by Brian Simons
“What does it do?”
“Somewhere in there,” he said, tapping on my forehead, “you’ve had a really good feeling. Like, really good. This little miracle brings that feeling back. It makes this whole thing…,” he hesitated, looking out at ruins of his tavern, “almost tolerable.”
“But what is this whole thing,” I asked. “What came barreling through here?”
“That’s the Stricken,” he said. “At least, that’s what we call it. It started small but boy, has it grown. No one knows if it kills the weak and absorbs the strong, or the other way around, but it’s unstoppable now. Not just one person inflicting grief, a whole entourage of them, controlled by one man consumed by Ripcord’s desolation and hell-bent on inflicting misery on everyone else. The griefer-in-chief. A black mage turned bad, if you can believe that.”
“Why did it come here?” I asked.
“It goes everywhere,” he said, “looking for lives to take. It usually doesn’t stop here long though, since it’s so abandoned. Help me fix this place up, would you?”
I normally wouldn’t hang around with a drug pusher, but this guy seemed to have saved my life. He could easily have let me end up like Roy. If he knew ahead of time that I wasn’t interested in purchasing any drugs, maybe he would have.
After setting up a few tables and chairs, and making a pile of broken furniture in the corner, I stopped to wipe the sweat from my face. I noticed a man standing in the doorway. He was dressed in all black and carried a dagger in each hand.
“Something tells me,” he yelled, “that you don’t have the money, Pickman.”
“I did, but the Stricken took it,” said my new bearded friend.
“Nice try,” the man in black said. “You have two days or it’s game over for you.” He turned and walked away from what was left of the tavern.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Business.”
“So, your name is Pickman?” I asked.
“It’ll do,” he said.
“I’m Cale.”
“Cover me, Cale. I’m going in.” Pickman took a leaf out of his tin and pressed it onto his tongue. His jaw starting working at the leaf and his pupils grew wide. He sat there for a few minutes in some kind of dream state while I continued to set up the furniture. Then he spat the leaf onto the floor and jumped to his feet.
“Enough of that,” he said. “I take it you’re a green mage?” he asked.
I nodded. My starting outfit of green shirt, green pants, green boots said it all.
“Good. Change of plans. Let’s blow this joint.”
“And go where?” I asked.
“Do you have anywhere not to be?” he asked.
“No.”
“Perfect.” He walked over to the pile of broken glassware and fished out a pair of unbroken beer mugs. “Last one’s a rotten Easter egg.”
6
I followed Pickman into the dusty street. He bent down and scraped at the dirt with a beer mug until he had an inch of dirt in the glass. He took another glass and added an inch of water to it with a wag of his finger. Then he handed both to me and started walking along the dirt road.
“Put these in your pouch,” he said. I looked at him quizzically. That sounded like a recipe for mud and broken glass. “Come on,” he said, “they’ll be safe in there. It’s not like the real world, just trust me.”
Opening the pouch brought up my inventory menu. Now, in addition to three unknown plants, I had some dirt and water.
“You’ll use those to Grow plants, yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. Say, how long have you run that tavern?”
“Dunno. Hard to tell if time here matches up with the real world. I would say years. It certainly feels that way.”
“Have you ever met a woman named Nadine Cross?”
“I wouldn’t remember if I did,” he said. “After a while, the players are all the same. They’re either customers or not customers, that’s all I know.”
I assumed he meant customers for that strange leaf he sold, rather than average tavern fare. Nadine would certainly not be a customer.
“She’s my wife,” I said. “I’m looking for her.”
“That’s sweet. I’ve got no one to look for, and no one looking for me. Good for you.”
“You haven’t found anyone in Ripcord that you knew when you were alive?” It felt strange to call it that, when you were alive. I certainly felt every bit alive here in Ripcord.
“I didn’t leave anyone behind worth looking for,” he said. “Besides, Ripcord isn’t a place to keep friends unless you’re a sadistic asshole. Everyone here dies a painful death eventually. It’s funny, everyone thought Ripcord would prevent that but all it does is stave it off. A change of venue for your ultimate demise, but that’s all. Given the choice, I’d rather watch strangers suffer than friends.”
We walked until the dilapidated wooden buildings were far behind us. Eventually we came upon another small wooden building. This one was less professionally constructed.
Pickman sighed. “Every now and then a player comes through here and thinks we deserve a proper town, so they start one from scratch. This is about how far they get before they realize the Stricken will never let that happen.”
“So what happens to the players then?”
“You saw their faces, didn’t you?” Pickman asked. “The Stricken absorbs them into his little cult, binds them to his person like evil appendages. He’s controlling them. At least I think it’s a he. That’s the rumor anyway. I never got close enough to ask.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “And the players can’t break away?”
“Believe me, if they could have they would have. He’s a rolling cloud of pure misery. I’d rather die than get wrapped up in his little menagerie.”
“And no place is safe?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that. Some folks have figured out how to keep away from the Stricken. Alonso, he’s one of them. We’re going to pay him a visit.”
“How far is he from here?”
“Not far,” Pickman said, “but we’re not going straight there. We need to level you up first, give you a fighting chance.”
“A fighting chance of what?” I asked.
“Of surviving.”
Pickman turned off the road, kicking dust up behind him as we ventured into the featureless steppe ahead. “Take a gander,” he said.
All I could see were occasional shrubs and weeds. I grazed my hand across some of the branches to absorb their essence.
Sagebrush. Rhubarb. Tumbleweed. Unknown.
“There’s another unknown plant,” I said. “I’ve come across a few of these so far.” This one had heart-shaped leaves attached to a tightly coiled vine. I tugged at it, but the vine snapped back into a corkscrew.
“Hold onto it until you level up,” Pickman said. I snapped off a leaf and the thin piece of the vine at the tip where it hadn’t grown so robust yet. I placed it in my pouch.
Pickman stopped walking and crouched low, waving one hand for me to join him while his other hand shielded his eyes from the sun. I knelt down on one knee and tried to follow his gaze.
“Do you see that?” he asked. “It’s a curlynx.”
All I saw was an indistinct gray shape on the horizon. “What’s a curlynx?”
“A powerful monster worth a good chunk of XP.” Pickman stood up and waved his hands, hollering.
“What are you doing?” I asked, watching the distant shape grow closer as the monster bounded toward us.
“Getting its attention.”
A massive feline came into view. Thankfully it was the only one in sight. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was sure I wasn’t prepared for it.
As the cat got closer it slowed down, eyeing us carefully from a safe distance. One long tendril extended from each of the cat’s front shoulder blades, covered in the same short flaxen fur as the cat’s body. Each tendril ended in what looked like an arrowhead
made of bone.
“That’s not a normal cat,” I said.
“First lesson,” Pickman said. “Ripcord is a blend of the familiar and the fantastic. That thing acts like a cat though, mostly. Try not to let it whip you with those tentacles.”
“We’re not going to fight that thing, are we?” I asked.
“You are, greenie. Time to show me what you’ve got.”
“I don’t want to hurt it,” I said, “it’s just a poor animal.”
“That poor animal is ten seconds away from sinking its teeth into your neck.”
The curlynx had stalked closer to us and leaned back on its short hind legs. Its front legs were twice as long. They were sleek and muscular under that short layer of fur. The cat’s upper lip pulled back. It flashed its long, sharp teeth before it leapt from the ground toward us, covering several yards in one jump.
I held out my hand and did the only thing I could. I summoned a cloud of pollen.
The Pollen skill only became available after I had Osmosed a few trees. Plant life was generally lacking in this dry, sparse terrain, but I was relieved I could cast Pollen here anyway. A wispy yellow fog sprang from nowhere, filling the air around the curlynx. At half a mana point per second, I could keep this up for two minutes, assuming it was worth it.
“Jesus Christ, Cale,” Pickman said. “What are you trying to do, give it an allergy attack?”
The curlynx shook its head from side to side, sneezing into the pollen-filled air. “It’s all I’ve got,” I confessed.
The cat took a few steps back until it was free from the yellow haze. It ran around the cloud and toward me. It reared back on its hind legs, preparing to pounce.
I dropped to the ground and hid behind a tiny bush. It rose only halfway up my shin, but I pressed two fingers against the base of its trunk and activated Grow, adding thickness and height to the small plant as its shape snaked out of the ground and rose to my knee, my hip. By the time the curlynx was in the air, I stood behind a sagebrush six feet wide and as high as my chest.
The animal crashed into the plant and winced as it tried to free itself from the many rough branches, its shoulder tentacles thrashing wildly against the plant and the ground.
I stepped back from the monster to avoid its reach. The bone blades it whipped back and forth looked like they could slice me right open.
And they probably would, soon. I had no MP left, so I wouldn’t be Growing any other sagebrush blockades. I certainly couldn’t outrun anything with lynx in its name.
The cat shook free of the sagebrush and rolled onto the ground, righting itself in a split second. I continued to creep backwards. After a growl and a quick shake of its head, the curlynx broke into a sprint towards me. I didn’t have the time or the space to turn and run. It landed two massive paws on my chest, bringing me to the ground.
Something the size of a basketball hovered over the curlynx’s head. It looked like a fishbowl full of water, but without the glass. The water bubble descended quickly, enveloping the cat’s head. It tried to shake free, but the water followed it, held into place by some preternatural force.
Or by my blue mage friend, stepping in again to save me from imminent death.
I lay there, pinned to the ground as the cat tried in vain to escape Pickman’s attempt to drown it in the middle of the arid steppe. After a minute of struggling, the curlynx took water into its lungs and started convulsing. When the torment was over, it fell lifeless on top of me and the blue orb burst, sending a gush of cold water onto the dead cat, and all over me.
“This is going to take longer than I thought,” Pickman said, reaching into his pouch and removing a leaf from his snuff tin. He placed it on his tongue and chewed while I stood there. His eyes rolled back into his head for a moment, then he spat the mangled leaf onto the ground in a wet wad.
“The key is not to chew it for too long or you lose all track of everything,” he said.
“Maybe the key is not to chew it at all,” I said.
“Too late for that. I’d get the shakes.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“Now you do whatever it is you do to level up. I dunno. It’s not every day a green mage comes through here.”
I could just walk away and leave this drug-addled deviant behind to go looking for Nadine on my own. However, he was the closest thing I had to a friend now that Mary had turned heel at Cortina’s border, and he had saved my life twice, even if he’s the one that put me in jeopardy that second time.
I supposed leveling up could come in handy.
“I can’t do anything at the moment,” I said. “I’m out of MP.”
“Fine, then we sit,” he said. He plopped down onto the ground and leaned back, supporting himself on two outstretched arms. “Do some gardening when you get your MP back and let me know if you have a chance to learn anything useful.”
I waited until I recovered a few mana points, then spent them to Grow a nearby rhubarb. Its large green leaves got fuller, its red stem longer and thicker. I was back down to zero MP.
“What did you mean when you said green mages didn’t come through here every day?” I asked.
“In case you haven’t noticed, and I mean this in the nicest way possible,” Pickman said, “you are fucking useless.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. I was still a low level, there must be something better I could unlock later on.
“You have to know when you start this game what kind of a person you are,” Pickman said. “You’ve seen what black magic can do. Very powerful stuff, though most people don’t have the stomach for it. Red magic is all about fire damage, blue channels the destructive power of water, white magic can heal and protect a person through just about anything. Green magic? I have yet to see a green mage hold his own in battle.”
“I didn’t expect to be in battle,” I said. “I thought I’d find my wife here.”
“And live happily ever after?” Pickman said. “Sorry to break it to you, but that ship won’t sail. With some luck though, we can help you live ever after a little longer. Don’t expect the happily part or you’ll only be let down.”
I tapped a small rhubarb plant and fed my MP into it. It grew a few inches, and rewarded me with a level up.
You have reached Level 9! Total skill points: 1. Total attribute points: 1.
A new ability opened up: Engraft.
CURRENT SKILLS
Grow (Tier 6)
Osmose (Tier 1)
Pollen (Tier 1)
AVAILABLE UPGRADES
Engraft (Tier 1): Engraft allows you to add qualities to plants as you grow them. Select qualities from the plants whose essence you have learned through Osmose. [3 MP to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.
Grow (Tier 7): At tier 7, Grow improves growth speed noticeably while slightly increasing mana cost. [1.7 MP per second to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.
Osmose (Tier 2): At tier 2, Osmose allows you to learn the essence of special common plants. [4 MP to cast]. Requires 2 skill points to unlock.
Pollen (Tier 2): At tier 2, Pollen forms a thicker cloud better able to impair your enemies. [0.75 MP per second to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.
I suddenly saw the benefit of improving my Osmose skill. By unlocking rarer plants, I would accumulate a repertoire of special properties to add to the plants I grew, potentially creating some powerful plants that I could use in combat. It would take two skill points to improve Osmose, but only one to unlock Engraft.
“I can open a new skill,” I said. “It will let me imbue plants with each other’s properties.”
“Doesn’t sound very potent,” Pickman said, “but if it’s the best you can do…”
I spent the skill point on Engraft, and promised myself I’d earn the two points to improve my Osmose skill after that.
It seemed that Engraft was a one-time deal. The first tier was also the last, revealing the word “Mastered” next to the skill. I realized each skill must have its
own unique path. I had no way of telling when any individual skill would top off.
I turned next to the attribute point I had earned. I hated how little distance I could run before my speed crawled to a standstill. If I had to guess, I got three seconds of running time for every point of stamina I watched evaporate from my meter. Improving my Speed would give me the stamina points to run longer.
