“How many people did you say lived here?” I asked.
“Over half a million by the last count. The city covers a little over fourteen miles.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. I had guessed that Arnicoal was large from Artus’ descriptions, and we’d passed an almost endless amount of ranches and farms for the last two days of hurried travel, but I hadn’t expected the place to be so big. Modern, real, cities that were in the real world could be this big, but game cities? It must have required an unbelievable amount of computer hardware to render Arnicoal.
“It is pretty! Ohhhh! We are going to have so many adventures cleaning and working. Look! Two castles! Yay!” Allurie pointed to the southern and northern ends of the sprawling city. The higher point on the cliffs had a nest of magnificent spires that glowed in the mid morning sun. They looked more like a closely grouped trio of glass sculpture than a fortress.
The southern castle looked more traditional, it was a bit smaller than the fortress at Cutno, and it was made of a cream colored stone instead of gray, but I could see the European styling on the walls combined with the Asian swooping roof.
“So why two castles? They seem pretty close together,” I asked as we continued to gaze at the distant city. There was a rest area on top of this hill, and there were a dozen other caravans enjoying the view of the coast before they descended the last few miles to the gates.
“They were there since the time of Heliotrope. The legends indicate that there were once two warring kingdoms that shared the isle of Coalna.”
“So that is name of the continent we are on? Coalna?” I realized that I knew very little about the world beyond what the dwarven loremaster had told me, but even that had been slim pickings. All of his research had led him to believe that there was an artifact in the underdark below the Laven Mountains, and there was one in the city owned by the family of Yinnia. Or at least, the loremaster’s books had hinted that the family had once owned one of the relics.
“Aye. Leo, you aren’t from around here. Are ya?” Gratia asked with a wink.
“Nope.” I laughed. “How many continents are there? How many cities this size? Are there more on Coalna?” I looked at the city of Arnicoal and shook my head again with amazement. A city of this size could be filled with thousands of different quests. I wondered if players could spend their whole careers just inside of its white washed walls. If the city was fourteen square miles, it might take someone a good chunk of the day to get from one side to the other. My mind spun with all the possibilities.
“Grrr. I’ll take you to a place with a map after we get settled at my home. I’ve traveled to the other continents, and there are much grander cities than Arnicoal, but she is my home, and I find her more than beautiful enough for me.”
“It looks mighty busy. I bet the people in those houses on the cliff have need for some new sculptures by an up and coming dwarven artist,” Gratia said as she pointed to the homes at the base of the shining castle.
“And I bet they would need lots of help cleaning!” Allurie giggled.
“I’m surprised you aren’t thinking about all the people that might want to mate,” I said as I looked at the pretty elf girl.
“Oh, no. There is only one man I want to mate with.” The silver-haired girl fluttered her eyelashes at me and gave me a sly smile.
“Jeeze. Let’s just get inside. I’m still nervous that the Cutno guards are right behind us.” I turned to look over the top of our wagon. There were a handful of other travelers on the road behind us, and I didn’t see any armed men on horses.
We had driven the horses hard and pulled the ponies behind us with long tethers. When the horses had seemed tired, we switched them out for the ponies. It had taken us two days to get here, and I’d logged out of the game from the back of the wagon while my friends continued to press onward. Every hour outside of the game had been stressful, and I’d kind of rushed the dinner with my parents and Zarra so that I could jump back into Ohlavar Quest.
I felt a smile creep to my lips when I thought about that dinner. The beautiful woman had been great with my parents, and they had really seemed to open up to her. I hadn’t seen them as coherent in years, and they had really hit it off. Zarra had engaged them with wonderful conversation, and I could tell that both of my parents had really liked the purple eyed woman.
The dinner had made me fall for her even more. At first, I hadn’t exactly trusted her. Maybe a part of me still didn’t, but she’d definitely won over my parents, and the last few times I had interacted with her had been really good. I knew I was attracted to her, and I was trying to put the brakes on the relationship so that it wouldn’t interfere with our work together, but my heart had warmed after seeing her make such a strong connection with my sick parents.
“Are you okay, Leo?” Allurie asked. I was walking next to the wagon, and she sat closest to me on the bench.
“Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking about stuff,” I said as I fixed my eyes on the sprawling city of white.
“What were you thinking about?” she asked with what seemed like genuine interest.
“My parents. They are sick, and I hope they get better soon.” I didn’t know why I explained it to her, but the words kind of fell out of my mouth before I remembered that Allurie was just a NPC.
“Oh. Is that who you visit when you go back home?” The silver-haired elf nodded to herself as she asked the question.
“Yeah. They have memory problems. Forget stuff.”
“I hope they get better also. I will think of them when I make my wishes at night before I sleep. Maybe one day I can meet them. They will love me because I love you so much! Yay!”
“Wishes at night? Is that like praying?” I asked.
“No, I don’t pray to the magic. Wishes are what you want for the others that you love. I think of them every night before I sleep.”
“Others?”
“Yes. So I wish that Artus will get home safely, and that his business will do well. I wish that Gratia will have a beautiful gallery for her art. I wish that you will find a man to love you. I wish that Tunni will have all the help she needs taking care of the castle in Cutno. Oh, I also wish for all my friends at the castle to find nice mates. It is really fun to do every night, and then my sleep is always sweet.”
“You don’t wish for anything for yourself?” Gratia asked from the seat next to Allurie.
“No. It doesn’t work if you wish for yourself. Only for others,” Allurie instructed her friend as if she was explaining that the sky was blue.
“Hmmm. Sounds…” the dwarven woman trailed off, and I guessed she was about to say ‘stupid’, but Gratia surprised me “… really nice. Maybe I’ll try it tonight.”
“Yay! I can help you if you want. I love helping my friends!” Allurie bounced on her seat.
“Aye. I know you do,” Gratia said with a smile at the elf girl.
The slope down this last hill was extremely mild, so we didn’t have to worry about any complicated braking maneuvers with the wagon, but we did have to navigate the gates of the city, and that ended up taking a few hours to get situated. While we waited at the gates with the other travelers, I kept my eyes focused on the landscape behind us. I expected a group of armored Cutno riders to peak the hill in the distance and then ride down the road like a furious avalanche of vengeance.
So maybe I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when they did begin to ride down the hill toward the gates of Arnicoal.
“Shit. Uhhh. Do those look like the Cutno guards?” I asked as I pointed at the peak of the hill we had journeyed down a few hours ago.
“Yes!” Artus gasped. We were three wagons from the entrance, and there were a dozen wagons behind us.
“Shit,” I moaned as I looked between the gate and the approaching dust cloud of guards. It looked like there were twenty of them, but they were a few miles away, and I couldn’t make out much more than a shapeless mass of gleaming armor.
“Once we get inside w
e can disappear. The Arnicoal guards won’t let armed soldiers into the city without approval from the gate magistrate,” Artus said, but his voice was filled with fear.
“There are a lot of travelers at the gate; maybe it will take them a long time to get to us?” I asked.
“They are moving, let us go up a spot,” Artus said as he inched the ponies forward.
Now there were two wagons in front of us, and it had seemed to take a few minutes for the guards to processes each of the earlier ones.
It was going to be close.
“The horses will give us away,” Artus growled as he pointed behind us. I’d taken off as many of the Cutno colored emblems as I could from the saddle and bardings of the mounts, but they were fine looking animals, and had nice looking saddles on their backs. They stood many hands above the donkeys, mules, and ponies that pulled the other wagons near us.
“Come on. Come on,” I begged whatever god, or AI would listen. The wagon owner two places in front of us was laughing with the guards, and I wanted to shout for them to hurry the fuck up.
“What will we do if they get to us?” Gratia asked as she peered over the side.
“I can’t fight twenty of them. Maybe we should just ditch the wagon and run in through the gates?” I asked Artus.
“That might work, but there are ten gate guards milling around beyond the checkpoint at the entrance. They will probably chase us. I don’t know what they would do if they caught us. We’d also be leaving behind all of Gratia’s art and possessions.” He shrugged after he spoke and the dwarven woman groaned with obvious displeasure.
The cart two spots in front of us began to move.
“Let’s go!” I yelled at the wagon in front of us when he didn’t instantly move forward to meet the guards at the checkpoint. The man driving turned back to glare at me, and I gestured with my hand for him to move forward. “I’ve got goods spoiling. Sorry!” I shouted at him, and he nodded back.
It looked like the Cutno guards were less than a mile from us.
“Damn. Damn. Damn. Ugh.” I rubbed my left hand over my face and marveled at how real the oil on my skin felt. The sensation made me smile, even though it looked as if we were just a minute or two away from getting captured by a bunch of guards.
“I don’t think we are going to make it,” Artus growled after the guards had interviewed the man in front of us for a few seconds.
“What if I stayed with the wagon, and you all went in through the entrance over there?” Gratia nodded over to the far side of the gate, where a lighter flow of foot traffic entered and exited a smaller gate.
“That might work,” Artus said with a growl. “But they might also just capture you, since they will see the horses.”
“It is an option, if we need to.”
“If we need to, we need to now. We won’t have the time to move when they are closer to us.” Artus glanced back behind us again. “What do you say, Leo?” The three of them turned to me with hopeful looks on their faces.
I glanced at the guards and single wagon in front of us, and then back up the road at the approaching guards. It really did seem like an army riding down, and I knew it would be game over if they caught up to us.
“Let’s stick together,” I hated the decision as soon as it left my mouth, but splitting up would probably put Gratia in a bunch of danger. Sure, I might escape, but the dwarven woman would pay the price.
“Can you please hurry!” I yelled up ahead. The guards inspecting the wagon turned to me with an annoyed expression on their faces.
But then they waved for the cart in front of us to continue into the city.
Artus flipped the reins instantly, and we rolled up to the guard’s spot a half a second after the wagon in front of us had left.
“You’re impatient today,” one of the guards said as he walked over to me.
“Sorry. I’m just seeing that group of riders coming. Looks like bad news. I don’t want to get stuck here if they attack you.” I thumbed over my shoulder toward the trail, and the man’s eyes moved down the road.
“Huh,” he said as his eyes grew large.
“Yeah. I don’t know who they are, but it looks like they have armor. I mean, I doubt they are going to invade a city as grand as this with just a few dozen, but I don’t want to be here when they reach the gates. Know what I mean?”
The guard I spoke to turned to a few of his fellows and pointed up the road. The men all seemed to notice the approaching cloud of horses, and they looked around each other with confusion.
The horses looked like they were less than half a mile away, and I could easily see the armor wearing riders.
“Looks like Cutno soldiers!” I heard someone shout from the ramparts above us. These assholes must have been sleeping on the job to not have noticed them before they were practically at the gates.
“We are carrying art supplies, and camping equipment. Do you mind letting us through?” I heard Artus ask the guard on the other side of the wagon.
“Ahh fine. Fenia aren’t known for transporting illegal goods. Get on with ya.” Artus’ guard said as he waved his hand for us to leave. His eyes were on the approaching pack of riders, and I guessed that the group of men were deciding if they needed to take up a defensive position.
“Thank you. Have a nice morning. Hope this works out with them,” Artus said as he flicked the reins.
Our wagon rolled forward and I looked over my shoulder as I walked next to it. As soon as we passed beneath the massive portcullis of the front gate I felt some of the tension leave my body. There was a main street that the gate flowed into, and I kept my eyes on the crowd at the front as we merged into the traffic inside of Arincoal.
We were fifty yards into the street, and somewhat obscured behind a half a dozen other city inhabitants, when the Cutno riders made it to the back of the line. Through the mess of Arnicoal Citizen tags around me, I could see the Arnicoal guards spread out in a semi-circle between the riders and the gate, but no one had drawn a weapon yet.
“We aren’t out of this yet. They might let them pass through,” I said up to my friends.
“I doubt they will without a magistrate sign off,” Artus said again from his seat on the other side of where I walked.
“They just let us through.”
“That is true, but we are just merchants. That is a group of armed soldiers from another city. Arincoal and Cutno are on friendly terms, but there is a bureaucratic process.”
“Allurie, can you get a better look at what is going on?” I asked the elf girl. Her eyes seemed to be sharper than mine, and she was sitting on the wagon at my shoulder height.
“The man at the front on the horse keeps pointing at us. Ohh! He just made his horse stand up on his back legs. The other guards look really happy! They are all coming to join in the fun. The horse riders are starting to move back. Ohhh! One is riding around the side of the lines. I wonder where he is going?”
“Has anyone drawn a weapon yet?” I asked.
“Nope, oh wait! One of the men on the ground has pulled his sword. Ohh! All of them are! All these big strong men, with their swords out, getting all hot and angry with each other. It is so romantic.” The elf girls sighed and then closed her eyes.
“I think you might be confused by what romance actually means,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“It means mating, doesn’t it?” she asked as she turned her head to stare at me.
“Uhhh. Well, I guess it does eventually.”
“We are turning here,” Artus growled as he made a hard right on a thickly packed street. “It is another forty-five minutes of travel through the city before we get to my home. I think we will be fine.” The din of the crowd was much louder on the street, and Artus had to shout so that I could hear him.
“I hope so. Allurie, keep an eye out behind us. Let me know if you see any Cutno guards. That is your job.”
“Yay! Thank you!” The elf woman turned away from me and fixed her pretty eyes behind us
.
The stress faded from my shoulders after every minute of travel, and we eventually made it to Artus’ home. It was a two story structure, made of white painted stone with blue painted wood accents. There was a large workshop on the side of the home, and Artus opened up the double doors to show that it was actually a pass-through that led to stables on the rear of his property.
My cat friend flicked the leather reins one last time, and the wagon moved in through the covered port. I shut the gate behind us with a thankful sigh and then smiled when the Quest Completed! words flashed over the New Quest: Escape the Cutno patrols and reach Arnicoal. Artus, Allurie, and Gratia must survive notice. You have been awarded 5 attribute points!
I did a big fist pump and turned to see if any of my friends were watching me. They had all turned the corner of the house by the stables, so I quickly opened my UI to confirm the 34 attribute points waiting for me. Ugh. I really wanted to spend them, but I knew that my path would become clear in the next few days.
First I needed to figure out where this Yinnia family lived, and hope that I could acquire the artifact from them.
If they still had it.
Chapter 10
“So you’re telling me that Baron Yinnia’s art and weapon collection is one of the most prestigious in the city, and he isn’t going to let me look at it, even if I ask him nicely?”
“No, and if you don’t mind, I’ve got to spend my time with paying customers,” the balding gnome man turned his nose up to me, and walked away with a huff.
“That went really well!” Allurie said as she hugged my arm.
“Uhhh. I guess. This guy actually talked to me for a few minutes. The other eight galleries looked at my clothes, looked at you, and told me that I wasn’t welcome.”
“We are making excellent progress! Oh Leo, I know in my heart you are going to find what you are looking for, and then he’ll make you so happy.” Allurie rubbed her cheek against my arm and sighed longingly.
Lion's Quest: Dual Wield: A LitRPG Saga Page 10
