggested she was fighting with her interface. “I’m logout locked too. Walt?”
“Same here” Walt said after a moment. “I tried a few sub-menus and forcing an interface reset thinking it might disconnect. No go.”
“She mostly seems into me, perhaps she’ll let you two go, when she gets what she wants,” I said.
Ashley looked as if she wanted to slap me, hand twitching at her side before she turned to Walt, her voice unusually sharp as she asked, “Is she one of them?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Ashley said, “You can’t trust her, Liam. I know she looks human, but she doesn’t think like we do. You can’t trust her just because she makes your dick hard. We can’t give that bitch a single thing she wants when it's on these terms or we’ll never get the chance to negotiate again.”
I looked at the two of them and realized how very little I knew about either Walt or Ashley. And they both seemed to be operating off information I didn't have.
“How about this,” I said. “We have some light here, warmth, furniture. This is probably the most comfortable we're going to be for some time. We have a pool of holy water that will probably get us drunk off our asses. I don’t really know either of you, you don’t know me. Let’s take awhile and talk, and maybe spill a few of the secrets you each seem to have.”
Walt and Ashley exchanged a long look and I noticed that it was she who finally gave the tiny nod of acknowledgment.
Chapter 10
It wasn’t hard to find cups in the restored temple. If I thought about it too much, I might pause over drinking what was essentially Yvera’s bathwater. Maybe that gave it more kick? It didn't taste like any alcohol I could place, but there was a pleasant burn that seemed to loosen the limbs and the tongue.
“So, who starts?” I said.
“Your idea, your lead,” Ashley said.
That seemed fair.
“I’m not exactly sure where to start this off. I’m Liam, Tommy’s twin brother. I know I’m a mystery to Walt, but you know me, Ashley.”
“Long time since we dated, Liam,” Ashley said quietly. “A lot of shit has happened. Just start from the beginning.”
“I’m the fuck-up of my family,” I said, starting off rather more bluntly than I’d meant. Perhaps it was the drink. “Both Mom and Dad almost made it to the city. You know Tommy just did, it’s why I’m here.”
“So why are you the fuck-up?” Walt asked.
“Girls,” Ashley said. I shot her a look and she shrugged.
“I get distracted or inspired, and lose focus,”
“Distracted,” Ashley said. “You’ve already missed landing blows, because you were staring at my ass in the middle of a fight. And I mean, damn fine, I know, but time and place.”
“That sounds more like an excuse than an actual problem,” Walt said.
“I’m being as honest as I can. I don’t have any deep dark secrets to share.”
Ashley said, “Horny and uncomplicated. We get it. That’s what I remember too, when it comes to you.”
“So what about you, Ashley?” I asked. “I’m missing a big section of your life. You moved away.”
“I didn’t have an interest in horny and uncomplicated boys,” Ashley said with some uncomfortable frankness of her own. “You bored me to fucking tears, I didn’t want to wait my turn to make it in the games and get out, so I just got up one day and left.”
“You can’t just… do that,” I said.
“You ever try? You ever know of anyone who has tried? Everyone is a sheep, Liam. Penned-in sheep from generations of penned-in sheep. We don’t even require fences, nobody ever thinks they can just leave. But I did.”
I’d wanted out my whole life. I’d never thought to just leave. It somehow seemed preposterous to me even now.
“So what happened?”
“I got to the city,” Ashley said. “It isn’t what you think. It's not just fancy clothes and celebrities everywhere—there are societies and cults, and secrets. Everyone trying to put together truths.”
“You miss it,” I said.
Ashley took a long drink from her chalice of water before answering. “Yes and no. I found truths there. I found a man who I thought could give my life purpose and meaning. But when you peeled beneath the pleasant layers he hated us, he hated humanity and to please him, I hurt myself.”
“Your burns?” I had to be a touchy subject.
“Yvera isn’t what you think she is, Liam,” Ashley said. “But you want my secrets, here they are. I’m a woman who has been incredibly foolish for love and I've done and experienced some terrible things. I’m missing whatever little switch inside your head tells you to turn back and go home, so you should never push me. However far you go, I’ll go further.”
That was ominous as hell, but what was even more spooky was the absolute certainty with which she said it. There was truth, raw and dangerous.
“I don’t suppose you can top that?” I said to Walt, joking.
“I far surpass it,” Walt said seriously. “Although Ashley and I don’t agree on everything. But you don’t get all of my secrets, even as drunk on this delightful substance as I am.”
“This is his show,” Ashley said. “He brought everyone into it. It’s all his plan.”
He wasn’t getting away with not saying a word.
“We shared,” I said pointedly. “If this is your show then you need our trust, at least a little. So share.”
“You did share, dull though your secrets were,” Walt said. “Fine. One question apiece and I’ll do my best to give you an honest answer.”
Walt was kind of a jerk.
“What do you least want us to know?” I asked.
“That’s the best you have? I mean, I wasn’t expecting much from you, Liam. But really?”
I thought it was rather good. Maybe it was, given he still hadn’t answered it.
“You said you’d answer the damned question, answer it.”
Walt said, “I’m a member of the Wayfarers of the Celestial University, one of those societies of secrets that Ashley mentioned. Scientists and followers of an ancient way of reason and deduction used to expand human awareness and understanding. It's a membership that in many circles would earn me a quick death, so please don't share the fact.”
“What?” I said, taken completely by surprise.
“What?” Ashley said too. I pleased to see this was news to her as well.
“You're some kind of cultist?”
“Of a sort,” Walt said. “I’ll provide no more details than that. Ashley?”
I couldn’t even really understand such a society, or imagine how belonging to one could result in a death sentence.
“What are you really after?” Ashley asked him. “Don’t pretend this is all an accident.”
“Not exactly an accident, but I also can’t say this was all intended or expected,” Walt said. “I’m seeking light in the darkness. I’m after secrets a good bit more interesting than yours. And you two are out of questions.”
“One more,” I said.
“All right, but nothing more about the society.”
“Can I trust Yvera?”
“I’m working on partial information there,” Walt said with a faint smile. “But here I would disagree with Ashley to a degree. It's perhaps best to think of her as a Goddess, just as she is in the game. She is something of a force of nature with the ability to do us considerable harm and you should never forget that. Ashley assumes a malignancy of intent, but from what I know Yvera doesn’t hate humanity. Rather the opposite.”
&nb
sp; “You’re wrong,” Ashley said. “And she’ll prove you wrong. Are we done with the fireside chat? We need to figure out our next move.”
I said, “Upwards and onwards. I’ve got my marching orders and you two don’t have anything better to do. We get to the throne room.”
“Fine,” Walt said.
“Fine,” Ashley said.
“It’s great when we all get along. We’ll see what's on the next level and I really hope your class quests aren’t this exciting.”
I knew even then it was likely to be a futile hope, so far nothing had been easy. I just wanted to put all these revelations out of my mind for awhile. I’d gotten more than I’d bargained for.
Chapter 11
Each lost in our own thoughts we made our way back to the central stairway leading upwards. I couldn't get my mind off Yvera. While I realized that essentially holding me captive in this place wasn't an endearing quality, I also couldn't help wondering if that really meant she was in some kind of trouble. There was a certain desperation to her, about this place and about this game, and I didn't understand it. I had the feeling that mattered greatly. Of course, I also found her literally intoxicating. I knew it made me a fool, but a part of me ached for that next encounter.
Once we left the chapel we were again plunged into darkness with only the glowing fireflies Walt conjured providing us some illumination. The stairs were broad and we made our way upwards. On the next floor was a large rotunda, the stairs continuing up farther. On each of the four sides of the chamber were massive arches carved with runes. Walt rushed over and began to study them. Fortunately leaping monsters didn't immediately appear.
The stonework here was considerably more elegant than on the floor below. Ashley cleared her throat and gestured me over to where she stood near the stairs.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Ashley pointed at scuff marks coming down the steps. “Not recent, dust has settled into them, but still sometime after things seem to have been abandoned.”
“So someone was still moving around even after whatever happened, or they came here later looking for something?”
“I think so. We should keep an eye out and try to figure what happened.”
It was certainly something to think about. While we were mulling that over Walt returned. “There are supposed to be defensive shields up, that's the entire point of the arches. Magical doorways to only let select people through, but they aren’t charged up. The runes seem elemental in nature.”
Ashley was looking intently at the dusty floor and she jerked her head towards marks in the dust leading into the south archway.
“This place had a visitor at some point,” I told Walt. “Since it looks like they went south, we will as well.”
Walt was right, the shields were down and nothing stopped us. The archway narrowed into a circular tunnel and the walls had a flowing texture. A closer look revealed them to be coated in running water, seemingly unaffected by gravity. Several sinuous and winding turns later we found ourselves in a large chamber. In the middle floated a large sphere of water, hanging suspended in midair, sparkles of light floating through it. In the ceiling above a large crystal was dimmed.
Below the sphere of water were countless tables, bookcases, and sets of arcane equipment. Walt looked like he might explode with glee and Ashley stared with an expression of wonder at the floating sphere.
“So... water?” I asked Walt.
He paused before rushing towards a workstation and said, “Well, clearly water. What else would it be? I don’t think things are working like they are supposed to be, though. See that large crystal on the ceiling? I think the sphere is supposed to be channeling power into it.”
I moved beneath the sphere, almost tripping on rough and fractured stone beneath my feet. The floor was glass-like with fractures radiating outwards.
“Walt, any idea what happened here?”
He came to look. “Lightning bolt, I think. I don’t know where that would have come from.”
Ashley said, proving her game expertise, “Someone was fighting something. Probably whoever came here before us. You’d use a countering element against one element, the air spell to counter water is lightning.”
“Defenses!” Walt said, excited. “Of course. I bet whenever the barriers went down it conjured defenses. Probably elementals. So water elementals for this one.”
“Our unknown visitor came here, blew up the defenses and what... Broke the crystal?” I said.
Walt moved to the very center of the chamber where a miniature copy of the sphere floated in the air. When he reached towards it detailed shapes materialized in the water. Symbols and diagrams that made little sense to me, but judging by the way he began to flick and cycle through them meant something to our wizard.
“He was shutting off the defenses,” Walt said.
“I thought those were shut down before he got here?” I asked, remembering the arches near the stairway.
“Not the interior defenses, those were powered down first, so that they could devote all power to exterior defenses for the castle itself.” Walt said. “This is some sort of power generator for water magic. I think they would use it here in the labs and also power the local defenses with it. But then something happened and they shut everything down to defend the castle.”
“So the tracks are from an invader?”
“Maybe, but from what I can tell at least decades passed after the exterior defenses were activated before the interior defenses went down. If it is an invader they were patient.”
I nodded slowly, thinking it over. If they had turned off things here, it likely meant that the other directions would have similar setups. I wondered if the surprise guest had managed to completely shut down whatever was protecting the castle, and what it would mean for us.
“Loot. Let’s see if there’s anything we can use here, then we’ll see if we can figure out where he went from here,” I said.
“He went to the western chamber next,” Ashley said, studying the tracks and scuff marks in the floor.
We broke up to scavenge through the tables and shelves. I grew rather excited finding a container filled with magic wands, but Walt explained they hadn't actually been charged with any spells and were simply a collection of non-magical sticks.
In the end Walt at least walked away with a change of clothing. Blue-trimmed robes he called, ‘Robes of a Fluid Mind’.
Our other find of note was a large magical battery that Walt assured us had some value in powering larger effects and was rare enough to be worth taking.
Having gotten what gains we could, we moved on. Apart from the tunnel leading back to the stairway there were two others that I reasoned must connect to the other labs. The next tunnel was initially water again until at the halfway point it turned to a sort of mud-like sludge, which then became perfectly polished stonework.
When we reached the chamber of Earth, it was if anything even more breathtaking than that of Water. In the center of the room rose a massive spire of intricate crystals in brilliant colors. A crystal similar to the Water chamber was fixed on the ceiling and magical beams of light frequently bounced everywhere.
Surrounding the crystal were the same tables and shelves, and the corpses of several massive stone golems. Most were destroyed, the bodies scorched and unmoving. But two were still roaming the room, their footsteps thundering ominously.
“So I guess whoever our guest was, they didn’t get the job done here. Those golems survived,” I said.
“And the power is still active,” Walt agreed.
“Can we take out the golems?”
“Normally, I’d say probably not,” Ashley said. “They're pretty tough. But your Smite and Walt’s Magic Dart are both fire-based, which they should be weak against. If you look closely, I think they each already got hit with a fireball. The guy probably just expected them to finish them off, but couldn't.”
She was right. The two survivors did look to be scorched on one s
ide with cracks radiating from an impact point.
Stone Guardians
Level 5: Type: Elemental HP: 35/400
Stone Guardians are commonly found around sites of Earth Magic and utilized by practitioners of that art.
They were sturdy, no surprise there, but they'd taken a hit. It was almost cheating to fight them like this—not that I minded.
I nodded to Walt and stepped out into view. Hopefully there would be no need for me to play the tank, but it was best I be the first they saw anyway. The two huge figures swiveled in our direction.
Smite
Smite
Flame Dart
Flame Dart
I felt the intoxicating rush of power as I let loose a pair of Smites at one golem and Walt unleashed flaming darts at the other. Both were quickly finished off. I noticed the XP was lower than I’d expected, I’d only gotten fifty apiece, but reasoned that must be because most of the damage had been done by someone else before. Were they even still alive? Could corpses collect XP?
The metaphysical quandaries of the gaming world.
The answer to one of those questions came as Ashley called out, “Over here!”
The body had seen better days, the leather armor blackened and curled around the edges. A mark on the floor showed where the golem must have been flung clear from a fireball. The spell intended to finish up the golems had at some point gone awry.
I ran my eyes over his gear, but kept seeing only Damaged Item for the armor. Shame. Although I supposed that a pile of loot on top of a few easy kills would have been too much to hope for.
Ashley pulled a backpack from around the golem’s shoulder and carefully opened it up. Within were a collection of spell scrolls. Walt began to sort through them.
“Three Wave of Earths, Three Typhoons. These are some high-level magic,” Walt said. “I could use the scrolls, but whomever they were, they knew some powerful mages to have access to these.”