But the snake didn’t let me get out the door. A couple times, I made it close enough to touch it, though at that precise moment, I was knocked away by the snake’s muscular body and found myself flung against one of the hooks on the wall.
Boo-oom, a gong rang out.
You were unable to complete the task in seven minutes. The bonus has been lost.
The snake threw its head back, as if laughing, its fangs flashed threateningly, and venom dripped from its mouth. Its tail pinned me to the wall. Damn it, the games are over—this is the end. I rummaged around in my bag, hoping to find something I could use. Potions, a portal scroll, another scroll (probably the one nobody can read), money…
The snake finished laughing, shook its head, and stared at me just as it had when we’d first met. Only this time, I could see final and unavoidable death in its eyes—my death.
My hand kept fumbling around until it came across something I didn’t recognize at first. I couldn’t be more like a certain hobbit if I tried. Here I am about to be poisoned and eaten, and all I can think about is what I have in my “pocketses.”
Still, I pulled out the object that had captured my curiosity, figuring intelligently that it certainly couldn’t make the situation worse. The snake’s mouth was opening wide, its fangs pointed straight at my throat.
It was the snake statuette strange little Pawny had given me, the one she sent Apofss over with. I caught myself wondering what would have happened if I’d agreed to take him, and which of the two reptiles would have won in a fight. Then, I shut my eyes. I had no desire to watch as the snake sank his fangs into my neck.
Ten seconds went by, and nobody had torn me to pieces. My veins still weren’t pulsing with venom, my body wasn’t shaking, and nobody had swallowed me whole. One eye eased open, this time my right one, and I saw the reptile’s eye just a few centimeters away. It was surprised, I thought. The creature was looking at me, and I would swear on anything, besides the surprise in its eyes, there was fear and relief that I wasn’t dead. It’s happy it didn’t kill me before it saw that thing?
I opened my second eye, leaving us to stare at each other for about half a minute.
“Hiss-ss,” the snake said, again opening and closing its enormous mouth and dropping its gaze to the statuette in my hand. Its hiss was almost apologetic, and it was like it was trying to say it was s-s-sorry…it didn’t want to kill me. At least, that’s what its drooping head told me.
I swallowed and replied. “Hiss-ss.”
Thank God, while I don’t speak snake, it appeared to understand everything it needed to understand. Its tail released me, its terrifying, triangular head nodded again, this time to say goodbye, and it slithered away into a hole in the far corner of the temple. It was only as I watched its body disappear that I realized how truly enormous it was. Its tail, before slipping into the opening, feinted quickly across the hook in the door hiding the key, and it swung open. That couldn’t have been the Great Snake Ping mentioned…or was it Pong? But it was definitely a close relative—that much was for sure. And I had no desire to even see the Great Snake, let alone meet it.
You passed the Test of Agility and earned the right to collect the Key of Guile.
I got up from the floor, reached out, and took the key.
Key of Guile
Quest item
You get weird thoughts coming into your head after stress like what I’d been through. I, for example, absolutely had to know how I could have beaten the test using agility. Strength wouldn’t have helped. While a leveled-up warrior might have been able to polish off the stone blockheads in the first temple, the snake would have been much harder. In the time it takes to swing a sword twice, it could pump a cistern-worth of venom into you and swallow you whole.
I looked around the space and remembered tripping over some rings a few times. Checking them out and noticing where they were located in the room, I shook my head. If some trickster managed to avoid soiling themselves when they saw the monster, realize what the rings were for, and get the snake wrapped up so tightly in them that it couldn’t move, I would have eaten my hat. I was not that person, needless to say. If it weren’t for Pawny’s gift… Who knows where I’d be right now? I owed her a thank-you, though something inside me said that her story was only just beginning.
Outside the temple, I breathed in the air that, just ten minutes ago, had seemed musty and damp. Living wasn’t so bad, especially when you consider the amount of adrenaline I had running through my veins—not to mention the euphoria that comes with being saved from what you think is certain death.
“All good?” Lane looked at me inquiringly.
“More than,” I replied with a nod. “Where are the other two?”
“Over there. They came across some kind of hoe, and so they’re trying to dig up that passageway and see what kind of valuables they can find.”
I turned to see the two brothers pounding away at the stonework hiding the fanged beast’s hideout.
“Stop, stop, you idiots!” I bellowed. “That’s not an underground passageway!”
“Then what is it?” Ping asked suspiciously.
“Yeah, what?” chimed in Pong.
“It’s a sewer,” I said, slapping my forehead. “The monks—”
“We’re not complete bumpkins,” Ping cut in, offended.
“We know what a sewer is,” explained Pong. “It’s a good thing we didn’t have time to break in. That explains why it’s so narrow!”
Ping nodded.
“Well, what next? The base or Maykong?” Lane smiled snidely as he looked at me.
“What about visiting one more place? The price is the same,” I replied, smiling just as snidely back at him.
Chapter Thirteen
In which the hero does everything the wrong way.
Lane grunted as he pulled out his map.
“These trips of ours aren’t going to end well. Things have been too good so far...”
“Don’t jinx us,” I replied, reining him in. “Everything’s going fine. Your chances of surviving over on the other side of the Crisna were way worse, and here you are, healthy and in one piece.”
“We all die someday,” Ping noted philosophically. “That’s the life of a hired sword. Although I’d rather it not be soon.”
“I don’t want to die at all.” It was the first time I’d ever heard Pong disagree with his brother. “I want to go back to the village, buy some land and a house.”
“We all want that, though not many live to see it,” Lane concluded. “So shut up and let Hagen tell us where we’re going next.”
Just like the last time, I compared his map with mine and pointed to a worn fold.
“There’s a temple right here.”
“Radzhakh Province,” Lane replied, shaking his head. “It’s like you’re picking out the worst possible spots on purpose.”
“What’s wrong with it?” My optimism and thirst for action were starting to wane as the adrenaline left my blood.
“Rebels,” Lane replied, looking away. “They’re protesting.”
“Protesting what?”
“Everything.” He obviously didn’t like the rebels. “It doesn’t matter who takes power, they immediately rebel. They don’t even wait to see what the new government wants from or will give them. During the day, they hide in the forest; in the evening they come out to spend the whole night fighting. Though they won’t hesitate to slit your throat if you come across them during the day either.”
“They’ve had about twenty governors there in the last three years,” Pong said, joining the conversation. “Maybe even more. They killed the last one with a snake dancer. The entire South was up in arms about it.”
I couldn’t help but wince. There was no way I was even looking at a picture of a snake in the near future, not to mention a live one. Just the memory… But I still wanted to hear the details. A dancer?
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the rebels sent the dancer
to his palace, saying it was a present from the governor of Gulkan, the neighboring province,” Ping started to explain.
“The governor really did send a dancer, complete with a caravan,” Pong jumped in. “The dancer was real, his personal favorite. But the rebels captured the caravan, killed the dancer, and sent one of their four leaders in her place. She’s crazy, her name is Xantria. Dagger, bow, sword—she’s the best at all of them.”
“The other three are no better,” Lane noted. “Yasmuga can master living animals: horses, elephants, even bears… They say his bears even dance—ridiculous! He has a way with people, too. Vaylerius is a famous mage, though nobody knows what his problem is. He’s noble, from a well-known family in the West, if what people say is true. He’s read all the books ever written, and he knows every spell there is.”
“And the fourth?” I asked, intrigued. The developers had quite the imagination, I had to give them that. “And what about the dancer? How’d that whole thing end?”
“Their fourth leader is the most dangerous,” Pong replied wide-eyed. “Danoot. He’s Xantria’s brother, or maybe her fiancé. Nobody knows anything about him for certain since he doesn’t leave witnesses alive.”
Ping took over from there. “And with the dancer it’s simple. The governor took to Xantria’s grace and beauty, which they say she has in spades, and let down his guard. She used a serpent sickle to take him out. That’s when you’re holding a snake in your hand and use it to attack.”
“What?” Lane stared at Ping dubiously. “What sickle? He was taking her to his chambers when she pulled a snake out of her bag and threw it at him. That’s it.”
“No!” Pong waved his arms in frustration. “It wasn’t like that at all! He took her, they did all kinds of nasty things together, and then he fell asleep. And that makes sense; Xantria’s a young girl, and he was getting up there, so he would have been exhausted. She ran off, leaving a snake on the pillow next to him. When the governor rolled over in his sleep, the snake bit him.”
“Okay, so, long story short, everybody’s dead,” I said.
The three mercenaries stopped short and stared at me.
“What do you mean, everybody?” Ping asked carefully. “I thought it was just the governor.”
“No, they’re all dead!” Pong gasped. “Believe me, brothers, something foul’s afoot with that girl.”
Lane looked at them and spat.
“I’m not even sure which of you is the biggest idiot… Anyway, it doesn’t matter who sent who off to their ancestors; the important thing is that it’s a nasty place. One of the Wild Brigade’s divisions is even stationed there. We just need to make sure we stay away from the rebels because we’d have a hard time getting away with our lives. They aren’t big fans of mercenaries.”
“You really don’t like them,” I said, looking at Lane. “We’ll hope to God they don’t get us.”
“Which god?” grunted Lane. “Everyone has their own, and some don’t have any.”
Ping and Pong had nothing to say, preferring to avoid as touchy a subject as that one.
“Here’s a scroll, let’s get moving.” I handed it to Lane. “It’s already past noon, and we don’t know how far it is.”
“And I want to do some drinking today!” Ping’s eyes shone; Pong licked his lips.
“You’ll get your booze, boar’s leg, and girls if we make it to Maykong,” I promised.
Honestly, it was great to see the sky again. After the gloomy jungle, the sun was nearly overpowering, though I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling.
“Is it far from here?” Ping asked Lane as he looked around apprehensively.
“How should I know?” The latter shrugged. “I know the village, but I don’t know where we’re going. Let’s get over into the forest, so we’re not sticking out here like a sore thumb.”
The portal had taken us to the edge of a small village, with a road winding toward it around a field planted with something. I’m no farmer, but it might have been yams or sorghum.
The map told me we were about thirty minutes away from the temple, and that this time we’d be marching through the forest.
“We’ll be there in half an hour if we don’t have any surprises,” I announced cheerfully. “Let’s get a move on it. What are we waiting for?”
We set off single-file around the field, keeping close to each other.
“I wonder where that kid’s running off to,” Lane asked, almost to himself, as he watched a boy running out of the village in the opposite direction from where we were.
“Could be going anywhere,” panted Ping as he wiped away the sweat running down his face. The sun was definitely beating down. “Maybe he has a big meeting he’s late to.”
“Has to be it,” Pong confirmed between puffs of air.
“Sure, sure.” Lane was starting to scare me with his spy mania.
The forest was cooler, though we didn’t feel any better—Lane pushed on ahead so fast that at times, I thought he was trying to lose us. The only thing that contradicted my suspicion was the fact that he stopped a few times to ask me if we were going in the right direction.
Our gallop took us to the next temple in just twenty minutes rather than the thirty I’d estimated. We flew into a small field, breathing heavily, and saw a squat temple growing out of the earth. Pong groaned.
“I demand a raise! This is crazy!”
“Me, too!” Ping joined in.
“Strong, hardy warriors, the pride and glory of the Free Companies,” spat Lane contemptuously. “Go ahead, brother, get in there and do what you have to do. Just hurry, because we’re going to have company soon—and that’s when things are going to turn south.”
I looked at Lane and realized that he wasn’t joking. It was the first time I’d seen emotions on the face of the cold-blooded soldier. That can’t be good.
You entered the Temple of Sarsvaati
Your task is to get the Key of Intellect by beating the Test of Wisdom.
If you can complete the task efficiently and intelligently spending less than seven minutes on it, you will get a bonus reward.
There wasn’t anything unusual there. Seven minutes, intelligent, efficient… I threw up my hands, drew my sword, and bravely tramped into the small—even in comparison with the first temple—room.
Just like in the previous temple, torches burned, bright and smokeless on the walls, and everything around me was quiet and empty. The other side of the room, the spot where I was accustomed to seeing the key, was also empty. I walked out into the middle to get a closer look at the wall and found something that puzzled me. It wasn’t made out of moss-covered stones like the rest of the temple; it was made out of brick. And right in the middle of the wall, there was a hollow about the size of a double door. At the center of the hollow, were large, square blocks that combined to form a symbol looking like the letter W. The squares on the edges were colored, and every couple seconds they flashed, almost as if a laser were shooting through them.
The rest of the squares making up the symbol were gray and empty, something explained by the pile of colored tiles lying broken on the floor. The colors were all unbelievably bright.
What is this? I kicked the hollow angrily, only to see the outer colored blocks flash, falter, and blink a few times. Nothing happened.
“Come o-o-on!” I cried in frustration. “A logic puzzle. What did I do to deserve this?”
That was the worst thing I could have possibly come across. I would have far preferred to have a snake chase me around the room again, if only for one simple reason: I knew how to run away from it, or at least die (we quickly forget our fears). But there? I had no idea what to do.
I’m more into the liberal arts, and logic puzzles like that are a no-go for me. Sudoku had been the worst for me when I was little, not to mention Rubik’s Cubes.
When it came to object-search games, I either hit the skip button or asked Nastya from the foreign department (she knew everything about geography in genera
l and Korea in particular) for help. She was a mathematical thinker and didn’t have a problem with things like taking a ball through a labyrinth or figuring out which key goes to which lock. I found the objects myself—I liked that part.
I just wish that little Nastya were here…
She may not have been, but the wall was. A multi-colored one, damn it!
I picked up one of the tiles and shoved it into the space closest to the edge. That’s heavy!
The edge tiles again flashed and glowed, and something green shone through the gaping cracks. That has to be the key. It’s a foot away from me…
That time, however, things ended differently: the light suddenly and quickly blinked twice, and my turquoise tile crashed to the floor. I was just glad I pulled my leg away in time.
“Damn it!” I swore aloud, slamming the hilt of my sword against the wall.
It struck home with a thud that shook the wall. Cracks spread out along it and disappeared into the pile of trash on the floor.
“Well, look at that,” I said with an unpleasant smile. “So it’s an alternative solution for the stupid and aggressive among us!”
I wasn’t about to dull the blade of my sword, and I suspected that the sneaky developers had stuck some kind of sword-breaking brick in there anyway just for fun. The pommel was the way to go. I swung away, and five minutes later the hole was big enough for me to stick my head in, reach out, and grab the key.
You didn’t pass the Test of Wisdom, but you reached your goal and therefore still get the right to collect the Key of Intellect.
Additional:
Time spent: 05:37
Intelligence shown: 0 of 100
Efficiency: 34 of 100
You do not get a bonus reward.
I was pretty sure I’d just been called stupid, if very tactfully. Whatever. I’ll live. The most important part was that I had the key.
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