10. Vesper #2
Locke squats down beside me and picks up one of the items, what looks like a small jar. His eyes squint as he reads the description of the item out loud.
“Healing Ointment: potion, weak. You got hurt, bozo. Spread this on the wound for some relief.” He sighs. “Why does it feel like that description is a direct attack on me?”
“Because it probably is,” I reply, picking up another item. It’s a cord with a small, silver medallion on it. There’s nothing inscribed on the medallion, but there’s a small yellow stone in the center of it.
Sunlight Medallion: token, weak
Are you afraid of the dark? Don’t panic! Just say, “light,” and this medallion will provide ample light up to ten meters. It can be recharged with the sun or by paying ten XP points. Effect lasts for one hour.
“Well, this is fucking handy,” I say, looping it over my head.
There’s another arrow—I have four now—and a scrap of cotton fabric. I tuck both into my inventory and check how full I’m getting. At some point, I’ll start having to drop things that are less important if I fill up.
“Let’s go,” I say, tapping my new medallion. “Light.” A soft yellow glow starts to emanate from the medallion and I grin. “See? Handy,” I tell Locke.
His brows rise and he leans in, studying the medallion. “Interesting magic.”
“Science,” Cipher corrects for the both of us. “Solar power was invented thousands of years ago by humanity. I only perfected the design.”
“Still magic,” Locke grumbles and steps into the cave first.
“We should use the potion on your bite,” I point out, holding out my hand for it. Locke hesitates, but passes the small jar into my hand and turns his back to me. He shrugs his shirt over his head and stands, waiting for me to apply the medicine, trusting me not to knife him once given the chance.
I don’t immediately move. At first, I simply notice just how muscled Locke is.
Like most in Dross, there isn’t much fat on him.
Fat is a luxury only afforded to those rich in resources, and for ninety-nine percent of Dross, that isn’t possible.
So that doesn’t surprise me. But muscle is also difficult to build there due to the lack of ample protein.
Locke is heavily muscled on his back, which tells me that he was a great Spine Jacker, a well-paid one that then used his strength for finding better resources.
But still, that isn’t what makes me pause.
It's the scars.
Locke’s back is riddled with long pink scars crisscrossing his entire back.
There are too many to count, each leaving behind a raised pink line.
Some of the tattoos he has are interrupted by the scars, while others are fresher than the pink lines, covering bits of them up.
All of the lines are different shades, telling me that some are newer than others.
“You going to put it on?” Locke asks. He clears his throat when I still hesitate. “Vesper?”
“Right,” I say, jerking my eyes off the scars and looking down at the jar. “Sorry.”
I unscrew the lid and dip some of the paste out.
The large bite wound is on his right shoulder, just between where his neck and shoulder meet.
It’s crusted with blood and bruised all around it, the bite itself is a bit moist where it’s starting to seep.
Clearly, the wound has been hurting for a while, but he hasn’t complained once.
“This looks pretty deep,” I say, wiping some of the paste around the top of the bite wound. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away. “You haven’t said anything about it hurting.”
“What good does it do to make it your problem, too?” he asks. He doesn’t flinch again as I put more paste on, as if he’s steeled himself against the pain.
“We’re a team,” I remind him. “You should let me know when you’re hurting.”
I finish putting it on and close the lid.
Locke turns to look me in the eyes and I get a look at all the tattoos across his skin. “Are we?” he asks, watching me carefully. “A team?”
I shrug. “I think so. We’re watching each other’s backs. That’s what teams do.”
He studies me. “Your friend, Dox. She was your team before?”
“She still is,” I say fiercely. “And when she gets here, she’ll join us.”
He sniffs and pulls his thin shirt back on. “More like you’ll trade up when she does. Don’t worry. I’m not under any illusions.”
“That’s not how—”
“We should find the safehouse,” Locke interrupts, looking deeper into the cave. “Use that fancy medallion and lead the way.”
I hesitate. Clearly, this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere good, not with that mentality, so ultimately, I step past Locke and do as he says. What good does it do to argue my character to someone who is practically a stranger? Something like that is shown with repeated actions, not words.
The light of my medallion is just bright enough to let us see about three meters in front of us and nothing else, just like the description said.
As we start to move deeper and deeper, it starts to unnerve me that we can’t see anything outside of that distance.
It isn’t until I start picking up more items we stumble across that Locke snaps at me, letting me know his nerves are on edge, too.
“Why are you picking up literally everything?” he quips, glaring back at me as I put another rock into my inventory. “You’re slowing us down.”
“What, are you not picking up things?” I fire back. “This could be important. Remember the howler monkeys?”
“I doubt that particular stone is important,” he grumbles. “If I see a weapon, I’ll pick it up. Otherwise, it’s not worth my time.”
I roll my eyes. “You’d think you’d have learned in Dross.”
He meets my eyes. “I learned a lot. How to backstab,” he says. “How to survive on one portion a week. How to kill.” He leans closer. “I didn’t learn how to hoard. It’s just stuff. Best to keep what’s important and nothing else.”
He’d made it a point to let me know he’s backstabbed people back in Dross, and that he’s fully capable of backstabbing me.
That’s fine. We’ve all done what had to be done in Dross, but here, the same rules don’t apply.
There’s an abundance of resources. We can survive and more numbers are always better.
I, at least, have to survive long enough until Dox gets through—and she will get through—so if I have to play nicey nice with Locke, that’s what I’ll do.
“He is going to get you killed,” Cipher murmurs, but I ignore him.
“Your loss,” I tell Locke, picking up more items.
Within the hour, my inventory is nearly full and I have to start dropping things that don’t in fact look helpful to replace the slot with something that does.
If the items are small enough, I simply put them in my pockets.
But I probably don’t need ten stacks of ten rocks in my inventory.
That’s probably overkill. I drop three stacks of them in favor of three buttons, a pocket mirror with a crack across it, and a note that says, “It’s already too late. ”
“There sure are a lot of trinkets in these caves,” I observe out loud.
“There have been many deaths in the Secret Abyss,” Cipher says. “Many players perish within the dark maze. You will likely find remnants of them along your path.”
I stop. “This is all from dead people?”
“Does that bother you?” Cipher asks.
I frown and shake my head. “No. In Dross, all resources are passed on when you die. Even your bones. It doesn’t bother me.”
Cipher sighs. “Humanity has fallen so far.”
I squint ahead of me and realize I can’t see as far as I was able to before. What was three meters now feels like one. I tap the medallion and it starts to fade quickly, as if my tapping is the reminder it needed to deplete entirely, leaving us standing in the dark.
“Vesper?” Locke breaths, pressing closer to me. “Don’t move. If we get separated in here, we won’t ever find our way out.”
“Why is it fading?” I growl, shaking the medallion. And then I remember the description, that it’s weak and only lasts an hour. “Fuck, I need to charge it.”
“We don’t exactly have the sun,” Locke says, stating the obvious.
“Which means it’s XP,” I breathe, grimacing. “One of us has to give up ten XP to charge it.”
We don’t speak for a minute, as if we don’t know what to do. Of course, it’s Locke who points out the obvious.
“Well, you have sixty XP. I only have thirty,” he rasps. “Seems like a clear choice.”
I sigh. Yeah. It feels like taking a step forward and taking two steps back, but he’s right. It’s only fair that I be the one to charge it. Besides, it’s my medallion.
“You’re right,” I murmur and shake the medallion. “Charge.”
A small icon pops up, letting me know my XP has fallen from sixty to fifty and then blinks away. The light starts to glow again and grows to the normal three meters, lighting the way once again.
“Let’s just hope we don’t have to do that too many more times,” Locke says, wincing. “Be faster when you pick up stuff. We only have an hour of light each time.”
We’re walking again, trying to find our way in the maze of tunnels with Locke constantly checking his map.
Cipher won’t tell us which direction to go, stating that it goes against his coding to direct us by the map.
It’s only as we’ve been quiet for what feels like forever that I realize we could be asking him questions about other things instead, even if he isn’t giving us directions on the map.
“Cipher?”
“Yes, Vespera?” he replies instantly.
“What is the mission?” I ask him.
“The mission?” he repeats.
I nod. “The objective. The task we have to do to make it out of here.”
“Ah, you mean how do you leave The Harrow,” Cipher says. “You must collect five keys, one from each region, to unlock the exit gate. These keys can be retrieved from the Major Boss of each region. Upon unlocking, you will be able to step out of the Harrow back onto The Cradle.”
“So, there are five regions?” I ask.