The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

  Rachel grimaced and knelt to the ground. “This is um…kind of strange, but…” she waved her hands over the dirt in an unfamiliar motion and muttered a few words under her breath. After a few moments, the ground started to shake and the dirt parted. From where her hands had been, a full, human-sized skeleton raised itself from the ground and stood before her, as if awaiting instruction. I could see that it was only level three and not very strong. It didn’t even have any weapons or armour – more like it was one of those anatomy skeletons that you’d find in a biology classroom, just looking at you and smiling with no real intent.

  “I’ve been sending skeletons in there but the spiders just take them out. I can’t raise them very quickly, but I was hoping that eventually they might be strong enough to take out the dungeon.”

  I looked at the skeleton then back to Rachel. “I don’t think that this skeleton will do anything much to the spiders, besides I don’t suppose you know that there’s a boss in there, do you?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “It’s a queen, and the last time I checked she was level twenty,” I said.

  “T…twenty? Oh man,” Rachel replied as she shook her head. “I’m so stupid.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I attempted to soothe her, “This isn’t at all like anything I have ever played before, there are so many things to learn about.”

  “You’re not wrong…” Rachel replied. “I just thought that games were easier than this, you know?”

  I nodded. “Sometimes they are. You just need to know how you want to play. Every game has its weaknesses.”

  “Right,” she agreed. “and goblins are the way?” she indicated my crew still shuffling their feet on the ground behind me trying to seem busy or otherwise entertained.

  “No more than skeletons are,” I replied with a smile.

  “Oh right,” she said remembering that the skeleton was still standing gormlessly next to her. “You can go now,” she told it and in the most instantaneous and dutiful way, the bones fell apart and turned themselves into a neat little pile on the ground.

  “So you’re a necromancer?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Yes, I got the skill kind of by accident, but I couldn’t help thinking how useful it could be. As it turns out it's not that helpful at the moment but I think at higher levels it might come in handy,” the spark of enthusiasm seemed to return to her voice, which in turn made me feel a little more comfortable.

  It made me wonder what she had done to gain such a skill, knowing what I had to go through to get my own. It made me think about how valuable knowledge could be in Freedom Online, that was at least until the first players were released from their gaming pods and the media swarmed them, juicing them for every little pulp that they could recall.

  I made the conscious decision to not ask Rachel directly about how she came across the necromancy skill. I could assume that it had something to do with inadvertently playing with bones or something, but I either didn’t want to know or didn’t want to offend her.

  It was a hard call to make, but now that I was sure that Theo and Sano weren’t the cause for the spider nest’s levelling efforts I felt a lot more comfortable with Rachel’s presence. I even invited her into my warband and offered her to raid the dungeon with me – or at least the outskirts as once I discovered that even the smallest spiders were at level six now it was getting a little dangerous for my companions. Rachel had summoned a single skeleton as a protector, hiding behind it most of the time allowing it to soak up most of the damage that the spiders dealt. They seemed naturally drawn to the creature above their desire to harm my goblins and I, and I couldn’t say I wasn’t grateful for that. I could tell right from the start that the skeleton acted as a tank for the group, so it wasn’t too much of a shock that alone the spiders had made mincemeat, or more appropriately, bonemeal out of it.

  Once everyone had gained a couple of levels (apart from myself and Ushuk, we’d only gained a single level and I made sure to place the new attribute point into wisdom again and I guessed the goblin did as well) I knew that it was time to head back to the camp. This led me to another dilemma.

  “Um, Rachel? I have to go now.” I said apprehensively.

  “What? Why?” she answered quickly, as though sideswiped by the announcement.

  I didn’t really want to tell her that I had a settlement to get back to just yet, not knowing too much about her, but the decision was taken from my hands when Ushuk decided to speak.

  “We have settlement at Coyote Creek. More of the clan waiting there.” He’d just spilled the beans on our entire operation. I made a mental note to remind Ushuk that our biggest defence was our secrecy when we got back home and kicked him lightly.

  Home. It was strange but I kind of felt like it was my home now, any feelings of sentiment waning away for my past life. No, my real life I reminded myself harshly. Sometimes Freedom Online could feel a little too real.

  “She is friend now, she fight with us not against us.” Ushuk told me as though he could feel my frustration. His definitions of friend and enemy were a little too black and white for my liking, but who was I kidding really, I was always going to invite Rachel back to the creek.

  Rachel didn’t say a word. I could tell that she knew the goblin had stepped over the line and wasn’t really sure how to respond.

  “That would be lovely, Ushuk,” she eventually said. “But it’s really up to Tandy who he invites back to his camp isn’t it?” She spoke as though we were two parents speaking over a child who wasn’t yet fully briefed on the situation.

  I smiled and nodded. “You are more than welcome, we have loads of food and stuff to do.” Rachel had won me over by her sheer innocence. Who could deny the necromancer a few liberties?

  Chapter Seventeen, Innocence

  R

  achel had been expecting a campfire, fallen log and maybe a tent. I could tell. I watched her eyes widen as we entered the oasis that was Coyote Creek and smiled to myself happily as she absorbed the marvel that stood before her. My settlement was definitely looking like more of a village than even I had remembered, having not taken too many opportunities to stand back and let it all sink in.

  There was so much activity going on. I could see that the roads had made great headway and rolling atop them the haulers were pulling carts laden with logs, stones, meat, pelts and other resources that had been collected en masse.

  I could see small stone walls starting to line the outsides of walkways, roads and buildings now in the fashion of ancient Greek cities – god knows where they’d learned to do that – and everywhere I looked everyone seemed to be doing something productive, whether they’d been instructed to or not.

  I led Rachel to the cooking fire and offered her her fill of the food that Snafu never ceased to provide for the clan. I thought of it as a kind of ‘welcome to the clan’ gesture to provide her with one particular boon that I had found so interesting and useful.

  “Well Fed!” she exclaimed, “and it was delicious!”

  I smiled. “And if you keep eating well like that you’ll get another bonus too,” I said, remembering the Balanced Diet trait.

  “How have you done all of this? It’s amazing,” she asked once the surprise of new boons had faded away.

  “The same as you, trying new things and good things just kept happening,” I explained rather cryptically. As much as I sort of trusted her and allowed her into the settlement, there could be nothing good to come of telling her all of my secrets a once.

  Rachel did seem a little placated by my answer, although I could see the yearning for new knowledge in her sparkling eyes.

  “What about you? What’s your story?” I asked, leaving the question purposefully open-ended to allow her to interpret it however she wished.

  She didn’t answer for a long while. I wondered if she had decided to stay silent on purpose and was about to interrupt her when she finally spoke again.

  “I...I didn’t really play m
any games in the real world.” She explained. I nodded. “I didn’t really know what to expect from the game and I was pretty amazed at just how realistic everything is, it’s like I’m truly in a different world.”

  “It was like that for me too…the realistic part, not the game part. I played a lot of games out there, I mean a lot,” I winced at my own excitement at recounting video games but I didn’t think it made too much of an impression on the necromancer.

  “So I thought when I got into the game I would look for other people you know, like it might have made everything easier, or someone could teach me how to play properly…” Rachel trailed off and her smile fell as though she was replaying a painful memory.

  “Is everything OK?” I asked, picking up on her discomfort.

  “Yes…its just that…well do you ever think that you know somebody and then they turn out to be completely different to how you thought, and they do something that you could never have thought that they could have done?” She asked.

  It took me a moment and I had to repeat under my breath what she had said in order for me to follow her quick and tangled speech. Eventually, I said, “Yes, sometimes people can hide who they really are.”

  “Well, this wasn’t like that. When I eventually found some other players, they were so nice. They taught me about some skills that came in handy in the game, let me share their food and stay with them for a while…” She swallowed hard. “But things started to get a little bit strange after a while. They started to…change.”

  I nodded again, not wanting to interrupt her flow as she looked as though the slightest change in direction could completely throw her from her trail.

  “I knew they were killing monsters…” she stopped to look around at my goblins, “I, I…don’t mean monsters…you know” I nodded “I knew they were killing them and usually I just followed them around and ate the stuff that they were preparing and sleeping in their camps. One time I caught up with them before they’d had a chance to clear everything away and I saw that they were eating the monsters that they’d killed. Normally it wouldn’t have been a big deal – wolves, wild boars, even snakes if they’d found any but this time I could see that they had been eating something that had big grey arms. I knew what it was right away because they’d been talking about hunting this thing for a while – it was an ogre.” She let her head drop as she spoke. “I mean I know its just a game, I do, and I know that ogres aren’t exactly clever things…but eating one? It just makes my skin crawl.”

  “I know the feeling” I added quietly.

  “Then after that I started trying to distance myself from the group you know? I wanted to start to break away, maybe go it alone. I knew it was going to be tough without a group but I thought I could handle it. Eventually, they saw what I was up to and I overheard them making plans one night to put me in chains so I couldn’t escape. One of them even suggested that they just killed me an be done with it.”

  “Did they…hurt you?” I asked, trying to phrase my question in the most sympathetic was possible.

  “No, no nothing like that,” she replied, catching my meaning. “But I overheard them talking about wanting to kill as many things as possible, eat them…and even drink their blood. I think maybe…they were vampires?”

  That was news to me. Of course, it made sense but it was something that I hadn’t even thought about before.

  “Wait, these were players and vampires? What would drive someone to turn to…that?” I asked in disgust.

  “Theordore said that…” she started but I couldn’t help but interrupt. “THEODORE?” I said the name so loud that some of my goblins turned to look at me in questioning silence. I made the effort to lower my voice back into the conversation. “You were with Theodore’s gang?” I asked.

  “You know him?” Rachel asked. “How?”

  I noticed that the girl had started to lean away from me as her eyes were darting about again as though looking for an acceptable escape route.

  “That bastard killed me!” I exclaimed with as much venom as I could muster. I wanted Rachel to know that I had my own reason to hate Theodore and co.

  “Right,” She continued, settling back into her comfort. “Theodore said that it was the best feeling that he had ever experienced. I could see how people were easily enrolled into his gang when he was offering such delights. I think that’s how he did it you know – he would say how good it all felt but never really let on what was happening until the person wanted to feel it too more than anything. I’m so glad that I could see through his little games.”

  “So how did you get away?” I asked.

  “Well, once I’d made my mind up, they started getting a little pushy. I could tell some of them were getting frustrated and wanted to…do things…but Theodore never let them. I’m not sure why he stopped them, if he just wanted me for himself or if there was still a sliver of humanity in there somewhere, either way…anyway once the night came and they were all sleeping off their latest meal I ran into the forest and as far and as fast as I could before I was too exhausted to move any more. Once I’d finally woken up I knew I was in the Dark Forest and that’s where I’ve been staying up until now. I’d been catching small creatures and picking fruits and vegetables wherever I could to stay fed but to be honest, it’s been really hard. Every time I ventured too far into the forest I could tell that the creatures were getting stronger, even to the point where I couldn’t kill them anymore, so I just made sure I kept hidden and made notes on my maps of everywhere I had been. Honestly, when I saw the notification about the dungeon, I thought that it might have just been for me, you know like the game was trying to give me something to help me out?”

  Rachel stopped talking and I wasn’t sure if it was the end of her story or not, but I spoke next anyway.

  “It hasn’t been easy, it’s not like there is an instruction manual or a guide to follow on how to win in here. I think you just have to pick your path and follow it.” My words seemed to soothe Rachel, after the retelling of her story seemed to have a profound effect on her. “and don’t worry, we don’t eat sentient beings here…no matter how much my clan here look like monsters.”

  “Clan?” She asked and I almost facepalmed.

  I immediately invited her into the Crocodile’s Teeth clan, pulled a tooth from my inventory and offered it to her. Rachel took the tooth from me and as it had done with the others in my clan who had received the same gift, it offered a string for her to tie it around her neck, which she did immediately. Then she accepted my invitation and joined the Crocodile’s Teeth.

  “If you ever want to talk, or if something doesn’t seem right then you can always ask me outright. I know what you have been through and I promise it isn’t like that here. I added as though it was a welcome speech. I really should come up with one of those.

  I spoke with Rachel for the next hour or so about how I built up my clan with the help of Ushuk and Snafu, making sure to leave out most of the finer details such as what skills I had and how I got them. I told her about the siege that I’d had a hand in in my first days within Freedom and how Sano had ended the Sawblades Clan shortly afterwards. We postulated on what being a vampire actually meant for the players, but could only come up with what was generally accepted about vampires in the real world – that they drank blood and were very strong. From what we had already seen we discounted the daylight thing and the turning into a bat thing, but truth be told it really didn’t give us much to go on.

  “Hang on, did you say you had maps of the whole area?” I asked when thinking about what we should be doing the next day after breakfast.

  “Well, yes, loads actually,” she replied and she gave me a stack of papers from her inventory, each with a part of a map drawn on them. I looked at the papers quickly before putting them into my inventory. “do you need these back?” I asked and she shook her head. Brilliant.

  Rachel also told me how she got her necromancy skill and how it worked, which I was very pleased about. The
odore and his crew had devoured the remains of some unlucky creatures, Rachel had dug them up from the ground and attempted to piece them back together to see what they had eaten, and pay the deceased the proper respects that they deserved. She said there were a few creatures there but couldn’t remember exactly how many. After a while the game had given her the choice to take the necromancy skill, which I found kind of strange, not having been given any choices myself but I didn’t pry any further.

  Once she had accepted the necromancy skill, Rachel said she was given the ability to cast a spell to raise a friendly skeleton from the ground, providing that it was able to emerge freely by spending her. The skill at its current level only allowed for a rather weak, single skeleton, but she was sure that as the skill levelled up that she would be able to summon more allies and at higher levels.

  The skill sounded unbelievable and once again it got me thinking just how adaptive and free the game could be. It was almost as though a person really could do anything.

  That evening after dinner, I told Rachel about the sleeping arrangement for the clan. I presumed that she didn’t want to bunk up with the goblins, and I thought that she probably wouldn’t be constricted by the ‘no guests in the chief’s hut’ rules – but it seemed like a bit of a delicate subject. There was no easy way to say ‘come sleep in my hut and by the way don’t worry I won’t sexually assault you’ but it seemed that in just the awkwardness of my offer, the point was clearly put across. Besides, we didn’t undress and practically the entire floor of my hut was covered in furs, so we could sleep feet apart, facing away from each other and it would be as though there was no awkwardness to be had.

  The next day I had a challenge for my woodworking team. Well, challenge might have been a little too juicy of a word, all I wanted was a large, flat plank of wood to be made into a table so that I could arrange Rachel’s maps properly. I was astonished when it took less than ten minutes for the thing to arrive at my side – they had simply attached four planks together and called it job done. It definitely did the trick for me.