“What? Are you crazy!?” Crusher said, looking at him in astonishment.
“Technically speaking, probably,” he said as he turned back to the window, and then stalked beyond it to where there was a locked door with a set of fold-out stairs.
“What are you doing?” Crusher said in alarm, as Winters wrenched at the handle and suddenly the carriage rocked with violent gusts of wind as the blurring scenery outside was revealed. “Winters – no! Don’t go out there!” the dwarf shouted behind him.
“Of course I’m not, I’ll die if I jumped out there!” The mage shook his head. In front of him he could see the plains and the hills were now a blur of green and brown, broken with the sudden whizzing shapes of trees or copses. This dwarfish cart, it appeared, could go at phenomenal speeds. (When being chased by the most dangerous monster in the game, Dean thought).
Ahead of them swam the morass of the Wyvern mountains, and Winters could clearly see the dark tunnel into which they were about to plunge, growing larger as it sped towards them.
On the other side, however, there was a very different vision. The giant bat-like creature of the Archon was much closer. So close that Winters could swear he could see the white flash of pointed fangs in its mouth. It was almost overhead, and, as the pair peered back at it they heard it screech in fury and point a black-clawed hand towards them.
“Back!” Crusher suddenly pulled on Winters’ cloak, as a bolt of ugly bruise-purple and black energy shot out of the creature’s pointing talons to burn along the side of the train like fire.
“Oof!” Winters tumbled on top of the dwarf, smelling the vague acrid tang of burnt hair and clothes. “Wait. I have an idea…” He struggled out of the dwarf’s grasp, fighting his way back to the door to lean out again and look up to where the Archon was beating its wings faster and faster towards them.
“Come on, then! Is that all you’ve got!?” he shouted at the demon above, eliciting another screech of anger from the thing.
“Winters – you’ve gone crazy. What the hell are you doing? Don’t make it angry, for God’s sake!” Crusher said.
“It already is angry from what I can see,” the mage said, slipping the green crystal from his jacket and holding it in his hand.
The train shook once more, as another bolt of purple and black fire swept over it. About now they could hear shrieks and wails of other dwarfish and non-dwarf passengers up and down the train, as they too must have seen just what was coming for them.
“Here, bat face! Is it this you’re looking for?” Winters once again leaned out, holding the crystal up high in the air. The sun caught it, and the crystal flashed a green light over Winters’ upturned face for a moment, bringing with it all the hope and optimism of a new and fresh spring dawn.
“Ours! GIVE THAT BACK!” the creature howled in fury and swooped down.
Come on, come on… Winters waited for it to do what he was sure it had to do, if it wanted the crystal. This dwarfish train, as battered and burnt as it was, was still a large construction. The Archon would have to land nearby to attack it – or use a weapon.
The Archon swooped for a tall, thin tree which it casually wrenched from the ground, and raised it like a club to batter the side of the train directly.
“Gotcha!” Winters snarled ferociously.
*
Green Ouroborax:
Animate Plant
*
“Last time I used, what, 40 Mana points to make that living wall? he thought. He had been recovering his Mana since being on the train, but he still wasn’t at maximum yet. He only had 35 in total left. Did he spend all of them, knowing he might not get another chance?
2He sent 20 over to the Green Ouroborax, and pointed it at the tree the Archon was swinging like a club. It was, technically, still a plant, wasn’t it – even if it wasn’t connected to the ground anymore?
It turned out that it was, as the tree started to react to the magic sent by the Green Crystal. It sprouted whip-like branches from all along its length and flared around the Archon in the air.
“It’s amazing – it’s like it chooses the most optimal way to attack or solve a problem!” Winters laughed as Crusher joined him.
The Archon was engulfed by an ever-thickening web of wood, root, and vine. Winters watched as it strapped over the creature’s wings, and then splintered as a powerful wing beat broke it, but two more branch-vines had already taken its place. Winters thought the Archon might break free, but more of the tree (which now just looked like a ball of wooden rubber bands) was reaching and flicking itself around the Archon, reattaching to other branches and roots. The shrieks and howls of the creature grew muffled as the ball of wood started to turn over and over on itself in the sky, falling to the ground in an explosion that sent up a mushroom cloud of dirt.
“Do it again!” Crusher said.
“I can’t – that was about as much magic as I could spend!” Winters said, turning to look down the road. “But hopefully, we won’t need it…”
PHOOOSH! There was a sudden shrill whistle, and then blackness as the dwarfish cart fled into the tunnel running under the Wyvern Mountains, and straight to the Near Kingdom.
*
New Chapter! The Gemsmith
Story: the Ouroborax Crystals.
Continue? Y/N.
Y.
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Chapter 27: The Gemsmith
“We’ve just started a new chapter,” Crusher breathed at him, as the darkness of the tunnel filtered lighter and lighter.
They were still on the dwarfish train, but everything about the scenery outside the porthole windows had changed, and Winters guessed it must have been crossing the threshold between the Outer and the Near Realm. Here in the Near Realm, it must be like playing in the ‘Safe’ or ‘Easy’ mode, he realized – which also explained why the game got more dangerous the further out you went towards the Darkling Gates.
Outside the porthole windows there were still lines of hills, forests, lakes, all the things you might expect from a fantastical land – but the grass was greener and they passed snapshots of many smaller villages with white daubed walls and quaint thatched roofs. Whereas before the Near Realm of Aldaron had seemed big and strange to the noob Winters had been, now he realized it was really a training ground.
“The entire game is about getting to the Far Realms, isn’t it?” he murmured, as much to himself as the dwarf.
“Yeah. Didn’t you guess that?” Crusher was looking at him weirdly as he seized the open side door and threw it closed with a mighty clang. Instantly, the whine of the racing wind vanished. “Didn’t you see the ads for Aldaron?”
“Uh-huh.” Winters shook his head. “I was in hospital before this. This is supposed to be my therapy.”
“Some therapy,” Crusher muttered. “The ads are all ‘a world in peril of the darkness!’ And ‘Who will rise to be brave enough to save it?’ You know the kind of stuff.”
Winters nodded that he did. “But now, it’s the other way around. The whole game is out of whack,” he said, rubbing his head as he hid the Ouroborax away in case anyone else saw it. “I guess you’re supposed to level up in the Near Realms like you showed me how to do, and then you go off to the Outer, and then the Far when you’re a hero. Try to save the world.”
“Hey, we might still have to do that if we have to find the rest of those crystals of yours,” Crusher muttered ruefully, sliding to his feet to sit with a thump next to the mage in the corridor.
“Maybe. But now the Archons are coming here, right?” Winters nodded back to where the impossibly high wall of the Wyvern Mountains could still be seen in the distance. They were growing smaller by the moment, and their tops indistinct, but he found his eyes moving to look back at them out of the porthole window often, just in case a black-winged figure appeared out of the heavens, screeching for their blood…
“They’re not waiting for the characters to level up and become heroes
and go out, the entire game is being Modded all over the place, and one of the worst enemies of the entire game was right there, at the very edge of the Near Realms!” Winters said. “How much are the Controllers going to destroy their own game in order to steal back these crystals?”
“I think we all know the answer to that one,” Crusher said. “But you’re right. If we don’t do this, then the whole game is in jeopardy, and so is Lady Jay…”
And maybe us, too, Winters thought. Is my head going to explode any minute now? Just like Lady Jay’s?
But he didn’t say any of this to the dwarf. He was still aware of how deeply Crusher had freaked when the Archon had showed up. He had been terrified.
But what made me try to fight it? Dean wondered, shaking his head at himself. Just a few short weeks ago he would never have done that. He would have run, just as Crusher had advised – run and probably died when the Archon baseball-batted the train off the causeway.
He didn’t particularly feel like a brave person. If anything, he felt as though he was more of a coward. Jay is out there in some secret Odge medical facility, and here I am playing wizards in a game! he thought. And not just Jay – Marcy was risking her job, possibly her life as well, by trying to hack into the health systems for more information. What was he putting on the line?
If all I can do is to virtually do the right thing, and virtually be brave – then I am going to do it, Dean realized. Most of his friends were doing a whole lot more than he was (or so he thought) and so, if his role was to be Winters the Gemsmith, then he would play it to the full.
Maybe that’s what separates me from Crusher, too, he thought. This game really is everything to me, he realized. It was his life now that he wasn’t running his store. This game was the only way he had to feel brave, to feel like himself – even though he was playing a character that couldn’t be more removed from himself, wasn’t he?
“How long will it take to get to King’s City?” Dean asked, giving an encouraging smile to his friend.
“Not long. Things like these are just like a cut-scene. An excuse to spend some XP, heal up, work out your inventory and story chapters, right?” Crusher said. “We should even be healing and regaining Mana the longer we stay on here, and, unless you are actually physically traveling through the wilds out there, the game speeds up your journey to the next chapter along the story,” Crusher said.
“Which is us unlocking the crystal.” Dean nodded.
“No – it’s you fixing the crystal. I know nothing about gemwork, or metalwork at all,” Crusher said woefully. “My dwarfish parents would be so embarrassed, if I had any.”
Dean laughed.
*
“What was that?” the worried voices of the other passengers on the train were all saying, everywhere the mage and the spy turned. There were dwarves, humans, and even occasional elves in the corridors, hurriedly talking about the attack on the train that had almost cost them their lives.
“It was a demon,” said one human. “A Darkling one.”
Close, Winters thought, sharing a dark look with Crusher. They had started to make their way through the carriage as soon as the dwarfish guards had asked all of the passengers to be checked.
“It seems the train drivers are pretty worried about who on their train could have attracted such a monster…” another human muttered. Winters ignored their speculation. It was all the same – lots of mercenaries and would-be heroes returning from the Outer Realms with their XP and treasure, and looking to re-equip in the King’s City.
Come on, come on, come on! Winters kept looking out the portholes, as now they passed canyons besides waterfalls, and occasionally deep woods and singular, white-stone towers.
“How long is this going to take!?” he said in alarm, earning a shared groan from the noisy crowds.
PHEEET! A blare of the train’s whistle revealed it wasn’t going to be long at all. Crusher had been right, and their passage was sped up as they approached the ancestral seat of governance for the entirety of Aldaron.
“All passengers! Arriving at Terminus, outside King’s City!” a dwarfish voice chimed through some sort of speaker (which Dean saw was really a funnel that extended through the entire train).
“Excellent!” Winters and Crusher grinned, as steam was kicked out from either side of the train and the scenery started to slow, and slow, and slow – eventually turning into buildings and people.
Terminus was a small waystation outside King’s City, attached straight to the roads and thoroughfares that led to the main gates, it seemed. Winters and Crusher disembarked to a press of noisy shouts and alarmed voices, and a small shape suddenly seized Winter’s arm.
“Mage Winters?” He turned to see it was another dwarf, wearing a dark black tunic and breeches, with a silver trim.
“Yes?” he said in alarm.
“That’s Hedric.” Crusher arrived at his side, as people all around them were shouting and talking loudly about ‘the thing’ that had attacked the train just a little while earlier.
“Orders of the Duma Embassy. Right now,” Hedric said. He was a small dwarf, with a ginger beard clipped close to his face, and a small, faintly ridiculous black cap that made him look like something from the Victorian era.
“Okay, but I really have go…” Winters said through gritted teeth. How do I know this isn’t another Control Modification, trying to throw us off track? he thought in alarm.
“The Ambassador was pretty vocal about her wishes, Mage,” the messenger, Hedric, said grimly. “We have word that you have information regarding what you were sent out there to do – the Lady of Efen? And the Ambassador needs to know, now.” He made a small gesture with his head, and behind him clanked four of the head-to-toe armored guards of the Dwarfish Embassy.
“I don’t think so,” Crusher said, stepping forward between his friend and the guards. He had in his hands his war axe, holding it lightly. “You see, my friend here has got some very important business to attend to, right away…”
“Crusher – what are you doing?” Winters asked.
“I can’t help you with the crystal, Winters. But I can buy you some time!” his friend whispered back.
“I’m sorry that you think that.” Hedric’s eyes narrowed, and the guards rushed forward.
“Mage! Run!” Crusher shouted, kicking Hedric squarely in the chest back into the guards.
Winters spun around and plunged into the now worried crowds of the platform, fighting and pushing for his way into the streets of Aldaron, and, if he could get there, Grum’s workshop…
*
Dean, the mage Winters, ran through the streets of the capital, after having slipped through the main gates by dint of the crowds. He was getting used to the layout of the city now, and knew the route he was going to take as he plunged through the Dockside Markets to the quickest bridge over the bay.
Is it me, or is the city seeming more agitated than usual? he thought as he jogged, avoiding a cart of bronze cogs pushed by a gnome, and past an older woman in silks attempting to sell fortunes.
There were more people in the streets, if that was possible – and that meant more players, didn’t it?
His feet got to the far end of the bridge, out into the complicated avenues of the Docks, where he turned to his extreme right, towards the cliffs and where Grum’s workshop – his workshop – would be sitting.
Only to skid to a halt, as there was now a small (but very pretty) park with a central tree surrounded by curling black railings.
“When was that put there?” he muttered, darting back to the main thoroughfare and pushing past people to the next turning.
“Aha.” This one seemed more recognizable – but it still wasn’t the right one. Whatever, I’ll cut back across at the end of the street… he started to think, just as there was a sound like a peal of thunder from above him somewhere.
“What was that?” He looked up to see that the previously blue skies,
dotted with little white clouds, were now a boiling black mass of storm clouds. When did the weather change so quickly? he thought, heading past an elvish restaurant, and then a human tavern, and then-
“Sckrarrgh!” A sound like a hiss and a scrape of metal shocked him, as something leapt out into the street, blocking his path.
“What the hell is that!?” he shouted, bringing his quarterstaff up just in time to jam it into the thing’s snatching jaws.
The creature was large, crouching over six chitinous legs, with a heavy carapace of shiny black and blue. Its head was a series of four mandibles flexing in the air viciously at him.
“What is that!?” Winters staggered backwards, as the creature spun entirely around, flinging out sharp legs to slash across the front of the mage’s tunic.
Double-Attack!
-4 Health!
-4 Health!
“Agh!” Winters jumped and rolled across the floor. “Cripple!” he shouted at it, thrusting out with his hand as an evil little sigil appeared and shot towards the thing.
15 damage!
How much Mana do I have left after firing up the Ouroborax? He rolled again as the strange giant insect wavered on its legs before shaking itself and lurching closer towards him.
Not enough. He flung out his hand to try and cast the spell again, but nothing came out but a disappointing fizzle. He would have to attempt to fight the thing off with the broken stub of his quarterstaff.
I’m no fighter, though… Winters thought in alarm as the thing, slowed by his Cripple curse, lunged at him. He managed to dodge, but only just as he threw himself against the nearest tavern windows. He could clearly see the other Aldaron adventurers inside, from barbarians to knights to elvish sorcerers, laughing and enjoying their games of chance.
“Hey! Help me! There’s a monster to slay out here!” he screamed, but it was like they couldn’t even register that he was there. Not one of them moved.
“Skrag!” Something punctured into his back, before throwing him down the street.
-6 Health!
Tales of the Gemsmith Page 29