“This may sound too easy, Kayla, but what about that –” I began, bringing the Ancient Lykos Pendant back out of inventory. That open hole in the middle made me think of a peephole or a looking glass and that made me think that maybe looking through that amulet would be the answer. I stopped talking as I saw the Nix Sorceress do the same thing.
She met my chagrined frown with a smirk as she held up the pierced amulet. “Great minds think alike, Shale!”
Well, I couldn’t argue with that, could I? “Fair enough.” I held the pendant up to my eye, peering through the hole. Looking at Kayla through it revealed nothing different, nor did it show any great secrets in the stalls and shops of Kalaam. However, when I looked at the parchment through it, the scrambled letters and shifting inks sorted themselves and settled into a short message in the common language of the Elemental Kingdoms. Grinning, I read on.
Watch for any who seek out the Vale! It must remain sacrosanct! Once your cell has been relieved, return swiftly to the west with what news you have gathered from the den of sin the Sultan calls home.
Remember the path well! The sandstone jaws mark the way. Three wolves, two supplicants, one gate. If you forget these things, you will never be able to return to our fold.
What followed immediately after we read our scraps was completely predictable.
Dynamic quest ‘An Answer of Violence’ updated!
Objective updated: Head into the Western Desert, follow the instructions from the Cultist’s note, and enter the Vale of the Three Wolves!
“Yes!” Kayla’s shout was bright and happy as she turned back to me. “I don’t know which one of us did it but one of us did. This quest is exactly what Crysta must have been talking about, the path to the Vale of the Three Wolves.”
Nodding slowly, I sent both the note and trinket back into my inventory. “I guess so but what about Alizhard? Didn’t she say we needed to talk to him here?” Maybe I was being paranoid or maybe I wasn’t used to things going smoothly. Almost nothing in my life ever went down straight lines, even down in the deep dive.
Kayla put a hand on my shoulder, eyes brimming with confidence. “We’ll figure that out as we go. This has to be it.” That touch and that look did wonders for my own confidence. “This is talking about the Vale, after all, and I’ve never heard another mention about a place with that name outside of Crysta and this quest.”
As persuasive as her argument and her touch were, there was still a bit of niggling doubt. “I guess, but I know I haven’t done much questing in the Sultanate. I really don’t know the lay of the land that well, do you? Maybe this is just some obscure mid-level quest neither of us knows about.”
“Look, my instincts on this sort of thing are usually spot on.” Kayla’s hand ran down my arm as she took hold of my right hand with both of hers. “Trust me. I know this is the quest we need to follow.”
Those big blue eyes were locked on me and her icy-cold hands soothed some of the burning heat from the sun beating down. That alone was persuasive. More importantly, memories of what my parents used to say to me before they died spun around in my brain. Everyone I cared about in my life always harped on the need for trust, that trust was the foundation of any relationship. Considering Mom and Dad had never seemed to have any troubles keeping things going before the accident, I was more than willing to believe that adage.
Well, if I was really going to go all the way as my sister Chrissy said I should, this was a great time to work on that foundation.
I let my vague frown of doubt turn into an agreeable smile. “You know I trust you, so let’s do this then.”
“Western Desert here we come,” she nodded as she pulled away. Leading the way through the crowd, Kayla had a purposeful stride in her step and I followed closely behind.
While Kalaam was mostly new territory for the both of us, the obvious direction to go in was west, of course. The Western Desert was one of the initial questing areas for Ember champions, spreading out in a vast arc due west of Kalaam. It wouldn’t be hard to find. What would be hard was finding the spot referenced in the note. The desert was vast, after all, and I would be slowing us down quite a bit with good, old, reliable, and plodding Snowy as my mount.
Kalaam being the winding snake’s nest that it was seemed to actively fight our attempts at navigation. More than once I thanked my choice to be a Craggar instead of an Ember. To have had to level up from the start in this city would have made me murder someone.
It took us a good ten minutes to unravel Kalaam’s many paths, alleys, and overpasses to make our way to the majestic polished stones of the Solar Gate, the westernmost break in the defensive walls of Kalaam.
The Solar Gate matched the incredible artistry and soaring architecture of the palace quarter. White-washed sandstone made up the thirty-foot high arch that framed the gate itself, a golden sculpture of a stylized sun making up the keystone, reflecting dazzling shafts of light from the blazing star overhead. The gates themselves were equally gargantuan, treated redwood doors at least five feet thick that were opened and closed via ancient mechanisms from before the Sundering.
This time of day, those doors were wide open, allowing a steady trickle of merchants and travelers passage to the desert beyond. Most of them were native Embers in their multilayered robes and colorful turbans, mounted on native Desert Striders, long-legged birds most similar to giant ostriches, if ostriches had two-foot long dagger-like beaks and immense, fiery plumage. The Sultan’s Guards, clad in elaborate studded leather armor and scarlet turbans, their faces hidden behind bronze masks that imitated demonic creatures from Ember folklore, watched the flow impassively, not raising a finger to the occasional arguments between merchants jockeying for position. Fortunately, unlike most of the bustle in Kalaam, the devs had obviously routed the NPC AIs to leave a continually open lane for players to move in and out of town.
We were equally fortunate that Elementalis Online didn’t have any aspects of old-school survival games of the One-and-Twenty. Those games required punishing micromanagement of resources, food, water, stamina, all that kind of stuff. Despite the blistering desert heat, we had no food, water, or temperature meters to balance out. Imagine how much longer our trek would have taken if we had to gather supplies and fill our saddlebags with food and waterskins to get us across the desert! No, all I would have to worry about would be rehydrating out of the dive as I could still feel the faint, ghostly tingle of sweat on my ‘real’ body.
“I hope we aren’t out there riding around too long,” I muttered as I summoned up my well-used Ram’s Whistle. With the vast majority of my gold converted to real world dollars, all I had ever been to afford was my good old reliable Snow White Mountain Ram. Snowy had never let me down unless you counted when he got me killed escorting the Princess Kallisandre, or when it turned several of our exploits into slogs as everyone had to slow down to accommodate me.
“Oh, Shale,” Kayla said, putting a hand on my shoulder right before I blew the whistle, “you won’t need that.” I glanced back at her in surprise as a ping echoed across my UI.
Kayla would like to trade with you!
Do you accept?
“Uh, okay?” I mentally accepted the trade request as Kayla conjured up a neatly wrapped package which added itself to her side of the trade window. “This is a good thing, right?”
She rolled her eyes in response, her arms folding over her stomach. “Of course, it is!” As I hit the okay on the trade, she watched me with anticipation as I held the blue-wrapped gift tentatively in one hand. “Well, it won’t bite. Go ahead and open it.”
It was going to take a bit before I would get used to having good things come my way, I mused as I meticulously opened the package, at least Shale did. Despite the amazing interactivity of having your brain directly connected to the system, the developers still added these canned animations for a lot of things. After all, most people in the real world aren’t sword masters, expert archers, and certainly not master wizards.
Undoing the last bit of wrapping paper, the package poofed with a cloud of multicolored smoke before resolving into what looked to be a foot-long, hollowed-out monster tooth. Both the large end and the narrow end had openings, essentially creating a crude horn out of the thing. Taking a closer look, the item data popped into a floating translucent pane above the horn.
Pearlescent Stone Lizard’s Horn
Grade A Summoning Item
3 second summoning time
Blowing this horn made from a Slate Lizard’s tooth summons a trained Pearlescent Stone Lizard for you to ride. The Lizard’s level is equal to your own minus 5% (current Level 38).
As I examined the Horn, I could see Kayla smiling out of the corner of my eye. “I promised we’d do something about that sluggish mount of yours, didn’t I?” While I knew I needed to upgrade ye olde Snowy, I felt strangely apprehensive at the actual idea of never blowing that wood-carved whistle again. After a few moments of no verbal response, she leaned forward, her smile starting to fall. “I know it might seem a bit much as a gift but I thought it might help out, what with trying to help you make money for, well, whatever is wrong up there.”
While I winced mentally at that, I blinked a few times outwardly as I forced myself to get my act together. “No, it’s not too much, Kayla.” Geez, could I mess up something that should be a sweet moment more? Well, I guess I could have turned away and told her it was trash. Letting the smile that I knew was lingering under my pondering to actually come out, I pushed on. “Sorry! It’s weird, I never thought I’d ride anything other than Snowy. This is really great. Thank you.”
I caught the little sigh of relief as Kayla’s smile came back. “I think we all get attached to our first mounts.” She summoned up the coral ocarina that summoned her own Sea Horse, a bit of an impish grin as she prepared to play it. “Now maybe we can actually find those wolf’s jaws sometime this week!”
I laughed at that. She wasn’t wrong, though, and I was more appreciative of the gift already. Going from a Grade D to a Grade A mount was like moving from a junky used car to a brand-new sports car. “We might. I really can’t thank you enough.”
Her eyebrow arched a hair as she said one last thing, “Just keep being you, Shale.”
As Kayla summoned up her Sea Horse, I took a deep breath and brought the Lizard’s Horn to my lips. The sound it elicited was a deep, throbbing bass note, a single tone that ended with a burst of smoke, dust, and fragments of stone. When the cloud cleared away, my shiny new riding beast was stretching his legs.
I really meant the shiny bit. Stone Lizards were big, dinosaur-like lizards, natives to some of the rocky foothills of the Dominion Mountains, and this particular one had scales with the luster of polished pearls. When I meant big, I mean it. The thing was a bit longer than the biggest stallion and twice as wide, with six legs keeping him stable instead of the usual four. The saddle, bit, and bridle were all made of white leather and silver fittings, all matching well with the pearly scales and skin. Four glowing eyes mounted above his snout and impressive jaws glanced eagerly in my direction.
“I thought you’d like a mount as big and tough as you are,” Kayla called from her perch atop her elegant steed.
I grinned back at her as I clambered up into the saddle, throwing my armored bulk atop the beast. “I think you called that one right on the nose!” The beast let out a throaty bellow and shifted under my weight, moving from foot to foot to foot to … well, you get the picture. “What do you think? Is Pearly too goofy of a name?”
“No, I think it suits the both of you.” Kayla flashed me a happy smile as she turned her aquatic equine towards the path through the gate. “Now let’s give him a good try-out!” With that, she spurred her steed onward, the Sea Horse galloping down the path.
With my own smile and a shake of my head, I spurred Pearly on after her. The huge lizard’s muscles rippled as Pearly surged forward, all six legs pumping like mad and managing to just keep up with the pace of the much more agile horse.
I immediately questioned why I had never gotten myself a real mount before and why I was ever hesitant to put old Snowy out to the virtual pasture.
It’s a good thing Kayla had given me that gift because the Western Desert was every bad thing I could imagine about a desert mixed up with what had to line up with some classical interpretation of Hell.
Red sand clashed with black, sulfurous rocks, blowing winds gusted into mini-sandstorms. Sandstone markers pierced up into the sky, strange monoliths marked the way down the trade roads. What vegetation did exist was a variety of red-and-gold cacti that radiated some kind of internal heat a step above the already punishing conditions. I suppose to an Ember the warmth would be comforting. As for Kayla, Nix were almost as heat-resistant as Embers so she didn’t seem to complain one bit about the heat. Me, well, I was an uncomfortable, sweaty mess. All the same, I clamped down on any complaint and kept an eye on the horizon, looking for any clue as to these sandstone jaws we were looking for.
With little information to go other than ‘go west, young man,’ I decided to ask the obvious question. "So, uh, where to?"
“Well, let's get the lay of the land," Kayla responded, "by following the trade road and looking at those markers. They are the only sandstone bits I can see that aren’t part of the capital. Maybe one of them has a marking of a wolf or beast’s jaws or something.”
“Sounds like a good place to start,” I agreed as we headed down the barely demarked roadway.
These were newbie yards, and what hostile beasts wandered near the roads wisely ignored us. At least there were monsters that were somewhat familiar, such as the Fire Sultanate’s native Pyrolins (not to be confused with Pyrlins), red-skinned goblins with flames licking out of their big mouths.
Naturally, the desert wasn’t one to leave me comfortable, and I certainly didn’t feel comfortable with the roiling masses of tendrils spilling forth from a blazing flame that were called Blaze Snakes. They sure as heck didn’t look like any snakes I had ever seen.
I just didn’t like it. That’s the end all, be all of it.
An hour slipped away, sands in the hourglass matching the blowing sands all around us. We passed several travelers, traders, guardsmen, and other players, but no more assassins or cultists attacked us. We pored over what felt like hundreds of those stupid waymarkers. Most of them were plain, with worn carvings of the Sultan’s crest to mark them as royal property. A few contained directions to nearby towns, oases, and the occasional traveler’s warnings of dangerous regions. The virtual maps in our UIs automatically updated based on those signs but nothing else of sandstone showed up during our weary trek through the desert.
Kayla never wavered in her onward push, but it was becoming all too clear to me that we were on the wrong track with the quest. As far as the heat goes, all I know is that Pearly seemed to be dealing with it a heck of a lot better than I was. As we reined in next to yet another marker, I leaned forward in the saddle toward Kayla who was still intently focused on examining this pillar as we had all the rest.
“Look,” I offered, “I think we need to look at this from another perspective.” She elegantly settled back in the saddle and turned her Sea Horse to face me, so I continued. “It’s been useful getting the lay of the land here but I’m pretty sure these markers aren’t the key to this puzzle.”
Kayla chewed at her lip for a moment, her eyes flicking to the marker one more time before focusing on me. “I don’t know. If we had any other clue as to where we might find these sandstone jaws, I’d go for it but this seems to be the only thing we have to follow here.”
I rubbed a hand down my stony face, surprised that it didn’t come away wet. Craggar don’t exactly sweat, not with that stony skin. While I couldn’t fault Kayla’s logic, I had the belief that we were wrong. I had to convince her somehow.
“Call it gut instinct,” I offered, an idea starting to light up in my overheated brain. “Look, let’s at least take a second here where it’s
safe to think, take a look at what we’ve mapped. Maybe the markers have given us an answer we haven’t figured out yet.”
“Huh, maybe you’re right.” Kayla nodded slowly. “Besides, I trust your instincts. It’s gotten us through a lot already!”
With a little maneuvering, we managed to somehow get both Kayla’s horse and my own lizard to sidle up side by side. Leaning over in my own saddle, I could get close enough so that we could both look at Kayla’s map, materializing from UI element to a glowing interactive image on the scroll she unfurled in her hands.
If nothing else, we hadn’t totally wasted the day. Between our riding and diligent marker reading, we had marked a good half of the Western Desert with a good two dozen points of interest marked. For a few minutes, our eyes searched over the map, trying to take in the maze of markers sprinkled over the half-finished map.
Kayla pointed out a marker, red to denote a dangerous area. “What about this? The Teeth of Majera?” She glanced over at me. “It’s out of the way, supposed to be riddled with bandits, and teeth could be a reference to jaws. If I were a bunch of cultists, I would consider using banditry as a cover.”
Frowning a bit, I gave a half-nod. “Maybe.” Something still didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it was because the Teeth were more north than west of Kalaam or maybe it felt too tangential. “I’m just not sure.” My eyes cast along the western end of what we had mapped and there was a marker that seemed to jump out at me.
“You’ve got that eureka look in your eyes, Shale.” Kayla smiled and tried to follow my gaze. “What is it?”
“I might be barking up the wrong waymarker but …” I pointed at the green town marker I had been staring at. “Kalmarkat.”
What had caught my attention was the little Masonry Guild symbol over it. The Masonry tradeskill was used to refine and craft stone into various structures and furniture bits as well as some types of usable crystal items. Normally, tradeskill guilds were near places where materials abounded to help with the setup of crafting quests so Masonry Guild meant stone. Reading a little deeper, I noticed an important point.
The Vale of Three Wolves: A LitRPG Adventure (Elements of Wrath Online Book 2) Page 3