by Edward Brody
I rounded to where my usual room was and the door was closed. I banged on the door a few times, expecting that Ozzy was inside, but there was no answer.
“Ozzy!” I shouted at the door. “Open up. Let’s go!”
“He’s probably exhausted,” Adeelee said from behind me.
I jumped at the sound of her voice and turned around, always blown away by her beauty. Tsarra was right behind her. “Oh hey… You didn’t sleep?”
“I had a quick nap,” Adeelee said. She bit down on a piece of elven pie, and then held out her hand where she was carrying two uneaten ones. “Having a nice meal kind of perked me up. You should have one.”
I smiled and grabbed one of the pies. “Thanks, Adeelee.”
“Of course.”
“I’m ready to head out if you guys are.”
Adeelee nodded.
I turned back towards the door and banged a couple more times. “Ozzy!”
The door finally unlatched, and when it swung open, there was Ozzy standing in his boxer shorts, revealing his hairy chest and slight beer belly. Running around at his feet was his dog, Royce.
“What the hell?” Ozzy asked. “I just barely got to sleeping.”
“Put some clothes on, man. It’s time to go.”
“Awww, shit,” Ozzy moaned and tilted his head from side to side. He lifted his chin and sniffed.
“Elven pie?” Adeelee asked, holding up another pie for him.
“Now we’re talking,” Ozzy said, snatching the remaining pie from Adeelee’s hand. He took a huge bite of the pie, chewed it briefly and swallowed. “Oh, man. I feel better already.”
“Just get dressed, man,” I insisted. “I have a wagon waiting outside the Vale.”
“Alright, give me a minute.” Ozzy eased the door closed.
“A wagon?” Adeelee asked.
“A new recruit for the guild. He was working as a merchant in Linden, but now he’ll be working for the guild in Edgewood.”
“You must have had a better offer for him than you did for me.” Adeelee smiled.
I shrugged and scratched the back of my head shyly. “Something like that.”
A minute later Ozzy came out of the room, fully geared up with Royce wagging his tail behind him.
“They let you bring Royce into the Vale?” I asked.
“Ehhh...” Ozzy said. “I kinda summoned him while I was in the room.”
Adeelee raised an eyebrow. “It’s okay…” she said. “Let’s head out. If you need any essentials, you should stop at Rhys’ shop first.”
“Already replenished,” Ozzy said.
“And I’m broke,” I said with a grin. “I think I’ll be okay until we get to Edgewood.”
“What happened to your gold?” Adeelee asked.
“Ah, yeah. Thanks for reminding me.” I reached into my bag and pulled out my Arcane Missile spell. “Arcane…” I said with a wink. I quickly read the spell and the words jumped of the page filling me with knowledge, and just as quickly the scroll disappeared into thin air.
Congratulations! You have learned the spell: Arcane Missile.
“I’ll test it out once we get going.”
“Alright,” Adeelee said. “Let’s go then.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
01/13/0001
When we arrived at the wagon, Gerard was hanging off the edge of his seat, ripping off pieces of a food ration and tossing them at Sora. Sora, big as she was, seemed to be enjoying jumping up to catch the bitter pieces of food just as if she were still a cub.
“Oh you’re back!” Gerard said giddily.
“Gerard, this is Ozzy and Princess Adeelee of the High Elves.”
“Princess?” Gerard looked surprised and quickly tossed the rest of the food ration to Sora. He jumped off the wagon, rubbed his hands together and then kneeled before Adeelee. “Forgive my manners.”
Adeelee chuckled. “Oh, no matter. You may rise, and it’s a pleasure to meet you, Gerard.”
Gerard stood up and gave a slight bow of the head. “And you as well.”
Ozzy held out his hand, and the two men shook. “Nice to meet yah.”
“Ozzy is also joining the guild in Edgewood,” I explained.
“Oh…” Gerard set his eyes back to the Princess. “And Adeelee will also be a member of the guild?”
I glanced at Adeelee out of the corner of my eyes and shook my head. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Hmph!” one of the elven guards said from a few meters away. “As if the princess would join some pathetic startup guild in the dark elves’ forest.”
The comment gave me a mix of embarrassment and anger, but I didn’t say anything. After all, he was pretty much right. We didn’t have a lot going on yet.
“So this is the wagon?” Adeelee asked. She walked around and looked at the wheels and then the horse. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover quickly. I think it’s best that you and I travel alone, Gunnar”
“Huh?” I asked.
Adeelee pulled out a golden key and handed it to me.
You’ve received: Jax’s House Key. Durability: 100/100. Quality: Average. Rarity: Rare. Weight: 0.1 kg. The key to Jax’s home.
“We don’t know where Jax has is headed, so we should check his home for any clues first. If we hurry through Addenfall to check his house, we can still make it to Edgewood before the wagon gets there.”
“Huh? I asked again. “How? Your Spirit of the Forest spell won’t work through the Freelands, right?
“No, but you’ve got Sora, and I’ve got Tsarra.”
“Huh?” I asked for a third time.
“She’s big enough that you can ride her now. I’m sure she’ll allow you.”
I turned to Sora who was still chewing on some of the food ration that Gerard gave her. Her ears perked up, and she looked at me as if she knew that she was being talked about.
“Just ask her, Gunnar.”
“Uhh…” I groaned. I took a deep breath and shrugged. “Alright.” Adeelee told me that Sora may grow as big as Fenris someday, but I had never really thought about riding her. I motioned my hand toward Sora, and she immediately rushed over to me. I kneeled down and looked her in the eyes. “Adeelee says you’re big enough to ride. What do you think?”
There was another strange whisper in the back of my head, so faint that I couldn’t make out what it was saying. But nonetheless, I got the feeling that she was accepting of the idea.
Sora pressed her head against my hip and purred before lowering herself before me.
“Just be careful,” Adeelee said. “She’s still not fully grown, so you’re a bit of a load for her.”
I nodded and hoisted myself over her back.
Sora growled as she rose to her feet, and I had to use both my hands and my knees to keep myself balanced. She didn’t have the same thick fur that Fenris had, so it would be easier to slip off if I weren’t careful.
“Fuckin’ A,” Ozzy said. “I love Royce and all, but I need myself one of those.”
Royce wagged his tail and jumped around at Ozzy’s feet, and we all laughed at his comment—all except the elven guards who just sneered.
Adeelee mounted Tsarra, and Ozzy hopped on the wagon with Gerard.
I gave Gerard and Ozzy quick instructions on how to find our homes in Edgewood and told them that we’d meet up with them there. Adeelee was confident that we’d arrive in Edgewood before the wagon, and though she was reluctant to visit Edgewood, she agreed to stop by there so I could give Aaron a heads up as to what was going on.
Gerard ordered the horse forward, and off they went.
Sitting on top of Sora was a surreal feeling. For one, she was my pet, and I wasn’t just riding on the back of her like I had with Fenris. Also, she seemed to simply understand where I wanted to go. As I shifted my weight with my knees and applied pressure with my hands, she felt like an extension of my own body. She moved with me rather than feeling like I was ordering a horse around.
“To Jax’s home?�
�� Adeelee asked.
“Let’s go…”
Adeelee bolted off with Tsarra, and I gave Sora a light pat to follow. Sora leapt and burst into furious run, and there I was, riding through the forest with my two favorite girls—Sora and Adeelee. I didn’t know Tsarra very well, but I was kind of growing fond of her too; twice now she had saved us from compromising situations.
Two weeks in Eden’s Gate and my girlfriend—or was it ex-girlfriend—was starting to become a distant memory. Everyone had told me to forget about Rachel, but allowing her to slip out of my mind had cleared room for others to consume it.
When we arrived at Jax’s home, everything outside looked undisturbed. Adeelee and I dismounted our travel companions, and we began walking around the perimeter, looking for clues.
I approached the door once we were sure no one was inside, and I used Jax’s house key to open the door.
It was just as I remembered it from the night that I had woken up after being eaten alive by maggots. Everything seemed like it was in the same place, but the fire in the fireplace was out, and all of Jax’s alchemy gear and reagents were gone from his standing desk.
Adeelee started searching the desk, and I walked over to the cabinet where he usually stored food and food rations. The cabinet was fairly high, so I couldn’t get a good look at what was at the further portion of the cabinet and stuck my hand in to feel around. My hand immediately touched something sticky and bouncy, and I immediately knew what I felt.
Spider webs.
I jerked my arm out immediately, and when my hand came out with a nasty, green spider sitting on top, my heart practically jumped out of my chest and I jerked backwards, knocking my back against Jax’s dining table, tripping on a chair and falling to the ground with a thud.
The spider jumped off me and started scurrying for the door.
“What happened?!” Adeelee asked. “Did you find something?”
I tried to catch my breath and shake the heebie-jeebies from my body. I wasn’t going to be getting over my fear of spiders any time soon, but I didn’t want to look like a total dweeb in front of Adeelee. I cleared my voice and picked myself up quickly, trying to look as collected as possible. “It’s nothing… a spider is all.”
“A spider? You scared the hell out of me.”
I dusted myself off. “Sorry about that.” I tilted my head towards the cabinet. “It’s empty up there. Did you find anything?”
Adeelee shook her head. “Desk is cleared save for a broken vial.”
I huffed and scanned the edges of Jax’s cabin. It was small and there weren’t many places to hide anything. If there had been any signs of struggle or any other obvious clues, we would’ve seen them right away. It looked like he just took all his necessities and bounced without a trace.
“Hmm…” I mumbled and shuffled over to Jax’s bed. I kneeled, knowing that Jax often stored crates of items underneath it. I yanked at two different open crates that were under the bed and scooted them into view.
One of the crates was completely empty save for a small layer of dust that had gathered at the bottom, but the other had a few low-level starter items inside. There was a training dagger similar to the one I was given in the tutorial, a basic shortbow, and a pair of thin, weathered gloves. Tucked under the gloves, however, was a thin, folded parchment, the bottom half torn off.
Adeelee picked the note up and read:
A life in the forest? How bland. I’m growing old and my dreams have turned to seeing something new, to meeting someone and settling down. Addenfall is no place for a lone human to stay. The Serpent Sea? Perhaps crossing and starting my life anew wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps—
The rest of what was written was missing.
“Jax left to cross the Serpent Sea?” Adeelee muttered. She looked up and sighed.
I put my hands on my hips and looked to the crates on the ground. “Hmph.” I looked back up and scratched my head as I focused on the empty standing desk and the cabinets, then back towards the fireplace. Something wasn’t adding up.
“I guess we’re wasting our time then.” Adeelee shook her head. “You should forget about the whole Sparrow thing, and if he crossed the Serpent Sea, there’s no telling where he’s gone. And…” Adeelee trailed. “It doesn’t sound like he wants anything to do with us anymore anyway.”
“Let me see the note,” I said, motioning towards the parchment.
Adeelee handed it to me, and I began to inspect it. It looked just about like any other parchment but there were a few things that stood out to me.
“It’s too perfect,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I rubbed my index finger across it and then pinched the tip of my finger with my thumb. “There’s dust in the crates and even on the items in the crates, but this is clean.” I focused in on the tear of the paper. “And how convenient that none of the letters were torn. It was written after the paper was torn and not the other way around.”
I looked back up to the cabinet and standing desk. Jax had taken everything of value with him, leaving only a single crate with useless low level items in it. If he were so meticulous to gather his valuables, and even go so far as to give the key to his house back to the elves, he wouldn’t have left something supposedly written to himself, giving away his location.
For a moment, I considered that I was in a new world where Earth rules didn’t apply, and maybe the note was simply some sort of cheesy programming, made to set me across the Serpent Sea in search for Jax. But thus far, nothing had been sloppy about Eden’s Gate, and quests seemed to be created based on the NPCs’ actions rather than NPCs being shoved down linear, predetermined quest paths. And if this were relevant to “The Missing Bastard” quest, I had a feeling that I would’ve gotten a quest update of some sort.
“It’s a plant,” I said.
“A plant?” Adeelee asked.
“I don’t know if Jax wrote this or not—he probably did—but this was placed here to set us in the wrong direction or stop us from looking for him.”
“Why do you think that?” Adeelee asked. “It makes no sense.”
“Has Jax ever acted like he didn’t like living in Addenfall?” I asked.
“No,” Adeelee said. “In fact, he always seemed to love it here.”
“And have you ever known him to write memoirs to himself?”
“No...”
“So what are the chances that this—“
“You’re smart beyond your level, Gunnar,” Adeelee interrupted and threw me a wide smile. “I should invest some points in intelligence on my next level up.”
I grinned. “And this only strengthens my belief that the Sparrows have something to do with this. Whether Jax is a Sparrow or not, after the story you told me, the medallion, and Jax’s disappearing act…”
“So if Sparrows have something to do with it…?”
“Then we find a Sparrow.”
“And how do we plan to do that?” Adeelee asked.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the quest I pulled from the bulletin board in Thorpes a few days earlier. “I just so happen to have a quest to catch a Sparrow. I was planning on doing it myself sometime, but with Jax leaving and all…” I handed the quest to Adeelee and she began reading.
“Knuckle Bay…” she muttered.
“What about it?” I asked.
“Thieves, pirates, murderers… There is no law in Knuckle Bay, Gunnar. It’s an unlegislated city governed only by fists—hence the name, Knuckle Bay. It’s where thugs go to launder money and smuggle stolen goods.”
“Then that makes it the perfect place for a Sparrow to hide.”
“And a perfect place to be murdered and forgotten.”
“You don’t have to go,” I said. “I’m a Reborn, so if I’m murdered, I’ll have another chance. I understand that it’s riskier for you.”
Adeelee took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, I’m going. I need to know that Jax is okay.”
I smil
ed and handed Jax’s house key back to Adeelee. “Edgewood is on the way.”
I pushed the door open to step out, and almost fell back into Adeelee when I saw what was outside. Right beside the front of the step was the same small, green spider that had jumped on me when I stuck my hand inside the cabinet. At least, I thought it was the same one.
Name: a forest spider
Race: insect
Level: 1
Health/Mana/Stamina: 5/5/10
Status: neutral
Adeelee snickered. “You’re really scared of spiders, aren’t you?” She made a move to step in front of me, but I held my hand out.
“I’ve got it,” I said.
I focused on casting Fireblast, but the moment I started to feel the flames forming in my hands, I remember that I hadn’t used my Arcane Missile spell yet. I cancelled the call of my fire and closed my eyes a moment, trying to will arcane magic into my hands.
As the magic crept down my arm and past my wrist, it felt quite different than my usual magic spells. It was tingly and cold, but had some undertones of heat somehow. I opened my eyes and held my palm out toward the spider the same as if I were going to cast Fireblast. There was a split second during which I could see blue hued flames forming at the tips of my fingers, but just as quickly as I noticed it, a small cone of magic shot out of my palm and sped into the spider with a direct hit.
You have gained 15 XP!
There was a brief moment where the residual, blue flames of the Arcane Missile were visible on the ground, but they disappeared within a second, and there was no charring or burn marks left on the ground as if I had cast Fireblast. The dead spider looked like it had been blasted apart and melted, but its limbs had only slightly darkened. Best of all, it only seemed to use about half the mana that Fireblast would’ve.
I turned to Adeelee with a proud grin on my face. “No more spider.”
