Argul did not appear outwardly remorseful about his guilt, which
was all the more irksome as the troupe plodded through knee-deep snow
and seething cold winds. The storm was far too audible to voice
concerns, and as the hours drew on, concerns grew higher. Not because
of the wolves, which Wraith and Z handled well enough on their own,
or the NPC bandits, which K. Wolfe, Rhivaun, and Argul dispatched in
short order, or even the tracking, which Zawind took on with
admirable ease.
It was the tension building amongst them. If Argul was truly
willing to toss aside friendship for a cause that only seemed
righteous to him, what other ends would he go to in the same regard?
Was he so invested in the politics of the game that he had forgone
some piece of his humanity? Did he truly believe in the worth of the
natives to the realm?
Or was he just playing with lives as callously as a child plays
with toys?
They had reached the forest of Lia's kidnapping and followed a
slightly snowed over set of tracks deeper into the woods. The signs
of struggle were clear - dragon claws against trees, blood
splotches streaked across snow and terrain, and upon further travels
there was a large crater of visible, muddy ground measured at about
Lia's size where she must've been captured.
"What color does Lia bleed?" Asked Zawind to no one in
particular.
At length, Z spoke up, pulling the cowl back on his protective
winter cloak. "I don't think I've paid her enough attention to
know. Blue maybe?"
Argul walked passed the kneeling Zawind and did some surveying of
his own. Traces of footsteps only went toward the crater, and given
how the snow still fell passed the foliage of the thick and stalwart
trees, it was hard to find a set of prints that went anywhere
outward.
"Puny One bleeds red like the rest of us," said the Shadow
Reaver, seeming to have found something in the crater of shallow mud.
"They did not have to cut her; simply subduing her would've been
enough."
Rhivaun was ahead of all of them, regarding the trees with the
light of his staff's red crystal. Even the faintest trace of
struggle could be seen with its ethereal glow, and yet even he seemed
to be taking more than the usual few moments to comprehend what may
have happened to Lia. He had forgone his winter cloak's cowl,
revealing a bald head and intensely concentrated eyes. While not much
of a tracker on his own, having the aid of magic helped him in more
ways than just battle.
Wraith was some distance behind, somewhere at the edge of the
wood scouting their backs for would-be assailants. The first day of
their travels had gone inconceivably well, and it fell to his
vigilance and skill to see that the second follow suit.
Zawind joined Rhivaun, perhaps to test his own eyes at something
that the mage could have missed even with the aid of his otherworldly
powers. Argul and Z exchanged words while K. Wolfe went to conduct a
study of his own.
The Breaker, Z, was glaring at Argul throughout the exchange,
wondering if his planning had been flawed after all. "What happens
if we don't pick up a trail?"
"We will."
"That doesn't answer my question, ninja."
He gave a killing look of his own, an overflow of the bother
behind being the only accused, no matter how justified the
accusation. "I answered every question on the way here. The only
question that needs answering is where we find a trail, not whether
or not we can. How ironic is it that your tracking skills are
lacking in this situation?"
"Oh, don't even put this on me you fuck!"
"Right, right, I'm the evil McMeanie pants who sent Puny One
into this mess - a mission that, at this point, may not even
succeed. Newsflash: it will fail even faster if you're all
expecting a knife in the back from me, got it?"
Having the tension thrust sorely on his shoulder, Z drew his
great blade and jammed it in the snow. "I don't deal in knives,
little man! If I'm going stab anything, it'll be in its front, in
a place where it hurts, not where it will always kill!"
K. Wolfe caught the conflict before it escalated, trying to keep
Z at bay with an arm on his shoulder. "Don't..."
Argul's motions could not be tracked in the heavy cloak and
mask he wore, but it could be safely assumed he was moving a dagger
to his hand. "You won't stop him, Magic Bro. And frankly, I wish
you wouldn't."
"Well I am!" Shouted the boy, now moving to Z's front with
brows furrow in concern. "Z, just keep it together for a little
longer. I'm sure we'll find something."
That did little to placate the six-foot menace of the realm. "He
sells out one of our own, comes to us for help saving her from the
very predicament he put her in, and I'm supposed to keep it
together? Your naivethas gone from laughable to sickening, Wolfe."
"I thought you were friends, Z? I thought you were brothers in
arms!"
"I'm brother to no man who leaves for months and comes back
only to endanger the whole lot of us. Among the many things he's
done wrong is give me a long, cold, and windy walk to think over just
what it is that he's gotten us all into. Even if we do somehow
succeed - and frankly, the odds range anywhere from up in the air
to outright suicide - how can we look this man in the face and call
him friend ever again?" The warrior's words reached sphere of
emotion in his chest. He was ready to bring down the assassin any
moment.
And Argul appeared all the more nonchalant as a result. "You
haven't seen what I've seen, Z. None of you have. I've followed
Diokles these passed months, knowing only that which I had heard from
you and a few locals. To avoid interference from both you and his
henchman, I logged into the realm under 'Do Not Disturb' status.
"And in my findings, I saw something..."
It was a thought the ninja could not quite finish without
pausing. The images seemed to flush out any anger and replace it with
a subtle, inward horror. Broken somewhat by the revelation of his own
fears, he turned away from them both.
Z recognized the change, only lightly turned from his tirade to
consider what could frighten a man whose profession was smeared in
blood. "What did you see, exactly?"
"I saw players. Dead. Just... dead. As if they couldn't
respawn."
"Are you sure they weren't natives?"
K. Wolfe answered before Argul gave his response. "Couldn't
respawn? What did they look like?"
"I only remember their faces, suspended in the same kind of
confusion, as though asking the same question I asked: why won't
you respawn?"
"Did they say anything to you?" K. Wolfe inquired further.
"No. All the ones I found had logged off. It seemed odd to just
leave your corpse dead in the middle of an open zone. Even so, the
corpses one usually finds don't have such an awful look on their
faces."
Z stepped passed the young man, grimly intrigued by the new
notions. "And you think Diokles did this?"
The ninja nodded over his shoulder. "Of this, I have no doubt.
Only he would find a way to do more than simply kill a player."
"If that's the case," said K. Wolfe. "Then those players
would have to start all over with new characters."
"That is exactly what I fear. The server databases are reported
to be crowded with inactive player character names, many of which
dead on log out. Diokles has found a way to do more than just kill a
player; he's forcing them to start over. I can think of very few
reasons why he would want to do that."
Wolfe was at work, putting the thought processes of a mad man
together like a set of horribly jagged puzzle pieces. "The more
players he does it to, the further ahead he'll be in the game than
those players. If he somehow gets the majority of the realm..."
The stony, pale assassin inclined his head forward and continued,
his voice somehow breaking through the harsh winds. "I came across
a mid-level area full of players just randomly cut down. Fifty, maybe
sixty in all, just laid out upon the grass. They had all been stabbed
in the back, or severed completely in half, wearing that confused
expression. Some of them even seemed annoyed, or scared."
Z folded his arms, still resolute to find disbelief somewhere in
the story. "Why haven't the GMs tried to stop him? They can
obviously see this kind of anomaly on their end. By your accounts,
Diokles may have already done this to more than a couple hundred
players."
"That brings to mind another thought: what if he managed to
kill a GM with this ability?"
K. Wolfe shook his head. "Their administrative rights are in
their accounts, not in the characters they create."
"That brings me a bit of relief," replied Argul. "Even so,
I can say little as to why he hasn't been stopped. There'd be no
place to hide from a GM."
Z's was standing beside the assassin then, trying to get an eye
on what it was that the assassin was looking at.
Zawind and Rhivaun were coming upon something. All three
onlookers met their comrades at the base of a damaged tree. At first
glance, the chipped bark and dented snow would mean little in the
face of an obvious ground of struggle. What Rhivaun's staff had
done was remove the tampering of a rogue mage trying to cover up a
certain line of blood dotted upon the ground. Zawind deduced that the
direction the blood pointed was due Southeast.
"How do you know it doesn't go Northeast instead?" Asked
Rhivaun, scratching the thin coat of facial hair at his chin with
genuine curiosity.
To which the Tempest Blade replied, "Because Northeast contains
only a lake, frozen over by the snow. That area is too open for a
covert base of operations. A simple scout of two could find such a
place in no time."
"I see. Let's have a better look then." Rhivaun took his
place in front of all of them, standing right in front of the blood
streak's northernmost direction. "Let lightning reveal all."
The lightning mage spread both his arms out and gathered the
amalgamated energies of flame and wind. Once he tethered himself to
the ground with the newly made lightning, the staff suddenly went
aglow with mottled power. In that same instant, a barrage of cackling
thunder sent a shockwave throughout the snow. A sweep of unseen magic
rushed before Rhivaun in one wide swoop, sending the ground's snow
away just enough to reveal a path-like divot, leading Northeast.
The path was as wide as Lia would be in her dragon form.
Pulling the hood back over his head, Rhivaun nodded back at his
comrades with a simple stare, thinking nothing of his accomplishment.
"Zawind is correct. They took her Northeast."
"Why didn't you do that earlier?" Asked Z.
"Unlike you, Z, my mana can't be
restored. If I simply threw Sensory Lightning out at any random
direction, I'd be useless on the off chance we find the dragon girl
and are given to combat." The Levin Master spared a particularly
upraised eyebrow in Argul's direction.
The warrior had not noticed. "Huh..."
K. Wolfe had heard enough. "Then let's go get Wraith from the
forest's edge. I would have Argul give you all an account of what
he just told me and Z. This operation just got a bit more
complicated."
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