A Song of Shadow Page 24

  “A foot goes in,” Bogart explained, arming the next trap, “and when Johnny tries to yank it out, he gets spikes for his trouble. See how I’m setting them with their points downward? And just in case someone accuses me of having a poor imagination,” he took a wooden jar from his shoulder bag and poured the contents into the pit trap, “this will increase the restraining effect and add debuffs, as you people like to say around here.” The orc skillfully camouflaged the trap and set to work on a new one. “Learned how to make it just the other day. It’s a nice touch, I made sure.”

  The sight of his thoughtful, businesslike face made a chill run down my back. From Pasha’s tales, I knew that Bogart the Base’s in-game exploits were a pale semblance of what he had done in meatspace. Sasha did not have to study trap-making in the game, he just made the same devices as he had in real life. Thanks to which, he received a rare trait—Ingenuity, which was similar to my Composition. It was just that his creative pursuit was very different from mine.

  Bogart, meanwhile, completed the work and put on his shaggy cloak. It concealed his grotesque appearance and in doing so suddenly made him seem frighteningly real. My imagination immediately began to paint pictures of him hiding out somewhere in the forest, lying in ambush for some unsuspecting victim. Or did he have some other term for it? Target? Object?

  “Yo, Kiera Khan, why are you just standing there?” Bogart’s happy call snapped me back to the present.

  “Oh I was just...” I drawled vaguely, driving away my anxiety.

  “You better get ready,” advised Bogart sympathetically. “We have to do everything precisely here.”

  I nodded and cast my Shadow Shield.

  “Daaang,” the orc whistled. “Kiera Khan, you’re like the Lord of Shadow around here—among us mere mortals. One, two...whoa...four. And three of them are like breakdancing or something. Where can I learn to do that?”

  “You must join the dark side of the Force, young Padawan. We’ve got cookies for you too if you sign up now.”

  “I don’t like sweets,” he sighed. “I’ll have to wait until you have some shishkabob or asado promotion. So, this looks like pretty much it...”

  He looked me over meticulously once more, then examined the clearing and finally the thickets—as if the Yeti had just trundled into them. He was peering so intensely that I couldn’t help but turn to look. Encountering nothing, I looked back at Bogart and encountered...nothing. The orc had vanished.

  “Start your show,” a voice sounded from the brush. “We need to draw an audience.”

  “I take requests,” I announced, desperate to understand where Bogart was hiding. It was useless—he had disguised himself perfectly. “What should I play for you? What strikes your mood?”

  “Hard to say,” he said. “What’s your favorite one?”

  “Oh,” the question puzzled me. “Hard to say. Different songs for different moods. But, I can play the one that was my jam for many years.”

  “So play it,” said Bogart.

  “Only don’t laugh too loudly, you’ll give away your position,” I warned and switched the eid into acoustic mode.

  The primitive chords, more suitable for a beginning musician from a subway station than the future minstrel of the Empire of Shadow, resounded through the forest. And the vocals too were a bit more fitting for a local drunk. A sarcastic song sung by lazy booze-hound who dreamed of a special destiny and great achievements as he sipped his brew in a dirty dive bar.

  Invisible in the thickets, Bogart snorted, holding back his laughter.

  “Kiera, we hardly know ye,” Bogart giggled softly. “After this song and your admission that for many years this was your jam, the question begs itself: Could this be the reason why you’ve joined the straight edge kids in leading a sober life? Or did your observations of Edilberto bring you to this? Tell the truth!”

  “My observations of the entire world. The song is almost a hundred years old. And, it should be mentioned, it still sounds as relevant as ever.”

  “Well you’ve aged well,” the orc whistled.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be sitting in ambush?” I squinted in the direction of Bogart the bush.

  Despite all my efforts, I couldn’t discern the orc among the blot of green.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be acting like a maiden in distress?” the bush reminded me in Bogart’s voice. “Get to it!”

  I merely hummed to myself, chuckled and sat down on the tree root sticking out of the ground. Then I began to arrange my sheet music around me. Just a lonely bard enthusiastically composing a new song. To make this picture seem more believable still, I really fell to my task—writing the song about Salamander. Progress creaked on slowly—my thoughts occupied with the forthcoming battle. But the loud sounds were sure to draw the biota of the Dark Legion to me sooner or later.

  As for Bogart, he may as well have vanished entirely. I couldn’t see or hear him while I tortured my strings. He was like a true cat lying in ambush at the mouse hole—immobile, patient, occasionally twitching an ear. I didn’t know a single player who would have had the patience to lie for hours without moving a muscle.

  I was starting to think that no attack would be coming when my body ceased to obey my mind and the long-awaited system notification appeared before my eyes:

  You have been stunned for 5 seconds!

  Unlike last time, this was caused by an arrow from a biota hunter who emerged out of camouflage in the company of ten of his buddies. Someone beside me cursed elaborately. About a dozen rogues appeared one by one out of camouflage, stumbling into the small traps that Bogart had set in the clearing. The traps resembled small hedgehogs. Treated with poison, they saddled their victims with debuffs that would keep them from going into stealth again.

  A second stunning arrow followed the second. The players quickly adjusted to their foiled plans and while the rogues began to steal towards me as cautiously as they could, the hunters worked to maintain my stun.

  To my left, the thicket erupted in a roar—like a thunderstorm in May. The players reacted instantly to the potential threat. But as they searched for the new threat, they messed up their rotation, allowing me to leave stun. Taking advantage of this, I tore away from my attackers as quickly as I could. I needed to put some distance between us to avoid further stuns.

  “After her! Use your pets to trigger the traps!” Otolaryngologist ordered his raiders.

  It seems that everyone in the Dark Legion had already become acquainted with what Bogart the Base was capable of. Not so long ago, members of this particular guild helped Bogart organize a training ground with traps in order to repeatedly kill one brazen PKer.[1]

  At that time, the tactic of neutralizing traps using pets proved themselves to a T and now, noting Bogart’s hand in the location, and the scattered devices in the ground, Oto quickly made the right decision.

  I ran through the forest as fast as I could, carefully jumping over the prepared pits and traps. A lengthy train of tamed wolves, foxes, cougars and other representatives of the local fauna chased at my heels. Behind them, with some lag, huffed a pair of demons summoned by the warlocks. The demons were in no rush—unlike the animals, they were relatively sentient and understood that in this race, it was the one who finished last that won.

  Behind me, something popped with a loud bang. Unable to resist, I turned to look. Getting ahead of my other pursuers, a cougar had snagged the tripwire and set off a scroll of fireball that Bogart had set up. The primitive but powerful level 90 spell incinerated the animal where it stood. Immediately after this, another beast fell to Bogart’s traps: A wolf landed in a disguised pit with stakes and tried unsuccessfully to free itself. The trap would not let it go, and with each jerk the beast pushed deeper into the pegs, howling as it lost the remnants of its health.

  I continued to run along my pre-planned route, making unexpected turns and tacking like a hare. The pets behind me perished in the traps, one by one, creating a safe passage for the players,
who ran behind me without losing sight of me but without taking the risk of leaving the ‘swept’ path.

  A wise decision. Or so, no doubt, it seemed to them.

  We tore around the forest like this for no less than ten minutes. A couple of sips was all that remained of the water in my flask when I reached the appointed place. It was located about fifty meters from the start of the chase. I even saw some of my score sheets scattered on the ground.

  I dashed the last twenty steps with extreme care, exactly as Bogart had instructed me. And, no sooner had I reached the cross that marked spot, than I whipped out the eid and twanged an impact shade into one of my pursuers. I think I caught a puzzled expression on the hunter’s face before he disappeared into thin air. That’s right, bud. I too would be surprised by a spell with a radius of a hundred meters...

  Quest updated: Way of the Apprentice. Step 1.

  15 of 30 biota killed.

  “Stun her!” Oto barked and vanished from sight along with the other rogues.

  But I was not interested in them. The ranged fighters were quickly closing the distance, trying to get in range for their weapons and skills. One of them—a black-red pirq—yelped as he plunged into a disguised pit, from which a moment later a vicious series of curses followed. One of the dummy’s comrades decided to help his friend—only to step into a snare of twisted vines. The noose drew tight around his ankle, jerked him to the ground and dragged him to the edge. After plowing a fair furrow, he disappeared into the bush, and once there soared up to the top of the tree which snapped upright, hoisting him. The player suspended by his foot fumbled absurdly, trying in vain to free himself.

  “Get meee down!” he squealed.

  Alas, the others had more important things to do. I managed to one-shot another hunter before his buddy struck me with a stunning arrow. The ranged fighters took up the best positions they could find—islands of greenery, which the blight had not yet filled in. Suspecting a trap, the warlocks sent forward the surviving demon. He calmly crossed two green spots and plummeted into the pit arranged in the third one. Delighted at the chance to avoid the blight’s debuffs, the ranged fighters arranged themselves on the patches of safety and began to pour stunning arrows and spells on me. For a brief moment, I even felt flattered. So this is what a dungeon boss feels like. And, like any boss worth her salt, I was preparing for the battle’s next phase.

  The rogues were nowhere to be seen. There was no particular need to hurry so they were carefully choosing their path. The surviving hunters could keep me stunned for another half a minute, and the mages were methodically and implacably hammering my Shadow Shield. Each spell dealt monstrous damage, and I couldn’t help but grow nervous, seeing my second materia shade’s health start to grow thin.

  The rogues’ objective was simple: survive and get close enough to use their melee attacks and stunning spells. Experience had shown that stun was much more fearsome in PvP than the equipment and powers that Geranika had gifted me.

  This time no one fell for the metal caltrops scattered on the ground. The players were watching where they stepped carefully, anticipating Bogart’s tricks. They weren’t wrong. But the tricks weren’t only under their feet. A thin, barely-noticeable thread of spider silk, placed at chest level, stretched taut and tore. A doubled-over willow snapped upright, jerked the net after it and the players with it.

  This knocked the others off their rhythm, making them nervous and forcing them to choose their footing even more carefully. Another rogue decided to be clever and stepped onto a trap that had already neutralized one of his unfortunate friends. He assumed reasonably that the place was now safe. In vain. Something like a rake popped out of the grass. Only this rake’s crossbar was studded with sharpened stakes which plunged right into the victim’s groin. The glade erupted with a mournful howl of pain: I guess this player’s pain filters were set to a lower value than my ninety percent. Poor guy...The new victim struggled to free himself, but only made things worse. I don’t know what Bogart had devised here, but every new jerk only drove the spikes deeper in.

  “Bogart you bitch!” one of the mages yelled angrily. “You can count yourself on the Legion’s shit list! Do you understand, you bastard?”

  I don’t know whether the legionnaire’s threat was real or just an attempt to unmask the smart-ass bounty hunter, but Bogart did not answer. Or, he answered in his own way: The sound of the orc’s axe striking a trunk echoed from the woods and the ‘safe area’ under the feet of the mage and a couple of his comrades flipped, revealing a pit with stakes. The players dropped into the trap, and the lid rotated again to muffle their cries.

  I watched all this from my ‘front-row seats,’ patiently waiting for the hunters to exhaust their stun spells. And the Seconds for their part seemed to understand that that moment was quickly approaching too. The rogues lost their cool and rushed me, trying desperately to close the distance. A fatal mistake. One of them finally got close enough to use his ‘backstab’ attack. But as soon as he appeared behind me, a big mossy log came whiffling through the tulgey wood and impaled the poor fellow along with several of his fellows to the nearest oak. I exhaled with relief. Until that moment, I wasn’t sure that Bogart’s calculations were correct and that terrifying ram wouldn’t hit me instead.

  The next moment, the latest stun expired and there was no longer anyone who could stun me again.

  “Shall we dance?” I mimicked Plinto’s smirk from the Legends of Barliona videos and strummed my strings.

  The glade filled with the gloomy sounds of Chopin’s funeral march, every four seconds generating a deadly shade. After the second one-shot, one of the surviving officers gave the command to retreat. The players who still had some mobility rushed back to the trodden path, which had brought them to this glade of horrors and death.

  This was a further, fatal mistake. I hadn’t wasted so much time jogging around the forest for nothing. Shadowing my pursuers, Bogart had armed the ‘sleeper’ traps and snares, generously scattered around the seemingly safe road. I could now periodically hear the riffs I had recorded at Bogart’s request.

  All I had to do was move along the truly safe path and one-shot my pursuers as they got caught in the traps.

  “So what do you think, have the Chicago Bulls reached the playoffs or do we need to win another game?” asked Bogart, emerging out of nowhere and examining the trap in which Oto had been flailing only a few seconds ago—right before I put him out of his misery. “Mission Accomplished!”

  Bogart held up his hand for me to high-five.

  This was followed by a golfclap of approval. I jumped from surprise and turned my head. Geranika stood behind me, smiling and lazily clapping his hands.

  “Bravo, Lorelei. You have a very resourceful friend.”

  He took a leisurely stroll around the clearing, setting off some of the traps. The deadly devices dissolved into dust as soon as they touched the Lord of Shadow.

  “Hey, guy, did you build those? Then what are you breaking them for?” Bogart protested. “I labor my ass off, spill my dear orc sweat and then you show up—a real phenomenon, a real Travolta. I understand that you’re like the top brass around here or whatever, but how about a little respect for another’s work?”

  Geranika froze for a moment. The imitator was processing the player’s words.

  “That’s good. There’s good. Just stand right there,” Bogart went on, pointing his finger for emphasis. “Otherwise you’ll ruin the rest of ‘em. What is it you want anyway?”

  Geranika frowned and snapped his fingers irritably. The Lord of Shadow’s gesture froze both Bogart and Merlin where they stood.

  “Not very intelligent, but highly resourceful,” Geranika went on, as if nothing had happened. “I am pleased with your work, my future apprentice. You have managed to learn that even the power I have granted you is not an excuse to underestimate your foes. You could have simply hunted your enemies piecemeal to complete my quest, yet you chose a different path. You took your
past mistakes into account, and found a suitable ally for your purpose. More importantly, you achieved the desired result. You deceived your opponents, made them believe in victory, made them feel as if they were in control of the situation, and then you destroyed them. Excellent. I need an apprentice like you.”

  Quest complete: Way of the Apprentice. Step 1.

  +1,000 Reputation with Geranika. Current status: Friendship.

  The Lord of Shadow stepped forward, put his hand on my shoulder and the world disappeared, drowning in a leaden-gray fog. For a moment I thought that Geranika had sent me to the Gray Lands, but the fog cleared immediately and the world around me regained its colors. We stood at the edge of a precipice. A mountain range I had only ever seen from afar snaked all around us. A breathtaking valley unfurled below us: The Hidden Forest in all its grandeur. A teeming sea of green at the clouds’ very fringe. And in the center of this roiling expanse of green stood the Tree.

  I grew dizzy from the numbing height. Starting back abruptly from the edge, I slammed my back against the stone ledge behind me. My health bar dropped a bit, even despite my shield.

  Geranika observed me silently. Curiosity and mockery played in his eyes. But the challenge in his look helped me regain my composure. The last thing I needed was an NPC laughing at me. I took a deep breath and managed to pry myself off the stone ledge and even took a couple of steps forward.

  “This world is cruel, Lorelei,” Geranika’s dark eyes followed my every move. “It brooks neither weakness nor indecision. She who wishes to stand beside me must know how to harness her fear. Prove that you are capable of this.”

  And the Lord of Shadow politely stepped aside, clearing my way to the edge.

  “Jump, Lorelei. Prove to me that you can follow me to the end. Prove to me that you are worthy of true power.”

  Quest available: Way of the Apprentice. Step 2.

  Description: Take a leap of faith.