Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

Rezzik gave the goblin a sharp look. More words were exchanged in their language so I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Which only seemed fair considering we could do the same thing with party chat. Besides, it’s not like I needed to understand the words to get a feel for where this conversation was going.

  This time it got heated. Rezzik seemed to be barking out orders at his two companions, and they didn't seem inclined to follow those orders.

  Finally one of them turned to me, Keia, and Kris. The goblin shrugged as though it was apologetic, but that wasn't going to change what was about to happen.

  I seriously hoped that what was about to happen wasn't something terrible. I looked at those goblin weapons and tried not to think about what would happen if these goblins tried to make like an ancient late twentieth slasher and ch-ch-ch my ah-ah-ah with the damned things.

  "You have to understand," the goblin said. "It's just business. Humans have to be taken to the Chief. We can't just decide to let you go. Not without risking getting in serious trouble. Rezzik knows this.”

  That last bit was said with a look that was every bit as sharp as their knives directed at Rezzik.

  Any notion I might’ve had that we were going to get off scot-free disappeared under that glare. Now I felt sick to my stomach. I had a feeling the goblin Chief, whoever that was, was going to be a lot less lenient on us than the goblin whose life I’d already saved a couple of times. Damn.

  "I don't suppose we can appeal that decision?” I asked.

  The goblin hit me with a flat stare. As though to ask me if I was being serious. I shrugged.

  "I figured it was worth a try," I said. "Can you blame me?"

  “You could always go for a trial by combat,” the other goblin said, flourishing its sword and doing a little twirl as the lights went out. “But I don’t like your chances since you humans can’t see down here without light.”

  I swallowed. Yeah, I didn’t like our chances either. Maybe Keia might be able to get in a lucky shot if we still had those lights up for her to see by, but the thought of getting attacked by these stabby little murder machines in the total darkness deep under the game world gave me the willies.

  It also had me wondering if there was a way to make the equivalent of night vision tech in this game. That was something I’d definitely have to look into, but right now I needed to stop those goblins from doing their murderous thing.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Trial by combat isn’t necessary.”

  The lights came back on and I let out another relieved sigh. I didn’t think they’d actually start murdering us unless we took them up on their offer of trial by combat, but I couldn’t be sure and my mind was starting to fill in the blackness around me with hallucinations of creatures closing in around me in that darkness.

  “Glad we could come to an understanding,” the goblin said.

  I thought about offering the goblins a bribe. They were highly mercantile, after all. Like some bored scenario designer had copied and pasted Ferengi traits from the ancient Star Trek over to these goblins. The only problem was we were deep in caverns where we were already very much at these goblins’ mercy. They knew their way out of there, they knew how to activate the exit, and we had no clue how to do any of that.

  The practical upshot was we were trapped underground with no way to get back to our bodies should we get killed, surrounded by goblins who could shut off the lights and either kill us right away, or leave us wandering in the dark until we stumbled across something down here in the dark that could kill us. At which point they could take all our stuff. No bribe necessary.

  "This isn’t good,” Keia said in party chat.

  “I think you were too quick to turn down trial by combat,” Kris said.

  Keia and I both turned to him. “Are you nuts?”

  “Well no,” she said, running a hand along the war hammer strapped to her back. “But if these guys think we’re going to go quietly they’ve got another thing coming. I figure it’ll be a good fight!”

  "That's your solution to everything," I groused. "And maybe don't stroke your warhammer like that while you stare at the goblins? They can’t hear us in party chat, but we don't want our kind host to see you stroking that weapon and get the wrong idea."

  "Oh," Kris said with a blush. "Sorry about that. I still think we could take them though.”

  "You're going to be sorry when you get your ass killed again," I said. "Honestly. How do we fight them in the dark?”

  “I don’t know?” she asked. “I could wave my hammer in front of me when the lights go out. If I keep it low to the ground I’m bound to hit one of them before they get to us, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t going to dignify that with a response.

  We lapsed into silence for a good long while after that, following our goblin captors. Darkness pressed in all around us, the passages illuminated only by the glowing gems. That oppressive darkness seemed to invite us to be quiet. It was like we were moving through a grave or something.

  Honestly it reminded me of my mental image of the mines of Moria when I’d first read Lord of the Rings back in elementary school. Back before I’d sen the movies and had my imagination polluted by Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth. I’d been fascinated by the description of the vast underground halls, and a little claustrophobic at the same time. I’d never been a huge fan of tight enclosed spaces, and the idea of being trapped deep underground always gave me the shivers.

  Spelunking wasn’t a hobby I ever intended to take up, is what I was getting at. For all that it wasn’t really a hobby I could take up considering where I lived. Or that most cave systems had long since been filled in by developers looking to shore up the ground so they could put an arcology over them.

  Though oddly enough I wasn't having any trouble with the confined spaces now. No, there was enough space above us that I wasn't getting too claustrophobic. Or maybe it was simply that I was aware this was all happening in a video game, literally it was an experience being pumped between my ears from a server somewhere, and so the claustrophobia didn't hit me nearly as badly as it would’ve if I were taking a walk through a bunch of suspiciously spacious underground caves in the real world.

  Whatever the reason for my lack of claustrophobia, I could simply enjoy the walk through the dark and scary cave. As much as I could enjoy a walk when there was a good chance our captors could decide to be done with us at any moment, that is.

  I ran my fingers along the stone wall. It felt dry, which was a surprise. I always figured caves would be dank places full of eyeless creatures rather than dry like this one.

  "You know what this reminds me of?" Kris asked.

  I hit her with a look. On the one hand I was aware that Kris knew about Tolkien’s works, but on the other hand that was because Kris had watched the movies. Not because she'd been a huge fan of the books. Which seemed like a travesty to me, but Kris had never consulted me about her choices of reading material which had always tended towards fantasy written long after Tolkien was dead.

  "Reminds me of Moria," Keia said.

  I looked at her and grinned. She looked right back at me and smiled, then reached out and touched my hand.

  I took the hint. I interlaced my fingers with hers. That smile got larger, and for all that we were deep underground in a virtual cave being led to our potential deaths at the hands of some goblin Chief buried deeper beneath the virtual world, I felt pretty good in that moment.

  "Oh," Kris said. "I was going to say Skyrim. You know, like Blackreach?"

  I shivered. The less I thought about that place the better. Sure it was impressive, especially for a game designed in the early twenty-first that wasn’t even originally intended for VR rigs, but I didn't like thinking about the creepy things hiding under that particular game world. Or the creepy flying insect things that were always waiting to destroy a wary adventurer with their mandibles of death.

  "What?" Kris asked.

  "That place just creep
ed me out,” I said.

  "That's because you were always trying to mine ore veins and loot alchemy ingredients," Kris said with a sniff. "If you just beat stuff over the head like you were supposed to you wouldn't have had a problem with monsters ambushing you every five seconds.”

  I figured there was something to what Kris said, though maybe not what she'd intended. There were so many games out there where the end goal was killing and maiming. Meanwhile I’d always had more fun with the crafting. Even if it was clear the crafting system was more of a game-breaking afterthought the designers didn’t think many people would use so they hadn’t given it much thought which led to it being so easy to break the game.

  It was enough to make me wonder what would happen if I was able to figure out a way to get a victory condition that had nothing to do with killing and maiming creatures that didn't want to be killed or maimed. Especially when we were talking creatures that, for all that they were algorithms in a videogame, sure acted like living creatures.

  Once again I found myself wondering exactly where the dividing line was between a thinking creature that was thinking because it had a chemical computer that’d been cobbled together over billions of years of trial and error, and a thinking creature that was a thinking creature because it’d been designed by other thinking creatures to be a thinking creature.

  That was getting into philosophical territory that made my head spin, and so I decided I wasn't going to give myself a headache thinking about it. For the moment.

  There were goblins in front of me that looked, acted, and felt like real creatures. Intelligent creatures that were being put down by people who represented Horizon, who I loathed. That was enough for me.

  I just hoped those goblins would realize we were friends, not foes, and we’d survive this encounter long enough to give them the help they so obviously needed.

  63

  Down in the Underground

  Rezzik moved back just a bit from the two goblins that’d gone from being our rescuers to our captors. The goblin looked up at us with apology in his eyes.

  "I'd hoped we could avoid this," he said. "I know you've been helping. That you’re not like the others.”

  Rezzik said that last bit quietly to himself. Like he was trying to convince himself it was true. I didn’t want to see what would happen if he decided it wasn’t true.

  “You saved me twice now,” he whispered.

  "Don't think anything of it," I said, trying to stay positive with the one goblin who appeared to still be our friend. "Besides. Going to meet your Chief might be a good thing."

  "How could that possibly be a good thing?" Keia asked.

  "You never know," Kris said. "Maybe Conlan here is into getting ripped apart limb from limb by a bunch of goblins. Did you ever think of that? Bet you didn’t know what you were signing up for when you got with him.”

  Kris did that eyebrow wiggling thing she did when she was making a joke that was in extremely poor taste. Meanwhile Keia shot Kris a dirty look.

  "Well you never know!"

  "Can it Kris," I said. "That's not what I'm thinking about at all. I mean I am thinking about getting torn apart by goblins, that hasn’t been far from my mind since we got trapped down here, but that’s not what I was talking about.”

  I pulled up the list of Spellcrafting abilities I’d gained. There were certain perks I’d picked up that opened up different subskill trees I could level the same as I leveled my other skills. The more I used those subskills the more they leveled up, and if I leveled them enough then it gave me points on the main Spellcrafting line.

  Sort of how Gathering:Herbs was a subset of Gathering with one leveling up the other.

  The one thing I kept returning to was the manufacturing subskill line. I could grant other people a small amount of my Spellcrafting mojo, and at higher skill levels I could even imbue equipment with the ability to do spell infusions. I wasn't quite there yet, but I figured it wouldn't be much longer before I could start to create equipment that would allow other people to do spell infusions on my behalf. All I’d have to do was get a big cache of weapons I could infuse and that would go a long way towards powerleveling me towards my end goal.

  All I’d need to get that big cache of weapons was a spot to turn all this goblinsteel into weapons and armor. It’d be even better if I had a steady supply of goblinsteel and other crafting supplies, but I couldn’t be sure the goblins would have anything like that.

  A bunch of goblins hiding in caves didn’t seem like a good place to find an abundance of crafting supplies, after all. And if they were in as much trouble as it seemed thanks to Horizon Dawn steamrolling them for the past month they’d probably really have a tough time helping me out.

  I figured the best I could hope for was a forge, but that’d be good enough at this point.

  Basically I needed to sit and grind up my crafting skills as fast as I could. I needed to sit and experiment with this stuff and see what I could do. I had high hopes that I might be able to take care of that problem as well as the problem of finding people to use that equipment once I got that subskill unlocked. It all depended on how things went with the goblin Chief.

  At least I assumed the goblin Chief was the highest authority in the goblin land right now since the goblin king appeared to be conveniently trapped under a raid dungeon where he was waiting for a bunch of humans to come along and kill his ass for some sweet loot.

  Well if I had anything to say about it then the sweet loot being created underground was going to have nothing to do with stuff players got out of a raid dungeon.

  "Why did you do it?" Rezzik asked.

  “Do what?" I asked.

  "Save me," the goblin asked, eyes darting towards the other two goblins who’d refused to let us go.

  I got the impression this conversation was as much for the benefit of those two goblins who were clearly listening in as it was for Rezzik who was curious why he’d been saved.

  I shrugged. "It was the right thing to do. Horizon Dawn has been treating your people like crap, and that's not right. So I intend to do something about it."

  I wasn’t going to go into the whole story of why I’d sworn revenge on Horizon and anyone associated with them. That would involve a lot of explaining I didn’t want to get into with a goblin who had no idea he was part of a video game.

  "That's it?" Rezzik asked. "You saved me because it was right? Not because you needed something?"

  Kris barked out a laugh at that. "What kind of assholes do you think we are? Horizon people?"

  "Not all of us are like those pricks,” I said. "In fact, I'm sworn to fight them wherever we go. And if they're trying to hurt people in your world then I'm going to stop them."

  I stopped and thought about that. As vows of vengeance went it was a pretty good one, but it felt like there needed to be more to it. It felt like I needed to make it clear that there was more to my saving Rezzik than simply wanting to stop Horizon. Because if I was just saving the goblin because it stopped a bunch of assholes I didn't like from doing bad things then was that really much better? Did the motivation matter as long as the end result was the same?

  I was doing too much philosophizing. I seemed to be doing more and more of that the more time I spent in this game. Especially where the goblins were concerned.

  "Don't get me wrong," I said. "We would’ve saved you no matter what. But it's an added benefit that we got to save your ass and stop Horizon from getting what they wanted at the same time. Two birds with one stone and all that."

  "I see," the goblin said, though his tone said he didn’t really see it at all.

  I looked to the two goblins walking in front of us. More particularly I focused on the glowing stones they carried. I wondered how I could get a spell infused stone to do the same thing. Sure I’d figured out a way to get a stone to glow, but what I really needed was a way to get a stone to glow without immediately blowing up and giving me and everyone around me a very bad day.

 
"I know what you're doing Rezzik,” one of the goblins walking in front of us said. "And it's not working."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Rezzik said.

  “Uh-huh. That story would be even more feel-good if I didn't recognize that girl from one of the mine clearing operations,” the other goblin said.

  Keia hissed and made a motion with her hands that looked like she was about to pull out her bow. It didn't appear in her hands, though I knew it was in her inventory and could come out at a moment’s notice, but I understood the impulse. I wanted to let out a couple of curses myself. If that goblin recognized her then he might think all of us were really in league with Horizon. That this was just a trick.

  We needed to handle this very carefully. I started by reaching out and putting a hand on Keia’s arm. I pushed down until she wasn’t in a position to summon her bow, for all that she glared at me as I did it. I shook my head slightly.

  Keia frowned. She didn’t like this, but she seemed willing to go along with me for the moment. Which was probably easy enough considering the alternative was to die down here in the darkness.

  "She was part of Horizon once, yes," I said. "But did you know she's the one who fired the arrows that saved Rezzik the first time we met?"

  Rezzik eyed her critically. Clearly he didn’t like the thought that she’d been a Horizon member at any point, even if she had saved him.

  "She was?" he asked. “Why did you save me if you were one of them?”

  "Because I’m not one of them,” Keia spat. “I hate them as much as you do.”

  There was no heat to her voice. No emotion at all. It was just a simple, cold, unemotional statement of fact.

  “I saw what they did to your people and I knew it was wrong. I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. I hate them and I'm going to kill all of them if I can,” she growled. “I’ll kick them out of this town once and for all. I hate everything they stand for, and anything that lets me get revenge on them is just fine in my book.”

  "We’ll see when we get to the Chief," one of the goblins said, his tone clearly saying he wasn't sure what our chances were, but if he were a betting goblin he wouldn't take those odds.