Patch 17 (Realm of Arkon)

by G. Akella

  Was that the local lie detector or something?

  I didn't really have anything to hide, so I did what was asked of me without worry. My palm felt warm and a slight pricking.

  "Have you been to the Zorn or Alcatta provinces?" the demon began his questioning.

  "No."

  "Are you in any way associated with Prince Vallan or any of his vassals?"

  "No."

  "Are you plotting against the rulers of Ashtar Dominion, either directly or indirectly?"

  "No," I shrugged.

  "You may remove your hand. Where will you be staying? And for how long?"

  "I will probably stay at The Learned Troll. As for how long, I do not know yet."

  The demon scribbled another note in his log, then closed it and shot a questioning glance at the tifling. Still boring me with his vertical eyelids, the latter looked contemplative for a moment, then asked in an insinuating tone:

  "Was there a breakthrough of light forces somewhere in our domain? Where did you come from, mage?"

  "I think that your subordinate just reported to you all the particulars," I gestured at the sergeant of the guard. I never liked his type, but I wasn't about to pick a fight with him. That would be idiotic.

  The tifling shook his head, put his arms behind his back, cocked his head slightly forward and spoke:

  "A human mage named Krian somehow appears near Lamorna, a village in Jarus Province, slays the Great Netherworld Demon Shaartakh..." I watched both the clerk's and the sergeant's eyes blow up to the size of golf balls. "Then, while traveling with a caravan toward Nittal, gets caught in a misty rift," the tifling took the arms from behind his back and crossed them over his chest once more. "At night the caravanners are attacked by a skhiarta—the first such reported incident in at least fifty years. Our mage here doesn't succumb to the monster's charms, but destroys it along with its brood. Did I miss something?"

  "No, that about covers it," I said. "But tell me," I held a pause, looking at him expectantly.

  "Annat. Dar Annat, if you insist. I'm not big on ranks," the demon introduced himself.

  I nodded and continued:

  "Tell me, venerable Dar Annat, slaying Shaartakh and the skhiarta—are either of those things a crime?"

  "No, of course not. Both are commendable by the dominion, only..." the tifling looked at his subordinates. "Leave us," he commanded. "And you can take a seat, if you wish," he motioned at the now-free chair.

  "It's all right, I'm not tired," I remained standing. There was only one chair, and sitting on it would mean putting myself in a position of weakness from the get-go, since I'd have to be looking up. No thanks.

  "A moment," the tifling spread his arms wide and made a subtle motion with his right wrist. My ears clogged up for a second, to which he nodded in satisfaction and explained. "Shroud of Silence—to keep curious ears away. So, where were we? Oh yes," Annat gave me another intent look. "You are an enigma, and therefore potentially dangerous. And one of the objectives of the organization that I have the honor of belonging to is precisely this—eliminating any possibility of trouble arising on the dominion's territory."

  His heavy gaze had a hypnotic quality to it. As if at any moment a forked tongue would slither out of his mouth, and I, entranced, would readily allow myself to be swallowed whole. Barely fighting back the delusion, I asked:

  "Secret police?"

  "Not quite, but you're not far off," Annat brushed a nonexistent speck off the sleeve of his gray tunic. "The magistrate I have the honor of belonging to is responsible for internal security in the dominion."

  "And how is it I've come to be of interest to such a powerful security service?"

  "I just want you to answer a few questions," he motioned at the hemisphere on the desk.

  "And if I refuse? Will you arrest me, or worse?"

  "Arrest you? Heavens, no. Why would we? You've done us an invaluable service." There wasn't a hint of sarcasm in his eyes. "You will simply go your merry way," he shrugged. "Having said that, you're obviously a shrewd individual—you realize the benefit of cooperating with an organization such as ours. Especially since you've already confirmed that you're not connected to the rebels and aren't plotting against the state."

  "Fair enough," I nodded my consent. "Ask your questions."

  "How did you end up here?"

  "I came from another world. I do not know the mechanism of my appearing here," I said, and my answer was God's honest truth. Indeed, I hadn't the slightest clue how the game capsule really worked.

  The hemisphere grew warmer under my palm, but retained its color.

  "Who sent you here?"

  "The order was given by one of the creators of this world. I am tasked with completing a certain quest that is in no way connected to the security of Ashtar Dominion, nor of this entire plane." As far as I remembered, Cheney was there from the start of the game's creation. And what was it he'd said to me? To be a beta tester? A perfectly proper quest in my book. "But I don't want to expound on the topic."

  "Interesting. But the Eye of Truth never lies. Let it be so, then. Besides, who are we to question the designs of higher beings?" As I'd suspected, the tifling took my story to mean that I had been sent here by some god. This was a good thing, as gods were a real force in Arkon that few would want to mess with. And who knew how a god might react to a mortal being overly inquisitive about their plans?

  The tifling's inscrutable face gave nothing away. Still, I could guess his thoughts with a ninety nine percent certainty. It was either The hell with him! or Best let sleeping dogs lie. If only the horned bastard knew that I'd been itching to tear the aforementioned "god" that had sent me here to a thousand little pieces.

  "Last question, and you may take your hand off the artifact. Just for my own personal curiosity. How did you manage to slay one of the elder demons?"

  "I don't deserve much credit there. I was helped by a mage's phantom whose bones were being guarded by the ancient beast."

  "You mean, the demon croaked because you had to bury the mage's remains?"

  "One of the great mages of antiquity," I corrected him. "Besides, it's unbecoming to deprive anyone of a proper burial, don't you think?"

  Annat shook his head, deep in his own thoughts.

  "I hope that you'll abstain from visiting local cemeteries and burial sites. See, you might not find another elder demon to serve as your lightning rod should you come upon some more scattered bones." The tifling's face didn't show whether or not he was joking. The Hart with him! There were no further questions—the security agent seemingly didn't care about that mage's identity or how the two of us took down Shaartakh.

  "Take this," Annat handed me a round piece of leather, ostensibly the local registration certificate. "And another thing... The moment something starts happening to you, please find me right away."

  "Why do you think something should happen to me?" I asked warily.

  "You're no fool, Krian," the tifling gave me a sidelong look. "Do you know of any other members of a light race visiting the dominion? Or do you think that you can stroll around the streets of Nittal after slaying an ancient monster and not draw attention to yourself?"

  "So what can happen to me?" I knew the question was foolish the moment it was uttered.

  "How should I know? We'll know when it happens. You can find me in the citadel. Ask anyone how to get to the Gray House. That's all, you may go now," he nodded his farewell.

  After a polite goodbye, I set out in search of Rioh.

  Upon leaving the basin, I touched the big boulder and confirmed my new binding point. It would have been better to bind somewhere outside the city—there were several such gray boulders on the approach—but I'd been too lazy. Besides, I now had clothes courtesy of Treis, so in the event of death I wouldn't need to flash my undergarments for all to see. This was another element of the game: your personal clothes were equipped into special slots and shown by default after death. Imagine a group of players several miles aw
ay from their binding point. What should they do if they wipe—run through the woods buck-naked? Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were plenty such exhibitionists in the game, but city guards had little tolerance for full frontal nudity.

  I didn't need to go far to find Rioh. He was chatting with the coachman of a long string of wagons that had been stopped by the city guards at the entrance. Going by the smell, the wagons were filled to the brim with fish.

  "There you are, master mage!" he bawled at me from a distance. "I was just telling my friend here how you terminated that skhiarta!"

  Dozens of heads turned at once—coachmen of anterior wagons, soldiers lingering nearby—and regarded me with quite a bit of interest.

  "Come, Rioh," I waved dismissively, "we haven't much time." The last thing I wanted was to draw extra attention to my person.

  We crossed the square—an empty space before the city gates, dotted with storeroom-like structures—and headed toward the harbor along one of the four streets that led there. The street sloped downward noticeably, framed on either side by tall enclosures—some stone, mostly wooden—and gray walls of buildings. This was the city's industrial zone.

  "What do you think, Krian?" Rioh spoke after we crossed an intersection. "Should I become a caravan guard?"

  I sighed—the young demon was incapable of being silent for long.

  "Don't ever transfer the responsibility of making decisions to others. Especially when those decisions will determine your fate."

  I didn't expect him to understand the full brevity of my words, but he seemed to get the gist of it. I empathized with his dilemma—it's not easy to give up the old and familiar. In my time, despite great prospects and possibilities, I doubted whether I should cross the ocean at all. If it weren't for Alyona—I smiled at the thought of my sister—I might have remained your run-of-the-mill manager at a run-of-the-mill company. Then again, who was I kidding? I didn't doubt my decision for a second back then—I simply let my sister think she was persuading me.

  "Well, I've already decided," the young demon said musingly. "But I'm still kind of scared."

  "If you've already decided, just do it."

  As we drew farther from the gates, the shops and the storerooms began giving way to residential houses. There was no apparent architectural design or style: some houses had windows that opened up on the street, others were clustered inside fenced-off courtyards. In this part of the city, most structures were two stories high with white or light gray walls. The clanging of metal and the screeching of gears were overtaken by the noise of the private sector: kids shouting and squealing, hammers thumping, horses whinnying. As we passed a drinking well right off the road, we saw a bunch of local women in motley garments engaged in a boisterous discussion with wild gesticulations. With a wave at the others, one of them detached from the crowd and sauntered our way, hips swaying gracefully. A comely dark-haired young woman in her mid-twenties, she sized me up with a sardonic sparkle, winked and kept going, her swaying even more pronounced, leaving Rioh and I no choice but to part and let her through.

  "What a woman!" the coachman whispered in awe, following the demoness with his eyes. "She liked you, Krian," he added with a hint of envy.

  "I'm happy for her. Are we there yet?"

  "Almost. See that crowd? They're exiting the market. We just have go around it," the demon gestured to show how exactly we ought to round the space—evidently, at some point we'd need to take flight. "From there it's another hundred yards to The White Lily. Oh, um," realizing he'd said too much, Rioh corrected himself, "I meant another hundred and fifty yards to your Candle."

  "Isn't there a way to deal with these pubertal issues in your village?" I grunted.

  "What are you asking, master mage?" Rioh gave me a reverential stare.

  "Is there nobody to hook up with in your village?" I rephrased my question.

  "Oh, of course! Don't you worry about that! When you come visit us in Urcahnta, you could have any single girl you want! Even some married ones would—"

  "No!" I stopped right in the middle of the road, cutting short the coachman's monologue with a heavy sigh. "I'm talking about you! What do you need this Lily for? There you've got to pay for it."

  "Ohhh, that..." the demon deflated. "You see, in Lily you need to pay, but in Urcahnta you need to marry. I'd rather pay. Here in the city the girls are easygoing, but back home they'll bite your head off. You can't swing a cat without hitting a relative, even if a distant one... You're lucky—you can come, do your business and leave," he accentuated the word "business" in a way that made me think he wasn't talking about fighting back the undead at all.

  "Fine, let's just go," I sighed.

  If there was one thing I liked about cities in Arkon, it was their cleanliness. I could only imagine the stench that must have afflicted a large Medieval city. To be sure, there were plenty of smells here too, but most were of the pleasant variety. As we drew closer to the market, we began seeing more shops and storefronts, typically with the standard game signs.

  The air was therefore filled with the aromas of freshly baked bread, roast meat, leather and some kind of trimmings. Though these smells were surely present in any real Medieval city, they were no doubt overpowered by the pungency of manure or swill poured out into ditches. There were ditches here as well, but they mainly served the role of gutters. The horses and yaks hitched to myriad carts and wagons didn't defecate on the street.

  I knew we were coming up on the market from the din of the crowd that came from there. We skirted it and slipped into a narrow alleyway—I had nothing to do at the market, not now anyway. I was definitely going to check out the wares later, maybe even pick up some quests.

  In another hundred yards or so we made a right into a fairly wide gap between two houses, which took us to a parallel street. The young demon seemed to know his way around this part of town—and why wouldn't he!

  I knew why the locals called the hotel "Candle" the moment I spotted the structure, namely the extension built over the third story—cylindrical in form and painted white, like some kind of phallic symbol threatening the heavens. The building looked utterly ridiculous, but who was I to judge the intricacies of the local marketing?!

  "We are here, Master Krian!" Rioh decided to play Captain Obvious.

  "I see that," I nodded and patted him on the shoulder. "Thanks for walking with me—I would've gotten lost without you."

  "No, thank you, Krian," he said somberly, then shook my offered hand.

  "Good luck to you, future caravanner. Enjoy yourself with the ladies of The Forest Violet."

  "The White Lily," he corrected me. "The Forest Violet is further downtown and very pricey. Although the girls are real lookers too, like..." he stammered, searching for the right comparison. "Like the one who winked at you! Do you want me to show you the way?"

  Viol"I'll find my own way if need be," I stopped him before he could start listing all the brothers in Nittal, their menus and rates.

  "Master mage! May I ask one last question?"

  "Shoot."

  "Do you promise to visit us?" he looked at me with hope. "It's gotten real bad at home. My mother is afraid of letting my little sis outside. It used to be really great in the village—folks were laughing, enjoying life. But it's nothing like it used to be."

  "I promise, Rioh!" When he mentioned his sister, I felt an aching inside me. How is Alyona doing? I sighed. Hanging in there, I hope.

  "Thank you," the young demon flashed a big smile. "I'm going to head out now, all right?"

  "Go already!" I hurried him. "Your conquests await."

  I watched his figure shuffle away clumsily for a bit, then shrugged my shoulders and walked into the open gate of the hotel.

  The hotel was almost the carbon copy of Kort's inn. In fact, all establishments of this type had more or less the same layout. The large dining hall, which took up the entire first floor, was submerged in twilight despite the hour of day. The few magical lanterns around the room did
a poor job of diffusing the darkness with their dim light. The best-lit areas were over by the windows where the hotel's patrons were sitting. The crowd was small but probably right for the time of day: several singles dined alone at separate tables, while a larger group in funky clothes were evidently celebrating, judging by the half-empty bottle of moonshine crowning their table.

  Right of the front door stood a brawny demon—the bouncer by the looks of him—flirting with a giggling barmaid as she wiped the tables clean. The bouncer barely favored me with a glance, and the waitress didn't do even that.

  The bar was knocked together with wood that seemed to have grown dark with time. Four kegs were stacked right on top, each one forty to fifty liters. Behind the bar was a glass stand with dozens of different bottles, to the right of which a boar's muzzle scowled at the guests from the wall.

  I looked around for the owner or bartender; finding neither, I coughed pointedly to draw attention to myself.

  To my surprise, it worked. The door leading to the inner chambers flung open, and a demon emerged. Roughly fifty years of age, he wore a mouse-colored shirt unbuttoned to his chest, a leather vest with a black trim along the edges, and skinny black pants tucked into boots. The size of his sword—sheathed at the waist—instilled respect.

  My jaw dropped when I saw what the demon was holding in his right hand. Mother of God! It was better than any epic loot! In the meantime, the demon assumed his place behind the door; bringing a smoking pipe to his lips, he took a deep drag, exhaled the smoke, arched his right brow and asked in an even, rasping voice:

  "You all right, light one?"

  So cool and collected, as if he entertained patrons from Karn by the dozens. Could've at least feigned surprise for appearances' sake. Then again, Kort hadn't seemed to care about me not being local at our first encounter. I swallowed a lump, sucking in the aroma of tobacco, and said:

  "I'm looking for Gerid. I have a letter for him from Kort in Lamorna."

  "You're looking at him, boy," the proprietor replied just as calmly. The look in his dark brown eyes somehow closely resembled that of Annat the security agent. I handed him the scroll.