“As for the rest,” he finally announced, “I’m not sure what three wolves refer to. There aren’t many Scorch Wolves in this region; they tend towards the Firetop Mountains to the north of us. It’s more Sand Lions and Blaze Snakes as far as wild beasts in these parts. However, I have seen what I would interpret as sandstone jaws in the Markat Hills.”
“The trail of bed crumbs keeps going on,” I nodded with a chuckle. Pearly matched my laugh with a snort of rock dust “Is there a waymarker that will fill in the point of interest or can you share the waypoint with us?”
Wazif looked up from his map, his brow screwed up in consternation. “I would gladly … if I could. You see, it’s not actually an official point of interest. It doesn’t have a map marker or serve as a vista to fill in the map, nothing like that.” His round face melted back into a grin. “Fortunately for you, I found it such an interesting sight that I added it to my own list of personal map pins. I could easily lead you there myself.”
Kayla gazed off to the west, to where the sandstone hills started to rise from the sands. “What exactly is it?” she said with a thoughtful lilt to her voice.
“Oh, well, higher up in the Hills and further than you can see from here,” Wazif began, “the larger sandstone outcroppings get more and more elaborate. There is one particular valley that contains an overhang. Under that particular overhang, there are, for some reason, an irregular set of stalagmites and stalactites along the perimeter of the space underneath.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Now, I’m a bit of an anagramming panderer on the summer solstice …”
“Filter?” I provided with a sympathetic smile.
Wazif laughed. “Yes, Filter. What’s important is that there shouldn’t be either of those things in that particular cavity, at least by any science that I know, and it does make that particular formation look like a set of jaws. Until now, I just thought someone on the art team simply had a flight of fancy while designing the area, what with no quests or point of interest marker, but now I know better.”
I nodded slowly and adjusted myself in the saddle. “That does sound like our best bet.” A bit of simmering guilt came to the fore. We were basically taking Wazif away from his own game time, his own pursuits, just to be our personal guide, and that prompted me to ask him, “Are you absolutely sure you want to come with us instead of telling us the way?”
“And give up the opportunity to adventure with two of my in-game heroes?” Wazif gave me a look likely reserved for crazy people. “I’d never be able to live with myself if I walked away now!” He pulled on the reins of his Strider, bringing its beaked head up to attention. “Besides, the deeper paths in the Hills can get very twisting. Even with the exact coordinates, it could take you twice as long to find the right path to get there without me.”
Kayla nodded. “Then we certainly don’t have a choice.” She bobbed her head in a salute to the Ember. “Thank you for going out of your way like this, Wazif.”
“Right,” I agreed, “thank you very much. If we do run into trouble, though, get out of the way and let us handle it.” I smiled. “I sure as heck don’t want you to lose any more time than you already are.”
“Oh, never fear, Shale.” Wazif pulled his mount around toward the nearby hills. “As I said, I hate pain! I’ll be staying well out of the way if a fight happens.” Glancing over his shoulder, he looked to the both of us. “Are you both ready?”
Kayla and I shared a brief smile before we both nodded to Wazif. “We’re ready,” I announced, bringing Pearly in to follow the vibrant purple-and-red tail feathers of the Strider as Kayla fell in beside me.
“Then let’s be off!” Wazif spurred his bird onward, the Strider letting out a squawk and a puff of flame before charging off toward the trail, Kayla and me following closely in his dusty wake.
Quote 4
I'd love to tell you more about the Ring of Promise quests, I really would, but considering how strongly we have to divide real world connections and the deep dive Internet, I have to play things close to the chest for now. There are still hundreds of reported brainjackings and neural invasions even these days with the protection of overlapping Filter AIs watching us. Imagine how much worse it might be if the intricate details of the one link between game and RL were made public!
Havoccore, EO community administrator, State of Elementalis Q & A 2220
4
Any vain hopes that moving up into the Markat Hills would provide relief from the blazing sun of the Fire Sultanate was dashed soon after we started up the trail into it. At least the landscape was different. Left behind were blowing red sands, black brimstone rocks, and burning cacti. In their place, we had glittering sandstone hills, winding trails, and not a scrap of vegetation to be seen. Though we were free from abrasive gusts of grit, the sun’s glare might have been worse, reflected off the liberal amount of quartz (or maybe diamond) in the stone all around us.
Wazif led us with barely a stop to look at his map. If there was any real delay in our journey, it was the moments of caution when the miner would be forced to use Shadowstep to slip past some of the more threatening patches of MOBs. I had to give him a ton of credit. He managed to get in and out of this place to do as much mining as he had to achieve that Grand Masterdom and that was no mean feat. While they would have been almost immediately lethal to Wazif, the slithering masses of Blaze Snakes and scattered camps of Pyrolins gave Kayla and I a wide berth. We didn’t even catch a glance of a Sand Lion, though echoing roars would occasionally reverberate off the sandstone from far away.
A part of me was getting paranoid. To me, it seemed like the monsters were staying too far away, making this feel too much like a scripted event instead of the normal MOB behavior, but I tried not to worry about it too much. Besides, Wazif didn’t seem worried, and he knew this place a lot better than we did. If he wasn’t worried, we shouldn’t be.
And it was a good thing that he did know it. While the early going was a fairly open series of lightly rolling foothills, the whole place soon turned into a maze of winding trails, steep drops, and naturally formed arches and overpasses. Add onto that regions of bubbling, boiling mud pits and vents belching intermittent bursts of fire and this region was turning into a mess as nasty as the Stonefire Forest back in the Earth Kingdom. Still, despite the travails, Wazif was an unerring guide.
As we turned down another winding path and entered the shadow of a hill that was more a mountain than a molehill, the Ember glanced back at us. “So, we’re deep enough in the Hills that I doubt we’ll run into another group of players anytime soon. What exactly is it we are expecting up ahead?” Before either of us could formulate an answer or confer with the other, Wazif grinned. “You don’t need to give me any specifics about the quest if you don’t want to, but I do want to know if I should be running out of an aggro radius or ducking for cover or simply hiding when we get close.”
Pearly snuffled out some dust as I scratched my cheek. I really had no clue what we were going to find and I wasn’t sure what to tell our new friend. “I’ll be honest with you, man. We don’t know what’s ahead, only what we’re supposed to be looking for.”
He nodded slowly. “Right, those sandstone jaws.”
Kayla spoke up, glancing away from the looming hills on both sides, “More specifically, this whole search is supposed to lead us to someplace called the Vale of the Three Wolves.”
It was more info than I had thought to offer, what with our decision to play things close to our chests, but it was a harmless enough factoid. Considering neither of us, no matter our experience, had ever heard of the Vale before, it shouldn’t clue the miner into our ultimate goal. That was confirmed by his face scrunching up into a frown. What I didn’t expect was the exact nature of his reply.
“You aren’t pulling my leg, are you?” He slowed his Strider to a crawl, incredulous eyes still locked on us.
“Uh, no,” I frowned back. “We’re looking for the Vale of the Three Wolves. I hadn’t heard of it
either before this quest but –”
Wazif cut me off with a raised hand as he said, “Okay, okay. I don’t know what’s going on, but I sure can’t understand either of you. It’s just a bunch of random nonsense … wait a tick …” Realization dawned in his eyes and it started to percolate through my skull at the same time.
“Like the Filter?” I offered, as I reigned in Pearly to match his speed. “Like if I was crowning a sickly baron with a fresh creamsicle?” Ah, there it went … but if the Filter was doing something when we talked about the Vale …?
Kayla slowed up herself. “But that doesn’t make any sense!” She pointed a finger up toward the ruddy sky. “We’re not talking about, you know, up there. We’re only talking about a quest in the game.”
Our guide took a long, slow look from me to Kayla and back before letting out a fiery puff of a sigh. “I’m not trying to say that you’re lying but this is very strange, you have to admit.” The suspicious cast in his eyes faded as his previous gregarious grin returned. “But there are a lot of strange things going on in the game these days. Who am I to argue, eh?”
He might not have thought much of it, but I wasn’t quite as happy with it. With a grunt, I nodded to him while Kayla flashed a smile. “Thanks for your understanding, Wazif. If either of us knew why this was going on, we would tell you.”
“I believe you, Lady Kayla.” With an absent wave, Wazif signaled that his questions were truly over by turning back toward the trail ahead. “So, when we are about to get to your jaws, I’ll take to the shadows for the last bit of the trail. Just to be sure I don’t wind up blown all the way back to Kalmarkat, you understand!”
As his Strider started to speed up, my frown didn’t lighten as I spurred Pearly on. “Yeah, do everything you need to do to be safe.” I felt Kayla’s eyes on me so I gave her a sidelong look.
Kayla: I’m going to guess what’s bugging you is what’s bugging me?
Shale: If it’s the fact that the Filter is acting funny, then double-plus yes. Maybe that was why Crysta didn't tell us more about it. She already knew she couldn't.
Kayla: And yet we can’t tell anyone else about it! Or maybe we can only tell certain people?
Shale: Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
Those big blue eyes were pensive as she nodded faintly, chewing at her lip as she turned her focus back to the trail ahead. What she was thinking about, I could only imagine, especially as I was getting wrapped up in my own head.
The Filter was an AI, after all, an intelligent, independent computer system that was always running through our brains in the deep-dive. While there had been no reports of any Filter-style systems causing any harm to any diver, that didn’t mean that it couldn’t happen or that it wasn’t capable of some dubious things.
I shook my head and tried not to dwell on it. Maybe it was a defense mechanism to protect players that weren’t involved in the Ring quest from learning that you were going after it. It could be construed that scrap of information might lead to figuring out someone’s real-life identity, I supposed. Honestly, I wasn’t one-hundred percent convinced but, come on, this was only a game, right?
Yeah, I didn’t have much luck in the distraction department. Fortunately, I had little time to run conspiracy theory circles in my head as, a short time later, Wazif pulled up to a halt as we crested a low hill. “Whoa, friends! We are almost there.”
That broke through the tangled thoughts occupying my mind. Glancing around to regain my bearings, I pulled on my lizard’s reins. From our vantage point, I could see that a small, circular valley no larger than a football field in size stretched out below us.
More hills shot up around the edge of said valley, looming over this one easy path down into it. Even the hilltop we were on was shadowed by a stone path that stretched from the large hills to either side of us. The valley really was a dead-end area with nothing particularly special about it outside of the strange overhang that Wazif must have been leading us to.
When he said it looked like jaws, he hadn’t been kidding. By some working of elemental forces, what I guessed had been a rather impressive peak had shattered (probably during the Sundering) and toppled over. Somehow, that peak had landed on its former base to form a ‘top jaw’ of glittering sandstone while the rocky ground itself formed the bottom slab. True again to Wazif’s word, those jaws had teeth but he hadn’t quite done them justice. They weren’t just stalactites and stalagmites; they were almost perfectly tooth-shaped and formed from crystal that seemed to faintly glow with elemental power.
Wazif spread his arms grandly as he sat up tall in the saddle. “I present your sandstone jaws!”
“That must be it,” Kayla cried out, her own suspicions swept away by the surge of discovery. “A place as beautiful and peaceful as this, you would think that more avatars would be out here, just to enjoy the place.”
I quirked a half-smirk. “Who’s got time to sit around in EO?”
It was a bit of a self-deprecating joke, at least that was my intention, but no one laughed at it. I guess I’m not much of a comedian. Kayla’s sidelong glance was more pensive than anything while Wazif took me at face value, chuckling as he bounced off his feathery mount.
“Everyone should find the time to smell the sun palms, Shale.” He nodded as the Strider dissipated in a cloud of smoke and flame. “Imagine spending every moment in the dive grinding away! What sort of game is that then?”
I didn’t feel like debating how I spent my EO time and the reasons why, especially as the Filter would sweep away most of it. Not everyone was so fortunate that they could spend their time in-game playing … and I realized the oxymoronic nature of my thought the moment I, uh, thought it. That fact didn’t make things untrue, though, but I only grunted an assent as I slid off Pearly’s scaly back, sending him back to the virtual nowhere he spent his time.
Kayla was right beside me in a moment, her own horse gone in a wave of ocean water. Her hand brushed my arm and, as I glanced at her in surprise, she opined, “Some people enjoy the grind and others don’t have as much choice about it.” I have to admit, it felt pretty good to have someone understand and defend my position that wasn’t, well, me.
Our new friend didn’t seem to take offense, nodding sagely. “Then count me corrected!” He pulled his elaborately gemmed pick from his inventory and held it out like a wand, the clear quartz on the top of the pick head starting to glow. I guessed that it was an Eagle’s Eye Gem like Crysta’s. As Kayla and I joined him at the very peak of the hill, Wazif scanned the area carefully.
“Fortunately, I see no potential danger,” he reported. “All the same, I believe this is where I’ll stealth up and observe. If you need me or the quest completes safely, holler and I’ll be here.”
I shook off my funk and nodded as I summoned up my shield and banner. “You got it. Thanks for all your help up to here.” With a mental nudge, I shifted through the tabs of the Herald interface to fire off a friend request to Wazif. Hey, I was supposed to be coming out of my shell, right?
“I couldn’t have said it better,” Kayla added, a smile starting to fade into the focused game face I was by then intimately familiar with. “Thank you and stay safe. If this is what this is supposed to be, we owe you a lot.”
Thumbing a smoky quartz stone that was front and center of his tool harness, Wazif started to fade from sight with a merry grin. “It has been my pleasure! I can only hope that this is what you are looking for.” His form became translucent, almost invisible to our eyes. If we had been against him in a PvP environment, he would have totally vanished. “My only request is that, if it becomes possible, I really must know what this has all been about!”
Wazif has accepted your friend request! You will now be informed of his online status, location, and may exempt him as part of your Do Not Disturb settings.
“Trust me,” I assured him. “If we do succeed here, I have this funny feeling everyone’s going to know about it.” Even i
f we didn’t tell another soul, with our current fame as the Firsters, a Ring of Promise on my and Kayla’s fingers would spark quite the talk among the gossip mongers of the server, if not the entire game.
There was the barest hint of embarrassment in the way Kayla’s stance shifted at my words but it was gone in a second. Conjuring her staff and orb, she looked back at Wazif’s phantom form and my much more solid one. “Well, we had better get this going. We’re down to fifteen minutes of login time left and I certainly don’t want to have to log out here in the wilds.”
With a nod, I moved forward to lead the way down into the valley proper, Kayla falling into careful step behind me. The path was clear and the slope easy to navigate. A few moments later, we came out on the floor of the valley, the immense sandstone jaws gaping before us. From ground level, it was easy to see the back of the crevice despite the shade, especially with the glimmer from the charged ‘teeth’ lighting the way. The gap was large enough to walk in easily, starting at an easy fifteen feet tall and eventually ending at a space that could fit Shale’s large frame with a little stooping.
If the strange rock formations weren’t enough, the abrupt end of the ‘jaws’ confirmed for me that this wasn’t something random. Rocks just didn’t sit that way, at least to my knowledge, and the physics engine for the non-supernatural aspects of Elementalis was pretty realistic. This was too deliberate of a structure to be a random artist’s pet project or something auto-generated by some terrain building algorithm.
We stopped at the edge of the yawning gap. Nothing had yet tried to kill us or even stirred as a hot wind swept down from the hills around us. I glanced over at Kayla who was peering intently into the gloomy mouth.
The Vale of Three Wolves: A LitRPG Adventure (Elements of Wrath Online Book 2) Page 5
