The Prisoner of Arabella Read online

  The thought made me smile even as we left the grounds of the old federal penitentiary. The one they had told us would never be used again.

  X - X - X

  They provided us with data pads with the latest information almost before we sat down in the car. I read the briefing that they had put together for us. There was also an engineer to go back over the information and to answer questions.

  “I’m Andrew White. Please call me Andrew.”

  He had a midwestern accent with a slight drawl. I’d have placed him as being from Nebraska or maybe Kansas.

  “So far, the players think this is just a new event we have arranged, and the news has been slow to pick up on what’s been going on.” Andrew sighed “But we know this can’t last. Last night at 15:34 Eastern time, a Chinese guild was attacked en route to Arabella. Twenty-seven players escaped out of a total strength of four hundred thirty-one.”

  He looked at Anna and James.

  “This is getting very political. The state department is involved.”

  “The last time I dealt with them was over five years ago on the Standing Buddha Reconstruction in Pakistan," I said thoughtfully. “I dealt with an Earl Grey. Is there anyway he could liaise with us?”

  Andrew looked at me like I had just grown a second head. “I’ll ask, but I think they assigned us a Mr. Trask as our liaison.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, first things first. What is the mission you have for me?”

  “We will go over that, but basically we need you to finish the quest. We know ultimately it leads to the destruction of the lich king. Bu we don’t know how.”

  “Wait. Didn’t you write the quest?” Anna asked.

  “Um, no. We conceived of the world and the background and then let the AI, Arabella, write the quest. She has not been responsive, so we will have to go in ourselves. Or, well, you will,” Andrew said, pointing at me. “And solve the quest. We know that you are going to have to find materials and forge weapons to kill him, but we don’t know where the materials are or where you can learn about them.”

  Biting my lip, I sighed. This would be a tougher nut to crack than I thought. All while pulling Agent Dabrowski along with me in the game. Fun.

  Anna looked at me strangely. “Is there anything you haven’t done or that you can do?”

  I shrugged. “Yes, but I’ve had a lot of opportunities over the past few years. I don’t watch the net, and I didn’t play video games. Pretty much I read, worked, and met new people and immersed myself in their cultures when I could.”

  Anna rolled her eyes at me, then coughed as she caught Agent Prentice’s eye.

  “He’s a Harry Sue,” she quipped.

  “A what?” Agent Prentice and I asked in unison.

  “He’s an over powered know-it-all,” she said. “He seems to know everything or can do anything.”

  I scratched the back of my ear and looked embarrassed. “I suck at relationships, working with animals and children, and watercolor.” Agent Prentice was giving me a funny look. “What? There’re plenty of other things I don’t know.”

  “I saw the library in your house,” Agent Prentice said.

  I shrugged.

  “There were manuals there from the 1940s. I noticed one on Renshaw Memory Techniques. I had to look it up.”

  I coughed. “Yeah, it helped,” I said with a half-smile. “My mom started me out on them even before I could read, and it helped me develop a near eidetic memory.”

  “What does that mean?” Anna asked.

  “It means he remembers almost everything he says, sees, hears, or reads.”

  I blushed.

  “Oh,” Anna said with a strange look on her face, just as we pulled up in front of Psysoft’s building, sparing me some embarrassment.

  Though I knew Anna would ask about it later.

  X - X - X

  When we arrived, Miles and a cadre of engineers and technicians met us in a conference room on the fourth floor.

  “You read the materials?” he asked, and I nodded. “First, we need to get you to Arabella to get on with the quest. From there, I don’t know. Agent Dabrowski will meet you there.”

  “Um, any idea of what I need to do?” I asked.

  Miles shrugged, looked me in the eye, and grinned. “Not a damned clue.”

  I sighed. “What can you tell me?”

  “Team BMW will go over what we know now. We have a second team working on disengaging the interlocks to the pods, but we designed there for the Mars program and their redundancies and back ups were meant to prevent damage to the occupant, so that may be a no-go.” Miles motioned to three people. Only one wore a white lab coat, and the others were in what I’d call dress casual: slacks, knit tops, and nice shoes.

  “Bahtavi, Marleen, Wayland—what do you have for us?” Miles said.

  The woman, who I assumed was Marleen, stepped up.

  “We went back to the original betas for project Arabella. Most of them couldn’t remember anything. Remember, this was originally five years ago.”

  I nodded, as did Miles.

  “And?”

  “We found one tester that had taken notes. He's still in-game, and he is willing to help us, along with his guild, but there's a catch. But coincidentally that plays into what we need.”

  “Oh? And what does he need?” Miles asked.

  “He needs us to find his newest guild member, Lorcan.”

  I perked up. “Morner was a beta tester?” I said.

  “Yes, and he has notes about the original quests and the lich king. Though I don’t know how extensive.”

  I turned thoughtful. There were a few too many coincidences, and as I recalled, five years ago was where things in my life had started to go a little weird over in Pakistan. Marleen continued over my musing, and I tried to catch back up surreptitiously.

  “Wait, what was that last part?” I said looking up at Marleen.

  “Oh, the Rhyou Gate?”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “We think the gate has to be repaired. The parts are scattered throughout at least three dungeons in and around the city of Arabella. We know one dungeon is the Hand of Fate. It's a ten person PVP dungeon.”

  “PVP dungeon?” I asked like the noob I felt like. .

  One of her colleagues—Bahtavi, I guessed—chimed in.

  “Initially players didn’t feel challenged in other games, so we incorporated a harder dungeon where two teams had to fight one another for the win with correspondingly higher quality drops depending on the number of team kills. So you fight monsters and an enemy team trying to kill you, and you want to have the highest number of kills to get the best stuff.” Batavi looked through his notes. “The dungeon proved unpopular, but it remained in the game, as there are several quests tied into it.” He coughed, then clarified. “Class quests.”

  “But if you want the pieces to the gate, you will have to go in on hell mode,” said Wayland.

  “And what does the Rhyou Gate go to?” I inquired of the team.

  “The world of dragons,” Marleen said. “We believe that is where you can find spells and materials to fight the lich. Rhyou is on the upper planes in the game world.”

  “Does that mean there are gates to lower planes?”

  She nodded.

  “Like a world of undead and demons?” All the engineers and Miles looked at me and looked at each other. I closed my eyes. “And might the lich king know of the gates?”

  Miles summed it up nicely. “Well, shit.”

  Chapter 5

  I found it strange that I was both apprehensive and excited at the same time to get back in the game of Arabella, and it made me feel strangely important. All I would be doing was going into an imaginary world to risk myself becoming trapped and dying to save a hundred people I didn’t even know from the same fate. There has to be something wrong with me. I know.

  As I nestled in my pod, I looked over to the technician they had helping me. “Tell me again why we can
’t just reprogram the game?”

  “Because Arabella, the AI, won’t allow it,” she said as the cover closed.

  Next thing I knew, I was descending through a corridor of light, and I was back in the tavern I had left over a week ago.

  “Master Lorcan, you be back,” said the owner as I was suddenly in the room.

  “Aye, no reason not to,” I said with a smile. “Tell me what have I missed.”

  “Oh, not much from what I heard, but the guards had asked fer ye the past few nights. I think they like your singing, and nae a word to em about yer patron.”

  I smiled. “He will be appreciative, I’m sure,” I said as I left the inn, fully intending to be on my way to Arabella.

  But I realized I had a stop I had to make at the Mage Guild to see Master Silverleaf and seek his consul.

  The main door to the guildhall was a few buildings down from the Cock-Eyed Cockerel, and I knocked and waited. Within a few moments, the door was answered. I was let into the hall by another elder mage.

  “How may an old man help you?” he inquired.

  “I was hoping to see Master Silverleaf,” I said respectfully to the old gentleman.

  He was an elf, slight of frame and hunched with age, but perceptive.

  “Ah, he is up at the keep.”

  I sighed.

  “Oh.” I could only imagine that he was there investigating the jail-break I had performed before I left the game. “I see. It is rather important that I speak with him.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Everything is important to you travelers,” the elf said. “You must realize that we have our own affairs that for us take precedence.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand that,” I said, placating. “I had just wanted to give him a forewarning of trouble to come.”

  “There is always trouble to come. You youngsters can’t seem to get it through your heads.”

  “Might I at least leave him a note?”

  “Yes, yes. There is parchment and a quill over there.”

  Master Silverleaf: please, I beg you to forgive me for leaving you this news in this way, but time is of the essence. As feared, the lich king of old stirs. I head now to Arabella to learn what secrets I may to put his evil to rest for all time.

  Travelers have already been turned into his tools and scour the land. I beseech you to warn the elves and the dwarfs that the old evil has risen once more. I, along with others of the travelers, seek even now to stem the tide of undeath that rises against us.

  Lorcan

  Sealing the note, I handed it to the old mage. “Please see he receives this as soon as possible. The kingdom may ride upon what you and he knows,” I said, and then I asked where I might find the stables.

  X - X - X

  The stables were easy enough to find; the entrance was through a building with wide double doors at the front. The sign over the door of a horse also helped.

  “Can I help ye lad?” I heard a voice say as I stepped in the building. I smiled and looked down to see a short dwarf, dressed in leathers.

  “Yes, I’d like to buy a horse.”

  He looked me over.

  “Aye, I can help ye with tha’, but you must buy the riding skill.”

  “How much?” I reflexively asked as I opened my pack to see how much money there was, only to receive a shock as I found over three hundred gold in my wallet.

  “The riding skill is ten gold, and a horse’s price varies.”

  “I need a fast mount as fast as you have.”

  “The grey gelding is the fastest. He gives you a fifteen percent increase to mounted speed,” the dwarf said as he led me deeper into the building and stopped in front of an inner stall. There I saw a grey horse. “This fella will run ye thirty gold.”

  He reached up on tiptoes to rub the muzzle.

  “I’ll take him,” I said as I took the gold out and handed it over along with the training fee.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” the stable master said, handing me the reins and a skill book. “Now if you want him to run faster, I’d get him shoes over at the blacksmith.”

  I shook my head. It was just one more way that the company could get more money out of the players.

  I led the horse from the building over to the blacksmith.

  “Let me guess, you would like me to shoe your horse?” the smith asked.

  I nodded.

  “That's five gold, but it's a buff you have to renew every week.” I handed over the gold, and he made a shooing motion, and within five minutes I was on my way.

  From Lorcan: Hi, Morner. Guess who is out of jail and finally on his way to Arabella?

  From Morner: About time! Miles told me what happened to you. I’m sending you a way point.

  From Lorcan: Did Miles tell you where we need to go?

  From Morner: I am not going to like this, am I?

  From Lorcan: Probably not. First stop is the Arabella PVP dungeon. We think the lich king is sending players there, so we will go head to head with undead.

  From Morner: Okay. Follow the way point. I’ll be putting a team together. That's a mid-level dungeon, and you’ll be on the low end. I need you to think of anything you can come up with to give us an edge.

  From Lorcan: You want me to cheat?

  From Morner: If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.

  As I rode, I reviewed my character sheet, as I recalled I had leveled just after the jail break quest. I had attributes to assign.

  Name: Lorcan Race: Woodsprite Class: True Bard Level: 10

  Height: 5’ 6” Weight: 152 lbs Eyes: Blue Hair: Brown

  Statistics:

  39-Strength: carry 330 pounds and 3.9% damage to weapons damage and energy regeneration

  21-Agility: 2.1% increase weapon skill and avoid damage

  40-Endurance: 400 HP to base HP and 4% to base energy pool

  25-Intelligence: 250 to base mana pool and 4.5% spell damage

  21-Wisdom: 2.1% recovery base mana regeneration rate

  21-Charisma: 4.2% increase in favorability from NPCs

  23-Luck: 4.6% increase to all positive rolls or negative rolls

  Mana Pool: 440

  Hit Points: 420

  Energy Points: 240

  Spells:

  Magic Missile

  Levitate

  Enchant Weapon

  Dispel Evil

  Heat/Cool Metal

  Protection from Normal Missiles

  Silence

  Sleep

  Songs:

  Song of Healing - Energy Cost: 20 and 20 HP. +5 HP per second for 30 seconds.

  Song of Courage - Energy Cost: 80. Increases a player’s HP by 10% and damage by 5%.

  Song of Derision - Energy Cost: 40. Debuffs enemy with -5% to hit and -5% damage, may act as a taunt.

  Known Skills:

  Alchemy: Apprentice

  Armor Smith Journeyman

  Burglary: Journeyman

  Blacksmith: Journeyman

  Cooking: Journeyman

  Engineer: Apprentice

  Farmer: Apprentice

  Gem Cutter: Apprentice

  Herbalist: Apprentice

  Jeweler: Apprentice

  Leather Working: Journeyman

  Lore Master: Journeyman

  Medic: Apprentice

  Weapon smith: Journeyman

  Wood Worker: Apprentice

  Martial Skills:

  Thrown Weapons: Neophyte

  Bows: Apprentice

  Swords: Neophyte

  Exotic Weapons: Journeyman

  Pole Arms: Journeyman

  Unarmed Combat: Apprentice

  Dodge: Neophyte

  Since I did not have points to assign, I thought about what I might do to defeat the undead menace. The only thing I could think of was holy weapons.

  From Lorcan: Jamie, what kind of exotic materials do we have access to? I’m thinking bone, wood, etc.

  From Jamie: Glad you’re back. What do you
have in mind?

  From Lorcan: I’m not sure. I need to experiment and see what I can come up with. Are there a paladin and a high level cleric in the guild?

  From Jamie: Yesss.

  From Lorcan: I should be at the way point Morner gave me in a few hours.

  Suddenly, I was thrown from my horse when I felt a hot lance of pain in my back.

  “Get the son of a bitch!” I heard a familiar voice yell.