Entry Twelve

  Songbird

  Brennar’s stable was easy to find, thanks to the game’s aforementioned olfactory realism. It turned out Ilerian horse poop smelled exactly, and I mean exactly, like Earth horse poop. As my dad would have said—grody. But the Bimster was batting a thousand—there was indeed a wooden sign with an artfully drawn songbird. It hung above a set of huge double doors that had to be ten feet tall.

  I crossed the wide road, dodging between a horse-drawn cart carrying a bunch of wooden boxes and another carrying what looked like enormous cabbages. Yep, cabbages. The elves driving the carts looked at me curiously but waved a friendly greeting to me. I returned the gesture and turned back toward Mayor Hassine’s place. Each of the mayor’s imposing wooden doors was engraved with a huge, intricately detailed tree, complete with leaves, some sort of oblong fruit, and, yep, birds. Lots of birds.

  The engraved creatures were animated, like several of the moving-art scenes I’d already witnessed in the town. Some chased each other, flying from one door to the other and back again, while others cleaned themselves or pecked at branches. I watched for a good three or four minutes, waiting for the animation loop to finish and start over again, but it didn’t. It was either super long or maybe even randomly generated. Either way, pretty coolsville.

  I pulled on one of the ornate golden handles and stepped in. The door, large as it was, snicked silently shut behind me, and then all was quiet. Library quiet. It wasn’t like anyone outside was partying like it was 1999, but none of the usual clamors of medieval street life penetrated the mayor’s apparently sound-proofed mega-doors.

  I was standing in a small, pink-and-crème marbled foyer that smelled like fresh roses. Two thick granite columns supported a big wooden arch that separated the foyer from a long, narrow, throne room-like space. As I passed beneath the arch, I heard faint flapping sounds and looked up to see dozens of birds hanging out amongst the high ceiling rafters. None were chirping, though, and glancing down at the marbled floor, I didn’t see a single bird dropping. They were some well-trained birds.

  There was a small crowd at the far end of the room, so I headed there, following a plush velvet carpet that led from the entryway to what I guessed was the mayor lady’s throne or whatever. There was a line of townsfolk, apparently waiting their turn to speak with Her Majesty, and a shriveled little grey-haired elf sat off to one side at a small desk. She was even older than the Bimster. Now, trope lore dictated that elves lived a long, long time, but this lady? I wondered if she had fond memories of the day dirt was invented. That old.

  The line of townies led up to a utilitarian, plain-Jane metal desk. It was the blandest, undecorated thing I’d seen in the entire town so far. Scrolls, parchments, and quills were scattered all over it, but no one was there. I walked past the line of eight or nine patiently waiting elves (NPCs never cared if they got skipped) and stood directly in front of the desk. Right then, a bright glimmer high in the rafters caught my attention, and I looked up to see a golden bird come flying into the building through a small window. The bird circled a few times and then dove straight at me.

  I instinctively ducked as the thing buzzed me. No puns intended. (Or, no. Yes, both of those were absolutely intentional.) I straightened and saw that the bird wasn’t a bird but rather a bird-sized metal bird replica that looked as close to a bird as possible if you made one out of gold leaf and watch parts. It hopped around on the mayor’s desk, making little clicking sounds, and I could see its gears and servos working as it bobbed its head to pop open a tiny canister attached to its leg. The clockwork bird used its metal beak to pull out a tiny piece of paper. It shook the paper vigorously, dropped it on the desk, and stomped on it a few times with its tiny feet, flattening it out.

  A scratchy, throat-clearing sound to my left tore my attention away from the awesome clock-bird thingy. The neolithic elf lady was squinting in my general direction. She cleared her throat again and raised a finger that looked like it pre-dated the dawn of amphibian, let alone mammalian, life. She pointed it at me and, as I watched in growing horror, slowly rotated it to point at the back of the line.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Oh no, she didn’t. Yes. Yes, she did.

  I turned back toward the clockwork bird on the desk, pointedly ignoring the pointing elf.

  “Rude,” she squawked.

  I gawked at her in dumbstruck amazement. I’d been called many things by preprogrammed NPCs, but never “rude.”

  “Rud-y,” she said. “Why, your name must be Rudy. Rude, rude, Rudy Rude.” She twirled her stick-finger, pointing at the ceiling, and then abruptly poked it toward the back of the line again. Twice.

  I turned away from her, intent on ignoring whatever other commentary the nasty little NPC had for me when the clockwork bird hopped into the air. There was a bright flash of golden light, and the bird expanded in size exponentially. For an instant, I thought the thing was going to go supernova right in front of me like some metallic Angry Birds crossover. Its wings, tail, and chest pieces pivoted open on hinges as they magically expanded, doubling and redoubling in size. They were also morphing into fleshy bits and reconfiguring themselves, going full-out Autobot. Within two, maybe three seconds tops, the clockwork bird had fully transformed into a distinguished-looking elven lady in flowing robes and short, brown, you guessed it—feathered—hair. Oddly, she had a large golden cog embedded in her right cheek and another on the back of her right hand. Both were slowly moving, ticking like gears in a timepiece.

  “More than meets the eye,” I mumbled.

  “There is a line, good sire,” the woman said patiently.

  “Uh-huh, sorry, I just need a sec,” I said. This chick (ha ha) was the Songbird—the mayor I’d been seeking—and my excitement level was through the bird-infested roof. “I need to get some backstory, maybe some lore, and kick off the initial quest, whatever that might be.”

  “Rude,” Neolithica squawked again off to my left.

  The mayor held up a hand toward the (much) older woman. “A quest, sire?”

  I nodded. Now that the dialog tree had been initiated, I needed to keep it flowing. “Yes, ma’am. A quest. That’s how these things always start, right? Newbie, that’s me, logs in, finds the closest town or village, meets some random peeps, and gets the starter quest from somebody in charge. That’s you. Usually, it’s the quest that kicks off the main storyline.”

  “Rud-y.” The single-tracked Neolithica was glaring at me, pointing over and over again at the back of the line.

  “Sire, I’m not sure I understand you,” the Songbird replied.

  Blarg. The game devs seemed to like to draw things out unnecessarily. Or, most likely, they were trying to showcase their new, admittedly very cool, speech-parsing AI. Kudos for that, but with Thomas waiting for me in RL, I really needed to get this show on the road. “Okay, let’s start with some backstory. Where am I, why is the town/tribe/kingdom in danger, and who are the bad guys?”

  The mayor pursed her lips. Her AI seemed to churn for a while, which was fine. After all, I had thrown a bunch of queries at the thing. Finally, she said, “Sire, this is the town of Westvael. It is not in danger, at least no more so than the Kingdom of Ileria itself.”

  “Awesome! Good start, good start,” I said. “So, where in Ileria is the town of Westvael? I don’t seem to have a mini-map.”

  “Near the southeast border, of course,” she replied, her single raised eyebrow betraying what she thought of my intelligence score.

  I nodded. “Westvael is in the southeast. Great job, level designers. Last but not least, where do I find the bad guys?”

  “The Horde? Beyond the wall, I should hope,” the mayor replied.

  “Ah! And there we go,” I said, smiling. “The ‘horde’ is beyond the ‘wall.’ Indeed. Kind of tropey by this point, but a logical choice for a starting area, at least. The wall isn’t made entirely out of ice, is it?”

  The Songbird looked at me like I fell out of the stupid tree and hit every possible branch on the way down. “That is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard of. Who would build a wall out of ice?”

  “Exactly. That’s what I kept thinking! So, is there a newbie, starter quest you can give me? Please, please, anything but a fetch quest. By the gods, I hate those.”

  She stared at me, her cheek-cog slowly ticking counterclockwise. The thing was mesmerizing, and I wondered if the mayor could use it to hypnotize people. She looked over at Neolithica, who shrugged and croaked, “Give Rudy a quest to find his manners. That will rid us of him for a long, long… long time.”

  “That is unkind, Mother,” the mayor said. Turning to me, she shrugged and said, “Westvael wants for nothing at the moment.”

  “Nothing?” I repeated, frowning. “I can’t adventure without something, you know, adventurous to do. Help a newb in need?”

  The mayor quirked her lips to the side and stared down at her desk in thought. “Her Royal Princess Aliana is scouting south of the town. She resupplied here in Westvael and set out not long ago. If you hurry, perhaps you could…”

  I didn’t let her finish. “Perfect! I’ll go find this princess lady. She’s probably in trouble by now and will need some good ol’ fashioned rescuing.”

  “I should hope not, sire. She is…”

  But I was already bolting for the door. I didn’t hear the rest of what the Songbird said. It didn’t matter, nor did Neolithica’s mocking cackles that chased me out the mega-door.

  Starter quest, here I come!