I had felt this way when I saw the guards at the gate of Cutno hustle Artus, I had felt this way when the vegetable broker Geerne had walked with me through the city, and I was feeling this way now, as I watched my dwarven friend debate a serious lifestyle change. I knew what the woman was thinking, feeling, and agonizing over from the slight expressions on her face. I hadn’t known about her art, but it was apparent that there was nothing else that she would rather do, and she wanted a chance to stand on her own feet, away from the umbrella of her clan.
“It is decided then. I’ll be joining you on your way to Arnicoal,” the woman said with a nod and slight frown.
“Are you sure? It seems like a risk—” I began to say, but she interrupted me.
“Of course I am sure! Once a dwarf makes a decision it is carved from rock, wrapped in steel, and then dipped in adamantium for good measure. That is—” Gratia turned to Artus, “if you wouldn’t mind making an introduction to your friend for me. I think my work stands on its own, but I’d appreciate any help you could give me.”
“Of course,” Artus said with a bob of his cat head. “I’m also not without finance. If you need an investor for a gallery, or to get you started, I would hope that you’d consider me. As I said before, I don’t know anything about art, but I know you, and I trust in you.”
“Those are kind words, Artus. By my grandfather’s beard.” The short woman wiped the back of her hand across her face. It didn’t look like she was crying, but her voice had softened from her usual tone. “I really did get lucky. I should be all sorts of dead right now, but instead, I’ve met some great people, I have my freedom, and I’m gonna try at my dream.” She looked between Artus and me, and then she smiled. “Thank you both.”
“It was mostly Leo. Grrr,” Artus said with a laugh.
“Don’t worry. No thanks are needed,” I said as I raised my fist again so the dwarven woman could press her knuckles against mine.
“I suppose I should thank that damn elf too. She’s all kinds of stupid, but she did really help us with the wagon, and carrying the armor. Our kind don’t really get along that well, but I’d call her a friend if someone asked. Where is she?” Gratia raised her eyebrow as she looked at me. “She’s normally stuck to you like a pimple on a troll’s ass.”
“She’s mad at me. I told her that we are going to swing close to Cutno so that she could go back home. She wants too—”
“Stay with ya forever and make lots of babies. I get it.” The woman filled in. “Here is the plan: I’m going to call some servants, get all my possessions packed up, and then have your wagon loaded up with ‘em. We gave you a stout one, so it should be able to carry most of my things. The good news is, we’ll get some Blood Smiths to journey with us through the foothills, and maybe for a few dozen miles through Cutno’s valley. Sometimes it pays to be me. You two get that elf, and meet me at the wagon in an hour. Then we’ll get out of here. What do you say?” The woman smiled at me once she finished.
“Sounds like a plan. I’m really happy you are coming with us,” I said, and it was the truth. The woman was a little prickly around the edges, and she wasn’t a warrior, but I felt a fondness for her that I had never experienced in a game before. Until I met Artus and Allurie.
A flash of text appeared across my UI screen. It was written in the nice orange I had changed the colors to, but it had some blueish-gray shadowing to make the text pop from the background of my vision.
New Quest: Find Allurie and meet Gratia at the wagon
There was a timer beneath the quest text, and it began to countdown from sixty minutes.
“Alright,” I said as I turned to Artus, “Let’s find Allurie. She is probably at the wagon already.”
I gave Gratia another nod, finished putting the new sword on my belt, and then moved to the exit door of her suite. Artus followed me, and we began our walk toward the front gates of the massive stronghold.
“Leo, are you feeling okay?” Artus asked after a few minutes of walking through the stone corridors.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“Could be nothing, but you seem a little stressed. You normally have a smile on your face. Today you are mostly frowning. Do you miss Allurie?”
“No, I mean. Ack. I’m sad she is mad at me, and that I have to send her home, but I’m just worried about other stuff. I’m sorry I—”
“If you want to talk about things, I’m your friend. We fenia aren’t much liked in the world, but we know how important friendship is.”
“Thanks, Artus, I’ll keep that in mind.” I smiled at the cat-man and thought about how ridiculous of a conversation it would be. I’d be talking with an NPC in a virtual video game about people trying to assassinate me because I was switching from one video game to another. I doubted that the conversation would go anywhere productive.
I was suddenly lonely, and missed Jax and Garf. Perhaps Dinah was right when she asked if I was really going to be okay without them for two years. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my parents, or the assassination attempts, that wasn’t either a virtual friend, or someone that worked for Arnacript. I wanted to be able to confide in Zarra, and maybe I already was, but part of me feared where our relationship was heading. I knew I was attracted to the woman, and she seemed to share my feelings, but it was going to really make our jobs difficult if we were also lovers. I struggled with the desire to become more intimate with her, and also make our game awesome.
“The main gate is up ahead,” Artus said after another five minutes of walking. I had spent my last game session with the clan’s loremaster, and I hadn’t really explored the stronghold, so I was letting the fenia lead me through the maze of hallways.
The tunnel opened up into a massive cavern, and I looked around the space with a sense of astonishment. There were hundreds of Dwarves milling about in the front “lobby” area of the stronghold. Some worked on the dozens of wagons that were parked in the space. Others herded ponies, goats, and chickens into pens, and another group of dwarves seemed to be doing maintenance on one of the fifty ballista that were pointed at the massive front door of the stronghold.
The door was some twenty-five feet high, and made of a strange colored metal that seemed to pull the emberlight in like a black hole. The ceiling of the cavern went up about eighty feet, and I could see more ballista hanging from the rocks there.
“Damn, they are prepared. Do they get attacked often? I can’t imagine anything getting through that massive piece of metal,” I said as I pointed at the front entrance.
“I asked that question when I first walked in here. Grrr. They said they haven’t had a giant attack in a good eighty years, but they lost a lot of dwarves with the last one, and they don’t want to risk such a thing again.”
“Ahh,” I said.
“This is our wagon. Isn’t it nice? They are treating us very well. It is a good gift.” Artus ran his furry paw over the flank of the covered wagon, and I heard a purr escape his throat.
I didn’t know that much about wagons, but the vehicle did look well crafted, it was about fifty percent larger than Artus’ old one, the seats looked more comfortable, the wheels were larger, the wood thicker, and the covering meant that we might be able to sleep inside.
“I like it!” I said as I peered inside.
“They’ve given us more than enough supplies to get us there, and we’ll have more than enough room for Gratia’s stuff.”
“I’m happy she is coming with us,” I said.
“Grrr. Me as well. I don’t see Allurie, though. I would have thought she would be moping inside. She knew we were going to leave as soon as you woke.
“I’ll ask someone.” I turned from the wagon and saw an armed guard pacing forty feet from our wagon. I walked over to him and extended my fist to bump him.
“Greetings, human Leo,” he said with a nod.
“Greetings friend. I’m looking for the elf girl that traveled with me. Silver hair and turquoise colored eyes.
Have you seen her?”
“Aye. She came this way. Looked upset, which is odd for an elf, but I didn’t care to ask what her problem was. Elves and all.”
“Did you see where she went?” I asked.
“Aye.” He nodded toward the gate. “She asked the gate guards if they could let her out. They opened the smaller door on the side, and she went through.”
“Ugh. That leads outside?” I asked the question even though I guessed what the man was going to say.
“Aye. She left about ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago. Kind of stupid, it’s dangerous out there, but then again. Elves.” The man raised his eyebrow and shrugged.
“Shit. Shit. Thanks for your help.”
“No worries. You gonna chase after her? I can get some of us together to go with you.”
“You’d do that?” I asked with surprise.
“For her? No. For you? Maybe. Because I’m bored? By my grandfather’s long beard, yes.” The man let out a low laugh. “So you going?”
“Yes!” I waved to Artus urgently and the fenia loped over with his cat gait.
“Allurie went outside. Some of these nice dwarves are going to go with me. Can you stay here until I get back?” I asked my friend.
“Grrr. Yes.” He nodded. My friend’s yellow-gold eyes were wide with surprise, and the expression made me think he liked Allurie more than he had let on.
I turned to the dwarf, and the short man opened his mouth surprisingly wide.
“Kinsmen and women! I need some stout warriors to leave immediately! We are joining the human on a valiant rescue mission! We will probably all die! But those that return will drink their beer knowing they have the honor of their grandfathers flowing through the locks of their beards!”
The call to action seemed a bit ridiculous to me, but within thirty seconds there were five armored warriors standing around us. Four of them were men, but one woman gave me a fist bump as she stepped into the circle. Her face was covered in scars, her plate armor had a bit of a red hue to it, her shield looked thicker than the gates of the stronghold, and the axe tied to her belt was almost as long as my arm.
“What’s the mission?” the woman growled, and the first dwarf explained the situation to her. It was apparent from his tone that this woman was of significant rank, and I guessed that she was a Blood Smith.
“Fine. Let’s go find an idiot elf,” the woman said as she glanced at me. “Human, may we join your party?”
“Yes,” I said as a dialogue box opened on my UI. I had said the word so fast that I didn’t get a chance to read the text, but the left side of my interface was suddenly filled with the portraits of the six dwarven warriors. There were health bars beneath their transparent pictures, but their names read off as Dwarven Warrior #1 all the way through #6.
But I didn’t have too much time to study the new party display. Within two seconds of the group forming, the six dwarves were sprinting toward the side exit door that was placed next to the bigger gate. This door looked just as thick as the main ones, but it was only large enough to fit one person through at a time, and I was probably going to have to duck to enter.
The pair of guards at the smaller door must have realized what was going on, and they swung it open so that our party of seven could run through without slowing. I did have to duck a bit when I followed them into the tunnel beyond the door, but I didn’t feel as if the slightly crouched run was hurting my speed that much. My party members couldn’t really run that fast on their short legs. The tunnel lasted a bit longer than I expected, but we reached the end after thirty seconds of running.
“We are dwarves!” the woman in the front called out as soon as we exited the tunnel.
“We are dwarves!” the rest of the warriors shouted in return.
“Strong and true!” she shouted-sang again.
“Strong and true!” the men sang.
“If there’s a job!”
“If there’s a job!”
“We’ll see it through!”
“We’ll see it through!”
“We are dwarves!”
“We are dwarves!”
“Stout and hard!”
“Stout and hard!”
“If someone needs help!”
“If someone needs help!”
“We’ll be their guard!”
“We’ll be their guard!”
“We are dwarves!”
“We are dwarves!”
“Feel our might!”
“Feel our might!”
“In the darkest caves!”
“In the darkest caves!”
“We are the light!”
“We are the light!”
“We are dwarves!”
“We are dwarves!”
“So have no fear!”
“So have no fear!”
“Unless you’ve got!”
“Unless you’ve got!”
“A lot of beer!”
“A lot of beer!”
They sang the words out in time with their running steps, and I felt a smile come to my face at the last verse. I was glad that Ohlavar Quest’s AI had decided to make the dwarven race more traditional. I’d always liked their racial archetypes in the various fantasy games I’d played, and these guys were really fitting the mold of the classic and badass dwarven warriors.
We had exited the stronghold at the bottom of a steep gulch, or maybe it was a canyon, or a ravine. I didn’t know the exact terminology for the landscape, but the slopes were super steep on each side, and there was no way that Allurie could have climbed them without gear. The only way she could have gone was ahead, and the dwarves just ran in that direction while they chanted their song.
There was a bit of grass on the sides of the slope, so I guessed that we weren’t that far above sea level. The air was crisp though, and if I hadn’t been running, I might have actually felt cold. Then again, the temperature fluctuations hadn’t really bothered me so far in the game. I had only been slightly uncomfortable when I had run around naked in the underdark, so I was guessing that Zarra’s team had the VRIU set to ease some of the temperature discomfort.
We ran for another five minutes, and then the gravely pathway came to a T intersection. The women in the lead raised her arm, and the line of marching dwarves came to a halt.
The six of them turned around where they stood, and each of them sniffled their noses a bit. One of the men began to wander around the intersection, and his eyes were down at the gravel. Their search continued for a few more minutes, and they began to spread out more along the space of the wide road. Finally, one of the men gave a shout out, and we all ran to where he pointed.
“Damn elf. She’s going the wrong way,” the lead woman sighed with annoyance.
“There is a wrong way?” I asked.
“Aye. There is that way.” She pointed the opposite direction on the road with a thick finger, “That will take ya to the foothills, and eventually Cutno Valley. That is, if the trolls, or goblins, or orcs, or ogres, or wyverns don’t eat you. Or,” she gestured the way that Allurie’s footprint indicated the elf girl was walking, “you can take this way, which doesn’t go anywhere except where there are more trolls, goblins, orcs, ogres, and wyverns living.”
“Shit,” I sighed.
“No worries, human. You helped get Gratia back for us. We’ll find your pet elf. Let’s go!” she screamed, and the short men quickly formed a line behind her.
They picked up the song where they left off, and I almost wanted to jump in with them. I didn’t know if that would insult them, since I wasn’t a dwarf, so I kept my mouth shut and kept my gaze on the sides of the mountains around us. There were dozens of nooks and crannies that monsters could hide in, and if any of them knew how to use a bow, it could have presented a dangerous situation. My companions didn’t seem to care though, and they didn’t even turn their heads so they could watch the sides of the road.
After a few more minutes I knew why. There was a large stone structure up ahea
d. It looked like a mini castle, with fifty foot tall towers, a thick wall, and ballista set up in every single corner. It looked as if the fortress was ready to take on Godzilla, and I realized that it made a lot of sense to have outposts near their main stronghold.
“Hey!” a dwarven soldier called from the ramparts of the fortress. He was carrying a crossbow almost as tall as he was.
“Have you seen an elf girl?” the Blood Smith shouted up the wall.
“Aye! She walked past us. We called her an idiot, but she didn’t reply. Then we said we were sorry, but she was still an idiot, and she needed to come back behind the walls, but she kept walking. Elves! I tell ya! Maybe I should have offered her my pen—”
“How long ago was that?” I shouted up at the man.
“Ten minutes. Actually. Hold on!” He set down his giant crossbow and then pulled a spyglass out of his armor. Then he turned away from us and peered through it.
“I see her! About a mile down, maybe a bit more. You’ll catch up to her soon!” He shouted down at us.
“Thanks!” the Blood Smith yelled, and she nodded her head for us to fall in line again.
Our running pace picked up some, and I was actually starting to breathe a little bit. I could have gone much faster, and it still didn’t feel like I was working that hard, but I knew that we were moving much quicker than Allurie.
Why in the hell had she just run off like that? It was annoying because we were wasting time, and she was putting herself in danger. She was also putting all these dwarves in danger, but part of me guessed that this group of warriors were more than happy to have an excuse to maybe thrash some monsters.
The problem with Allurie’s action was that she had forced my hand. Yeah, I had planned on taking her back to Cutno, but I might have changed my mind when it came time to tell her to go home. Now I was pretty certain that she needed to go back to the castle. There was no way that I could have someone around me that would just run off into danger when she disagreed with me.
“Up ahead!” the woman at the front shouted, and I spotted the silver-haired elf about a quarter a mile ahead. Allurie heard the shout, and she turned around to face us. It looked like she had an axe in her hand, and she kind of moved into a battle stance as we approached. Then she seemed to recognize me at the distance, and the woman lowered the weapon.
Lion's Quest: Dual Wield: A LitRPG Saga Page 4