I was quiet for a while as we traveled. I wanted to ask about the Taxin El, the founding species of the Hierarchy. I wanted to ask about humans. I kept looking at the legendary card in my inventory—in this apparently dangerous world, it would either keep me safe by making me powerful or paint a giant target on my head. Maybe it would do both. If Cuby was right, I was wasting valuable time with which to get a head start on experience by not using it immediately.
Cuby was asking Kontor questions, which he was happy to answer. Her last question had been about geography—what was the shape of the world?
“It’s a set of intersecting helices,” Kontor said to her. “The Scimitar Mountains form one curving arm that rises as you travel. Go too close to either edge and you find a sheer drop into nothingness below. Go downward or upward along the mountain range far enough and you’ll find a section where the helices cross—two arms meeting in one place. There are cities at these intersections, though we in Oromar’s Bastion haven’t had word from either in some time.”
“So for now, we’re stuck in the Scimitar mountains,” said Cuby. “With a lot of mountain-range between us and anything else?”
“The mountains cover the whole of this arm,” said Kontor, nodding. “Though if you can fly, and could fly far enough, you could cross the vast distance between arms without having to traverse the intersections. No-one in my lifetime has done it, and personally I doubt many of the stories that we’re passed down about those who have… but it’s not impossible. There’s a gnome back in Oromar’s Bastion that’s rather obsessed with the concept, always trying to build flying machines that never work.”
“Okay, good,” said Cuby. “What about levels? Do the levels go up or down in either direction?”
“Up in both,” said Kontor. “Everything around the base of Oromar’s Bastion is level 1 to 6. The further you get, the higher they get.”
“Okay,” said Cuby. “And what about the cultists? The demons? What’s going on with all of that?”
“Ah,” said Kontor. “The machine cult. The Scimitar mountains have been home to this corruption for as long as we can remember.” He shrugged. “An elder in Bastion could tell you more, as there are a few stories. But an ancient civilization once stretched through these mountains, stewards of something called the Great Machine.”
This brought me out of my reverie, and I materialized the shard which had given me a quest earlier. “I picked up a piece of it,” I said.
“Keep it,” said Kontor. “They’re scattered through the mountains, but the metal is valuable. There’s a few folk in town who will want it from you.”
Good. I put it back in my inventory.
“We don’t know what the machine did—guesses range from pumping and distributing clean water to being some kind of weapon—but it was truly vast: you can find pieces everywhere, some of them larger than a house. The most intact pieces are found underground. But one of our neighboring settlements, a gnome town by the name of Mirakkatet, they began to research the Great Machine extensively—only this ended in disaster.”
I nodded. Research into ancient, unknown technology gone wrong? Sounded about par for the course as far as fantasy games went.
“In Mirakkatet, they built a machine of their own, using parts they’d unearthed in the mountain beneath the town. We’re not sure what it was supposed to do—but when activated it opened some kind of portal. Many of the gnomes, dwarves, and humans who lived there were taken, corrupted into the monster you saw earlier. Mirakkatet fell, with its remaining citizens coming to live in Oromar’s Bastion—and what is left now is a dungeon. The device they built is operated by the cult, and it spews its evil into the lands around us, corrupting even the simplest creatures into demons.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Cuby nodded at all of this. “Mirakkatet, then,” she said. “That’s where we need to be.”
Kontor was taken aback. “Mirakkatet is a free dungeon,” he said. “And your level—”
Cuby scoffed, cutting him off. “We’re almost level 3, and we’ll get higher. We’ll find some allies and take that dungeon, right Alatar?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “As long as we’re cautious about it.”
“Dungeons have the best rewards,” Cuby explained. “And free dungeons have the best rewards of all. I want to be in the group that locks the dungeon for the first time and liberates Mirakatetz, so we’d better move fast.”
“I can only hope you succeed,” said Kontor, sounding dubious.
“Question,” I said. “What’s a free dungeon?”
Kontor looked up at me with a curious expression.
“He malfunctioned, remember?” Cuby said. “A free dungeon is—it’s the way dungeons start off. A part of the world, basically. Once the free dungeon has been completed, it stays completed, but an entrance spawns to an instance of the dungeon as it used to be. An instance—”
“Actually,” I said, “I know what that is.”
“Oh. Good.”
“So people can repeat the old dungeon to still get rewards,” I said. “Even after we’ve cleaned the place up.”
“Uh-huh!” said Cuby. “Except it’s usually way weaker as a locked dungeon than as a free one, because free dungeons have no cap on the number of players who can confront them at one time. They’re as open to the world as this,” she said, gesturing at the sparse evergreen forest around us. “They have better rewards, too.”
“Great,” I said, distracted. Kontor had done much to explain a lot—but then what are NPCs for, if not to provide an endless waterfall of exposition? Better to talk to a person than an encyclopedia entry.
Suddenly Cuby threw back her head and screamed a long, drawn-out call.
Kontor jumped. “What are you doing?” he asked fearfully.
“It’s our monster call,” Cuby said. “I figured we’ve talked enough—I’m close to leveling and so is Alatar. Now be quiet so we can listen.”
She screamed again. In the distance, we heard an answering call.
Cuby looked at me and grinned. “Let’s go get it!” she said.
- - -
The jawspray fell, half its head transmuted to a glassy substance by my Magic Arrow and scattered onto the ground behind it.
This particular jawspray was special:
Congratulations, you’ve leveled up!
You are now a level 3 Mage.
You have gained a new Spell slot. Open your Ability Selection pane to choose a new Spell.
Your Hit Points have increased by 30 and your Mana has increased by 70.
Human Adaptability increases each of your Strength, Agility, Focus, and Spirit by 1. You have 1 stat point to distribute.
“See?” Cuby said, turning back to Kontor. “It’s worth it to get a little off-track. Don’t you feel safer with two level 3s than level 2s?”
“Of course,” said Kontor. “Let’s just not get out of sight of the gray finger,” he said, pointing at a tall, narrow rock formation that he’d named while we were hunting demons. “It’s easy to get lost in these mountains, even for a native.”
“Sure thing, Kontor,” said Cuby. She looked over at me. “What’d you get, Alatar?”
I opened up my ability pane. Time for a new spell.