by John L. Monk
“I’m Elfie, Felix’s wife,” she said, reaching out to shake my hand.
She was an elf, all right. Big eyes, pointy ears, flowing black hair tinted sharply white at the ends, and she was taller than your average human female player. As with her husband, she wasn’t squintable, so I couldn’t tell her level other than guessing it was a thousand or higher. With the 50-point racial bonus to comeliness, she was a knockout. Given that I could focus on the features of her expressive face without drooling, she hadn’t cranked it all that much higher.
“Howard,” I said, smiling and trying not to stare as I shook her hand. “Good to meet you.”
From the other room, Felix yelled, “She’s never met a necromancer before! It’s gonna get weird!”
Elfie nodded. “It’s true. They’re too rare. And the class is sort of…”
“Broken!” Felix shouted, still in the other room. “That’s what everyone says!”
Elfie winced in pained empathy, but I waved it away.
“I like to think of it as a fixer-upper,” I said.
“What will you do when you get to Ward 2?” she said. “Keep a log on who to kill and how many times you’ve done it? That’s what I’d do if I were a necromancer. Otherwise, you know … thousand lives, then poof—gone. I mean, unless… I mean you don’t seem like a cold-blooded murderer, Howard. I have a great eye for character and you seem sweet. Sensible. Not bloodthirsty. You are sweet, aren’t you? Noble of soul, pure of heart?”
“Quit pestering the man!” Felix shouted. “You’ll scare him off! Now, come on, both of you, get ready… Here I come!”
Caught in the tornado of words, I dizzily stared in wonder when Felix entered the room. Balanced in his hands was an enormous white cake too tall for him to see over. He tottered past us into another room followed by Elfie and then me.
“You should have asked for help,” Elfie said.
“I got it,” he said and hoisted it onto an ancient-looking oaken dinner table. “Dig in!”
Not waiting for us, he sat down, grabbed a fork off the table, and carved out a big piece, which he quickly gobbled down.
“Ooh…” Felix said in a voice filled with rapture. “Oh, it’s just so good… Best I’ve ever made!”
“He always says that,” Elfie said. “Quick, grab a fork before he eats it all!”
So there I was, in the house of two very strange strangers, ready to talk about Ward 4 and magic boats and preparations, and none of that was happening. I stood bewildered while they went to town on the cake—which did look good, incidentally, in a “things that don’t matter at all right now” kind of way.
With a sigh, I sat down next to Elfie, who smiled at me, cheeks full of cake, making her look like a greedy hamster with too much comeliness. But at least she wasn’t asking me about necromancers and if I was a murderer.
I looked around for a fork and Felix said, “Here,” materializing a fork as if by magic.
“Should I have a plate?” I said.
Beside me, Elfie said, “Juzh dig enn. Thiz gake don las long!”
Felix nodded. “It’s on a timer, Howard. Fades fast—quick, now! This is very important!”
Curious, I dug in, stuffing my mouth with … well … the most delicious, amazing, stupendous, perfect, scrumptious, heavenly, mouthwateringly wonderful cake I’d ever had in my life, either on Earth or in the game.
I’d set my notifications back to visual after arriving in Brighton, and I was surprised when a game message appeared.
MAJOR PERK AWARD: Marie Antoinette’s Revenge
Duration: 3 weeks
Cooldown: 1 month
Description: Consumers of this delicious, amazing, stupendous, perfect, scrumptious, heavenly, mouthwateringly wonderful dessert are immune from losing permanent lives for the duration of the effect.
(Does not apply to fights with bridge guardians, the Domination, or true-death-centric events such as Roshambo Roulette.)
When my senses cleared, I gaped at Felix in wonder.
“You’re a…”
Felix nodded excitedly.
“You’re…” I tried again.
“Go on,” he said, smiling widely.
“You’re a delectomancer,” I said in disbelief.
Now I knew why he played a dwarf, or at least one reason. Delectomancers, they said, were the most powerful self-buffers in the game. Dwarves, as a race, received a five percent bonus to all self-buffs, which usually came in the form of potions.
“There’s only three in the world,” Elfie said beside me, beaming with pride.
Felix held up a cautioning finger. “That we know of. Not everybody wears it on their sleeves, you know—or spattered down their shirts, so to speak. Still, I’ll admit we’re pretty rare. The quest to find the Delectonomicon—the class starter—is long and arduous. It takes you hither and yon. Hither and thither. Far and wide! And yes—oh yes—behind the bushes…”
“Too far, if you ask me,” Elfie said with a frown. “How long did we search for that irritating Gingerbread Boy?”
“Ages and ages, in multiple stages,” Felix said.
“And what did you do when you found him?”
“I bit his ginger head off!”
Felix threw back his head and cackled like a maniac—then began choking on a chunk of un-swallowed cake. Elfie leaped out of her seat, ran around, and performed the Heimlich maneuver while I sat and stared and wondered just what the hell I’d gotten myself into with these two.
In front of me, the remainder of the delicious, amazing, stupendous, perfect, scrumptious, heavenly, mouthwateringly wonderful cake was beginning to decay, turning black at the edges and caving in down the middle.
When I looked at Felix, there were tears in his eyes, and not just from the choking.
“I always hate this part,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Elfie, I learned, was a dual-class runemaster-wizard. Wizard, mostly, from how she described it, and not very much runemastery. If Felix had another class, he never mentioned it. Plenty of players picked up other classes in their journeys but never ranked in them.
The three of us were relaxing with wine and cheese near the hearth, whose flames formed mesmerizing images the longer you stared at them. Unlike most people, Elfie’s frenetic chatter had dampened with the flow of alcohol, replaced by a broad, lazy grin. I still hadn’t touched my wine, though I did nibble at the cheese.
Felix was telling me about delectomancy and how it worked.
“I was holding back that last pinch of salt until you arrived,” he said. “Once I added that—poof, the magic happened! There’s no real cooking cooking involved in delectomancy, not as such. Ingredients are mixed and cooked ritualistically. In that respect, it’s very similar to alchemy but tastier by far, and quite a bit more outlandish in its effects. Self-only. No powders and oils and all that. Everything must be eaten for the effect to take place. Oh, and the class is powered by a derived stat called transcendence, based on the sum of all my stats divided by five.”
“All stats?” I said with some surprise. The classes I’d tried focused on no more than a few, weighted according to spec.
Felix nodded. “Yep. Very versatile. I can wear any piece of stat gear and still benefit.”
“I keep telling him to add more to comeliness,” Elfie said with a giggle. “He always says, Dwarves are not supposed to be pretty!”
Which led to another question: “So, why dwarf? Is it just for the self-buff bonus?”
“Elfie and I are big Tolkien lovers, as I’m sure you can tell,” Felix said. “If the game had hobbits, I’d be one. The way I see it, dwarves are the next closest thing to Tolkien’s vision.”
“What about gnomes?” I said.
Felix grimaced. “Gnomes… Pinched little faces, tiny bodies, stubby little fingers… Not my cup of wine.”
“Me either,” Elfie said and took a sip.
“And why did you go elf?” I said.
“Why are you
human?” she countered.
“Or still a man?” Felix said with an arch smile.
I must have blushed because Elfie reached over and gave my arm an encouraging squeeze.
“We are what we are,” she said. “I was always an elf way down deep. I just never looked like one. Felix always wanted to be a chef in real life, but then life got in the way. Which has me wondering…” She peered at me intently. “What makes someone nice as you play a necromancer?”
“Told you it’d get weird,” Felix said.
By now, I’d gotten pretty good at explaining myself. I gave them my basic spiel about the Domination and my years spent testing different classes.
“That is a singularly noble pursuit,” Elfie said.
She raised her glass, and I had no choice but to join her in a sip. Surprisingly tasty, faintly sweet, with a warm mouthfeel that still didn’t make me want any more.
“It makes sense, that thing being glitched,” Felix announced as if I’d been waiting on just such a judgment. “We’ve seen the survivors: depressed, haggard, one Ward 4 life left, doomed to Ward 3 gear the rest of their lives… Then one day they disappear—off to the Hall of Heroes, most likely. Or the Dryad. But not in your case. You found a purpose. You’re going to fix things. Everyone needs a purpose, I’m convinced of it. I have mine, you know.”
“Me!” Elfie said.
“You only want me for my pastries,” he said.
“Not true,” she said. Then, a second later, she admitted, “Actually, no, he’s right.”
The three of us chatted well into the night, getting to know each other and sharing stories. I began to feel guilty. Why? Because I was impatient. I needed them for more than food and conversation. Several times, I found myself on the verge of bringing up their services, only to back off for fear of giving offense. What a relief, then, when Felix changed the subject.
“All right, fine, may as well talk business now,” he said. “Did you bring the bottle? The one with the ship in it?”
“Uh, yeah, one sec.”
I fished out my bottomless bag, removed the Boat in a Tote, and handed it to him.
Felix’s tone had switched from lively and jovial to clipped and instructional.
“Lovely things,” Felix said, looking at it closely. “To emerge at sea, break glass.” He sighed sadly. “Pity it has to be destroyed. Only way to get you to Ward 4, though. The Royal Banshee is a mobile instance. When we cross the divide between wards, you’ll be presented with an option to fight the bridge guardian. On a normal ship, you’d be instantly teleported into the fight.”
Elfie cleared her throat. “Now, now, Feelzy, it’s rude to ask a guest if he brought the money for the trip.”
Smiling, Felix said, “But I didn’t ask him if he brought it.”
“Well good, then, because that’d be rude,” she said, then turned prettily to me and blinked. “Did you bring the money, Howard? We actually need it for the cake ingredients. They cost a fortune, and it’s the only way we can safely offer the service.”
“That much?” I said in wonder, though of course I believed them. Any cake that could protect someone from lost lives would necessarily have been off-the-charts expensive. “Do you have a purse?”
Elfie snapped her fingers and a bag floated in from another room. Wizard spell, Telekinesis. She opened the bag and pulled out a garden variety coin purse … but I had eyes only for the bag.
“That’s a Portable Hoard! Now that is something.”
“Oh, this old thing?” she said demurely.
Portable Hoards were No Loot/No Steal bottomless bags. They came from Ward 4 off a wandering demigod named Syadk’ Ro. I’d never fought it before because it never traveled the Blood Road, and it was hard gathering enough players to hunt for it.
I touched my freebie coin purse to hers and mentally willed the 20 million transfer.
“Perrrrrfect,” she said, stashing it away.
“Great, that’s settled,” Felix said. “Now I’m going to get some sleep. I was up all last night using my foodoo powers and I’m utterly exhausted.”
“Dished?” Elfie said.
“Hah,” he said. “Should have thought of that myself. You have the makings of a gigglemancer, my dear.” Then to me: “We’ll set out tomorrow after a good rest. That is if you’re done here in Brighton?”
I looked at him funny. “What do you mean a good rest?”
Elfie took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Felix and I are Hard Modes. We have to eat and sleep or we suffer. If we stay awake too long or go without food, we’ll die and lose a life. It’s one of the reasons we started this service, actually: to level more quickly while under the protection of Marie Antoinette’s Revenge.” She smiled impishly. “That, and it’s fun helping out you low-levels.”
“Some of them,” groused Felix.
“Most of them,” Elfie countered.
While I reeled in surprise at being in the company of two Hard Modes, Felix escorted me to a room I could use and said I had run of the house. Then he and Elfie turned in for the night.
I didn’t go to bed right away. The couple had an extensive library of fantasy and sci-fi books. No horror, of course. Nobody had horror. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy a good fantasy novel, but I was living that life. For me, escapism came from anything not fantasy.
“If you do your job right,” I said quietly, “maybe we can all escape.”
Trying to escape for a while, I took out my copy of The Thin Man, plonked down in one of the comfy chairs near the hearth, and began to reread it.
The next morning, after Elfie let loose a high-level genie to watch the hobbit cave, the three of us strolled down to the sandy shore beyond Sandpiper Vista. Everywhere we looked were tiny crabs that fled our approach. Otherwise, the beach was deserted.
“Shouldn’t we be using a dock or something?” I said dubiously. The water was clear but shallow, and a tall ship like the one in the bottle would run aground long before reaching the shore.
Elfie frowned as if I’d said something wrong. “You have to trust the magic, Howard. You do trust the magic, right?”
I started to protest, then saw an impish smile teasing at the corners of her mouth.
Standing next to a large boulder, Felix shouted, “We usually break them here!”
Beside the boulder was a wooden box with a hinged top. On the lid were the words Broken Glass painted in white.
“Smash the bottle, then put the glass in here,” Felix said.
It still made no sense.
“Won’t the ship get stuck in the sand?”
As one, Felix and Elfie shouted, “Trust the magic!”
“Fine,” I said. “All right, here goes.”
Trusting the magic, I reared back and threw the Boat in a Tote at the boulder, smashing it to hell. I looked around for a ship, but nothing was there.
“Where is it?” I said.
For the barest of moments, I grew suspicious. My new friends were far more powerful than me and they seemed … well, not crazy, exactly, but definitely odd. Could this whole thing be an elaborate joke? A way of making 20 million gold while feeding a perverse need to screw with people? A darker version of Joe Volcano?
“While we wait,” Felix said, “let’s go over some logistics. You need to get to the Well of Dreams. Normally, we take people to the Tree of Death—to get the XP perk, right? But you’re different. Kind of interesting, if you ask me. Anyway, it’s a longer march. Not that we mind…”
“We don’t mind!” Elfie said happily.
“But it’ll be a slog. Lots of baddies on the Blood Road.”
“I’ve been there before,” I said.
Elfie said, “He told us last night, remember? He fought the Domination.”
“Ooooh, yes,” Felix said, smiling and shaking his head. “Plum forgot. I’m so used to dealing with lowbies on this trip, please forgive me. Also, there was wine involved, so…”
“I’ll clean up the glass,” Elfie said and sta
rted to pick it up.
Normally I would have helped her, but I kept staring at the water. Where the heck was it?
“He’s not trusting the magic,” Felix said morosely.
In a high, singsong voice, Elfie recited:
“A buxom young maid who was dusting,
Had beauty divine and so trusting.
The dust got her sneezing,
And her corset to squeezing,
Till the laces, too tight, began busting!”
Lunatics, I thought. Both of them.
Overhead, the sun fell behind a bank of thick, dark clouds I could have sworn weren’t there when we first came out. Visibility on the beach had dropped down to perhaps fifty feet in any direction, blocked by a hazy mist sweeping in off the ocean.
“Oh, by the way,” Felix said, “did you happen to bind before coming here?”
I nodded. “Up at the Crimson Sigil Stronghold.”
Felix sneered. “Bunch of morons. Anyway, you won’t be able to bind again until the Island of Yes Return.”
“Yes Return?”
The air had definitely grown misty. Visibility had dropped to maybe twenty feet, and the clouds overhead were much darker now.
“Is this part of it?” I said, staring upward.
“I certainly hope so,” Felix said.
“Still not trusting the magic,” Elfie said. “Sigh…”
And then I heard it: a bell sounding from way out over the water beyond the mist, oars creaking in their oarlocks to the rhythmic splash of water.
From out of the mist came not a tall ship with three masts but a large rowboat with about ten men on it pulling for shore. Occasional shouts carried our way:
“Row for your lives, you mangy curs!”
“Pull harder, you box-hauled rapscallions!”
Felix elbowed me in the ribs. “That’s not the ship, Howard. There’s the ship. Way out there.”
I followed his pointing finger and saw it poking out of the distant mist—a frigate like something out of a pirate movie. Now I felt foolish—which I’m sure was precisely what my two new friends wanted.