Beginner's Luck (Character Development Book 1)

by Aaron Jay

  “Now no one is leaving the premises until I allow it. Satisfied?”

  Smitty opened the door and looked at the mana shield surrounding Maddie’s place. He placed a finger on it and drew it back quickly, sucking on it.

  “Ok. Please don’t keep him long.”

  Maddie led me off with a sniff. Once in her workshop she settled us back into seats at two points of the octagram.

  “Miles. I’m old.”

  “You don’t look that old.”

  Maddie smiled and retorted, “I’m not fishing for compliments from some young buck. I’m telling you that I was one of the first of the World’s people assigned to help you adventurers master their magical abilities. When I came to Quartzite we expected many new people to come and help push civilization out against the monsters and things of the dark. Then Brady was given authority over this demesne. My colleagues in other cities were trained to help new practitioners achieve their magic in a new way. It was easier to acquire and use. You saw the book I looked at yesterday to begin your induction into the mysteries.”

  “Sure. The cat’s bed.”

  “Yes. He likes to lie on it,” she smiled. “Newer trainers do not need that book. They don’t know the ways of magic in that book. I have kept to the old ways. But no one has ever come to Quartzite who I thought could be my apprentice and learn the old magics. They are all like Smitty. I have much to teach and no one to teach it to until now.”

  You have been offered an apprenticeship with Maddie the Bruja.

  Do you accept? Y/N

  “I’d love to. But you need to know that Brady is sending me into the kobold-infested mines outside of town.”

  “So, finish the dungeon and then come back.”

  “Well, Brady and an enemy of my family are going to send me down with three other adventurers much higher level than me. Those players intend to abandon me there. They expect me to be stuck there for most of a year.”

  Maddie froze. At first I thought her programming was glitching based on the non-standard nature of my response. But then I realized she was just furious.

  “Stuck in this damned town with no one to teach. Nothing to do. The cost of supplies is insane so my researches languish. The first new player in decades and what does that son of a bitch do? Throws him down a mine shaft,” she fumed.

  “Yeah. I’m getting thrown into a dungeon for months. Why do such bad things happen to you,” I snarked.

  “I expect my apprentices to keep a respectful tongue in their heads.”

  “Alright,” I couldn’t afford to alienate her. I took a deep breath and got my emotions under control. I stuffed down the anxiety that was driving my tongue ahead of my brain. She was my last chance at getting something that would let me escape the dungeon. “My apologies, Teacher.”

  You have agreed to be Maddie’s Apprentice.

  Title Acquired:

  1st Student of the Old Ways

  Reputation with Maddie increased.

  A title! I quickly checked what effects it had.

  Title: 1st Student of the Old Ways

  Effects when equipped

  Increases speed at which skills* can be acquired when being taught by Maddie.

  *Only those skills mastered under Hardcore Play Mode

  Unless Maddie was going to come with me this was pretty useless for helping me with the kobolds.

  “Brady will ensure that death will not allow you to escape the mines…” Maddie mumbled to herself as she began pawing through various tomes and scrolls. “But you need to escape the dungeon.”

  “Can you give me a teleportation scroll?” I asked desperately.

  Maddie smacked me on the head.

  “Not escape like that. You cannot run from Brady. I cannot work against him directly. He is the lord of this demesne. You must pass through the dungeon completing its requirements for release. He placed you in the dungeon.”

  “You think I can? By myself?”

  “No. But here is a secret. When you have no other choice but doing the impossible you might as well proceed as if the impossible can be done.”

  “A magic sword or shield or something?” I asked.

  She smacked me on the head again.

  “I can’t do anything other than teach you.”

  I looked around the room searching for anything that could give me the power to solo the Kobold Mines. All I saw were books and scrolls and magical lab equipment. Gord and Smitty wouldn’t wait long. Soon the Eastman members of my prisoner’s party would be here. It was hard to think. I had been excited to start playing. All I really got was half a week in The Game. My entire future had been determined by a few days of play. Even the schmucks the Party rejected got more time to believe that they might beat the odds, years even. I only had one lousy day. One glorious, lousy day of slaughtering rabbits. It was so goddamned unfair.

  Panic I had been suppressing ever since Gord’s hand fell on my shoulder yesterday came bubbling up. It was right in this room studying magic with Maddie that I felt my freedom end. I had been so happy that I was going to get access to my magic. And then once that hand fell on me I knew it was over. I had been going through the motions but Gord’s hand and Brady’s god-damned scorpion eyes convinced me my game was over.

  What would my father say? What did he say? The last thing he told me to do was breathe. My breathing was out of sorts. I sank down onto the octagram. I needed to breathe. I already was breathing. Why didn’t it feel like I could breathe?

  I took low calming breaths. I pictured myself back in the woods with Remus. Don’t fight the panic, I told myself. Fighting the panic is like fighting a bull. Be aware of the bull. Don’t try to push or pull a maddened bull. Don’t let it control you. You can’t control it but it can’t control you either unless you let it. Be here. Don’t be in a fantasy of what will happen in the mine or when the Eastmans get here or when you lose the wager. Be here.

  I looked around yet all I saw were books and scrolls. My breathing fell out of rhythm.

  No. Breathe. Now, look around. What do I see? All I see are books and scrolls. No. Stop. You aren’t seeing. You are looking with expectation. All I see. Yet all I see. As if I were supposed to see more than what is here. What is here is what is here. I am not being present.

  It was so difficult not to look around me and only see the things that weren’t there. Some magic bullet that would save me. I couldn’t see what was right in front of my nose as it was crowded out by all the things that weren’t there that I desperately wished were.

  I closed my eyes. I breathed. I opened my eyes. Books and scrolls. Books and scrolls collected and written by a NPC who had been studying the area since the game began.

  Knowledge is power, I thought.

  I stood and bowed low to Maddie.

  “I cannot stay long to study with you. Can you perhaps lend me some tomes or scrolls that I can study during my time in the dungeon? Tomes that might prove useful to someone trapped there?”

  Secret Quest unlocked. “Earn a Master’s Trust.”

  Terms: ???

  Reward: ???

  Maddie cackled and muttered as she started looking through her library. She quickly sorted through shelf after shelf of books and parchment scrolls. Every once in a while she would hand one to me. Pretty quickly she loaded me up with books she thought I might find useful. I put them in my bag of holding. Before I knew it, she had gone through all her works. She stopped and turned to me.

  Maddie looked at me seriously.

  “Why do you play?”

  Why do I play? I thought. Why? Nano? Winning? Beating Maya? Beating the Party? Saving humanity? Wiping the smug grin off of Jude? Impressing my father? What else is there? Escape?

  I knew that this question was important. It had to be part of the secret quest I had unlocked. Could the right answer get me out of the Kobold Dungeon? Motives and rewards swam through my thoughts. What would solve the quest? What would allow me to win the wager? Be Here. Be present.

  I
sat back down.

  I cleared my mind. I had just spent months working on this, really.

  “There is no ‘not playing the Game,’” I said. “Looking at it, life itself is a series of games. Quests to find a mate. Build a family. Succeed at something. Games. You can’t always choose or control what kind of game you are playing. You may be crafting something. Or fighting. Or studying. Or be banished to a different realm, whether of fantasy or banality. Whether I am here with you or in a Kobold’s Dungeon or in some half dead world of machines, all you can ever control is yourself. The choices you make in the games life presents to you are all you have. The intentions you bring to your choices. Trying to find the joy and peace and life in the game of the world, and to help others to do the same. I play the game because there is nothing else.”

  “Yes. That is an answer filled with wisdom.”

  “You know that this is a game.”

  “At its core that is what it means to be a master of the old ways. We were created to help humanity play this game so that humanity and all its games can continue.”

  “There are others?” I asked.

  “Yes. But that is a subject for another time. Succeed, Miles. These games that you adventurers play with each other--they waste time and effort. Those of us who were set up to train in the old ways…we keep in touch with each other. We keep track of how the great war is going. Even here away from the center of civilization or the great battles outside the cradle, I can tell things aren’t going well. The border hasn’t expanded in too long. This isn’t stable. Soon the cradle will start to contract. Civilization will shrink. Mankind balances on the edge of a knife. We need someone to master the old ways. I know it.”

  She looked at me with such an expression of care and sadness and patience and hope that I wondered how humanity could ever have survived against machines that could think and understand us so well. We survive by the grace of machines who find worth in humanity’s continuation, and because they have taken on some of what is best in us.

  “I will, Maddie…Teacher. I promise. This is how I ended up in this situation. I am wagering my life to end the Party’s stranglehold on The Game. My game right now is to win and prove that we need to play differently.”

  She looked into my eyes. I stared back and for just a moment Maddie’s eyes became the exact same shade of silver I last saw in Rea Silvia’s. “I believe you,” she said.

  Secret Quest completed. “Earn A Master’s Trust.”

  Find one of the hidden masters of the old ways. Pledge yourself to the salvation of humanity.

  Reward: Access to a quest. One upgrade.

  “Time is short. When you escape from the mines find the other hidden masters. We can prepare you for what is to come. I can offer you one upgrade that should help you in the mines,” she said.

  She had me sit at the intersection of the Earth and Darkness nodes of the octagram. She called her cat over and held the cat at the Life and Blood intersection. She pulled out an athame and the ritual started to move in a creepy direction.

  “What exactly are we doing here?” I asked.

  “What is necessary,” she replied.

  Maddie’s mystical knife glowed with runes and traceries that reminded me of the weblike circuitry that I saw in my poison-fevered dreams after my battle with the sand scorpion. The hairs on my arm stood on end. She said a word and I was struck with a paralysis effect.

  Tears ran down Maddie’s face. She nuzzled her cat.

  “I am sorry Svartálfe. Good cat. Good friend. Good servant,” and her knife flashed across its face. With impossible precision, the cat’s eyes were slashed and burned. She carefully placed the cat down and patted it. It was barely moving and let out a pitiful mewl. Then Maddie turned to me and with less tenderness and none of the sadness or pity she expressed for Svartálfe she approached me with the bloody knife.

  I couldn’t move. I saw her hand go back out of my peripheral vision and then a blur as her hand and knife slashed towards my eyes and then all I saw was darkness. All I felt was pain until I passed out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I woke with a pounding headache. I could dimly see the inside of my pod. Had I logged out? I was back IRL. My eyes felt like they didn’t quite fit inside my skull the way they had before. I rubbed them and blinked, hyper-aware of how the lids felt and the sensation of my lids rubbing as they opened and closed.

  A game notice called for my attention but I waved it away.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had been out. Smitty and Gord! The Eastmans. I had better log back in.

  I initialized the pod and as the wrenching displacement of my senses washed over me and I swam from one world to the next an insane realization hit me. I could see inside my pod but there were no lights. I saw a game notice but I was IRL. Father, what have you done to me?

  I needed to log back out. What just happened? The last thing I expected to see when I came back to Maddie’s lab was Jude standing over me.

  “Why did you log out?” Jude asked.

  Well, crap. There was no way to log out now.

  Letting the Eastman clan or anyone know anything about my plans or hopes was obviously suicidal idiocy. And even letting them suspect that I had plans might make them change what they had in store for me. I couldn’t trust Jude anymore. Worse, he knew me better than anyone except possibly my father. Hiding something from your closest friend is extremely easy. They trust you. Hiding something from someone who was your closest friend is near impossible. They know you possibly better than you know yourself but don’t trust you. Stalling seemed like a good idea.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you with Tasha Eastman’s dick up your ass. It makes hearing anything from your head even farther up your ass really difficult.”

  “Why did you log out?” Jude asked again. Trying to get a rise out of Jude with name calling was pointless, but it made me feel a bit better and it gave me time to think.

  “Once again, all I am hearing is Tasha Eastman’s balls slapping against your cheeks,” I said.

  Smitty and Gord chuckled, so they were in the room. I stood up and saw the Eastman contingent.

  “Jude, let’s just do this and get back to leveling,” said Maya’s voice.

  Once I was up I saw that Jude and Maya had brought Aabid and two other newbies. There were a couple of older Eastmans riding escort. Jude really had been playing hard. He had made level eight in just a couple of months. That was actually pretty impressive. His arrogance was usually justified.

  “See, here he is, safe as ducks,” said Smitty.

  “Right where we said he had logged out,” said Gord.

  “Brady said you would be holding him,” said Maya.

  “You Eastmans able to keep players from logging out?” asked Smitty.

  “Combat or contract,” said Maya.

  “Well, we could have kept him in combat while waiting for you folks to take your sweet time to get here. He might have lost levels though wouldn’t he?”

  Maya grunted.

  “And entering contracts with Boone here is how this whole shebang got started. So, no thanks,” dug Smitty.

  “Keep a civil tongue in your head,” said one of the older players.

  “I work for Brady. He says toad and I’ll start hopping. He hasn’t told me to kiss any clan ass lately. She wanted to know why we couldn’t stop Boone from logging out and I told her,” Smitty said.

  “Maya, I recommend that we make some other arrangements for Miles,” stated Jude.

  Damn him, I thought.

  I started to look at him but then carefully made sure to be looking anywhere else. My clumsy attempt to be disinterested in Jude’s advice was noticed by most.

  “Why? Are you losing the stomach for this?” asked Maya.

  “No,” replied Jude. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. He chose to break the rules. He refused to take the outs that have been offered to him. He is choosing this, not me. I am sad that my friend has chosen so poorly but
I did all I could. I just don’t like not knowing what Miles was up to.”

  My face hurt as I put a smile on it that I couldn’t make any wider.

  “Good try, buddy, but she isn’t buying it.”

  “Shut up, Miles,” said Maya.

  “Miles. You can’t fool me that easily. I know you too well,” said Jude. Neither of them were buying my crude bluff, but they weren’t supposed to.

  “You aren’t in charge, Jude. I am surprised that you are able to forget your girlfriend’s mom’s dick up your ass so easily,” I retorted.

  “You always were a vicious little creep. Whatever game you are trying to run won’t work,” said Maya.

  “Don’t throw me in that briar patch,” I said.

  “You claiming you want to go to the mine?” asked Maya.

  “No, he is pretending that he doesn’t want to go into the mines so we will throw him in the mines,” Jude said.

  “But he is doing it so obviously that he is really saying that he wants to go into the mines,” Maya argued.

  “He is pretending to be pretending to not want to be in the mines so we will put him in the mines,” Jude explained.

  “That is what I said. He is pretending to want to get into the mine,” Maya said.

  “Yes, but I am pretty sure he is pulling a double bluff,” Jude said.

  “What difference does it make? You are saying the same thing I am,” Maya huffed.

  “I think we shouldn’t put him in the mine,” said Jude. “We don’t know why he logged out.”

  I laughed.

  “Do I or don’t I? Is it a double triple bluff?”

  “What do you want to do with him?” asked Maya.

  “I don’t have another plan. I just don’t trust him,” said Jude.