They called it the icy crown.
A frozen wasteland where the mountains clawed the sky, ranges criss-crossing and ending up here where the continental plates hadn't just ground together, but gone back to their room for some serious smashing followed by a volcanic cigarette or two and a magma afterglow.
A few stubborn pine forests poked up out of sheltered valleys, but the cruel winds ripped across the ice and tundra like blades, shaving away most other things that tried to live here. And yet things did.
One of those things winged southward, great black wings beating like drums against the early morning sky. Next to him, a blue woman sat cross-legged on a carpet, and a drakkit hunkered down as small as he could get hung on grimly behind her, doing his best not to shred the weave.
It was a bit tricky. The air currents were harsh up here, and he was bulky. Fortunately Geebo was nimble.
Which was good, because Rich was too busy trying to match landmarks to the crude map he'd been given to help Geebo if the drakkit fell.
It wasn't a bad map, not really, but it was clear that whoever made it hadn't been factoring in a dragon's eye view. Rich was used to orienteering maps, had taken most of the wilderness survival courses offered by Waverly Academy, but this map had been put together by someone who thought good topography meant selecting a nice-looking font.
It didn't help that he was working with only one eye, either. And that the light of the rising sun on the snow and ice below was kind of blinding. But he endured, doing his damnedest to find the landmark he was looking for.
Finally he saw it, smudges of smoke on the distant horizon. And beyond it, to the south, the white expanse of snow broken by grayness, fading to black.
According to the dwarves, there was a deep city down below, a craft city of the elder dwarves who had never come to the surface. The only thing there were the chimneys of the great foundries, using the mightiest of dwarven engineering to pull the smoke up and away from the depths, and spraying it out over the surrounding wastelands.
It was a neat bit of lore, and the topography-typography person who had sent the landmark information key along with the map had selected a nice font, as it went.
Rich gave the smoke a wide berth. Even so, the air brought back bad memories. It smelled like his time in the burn zone, charred and toxic and angry.
Next to him, Aunarox made gagging noises. “This is truly wasteful!” she decided, probably using her illusions to make sure he could hear her plainly even with the distance and winds involved. “I could do so many things with this sort of smoke and ash. They're throwing away good poison!”
“They're getting it out of their homes,” Rich rumbled back, trying to figure out a good course to the next landmark. He had to put the chimneys to his back, he remembered that much... “The priority is to keep from poisoning themselves. They could care less about their upward neighbors.”
“One wonders why they don't simply change themselves so it is not poisonous,” Aunarox mused. “Some extra lungs would be easy to arrange.”
“Firstly, it's not that easy for people to modify themselves like that, even with magic,” Rich explained. That was what he thought, anyway, who knows what kind of transforming spells were around here. “Secondly, most cultures portray dwarves as stubborn and conservative. The only change they like is the coins they get back when they overpay for goods and services.”
“Meh,” Aunarox snorted.
Past the chimneys, the mountains spiked highest, and then started sloping down. They went from blackened, ash-stained snow back to pure white along the southern slopes, and the wind currents likewise sheared off in harsh dichotomy.
Your Fly skill is now level 18!
After a time, he won free of the turbulence. Then he glanced back to see how Aunarox was doing.
She was managing the carpet like a pro, but Geebo was half off it, double-jointed legs flailing in panic.
Rich started back, trying to get there in time, then pulled away. His wings displaced a lot of air. He couldn't get near them...
...but maybe I don't need to, he remembered.
“Blessing of Luck upon Geebo, 20.”
And the winds eased up, just a bit. Geebo managed to scramble his back legs back aboard, and secured his foothold again.
That blessing is going to stay there and tie up twenty fortune points until I take it away, Rich remembered. And I can't give out another blessing until this one is done. Well that's fine. Dead Geebo is an unacceptable outcome, here.
Fortunately, once they were down past the taller mountains, the windshear eased up a bit.
Glowing white trees are the next landmarks, Rich thought. And hopefully they'd hit it soon, because it was getting near time to log out. Academy mornings started at seven o clock sharp, and if you were late it went on your record.
He was going to be tired when he logged out though, and that wasn't so good either. But there was no help for it. He'd spent all night flying, and though dragons, even stone dragons, could make mad time in the air, it had taken forever to leave the prison behind and cover nigh-endless miles of frozen wasteland. And despite Cutter's assurances that this wasn't an immediate problem, the agent had insisted on meeting him before he logged out.
Then the glow caught his eye.
He'd been worried that the trees would be small, or hard to notice in the daylight, but no, no. They were massive, and had icicles the size of the Washington monument hanging from branches that stretched for miles. He kept far above them... the lore attached to these said that they were home to snow elves, and he had no desire to rile up cities full of people who were really, really good with arrows.
Rich couldn't resist taking some video, though. That would be fun to look at during boring times in Protocol 201.
Even though he was far above them, birdlike creatures still scattered from the tree he overflew, and started angling toward him in a loose flock. His draconic eye caught glints of metal, and he knew those were mounts of some sort. Guess it was too much to hope that they wouldn't notice me. They're elves, the sun is up, and I'm a biiiiiiig target up here in the sky.
But no attack came. The bird-things were fast, but they kept pace with him a dozen miles back, and turned as one once he was far enough from the tree. Just the border patrol. Rich could live with that.
Still, it was a little annoying to know that he'd been noticed this early on. Cutter had said it didn't matter if he was spotted, but the Snow Elves were supposed to be one of the major civilizations in the region. They'd talk to others, and word would spread, and the Guild he'd pissed off would learn eventually. It had been three years, true, but he was sure they'd still bear a grudge. And they'd had three years to level up, to recruit more badasses, and get better gear. Sure, he was a full-fledged dragon now, but he had no delusions as to how an uncontrolled confrontation would go.
It took some circling and ranging out to the west to find the next landmark, the trade-city of Tȕkold. This was a smear of smoke and brown against the white, with broken green-and-white terraces cut into the hill below it. It was distinctive, and the second he could confirm it was the place he dipped low and put mountains in between himself and the settlement. There was supposed to be a dungeon nearby, an ancient temple on the shores of an inland sea...
...and after half an hour, he found it. Which was good, because he would have to log out in a matter of minutes.
The building stood solitary on top of a hill, blue and yellow and boxy, with runes and pictographs of blocky humans building inscrutable devices. A few sweeps showed nobody present, and so he landed in front of the twisting, rusted metal stairs up and ascended. They creaked and groaned and sent showers of red dust down to the black-water-kissed beach below, but held.
“I shall stay up here, and keep an eye on the entrance, my friend,” Aunarox whispered in his ear. “My mind becomes muddled while travelers of your world are around. As does your drakkit's brain, I believe.”
“Yes,” Rich agreed. He'd done some digging into that, and found the rabbit hole it opened up a bit deeper than expected. But it was nothing he could discuss with game-based entities, especially on a darknet game with minimal safeguards. “Wait here. I won't be long.”
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Then the world rippled.
It was nothing he could put his finger on, not with any certainty. A difference in the air, or the light, or the fact that the wind wasn't blowing in the same direction. Or perhaps a combination of all these factors plus a few subtle ones he couldn't name, added up to the fact that now he was in the dungeon proper.
He'd thought that the caverns his character had explored during his hatchling state were a dungeon. They had all the ingredients... traps, puzzles, treasure, and horrible monsters. But no, they had been part of the world proper.
Actual dungeon were a different thing entirely.
If Geebo had it right, they were created by dragon eggs, the magic and power of the unborn hatchlings warping reality around them to create a dream of both treasure and danger.
Mind you, Geebo hadn't put it in exactly those words.
But the upside to dungeons was that when you went in, it created an instance for both you and your party. Nobody else in the world could enter your instance, not without some serious shenanigans.
There on the steps, just inside the entrance of the Ikeellya dungeon he sat and waited for his handler to appear.
Movement behind him, but Rich didn't react, kept his instincts in check.
His instincts were different in this body; it was a chore. And the fact that the game changed something as fundamental as his hindbrain's own reactions added to the whispering worry that gnawed and bounced around inside his brain like a trapped rat. This game was too real. It was too good. It was taking his humanity from him, and replacing it with... what?
Besides, there was only one person it could be.
“I expected you earlier,” Cutter spoke.
“Then tell your cartographer to do better work. Though the lore was fun, I'll give him that.”
“You've grown quite a bit since those years ago,” Cutter said, walking around him. Rich glanced down to see a figure in white furs, with a gray cloak snapping and billowing behind him. There was a bow on its back, and a pair of hilts protruding from sheaths at its waist. Overall he was about average size with an average build, and a pair of intense blue eyes peering out between layers of cloth.
The name above his head read, in green letters, “Nerguin – Assassin 12”
That wasn't his only job. Rich had taken the opportunity to examine him in the party screen. He'd dipped into every job that was vaguely roguelike, to some degree. But Assassin was his highest, so it showed up And of course he'd chosen human for his race. All the better to blend in, Rich knew. That was a prime part of any agent's training; learning to be nondescript, to avoid acting or looking or even emoting like an agent. If you couldn't turn it off, you couldn't operate in public except in very limited roles.
“I honestly can't remember what all you saw during whatsername's lifestream,” Rich said. “No, wait, she's on my friends list. Living Dead Girl, that's it.” He pronounced it carefully and differently than how it usually sounded, to make sure he didn't accidentally message her.
“You never watched that stream?” Cutter asked. “Ah, that's right. No darknet access since that incident with the Haskeens.”
“That incident. That's a mild way of putting it.”
“Since the clusterfuck, then. Better?”
“A bit.” Rich shifted, turned to face Cutter fully and the man took a step back. “Relax. Just stretching my tail and wings. They cramp up after long flights if I don't.”
He had no idea if that was true, and you couldn't feel pain in-game, it just registered as odd sensations. But it DID feel good to stretch.
“Yes. You'll do,” Cutter decided, and pulled down the cloth wrap masking his face. “Here's the mission; we need you to be a very large distraction.”
“That's all?” Rich squinted. “I was expecting something more.”
“And you'll get it. We're in Bharstool now. You remember that name?”
“I've heard it somewhere before, but it's been awhile.” Rich grimaced. “I'm going to have to log out soon to get to morning P.E. Can we cut to the chase?”
Cutter nodded, eyes never leaving Rich's singular orb. “The guild you pk'd has conquered the country. They're pushing into a neighboring region, Upper Derope. They're looking for something.”
“The city,” Rich said, remembering with a start. The Icon, that evil masked thing that had been a servitor of a horrible dark power, had built an ancient city long ago. “They're still searching for the secret of guilds, then?”
Cutter blinked in surprise. “They are. I'm surprised you know that.”
“I'm surprised you didn't know that I knew. The conversation where I learned that took place while I was being rolled out to the burn zone.”
“Most of the records from that incident... that clusterfuck, were sealed.” Cutter said. But his voice held doubt now. “Anyway, it doesn't matter. What does matter, is that all things being equal, they're going to roll through Upper Derope and achieve their goal over the shattered remnants of that nation. We don't want that to happen.”
“Why?” Rich wondered. “Why is this an op? Why does Faith care about a darknet game's geopolitics?”
Silence for a bit, and Rich watched Cutter's eyes flicker, caught the way his breath hitched, and saw just how the man shifted position a bit.
He's trying to figure out the best lie to tell me, Rich knew.
PER+1
“Are you aware of the goldfarming industry?” Cutter asked. “Game accounts created for the sole purpose of trading digital, game currency for real money?”
“Ah,” Rich said, playing along. “We're involved in that, are we?”
“It's bringing in significant amounts to the involved parties within the Ministry. We're late in the game, and the Bharstool Warmers' war is causing those initiatives to lose money.”
Probably partially true, Rich decided. The best lies had a foothold in truth. “So what do I need to do?”
“Be yourself. Be a dragon.”
“I spent many, many sessions in therapy learning to not be a dragon,” Rich said, quietly.
“And now your country needs you to be one again. Look. I have children of my own. I can appreciate the teenage angst, and the pain that went into it. But even if I sympathize my department's not going to take no for an answer. So neither can I.”
“I know.” Rich closed his eye. “Tell me the details.”
And Cutter did...
RUTGER'S CHARACTER SHEET
Spoiler: Spoiler
Name: Rutger Royal
Age: 3
Jobs:
Cleric (Konol) 1, Cultist (Anjuuta) 7, Young Dragon (Stone) 10
Attributes Pools Defenses
Strength: 336 Constitution: 336 Hit Points: 672 Armor: 190
Intelligence: 61 Wisdom: 74 Sanity: 135 Mental Fortitude: 190
Dexterity: 15 Agility: 40 Stamina: 55 Endurance: 25
Charisma: 55 Willpower: 331 Moxie: 386 Cool: 165
Perception: 301 Luck: 56 Fortune: 357 Fate: 18
General Skills
Brawling – Level 16
Climb – Level 4
Dodge – Level 13
Fly – Level 18
Ride – Level 1
Stealth – Level 2
Swim – Level 2
Stone Dragon Skills
Burninate – Level 13
Chomp – Level 9
Draconic Tongue – Level N/A
Dragonseye – Level 15
Earth Resistance – Level N/A
Flameborn – Level N/A
Hoarder – Level 1
Limited Equipment – Level N/A
No Thumbs – Level N/A
Sandblast – Level 1
Scaly Wings – Level N/A
Slow to Age – Level N/A
Tail Slap – Level 2
Cleric Skills
Blessing – Level N/A
Faith – Level N/A
Godspell:
Holy Smite – Level 1
Lesser Healing – Level 1
Shield of Divinity – Level 1
Cultist Skills
Conceal Status – Level 1
Curses – Level 1
Dark Chant – Level 1
Darkspell: Fool's Gold – Level 1
Enhance Pain – Level 1
Occult Eye – Level N/A
Servant of Darkness – Level N/A
Transfer Wounds – Level 1
Unhinged Mind – Level N/A
Unlocked Jobs
Conjuror, Fire Elementalist, Grifter, Knight
Gear:
Mirror of Planar Contact, Assorted low-level reagents and crystals, and a dozen bits of golden furnishings and random objects