A Song of Shadow Page 16

  “Say, you denizen of the goblin reserve, have you brought me those herbs?” I reminded Chip of the business at hand.

  “I have brought the package!” the pirq replied. “What about you, Dr. Strangelove? Have you acquired the Doomsday Device?” He tossed me a new inventory bag with 40 slots practically overflowing with mana potions.

  “Would there were something to acquire, my dear Mr. Bond,” I took two Shadow Seeds from my bag and offered them to Chip. “One of each caliber.”

  “Hold up!” The pirq reached into one of his bandoliers and pulled out...

  I assume it was a gas mask. In any case, it was sewn from a crude material with round eye sockets that made it look quite a bit like an ancient gas mask. Chip pulled this over his face...and I realized that Chip’s passion for stupidity and showmanship was limitless. How else could you explain the time and money he had spent on ordering a craftsman to make this utterly useless item?

  “Da-da-da-da-da...” Chip meanwhile began humming the Twilight Zone theme song and stretched out his paw. “Still the trembling in your hands, you’ll drop them,” he hurried me.

  “Chip...” No longer paying attention to the NPCs who as per usual went blank-eyed as soon as players started talking about meatspace. “What the hell is this thing?! Can I call you a doctor?”

  “Personal protective equipment!” proudly proclaimed the owner of the cloth muzzle. “Who knows what these prehistoric Mendeleyevs cooked up in their alliance with the medieval Michurins.”

  “And who made this miracle of engineering for you?”

  “Oh, one of those ninnies that hang around this place their entire lives,” Chip chuckled. “Though for whatever reason, he decided that it was me who had a few screws loose—can you imagine? When people lose their sense of humor...where does it go?”

  “I’ll venture to guess that in some heads, it is sometimes replaced by common sense. All right you flea-bitten stalker, take these seeds.”

  As soon as the foggy seeds fell into Chip’s paw, his HP bar began to fall, and I received a notification that I had hurt another player and therefore earned the outlaw status.

  “Massaraksh!” Chip hurriedly poured the seeds into a copper phial with a screw cap. “I guess those blessed druids gave me this vial for a reason after all. Lori, I’m sorry...” He nodded guiltily at my avatar’s name, glowing outlaw red.

  “You’re the damn ninny!” I cursed at Chip with all my heart. “If they gave you a vial for the quest, why didn’t you get the fu...” I glanced at Anica and caught myself, “...ngible thing out?”

  “How was I supposed to know that this crap is really toxic?” Chip spread his paws.

  “Okay, forget it,” I muttered, calming down. “Grinding won’t work, and to the dogs with grinding anyway. I was planning on doing the cicerone quest. By the way! You’re about to go see the druids, right?”

  Chip nodded, and I rubbed my hands eagerly.

  “Bring me a scarlet flower from an enchanted castle, will you, pops?”

  “Why don’t I just skip the flower and bring you the furry beast for your amorous satisfaction?” Chip chuckled cheerfully.

  “Why?” I asked surprised. “I already have one.”

  I cast the pirq a meaningful look.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he protested emphatically. “I am strictly limited to serving the aesthetic and edifying pleasure of gaze and mind. And I would prefer you to avoid confusing things in this area.”

  “Well, in that case bring what I’m asking and not whatever you come across. I have this quest. It requires vitar seeds, which the local druids should have. Get me three or more. I think they might be useful.”

  “Vitar seeds, huh?” Chip thought for a moment. “All right, I think I’ll manage. It’s not exactly hunting bison.”

  “Go complete your quest and come back here with those seeds.”

  I cast Shadow Ward on Chip to keep him safe from the mobs along his way and gave him a copy of my map.

  “Ah, by the way,” Chip slapped his forehead lightly. “Your buddy Beast owes Sasha two bottles.”

  “When did he manage to accrue that debt?” I asked surprised.

  “Well, I was just about to dive into this place when Sasha called me up,” Chip snorted glibly. “Basically a natural situation. You are aware that your bassist bro is good at recruiting followers? So he pulled something that led to an entire percussion ensemble to assemble in his honor. Beast, realizing that he would play the part of the percussion for this ensemble and that it’s time to scram, took off into the forest...right to the exact place where Snegov had carefully arranged his dirty little traps. Someone had asked him to ambush someone. So Edilberto came tearing right into this idyll with the crowd on his heels...Can you imagine what happened next?”

  “A large-scale excursion to the Gray Lands?” I logically assumed.

  “Precisely!” Chip raised a finger. “And the best part is that the prey, the magic piglet, broke through the entire area without a single scratch! Talk about fool’s luck, huh? Sasha was holwing his head off.”

  “Uh-huh, I can imagine them now,” I giggled. “Red Hulk vs. Green Hulk.”

  “Yeah, the red one’s digging the earth with his toe, guiltily, while the green one is hopping around and screaming so loudly that the birds are falling out of the trees,” Chip joked along with me. “Sasha set the reparations at a case of rum to begin with, but Beast was in his element that day. Not only did he manage to figure out that the percussion ensemble was about to beat his ass all on his own, he also performed the role of the starving artist to a T, turned his pockets inside out and managed to talk Sasha down to two bottles.”

  “Those two should not be hanging around each other.” I sighed. “Not only will they drink themselves to death, they’ll cause property damage in the process.”

  “Nah, Snegov’s basically sober at the moment. The proctologists got to him,” Chip reassured me. “So there’s no danger of them drinking themselves dead.”

  He thought for a second longer and added:

  “Can’t speak for the property damage though.”

  “Are you trying to say that two bottles of vodka is sober?”

  “That was the base ration!” Chip tapped his forehead with his finger. “We were going to barbecue, remember? So Beast was volunteered to outfit our little expedition with fuel.”

  “All right, let’s get back to virtual reality. I still have to grow my cicerone, the way to the Arras remains untraveled and I haven’t made a map yet. By the way, let me copy yours down.”

  I didn’t use the auto-copy feature. Copying by hand leveled up my cartography a little, but it also helped me understand this field better in real life. And, since my abilities left something to be desired, Pasha’s guidance here was quite useful. In exchange for my diligence, I not only raised my cartography a bit, but discovered that the druids’ grove was nearby. The blighted ground arced around it, forming a crescent with the druid’s lair right in the center. It followed that the druids had some way of fighting off the blight available to them. So why didn’t they use it right away to protect the entire forest?

  I asked Chip about this.

  “Who the hell knows them?” He scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll make sure to ask them when...Anica! Don’t touch that!”

  He dragged the little girl away from a blighted plant.

  “This tree is sick. If you touch it, you might catch what it has. Kiera, don’t you know to look after a child?” The furball turned on me.

  “Pasha, could you look down, please?” I asked the suddenly agitated pirq. “What do you see?”

  “Yeah and so what?” Chip stared at the blighted ground beneath our feet. “She’s not going to stick her foot in her mouth. Her hands are a different story.”

  That was some killer logic there, what could I say? You expect to hear this from a mother of four, not an officer with combat experience. Maybe all this lying around at home had affected him or someth
ing?

  “Pasha, are you okay? This is a game. She’s already a ghost. Bacteria aren’t dangerous for her.”

  “Hmm...Yeah you have a point. Sorry...”

  Chip wilted a bit, and then squatted down in front of Anica and began to show her a cat’s cradle with a string between his fingers, no longer paying attention to Salamander and me. I observed my friend for a short while trying to understand, but in the end had to wave my hand and forget it. It was clear only that the topic of children wasn’t a simple one for Chip. I guess his had been a complicated divorce. Or marriage. When I get out of the capsule, I’ll ask him about it in more detail.

  “Listen,” An idea occurred to me. “Maybe you’ll take Anica with you? To the druids? I don’t like to stray beyond the blighted ground unless it’s necessary and the landscape here isn’t exactly picturesque. She can take a walk through the woods with you at least. Anica, do you want to go for a stroll with Mister Chip?”

  “I do!” the girl instantly lit up. “Will he show me more tricks?”

  “Sure, I’ll show you,” Chip agreed willingly, rising. “As long as you behave well and don’t touch anything without permission. Deal?”

  “Uh-huh!” Anica quickly agreed and darted forward to catch a large colorful butterfly.

  “Hey, but don’t take her to the actual druids, just in case. She’s supposed to be with me and the locals are against me now. Who knows, maybe they will start aggroing against the spirit. She has about five hours before she has to go back to the Gray Lands. Let her enjoy the woods a bit. If something happens, tell her to hide somewhere while you complete your quest.”

  “I would not advise them to...how did you put it? Aggro, right?” Chip smiled crookedly.

  “At your level, no one is going to ask you anything,” I set upon the stubborn pirq. “Just limit your stroll to the ordinary part of the forest—where it’s safer.”

  “We’ll see,” Chip answered mysteriously and it occurred to me that with his attitude, he could go as far as battling the local guards if they tried to arrest the suspicious ghost.

  “You can use me to test how hostile the locals are to ghosts,” the Salamander King suddenly offered. “I am accustomed to battles and I can stand up for myself. In the worst case, I will return to the Gray Lands, but at least I will have done some good.”

  “The voice of reason from the powers that be,” Chip agreed. “Come along now. We will conduct some trials. If everything goes okay, I’ll be back for the young lady. And if not, your new name will be Nicholas II.”

  The wait turned out to be a long one, but there was no reason for anxiety. Salamander’s frame indicated that His Long-dead Majesty was in rude health, which logically led to the conclusion that the locals’ attitude toward summoned souls was not contingent on their attitude toward the summoner. Or maybe it was still contingent, but in some convoluted, subtle manner. Either way, the biota did not attack the spirits.

  By the time the experimenters returned, Anica was full of impatience. She kept trying to run after them, but I did not dare let her leave the blighted ground. Here we were in relative safety: the sentries would not come here and my shadow ward kept us safe from the local mobs.

  “The trial has been deemed a crushing success,” Chip said, nodding toward the glowing Salamander. “The Greenpeace faction jumped for joy: They have long since wanted to chat up a soul returned from the Gray Lands. So they vehemently swore that they would honor and cherish their valuable guests. Pass me your charge and go ahead with your quests. I did not mention that the bard who had summoned them had gone over to the dark side. Who knows, after all. If they change their mind, I’ll have a hard time proving that I wasn’t trying to destroy druidism in the flower of its youth.”

  “Good point. Have you brought the seeds?”

  “That’s a bit more complicated...They have some kind of sacred significance, I didn’t find out exactly what. But you can get them by completing a quest chain. I’ll try to bargain with them some more. Heck, haven’t I brought them a guest from the other world or what? Anyway, I will get the seeds, it’s just not clear when that’ll be.”

  “It’s a pity,” I said sadly. “And what about the Shadow Seeds? Did you hand them over?”

  “Uh-huh. Didn’t I say that it’s like the army in here? If you complete some task, good job and here’s some more work. Which is to say that the druid party immediately assigned me another quest: Someone impudently snatched the body of the local glorious leader from his sacred resting place in the local mausoleum.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not sure there’s a better way to put it,” Chip clarified in an apologetic tone to the ghosts who had gone blank from our exchange. “The local Guardian is gone. He doesn’t respond when they summon him and their magical gadgets don’t detect him. They’ve ordered us to look for him using the typical scientific method of poking around.”

  “That’s our boys’ work. The renegades, I mean. They’ve stashed the guardian away so he doesn’t interfere when they ambush the embassy,” I shared the fresh gossip. “By the way, tell Eben what the renegades have planned,” I ordered, and again, briefly, related to Chip the information already known to him: A quirk of the game. To limit cheating, NPCs would only accept information that the player received inside Barliona and not read on the fora or learned in real life.

  “Make sure to emphasize that they do not intend on hurting their own,” I reminded. “Only the ambassadors. After that, they’ll surrender themselves to the mercy of the Council.”

  “Yeah,” Chip scratched his head furiously, as if he had fleas in there. “Do you happen to know which particular dungeon the Guardian is languishing in?”

  “No idea,” I confessed, “but I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.”

  We managed to avoid any long farewells. Chip just waved his paw, Salamander saluted with his sword, and Anica simply rushed off to frolic among the greenery, completely forgetting about me. I mean, kids these days!

  And yet, despite the ever growing distance between us, I simply could not get those souls out of my mind. Not for excessive sentiment but rather due to the hefty blow to my HP that I was taking every thirteen minutes. Thanks to the eid’s attributes, the cut was not too much, a little less than ten percent, but even this bit had to be healed, distracting me from the cartography of the area I was walking on. Wish I had a horse...But mounts cost an unbelievable sum around here. And I don’t have access to the bank either. I’ll have to ask Sloe whether his guildmates can hook me up with some old nag. It won’t do to try and get around solely on my two legs, burning through my poor reserves of stamina.

  “A miserable sight,” a familiar, resounding voice said suddenly.

  Geranika.

  The Lord of Shadow stood ankle-deep in swirling fog, observing me. In my head the cartoon donkey of my childhood quipped in a melancholy voice: “Thanks for noticin’ me.” Ugh. That’s memory for you!

  “Emperor?” I stopped, respectfully bowed my head and looked inquisitively at Geranika. “What are you talking about?”

  “About you, Lorelei,” he clarified ruthlessly. “With your talents you could reach unprecedented heights, bard. By my side you could sing of the conquest of Barliona. You could master such powers as most free citizens do not even suspect exist. Power, greatness, might...The empires that so recklessly rejected you shall be washed in blood. But instead you prefer to waste your time serving Astilba. Impoverished, weak, pathetic.”

  Geranika’s voice was full of contempt, yet he failed to make much of an impression on me. I remembered too well that video in which a shaman named Mahan was offered to become a disciple of his. It looked like this entire situation was following a similar script for finding a student. Not exactly risk-averse, this Geranika fellow: As I recall, the previous candidate had almost deprived him of immortality. If I were in Geranika’s place, I wouldn’t allow any free citizens too close to me, but he didn’t seem to care one bit. He keeps trying to recruit me. Cu
te game going on here.

  So let me recall what the shaman had to do in his situation...I believe he had to turn on his race, his teacher, his totem and his friend. Let’s see what will happen in my case. I can’t really be penalized more than I’ve already been.

  “It was the thirst for true greatness that called me to accept Shadow,” without hesitating further I began to pull the wool over Geranika’s eyes. “I still lack experience, but I am constantly searching for new knowledge that can make me stronger. Astilba can teach me a lot, but I have to earn the right to learn.”

  “You are right about that.” A pleased smile appeared on Geranika’s face. “The right to an apprenticeship should be earned. But you have erred in your choice of teacher. There is no creature in Barliona more powerful than me! No one else will teach you to command the forces of Shadow.”

  But of course—he’s looking for a student. I wonder whether this is a scenario requirement or whether this is just Geranika’s imitator stepping on the same rake as before...

  “I dare not dream of a teacher like you, Emperor,” I said aloud, bowing. I should look up a video on how to curtsey properly. I don’t think I’m supposed to bend my back like that. “How may I earn such an unprecedented honor?”

  The question clearly pleased the Lord of Shadow. He slowly approached me:

  “I have to be sure that you’re ready to break with the past. With your race and your people. Compassion and the attachments of the past shall not deter my student.”

  “How can I prove this to you, oh Master?”

  The grin on Geranika’s face went crooked:

  “Kill three dozen biota as a token of your devotion.”

  Quest available: Way of the Apprentice. Step 1.

  Description: Geranika is ready to become your mentor, but before you start learning, you need to prove your loyalty to your new teacher. Kill 30 biota. Deadline for completion: 72 hours. Quest type: Unique chain. Reward for accepting quest: Unlock the Shadow Transform ability. Reward for completion: Next quest in chain, +1,000 Reputation with Geranika. Penalty for failing/refusing the quest: Hostile status with Geranika.