by G. R. Cooper
Have to get Lauren to take a look, he thought, carefully putting the little guitar into his new backpack. He then closed both doors and moved to the line of cupboards lining the left wall. Pulling open the first he came to, he saw, in addition to various cups and plates, two stoppered clear glass flasks. They looked to each hold half a pint or so of a deep blue liquid. Wulfgar took one in each hand and looked to Nop.
“Any idea?”
The werewolf shook his head, “And I wouldn’t open them here. Find out what they are when we’re in a safe place,” he said quietly.
Wulfgar nodded. Given what the smells that the nymphs had used had done to him, he wasn’t prepared to just start sniffing odd substances. He put them into the backpack and closed the cabinet door before opening the next in line. It contained more plates. Nothing special, just white porcelain. He picked one up, turned it over. Frowning, he put it back. Just a normal plate. He gently pushed the doors closed and saw, just on the other side of the cabinet, a staff. It was maybe a meter and a half long, leaning up against the side of the cupboard.
He took a closer look. It was black. Mahogany, Wulfgar thought. Ornately carved. An obvious handhold was just below the head - a finely detailed cat’s head, with what looked like multi-shaded blue opals as eyes staring out of the otherwise uniformly black feline visage. He picked it up and turned to Nop, who was joining him.
“What do you think?” whispered Wulfgar, holding up the staff.
Nop shrugged, “Could be something powerful. Could be a walking stick,” he smiled.
In any case, thought Wulfgar, Shannon will like it. She’d always been a cat person. Wulfgar had been completely unsurprised when he’d discovered that in this world that she’d sought out and tamed a tiger - a black tiger - and named it Schwartz. That had been the name of Shannon’s beloved black cat.
If you’d asked me before I came into this world, I would have bet every single cent I had that Shannon would naturally become an animal tamer in this realm. For her, there had probably never been any question of choosing anything else.
“Did you find anything?”
Nop smiled and pulled out a shining, silver-looking short sword. It was carved with ornate leaves that followed from just behind the tip, down the blood-groove and turned into a beautiful cross-piece. Even the leather that wrapped the handle was white.
“Nice!” whispered Wulfgar. “Any idea what it is?”
“None. Just a sword as far as I can tell.”
“It’s good loot, anyway. Congratulations.”
Nop shook his head and put the sword back into his inventory, “Not my style,” he smiled, “besides, I usually dual-wield.” He held up both of his hand-like paws. Razor sharp claws extended then retracted.
Wulfgar smiled. He’d nearly been on the receiving end of those kinds of talons on his very first day in the Omegaverse. The excitement he’d felt, retreating full speed back to the shuttle on his very first mission, when Matt, Vince and Clancey had been wiped out by the werewolves at a colony outpost, had been one of the most thrilling of his gaming career. He could still feel the breath of the Canis Arcturus on the back of his neck as he’d barely beat it through the shuttle airlock to safety.
“Why do you suppose,” he asked his new friend, “that this room has all of this valuable loot?”
Nop looked thoughtful for a moment. “My guess would be that after whoever,” he waved toward the two closed doors, “is done with their victims, they drag them down to the trash chute. They probably stop here to make sure that they’ve taken anything of value off of the corpse. This is kind of a store-room.”
That made sense to Wulfgar. He looked around the room. “Did we check everything out?”
“Yes. Which way?”
Wulfgar looked at one door then the other. There seemed to be nothing to choose between them. He remembered his professional quest - the quest he’d taken to become a Magus of Evening. When he’d joined the guild, they had sent him on an introductory small dungeon crawl as a tutorial in how to use magic. Within that dungeon had been a room with three doors to choose from. He could only ever open one door - once he chose, the other two would remain forever locked.
There had been nothing to differentiate those doors either. After a short while, he had learned to use his brand new Illumination spell to look underneath each of the doors and saw that only one had any sort of flooring on the other side. The other two doors dropped into a Stygian abyss.
He first checked to see whether he could make out anything at all underneath either of the doors. They were uniformly dark. Then he activated Illumination and set the radius to one meter. As he felt the slow tickle of his mana begin to rise up to fill the gap he’d just spent, he looked underneath the first door. He could only see more flooring that matched the room he was in.
Standing, he moved to the other door - the door that had been on the opposite wall from the portal that they’d entered through. He knelt and looked under the wood. He could see the light from his spell spread around just inside of the other chamber, but could discern nothing apart from more of the same stone floor.
“What’s that?” came a voice from the other side of the doorway.
Wulfgar killed Illumination and jumped away from the door, looked at Nop and hissed, “Stealth! Now!”
The werewolf disappeared as Wulfgar activated his own skill. He moved past where Nop had been and whispered urgently, “Downstairs.” He moved in between the two tables and headed for the open doorway. As he went through, he stopped - he had nearly two and a half minutes left before his skill ran out, exposing him. He moved to the side and watched the door on the other side of the room, and held his breath as it opened.
He could just make out the chamber that was revealed, when the doorway was filled with a tall, willowy woman. She had long, dark hair that fell past her neck and covered one naked breast. She was otherwise nude. She was beautiful, but emanated evil. A man approached from behind her, and looked into the store-room over her shoulder. He looked to be nude as well.
“What is it?” he asked.
The woman shook her head, “Nothing. Probably just the flickering of the torch going out.” She entered the room and took the torch nearest her and approached the stairwell. She held the flame up to the torch that Wulfgar had extinguished, relighting it. She was only a meter or two away and Wulfgar shuddered as her scent hit him. It was like the smell of the nymphs, but at once less powerful and more unnerving. His fingers clenched to the stairwell wall as he steadied himself.
She was taller than the nymphs. Approaching his own height, she would be taller than average for a human female - but there was something inhuman about her. As she turned away and began walking to the other side of the store-room, he took the opportunity to examine her body. She was thicker than the smaller nymphs, even in proportion to her height. Voluptuous, unlike the gazelle-like, nubile water spirits from the night before. She also had a tail. The same color as her skin and half a meter long, it swayed, serpent-like between her thighs as she walked. She moved past the man and Wulfgar saw that the creature was as large as he was, and muscular. His hair was as dark as hers.
As the man turned to follow her, Wulfgar saw that he had an erect penis. A very large erect penis. Wulfgar quickly forgot about that as the man walked away - the pair of skin colored wings folded against the creature’s back was much more interesting. As the creature moved away from the door, Wulfgar was able to see several more females within the room, all of whom looked much like the first. Variations on a single theme, they were all of about the same size and all heavily built with large hips and breasts.
Wulfgar was about to turn away and retreat down the stairs to join Nop when an urchin moved into his view. A thin waif, a young human girl. She looked dirty and scared. She moved quietly, unobtrusively, to the door and gently began to pull it shut.
The girl looked to Wulfgar to be terrified. She looked over her shoulder as she slowly closed the door, then back into the room. T
hen she paused. She was looking directly at Wulfgar; her jaw dropped.
Shit! I really have to pay attention to my Stealth timer! He had become visible. He looked pleadingly at the girl and raised one finger to cover his mouth. He prayed that she would understand the message and not raise alarm.
Still looking afraid and with mouth still open, she quickly nodded once and pulled the door shut.
Breathing a sigh of relief at his luck, he turned and quickly ran down the stairs.
Chapter 5
Wulfgar reached the bottom of the stairs and activated his Illumination spell. He looked to Nop and shook his head, “I’m not sure what lives up there, but they’re not nymphs.” Whatever effect their scent might have had on him, it was only superficially similar to the previous night’s experience. He thought back to a book he’d read on Greek mythology when he was a kid.
Hylas was the son of King Theiodmamas, the king of the Dryopians who was killed by Heracles - or Hercules to the Romans - in battle. Hylas was taken under the wing of the legendary hero and made his arms bearer. Like a knight’s squire. Hylas was universally loved, and renowned for his handsomeness.
Heracles made Hylas an Argonaut and, on the voyage of the Argo, Hylas was taken by nymphs who fell in love with him. He was lured underneath the water by nymphs and never seen again, presumably living out the rest of his time in ecstasy. While some accounts state that he was drowned, even those tales relate that the nymphs meant Hylas no harm - they had no idea that he couldn’t live with them beneath the water.
No. Not nymphs, thought Wulfgar, I’m sure of it. Whatever is up there is evil. Pure evil.
“What are they?”
Wulfgar shrugged, “I have an idea or two, but I’m not sure it really matters. We’re going to do our best to avoid them and find the prince.” He then told Nop of the child he’d seen.
“She was human?”
“I’m almost sure of it,” nodded Wulfgar, “and I’m positive that whether or not she’s human, she doesn’t want to be here. She looks like a slave, and she’s terrified.”
“So, in addition to the prince, you now plan to rescue the child.”
Wulfgar smiled fiercely, “And whoever else they’re holding.” He looked down to the closed door in the floor, wondering if he should open it just in case his friends tried to come through again. He decided against it - the initial plan was still good; if they needed more adventurers to tackle this dungeon, they’d come back later after their reconnaissance.
“That wasn’t the quest, was it?”
“No,” Wulfgar agreed, “but there was nothing in the quest that said we couldn’t rescue anyone else.”
“But what if your rescue interferes with the quest?”
“So be it,” he looked at Nop. “What would you do if there were Canis Arcturus pups enslaved up there?”
“What would you do if there were Canis Arcturus pups enslaved up there?” countered the werewolf.
“Exactly what I’m going to do now,” he looked up the stairs. “Get them out.”
Wulfgar sat, leaning back against the damp stone wall, “Of course, when I say now I mean just as soon as my Confer spell cool-down is finished and I can give you Stealth again.” He made himself comfortable and looked to the sitting Canis Arcturus, “Do you think I’m being foolish? Risking everything to save some AI children?”
“It’s not for me to say.”
“Of course it is. You’re a part of this quest now. You’re grouped with the rest of us. You have as much say in how we go about doing this as anyone else.”
Nop pointed to the closed doorway in the floor, “You didn’t ask my opinion about whether or not we should block off the others.”
Wulfgar nodded, but waved his hands, “That’s different. There was no time to discuss our options. If I had, it would have been moot. The rest would have joined us and been trapped.”
“Possibly trapped.”
“Possibly trapped,” conceded Wulfgar, “but a distinct possibility nonetheless.” He looked closely at the werewolf. Was he just being contrary or did he really think Wulfgar was making a mistake. Wulfgar felt somehow like he was being studied. He decided to go onto the offensive - being pensive about his role in this world had never given him any answers. Only when he had confronted Clive had the xenoanthropologist ever admitted anything.
“Who are you?” asked Wulfgar, looking levelly at Nop. “I don’t mean here, now. The Canis Arcturus are, like humans, players within this world.”
“Many of us are,” agreed Nop.
“So, some are NPCs. Just like humans. But you are not. You have an existence apart from this world, and I think that your role within this world isn’t as superficial as it might seem to other players.” He tried to read the werewolf but he was too different. Alien. “You work with Clive.”
“I promise you, I am not an agent of King Clive.”
“That’s not what I meant, and I think that you know it. You are here to study us. To study humans. To study me.”
“If I were, would I admit it?” Something of a wry smile spread across the werewolf’s face.
“Clive did.” He looked closely at Nop, to see if there was any trace of surprise. That he could tell, there wasn’t.
So, Nop knows that Clive told me. That means he’s in contact with Clive. He smiled sardonically. That would only be the case if I was correct. Nop, and presumably Gar, is one of them. Whoever ‘them’ were.
Nop seemed to follow Wulfgar’s train of thought; whether he knew he’d given it away or that it really didn’t matter, he continued, “Yes. I am here to study humans. To study you.”
“Why?”
“Clive hasn’t yet told you, and I’m not going to either.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Why shouldn’t you trust me?”
“Don’t be a dick,” laughed Wulfgar, “that Socratic method bullshit isn’t going to work on me.”
“Is the Socratic method bullshit?” asked Nop, looking seriously at Wulfgar. Then the werewolf’s face dissolved into laughter. “I can’t answer your questions, but I can ask a few.” He paused and continued looking into the human’s eyes, “How many humans know enough to even ask the questions you’re asking?”
“As far as I know,” replied Wulfgar, scratching his beard, “I’m the only one.”
“Really?” Nop raised his eyebrows.
“Fine,” admitted Wulfgar, holding up his hands, “I’ve told some of my friends.” He shrugged, “I was pissed off, feeling manipulated by Clive and,” he looked back at Nop, “you. All of you. I don’t like being a fish in a bowl.”
“Understandable. However, the friends you’ve confided in aside, how many humans know?”
“None, as far as I know.”
“Why is that?”
“Obviously, because it’s a secret. You don’t want humans to know. Especially those outside of this little corner of the Omegaverse.”
“Why is that?”
“Because we’re not ready?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Why then are we studying you?”
Wulfgar thought. “You’re trying to determine if we are ready. To know. The truth.”
“How will we know when you are ready, as a species?”
“I don’t know.”
Nop laughed, “Damn. I was hoping you’d have the answer to that one. But, truthfully, there is no one way to know.”
“From what he told me, though, Clive implied that this has been done before. With other peoples.” He looked into Nop’s eyes, “With your people, presumably.”
“A fair assumption,” nodded Nop.
“But,” continued Wulfgar, looking at the ceiling in thought, “another assumption is that you’ve known about us for a long time. Humans, that is. Earth. And that we must at least be close to being ready for you to have gone to all this trouble,” he waved his arms, encompassing the entire world, “creating not only this little universe, but the greater outside Omegaverse. Creating t
he manufacturing necessary to make the Virtual Reality helmets that we use.” He thought for a moment, “Hell, you must be already pervasive within the real world of Earth. Within our human societies. Right?”
Nop smiled again, “Do you still think the Socratic method is bullshit?”
Wulfgar laughed and stood, “Point taken. C’mon, my cool-down is over and it’s time to go save some children and an elven prince.” He looked down at the rising Canis Arcturus. He wondered if he could trust the werewolf. Knowing that it was working with Clive, that it was studying humans, meant that there was more to learn. The thought flashed that Clive knew that Wulfgar no longer trusted him. Putting the human into contact with two Canis Arcturus agents was just the sort of thing he’d have done if he was watching people he could no longer deal with on a one to one basis. He frowned.
“This discussion is not over.”
The pair reentered the store room, moving quietly but not stealthed. Wulfgar had conferred the skill on the werewolf as they climbed the stairs, but would hold off on using it until necessary. They had decided on a plan, and by agreement both moved to the door on the right side of the room as they passed through the stairway opening. To the door that they had not previously seen open. Wulfgar remembered to shut off Illumination and put his head to the wooden door, listening. There was no sound from the other side, but they waited for a minute to make sure.
After the wait, Wulfgar slowly pressed down on the door latch and gently pulled. The door opened silently and Wulfgar held it open at a few centimeters and looked through the crack into the next room. The space was well lit. Marbled floors stretched into the distance, covered by innumerable, large pillows. Candelabra were spaced randomly around the floor, their flames flickering gently in the breeze-less room. Pillars, as wide as the ancient trees of the elven forest, reached for the high ceiling.
Bodies writhed on the floor around the room. The dark women that Wulfgar had seen earlier, with many similar sisters. They lounged, eating and drinking and talking quietly; a low barely audible buzz reached the human’s ears. Ornate curtains hung from the walls, and a wide marble stairway led upward from the other side of the room.
