by Randy Nargi
Great.
Her head was still pounding, so she cast healing touch on herself. That did the trick. Her head cleared, and she took another crack at the wheel.
After working at it for several minutes, she finally was able to open the hatch. Immediately, she was hit with the smell of cool, ocean air.
That felt good.
She jumped up and pulled herself through the hatch and then slid down the metal sphere on to a beach. As she stood up and brushed the sand from her clothes, she caught a glimpse of something that nearly made her heart stop.
WTF?
It was a giant alien-looking creature standing in the water, a couple of hundred yards offshore.
The creature was terrifying and immense—easily several hundred feet tall. It was roughly shaped like a man, but with incredibly thin, spindly, boney limbs, and a strange head that resembled a hammerhead shark. An extra pair of arms jutted out from the monster’s shoulders, which made it look almost like a spider. Both the head and the limbs had all sorts of chaotic protrusions that looked like little horns or spikes growing out of the body.
She didn’t know if it was too far away to inspect, but she gave it a try.
:::::. Cormorian. (Legendary). Hostile. .:::::
Pari watched, mesmerized, as the cormorian slowly walked away from the shore, towards the sun which hung low in the sky. It felt like forever until the monster gradually disappeared into the fog, but the terror still stayed with her. It was only the sound of a message alert that broke her out of her reverie.
:::::. New message from Justin. Listen? .:::::
“Yes.”
As Pari listened to Justin’s message, she felt a stab of guilt. She had just left him there at the party alone. Sure, it wasn’t her fault; it was those slimy Hawks, but still it was wrong of her.
And now he was on some sort of quest with Klothar at Tashon’s Gate?
This was getting weirder and weirder. It must be some sort of new quest system that the devs were testing out.
She rubbed her shoulder, thinking. She really needed to update Lazarus. It would be really bad to put it off any longer, so she just bit the bullet.
“Message to Lazarus: It’s Pari reporting in. I’m okay, but a lot has gone down. The Hawks drugged me so they could get at the sage. Really bad. I woke up on a boat to Northfleet, but then the boat was attacked and now I’m on some deserted shore in god knows where. Oh, and I just saw what looked like an alien giant. It’s called a ‘cormorian’ and it’s a legendary. This whole thing feels like some kind of bizarre quest, but I have no quest objective. Anyway, I don’t even know what level zone I’m in, but I’m going to try to make my way back to a road. Hopefully I won’t die. Message me back and let me know how you guys made out.”
Ok, that was done. She’d just have to deal with Lazarus once she got back to Rathenhall—if she got back. She noticed that the tide was coming in, which wasn’t good. The beach she was standing on was a thin strip of rocks that ran between the ocean and a line of rugged chalk-white cliffs that rose sharply fifty or sixty feet straight up. Some time soon the water would come right up to the base of the cliff. And then she’d be toast.
Her first priority was to get off this damn beach. She looked north and then she looked south, but all she could see was beach, cliffs, and fog. She looked back out to the water, but there was no sign of the cormorian. There was also no sign of the ship. Did it sink? If that sphere really did smash through the hold, the ship would have sunk for sure. But there was no debris anywhere.
Pari turned back to inspect the sphere and walked all around it. It really did look like an ancient diving bell, and it was scratched and banged up pretty badly. She noticed that there didn’t seem be any places to tie anything on to sphere, however, which made her diving bell theory seem less likely. How would you pull the thing up from the bottom of the ocean? Unless it was meant to be carried around in a net. Who knew?
She sat down on a boulder, took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate. Where exactly was she?
The sailor had said that they left from the town of Lorque which was on some bay. And they were almost out of that bay when they had been attacked. Okay…
The geography of this part of Greystrand was a blur. All Pari knew was that there were four seaports: Lorque, Port Arlin, Jodrell, and Northfleet. She was somewhere between Lorque and Port Arlin. Didn’t the sailor say they would be in Port Arlin in a few hours?
How much faster was sailing than walking? Her engineer’s brain kicked in. If only she had her phone to do some calculations. And a decent map. Oh well. She’d just wing it.
Just as a rough starting point she knew that a sailing ship was quite a bit faster than someone walking. How much faster? Twice as fast? Five times? Probably not that much. Maybe three or four times as fast. If that was right, you could quadruple the time to sail to Port Arlin—just to be conservative—and you’d get eight hours to hike to Port Arlin. But that assumed you followed the shoreline.
The good news was that Port Arlin was on a bay which was a little inland. That much she knew. So it might be possible to go straight east and cut a bunch of time off the travel since the route would be more direct. How much time? That depended on how far north or south she was from Port Arlin. But as she thought about it, Pari decided that it really didn’t matter. If she was anywhere remotely near where she thought she was, she’d hit a road no matter what—as long as she walked straight east. It might take her a day. Or a day and a half. But she would eventually hit the road from Oakford Cross to Port Arlin. That was the good news.
The bad news was that she’d be out here in this wilderness for the night. With nothing to eat or drink. And no weapons besides her dagger. In a zone that she was very unfamiliar with.
That sucked.
But what sucked worse was the sudden realization that all her nice calculations didn’t mean a thing if she couldn’t get off this beach and up on to the top of those cliffs.
She looked down and saw that the water was noticeably closer. Soon it would be lapping at her feet. Not good. She needed to move. Now.
North or south?
In which direction might be a valley or a stream or a collapsed section of cliff? There was no way to tell. So she flipped a shell. Top of the shell meant north. Bottom meant south.
The shell landed top up.
North it was.
Pari hitched her belt tight, checked that all her pouches were still in place, and then set off at a jog north along the rocky beach.
As she ran, she thought about Justin. She needed to get back to him. If he wasn’t with the Hawks, there still might be a chance to recruit him. And then maybe Lazarus wouldn’t think she was such a colossal screw up.
Wishful thinking.
Chapter Sixteen
“You what?” The ranger was not happy. That much was for sure.
“I got us a quest,” Justin said.
They were standing outside of the inn. Once Justin had finished his beer, he became restless and went out to find Klothar, who was just emerging from the building.
“You’re not making sense, lad,” Klothar said.
“Isn’t this what you do here—go on quests?”
“Verily, but not just any quest, willy-nilly.”
Justin crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen, I need XP. And the guy in the bar was a quest-giver. So I went for it. What’s wrong with that? It’s like fifteen minutes away. We just find his amulet and bring it back here. Honestly, it seems like a level one quest.”
Klothar rubbed his chin and said, “A quarter hour away? Well, we may have time to get there and back before dark. Let us take the horses.”
They returned to the stables and fetched their horses. As they made their way out of the fort, Justin explained the quest to Klothar.
“South, you say?”
Justin nodded. “That’s what Wreman said.”
“He must have been traveling from Rathenhall. This way.”
From his
lore knowledge, Justin knew that Tashon’s Gate was at a junction of three well-traveled roads. He and Klothar had originally come from Holgate to the east, but that road also continued west for fifteen miles or so to the town of Oakford Cross. And the road they were on now traveled roughly southeast to Rathenhall, which was one of the three largest cities in Greystrand.
By the time they reached Wregman’s wagon—or what was left of it, they had ridden for more like a half hour than fifteen minutes. Off to the side of the road was a wreck of a wagon. It had been smashed and burned.
“Careful,” Klothar said.
Justin rode closer. “It looks pretty safe to me. The attack happened this morning. The args probably took everything they wanted and left.”
He dismounted and walked around the wreck. There were no bodies, but there was congealed blood in the dirt. And flies. A lot of flies.
Klothar remained on his horse and notched an arrow in his bow. “You search. I’ll keep watch.”
“Fine.”
He began poking around the wagon with his sword, starting at its front, where Wreman might have been sitting. He moved charred pieces of wood and broken crates and bits of fabric. It looked like the args had taken everything they could carry off—including the corpses of the fallen.
“Is that normal?” Justin asked Klothar. “For the args to take their victims, I mean?”
“Nothing’s normal with args. They’re completely unpredictable. They don’t think the same way we do. You best remember that, lad. It might save your life one day.”
“Got it. Abnormal and unpredictable.” He continued to poke around in the dirt, but didn’t see anything but kind of gross clumps of blood and sand.
Justin decided to spiral out his search area and methodically cover a radius of 30 feet around the wagon. What he should have done was try to get more detail from Wreman. He searched for a half hour at least, but he wasn’t at all sure he was looking in the right places.
Finally Klothar asked, “Any luck, lad?”
“No. Maybe you should come down here and help me search.”
“Someone needs to keep watch. Besides, I’m a ranger, not a scout.”
“Yeah, but don’t you have keen vision for spotting tracks and whatnot?”
“Tracking is not the same as grubbing around in the mud. Perhaps we should have brought a hog or two since—”
Justin tuned out the rest of what Klothar was saying. He caught a glimpse of something shiny peeking out from beneath one of the wagon’s wheels—a wheel that had escaped the fire. Maybe this shiny thing was just part of the wagon, but Justin quickly dug it out of the sand. His heart soared as he unearthed the amulet.
“Found it!” he yelled.
“Keep your voice down, for the maker’s sake!”
Justin held the amulet up for the ranger to see. It looked just like the drawing Wreman had made, but seeing it in person, Justin thought the amulet definitely resembled a broken pentacle.
Klothar squinted at the amulet. “That design looks quite familiar. Let me take a look.”
Justin walked over and handed the amulet to the ranger who turned it over in his hands.
“I feel like I’ve seen this before.”
“Do you remember wh—”
He couldn’t get the last word out because—all of a sudden—a sharp stabbing pain exploded in his throat. Justin lurched forward. His eyes lowered, and he saw, in horror, that the bloody point of an arrow was now protruding from his adam’s apple.
“Down!” Klothar yelled.
But before Justin could move, another arrow punched through his chest and he collapsed face first on to the ground, blood burbling into the sand.
Then everything faded away.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Killed again. This was the second time in two freaking days.
He had no idea of what dying did to his stats, but he already was so wimpy that he couldn’t afford for anything to go down.
Justin shook his head, trying to clear it. He was on a hill at the base of a Life Tree, but the landscape around here looked similar to the terrain around Tashon’s Gate. Hopefully he wasn’t too far away from the fort.
He stood up and examined himself. There were holes in his shirt and cloak where the arrow had impaled him, but his body was fine. No wounds at all. He ran his fingers along his throat and that seemed okay too. What a horrible feeling—getting shot in the neck like that.
Around him was a meadow filled with scrubby bushes and a few trees. A narrow footpath led away from the tree. Probably made by all the people who had died around here over the past several months.
He stood there for a few minutes, waiting for the grogginess to pass. There was no one around—which meant that Klothar hadn’t died. Unless there was a different resurrection process for NPCs.
Well, he couldn’t wait forever. Justin followed the path as it wound its way down the hill. At the bottom the path joined a larger road that ran east/west. In the distance, to the east, he could see the tower of Tashon’s Gate, peeking through the trees.
Thank goodness. He wasn’t too far away.
With his head now completely clear, Justin started walking down the road towards Tashon’s Gate. There weren’t any other people around. No wagons. No horses. Everything was still and quiet.
Maybe too quiet.
He reached for his sword, but it wasn’t there.
Crap!
Had it fallen from his hand when he got shot? Ugh. That meant he’d have to go back to the place where they had been ambushed.
Justin started checking his pouches. What else had he lost? The amulet! No, he had given it to Klothar to look at. Hopefully the ranger still had it—wherever he was.
His glowstones were still there, as was his blood clue, his money bag, and his Circle of Reckoning. He also found some other miscellaneous things including a tinderbox, an empty water skin, a small knife, a coil of thin leather cord, five strips of jerky and a parcel wrapped in an oiled cloth and tied with a cord. The parcel contained a quill pen, a vial of what looked like ink, and a small blank journal.
He packed everything back up and popped one of the jerky strips in his mouth and started to gnaw on it. It was horrible, and he spat it out. Really? They couldn’t have programmed the freakin’ jerky to taste good? How hard was that? Maybe he’d have to buy the good stuff back in Tashon’s Gate. They certainly had decent beer.
And then he got the idea to check his money bag. He popped it open and looked inside.
Crap.
He was down to ten coins: an eel, four shields, and five crowns. Half his money was gone. Oh, man. Dying sucked.
Well, nothing he could do about it. Except maybe not get killed.
Justin started hiking along the road towards Tashon’s Gate. He strode quickly, wanting to get back to the fort as quickly as possible. The wind was starting to pick up and Justin was noticing that the shadows were getting longer. Sunset was not too far off. He kept his head down and squinted his eyes a little to protect them against the wind.
He heard the clomping of a horse before he saw it—but then the rider rode around a bend in the roadway and raced towards him.
It was Klothar!
“There you are, lad. And no worse for the ordeal, I’ll wager.”
“Not physically. But I lost half my gold—and my sword. You didn’t see it, did you?”
“I’m afraid your blade melted into the ether at the same time your corpse did. But I saved your mount and returned her to the stables.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and I did manage to keep this.” He tossed something shiny at him.
Justin snatched it out of the air. The amulet! That was a relief. At least they could still complete the quest.
“Thank goodness. And how about you? I see you survived the args.”
“There were but a half dozen of the foul beasts. I easily dispatched them.”
“So, I guess that was an ambush, eh?”
“It was. A
s I said, args are cunning foes. And patient. They knew the wreck of the wagon was bound to draw the curious, so they hid themselves and waited. I should have anticipated that.”
“Well, don’t beat yourself up. We found the quest item. That’s the important thing. Let’s hightail it back to town and turn this puppy in.”
Klothar shook his head. “Lad, I have to say, your command of the language is good for a foreigner, but sometimes you mangle our words most horribly.”
Justin grinned. “It’s called slang. I’ll teach it to you some day.”
Klothar turned his horse around and walked it beside Justin, and they made it back to Tashon’s Gate just as the guards were locking the fort up for the night. Klothar quickly stabled his horse and then they made their way to the tavern.
Inside, the tavern was ten times more crowded than when Justin was here earlier. There were all sorts of people laughing and drinking and eating and gambling and telling stories. You could barely hear yourself think over the din.
“Where’s this merchant?” Klothar shouted.
Justin scanned the room. He didn’t see Wreman.
Uh oh.
He pushed his way over to the bar. The same bearded barkeep was there so Justin waved him over.
The man wiped his hands on his apron. “Back for more Catfish 99, are you?”
“No, I’m looking for that man I was talking to earlier. Wreman. Do you know where he is?”
The barkeep raised an eyebrow. “I have no idea. I serve them ale and food, not act as their nursemaids. Now, what are you having?”
“What? Nothing. I need to find Wreman.”
The barkeep glowered at him. “You need to order something, lad. And then I might tell you what I know. Either that or depart my fine establishment.”
“Fine. Give me two beers. Normal ones!”
“Coming right up.”
Klothar came over to the bar. “Any luck?”
Justin shook his head. “Not yet. I’m working on it.”
A few moments later, the barkeep banged two tankards of ale on the bar. “That’ll be two crowns.”
