“Those crystals are the key to the game. The key to the whole game. You must find them. Save them and protect them. Even,” her eyes flickered, becoming a shade darker, “even from me.”
“What!?” Dean shouted, just as the room flashed in brilliance once more, and he opened his eyes to be looking up at the distant foliage of the Shrine of Oak, surrounded by the grumbling bodies of his companions.
“Dean!? Dean – are you okay?” It was Marcy, in her elvish form, sliding on the grass at his side and putting her hands on his shoulders. “Breathe, remember Dean, breathe…”
“I’m fine, really,” the mage managed to cough, although, checking his health bar, he was anything but fine. He was down to half-health from whatever that explosion must have been. “Did you see that? The Lady Efen?” He groaned as Mirelle helped him to his feet.
“Yeah, she was right here, coming down through the trees, and then – there was some kind of explosion, and the game reset.” Mirelle peered up above them as if the Lady of Efen might suddenly coalesce out of thin air once more. But, apart from the groaning and mumbling elves all around them, there appeared to be no vengeful demi-goddess.
“No, I mean…” Dean was about to say something about what he had just witnessed, but the grumble of his friend Crusher at his side distracted him.
“Half-health!? I only just fell over!” he was shouting, annoyed as he dusted down his armor.
“Same for me,” Winters consoled him.
“And me,” Mirelle checked, and it appeared the same for all the characters here. Whatever that explosion had been, it had almost wiped them out in just one scene!
“And it wasn’t natural, that’s for certain,” Crusher said, nodding to the sacred lake. “Come on, we should find out what it was.”
“No, it wasn’t natural,” Mirelle said, frowning. “It reset the game – has anyone here ever experienced that before?”
“Only when the power goes out to my apartment.” Crusher let out a harsh laugh. “But this seems to have happened to all of us – everyone – so, what was it? An America-wide blackout?”
“Oh dear God, the hospital!” Mirelle suddenly froze. “Look, I should be going, just in case… I have patients to see to.”
“I don’t think it was America,” the Lady Jay was saying beside them as they ran past the groaning and hurt elvish guards. “It makes more sense for it to be a game-only problem. Did the rest of you see the loading screens, it said ‘server reboot’?”
“Where are the servers?” Dean frowned.
“California, I think,” Crusher said.
“Still, we’re in San Maria – right on the tip of Cali,” Mirelle said, slowing her pace.
“Marcy – I mean, Mirelle – I need you!” Winters found himself saying in alarm, struck by how strong he felt.
“Not as much as the kids on life-support. Sorry Dean, I’m out.” He watched as the elf raised a long-fingered hand to wave, freeze-frame for a second, and then suddenly disappear. Dean had never seen a player character exit out of a game before; he had thought they might go into a special room or something, but they just seemed to disappear as if they had never been here.
“But, but where will she reappear?” Winters said.
“Come on, mage – no time to waste!” Lady Jay had reached the stone markers around the edge of the lake.
The explorer was right – there really was no time to waste as the rest of the elvish Judgment were stumbling and struggling to their feet. But still, Dean couldn’t bring himself to turn and leave the spot where his friend had so recently been.
“She’ll turn up back here, when she re-logs in. Hopefully that will be long enough after that there won’t be a huge pack of guards waiting for her, like there is for us!” Crusher pointed to the re-forming pack of guards who had been trying to capture them. “Now move it, before you turn into a porcupine from those blasted elvish arrows!”
Fine. Winters turned and ran for the edge of the lake, where Jay and Sari were already working to haul something, or someone, from the edge of the water.
*
The sacred pool was roughly circular, wide but shallow, with a sloping edge made of fine silver-gray sand. Only, there seemed to have been a lot more water once, before the explosion, Winters saw. Instead of a wide, brimming lake surrounded by a thin collar of sand, instead he now stood at the edge of a shallow bowl, with a mere paddling pool of water at the bottom, and a thick band of dark graywet sand that crunched as he ran to help Jay and Sari with their burden.
It was a man, in a dirty cloak and tight-fitting leathers, his face half-hidden by a wrap of sodden cloth.
“It’s him, the same one I met,” Jay said, after dragging him further up the beach to the dry area. “The Red Hand.”
“The Red Hand? Goddamn!” Crusher coughed. “He’s famous. Like, epic hero-level famous.”
“Famous or not, he needs healing,” Winters grumbled. If only we hadn’t lost our druid. “Sari? Do you still have some of that elixir?”
“Sure, here.” She took out one of the phials and put it to the man’s lips, when the air was filled with the sudden fragrance of something sweet, a summer fragrance.
“Urgh! Yak!” The Red Hand started coughing and spluttering, his black-brown eyes flapping as he looked around him.
“Easy, you’re among friends,” Winters growled, looking back up to the edge of the lake. “Although, if we don’t get out of here soon, then I don’t think that’s going to do you any good…”
“I’m on it,” Sari said resolutely, turning to crunch along the sand a little way from them, raising her hands and starting to murmur in a low, occult tongue. As she did so, a light haze started to fall from the canopy above, becoming thicker and thicker as it coalesced over the settlement, turning from a haze into a mist, and then into a fog, and then into a white-out of heavy white cloud.
Sari – no! It’ll cost you too much!” Jay was saying, turning from the spluttering man to seize her friend as she stumbled backwards. It had cost her a lot, Winters saw. But then again, she had managed to put an enchantment on the largest settlement of elves in the entire game.
“Winters? Dean Winters?” the Red Hand beneath them spluttered.
What? How does he know my name – my real name? The mage dropped the man he had been holding.
“It is, isn’t it? I recognize your avatar. Thank God,” the Red Hand said, pressing an object into his hand. “I want you to repair this.”
When Winters looked down, he was looking at a faded, not-so-green-anymore Ouroborax Crystal.
*
“What?” Winters said again. “You want me to…”
“Sorry to break up the MacGuffin party you lot, but we have to get going. Now.” Jay was half-staggering, with Sari the Enchantress at her side, pointing into the mist where the far edge of the lake should be. “We’re all down to half-health, and I for one have spent years grinding out the XP on this character – so I am not about to throw it all away now!”
“She’s right,” Crusher said. “Time for explanations later.” He turned a little hesitantly to the Red Hand, now being helped to his feet by the artificer Winters. “It’s a real honor to meet you, Red – but if you could forgive us…”
“No, your companion is right. We should get going. If we can get past the Judgment’s boundaries, then there might be a few things I can do to help…”
Winters watched as the Red Hand’s eyes seemed to flicker, going wide as if staring into some hidden realm, before he snapped back to the present moment.
“Come on!”
The group, now bearing two injured and exhausted members, hobbled and half-ran through the thick white fog summoned by Sari, hearing muffled shouts of alarm from the elvish guards from all sides.
“Shhh! Move quietly – but quickly!” Jay was saying, taking the lead with Sari slumped over her shoulders as the ground underfoot changed. They were climbing over a low stone wall, out of the
sand and onto a dew-wet meadow, with glistening wildflowers brushing their calves.
“Halt!”
“Where are they!”
“Someone call an enchanter to dispel this accursed fog!”
The sounds of their searchers continued, as a large shape loomed out of the white: the graceful wooden trunks of an elvish house, which Jay slumped beside, leaving Sari for a moment as she scouted around its outskirts. A moment later, she returned.
“This way,” she said and hauled her friend to her feet, leading the way once more out into the fog.
They travelled through the spiritual home of the Judgment in this manner, pausing at each house that met their path, or skirting around stands of sacred trees as the shouts and calls of the befogged elves behind them carried close or fell back away from them. Soon, Winters thought he could sense a change in the land underfoot. The meadows were not quite so pretty, and a little wilder, and they were passing less standing gourd-lights, and more thin trees.
“We’re almost to the edge,” the Red Hand breathed, again his eyes doing that flickering near-and-far thing.
Out of the fog appeared a dark shape – a standing stone with many concentric circles whorled over its surface. Jay paused beside it, waiting for the others to catch up before they dove past it.
It was like walking through a sudden downpour, or through an area of central heating. Winters felt the frisson of magical power as the white drifts of the fog started to lift all around them. More trees, larger this time, loomed out of the gloom, and the light above them grew dim with the heavy canopy above.
“We’re out,” Jay breathed, heaving a great sigh as she looked around their surroundings.
They were in a wild tangle of wood, with moss-covered stones caught in the root systems of the trees. The sounds of distant wildlife, the squawk of birds, the snuffles of larger beasts, could be heard in the distance.
“But we’ve still got a way to go yet.” Jay gritted her teeth, looking first one way and then another, before selecting a route by some Explorer art or skill that Winters didn’t understand.
They struggled and ran through the wildwoods, climbing the boulders beside silver, musical streams at times, or else skidding over grassy banks in forgotten clearings.
-1 Health his status bar rang up, after the many rounds of strenuous activity. How much have I got left in me? Winters checked his health bar.
5 Health
“Goddammit!” he cursed. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not sure I can even go much further… This forest is killing me!”
“You magic users, always the same,” Jay grumbled, but he could see from the scowl in her features that she, too, must be just as worried. Winters knew they needed to find some safe sanctuary, and soon.
“Okay. Well, I said I might be able to do something for you…” the Red Hand gasped, patting Winters on the shoulder to release him, which Winters did, albeit uncertainly as the infamous thief wobbled on his feet, reached out to put a steadying hand on a nearby tree, and looked back at Winters. “This is difficult for me,” he said, in a disturbing echo of what the Lady of Efen had said to him, Winters thought. “I might not make it back soon. Or at all. If anything happens, Dean – just remember this: find the other crystals. Repair them.”
Fzzz
There was a ripple of glitching interference in the game, as the details of the tree bark grew too sharp, and yet the surrounding characters seemed to fade out, and then, with an audible thud the game snapped back into focus, and the Red Hand was gone. Just, vanished.
“What in the name of Crom was that!?” Jay shouted. “I mean, what was that – that wasn’t any spell – that ripped a friggin’ hole through the entire game – did you see that static!?”
“That certainly wasn’t any spell I know…” Sari whispered, rubbing her head. It was clear the enchantment she had cast over the entire Shrine of Oak had cost her dearly.
“You’re right…” Winters murmured, thinking about his strange, solo encounter with the Lady of Efen, and even of the weird hacked entries he had read about the Ouroborax earlier today. This game was getting really glitchy, really buggy. And it all seemed to have something to do with this quest they were on. “I’m not sure that I like this,” he agreed, thinking about being stuck in that darkness just a little while ago. What if it hadn’t stopped? What if we’re all in REAL danger here, not just the virtual damage we could get to our characters but REAL danger to our minds? But, having almost no way of mentioning all of these concerns to those people around him, he settled for, “None of this feels right.”
“Damn straight none of this feels right – look at that!” Crusher was nodding over his shoulder, where there was now a brighter patch of greenish light where before there had only been the gloom of deep forest cover. “That wasn’t there before. That’s just appeared there, I swear it.”
“We might have missed it as we ran…” Winters tried to say, not wanting to remember what the Red Hand himself had said. “This is difficult for me.” Like the thief had done something to the game they were in, changed it around somehow…
And now there’s this, behind us – but what is it exactly?
“There is no way I missed that,” Jay said certainly. “I’m very good at what I do. I had every scan and skill running to find paths and tracks through the wildwood, and nothing showed. Nothing.” She scowled at it, but still, Winters found himself stepping towards it.
The greenish light grew lighter but not brighter, resolving into a small, narrow path picked between the trees, and standing on it was one of those strange, white-robed, no-eyed, no-nosed creatures from before, holding a staff.
“A Forest Guardian!” Crusher swore. “Now we’re screwed…”
“No – wait.” Winters raised a restraining hand at the dwarf. “It’s looking straight at us, and Mirelle said you should never look at them, didn’t she?”
“What about them eyeballing us?” Jay reached for the pistol at her hip.
‘“The Lady wants you alive.” That’s what the last one whispered to me. It knew who I was. It was serving the Lady of Efen. Winters licked his lips nervously. But which one? The one with white eyes that seemed to want to make peace with him, or the one with black eyes that seemed hell-bent on destroying everything in her path?
“Either way, it’s not attacking us right now,” Winters said, as the creature very slowly turned down the path, and started walking. “You know, I think it even wants us to follow it.”
“Probably lead us straight back to the Judgment,” Jay muttered darkly.
“I don’t think so. If it wanted to hurt us, then it could easily kill us, right?” Winters pointed out. “And it seemed to me like the elves sort of respected them – but that they didn’t trust each other. No. This is a sign, I swear.” He stepped forward, hopping down onto the narrow path after the creature and hurrying after it. After a moment’s grumbling and exasperated sighs, he heard Crusher, Sari, and finally Jay follow suit.
“Signs!” he heard Jay whisper to Sari behind them. “This is a game, for God’s sake, it’s not a freakin’ religion!”
But Winters was too focused on following the Forest Guardian as it turned and twisted through the forest. Even though the creature never appeared to go faster than a walking pace, somehow it always managed to be out of reach, just turning as Winters rounded a tree.
“Hey! Wait up!” he shouted, but the thing didn’t register that it had even heard him, as it turned around a thick hedge of overgrown briars, and vanished.
“Damn!” Winters ran to the hedge, turning past the briars to see a small clearing surrounded by dense undergrowth, with a ramble-down cottage, half grown over with ivy and brambles at its heart.
“That, uh, that’s a witch’s hut if ever I saw one,” Crusher said as he skidded to a halt behind Winters.
“You’re probably right.” Winters looked at the small wooden hut with its peaked shingle roof and shuttered
windows. “But the Forest Guardian wanted us to come here…”
“Hopefully it’ll be inside, making a cup of tea,” Crusher murmured, although to Winters’ eyes it looked as though no one had used the cottage for a long time.
“What the frig is this?” Jay said, when she and Sari limped into the clearing.
“I think it’s a safehouse,” Winters murmured, looking at the way the clearing was almost entirely cut off from the outside wood. “I think the Forest Guardian led us here to hide us from the Judgment of the Elves.”
“But … why?” Jay continued, as Winters barged the door open.
Goal Reached! Red Hand’s Hide-Out Found! +175 XP!
Story: The Ouroborax Crystals.
“Ah,” Crusher said sagely, brightening up considerably after the fresh flush of XP. “This place belongs to the Red Hand? And it is a part of the Ouroborax Story, so – all well and good, right?”
“Is it me, or is this story getting weirder and weirder?” Sari muttered, as they swept into the hide-out, to find a small, comfortable cottage with wooden sideboards, a table, and shelves with a range of dusty glass phials with suspicious looking herbs and powders inside.
“No, it’s not just you,” Dean sighed. “Like – all of those glitches around the lake? When the Lady of Efen showed up, and then, what ... got banished?”
“Got banished I would have said, if this were anywhere else in the game.” Crusher sat on one of the wooden chairs with a groan of exhaustion. “But did the rest of you have all of that reboot stuff? It seemed to be game-wide. That’s not an in-game spell, that’s…”
“A glitch,” Winters said distractedly, as he walked around the single room, looking at the shelves. He saw something glinting behind a stack of old bottles.
6 Health Elixir’s Found! + 150 XP!
“Hey, look!” Winters pulled out six of the same bottles that Sari and Jay used.
“Well, that’s a stroke of luck!” Crusher clapped his hands together. “And one for each of us, if Mr. Red Hand and Mirelle ever come back!”
“Yeah…” Jay narrowed her eyes. “Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”
Tales of the Gemsmith Page 21
