by GR Cooper
"Bridge? What about it?" frowned Corwin.
"Didn't he," Wulfgar nodded toward Tim, still standing in the corner, "demand payment to cross it?"
"Nope," shrugged Corwin, "this is the first time I've ever seen him."
"Maybe he was quarrying stone at the time," suggested Rydra.
"Could be," acknowledged Wulfgar, "could be. In any case, if your friend rezzed back at that village, he's likely in a spot of trouble. The other Tim is kind of a dick-head. He damn near killed us, and wouldn't let us bind at his village."
"Well, if he's not back in a few days, we'll have to go back and check out this Tim," said Corwin. He waved down an NPC barmaid, "Hey! Our friends don't have any beer! Get your ass moving and bring them some."
A few days? Wulfgar wondered why Galad's friends weren't more concerned. He mentally shrugged. They knew their friend, if they weren't bothered, he shouldn't be, he thought.
"About fucking time," growled Corwin as the barmaid put four mugs in front of Wulfgar and his friends, "be quicker about it next time."
"No need to be nasty," laughed Wulfgar, "we're fine."
Corwin looked at Wulfgar with undisguised disdain.
"They're NPC's, dude. What the fuck does it matter?"
"Common courtesy?"
Corwin laughed, "Fine. Be nice to the computer program. I'm sure it gives a damn." He shrugged, shook his head ruefully and went back to his beer.
Wulfgar decided to change the subject.
"No. To answer your question. Lauren is not a tamer. Tim is my familiar."
"What?" squeaked Catcher. "Your familiar?"
Wulfgar smiled at her. He nodded, "Yeah. Unique, isn't he?"
"As far as I know. I can't imagine anyone else picking a stone troll as their familiar." She smiled, "How is he? As one?"
Wulfgar shrugged, "I have no idea. None. We just teamed up yesterday." He laughed, "He does work pretty well as a bodyguard, though."
"I can imagine," said Connor, "But what, exactly, is a familiar?"
Wulfgar shrugged and Catcher spoke, "It's a creature that forms a symbiotic relationship with a magic user. The familiar allows the wizard to control, much like an animal tamer, the familiar's inherent abilities. It also gives them a bonus in some spells, both in power as well as in the experience points earned. They can also see what the familiar sees, in real time, no matter the distance between them."
"Do you have one?" asked Wulfgar.
Catcher shook her head, "Nope. Not yet. I'm a Magus of Night. I've already decided that I'm going to try to get an imp," she held up crossed fingers, "I hope. Their plane travel ability, well, if I could get control over that ...", she just smiled and spread her hands.
Wulfgar smiled. He had no idea what plane travel was, but it sounded pretty good.
"I'm Wulfgar, Magus of Evening." He bowed with a flourish while remaining seated.
"I'm Soulcatcher, Magus of Night."
"Soulcatcher?" laughed Snorri. "That sounds ominous."
Catcher laughed. "I got it from a favorite book. I picked it as my name, since that's what I usually went by in games. I didn't, however, think through what it would be like to actually go by the name permanently." She smiled, "It just gets to be a bit weird having everyone call you Soulcatcher all the time, so I just go by Catcher. It's much less creepy."
"I just assumed that you had played baseball," said Lauren, who took a sip from the beer in front of her.
"Softball, actually, but first base," Catcher grinned.
"So here we are," said Wulfgar spreading his hands to include his friends, "in this little village, with our troll companion. We got a quest in Edonis to see what was going on at the outpost. We did," he looked up. "It was orcs. We cleaned them out, but we didn't get a quest completion message."
The trio exchanged glances.
"The quest we attempted last night? We failed. We didn't get a completion message, either," said Corwin, "We were just talking about that a little while ago. We didn't know if that meant that we still had the chance to finish it," he looked to his friends then back to Wulfgar, "but your news paints that in a new light. Usually, when you fail a quest, that's it. You're done. Maybe you lose some rep, but the quest gets removed from your list."
"That," interjected Catcher, "plus the fact that Galad hasn't come back..." she let the thought hang.
"Something weird is afoot," said Rydra softly.
"So, what was your quest?" asked Wulfgar. He smiled up as the barmaid brought them another round. The smile turned to a frown as Corwin smacked her on the ass.
"About time, honey," he said, then looked up and saw Wulfgar's glare. "Oh jeez, get over it already. They're not real. They don't have any feelings."
"As far as you know."
Corwin rolled his eyes.
"The quest," interrupted Catcher, "was to take control of this town." She continued speaking in response to Wulfgar's raised eyebrow. "Since this town, Marchstone, is in the frontier, it isn't pledged to any kingdom. Thus, if you complete the quest, you can take actual control. You get access to the, uhm," she shrugged, "town settings, for lack of a better word."
Connor nodded, "Yeah, you can set pretty much everything about the town. Taxes. You can set whether you want the town to pledge to a kingdom. You can set alliances."
"You can do pretty much whatever you want," said Corwin. "I was going to say that you'd become the mayor, but, really, you become the dictator."
"And that's what you four were trying to do last night?" said Lauren.
The three nodded.
"And the access to the control is beneath the keep?" asked Rydra.
"Kind of. The quest is actually to retrieve a jewel. You then use the jewel to access the town control."
"That's it?" laughed Snorri.
"Finding the jewel isn't the hard part," sneered Corwin.
"What's guarding it?" asked Wulfgar.
Catcher nodded and Connor spoke, "A snake."
"A big fucking snake," added Corwin.
"How big?"
"Picture a Volkswagen. A beetle," growled Corwin. "That's about how big its head is. Extrapolate from there and you'll have a good idea of how long it is."
"Pretty big," agreed Wulfgar.
"Not only huge," said Catcher, "it's venomous. And it's a spitter. Doesn't even have to bite you. It can spray you from across the room."
"That's how it got Galad," said Connor softly. The other two nodded.
"It didn't sound like he enjoyed it, either," said Corwin. He frowned at the thought of his friend's pain.
"So a giant snake that spits venom," said Wulfgar. "Anything else?"
"Isn't that enough?" asked Corwin.
"It's fast," said Catcher, "Very, very fast. It struck the three of us faster that we could react. It's like a freakin' coiled spring. It was red as hell. I damn near puked all over the place when we first saw it. We didn't have a chance. We got into the room and before we knew it, it blasted Galad and then one-hit killed the three of us before we could even begin to think about how to attack it."
Rydra looked to Wulfgar. They had the same thought. So did Corwin.
"Forget it," said Corwin. "I know what you're thinking. I was stealthed. It didn't fool the thing for a second."
"Makes sense," said Lauren, "snakes sense heat. You probably looked no different to the snake than the rest of your group did."
Wulfgar paused in thought. He looked around the tavern for the first time. As his eyes scanned the room, he noticed that most of the locals - the NPCs - looked away or down as his gaze cast over them. A fire roared hotly in a very large fireplace centered on one wall; within a large spit roasted a variety of fowl. Next to it was the window that he and Rydra had spied through earlier.
He was concerned. This news about someone not resurrecting bothered him. He felt, somehow, that this was tied to the lack of quest notification. He didn't know why he felt that, but he did, and it painted the world in a new, deadlier light. How would it chang
e this world, knowing that, at best, there was a delay on coming back to life? And, at worst, that there was some sort of perma-death now. It added a weight to each decision that wasn't there before.
He smiled softly. It seemed that his decision to co-opt the Druid religion had been premature. What use was it to be able to create bind points if you couldn't rez?
A cold wave swept over him.
What if that decision, his decision, was the reason for the change. Clive had shown no reluctance to manipulate him to further the alien's own studies. Was this a test? Was the world being manipulated in order to see how he would react?
He shuddered, then shrugged off the thought. I didn't make any sense, that he could see, for an entire world to have a fundamental change inflicted upon it just to see how one lone human would react.
You're being paranoid.
He was brought back to the present by a low rumble beneath his chair. Bear was growling. The dog, resting beneath Wulfgar since the group sat, stood, its haunches bristling. He took a low step toward the door of the tavern, which opened. A night breeze blew into the room.
Bear's growl intensified as a cat came through. A cat as tall as the Bernese Mountain dog, and twice as long. A jet black tiger; its stripes barely discernible, only a little darker than the rest of the feline's fur.
Wulfgar's hand dropped to Bear's shoulder, steadying him. The tiger came fully into the room, glanced up at Tim, then sat, curling its long ebony tail around its legs. It began cleaning itself while looking around the room unconcerned.
Wulfgar looked up as the door closed. It had been closed by the tiger's companion. She looked tall and lean. She wore heavy traveling clothes, wrapped in a forest green cloak. Long auburn hair swirled out of a hood that draped to her shoulders. Her beautifully familiar face scanned the crowd, passing over Wulfgar without pause, as she shrugged the cloak off of her shoulders, allowing it to gather over her back.
Wulfgar's jaw dropped.
All previous thoughts and concerns left him as he looked at the new arrival.
It was Shannon.
Chapter 7
The more he watched her, the more surely that Wulfgar knew that the new arrival was Shannon. It was more than just the fact that she looked exactly the same, only taller. The way she carried herself. The way she spoke. Everything about her convinced him that she was Shannon.
She introduced herself as RaNay. She had just arrived in Marchstone, having traveled from the southern mountains. She had spent much of the past few months training her taming skill in the jungles to the south. Training until she could, finally, successfully tame the tiger purring at her feet. Bear, still unsure about this new creature, returned to Wulfgar's back and continued to stare down the cat, which made a point of ignoring the dog. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the barmaid, who pointedly kept away from Corwin.
"Champagne?" asked RaNay.
The waitress just returned a blank look.
"This world sucks ass," snorted RaNay quietly, then, "Just give me whatever white wine you might have."
The server backed away, bowing, before turning and trotting into the back.
"See?" said Corwin, "You just need to kick a little ass and they'll be sure to hop on it."
The rest of the table ignored him, returning their focus to RaNay. She smiled up as the harried girl returned with a flagon of wine.
"Thanks, sweetie." She took the glass and drank deeply, then sighed in satisfaction. "Viognier, unless I'm mistaken," she smiled. "And a good one, too." She smacked her lips and looked back up at the group.
"So, I was finally able to tame Schwartz after leveling up enough," she spoke as an aside, "and dying countless times!"
Wulfgar checked her sheet.
Holy crap! She's level fifteen. How the fuck long has she been in this world?
She shrugged, "Then I headed back into town and just happened to check out a quest board. At the top, one that tasked me with coming here, or at least to an outpost near here, because it had suddenly stopped sending in reports." She shrugged again.
Lauren spoke, "Western Marches I. The quest directly from King Clive."
RaNay raised an eyebrow, "Yeah, how did you know? In any case, I normally would have ignored a quest that had me travel so far for such a meaningless task, but the reward was, well, insane. I had to take it. So, here I am."
"We knew," said Wulfgar, "because we had the same quest. And we completed it last night." He looked deeply into RaNay's eyes. She showed no signs of recognizing him. That wasn't a surprise. Wulfgar looked nothing like Duncan Sheriden, and she had never met him once he had changed his avatar shortly before entering the game permanently - she had been dead for months by that point and already resurrected within the Omegaverse before he'd changed.
"What? Completed it?" RaNay paused for a moment. "But the quest still shows in my list."
"Ours too."
"But, if you completed it ..." RaNay raised one eyebrow.
"Yeah, well, we're ninety-nine percent sure we completed it," responded Wulfgar. He felt lame. Suddenly, he wasn't at all sure that they had completed the quest. He looked to his friends.
"Well," he began again, "maybe we have to report to Edonis before the quest is completed." His friends shrugged.
RaNay groaned. "You mean I just got here, but now I have to go all the way back to that boring ass city?"
"Not necessarily." Wulfgar paused, brought up his controls and added RaNay to their group. He smiled as she accepted the message. "Now, when we get back, you should get credit. I mean, if that's really all that's preventing us from completion ."
"Every other quest I've had, though," said RaNay, "only required a turn-in if the quest specifically asked for it. This one only said to investigate, not report back. That's usually been part of the first of a chain-quest." She looked around the group, "You guys didn't get a follow up quest?"
Wulfgar and his friends shook their heads.
"And it's not like that's the only weird thing," interjected Catcher.
RaNay looked up to the wizard questioningly.
"Our friend died on a quest last night and didn't rez," she said, "and we didn't get a quest failure message from that either."
RaNay frowned. "That is odd. Different." She shrugged, "I haven't experienced anything like that. At all."
"When was the last time you rezzed," asked Corwin.
"Not since I got Schwartzie. Maybe a month."
Corwin frowned.
"Wait," said Wulfgar, "You left on this quest just after you got the tiger. Are you saying that it took you a month to walk here."
RaNay nodded and smiled, "Yah. It's a big world. But," she snorted, "to be fair, it was through the mountains. It wasn't easy going." She took a long drink of her wine. "Honestly, I probably wouldn't have made it without Schwartz. There's some nasty shit up in those mountains."
She pushed her chair back, stood and beckoned the inn-keep. "It's been a long day," she told the group, then looked up as the tavern owner arrived, "and I think I need a room to get some sleep."
Wulfgar dropped the latch on the door to the small, tidy room he'd taken for the night. The party had split up shortly after RaNay left. Each had taken a room for themselves; there had been no discussion between himself and Lauren as to whether to share a room. They had simply acquired separate ones.
Bear followed him into the room and curled into a ball at the foot of the bed. Tim was still in the tavern public room below, standing silent near the door he'd been next to all evening long. He seemed, Wulfgar mused, to be happy standing still and silent as the stone from which he was made. The locals had even seemed to warily accept the troll; the men tipping their hats to him as they left for the evening.
As he wrapped himself in the soft, warm blankets and settled into the surprisingly comfortable bed, he thought back on the evening. About how shocked he'd been when Shannon had walked into the smoky inn.
He was unsure of himself. Unsure of what his
next step should be. Should he reveal himself immediately? Should he try to get to know her first? He couldn't believe that her arriving here, almost simultaneously with himself, was a mere coincidence. Not after everything he'd been through; not after everything he'd been told.
Wulfgar stared up, into the wood beamed ceiling, watching the flickering shadows thrown by the low fire crackling in the fireplace. He sighed and closed his eyes.
Almost immediately, he fell asleep.
Almost immediately, he began to dream.
He approached a worn, boarded, antebellum colonial; faded, chipped and forgotten amid the over growing acreage in the dusky hollow of an ancient-beyond-time nook of the Blue Ridge mountains. As he approached, drawn against his will, down what remained of the broken, muddy lane that led to the ruin, he passed in between a pair of brick stanchions that marked the boundary of the fold, long since given up its enclosing fence.
As he passed through the gateway, a murder of crows settled on the tops of either brick post. Silently. They eyed him, daring, as he made his way between them, up the yard to the gaping maw where the front door once stood.
He didn't know why he was here. Why he entered. Why he didn't just turn around and leave. Such logic has no place in nightmares. As he crossed the threshold, the silence was rent with the thud of a brass knocker pounding the door that no longer existed, as a warning. He wasn't sure whether the warning was for himself or for whatever might lurk within.
After the knock faded, he turned to see, overgrowing with weeds, a rain and dirt stained cairn in the yard in front of the manse. He knew, knew, that what lay underneath the stone pile was the secret, the reason that he was here and was the answer to the decrepitude that lay on this small valley like a shroud.
Entering deeper into the house, he walked through the dusty foyer, barren of furniture. Plaster, fallen from the ceiling two storeys above, crunched underneath his feet as he mounted the curving staircase that creaked beneath him. His hand reached to the faded balustrade, then recoiled as his simple touch revealed rotten wood incapable of providing support.
Halfway up the staircase, he stopped, frozen by the faintest of sounds coming from above. He wasn't sure what it was, or even if he heard anything at all, but he felt that someone, or something, was up there and it was both aware of his approach and preternaturally unhappy about it.