34. Locke #2
“They’re from different Tiers,” I point out. “Look at how they’re dressed. He’s clearly been in the lower levels of the ship with us.”
She shrugs. “Maybe love can transcend Tiers?”
Because she says that, we both look back out the window.
Because we’re looking, we catch the proof of how wrong that is.
The man lowers his arms, encouraging her to keep hers out, and then he rears back and shoves her as hard as he can.
She screams and falls over the railing, disappearing over the edge of the ship and plummeting toward the water below.
My mouth falls open in surprise. I hate to be wrong but—
“Well . . .” Vesper starts, “I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.”
“More for me,” Svetlana declares. “Too bad she did not have wings so she could really fly. A shame.”
And then she continues to eat as if we didn’t just witness a murder between what are clearly NPCs. Nothing happens to the man. He simply turns, tucks his hands into his pockets and strolls away. He whistles an upbeat tune as he goes and even tips his head to us as he passes.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think it’s time to get off this boat.”
She nods, but we take the leftover food with us back to our healing room and spend the rest of the time making sure we have everything we need to leave.
“What do you think will be the Minor Boss?” Vesper asks as she packs up the few things she’d left out of her inventory. I watch as item after item disappears after she picks it up and holds it in her hand.
We’re leaving the safehouse today. While the point of the safehouses is that they are safe, there is nothing that offers XP increases here.
We’ve run into a few other players who entered the Harrow Gates at the same time as we did.
They made it to this safehouse and stopped, figuring it was a good enough place to hole up.
I tried explaining to one that of the two regions we’ve been to so far, this safehouse has ass food and hard mattresses, but they weren’t willing to leave.
I can’t blame them. This shithole is still better than Dross, even if the toilets back up all the time.
Ours doesn’t even work right now and we’d had to sneak into another room to use it.
“Who knows,” I mumble as I shove things into my inventory. “Hopefully not more fucking penguins.”
The penguins had been a nightmare, not because they were a particularly difficult boss, but because of how brutal it had made me feel.
The crunch of bones as my hammer hit them had urged me on.
With each bone break, I’d felt a little jolt of energy, as if I grew stronger with their pain.
I liked it. I liked that feeling a lot, and that makes me nervous.
When Vesper had killed the Emperor, I hadn’t wanted to stop.
I’d only lowered my hammer through sheer force of will.
I’m not yet ready to look at myself closer for that.
I certainly don’t plan on telling Vesper about it.
Cipher doesn’t need any more ammunition.
“Too late,” Cipher chirps in my mind. “I already have plenty.”
“Fuck off,” I say under my breath.
“What?” Vesper asks.
“What?” I repeat, shaking my head. “Nothing.”
Vesper stares at the bits of metal she’d found on the Titanic laying on the upper deck, her hands on her hips. It’s just a few nuts and bolts, nothing special, but she clearly wants to take them.
“You got something less important than those, Hyena?” I tease. “Or do you gotta leave them behind?”
“Haha,” she says, mockingly. “I don’t have any metal. Might come in handy in the next zone.”
“Or . . . it could be useless junk,” I remind her. “You don’t gotta take everything, you know?”
“I will take them,” Svetlana declares, reminding me that she has her own small inventory. “But I will drop them if I find something else I would like.”
“Deal,” Vesper says cheerfully, offering the metal to her.
They disappear as the bug climbs up her arms and settles on her shoulder. Svetlana turns those large, threatening eyes toward me and I have to force myself not to shiver. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to her, even if she’s starting to grow on me. I really fucking hate bugs.
“Ready?” I ask as I shrug on my new winter coat we’d grabbed from the trader onboard, a beady-eyed man who hides in a bathroom stall.
We’d had to knock three times and declare we weren’t the police to trade with him, whatever that means.
We’d both lost our boots to the Frostbit Sea, so we’d had to purchase new ones from him, too.
Unfortunately, the only ones available were large fur covered snow boots that we’d had to trade some stacked Harrow Bars for.
Seemed like a fair trade to me. I’ll never eat the Harrow Bars again if I can help it and we needed boots and I needed a new jacket.
“Ready,” Vesper answers as she pulls up her fur-lined hood and leaves room for Svetlana to tuck inside.
“I am not,” Svetlana grumbles. “The cold and praying mantises do not go together.”
The first burst of frigid air on my face as we climb to the deck again makes me want to turn back around and stay on the Titanic.
The second makes me regret ever coming to this part of the Harrow.
If I could have chosen any other sort of climate, I would have.
Dross is hot and miserable, but it’s nowhere as miserable as the bone-deep chill that comes with the Shatterlands.
And that’s before you think about what’s hiding in the water of the Frostbit Sea.
The boats waiting at the stern of the ship aren’t much bigger than the one we’d tried to row in on, but they at least look sturdier. They probably could still be taken out by the orcas, but maybe the leopard seals wouldn’t—
“You first?” Vesper says, looking at me expectantly.
My first instinct is to argue. I don’t want anywhere close to that fucking water, especially not first.
But Vesper is the reason we’re alive.
We’d talked about it, and after a deep dive into what happened, we’d discovered that we both have a very small progress bar.
It isn’t in the same spot as our XP or stats.
It’s with our skills menus, a small thin, green bar that doesn’t have much description at all.
When Vesper hovered over it, it simply reads “mana.” Cipher hadn’t told us anything at all, refusing to, and I assume it’s because Vesper is still mad at him for abandoning her during the orca pod boss battle.
Still, our best guess is that the horned whale, which we now know is a Narwhal, was called to us because of Vesper’s Beast Bound powers.
She’d used that mana bar to do so, and even now, it’s still only a quarter way recovered.
It’s hard-earned power, taking a week to fully regenerate, but it had come in handy when we needed it most. We’d survived, and because of that, I roll my shoulders, and start to descend the ladder.
My legs shake the closer I get to the water, but I try not to let it show.
The last thing I need is Vesper thinking I’m scared, even if I actually am.
There’s no way we could survive the orca pod twice, and if something happens this time, we won’t have Vesper’s skills to fall back on. Not until we fill her mana bar again.