Pr(1)
Resetting the hotel room worked exactly the way it had for the buffet. First Amelia made a weird little gesture with her hands, then all the broken and overturned furniture suddenly fixed itself and jumped back into place. She also believed Cooper when he blamed the trashed hotel room on the Geeks. As a result, Cooper was in a pretty good mood when he and Amelia finally sat down at the massive round table to have that talk.
“Could you start by putting your hand in the bowl?” Amelia said, indicating the silver bowl full of water on the felt between them. “Just for a second.”
Cooper did as he was asked. The second his hand hit the water, a weird light emerged from inside the bowl. Once he took his hand out again, the light clarified into a sheet of squarish little symbols that looked like they might have been Chinese or something, surrounding little points of glowing color, like the indicator lights on the dashboard of a Chrysler LeBaron.
“The fuck is that?” Cooper demanded.
“It’s your ka,” Amelia said as she frowned at the robes of symbols. “It’s kind of like your identity card within the game.”
“What kind of writing is that?” Cooper said, pointing at the ka.
“Chinese,” came the reply.
“Cool,” Cooper said, pleased with himself. “Do you know what it says?”
“It’s a list off your attributes.”
“My what now?”
“Attributes. They’re sort of like vital statistics that govern your interactions in the Game. For instance, your strength is rated as silver, but your spirit is rated as gold.”
Cooper thought for a moment. “I understood none of that,” he finally said.
“It’s not that important. Or at least not right now. We’ll definitely want to talk more about attributes later. It probably is good for you to know that everything in the Game has a rating. Only instead of numbers, the Game uses metals.”
“You said my spirit was gold. Is that the best?”
“No,” Amelia replied. “Gold is actually right in the middle, 5 out of 10.”
“Really?” Cooper said, disappointed. “What’s 6 out of 10?”
“Mercury.”
“What about 7 out of 10?”
“Tin. I know, it’s all backwards,” Amelia said. “People have been arguing about why for literally thousands of years. The best explanation I’ve ever heard is that gold was the top when the Game was first created, and then the other levels were added later.”
“What’s 10 out of 10?” Cooper asked.
“Meteoric iron.”
“Well at least that one’s cool.”
“I don’t disagree,” Amelia said. “And for what it’s worth, a gold rating in an attribute is excellent right now. That’s actually the highest attribute rating you can have up here on level 1."
“I’d probably feel great right now if I had any idea what you were talking about,” Cooper said.
“I promise this is going somewhere. Now objects in the Game are also rated from 1 to 10. The ones with no magic at all are clay-level. For instance your Swiss Army knife. Useful, obviously, but not magical.”
“So clay is 1 out of 10? That’s not even a metal.”
“Like I said, the whole system’s a mess. Next we have the lead tier. These objects are the first that would technically be considered treasures, though the enchantments on them tend to be fairly minor. For instance, that piece of charcoal tied to the top of your staff. It’s called the Coal of Agni. Not particularly powerful, but very useful for starting fires.”
“What did you say the name was? Coal of…”
“Agni,” Amelia said. “It’s the name of a Hindu fire god. Treasures generally have some sort of god associated with them.”
“Oh, so you have religion down here too? This keeps getting better and better.”
“For what it’s worth, the gods rarely become important before level three,” Amelia said. “Your other lead-tier treasure is the Token of Aeneas.”
Amelia pointed at the single $100 bill set apart from the others.
“So you’re saying that particular hundred dollar bill is magical?”
“Correct,” Amelia said.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“But only that one?”
“Correct,” Amelia said again. “That bill will allow you to access certain special areas in the Market. Don’t worry, I’ll explain what all of that means once we get closer.”
“What about these?” Cooper said, pointing to a pile of thin steel hoops, each about 4 inches across.
“Those are called ally collars. We'll talk about them more later, but the short version is they allow other players to travel to and from your pr."
"My what?"
"Your pr. It's an Egyptian word. It means your house or your domain. All of this is your pr."
"How do you pronounce it again?
"Pr. Moving on to your copper-tier items…” Amelia said, pointing at the cumberbund. “The Belt of Thor is a decent survivability item. It can become quite powerful when upgraded. We also have the Pouch of Dionysus…”
Here Amelia pointed at the leather bag that had until recently been full of human teeth.
“That one makes jelly-bots.” Cooper said.
“The technical term is wine golems, but yes, you obviously have some experience with those. And let me just say that both of these are excellent finds. Copper has historically been the highest tier of treasure that could appear on level 1.”
“Historically.” Cooper echoed.
“Historically,” Amelia nodded. “But more recently - in the last 100 years or so - silver-tier treasures have begun appearing on level 1. No one knows why. It’s quite rare. I’ve only ever seen it happen twice as I recall. Anyway, the really important thing to know is that whenever a silver-tier treasure appears on level one, it is invariably cursed.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cooper said, rubbing his eyes. “No you’re gonna spend another 20 minutes tell me what curses are.”
“I promise I’m almost to the point. Yes, we do need to talk about curses briefly. For the most part, they sound like. The lower level ones are annoying mainly. They decrease one of your attributes by a point, they make you clumsy, or hungry, or just extremely unattractive to the opposite sex. Higher level curses are more dangerous, however. There are ways to break them, but that tends to become easier the lower you go, so if you draw a particularly nasty curse early on it can actually be quite dangerous. So finding a silver-tier treasure on level one, when it does happen, can actually be a bit of a mixed blessing.”
“Let me save you some time,” Cooper said. “All this build-up is just to tell me that the snake stick is silver, right? And that means it’s cursed, which is why I can’t put it down. There. Was that so hard?”
“Actually, that’s quite wrong,” Amelia replied testily. “If you’ll please just bear with me one more minute. You are correct that you are carrying a silver-ranked treasure. It’s called the Ring of Kali, and it’s one of the better stealth treasures in the Game. It does in fact have a curse on it, but that’s not what has me worried. What worries me is that the object attached to your hand appears to be a gold-level treasure called the Staff of Imhotep. Unless I’ve made a terrible mistake, it is far and away the most powerful treasure that has ever appeared on level 1 at any time in the last 5000 years. So I hope you can understand if I’m a little bit anxious to figure out what’s going on.”
“I definitely get it,” Cooper said. “I’ve been feeling basically that same way every minute for the last two weeks.”
Amelia sighed. “I suppose that’s fair,” she said. ”Alright. I’ll cut to the chase. At some point, we should probably try to figure out why there is a gold treasure on the first floor, but I suppose it can wait until after badminton practice. The more immediate problem is that yes, the staff is cursed. If my measurements are correct, it’s a gold-tier curse called 'The Curse of Apep'".
“What does it do?” Cooper asked.
“It drives you insane and then kills you.”
“Okay so it’s definitely bad. How long does it take?”
“It depends. The first symptom is a recurring dream where you see yourself on top of a pyramid, being worshipped by a crowd of millions. Have you had anything like that happen yet?”
“I don’t usually remember my dreams,” Cooper said. “But let’s say I was having them. What exactly am I supposed to do about it?”
“There are a number of ways to relieve curses. The most reliable is holy water.”
"You mean like Catholic holy water?"
"It doesn't have to be Catholic necessarily", Amelia replied. "The specific god shouldn't matter."
“And what do I do with this holy water when I find it?”
“You drink it.”
“Really? Just guzzle it down like a frat boy on spring break?”
“Yes," Amelia said "Drinking holy water is the best way to clear a curse.”
“Okay great," Cooper said. "So where do I go to find holy water? Does this place have a spigot or something?"
“Now we're reaching the real issue," Amelia said. "There will be any number of shrines that offer holy water down on level 2. Your options here on level 1 will be much more limited. So my advice would be to go down the stairs immediately. That gives us the best chance to nip this curse in the bud before it becomes a serious problem.”
Cooper paused a minute before responding. “You told me I could take a week off first.”
“Yes, I did," Amelia said. "Now I’m updating that recommendation.”
“If I go down to the second floor, can I come back up later?”
“No. Once you descend, you can never come back up to level 1 again.”
“So I’ll never see you or this place ever again?”
“There will be entrances to your pr down on level 2, but you will need to go find them.”
“And how long will that take?”
“Hard to say.”
“Okay, well this fucking sucks then. You promised me a week-long vacation and now you want me to run back into that fucking shitshow and start shotgunning bottles of holy water ? Godammit! Do you have any idea how good a mood I was in 5 minutes ago?”
“I’m sorry. I usually hate being a party pooper.”
“Isn’t there any other way?”
“Well, there is one other thing that could potentially work.”
Silence.
“What?”
* * * * *
Name: Cooper of Vancouver
Gender: Male
Affiliation: None
Age at Entry: 29
Current Level: Pr (1)
Jing: 10/10
Qi: 14/14
Shen: 0
Life #: 2
Status: Cursed (3)
