Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  I waited with interest, but of course nobody actually left.

  “Are you ready to begin your journey to completeness?” he asked, raising his obscured head high.

  Everyone around me barked ‘Yes!’ and Nickel jerked his head in the direction of the Father meaningfully, and I joined in.

  “Are you ready to dedicate your lives, your minds, bodies and souls, to servitude?”

  “Yes!” everyone cried. I opened and closed my mouth but no sound came out. Am I ready to what now?

  “Well, be gone, and may honour and luck be with you as always,” he said.

  New Quest!

  My Heartbeat, My Soul!

  The Father wishes you to prove yourself worthy in the eyes of the goddess Titania by aiding a citizen within the city of Dawnspire, and then returning for judgment.

  Reward: Unknown Item(s)

  200 EXP

  Accept/Deny

  The text appeared in front of me and I swiped my hand across the word ‘Accept’. It dissipated in front of me like smoke, which was awesome in itself, and then a little jingling noise sounded out and a notification appeared in the top right corner. I turned away from the crowd, who were all filing out of the hall, and gestured at it with my hand.

  You have received a QUEST!

  Complete it to receive your reward.

  Keep track of your quests by concentrating on viewing your journal, and gesturing wilfully to view.

  Not super helpful, but the most aid I’d received in this game so far, so I noted it and stepped outside the double doors and back into the busy city centre.

  I had to find someone to help, and then I’d get some kind of … blessing? A higher rank in my randomly assigned career, and probably some other cool stuff. It was a start, and definitely not something I was going to say no to. I had no idea how much EXP 200 actually was, but it probably wasn’t to be sniffed at considering it was quite a big quest.

  After just a couple of seconds of aimless drifting, a cloaked figure slammed against my side, almost winding me, and wheeled around to jab an invasive forefinger right in my chest. Ouch. Wow, they really didn’t dull the senses in this game at all; in The Afterlife you could choose how much you actually felt and experienced, in terms of pain as well as pleasure — but when I had ‘gestured wilfully’ hoping for an Options menu, nothing happened.

  “Watch it, moron,” the figure snapped. He threw his hood back and I realised it was that level 5 teenager from inside the hall, and I sighed. I couldn’t get into a fight with him, even if I did appear to have eight years on him.

  “You clearly just bumped into me,” I pointed out, and moved to walk away from him, indicating that the conversation was over, but he was having none of it. He sidestepped in front of me, green eyes blazing.

  “You what?” he challenged, his voice just a few decibels too high. Why was he so mad? I inspected him again to find that he was still Neutral to me, so why was he acting Hostile?

  “Look, OK, you’re a teenage boy in a place that hasn’t invented porn yet, I get it; I do,” I said, raising my hands up. “We’ve all been there. Except me, I guess. Until now. Oh, wow, I hadn’t even thought of that.” I paused, looking away, while he stared daggers right at me. I turned back to him and shrugged. “Look, I don’t have any weapons or armour or money or … anything. I’m not going to fight with you. Just walk away, dude. We don’t have time for this.”

  You have discovered a hidden skill!

  Speech: Some men are fighters, some men are healers, some men build kingdoms with their bare hands … and some men are good talkers. You are the latter.

  Related Attribute: CHA

  With that, I walked away with purpose, hoping he wasn’t going to follow and stab me or something. “Chickenshit!” he yelled after me, and people on the street turned to stare. I chewed my lip and quickened my pace. I needed some quests and I needed them quickly if I was going to make the most of my time in this game.

  I wanted to explore, really; to carry myself to faraway places on my own legs and see the beautiful views I knew there would be. But I needed some levels and gear if I wanted to do that, and right now I had nothing. Literally nothing. I’d be killed by a couple of mosquitos if I strayed too far from the city gates.

  I passed a shop with a swinging, creaking sign that stated ‘SMITH’ and figured that was a good enough plan when it came to acquiring some kind of weaponry, so I pushed the door and headed inside the shop.

  “Hello?” I asked, looking around to see no other person inside, but shelves upon shelves of pretty metal items, most of which I actually wouldn’t have been able to identify with a gun to my head, but some of which I recognised. There were several small blades available for inspection, but when my thumb found the edges they felt fairly dull to me, which could have been a safety feature in the game, but honestly I doubted that a little.

  The shop was nicely decorated and felt warm and welcoming, and the displays were set out so that each item looked enticing. If only I had just a single copper piece in my pocket.

  “Hello!” an old man greeted, stepping from a back room to the counter and fastening a tight rope around his loose trousers. He had short hair and a receding hairline, a flabby, weak chin despite the rest of his body being fairly average in weight, and watery, smiling eyes. “My name is Ronan. Can I help you, Brother?”

  I wondered if I should correct him: I didn’t have the title of Brother yet, but he would learn that if he inspected me, so there was no need to correct him for making a guess from my pendant and ugly brown clothes.

  “Yes,” I said. “How much is your cheapest weapon?”

  Ronan let out a tight laugh, quickfire like buckshot, and then stuck his thumbs under the rope holding up his trousers. “Oh, well. We have a new stiletto in that I think you’d love.” He pointed at me and then shuffled to the back room again. He returned not too long later with his grimy hand wrapped around the leather-wrapped hilt of a very small, long dagger. “This is a handy weapon. Easy to conceal. Very easy to use. Very effective.” He swished it in the air and made a couple of jabbing motions with it.

  I couldn’t help but be put off by the size, though. I motioned behind him to a large sword that leaned against the back wall. “How much is that?” I asked instead.

  Ronan turned back to see what I was pointing at, and then turned back at me with a grim expression. “That’d fetch a good 500 gold,” he said. “Listen, why not tell me how much gold you have first? Then we can start from there.”

  “I, uh … I have nothing, yet,” I told him. “I’m going to look into getting some gold as soon as I can, so I thought I’d look around here and find out how much I’d need.”

  His lips twisted slightly and he pocketed the stiletto. “Well, the daggers here range from twenty to 200 gold. Swords are much higher,” he said tersely.

  I cleared my throat gently. “Look, uh, is there any way we can come to a different arrangement? I may not have any gold but I am willing to help out.” I paused. “Anything you need.”

  Ronan frowned down at his display case and I wondered if he was going to ask me to leave, but then he looked up, loudly sucked on his tooth, and then nodded. “Alright, lad,” he said. “How about this? I’ve got a suspicion that my new hire is up to something. Maybe stealing from me. Keep it hush what I’m about to tell you, yeah?”

  I nodded, wide-eyed. I was about to get a new quest already! This was going alright so far. Ronan stepped in closer so I bridged the gap between us and leaned in to hear him as he spoke quietly.

  “I want you to follow him,” he said. “He’s a shady guy and no one around here has heard of him before. Obviously, because of the Blight, no one gets in the city gates without a damn good reason. I think he’s lied his way into the city and now he’s lining his pockets with my gold before he flees.”

  I leaned back to get a better look at him. “Sorry. What’s the Blight?”

  He frowned and shook his head at me. “You Collective recruits hav
e your fingers up your— ahem. Your priorities maybe in the wrong places.” I waited patiently. “Boy, the Blight. The Blight! You know. The reason no one is allowed into Dawnspire. The disease that’s affecting the crops in the Waste and in the East.”

  The Waste and the East? “Oh yeah? So you’re getting a lot of people coming to Dawnspire because they can’t farm back home?” I asked.

  “Exactly.” He shook his head again. “Can’t believe you don’t know that,” he muttered. I resisted the urge to tell him that I was from a different reality altogether. I didn’t think that would get me any points with someone about to hire me.

  “But it isn’t affecting Dawnspire?”

  “Nah,” Ronan said, sticking his thumbs back into his waistband. “Hasn’t reached us yet, and the Father assures us that the Collective’s magic will stave it off until Titania— oh shit, please don’t say the thing.”

  “Huh?”

  He leaned in closer and peered at me and I felt a slight puff of cool air over me, before he settled back again and nodded. “You’re only an Acolyte,” he said with realisation. He had just inspected me? “I guess it makes sense you don’t know much about the order yet. Why’d you join? Shit, no, that’s none of my business. Sorry. I’m a chatterer. I think that’s why young Nicholas is happy to take advantage of me, but I’m not a fool. I might be a blabbermouth and an old coot, but I’m not a fool.”

  “So you want me to follow him?” I asked. “Where is he?”

  Ronan jerked his thumb behind him. “He’s making a custom sword, and he’ll finish it off and deliver it in a few. He always takes a strangely long time to do simple tasks, so I want you to follow him from a distance. Don’t let him see you, and for the love of the titans, just do not let anyone know I asked you to do this. Get it done and I’ll give you enough for a dagger.”

  New Quest!

  A Traitorous Assistant?

  Ronan, a Dawnspire Blacksmith, suspects that his new assistant, Nick, is a secret refugee here to steal from him and then escape the city. Follow him and find out what you can about his identity.

  Reward: 20 gold

  90 EXP

  Accept/Deny

  I raised my hand and flicked ‘Accept’, and the text disappeared like smoke again. It was a pretty cool visual.

  “Nick,” Ronan said loudly, as his assistant entered the room presenting a big, shining sword on a cloth. I was about to inspect the guy when I realised that I already had. In town. He was the ‘Unfriendly’ guy. This was not boding well already. Could it be a bug? Why would he dislike me? He looked up and glared openly at me.

  “What’s an Acolyte doing here?” he asked, and I felt the same almost imperceptible cool tingle of an inspection being performed on me.

  “I, uh, was just looking around,” I said. “Cool sword. Did you just make it?”

  “Yes,” Nick said, and turned away.

  “It’s for one of your ilk,” Ronan added, a small smile on his face. “Brother Caspian.”

  I nodded as though I knew who that was, but I did not. “Great. It looks really good.”

  Nick looked at me hotly and then turned away again as Ronan took the sword, squinted at it in much the same way he had me, and nodded once. Before he sheathed it, I quickly tried to inspect the item the same way I would inspect a person.

  Steel Longsword

  Fine Quality

  Attack: +8

  Req: Strength 14

  I recalled my own Strength being less than that, but a +8 to attack sounded pretty good. It wasn’t for me, obviously, but it was good to know what I could learn about weapons by eyeballing them.

  Nick left, but not before giving me one last glare, and I stuck my tongue out at him — when his back was turned, of course. I was wearing sackcloth, after all, and the guy was holding a big-ass sword and seemed to hate me. I wasn’t dumb.

  OK. I wasn’t that dumb.

  “Don’t be seen,” Ronan said softly once Nick was out of sight, and I nodded once. Here goes, I thought.

  I would have to stay out of sight and not be caught following the guy. Normally these types of quests in games were easy enough — you could kind of tell the routes that the game wanted you to take — but this game was a cut above. If everything I’d heard about it was right, it was possible that no programmer had really even had a personal hand in designing Dawnspire. I was just going to have to use my wits and incredible athleticism.

  So essentially I was boned from the get-go.

  Once out the door of the blacksmith’s, I had hitched up my sackcloth and I was ready for anything.

  4

  The Assistant

  Name: Matthew Blake — Level: 1 — Progression: 15%

  Race: Human — Specialization: None

  Faction: Dawnspire Collective — Rank: Acolyte

  STR: 12

  DEX: 10

  INT: 8

  WIS: 5

  FORT: 9

  CHA: 9

  Atk: 6 (+0) — Def: 5 (+0)

  Alliances:

  Dawnspire Collective — Friendly

  Skills:

  Improvised Combat (Level 0 — 65%)

  First Aid (Level 0 — 40%)

  Speech (Level 0 — 90%)

  I took a quick look at my character sheet when I set off and noticed that I was really close to a level up in Speech. Though I wasn’t sure exactly how this was going to affect my journey — it wasn’t going to actually change the way I spoke, after all, but it might make the words that I chose a little more effective with people, or open up more options down the line? — I thought it would be a good idea to try to progress in that soon to see if it contributed to my overall level, specialisation or rank, or something else.

  I also really needed to get some kind of weapon so I could start levelling up in that. Otherwise I was going to end up with a weirdly high Improvised Combat skill, and I was sure I wouldn’t really need that very much at all once I got a good sword.

  Nick turned around suddenly to greet someone and I panicked and lunged for an alleyway and threw my back against the wall. After a second I was brave enough to turn around and peer around the corner, to see my prey just about vanishing out of sight in a crowd.

  I was going to need to be more careful than just strolling, or I would out myself as a stalker by acting like a maniac, before anyone else even had the chance to suspect me.

  As soon as Nick disappeared fully behind a building, I upped my pace, and then tried to blend in a little with a crowd as I rounded the corner behind him. With a jolt I noticed that the Hall of Silence was behind us, and if he was delivering something to a high-ranking member of the Collective, he was probably going the wrong way. He spun around suddenly to peer behind him, and I crouched quickly so I was immediately obscured by the low pale walls of the fountain in the centre of the city.

  Water gushed above me and I finally got the nerve to continue creeping forward in a crouch, not caring what the other people walking around thought of me.

  You have discovered a hidden skill!

  Stealth: Why go for honor when you can sneak around like a rat in the sewers and stab your foes in their beds when they least suspect it? I guess we can’t all be respectable warriors.

  Related Attribute: DEX

  Man, the game was seriously giving me shit every time I made a decision. I bet that whatever Luke did, the system lavished praise on him at every turn, like every cute girl in every bar ever.

  I gritted my teeth and continued to Stealth my way down the road, alternating between obscuring my wide body behind anything I could find, and walking as casually and silently as I could down streets and around twisting corners.

  Man, this city was really huge. Not game huge either, but actual city huge. And all of the people around me were having dynamic interactions, going about their daily lives, and all looked completely unique and realistic to me. It was becoming really difficult for me to remember that I was in a virtual reality. I was in another land.

  Finally,
after circling the same street and alleyway an extra time, I guess to make sure he wasn’t being followed — ha! — shady Nick stopped and thumped once on a dirty wooden door. He paused for several seconds, and then thumped three times in quick succession with his fist. Definitely shady. The old blacksmith had probably been spot on … unless it just so happened that a high-ranking member of the Collective was hiding in an alleyway and required a secret knock from every random delivery guy? Not too likely.

  I ducked behind the wall to watch. The door didn’t budge and Nick looked impatient, pausing to wait before trying the secret knock again. I was mostly hidden, but I was pretty positive that if Nick turned his head all the way to the right, he was going to see my grinning face clear as day. I spotted, at the other end of the alleyway, a gate that led to a tended garden and a thick collection of bushes. I could watch from there and I wouldn’t be seen, but I had to be quick and avoid missing any part of their conversation or I would probably miss out on the quest. It was a better idea than potentially being caught spying, so I made my decision, turned tail and sprinted around the block.

  It didn’t take me too long to find the tended gardens around two corners, and I quickly spotted the thick shrubbery that I had planned on hiding in, but I had an unexpected obstacle: a young woman, maybe my age, was sitting on a low wall in the centre of the garden, looking out at the distance, kicking her legs a little, and eating a rosy apple.

  I would have to get past her without drawing attention to myself from the men ten feet away in that alley, hide without being asked any questions … and I was going to have to do it in the next couple of seconds or I was going to miss the conversation entirely. I had already wasted a precious minute of time.

  I picked up the biggest rock I could find and ducked behind a tree before the daydreaming woman spotted me, and then I whipped my arm and lobbed it at the stone wall of the building behind her. It connected with a crack and she turned, surprised, to see the source of the noise. I took that second to hobble as quietly as I could and squeeze myself into the bushes beside the gate.