Grand Game 482: No Certainties (Patreon)

Aetherstone bracelet deactivated. Remaining stored locations: 1. Charged and unetched gems: 3. Uncharged gems: 1.

I stepped out from the selfsame portal I had a few days ago, only this time my passage was a shorter one.

My entry back into the real was not as uneventful, though.

You have entered a tier 6 concealment field. 

You have triggered the ward: fly-trap. 

Strands of silk that felt as strong as bands of steel wrapped around my torso. Yanking me off my feet, they flung me against the adjacent wall and held me pinned.

You are stuck (duration: 30 seconds). 

Yikes. I’d walked right into that one. I was unconcerned, though. Having already spied the two cloaked forms stretched out flat in the far corner of the room, I realized whose trap I’d fallen prey to.

“Uhm, Adriel? Want to let me down?” 

The lich sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Michael?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, letting the spell wrapped around my face dissipate. In the next instant, the silk strands trapping me fell away, and I dropped lightly to the ground. “What was all that about?” I asked, rubbing my wrists.

“Precautions,” she said with a smile.

“I see,” I said, shaking my head. “And you call me paranoid.” 

Adriel laughed. “Well, it seemed only appropriate after—” 

She broke off as the figure next to her stirred. 

“Who… w-what,” Nyra began sleepily then caught sight of me. “Michael! You’re back!”

I smiled. “I am. And you’re grown in the interim I see.” I raised one eyebrow. “Level fifty-three already?”

“Adriel’s a slave driver,” she said, but there was a smile to her words and no coldness in the look she threw the lich. Good, they’ve been getting along. 

“Prime?” Ghost greeted, also stirring. “Where are we?”

“We’re out of the safe zone and back in the portal tower,” I replied. “You better manifest. I’m sure Adriel and Nyra are anxious to greet you as well.”

The pyre wolf did not respond, but the contentment filling our bond was answer enough.

Chuckling, I strode toward the remains of the campfire someone—Nyra most likely—had started in the center of the room. “Can we get this going again? I’m starving.”

Adriel threw me an amused look. “Of course. We have much to discuss.”

I nodded. “We do. But first—food.”

✵ ✵ ✵

A Seeking Eye has been attuned. You can now activate this item when necessary.

A few hours later, my hunger assuaged, and my throat dry from talking, I finally finished my retelling of the events of the past three days.

“That’s quite the tale,” Adriel murmured when I was done.

Nyra nodded, looking fascinated.

“So much has changed,” Adriel said, her gaze far away. “It’s almost a different world...”

“Not everything has changed,” I added sympathetically, not missing the strained note in her voice. The Kingdom the lich had come back to was not the same one she’d left centuries ago, and that fact was finally hitting home.

“Enough has though, that you cannot rely entirely on my advice,” the lich continued more firmly.

I nodded, having come to the same conclusion myself.

“What I don’t understand,” Nyra said, “is why those Powers you mentioned—this Blythe and Mammon—didn’t appear. Surely if control of the sector was as important as your merchant friend Nicola made out, they would have wanted to take a direct hand in matters?”

“That one I can answer,” Adriel said, speaking before I could. “Even in my day, the Powers were loath to interfere in player conflicts. For one, the Adjudicator’s injunction against attacking players would keep them on the back foot. They would only be able to react. Then, too, there is the no-so-small matter of being ambushed. If one of the Powers appeared, I can assure you the second would have as well, but it is usually the one fighting the longest that loses.”

She glanced at me. “Lastly, there is Michael. To them, he was a wild card. If this were uncontested territory, deep in the heart of a single Power’s demesne, I have no doubt that he or she would’ve turned up and hunted Michael down.  But as things stood, both Mammon and Blythe had to be wondering if Michael was an agent of the other, a ploy to weaken them before the true conflict.”

I nodded. Adriel’s analysis was consistent with my own, but there was one other point to add. “There was also little reason for either Power to risk themselves. For Mammon the loss of this sector was not particularly significant. His faction owns others in the region, and, as a recent acquisition, sector 75,172 was likely the least of them. Blythe also didn’t need to turn up since her people were winning.”

“I understand what you’re both saying, but...” Nyra waved her hands in frustration, “it all sounds so thin. What if Blythe or Mammon were having an off day? Or if anger overcame them? Then…”

“… the outcome could have been very different,” Adriel finished for her. 

“Yes, exactly,” Nyra said.

Adriel smiled. “Welcome to the Game. Going forward, the only thing you can be certain of is that there will be no certainties.” She laughed. “It’s nice to see that this much about the Game hasn’t changed at least.”

Nyra’s lips turned down, not as enamored of the notion as Adriel was, but then again, she, like me, was still a relative newcomer to the Game.

I changed the topic. “I meant to ask, have you ever heard of something like a thieves guild?”

Adriel shook her head slowly. “There were certainly guilds aplenty during my time. Usually, scions from different Houses gathered under their roof—those who shared similar goals. Of course, House allegiance always superseded guild loyalty. But, as to a thieves’ guild, I never heard of one.” She bit her lip. “Nor do I know what ‘an Under-dweller’ could be.”

I sighed in disappointment. I’d been hoping Adriel could solve that little mystery.

“A thieves guild doesn’t sound all that interesting,” Nyra added. “Now an assassin’s guild….” Her eyes glinted. “That I would join in a heartbeat.”

I snorted. “Don’t be so sure. Remind me to tell you about the Mantises one day. You won’t be so enthused by the idea then.” Ignoring her curious look, I turned back to the lich. “Now, enough about my adventures. Tell me: how did your own three days go?”

Adriel shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. We spent nearly the entirety of the time in the foothills and only got back last night—and that was mostly to check if you’d returned. To be honest, I didn’t expect you for a few more days at least.” She smiled. “You’ve been surprisingly punctual.”

“A happy accident I assure you,” I said, with a rueful grin. “How did things go in the foothills?”

Adriel glanced at Nyra, fielding the question to her.

“It went well,” the young woman answered, with a sidelong glance at the lich. “Better than I expected, really. Killing the rock trolls was a lot easier than the wisp lords.”

“I bet. What skills did you manage to train?”

“All three of my base Class skills: longbows, sneaking, and focus,” Nyra replied with obvious satisfaction. “They’re all at tier two now.”

“Really?” I murmured. “Then these might help,” I said, placing a heavy bag in front of her.

“What are they?” Nyra asked, opening it and peering inside.

“Books,” I said, pleased that I had remembered to purchase them. “Skillbooks and ability tomes. I wasn’t sure which particular skills or abilities would interest you so there is a wide selection in there: everything from light armor to heavy, from daggers to axes, and from backstab to charge.” I paused. “No magic or psi, though. Those are better left to your second and third Classes.”

“A wise decision,” Adriel said softly. “Keeping each individual Class specialized will increase the chance of them melding.”

As my own Classes had. 

I, too, had kept my Classes specialized—although it had been more an instinctive ploy on my part rather than defined strategy—and it had led to them blending well together. 

It was possible, too, that Nyra’s first Class would evolve after she completed its configuration—like mine had—although that was less likely. It remained a possibility, though, which is why I didn’t want to distract her with the idea of magic and psi just yet.

Unaware of the thoughts running in my head—and in Adriel’s too, I suspected—Nyra did not look up from her fascinated study of the bag’s contents.

Noticing the young woman’s distraction, Adriel turned back to me, a wry look on her face. “Which reminds me. While we’re on the topic of skills… death magic for Ghost?” She glanced at the pyre wolf resting at her feet. “Not that the choice doesn’t please me, but why?”

“You explain it, Ghost,” I murmured, and a second later, she began to do so, enthusiastically laying out her reasoning for Adriel.

Leaving the pair to it, I refocused on Nyra. “What about your poisoning?”

Tearing her gaze away from the bag, she looked at me. “What?”

“How is training your poisoning skill going?” I clarified.

Nyra’s lips turned down. “My progress there has stalled.”

“Well, then, maybe this will help,” I said, sliding the poisoning kit across to her.

Her eyes widened. “Is that for…?”

“It is. It’s yours now,” I confirmed. After a moment’s thought, I added a few more trinkets. “As are these.”

You have lost 20 x bombs, 3 x full healing potions, a bishop’s ring, an elite poisoning kit, the band of stillness, the gift of the unbound, and an enchanted leather armor set. 

Nyra blinked, staring down at the sudden wealth of items.

“Use them or don’t as you please.” I gestured to the bag of books. “Nor is there any reason to rush your choices. Take your time and be certain of the skills you want, because once you make up your mind there is no going back.”

“I will,” she said softly. “Thank you, Michael.”

I inclined my head in acknowledgment, and when I looked back up, it was to find all three of my companions staring at me expectantly. “Morning is almost upon us, so there is no point going back to sleep,” Adriel said, glancing out the window at the lightening sky. “Which begs the question… what next?”

“We leave,” I said firmly.

The lich’s brows rose in surprise even as Ghost’s ears perked up excitedly. 

“What, immediately?” Nyra asked. She gestured to the corner where she and Ghost had so recently buried the Blood Talisman. “You aren’t going to use that blood-thing first?”

“I can’t use the Talisman,” I said reluctantly. “Not yet. Worst case, absorbing a new blood memory is going to take three days, and I can’t afford to be knocked out that long. By then, the battle for the sector will probably be over, and whoever has won is going to be scouring the area for the upstart Power who upset the status quo. Yes, the odds of them finding us here are low, but low is not non-existent.”

Adriel nodded slowly—in agreement, I thought. “And I imagine neither envoy is going to be best pleased with you when they resurrect in a few more hours.”

I grimaced. “That, too, is unfortunately true.” Why Malikor would be angry was easy enough to understand. I’d stolen the sector from him and all his legendary gear. Tyelin’s own feelings in the matter were harder to predict, but I didn’t see him being happy about the fact that I’d so twisted his own schemes that they came back to bite him.

“So, what are we waiting for?” Nyra asked, sweeping her new possessions into her bag of holding. 

“A good question,” I said, a smile on my face as I rose to my feet. “There’s no point in delaying further. Let’s go to the tundra.”