by Hugo Huesca
“As I’ve said, Ivalis is a very real place,” Kharon said. “You’re looking at the physical manifestation of its own magic. There are no ‘health points’ in Ivalis, although there are experience points. You’ll find that your videogame follows the laws of magic of our world and not the other way around, which is probably the reason the game’s creators chose your world for their plans.”
Kharon nodded to himself as he went on, “Ivalis’ magic system is called Objectivity, and is well known among all of its inhabitants. They can’t access it as easily as you can with your gaze, which is known as ‘the Evil Eye.’ You can turn it on and off as you will.”
“Evil Eye?”
“Well, we weren’t the ones who named it.” Kharon shrugged. “The reason your status seems empty is that you know of no spells and hold no possessions nor claims. If you want more in-depth descriptions of what your skills and talents do, simply focus on them. I’d advise you to leave such inquiries for later on, since your future minions are already in dire straits as it is. If you manage to save at least one of them, they’ll be glad to explain the intricacies of Objectivity to you.”
Ed took his gaze away from his hands and the status screen disappeared. “My highest attribute is a boosted 11, so a 12. Is that number high?”
He needed to know this if he was going to jump straight into unknown danger.
On a whim, he tried to access Kharon’s stats for comparison, but all he got for his troubles were a bunch of “?????” lines.
“Humans average a 10 across all their attributes,” Kharon said with a condescending gesture. “Are you ready to traverse the portal?”
Once again, Kharon was making sure that Ed had little time to think things over. The young Lord considered refusing for a moment, just to spite the Boatman. Then he discarded the idea. From what he understood, people’s lives were at risk, and he could do something about it. To refuse just to anger someone would be something that Ryan would do. A random use of authority without any of the responsibility. It would mean failing on the path he had proposed for himself before having started.
Ed stepped forward. “Do I just walk into it?”
“Indeed. Good fortune, Dungeon Lord. May your nights be exciting and pleasing to the Dark.”
Ed took a deep breath and walked out of the world of nightmares and into Ivalis.
6
Chapter Six
The Witch
Colors changed in an instant. His cheap work shoes were suddenly out of place in the uneven terrain of a dilapidated cave. Sunlight filtered through a tunnel’s entrance not far away from Ed. He took in his surroundings.
He had appeared in front of a crude stone altar covered with a dirty, red rag as a tablecloth. It was decorated with violet flowers of a kind he had never seen before, and a tin medallion of a crude craftsmanship sat by the center. It was made to resemble an open eye partially eaten by a headless mouth.
The rest of the cave was empty. There had been a recent cave-in, from what Ed could gather. Parts of the ceiling had fallen and the entrances of other tunnels were covered by boulders bigger than a man. The floor was cracked and dusty, but it had been of human make, once. Small oil lamps were strewn between the altar and the last tunnel exit like crude guiding lights and gave the cave an eerie atmosphere with the dancing fire. Ed saw two crude, empty sleeping rolls at opposite ends of the cave and a pelt bag.
The cave was cold, enough to make Ed shiver and wish he still had his shirt. And it was empty, not counting himself.
Ed shrugged and took a step toward the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.
“Wait,” Kharon’s voice called from behind the altar.
Ed jumped with surprise, but hurried to turn back to find Kharon’s upper body floating in midair with his lower half nowhere to be seen.
“It’s dangerous to go alone,” the Boatman told him with a mocking grin. His arm appeared into reality carrying a wooden stick that he extended to Ed. “Take this.”
Ed grabbed the stick. It appeared to have been roughly worked on by a blunt knife.
“This,” Kharon added, “is Alder’s walking stick. May it serve you better than it did him.”
“Thanks, I guess,” said Ed. The wood felt rough and real in his grip, and along with the cold and the sharp edges of the rocks beneath his feet, it erased any doubts remaining about the reality of his situation.
Kharon nodded without an ounce of shame and disappeared.
Outside, a woman screamed.
Adrenaline shot through Ed’s veins and made his heart race and his body tense with excitement. He was in an unknown world, facing unknown danger, with a stick as his only weapon and dressed only in his work pants.
The woman screamed again.
Ed ran to the tunnel’s exit and climbed across the rubble. As he left the tunnel he could hear more sounds, and the sunlight became brighter and made the cold diminish slightly.
It was the sound of a fight with several people cursing, yelling, and struggling. Ed hurried his half-rush, half-climb until he exited the tunnel, then had to cover his eyes when the sunlight became piercing.
“Stay away from me, you disgusting pigs!” That was the woman screaming again. Her accent reminded Ed of Count Dracula’s exaggerated accent in movies.
“Give us shiny things or die, human!” That voice was hoarse and nasal. It was followed by a chorus of other voices that agreed with the sentiment. “You are surrounded!”
“Alita’s tits! Lavy, just give them the stupid trinket!” A male’s voice.
“I won’t lower myself to the demands of batblins,” said the woman, Lavy. “If they desire my arcane symbol, they can pry it from my cold, dead hands!”
Ed forced his eyes open and blinked furiously while they got used to the light. The tunnel had led him to a rise in a rock formation with the action happening a few feet below him, at the formation’s skirt. He saw two human shapes with their backs against the trunk of a tree and a dozen smaller figures surrounding them.
“You heard the lady, bros!” said the batblin. “Get at ‘em!”
“Dunghill!” exclaimed the young man.
There was movement as the first batblins advanced. They seemed to be armed with sticks—no, with farming equipment.
Lavy exclaimed, “Blazing whip!”
A line of fire surged from the woman’s hand and she cracked it against the batblins nearest to her. The batblins cursed and pulled back. The acrid smell of burnt fur reached Ed’s nostrils.
His eyesight had cleared by then, and Ed took in the scene unfolding in front of him. The batblins were small humanoids of mismatched proportions, protruding bellies, and hanging flaps of skin. They were covered with gray fur and their heads looked like those of a bat. Pointy ears almost as tall as their faces, leaf noses at the tip of triangle-shaped snouts, glinting, mouse-like black eyes, and parted lips that pulled back to reveal blunt fangs covered with saliva.
Ed had seen them before—while playing IO. They were low-level encounters, almost exclusively found in open territory and rarely inside an occupied dungeon. Scavengers, opportunists, nasty little critters.
Of course, the dated graphics of the game barely matched reality. All the game’s batblins were based on the same model, while the rabble members he was seeing here were very different from each other. They had angry scars streaking their bodies, bald patches, burn-marks, and rags and straps that served as clothing and makeshift armor. Some of their bellies were bloated like balloons. Other batblins were skinny and malnourished. They were all covered in dirt and grime in varying degrees of nastiness.
Even at this distance, Ed could smell the lot of them. It wasn’t pleasant.
Their leader, a portly batblin with a wide snout, tried to brush aside Lavy’s whip with his makeshift spear. That earned him a burn to his shoulder.
“Agh!” he exclaimed while his fur simmered. “What are you waiting for, fools? Rush her down, she can’t smack us all!”
The batblins be
hind him didn’t move. No one wanted to be first.
Lavy smiled in satisfaction. She was a young woman dressed in a knee-length woolen dress and trousers. She was somewhat younger than Ed, or so she seemed. Her long, frizzy black hair was tied behind her back, and her pale skin was splotched prawn-red. It was the type of skin that burned under the sun, while failing to tan. Her eyes were of a dark purple, almost black, and shone maliciously while covered in shadows and runny mascara.
“That’s right, we’re mages!” said the young man behind her. “Run away or suffer the destruction of our arcane wrath!”
He was dressed in the same woolen outfit as Lavy and was sitting—or laying?—with his back against the tree’s trunk. His bowl-shaped hair was an almost orange blond, and all of his features seemed to consist of pointy ends and clumsy gestures of his long limbs. His eyes were a washed-out blue, and they were wide with badly concealed fear.
“Shut up,” Lavy mouthed at him. Just when Ed started to think she had the situation under control, the whip vanished from her hand with a puff of smoke.
The batblin leader took a step toward her, slowly, fearfully. His shoulder still smoked.
“Away, scum!” Lavy gestured at him, but no new whip was produced.
What are you doing? Ed thought. Cast it again.
Her spell had been a simple one, low-leveled. Ivalis Online used a cooldown system; the weaker the spell’s strength the faster it could be used again.
Yet, she didn’t cast the spell again.
Ed examined the batblin.
Batblin Cloudmaster. Exp: 50. Brawn: 7, Agility, Spirit, and Endurance: 6, Mind and Charm: 5. Skills: Brawling: Basic V, Knowledge (Hoia Forest): Basic IV, Survival: Basic VII. Talents: Cloud Swarm, Cloud Morale.
Ed skimmed the green words without delving too deep into their meaning since the batblin was already gaining confidence that no new magic attack was coming. He took a step forward, then another, ignoring Lavy’s constant threats.
Seeing as their leader wasn’t getting roasted, the remaining batblins advanced close behind him. Their lips curved upward in slimy smiles.
“It would be a fine time for you to stand up and defend my honor, you useless child,” Lavy told the blond man.
“My ankle is sprained, I think,” he grimaced, holding his leg. “Toss them the trinket? Please?”
“No trinket!” exclaimed the batblin leader. “You harmed me! You’ll pay, humans!”
Lavy backtracked until she was against the tree, next to the other human.
The batblins closed in, and Ed jumped from the tunnel’s entrance while roaring as loudly as he could.
The batblins and the humans barely had time to react in surprise at his sudden rush when he was already skittering across the dirt—barely keeping his footing—and reaching the fray with the rage and grace of a moderately big boulder.
“More humans!” one of the batblins announced. “It’s a trap!”
Ed brandished Alder’s walking stick high over his head before anyone—batblin or human—had time to react and heaved it with both his arms like a baseball bat against the leader of the group. The batblin barely had time to whimper before the hit struck hard against his temple with a dull thud. The batblin’s feet left the ground for an instant, and then the walking stick broke in two.
The batblin cloudmaster screamed in pain and fell to the ground stunned and clutching at his head, moaning in a pitiful way. He was bleeding from a gash under his ear, but not profusely. The blood was the color and consistency of used motor oil.
“Sneaky humans!” the batblin groaned. “Get ‘em, boys!”
The other batblins advanced with their hoes, sickles, and blunt kitchen knives pointed in Ed’s direction. Ed’s eyes sensed the danger and delineated a confusion of stats and numbers in such a manner that he had to blink and will the numbers to become smaller and less intrusive. Because of that, he only glanced vaguely at the information of the Evil Eye. The cloudmaster had been the strongest one.
He was stronger than all the batblins, but they were more numerous and they were angry, and he suspected that, stronger or not, a foot of rusty farm equipment through his guts would ruin his day all the same.
It was clear he’d need to apply an out-of-the-box tactic.
He pressed the jagged end of his half-stick against the cloudmaster’s neck. “Stay back! I swear I’ll kill your boss if you take another step!”
“Gah! Wait, you fools!” added the cloudmaster. “Let me go, human!”
Ed heard the young, blond man mutter something behind him like, “Oh, that’s my walking stick, isn’t it? I was wondering where I’d left it…”
The batblins looked at each other, at their boss, at Ed. They stopped in their tracks, but they didn’t lower their weapons.
“I’ll kill him,” Ed swore.
For a moment, Ed thought he had them. Then, the batblin at the front of the rabble shrugged. “I never liked Drusb—he’s an asshole. Unk thinks Unk should be new cloudmaster!”
“You go, Unk!” one of the other batblins said.
Another one: “No, I should be new cloudmaster!”
“Whoever kills the human first is new cloudmaster!”
“Yes!”
Oh, shit. He deeply regretted not having read up on Ivalis Online lore books regarding batblins, but Ryan’s constant nagging for the group to level up as fast as possible without paying any attention to the lore had left Ed with little time.
“You giant piles of dung!” Drusb yelled at his group. “I’ll kick your asses for this!”
“You shut up—no one talks like that to Cloudmaster Unk!” said Unk. He leveled his sickle in Ed’s direction.
“Wait!” Lavy appeared next to Ed while holding the other half of Alder’s walking stick. She had her gaze focused on the line of batblins. “Wait one second, Unk. There’s two of us. If you come at us first, I swear upon Hogbus that we will gut you like a pig. In fact, even if you overrun us, we’ll certainly kill whoever attacks first.”
Unk stopped and considered this turn of events. “Silly wench, you ain’t smarter than Unk. Vogkord, you go first!”
Vogkord, next to Unk, looked at his new cloudmaster with alarm. His bat ears trembled. “Like hell I will! Those humans are strong, Unk.”
“This is an order of your cloudmaster,” Unk said.
“They’ll kill me! How about we send someone no one likes first?”
Unk passed one dirty, hairy hand with unkempt, black nails over his double-chin. “Smart Vogkord. I name you my new advisor. Klek, you go first!”
The batblins laughed like they were at a party and someone had made a particularly clever quip. The former cloudmaster at Ed’s feet groaned in shame. “I’m so dead.”
“Yes, come here, Klek!”
“Klek, you useless rat, you go first!”
A batblin about a head smaller than the others, at the back of the group, tried to turn and run, but the others grabbed hold of him and pushed and kicked the poor batblin to the front. Ed realized Klek wasn’t even armed with a sling, he only had a small rock in each of his hands. A pair of fearful, black and brown eyes looked at him while the batblin trembled.
He looks like a puppy. Do I really have to kill a puppy to get out of this?
“Idiots,” the batblin was whispering non-stop. “Idiots, idiots, idiots. Can’t you see? Can’t you see his eyes?”
“Shut up, Klek.” Unk pushed him forward. “No one cares about a pair of shiny human eyes.”
“Eeeek!” Klek fell forward while his rocks fell forgotten to the ground. Out of the corner of his vision, Ed saw Lavy turn to him with wide eyes. She started to whisper something.
The rest of the batblins seemed to judge Klek’s fall a good enough distraction because he ran toward Ed and Lavy.
Drusb started squealing like a pig and covering his face in terror. Ed ignored him and jumped over Klek’s head, his half-stick raised high above his head and the pointy end aimed at Unk’s ugly mug.
I hope there’s no scoreboard here, because getting killed by low-level critters in the first five minutes is going to make me look very silly, Ed thought. That’s a mouthful for someone’s last thoughts.
Whenever Ed had played Ivalis Online, he had realized that the most frequent parting words were, in fact, something like, Ah, fuck. Or the always popular, Whoops! Even, I’m sure we can take them.
Ed pushed a hoe away with a smack of his hand and stabbed Unk’s collarbone instead of his eyes. The batblin screeched like he had received a mortal wound and fell backward into the other batblins…And then Ed was surrounded.
I’m sure I can take them, Ed cheered himself while a lot of rusty, pointy ends were hoisted in his direction.
“He’s a Dungeon Lord!” yelled Klek, mud-faced, still laying behind Ed. “He’ll kill us all!”
Like a charm, the batblin’ circle took a collective step away from Ed. Arms faltered and ears flared up in alarm. They all started to chatter at once.
“A Dungeon Lord?”
“Impossible!”
“His eyes!”
“No Dungeon Lords in Starevos!”
“Look at his eyes!”
“Must be a trick!” declared Unk. He tried to push more of his batblins towards Ed, but this time everyone had firmly planted their feet in the ground.
“It’s not a trick,” said Lavy. “That’s the Evil Eye you’re seeing.”
“He looks like a wraith!”
“Fools!” she went on. “You really don’t know how close you were to annihilation! Do you even understand the terrible eldritch powers this Dungeon Lord was about to unleash upon your stupid hides?”
Everyone, human and batblin alike, turned to stare at Ed. He lowered his weapon and stared back.
“Um, my Lord,” Lavy whispered at him with a hand covering her mouth so the batblins couldn’t see her lips. “This would be an excellent time to unleash a bit of your eldritch powers. Maybe fry a batblin or two? It would help underscore my point.”
