Clan Dominance - the Sleepless Ones 2

by Dem Mikhailov

  “Well, who else could it be? Who could have wished death upon the old man?” The shop owner answered my question with his own. “She’s a real snake, I’m telling you! But, anyway, kind sir, it would be too late to guess or suspect right now. Old Jogley rests in peace, and can tell us nothing anymore. Unless his spirit speaks to someone from his grave, har har... I’d give two gold pieces to know the truth, and no mistake. We were really fond of old man Jogley. He’d have a kind word for everyone, and would always offer help. Let’s toast his memory again, kind sir... Sorry, I don’t think I caught your name.”

  “Rosgard,” I replied.

  “I’m Stevan,” the shopkeeper nodded in response. “Bottoms up, Rosgard.”

  “Here’s to old Jogley,” I nodded, recollecting Stevan’s earlier words. “Unless his spirit speaks from his grave, huh... Listen, Stevan, if she’s really such a sourpuss, and of no use around the house, why would Jogley’s son marry her in the first place?”

  “Haven’t seen her, have you?” Stevan squinted at me slyly.

  “I haven’t indeed,” I shrugged.

  “Well, then. You’ll get it once you do. She’s the most beautiful woman in this village. So shapely!” Stevan exclaimed, twisting his mustache with panache. “If I found myself sharing a hayloft with her for a night, I’d stay up until the crack of dawn for sure... heh heh...”

  I had no interest in the shopkeeper’s lewd dreams, and got right down to business.

  “Right, I get it. Stevan! How about I look into this? What do you think?”

  “Look into what?” A somewhat inebriated Stevan asked, obviously not getting my drift and wiping the sweat from his brow, whether it be from the wine or his fevered fantasies of entertaining another man’s wife in his hayloft. Speak about village playboys...

  “Well... I could get to the bottom of this thing — find out why old Jogley’s pushing up the daisies, and whether his sudden death had come of natural causes...”

  “Natural, my foot!” Stevan said gruffly, banging the counter with his heavy fist and making it rattle. “I’m telling you, something stinks to the very heavens here! They wouldn’t be gossiping otherwise!”

  Village gossips were apparently the ultimate heralds of truth now.

  “If he died of natural causes, I won’t charge you so much as a copper,” I said in an insinuating voice. “And should it turn out that the old man did in fact receive some assistance with his departure from the world of the living, you’ll pay me the two gold pieces you’d mentioned. So, what do you say?”

  “Ag-g... Ug-g-g-gh...” Stevan’s body started to convulse, the bottle fell out of his spasming fingers and started rolling across the counter, leaving blood red drops of wine behind it. “Agh... Uh... Whoa, mm-rr-gg-gh...”

  “Stevan?” My eyes bulged as I swayed drunkenly, taking a few unsure steps back. “Stevan!”

  What could possibly be afflicting these traders? There was the Crèche case, and there we were again in Mossy Hills...

  “Agreed!” Stevan came to his senses in an instant, picking up the bottle deftly. “My, I’ve sure had a few over my limit, eh? Har har! And there you were saying it would be sour! Top notch stuff! I agree! Two gold pieces isn’t that high a price for a just cause!”

  You have received a quest: ???

  Investigate the death of old Jogley, the fisherman from the village of Mossy Hills.

  Minimum quest completion requirements: ???

  Your reward: two gold coins.

  “All right,” I nodded carefully, taking a step forward and shaking the offered hand with caution. “I’ll do everything that’s within my powers.”

  “So, we’re agreed, then! And trust me on this one, Rosgard — traders are stingy as a rule, but this time I’d prefer to spend my money than hold on to it! So do whatever you can, I beg of you!”

  “I’ll go all-out,” I reiterated, trying on my Sherlock Holmes hat mentally. “Say, Stevan, how much exactly do you know about the circumstances of old Jogley’s death? Was there anything strange that you may have seen? For instance...”

  I never managed to finish the phrase.

  The earth rumbled, and there was a tremor — the shop’s log walls creaked with tension, and white dust started falling from the ceiling. I couldn’t stay vertical, so I fell to my knees, dropping the wine I’d never managed to finish. The bottle smashed to pieces, and there was a pool of dark red on the floor, reflecting the grimace of total surprise on my face.

  “What the?!”

  The next tremor was even stronger. I saw the beams sag with a loud wail above me, and dashed toward the exit on all fours, yelling as I went,

  “Stevan! Outside! It’s an earthquake! Hurry up!”

  We tumbled out into the street together, falling flat on our faces in the dust and keeping still, waiting for the crust of the earth to tremble again. The air was filled with frightened shouts of the villagers; the dogs in the yards were howling, and the cows were mooing in panic... Still, that seemed to be it. Everything else remained the same, other than the strange residual rumbles and the clouds of dust in the air that gave the impression of twilight. There were no other tremors but the first two, powerful as they were. The earthquake — or, rather, Waldyraquake — seemed to have ended successfully, and the world didn’t come to an end after all.

  I waited for a few more minutes just to be on the safe side. Once I got certain my precious life was no immediate danger, I rose slowly to my feet and grumbled to Stevan, who was still lying in the dust,

  “Get up, friend. It’s all over.”

  The only response I got was the sound of loud snoring.

  Stevan must have overdone it with the wine and the stress, falling asleep like a baby right there in the roadside dust next to his shop.

  I groaned bitterly as I looked at the sky. Now, why did such things always have to happen to me?

  The very next moment I forgot all about the shopkeeper and the rest of it. The reason was a host of the Immortal Ones diving down from the sky in what seemed like great hurry, wrapped up in fiery auras and leaving visible smoke trails. I’d first assumed they were diving right toward me, but shortly realized they’d had zero interest in this small and sleepy village.

  Five of Waldyra’s angels whooshed through the skies above Mossy Hills with a roar of ripped-up air, disappearing behind the edge of a faraway forest. A muffled boom was heard seconds later. The earth didn’t rumble, but a dark cloud rose from the direction where the live comets had disappeared, apparently consisting of earth that had been pulverized after an impact. Did they just ram into the ground at full speed, I wondered?

  “Did you see it?! Did you?!” I heard an excited yell in the street and turned around at once.

  A Level 18 elf player clad in leather armor was approaching me, waving his hands excitedly.

  “I did,” I nodded, still in a stupor. “What’s going on?”

  “No idea!” The player shook his head and instantly proposed, “Hey! Would you look after me for a sec? I’ll just pop out for a few minutes to check out the forum. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I return, promise!”

  “Absolutely!” I nodded, without having him ask me twice. “Just make sure you don’t take too long.”

  “Right on!” The elf slumped down onto the ground, and his face became a lifeless inanimate mask in a second. The soul had left its virtual body, going back to the real world.

  That surely didn’t happen often — he’d gotten so curious about what had been going on that he asked a perfect stranger to look after his character. Had I wanted to, I could finish robbing the lifeless body and retreat unhurriedly in a matter of four minutes or so.

  However, instead of stooping to such a nefarious deed, I got the snoring Steven on my shoulder with a groan and pulled him back into the shop, placing his unresponsive body on the floor carefully. My eye roved over the goods lying on display everywhere, then I sighed sadly and got out, shutting the door carefully behind me. I may have been tempted
to take something, but I remembered I’d had business here yet, and trouble with the locals was the last thing I needed.

  I spent the next quarter of an hour sitting on the shop’s porch staring into space and nibbling on a stalk of clover I’d just picked as I corrected my schedule.

  Death was never the end in Waldyra, and that was true for some of the locals as well, not just the players. Of course, this rule only worked in case of the really important locals — those involved in quests, or simply famous characters like barons, counts, and kings. All the high-ranking locals went to an “afterworld,” which was a specific location inhabited by spirits. Players could not reach it, but it didn’t mean that the reverse was true as well...

  There were artifacts, rituals, and spells that could help you summon the “spirit” of a deceased local from the great beyond. However, it was impossible to coerce them into speaking unless it concerned a quest or was of some benefit to the spirit itself. Both conditions applied in my case — provided that old man Jogley did not indeed expire of natural causes.

  A ghost thirsting for revenge would instantly reveal all the circumstances of its death and identify the culprit. That was my main hope. Once the vengeful spirit would launch into its accusatory diatribe, I’d only need to ask it a few questions concerning Grym’s legendary set of armor, and would hopefully receive some answers. On the other hand, if the old man died of natural causes, his spirit would most likely be reluctant to get candid, telling me to get stuffed, or altogether refusing to be summoned by a noob like me. In which case, I’d need to look for clues elsewhere.

  Apart from all the trouble, I’d need to level up three or four times before nightfall at least, so that Gosha wouldn’t have any reasons to blame me for arrested development. It would be better still to level all the way up to twenty, earning some gold on my way and upgrading Ice Needle to Tier Two, where it became Ice Shard. It was sure nice to dream...

  “Thanks!”

  “You’re welcome,” I nodded, looking sideways at the elf, who had just returned. “Well? What happened? The Immortal Ones’ autopilot broke, and the brakes didn’t work, either?”

  “Oh, never mind the Immos!” The player made a dismissive gesture, forcing me to move, and sitting down next to me. “You won’t believe what’s happening!”

  “So... What exactly is it?” My curiosity got the better of me.

  “Fire Hawks have brought down the Diamond Hammer dwarf egg and made a crack in it!”

  Well said! I only wished I could understand that...

  “Uh... Would you say that again, please?” I replied, somewhat baffled by his statement. “In terms accessible to mere mortals like yours truly.”

  “I’m giving it to you like it is! The Hawks have brought down the Dodecahedron of the Diamond Hammer clan! It cracked! The forum’s discussion boards are totally off the hook! The Hammers have raised a stink to the heavens, all the Immortals have arrived, and they’re trying to establish whether it was a con job or legit gaming! While the Hammers were howling and lamenting, the Hawks got in through the crack and mopped up everyone inside. Oh, and they also robbed the clan’s vaults! They took everything but the furniture! The Hammers are weeping, banging their heads on every wall they can reach, and pulling out their hair in grief. But I don’t think they’ll have any luck with the administration. The portal has already published news about the fall of the clan’s citadel, and the forums are flooded with comments!”

  “Could you be more specific? How exactly did it happen?”

  “Listen here!”

  The elf got on with his impassioned report, his hands moving all the time the way that would garner admiration even in southern Italy. I hung on to every word, recollecting everything I’d ever heard of the Dodecahedron and slowly going from impressed to flabbergasted. What the Hawks had done was unrivaled by any other deed in Waldyra’s history and was a legendary event worthy of a picture at every inn by any account.

  The Dodecahedron was one of the oldest and best-protected clan citadels in the world of Waldyra. It was owned by the Diamond Hammer clan — one of the oldest and the richest, specializing in trade and politics, for the most part. The militant name of the clan notwithstanding, they normally avoided military action. Instead, they sold all sorts of goods or resources, loaned money at exorbitant interest rates, and bought prime real estate wholesale. Every city in Waldyra had a shop owned by the Hammers, selling excellent hand-crafted weapons and equipment, as well as myriads of artifacts and potions. The prices were steep, but the wares were worth the money.

  The Hammers built their clan citadel emphasizing protection and the minimization of the unavoidable sieges and attacks. They built a monolithic dodecahedron deep underground, naming the citadel after its shape. It had no entrances or exists, and was only accessible via teleport. The construction material was a complex alloy of various metals and minerals, extremely hard even in small amounts, and the Hammers had invested an incredible amount of money into the construction, making its walls as thick as possible. Protective magical artifacts were obviously present in great abundance, too.

  The citadel was hardly oviform, and yet most players would call it “Egg,” since “dodecahedron” was just too tough to pronounce. The Hammers themselves claimed they followed the Pentagon’s precedent in naming their construction after its shape.

  Many clans had tried to reach the underground citadel, invariably failing each and every time. And today the Hawks had suddenly succeeded in their assault, although the term only applied very loosely.

  The Dodecahedron was a perfectly autonomous structure that never interacted with its surroundings — it was “suspended” deep underground. The attackers used this very circumstance to their advantage.

  According to the news published at the forum, the Hawks had made a tunnel, too; however, they’d used a novel tactic — instead of digging from the top down to the bottom, they went from the bottom up. They’d started digging a few miles away, went almost vertically down, and then headed slowly for the Dodecahedron. First they dug an enormously deep and wide vertical well underneath the citadel, and then started to whittle away at the “seal” of earth and rock that had supported the construction. The laws of gravity did the rest — once the supporting layer eventually became too thin for the Dodecahedron’s enormous weight, it cracked, and the thing fell right through, cracking from the impact with the hard rock at the bottom like the shell of an actual egg, thus doing justice to its popular nickname.

  What befell the Hammers that had been inside the citadel at the moment defies imagination — I was certain few enough had survived the fall and the horrendously strong impact. Battle mages had found themselves at respawn locations first — that much was obvious. The respawn location was doubtlessly inside the citadel, right next to the battlefield, but the mages would respawn naked, wearing nothing but their diapers, since all their equipment must have remained where they had been killed. This didn’t do anything good to their survival capacity and benefited the attackers.

  As soon as a fracture appeared, the emboldened Hawks swarmed into the Dodecahedron, making short work of the greatly surprised guards, looted the plentiful clan vaults, taking all the high-class equipment off the bodies of the slain Hammers, and, most importantly, purloined the clan’s symbol — the main treasure of the clan; an artifact giving clan players an enormous number of buffs and bonuses. It could be said that the Hawks had stolen the very heart of the Dodecahedron, shaming the famous traders for all of Waldyra to see.

  The Immortal Ones left their celestial abode to heed the howls and cries of the Hammers claiming that their opponents had cheated, exploited a bug in the system, and, generally, played foul. Right at that moment, scores of epic proportions were being settled underground, at the ruins of the legendary Dodecahedron, the main objective being to find someone responsible for the whole debacle. As for yours truly, the only thing that had surprised me was the sheer scale of the Hawks’ operation. They didn’t just capture the c
lan’s citadel — they smashed it to smithereens, leaving the Hammers without a roof over their head. As for the traders, they’d need to focus on something other than the ingloriously defunct Dodecahedron — namely, the ransom they’d have to pay to get the clan symbol back. The Hawks would certainly demand a price steep enough to turn yesterday’s tycoons into beggars. The citadel could be rebuilt, but nothing would replace the clan symbol.

  A clan symbol was a very sensitive subject in general. It was unique and could not be copied. It also bestowed a substantial amount of bonuses on the members of the clan as chosen by the clan’s leader. They could affect characters, the amount and the quality of gold and items received as loot from monsters, boost certain skills and give unique buffs. You couldn’t have it all at once, of course. The clan had to make choices from an enormous list personally, making sure they conformed to the clan’s objectives and gaming style.