Chapter 24: Chapter 24. Maybe-enchanter

Frederick was laughing so hard that tears were running down his face until eventually, he started coughing, holding his curled hand over his mouth to keep from spitting into the seeing pool.

He finally stopped laughing enough to gloat, “I told him! I told him if he created a big bad someone would fill the role! All those quests, all those fake prophecies… They are fake, right?”

Lore, Lyric’s dark sister, the goddess of vengeance and dark desires, shrugged, “I am not sure what is so funny. Allister was right. If there weren’t an end goal, a big bad, the travelers would find their own endgame. The highest one right now is only rank 15, but that’s not going to last. And I spoke with Clotho. Her oracles are staying mum. The only stuff they are getting about an endgame is from their quests, not their affinities.”

Frederick liked both sisters, you would kind of have to, considering that they shared a body and came as a set, but Lore’s sense of humor tended toward the morbid schadenfreude and wickedly sardonic. She probably wouldn’t appreciate the Irony until it landed in her lap.

“Yes, but I told him that if he didn’t lock it down, and pick an existing target rather than leave it open-ended, it would play right into the game’s purpose. Baal was more than ready to take on the role, and even Asmodeus would probably have dropped to the prime plane for the power boost if Allister wanted a more… detective story finish.”

Lore shrugged, her long, ebon hair half-obscuring the olive tones of her face and covering one violet eye as she replied, “Yes, but then they would have had to keep an eye on him to keep him from abusing it. Baal or Kronos would have been more than happy to use the quest as an excuse to tip the prime plane into their own realm long before anyone was powerful enough to meet the threat, and if that happens, Allister and his ilk lose. Plus, they are just…”

“Lazy.” Frederick finished for her, and she nodded. “They are lazy. They could have found a volunteer anywhere, even one of their own. But if they did it and gave him a power level, they would have to immediately start creating a new set of challenges, maybe a new realm, once they were inevitably beaten.” She finished.

Frederick chuckled, “Exactly. The problem is, they are used to outlasting any of their problems, never do today what you can put off long enough for your opponent to die of old age. I can understand that attitude, and Atropos just cackles gleefully any time I try and talk to her about it. I swear she knows something, she doesn’t want this world killed off any more than we do, but she has a weird sense of humor.”

Lore nodded, trailing her fingers in the pool and setting the image of the kobold and the kitsune fiddling with the dwarf’s shield wavering. “Well, she alone knows when the world is supposed to end. I would take her amusement as a positive sign because when she’s asked about it she usually just gets depressed.”

Frederick sighed and flopped down on his throne. It was comfortable, as thrones go, but he was getting tired of just hanging out in his realm. He wanted desperately to go for a flight, but if anyone saw him, and someone would, it would give AO the excuse it needed to set up entire quest chains to wipe out his followers. Allister and Frederick were not friends, and Allister would use any excuse to smash Frederick’s power base since he knew full well that it was only the pact that kept the two of them from each other’s throats, and Frederick was very good at dealing with throats.

“Well, how is Mnemosyne doing?”

Lore smiled a little, just a hint, without the snark that such an expression usually held for her, and for just a moment in the unguarded expression, you could truly see her resemblance to her sister.

“She has him convinced that she’s just a figment of his unconscious mind. Some kind of story about his head exploding if her true goddess power was there like she was Flame or Morgaine.”

Frederick grinned, “Well, the muses are the masters of fiction, although convincing someone you are a figment of their imagination from inside their head, must have been a feat worthy of Nektuso.”

She shook her head, “Not really. He’s very… accepting of the words of others, something about the way his brain works. He’s used to getting lied to, so he just locks potential lies into that part of his mind where he keeps his emotions until he can decide what to do with them. Since that’s where she’s living, he took her at face value.”

Frederick nodded, “Makes sense, now that I think about it, she probably was the only one that could do it. Anything good?”

Lore shrugged, “She says that he’s evolved twice, and is following the mind path as you’d hoped. He has even invented a new form of runic enchantment, way simpler than traditional enchanting. Something to do with knot-tying that just requires a hint of mana to activate. Obviously, he’s just starting to hammer it out, but it’s like minor enchantments for dummies. If he shares it, it could revolutionize enchanting that’s not dependent on AO skill trees, but it won’t help much for the high-end stuff.”

“He’s trying to be an enchanter?” Frederick asked. That was normally one of the routes that hero nerds took. Once Allister made sure that AO created quest chains for toppling despots, destroying evil archmages, and stopping demon and undead invasions, he'd snatched up over half of the game's functions, leaving it without the resources to summon a real hero. To quote one of Frederick's favorite Earth movies, when everyone is a hero, no one is.

Lore shook her head again, “No, he’s a sailor. He was just looking for an easier way to do some basic gear-making and grabbed an evolution on the fly that combined both channel and imbue with his knowledge of weaving and knot-tying. It doesn’t take those affinities to use, just to build. I think it surprised the hell out of her since he was talking about steel and magical coding like a traditional hero… and then he grabbed something most people would consider their grandmother’s skill set.”

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She chuckled a little, “I caught Mnemosyne by surprise, and she’s used to working with historians and sages, I think she likes being surprised. Plus, it’s given Celia a new avenue of attack. Just his growth has given her almost 6% of her resources back, although, if Dirt gets lost, she’s going to lose another 2%. Still, she’s working on the quest system, In her position, Nem can give Celia a push to give him some quests to work on, especially if he is the Destroyer. Right now he’s an underdog, and if there’s a hint that he can become this thing, Lachesis can give the game a lot to work with, and she will. She loves underdog stories, even the villain ones.”

Lore smiled, this time with her trademark vengeful look, “it’s also something just about anyone with a weaving or tailor skill can learn and implement on a small scale once he fleshes it out a little, no sorcery, imbuing, or elemental affinities needed.”

Frederick knew well how Lore tended to react, and that smile meant something. “You are thinking this will close a hole in non-adventurers being able to defend themselves, aren’t you?”

Lore nodded, “Yes, I will ask my sister to push him to share it once he gets the kinks worked out. Smiths, farmers, and herders have always been able to defend themselves, so just imagine some sweet young thing getting kidnapped by dead-end raiders on her way to meet her future husband, only instead of being a helpless victim, she opens up her hope chest, and lets her wedding sheets eat the bandits.”

Frederick chuckled, he always liked Lore like this. “Speaking of bloody sheets and working the kinks out…”

It wasn’t flying, but with Lore’s gleeful participation, it came pretty close.

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It took a lot more energy, but it turned out that my claws could peel away bronze in strips, sort of like carving a piece of soft pine with a pocket knife, rather than the clay that normal stone felt like.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing, but after a few false starts carving the designs out of stone and showing Mae what I was doing, she helped me work up a sort of Celtic knotwork design that Cassie could feel well enough to add earth essence when she woke up after about four hours. Carving it around the bronze edge of her shield was a pain, but it was a shallow enough cut that it didn’t seem to affect the integrity of the shield itself. There was a gap where the dire rat had taken a bite out of the shield, but Cassie had a pot of glue and we filled the gap with an appropriately-shaped piece of bootsole and continued the pattern.

The pattern Cassie helped us choose was one that she claimed, after several carvings of Celtic knotwork from memory, resonated with her earth affinity. It was a simple 3-strand braid, and I had quite a bit of malachite that I trimmed into shape and fitted into the grooves. It went surprisingly quickly, and by the time Rik reappeared, I had already fed a hefty dose of Magic into the pattern, which held it far better than my knife did.

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