by Adam Elliott
He was in his mid to late thirties, fit but not muscular, handsome but not stunning. A crop of messy red hair and short goatee, complimented by Irish features almost made Cayden mistake the man for a human rather than an Elan, but there was no mistaking the unnatural yellow of his eyes. He was dressed casually, an embroidered tunic cinched about his waist by an improvised belt. He looked more the town lush than a commander.
“Hmm? Nothing to say? I'd heard you were rather talkative.” He continued.
Cayden frowned at that, rising to the bait in spite of himself. “Under compulsion.”
To his initial relief, the frighteningly named Gribb had turned out not to be some hooded torturer. He was still a brute of a man, green skinned, thick-necked and barrel chested, but his skill turned out to reside in divine magic, particularly of the divination variety. The lieutenant had plied him with questions, and Gribb had acted as a sort of magical lie detector, constantly updating his superior on the veracity of Cayden's claims.
Cayden had been truthful in his answers even without the need of spells, but it was perhaps his lack of lies that damned him. They'd been expecting falsehoods, and when they found none, they turned to more drastic measures. Detection spells became control spells, the diviner overriding Cayden's natural defenses to such abilities so as to force him to tell the truth about all things. And he did.
Perhaps to test the success of their spell, the questions they asked were not merely about his goals, where he had come from if he were a spy and so forth. They also delved into embarrassing personal questions forcing him to spill deep personal secrets, in an endeavor to prove that the magic was working as intended. And when it was over they left him in the dark, furious and mentally exhausted from the ordeal, only to begin anew hours later.
“I heard that as well.” A moment of sympathy passed across the Elan's face as he avoided Cayden's gaze. “And I'm sorry about that. We can be overzealous at the best of times, and having a stranger from one of the bloodline families appear on our altar through the wards... well needless to say you ruffled some feathers.”
“It wasn't my intention.”
“I... am certain." The man smirked, clearly anything but. "Did they tell you that you shattered twenty-three of our most powerful wards to get here?"
Cayden glanced up at that, genuine surprise on his face. “They hadn't told me, no.”
“Mhmm, quite the damage. The mage guild is in an uproar.”
“Perhaps they'll make better wards this time?”
The man laughed at that, a boisterous, full-throated chuckle as he continued to pace.
“So... who are you exactly?” Cayden asked the laughing man.
The redhead stopped his pacing, still smothering down the last of the laughter as he looked through the bars. “You came all this way and asked for me by name, but you don't know my face? Interesting.”
“Aaron Beresik?” Cayden said, suddenly sitting fully upright, his shackles clanking as he moved. “You got my message then.”
“I did, yes. Though I'm still not sure entirely what to make of you.”
Cayden breathed a sigh of relief. The first man had thought him crazy, but at least one of his interrogators must have given his story enough credence to pass it along.
“So you know why I'm here then.”
“I know why you say you are.” He raised a hand to forestall Cayden's protestations about his honesty. “I believe the Great Emperor has charged you with a grand quest, that would explain how you so easily obliterated such powerful warding spells. What I want to know is why?”
Cayden studied the man before replying. “You mean why am so motivated by this quest that I'd suffer death just to travel here?”
Aaron nodded.
“The quest came part and parcel with a... experience. I can't explain it in words." Cayden started.
“Try.”
He frowned, taking a moment to compose his thoughts to avoid one of his typical rambling responses. "I was somewhere else. Outside the tower, I think. I saw many people die, and then I died. Afterward, I awoke in a room of mirrors and spoke to a woman..."
“The White Knight.”
“You know her!” Cayden leaned forward, held back only by the sharp tug of his chains.
“I know you mentioned her in your report." Aaron replied thoughtfully, eyes narrowed. "You've come all this way for a woman then?"
The sharpness of the question surprised Cayden. Was it just that simple?
No. The pull he felt was more than just attraction. It reminded him more of the sensation he felt for those two years as he waited for his chance to come to Babel in the first place.
“I don't know why I'm here. Not why I'm in Axfell, nor why I am even in the tower.” He admitted. “Most people come here for a reason. They want something out of the game. Money, power, the Emperor's Wish, you name it. None of that ever interested me. I just wanted to be here.”
Cayden paused, looking down at himself for a moment before shaking his head. "It's more than that. Before Babel, there was a missing part of me. My parents were talking about my colleges, about planning for my career and retirement of all things. It was absurd." He frowned. "Outside the tower, there is a whole culture based on adventure, of new worlds and quests, of exploration. But it's all games, all fiction. I felt like I'd been cheated out of something that never existed. Not until Launch day.”
If the Elan had any trouble understanding the talk of the outside world, he gave no sign of it, his cryptic eyes drilling into Cayden. "And The White Knight?"
“I-” He halted, gathering his words. “Have you ever woken from a dream and wanted to go back? Even if you don't remember what you were dreaming about, you still feel that pull. Something unfinished, something missing. That is why I'm looking for The White Knight."
Aaron raised an eyebrow, the bemused smirk returning to his features. "It seems the Great Emperor has sent me a poet as well as a student."
Before Cayden could fully process his words, Aaron gestured with a finger and spoke a pair of commands. "Release and Open." Bolted shackles popped free in an instant, metal skittering across the stone floor while the cell door swung wide. Aaron was waiting for him, rummaging in a pouch at his side as Cayden approached. "For the duration of your stay, and anytime you wish to return, you must wear this."
Aaron handed him an adamantite pin the size of a small battery and gestured to the lapel of Cayden's shirt before he continued. "Even with the pin, you will not have the run of the fortress. You will be confined to the Mage's quarters at all times unless accompanied."
“I understand.” Cayden replied promptly, picking up his pace to walk alongside Aaron as the older man led them to the far end of the stone cells and up a small ramp leading back to the wooden garrison building.
Soldiers eyed them as they passed, even the most junior among them clad in dark, oiled mail that Cayden knew was miles beyond his ability to even equip. Most seemed passive at best, though a few were derisive with regards to Cayden. The vast majority of Elan had no real concept of levels, skills or attributes, but trained warriors such as these seemed to have a way of sensing when someone was far above or below their level. And they were not impressed by Cayden.
“You'll find your things here.” He gestured to a counter marked as the Quartermaster. “But you will not wear or use any arms and armor during your time here. “Is that understood?”
“It is.” Cayden paused, only to add. “Does that exclude my glasses?”
Aaron seemed annoyed by the question. "I will never understand the Bloodline obsession with 'screens.' Yes, you may wear them."
He waited for Cayden to collect his things, don his glasses and properly reconnect with the outside world before continuing his brisk pace out a side door and onto the snowy plains of Axfell.
Cayden hadn't had much time to admire the fort when his paralyzed body was being dragged to the dungeon in the first place, but at a second glance, he didn't appear to have missed much. It was dark
out, well past midnight. A pair of moons shone overhead, their collective light providing enough to see by as the two trudged along a relatively clear road packed on either side by mounds of snow.
The fort, as it were, was surrounded on all sides by a thirty-foot tall cliff face. Small, clearly unnatural ramps led up the inside of the wall at various points to allow defenders to easily scale its sides without the need of ladders. The top of the wall was studded with improvised wooden emplacements for archers to fire from behind cover but lacked any significant fortifications beyond simple height. He knew that was deceptive, however, that the fort itself stood at the height of a peak, that it was ringed on all sides by water and that the outer cliffs of the wall were nearly two hundred feet from the water of the moat to the top where the defenders would fight.
“This way." Aaron directed, leading Cayden around a corner onto one of the main roads. Ahead a great bonfire crackled with nearly a hundred half drunken soldiers sitting around its base, telling tales and toasting one another while a pair of enormous boar roasted on a spit. Further ahead a man in full plate practiced some form of routine on a training dummy, the shining greatsword flashing in the moonlight while his matte black adamantite armor drank in the remaining darkness.
It was all Cayden could do not to gawk at the beauty of the man's routine as his blade sliced this way and that, tearing apart straw dummies and parrying invisible attackers. His voice filled the air along with the woosh of his blade, a yell punctuating each successful strike, until nothing but torn up combat dummies remained.
“Aaron.” The man said, his breath barely even quickened despite the incredible exertion.
“General.” Aaron replied with deference.
“Which makes this our prisoner.” The general towered over Cayden, his armored frame reminding the young man of one of a dozen fictional black knights. “Or... no? Your apprentice now, is it?”
“We'll have to see what Vincent thinks.”
The general gave a half-hearted laugh. "So we'll see him back in a cell before dawn then."
“Hopefully not.” Aaron replied with a chuckle of his own. “Best of luck General Leo.”
He replied with a nod, turning away from captor and captive to return to the center of his destroyed strawmen. Once there he intoned some magic word, the damaged dummies repairing themselves just in time for the beginning of a new routine.
Cayden waited until they got far enough away before he finally allowed himself to begin to snicker. “Is his name seriously General Leo?”
“Yes?” Aaron replied, clearly confused.
Confirmation only made Cayden laugh harder as Aaron led them further into the camp.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Vincent, we have guests.”
“And?”
Aaron Beresik might have been the world away from what Cayden thought of when he pictured a Magic Caster, but Vincent Tempes made for a pretty solid match. He was decades younger than a proper Gandalf, and he lacked the ridiculous beard and hat, but everything about his look and demeanor just screamed spellcaster.
It had taken Aaron three attempts to get even that single word out of the wizard, and even that reply hadn't seemed to come with the man's attention. Instead Vincent remained immersed in the pair of open books on the table in front of him, apparently transcribing some bit of arcane lore from one to the other with careful precision and total disregard for his comrade.
“And I need you to put down the quill for a few minutes and be social.”
“Must I?" Came Vincent's dry reply. The repeated annoyance of Aaron's words was enough to finally draw the man's eyes at least, much to Cayden's dismay.
His eyes were silver. Not a light gray, or a pale blue, but a metallic silver surrounded by a nearly black sclera of a sort he'd never seen on human or elan. The gaze fixed him, and he wanted to run away or cower in fear if he couldn't make it that far. It was a sensation, unlike anything he'd ever felt, forcing him to step back involuntarily from the mage even as Aaron gripped his arm.
“Really Vincent? He doesn't have anything.” Aaron scowled. “Cut it out.”
“Tsk. Very well.”
The feeling of dread vanished in an instant, as did the darkness that surrounded the mage's silver eyes. It was still uncomfortable, having that piercing stare seeing through him, but absent its effects Cayden could now recognize the fear for what it had been. The result of some magic spell or ability.
“Forgive my friend. His arcane sight allows him to see magic on your person, but it is uncomfortable to say the lease. “ Aaron shot Vincent a look of his own. “As well as impolite.”
With the fear gone, Cayden was able to observe the mage more carefully. If he had to guess, he suspected Vincent to be the elder of the two, perhaps somewhere in his mid-forties. He had shoulder length black hair that he wore down to his shoulders in a barely cared for mess. The hair contrasted strongly with skin rarely saw the outside of the library in which they stood. His robes fared no better, they were expensive but uncared for, the mark of someone who knew about the trappings of finery without actually caring for them.
“It would not be the first time you've brought a dangerous man into my study Aaron.” Vincent retorted.
Aaron rolled his eyes at that. “One time.”
“Too many. It was a costly mistake, as you recall." Vincent seemed ready to relitigate the old grievance when he thought better of it. "Explain our 'guest' so that we can progress past the pleasantries if you would be so kind."
“He is the one who broke your wards.”
That got Vincent's attention. Eyes that had been bored with Cayden drew into sharp focus, studying Cayden from head to toe. “And it was the Grand Quest then.”
“Yes. You were right.” Aaron replied. He paused for a moment, then added, for Cayden's benefit. “He's often right.”
“Always right.”
“Often.”
Cayden could see the two were ready to bicker, and that the back and forth could be a long one. He cautiously cleared his voice, drawing just enough attention to stave off the derail without being too obvious about it.
“So the time has come, has it?” Vincent said, rising from behind his desk to pace towards the two of them.
“Only with your permission.” Aaron said. “You know that the Great Emper-”
“You have it.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow at that. "Really? Just like that?"
“Now you're questioning my judgment in trusting your judgment? That is a ridiculous low, even for you Aaron."
“That isn't what I'm doing; I was just expecting..."
The voices of the bickering mages faded to the back of Cayden's mind as his glasses flooded with messages:
Quest Complete: First Steps
You have Earned 35,000 XP
New Special Quest
Learning to Walk
Requirements: Complete the Trial of Axfell.
Reward: 35,000 XP.
Level Up!
You have (5) Undistributed Stat Points
You have (1) Undistributed Mastery
Level Up!
You have (10) Undistributed Stat Points
You have (1) Undistributed Mastery
Level Up!
You have (15) Undistributed Stat Points
You have (1) Undistributed Mastery
Just like that. Three words from Vincent equaled three levels. He knew a special quest could grant impressive rewards, and that the developer likely never intended for someone to be doing a quest like this at such a low level, but even still, this was ridiculous.
His fingers itched to touch at the air, to pull up his character sheet and dump the levels directly into his unique class. Common decency stopped him. Even if the two elan mages were bickering with one another now, they could stop at any moment, and he'd look quite the fool if he was deep in his menus when they turned their attention back to him.
That didn't stop him from plotting and planning. With the introduction o
f Runemagi, his original build was in shambles. He'd known at a glance that he needed to max out the unique class, but in all the excitement he'd barely had time to explore its abilities, or to think how they would interact with the way he had intended to play. And what to do with that mastery point?
Mastery points were among the single most important build decisions a player could make in Babel. Earned at level ten, twenty, and every twenty levels thereafter, each represented a monumental alteration to the function of a single skill of the users choice, drastically altering the viability of certain skills, abilities, or even classes.
A mastery point put into Southern Cross at his current level, for example, would alter the ability into Crucis, an ability he'd memorized by heart:
Crucis
Type: Active Combat Skill
Skill Level: Mastered. (Novice Capped)
Effect: Swing four times in rapid succession. 95% increased damage on each attack.
Cost: 125 TP
The difference was staggering.
It did still have its flaws. A mastered ability was still capped at Novice, Intermediate or Advanced levels until he'd met with a proper trainer, but the moment he did the skill would jump to the maximum effectiveness of its new rank. Even without, a mastered skill gave immense bonuses, doubling the number of attacks in a chain for Southern Cross, and having similarly massive effects for other abilities.
His original intent had been to master Grasp the Earth which would have given him access to the more powerful Grasp the World ability. It's signature power further cut in half the already minimal damage Cayden could receive from a perfect block, effectively doubling his staying power against any opponent he could properly block.
