Winds of Fate Page 3

  Nothing had changed in the game. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and NPCs shared the streets with the occasional player.

  Kroytsen certainly didn’t appear to be the game’s most popular city, even considering the fact that it was a weekday. That didn’t matter to me, however; I had a meeting with the group to get to. There was half an hour left before the deadline. That should be plenty even though I have to get some things done first.

  The first thing was to head to the nearest mailbox since the little envelope in the interface showed me that I had mail. I figured it was money from the auction.

  There was money for me, but I was surprised to see that there were also two very unexpected letters. One was from Elina, my favorite clan leader; the other was from Milly Re.

  I was even more surprised by the fact that the two letters were nearly identical. Both ladies needed to see me right away to talk about something highly important. I was supposed to—or rather absolutely had to—get in touch as soon as I logged in. They would both be waiting impatiently. What in heaven’s name do they need from me? I mused back to how good life was when I first started playing. Nobody knew me, I didn’t owe anyone anything, all I had to do was avoid Euiikh, and I was golden. I could just give all this up and go live in the swamp with my dearly beloved.

  Life pressed on, however, and I, well-mannered and cultured that I was, needed to answer. I sent them identical replies.

  Dear recipient,

  I would be happy to meet with you, although I am unable to do so at present. Today, Friday, at 10 a.m., I am leaving for a trip through the mountains that will take me to the northern part of the continent.

  As soon as I arrive, I will get in touch to set up a meeting.

  Yours truly,

  Hagen

  A well-written letter, I thought, that politely and clearly said I was too busy wandering through tunnels and dodging rock slides to think about them. Very romantic.

  My secretarial duties done, I visited a trader to buy some dried meat. Food in Fayroll was simpler than in other games. All you got from eating it was a faster regeneration time for your life energy. Some games offered an attribute boost for chowing down on some roast pig, but we didn’t have anything like that. Nothing even happened if you decided to go without eating completely. You could just indulge after a tough battle to get back on your feet.

  After dropping by my hotel room to drop off the money, I set off for the gate at a brisk trot. Time was ticking, and it was just about time to leave.

  There were already five people at the gate, and all of them had the Hounds’ symbol over their heads. That has to be the group of kiddies I’m supposed to join. “Kiddies” may not have been the right word, though; none of them were below Level 50.

  I recognized Fitz from the Gray Witch’s office. He was yelling some kind of lesson at one of my future companions.

  “Oh, you ‘thought’? You mean to tell me that the head of cabbage sitting on your shoulders is what you use to think with? The decomposition going on up there is actually some kind of cognitive process? I’m going to have to disappoint you; you have no business anywhere near the word ‘cognitive.’”

  I walked over to the red-faced warrior and announced my presence. “Hagen, participant in the Northern Campaign. Present and accounted for.”

  Fitz turned to me, rolled his eyes when he remembered who I was, and growled at me. “Fall in with the rest. Yes, that bunch of no-good animals. At least, they’ll have one real person in the group.”

  “Fitz, do you ever get tired of yelling?” I heard a lazily imperious voice call out.

  Turning, I found the owner of the voice was a Level 98 elf warrior named Miurat. So he’s the reinforcements they sent.

  “Well, we all know how you can get out of anything, but I have to make sure these idiots get to the other side of the mountains—all of them, preferably,” roared Fitz. I was getting the impression that he was the kind of person who spoke in a bellow.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Miurat replied impressively. “I’m coming with you and sharing the responsibility for everyone, so I’ll be right there with you if anything goes wrong.”

  “Like in Mirron?” growled Fitz spitefully.

  “You watch your tongue!” answered Miurat, losing for a second his gentility in favor of a flash of anger. “You weren’t there, so you don’t get to have an opinion on what happened.”

  “You’re right; I went too far,” answered Fitz quickly. “Okay, is everyone here?”

  “Yep,” answered a Level 51 archer girl with the hard-to-pronounce name of Tirnuvinuel. “Weren’t there supposed to be just five of us though?”

  “Correct,” confirmed Miurat. “Six with our Thunderbird friend, eight with the two of us. We should be fine.”

  “Why is a Thunderbird coming with us?” asked a warrior dwarf named Frag.

  “Because,” Fitz said, glowering, “we’re allied with the Thunderbirds, so they’re friends of the clan. You’re all too green to see how they fought on the walls of the Wild Heart citadel. This one may not look like much, but he made a name for himself there.” Fitz jabbed a finger in my direction. “He was in the middle Mouse, right on the top level, and he was one of only a few to survive. So there you go.”

  “Oh, really?” Miurat’s eyebrows shot up. “That was you? Valent told me how you saved his life.”

  My companions turned respect-filled faces toward me. Fitz and Miurat certainly were talking me up.

  “Well, not exactly. I just backed him up a little,” I said modestly.

  “We’ll talk when we stop for breaks,” said Miurat before going to stand next to Fitz.

  “All right, fighters!” screamed Fitz at the top of his lungs. “Check one more time to make sure you have everything you need. Potions, good; weapons, equipment all repaired? You have exactly ten minutes before we leave. If you need more time, you can spend it sitting here picking your nose.”

  Oh, no! I haven’t repaired my equipment in forever!

  I quickly looked around and located the blacksmith. Happily, he was nearby, and so I moved in that direction as casually as I could (I had a reputation to uphold, after all).

  Thankfully, equipment repair in Fayroll was fast, if pricey. I was done by the time our ten minutes were up, and we heard our “Everyone ready?” We left peaceful, calm Kroytsen behind us. In front of us, loomed the mountains.

  Once out of the city, I started to get the jitters. I was setting out on one of my most risky endeavors to that point in Fayroll. My life certainly hadn’t been smooth sailing before that point, though I had always stuck to areas I could handle or where I had powerful backup to make sure everything would be okay. This time, we’d be going through an infamous location I was a good seven levels short of being ready for. The group was made up of similarly low-level players, a brave soldier with the manners of a drill sergeant, and an unflappable elf I couldn’t get a read on. I had good reason to be nervous.

  Lost in my thoughts, I gradually fell back to the rear of the column and realized I was last in line. Oh, no, there’s Miurat catching up to us.

  “Don’t worry,” he said as he came up to me. “We’ll be fine. The mines are bad, of course, but I’ve been through them three times—both directions. Fitz has been there, too. We wouldn’t let anything happen to the Gray Witch’s personal friend, would we?”

  He winked at me and headed up the column to catch up with Fitz.

  ***

  From the third edition of the Fayroll Times:

  …his colleagues all referred to him as a great person and a highly competent professional.

  Fayroll as we know it was, in many ways, his baby, and it is hard to believe that he has left, for good, a world he knew so intimately.

  Classes: which one is right for you?

  Mages, Part 3.

  …and other spells. At the beginning levels, mages also face a critical decision: which school they will practice. The choices are the schools of ai
r, fire, water, and earth, and they are what determine how effective a mage’s spells will be in those and other areas…

  History and Creation of the World

  Nobody expected the advent of the gods in Fayroll. The dragons assumed the gods’ arrival marked a challenge to their power; the light races looked to them as protectors and patrons; and the dark races regarded them as worthy of adoration. The true reason the gods came was to achieve absolute dominion over the Fayroll world.

  Announcements

  Dear readers,

  As you no doubt understand, we are in no position to keep track of everything going on in Fayroll, no matter how much we would like to do so. With that in mind, please send us short overviews of the events you think are worth publishing.

  Excerpts from the Fayroll Chronicle

  The yearly Silver Arrow competition was held in the Borderlands. Hundreds of Fayroll’s best archers gathered in Nottsburg for two days and three rounds of shooting. The winner was Ellan of the Plain from the Leviathans clan. He was given the traditional silver arrow and the 20,000 gold purse.

  The Eyes of the Beast clan visited Ouk Cave in search of Klatornakh, an epic monster. The entire clan went in, but not a soul returned to tell the tale. Unfortunately, that is how some raids end…

  An attempt to descend Nabia Falls in the southern reaches ended in the death of a well-known adventurer. TurDal, a famous traveler and adrenaline junkie, decided to conquer the enormous and nearly vertical waterfall by locking himself in a barrel and throwing himself into the river just upstream of the falls. When the barrel reached the bottom and was plucked out of the water, the players waiting there found only the brave dwarf’s possessions. TurDal remains optimistic and is looking for other ways to master the watery beast.

  Fun Times in Fayroll

  Today, we learned, yet again, that just about anything is possible in Fayroll. Just recently, three alchemists in Anselm, a town on the southern coast, made a bet about which of them—in three weeks—could make the most realistic grenade they could using nothing but alchemical ingredients. The results have been explosive: a burned-down building, a partially melted road, and ten scalded people living in what had, until the bet, been a very quiet town. The local government evacuated part of the population. We will keep an eye on events and fill you in as they develop further.

  Coming up in the next edition:

  An interview with Harry the Eye, head of Rivenholm’s strongest clan.

  Chapter Three

  In which the hero finds himself crawling around underground, yet again.

  The mountains towered high above us. I’ll be honest, they were the biggest I’d ever seen—the Pyrenees and the American Cordillera had nothing on what was right in front of me. You couldn’t help but realize how small and insignificant you were standing there.

  It was as if the mountains were saying, “Well, hello there, you little bug. Oh, you’re going to climb around on us? Be our guest. Your whole life is an instant to us, a gust of wind in our peaks.”

  We noobs were the only ones staring up at the mountains, by the way. Our veterans had been around the block a few times and remained untouched by their beauty. Still, Fitz and Miurat knew how we felt, so they gave us a few minutes to gaze at the majestic splendor. Once they saw our glances shift from the snow caps to the snarled mess of stones around the foreboding entrance to the infamous mines, they started in on their first and, presumably, only briefing.

  “Listen, kids. We’re about to enter the Rina Mines, a rotten, unpleasant, and evil place,” said Fitz, laconic to a fault.

  I shifted my stance and was about to ask a question when I saw Miurat motion me to keep quiet—there would be time for questions later. Fitz continued his speech.

  “Your job is simple: stay alive. But for that to happen in the mines, we’re going to have to be a well-oiled, precise, and steady machine. If we aren’t, Miurat and I will be the only two walking out the other side—and maybe just me. So, you can check your ambitions at the door, forget your high opinion of yourselves and leave what you have to do in the North alone for now. That’s it. Questions?”

  Fitz bristled his mustache, coughed, spat, and looked us over with a threatening glance that told us he’d be jamming any questions we asked right back down our throats. The young Hounds obviously had questions, though the timid way they were looking back at our leader made it clear to me that none of them wanted to risk it. I raised my hand. Who cares what Fitz thinks of me?

  “I have a couple questions.”

  “Yes?” The warrior’s brows creased menacingly.

  “What do you mean, it’s an ‘evil’ place? God-forsaken like Snakeville or something else?”

  “Nobody knows what’s in Snakeville, and the people who do, don’t talk about it,” answered Miurat before Fitz had a chance. “Here, it’s simple. The mines are an alternate route to the North. It’s shorter, faster, easier, and not as cold as the pass, but it comes with a price. It’s incredibly dangerous and hard on you mentally.”

  “Mentally?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Miurat tucked his hands behind his back like a professor beginning his lecture. “Nobody likes being down there in the mines, even—you’d be surprised—dwarves. The whole time, you feel a relentless psychological pressure bearing down on you. You see the souls of burned miners; you hear footfalls and cries; and the darkness whispers in your ears. You may even see fragments of a battle. Also, don’t be surprised if someone who just died appears to you. A guy I know was shocked to see a girl from his clan he’d been chatting with not an hour before.”

  “Why are there burned miners?” I asked with interest.

  “Oh, that’s a fascinating story,” answered Miurat, perking up. “Back when—”

  “Enough!” barked Fitz. His whiskers stood on end. “You can chat later. We have to get to the Ninth Hall, which is about eight hours away including breaks, and we may have to fight our way there.”

  “Okay,” Miurat said to me softly, “I’ll tell you on the way. And stay close to me, by the way. Do you like to play the hero?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that.” Miurat smiled. “You know, ‘one for all and all for one,’ ‘go out in a blaze of glory,’ all that. Do you have a thing for heroics?”

  “Me? No, I don’t care about all that,” I answered honestly. “I mean, I won’t run from a fight or abandon the group, and I’ll do my level best, but I try to stay away from the middle of things.”

  “Excellent,” said Miurat. “I think we’ll get along fine.”

  I nodded. “Agreed. Two smart people can always find common ground.”

  “Okay, fighters, let me remind you one more time,” said Fitz, who was finding his stride as an orator. “The key in the mines is discipline. Relax, get cut off from the group, and you’re a goner. Nobody makes it alone in the mines. That’s a theory that’s been tested on many an occasion and by players much more advanced than you. Oh, and if you die, you can kiss your belongings goodbye—portal scrolls don’t work in the mines. Not even the messaging system does. Everything clear?”

  “Got it,” we answered discordantly.

  “We’ll go like this.” Fitz waved at us. “I’m up front, behind me are Frag and Moris.”

  The dwarf and human, both warriors, nodded. Fitz noted their assent and kept going.

  “Then Tirnuvinuel…” He shook his whiskered head as if brushing off a fly. “That’s too much of a mouthful—you’re going to be Trina from now on. Flores will be next to you.”

  The elf archer and mage girl also nodded, stepping into position.

  “Okay, next is you, Hagen, and Engis.” The healer standing next to me glanced quickly in my direction. “Miurat will bring up the rear. Questions?”

  Nobody said a word.

  “Excellent. Flores, go ahead and buff us with whatever you can, and let’s go. We should’ve been in the mines an hour ago.”

  Flores waved his staff, blurted out something unint
elligible, and I got +25% to my life energy restoration speed for two hours.

  “Great,” growled Fitz happily. “Well done. Oh, I almost forgot; there’ll be all kinds of armor, weapons, and whatnot lying around just begging to be picked up. Don’t even think about it! I won’t lift a finger to help you since there’s no chance you’ll get back to the group alive. You don’t make it far in the mines by being greedy.”

  “A-a-ah, that’s a shame,” said Frag. Dwarves are a rapacious bunch even when they have yet to see what’s going to be out there for the taking.

  Fitz looked at him fiercely before giving one final order. “Move out!”

  Our column tramped into the looming chasm that served as the entrance to the mines.

  You entered the abandoned mines under the Rina Mountain. Long ago, hardworking dwarves worked veins of rich gold and precious gems until a fight broke out in the Last War between…

  I would have liked to read what happened, but I closed the message to make sure I kept up with Fitz.

  Everything inside was gloomy. To be fair, nothing is ever much fun underground, I don’t think, either in the game or in real life. There’s no space, the air is stale…it’s just unpleasant, in a word. But in the mines, it wasn’t just the walls and ceiling closing in on us; the very atmosphere was depressing. It was like somebody had started sucking the life out of us drop by drop.

  “Well, has it started to get to you?” asked Fitz quietly.

  Everyone except Miurat nodded in unison.

  “This is nothing,” the veteran said. “It’ll get worse. You just pray to all the gods that we don’t meet a marching band of dark dwarves—that’s when it’ll get really bad awfully quick! Okay, let’s go.”

  The column moved forward. We must have looked positively infernal in the dim light illuminating the way forward. The light came from the many mushrooms covering the walls. It looked like they were there to match the glowing moss I’d seen in the citadel dungeons.

  “What was that about a band of dark dwarves?” I quietly asked Miurat, who was walking behind me.

  “Dark dwarves?” he responded. “Ah, that’s a long story.”