by Eric Nylund
“We saw the fire.” Lordren’s voice cracked and he squeezed Elmac tighter. “We tried to—I thought you might be…”
“Aye, well, I be fine.” He pushed Lordren back.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, interrupting, “but where are we?” I waved about at the infinite darkness surrounding us.
“This is a void cube,” Lordren told me. “It is where Hiltmyer and Company secures its most interesting items. Come, follow me, and please stay on the path at all times.”
Black flagstones paved a corridor four paces across under my boots—then there was a nothing so devoid of… of anything, dust, light, even a sense that there was “space” there, it was painful to look at for long.
Lordren’s gang parted what seemed like black curtains, let their boss through, and waved for us to follow.
We did, everyone scrunching near Lordren as he walked into pitch blackness. The stone path appeared only a moment before his foot touched down—remained for mere seconds after.
“Void cube?” Morgana asked. “What’s that then?”
I detected a bit of professional safecracker curiosity in her tone.
“Very old magic,” Lordren answered. “Shaped by the Titans from a shard of the primordial void. It is the quintessence of not being. To touch it is to be un-created.”
I tried not to think about this un-creating nothing as I marched forward, and concentrated on putting one foot as straight as possible in front of the other.
Ahead was a sliver of light. We entered and—emerged in Hiltmyer & Co, Trading Post Extraordinaire.
I exhaled and turned.
The rest of the gnome firing squad marched through what appeared to be an ordinary closet door.
The door shut on its own.
It didn’t have a lock. Or a doorknob.
I made a note to never break into Lordren’s shop or even wander off unescorted.
The shop was the type you ran across in any fantasy game: jam-packed with everything a would-be adventurer might need. One’s eyes tended to wander… pickaxes, packs, rope, and so much more. Think of it as a cross between a sporting goods store, antique shop, and a hoarder’s attic, then squeeze it all into a long, narrow building almost too cramped to navigate the aisles, and you had the idea.
The thing that caught my attention, though, was the front window.
The blinds were down, but the slats cracked open enough so light streamed through, glowing orange, and reminding me of the wires of a space heater.
A light that had to be coming from Elmac’s bar. Burning.
Elmac was halfway across the store before I realized it. Morgana and I trotted after him.
We looked between the slats.
It felt like a blade of ice had been shoved into my gut.
The Bloody Rooster was gone.
All that remained were smoldering timbers thrust up like the ribs of a giant burnt offering. The center had caved in and formed a pit glowing like molten steel.
The basement must have collapsed.
I swallowed. It stuck in my throat.
If there hadn’t been an escape hatch in his vault, it would have been a long time before anyone would have even found Elmac’s safe under all that, let alone figured out a way to open it.
It would have been a torturous end.
“This is my fault.” Morgana’s voice tightened and she clutched a silver chain about her throat. “It was just a bloody quest for the Thieves Guild. I’m so sorry, Elmac.”
“No lass. Don’t.” He turned to her, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “’Tis not your doing. There be more to this than one of your quests.”
I agreed. It could have been someone after me. Or Elmac. Or none of us. We were operating in the dark.
I strained my eyes searching the street for something that might offer a clue.
There was easy access to River Street from a number of alleyways. Any pyromaniac could have snuck in and out undetected. No help there.
The intensity and speed at which this fire had reduced Elmac’s beloved bar to a pile of ash was impressive. It was as if someone had used white phosphorus or a fireball. The buildings around Elmac’s, however, some so close they’d practically touched the bar, were unscathed. Not even scorch marks.
I pointed this out to my companions.
“’Tis what I told you before,” Elmac replied. “There be building codes. After the southern section of town burned down, every structure has to be enchanted to resist fire—if not made entirely fireproof. I had the best money could buy. Would have taken strong magical fire or an unholy flame to overpower it.”
“So this was started by a wizard?” Morgana asked.
“Aye, maybe.”
Strong magic like the stuff that had compressed a monster cloud of death into a tiny vial?
Again, there was only one group I knew who had that kind of juice, an equal propensity for overwhelming vengeance and violence, and come to think of it access to all things unholy: The Lords of the Abyss.
So what about the rule prohibiting them from targeting players?
I felt like I was missing something obvious.
I inhaled deeply and took in the scent of burnt oak blended with a hundred different single malt whiskeys and other assorted vaporized liquors, savoring the last of what might have been many pleasant memories that we’d never again have in the Bloody Rooster.
A breath shuddered out of Elmac. “Me bar…”
I set a hand on his shoulder.
Elmac dropped his head.
It was a cruel myth that old soldiers preferred to lick their wounds alone. They needed comforting more than most.
Behind us, Lordren politely coughed. I turned and saw all the gnomes stood pointy hats in hands, gazes downcast, some quietly crying, all respectfully waiting.
“What can we do, Elmac?” Lordren asked.
Elmac shook his head (and clandestinely wiped his face). He looked up and faced Lordren, eyes bloodshot and wild. “Did you see Marty? And the rest ’o the customers? Did they get out?”
“Some,” Lordren whispered. “They were taken to the Temple of the Three Sisters. I am not sure exactly whom… or how many survived.”
Elmac went rigid, and not I suspected, from grief.
I looked outside once more.
There was a silhouetted crowd gawking from a safe distance.
As my vision adjusted I made out a few dozen people, and over the heads of some, wisps of smoke seemed to linger. My eyes were inexplicably drawn to the stuff.
It slowly came into focus. Silver letters.
I took an involuntary step back.
There were other players out there.
I squinted, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t quite make out the words.
“Still got that spyglass?” I asked Morgana.
“Crikey, why didn’t I think of that?” She blinked, her gaze darting back and forth, and a brass spyglass appeared in her hand. She extended the thing and looked.
So far, I’d met only three players in the game.
In the “nice” column was Morgana, true-blue pal, dangerous, mysterious, always there for me.
The two in the “naughty” column were Fhullrokotop, cleric of the Elder Lovecraftian gods and certifiably insane—and my brother, the anti-paladin working for the Lords of the Abyss. Both of them practically clichés of evil.
So, these new players were what? Friend? Foe?
Morgana passed her spyglass to me.
I held my breath and peered into the eyepiece.
The first player was hard to miss. She was a wood elf who wore a three-sided pirate’s hat bedecked with ostrich plumes, a ruffled red shirt crisscrossed with bandoliers, black leggings, and a wide leather belt holding a hand crossbow, rapier, and assorted pouches. It looked as if Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Errol Flynn had tried to, and done a poor job of, copying her flamboyant style.
Her player tag read:
Cassie Longstrider
Ranger (S
washbuckler) / LEVEL 12
Wonder Women
I whispered this to Elmac.
“Regular customer,” he told me. “’Twasn’t there when we walked in. A bit, er, rowdy when she’s had too much. Grand tipper, though.”
“Wonder Women?” Morgana looked into the distance, searching her memories (or checking her interface). “Yeah, the likes of Athena, Hera, valkyries. If Joan of Arc was in the Game, that’s the clan she’d be in, if that is, she wasn’t already a Catholic saint.”
I continued my search and spotted another player—this one climbing out of the molten pit. He wore a chainmail hauberk that fit him like a second metal skin. It glowed red-hot but rapidly cooled to dull silver. Completing this heat-proof ensemble was a helmet with curved horns and a metal club big enough to flatten a horse.
I read his tag for the others.
Grimhalt
Cleric (Zealot) / LEVEL 9
The Wild Hunt
Morgana growled, “Ran into that one before.”
When I’d met Morgana in the Free Trial, she’d told me that one of these Wild Hunt people had hassled her. Couldn’t have been this guy because he was too high level to engage in PvP combat with a first- or second-level character.
Although, if Morgana hadn’t known about this rule at the time, he could have chased her into that zombie-infested forest… where the unliving would have torn her to pieces for him.
So, one more on the naughty list.
“He’s psychotic, that one,” Morgana said.
“Agreed,” Elmac muttered. “The Wild Hunt has gods that—”
I held up my hand. “I know about the Wild Hunt.”
I hadn’t meant to be so rude and cut Elmac off, but just then I spotted another player, and couldn’t focus on anything else.
This guy wore gray robes whose silky fabric shimmered with subtle twinkling reds and greens… nebulae and stars that were not merely embroidered; rather, this looked like the real thing, a window into the cosmos.
I didn’t think he was human.
His features were angles and planes devoid of a single curve. It was like Picasso had chiseled a face from blue-gray slate—the color of a drowned corpse. Yet he was also somehow unearthly handsome. Creepy too, because crowning his bald head was a ring of seven-penny nails driven halfway into his skull, reminiscent of Pinhead in Clive Barker’s 1987 nightmarish flick, Hellraiser.
Almost in a trance, I read his placard for Elmac’s benefit.
Harlix Hadri
Wizard (Researcher) / LEVEL 12
Sapientia Aeterna
“Sapientia Aeterna?” I said. “My Latin’s rusty. That’s what… ‘Smart Forever’?”
“Eternal Wisdom,” Elmac corrected.
“Heard of them,” Morgana said, tapping her lower lip, not sounding happy. “Think from one of my guildmates. Just a tick. I’ll send a quick message.” She typed on an invisible keyboard.
I watched this Harlix wave over a city guard.
The guard jumped, started to salute, but halted the gesture mid-way.
Looked like the wizard had pull with the city’s officials, but wasn’t one of them.
I set the spyglass down, tabbed to the notes section of my interface, and wrote down everything I’d just learned. Unlike Morgana’s clan, mine had no database on players, clans, and game abilities. This was as good a start as any.
When I had it all copied, I grabbed the spyglass and continued to search. There were plenty of guards and onlookers, but no more floating title placards.
I didn’t see the one person I thought would be here: Colonel Delacroix. If anyone could get to the bottom of why these assassins were after us, it’d be High Hill’s Chief of the not-so-secret secret police. Where was she?
I forgot all about Delacroix as another person caught my eye.
She wore a veil and white dress with gold spirals along the arms. In the firelight, it looked drenched in blood.
She turned from the smoking ruins and looked across River Street.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said she gazed directly at me.
The light was all wrong, though. I was in deep shadow behind slitted blinds, and the flame-lit glare off the store’s window would have further obscured my presence. For all intents and purposes, I should have been invisible from her vantage.
Behind her veil, I thought I caught a glimpse of ghostly indigo blue eyes, like smoldering coals.
She then turned back toward the remains of the Bloody Rooster.
“Here we go,” Morgana said. “Got a reply.”
I stepped back and lowered the spyglass.
She paused to scan the message. “Eternal Wisdom… blokes are a pack of wizards and higher IQ types… dedicated to gathering knowledge and secrets.” Her features slackened. “Membership includes liches, elder god devotees, and evil genius types.”
Lovely. Smart and evil. One of my least favorite combinations (right up there with ignorant and loud-mouthed).
“Wait,” I said, “that doesn’t mean this Harlix guy is necessarily evil. His wizard specialization is ‘Researcher.’ That has to be, what, like a librarian?”
“Hang on,” Morgana whispered, scrolling ahead.
“Yeah…” she told me. “No. Says ‘Researcher’ is more like an ‘Inquisitor.’ They’re known to extract knowledge from items, history from places, and secrets from people—and are none too particular on the condition they leave the things that information gets extracted from… as in erased, destroyed, or dead.”
Regardless of rules against high-level players annihilating lower-level ones—I had a strong preference to stay far away from these three. At least until we knew what they were up to.
“I vote we stick to our plan,” I said to Elmac and Morgana. “Send a message to Delacroix, then a tactical retreat, knock out an easy quest, and level up a bit. In the process, we might give these assassins the slip.”
“I can go along with that for now,” Morgana whispered.
Elmac said nothing and stared out the window, dark eyes unblinking.
“Elmac?”
He shook his head. I wasn’t sure if that meant he didn’t like my plan, or if he just wanted me to shut my trap.
Morgana moved to his side, hesitated, then put an arm around his shoulders. “You can rebuild. We’ll help. The important thing is you’re alive, mate.”
The tension melted from Elmac. He slowly, reluctantly I think, withdrew from her. “Aye, lass. Thank you. We could rebuild, but I think this be a sign that I move on.”
“So,” I asked, “are we sticking to the plan?”
“We stick to the plan.” There was steel in his voice. “Get word to the Colonel, ’o course, and then a tactical retreat. But when you be making fifth level, Hektor, I get in the game, no delay… so I can be arranging a bit ’o dwarven vengeance.”
Elmac faced Lordren. “And if we be doing that, Master Trader, we be needing your five-star service. So, best wake the entire staff.”
CHAPTER 8
What exactly was five-star service?
In short (no pun intended), it was every player’s shopping dream.
Elmac had barely drawn a breath after his request when Lordren turned to the squad of attending gnomes and clapped his hands.
They jumped into action—screwed the blinds fully shut and lowered steel shutters over the windows and doors to further secure the shop. Orbs of cut crystal flickered with light and transformed dingy to brilliant.
Another legion of gnomes appeared from nowhere—swept, dusted, mopped, polished—and vanished again. Before I blinked, there were more crews: running back and forth; opening trapdoors; pulling back curtains to reveal alcoves, changing rooms, misty magic mirrors, and a small kitchen with coffee percolating. They straightened shelves; removed common items and set out new clockwork gadgets, cases of gemstones, rows of boots, and racks of robes, jackets, and cloaks of exotic leathers, furs, and silk; sunflowers were set in Ming vases, incense lit… and much more th
at I caught only blurs and half-glimpses—impossible things that had to have been my imagination.
Three elder gnomes in matching silver-pinstriped suits approached us. These gentlemen eyed us up and down, shared a glance, and nodded to one another.
I was about to introduce myself when they undulated their hands and chanted three mystical words: “Emundabit, percula, heilen.”
Fist-sized cumulonimbus thunderheads condensed about me.
I resisted the impulse to backflip away from this uninvited and potentially harmful spell. I was perhaps a bit on a hair-trigger tonight after all that had happened.
Elmac calmly stood there, raised arms over his head, and slowly turned in his personal cloud formation.
If it was okay with Elmac, I guess I could play along too.
The clouds gently steamed my clothes, faded stains, straightened wrinkles, and the smell—oh nice, no more eau de outhouse, but that refreshing off-the-clothesline scent that reminded me of summer. The rips and tears I’d recently acquired mended as well.
I looked, smelled, and felt as if I’d just stepped out of a shower, toweled off, and been professionally pressed.
Before I could thank these wizard cleaners, they reported to Lordren, whispering in hushed tones.
“Lordren’s staff be taking good care of you two,” Elmac told Morgana and me.
“Us two?” Morgana asked. “What about you? And what’s this five-star service costing? Not that I’m complaining. Entirely.”
“Costs nothing,” Elmac said. “Lordren owes me a few favors.”
Good thing. If my prior dealing with Lordren was any indication of his business chops, Elmac’s purse would have been considerably lightened.
And also good because we could all use a little five-star treatment. You know, live a little. We might, after all, be dead before the sun rose.
“Thanks, Elmac,” I said. “Just one more thing. With assassins potentially skulking just outside… well, I’d hate to bring trouble to Lordren’s doorstep.”
Elmac managed a halfhearted grin (the best he could muster under the circumstances). “No one has ever, ever broken into this shop,” he said. “And I doubt any ever will.”
