War Aeternus: The Beginning

by Charles Dean

  “Woah, so many different ways to prepare chicken . . .” Miller gasped from beside him. He had been chewing loudly and open-mouthed as he watched Lee flip through the pages. “I wonder what that one tastes like.” He reached across to place his finger on a page with a Cajun chicken recipe, but Lee smacked it aside.

  “No touching the book while eating! Your hands are oily!” Lee snapped at Miller.

  As he swatted away Miller’s hand, he noticed that Ethan was now standing on his right leg and wagging a ‘no no’ finger at Miller while crossing his arms. Lee chuckled at the little mouse, and Ethan scampered down onto the floor.

  Where are you going? Lee wondered, using his connection to see what the little mouse was up to. He strengthened the connection between them and focused on what Ethan was doing. As soon as he did, he realized exactly what the mouse was doing: hiding. The mouse could smell a cat and took that as a sign to vamoose. Wait, I don’t remember seeing any pets in the bar last night . . . Lee looked around in an attempt to spy where the cat was lurking, but his eyes landed on a familiar face walking up to him instead.

  “Ling.” The word left his mouth as soon as his eyes made contact. She has a pet cat, so the scent is coming from her, not from an actual cat.

  “Umm . . . Yes, that’s me.” Ling’s eyes warily darted between Lee, Miller, the book, the food on the plate in front of him, and the two drinks Lee had forgotten were there. “Did I come at a bad time?” she asked, quickly adding, “I should go,” before anyone answered.

  “You eaten yet?” Lee blurted out before she had a chance to turn around and dart back toward the door.

  “Oh . . .” —she looked back at the food—“I had an egg this morning.”

  “An egg? Like, not eggs, not a plate of eggs, not scrambled eggs, but just an egg?” Lee clarified.

  “Yeah, an egg.” Ling nodded “I just didn’t feel like eating more.”

  Or maybe your dad gave away most of his money on a quest reward so you can’t afford more. Lee wasn’t sure how the quest might impact Ling’s family finances, but he knew just from looking at her that, while she had no real fat on her, she couldn’t get some of those curves without a healthy diet.

  “Wow, I don’t think that would even qualify as a snack! I eat nine to ten eggs at a time and still feel hungry!” Miller’s shock was drawn across his face in exaggerated proportions like he was straight out of a Japanese comic. “You need to eat right away!” he commanded, reaching over and grabbing a piece of chicken from Lee’s bucket and shoving it at the girl. “Eat!”

  “I . . . suppose I could try a little of the . . . umm . . .” She hesitantly reached out and grabbed the chicken. “. . . whatever this is.”

  “It’s chicken! Chicken from the god of gods himself, Augustus! Man, I tell you: This church is amazing.” Miller practically spat the words out and then turned his attention back to another piece of chicken for himself. “I see why you’re such a faithful servant.”

  “There are more reasons than food,” Lee said, failing to mention that those other reasons were roughly extortion and kidnapping.

  “It is . . . It is very good, but maybe a bit heavy?” Ling said as she wiped her mouth.

  “So, what brings you out here? Need us to find your cat again?” Lee asked with a light laugh.

  “No, I just . . ..” Ling clenched her eyes shut and shuddered a bit. “Shannon disappeared last night.”

  “What?!” Ramon shouted as he stormed in from the kitchen. “Shannon went missing? When? Where was she? What was she doing outside of her house at night?”

  Ling stopped chewing and started to tell the story. “She was trying to meet with her friend. Her father doesn’t like him, you see, so they arranged to meet with each other at night when no one would find out. When she didn’t show up, he just assumed that she changed her mind or got caught sneaking out.”

  “Well, if she’s missing, why didn’t you say something sooner? Where is her dad? Shouldn’t people be out searching?” Lee asked.

  “Well, that’s the tricky part. Everyone went to the hunter’s hall to get volunteers. They’ve already started the search, but . . .” Ling’s eyes stopped shifting around and her gaze leveled on Lee. “I thought you would be more helpful.”

  “Because you want my god to find your friend.” Lee spelled it out and said it plainly, even if she wouldn’t. If he could convince the chef to pick up religion for bacon and fried chicken, and Ling to pick it up so that she could save her friend, then that would give him at least one more day back in the real world. He might be destined to stay here at Augustus’ whim, but a day in the real world would be invaluable if he used it correctly. “You want the god you don’t believe in to perform miracles for you,” he finished.

  “I . . . I didn’t say I don’t believe in him!” she protested. “I just . . . No one has ever mentioned him before, so it’s natural to be skeptical!”

  “Skeptical? Of the god who helped me save your life and asked nothing in return?” Lee cocked an eyebrow as he smiled up at Ling. “What an odd thing to be skeptical about.”

  “Well, I mean—”

  “Enough with the chat, boy.” Ramon slammed a hand on the countertop. “Go! Go get Shannon before it’s too late. If you can bring her back unharmed, I’ll personally bring Ling with me to every service!”

  Lee closed his eyes and sighed. So much for me getting to enjoy my morning before being thrown to the wolves again. “Alright,” he said after making peace with the danger he was committing to. “Let’s get going.”

  “Wr-igh-way? ut-a-bou-rek-fst?” Miller asked, his mouth still stuffed with fried chicken.

  “Of course right away. Just pack some food and leave the rest for the other patrons. We’re not the only ones who need to eat in the morning.” Lee snatched the bucket of chicken away from Miller’s grasp and passed it to Ramon.

  “You don’t have to pack anything,” Ramon said, taking a box from underneath the counter and handing it to Lee. “This is a lunch my wife made me before work, so please bring back the box.”

  “Thanks.” Lee accepted the lunchbox and then immediately gave it to Miller to hold. “And don’t forget your promise,” he said as he took the book from the counter and put it back in his magical brown satchel. “It takes a lot of faith and a miracle to get anything from Augustus. Trust me.” Although, I suspect a bear-sized swimming pool filled with beer might appease him in place of actual believers, Lee thought, remembering that the god had assumed the form of a mouse and swam around in a mug of beer.

  “Stop acting like we wouldn’t do it no matter what.” Miller grinned in a goofy fashion as he stood up. He was trying to play it off as if the kidnapping wasn’t a big deal, and there was no way that anything could go wrong. “We’re devout believers now, after all.”

  “So, where do we start?” Lee asked. “Can you show us her house and where she was supposed to meet her friend?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll take you there right away.” Ling nodded once and then turned and darted out of the tavern and to the left.

  Lee was startled by Ling’s sudden decisiveness, so it took him a second to react. When he did take off after her, however, he was pleasantly surprised to realize that he was faster than he would have expected. Ling ran like a high school track star, but Lee had no trouble catching up to her and then keeping pace as well. Normally, he would have been winded after a minute running at the pace he was keeping, but now he was able to complete the entire eleven-minute run without having to do more than regulate his breathing. Even when he came to a stop next to Ling outside of a small house, he didn’t need but a few deep breaths before he was back to normal.

  Is this because it’s a game world or because I’ve leveled up? Most of the situations he had been thrust into so far where he had exerted himself were so physically demanding and mentally intense that it made sense he wouldn’t have noticed. After all, the last thing on anyone’s mind when someone was trying to ram a sword into his gut was whether or
not he was out of breath. He had been preoccupied with more important things like staying alive and not having his guts spilled all over the place. Thinking back, however, he realized that he hadn’t been panting and hyperventilating like an office worker without a steady exercise regime would have. All of my primary stats have gone up by a few points, and their base was only ten to begin with. Does that mean each point is 10% more than my originally-weak arms could handle? Or is it just that stamina functions differently in this world?

  “There’s nothing here,” Miller observed as he arrived, pulling Lee out of his introspective on game mechanics. “It’s like the place has been swept clean. The ground has been disturbed a good bit, but no more than it is in most other places around the town. How are we supposed to dig up any clues to where she might be or who might have taken her?”

  “That was the hunters,” Ling answered, peering at the same barren ground as the two men. “They took every piece of cloth or stray object they could find for the dogs. They’re hoping one trail leads outside the town.”

  The dogs! Of course. They must have bloodhounds or some such that can sniff out trails as well. That means my advantage with Ethan is far less significant than I had hoped . . . Lee looked up at the house hoping to find some clue the others might have missed. It was rather plain, just like every other house in town, and there was absolutely nothing to distinguish it from any of the others. Nothing at all separating it and the other houses. It’s not even an outskir—

  “Hey, Ling!” A thought crossed Lee’s mind. “The guy Shannon was going to meet behind her father’s back . . . Where is his house?”

  “It’s that way,” Ling answered, pointing back toward the center of town. “We actually passed his place on the way here.”

  “I see.” Lee scratched his chin. So, she was traveling in the middle of the night, but unlike Ling, she never actually left town. “And this happens often, right?”

  “Yes, unfortunately. Most of the time it’s when people are out at night or . . .” She trailed off, her eyes beginning to tear up. “It happens a lot . . . even when people are just in the fields during the day . . . and it’s so terrifying.”

  “But are most of the kidnappings in the fields?” Lee felt bad pressing the subject when she clearly wasn’t over what had happened the previous day, but a suspicion was beginning to build in his mind. “I mean, do people go missing in the field or at night more often?”

  “I don’t know. I try not to think about it when it happens, but . . .” She looked toward the edge of town and then back to the center. “But it happens more in the town.”

  “Hey, easy, man. Can’t you see this is hard on her?” Miller intervened, moving over to Ling and putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. We don’t need all of these questions, do we? We’re just going to pray and ask Augustus the great and mighty god for help, and he’ll help us. That’s all there is to it! Right, Lee?”

  “Augustus is not the type of god who helps those who can easily help themselves without him,” Lee replied, making up more stuff about the religion. Sorry, Benjamin Franklin, but I’m gonna have to steal your quote.

  “That can’t always be the case, especially since we need his help in this situation!” Miller demanded. “Time is of the essence, and a person’s life is on the line! As the Herald of a faith, surely you can ask Augustus where this one is just like you did for Ling.”

  “We don’t need his help because time isn’t running out as fast as you think; and, unlike with Ling, the answer is already in front of us.” Lee quietly signaled for Ethan to start checking around. “After all, we already know an important detail that I don’t think even your hunters have noticed.”

  “What’s that?” Miller and Ling asked at the same time. “There isn’t anything left for them to have missed, is there?” Miller pressed.

  “Why aren’t we pressed for time?” Ling asked this time, unconsciously rubbing at her wrists where they had been bound the day before.

  “Because Shannon is still in the city.” Lee couldn’t help but feel confident about this conclusion. All of the countless hours he had spent listening to detective shows while he played games had given him enough confidence to be certain of this conclusion.

  “What do you mean?” Miller looked around.

  “Well, is there a body of water near here? Perhaps there is a running river close to the town?” Lee tried to put the pieces together before incorrectly assuming.

  “Of course. There are creeks and streams everywhere around here,” Ling answered.

  “Ah. And I’m assuming that out of all the trails the hunters check, they all turn up dead ends? Sometimes even circling back to town?” Lee needed to confirm one last piece to his puzzle.

  “No, they’ve never found the trail. Not even once. It almost always goes dry. They’re out doing their best, trying their hardest, but by tomorrow . . . They all know that Shannon will still be missing, Shannon’s father will still be crying, and no one will know what to do.” Ling wiped a tear away. “That’s why we need you to use your god, to take this seriously and help us quickly!”

  “Ling, the reason no one ever found any of the captured people leaving the city is that’s not how most of them were captured. You were an exception, not the rule. They took you from the field and during the day. They had a clear path to make their escape, and there was no trail from where you were. Most people, however, don't leave town right away. Whoever took Shannon had to know that she would be sneaking out in the middle of the night, when she was doing it, and what path she would take. Otherwise, they had to have been watching and simply got lucky. Either way, they need a place where people would pass by all the time, somewhere you could hide someone without anyone noticing.”

  “Huh?” Miller and Ling both stared at him blankly.

  Lee finally just spelled it out. “Someone in the town did the snatching, and they’re probably hiding Shannon somewhere in town until the hunters stop searching.”

  “What? No! Who would ever do that? That can’t be. That’s not possible. Our town doesn't have people like that!” Ling protested.

  Miller just nodded along in agreement even though he looked like a five-year-old who had bitten into sour candy and wanted to pretend like it was no big deal.

  Lee thought about spelling out the whole deduction for her so that they could be on the same page, but then he remembered how Augustus had mocked NPCs as ‘not really capable of passing a Turing test’ and held back. He was certain Shannon was still in the town somewhere, but that didn’t mean he wasn't going to hedge his bets and conduct the search of the city as quickly as possible. On the off chance that she wasn’t, he still would have time to catch up to her outside the town if he was wrong.

  “If she’s still in town, how do we find her?” Miller asked.

  Lee once more called on his detective show experience to put together a quick plan. “Well, for that, we’re going to need to find all the houses on the path she would naturally take toward her boyfriend’s and then find out what routes people were taking in town when they went missing. Let’s find the houses that overlap on those routes, and then go door by door until we figure out which one is holding Shannon.”

  “I know a few of them,” Ling said.

  “Do you have a map of Satterfield somewhere that we can draw on?” Lee asked.

  “No, but”—Ling looked around then gave up on finding whatever she was after and just squatted down despite her flowery yellow dress and started drawing on the ground. Given that Satterfield really wasn’t a large town to begin with, she was able to draw out the houses as little blocks and the streets rather quickly.

  “So, those squiggly lines on the streets . . . Are those the routes you remember people taking?” Lee asked.

  “Yeah, just two of them. I definitely won’t forget Red’s route toward Isaac. Everyone thought they hated each other. Red’s best friend was the only one who knew that the two were seeing each other every night, so it was
the town gossip for a while when everyone found out about it,” Ling explained. “When Sam was taken, he was on his way to meet up with his buddy Adam so that they could go see Blaise play at the tavern, but he just never arrived.”

  “That’s only two paths, but it’s enough.” Lee circled the one chunk of blocks that they all walked in front of. “That narrows it down to at most six houses, so it shouldn’t be a lot of work from there.”

  Little Ethan scampered across the street and climbed back up into the comfortable pocket he seemed to favor. The mouse gave Lee a few mental squeaks, reporting that he had managed to sneak into Shannon’s home and pick up her scent from clothes still in the home.

  You got enough to go on, right? Lee asked, double checking. Another series of squeaks gave the affirmative. Are you going to kick me again if I give Augustus credit for your work once more? The mouse merely nodded and crossed his arms inside the pocket.

  “Then let’s go knock on doors and bang some skulls until we flush out the wicked rat!” Miller retrieved his weapon from his inventory and slammed the base of the spear into the ground for extra emphasis.

  “It’s not that easy,” Lee admonished him. “We can’t let people know what we’re asking about, or they won’t help us. Right now, not one of these six houses suspects they have anything to worry about from us. Five of them don’t, and the one that does thinks we are too stupid to ever figure out his trick. If we start alarming people, the guilty culprit won't open his door, we won’t be able to search the house easily, and Shannon might never be found.”