3.12 Downloadable Salvation

Payday at Whizco would not have been due for another fortnight. For Bearded Man and Pretty Girl and Saz and Paul and Jez, the limbo dragged on, and Zoommart’s pittance would be even further away, if it came at all, but we shan’t dwell on that. Crystal’s immediate termination meant her pay arrived slightly sooner than anticipated, so for Silven, everything worked out pretty much perfectly.

He had never paused to think about how he would acquire his Gems from the real currency, or how he even knew that was probably how he was going to get them, and certainly not how to get home, but it didn’t matter in the end. Some sort of ghost in the machinery took care of all that.

Before long, he found himself in the promised shadowy back alley of the royal republican capital. The light for said shadows came from wooden planks erected upon tall poles, hammered into the cracked pavement of the alley. Around the edges of those planks were candles that should not be; candles that had no flame and yet blinked out white light into the dancing shadows all the same. They looked suspiciously like candles from that supermarket, another world away. Or should that be another world out?

The carvings that they illuminated were cheerful and meaningless. Yay! proclaimed one, Gratz another, and the most mysterious, above a giant flashing arrow of lights, read DLC here. Beneath this arrow stood a man in a ridiculous purple velvet cap in the shape of a boar’s head, a spotty green chestplate, and fuzzy yellow breeches. “Congratulations, friend!” he boomed in a deep, hearty voice. “The Gods have smiled on you. And because of that, why not have a free gift?” He produced an enormous wooden chest from his pocket and held it out, beaming. Silven lifted the lid and shielded his eyes against the golden glow within. Then, he frowned.

“One million gold pieces!” announced the man joyfully. “Well done, friend. The Gods have made me, so you deserve money. Take it, take it.”

“I don’t need it,” said Silven, and pushed the chest away. “Why are you dressed like that?”

For such a giant of a man, the merchant twirled quite gracefully. “To show you how different you could look with my strange and exotic wares from a land far beyond the sea that has never been mentioned to you until this point.” His face grew sad. “But I could never sell you anything until you have accepted my gift.”

Sighing, Silven took the gold. The man nodded solemnly. “Now just know that there’s demons clawing their way out the ground this very minute that have developed a startling resistance to steel paid for in such coins. You need special weaponry to look cool enough to destroy them. And you know what I need in return.”

Silven reached into his pocket and rummaged about. His face dropped. His inventory was exactly as he left it. And then, his thumb slipped over something flat and papery beneath his Random Object That Stops The Zombie Hordes of Querinall. He drew it out and scowled. “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of seven Gems?” he cried in disbelief. “What is this nonsense? You can’t even be bothered to make them?”

Before he had finished, the man reached out a snake-like hand and snatched away the little note. “I’m sure they’re all snug in a vault somewhere in the Big City,” he muttered hurriedly. “Anyway, will it be the Serrated Rainbow Blade of Badassery today? Or this cute little pair of raptorskin jeggings? All your subjects will want these next summer!”

“Jeggings?” repeated Silven incredulously. “Now we’re starting to get a bit silly. Stop making things up and give me the charge stick of rear-end propulsion.”

The clown-merchant rolled his eyes and handed over a bulbous metal rod. Silven cast an uneasy eye over the blinking lights and disappeared to the safety of Stuff HQ.

He hadn’t seen Olgred and co for a day or so, and thus he braced himself for the deep calamities he would surely find his young republic sinking into. At this instant, however, he told himself everything would have to wait. Olgy had never been much use in a fight, but he was at least getting the hang of walking to heel, so he’d have to do. If Dasat was around... but no, there was no time for thinking like that. He found the officials gathered in the conference room, heads clasped in hands to a man. Things were going as expected.

“Olgred, I require you for a matter of utmost importance,” he rasped, cutting off the rumblings of a shaggy grey monstrosity filling half the audience pit. “No time for questions. Let’s go.”

The former merchant slouched in his chair and turned a weary eye on his master. “But listen, Your Majesty! We have a matter of national crisis!”

“Olgy!” repeated Silven sharply. “Come on. That’s an order.”

Reluctantly, Olgy hoisted himself to his feet and dusted off his velvet jacket. “But just look at him, master.” The beast grunted mournfully from its pile of splintered chairs. The companion struggled against his obedient feet to grab a pile of parchments from the table. “We’ll talk as we walk.” He jabbed a finger at a sloping line on the scroll. “You see this? The battles have resulted in an unprecedented experience explosion across the country. Our poor giant tribes are crashing. Most are born as ancient champions these days to fight for their lands, and the few obligatory sword-fodder young enough to be making babies are now too busy feeding soup to their withering eldest to do so. It’s a demographic disaster.”

“Indeed,” urged Simitest, clasping his immaculately clean-shaven hands against his shirt. “Plan A has failed. Those retirement homes we built along the south border? We can’t get the doors to clip on. Where in the cursed realm is our Head Engineer?”

Silven stopped mid-step and gritted his teeth. He turned and faced his friend, his old infuriating friend in his new obnoxious clothes, prattling on fitfully about the merits of an industrial-scale healer recruitment initiative. It was exactly as he’d hoped he would one day become. Right now, he wanted to punch him in the face. “Fine. Stay and help. I’ll save the world without you.” He spun by the door and stalked away. Coming here had been a mistake. He understood that it wasn’t Olgred’s fault. The innocent fellow could never truly comprehend even if Silven explained all, and it would be better to shield his inquisitive mind from the horrors of this – oh, screw that, he just wasn’t good with emotions. Better to take his frustrations out on Big Bad Bossman instead.

By the time he’d cooled down in the sweet hillside breeze, he’d decided that he would still need someone to keep him at unhinged. If he slipped to actual insanity, it would mean doom for them all. He hopped back to the silent pit and found Professor Grennel collecting residues from a recently deceased hawk as any good scientist should. He took the opportunity to apply his new toy to the scholar’s unsuspecting buttocks and nodding at the whining heap in satisfaction. “Let’s do this. And take care not to whizz off into the abyss of meta-misery. It is a rather unpleasant experience that I wish not to repeat.”

Grennel got to his knees and glanced down over the edge. “I want to agree, but it might be better than this sudden compulsion I feel to gather another fifty nine eagle ichors.”

Silven frowned. “Ichor. I keep hearing that word. Does anyone actually know what it means?”

The professor rose and worked his mouth quietly. “Ichor. Ichor. Great, I can’t get it out of my head.” His glum face hardened into a look of pure determination. “You couldn’t let a poor academic get deleted in peace, could you? We’re gonna have to try really hard to survive now.” He rose and shook a feeble fist across the plain, where far, far away, someone waited for them. “Like, really, really hard.”