Alexa Drey- the Veils of Lamerell

by Ember Lane

  At this point in the game, this is all the information available to you.

  Even though I knew nothing, I knew that I was about a foot below the bottom rung of this land’s ladder.

  There were fifty thousand folk aboard this colony ship. Most had probably played games all their lives. Lincoln had told me that the individual scores would be made available at the end of the voyage and that we could complete the game if we were good enough. So, I thought, I’d best learn how to play this fast. I wanted to win, or at least not get humiliated.

  A prompt appeared in my mind’s eye and told me the Endings River was ahead, nothing about what was behind, and so I walked down the curved path, bathed in the light of the golden veins.

  And I walked, and I walked, down and down.

  I began to have doubts about my choice, wondering if I’d gone the right way. The prompt might have told me the Endings River was that way, but did that mean it was the right way to go? Was it some kind of test to see if I was a freethinker or a feeble follower? Thirst ripped through me. My legs started to ache. The tunnel curled on.

  After a while, my breath became labored, and I started to sweat. I couldn’t quite understand it. I was a healthy, active, and fit, twenty-four-year-old woman, so why was I tired from just walking? Then, dizziness came over me, and I had to stop. Reaching out, I leaned on the cool rock, gasping for breath. A small, red dot flashed in my eye.

  Energy 3/10: Your energy is dangerously low.

  Energy will rejuvenate through rest and eating or drinking. If your energy gets too low your Health Points will fall. If your health = 0, you die. Increase your Stamina Levels to increase your energy capacity and slow your energy loss.

  Walking? Walking had slaughtered my energy? I slumped to the floor, sitting against the tunnel’s side. As I had nothing to drink or eat, I supposed the answer had to be rest. While I was sitting there, I gave myself a brief once-over.

  My in-game clothes were reasonably uncomfortable—itchy against my sweaty skin. I was wearing what appeared to be a tunic made out of a sack, some type of rough hessian, same for my pants, and I had a pair of boots on, animal skin, laced tight against my ankles, and that seemed to be it. No pockets. Nothing.

  Though the tunnel I was in appeared very realistic, and I was almost looking forward to seeing more, but I couldn’t help but think I was going to be in for a some boring years if I had to keep waiting for my energy to refill every time I walked for an hour or so.

  The golden veins of rock were beautiful, like molten larva sandwiched between slices of browned toast. They pulsed with iridescence. I crawled over and tentatively reached out to touch one. When my palm pressed against it, I felt a warm surge flow into me. The dot in the corner of my eye blinked green.

  Energy restored! You have drunk from the Gilden Vein. Your energy has filled. The Gilden Rock harbors Earthpower. Earthpower is one of the primary powers.

  Congratulations! You have replenished your energy. You have gained a stamina point and now have 2. Your energy capacity points have been increased to 20. Your Energy will replenish faster and diminish slower.

  I waited for more, but the words vanished, replaced by the blinking, green dot again.

  A quick recap, I thought. Best force the knowledge into my head. If I was going to become good at this game, I had to learn every new detail, and it had to become second nature.

  The higher the number of stamina points, the more energy I’d have and, the longer my energy would last, plus it would replenish faster too. It also appeared that one stamina equalled ten energy capacity.

  Secondly, I had to accept that all was not what it seemed. If you could drink from a rock, what else could feed you? Conversely, my studies of nature had taught me that not all pretty things were what they appeared to be, so if you could drink energy from some things, surely others could leech you of the same? Also, what the hell was the attribute: Vitality? The clue was probably in the name, but I guessed it was linked to my health, like stamina and energy stats were linked.

  Looking around, I didn’t think I’d get to find out there. Still, at least I could get to the Endings River now, which was something. If I got tired, I just drank energy from a golden rock—what was odd about that?

  I walked down and down, around and around, drinking from the rock when needed. Slowly, the spiral appeared to widen, the golden veins getting fatter, the tunnel broader. It was like I was walking inside a snail’s shell—one of those tall, cone-shaped ones, and I began to suspect I might be coming to my destination, and when I did finally spill out of the shell, a magical sight greeted me.

  The shell’s mouth ended, and the brown of the downward path turned to white, the rock giving way to a small horseshoe of gleaming white sand, around twenty feet wide. The water of a luminous blue river lapped lazily onto the quaint beach, before tapering and meandering away between huge, craggy cliffs of brown rock and golden veins that arched over to form a cavernous ceiling. It was truly a sight to behold.

  It was at that moment I started to feel nervous of just how incredible this place was, just how real, and just how…how lucky I was to have set eyes on it, to feel it, and to taste it.

  “Hello!” I shouted. I wanted to scream my arrival to the world. My cry echoed away, fading without reply.

  “Hello!” I tried again, but still no one called back. I kicked at the sand.

  Thirst coursed through me again, dragging my awe away. I stumbled through the fine sand and knelt by the water, reaching down and cupping my hands to scoop it up to my lips. The moment I drank my first drop, I knew it was something magical.

  Its power pulsed within me, sating my thirst instantly. I needed no more than a drop or two, and so I let the rest rinse through my fingers, and knelt there, looking out over the glowing water.

  That annoying, little green dot was blinking wildly.

  Congratulations! You have reached your destination. You have unlocked the attribute Intelligence. Intelligence affects your capacity for Mana. You have 10 mana.

  Energy restored! You have drunk from the Endings River. Your energy has been restored. The Endings River harbors the power of water. Water power is one of the primary powers.

  Congratulations! You have replenished your energy. Your stamina points have increased to 3. At 3 stamina points, your energy capacity is 30.

  All well and good, I thought, but surely there should be some kind of avatar to explain all these things. Mana? What the heck was that? Well, I had 10. Hoorah! Maybe…

  It was just as that thought drifted out of me and over the enchanting, glowing water, that I heard the faint sound of singing. I say singing, but it was more like a cross between a rasping folk singer and a cat being throttled. Its strangled tune peeled off the cavernous walls and dripped onto the river’s surface, while other notes screamed around the cave like tormented souls. It was a few moments before I spotted the origin of this musical blaspheming.

  Poking around the rock’s edge, where the Endings River finally vanished, was the bow of a rowboat. As slow as you like, the rest of it was dragged into view. I say dragged because the boat lurched like that with every dip of its oars. There was a sole oarsman, and it was he or she that was singing away. Aft of the boat, a lantern hung from a bending rod, swaying with every leap forward. I watched as the boatman neared, deciding it was a man, as surely no woman could butcher a tune so.

  Slowly, I began to pick up certain things about him. Firstly, he was painfully thin, and I mean painfully. Secondly, he had no hair or clothes. Thirdly, he had a red feather poking out of a hole where his left ear should have been. He was also smoking what appeared to be a fat cigar.

  Oh, and he was a skeleton.

  He beached the boat, pulled the oars in and stood, looking around.

  “Billy,” he said. “Billy Long Thumb,” and he held up his hand.

  He had a very long thumb—skinny, but very, very long.

  “Long thumb, long…” He smiled and sighed.

  2
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  The Legend That Was Billy Long Thumb

  “So,” Billy Long Thumb said. “Where do you want to go?”

  I had no clue, though presumably "down-river" would be the choice. I shrugged instead. Billy jumped out of the boat and splashed through the water, dumping himself beside me. He took a great suck on his cigar, the smoke drifting up through his ribs. “First time?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Well, I suppose you want to get on, suppose you want to rush to the surface and start building your settlement, fighting your wars or questing for a Leviathan.” He sighed. “Well, I can take you back to any shelf and that’ll lead back to your respawn point, but it would have just been easier not to fall off in the first place.”

  “Off what?” The seeds of frustration were beginning to germinate inside me. I hated being out of my depth.

  “You should have just stayed put and waited.”

  “Waited?”

  “Well,” he scoffed. “It’s the rules.”

  “Should I just walk up the path?” and I pointed back up the subterranean trail.

  “You can’t—you’re dead, you called the boatman—me. It’s too late for you now,” and he shrugged his bony shoulders. “You’d double-die ten feet up and then you’d end up right back here—well, down river—on the shelves—twice... I think.” He jumped up. “Well, I guess you’re in a hurry to get on with it—to respawn.”

  “No… No…” I blurted, grabbing his bony hand. He seemed to know so much, and I knew nothing. “We can talk. I’m in no hurry to, err, regenerate.”

  “Respawn, it’s respawn.”

  “See, you know so much. Tell me about… about something.”

  He looked at me, one eye socket raised. “Really? You might fall behind the others.”

  “Really. I’d love to learn from you. I… I don’t know anything.”

  Billy grinned a tooth-filled grin.

  That annoying dot in my eye blinked green.

  You have made Billy Long Thumb a happy man. Billy is the boatman. It is his task to ferry the dead to eternal light or eternal damnation. Most of his passengers aren’t in the mood to be very chatty.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the attribute Charisma. You now have 1 charisma point. As you increase your charisma points, you will find that folk are more likely to help you.

  “So what do you want to know?” he asked me.

  “Where am I?”

  He swiveled his skull. “Well that’s easy. You are at the mouth of the Gilden Lode at one of the beginnings of the Endings River.” Billy sat back, resting on his outstretched palms, his cigar dangling from his mouth. “Are you a bit thick?”

  “Thick?”

  “Thick: slow, stupid. Well?”

  “No.” I felt my charisma vanishing—and not the game sort.

  “Then why ask what you already know. Ask me another.”

  “Where does the Endings River flow to?”

  Scratching his skull with his extremely long thumb, he appeared to ponder the question. “Most places. It collects the souls of the dead and carries them to either the light or…” He pointed his thumb down. “You know…”

  “Why isn’t it packed full of bodies?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “Oh it is, but only the souls—the bloodied bits stay up top for a while until the land assimilates them. The souls give it its glow. After their choosing, it’s my job to… escort them to their fate. If they don’t go voluntarily, that is.” Billy sat bolt upright and crossed his legs. “What happened to you then?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, how did you die?”

  Even though I knew it was a game, I was kind of shocked by his question. “Have I died already?”

  “You must have. You’re here. If you were alive you wouldn’t be—are you sure you’re not stupid? You must be dead. But then…” He tapped his finger on his chin. “No, you’re not allowed down here if you’re alive. And if you’re one of them players—” Billy pointed down river. “Well, you should have just appeared on a shelf. Them’s the rules, and that’s what happens. So, I’ll ask again. ‘How did you die?’”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  His eye sockets arched in surprise: “Well, that puts everything in a muddle. No, you must have just fallen off your shelf. You can’t be here if you haven’t died. Rules are rules, when players die up top, they wind up here, spend a while on a slab contemplating their failure until they eventually summon up the courage to pass through The Clepsydra and back on with their lives up top. ‘Course, by that time all their stuff’s been robbed, and they’re probably a mere shadow of what they were. I suppose that’s why some don’t bother.” He jumped up. “I’ll show you.” He clambered back into his boat.

  I pushed myself up and followed, getting in and sitting on the bench opposite him. Billy slouched back, puffing on his cigar, resting his skull on the boat’s prow and his feet on my bench. The oars started rowing themselves.

  While he was silent, I looked around. The veined cliffs rose up about a hundred feet, the cavern’s top so distant as to be just a sheet of black, like a night sky bereft of stars. As we traveled along the river, the gilden veins diminished until we rowed around the first meander, and their golden light petered out, and the beach was lost from view. The glow of the souls in the water still shone up, and as I looked into it, I was drawn to what I assumed where their forms—swirling, ethereal phantoms like I’d imagined ghosts as a child—bodies cloaked in white sheets. Some looked at peace, and some appeared filled with dread. It was a strangely beautiful sight.

  Billy grunted. “No end of souls filling the river at the moment. Must be dark times up top. The land needs heroes.” He scoffed, “I was a hero once—ask anyone. The scourge of Striker Bay, legend—I was legend. Say, what’s your name?”

  “Alexa Drey,” I answered.

  “Yes,” he declared, “now that’s a name fit for legend. Look, there they are.” He pointed up. “The catacombs.”

  Following his slender finger, I saw the first of the shelves. They were like hewn horizontal hollows, almost a side-on grave, and each had a lit candle at one end. There were tens of them, but as we rowed farther, tens became hundreds, and some were occupied. And then we came to a straighter part of the river, and I saw they lined the entire way.

  “Are they dead?” I asked, looking at the few that were occupied.

  “Dead?” Billy shook his head. “No, no, no, not dead. Like I said earlier, some folk up there don’t die properly. They appear on the slabs, hang around for a bit, and then attempt the clepsydra.” He shivered, and his bones rattled. “Wouldn’t relish that.”

  I took stock. It was becoming hard to remember that this was a game, and I was supposed to be learning how to play it. I surmised that if I died up top, as Billy referred to it, I would end up on a shelf, non-players would die and become ghostly souls in the Endings River. If I ended up on a shelf in a catacomb, I had to wait a specific time, and then return to the world through a thing called the clepsydra. It seemed fair enough.

  “What’s the clepsydra?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, trust me I do,” I assured him. In all probability, I’d probably die at some stage, so I thought I should know.

  “Do you know what an hourglass looks like?”

  I told him yes.

  “Well, to get back to the top, you have to swim up from the bottom and through the middle of the hour glass, then up to the surface. First time you die, it’s not so bad, the glass is quite small, the neck quite wide and it’s filled with water.” He leaned forward, his teeth forming a grim line. “But the more you do it, the bigger the clepsydra becomes, the tighter its throat, and the more… sandy… the water becomes until it’s as tall as a mountain, as thin as a reed, and as dry as a bone.”

  Shivers went up my spine, and I decided to steer clear of death.

  “’Course,” Billy continued. “At first, the noobs just die and die,
but they soon get the picture.”

  Looking up, I saw a woman appear. She laid down for no more than a couple of minutes, stayed perfectly still and then got up, vanishing farther into the crevice she’d landed on.

  “First timer,” said Billy. “She’ll be back, probably thinks it’s all just a bit of fun. They start getting careful after ten or twenty times.”

  “Ten or twenty,” I repeated, making a mental note.

  “So,” said Billy. “You want to hop up on one of those slabs? I can give you a leg up.”

  I looked at the lowest. It seemed possible. Hang on, no fair; I hadn’t died yet.

  “There must be some other way?”

  Billy shrugged. “First time is easy enough.” He steered the boat toward the lowest slab.

  “No!” I shouted, my voice echoing around. I stood, and the boat rocked.

  “Woah there!” Billy shouted. “Calm down. You haven’t got a choice.”

  Staring down at him, I smiled. I had 1 charisma point, after all. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure,” he said, all curt.

  “Positive?” I tried to smile the broadest smile I could.

  “Well…” he said, fidgeting around.

  “Please…” I pleaded.

  “There is one way.”

  Congratulations! You purposely used the attribute charisma on Billy Long Thumb.

  Congratulations! You have increased the attribute charisma. You now have 2 charisma points. With 2 charisma points, things will bend to your will.

  Billy turned away from the shelves and rowed on. The river wound through the honeycombed cliffs until another little, horseshoe-shaped beach came into view. He aimed the boat toward it.

  “Found it,” he said, all proud.