The Kings of Edonis
Author: G.R. Cooper
Date: 2016-02-19 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Science Fiction
Description: After permanently leaving his earthly body behind and entering the Omegaverse forever, Duncan Sheriden is ready to begin his quest - to find his friend Shannon, who he had inadvertently resurrected within the game world after her death. Resurrected her within a portion of the Omegaverse separate from the space battles he’d come to know, within a fantasy world where standard Role Playing Game rules applied, a fantasy world that operated at the speed of thought. Every second of the earthly time-scale was a much greater length of time within the fantasy realm, and every second he spent before ent

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Also By

Dedication

Prolog

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Epilog

Character Sheet

Acknowledgments

About the Author

The Kings of Edonis

by G.R. Cooper

Copyright © 2016 G.R. Cooper

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Also By G.R. Cooper

Omegaverse Series:

Shepherd Moon

Shepherd’s Crook

Shepherd’s Cross

To Kelton and John for helping to invent online gaming, and Jonathan for dragging my ass into it.

Prolog

Duncan Sheriden looked down at the smartphone-like object in his hand. He pressed his thumb to the center of the screen, to a graphical button labeled with his name, that depressed with a click. He watched as the seconds passed, as a circle of light grew around his thumb. As the circle completed, Duncan’s name grayed out on the screen and the button disappeared.

Duncan tossed the now useless device across the room, where it landed, silently, on the couch within his apartment on the space station that orbited Kepler 22B within the Omegaverse. He had been playing the virtual reality game for six months, through a career seemingly touched by fate. He had found amazing weapons and gathered untold riches - he had purchased a top of the line merchant ship and begun a successful trade mission with the aliens of the Canis Arcturus on Eta Bootis - but most of all, he had found an abandoned space station and claimed it as his own. It had seemed his luck was endless.

Then he found out that it wasn’t luck, after all, that had propelled him forward.

It was a test. A test that he had apparently passed.

He reached down to pet his dog and then started walking, toward the door.

“C’mon Bear,” he said, speaking to the large Bernese Mountain dog. His friend and business partner within the Omegaverse - Phani Mutha from Pune, India - had begun a lucrative in-game pet store, selling AI dogs, cats and lambs that he had created to the tens of millions of players within the virtual world based game. Duncan and the dog had hit it off from the first instant that they’d met, and he was often shocked by how real both the dog and his feelings toward it felt. He reached down and scratched behind Bear’s ear and the dog stretched out, with a little sigh of contentment.

Duncan looked back to the device that he’d thrown onto the couch. With that simple press of a button, he had severed his consciousness from his physical body. The body, the only vessel his mind had known since birth would now, he was told, log out of the Omegaverse, go into Duncan’s bedroom in Charlottesville Virginia, get into bed and simply die. His mind, his being, would continue on within the virtual world. He wondered if that now meant that he was, in fact, nothing more - and nothing less - than an artificial intelligence.

Where did the “real world” end and where did consciousness reside if it didn’t have a physical host?

That question had plagued him, had kept him awake, for weeks, ever since he had noticed that the little resurrection device had not only contained an entry labeled ‘Duncan’ for himself. It contained an entry for all of his friends that had tried out his new, next generation, virtual helmet; a helmet that provided unparalleled realism and that the Omegaverse Corporation had chosen him to beta test. The difference had been, he admitted, like the difference between playing computer games on a standard, old school, flat-screen monitor and playing it on the first generation VR helmets had been. Night and day.

The new helmet not only gave the visual impression of actually being there in the way that the previous generation’s helmets did, it added immersion for all of the senses. Every sound, smell, touch and taste of the virtual universe was represented. It became like there was no difference, in his mind, between the Omegaverse and his real life.

His friends had agreed when they’d tried it, including Shannon.

Shannon, who had been one of the friends to initially talk him into entering the Omegaverse, and had provided a great deal of guidance, support and love in his early ‘career’, had suddenly died - of a brain aneurysm - shortly after trying out the helmet.

When Duncan had first received the device, and had noticed the entries for all of his friends, he had also seen that they were all grayed out except for one. Except for Shannon.

Without thinking, he had depressed the button and Shannon had been reborn into the Omegaverse; confused, overwhelmed and, it turned out, violent towards Duncan. She had knocked him out, leaving him with only an idea, a guess, of where she had gone.

She was only a consciousness, and, it seemed, not wholly herself. Where did she go? Did she need his help?

That was what he was determined to find out.

That was his quest.

He had been given the device out by his in-game, AI assistant. A personality named Clive who, it turned out, was not an artificial intelligence at all. Clive had left a series of bread crumbs that Duncan had followed through the Omegaverse until it led to Clive’s home within a fantasy based realm. A realm, it turned out, where Clive was the king.

And much more than the king.

As Duncan and Clive stood on the balcony of his tower, within the center of a great walled city, Clive had explained to Duncan how he was an anthropologist - and that he was studying humans. Studying them in preparation for making first contact between his species and Homo sapiens. It was Clive that had manufactured his incredible string of good luck. Clive had been searching for someone, someone whose way of thinking made them a candidate to be the first human to learn the truth behind the Omegaverse. Someone suited to be the initial contact between the human race and the alien species conducting the tests. Duncan still didn’t know what that meant or what the implications of the choice were.

Duncan had been floored to learn that the Omegaverse was nothing more than a tool being used by several alien civilizations for the study of mankind. In fact, at least two of the alien species that he’d fought against for control of the various star systems or negotiated trade agreements with - the Canis Arcturus, known as the Werewolves, and the Arn - were not AI at all, but sentient alien beings in their own right. As he stared down into the medieval city below, Clive had explained that Duncan was in a unique position; that while nearly a hundred million humans had played within the Omegaverse, only one knew the real truth. Duncan.

He explained that humans could not only be studied within the Omegaverse, they could be resurrected within it. Could and had. Tens of thousands of humans had played underneath their virtual reality helmets long enough that a full recording of their consciousness could be recreated, and they had been born again within the realm below after they had died on Earth. They knew that they had died within the outer world, but they didn’t know anything about the true nature of the world or its purpose.

Shannon, however, was a different case. Duncan learned that each person who was revived within the game world was only given that opportunity if enough of their consciousness had been recorded to ensure that it really was them, completely. Clive would not have, he said, allowed her to be brought back given the amount of her that had been recorded - there was no way to be sure that it was really her, all of her, and that the risk for something like a psychotic break was too great.

Coupled with the fact that she had been brought back to life cold, without any of the preparation or orientation that Clive’s people had developed over several millennia through multiple sentient species, left Shannon in a precarious position; her mental state could not be predicted, and Clive claimed that he had no way of determining it. She was, he concluded, somewhere within the realm below. Possibly in trouble, likely unable to cope with this new reality that had been thrust upon her with no warning or instruction whatsoever.

As he contemplated the new world, he was also told that this new, to him, part of the Omegaverse functioned differently from the rest in one fundamental way - the time scale of the world was that of thought. Each instant on Earth, or in the outer Omegaverse, was days or weeks within the new realm. Each second that Shannon had in that world left Duncan that much further behind in this one.

So, in addition to needing to find Shannon; to determine if she needed his help; to determine if her initial hostility carried over to the present - he had to hurry, to enter that realm. Every second he delayed was an incalculably greater period of time that Shannon had to get further away within the world, to grow in her powers and, maybe, her hatred and resentment for Duncan. But first, he had needed to sever himself from his terrestrial body, to enable his consciousness to be able to enter Clive’s realm.

Duncan looked from the couch to the doorway of his little apartment. He didn’t know when he would see this place again. He didn’t know how long it would take him to find Shannon. There was, he admitted to himself, quite a lot that he didn’t know. Quite a lot. He didn’t really know how going from a science-fiction based game universe into a fantasy RPG universe would effect his decisions. He assumed that meant that he would have to start at the beginning, at the bottom, and work his way up into the knowledge and skills required to succeed in this new world, to learn anew everything he needed to get by in this new corner of the Omegaverse.

It was time to start learning.

“C’mon Bear,” he repeated, then began walking toward the door.

Chapter 1

Duncan Sheriden reached down to his left side and began to scratch behind Bear’s ears. The dog, nearly waist high and a hundred kilograms, large even for a Bernese Mountain Dog, moved into and nuzzled against Duncan’s left hip. A fresh breeze, warm and carrying the fecund smells of the distant valley floor, flowed over them as they stood near the top of a single peak in the seemingly infinite mountain chain that stretched to their north and south.

He turned from the westward vista and looked to the east. He could just make out the sound of the pounding surf at the base of the range where it bordered the expanse of a grey-green ocean that stretched to the horizon.

Boats dotted the surface, coming and going from a point to his north. The city - he didn’t know the name - that he’d viewed from Clive’s office seemed to have been built through the mountain chain, or at least had a twin on the opposite, seaward, side. The great half-circular wall that enclosed the western side of the city from the valley beyond was matched by a like wall that rose out of the ocean in the east. It seemed, from Duncan’s vantage, to enclose a vast harbor works.

Duncan, followed closely by Bear, moved to the eastern escarpment and looked down to the harbor. He fought down his ingrained unease with heights and examined more closely the part of the city below. It was built into the living rock of the mountain, and only extended into the enclosed harbor through a vast interlocking network of piers and docks. Figures, ant-like below, moved to and from the docked boats, their shadows stark and long in the morning sunshine.

He looked back up to the star, musing that at least the sun seemed to rise in the east on this planet - unless his assumptions had skewed his sense of direction. Maybe he was looking at the rising sun in the west, which put the city to his south. He shook off that thought - it really didn’t matter as long as everyone used the same reference point, and, he assumed, that since the populace of this realm were originally from Earth, they would all use the standard cardinal point references.

Duncan sighed, which Bear echoed, and began walking toward the city. He had a lot to learn, even after a very information filled morning.

Duncan had entered this realm - he still didn’t know what to call it - earlier in the morning. After leaving his apartment in the Kepler 22 space station, he had responded “Clive’s office” when asked by the automatic transporter for his destination. In response, it had dropped him into a nondescript room, much like the one on the space station that he used to trade with the Canis Arcturus, the Werewolves.

It was a simple, windowless, white cube of a room dominated, in the center, by a lone screen standing on a plinth. Unlike the Werewolf station, however, the screen did not display a merchant’s dream of virtual objects for sale. It showed what, Duncan assumed, was a standard role playing game character sheet.

The sheet was pre-populated with Duncan’s current character name. Wulfgar. He left it alone. It displayed the caveat that once the character sheet was generated and the player entered the world, he would be unable to change the name, or any of the characteristics he chose for that matter, without completely exiting the world and beginning over.

In any case, he would be unable to leave the world without losing all progress. Any character advancement would be nullified once he passed back into the Omegaverse at large. That answered one of his initial questions. He would not be able to leave his personal quest in order to check on the status of his friends in the outer game world.

He didn’t really worry about that. His quest - to find his friend Shannon and help her, if she needed it - was the most important thing on his mind. Otherwise, he felt absolutely no pressure to do anything at all. It was liberating, he thought. He had, for the first time in his life, no feeling of pressing obligations. He could do anything and go anywhere in the universe. His old life was over. His new life was hours old, and his new life was, as far as he knew, literally limitless.

He couldn’t die. He wouldn’t end, unless he decided to - and he couldn’t, at this point, foresee any conditions where he would want to end his existence. He had an infinite amount of time and space with which to define and redefine, as he saw fit, his entire life. If he got tired of one thing or place, all he had to do was find something else and stay there for as long as it interested or amused him. He was almost glad to have the structure of the game world laid out in front of him. If gave him some sort of hook, a beginning, on determining the beginning of his post-life time.

Post life? He shrugged off that description. Post organic? Neo sentient? He couldn’t even come up with a simple title for his new life. It was all too much to wrap his brain around. He shook off the bewilderment and looked back to the screen.

Wulfgar. He would have to start thinking of himself like that. He needed to subsume his previous existence, to become what he was pretending to be in this new world.

“Hey Bear,” he laughed, “you go ahead and start calling me Wulfgar, OK?”

The dog looked up at him, cocked his head and lolled his tongue. Wulfgar took that as acceptance and reached down to scratch the dog.

“OK, that’s the name taken care of,” he continued reading down the list of the character sheet. He scanned the entries.

Strength. Pretty self explanatory. That would effect how much he could carry and it would provide a modifier to how much physical damage he could both take and inflict.

Intelligence. That would determine both his ability to learn and effectiveness of any magic he was to try, as well his facility with new skills - any skills he used would get an experience point boost based on his intelligence. That didn’t make much sense to Wulfgar, but he assumed that would be the case for much of this new world at first.

Agility. Bonuses to both speed and his ability to hit. A highly agile person, he read, would have the advantage in an otherwise even fight - their hits would land first, disrupting the attack of their opponent. It would also provide bonuses to purely physical activities, like climbing or moving stealthily.

Personality. That effected the way that non-player characters interacted with the player.

“Why don’t they just call it ‘charisma’ like everyone else?” muttered Wulfgar. He had no interest in NPCs, at least as far as he knew.

Fortune. In other words, luck. That seemed to be the most nebulous, and thus least interesting, aspect to Wulfgar. All it seemed to indicate was a boost in the amount or quality of loot he would find. Wulfgar wasn’t in this world for loot, he was here for a singular purpose. Besides, if this place was anything like any game he was familiar with, a profusion of loot would eventually follow - whether quickly or long term, and he was in this for as long as necessary.

So, he had five attributes to choose from and twenty-five points to distribute. The most he could put into any one attribute initially was ten. He could spread, evenly, his points between every attribute and be a perfectly average, he assumed, five points across the board. He began to feel a little pressure in this decision - if he chose poorly, he’d have to give up any progress he’d made in order to ‘re-roll’ the character and reset the stats. He tried to imagine problems that he was going to overcome.

First, he needed to be able to travel widely. He had no idea what he was going to face or who he was going to have to deal with. The mention of ‘stealth’ appealed to him. The best way, he thought, to deal with the unforeseen problems he imagined that he was going to have to deal with was to avoid them in the first place.

So, ten points to Agility. He wanted that maxed out. That left fifteen points. He was a little put off, in that there was no explanation about the scales involved - but that was pretty much standard in his limited gaming experience. Was ten points ten times better than one point? Was it several orders of magnitude better? Was it a Richter scale where each additional point was ten times more powerful or a simple proportional increase, as in two was twice as much as one, and four was twice as much as two? He really didn’t feel that there was enough information to make what felt like a permanent choice. All he could do was to try to guess what kind of ‘game’ he was going to play and tailor his choices accordingly.

There was no mention of ‘hit points’ or anything like that - just that strength provided a modifier to how much damage he could take. He assumed that meant that any sort of hit points was proportional to his level within the game - that seemed to be one of the classic ways of dealing with it.

He was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed and just decided to go with his first, best, gut instinct. After maxing out Agility, he decided that doing the same for Strength was probably a safe bet as well, leaving him five points for the other three. He just threw the rest into Intelligence - he wanted to take advantage of any experience bonuses he could get. He would let any problems with Personality and Luck take care of themselves.

Once he had taken care of his attributes, he was given a list of choices covering his origin. He scanned down the list. There were several varieties of human, as well as the standard spread of the various fantasy requisites - elf, dwarf, gnome, goblin. In addition, he saw two that were familiar to him from the outer Omegaverse - the Arn and Canis Arcturus.

All but the human choices, however, were grayed out - unavailable - to Wulfgar. He wondered if that was just for him, due to his special knowledge about the makeup of the player base, or whether all newly resurrected humans were limited to beginning their new existence, once again, as a human. Did his special knowledge, that the Arn and Canis Arcturus - at the minimum - were not AI but representatives of their respective alien species, put him in a special place among human players? Clive had said so, and Wulfgar was determined to keep his promise; to keep Clive’s secret. No other players would find out that they were part of a alien study on humans, at least not from him.

Wulfgar hoped, at the least, that keeping that secret would count as favorable within the study. He suddenly felt something like the weight, the responsibility, for the entire human species as a representative to the varied alien cultures of the galaxy. He shrugged it off - all he could do was his best, and hope that his actions painted humanity in a positive light.

Scanning through the long list of options, he found what he thought he was looking for, the Highlanders. Given their origin in the mountains, they had a natural physicality that gave them an added boost, +1 in Agility, as well as the first level of the Climbing skill.

Since he was planning on playing a stealthy, low profile kind of character, he used his first skill choices in a way that he thought would best suit his style. The first of his four skill points he spent on Stealth.

“Congratulations!”, he heard, as though his inner voice was actually addressing him. “You have gained a level in Stealth!”

He thought about it and the information about the skill seemed a part of his mind - something he had seemingly known and, in fact, he felt like there wasn’t a time when he couldn’t remember what Stealth’s skill gave him. Weird. By trying to be stealthy, he lowered his detection radius. Each level he gained would reduce by 1.5%, multiplied by his Agility, his visual and aural radii. Each level he gained would allow him to move stealthily for ten seconds. Once he used the skill, there would be a cool-down period of ten minutes before he would be allowed to use it again. His success depended upon a number of a variables, including his clothing and gear, line of sight between him and anyone he was hiding from, and even atmospheric conditions - it would be easier to use Stealth during a thunderstorm at night than during a clear, blue day at noon.

Knowing that even the most successful sneak-thief was occasionally discovered and needed to have some sort of combat ability, he read through the fighting skills associated with Stealth. One that jumped out, and he immediately selected, was Hidden Stab. If he attacked someone while in Stealth mode, it increased the damage of a small blade, and it factored in the bonus not only on his Hidden Stab and Small Blade levels, but on his Strength and Agility as well. That seemed, to Wulfgar, to suit both his attributes and play style perfectly.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Hidden Stab!”

His next choice, he thought, was obvious. Small Blade. He quickly chose it, gaining the first level, so that he would have to-hit and damage bonuses when using a knife or short sword. Given that Hidden Stab used that skill to factor in damage bonuses, it seemed a no-brain decision.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Small Blade!”

That left Wulfgar with one skill point left to spend. He saw nothing that told him that he had to spend it immediately. It would do him no good until he did, but he decided that he wanted to have at least one point in reserve. For now.

Wulfgar began walking toward the north, through a beautiful mountain valley. Though more or less level, the glade was near the peak of the mountain chain, a few hundred meters above either the ocean to his right or valley floor to his left. As he walked, Bear by his side, through the fresh, bright morning, he breathed deep of the intoxicating combination of mountain air and ocean breeze. He couldn’t ever remember feeling at once so relaxed and so invigorated. Bear, seeming to match his mood, ran ahead and began to roll through a small patch of gorgeous, blue flowers.

Feeling playful, Wulfgar joined his dog and they began to wrestle. The mountain dog rolled onto his back and snorted, then sneezed.

“Allergic to the flowers?” he asked the puppy lightly.

He reached over to one of the blooms and looked at it closely. It didn’t look like any flower he knew, but, he admitted to himself, he was no botanist. He pulled on the stem just below the spread of the flower, and his fingers slipped, crushing the plant.

“Your Herb Lore level is too low to harvest this plant,” his inner voice said to him.

He thought, and brought to mind what Herb Lore was. The skill added the ability to detect valuable plants. Each level in the skill increased the amount he could harvest from a single plant as well as his detection range.

Wulfgar rolled onto his back and thought out loud.

“I am going to need some skills besides the ones that will let me disappear,” he mused. “I’m sure this wouldn’t have been created as a skill if there weren’t some use for these plants within the world.”

He looked around the little valley spread around him. It was covered with a large number of plants. At this point, he had no idea if this was some sort of herbal treasure trove or just one of many little vales spread throughout the world. He shrugged. He wouldn’t need the valuable plants for an income - when he had cleaned out his earthly bank accounts before entering the Omegaverse permanently, he had purchased almost one hundred million credits in game currency - he was set for life, or whatever this was. Still, plants were usually valuable in games for more than their monetary value.

He shrugged again.

“What the hell,” he said, and spent his last remaining skill point on level 1 Herb Lore.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Herb Lore!”

Instantly, the field around him changed, subtly.

The flowers, in an area about five meters in every direction, were, somehow, known to him. He knew that the blue flowers were called Shepherd’s Piss. Wulfgar rolled his eyes and thought, “Stupid name.” His knowledge - at least at this point - held no information about how it got that name. He did, however, now know that the flower only grew in high mountain vales and was considered uncommon in this part of the world, rare in others. It was a vital ingredient in a potion called Scampering Goat, a potion that gave the drinker the equivalent of ten levels in climbing ability for one hour.

That could come in handy, Wulfgar thought, as he began pulling up flowers. He began to notice that he was able to successfully gather the required potion ingredients from a flower about a third of the time. Two thirds of the time, however, he only managed to mangle the flower and produce nothing useful. About one in ten times, however, he was able to gather twice a ‘normal’ take from a flower.

After a few minutes, he’d cleaned out the area around himself, then moved off to the next patch of flowers. As he approached them he recognized them as more of the same - Shepherd’s Piss. The process repeated itself as he cleaned out five patches within the little valley. The little leathern bag that hung from his rawhide belt - wrapped around a large blanket that, kilt-like, enveloped his large frame - began to fill.

At the last patch of flowers he noticed a single, rose-like flower that grew forlornly near the middle of the valley. As he looked at it, he could discern nothing about it, so he turned his attention back to the Shepherd’s Piss. As he pulled up one of the last of the blue flowers, his inner voice again spoke.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Herb Lore!”

Wulfgar straightened, put the last of the blue flowers into his bag, and his attention was drawn back to the rose. He now saw, he assumed thanks to his higher level in Herb Lore, that it was called Billy Goat’s Rope. A rare flower, chewing it gave the eater an increase of plus one then ten times their Climbing level for twenty-four hours - even if you didn’t have Climbing as a skill, gnawing on this plant would give you level 10 for a day. As new to the world as Wulfgar was, he could still recognize what a powerful find this was. He thought more about the flower and knew that it only grew, like the Shepherd’s Piss, in high glades and was only found around that blue flower, but only seldom found at all. Wulfgar wondered if there was some sort of symbiotic relationship between the two, then bent to pick it.

As he rose, with the successfully harvested plant now in his hand, he looked back to the patch of Shepherd’s Piss. New information on the plant came to the fore of his consciousness, and he knew that the little blue flower bloomed once a month. He looked down to the Billy Goat’s Rope, but had no idea what its life cycle was.

“Maybe at third level Herb Lore,” he muttered as he whistled for Bear.

Wulfgar and Bear left the little valley and made their way up a small hillock that was actually the peak of one of the taller mountains in the chain. As they came out of the protective cover of the glade, the wind, never absent, picked up. Wulfgar’s kilted blanket lifted in the breeze and his bare thighs chilled. He began to step over small, pointed stones - his unshod soles offering little protection. He wondered why he wasn’t even given shoes.

“I know the poor, barefoot mountain folk is pretty stereotypical, but this is ridiculous,” he muttered as he crested the peak and looked down to the valley below.

After filling out his character sheet he had emerged, clad only in his dingy belted blanket, from a small cave in the high mountains. He wasn’t sure what he expected - maybe waking up in a small village inn would have been nice - but leaving the bright, clean room and entering a dank, dark cave wasn’t high on his list of “Great Ways to Enter a New World”. He turned and, unable to see the back of the cave, felt the slime covered wall for any sign of the door he’d just come through. He could find none.

The morning he had spent making his way toward the city whose tallest buildings he could just make out in the distance, well below his vantage high in the mountains, had ended at the valley that was just above the city. As he made his way over the edge of the peak, he finally got a look down the slope at the path he would have to take to get to civilization.

The drop dizzied him. It wasn’t as sheer as El Capitan, but it wasn’t a stroll down his Blue Ridge Mountains either. He tried to focus down the mountain, looking for paths. As he did, he began to notice routes, and that they were somehow highlighted to him.

“That must be the Climbing Skill,” he told Bear as he looked up to steady himself and regain his breath, “showing me the possible ways down.” He gulped, “Unfortunately, buddy, most of the routes are in red, with only a couple in orange.” He assumed that ‘red’ was more difficult than ‘orange’, and the obvious danger of the really difficult looking routes assured him that he was right.

He began to walk toward the least intimidating of the orange routes when he stopped, and, remembering the day, pulled the leafy Billy Goat’s Rope out of his bag. He looked at the plant, knowing its value, not wanting to waste it. Then he looked back to the route down, not wanting to die.

Wulfgar crammed the leaves into his mouth and began chewing. It tasted vaguely minty. Not bad at all. As he watched, the routes down the mountains solidified, changed colors. While some of the red lines remained red, a few changed to orange and one or two to yellow. The easiest one, however, the one he’d been heading for, became a bright, calming, comforting green.

He wondered what his current skill in Climbing was and was answered by an ethereal scroll like parchment appearing in the side of his view. He looked toward it and it leapt into focus in front of him. He quickly scanned down the sheet until he found the skills listing. Underneath, first in the list, was Climbing. In parenthesis after the title, the number twenty was italicized. That tracked with what Wulfgar expected. His level one Climbing, then the plus one gave him level two, then times ten gave him level twenty. For the next day. None of the other skill levels he read were italicized, and he assumed that was meant to indicate the temporary nature of the skill level.

“No time to waste, buddy” he said to Bear and they moved toward the edge.

“Green or not,” said Wulfgar as he edged out over onto the cliff-face, “this is going to be one hell of a climb.” He lowered himself down, to a small ledge that jutted out into space. It left him with just his head poking above the cliff. He looked directly into Bear’s eyes, the dog was now laying on the ridge just in front of him, both paws hanging off into space.

“How they hell are you going to get down?” Wulfgar muttered. “Even with the additional skill level, I doubt I can carry a beast like you.”

Bear responded by dragging his tongue from Wulgar’s chin to his forehead.

Wulfgar rubbed his face onto the part of his blanket that was draped over his right shoulder, trying to dry himself. As he did, Bear liberally spread what felt like at least another pint of dog spit on the side of his head - and it felt like most of it wound up in his left ear.

“Aww, cut it out, buddy,” said Wulfgar as he lowered himself outside of Bear’s tongue range. He tried to shake out his ear while maintaining a grip on the wall face in front of him. He turned and dropped to the ledge he was standing on, sitting with his legs dangling off into space. He mused on how different he felt than before - he was either becoming used to extreme heights or his new racial characteristics were rapidly overcoming his earlier fears.

He looked between his legs and noted that a much larger ledge was just below. He scooted his butt over the edge and dropped his feet down below. This ledge was much wider and ran around to the side of the mountain out of his view. As he looked, Bear bounded around the corner and ran up to him, then dropped onto his back for his usual belly rub.

Wulfgar bent and began a vigorous rub, “Well, that answers the first question. At least I know you’ll be able to get down by yourself.”

He laughed, “I wonder if I could have just ridden you down the side of the mountain.”

As if in response, Bear snorted, then rolled onto his stomach and looked up at Wulfgar, seemingly waiting to watch his friend attempt the next stretch of his decent.

After several hours, Wulfgar was nearing the bottom of the cliff face. He stood back on the largest ledge yet - they’d been gaining in size as he got lower in altitude and soon he would be able to walk the rest of the way to the valley floor. He looked up, to take in the totality of his climb. Just as his face raised, a shadow crossed over his head as a large eagle flew by.

He was just starting to wonder whether the eagle was a danger to him when he felt a slight, wet slap in between his eyes. Startled, he backed a step and raised his hand to his face.

“What the fuck?” he muttered as he felt his forehead.

He brought his hand away and looked at it.

“Bird shit?”

He was stunned. He looked to Bear.

“That eagle shit on me.”

Bear tilted his head sideways.

Wulfgar turned, incredulous, and began to walk toward the next step in his descent, when his right foot shot out from underneath him and he fell squarely on his ass.

“What the fuck?” he shouted, louder this time.

He felt an ooze between his toes that was matched by a slimy, cold feeling under his right thigh. He rolled off to the right and stood, favoring his left, clean, foot, while holding the kilted portion of his covering off of his ass. He looked down at what he’d slipped in.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered. He’d stepped in, and slipped on, a large, brown, stinking pile of shit from some unknown animal. Whatever it was, he thought, it was much, much larger than an eagle, if its spoor was any indication.

He started dragging his foot through the thin, brown grass that dotted the slope, trying to clean the stool from between his toes. He noticed Bear moving away, upwind of him.

“I don’t suppose you want to lick this off of me, do you buddy?”

The dog just snorted and moved off further.

Wulfgar pulled off his belt and began unraveling his covering, taking care not to get any of the shit on it. After he was naked, he stood, taking in his own, new body. He looked to his crotch and his mood improved - his arms and shoulders weren’t the only things larger than his previous body. Smiling, he put his fists on his hips and looked around, trying to find some way to clean himself. A gurgling mountain stream - maybe with a convenient waterfall - would do nicely.

No such luck. He continued to drag his foot over all of the fresh grass he could find, until it was, more or less, clean. That left his leg to be cleaned. He couldn’t see anything such as leaves he could use to wipe with. Nothing. Finally, he bowed to the inevitable and dropped to his ass and began sliding around on a patch of grass that he hadn’t yet befouled.

“Shoes,” he muttered, “I have to get into the city and find a pair of shoes. And pants.”

He re-wrapped the long, dingy un-dyed muslin around himself. He knew, instinctively, just how to roll it around his body and bunch it up in the back before securing it with his belt - creating a passable kilting. He then pulled the longer portion of the blanket, bunched in the back, over his right shoulder and tucked the loose end into the belt at his belly.

As he looked up, he noticed that Bear had once again approached him. The dog seemed to be smiling.

“Hilarious, right?” Wulfgar muttered as he turned to face the city walls in the distance and began trotting toward them.

It took an hour, but Wulfgar finally reached a dirt road, built on top of small causeway that pointed toward the city a couple of kilometers distant. He paused after climbing up onto the middle of the road, and, for the first time, took in his surroundings. Still near the eastern mountain chain, it dominated the view to the north and the south, and it was matched by a twin, parallel line in the distant west. In between the two, a bright, verdant valley stretched as far to the north and the south as he could see. It was dotted with small farmsteads and the ordered fields that surrounded each.

To the southwest, the slightly elevated roadway ran until it entered a small village. As he looked around, he thought he could make out similar, tiny hamlets dropped, seemingly at random intervals, around the valley floor. Occasional copses of trees - he couldn’t tell the type, but they looked like oak - some almost large enough to be called a forest, sat among the small hills and hollows that made up the valley floor. Lines of trees could be seen here and there, and he assumed they grew on the banks of small streams or rivers. All in all, he thought, it was a very pleasant place, not unlike the Shenandoah Valley back home.

Home, he thought, suddenly. Where is that now? He realized that he would probably never return to Virginia - or maybe even Earth - and that he was in need of some new place to think of as home. Surprisingly, he found the thought comforting - freeing. His options were open and infinite. He felt no responsibilities, no pressing need to do anything at all really; except find Shannon.

He looked up as an ox drawn wain approached from the city and smiled at the driver, a farmer of late middle age. The man just scowled at Wulfgar as he drove past, and spit to the ground on the side of the cart away from Wulfgar.

“Highlander,” the man muttered derisively, just loudly enough for Wulfgar to hear, then he flicked the switch against the rump of the ox, who continued its measured, slow pace to the southwest.

Wulfgar moved back into the center of the road after the cart passed, shaking his head.

“Guess he doesn’t like us much, Bear,” he said softly. The dog snorted in agreement.

They turned up the road and approached the city.

The city wall loomed above as Wulfgar approached the gate. A pair of guards, on either side of the portcullis, stood examining travelers as they entered or left the city. One saw Wulfgar approach and motioned him to the side, away from the streams of travelers and toward the guard post.

“What’s your business?” he asked brusquely.

Wulfgar smiled as broadly as he could, “To make my fortune in the city!”

The guard guffawed, loudly, drawing the attention of several passersby.

“Not if I have anything to say about it, boy.”

He looked Wulfgar up and down, not bothering to hide his disgust.

“First, you’ll have to show me some means,” he said, “something that shows me that you aren’t going to wind up becoming nothing more than a beggar on a street corner.”

Wulfgar looked down at himself, he had nothing. He pulled the small leather bag off of his belt and opened it, showing the guard a handful of the flowers that he’d picked that morning.

“I have some Shepherd’s Piss to sell,” he said hopefully.

“And what,” growled the guard, “are you going to do when you don’t have any more piss to sell? That,” he pointed to Wulfgar’s hand, “might get you through a day or so. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“It’s all I have,” muttered Wulfgar, “but I’m a hard worker.”

“So go work on a farm. Leave the city, boy.”

Wulfgar’s temper began to rise.

“Why aren’t you asking any of the other people these questions? Why am I the only one?,” he stood tall, trying to physically intimidate the guard. “Let me through.” Wulfgar then heard his inner voice.

“Intimidation failed.”

He stood, shocked, as the guard darkened and moved toward him.

“Because,” the guard growled as he backhanded Wulfgar, knocking him to the ground, “none of these good people look,” he screwed his face up in disgust, “or smell like they’ve just rolled down a mountain of shit.”

Wulfgar gathered the blooms of Shepherd’s Piss, dropped as he fell on his ass, and his anger grew. Stuffing the flowers back into his sack, he stood and turned back to the guard, his rage burning, turning the periphery of his vision red. He moved on the guard, intending, he realized, to settle this with his fists.

He pulled up, suddenly nauseated. He realized that it wasn’t just the periphery of his vision that turned red, a bright red aura had grown around the guard as well.

Wulfgar thought for a moment, then understood. The guard was obviously a much higher level than Wulfgar, and he had little or no chance of defeating him in combat - and he would certainly be slaughtered by both guards if he decided to turn this into a physical confrontation.

He backed away, shamed as the guard laughed and turned his attention back to the crowd.

“Fucking Highlander,” the guard muttered, then he forgot Wulfgar.

Wulfgar moved away from the gate and began to wander, while thinking, along the outside perimeter of the city wall. He wondered about the message he’d received, “Intimidation failed”. He didn’t knowingly try to activate any skill, but he didn’t know how else it could have worked.

He looked down at Bear, who was following him through the short grass.

“How do you intimidate someone?”

Then, weirdly, he knew. Intimidation was an automatic check, done when either party tried to initiate it. It factored in each party’s level, their Personality and Reputation, and determined the probability of one or the other being able to stare down their opponent.

Wulfgar realized that his first level, zero Personality and no Reputation put him at the bottom rung of any kind of scale he could think of.

“I wonder if I could even intimidate you,” he said scratching Bear’s neck.

As if in response, Bear snorted, moved away a step and lifted his leg on a small bush.

While he waited for Bear to finish, Wulfgar began to wonder how he was going to enter the city. He looked around, trying to find some sort of inspiration. All he knew was that he hadn’t given up his life and entered this world in order to become a farmer. He felt Bear brush up against his thigh as the dog returned, then they continued, walking around the outside of the city wall.

As they reached the halfway point between the gate and the mountain face, Wulfgar stopped and looked back and forth between either end point. There was a guard station above the gate and another at the wall’s end, at the mountain. That made sense to Wulfgar, though the wall was sheer at that point, the angle between the wall and the mountain would make for easy purchase for a skilled climber. He was sure that once he got close, he’d be able to discern an easy path to climb at that point.

He started, shocked at his oversight.

He could just climb the damn wall!

Wulfgar looked to the wall in front of him - halfway between two guard posts gave him, he thought, the best chance of getting over undetected - and willed himself to look for a route up.

He found one, as a bright orange line stretched up the five meter high wall. He looked closely at the fortification. It was made of finely hewn, large blocks of a white stone - granite maybe - that seemed to have been placed on top of each other without any sort of mortar other bonding method. The workmanship was excellent, indeed, as far as he could tell, flawless. He would have to, slowly, work his way up the wall face using the minuscule lines between the blocks. It would be difficult and, he was sure, impossible once his Climbing level returned to normal in the morning.

But that still gave him plenty of time.

Wulfgar moved back, away from the wall, and sat, with Bear. He looked at the wall and began to wait. For darkness.

“Stay,” said Wulfgar as he stood into the dark. He moved away from the dog and toward the wall, a looming shadow in the moonless night, as quietly as he could.

“I wonder,” he thought, “if there even is a moon above this world.”

He waited. The answer didn’t come to him. Apparently, just wondering wasn’t enough to make any piece of information about the world or its rules become a part of his general knowledge. He shrugged, putting aside that factoid as he reached the wall.

Climbing the wall was simpler than he’d feared. His skill gave him indications on the way up where best to place his hands and feet for surest purchase. Wulfgar marveled at the seemingly impossibly small nooks between the almost perfectly laid blocks that he was able to grip with his fingers and toes. He moved slowly, surely, until he found his way to the top. He pulled himself, slowly, between two merlons on the crenelated parapet, and dropped quietly to the walkway.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Climbing!”

Laughing inwardly, he looked to his skill chart. It now showed his Climbing skill at level thirty. Just that easily, he’d gained, however temporarily, an additional ten levels. He looked back through the opening and down the wall. The route he’d just taken up had changed from orange to green. He could probably run up and down that wall without breaking a sweat, now. At least, he could until morning, when the Billy Goat’s Rope wore off and he returned to level two.

He smiled grimly as he looked back and forth along the wall for any sign that he’d been discovered. Since taking his place in the bushes that evening, he’d seen that guards had patrolled the wall like clockwork - once an hour a soldier from each of the guard towers met where he was now standing, halfway between the two structures. He still had, if their schedule remained the same, about half an hour until their next meeting. Plenty of time.

Wulfgar surprised himself. He would have thought that doing something like this would have been a nerve wracking experience, but he was actually enjoying himself immensely.

He began to work his way toward the tower above the southwest gate, trying to stay low, in the shadows, and moving as quietly as possible. He spent most of his time trying to scope out ahead and behind for the sudden arrival of guardsmen, as well as any routes down from the wall into the city itself. The only way that he’d seen, so far, was to hop off onto the roof of one of the small huts that sheltered up against the wall. It wouldn’t be a difficult route down, even if he wasn’t able to find any stairs to speak of.

After only a few minutes, he reached the door to the guard tower. The tower itself was only a single story square of blocks that topped the wall above the gate, which was still open allowing traffic to move freely, even at this late hour. Wulfgar frowned, he wondered if he’d have had a simpler time in approaching the gate when it was less busy. He shrugged, and looked back to the tower and its wooden door, opened to allow him to peer through the simple room to the similarly open door at the other end. The light of several lanterns, sitting on simple wooden tables, shone out into the dark night, casting elongated door shaped patches of light onto the parapet.

Wulfgar moved forward until he was just outside of the reach of the lantern light and looked through, into the guard post. He couldn’t see anyone to speak of, but could hear movement on the lower level. Apparently the guards took turns - one each climbing the wall and meeting their compatriot along the wall every hour. It was an easy job - it probably only took fifteen minutes of the hour, the rest of the time was spent watching the crowd.

He tried to remember just how much time he had left before the next scheduled patrol. He thought he had plenty, at least fifteen minutes.

Wulfgar moved into and through the light, and into the guard tower itself.

The room wasn’t huge, maybe ten meters on a side, and the route between the doors to the continuation of the parapet was through the middle. The tower, he assumed, must hang off the front and rear of the wall. Toward the outside of the wall, the room had several slits - obviously for archers - that overlooked the approaching road. The opposite, interior, wall, was bare but for a few unused torch holders. The floor had, on the outer side, several hinged wooden doors that lay closed, flush with the rest of the stone floor. Murder holes. Anyone attempting to storm the gates below would find themselves rained upon with any number of deadly attacks - rocks, boiling water, burning oil. Wulfgar had seen enough movies to be able to picture the slaughter that would ensue. A similar hinged door lay open on the interior side of the room. The ladder up from below.

Wulfgar looked to the nearest table, it was bare but for a lit lantern near the center. Another table, toward the back of the room, was similarly laid out. The third, however, seemed to have a few coins and some small rectangles of paper - a few spread fan-like on either side of the table with a larger stack near the lantern. An interrupted card game.

He approached the table.

Four silver shaded coins were strewn in between the hands.

He thought for a moment, then reached for the coins and scooped them up.

“Alignment changed. You are now Unlawful Neutral.”

“I’ll be sure to help a little old lady cross the street tomorrow to make up for it,” he muttered as he began to move back toward the door.

Then he froze.

He could hear grunting from the opening in the floor. Someone was coming up the ladder.

Frantically, Wulfgar looked around. He might be able to run out one of the open doors - but he didn’t know which way the guard was going to go. If he’d misjudged the timing, the guard could be going out the route that Wulfgar had taken in. If not, he might be going out the other door for a similar patrol in the other direction. Wulfgar cursed under his breath - he’d forgotten that there were two ways that guards from this central post could patrol. That changed his safe one patrol an hour to a perfectly on schedule two patrols an hour.

He was not only not supposed to be in the city, he was standing next to a card game that was missing four coins - coins that would be easily discovered in his pouch among a largish collection of Shepherd’s Piss.

Wulfgar decided, leaned forward to blow out the lantern nearest him, then backed into the front corner and made himself as small as possible.

A head appeared through the floor in the opposite corner of the room. It was the same guard who’d knocked him down earlier. Wulfgar felt fear well up throughout his entire body, and his skin became clammy as a cold sweat broke out.

The guard pulled himself erect, then looked back down through the hole.

“If those bastards get here to relieve our watch while I’m gone, don’t you be coming up here. I want you down there with them when I get back, not up here changing your cards or checking mine. I’ve got a days wages on this hand, and I’ll take no nonsense on your part,” he growled, then spat onto the floor.

“And don’t think I won’t ask the relief if you’ve been with them the whole time,” he yelled as he moved away from the ladder, into the room, “cause I will!”

With a start, Wulfgar remembered, just as the guard turned in his direction, to activate Stealth. He wasn’t sure that it would help him, since he wasn’t moving, but he hoped that it would. Hoped that it would prevent the guard from noticing him. From his memory, he thought that he had ten seconds until the effect - whatever it was - was spent. He hoped it was long enough.

The guard stormed through, intent on finishing his last patrol of the day’s watch, and never looked in Wulfgar’s direction. After the lumbering brute had left the guardroom - in the direction opposite from the one that Wulfgar had entered - Wulfgar waited, silently, for ten seconds. Then another minute, just to be sure.

Finally feeling a sense of relief, he stood and made his way, as quickly as he could do so while remaining silent, to the door that he’d entered. He made his way back out onto the parapet, and sped into a jog, trying to get away from the tower as fast as he could. He passed several rooftops before finding one that had a small alleyway in between it and the next hut along the wall.

Wulfgar lowered himself and, after testing the firmness of the thatched roof, dropped his full weight onto the hut, then immediately dropped into the alley. He stood, silently, waiting for an alarm to break out, some sign that his movements had been noticed and frowned upon. After a minute’s silence, he moved inward, up the alley toward the lane that paralleled the wall. He looked to his left then his right, up and down the street.

Nearing the middle of the night, there was no traffic that he could see in either direction. The huts that butted against the city wall seemed to be small shops - their wares still out in full view, not locked up for the evening.

Crime was obviously not a problem in the city.

Wulfgar felt guilty, bad for the days wages that he’d stolen from each of the two card players. Whatever the treatment he’d received, he didn’t feel like they deserved that much punishment. He thought, briefly, about climbing back up to return the coins, but he didn’t think he had the time - however badly he felt, it wasn’t enough for him to risk discovery.

As he made his way up the street, the shrill sounds of an argument erupted from toward the gate. Wulfgar frowned - the guards had probably discovered the missing coins and were throwing accusations at one another.

Wulfgar took the first turning, inward, away from the wall, and that street led him into what rapidly became a maze of twists and turns. He had just decided that he’d become lost when he felt a nuzzle on his right thigh and looked down.

“Bear!” he exclaimed, truly joyful. “Sorry, buddy, I’d forgotten all about you. Take advantage of the fight at the gate to slip through?”

The dog looked up, then licked Wulfgar’s hand, as the two of them turned and began climbing a slightly rising street into the heart of the city.

After several twists and turns, moving, Wulfgar hoped, in a more or less northward direction, they stopped at the fourth or fifth inn that they’d passed. They’d hurried by the first - assuming that the inn closest to the southwest gate was likely where the two guards, once off duty, would retire for dinner and drinks - and then several more just to make sure that they were far enough away from anyone that would recognize them.

He pushed through the doorway and a wave of smoke and heat blew out into the night air. Pulling the doorway closed behind them, Wulfgar paused to let his eyes adjust to the new light.

A balding, middle aged man approached them. He wore an apron over a stained muslin shirt and was wiping out a mug with a dirty rag.

“You’re welcome,” the man spat, “but you’ll have to vouch for the mangy cur.”

“The dog is well behaved, he’ll be no trouble,” pleaded Wulfgar.

“I was talkin’ to the dog, Highlander,” growled the man. “Now before we do anything else, show me your coin. You’ll not be getting any credit here, I can promise you that!”

Wulfgar pulled out the four silver coins and held them out.

“That’ll get you fed, drunk and a place in the stable to sleep. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it,” said Wulfgar, handing the man the coins as he moved into the crowded space. Faces that had been turned to watch the exchange shifted back to the plates and mugs in front of them, and the low rumble of conversation rose into the silence, accentuated by the popping and hissing from a large log fire that anchored one end of the long table that thrust into the room. Wulfgar moved onto the bench, into an opening between several humans and what, he was surprised to find, was a small cluster of Canis Arcturus - Werewolves.

As Wulfgar settled onto the bench, the proprietor returned with the mug, now full and spilling over the sides. He slammed it onto the table in front of him.

“Eatin’ is done on yer own,” he muttered, waving at the table full of trenchers, large bowls of stew and plates of what looked like smoked ribs. The man reached through to one of the piles of ribs and grabbed several. He then dropped them onto the floor in front of Bear, curled up behind Wulfgar.

Wulfgar took a large drink of the beer, and found it delicious. A brown ale, he guessed. Putting the mug back onto the table, he reached for one of the trenchers in front of him and began filling it with the heavy, brown stew.

“The ribs are claimed,” hissed the Werewolf across the table from him, as it broke a bone between its rows of razor sharp teeth.

“Never fancied them, myself,” said Wulfgar happily, as he tore off a piece of the stew soaked bread and pushed it into his mouth, “eat all you want.”

“We was just telling you that. That we’ll eat all we want,” grunted the Werewolf to Wulfgar’s left.

“And I,” said Wulfgar levelly, turning to look the Werewolf in the eye, “am agreeing to your proposition.”

The Canis Arcturus grunted, then broke several more bones, chewed, and swallowed.

“You know,” it said returning Wulfgar’s stare, “that humans are very, very lucky.”

“How so?”

“They taste like pig.”

“How is that lucky,” smiled Wulfgar toothlessly.

“Because if there were no pigs, we’d be eating you.”

Wulfgar laughed, turning back to his meal.

“That’s awfully true. We are lucky.”

“And tasty,” said the Werewolf, turning back to the pile of ribs in front of him.

“I wonder,” said a large man with a full head of long yellow hair and matching beard that drooped nearly to the table, who was sitting opposite Wulfgar next to the first Werewolf, “just, exactly, how Werewolf’s taste?” He continued chewing as he reached between them and took a rasher of ribs, then greedily began to eat the meat off of the bone while shifting his gaze between the two.

“I’m sure,” said the first, “that any of us old and sick enough for you to kill would be very stringy.”

The second made a sound that Wulfgar assumed was laughter.

So did the man. He looked back to Wulfgar.

“I’m Snorri,” he said through a mouthful of rib meat, “and these two are Gar and Nop.”

“Wulfgar.”

“Have some ribs, Wulfgar,” said either Gar or Nop. They looked identical, at least to Wulfgar.

“No thanks,” responded Wulfgar through another mouthful of beer, “I really don’t much care for them. Too greasy for my taste.”

“More for us,” said Snorri happily.

“Are you new here?” asked Gar - who Wulfgar had decided was the Werewolf on his side of the communal table.

“I am,” laughed Wulfgar, deciding the play the role. “I’m just down from the mountains. My little village seemed a bit small. I want to see what’s out there that’s big. This city seemed a good start.”

Snorri shrugged, “It’s a start, but there’s bigger, and there’s more interestin’,” he said, wagging a bone at Wulfgar in emphasis of his point.

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, this place is too quiet, by half. The king, bless him, has this city tightened up right like. Nobody can get away with nothin’ within these walls.”

“Or until you’re a good ways away from the walls,” grunted Nop.

“Or a good ways away,” agreed Snorri.

“King Clive?” asked Wulfgar.

“Who else?” snorted Snorri. “Just how far away is your village, anyway?”

“Light years,” muttered Wulfgar.

“Huh?”

“Pretty far,” said Wulfgar, more loudly. “And not exactly on a main trade route. I’m not really up on the current affairs of the kingdom.”

“That’s obvious from lookin’ at ya. Not that we mind, of course,” said Snorri, “we’re more open minded than most about who we associate with. Adventurers can’t always be too picky about who they spend their time with.”

“Would you be interested in having me along?”

Snorri looked him over.

“No, sorry. Not until you have a bit more experience. At this point, you’d just be in the way. No offense meant,” said the man, standing. The two Werewolves joined him.

“We’re away, Wulfgar, and we’ll be long gone by the time the sun comes up. Good luck t’ye,” he nodded as they moved toward the exit.

“And you,” waved Wulfgar, before turning back to his dinner.

He spent the rest of the hour filling his stomach, sneaking a few more bones to Bear, before finishing himself. Tired, he left the main room and made his way out the back, to the stable. He and Bear found an empty stall with fairly fresh hay spread around it and they curled up together and slept.

Chapter 2

Wulfgar sputtered, shocked awake, and he rolled away from the warm fur of Bear’s side, trying to get away from the hot stream that sprayed his head. It took him a moment to remember where he was, as he bounced off the wooden slats of the stable stall wall. He wiped the foul smelling liquid away from his forehead and looked up to see a horse standing over what had been his bed. Bear sniffed at the stream of urine that now poured into the dirt floor.

“The stall was your’n until dawn,” the innkeeper spat, leaning into the stall, “now it’s his,” he said, nodding toward the horse. “You’d otherwise be welcome to a sausage and a beer in the house, but I’ll be wanting you to stay outside since you smell like horse piss. Meet me at the back door and I’ll give you your breakfast.”

“Thanks,” muttered Wulfgar, moving past the horse toward the outside of the stall.

“Don’t be thankin’ me,” said the man, leaving the barn, “you paid for’t.”

Wulfgar stepped out of the stall and into the middle of the stable, looking around. He found what he sought - a trough of water - and moved to it, plunging his head into it. The cold water shocked him fully awake and he stood, shaking his head free of the water. He stretched, enjoying the fact that his new body seemed none the worse for sleeping on the floor of a dirt stall - he knew his old, real, body would have complained noisily through a series of creaks and groans. He ran his hand through his hair, noticing that it seemed to dry out more rapidly than it would have outside of the Omegaverse.

There was, he thought, a lot to be said for having an eternally youthful, healthy and strong body. Even the hunger he felt was only a small annoyance, he felt like he could go for days - or even longer - without eating or drinking to no real detriment beyond slight discomfort. That wasn’t, however, going to stop him from enjoying the promised breakfast, so, leading Bear, he left the barn and moved back through the small, open courtyard to the rear of the inn.

He looked up. The sky was clear, blue above the shadows that lay across the town - the city must remain in shade until the sun crested the peak of the mountain chain. It would probably be near to mid-day when the star’s rays finally shone down onto the streets. He couldn’t see any indication of the peaks to the west, the courtyard and streets were too narrow; their views would be eclipsed by the buildings that crowded each other. It felt, he thought, fairly claustrophobic.

Wulfgar knocked on the door and it was answered shortly by the inn keeper, sausages and a mug of beer in hand. He tossed one link to Bear, then handed the other and the frothy brew to Wulfgar, who nodded his appreciation and began devouring the wurst.

“If it’s no trouble,” he grunted between chews, “could you direct me to the nearest herbalist, and then I’ll take my leave of you.”

“Aye,” he nodded toward the break between the inn and the next building, the alleyway that led directly from the street to the stable, “to the street, turn to your right. Four blocks up. It’ll be on yer right. Sign be showin’ a green cross.”

“And leave the mug,” he grumbled as he turned, shutting the door.

Wulfgar tossed the rest of his sausage to Bear, then drained the mug in a single, gurgling draw. Belching, he watched his dog enjoy its breakfast, then turned and walked into the alley and out into the street. Following the inn keeper’s directions, he made his way through the bustling morning crowds to find the shop with the green cross.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Wulfgar said as he entered the herbalist’s, closing the door behind him. The shop was large, with several rows of shelving, each displaying jars of wildly varied plants. Along the left wall were several rows of baskets, holding what looked like various tubers and rhizomes. His small bag containing a few dozen stems of Shepherd’s Piss felt small and pathetic.

A withered, wizened crone moved from behind a small counter on the far wall, and stared down her nose at him.

“Yes?”

She brightened as she approached.

“Welcome, cousin, welcome,” she smiled as she reached him. “It’s long enough since I’ve seen one of us down from the hills. What can I do for you this morning?”

Wulfgar smiled, pleased to finally find someone who treated him with basic human dignity.

“I have some herbs for sale,” he brought forth the bag, opening it in front of her. “Shepherd’s Piss.”

“And they’re lovely,” she sighed warmly, “but I’ve not much use for them.” She pointed to a large jar of the blue flowers to her right. “I can only give you a silver for them I’m afraid. They grow in plenty, at least as far as the demand for them is concerned, around these parts. In the mountain vales.”

Wulfgar frowned, “I guess it’ll have to do. At least that’ll get me a couple of hours in an inn, right?”

“Nonsense! A silver should get you a several nights in a comfortable bed, with dinner and breakfast beside.”

She looked into Wulfgar’s eyes.

“You’ve been taken, haven’t you lad.”

Wulfgar nodded.

“Four silvers. For a stable stall.” Wulfgar shrugged, “At least they fed us.” He reached down and scratched Bear’s ears.

“Bastards,” she muttered, moving back toward the counter, “they see one of us coming, fresh from the hills, and their stupid arrogance and hatred make them want to take advantage.” She reached into a small box and pulled out two silvers, holding them out to Wulfgar.

“I couldn’t,” he said, shaking his head, “you said they were only worth one.”

“And I was being generous at that,” she smiled up at him, “but we have to look out for one another, us Highlanders.”

“Really, I can’t.”

She forced the coins into his hand and took the Shepherd’s Piss from him. All except for one flower, which, smiling, she pushed back into his pouch.

“Maybe you could be helping me out with a little problem of mine as well? I’ve been having a rat problem, back in the storage room. They’re too big for me to take care of, and it would be worth that extra silver if you could get rid of them.”

“Aye, I will,” Wulfgar smiled.

“You have accepted the quest Exterminator I from Heather the Herbalist”

Wulfgar’s smile grew. Finally, he was going to get some direction, some small purpose that would help him find his way in this realm. He nodded toward the counter top.

“Can I borrow that knife?”

“Aye,” she said, handing it to him.

He took it, looked it over, turning it in his hand. It was nothing that he would consider a combat knife, but since he was only going after a couple of rats - and since he was otherwise weaponless - it would have to do. It was fairly long, with a single, curved blade. It looked, he admitted, much like a small chef’s carving knife; perfectly suited for chopping herbs and, he hoped, rodents.

“Holy shit,” Wulfgar muttered under his breath, “those thing aren’t rats. They’re little ponies.” He crouched and moved as silently as he could through the doorway into the large storeroom at the back of the store. Barrels and large sacks lined the walls of the dark room, and shelves containing glass jars circled it. A single small lantern, hanging near the doorway, threw long shadows into the space. There were three large rats, busily chewing on something or other at the far end of the room. Suddenly, the previously sufficiently large butcher knife felt like a toothpick in his hand. The rodents were each about knee-high, maybe a meter long.

“Rodents of freakin’ unusual size,” Wulfgar thought as he activated Stealth.

He began moving toward the trio of rodents, balancing the need to carefully place his feet quietly while running a mental, ten-second countdown until Stealth ran out. He rapidly reached the closest of the trio, and selected an area in the middle of the rats back, just off the spine, to target. As the knife plunged toward the mass of dirty, greasy gray fur, he wondered if there was anything he had to do do activate Hidden Stab.

“6 points of damage!”

“12 points of damage, Hidden Stab!”

The rat dropped, instantly dead, as its legs gave out. Stunned, Wulfgar straightened, pulling the knife free of the rat’s body, splashing a thin trail of blood onto the wall in front of the corpse. He turned as quickly as he could, looking toward the next closest rat, when he was knocked out of the way by a blur of growling black, brown and white fur.

Bear rocketed past and dropped onto the first rat which collapsed under the overpowering weight of the dog, its spine snapping with a loud, sickening crunch. The third rat hissed in surprise as it turned to face its attacker, but Bear was too fast. His fangs tore through the rat’s neck as he pulled it off the ground and began to shake it. Blood splayed across the wall as the dog shook its prey three times then dropped it, dead, at Wulfgar’s feet.

“Holy shit,” said Wulfgar again, shocked by the speed and ferocity of his trusty companion, “holy shit.”

Bear just looked up at him with what looked like a self satisfied grin.

“Good boy,” Wulfgar scratched him behind his ears, “good boy. I named you well, didn’t I?”

Bear just snorted and moved toward the other end of the room. Reaching the doorway, he circled twice and dropped onto the floor with a sigh. Wulfgar looked at him with new eyes. He’d previously thought of Bear as just a companion. Someone to talk to. A comfortable pillow. His respect for the animal grew, and then he realized that, at only about six months old, the dog probably had growing left in him. He could conceivably grow to Wulfgar’s waist - the dog was nearly hip high already - and weigh more than a hundred kilograms. He’d have to research what role animal companions played in this world, but, so far, Wulfgar was more than pleased.

“Next time I’ll just send you after all three,” smiled Wulfgar.

Wulfgar reported the results to Heather, who brightened considerably, beaming up at him. The tiny woman took his hand in one of hers.

“Thank you.”

“Congratulations! You have completed the quest Exterminator I from Heather the Herbalist!”

She laughed then looked back up at Wulfgar.

“I’m afraid, that was just a temporary cure. I think that the rats come in through a hole in the back wall,” she took his other hand. “Would you be a dear and look into that for me?”

Wulfgar nodded, smiling.

“You have accepted the quest Exterminator II from Heather the Herbalist.”

“Not a problem,” he laughed. He turned and moved back into the room. Bear looked up at him, then dropped back down with a snort. Wulfgar made his way through the clutter to the far, rear corner, deepest in the shadows of the room. He moved aside a partly full sack and seeds of some kind spilled out of a large hole that had been chewed in the rear of it. It had hidden a hole, about knee-high to Wulfgar, next to the corner of the wall. He stooped and put his head through.

Inside, the hole was a small space that almost immediately dropped into an impenetrably dark drop in the floor. It looked like he’d be able to squeeze his way through. Barely. Straightening, he looked back to Bear.

“Are you coming?”

The dog answered by shifting his head on his crossed paws, looking away from Wulfgar.

“Fine,” he muttered, “I’ll take care of this by myself.” He bent again, looking through into the darkness, trying to determine the best way to get into the hole. He placed the knife into the little cave, sitting on the sill of the drop. Putting his feet through the opening, he pulled himself, sliding on the floor, through the opening and shuddered a little as his feet dropped into nothingness.

He slid himself over the edge and followed his feet down. He assumed, rightly as he was relieved to find out, that the hole couldn’t be very deep if the rats had been able to come up using it. It angled down for a meter or two until it opened up into what felt like a larger room, one that he was at least able to stand fully within.

Wulfgar then began to wait. To wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. As his senses acclimated, he began hearing a scratching in the distance. He could not, however, tell just how far away it was - it could have been a quiet movement just out of arm’s reach, or a loud rustle away through the cavern.

Eventually, he began to notice lines, rays of subtle light, that shone through what looked to be the floorboards of the local buildings. He could just make out the slight sounds of people moving around above, and occasional light falls of dust through the floor slats marked their passing. Those sounds, however, weren’t traceable to the closer, louder, sound of movement within the rat excavated tunnels.

Finally, after several minutes, he had become as habituated to the cell as he thought he could, he looked back up, to the hole he’d come down. He was surprised to see Bear’s face, hanging off the edge, smiling at him.

“Feel free to join me,” whispered Wulfgar as he pulled the knife down. The leather wrapped handle felt comfortable in his hand. The dog didn’t move, but continued to watch. To wait. Smiling, Wulfgar turned and looked deeper into the unknown darkness. He felt sure that, if he really needed him, Bear would be there.

He crouched and began to move, as silently as he could, in the direction that he thought the scratching sounds had come from.

While claustrophobia had never really been an issue for him, Wulfgar wasn’t, he admitted, exactly comfortable moving through the tunnels. They were a maze, a warren, that seemed to be laid out in no well thought order. At least, he thought, they were tall enough for him to move through easily, even if they were only a little wider than he was. If something came out of one of the shafts that he’d passed on his left or right, he’d have a difficult time turning quickly enough to fight off an attack. That worry, however, didn’t stop him from taking the route he thought was directly toward the scrabbling sounds that were getting louder by the minute.

Rounding one bend, he saw, a few meters ahead, that the tunnel opened up into what looked like a room. He reached up and gripped what felt like a wooden beam that supported the floor of the building above. Using that to hold himself steady - and silent - he leaned as far around the corner as he could, trying to get a clearer view into the space beyond.

The larger area, with the resulting increased ceiling size - and, thus, more area for light to leak through from above - was better lit than the tunnel. It looked like a circular room, with tunnels leading off from the other side. In the middle was a mound - a rat’s nest - of flotsam and jetsam; cloth, string, anything that could be piled into a comfortable bed for its occupant.

The occupant was what Wulfgar focused on.

If the rats in Heather’s shop had been huge, this one was a true giant. It was, if anything, bigger than Bear. It was also, thankfully, asleep. Its head, pointing directly down the tunnel and at Wulfgar, rested on the near edge of the nest. Its slow, steady breathing indicated - Wulfgar hoped - a deep sleep. He looked around to the rest of the room. The giant rat seemed to be alone.

Crouching again, Wulfgar moved around the bend and into the room. After waiting a second to scan the space and ensure that they were truly alone, Wulfgar activated Stealth and began to move, silently yet forcefully, toward the giant.

He took one step.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Stealth!”

Holding his breath, Wulfgar moved to within striking distance and raised the knife. Just as he did, the eyes of the rat opened and blazed, its red pupils seemingly on fire. It hissed as Wulfgar stabbed with all of his strength toward its neck.

And missed.

“Shit,” groaned Wulfgar as the rat sprang toward him. He moved to the side and the beast brushed past his left leg. The rat turned his head and, rising onto its hind legs, thrust towards Wulfgar’s face, its fangs bared and glistening. Wulfgar, falling backward, pushed his left arm at the rat’s face, and pain erupted as it sank its teeth to the bone halfway between his wrist and elbow.

“You have taken 2 points of damage!”

“Shit!” he yelled, much more loudly, as the rat overpowered him and took him to the ground. The heaving beast’s weight pressed down on him as it continued to gnaw on his arm. He was shocked by the suddenness and amount of pain. The rat turned its head, getting the human’s arm out of his gaping maw, and turned back, pushing toward Wulfgar’s neck. Using his wounded arm, Wulfgar grabbed the rat by the ear and pulled its head away. Freeing his other arm from underneath the bulk of the rodent, he thrust the knife upward and inward.

“4 points of damage!”

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Small Blade!”

The rat hissed in pain as it tried to move away. It rolled off of Wulfgar and the human followed, pulling his left arm into a choke hold around the creature’s neck and pushing his right around, poised to thrust, again, into the rat’s side.

“Wait!” hissed the rat. “Wait!”

Stunned, Wulfgar pulled up.

“You can speak.”

“Of course I can speak,” it hissed from beneath the human’s weight, “I’m a king.”

Wary, Wulfgar pulled the rat close again.

“Then speak,” he said. “Why should I wait?”

“I can pay. Spare my life.”

Wulfgar thought. He was here to eradicate a rat infestation. He’d been told nothing about talking rodents. How would the quest be fulfilled if he didn’t kill the rat, king or not? Then he thought back to what Heather had said. She just asked him to look into the problem for her - she never said anything specifically about killing the rats.

“I’m here,” he began, “to stop you and your people from invading the herb shop. Before we go any further, I have to have your assurance that you will no longer bother her.”

“Done.”

“Congratulations! You have completed the quest Exterminator II from Heather the Herbalist!”

“Congratulations! You have gained a level! You are now level 2! You have 2 Attribute points to spend!”

“Very well,” said Wulfgar, rolling off the rat king. He sat, rubbing his sore left arm, and looked over the rat. Its eyes, he noted, carried an intelligence and gravitas he’d never seen in an animal before - even Bear.

The king moved gingerly back to his mound - his throne - and turned back to face Wulfgar. It bent to lick the wound in its side.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It was honorable combat,” snorted the king, looking back up, “nothing to be sorry for.” It seemed to smile, “I got you pretty good as well, though, didn’t I?”

Wulfgar nodded.

The king pulled himself up and looked over the human.

“As I said, I can pay,” it began, “and do so gladly. “There,” it nodded toward the edge of its throne pile, “is my payment. It’s yours.”

Wulfgar reached for the small, leather bag and opened it, pouring the contents into his left hand. Six silver and twelve copper coins.

“A king’s ransom,” the rat snorted derisively, “but a pauper king.”

“Times are hard,” nodded Wulfgar, unsure of what to say.

“That they are. Especially since the dark king has taken to pushing into my territory.”

Wulfgar dropped the coins back into the pouch, “The dark king?”

“Aye, he leads our people within the mountain. Within the dark. We had a truce of sorts. I have the territory in the light, under the floors of the city on this side of the mountain. He has the darkness of the caves within the mountain. Our cousin, the wet king, rules the wharves and warrens on the seaward side.”

“But,” it continued, “of late, the caves seem to be too small a kingdom for him. His people have been pushing out into my territory, killing and forcing my people ever further, ever closer to the walls.” It sighed, “That’s why I sent my people into the shop, I need some of the Rat’s Bane, a flower she stores.”

“Rat’s Bane?” That sounded ominous to Wulfgar.

“Aye,” the king spat. “A poison. A vile weed. But I can think of no other weapon to use to fight the oncoming hordes of my cousin. It’s not an honorable fight, but when a king has to choose between his honor and his people, it’s dishonorable of him to put himself or his legacy before those who depend upon him. I wait the return of my soldiers with the poison, so that we may, I hope, begin to push our enemies back to their rightful homes.”

“Your soldiers won’t be coming back,” said Wulfgar levelly, looking the king in his eyes.

“I thought as much when you came through. Can you help us?”

Wulfgar thought. The previous quests he’d undertaken had been straightforward, so he thought. This, however, threatened to pull him into a political war he didn’t understand; and there was enough in this alien world that he didn’t understand as it was.

“How?”

“Bring me Rat’s Bane.”

“No.”

“You have rejected the quest Total War I from the Rat King of Light”

“Alignment changed. You are now True Neutral.”

“Then my people are lost.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that saving your people at the cost of your honor is the only way out. Is there anything else, any other way, that I can help?”

“I can’t think of any. The dark king has rejected all of my diplomatic overtures. Maybe if you went to him?”

“If you think there’s a chance, yes.”

“You have accepted the quest Balancing Light and Dark I from the Rat King of Light”

Bear moved out of the way, away from the hole, as Wulfgar pulled himself up, into the back room of Heather’s Herb shop. He pulled the blade of the small knife across his kilted blanket, cleaning the rat blood off. The state, the cleanliness, of his covering didn’t concern him. As soon as he found a bank, he was going to withdraw enough money to buy a full, new outfit - “and some damn boots”, he thought as his feet adjusted from the dirt of the rat warren to the rough hewn boards of the store’s floor.

First, though, he needed to report his success to Heather. He made his way back into the front of the store and brought her up to date.

“Wonderful,” she said, “so they’ll no longer be a problem?”

“I have the assurance of the Rat King of Light.”

“The what?” she asked, looking at him suddenly as if he’d come down with an obvious and irreversible mental deficiency. Then she looked to his arm.

“Ach, lad! You’ve been wounded! No wonder you’re speaking nonsense. You’re like to have a fever. Come with me!”

She led him back to her counter and cleared a space. Pulling out a mortar and pestle, she began filling the small stone bowl with a variety of herbs, spitting into the mixture - he presumed to provide some moisture to meld the paste she was grinding.

“A rat bite!” she said, tutting over him. She looked up at him and smiled. “Tis a good thing you’re here, those can fester and get nasty awfully quick. Awfully quick.” She began to spread the paste over his arm, which instantly felt better. Emptying the contents of the mortar, she pulled a clean piece of cloth from behind the counter and wrapped it around his arm.

“You have been healed of 2 points of damage!”

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“Keep it on for a few hours, just to be sure.”

He nodded.

“Now,” she said brightly, “if you’re going to spend your time rooting around in cellars cleaning out rats, you should know a bit more about herbs and poultices than you already do. Here,” she thrust a piece of parchment in front of him. He read the title - Basic Healing; Poultices.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Herb Lore!”

“Congratulations! You have earned the Herb Lore skill Healing Poultices!”

He brightened - he suddenly knew where to find the plants required to make a basic healing poultice, as well as the recipe required to make one. In addition, he knew several other recipes as well, including the potion Scampering Goat. Heather also pushed the mortar and pestle into his hands, as well as enough herbs, he saw, for two or three poultices.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said graciously, “for all of your help, lovely lad.” She smiled up at him, “And always remember old Heather whenever you need to buy or sell herbs!”

Wulfgar turned and walked, followed by Bear, out of the small shop into the bright sun. It was early afternoon and the star had risen past the mountains, throwing light directly down into the city. After returning her knife, he’d asked for directions to the nearest bank. It was time, he thought, to shake off the rags that showed him off as nothing more than a destitute Highlander, and get some clothes and gear suitable for not only a brave adventurer, but a diplomat between two kings - albeit, rat ones.

The crowd moved slowly through the street, and he went along with the flow until they reached the large square that Heather had told him of. The square, anchored on the east by the gate to King Clive’s inner keep, seemed as large as several city blocks. The view once inside of it, no longer bound by the closeness of the city streets and the buildings that hemmed in any vista of anything except straight up, was awe inspiring.

The mountains rose nearly vertically behind the towering walls of the inner keep. Clive’s tower rode up the wall’s height, until it matched the level of the peaks. The half-rounded spire seemed to grow out of the very mountain wall. He remembered, standing on the balcony looking down, how impressive the city below had looked. That was nothing compared to the view up. He was awed.

His eyes followed the tower back down to its base and shifted to this side of the keep’s wall. His attention was drawn by the call of a crier.

“For disturbing the King’s peace, these two are sentenced to a day in the stocks!”

Wulfgar was shocked. Near the center of the square was a raised wooden platform. Across it were several wooden stocks - of the sort he’d seen in history books punishing pilgrim settlers in colonial America - and in the two center stocks were two men. One was the guard that had accosted Wulfgar the day before as he tried to enter the city. The other was his partner.

Apparently, that noise he’d heard the night before had been the two of them fighting about their missing wager.

Whistling innocently, Wulfgar made his way around to the other side of the square, where Heather had said the nearest branch of King’s Bank was located.

Wulfgar looked up at the imposing, wooden double doors at the top of several wide stone steps that he’d climbed after crossing the square. Large, embossed letters hugged the archway formed by the doors - King’s Bank. He pushed through - motioning for Bear to stay on the steps - into the large, marble floored room. The doors swung shut behind him with a gentle yet heavy click. As his eyes adjusted to the lowered light, shining through from large windows that arrayed the wall behind him, he looked around. A kiosk, directly in the center of the open floor, fronted a counter that stretched the length of the rear wall, with several cashiers sitting on the opposite side. Two lines of marble pillars stretched from the front wall toward the rear on either side of the kiosk, before stopping short of the cashier’s counter. Wulfgar looked to the kiosk. A woman sat on a high chair behind it and she was staring, coldly at him. He approached.

“Hello,” said Wulfgar, smiling up at the lady as he reached her. “I’d like to make a withdrawal.”

“Really?” she drawled, unbelievingly. She shrugged, “Put your hand in.”

“What?”

She smiled, knowingly, her assumptions confirmed.

“As when you opened your account, sir,” she sniffed, “put your hand in the opening so that we can recognize you.”

Wulfgar, confused, looked to the wooden front of the kiosk. There was a small hole. He put his right hand through, and felt a coldness clench it as some force he didn’t understand tried to determine his identity. He looked back up at her.

“I’m afraid that we have no record of you here,” she smiled. “Perhaps sir meant that he wished to make a deposit and open an account?” The look on her face betrayed the likelihood she attached to that possibility.

Wulfgar was confused. His Omegaverse account held nearly one hundred million credits - about a hundred thousand U.S. dollars - that he’d purchased when he cleaned out all of his earthly bank, investment and retirement accounts once he’d decided to enter the Omegaverse permanently.

“There’s a mistake,” he said, the cold from his hand washing over him as a wave of fear - that his life savings was gone - swept over him, “I have one hundred million credits in my account.”

She looked confused.

She held up one finger.

“We deal in copper,” she raised another finger, “silver,” a third finger, “and gold. Not credit,” she lowered her hand. “Now, if you would like to open an account, we can reset so that your hand will establish your identify for us and you’ll be able to deposit and withdraw from any bank in the world.”

“I, uh,” he said, quaking, confused. “Maybe later.”

He turned, stunned, and made his way back out of the bank where he sat on the steps, scratching Bear’s ears and thinking.

Wulfgar sat for a few minutes, watching the flow of foot traffic pass around the square. A horse, the first he’d seen inside the city - at least, the first that wasn’t pissing on him - passed by, its rider resplendent in shining armor, a large two handed sword hanging in a scabbard draped from the pommel. The shining white horse, head proudly held high, approached the gate to the King’s Keep and swept through the doors that two guards closed behind it.

“Of course! That’s it!” said Wulfgar, happily, standing and walking toward the gate, “C’mon, Bear, let’s go see the King!”

“You what?” asked the guard, incredulously.

“I need to see King Clive, please,” Wulfgar repeated, “I’m a friend of his.”

The guards looked at each other.

“I know that I don’t look like much, but, really, I’m a friend of his. I’m sure he’ll make it worth your while if you could get him a message that I’m here. Tell him it’s Duncan Sheriden.”

The first guard nodded, smiling.

“Of course sir, just a moment.”

Wulfgar sagged, relief flooding through him.

“You remember, Burt,” said the first guard, looking the second, “just last night the King was telling us to be on the watch for his bosom chum Dunden Sherican and that we should let him right through to the Chamberlain, even if he did look like a stinkin’ Highlander that a stray tomcat had just coughed up.”

“Oh, right,” laughed the second guard. “This way, Sir Shamidan Dundas, the King is expecting you.”

They broke down laughing, then waved Wulfgar away.

“Fuck!” swore Wulfgar under his breath as he turned, out of ideas. He looked around, trying to decide what to do next, when he felt his right arm tugged.

“C’mon,” said a young woman.

Wulfgar looked at her - she was much shorter than him, between a meter and a half and two meters tall, and blond. Pretty, but not in a conventional sense. She had kind of a square jaw and an athletic build. She wore a white muslin shirt, rolled to her well defined biceps, and black leather pants and boots. On top of that, she wore a black leather apron that nearly dropped to the ground.

“C’mon,” she repeated, smiling this time.

“Where to?”

“I’m going to let you buy me a drink,” she said laughing, “and then, after, if you’re really, really lucky …”

She paused, looking at him coyly.

“Maybe I’ll let you buy me lunch!” she laughed again, louder. “Don’t hate the player,” she said, winking, pointing at herself, “hate the game!” Then she spread her arms around, indicating the rest of the world.

Wulfgar finally understood - this was another player. A human. As far as he knew, the first that he’d met since leaving the outside Omegaverse.

She turned and began walking quickly toward the opposite side of the square.

“Hang on,” he said, “just a sec,” as he caught up with her.

She turned to look at him, then shouted, “OOOH! Is that your dog? I love him!” She fell to her knees, arms wide, and Bear obligingly rushed into them and began exchanging rapid kisses with her.

She looked up at Wulfgar, imploringly.

“Where did you get him?”

“I brought him with me,” he said, then coughed, “from outside.”

“You can do that? Dammit!” She continued scratching the dog as she stood, “I had no idea.”

“Neither did I, until I did it, but then,” he shrugged, “I have no freaking idea how this whole world works.”

“That was kind of obvious.” She looked at him, seriously, “How long have you been in?”

“About a day.”

She nodded again.

“What’s your name?”

“Wulfgar,” he said, “or did you mean …”

She interrupted him.

“That’s exactly what I meant. We don’t exchange true names in here.”

He nodded, “I get that, the whole role play …”

She waved her hands, vigorously.

“No. I mean, never, never, tell anyone your true name.”

He tilted his head, raised one eyebrow.

“Because,” she continued, “your true name holds power over you,” she waved a hand, “at least it does in here.” She twisted her fingers in front of her lips, indicating a locked mouth, and looked at him questioningly.

“Got it,” he nodded. “Tick a lock.”

She nodded, then smiled again.

“C’mon,” she said again, “I was serious about that drink.”

Wulfgar followed as she sped across the square, and Bear bounded up to her, gaining another ear scratch in the process.

“Traitor,” muttered Wulfgar behind him, then, more loudly, “hey! What’s your name?”

“Oh,” she laughed over her shoulder, “sorry! I’m Lauren.”

“Lauren. Got it, thanks.”

“I spelled it with a break at the syllables with an accent on the first, you know, all fantasy book style, but it’s really just Lauren,” she smiled as she turned down into a narrow street.

“I need to get some new clothes.”

She nodded, slowing. “Ok, I know just the place,” then continued down the street.

“What do you think so far,” she asked, “you know, of the whole game world?”

“It’s really, really weird,” he shook his head. They began passing underneath an overhang - one of the building’s second story had been built out over the street. As they neared the end of the building, where the skyline opened up once again, someone in the building above shouted out.

“Gardyloo!”

“What the hell does that …” Wulfgar looked up and was rewarded, for the second time that day, with a face full of urine. Shocked, he quickly wiped off his face, shaking the piss off of his hand and moved, quickly, away from the building overhang. He looked up in time to see an old woman pulling a wooden bucket inside of a window, whose shutter she pushed shut.

“What the hell?” swore Wulfgar again, looking at Lauren. She shrugged.

“Hell if I know,” she said, obviously trying not to laugh, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Then she lost control, laughing hysterically. She held up her hands in supplication, backing away from Wulfgar.

“I’m sorry,” she snorted, “but that was damn funny.”

“It’s the second time today!” he sputtered, “And yesterday a freaking eagle shit on me!”

She just shook her head, still laughing.

“Hang on,” she said after a moment, “let’s group.”

Wulfgar nodded, and Lauren added him to a group she’d created. She paused for a moment.

“I get it now,” she said, “you have zero Fortune. And check out what it says under your Abilities.”

Wulfgar brought up his character sheet and scrolled down to Abilities.

No Luck: ??? Fortune favors the fortunate; you, however, are screwed!

“What the hell?” he repeated.

“You aren’t paranoid if the universe really is out to get you,” she laughed. “And zero Personality. I’m guessing that the NPC’s haven’t exactly been treating you as a long, lost friend, have they?”

Wulfgar shook his head, and looked at the other entry under Abilities.

Highlander: +1 AGI. +1 Climbing. +10 PRS with other Highlanders.

That explained why Heather the Herbalist had been so sweet to him.

Lauren continued speaking.

“You’d better let me do your shopping for you, at least for now. Zero Personality will likely mean that the shop keepers are going to gouge you for every copper that they can.” She continued reading for a moment, “Do you have any money?”

He nodded, and handed her the small bag, “Eight silver and twelve coppers.”

“More than enough,” she said taking it. “Wait here,” she looked up to the sign of the outfitters, “I’ll just be a second.” She looked him up and down, sizing him up, then left, entering the store.

Wulfgar took a moment and looked over Lauren’s character sheet.

Laur’ En.

Level 5. She was a way ahead of him, but he had no idea how far. He had gained one level in one day. Was she ten days ahead? A hundred? Months? Years? Then he looked down to skills.

Blacksmith. Level 12. He smiled. That explained her biceps - she’d been doing a lot of hammer swinging.

Imbuing. Level 2. He had no idea what that meant. He scanned down the rest. Except for level 1 Magic, they were all combat arms skills. Small Blade. Large Blade. Two-handed Blade. Axe. Mace. All were at level 1. There seemed to be no direction in her choices, it was as if she couldn’t decide what she wanted to be.

He looked up as she returned, grinning. She handed him a folded stack of leather. He took off the top item and let it fall open. Leather pants. Wulfgar handed her the rest and pulled the pants on underneath his kilted blanket. After he’d fastened the buttons in the front, he un-looped his belt and pulled the cloth off, letting it fall to the ground. She handed him a pair of shoes - full foot sandals, actually - and he sat to pull them on.

“They’re better for stealthy movement than boots, so I assumed …” she left the rest of her point hanging.

“You assumed correctly,” he said standing. Smiling, he nodded to her, “Thanks!” He looked at her, then cocked his head. She was trying not to laugh.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Here’s your shirt,” she handed him the beautifully made leather shirt and he pulled it over his head, straightened the front and back, and pulled his belt around his hips, cinching the shirt.

“What?” he repeated.

She was barely controlling her laughter.

“I knew it,” she chortled, looking him up and down. “Tall, trim. Dark hair and tight leather pants. My new friend is Freddie Mercury!”

“How much,” Wulfgar asked as they walked through the crowd toward the inn Lauren had chosen.

“Oh, yeah,” she turned to him, handing him his coin purse, “it was eight silvers, all told.”

Four days pay for a city guard, for a suit of clothes.

“I got you a discount,” she continued, “I do a lot of business with him. Through my shop.”

Four days pay, and that was at a discount. At his old job, nearly a week’s wages on one suit of clothes would have been the equivalent of having it tailor made on Saville Row in London. But that, he reflected, was an exactly apt comparison. There were no automated manufacturing processes in this world. Everything was made by hand. He looked at Lauren. That seemed to be her chosen role here, an artisan. To craft metals.

“How long does it take you to make a sword?”

“A good one? At least a week, and that’s without factoring in the failures,” she said over her shoulder, “and I’m not even very good yet. That’s just a basic blade. Once I’ve advanced in Imbuing, it will take much longer. It’ll be a much more intensive process.”

“Imbuing?”

She opened the door to the inn, holding it as Wulfgar and Bear went through, then pointed to a small table between a bar and a fireplace. The place seemed interchangeable with the inn that he’d eaten at the night before.

“It’s difficult to explain,” she began as they sat. A barmaid brought them a pair of large, full, mugs and put them on the table in front of them. “It’s when you impart some additional qualities to the weapon. Or armor.” She took a drink, “For instance, if you were to work with me using your Herb Lore skill, I could imbue a blade that caused a bleeding wound. All it would take is our combined skills, some of the required herbs, and a whole lot of luck.”

“Luck?”

“Yup, the failure rate is insane. And you use up a lot of materials,” she smiled, “not only the imbuing materials, like the herbs, but the item itself. You can only try an imbuing on an item one time. If it fails, it will always fail again in the future. If it succeeds, however, you can try again with another property, and keep going as long as you succeed.”

“Wow, really? That seems pretty powerful.”

She nodded.

“Yup, but I haven’t heard of anyone successfully imbuing more than one quality onto a single item, except for once. It was a shield, and they managed to make it both fire resistant as well as dragon resistant.”

“Dragon?”

She smiled, showing off a mouth full of large white teeth.

“Oh yeah, that was a special order that someone made for this group that wanted to head directly into a dragon’s lair.” She paused, raised one eyebrow, “I heard they got eaten.”

“But by luck,” Wulfgar said, sipping his beer, “do you mean Fortune?”

She thought for a moment.

“I don’t really know. Maybe that factors into it.”

“So I should start raising my Fortune attribute before we try any imbuing.”

She looked at him levelly.

“Absolutely not,” she said seriously.

“What? Why?”

“Because, walking around with someone who’s always having piss and shit rain down on them is hilarious!” she laughed as her face once again broke into a flash of teeth. She took another sip of her beer, then leaned back.

“But seriously,” she continued, “yes, I would get those attributes out of zero as soon as you level up.”

That reminded him.

“I did just level up this morning, and I haven’t done anything with that yet.”

“Cool! Congratulations. That also means that, at level two, you have two attribute points to spend. I’d drop one each into Personality and Fortune.”

“At level two? Is it different, based on level?”

“For sure,” she looked up and smiled as they were served another pair of pints, then looked back at Wulfgar, “on even levels, you get attribute points to spend, on odd levels you get skill points. But,” she pushed away her old, empty mug and grabbed the fresh one, “those points are kind of front loaded during your development. You get two attribute points at levels two, four and six, then one attribute point at levels eight and ten. After that, the points start coming at every other even level. Fourteen and eighteen for attributes. It’s the same for skill points, but like I said, on odd numbered levels. As you level higher, the gap gets much longer.”

He looked at her and nodded.

“That seems to make your choices feel kind of semi-permanent.”

“It does, but given that we’re here indefinitely, it makes sense. Otherwise, you’d have folks at level gazillion with forty-million strength and such.”

“I assume that leveling takes progressively more effort as you gain as well.”

“Yup! I think it took me about twice as long to get from level four to level five as it did for me to get from level three to level four.”

He nodded.

“How long have you been here?”

She frowned.

“I understand why you’re asking, but it’s not something we really talk about. Players, that is.” She raised one eyebrow, “One thing that people want to try to determine is how much the older person’s time in game is compared to their last memory out there,” she nodded her head sideways, which Wulfgar took to mean she was talking about outside of the Omegaverse. Before they died. He nodded as well.

“But that doesn’t always track. Say, for example, that my last memory was on a March night. That doesn’t mean, though, that I died the next day. I might have left on a long vacation. I might have not been under the VR helmet for a month or more before I died. And there’s no way I’d know. Your last memory is only up to the last time you put on the helmet, at least that’s how it was explained to me.”

She shrugged.

“And plus, maybe we weren’t” she looked for the word she wanted, “revived after the same interval as everyone else. Maybe I was kept on ice for a few months longer than you were, for whatever reason. So even if our last memory occurs on the same day, you might have a long head start in game.” She smiled ruefully, “there’s just no way to tell, and people have tried. And besides, there’s usually the big question. How did you die? Unless we were suffering from a long illness, or had some premonition, we just don’t know.”

He nodded. He wanted to ask her about the revival process. What she’d experienced, what she’d been told. How it felt. But he didn’t want to give anything about his own story away - Clive had told him that his processing was different, and that he knew a lot more about the Omegaverse and its purpose than the other players he’d meet.

“Are there a lot of us? I mean, as far as I know, you’re the first I’ve met.”

She laughed.

“It’s really kind of hard to tell sometimes. The AI is really that good. Just about the only time you’ll be sure that you’re seeing a player is when they’re new and they do something stupid.”

“Like trying to get in to see King Clive?”

She laughed again.

“Exactly. But even so, you’ll kind of get the hang of spotting us,” she smiled and drank, “and most of us, so far, seem pretty cool.”

“But there is an etiquette.”

“Yeah. It’s not like it’s written in stone, and maybe it’ll change in the coming years, but a lot of folks just seem to want to forget about the past and get on with their future, some just want to tell you everything about their lives. It depends on the person.”

“And you?”

“I’m in this for the long haul. I mean, I don’t mind answering some questions. Like your first. I’ve been in the city for about a year.”

That shocked him a little.

She laughed.

“Yeah, and I’m only level five. But don’t let that bother you too much. I’m focused on being a blacksmith. It’s notoriously hard to level. It takes a lot of resources, and resources cost money. I’ve done a lot of grunt work. Repairing armor. Sharpening swords. Things that don’t do squat to help you level, just in order to get the money to buy resources that I can then fail to pound into anything people want to buy,” she laughed. “And leveling my blacksmithing skill doesn’t do a lot to gain in my character level. The bulk of those points come from finishing quests. Smithing is a money making skill. Sort of,” she smiled ruefully, “at least, once you get up there. Imbuing should help with that, but I wasn’t even able to choose that as a skill until I’d reached level ten Blacksmith.”

“And all the level one skills?”

“Oh, those are really to help the blacksmithing. Every level that I get in Large Blades helps me to craft swords, and so forth,” she shrugged, “but I really need to do a little adventuring to raise those skills. I used some points as I leveled to get the initial skill, but it’d be stupid to add those points to the skills when I can raise them by using them.”

“So you can’t get the skill just from doing it initially.”

“Yeah, but it takes forever. I’d probably wind up chopping off my foot a dozen times trying to get to Large Blades level one,” she shook her head, “nope, I see that as a complete waste. At least with level one, you have some small skill that you can use. It’d probably take as long to work my way up to level one in the weapons skills as it would to get them from level one to level five, and since each weapon’s skill level adds to the blacksmithing level, it increases my ability to make those weapons. Even more than just raising my blacksmithing level would.”

He nodded and sat silently, sipping his beer for a minute. He then opened his character sheet and added his two attribute points, bringing Personality and Fortune to one each. He wondered just what kind of a difference it would make. Would he be able to notice a change that small? This was a lot of information to take in all at once.

Lauren seemed to read his mind.

“I know, but don’t worry, you’ll eventually soak all of this information in.” She smiled, “Until then, have another beer. And another. You can get a nice, cool buzz here, but I haven’t heard of anyone being able to get stupidly, sloppy, blackout drunk.”

“Challenge accepted,” laughed Wulfgar, raising his mug.

“I was serious about you paying for the drinks,” laughed Lauren after they’d talked for several hours. She’d been right, the beer had never stopped flowing, but Wulfgar never got more than a pleasant buzz.

“I’ve lost track,” he burped, “how many did we have?”

She shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter, both of us,” she reached down to scratch the dog, “and Bear can drink all day and night. For a copper.”

“Hmm, that leaves me with eleven,” he pulled one coin out of his bag and dropped it to the table. “Do we tip?”

“Nope!” she laughed, “that’s not a custom in this world.”

“Hey, that reminds me. What do you call this world?”

She laughed, “The world is just called the world. As far as I know, it doesn’t have a name. The specific areas within it, however, do.” She stood and stretched. “This city, for example, is Edonis.”

“Edonis,” Wulfgar repeated.

“Yup. And Clive’s realm is called Heim,” she scrunched her face, “I think that’s German for ‘home’.”

Wulfgar nodded. His passing acquaintance with German was at least that comprehensive. He stood too.

“That fits, I guess, since it’s the starting point for players, right?”

“As far as I know, yep. I don’t know if anyone starts at any other location,” she paused, “hey, do you have a place to stay?”

“Nope.”

“Cool. I have a spare room you can crash in. Until you get on your feet here,” then she turned serious, “on one inflexible condition.”

He smiled, “Which is?”

“Bear stays with us.”

“Deal,” Wulfgar laughed as they left the inn.

They walked in companionable silence through a few twists and turns in the darkening streets. He felt that it would be months before he could begin to find his way around the maze of the city. Edonis. After a few minutes, she opened the door to a small wooden shop, butted up against the city wall. He looked to the gate, wondered who the guards on duty were, then shrugged and followed Lauren inside.

“It’s not much,” she said, turning up a lantern and splashing the shop in light, “but it’s close to the northwest gate and I get a lot of foot traffic,” she smiled, pulling out an few heavy logs and bending before a large fireplace. She put the logs on and stoked them for a second, then stood again, “you know, for repairs and the like.”

“It’s homey,” said Wulfgar.

“It’ll do. Anyway,” she pointed to the right rear of the shop, “there’s a little room back there with a cot. It’s all yours! I’m going to head for bed,” she laughed, “I’ve become something of a morning person since I arrived.”

Wulfgar smiled, “Good night, Lauren. And thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she paused as she was halfway into her room. “Hey, Wulfgar.”

He looked back.

“It’s totally OK if you say no, and I’ll understand,” then she waved a hand and hurriedly said, “and it won’t make any difference on whether you can stay here or not.”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind if I did some adventuring with you,” she smiled, “just a little. To help raise my skills.”

“I’d love it!”

“Sweet! Thanks! Sleep tight. And you, sugar Bear!” She waved at them and entered her room.

Wulfgar looked down at the dog, who was looking up at him. He smiled.

“Go ahead.”

Bear bounded away and pushed through Lauren’s door. Wulfgar entered his room and dropped onto the cot and almost immediately into a deep sleep.

Chapter 3

Wulfgar woke to Bear’s prods. As he sat, he once again felt relieved that he could rise refreshed from a few hours on a rickety cot. He scratched the dog underneath its chin, then stood and left the small room. The morning sunshine had lit the small shop enough for him to get a good look around it. Along one wall, near a workbench in the far, front corner of the room, was a part of the floor covered in gravel - as opposed to the planking that made up the rest of the room - within which was a forge, anvil and small tool bench. To his right, at the other back corner of the shop, Lauren was just emerging from her room.

“Good morning!” she beamed, as she moved to the forge and began adding fuel to the lowering fire. She gave a bellows a few pumps and the intensity of the flame grew, then she stood stretching. After a moment, she moved to the front of the store and pulled the large, wooden rolling door to one side, opening the interior to the street beyond. A few of the people passing by nodded to her and she waved back happily, before turning back toward Wulfgar.

“What’s up?” she asked, pulling a long leather apron over herself and tying it in the back.

Wulfgar shook his head, “Nothing much. Had a great sleep, thanks. Just trying to figure out what I’m going to do today.”

“Are you feeling lucky, what with that new Fortune and all?” she laughed.

“Why?”

“Because I am, and I was thinking about trying my hand at some imbuing. Want to help?”

“Sure. How?”

She moved toward the anvil, Wulfgar following, and took a short blade from a rack along the wall. It was a beautifully designed knife - short sword, really - that was about as long as Wulfgar’s forearm. It was double-bladed and shone, highly polished. The cross-guard was brass, which fronted a smooth handle made of some black wood, held in place with what looked like brass rivets. One finger width down the handle was a second brass fitting that made a nook for the index finger. A pointed pommel finished the blade.

“Nice,” he said admiringly, “did you make it?”

“For sure! It’s my best work yet,” she moved to the forge and thrust the blade into the hot coals, then turned to Wulfgar, “I was doing a little research last night, and I think we can use your basic healing knowledge, from your Herb Lore, to imbue this blade with a nifty little trick. When you stab something with this, it will heal you of damage.”

“That would be very, very cool,” said Wulfgar excitedly.

She nodded, “Yup.” She raised one eyebrow, “But that assumes we can do it.” She pointed to one side of the anvil, “Move over there and make your poultice ingredients.”

He pulled the small mortar and pestle from his sack, added the plant matter and, mirroring what he’d seen Heather do, spit into the small stone basin and began to grind the ingredients together. He watched as Lauren moved the blade, turning it within the coals.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” she called over her shoulder. She pumped the bellows twice and looked appraisingly into the fire.

Wulfgar studied the paste. As far as he could tell, it looked like the goop that Heather had spread on his arm.

“Ready.”

“OK. When I get the blade to the anvil, just slop your stuff onto the blade. It doesn’t have to be pretty,” then she pulled the knife out, gripping it by the handle - Wulfgar assumed that it hadn’t been in the flames long enough for the handle to get too hot to touch - and turned to the anvil.

Moving quickly, she placed the blade on the anvil, raised a small, delicate looking hammer, then grunted, “Go!”

Wulfgar ran his fingers through the mixture in the mortar, and slopped it out onto the blade. It hissed and a little smoke rose as Lauren brought the hammer down, the metal on metal creating a pleasant, high pitched ringing as she continued to rapidly hit along the blade.

“Yes!” she exulted, looking up at Wulfgar happily.

“It worked?”

“Oh, no. We failed,” she laughed, “but I gained a level in both Blacksmithing and Imbuing.” She straightened, smiling and wiped the herb mixture off of the blade before turning it and presenting it, handle first, toward Wulfgar.

“Here,” she said as Wulfgar took the handle, “it’s a gift! I’ll replace it in the future with one we successfully imbue,” she held out her right hand, with her small finger extended in a crook, “pinky swear!”

He laughed, took her pinky in his, completing the ritual, as he looked at the blade. It was truly beautiful workmanship, and he told her so.

“Thanks,” she smiled, replacing the hammer from its nook on her tool shelf, “I have to admit, I am happy with my progress with small blades.”

Wulfgar stood, admiring his new blade. It really was, he thought, a work of art. Lauren watched him for a moment, then laughed.

“Do you think you can find your way back to the store? The one where I got your clothes.”

He nodded.

She bounded up to him, smiling.

“If you want,” she began, “we can do a little adventuring today. You know, if you feel like it.”

Her enthusiasm was contagious. He laughed, “Sure, why not. I’ve actually got a quest already.”

“Sweet! I’ve got a few things to take care of here, but if you wanted, you could head back to that shop and get whatever you think we’ll need,” she handed him a small bag that tinkled, “you know, a backpack, maybe some torches, and a scabbard for that sword,” she nodded toward the blade in his hand.

He nodded, pocketed the coin purse, and left the shop, noting that Bear was still stretched out near the fire. He decided to take his time, to begin to acclimate to his new surroundings. The buildings looked like a mix of architectural schools. Some were vaguely Tudor, with exposed beams and white-washed plaster, some were plain, painted wood and a few were made from what looked like glazed mud brick. The variety gave the city a thrown together, but comfortably lived in look.

The people, likewise, were a wide mix of mainly humans. They moved in a seemingly single orderly flow, up and down the hard packed streets, sometimes entering or exiting the stream through some random doorway. Wulfgar moved with the crowd until he reached the shop Lauren had taken him to the day before.

He entered and looked about the store. It was much like Heather’s herb shop, but instead of rows of displays for plants, there was a little of everything. A mousy looking man emerged from a back room and looked Wulfgar up and down. A frown took over his face.

“Lauren sent me,” Wulfgar smiled, “to get some supplies.”

The man nodded, “I saw you with her.” He shrugged, “What can I get for you?”

“I need some supplies,” Wulfgar repeated, “for some cave exploration. Backpacks, torches, and the like.”

The man nodded and began moving through the store. He pulled two brown leather packs off of a shelf and started filling them with items from several shelves. Wulfgar walked to the rear of the store, which was laden with leather goods. He pulled his knife out of his belt, where he’d tucked it before leaving Lauren’s, and quickly found a scabbard that fit. It had even been dyed using the same black color that his outfit had been.

“Allow me,” said the shopkeep, coming up behind Wulfgar. The man took Wulfgar’s belt off and slid the scabbard onto it. The belt loops were at an angle, and the handle of the blade was roughly parallel to the belt. The man cinched the belt around Wulfgar, just above his hips.

“There,” said the man with an appraising look. He nodded, smiling in satisfaction.

The scabbard was planted against his lower right back. Wulfgar reached back and his hand, almost naturally, found the handle. He pulled out and down and the blade slipped easily out of the scabbard. Wulfgar smiled - it was almost as fast as a cowboy’s quick-draw peacemaker holster. He pushed the blade behind him and easily found the opening, sliding the knife home once again. He nodded.

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“A suitable home for a fine blade. Is that one of Laur’ En’s?”

Wulfgar nodded.

“Looks like one of her best. I sell as many as she can make,” the man dropped the filled backpacks onto the counter, “and if you ever feel the need to sell that one, please see me.”

Wulfgar smiled thinly. He wasn’t ever going to sell the blade and the man knew it, but he nodded anyway.

Wulfgar tossed Lauren her coin purse. She missed the initial catch and her chest rang out as the bag bounced off her breastplate. She caught the purse on its rebound and smiled.

“Did you get everything?”

“I think so, “ he nodded, then “you’re loaded for bear, no pun intended,” he laughed as he scratched his dog’s neck.

“You like?” she spun, arms wide, showing off her full suit of plate armor. Every part of her, except her head, was covered in blued steel. “It’s totally the latest fashion.” She snorted.

“Did you make it?”

“Mmm hmm,” she nodded, tightening the leather straps on her left shoulder piece. She did a deep knee bend then straightened, twisting her torso - ensuring a good fit. “It took forever, but I really like it. These things are far more comfortable than you’d expect.” She laughed, “Not that they’re comfortable, per se, but you can really move pretty well in them.” She walked to the front of the store and pulled the large door, rolling it sideways until it closed the shop from the street outside.

“What’s the quest?” she asked as she pulled a hand and a half sword, plain but deadly looking, down from its perch where it had been an advertisement of both her skills and services. She pushed the blade into a scabbard that hung from her back, then cinched the leather belt, draped over her right shoulder and under her left arm, tight, pulling the sword in close against her back. She then pulled on her backpack, which fit snugly against the center of her back.

“We’re heading in to see the Rat King of Dark. As an embassy from the Rat King of Light.”

“The what?” She looked at him, confused. He explained the quests he’d taken the day before, and the resulting mission on which they were about to embark.

“Whoah. I had no idea there were a kingdoms of magic rats just underneath me.” She looked down warily at the floorboards of the shop, then moved to the small door in the front left corner of the shop.

“Shall we?” she asked over her shoulder as she pushed through into the street. Wulfgar, trailed by Bear, followed her through into the bustling avenue. They talked as she led them through the streets and, once again, into the main square in front of the Clive’s keep.

Wulfgar tapped the sword hanging from her back, “I’m not sure there’ll be enough room for you to wield that thing. At least not effectively.”

She nodded. “You could be right, but worst case, I’ll just tank and poke them as best I can.” She made a thrusting motion with her right arm.

“Tank?”

She looked at him, raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah, tank. You don’t know what that means?”

“Nope.”

“Heavy armor, like a tank. I go forward and take the punishment while the rest of the group, that is you, hit them with your specialties. Sneak up and back-stab to your heart’s content,” she laughed then held up her arm and pointed at her chest, “that’s what the armor is for.”

“Ah, I see, I really didn’t play a lot of online games before the Omegaverse.” He shrugged, “I played some offline RPGs and such, so I know the basics, but never really got into the whole MMO thing.”

She nodded, “I kinda got that. Anyway, I really want to use this sword to level with because this bastard, pun intended,” she grinned, “is great for weapon smiths.”

He cocked his head.

“Because,” she continued, “a bastard sword, a hand and a half sword, can be used one handed or two handed. So if I really level up either of those, they’ll work with my blacksmithing skill and I can make some really kick ass versions that people with either Large Blade or Two Handed Blade skills can use. I figure that doubles up my market, and I really only have to level up one of those to get there.”

“Then why have both skills?”

“Oh, there are a lot of reasons. Two Handed Blade also covers stuff like glaives, halberds and other pole arms, in addition to the big honkin’ swords like claymores and the Landsknechte zweihander,” she nodded enthusiastically, then noticed Wulfgar’s glazed expression.

“Yeah,” she laughed, “I’m kind of a medieval weapons nerd. But anyway, the main market is in the Large Blade. The one handed swords. Most fighters tend to favor them.”

She looked wistful, “But if I can get my skills up enough and get the contract from the king for the King’s Guard’s halberds, oh man, I’ll be rich!” She began to cackle gleefully before smiling up at Wulfgar, “anyway, that’s the plan.”

“Do you miss it yet?” Lauren asked, looking up at him as they walked, Bear between them, through the crowds moving along the narrow Edonis streets. They’d left her shop, planning on entering the middle, interior part of the city. The part of the city that had been dug through the mountain to connect the plains with the vast ocean to the East.

“Miss what?” he asked as they dodged a running child.

“You’ll know,” she laughed, “when you miss it.”

He looked down at her, raised one eyebrow.

“So, you’re not going to tell me?”

“Nope. But, trust me, you’ll miss it before too long.”

They rounded the street and entered the westernmost part of the King’s Square. The square, really a long rectangle, was simply a wide open area between the northwest gate and the gate to Clive’s Keep. They turned, to their right, and moved into the open area and toward the keep.

“This quest,” she began, “is in the catacombs?”

“I believe so. All I know is that the Rat King of Light said that the Rat King of Dark’s territory was in the mountain.”

She nodded.

“The dwarves will know, if anyone does, where to go. I do a lot of business with them. Repairing mining and carving tools and the like.”

She moved them through the square toward the right side of the keep’s wall. He assumed they’d follow the outside of that wall until they’d entered the mountain. The buildings seemed to curve around the outside of the wall, so he thought that there’d be a street that followed it.

As they approached the center of the square, he noticed that the stocks were being emptied of the two guards that had been there since the previous day. Wulfgar made a note to be looking away from them as they passed.

The trio of adventurers reached the interior end of the square and, as Wulfgar had expected, they turned off into a street that curved around the outside of the keep’s wall and toward the mountain range whose heights loomed ever closer.

The crowds, funneled into closeness by the narrower streets, pushed Wulfgar and Lauren closer together.

“Do you have any more information about what we’re doing?” she asked.

“Nope. We just go see the king. Try to end the war. Seems kind of silly, really.”

“That’s OK, experience points are experience points. This is easier than heading out on some wild goose chase across the valley. Hopefully, we can wrap this up by lunchtime and be back before you know it. Hopefully.”

Wulfgar’s eyes were drawn upward as they got closer to the mountain face. He could just make out a large archway - large enough that it looked like it covered several streets - that began at the keep wall and stretched toward the city’s outer ramparts. As they reached it, he saw that the streets and lines of buildings continued in through the opening. He was impressed.

Once through the massive arched opening, into the maw of the mountain, it opened into a vast, high and long cavern. Within, beautifully carved from the stone, the street proceeded flanked by row houses, each with its own set of steps that rose from the cobble carved roadway. At the border of each house, a column rose to the ceiling far above and from each column hung a series of large lanterns that rose from three meters to the roof. The lantern light, reflected around the cavern by the fluting in the polished columns, lit the area such that there was no discernible difference in the level of light when they entered into the mountain’s heart.

“This is where the rich folk live,” said Lauren, looking around in the wonder that Wulfgar felt. “Hopefully, someday, I’ll be able to afford one of these places.”

“And here, someday isn’t just a wish, is it?”

“True,” she answered as she turned off the main street into an alleyway. “This way should bring us into some dwarves. They’re the ones who build all of this.”

The narrow close connected to a small, but still well lit, street that paralleled the main avenue behind the row of mansions. She turned again, heading to her right, toward the center of the mountain, until they found a small doorway carved into the otherwise featureless left-hand wall. She knocked as she entered, and Wulfgar, trailed by Bear, followed through.

The interior of the room was larger than the little door suggested, and was lined with rows of shelving containing shovels, picks, hammers and other mining tools. The room was otherwise empty, except for a desk near the front, behind which sat a gray, wizened dwarf. The dwarf was busy, writing in a leather bound notebook, though how anyone could see to write through the long curly beard that spread on the desk was beyond Wulfgar.

Lauren looked back and whispered.

“Be careful with your personal pronouns,” she lowered her voice even further, “Narri is female.” She turned back to the dwarf.

“Hiya, Narri!” Lauren beamed. “Got any tools that need repaired? Any sharpening required?”

Narri just shook her head, then looked up and smiled. She pulled a short, smoking, clay pipe from her mouth. “Not today, dear. The miners have heard of a new vein, found to the north. They’re off. Probably won’t be back for months.” She waggled the pipe in Lauren’s direction, “Mark my words, King Clive will be no happy about the delays in the excavation but,” she shrugged, “what can you do? Gold in the ground fires a dwarven heart more than gold in the treasury, as we say.”

“In that case, you should be free for dinner. Tonight? At the Gilded Pumpkin?”

Narri nodded, smiling.

“Oh, I’m a jerk!” said Lauren, turning to Wulfgar, “May I introduce my friend Wulfgar and his better half, Bear!”

Trying to keep from laughing, Wulfgar bent at the waist as deeply as he could.

“May your beard be ever curly, and your veins rich and never ending!”

“You have gained in reputation with the Dwarven kind. They are now friendly toward you!”

“What a charmer,” laughed Narri, “I’d be delighted to have dinner with you all.”

“Great! We’ll see you then,” laughed Lauren. “But there’s one other thing I need from you. Where would you go if you wanted to get into the caverns. We have to find some rats.”

Narri nodded her head toward the rear of the room, “There’s a hole in the back, but we don’t go down there,” she puffed on her pipe, “as we have kind of a truce with the Rat King of Dark. We stay out of there, and he stays out of our excavations.” She frowned, shaking her head, “I rue the day that King Clive decrees we have to build further into the heart of the mountain. I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Lauren nodded, “Yeah, that will suck. But for now, we have business with the rat king, so that sounds like just the way we need to go.”

Narri nodded, “It is, but I’m afraid I can be of no further help. I’m unfamiliar with the caves in that direction.”

Lauren took Wulfgar’s arm and pulled him toward the back of the room, “That’s OK, Narri, you’ve been a huge help. Dinner is on me tonight!”

They walked through the caves, Lauren, as the tank, leading, flanked by Bear with Wulfgar bringing up the rear. As they neared the first fork in their path, Lauren turned to Wulfgar and motioned for him to turn around. He felt her open his small backpack and begin to root around through it. After a moment, he felt her close the top and tighten the straps. He turned to look at her.

She held up a lantern and a hunk of chalk, which she handed him before opening the lantern. She stepped back and made some small movements with her hands while muttering what sounded like nonsense.

The lantern’s wick burst into flame and she closed the glass.

Wulfgar looked at her, raised one eyebrow.

“Just a little level one magic,” she smiled, “better than trying to light it with a flint and steel. We’ll have to get you similar learnin’ before too long.”

“Anyone can learn magic?” he asked.

“Yup. You just need the minimum intelligence and magic level for the spell, then you can buy the scroll and learn the spell. The scrolls are very expensive,” she rubbed her steel clad fingers together, “muy espensivo! But once you read the scroll, you know the spell. I just know the one spell, Light. Lets me light up lanterns and torches. No offensive capability,” she shrugged, “but that’s what this is for,” she laughed, pulling her sword from its sheath.

She nodded toward the side of the cavern wall and pointed at the chalk in Wulfgar’s hand.

“Make an arrow, pointing back the way we came. Do that at each intersection we come to. I have no desire to get lost down here.”

He nodded and did as she instructed, then turned back to her.

She handed him the lantern, “I’m gonna need my hands free, just in case.” She reached down with her newly freed left hand and scratched Bear behind the jaw, “Do you think you can find the rats for us, cutie pie?”

Bear turned, looked first to the left, then the right, chose the right hand turn and moved forward.

As they moved through the caverns, some smaller, some larger, Wulfgar began to think back on the past few days. They had become a blur of activity, of new information, and he worried that it might serve to distract him from his real quest. To find Shannon. They stopped in a larger cavern, with several exits. Bear moved off to sniff each one. Wulfgar joined Lauren in the middle of the room.

“Lauren,” he whispered, “when you said never to give anyone your true name, well, why? What can happen?”

She looked up at him, her usual laughing mien now serious.

“Any number of things, really. It can be used to curse you, from pretty much anywhere. And if they’re in your presence, they can use your name to magnify any spells directed against you.”

“Good or bad?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s not worth the risk. Trust me, the fewer people who know your real name, the better.”

He nodded. Then thought for a moment.

“Say, for example, that I knew someone’s true name. Is there a spell that I can use to find them?”

She frowned, looked thoughtful.

“I think so. Maybe.” She shrugged, “But I’m not the one to ask. I’m just a hammer jockey,” she smiled. “Why? Is there someone you’re looking for?”

He shook his head vigorously.

“Nope, it was just something I was wondering about. How your name could be used against you, that is.”

She nodded as Bear rejoined him and, forgetting their conversation, she said to the dog, “Did you find the way, boy?”

Bear turned and moved toward one of the holes. He stopped, looked back to ensure that the humans were following, then moved into it.

Wulfgar stopped at the entrance, made a chalk note in the wall, describing where to look for the arrow that would lead them out of this cross-roads, and thought about what Lauren had said.

If you knew someone’s real name. The name they’d been born with. On Earth. There might be a spell you could use to find them.

He knew Shannon’s full, true name.

Lauren held up her hand, signaling Wulfgar to stop. Bear, nearing the next cavern in the catacombs, had frozen, crouched - his fur looked to be standing on end and Wulfgar felt more than heard a low, rumbling growl from the dog. Warm, flickering light shimmered around the corner past Bear and Wulfgar lifted the lantern and blew out the flame before joining Lauren.

“Wait here,” he whispered, “let me see what’s going on.” He moved quietly past Bear, patting the dog to silence him, and peeked around the corner. A few torches, stuck into nooks in the cavern wall, lit a scene of quiet desperation. A number of large rats - maybe a dozen by his quick reckoning - were cornered, back to back, fighting off several small, green, humanoids; each about a meter tall, but well armed and armored. Apart from the occasional grunt from random combatants, the fight was eerily quiet. Wulfgar felt Lauren join him at his left elbow.

“Kobolds,” she whispered. “Like little orcs. Mean bastards.” He felt her tug his left arm, “I’m going to move in on their left flank and hit them hard, screaming. You wait for an opening and then do your back stabbing stuff, OK?”

He nodded and pulled his blade from its sheath on his back as she moved into the room, as quietly as she could, beckoning Bear to follow her.

Wulfgar moved into the cavern and began to work his way around to the right. The kobolds, grouped near the far end of the room, were all facing away, toward the rats that they had cornered. As he saw Lauren get to within a few meters of the cluster, he began walking toward the nearest kobold, engrossed in its fight with a particularly large rat.

As he reached the halfway point, about six meters from the fight, he activated stealth and brought his right arm high, readying the blade for attack.

Lauren’s scream, followed closely by Bear’s howl, reverberated off the cavern walls just as Wulfgar reached the fight. He brought his right arm down and forward, as hard as he could.

“7 points of damage!”

“12 points of damage, Hidden Stab!”

He felt the sword twist in his hand as it entered the kobold’s back, turned as it passed through the smaller creature’s ribcage. Bile rose in Wulfgar’s throat as he felt the blade scrape on the kobold’s bones. It sank to its knees, dropping to little more than knee-high to Wulfgar, as it let out a gurgling moan that sounded, to Wulfgar, as if one of its lungs had been punctured. It twisted, pulling the blade from Wulfgar’s hand, and it fell onto its side, a keening, high scream erupting from its mouth along with frothy, pink bubbles.

Shocked, Wulfgar stared down at the writhing creature, its teeth bared in a grimace of agony, as it tried to reach one of its long, spindly arms around to its back to get at the blade. It hissed and groaned, as oblivious as Wulfgar to the fight surrounding them. It coughed several times, its long pointed nose and ears shaking comically, before its eyes rolled back and it stopped moving with a long, wet, sigh. This wasn’t like fighting the rat. That had been like sticking a knife into a fresh loaf of bread. This was different. More real.

Sickened, Wulfgar stared down at the little creature, which looked pathetic and helpless curled on the floor of the cavern. He began to wonder, was this an AI? He knew that some - or all - of the Arn and Canis Arcturus were not. They were feeling, sentient creatures. Was this thing on the floor like that? Was it just an AI? And if it was, so what? What was he, really, now if nothing more than an AI. He had no physical entity any longer.

He came back to his senses as someone shook his left arm.

“Hey, buddy, you OK?”

Wulfgar, shaken from his thoughts, looked up to Lauren. She looked concerned.

“You OK?” she repeated.

He looked around. The rest of the kobolds had been spread around the room. None of them moving. Bear sat near the middle of them, on his haunches, licking one of his paws. He looked back to Lauren.

“Yeah. I’m OK. You?”

She nodded, “I’m fine. But, really, are you?”

He shook his head, “Yeah, I’m OK. Really,” he assured her. “It’s just that, you know, in the Omegaverse, I killed lots of creatures. Lots. But somehow, with a knife, in the back …”

“It’s more personal than a plasma rifle, yeah,” she nodded, smiling sympathetically. “Just remember, they’re AI. They’re not real,” she bent and pulled Wulfgar’s blade from the kobold’s back, cleaning it on the dead creature’s shirt before handing it back to him.

He nodded, sheathing the weapon, then looked back up to Bear. The dog was still licking one of its forelegs. One of the smaller rats approached the dog, warily.

“She would like to know,” said a small, sibilant voice to Wulfgar’s right. He looked, and saw he was being addressed by one of the larger rats, “if she can safely approach the beast. To heal it.”

Wulfgar looked back to the dog, “Take it easy, Bear. It’s OK. Give her your paw,” he smiled as the dog, easily twice the size of the little rat, raised his left paw to her. She moved in and began using her small, human-like hands, to wrap Bear’s wounds.

Wulfgar looked back to the rat as it continued speaking.

“My thanks,” it said, “you have arrived just in time.”

“And mine,” said another equally gigantic rodent, standing apart from the first rat. It had several smaller, but still large, rats arrayed around its flanks. As Wulfgar watched, the first rat’s people moved in behind it. It looked, to Wulfgar, like a standoff.

“You’re welcome,” said Wulfgar looking between the two groups, then, to the first, “do I have the honor of addressing the Rat King of Dark?”

“You do,” said the first, “and he is in your debt.”

“As is,” said the leader of the second group, “the Rat King of Wet.”

Wulfgar looked from one king to the other and back, unsure of what to do. The kobold attack had interrupted what had already been a fairly intense confrontation between the dark and wet kings. From what Wulfgar could understand, the argument had been much the same as the light king’s complaint - the wet king was pushing into the dark king’s territory. He looked to the king on his left who, true to his title, had almost black fur, unlike the lighter gray of the light and wet kings.

“Is that why your people are moving into the light king’s area?” he asked. The king looked up at him and nodded.

“Aye. We’re being forced by the wet incursion,” he turned back to the wet king and spat, “invasion of our territory. It is without precedent and unwarranted. We have done nothing to instigate this fight.”

Wulfgar looked back to the wet king and waited.

“We have no choice, cousin,” pleaded the wet king, “we’re being forced out of our rightful place,” he looked up at Wulfgar, pleading, “we have no choice,” he repeated, “it’s the Aos Si.”

Wulfgar was confused. It sounded like the wet king said “ace shee”, and he had no idea what that meant - but he didn’t want to lower his standing with the two by pleading ignorance.

He nodded thoughtfully, “The Aos Si, eh?”

“Aye. They showed up without warning, invading from one of their islands to the east. Their blades and their magic are too much for us to withstand,” it looked back to its cousin and repeated, “we had no choice.”

Wulfgar thought for a moment, then looked to Lauren. She shrugged and raised her eyebrows. He frowned.

“Oh well,” he thought, “in for a penny …”

“Is there anything,” he said looking back and forth between the kings, “that I can do to help?”

The wet king bared his fangs, “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Wulfgar shook his head - the mention of blades and magic made the Aos Si, whatever they were, sound like a bit much for a second level rogue and fifth level artisan to handle.

“I’m afraid I would be of no use in that fight.”

“You have rejected the quest Total War II from the Rat Kings of Dark and the Rat King of Wet.”

“Perhaps,” he continued, “I might be able to talk to them. To find out what they want.”

“You have accepted the quest Balancing Dark and Wet II from the Rat King of Dark and the Rat King of Wet!”

“You have gained in reputation with the Rat folk. They now respect you!”

He looked back to Lauren, unsure of what to do. She again shrugged.

Wulfgar looked back to the kings and bowed, “I will, by your leave, now seek out the Aos Si and try to determine why they have attacked you.”

He turned and called for Bear, who followed him and Lauren out of the catacombs. The dog still limped, but only slightly so. As they got a few caves away, Wulfgar looked down at Lauren.

“OK. By my reckoning, we now have two quests. Levels one and two of Balancing. What does that mean?”

“They could be, you know, linked or something. I’m not sure of the word to use. But, maybe, completing one will complete both,” she shrugged, “that would be my guess, anyway.”

He nodded. That made sense.

“What do we do now?” she asked, “head to the docks? Try to find the Aos Si?”

He shook his head.

“Not yet. Not ‘til tomorrow, at the earliest. We have some preparations to make, not least of which is,” he laughed, looking down at her, “finding out what the hell the Aos Si are.”

Wulfgar downed the rest of his pint of black beer and smacked his lips, then held up the empty mug to get the waitress’s attention.

“Tell me, Narri,” he said, stifling a burp, “do you know anything of the Aos Si?”

“The folk?” she asked, wiping beer foam off of her navel length beard, “A bit. A bit.”

Wulfgar looked to Lauren and they exchanged smiles.

“Anything you can tell us would be of great help.”

“Well,” she began, looking thoughtfully up at the humans, “first of all, they’re tiny. About knee-high to you. And they’re beautiful. One of the most beautiful, if relatively hairless, of the peoples of the world. Only the elven folk compare,” she paused, “indeed, they look to be elves in many ways, only smaller.”

Narri brushed her mustaches off her top lip and nodded, “Yes, I believe they are at least partly elven, but without the elven animosity toward my people.”

Wulfgar nodded, smiled. A friendly people was good news.

“At least, they don’t hate us because of who we are,” she smiled, “they hate all of the peoples equally.”

Wulfgar frowned, his hopes dashed.

“That said, they can be dealt with,” she raised one eyebrow and wagged a chicken leg at Wulfgar, “they tend to treat others as they’re treated. And they never, ever, forget a slight, however small.”

She looked up at the ceiling in thought, “What else? Oh,” she looked back to Wulfgar, “they’re barrow dwellers. They live in mounds.” Narri started counting off on her short, chubby fingers, “They’re strong in magic. They’re found all over the world. They like green places. Why do you ask?”

“We have to go see some. Tomorrow. Apparently, a number of them have moved into the docks.”

“Here? In Edonis?”

Wulfgar nodded, Narri frowned.

“Then they’re unlikely to be in a very good mood,” she said. Wulfgar and Lauren exchanged glances. Narri continued, “If they’re away from their greenswards and mounds, well, it can’t be for any reason that would make them happy.”

“What would make them happy?” asked Lauren.

Narri shrugged, “Going home?”

Wulfgar chewed on a turkey leg in thought. Narri, having left an hour earlier, had given him a lot to think about. Finishing the meat, he dropped the bone underneath the table and heard Bear begin to tear it apart. The smoky atmosphere of the Gilded Pumpkin shifted as the door opened and closed, letting the evening breeze flow through the room.

“I’ve got a feeling that tomorrow won’t be simply a case of asking the Aos Si to play nice with the rats.”

Lauren nodded, “Me too.” She thought for a moment, “I predict we’ll be leaving the city tomorrow.”

Wulfgar nodded, then looked up as a man took the seat next to Lauren.

“What’s up, newbies?”

Lauren looked up and smiled, “Hiya Snorri,” then looked back across the table, “Wulfgar this is …”

“We’ve met!” beamed Snorri.

Wulfgar nodded, smiled, “I thought you were off adventuring.”

“I was, I was. Gar, Nop and me fixed a little dire wolf problem for a local village,” he shrugged, “then I made a joke about them killing their cousins, and they got pissed at me,” he shrugged again, “so they’re boycotting my friendship for the moment,” he laughed, “but they’ll get over it. They always do. Hey,” he added to Wulfgar, “sorry about us not taking you on the quest. Gar and Nop are kind of picky about who they adventure with. I’m a whore,” he laughed, “I’ll hook up with just about anyone.”

Lauren looked up at Wulfgar, raised one eyebrow as an unspoken question. He nodded.

“We currently have an opening in our roster,” said Lauren looking back up at the blond Viking.

He stood again, “Great! Where are we off to?”

She laughed, dragging him back down onto the bench, then signaled the waitress for another round of beers.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, you big knucklehead,” she laughed.

Snorri smiled, accepted the mug from the waitress, and quaffed the brew in one long draw before handing it back to the waitress, “Another please, darlin’, if you don’t mind.” Then he looked back to Wulfgar, then Lauren.

“So, where are we off to tomorrow?”

They spent the next hour bringing Snorri up to speed on the quests as well as their thoughts on what was coming. He nodded thoughtfully at the end .

“I think Lauren’s right. Tomorrow will likely see us heading off to wherever the Aos Si come from,” he looked up at Wulfgar. “The islands, did you say?”

“I didn’t, I think the Rat King of Wet did.”

Snorri’s brow furrowed, “That means a sea voyage. That means we’ll need to be equipped for,” he raised his arms and shoulders in question, “whatever we run across.” He frowned, then he smiled, “Sounds like fun. I’m in.”

Wulfgar pondered that. They needed to be equipped for whatever. That meant, he assumed, combat. He thought back on the fight that morning, to something that had been bothering him since.

“What happens when we die here?”

“I haven’t died yet,” Snorri knocked on the wooden table, “but when you do, you’re resurrected at the last holy site you bound yourself to.”

“Holy site?”

“Churches and the like. Depends on the religion.”

“Religion? Really?” Wulfgar looked to the two blonds, both were nodding.

“There’s all kinds, and the one you choose can have an effect on your development.”

“Can?”

“Ayeah,” nodded Snorri. “As you may have guessed, I’m an Odinist. Thor’s hammer and all that shit,” he laughed. “That gives me the Berserkergang ability. Once per day, I can call on Odin if I’m low on health and in battle and he’ll give me a nice big to-hit and damage bonus.”

“And I’m an Hephaestean, god of blacksmiths,” added Lauren, “that increases my smithy leveling by ten percent.”

Snorri took another drink, “And, as I said, there’s all kinds, but you’ll want to do some research before you pick. If you switch sides, you become apostate for that religion. That can increase the hostility level of its followers. Permanently.”

“You said ‘can’, that implies some don’t.”

“Yup,” said Lauren, “there are even some religions that don’t do anything at all, within the game. They’re started by players. I guess you could call them ‘real’ religions,” she looked up at Snorri who shrugged, “in that the followers follow them on faith. There’s even one that was created based on the Omegaverse and, well, us.”

Wulfgar raised one eyebrow in question.

Lauren nodded, “It’s the Church of the Sacred Self. Its followers believe that they are personally connected to the divine, since they are, after all, really dead. That our manifestation in this world,” she spread her hands, indicating the Omegaverse, “is only a reflection of our true self, which is in heaven at the right hand of God.”

“They pray to themselves?”

Snorri nodded, “Yep, it was started a couple of years back by some crazy broad.”

Lauren snorted and elbowed Snorri in the ribs, “Broad? Really?”

“Dame, skirt, whatever it is you chicks like to be called,” Snorri winked at Wulfgar, who had the sense not to laugh out loud. He drank on his pint instead, hiding his smile in the frothy head.

“In any case,” continued Snorri, “you don’t have to follow a religion, and you don’t have to be a believer to bind yourself at a holy site. Anyone can do that.”

They spoke for a few more hours, making plans for the following day. Snorri, the most experienced adventurer of the group, would be in charge of provisions and preparation. They also agreed that Lauren, with the highest Personality attribute of the group, would do all of the talking with the Aos Si. That left Wulfgar feeling a bit like a useless limb, but he was sure that would pass. There was likely to be plenty of work for all.

As they settled the bill for the evening, Lauren picking up the tab this time, Snorri leaned over and nudged her then nodded toward Wulfgar.

“Does he miss it yet?”

She shook her head, “Nope. Not yet. I asked him this morning.”

Snorri laughed.

“He will.”

Wulfgar, Bear and Lauren walked through the late night streets of Edonis toward her shop. Snorri would be sleeping the night at the Gilded Pumpkin, and they agreed to meet there in the morning. As they walked through the quieting city, Wulfgar thought about the differences between his previous self and his current incarnation.

“I’ve noticed that I don’t need nearly as much sleep as I did before.”

Lauren nodded, “Me too. We can actually go for days now without needing to sleep, really. It’s more of a comfort thing. Habit, really.”

“I used to sometimes need a good nine or ten hours of sleep,” he shrugged, “when I got really worn out.”

He looked down at her.

“Is it just me, or is this transition really kind of bizarre in some ways, but fairly normal in others.”

She pulled ahead as they reached her shop and pulled open the door.

“It is,” she agreed, “but you’ll get used to it.” She shut the door after they all entered, then turned up a lantern hanging near the entrance, bathing the shop in light.

“I do still wonder about it sometimes,” she said as she began to pull off her armor pieces, laying them on a small table next to her forge. She looked up at him, “Let me see your knife.”

He pulled the blade and handed it to her, handle first.

“Forty-nine out of fifty,” she said, then bent and began tapping the blade with a small hammer.

“What?”

“It’s a measurement of how worn the blade is. It has, like, fifty hit points total, and it was down one. Hardly worn at all, but I’ll go ahead and top you off, as it were. Who knows when I’ll be able to tend to it again?”

“How can you tell?” The blade looked brand new to him.

She laughed, “It comes with the blacksmithing skill. I think it was at level two or three. Fairly standard. I mean, you have to be able to diagnose the patient before you can cure it, right?” She stood back up, and handed the blade back to Wulfgar before beginning a similar routine with her own sword and armor, “As you gain in experience with item identification, you can begin to identify magical items and their properties as well. I can for some low level stuff, mainly common and a few uncommon items.”

“Anyway, like I was saying,” she continued as she worked into a rhythm between hammer, anvil and armor piece, “I still wonder about the differences between my old life and my new one.”

She stood up, looking appraisingly at one of her greaves, newly refurbished, then nodded, satisfied, before returning the piece to her armor rack and selecting the next to be repaired.

“There is a lot I don’t know. Like how I died. There are times I want to know and times that I don’t, you know?” she looked up at Wulfgar, who nodded but said nothing. “I think it’s pretty wise that the folks in charge of the transition process refuse to tell you, but make it known that you can find out from them later, after you’ve had a chance to acclimate.”

She put the last of her repaired armor pieces back onto its display rack, then twisted left, then right, and stretched her arms toward the ceiling.

“I suppose,” she said, “that I could now look into it. To find out how my previous life ended. But I think it’s still too fresh. There’s so much else that I won’t be able to find out, I think. Like, what happened to my dog after I died? Did someone take care of her?”

“You had a pup?”

She smiled, “Yeah, I miss her. We used to go hiking a lot.”

“Where at?”

“Upstate New York. Where I’m from,” her smile became sad, “I suppose that I could grind to level fifty, so that I could exit back into the bigger Omegaverse, and go through all of my old social media. Figure out what happened to Binny. See how my family is,” she laughed, “and see who went to my funeral and what nice things everyone said about me. See if my boyfriend is seeing someone else.”

Wulfgar tried to conceal his shock. He didn’t know that you could exit out of this world at fiftieth level with no penalty. There was so much information that other players took for granted that he just didn’t know because he came into this world without going through Clive’s indoctrination process. Of course, he also had a great deal of information about this world, and the Omegaverse, that no other player had.

“There’s no hurry,” he prompted her.

“Yah, I know. Time moves much faster here than outside. Or slower,” she laughed, “I never remember how I’m supposed to describe it, just that a year in here is nowhere near a year out there.” She laughed, “For all I know, they haven’t even had my funeral yet.”

“For all I know,” she continued with a low, evil laugh, “they haven’t even found my body yet! Maybe my serial killer hid me extremely well!”

Wulfgar raised one eyebrow.

“For all I know,” she shrugged, “I stepped in front of a bus.” She shrugged again, “For all I know …”

Chapter 4

“I think I know what you mean,” Wulfgar nodded to Lauren as he left his little room. He stretched the sleep away and rubbed his eyes then pulled on his leather shirt, happy that body odor didn’t seem to be an issue in this world. He hadn’t bathed since arriving - and indeed had showered in urine twice - and still he couldn’t smell himself.

“What’s that?” Lauren asked, looking up from a foot powered stone wheel where she was sharpening her sword, her right foot rhythmically pushing down on a pedal which spun the wheel at a high rate. Sparks flew as she moved the blade’s length along the surface.

“What I miss. And I do miss it.”

Her mouth broke into a full toothy grin.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. My, uhm, morning constitutional.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Uhm, moving my bowels.”

She laughed.

“Yup. That’s it. Weird, isn’t it? How that was such a normal part of the daily routine that you never would have thought you’d miss. Hell, if asked, I’d probably have said that I’d be glad not to have to bother with that anymore.” She stood, sheathing her sword; the scabbard hanging from a hook on the wall. She began to pull on her armor.

“Need any help with that?”

“Nope! Thanks,” she twisted into her breastplate and cinched and latched the leather straps, tightening the front and rear pieces, “I got good at doing this myself a while ago.”

He nodded, then began to get ready himself. He pulled on his backpack, then his belt, shifting it until his short sword nestled comfortably against his lower back. He looked up once he was situated, to Lauren’s smiling face.

“Ready?” she asked. He nodded, returning her smile.

He moved through the door into the morning traffic and turned directly into a very large man. He looked up.

It was the guard. The guard who’d barred his entry into the town a few days earlier. The guard from whom Wulfgar had stolen. The guard who had spent a day in the stocks.

“Well, look who it is! The fuckin’ Highlander!” The man poked Wulfgar in the chest. Wulfgar didn’t remember the man being so large, but he was at least half a head taller and broader in the shoulders. The past several days of being one of the larger people in the city had reset his internal scale; he was now used to being bigger than everyone else, something that hadn’t been the case when he first entered the world.

“How’d you get into the city?” the guard asked, looking Wulfgar up and down, “and with a fine new set of clothes,” he spun Wulfgar around as effortlessly as if he was a child, “and with a nice new pig sticker to boot.”

The guard pulled Wulfgar’s blade, handing it to his partner.

“Now, where’d you get the money for all of this fine gear? Don’t tell me, a handful of Shepherd’s Piss is going for twenty gold these days. Is that it?” he snorted in laughter, spinning Wulfgar back to face him.

Lauren moved to intercede.

“I gave him the sword,” she said, “and bought him the clothes.”

“Did you now?” growled the guard. “Well, we can soon learn the truth of that.” He pushed her back out of the way, “We’ll have this one in front of the magicstrate.”

“Don’t you mean magistrate?” asked Wulfgar before he thought better of it.

“I mean what I said. The magicstrate will be able to get the truth from you. Never fear,” he then laughed, “Unless, of course, you have something to hide. Then, by all means, be my guest. Fear.”

Wulfgar was thrown into a cramped cell. He’d been dragged through the streets between the two guards, powerless to resist. Lauren had followed for a few seconds, then shouted.

“I’m going to get Snorri, to help!”

“Take Bear!”

“For sure!” she answered before turning toward the Gilded Pumpkin.

His two captors had dragged him in silence through the streets, until they’d entered an imposing building, up a long, wide, stone stairway and through a pair of doors, opened for them by liveried pike-men. They hadn’t bothered with anything like a formal charge or declaration, they didn’t stop to check him in, they simply continued to drag him down a long hallway, flanked on either side by cells, until they reached an open one and pushed Wulfgar into it. He fell to the floor, on his knees, as the guards slammed the door shut behind him. They turned, still without saying anything, and left the way that they’d come.

Still on the floor, Wulfgar turned to face the cell door and sat back, pulling his knees into his chest. He took in his surroundings. The cell was small. Long enough to stretch out in, but then narrow enough to reach out with both arms and grasp his left and right barred walls. The cage reached high in the cavernous room, almost to the ceiling ten meters above.

“What are you in for?” asked a quiet voice to his left.

Wulfgar turned to look. His new neighbor, squatting in the cell next to his, smiled at him.

“What are you in for?” he repeated.

Wulfgar shrugged, “Pissing off a guard, I guess.”

“And you couldn’t avoid him?”

“Avoid him?”

“Yeah, if you annoy a guard, just stay out of his way for five days or so. They’ll forget all about you.”

Wulfgar shook his head, “Nope,” he laughed, “I haven’t even been here that long.”

“Newby, eh?”

Wulfgar nodded, then thought.

“The thing is, though, I really think I am in some trouble. I stole four silvers from the guards a few days back, when I first got to town.”

“And you’re worried that the magicstrate will be able to find that out?” the man nodded, “And you’re right, he will. He’ll zap you with some magic and bippity-boppity-boo, you’ll tell him every law you’ve broken in the past week.”

“What then?”

“Jail, fines. The usual,” the man shrugged, “it’s par for the course in our profession.”

“Our?”

“Ain’t you a thief?”

Wulfgar shook his head, “Not really, I mean I stole, but I’m not a thief. Character-wise, that is.”

“You ain’t in the guild? The Thief’s Guild?”

Wulfgar shook his head.

The man looked shocked.

“Aw, shit, man. You can’t steal unless you’re in the Thief’s Guild. If you don’t have them pulling for you, god knows what the magicstrate will do to you.”

A cold sweat burst out all over Wulfgar’s body, and his stomach tightened in fear.

He suddenly realized that maybe not being able to shit his pants wasn’t exactly the worst thing.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Wulfgar after a time. “Any way I can get out of this?”

The man looked up, spread his arms, “Nope. Not unless you can climb like a monkey.”

Wulfgar thought for a moment, smiled, then started digging through the small pouch, still hanging from his belt, and pulled out his last flower of Shepherd’s Piss. He said a silent prayer of thanks that the guards hadn’t removed anything except his knife, then pulled his mortar, pestle, water pouch and small glass jar out of his backpack. He looked up at his new neighbor and smiled. The man smiled back.

“Keep a watch out,” Wulfgar whispered as he pushed the flower into the mortar. The man stood, turned to face toward the entrance and backed up to the bars that served as the wall between them, blocking any view from the front of the building to Wulfgar. He began grinding the flower with the pestle. Once it was nothing but a paste, he scooped it into the glass beaker then filled it with water from his skin, then stirred the mixture with his finger.

“How long,” asked Wulfgar, “until they come for us?”

“Can’t say. Depends on how busy they are.”

Wulfgar nodded to the man’s back, then activated his climbing skill. An orange line appeared about two meters off the floor and wound its way up the bars to a window near the ceiling. He looked back down and drained half of the potion in one gulp. It tasted foul, but, thankfully, left no aftertaste after he’d swallowed it. He waited a few seconds, hoping that he’d drunk enough for the effects of the potion, called Scampering Goat, to increase his skill by ten levels.

He looked back up and activated Climbing once again. The same line was now green.

“Here,” he whispered, handing the potion through the bars, “drink this.”

The man took the vial and drained it, grimacing, in one gulp.

“What was that?”

Wulfgar smiled at the man - gulping a potion made by a stranger, no questions asked.

“Climbing potion. It’ll give you level ten for an hour.”

The man nodded, then looked up at the wall.

“Cooooool!”

Wulfgar smiled, he guessed that the man saw the route up.

“Is it green?”

“Yeah.”

“OK,” Wulfgar moved to the back of the cell, “Here’s the plan. I’ll go up and open up the window so we can get out. While I’m climbing, you keep an eye out and let me know if it looks like anyone is interested. Then I keep a watch while you climb.” He raised one eyebrow, questioningly.

“Sounds like a plan,” said the man, smiling, handing the glass jar back to Wulfgar, who began to put his potion making gear back in his pack then pulled it back on.

Wulfgar’s heart began pounding. He looked to the front of the building, and silently thanked his guards that they moved him into a cell at the rear of the vast room. He looked back up, then pulled himself off of the floor by leveraging himself into the angle between the bars and the brick wall.

“All clear?”

“Yup,” his partner whispered, “I’ll hiss if it looks like anyone notices something.”

Wulfgar didn’t bother to answer, he just activated Stealth and began climbing. He used the fingers of his left hand, as well as his feet, to gain purchase on the bricks while using his right hand to reach high onto a bar in the cage. Pulling himself up on the bar, he quickly re-established his grip on the brick wall as he moved up. In this way, he was easily able to make his way up to the window sill.

The window was more a portal - an opening through to the outside that let in both fresh air and light - that was large enough for him to have walked through. He pulled himself over the ledge and, turning around, looked back down into the cells. He gave the thief a thumbs up, and the man returned it, before beginning climbing.

Wulfgar started to look up, to keep watch around the rest of the jail, when he was shocked into stillness.

The man, just as he was about to reach the wall, disappeared.

He was gone. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t.

Wulfgar felt panic rise and he was unsure of what to do. Did the man fall through some magical portal? Did he need rescuing? He was just about to begin the climb back down to investigate when the man’s face appeared in front of him.

Startled, Wulfgar moved back away from the ledge, giving the man room to come through.

After he’d joined Wulfgar on the roof, the man sat up, with his legs hanging over the eaves.

“Man, that Climbing thingy is useful. Gotta get me some of that,” he smiled as he leaned back against the dormer that protruded from the roof.

All at once, Wulfgar understood.

The man had used Stealth. That’s why he had seemed to disappear. He smiled, understanding what it was that others saw, or didn’t see, when he used the skill himself.

“What level Stealth are you?” he asked.

“Thirteen, baby!” the thief laughed, “and I’d guess you’re three or four.”

“Two. For now,” Wulfgar smiled.

The man nodded, then stood.

“I’m sure there’s lots of information we can exchange, but, we need to get moving,” he moved toward the front of the building a few steps then jumped off the side.

Wulfgar ran the few paces to where the man leapt from and looked down, concerned. The man looked up at him from the roof of the next building over, a few meters below. Wulfgar took a breath and jumped across the alleyway, landing next to him. He then followed as the man moved toward the front of the building, then dropped to a small balcony that stuck out into the narrow space between the building and the magicstrate’s.

“My home,” the man said, walking through an open door that led from the balcony into a sparsely furnished room, about the size of the average highway side motel crash pad, “I tended to have a lot of business with the magicstrate early on in my career, so I got a place close by and never really moved.”

He moved to a small chest at the foot of his bed, opened it and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves, then tossed them to Wulfgar.

“Here,” he smiled closing the chest. “They really helped me early on. They give you level seven Stealth.”

Wulfgar looked down at them appraisingly. He looked back up at the man.

“But,” he continued, “that’s just a flat level seven. Not an increase of seven levels. Otherwise,” he laughed, “I’d still be wearing them. I passed needing them a while back and I suppose I could sell them for some good bread, but I kinda grew attached to them. So,” he raised one eyebrow, “this is just a loan. Capisce?”

“Got it. And thanks,” said Wulfgar, pulling on the first glove. It fit. “Like a glove,” thought Wulfgar. The black leather hugged his hand and extended back into a loose wrapping that stretched halfway up his forearm. It was tightened through three belts and buckles on the inside of his arm. He pulled them tight, fastening them, then pulled on the right hand glove.

Wulfgar read the item’s description.

Clandestine Gauntlets: Provides wearer level 7 Stealth. Does not stack with skill levels, but will stack with other Clandestine items. A full suit of Clandestine gear provides a +4 Stealth bonus in addition to the stacking effects. Rare. Item 2 of 4 for suit.

“Thanks,” he repeated, the looked up and smiled, “Now I’m all set. As soon as I get back the knife the guards took from me, I’ll be ready,” he held up his hands, “I’ll get them back to you the second that I reach level seven.”

“Or as soon as you die,” the man snorted. “They’re insured, by me. So that they would be on my person whenever I resurrected. That insurance is still in place, so if you croak, they’ll drop back into my pack.”

“You can insure your stuff?”

“Oh yeah. Through the bank. You can have it auto-withdraw from your account every time that you die. Saves having to rush off to find and loot your corpse just to get your stuff back.”

Wulfgar pondered that. It looked like he was going to need to open an account in the King’s Bank after all. But first, he needed a small nest egg.

“That reminds me,” Wulfgar said, “I’ve got a quest and a small group. Want to join?”

“I do need to get out of town a few days. At least long enough for the guards and magicstrate to forget that they want to see me.”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think that it will take us to an island to the east. I’m guessing that it’ll take a few days.”

The man nodded and smiled, “Sure.”

“Great! The thing is, I have some friends who are probably looking for me. They’ll probably head into the magicstrate’s office, trying to help.”

“And with you not there, that could raise some questions,” the man nodded, thinking. “I can handle that. The Thief’s Guild sells disguise kits. They don’t last for too long, but they prevent any NPC’s from recognizing you.”

“Do you have one I could buy from you?”

He shook his head, “Nope. I mean, I do have some, but you have to be in the guild for it to work. I’ll go ahead and use one and get to your friends for you.”

“Great! Thanks. They’re easy to spot. A large dog,” the man raised his eyebrows, “a big Viking looking guy and a very cute blond in plate armor.”

“Define ‘cute’,” the man snorted, “because it sounds like the big warrior guy is just my type.”

Embarrassed by his assumptions, Wulfgar changed the subject.

“What’s your name? I’m Wulfgar.”

“Rydra,” the man smiled, holding out his hand to Wulfgar.

Wulfgar took the hand, shook it, then continued, “My friends should be somewhere between the magicstrate and the Gilded Pumpkin inn.”

Rydra nodded, “I know the place. I’ll find them.”

“Tell them to meet me at Narri’s.”

Wulfgar made sure he was leaning nonchalantly against the wall next to Narri’s office when his friends rounded the corner, examining his fingernails with a bored look on his face. He looked up as Bear bounded forward with a small bark, curling himself around Wulfgar’s legs.

“What kept you?” he yawned toward his friends, then asked “Impressed?”

“What?” snorted Snorri, “that you were able to climb out of a cage that hadn’t been designed with a roof?”

“And that you had to use a potion to do it?” added Lauren.

Wulfgar looked to Rydra, a pained look on his face.

“You told them?”

“Oh yeah, but what I didn’t tell them was this!” he reached into his cloak and pulled out Wulfgar’s blade. “I bagged it from behind the sergeant’s desk then split.”

“Now that’s impressive,” said Lauren. Snorri nodded agreement, and Rydra bowed.

“My disguise was fairly effective,” he admitted, “and they weren’t expecting a little old lady who asked about filing a missing person report to reach behind the desk and grab it when they turned around to get the proper paperwork. I took it, moved out the front door and began to back-trace toward the Gilded Pumpkin when I saw these folks just entering the square.”

“And what a surprise that was,” Lauren interjected, “when this old woman comes up and says ‘Wulfgar says to meet him at Narri’s’.”

“Which wasn’t a surprising as when the little old lady turned into a young black man,” laughed Snorri. Rydra joined him.

Snorri looked down at the thief, “So, did you choose to be black so that you could hide better in the shadows?”

Wulfgar groaned and Lauren elbowed Snorri, but Rydra laughed, “No, I didn’t choose to be black. My parents kind of chose it for me, you know, being black and all.”

“So you were black before?”

Lauren elbowed him again, “Please forgive our Snorri. He’s not exactly a diplomat.”

Rydra laughed again, “No worries,” he looked back up at Snorri, “Were you a blond giant before?”

“Hell no!” Snorri’s booming laugh filled the narrow street, “I was just a generic, average, white-bread guy from New York.”

“Me too,” added Wulfgar, “except the New York bit.”

“Me too!” squealed Lauren, “except for the generic, average guy part. What part of New York?”

“Long Island,” Snorri’s chest swelled.

Lauren scrunched her face, “Eww.”

Snorri’s face changed to reflect his derision, “Let me guess, Upstate?” then groaned at Lauren’s nod.

“Eww both of you,” Rydra said mimicking Lauren, “Manhattan’s where it’s at,” then laughed, “at least, that’s where I’m from.”

“Oh dear lord!” muttered Wulfgar effecting his best Charleston drawl, “I’m surrounded by yankees!”

Rydra laughed, then began to sing, “Across a hundred and tenth street, you can find it all in the street!”

Wulfgar nodded eagerly, “Bobby Womack!”

Rydra stopped and stared up at Wulfgar, a truly shocked look crossing his face.

“What?” asked Wulfgar, “can’t a generic, average, white-bread guy from Virginia like rhythm and blues? Besides, that was from the movie of the same name. Also, it was used again twenty-five years later by Tarantino.” He shrugged, “I used to work in a video store and I watched a lot of movies …”

“Video store?” laughed Lauren, “jeez, you’re old!”

Rydra let out a shriek of laughter, “You want old? I saw that movie in the theater. First run!”

“He wins,” Snorri added, the others nodded, then Snorri looked back up at Wulfgar, “Hey! I heard that you finally missed it!”

Wulfgar shrugged, nodded, “I did, this morning.”

“Missed what?” asked Rydra.

“Taking a shit!” roared Snorri, “damn I miss taking a huge shit in the morning.”

Lauren shook her head and laughed.

“I sure as hell don’t,” said Rydra, “but I had plenty of time to get over stuff like that. I can’t even remember from before this world what it was like to take a good, roaring piss,” he shook his head, “last few decades, all it did was dribble out. I’m glad to be done with all of that.”

“And on that note,” laughed Lauren, “shall we continue our journey?”

Narri hadn’t been at her desk when they entered, so they went directly through her office into the catacombs. After their brief introductions, they had discussed how best to go about finding the Aos Si and Rydra had wisely pointed out that the Rat King of Wet, if they could find him again, would be an excellent source for that - since it was his territory that the Aos Si were invading anyway.

They once again tasked Bear with finding the king and they all set off following the same path that they’d taken the day before. After a time, they came into the large cavern, the site of yesterday’s battle, now cleaned of all signs of the struggle that had taken place.

“It’s interesting,” Wulfgar said to Lauren, “how what felt like took forever yesterday went by rather quickly today.”

“Finding this place? Yeah,” she smiled, “it always seems quicker the second time you go anywhere.”

After the exchange, the group heard some rustling from one of the passages off the far end of the cavern. Lauren unsheathed her sword and Snorri a double-bladed battle axe while Wulfgar and Rydra moved in behind the tanks, Wulfgar pulling out his short sword while Rydra drew twin knives - evil looking curved daggers.

A large rat - the King of Wet, Wulfgar thought - entered the room and the party relaxed and holstered their weapons.

“My King,” said Wulfgar, walking forward and bowing, “we have come to seek your assistance in our quest.” He assumed that since he had accepted the quest for the party, it was up to him to speak, “We need your assistance,” he repeated, “in finding the Aos Si. We are all unfamiliar with your realm.”

The rat nodded and hissed, “Of course. I will assign one of my people to guide you. My son, in fact. Follow me.”

The king turned and moved back into the same passageway from which it had emerged and the party followed.

“That was easy,” whispered Wulfgar.

After a short trip through unfamiliar caves, they came to another, smaller, cavern. This one bustled with a large number of rats, many of them much smaller.

“This,” began the king, “is where we’ve been forced to. Our females and pups are here, squeezed between two enemies, while our bucks hold the lines between the Aos Si and the Dark King’s folk.”

The party moved toward another light gray rat, nearly as large as the king, who turned to face them.

“My son,” said the king by way of introduction.

“My prince,” said Wulfgar bowing. The rest of the party followed his lead. Bear sat and began scratching behind his right ear.

“Our saviors?” asked the prince to his father, who nodded. The prince looked back up to the party.

“We hope so,” answered Wulfgar. “We’ll try.” Then, for no reason he could think of, he added, “I pledge our lives to this quest.”

“You have promised to complete this quest. You will lose reputation if you fail.”

“You have gained in reputation with the Rat folk.”

He heard low groans behind him.

“Dumbass,” whispered Snorri.

The prince and the king, however, bowed low before the party, and the king responded, “I pledge my oldest son to the completion of the quest, as well, he will accompany you. As will,” he added, “one of my healers.”

The king turned and summoned, without speaking, a small long whiskered rat. She had large eyes and a delicate mouth, and her paws looked amazingly like small, rounded human hands. She came forward and bowed.

“She does not,” said the prince, “have a human tongue, but I will speak for her.”

“She has no small skill in healing,” added the king, “and should hopefully be of assistance should the Aos Si prove intractable. She has proved invaluable in our recent struggles.”

“Does she understand us?” asked Lauren. The little rat nodded.

“Does she have a name?” the blacksmith continued.

“An unmated female is called a doe,” said the prince. “That will suffice, as will prince for me.”

“Prince, eh?” snorted Rydra under his breath. “Does he party like it’s 1999?”

Wulfgar stifled a laugh and, hiding his smile, bowed deeply again, “Our thanks, my king. We will now surely have no problem fulfilling your quest. I hope to have your people in their homes soon.”

The party, now four humans, two rodents and one very large canine, made their way through the caves, directed by the prince. As they moved, eastward Wulfgar presumed, a dampness absent from the earlier catacombs enveloped them; a humidity that seemed to increase the dank quality of the cavern. They also began to smell the first tang of sea salt. They entered a large cave, larger than any that they’d seen, and found themselves surrounded by a large number of rats. One approached the prince and bowed, looking, Wulfgar thought, like a Lipizzaner stallion - dropping to one fore-knee while extending his other leg forward, his snout brushing the ground.

After a few moments the prince nodded and the rat returned to its ranks.

“We are at the limits of our territory,” began the prince, “after this we are in the control of the Aos Si.” He pointed to one of three passages off the eastern end of the cavern and looked back to Wulfgar, “Which should we choose.”

Without thinking Wulfgar answered, “Take us to your hearth. Your home. I imagine that’s where we’ll find their rulers.”

The prince nodded and turned, “The center path.” He moved toward it.

“Wait,” said Snorri, “uhm, my prince, I think you should let me go first. Just in case.”

The prince nodded and the party moved away, through the line of rats and deeper into the caves.

Lauren dropped back to cover the rear as they entered the passage, motioning for Doe to move into the center. The little rat did, timidly moving in next to Bear and walking on the dog’s left flank. Just ahead were Wulfgar and Rydra, then the prince, all following as Snorri led the way.

“Never,” said Snorri softly over his shoulder, “volunteer me for another oath, OK?”

“OK,” agreed Wulfgar. He looked to Rydra.

“You should never pledge yourself either,” continued Rydra placatingly, “oaths have effects here. They truly bind you in more ways that just giving your word.”

Wulfgar nodded, embarrassed.

“As it is though, this one isn’t too bad. It might be worth the risk,” he looked forward to Snorri who, without looking back, nodded.

“How so?” asked Wulfgar.

“Can’t tell yet, but the pledge will likely serve to increase our reward. Not only with this quest but for all of the associated quests. I guess,” he shrugged, “whether the pledge applies to the entire chain.”

The group entered a small chamber and Snorri halted looking around. When he was satisfied that they were alone, he put up his axe and pulled off his backpack. Opening it, he pulled out a glass jar full of a white liquid and a small bowl containing a large, yellowish cube.

“What’s that?” asked Lauren from behind them.

“Milk and butter,” said Snorri over his shoulder.

“Hungry?” asked Wulfgar.

“I take it you’re not lactose intolerant,” added Rydra.

Snorri laughed quietly.

“No. Unlike you uneducated heathens, I did my research. The Aos Si are often bribed with gifts, and one of the traditional gifts is milk and butter.”

“Bribe is such an ugly word,” said a voice in Wulfgar’s ear. He felt a small, cold, blade pressed against his throat, its pinpoint pressed in toward his carotid artery. “You should really call it a, uhm, what Tane?”

Wulfgar froze. He saw a small man-like creature suddenly appear on Snorri’s shoulder, holding a finger length blade at the man’s neck.

“Offering, I think. Offering is a much nicer word, Bael,” it said.

“Does everyone have someone sticking a blade in their neck?” asked Wulfgar. He was answered by low grunts from around him and a muffled growl from Bear.

“Everyone does,” said the voice in his ear, “but does everyone need to be told what happens if they do anything remotely uhm, what’s the word, Tane?”

“The word stupid should suffice, I think, Bael” said Snorri’s captor.

“Does everyone need to be told what happens if they do anything remotely stupid?” concluded the voice.

“I don’t think so,” said Wulfgar, then flinched as the blade’s pressure increased, “No. I mean, no I don’t. No we don’t.” The pressure relaxed.

“We also don’t have to be told,” he said louder, “that we are all at your mercy. That even if you were to remove the blades from our throats and then engaged us in conversation, that we would be in no less danger. At all.”

The voice, closer to his ear this time, whispered, “Good. Any questions?”

“Want some milk?” asked Wulfgar lightly.

“You’re right,” Rydra conceded, leaning in to whisper in Wulfgar’s ear, “she is cute.” He laughed a little, then added, “If you’re into that sort of thing.”

Wulfgar smiled. He, Rydra and Snorri, along with Bear, Prince and Doe, were huddled, sitting, in the middle of a large cavern watching Lauren speak to the leader of the Aos Si. She was in front of a small, elevated area within the cave, on which was sitting a pair - two of the most beautiful people that Wulfgar had ever seen. They lounged with careless insouciance, regal in shining robes that spread around their small bodies. It seemed that they shimmered, whether from some artificial light or an inherent magic, he couldn’t tell.

“Your majesty,” began Lauren, bowed and speaking to the floor in front of them.

“How many kings of Edonis are there?” whispered Wulfgar sardonically.

“Too many,” said the male of the pair, standing and looking toward Wulfgar, who blushed, cursing himself for his stupidity.

“Too many,” the king repeated, walking toward Lauren, “but we are not here by choice.”

Lauren looked up at him, “And we’re here to help.”

“All of you?” asked the king, looking to the Wulfgar’s left.

Wulfgar turned his head and watched the rat prince walk forward and give a perfunctory nod.

“Yes,” hissed the prince, “if we can be of service to help you all return to your home. We will.”

“Yes,” agreed Lauren, “but first we need to know where your home is and why you had to leave.”

The little king looked back up to his partner, who began to speak with a voice like soft music. Wulfgar felt drawn to her, he felt that he’d gladly do anything she asked. The world began to change, to brighten - he was overcome with a warmth, a surety that everything would be fine thanks to the queen. He was overcome with the desire to die for her. Then he shook his head, pushing the thought away.

“You have successfully resisted the Charm of the Faerie!”

He looked to Rydra, who smiled back, nodding. They both looked to Snorri, who seemed to have glazed over and was nodding, drool hanging from his lower lip.

Wulfgar reached forward and flicked the big man’s left earlobe.

Snorri shook his head, stunned, then looked back at Wulfgar and whispered, “Thanks, owe you one.” They all looked back at the queen, who chuckled softly.

“You’d have not so easily escaped my snare if we were on my island, Baile,” she shrugged, then continued, “In any case, if you would help us willfully, I am still pleased.” The king, once again taking his seat by her side, looked less so. He frowned at the group.

“We were forced away from Baile,” he said, then his voice lowered, “by the Baen Si.”

A shudder went through the room. The rest of the Aos Si seemed to have been physically assaulted by the words and the light emanating from the royal pair lowered, for a second, before returning to its previous brightness.

“Will you help us?” pleaded the queen.

“We will,” answered Lauren, speaking for the group.

“You have accepted the quest Baen Si’s Wail I by the Faerie Queen!”

The message, Wulfgar thought, somehow felt orange. He couldn’t describe it in any other way. When he had accepted the previous quests in the chain, there had been no particular feeling at all. That could only mean one thing, he thought - this quest, unlike the previous ones, was more difficult. More dangerous.

“At least,” he thought thankfully, “it didn’t feel red …”

“Our thanks,” said the king softly, then his voice rose. “When the Baen Si arrived on Baile, we were sore afraid. Her cry is usually a harbinger of death for one of the folk. But this time, her cry didn’t cease. It continued, for days. There was nothing that we could do.”

The queen nodded, “We were forced to leave, beginning the cascading effect you’ve seen before you. We do not want to be here,” she looked to the prince, “to have invaded your homes. We want,” she finished simply, “to go home.”

“Why would the Baen Si do this?”

The queen sat thoughtfully for a second, “I can think of only one reason. Her home is beset as well. Rid that of whatever drove her out, and she will, I hope, return.”

Wulfgar gulped, then spoke up, “What could drive her from her home?”

The queen shook her head, “The Baen Si has power. Great power. But she has no physicality. I can only guess that whatever drove her away is immune to her magic, and likely, all magic.”

“Or,” added the king, “it is even more powerful than the Baen Si.”

Wulfgar, with Snorri, Lauren, Rydra and Bear, walked onto a long pier that stretched out into the man-made harbor whose walls completed the great circle that was Edonis. He looked back the way that they’d come. A large half-bowl seemed to have been carved out of the mountain face, within which was the eastern portion of the city. It looked, Wulfgar thought, like the city had been built into the face of a half-domed amphitheater.

He turned back, to the east, as they made their way through the various sellers of fresh seafood that lined the part of the maze of docks near land. He tried to keep from looking down, from trying to spot the two rats and two Aos Si that were accompanying them, underneath the pier. He hoped that they would be able to keep up with their pace, as they were moving from one piling to the next, but Prince had assured the humans that it would be no problem.

“Does anyone know where we’re going?” asked Wulfgar.

Snorri nodded, “Yeah, there should be some boats for hire. Out nearer the end of the docklands,” he shook a small purse that the faerie king had given them for that purpose. Once they had contracted with a captain for the cruise, the rats and the faerie princes would join them on the boat. Extra coins had been provided in case the captain proved to be intractable about the extra passengers - especially the extra passengers in question.

Wulfgar followed the rest of the group, enjoying the smell and breeze of the ocean air and the cries of the gulls. He was looking at Rydra when he noticed the man shimmer for a second, then return to normal. It wasn’t the first time that he’d seen it happen. Frowning, he squinted at the man, trying to figure it out, when it dawned on him.

“Rydra,” he began, catching up with the man, “are you activating Stealth?”

He looked up at Wulfgar and grinned, “Oh yeah, man. Gotta keep practicing.” He waved his arms, encompassing the area, “there’s just about no way I could successfully do it, it being sunny and seeing how I’m in the middle of a crowd, but even failures can result in a gain of experience.”

Wulfgar nodded, wished he’d thought of that earlier. He activated the skill.

“Stealth Failed.”

Rydra added, “You just gotta be mindful of when you do it. Don’t ever forget that ten minute cool-down. Don’t want to be practicing the skill in some dungeon, then not be able to use it to get your ass out of a hot little fire!”

“We really could use a watch,” laughed Wulfgar, “maybe a nice Rolex.”

“I was always an Omega man, myself,” chuckled Rydra, “but if you just think on the skill, it’ll tell you about how long you have ‘til you can use it again.”

Wulfgar did. He thought about using Stealth and knew, just knew, that he had a little over nine minutes until the cool-down period ended and he could use it again.

“That’s handy, thanks.”

“Ain’t no thang,” grinned the little man, “I imagine that before too long, you’ll have plenty to teach me as well.”

They continued walking, moving through the crowds of shoppers and mongers, along the boulevard-wide docks that stretched out from the city waterfront toward the encircling harbor wall. As they reached the halfway point between lands edge and the wall opening - a high arch topped with a large, glass walled room that Wulfgar assumed was some sort of light-house - the docks began to branch out into smaller piers where many of the larger boats were docked. None of them that he could see seemed to be longer than about forty or fifty footers, about fifteen meters long. Decent size for a sailing yacht, but nothing he’d want to take on a long sea voyage.

The walk, the smells, sights and sounds brought back memories for Wulfgar. About the time, before he’d ever heard of the Omegaverse, a friend had invited him on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina where they would be part of a crew to ferry a forty-seven foot yacht to Norfolk, Virginia. Duncan, his friend and her boyfriend, and another couple had driven a rental car from Charlottesville, Virginia to Charleston where they’d boarded the boat. It was beautiful, long and narrow. It sat low in the water - from the pilot’s seat, you could almost reach into the water on either side.

It hadn’t been Duncan’s first time on a boat - he’d been sailing on the Chesapeake Bay several times - but it was his first time at sea on such a small vessel. It had been exhilarating. The weather the first day, as they made their way out from the Carolina shore toward the Gulf Stream, had been perfect.

He’d sat on the bow, letting his feet dangle into the wake plowed up by the movement of the boat, enjoying the weather. After a time, he’d noticed that the slapping of the bow wave on the bottom of his foot felt different. Harder. He looked down and saw one of several dolphins, surfing along on the crest of the bow wake, nudging his foot with its snout. He made, for the first time in his life, meaningful eye contact with an undomesticated species. It was more impactful than he would have thought. He could not only see thinking and intelligence in the animal’s eyes, it seemed to Duncan that the dolphin was observing the same things in him. They just looked at each other for what felt like hours; it seemed that time stopped. After the initial shock wore off, he just smiled and watched the playful animals move through the water.

Once they’d left, he went to the stern of the ship and got the news - a storm was brewing and chasing them down. It would hit sometime around nightfall. The group began to work to batten down the boat, to make sure that everything was properly stowed for the rough seas rushing up from behind.

As night fell, Duncan had watched the front approach - a wall of dark that loomed out of the west. As the night grew darker, the front turned into an ill-defined mass that seemed to envelop them.

Then the gust front hit.

The yacht, which had felt plenty massive before, suddenly seemed tiny and insignificant as the swells pushed it further out to sea. The crew decided that the more experienced sailors would take the first watch, and that Duncan would handle the overnight watch; after the storm had blown through. Duncan descended into the boat and tried, fruitlessly, to sleep. To wait for his watch. As he lay there, he watched back and up to the helmsman sitting, strapped in, behind the large wheel as water broke from left, right and behind over the sides and stern to wash over the pilot. The little ship was pitched and tossed for hours.

Thankfully, Duncan had never been prone to seasickness, but he still got little rest until it was time for his watch, at about midnight.

He took over from the previous crewman and strapped himself in behind the wheel - though it was probably no longer necessary to tie himself down; the rage of the storm had blown through, leaving an eerily dark, but comparably calm night.

That night was one of the most memorable of his life.

As the rest of the crew, exhausted from battling the storm, slept below, Duncan alone manned the helm. He didn’t have to really follow any particular course - they would have to re-establish their location and re-plot their course to Norfolk the next day - and he was only really there to ensure that they didn’t hit any other shipping, which was an extremely unlikely possibility.

So, he sat, and watched the night.

The darkness, which he could feel roiling above him, was occasionally lit by stabs of light - some further, some closer - as lightning struck from the clouds to the surface below. It was scarily beautiful. He was at once enraptured by the sight, but worried that their mast - the only vertical mass for dozens of kilometers in every direction - would soon attract one of the explosive down-bursts. He could only hope that whoever owned the yacht had ensured that the ship had been electrically ‘caged’ and that if lightning did hit, it wouldn’t have to find its way through to the sea below via some non-conductive ship element like the hull - or Duncan.

He had shrugged off the concern, however - since there was nothing he could do about it, there was, he felt, no reason to worry about it - and just enjoyed the spectacle of the brilliant light show. At its peak, the storm seemed to flash, from some random direction and distance, every few seconds. It was more thrilling than any fireworks display he’d ever seen.

As the hours and the night wore on, the storm had moved ahead and the sea and skies had calmed. He had just begun to relax and enjoy the solitude of the night, to lean back and let himself really begin to take advantage of the calming of the sea, when he’d been startled out of his reverie by a sudden flash in the water, about two meters to his right.

Something splashed. Then again.

As visions of attacking sea monsters rose in his brain, he cinched his harness and peered into the darkness, trying to determine what was rising out of the thousand meter deep ocean below him. His fears conjured something huge, unnameable and terrifying that had risen up from the eight-thousand meter deep Puerto Rican Trench, worked its way up into the Gulf Stream and hungered. He began to picture Architeuthis - the giant squid - its eyes as large as manhole covers, its limbs long and strong enough to enwrap the entire ship and drag it, crushing it, below into the depths, while it fed on Duncan; pulling him, with two long, horned arms, into its beak-like gaping maw. Then he began to imagine something even worse, something that could feed on that nightmare, deep in the unknowable abyss directly beneath him.

That’s when it burst back through the surface, directly where he was watching, sending a flood of adrenaline into his horrified mind.

The dolphins had returned.

Duncan laughed.

The group approached a grizzled captain, standing at the helm of his ship. He looked up as the group approached and Snorri walked up the gangplank onto the moored vessel, a ship that looked to Wulfgar a bit like a caravel. It was twin masted, with a larger mast amidships and a smaller on the raised stern. About fifteen meters long - about as long as the much lower and sleeker yacht that he had sailed on to Norfolk - it was of the type that the great Portuguese explorers of the fifteenth century had taken into the unknown on Earth.

The captain nodded at Snorri’s request to board, and the rest of the group followed him onto the ship. Wulfgar looked around. A small crew was busy about the chores of the ship; mopping, tarring, and one looked to be checking through the folded rigging. He looked back to the helm and went aft, joining Snorri and the captain in mid-negotiation.

“Baile, you say?” spat the old, lean, leathern man.

Snorri nodded.

“A silver each,” he said, stuffing a pipe into his mouth and looking through the group, counting, “including the dog.”

“Done,” agreed Snorri, and handed him the clinking bag. The old man opened it, draining the coins into his cracked and aged hand, counting them as they dropped.

“This is too much,” he said finally. “There’s nine coins and five of you,” he raised one eyebrow and looked back to Snorri, “is the rest a gift?”

Snorri shook his head, turned and whistled.

The old captain let out a low growl as Prince, Doe, Tane and Bael came aboard. Wulfgar took the opportunity to really look at the two faerie princelings for the first time. Sons of the king and queen of the Aos Si, Wulfgar hadn’t really had a chance to talk to them after they’d been assigned to help with the quest - he hadn’t talked to either, in fact, since Bael had held a blade to Wulfgar’s throat. He still didn’t know much about the diminutive pair, but given how the Aos Si had managed to surprise and subdue the entire party spoke volumes about their abilities. In addition to being invaluable guides on this quest, Wulfgar was sure that their additional firepower would come in handy.

They came forward, ahead of the two rats, regally making their way toward the humans. Tane and Bael both looked upward at the group, defiantly, Bael resting his right hand on the pommel of the tiny sword that hung from his waist. Despite their size, their mere presence was, at least to Wulfgar, a little intimidating.

He looked back to the captain as the old man coughed, “I made my deal with you lot, nothing was said about transporting vermin.”

Wulfgar walked forward a step, leaned in above the captain, and said slowly, levelly, “Those vermin are my friends.”

“Intimidation Successful!”

“You have lost Reputation!”

The man raised his hands in supplication, “Fine, fine,” he raised one hand to Wulfgar’s chest and pointed at him, “as long as you take full responsibility for your,” he looked back to the second group and frowned, “friends.” He shoved his pipe back into his mouth and added, “And they’ll stay below. At least until we’re at sea. I’ll not have any other captains see me carrying those,” he paused, growling, “passengers.”

The captain moved forward, began to shout orders at the crew who leaped into action, preparing the ship to sail.

“Nicely done,” said Snorri to Wulfgar, “but I wouldn’t do that too often. You spend Reputation points like crazy when you do.”

“But I have no Reputation,” countered Wulfgar.

“Even worse. That means that your Reputation will sink into the negative.”

Rydra added, “You start with a blank slate, a tabula rasa, from which you can either go up or down. Do good, nice things, it goes up. Do bad, evil things, it goes down.” He shrugged, “You can either become famous or infamous. Through your actions.”

“Noted,” replied Wulfgar, “and thanks you two.”

The four humans lounged naked on the small ship’s foredeck, soaking in the sun and enjoying the feeling as the breeze pushed them through the outer harbor toward the opening under the arched lighthouse. Bear slept between Wulfgar and Lauren, who each leaned back onto either side of the dog; Wulfgar against his left shoulder, Lauren snuggled in on his right hip. Rydra lay out on his back in the middle of the deck, his arms behind his head, as he stared up into the sky.

Snorri sat with his back against the base of the bowsprit, where the spar first extended forward from the bow, his arms resting the short railing that stretched down either side of the ship to the stern. His thumbs tapped out according to an internal rhythm on the rails.

“I never would’ve thought,” he began, shaking his wind blown hair from his face, “that I would be sitting this close to a fully naked, attractive woman and not rise to the occasion,” he laughed lightly, “you know, on my own.”

“I’ll try not to take it as an insult,” chuckled Lauren, “but I’m in the same boat. No pun intended.”

After they had come to terms with the captain and crew preparations were begun for sailing, the party had gone belowdecks, to the open forward cabin where they’d sleep. As the rats and Aos Si made themselves comfortable - unhappy but willing to stay out of sight until the ship, the Piraeus, made open water - the humans had begun shedding their gear.

Once Lauren had removed and stored her plate armor, she’d been left in nothing more than a full length, padded suit that looked to Wulfgar like a quilted ski outfit, and began to strip that off as well.

“Going commando, are we?” asked Wulfgar.

“Might as well,” shrugged Lauren. “It’s a beautiful day and we have nothing better to do than to catch some rays.”

Wulfgar had to admit that he had been worried that his natural inclinations would, as Snorri put it, rise to the occasion, but while he appreciated the view, it really didn’t stir anything in him.

“Hormones,” said Snorri continuing his drumbeat on the railing, bringing Wulfgar back to the present, “we don’t have any hormones.”

“So there’s no sex?” asked Wulfgar, more than a little disappointed.

“Oh yeah, there is,” laughed Rydra, “lots and lots of it. But we have it because we want to want it, not just because we want it.”

“Because you want to want it? I don’t follow.”

“We have sex to fulfill a psychological need, not a physiological one. We have sex with someone we want to be with, we don’t get with someone just because we want to have sex.”

“So everyone just makes love? There’s no fucking?”

Rydra bellowed, a deep laughter Wulfgar wouldn’t have expected from such a small man, “Oh, yeah, man, there’s plenty of fucking. I could show you a true dungeon where anything goes. But, yeah, it’s usually more about intimacy than physical release.”

“Dungeon, eh?” asked Snorri.

“I doubt you’d be interested,” snorted Rydra.

“Why?”

“I’m not suggesting that I would presume to try to guess your particular kink, but the dungeon I’m referring to is a men’s club.”

“What?” asked Snorri, who thought for a moment, then asked, “You’re gay?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Why didn’t you resurrect as a woman then?”

“Oh jeez,” muttered Lauren as Rydra rose onto his elbow and looked back at Snorri, smiling.

“Because,” he said slowly, enunciating every word, “I am not a woman.”

Snorri raised his hands, “I wasn’t saying that there’s anything wrong with being gay …” he began.

“Some of my best friends …” muttered Wulfgar, laughing.

Rydra nodded, “I know.”

“It’s just,” Snorri continued, “why wouldn’t you be a woman if you could? Then you could have all the men that you wanted.”

“I know,” repeated Rydra, “it’s not that you lack sympathy for gays, you just lack empathy.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You have the ability to feel sorry for the problems that we go through, but you don’t have the ability to put yourself in our place. If you did, you’d understand that I don’t feel, in any way, broken. I don’t need to be fixed.”

“I was just saying,” said Snorri, “that if you wanted to have sex with men, you could get a lot more as a woman, that’s all. There’s this one player I know, and she’s taken it as sort of a hobby to be with as many men, players and NPC’s, as she can,” he laughed, “and some of us as many times as we want!”

Rydra nodded, “Maybe, but I like myself just the way I am, and that was a very long, very hard road I had to travel in my life, and, frankly, I’m not willing to throw all of that work away just to increase the pool of my possible partners,” he then winked at Wulfgar and Lauren, “besides, that nymph player you mentioned? That sounds just like what a repressed gay man would do; resurrect as a gorgeous woman and screw as many men as he could.” He smiled, then leaned back onto the deck and put his hands behind his head.

“See, that’s just what I’m …” began Snorri, then halted, “Wait, what?”

“Oh yeah, I’d bet your little friend really is a man.”

“No way,” said Snorri, shaking his head, “no way. I’d know.”

“If you say so,” said Rydra softly, smiling into the sky.

“I’d know.”

“Why would it matter?” asked Lauren, scratching Bear’s chest, “you just said that was exactly what Rydra should do.”

“I’d know,” repeated Snorri, as if he was trying to convince himself.

“Empathy is a bitch, ain’t it?” laughed Rydra quietly.

“Anyway,” said Snorri, “the difference is that we don’t have all those hormones and chemicals screwing us up, Wulfgar.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“For me,” shrugged Snorri, “it’s overall great. No more medicines needed to keep me from going batshit,” he laughed. “No more Olanzapine, no more Haloperidol, no more Prozac. No more need to feel like I’ve been drugged into submission just to keep me from feeling like I was losing it.”

“Bipolar?” asked Rydra.

“Yeah. It was like my emotions were on a roller coaster. Sometimes I’d be so up I felt like I could do anything. I had so much energy that people thought I was coked out of my gourd, other times depression that was like a weight. Literally, it made me feel like I was looking at everything through a dirty fish eye lens.”

The rest just waited, listening silently, for him to continue.

After a few moments he said, “And everyone always tried to be so helpful, but they didn’t understand. I had one girl, really nice but clueless, who tried to empathize,” he smiled toward Rydra who gave him a thumbs up, “by saying that she understood because her dog died and she was depressed for a long time.”

He laughed quietly.

“Feeling bad when your dog dies is sadness. If she had been depressed, her dog dying wouldn’t have made any difference in how she felt. Getting a new puppy wouldn’t have made a difference in how she felt. She would have just been,” he shrugged, “blah. Depression isn’t feeling bad, depression is feeling nothing. Wanting nothing. You just want the entire universe to just go away and leave you alone. Death isn’t enough, man, you just want to cease to exist.”

They waited a few more moments for him to continue, when he didn’t Wulfgar spoke up.

“And now?”

“And now it’s great! I’m happy when I’m supposed to be, and sad when I’m supposed to be. And when I’m happy, it doesn’t feel like I’m on a backwards speeding bicycle just trying to keep everything under control and on course, and when I’m sad it doesn’t feel like I just want to curl up and go to sleep, forever.”

He shrugged, “Which is probably what I did.”

“Did?” asked Lauren quietly.

“Yeah,” Snorri answered, “I was off my meds, my last time under the helmet. It would happen sometimes, I’d either think I could hack it or I’d just get so sick of feeling level and bored that I’d take a chance. I remember my last Omegaverse mission was with some buds, attacking an Arn outpost. One of my friends threw a grenade, it landed too close to me and it killed me. I remember freaking out, losing my shit, then nothing.”

He raised one eyebrow and stretched back, looking into the sky, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I just ripped off the helmet and killed myself. At least, I hope that’s what happened.”

“Why?” said Wulfgar and Lauren simultaneously.

“Because that’s better than if I hurt someone else on my way out. When I’d lose my temper, I was gone, man. Gone. It was like I was shrunk into a little ball in the middle of my brain and had no control over my body anymore. I’d literally see red. The veins in my head would throb, and a red wash would cover everything. I’d go crazy, punching, spitting, screaming, and all the while I’m sitting in this little ball in the middle of my brain unable to understand why the fuck I was going nuts and being unable to do anything about it. I was along for the ride, man.”

He laughed.

“I can tell you, the first time I used Berserkergang in this world, it freaked me the fuck out, because that’s exactly what it feels like. You lose control of yourself and just hit, hit, hit, until you feel like every ounce of energy has been drained,” he smiled, “I damn near changed religion after that.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Rydra.

“Because at least here I can choose when it happens. Back then, I never had any idea when it would come. I never knew what my mood was going to be like on any given day. I could wake up just fine and some little thing would set me off. Or nothing. Sometimes, my mood would just start falling. It was like my brain was riding on a sine wave. I’d go up for a while, then go back down for a while, then back up. Sometimes the peaks and troughs would last for a day or two, sometimes months. There were times I just didn’t want to get out of bed for weeks and weeks at a time. Then there were times when I got so much shit done on so little sleep that I thought I was a god. Those times were pretty damn good, actually.”

“But,” he shrugged, “that was only when I was off the meds. When I was on them, everything was an easy, level, kind of meh feeling. Not to be recommended, any of the above. I never felt like I had any control over my life whatsoever.”

Snorri stood, turned, and dropped back down, looking forward with his legs dangling off either side of the bow as the ship moved through the harbor arch. He looked up as they went underneath the lighthouse, then pumped his arms wide as the wind blew past him.

“But here,” he said, then shouted, “I’m the King of the WORLD!”

Wulfgar stood at the stern, watching the lights of Edonis in the distance cut through the night’s fall. He, like the others, had donned their gear as the sun dipped below the mountain range to the west and the temperatures began to fall, hours before. Lauren, clad in her quilted under-suit, stood next to him.

“It’s going to take me a while to get used to the slower pace of this world,” he nodded toward the city maybe thirty kilometers in the distance, a speck of light on the otherwise darkened mountain range, “half a day away and we’re still in sight of the city. More or less.”

She smiled and leaned forward on the fantail, looking down into the wake, “You just gotta go with the flow, man, but, yeah, it takes a little getting used to.”

“I’m not complaining,” he laughed, “it feels kind of great, not to have to worry about all of the bullshit. No more tax forms, for one.” It was nearing April fifteenth back in Virginia. “All things considered,” he continued, “I’d much rather be standing here at midnight with you.”

She nodded, looking up and back at him, then she looked past him.

“They’re waving for us,” she straightened, then began walking toward the bow of the ship. Wulfgar followed.

“What is it?” she asked as they rejoined the group.

“A mist,” said Bael, pointing eastward, “has risen.” The ship would soon enter a darkened cloud, floating on the calm surface of the sea.

“So?” countered Wulfgar.

Bael looked up at him and frowned.

“So, maybe nothing,” he looked back forward, “maybe something,” he added softly.

“Best,” continued Tane, “arm yourselves,” he drew his small sword, as did his brother.

Rydra pulled his two daggers out of his cloak as Snorri unlimbered his axe. Bear and Prince moved into either side of Doe, keeping her in the middle of the group, as Wulfgar pulled his blade.

“Shit,” said Lauren as the fog enveloped them, “I don’t have mine, I need to get below,” she started looking about frantically, they could no longer see the forward mast of the ship, mere meters behind them, much less the stern beyond that. They heard the captain bellowing to his crew, but couldn’t make out the exact words.

“Forget that,” said Rydra handing her one of his curved daggers, “take this.”

She nodded thanks.

“Remember, Lauren,” growled Snorri, “you’re not a tank. At least not now. You’re wearing a puffy, marshmallow suit.”

She nodded again, grimly this time.

They heard more shouting from the stern. Higher, louder this time.

Then they heard screams.

Chapter 5

The screams from the rear of the ship continued, increasing in volume and intensity. Wulfgar looked to the rest of the group, and Rydra looked up at him.

“Have you used Stealth within the last ten minutes?” the little thief asked him.

“Nope, I’m ready,” Wulfgar answered.

“OK,” Rydra turned to the rest of the group, “we’ll go ahead, Stealthed, and try to get the drop on whatever is coming. The rest of you be ready to haul ass to pull our asses out of the fire as soon as you hear it get nasty.” Another scream ripped the night. “Well, as soon as it gets nastier.”

He looked back up to Wulfgar, “Those gloves give you seventh level, that should give you just over a minute of Stealth. Plenty of time to get aft and pick your target. I’ve got over two minutes, so I’ll let you make the first play. You take whatever we come across first, and I’ll hit the next one in line,” he paused, “unless there’s only one bad guy, then I’ll hit him on the far side and you hit him on this side.” He looked down at his knife, then back to Wulfgar.

“Ready?”

Wulfgar just smiled and activated Stealth. He watched as Rydra did likewise, and saw the man shimmer as he became translucent, then became a indistinct spot, only distinguishable as a wave, a movement within the thick fog. As Wulfgar reached the mainmast, centrally located on the small ship, he leaned against it, trying to peer back through the soup to the stern. Nothing resolved.

“You have been gifted with Faerie’s Kiss by Bael!”

“You have been gifted with Serpent’s Sting by Tane!”

“What the hell?” muttered Wulfgar. He didn’t know what those gifts were, but they sounded great. With a renewed sense of purpose and power, he continued following along the path that Rydra had taken before him. As he reached the short stairway that led up to the rear deck, he began to crouch, holding his blade in front of him.

Cresting the top of the stairs, he was met with a scene of horror.

The crew, many of them bleeding, were prone on the deck, none of them moving, while monstrosities surrounded the captain at his wheel. Humanoid, but like caricatures of humans. They stood about chest high to Wulfgar, and looked like nothing more than water logged corpses. Their flesh, a sickening gray, was ridged like pruny fingers too long submerged in bathwater, and their faces hung off their skulls like melted masks. Seaweed, also gray and dead, draped their twisted and stunted bodies. The only color about them that wasn’t a deathly pallid wash was the red that dripped from their talons and teeth.

Wulfgar scanned the rear railing, trying to glean some indication of Rydra, some confirmation that he was in place and ready for Wulfgar’s attack, but he couldn’t spare the time to ensure that the man was set. The captain, his eyes screwed shut in terror, was pulled into a choke hold by one of the zombies behind him, and was falling to his knees, his struggles lessening by the second. There was no more time.

Stifling a growl, Wulfgar strode in on the three that were standing on his side of the wheel, their backs to him as they watched their comrade subdue the captain. He chose the one on the right and moved in behind it. The smell, the wet, slimy stench of long rotten death, gagged him as he closed on it. Wulfgar grabbed the abomination by its left collarbone while thrusting forward and up with his right arm, aiming to skewer the beast just below its well defined rib cage, just to the right of the spine that traced down the creature’s back. He took a deep breath and thrust forward, with all of his strength.

Wulfgar exulted as his blade went through the sickly soft and malleable flesh.

“4 points of damage!”

“13 points of damage, Hidden Stab!”

“Faerie’s Kiss! Target is stunned!”

“Serpent’s Sting! Target is bleeding!”

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Small Blade!”

“Congratulations! You have earned the Small Blade skill Blade Wind!”

Wulfgar ripped his sword out of the thing’s back as it sank to its knees and pitched forward onto the deck, stunned and bleeding but alive. As he tried to process the rapid flood of messages he was receiving, he moved a step to his left and targeted the second of the creatures. As he did, he saw the head of the monster that gripped the captain snap back forcefully as Rydra appeared behind its left shoulder, his own small curved blade pulling across its throat as a stream of gray goo erupted from the horror’s throat and mouth. Then Wulfgar was brought back to his own fight as his new opponent turned to face him.

“Time to find out what this whole Blade Wind thing is,” he thought as he activated the skill.

As if of its own volition, his body spun quickly to the right, his arm flung out by the force of the movement. As he completed a full circle, his blade cut through the nightmare’s throat, just as Wulfgar made eye contact with it and felt his knees give way beneath him.

“3 points of damage!”

“Faerie’s Kiss! Target is stunned!”

“Serpent’s Sting! Target is bleeding!”

“The Eyes of the Abyss envelop you!”

Then he knew nothing.

Wulfgar opened his eyes, and his view resolved into a magnificent star field. Two thoughts rushed into his head. First, he could recognize Orion. That meant, his muddled head concluded, that this world - wherever it was - was close enough to earth that the Milky Way’s patterns were recognizable. The second thing he noticed was the sliver of a moon that just edged into his field of view. He turned his head and focused on it. He couldn’t see much of it, but he could see enough to recognize that it wasn’t Luna, Earth’s moon. It was either closer or larger, and he could make out a number of bodies that looked like moonlets in close orbit with it.

He shook off those thoughts and realized that he was laying on the deck of the Piraeus, his head on Lauren’s lap. She ran her fingers through his hair as she smiled down at him.

“Have a good nap?” she asked lightly.

“I kinda did, actually,” he chuckled, enjoying both the feeling and the view as her face broke into a larger smile, laughing.

“Then get on your feet, sailor!” said Lauren in mock seriousness, “Now that we’ve cleaned up your mess!”

Wulfgar sat up, looking around. The fog had cleared, and the night was crisp. The stars flooded his entire view like nothing he’d ever seen and as he leaned back against the ship’s railing, he noted that there was no easy way to discern the horizon as the stars reflected off of the glassy surface of the sea like a mirror. It was like the little ship was frozen inside a motionless snow-globe, and the beauty of it was inspiring.

He looked back to the deck. The rest of his party was moving through the crew, helping them where they could. Doe walked among the injured, cleaning and binding wounds, Bear standing over her protectively. Wulfgar smiled. The captain, leaning against the wheel, looked to Wulfgar.

“My thanks, sir.”

Wulfgar nodded, then looked to Rydra, “What were those things?”

The thief just smiled ruefully and shrugged, “Not good, man. Whatever they were, they were not good.”

“Revenant,” added Bael as he approached, “seeking new slaves for their Lich lord.”

“Lich?”

“A powerful …” continued Bael.

“Very powerful,” added Tane.

“ … undead wizard. Likely one that reigns in the abyssal plain below,” said Bael. “The revenant seek new followers to be dragged below and enslaved to the Lich.” The little creature shuddered, “They’ve taken Aos Si before. The revenant’s power, the Eyes of the Abyss, will reduce anyone who succumbs,” Bael nodded toward Wulfgar, “to helplessness. Then they are taken to their new master, who adds their life-force to his power and drains all that made them alive, leaving nothing more than a husk whose sole purpose is to seek new minions for their lord.” He shuddered again.

Rydra spoke, “Thanks for the enchantments, Bael, Tane,” he bowed. “Faerie’s Kiss and Serpent’s Sting. They helped.”

Wulfgar nodded, “Yeah, thanks! I’m not sure if we could have done as well without them.”

“Temporary, I’m afraid,” said Bael, “but you’re welcome.”

“We’ll need to wait,” added Tane, “a while before we can grant them again.” He looked up at the stars, “It will probably be midday before we’re able.”

“Coming up on one healthy and two stunned and bleeding revenant was much better than three healthy ones,” snorted Snorri, standing at the rear of the deck with his hands on his hips, “much better. Once Prince dove in on that last healthy one, we,” he nodded toward Lauren “were able to quickly bring him down while the Aos Si and Bear took care of the wounded.” He smiled and looked to Rydra, “I think our sneaky friend here is the only one that managed to take out one of them all by his lonesome.”

Rydra bowed, “Ain’t no thang,” he chuckled. “Wulfgar will be able to bring that kind of power to bear in just a few more levels. The attacks out of Stealth can do some wicked damage up front. It’s when the fight gets normal, though, that we start to rapidly get outclassed.”

Wulfgar nodded, then asked, “Hey, was there any kind of loot?”

Snorri bellowed in laughter, “I like this guy! A man after my own greed!” Then the big man shook his head, “Afraid not. Nothing to speak of. We just finished dumping the corpses when you woke up.”

“Nothing tangible for most,” countered Bael, “but my brother and I each have two Hearts of the Revenant. We can use them for powerful spells.”

Tane added, “Are there any of you who’ve studied the magic arts?”

While the rest of the party each shook their head, Lauren piped up, “I have, but just the beginning. Only for some practical light spells, and I have no plans to take it further.”

The Aos Si nodded, “Then we will keep the hearts. They may become invaluable in our quest.”

Shaking off the last of the effects of the Eyes of the Abyss, Wulfgar stood and walked to the center of the deck, where he stooped and picked up his blade. Ensuring that it was first clean, he sheathed it then reached down to pull up the captain who had held his hand up to Wulfgar.

“Thanks again,” mumbled the captain, as he set about moving through his crew, asking after their health. All seemed to be mostly well, and those who’d had scratches or bites from the revenant looked to have recovered after Doe’s ministrations.

“One thing though,” said Wulfgar turning to Rydra, “yesterday,” he thought for a second, “or the day before, I attacked a kobold. Killed it from behind. It, well, kind of sickened me. Tonight, though …” he paused, looking for words that had described the joy he’d felt attacking the revenant.

Rydra smiled, “You liked it, didn’t you?” He tilted his head, “That’s a game mechanic. Kobold’s are neutral. You’re neutral. You have a connection, however weird, with them.” He looked back down to the bloodstains on the deck, “These things, though. They’re just evil. Pure evil.”

He laughed, “And by attacking them, you’ve gained in Alignment. You’ve become other than pure neutral. Do that enough, and you’ll rise up the ladder. You’ll become good. Do enough bad things, and you’ll go down, or,” he shrugged, “like me, you’ll just kind of float in the middle.”

“Like you?”

Rydra smiled, shrugged, “I steal. I’m a thief. Now, I have my own set of values. I only steal from NPC’s. I never steal from players. The system, however, doesn’t see the difference, and it makes it very hard to go up on the Alignment scale, but very easy to go down. If I added killing good guys to my repertoire, my Alignment would sink into the darkness so fast it’d make your head spin. Pretty soon babies would spit on me and kittens would shun me,” he laughed. “As it is, my profession seems like it’s going to limit me to pure neutral. And that’s fine. I still get a kick out of killin’ evil.”

“But I haven’t really changed, I’m still neutral too.”

“It takes a lot more than backstabbing a couple of revenant to get you into the good. Keep it up, though, and it will happen.”

Wulfgar nodded, but knew there was more to it than that. More to his reaction than what was caused by the game. He knew that his feeling was fed by the knowledge that the NPC’s in this world might be more than they seemed, on the surface - and he wasn’t at all sure how death in this world really effected them.

The humans again spent the late morning and afternoon napping and lounging on the foredeck. Again, they lay naked, but this time they kept their gear close at hand. Just in case. The rats and faerie seemed content with their own company and declined the invitation to join the rest of the party, returning instead belowdecks after the Aos Si had given the captain specific directions around Baile to where the home of the Baen Si lay - the small island of Ma’Keis. The gruff old man, recovered from the night’s ordeal and once again the stern taskmaster, chomped on his pipe and predicted that they’d reach the island after nightfall.

“Is it just me,” asked Wulfgar, “or do the NPC’s seem a bit, I dunno, standoffish?”

“They are,” confirmed Lauren. “They play their role, and they play it well. Seamlessly, really. But they’re not much for small talk or chit chat.”

“They’re also useless when talking about game mechanics,” added Snorri, “I mean, you ask them what level they are and they just look at you like you’re off your meds.”

Rydra laughed, “That reminds me of the first time I played Dungeons and Dragons. It must have been around 1978 or so, and I did exactly that. I asked a NPC what level they were. The dungeon master responded in that very way; he had the NPC ask me what the hell I was talking about.”

Wulfgar smiled as he looked up at the sky and wondered if there were some guide for the alien races playing NPC’s in this world. Did they have to be mindful to give nothing away? Were they required to limit their interaction to prevent letting something slip? He also didn’t really think that every NPC in the world was really a front for a sentient creature - he couldn’t see some alien wanting to spend their entire existence role playing some shop keeper in the hopes that a human player might wander in and drop some meaningful insight into human culture. No, he was sure that they were likely only about as numerous as the human players in this world. If even that plentiful.

“It works to our advantage sometimes,” continued Rydra. “When I was new, I accidentally slipped and used my true name with an NPC,” Wulfgar looked to Lauren who looked back and him and winked, smiling, “but they immediately forgot it and used some close-but-no-cigar version of my name.”

Wulfgar, thinking back, realized that had happened to him. When he’d tried to get in to see Clive, and told the guard that his name was Duncan Sheriden, the NPC had responded with something like ‘Dundas Sherican’. Wulfgar had thought that the man was just doing that as part of its mockery of him, but Rydra’s information painted the exchange in a new light.

He thought, yet again, to his problem. Finding Shannon. Knowing her true name would help, if he could find someone who could use an appropriate spell. But, he countered himself, that would give someone Shannon’s true name and, apparently, great power over her. He wasn’t at all sure what could happen, but he knew it wasn’t up to him to risk that for her - he’d already done enough wrong to her by his assumptions. She wouldn’t even be in this world if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to resurrect her, and he wasn’t going to compound the problem by making her way in this world even more difficult than it should be.

But, he wondered, how else can I find her? This world seemed immense.

Then he had a thought.

“I think,” he began, “that I need to exit out. To reset and change my character.”

“Why,” said all three of his companions at once. Bear just rolled over on his back, hoping for a belly rub, but was ignored this one time.

“I think,” Wulfgar continued, “that I should be a mage. A wizard. I want to study magic.” That would solve the problem - he would be the one to use his knowledge of Shannon’s name to find her. He just needed to learn magic. To learn the appropriate spell.

“You can,” said Lauren, “as soon as you hit level three, you’ll have a skill point to spend. Use it for level one magic.” She paused, staring into infinity, “and your intelligence is at five,” Wulfgar realized she was reading his character sheet, “which is plenty for level one.”

“And a rogue-mage is a very viable character,” added Rydra, “I considered that one myself,” he shrugged, “and I still might become a thief-mage.”

“A pure mage isn’t all that common,” Snorri pointed out, “and they’re next to useless in adventuring until they get up to a pretty high level. Their buffs are good, but not worth the split in treasure. They usually get screwed out of loot until they can pull their own weight.”

“Buffs?” asked Wulfgar.

“Enchantments,” answered Rydra, “enhancements for combat, for offense or defense. Like the Faerie’s Kiss and Serpent’s Sting that the Aos Si gave us last night.”

Lauren rolled over onto her stomach, her chin resting on her crossed hands, and, Wulfgar had to admit, hormones or no hormones her athletic shape stirred him. She smiled up at him, tilting her head sideways until it rested on her right forearm, “So, you’re really in a good position now to begin your magic training. Just keep adding to your Intelligence as you gain even levels, and add to your magic skills as you gain in odd ones,” she paused and smiled again, “no need to leave and reset.”

Wulfgar thought for a while, and the group continued making small talk. Talking about anything except the upcoming fight. By an unspoken agreement, nobody had mentioned the bad feeling that accepting the quest had given them. He thought about what the others had said, about how he was still in a good place to begin a career in magic. He had no idea how the magic system in this world worked, but that was going to change. As soon as he reached level three, he’d have two skill points to spend, and he now intended to spend both of them in furthering his magical ability.

“How,” thought Wulfgar, “do I tell how long I have until I level up?”

His character sheet appeared, translucent, in front of his eyes and he looked at the beginning, where it listed his level. Level 2. As he read the number, he understood that he was about three quarters the way to the next level. He began to scan down the sheet, some of the skills were further along their advancement to the next milestone, some less.

He looked further down and, at the bottom, noticed that there was an entry, a log, for his combat. He began reading last night’s entry.

Stealth activated. (2 [Stealth level] +5 [ItemBuff]) x 1.5 x 11 [AGI] = 115.5 - 0 [fog] - o [night] = 115.5% Success!

Buff activated. Faerie’s Kiss. Duration 260 seconds.

Buff activated. Serpent’s Sting. Duration 260 seconds.

Revenant 1 Stealth visual check. 115.5 - 50 [visual acuity] = 65.5 + 20 [fog] + 20 [night] = 105.5% Success!

Revenant 1 Stealth aural check. 115.5 - 25 [aural acuity] = 90.5 + 10 [sea] + 35 [combat, local] = 135.5% Success!

Revenant 2 Stealth visual check …

Wulfgar scanned down the sheet, past all of the entries that showed that there was no chance that his Stealth would have been detected by the revenant on the foggy night, surrounded as they were by the noise of the sea and the screams of the sailors.

Target Revenant 1. AC1. Level 3. Hit Points 45.

ToHitAC1 = 35% + 40% [Backstab] + 5% [Small Blade Level 2] = 80%.

RNDRoll: 37. Success!

“4 points of damage!” 1d6 Roll: 2 + 1d4 Roll [Small Blade]: 2 = 4

“13 points of damage, Hidden Stab!” 10 [STR] + 11 [AGI] x .5 + (2 [Small Blade] + 1 [Hidden Stab]) = 13.5

“Faerie’s Kiss! Target is stunned!” 17 [Damage] x 1.5 = 25.5 seconds

“Serpent’s Sting! Target is bleeding!” 1d10 Roll [Damage]: 2 points for 1d20Roll [Duration]: 10 seconds.

Wulfgar looked down to the end.

Target Wulfgar. AC3. Level 2. Hit Points 21. Mana 5. Stamina 13.

The Eyes of the Abyss. BaseChance 40% + ((3 [Revenant 2 level] - 2 [Wulfgar level]) x 10) = 50%. RNDRoll: 21. Success!

1d6Roll [Duration]: 4 = 240 seconds - 13 [Stamina] = 227 seconds.

“The Eyes of the Abyss envelop you!”

Wulfgar closed the sheet and stared up at the clouds floating by as the ship moved through the sea. There was, he thought, a lot more going on in regards to his skills than was presented to him through the little, flash, system messages that his subconscious voice seemed to shout at him during combat. He would have to do some further studying, to learn how all of the different factors combined to determine his success or failure at any given task.

Just like a lawyer went to law school to learn the best way to use the rules of society to his client’s advantage, he needed to apply himself to the rules of this world in order to learn the best way to use the rule-set of this entire world to his advantage.

Wulfgar opened his eyes into a darkening sky. A chilling breeze blew over the deck, over him and, shuddering, he sat up and reached for his clothes, stacked next to his body. He pulled his shirt over his head, then stood to pull on his pants. He looked up at the rest of the group and smiled.

“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” Lauren chided softly, smiling up at him as she sat, leaning backwards on her arms that were planted on the gently rolling deck behind her.

Wulfgar just smiled as he continued dressing, looking around to take in the surroundings. The Aos Si and rats had joined the rest of the party, and all, except for Wulfgar, looked well kitted out and ready for the evening to come. All of them sat around the foredeck, looking up at him. He began to feel a bit like the center of attention, a feeling that had always bothered him.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“We were just beginning to plan out what we’re going to do when we get to the island of …” Rydra paused, looked to Bael and Tane, sitting by the base of the bowsprit on the ship’s bow.

“Ma’Keis,” said Bael, looking down his nose, squinting toward the trailing horizon. Tane just lowered his head, saying nothing.

“Ma’Keis,” continued Rydra, “the home of the …” he paused as Bael and Tane looked up at him suddenly, “ … our, uh, adversary.”

“Truly,” admitted Bael, “it is the home of our adversary, the Baen Si,” he and Tane looked pained at the words, “but we go to rid Ma’Keis of whatever it is that drove her from her home.”

As he spoke, a howling wind began to wail, and Wulfgar looked up, past the port edge of the boat and saw that they were passing, fairly closely by, an island. It fronted the sea with steep cliffs against which the surf pounded, and was topped with rolling verdant green hills that stretched into the distance to Wulfgar’s right and left. As he looked, he could just make out the figure of a pale woman, her white cloak and long silver hair whipping around her in the wind, her arms folded across her chest. Even from a distance, Wulfgar could read the pain and anguish in her body language. The wind’s shriek increased.

Bael and Tane leaned forward into their knees, pressing their balled fists into their ears.

“The Baen Si,” whispered Lauren, looking back at the wraith over her right shoulder. Moving easily within her plate armor, she shifted until she was seated facing the island, then looked back to the faerie.

“Ma’Keis?” asked Wulfgar.

Rydra shook his head, “Baile,” then nodded toward Bael and Tane, “their home.”

Wulfgar nodded his head, understanding. Seeing how the faerie were effected by the sound - a sound that he knew was much more to them than the scream of wind - he understood why the folk had been forced to flee their homes.

Lauren pulled her knees into her chest and rested her chin on her armored knees.

“The Baen Si’s wail signifies death,” she said softly.

Wulfgar looked at her appraisingly.

As if feeling his stare on her back and understanding his thoughts, she continued, “I’m Irish,” she shrugged, answering his unspoken question.

Bear stood and walked to Wulfgar, who sat, taking the dog into his arms. Timidly, Doe moved in next to her protector and Wulfgar reached across and, hesitantly, began stroking the fur around her neck. She sat on her hind legs and sighed, leaning in against Bear as the dog rested his head on Wulfgar’s knee.

He looked back up, to the island, and noted that the woman, the Baen Si, was no longer in view. The wind began to lower, to quiet, and the faerie straightened, recovering their composure.

Snorri looked to the little pair with true concern in his eyes, “Are you two going to be all right? I mean, if what we’re going up against can make that,” he gestured with his thumb toward Baile, “flee, does it hold power over you as well?”

Bael and Tane exchanged glances, then looked back to the human.

“We are not sure,” said Bael, adjusting a small filigreed head piece - it looked almost like a tiara to Wulfgar - that circled his head just above his eyebrows.

“We have been thinking,” added Tane gesturing toward his brother, “and have been discussing, about the possibility that what we’re going to be facing is …” he paused, gulping. Bael just looked down and wrapped his chest in his arms.

“What we might be facing,” continued Tane, forcing himself to speak through obvious discomfort, “is,” he gulped again and looked up at the rest of the party, his little face screwed up in seriousness, “a leprechaun,” he finished quietly.

Snorri burst into laughter, cutting through the dread that had fallen over the group.

“A leprechaun? Really?” he thought about it some more, then laughed even harder.

The brothers looked at each other incredulously, “He laughs,” said Tane, “at a leprechaun.” They looked back at the big man with wonder in their eyes.

“Of course!” chortled Snorri, “they’re magically delicious!” He lost control in another bout of laughter.

The faerie jaws dropped in unison, “He’s eaten of the leprechaun?” squealed Tane.

“I think,” said Lauren levelly after Snorri had gathered himself, “that they are not speaking of the creature on a box of Lucky Charms.”

“They’re not,” added Rydra, then looked to Snorri, “How familiar are you with your Norse legends?”

“More than passing,” said Snorri, catching his breath.

“As am I, and from what I remember,” he said scratching his head in thought, “what they’re referring to is not so much something you’d find in an Irish gift shop’s toy selection, but more like Loki.”

Snorri paused, thoughtful, “So, kind of like a spirit of mischief,” he pondered some more, “But that’s not so bad. Loki was always getting his ass handed to him.”

Rydra nodded, “But by whom? Thor? Odin? How would you stand up against Loki?”

Snorri gulped, understanding.

“We are,” continued Rydra, “maybe,” he conceded, nodding toward the faerie, “going up against something that made the Baen Si flee, and the Baen Si made the entire Aos Si flee.” He smiled, “That frightens me.”

“Me too,” said Lauren softly. She looked up at Wulfgar and smiled. The group sat in silence for a minute, contemplating their near future. Wulfgar looked toward the island, the shadows thrown by the small hills lengthening, and wondered at the beautiful desolation, wondered at how such a gaunt, windswept scene could be at once so eerie and yet so welcoming.

“So,” concluded Snorri, breaking the silence, “it doesn’t have a pot of gold?”

“Oh no,” said the brothers immediately, “the leprechaun is never found far from his fortune.”

As the evening fled into night, the small ship rounded a promontory, giving it and the waves crashing heavily upon it healthy leeway. As they moved past it, a small island that looked to be no more than a kilometer wide, at the most, hove into view just off the shoreline of the larger island. Like the larger island, Baile, Ma’Keis seemed to rise steeply out of the ocean, with only one lonely spar that reached down into the water. As they approached that point, the captain had the crew pull the sails and drop anchor, leaving the ship stationary half a kilometer away from the shore.

“Should we wait until morning?” asked Snorri quietly. A palpable dread had fallen over them as they came into view of the island, the home of a wraith of death.

“No point, I think,” said Wulfgar, “there doesn’t seem to be a house on the island, I’m guessing that she lives underground,” he looked down to the Aos Si who nodded, “so it doesn’t matter whether we go now or later. Might as well be now.”

Snorri nodded once, then again more forcefully; as if trying to convince himself.

“Yeah, ok,” he said softly, then more loudly, “let’s do this.”

The group gathered into a skiff lowered off the leeward side of the ship and were rowed to the shore by two of the crewmen. As Wulfgar got out, he looked around the beach. It was a narrow, low arm of land that rose up until cliffs formed on either side as it merged with the rest of the island. Waves, seemingly funneled toward the cliff by the nearly ninety-degree meeting of the spur and the bulk of the island, exploded upward, spraying the crest every few seconds. Gulls screamed above and through the wash, endlessly startled by the recurrent violence of the sea. Foam churned on the tops of the breakers and seemed to glow in the gathering gloom of the deepening nightfall.

Lauren and Snorri led the way up, with the Aos Si on their left flank, Prince and Bear on the right and Wulfgar and Rydra bringing up the rear. Doe was safely encircled in the middle of the group.

Rydra looked to Wulfgar, “We should probably coordinate how we operate,” he began, “if it turns out we’re going underground, on a dungeon crawl.” Wulfgar nodded, listening. “Our role,” continued the thief, “will likely be as scouts. We’ll each take it in turns to go ahead of the group, to see what’s awaiting us, then return and report. That should allow us to move through the,” he shrugged, “whatever it is, fairly quickly. You take one room, I take the next, and so on. We might have to wait, for the Stealth cool-down, but we’ll be able to get through twice as quickly as otherwise.”

Wulfgar nodded, “Sounds like a plan.”

The little man laughed, “Well, you know what they say. Even the best plan never survives contact with the enemy.”

“That’s why you develop contingencies,” added Wulfgar.

Rydra looked up at him appraisingly, “Yeah, it is. You a vet?”

“No, sir,” chuckled Wulfgar, “project manager.” He thought for a moment, “You a vet?”

Rydra nodded. “U.S.M.C. 1968.”

“Tet?”

“Damn, you do know your shit. Yeah. Hue city.”

Wulfgar laughed again, “Like I said, I used to work in a video store. Full Metal Jacket.”

Rydra shook his head, “A lot of that movie was bullshit,” then he paused and said more softly, “and a lot of it wasn’t.” Wulfgar got the feeling that Rydra didn’t want to discuss it further.

“In any case,” said Wulfgar, “I’m guessing that after that all of this,” he spread his arms wide, “doesn’t really hold a great deal of fear for you.”

“It can, it can,” Rydra acknowledged, “but, yeah. Knowing that you can res takes some of the sting out of it.”

Wulfgar was startled out of his train of thought, “Oh shit, I forgot to bind at a church before we left.”

“Interesting,” said Rydra, “and you hadn’t yet bound at one at all? Since entering the world, right?”

Wulfgar nodded.

“Interesting,” repeated Rydra, “I wonder what that’ll mean, if you bite the dust here.” He thought for a moment, “As it is, any of us,” he swept his hand indicating the rest of the group, “who die here will res back in Edonis, so we’ll be out of the fight. You?” he just shook his head, “Hell if I know, man, maybe you’ll res back where you first entered the game.”

Wulfgar smiled, “That would suck! I was way up in the mountains above Edonis, and I had to climb down,” he remembered, “and I had to eat some herb, uhm, Billy Goat’s Rope, to be able to climb down. I doubt that it’s even bloomed again.” He pictured himself trying, and failing, to descend to the valley floor, falling and splattering on the rocks over and over as he was born yet again at the top of the mountain chain. “That would suck!” he repeated.

The group stood, circling around the low entrance to a small cave. Inside was nothing but darkness, much darker than the star spattered night above them. The entrance was on the side of a low barrow, a grassy mound near the center of the small island. The grass seemed trimmed, probably by some livestock, but none was evident. The opening itself was neat, the dirt floor in front of it it tidy and cleaned of any debris, the arch shaped doorway seemed carved out of the hillock, but as homey as the little place looked, it emanated a sense of dread.

Wulfgar tried to lighten the mood, “This world needs a soundtrack. Some Carmina Burana or Conan the Barbarian.”

The rest of the group seemed to ignore the comment, as though waiting for one of them to decide to enter the mound.

Wulfgar shrugged, “Shall we?”

“Might as well,” said Lauren. She pulled her sword out of its sheath on her back and held the blade in front of her, arms bent and ready to attack. She looked back over her shoulder, “Light up some lanterns,” then turned to Snorri. “Let’s go.”

The viking ground his teeth in determination, hefted his axe and nodded. The pair walked through, into darkness.

“Hey!” said Wulfgar, holding up his lantern, “We haven’t lit these yet!”

Bael turned to him and, holding up one hand toward the lantern, spoke softly. Light flared into the lamp and Wulfgar closed the little window before drawing his own blade as the rest of the group stepped through the portal.

Wulfgar looked around the little room. It seemed, to him, surprisingly homey for the home of not only a faerie, but an undead faerie, and harbinger of death at that.

“Looks like Bilbo’s grandmother’s house,” said Rydra, as though reading Wulfgar’s thoughts.

The room wasn’t large, maybe five meters on each side, and the group was crowded together near the doorway that they’d come through, still spread in their combat formation. At the center of the room, a small table was set with two place settings, a chair on either side.

“I wonder how often the Baen Si entertains,” quipped Wulfgar as he scanned the rest of the room. A small fireplace, a fire gently crackling, took up the far wall and was flanked on either side by doors, both closed. The room was sparsely, but nicely, decorated. There seemed to be nothing to search, however; no containers. No boxes, no cabinets. Nothing to keep them there.

“Which door?” asked Lauren without taking her eyes off of that side of the room.

“I always used the ‘follow the right hand side of the map’ technique in my dungeon crawls,” said Snorri. The rest of the group nodded.

“Scouts up?” asked Rydra, then he looked over to Wulfgar and smiled, “Who’s first?”

“Coin toss?”

“Sure thing,” Rydra laughed. “Heads I win, tails you lose!”

Wulfgar smiled and set the lantern on the table as he moved through the group toward the right hand door. He was reaching for the handle when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Just a sec,” Rydra moved in beside him and dropped to one knee, inspecting around the edges of the doorway.

“No traps,” he said, “at least, none that I can detect.” He looked up at Wulfgar, “Remember,” he said softly, “you have about a minute of Stealth. Thirty seconds out, then thirty seconds back.” He stood, nodded toward Wulfgar then moved back into the protection of the tanks.

Wulfgar placed his hands softly against the door and leaned in, putting his left ear up to the wood. He held his breath, listening for anything he could hear from beyond the door. There was silence, so he reached for the wrought iron latch and slowly lifted it until the door began to push forward. Once clear, he lowered the latch again, then increased the pressure on the doorway.

He pushed, slowly, until the door had cracked just enough for him to slide through, then he activated Stealth and sidled into the next room. He waited a moment to let his eyes adjust, as the flickering firelight and glow from the lantern shone through the cracked door into the new space. The room looked long, much longer than it was wide. The width was no more than the previous room, but it stretched on into deepening darkness.

“Can you see anything?” a hissed, quiet question shocked Wulfgar into motionless. He looked down and to his left, at Prince’s snout that pushed just into the darkness.

“No,” whispered Wulfgar. Prince looked up, toward the sound of Wulfgar’s voice.

“I can see in the dark,” it said, “I’ll join you. I’ll follow behind.”

Wulfgar nodded and began to walk the middle of the room, into the darkness. He moved around the right hand side of a long table with high-backed, plush chairs lined down either side. There was nothing on the table itself except a white cloth. Paintings ranged down the right wall, but it was too dark to make out what they conveyed. Given the increasing feeling of oppression that weighted him down, Wulfgar wasn’t disappointed that he couldn’t discern what possible nightmare they portrayed.

He reached the far end of the room - it hadn’t been as long as it had first felt when he was staring into nothingness. There were two more doors in the hall, one on the far end, one on the left. Assuming the other way out of the front room was as long - or even half as long - as this room, the door on the left was another way into that chamber. He began to return, to trace his steps back to his party when Prince spoke.

“There you are,” the rat said from his hiding place along the wall. He had moved from the doorway, along the interior wall, and had found a dark spot between two cupboards just before the door at the halfway point of that wall.

“Shit,” muttered Wulfgar, angry with himself for forgetting the Stealth timer. “If I forget that at the wrong time,” he thought, “that’ll be a quick, one-way ticket back to … wherever.”

He hurried back through the to the first chamber, pulling the door completely open and flooding the new room with the soft light of the first.

He shook his head at his friend’s questioning looks.

“Nothing,” he began, then was silenced.

By a noise; a thump and what sounded like a low moan.

Coming from the door they hadn’t taken.

Wulfgar looked up at Rydra, who motioned the group into a tighter circle.

“Tank, rogue, Bear, Aos Si,” he whispered pointing toward Lauren, Wulfgar, the dog and Bael, then motioned toward the first door, the door they hadn’t chosen.

“Tank, thief, Prince, Aos Si,” he mouthed motioning toward Snorri, himself, the rat and Tane, and then began moving into the room that Wulfgar and Prince had cleared. “Give us a few seconds,” he said to Lauren, who nodded. He pointed to Doe, then the doorway between the two open rooms; she moved next to the fireplace, on the opposite side from the closed door.

Rydra’s meaning was obvious - the first group would go through the first closed door, the second would move into the further room and go in through the side door. Whatever awaited within the room would be beset on two sides at once - hopefully.

Wulfgar moved to the side, to watch the other group get into place. As Snorri moved in toward the door, resting his big hand on the latch, Wulfgar looked to Lauren and nodded.

She lowered the handle, softly and quietly, then bulled her way through the door. A split second later, Snorri did likewise and both groups poured into the room, ready for anything. They hoped.

As Wulfgar leapt through the door, the last member of the attacking part into the room, he scanned the space, trying to take the new room in as quickly as possible. It shared dimensions with the room it paralleled; long and narrow with an opening at the far end, but it was furnished more like a hallway. It was empty but for a rug that ran most of its length, as well as a few standing armoire-like cabinets along the left wall.

There was nothing else in the room. Nothing that could explain the noise they’d heard, seemingly coming from the space only a few moments before. The group looked to one another. Rydra raised one finger to his lips, as Doe silently joined the group from the front room. The far side of the room did not end in a door, as the dining room did, but an open portal that lead down into a long, stone stairway, lined with flickering torches. Rydra moved to the top of the stairs and listened for a moment before joining the rest of the group, now huddled in an outward facing circle in the middle of the room.

He leaned in and whispered, “Why don’t you guys check out these rooms,” he nodded toward Wulfgar, “including that closed door in the other room, while I go down there,” he jerked his right thumb in the direction of the stairwell, “and see what’s what.”

Rydra looked to Prince, “Can you stay at the top of the stairs and listen for, I don’t know anything bad that might happen to me?” His face broke into a large smile .

“Yes,” hissed Prince, who moved to the right of the opening. Doe moved in on his flank.

“C’mon Bear,” whispered Wulfgar as he moved back into the room he had first cleared.

Wulfgar leaned in and put his ear on the door, listening. As before, he could hear nothing apart from his own heartbeat. He looked down to his companion.

“Smell anything?”

If Bear did, he didn’t answer.

Wulfgar pushed down on the latch and leaned on the door. As the crack widened, he pushed his blade through into the darkness with his right hand and on the door with his left. Light from the lantern on the end of the long table cast long shadows past Wulfgar as the new room resolved in front of him. It looked like little more than a closet - a pantry.

“Need any place settings?” Wulfgar asked Lauren, standing near and going through one of the sideboard cabinets. He stepped into the closet and looked through the various shelves that lined the walls. Some stacks of plates and boxes of standard cutlery. Nothing more. Nothing of interest. He sheathed his sword and began to go through them, just in case.

After a few minutes, he stood straight, “Disappointing,” he whispered, then felt Lauren move in behind him, reaching around his throat.

“Here you go,” she said, clasping a catch in front of his neck, “I found this in one of the drawers.”

Wulfgar turned and felt the nearly floor length cape swirl around him. He grabbed one side and pulled it in front of himself, the flat black of the cloth felt heavy through his gloved hands.

“Does it go with my eyes?” he asked lightly, turning to face her.

“Kinda does,” she said, looking him up and down. “It’s called the Baen Si’s Cloak. It’ll give you an extra ten percent magic resistance and once per day a twenty-five percent chance of canceling entirely a magical attack. Might come in handy when you’re scouting around downstairs.”

“Damn, I hope not,” he laughed as they moved back within the room and continued searching through the various drawers and cabinets. Apart from the cloak, there was nothing of interest. They looked at each other and shrugged, then began to move toward the next room, to check on the progress of their compatriots.

Then they froze.

They heard the sound again. The thump, followed by a low moan. Exactly as before, and exactly as before it sounded like it came from the next room. They pulled their blades and crouched, then again moved forward to help with whatever it was that had made the low, guttural moaning noise.

Lauren was met in the doorway by Snorri, coming through behind his readied axe. They stood, looking at each other questioningly.

“What the hell …” began Snorri.

“We were just coming in to help you with whatever that noise was,” finished Lauren.

“But we heard it come from in here,” he responded. He looked back and down to the Aos Si standing on his flanks. They nodded.

“It definitely came from your room,” countered Lauren. Wulfgar nodded.

“Someone is fucking with us,” growled Snorri.

“Or something is,” agreed Lauren, she looked up at Snorri, “did you guys find anything? We found a cloak.” Wulfgar spun dramatically to show them.”

Snorri smiled, “Don’t forget to include that when we tally up the loot from this little expedition!” He looked down his nose at Wulfgar in mock seriousness, “Can’t have you getting more than your fair share, newbie!”

Wulfgar nodded as the group moved back into the hallway, “Hey, did you guys check under the rug?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, you know it,” laughed Snorri, “this ain’t my first crawl.”

Wulfgar held up his hands in supplication, and answered in a Texas drawl, “Didn’t mean to question your abilities there, partner, was just trying to make sure that no stone is unturned.” He looked around the room and did a quick head-count.

“Where’s Rydra?” he asked. He looked to Prince at the top of the stairs, “He should have been back by now. Did you hear anything?”

Both rats shook their heads.

“How long has it been,” asked Lauren, her face suddenly overcome with worry.

“Too damn long,” muttered Wulfgar as he began moving toward the stairwell. “Too damn long.”

Chapter 6

Wulfgar looked down the stairwell, into the first couple of meters of the room below. It seemed, from his vantage, to be well lit. Over lit, in fact. Torches lined the stairway and based on the light levels that he could see in the chamber, it wasn’t just the stairs that were so highly illuminated. He looked back to the group and motioned for them to wait, then began creeping down the stairs.

After what seemed an interminable period, he had descended enough that he could make out what seemed to be most of the room. He crouched, steadying himself on the stone wall, and peered in. The chamber seemed squared, about as long as the hallway above, and he could make out a pedestal, about two meters long and one meter high and wide, in the middle of room. A body lay sprawled, on its back, along the top of the surface. He couldn’t make out much about the person, but he could tell that it wasn’t Rydra. His beard and braided hair draped over one end, while his long, white, body lay naked on the stone, his arms hanging outward and down from the side of the marble bed.

Wulfgar waited a moment, looking and listening. Silence. He moved to the right, to the opposite side of the stairway, to try to take in as much of the chamber as possible. There was only more of the same. A large square room, the walls lined with torches, and three closed doors - one on either side and one on the far wall - all surrounding what looked like a sacrificial plinth in the middle of the room. He crept to the bottom of the stairs, to take in the rest of the space. It added nothing new - and there was no sign, anywhere, of Rydra.

He moved as quietly as he could into and through the room, pausing at each door to listen. Nothing. He considered, for a moment, opening one of the doors - just for a peek - but decided against it.

“Best to have my backup ready,” he muttered as he made his way back toward the stairwell. As he moved through the room, he looked down at the man on the pedestal, but he could glean no new information about him. He looked to be about thirty, with sun-darkened arms and head. His hands were noticeably rough and calloused.

Then Wulfgar froze in mid-stride.

Thump and moan.

Again, it sounded like it came from the next room - but he couldn’t tell which one. Whether it was through the door behind him or one of the ones on his right or left, he couldn’t be sure.

He suppressed a nervous giggle, and whispered, “You can’t really die, you can’t really die, you can’t really die,” as he quickly made his way into the stairwell. He felt invisible hands reaching in from behind, to grab and drag him to some stone plinth to await some unnameable horror, then he took the stairs, two at a time, and burst forth back into the hallway, breathless, his heart threatening to pound its way out of his chest and up through his throat.

He tried to compose himself as he looked around, to prevent his friends from seeing just how rattled he was.

But the room was empty.

Wulfgar ran to the side and, thrusting open and through the door, into the dining room. He looked around, frantically, but it, too, was empty. He ran to the pantry and stuck his head through. Empty. Panicking, he turned and fled to the main room, to the little sitting room with the comfortable fire. He expected to see his friends, sitting around the fire, waiting to surprise him and mock his terror.

Empty.

He forced himself to stop, to breath, to try to regain some semblance of control, to think.

“What the fuck?” he muttered. Where could everyone have gone? He looked to the front door of the little room. He couldn’t imagine that everyone would leave the barrow without telling him; without leaving at least one of them behind to let him know; without leaving at least some kind of sign, some signal that they were leaving.

“No,” he thought, “they wouldn’t have left me. They wouldn’t have even left the hallway without leaving someone behind to let me know.”

He could think of no explanation.

“What the fuck!” he grumbled, more forcefully. “OK,” he said in as normal a conversational voice as he could muster, “there has to be some explanation. Even a magical one.” He continued thinking, wringing his brain, trying to explain his situation.

Nothing came to him.

He shook his head, “If the answer isn’t at the beginning, it must be at the end, right?” he convinced himself as he made his way back through the hallway, back into the stairs. He had taken one step down when he was again clutched by terror.

Thump and moan.

Steeling himself, he forced his way through the expanding horror that his brain was envisioning, toward the bottom of the stairs. Just before reaching the midway point, he stopped, listened. When, after a moment, he could hear nothing but the pounding of blood rushing through his head, he continued to the bottom and entered the chamber.

The chamber with the pedestal.

Which was empty.

Wulfgar stood still for a moment. He thought. He hadn’t checked the body on the pedestal before. Maybe it wasn’t a corpse.

“Maybe it was just some sleeping naked guy,” he muttered. “Maybe it was just some sleeping naked guy who woke up and decided to go about whatever business he had in this fucking madhouse!”

He stifled himself, forced himself to breath. He forced himself to think about the problem at hand and possible solutions. He forced his hands into either armpit in a futile attempt to stop them from shaking.

“Think,” he whispered, “think!” He looked to the far wall and to either side. If the answer wasn’t where he had been, it was likely through one of those doors.

“But which one?”

Thump and moan.

“Oh, fuck you!” he said over his shoulder, and began walking toward the door on the left hand wall. He pulled his hands out from underneath his arms and pulled his knife from its scabbard as a rising tide of anger swelled in him.

“Fuck you,” he repeated, louder this time as he reached the door. He straightened and kicked, forcing the door to slam open and then bulled his way into the chamber, ready - hoping - for something to stab. The pent-up fear was rapidly converting itself into overwhelming rage.

He snarled as he took in the room - it was a mirror of the one he had just left. Square, three doors and one stairway - to his left - all surrounding a stone pedestal in the center.

A pedestal that held what looked like a corpse.

Wulfgar strode forcefully to the plinth, and looked down at the body. It was the man, the tanned and bearded man that he had seen before. Only he wasn’t on the same pedestal. Wulfgar’s eyes scrunched in confusion as he tried to work out what happened, when he was shocked back into the present by a wave of motion to his left.

Snorri and Lauren, trailed by the rest of the group, bounded into the room, weapons drawn and ready for action. They spread into the room, facing outward in a half-circle, prepared to receive hell from any direction. Wulfgar had to admit to himself that it was an impressive entrance.

They looked to Wulfgar, who motioned placatingly with his left hand as he sheathed his sword with his right.

“It’s OK,” he began, then looked back over his shoulder at the open doorway, “that was just me, making an entrance.”

The rest of the group calmed and Snorri looked at Wulfgar.

“I don’t think,” Snorri said slowly, as though explaining a difficult notion to a slow child, “that you’re quite grasping the concept behind the idea of stealth.”

Lauren smiled then piled on, “It does require, I would think, some small element of quiet.”

Thump and moan.

“That!” said Wulfgar excitedly, “that’s what’s been fucking with us.” He looked behind him into the other room and pointed, “There is another room, just like this one through there, and another stairway just like that one,” he pointed to the entry that the group had just run down, “that leads up into a three room suite just damn like the one we cleared out. Just like the one you guys just left.”

He paused, thinking.

“I think that little bang and groan coincide with some sort of shuffling of the rooms, and I’ll bet you my last penny that that door,” he pointed to the door on the opposite side of the room to the one he’d just burst through, “has another damn room just like this one, with another damn staircase that goes up to another damn suite.”

“Like Lauren said,” he continued, “something is screwing with us. And that thing is doing whatever it can to make sure we’re confused and vulnerable before it kicks the living shit out of us.”

“We should probably,” said Wulfgar after allowing the rest of the group to come to terms with what he’d said - with what their situation was, “stick together from now on. Nobody should be out of sight of at least one other person in the group, and, ideally, we’ll all stick together.”

The rest of them nodded.

“First thing, I want to check out my theory,” he pointed to Lauren, “Go stand in that doorway,” he pointed then to the door he’d kicked in, “and I’m going to go to that one,” he pointed to the door on the opposite side. When they were both in place, he opened the door. He saw another chamber, just like the one he had been in. He made sure that there was no corpse on the pedestal, and that the door on the opposite side through the room was closed, then looked back to Lauren.

“See anything?” he whispered loudly to her.

Lauren shook her head.

Wulfgar looked to Snorri, “Come take my place here, I’m going to go in through this room and try the door on the other side.” He waited for the big man to join him, then Wulfgar moved into the room, looking warily up the empty staircase as he passed it, and then reached the far door. He pushed down the latch and then opened the door, quietly and slowly.

He looked into the room. Another like the others. An empty pedestal, but the door on the other side of the room was already opened. A figure in plate armor stood in the portal.

Lauren waved happily to him.

He smiled, then turned back and rejoined Snorri in the middle room.

“That’s what I thought,” he sighed in relief as the group joined around him, “there are three identical rooms, all leading up to seemingly identical homes, and they seem to shuffle randomly at intervals.”

“Why?” asked Snorri.

Wulfgar shrugged, “Hell if I know,” he laughed a little, “I didn’t build the damn thing.” He thought for a moment, “Why would the Baen Si want to put a confusing basement in her home? Is she worried about people coming in and finding her wine cellar?”

“Maybe,” countered Lauren, “It’s not to keep anyone from going from her rooms into her basement, maybe it’s to keep anything in her basement from finding their way into her rooms.”

They all stopped talking and looked to the door on the far wall. The only doors left for them to explore.

“Was there any sign of Rydra?” asked Tane softly.

Wulfgar just shook his head.

“Before we do anything else,” said Wulfgar, “we need to address the elephant in the room.”

“You mean the naked elephant?” laughed Snorri, nodding toward the pedestal.

Wulfgar smiled. He moved to the center of the room and the rest of the group crowded around the man.

“Is he dead?” asked Lauren.

Wulfgar shrugged, then reached out to touch the man’s shoulder, “Still warm,” he leaned in toward the reclined chest, “Can’t see any movement. Can’t tell if he’s breathing.”

Bael and Tane flit up onto the man’s chest. They didn’t seem to so much jump as just levitate up from the floor onto the man. Bael bent and studied the man’s face.

“I don’t think,” he began, “that it’s dead, but I don’t think it’s just asleep.”

To answer, Tane pulled his sword and rammed it an inch deep into the man’s shoulder. He didn’t react.

“It’s not just asleep,” confirmed Tane, cleaning then sheathing his blade.

“Remind me never to ask you for a wakeup call,” muttered Snorri.

The two Aos Si leaned in toward each other and conferred quietly. Wulfgar looked up at Snorri and Lauren, raised his eyebrows. They shrugged in unison. His view was drawn back to the man’s chest as the two faerie sat, cross-legged and facing each other. They put their hands on their knees, palms up; looking like two little yogis about to try to achieve enlightenment.

They began muttering incomprehensible words under their breath, raising in volume as they proceeded. A glow, an aura, of light surrounded the pair, and it began to sparkle, to take the shape of a nebulous, almost electrical, sphere around them.

After a moment, the man coughed, coughed again and turned his head. He slowly opened his eyes, confused and bewildered. He looked around to the rest of the room as the Aos Si removed themselves to the floor. He started to sit up, then groaned and collapsed back onto the stone.

Lauren reached out her hand and gently laid it on the man’s shoulder, “You’re fine,” she said, “You’re safe.” Her touch, even through metal gauntlets, seemed to calm him, to reassure him. “Take your time,” she continued, “there’s no hurry.”

“What’s your name?” asked Wulfgar softly.

“Jame,” the man croaked, putting his hands to his temples, rubbing them, “Jame,” he repeated, “First mate on the Swan out of Edonis.”

“What happened Jame?” asked Wulfgar.

“I don’t rightly know, sir. Truly I don’t. The Swan were making through a calm sea,” he looked up at Wulfgar almost pleadingly, “and a fog grew, out of nothing. No front come through, sir, I swear it. There was no reason to expect it,” he looked around at the group who exchanged glances with each other.

“And then?” continued Wulfgar.

“And then,” the man shuddered, “things. Just things, sir, I can no describe them better,” he covered his eyes, “they just climbed out of the soup and fell on us. Gray, they was. Gray and bloated, like someone found dead in the water what the sharks didn’t get to.”

He looked up at them, “And that was the last I remember,” he looked around, “You have to believe me.”

“We do,” said Wulfgar quietly, “We do.”

“Revenant,” said Snorri. The rest nodded. The man sat up and swung his legs off to the side, covering himself with his hands.

“That stair,” said Lauren, “leads up to a suite of rooms. There’s a sitting room on the far side, with a nice chair and a warm fire. There are cabinets with clothes up there, you should be able to find something to wear. We’ll be along to collect you, to help you back to your ship, before too long.”

The man nodded thanks and dropped off of the pedestal and made his way up the stairs.

After they’d watched him leave, Wulfgar spoke, “Revenant. Why would the revenant bring him back here, back to the home of the Baen Si?”

The others shrugged.

“There’s no reason that I can think of,” Wulfgar continued then looked down at the Aos Si. “Does a leprechaun have any need to work with revenant? Have they ever been known to?”

The faerie shook their heads, “The leprechaun is solitary.”

“Then,” continued Wulfgar, “what does work with revenant?”

Bael and Tane exchanged worried glances, “Only a Lich.”

“That’s,” said Wulfgar softly, “what I was afraid of.”

“So,” concluded Snorri, “no pot of gold?”

“I haven’t heard the groan and grumble of the room shuffle in a while,” said Wulfgar, “It could be that having all of the side doors open prevents it. We should leave them open while,” he nodded toward the door on the far side of the stairway, “we see what’s through there.” He placed the lantern on the still warm pedestal, “I’ll just leave this here to let us know which room had the stairway that we came down.”

“What about the other two doors,” asked Lauren, pointing with both hands toward the rooms on either side, each of which had a closed door that matched the one they were facing.

“Hell if I know,” said Wulfgar, “I guess we’ll just go through this one and if we don’t find anything, keep searching back until we do.”

Lauren nodded, then motioned for Wulfgar to spin around. He did, then felt her push her hand underneath his cloak and reach into the small pack just above the scabbard at the base of his spine. After a minute, she closed the pack and straightened his cape. He turned in time to see her draw a large ‘one’ in chalk on the door in front of them, then trace a large circle around it. She then tossed the chalk onto the pedestal next to the lantern.

“Smart,” said Wulfgar. She smiled up at him.

Snorri and Lauren pulled out their weapons and stood side by side in front of the door. The rest of the group armed themselves and arrayed behind them.

“Remember,” whispered Wulfgar, “if we run into any revenant, do not look them in the eyes. That’s a quick way to wind up on a slab,” he patted the pedestal. The rest of the group nodded.

Lauren reached forward and worked the door latch, then pushed it open a crack. Snorri, to her left, pushed on his side as well and the door swung quietly open, then he, followed closely by Lauren, moved into the room. They stopped a couple of meters within and let the rest of the group form up behind them. Wulfgar was the last through, and he quickly scanned the room, taking it all in.

The space was long and narrow, with man-wide cages indented into the wall down either side, eight in total; four along either wall. Inside of each of the cages was what looked like a human skeleton, crammed into a standing position by the narrowness of their cells, which were barely large enough to contain them. Rusted, wrought iron slabs crossed and stacked to make a doorway for each of the little tombs. In the middle of room was a rounded stone, a ball with an indentation on the top and eight grooves that ran down the sides, meeting at the bottom in a stone base. On the other side of the room was another closed door.

Wulfgar walked down the right side of the room as the group made their way up the center. He looked into each cell as he passed, but saw nothing besides bones.

He reached the far end and was leaning in to listen at the closed door when he heard a shout behind him.

“No! Don’t!”

Wulfgar pulled back from the door and looked it up and down, thinking that he had done something wrong. He turned and looked back to the group.

Snorri had picked up what looked like a brass pot, one spigot and one handle on either side. He had just finished pouring the contents onto the top of the stone ball and a thick, red liquid oozed down the eight grooves.

“Shit,” said Lauren, “circle up!” She started to move back when the streams of liquid met at the base of the object. The rear door, the door back the way they came, slammed shut. On instinct, Wulfgar tried the door in front of him. The handle wouldn’t move.

A rustling began from each of the small cells that lined the room, and the scream of metal on metal broke the stillness as each of the jail cell doors began to creak open.

“Not good,” muttered Wulfgar as he leaped toward the nearest cell, the furthest down the right hand side of the wall. He leaned in, putting his entire weight behind his left arm as he gripped the metal bars, pushing against the outward thrust of the door. His feet slid, backward, against the stone floor as the door pushed him on its unimpeded course.

“Not good,” he repeated as he saw that all eight doors were opening in unison. He let go of the door and instead thrust his blade through the bars at the reanimating skeleton inside.

A miss! He cursed under his breath as he withdrew the blade. A bony hand thrust through the cell bars as its owner moved around the edge into the open room. Wulfgar struck down at the arm, hoping to use the leverage of the metal bars against the skeleton.

“4 points of damage!”

The hand, chopped off mid-arm, dropped to the floor. Wulfgar pulled back his arm and looked up, smiling, just as a bony fist connected with his jaw.

“You have taken 2 points of damage!”

He swung at the arm, but missed as its owner retracted it. Wulfgar’s sword spit sparks as it glanced off the stone wall.

“You have taken 3 points of damage!”

Wulfgar fell backward, onto his ass. He hadn’t even seen that attack coming. He rolled away from his attacker and back up onto his feet just in front of the doorway. He shook off the fuzziness in his head and focused back on the skeleton, grim in its determined pursuit of him.

“Enough of this shit,” muttered Wulfgar as he activated Blade Wind.

His right arm flew out as his body whirled and he felt his sword connect, twice.

“5 points of damage!”

“10 points of damage!”

“Critical Hit!”

Wulfgar regained his balance as he watched the head fly from his attacker. The rest of the bones dropped into an unmoving pile at his feet. He turned and saw another skeleton, rocked to its heels - the first of his hits. Blade Wind’s swirl had brought the second skeleton within arm’s length and his blow had sent the would-be back-stabber reeling. Wasting no time, Wulfgar moved to follow up the attack before his enemy could recover.

Grinning wolfishly, he strode forward, raising his arm. He saw, from the corner of his eye, a flash of light and the smell of sulfur, and saw several flaming, smoking bones fly past, behind his current target. He brought down his arm, as hard as he could, aimed at the shining bone head of the skeleton.

“3 points of damage!”

Wulfgar laughed and pulled back his arm as the skeleton dropped to one knee. He kicked, connecting with its jaw.

“1 point of damage!”

The skeleton fell backward, laid out prone, and Wulfgar followed through, stepped forward and brought his right foot down onto the skull, which exploded into a shower of bone shards and dust.

“Your Alignment is now Neutral Good!”

He turned to survey the rest of the battle. Bear and Prince were ripping apart a flailing skeleton at the far end of the room, Doe cowered behind them, hidden, protected, within one of the now empty cells. He then saw Tane, his hands held forward, one palm raised, the other lowered, move his mouth as a flaming ball shot from his fingertips, connecting with the ribcage of an armless skeleton. The fireball exploded on its chest, and it dropped to its knees before trying to, clumsily, rise back to its feet. Tane and Bael wasted no time, moving in with their swords and hacking at both sides of it.

Wulfgar watched as Snorri swung his great axe, severing a spinal cord and bellowing in laughter, and then beginning to stomp on the twitching remains that scattered over the floor.

His attention was then drawn to Lauren, her sword making great arcs through the air of the room, at once holding off and pushing back two of the skeletons. In awe, he saw as she seemingly effortlessly parried each attempt at attack, all the while managing to find some opening she could chip away from, her brow frowned in concentration.

Coming out of his daze, Wulfgar activated Stealth and moved in toward Lauren and the two skeletons between them. He swung his sword side-arm, aiming at the spinal column of the attacker on Lauren’s left, his right. Bone chips flew as his blade connected.

“9 points of damage!”

“14 points of damage, Hidden Stab!”

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Hidden Stab!”

The skeleton broke in the middle, its torso and legs flying in different directions. Wulfgar stepped to the right and once again stomped hard, crushing the skull and sending teeth and shards flying. He looked back up just as Lauren finished off her opponent in a similar fashion.

She looked up at him and smiled, “Didn’t need,” she said jauntily, “but thanks for the help.” He just smiled in return.

“And you!” she growled turning on Snorri, “The next time you see some sort of blood magic all laid out before you, do me a favor and don’t complete the ritual!”

Wulfgar leaned back against the stone wall of the skeleton chamber, grimacing in pain. He looked into the soft, dark eyes of Doe as she bound his wounds. She concentrated, her small hands deftly administering to his sore jaw - she had already tended his ribs, and he could tell that her work had already made a difference.

“You have been healed of 2 points of damage!”

She stepped back and her eyes narrowed in thought, then she nodded, slightly, happy with her work.

“Thanks, Doe.”

She nodded again, a slight smile flickering across her face momentarily, before she returned to the center of the room.

Wulfgar looked to his friends as he stood, stretching the soreness out of his limbs. The rest were all gathered in the center of the room, in an inward facing circle around Snorri, who was pulling items out of his backpack. Wulfgar joined the circle.

“What’s up?”

“Dinner time,” said Snorri, smiling and handing Wulfgar a sausage.

Wulfgar snatched a bite then waggled the rest of it back toward Snorri, “Do we really have time for this? We still need to find Rydra, and we have no idea what kind of trouble he’s in.”

“Check your Stamina,” said Lauren in between bites. She took a swig from a wineskin and passed it to Wulfgar, who grabbed it while looking at a translucent copy of his character sheet. The entry next to STA read 08/13. As he looked at it, the number rose to 09/13.

“Hmm,” he mumbled, then swallowed and followed it up with a swig of what turned out to be cool water. He passed the skin to Snorri.

“How does it go down?” he asked Lauren.

“Getting hit. Using special moves, stuff like that. It’ll go back up on its own, given time, but eating and drinking will scoot the process along. You should be back up to max in a minute or so.”

Wulfgar nodded, the looked toward Bear, “Does it work the same for NPCs?”

Lauren shook her head, “Don’t think so, and if you ask them, they won’t know what you’re talking about.”

Wulfgar looked to the Aos Si and Rats and they seemed to not be following the conversation at all.

“As to Bear, though,” she continued, “I don’t know, though I assume you could know if you had the Bestia skill.” She smiled up at Wulfgar, then responded to his questioning look, “Animal taming, I guess is what you’d call it. It’s a skill that lets you tame and then control wild beasts,” she started scratching the dog’s head, “Not that you’re wild, sugar Bear!”

She continued, “If you had that skill, I bet you could get greater access to Bear’s information, and maybe even unlock some special abilities for him. Or even,” she smiled toward Doe, “find him a friend or two.”

Wulfgar laughed, “Yet another of the long list of skills I have to look into. When there’s time.”

“You have all the time in the universe,” laughed Lauren.

“But not the present,” said Snorri, putting his pack back on, “There’s some thing down here that needs killing, and a friend of ours who likely needs rescuing.”

As if to accentuate that point, the group heard a low, guttural laugh. It seemed to come from all directions at once. It went on for several seconds.

And it sounded nothing like any of the previous noises they’d heard in this place.

“I take it,” said Snorri into the silence that followed, “that wasn’t a leprechaun.” The Aos Si shook their heads. Everyone seemed to nod at once, steeling themselves. Wulfgar looked to the door that he’d been inspecting before the skeletons rose, then back into the room.

“Before we see if we can go forward,” he began, “it might be a good idea to check and see if we can go back.” He nodded toward the door they’d come through.

As he inspected the new door, Lauren went back and opened the first. Wulfgar didn’t know if he would be able to detect any traps - he didn’t know if Rydra had used a skill earlier or if he’d just looked for anything that looked ominous. It looked, Wulfgar thought, like a door. If there was a trap on it, he couldn’t tell. He moved the handle, slowly, and it didn’t resist his efforts - whatever had locked it before had released its hold. He let the handle return to its previous position, then Wulfgar returned to the his friends. He paused as he reached them - a low hum, musical and evil, began to pulse through the chamber.

“Whatever that is,” he began, “I have a feeling that it’s bad news for Rydra.” The rest looked at him, waiting, “And I think we need to get our asses moving.”

Turning, he pulled his sword free of its sheath, and strode forcefully to the door. As he reached for the handle, he could feel his friends move in behind him. Grasping the wrought iron softly in his left hand, he pushed down on the latch, then slowly forward against the door. It swung silently on its hinges, opening into a short hallway.

Wulfgar crept forward, treading as lightly as he could. As he took his first step into the room, the floor creaked beneath his feet. Unlike the rest of the complex, this room had boarded floors - not smooth stone. He bent and examined the floor, but could discern nothing special about them, so he made his way to the next door and readied his fingers on the latch. He looked back to the group behind him.

“Ready?” he mouthed.

They nodded and he dropped the latch.

The floor fell away beneath them.

As he fell, Wulfgar caught a glimpse of the room they were falling into.

It was round, torches circled the walls. In the center was yet another stone altar, and on this one, Rydra lay naked and asleep - at least, Wulfgar hoped he was asleep. A figure stood over him, one arm raised high, the other holding a staff that it was pressing down on Rydra’s chest. Just above his heart. In the raised arm was a cruel, evil looking dagger - bent, wavy bladed - its shape alone was ominous, terrifying. The figure looked up, startled, and hissed, snarling through a nightmare of fangs.

Its face looked like nothing more than a skull tightly wrapped in leathern, parchment colored skin. Thin, almost non-existent, lips framed the horror that was its mouth - a gaping maw of pointed incisors. The nose was nothing more than a upside down heart shaped hole, and its large, oblong eyes showed only a flickering, fiery red. Black, raven hair was pulled back tightly onto its scalp, and gathered into three long tails - one each in front of two long, pointed ears, and one that draped down the creature’s back. The tall, thin body was wrapped, mummy-like, in faded, discolored muslin, that covered everything from the neck to its feet except for the two, claw-like hands.

It spun, impossibly fast, and crouched, holding the staff sideways before its face while crooking its right arm, ready to thrust.

Wulfgar took all of that in the time it had taken him to fall to the floor. As he hit the stone, he rolled off, to his right, toward the wall. Snorri hit harder, and fell to his knees then forward onto all fours. Lauren, clad head to toe in heavy steel, hit hardest of all, and fell backward prone.

Bear and the rats, already on four feet, faired better. They landed ready to run, which they did. Doe moved back, behind the protection of Lauren, while the dog and Prince, without hesitating and fangs bared, rushed the creature in the center of the circular room. They covered the space, no more than a few meters, between themselves and their prey in a flash and leapt, seemingly in formation, Bear’s growling howl filling the room.

The creature, snarling like its attackers, snapped its left arm down, moving the staff in a great circle while it hissed.

“Bshaw!” it screeched, spittle flying from its fangs.

Prince and Bear seemed to go limp, in mid-air, and the creature turned sideways as the two flew past and dropped, skidding, to the floor where they stopped in two silent, unmoving heaps.

“NO!” screamed Wulfgar as he ran forward, now on the flank of the wight, who spun to face him. As he approached the monster, a wave of nausea flowed through him - this creature was a much higher level than Wulfgar. The creature held its blade up between them and Wulfgar dropped and slid on his knees across the smooth stone floor. As he slipped underneath the dagger, Wulfgar activated Blade Wind. His momentum from the slide seemingly turned into a spin on the floor and his arm flew out as the creatures knife hand dropped in a missed strike.

“5 points of damage!”

Wulfgar’s blade connected with the creature’s left knee, which buckled. It dropped to one knee, which brought it face to face with Wulfgar, who looked away, avoiding making eye contact. The stench of death enveloped Wulfgar as the monster exhaled in pain.

Wulfgar had taken first blood for the adventurers, but before he could react, the wight brought its left arm down on Wulfgar’s head, clubbing him across the temple with the staff’s head.

“You have taken 4 points of damage!”

“You are stunned!”

Wulfgar fell backward, sprawled at the monster’s feet.

The lich used the leverage from the strike to raise back onto its feet. After dropping its blade on Rydra’s chest, it gripped the staff in both hands and, pointing the head at Wulfgar’s head, spoke.

“Meschlaw fantalang!”

Fire erupted from the staff’s head, enveloping Wulfgar’s entire body. He could feel the heat surrounding him, but no pain.

“The Baen Si’s Cloak protects you!”

As his brain swirled, Wulfgar remembered what Lauren had said about the cloak - once per day, it had a chance of negating a magical attack. It seemed that it had saved him from the wall of fire that surrounded him. Before he could exult, though, the lich snarled and raised the staff again, and Wulfgar’s brain repeated - once per day.

The creature’s lips snarled as it formed its next spell, the evil in its wholly red eyes bore through him. Before it could exhale, though, a blond blur moved into Wulfgar’s vision as Snorri attacked, his axe biting through the air before it connected with the beast’s back.

The lich screamed, a high pitched wail, in both pain and anger as it turned on the viking. Snorri snarled as he lifted his axe high above his head, preparing for another attack. He dropped to one knee as the blade came down - but the lich side-stepped and the blade thundered against the floor. Sparks flew and the room shuddered as waves of energy seemed to erupt from where the axe hit. Wulfgar didn’t know what skill Snorri had used, but was sure that it would have been devastating to be on the receiving end of it.

Snorri looked up in horror as the lich spun, the head of its staff connecting to Snorri’s jaw. The big man flew backward, sliding across the floor - out of all proportion with the physics of the hit, Wulfgar thought. Blood flew from his friend’s face as he spun to stop, before rolling over and rising back to his knees.

Wulfgar heard mumblings, in stereo, from either side of the room. The Aos Si, it seemed, faired a bit better than the rest - instead of falling to the floor, they had floated and spent the intervening moments moving to either side of the lich and preparing their spells. Wulfgar turned his still stunned head as far as he could to watch.

Floating near the ceiling, the faerie brothers each held in front of themselves one of the hearts of the Revenant - they grasped the baseball sized lumps of red meat in their small hands.

Tane finished first, his hand glowed as a bright blue beam of light streaked from him to the lich. The light hit the monster and hissed, dissipating into a fizzle.

The lich laughed, a low haunting evil growl, as it raised the staff toward the princeling.

“Meschalaw fong!”

It struck down with the staff and Tane exploded in a fireball. The Aos Si screamed as it dropped to the floor, then lay silent. Doe ran from behind Lauren, just regaining her feet, toward the fallen Tane - the lich’s staff turned to the small rat.

“Meschalaw fong!” it said again, and she was blown back against the wall where she lay unmoving.

“Fuck you!” screamed Lauren as she charged. She raised her sword arm just as a blue light erupted from Bael’s arm. This time, the light exploded around the lich and it again dropped to one knee as Lauren reached it and began frantically pounding on its head and body. The lich reeled from the blows, and fell to both knees as Lauren continued her frenzied attack. From what Wulfgar could tell, she used no skill - relying instead solely on her blind fury to pummel the creature.

After her third or fourth strike, the blue glow from the lich vanished - whatever the effect of Baen’s spell, it was over. The lich thrust upward and out with its staff and Lauren fell backward, dropping her sword. The lich reversed his hold on the staff and, with a downward stabbing motion, thrust it toward the prone blacksmith as it began to speak.

“Mescha …”

“ODIN!” Snorri roared as he entered the fight again. His axe began to rain down on the lich. Snorri screamed incoherently, spittle flying from his Berserkergang maddened lips. He began to laugh and cry at once as his blade flew. The lich was visibly shaken as it dropped to all fours on the floor. It raised its right fist, staff held crosswise between the two combatants, and it whispered.

“Nondalay beleeg ‘EH!”

Snorri flew backward, an orange shield-shaped light shot from the staff throwing him violently against the wall, where he crumpled and sighed, dropping to the floor.

Again, a blue light struck from Bael, exploding on the lich’s head. The wight froze, unable to move except to snarl at the faerie prince.

“Wulfgar!” Bael screamed, “Hurry!”

Wulfgar tried to move, but felt as though an elephantine weight held him immobile. No matter how hard he struggled, no matter how much he willed it, he could not move.

Then he could.

“You are no longer stunned!”

Wulfgar rose, crouched, behind the lich. He picked up his blade and snarled.

Keeping low, Wulfgar moved in and activated Stealth.

Reaching the lich, he reached up and grabbed it by its left collarbone for leverage, then thrust upward with all of his strength, directly into the monster’s back.

“10 points of damage!”

“Critical hit!”

“14 points of damage, Hidden Stab!”

The lich screamed, shaking the room, as it twisted, coming out of Bael’s spell. Wulfgar’s blade, still embedded in the wight’s ribcage, ripped out of Wulfgar’s hand as the creature turned, falling back against the pedestal for support. It looked weary, hurt and wounded - but not defeated.

Helpless, Wulfgar could only watch as the lich raised its staff, pointing it directly at Wulfgar’s head.

“Meschalaw foNNaahhhgh,” it grunted as a knife blade emerged from its mouth. Its eyebrows furrowed in confusion, then the red light in its eyes extinguished. It fell, in a heap, at the foot of the plinth. The body, no longer moving, began to smoke, to sizzle. Smoke enveloped the corpse as it rapidly reduced to ashes. Soon, there was nothing left of the lich but a black stain on the stone floor.

“You have gained Reputation! You are now considered Dangerous!”

“Your Reputation grants you +1 Personality! Folk are wary of you and treat you with added respect!”

Wulfgar looked up as Rydra, looking nothing worse than weary, sat up and swung his legs off of the pedestal. The thief took in the scene, the carnage, surrounding him. He didn’t say anything, just looked to Wulfgar and nodded.

Wulfgar rose, walked to Lauren. She was shaken and bleeding. He bent to help her, but she shook him off, pointing toward the far side of the room.

“Doe,” she grunted, “Tane. Check them.”

He stood back up and went to the two motionless bodies, but he could tell that there was nothing he could do - not at his current level, anyway. Tane was sprawled almost comically like a thrown doll, his body bent into an unnatural pose. Smoke still rose from his darkened body. Wulfgar sighed, then felt a cold muzzle press into his left hand. He looked down at Bear and sighed again, in relief. The dog and Prince, bound by whatever spell that the lich had used to put them to sleep, seemed to have been released upon the creature’s death. Wulfgar scratched the dog, nodded at the rat, then moved to Doe’s body.

The little heroine looked almost peaceful, as though she dropped into a nap along the curved wall. Bear pushed his snout into her, sniffed, then licked her once, before dropping onto his belly, laying and looking at her. He seemed unsure of what to do, but just dropped his head onto his crossed paws and sighed, staring forlornly.

“You have been healed of 4 points of damage!”

Wulfgar looked up, to Bael, finishing his magical ministrations. He nodded his thanks to the faerie, then moved back toward Lauren who again shook him away and pointed toward Snorri, laying against the wall on the far side of the room. He walked quickly across the room and bent over the man’s prostrate form, feeling for a pulse. Snorri groaned as he regained consciousness, then rolled onto his side, looking up at Wulfgar with one eye, the other bloodied and swollen shut.

“So,” groaned Snorri, “any sign of a pot of gold?”

Wulfgar laughed.

“Not a penny, now shut up and let me take care of you.” He pulled off his pack and began making a healing poultice. As he ground the ingredients together, he looked up to see Rydra join them, pulling on the last of his clothes.

“You must have a story to tell,” said Wulfgar as he spread the healing ingredients onto a clean bandage.

“I must, but hell if I know what it is,” the little man smiled. “I was looking over an unconscious or dead man laying on some sort of stone table.”

“A naked unconscious or dead man,” grinned Snorri lasciviously through a fat lip.

Rydra chuckled, “Not my type. Besides, not into necrophilia. Anyway, one second I’m wondering who the hell that guy was and the next I wake up over there,” he nodded toward the center of the round room, “and noticed some sort of thing leaning back against me and a dagger laying on my chest.”

“Oh,” said Wulfgar sarcastically, as he wrapped the bandage around Snorri’s head, “so you thought you’d just ride in and save the day and take all of the credit for the fight? Is that it?”

“Something like that,” laughed Rydra, “something like that.”

Wulfgar shook his head, “And there I was, looking forward to finding out what the hell was going to happen to my sorry ass when I died. And you had to go and ruin everything!”

“I’ll be more considerate, next time,” smiled Rydra as he helped Wulfgar back to his feet. He held up the Lich’s staff, “We’ll have to get this checked out when we get back.” He also held a little leather bag that jingled when he shook it.

Wulfgar turned and walked back to Lauren.

“No excuses this time,” he said sternly, smiling, “your turn.” He dropped to one knee and made another poultice. As he began to grind the ingredients in the little stone bowl, he heard a new message.

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Herb Lore!”

“Congratulations! You have gained a level in Healing Poultices!”

“Congratulations! You have earned the Herb Lore skill Cure Poison!”

Wulfgar smiled momentarily as he applied the bandage to Lauren. She sat up, then looked to Doe and Tane. She looked back to him. He just shook his head and frowned.

“Poor sugar Bear,” she sighed, watching as the dog seemed to grieve for his friend.

“Poor Bael,” added Wulfgar. The little princeling was wrapping his brother’s corpse. He looked up as Wulfgar approached.

“I don’t know what to say,” began Wulfgar.

“There’s nothing to say. He died for his people. He gave them back their home.”

Wulfgar nodded, felt the rest of the group joining them.

“May I?” asked Wulfgar, motioning toward Tane. Bael nodded. Wulfgar bent and took the Aos Si in his arms. He watched as Snorri did the same with Doe.

“That’s not necessary,” began Prince.

“It is,” countered Lauren, her tone brooking no argument.

“She’s yours, then,” finished Prince.

Wulfgar looked to his friends, “Is that it, then? Are we done?”

Rydra nodded, “I think so.”

“No message? No congratulations?”

Rydra shrugged, “Probably not until the Baen Si returns home - allowing the Aos Si to return to theirs, all the way up the chain.” He shrugged again. “There’s no other way out of this room,” he pointed up to the ramp that the wooden floor from above had become, which led back up to the door into the skeleton chamber.

“What about the other rooms?” asked Lauren. Rydra looked at them quizzically, and Wulfgar explained about the system of shifting rooms, and how they thought that the other doors led to two more areas that needed to be explored.

“That could be a problem,” countered Rydra, “We’re all pretty much banged up, and Wulfgar’s pretty blade disappeared with the Lich.”

“I’ll get you a new one,” whispered Lauren. Wulfgar nodded his thanks.

“Lichling,” countered Bael.

“What?” asked Wulfgar.

“Lichling. Not a lich. At least, not a fully grown lich,” he shrugged, “I guess you could call that a lich child.”

“A child?” asked Wulfgar incredulously, “That thing nearly kicked our ass. All of us.” Bael nodded. “What the hell,” continued Wulfgar, “would a fully grown lich have done to us?”

Bael just smiled sadly and pointed at his brother’s body.

They waited in the first of the lower rooms, the room where the sailor’s body had been found, while Rydra quickly checked the other two doorways. He returned shortly, shaking his head.

“The other ways had two other skeleton rooms,” he looked up at Lauren smiling, “but I didn’t drip the blood over the balls,” he’d enjoyed mocking Snorri when they’d told that story to them. Snorri smiled, acknowledging his own blunder.

“But each of the far doors in those rooms,” continued Rydra, “couldn’t be opened. If I had to guess, I’d say that these center rooms shift around, while the sacrificial chamber is only accessible through whichever one is connected to it at the time,” he shrugged, “in any case, there’s nothing else that I can find. I think we’ve cleared this place out.”

“How come,” asked Wulfgar, “if there there was a lich, a lichling,” he nodded toward Bael, “that we didn’t see any Revenant? I thought they were used by the lich folk as their servants.”

“They are,” said the Aos Si, “but they’re only of value in collecting souls for the lich. They would be of no use here, only outside, bringing in new victims.”

“Do we need to get out of here? In case any of them return?” asked Lauren.

Bael shook his head, “I don’t think that should be a concern. I’m not a lore master, but I believe that all of the revenant created by the lichling were released upon its death. They should be now free, their souls and their bodies. To go wherever souls go.” He looked at his brother.

They climbed the stairs in silence, made their way through the long hallway and back into the living chamber. The sailor, now dressed, rose and greeted them. Noting their demeanor, he didn’t say anything, he just filed into the group as they all left through the front door of the Baen Si’s home.

The group exited back out onto the grass in front of the doorway. It was now day, a bright cheerful morning greeted them as they walked back down the hill toward the waiting skiff. They moved in silence toward the sloping promontory that stretched like an arm down and into the sea, Wulfgar looked down at the little Aos Si in his arms. He looked like he was asleep, and his weight barely registered in Wulfgar’s arms. He wondered at what Bael had said.

“Where do the souls go?” he thought. Are there even such things as souls? Did he, Wulfgar, posses a soul? Did he separate from that when he’d separated from his body? Did he ever have one to begin with? Did the AI have a soul? If asked, as recently as a week ago, he’d have laughed off the thought as absurd. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. What made a person? What made a soul? If a computer could pass a Turing test - if it could convince humans of its humanity - what difference, at the point, did it make? Would an intelligence - artificial or not - care whether organically created creatures considered it as having a soul?

At some level, Wulfgar thought, each of us are responsible only for our own existence - whether you wanted to call that sentience, a soul, consciousness, or whatever - and nobody else’s definition or thoughts on our existence mattered.

At some level, he countered himself, everybody else’s definition was all that mattered.

Lauren nudged his arm. He looked up at her and she motioned her head toward the south. He looked and, high on a perch at the top of one of Baile’s seaside cliffs, the Baen Si stood, watching. Silently.

Chapter 7

Wulfgar pulled himself over the gunwale and onto the deck of the Piraeus, then turned and helped the rest of his friends onto the ship. As he finished pulling aboard Snorri, the last one out of the skiff, he straightened and stretched his back and looked up to the little island of Ma’Keis. Standing, almost shimmering, in front of her door was the Baen Si, arms still wrapped around her chest, long white hair and cloak still blowing in the wind. She didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge Wulfgar’s glance, but he felt that she was looking at him. He held her gaze for a moment then turned and joined the rest of his friends around the captain.

“We’ll need,” began Bael, “to return my brother to his people. To his land.” He glanced to the humans, “And the king and queen will want to speak again with those they’ve become indebted to, as well.” He gave directions to the captain on where to make landfall on Baile, no more than a few hours sail away.

The captain nodded and began moving through the crew, shouting orders, preparing the ship for sale. As the adventurers moved to the forward deck, Wulfgar glanced up at the barrow - the Baen Si was gone.

“Congratulations! You have completed the quest Balancing Light and Dark I from the Rat King of Light!”

“Congratulations! You have completed the quest Balancing Dark and Wet II from the Rat King of Dark and the Rat King of Wet!”

“You have gained in reputation with the Rat folk. They are now in awe of you!”

“You have upheld your oath to the Rat folk! All of the people of the world now hold you in higher esteem! +1 Personality!”

“Congratulations! You have completed the quest Baen Si’s Wail I by the Faerie Queen!”

“You have gained in reputation with the Faerie! They now respect you!”

“Congratulations! You have gained a level! You are now level 3! You have 2 Skill points to spend!”

Wulfgar paused in mid-stride, overwhelmed by the information that flooded into his brain. He looked up to his friends, who had all begun smiling, and knew that they’d received similar messages as well. They continued walking toward the front of the ship, and Rydra patted Wulfgar on the back.

“Thanks for the invite,” he smiled, “that was fun.”

“Is that it?” asked Wulfgar, “Is it over?”

Rydra nodded, “Yeah, though we’ll want to visit the folks who gave us the quests, to see if there are any further rewards.”

“As to that,” interrupted Prince, producing a small bag, “The Rat Kings have authorized me to provide this upon successful completion, as well as the thanks of our peoples.” He handed Wulfgar the bag, then Prince went belowdecks, into the comfort of the cold, damp and dark.

Wulfgar tossed the bag into the air once, then pulled it open and poured the contents onto his hand.

Eight gold coins.

He began dividing it among the group, two coins each to Rydra, Snorri, Lauren and himself.

“Doesn’t seem like much,” muttered as he pushed his own coins into his pocket.

Lauren shrugged, “It’s about a month’s pay for your average NPC. Not too shabby for a couple of days adventuring.”

“And that’s just from the rat quests,” added Snorri, “the faerie quest was more difficult, higher level. I’m sure the king and queen will reward us handsomely.”

Wulfgar and his friends bowed in front of the king and queen of the Aos Si. The tiny regal pair lounged at the crest of a small hillock, shaded by a copse of oak, ash and thorn. A stone circle crowned the hill, each menhir straight and clean; though the monoliths together gave the impression of great age, like the prehistoric monuments of the British Isles, there was nothing run down or out of shape about them. The evening sun shone between two of the rocks to the west, casting a warm and comforting glow into the shadows thrown by the stones.

Wulfgar lay the body of Tane in front of the prince’s parents, then took a step back to join his friends.

The king nodded toward Wulfgar as the queen looked sadly at her son. “We thank you,” he said slowly as the pair rose and, holding hands, walked toward the body. Looking down, they spoke softly, unintelligible to the humans. A warm, golden glow surrounded Tane’s body and it seemed to meld into the ground beneath him. After a few moments, all that was left was a slight discoloration in the green grass.

“We thank you,” repeated the queen, “for returning our son to his home, and for returning our people to theirs.”

“As a measure of our gratitude, we would like to offer these small gifts,” he looked up at Lauren. “As a creator, an artisan, a profession we hold in high esteem, we would offer you this.”

He held out a small hammer, beautifully made, that shone of polished steel.

Lauren nodded her thanks and took the gift.

The king turned to Snorri, who bowed his head.

“As a warrior, a protector, and righter of wrongs, we would offer you this.”

He held out a pair of beautifully wrought gauntlets made of green steel, each finger seemed formed of overlapping, leaf shaped plates.

Snorri smiled and took the gloves.

The king turned to Rydra.

“As a thief, a finder of truths, we would offer you this.”

He gave Rydra what looked to Wulfgar like a small keyring.

Rydra smiled and accepted it.

He turned last to Wulfgar.

“As a rogue, a covert fighter in the darks rooms of evil, we would offer you this.”

He held out a pair of black leather shoes, heavy slippers, which Wulfgar took thankfully.

Wulfgar examined the shoes.

“Clandestine Slippers: Provides wearer level 7 Stealth. Does not stack with skill levels, but will stack with other Clandestine items. A full suit of Clandestine gear provides a +4 Stealth bonus in addition to the stacking effects. Rare. Item 3 of 4 for suit.”

He looked back up at the king, smiling.

Wulfgar leaned back against the ship’s rail and pulled off the shoes Lauren had picked out for him and pulled on his Clandestine Slippers. He looked to his character sheet and scrolled down until he could read the entry for Stealth.

Stealth (2+12).

He was, functionally, level 14 Stealth. In addition to the higher percentages for success in all conditions, that gave him one-hundred and forty seconds per use. Nearly two and a half minutes. He smiled and looked to Rydra.

“I almost feel bad about this,” he said, “I mean, I’ve got my Clandestine piece and your Clandestine piece and I’m at a higher level of Stealth than you are.”

Rydra just shook his head, “No matter. Even if you gave me my piece and your piece, I’d still only gain a level.” He shrugged, “Anyway, I’m not too far from gaining that level anyway. I think we’ll be tied soon and,” he chuckled, “when you gain up to level three, you’ll still only be at the same level you are now, since those items don’t stack with your skill.” He smiled broadly, “Don’t worry, newby, I’ll be ahead of you again soon.”

Wulfgar laughed and turned to Lauren.

“What did you get?”

She was sitting, out of her armor, cross-legged in the middle of the deck, admiring her new hammer. It looked like a very small sledge, about the size of a standard claw hammer. She held it up into the fading sunlight.

“It’s an imbuing hammer,” she said happily, “It adds ten levels to my imbuing skill!”

“Wow!” exclaimed Wulfgar, impressed, “That seems pretty powerful.”

She smiled, “It is, but it only works five times, then it’s just a regular, plain ol’ hammer.” She looked back down at it, “I was just wondering how to use it. I think I’m going to save it, and only try it for second imbuing.”

“What’s that?” asked Rydra.

“Well, you can imbue an item with special qualities and keep going, as long as you’re successful. Rather than use this on a first attempt, I’ll save it and try imbuing a second quality on an item that I’ve already been successful with once. Maybe I’ll be able to make some really kick ass items.” She looked up at Wulfgar and winked.

“The gloves?” asked Rydra, looking to Snorri.

“They kick some major ass,” the big man laughed, “In addition to the highest armor class rating, they give me the ability to use Faerie’s Kiss once per day. That gives me a minutes worth of that buff. Each target I hit in that minute gets stunned for the amount of damage times one point five seconds.”

“Wasn’t the buff we got like four and a half minutes?”

Rydra nodded, “Bael and Tane were probably using a higher level of that spell.”

Wulfgar nodded. “And what did you get?” he asked Rydra.

Rydra pulled out the little ring.

“A keyring,” he laughed, “for my lockpicking tools. It gives me plus five levels in my lockpicking skill.” He looked up and smiled, “And it stacks on my skill, so I’ll be using this thing forever.”

He leaned back against the railing with a happy sigh, “This, coupled with the bonus I got for upholding the oath to the Rat folk, augur a large increase in my wealth, I do believe.”

“What was that?” asked Wulfgar.

“Once per week, I can call on the Rat folk to lead me into a building in Edonis, otherwise bypassing the normal entry points.” He smiled, “I can literally get in almost anywhere, undetected and with this,” he held up the keyring, “I’ll be going through chests and store-rooms like crazy!”

“I didn’t get anything for the oath,” frowned Lauren.

“Me neither,” added Snorri.

“Those are the breaks,” shrugged Rydra, “sometimes you get a nice bonus, often-times you don’t get squat. But you always lose, and lose big, if you fail the quest.”

“How can you fail? You could just keep trying, right?”

The rest shook their heads, “Nope, if we’d have died in there,” Rydra pointed his thumb backward in the general direction of Ma’Keis, “the quest would have been over. A failure. And it was a damn close thing as it was. If we didn’t have the Aos Si along, I doubt we’d have succeeded.”

“That’s,” interrupted Snorri, “why you want to be very careful about making oaths. The one you made for us turned into an oath for the entire chain. If we’d failed at the last quest, we’d have failed them all, and we’d still have been bound by the oath made to the lower level quest. It wouldn’t matter that we’d accepted a much harder quest on top of that.”

“I’ll be careful in the future.”

“Did you get anything out of it?” asked Lauren.

Wulfgar nodded, “Yeah, but just plus one Personality.”

“Holy shit,” said Snorri, “that’s awesome!”

Wulfgar looked up at him, a little shocked.

“Really? It’s just an attribute point.”

“That’s just about the hardest thing to raise in the whole game,” countered Rydra. “It might not seem like much now, but once you start getting up in levels, it gets really rare that you have attribute points to spend, and every little bit counts.”

“You may not value Personality,” said Lauren, “and maybe a bump in Strength or Agility would have been more impactful, but you still got a really rare reward.”

“So,” asked Lauren as the group sat on the deck sharing dinner, “how are you enjoying your first week?

Wulfgar looked up at her and smiled.

“It’s really only been a few days, hasn’t it? I already feel like I know you guys. Like I know this world,” he shook his head, “but I realize I don’t. At least, not the world.”

“It’s a big place,” agreed Snorri, “and you’ve only really gotten to know one city in one kingdom. There’s a whole realm of stuff out there that could keep you busy for years, and that’s just within Clive’s kingdom. There are places and races out there that are only legends here. Elven cities. Dwarven mines. Other human civilizations.” He winked at Wulfgar, “We’ve got a lot of exploring to do.”

“And,” Wulfgar thought, “a huge area in which Shannon could be anywhere.”

Wulfgar nodded, “I’d like to do the exploring with you guys.” Snorri and Lauren smiled.

“I’m still pretty much a homebody,” said Rydra, “I mean, I enjoy the occasion local quest as much as the next guy, but I don’t see myself getting much out of Edonis. At least for a good while.”

Snorri frowned, “You mean, why explore and enjoy the world when you can just steal and do nothing?”

“Exactly.”

“What kind of life is that?”

“Relaxing,” Rydra sighed, “Look, I don’t expect you all to understand, but I was an old man. I’d spent decades working my ass off, forty hours a week. I had a good life, I enjoyed it and my family and friends, but I didn’t have much of a retirement. Too many health problems to enjoy myself. Now?” he shrugged, “Now I intend to enjoy myself.”

“And you take enjoyment out of pilfering NPC's?” sneered Snorri.

Rydra shrugged, “It’s a living. Besides,” he wagged a finger at Snorri, “I’m just taking what the system gives me, same as you. Just because you’re killing the NPC's before you pilfer them doesn’t make you any more or less honorable than me.”

“You don’t worry about that whole racial stereotype thing?”

“Oh, Jesus, son!” laughed Rydra, “Because I’m black I can’t be a thief without someone bringing that old bullshit into this world?” He shook his head, “Hell no, you don’t get to play that. Not here.” He pointed at Snorri, “Did you go around slaughtering people when you were alive? Aren’t you worried about that whole racial stereotype thing? The crazy white guy axe murderer?”

“I never, never, stole a thing in my life. I was an accountant for nigh on fifty years. When I got here, I did an accounting, an analysis of this world and what I wanted out of it. What I don’t want is to run all over the place like some teenager smelling his piss, high on his own testosterone and playing whack-a-mole against fantasy creatures. I want a nice, quiet life. I want to be left alone, to my thoughts. And I don’t want to have to rely on anyone else.”

“Put that all together,” he shrugged, “and the profession for me is thief. That’s it, that’s all there is to it.”

“Look,” said Snorri placatingly, “I don’t think less of you. I like you. I was just wondering, is all.”

“No worries, my man, no worries.”

“You don’t seem too upset,” said Lauren, “and I would imagine a man of your age, well, you must have gone through some tough times.”

Rydra nodded, “I did. But there’s one thing I learned a long, long time ago.” He looked back up to the group.

“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you don’t really have a sense of humor; you’re just an asshole who likes to laugh at other people.”

Wulfgar leaned back against the railing, watching the mountain range get larger. He thought about the totality of time ahead of him; an infinity, seemingly, unbounded by an end point. Once he had found Shannon, what then? Would he continue within this world? If so, then what? If not, then what? He looked to Rydra, whose hand rested on Bear’s neck, comforting the dog.

“What do you do with your time?” he asked.

Rydra looked up, “Me?”

Wulfgar nodded.

Rydra smiled, “You mean when I’m not out pilfering from NPCs?” he chucked, “I write.” He paused, “I spend a lot of time, in my bed, staring at the ceiling and writing.” He tapped his right temple, “I’ve got a lot written, up here.”

Wulfgar raised one eyebrow.

“I’ve got the book memorized. Perfect recall helps,” the little man said and paused for a moment in thought, “and I don’t suppose all of you have thought through the implications of perfect recall.”

Wulfgar shook his head, Lauren and Snorri looked to the thief.

“What,” he began, “defines our personality? Is it just our consciousness?” He didn’t wait for an answer, “And does our personality remain constant throughout our lives?”

Wulfgar shook his head.

“So, what drives changes in our personality?”

“Experience?” asked Lauren.

Rydra nodded, “And what’s another word for experience,” he tapped his head again, “up here.”

“Memory,” suggested Wulfgar.

“Exactly. So, if our grand benefactors,” he spread his arms wide, “can recreate our personality, they must also include our memories right?”

The other three nodded.

“And your memories are as they were before you made the transition, correct?”

They nodded again.

“So, if you have perfect recall, and a recording of your memories …?” he let the thought trail off.

“We should be able to remember, well, everything, right?” asked Wulfgar.

Rydra nodded, “That came to me one night as I was lying awake, trying to work out some of my old relationships. You three are probably too young,” he looked at Lauren, “or too new,” to Wulfgar, “or too stupid,” he winked at Snorri who bellowed in laughter, “to have the epiphany I did, but I was an old man when I died. My last years, well, I didn’t have any degenerative diseases, but my memory got bad. I couldn’t remember what I’d had for breakfast on any given day, or whether I’d had breakfast at all.”

He shrugged, “But once I got here, my recent years became unmuddled, clearer. I could work my way back through the streams of my memories, remembering what happened, what was said, everything really.”

“It’s not like,” he paused, thinking, “having an eidetic memory. I mean, you can’t ask me what the weather was like on April third, twenty-three years ago, but if I have a memory, however early, I can work my way backward and forward from that point. A blip, a single picture, can be unraveled to reveal the whole story. At least, from my point of view.”

“I suppose,” Rydra pondered, “that given the time,” he smiled, “which we all now have, we could lock ourselves in our rooms and think back through our entire lives. I might just do that one day. But for now,” he smiled, “I’m writing my memoirs. The big story.”

“Why?” asked Snorri, “I mean, if you can remember everything, why write it down?”

“For one, as an old man, I learned not to take what I can do now for granted. I might not have the ability to do it later. Make hay while the sun shines, and all that,” he smiled at Snorri. “For another, I lived a pretty interesting life, if I do say so myself.” He chuckled, “I won’t give away anything now, though, I’ll just let you each have a copy once it’s done and published.”

“And then?” asked Wulfgar, “I mean, you don’t need an infinite amount of time to write about seventy or eighty years. What then?”

“I always,” said Rydra, “fancied myself a poet. I wasn’t very good,” he smiled ruefully, “by any means. But I figure I have a long, long time to hone that particular skill. So, for now, I’ll pick a few computer pockets to buy my wine, practice my craft and enjoy meeting people from all walks of life,” he smiled, “because, as far as I can tell, that’s what being a poet is all about.”

Wulfgar lay awake into the night, looking up at the familiar constellations. He began thinking on what Rydra had said, about memories and recall. Wulfgar - Duncan - had been an orphan for as long as he could remember. He had no memory of his parents and only occasional glimpses into his early life.

He thought back to what he presumed was his earliest memory.

He didn’t know how old he was, but he couldn’t have been more than three or so. He was in the back of a car. He could tell now, through his experiences as an adult, that it was an old Volkswagen bug. A beetle. From the trim around the window, the car was light blue. He was standing in the rear seat, the car unmoving. He tried to will himself to look around, to see if anyone else was in the car with him, but he could only remember, could only see, what he had seen - he could focus on anything that had been in his field of view at any given time, but no more.

In his memory, he moved forward and pressed his face against the glass. It felt cold on his skin and he could just see the glass in front of his mouth and nose fogging from his excited breath. His attention was drawn to a group of men, middle aged and older, who were standing in front of an open barn. They seemed happy, relaxed. One of them, a large knife in his hand, seemed to be leading the discussion. He pointed within the barn.

Another of the men unraveled a rope and threw one end over a beam that extended from the roof of the barn. He caught the rope and began tying it. He looped it once and then began circling the rest of the rope around where the loop met itself.

He was making a noose.

Duncan felt and heard the car door close behind him and heard an excited voice - a woman’s voice - in his ear.

“You shouldn’t be watching this, honey,” it said as a hand closed over his eyes.

Duncan struggled, shaking, but the woman was too strong. He couldn’t break free.

She pulled Duncan back into her chest, her hand still clasped over his eyes.

But two of her fingers had spread.

He could now see the men again.

Two of them grabbed one end of the rope and pulled the slack out of the line, leaving the loop, the noose, laying on the bare dirt in front of the barn door. The man with the knife nodded, and two more men came out of the barn, each holding a rope that was tied around the neck of a very large pig.

They moved the swine forward, until its rear legs were even with the noose, then the man with the knife bent over and lifted first one then other other of the pig’s hind legs and placed them inside of the noose. The man then straightened and patted the pig gently on the rear while nodding to the two men holding the taught end of the noosed rope.

The hog began to squeal as the noose tightened and lifted its legs off of the ground. The two men who’d led the pig out of the barn held the beast in place as it was lifted, first its rear then its forward legs. Once off of the ground, the two men removed their ropes from around the pigs neck and the hog was pulled higher.

That’s when the man with the knife deftly stepped in and quickly pulled what must have been a razor sharp blade across the hog’s throat.

Blood began to pour and another man stepped in and placed a large metal bucket underneath the flow.

Duncan remembered how enthralled, how enraptured, he’d been watching the pig being slaughtered, and how disappointed he’d been when the car started up and began to move forward. The woman pulled him in tighter and, after a moment, took her hand from his eyes.

He could see the back of a man’s head, sitting in the driver’s seat, as trees passed down either side of the car. Already exhausted, it didn’t take Duncan long to fall asleep in the woman’s arms.

Were these people in the car his parents? He remembered the man who’d cut the pig’s throat as his great-grandfather, but he never got a good look at his face.

Wulfgar blinked, seeing the stars wheel around his head as the Piraeus turned for a favorable wind. This was a new aspect of his life he would have to think about. How much of his life did he want to remember? He had gone through his entire adulthood never seeking out any answers; whatever the reasons that his parents, his family, had for giving him up, he was content in not knowing. He didn’t want to read through some dusty archives, trying to piece together the story from official records.

But this was different, wasn’t it?

This was remembering.

He just had to decide how much he wanted to remember, and when.

He fell asleep trying to decide if when was now.

Wulfgar took a long draw off of a pint of dark beer in the Gilded Pumpkin. He looked across the table, to Lauren who sat picking through a roasted chicken. She looked up at him and smiled.

“You look very dashing,” she smiled, laughing quietly.

“Doesn’t he just?” added Snorri.

The door to the inn opened and Rydra strode in, directly toward the table. He sat with a sigh and looked up at the rest of the group. When he got to Wulfgar, his face took on a shocked expression.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, nodding toward Wulfgar’s forehead, which was covered by the snarling face of a Canis Arcturus. The head, which molded itself, hat-like, onto his skull, trailed down into a short cape that dropped just below his shoulders.

“Cowl of the Wolf,” smiled Wulfgar. “It’s an artifact I found out in the Omegaverse. Got it when I killed an alpha Werewolf.” He shrugged, “I went and opened a bank account today, and when I opened my box this was already in it. I guess, since it was already in my character’s pack when I came through, it checked to make sure, I don’t know, that it wasn’t technological, and it just left it in my inventory.” He shrugged again, “Or, at least, in my bank vault.”

“Yeah,” said Rydra, “We all have the clothes we were wearing. They were in our vaults, but I’ve never heard of anyone having an item transfer. It looks dashing.”

“That’s what we were just saying,” laughed Lauren.

“It looks ridiculous,” said Wulfgar, taking it off and putting it into his pack. “In any case, though, Lauren was just saying how a high level tailor should be able to combine this with the Baen Si’s Cloak. Maybe even adding some fur, making the cloak itself kind of the lining of a head-to-toe fur piece. If we can get some fur with some additional properties, that would be great. That’s just what we were talking about when you got back.”

“As to that,” said Rydra, wiping beer foam from his top lip, “I just finished selling the lich’s staff and pricing out that cloak. The staff was rare. It was used for Necromancer spells. Evil stuff. There’s a market for it, but not a big one. My guy said he’d be able to sell it, eventually, so he gave me a good portion of its worth. He also priced out that cloak. Do you want to keep it?”

Wulfgar nodded.

“OK, then here’s your share of the staff and lich’s gold,” Rydra pushed two gold coins to Wulfgar and a larger stack to the other two.

Wulfgar pocketed the coins, doubling his fortune. The two would join their partners in his bank vault the next day.

“Doesn’t exactly seem like a big haul, does it?” laughed Rydra, noting Wulfgar’s expression, “But, again, gold goes a long way here and it’ll add up after a while.”

“Besides,” he continued, “take it from an old accountant, economies in a world like this just aren’t like the ones in real life,” he held up finger quotes around real life, “you have money coming in, being created out of thin air, and without enough drains for the currency, you’d run into rapid inflation or hyperinflation and pretty soon money would be worth nothing at all. You’d have folks who’ve been here for a while with so much money they couldn’t spend it all and the prices of everything would rise so much that new players wouldn’t be able to afford anything. Currency at that point simply becomes valueless, you’d wind up with a barter economy after that - doable, but confusing for anyone who didn’t know the relative values of everything, every item.”

“What this world has, what it has to have, are a series of faucets that drain the currency as fast as it comes in. Now, back out in the outside Omegaverse, you had items that were insanely expensive and you had players who spent a lot of time arbitrage trading. Buying resources at a low price in one market, and selling high in another. That tended to spread the wealth around.”

Wulfgar nodded - that’s exactly what he’d done. The Cowl of the Wolf had given him the ability to negotiate a trade deal on the home planet of the Canis Arcturus. He’d made a fortune buying and selling in that hostile alien market, which was closed to all other players.

“But this,” added Rydra, “is a more focused, closed economy. I suppose you could buy items in Edonis and ship them off to other cities, but as far as I know, there’s no mechanism within the system to provide you with any sort of up to the minute prices. Functionally, we’re kind of on our own here. So, while everyone is off adventuring, basically creating copper, silver, and gold out of thin air, well, after a time that currency would start to pile up.”

“There are two main ways to prevent that from happening. First, throttle the amount of currency coming into the system. Thus, we don’t really get chest-loads of cash as loot. Second, the system needs to have drains, money sinks that take currency back out of play. Item insurance is one.”

Wulfgar nodded. When he’d signed into the bank today, he’d agreed to insure each of his valuable items at a price determined with the banker. If he died, the items would be in his inventory when he resurrected. If he didn’t have the money in his account to cover the cost, the items would remain on his corpse and he’d have to trek to wherever it was to recover his things.

“Another is item degradation. You pay to have smiths and tailors,” he nodded to Lauren who did a little seated bow, “repair items. That moves the money around in the case of player craftsmen, removes it from the system in the case of NPC’s. Most spells, potions, and healing activities require agents or reagents. While you can find them in the wild, you’d spend all of your time just picking flowers or rooting around for nightshade just to find enough to adventure with. So folks buy them from herbalists or magic shops. That removes currency from the system.”

“Basically,” he concluded, “for every copper, silver, and gold piece coming into a closed system, you need to have a drain to take it back out eventually, otherwise the system will rapidly spiral out of control and, essentially, become meaningless.”

“That’s a lot of words to simply say “shut up and take your two gold pieces, newbie!”, isn’t it?” Wulfgar laughed.

Rydra smiled, then looked up as the door to the inn slammed open.

The group froze mid-chew and mid-drink as two large, pole-arm wielding men advanced on the table. They came to attention, just behind Rydra and, in unison, slammed the butts of their long spears onto the wooden floor of the inn, silencing the crowded dining hall.

Rydra looked up, a worried expression falling over his face, “I guess I wasn’t away long enough,” he muttered, “the fuzz found me.”

A small, thin man pushed his way through the two guards. He was dressed in a long, fine, embroidered purple robe. He walked to the table and pulled his right arm out from beneath his robe and thrust a rolled scroll forward.

Toward Wulfgar.

“The king,” he began in a steady, level tone, “requests your assistance.” He handed the parchment to Wulfgar and, without waiting for answer or reaction, turned and left as quickly as he’d arrived. His two companions turned in lockstep and began marching after him. The entire episode lasted just a few seconds.

Wulfgar heard an excited whisper from one of the near tables, “The king’s Chamberlain!”

His friends looked to Wulfgar expectantly, a slight wave of relief washing over Rydra’s face.

“Well?” asked Lauren excitedly, “Open it!”

Wulfgar smiled and snapped the wax seal and rolled the scroll out.

He began to read, making a show of squinting as his eyes moved through the words.

“Aaaaahhh! Out loud!” laughed Lauren in mock pain.

Wulfgar chuckled, “It seems,” he began, “that King Clive requests my,” he looked up momentarily, “our, assistance in a little problem he’s having, out on the frontier.” He scanned further down the page, “One of his outposts hasn’t sent any messages in weeks, and the last missive contained dire warnings of massing bands of,” he looked up, rolling the scroll, “miscellaneous bad things. Et cetera. Et cetera.”

He pushed the scroll into his belt, “So, who’s in?”

Lauren smiled and Snorri laughed, “You have to ask?” Then they all looked at Rydra.

The little man shrugged, “The little run to the Baen Si’s home only took a couple of days, and the guards are still probably looking for me. For at least a few more days.” He smiled, “And it is the king, after all,” he shrugged again and nodded, smiling.

The other three raised small cheers and their mugs in salute.

“You have accepted the quest Western Marches I from King Clive.”

Snorri leaned back in his chair, sighing in happiness, “Tomorrow?” The rest nodded. “OK, I’ll take care of getting us some mounts and a pack horse or two. Is there anything else we need to take care of first?”

Wulfgar nodded quickly, “Oh yeah, plenty. First, I’ve got to bind at a church or something.”

“Have you thought about what religion you’ll follow?” asked Snorri.

Wulfgar shook his head, “I don’t know enough about them to decide. Maybe there are some that will help my sneakiness,” he looked to Rydra who nodded, “Or maybe I’ll want to choose something that helps with magic.”

He shook his head again, “And that’s another thing I’ve got to look into. I’ve got two skill points to spend, and I need to figure out how to use them to get started in the magical arts. I should probably do that before I decide on a religion.”

Wulfgar smiled a little, sadly.

“What?” asked Lauren.

“I was just thinking,” he said looking up, “about what a friend of mine use to say. Shannon. She always said that in the universe where she was god, when you died you were placed upside down in a barrel. All of the alcohol that you wasted over your entire lifetime was poured into the barrel and if you drowned, you went to hell. You were allowed to drink as the booze was poured in, and bartenders went into the barrel feet first.”

He smiled again, “She called it ‘Valhalcohol’.”

His friends laughed, Lauren said, “She sounds pretty cool.”

Wulfgar laughed, “I think she added that last bit about bartenders because she was one. But, yeah, Lauren, Shannon was pretty cool. I think you and she would be great friends.” He paused, “Would have been, anyway.”

“Anyway,” he repeated, “I have to look into a few things before deciding on a religion.”

“If you’re serious about making magic your profession, you can take a quest from the Magic Guild,” said Rydra, “and that will get you a good boost. I took one from the Thief’s Guild.”

Snorri nodded, “Same with the Warrior’s Guild.”

“And Blacksmith’s Guild,” added Lauren.

“OK,” responded Wulfgar, “Tomorrow morning I’ll head over to the Magic Guild and see what they have to say. Snorri will get us some mounts, and you two,” he pointed toward Rydra and Lauren, “make whatever preparations you think necessary for a trip into the western mountains.”

“Maybe,” he continued, “the magic users will have an idea of how I can use the Heart of the Revenant.”

After the group had returned Tane to his parents, they had, on their way back to the ship, paused to bury Doe’s body on top of a small grassy knoll that stood above a sheer seaside cliff. After they finished and stood over her in a moment of silence, Bael had given Wulfgar the last of the Hearts of the Revenant. Bael had used two and Tane one in their efforts to subdue the lichling, and one had been left over - one of Tane’s. Bael had indicated that Wulfgar would be able to find a use for it in his forthcoming magical career. Wulfgar didn’t know anything about the item or what it could be used for, but he thanked Bael gravely, then the humans had taken their leave of the Fae and made their way back to the ship.

“So,” asked Lauren, pushing open the door to her shop, “how did you enjoy your first week?”

He smiled down at her as they went through the door, Bear in tow. “Like I said earlier, it feels like a lot longer. It sure has been packed with a lot of information. But I feel like I’ve really gotten to know you guys, pretty quickly.”

She grinned up at him, “Me too. Oh, hey,” she said moving quickly to her forge, “I almost forgot. I’ve got to get you re-armed.” She reached onto a cloth lined shelf and pulled down a twin to the long knife she’d given him before, then pumped the bellows a few times, stoking the fire that didn’t seem to ever go out.

“Let’s try imbuing it,” she said as she thrust the blade into the fire.

“I got a new skill after the lich fight. Cure poison. Can we try that?”

“Sure!” she said, “Given how imbuing works, that should cause the blade to inflict poisonous hits.” She smiled and started humming a song, familiar but Wulfgar was unable to place it. She pumped the bellows again, turning the blade, as Wulfgar rooted through his pack, pulling out the ingredients for an anti-poison potion.

As they worked, Lauren spoke, “Tomorrow morning, on the way to the Magic Guild, I’ll show you where a church is we can bind at. It’s not out of the way,” she nodded to herself, turning the blade again, as she resumed humming the tune. Wulfgar bit his tongue, wanting to know the song but not wanting to ask. Not yet. He wanted to try to work it out for himself first.

Instead, he asked, “What do you think of the quest?” He ground the potion ingredients into the little stone bowl.

“The Kings of Edonis seem to take a special interest in you, Wulfgar,” she said smiling up at him. She looked to the bowl and raised her eyebrows questioningly. He nodded and she pulled the blade from the fire and took a step to the anvil, grabbing and raising a regular hammer above her head, putting the blade onto the anvil’s horn.

Wulfgar turned the contents of the mortar onto the blade where they began to hiss and sizzle.

Lauren brought the hammer down once, twice, then began tapping along the entire length of the blade.

“Yes!” she hissed happily, “Houston, we have an imbuing!”

She turned, stepped back to the fire and pushed the sword back in, pumping the bellows twice with her free hand. As she worked, she started humming the song again. It started to drive Wulfgar to distraction, trying to remember the tune.

He reached back into his pack, putting away the potion ingredients.

“Now,” Lauren said happily, “let’s try your healing poultice. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

“Really? OK.” Wulfgar began pulling new ingredients out of the bag, mixing a new concoction.

She turned the knife again, and began whistling. The same tune. Wulfgar gave up thinking about it and shook it off, focusing instead on the task at hand.

“Ready,” he said after a minute and Lauren turned and returned to the anvil. This time, however, she pulled out her new hammer, the hammer she’d received from the Aos Si.

“Whoah,” said Wulfgar, “hang on. I don’t want you to use one of your five tries on my sword.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said smiling, “I really want to give it a try. You just happen to be around to benefit from it,” she winked up at him, then nodded toward the contents of the mortar.

He shrugged, then dumped the healing mixture onto the blade.

Lauren’s arm came down and the blade and hammer rang out, louder, more musically than before. A glow, bright and blue, enveloped the pair, hunched over the small shop’s anvil. Light sparks flew from the blade as the hammer made contact.

“Holy shit, holy shit, HOLY SHIT!” Lauren screamed, laughing, “It worked! It worked!” She stood, looking at Wulfgar, her face lighting up the room. “It really, really worked,” she whispered, turning and putting the hammer onto the top shelf next to the forge. “It really worked.” She shook her head, starting humming the tune again, and pulled another item, a jar, down from next to the Aos Si hammer.

“This stuff,” she said returning to the anvil, “will temper the blade. At least, that’s what they call it. It’ll make the sword much stronger,” she looked up at Wulfgar, “meaning it’ll give it more hit points, but, importantly, it’ll also give the blade an identity. You can name it. That won’t add any special properties, except one. It’ll be like any other identified item. Folks will be able to examine the object and read its properties.” She opened the jar, sprinkled a good amount of powder along its length, then returned to the fire.

As she once again began pumping the bellows, and once again began humming the same song, the fire roared and crackled. Sparks flew from around the blade as the tempering agent burned off. After a minute, she pulled the blade back out, turned to the anvil and placed the knife again on the horn. She raised the hammer.

“Name?”

Wulfgar was flustered, unprepared. He’d always hated trying to think of new names, and had always just thrown out the first name he thought of. His ship, in the Omegaverse, he named Shepherd Moon simply because he happened to be in the vicinity of just such a moon in the orbit around a ringed planet. From that followed Shepherd’s Crook, his space station, and Shepherd’s Cross, the colony he’d founded on a nearby planet.

“Argh, uhm,” he muttered frantically, trying to think.

“Hurry.”

“Shepherd’s Bite,” he said, instantly hating the choice as her hammer rang down.

She looked up, smiling, handing him the blade. He took it, thanked her, and examined the blade.

Shepherd’s Bite. Fifty percent chance on successful attack of inflicting poison damage for one to four damage per second for one to six seconds, plus one half of the user’s Small Blade level. That damage is then applied to the player as healing in a one to one ratio.

He looked up at Lauren, smiling hugely, and mouthed “Whoah!”

She laughed a little, resumed humming, and returned the powder to the shelf.

“It’s been a long day,” she said, “and it’s going to be a long day tomorrow. I think it’s time for bed.”

“Tired?” he asked, sheathing his new blade.

“Not in the least,” then turned to the dog, “Bear. Go to sleep.”

Wulfgar watched as the dog walked next to the fire, turned twice and dropped into a sighing heap.

Lauren took Wulfgar’s hand and began walking him toward her room, still whistling.

That’s when he recognized the song.

It was by Cheap Trick.

I Want You to Want Me.

Epilog

Ness’a leaned heavily on her walking stick as she pushed her way up a game trail through the eastern foothills of the Far Mountains. She looked back, the way she’d come, to the valley that lay eastward toward Edonis in the far distance. She sighed; to have walked so long and still be able to see her starting point. The starting point for all of her journeys. Each time she left, she just began walking, letting some whim of the day choose her direction - as long as it wasn’t a direction that she’d taken previously. She sighed again, turned and once again began moving her bulk up the initial climb into the mountains.

“Maybe next time not so fat,” she thought. An ascetic’s duty to shy away from ideals of beauty was one thing, but a missionary who relied on foot travel didn’t need to be slowed by unnecessary weight. Each time she was born again, she was born again anew. Keeping only her name, she rejected all of the temptations of narcissism. She changed herself until she was satisfied that nobody would look to her for her comely visage - all that mattered was the message.

She sighed again and turned back to the trail, to the west, and again began climbing into the mountains. Her stomach, ever empty, rumbled a little. Ness’a had decided, long ago, never to eat or drink. Unnecessary for continued existence, they only provided comfort and buffs for skills she would never raise, abilities she would never use. And comfort was a luxury which detracted from the never ending reminder her of her mission. Every hunger pang, every dry, thirsty breath reminded the pilgrim that she was doing God’s work. His will.

Ness’a turned a corner and froze, face to face with a jet black tiger; its head easily larger than her own. It looked into her eyes, its face level with her own as it sat on its rear haunches, studying her. A low growling purr sounded from deep within the creature.

Ness’a mentally shrugged. Death was nothing new to her. Sometimes it came more quickly, sometimes less. She would soon, she knew, be resurrected in one of the false idol churches within the city of Edonis. A flash of pain, then she would recreate her character - this time leaning more toward simply ugly than hefty - and once again begin her trek out into the wild, proselytizing to those she met.

“Hush, Schwartzie,” said a soft female voice.

Ness’a looked up, to the boulder she’d just circumnavigated, and saw a beautiful woman, long red hair that draped to her lap, sitting on top of the rock, cross-legged. Her hands, folded in her lap, glowed from the light of some spell, unknown to Ness’a.

“Hush, Schwartzie,” the woman repeated, “Be nice, you asshole.”

The tiger, its stripes a darker black than the rest of its body, stood and prowled slowly around Ness’a, moving onto the trail behind her, where it once again sat and began cleaning itself.

“Sorry,” the woman said, “my cat is kind of a dick.”

Ness’a shrugged off the apology, “It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t afraid. I’m Ness’a,” she concluded importantly.

“RaNay,” responded the red-head, “And you really should have been afraid. Schwartz is kind of a bad-ass.”

“It doesn’t matter,” repeated Ness’a, “death holds no meaning for me, here. Only heaven.”

“Heaven?”

“Heaven,” repeated Ness’a, “where we truly live, at the right hand of God. That,” she said, working herself into excitement, “is what the Church of the Sacred Self teaches us. All of this,” she spread hands, indicating the world around them, “is but an illusion. We are but illusions. We are really, truly, standing in heaven. Our true selves are all that matters.”

Ness’a dropped to her knees, “Oh, Ness’a, please help me to spread the word of the truth. Find RaNay. Convince her to speak to this one, to show her the light, to teach her the Truth.”

RaNay just sat, open mouthed, and raised one eyebrow.

“Wow. Really?”

Ness’a put her palms against the boulder, looking up at RaNay, pleadingly, “Yes. You must believe. Look into your heart, you will know it’s true. If not now, soon. Ask yourself, your true self, to visit you in your dreams. To explain the logic of it.” The big woman struggled to her feet, pushing off the boulder. She bent and picked up her staff, using it again to shift her weight.

“You will, I know it. Ness’a has told me,” Ness’a completed. “You will,” she mumbled again as she began working her way again up the trail, up the mountain.

RaNay watched her leave, then shook her head. She dropped from the boulder, landing easily beside the tiger. She reached down and scratched it behind an ear, earning a happy purr. They began to walk the way Ness’a had come, toward Edonis.

“You know, Schwartzie, whoever invented this whole world may have resurrected us without whatever craziness we had back in the real world, but they didn’t do shit to fix stupid people.”

Name: Wulfgar

Level: 03

STR: 10

INT: 05

AGI: 11

PRS: 02+01

FRT: 01

HP: 22 (ST+AGI + (LVL/3))

AC: 03 (Leather, Full)

STA: 14 (AGI+LVL)

MNA: 05 (INT+ (Magic Level x 2))

ALI: Neutral Good

REP: Dangerous (+1 PRS)

Dwarves: Friendly

Faerie: Respect

Rats: Awe

Skills (Level):

Blade Wind (1): Targets most vulnerable facing part of the opponent. Activating causes player to spin and gives a +10 to hit attack on the opponent. Player cannot be hit during the spin. Cool-down 30 seconds minus 1 second per Blade Wind level to a minimum of 10 seconds. Active. Skill automatically granted at level 3 Small Blade.

Climbing (2): Increases ability to successfully climb what would otherwise be an impossible vertical barrier! Each level adds .5% success chance per skill check, each point of AGI adds 1%. Active. 100 - Difficulty% + (Skill Level bonus + AGI bonus) = Success %

Cure Poison (1): Allows the creation of poison curing potions. Higher levels can cure more deadly poison. Active. Skill automatically granted at level 3 Herb Lore.

Healing Poultices (2): Allows the creation and application of healing poultices. Amount healed is dependent upon skill level. Active. Skill automatically granted at level 2 Herb Lore..

Herb Lore (3): Adds ability to detect and use valuable plants. Each level increases the amount of harvest as well as the detection range for the player by 1%. Passive

Hidden Stab (2): Increases damage done using a Small Blade while in Stealth. Passive. (STR+AGI) x .5 + (Small Blade Level + Hidden Stab Level) = Additional Damage. Removes player from Stealth.

Small Blade (3): Gives to-hit and damage bonuses when using a knife or short sword. Passive.

Stealth (2+12): Lowers the detection likelihood and radius of the player. Each level removes 1.5% of radius, multiplied by player’s AGI. Separate checks are made for visual and aural radii, each based on several environmental variables. Each level allows for 10 seconds of stealthy movement. Cool-down 10 minutes. Active.

Abilities:

Highlander: +1 AGI. +1 Climbing. +10 PRS with other Highlanders.

Items:

Clandestine Gauntlets: Provides wearer level 7 Stealth. Does not stack with skill levels, but will stack with other Clandestine items. A full suit of Clandestine gear provides a +4 Stealth bonus in addition to the stacking effects. Rare. Item 2 of 4 for suit.

Clandestine Slippers: Provides wearer level 7 Stealth. Does not stack with skill levels, but will stack with other Clandestine items. A full suit of Clandestine gear provides a +4 Stealth bonus in addition to the stacking effects. Rare. Item 3 of 4 for suit.

Baen Si’s Cloak: Provides wearer +10% magic resistance. Once per day, has 25% chance of completely negating one (1) magical attack. Uncommon.

Cowl of the Wolf: Provides visual camouflage in similarly colored environments, as well as infra-red cover in all environments. Reduces species aggression from Canis Arcturus to neutral. Unique. Bound.

Shepherd’s Bite: Provides upon successful attack a 50% chance of inflicting poison damage for 1d4 damage per (1d6 + Small Blade level) seconds. All poison damage is applied to attacker as healing at 1:1.

Acknowledgments

In addition to the usual suspects, Kevin and Ed, I need to thank some friends, old and new, for their kind support, encouragement and suggestions. Chris, for always being a great cheerleader, and Justin, Leta, Peter and Steven from the Facebook LitRPG group; and thanks to Aleron for creating and maintaining that group (as well as writing some kick-ass LitRPG himself). I highly recommend that you join if this little genre is of interest to you - since there are many authors in the group, it’s a great way to get up to date information about releases.

As always, I’m indebted to my family - the ones I’m related to and the ones I’m not. Many of them are “characters” in these books, in that when I’m writing dialog, for example, I think “If ‘Shannon’ was an actress, how would she play this character?” or “How would ‘Lauren’s’ personality effect how this character says this particular line”. So, if you recognize yourself in these pages, just know that I’m not necessarily saying that you would think or act in a particular way, I’m just running that character through this process in order to give them a distinct voice within the story.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has given me kind words of support - whether via email, Facebook messages, or reviews online. Each and every one makes my day and helps me to write just a little faster. Thanks, I truly do appreciate them.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this volume - I look forward to telling more Omegaverse stories.

About the Author

G.R. Cooper has been a lot of things - retail clerk, construction foreman, tech support - but his career has been in developing online games. From Community Manager, to Producer, to Creative Director, and now, “Writer”.

His favorite, however, and what he still thinks of himself as, is as a Game Designer.