by Alex Bobl
The tall angular donjon made of large slabs of stone towered before him. A squawk came from above. Mechanically Attila reached for his sword, then swore under his breath. This was Bestia, a harpy that lived alone in her nest on top of the donjon. She was as mad as a bat. Harpies were, normally, but this one had a couple of screws seriously loose. Every time someone approached the center of the fortress she would scream her head off warning the tavern's guards about a new visitor and showering him with her fossilized feces. Although she'd never actually hit anyone with it.
The breach in the donjon wall faced north, offering access to the tavern. Attila was approaching it from the west. Instead of entering the building, he stole a look around and turned toward a tall copse of bushes. He climbed inside and crouched on the ground. Then he opened the Book and reached for the God's Eye in his belt bag.
No player was ever without his Book. You couldn't lose, sell, steal or give it away. The Book's appearance differed depending on your level. At first it was little more than a miserable-looking journal bound in cheap leather, but as you progressed through levels, it transformed into a precious manuscript inlaid with precious gems. You could leaf through it; alternatively, you could transfer your interface onto its cover. As a level 29 Ranger, Attila owned a beautiful Book bound in embossed morocco leather and topped with a fancy frame surrounding the magic screen. Instead of all the buttons and the joy stick he had four oblong crystals, one in each corner of the Book: white, blue, green and black. You could press them, sinking them into the soft leather, and also turn them knob-like... overall, this was an excellent thing available to everyone level 20 and above. It had cost Attila two hundred gold but it was worth every penny.
He pressed the white crystal, then turned the green one. The bag on his belt twitched. The silver disk of God's Eye soared into the sky, clicking; it splayed its arms out, unfolding into a steel six-pointed star. An open eye glowed in its center, its black pupil floating in a hemispherical pool of mercury. Its arms dripped magical runes that slowly melted in the air.
The artifact stopped about fifty feet above the ground. Attila pressed the white crystal slightly, activating its stealth mode. The star streamed charges of lightning, dematerializing. It wasn't a hundred percent invisible but if you didn't know it was there you'd be hard pressed to find it.
He reached into the bag again, producing his pride and joy: a pair of large copper goggles complete with a leather strap. Attila had modeled them after the Goggles of Underground Gloom which he'd bought from a dwarf player who'd managed to come back from the Steam Tunnels alive and in one piece. The goggles allowed you to move in the dark dungeon without a torch or other source of light. But these ones, modified by Attila, also served a new purpose.
Attila put the goggles on and secured the strap around his head. He turned the black crystal on the book cover. A small round window appeared in the goggles' left lens. He turned the blue crystal slightly and the Eye in the sky rotated, following its movement.
The little round lens blinked. Overlapping the view around, it offered a bird's eye picture of the area. Bestia soared over the donjon, oblivious to God's Eye watching her. Ruins bared their grinning stumps of walls from the sea of greenery. Slowly God's Eye began to rotate, offering a panoramic view.
So, what did we have here? The Eye offered a view of the donjon's flat roof complete with Bestia's nest made of a paraphernalia of twigs, bones and withered pelts of small forest creatures. Then she was back, landing and taking her place in the nest. Harpies were sharp-fanged creatures dressed in scruffy tunics made of animal pelts. They had female bodies, emaciated arms and a pair of scraggly skeletal wings on their backs. Harpies were known for their nasty and quarrelsome character, aggressive with newbs and cowardly with established gamers.
Bestia crouched in her nest and froze, staring into space. Attila couldn't see her face from above but he could well imagine it, spiteful and dumb. Despite the fact that harpies walked around half-naked, they were about as sexy as a geriatric frog.
He motioned the Eye further on and squinted, focusing on a hole in the wall overgrown with brambles. This was the entrance to the Tavern.
A man clambered out and stood up, looking about himself. He wore a checkered bandana, a gray and green hunter's jacket and a tartan kilt. A Highlander, oh right.
The man carried a leather backpack. In one hand he held a short spear. And if Attila lowered the Eye slightly and looked at him from a different angle... oh, yes. Now he could see the man's short dark beard and his bushy eyebrows. His powerful legs were stuck into a pair of fur boots.
The Highlander shrugged and began forcing his way through the bushes. Luckily, he seemed to be heading in the opposite direction from the portal station. Attila wasn't exactly looking forward to meeting the guy face to face.
In any case, it looked like the Eye was working. True, it wasn't exactly legal. It could easily get him collared by the legionnaires: the players hired by the Admins to perform police functions. But now the only thing left was to get paid for it.
Attila stood up. The whole transaction was a piece of cake. He had the goods; his customer was now waiting for him in the tavern, prepared to part with a hefty sum of money. So why did he have this bad feeling? He seemed to sense someone's stare focused on his back.
Attila changed the Eye's settings so that it hovered nearby the donjon, rotating slowly. The image in his goggles and on the cover of the Book also began to rotate. Good. Let it stay there and scan the area. This wasn't some Mickey Mouse business. Attila was playing big time. Security was key.
He shut down the Eye view and began walking around the donjon, keeping an eye on the image in his goggles. Immediately he stumbled into some gelatinous goo. The fabric of reality around him thickened, rippled with interference. Then it all ended. An aberration? There was no record of anyone encountering them so close to the tavern. A glitch? Most likely. Never mind. It didn't seem to have affected anything. Time to move on.
He climbed through the narrow hole and found himself in a room with a door watched by two NPC guards. A torch burned brightly. One of the guards was sitting on an upended bucket; the other was leaning against the wall. Whoever entered the room, their modus operandi didn't change: the one on the bucket raised his loaded crossbow, aiming it at the guest, while the other laid his hand on his broadsword and demanded,
"Who the hell are you? What's your business?"
"Need a drink," Attila dropped as he walked through the door.
"Leave your weapons over there!" the guard barked at his back.
Attila went down a staircase which was lit by another torch stuck into an enormous skull that sat on one of the steps. Below, a copper-lined door led into the tavern. Joel the guard stirred next to the shelves laden with various weapons. He was an NPC too.
"Lay your weapons onto the shelf!" he commanded.
You couldn't enter the tavern while carrying weapons in any shape or form. The door just wouldn't open. Every game had to have safe locations like this.
Attila ran a nonchalant hand across his chest, removing his sword and the shield, then unbuckled his knife and laid it onto the shelf. Joel watched over him, playing with his broadsword. The only thing Attila had kept was a large iron medallion on his neck in the shape of a two-pronged fork. Attila had been allowed through while carrying it hundreds of times before; the game security invariably failed to detect it. And still he breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened before him.
The tavern was lit by oil lamps hanging from hooks. Two patrons were engrossed in a game of cards at the nearest table; they turned their heads for a look and immediately lost all interest in him. A gaunt stooping Elf nursed his mug on a bar stool; he looked around, saw him and reached for his backpack lying on the spare stool next to him, moving it onto his lap.
Two more men were having dinner at the other end of the room next to the door that led to the castle's dungeons. The one that was facing him raised his head, meeting Attila's stare; t
hen he looked back down at his plateful of meat stew. His friend kept rattling his spoon against his own bowl gulping his food down greedily, his ears moving with the effort.
Attila nodded to the landlord behind the bar. His name was Barb — and he was actually a unicorn. Or rather, an animal humanoid. His body was perfectly human, ending in a horse-like neck and head topped with a long horn. A long time ago, when Attila had still been learning the local lay of the land, someone had told him Barb's story. His name was indeed Barb: a seedy vendor dealing in some questionable goods who one day had the misfortune to rip off a Barbarian Shaman by selling him some run-of-the mill deer horns in place of the unique Unicorn horns famous for their magic properties. The shaman — who happened to be a worshipper of the Beast God — saw right through his little scheme and cursed the landlord, turning him into his current shape. After that, no one wanted to deal with him so he opened the tavern instead.
Upon seeing Attila, the landlord shook his mane and neighed curtly, motioning him to enter. Attila found it funny that he could both speak and neigh like a proper unicorn.
Finally Attila saw his customer.
A large bearded half-orc clad in a shiny bulbous cuirass (he'd identified himself as Beast at their initial RV) was sitting at a table not far from the bar. In front of him lay his helmet adorned with a picture of a fanged orc skull and crossbones. It was tacky as hell but it did catch your eye. An enormous mace lay on the table next to it.
The half-orc raised his huge loglike arm, motioning Attila to approach. He bared his yellow fangs in a grin, then raised his beer mug by way of greeting him.
Attila took a seat at the table next to him. The half-orc had pale-blue skin. A scar ran across his temple. His long beard was tied in a knot at the end; as for his hair, it was unusually thick, resembling a nest of little snakes. A bowl of pickles stood on the table next to a second mug. Beast reached out and filled it from a keg.
"Cheers, man! May the Canyon be good to us!"
Attila reached for the mug and drank the toast. His client's Adam's apple twitched as he poured the beer down his neck. Then he grunted, pounding his nearly-empty mug onto the table. Attila barely touched his drink.
"So? Have you got it?" Beast craned his powerful neck toward him. His voice sounded impressively husky but still Attila thought he could detect a sour note. The player must have been young — most likely using a voice changer attached to a microphone to sound older.
Beast cast a furtive glance around and leaned toward Attila. His dark orcish eyes glistened as he repeated,
"So, you got it? Show me. Can't wait."
His boyish intonation didn't match his militant stance. When an enormous bearded hulk of a half-orc complete with scars, weathered skin and fat greedy lips begins to fidget and pull faces, it admittedly looks funny.
"Relax," Attila said. "Calm down, man. You're attracting attention. You sure you got the money?"
"Where's my cheat?" Beast raised his voice.
Attila cast a worried look around. "Put the voice down, you idiot!" he hissed.
Beast shrunk his head into his shoulders. "Why?" Not receiving an answer, he sat up straight again. "Who do you think you are?"
Jesus. Attila heaved a sigh. "The Eye is hovering over the donjon's roof," he said. "It's transmitting the images here," he reached into his bag for the Book and laid it on the table. "Wait, I'm gonna turn it on now. Can you see? You can control it via these crystals. Here, try it."
Continuing to explain, he pushed the Book toward Beast who immediately began pressing and turning the knobs, open-mouthed with the effort. When the image in the frame obeyed his actions commanding the Eye to move, he beamed like a little boy.
Yes. This was a boy. He must have stolen the money from his parents. Having said that, some of these kids were quite capable of earning large sums by gaming, much more than their dad could bring home by busting his hump on some assembly line. Attila kept explaining the details while casting occasional glances at the helmet. What a stupid logo.
The bad foreboding arose in him again. He cast an inconspicuous look around. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to them. Everything was business as usual. And still-
The landlord and the hunched-up Elf by the bar were talking in low voices. The Elf finished his mug in one swig and cast a nonchalant glance at Beast and Attila.
Attila didn't like it. Then again, there was nothing suspicious about the man. It wasn't even the patrons that worried him, it was the tavern itself. There was something wrong about the whole setup. What could that be? He didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
"Cool," Beast mumbled, playing with the Eye. The image on the book cover kept rotating. The picture in Attila's left goggle lens mirrored its movement. He could see the room and he could also see the overlapping view of the ruins outside, the bushes and the donjon.
Beast had found Attila via one of his old clients. He'd contracted him to make the Eye: an absolutely indispensable thing for every Pioneer, whether alone or in a group. A cheat like that could seriously improve your chances of survival in the Dead Canyon. The problem was, it wasn't exactly legal. The emphasis being on "exactly". The truth was, the Admins had chosen to close their eyes to the players' use of cheats which admittedly added to the game's appeal. On the other hand, they tended to unsettle the game's balance which was why cheat builders were prosecuted, arrested and heavily fined.
Admins didn't bother to arrest them themselves, though. They had specially hired players to do just that. Called Legionnaires, they too were obliged to follow the game's rules just like everybody else. Well, almost. The constant standoff between the legionnaires and cheat masters that often resulted in major confrontations were Gryad's special feature: a fun attraction which added to the game's excitement.
Attila frowned. There was one other strange thing about the tavern. It was nearly empty. Normally, the Unicorn was packed. He'd never seen even half of its tables empty; now virtually all of them were deserted.
"I'll take it," Beast announced.
"Quiet, you," Attila hissed. "What's wrong with you, man? Can't you keep your voice down? It's five and a half grand."
Beast's eyes opened wide with indignation. "You said it was four!"
"I had to buy some native software. Couldn't get any hacked ones. Didn't I warn you that the price might go up? I did. So if you want it, you'd better pay now."
Attila pulled the Book closer and closed the Eye's view on the cover, opening his payment provider instead. Beast stared at him, mouthing something.
Attila knew this old salesmen's trick. You had to hand the goods over to the client so that he could hold it, touch it and feel that it was already as good as his. Then you took it back from him. Subconsciously the client would already regard the item as his own and would be much more prone to buy something he otherwise wouldn't have. So now Attila was sure this Beast wasn't going to reconsider.
He was desperate, too desperate to scruple about such tricks. Besides, he'd indeed gone over his budget while working on the Eye. A visit from some shady debt collectors was the last thing his wheelchair-bound body needed. He had to raise the money today by hook or by crook.
Beast sniffed unhappily.
"Have you ever used the in-game banking system?" Attila asked.
"Of course I have. Who do you think I am?"
"I don't know, do I? I'm not talking about shopping. I mean a direct transfer between accounts."
"I know what you mean."
"So send it, then. Or are you not taking it? I'll be off, then," Attila reached for the Book. "It's not a problem to find another customer for this."
"I am taking it!" Beast wheezed. Stealing a look around, he reached for his backpack that lay on the bench next to him. He rummaged through it for his own Book and placed it on the table. It looked truly Barbaric with its rough leather cover, all scratched and dented. Instead of crystals, he had four skulls mounted in the cover's four corners. The screen was framed with a
pattern of bones.
"Don't look," Beast said, leaning over his Book and covering it with his elbow. "I need to enter the password."
Attila, however, looked hard — but not at the Book. He was peering at the outside view that the Eye was sending to his goggle lens, watching five legionnaires circle the donjon. They were clad in light knee-length chainmail shirts with an emerald sheen. Their signature helmets were topped with birdlike beaks. The legionnaires were armed with bastard swords which they all wore whenever they weren't undercover. They never used shields, relying on their powerful arm bracers with which they could parry the fiercest of slashing blows.
They hurried through the brambles toward the donjon. Were they just patrolling the area? Or were they on a manhunt?
Slowly Attila turned his head and looked at Beast. The understanding came too late.
Beast glared back at him. "Quit staring! I don't need no password spies!"
Attila cast a quick glance at the two men by the back door. Why had they chosen that particular table? And the card players by the front entrance, weren't they sitting there to cut off all possible escape routes? And this Beast... he was trying too hard pretending to be an unskilled noob.
Gosh. This was a setup.
They'd been waiting for him. Wanted to catch him red-handed. He, Attila, had given the RV details to his customer who was in fact an undercover legionnaire. This wasn't the real Tavern: the NPCs had lured him into its copy created specifically for the purpose of entrapping him. What was that spell called — Smoke and Mirrors? A powerful piece of magic and prohibitively expensive, too. To cast it yourself you had to be a level 80 wizard which was something only Elven wizards — and maybe the Drow too — could afford with their racial magic bonus. And the gelatinous goo he'd walked in as he tried to enter the donjon was no glitch, either. By disturbing it, he'd triggered the trap.
The Elf by the bar stood up. The landlord leaned over him, explaining something while casting a big horsey eye at the table where Attila and Beast were sitting.
