Jace was glad he had changed out of his orc form because even as a human, he nearly scared the halfling to death when he walked into the tower’s first floor.
“Eeeek, who are you? Where did you come from?”
“Don’t worry,” Jace said. “I’m just here to talk with the master of the tower. Others have come before me, correct?”
“Yes, sure,” he said, backing away from Jace and reaching for a short sword. “They come diving in here half burnt to death with explosions chasing them. Then they threaten my life and torture me for information.”
Jace was currently unarmed as his sword hung its sheath. He made a calming gesture with his empty hands. “I mean you no harm. I am here to talk with Nal Saikol.”
“He doesn’t talk,” the crafter said. “He just kills. He kills everything.”
Jace padded himself down, pretending to look for arrow holes and finding none. “He hasn’t killed me. I just want to talk with him. May I go upstairs?”
The way wasn’t barred, and the room wasn’t cluttered. The halfling stood before a large table with three stacks of raw arrow material piled next to him. A vacuum tube like Gromphy had used hung above the workspace. The halfling had been sitting at the table when Jace had entered; now, he was standing against it quivering in fear. “Like I can stop you.”
“Thank you,” Jace said and moved through the center of the room to the stairwell in the back. He kept his eye on the small crafter, however. It would be a shame to survive the deadliest archer in the game only to be backstabbed by a halfling. That didn’t happen, and Jace made it to the stairs.
Twelve floors took a minute to climb, and Jace noticed very little on the levels he passed. Psycho was waiting at the top. His room was spartan, with a bed, table, and chair. The chair was sitting in front of the lone window that looked out over the bridge. Jace imagined the NPC sat there every day, hour after hour, waiting for people to come to visit. He probably got a notification each time someone new entered the module, and it was a fifteen-minute walk to the bridge. So if he were eating or sleeping, he would have time to set up in front of the window. Over 100 arrows lay on the floor next to the chair.
Psycho stood in the middle of the room, holding his bow. He wore golden dragon armor, a couple of rings, a belt, and leather boots. Jace saw fletching peeking over his shoulder and a 2-handed katana on his hip. If he chose to shoot Jace from this range, it would be over quickly. “The legendary Jace Thorne,” the elf said.
“The legendary Nal Saikol Gladekin,” Jace replied.
“What did you do to me?” Anger filled his voice, but he didn’t raise his weapon.
“I gave you some peace so we can talk.”
“It won’t last. It never lasts. Do you want to know what happened to the last two people to make it up here?”
“Actually,” Jace said. “I do.”
“They were both dwarves. The first had three shields like the one right before you, but he was willing to take damage between changing them and still had enough left to make it to the tower. He carried my crafter up here, holding a knife to his throat, forcing me to join his party. I did, but when we got back to his stronghold, I . . .” he struggled through the memory. “I killed them. I killed everyone in his party and him. I didn’t even take anything. I just left them all dead. One of them respawned, an NPC linked to his stronghold, and I killed her again.”
The elf stared hard at Jace, but the human didn’t flinch. Jace knew Psycho was fully aware of the rules of the game, so his understanding of respawning and NPCs didn’t surprise him. “And the other one?” His research showed that only two had made it to the tower.
“He cast a control spell at me through the window. I don’t know where he got the mana. It must have been a high-level wand. He forced me to join his party. He had to keep the spell active all the time. When we got back to his stronghold, he had a harem of female elves waiting for me as if . . .” he spat on the ground. “As if that’s what I’m looking for. But he forced me to . . .” he spat again. “As long as he had that spell, I couldn’t do anything. Eventually, he left for your dimension but kept us frozen. When he returned, it took him one round to cast the spell fresh, and he wasn’t fast enough. After he was dead, I went to the harem and . . .”
Jace saw his face crack as he struggled for control. “I’m broken, Jace Thorne. I’m of no use to you. I’m a killer, and I can do nothing about it. Ever since Drescher . . .” but he couldn’t go on.
“He broke your script,” Jace said. “You know what a script is, right?”
The elf nodded.
“Now your Temperament is locked on Combative. When you joined him and thought your sister was with him, you were probably Friendly toward him. Once you found out what he did, you changed to Hostile. Now that he is gone, you are Combative. If you joined me, that might change to neutral, as you are now, but I agree with you; it will change to Hostile and then to Combative again. Drescher got a pass because he was the first to fool you, and you gave him your word. I assume you didn’t promise to serve your other masters unconditionally.”
Psycho shook his head vehemently. “And I won’t promise you either. Even if I wanted to, I . . . I can’t.”
Jace nodded. “I have come with a proposition for you. I believe I know where your sister is. I can bring her to you.”
Psycho laughed. “Really. I didn’t expect that. I know where she is too. She’s gone. She’s dead. I’m broken forever.”
“She is with your people,” Jace said. “In their homeland.”
“Hah!” he shouted. “You are lying. If she is there, her stone is with her, and you can do nothing. You need both stones to open the portal, hers and mine.” He held up his bow, and Jace saw the teal mana stone pulsing in the weapon. It filled each arrow he fired with whatever mana he wanted and would never run dry. Psycho had spent all his points in Dexterity, Constitution, and Strength. He could only make magical attacks with his bow because of the stone.
“We only have one of the stones on this side of the portal. If you are telling the truth, then she is truly gone.” He paused as this new reality sunk in. “As are all my people. They are stuck where they are, with only one stone, and I am stranded here. I am truly alone.” He lowered his bow and slumped his shoulders.
“Do you know this is true?” Jace asked, assuming that his script would confirm it.
He nodded his head and spoke softly. “I assumed she had been killed and the stone lost, but now that you say this . . . I know it is true. But why? Why would they leave me here alone? The orcs attacked when my people went through the portal, but Mur should have known to stay on this side. The orcs wouldn’t have forced her in. Not if they knew what that meant. They wanted the elves here.”
“You do not know why your people left you? You don’t know what is different about you?”
A fire burned in his green eyes as he leveled a stare at Jace. The human worried the elf’s Temperament might have just been elevated to Hostile. “What do you know, shaman? Speak carefully, or the next words will be your last.” His knuckles were white on his bow.
Jace had no choice but to move on, but he approached the topic from an angle. “Snowy told me.”
“Your wolf?”
Jace nodded. “She hates elves. She didn’t mind you.”
Psycho growled at the implication but knew it wasn’t Jace he was mad at. “My mother died giving birth to me, and my father hated me for it. My sister raised me, but I knew I was different. When I met the orc leader – that half-breed monstrosity – he told me. I didn’t want to believe him. But I knew.”
Jace felt it was too much of a Star Wars rip-off, but he hadn’t written the module. It was a classic cliché for a reason. “He was your father. You are one-quarter-orc.” They had gotten to the truth in a roundabout way, and Psycho didn’t attack him when he said it.
“And for that, they left me?”
“Could you have even passed through the portal?” Jace asked. “Would your magical homeland allow any orc in? Perhaps when they decided to leave, they had no choice but to leave you behind. Your sister may have argued. . .”
Psycho nodded. “She did. She never wanted to leave. She must have known I wouldn’t be able to join them. But she couldn’t go against the elders.”
“And they wouldn’t have let her stay behind,” Jace added.
“Then what is this plan of yours, oh great, Jace Thorne,” he growled. “I’ve heard of you in my brief time outside of this tower. I know you killed Drescher, and as much as I hated him, that was a better existence than this. Now you come to me with news to make my life even more wretched. What purpose do you have in all this? Why tell me lies that you can bring my sister back if you know she is in another world? Might you bring me into your dimensions to find her?”
Jace tried not to laugh. That would be something. “Tell me one thing. The other stone – your sister’s stone – does exist, correct?”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“It did,” Psycho confirmed. “I saw it. They would not have been able to open the portal to leave if it did not.”
“And it is identical to yours in every way?”
Again, the elf nodded. “They were fashioned together by the gods at the birth of my people. They are twins.”
“Then I know how to get your sister back.”
“How?”
Jace smiled. “You need to trust me. Give me your stone. I will give you a potion. Then I will leave here, and you need to drink the potion.”
Psycho didn’t like the sound of any of that. “And what will this potion do?”
“It will kill you.”
Psycho laughed. “You are misinformed, then. You see, as part of my blessing, which I now know is a curse, I cannot die. When too much damage is done to me, I heal. When a spell would render me Helpless, I am immune. When someone tries to kill me, I survive. You have all the answers, but you didn’t know this?”
Jace nodded. “You’re right. I forgot one step. You need to join my party first.” Jace knew Psycho was one of the most aware NPCs in the game, but he was about to do some severe fourth-wall-breaking here. “You know that rules run your reality. One of those rules involves something called a Death Save. A person makes it when their life is threatened. They can succeed the save or fail it based on their skills and abilities. You are always scripted to succeed. However, once you ally yourself with a player like me, you make yourself vulnerable to them. That was how the second player was able to always cast Control on you and never worry that you might defend against it. It will be the same if you join me. Yes, if I gave you the potion now, you would drink it and automatically make the Death Save. But if you join me first, the game will not allow you even to attempt a save, and you will automatically fail.”
“Even if your words are true, why should I do this? Why should I commit suicide?”
“So, you are loving life right now?” Jace wished he could take the sarcastic comment back as soon as he said it.
“Killing arrogant smart-asses like you brings me a bit of joy,” he said through gritted teeth. “But how does killing me bring my sister back?”
“If you give me your stone, I walk out of this module, and then you kill yourself; you will reset. You will be a companion of mine but will not have established a respawn point in my stronghold, so the realm will have no choice but to put you back in your module. It will reset everything. You will go back in time as if you never met Dresher. The orcs will all still be alive, and you will be looking for your sister. And . . . you will have your bow.”
He looked at his weapon. “With my stone in the bow.”
“Yes, and I will have the stone you are about to give me. The realms do not allow two identical things to exist in a way where they can contact each other. Often two things can exist in parallel but not simultaneously. However, if what you say is true, and the other stone did exist and is identical to yours, then the realm will again allow two to exist simultaneously, and we can use them to open the portal.”
“We would need to kill the orcs and heal the land,” Psycho said.
“That is something that has been done before. It can be done again.”
Psycho was deep in thought. “This all sounds . . . not real. Like you are inventing a mystery just to solve it.”
“In a way, I am,” Jace admitted. “Though I am not the one that created the mystery. The one who designed you and your module put the mystery there, and it was my job to come up with the answer.”
“How do you know you are right?”
“Because of your name, Nal Saikol.”
“You are the only one who calls me that,” he replied.
“I know, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the module designer gave you the nickname Psycho on purpose to steer people away from the clue.”
“My name is the clue?”
Jace nodded. “Your name spelled backward is two different names: Loki and Aslan. These are both fictional characters from my world. Loki is a trickster. He is always making illusions to fool people. I don’t know if Drescher figured it out or just got lucky. I kind of doubt he is smart enough. But in order to solve your quest, you first needed to be tricked.”
“How do you know what trick to use? There could have been all sorts of illusions to fool me.”
“Your sister’s name is Mur Calumis. This spells Simulacrum backward, which is a copy of something. An exact copy of something. We need to trick you by making an exact copy of your sister. Someone who holds an exact copy of your stone.”
Psycho nodded. “And who is Aslan?”
“A noble lion who had to die and return to life to achieve his quest. But he wasn’t killed in battle. He had to give up his life willingly for it to work.”
{By the way,} Gracie chimed in. {I am loving this. When were you going to tell me you cracked his module?}
“I’m telling you right now,” Jace whispered, but Psycho heard him. He went with it. “I’m telling you this right now because I need your help. Yes, I want to see you freed from the malicious script controlling you, but I also need you to help me defeat some horrible people who are currently making Drescher look like a schoolyard bully. And I don’t need a hostile, scripted version of you. I need you free and fully committed to my party. I don’t want you killing Esther in her sleep.”
“You need me to kill someone, don’t you?”
Jace nodded. “I need someone to make an 800-foot kill shot.”
Psycho laughed again. “I don’t know if you were paying attention, but fifteen minutes ago, I took three shots at you from 400 and didn’t do a spec of damage.”
“Don’t worry about that. If I can bring you and your sister back from the dead, I can give you a bow to make that shot.”
Psycho was silent for a few moments. “After I die, when I come back, will I remember any of this? I mean, this conversation we are having now? How will I know it is you when you find me in my old home? How will I know not to kill you on sight?”
“No,” Jace answered the first question. “You will not remember any of this. You will be as you were, mourning the loss of your people, hunting the orcs by yourself, and looking for your sister. I will have to trick you again. Do I have your permission?”
That request assured Psycho he could trust the shaman and earned Jace far more respect than he realized. The elf nodded.
“Good,” Jace said, “but that brings up one problem with my plan that I don’t have a solution for. Right now, the news is going around the realms where I am. A human is camping out at the beginning of the bridge. His name is Victron.”
“The bard who just sits there and watches everyone die?” Psycho asked.
Jace nodded. “Though, he insisted that he stands and watches everyone die. I am sure he has sent word out that I am here and have successfully made it across the bridge. Some will assume I will steal you away like the two players before me and hope you will kill me as you did them. However, the way I crossed the bridge, without raising a shield or taking a single point of damage, will lead others to guess that I know how to solve your quest. Or at least that I think I do. Right now, they are all gathering their best illusion spells, racing over to your old module, and waiting for it to reset. It is difficult to explain, but when it does, they will all enter into their own copies of your elven village and try to trick you as Drescher did. I don’t have a way to stop them. I plan to have you join my party for the right reason, to complete your quest honorably. That will take time. If they successfully trick you and get you to leave the module before I complete your quest, I will be kicked out and will fail.”
Psycho managed to follow that conversation. “I think I have a solution.” He reached into a pouch on his belt and removed a small golden necklace. “This belonged to my sister. I found it amidst the dead orcs near the portal. Since I didn’t find her body, I assumed it meant she was still alive. Now I understand she probably left it behind so I would have something to remember her. Either way, when I focus on it,” he held it up to the light in the room, and it sparkled, “I want so much for her to be alive and with me that I think I accepted Drescher’s illusion without trying too hard to defeat it.”
Psycho offered it to Jace. “Take this with you. There is only one of these in all the realms. If your theory is correct, this pendant won’t be there when my home resets. It will be with you. I won’t find it, and when others come to trick me, I won’t be as easily fooled.”
Jace held up his hand. “Before I take it, will you join my group? I’m sure Drescher mentioned at some point that he had an operator that helped him. I have one too. Her name is Gracie. She can better analyze how that necklace affects you.”
Psycho nodded.
[Nal Saikol Gladekin has joined your party.]
{Let’s have a look,} Gracie said. After a few moments, she confirmed what Psycho said. {It is hard to find, and I doubt other players he’s been with would have seen it if they didn’t look for it, but it seems like he has a conditional penalty of -40 to his Perception. You add your Perception to your Magic Defense when trying to defeat illusions. It doesn’t say what that condition is, but it makes sense that it would be the pendant.}
Jace nodded at the voice in his head and then took the jewelry from the elf.
{Wow, that worked. The penalty is gone. Of course, this means it is going to be harder for you to trick him too.}
“I give you permission to use that against me,” Psycho said, solving Gracie’s problem. “Whomever you disguise as my sister, if you give that to her and have the stone, I will believe you instantly.”
“May I have the stone?” Jace asked. He realized he was asking an awful lot of the elf. Psycho had just handed him the one thing that reminded him of his sister, and now he was going to hand over the most powerful magical item in his possession. And all Jace was going to give him in return was a potion that would kill him and a promise that he wouldn’t remember any of this.
The archer removed the stone from his bow and handed it to the shaman. “I promise I will . . .” Jace started.
The elf held up his hand. “I trust you. I saw how you dealt with Wallace, Esther, and Drescher. I saw how the last two players who reached this tower treated me, and I see how you are doing it. You are an honorable man, or orc, or whatever you are. Give me the potion.”
Jace nodded, storing the necklace and stone in his inventory and retrieving the vial of blue liquid. He handed it to Psycho. The elf looked at the potion inside, expecting something more heinous. “I know when I wake up, I will be back home and remember none of this, but after it is done and my homeland is restored, will my memories return? I don’t want to forget what we’ve done here.”
“I think so,” Jace replied. “I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I’ve rescued two other NPCs from their modules. While they were in them, they did not know what they had done before in the game, but once I freed them, it all returned. You are different because you are designed to be released from your module. I don’t think you will remember all of the other player’s failed attempts to free you, but since I believe you were meant to be tricked and then killed, it would be odd for you not to remember that process once it was complete.”
Psycho nodded. “If that proves not to be the case, take these as well.” He moved to the table and opened a drawer. Inside was a heavily worn notebook. He handed it to Jace. “I trust you not to read this. If I don’t regain my memories, give this to me. It is written in my hand. It will help.”
Jace stored it in his inventory. “Anything else you picked up since leaving your homeland that you want to keep? Any equipment that Drescher gave you?”
Psycho slid a ring off his finger and handed it to Jace. It was a +2 Strength ring, like the one he earned from the Strength trials and given to Esther. “Drescher handed these out like candy,” he said. “He made sure all his half-orc guards had one.” The elf chuckled. “I guess I was one of them.” He looked down at his armor, clothes, and weapons. “Everything else I have I had with me in the forest. According to your plan, I should have it again. Though,” he looked toward the window, “You might want to take a few arrows. I hear they have great street value.”
Jace gathered all of them, again taking advantage of his impressive Carry value. “One more thing,” he added. “It is important to drink that potion after I have completely left your module. I asked my crafter to make sure it was instantaneous and painless. If the unique items you gave me are still in the same module as you when you reset, I fear you will take them with you. Once I am out, they will be locked in the broader realms, and we should be okay.”
“I understand,” Psycho said. “Now go before my Temperament changes, and I kill you. I will see you on the other side.”
Jace said his farewell and hurriedly ran down the stairs. As he ran back across the bridge, he was fearful that any moment an arrow might hit him in the back, and he didn’t look forward to the experience. At least it wouldn’t have acid or fire in it.