Not even five minutes after entering the market square, I bumped into Jakob near one of the weapon stalls. He was busy inspecting various bows on display, a few of them likely rare items sold by the vendors on behalf of other players or bought-and-sold second-hand like with my daggers. I tapped him twice on the shoulder and he almost jumped out of his skin. I raised a hand and apologised, but he was happy to see me when the shock had subsided.
“Are you preparing for the next Stage?” I asked.
Jakob looked back at the weapons for a bit, then at me. “Yeah. I was hoping you’d…”
“Of course. Let’s go together.”
His eyes brightened. It seemed he hadn’t expected me to want to group up with him. Then he held out his hand, “I would like to invite you to my group, do you agree to join?” he asked, with a strange sort of robotic cadence, as though reading from a script.
“I agree,” I replied, copying his strangely formal mannerism for some reason and grasping his hand.
“Welcome to the group,” he announced with a nod.
I nodded in return, without knowing why. A strange, yet familiar-sounding, bu-bu-buuu! played in my inner ear, and I instinctively opened my menu and saw that there was an icon next to the ‘Group Functions’ option. When I clicked on it, a list of three names emerged, with a toggleable button next to each of them saying: ‘Show on map’. All of them, except for my own, were set to ‘On’.
On the list of names were: ‘Jakob’, who had a crown next to his name, probably to indicate that he was the group leader; ‘Aiko’, i.e., me; and ‘Duke Harkenfaarth’. Besides the names, I could also see what Stages they were on, and both of them, as well as myself, were listed as being on the same Stage: ‘A Looming Shadow’. I assumed this was the one that would take place in Silt.
There were also colour-coded buttons next to each player’s name, which, when hovered over with my finger, stated their function: Red indicated ‘Leave Group’ if I hovered over my own name, but said ‘Vote to Kick’ when I looked at the other names; Blue was ‘View on Map’ regardless of whose name I hovered over, and as a test I could tell that ‘Harkenfaarth’ was somewhere in the south-eastern part of the Village; and, finally, Green said ‘Add to Friendlist’. I wasn’t completely sure what ‘kicking’ someone from a group entailed but guessed that it had to do with removing them, which seemed to require a vote.
“Who the hell is Duke Harkenfaarth?”
“Oh, that’s Patrik, he’s kind of a braggart, but he’s harmless. He’s the one who gave me the scroll for the Scrying mirror. I don’t think you’ll have any problems with him.
“Speaking of the mirror, I managed to craft it this morning. I had to do it in the darkness, which was weird, and right now it just looks like a blank coin that doesn’t show anything.”
“How do you activate it?”
“I have to hold it in my hand and point it at the person I wish to scry on.”
I gave him a suspicious look.
“I won’t use it on you! I swear!”
I chuckled at the sincerity with which he said it. “Still, what a creepy thing to be able to do…”
“I don’t think you have to worry about it. Patrik told me that he managed to get the scroll really cheaply since the player who was selling it had no idea what it was, even after asking several people in the various taverns. He said the seller just thought it was some lore stuff, and those things are a lot cheaper than crafting recipes, which often go for several hundred gold.”
I nearly choked as he said it. “Several hundred??”
“Yep.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Are you done looking yet?” the bow vendor asked impatiently. The guy was a scruffy-looking senior with three fingers missing on his right hand.
“I think I’ll take ‘Barnacle Barney’s Toothpick’.”
The vendor nodded sagely. “Good choice. That’ll be seventeen gold and fifteen silver.”
“Damn…” I commented, but Jakob didn’t seem discouraged by the price tag.
“I’ll give you fifteen.”
The vendor’s eyes narrowed, converging every wrinkle on his aged face so that it created a series of channels in his forehead. “Sixteen.”
“Fifteen-and-a-half and I’ll throw in this bow,” Jakob responded, holding aloft the what-I-assumed-to-be-worthless Red Runner bow.
The man sighed, scratching his receding hairline and greying dark crown of curls. “Fine. You’re lucky this week has been slow.”
Jakob flashed me a boyish grin. He was very handsome when he smiled like that.
“Check it out,” he told me, sticking the recurve in my face as we were walking out of the Village to meet up with Jakob’s friend, Patrik, aka Duke My-Cat-Stepped-All-Over-My-Keyboard-And-Managed-To-Press-Enter-Twice-So-This-Is-The-Name-I-Am-Stuck-With Harkenfaarth. I wanted to ask Jakob if he had enough money for the Tournament Stage, since it would cost twenty-five gold, but I instinctively knew that he was loaded.
‘Barnacle Barney’s Toothpick’ was a twisted piece of grey driftwood covered in sharp barnacles all along its length and with a fraying string that looked like a repurposed tendon from some large animal.
I almost asked him why he’d bought such a worthless weapon, but then I saw the tooltip:
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‘Barnacle Barney’s Toothpick’
-Ranged Weapon-
Bow > Recurve
“Found stuck in the teeth of Barnacle Barney, the scourge of the fishermen of Silt Lake, who have oftentimes lost their catch to his greedy jaws.”
Trait(s):
‘Barnacle Shaft’
‘Parasitic Barnacles’
‘Water-born’
Equip
Discard
Weight: 1.1 kilos
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The traits read in order: “The arrows of this weapon are covered with barnacles which produce jagged and hard-to-heal wounds”; “If arrows fired from this bow remained lodged in an opponent's flesh for a while, they will spread barnacles within their body, causing internal bleeding”; and “Can fire normally while underwater”.
The flavour text was short and raised more questions than it answered.
“Pretty good right?” he asked.
“Bewildering more like. Who the heck is Barnacle Barney?”
“He’s a big shark that lives in the lake just next to Silt village. Someone got this bow after managing to hook him on their fishing rod.”
“Don’t sharks need saltwater?”
Jakob just shrugged.
Before I could raise more questions, someone addressed us up ahead, “Took you long enough, J. Did you manage to craft the Scrying Mirror?”
“Hey Patrik. Sorry, I went and bought a new bow as well. But yeah, I have it right here, do you wanna see it?”
Patrik walked up to look at the coin-sized blank mirror in Jakob’s outstretched palm, no doubt reading through its tooltip. He acted as though I wasn’t there, which, for some reason, I didn’t mind, even though most would consider it rude. He was the first person besides Jakob and Kerebor who hadn’t been starstruck the moment they laid eyes on me. Granted, Kerebor was a creep, so he didn’t really count. Also, I wasn’t wearing my cape, so he’d have no way of knowing.
“I’m Aiko,” I said by way of greeting.
Patrik finally looked at me. He had dark-brown hair, bushy eyebrows, and a curled moustache. From his features, I guessed he was thirty-something. He had a strong cleft chin and high plastic-surgery-like cheekbones. I felt pretty certain that his appearance was meant to be some kind of joke, since his ridiculous face exuded ‘Duke Harkenfaarth’ energy.[1]
“You can call me Patrik,” he replied.
“What’s the story behind the name and face?” I asked.
Jakob looked at me like I’d just called his mother a fat, big-mac-devouring, habitual-milkshake-slurping, trailer-trash dumpster-denizen. Patrik just laughed, then shrugged. “No clue, I’ve forgotten.”
“Why haven’t you changed it?”
“I don’t remember what my real face looks like, so I have no idea what I’d change it to.”
I suddenly felt bad for asking.
“There’s a lot of people like that,” Jakob then commented. “People who have lost their true selves and only know the fabricated bodies they now wear.”
“Well, at least you remember your real name,” I said.
Patrik shrugged again, so I continued, “Most people don’t even know my name, they just call me Raven-Black.”
He smiled as if he hadn’t heard a word I said, then a few seconds passed, and I saw his furry eyebrows twitch as his brain caught up with his ears. Patrik quickly looked to Jakob, who simply smiled. When he looked back my way, I was wearing the cape, its raven feathers puffed up and impressive.
“…now the sword makes sense,” Patrik commented dully. “I was like: who the fuck uses a katana in World One??”
Jakob laughed, then said, “Alright, now that introductions are out of the way, let’s get to Silt before the sun starts setting.”
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[1] It’s quite a nebulous thing to explain, but imagine Lord Farquaad from Shrek. It was the same kind of energy he exuded.