Sicora Online_The Sorting

by S. W. Clarke

  “You have a chimney,” Veda said, holding the cup in both hands.

  “Is that what you call it? The orcs think it’s a natural vent, warm themselves atop it come winter.” The elf set her fingers under the cups, tilted them up. “Drink.”

  Veda sniffed, found the scent familiar. She reached into her tunic’s pocket, pulled out some of the cave moss she’d gathered. The smell was the same. As she held it, the prompt that appeared was different from the one she’d seen on first holding the moss:

  ITEM: Hypericum Moss

  QUALITY: Common

  STATS: None.

  EFFECTS: Provides +5 to stamina for 30 minutes when consumed. Cures most infectious wounds when applied to the skin.

  “Good eye,” the old woman said. “It’s a bolstering herb. Gives you vitality.”

  Veda took a sip, and Galen followed. She understood immediately what the elf meant: her body felt warmed, invigorated. In her interface, her stamina temporarily rose five points.

  “What’s this?” It was a soft man’s voice, and Veda’s eyes had adjusted enough to take in the sight of a withered elf, pointed ears adorning a bald head. He reached out to touch her hair.

  The woman slapped his hand away. “Quit, old lecher. She’s an empath.”

  The man’s blind eyes went wide before they closed. His hand went up again, but this time the palm faced up at the level of her her own hands. “May I?”

  Veda stared at the fingers—so long, the nails uncut—and then removed her left hand from the cup, set it in the elf’s. His skin was warm, and he placed his other palm over hers, his eyes closing.

  A flashbulb vision appeared in Veda’s mind. She gasped, nearly dropped her cup. He had projected his feelings into her, through her. “You’re split,” she said.

  The old man’s lips curled. “Yes, for some time now.”

  Other elves had entered the dome: two, four, eight of them, all ancient and stooped. They stared at Veda as though she were a newborn child.

  “What’s happening?” Galen asked.

  Veda turned to him, her eyes filling. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “She doesn’t use her eyes quite the same,” the old woman said. “She perceives. What’s your name, girl?”

  “Veda.”

  “I’m Wa,” the woman said. “Used to be Wanath, but the other part of me resides up there.” Her finger crooked upward.

  “I am Lei,” the man said, sliding his hands from Veda’s. “Once Leiwen.”

  One by one the other elves named themselves, their voices rising in soft notes as they offered their half-names.

  “Up there?” Galen asked.

  “You humans are sightless, aren’t you?” Wa asked, but her face was lit. “What do you know of this world?”

  “It’s a compass,” Veda said.

  “Yes, that’s true. What else?”

  “Orcs rule the surface,” Galen said.

  Wa’s mouth quirked. “After a fashion. Follow me, both of you.”

  She led them through the dome, the others watching their passage through and into a smaller tunnel. There, Wa lifted a second curtain, ushered them into a small, dark room where she instructed them to sit on a stone outcropping formed like a bench into the wall.

  Once all three were inside, there was a scrape and a flare of light came over Wa’s face. “What magic is still in me I can use to show you.” She she set the candle on the table at the room’s center, which set a large teardrop of light on the far wall.

  Wa pulled something from her pocket, uncupped her hand before her face. A green powder lay her palm. When she blew, the powder lifted, sailed through the light. Veda’s hand went to her mouth as images formed.

  “Before the first human incursion,” Wa began, “we lived in the forest. We didn’t know time or age, and we didn’t know malice.”

  In the light, the powder shaped itself into a village in the branches. The elves moved among the trees, green powder trailing their fearless steps. They stood tall, lithe, contemplative. Veda imagined Wanath herself leant over the railing, her eyes on the canopy.

  “In that timelessness, you humans appeared, and you were treacherous.” Red powder blew in from Wa’s hand. This mingled with the green with ease, curiosity. Here was a boy climbing a tree, and here he was shaking Wanath’s hand. Here he was sleeping in their village, and here he was sneaking through it, pushing an elf right to the forest floor.

  “You killed one of us, and then one became many.” The powder reshaped to a canvas, green and red commingling. After a moment, the two colors set into a vibration, holding together with unease until the tremors grew so strong, so fast that the entire picture exploded in red.

  “If we wanted to survive, we had to change,” Wa said. The familiar curve and string of a bow lifted from the wall. It reshaped into a sword, an axe, trees falling with the sounds of mourners to the forest floor. Here knelt a green elf, a heart of red beating inside him, as he laid a human to the ground with his arrow.

  “We began to understand the duality in every creature. What is good, and what is not. What is life, and what is death. But we didn’t understand it well enough. Our kind was split into two halves.”

  The elf with the red heart stood over the human, and the beating organ in his chest grew, grew until his body sundered, red and green powder scattered. In his place stood two creatures: the red—an orc, tall, full of vigor and fury—and the green—the elf, now deprived of those things, feeble and stooped. The elf took shuffling steps, fleeing ahead of the orc.

  “To preserve our better halves, we took ourselves underground,” Wa said. “And that’s where you come in, empath.”

  Wa blew the green and red from the air, tossed up a new purple grain that shimmered, fell like rain. “Victory isn’t always sundering an orc in twain. In our world, it’s piecing the two halves together again.”

  She flicked her hand, encouraging the purple powder in a helix around her fingers until a face emerged from the tornadic swell. For a moment Veda saw a young, vital Wanath, her naïveté aged to wisdom, her reckless energy tamed by new understanding.

  Wanath hung in the air a moment, and both humans were captivated. Then Wa swept her fingers through the portrait, and Wanath scattered like sand. The illusion disappeared, and they were left with the empty canvas, the flickering candle.

  “Wa,” Veda said, “what will happen if we destroy the orcs?”

  Wa’s fingers snapped, splayed out. “You know what, Miss Red. Two days ago, twelve of us disappeared. Six today. Twenty remain.”

  Veda’s eyes met Galen’s. She knew his look well enough now to see that he was decided. “How do we fix it?”

  Wa laughed, blew out the candle. “You’re the first humans to make it beyond the pit trap. I haven’t got answers for you—only history. Come.”

  She led them back into the dome, where Wa pointed to the ceiling. “Can you look up now, humans?”

  Veda lifted her face. The top of the dome was a compass, the needle pointing down toward them like a pendulum. “This spot right here is where the splitting occurred. Even now the orcs, dumb and thoughtless, are drawn to it, hew the trees to make their stronghold above us.”

  “It’s the north pole of this world,” Veda whispered. “Wa, what’s at the other end?” She pointed to the southernmost point of the map.

  “That,” Wa said, lifting a tremulous finger, “is the site of the old village. It’s largely hidden—only one who perceives can find it, in the same way you found our cave. And the orcs dare not go near it.”

  “Why?” Veda asked.

  “If you want to know, it’s where the first elf was killed. He was my husband—first husband, before old Lei—and I cursed the spot with all my crying. Unintentional, but it ended up so awful cursed that any orc who went near it would lose his insides out both ends within half a day. Can’t say I regret it happened that way.”

  “And what about humans? Are we susceptible to the curse?” Galen asked.

 
Wa lifted her shoulders. “Care to find out, little knight?”

  “Yes,” Galen said, and Veda lowered her chin, eyes on him. His pitch was low, final, echoed through the dome. “I care.”

  They had their fill of the stew with the other elves around. Lei played a lute, and the song sounded so strange and restful that it left Veda feeling tired and heartsick at once. Beside her, Wa sat cross-legged, the milky eyes fixed on Lei. She leaned close. “You should have seen him when he still had the orc half in him.”

  Veda’s cheeks went warm. “Do you love him as much as your first husband?”

  “Oh, girl,” Wa’s hand swiped through the air. “None of that matters. I love him here and now, which is all you and I have. Don’t ask such questions—they bring nothing but worry.”

  And Wa’s blind eyes went back to Lei at the lute as though she could see him. After a time, they closed, and Veda understood that the old elf was just as present as any of them—the other elves, Galen, even Veda herself—even with four senses. Next to Wa, she almost missed her blindness, coveted it.

  When night came, Veda was provided a little room with a curtain and the softest, oldest cloth she’d ever set her head on. It smelled of the elves, and as she stared at the candle’s teardrop on the ledge above her, she thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be integrated into a game. Here she could see, here she was an empath—whatever such a thing was.

  One who perceives, Wa had said.

  The flashbulb vision. She hadn’t seen the splitting, exactly, but she had felt the pain of it. In a moment, she understood Lei’s singular experience: the fear, the anger, the sadness. She felt what he felt with the same acuteness as he’d felt it. And then she was remembering how the elves had looked at her, as though she were special. And she felt tears because she had spent her whole life knowing she was not special, not remarkable at anything.

  And that, she knew in retrospect, was a hard belief to carry with you.

  Eleven

  Veda dreamed of color. This time, yellow was yellow. Green was green. Red was red. She’d never had such a dream—a visual one—and she had the lucid thought that she would like to stay by the river whose iced bank she sat on, to keep staring over the misted waterfall. Around her, winter spread across the white marble of the world. What a stark and beautiful place, dangerous and delicious.

  She woke when Wa pressed her face through the curtain and chided her for leaving the candle lit all night. When Veda sat up, the wax had spidered over the stone. Here, time went slow and fast all at once.

  Inside the dome, Wa pressed her hands deep into a stone chest. “You’ll go back the way you came,” she said. “No shortcuts here. It’s easier this way, in the safety of the tunnels. Especially when you have this.” And she lifted a gem from the chest, turned it in her fingers so the green shone in the torchlight.

  When she came to Veda, the elf gestured for the cracked staff at her side. Wa lifted the length of it with ease, clucked. “It’s an old thing, but you and I both know old things can still be useful.” She winked at Veda.

  Wa pressed the bottom of the staff into the ground, cupped her hand atop it with the gem at the center. She closed her eyes, her lips moving to form whispered words. At once the old piece of wood responded, the cracked length mending, fitting together, the wood’s grain darkening to a rich and gleaming hue. Tendrils emerged up the length of the staff to wrap around the gem that the elf had now uncovered.

  “And there it is,” she said, rapping the wood on the ground in front of Veda. There was the staff, newly adorned, the green crystal shimmering through the enfolding branches.

  Veda accepted it, and in her interface it had a new name:

  ITEM: Wa’s Gift

  QUALITY: Rare

  ATK/DLY: 5-6/2.5 secs

  STATS: +5 to wisdom

  EFFECTS: Provides a dim light source. Once every twelve hours, you may activate a healing or damage spell (your choice) that drains 100% of your mana. If no target is selected for the spell, it will become a flare.

  “Choices, Veda,” Wa said, retrieving a shoulder strap from the chest that she passed over as well, “you always have choices.” She turned to Galen. “And I guess you’re expecting something too, little knight?”

  Galen shook his head, averting his eyes. “No—”

  “Well, chin up. You’re getting something.” Lei emerged from another room with a small bucket. “He fancies himself a painter, you see,” Wa explained, as the old elf beckoned for Galen’s shield.

  Galen removed the large kite shield from his back and set it against the wall. Lei tugged at the arrows sunk into the front, wringing them free and setting them on the ground. He placed the bucket on the stone floor, removed a brush with fine hairs swirled to a point. The tip was pearled in forest green paint.

  Lei dabbed the paint on the bucket, lifted it to the canvas. He began at the spot where one of the arrows had pierced, swirling the paint in a circle. As he did so, the wood healed. He drew the brush up and down, forming a gradual line. Out of it sprung branches, leaves. Within a few minutes, the kite shield glowed golden with the tree that covered it, and then the paint settled.

  Lei nodded, put his paint and brush aside. He struggled to lift the shield, and Galen helped him. “Protect those precious to you, knight,” he said.

  And Veda knew it had become a very special shield indeed.

  The old elf had just lifted his bucket when his eyes went wide, and one hand went to the center of his chest. The bucket slipped from his hand, green paint splattering across the stone. He crumpled just as fast, dropping to the ground. Veda darted to her knees, but Lei had already commenced dissolving into his clothes; by the time she reached for his hand, he was hardly more than the pile of rags he’d worn. Veda felt only the hint of the warm fingers that had touched her own, told the long story of the elves’ splitting, before they were green powder risen into the air, a single tendril lifting toward the ceiling.

  Wa let out a horrid wail. She came forward, her hands raising to grasp what she could of the powder. Most of it slipped past, evaporated into the compass above. She opened her palms, pressing the particles between her fingers. And finally Wa lowered herself to one knee and then the other, and gathered up the clothes to her face. “They’ve done him,” she said, muffled. “They’ve done him.”

  “What’s happened?” Veda asked, stooping to Wa’s side. The other elves had emerged now, and they let moans so sonorous, so beautiful that Veda’s chest squeezed tight.

  “You know what, Miss Red,” Wa whispered, “you know what.”

  And she did know: the humans had slain Wen, Lei’s other half.

  Wa raised her face, set her hand on Veda’s shoulders. “If you’re going, you should go now.”

  The prompt finally appeared in Veda’s interface:

  QUEST AVAILABLE: Make Them Whole. Wa has tasked you with saving the elves and the orcs by venturing to the old elvish village in the south. Beware: the village bears a great curse.

  REWARD: Revealed upon completion.

  ACCEPT? Y/N.

  “Yes,” Veda said, “I’ll go now.” She stood, slinging the shoulder strap crossbody and slotting Wa’s Gift onto her back.

  Galen, who had been staring at the paint pooled like blood, now nodded. He lifted the kite shield and strapped it to his shoulders. “We,” he corrected. “We will go now.”

  They emerged from the cave into late afternoon. Veda’s perception had risen to level 5, and they had been able to navigate their way back at a jog. They had even taken the pit trap with ease. And both had gained +1 to stamina.

  The forest was quiet, serene. Even so, Veda felt the urge to return to the tunnels, the elves, the safety of the dome.

  “It won’t be far,” Galen said. “If we’re in the southwest quadrant, it should only be about twenty minutes to the village—if it’s there.”

  “It’s there,” Veda said, starting along the map’s edge. It was a breeze on her face, pushing her hair back. “The
elves are capable of many things, but that half of them couldn’t lie.”

  They walked in silence, pushing their endurance. The moss had helped, and even chewing it raw seemed to provide a little benefit. But they had still run a long distance to get above ground.

  “Veda,” Galen said, “what did they mean by empath?”

  “I don’t...think through my eyes. When Lei touched my hand, I could feel—not see, but feel—his memories.”

  “You could feel them?”

  “Yes. It’s like when you think back on something that really affected you. There’s the visual component, right? But how much of the memory is what you saw?”

  He was silent, and by the angle of his face she knew he was recalling something specific, something palpable. “I think I understand,” he said. “But how many times have you touched someone’s hand and been able to do that?”

  She shook her head. “Never. But…I don’t think with my eyes in life, either. I can’t even use them.”

  “Sicora is like that—she picks up on our unique traits, incorporates them into the game.”

  “Did Sicora do that with you?”

  “Sort of. I always played a rogue before I came to this game. Here, I was a guardian before I even knew the class existed.”

  “What about Prairie?” she started to ask, but Veda couldn’t continue; her will had been sapped. Above, the canopy thatched so tight she couldn’t see a bit of sky. And before them the forest sat like pitch, divided between here and there by a shift into darkness.

  Beside her, Galen had gone grave. There was no evidence of a village—only of what was left, the intangible. It hung in the plasticine air, issued from the grass, twisted the trees into stooped and uncommon shapes. And Veda’s entire body felt enfeebled, her feet responding with surly half-steps.

  “I can go alone,” she whispered. It took every scrap of will to say.

  “No,” he said. His fingers tapped the shield over his shoulder. “You can’t.”

  So they went together, and that was how they came upon the voice. The voice was light. The voice was honey. The voice was silverfish in Veda’s eyes. “Hello, little fool,” the voice said.