86. Mother

Once I had finished my massive backlog of messages – a task which was only possible by filtering out effectively thousands from Travelers I had never met and mass deleting them – I played with the settings before finding out that I could prevent most people from sending me mail unless they’d actually encountered me in the world by simply clicking an inconveniently placed box.  So I clicked the seven hells out of that box.

Why wasn’t that box clicked by default?

Annoyed at the amount of spam I’d been forced to deal with, but proud of my accomplishments, I remounted Shadow and we got back underway to my step-father’s estate, which took a while.  Tarisha hadn’t been idle while I was occupied, and several new bodyguards had been teleported along by the convenient new ability she had gained.  Aside from Tarisha, four members of my current Dusk Guard were from <Peasant’s Revenge>, while two members, a cleric and an Elemental Archer, were each from one of the different guilds which were vying for my attention.  The remaining four spots were taken up by Corinth, Rodney – a kid from <Ragtag Muffin> I had partied with before – and two other random players who were eager to introduce themselves, although I had no idea where they had come from.

“They’re friends of friends of friends,” Tarisha explained when I asked.  “Sophie logged off just a few moments before I could ask her, or she might have joined us.  But I think it’s getting late for her anyway, so maybe not.”

“I thought <Ragtag> didn’t want to associate with me anymore,” I commented.

“That’s bullshit,” Rodney said quickly.  “Seriously, it’s all bullshit.  The mods just didn’t want to deal with a bunch of trolls so they totally cave to the pressure.  But now all the kids are bitching about it in group chat and making it into an even bigger deal than it was originally.  Some kids are threatening to leave over it, and some of them are actually doing it too.  Nobody’s fucking happy about it, but I will literally Gee quit before I listen to the mods tell me that I can’t be your friend, Hail.”

I blinked, because I didn’t think that Rodney and I were actually all that close.  I had only hung out with him a bit as part of a group, after all.  “Thanks Rodney.  That means a lot to me.”

“Yeah, no problem,” He said.  “So, I have the rest of this game-day before I have to log out.  I know that you said in your message, Tar, that it was guard duty, but do you think we’ll actually get attacked, or can I kind of just zone out and read the forums or what?”

“Tar?” I asked, glancing at Tarisha.  She shrugged.

“You might be called on to take part in a sort of role play event,” Tarisha said, “So maybe don’t zone out completely if you can avoid it.  We’re not very likely to be attacked, I think, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility either.  If we are attacked by something below level forty, then you’ll be supporting Hail and we’ll be letting you guys deal with it.  If it’s an endgame player or something that your group can’t realistically handle, we’ll step in.”

“Sweet.  So I get to just stand around, look tough, and I get free experience and rep,” Rodney said.  “Sounds awesome.”

The other two Travelers, the low leveled ones that I didn’t know, exchanged glances, then nodded towards me.  “Can we get the experience boon/curse thing?” one of the friends to the third degree asked.

“The what now?” Rodney inquired.

Corinth was the one who took over the explanation, as he’d had a long conversation with one of the priests of Thedum in Zhesa city going over all of the benefits and pitfalls of the Traveler version of my curse in detail, including the scaling level of difficulty associated with the quest to remove it.  After the explanation, the two strangers both requested that I infect them, as did one of the high level guards, to my surprise.  Rodney abstained, stating that it sounded like more trouble than it was worth.

Personally, I agreed with him, but at least they had a choice in the matter.  My own situation had been inflicted upon me without warning, and I remained dissatisfied with all of the possible solutions.  Including the one where I do nothing about it, which was regrettably the one that I was forced to take.

I wasa little annoyed that the topic had come up after I had just decided, with Tarisha’s help, to keep my ability to spread the [Reaper’s Embrace] slash [Through the Valley of the Shadow] combination relatively secret.  I wasn’t the only one annoyed, as I noticed Tarisha glaring at Corinth during his explanation.  But compared to everything else, I thought my curse/boon combo was relatively low on the scale of earthshaking secrets regarding my abilities.  It was only worth keeping secret due to the vulnerability [The Gray Man’s Touch] caused me, but somehow that didn’t actually come up in the course of the conversation.  My curse was framed in the conversation as just another cool aspect of interacting with me.

Once everyone had [Reaper’s Embrace] that wanted it, I re-equipped my [Ring of Holy Light].  Tarisha rode up to me when the topic of conversation had drifted, nodding towards the wardrobe vanity pet that was still following me.  “Is that from Gideon?” she inquired.

I nodded.  “He sent it to me.  Along with a message, before he did what he did.  He sort of made it sound like it was goodbye.  Like, he’ll never be able to come back to this world.  Do you think that’s true?”

“I don’t know enough about his legal situation to make a prediction, Hail,” Tarisha admitted.  “Disbanding <The Endolphins> probably wasn’t a criminal act by the laws of our world.  But it is a very serious civil matter which will probably tie him up in court for years to come.  Given his silence since then, he’s probably been advised by his lawyers not to comment on his situation for legal reasons.  If he does come back, it will probably just be to liquidate his account before disappearing forever.  But like I said, I don’t know the exact details of his situation, so that’s just speculation.”

I nodded.  “Okay.  Thanks.”

“Lord Hail, you should perhaps not show that vanity pet off too much,” she informed me.  “There’s no unbinding it at this point, but if Gideon’s employers learn that you have it, it might cause additional problems for him.”

“Oh.  I didn’t realize that,” I admitted.  It had been clumsily chasing after us, and when I selected the option to dismiss it, it promptly fell on its front side, then faded into nothingness.  The enchanted clothing that had been following it fell into the dirt and faded away as well.

“It’s probably not a big deal,” Tarisha assured me.  “Compared to the value of the guild itself, that pet is just a drop in the bucket.  But the companies that are suing Gideon might not know what happened to it, so I’d recommend not parading it around in public.  If nothing else, it’s likely to contribute to others seeing through your disguise.”

“Yeah, I see your point,” I agreed.  “I was just feeling, I don’t know, nostalgic or something. Come on, we’re almost to our destination.”

Indeed, we arrived at my step-father’s mansion only moments later.  There wasn’t actually much to cause it to stand out from the surrounding buildings; every house in the neighborhood was of similar size and wealth.  There was plenty of available space in Prowhaven for large estates, after all, and nothing in the appearance of the Wildeheart mansion caused it to particularly stand out.  I was only certain we were in the right spot because of a conveniently located postal sign identifying the residents.

Although the building and surrounding yard was large, it didn’t compare to the needless extravagance that my uncle Storm had shown in his house in Zhesa city.  When Corinth knocked on the door, a canid butler answered, inquired as to our identities and the nature of our visit, and promptly showed us inside to a sitting room.  The servant’s canine features made him look more like a hound than a wolf, although I knew that it would be rude to point out such a thing.  Canids could be touchy about the nature of the spirit their body bound to complete their beast-man transformation whenever that spirit was not a proud and majestic wolf.  I didn’t see that they had anything to be ashamed of, but then I wasn’t a canid, so my opinion on the matter was irrelevant.

The butler left to announce us, but he hadn’t been gone more than a moment before Malkios appeared.  I had just taken a seat and dismissed my magical disguise, but when the burly former guard captain burst through the door I stood back up to greet him properly.  I didn’t manage to actually get any words out before he once more enveloped me in a bear-hug that cut off my access to oxygen.

“Damn fool boy, getting yourself thrown through a portal into the deadlands,” he muttered.  “There’s just no keeping you out of harms way, is there?  I about strangled Gwen when she finally figured out where the portal went to, but if the gods are playing around with you, hijacking your portals to send you to their personal domains, then there’s not exactly anything a mortal mage can do to stop them, is there?”

I slapped against his muscled arms with increasing desperation until he finally got the message and released me, allowing me to catch my breath.  “It was Auroras who interfered with the portal,” I explained.  “It’s a long story, but I don’t think he’s my enemy.  And I’m pretty certain he’s not the one responsible for the the assassinations.  Oh, and I guess he’s The Gray Man.”

Malkios blinked.  “You want to run that last bit by me one last time?  Old man Auroras is literally the bogey-man?  No, wait until your mother gets here or you’ll just be repeating yourself twice.”

Instead, Malkios explained his own actions in the wake of the disastrous visit to Storm’s estate.  He had spent the first twelve hours following my disappearance trying to force Lady Gwen to reopen the portal through which I had vanished before it became apparent that divine shenanigans were involved.  At which point he’d decided that the matter was officially outside his realm of influence, and he had decided to take what control of the situation he could by following my last order.  So he had journeyed to my mother’s side, and had been protecting her ever since.

Somewhat to the annoyance of Lord Wildeheart’s household staff, who didn’t see the need for his protection at all.  They had given him a small room, and they were feeding him without much argument, but he complained repeatedly that the household staff kept trying to pass off their duties to him.  He hadn’t minded so much when he’d been asked to chop firewood, but asking a soldier of his stature to help with the laundry was, according to him, outright insulting!  I commiserated with him on the topic, although I secretly found it absolutely hilarious and had trouble keeping a straight face.  I think he saw through it, but before he could get too angry with my amusement, the door to the sitting room opened again, and Mother and my step-father joined us.

Mother was pregnant.  Really pregnant.  I mean, I’d known that, already, but I was still a little surprised to see her in that state.  She looked like she was about ready to pop, and it jarred with my mental image of her that I’d had throughout my childhood.  Even her face seemed different, warm and happy with a sort of glow which was hard to quantify.

Despite the jarring reality that she was differentthan I’d imagined her to be, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the joy of seeing her again.  I had missedher a lot more than I had consciously been aware of.  She smiled.  I smiled.  We embraced, which was somewhat awkward around her baby-bulge, and she whispered a private greeting in my ear.

I mostly kept my emotions in check, although nobody said a word about the single tear that escaped my control.