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by R J Triveri

  As Walter took the reins, Athos began his story. From his arrival and his helping the pair of guardians to his time with the dryads, he left very little of his time in Incipere out. How he got there, that was a different story, but Walter didn’t pry for the moment. When all was said and done, it wasn’t the worst way that he could have imagined spending an afternoon; however, Walter did have a few comments of his own.

  “You actually stayed with the dryads?” Athos nodded, “I had heard they aren’t always the most hostile, but I didn’t actually believe it.”

  “Honestly, they were very good to me,” he had left out the trait he had gained as Ioh had recommended. Walter seemed like a nice enough guy, but he wasn’t that interested in people knowing everything about him.

  “Are they as beautiful as people say?”

  That was a bit of an uncomfortable question, and Athos wasn’t quite sure how to answer but tried all the same. “Well, they are, but more in a… if-you-like-a-woman’s-body-on-top-of-deer sort of way.”

  “Ah, so they aren’t humanoid?”

  “More like centaurs.”

  “Well, there goes that dream.”

  The young alchemist couldn’t help but stare a bit as the wagon continued towards a growing hillside. “You’re a strange man, Walter.”

  Walter’s laugh was like an avalanche before he settled enough to speak. “Better to be one by choice than being branded as one with a name like Athos.”

  “Hey, I happen to like it!” he defended, “If you have to blame anyone, blame my parents.”

  Walter shook it off with another laugh, “Nah, you had the chance to change when you arrived. Blame’s all on you, Musketeer.”

  The conversation hit a bit of a snag as Walter’s concentration shifted back to the road. So, with his free moment, Athos opened his window to watch his screens. Tapping the map, he observed as the pair traveled up a hillside with a town symbol waiting on the other side. In basic font, Oenus flashed. Using his fingers to guide the map, he traced back down their path to the forest, which he discovered was named The Forest of the Dryads. “Talk about a creative name.”

  “Huh?”

  “The forest. It was named the Forest of the Dryads.”

  Walter just smiled, “Just wait till you go to the Dungeon of Darkness. Can you guess what its big draw is?”

  “Darkness?”

  “No, light puzzles actually. The name is very misleading.”

  Athos sighed as he zoomed the map out to see the surrounding areas then closed it and let his head fall back with a groan, “I’m never going to get the hang of this.”

  It was amazing how comforting talking to a man you hardly knew could be. “Hey, I wouldn’t worry. Once you get settled, things will get easier. All you need to do is relax.”

  His head returned to the upright position as he nodded, “Easy for you to say. How long have you been here, Walter?”

  He shrugged as he cracked the whip again. The hill was starting to get steep. “A little while after the testing started, so in Earth years... Five years? Six years? Time doesn’t quite feel the same here, you know?” He did. “When I had saved up enough bytes to build my farm, I almost died of exhaustion. When my wife found and rushed me to Oenus, I had to be told I needed to sleep because of a code update. Shoulda figured something was wrong when I lost my HP bar.”

  Athos nodded. It was an all too familiar feeling for him. “I can relate to that. Same thing happened to me. None of the hospital’s textbooks had that information.”

  “Hospital?”

  The alchemist suddenly felt very uncomfortable and shook his head. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Whatever you say, Athos,” he turned back to the front and cracked the whip again. “This is my favorite part; you’ve gotta love the view from here.”

  Athos couldn't argue with him as they crested the hillside and saw the waiting world below. A rushing river parted the village into three sections. On their bank, the village consisted of a huge stone square, stalls, a few gardens, and what looked like a ring of stones. A large drawbridge lined with stone and a dark, gray wood connected the bank to a small inland island where it looked like all the houses were collected. It was too far to make out the other bank, but he assumed it was much like theirs. It wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small. It was just the perfect size for Athos.

  “Welcome to Oenus, the frontier’s own City on the Water.”

  Oenus, City on the Water

  “Ready?” Walter asked with a wily smile.

  A puzzled look painted the alchemist’s face. “For what?”

  “This.” An intense wind blasted Athos in the face as Walter unhitched the lizards from the cart. In a swift, practiced maneuver, the older man belted himself in and smiled as the alchemist gripped onto the seat as Walter’s hand balanced carefully on the handbrake. “I’ve done this hundreds of times, Athos. Hold on!”

  “Walter?!”

  “Hold on to your ass!”

  For a moment, Athos hesitated, but in the end, hold onto his ass he did as the air rushing from his lungs carried his voice far and wide. “Walter!”

  The speed of the runaway wagon picked up, growing faster and faster until his ears couldn’t tell the difference between his screaming and the screaming stress of the axles under him. It was the longest moment of his life if he didn’t count the frantic ride to the hospital. Even though the ride down passed in only a few moments, his mind didn’t stop screaming until the wagon came to a stop and arrived at the center of the village’s stone marketplace.

  Despite the screaming, the man, the alchemist, and the wagon, people acted as though it were a normal day. The townspeople went along with their business of buying goods, trading, ignoring the shaky alchemist in the dark coat… normal things to ignore the abnormal occurrences.

  A large hand came down on Athos’s shoulder to steady him as an equally large voice laughed, “Oh come on, it couldn’t have been worse than when you were downloaded, Athos.”

  Steadying himself, Athos looked at the large supplier and grimaced at the memory. “I have no idea how bad it was six years ago, but mine was nowhere near as bad as that. We could have died!”

  Walter smiled and doubled down the hand on the young alchemist’s shoulder with a pat. “We could have, but we didn’t.” His grin only grew in proportion to Athos’s distress. “I said to trust me, Athos. I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been compiled.”

  “Four days doesn’t make you an expert at something!”

  “I’ve been doing it longer than four days! Jeez, boy, you are high-strung. Live a little.”

  Before Athos could formulate a response, a woman interrupted the bickering pair with a satisfying smack to the back of Walter’s head. “You said you wouldn’t do that anymore!”

  Fear glistened in the eyes of his new acquaintance as the woman half the man’s size stared him down. With hair the color of the earth and eyes to match, the girl was like a dust storm in form and function, and if the alchemist was being honest with himself, she was starting to frighten him. Walter was practically shaking in his virtual boots as he did his best to compose himself. “Sweetheart, I didn’t know you’d be here already…”

  “That doesn’t excuse this!” she almost screamed, motioning her hands to the wandering lizards and the cart. “What would we do if we lost those two? We can’t afford another pair of dust monitors, and what about if you crashed again? The healers would have had a field day with your bill!” As if noticing Athos for the first time, the woman turned to him curiously. “And who is this, another one of your friends?”

  Walter hesitated as Athos regained what stamina he had. “His name is Athos, Sal. I met him on the road here. He needed a ride, and who else would have stopped to help him? Alchemist or not, he’s still human after all.”

  The woman Walter called Sal looked Athos over again like a cat watching a mouse before it pounced. “Athos, huh? What was an alchemist doing all the way out there without a pa
rty, anyways?”

  Athos was getting the distinct feeling that alchemists were not supposed to be on their own. With that information in mind, he made a mental note that, if he ever got the chance, he really needed to ask someone why that was.

  “He’s a newbie. The higher ups didn’t know about Tenebrae and dropped him right in the middle of the conflict. The guy barely made it out.”

  “It wasn’t barely, Walt,” but the way that the eyes of fire and lightning looked at him, it made him regret the correction.

  “See, Dad! You don’t need to lie to make him look better.”

  “Sally, I wasn’t trying to…”

  “You weren’t trying to what?”

  And so it began again as Athos stood by watching the horror unfold much like a train wreck.

  “I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble, Sal.”

  “Well, you caused some!” Opening her status window, she flipped to her equipment and showed her father the status of the wagon. “The axles are stressed, the wheels are damaged, the break and yoke are well below where they should be, and the harnesses are degraded. It’ll take me hours to fix the wagon, and you know I’m still low rank with leather.”

  Athos winced at the sharpness of her tongue and the way her words landed like punches against her father. The girl was like a prized fighter dancing her way around a rookie that was too scared to fight back. All the rookie could do was play defense…

  “I know, but we’ll make more than enough off the crops to pay for materials for you to work.”

  And hope not to have a knockout punch landed.

  “That’s not the point, Dad! Mom told you to be careful with it after the last time we fixed it. If it degrades anymore, we’ll need to buy a new one. What would she think then?”

  But when that punch landed and the countdown to continue ended, all that Walter could do was submit. “I’m sorry, Sally.” With the remorse that drenched his voice, it was hard not to believe him. “I promise never to use your wagon like that again,” he finally relented as the verbal assault ended, and her gaze softened. “Just don’t tell your mother. You know she’d overreact.”

  If that was a normal reaction, Athos didn’t want to see an overreaction.

  Sally nodded as she walked over to the wagon and gingerly re-harnessed the pair of dust monitors. “I’ll try not to, Dad. I know how upset Mom would be if she knew you were being reckless again,” her eyes turned to Athos, letting a sigh escape as she returned to the harness, “or that you were picking up strangers on the side of the road.”

  Athos decided it was in his best interest to leave that comment where it was and not to explain how he had almost been run over. “Walter, Auxi said I’d be able to get some help getting settled here. Do you know where she was talking about?”

  Sally almost choked as she held a laugh back. “Dad, you weren’t kidding. He is new.”

  “I told you,” he said under his breath before turning back to Athos, “As long as my daughter doesn’t mind tending to the shipment, stand, and the dust monitors, I can show you exactly where you need to go.”

  She waved him off before finishing her work with the harness. “As long as you don’t sign up for a dungeon run again or bring home another pet, I don’t think I need to worry about you right now, Dad. I’ll get everything ready for when you get back.” Turning to face the two, she tried to smile, but it didn’t quite look right on her face. It seemed as though her calm smile was holding back the storm. “Just make sure to come back, and it was nice meeting you, Athos.”

  About as nice as getting mugged, he thought to himself. A pang of guilt flooded his thoughts, but he shook it off as he smiled back. “And you, but please don’t be too hard on Walter. He’s just trying to help me.”

  “He should think about himself more often,” she sighed. “Somebody has to.”

  “I think about us plenty,” Walter tried to add before his daughter turned and went to tend the shipment. Her screen glowing as she transferred items between inventories at the wagon. The man turned to Athos and sighed. “She worries too much. Don’t mind her, Athos.”

  “She has a point. I could have been anyone.”

  “But you weren’t. Plus, a rank one with pointy ears like that? I’ve got nothing to worry about from a forest child.”

  “Pointy ears?!” Athos’s hands bounded from his sides to his ears, and indeed, they came to a point that they did not just a few days prior.

  “You didn’t know?” Walter roared merrily as he turned to walk away. “Come on, Athos. We’ve got things to do. The guild isn’t going to be open all day. I mean, it is, but I don’t have all day to get you there.”

  Athos groaned to himself. How had he not noticed it before? Opening his screen, he went to his equipment and zoomed in on his upper features. Sure enough, under his hair, his ears came to a small, obviously there, pair of points. At least it wasn’t as obvious or large as the dryad’s were.

  “Are you coming or not?” he called back as Athos stared at the screen.

  “I’m coming,” Athos replied while brushing his hair over the tips of the ears.

  The market was larger than he would have thought possible from their distance. People, animals, and creatures of all sizes were shopping or selling whatever they could get their hands on. Small stands selling baked goods that lingered in his nose and tugged at his tongue, armored men selling hides and claws, men in large brimmed hats selling maps, exotic looking people selling equally exotic creatures… it was a regular grand bazaar as he and Walter passed each one.

  “Gotta be careful here, Athos,” he explained as they passed a caged set of creatures with a man yelling rather loudly about how great he was for having captured them. “Some people don’t have the morals they need to raise animals right. Some skimp on their cooking and can make you sick.” His eyes wandered to one stand in particular before turning his attention back to his walking buddy. “Just because it’s digital, people think it doesn’t matter in the long run here. Never be cheap when your life could be at stake.”

  “Who should I watch out for?”

  “Don’t buy anything unless you ask me first,” he said simply before bringing up his inventory window and clicking the smile emoticon near the bottom. “I’m going to send you a friend request. It’ll let me contact you in an instant, and you can do the same. That way it’ll keep you out of too much trouble, even if you won’t have the money to buy anything soon.”

  He nodded and, not a moment later, heard a familiar pang echoed inside of his skull. Opening his window, he went to the same icon that was now outlined in a gold and green pulsing ring:

  Friend Request Received: Walter Queen - Rank 10 Supplier

  Accept?

  His hand pressed against the screen to accept and saw the list update to state that Walter Queen was now his friend along with his rank, his last known location, and a little envelope. Athos wasn’t exactly comfortable with someone knowing so much about him, but he was starting to like the big lug and figured he’d give him the benefit of the doubt. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Press the little letter icon, and it’ll send me a message.”

  It seemed far too easy. “And you’ll respond?”

  Walter nodded as the pair started past the last set of stands. “Quick as I can if it’s important.”

  Athos’s face rose into a smile for a moment as he closed his screen, and not just because he had been able to hold a conversation, browse his screen, and read its data all at once. “You know I might send ten a day.”

  The grin was infectious as Walter kept the pace. “You don’t seem like the attached type, but if you need it, I’ll help you out.”

  “You’re a good man, Walter,” the alchemist affirmed.

  The crowds began to melt away the further away the pair got from the stands.

  “I’m an even better farmer, so you can imagine how good business is.” With a grin, the man’s burly hand came down on Athos’s shoulder as they reached th
e bridge out of the business district. “Welcome to Oenus proper, Athos. Now, let’s get you to the guild house before the evening rush.”

  Oenus Proper

  Just as he saw from on top of that god-awful hill, Athos and Walter were now face to face with the bridge connecting the markets to the city proper. To the surprise of the young alchemist, the wooden span was much larger than it looked. From a distance, the bridge looked as though it might have held two, maybe three people walking abreast to get through the city, but now that he was on it, he realized it was meant for so much more than that.

  “It was meant for the Battalions,” Walter chimed in when he noticed the surprise on the alchemist’s face.

  “What?”

  “You were wondering about the bridge, weren’t you?”

  “How...”

  “I thought the same thing when I got here for the first time, Athos,” Walter laughed before taking the first crossing step. “It’s just a drawbridge though. It’s not going to bite, so get your ass in gear, newbie.”

  Newbie... It wasn’t a term he was fond of, but it was better than the alternative or being decoded, or whatever they called it when you died here. Another question for another time, he figured as he followed Walter’s lead.

  “From the early days of Incipere, right?”

  Walter nodded as the pair continued down the bridge. “Despite the frontier being a rather new part of the world, it was still around for the Great Hunt. They needed bridges and easy transportation to deal with all the bastards that downloaded themselves in as an escape from the real world and tried to cause problems. No one wanted to be caught with their pants down or their gear wet.”

  “There aren’t many things in the files about the Great Hunt.” If he were being honest with Walter, the name wasn’t even a common thing to find. Most of the time, it was simply referred to as the Founding Days.

  “The Inciperians don’t like talking about it. Too many bad memories for them and a lot of the mainlanders for that matter.” His eyes seemed to wander as he spoke, stopping for a moment so that he could take in the sky for a few moments before he started walking again.