by Jason Cheek
‘What kind of traps are we talking about?’ I immediately sent back. Neysa didn’t know what they were called, but Helgath did as her clear thoughts rang in my head.
‘There are spring traps everywhere,’ Helgath sent a mental picture of a spring trap large enough for a humanoid to get caught in. She also added in several other traps they’d come across. ‘Along with a number of pit and spear traps.’ Once again, I had the mental image of several traps with spears set up to pierce inattentive strangers.
‘Were you able to get a count of the numbers of newfar we’re looking at?’ I asked, relieved that they hadn’t been caught in any of the traps. Although none of them would kill my girls, they’d either have to worry about being captured or alerting the camp to their presence. ‘Or find a path inside their camp?’
‘I wouldn’t risk it,’ Helgath’s mental voice warned, after a short pause. ‘The two approaches we found were being closely watched by sentinels in the trees.’ In a flash the locations and general layout of the camp filled my mind. Seeing the extent the Aussies had gone to protect their camp, I decided not to risk getting in closer. That wouldn’t work here. Besides, I didn’t see any way we could sneak into the camp without triggering a trap or letting the sentinels know we were here.
On top of that, if I wanted to know their true intensions, they had to believe we were helpless. With the last puzzle pieces in place, I was finally able to come to a decision on how to proceed. This exact question had been floating around in my mind since we’d left Delonshire. Instead of becoming clearer the closer we’d gotten to Domenic’s territory, it had only gotten more convoluted after hearing about all the shenanigans Julie had been up to since the start of The World. But, over the last few days, I’d finally come up with something that I thought just might work. Now, it was time to see if I was right.
‘Here’s what I want you to do,’ I sent, quickly explaining my plan in full. They both thought it would work nicely and agreed with my conclusion. Either we could trust the Aussies or we’d slaughter them all. ‘Do you think you can stay hidden there?’
‘No problem,’ Neysa and Helgath replied in unison.
‘We’ll be down shortly,’ I replied, as I focused once again on the discussion going on around me.
“So how do we figure out if we can trust them or not?” Angie asked, her distrust for strangers clearly evident in her cold tone.
“Yeah, getting betrayed now would totally suck,” Krishna agreed, as he came to a stop beside Angie.
“That’s a good question,” I agreed, good-naturedly. Seeing the questioning looks on my friends’ faces, I couldn’t help the smirk that came to my lips.
“Okay, here’s what I was thinking …” Quickly explaining the same plan to my friends, I was happy to see the wicked smiles that appeared on everyone’s faces as I came to the surprise at the end. Looking between the groups’ excited faces, I arched an eyebrow at Angie. “Does that work for you?”
“Not bad,” Angie grudgingly agreed. “So who’s going to be the sacrificial lambs for this?”
“I’ll need to be there if this is going to work,” I said, thinking over everyone’s abilities. The selection really wasn’t hard. Only a handful of my current people didn’t have stealth, besides the Uten Syn guild, which was something that we’d have to correct once things settled down.
“I’ll be taking Ulia, Keela, Rayne, and Fylreh with me un-stealthed,” I said, as my companions stepped forward without hesitation. “And Yun, Sarka, Unalia, Tinyr, Brenna, and Neristhana will be going in stealthed for close support,” my eyes took in the rest of the group. “Once everyone gets into position, we’ll get their attention.”
“Does that sound good?” Seeing everyone’s nods of agreement, I stepped away from the ledge. “Then, let’s get going.”
With all of us having Darkvision, we descended without issue to the base of the mountain. The lose rocks we dislodged weren’t loud enough to give our position away. Besides, the Aussies sounded like they had a pretty good party going by now. Hopefully, that would help us catch them off guard.
As soon as we made our way into the forest, Krishna and Gaelin fell back to lead the Guardians. The plan for them was to hold back at nearly max range for healing and ranged support if needed. They also kept their zombie pets lined up in front of them as a reserve force or for cover in the unlikely event that we needed to retreat.
Angie and her girlfriends took charge of the Druids that were coming with us. Stopping at the edge of the line of traps surrounding the camp, we quickly got to work. With the Druids in Were-form helping out, we were able to get everything prepared in under five minutes. Giving the women a silent nod for Angie to get her people into position, I stepped up close to Sarka.
“Pick your targets carefully,” I said, keeping my voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “But don’t get in too deep. The last thing we want is to have you guys get blocked from falling back if this turns bad.”
“We’ve got this,” Sarka said, rolling her eyes. Whatever, I was just glad that she, Tinyr, and Unalia had all taken my advice to leave their pets with Krishna, regardless if they were soulbound or not. “Would you stop acting like a mother hen?”
“What the fuck ever!” I snapped under my breath, giving her the dual fingers. Laughing, my friends triggered their Stealth as Brenna and Neristhana silently followed suit. With a sigh, I started forward to find the place Neysa and Helgath had told me about, when the Silver Dire Wolf’s thoughts brought me up short.
‘It’s two feet in front of you.’ I held up a hand for my companions to stop and knelt in the frozen snow. Looking carefully, I could just make out the man-sized snare trap. ‘There’s eight of them on this track.’ Neysa continued to explain as I my eyes scan ahead.
Whoever had set this trap must have used both Darkvision and regular vision to hide it from sight. It was almost invisible to the eyes. Mostly though, its camouflage was due to the snares’ large size, but once you knew what you were looking for, the trap wasn’t so hard to find. The trees bent in odd shapes over the trail were what gave them away.
‘Where are you?’ I asked, as my eyes searched the forest around us. I saw them before either one of them could answer. ‘Wait, is that you in the snow drift at the base of the tree?’
‘I am the snow drift,’ Neysa sent back with a mental snort. Before I could ask how, Helgath cut in.
‘I covered her up with frozen snow,’ the Half-Orc explained.
‘Heh, you’re going to scare the crap out of whoever you pounce on,’ I chuckled happily at the thought. ‘Okay, let me get everyone in place.’
Pointing two fingers at my eyes, I then pointed out the traps on the ground to the non-stealth group. Before continuing on, I caught Fylreh’s attention and pointed to the trap I was kneeling before and the next one in line, signaling that these were for her. The annoyed look she gave me made it clear what she thought of the plan, but she didn’t have much of a choice about being here. By now, Fylreh and Neysa were almost more recognizable then even I was in The World. If we were going to sell this as being legit, one of them had to be with me for the players that found us. Once everyone was in position, I called my messenger.
‘Come to me, Tengsly. There’s work to do.’ I mentally sent to my pet tucked away in my hood. Luckily, the little guy hadn’t been hurt during the life and death struggle I’d had with the Elite Fanged Tarpan Striders earlier, I thought, as a gray blur of flapping wings came to hover before my face. Focusing on the Flying Squirrel’s intelligent eyes, I mentally pictured Dangas Khan, the camp in the middle of the forest, and the message I wanted to send.
Honestly, I had no idea if this was even going to work, since I’d never met Dangas Khan before in my life. It wasn’t like I could mentally picture the player for Tengsly to find. My concerns didn’t seem to be an issue because the Flying Squirrel chittered in understanding and raced away. I wondered how long he’d take to get back if Dangas wasn’t there. We’d barely been waiting thre
e minutes, when Tengsly came fluttering back. Hovering before my face, he transmitted the message to me.
‘Damn man, you almost made me bust a plugger, Star! Yep, that’s me guild mates in the forest at the base of the mountain. Come on down and we’ll catch you in the forest.’
For a moment, I could only shake my head at Dangas’ comment of “We’ll catch you in the forest.” That didn’t mean they were after me, but the double entendre didn’t leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. Frowning, I pictured Angie and Krishna’s faces to the little flying squirrel.
‘The trap’s been set.’ As Tengsly took off again, I began checking over my gear and tightening everything down so I didn’t lose anything important when I sprung the trap. In the distance, I could hear the excited voices of the Aussie players gearing up and preparing to move out. My eyes met Ulia’s solemn gaze as they laughed about pulling one over on the Revenants’ guild leader.
Hearing that, a part of me wanted to just say fuck it and attack them as soon as they came into range, instead of playing this charade. As if reading my thoughts, my companions began reaching for their weapons. Signaling for them to wait, I took a deep breath, pressing my fingers to my eyes as I tried to forcibly calm myself down.
It was easy to be paranoid with everything going on, but I couldn’t let Julie’s actions affect me like this. When it came down to it, we needed the extra help with the forces the Chaos Storm were bringing into play. The plan I’d come up with was to see if we could trust the Aussie guild or not. Attacking them straight off wouldn’t help anything and would just give us another enemy in the region to contend with.
Reminding myself that it would be best to not make any rash decisions, I nodded to my team as the sounds of the Aussie players making their way through the forest came to my ears. When they were but twenty yards away, I signaled for my team to proceed as I triggered the snare trap on the ground in front of me. With a yelp, I found myself lifted into the air with an incredible force. At the same time, some jingling that sounded like metal cans with marbles inside of them started making a racket in the distance.
Almost simultaneously, the shouts from my team joined me as Ulia, Keela, and Rayne were lifted into the air to hang upside down like I was. Even Fylreh had grudgingly followed my order as two different snare traps pulled at one of her front and rear leg. Although, she drew the line at yelping in surprise or fear as the cacophony of sounds increased with each trap that triggered.
Immediately, I heard excited shouts coming from the lead Aussies at the sounds of the traps being triggered. I couldn’t make out the words, but a number of people were loudly boasting about their abilities as they came closer. Probably because the player accents was so heavy and the slang so different then what I was used to with American English.
What happened to everyone speaking common? Well, we’d learned during our travels that if someone spoke a lot of slang that didn’t have anything to match within the “common vocabulary”, then the game just used the players’ default language from the real world. You could also purposely focus on your words and actually speak your native tongue and bypass the game’s language system entirely, but that took a lot more focus to do with any regularity.
I will say this for the Aussie’s, the traps weren’t bad. They were nonlethal and definitely caught you by surprise. If we hadn’t been prepared ahead of time, most of our gear would have been left on the ground when we were yanked upside down. None of us bothered to continue squawking once the hook was set. Instead, we quietly dangled above the ground at eye level waiting for our quarry. I’d left my shield on my back but the Dark Blade of Lord Kayden and the Vicious Executioner's Axe of Cruelty were gripped tightly in my hands. Behind me, my companions were just as calm and collected, preparing to fight where they hung. As the first few Aussie players stepped out onto the trail where we were hanging, Tengsly came fluttering up to me and quietly settled in the hood of my cloak.
“Aye mates, look what we have here,” Dangas announced proudly, as he stepped up to me with twenty or so friends at his back. “It’s the infamous Startum Ironwolf!”
“What a beaut!” A player named Daniel McConnell said with a woot, as he came to a stop behind Dangas. “You actually did it, you bloody ripper! You pulled one over on the dingus.”
“What a complete numpty!” Another player named Rassilon Tardis said, with a shake of his head at the second Aussie player.
“So what does this mean, Dangas?” I asked, feeling my anger beginning to rise. If these guys had decided to betray me to Julie, I swore it would ruin my love for Aussies forever. “Are you selling me out or just having some fun?”
“Well, we’re not here to fuck spiders!” A red Panda-kin girl named Steph FoxFire barked out with a laugh. I couldn’t help but do a double take, since I’d never seen a character like that before in a game.
How did I know the red Panda-kin player was a female? Well, besides the very sexy and feminine Aussie accent coming from her black lips, she was a very anthropomorphic-correct panda-girl even with her thick coat of fur and poofy tail. Although, I wasn’t about to ask why she called herself FoxFire when she was a red panda.
Red Pandas weren’t exactly Panda bears. They looked more like a raccoon mixed with a fox than anything else. It gave the panda-girl a truly unique and sexy look. Her entire body was covered in fine red fur, except for around her eyes, nose, and the tips of her ears that had pure silver-white fur. The hair on her belly, arms, and feet was also somewhat different. The red there was so dark it was nearly black. At least, it was from what I could see between the blue robe-like wraps she wore around her upper chest and waist that she wore for decency. The wraps kind of reminded me of the mage outfit in Diablo. Around her shins were another matching coarse blue-cloth wrapped with brown leather that were similar to Neristhana’s boots that just covered the lower part of her leg and the top of her feet.
The panda-girl didn’t have a mane of hair or anything like that. Instead, her skull just came up from her neck in a triangular head with two cute, raccoon-like ears. The black button nose and short snout on her human-like face was a perfect human-bear mix of beauty and wild ferocity that caught the eye. In her hands, she held an ornate staff with a blue gem that screamed mage. My eyes were suddenly pulled away from my inspection as the Daniel player unhappily shouted at me.
“Drink a cup of cement and harden the fuck up, you seppo!” I swear the man had to be an Aussie red neck. I didn’t know what seppo meant, but I figured it wasn’t anything nice as the next redneck sounding Aussie called out.
“Who said we were selling you out, man?” He was an older looking guy named James Ross-Munroe. Puffing out his chest, he shook his fist at me. “Them be fighting words, seppo!”
“Alright, enough with the yacking!” Dangas yelled out at the players behind him, as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked me in the eye. “Those Chaos Storm blokes have been passing through the entire day looking for you hard. Demanding that we give you up or pass along the message if you showed your face around here.” Seeing the concerned look that crossed my face, the Aussie guild leader just laughed.
“Don’t be getting your knickers in a knot.” Dangas said, trying to calm me down. “Me mates wrecked them good, but the fuckwits didn’t want to hang around and play.” The Aussie nodded in the direction of the mountain. “They took off through the pass like a bunch of knobheads.”
“What?” I asked, fishing for why they didn’t seem interested in selling us out, but still had us walk into one of their traps. “If you didn’t want the reward they were offering, then why string us up like this?”
“What reward?” Daniel asked, his tone suddenly ugly. “Their offer was ripe as a week old roo.”
“Ripe as week old roo?” I couldn’t help but repeating the words with a laugh. “I guess, you mean it stank to high heavens?”
“Well, I wasn't trying to say it smelled like roses,” the Aussie red neck said in annoyance.
“He’s from
Queensland,” Rassilon said, as if that explained everything. Who knows, maybe it did. I just didn’t know enough about Australia to know either way.
“Actually, Star. Me and my mates wanted to see what kind of bloke you were,” Dangas said, nodding to the twine wrapped around my ankles with a shit eating grin. “We had a bet going if you’d fall for a simple snare trap or not.”
“Guess you must be a bunch of city blokes to fall for something simple like that.” James said, laughing it up. “I told ’em you were just some gamer blokes and not real life hunters. Just made me a pile of money on that bet.”
“Alright, mates,” Dangas called out to his guildies. “Cut ‘em down so we can figure out how we are going to help this bloke out.”
“Is this all of your people?” Steph asked, somewhat confused as five guys stepped forward to cut us down. “Because you’re going to need a lot more than this to help your friend out.” By now, most of the Aussie guild had gathered around and were talking shit about how easily they took us out.
“No worries, mates,” I said, in my best Aussie accent to the players coming to cut us down. “We’ve got this.”
Using my body to put tension on the thick twine holding me in the air, the Dark Blade of Lord Kayden smoothly cut through the snare as I flipped to land on my feet. As if we’d practiced the move, Ulia, Keela, and Rayne flawlessly copied the maneuver and took up defensive positions behind me. While that was going on, Fylreh’s scimitars made short work of the two snares that had trapped her legs.
The sudden ease with how we freed ourselves took the Aussie players by surprise. Before they could say anything about it, I put my fingers to my lips and let out a piercing whistle as I mentally gave the orders for my pets to subdue. Instantly the ground around the Aussies’ players feet erupted with earth and frozen snow as seventy-two zombies leaped onto the shocked players standing nearest to them. At the same time, Sarka, Yun, Tinyr, Unalia, Brenna, and Neristhana came out of Stealth to subdue the loudest talkers, while thirty-eight Druids in Werebear and Werewolf forms dropped down from the trees above to tackle the remaining Aussie players to the ground. If that wasn’t enough of a surprise, it was about then that Krishna came running up with his thirty Guardians with their defensive line of NPCs out in front.