Hope Engine

by Andrew Lynch

  ‘Yeah. That might be a problem. We’ll find out.’

  ‘Uh huh. Love the confidence. So attractive.’

  ‘You think I’m attractive?’

  ‘Sarcasm, Severo. Look it up.’

  Tearing myself away from looking at the skyline of buildings on the tiers above, I said, ‘Wait what? You think I’m unattractive?’

  At the same time we both looked down at our hands. She was still holding my hand to guide me. She let go.

  ‘I didn’t say that, either.’

  So, she means… that… I am either attractive or unattractive in her eyes. Still in there with a chance! Nice!

  ‘Focus,’ she said. ‘What’s the plan? We know that this Hursh of yours isn’t here, so what are we looking for?’

  ‘Can we find where he logged out? Or, did he have some player housing here, or a base in the capital, maybe?’

  ‘I hope you’ve brought money. Let’s go.’

  She led me into a bazaar of winding streets, made up of squat, double storey houses, themselves lined with hastily erected tents, stalls, perches, rugs, anything that it seemed like a merchant could sell something behind.

  ‘Oh, and make sure to keep it hidden.’

  ‘Why? Wait, can players pickpocket me here?’

  ‘Players, NPCs, Mobs. The main thoroughfares are safe enough, but the further you get from them, the fewer guards, and the further you get from guards, the more knives you might find in your back.’

  My voice cracked. ‘Oh. Right.’ No better way to show your manliness, Severo, great job. I clutched my purse a little bit tighter. My wallet! My manly wallet. That’s what I clutched tighter. God damn it.

  The bazaar was filled with just about everything I could imagine. There were basic weapons being hawked by a low level player, presumably just someone trying to get his money back so he could craft more, grind out his blacksmithing. Good luck to him, because those daggers resembled a brick. There were stands filled with gems and jewels that were bright enough to hurt to look at. There were booths filled with normal, boring looking rocks, which confused me why they were so busy. There was a pixie merchant trying to convince a hulking orc that the pixie sized armour could totally work. Yeah, as a gauntlet, maybe. I was sure that if I wanted to buy something, I could buy it here. I lifted my robe slightly and looked down at my feet.

  ‘Quick detour first?’

  Bri followed my gaze and grimaced. ‘Ugh. Good idea.’

  Chapter 37: The Accused

  ‘Eyes, these feel so much better.’ I wiggled my toes inside my new boots. ‘I hadn’t realised how much the cloth wrapping was hurting.’

  Bri staggered out of the shop still in a state of shellshock. She was muttering something about the sight of my feet.

  ‘Oh, come on. They weren’t that bad. And the Imperial Recaf got rid of the mould.’

  She gagged a little bit.

  ‘And where did you get that money?’

  I shrugged. ‘I told Horace I might need funds, and he pulled this out of his robe. He said something about impending war being healthy on the coffers.’

  ‘As soon as we get back, I’ll have to open my grove up to the refugees. It looks like you’re bleeding them dry if you’ve got that much spare gold lying around.’

  ‘I’ll be honest, he’s the money guy in our relationship.’

  ‘Your relationship?’

  ‘Not like… don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘No judgement, Severo. There’s plenty of player and NPC dating. Not at all uncommon for a player and their head minion to become… entangled.’

  I sniggered. “Head minion”. Heh. ‘Yes, well. He’s not the proverbial apple of my eye.’

  ‘Oh. And who is?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Anyway, let’s find our man, shall we?’

  She nodded, but I was sure I saw a tight smile carefully hidden there.

  ‘We need an information broker. There’s plenty around, come on.’

  She led me several blocks down the main street, before turning down a side alley, still equally crammed with stalls, and then into a darkened, dilapidated building. She gestured for me to stay by the door, and moved forward a few steps to speak quietly to a woman there who eyed me suspiciously. I didn’t take any offence, as she was eyeing everything suspiciously.

  After a few minutes of me standing in the back like a child waiting for his mum, Bri returned.

  ‘Problem! What we need isn’t a low tier issue.’

  ‘How isn’t it? We can get anything here, surely? I know that if we went, like, one more block further from the main street, they’d offer us anything.’

  She nodded. ‘Not far from the truth. But, what we want isn’t illegal.’

  ‘Okay. Great. I don’t know why it would have been illegal in the first place, but legal sounds good.’

  Bri made an iffy motion with her hand. ‘Ehh, yes and no. I figured we’d need hacked information, but nothing too dangerous. You know, a player’s exact location from three weeks ago isn’t that big a deal. So any two-bit info dealer down here could get us that in an hour or two. But, because that information isn’t illegal, and is known… they won’t go against the official information brokers.’

  ‘Convoluted, but okay. So we go to an official one. No problem, right?’

  ‘More expensive, more regulated. Because it’s known information, only authorised people are allowed to know.’

  ‘Ugh, fine. We can become authorised, right? And surely if we’re not authorised, it becomes illegal again and that woman could get it?’

  ‘No, no. Low tier illegal info is, while technically illegal, not of concern to the creators. But known information is governed by in-game systems, which means they’d have the city guard on them. And capital punishment? Very much a thing.’

  ‘Right, okay. How do I get authorised? I’ve got the money, I’ll pay.’

  ‘No. We still need to find the information first. They’ll tell us what’s needed to get the information. Authorisation isn’t some official status. The broker can set it, and even change it on a whim. So be nice, okay? If they don’t like you, they won’t tell you.’

  ‘What do you mean me be nice? You need to…’ I stopped talking when I saw her face. ‘Keep doing you. Everyone likes a strong independent woman. Nice. Let’s go, yeah?’

  She glowered, but I made sure to look everywhere but at her, so I didn’t get disemboweled then and there.

  We headed back through the narrow, ominously shadowed streets, and then along the main thoroughfare. I noticed that there were ferries running regular trips between the tiers, but for some reason Bri didn’t even try to get to one, and instead we headed straight for the stairs. A set of zigzagging, carved into the rock, stairs. With what must have been, easily, a thousand people on them at any one time. Although, I did note that it would make besieging this place almost impossible. The infrastructure required to get any decent sized unit to the mid tier would be colossal. That didn’t make the impending climb any less arduous, but still. It made sense.

  And so, we climbed. Trudged. One foot in front of the other. Like cattle. In the most claustrophobic queue I’d ever experienced. I also had a creeping fear building up inside me. Why was I making a stand in Thanis, when I could just retreat to here. I was positive that there was no need to ever leave the capital if I didn’t want to. I could get a job. Build my way up the corporate ladder. Maybe me and Bri could have kids. Then I could have a midlife crisis and she could catch me in bed one day with a hot little number. A fire elemental, logically. We’d hold it together for the kids, but the passion would be gone. Still, it wouldn’t matter because I’d be at the top of my career then.

  Hmm, maybe that life wasn’t for me, because I honestly wasn’t sure how that was supposed to sound good. In fact, that sounded both more boring and more stressful than a life of adventuring… oh. That’s why people played this game. Right.

  ‘Bri, how come you know this place so well?’

  S
he was in front of me with no room to turn round as the queue crept slowly upwards, so I had to try and listen from over her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t, really. There’s a quest at level twenty that runs you around the city. Kind of a “get to know the place” intro quest, but that’s the only time I’ve been before. Took about a week to do, and culminated in a visit to the top tier. But it grants you a city map, and you can overlay that, and there are basic vendors, waypoints, and a search function.’

  ‘Oh. That sounds useful.’

  And here I was, thinking it was all part of her extreme proficiency at life. She could have played me like a fiddle!

  ‘Is this queue always so slow? And why so many queues here, anyway?’

  ‘Bureaucracy.’ She shrugged. ‘At a certain size, it’s just needed. And this does seem particularly slow, I’ll admit.’

  I almost asked if we could push to make things to faster, but then I looked over the stone railing, and decided I didn’t want to die. It might only be a game, but vertigo was real.

  After another hour of painfully slow waiting, we finally made it to the mid tier entry gate. There were two guards restricting the flood of visitors from overwhelming the mid tier. They were resplendent in their… actually, for such an impressive city, these two looked remarkably unimpressive. Shabby, was the only word for them. One leaned on his spear, and the other was clearly hung over and none too happy about the sun heating his helmet up. He smelled of grain alcohol.

  ‘Papers,’ the spear leaner said in a bored voice.

  I looked down inside my robes and reached around until I found the leaf of parchment that was my travel visa. As I pulled the paper out, it suddenly got sprayed by a splash of red. Arterial red, if I had to classify it. I looked up, and the two guards lay crumpled on the floor. My face and robes were also covered in blood.

  I looked to Bri who was a similar shade of life juice. ‘Umm, what!?’

  With eyes wide, she answered, ‘I… have no idea.’

  ‘I guess that means we can just go in though, right?’

  A shout from far off. A patrol of four guards. ‘Oi! You two! You just killed those men!’

  ‘No, we–’ I began to shout back, but turned to Bri. ‘Did we?’

  She shook her head. ‘We can’t afford to be locked up. We need to run.’

  I looked behind us. A sheer drop back down to the the low tier. Certain death. But the ferry platforms were still moving to and from the designated docking stations.

  ‘Do you have any flight spells?’

  ‘No.’

  I ran in Bri’s direction, grabbing her hand and pulling her with me as I went. ‘Ferries. Let’s go!’

  Before long she was outpacing me, and luckily, we were both outpacing the guards. They had looked equally as unprofessional as the two that died, with ill fitting gear sure to slow them down, plus the extra weight of metal armour.

  There were guards by the ferry platform, but they hadn’t seen us yet.

  The patrol from behind us shouted again, but as long as we didn’t stop, we’d make it to the ferries long before they would catch up with us.

  ‘What do we do about the queue?’ I asked as we ran.

  ‘We’re wanted for the murder of two city guard. I don’t think cutting in line will be a big issue.’

  Fair point. It was a long line, but the ferries landed and took off one a minute.

  We reached the front of the line just as a new ferry docked.

  ‘To the back,’ the dock guard pointed in the obvious direction.

  I fumbled around for my money, and pulled six bits out, handing them to the guard. I didn’t know if that was a lot, but from the guard’s reaction, I had just handsomely overpaid.

  ‘On you go, good sir.’ Players behind me in the queue grumbled resignedly, but didn’t do anything.

  Bri went up first, and I followed.

  ‘We made it!’ I shouted a touch too loudly. The ferry mage turned and looked quizzically at me. I smiled. The platform filled rapidly with players and NPCs.

  Bri, in a much more discreet voice, said, ‘Yes, but now we’re trapped here for another thirty seconds. And those guards weren’t that far behind us.’

  I turned to see where we’d come from, and sure enough, the patrol of four guards were suddenly very close. They were even in shouting distance, which they took full advantage of.

  ‘Don’t let that ferry leave! Murderers aboard!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bri said. ‘Nothing stops a ferry from leaving.’

  And the guards realised it. The head of them thrust his spear forward. ‘Boarding action!’

  I started to cast my slowing spell. There were only three, I could tag them all before they got here. Bri slapped my hands away.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?!’

  ‘Wha– they’re attacking us, so I was slowing them.’

  ‘No. Bad idea, Severo. Bad. Right now, we’re just accused, but we haven’t done anything. If we actually attack, then we’re screwed. Use your money!’

  My money, right. The guards were at the front of the line, pushing their way into it. I dug my hand into my wallet and threw a handful of bits at them. The line around them exploded into a flurry of activity as everyone rushed to grab what they could. The guards were blocked and couldn’t get past.

  The ferry pulled away.

  ‘I had meant bribe them, but that worked too. I guess.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We need to clear our names.’

  ‘How?’

  Bri considered for a moment. ‘Time to visit your class hall. Warlock Hollows.’

  Chapter 38: Warlock Hollows

  The platform landed us in a different place than the ferry from the entry island did, but as I didn’t know my way around the low tier, it didn’t make a huge difference.

  We jogged briskly along the main street and took a few random turns to lose ourselves in the back alleys.

  Bri told me there would be a warrant out on us now, so any city guards would be hostile, but also that a city guard doing his job properly in the low tier was rarer than a Fawn that liked men. I smiled politely, but the memory of Stagatha’s bug irises creeped me out.

  ‘How do we find out what happened?’ I asked as Bri continued to lead me somewhere.

  ‘I suppose you could launch an investigation. Which would require you to talk to the city guard. Which if you do, they will arrest you.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like a winner. I could investigate it myself?’

  ‘Of course. Where will you start?’

  The shadows darkened as we continued our way through back alleys, leaving the main street further and further behind. ‘I can’t say I’ve had a lot of time to think things through, but I suppose on the mid-tier.’

  ‘Where you’ll be arrested on sight.’

  ‘I won’t be seen.’

  ‘Oh? Been levelling your stealth, have you?’

  ‘That’s a thing?’

  ‘My point exactly.’

  The darker shadows made sense. Time was moving on, and there were more buildings around us, and the city walls loomed high. But…

  ‘Bri, is there supposed to be fog on the ground here?’

  ‘No, we’re not–’ She stopped and looked down. ‘Oh shi–’

  In the blink of an eye, the mist rose to swallow her up, and then disappeared, taking her with it.

  I let out a length of my chain, ready for whatever might come next. Was it the killer from the mid-tier?

  A figure appeared in front of me, shrouded in shadow and mist. I glimpsed a motion of his hand, but it was too dark for me to see what it was. An attack? Yet nothing happened. I was about to call out, when he motioned again, but this time I felt a force from behind push me forward. I stumbled, but righted myself. The figure was walking away now, so… I followed.

  There wasn’t much to say for my surroundings. It was dark, and even if it hadn’t been dark, it was now foggy. I could only tell where a w
all was by the mist clinging to it. The figure never seemed to get closer or further away. If I stopped, it stopped. If I jogged, it moved faster – it wouldn’t deign to actually jog, of course.

  After several minutes of twists and turns, the fog cleared, and the darkness lifted. The figure disappeared, seeming to melt into the mist around it. It had left me on the precipice of a cramped corridor, seeming to be made out of black cloth and twisted sticks. It was almost as if someone had tasked my cultists with making a tent.

  ‘Welcome to the Warlock Hollows, brother.’

  I turned to see a cultist, almost identical to one of my own, except standing a bit taller. Thinking about it, he was the same as mine except he lacked deference, standing proud with shoulders back. Also, I could see his face as his hood was pulled back. He was an earth elemental NPC, with broad, craggy features.

  ‘Yes. Hello, brother. This is exactly where I meant to be. Have you perhaps seen my companion?’

  ‘We have many here. More specificity is required.’

  ‘Druid. Briar of Bark. Goes by the name Bri. Probably very pissed off?’

  The man rubbed his fingers together, the noise of two rocks clashing making my hair stand on end. ‘Yes. We have her in purgatory. We can release her outside our borders if you wish?’

  I thought for a second. ‘I’ll need to speak to her. Can she join me?’

  He shook his head. ‘The Hollows are not for outsiders, brother.’

  ‘No. No, of course not. What was I thinking?’ He took that as rhetorical, so I continued. ‘What do I do here? In the Warlock Hollow.’

  ‘This is a place for all warlocks and covens to gather. You seem to be here without a quest to guide you. Perhaps you are searching for something specific? A certain, dark delight, perhaps?’

  ‘Dark delight? Eyes, does every class have access to prostitution? I get the Fawns, but who wants to sex up a cultist?’

  He gave a broad smile, the sound of earth shifting when he did. ‘Actually, yes, they all do, brother. In one form or another, and in loose definitions. But I meant the dark delights of knowledge. Information. Power.’