The Dragon's Revenge

by Conor Kostick

  Thinking back to the raid against Mikarkathat, it was the ranger, Roisina, the sorceress, Sapentia and the shadow knight, Grythiss who had to display the most skill in the fight. They managed the arrival of the elementals and we would have wiped if all three of them hadn’t been at the very top of their game in controlling the newcomers. When we raided against Mikarkathat in Epic 2, I wanted to be a level one hundred hunter, capable of taking control of dozens of adds if necessary and pouring arrows into her if not.

  Did I care that I was going against Blackridge’s instruction to create a human warrior? Well, in short, no. Sod him. Of course, I believed in teamwork and following a plan. But I hadn’t come here to be a cog in the machine. I’d come to build a raid team that could take out Mikarkathat. And there was something about the man that had irritated me. A sense of self-importance that he’d projected when dismissing me without a ‘goodbye’, ‘good luck’, or even eye contact.

  To my basic starting attribute score of 11 in each of Strength, Dexterity, Spirituality, Intelligence, Constitution and Beauty, I now assigned the three points that the game allowed me in order to start my journey towards specialisation. I put all three into Dexterity, because my chance to hit as an archer was strongly affected by my Dexterity score. The next most useful attribute for a hunter was Spirituality, because this set the size of your spirit pool and when the hunter obtained spells, the more spirit you had the more often you could cast them. Since I wouldn’t get my first spells until level 7, I could afford to wait before boosting Spirituality. I’d get a new attribute point to spend each time I levelled up, so I’d probably use the gains of levels 5 and 6 to improve my Spirituality score.

  Right, before entering the game, I still had to choose a starting region and a name. I picked Palernia, which was in the north-east of the continent. Not too far away from where the dragon had her headquarters, apparently. The enemy armies all seemed to be operating in the south though. From my - admittedly brief - examination of the campaign map, Palernia looked like a good region for a half-elf hunter. It had a huge forest that stretched all the way to the northern coast, full of intriguing places of interest, like lonely towers or islands off the coast with ancient ruins.

  Starting region: Palernia

  Name: Klytotoxos

  This was the name I’d prepared. It meant ‘bow-famous’ and sounded sort of elven, right?

  That was it. I was all set to begin my adventure. With the same gesture as in clipping up to Epic, I triggered my entry to Epic 2. An even greater tsunami of sound and colour than I was used to rushed upon me and I was born anew in an unexplored universe. No longer Tom Foster, I was Klytotoxos the Hunter!

  Chapter 5

  The Eye Beholds

  An unbelievably beautiful scene was in front of me. If the game’s designers had wanted to get you hooked from the moment you arrived in world, they had succeeded. I was on a sand dune, covered in long-stalked grasses and wildflowers, looking out to sea. In the distance were islands whose stark cliffs and stacks suggested it would be a challenge to reach their tree-covered interior. Yet, was that a flag, flying over the treetops of the nearest island? Or a bird? Definitely a flag. With a slight haze in an otherwise perfectly blue sky blurring their details, there was a mystery about the islands. They beckoned: ‘come, explore, discover, possess.’

  Behind me (I wobbled as I turned; it would take a while to get used to the new style of tracking pad) was a forest. It was a young forest, in that the trees were slender and well-spaced: ash, elm, oaks and several species I didn’t recognise but whose delicate branches and small leaves reminded me of birch. In the depths of the forest, shafts of sunlight picked out a light undergrowth and occasional clusters of foxgloves of the most vivid purple or individual, bright yellow St John’s wort.

  Sounds: soporific, hushing waves; distant, talkative seagulls; from the forest a caw-ing from a species of bird I did not recognize; a background hum of bees; a sudden thrumming beat upon a trunk, like that of a woodpecker.

  Turning to the beach once more, where white, dusty sand met a turquoise sea, I realised a woman – an elf – was standing there, looking towards the horizon. She had been so still and her pale cream cloak so similar to the colour of the sand, that I only noticed her when a breeze coming from behind me had moved it.

  Before I moved towards her, I checked my inventory.

  A knife; two ripe nectarines; a water flask.

  Now that was as minimal a beginning as I’d ever encountered. Not even two copper pieces to rub together. Nor was the knife a weapon, it was a small-bladed item, for simple cutting tasks. The damage to speed ratio on it was so poor I’d be better using my fists. No bow. That was disappointing in a hunter. How was I going to start my journey to elite archer?

  Oh well.

  Allowing the harness to take some of my weight, I ran, pretty successfully, over the sand and as I approached her, the elf turned with a smile that would have caused the moon and the stars to linger in the skies to witness it. I mean she was beautiful. All elves have that fine, high-cheekbone look. With this woman, there was something more, perhaps in the extraordinary, cerulean green-blue eyes she fixed me with, or her cascades of near-white hair that fell to her waist in sinuous curves that evoked the waves of the sea that were constantly coming towards us.

  ‘My son.’ Her voice was gorgeously expressive, as was the welcoming gesture she made with the whole of her arm, right down to her fingertip.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s time for me to depart.’ Willow seeds were drifting from the forest and she caught one as it passed. ‘There is a message in the waves and the sand and the motion of the trees. The members of the Order of Nereids are summoned to war and I do not believe you and I will meet again.’ As her smile became melancholy and she caressed my cheek, it seemed as though a cloud had covered the sun, though it was above me, as bright as ever.

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘You must be a pure descendent of sea elves to enter the palace of King Neyus. And your father, as you know, was human.’

  ‘My father?’

  She smiled affectionately and the sun shone brightly again. ‘It is time for you to find him. Ask for Knegos, in the town of Safehaven.’

  You have been offered the quest: Find Knegos.

  Accept

  ‘Where is Safehaven?’ I asked her.

  ‘Two days’ walk along the coast.’ She pointed to my right, which I took to be south-west.

  While I wondered what else I should ask, the white sail of a ship rounded the cliffs of one of the islands. It had a leaping, dark blue dolphin as a design upon it.

  ‘I leave you with three gifts.’

  You learned the skill Set Traps (1).

  You have learned the skill Archery (1).

  You have learned the skill Bowyer (1).

  Aha! Good to have those skills up and running.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Before I could say any more, she was gone and a shrieking sea-eagle was in her place, flapping its heavy wings, causing me to stagger back as she became airborne. She flew low across the waves to the boat, which altered course upon her landing on the bow. Soon, the dolphin-marked boat was hidden by another island and having stood up to wave, I now lowered my arm.

  Well. Interesting and entertaining. Ten out of ten for the game writers. There was a lot to mull over in that short encounter. It gave me the context for my choice of half-elf as a species and possibly some high-level quest leads in the future.

  For now, though, I had only two nectarines. I’d better get walking towards Safehaven.

  As I travelled along the beach, I marvelled at the design of the tracking pads, the ground actually felt softer under foot when I walked on the sand than when I crossed slabs of white, cracked stone that lay across the beach like the splayed fingers of a fallen giant.

  This was very pleasant. A far cry from the grey skies of Dublin. But I wasn’t here to holiday. How could I level up? Either in my skills or
my level as a hunter. Not until level 7 would I get my first spells and I was in a rush to do so. My research had led me to believe that once I had magic at my disposal, I would achieve far more in battle than I could for levels 1 to 6.

  Alone with my thoughts, I walked and walked, all the while enjoying the limitless views across the seas and the sight of seagulls sweeping over the waves. Presumably, being a fantasy wargame, there was danger nearby. Wild, predatory animals, or monsters of some sort. Typically, however, the game was designed for new players to get started in relative safety. So while I did check from time to time that I wasn’t being stalked, I mostly followed a line of dunes (easier to walk on than the sand) south-east.

  What would Mum be doing now? It was about 10 a.m. in San Francisco, so that was what? Five o’clock in Dublin. She’d be finishing work and leaving for a house that probably felt a bit quiet to her without me. Or maybe not. Maybe she had invited some friends round. It was payday, after all. Thinking about this got me excited, I couldn’t wait for my first month’s pay to arrive in my bank account. I really didn’t need much here. The hotel and headquarters took care of the necessities. I would send Mum three thousand dollars. What a difference that would make. She could get new clothes. Fix up the broken shower. Loads of things that make life sweeter.

  You are thirsty.

  A game message popped up on my IUD. I wiped it away and ignored it, interested to see what would happen. In my real-life body I felt thirsty too, but wanted to go on for a while longer before taking a break.

  After thirty minutes, the message came back.

  You are thirsty.

  This time I drank a quarter of the water from my flask. Getting more water would not be too challenging, I’d already crossed a dozen streams that had dug shallow, sinuous channels in the sand as they made their way to the sea. I’d just have to track them back far enough to get a decent flow of clean water. Food, however, could be more of a problem. There were a lot of rabbit holes in these dunes. Could I catch one? Tom Foster was a vegetarian, mostly, but Klytotoxos the hunter was definitely going to be a meat eater.

  When the elven lady, my in-game mother, had given me skills, they appeared as options in a drop-down menu in the UI. I tried one now.

  Set Trap

  No joy.

  You are missing necessary items.

  Of course. On the plane, somewhere over the Atlantic, I had read about this skill. It was a bit like crafting, you had to have the right components in your inventory. And different items allowed for different, more or less effective, traps. I’d have to look up the art of setting traps again in a break. No doubt I’d get the same message if I tried to make a bow.

  And I did.

  In any case, the landscape was changing, the dunes were becoming irregular and between them the ground was marshy. A buzzing alerted me to the presence of a lot of insects. Here, there were flocks of waders between me and the line made by the sea meeting a dark, muddy land. On a relatively high dune, I paused to plan my route. This could be the mouth of a major river and I wouldn’t want to go halfway across it to find my path blocked by water or swamp.

  The sun, now nearly overhead, caused the land here to shimmer with thousands of glittering pools. Obviously, there was a lot of surface water around me, catching the light. And it did seem to me that a shining, silver ribbon in the distance was a river, making its way through the fecund landscape. Best to turn inland for a while.

  As I walked through bushy clusters of tall grass, mangroves and rhododendrons I could hear my footfall change from a slapping sound when I had trod the hard, crusty sand on top of the dunes to a squelching noise. And the tracking pad felt spongy beneath my feet. This was a whole new dimension of sensual experience compared to Epic. I liked it for that, even though I was not moving as quickly through the landscape.

  Unexpectedly, there was motion near my feet. I paused. What was it? Something on my right. After a long while, in which I felt hot and anxious, I spotted it. A brown snake, which had rushed away from me and was mostly underwater in a brackish puddle. My goggles had a nice feature, which is that they read my eye position and automatically triggered a targeting of the snake. I didn’t have to point with my glove and select the target manually.

  There was a readout on the UI: dangerous.

  Level One then. Damn. No bow. No decent knife. I could hardly fight a snake with fists though. Much as I was desperate to get started on levelling up, I decided that a fight here would be a mistake and that I must get hold of a decent sized, heavy piece of wood at least, to use as a cudgel.

  Skirting the snake, reluctantly, I kept on going through the swamp-like environment for what seem like hours but might have only been one. With the need to check ahead in case of another snake, the time passed much more slowly than when I’d been daydreaming about Mum while looking at blue skies and distant, misty islands.

  At last, with the shadows of the treeline reaching out towards me, I came to the river proper. It didn’t look too bad. About twenty metres wide, shallow enough, rather brown though. Too brown to fill my flask. As I studied the ripples on the water, I made a mental note to get the swimming skill as soon as I could. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be out of my depth here. And indeed, as soon as I started to cross (with the tracker ball feeling loose beneath me), I was happy to discover that the river only went as high as my waist.

  On the far bank, however, I was less happy.

  You feel pain -1hp.

  What was it, had some creature from the river targeted me? A snake? I span around and as I caught sight of my legs, I gave a yell of disgust. Leeches, larges leeches all over me. Damn. With vigorous slaps of my hand, I found I could knock them off. Not before another message.

  You feel pain -1hp.

  Given that a 0-level hunter starts with only 8 hit points, losing two of them was significant. Not a great start. How far away was that town, Safehaven? The name was suddenly very appealing. There was higher ground ahead, south, and I was fed up of this swampy estuary. Pushing myself hard, concentrating on my footsteps, I hurried on until the grass became thicker and less spongy. Satisfied there were no threats in my immediate environment, I decided to take a break and unclipped.

  Chapter 6

  Death

  Here, the experience of returning to the real world was even more disorientating than leaving Epic from my home rig. It took a moment before I could even walk straight, with the ground feeling incredibly hard after the tracker ball. On leaving the toilet, a young woman I hadn’t met before greeted me.

  ‘Are you Tom Foster? Please come with me to the control room.’ Curiously, her head ducked down at once, shy, or anxious. Probably aged about twenty, she was shorter than me, with a brown bob that was swaying as she avoided my eyes. Her T-shirt was navy with rainbow letters on the chest that advertised SmartBot an AI company. She was pretty and hampered by being so much younger than her, I would have been daunted at the prospect of talking to her. Except that the opportunity didn’t arise; she hurried ahead of me the whole way.

  There were more people in the control room than earlier, maybe twenty of them standing around the large map, Felicity, my chirpy guide to the building among them. These were my comrades, presumably. Most were relatively young (though none as young as me). An elderly man in a smart, pink polo shirt and a middle-aged woman were also there. Gamers? Or company staff. All were looking at me; I smiled and raised my hand. No one responded.

  From his post near the centre of the southern edge of the map, Blackridge was staring at me, his heavy face threatening.

  ‘Foster. What the hell are you doing? I told you to start a human warrior in Mount Lotus.’ From his right, Blackridge picked up a figurine and hurled it at me with real force. Leaning back, I let it whistle past me to hit the wall and bounce on the tiled floor. ‘You’d be level three by now. Instead, you’re a shitty hunter. What’s that about? Useless on raids. The slowest class to level up. What the hell were you thinking? Delete that crap and start again, prop
erly!’

  Very conscious that everyone in the spacious room was looking at me, I felt a constriction around my heart so powerful that I’d never experienced anything like it before. Fear and shame fought to get control of me. Should I do what he said? My initial reaction was to duck and hide from this angry man. No. I had my plan and it was a good one. What did this guy know about killing Mikarkathat anyway? I was the only one who had ever done so. There was something else too. I took a deep breath that shattered the iron bands that had built up around my ribs. I was from Cabra, Dublin, Ireland. And while on the spectrum from murderous headcases to mildly anti-social troublemaker I was definitely an outlier in the direction of polite society, no one pushed me around like this.

  In control of myself, although my heart was beating like crazy, I picked up the figurine from the floor and examined it: a skilfully rendered warrior in plate mail, holding a two-handed sword high above his head. Nearby was a bin full of plastic figurines. Crossing to the receptacle, I dropped the warrior in and rummaged until I found an archer. An elf, but it would do: leather armour, bow raised and arrow notched. It was a stretch, but from the opposite side of the map to Blackridge, I reached across and placed the figure on the coastline of Palernia.

  Then I met his gaze.

  ‘You think you’re smart, kid? Well, I’ll give you another chance. Get back in there and start levelling a warrior or you’re on the next plane home to Ireland, or Vietnam, or wherever.’ He was spitting contempt.

  Poker is a game that had always interested me. If it hadn’t been for Epic, I probably would have played poker online a great deal. Having said that, I was well aware that I needed to learn more about the maths behind the game before playing it for significant sums of money. One aspect of the game that I think I would be good at is recognising when a player is bluffing.