by Deck Davis
“So,” said Jake, “Where am I?”
“Right now, you’re in my way.”
“Listen, this might make me sound like an absolute idiot…but is this a game?”
Cason tore a chuck of flesh away from the deer and threw it on a sheet to the side of him. His hands were covered in red. He stood up, approached Jake and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, smearing the deer juice all over him. Jake backed away a step.
“A game?” he asked. “You meant like what kids play? Marbles?”
“No, not that.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“When I made you the potion, for example. Straight after, words told me that I’d become an alchemist. It happens when I get hurt too.”
Cason shrugged. “So what? We all have that. Have you just fallen out of a cow’s backside or somethin’?”
Hmm. This wasn’t a game, then. That was the conclusion Jake came to. Cason had said, ‘we all have that,’ so unless he was being an asshole, he meant that everyone in this world got text alerts like Jake.
This was getting stranger by the minute. He guessed a natural reaction right now would be to panic. Lose his head, run across the fields crying out for the portal home. That wasn’t an attitude that would serve him very well though, was it? He decided to adopt the mindset that he knew would see him through until he worked out what was going on.
Fuck it.
“I have some attribute points to spend,” said Jake. “Since I’m an alchemist now, I was wondering if you knew how I should spend them.”
“What do I look like to you, the oracle?”
“I’m this close to hitting you on the nose, Cason. You’re the biggest asshole I ever met.”
“And don’t you forget it,” said Cason. He stood again and put his hands back on Jake’s shoulders, coating him with more deer blood. “I could tell you the answer, and you could spend the points, and we’d all do a happy dance. But you wouldn’t have learned shit, would you?”
“I guess.”
He hated to admit it, but Cason was right. And damn it if he wasn’t haven’t to concede to that particular truth more the longer he spent with the old alchemist. He willed his character screen to display, and found that he could recall it within a millisecond.
Name: Jake Steele
Level: 1
Exp: 10%
HP: 102 / 127
Stamina: 159 / 159
Mana: 0
Class: Alchemist Lvl 1/10
Base Skills:
Brewing Lvl 1 / 50
Attributes 25 points available
Intelligence
Strength
Charisma
Agility
Endurance
Luck
The first thing to recognize was that the attributes weren’t there just for show. The way they improved would define how well he’d perform in this world. He could load every damn point into luck, walk into a casino and clean them out, but that wouldn’t help if his shitty strength stat meant that he couldn’t carry away with the cash. Every decision had consequences, and trick was making sure you struck more gold than shit.
With that in mind, he thought about what an alchemist needed. He was going to be brewing potions and stuff like that, so there was no need for heavy strength and endurance. Nor was agility going to be a major player in this. That left intelligence, charisma and luck. Normally in games he ignored luck, but not today. He’d already learned from his limited time making a healing potion that as well as craft, luck played a part in an alchemist’s life.
According to the text that appeared when he focused on his class, high intelligence would help increase the potency and quality of his brews, while charisma and luck would increase his success rate in making them. The reason charisma was so important was that any good alchemist put some of his own self into each potion he made. That sounded a little disgusting.
He’d need to give these stats priority, while not ignoring the others. It took a little juggling, but eventually he got the right balance.
After spending his attribute points, he was done.
Intelligence: 7
Strength: 3
Charisma: 6
Agility: 2
Endurance: 3
Luck: 4
When Cason was finished butchering, his wrinkled chest was covered in deer blood. He looked like he’d just stood in the middle of a massacre.
Cason walked into the hut, and Jake followed him. He glanced to his right and saw the girl, freshly tied to the slab. He untied her this time. She stirred a little, and he carefully helped her sit up.
“You okay, gal?” he asked.
The girl growled. Her face contorted into rage, and she bared her teeth. Carson leapt back like a startled cat.
“Feck’s sake! Pass me the potion! She’s turning again!”
Jake was about to move, when the girl’s face changed. The look of anger left her, replaced by an impish smile.
“You fall for it every time,” she said, and laughed.
Cason shook his head. His owl-like eyebrows looked especially stern. “Don’t know why I keep you around,” he said.
The girl slid off the slab, stretched her arms and legs, and then walked toward the door. On the way, she grabbed a bow that was propped up against the wall. Next to it was a leather purse with bolts in it.
She tapped her fingertips along each bolt, mouthing numbers to herself as she counted them. When she counted eleven, she removed one bolt and left it on the floor. She then counted the bolts again, deliberately mouthing each number.
Jake recognized this for what it was straight away. The girl had a case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Jake had it too. It used to be really bad, especially after his parents died. He’d once spent two hours in his bedroom flicking a light switch on and off, unable to leave it until he’d done the right number of flicks. He’d learned to deal with it a little better, but it still came back when he got stressed.
“Going hunting,” the girl said. “Won’t be long.”
“Hope you don’t get mauled by dunebears,” said Cason. “That would be a crying shame.”
The girl winked and then left the shack. When they were alone, Jake turned to Cason.
“What’s with her?” asked Jake.
“I was minding my own business a few years ago,” said Cason, “when she comes banging on my door begging for my help. Girl’s a demogoth. Know what that is?”
“Not a clue.”
“Course you don’t. You don’t know where your own arse is. Demogothaspianide is an infection. The people unlucky enough to get it are demogoths. It’s a sort of parasite that starts to take over the host, turning them into the mossy son-of-a-bitches that you started to see when this pretty lady changed.”
Jake remembered the mossy growth on her face that had started to turn hard. He remembered feeling her calloused fingers tightening around his throat. If she tried that again…
“I’ve been trying to find a way to fix it for the last five years,” said Cason. “I want to cure the demogoths for good, since there’s a village of them far too close for my liking. I came up with a potion that holds back the change for a while, since I’m an alchemical master. But the ingredients are rare as hell, and not something I can produce on a big scale. I need something long-term.”
“And have you found anything?”
“If I had, I’d be living in Terono in a golden palace filled with whores, not scraping a living in this backwater shithole. Nobody’s ever cured the demogoth.”
Jake needed to ask Cason about the portal, but he wasn’t sure if he could trust him yet. The guy had just expertly butchered a deer, and was now walking topless in his hut with his chest covered in blood. He didn’t inspire much trust.
Then again, what choice did he have? He couldn’t exactly google where he was, could he? If Cason wanted to hurt him, he would have tried it by now, and even if he did, Jake would give old owl-face a fight.
“I’m going to ask you something here,” said Jake. “And you’re gonna think that I’ve lost my mind.”
“Go on…”
“Have you seen any portals around here lately? You know, about my height, rectangle-shaped, weird blue light running across it?”
“Now that you mention it, I see those all the time.”
“Really?”
“Course I fucking don’t! It’s time you told me what happened to you, lad.”
Jake explained as best he could the events of him finding the portal and leading up to his fight with the banshee and his arrival at Cason’s hut. Even as he told it, the story seemed too fantastical to be true.
When he was done, the alchemist stood with one hand on his hip, the other on his chin. It would have looked like an intelligent pose were it not for the fact he was half-naked with deer blood soaking his skin.
“There’s a lot of weird shit around this place,” said Cason, “And even I haven’t seen the half of it. There could be someone out there who knows where the portal that shit you out into this world is.”
“I better start looking then,” said Jake.
“Tell you what. You don’t seem like such a bad little bugger, and I always have a soft spot for a fellow alchemist, even if their health potions taste like piss. Give me a little time, and I’ll see what I can find out.”
Chapter Six
Jake spent the next few days acclimatizing to his new world by exploring a little during the day. He ventured down the hill and across the pastures of dead grass, but he decided not to risk going anywhere where he might get attacked. There’d be time for that, but it wasn’t yet.
He decided that from now on, he’d keep his camera around his neck at all times. He had enough film for another thirty photos, and he was going to capture what he saw here.
Cason told him a little about the world Jake had found himself in. The most pertinent information he gave him was the name of the place - Cockflaps.
Or that’s what Cason had insisted on telling him for the first few hours, before finally relenting and giving him the real name of the world. It was called Sarametis, and the particular area Cason lived in was Reaching Crest. Sarametis was governed by an emperor named Kolemos and his Council of Seven. ‘Emperor’ was a titled passed down by birth, whilst the Council of Seven were nominated and elected by the people.
Reaching Crest was an island, and over a thousand miles to the east, across a raging ocean, was the mainland of Cockfl...Sarametis. The distance between the island and the mainland meant that the emperor rarely intervened in island matters, though there was a unit of his soldiers stationed here to keep the peace.
Even this island seemed huge and had so much to explore. Jake was itching to go, but this wasn’t like breaking into an abandoned factory; the banshee had proven that there were things on Reaching Crest that wanted to kill him.
Besides, there was still things in and around Cason’s shack that he hadn’t seen. Around the side of the shack, he discovered eight wire cages stacked in two rows of four. Inside each one was a different type of bird.
At first, Jake had assumed that Cason planned to use them in some kind of weird alchemical ritual. The first image that came to mind was Cason naked, smeared in bird blood and dancing around the fire. Jake had to question his own mind for conjuring that picture up.
When he asked Cason about it, the alchemist told him that he’d found the birds injured at various times, and he was nursing them back to health.
“After that, they can bugger off,” the alchemist added. “Well, most of ‘em, anyway. I’ve started training some of ‘em as message birds. Makes it easier for when I need to get in touch with people.”
Once Jake had gotten to know Cason a little better, he decided he needed to ask him something. It was a brisk morning, and there was such a chilly snap in the air that Jake thought it might snow. The shack was filled with a delicious smell. It was a savory odour, one of pastry and gravy. It’d been a while since Jake had had a home cooked meal.
He found Cason stood by his makeshift oven, bent down and staring at it. Cason glanced at Jake and beckoned him over.
“There’s a pie competition in Logh Hyde next month,” he said. “I’m working on a hare and mushroom stew pie. I came third last year, but by Narlogh’s spotted bon-bon crack, I’m going to win this time. Fancy some breakfast?”
Jake had to admit that the meat and gravy smell was making his early morning hunger flare up. He felt a dull burning in his stomach. The last thing he’d eaten was a few slices of bread and cheese the night before. Cason liked to cook almost every meal, but he’d been too drunk that night.
“Sure. But I need to ask you something,” Jake said. “Before I got to your shack, I saw something kinda weird.”
“I know, I know,” said Cason. “There’s a bloke running around out there with two arses. I’ve seen him too. Apparently he was born that way. Just try not to stare, yeah?”
“No…not that. Two arses? Really? Where?” Focus, he told himself. Think about arses later. “When I was on my way up here, there was an orb behind me. And it had a face in it. It was a guy, and he had this horrible stare and really greasy hair and-”
“And he was following you,” finished Cason.
“That’s right.”
“That’s the Watcher,” said Cason. “Nobody knows his real name or what he wants, only that he floats around in his stupid orbs and…well…watches people. Never actually seen one myself, but I guess I don’t leave the shack much, and there’s no way an orb would make it up here.”
“Is it anything to worry about?”
“Not unless you go north, into the Widow Leaf forest. Stay the hell away from there. There’s shit up there that would chew your skin off while you’re still alive. And once you get out of the forest, there’s the maze.”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Every year an idiot or two goes north to try and walk the maze. They reckon there’s something waiting at the end. Never met a man who’d made it out alive. Never go there, Jake.”
“Gotcha.”
“Say it back to me.”
“Say what?”
“That you’ll never go there.”
Jake sighed. “I’ll never go there.”
“Where?”
“I’ll never go to the maze.”
Cason smiled. “Good. Once you’ve acclimatized a little, I’ll take you on a tour of Willyflaps.”
For now, Jake contented himself with getting used to the shack. Most of Cason’s shack was full of oddities and weird artifacts, but there was one thing stranger than most. Every so often, Jake would see something move across the floor out of the corner of his eye. He only saw a blur, and the first couple of times, he went looking around the shack to find whatever it was. There was no sign of it. Eventually he gave up looking, worried that he was going crazy.
As interesting as it was to explore the shack and the lands around it, Jake was more interested in something else. The girl.
Jake gave her a little leeway at first, but when she looked in the mood to talk, Jake had approached her.
“Nice moustache,” was the first thing she said to him. “Makes you look like a pirate or something. Is that the look you were going for?”
Look? Jake didn’t think he was aiming for a look. He mainly just wanted to cover his lip scar.
“Thanks. Pirates are cool, with the rum and the pillaging and taking what’s not theirs and stuff, so I’ll take that as a competent. I’m Jake Steele.”
“Faei Hook,” said the girl.
She had big lips and a cheeky look to her eyes, like an evil child who’d grown up to a young woman without losing her mischievous glint. Her red hair was so fiery that it was almost made exactly to Jake’s tastes, as if some otherworld cupid had created her just for him. Her hair was the longest he’d ever seen on a girl. It ran down to her knees, and it was tied into a series of thick-looking knots. A golden line of light pulsated through it from the root
s in her head right down to the ends, before starting at the top again.
“Cason whipped it up for me,” Faei explained, when she caught him looking at the pulsating light in confusion. “I was upset one day about my folks, and he did it to cheer me up. That was back when he thought I was a girly-girl. The effect was only meant to last a day, but he must have brewed it wrong, because it’s been here months now.”