“Agh!” Dean felt it like a sudden sensation of cold freezing his kidney, before he rolled along the cobbles. The thing had managed to hit him, and he was sure that he didn’t have that much Health left.
“Sssss!” The creature turned.
It’s a Control Mod. It has to be. Winters rolled, sparing a look behind him. The stupid thing had actually thrown him deeper past the avenue it was guarding. It was exactly where he needed to go – but how could he take his eyes off of it to run?
“Power of Oak!” A shout rang through the street as, suddenly – impossibly – the mage watched the air ripple between him and the beast, and the contrast of shadows and light suddenly grew for a moment. Two figures fell out of that tear in the game – Mirelle the elvish druid, and the Red Hand.
Mirelle had been the one shouting, using her elvish magic to summon a deep green and gold energy that enthused her scantily clad form. Winters watched in awe as she jumped forward and hacked at the thing with one of her elvish scimitars, severing one of its legs in a curving arc.
“Skrakk!” the thing jabbered and leapt backwards.
“Dean – we’re here to help – get to your workshop!” Mirelle had a chance to say, just as there was another insectile shriek as another of the things jumped into the street behind its wounded foe.
“No – I can’t leave you!” Winters jumped to his feet, but the rangy form of Ramesh the Red Hand was already pushing him back.
“You’re out of Mana, and you can’t fight for crap, you’ll be no good here, and better off doing what needs to be done, come on!” He tugged at the mage as Dean watched Mirelle jump and spin in the air with the expertise of a kung-fu master. Her twin scimitar blades struck out, severing another couple legs in a spray of black ichor before fending off a darting bite.
“I got this!” Marcy shouted, and Dean realized that, yes, she really did. “Go, Dean – do what you were always meant to do!” she shouted.
What I was always meant to do, he thought as he allowed the Red Hand to lead him down the avenue and to the edge of the Dockside warehouses where Grum’s workshop should still be.
“If the Controllers haven’t overwritten it yet,” he snarled.
“Yeah – those things are Poison Beetles. You only get them in the deserts of the Outer Realms,” Ramesh explained. “They’re a Control Mod, for sure.”
“Not the only one,” Dean managed to gasp. “We got attacked by an Archon on our way back from the Shrine of Oak.”
“You what? How did you get away?” Ramesh said in awe, but there was no time for explanations as they rounded the last corner and saw that yes, Grum’s quaint and ramshackle workshop was still there, still set back against the cliffs with the overhanging vines.
“There! They haven’t got to it yet,” Dean shouted in thanks as they skidded on the cobbles, rounded the small alley, and raced into the three-hearth yard at the back of the small house.
*
“Coal! I need heat!” Winters was shouting, pointing at the largest furnace he had there. He didn’t know precisely how much heat he needed, but he was damn sure it would be a lot. “In the shuttle, by the storeroom,” he called to the Red Hand, who appeared to now be working as his assistant.
“How much?” Ramesh paused before the metal box overloaded with blackened lumps of coal.
“Er… All of it?”
Winters got the furnace lit and then quickly donned the protective apron, the heavy gloves, and visor of his trade, and somewhere he felt his heart racing. Or maybe he was excited, he couldn’t tell.
BADA-THOOOM! A sudden roll of thunder shook even their secluded environs, and they looked up into the sky.
“What in the name of all that is holy was that?” the mage whispered.
By looking down the alleyway at the side of the house, they had a clear view over the bay, the Dockside Markets, and the lower half of the city, crisscrossed with bridges. For a moment, the mage Winters just thought it must have been a peal of thunder because the sky was so black and heavy with storm clouds. That was until he saw what it really was that had caused it.
BA-THOOOM!
A large plume of smoke and pulverized rock swept up from the Markets, and the pair watched the debris was flung high into the air. Then there was a large dark shape, swooping high over the city, and shrieking like a demented bird.
It was large, about the size of a small jet plane, with a wing span that cast shadows even under the stormy skies. As they watched it hurled another great ball of purple and black energy down at the city.
“The Archon! It’s here in the City…” Winters heard the Red Hand say. “This is crazy. Never before, never has there been an Archon this far south…”
BADA-THOOOM! The source of the noise was suddenly revealed to not be the curse-bolts of the Archon itself, but the City’s magical defenses. A bolt of burning red fired out from the top of the magical academy known as the Aeturnum, arching towards the Archon. At the last moment, the giant demonic bat-thing swerved out of the way, and the bolt of fire plunged into the Dockside Markets, creating another huge explosion.
“But the City is fighting back – how could it defeat an entire city!?” Winters said. Clouds of crossbows fired up towards the thing, as well as the far smaller bolts and darts of magical power from other character magic-users.
“I hope you’re right. The true strength of the Archon has never been tested in this way…” the Red Hand said. “You need protection. I’m going to set wards around this place.” He took out a handful of small, shining crystals and started to place them along the bounds of the workshop.
“Wait, Red – how do I unlock the crystal!?” Dean shouted at him. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“I don’t know!” Ramesh shouted. “Just … just trust your instincts!” He set another orb down, and a line of white, unburning fire stretched between them.
“Oh great. Trust my instincts. What the hell does that even mean?” Winters moved back to the furnace, which was now glowing a bright white and yellow.
It needs to be hotter, that much he knew. But what did he have? He turned to run into the storeroom, kicking over buckets and throwing boxes first one way and then another as he searched for some hotter sort of material. What burns hotter than coal? he thought, rubbing his face.
His hand held the answer. The small band of iridescent black dragon iron, his Winter Ring that helped protect him from flames. He tore it off his hand, and then moved to grab the last few remaining nuggets of the dragon ore he had left from his time making items for the Dockside Stall.
All in all, it was a pitifully small amount. But before I was only trying to melt this stuff in order to turn it into something else the mage reasoned. I wasn’t trying to use it as a fuel…
He threw the handful of strange metals and his first ever crafted object into the furnace, and started to pump the bellows.
“Hotter, damn you! Hotter!” he hissed into the fire, watching it turn from white and yellow to blue and yellow, and then finally a hazy green shot through with a suggestion of purples and pinks. It was as hot as he could make it, he was sure.
BADA-THOOM! Another explosion rocked the city, much closer this time, and a shriek like a thousand lost souls of hell echoed over the rooftops. Again, much closer. When Winters spared a look over his shoulder, he saw that there was now a dimly glowing white ‘tent’ over the yard and his entire workshop, spreading from the ring of small glowing crystals Ramesh had put down and was now, seemingly, tending to. He sat cross-legged in front of them, rocking back and forth in meditation.
“Great. You just keep that up,” Dean muttered angrily as he took out the Green Ouroborax and held it in his hands. “Well, here goes nothing…”
He gripped it with a set of tongs and, with his gloves, attached it to a clamp and began to slowly lower it into the heart of the burning fire.
*
The flames played over the Green Crystal’s surface, creating a bright green
glow that illuminated the entire yard. It was beautiful, and even in virtual reality, Dean could feel how fiercely hot it was.
But nothing was happening, he thought as he looked at the crystal. “Just what am I supposed to do?” he whispered to the crystal, as if it could give up some of its secrets.
Of course, the Green Ouroborax said nothing. It wasn’t that type of magical item.
Dean gritted his teeth in frustration. He could have wept, it was so upsetting. What was he supposed to do? Crusher had believed in him. Marcy had believed in him. The Red Hand had believed in him. But what am I supposed to do?
The mage remembered the elf’s words. “Do what you were always meant to do.” And the words of the Red Hand: “Trust your instincts.” But what did any of that mean?
They trusted me because they thought I had the skills to do that. Only I don’t, I’m a cripple… Dean felt a sudden shiver of self-doubt. Had all of his friends been wrong to hold him in such high esteem so quickly?
“Dean!” A terrified shout, and the mage was shaken from his reverie, to look, appalled, at the form of none other than Marcy on the other side of Ramesh’s protective ward.
“Ramesh! Red – you have to let her in!” Dean shouted. The elf had blood running down the side of her face, and she was limping, but she was alive.
“Can’t…” the words gasped from the Red Hand’s mouth, as he tried to talk and keep praying. “Otherwise we lose the ward.”
“Screw the ward – that’s my friend out there!” Dean shouted.
BADA-THOOM! The magical cannon-shots were getting much closer now. Dean saw bits of gravel and dust skitter off the glowing white protection orb over his head.
“I need her here – I have no idea what I’m doing!” The mage gesticulated back at the furnace.
“Dean – neither do I!” he heard the elf – his friend – shout, her voice muffled through the forcefield.
“I can’t do this without you, Marcy!” he yelled, begged.
“You can. You must!” she shouted back. “This is what you do, remember. You make things beautiful. You are good at this!” she shouted, just a moment before her words were snatched from her by another almighty explosion.
KARAKA-THOOOM! Suddenly, boulders the size of fists were rebounding from the Red Hand’s protective forcefield, and Dean flinched even though he knew they weren’t getting through. Marcy is out there! He gasped, turned to look, but beyond the forcefield was a wall of dust and smoke. How close was that strike? How close is the Archon if the Aeturnum fired that close!?
“I SEE YOU!!” A voice like a hundred snakes, if they could talk, as a shadow spread over the orb of blue-white light. Beside him, Dean heard the Red Hand muttering fiercely, trying to pump his zone of protection with as much juice as he could possibly give it.
“IT’S OVER, RED! YOU AND YOUR LITTLE PUPPETS! GIVE ME THE CRYSTAL!” the voice of the Archon boomed, as the shadow drew closer.
“Winters – any time about now on that Crystal, if you please…” Ramesh the Red Hand said through the side of his mouth.
“Marcy is out there…” he said helplessly, as the dust started to settle outside the workshop, revealing a terrible battle scene.
Most of the street was flattened and blackened, as if the Aeturnum had scored a direct hit. There was smoking wreckage and rubble everywhere, but the only thing that still stood (smoking from its singed wings, slightly) was the gigantic form of the Archon, stalking closer. Its gray-blue skin crackled with purple and black power. Its clawed feet shattered cobblestones as it marched.
And there, off to one side, lay Mirelle, or Marcy. She appeared to be unconscious, or possibly dead, Dean didn’t know.
I have to do this – for her Dean thought. But he also knew that the Red Hand’s ward of protection surely couldn’t keep the creature off for long.
“Hang on. What did you say about the Archons? he said. “That they’re supposed to be like wandering hero-level monsters? That they can’t stay for long in this realm before having to return to the Darkling Gate?”
There was one other being who might be powerful enough to stop an Archon.
“Because you said she was written a bit like a wandering Archon too, didn’t you?” he muttered.
*
Specialist Spell added to Level One List:
The Lady of Efen
*
“It would only take one Mana to summon her, too…” Dean activated the spell he had been given by Efen herself.
Sssssssssssss….
There was a flash of white light that didn’t appear to do anything, and an accompanying whine like a kettle. The mage turned first one way and then the next, but the Lady of Efen was nowhere to be found.
Sssssss…
“What if she comes in her black-eyed form? And tries to kill us all? Winters thought. He had no way of knowing.
Sss…
The whine was getting closer, but so was the Archon. It now loomed over Grum’s workshop-cottage, and, with a casual backward sweep of its hand, tore apart the roof and first story.
“IT’S OVER, FLY-BOY. YOU’RE ALL MINE NOW...” the Archon boomed.
“Ss-Stop.” The tea-kettle whine exploded into one word, as a figure like a fallen star dropped onto the back of the titanic Archon, and flung him, head over feet, a few streets back. The body of the Archon tore through several buildings before rising into the air, hissing and snarling in fury.
It was the Lady Efen, only as large as she had ever been in real life – but now with a white halo of light as if she was an incandescent star. She still wore her diaphanous, billowing gown that plastered itself to her milky-pale form, but now her hair was long and black.
She was rising into the air, flying by her own mystical power – and her eyes were a radiant white. The two creatures hung in the sky over the city for a brief moment, each staring down their foe, before – in a flash, the Lady of Efen blurred towards her opponent like a torpedo.
Whumpf! Dean thought it was like watching a fighter jet suddenly cross the sound barrier. Efen hit the Archon like a speeding bullet, and the two of them rolled over the city as they exchanged blows.
Fzzt! The protective ward fizzled out as Ramesh slumped to one side, looking tired and ill.
“It’s all I’ve got. What did you do!?” he whispered in horror at the cosmic battle occurring over the city between Efen and the Archon.
“What I had to. I followed my instincts.” Winters turned back to the furnace, where the Green Ouroborax was still in its original shape. “Marcy believed in me. She believed that I knew what I was doing,” he said through gritted teeth. He did. Dean had worked with crystals before. In fact, he had worked with a lot of crystals before, in the real world.
“You don’t melt crystals. You coax them,” he said, reaching not for his large hammer and chisel, but instead for his much smaller, finer set of tools. He took the Green Ouroborax out of the flames, where it now seemed to be glowing with an inner green light, and he got to work.
“Red? Get me some gold. There’s a little bit of ore in the stores,” Winters said as he worked, sitting down on a stool in front of the anvil and opening up the in-game design software.
It took Ramesh a little while longer to stagger to the store, find the ore, and limp over to him. “Here.”
“I want you to melt it. In the same furnace that I heated the Crystal in.” Dean instructed him how to use the gloves, set out a crucible, and push the small container of precious stuff into the coals. “Then get me those molds over there,” he directed as he worked.
The in-game designer opened out a smaller screen where Dean could work on the vector image of his item. Currently, it showed an enlarged picture of the Green Ouroborax, as if he were using his good old magnifying glasses to work in his workshop. Just as carefully as if he were working there, he selected the smallest of his ‘chisels’ tool choice, and started to work on shaping the Ouroborax. It was, at the moment,
a large lump of green crystal blades. He wanted to craft it into something else.
Whumpf! THOOM! The sounds of the battle raged all around him as the Gemsmith worked, but Dean found he could strangely cut out most of the noise. It was a shadow of that same old feeling he had when he had worked in his own workshop in the real world. That complete zen-like tranquility, the pursuit of exact precision, elegance, perfection.
As if in a trance, he brought in the elements of the molded gold the Red Hand eventually brought to him. He created delicate strands of a cage around what he had made, and then tightened that gold wire into a wrap, so that it became like a handle.
His work consumed him, cast out all other thought. Dean forgot that he was Winters, the human Sorcerer-Artificer of Aldaron, and remembered that he was Dean Winters, the human gemsmith. He wasn’t a cripple. He was good at this. He knew what to do.
“Holy crap…” he heard a voice say as he shook himself out of his reverie. There were other characters standing around him; the Red Hand, Mirelle, and Crusher. He was still seated at the anvil, and most of Grum’s workshop was destroyed around him – as well as most of the street beyond it – but his friends had managed to survive.
“Mirelle — Marcy!” Dean Winters said, rising to his feet and throwing his arms around her.
“Ow, easy there, mage,” she hissed, still limping. “I think Efen fought off the Archon. I don’t know. Have you managed to do it?”
“He damn well has, you know!” The Red Hand was looking down in awe at the thing on the anvil. Very, very delicately he picked it up, and presented it gingerly to Winters. “It’s yours. You shaped it. You crafted it.”
Winters looked at it. It was a thing of beauty, he thought proudly. He had turned the hunk of crystal blades into one long tapering crystal shard, with a ‘handle’ of crisscrossing gold wire with tiny hooks that could be attached to a chain. It looked a little like a green-crystal knife, or a cross between a knife and a pendant.
“That’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything as fine as that in the game before,” Crusher said.
“But… How do we unlock the code inside it? That it is?” Winters held it up, swishing it through the air.
Tales of the Gemsmith Page 30
