Absalom’s Trials

by J. D. L. Rosell

  Even my piss-poor performance had been enough to start me on the track of a new skill — Unarmed Combat. Of course, I'd only gotten 10% progression in it, so that told you something of my proficiency in it.

  Closing my stats, I met Sarai's stare, which still had a bit too much awe in it for my comfort. “I don’t think pit-fighting is going to work.”

  She suddenly smirked, her old mockery returning. “You think?”

  I ignored her. “I do want to keep my options open, though. Is there anyone who could train me in fist-fighting?”

  “No one I know of. You could trying asking around the pit, but remember, they might be spooked about your resurrection — they're not fond of magic, as I said before.”

  I wasn't too disappointed that that option looked to be out, though my other avenues didn't thrill me. As I didn't want to weave, that just left the drinking contest. Considering what had happened in the pits, I was going to go into this one with a little more preparation.

  “Is there an herbalist among the Fralishk? Or some sort of potion brewer?”

  “There's a tea shop, though I wouldn't recommend it. They qualify slug guts as a delicate ingredient.”

  My stomach soured just thinking about it. Still, I couldn't turn up my nose at anything if I was going to pass this damned trial. “Point it out to me when we have the chance.”

  “Of course. Would you also like me to point you in the direction of the master weaver?”

  “Fickle gods, no. I don't want to know any more about it than I have to.”

  The priestess cocked a smile at me. “Does it scare you that much? Oh, fine. Best of luck with your drinking contest then.”

  We walked to the stairs down to the town again, and Sarai pointed out the tea shop to me, a squat building that was unremarkable except for the rusted wind vane that didn’t shift in the strong gust that wound through the town. I thanked her and headed for it, but paused before I went down all the way.

  Daylight had come in full so I could now see more of the town as well as the surrounding area. The town was set inside a basin, with rocky, brown hills rising up all around. That explained why it was so muddy everywhere in Urandal — all the rain would run down into the town. The Fralishk’s engineering skills had fallen far from when they built Isvalla’s temple, that was for certain. There were also patches of green on the surrounding hillsides, but by and large, it looked like a recently used latrine. I sighed and made my way down.

  More Fralishk were on the streets now. While they openly stared as I passed through, no one screeched and ran away, though more than a few cringed back. Another benefit to wearing my armor — I may not be gaining love or worship for Isvalla yet, but respect was a good way to start. It made me wonder if there was a way to track my progress in that regard. I checked the quest prompt:

  The First Trial: Trial of Devotion (Level ???) [Absalom] [Isvalla] [Urandal] - Renew the faith of the Fralishk in Isvalla, Devalyn goddess of desire. Nothing says true love like being forced into it!

  Reward: +100,000 XP (+5000 XP), increased alignment with Absalom, increased alignment with Isvalla, increased alignment with Urandal

  *This quest is part of a series of quests: Absalom’s Trials. Failing any one of the trials will result in permanent death by being sent to Faze-Aught.

  Reputation with Urandal: -68/1000

  I should have expected as much, but I cringed to see my step back in progress. My bout in the wrestling pit had set me back more than my death penalty. It looked like I needed to get all the respect I could traveling the streets.

  I reached the tea shop and knocked lightly on the doorframe, as the entrance was covered with little more than scrappy hanging furs.

  “In!” a gravelly voice I thought was female shouted from within, irritation plain in the word. “Why you shy and wait? Waste my time!”

  I scrambled in and looked around. The ceiling was low enough that I couldn't stand upright, especially not since my height had increased as an autumn elf. I saw the dirt floor contributed to this problem, as it mounded in places and made navigating the place difficult. Hanging off the walls were various dried plants, and the far side boasted a makeshift countertop with a silver-haired Fralishk reclining behind it. I’d met some frumpy shopkeepers here in the Everlands, but this herbalist had to be the frumpiest.

  “What you want?” the Fralishk asked sharply in her heavy accent.

  “Greetings, wise one,” I said as humbly as I could manage. I didn't know if they bowed here, so I thought to try it out just in case.

  “You smell my dirt?” The old Fralishk — I decided her silver hair was from age — sounded outraged.

  Another mistake. Time to see if my charisma would work on these creatures at all. “Sorry,” I said, speaking as straightforward as she had. “Didn't mean to smell. I’m here for a tea for drinking too much. Do you have anything?”

  She snorted at me. “Do not drink. Then not too much.”

  “But say I already did. What do I take?”

  She looked about to spit at me, then thought better of it. “Here.” She reached around and pulling one string of brown dried herbs down from the wall behind her. “Grind up, sprinkle in hot water. No more drink.”

  “Just to be clear,” I said, not trusting the crumbling leaves she held, “this helps if I've had too much alcohol, right?”

  “What else?” She looked as if I were insulting her intelligence. Which, actually, I guess I was.

  Still suspicious, I examined the stats of the herb:

  Grashka (Herb)

  Quality: Poor

  Rarity: Common

  Use: When placed in boiling water, it is said to help with drinking too much alcohol.

  I reached out to accept them, but she pulled back. “100 coins.”

  Did I even have that much? After purchasing my new items, I'd nearly drained all my reserves, at least until I could sell the tons of loot I had. But I managed to scrounge up 100 coins and passed them over, muttering, “This better work.”

  The herbalist scowled and turned her head aside. I needed no other sign, but slouched my way out.

  If all went well, I was set to win a drinking contest and advance my reputation, hopefully significantly. Though seeing that 1000 point goal I had to reach did give me pause. Would just succeeding in one area be enough? I suddenly doubted it. In any case, I had to keep pushing forward. I just had to keep trying until I succeeded, or I’d get sent to Faze-Aught.

  Asking passing Fralishk until I got a straight answer, I found the most popular bar I could and entered within. It was called The Rat’s Bilge, and boy, did it tell. A layer of dark green grime grew over the ground, no doubt thriving on a diet of spilled drinks. But the smell wasn't nearly so bad as some other places. Apparently, it was a purifying kind of lichen. Rickety tables throughout also sported the grime, as did the counter and shelves, and even some of the barrels lined up on them. Just slightly less prevalent were the Fralishk, screeching and chattering and making that sound I now knew was laughter.

  As I entered, many of them looked around at me, but most went back to what they were doing. That was good. It looked like dressing in my armor meant people here didn't recognize me either. One, though, pointed and shouted, “Hair-less! You no hold drink here!”

  This was my chance. “I will,” I said firmly. “And I'll hold it against you.”

  Suddenly the interest of the room turned back to me. My challenger, one of the bigger Fralishk I'd seen and hosting hunched, muscled shoulders, moved forward with a wicked grin. “You will drown in groush, I see to it. Bar!”

  In moments, a table had cleared for us, and pewters brimming with drink were lined up. I eyed them with growing apprehension. The liquid was dark and foaming with a green tint to it. I didn't doubt the lichens we walked on had found their way into it sometime during fermentation. Once again, I wondered how present disease was here in the Everlands, and hoped the runs weren't in my future. Though more likely I'd throw it up long before tha
t. Though really, alcohol was pretty foreign to me in general. The only way I’d rebelled in high school was staying up too late playing video games.

  My competitor gripped the first mug, and I did the same. The drink was cool. I'd just have to hope that the herb would work as well in it. Crumbling some it in my other hand in my cloak’s pocket, I casually placed the hand over the mug, acting like I was checking for the temperature.

  The Fralishk opposite me snorted. “It good to drink. Now, ready? We go!”

  A question as to the rules of the contest was on my lips, but as my competitor had thrown back his drink, I had no choice but to start in on my own. It tasted as vile as I'd suspected, bitter and sour with a taint of vomit underlying the whole thing. But I continued chugging until I had to break off with a cough. An uncomfortable metallic taste was growing in the back of my throat, but I ignored it and pressed on.

  I was nearly to the end of the first cup — my competitor was working his way through his second — when I felt an undeniable roiling in my stomach. This early? I couldn't believe my ill fortune. I tried powering through it, but my belly had other plans. The cup caught the first spurt, but soon I was spewing my guts all over the bar’s floor.

  The room erupted into laughter, the Fralishk I’d been drinking against laughing loudest of all. When the episode was over, it was all I could do to rise shaking to my feet, slap down some coins — I couldn't tell how much — and stumble out of there, the laughter following me out onto the street.

  As soon as I was out of earshot of The Rat’s Bilge, I slumped down in an alley to rest. My status was dual, both Drunk and Sickened. Drunk?! I hadn't even kept down a full glass! I'd only tried alcohol once in real life — wine at a Catholic communion — but having this little tolerance was unbelievable.

  Real life… Thinking about that was a mistake. In my wallowing misery, I suddenly missed home with an aching worse than my conditions. One time I'd had the flu, and I remembered how my mother had done all the typical things a mom does: gave me chicken noodle soup, got me Gatorade, and let me play video games in bed all day. It was simple, but it made me wish she could take care of me the same now, even though it had been years since she'd coddled me like that.

  I stayed there an hour in utter despair before I was able to get to my feet again. I didn't have my family to help me now. If I was ever going to get home, I had to help myself. I had to find a way out of this.

  Another drinking contest was clearly out of the question, especially when a check of the quest prompt showed I was now 102 points in the hole on my reputation. I couldn't risk it falling any further unless I wanted to do this quest for the rest of my life. But I found myself stumbling my way back to the tea shop anyway. Even though I hadn't used it with hot water, I felt the herb should have done something more for me than it had. In fact, it seemed to have made things worse. I needed answers.

  I blew through the curtains and into the shop without knocking. “Your herb is a dud!”” I accused the old Fralishk, who still reclined behind the counter.

  “What is this? Herb a dud?” Her voice rose in anger as she spoke. “Not fake! You boil in water after too much drink?”

  “Well, no. But I put it in my drink.”

  “You put in groush?” The old Fralishk crone set to screeching. I gritted my teeth as I waited for it to stop.

  “It get rid of drink,” she finally continued, then motioned something coming out of her mouth.

  I reddened as I understood. “You mean it's supposed to make me throw up?”

  She screeched with renewed laughter, and I couldn't even blame her for it.

  “Fine,” I admitted. “Maybe I should have asked about that. But don't worry, you can make it up to me.”

  “Make up? Melka no owe to you!”

  “Then humor me and pretend.” I swallowed my pride and continued. “I hear there are masters of weaving in town. Would you be able to point them out to me?” As the other two options were on a hiatus, it looked like I had little choice but to try my third route to success and see if it stuck.

  The old Fralishk — Melka, apparently — quieted and studied me thoughtfully. “You want to weave?”

  “Yes. Very much so.”

  Apparently, I lied well, my words perhaps bolstered by my charisma. “Good,” Melka said, and what looked suspiciously like a smile appeared on the cantankerous woman's face. “This is wise for weak belly like yours.”

  All goodwill I'd started to feel toward her dissipated. “Just point the way, old woman.”

  Her grin widened further still.

  In the end, she gave me directions, and I was on my way across town once again. The master weaver she sent me to, Mistress Helge, lived in one of the finer and better-kept houses in Urandal. Its roof was made of clay tiles except for patches of thatch, and it had ornamentations other than half-formed clods of dirt that poked out like pimples from the rest of the houses. I knocked on the door, which was only rotten at the corners, and waited for a reply.

  A moment later, the door opened to reveal the most ridiculous looking Fralishk I'd met yet. He wore a white wig like a colonial gentlemen and sported a blonde mustache. The spectacles perched on his nose were slightly eschew, and he wore a blue coat that looked daily cleaned and pants like white tights from Victorian England. Where had this creature come from? I couldn't speak from trying to keep my chuckles in.

  “Yes?” the Fralishk — a butler I assumed — said crossly.

  I mastered myself. “Hello. I’m here to see Mistress Helge. Melka sent me.”

  “That old fox? Yes, yes, very well. Mistress is always so accommodating of Melka’s mongrels.”

  This butler talked very differently from any other I'd met, and used normal English, or at least the normal I was used to. It was a nice change of pace.

  “Thank you,” I said, and stepped in at his invitation. The inside of the house was also relatively well kept, with actual wood floors in place with carpets overlaying them. The butler scuttled his way before me, the sound of his claws more pronounced whenever they scratched along the wood. I flinched the first time I heard them, remembering how those claws had ripped into me in the pit. I shook my head. I had to get over that defeat, and the sooner, the better.

  We wound up the spiral staircase to a pair of double doors at the end of a short hallway, where the butler stopped and knocked. “Mistress?” he said. “A Devalyn…” He looked me up and down. “... adventurer has been sent by your dear friend Melka.”

  “Bring them in!” a voice snapped from the other side.

  We entered within, and I blinked at the sight. Tapestries hung from every available surface, many of them so huge they took up a whole one of the eight walls of the octagonal room by themselves. In the middle of the large, cloth-strewn room was a rather small, bent Fralishk, glaring up at us.

  “What are you here for?” she demanded. “I assume you're not a fool. Melka isn't in the habit of sending fools.”

  Remembering my mistake with the tea, I wasn't so sure about that. “I'm here to learn weaving from you, Mistress Helge, if you'll permit me. I admire your—”

  “No, that's not it,” Helge interrupted. “She wouldn't have sent me a Hair-less for a task that so ill suits you.”

  Little wonder that the two women got along so well. “Truly, Mistress, I assure you that I wish to learn—”

  “Ah! I see now!” She set down the weaving she'd steadily been working on the whole time I'd stood in the doorway and scrambled surprisingly fast over to me, then studied me from head to foot. “She finally found what I've been looking so long for.”

  “Me? What have you been looking for?”

  Her eyes seemed blacker and beadier than before. “Someone to take back this town and set it right.”

  5

  Alluring

  I blinked. “Take Urandal back? From whom?”

  “Sit,” the small master weaver demanded, dragging me over to a chair on the opposite side of her weaving table and plunking
me down in it. “You’re a newcomer, or I would have heard of you already. Your name?”

  “Marrow.” To my horror, I almost added ‘the Catalyst’ to the end of it. I’d heard it so often lately I was almost parroting it myself now.

  “Marrow. I assume you have bones to you then, and from the look of you, you’re a fighting man. That’s just the kind of man we need here.”

  “You have a monster problem or something?” My hopes started to rise. I much preferred that method of gathering reputation if I could manage it.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Helge snapped. “You think we can’t take care of monsters? Just go to the pits if you want to see how strong our warriors are.”

  I shivered. I’d seen more than enough already.

  “No, it’s not that we need to overcome. It’s our own leaders. A cabal runs this town. Master weavers like myself are held up as paragons, but everybody knows who has the true power. Boss Kerak and his gang, that’s who!”

  Now it was becoming clear what kind of quest this was. A good ole showdown, cowboy style; a single sheriff against the lawless bad folk; me and a master weaver, standing against a boss and his lackeys. “Tell me more. What exactly do they do that’s so bad?”

  "They hold us back and keep us as savages! Haven't you looked around? Our buildings fall apart and are made to fall apart. Sometimes, they literally are made of nightsoil! Most of our population is illiterate and wouldn't know the first thing about scholarship or engineering or government! How can we better ourselves when brutes control and repress learning?"

  “But if they repress learning, how is it that learned master weavers like you hold prominent positions?”

  "Yes, yes, they hold us up and put us on pedestals. But open your eyes, Marrow. Most of my people don't think they can achieve any success in weaving themselves or become anything like my peers and me. They don't believe they're any better than the fighting and drinking horde they are now. We need to show them that they can do better, and the first step is to tear down Kerak and his minions.” She studied me with a hard look. “You are a single man, I know. But are you up to the task?”