Chloe agreed, and they set off. The desert ahead looked barren, but Chloe had seen enough nature documentaries to know that the desert slept during the day, only to come alive at night.
They made surprisingly slow progress as they marched up dunes and skidded down them. Although the sun was setting, the heat of the day had been absorbed by the sand and simmered beneath their feet. They drank their skins of water dry with barely a conscious thought, and by the time darkness had taken over and a chill wind swept across the sand, they were all relieved.
They were a strange sight, a line of adventurers toiling up and down the dunes. As they walked, Tag continued to tease Ben about the fact that his friend didn’t know what his class was yet. Not that Ben seemed to care. He was keeping his eyes peeled, on the alert for foes.
Gideon marched along beside Chloe, the pair of them discussing Gideon’s “real” life as Chloe asked questions about how his brother was enjoying his play. Gideon told her that now that several weeks had passed, his brother had begun to give even less of a damn about him, and the shine of torturing Gideon through the game had begun to wear off.
“Honestly, now I just log out of the game, get my dinner, do my chores, and I’m back in when that’s all done, y’know?”
“Chores?” Chloe said. “How old are you?”
Gideon flushed. “22, but I’m saving for my own place. I’ve told my mum that once I’ve gotten some kind of gaming sponsorship deal, I’ll be moving out. Loads of people do that now. Advertisers make a killing using influencers to promote their brands. It’s just a matter of time before I get picked up. I know it.”
Chloe thought back to what Mia and Demetri had said about them all being watched. 39 people had been watching their progress. What would it be like if they had 500? 10,000? 50,000? Was that even possible? Could Gideon actually make a living, or even enough to move out of his mother’s house, just by gaming.
“I can see it now,” Chloe teased. “Gideon: sponsored by Pepsi.”
“Ew, no. I’m a Coke man.”
Chloe nodded her approval. “Good for you.” She considered, then said, “And she believes in you? Your mum, I mean?”
Gideon shrugged. “Sometimes I think she does. Other times, I feel like she just pities me. My brother jokes about it all the time at the dinner table, and she doesn’t defend me as often.”
Chloe wondered what her parents would have thought if she had chosen a career as a full-time gamer. Would it be enough for Chloe to not invest in stocks and shares? To not throw her money at global investments that boosted the Lagarde name? Could Chloe ever really be just a small-town girl who enjoyed the life she led and made decent friends along the way who actually cared about her?
“I think you’ll make it,” Chloe said, already imagining the conversation where she’d ask her father to invest money in Gideon’s career. Backing from the Lagardes was powerful backing indeed, and if anyone deserved some sort of success, wasn’t it Gideon?
Chloe was broken out of her thoughts as she reached the top of yet another dune.
Ben had paused at the top and was staring ahead. Chloe caught up, using her Dark Vision to try to boost what she was seeing. There, down in a tiny valley below, was the moonlit outline of a straggling village, and beside it, a pool of water.
Chloe suddenly realized how thirsty she’d become. “And there I was thinking that I’d have to turn my Ice Shards into popsicles and lick the damn things.”
“Do we know it’s safe?” Gideon whispered.
“It’s got to be safer than being out here,” Ben replied. “There are things crawling in the desert. Big things. I’ve watched them for some time on the edge of my vision. We should find safety.”
“Besides,” Chloe added, pulling out her sword, “who’s going to threaten a group of the blessed?”
Jesepiah frowned.
“Oh, and Jesepiah, of course,” Chloe corrected.
And Shaman Decaru, child, the wisp chimed in.
Of course. How could I forget you? Chloe sent back.
The moon was high by the time they made it to the village. They had stopped talking some time ago, keeping quiet as they approached. Chloe led the way, moving alongside the first building and peeking into the windows.
The huts were crafted of all sandstone, thick-walled things with no glass in the windows. In the moonlight, they looked as bleached as bone. Chloe poked her head inside, but saw no one. The rooms were bare, apart from a few items of clay crockery. There was no one in the bedrooms or anywhere else.
They split into pairs and examined the surrounding houses, finding that the same pattern repeated throughout the other houses. When they reached the edge of the village where they had seen the pool, they found that what had appeared from afar to be a shimmering lake of water was nothing more than dried and cracked mud. Chloe couldn’t imagine the last time this area had seen any type of rainfall.
“A mirage?” Gideon asked.
“That would be amazing. Thanks, bud! My neck is killing me,” Tag replied without hesitation.
“No, mi-rage. Not ma-ssage…” Gideon corrected, much to the delight of Chloe and Jesepiah.
Ben sighed. “I can’t believe this whole place is deserted. Ha! Desert-ed.” He laughed. “Get it?”
“I can,” Gideon replied dryly, ignoring the quip. “Imagine living out here where the world is so dry and hot? Wouldn’t you want to move somewhere else? Live where didn’t have to travel miles and miles for water?”
“I suppose,” Chloe said. “Still, it’s surprising that the houses are in as good of condition as they are if the whole population just up and left. Couldn’t have been all that long ago.”
Ben glanced at the huts. “Since they’re vacant, I guess they won’t mind if we take a room and rest up for the night? I’m getting notifications that my sister and her boyfriend are round with their new kid, and Uncle Ben doesn’t want to miss out on nephew time.”
“Uncle Ben? As in, the rice?”
Ben’s face fell. “Maybe just ‘Uncle’ or ‘Ben,’ then?”
“That’s better.” Chloe winked.
Shaman Decaru guided them all into one of the larger huts. There they each took a bedroom, Chloe claiming one she found on the second story that had a great view out over...well, sand.
She heard the others rummaging around, making themselves comfortable. She had always wondered why it was such a ritual—making themselves comfortable—when they were going to log off. It wasn’t like they’d feel anything that happened while they were away from their avatars—unlike Chloe and her stupid pain receptors.
Chloe sighed, laying her head on a folded bunch of material Jesepiah had given her. The floor was hard, but it was nice to be off their feet after traipsing so far across the desert. Soon enough, she heard the last mumbles and chatters of Gideon, Tag, and Ben before the three of them logged off and vanished back to reality.
Chloe lay for some time in the silence, many thoughts passing through her head. She wondered what they were all like in real life. Whether they had met each other in person, or whether they just gamed online—friendships connected by fiber wires and internet signal. She imagined Gideon as a rambunctious 55-year-old female with a swollen stomach and varicose veins, sitting in the darkness of her basement with only the glare of her computer screen to illuminate her bulk.
She chuckled into the ring of her fist and exhaled.
“You know I can see everything you see, right?” KieraFreya said, her voice echoing around the room.
“Shhh! Keep it down,” Chloe said. “Jesepiah is an NPC, remember? She doesn’t log off like the others.”
“What the hell is an NPC?” KieraFreya asked, not adjusting her voice one bit.
“A non-player character,” Chloe replied. “Someone who is controlled entirely by the system’s AI. Like you and the shaman, for example?”
“Excuse me?” KieraFreya sounded pissed. “You really think someone else has control of me? That I’m not in full possess
ion of my faculties, and that some puppet master has his hand up my ass? Who the crap is this Ay-eye, anyway?”
It took Chloe a moment to realize what KieraFreya had said. When it sank in, she stifled her laugh, clutching her stomach tightly as she rolled on the floor.
“Hey, what’s so funny?”
“Seriously, you’re going to have to keep your voice down.” Chloe wiped away a tear. “It’s not ‘Ay-eye,’ it’s ‘AI.’ ‘Artificial Intelligence.’ It’s when a computer can create its own intelligent code based on a series of presumptions and implement the results, learning as it develops and grows.”
“Okay, here’s my second question,” KieraFreya said. “What the fuck is a computer?”
Chloe, realizing this might turn into a long series of questions, decided to change the subject. “It’s nice hearing your voice out loud again, y’know? Damn, I hate that I just said that. Shame we haven’t got Decaru joining us.”
“Oh, you know that know-it-all. He’s probably off somewhere, having abandoned us once again. You know he doesn’t actually give a shit about us, right? He’s using you to travel to certain—”
There was a blinding flash of light as the shaman appeared in the corner of the room, legs crossed in lotus, his body levitating several feet off the floor.
“A shaman doesn’t use his companions for anything,” he informed her, his face expressionless as rings of smoke poured out of his mouth, the hookah snuggled firmly in his grasp. “A shaman symbiotically pairs with others, finding ways to benefit from the situations they find themselves in.”
KieraFreya tsked. “If that’s so, then why do you keep abandoning her at the last minute? Disappearing for hours—days—on end without so much as a word? We keep thinking we’ve lost you, and then bam, you’re back. You’re like a goddamn leech we can’t shake off.”
Chloe considered this. KieraFreya did have a point. As much as she liked the shaman, he had never explained his purpose. But then again, hadn’t that been the agreement? To follow where they go and keep to his own agenda? Hadn’t he already done well to serve them in situations thus far? The skelly cave? The jaguar?
“If you want to know what I’ve been up to, all you have to do is ask.”
KieraFreya shook. “I just did ask!”
Jesepiah moved around in the other room, Chloe urged KieraFreya once more to keep her voice down.
The shaman grinned wickedly. “You didn’t say please.”
Before KieraFreya could open her mouth, Chloe stepped forward. “Please will you tell us where you’ve been?”
“I want to hear it from her,” the shaman replied.
There was a moment of silence in which the only sounds they heard were the gentle snoring of someone down the hall and the winds hushing their way across the desert. Finally, and with great pain, KieraFreya said, “Please.”
The shaman nodded, took a lungful of smoke, and began his tale.
Chapter Sixty-One
Chloe rolled over once more, struggling to find sleep. The idea seemed impossible, considering the excitement and action that had taken place over the last 24 hours of game-time. Her body had felt exhausted just moments ago, but after casting Healing Hands on herself, she discovered that the spell also cured aches and pains.
Now she was fully rested, but her mind still wanted sleep.
She shuffled around to lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. The shaman’s tale had been an interesting one, a journey filled with floating and hiding and reading and talking. She wished she possessed some of the powers he held. It might make her journey easier to simply float around as a ball of energy.
The shaman told them that he had learned a lot. That he had simply visited any and all apothecary and magical store that he found on his way, engaging in conversations with the owners, learning new spells, and widening his knowledge pool. He hoped to write a book one day, thicker than the tome he had given to Chloe (who had passed it on to Gideon), detailing as much of the world as possible before he died.
Chloe didn’t know how long that gave him—or, indeed, how long the average life expectancy was in Obsidian—but she assumed that he didn’t have many more years left in him.
Of course, KieraFreya had mocked him whenever she could, poking holes in his plan, which the shaman took with the calm grace Chloe had come to expect from him. The calmer he became, the more annoyed KieraFreya became, and while Chloe could still muffle her bracers in her armpits, the addition of the greaves meant that KieraFreya now had a voice whenever she wanted one.
Sigh.
Chloe’s mind reeled, wondering what else was out there in the world. She’d experienced one of the great cities—Nauriel—and now found herself on the run. She had lived in the tribal village of Oakston and chosen to leave despite their invitation to remain there, wanting adventure to keep coming her way.
What would greet her now in the great Learian Desert, a name Decaru had detailed to her, divulging as much information as he had gathered from citizens of Nauriel. But somehow Chloe couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it all. That there was something alive around them, but they just couldn’t see it.
She blinked open her map, traced their path with a finger, and tapped the place where the map showed the next sigil—directly on top of all of their character icons. They were here. Whatever the next piece of armor was, it was here in this dead, deserted, desert village. It was right here.
A thought came to Chloe—what if the armor was under the protection of the previous citizens of this village, and now that they had moved on, the armor had gone with them? Could a primitive village such as this have worshipped the glowing armor? Could the armor even be moved from the spot where the gods had placed it?
So many questions, so few answers.
“You know, it’s funny listening to your thoughts,” KieraFreya whispered into the darkness. In the corner Decaru twinkled, a small glowing sphere of energy. Presumably, he was sleeping.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“It’s like watching a dog fart and scare itself awake. There’s so much thought, but so little understanding.”
“And again I say, shouldn’t a goddess of this realm know the answers to a lot of these? Wasn’t it your job to watch over the citizens of Obsidian and guard them? Guide them? Deliver retribution to those who needed it?”
KieraFreya lifted Chloe’s arm into the air, then let it drop. The metal hit Chloe in the face.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“Just for fun.” KieraFreya giggled. “Don’t you listen to anything? I’ve been in pieces for literally thousands of years. You really think a world doesn’t change in that time? You really think your world hasn’t changed a bunch in a thousand years? I used to know what was going on. Hell, I could tell you a thousand stories about the world back then. But now? Forget it. This place is as strange to me as it is to you. This, in fact, used to be a huge lake. Yeah. Killer squid and a thousand see-through octopi—”
“Octopuses,” Chloe interjected.
KieraFreya thought for a moment. “It’s ‘octopi.’”
“I’m pretty sure it’s ‘octopuses.’” Chloe looked at the shaman for confirmation, forgetting that he was asleep. As if mocking them both, his orb briefly changed to the shape of an octopus but otherwise, he ignored them.
“Anyway,” KieraFreya said, “my point is that you can’t expect me to remember everything when I’ve been buried beneath the earth for thousands of—”
Chloe’s back straightened, KieraFreya’s words melting into her ear. “Beneath the earth,” she whispered.
“What’re you—”
Chloe was up and out of the hut in no time, leaving the others resting behind her. The night air had turned cold, and she clasped her arms around her chest for warmth. It was dark out now, their little valley only illuminated by the few stars that revealed themselves through the cloud cover.
“Where are you going?” KieraFreya asked. Chloe felt some resistance in
her legs as she pushed onward.
Chloe utilized her Dark Vision, dragging a foot in the sand behind her to leave a track wherever she went.
“Don’t you see?” Chloe said. “You were buried beneath the earth. This was a lake. At some time in this realm’s history, you must’ve have been buried beneath it. Below the squid. Below the octopuses—”
“Octopi—”
“Octopuses! You must be somewhere beneath us. The map says you’re here. Where the hell else are you going to be if you’re not buried below the sand?”
The shaman had followed Chloe and now floated lazily behind them, almost spectral in appearance. His face reflected the deep thoughts behind his eyes.
“That’s a great hypothesis, Chloe. But tell me, if that’s true, how are we supposed to get down below the sand!” KieraFreya queried. “Unless I’m much mistaken, you haven’t yet learned the Deep Dive spell, nor can you shovel handfuls of sand away and dig gigantic holes. It could be anywhere.”
Chloe scratched her head, trying her best to think. Everywhere she had been so far, there had been an entrance. The cave in the Oakston woods, the secret pad in the Nauriel Tree. Every game left some kind of opening, surely. Some way to get to where the treasure is buried. All they had to do was find the door and bam, they’d be laughing beneath the sand.
“Let’s just keep searching,” Chloe said. “We’re sure to find something soon.”
“And the others?”
“They’re asleep or logged out, aren’t they? We can always come back and get them when we find the entrance.”
“Are you sure?” KieraFreya interrogated. “From what I’ve seen so far, you prefer to go on your adventures solo.”
Chloe didn’t rise to the bait.
They searched long into the night, looking high and low, roaming through every house they passed, and found nothing but sandstone, sand, and more sand. KieraFreya continued to talk despite Chloe refusing to address her quips, and eventually they found themselves skirting the village, looking out at the rising dunes surrounding them. They now wondered if there really was anything below the dense layer of sand, or if Chloe’s idea was wrong.
Collecting The Goddess (Chronicles Of KieraFreya Book 1) Page 43
