I’d gotten so worked up the day before with the temples, snakes, rebels, and Vezhleva, that I slept until 11. I didn’t hear Vika leave, my telephone ring, or the wind kick up outside the window in anticipation of an upcoming storm. My sleep was dreamless and serene.
Once I’d opened my eyes, the first thing I realized was that I was in a great mood. Wednesday had passed in anticipation of the pointless and daunting date with Vezhleva. Though we weren’t overly friendly, I’d managed to avoid open hostility in parting ways with her. I also knew that she wouldn’t risk taking a shot at me while I had the shadows of Zimin and Valyaev cast behind my back.
Speaking of Zimin.
“Hi, Maxim, it’s Kif.”
“If you’d called me a couple hours ago, or even just picked up when I called, I’d have thought that you took me up on my advice. As it is, I see you didn’t.”
“That has nothing to do with the respect I have for your advice; it was purely my sense of self-preservation,” I explained. “I’m not man enough to get in bed with a viper.”
“She doesn’t have teeth there, I can tell you that much. Anyway, it’s your life to live as you choose.”
What he said may not have been that pleasant but he tone was very friendly.
“I did do what you asked me to do,” I said proudly. “I told her everything.”
“And?” I heard some business-like notes creep into his voice.
“She got excited, just about picked me up out of my chair wanting to know where I’d gotten the information.”
“What did you say?”
“What did I say?” I paused for effect. “I told her I couldn’t say. That was it—I said that it wasn’t my secret to keep.”
“Hmm, good work.” Zimin grunted in satisfaction. “Okay, so if she calls, don’t pick up the phone, and don’t get together with her again until you hear from me.”
“Geez, this is like a spy novel,” I replied apprehensively. “Does she—”
“Does she what?” Zimin asked shortly.
“Suffer from vascular problems?”
Zimin laughed.
“Kif, I love you, you son of a bitch. You’re an artist with words.”
I chuckled along with him respectfully. He could be sending an army of enemies armed with .45s after me as we speak.
“Don’t worry about all this. As far as Marina is concerned, no, she’s fine. She wouldn’t get into insider trading; her thing is a little different. But you don’t need to know what it is—yet, at least.”
“Glad to hear it!” I replied with complete sincerity. “I’d rather not, and I probably wouldn’t find it all that interesting anyway.”
“Excellent, that’s what I like to hear. What else did I want to tell you? Oh, right. The Old Man wants to meet you.”
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I didn’t say anything.
“He said to bring you over as soon as you successfully finish the dryad quest.”
“I guess that’s good?” I responded, trying to get a feel for the terrain.
“That?” Zimin was quiet for a second. “It took me by surprise. Also, it’s not that great for you, at least…”
“You’re making me nervous,” I said.
“No, not like that.” He snorted. “The boss isn’t going to eat you—I don’t think he’s ever gone after anyone in his life. But the fact that the Old Man wants to see someone just getting his feet wet in the company, considering that most people who have worked here since the beginning of time still haven’t met him, won’t do you many favors. So, just be ready for a lot of people to start thinking about how they can cut your legs out from under you. Of course, there’s the other side of that coin, too: you’re close to us—the Old Man’s right-hand men and, I think it’s safe to say, his heirs apparent—and you’ll have been to see him, so people will try to be friends with you. It could help them out, they’ll think.”
“Phew,” I exhaled. “If only things were as simple as they used to be…”
“Oh, stop it. We did give you a bonus, by the way. You’ll see for yourself for today.”
“Oops, I won’t be there. I’m headed to the temple. Could your girl give the money to Vika?”
“You’re not worried about putting money in your woman’s hands? She won’t spend it?” Zimin needled me.
“Vika? No, she won’t spend it,” I replied confidently. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Ah, Kif, still so young,” Zimin said. “You don’t know the first thing about women. But whatever, that’s not important. Oh, one last thing. Starting next week, we’re going to expand the paper the way we talked about. You can expect your new people to show up for work on Monday—Eliza will call your head editor. We’re going to keep the price the same, so that should make people happy.”
“She should call Mammoth, too, I mean, Pokrovsky, so he opens up the other two rooms in our wing for us,” I responded quickly. “Otherwise, we’ll be sitting on each other’s laps. And you should give Vika a raise since she’ll have more of the buggers to deal with now.”
“Well, aren’t we greedy!” Zimin said, clearly appreciative. “I like people like you.”
***
A little while later, we hung up. I called Vika to give her the good news and tell her to bring my money home, went out for a smoke, and climbed into the capsule. It was time to polish off the temples once and for all, or, at least, as much as I could. I was sick and tired of them.
A notification was the first thing I saw when I logged into the game.
The changes made to the game include an update to the condition for the Legend of Fayroll action.
To get it, complete 178 more actions in Fayroll.
The second thing that surprised me was that, for the first time in a little while, the base was a flurry of activity. What happened to the peace and quiet, the empty parade ground, Grokkh getting drunk? I could hear him yelling from a ways away.
“You’re a bunch of goats, and certainly not warriors worthy of the great Seventh Company! Tighten your belt, dummy!”
Everyone from our barracks was sitting on the steps. Everyone, that is, except Fattah, who I hadn’t seen in a while. At that rate, he wasn’t going to be sticking around long enough to get anything special.
My brothers in arms were watching the master lieutenant work over the troops standing at attention, cracking jokes at their expense as well as at Grokkh’s. Veterans are the same everywhere.
I got started just in time. Another day and I’d have been too late. I wasn’t even sure we’d be allowed to head off that day, and I walked over to my laughing comrades with that thought in my head.
“Hey everyone.” I sat down next to Lane and pointed over at the ranks lined up. “Fresh meat?”
“Tender and juicy,” Ur replied as he blew his nose. “They just came trooping in through the portal. Looks like our break’s over. They’ll split them up into the different companies, and we’ll be back in the thick of it.”
“Yes?” I said sadly. “Today?”
“Probably not today,” Lane responded, cheering me up. “They have to get them all assigned, and then there are briefings to do. We’ll get started tomorrow. Why? You have an offer?”
“What do you think?” I winked at him. “Only this time, I need you all to come into the temple with me. But wait, are you sure they’ll let us leave the base?”
“Let me go find out,” Lane said. He got up and walked confidently over to Grokkh.
“Fattah hasn’t shown up?” I asked the rest of the group.
“Nope,” Ping answered quickly. “Haven’t seen him.”
“Not for a while,” confirmed Pong.
Where could he have gone? Although, it was as good a time as any for him to take care of whatever he had on his plate.
Lane pulled himself up to attention in front of the master lieutenant and said something to him. The latter frowned slightly, though he nodded graciously.
“It’s fine. We can go,” Lane said as
he walked back. “But it’s going to cost us a day off, since tomorrow we have missions.”
“That’s a shame,” Pong sighed.
“A crying shame,” Ping nodded.
“You don’t have to go with us. But I wouldn’t count on tomorrow being a day off even if you don’t.” Lane looked at the brothers. “Sounds like the companies have their work cut out for them.”
The pair thought for a second, and Lane turned to me in the meantime. “So where are we going? And what are we doing there?”
“We’re going…”
I realized that I hadn’t even checked to see, so I pulled out my map. The red spot was close to a village named Surdge, one the company and I had visited. It was about three hours away from the Monkey King Temple.
“We’re going…”
Lane pulled out his map and held it up.
“Just point.”
I did just that, and Lane frowned.
“Do I understand correctly…?” he said slowly before coughing and starting over. “Do I understand correctly that you want to visit the Temple of Hannuman or, as the locals call it, the Monkey King Temple?”
Ping gasped, Pong turned pale, and only Ur kept watching the newcomers, unperturbed. The name apparently meant nothing to the Northerner. Well, either that or he couldn’t care less about all these Southern biases.
“Exactly,” I replied. “Does that change anything?”
Lane was silent for a brief moment, clapping me on the shoulder when he finished thinking. “Just the price, as far as I’m concerned, and maybe my plans for the evening. I was planning on living to see it, though now I’m not sure. As far as the rest, I’m not sure what they’ll say.”
“I’m with you.” Ur, it so happened, really was listening to the conversation. “You can pay me the same money Lane asks for; he always knows how much things cost.”
Ping and Pong whispered to each other before Pong announced their decision. “We won’t take less than 1,500 gold each. Plus, we want drinks and girls in Maykong included for tonight—only the best, most expensive!”
“Agreed,” Lane said with a nod. “That’s a fair price, and that was a good point about drinks.”
“You got it,” I replied, looking the squad over. “I’ll give you the money up front, and drinks are on me. Lane, have you been to that temple?”
His face darkened slightly, and his answer came unwillingly. “I was nearby, though we didn’t actually go in. And don’t even ask when that was or who I was with,” he replied, cutting off the question I didn’t even have time to ask.
“You don’t have to tell me. I do want to ask, though, did you not go in because you couldn’t get there or for some other reason?”
Lane pursed his lips. “The person in charge turned us around at the last minute. I’m not sure why. There wasn’t much keeping us from going in. It’s a dark spot, but we didn’t have to do any fighting. There was nobody on the road to the temple, or at least nobody there that I saw. The locals don’t venture anywhere near it.”
“Bunch of superstitions…” Ur said as he stood up. “We have hills up in the North where they say there’s an ocean of the dead. I’ve been to see them, and there was nothing…”
I wouldn’t say that…you just got lucky, my friend.
“So, if we’re agreed, I can pay you, and we can leave?” I glanced around at the group, and everyone nodded. “Lane, you can get us as close to the temple as possible?”
Lane nodded again, still lost in his own thoughts.
Ten minutes later, we were all dressed and ready to go. We were about to leave when we were stopped by a shout from Grokkh.
“Hold it right there!” The green-skinned commander ran over and started checking us out capriciously.
“Is something wrong, Lieutenant?” boomed Ur.
“Master Lieutenant,” Grokkh responded, adopting the intonation of his dead goblin friend. “Since when do you go see girls dressed up in full battle gear?”
“It’s times like these,” Lane said, looking away, “when you just never know what to expect.”
“Okay, listen up,” Grokkh said, his words gaining a new harshness. “If I hear that you’re out swashbuckling on your own, I’ll drive you off into the Sumaki Mountains, right into the mines. And you know I do what I say I’ll do.”
“Master Lieutenant,” I said, getting involved, “Lane’s right. Things are rough these days, and you can’t be sure of anything. Also, we don’t know anything about the new recruits here in our glorious Seventh Company, where they’re from, what they’re up to. You know how it is—better safe than sorry.”
Grokkh squinted at us one more time, though he kept his comments to himself and headed back to the new conscripts.
Lane opened the portal, and we stepped into the blue film.
***
Why do all these abandoned temples have to be off in the damn jungle? It was becoming a trend, like in some Kipling novel. Why can’t they have just one on a sunny plain, with the wind brushing your face? Somewhere that doesn’t stink of rotting plants, and where it isn’t so incredibly muggy. Why?
But no, the developers knew what they were doing, and we were greeted by a dim twilight, plants crunching underfoot, and a mucousy smell that let us know something was crawling around somewhere…
The first thing I did was open the map and see that the temple was fairly close. Lane and his group really had stopped just short. I wonder why he was here. And who was he with? One thing I was sure of; he wouldn’t be telling me. That wasn’t the kind of person he was.
“We’re going that way.” I jabbed a finger in the direction of our destination and set off. Ur was behind me, the brothers were behind him, and Lane brought up the rear.
I estimated that it would take us twenty or thirty minutes to get there, which was child’s play compared to what we’d had to deal with up to that point. To my great surprise, we made it to the temple without incident.
It just so happened to be exactly what I had wished for. The temple was on a field that appeared as if out of nowhere in the middle of the jungle. To complete the circle, it should have been overgrown with trees, vines, and other green Southern nastiness but it wasn’t. The field was perfectly round, it was covered in short grass, and the building itself didn’t look timeworn in the least. Its gilded walls even glinted in the sun. The round roof was crowned with a presumably gold statue of a monkey. It held a staff in one hand and some kind of horn in the other. I had no idea what that was about.
“There it is, the cursed temple,” Lane muttered.
“What do you mean, ‘cursed’?” Ur snorted. “Getting here was so easy, we might have been walking down the main street in Maykong.”
“Gold,” Pong whispered as he stared at the statue in spellbound wonder.
“Absolutely gold. If we could just get it down from the roof,” added Ping.
“Hey, warriors,” I said, interrupting their baser instincts. “We’re going to take care of my mission first, and then you’re free to do whatever you want. But not before then, okay?”
“I wouldn’t advise it anyway,” Lane chimed in. “The gods left, of course, but still—it’s a bad idea. They always guard what’s theirs, even when they aren’t at home.”
The brothers glared at him wordlessly before a smirk came over both their faces at the same time.
We walked out of the forest and headed toward the temple. The field wasn’t large, and I couldn’t figure out where the three enormous figures looming in front of us had appeared from.
They were…I don’t know, gorillas? Though they dwarfed the gorillas, we have in the real world. I could only assume that they were grandchildren of King Kong, only with felted and, for some reason, white fur.
Swords rang as they slid out of their sheaths, and we huddled close together, shields tight and swords out. The giants were in no hurry. They ambled their way around us, almost as if they were deciding who they were going to kill first. The possibility that they m
ight not be able to send us off to the gods didn’t seem to occur to the furry, fanged beasts.
“Temple guards?” Lane assumed.
“Our death warrant,” Pong whispered thinly.
“That one, the biggest one, he’s mine!” Ur barked. “I’m going to make a necklace out of his teeth; I’ll be the only one with anything like it.”
“Teeth”… I wasn’t sure they fit the title. If we knew nothing else, we could at least see that they were meat-eaters.
The temple guards paused, one of them roared, and they started beating their chests, letting our circle know that the end was near. I thought, however, that they might have been getting ahead of themselves, seeing as how—
Just then, the grass around us started to move suspiciously, until first one and then another guard bellowed piteously. A black streak of slack-jawed lightning leaped out of the grass to latch onto the third’s face.
“What the…?” Ur boomed in surprise.
The largest of the trio, their leader, ripped the snake off his face with a howl, but not before the little bugger could strike his nose several times. Judging by the way they looked and how they attacked the gorillas, I assumed that the snakes were ringhals. One after another they leaped, spitting venom and landing on the furry white killers. I had no idea what was going on, though I wasn’t about to complain…
You received unexpected aid from the Fayroll animal world.
Clarification:
This aid is a random bonus received because you completed a quest in the Children of the Goddess series. It cannot be summoned, and it cannot be received more than once every seven days.
One thing was for sure—it was a great time for help to arrive. In fact, it was perfect…seriously.
The giants had collapsed to the ground, and the convulsions shaking their powerful bodies told me that they were nearing the end.
All that experience going to waste? I ran over and slammed my sword into the eye of the closest one to me. He bellowed, twitched, and gave his soul up to Hannuman. A happy smile on my face, I turned, only to step on the tail of one of the snakes. It hissed angrily and flashed its fangs at me, though it decided against trying to actually bite me. Off it slithered toward the forest where, judging from the grass, the rest of its friends were going as well.
Fayroll [04] Gong and Chalice Page 20
