by GR Cooper
"And RaNay got the quest over a month ago, game-time?"
Wulfgar nodded again, knocking on the table again as Corwin dealt the river. A two of hearts. Wulfgar started to flip his cards, revealing his full-house, when Corwin pulled five gold coins out of his purse and put them in the center.
"Whoah," growled Wulfgar, waving his hands, "we said table stakes."
Corwin nodded to the troll's purse, "It's on the table. So's mine."
Technically correct. The best kind of correct. Shit.
Wulfgar looked to his hand again. The two black aces stared up at him, encouraging him. It wasn't really a gamble if you knew you were going to win, right? He looked into Corwin's eyes. There was a glint there, a glimmer. He had the feeling that Corwin had planned for this from the start - when he'd noted that Wulfgar had left Tim's purse on the table and done the same with his own. He was bluffing; trying to buy the pot.
Hell, he might even have a pair of queens under there. Another full-house. That won't beat my aces, though.
He called Corwin's five, then pushed another five gold coins into the middle. The pot was now twenty gold. The coppers and silvers sitting underneath that pile paled in significance.
"Shit," said RaNay.
"Are you sure?" whispered Lauren.
Wulfgar smiled up at Corwin, then the smiled faded as Corwin called.
Shrugging mentally, he turned over his aces. His friends all laughed, and Lauren squeezed his arm.
Corwin turned over one card.
The queen of hearts.
Wulfgar smiled.
Corwin turned over his last card.
Wulfgar's heart dropped.
The king of hearts. Four of a kind. Corwin smiled a little as he pulled the stack - the fortune - to his side of the table, then began shuffling again.
Wulfgar felt sick. He not only lost everything he had, he didn't have enough to pay for the new cloak that was being made for him at this instant. His mind began to race - maybe if he left now it wouldn't be too late to cancel the order. He began to push back from the table.
"Double-or-nothing?" asked Corwin. "One hand?"
Wulfgar shook his head and began to stand, weak in the knees.
"No, really," said Corwin. "Hey, how about this. We'll do all the dealing. All the cards. You can see what you have and then decide if you want to be double or nothing. Or you can fold. No loss. How about it?"
Relieved to be able to put his weight back onto the chair, Wulfgar nodded dumbly. He looked up at Rydra as he tried to gather his thoughts.
If I was still in my old body, I'd probably be throwing up right now.
As it was, though, he felt flush. Bewildered. Bemused.
Rydra smiled at him kindly, "So, if RaNay received this quest a month ago," he continued, "then she would have received the quest long before you ever entered this world, right? How would anyone, even Clive, have known where she needed to be a month before you'd even decided to enter the game?"
Wulfgar shrugged. Rydra raised a good point; one that he couldn't explain away. He looked down at the cards that Corwin had just finished spreading across the table. Ace of spades. Ace of clubs. Ten of spades. Jack of spades. Wulfgar turned up and peeked at his cards.
Pocket aces again. Red ones this time.
He took a deep breath, sighed in relief. Four of a kind, all aces.
"You in?" asked Corwin.
Wulfgar's mind was a whirl. He pushed Tim's purse with the remaining ten gold coins into the middle of the table. Corwin matched his bet with two stacks of five gold coins. They shone in the sun that was just beginning to peak into the tavern windows as it made its way toward its westward setting.
Wulfgar turned over his cards, showing four of a kind.
"Wow," breathed Lauren.
"Nice!" shouted Snorri.
Wulfgar just looked up at Corwin, fearing what was coming.
Corwin turned over his first card.
Queen of spades.
Wulfgar knew what the next card was before Corwin turned it. His breath caught as his fear was confirmed.
King of spades.
Royal flush. Best hand in the game. Unbeatable. Unbelievable.
Wulfgar felt drained, utterly defeated.
"Nice hand," smirked Corwin, pulling the stack home. "But not quite nice enough."
"Stop it asshole," said Catcher softly, reaching across RaNay to punch Corwin in the shoulder, "look at him."
"What?" asked Corwin. Wulfgar watched as Corwin stacked the coins. Two stacks of twenty gold and much smaller piles of coppers and silvers. He smiled up at Wulfgar as he pushed half back across the table. A broad grin broke across his face.
"Look at his sheet, dude," chuckled Connor.
Shaking, Wulfgar looked to Connor then brought up Corwin's character sheet.
Name: Corwin
Level: 06
STR: 05
INT: 05
AGI: 05
PRS: 01
FRT: 19
He looked back up at Corwin, who was now laughing out loud.
"You cheated!" Wulfgar's dismay rapidly flipped to anger.
Corwin raised his hands, "Did not! The cards fell randomly. They might have had help from my Fortune, but other than that, we both just dealt the cards naturally." He laughed again, and finished pushing the twenty gold and miscellaneous lower value coins.
"You set me up?" asked Wulfgar, his anger fading into relief.
"We all did, sweetie," said Lauren softly, leaning into Wulfgar's shoulder.
"Not me!" shouted RaNay.
"Not her," agreed Lauren, "but the rest of us. Sorry. It was my idea."
She smiled as Wulfgar turned to her, his face showing shock.
She shrugged, "When I saw Corwin's Fortune, we just started talking about how that changed things for him."
"And," interjected Corwin, "when she told us that your Fortune was one, well, the rest of the plan just fell into place."
"Do you do that often?" asked Wulfgar.
"Against NPC's? Sure. But not other players," he smiled, "that wouldn't be fair." He reached back across the table and grabbed two coppers from Wulfgar's stack, "But for the lesson you've just received, which is never to gamble with another player without checking their Fortune, you'll be paying for dinner and drinks tonight!" He waved the waitress to the table.
Wulfgar took a bite of his dinner; a perfectly al-dente fettuccine with a delectable Alfredo sauce. He smiled as he took a drink from a not-too-sweet chardonnay. Like most people, he just assumed that all of the meals in this medieval world would be stereotypical dark ages food. Mutton. Mead. But you could get pretty much whatever you wanted. Lauren was eating flaky blue crab, Rydra a lobster bisque. RaNay hummed happily as she chewed through the freshest looking salad that Wulfgar had ever seen. He wiped his chin and looked up to Corwin.
"Why did you do that? Load up on the Fortune?"
Corwin just shrugged, "It started off as kind of an experiment. When I first entered the world, I figured I'd make a niche role for myself. Mr. Lucky. I just assumed that if it didn't work out, that I would always exit out and re-roll. So far, it's been pretty cool."
"How so?"
"It seems," he pulled his soup spoon out of his mouth and wagged it toward Wulfgar, his eyebrows scrunched in thought, "that the system determines the quality and quantity of loot based on, at least in part, the cumulative Fortune score of the group."
"So folks want to group with you to increase their odds of getting good loot?"
Corwin nodded, "Mmmmhmmm," he swallowed a bite of bread, "and it seems to make a difference. But it's hard to tell, you know?" He smiled, "I'm still in my experimental phase."
"If only you were a girl!" snorted Snorri.
Corwin ignored the Viking and continued, "I mean, the only way to do it scientifically would be to have a group complete the same quest twice, once with me in the group and once without, but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet."
"What else d
o you bring to the party, so to speak?" asked Rydra.
"Minor skills," acceded Corwin. "Mainly stealth, so I can hide when the fighting goes down. Some stealing. Lockpicking" He laughed lightly, "So, yeah, I'm mainly just around for loot. It seems to make a difference."
"We've noticed some better returns," added Catcher. "More money, better items."
Wulfgar nodded. He thought it made some sense.
"Is there any distance requirement?" he asked.
"Don't know. Good point," he laughed, "maybe I could just setup in Edonis, group with whoever was about to go off on a quest, and then get a cut of the loot when they return. That'd be pretty sweet."
Wulfgar changed the subject, "I've been thinking. I want to do a test of my own. A test of the quest system. To see if there really is anything to this feeling that quests aren't being written off as done."
"Where are we going?" asked Snorri.
"We aren't going anywhere," Wulfgar responded, "I am. I know a quest I can take."
He told them what he planned to do.
The group looked around at each other, concern growing on their faces. Catcher leaned into the table and looked directly into Wulfgar's eyes.
"Are you sure? Alone?"
Chapter 8
Wulfgar pulled open the door to the keep, its heavy wooden slats barred by rows of heavy iron slabs. The door swung easily on its hinges and the last light of the day rushed into the room. The room seemed nondescript on first impression. Wulfgar pushed his way into the room. His second impression was the same as the first. The room was rectangular, wider than it was deep. There were no windows that he could see around the walls. It was, he thought, a good foundation on which to begin the addition of walls to turn the keep above into a true castle.
He activated his Illumination spell, further lightening the place. In the center of the room was a tubular stone wall. He made his way to the rear and saw a doorway opening into the rounded surface. Leaving the plain room, he stepped into the enclosure and saw that it encased a circular stone stairway that rose above and dropped below the entry room. He looked to the left, toward the downward stair. He could see nothing within the sphere of his illumination that caused concern. Turning to his right, he began to climb.
After a short, uneventful rise, he saw another opening. He paused within the doorway and looked in. The room wasn't nearly as large as the one below and it mirrored the stairway in its circularity. Wulfgar walked in, confirming his suspicion. The room enclosed the stairway in a concentric ring. There were windows - archer holes - placed near each other all the way around the floor. Along the inner wall - the one that housed the staircase - were stacked racks of pole-arms and bows. The armory for the tower guard. Baskets of arrows lined the outer wall, within easy reach of each of the windowed slots. There were no torch sconces along either wall - that seemed to make sense; in this room, seeing outside was important.
Wulfgar made his way back into the stairway and up to the next level. In size, it matched the one below. Bunked beds were stacked around the inner-circle, like spokes on a wheel. They were all empty and dusty, waiting for a force that wasn't yet recruited. At the foot of each bed, more racks of bows sat, and baskets of arrows lined the wall as below. Anyone trying to approach any side of this tower needed either a large force to draw upon or hopelessly poor archery on the part of the defenders to have any hope of storming the keep.
He ascended another floor and found a match to the one just below. More empty bunks. Wulfgar turned and trotted up the final stairs. This time, instead of opening into the room through a doorway, the stairs ended in the floor of the center of the top room of the keep.
Unlike the spartan abodes below, this room was lavishly furnished. A huge, four poster, bed jutted from the outer wall in between one of the four large arched windows that arrayed around the room like the cardinal points on a compass. Along the wall on the other three pie-portions of the room were a thick, wide, leather couch, a large wardrobe, and a deep desk. On each portion of the wall was a lit torch. Wulfgar turned off his illumination and approached the desk.
Sitting on top of the shining mahogany top was a rolled scroll. Wulfgar picked it up and untied the blue ribbon that bound it. He began to read.
The March Stone.
Beneath this keep, in the far reaches of the dungeon, lays the March Stone. Retrieve that stone and return here to claim sovereignty over the village and lands of Marchstone. Only the hearty adventurer who places the March Stone within the receptacle here will gain in experience and win control!
This quest greatly exceeds your current level. You will only be permitted to attempt this quest once.
"I accept this quest," said Wulfgar softly, gravely.
"Are you sure?"
Wulfgar grinned.
Yes, he thought.
"You have accepted the quest The March Stone!"
Wulfgar nodded. This all matched the expectations that the other players had given him, based on their experience. There was nothing that offered any trouble. Yet.
Until that snake, he chuckled to himself.
Looking up, he saw a wooden doorway in the ceiling, a short knotted rope dangling from one end. He pulled on it and the door dropped into the room. He reached up and pulled down a folded ladder that lay nestled against the door. After extending the attic-like trap-door into the room, he climbed up and onto the keep roof. Wide, the doorway was in the middle of the battlement. He walked to the edge and looked westward between two merlons. The sun had almost dropped behind the seemingly impossibly high mountain range that formed the westward border of the alpine valley. He glanced to the south, to the little pass that had provided his entry into the valley. A hundred meters wide, it seemed tiny from this distance; the little stone keep standing like a forlorn tooth in a gummy mouth.
He turned to his right and for the first time got a good look to the north and west. A hundred meters north, the valley floor dropped a little and turned into a large, placid lake that seemed to stretch into the distance, reaching the boundary provided by both the eastern and northern mountain ranges that fronted the valley.
To the northwest, at the only part in which the mountain range didn't wall the valley - apart from the small pass to the south - the lake seemed to disappear into a wide opening. Through and beyond that opening, for as far as he could see into the westering light, was a dark, primeval forest. Even from many kilometers away, Wulfgar could feel its brooding malevolence.
He shuddered.
He started at a noise from behind himself.
Turning, his shock turned to happy surprise.
"Hey, Shannon. What's up?"
She threw her arms around his neck, giving him a tight hug.
"Are you sure about this?" she said softly, before letting him go. She stood back and looked into his eyes.
He just nodded.
"I don't want to lose you again. Can't you wait until we find out if we can at least rez first?" She shook her head, "This is crazy. At least let me go with you, to cover your back."
He shook his head.
"There's no reason. I can either do this alone, or it can't be done. If I die, there's nothing you could have done to prevent it. Even your tiger can't take out a giant, venom spitting snake."
"Then what the hell makes you think you can deal with it?" she hissed, exasperated.
He smiled, shrugged.
"Because I think that this quest was made specifically for me. By Clive." He shrugged again, "I think, I feel, that I'm supposed to do this and I'm supposed to do it alone."
"Why?"
"Trust me."
Wulfgar made his way down the stairs, past the ground floor and down. As he descended, the lingering light failed and he activated his Illumination spell.
"You have gained a level in the spell Illumination."
He smiled.
Every little bit helps!
Wulfgar considered activating stealth; to train it. He laughed the thought away - he just might,
conceivably, need that particular ability on a moment's notice and didn't need to worry about cool-down times.
He circled his way down, counter-clockwise into oblivion. Unlike the ascent, the way down was unbroken by doorways. He lost all sense of how far he'd gone; how many steps he'd taken. He was, he thought, certainly further below the ground than he'd been above it on the keep battlement. He put his hand up and dragged it along the stone wall. It was slightly damp. Cold. He thought he could detect an increase in the heat, however, as he got lower. He could feel a slight, warm, breeze coming up from the depths; warming his face as he descended.
Just when he thought that the stairway couldn't descend any further, it stopped; dropping him off into a large room. He doused his illumination, suddenly aware that it was as much a beacon for predators as anything else. Darkness fell over him, draping a visual blanket over his lack of foresight. He waited a few seconds, for his eyes to adjust. After a while, he could just make out in the distance the barest flickering. He stared, willing his pupils to dilate. Faster than his organic eyes could have, he adjusted to the darkness. The flickering was joined as he looked around the space. Tens of meters away, he could just make out a line of torches. He assumed, hoped, that they were ensconced along the wall and not held by orc captains thirsting for his blood. He waited, watching. The flame didn't move. If they were being held by orcs, they were held by a disciplined phalanx that wasn't advancing on him. And if they were held by a phalanx of orcs, there wasn't much of anything he could do about it. He shrugged and walked into the room.
The space felt large - literally cavernous. He thought he could just make out a dripping in the distance. It felt odd, he thought, to be able to sense the enormity of the space through nothing more than some torch flickering in the distance and a vague feeling of loneliness. He briefly considered relighting his Illumination spell, but discounted it - if the space was as large as the evidence indicated, the smallish sphere of light wouldn't serve to show the boundaries of the room anyway.
Wulfgar walked, as quietly as he was able, toward the line of torches. After fifty meters, the light thrown by the fires showed a cave wall. The room had been dug - either by intelligence or the forces of nature - from the living rock of the mountain root. He pulled one of the torches from its sconce and began making his way around the perimeter of the cavern. Putting his left hand on the wall, he moved to the right; he mused that he should have pushed his new friends for more details about the quests. He should have asked for specifics about routes, rooms, anything that would have served to get him from point A to point B in the quickest time, with the fewest questions, possible. He could only see the torches along one stretch of the wall - that portion of the wall was alone in being lit or the torches from further reaches were too weak to reach him.