A Song of Shadow Read online

  The Guardian, who had been watching the wild dance with a grin, again began to boom:

  “MY WORRD IS INVIOLABLE. THERREFORE, RECEIVE NOW THE PRROMISED SKILL...BARRTERING.”

  Another radiant aura enveloped the dancing bear and then the bear’s face broke into an eerie smile. I scratched my head, puzzled. Strange, I thought Chip already had the bartering skill...

  “AS FOR YOU, MINION OF SHADOW...” The black’s pirq’s muzzle turned in my direction and lost all trace of gaiety. “YOU SHALL NOT BE DESTRROYED WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF REVIVAL. I SHALL ALLOW YOU TO FINISH WHAT YOU STARRTED BEFORRE YOU ARRE EXILED FRROM THE HIDDEN FORREST. SHADOW SHALL HAVE NO PLACE IN MY LAND!”

  Oh how generous. If you think about it, it’s not such a bad reward. Especially if you remember the video of the trial of Mahan after the scenario of the Dark Forest. He almost had his avatar deleted for his shenanigans with Geranika. The heck with it, exile. The main thing is that I will keep Lorelei and have time to finish the scenario.

  “I thank you for your mercy, Guardian,” I answered with all possible respect.

  “If you want to deceive Geranika about the reason you failed his quest, I can help,” said Eben who had been silent until now. “Tell him that you encountered me under the hill and I sent you to the Gray Lands. I can do more than kill you. I can also leave a special mark on you which will deceive Geranika into thinking that I killed you. There is a chance that you will be forgiven, you will not lose his trust and will be able to reveal his plan to us later. Do you agree?”

  Quest available: A Friend among the Outsiders. Description: Eben wishes you to learn Geranika’s plans and tell him about them. Quest type: Unique scenario. Reward: Variable. Penalty for failing/refusing the quest: Eben will no longer consider you his agent.

  “Yes, oh Seventh,” I answered after a moment’s hesitation.

  I won’t be any worse of for accepting this quest.

  “Here is an amulet to contact me. Good luck to you, Lorelei,” Eben said very gravely and the next instant, a blow from his dagger sent me to respawn.

  You have died. You may continue playing in the Gray Lands. Do you wish to move to this location?

  The ‘No’ option beckoned me to take a break and relax a little. After such an eventful game session, I could use some rest, especially taking into account today’s scheduled band practice. But the Gray Lands also represented an opportunity to read a new entry in Cypro’s journal...

  “I’ll just read the entry,” I promised myself, pushing ‘Yes.’

  The colorless, lifeless world resembled an old film. A silent movie from the beginning of the twentieth century. I wonder if I get Chip in here, will he start imitating Charlie Chaplin?

  Such delirious thoughts really did point to the need to take a break, and I hastily opened the Tenth’s tattered journal. Instead of a new entry on the blank page, however, I encountered the following notification:

  Bardic Inspiration 15 required to read the next entry.

  I sighed in disappointment and exited the game.

  The apartment was still and empty. The capsule in Pasha’s room hummed steadily. I bet he hasn’t yet completed his business with the Guardian and the druids’ quest. Sasha, most likely, will continue to hang around for a long time with the raid. Great. The most important thing is to snatch a couple of hours of sleep—that’s all I had before Pasha’s cartridges had to be swapped again.

  But by the appointed time, Pasha had still not emerged from his cocoon, though Sasha had and was now puttering around the kitchen. I was already used to the fact that the kitchen was like Pasha and Sasha’s joint estate, in which I acted the part of the guest and the court taster. I cannot say that I was very upset by this state of affairs. Sasha, who seemed to have his own electronic key for the apartment, was chopping vegetables with a hefty cleaver, slightly smaller than Bogart’s Croaker.

  “I’m going to make ratatouille,” he announced. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Do me the favor,” I did not refuse, sitting down on an empty stool. “And where is the second behemoth?”

  “Pasha’s stayed in the game,” Sasha replied, conjuring over a teapot. “Your Eben has taken him away on some kind of mission.”

  “I’ll go press the call of the meatspace button, or that evil doctor will come and take his undisciplined patient back to the hospital.”

  “There is still time,” Sasha nodded at his watch. “You’ll have time to have some tea.”

  “Good idea,” I agreed, making a ham and cheese sandwich. “How did the whole thing end in there?”

  “Ah with nothing,” Sasha waved his hand. “The raid went on about its business. That spy-root of yours to Pasha with him and then I got eaten by dinosaurs.”

  I popped out my eyes and choked on my sandwich. Sasha immediately began hammering me between the shoulder blades, catapulting the bit of sandwich out of my throat and onto the table in an appetizing still-life.

  “Huh?” I asked when I’d done coughing. “What dinosaur?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Sasha shrugged, laying his knife aside and picking up the sponge. “They were like velociraptors or some-other raptors...dromaeosaurids, in other words. I was walking along, minding my own business and a pack of these prehistoric feathered creatures burst out of the forest and fell upon me.” He began to wipe my arts and crafts from the table. “And I had a brain fart. Instead of thinning them out with my crossbow, I chose hand-to-claw combat...And was punished for my short-sightedness with a series of crits.”

  “Where did dinosaurs come from in there?”

  “Pasha told me that the pirqs raise them like cats, dogs and other cattle. They’re found closer to the mountains,” Sasha happily shared his knowledge of the matter.

  “What will the devs cook up next...” I wondered. “We’ll need to interrogate Pasha about the pirq starting location. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to go there anymore.”

  “Could be, could be,” Sasha tossed the sponge in the sink and then started to rummage in an obscure corner of the kitchen cupboard and produced...a bib.

  “Here.” He dangled the bib in front of me. “Baby Sinclair...”

  “Oh but I couldn’t possibly presume to use yours,” I declined such a generous gift. “And where’d you get that anyway? Don’t tell me it’s your patrimony or something...Even taking into account Pasha’s problems with the jaw, it’s not his size.”

  “Why we ordered it for you,” Sasha gibed back. “You’re a musician, a cultural persona. In other words...a savage. I’m sure you’ll like it. It’s a nice pink and it’s got these kitties all over it.” He stuck the bib right up to my nose, eager I see the kitties.

  “Nope. Not my style,” I concluded after carefully trying on the bib. “And you didn’t get my size right.”

  “Have it your way, you bib snob,” Sasha snorted, putting the bib away. “Just don’t tell Pasha. It might piss him off,” he warned.

  “Why?”

  “He doesn’t like it when people touch his daughter’s things. Or remind him about that whole thing in general,” Sasha said after a brief pause and returned to his cooking.

  I was stunned. Pasha had of course mentioned his divorce to me, but he somehow kept silent about having a child. Now, however, his overzealous care towards Anica began to make sense. It seems the NPC somehow reminded him of his daughter.

  “He never said he has children. And there isn’t a single photo in the apartment,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Sasha quietly made me ​​a new sandwich and only then replied:

  “He does not like to remember that episode of his life.”

  And he returned to shredding the defenseless vegetables with the knife. I pilfered a slice of an innocently-killed tomato from him, crowned my sandwich with it and began to chew pensively, considering this new bit of information.

  “Oh, the intelligentsia!” Pasha’s voice boomed behind me.

  The pilot staggered to the table, studied
the activities of his friend and flopped down beside him. His eyes gleamed, his face shone with delight. It was clear that the game had succeeded in really capturing him.

  “Guys!” The tone in which this word was uttered, fully confirmed my assumptions. “You’re about to turn into a pack of wild horses, neighing and stomping your hooves, but I’ll tell you anyway: Being a bear is the bomb! Hey you long-nosed log, where is my juice?”

  “In the fridge, oh avatar of Baloo,” the long-nosed log replied humbly, without looking up from his work. “Lend me a paw and pass it over here. The juice, I mean, not your paw.”

  “What poor manners,” Pasha reproached his friend and reached for the juice.

  “Tell me more about the bear,” I said. “What skills, traits and particularities does he have? I’m curious.”

  “Um...” Pasha sucked on the straw and only once the juicebox began to cave in, he exhaled loudly and only then attended to my curiosity. “I have not fully understood yet—there wasn’t much time—but I found out that my stamina is doubled. There’s a bonus to strength too, something to do with level. And we need to earn more money, ‘cause the grizzly has his own gear. Or something like that.”

  “And how do you do damage? With your teeth and claws?” I grew even more interested, vividly imagining Pasha in his grizzly form, phlegmatically chewing up the enemy.

  “Uh-huh,” my companion nodded. “But that’s also full of various details like levels and buffs and stuff. We’ll figure it out in due time, basically. All right there, Bogart, what do we have for our barbecue tomorrow?”

  Sasha scratched the tip of his nose with his knife, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, calculating something, and reported:

  “It’s all almost ready, I just need to buy some meat and marinate it. I already told Butcher Bob to save us a pig neck in advance. Well, and we’re also waiting for Wallace and Morgana to show up.”

  “WALL-E? Where’s he bouncing around these days?” Pasha asked.

  “Still with my brigade. You know those combat engineers. They’re either building a bridge or blowing one up. Here’s what I think I’ll do: I’m going to get everything ready right now and stop by the bar for a drink. After that way I’ll pop into the super—maybe the whiskey will remind me of what else I need to buy.”

  “Fine, we’ll change the cartridges while you’re out,” I approved the plan.

  “No one asks me a damn thing as usual,” sighed Pasha, playing the victim of some dictatorship.

  The replacement of the cartridges passed by in the habitual order, except that we had to use the last cartridge on the face regenerator, the one restoring Pasha’s lower jaw.

  “Listen, I was just wondering, is it about time that I head home?” I asked Pasha, after the procedure was done. “Snegov is here almost all the time, so I don’t think I’m that necessary anymore.”

  “What’s with you?”“ Pasha propped himself up on his elbows. “Did we do something wrong, Kiera?”

  “No, everything is great,” I even laughed. “But I have my own house, rehearsals, concerts...”

  “Well, you’re not having any problems with your practices,” reasoned Pasha. “And you said yourself that you guys don’t have any shows scheduled. On top of that, they’re sure to send our long-nosed log to Africa soon, and then I’ll be left here alone—with Sarge.”

  “How soon?” I asked, baffled. “Wasn’t he complaining that his vacation was too long and he didn’t know what to do, except ‘languish in his VR sarcophagus?’ Doesn’t he have another month or two on his break?”

  “Oh didn’t he tell you?” Pasha asked, surprised. “He finally made lieutenant. He’s going to the big time. They’ve given him a platoon.”

  “I won’t pretend that I understand what that has to do with his vacation ending early.”

  “They’re calling him up,” Pasha explained patiently. “There’s no one there to command the platoon. For now, it’s assigned to garrison duty, the deputy CO is in charge, but it’s not the same thing. So they’re calling up our beloved Lieutenant Snegov—he’s going to be issuing orders.”

  “Mmmyeah...” I drawled. “Fun life you guys lead. All right, in that case I’ll hang around a little longer. But keep in mind, as soon as I gain worldwide renown, I’m off on my world tour!”

  “Agreed,” Pasha said and picked up his T-shirt. “Let’s go down to the street. I don’t want to miss the sight of Sasha fleeing the supermarket in a shopping cart again.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  At last the momentous day arrived—Pasha’s jaw regenerator was coming off and he would be able to eat solid food again. The pilot’s ecstasy knew no bounds. He was glowing so much that at any moment now, I expected sun specks to go running along the walls turning the place into a disco.

  For the occasion, Sasha arranged a picnic with a barbecue and other treats. Two more joined our small company—Wallace, who came literally the day before, and whose nickname was WALL-E and an old friend of Sasha’s named Eugenia. Wallace served as an engineer-sapper, in the same peacekeeping brigade as Sasha. All three of them had been friends since childhood—or as Sasha put it, ‘we shared one pot in pre-K.’ Wallace also had the reputation of being the only respectable person in their trio, as he was married and already had two children.

  On the other hand, respectability did not get in the way of his fooling around.

  As for Eugenia, who liked to go by Morgana—we had quite a lot in common. She was the only one who like me had no relationship whatsoever with the armed forces and also played Barliona—but she also worked in there as an in-game lawyer. She had never actually met Pasha before and only knew of him because of Sasha’s tales and so for once I did not feel like I was the only newcomer in this company.

  Mount Mashuk was chosen as the location for the picnic. Pasha insisted that this was the only place worthy of entertaining such a respectable audience. Now I can’t speak for the venerable public, but the plain at the foot of the mountain seemed perfectly fine to me. Still, here we were. Overgrown with forests and fragrant grasses, the mountain’s slopes curved fancifully in places, forming level meadows suitable for camping.

  The first thing the guys did when we reached our camping ground was pull out bags and latex gloves and started picking up the refuse left behind by the previous campers. Pleasantly surprised, I joined the cleaning without objection.

  “I have a special poster for them, for the pigs,” Wallace huffed spitefully, stuffing the gathered garbage into a green bag with an alphanumeric combination on its side. “Help me out Pasha—not as a fellow grunt but as a friend—there’s another bag in the trunk.”

  The pilot looked into the beaten up SUV, which had hauled us up here, and fished out a frame with a solar panel battery. A hoop large enough to fit around a tree trunk was mounted to the frame.

  After fiddling around for a couple of minutes, Pasha attached the device to a tree and turned it on with interest. Three dirty piglets appeared on the neon screen with the inscription ‘Only you can prevent the three little pigs from littering in the forest!’

  “Verily,” Sasha approved, brandishing his shovel with such menace that it seemed he was about to bash in some littering piglets. “Is that enough?”

  He straightened out, standing in a hole dug for garbage disposal and wiped the sweat from his bald spot with a handkerchief.

  “More than enough,” Wallace nodded. “Step aside...”

  Sasha climbed out and the first plastic bag went flying into the pit. In general, these bags intrigued me quite a bit: In addition to the incomprehensible alphanumeric combination on the side, they were equipped with a vacuum clasp and a fishing line with a ringlet.

  “Fire in the hole!” Wallace yelled cheerfully and pulled the little ring.

  A wave of heat erupted from the pit accompanied by a tiny mushroom cloud of ash. And that was that. Nothing remained of the bag filled with empty bottles, beer cans and other litter.

  “That’s how we recycle out th
ere,” the sapper explained to me, throwing the next bag into the pit. I figured by ‘there’ he was referring to Africa.

  “Want to try to yank it?” he asked, offering me the ringlet.

  “Will it blow my hands off?” I asked just in case.

  “Well, you’re not going to hold the package in your hands, are you? So go ahead and pull away, no need to be afraid,” Wallace encouraged me and walked to his SUV for the next package, of which he had a box in his trunk.

  I looked at the ring in my hand doubtfully, took a deep breath and, following Sasha’s example, hollered, “Fire in the hole!” and pulled. A hot blast blew into my face, ruffled my hair, and...that’s it. Nothing to be afraid of—if you don’t hug the package to yourself, that is.

  “You look like Medusa,” Pasha giggled. In view of his limited mobility, he had been tasked with uncorking the beer bottles.

  “Yes, there is a resemblance,” Sasha agreed with him and clarified, “Medusa after surviving an explosion in a fireworks factory.”

  “It’s a pity that I’m missing my ability to turn you clowns into stone,” I complained. “You lot would make a nice group sculpture. The Burghers of the Nuthouse.”

  “Oh what fine black bile,” Sasha quipped, quickly thrust a ring into my hand from the next demo package and stepped aside. Here was my second chance to cremate ‘the artifacts of a civilized society,’ as Wallace had dramatically dubbed the garbage. Meanwhile, the author of this bon mot was watching the fire, periodically prodding it with a long branch and filling in the loss of liquid with the help of a bottle of beer.

  “Kiera!” Two voices shouted indignantly behind my back. “Bogart’s eating raw meet again!”

  Turning around, I saw Sasha, scurrying for the forest with a piece of meat between his teeth. He didn’t go far though—right up to the treeline, where he stopped and began to collect more firewood as if nothing had happened.

  “He’s a ranger after all. A born savage,” Pasha chided me. “If you only knew what kind of crap they eat when they’re behind enemy lines. Sometimes I was even afraid to extract them: They spend two weeks in the jungle, subsisting on god knows what, sleeping in lean-tos made of their own shit, and then when they hear my bird chopping the air, they come running out like...like an undiscovered tribe, only one that’s armed with AKs and Dragunovs instead of clubs and spears. So just make sure you eat your fill because this one leaves no grub behind.”