by Jakob Tanner
The same debuff icon flickered underneath the scorpion’s nameplate. Damn right. I coughed; I needed to get out of here. I flamed dodged, drifting across the dirt tunnel towards the hole where I had entered.
I sprinted towards the light. I power jumped back onto the arena floor. I conjured another fireball and whipped it at the entrance of the tunnel to ensure our victory.
The ground shook and vibrated as the scorpion lost consciousness and writhed to death beneath the arena floor.
+210 EXP!
The arena gasped in shock. It then erupted in a sea of cheers. Those who had bet money on us had made a ton of gold coins this afternoon. As the crowd whooped and cheered, a prompt appeared on my HUD, filling me with relief:
You have successfully completed Quest: The Cheater’s Pit!
+1000 EXP!
+Freedom from the pit
23
After the arena battle, one of the guards escorted Shade and me through the casino, kicking us out at the back entrance. Carriages and air trams swooshed by while Laergardian soldiers patrolled the streets and citizens went about their everyday lives. Nothing had changed while we’d fallen into the nightmare vortex of the Grand Casino Palace. I winced at the glaring afternoon sky. I had a nauseous sense of vertigo, reminding me of whenever I went to the cinema in the middle of the day back IRL. A mental cocktail of guilt and lethargy.
Shade stretched his arms and yawned. “See, we got out of there fine. I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. We need to come back here sometime.”
The gall of the thief astounded me.
I reviewed the details of the king’s quest and there was one last place for us to go check out. The Haeren Church of the Nine’s Orphanage.
I consulted the mini-map. “Alright man, no more detours.”
We set off across the southern quarter of Land’s Shield. After blocks of nightclubs and cafes, we entered a quieter residential district of crooked downtrodden homes. A homeless Haeren man slept on the ground beside a heap of garbage in a puddle of his own vomit. A group of mice scurried down the cobblestoned alley. An airship flew over, casting its long shadow over us and the sleeping drunk. So the southern aerodrome was nearby. Another addition to the neighborhood’s undesirability. According to my mini-map we had entered the Southside Slums.
We walked along the outer edge of the neighborhood, hugging the walls of the city. Metal grates and fences blocked off the aerodrome entrance, forcing ticket holders and passengers to file through a narrow stairwell. A crowd of all the different races of Illyria crammed together in haggard robes, pushing and shoving each other to get closer in the line. Up above, smaller airships zoomed into a snazzier parking lot for nobles. I guess you can’t escape elitist bullshit even inside an online video game.
A Lirana street performer juggled flaming torches with his hands and tail while other street miscreants ran up to those in the line, with pleading faces and hats, asking for money. Green-caped Laergardian soldiers kept an eye on the chaos of the bottom layer of the aerodrome, prepared to intervene if anything serious were to happen.
As we left the aerodrome behind, the city walls dwindled and turned into nothing but rubble. What remained was a dirt cliff on the edge of the sky. Geez. This was dangerous to have here. A rickety wooden dock poked out from the cliff side. A shanty town had formed along this edge of the city, constructed of ladders, scrap metal, and the surviving remnants of half-made airships. Little kids climbed up the ladders and played in the impoverished slum. Huddles of hungry people rested in makeshift homes.
I checked the mini-map to see if there was more info on my current location.
The Broken Docks (Southwestern Land’s Shield, Laergard): A slum neighborhood built on the remains of a failed and unfinished expansion project for the southern aerodrome. While poverty can be witnessed throughout all of Land’s Shield, the Broken Docks is without a doubt the city’s poorest area.
Grim. I turned away from the dilapidated neighborhood. The orphanage was supposed to be nearby. Down the road and on a corner facing the Broken Docks was a blue-domed building. Nuns and acolytes in bright white robes swept the doorway as little kids ran at their feet, playing tag and other games.
It all looked peaceful until a scream cut through the pleasant scene, a horrified shriek from inside the orphanage. The kids stopped playing, looking up to their guardians with worry. The nuns themselves dropped their brooms and hurried through the door and into the building.
I nodded to Shade and ran ahead. We barged past the little kids who were huddled together, frozen in shock.
“Do you think Sister Evelyn found our candy stash?”
“No way, we hid it so well.”
“I think something bad has happened, you guys.”
Children. They knew how to pick up on things. We stepped past them and entered the stone building. Behind the door was a hallway of open doors and stray toys on the ground. Cute little Muumuu and Lirana orphans poked their heads out from their rooms, looking onward down the hall with concern at the gathering of nuns.
We strode towards them and one turned around. “I’m sorry—no visitors at the moment. We’re in the middle of an emergency.”
“We’re here to help,” I said. “Do you mind telling us what’s happened?”
“It’s not any of your—” Her jaw locked from behind her veil. Tears filled her eyes from behind the slit of her head mask.
“Has someone gone missing?” Shade inquired.
All the nuns turned to us with shock.
“How did you know?”
“The king has assigned us to look into the vanishings of different people in the city,” I said.
“Bah!” said the nun. “What does the king know? He doesn’t care. If he did, he would’ve fixed the Broken Docks, the slums, the crime lords, all of it! All he cares about is his petty game of politics with Arethkar.”
She was upset, her anger seeping through her words. She wasn’t being helpful or rational—understandable given the circumstances.
“We don’t disagree with you, sister,” said Shade. “The king is young and his mind is preoccupied. He’s still learning how to rule. Frustrating as it may be for all of us citizens who bear the brunt of his novice leadership, now isn’t the time to lash out. We must keep a level head.”
The nuns nodded their heads. You had to hand it to Shade: he was 90% drunken shit disturber, 10% suave-as-fuck conversationalist.
“Who went missing?”
“Little Mira,” said the nun. “She’s run off…”
One of the older nuns, pushed the one we’d been speaking to aside. “I’m having none of this. We have children here to look after. There’s no time to be spared for troublesome kids who wish to run away. As hard as we’ve tried, they have made their beds.”
The older woman—this must be the strict Sister Evelyn the kids outside had been talking about—grabbed us by the shoulder and pushed us down the hall.
“But—” I said.
“No ‘buts’. I wish you two gone from here.”
The nun pushed us out the door and then slammed it in our face.
Geez. We only wanted to help. I paced back and forth across the pavement, getting more and more pissed off.
“Those nuns don’t even want to find the child,” I said. “What the hell?”
“You need to calm down, Clay.”
“Calm down! We want to rescue these lost people and those nuns—they don’t care.”
Shade nodded and sighed. “Trust me. They care. But as the older nun said, it’s their job to look after those who are with them. Not those who are gone. Kids are always coming and going from a place like this and you can’t focus on the ones who leave because they were always going to.”
I let out a heavy breath. “How do you know all this?”
Shade frowned and shrugged. “Because I was an orphan once too.”
He looked me in the eye and he didn’t have to say it. He was the exact orphan he was des
cribing; one who would’ve run away no matter what any guardian had tried to do to make him stay.
I stood there not knowing what to say. My anger and frustration was slowly dissipating. But still. Where did we go from here? A message appeared on my HUD.
Quest Update: Disappearances in the Capital
You have successfully followed through on your two leads.
Was that it? No hint on where to go next? What kind of bullshit update was that!? Let me think. We were investigating the disappearances. So far they were all quite random. Plus they all fit a narrative, a disappearance easy to shrug off, explain away. The depressed and suicidal scientist on the edge of the world, an unlucky prostitute with very little power over her own destiny, and two orphans living in the poorest area of the city. What linked them altogether?
The light bulb clicked in my brain. Holy crap.
I ran over to the kids.
I crouched down to speak to them at eye level. “My friend and I want to help Mira. Can you help me?”
One of the Haeren boys grabbed the hand of a small but tough Rorn girl. They looked up at me with big innocent eyes. They didn’t move.
“One small thing,” I said. “Mira. Was she by any chance Aeri?”
They nodded their heads.
“And the last orphan to vanish—was he or she an Aeri as well?”
They nodded their heads again.
So the disappearances weren’t random. Whoever or whatever was causing the vanishings, they were targeting Aeri citizens.
A chime went off, alerting me of a new HUD message.
Quest Update: Disappearances in the Capital!
Good work! You’ve uncovered a pattern linking the disappearances. What do you do with this information? Who do you take it to first?
1. King Jared Ravenmour
2. Bertwald Graves
3. Sir Archades
4. The Aeri District
5. None of the above. Someone else.
6. Keep this to yourself.
There was no question or hesitation here on my part. The king, Bertwald, and the
knights—they’d been pretty much useless up to this point with regards to stopping the disappearances. I’d let them know what I’d discovered eventually. But right now, I had to let the people of the Aeri district know they were being targeted.
I sprinted down the street, Shade right behind me.
I had to warn the Aeri.
I hoped it wasn’t too late.
24
Even casting shocking speed on both Shade and myself, it took us over half an hour to sprint to the Aeri district. This city was big and had no sympathy for pedestrians in a hurry. I was panting by the time we arrived in the Aeri district. We stood in the middle of the square we had been in earlier. Except what had once been filled with activity— kids playing soccer and neighborhood adults conversing together—was now empty. Where was everybody?
The answer came in the form of an arrow landing right at our feet. Looking up, there were silhouettes of rangers on the surrounding rooftops. I was unable to make them out, but I guessed they all had arrows nocked, ready to blast through our necks. Not the warm welcome I was expecting, given I was the one rushing to help them.
Unless.
They were already on high alert. What happened?
“We’re here to help,” I yelled up to the rooftops. “We believe someone in the city is causing people to disappear and is targeting Aeri citizens.”
One of the shadows above the roof flipped off the railing, bouncing down to the ground, creating power jump mana puddles to soften his steps. It was Tien, the lovesick fiancé we’d helped earlier. As he strode towards us, he looked more determined than ever, even more determined than when we had freed him from his debt. Gone was the pathetic lovesick NPC with a lame fetch quest and in his place was a stalwart young community leader.
“Tien?”
The Aeri man came towards us and once recognizing us his shoulders fell in relief. He lifted his hand up to the others on the rooftop, signaling them to lower their bows.
“Sorry,” he said. “The neighborhood watch was called into action. One of the district’s children has gone missing.”
Shit. We got here too late.
“Who?”
Tien shook his head and wiped his eye. “Little Fen.”
My heart sank. I shook my head. Not Fen. The kid who had helped us find all those quests. Who we had promised to play soccer with later.
“When was he last seen?”
“Over an hour ago,” said Tien. “No other suspicious things have—”
A horn rang out. A voice hollered from the roofs. “Someone’s been spotted over by the south alley!”
Tien looked to us, “Let’s go!”
We dashed down a street and turned a corner and spotted a figure shrouded in a black cloak, clutching two young unconscious children in his arms. They weren’t screaming or scratching their way to escape. The captor must’ve drugged them. The bastard.
“Stop!” we yelled, but the cloaked figure hurried down the street and turned a corner. By the time we made it there, he had vanished.
“How is this possible?” said Tien, out of breath.
Shade hurried to the middle of the laneway and pointed at a sewer grate. “I know which way he went.”
The grate was askew and Shade dragged it open. The hole revealed an ominous dark pit, the vile stench of sewage wafting from below. Water rushed beneath the darkness.
I turned to Tien. “You stay up here and get the others to guard the other sewage exits in case he tries to come back to street level. Shade and I will hunt him from down below.”
Tien nodded and clutched his bow. “Good luck.”
“You ready?” said Shade.
I nodded and jumped down the crate, landing on a stone platform beside a flowing river of sewage. Shade came down after me. The faint light of the late afternoon sky cast itself across the entrance of the sewer but the path ahead was full of murky shadows. Footsteps echoed further down the underground pathway.
On either side of the passing river of sewage were curling damp brick walls with torch attachments every few meters. I snapped my fingers and let my palms ignite with flame. I volleyed the ball of fire to the torch and the flame caught, lighting up the corridor.
Perfect.
We ran down the sewer. I lit up the passages ahead as we ran, conjuring fireballs. Rats scurried along the stone floor, rushing through algae and moss and through tiny carved holes in the wall. The assailant was nothing more than a rat as well, running through these murky underground corridors, hoping to escape us.
The corridor cut off into two separate sections. We followed the echo of the running footsteps. We turned a corner and I threw a fireball across the hall, illuminating a nearby torch. The new light of the corridor caught sight of our kidnapper. I was filled with rage. I conjured a fireball and whipped it towards his back. The kidnapper spun around. With his bony pale hand he created a ghastly green energy ball, throwing it towards us. I grabbed my staff, swiping across the blow, nullifying it.
The criminal’s stats appeared below his nameplate.
Necrotician
Level 10
HP: 210
MP: 15
The cloaked figure raised his pale hands in the air and cast another spell. Two undead creatures emerged from the river of green sewage. They were monstrous and repulsive. They had red slimy flesh, skin turned inside out. Their faces were the skulls of rhino-like creatures with long crooked skeletal horns. Sharp bones jutted from their spines down to their toes. They had long arms and razor-edged bone axes for hands.
The creatures’ stats appeared in my HUD.
Corpse Golem
Level 8
HP: 370
MP: 7
They each roared, charging towards us. The cloaked figure, with the two children clutched under his arm, hurried down the corridor, leaving us to fight his undead minions. There was no getting around them.
Shit.
“We have to kill these guys fast, Shade,” I said.
The corpse golems ran straight for us, their bone axe hands swinging back and forth with every step. Time to slow them down. I stretched out my hand, casting ruptured ground. The floor at the undead’s feet, rippled and crumbled into jagged rock. The undead tripped and fell. Nice. But then they got up and continued their assault towards us. No HP damage at all.
I clutched my staff, drawing all the excess mana in the area, summoning a large fireball in my hand. Time to toast these corpses. I threw the fireball at the incoming galloping beast. The creature lunged into the attack. The blast did zero damage again.
Shade, dual-wielding his revolvers, unleashed a rapid fire of bullets. The attacks stunned the incoming enemy and knocked them back. But nothing more, no damage done.
These guys were freaking invincible.
“Uh Shade,” I said. “What do we do? Our attacks don’t affect them.”
“Get back,” Shade yelled and ran down the corridor.
One of the corpse golems leapt across the sewer’s passage and dug its bone cleavers into my chest. A hot pain seared through my entire body. The bone spikes sliced through my lungs and organs. My HP plummeted every second the bone cleaver stayed wedged into my body. It hissed at me with its tiny teeth and foul-smelling breath. It had me stuck in its grip.
Did I hand off another phoenix feather to Shade? He wouldn’t get it in time. I had three seconds to live. I had to prolong my life.
I searched inside myself and stretched my chest out, letting the cleaver hands stab deeper into me. A vaporous mist of healing rain surrounded me. It didn’t quite push my HP percentage up but it fought the rapid decline. The corpse golem shrieked in pain, ripping its bone cleaver hands from me and jumping backwards, knocking its partner over in the process.
Blood leaked out of my body like crazy. I cast healing mist again. I materialized a health potion, chugging it down. The wounds on my chest closed, my HP bar returning to 85%.
