Soon, Lexi understood why they would be late for a six o’clock event.
Their first stop was actually Safe Haven, of all places. They didn’t go into the city but turned around and entered the countryside. This was a non-hostile area filled with generic quests for low-level players just learning the game. You could kill rats in a farmer’s basement, rescue a house cat from a tree, or save a boy who had fallen into a fast-moving stream while fishing.
The rolling hills, trees, and squared-off patches of crops looked peaceful in the fading light of the setting sun. Lexi allowed her face to transform enough to activate her feline senses and detected no trace odor of any hostile creature. The worst they could expect in this environment was a level two bat, which could only attack within specific areas as part of a module. Whatever her companion planned to do here, the druid doubted it involved initiating a beginner quest.
Pieter put his back to her now, knowing he was safe from any attack in this environment. It was a good thing because she had no idea where to go. The mage took a confusing route through trees, cornfields, and over streams. Lexi was sure it was to disguise the way as much as possible, but she was marking the trail and could retrace it months from now in the pitch-black if needed. The game had no bathrooms or accounting for that type of bodily emission, so animals could mark their territory by depositing mana along a trail instead. Lexi had plenty of mana to spare.
Eventually, they crossed a stream that cut through a particularly rocky section of ground. It had eroded a shallow canyon, and Pieter moved up to one of the blank stone walls. He looked back and forth in a practiced motion to ensure he wasn’t being watched, but when he glanced over his shoulder, Lexi was there. She crossed her arms and waited. He shrugged and pressed several areas of the wall, releasing small amounts of mana as he did.
{Don’t worry,} James said in her mind. {I am recording this. I will figure out the code later.}
A door opened in the stone with a pop and hiss, rotating inward. Pieter produced a magical light and started to enter but stopped and turned. “You stay here.”
Lexi nodded and listened closely. The mage ventured a few feet into the cave, opened a chest, rummaged through it for a moment, and then returned to the canyon in under a minute. He closed the door behind him. “Can I ask what you got?”
Pieter held up his hand. An onyx ring sat on his finger. “In order to access Overton, you need one of these. The travel nodes won’t work without it.”
They hurried back to Safe Haven along a more direct route, found the node, and traveled to New Paris, a stronghold city Lexi had been to several times. It was as metropolitan as it came for a fantasy setting, filled with shops, outdoor diners, and civilized entertainment. There were brothels, gaming houses, and taverns if you knew where to look, but it catered to a more upscale clientele. The city guards were battlemages and were more feared than Drescher’s half-orcs had been. It was a PVP zone, but few fights ever broke out.
They hadn’t formed an alliance yet, so any move she made against him would be viewed as a hostile attack, and the guards would step in. But Pieter still insisted that she lead the way, giving her directions as they walked. Once they reached a small shop off the main street, he beckoned her to enter ahead of him. “Ladies first.”
“What a gentleman,” she said and took the offer.
The room was tiny and crammed with shelves. An NPC halfling stood on a raised platform behind a counter that she bumped up against after taking only three steps into the shop. The walls were lined with useless trinkets and figurines, none of which gave off any magical signature. “Can I help you, miss?” the male clerk asked. “Perhaps you were looking for someplace else? There is an apothecary down the . . .” his voice trailed off as he looked over her shoulder at the bearded mage who squeezed into the room behind her. It took the halfling a moment, but recognition eventually dawned in his eyes. “Pieter?”
Lexi guessed the mage hadn’t been here since his death. Pieter held up the hand that wore the black ring. “Greetings, Ellis. It’s been a while.”
“It has,” he agreed. “My condolences on your loss. It happens to the best of you. Are you going to the Arena? I don’t have you on the guest list.” He glanced at a cuckoo clock on the wall. “Looks like you will be late.”
“Last minute decision to attend. I need to talk with the Admiral, and I’m bringing a friend.”
The halfling frowned. “Pieter, you know the rules. I’m afraid I’m going to have to send in a request. You will have to go to the Pier.”
The mage nodded. “I know, just be fast. Like you said, we’re late.”
Ellis nodded and turned toward Lexi. “Okay, miss, make this quick for me. Name, Level, and Class.”
“Uh,” she hesitated and looked back at Pieter. The mage nodded. “Lexi, level 18, druid.”
“Very good. What items do you have?”
For someone who walked around naked most of the time, Lexi found this very intrusive. “I don’t understand. Why do I have to . . .”
“You’ve never been to the Arena before,” Ellis said. “This is the protocol. If you don’t like it, you can leave. Now, what do you have?”
“Two True Strike rings,” she replied, holding up her fingers and showing off the emerald jewels, one on each hand. Three other rings were visible. “Wisdom +2, a Piercing Immunity spell, and the last has a Detect Trap spell.” Her hands went to her face. “And two earrings that each add +5 to my Sensory Perception.”
“Very good,” the halfling said. He wrote the items out on a stone tablet, but Lexi didn’t see any markings. “And the necklace?”
“Critical protection,” she replied.
“Good, good, and what do you have in your inventory.”
“Uh, a few healing potions, a change of clothes . . .”
“No, no, lady,” Ellis said. “I need to see them. You can ‘Drop All’ on the counter unless it is too much. There is a chest behind you that you can empty into also. You can also leave items there if they aren’t allowed.”
“And if I don’t come back to get them?”
The shopkeeper smiled. “Then don’t leave anything too expensive.”
“We are short on time,” Pieter nagged from behind her.
Lexi sighed, put her hands on the small counter, and activated her Drop All ability. It wasn’t much. Five healing potions appeared on the counter along with the goblin figurine, the enchanted necklace, and another wrap, this one in a light green fabric.
The halfling only cared about one of them. He picked up the necklace. Lexi had retracted her hands from the counter to reveal the items she had deposited and now tried to reach back and grab them. “That is mine! Don’t . . .” her hand smashed into an invisible barrier.
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“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” the NPC said. “I don’t even know how to classify this. I’m not sure I can . . .”
“It is essential to our quest,” Pieter jumped in. “As you can see, it has no offensive powers. Please, we must be leaving.”
Ellis shrugged. “Very well. It’s your hide if he doesn’t like it.” He put the necklace down. He had seen Lexi use the Drop All ability, but it wasn’t much, and players always had sneaking tricks. “No weapons, armor, shield?”
Lexi shook her head. “Nothing other than these.” Her fingers shrunk into paws, and vicious claws extended.
“Ah, right, a druid. Panther? Tiger?”
“Leopard.”
Ellis cocked his head and shrugged. “Not many do that.” He jotted a few more things down on his stone pad and then looked up. “Okay, you can take all this. Pieter, you know the drill. The travel node is in the back. I’ll try to make it quick.”
Lexi reached out hesitantly, but the magical barrier was gone, and she retrieved her items.
“Thank you, Ellis,” Pieter said. “Always a pleasure doing business with you. Which ones do we need?” He motioned at the trinkets lining the walls.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot, that would have been bad.” The halfling thought for a few seconds as Lexi returned from her inventory, appreciating the distraction as she felt vulnerable standing flat-footed for too long in the strange shop.
“Take the penguin from the middle shelf there,” Ellis said, pointing to his left. “And, uh, the palm tree just over your shoulder.” Pieter retrieved the items and then pushed Lexi toward the back of the room. Soon, they were in a cramped square closet only slightly larger than an outhouse. A travel node stood in the middle.
“Satisfied now,” Lexi growled at him once they were shut inside. “Didn’t trust me? You needed to see everything I was carrying?”
Pieter laughed at her. “That had nothing to do with it. You still don’t know who we are going to see. He runs a tight ship.”
“The Admiral?”
The mage chuckled. “Yes, well, perhaps not actually a ship. You’ll see. Unfortunately, we must first go to a holding area while you’re approved.”
“The Pier?”
He nodded. “You listen well.” He hesitated. “Is the other wrap you are carrying warmer? You might want more protection. And you need to hold this.” He handed her the palm tree.
She turned the small stone carving over in her hand. It was a few inches long. “I need to dress warmer, but we are going to a tropical location?” But then she remembered that he had a penguin.
“No,” the mage said. “These are random. They change every time. Much better than a passcode. We are going someplace bitterly cold. You might want to adjust your settings to turn down Environment to nothing.”
Lexi shrugged and grew fur. The game let her cover most of her body, but her clothes hindered the transformation, and she discarded the wrap. As it fell to the floor, she nimbly caught it with her hand, saving her the trouble of bending over in this tiny room with a man she didn’t trust. Her leopard form was much slimmer than her curvaceous human one, and after a curious glance at her unclothed body, Pieter didn’t stare. She entered her inventory to store the clothing and change her settings.
“We will need to be allied for this,” he said. “You won’t have access to this location.”
For the past two trips through a node, the mage had told her where to go, and she had traveled first. Now, she accepted his alliance offer and braced for the unknown as Pieter activated the node.
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Lexi emerged from the nether into a brutal landscape. All she could see was snow and ice as wind whipped her hair and fur in all directions. She struggled to keep her balance, but as her bare feet sunk into the knee-deep snow, it helped stabilize her.
“We need to go this way!” Pieter shouted above the gale, grabbing her arm and pulling her along.
Lexi didn’t know how he could tell one direction from the other. Her leopard skills usually gave her supreme awareness, but this environment was entirely out of her comfort zone. There was no scent in the air, no sound of snapping of twigs, and no tracks to follow. Instead, it was loud, cold, and violent in every direction.
Pieter tugged harder, and she struggled to follow, hunkering her head down in the storm. It was good that she had shed her wrap in the other room because the wind would have ripped it off her. Some sixth sense told her to clutch desperately at the palm tree in her right hand and plod forward.
“Stop!” Pieter said after the longest minute of Lexi’s life.
She had been staring at her feet, focused on moving them through the snow, and now looked up. They had reached the edge of a cliff, and Lexi could see massive icebergs floating hundreds of feet below them in a vast sea. The wind blew in their faces, but without snow before them to whip up into a frenzy, the visibility improved. A slender finger of ice-covered stone extended before them like a diving board over the distant water. Or, Lexi thought, like a pier.
“We need to walk out on that!” Pieter said. “You need to hold the railing. Don’t drop the palm tree.”
“You go first!” Lexi screamed, not trusting anything about this arrangement.
“No. You go first.”
She growled. Even out here, where she was barely clinging to life, he didn’t trust her. Didn’t he understand she still needed him? “Fine!”
Metal poles four feet tall rose from the side of the pier with a slim rope stretched between them. She stepped onto the icy finger and reached for the rope with her free hand. Her foot landed first, and it slipped out from under her, giving her a terrifying look at the violent waves crashing into the cliff face below her before her hand clasped onto the rope in a death grip.
Instantly, she was stabilized. She could feel the magic working between the ice and the railing. Slick surfaces weren’t common in the game, and few people took or had the Grip feat, which improved your ability to perform actions on poor footing. Depending on what you wanted to do, you needed to roll a high enough number not to fall. Lexi figured this pier was enchanted to -30 or something worse, preventing anyone from even being able to walk on it.
However, as a big cat, she had an advantage. Claws extended from her toes and gripped the ice firmly. She took another step and didn’t fall.
{You saved that time,} James said in her head. {You don’t need the railing if you don’t want it.}
“Where have you been?” she asked as she moved slowly onto the icy walkway. “A little guidance would have been nice.”
{I’m sorry, Dear, but I can’t see anything. You must be in a private zone. I am uniquely in the computer, so I can see your dice rolls, but I don’t know where you are. I see you are taking cold damage each round, and you just failed a roll on a slick surface, so I assume it is icy.}
“A bit,” she replied. Thanks to the violent wind, she knew Pieter couldn’t hear her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the mage moving out behind, one hand firmly on the railing while the other clutched a penguin. She looked forward and down, seeing she had miraculously maintained her hold on the palm tree. “Any idea what I am holding in my left hand?”
{It’s not magical,} James said. {I don’t know its purpose.}
The pier was only thirty feet long and ended in a sharp drop over the edge. Lexi wondered how far they had to go, but Pieter kept pushing from behind, so she kept walking, stopping only when she was a few feet from the end.
“Now what!” she cried when the mage got close.
“Now we wait,” he said, close enough to her that he didn’t need to shout.
“Wait for what?”
“For our request to go through. Don’t worry. The Admiral owes me a favor. This shouldn’t take long.”
Lexi frowned. “And if the request gets rejected?”
“Then we get eaten. Though, probably just you.” He took a step back from her.
She was about to ask by what, but out here, away from the snow-covered ground, the visibility was much better, and she could look back and see where they had come from. They had been transported into a narrow box canyon fifty feet across, with 30-foot glaciers rising on either side. Perched on the top of the ice walls were a dozen level 20 ice drakes, six on each side. Their eyes never left the players, but they gave no hint of attack for now.
Lexi could stand and walk on the ice without issue, but running or attacking would require a higher roll that her clawed feet would likely support. Regular players would have to clutch a random figurine in one hand and the railing in the other while trying to fend off massive flying creatures. They would be dead in seconds.
“Why do we have to come out here?” she asked, motioning to the narrow band of ice and stone that supported them.
“They don’t process the request until we are at least halfway onto the pier,” he replied.
“And what does this do?” She opened her left palm to reveal the tree sitting on her hand. As she did, biting cold struck her soul, and her health plummeted. The wind nearly ripped the item from her fingers, and she gripped it tightly again.
{Whatever you just did,} James said. {Don’t do it again.}
Knowing she had learned the hard way, Pieter didn’t answer her question.
“How will we know when our request has been approved?”
The mage started to answer, but a motion from behind spun Lexi back around. She almost fell, but her toe claws gripped the ice, and her right hand was still firmly latched to the rope. A travel node had sprung up from the end of the pier.
“You can use this one,” Pieter said, getting up close behind her. “Get us out of here. There should be only one available destination.”
She activated the node, and the two players disappeared.