Spiteful Healer

Chapter 121: Promise

“Ahhh…” Darkshot stretched out his arms as the party walked into the shadows cast by the walls surrounding Kordas. “It’s good to be back.” he added. The sun sat securely in the middle of the cloudy sky that afternoon, and as they approached the gates they heard the familiar sounds of wagon wheels turning, beasts of burden grunting, and players and NPCs shouting. All of it coming from within the grand city before them.

A few of the nearby players and NPCs that were going about their business had stopped to stare curiously at Snowflake as he proudly strutted along behind the group beside Melon. Despite the large variety of beasts that were typically present within Kordas, gryphons were not a common sight, and for many players it was their first time seeing one, period. Snowflake was loving the attention, keeping his beak held high with his eyes closed, allowing his beautiful white feathers to reflect the sunlight.

That all came to an end when they were stopped by the guards out front of the Kordas gates, though.

“Halt. An untamed gryphon cannot be permitted to enter the city. Do you have a tamining license for that beast?” The Kordas guard said as he moved to stand in front of the party. Aegis turned around to look at the others, confused.

“Taming License?” he asked, hoping to get an answer from either Rakkan or Lina.

“Yes, for uncommon wild beasts, you need to prove to a Stablemaster that it will listen to you, so that you can get a license for it. You need to show that license to the gaurds before they will let it walk around in the city.” Lina explained, and as she did she motioned to the nearby stables that sat along the road near them, just outside the gate a few meters away.

“Right.” Aegis sighed, turning to head to the stables.

“And, also… you might want to consider dressing more appropriately.” The guard continued speaking, but Aegis ignored him, leading the others as he arrived at the stables.

“I guess Melon should wait here too.” Pyri said as she hopped off the back of her horse. Aegis approached a stablehand he saw unloading a barrel from a cart just outside of the stables.

“Excuse me sir, are you able to take care of a gryphon for a bit?” Aegis asked him.

“Not going to look for a Stablemaster?” Rakkan asked Aegis.

“Nah, we’ll work on training together back in Rene. For now I just want to turn in this quest.” Aegis shrugged back at Rakkan, while Snowflake let out an acknowledging squawk.

“Ah, yes, we have room for a variety of beasts at our stables. Of course, it will be more expensive than taking care of a horse. How long will you be staying in Kordas?” The stablehand said as he looked between Aegis and his gryphon.

“Not long… You’ll stay here in these stables for a bit, okay? We won’t be long, then we’ll head to our new home.” Aegis said to Snowflake, and Snowflake squawked. “No cages, though. He doesn’t like cages.” Aegis turned to the stablehand and he nodded apprehensively.

“Please take care of Melon as well, she’s a sweetie.” Pyri handed the reins of Melon to the stablehand and he bowed politely, but not before Darkshot took his nest pack off of the side of Melon’s saddle, then carefully lifted out the now dark gray feathered Darkwing out of the nest to cradle it in his hands. The party waved to the two animals, then turned back towards the gates and approached, but they watched as the guard once again stood to block their path, eying their acid-burned clothing up and down.

“Look, we’re going to get new clothes as soon as you let us in the city.” Aegis grumbled at his gaze. The Kordas guard hesitated for another moment before he reluctantly stepped aside and let them pass. The five of them walked together through the southern gate of Kordas, entering the streets where, once inside, despite their low durability attire, barely drew attention from any other players walking the streets.

“Look how big this guy is getting. He’s such a big lil’ fella.” Darkshot said in a babying voice as he gently tickled under Darkwing’s chin, which he seemed to enjoy.

“Sounds like you’re getting along with him. Even though he’s a pigeon.” Rakkan commented with a smirk.

“He’s not just any pigeon. He’s a Kalmoorian pigeon.” Darkshot replied with confidence.

“What’s special about a Kalmoorian pigeon?” Lina asked curiously.

“Well…” Darkshot hesitated. “I don’t know yet. But, we’ll find out. I bet you’ll all be jealous of it, too.” Darkshot finished. Rakkan just shook his head in disbelief at this.

“Whatever, I gotta log for a bit. I promised my parents I’d do some stuff around the house once we finished our quest. Are you guys gonna still be around Kordas tomorrow?” Rakkan asked as he stopped to talk to the others, everyone huddling around off to the side of the Kordas street.

“Yeah, I think I should craft us some new armor and clothes before we head back to the Temple of Shiva. Going like this is a little disrespectful.” Aegis motioned down to his patchwork armor.

“Aite, cool, I’ll catch you guys later.” Rakkan waved before logging out from the gameworld.

“While you are doing the boring crafting, I…” Darkshot motioned to himself with a big smile. “Am going to show my new bird to someone. How’s my hair?” Darkshot asked Aegis as he turned his head to the side for Aegis to look at it closely.

“Uh, fine… I’d be more worried about your clothes.” Aegis shrugged.

“Nah, the acid burns add to the dark mysterious look.” Darkshot replied. “Cya later.” He waved excitedly before rushing off into the city, leaving just three of them now.

“Speaking of breaks.” Pyri said as she stepped forward. “Would you mind picking up groceries for us before you start crafting? The fridge is getting empty.” Pyri asked Aegis.

“Uhm…” He thought on it, he didn’t really want to, but ultimately he knew someone would have to do it. “Yeah, sure,” he shrugged. “Be back in a bit then, I guess.” Aegis waved, half to Lina and Pyri, half to his audience which was now holding steady at 33,000 viewers. Lina smiled and waved to him, watching as he disappeared from the game world, and it was only once he’d gone that she realized she would be alone with Pyri.

“So.” Pyri turned to Lina. The two were staring at a large decorative wagon that passed by them in the street nearby. It had a noisy bard player singing a Yumily song horribly off tune sitting on the roof of it. “You’re dating my son now, huh?” Pyri turned and smiled warmly at Lina, surprising her.

“Uhm… yes.” Lina avoided her eyes and looked down at her feet as she began fidgeting with the hilts of her sheathed daggers.

“Since when?” Pyri asked curiously.

“Well… he asked me out at the fountain, just before we left for the quest.” Lina replied awkwardly.

“I see.” Pyri nodded, and it went awkwardly silent for a moment. “Why did you lie?” Pyri asked her, now also avoiding looking at her.

“Huh? I didn’t!” Lina replied flustered. “He really asked me then, I swear!” She said defensively.

“No, not about that. I meant, about the book, back in Kolz.” Pyri answered.

“Oh…” Lina slowly began to calm down, thinking of an appropriate answer for a moment. “I saw your face. It reminded me a bit of me, when I’m scared of people finding out I did something weird.” Lina shrugged. “I always wish that someone would come and save me from the situation… so.. I thought, ‘I should do that.’” Lina explained as she went back to twiddling her dagger hilts.

“So, you saw what I did?” Pyri asked her timidly.

“No… I even went back to watch it in the livestream viewer, on our way back here,” she motioned to the Kordas streets around them, “but Shinji kept Aegis’ camera pinned on Aegis during that time, so no one could check how it happened.” Lina shrugged, and saw Pyri let out a sigh of relief. “But I guessed… I felt when the gargoyle gaze effect dropped from us for a moment, I even thought about actually shadowstepping to get the book, but I chickened out.” Lina giggled softly.

“Shadowstepping off a cliff would’ve been crazy.” Pyri nodded.

“So it was you?” Lina looked at her curiously and Pyri looked back hesitantly.

“Yeah…” Pyri answered reluctantly.

“With cinderbolts? Without burning the book? That must’ve been really hard to do. Aegis said you were pretty good at games, but that is really high level stuff!” Lina said with adoration in her eyes as she looked at Pyri excitedly, but Pyri looked anything but happy to hear this praise. “Or…” Lina toned her expression down after seeing her reaction. “Did you do something else? Like a cheat, or an exploit?” Lina asked in a whisper.

“No, nothing like that. It was with the cinderbolts.” Pyri confirmed, and Lina nodded, followed by another silence.

“But then, why were you so scared of everyone knowing it was you?” Lina asked her with sincere curiosity.

“It’s just…” Pyri looked at Lina hesitantly, then looked down at her feet and began tapping them on the paved ground nervously. “Can you promise not to tell Aegis?” She asked.

“I promise.” Lina nodded without hesitation.

“I just…” She let out another deep breath. “I don’t want Aegis to know I can do stuff like that. Or anyone, really. The last time I showed what I could do, it ended badly.” Pyri explained as her voice went softer and quieter towards the end of her sentence.

“Oh…” Lina replied as she began to ponder what Pyri was talking about, and slowly but surely she pieced it together in her head. It took awhile for either of them to speak again after that. “Okay, I understand. I have some stuff I don’t want Aegis to know too… so, I promise to keep it a secret.” Lina smiled at Pyri, and Pyri looked back at her and returned the smile.

“Thank you.” Pyri replied. After a few moments of peaceful quiet, though, curiosity began to creep up on Pyri. “What sort of stuff are you hiding from Aegis?” She raised her eyebrows at Lina deviously. “You know, since we’re keeping secrets together now.” She added a shrug.

“Well…” Lina looked back down at her feet. “It’s really embarrassing.” Lina sighed.

“Oh, those are the best sort of secrets.” Pyri rubbed her hands together. “I promise not to tell.”

“Okay…” Lina sighed. “When I remade my game character to play here with him, I couldn’t think of a good name, so I just named myself Silentwire.” Lina replied.

“Hm? What’s weird about that?” Pyri asked.

“I really like using anagrams for game character names…” Lina replied shyly. Pyri took a second to process this in her head, then her eyes went wide with shock.

“Oh. Oh wow. That’s a bit creepy.” Pyri said with a nod of disbelief, but as she did she spotted Lina’s embarrassed expression. “Or sweet, you know. Depending on how you look at it.” Pyri tried to soften the blow.

“Please don’t tell him, he’ll definitely think I’m creepy.” Lina pleaded with Pyri.

“I won’t, promise. Do kids still do pinky swears nowadays?” Pyri said as she held out her pinky finger to Lina.

“Mhm, sometimes.” Lina nodded, and quickly wrapped her pinky around Pyri’s.

“I promise I won’t tell Aegis about your character name.” Pyri nodded.

“I promise I won’t tell him you are really good at this game.” Lina nodded back, and the two girls smiled at each other.

“Phew. I feel a lot better. I’m glad my son picked a girl like you.” Pyri patted her on the shoulder, causing Lina to blush. “Well.” She turned towards the city in front of them. “I’m going to return some of these spell books and try to get a portal spell book. If I had a Kordas portal, we would have avoided a lot of issues in Kolz.” Pyri declared.

“They’re really letting you borrow intermediate spell books from the Wizard Tower?” Lina asked curiously.

“Eh, more or less. I’m not sure if it’ll work a second time, but it's worth a shot.” Pyri shrugged as she started walking in the direction of the Wizard Tower.

“I’ll come help! If they don’t let you borrow the portal book, I can just steal it for you.” Lina said cheerfully.

“I like your style.” Pyri replied as the two walked side by side into the city.

Darkshot found himself in the central market square of Kordas. Not far from the city's busy auction house, set up around a fountain, were countless stalls and kiosks of various merchant players and guilds, as well as NPCs. They were selling items of all sorts, from special furniture, to interesting foods, to rare armors and weapons. Darkshot wasn’t interested in any of that, though, he was specifically looking for one stall in particular, and it didn’t take him long to find it.

He approached the Night Hunter’s stall with a strut as he spotted Sherry behind the counter, speaking to a customer about purchasing one of Tullan’s many crafted weapons. Darkshot waited patiently for her to finish before stepping up to the counter himself.

“Hey.” Sherry smiled at him warmly with a look of recognition. “It’s been awhile, I thought you forgot about me.”

“Forget about you? Of course not.” Darkshot replied, trying to speak in his manly theatrical voice.

“What’s wrong with your voice?” Sherry asked him with a raised eyebrow - having spent plenty of time with him in the training grounds, she knew what he normally sounded like.

“Nothing.” Darkshot faked a cough, returning to his normal voice. “Look, I got a baby bird for completing my class quest.” He said as he excitedly held out Darkwing over the counter. It curiously poked its head up to look at Sherry and let out a light peep.

“Aww… he’s so cute. He doesn’t look like a Darkwing, though.” She commented on the name as she gently stroked the top of the baby bird's head.

“What do you mean? He’s totally a Darkwing. Like Darkshot. Perfect team.” Darkshot motioned to himself.

“I think with a name like Darkshot, you should go with some contrast. Name him Lightwing.” Sherry smirked.

“Nah nah nah.” Darkshot shook his head at this. “Darkwing is the best. Right lil’ guy?” Darkshot turned to the baby bird and it let out another peep. Darkshot watched as Sherry smiled wide at the baby bird and couldn’t resist staring into her beautiful star-shaped pupils. “So, I bet you’re wondering what happened to this armor, right? I could tell you all about the epic adventure I just went on, over dinner? At a restaurant?” Darkshot said as he motioned to the nearby restaurant buildings lining the city square.

“Oh, no need. I saw it all on the livestream. Night Hunters are all pretty big Aegis fans.” Sherry replied with an uninterested shrug.

“Oh… really?” Darkshot replied with a hint of disappointment. “You sure? You saw how I shot those arrows across the abyss at the gargoyles? How I bravely ran through the ooze in the face of certain death?” Darkshot asked, trying to talk up his heroic acts.

“Yup. I also saw how you bravely inched your way over the rope like a cute little inch worm to get to the ruins.” Sherry smiled at him mischievously.

“Well, you know… it was the smartest way to do it.” Darkshot replied defensively.

“Mhm. But my favorite part of your adventure was just before that, you know, when you went to visit the temple of Aphrodite, with your profanity filter turned off.” Sherry said, and her smile completely faded in place of a glare.

“You saw that?” Darkshot said anxiously as he avoided her eyes.

“Mhm.” Sherry replied while crossing her arms.

“Well, you know, it was just for Aegis’ quest. I only went there to help out my friend.” Darkshot replied flustered.

“Mmmhmmm.” Sherry shook her head at him.

“It’s true, I swear! And, my profanity filter is on now. So I can’t see anything anymore.” Darkshot said hastily.

“Riiight.” Sherry shrugged.

“C’mon, give me a chance. We had so much fun training together, right? I’m only in Kordas for a little bit, let me take you out to dinner.” Darkshot pleaded with her as Sherry spotted another player approaching the Night Hunter stall over Darkshot’s shoulder. She looked between the tiny bird, Darkshot’s desperate eyes, and the customer, and didn’t answer for a moment. Eventually, she let out a reluctant sigh.

“Fine, but I pick the restaurant, most of these places here suck. And you’re paying. The stall closes at sunset.” Sherry motioned to the virtual sky above them without looking back at Darkshot as she said all of this.

“Yes!” Darkshot pumped a fist in the air while the other hand carefully held Darkwing. “I’ll be here to pick you up at sunset.” He spun around excitedly as he walked off into the crowds of nearby players, a skip in his step. Sherry caught a glimpse of him skipping away and couldn’t help but smile at his goofiness.

Eli stepped out of the shower, dried off his hair and got dressed as he normally would. It felt strange, putting his shoes on and stepping out of the front door of his house. The real sun should’ve felt differently to him than the virtual sun of the game world did as it shined down on his real skin, but it didn’t. As he walked down his driveway to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street of his neighborhood, it felt barely more real than he had felt walking around the streets of Kordas.

The primary difference was simply that everything around him just looked plain, and boring. Sure, it was all practical - the streets, signs, houses, and gardens were all built with an optimal amount of materials. The bare minimum required for them to perform their functions. But it all looked so boring. There were no strange, unknown beasts pulling along carts of goods down the road, only cars and autopods driving by.

There were no orcs, satyr, or lizardfolk walking about the streets alongside Eli as he made his way to the grocery store, it was just humans, Boring, plain old humans. They couldn’t use magic, either, they just had their implant chips, two hands, and two feet. It wasn’t long before he arrived at the nearly empty parking lot of the grocery store, walked across the asphalt and arrived at the automatic sliding doors that opened with a dinging bell for him as he stepped in front of them.

He entered the shop and felt the cool air conditioned atmosphere take over. He looked at the shelves to see all the prepared meals in cans and boxes on one side of the store. The frozen and refrigerated meats lined up in rows of refrigerated shelves on the other side of the store.

He didn’t need to hunt direwolves or lynx, or boars to get his food. He didn’t need to farm, gather herbs, and make a campfire to cook it. It was all right here, already done for him. All he had to do was put it in a shopping cart, and pay for it. It was simple, easy, convenient, but, most importantly…

“Boring.” Eli mumbled to himself as he thought about it. As he grabbed a shopping cart and started filling it up with food for himself and his mom to eat over the next weeks, he couldn’t help but just feel bored. He looked out the front windows of the shop and just knew, nowhere in the world was there ever going to be a dark looming threat like the abyss or the Avatar’s of Darkness. There was no goddess of Eirene out there who needed his help. No matter how long he looked out the window, a dragon was never going to fly by across the sky above.

As he used his wrist implant to pay for the food and loaded it into grocery bags, he headed out of the shop quickly, a skip of urgency in his step as he excitedly headed back home. He was eager to get back into the game world to spend more time with Lina, his mom, Rakkan, and Darkshot, and keep exploring and getting stronger. For that brief moment of time as he rushed back home from the shop, he’d completely forgotten about why he’d started playing the game entirely. When he got back home, Eli kicked off his shoes and quickly unloaded the groceries into the fridge, freezer, and pantry, but just as he was finishing putting away the last few items, he got a ring on his ear implant, and a notification appeared through his eye implant in his peripheral vision, notifying him that Shinji was calling him.

“Hello?” Eli answered as he tapped his ear implant to accept the call, crumpling up the empty grocery bag and throwing it into the plastic recycling bin in the corner of his kitchen.

“Hey there, it’s Shinji. Do you have some time to talk?” Shinji asked him through the call.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Eli replied.

“Good, but this will be an important discussion that I’d rather do face to face, at least through VR. Would you mind joining me, Hae-won and Tommy in an office meeting simulation?” Shinji asked, his voice sounding serious.

“Yeah, okay…” Eli replied hesitantly, curious what they could possibly want to speak to him about. “Just send me the meeting invite and I’ll hop in my Simbox.”