I should probably let her brother out, too. Together they might cheer up a bit.
Pressing my back against a dangerously loose rampart, I selected the second egg and set the chick free.
Weeeeoo! The second shriek, alarmed and inquiring, joined the song of bitter desperation. A brief pause, a rapid exchange of mental images—then a double surge of anxiety and fear hit my momentarily eased nerves. I collapsed to my knees, groaning with the mental pressure and sniveling with my suddenly bleeding nose.
I barely registered the sound of bare feet slapping quickly against the stone when a disheveled Lena rushed onto the wretched platform. Her slim frame was barely covered by a thigh-long T-shirt, her feet bloodied by her mad sprint across the shards of stone that covered all of the castle's floors. At least she wasn't followed by an equally half-dressed Cryl, saving me from any indecent ideas.
She looked me over, her eyes tearful with sympathy. "Hold on, Max," she gasped, rushing toward the chicks. She struggled to reach and hug both their spiky heads, paying no heed to the blood that started oozing from at least a dozen cuts on her arms and hands, and whispered something very soothing, kissing and stroking the sobbing baby dragons.
The pressure started to subside. The pain and anxiety were still there but at least they didn't make you feel like wanting to jump to your death in a stupid attempt to escape it.
I wiped my still bleeding nose with my sleeve and dried my tears, then struggled to my feet to take a look at the chicks. They were sniveling and complaining, crystal liquid forming in the corners of their eyes. A heavy viscous droplet rolled down a scaly cheek, hardening as it fell.
Ding dong, the vitrified tear rang against the flagstones and rolled toward my feet.
Forcing my cramped muscles to move, I picked up the still-warm crystal.
A True Tear of a Phantom Dragon.
Item class: epic
Effect: +75 to a characteristic of your choice
Holy shit. I'd never heard of anything like it. I didn't even dare to venture a guess at its price. I buried myself in the Wiki pages, scanning the search results, my fingers squeezing the crystal even stronger. Fifty to a hundred grand! The price for a unique object like this floated across a large scale, limited only by the buyer's financial muscle. Not everyone was able to pay the price of a good car for a couple of virtual marbles, but the item's cataclysmic rareness and its properties outweighed any expenses in the eyes of those who understood those things. An item like that could allow you to improve any piece of top gear or create a unique customized set of jewelry tailored to one's particular needs. So for the perma players like myself the stone was priceless.
If you think about it, how many billions, in real life, would a football team owner pay for a tiny diamond which, when pinned to one of his players' shirt, would add 75 points to his strength? How much would an aging millionaire be prepared to offer for +75 to his dwindling life? Or a scientist for an equal bonus to his intellect?
Ding dong, another crystal rolled across the floor, disrupting my fantasies. The baby dragons kept sobbing and weeping, generating a steady flow of artifacts...
How's that for a money mill?
Oh-ow, an especially heart-wrenching bout of despair doubled me up. A tear mill, more likely. How much for a child's tear? And for a baby dragon's? What would I be like, trading in infants' misery?
"Max!" Lena called anxiously. "Where's their mom?"
I gulped. Spitting out more blood from my bitten tongue, I croaked, "Dunno. In a zoo... hopefully."
"You've got to find her! The babies won't last more than a day without her! I can't prevent them from panicking for long!"
New Quest alert! The &#ç$ Priestess' Request!
You have 24 hours to find the Phantom Dragons' mother and set her free.
Reward: ?&@$*é№
'xcuse me? Was it that Lena had just sent me on a quest? "How did you do that?"
"What're you saying? Hurry up!" she tilted her head, annoyed. She bit her lip, blood from her scratched arms streaking the chicks' scales red.
"I got a quest from you! To find the chicks' mother!"
"Then go and find her!"
"I am going! Only how are you going to-"
"Master!" Lurch's worried voice broke into my mind. "The goblins are all running off! The guards have been forced out past the outer walls, and I.. I can't stop crying for some reason... even the starlings have abandoned their nest! They're gone."
Here's another one looking for a shoulder to cry on. What was it with me that they all turned to me for help? Can't someone help me for a change, at least to get up and clean my face from all the blood and tears?
"Wait a bit, Lurch," I managed. "Everybody's screwed up at the moment. We've got some new chicks hatched here and their mom is gone. So they're crying us a river. Wait a little, I'll think of something."
Ding dong. What kind of sadist was he who'd come up with that wretched sequence, grief—tears—money? Couldn't they have thought of Crystals of Laughter or something? Disgusted with myself, I picked up the precious tears from the flagstones making myself the solemn promise that I'd do everything it took to set the Dragon Mom free and wouldn't linger for a second to acquire an extra crystal.
"Hold on, Lena. I'll be back as soon as I can."
I scrambled back to my feet, activated the portal and teleported to the Temple. Here the pressure wasn't as heavy but I still found it hard to concentrate, especially considering Lurch's quiet whimpering that had added to the Dragons' duo.
I had to do something about it. This was a real psychological weapon from some governmental agency's arsenal. Like when the secret services hide a tiny transmitter the size of a dime behind your wallpaper. And there it would sit resonating, driving their unwitting customer to such mind-wrenching depression it would only take him a couple of days to step off the balcony. Or swallow a handful of sleeping pills before laying his head back on the pillow with an angelic smile on his face, anticipating a quick end to his misery.
And here I had a couple of grief generators cuddling up right next to me. I personally could scram for a day or two, but Lurch couldn't, and I didn't really need a nutter AI around me. But above all, we had to help the chicks. They were tearing my heart out.
Wincing from the pressure of unwanted emotions, I activated the portal to the Vets. A quick ID check, mutual nods of greeting, a few hundred feet of narrow stairways and corridors, then I collapsed into a chair. It had been a hard day, considering it had only just started, so it was time I made myself some soothing herbal tea. By nighttime, I would sure need some.
Now. Task #1: locate the dragon. A few keyword searches promptly offered the information I needed. Not a minute too soon, though. The administration of the City of Light announced that this very midday, the servants of the God of Light would use the purifying power of sunrays to exterminate the vile spawn of the Dark: the Bone Dragon. Actually, as some independent reporters sneered, the decision had been taken in view of the dragon's explicit unwillingness to live, so that she was about to kick the bucket on her own accord depriving the zoo owners of a stable cash flow. That's why they decided to squeeze the last drops of gold out of the collapsing story: an exemplary execution, entrance fee ten gold. Truly medieval. In another hundred years, they might start burning witches at the stake.