by Edwin McRae
“Think very carefully about what you’re planning to do with that knife.”
Vari looked Dayna in the eye. She sensed something about this woman, her attitude towards weakness, her eagerness to point those arrows at anyone not of her world. She was not one to provoke.
“It’s for him, not you.”
Mark motioned for Vari to stop. “Just wait a minute.”
“Why?”
“Shouldn’t we interrogate him first? Find out where the reivers are taking the villagers?”
“I know of no villagers.”
Dayna gave a sharp sigh. “There’d be no point. Reivers are raised in pain, at least so I’ve heard. There’s nothing we could do to him that his people haven’t done to him already. He won’t talk.”
Mark looked to Vari, his upper lip curled with a touch of disgust, or was it fear? “Is this true?”
Vari nodded, then walked with slow, deliberate steps to the injured soldier. He looked up at her, his eyes weeping blood. She didn’t hesitate. She simply drove the dagger up under his chin, held him for a moment as he jerked and spasmed in his death throes, then let him fall back into the dirt.
You killed a wounded Level 2 Reiver Warrior.
Your XP reward = 10 XP
She cleaned her dagger on his pant leg and tucked it back into her sash.
She wasn’t sure what she felt at that point. The chilling pleasure of revenge? No, there was no joy in killing men who’d already given their lives to the Way. They were already dead. The hot thrill of escape? No, not until every last inquisitor was gone, burned and scattered to the winds. Calm. That’s what she felt. She looked at Dayna, then Mark. In good company, if that was a feeling. To Vari it didn’t matter if it was for moments, for days, or forever. She’d felt lonely for so long that any respite was welcome.
It was Mark who finally broke the silence. “So, do we keep following the trail, catch ourselves some slavers?”
Dayna shook her head. “It's getting too late. We might as well camp for the night."
"Sure," agreed Mark with a tentative smile. "Does that mean you're offering to cook?"
Dayna’s scowl deepened even further. "Might I remind you that I'm still only about a finger’s twitch away from putting an arrow in you?"
Mark's smile faded. "All right. You find the food, I'll cook it."
“I’ll get a fire going,” Vari added quickly.
Dayna nodded curtly and set off into the forest while Mark tethered the horses in a nearby clearing. As she gathered firewood, Vari silently thanked Fate for delivering her these new companions. Would they be friends or would she one day have to drive her dagger up under their chins too? She hoped for the former.
4
Dayna returned with walnuts, wild potatoes, and wild yams. Then she sat by the fire and pretended not to watch Mark as he heated some stones and then lay the walnuts, potatoes and yams among them to cook. As a last touch, he sprinkled the vegetables with leaves from a rosemary plant he’d found growing.
Mark’s dad had been a pretty awesome cook before the "big C" had made a meal out of him. As a teenager, Mark had helped a lot in the kitchen, so it was almost habitual for him to rustle up a meal whenever he had company. Of course, real company wasn't something he did much these days. In the games he played, he tended to be a loner, preferring to do things his way rather than bow to the expectations of the pack. But there were still games that maintained the conventions of eating, sleeping and excreting, and Reign of Blood was one of them, so he’d kept his virtual cooking skills polished.
They dined in near silence, with Dayna seemingly content to brood, Vari smiling yet distant, and Mark feeling too nervous to even think of something to say. It wasn't exactly the fantasy ideal, the brave adventurers huddled around the fire, sharing courageous tales and comradeship. This was just like every RL party he'd attempted to go to, tense and uncomfortable, saturated with awkwardness. It was a relief when Dayna yawned and took herself off to bed, a blanket she laid out upon the leaf mould under the canopy of some ferns. Vari nodded her thanks for the meal shortly after and retired to a comfortable hollow at the base of a tree, leaving Mark to poke at the fire with a stick.
He didn't want to dwell on the fact that he was effectively trapped here. He could feel the clammy claws of anxiety every time he entertained the thought, so he left it alone. Instead he focused on what he could do, bringing up his notifications and character stats.
Your party has slain two Level 2 Reiver Warriors.
Your XP reward per party member = 20 XP
Curious, thought Mark. The experience system must have partied him with Dayna as soon as the reiver warriors had charged out of the forest. But since Vari had taken out the first three warriors before Dayna and Mark knew what was happening, she must’ve gained their total XP for herself. And fair enough too.
Your Swordplay skill has reached Tier 2.
Receive a 20% increase in damage, accuracy and parrying.
As an experiment, Mark stood and drew his sword, softly and smoothly so as not to disturb Vari and Dayna. It felt lighter in his hand, more balanced, and when he swept it through the air, he could feel the improved sense of control. Smiling to himself, he sheathed the sword and sat back down by the fire.
You brokered peace between a reiver and a Garlander.
Your XP reward = 10 XP
No Diplomacy skill? wondered Mark. Actually, he was kind of relieved. He’d always found it weird that RPG designers insisted on including soft skills in the stats line-up. It was a hangover from tabletop roleplaying, where you might roll the dice to see if you’d smooth-talked the night watch into letting you off with a warning. This was VR, where the border between player character and avatar was well and truly dismantled. A player’s soft skills in RL were their soft skills in VR. Well, that’s the way Mark had always thought about it. Part of the reason why he never chose to play as a rogue.
Congratulations!
You have reached Level 3 in the Warlock class.
Progress to Level 4 = 50/100
You have earned 2 Attribute Points.
There are now 4 unallocated attribute points in your pool.
Spell Selection
As a Level 3 Warlock you have unlocked a set of 3 magical spells.
You may choose 2 out of the 3 spells on offer.
Alternatively, you may wish to save one or both spell slots for “found spells”.
Arcane Edge
Ethereal Flesh
Doppelganger
Each spell has a base casting cost of 6 EP multiplied by the Tier at which it is cast.
Mark didn’t feel ready to make his spell choice just yet. Nor did he have any idea where he was going to ‘find’ spells. He’d only gained Second Skin while having a reiver warrior literally on top of him. There was too much he didn’t know about this version of Reign of Fire, too much that he couldn’t predict. In fact, the most pressing question was that of his class designation.
Warlock? There’d never been a character class called “Warlock” in any version of Reign of Blood that he’d played. And he wondered why he hadn’t even been given the option of selecting his class. In fact, it’s like he’d somehow skipped the whole character creation phase altogether. So far, the warlock build suited how he normally played, a combination of combat and magic, but he was used to finding his own way through his character builds. It was important to him. It wasn’t like he could do that in the real world so it kinda rubbed him up the wrong way that he was being railroaded down the warlock path. And by who? Or what? Why was he here? And why couldn't he leave?
Once again, Mark took a step back from these big questions. Instead, he did what his counsellor had advised him to do, to focus on the here and now. A bit of mindfulness to stave off the inevitable spiral of over-thinking and self-flagellation. He poked around in the embers of the fire, focusing on the undulating red glow, the flair of bright orange and yellow as air awakened the charcoal, the fleeting nature of the moment
as the heat subsided and ash reclaimed flame.
A flurry of thoughts settled like ash upon the ground of his mind as he calmly considered the facts at hand. He was a warlock, on a quest to free some people he didn't know, with a ranger he'd only just met, and whose first act had been to shoot an arrow through his neck. With that in mind he checked his Body and HP scores.
Body: 11
HP: 33
With a mental command, he dropped two of his attribute points into Body and nodded with satisfaction at the result.
Body: 13
HP: 39
The muscles across his body contracted for a moment. It wasn’t like a cramp or convulsion, more like a pleasant stretch. Mark flexed his arms and enjoyed the increased density and firmness in his biceps, triceps and forearms. Certainly beats going to the gym, he thought to himself with a grin, and with his HP being calculated as Body times Level, a score of thirteen would present Dayna with a slightly tougher task the next time she decided to murder him.
He caught himself unconsciously rubbing his throat with his right hand. He clenched his fist and willed his Spirit and Essence Point scores into view.
Spirit: 11
EP: 33
With more spells on offer, he dropped two points into Spirit. It was only the difference of one more Level 3 spell cast now, but he’d get the benefit of some exponential growth as he leveled up.
Spirit: 13
EP: 39
His palms tingled and he felt a warming in his chest, like he’d just quaffed some hot lemon and honey drink on a frosty morning.
His attribute point pool sat empty, but he knew it wouldn't take long to replenish it if his days continued to be as eventful as today. Out of interest, he brought up his Mind score.
Mind: 10
Mark didn’t have the foggiest idea what Mind was good for. He didn’t feel extra smart or dull, just normal. Perhaps there were skills he could unlock that required a high Mind score? For now, building Body for Health Points and Spirit for Essence Points seemed to be the safest way to go.
As he waved his stats away, he wondered about the concoction that Vari had used to cause her explosion. Perhaps she had some sort of potion brewing ability. If there was ever a skill that needed a strong Mind score, alchemy would be it. Yet this was pure conjecture. Apart from her nice smile and penchant for blowing up reiver soldiers, he knew next to nothing about Vari. And that gave him an idea.
Dayna lay asleep on her side, her back to Mark. He peered through the gloom at her and focused on perceiving her stats. He applied a little bit of willpower at first, more like a dash of wishful thinking, and then gradually increased the intensity of his regard from piercing gaze to full-on stalker stare. His eyes began to ache, and just as they started to burn, so much that he thought he would have to screw them shut, Dayna's details illuminated the night air above her.
Dayna of Elmtree
Class: Ranger - Level 4
Skills
Bloody Mindedness
Wilderness Affinity
Archery
Knife Fighting
Stealth
Gloomsight
Try as Mark might, he couldn't bring up any descriptions or Tier numbers for Dayna's skills. A shame, because he really wanted to know what Bloody Mindedness was, other than her obvious tendency to be an acerbic, hard-assed bitch.
Perhaps, as a Level 3 Warlock, he was only entitled to a brief description of another's character. Or more likely Mark was being limited by the fact that he was currently a level lower than Dayna. To test his theory, he turned to the slumbering Vari and gave her the stalker stare.
"You only need to ask, Mark."
Vari's dark eyes glistened in the light of the dying fire, large and as warm as the charcoal at Mark's feet. Heat flushed up Mark’s neck and face, the embarrassment of a little boy peeking into the girls changing room.
"Um, sorry, I was just…"
In fact, he wasn't really sure what he was "just doing". Was he gathering information about his party so as to better understand their strengths and weaknesses? Was he planning to use this information to form future strategies? Or was he just being nosy, prying into private places that he didn't belong, as usual.
"I'm what the reivers call a Figurist. Level 3. I deserted before I completed my training."
Mark's curiosity wrestled with his embarrassment. "Training in what?"
The developers seemed to be pulling out all the stops this time. A complete rethink of character build plus two new character classes? And then there was this new race, the reivers, not to mention the differences that he'd noticed in Garland. This was not the Reign of Blood of his first 500 hours of play.
"It's…complicated." She shifted in her hollow, shuffling the dry leaves about, although it seemed as if she was trying to make herself feel more comfortable about the topic of conversation rather than the sleeping arrangements. "A figurist changes things, takes what is already there and moulds it into something new."
Something about the way she said it, her reticence, unsettled Mark. "What sort of materials are we talking about here? Stone? Metal? Water?"
Elementalists changed things, creating golems out of mud, ice walls out of water, but that didn't seem to quite fit with what Vari was saying. She shook her head, looked down at the ground, and drew patterns in the leaf mould with a twig.
"Bone. Flesh. Blood." She looked up at Mark, her eyes shimmering, not quite with tears, but certainly with sorrow. "The inquisitors, they find those of us with the talent, make us create their aspirations, their fantasies. The others they find, those with talents they deem irrelevant, they…"
Mark's insides prickled with sudden anxiety. This young woman was opening up to him, bearing her troubled soul, and it was all he could do to fight the urge to run screaming into the woods. He’d felt the same way any time his ex-wife had tried to get “deep and meaningful” with him. His throat went dry, his guts became a pincushion, and he made any excuse to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. But this time he kept up the fight, shut a host of cowardly excuses and conversation stoppers behind his gritted teeth, and just listened.
"The others...they were the materials."
Mark could imagine, all too vividly, what Vari must’ve dealt with. A lifetime of horror films had seen to that, yet he couldn't imagine how it would feel to be surrounded by that every day, to have your hands wrist-deep in it, to have that sordid misery filling your nostrils, biting at your eyes. Then again, he didn’t know if what she was telling him was real. She seemed to believe it was, but then she was an AI, programmed to believe whatever the developers wanted her to believe. For all he knew, her figurist backstory was just that, a few lines imported from some narrative designer’s lore document.
"I'm sorry." It was all he could manage, all he knew how to say. Thankfully, it seemed to be enough.
Vari nodded. "Thank you." Then she settled down into her leafy hollow, and moments later Mark heard her breathing, soft and deep.
He envied her in some ways. Having unloaded her troubles, she was able to let herself sink into the bliss of sleep. He doubted he would be able to do the same tonight, or any nights to come until he'd worked out what the hell was going on. Yet, as he wrapped himself in his cloak, lay back upon the soft earth and closed his eyes, oblivion caught him by surprise.
The next morning dawned with a cloying fog that would’ve soaked Mark to the bone had it not been for his traveling cloak. He awoke to a sharp jingling near the tip of his nose. It took a moment to recognize the gleaming mass that Dayna was thrusting at him.
"Put them on. I've already cleaned them in the stream." The chainmail she dumped on his chest, the helmet next to his head. "Looks like they’re about your size."
Taken aback by Dayna’s generosity, Mark couldn’t help but say, “What? Not planning to cash them at this blacksmith of yours?”
Dayna’s face didn’t even twitch. “They’re mine. You’re just carrying them for me.”
; “Oh, so now I’m your human saddle bag?”
“Yep. Try not to get them messed up.”
“I still want my sword back.”
“Been thinking about that.”
“So you’re going to give it to me?”
Dayna looked him up and down, like an undertaker sizing up a corpse for a coffin.
“You reckon you get a new sword every time you die?”
“Guess so.”
“Then I could set up a tidy little side business as a sword merchant.”
Mark’s Adam’s Apple scraped up and down his dry throat as he tried to swallow the implications of what Dayna had just said.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Depends if you keep bringing up that fucking sword.”
Then she was off, vanishing into the ferns. Mark shook his head, mouthed the words “total bitch” and set about examining the armor, if only to calm himself down a bit.
Reiver Chainmail Vest
20% reduction to damage caused by hits to the torso.
10% chance to prevent total damage for non-magical blade strikes to the torso.
Reiver Spiked Helm
20% reduction to damage caused by hits to the head.
20% chance to prevent total damage for non-magical blade strikes to the head.
He compared the Chainmail stats with those of his leather armor.
Garland Leather Armor
10% reduction to damage caused by hits to the torso and forearms.
10% chance to prevent total non-magical puncture damage to the torso and forearms.
The chainmail was a definite improvement. He looked over at Vari, curled up in her comfy hollow, and then took the armor with him into a secluded spot near the stream where he could clean up and change. As he shucked off the leather gear and the shirt beneath, he was rather surprised to see the state of his own physique.
