A Thousand Drunken Monkeys: Book 2 in the Hero of Thera series Page 11

  No. Not going there.

  Back into your box, oh unwanted implanted memories.

  Yeah. Not so easy. I took a few moments to try to sort through it all, but it was too much pain to process. And it was so damnably fresh in my mind… well, because it had been seared into my neurons only a few hours ago.

  A new tiny window appeared:

  MAGE OF THE LINE SPECIAL CLASS FEATURE

  Unlike other spells that require gestures, foci, or some ritual—none are required for Mage of the Line abilities as the manipulation of ley lines occurs in the AETHER, a dimension outside normal space-time. Mage of the Line abilities, therefore, appear in the normal world to be cast almost instantaneously and there are no corresponding spell cooldowns.

  This explained why Balaster Saint had been so lightning fast when he’d demonstrated his abilities to me. My attempts had always seemed so slow in comparison because I was in the aether. From Dad’s perspective in normal space-time, I would have looked just as quick.

  Okay. That cleared that up.

  On a more practical note—wow! This feature was a major bonus.

  In the aether I could spam as many spells as I wanted in the middle of combat, taking no relative time to do it. The only limitation seemed to be my available mana.

  Actually, this was a little gross. What was the catch?

  I was sure I’d find out soon enough.

  I moved on to the last three abilities to choose from:

  Energy Redirection: Energies directed at the Mage of the Line may be harmlessly channeled into the aether.

  Range: 10 yards.

  Mana Cost: 1 mana per point of energy deflected, maximum 10 points.

  Energy Tap: Tap local ley lines and project energy into the normal world (cone of fire, electrical discharge, sonic boom, etc.). Type of energy is dependent on the particular ley line tapped.

  NOTE: Discharged energies usually do not harm the caster.

  Range: 10 yards.

  Cost: Fixed at 20 mana to channel 10 points of energy.

  Life Energy Drain: Use dormant ley lines to siphon the life force from a living creature into you.

  Range: 10 yards.

  Cost: 1 health drained/healed per 3 mana expended, up to maximum of one-third the target’s total health or 10 points health drained (whichever is greater).

  Energy Tap was a basic bread-and-butter attack ability. More versatile than a normal beginner mage spell, however, because you could choose the damage type. Cool.

  Life Energy Drain was this class’s starting healing ability. Necromancy? Evil? I wasn’t sure. In any case, I’d just boosted my Spiritual Regeneration, so the chi-ability’s healing-to-mana ratio was much more effective than this.

  Energy Redirection was nice, but as a Spirit Warrior, I already had a decent chance to dodge such dangers.

  So, I crossed Energy Redirection and Life Energy Drain off the list, which left Energy Tap and the physical version of Small Pass as my two abilities.

  I hoped I’d be able to combine Energy Tap with my martial art skills.

  Fists of Fire! Lightning Kick! Freezing Death Touch!

  I better not get carried away. I still didn’t understand all the ins and outs of the ley lines and the aether.

  I think I now got why you selected your two starter abilities before you really understood this class. It was like picking a class specialization path first. Depending on your choices, this class became a mentalist type, illusionist, necromancer, or in my case, battle mage—all with correspondingly different progression paths.

  But that begged the question: Why do it that way?

  I finalized my choices and new text appeared.

  MAGE OF THE LINE SKILLS & ABILITIES

  Passive Skills:

  Reflexive Mana: Gain a mana pool based on your REFLEX stat. This manifests as the ability to reach into the aether and manipulate the slippery psycho-physical ley lines. If this mana pool ever drops to zero, your REFLEX stat also drops to ZERO until this mana pool entirely regenerates.

  Obscura Totata: Your player title placard is altered to conceal this class.

  Active Skills:

  Visualize Aether: Project your astral presence into the aether to see and manipulate ley lines. Since you are attuned to the true underlying nature of reality, you gain a one-time bonus of +1 to your PERCEPTION.

  Range: Visualization range varies from region to region in the aether. Ley line manipulation range is the same as your normal physical reach.

  Cost: Varies slightly from region to region in the aether, but approximately 1 mana per second of subjective time spent in the aether.

  WARNING: If you exhaust your reflexive mana in the aether, your astral presence will be severed from your physical body. This is fatal.

  Basic Spells:

  You have selected Small Pass (Physical) and Energy Tap as your beginning spell-like abilities. At higher levels, more options and higher tiers of these basic abilities may be unlocked.

  (Tap and hold spell names if you wish to review details here.)

  Skills:

  Sleight of Hand (5/30): Perform feats of legerdemain and prestidigitation—card tricks, making coins vanish, three-card monte, etc. This is a physical skill, not a magical one.

  As you have selected a new secondary class, you receive:

  THREE STAT points and SEVEN non-combat skill points to distribute as you see fit.

  A few surprises here. The bonus PERCEPTION was appreciated. And as expected, a mana pool based on my already high REFLEX was great, but the downside of depleting that pool was serious. I’d have to watch that—especially while I was in the aether. Also, I hadn’t expected my range of manipulating ley lines to be the same as my physical reach. I was glad I’d picked up Blackwell’s Band since it tripled that.

  But what was up with this Obscura Totata skill? It had to have something to do with the Mage of the Line being a “secret” class.

  And hey! Sleight of hand. I’d always wanted to do card tricks. I had a hunch that with a little practice and ingenuity I’d find a few combat applications for that skill too. Thrown playing cards perhaps?

  As far as the extra stat, combat, and non-combat skill points?

  If I’d leveled up as a Spirit Warrior, I’d have had four stat points. I’d gotten three here with a freebie +1 to PERCEPTION, so that was a wash. The combat skill points I would have gotten as a Spirit Warrior were gone—but considering I’d just received an entirely new set of abilities, that was more than a fair trade. The non-combat skill point increase had remained the same.

  Not too shabby.

  Congratulations!

  ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

  “Black Swan”

  You are the first Player in over a hundred years to be a MAGE OF THE LINE.

  You are indeed a rare breed.

  An icon of a silhouetted swan with spread wings appeared and faded.

  Good?

  Why, though, was I the only player in over a century to pick this class? Maybe since the Game had a bazillion classes, this “rare” achievement wasn’t really so rare after all.

  Over the next few hours, I ran through all the ways I might assign my points.

  I ended up adding a point to REFLEX, EGO, and STRENGTH.

  My REFLEX was already high, and I’d want it even higher as so many of my martial arts abilities and now my Mage of the Line mana depended on it.

  I needed the extra point in EGO to use the headband. This also boosted my spiritual mana, so that was good.

  Why bother with STRENGTH? I’d get more health, it would add damage to my strikes, boost my carrying capacity, and well, this wasn’t strictly a min-max strategy, but I wanted to look a bit more buff too.

  So, along with the PERCEPTION bump for being a Mage of the Line, and the +1 STRENGTH and REFLEX bonuses from the demon bone knuckles, I had:

  BODY: 15

  STRENGTH: 5

  REFLEX: 10

  HEALTH: 160

  MANA (Reflexive): 100r />
  MIND: 4

  INTELLECT: 0

  PERCEPTION: 4

  SOUL: 7

  EGO: 4

  GHOST: 3

  MANA (Spiritual): 70

  I felt faster, stronger—just better! (although one of these days I was going to have to give myself a point of INTELLECT).

  And new non-combat skills? I’d wait. I’d had enough memory cutting and pasting for one day.

  Besides, just then the wagon came to a halt.

  There were scrapes and shuffles overhead as debris was cleared, and then the lid of my coffin was crowbarred open.

  Two gnome drivers peered down, both holding their noses and waving me to get out.

  It was good to finally breathe fresh—whoa! The smell was like a punch in the face (followed by a roundhouse kick).

  I got over the side of the wagon and puked…

  right next to Morgana who was doing the same.

  “Oh, shoulda warned you.” Elmac knelt next to us. “Sorry ’bout that.”

  I purged the scrambled egg breakfast Lordren had served us along with coffee and rare cognac. After my stomach had given up its last and my eyes were done watering, Elmac herded us away from the stench.

  There was no sign of High Hill’s wall. There were open meadows and fields of corn that stretched to the horizon. I turned and saw the overwhelming smell was not coming from the stuff in Lordren’s wagon, but from a five-hundred-foot tall mountain of trash and decomposing organic material.

  “’Taint pretty,” Elmac said, “but Father always told me to be judging a civilization by the quality of its waste disposal engineering. He said ‘A city covered in shit, be shit.’”

  He dusted off his hands. “Now, let’s go see ’bout supper.”

  CHAPTER 12

  We moved a half mile—upwind.

  It was late. The rays of Thera’s golden sun reached toward the horizon, so Elmac found a spot within a stand of willows to set up camp. From his massive pack (which was as large as himself and stuffed to the bursting point), he pulled out a cantaloupe-sized stone, spoke a word to it, and set it on the ground. The stone glowed red hot.

  How had I ever gotten by without magic?

  He then found three sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and doled them out. Between slabs of a French baguette was a half rasher of crisp bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes.

  You’d have thought after my earlier gastrointestinal distress, food would have been the last thing on my mind. Wrong. I was ravenous and tore through the thing in ninety seconds.

  Elmac handed me a second sandwich (Morgana too) and set a stovetop espresso maker on the heat stone.

  “So… Elmac,” Morgana said around mouthfuls. “Go back to what you were saying before. That entire mountain is a loo?”

  “Aye, ’twas built centuries ago,” Elmac explained. “The pit dug, pipes laid—all fine dwarven engineering, mind you.”

  “That makes no sense,” I said.

  I turned around to study the “mountain” of trash situated in a crater. It was surrounded by a wide moat of sewage that poured in through dozens of ten-foot wide pipes. Really gross.

  You’ve undoubtedly caught a whiff of an ordinary latrine, but consider adding the smells of troll dung, dragon poop, and other mythological creature waste by-products. Without going into details—the odor I’d gotten a sniff of earlier was of equal mythic stature.

  “That thing is almost overflowing,” I said. “If it was dug ‘centuries ago,’ it would have filled up a hundred times over.”

  “Actually,” Elmac told me, “it ’bout fills every week.”

  Morgana and I exchanged a perplexed look.

  “Someone carts it all off then?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said and squinted at the sun as it inched toward the edge of the world. “’Tis best you be seeing it yourself. Let’s take a look, eh?”

  Morgana shrugged, as did I, and we three walked to the edge of our little grove.

  After a moment, the sun kissed the earth and its rays painted the eastern sky with pink and orange.

  The ground trembled.

  The titanic pile of refuse shifted and avalanches of trash tumbled down its slopes. My ears popped, willow branches rustled, and the air filled with a near sub-sonic sucking sound.

  The moat boiled. Plumes of steam geysered about the edges. Parts of the pile caught fire and spiraled into cyclones of flame.

  The moat then drained away, and the entire pile of putrefying poop started to sink, picking up speed as it went… to where exactly?

  In the span of four heartbeats, it was gone. All of it.

  Amber light flickered within the pit, faded, and went dark.

  “That was…” I started but honestly didn’t even have a guess.

  “A volcano?” Morgana offered.

  “No,” Elmac said. “The pit be dug over a cyclical gate to some hell dimension. There be two reasons for that. First, the whole mountain be a plug so no beasties get through to Thera. Second, the other side has a lower atmospheric pressure. When the gate opens” —he made a fist, stuck his thumb in the bottom, then quickly pulled it out to demonstrate— “whoosh! The whole kit and caboodle be pushed through and dumps a mile over the ground on the other side.”

  “Holy sh—” Morgana whispered.

  The citizens of High Hill just might have found the most audacious (and perhaps most practical) use for a trans-dimensional gate ever.

  Somewhere in the many hells, it was raining trash and crap upon the heads of whatever demons were plotting no good. Poetic justice if you ask me. Although… I wondered if perhaps this was a contributing factor as to why demons were so hostile toward mortals.

  I loved Thera. Where else in the multiverse could flushing a toilet be a spectacle of epic proportions?

  Moreover, this felt like a metaphor that my luck had finally come to a turning point.

  We’d almost been similarly sucked into that assassination quest. While I knew there was outstanding business to stop said assassins from murdering innocent people, and some payback for the Bloody Rooster, we had extracted ourselves from a very sticky situation.

  And now? Level up, get Elmac in the Game, and be able to think without worrying about getting stabbed in the back. Hopefully, by the time we returned to High Hill, Colonel Delacroix would have gotten Elmac’s message and come up with a way to help.

  It was a tricky balance. We weren’t powerful enough to take on the Silent Syndicate, but every day we were away gaining levels and abilities… people might die.

  I didn’t like it, but it seemed the least-bad strategy.

  On the philosophical side of this, we were now forging our own path instead of being led by the Game, or Game Master. Not a trivial point. How was I going to free all of Creation from the machinations of the gods, if I couldn’t even free myself? Practice what you preach, brother.

  Elmac passed me a dented flask. “Nip?” he asked.

  I took it, braced, and sipped. I was pleasantly surprised to taste a smooth and chilled-just-above-freezing vodka martini.

  I handed it to Morgana, who took one, two, three slugs.

  She returned the flask to Elmac. “Brilliant.”

  The show over, we wandered back to camp and settled about the glowing heat stone.

  Morgana lay on her side before the warmth like a cat in front of a radiator.

  She had new gear too. Her old leather armor had been upgraded to a full matched suit, complete with hood and little ears. This was not the cute lingerie outfit that probably just popped into your head… none of that breast-popping corset or bare midriff stuff.

  The armor was matte black leather with subtle blackened mithril exoskeletal articulations at the knees, elbows, and one shoulder. There were a half dozen sheaths on the thighs, two crisscrossing the back, and a few on the forearms—all to hold an arsenal of darts, throwing stars, daggers, and short swords. Fine scales of black metal covered the vulnerable areas. The boots were made of a thick pebbled hide th
at could have come from some gigantic Gila monster.

  Morgana didn’t make a sound moving in it, either.

  I was curious, so I asked if it was enchanted.

  She brought a finger to her lips then whispered, “A lady has to have her secrets. You’ll see soon enough.”

  “Can’t wait,” I remarked a tad acidly.

  Her gaze darted over my head. “What’s with your placard?”

  I shot her a quizzical look. “I can’t see it. What do you mean?”

  “Well, you leveled up” —she snorted— “congrats. But it doesn’t say what you leveled up to. Third-level Spirit Warrior… and then there’s an ‘M’ …but the rest gets cut off like someone used too big a font.”

  That must be my new Obscura Totata skill in action.

  I shrugged. “Guy’s got to have his secrets.”

  Two could play that game.

  Her lips pursed. “The bloody Black Swan achievement, too? You have all the luck, you do. That thing is supposed to be beyond rare.”

  I took a mock bow to hide my growing concern.

  With so much unknown about my new class, I didn’t think it wise to flaunt this particular achievement anymore. It would only lead to questions I couldn’t answer.

  I went into my interface and de-selected the icon from my player placard.

  “So you leveled up?” Elmac asked me. “How much more till you be fifth? I be itching to start. Got a few ideas for my character… and then a few necks to break for what happened to the Rooster.”

  How was I going to explain to Elmac that a new first-level character would have no chance against a society of assassins? I’d already told him that while he’d be reincarnated into a new body, he might lose some of the abilities he had in this life. I wasn’t sure that had sunk in yet. We’d have to get him to at least third level, or better fourth… or fifth, so he’d stand a decent chance of surviving.

  On the other hand, in the Free Trial Morgana and I had prevented an elder god from entering Thera. Who was I to say what could and couldn’t be done? Of course, we’d also come within a hair’s breadth of being sacrificed to said elder god.