How's that for a meeting on the Elbe! The two bears brushed their sides as Eric and I hugged each other.
"What brings you here?" I asked.
He was about to speak when I heard an unstealthed Dan's voice, "Just checking to see who it was painting the town red this time. The General even refused to bet it was you. Listen, dude, you're getting a bit too predictable!"
Fed up with talking with his head tilted up, Dan pulled an artifact whip out of his bag and cracked it in the air. I liked his mount—a proper knight's charger, gigantic and powerful. Not as impressive as Hummungus, of course, but still.
Once he mounted it, I offered him my hand with a smile. "And seriously speaking?"
"Seriously speaking, we were in town so we thought we'd check out the event they were having here. Eric out of curiosity and me, to level my new pickpocket skill. Might come in handy in my line of work. And there you were, as large as life and twice as ugly. Once the tea party started, we announced a yellow alert over the castle and pulled in a few guys so you shouldn't think you've been battling them all on your own like a Biblical lion. And once that celestial beauty had kindly offered us more of her bottom views, no amount of God's—let alone Goddess'—wrath could keep them back."
"Thank you very much, guys. So what's the score?"
Eric shook a proud fist in the air. "Seven, I got seven of the bastards!"
Dan gave him a pitying look. "I have sixteen. Overall for the Guild, three hundred eleven frags, plus some gear and Faith points. All in all, not a bad day."
With a start, the Vets shrunk back, drawing their weapons and raising their shields.
"WTF?" I turned round to take a look. It was indeed impressive—the dragon, glistening in the sun, was heading in our direction. I waved to the Vets—no worry—and rode out to meet her.
"Priest, I'm ready! Thanks for your help. I owe you. But now I'd love to see my children."
No, I definitely wasn't a dragonologist. Was she a boy or a girl? After the dressing-down the Hell Hound had given me, I didn't dare ask. Or maybe, her skeleton didn't have gender by definition, but once it accumulated a bit of energy, it could start laying again?
In any case, she didn't need to yell. I shook my head restoring my hearing. "Don't mention it. And turn the sound down, will you? My brains are about to explode. In any case, how do you expect us to travel? You're a bit too bulky to teleport."
"We can fly!" the dragon bared her teeth and lowered one wing to the ground as an improvised boarding ramp. "Put your critter back into his artifact and climb up. The sky's the limit! There you can find the ultimate freedom!"
Oh, well. Teleporting would be faster, of course, but who was I to resist the invitation of a dragon ride? That wasn't some Boeing-manufactured aluminum tube shared with a hundred sweaty bodies. This was an honest-to-God, wind-in-my-hair, earth-the-size-of-a-handkerchief flight. Yes!
With a pat on Teddy's neck, I folded him back into his artifact and ran up the bony steps. So! The game developers had thought of everything. A reclining bone chair with anatomic armrests was just as comfortable as your office one. I had barely sat down when the dragon took a quick run and kicked herself up into the air, spreading her wings. A flying mount, the first one in AlterWorld, had taken her rider to the sky!
My inbox pinged. Need to talk, Dan PM'd me, followed by a new message, from Eric this time,
You're too much, dude! Can I borrow your dragon for a ride?
Chapter Twenty-Two
As we approached the castle, I didn't sense any of the chicks' emotional pressure. Below lay the Valley of Fear, rather sad and boring, striped by ancient roads and pockmarked with ruins. All that I diligently marked on my map. You can say what you want but air recce is a great thing. From the ground, you don't notice one tenth of what I copied from half a mile's height.
The dragon emitted occasional broadband impulses, scanning the horizon and listening in to the echo. It was probably why the chicks had quietened down, their sensitive hearing detecting their mother's sonar.
Finally, the Castle. Now the outer walls looked much more presentable than the sad picture of bombed-out desolation that had been revealed to me a week ago from the top of the hill. The sleepless Lurch had done a great job. His hands were oozing magic. The inner courtyard had been transformed, too, and now looked like a botanical garden set amid a field of flowers. And the Castle! I nearly fell off the dragon when the clouds parted and the sunrays illuminated the once gloomy stones. The donjon's gray towers erupted in billions of colored sparks that glistened rainbow-like as if some upscale interior designer had studded them with countless handfuls of precious stones.
Precious stones? Lurch!
"Lurch!" I yelled into the communications artifact. "Why are you sparkling like a diamond factory on steroids?"
"Greetings, Master! It is beautiful, isn't it?" he asked rather timidly.
"You can say that! Now answer my question."
It haltered while I was hurriedly leafing through his access levels. Where had he gotten the resources for all this magnificence?
"Master, when the chicks were crying, everything here cried and wept with them. These are Tears of Stone. They seeped through thousands of its pores until they hardened and turned into perfect crystals. I must be the most beautiful castle in the entire AlterWorld now. I wonder, Master, if you wouldn't mind me taking part in this year's exterior design contest? I'm more than sure we'll get first prize."
"Wait! You and your contests! The crystals, do they have stats?"
"Random ones, from +1 to +20 depending on their caliber. But please don't start ripping anything off, I beg you!"
"Or what?" I teased him, repaying him for the moment of anxiety. "You gonna cry too?"
"Dunno..." Lurch whispered.
His voice was filled with so much sadness I felt like a real piece of work. "Not to worry. It is very pretty. You are undoubtedly the nicest castle in the whole of AlterWorld. Just in case, could you please calculate your square surface and the average quantity of gems per square foot? I'd love to know how many gems you've got stuck to you. And if you think you can grade them by size, that would be-"
I shut up midword and grabbed at the bone armrests as the dragon banked in a steep turn and began to land. She zoomed down onto the tower and flapped her wings, damping the speed with their power field. Softly she landed onto the ancient stones.
A powerful surge of emotions threw me out of the saddle. I switched off. No idea how long I was out. When I finally came to, I was sitting on the flagstones with my back against the rough rampart. Lena was fussing around me, shouting, about to raise her hand for an encouraging slap on my cheek. I caught her hand in mid-air and shook my head, returning my thoughts to their usual places. I must have missed something, anyway. The dragon sat on her nest brooding like a chicken, the two fat-bellied chicks squawking happily under her wings.
"How's it going?" I asked, my throat dry and coarse.
"Fine! It's you I was worried about. You just collapsed flat out."
I tried to swallow. "It's all these phantom emotion generators assaulting my brain. I'd love to know why those idiots don't classify emotion amplification as mental attack."
"Excuse me?"