by Kyle Vauss
“Apparently so. But on two occasions in the last year, 6 months apart, you made drunken posts lamenting the loss of your fiancé and dog.”
“I deleted those.”
“From the main feed, yes. But you should know that nothing is ever really deleted when you press the delete button.”
This was all getting to be too much. My head started to swim, so I stood up.
“And you?” I said. “The story about your wife. What’s the deal?”
“It was meant to parallel your own problems. We both had our loved ones taken away from us, one way or another. You showed signs of being unable to confront your own problems. It was thought you might benefit from seeing a similar issue with someone else.”
“So, what are you? My therapist? One that I didn’t even ask for?”
“This is a trial,” said Bolzar. “And it only has good intentions, I assure you. This could open so much treatment of mental conditions. It could be a breakthrough. And besides, you agreed to it in your-”
“Terms and conditions. Yeah.”
In exchange for investing in Infarna, the government were using it to trial psychological treatment. I didn’t doubt that they had good intentions in doing it, but it made me angry that I’d unwittingly become a test subject.
“I want out of the experiment. Now,” I said. “And I don’t want to be summoned back here.”
Bolzar stood up. He walked around the table, and then stood in front of me. I was a couple of inches taller than him, and he had to look up to stare at me. He stuck his hand out, as if asking for a handshake.
“This is the last time we’ll see each other, Tom,” he said. “You’re a different person now. You’ve come to accept the past. Maybe you’re not completely over it, but it seems you will no longer let it hamper your future.”
“What are you saying?”
“That for you, the experiment is over. I’ll no longer summon you here. And as a parting gift, I’ll give you a level 10 cantrip few players can use.”
I folded my arms. “What is it?”
Bolzar smiled. “It’s a cantrip that is only fitting, giving that your old ‘self’, the one full of pain, has died, and you stand before me as a new Tom. Your new skill is called ‘Spare the Dying’.
In my research, I knew about a lot of skills in Infarna, but I’d never heard of this before.
“What is it?” I said.
“You’ll know soon enough. Thanks, Tom. Your feedback has been invaluable.”
Knowing I was never going to see him again, I did something I couldn’t even believe myself. I reached out and shook his hand.
After all, he was right. As much as I didn’t agree with their methods, I really had changed. I had something to fight for. I had friends.
“Bye, Tom,” said Bolzar.
And with that, the white-walled room started to disappear.
Chapter Thirty-One
[4th Cantrip Gained – Spare the Dying]
- The shadow walker can touch a creature with 0HP and restore them back to life, with minimal health points. Effect can only be used within 5 minutes of creature’s death.
“Okay, Tamos?” said Loria.
I ignored her for a second and focused on my new cantrip. This one wasn’t on the shadow walker skill path. At level 10 I was supposed to get a choice between 3 new cantrips, but none of them was Spare the Dying. It seemed that Bolzar hadn’t been lying; participating in his game had really helped me.
I looked at Loria. “I know what we need to do,” I said.
We spent the next two hours running through our game plan. Getting to Gabber would be difficult, and freeing him was going to be even harder. We needed to make sure that Crawford, his neeves, and his mercs didn’t chase us. I had the perfect plan. Well, as perfect as any plan could be.
By the time night fell over Infarna, we were ready. Fixing the altar on the hill in our sights, we made our way across the plains.
As we got close to the hill, I saw that the two neeves in the middle of it were tied to a stump. The ropes wrapped around their necks gave them some limited movement, but I knew Crawford hadn’t posted them there to attack. They were there to warn him if anyone tried to approach. Two mercs stood at the bottom on guard duty, having switched positon with the neeves. At the top, just out of view, something glowed. It might have been torchlight.
“You ready?” I said to Loria.
She nodded. “Are you sure this will work?”
“If we do it right, yeah. We can’t afford any mistakes.”
With that, I activated Shadow Form. The air around me grew vague. My arms shimmered and then turned to shadow. It felt like I was underwater. Next to me, Loria leaned on her staff and closed her eyes.
I knew that she wouldn’t be able to hear me now, so I just hoped that she would stick to her part of the plan. I hung back a little, keeping an eye on my mana and making sure it didn’t drain. I had two mana potions that Loria had given me. I hoped it would be enough to keep me in Shadow Form long enough to carry out the plan.
Rather than creeping forward, this time I just walked on, brazen. I was confident that while I existed in the shadow realm, the two warriors couldn’t see me. I inputted a command on my game interface to warn me when my mana dropped to three-quarters, halfway, and then to a quarter.
I looked back at Loria. I was waiting for her now, yet she hadn’t done anything. She was twenty feet away, crouched behind a rock.
Come on, Loria, I thought.
And then a dire rat came scampering out from behind the rock. It scuttled along the ground and toward the mercs. I watched it, and I couldn’t believe how life-like it seemed. While my Minor Illusion produced perfect-looking copies, they couldn’t move. But this illusion was something else.
The dire rat got within a foot of the mercs, then stopped. One of the warriors elbowed the other and then nodded his head at the creature.
“Fancy some toasted rat for supper?” he said.
“If you can catch it.”
“You reckon I can’t?” asked the one on the right.
“You’ve got hands like treacle and the reflexes of a troll.”
“Right,” said the other warrior. “Watch this then.”
The merc warrior adopted a stance that I can only describe as the kind a man would take when he’s about to go rat catching. He held his hands out in front of him, fingers tensed. He bent his knees slightly, ready to pounce.
The dire rat stood on its hind legs, hissed, and then scuttled to the right, running off the hill and then around it. The warrior went to follow it, when the other grabbed his sleeve.
“What are you doing? Crawford said to watch out for the shadow walker.”
“I’m not spending another night with a belly full of nothing but oats. I need meat. I’m getting the vermin.”
The warrior sprinted away after the rat. He darted around the hill and then disappeared out of view.
This was it; time to put the plan in motion. My pulse pounded at the thought of it. Maybe this was how people felt when they went on dungeon raids. You spent time putting every piece of the plan together like a musical composition, but all it took was one wrong note and the whole thing was done.
I walked around until I stood behind the remaining merc. I glanced behind for a second, but the neeves were thirty feet away, and they seemed to be napping. Staring at the back of the warrior’s head, I deactivated Shadow Form.
Quickly, I drew my sword and turned it around, then slammed the blunt end into the warrior’s head. At first, he just stumbled forward and fell onto one knee. I hit him again, this time with enough force to knock him unconscious.
Grunting, I dragged the warrior across the plains toward the rock that hid Loria.
“We need to hurry,” I said. “The other merc will be back soon.”
Loria nodded. “I haven’t tried this spell yet, but it should be okay.”
“Is your mana topped up?”
“Duh. Come on, Tamos. Give m
e some credit.”
“Sorry. I’m just anxious.”
I watched as Loria activated her spell. Her skin began to bulge in places, as if fingers were prodding her from the inside. Her hair curled up, and her cheekbones cracked and then shifted. Her arms shortened and her shoulders became stocky. A few seconds later and it wasn’t Loria standing in front of me, but a merc. She was an exact copy of the one who was unconscious at my feet.
“Impressive,” I said. “But we need to make sure he doesn’t wake up.”
I glanced over at the hill. The other warrior was coming back now. We didn’t have long.
“I couldn’t keep the rat going, and cast the transformation illusion at the same time. My max mana isn’t big enough,” said Loria.
I looked at the merc. The easiest thing to do would be to slit his throat. Since he was unconscious, any damage done to him would count as a sneak attack. Problem was, since travelling with Gabber, I was beginning to see NPCs differently. There was a part of me that believed they had their own thoughts and feelings.
I was changing. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, it was true. Just a week ago, nothing in this game had meant anything to me. It was just a way of making money, a place like my office where I grinded away the hours. Now, it was different.
I stood up. I looked at Loria. If it weren’t for the name tag above her head, I would have just believed she was a merc. “How long can you keep this up for?” I said.
“My robe regenerates mana, and I have 2 potions. I can last longer than you in your Shadow Form.”
I nodded. “And you’re good with the plan?”
She stared at me. “Are you absolutely certain it’ll work, Tamos? I mean, it’s risky as hell…”
“It’ll work,” I said. “It has to.”
Truth was, I didn’t know whether my plan would work. I was just going to have to find out, because there was no other way. The next alternative was to just let Crawford kill Gabber. Anything else had to be worth trying.
I activated Shadow Form and moved over to the hill. Although Loria had transformed her appearance to that of the warrior’s, she retained her illusionist stats. That meant she walked slower than me.
Just as I reached the bottom of the hill, the other merc came back. When he saw that his friend was gone, he looked around from side to side. Then he spotted Loria in the distance.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said.
Loria stopped. Although she looked like the warrior, I could tell she was struggling with how to act. “Thought I saw the rat run over there,” she said, in the merc’s deep voice.
The other warrior sighed. “Guess its oats again, then. I couldn’t catch it.”
Loria shook her head to feign disgust, but her shakes were so exaggerated that it was ridiculous. She was trying too hard to get into character.
“It’s great being a warrior, isn’t it?” she said. “You know, and doing warrior things. I love my sword…and stuff.”
Jesus, I thought. She’s so wooden.
“Are you alright, Hex?” said the other merc.
“Yeah,” answered Loria. “It’s just been a while since I killed something. With my big sword. And I tell you what, I could murder a beer.”
“But you don’t drink. Ever since that night with the witch and the chicken.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Loria. “I mean a metaphorical beer. Listen, I’m gonna see if the neeves are okay. Keep an eye out here, yeah?”
The other merc scratched his chin and looked at Loria strangely. “Fine, Hex. Don’t be long though. I’ll keep a look out for that rat.”
With that, Loria walked up the hill. I stayed close to her in Shadow Form, but as she approached the neeves, I held back a little. The last time I’d used Shadow Form, back at the camp, I was sure the neeves had been able to sense me. They might not have been able to see me while I was cloaked in shadow, but it seemed as if they had an idea I was there.
We needed to get by them without a fight. If I alerted Crawford to our presence, he’d just kill Gabber there and then.
Loria walked up to the neeves. When the creatures saw her, one stood up. The other sniffed the air warily. Loria reached down and untied the ropes that held them to the stumps. Then, she swung her inventory bag off her back. She rooted through it, and pulled out the meat from a fat-bellied troll that we’d killed while levelling up.
She held the meat out to let the neeves smell it, and then threw it down the hill. Both animals took off in a sprint. I stayed to the side, trying to move back when they ran passed. In their pursuit of food, they didn’t even stop to smell the air.
I joined Loria at the stumps. I deactivated Shadow Form. “Well done,” I said. “Now for the hard bit.”
Loria looked surprised to see me, but then composed herself. She nodded. I could tell she wasn’t a fan of my plan, but she would go along with it. I just hoped it worked. I wouldn’t show her, but I was worried that my scheme could be the end of our journey.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Basic arithmetic told me that Crawford had two neeves and two mercs at the altar with him. That couldn’t be helped now. The hardest bit had just been getting by the ones he’d left on the hill.
Using my cantrip, I faded back into the shadows. Shadow Form, unlike my other cantrips, didn’t work on a cooldown basis. Instead, I could cast it as long as I had mana, and the cantrip would steadily drain it. I changed my setting to give me more advanced warning of mana depletion, and then I set out.
I moved ahead of Loria, and two minutes later I reached the top. In front of me was an oval-shaped construction. The floor was covered in marble tiles. Some squares were cracked and others were missing, as if somebody had tried to steal them. There were four pillars supporting the roof. Two of them had mercs leaning against them.
There was an altar in the middle of the floor that rose four feet up. It was sculpted from white stone, and patterns were chipped into it. On top of the altar, with ropes around his wrists and ankles, was Gabber. Crawford stood next to him.
Crawford looked different. His hair was combed to the side, and his clothes were less dirty than usual. To give him credit, all through his pursuit of us Crawford had shown that he didn’t mind getting dirty. Now, though, he wore garments that must have cost hundreds of GD.
“It’s nine o’clock,” said Crawford, pacing around the altar. “Father will be tuned in now. Time to get started.”
I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see that Loria had walked onto the marble floor. She headed toward a pillar, when Crawford turned to face her.
“I thought I told you to stay at the base of the hill and make sure Tom doesn’t try to make a daring rescue for his friend.”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, sir,” said the pretend-merc. “I wanted to see you become the 3rd person to get the achievement.”
Smart, I thought. Rather than concoct some elaborate lie, Loria had just played to Crawford’s vanity. And judging from the smug smile on the hunter’s face, it had worked.
“Father,” said Crawford, pacing around. “You should be tuned into my feed now. Or I hope you are, at least. After all, you said you would come and see me in the school play. You said you’d watch my first match for the school soccer team. You said you’d listen in when I gave my first presentation at the office. I hope this time you keep your promise.”
For a second, he walked over to the far end of the altar and stared out into the distance. He was silent for a few minutes. Gabber squirmed on the altar, but the ropes were too tight around his wrists. A rag was stuffed into his mouth.
Crawford turned around. “If you’re watching, Father, you’re about to see history made. Not for the first time, maybe. Others have gotten the achievement before me. But I’ll be the third person in the history of Infarna. Do you understand what that means? The work that has gone into it? The skill involved?”
He walked over to Gabber and stood above him. Gabber squirmed, but the ropes held firm. Cra
wford reached to his side and pulled out a dagger.
“This is it, father,” he said.
I looked at Loria. It was now or never. This was the most dangerous part of the plan. It was a massive risk, and I was terrified that it wouldn’t work. But it was our only chance. If we didn’t do it this way, Crawford would just keep coming for Gabber. He’d never stop.
Loria walked over to the altar. Her steps were shaky, as if she was unsure of herself.
[Warning – Mana at 50%]
I reached into my inventory, took a mana potion and drank it back.
