Viridian Gate Online- Absolution

by N H Paxton

  “Need to get moving. Can ask question later.” I stood from my seat and snapped my fingers, triggering Purifying Fire with my hand above the candle.

  It bloomed into life, the fire taking hold and filling the little hovel with golden-orange light. Gods, I loved that ability. It made me feel so powerful.

  “Right, light is good.” I snatched the candle, equipped with a handy carrying tray, off the table.

  I drew my hood back from my face and enjoyed the firelight for just a moment before looking down the two tunnels.

  The one to the left had seen considerable traffic, given the smoothness of the stone and the considerable lack of dust and debris. The one on the right, however, was mostly covered in dirt and dust with very little evidence of travel. I recalled the words of a once-famous Earth poet, and how he discussed traveling the roads that were avoided. It had changed his life entirely. I wasn’t willing to take that risk.

  I looked at each path once more, considering. I shrugged and chose the path on the left. It was entirely possible I was heading into a trap or perhaps completely the wrong way. But I had made a choice, and I intended to see it through.

  It seemed too obvious, but the world of Eldgard had rules and laws that had to be followed, even by powerful NPCs.

  Several minutes into following the winding path, I heard the sound of metal boots clanking on the stone floor.

  Reacting quickly, I blew out the candle and crouched, activating Stealth. I pulled my hood over my face to improve my vision in the darkness. I wanted to be prepared for whatever it was that was coming my way.

  The steps were uneven and sounded labored. The tunnel began to lighten as the footsteps approached.

  A figure rounded the bend of the tunnel I was crouched in. The torch it carried blinded me against its face and broke my Stealth. I stood up, my crouching completely pointless at this point.

  “Lord Vlad?” Garret’s voice echoed through the tunnel to me, his breath coming in rasps and shudders.

  “Garret!?” I rushed to him, pleased to finally have an ally with me again. It had only been an hour, but the darkness stretched time and made it feel like an infinite void.

  “Yeah, hey. Ugh.” Garret collapsed, his metal armor clanking on the ground as he fell, the torch landing hard and going out.

  “B’lyad.” I huffed as I reached him, kneeling on the floor next to him.

  He was pretty badly beaten up. There were open wounds all along the places where his skin was exposed, and some of those wounds looked burned and blistered. I uncorked a Health regen potion and poured it into his mouth. Most of it missed and splattered on the ground.

  A moment passed before he coughed and sputtered, the dust around his head blowing away at the sudden movement of air. He groaned and rolled over onto his back. His breathing was shallow and weak.

  “I...” he started, a gasp on his lips. “I didn’t think I’d find you.” His eyes were flickering back and forth, looking for something to focus on in the darkness.

  I picked up his torch and triggered Purifying Fire, igniting it. The sudden burst of light made us both squint.

  “Am here, Garret. You are wounded, can help.” I reached to my belt for another potion, but came up empty.

  Garret held up a hand when I frowned.

  “No, I’m good now. I’ll heal.” He sat up carefully, his armor creaking. He ran a hand through his hair before turning to me with sudden anger on his face. “The bastard killed Ken.”

  Shades All Color

  “DARK COLLECTOR KILLED Ken? Six hours not yet over.” I could feel anger rising inside me.

  I turned my head sideways, my neck popping loudly. I centered myself by closing my eyes hard and breathing deeply. I wanted to find the bastard and kill him outright.

  “Yeah, he said something about not waiting around for you to find him. Then he twisted Ken’s neck, killing him instantly. I barely escaped, fighting my way through hordes of his undead minions.” Garret shuddered a bit.

  There was something off about his mannerisms. Garret was rarely afraid of anything.

  “How did escape?” Garret’s ever-present greataxe was nowhere to be seen.

  Unless he’d stowed it in his inventory in order to escape.

  “I just ran, using my abilities to punch through as many of the stupid zombie-shits as I could. I dropped my axe on the way, somewhere. I took a pretty nasty beating on the way out of his chamber. You should see the crazy shit he keeps in there.” Garret shook his head, his normally spiky hair hanging in clumps from sweat. It bobbed about in a strangely hypnotic way.

  “Ah, Vlad understands. Hard fighting to be had ahead?” Even though I wasn’t looking forward to clashing with the Dark Collector, I knew it was going to happen. I needed to prepare myself to face whatever the Dark Collector was going to throw at us. Being down two party members put us at a nearly unacceptable disadvantage.

  “It’s gonna be rough. I don’t think we can even chance it, man.” Garret looked at the floor, his eyes narrow and flitting back and forth, searching the dust-covered stone.

  “Does not matter, cannot ignore necessity. Quests demand results.” I looked at the countdown in the quest log for the Guild Banner. Thirty-two hours and eighteen minutes. I was running out of time quickly.

  “Yeah, I don’t know why you’re following through with that.” Garret’s comment caught me off guard.

  “Please to be excusing. What in hell did say?” I raised an eyebrow, firm and authoritative. He met my gaze and shrugged.

  “I just said it might be alright to maybe give up the quest. We’re facing impossible odds here.” Garret turned, his face shadowed from the light of the torch.

  His words were not from the Garret I knew. There was something deeper at play here, and I needed to remain on guard.

  “No, is not okay.” I gripped his shoulder and turned him around. “Collector killed friend, kidnapped you both, took Eberand with poison. And want to give up?”

  “I guess I’m just worried.” Garret put his hand on his forehead, then pushed his hair back. “I just need a weapon.” He shook his head again, this time quickly, as though he were trying to clear something from his mind.

  “Have weapon, can modify if have time. Only have few hours to find Dark Collector but will spare moments to augment.” I pulled the heavy bone axe from my inventory and laid it on the floor.

  Several other ingredients found their way into my hands as I dug through my inventory, removing the necessary materials to completely rebuild the garbage weapon into something useful.

  I started off by attempting to simply use Reconstruction, but received an error message for my efforts.

  <<<>>>

  Reconstruction Failed!

  The item you are attempting to reconstruct is natural and cannot be altered through Reconstruction!

  <<<>>>

  “B’lyad,” I swore as my hands burned from the failed attempt.

  “Everything alright?” Garret had found himself a seat nearby on the ground as well, sitting cross-legged, staring into the darkness, the torch held above his head.

  “Is fine, need to try alternative technique.” I closed my eyes and considered an idea.

  Previously, on Earth, I had made a weapon that would shift given the correct series of inputs. Rotating the handle on it would cause a spring-loaded blade to protrude from the top, almost like a switchblade. Another complete rotation caused the blade to fold sideways, making the weapon like an ice axe that one would use to climb a mountain.

  It took some considerable work with engineering to make it work.

  I opened my crafting interface and looked at the bone axe. I had some spare materials still in my inventory: a few ingots of steel, some springs, and some wooden rods. Thankfully I hadn’t cleared my bag out before leaving for this quest.

  I tore the crescent axe head from the ligament it was attached to, using some shears I used for cutting leather. Then I removed the ligament entirely, stowing it in my inventory.<
br />
  <<<>>>

  Ancient Ligament

  Item Type: Ingredient/Crafting

  Item Class: Rare

  This ligament, ancient and somehow still elastic, could be used for a number of purposes. Bungee jumping, anyone?

  <<<>>>

  Who the hell wrote these flavor texts? I shook my head and cleared the item information before proceeding to shave off some of the large bone that previously had served as the haft. I used a wood plane that I had sharpened to a terrifying edge. The small fragments of bone fell away as dust while I worked to even out the haft.

  Smiling, I took a sharp awl and worked a deep groove into the bone exterior. The small rubber mallet I used to tamp the awl made a pleasant thunk every time I struck the head. I slipped into a trance as I worked. Crafting brought me great peace and made me feel invincible.

  “Almost done with first phase,” I muttered as I took one of the wooden rods, about three meters in length, and fixed it to the bone haft with a few steel brackets and barbed nails.

  It would serve as a strengthening item and as the primary pivot point for the entire device. This wasn’t going to be any greataxe, it was going to be incredible. It was going to change depending on certain criteria. I just needed it to follow instructions.

  The primary section of the haft was complete. I needed to make the second one, which would rotate and extend the weapon as well as change the head to work like a great scythe instead of just an axe head.

  I had a few [Silvered Springs] that I coiled around the wooden rod, making sure they slid up and down without friction. I needed this to be smooth and efficient.

  I grabbed another rod from my inventory and placed it next to the first. Closing my eyes, I focused on the two of them fusing together, complete with an internal channel for movement and a series of escapements that would all lock into one another to keep the weapon in one position or another. Once I had the image firmly in my mind, I triggered Reconstruction.

  I felt Spirit slip from me and flow into the wood rods, the items warming gently before an unexpected snap filled the small tunnel. I opened my eyes and saw the items fused in exactly the way I desired.

  I twisted the entire haft, and the wood shifted, the tiny internal escapements locking into each other at their maximum rotational point. Excellent.

  “Nearly complete.” Now I needed to simply add the head, manipulate it to do what I wanted, and make sure it would hold steady, not spontaneously shift forms in combat, and stand up to a beating.

  Easy. Not.

  I took the scapula that acted as the crescent axe head and laid it next to a few steel ingots. I wanted a template to make a new axe head, one that would sit in the same position as the bone one but would be at an odd angle. Two cutting heads would be better than one.

  Your effort is wasted. Gamma’s voice slid through my head as I worked.

  “Why is that?” I whispered. I could answer Gamma in my head, but I preferred to speak my thoughts to him.

  It will never be as great as I am. There was a thickness to its voice, almost a smugness.

  I caught an image of someone smiling with an expression of extreme self-satisfaction.

  “Is true, but need to make anyhow.” My whispering caught Garret’s attention and he looked over, annoyed.

  “The hell are you muttering about?” He rolled his eyes before returning to his watch of the darkness.

  He is not the same. A sensation of suspicion flooded the inside of my skull.

  It was interesting that Gamma was also picking up on Garret’s change in personality.

  I continued to work on the axe. I took the four ingots I had on hand and gathered them together in one spot, all touching one another. They had to be in direct contact for this to work, or I would have to do it multiple times.

  I placed my hand on top of them all and triggered Purifying Fire, letting the flames heat the metal just to the point of softness. I broke off the ability and then immediately triggered Reconstruction, focusing on the scapular axe blade. The sensation of Spirit flowing from me, not something I enjoyed, occurred again.

  The metal yielded to my demands, the soft alloy shifting and becoming a single puddle, then an axe head, sharp and violent, identical in form to the scapula that lay next to it. There was a creak as the metal solidified in an instant, tempering itself.

  “Success.” I smirked as I picked up the axe head. It was solid and heavy. I ran a finger along the cutting edge and was pleased to find that it easily parted the first layer of skin on my thumb. It was terribly sharp. Perfect.

  The next step was to affix the two heads together, but also to the haft, while also allowing them to shift when the entire device was twisted and activated. That would be a challenge.

  I ran through potential outcomes for the activation of the item. I wanted the axe heads to be stable and at a forty-five-degree angle when in their standard position. When switched, I wanted them to rotate in on themselves, forming the inside of a hard scythe. Pivot points and joists and shifting gears would need to be made for this.

  I considered the rotational energy and chose to use a slip mechanism. I wouldn’t need to use gears and cogs, I could use pivot points and brackets. I nodded as I pulled a few crossbow bolts from my belt pouch, stripping the heads off of them with a pair of pliers I kept handy in a pocket on my pants.

  I split them carefully down the middle to make the right thickness. I needed, from my best guess, eight total joists. I sighed as I looked at the axe heads. I hadn’t bothered to put holes in them to make it easier on myself. I would need to use Reconstruction again on the metal one and hope I didn’t fracture the bone one with my awl. Pizdets.

  “Is okay, will succeed. Should not fail. Hopefully.” I took my awl and placed it where I expected the pivot point to be.

  I raised my hammer and sneered. I needed to punch through the bone with a single blow. The more times I hit the awl, the higher my chances of fracturing the entire axe head.

  I brought the hammer down quickly and forcefully, the mallet head landing dead center on the top of the awl. A cracking and splintering sound issued forth from the bone axe head. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the damage I had done.

  “Nice hit.” Garret had found his way over to me.

  I opened my eyes and found that the awl had punched straight through the bone and embedded itself into the stone floor below.

  “Expected to break axe head.” I raised both of my eyebrows in surprise.

  “Killer work, Vlad.” Garret clapped me on the shoulder, his gauntlets weighing heavily on my arm.

  “Not done, but soon.” I placed my hands on the metal axe head, triggering Reconstruction as I focused on creating a hole in the metal identical to the one I had made in the bone.

  The metal creaked slightly, then gave a loud clang as it shifted. The hole appeared, just as I had designed.

  Now I needed to affix them both to the axe, after working out the functional processes that would allow the heads to shift into the scythe I had envisioned. I sighed heavily as I sat on the ground, cross-legged. I placed my hands on the cold stone ground and leaned my head back, rolling my head around on my shoulders to ease the tension in my neck.

  I rested for just a couple moments before continuing, eager to finish the project and see what kind of chaos it could create. I looked at the haft of the axe as I twisted the rods, making sure that the torsion would perform the way I desired. Having nailed down the way it rotated, I set to work fixing the joists and the blades.

  I fed small slugs of steel into the holes, fitting them with tiny brackets I welded together with Purifying Fire. If people on Earth could have welded metal with their hands, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

  That was a thought for another time, one where I had time to actually consider the differential outcome of history as a whole. I raised an eyebrow at the thoughts my brain periodically filtered in. Where did these thoughts come from?

  I shook my head, t
rying to regain my focus on the project at hand. I was gaining ground. I just needed to bracket the entire thing together and sheathe it in some kind of metal, and we would be set.

  When both axe heads were slugged and bracketed, ready for their joists, I affixed the joists to the bracket sets with small barbed nails, then carefully slid the joists into their places on the rotational shaft. I affixed that with barbed nails and steel brackets as well.

  I made the final attachment with a quick weld from Purifying Fire, securing the brackets to the nails themselves. I wanted no chance of this weapon coming apart in combat.

  Finally, it was ready for testing. I stood up, dusted my pants off, and grabbed the axe. It wasn’t completely finished, but I wanted to make sure the torsion system worked the way it needed to.

  I gripped the haft in both hands, giving it a firm twist in opposite directions. There was some creaking, followed by the slick sound of metal shifting. The axe heads shifted in opposite directions, flattening out into a T shape.

  “Pizdets!” I leaned back quickly as the metal axe head nearly took out one of my eyes. “Did not expect inverted momentum. Is complication, but could be effective in combat.” I held the weapon out, the heads perfectly balancing the end of the axe. Perhaps that would actually work out better.

  “That’s awesome. Is it a war pick?” Garret eyed the weapon, a strange glimmer in his eye.

  “Was meant to be scythe, but war pick may have better use.” I glared at the weapon that had not quite turned out the way I’d expected.

  Perfection, though, was the enemy of progress.

  “Is it ready?” He stood impatiently, anxiously stepping from one foot to the other. It reminded me of a child’s potty dance.

  “No, not quite. Needs metal coating to protect sensitive functional components.” I furrowed my brow, trying to think of a way to make a coating for it that would be strong enough to prevent the wood inside from being broken.

  Steel likely wouldn’t be strong enough to keep it safe. It would prevent cutting and slashing, but impact would still damage the functionality. I placed the knuckle of my index finger under my nose, thumb on my chin, and stared into nothingness for a moment.