Executioner- Reign of Blood

by Edwin McRae

  Here lies Braemar of Whitestone

  A courageous druid and loyal friend.

  A life given in service.

  A life to be remembered.

  After that, Mark and Vari tried to keep themselves busy, to fill the void that Braemar had left behind. Mostly they gathered alchemy ingredients in the forest, but they couldn’t avoid the tension that now permeated the fortress. The rangers had encountered things on their patrols that had no business being in Garland. Small tribes of Cave Ghasts. Flocks of Mist Wraiths. Even a siren, encountered in one of the nearby lakes by fishermen who barely escaped with their lives.

  Travelers were becoming more frequent at Citadel. Some journeyed there out of curiosity, some out of necessity. The former spun tales of strange beasts and desolate tracts of withered forest. The latter brought grim news of Garland villages laid waste by creatures of nightmare. When put together, the stories encompassed the full length of Garland’s mountainous border with the Barrens. The only good news was that the reiver raids had stopped. Vari suspected it was just a side-effect of the rising corruption. The reivers were finding it increasingly difficult to get through the mountains. It wasn’t worth their time and loss of life.

  It took a couple of days for the weight of Braemar’s death to ease from Mark’s shoulders and another two days for Mark to regain the headspace to tackle this growing problem. In that time, an impatient Arix peppered him with questions about Citadel and Garland, and offered plenty of unsolicited town-building advice. The rest of the time, Arix entertained himself by collaring and cross-examining people.

  Mark could tell that he wasn’t genuinely interested in what the rangers or villagers had to say about themselves or their lives. His questions were pointed and erratic, more like an interrogation than a conversation. It was like the executioner was trying to exhaust each NPC’s dialogue options, like he hoped to catch them out with a repetition or glitch and therefore prove that they were scripted. Mark interrupted whenever he could, inevitably exposing himself to Arix’s variations on the theme of “When are we going back to the Barrens?”. He found it ironic that the player was starting to sound far more scripted than any of the supposed NPCs.

  So it was on the morning of the fifth day that Arix caught Mark by surprise.

  “I didn’t think we were at this point yet.”

  “What point?” Mark continued to brush his horse, removing smears of dirt from his pre-breakfast ride with Vari.

  “AI that can mask itself as AGI.” Arix was stretched out in a pile of hay, his hands clasped behind his neck.

  “AGI? What’s that?”

  “Artificial General Intelligence. Software what basically thinks for itself.”

  Mark felt frustration building within him but he took it out on a particularly stubborn patch of caked mud. “What makes you think these people are masking anything?”

  “I’ve followed the tech news, yeah. We’re decades short of proper AGI. But limited AI, that’s a different story. What them clever Reign of Blood fuckers is done, is got them algorithms to parse thousands of hours of dialogue. Means them NPCs got a ready line for everything, don’t it. Don’t know how they’re sorting copyright and all that. Bloody sure I’ve heard some of them lines before in other games. Movies too. Probably scraping the internet for content, updating regular like. Yeah, that’s what’s going on.”

  Vari was all the evidence Mark needed to know that Arix was dead wrong, but he played along to get a better feel for Arix’s perspective. “Isn’t it usual practice for a team of writers to churn out a bunch of dialogue trees and casual utterances?”

  “Yeah, but with these NPCs, their trees are like dialogue-fucking-thickets. Got to be an end somewhere but fucked if I can find it.” He sat up, stretched and yawned. “The way I see it, this is some sort of prototype, innit.” He fixed Mark with a hard look. “Ever been to the Garland capital?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where you say you arrived again?”

  “A small village, two days journey from here,” Mark explained. “The village is gone now. The reivers destroyed it. The survivors were the first people to settle here in Citadel.”

  “Have you traveled beyond that village, further into Garland?”

  Mark shook his head, a little embarrassed now. He’d vowed to protect Garland but didn’t even know what most of the country looked like. Braemar, Calder and various townsfolk had talked about other places in Garland, the beauty of the lakes, the fecundity of the croplands and orchards, the virgin forests and wildflower meadows, but he’d never seen any of it for himself.

  “Beyond the Barrens?” pressed Arix.

  “Where we met you, that’s the deepest I’ve been.”

  Arix pursed his lips in thought. “Then between us we’ve only experienced from Citadel to the reiver side of the Barrens. The reivers talk about Credence. So does Vari. But I ain’t never seen it. I popped up right in Karina’s tent.”

  Mark set his brush aside and stroked his horse’s neck. ”Where are you going with this, Arix?”

  Arix stood and dusted hay from his leather armor. “We’ve no idea how big this expansion is. Could be that it starts just before your dead village and finishes on the far side of the Barrens.”

  Mark shook his head. “Vari’s homeland is at least two months’ ride from the Barrens.” He crossed to the stable doors and pointed out one of the rangers up on the wall. “Those rangers came from the Garland capital and it took them about a week to get here.”

  “Backstory, mate. Them rangers could’ve spawned out in the forest for all you know.”

  Mark scowled at Arix. “Braemar’s home, Whitestone, that was near the capital too.”

  Arix folded his arms and leaned against the frame of the open stable doors. “Mate, you and I both know how NPCs normally work. They talk about far off lands to make the virtual world feel more expansive than it actually is. It’s smoke and fucking mirrors.”

  “Look, ‘mate’,” said Mark with a sigh. “I don’t pretend to know what’s going on here, but I can assure you there’s nothing ‘normal’ about this FIVR.”

  Arix winced and sucked air through his teeth. “Well, as much as you might want it to be different, Mark-”

  “How about we postpone this debate until we get back from the Barrens?” He wasn’t yet feeling ready for another round with the ruins but he couldn’t think of any other way to shut Arix up.

  The executioner grinned like the cat with its proverbial cream. “Now that’s an offer I can’t refuse, innit. When do we leave?”

  “Vari and I will meet you in the library this evening for a planning session.”

  Arix gave him a double thumbs up. “I’ll be there.”

  True to his promise, Arix was already seated in the library when Mark and Vari entered. He raised his goblet of claret in greeting.

  “Now this is what I call a tasty drop.”

  “Thank you, Arix,” replied Citadel, his voice emanating from near the mantlepiece.

  Mark imagined Citadel as a nattily dressed warlock, leaning against the warmed oak as he sipped at his silver goblet, his pinky finger extended just so.

  “Garridar was a severe sort, prone to brooding,” Citadel continued. “Yet he was a keen collector of Garland wines. Although, on hindsight, most bottles didn’t stay ‘collected’ for long. That claret is one of the few that survived his rather unquenchable thirst.”

  Mark picked up a goblet from the giant cockroach that scuttled by, a silver serving tray perched on its back. He took a sip and sank into his chair with a sigh.

  “Let’s start with the obvious. Without Braemar, or a druid with his skills, we can’t complete the Chasms of Corruption quest. Arix, you won’t have seen that quest message so I’ll-”

  “Actually, I had a problem with that quest anyway,” interrupted Arix.

  “What? When did you see the quest description?”

  “I saw the failure message. Sid filled me in on the rest.”

  “
I didn’t think you’d mind considering that Arix is now a member of your party,” added Citadel.

  “No worries, Sid, and thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “What was your problem with the quest, Arix?” asked Vari, her tone guarded.

  Mark reached over and rested his free hand on her forearm. He felt the tension in her muscles. Try as he might to ease her tension, her dislike of Arix showed no chance of abating. Arix seemed not to notice.

  “The way I see it, the chasm was never the problem,” explained Arix. “It’s just the housing for whatever’s fuelling and spreading the corruption, for what’s making them smaller chasms and all. With them being monster generators, closing the chasm might kill whatever’s inside, but there’s no guarantee. What if the thing just goes deeper? What if there’s an attached cave system? Other chasms might open up as the corruption leaks to the surface. We might inadvertently make the source a shitload harder to get at.”

  Vari nodded with grudging agreement. “Like how the Ghast Queen was able to seep through the mountains. She consumed ore and then oozed through the resulting gap.”

  Arix grinned and snapped his fingers at her. “Exactly! Yeah, Sid told me about your Depths of Corruption quest too. You’re not just a pretty face, are you, Vari.”

  “You know what it means to snap your fingers at someone in Karaji, Arix?”

  “No, what?”

  “For every word you offer in insult from now on, I shall cut off a finger or toe.” She snapped her fingers at him and mirrored his grin with a sharper one of her own.

  Arix raised his hand in supplication. “Alrighty, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

  “What are knickers and why would I twist them?”

  “What are knickers?” Arix’s smile took on a leery edge as he winked at Mark. “My kinda lady.”

  Mark felt his face go red and he offered Vari an apologetic look. She didn’t notice. Her dark eyes were now boring into Arix. Mark worried that she was about to break his fingers with a Sculpt Bone spell. He squeezed her arm a little tighter.

  “We were talking about the chasms and corruption?”

  “True true.“ Arix took a sip of his wine, savoring it for a moment before swallowing it down with an audible gulp. “In my experience, a well-designed quest is a guide, not an instruction manual. You can achieve the quest by achieving the goal. In this case, the goal is to destroy the source of the corruption. Closing the chasm might’ve done it, maybe, but it might be even better to lower Mark down on a rope and have him hit the thing a few times with that fiery bastard sword of his.”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” interjected Citadel, “but might I query something about your theory, Arix?”

  “I think it’s pretty fucking watertight,” said Arix, “but sure, Sid. Go nuts.”

  “Are you saying that the gods are fallible enough to create a poorly designed quest?”

  “I was going to ask the same thing, Sid,” added Vari.

  Mark cringed. Arix was in dangerous existential territory here. Arix didn’t seem worried though.

  “Is that how it works here? The gods create your quests?” Arix looked around the room, pretending to search for the ‘gods’ behind the armchairs and up on the bookshelves. “Geezas and slappas in flowing robes serving up destiny like canapes on a silver platter?”

  “Yes,” answered Vari, unamused. “Mohkash of the Flowing Waters fishes our hopes and dreams from the rivers of consciousness.”

  “Urgred the Wise is our Garland equivalent,” added Citadel.

  Arix laughed. “In our world we call them the Developers of the Game. Right, Mark?”

  “Regardless of where the quests come from,” said Mark, trying to nudge the conversation away from gnarly metaphysical matters, “you’re suggesting we have some room for interpretation, right?”

  “Of course!” insisted Arix. “Where’s the fun in just slavishly following quests to the final fucking letter? The prize is the prize. Doesn’t matter how you take it.” He leaned forward, cupped his hands around his goblet, and fixed them both with an intense look that made Mark squirm a little in his seat. It was the look of a pushy real estate agent about to close a deal. “I want to help you save Garland from the corruption, so-”

  “Why?” interrupted Vari.

  Arix raised an eyebrow at that. “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to save Garland? You’ve only just got here. You don’t know anyone apart from us and Citadel, and you barely batted an eyelid when Braemar died.”

  “I’ve talked to lots of people since I got here,” defended Arix.

  Vari and Mark exchanged an incredulous look. She’d seen Arix’s style of ‘conversation’ too.

  “Besides, I’m an adventurer,” continued Arix, “like Mark here.”

  “You’re nothing like-” began Vari but Mark squeezed her arm, imploring her to stop. He had a pretty good idea of Arix’s motivation. Get back to reality.

  On that front, Mark was in no hurry. He knew he was in hospital, and the New Zealand public health system was such that he’d get a good level of care. He had health insurance. One of the few things he could now honestly thank his ex-wife for. He wouldn’t have bothered had she not insisted. If there was a question mark over his ongoing care in public, his insurance would cover private. His mum would sign the paperwork on his behalf.

  He felt a pang of guilt as he wondered how his mother was faring. Theirs had never been an easy relationship. After his dad died, parental arguments morphed into mother/son arguments. Without his father around, Sandra wanted to reshape him instead. She hoped to turn him from a “hopeless dreamer” into someone who was “going places”. Now she could bemoan her poor fortunes and the tragedy of her talented son with all of his “lost potential”. And he wasn’t there to inconveniently point out the bald facts of his rather unremarkable life. Sandra would take comfort in signing the papers, in making sure the insurance company did right by him. She could console herself that she was still being an excellent mother while her ‘troubled’ son languished on life support, his head in proverbial clouds.

  The irony of it was that Mark had become exactly the sort of man she’d wanted him to be. He had skills, respect, and even his very own castle. If she could get her head around the ‘virtual’ aspect of it all, she might even be proud of him.

  “Arix wants to help and that’s good enough for me,” said Mark before Vari could start up again.

  “Sorry, Mark,” retorted Vari through gritted teeth, “but it’s not good enough for me, not at all.”

  “Okay,” soothed Mark, “but I want to hear him out all the same. Can you do that for me, Vari?”

  Vari curled her lips, clearly tempted to argue further, but then nodded and put her other hand on top of Mark’s.

  “You were saying, Arix?” she prompted, rather coldly.

  Arix shuffled forward on his chair and his right leg started into a steady up and down jiggle. The executioner seemed unaware of it but Mark wondered if it was a tell of some sort, an unconscious gesture that hinted at hidden anxiety or excitement. By contrast, the gamer’s voice was slow and calm.

  “Braemar’s passing was a fucking tragedy. I didn’t get the chance to know him, but from first impressions he seemed like a really nice guy.”

  He sounded genuine but Mark knew Arix was just saying that for Vari’s sake. His right knee kept on jiggling up and down with enough energy to send tremors through the floorboards.

  “But the real point is this,” continued Arix. “His death has closed off just one way of skinning this cat. He were following stress fractures in the earth, yeah? That’s how he found the chasm in the parade ground?”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Mark.

  “Okay, so none of us have that kinda smarts. But we have others. Like, who has spent more time in the Barrens lately than anyone else we know of?”

  Mark realized where Arix was going with this. “Your inquisitor friend?”

  “Exac
tly!”

  Arix was about to snap his fingers at Mark but stopped himself in the nick of time. He winked at Vari and got a faint smile in return. Good, thought Mark, the first sign that Vari and Arix might learn to tolerate each other.

  “I overheard that this is the first expedition she’s ever led into the Barrens,” Arix explained. “But not the first one she’s been on.”

  His jiggling knee picked up the pace and the tremors in the floor grew stronger. Though his voice remained calm and collected, the knee told Mark that Arix was building up to something. “By the way some of them soldiers were talking, the last expedition didn’t end well. She and a few grunts got out but there weren’t much change from the fifty poor bastards what went in. Probably why she’s got four times that number with her this time. And there’s that sergeant what Karina treats like her lapdog. She’s delved into them Barrens and lived to tell the tale too.”

  Mark felt a jab of adrenaline in his gut, one that spread its prickling wings right up his back. “This reiver sergeant. What did she look like?”

  Arix looked up to the left as he searched his memory. Mark remembered reading somewhere that the left brain is for logic and memory and that the right brain is for creativity and imagination. A person instinctively looks up to the left when they’re remembering a fact and to the right when they’re making something up. So whatever Arix was about to tell him was either the truth or the executioner knew that little psych snippet too and was using it to cover his tracks. Mark wanted to believe Arix, but there was a mismatch between his voice and body language that was simply rubbing him up the wrong way. He wished, for a start, that the guy would stop jiggling that knee. It was distracting.

  “She was one of them girls what look chubby but is actually a fucking beefcake,” offered Arix.