by Dmitry Bilik
I examined the weird stabbing weapon I’d so suddenly acquired.
Copy of the Ilitian Merchants’ spear
Summoned weapon
Time to disintegration: 1 hour 59 minutes 12 seconds.
I turned it over and tried to toss it in the air. The spearhead was sharp. You could use something like that to clip the fingernails of certain antagonistic Players. A very good copy. Counterfeiters, eat your heart out.
“Can you draw an assault rifle?” I asked.
Arts gave me a condescending look as though I was trying her patience, then smiled at her own thoughts. “You don’t understand. I can draw anything, even an atomizer from one of the central worlds. Only it won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“To summon an object, really summon it, you need to know its design in every detail. I spent almost a month on the pistol. The breechblock, mainspring, operating spring, hammer, firing pin... you need to draw all the details. Then I pass over on top of it with another color. You get it?
It was all very complicated. I looked at my spear with new appreciation. The small notches in the wood, the scuffs on the tip — they looked like it had really been sharpened. If you didn’t know, you’d think it was real, not summoned.
“If you draw something and only stick to the outward appearance, you’ll just end up with a mock-up,” she added.
“Is this your main development branch? Artist?”
“It’s bad form to ask a Player about their specialization, remember. You’ll get smacked on the face or worse. If they want to, they’ll tell you themselves. But I shouldn’t hold your breath.”
“Why not?”
Arts rolled her eyes. “Are you so simple or just pretending? Curious idiots don’t last long here. The Game is the worst place for friendship. You either survive alone or join an Order. But even if you join an Order, no one guarantees your safety. Once you start to create problems or just get in the way...”
To finish her point, she drew her thumb across her throat. “Naive individuals like you die immediately.”
“How am I naive?”
“Well, you grabbed a mission without even asking yourself who it was from, even though it said in black in white that it was for dummies,” she snorted. “It was limited to players under level 10. Whoever wrote that, didn’t want a strong Player to take the mission.”
“Why not?”
“The Wild Lands are only dangerous for an inexperienced Seeker. Of course, you meet all kinds of monsters here. Like Alphas, for example. But if you know what to do, you’ll reach the nearest city with no problem. Alive,” she gave me a meaningful look. “But Players like you end up in Rachnaids’ jaws.”
“Was that the creature we saw? It said it was a famulus.”
“That’s right. All those creatures are called rachnaids. Their nests consist of famuli, which are the servants, an Alpha, and the Mother. The Alpha is the Mother’s personal bodyguard. He’s chosen from the largest rachnaid, and then the Mother feeds him with her milk or whatever those insects have. Over time, the Alpha grows a thick shell of armor.”
“I hope we don’t run into that one.”
“That’s unlikely. They usually don’t leave the Mother’s side. They only start roaming about when the colony is in danger. Wait a second....” Arts stopped and peered into the darkness.
We’d already descended a long way from the Gates platform. If the brisk wind was any indication, the mountains here weren’t very imposing after all. I wondered what lay farther on. Plains?
“Do you need light?” I offered. “I have a spell.”
Arts looked at me skeptically, then nodded. “All right. Over there.”
The sharp light made my eyes water, so I had to shield them with my sleeve. It took me a few seconds to adapt and get a good look at our surroundings.
You wouldn’t really call it a road: more like a trail, hard and rocky (which I already knew courtesy of my bare feet). It was lined with boulders and pieces of massive stone blocks which at one point must have crumbled down from the mountains above. Arts was pointing to one of them.
At first I didn’t see anything of any interest about it. But then I noticed the edge of a webbed wing protruding out from the safety of the boulder. Someone was lurking behind it.
The ball-shaped tip of the girl’s staff grew red-hot, as if someone had held it in a forge for an hour or so.
Arts advanced a couple of steps. “Come out, Kabirid! I can see you.”
The webbed wing shrank behind the boulder.
A few seconds later the Kabirid reluctantly emerged and approached us. He was a powerful creature, more than six feet tall; his red skin appeared singed. He had small horns on his forehead and enormous wings on his back. But while Archali wings look just like birds’ wings, the Kabirids seemed to have bred with bats. This stranger’s body was human down to his knees, ending with goat’s trotters. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sight.
“Who are you?”
“Fib... Fibst. My name is Fibst.”
Fibst, ???
???
???
Liar
???
???
The question marks next to the name indicated that Fibst wasn’t his real name. But that was how he introduced himself. On top of that, the Liar characteristic put me on alert.
“I think he’s bluffing,” I said to Arts.
“I know he’s bluffing,” she said loudly. “Right, Fibbian?”
The Kabirid’s eyes bulged as though he’d been accused of cannibalism. On the other hand, who knew? Maybe that was totally normal among his kind?
Our new acquaintance made a sharp gesture with his hand. I felt like someone had slit my eyes with a knife.
“Aaaahh!”
I heard the sound of a rockfall nearby, followed by an inhuman growl and the cracking of bones. Then all was silent.
A small hand lay comfortingly on my shoulder.
“Was I just blinded?” I asked.
“Just wait a bit.”
Indeed, my eyesight gradually returned. The hazy outlines of my surroundings emerged from the darkness, coming into focus. Finally, the world regained its original color.
“What was that?”
“Blindness. Don’t you understand? It’s pretty rare. Such a shame I couldn’t kill him.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Gone with the wind, as the movie says. Those Kabirids have no manners.”
“Why didn’t you go blind?”
“I did. I just got my sight back fast. My Stamina is high and has all the abilities that come with it.”
Of course she didn’t say what those abilities were. By her own admission, Players didn’t share things like that. Never mind. I didn’t care, anyway.
I scrambled back to my feet. I hadn’t even realized that I’d dropped to my backside — so naturally, now I had to get back up.
“An Archalus chummying up to a Kabirid!” she sniffed in contempt. “Unbelievable.”
“I don’t quite follow you. I mean, I don’t follow you at all.”
“The Archalus who sent you here with the letter is obviously an accomplice of that fib-telling Fibbian, if not his friend. Where’s your letter? Open it.”
I took out the sealed parchment and turned it reluctantly in my hands. It was still someone’s correspondence, you know.
Arts ripped it out of my hands, tore open the seal, and held up a pristine sheet of paper. “Here you go,” she tossed it aside. “The letter is just a ruse. The Archalus recruits newbie Players with the promise of some decent money — decent for a newbie, of course. He sends them here where they most likely fall right into the hands of the rachnaids. Then they get robbed and eaten.”
“So what do those two — the Archalus and the Kabirid, as you called him — get out of it?”
“It’s all very simple. The creatures kill the Players, and after some time the Kabirid collects everything they dropped — dust mainly. You wouldn’t get
rich doing it, but a couple of kilos in a few days is still a couple of kilos. Plus the loot. The two bastards would then lie low for a while and move on. Rinse and repeat. We really should report it in the nearest city. They’re probably already wondering why they’ve been having a lot of new Players showing up recently.”
I listened to her open-mouthed. Holy crap, what a scheme. How do you trust angels — I mean, Archali — after this?
The truth was quite sobering. Here I was, a naïve little nerd who expected his new dream world to be paved with rainbows. I seriously believed that its denizens saw their purpose in helping the weak and righting the errant. Reality was much simpler and more cynical.
If there was a way to profit from a fellow Player’s death, someone would certainly take advantage of it. If there was a way to rob said fellow Player of a spell or ability, someone would do it.
My incredulity must have been written all over my face because Arts said,
“Not everything is so clear-cut in the Game. It’s only in books where angels are good and monsters are bad. Here, you’re gonna meet Archali with such dark karma they’ll make a Kabirid blush. There are Abbasses who have betrayed their own people. Genies who bargain with Ifrits. Things aren’t black and white here, not in the way you’re used to, anyway. Oh, look. The sun’s coming up. Finally!”
I didn’t see any sun or whatever they had here. But she was right: the sky over of one of the mountains had gotten lighter. The gloom was gradually receding, taking my remaining anxieties with it. The Red Moon became fainter, no longer hanging somberly above us.
A scorched valley covered in sparse vegetation opened up below. Arts was heading toward it.
“We’ll get to Virhort by midday,” she said. “It’s a piddling little town — not a town even, more like a fortress spilling out of its limits. It’s a ghastly hole, but they still have Gates and a Gatekeeper. They also have a Kabirid governor who’s sympathetic to lost souls like you and I. The important thing is to avoid crossing paths with the ruler of the community.”
“You mean their sachem?”
“You could say that. This isn’t the Cesspit, so things are different here. Purgator is unfortunate enough to be stuck between Elysium and Firoll, the two worlds that are constantly at war with each other.”
“Between a rock and a hard place.”
“Exactly. There’s no official direct route between them. You need to go through Purgator. So the two armies seize Purgator cities one by one, whichever army is the closest. They capture the ones that are geographically strategic, of course. There are still a few big cities in the north, far enough from the theater of war to be able to develop, after a fashion. But nobody ever ventures there — neither the Archali nor the Kabirids, let alone Players. The city inhabitants are an aggressive bunch — they’ll kick your butt to hell and back. You’ll be lucky if you get out of there in one piece.”
“And this Virhort, who does it belong to now?”
“Good question. Last time I checked, it belonged to the Archali. But I haven’t been here ever since the Red Moon rose — and a lot might have changed in these couple of weeks. But don’t be afraid. Virhort has nothing to do with Players’ communities. What’s going on in the city doesn’t concern us. Almost.”
“Arts,” I said hesitatingly, “could you maybe draw me some shoes?”
She burst out laughing. “I can only draw clogs in a hurry, wooden ones like they wear in Holland. Fancy some?”
Wooden shoes? I looked down at my dust-covered feet. No, thanks. Apparently, I’d have to grin and bear.
Arts froze. “Shut up.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t talking but obeyed anyway.
She looked around anxiously. With each passing second her face became more worried. She turned back to the valley we had left, and I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.
“What’s there?”
“A real mess. I’d say more: a freakin’ shit of a mess,” Arts said, adding a few stronger words.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I just didn’t expect this kind of language to come out of her mouth. Up until now she’d sounded all so educated and well-mannered. What could possibly be happening back there?
I peered at a gleaming spot of light rapidly approaching. The sound came later: the familiar screeching noise that made me shudder. I wanted to hunker down somewhere and not come out until it was all over. The scraping of the sharp front feet against each other sparked panic in the depths of my being. The only thing keeping me from dropping everything and taking to my heels was Arts’ presence.
Those damned rachnaids.
“You distract the famuli,” the girl commanded. “It looks like there are only two of them. Just hold the spear out in front of you and don’t let them come close. Got it?”
I nodded quickly without taking my eyes off the approaching creatures.
“If you can, just hit it over here,” she grabbed my head, turned it toward herself, and pointed to a spot on her throat. “That’s one of the few places where they’re vulnerable. Or on the legs.”
I listened; I think I even managed to remember some of what she said. Hit them on the feet or under the head. It couldn’t be simpler. It was all so simple... all of it...
My thoughts dissolved faster than I could think them, because in this trio of rachnaids there was clearly a leader. It was one and a half times larger than its cousins, with thick chitinous sides, huge feet with dagger-like filaments on them, and a powerful dark head.
The huge boulders tumbled like weightless garbage under his limbs. This robust creature wasn’t so much running as floating through the valley in front of his counterparts. His long mandibles were wildly seizing the air, as if they were looking forward to capturing their impending prey. His faceted eyes reflected the rising sun.
“What the hell is that?” I asked quietly.
“The Alpha,” Arts said, raising her staff.
Chapter 18
THERE’S A CLICHÉ that before a person dies, their whole life flashes before their eyes like a movie. Either my life would only make for a boring B-flick, or I didn’t deserve a full feature, but instead of a full-length film I only saw a screenshot of Bumpkin’s wafer rolls on my kitchen table. Would I ever eat them again?
Lost in these thoughts, I missed the moment when Arts transformed. One second she was standing there in her ordinary clothes — a sweater, pants and worn-out leather boots — and then she was wearing some weird-looking armor. The pauldrons, knee guards, and breastplate were made of an unusual dark metal; the rest was just light leather armor.
Did that mean that you could carry around a full set of armor in your bag? That made sense. Armor is only limited by the weight you can carry, but it doesn’t affect reality in any way. So you travel light until you face the first danger and then poof, you’re a knight in shining armor, bar the horse.
Arts staff was so incandescent hot now that it hurt to look at it. When the Alpha approached, the staff flashed one last time and spouted a brief spurt of flame. Strangely enough, the fire seemed to have noticeably cooled the rachnaid’s ardor. The leader crashed to the ground, tucking his feet under himself.
Arts ducked to the side, toward the stones, leaving me alone. The remaining two famuli who until now had kept a safe distance tore toward this reluctant new target. OK, time to really get a grip. Just like Arts had said — I had to hold the spear in front of me. Check. Now what?
Defying my expectations, the rachnaid soldiers didn’t fly at me in a cavalry charge. They were clearly familiar with spears and even displayed something like a strategy. While one of them distracted me with fake attacks, the other one began to circle me. No, my sweeties, that’s not the way it works.
I didn’t even notice that my hands had stopped trembling. I stood confidently with my bare feet on the rock, bending my knees slightly, just like Hunter had taught me. Admittedly, he hadn’t told me how to handle any mutant insects. So I’d need to adlib.
> Not waiting for the other rachnaid to get all the way around me, I attacked. Not sure if you could really call it that. I merely took a small step forward and poked the spear into the snout in front of me. I did it gently so as not to break my guard.
The rachnaid shrank back without even trying to defend himself. I soon understood why: while we were thus waltzing around, the other rachnaid was inching his way toward my back.
Little did he know.
The vulnerable spot that Arts had mentioned was a slightly protruding, drooping pouch on his neck. And it wasn’t protected by the hard chitin. I glanced at how many charges I had: they were fully restored now. That meant it was now or never. If I slowed down, they’d tear me to pieces between the two of them.