The Secret of the Dark Forest ( (The Way of the Shaman: Book #3) (33 page)

"No," the girl shook her head, "you seem to be a sensible person, capable of listening to a woman's point of view, rather than one of the 'alpha-males', for whom there are only two types of opinion: theirs and the wrong one. For example, go outside and try Donotpunnik."

"What's he got to do with this?"

"What indeed. He is your second adviser. Like the rest of the raid, he had his quest updated and, according to the Agreement, has a right to know how it happened. And fishing everything out of you, down to the smallest detail, isn't that much of a challenge for him. Especially if you're unprepared."

"Yeah, right, so you, being so kind and magnificent, are willing to prepare me to face the monstrous Donotpunnik, eh? I can't call what you're doing right now anything other than a scam. So what do you want for the great honor of training me, then?"

"Nothing extraordinary. We agree that I will have the opportunity to ask you any question, to which you will give me the fullest possible answer. That's it. For that I am prepared to help you."

"Just a question? And not to transfer or hand something over? Just information?"

"Exactly. Items are not my highest priority ..."

"Tell that to the Chess Pieces," I muttered and tried to think hard: what could Anastaria ask that I would really prefer not to tell her? How to find the Dragons? That's stupid: she's a Siren, so it would make little sense for her to go visiting Dragons. They'd go into 'Patriarch mode', blocking any attempts to speak to them and chuck her out of their world. What else? How to become a Shaman? Total nonsense, since there's probably plenty of information about that out there. The Chess Set riddles I was going to throw to her anyhow, because I need the answers. And that's it; I can’t think of anything else. So, on one hand I should win in this exchange, but knowing Anastaria ... she's being just a bit too approachable, something isn't right here.

"Fine”, I finally forced out a reply, "I will answer your question, only let's be clear on what exactly you're going to do. 'I can help' is too vague – it could mean just about anything, down to tying my shoelaces. And nothing more useful than that."

"Sending you an agreement, it covers everything. At one point I signed a similar one with Ehkiller, so I still have the template. If the wording suits you, you can proceed to tell me exactly what went down yesterday."

"When the majority of the players returned to reality, I told my fighters the reason that Elenium left and why you joined the clan. I stayed within the limits of the confidentiality agreement, but I gave them the basic idea." I signed the agreement and then gave an accurate account of what happened last night. "In the morning I woke up to the avalanche of clan applications and then saw you snooping on me."

"So it looks like aside from Hatred you managed to get a 320-level ring for Paladins and Priests out of the encounter ...," said Anastaria thoughtfully. "Why are you so damn lucky? Even I don't have anything higher than 300 ... all right, we'll return to the ring later. Would you mind if we invited Clutzer?" the girl asked me, "It's time he started learning."

"Agreed. I'll call him over."

"Clutzer. Come into the tent, there's stuff we need to talk about."

"I wonder – will Plinto stop him or obey your order?" muttered the girl musingly. "I did ask him not to let anyone into the tent ... . One point to Mahan," she added, when she saw Clutzer come in, "Plinto's your man, congratulations. All right, let's begin. The majority of the players have only one question now – what happened during the night? Our aim is to produce a decent explanation for yesterday's events, without revealing any secrets, because under the Agreement Donotpunnik will be demanding full information. And he will be within his right: the quests have been renewed and people like him are real sticklers for details. So we have to figure out what we can tell him and what we can't. Here's what I'm proposing to do in view of what happened on account of Mahan's Totem and, most importantly, why I'm proposing it ..."

"Attention, everyone! General meeting in five minutes!" I shouted as soon as I came out of the tent. "I have information that I intend to share under the conditions of our Agreement! There is no need to surround me now – I'll be telling everyone everything a little later in any case." I immediately stopped the players who had begun to approach me. It was Anastaria's suggestion that any attempts to refer to non-compliance with signed documents had to be shut down. This was quite dangerous, because there was no telling which way the Imitators' brains would spin if it came to any disputes. But if I made a clear announcement of my intention to comply with my own Agreement conditions, it would be hard for them to find fault. Moreover, as the raid leader, I had to draw attention to my good self and ramp up interest in [anticipation of] the meeting. Simple psychology, nothing unlawful.

"So, yesterday, when the majority of the players logged out to reality," I began with the requisite reference to the fact that it was their own fault, letting it slip that I didn’t mean all of them – just the majority. Let them look at each other and wonder which of them was around and is withholding information. Few know that only those unable to log out had stayed behind. "A Vampire-scout entered the glade. One that had not been changed. Yes! Aside from those we've come across, this forest also has unchanged Vampires. He used a portal and brought me to the camp of the local partisans and I spoke to their leader. You can all see the result – the quest was updated. I managed to find out the cause of the taint and what it is we have to do. The Boss refused to tell me the place where the Tear was stuck into the ground, insisting that the war between them and the Fallen was an internal affair of the Dark Forest. They will neither help nor hinder us."

Anastaria had laid out so many arguments why we shouldn't tell the others about the Patriarch, that in the end I agreed with her. I may have Hatred with him, but she, when she goes back to Phoenix, will have a chance of finding him and getting some quests out of him. When I voiced these suspicions, Anastaria smiled and proposed an agreement whereby Seathistles would get ten percent of any loot that Phoenix could manage to get out of the Patriarch from the moment this promise is made. This agreement was made on Ehkiller’s behalf. Of all things, I've never heard of such a method of signing agreements on behalf of another clan, so after swapping a couple of phrases with Clutzer and raising our profit to 15%, I agreed. The text of the agreement appeared before my eyes, sporting Ehkiller's signature just a minute later. He signed under the girl's words – and that was that. The door to the Patriarch was now closed to me anyhow. ...

"I summoned my Totem during my meeting with the Vamps: him." With these words I summoned Draco. I had debated this point quite furiously with Anastaria: she was very insistent that I should show off my Dragon, switching all the attention from the Vampire boss to him. I kept refusing, arguing that he was still too small: if people were to see him now they'd start hunting and killing him, bringing his level down by 10 levels per death. All in all my arguments were quite childish, while Anastaria contended that I’d have to hurry up with leveling my Dragon, and that this would be pretty difficult if I kept hiding him from everyone. And I also had to give some kind of explanation for the increase in my rank: yesterday everyone had left an Elemental Shaman behind, but they were suddenly seeing a Great one. Ranks don't go up just like that; you have to do something extraordinary for that to happen. In the end I’d agreed to show Draco, so now I was watching the reactions of the players very closely. There had been all kinds of creatures in Barliona in the fifteen years of the Game, but no-one had come across a Dragon before. Before the events in Beatwick no-one had even believed they existed, and suddenly here's a Shaman with a pet Dragon! "With the help of the Dragon I’ve fulfilled certain class-based conditions and become a Great Shaman, but I also learnt of a certain Dragon trait: Hatred with Vampires. I discovered this last night, when the local partisan boss almost sent me for respawn, so I'm not a suitable contact for this group. If we should run across any more unchanged ones, I propose that we send Anastaria and Donotpunnik, my deputies, to communicate with them. What I just described is exactly what happened during the night. Let the Emperor be my judge if I lied!" I waved away the message informing me that I was summoning the main Imitator in Malabar as a witness too often and that from my next summons I would start receiving terrible penalties, and looked at the players. As Stacey had pointed out, I wasn't facing a bunch of gamer kids, who had just seen a Dragon for the first time, but the top managers of the largest Game corporations: they would not take even their own word at face value unless it has been verified in writing and certified by a notary. After I’d honestly retold last night's events it would be impossible not to believe me. You couldn't deceive the Emperor. He doesn't check just the formal side of things, when something unsaid is equated with the truth, oh no. If you wanted your words to be verified, you had to tell enough of the truth to pass the test. Any play on words counts as a lie for him ... .

In a few hours' time, having gathered into one big group, we ventured out from the Guardian's glade. According to our scouts, there was no-one for a radius of a couple of kilometers around, so the raid wasn't in danger of running across another Ash. The option of using flying pets to travel was ruled out after one of the players mounted his griffin and flew up. As soon as he rose ten meters above the ground, he immediately disappeared. According to the map – upon which the player was indicated by a small dot – and the swearing in the raid chat, he was thrown right back to the entrance to the Dark Forest, where we’d been initially teleported by the High Priestess. The player tried to fly back to us from there but as he got close to us he disappeared again upon landing. He was back at the start of the Dark Forest and once again there was much swearing. It became clear that only travel on foot was possible in this location. According to the unlucky player, he needed two hours to get to where we were. So we would have to wait ...

"Elementals, two hundred meters, 300+, eight heads, two full sets: twenty meters apart.
Mage support, twenty, 350+: zero meters apart."
Plinto's economical report appeared before my eyes in the raid chat. As soon as our raid group was back together, we moved towards the center of the forest. All possible paths vanished within an hour of walking, so after sending the scouts ahead, we started to beat our way through the trees, leaving a narrow path behind us. The mages, to give them their due, managed to burn a hundred meters of the forest in less than five minutes by using their Mana prudently, allowing the raid to keep moving. No-one was keen on trying to fight through the thicket. In the end, after three hours of this kind of movement, we'd put quite a distance between the Guardian’s glade and us as we searched for Midial's troops. Now finally Plinto had run across them. I couldn't help feeling pleased that I’d managed to understand at first glance what that potentially incomprehensible text actually meant. A sure sign that I was getting the hang of it.

"The Rogues take the mages, keep half stunned and interrupt the casts of the rest," Anastaria said as soon as we called a council. "Elementals are more difficult. One tank won't be able to handle a full set; he'll get mowed down. But the distance between the mobs will allow us to pull them one by one, so it shouldn't be too bad. Then we ..."

"Elementals and mages fifty meters. ETA to raid – 30 seconds. You've been spotted."
Plinto's next message interrupted Anastaria's lecture. The girl spent a couple of seconds looking at Donotpunnik, somewhat lost, but then the spark appeared once more in her eyes and my Deputy began to muster the raid:

"Phoenix, drive Alpha, Hell you're on the fire ones! Undigit, the water ones are yours, Etamzilat, get the air ones. 'Killer, try to stop the earth ones. We hit single-target only! If I see anyone using AoE spells, I'll rip them a new one! All Rogues, to the mages! Stun them! Small fries – three hundred meters back into the forest, now! All the Priests twenty paces back and get anyone who’s down back up! Here we go guys, this is gonna get messy!"

"Visitors – 20 meters. Hitting you in 10 seconds. Moving very fast, I can't manage to ..."

With a wild crash the trees twenty meters from us fell down and for the first time in my gaming life I saw a Fire Elemental. Before, in pictures, holograms and video this mob didn't look all that big or scary, but now ... it was a nearly two-meter tall pillar of fire, moving in the air about a meter off the ground and burning off even the mist from underneath it. The players were engulfed in a wave of warm air. After bursting into our clearing the Elemental halted for a second, looked around and, with a strange screech, headed toward us. Behind what was presumably its back pillars of water, earth and air started to appear, figures of human mages flashing between them. The 'guests' had arrived.

"I'm taking the flaming ones!" shouted Hellfire, throwing an axe at the impressive spectacle and pulling another with his tanking ability.

"I'm on Hell and Undigit," shouted Anastaria, starting to pour healings into the Tank, whose Health started to slide. "Plinto, the mages! 'Killer, slow the earth! Don – help with the mages! Mahan! Why are you still here? Get back, now!"

"Minus two! Five are in stun! Crowd-control on the rest! ..."

"Elenium, get Brast up! Some Priest, damn you! Move it!"

"Mahan, get out of the way! Beat it already! Hell, I'm running out of Mana! Hunker down, I'll recharge! Everyone hit the mages – Elementals have immunity slapped on them!"