“Good idea,” I replied, pulling up a folder and searching until I found a relevant clip from our feed. “Here, let’s use the speakers for this, it’s not like anyone else is back yet.”
“Sure,” Peter said with a shrug as he leaned in closer towards the screen, the two of us listening closely to the feed.
After our meeting with Paul at Ætherworld Productions, Peter and I had returned to an empty apartment, Misha having texted us that she was going out for breakfast with a friend, then heading back to her apartment to grab a few things. That had given us the suite completely to ourselves for the day, which we promptly used to continue working—Peter busying himself with setting up a meeting with the two guilds that we’d just finished vetting and me trying to catch up on my endless to-do list that hadn’t seen much progress in the last month.
“Hrm,” I grumbled after the most recent clip finished, turning to look towards Peter. “That still sounds like him, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Peter agreed with a sigh before motioning for me to move over. “Here, let me have a crack at that.”
Sliding over to give the man clear access to the computer, the next hour flew by in the blink of an eye as we watched and re-watched countless segments of our feeds that had Graves in it. Given that we had access to Freya’s and nearly all the other’s feeds from Graves’s original trek to Aldford, we had plenty of samples containing his voice to choose from. Unfortunately, though, with each and every single one we watched, my suspicions became stronger and stronger.
“No feeds with his name attached,” I replied in defeat a while later, breaking what had been a long silence as I finished my search through the currently available feeds and leaned back in my chair to rub my eyes. “Not even any old ones before our showdown. If that’s really him, he’s keeping this all under wraps pretty tightly.”
“Probably a smart thing to do if you’re trying to destabilize a kingdom,” Peter said dryly as he too leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling for several seconds. “I think that we might need to try tackling this from another perspective.”
“I’m open to ideas,” I answered, turning over the tablet in my hands in an attempt to keep them busy. “What are you thinking?”
“First off, let’s make things simple and cut Graves out of the picture for a second,” Peter stated, his eyes taking on a faraway look as he spoke. “And let’s just assume that we have someone, be it NPC or player, trying to stir up some shit in Eberia with the intention of helping the Ascendancy somehow. How does that all fit together with what we already know that’s happening in the city?”
“Hm,” I made a thoughtful sound as I considered the question. “Well, we know from Lazarus and Stanton that the nobles in Eberia are all at one another’s throats, partly because of everything that happened in Lazarus’s feed, but I’m guessing there’s been other resentment building for a while now, way before the game even started. Lazarus’s stuff is just what set it all off.”
“Right,” Peter agreed, nodding his head. “Plus, we also know that the king is making that even worse by staying completely out of the city’s politics and is wrapped up himself with that woman he’s chasing, not to mention whatever cult Stanton says she’s associated with.”
“Yeah, the Church of Nil,” I said. “Do you think they’re linked in this somehow? Stanton did say that she had a priest with her, and this guy in the feed is pretty ‘robey’ and cultish looking.”
“Maybe?” Peter replied as he gave me a shrug. “Anyone who’s played a game knows there’s a story arc going on there, probably even a larger world event in the making. But without more information, we can’t assume that Graves and that priest are one and the same. No matter how ‘robey’ or ‘culty’ they may look.”
“Well, there’s the king’s fall out with the military too, which the church was involved in,” I added, remembering Veronia’s description of events when they’d tried to curb the faith’s influence on Swain. “Plus, there’s all of this geas stuff in Lazarus’s feed that the old king in Eberia apparently had access to as well. If those aren’t red flags that something’s going on, I don’t know what is.”
“Wait, there’s geas stuff? Ugh, I guess I probably should watch that feed too now,” Peter said, rubbing his face with a sigh. “Okay, so let’s say that this church is involved in something shady, but how does that connect at all with Graves, assuming that’s really him, in helping the Ascendancy? Why would they go through all this trouble to get the king’s ear, then pull everything down around them? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Based on what we know,” I countered. “They could have any number of agendas. You saw in the same feed as me that Graves didn’t care if things worked out or not.”
“You really think it’s him, don’t you, Marc?” Peter asked, glancing towards me as he posed the question.
“I…think it sounds like him,” I said, taking a moment to consider what I was thinking and feeling. I didn’t want my history with Graves to color my perceptions unfairly, yet I didn’t feel that I could ignore the evidence at hand. “I don’t know how he would have gotten involved in any of this, nor what happened to him after we stopped him, but look at what’s going on and tell me that you don’t see a link.”
“Oh, I see a link for sure, Marc, don’t get me wrong,” Peter replied, “but until I see his face or a tag identifying him, I’m going to assume that the voice is a coincidence and that we’re dealing with a random player. Unless, of course, you want to send Graves a PM to check in on him?”
“Oh, yeah, how would that go?” I said, mockingly pulling up my hand by my ear as if I were on the phone. “‘Hey, Graves, it’s Lyrian. Remember me and how I beat you senseless and ruined your plans? Great! No hard feelings, by the way. I’m just checking in to see if you’re stirring up some shit in Eberia. No? Well, my bad then. Stay the hell away from Aldford in either case, though. Thanks, bye.’”
“Ha! Sure, I don’t see why you can’t start off with that and see where it gets you,” Peter replied with a chuckle.
“Onto his ignore list I bet, assuming I’m not there already,” I said, looking down at the tablet in my hands, an idea suddenly coming to mind. “But even if we don’t know what this ‘mystery player’ is up to, it’s been what? A month and a bit since everything in Lazarus’s feed has happened? Maybe a better track is to take a look at the feeds coming out of Eberia now. Whatever’s going on there has had plenty of time now to cook and develop.”
“Hey, there’s an idea,” Peter said, leaning forward in his chair as he called up a search page on the computer while I did the same on my tablet. “Plus, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see what’s going on there anyway. I’ve been focused almost exclusively on Coldscar lately since that’s where most of the players are right now.”
“But not all of them,” I noted as my tablet finished loading my most recent search, showing me a list of feeds that were being uploaded from Eberia.
“No, not quite from the looks of it,” Peter agreed as we set about the task of sorting through our respective lists, taking the time to watch snippets of the feeds that were being posted publicly. Comparatively, there weren’t as many individual postings coming out of Eberia as there were in Coldscar, but that still left dozens upon dozens of them to scan through, despite the fact that many of them proved to be next to useless. But the longer that we worked, we were able to find the rare few that helped us paint a picture of what was happening in the city.
A picture that neither of us happened to like.
“Damn, what’s happened to this place…” Peter mumbled as he skimmed through a feed on his screen. “This is nothing like what I remember from launch day. Everyone here looks scared—terrified, even.”
“I’ll sure say,” I replied as I skimmed through my own clip which showed a full riot in progress. At first, it was hard to pick out what exactly was going on—the adventurer whose perspective I was watching from havi
ng arrived late to the scene—but as the events unfolded, the view eventually shifted to show several different forces fighting in the middle of the street. “I have what looks like two or maybe three sets of guards wearing different colors brawling in the street with one another here, while the other citizens watch and throw rocks from the sidelines.”
“Yeah?” Peter asked, leaning over from his chair to look at my tablet, shaking his head as he saw it. “What’s the date on that one?”
“As recent as it gets with the delay,” I replied. “This happened right at the end of March. It was uploaded this morning.”
“So, chances are it could be worse now,” Peter said with a sigh, turning to look back at his screen. “I haven’t found anything as exciting as that, but I can definitely confirm that the nobles are still at one another’s throats from these older feeds. From what I’ve been able to piece together so far, they’ve almost divided up the city between themselves, with checkpoints and guard posts everywhere. It’s like they’re carving out their own little kingdoms within Eberia itself.”
“Shit,” I cursed with a scowl. “I knew things in Eberia weren’t exactly great, but this is getting to be worse than I thought. Are you seeing anything about that church? If they’re up to doing something, now’s the best time.”
“Bits and pieces, but nothing that stands out, to be honest, especially not compared to the other churches in Eberia,” Peter answered, switching to another clip on the monitor showing a group of men dressed in simple black and grey robes standing on top of a heavily loaded wagon. But before he could press play, the door let out a chime and opened, Misha’s voice filling the air a second after.
“Hey, boys, I’m back!” she called out, both of us swiveling in our chairs to see the blonde-haired woman drop a heavy duffle bag to the ground with a loud thump before bending down to take off her shoes. “How did the meeting with Paul go? Are we managing to keep up with the bills?”
“Hey, Mish,” I replied, my brain shifting gears as I thought back to the earlier part of the day. “Yeah, everything went well, and we’re managing to keep things afloat.”
“Well, I was hoping for more specifics, but I guess that’s good to hear,” she said as she stood up and looked in our direction, her eyes landing on us before sliding off and focusing on the computer screen. “What have you guys been up to all day? Searching through more feeds for guilds to invite up to Aldford?”
“No, we already got that sorted out,” I answered, looking over towards Peter, then back at Misha. “I’m afraid we have some good news and some bad news.”
“Oh?” the woman asked, a single eyebrow rising inquisitively. “What’s going on?”
“Well, the bad news, if I’m not mistaken in where Marc is going with this,” Peter said, his eyes alternating between me and Misha, “is that it looks like Eberia is really going to shit, and there is a non-zero chance that Graves could be behind it all, or if not, a big piece of it.”
“I see,” Misha stated slowly, her face turning blank at the mention of Graves’s name. “And pray tell, what is the good news?”
“The guild made slightly over one point one million dollars from our feed last month,” I said, letting a smile spread on my face as I dropped the news.
“I see,” Misha repeated again, the only different sign this time being a slight widening of her eyes. “And just so I have it right…I have ten shares allotted to me, correct?”
“Yep, we all do,” I answered with a nod.
“That’s what I thought,” Misha said, the emotion in her face returning as a grin appeared. “For ten shares of that pie, I can deal with a hell of a lot of bad news, even if it happens to involve Graves. Catch me up. How did you guys come across this in the first place?”
“It was Lazarus’s feed, actually…” I said as I started to explain the last few hours of mine and Peter’s research to Misha, the woman falling into a third chair and joining us both.
“And that’s about as far as we got,” Peter finished as the feed with the robed men he’d pulled up earlier came to an end, which had shown several priests belonging to the Church of Nil handing out packages of food to a group of Eberian citizens. “Things seem to be going steadily downhill in Eberia based on what we’ve been able to find so far, which is a bit worrying given the skirmishing between Eberian and Ascendancy adventurers that we’ve seen outside of Coldscar.”
“It does look pretty chaotic,” Misha admitted as she continued to stare at the frozen image on the screen between us. “What’s the situation like in Coldscar comparatively?”
“Much better,” Peter said. “But that doesn’t mean much in itself, because Coldscar is largely a military city. According to the feeds, what’s-his-name—Veronia’s father—is running the place himself now while he digs in and gets ready for the Ascendancy to come knocking.”
“I don’t know his first name, but I remember Aldwin referring to him as Marshal Tarius,” I told the pair. “He’s the overall commander of the Eberian military from what I understand, now that Swain has cut himself out of the loop.”
“A commander without any support from home from the looks of it,” Misha mused, scratching her chin in thought. “Honestly, if I were in his shoes, I’d really consider abandoning Coldscar, pulling back to Eberia with the military behind me, and staging a coup if need be.”
“Thus driving everything straight into civil war,” I replied wearily, the same thought having crossed my mind in the past. “Then into real war shortly after once the Ascendancy decides to knock on the door.”
“War does seem to be the common thread all across the board lately,” Misha commented with a distasteful expression. “Which I guess brings me to this next question…and I know it’s probably going to sound a little bit callous.”
Peter and I both looked towards the woman with inquisitive looks, her eyes glancing between us.
“Is any of this our problem?” Misha asked, waving a hand at the screen. “Eberia, the problems with the nobles, hell, even Graves. We did what Stanton asked and restored the æther flow to the city. Our involvement is done now.”
“Well, we kinda have a vested interest in making sure that Eberia doesn’t go to shit,” I said, wondering where Misha was going with her question. “We’re sort of neighbors, after all.”
“Yeah,” Peter agreed. “If something happens to Eberia, like the Ascendancy for example, then chances are we’re not going to be that far behind.”
“I absolutely agree to all of that,” Misha replied, her eyes focusing on me as she spoke, “but again, is that our problem? As it is, we’re kinda neck-deep in our own issues with Carver at the moment. Not to mention those orcs that we know are around, too.”
“Along with ten thousand other things that I’m sure are just waiting in the shadows to pounce on us the first chance that they can,” Peter added. “What’s your point?”
“That is my point,” the blonde-haired woman replied. “With everything we have on our plate right now, addressing a problem in Eberia isn’t exactly realistic for us. At least not from within the game. Outside of the game, however…”
She paused to look at us expectantly, letting her words hang in the air.
“We can shine a spotlight on it,” I said as Misha’s train of thought began to crystalize in my mind. “We have Lazarus’s feed right here, which we can use to highlight everything going on in Eberia, and then we could probably reference some of the other feeds that have already been posted, maybe get Paul to put something together as well…”
“Then piggyback that feed off our existing popularity to let the other players watching a preview of everything that’s going on in Eberia,” Peter finished, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. “Depending who sees it and if it goes viral enough, it might convince some of the adventurers around Coldscar to head back to the city or maybe encourage new players to spawn there. But that could also cut both ways. We might get people who are looking to start shit heading back there or end
up giving away information to the Ascendancy players.”
“Information that’s already out there,” Misha pointed out. “You guys found all this out after, what? A couple hours of searching? The top Ascendancy players have probably watched the majority of the feeds coming out of both Coldscar and Eberia as they prepare for this war. Hell, if they had friends in the character creation queue, they might have had them spawn in Eberia on purpose to destabilize it from the inside. I know I would have tried if I were in their shoes.”
“And on top of all of that, we have no surefire way of controlling what other players will do,” I added, leaning back in my chair as I considered our options going forward, realizing that Misha’s suggestion was the best that we could realistically manage. “Regardless if it’s good or bad, players will simply do whatever they want to. It’s anyone’s guess how any of this will play out.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re both right there,” Peter conceded with a sigh. “So, the question becomes are we going to stick our nose into this then in the first place? Remember, we’re also going to be trying to steal a pair, if not more, of the better guilds in the area too. Depending on how this works out, we could be throwing the whole region into chaos ourselves.”
“Or the guilds might tell us to screw off and our warning about Eberia will fall flat,” I replied fatalistically, knowing that everything that we were planning could amount to nothing. “But I think we have another obvious solution here that we might be overlooking.”
“And what’s that?” Peter asked, turning his head to look at me and raising an eyebrow.
“Sending Lazarus, Sawyer, and Ransom back to Eberia,” I announced, belatedly realizing that I’d used the group’s online names out of habit all this time and went onto correct myself. “Err, I mean Gavin, Michael, and Alec. As it is, they’re only here with us because Stanton dragged them out to Aldford. With the ley line stuff sorted out, I’m sure they’re itching to get back to their people who are being held prisoner by House Denarius.”
Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4) Page 11
