Chapter 9: Death of an Executive II

The night binoculars confirmed our destination was a vessel. A dark yacht. Not unlike Azwold’s motorcar, the yacht looked out of place; like it had come from a alternate world. The quiet lapping of sea upon hull, and the churning of oars were the only sounds. It looked abandoned, but not derelict.

“Caution might be key,” Azwold muttered. “Don’t forget that musket we saw.”

One of the kobold crew jumped up, and I ducked to dodge the claw of a grappling hook swinging above my head. The creature grunted, chucking the hook up and over a rail.

“There are better ways to board a yacht,” the mage whispered to me, “but I guess these guys have never seen one.”

The party barked out hoots and howls at the tensing of the rope. They heaved the canoe up against the yacht as a team, then scrambled on board in a frenzied ruckus. We listened as they tore straight for the ship’s cabin, clawed off the door with crude stone weapons, and darted inside.

Azwold took a deep breath. Many did not share his high opinion of stealth. He heaved himself up, grunting, then lugged me up after. Pushing myself up from the metallic deck, I peered at a ship so eerily like and unlike what it should be. We approached the open cabin door.

He bade me look first, the swab. But, compelled, I obeyed.

From the far end of the cabin, sparks were launching like fireflies. Someone yelled a horrible noise. The lighting flickered. Before my vision adjusted, the kobolds had caught something.

They had speared a man to the control panels. Little clouds of blood seeped toward the sleek angles of his off-white, tailored suit. It bore the navy blue Telemoon insignia. Instead of a school of magic and class, the man’s only identifier was “Executive II.”

“Oy!” Azwold yelped, “How am I supposed to get answers if you skewer my rats?”

All four kobold brigands glared at him. They performed pantomimes of what looked like spell casting and pointed at him.

“What?” he shrugged, “Not much I can do with the freshly slain.”

But the spirit vision was still behind his eyes. As the kobolds’ damage over time ticked its last toll, the executive slumped. The green of his life bar faded to yellow, orange, and then the last drip of red. Azwold watched his spirit departing, like silent, uncertain twists of candle smoke. He brandished the [Hive Scepter], using the Shaman’s vision gift to demand the ghost wait. Compelled, the spirit dithered, foggy and impermanent like tattered cobwebs.

“Tell me what I need to know,” Azwold spoke. “And I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

The executive’s spirit stared, uncomprehending.

“You involved with that tower? Odds are you’re not headed to a pleasant neighborhood within the Spirit Realm. I’d help me out if I were you.”

The ghost hesitated. Then it hissed, “What… do you want…?”

“The tower must come down,” Azwold demanded. “How do I disable its defenses? Tell me.”

It hesitated again, gazing around at things even I couldn’t see, then gave a long, shivering sigh. We spotted something glimmer in his mouth.

Azwold gripped the man’s dead chin and looked inside his mouth. There was a gold and silver tooth, with hints of etching scribbled on it. He pinched it and tugged. It came loose, saliva-slick.

(Azwold has received [Quest Item: Aurum Dente])

“What is this?” said Azwold. “Like a slobber-proof USB stick?” He released his hold on the man’s chin, then his ghost. It was flushed away into the streams of the dead.

“How did you make the spirit wait?” I asked.

“Ability called [Speak with the Dead]. The Shaman food gave me extra mana to maintain it, and to give the target simple commands. They’re developing one you can cast on groups for the next expansion. I voted for [Seance] as the name, but they rarely listen to me. Still kinda new.”

“Does this mean you are a ‘nub’ game developer?”

“… yeah, I guess so. Never mind. Anyway, I dunno if I can actually help that poor fool. I’ll think on later. Telemoon are full on RP, but if you’re not in their guild, you can’t always make sense of their shenanigans. They never break character, though, so you gotta play along sometimes.” He pocketed the tooth-key, and we lead the kobold crew back to the canoe.

The tide had risen, sinking the Cave O’ Whispers deeper. Our canoe glided over to the submerged steps without keel scraping stone. Azwold ordered me to the cliff ledge above, where we observed the Shaman waiting. I folded my arms over my ribcage in a vertical, coffinesque repose. Then I obeyed anyway.

The mage argued with the four kobolds. They wanted to row off with his canoe, but Azwold made them some subtle trade. After a snort of approval, they paddled to the incense pole and moored it instead.

Each hesitant moment could cause unknown damage to Spirit Realm fabric. And since the Spirit Realm was where the mage drew his power from, I went snooping.

By the time I had found something, Azwold was ascending the stairway, wet coat tails whipping behind him.

“So, we’ve got the key to the tower’s shield,” he said, joining me on the cliff’s path. “We just need to figure out what to do with it. Quests aren’t usually this vague. What have you found? No excuses this time.”

I remained silent, standing statue-still.

“Quickly,” Azwold growled, “I’ve no time for games.”

I heaved a bone-sigh, “Granny Kobold lies yonder. She’s sniffed out a machine yard.”

The mage motioned for me to lead the way.

The logistics of the tower’s construction were difficult to fathom. Especially under the nose of combative natives. There was a ubiquitous, skull-penetrating buzz as we passed within range of the tower’s base. Static was palpable in the air.

Keeping distance, we walked.

“And lo,” I hummed hollowly, “machines.”

Azwold peered across the unnatural clearing. “Uh,” he said, confused, “Trailer-drawn power generators? Crane tractors? What the actual eff…”

The machines were dormant and half-hidden. Perhaps their fuel supply had run out.

“If they sleep,” I said, “what powers the tower’s shield?”

He shook his head.

Two crane machines loomed over the clearing from either side. We found several navy blue Telemoon motorcars parked in a line next to the generators. They looked built for work and utility to me, much larger and more cargo capacity than the mage’s Gremlin. But land vehicles on an inaccessible island? I assumed Azwold’s choice to come via canoe was because the island lacked harbors. The Telemoon guild had invested much to build here.

A commotion at the far end of the clearing drew our sharp attention.

Azwold put a finger to his lips, then snuck toward the noise.

“It sounds like fighting to me,” I said. “Why are you walking toward the fighting?”

“Because,” he whispered, “C’mon.”

Without the scepter’s ring, the game mechanics allowed me little room to straggle, so I followed. We hid behind a redwood trunk and watched.

Two Telemoon goons were facing off against a small band of kobolds. I recognized the four from our canoe excursion, and this triggered some defensive instinct in me. Against logic, I moved to intervene, but the mage called me back at once.

“Don’t,” he said. “Let’s see what we’re up against first.”

“I agree! So why was I compelled to attack?”

“Because someone attacked a party member?” he guessed. “The kobolds aren’t technically in our party, but you’re like a walking loophole, so color me surprised. Hang on, I’ll take you off auto-defend.”

“Please do.”

“Alright,” he kept a low voice, “so the Telemoon guys are real players. The kobolds are enemy NPCs. If the players win, they get experience, loot, gold, stuff like that. These things contribute to strengthening your character over time. Leveling up and such. The enemies will respawn after a little while, good as new. Like they never died. Unless someone like me uses their corpses for spells. They’ll eventually respawn either way.”

“I see,” I said. This time, my attention was intent.

“If the kobolds win, the players’ spirits materialize in the nearest graveyard. ‘Materialize’ might be the wrong word, but you get it. Then the players’ corpses will sit like empty lumps waiting for their ghosts come running back. Like I did when you kicked me into the oubliette. Don’t think I’ll forget that.”

My plan was to never acknowledge anytime he mentioned the incident.

“So a player-as-ghost can hop back into their body from a close range,” he continued. “They revive with low HP and carry on from there. No real downside except having to heal up and start the fight over. Or give it up for another day.”

His explanations ceased when the larger Telemoon guy ripped an arrow from his shoulder with a holler, then readied an attack. He was wearing a battle frame. A product of Gadget Craft; it had wood and metal framing, springs, hoses, pulleys, all enclosing a power-pack on his back. It seemed comically overcomplicated.

But then he stomped, casting a spell, and his fists hardened to stone. He charged forward, uppercutting one of the kobolds. The spring power of his blow, aided by steam blasts from his pack, flung the creature clear across into a bush. Its health bar plummeted.

It became clear in that instant that Telemoon cared more about results than looks.

Two kobolds flanked him, punishing his charge with a spear from each side. Their attacks glanced from his metal frame as he twisted, doing minimal harm.

The second Telemoon player aimed a strange wand at the nearest kobold. It wasn’t a magic wand, that was obvious. It sparked like one, but was metal and had buttons and moving parts. Taking aim, he let loose a zapping bolt, which chained to two other nearby kobolds, shaving a quarter of their health in one blast.

“It seems our brigands are losing?” I hummed, nervous.

“Yeah, these two seem a little tougher than expected,” he said. “I have a plan, though. If we jump in now, it’ll flag us for PvP.”

“Which means?”

“They can’t attack us unless we damage them first somehow. It’s the game’s way of preventing higher level players from swooping in and killing noobs over and over.”

The kobold ‘captain’ let out a wail. The other three jumped up, invigorated and yowling. All four dashed at the one with the zappy stick, tackling him. After a flurry of claw and bite attacks, all four leapt away, recharging from their rally.

Though they had halved his hit points, the zappy guy stood, dusting off his blood and bruises. He readied what looked like a miniature cannon, then fired. A webbed net spiraled out over the winded kobolds, all in a group. Electrified, it stunned them.

I shivered, reminded of my graveyard; of when volts had me immobilized. It reminded me, too, of the fishing net the kobolds had used on Azwold. Had Telemoon modified the tribe’s own weapons?

With little preamble the bruiser leapt into the air. He slammed down on them like a boulder. A dusty shock wave blew out in a ring. When it settled, our little kobold crew was dead.

The Telemoon guys did not bother to celebrate their victory. They took their rewards and carried on with their work as if kobold cleanup was simple routine.

“Okay,” said Azwold, “now that they’re softened up a little, let’s get em before they heal. Watch this.”

He read something that sounded like depressed poetry from the tablet, and a ghostly swirl enveloped his [Hive Scepter]. He walked out from behind the tree and yelled, “Oy! Turd Farmers! Got something for ya!”

A vengeful spirit seeped out of the scepter as Azwold cast [Spell: Haunt]. It flew to the one with lower health, possessing him. He screamed, dancing in place as the spirit ate up his health. He dropped to the dirt, and the spirit spiraled out, looking for a new host to haunt. The bruiser may have been resistant to the kobolds’ physical attacks, but the spirit magic melted his HP.

But he was not all the way dead. Azwold’s spell finished, and the spirit zoomed back to the scepter. I watched, anxious, as the Telemoon goon adjusted his gear.

And then I was moving toward him. Against my will. “What are you doing?!” I squealed. “I’m a nub! Remember!”

“Don’t worry,” Azwold called to me, “I wanna try something.”

As the enemy stood preparing his attack, stoic, I rushed to him and took a trembling swipe with my vine fingers.

For 1 damage.

Not this again.

The player looked at me, the thinnest of grins on his face. Despite his HP flashing red, I knew that I would be demolished, and stood quaking.

Then he took another 1 damage. And another. I noticed a hint of ectoplasm smudged into the scratch.

His grin faded. As did his remaining health. He keeled over backward onto his power-pack.