by S. R. Witt
TALENTS: Weapon Affinity (Piercing, 1H), Friendly Fire
SKILLS: Climb Walls: 3, Craft (Fletcher): 1, Detect Traps: 1, Disarm Traps: 1, Evade: 2, Foraging: 1, Herbalism: 1, Hide in Shadows: 8, Listen: 2, Lore (Noctivagant Incursion, Third Screaming War): 2, Lore (Screaming War): 1, Pick Locks: 9, Pick Pockets: 10, Search: 1, Spot: 3, Unarmed Combat: 1, Weapon (Bow): 2, Weapon (Piercing, 1H): 1, Weapon (Thrown): 1
REPUTATIONS:
Church of the Freehold: -10
Law: 0 (-50 if revealed as a thief)
Priests of Hoald: -10
ShadowS: -24
Sisters of Merciful Fortune: -20
Sunmurder: 1
Villagers: 0 (-10 if revealed as a thief)
My slightly fuzzy brain had to process the scrolling wave of system messages a few times before the reality of what I’d done set in.
Oh.
Shit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I left Bastion at our table and hurried out of the tavern the second I realized what I’d done. I prayed my screw-up wasn’t going to push the Grandfather over the edge. If I ever wanted to climb the Shadows’ ranks, I had to stop being such a bonehead.
The bitter cold and biting wind blew the last of the alcohol fumes out of my head and left me tired and raw. My thoughts, dark and bleak as they were, became crystal clear and razor sharp.
I still needed and wanted a good night’s rest, but I’d never be able to get to sleep until I cleared the air with the Grandfather. I needed to know just how hard I’d screwed the pooch this time.
But, for some reason, the old man acted like he had no idea that I’d blown the quest. In fact, his snarky-but-understanding attitude put me on my guard.
“Back so soon?” The Grandfather of Shadows asked as I entered the Shrine. “Did some scary goblins chase you away before you could retrieve the Codex?”
A hot flush flooded my cheeks, and my eyeballs tried to burst out of their sockets and roll around on the floor. “Are you kidding me?”
He pressed the tips of the fingers on his left hand to his chest and widened his eyes with feigned surprise. “Oh, forgive me, brave hero, for doubting your impressive skills and dauntless bravery.”
“You know what? My brother and I fought three furious monsters to get this for you, but just for that, you can’t have it,” I said, and drew the Burning Codex from the pouch on my hip.
That got his attention. He sketched a hasty bow and offered me a short round of sincere applause. “I apologize. If that is the Burning Codex, then I am impressed.”
If it’s the Codex…
Temper flaring, I crossed the Sanctuary and extended the book toward the Grandfather. “Feast your eyes on this.”
He took a long, hard look at the book in my hand. Then his bushy eyebrows shot up, and his thin lips formed a tight ‘O’ of surprise within the gray confines of his goatee. “Well, then. That is something. Come along. You’ve earned your explanation.”
He rose from the pew and motioned for me to follow him. We made our way out of the sanctuary and into a cramped hallway. The walls were lit with tiny candles in niches near the ceiling. The flickering light cast crawling shadows along the carved reliefs adorning the walls. Dragons of light and darkness warred all around us, their battles shifting with every step we took.
My attention was so focused on the shifting patterns overhead I missed the doorway the Grandfather slipped through. I’d have kept right on walking if he hadn’t snatched my arm and pulled me into a circular chamber. It was less than fifteen feet across, but its ceiling was far overhead. A blazing globe of light hung from long chains bolted to the ceiling, casting a pure, undiminished radiance on the bookshelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling. “Here we are.”
Thick metal rings encircled the room between the tiered shelves, and a wheeled ladder was attached to the rings by iron cuffs.
The old man grabbed the ladder and hopped onto its lowest rung, kicking it into motion with his other foot. The ladder rolled around the room without a sound, stopping only when the Grandfather dropped his boot to the floor. He scrambled up the rungs, much quicker than someone of his age ought to be able. His fingers trailed over the spines of a dozen different books as he searched for one tome in particular.
His silence annoyed me. He’d dragged me down here to show me something, and all I saw was the soles of his boots as he climbed the ladder. “What are we looking for? I can help.”
The old man glanced down at me. The blazing overhead light hid his expression in a mask of shadows, but his chuckle reached me with no problems. “Go ahead, take a look. I’m searching for a volume entitled The History of Wenderly. It should be about an inch thick, and it has a red cover.”
There were a ton of books in this room, but not too many red ones. I ran my index finger along their spines, watching for color before trying to decipher the titles. I don’t know why the Grandfather thought it was so funny I tried to help, it wasn’t like I was illiterate.
The first red book I found was too thick, but I decided to satisfy my curiosity. When I focused on the title branded onto its spine, I realized the problem. I didn’t have any points in language skills.
Damn. I was illiterate. At least partially.
This is a special language you do not yet understand. Perhaps, with practice, you will learn its many secrets.
The Shadows must have written these books in some sort of code to keep their secrets safe from outsiders. How many other special languages were there?
I made a mental note to educate myself as soon as possible, then took a seat at the small table in the center of the room. The old man’s chuckles floated down to me again, making the tips of my ears burn with embarrassment. I couldn’t take anything for granted in-Game, and I realized I needed to spend a lot more time digging into the mechanics of Invernoth if I wanted to succeed here.
I opened the skills panel on the menu and got a quick lesson in just how many things I didn’t know. Most of the skill names were grayed out because I hadn’t earned any points in them through practice or training. A few had asterisks next to their titles, and when I flicked my eyes toward one them, a small status window with a flashing yellow border floated into view.
This skill is reserved for members of the Warrior class
Learning some skills were locked by profession was frustrating, but it could’ve been a lot worse. A quick investigation showed me most of the locked skills were related to the thief class, and I wondered if anyone could even see them given that thieves weren’t exactly a well-publicized part of the game. There were also a ton of skills locked to the Expert class, which seemed to focus on a wide variety of survival, crafting, and non-combat abilities.
The old man was still puttering around on the ladder, so I spent the time digging deeper into the skill section of the game. Unlike most games, the number of skill points you could gain per level wasn’t limited. While you couldn’t earn more than five ranks in any skill at any given level, the only restriction on the types or number of skills you could learn was your profession.
That realization made me want to smack myself on the side of the head for not spending more time researching how the game worked. I could have been raising all my skills through practice, not just waiting for them to go up through regular use.
Games, kids. How do they work?
The old man startled me by dropping a book on the table between us. He flopped down into a chair across the table from me and thumbed through the tome he’d plucked from the shelves. “The Hoaldites wouldn’t want you to see this, you know.”
An anxious moment passed between us. Apparently, the hate the Hoaldites felt for thieves was mirrored by the Shadows’ distaste for religion.
I cleared my throat. “It’s not like I’m going around telling the Hoaldites all your dirty little secrets.”
The Grandfather rolled his eyes and went back to looking through the book. “And yet you didn’t have any trouble coming to me with the informa
tion about their plans, did you?
“Why is that?”
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. The real reason was that I wanted the Shadows to help me get out from underneath the Hoaldites’ collective thumb. It wasn’t a very noble motivation, but lying to the Grandfather was a risk I wasn’t about to take. The old man had a pretty good eye for bullshit.
I fidgeted in my seat, then dove into my explanation. “Because I need your help. And because I thought it might improve my standing with you. And because their new priestess really pisses me off.”
That earned me a surprised look. “At least you’re honest. That counts for a lot amongst thieves.”
The Grandfather tapped his finger in the center of the page and said, “Here it is. Lord Wenderly ruled over Frosthold after he returned from the War. There’s some dispute about whether or not he was entitled to rule, but he did have the key to the Burning Throne, which is the seat of Frosthold’s Dominion. Some say he killed the dragon entrusted with protecting Frosthold to get it, some say he merely stole it from the dragon’s corpse. Still others believe the dying dragon gave it to him as a way to try and preserve the Dragon Web and protect Frosthold from the nightspawn.”
Great, a history lesson. Just what I wanted.
The Grandfather glanced at me to make sure I was catching the mountains of wisdom he was dropping on my head. I nodded so he’d think I was taking notes and get on with it, already.
“There’s no record here of whether or not he was able to use the Key and sit upon the Burning Throne, but just having it convinced everyone he was in charge.”
The Grandfather rubbed his chin as he read. He turned the page. “Anyway, long story short, Wenderly never married, didn’t have any children and died unexpectedly. Some sort of fever? It’s unclear. What is clear is the town elders tore his place apart looking for the Key so they could name one of their number as the new leader.”
The Grandfather grinned. “Problem is, they never found the damned thing.”
I already knew the important part of this little fable. The Key was missing, and the Hoaldites were looking for it. “And that’s why the Hoaldites have hired every adventurer they can to find this thing before the nightspawn can get their hands on it?”
He ignored me for a few seconds, flipping from one page to the next. He ran his finger down the rows of text then raised his eyes to mine. “The priestess said something about nightspawn?”
I nodded. “She claimed they were looking for the Key, too.”
The old man cradled his head in his hands for a moment. When he looked at me again, he seemed older, tired. “And you say monsters were trying to reach the Codex? Can you describe them?
“There was a dog lady,” I started.
“Sounds like a wargrai. They’re the elite scouts of the dark spawn.”
“What about a crow person? An aryx, I think.”
The Grandfather scratched at his chin. “The aryx were the terrifying masterminds of the Noctivagant Legion. The legends say they were destroyed during the Second Screaming War.”
I snorted at that. “Legends say a lot of shit that isn’t true, apparently. There was also an ogre.”
“If the nightspawn are organized enough to send a goblin raiding force here, and then follow it up with a guerrilla force in search of the Burning Key, we have a serious problem.”
When it became apparent the Grandfather wasn’t going to spill the beans, I prodded him. “There’s always a problem. What is it this time?”
The old man pursed his lips and steepled his fingers on the table between us. “I promised you more information about what it is we do, so listen carefully.
“The Shadows aren’t only thieves. We don’t merely redistribute wealth, we manage power. It’s our sacred duty to maintain the balance. Not too much darkness, and not too much light. The Hoaldites don’t hate us because we steal from them, they hate us because we stymie their plans to control Invernoth.”
Confusion knitted my eyebrows together. “But why? I mean, yeah, they’re dicks, but aren’t they kind of the good guys?”
The Grandfather smirked. “If the Hoaldites seize control of Frosthold, even if they believe they act for the good of us all, their rule will rob the people of their freedom.
“The Hoaldites claim to care for the poor and the weak but think about what that means. Do you see the flaw in their philosophy?”
His words rolled around in my head, picking up stray thoughts. Then the light bulb turned on. “If it’s their sacred mission to care for the poor and the weak, then they become more important, more powerful, when there are more poor and weak.”
The Grandfather nodded, and I felt like I’d just won a gold medal. “Correct. The Hoaldites, and every group like them, needs to be needed. And if no one does need them, then they will make someone need them.”
Suddenly, the Hoaldites seemed like they were a lot more than just annoying. “So, the Shadows are what? Freedom fighters?”
The Grandfather chuckled. “We want people to choose what kind of life they will lead for themselves. We don’t want the Hoaldites to claim the Dominion. We don’t want anyone to claim the Dominion. The dragons were wise enough to manage that kind of power, with the aid of the mortals they ruled, but I have no faith men alone can handle that kind of power.”
“Well, good for us, then, because I stole the Burning Codex right out from under the noses of those nightspawn, and now no one can have it, right?” I forced a grin and prayed the old man wouldn’t ask for the book.
The old man leaned back in his chair and put his boots on the table. He blew out a gusty sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was the first time I’d seen any sign he was capable of getting tired or worried, and it freaked me out a little. “The Codex is part of the puzzle. It holds the secrets of the Burning Key and explains how to use it to claim the Dominion.”
Something about this didn’t make sense. “Then why weren’t the Hoaldites looking for the Codex? If they have everyone out looking for the Key, aren’t they skipping a step?”
“The Dominion isn’t meant for men. It was the province of the Dragons. With their passing, much of their knowledge was lost.” The Grandfather dropped his hands into his lap and sighed again. “The Hoaldites must have a piece of the puzzle that they think will let them use the Key without the Codex. Or they may not know they need the Codex at all.”
“How did you know about the book?”
The old man looked at me and grinned. “It’s my job to know things. But the short version is the Shadows had worked with Wenderly before he disappeared. He told us he’d hidden the Codex in his home and assured us it would never be found.
“When he died, and the town elders didn’t find anything in his home, my predecessors took him at his word and decided to leave the Codex hidden rather than try to find it. If we couldn’t find it, there was precious little chance of anyone else discovering it.”
“Until all this started going down, and you figured it would be better to have it in hand than take a chance on the Hoaldites finding it first.” It made sense, but I still didn’t understand what the Hoaldites were up to. “So what do we do now?”
“Do you really want to prove your loyalty to the Society of Shadows?” The old man didn’t wait for me to answer before he plunged on with a warning. “Before you accept, understand this will put you in the middle of a battle much bigger and older than you can imagine.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off again.
“And, if you do this, you will be at odds with the Church of Hoald. More importantly, you will have to keep working with them while you’re working against them. If you’re found out, death or exposure as a thief will be the least of your worries.”
A new quest prompt popped up.
Do you accept the quest Prove Your Loyalty, Part 2?
Like there was any doubt. I needed to rise through the ranks of the Shadows if I wanted to get juicy jobs worth real money.
; Plus, anything that screwed with the Hoaldites sounded like a good plan.
Plus plus, I was curious as hell about what was really going on with the Dominion.
Plus plus plus, if I got really lucky, I’d fix my negative Shadow faction reputation before it blew up in my face like a bomb.
“Yes,” I said, with a grin. “Let’s do this.”
The Grandfather gave me an honest smile and leaned in close. “I need you to steal a map…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The sun was rising over the horizon like a flickering match head when I sneaked out of the Sanctuary of Shadows and crept through Frosthold’s snowy streets. My exhausted body wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a few dozen hours of sleep, but neither of those was in the cards I’d been dealt.
The winter wind kicked plumes of snow into my tearing eyes and drove needles of ice into my ruddy cheeks. I don’t know why the developers decided Frosthold needed to live up to its name so literally. I’d never been as cold as I was traipsing around the streets of this virtual town, and it made the tavern’s candlelit windows look all the more inviting. I just wanted to get inside, wrap my hands around a steaming tankard of mulled cider, and catch a breather before I logged out to get some well-deserved sleep back in the World. I probably could have logged out from the Sanctuary, but there was something comforting about hanging out in the tavern amongst other adventurers.
Of course, if they knew what I really was, most of my fellow adventurers would turn on me in a heartbeat. Camaraderie only goes so far, and hungry explorers would sell their own mothers for a pouch full of silver pieces.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t see it coming. My eyes were focused on the tavern’s warmly glowing windows and not the world around me.
