Demonic Magician

Knowledge equalling power was a common saying, probably across all the realities that most Players came from. It could be a key to open a doorway that hindered your progress. Just as easily, that door could have been preventing something untoward darkening your porch, and the knowledge had instead just drawn you closer to your doom. Perhaps I should draw some smiley faces next to my notes to make them feel less drab. :) No. That just seems disingenuous.

We tensed up as a black cat walked into the sparse light of the canopy swaying in the breeze. With the shimmer of a dark mist, the small creature rose up into the figure of a woman. Her adventuring gear was various shades of black and dark gray, a slight bagginess to them that signaled to me she possibly wasn’t much of a melee fighter.

Her bright green eyes were a contrast to her dark skin and black hair - but perhaps the second and third most striking thing about her were the cat's ears atop her head, and the tail that waved behind her as she leaned lazily against a tree.

My fingers gripped my card too tightly, drawing blood from my own hand. “Who are you? Do you work for the Lady in Red?” My voice came out a lot sterner than I was used to, my usual flare washed away by the stress of potential antagonists.

“Me? No… I do not.” She grinned widely, seemingly amused at the attacks readied toward her. “I’m perhaps one of the few that do not work for the Crimson Shadow now.”

“Crimson Shadow?” I asked, still not convinced this woman was worth trusting.

“I see you are lacking in knowledge. Allow me to introduce myself.” She bowed, her tail flicking side to side behind her, before she leaned back against the shadowed tree. “My name is Hannah. Perhaps we can trade?”

I shot a side glance toward Ren, and the elf just shrugged in response. Wolf was still on edge, possibly slightly confused that the cat had turned into a person. That could just be me projecting. I had seen enough oddities to know when to suspend my disbelief, but the regularity was almost unpalatable.

“Oh!” Hannah narrowed her eyes. “Is your bear a shapeshifter too, or a pet?”

“I’m just a Player,” he grunted in response.

She nodded slowly. “Fascinating. This System really is something, huh? So how about the trade?”

I exhaled through my nose and allowed my card to fade away, flexing some comfort back into my fingers. Ren kept her arrow drawn, which was fine. I could be a little careless if she had my back. “What did you want, and for what are we trading for?”

She sucked her teeth. “Well. That depends. Are you after information on the Lady and her new gang? She’s quite the up-and-comer around here.”

“And what in return?” I worked my jaw. This information could be worth its weight in gold, and perhaps the shapeshifter knew this. We were currently stumbling around in the dark when it came down to the Lady and the goons she had gathered. If we could get the upper hand then perhaps we could sleep a little easier at night.

“I may have overheard you received a couple of Power Tokens. You’re new here, so I’ll even make you a deal. I’ll give you the information first, and you give me a Token once I’m done.”

Ren huffed. “What’s stopping us from taking the information and not paying up?”

“Well...” Hannah grinned widely. “The Crimson Shadow might pay me well for your location.”

“So what’s stopping you from telling them even if we do pay you?” I was already growing tired of the games. It was easier when someone was a friend or foe from the outset. Despite my usual charms, I was slowly starting to accept that I didn’t need to wow everyone over to be a fan. Just most people.

She shrugged. “I suppose you’d need to trust me.”

Ren and I exchanged glances. Still a scowl there, but I reckoned we were on the same page. I adjusted my hat and stood up straight. “Very well, we accept.”

“Purrfect.” She grinned again. “That’s a little cat joke. You have no idea how it tickles me to annoy people with it.”

“I can imagine,” Ren said plainly, ignoring my questioning glare.

“So, this 'Lady in Red'.” Hannah rubbed at her face. “She came over and almost immediately herded all the black sheep of the area. No idea how. She must have some kind of ability for it, right?”

I nodded. “She was running a criminal group in New Forest before we forced her out.”

“So we have you to thank.” She rolled her green eyes. “Good information, thanks. Anyway, she formed a group called Crimson Shadow - which is as cringeworthy as your costume.” She waved a finger at me. “But they are all business. Player killing, theft, trying to exploit the System. The System always had bad apples, but they were usually self-serving, or at least stuck to the usual rules of society. Now they're all on the same page and willing to do whatever she wants.”

“Which seems to be 'be more murderous'.” I grimaced. How had she managed that so fast? We were barely a day behind her and she had roused a mercenary group to do her bidding in the time it took us to beat up some thieves and fall out of a tree.

“Yeah, no kidding. There was a Party of five that liked to hang around this area to help low levels that came through. Crimson Shadow poison bombed them in their sleep while they were camping and then peppered them with arrows as they stumbled around, disoriented.”

I could feel the tension in our group rise. Whether that was because of the cruelty against our fellow Players, or because that could have easily been us last night, it didn’t matter. We couldn’t be safe while they still roamed the area.

Hannah sighed and pushed away from the tree. “Honestly, part of the reason I’m giving you this up front is because it sickens me. Not that I expect you three to do anything about it. But you are at least warned. You know what’s out there.” Her eyes unfocused a little as she stared off at the side. Accessing her STAR. "Honestly there aren't many good apples left, things are moving fast. Apocalyptic, almost."

“Are there any places the Crimson Shadow stay on the regular?” I asked.

The shapeshifter tilted her head toward me. “Heroic type, eh?” She looked at Ren and then back at me. “If you know what you’re doing, there’s a small camp due east of here, but I stay as far as I can from it. Some horse-riding nob and a gaggle of jerk-offs. No Lady though, she moves around a lot.”

“Hadrian,” Ren muttered, perhaps just tasting the name to make her hate more concrete.

I popped the Map up on the side and checked potential places. It’d be out of the way from the Monster Hunt. But in a way, it was towards a greater one.

“That’s about all I have time for, I’m afraid.” Her smile returned to her face, and she held a hand out. “Worthy of a payment?”

With a sigh, I went through my Inventory as I took a few steps closer to her. “We’ll see you again?”

“Doubt it.” She shrugged. "By choice, of course, not that I intend to fall foul of the Shadows."

With a brief smile, I flipped the small object through the air, straight toward her rather than in an arc. She caught it deftly and immediately pocketed it. She gave a brief bow.

“Best of luck to you.” With a twist of brief smoke, she shrunk into cat form and padded off nearly silently into the woods.

I watched the Dazzle icon fade from view and then turned to see Ren with arms crossed, a Dazzle icon also over Wolf.

“What?” I shrugged, grinning. “Do you think that was a mistake?”

“I feel like that it will become a problem for us in the future,” the elf said as she deflated. “But I appreciate you not giving away some of our power.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t check it before leaving. More the fool her.” I smiled off at the woods. A simple trick that shouldn’t have worked - perhaps my bonus to Deception paying off?

Ren gave the bear a pat on the side before walking over to me. “Is that why you were dicking around in the thief hideout so much? I think we are done here. We should move.”

I nodded to both parts of her sentence. “I had hoped to get some gold paint at some point, but splitting that metal bar up into fragments was worth the effort.” It was too good to pass up - almost the right shape and thickness to pass as a faux Token. One from each end of the bar I had looted. I figured they’d come in use, eventually.

“Not a lot of good meat there,” Wolf grumbled as we headed back into the woods.

“Afraid not.” I gave him a smile. “But I’m sure a better meal awaits us right over the next horizon.”

He lifted his head up and glared at the mass of trees before us. “Seems a bit far.”

Ren said nothing, and just looked out into the surrounding as we continued on. After a few minutes of silence, the tension was too much, and I had to say something.

“Still letting the information sink in?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s… bugging me that they’re there, and we know they’re there… but I don’t know if we should…”

“Surprise-attack their camp and kill them all?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Exactly.” She sighed.

“It would be nice to strike while the iron is hot, but we should get a little more powerful first. Be more prepared before jumping into danger.”

Ren gave me a nod but didn’t continue the conversation, once again looking off to the side through the trees. I could understand her frustrations. A known threat should be dealt with as soon as possible before they became more a problem, but I was equally keen not to have our plan backfire and cause us injury. First time for everything.

Instead of worrying over that, I turned my attention to my Inventory and activated the Power Token. While we were getting more skills than tokens currently, I assumed that they would level out eventually if we had to gather ten per ability after the first upgrade. There was the temptation to start stockpiling, maybe get something important powered up early… but I had already spent this one in my mind. The other I was keeping safe for when Wolf could use them. As desperate as I was for further power, we each deserved to rise together.

. While not something that overtly strengthened my fighting capacity, it had become the lynchpin of my fighting style. There must have been some manner of intention in the System for that to be the case, otherwise it wouldn’t be rewarding the actions with Dazzle icons and powers that worked together. There must be an element of procedural development to guide the progression of Players.

[ is now Advanced: Your Deception success chance increases with both INT and DEX.]

The skill upgraded, although the description didn’t change. Not even a vague ‘increased’ to show that my Token hadn’t been spent for nought. Only the border of the skill window changing to a silver color denoted that the upgrade had been successful. A small plus symbol beside it when viewed.

I furrowed my brow. Maybe I’d just have to try it. Mentally, I went through the menus and brought my Inventory up. No real increase in speed there. Perhaps there was a hard limit? A knot in my stomach started forming, thinking I’d made a mistake. I took a deep breath and went to retrieve an orange from my Inventory - to find it was already there in my hand.

It swapped to my dagger, and I flipped it into the air before it vanished.

“Everything okay, trickster?”

Ren was looking at me with a tilted head, and Wolf was mostly oblivious, but had a Dazzle icon over his face.

“I seem to be able to access certain items innately without having to go through the process of quickly going through the STAR options.” My furrowed brow continued as we stepped through the thick grass beneath the shadowed canopy.

“Sounds like more bullshit, then. Just Inventory?”

I nodded. There wasn’t a way I could swap equipment that quickly. Quicker than most, perhaps - but the Inventory System was where my abilities really shone. From my head, I took down my top hat and held it in my right hand. From my left, I pulled the orange out from behind my ear and dropped it into my open headwear. I then tipped the hat upside down, and after a couple of seconds of nothing, the spear began to slowly slide out onto the ground.

Wolf had a couple of extra Dazzles, but Ren was unimpressed as usual.

“Can you turn the orange into meat next time?” The bear asked with wide eyes.

“What do you mean?” I grinned. As I leaned over to retrieve the spear, putting my hat back on with a flourish, I brought it up to reveal it was now a linked chain of sausages.

He gasped as his icon increased by one, and I threw him the meat to consume. It felt smoother to do the switching, like I had more control over the speed or where and how things came into my hands. Barely registered the screens in my vision, actually - it was almost like I was doing it by thought alone.

“I can’t tell if you’re getting better, or I’m just tolerating it more.” Ren tilted her head and her frown relaxed slightly.

I gave her a brief bow and a warm smile. “I’ll accept either at this stage. What did you end up choosing?”

“Entangling shot. Slightly wider area, stronger entangle. It’s one of the few crowd control skills we have, and helps us all out.” She shrugged.

“Pragmatic. You really do pull most of the weight for us. Sure, Wolf can take a hit.” I gave him a pat on the side as he finished lapping up the meat. “And I have my good looks and charm, but you’re keeping us alive.”

Ren just rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to flatter me or yourself with that statement. Enough trickery for now, we have a Monster to hunt.”

I grinned as we started back out, pausing briefly to glance around the terrain behind us. There was an eerie stillness to it that I couldn’t quite shake. Something telling me to be wary.

Quite frankly, I felt like there were plenty of monsters hunting us.