I thought Faun was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and she had been—up until that moment. I was looking at the image of an olive-skinned goddess. She stood tall and defiant, her emerald gaze piercing the captor who had dared to take her picture. Her long black hair fell to her waist, brushing the chains around her wrists. I had a feeling that the metal binding her was not there simply to keep her from escaping, but more to prevent her from murdering the sickos who had the audacity to put them on her. It was then that I knew what my real mission was.
Pop!
Quest Updated: Paving The Way
Objectives:
[x] Slay Conn Felvid
[] Rescue Safira
Her name is Safira, I thought. Fitting. It’s both fierce and elegant.
NEW SKILL!
Coursing
Type: Active
Description: Track whoever you want. Simply utter the spell and then the name of the person you wish to find. Let your hands guide the way.
Holy fuck! I thought. This is going to be hella useful!
“Coursing! Safira!” I shouted into the darkness.
My hands began to tingle much as they had at the sacred pool with Binari. I looked down at them and discovered that they began to glow gold, though it was faint. I held them up in front of me and turned around in a circle to see if I could detect any change. That seemed to be the ticket because as I spun, I saw them slowly begin to brighten and then dim again. It seemed intuitive that the glowing indicated whether I was on the right track or not. I had no idea how far away she was, but I had a hell of a lot more to go on than I had several minutes prior.
I reclaimed my knife from the heart of my first attacker and called Sleeper to me, thankful that he had not bolted in the struggle like my enemies’ less-than-loyal mounts. I saddled up and headed out in the next few minutes, after applying my last healing potion to my aching wounds, eager to save the beautiful damsel.
I had been tired after my bout with the Sundrake, but sleep was no longer a concern in light of my new mission. I would ride south all through the night and then some to find her, with the soft glow of the two moons now high overhead to guide my path.
10
I traveled until dawn, following the glow of my hands more or less southward. The village that I suspected to be Felvid and his cronies’ destination came and went, the Coursing spell paying no mind to it. The Evermeadows were appropriately named, I discovered, because they stretched on and on and then some. I was beginning to suspect that they would never end, that the hilly fields were perhaps generated indefinitely as players explored more and more of them. A glance at my map assured me that there was indeed another Zone waiting for me some distance to the south, but the sense of scale was difficult to determine.
Just as the morning sun peeked up at me from over the horizon, I saw a mounted man traveling down the path in my direction. He was big and brawny, an armored beast of a man that I hoped I was not about to have to face in battle.
His armor was green and gold, as was that of his muscled black stallion. I slowed Sleeper’s approach to a trot and made ready to greet the stranger. His countenance looked approachable enough.
“Greetings, young man,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief at hearing no tension in his voice as I half-expected him to regard me with the same suspicion as Elder Frey and the majority of the other standing members of the Presence.
“Hello,” I said with a quick wave. “I go by Si1ence, but my name is Rixon.”
“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you on this fine morning, Si1ence,” he said with a nod. He stopped his horse next to mine and we were suddenly within arm’s reach of one another. “My name is Henrik. I am what you would call a paladin. I have made a vow to my god to smite evil where it stands.”
I jokingly held my hands up in defense, saying, “I hope you see no evil in me.”
He laughed, returning my gesture with a knowing grin. “We would not be speaking if I did. Being a paladin, I have certain abilities that allow me to determine such things at a glance—unless an evildoer is cloaked by powerful magics, of course.”
“That must come in handy.”
“That it does. So, tell me, Si1ence, what are you doing out here in the Evermeadows?”
“I’m tracking down some slave women so that I can free them. They have been captured by the Gray Favor. I just killed several of their men last night and got some information on these women.”
“Ah, very interesting . . .” he said, putting a hand on his chin. “Your quest excites me. May I join you?”
I was taken aback. His offer was so unexpected. “Don’t you have other things to do? It’s not that I wouldn’t want your help, but I don’t want to distract you from whatever quest you’re currently on.”
“Nonsense,” he said with a laugh. “My only question is to vanquish evil, and it seems that helping you would allow me to continue down my path. I have just come from intercepting a supply wagon under control of the Gray Favor. I am simply roaming the land looking for more of them and the like. It seems as if you have more direction on the matter than I do, friend.”
“Oh,” I said. “Then please, by all means, join me.”
He turned and headed with me back down the path in the direction from which he came. He was never lacking in conversation, asking me all sorts of questions about my life and volunteering information about his own without me even having to ask.
He told me that he was born in the Tel’Maryn but his journey for fortune took him to the Temple of Vines in its respective Zone. It was predominately a wine country, he told me, with hills much like those in the Evermeadows, but they were more compact and the land had “more to it.” There were cities and towns in the Zone of Vines, but a lot of the inhabitants lived out in the country in stone homes gathered into relatively small hamlets with trade routes among them. Theirs was partially a warrior culture, with almost every man highly trained in combat. Their women were just as fierce and specialized in the art of archery. They were known as Venmed (Knights of Wrath) and Vinmiten (he did not tell me what that meant), respectively.
He went on to explain that the women were trained in archery to defend the vineyards from vicious bird monsters, known as Rawkina, that come to feed on the grapes during Autumn. These Rawkina, he said, had long, fearsome beaks which housed fangs that were equally menacing. They had nimble money-fingers on the tip of each wing and electric blue plumage. I did not ask if the plumage was actually electric or if he was just saying that to describe its color. Knowing this world, I assumed the former was the case.
Every hunting season, the Vinmiten kill these creatures when they come to feed and collect the feathers of their plumes to make headpieces which they wear to display their prowess in battle. The more feathers a woman has, the more renown she has in her community, giving her increasing authority over and respect of those around her. The women who have the most feathers on their headdresses have prime pickings from the men, and they often pick from the strongest of them to ensure that their children will grow to be as powerful as they themselves are.
“So, is it sort of a matriarchal society, with the women getting to choose their husbands?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Everyone is valued on either their age or their battle abilities. The elders are both men and women. Their age alone attests to their ability to survive the harshness of the lands for so many years. Yes, it is true that the women often choose who they wish to marry, but that is simply a custom. It does not mean that the Venmed are valued less then the women. Ours is a fairly complicated social hierarchy.”
“I see,” I said. “So, if a woman has, say, 25 blue feathers and another has 26, does that mean the woman with one more has complete seniority over the other?”
He laughed. “Well, technically, that is true, yes, but—”
He was interrupted by a four-foot-long furred snake descending upon him from a tree branch hanging overhead. He whipped out his knife in a
flash and jabbed it up under the beast’s chin and into its brain. It hissed and dropped to the dirt of the path at his horse’s hooves, taking the knife with it.
“—but that is not usually the case,” he continued, dismounting from his saddle as if nothing had happened. “Yes, there are those vain few women who are silly enough to count each individual feather, but they are more often laughed at than not.” He pulled his dagger from the creature and wiped its red goo along it scaly hide before jumping back to his horse and continuing down the path as before. “It is more just an ‘eyeball’ sort of thing. If two women appear to have roughly the same number of feathers, then they are seen on even grounds. Besides, each of the Rawkina have varying numbers of feathers—one may have less than its brother but be far more worthy as an adversary. So, it all more or less evens out, you see?”
“I understand,” I said, trying my best to maintain as nonchalant a tone as he had after witnessing what had just happened.
After more conversation, I heard that familiar pop.
Name: Henrik
Race: Human
Class: Paladin
Relationship: Loyal
Level: 4
PRIMARY ABILITIES
Strength: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 5
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5
Charisma: 6
DESCRIPTION
Henrik is a paladin whose quest is simple: destroy evil wherever he finds it. His loyalty is easily earned, but once it is lost, it is hard to regain. He is an amiable man and well-versed in all manner of subjects. His knowledge of warfare is wide-reaching, as is his knowledge of many Zones of the land and their laws. He was born in the Zone of Leaves but left it at a young age to discover his fortune, settling for a time in the Zone of Vines, as a fan of both its structured warrior culture and the wines it has to offer. Periodically, he returns to his homeland to check on his old friends and family in the small forest village of Gulwatha. His primary focus these days is to banish the Grey Favor to ensure the safety of his people.
I was surprised at having earned the man’s trust so soon, since I had to have sex with Faun to get the same result from her, but it was written right there that his loyalty was easily gained. I could not protest the thought of having such a formidable warrior on my side.
The sky had grown a deep orange before we came across any changes in the landscape aside from the random trees scattered here and there. I pulled out my map to get some intel on the massive ominous forest we were approaching to the south and discovered that it was called the Fetid Wood. Soon after, Henrik announced that he had passed through it several times before.
“It’s a nasty swamp unlike any I have ever seen,” the paladin said. “The fumes are noxious enough in some places to kill a man, and in other spots they will simply force you to lose consciousness while the hideous beasts there do all the cleanup work.”
I cast Coursing for the twentieth time and held up my hands. There was no mistaking it—Safira was either in those woods or somewhere in a straight line on the other side of them. Seeing my action and likely having an idea what I was thinking, Henrik laughed.
“We couldn’t possibly go around?” I asked. If she was inside the woods, we would know for sure once we got to the other side because my spell would still point me toward the trees. If she was not inside, we would have just dodged an unnecessary hurdle. The gamer in me would have scoffed at the suggestion, but the guy in me who didn’t like to get stabbed and mangled wholeheartedly backed the idea.
“It’s your call, Si1ence,” he said, “but I’ll advise you to look to the left and right and see how far these trees stretch on either side. I know not where they end, but I can tell you this: going around them will add days to our journey, and beautiful Safira might be long gone by then.”
He had a point. Just for good measure, I consulted the map once more and discovered that the Fetid Wood reached into both Zones on the eastern and western side of Tel’Maryn, making it seem impossibly large.
“You’re right. Forget I suggested it. Let’s go.”
We rode down together and, just as we were about to pass through its dark threshold where, even in the dimming daylight, night appeared to be a constant fixture of the place, he paused to give me warning.
“By very careful in here,” he said, holding up a cautionary finger. “It is often the case that things are not as they seem. Everything wants to eat everything else in this place, and the forest itself will descend upon you at the first sign of weakness.”
“Understood.”
With that, we slowly trod inside. Everywhere I looked, it seemed as if trees were either dead or dying, slouched over, fractured in places, or overgrown with tangles of parasitic vines. These vines were not like the thick, healthy ones I saw in the forest Tir’Nadrun, the City of Crying Leaves. These were sick and gangrenous, many themselves were overrun with thousands of little mites or whatnots crawling all along their hairy green plant-flesh. I was careful not to brush against any of them for fear of being engulfed in the little bugs myself, but the task was not as easy as it sounded.
We dismounted soon after entry, walking over rotting log and under weeping branch. For miles, we did this in silence, and all along the way the stench of death never left my nostrils. Never before had I considered a place cursed, but this was the most unholy land I had ever set foot in.
The constant fear of being watched, being followed, gave my neck a lot of responsibility as a minute did not pass without me looking over my shoulder. There were sounds everywhere—insects crawling, insects eating, insects issuing loud mating calls that would usually quiet when we drew near. Most of these noises I learned to tune out since they did not present a threat to me as long as they were a reasonable distance away. The other sounds though—the not-to-distance howls, the snapping of fallen branches, and the rustling of leaves both on the swamp floor and overhead—they gave me pause; they made me all too aware of the beating of my own heart and the knot welling up in my throat.
More often than not, among the ever-present suffocating humidity, we would find ourselves trudging through ankle-deep muck. It was times like this that truly made me appreciate having the foresight to purchase the leather boots I had recently picked up. They were proving themselves far more useful than for simply their plus two physical defense bonus. The hardest part about traversing the grime was getting my horse to do so. When I had first met Sleeper, he was portrayed as this wild steed that needed the hand of a true master to tame him, but I had mistakenly equated his hard-headedness with bravery. This was not the case, as I’d discovered at the least-convenient time while trying my damnedest to pull him along into the shallow pools of icky soup. In all honesty, I could not blame him for his hesitation. In contrast, Henrik’s mount, who I learned was named Sunstrider—likely some developer’s homage to the lore of the Warcraft universe—did not balk when faced with the same task. He went wherever his master led him, like the good armored steed he was. This, admittedly, served as a minor point of embarrassment for me, but if the paladin thought anything of my horse’s reluctance to obey, he said nothing of it.
On some two-dozen occasions, I snagged myself on an unseen vine of thorns. Each one smarted like a little needle drawing my blood. Many of them were far more viscous than the ones at home, breaking off to accompany me until I mustered the resolve to pull them out, taking bits of my flesh with them, constantly adding to the symphony of pain and annoyance that was my constant experience in the Fetid Wood.
“They have even tinier barbs on their tips,” Henrik whispered. Upon seeing my confusion, he added, “The thorns—their tips have many smaller thorns on them. That’s why they hurt so much to pull out. There is a salve that you can douse them with to make them limp and rubbery so that they can be removed with little effort, but unfortunately I do not have any.”
“Eh, it’s not so bad,” I lied through gritted teeth as I yanked another from my forearm.
“We have to be on full alert here,” he warned as the goo grew deeper. “Stick to the spots where you see limbs and logs sticking out of the muck. That’s a good sign that we can traverse it. The empty spots might indicate a spot that is prone to swallow anything that enters it.”
“Like quicksand?” I asked.
“Yes, very much like quicksand.”
“What about snakes and other stuff living in the water? Are you sure it’s safe to travel this way?”
“No, it’s not safe at all,” he said and half-laughed. “But this is the only way forward, it seems. Every time I have passed through these woods, I have not found a way to get around the swampy parts. There are no roads leading through it, so each traveler must discover his path anew at every crossing. I have been keeping an eye out for ripples and bubbles in the water, and I hope you have been as well. I suppose I took it for granted that I did not have to mention it before.”
There were little islands dotting the deeper sections of swamp, and I was relieved at the sight of the first one we came upon. We climbed up onto its twig-covered surface, and I flopped down on my back, taking in a deep gulp of air and looking up into the dark branches towering above.
Circuit World Page 14
