by Harry Nix
We had to come within a few feet of him, but thankfully, the ground was dirt and we could move quietly. We crept past him and soon entered the mouth of the cave. Inside, it was as black as ink in between small patches of light, lit by flickering torches. They were the type you see in adventure movies, a rag and a stick and a seemingly endless flame.
The tunnel stretched off into the distance, going around a corner and disappearing into the black. Although there was a rudimentary path where carts had once been driven, everything else suggested that this cave had been abandoned for a long time.
We’d only walked a few feet before I cracked my foot against something in the dark, bashing my shin and taking skin off. I swore and then backtracked to the nearest torch, pulling it off the wall. Although there was a flame on it, there was no heat, and the rag wasn’t burning. I even waved my fingers through it a few times. If anything, the flame felt cool.
“You do know I have a flame, right?” Scarlet said, lighting one up at the tip of her finger.
“Oh, right,” I said, and then put the torch back. There was no point in leaving the guard alive if I was only going to tear a torch off the wall and make it obvious someone had come in here. Scarlet lit up a few of her fingers with small flames and took the lead. I followed behind her, able to dodge the abandoned mining equipment and various bits of rubbish on the ground by the dim glow of the flames on the ends of her fingers.
We walked for a few minutes, soon turning the corner and seeing the tunnel petered out in the distance, eventually reaching a blank wall that appeared to have been chipped away at sometime in the past. There were even abandoned pickaxes about the place. I don’t know if that meant the miners had made a hasty exit.
“You were killing spiders but now you’re helping spiders.” Isabel said out of the dark. Scarlet waved her hand about, increasing the number of flames lighting up the area, and eventually, a shape against the wall resolved itself into Isabel and her cloaks. She nodded to Scarlet, who winked back in response.
“So, where to now, do you think?” Isabel said, stepping away from the wall.
I started looking around, and quickly found a crack in the wall which was big enough for Ori to slip through, but no one else. On the far side, I could see a glimmer of light.
“Ori, go through here and tell me what’s on the other side,” I said.
The little demon liquefied and slipped through the crack, disappearing into the gloom. He returned a moment later, popping out of the hole, and changed from black to full color.
“It’s another tunnel. It looks abandoned, too. There are lights, but it stretches on further than this one,” he said.
I grabbed one of the abandoned pickaxes but when I turned around, Isabel was standing by the crack, holding in her hand what could only be a stick of dynamite. It didn’t have any words printed on it but the shape was unmistakable, as was the burning fuse. It appeared she lit it on one of Scarlet’s fingers.
“No! Are you serious? It’ll bring the whole mine down on our heads,” I said.
“Really? You want to dig rather than blow them up?” Isabel said. She scratched her temple with the lit stick of fantasy dynamite, and then sighed before pinching the fuse out. She slipped the stick into her cloaks and then picked up another pickax.
“Fine, I guess we’ll do it your way,” she said.
I cringed a bit as we started. The sounds of the pickax against the stone echoed through the mine, but there were no shouts, no one coming to investigate what we were doing. Even Scarlet and Ori got involved, finding pickaxes of their own and chipping away at it. Ori wasn’t much use, though, given his size, so eventually I ordered him through the hole and to look around on the other side. Some time passed before we had chipped enough of the rock out so we could all fit through.
We managed to enter into the other tunnel, me only sporting a few scrapes from the rock. Following Scarlet’s burning hand, we continued on, but soon she had to extinguish it. In the distance, there was motion, and as we crept closer, we saw there was a set of stairs at the far end of the tunnel. There was also another tunnel branching off, and as we stood there in the dark, we saw one of the lockbox carts roll up to it.
Just as I was wondering whether they would open the carts and start dragging spiders up the stairs, a man in long robes came marching down it before waving his hand irritably at a blank wall. The rock face shimmered away, and then the guards drove the horse and cart into the empty space behind it. As soon as they were inside, there was an enormous clanking noise, and they began to rise using a hidden elevator.
“Those dwarves do good work,” Isabel said.
It wasn’t long before the cart, and its contents disappeared, and the rock wall shimmered back to cover it all. The man in the robes was gone by then, ascending the stairs to wherever they went. There were at least ten guards around the bottom of the stairs, and they looked serious. They were armed not just with crossbows and swords, but there were also standing crossbows, siege ones, set up that could fire down the tunnel.
“So, should I use my dynamite now?” Isabel said.
“Where do you think those stairs go?” I said. I brought my map up, but it only showed the cave, and even though I tried to zoom out, I couldn’t see where we were in relation to the town. I’d been a bit turned around, so I couldn’t know exactly where we were, but I had a sinking feeling that those steps eventually led up to the castle atop the cliff.
“I could maybe get past, but not with the three of you stomping and snorting about the place like rhinoceroses,” Isabel said.
“Do you have rhinoceroses here?” I asked.
“Uh, yeah. My brother-in-law is one,” Isabel said, shaking her head at me. I saw Scarlet and Ori mirroring the movements, like, duh.
I ignored the three of them and looked back at the guards. Sure, maybe Isabel could sneak close, throw her stick of dynamite, and maybe even kill a bunch of those guards. But given how heavily guarded this place was, it was sure to bring a whole lot more down on our heads. We had to find another way up that elevator to find where the spiders were going. I suddenly remembered Wolfe’s offer. If I brought him ten more fangs, he had a better job for me.
“I think I have a way to infiltrate them. We might be able to get close or even go up the elevator. Maybe we can try another way,” I said.
“So, you were working with the bad guys, and now you’re not, but now you want to go back to working for the bad guys?” Isabel said.
“No. I want all of us to work for the bad guys, including you,” I said.
12
John offered me some bread. I shook my head, declining it, and then leaped off the cart, so I could walk alongside a while as we made our way out to Greenwood forest. John had a wife and a daughter. John, one of Wolfe’s men, who’d soon be dead along with the other three.
I’ve read grimdark and played grimdark, but this… this had gone so far past it was out in the blackest of the black.
I realized yesterday that we needed a cart to get into the mine and up the elevator. To get the cart, we needed to work for the spider kidnappers. As I guessed, Wolfe’s offer of a better job had been exactly that.
Yesterday we’d sold some stolen mining equipment for enough coppers to stay the night at The Glove. We’d then left incredibly early, heading out to Greenwood forest to meet with Ebony.
The plan was to work for the bad guys, murder the guards and then fill the cart with live spiders who weren’t bound in ropes and nets. Then we’d get to the top of that elevator, unleash them and see what happened.
Ebony had agreed with my plan. She’d supplied me with twenty fangs from dead spiders that I could bring back to Wolf to ensure that he would hire us. It all went so smoothly it was like the quest was on rails.
We’d returned to Bron, netting ourselves another two gold for the spider fangs I handed in and then pitched ourselves to Wolfe as expert spider hunters looking for more money. He hired us on the spot. Our job was to kidnap spiders, c
hildren, if possible, and adults otherwise.
And so now here we were marching out to Greenwood forest and the five guards who I’d been thinking of as NPCs were becoming more real by the minute. They joked and laughed, tried to start conversations with us. Scarlet talked to them, and sometimes Isabel did too.
I tried to avoid learning anything about them. Then John had spoken to me, introducing himself and seemed oblivious to my uninterested grunts. John, who had a wife and daughter. John, who wasn’t a bad man. John, who’d been a butcher until his shop had burnt down and he’d been thrown into poverty. John, who had taken the highest paying job he could find, capturing spiders and bringing them back.
John, who would be dead in an hour.
I felt like pulling him aside, giving him one of my gold coins and telling him to run for it, to get out of Bron and never return. I just couldn’t predict what might happen if I said that to him. Also, I didn’t have enough to bribe the other guards.
I kept telling myself they were digital bits, but this system was realer than real. I could see the stubble on John’s cheek. The lines in his clothes. The hard calluses on his knuckles. The weapon hanging on his belt was a heavy butcher cleaver from his former profession.
As I was churning this in my mind, Isabel leaped off the carriage and landed beside me and then walked in companionable silence. Maybe it was just me projecting, but it felt the closer we came to the forest, the grimmer she became.
I went over plans in my head, came up with mad ideas, trying to think if there was some other way, but soon enough, Greenwood forest drew near, and the men stopped their talk, getting their weapons and nets ready.
Not far from the ruined temple was another blue tree, growing in a slight depression. That’s where the ambush would take place.
We left the cart and horses behind, and with me in the lead, we made our way through the forest, clutching our weapons. Eventually, I saw the blue tree. A stream of light was shining down from a gap in the clouds, the bark iridescent.
As we approached, I glanced around, looking for spiders, but they were too well hidden. Feeling like I was locked in a body I couldn’t control, I plodded past the blue tree.
From behind, one of the men shouted in pain. I turned to see Isabel stabbing his back, hands moving in a blur. He was dead before he hit the ground. She dived on the second one.
“James!” John yelled, his face a mask of confusion. Scarlet hit him with a fireball in the back, and then I shot him with Bolt. He toppled over, dropping his cleaver, which dug itself into the earth. Ori threw some ink, blinding the fourth guard. The fifth was standing there dumbfounded, his mouth hanging slack.
Ebony and five other spiders came swarming out of the forest. John managed to get to his feet, the back of his shirt smoldering from the fireball. Isabel had finished her grim work, riding the guard to the ground, stabbing him as he fell.
Ebony crushed John to the ground, biting him multiple times with her sharp fangs. The blinded man when down too under a flood of spiders as did the one standing there seemingly paralyzed.
I stood there and watched, holding my staff, looking at John as he gazed up at me. He started foaming at the mouth, choked on it, and then died.
John, who had a wife and a daughter. John, who’d been a butcher.
“We’re done,” Isabella said.
Her voice pulled me out of my daze, staring at the five dead bodies. Experience had floated up from them, and I was a hair away from reaching level four, but surely there was a better way to get there?
Scarlet touched me on the shoulder, which brought me back to reality. I followed her and the spiders as we made our way back to the carts. Ebony had brought five other spiders with her. They were all adults, two of them even larger than she was, and although the plan had been to cram the cart with as many spiders as possible, they hardly fit.
After playing a slow version of spider Tetris, we managed to get the six spiders into the cart. We doused them with the bottles of liquid Wolfe had supplied. It killed the red mold, and we’d been ordered to apply to any spider we captured. It had a pungent scent, and so we splashed all over the spiders and the outside of the cart in case we were challenged on the way back into the mine.
Soon we were trundling slowly back towards Bron. Scarlet sat beside me loosely holding the reins, sometimes clicking her tongue to the horses. At the back of the cart, Isabel and Ori were talking.
“Someone burned down John’s butcher shop, and that’s when he went to work for Wolfe,” I said to Scarlet in a low voice. For some reason, I didn’t really want Isabel to hear me. I mean, she was on a quest of vengeance to find her lost lover, and I was worried about the minions of the bad guy we’d just murdered.
“I know. He told me his daughter’s name,” Scarlet said. She put her arm around me and leaned her head up against my shoulder. I know the brain is a stupid, stupid thing. In reality, I was in an egg-shaped immersion chamber owned by some dodgy Russians. Once the week was up, I’d be pulled out of the game, and who knows, I might never return. I could only hope the dodgy Russians paid me and let me live.
But all that meant nothing now. At this moment, I was here in this reality. I had this girl resting her head on my shoulder. I had six spiders crammed into the lockbox. The two horses were plodding, and swishing flies away with their tails.
This place felt so real that I couldn’t get over the idea that I’d just murdered a man, not some digital bits in a game.
We trundled along another half-hour when there was a flash of gold.
LEVEL UP!
The message accompanying it said The Third Way!
I didn’t bother reading the text box because it sure as hell didn’t feel like the third way to me. A new symbol appeared beside my Bolt icon. It looked like a rock with brackets around it. Underneath appeared the word Vibrate.
“Vibrate? Seriously?” I said aloud.
“I got Spike,” Scarlet said.
“What does that do?” I asked.
“When I stab someone, it can poison them or stupefy or cause a host of other effects.”
She spun the echo knife in one finger and seemed positively giddy about it. I looked back at Ori, who’d turned to face me.
“Split,” he said. He then demonstrated, splitting in half and turning into two smaller demons. He continued to divide until there were about fifty of them on the cart, each no more than a few inches high.
“How many can you divide into?” I asked.
“Doesn’t seem to be a limit,” one of the little demons said in a squeaky voice. To demonstrate, they all split again. Then they began to flow together, liquefying and reforming into one large Ori.
Scarlet touched my arm. “What did you get?” she asked.
“Vibrate. I’m not sure how useful it’s going to be,” I said.
As soon as I thought to cast it, a large circle appeared on the ground beside the cart, following along with us. It was about six feet in diameter and colored bright yellow, overlaying the ground. As I watched, it shrank, the yellow growing brighter as it did so. It contracted down to a single glowing point before expanding out again.
I caught on to what the system was trying to show me. I could cast a diffuse area of weak attack or concentrate on a single point for a strong attack.
“Stop us for a moment,” I said to Scarlet.
She clicked her tongue at the horses and gently pulled on the reins. Once we’d stopped, I cast the vibrate on the ground in its most diffuse form.
In the circle, small rocks began to vibrate. There was a low buzz, as though there were distant bees somewhere. I watched a small pebble fall off the top of the larger rock and drop to the ground. There were a few weeds and small plants in the area that began to vibrate too. A single leaf fell off a plant.
The spell only went for a few seconds, and I have to say I was majorly underwhelmed. I wanted an attack! What point was there vibrating pebbles in a six-foot diameter?
Casting the spell had tak
en a quarter of my mana, so I tried again. This time I shrank the circle down to a point, focusing on a rock. Another quarter of my mana gulped away, and the rock flung itself sideways, like a bullet, smashing into a tree and then bouncing off into the forest.
It was like non-directional telekinesis which... I guess was useful?
“See if you can take my graveyard spike,” Scarlet said, holding it up.
Without thinking things through, I cast concentrated vibrate and then woke up on the ground, blood pouring down my face, Scarlet and Ori standing beside me.
“Why would you throw it at your own head?” Isabel asked. She was still up on the cart, spinning a knife from hand to hand.
“Can’t control the direction,” I muttered, feeling my forehead. I had a gash that stung like hell that was surrounded by a lump where the graveyard spike had hit me. I got up and saw I’d taken half my hitpoints with the attack.
I cursed my stupidity as I got back up on the cart, but not too much. I could suddenly see a lot of applications for vibrate. If I concentrated on someone’s weapon. I could fling it out of their hand, maybe even injure another attacker. I had to wonder what would happen if I concentrated on a body part? Could I cast it and tear someone’s head off?
Holding my sleeve against the wound to stem the blood flow, I opened up the descriptive text.
Vibrate
It vibrates things, duh.
So much for more info there. Unlike Bolt which had new effects at higher levels (like chain lightning), Vibrate’s extra effects were blanked out. I’d have to level up to discover what they were.
“Can we keep moving please? It’s very cramped in here,” Ebony called out from within the lockbox.
Scarlet shook the reins and we started moving again.
Soon the blood stopped trickling and my health started to refill. My mood was slightly improved by leveling up and I guessed that soon I’d get an answer as to whether I could vibrate someone’s head off their shoulders.