“It was just a game. Up until it wasn't, Everything changed and I was stuck as a cannibal.” said the lean, wiry woman as she gazed around the engine room, eyes flickering at every movement, and lingering overly long on Thomasi whenever she wasn't staring at the toys around her.
“I mean, it's not the wahst chawse evah, but why wendigo?” Madeline asked. “Vampaias got moah powahs and less fuss. We... ah, they can leave theah victims alive, and the hungah isn't as bad.”
“Yeah, and every streamer who was milking the goth crowd had a vampire. It'd been done to death by the time I got there,” LivingDeadGrrl shrugged. “Wendigo hadn't. And I was pitching to the horror crowd, not the goth crowd. There's some crossover there, but with such a gory niche, I had a good thing going. Until I didn't.”
“I'm sorry,” Threadbare told her, shifting a bit and watching her yellow eyes snap to him. “I really don't understand a lot of what you're saying.”
Thomasi cleared his throat, and Threadbare watched her body shift as she moved to face him, slid a bit closer from where she was sitting with her back against the hull. “Basically put, she was an entertainer. Other people could watch her play this game, and live vicariously through her.”
“That and I kinda stumbled into it,” LivingDeadGrrl shook her head. “My starting location had some really limited options, my starting tribe had cannibalistic tendencies, and it would have cost me money to dump this character and make a new one. So I played the hand I was dealt. I'm really fucking stubborn that way.”
“Zuula approve,” said the Shaman, from where she was using one of the engines to warm a small pot of potions. “Is very orky approach to life. Even if you signed on for eternal hunger and shit like dat.”
“It wasn't so bad when the game was working right. But then it broke. And that sucked. I mean...” The cannibal pulled her mantle around herself, with a nervous twitch. “It used to be that you guys... that everyone who wasn't a player was only sort of conscious. You'd talk to them and they'd say like one or two things, with blank looks in their eyes. You were all props. Not really like people, and god that sounds horrible to say, I know. But it was true. It was easy to chow down on folks when almost everyone was like that.”
“So what happened?” Garon asked.
“Rich— a friend of mine— he got involved in one hell of a quest. Saving a god, or maybe the world, or both. I wasn't clear on all the details. But the quest was glitched. Out of everyone who went, I came back alone, the hard way. I died and respawned. And after I did that, everything was different.”
She looked down, eyes haunted and sad, and Threadbare couldn't help but go up and offer her a hug. She looked down at him, snorted, and gathered him into her arms. “You're trolling for faction, but whatever. Don't care. Been touch-starved for a very long time.”
“I've never met any trolls,” Threadbare told her. “And I'm sorry that we're reminding you of bad things. But we're trying to figure out what's really going on here, and why Mister Copperfield made such a mess in our home.”
“Mmm. Well, I can maybe guess, but I can't say for sure,” she said, putting him down and scratching her jaw. “If I had to guess, it's because of Eidolon. And Pat.”
“That's the second time that name's turned up,” Garon said.
“Third,” Thomasi corrected. “Though you weren't there for it. It's definitely got something to do with that nation, and the players who run it.”
“Yeah. It was a mess after everything broke. All the mobs... uh, sorry. Everyone who wasn't a player got smarter,” LivingDeadGrrl continued. “And suddenly every player could feel pain all of a sudden.”
“You couldn't befoah?” Madeline asked, curious.
“No. And a whole lot of people who thought they were hot shot found out that actual fighting sucks. Even with healing, it's something you gotta get used to.” She hugged herself. “It was rough for me, too. Wendigos aren't defensive. We take hits then we eat and heal fast. It's... yeah. Things were bad for a while. So like a lot of others east of the Yelps, we went back to Eidolon and tried to figure out what was going on.”
“And what did you find?” Thomasi asked.
“Nothing at first. The survivors from the dragons that went east came back west, and we had to fight like motherfuckers. It got bad. And that's when we found out that we didn't get any free respawns anymore. People started deserting, just vanishing off into the world, leaving the guild and dropping off the grid.”
“The dragons' ire was focused mainly in the east, from what I've been able to piece together,” Thomasi said. “There were other attacks elsewhere, but they saved the worst for the two major players in the Guild Wars. Which makes sense, those were the largest player concentrations in the game.”
“It was bad. Leave it at that. But we were winning. If they'd come at us all at once, we probably wouldn't have made it. But it'd be either solos or a few at a time. And none of the really big ones that we saw early on in the east. Then I fucked up.”
She fell silent, turning her face away.
“You don't have to keep going if you don't want to,” Threadbare told her. “We appreciate the help, but if it's too painful, we understand.”
“No. No, I'm cool. I got this. It's just... you remember something over and over again, yeah? You make choices then you come back to them, like one of those worry stones you rub between your fingers. And it's a question of whether the rock gives out before your flesh and bones do. So... basically a bunch of it got it in our heads that the leader of the guild we were in was trying to get us killed. That he wasn't doing as good a job directing the dragon wars as he could be. So a bunch of us got together and tried to stage a coup.”
“This is sounding familiar,” said Garon.
“I don't know about that. We went raiding into the great keep, chased Pat down into the dungeons. And that's where I found Midian.”
“Midian!” Threadbare sat up.
“Yeah. Tall. Elfy. Kind of a snack. And I'm not talking wendigo snack, if ya know what I mean.” Her leer was yellow and crooked, then it sagged back into sorrow as she remembered further. “Pat had her in a cell. I stopped to get her out, and she told me some shit. Primary among them was that she'd gone to Pat for something to maybe fix the problem, and he'd screwed her over. We didn't have much time to talk. I helped her escape, and we fled west. West and north. Around that black wall of nothing.”
“The Oblivion,” Garon said.
“Yeah. Good name. Thing is, we were chased. Figured out early on that they were focused on Midian. She was kind of messed up, too. She said she needed some time to put herself together, and she'd either come get me herself, or send Aunarox to do it. Then she walked into a dungeon before I could stop her, and that was that.”
“So how did you end up at the village?” Thomasi asked.
“Well, it wasn't there when I went looking for a place to hide. I found the volcano, started making a proper lair, and settled in to try and work through some shit. I was having a problem keeping a handle on my hunger. There weren't many people to hunt around there, so it helped me get my head straight. Had to hunt animals. That kept it down some. People just aggravated it. Reminded me of what I was missing,” she said, and her gaze was locked onto Thomasi again. “But then they showed up. Agnez' boys.”
“Agnez?” Thomasi frowned.
“They haven't talked about her? Huh.” LivingDeadGrrl spread her hands. “She was a friendly dragon who helped the guild. She was with Rich and the others when... ah... when things went to shit. She didn't come back. But Bortiz and the others showed up, and it took pretty much my everything not to eat them. We bonded over killing the wendigos and stuff that was attracted to me, that whole wendigo queen, thing. They told me that Midian had told them before she got imprisoned that they needed to bide their time, then flee to the volcano at a certain date.”
“That's a hell of an Oracle vision,” Thomasi frowned.
“Oracle? Heh. Nah, that's kiddie stuff. Midian's a full-bore Chronomancer.”
Thomasi's eyes went wide. “Oh my.”
“Yeah. And Pat wanted her sealed away. I had to help her out. Had to figure out what she saw. She told me some of it, but... her mind was messed up. The disconnect hit her hard. I'm not surprised. There's... something in that final dungeon. Something that messed us all up. Don't know if it was a glitch or something for a later world event that got called up by mistake, but it was bad.”
“Could you be more specific?” Garon asked.
Bloodshot eyes blinked at him. “You'll know it if you see it. Then it won't matter, because that thing is unbeatable. I ate some of it. That was a mistake.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “But we were talking about the villagers. They came with a couple of their family members, and we worked out an agreement. I'd do my best to keep them safe, until their boss came back. I didn't know if she would or not, but they showed up about the point I was realizing that I needed company or I'd go nuts. So we made it work, more or less.”
“Kind of yah. Almost vampaih like, got the lahd in the cahstle and the village down below. Or up above, in this cahse,” said Madeline.
“Yeah. It also meant I had to keep the wendigos I was drawing pruned back. Kill the stronger ones, and mark territory around the village to keep them away. Didn't always work,” she shrugged. “Hungry is as hungry does. And uh, Thomasi?”
“Yes?”
LivingDeadGrrl grinned, and long, sticky driblets of drool marked trails down her dirty face. “It's getting to be too much. I'm gonna need you to go until your PVP switch is back off, okay?” Her voice hardened. “Like, now.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Without another word he nodded, got up, and headed upstairs.
“I think you've told us a lot, we should probably go too,” Garon said.
“Oh you're fine,” LivingDeadGrrl said. “Actually, could I ask you to stick around, Madeline? You say you used to be a vamp, maybe there's some shit you could help me with...”
Garon and Threadbare caught up with Thomasi around the landing of the cargo hold. He shot them a rueful smile. “There but for the grace of God go I.”
“She's got good perception,” Garon pointed out. “Might wanna save that talk until we're farther away.”
“The engine noise is heavy, and she knows we'll be talking about her anyway,” Thomasi shrugged. “And I'm not going to say anything particularly bad. She's handling this whole mess better than a lot of other players I've met.”
“I don't know if we're any better off, though,” Garon said. “Every answer she gave us raised more questions.”
“That's okay,” Threadbare told him. “We need to talk to all of them, so we can hopefully get all the information we can. After that we can sit down and figure out what we don't know.”
Garon nodded, crouched low so his horns didn't scrape the ceiling too badly. “Mm. All right, let's get this done fast, then. I need to get everything I can, then waystone back and see what the situation is in Cylvania.”
“Which one next?” Thomasi asked.
“Copperfield, I think,” Threadbare said. “We're on the same deck.”
They found him in the cargo hold, bound with heavy chains in the same cage that Jean had once occupied. Cagna, Renny, Chase, and Zuula were all watching him, and Chase's hands never stopped moving, shuffling and putting down cards one after another.
“Okay,” the wooden man said, staring at the latest spread. “So that's a bad idea. How about if we take Arcane Assets out of the equation?”
“Ask the full question,” Chase told him. “You know how this goes.”
“Fine. I want to— ” his eyes slid up to Thomasi. “On second thought, I think we should pick this up later.”
“Don't stop on our account,” Threadbare said, moving into the clear space between the boxes. “We want to know what you want to know. This will save us some trouble and time.”
Copperfield considered him. “Before I tell you a single goddamned thing, I'm going to need to know what you plan to do with me. That's going to color our interactions for the rest of it, so we may as well get it out of the way now.”
“Well, you're guilty as sin,” Garon said. “Treason. Attempted coup. Conspiracy. Normally that would be a death sentence. But... given what we know about players... that's not going to work so well. Or it'd work too effectively.”
“Too effectively?” Copperfield gave them a slow blink, wooden eyelids clicking together.
“I told them about tokens,” Thomasi offered.
“Yes. We don't like the idea of sending you to some sort of eternal torment,” Threadbare said. “That's if you don't have any. If you do have some, then you will just return to life. So a death sentence is rather pointless in the situation.”
“The next thing we thought of was imprisonment. Put you in a hole in the ground and pour concrete around you until your sentence was up,” Garon said. “You wouldn't be able to die, since you're a golem now.”
“But that sort of imprisonment would be cruel to anything that wasn't a golem,” Threadbare remarked.
“Well aren't you the humanitarian,” Daffodil Copperfield remarked.
“No, I don't eat humans. The lady downstairs does, though,” Threadbare replied.
“That's not exactly what he meant,” Thomasi told him. “He was being sarcastic.”
“Oh, okay. I'm still a little bad with that.”
“So you've told me what you're not going to do. What does that leave you? I''m not an idiot. There's got to be some kind of punishment, here.”
“There will be,” Threadbare told him. “Did you know I had put you on a list at one point? I really wanted to kill you. But then I figured out I didn't need to do that. All I had to do was get you in one place within earshot long enough.”
“That's ominous,” David Copperfield said. “What exactly are you threatening me with, here?”
“First let me tell you want we want,” Threadbare said. “We want you to answer every one of our questions truthfully. Without trying to escape, or trick us, or lie by omission. After that, we will figure out if we can trust you to work off your debt to Cylvania with community service, or exile you forever, on pain of death if you return.”
“Not good enough,” Copperfield shook his head. “There's a few things I want from you, if I'm giving up that kind of leverage.”
“I'm sure there are,” Threadbare said. “But I really don't care. That was not a request. It was a statement. Program Golem. Four directives. Priority one, take no offensive actions. Priority two, use no skills. Priority three, tell no lies. Priority four, follow all my commands in a timely fashion and without malicious misinterpretation.”
Your Program Golem skill is now level 48!
Daffodil Copperfield's eyes went wide.
He started screaming.
“Stop that,” Threadbare told him.
“What did you do? You've ruined me!” Copperfield said, and started bashing his head against the bars. Red 1's and 2's floated up, a testament to his sturdy construction and the levels that he'd gained as a golem.
“Stop that too,” Threadbare told him.
“He's trying to kill himself,” Thomasi told him.
“Oh,” Threadbare said, as Coppefield laid off the pounding and hung limply in the chains, staring at him in fear. “That won't work. The programming should persist through death. It's a part of you now. It isn't a condition, or anything that can be removed. A Golemist would have to rewrite it to get rid of those priorities.”
“You've ruined me,” Copperfield said. “I can't live like this.”
“No. You can,” Threadbare said. “But this isn't going to be permanent. I have every intention of removing these priorities after we've saved our country. And the sooner you tell us what we wish to know, the sooner I can get that done. So if you please, let's begin.”
“Please! No! You can't do this to me! I'm real, damn it! You're just a mob! I'm real! I'm human, I'm not a goddamn machine!” His panic was very real.
For a second, Threadbare felt sympathy.
But then he remembered what this man had done.
“No, you are not a machine,” Threadbare told him. “But you are a golem. And I am a Golemist.”
They asked him quite a lot of questions, with Chase and Cagna chiming in, and at the end of it, they found themselves once more with a dearth of answers and an excess of questions. And all through it, Daffodil Copperfield raged and begged and sobbed.
The upshot of it was that he had volunteered for this mission, since it entailed gaining an immortal body. He'd entertained hopes of someday being able to escape his tyrannical home country of Eidolon and figure out a way to escape from what he thought was a broken game. He was certain that the key to that was one of the players who had gone on a final quest, back in the day, to stop the end of the world. All of those players were highly wanted by Eidolon, which made him think that the Patrician of Eidolon couldn't be trusted, and had maybe broken the game.
Eidolon's mission in Cylvania had been to incite a local rebellion, and prevent an alliance with Belltollia. He had been a key part of that mission, along with several specialists called operatives, who were conditioned to obey his commands. The last operative under his command, incidentally, had died in the wendigo tunnels. Lady Marks-Runcible had eaten the poor bastard to give herself a boost against LivingDeadGrrl.
And speaking of that, the main reason he'd gone to the wendigo lands to begin with was due to Chase's fortune. The idea had been percolating around in his mind, and that fortune had tipped him off to the fact that Eidolon's mission in Cylvania was... weird.
“Weird how?” Garon had asked. “You lot made a right mess of things.”
“Yes, but it wasn't enough. I've run similar operations before, and we were far more efficient. With this one, every time we started making serious progress, the Minister of Cylvanian Affairs would tell us to tone it down, or pull it back a notch. It was almost like they didn't want us to succeed. I really thought I was getting set up to fail. Or that they were gearing up to dispose of me.” Copperfield had closed his eyes. “There's less and less of us every year. Something always gets us. We can't help but die. And there's only so many tokens left. So you understand why you need to UNDO THIS THING YOU DID TO ME SO I CAN DEFEND MYSELF!”
They did get a list of names of those who had gone on the final mission. Agnezsharron. Rotgoriel. LivingDeadGrrl. Midian. And a few more details about the revolution and Belltollia that they hadn't known. It was clear without a doubt that the Phantom of the Lop Ear's attempt to kidnap Celia had been entirely uninvolved with Eidolon's mission, and had in fact caused some distress for the infiltrators.
At the end of it they ignored Copperfield's screamed pleas, and left him alone there, Chase and Renny and Zuula and Cagna joining them as they climbed up the stairs of the airship.
“Don't feel sorry for him,” Thomasi told them as they went. “The man's entirely self-serving, even if his overall cause would benefit others.”
“I don't,” Threadbare said. “I've learned that it really doesn't matter what your enemies think of one. Not so long as you have friends, that think of you well, and often.”
“That's pretty wise,” Chase told him. “I used to think Renny was exaggerating about you. But now I'm glad we came. And honestly, this is information we wouldn't have found by staying at home. We definitely made the right move by coming here.”
“That and we kind of needed to get out of town,” Cagna coughed. “The local authorities might have had a few questions to ask us that we really didn't want to answer.”
“Hang on, weren't you the local authorities? I thought you were a Detective?” Garon asked.
“I was. Which is why I knew that we couldn't give them any answers that weren't sketchy as fuck, and they wouldn't like that one bit.” Cagna smirked. “Besides, it wasn't my precinct, and we had to clean up their mess. So to hell with those assholes.”
“Eh, I don't know them,” Garon shrugged. “All right. One left.”
“One left? One what left?” Zuula asked.
“We're asking our guests questions,” Threadbare told her. “Aunarox is the last one left that we haven't questioned.”
“A djinn.” Cagna sucked her teeth. “Watch it. Don't wish for anything. Don't even use the word wish in a sentence around her. Those are dark creatures. There's cults to them up in the caliphates, and it's no coincidence that so much of their lands are blasted sand and desolate waste. Rumor is they were much nicer before people started playing around with lamps and rings and things.”
“I don't have anything to wish for,” Threadbare said. “All of my friends are still alive and we're making progress. And Celia is—” he stopped talking, realizing that he was about to say a few things in mixed company that might not be good to say.
Zuula put a plush hand on his shoulder. “She is,” said the half-orc. “She past the bad point. She be okay.”
Threadbare felt his stuffing untense. He patted her hand, and didn't reply. The rest of the group seemed to respect his silence, and they made their way up to the topmost deck without further discussion.
They found Aunarox up the tallest mast, staring out from the crow's nest, dangling her feet in the air and just watching the clouds roll by. Threadbare and Chase clambered up there alone; the crow's nest wasn't huge, and the others weren't so nimble.
“I greet you, oh gregarious gentlefolk,” said Aunarox, opening an eye and turning her head to face them as they clambered into the basket. “Your expressions seem quizzical, and portend the imminence of queries. Quiz away, my questioners.”
“Why did you appear to me in Cylvania City?” Threadbare asked. “In disguise, no less?”
“It was my task to take your measure,” Aunarox said. “You were not found wanting. It was necessary to determine which timeline we were in.”
Chase inhaled sharply. “You can see the timelines?”
“You cannot, oh Oracle?” Aunarox grinned a perfect white grin. “But no, I can not. However, the one I am in service to can.”
And a piece fell into place. “Midian,” Threadbare said.
INT+1
“Indeed,” confirmed the djinn. “I am her agent in this, as well as some other things. Though LivingDeadGrrl knows it not, I aided in their escape, and conferred with her before her isolation in the deeps of a dungeon. She is mad now, her mind out of joint with a world that has moved on, if only a bit. But I am out of place myself. I have taken pains to remain so, despite the pull of the deep magics upon what you would call my soul.”
“That raises a whole other mess of questions,” Chase squinted at her. “I'm not sure where to start.”
“Oh, my responsibility was never for your starting, merely for your ending. To whit, I am bound to but two more tasks where you are concerned.”
“And what are those?” Threadbare asked.
“I must help you retrieve a mirror from the Patrician of Eidolon. It has gone astray, and will be needed in the second task.”
“You're really going to make me ask it, aren't you?” Chase frowned. “What's the second task?”
“We must speak with an emperor, and gain entrance to the way between the worlds.”
“Emperor?” Threadbare asked. “Emperor of where, exactly?”
The djinn merely smiled. “That I shall not answer. But you know his story already, at least the one that has survived.”
Threadbare considered, then shook his head. “I do not think I do.”
“You will remember it when the time is right. Or perhaps you will not.” Aunarox leaned back in the crow's nest. “I hear war on the winds. Blood and bunnies and battering. You should go, effendi. There are other concerns ahead of you before you seek audience with the one who defied heaven...”