The Way of the Shaman [06] Shaman's Revenge

by Vasily Mahanenko

  The High Mage made a barely noticeable gesture and his two guards evaporated in the air around them as if they were made of smoke.

  “Have you ever considered why in every city of our continent, be it in Malabar, Kartoss or the Free Lands, the Mages’ towers are located in the north? The northernmost building of every city is the Mages’ tower.”

  Really! Back when I was a Hunter I had noticed this aspect of urban design. Back then, though, I didn’t give it a second thought. Perhaps this was just the way the designers preferred it? It’s only now, having spent some time as a Shaman at a completely different level that I understand that nothing happens in Barliona without a reason. Any event or phenomenon not only has its own rationale, but its own history and quest chain. The important thing is to know how to bring it to light.

  “This isn’t mentioned anywhere,” I agreed with the Mage.

  “It’s not. There are hundreds of theories why this is so, but only the High Mages of the cities know why it is this way. Far to the north, beyond the limits of our continent, lies an unexplored land. Every five hundred years, like clockwork, a black cloud travels from that land to Kalragon, destroying everything in its path. And it must be noted that it travels in a very strange manner—it vanishes as it approaches the coast, only to reappear some time later right beside one of our cities. Several times in centuries gone by, the ancient Mages ignored the cloud, and each time their lapse resulted in monstrous casualties. Cities vanished as if they had never existed. Along with all their residents. That was when it was decided that the northernmost building in any city should be the Mage’s tower—this way, we shall be the first to suffer the blow. It is now several millennia that we are fending off this evil, and yet the clouds grow stronger every time. Last time, when a cloud appeared before Anhurs, we were forced to summon all the Mages of Malabar.”

  “But what does this have to do with the Crastil and the Tomb?”

  “Patience, my young friend, patience. In search for a weapon against this scourge, we turned over every corner of our continent. Far to the north, in the Free Lands, near the headwaters of the Elma, we discovered a cave filled with Crastils. You’ve seen their inscriptions—they are mysterious and incomprehensible. The Mages thought that the words must mean something and began to experiment with the orbs in the hopes of finding a key to the riddle. That was when they discovered the Ergreis—a crystal of heavenly beauty, clear and pure like a tear. Enormous like the head of a bison. Deadly like the power of Geranika raised to the tenth power. It’s difficult to say why the Creator permitted an item from a different world to remain in Barliona, especially one so deadly, but the fact remains—the Ergreis was in Barliona.”

  “From a different world?” I asked surprised. “Where is it from?”

  “The Emperor Lait brought the Ergreis with him when he fled his world. The very Ergreis that was accidentally activated by Feeris, the great Mage of yore.”

  “Hang on, I’m starting to get lost. The Mages found a cave filled with Crastils. In the same cave they found a crystal called the Ergreis that had been brought to Barliona by Lait. This crystal was inactive. Some Feeris activated the crystal—it’s not clear how or why—and then something bad happened. Did I get that right?”

  “That’s correct. Feeris and all the Mages in the cave died immediately, whereupon the deadly aura of the crystal began to radiate out to the surroundings. The Mages figured it would stop in a radius of a kilometer, then ten and then a hundred. When the aura destroyed everything living in a radius of 500 kilometers without even appearing to pause, the Mages decided to destroy the source. They couldn’t teleport within the crystal’s aura and griffons hadn’t been domesticated yet, so they decided to set out on foot. An ordinary Hunter, who knew these lands as well as his own hand, led the campaign to the Ergreis. Today you know him as Karmadont. History is silent about how long the campaign lasted. All we know is that all its members, aside from Karmadont, perished. Three hundred and two Mages. No one knows how Karmadont managed to contain the aura of the Ergreis. What is known is that he sealed the crystal in the Tomb of the Creator. Whether the Ergreis is activated or not remains unclear to this day. In memory of the Mages who perished, 302 Crastils were removed from the cave. Over the ensuing ages, these Crastils dissipated throughout our world, but it remains unclear what their purpose is.”

  “Perhaps they served as the mechanism for containing the crystal’s power?”

  “Perhaps—this is the only theory that has not yet been tested. This is also why I am sanguine about the fact that the Tomb has been opened. We have enough Free Mages to destroy the Ergreis. If it is activated and begins to destroy all life once again, the Free Mages will be ready for battle. But before that happens, I shall test another theory.”

  “‘Far to the north, in the Free Lands, not far from the headwaters of the Elma’ is a bit too vague for finding the cave,” I said when I realized why the Mage had told me all this.

  “Unfortunately, I cannot be any more accurate. I don’t know if the cave is located in the mountains, or secreted in the ground—whether it is large or only a mere cavern. If you need Crastils, you’ll have to figure out a way to find the cave. And here, Earl, I request that you leave me. My business is pressing. I must prepare for the next deadly cloud which is due in a year and a half. I must help the Free Mages get ready to fight it.”

  “Thank you!” I thanked the Mage sincerely—but it was on the threshold to the office that I heard the fatal phrase which turned everything inside me upside down:

  “I told Anastaria this same story…”

  Chapter Six. Escape

  “Daniel?” a steely voice sounded in my phone.

  “Speaking!”

  “This is the Omega chauffer service. Your car is here. You are expected. A black Chevrolet.”

  “Thank you, I’m coming down.”

  Right after leaving the High Mage’s office, I blinked to Altameda and signed out of Barliona. Another headache enveloped me, telling me that I had to take a break, so I took another painkiller injection. At first I was very surprised to find a complete medicine cabinet in my bathroom—however, a quick investigation put everything in its right place: The cleaning service included the restocking of any medicines I had. And if the client didn’t have a medicine cabinet at all, the company would provide a complete assortment with all the necessities. Pretty convenient this cleaning service thing. I should use it more frequently.

  Checking to make sure that all my devices were turned off, I put on a jacket and shut the door behind me. I hope that someday I’ll come back to this place.

  The heavily-tinted car was waiting in my driveway. The windows were so dark that even the setting sun couldn’t penetrate them. When the door opened, I could barely contain a grin—the thickness and heft of the door demanded respect. It looked like the car was also bullet-proof. I wonder if it could take a hit from an RPG too..? Damn! What am I thinking about? I pulled my thoughts back to the dim interior of the enormous car as the doors closed automatically and I found myself in complete darkness.

  My eyes had not had time to adjust when two prongs were stuck into my torso. I wanted to object but my jaw twitched in a spasm—an electric charge swept through my body.

  “What the…” I began to yell, but the shock came again. And again. And again. Five brief but still very painful shocks passed through my poor body before the light came on in the car’s salon.

  “You make interesting enemies, Daniel,” said a nondescript, balding man sitting in the front seat and pointing some kind of gadget with two wires at me. “Forgive me for the pain I caused you—it was necessary.”

  “What the hell?” I finished what I’d started to say.

  “There were three subdermal tracking implants in you,” the man explained calmly, as though my outrage did not concern him a bit. “As I understand it, you were a prisoner. The government does not release its wards lightly.”

  “Three trackers?” The man’s words clicked
in my head and I calmed down a little. In any case, I stopped struggling to escape.

  “Two in your leg and one in your arm—just above your wrist. You can feel it if you like. At the moment the trackers are deactivated, but we will have to perform minor surgery to remove them completely. They are powered by your body and will reset in three hours. We need your permission to operate. If you refuse, we cannot render the service you requested and our contract with you will be terminated.”

  “You have my permission,” I immediately agreed. The thought that there were some foreign objects inside of me was extremely unpleasant. “You said something about enemies. What do they have to do with it? I’m not sure I understood you correctly…”

  “Someone really wants to know where you are,” the man began to explain, entering something into his handheld computer. “This car is already being tracked. Moreover, they’ve attached several sensors to it to determine how many living people are in it. That’s to make sure that we don’t dump you into a sewer along the way. It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered such a close watch on a subject. You’ve really upset someone quite a bit if they’ve hired pros of this caliber to track you.”

  “But you have a plan, correct?”

  “We have everything, Mr. Daniel. However, I will require another permission from you. I will inject you with a drug called Marlacyne and you will die for two hours. Literally. At the same time, we will apply an antidote to one of our men, who was earlier injected with Marlacyne, thereby reviving him. We have to conduct a blood analysis to determine the proper dose of the drug. Your death and the revival of our man must happen at the same moment.”

  “You want to kill me?” I asked surprised.

  “Temporarily. We purposefully didn’t destroy another little bug that keeps track of your location. That one isn’t from the government—someone else is keeping tabs on you. As soon as you die, we will transfer the bug to our man. Our job will be to misdirect whoever is tracking you.”

  “What’s to guarantee that I’ll survive? I’ve never died before.”

  “There is no guarantee,” smirked my companion. “Besides the fact that won’t receive our payment if you don’t. We are business men, Mr. Daniel. Losing money is not our line of work. Shall we begin the procedure? Or are you not ready to die just yet?”

  “Get on with it,” I replied, knowing full well that there was no way back. The old man will discover that I tried to flee and he’ll be sure to take some sort of measures, all the way up to abducting me and keeping me in his cellar. For safety’s sake.

  “Place your hand on this device,” asked the man, offering me a small box with a green phosphorescent outline of a hand. Placing my hand on it, I felt a pinprick resembling a mosquito bite and the world filled with grays and vanished…

  * * *

  “Make yourself comfortable,” a female voice sounded in the darkness. I tried to open my eyes and was surprised to discover that I felt absolutely no discomfort. I was lying on my back looking up at a light ceiling. My hands and feet were moving and my head didn’t hurt. Wishing to make certain that everything was okay, I sat up abruptly and saw an attractive woman of about thirty in front of me, putting away a syringe.

  “There’s food in the refrigerator,” she said, paying no attention that I was trying to get up from bed. “We will make sure that it doesn’t run out. Next to the wall, you will find the newest model capsule,” the girl pointed at the steel box. “It’s hooked up and checked, but it hasn’t been set up yet. You will have to do that on your own. As per your technical request, your connection will be channeled through seven extra servers. As soon as one is hacked, you will be notified. If the fifth server is hacked, you will automatically be disconnected from Barliona. The sixth and seventh servers will be destroyed. Your only contacts with the external world are through Barliona. There is no telephone or internet line here. You do not know where you are, so it is impossible for you to reveal this information in the game even if someone were to scan your memory.”

  “The Corporation can scan memories?”

  “We do not have evidence of their capability to scan long-term memory, but they can scan short-term memory. They’ve figured that out already. Please enter your digital signature here—our services cost nineteen million credits.”

  “You’ve done all this without a down payment?” I asked surprised, entering the digital signature. “What if I didn’t have this amount?”

  “We checked your real and virtual accounts beforehand,” the girl smiled, accepting my payment. The Legends of Barliona just lost nineteen million gold. “You are a solvent person, Daniel Mahan, so we decided to take the risk. Who knows—perhaps whoever is spying on you in reality is also tracking your accounts and bank transfers. Our services are not cheap, but we are worth every credit you invest in us. The clothes you are accustomed to are in the closet.” The girl waved in some general direction and only now I noticed that I was wearing some gray pajamas. “If you have any questions or you need anything, there is a phone on the table. Simply pick up the handset, and the line will automatically connect you to the Omega operator. If one of the proxies in the array you are connecting through is compromised, you will receive a notification in Barliona. We’ve made a minor tweak to your capsule to ensure this. What else…Oh! We have temporarily isolated the initiator of your disappearance, Sergei. The isolation duration that we agreed upon with him is three months. This too is covered in the cost of the package you paid for, so you have no need to worry about him. If you don’t have any further questions, I will leave you. Look around and make yourself at home—this will be your home for the next three months. All the best.”

  The woman left, closing the door behind her and locking it with several locks—it was then that I noticed that there was nothing but a handle on my side of the door. I yanked it several times to make sure that I really was locked in. The apartment boasted a bathroom big enough to fit a boat in and a tiny kitchen about the size of the bathroom, an enormous refrigerator stuffed full of frozen meals and, to my surprise, my favorite beer. There was also a bedroom with a twin bed and the newest gaming cocoon available. And a closet full of various clothes, all of my size. In effect another room but transformed to a closet. And that was all! It was all I had. There weren’t even any windows in this pharaohs’ tomb. Given the capsule’s capability of scanning short-term memory, the people who had hidden me away were keeping a very close watch over the security of my physical self.

  Excellent! I could now deal with the old man as well as Phoenix from a position of power. No one could threaten me with bodily harm.

  After a quick snack of several hamburgers, I climbed into the gaming cocoon and began to adjust its settings for my needs. A physiological scan, a brain scan, the attunement of the waves that would track and initiate the interface signals, the power block set-up, excrement expulsion and life support, set up, set up and more set up. I ended up messing around with the capsule for three hours, until the long-awaited notification appeared before me: “You may now enter Barliona.” The good thing was that the capsule wasn’t merely of the newest model, but it was also outfitted for long-term immersion, allowing me to remain in Barliona for up to six months if I wished.

  This is exactly what I needed at the moment.

  ENTER!

  “Orders, master?” asked Viltrius when I sprawled out in my rocking throne. I needed to decide what I would focus on first. A notification let me know that my clan had lost an enormous amount of money, but that our treasury still had about seventeen million gold in it. My own personal account also had seven million lying around, so it’s not like we were in the midst of a financial crisis or anything. There weren’t any huge outlays coming up and we had paid all our taxes for the next six months, so I could focus exclusively on the game.

  “Are there any guests in the castle?” I inquired about the Shamans that had been there earlier. What if someone was still staggering around the castle instead of undergoing registrat
ion for the new continent and updating their class mechanics…?

  “No—they all left Altameda the day before yesterday,” Viltrius replied with a bow.

  “When?!”

  “The day before yesterday,” the goblin replied calmly.

  “Ping,” Anastaria’s thought appeared in my head. A second went by before my head all but exploded with the girl’s enraged tirade: “Oh-ho! His majesty has deigned to return! I won’t even bother asking where you’ve been for the past four days. Are you aware that because of your absence, I’ve failed the Governor’s visit? Can you even imagine how difficult it was to come by that invitation?”

  Four days?!

  I opened my settings and stared with astonishment at the system time. If my eyes didn’t deceive me, then the last time I was in Barliona really was four days ago. Four and a half even. How much time did they spend hiding me? Or rather, how much time had I spent ‘dead?’ Why didn’t they warn me that the procedure would take so long?

  “No one kept you from going on your own,” I replied, not much feeling like being the whipping boy. “You can’t depend on other players in Barliona. If I’m not around, then your invitation automatically becomes an invitation for another person. So cut the crap!”

  “That’s exactly the point—the bonus for us attending together is much greater than me going alone.”

  “So you went to the reception?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did you meet the Governor?”

  “No. He refused to see me because I came on my own.”

  “That’s impossible! You can’t be bound to a player who’s not in game.”

  “I know. I’ve let the devs know and they’re looking into the error. I was worried Dan!”

  “I gotta go. I need to deal with some stuff.”