FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Marc consulted the information he'd accumulated from his play on this Siberal, back home, as they walked to the settlement, looking for any new landmarks in the area among the remaining pictures Paul had left them. For him to have sent the pictures, he needed to take control of a Caern, nothing else would handle the size of the files on the Lands. There was the one within the settlement, but if he was pursued, Marc didn't think he could hold it long enough to assemble the file, run it through whatever encryption Paul had and divide it so each of them would only get part of it.

Settlements didn't have defenses for a player to take control of, they were economic and social centers, not combat-oriented--not that it stopped players from turning them into that, but they needed a large combatant base on each side to make it happen.

He ran a search for other Caerns in the area. The four caverns that had been recorded had to have them, but those could change over time, and Siberal had been active for a few decades when he played on it. Three towers of power were listed, but those would show up on the pictures Paul had sent them, right? That left two keeps. It was possible Paul hadn't had time to include a proper picture of them.

Of course, he might have made the wrong assumption about Paul coming to this settlement. He'd only know once they reached the settlement, and asked around. There hadn't been a server reset since he'd found Paul's trail in the snow, so the locals would have news of any travelers and where they went.

If he couldn't identify which Caern Paul had gone to, they'd have to inspect each one directly and that--He was down, face in the snow, a weight on top of him. Something exploded close by.

"I thought assassins were always aware of everything happening around them?" Omar said, rolling off him. He gestured and a jet of water splashed over the shield as it turned to ice.

Marc got to a crouch. "Where did they come from?" A group of twenty were charging at them from what had been their rear. Players, by the diversity in races, every NPC they encountered on Siberal would be Artidras or monsters until it went active and NPC travel was taken into account.

"How should I know," Omar replied, sending a fireball at them. Taro was running in their direction to get behind the shield, lobbing potions behind him and slowing the enemy's approach. "You're the expert at picking up ambush."

"Tuck is--" the skeletal bull began.

"Tuck," Omar continued. "Which means he was too busy looking at Taro's ass to notice anything."

"Have you looked at that ass?" the monkey said, landing between them. "It's very distracting." He threw knives at the coming group. "You shouldn't be allowed to walk around with that on display," he told the bat.

Taro took out more potions. "With what on display?"

"This isn't an ambush," Marc said. "My guess is they had a teleport point set up ahead of time and triggered it after we passed."

"Can we make use of it?" Taro asked.

"Only if you know which one of them has the trigger item, what the item is, and if the point works both ways," Marc answered.

"Can we focus on that after we take them down?" Omar demanded?

"On it," Marc said and vanished from everyone's sight.

* * * * *

"Why," fireball, "is it," lightning bolt, "that." Tornado, "we can't get a break!" another fireball at the approaching yetis. Taking down the players had been easy enough, even as a group their levels were far below Omar and his, other than Tuck, but with his build, Tuck could dodge just about anything as he broke armor, leaving less protected enemies for them to take down. He was starting to hate how efficient his brother's build was, since it meant he'd actually put thought into it.

He shouldn't have to be dealing with the thinking brother in the Lands, Tucker was a clown everywhere other than when he was in a military conflict.

Of course, their real problem hadn't been the other players, but the monsters their fight had attracted. Omar wasn't certain if that had been their plan, or they'd just gotten lucky, but even if they didn't defeat all of them, this quest was done for.

"Warning!" came a voice all around them. "The Mithirdal outpost has been claimed by the Jostun Faction. Control of the outpost has been transferred to the Jostun Faction. Players have twenty-four hours to break their control. After that time, the Mithirdal Ice Forest will be controlled by the Jostun Faction. Good luck."

"Don't let that distract you," Omar yelled, as he sent a lightning bolt to arc between a group of yetis. For some reason, they were less immune to electrical attacks than fire. "We don't have time to deal with some player-created event."

"Except!" Taro yelled. "There aren't any other players on the Siberal world then us and them!" he threw a potion on the ground before the beasts the yetis used as attack creatures and as one stepped on the spilled liquid, it stopped in place, turning a clearer ice and then breaking into pieces.

Omar cursed. In the middle of all this, he'd forgotten that detail. "Marc, where is the Mithirdal outpost?"

"Nowhere near! They won't be able to box us in from there," the assassin replied from somewhere among the yetis. Omar couldn't see him, but one of the monsters fell from seemingly nothing.

"Then there's something there they want to take or keep us from reaching," Tuck said, jumping from one yeti to the other. His armor breaking skill wasn't as useful against them since technically they weren't wearing any, but it still caused them a small defense penalty that Omar could take advantage of once his brother was out of the lightning bolt's area of effect. "Horace, is there a Caern in that area?"

"Busy here!"

Tuck hit the ground rolling, got to his feet, and ran. Omar threw the lightning, and the yetis fried.

* * * * *

"Well?" Tuck asked the skeletal bull.

Marc raised a hand, panting, not even having the energy to glare at the monkey. "Let me breathe a little."

"We don't have the time," the monkey replied, sounding like what Marc remembered of an old teacher always telling him to take things more seriously, which considering the usual exchange between the monkey and Omar felt weird.

"Fine." He accessed his files, looking for any mentions of Mithirdal, and found a map. "Okay, there isn't much there. Just the outpost and a keep."

"Then they're after the Caern in the keep," Tuck stated.

"How do you know there's even a Caern in it?" Omar asked.

"There's one," Marc said, looking at the annotations on the map. "But why do you think they're after it?"

"Because if your friend had used the Caern in the outpost, there would have been no need to 'take it' and therefore tell us where they are. They could have accessed the Caern there, get whatever he left, and shut down the server. That is the only reason it's still active, right? They need to get what's hidden so they can know how dangerous it is to them."

"We don't know why they're doing any of this," Omar said, "but why take the outpost? If it's in the keep, they can just go in, and get the information."

"I'm not an analyst," Tuck replied. "That's more your field. But if your friend hid something important there, stands to reason he protected it. I never controlled a Keep's Caern, but it lets you do a lot of stuff, right?"

"You basically control the very reality in it," Marc said, going through more of the information he had.

"And Paul's an entopic designer," Taro said, "can you imagine the things he could do with that kind of control?"

"That still doesn't explain why they'd claim the outpost," Omar said.

"I thought you were the serious player in the family," Tuck said. "An outpost can be set as a guild spawn point for as long as it's controlled. That means they don't need to trog through all this to reach it."

"Why wait until now to take it?" Taro asked.

The monkey shrugged. "The difficulty setting?"

"I don't have that information," Marc answered, "I wasn't into taking over outposts back then, still aren't." He needed to find something because Omar wasn't going to like what he was coming up with right now.

"Alright." Omar sighed. "Where is the keep? How far is this Mithirdal Forest?"

There, Marc had what he'd been looking for. "The forest is two weeks for us under normal circumstances, but--" he raised a hand to stop the brastock's protest. "--if you don't mind a slight detour, there's an atelier not far from here. Taro can use it to open a portal to the keep."

"What's an atelier," Tuck asked.

"An alchemist's workshop," the bat replied. "They're sort of a mix between a shop, a teaching place, and an actual workshop, the one thing they do let an alchemist do is make potions that are out of their usual fields, a bazaar of possibilities, but I still need the ingredients. All I have is manarium from when I thought I'd be taking someone to a mana pool."

Marc smiled. "Brand new server, no players on it yet. That means it's going to be fully stocked."

"And you can get us to the keep?" Omar asked.

Taro considered it. "So long as Marc's map is accurate. I can make us the best travel potion available here."

"Okay, then we're going there. Marc, you're on point. Hopefully, they don't know about it and we won't have to fight more of them." The brastok sighed. "Which I can't believe I'm saying."

* * * * *

"Are you sure that's it?" Omar asked.

Taro grinned as he looked over the ice-covered tree. It wasn't often he was the one who knew more about something. The downside of spreading himself over so many characters. "Most ateliers are hidden since alchemists like their privacy." This tree looked like a sequoia wider than an entire neighborhood and covered with frost. How such a tree could still have leaves was something only the programmers could explain.

"So why didn't I ever see you go to one of those?" the brastok asked as Taro search the bark for the symbols that would activate the lock.

"A town will have anything I need, unless I'm going for some very specific ingredients that can't be found in nature, or are just too bothersome to get. Taro never bothered with the exotic stuff beyond manarium, and that's not exactly rare." He tapped the lock and a new window appeared. Those were the other reason he didn't go to these places. He wasn't the puzzle lover Omar was.

He looked at the representation of the alchemical elements, all twenty-eight of them, and moved them around the board. He needed to figure out the six that related to this atelier. Normally he'd have gained information in learning about its existence. Clues to make solving it easier, but they were all solvable even without those clues. Ice and water were obvious ones since this was Siberal, wood was also one, he added life and sun. What would be the sixth? He included earth, and did not get the green flash that said it was correct.

He sighed. Which one was wrong?

They were all obviously right. He hated these puzzles. What did trees do? That would be the basis for the elements, what it needed, what it was, and what it did. It breathed; so air? Only now he had seven, so he needed to remove one and hope air was indeed the right one. He removed one and put it back when he didn't get the green flash and moved on to the next element. He got a green flash once he took out wood.

"Come on, it's wood! How can that not belong there?"

"What's wood?" Omar asked.

"Never mind, just this stupid puzzle." The outline of a door appeared, and he pushed it. Warmth enveloped him and he hurried inside. "Oh, I never thought I'd ever feel warm again." And the smell, old books, dust. The smells of home to Taro.

"Shake out of it," Marc said. "You can feel warm for as long as you want once we rescued Paul."

"Right." Taro headed to the work table, bringing up the menu and looking through it for what was required to make a transport gate. "Okay, I need you guys to find me some things. Look in the cupboards." He listed the ingredients.

"Is any of this trapped?" Tuck asked.

"No, we made it in, so we're allowed to take what we need to make the spells if it's in stock."

"Seems overpowered," the monkey commented.

"Says the guy who can use shortcuts without having to pay for them," Taro replied. "Your class has its benefits, I have mine. I still have to use my work tokens if I don't want this to take a year to concoct."

"So how long will this take?" Tuck asked.

"I have enough tokens to bring this down to under two hours of work."

"So," Tuck said, stretching the word. "Are there any controls on this space? Like any chance you can change the settings to adult?"