by Kyle Vauss
“Is that him?” said Gabber.
I nodded. “Crawford’s here to join the party.”
Sac Mother squelched across the ground toward us, and the forgotten ones edged closer. I looked around. There had to be something we could do. Somewhere we could go. But I couldn’t see anything.
“Just try to carve a path to the tunnel,” I said.
I knew it was useless, but I’d go down fighting. I pictured myself explaining to the buyer that his shadow walker had one death listed on the account. He wouldn’t be happy.
“It’s been nice knowing you,” said Gabber, gulping. “Thanks. I know you’re helping me for the reward, but thanks all the same.”
Against all my instincts, I couldn’t help but feel sad that this was the last time I’d see him. I would die, and in a few hours I would respawn. This was the end for Gabber, though. I reached out and put my arm around him.
The forgotten ones moved closer now, trying to hem us in toward the Sac Mother who waited with her mouth open. I dropped the torch, gripped my sword, and got ready to go down in a blaze of glory.
Just as the first creature reached me and I lifted my sword, flames shot through the cavern. They filled the floor, spreading through the air and heating up everything around us. Instinctively, I pulled Gabber toward me and spread my robe around him. I crouched down to protect him from the flames.
The forgotten ones screamed around us. I heard the Sac Mother cry out as the flames licked over her skin. The sound of the blaze was deafening, and I could feel the heat on my skin.
When the screaming stopped and the flames died, I stood up. Thankfully, the flames hadn’t touched Gabber.
“She’s not dead,” said a voice. It was old and gravelly.
I heard a squelch behind me, and I knew that the Sac Mother had survived the blaze. I didn’t turn to look.
Instead, I stared at the figure in front of us. It was a man. He was taller than me, and he had a long gray beard. In his hand was a knobbed staff.
“Don’t dilly-dally,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”
With that, the man turned and ran through a tunnel to the north. As Sac Mother edged closer to us, we followed him into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty
“Who’s the little imp?” said the wizard as we ran.
The man’s tag read Dagnor Brute, which was a strange name for a wizard character. It sounded rougher than I expected, since most people who played as wizards named themselves things like Halan the Wise or Bandal the Grey. There was something weird about him.
The way he carried himself seemed confident at first, from the way he held his shoulders, to the eye contact he made when he talked to me. Looking closer, I began to feel it was just an act. Sometimes his shoulders would drop into a slouch, and it’d be minutes before Dagnor realized and corrected them. His eye contact was too strong, if anything. People who were naturally confident made eye contact sparingly, whereas Dagnor’s was intense.
“You’re not so hot yourself,” said Gabber.
We sprinted down the series of tunnels. For now, we had an unspoken pact that we just needed to advance north. We had to put some distance between us and the Sac Mother. The wizard didn’t know about Crawford, and I hadn’t seen fit to fill him in yet. I still didn’t trust him.
I watched the wizard in front of us, and I realized something. His body, although hidden by a robe, was much more muscled than you’d expect for a practitioner of magic. In character creation you could alter your physique in certain ways, but your class set limits on you. You couldn’t have a twenty-two-stone thief, nor a stick-thin barbarian.
I leaned in close to Gabber. “Something’s not right about this guy,” I said.
Sure enough, after thirty minutes of sprinting, Dagnor tripped over a rock. He put his hand out against the wall to steady himself but as he did, something curious happened.
His beard fell off. I reached down and picked it up. The grey strands felt rough against my fingers.
Dagnor snatched it off me, then turned away. When he looked back at me the beard was in place again.
“It’s a little lop-sided,” said Gabber.
Dagnor fixed it a little. “How about now?”
I shook my head. “More to the left.”
He moved it again. “Now?”
“To the right,” said Gabber.
“Fiddlesticks,” said the wizard. He grabbed the beard and tore it off his face, then threw it on the floor.
Fiddlesticks? What kind of person said things like that? It occurred to me that Dagnor was trying to talk the way he imagined a wizard would. Only, his vocabulary was so wrong that it was laughable.
“I’m the last person to open up discussions about the past,” I said. “We’ve all got secrets. But I think you’ll agree this deserves an explanation.”
“Yeah,” said Gabber. “Spill it. What’s with the face toupee?”
Dagnor leaned slouched against the wall. He moved his head forward an inch, then hit it back against the wall. It must have hurt.
“There’s no point pretending,” he said. He pinched his wizard robes as if to display them to us. “I bought this from a trader in Hunner Dam. Had to sell him my broadsword.”
“Wizards can’t use swords,” I said. “You can do a little melee damage with your staff, but you can’t swing a blade.”
“True, a wizard can’t,” said Dagnor. “But a bloody barbarian can, can’t he?”
I knew something was off about him, but this caught me by surprise. “You’re a barbarian?”
He nodded. “And I was a good one. But I hated it. When I hit level 5 and earned the Barbarian’s Brute Strike, I realized it wasn’t the class for me. I wanted to be a wizard. I shrugged it off, thinking it was a phase. Before I knew it, I was level 16 and I still wanted to be a wizard.”
“Why not just create a new character?” I said.
“I’ve invested so much time playing as Dagnor that I can’t bear to leave him.”
“So start a new character as a wizard and name it Dagnor.”
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the same. It’s like saying to someone who’s dog has died ‘Don’t worry. Just buy a new dog and give it the same name.’”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “It’s just a character. Why’s it so special?”
“I don’t have much outside of Infarna,” said Dagnor. “Sounds stupid, but it’s true. But here, I make friends, do quests. This was the character I started with and…I don’t know…it just feels special to me.”
“That spell wasn’t half bad,” said Gabber. “It sorted the Sac Mother for a while.”
“I cashed in all my swords. I bought robes and a fake beard. But I’m a fraud.”
He looked like he wouldn’t move until he’d cheered up, so I needed to perk him up a little. “What about the spell? There was nothing fake about that,” I said.
Dagnor reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a bundle of papers. “Spell scrolls,” he said. “Just spell scrolls that I bought. Anyone can use them. Even the little imp. I’m a fake.”
“So, what are you doing down here?” I asked.
Dagnor stood up. “There’s an NPC in Grey Eden who can do a class change. It costs more than I’ve ever earned in-game, but he can do it. I heard that there’s some rare loot down here, so I thought I’d come down and try my luck. So far, though, I haven’t found anything but the Sac Mother. And then you dullards.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You opened the locked door, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “The map showed it as a shortcut.”
“Here’s a tip,” said Dagnor. “If you see a locked door, don’t open it. There’s a reason it's locked.”
“Here’s another tip,” answered Gabber. “If you want your beard to stay on, buy better glue.”
Dagnor looked sad. “Does it look fake?” he said, ignoring Gabber and staring at me.
I didn’t want to lie to him, but he j
ust seemed so miserable. “It looks great,” I said. “Like a proper wizard.”
Dagnor stroked the ends of his beard. “Thanks.”
Gabber shifted his bag on his back. For such a small creature, he didn’t seem to have a problem with the weight. He was stronger than he looked.
“The clan never understood humans. You’re all obsessed with how you look.”
“Says the goblin in the frilly shirt,” I answered.
“Well, I’m different. Because of my….affliction. The older I got, the more obsessed I was with human culture, even if it alienated me from everyone else. I just couldn’t get enough of you guys. I was desperate to learn everything I could. I used to read every human book I could get hold of, but it wasn’t enough.”
Dagnor stared at Gabber. I could tell he was trying to process the idea of a talking Goblin NPC. Welcome to the club, buddy, I thought. Even after my travels with him, I still had to question my sanity when I heard Gabber launch into a story about something he’d learned.
“Eventually, I decided to reach out to someone,” said Gabber. “There were some human explorers five miles east of the village. Our scouts had trailed them. Father ordered them to hold off on attacking, since it seemed they’d be leaving.
“I snuck out of the village and wandered across the plains until I found the humans. I walked up to them and tried to look as friendly as I could. I had some stuff with me to give to them. Some little gifts of goblin culture.”
“What happened?” I said.
“I got an arrow in my backside. If I hadn’t have run so quickly, I’d have been stuck on a spit above their fire. After that, I learned that humans aren’t so good after all.”
“How did you the pair of you end up travelling together?” asked Dagnor.
Gabber smiled. “This guy’s different. He’s one of the good ones. He’s not like the others.”
We walked through the tunnels for the next few hours. Since we were on the shortcut route, the cavern exit was only four hours away. I would be glad to get out of there. I’d never paid much attention to the weather in Infarna, but I’d have given anything to feel the glow of the sun on my skin.
Every so often we stopped and listened, but we didn’t hear the forgotten ones. Even better, there was no sign of the Sac Mother. I was sure I could hear Crawford somewhere in the tunnels behind us. I didn’t know if it was just my ears playing tricks on me.
“For all we know,” said Gabber, “The Sac Mother got him.”
I shook my head. “Crawford’s too good for that. He’ll have gotten around her.”
As if in answer, I heard footsteps behind us. Pattering sound on the floor, picking up in pace as they got closer.
I turned to see two of Crawford’s hunting neeves pounding down the tunnel. Their eyes were fixed on us, and their open jaws showed rows of teeth.
“If they’re here, Crawford won’t be far behind,” I said. “We need to get moving before the rest of his neeves get here.”
“They’re too fast for us,” said Gabber. “And the pretend-wizard here doesn’t look like he can run.”
“Kill these two,” I said. “And then we go.”
As the two neeves got nearer, they slowed down. They prowled forward, taking careful steps as if they were lions closing in on a pack of gazelles. I thought about using one of my cantrips, but I knew I needed to save them. I was sure we hadn’t seen the end of the Sac Mother yet.
One of the neeves leapt at me. It growled midair. Its claws were raised, ready to tear my flesh.
I held my sword in front of me, and there was a screeching sound as the neeves claws scratched down the steel. I stepped back and thrust with my blade but I was too slow, and the neeve had already moved away.
It came at me from the side this time, then sank its teeth into me. I felt a searing pain on my waist, and my health bar fell. I slashed out with my sword but barely scratched it, and the neeve’s health didn’t show any ill effects from my attack.
“Circle around it and try for a weak spot,” I told Gabber. “I’ll keep it busy.”
Given the damage the neeve had done to me, I guessed that I could take 4 or 5 attacks before my health gave way completely. If there was only one to deal with that would have been enough, but the second neeve was stalking toward us.
Dagnor pulled a spell scroll from his inventory. He stared with a look of intense concentration, as if he struggled with the words.
“Tansen il Fagnus, byelium,” he said, starting to read.
Nothing happened. The neeve closest to me sank back onto its hind legs, ready to pounce. This was the problem with spell scrolls. Since they could be used by non-magic classes, the devs had made it so that you had to read the scrolls before the effect was cast. It was their way of saying ‘if you wanted to be a magic user, you should have picked a magic class.’
Gabber ran up to Dagnor and snatched the scroll from him. “It’s tansor il Hahbus,” he corrected. “Can’t you read?”
Dagnor grunted. “My barbarian intelligence makes it difficult. It’s like I can see the words, but when I come to say them, my mind gets messed up.”
“Leave it to me, then. And later, I’ll teach you how to read.”
As the neeve leapt at me, Gabber read the scroll. A blinding flash of blue light surged from it. It travelled across the cavern, hitting the neeve and freezing it mid-leap.
“It’s a paralysis scroll,” said Dagnor. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it.”
Taking the opportunity, I walked up to the frozen neeve and hacked at it with my sword. I grunted as I swiped away at its health. A few slashes later, and the neeve died, and I was rewarded with the tinging sound of EXP.
“Just one more,” I said.
I readied my sword as the last neeve walked toward us. Before I could do anything, Gabber ran in front of me.
“Wait a second,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-One
A flash of white light blinded me. At first I thought that Gabber had cast some kind of spell that he hadn’t told me about. As the light faded, it took a few seconds for my vision to adjust. I rubbed my eyes. When I opened them, I wasn’t in the cavern.
“Tom,” said a voice. “Long time no see.”
I looked around. I was back in the white-walled room. Bolzar sat on a chair with his feet up on the table. There was a bookshelf in the room this time, propped up against the wall.
I didn’t have time for this. Gabber and Dagnor were back in the cave with one neeve to deal with, and more on the way. I didn’t have time to answer riddles.
“What am I doing back here?” I said.
“The message hasn’t appeared yet?” asked Bolzar.
“Nope.”
He blinked twice, then nodded his head. “Okay, try now,” he said.
As he finished speaking, an alert appeared in front of me.
[Level up to level 7]
- HP increased
- Stamina increased
- Mana increased
- 2% speed bonus vs neeves
“That’s great,” I said. “But you didn’t need to bring me here to tell me I’d levelled up. Send me back.”
“Back where? To Gabber? Your little goblin friend?”
“I can’t leave him.”
“Meeting Gabber wasn’t an accident, you know.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He nodded at the chair in front of him.
“I’ll stand,” I said. I looked around for a door of some sort, but there wasn’t one. Just walls so white that they reflected the light, and no sign of a door frame in sight.
It was clear Bolzar wasn’t going to talk until I sat down. I walked over, pulled out the chair and settled into it.
“Relax, Tom,” he said. “Time moves slower here. After all, everything here is just data being sent to your brain. It only feels real because of the sensors connected to your hands. Every minute you spend here is less than a second in Infarna.”
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“Isn’t this part of Infarna?” I asked.
“It is, and it isn’t,” said Bolzar. “It’s as much a part of Infarna as, say, an options menu is in a game. It’s all part of the system, but it’s not really the point.”
“So why start this now? And why do it this way? It all seems so much effort just to get customer feedback. I mean, a survey online would have done the job.”
Bolzar grinned and shook his head. “Would a survey tell the devs how your pulse picks up when you see a pack of dire wolves? Would it tell us how your heartbeat slows at certain game maps, meaning they’re boring?”
