Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  “What was that all about?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Oh. I, uh…” He reached up and grinned through his long bottom fangs as he rubbed the back of his huge neck. “I threatened Balin again. I mean, you know, I threatened Balin just the once. Well, it was more of a conversation. A friendly one. A friendly chat between neighbours!”

  I nodded and then seized my opportunity as casually as I could. “I heard Balin, uh, earlier. Talking about you. With Ronan.”

  Hrzog’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “What were they saying? You gotta tell me! You have to!” He was bouncing heavily on the balls of his feet like a child.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t understand what they were saying. Something about daggers, but you don’t really make daggers, do you? So I wouldn’t worry.” I cleared my throat to signify a rapid change of topic. “Can we get that Smithing lesson underway if you have a moment?”

  Before I let him answer, I strode over to the anvil and forge at the back of the shop and picked up the very same squashed ingot I’d been battering a couple of days previously. “What now?”

  “Just keep going at that, remember to picture that, uh … that dagger…” His voice trailed off. “Excuse me. I have to check on something.”

  Wait, shit, was he checking on the dagger downstairs? I couldn’t have that — then when it was gone he’d be completely within his rights to believe it was me that had taken it. “Wait, Hrzog, I need your help,” I said. By some miracle, the huge orc turned on his heel and looked at me expectantly instead of continuing down the stairs to his basement.

  Could it have been the +4 to my Charisma? I noted that I should try to tell people what to do more often…

  “I need to know. This design that you’ve projected into my mind, of the dagger — that is what happened here, isn’t it?” I checked. I was mostly just gabbling to distract him from checking that his item was still downstairs, but I could gain some useful information about crafting, too.

  “Yes,” he confirmed, shuffling from foot to foot.

  “Right. Is that all I’d be able to make right now, at my skill level? Will I be able to make more things as my skill increases?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I sighed hard to indicate that I was irritated by his lack of detail, and he flicked his big dark eyes ceilingwards for a moment.

  “You really know nothing at all about crafting anything?” he asked.

  “Nope, nothing,” I said with a smile, struggling to hold the ingot in place with the tongs as I heated it until it was glowing, then began to hammer it some more. “What can you tell me?”

  “Well … alright. You need your first design to come from a trainer, and a trainer has to be level 5 in the skill or higher. Then when you get to level 1 you can start to tinker and come up with new designs, or you can use designs. Either from buying them, studying existing items to replicate, or having them projected into your mind by high-levelled players, like before.”

  I nodded. That made sense to me, pretty much, but I couldn’t let him leave yet. I motioned him over with my chin, and once again tried not to act surprised when the huge man did as I told him, and sat on a nearby chair.

  “So meditating on new designs versus working from an existing design — is there a difference in the end product?” I asked. “I’m assuming there are finite designs.”

  “I don’t think there’s a way of knowing how many designs there are. Brand new ones are created every now and then.” He gave a heavy shrug. “I don’t think there is a difference in the end product, no.”

  “Does my skill level make a difference to the quality or to the designs I can learn?” I asked.

  “Both,” he said, a little like a sullen teenager. “Also the materials you can use with the least chance of failure. How do you not know anything at all about crafting?”

  “I don’t know, just happened that way,” I said, figuring that this was a fair and vague answer to every question about aspects of S&S that I still just didn’t understand.

  “Well, you’re doing good,” he said. “That’s going to be a dagger alright. Don’t think it’ll fail.”

  I looked back at the ingot I’d been dimly smashing at, and was surprised to see that it was starting to become flatter and even somewhat arrow-shaped. “Do I have to do anything else?” I asked. “Or just smash?”

  “Just smash!” Hrzog laughed. “Heat and smash. Your instincts tell you what to do when it comes to crafting. That’s why you get better the more Wisdom you have.”

  “Alright then,” I said, and continued to smash it until it was even more long and flat. Hrzog showed me how to heat the sides up so that I could suitably smash those, creating a sharp edge.

  Congratulations! Smithing has reached Level 1!

  I felt a shudder as newfound confidence with the tools filled me.

  “Hey, did you just get your first level?” Hrzog asked, and when I confirmed it he gently — actually, it really hurt — punched me in the shoulder in congratulations. “Now you’re just twenty levels away from being near to a professional level! Keep smashing those ingots. You’re welcome to stay here and finish your first dagger. I have to man the shop.”

  I looked up to see somebody alternating between searching the ornate sheaths that Hrzog had on display, and glancing with confusion at Moro who sat like a ghostly sentinel by the front door and waited for me.

  I took advantage of Hrzog’s kind offer and continued to smash the edges of the iron dagger, my tongue sticking out, until I noticed that my stamina bar was getting dangerously close to 10%, so I set down my tools and wiped my forehead. The dagger was almost done, and though it looked incredibly shoddy in comparison to the dagger at my waist, I was so proud of it. It was one of the coolest things, I thought, that I had achieved during my time here so far.

  During my short rest, I noticed that I couldn’t see Hrzog, but I could hear him stomping around on the upper level of the shop and laughing loudly with a customer about some kind of blade that he kept up there.

  Now was my chance…

  I rubbed my hands firmly on my legs and blew on the sore parts of my palms before stealthily making my way to the corner of the room. It held a large, unhidden trapdoor with a thick handle and rusty hinges. It was a fair guess that this led to the basement. I made sure that he was walking away from the stairs, not towards them, and then I pulled on the handle.

  It was locked.

  “Dammit dammit dammit,” I hissed as I walked in quiet circles around the shop floor. If I were a key to a basement, where would I be kept?

  I searched high and low, cursing under my breath for not being better prepared, until I caught a glimpse of something shining below the counter, and pulled it into my palm. Yes! A small iron key. It was just then that Hrzog came stomping down the stairs, though. I pocketed the cool iron object and sprinted back to my chair and snatched up the tongs.

  “You doing alright over there, boy?” he called over to me as he sorted through the sheaths by the door.

  “Doing great, Hrzog, thank you,” I called back, gently tapping the ingot with the hammer as I grinned over at him. He nodded, looking satisfied, and then called up to the man upstairs before stomping back up to rejoin him.

  Now now now!

  I pushed myself out of the chair and jogged to the trapdoor, fumbling with the key a few times before I managed to jam it into the lock and twist it. With a click, the door was unlocked, and I winced, hoping no one had heard it. When I was sure no one was coming down the steps, I wrenched it open a crack and swung my legs in. I pulled out the key and pocketed it quickly again before finding the steps with my feet and slowly, quietly, pulling the door shut behind me.

  I was instantly plunged into darkness, but then my spectre phased through the door like it was nothing, and carefully stepped down behind me. Her soft glow lit up the room almost like a single computer monitor would have, and I could just about see.

  “Thanks, Moro,” I whispered, and she
flicked her gaze up to me and then away in response. It would have been nice to get a spectre that wanted to chat with me all day, but I didn’t think those existed, and I hadn’t expected to get a spectre at all … so I had to take what I was given.

  It didn’t take long to find the chest, but any moment now Hrzog was going to see that I was gone. He probably wouldn’t initially think to look for me down here, but it would look pretty weird that I had just wandered off, and obviously I couldn’t risk getting caught leaving his locked basement: that would destroy everything I had worked for so far. I’d get arrested, leave the Collective, and fail the White Suns. Damn, I may have screwed up by accepting this quest…

  Congratulations! Stealth has reached Level 2!

  The sudden burst of text in front of my face nearly had me fall to my knees, but I managed to keep it together and not emit the very unmanly noise that threatened to escape my throat.

  I took a deep breath and slid my key into the lock. But just the tip went in, the rest refused to follow. The key for the basement was not the same key for the chest — go figure; nothing could just be easy, could it?

  “Any idea how to unlock a chest?” I asked Moro, who sat patiently flickering at my side. She licked her ethereal nose and then yawned pointedly. “Are you bored?” I whispered accusingly. “I’m so sorry I can’t be more entertaining for you.”

  She gave me a look that I knew instantly was in perfect agreement with my sarcastic comment, and then curled up into a tight ball of ghost wolf and peered at me with her amber eyes.

  “I don’t get it, what can I do? You’re supposed to be able to do magic!” I hissed. “Do some!”

  She tapped her tail on the dusty floor and then closed her eyes. Was that a clue? Almost certainly not. “Dumb old poltergeist,” I muttered. She didn’t give me any response. Maybe my own spiritbound familiar was finally tired of me. What did that say about me?

  After my third quick circuit around the room I ascertained that old Hrzog wasn’t stupid enough to leave the chest key lying around mere feet away from the chest itself. Since, to him, it contained such a great treasure. Although the fact remained that he had left the basement key two feet from the basement door, which was throwing me for a loop. There was nothing else in the small dark room; I had to give up. I had no lockpicks. I had no way of knowing how to do magic.

  So I looked around again, this time with my improvisation hat on.

  There were plenty of ingots, blanks, moulds and tools like hammers, but I wasn’t going to hammer the thing open. It would be too loud. The thought occurred to me, however, that it was fine for me to have it look obviously broken into, as that would only prompt the orc to go looking for it quicker, therefore making a scene quicker and completing my quest.

  But if it was found out that I was down here, that would instantly fail me.

  Alongside the ingots I came upon a drawstring velvet bag that I hadn’t noticed initially, and I dumped out the contents. Moro’s ears perked up and she stood and walked up to them, lifting her front paws onto the table and sniffing at them with great interest. Her tail even wagged a little as she looked up at me.

  “You like gemstones?” I asked her quietly. The quest had said nothing about leaving anything else intact, so I squinted and quickly appraised a couple of the odd precious stones.

  Spectral Quartz

  Very Fine Quality

  That was all it told me about the item. Though the stones were slightly different sizes and shapes, that was all it said about any of them. Of course, the word ‘spectral’ very much got my attention, so I slipped the stones back into their bag and stuck them at the bottom of my pack, with every intention of keeping them.

  You have discovered a hidden skill!

  Thievery: Life is harder when you have morals, so don’t hesitate for even a second to hurl them out the window. Oh, wait, you didn’t.

  Related Attribute: DEX

  Was it really necessary for the system to be so damn judgmental? Before I could sulk, more text flashed brilliantly before my eyes.

  You have discovered Spectral Gems!

  Spectral Gems are among the most valuable items in Ilyria. They can be sold at a very high price to members of the Collective. They can be sold at a high price to vendors in Ilyria. Spectral Gems can be used to teach a spell to a spectre. They can also be used to set into metal items in order to use skin magic.

  Warning: using skin magic in front of the Collective will have you banished from Dawnspire.

  Fuck! That was so much information to take in at once. I finally figured out the secret behind spectral and skin magic? It was these magical gemstones. Either they were used to teach spectres spells, or they were set into inanimate objects instead. That was ridiculous to me — the Collective hated skin magic so much, and all it was was spectral magic without a spectre, it was no more different than that.

  These people were bizarre! It was all so arbitrary.

  It made sense that Hrzog might have them down here, though. He could secretly be in the business of setting the gems into weaponry for townspeople. I wondered briefly if the knowledge that he was betraying the Collective might be valuable to me, but decided it wasn’t. It was probable that most people in Dawnspire disliked the theocratic rule here.

  I fumbled with one from my pack and crouched down to show it to Moro, who looked at me with the most interest she had expressed since she had burst out of my soul. Her tail was waving from left to right like a domestic dog, and her amber eyes were wide. Her glow was bright.

  “Alright, well, I don’t really know how to do this, so I’m going to guess that this game has an Unlock spell,” I said. This would come in handy later anyway. “Um … fuck, can you help me?”

  The wolf sat and pressed her ethereal forehead against my wrist, and I felt nothing as usual. But she was trying to get me to continue to try. I brought back the text that I had just dismissed and read it again. Then I tried something new: I concentrated on the words ‘teach a spell to a spectre’ and tapped it with my forefinger. To my shock (and disgust at the fact I’d never tried something like this before…) a new block of text appeared a little closer to me.

  To teach a spell to a spectre you need a Spectral Gem. Holding the Gem in your hand, build the spell with your conscious mind. Transfer the imbued spell to your spectre. This will not work on a spectre that does not belong to you.

  Fuck, I was such an idiot! How much time could have been saved if I had thought to ask the system more questions?

  Even though I had no idea what the second line really meant, I felt confident that I could figure it out, but I needed to be as quick as possible — I had been down here for a little while by now, and Hrzog would get suspicious soon. And that wasn’t good.

  I sat cross-legged in the darkest part of the small room and, holding the quartz in my hand, squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could and concentrated. I thought about the vivid picture of the dagger and the little whittled chair, and tried to put an image that detailed in my mind of a key.

  In my mind it was a master key. It rotated in my head, a vivid image of a little bronze key with some red string hanging off the head. I tried hard to make it look more advanced: shinier, more complex, anything, but was surprised to learn that I couldn’t. It was like there was a block in my imagination. I slid the imagined key into an imagined lock and saw it turn and pop open.

  Satisfied that I had got my meaning across to the stone — or confirmed to myself that I was finally truly insane — I opened my eyes and found that I was trembling slightly. The quartz in my hand was hot, but that could easily have been because of how hard I had been gripping it.

  I stood up, a little shakily with anticipation, and then bent over and unfurled my fingers, presenting my spectre with the hot gemstone and assuming she would know what to do.

  She looked at it hungrily and licked her lips before opening her jaws and snapping it up. She swallowed it and licked her lips again, looking happier than I had ever seen her.r />
  Moro has learned a new spell!

  Lesser Unlock

  The stone dropped out of her centre and clacked onto the floor, but now it was a burnt black rock, smoking slightly. I inspected it.

  Used Spectral Quartz

  Terrible Quality

  No more information. I didn’t particularly want to pick up the smoking blackened stone, but I also didn’t want to leave it where Hrzog could find it so easily, so I kicked it into a grate and listened as it clattered a few times and then splashed. Probably a way into the sewers.

  With horror, I looked at the grate and then up at the trapdoor, and realised that I had also found my escape route.

  But first I had to test something out. I squinted quickly at Moro.

  Moro

  Level 4 Spectral Wolf

  Spectre of Votorius-Khan

  Soulbound

  Spells:

  Lesser Unlock

  Amazing. I traced my dry lower lip with my tongue and then pointed at the chest eagerly. With a new lease on life, the spectral wolf leapt forward and arched back her huge white head with a silent howl — which somehow I still felt like I could hear, somewhere deep inside.

  You have discovered a hidden skill!

  Spectral Magic: The art of meditating on new spells, and transferring them into your own spectre.

  This skill is RARE — Attributes will be increased every 2 levels instead of 5. Experience will be gained upon level up in this skill: (skill level*10)

  You have gained 50 EXP for discovering a RARE skill.

  Related Attribute: INT

  I heard an audible click come from the chest’s locking mechanism and with bated breath I crept forward and pushed open the lid. Lying inside on a bed of red cloth was a dagger, a few inches longer and a little thicker than my existing dagger. Beside it was a beautiful sheath with hand-painted symbols. I blinked a couple of times — seeing by the low glow of a ghost was a strain on the eyes — and couldn’t help but inspect it before I snatched it up.