Dragon World Online: Inception: A LitRPG Adventure (Electric Shadows Book 1) Page 7

  Bastion grumbled to himself and wrestled to keep his charming persona in place. “Of course,” he said. “I was merely admiring your handiwork. Let me see what you have on offer.”

  I followed my brother to the case and watched as he pawed through the weapons. These were much smaller, none more than a couple of feet long with plain, leather-wrapped handles and edges that looked like they might be sharp enough to spread butter, if you didn’t mind tearing up the bread in the process.

  Bastion picked up a few and tested their weight and balance before shrugging and lifting one from the crate. It was nowhere near as nice as the two-handed sword he’d taken from the dead leader of the Brotherhood. “This will do.”

  I looked at the weapons and decided a sword wasn't for me. I lifted a hammer, which the Game told me was the traditional weapon of a healer. It seemed too bulky, too heavy to use in combat. By the time I got it lifted up, someone would have my spleen on the end of their blade.

  I pushed the larger weapons aside and came across a cache of sleek daggers in the bottom of the case. They were short and slender, with finger grips hammered into their hilts. Simple guards jutted from beneath the blades, large enough to keep my hand from sliding onto the cutting edge when striking, but small enough not to hang up on clothing or their sheathe if I needed to draw a weapon in a hurry. I hefted one and it nestled in my hands like it was made just for me. I wanted two, but the old man was only offering us one each.

  “Thank you,” I told the smith.

  Bastion stared at me, his cheeks flushed and his eyes wide. Idiot, he mouthed.

  Whatever.

  This weapon speaks to you. You have gained the Weapon Affinity: Dagger knack.

  Hopefully, that would make me suck less when it came to stabbing things.

  The smith handed us battered leather sheathes and helped us buckle them around our waists. Bastion struggled a bit getting his sword in place, and the smith had to spend some extra time getting it just right.

  I eased back to the crate of weapons and slipped a hand inside. While the smith and Bastion were preoccupied, I lifted another dagger free and dropped it into my pouch. There. One for each hand. And no one would be the wiser.

  Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The smith smiled and gave us each a nod. “Those look like they were made for you.”

  I had to agree with him, but Bastion didn't seem sold on the idea.

  “Thank you,” I said, “I’m sure this will come in handy.”

  The smith smiled again and gestured for us to follow him. “I must bid you good night,” he said, “these old bones need the rest if I'm going to be up and at the forge tomorrow.”

  And with that, he let us out the front door and into the snow.

  Quest complete! Against the Bloody Brotherhood, Part 3. Return to the tavern.

  Bastion didn't say a word during our whole walk back to the tavern. He seemed preoccupied with his crappy weapon and I didn't see any reason to bother him with idle chatter. We both knew the way back to the tavern, so we trudged through the snow until we reached the welcoming glow spilling from its front door. Other adventurers were heading out, getting to know each other and embarking on quests they hoped would seal their fates as heroes of this new land. I felt a little tinge of envy. I wondered what it would feel like to really choose your own destiny, instead of having it chosen for you.

  Stop being a baby, I scolded myself. This isn’t a game. This is a job. I needed to start looking at it like that, or every day was going to be a disappointment.

  I clapped Bastion on the back and tried to cheer him up. “Come on,” I said, “that was your first quest. You can’t expect to get Excalibur right out of the gate.”

  He threw an arm over my shoulders. “Arthur did.”

  We both laughed at that as we entered the tavern. There were still some adventurers scattered around, but most had departed on their own missions. We looked around the room wondering where to finish our quest, when I noticed a faint silver thread leading toward the back of the tavern. That made sense. We just needed to return to the old man who started all this.

  “This way,” I said and Bastion followed me into the shadows.

  The old man puffed on his pipe, and green-tinged smoke floated around his head like the coils of a mythical serpent. “Glad to see you made it back,” he said with a wink.

  Bastion grabbed a chair from the table and spun it around before flopping down into it and resting his chin on its back. “The Brotherhood will trouble your village no more,” he said with a heroic smirk.

  I dropped into the chair next to him and crossed my arms over my chest. I wasn't great with witty remarks or little speeches, so I decided to play the role of the mysterious stranger come to town. The less I said, the more people would think I knew. I nodded to the old man and he nodded back, through a plume of pipe smoke.

  “That's good to know,” he said around the stem of his pipe. “But there are many more challenges awaiting heroes with strong hearts and clever minds. Have you chosen the path you will follow on your journey?”

  My brother puffed up his chest. “I am a warrior, and one day I hope to be a paladin.”

  The old man smiled at Bastion, a look with a little more pity than I felt was appropriate. “That is an honorable path, but a challenging one. Few who choose it reach its end. The road the paladin takes is one far less traveled, and one more demanding of the heart than the sword arm.”

  Bastion shrugged off the man's warning. “I am pure of heart and strong of arm. I will see this road to its end.”

  The old man puffed on his pipe for a moment, as if trying to decide what to say next. In the end, his words were few.

  “I wish you the best of luck. You are a warrior, so seek out Areon for your training. He's an early riser and hits the bed just as early, so your best bet is to find him in the morning.”

  Bastion grunted. He was eager to find his next quest, but if he couldn't see his trainer before the morning, he would have to wait.

  That was disappointing, because we'd have to pay for another day before we saw a return of any kind. The few coppers we had in our purses wouldn't even cover our fees so far. My heart sank and I wondered if this wasn't going to turn into another of our failed schemes to make some money. We’d tried a lot of things to make ends meet, and they’d all come up losers in the end. We couldn’t afford another misfire.

  The old man raised an eyebrow and peered at me from beneath its bushy expanse. “And what of you? Do you know the road you will travel?”

  I tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come. I knew what I was supposed to be, what Bastion expected me to be if our plan was going to work. But it wasn't a path I would've chosen for myself. It lacked any sort of glamour or distinction. Hanging in the back, making sure everyone else was all right. Helping the warriors get the glory. It seemed lazy and boring.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and visualized my choice. This is what I needed to do. It didn't matter that it was going to be boring, or that I would essentially spend the next however many months being a backstop for Bastion. What mattered was that my mother needed us to do this. This was how we were going to fix things, my brother and I. I didn’t have a real choice to make. I opened my eyes and smiled at the old man.

  “I want to be a healer.”

  The old man's eyes grew dark and serious. He puffed on his pipe and the clouds of smoke gathered around him like thunderheads. “Do you?”

  I swallowed hard. I don't know how it was possible, but this digital representation of a computer algorithm made me nervous. There was something appraising in his look that penetrated into my thoughts. He knew it wasn’t what I wanted. Somehow, he knew.

  But it was what I needed. Couldn’t he just get off my case and let me have this? He hadn’t asked Bastion any uncomfortable questions about his true desires.

  I returned his level gaze with a flat stare of my own. “It is what I want.”<
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  The old man chuckled and smoke leaked from between his yellow teeth. “No, it isn't. You have done nothing to mark your destiny as a healer.”

  I wiped my sweaty palms on the ragged trousers the computer had seen fit to equip me with, and stared back at the old man. “You don't know me.”

  He didn't laugh this time, but there was mirth in his eyes. “Oh, but I do. Let me ask you this. When your brother was hurt in that alley, did you think about healing him?”

  Oh. So that's how this was going to be? “No, but I—”

  The old man stabbed his pipe stem in my direction. “No, you didn't think about saving him. What you thought about was killing the person hurting him.”

  “But—“

  “And you thought about how you could do it while putting yourself in the least amount of risk possible. You hid. And then you struck from the shadows.”

  “But, I—”

  “When it was time to go to the Brotherhood's lair, did you stand by your brother’s side to aid him if he fell prey to his enemies?”

  This was crazy. I didn't even have any spells, how could he have possibly thought I'd be able to heal anyone? I mean, I did have that potion, which I guess…

  And I did spend a lot of times skulking around in the shadows…

  Damnit.

  “You are no healer. I think that much is clear. But do you know what you are going to be?”

  My heart lodged in my throat. Didn’t this guy understand what was at stake? I couldn't be anything but a healer. Bastion’s entire plan hinged on my character choice.

  “Perhaps there is something of the healer within you. Perhaps there is some honesty in your soul that makes you fit to attend to others.” The old man’s smile was broad and hungry, like an alligator lurking on the edge of the drinking hole. “Perhaps there's something you want tell your brother that will show him this honest spark burning within you.”

  I struggled to keep a poker face, but I don't think it worked. The old man knew. He knew about what I'd taken from the fallen swordsman in the bar, the loot I hadn't told Bastion about. He knew about how I'd taken that extra dagger, because I wanted it.

  The old man was calling me on my BS. He knew I didn’t want to be a healer, but he was giving me the chance to be one, anyway.

  All I had to do was level with Bastion. Tell him what I'd done, and be honest with him about how I felt.

  That would be honest. That would be the truth.

  But if I told the old man I didn't want to be a healer, if I was honest with him and with Bastion then would he let me be a healer? Or he would he pull out a trademarked old man, “I told you so!” teaching moment on us?

  If I only told Bastion part of the truth, told him about what I'd stolen but didn’t tell him about hating the idea of being his pocket healer, that wasn’t honest, now was it?

  The impossible situation squeezed around me like a python. My thoughts raced in circles, and every one lead me back to the same conclusion. I'd failed. I didn't know what I was going to be. I couldn't speak up in my own defense without betraying my brother and myself.

  My head throbbed. This was supposed to be a game. It wasn't supposed to be this hard.

  The old man tapped his pipe out into the ashtray in the center of the table and shook his head. “It’s time for this old man to get some rest. The two of you need to go on, now.”

  He stood, but I refused to move from my chair. “Wait. What am I supposed to do now? Who is my trainer?”

  The old man shrugged and stepped into the shadows. “If you cannot choose your path, then your path will choose you.”

  Well. That sounded ominous.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What. The. Hell.”

  Bastion was not very happy with me. He spat his words into the cold air on plumes of fog. His fists were clenched and he wouldn’t even look at me.

  “I don't know! That's not what I wanted.” I was pissed, too. Bastion hadn’t warned me about any amateur psychological examinations during character creation.

  Bastion’s voice filled the space around his head with steam, his emotions smoldering in the cold winter air. “We had a plan. I told you what to do.”

  “And I did it! I did exactly what you told me to do.” Except I hadn’t. There were things I’d done that I never thought anyone would know. But the Game knew.

  Bastion’s eyes narrowed to slits and his nostrils flared wide. “Did you? Because it doesn't seem like that's what happened. It seems like you decided you weren’t going to become a healer.”

  My skull throbbed. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch Bastion right in his stupid face. Couldn’t he see how I was struggling with this? Couldn’t he see that I wanted to do what he said? “Why would I do that? Why would I jeopardize everything we’re working for?”

  Bastion was so angry he was shaking. His knuckles cracked and he ground his words through gritted teeth. “I don't know. Why would anyone screw this up?”

  I shrugged and the chip on my shoulder grew ten sizes. “Oh that's how you want to play this? I'm just a big loser?”

  All right, I'd made a mistake. I hadn’t done things exactly the way I should have, but I'd been backed into a corner. If Bastion hadn’t charged right into those fights, then I wouldn't have had to be sneaky. If he hadn't got himself so banged up, I wouldn't have needed to ambush those people to keep him alive. “This is as much your fault as it is mine.”

  My brother stared at me in a way he never had before. The coldness in his eyes was deeper than the winter chill in the air around us. “This is my fault?”

  I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide for the next few years until my brother forgot all about me. “No, that's not what I mean. I only did what I did because I felt like I had to.”

  “Because you had to? All you had to do was hang back and help me out if I needed it.” Bastion paced back and forth, a sure sign that he was about to lose it. “I thought I made all that clear to you.”

  And he had. He’d spelled the plan out in thorough detail. “It's just… Look. I didn't have any way to help you other than to fight. And I'm not a fighter. So I had to be sneaky, right? How was I supposed to know the old man was going to push back on the healer thing? You told me it was just a matter of making a choice and sticking with it.”

  Bastion raked his fingers through his hair and it stood up angry spikes across the top of his skull. “Maybe that's what you did.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You never wanted this. You never understood the games. Even when I was a pro, you thought it was stupid.”

  “That's crazy. Even if I thought that, and I don't—”

  “You were always jealous of me! Always. I got all the attention. Mom always watched my matches. Dad—”

  “Don't.” Now it was my turn to be cold. Things were never the same between Karl and our father and our father and myself. Karl was the golden child. Professional gamer at 15, TV interviews, endorsements, plenty of money, and all he had to do was do what he was best at: Shoot people in their virtual head.

  The old man stopped laying hands on Karl before the bruises could start showing up on television.

  Which left him plenty of free time to go to work on me.

  “That is it. You’re jealous. You don't want this plan to work because then I'll be the hero again.” Bastion stared at me like he’d just seen me for who I really was. “You were never going to play along. You sabotaged this from the beginning.”

  “That's not true.” My defense sounded pretty lame, even to my biased ears. Maybe I had subconsciously sabotaged my brother’s plan. Maybe it wasn't even that subconscious. Maybe I got tired of playing second fiddle to someone who never knew how good they had it. Maybe it was my turn to be in the spotlight for a while. Maybe I wanted to be the hero. “But you believe whatever you want to believe.”

  Bastion opened his mouth to cut me down with a caustic remark, but we were interrupted by the incessant pinging of a digital alarm clock
. We both swiped the time notification away with angry gestures, and Bastion dissipated from my view.

  He’d logged out. Our argument would continue back in the World.

  But I wasn't ready for that, not yet. I kicked at the snow with my cold feet and walked away. I didn't know where I was headed, but I wanted to be alone. I took random turns until the warm light of the tavern was behind me, and the shadows were everywhere.

  Finally, I was alone.

  But I wasn't alone for long.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They got me two minutes after Karl logged out. I was walking down a narrow side street when I realized something was wrong. The snow stopped falling and the clouds gathered in tight to shut out the starlight.

  The shadows swirled through the alley. They separated from the walls and rose up from the ground to surround me. There were five of them, standing at the points of a star with me in their center. They were clad head to toe in shades of deepest black, their darkness punctuated by the gleaming slivers of steel clutched in their hands.

  “You lost?” The one in front of me asked. He was a little taller than me, and a lot thinner. Even wrapped in layers of black cloth, he looked skinny and his arms and legs seemed too long for his body. My gaze darted from his eyes to his hand and back again. He rolled the narrow dagger around his knuckles and it danced in and out of his grip like a living creature.

  “No. I was just heading over to—“

  Someone shoved me from behind. I stumbled toward the black-cloaked figure ahead of me and he pivoted on one heel to let me pass.

  A boot caught me in the ass and sent me sprawling. Dirty snow flooded my mouth and my hands skidded over the ice. The cobbles tore at my pants and cold wind snapped at my exposed knees.

  My hand shot to the dagger at my hip, and I managed to draw it. I wasn’t going down without a fight.