"There it is," he said quietly, like he'd been waiting for that.
"Now you know what it actually costs.
Every time.
No exceptions, no matter how good it feels for the two seconds right after."
I felt, distantly, a small twist of guilt underneath all the exhaustion. I had never taken a life I didn't have to, but I'd just erased something enormous and mostly harmless off the face of the earth because a stranger with glasses had wanted to win a bet.
"That's the Lanternwood Bow," Luxy said, awed, once I could stand on my own again.
"It's got the actual power of the sun poured into it."
"The bigger question," Savage said, staring at me like I'd grown a second head, "is how an NPC gets his hands on a legendary S-class weapon in the first place.
Who exactly are you, kid?"
I didn't have an answer for her. I was starting to suspect I didn't have an answer for most of what had happened to me lately, and that bothered me more than the numbness still crawling up my arm.
The road west to Vorn was tense in places and surprisingly lovely in others. Aside from the occasional icy glare from Savage, the weather held warm, the birds kept up a steady, cheerful racket, and the sun sat on my face like it had personally decided to be kind that day. By the time the iron mountains had shrunk to a pale smudge behind us, the river Oryn was close enough to catch and throw back the light in long silver ribbons, and green fields ran out to the horizon in every direction.
My grandfather used to tell me stories about the best defended city in the midlands: a hunter named Oberlin who supposedly found the largest gold vein in the known world, built himself an iron castle where stone would have done, watched a city grow up around it out of pure gravity, and then bought his way onto the council of the gods as the reigning deity of wealth. I never knew how much of that was true. Standing in front of the actual city, I decided most of it probably was.
Rose fields in every color imaginable rolled up to the walls, the whole approach thick with their scent, and the banners hanging along the ramparts showed red roses on a field of green. Vorn's twin towers rose high enough to be built as much for beauty as for defense. Three walls ringed the city, each thicker and taller than the one before it: two of pale stone dressed in climbing ivy, giving the whole place the look of something that had grown there naturally rather than been built, and an inner ring of grey iron that looked considerably less interested in being pretty.
People flowed in and out through the gates in a river of their own.
We split up once inside. Luxy and Savage went to restock supplies. Namey took me to find proper light armor, since apparently a member of the Wayfinders had to be able to actually hold up her, or his, end of a fight.
"There's someone you need to meet.
The other two can't know," Namey said, steering me deeper into the city than I expected.
"Who?"
I asked.
"Aftermath is different from other games.
It runs itself, no outside help needed," he said.
"I'm bringing you to meet a very important program."
We passed through both stone walls and into the grey iron keep, and from up there I could see clear down to the river port where the Oryn finally emptied into the city itself.
Inside a lavishly appointed building hung with expensive tapestries stood a golden statue labeled simply Oberlin. The office around it looked like the sort of place a wealthy, self-satisfied banker would choose to sit in all day.
"Greetings, master," a bald, gold-draped man in flowing yellow said.
"I did wonder when you would find your way to me."
He looked distinguished enough that it took me a full second to register he was actually talking to me, and a second longer to notice he bore an unsettling resemblance to the statue standing behind him.
"Jon, this is Oberlin," Namey said, with the specific pride of a man introducing you to a god he'd personally coded the ego for.
"The program you built yourself, to mine the gold and run its circulation through the whole game."
"You mean the founder of Vorn?
The god of wealth, that Oberlin?"
I asked, lost.
"It seems your memories have suffered some damage, master.
No cause for concern. I have everything well in hand.
Every spare cycle of computation is being put to full use," Oberlin said, with the mild, unbothered tone of a man discussing the weather.
"Oberlin, we need gold.
We've got weapons to buy," Namey said.
"If it's weapons, I know just the shop for it," Oberlin said.
After the general shock of meeting a god I had apparently designed myself, I found the weapon shop's selection disappointing. Plenty of heavy armor built for warriors, next to nothing in light leather for anyone who preferred to fight from further away.
"Jon, come look at this," Namey called from the back.
There, laid out on a stand, was a beautiful set of leather in matched brown and black, gloves and boots and a deep cowl to match.
"This is the ancient Veiled Plate of Kaldrec," a merchant said, materializing behind us without so much as a footstep to announce it.
"Kaldrec was a legendary assassin in his day.
This makes its wearer close to undetectable. Unfortunately, no one wants it anymore, on account of its...
complications."
"What kind of complications?"
Namey asked.
"It only permits its wearer to fight with a bow, and it triggers a mandatory retrieval mission the moment you put it on, one you must finish inside forty-eight hours or it starts draining your health, one percent every minute, until there's nothing left to drain," the merchant said.