by David Gunter
Seeing as any impediments to entering had vanished and not wanting to be around the creepy sailor in the dark hooded cloak, he entered the Temple and made his way through a dark passage that opened to a courtyard with a cryptic looking obelisk in its center. After glancing briefly at the tall object, he entered the room and looked around the room to see if he could spot any loose stones. He was quickly pleased to find just such a stone in the far corner of the room. It was smooth and round and looked to be made of the same material as pretty much everything in this city. As he went to reach for it, however, it gave him a quick shock, and a notification appeared.
“Ah, so you’ve been passing little notes around while the teacher isn’t looking. Some might think that’s cheating. They could be the answers to a test or maybe just a love note from your girl friend’s best friend. Cheating is cheating. But, that’s the sort of thing a dark one would do isn’t it. Best not be letting any of the other gods see you doing that though.” - Whispers
The wanna-be-god of this temple, has spotted you reading a secret note. Better not make him jealous. - Narrator
“When I find out who is adding this commentary I’m g….” - Whispers
Tommy wasn’t sure what the message meant by cheating except that the note awaiting him beneath the stone was not something of this VR world but rather something external. Perhaps there were additional constraints on receiving these external messages, but for what it was worth, the note would at least indicate what he was supposed to be doing here. He lifted that stone and grabbed the note beneath it.
It read, ‘Kill David Gosling, last seen headed to the Opal Kingdom.’
“A stinking assassination mission!” Tommy said loudly and with no measure of restraint. Still holding the note in one hand, he threw the rock, hitting the only other object in the room, and stormed out of the room. The rock hit the obelisk and then, bouncing off it, hit the far wall, finally coming to rest on the floor with an audible clang.
The room was silent and all for the sound of Tommy’s stomping, decreasing with the growing distance, nothing else was heard. A moment passed, then a small sound was heard that sounded like a crack. Then another crack was heard and then another. From the top of the obelisk to its bottom, an unmistakable line appeared where once the surface had appeared smooth and unblemished.
Something in the obelisk moved.
❧
Tommy had no patience for this latest development. He had put up with absurd requests and plenty of sketchy deeds from his time in the military, but at least these had been under the guise of honor and following orders. He had had a lot of time to think after the accident that had left him unable to take care of himself.
And then there was Tala. She had made the memories of his past and his present condition endurable. The year before, losing her to cancer had brought an emptiness and darkness that he struggled to come to terms with. This world was supposed to change all of this, and he felt he had been coming to terms with losing her until this point. Now, however, he was losing her all over again, and he wasn’t having any more of these men with dark designs using him to force their agenda. He didn’t want to be that man anymore, and he could feel the kind of person behind the curtain pulling strings was not the kind of person in line with his new moral compass. At least these weren’t the deeds he wanted to be known for going forward. He wanted to get Tala back, and he would do anything to keep her, and he couldn’t imagine her seeing him in this light.
He didn’t make an attempt to hide his frustration as he brushed by the hooded sailor and stomped down the steps leading away from the temple entrance and out onto the street. Then he realized that if he intended to head towards the Bar Maid’s Slippery Inn, he should probably get directions. He hesitated for a moment to collect his thoughts and then walked back up the steps to the shrouded sailor, who was watching him with more than a little curiosity.
When it was clear Tommy meant to speak to him, the sailor interrupted him, “So ye be done with this here temple, and ye be off to see the wizard? Har har” the sailor laughed, but Tommy bit his tongue and was clearly not having any mirth with his frustration.
“I, er, am looking to go to this Inn you mentioned earlier, the Bar Maid’s Slippery? Which way should I be headed?” Tommy asked.
“Ahoy! Har har har, it be slippery indeed, har har har”. The sailor laughed at Tommy’s less than perfect wording but then pointed in the direction.
“It’d be towards the east side of the city me hearty. If ye go around the temple to the east side, ye will find a road that get ye there.” Said the sailor.
Tommy was already walking away and headed to the east side of the temple before the instructions had been fully provided, and he could hear the sailor continuing to laugh at his broken English from a distance.
“Har har har.. she be very slippery that barmaid… har har… she be slippery….”
Tommy found the road on the east side of the building and started down the road, muttering all the way about how frustrating natural English speakers could be and how they could take their stupid language and put it somewhere dark and damp for all it was worth. He was still muttering to himself when he spotted the sign to the Inn ahead and noticed that the sign to the Inn, appropriately, had a young woman on it depicted bending over with a beautiful smile and a lot more cleavage. Tommy prepared himself to enter the establishment, expecting to find it quite busy and intended to make himself scarce once inside. However, when he entered the establishment, he found it nearly empty, and the only patrons were passed out drunk with their heads on the tables snoring loudly.
Tommy let the door close behind him with a thump, and a tiny bell was heard announcing his entrance as he did so. He stood near the door for a moment taking in the space and its inhabitants, and then after a little while, a young robust, but visibly undead, woman walked out of the backroom and walked over to the bar but not before pausing at the backroom doorway and giving him a good looking over. After she had walked over and stood at the bar, she put her elbows on the counter and gave Tommy a look and a view which resembled the signpost outside far too much. Tommy had the odd sense that it felt too rehearsed and disingenuous and almost as if the bartender was testing him in some regard.
“What ye be having short dark and not too handsome,” the bartender said.
The bartender seemed to be putting on an act as she did so because she raised her voice an octave higher than would’ve sounded natural on her. Tommy didn’t know why she was acting this way, but he felt he’d figure out what was going on soon enough. It felt as if she were hiding something or trying to misdirect things.
Tommy walked over to the bar and put his crossed arms on the counter as he sat down on the stool. “I’d like to be having the innkeeper’s slippery lass. I hear it is worth a taste.” Tommy said this with the same sort of higher than normal pitch the bartender had used on him a moment before and then mentally braced himself for a number of possible outcomes.
The color drained from the bartender’s face, and the obviously plastered smile she’d had a moment before vanished with an utterly shocked expression which at least could not have been dishonest. The bar tender’s eyes darted back and forth between Tommy’s eyes as if searching for something sinister or perhaps for some explanation hidden deep within his war-torn face. There, however, was nothing on Tommy’s obviously exaggerated, though friendly, expression that could’ve given away something duplicitous, and as Tommy’s lips curled even further into a smirk, the woman’s eyes widened in surprise and started to tear up. Then the woman did the most unexpected thing. She burst out into laughter and then burst out again even louder to the degree that Tommy nearly fell backward out of his stool and only barely managed to steady himself with the bar counter.
The bartender tried to speak between her laughter but could only muster short bursts of phrases, repeating parts of that which Tommy had already said.
; “Inns slip, haha haaa, innkeepers slippery, ha haaa, slippery, he he ha, slippery lass, ha ha haaaa. Who, ha haaa, who put you, he ha ha, up to, ha ha , this, ha ha heeee? Oh boy! Haha, I can’t believe what you just said, ha ha ha! But she is, ha ha haaaa, she is the most slippery, he he heee. You have noooo idea, ha ha ha, how slippery she, he he, can get, ha ha ha”. The bartender got a few things said through the laughter, which Tommy managed to put together but what was clear was that he had inadvertently hit a nerve and one not by his own design.
Though flustered by this unexpected turn of events, he didn’t want to pass up a stroke of what must have been luck, so he quickly added, “I take it I could have a taste of this slippery lass or know where some slippery lass can be found if you’re out?” That might as well have been a nail on the poor bar tender’s coffin. The poor woman let out another laugh, and she nearly fell over this time as she tried to catch her breath and calm herself. Then another undead woman walked out of the backroom and stood with her arms crossed, scowling at the first one, which was now coughing and laughing uncontrollably.
The first one managed to say a few words between the laughing and which Tommy barely made out as “slippery… meet… ugly,” and then she chose to extricate herself by making her way out of the Inn, laughing all the way out. The woman standing at the door to the backroom continued to scowl at the other woman until she had left the Inn, and then she seemed to realize that Tommy was standing there, so she turned her scowl and bad mood on him instead. Tommy realized she was now looking at him with the unspoken question of ‘what do you want’, so he started asking the same question he had asked the bartender.
“So, I’m looking to have a taste of the innkeeper’s slippery lass.”
The second woman didn’t quite put on the same shocked look the other woman had, but she instead narrowed her eyes and then walked over to stand in front of Tommy and put her hands on her waist. “You come in here and say that to my very face? So listen here, my Daddy, Mr. Ptolemy Peri, was the innkeeper, and he named me Sly, and he named my sister Slow, but nobody is tasting none of this. It’s not on the menu! Got it! BUDDY!?”, As she said her sister’s name, she pointed at her sister still laughing in the street outside and then pointed at her own assets indicating that nothing on her person was within reach or, as she had said it, ‘on the menu’. Tommy looked at the angry woman and then realized that he was in the middle of someone else’s practical joke and one being played on both him and the two women. That shrouded sailor was a real piece of work. Then suddenly Tommy realized that if this woman’s name could be combined in this way, Sly Peri becoming slippery, then the other ones could also be combined and perhaps with the same effect.
Tommy pointed at the woman laughing in the street and then asked. “So, if I can’t have a taste of slippery, could I at least have a taste of sloppy?” As he said that, he pointed in the direction of the woman still laughing outside.
Sly glanced outside and then looked back at Tommy, surprised, and then he saw the moment that she found the humor in her sister’s name.
Tommy couldn’t help it. He stifled a laugh and covered his mouth as he saw that Sly hadn’t yet laughed. Then he looked up and saw Sly was trying hard not to laugh as well. He let out another small burst of laughter and quickly stifled it. Sly couldn’t contain the mirth growing inside her much longer and stifled a laugh of her own.
Then together, they burst out laughing as if this had been the first joke of their lives. He laughed, and then she laughed some more. He slapped his knees, and then she slapped her knees. He bent over and held his stomach, and then she bent over and bellowed in laughter.
Slow walked in from outside, hearing the laughter that had started in the Inn, and stood watching the two quizzically. She waited for the laughter to start dying down, then she looked to her sister, “What’s so funny?”. Her sister looked back at her and then stifled another laugh just long enough to say, “Ugly, meet, Sloppy,” and burst out laughing again. At hearing this rendition of her name Slow’s mouth dropped open, but after a few moments, she also joined in the laughing with the other two.
After a few minutes of renewed laughter, the trio calmed down, and Slow was the first to speak. “Well, you’ve had your fun at the expense of our names stranger, what’s your name? Unless you really go by ugly, but I don’t think my stomach could take much more laughter today.” The undead women looked at each other and, after a brief laugh, looked back to Tommy to see what he would say.
“Well, ladies, I apologize for this awkward, though funny, misunderstanding. My name is Tommy, and I was told by the shrouded sailor standing at the temple entrance to come here and ask for this drink as it would, he said, help me answer questions about my quest. I am apparently on some sort of a dark quest that I don’t know anything about. I guess he thought that coming here and making a fool out of me would show me what I needed to know, so here I stand”.
The women looked at each other again but with a new seriousness on their faces. There was something in that hidden exchange, and then Slow looked back at Tommy and answered.
“Well, this sailor is no less than ol’ Sinbad, and we will be sure to pay him back for this interesting introduction. He is probably the most human of the shrouded, and they regard him as the black sheep of the family for it; you’ll see soon enough. He is always getting into trouble with them, and that’s why they assigned him the temple guard position, you see? I think, seeing his appetite for unruliness first hand, you’ll agree that standing guard at the temple is truly out of character for him. As far as this quest you mentioned, Sly is no more knowledgable than I, so neither of us would be able to answer your questions, but let’s let these sleeping dogs have their rest, and let’s find us a quiet place to talk.” Slow pointed at the sleeping patrons that had eerily managed to continue snoring through the laughter and motioned to the far side of the Inn where a few private tables were arranged.
Tommy followed Slow, and Sly followed close behind. Once they had sat down, Tommy looked across the table at the two women and waited for them to start.
Sly started, “Why don’t you begin by telling us how you landed on the quest, and then we’ll tell you what we know.”
“Well, where to start,” said Tommy. “I, eh, fell in a cave a few days ago. When I awoke, I had this creature on my back, and soon after finding this out, I found this wooden dagger on a corpse.” Tommy reached out of sight and pulled out the dagger he’d found, and displayed it on his open palm.
Both women gasped at the sight of the dagger, and he noticed that both of them had the sudden urge to grab at the item but held back.
“May we examine the blade?” Slow said after that moment of restraint.
“Sure.” Replied Tommy as he handed Slow the weapon.
“Oh, the details on this dagger are impressive.” She said.
She held up the dagger to the light and then suddenly realized she might be making the blade visible to others in the Inn and brought the blade closer and out of sight.
“I see this blade reacts to light the same way that all the buildings in the city do. But it cannot be made of the same thing as it is perfectly smooth while all the buildings in the city are jagged and are made of huge black stones. This blade was grown from the earth, and no hands were used in its construction. It was sung into existence by a voodoo witch, I’m sure. You said this was by a body you found in a cave?” Slow didn’t wait for an answer and continued. “Yes, this was sung into existence, and its power is over death itself. This dagger was designed to kill a god, and its true name is ‘Spine of the Deep,” but it likes the name Spine.”
Slow then handed the blade to Sly, and Sly also started examining it.
“Ah yes, Spine is what it likes to be called, and it has several other attributes as well. It kills instantly on strike, guaranteeing a critical hit. It is super light with no cost to stamina, and… “Sly paused. “Oh, this is interest
ing. It captures the soul it has slain within and allows its wielder to direct it.” Sly barely had said this when the other woman exclaimed in a far too excited tone.
“Wait! What?! Could it be?” Slow grabbed the blade from her sister and started reexamining it again. “Oh! There’s more. This blade makes the wielder immune to the effects of holy magic, various forms of light, and poisons but at the cost of soul energy.” She exclaimed.
“OK, so I’ve clearly come to the right place,” Tommy said. “But I have lots of questions. First, what is it with soul energy? This soul eater is eating it at a fast rate, and I don’t see it replenishing.”
“Well…” said Sly. “Your predicament is severe indeed. That soul eater is taking from you a resource that is very scarce in Atsia Major. The soul does replenish but very, very slowly. In fact, we only knew of one way of replenishing it quicker before today. The monks of the city of light are said to be able to convert light into soul energy. But as of today, there is clearly another way.”
“So what happens if a person runs out of soul energy?” Asked Tommy with noticeable angst in his voice.
“They die for good.” Both women said at once.
“Well, they don’t die right away,” said Slow. “They still have health, but if they lose that, they will die permanently,” she added.
Sly continued. “So there is only one way of coming back from the boat man’s ride if you’re dead, and the only way to do that is to provide him a coin. A coin for a soul, as the saying goes. You see, the veil exchanges soul for a soul coin, so if you put a soul through the veil you will receive a coin, and the reverse is also true. The problem is that in order to do that, you have to be able to capture a soul, which basically means coercing someone and taking them to the boatman since no one would be willing to make that exchange on your behalf freely. Assuming, however, that you have a coin, then you could exchange that coin with the boatman for the coin you want and exchange this coin for a soul. There are probably quests that would give you a coin, but I’d be surprised if someone dying wasn’t a part of one of those quests.”