by G. Akella
My inspection uncovering nothing worthwhile, I waved to my companion to join me and walked towards the main temple building. Judging by her moderately pensive look, Linara had managed to talk herself into or out of all of her points and was now considering what benefit a Grandmaster of Dark Magic could bring to her people.
As we exited another hut smelling of mold, she asked. "Krian, what did people think of necromancers in the world you came from?"
"There was no magic there," I said with a shrug, smiling at the elf before me. "No dark magic, nor any other kind of magic. Magic only existed in games and in fairy tales. Er... stories. We called them ‘fairy tales’ whether they had fairies or not. One of our fairy tales, for example, was about a small, extraordinarily kind girl."
"And what happened to the girl?"
"A toad stole her away from her parents," I went on, "and that was when her great adventure began."
That pulled her out of her reverie, and she gaped at me in surprise. "What does a toad need of a little girl?"
"The toad wanted her son to marry the girl." I looked at my companion’s astounded face and did my best to suppress laughter. "Then the girl ran away and lived with a mouse, but there they were going to marry her to a mole. Then she saved a swallow, and flew it to the country of elves. And she married the prince, who at their wedding gave her tiny dragonfly wings so that the could flit from flower to flower."
"A toad and a mole. You sure you have that right?
I shrugged. "It’s a fairy tale. There’s no telling what might happen in a fairy tale. By the way, we didn’t have elves in my world, either. Which means you’re like a fairy tale to me. One that’s turned into reality."
She sighed. "I can see that. When I was a kid, my parents told me about our home far away, about our brothers and sisters still in Karn, and about the Red Moon over the endless plains of Darkaan." She looked into space, past me. "I want that to turn into reality."
These people told different fairy tales to their children than mine had, but their stories seemed much more likely to become reality, at least.
The area near the main building was a dump, with gloomy walls of stone showing centuries of age, smashed windows, and a crooked door jamb. It wouldn’t really have been surprising to see empty plastic bottles, shredded old newspapers, and crumpled aluminum cans.
The elfess behind me nodded suddenly at the dark entrance. "There’s someone there! He is in great pain. He’s dying..."
"Come on!" I quickly entered the building, finding myself in a small hall with dim lighting. A wide corridor led off to the left, into darkness, small wooden boxes running along its walls. Across from the entrance to the corridor was a tall set of double doors, and next to them, a crooked mirror hanging on the wall. I saw a pair of flowerpots with wilted plants and scattered debris on the floor, and smelled mainly dampness and rot.
"That way!" Linara pointed to the door and flew on ahead.
I followed, drawing my sword just in case. The door was locked, but one kick from my boot solved that problem. The target flew off its hinges, granting us passage to a long, spacious room with high ceilings and narrow, pointed windows. Part of the floor was decorated with an ornamental blue, angular pattern, shining weakly under four twinkling magic lights. There was a wide pedestal by the far wall, where the altar had apparently once stood. And in front of the pedestal…
Linara gasped in shock. "That... that’s the Swamp King! But how?"
I was overcome by déjà vu.
In front of the pedestal, in a pool of its own blood, lay a creature that looked like a Chinese dragon, or perhaps a very skinny crocodile. It had a long, serpentine body, short paws, greenish-brown skin, and an elongated muzzle with horns that curved back. Drooping whiskers and a maw filled with yellow teeth completed its face. Chinese culture had a quite different idea on the nature of dragons than the fantasy of the West. They were associated with the water element, Yang, and good beginnings. Good dragons, eh? Yeah, right.
The creature lying on the stone slabs was named Taag-Aras. His level 619, and he didn’t seem to be "good" by any stretch of the imagination. That much I could tell from the bright red bar above his head. Ten-foot black stakes pinned the monster’s paws to the ground, and only fifteen percent of his nine billion HP remained. His life was draining very slowly, though, so he could lie like this for another week before dying. The Nameless had been chained in the same way, albeit the White Dragon was a good twenty times larger, and the stakes used to crucify him had been considerably larger to match. This was clearly the handiwork of the same torture crew. Why? Well, who could know. Perhaps erecting a temple in a foreign land required a great deal of energy. The Swamp was the source of its king’s strength, and perhaps his very torment near that source gave the disavowed the energy they needed. Then I noticed that the stakes were connected with thick, translucent threads or cables of some magical sort. At the place these threads crossed, a strange hexagonal symbol floated in the air.
So this is why I was here - this crocodile was our ticket to the other side of the swamp. I had to release him. It was odd, though, that Celphata had mentioned nothing of the Swamp King. Then again, all gods were strange like that. She had just taken her altar and rushed off to whatever other divine affairs she had to attend to. What did she care about some crocodile…
"He’s suffering. We have to help him!" Linara was sobbing, her voice pleading with me.
My rage blocked the wave of grief and compassion, and I headed for the crucified monster, careful to avoid the glowing pattern on the floor.
"Do you know how we can release him? I’ve never encountered anything like this, but I can try."
I shook my head firmly. "No! We’ve had enough of your experiments for today. First, let’s figure out what to do if he wakes up and tries to eat us."
Linara just repeated herself. "We have to help! He’s suffering!" She wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve.
"Very well..." I shrugged. Tiptoeing carefully through the blood pooling on the floor, I swung my sword at the hexagon.
That was just the first thing that came to mind. What else could I have done? Smash the pillars? Pull free the forty-foot crocodile, whose girth reached half a dozen feet in places? First instincts were almost always correct. A melodic crystal chime sounded out, and the hexagon dissolved into glistening dust. Playful sparks ran along the magical threads in all directions. The stakes crumbled, and Linara squeaked something indistinct from behind me. Taag-Aras’s HP stopped declining, still at around fifteen percent. I squinted at the elf suspended in the air to my left, took the second-to-last vial of Greater Healing from my belt into my palm, sighed - and smashed it against the muzzle of the prone monster.
Chapter 15
As Taag-Aras’s HP fully replenished, nothing happened for about a full minute. The beast wasn't moving, perhaps because all of the System’s resources were spent by Linara. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she exclaimed, sending rolling waves of joy into me as she circled around in the air. I was used to my companion’s colossal mood swings by now, so I just stood and smiled, waiting for the monster we had just saved to awaken. I couldn’t help smiling - the air was literally sparkling with the girl’s happiness. Few sentient beings would have rejoiced at an enemy’s recovery, which made these little elves truly remarkable. Or perhaps only she was, as I hadn’t met any of the others.
Taag-Aras shifted his head. He slowly opened his eyes and looked at me with his dull, orange snake eyes. In real life, a mortal fight would have ensued in an instant. I doubted that a regular crocodile in a similar situation would peacefully thank its saviors upon regaining consciousness. But this was not real life. Here, everything still acted by the laws of the realm’s creators. The bar above the monster’s head changed color, as expected, and I was greeted by a green message in the system log.
Your reputation has increased. The Great Swamp Serpent Taag-Aras is friendly to you.
Attention! You have garnered the att
ention of a higher being. Urgot, the God of Swamps and Swampdwellers, is friendly to you.
So he’s a serpent, after all, I thought. Taag-Aras looked from me to Linara, who had fallen silent, gave a barely perceptible nod, and charged for the exit, scales rustling and wriggling along the way. Thank you, Dark One... the echo of his voice rustled in my head. Linara made some kind of strange bow in the air as I watched him leave, wondering why a serpent needed paws at all. He would have moved more fluidly without them. Also, where had he crawled to? And who would open a portal to the other side of the swamp for us?
"The Swamp King has offered his friendship!" Linara whispered in shock.
"He’s my friend now, too." I shrugged and fidgeted, poking a hole that still remained in the stone floor, where a stake had been driven in. "I wonder why he didn’t send us straight to the graveyard."
"You don’t understand," Linara exclaimed. "He didn’t just offer friendship to me, but to my whole people! Our enmity is over! Don’t you understand? Now the sentient beings of the swamp will lay no hand on us, even if we’re on their territory!"
"Good thing you came along, then! Your father and mother and Tano what’s-her-name will give you some serious honors, and maybe feed you some ceremonial pastries!" My smile faded as I paused to view a multicolored stained-glass window. It depicted Vill sitting on a rock, imparting some teaching to some gray-robed followers.
It was probably just symbolic, an episode from the game's lore. Strange as it seemed, though, Celphata had said that without Vill the whole balance of the System would be disturbed. It wasn't that I was sad about the Twice Cursed meeting his fate, but the devil you know and all that... So if the opportunity presented itself, I would be sure to snatch Vill from Cheney's wretched paws.
Linara cut into my thoughts. "I don’t know how to thank you. If you had just let me sleep..."
I held up my hand. "Don’t. No one made you come. You came of your own will, and made friends with the Swamp King on your own. And enough talking for now. We need to check out this whole building before we leave."
I looked around the hall once more and set off for the stairs to the second floor, knowing full well that my companion would engage in her habit of "talking on the fly."
"Still, thank you! Do you think we’ll find anything useful in here? And how are we going to get across the swamp?"
I was carefully inspecting the wall the staircase was positioned against. "We’ll ride on the back of our new friend, of course! I’ll sit up front and grab him by the horns, and you’ll sit on my shoulders." I posed like I was on a jet ski. "We’ll race through the swamp, the wind in our hair. Back in the world I came from, we would ride jet skis across the water. It’ll be like that."
Linara’s emotions switched to "surprised" mode.
"I don’t know what kind of animal a ‘jetski’ is, but are you sure the Swamp King will agree to be ridden like a rabbit?"
"I mean, yeah, he’s our friend, right?" I was fully serious. "Otherwise he would have put up a portal for us. Right here in the temple."
It took monstrous force of will to hold back my smile. I walked around a stunned Linara and began to ascend the stairs, leaving her to her thoughts of riding the back of a god who had hated her people just moments before.
As expected, there was nothing of value in the whole temple. A dozen various recipes, seven gold coins, some rare chainmail rusted clean through, and a bunch of worthless junk. Still, I searched all the rooms, closets and chests, and even the basement - which smelled like a sewer running underneath a burial mound. Nothing. The loot in this place was pathetic. Of course, this dungeon was not designed for players. Celphata had killed the final boss after destroying the blue film over the entrance, and I had received no messages about killing or clearing or completing anything. Had the world really changed that much? Or was that the meaning of "open?"
As soon as we were back out in the courtyard, Linara paused. "Where do we go now?"
She had been absorbed in pensive silence as we examined the temple, uttering only a few phrases, mostly in reply to my questions. Which made sense given her people's newfound friendship with a heretofore mortal enemy. Trusting that such a change could be genuine had been hardly possible in the real world, but here, it was certain. Plus, this world was only really a half a year old. These people’s hostility was only in their memories - memories which the governing AI had planted in their heads. What great history of conflict could there possibly be between swamp frogs and forest dragonflies? Especially when the dragonfiles were guarded by two colossal wolves?
Of course, I said none of this out loud. And not just to avoid disturbing the solemnity of the moment. To tell the truth, this tiny, fragile girl deserved these moments of pervasive happiness after displaying such courage and compassion. But then her happiness quickly turned into some incomprehensible sort of sadness. I didn't ask any questions, so the cause of her sadness remained a mystery.
"Krian! Are you listening to me? Where do we go now?"
I nodded at the trees just outside the temple gate. "To the swamp. I’m fed up with this temple and its inhabitants, and there’s nothing left for us here."
"And what is there for us in the swamp?"
"I don’t know. Either Taag-Aras is waiting for us, or someone had built us a way across."
I winked at the girl, adjusted Ruination’s sheath, and headed for the exit. Linara sighed in annoyance and flew silently beside me.
It was getting dark. The day-weary orange sun caressed the edge of the horizon, slowly pushing down into the muddy swamp water. Frogs croaked loudly among the reeds, mosquitoes buzzed their intentions to bite us, and the air smelled of wild rosemary and algae. After the death, devastation and stench of the temple, this area was a place of peace and tranquility. Time itself seemed to stand still, perhaps due to the great distance from Karn and its cities and castles. It was as if the whole world had been cut down to this old, empty, godforsaken swamp. Would that I could find some log cabin along the shore, light a fire, and lean back to do nothing more than watch the patches of land dotting the horizon.
With a sigh, I chased away the thought and fixed my eyes on a cluster of plants growing in the grass. Perhaps I was no longer human, but I was still an artist. They couldn’t get rid of that part. And I hoped they never would.
We walked a path bordered by a small stream, all the way to the shore. Of course, Taag-Aras was nowhere to be seen. The serpent had apparently slithered home to lick its wounds and let its shattered nervous system recover. Yet, there was someone else waiting for us.
Ten yards from the water, there sat an elf on a long, rotten log. He was watching the sun set, and made no move to look at us. He wore a green linen shirt, brown pants, and a broad dagger. I had no idea what had made Donut decide that this character must look like Jabba the Hutt. He bore no resemblance to a reptile, despite what one's logical expectations might suggest.
"I’m going mad," Linara whispered when she saw the elf sitting on the shore. "I’ve lived a peaceful life and have given my parents love and respect. And I’ve studied hard. But I never dreamed of meeting two gods on the same day! Who are you, Krian? How did you meet this god, pray tell?"
I shrugged. "We just saved a close associate of his a couple of hours ago. So he has come to see us. And don’t you dare go mad without me. Going mad is more fun with friends. Then we can skip through the forest with imbecilic smiles on our faces until the end of days. And sing songs and converse with the mushrooms."
"Can you please be serious for once?" Linara hissed in my ear.
"Yes. I’m about to go seriously ask this god to send us across the swamp. Wait here. And don’t start talking to the mushrooms without me."
I winked at her and walked towards the waiting god.
"Wait, can mushrooms really talk?" I heard from behind me, and smiled.
Either my friend was finally learning to have a sense of humor - or she was indeed losing her grip on sanity.
Urgot
did not move when I approached. He kept sitting there, slipping his beads through his hands, and staring plaintively at the sunset.
The elven appearance was but a guise. The players at The White Crane had said that Urgot had apparently taken the side of the Ancients, but an elf would never oppose the Great Forest.
"Good evening," I said politely, and sat down beside him without being asked.
The god was silent for a while, then sighed, crunched his beads, and spoke without taking his eyes from the sunset.
"I had accepted what would have happened to the Great Forest after the Ancients' invasion. But I cannot accept what will happen to Arkon after the Beast's accession. I do not believe that you can stop him. I do not believe that you will come to an arrangement with the Guardians of the Dragon Graveyard. And I do not believe that the bones of the Dragon will even deign to answer your question. But I will still help you. I hope your other questions have been answered?"
Urgot made a barely noticeable gesture, stood and turned to nod at the green portal newly manifested near the water.
"This will take you within a mile of the Graveyard. Farewell, Dark One... and thank you for helping Taag-Aras."
The god’s monotonous voice was still ringing in my ears as I rose from the log and turned to wave Linara over to the portal suspended silently in the air.
So he didn’t believe in me... Of course he didn’t. But he had believed in the Ancients when they had set off for the Great Forest. Oh well. At least he was helping me. I could take it from here.
"You never told me anything about the Dragon Graveyard," I mentioned to Linara as I took in the star-speckled sky around us.
She smiled slyly. "You never asked. And why would you need to know about a place forbidden even for the gods to enter?"
"So what could you possibly know about it if even the gods never go there?"
"I know enough!" she snorted and looked down at me. Not in a literal sense - she was hovering just below my line of sight. But in that way girls often do.
