Chapter 29: Priestesses, Panic & Phantasms

The loud rustle from Gael standing and emerging from the bushes silenced the clearing and drew every eye in the camp. Every tired wary suspicious fearful eye. Every worn down scared refugee, every tattered and filthy soldier. Even worse, the ragged soldier’s hands were hovering over their weapons, ready to draw or pick them up if they hadn’t already.

If it wasn’t for Roxi hand on my hip I might have stayed in the brush, rather than following Gael out and facing the building tension. Unfortunately despite my well honed instincts to continue hiding, I’d discovered the existence of a Roxi override protocol that had driven me to step out.

Right into the wary standoff.

As soon as Roxi and I had stepped out I could feel the tension flare up as if we’d thrown a match into a meth lab. I’d been lucky to only lose my eyebrows when I’d snuck into one and done just that after they’d moved into my vicinity and started scaring off my clients.

A soft cough shattered the silence and refocused everyone’s attention on gale.

"Hey there!” the silver haired merc yelled, calling out to the clearing. “Don’t mind me asking, but you're not ghosts or spectres are you? Cause this wouldn’t be my first run in with a ghost village. And if you are, I'll have to ask this Priestess of Ruin here to perform an exorcism. Once I’m done shitting my breeches that is.”

What!?

Evidently I wasn’t the only one left confused after Gael’s words, going by people’s expressions as I looked around the clearing. That said, confusion seemed a far better outcome than the tension we’d just left, hands were already slipping from the weapons of stunned individuals.

As if that was enough, the combat maid turned to Roxi. “Hey Roxi, do these folks smell like spooks to your Ruin Priestess senses?” asked gael with a stage whisper.

The focus of the entire clearing and all the tension in it shifted its epicentre onto the dumbstruck amazon. “Ahhh…” she stalled as panic caused her brain to short. “No! No they do not.”

“Great news,” Gael exclaimed, flashing the Ruin Priestess a bright smile, nodding in an exaggerated manner for the audience. “So, hey... Since you’re not ghosts and all, nice to meet you! We’re just passing through the area, same as you all are and I’m just as surprised to be seeing you all here as you are us. Anyway we’re fairly tired after a day’s walking and we’re hoping you won’t be objecting to us sharing this spot and your fires for the night.”

Non-committal shrugs and indecipherable murmurs were all she received in reply. All of the previous tension had vanished as if it had been vacuumed off by a black hole spawned by her absurdity. Fear and hostility once again replaced by exhaustion, apathy and hopelessness. 

She had succeeded in defusing the situation, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there had been a method she could have used that didn’t involve fatally wounding me with secondhand embarrassment. Meeting Roxi’s eyes, I knew she was thinking the exact same thing.

“What!?” Gael asked, noticing our non-verbal conversation. “Did you really want to spend the next fifteen minutes or more trying to assure them of our intentions, fighting their suspicion all the while trying to keep the purpose of our travels secret?”

“Oh... “ I voiced with realisation. ”You purposely confused and messily derailed them before they could get started, so they weren’t just reacting out of fear and suspicion. Then once they were on the back foot and had to actually think, trying to catch up with your nonsense, you let them know Roxi’s a Priestess and therefore trustworthy. Then you let them know we weren’t here for them and stated our intentions for the night.”

“I knew you were more than just a pretty face, Aisling.”

The ruins clearing was strange in that it wasn’t an actual clearing, instead it was an area devoid of underbrush and other plants below the canopy that were common throughout the rest of the forest. Instead the forest floor was covered in a carpet of unbroken pine needles thanks to the invasive pines, likely planted by the villagers and had thrived since their disappearance holding off the rest of the forest.

Beneath the tall pines were the remains of stone walls and foundations belonging to what had once been homes and businesses of a small one street village similar to Spot. Where they were still standing at all, the walls rose mere feet from the pine carpet and rarely more than waist high. If we were to look from above, I’m sure we would have seen the square and rectangular outlines of what had once been buildings laying in two rows. 

Aside from one ruin that somehow still resembled a building, the ruined walls more closely resembled gravestones of a village lost than anything that may have once provided shelter. 

I could sort of see where Gael’s inspiration to ask the refugees if they were ghosts had come from. If we’d been camping here alone, the creepiness of the ruins and my imagination would have probably had me jumping at spirits in my peripheral vision. And the refugee’s presence didn’t make it all that much less creepy. 

The first thing we’d done once we’d gotten past the refugees' initial suspicion and hostility, was pick out a spot inside the ruins of what might have been a shop or home to lay our bedrolls for the night. Laying out my bedroll and blankets amongst the grave-like ruins I could feel a shiver running down my spine.

Roxi and Gael seemed to have no such fears or at least their imaginations were more settled than mine. That said, if there were ghosts, I’d have bet my lucky multitool I left back with my burned out corpse Earth-side that she could see them as part of her character design and had already learned to completely ignore them.

Kicking a rock away from where she’d laid her bedroll, Gael reached back over her shoulder and loosened her monster of a sword in its sheath. 

“I’m going to go talk to a few of those soldiers hanging around the camp and see if I can find out if there is anything new we should know about, y’know stuff of the fuck up our day variety. We do not want to be walking into any ambushes or villages turned military camps.” 

Standing from where she’d been smoothing out her blankets, Roxi nodded towards where the ragtag mismatched soldiers were grouped, “Need a hand with that?”

“Better I do it, I pretty practised at being circumspect. Don’t want one of these deserters ratting us out under torture,” she half whispered, keeping her voice low. “Now as for you two, I saw a Priestess healing people when we first arrived and if there’s a priestess here, then there is something in that ruin I think you Blessed might want to check out.”

The ruin she was referring to was the only structure that still stood taller than waist high. Glancing down at our packs I shot Gael a non-verbal question.

“Don’t worry about the packs. Gods gave me eyes as well as ears and I can use both at once, I should be able to keep an eye on them even as I’m loosening tongues,” she replied, already walking off.

An arm snaked its way across my back to wrap itself around my shoulders, looking up to where it came from I found Roxi looking down at me. “Shall we?” 

Nodding, I let her guide me towards the ruin Gael had pointed out to us.

The ruin was the sole standing structure left in the village that was still recognisable as the building it had once been. The village’s Church of the Paired Divinities had largely withstood the ravages of time, but that wasn’t to say it wasn’t a ruin. The church’s outer walls still stood waist to head high and its large foundation blocks still lay intact with only the measliest of weeds and grasses managing to grow out from the gaps between them. Even more remarkably, the church’s inner Sanctum and Altar lay mostly intact barring the weather damage and lack of roof.

That was where Roxi and I’s business lay.

Blending game mechanics and lore, Blessed could only attune themselves to active sites of worship in order to resurrect there upon death. An altar in a ruined church in the middle of the wilds wouldn’t normally register as a valid respawn point, but the presence of a non-player priestess at the site changes everything. 

The presence of a Priestess of Creation told me that this camp was more than the result of the games famed Chrono Generation, it had the feeling of something set up by the GM-AIs who were responsible for quest and event generation. Likely set up as a respawn island amongst a region of turbulence due to the ongoing skirmishes and insurgencies that upended the status quo of towns and villages being relative safe zones. 

Instead these ruins were a pseudo safe-zone and player hub. Lorewise too, even if this site was attacked by one of the factions in the civil war no one would lift an arm to attack a non-Blessed Priestess (with a capital P) of one of the big two. Nor would they be likely to kill or maim anyone sheltering in the church’s sanctum even if it was a ruin as long as she was here.

I’d had a lot of time to read up on the lore of this place during my period of enforced bedrest.

Entering the sanctum, a pop-up broke free of my UI overlay.

[You have discovered a Narrative Event Hub temporary resurrection site!]

[Attuning to this site will set it as your Resurrection Point for the next seven days. At the end of this period your Resurrection Point will return to the last Resurrection Point attuned, reaching a new Resurrection Point will attune you as normal. Do you wish to attune?]

This was new…

I’d never before been asked when attuning to a new resurrection point, it had always just happened when I’d entered a settlement with an active shrine or altar. In Spot it had been the church that the orphanage had been a part of.

Still compared to the emulations of pre-war mmos I’d played previously, Cora was especially dynamic with an evolving world. Even if it was created and run using AI, any game systems they made likely needed a degree of flexibility in order to function amidst all the chaos involved with this level of realism.

I really did not want to wind up trapped in the capital under siege if I died and had to respawn. And if we did somehow get out of the city again, repeating the long hike we’d taken to get here didn’t really appeal to me. Especially if we weren’t able to fly next time and had to walk that distance too.

Interacting with my UI interface, I selected yes. 

Do you really think I would’ve clicked no?

…

Wait! How the hell did Gael know we needed to approach the altar to manually set our resurrection spot?