Like a piano played by a hundred fingers, the music of my thoughts is sharp and percussive, expanding as the city streets stretch to Lake Michigan, while the Seluecid Sea lightly brushes at the sides of the raft.
“Whew!” I say, taking a knee.
I’ve had high points in MIND before as other avatars, into the twenties and thirties, but nothing ever felt like this, like I’ve lit the end of stick of dynamite filled with knowledge and shoved it in my ear, letting it explode within my skull cavity.
The thoughts eventually die down and once they do – once I’ve regained control – I return to the task of adjusting my character sheet.
With Willhammer’s Ring on, which I might add is a pretty good-looking piece of jewelry, my WILL is matched to my DEXTERITY. I add three points to this, leaving me seven more attribute points to assign.
As soon as I do this, I feel my agility increase and a sense of accomplishment fills me. I will do this; I will save Unigaea, I remind myself.
And somewhere, in the back of my head, a prudent voice reminds me that my quest for vengeance may overpower my quest to save the world if I’m not careful.
I’ll make the revenge quick, I tell the voice.
I throw three points in STRENGTH, and as soon as I do my muscles bulge and pulsate. Figuring it can’t hurt any, I put the final four points in SPEED.
Attributes
STRENGTH: 13
WILL: 13
DEXTERITY: 13
MIND: 11
SPEED: 9
A quick wave of my hand in front of my face and I assume I’m faster now. Looked faster, anyway. I’ll have to test it.
Only one more thing to do.
I crawl to the side of the raft and look down at the water. A deep breath in, I bend forward with my eyes clenched shut and stick my head beneath the waves. I hold my breath as I’m accustomed to, and once I’m ready, I breathe out and take a deep breath in.
Instead of water swelling into my mouth, I feel digital oxygen filling my lungs.
I give it another go, this time more relaxed than before. As the raft continues to float towards the southern continent, I keep my head under the water, breathing in and out.
I could definitely get used to this.
Chapter Three: Vampiric Mer-Dog
I turn my head and see the wavy outline of Sam Raid hovering over me. I whip my head out of the water and press my long wet hair out of my face.
“Um … ” She bursts out laughing.
“What? I was testing something.”
“Well, you could use a bath … ”
“Bath?” I sniff my armpit. “I’m still fresh. Wait,” I say as I take in the casual expression on her face. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
“I remember taking a nap, and now we appear to be just drifting along, which brings me to another point: why aren’t you paddling? I told you I don’t mind doing it.”
“Sam, touch your neck.”
“My neck?”
She looks at me suspiciously as I show her my scar.
“Jesus, Oric! What happened!?”
Her hand instinctively comes to her neck, and she lets out a little yelp. Wolf emits a panicked yip in response. After telling them both to cool down, I begin explaining what has transpired over the last hour or so.
“So ... you met the NVA Seed?” she asks, momentarily forgetting her bite marks.
“Yes, the Obelisk, as she’s known here. She’s supporting us.”
“By sending vampiric mermaids after us?”
“Like I said, relax, Sam, it’s not as bad as it seems. Just, you know what, I’ll let you see for yourself. Put your head underwater.”
Sam raises an eyebrow at me.
“I’m serious here, just see for yourself.”
“Is the water cold?” she asks as a sly grin forms on her face.
“Dunk your head or I throw you in. Which would you prefer?”
“Ha! I’d like to see you try to throw me in.” She places both hands on her hips.
“Is that an invitation? ’Cause I don’t think it’d be very hard for me to toss you into the water.”
She cocks her head at me. “Are you challenging me?”
“All right, Sam, you win,” I say as she stares a damn hole through me. “I won’t toss you in.”
“Good.”
Sam marches right past me, gets down on her knees, glances up to me one more time to let me know she’s still highly suspicious of what she’s about to do, and dunks her head in. She comes up almost immediately. “That was crazy!” She does it again and comes up nearly a minute later.
“Cool, huh?”
“Aside from the bite mark, yeah, it’s pretty cool.” She uses her hand to shake the water out of her short blond hair. “What about Wolf? Was he bitten?”
“Yep.” We move over to the Tagvornin canine and I crouch down in front of him. “You okay, buddy?”
He whines, and I place my hand on the scruff around his neck. I massage my fingers in and find the two vampire marks. “Well, Wolf, I’m happy to report that you are now a vampiric mer-dog.”
Sam laughs. “That’s one way to put it.”
He glances up to me with his big blue-green eyes and my heart melts.
In that instant he looks like a puppy, a helpless little thing barely able to stand let alone take care of himself. This is hard to stomach juxtaposed with the big, bad wolf I’ve seen maim people to death on multiple occasions, tearing their necks out one shred of flesh at a time.
It’s funny how that works, how one can go from innocuous to intimidating at the drop of a hat.
“We’ll test your abilities later,” I finally tell him. “For now, we need to get to the coast before another storm comes.”
(^_^)
Smooth sailing the rest of the way, and I get the feeling that our path is being shepherded – that our newfound guardian angel, the Obelisk, is buzzing somewhere over the water in her dragonfly form, keeping an eye on our passage and sending the sea dragons, who will always be lurking on the periphery, to another pair of hapless fools.
I say hapless given the task we’ve decided to undertake, a task Sam has now repeatedly said is right up her alley.
We bear the weight of the Obelisk’s faith.
“But seriously, Sam, you could just go back to doing what you were doing, rebuilding the city of Tangka and whipping the militia into shape for the next time the Tags decide to drop in uninvited.”
“And leave all the fun to you?” She waves this thought away. “You seriously underestimated my militiamen during the battle for Tangka, and you continue to underestimate them. Jeff of Hays has taken charge of the militia while I’m away, and if he doesn’t feel up to the task, Ralph or Jay will step in.”
“That’s if Jay isn’t in a tree.”
“He doesn’t climb trees all the time! And besides, this ‘save the world’ goal is your thing, your personal quest.”
“I’m aware, and that’s what concerns me,” I say as I press the paddle through the water.
I can see the shoreline now; I’ve never been more ready in my life to get off the raft. My water escapades over the last week have been trying, to say the least. That said, not many can say they’ve bested a sea dragon, been bitten by vampiric mermaids, met the NVA Seed of Unigaea, and lived to tell the tale.
I clear my throat. “What I’ve decided to do will, in the end, put me face to face with the source code bomb. You and Wolf as well.”
“I told you a dozen times already, Oric, I’m down.” She smirks at me. “And what else does Wolf have to do?”
“But what about your smuggling operations? Don’t you have something better you could be doing?”
“I’ve been smuggling ever since the Proxima Pilot Program was introduced. That’s eleven years, Oric, since 2058. I deserve a break. It’s like you don’t want me on this journey.”
“No!” I say a bit too loud. I clear my throat. “It’s not that, not that at all, Sam. I wa
nt you here – hell, Wolf wants you here. And Deathdale doesn’t know it yet, but we could use your help.”
“Yes, Deathdale,” she says, her grin fading.
“She’s not as bad as she seems.” An image of the eye-patched Solar Mage comes to me, her short gray hair, her impractical armor shaped like an A-line dress, her heeled boots. “But that’s beside the point. I’m just trying to tell you if you have something better to do, something more profitable, I totally understand. Do that, ’cause this is going to get crazy.”
“What could be more profitable than going to the Rune Lands and taking on the source code bomb? Speaking of which, did the Obelisk give you any advice on how to actually stop the spread of the bomb?”
“Nope.”
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She did give me a pretty sweet tattoo on my chest. Forgot to tell you about that. Five levels too. Can’t complain there.”
Sam shakes her head. “You’re a ridiculous man, you know that?”
“It’s better than being incredulous. Actually, I’m pretty incredulous too, especially when it comes to folksy bullshit and legends.”
“Right. Why am I sensing that you have underlying anger towards folk religions?”
“Ah, I don’t really, just not into superstition.”
“Okay. I don’t know what we’re arguing about then.”
“Are we arguing?” I motion for her to paddle. “You ready to finally do a little work?”
She laughs and walks next to me, making sure to nearly knock me into the water with her hip. Wolf moans and buries his head even further between his paws.
“You’ve got to be careful on such a small raft,” Sam says as she steers us closer to the shoreline. “And seriously, Oric, unless you want me to call you Eric, stop asking me if I’m serious about joining you. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.”
“You’ll have to log out at some point.”
“I have my own vat.”
“Really? Must be nice.”
Sam jams the paddle deep into the water and pushes us forward with real vigor. The shore is a stone’s throw away; I can almost taste solid ground. She gives the raft another vigorous push forward.
“You’re strong!”
“Is that an invitation for an arm wrestling match?” she asks over her shoulder.
“I was pretty drunk the last time I arm wrestled someone. It was in Rial Resort Town. Rich narco-orcs from the western splits love to get drunk and challenge each other to strength contests. Crazy night.”
“Did you win?”
Before I can answer, Wolf takes a running leap and lands on the shore. He circles around for a moment, huffing as his water anxiety leaves him. Driftwood is scattered along the shore; a circle of rocks marks a place where someone recently set up camp.
“I lost miserably,” I say after I’ve joined Wolf on land.
Sam throws me the rope and I pull the raft ashore. I look around for a place to hide it, wishing that Unigaea had Bags of Holding.
“So you’d like to replicate your loss tonight?” she asks as soon as she’s ashore. Sam Raid stands with her hands on her hips, a gesture I’ve come to recognize as uniquely hers.
“Ha! Sure.”
“Good, ’cause look what I got.” She pulls a bottle of champagne out of thin air.
“Where the hell did you get that?” I grin at her.
“I stole it from Florin’s little banquet.” She shrugs. “What did you expect? I’m a smuggler.”
“That’s some good stuff,” I say once I’m close enough to take the bottle from her. I hold the bottle up as if it were Simba, admiring the way the manufacturer has sealed it with Stater blue wax.
“You think Deathdale will be there?” she asks as we move the raft to a small clearing of fallen palm leaves.
“Hopefully.”
“And where did you say we’re going again? Your hut?”
“Yeah, my Walden’s Pond.”
“What?”
I start covering the raft with fallen fronds. “Long story short: Before I met you, I needed to get to Stater. I met some fishermen who told me some bandits were harassing them. I killed the bandits and took their hut. That’s where I sent Deathdale after the battle.”
“That’s right, you told me that. You didn’t tell me the backstory, though.”
“Sometimes it’s better that way.”
We’re both quiet for a moment. I don’t believe I’ve said anything profound, but by our silence, it feels that way. The breeze that comes ripples the tops of the waves. Seagulls fly over the water, swooping down occasionally to see what they can find.
Wolf licks his lips.
“We don’t have time,” I tell him.
Sam looks from Wolf to the seagulls. “He likes seagulls?”
“They’re not so bad. Taste a bit like chicken.”
“Gross, only an idiot would eat a seagull.”
“Well then, you’re looking at two idiots,” I say as I hook my thumb at Wolf.
“Give Wolf some jerky. You and I can eat the Unigaean MREs I’ve prepared. They’re good, trust me.”
(^_^)
I make a quick fire and begin boiling water. As Wolf chomps down on the jerky I’ve given him, Sam produces two square packages that remind me of bento boxes. They’re made of wood and the contents are wrapped in leaves.
She removes the leaves almost the way a person would husk an ear of corn, and places the gelatinous contents back into the wood box, which, as it turns out, has been cut with slits on its bottom side so it resembles a grill.
“I need a way to warm them over the water, rather than submerge them,” she says. “Luckily, I have this.” She produces a grill about the size of a large pizza. “It’s a bit big – supposed to be used to cook for several people.”
“I still can’t believe you made these.”
“My cooking trade skill is at level six.”
“Damn! You got me by four levels.”
“I took an interest in preparing food here as it isn’t quite a buff, but it does make you feel better to have something in your stomach. I wish it were a buff, actually. I’d continue to improve my skill if that were the case.”
Sam places the grill over the boiling water and puts the food on top, keeping them in their wooden boxes. The smell that emerges from the food gets Wolf whining again.
“You’ve had your jerky.”
“You’re so cute, Wolf, a big bad cutie wolfie!” Sam laughs. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you one.”
“We don’t want to eat you out of house and, um, inventory list. Also, you’re turning him into a softy. He’s supposed to be ferocious.”
Sam shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m stocked up. No food worries when I’m around and I’m pretty sure he’ll be just as ferocious after getting pampered as he was when you were neglecting him and filling him full of jerky.”
“Nothing wrong with jerky!”
She produces another box, unpeels the food, and places it over the grill. Once it is good and red, she hands me my box along with a spork. I stab into the mush and it squirts me in the eye.
“Shit!”
“Careful,” she tells me, a little too late. “It’s a variation of a piroshki, with a rib-broth soup inside.”
I take my first bite, ignoring my stinging eye. “Nice!”
I’m no foodie, but I’d bet good lira that a Brooklyn food critic would travel all the way to the Bronx just to stand in line for this stuff.
Wolf swallows his portion whole.
“Damn, boy,” I say with a chuckle. “That’s one way to do it.”
I decide to give Sam’s soup piroshki the Wolf treatment and slurp the rest of it down. I’m rewarded with burnt lips, but at least my hunger is sated.
“That good, huh?” she asks.
“Fucking amazing. Seriously. You’ve got to give me this recipe.”
“You’ll have to earn it,” she says with a wink.
What the hell is that suppo
sed to mean? I think as I stab my spork into a small piece that got away. The flirting between Sam and me has heightened over the last day, and it seemed like something might have happened in Governor Talonas’s seaside manor last night. But she retired to her room, and I retired to mine.
At some point in the middle of the night, Wolf snuck out to sleep with her.
The traitor.
As Sam finishes eating, I clean up the mess and return the lingering items to the list.
“You ready?” I ask both her and Wolf. She nods, and once she’s washed her hands in the water, she hops on.
I get onto Wolf’s back and pull her in close.
“Hey,” she says, but she doesn’t move away.
“Let’s go!”
His tongue wagging out the side of his mouth, Wolf tears through the sand dunes, past a few shaman huts, and into the underbrush that separates the coast from my humbly stolen abode.
The sun is a few winks away from setting, yet it still tries to hold on, rays cutting through the crimson skyline. But the dark will come, and no sun born fails to set.
As we ride, my thoughts settle on one thing: The Drachma Killers must go.
I’m surprised the Obelisk didn’t sense the feeling of revenge brooding inside me. It’s an extended detour, but I don’t plan to ride all the way to the far north of Unigaea without seeing that the Killers get their just desserts.
But our levels will prove to be a problem, I think.
Sam looks over her shoulder at me and scoots back a little, pressing her body into mine. I feel a spark between us. My thoughts are suddenly less macrocosmic, less poetic, more carnal, primal.
But game brain takes over pretty quickly, especially since there isn’t much we can do on the back of a wolf. I’ve got five free levels, great; Deathdale is now at level eleven, and Sam at level twenty-one. This is chump change compared to the Killers, who are at least in the fifties, or were when I last saw them.
We’ll have to go about it a different way, I think as Wolf slows. Loosely scattered patches of trees separated by clusters of rocks make it so he has to travel a bit slower than normal. The scent in the air has changed from the smell of the sea to that of blooming flowers. I glance around, semi-familiar with our current location.
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