by Jason Cheek
“Lord Ironwolf,” Assault Leader Dell said, snapping off a salute as my eyes turned to him.
“Have everyone stand down and get some rest tonight. The troopers are going to need as much rest as they can get to face these next few days.” I ordered, without consulting him first.
“No quick reaction force?” Assault Leader Dell tried to suggest, as I waved his words away.
“Let them rest,” I said, adding a little more force to my words. “As it is, they’re only going to get a few hours of sleep. Besides, we can trust the House of Tuin’Dyrr to have our backs for one night.” The House of Tuin’Dyrr was Mike’s guild of Shadow Assassins.
“As you command,” Assault Leader Dell said, giving me a salute before taking off to carry out my orders. While I understood his concern, unlike Dell, I knew I could trust my friend’s soldiers completely. Otherwise, Mike would have let me know. Besides, he knew as much as I did that our troopers needed a proper rest. Even if everything worked like a charm, we were going to be pushing everyone to their limits to reach safety.
“Okay, we’re ready to go,” Mike said, as he hurried back with Sub-Leader Chuzedros at his side. “I have Sub-Leader Zuvnabod shifting his Shadow Assassins group to watch the western graveyard in case we’re forced to respawn.” He explained in the way of an apology as the rest of us fell in behind him without our zombie pets.
“What’s with all of them?” Mike asked in obvious confusion, seeing Fylreh, Neysa, Helgath, and the rest of the large pack of Great Saber-Fang wolves fall in with us. He lowered his voice. “I don’t really see them scaling any walls.”
“They’ll be escorting us to the edge of the main battle,” I said, shaking my head at the mental picture I had of Fylreh and the wolves trying to climb up the walls after us. Shivering for a moment as I once again wished that I didn’t mentally picture everything that people said.
‘I could do it if I bit on the rope and you pulled me up after you,’ Neysa’s thoughts came to my mind a second later, as I unhappily sighed. Now, I was stuck with the updated mental picture running through my thoughts as Helgath’s odd child-like laugh filtered through my mind.
‘Yeah, because that’s so much better,’ I drolly shot back. Nonetheless, I found myself with a goofy smile on my lips from the exchange. Seeing Mike’s questioning look, I waved away his unasked question as we descended into the valley.
Chapter One.Thirty-Two
(Thursday, May 8th / Day 18 of The World.)
The night’s sky was constantly lit up with bright flares of varying colors from the spells being cast from the ongoing assault. Thunderous rumbles could be heard from the distant bombardment. With noise seemed to grow with each step as we slipped through the otherwise silent woods. It reminded me of the old war movies I’d grown up watching as a kid where the rear units could hear the ongoing battle from the front miles away. It was a surreal feeling as our Darkvision kept trying to switch between vision modes.
Mike’s Agility must have been through the roof, I thought, as I watched him slip through the shadows with a grace that I was unable to match even with my upgraded stats. His movements made me think of my fight with Apoxsee as I once again felt frustrated at my lack of levels or class. Not that I was jealous that one of my best friends in the world was a higher level than me. It was more that I was frustrated at being held up in my normal leveling process because of this side trip.
Also, we played differently. I was a mixed caster slash melee fighter, which was very different than Mike who was probably heavily focused on his Shadow Assassin build. Oh, I’m sure he had to have some mana for his Nightmare ability, but knowing him, he hadn’t focused on it enough to detract from his melee skills like I had with my Intelligence to increase the number of zombie pets I could have at one time. Although, I was curious as hell to see exactly what his Nightmare skill tree covered that allowed him to be a Shadow Assassin, since we hadn’t had a chance to share our magic yet with everything going on.
The trees ahead suddenly opened out into a small clearing with a number of gravestones scattered around and a hooded statue at the center. Before we could step into the clearing, a baldheaded Dark Elf suddenly appeared directly before an unsurprised Mike. When I say appeared, I mean he hadn’t been there a second earlier, nor had he popped out of Stealth. I knew that because my Perception skill hadn’t triggered.
“Head of Midnight,” the male elf said, saluting Mike as his eyes took in the rest of us with a questioning look.
“Sub-Leader Zuvnabod,” Mike said, introducing his subordinate with an outstretched hand. “This is Jay … I mean, Lord Ironwolf. Make sure you follow his orders as if you would my own.” As we shook hands, I heard Kenzie asking Zhou and Darkhorse sourly if they were chopped meat. Ignoring the sarcastic comments, Mike nodded towards the siege going on at the lowest part of the valley. “How are they holding out?”
“They still command the ground before the outer wall,” Sub-Leader Zuvnabod reported, in a deep voice. “But, I fear with our exodus of the southern graveyard, they’ll use the stealthers we were holding in check for a new wave of attacks against the defenders.”
“It can’t be helped,” Mike said, running a nervous hand through his short hair as he considered the problem. “We’ll retake the southern graveyard together once we return, but if they find out Lord Ironwolf is here in the valley, they’ll come after us with everything they’ve got.” Turning back to me, he nodded meaningfully at Fylreh, Helgath, Neysa, and the pack of Great Saber-Fang wolves at the rear of our procession.
“Fylreh, Neysa, and the wolf pack will be backing you up in case the shit hits the fan,” I said, frowning at the sneer that crossed the Dark Elf’s face.
“We don’t need any monsters or humanoid trash-,” Sub-Leader Zuvnabod began to say, as my Dark Blade of Lord Kayden cleared its sheath in the blink of an eye.
The words froze on the Shadow Assassin’s lips as the blade’s point was suddenly pressed into the hollow of his neck. At the same time, Neysa stepped forward with her fur standing on end as a rumbling growl came from deep within her chest, while Fylreh’s knocked bow appeared in her hands with an arrow aimed at the man’s eye. As if that wasn’t enough, Neristhana’s hand axe had cleared the sheath from where it hung at her waist with a metallic ring as the entire wolf pack stalked forward growling angrily.
“Hold!” Mike commanded in a ringing voice, as the sounds of bending bows came from the trees above. As the slight echo died away, he continued in the same tone. “I will slaughter anyone who interferes!” I caught his nod for me to continue out of the corner of my eye as I addressed the Dark Elf before me.
“This is your first and last warning,” I said, in a voice as cold as ice. Looking into his shocked, dark-brown eyes, I paused for a moment to make sure he understood that I was serious as a heart attack. “I will take your head if you ever disrespect my soulmates or companions like that again.” I swore I could hear the beating of his heart as I paused to let my words sink in. “Is that clear?”
There was that half a moment when the Dark Elf’s eyes looked back and forth between, Neysa, Helgath, Fylreh, and Neristhana as if he were trying to figure out who was whom. He quickly thought better of it as I pressed the tip of the sword a little deeper into his throat. A snarl came to my lips as his gaze focused once again on my face.
“Is … that … clear?”
“Yes, Lord Ironwolf!” the Dark Elf’s voice cracked, as he dropped his bow and raised his hands in surrender. We stayed frozen like that for a few moments longer, before I pulled the blade and sheathed it in one smooth motion. As he bent over and gasped for breath, I continued talking to Fylreh and Neysa as if nothing had happened.
“Don’t join the attack unless the situation turns desperate. I’d rather not let the Chaos Storm Alliance know that we’re in the area if at all possible.”
Fylreh silently nodded while Neysa chuffed unhappily before taking her place once again at the front of the Great Saber-Fang wolf pack
. Seeing their attitude towards her, I swore Neysa and I were going to have a talk about what this was all about, before I logged out for the night. Mike waited for the male Dark Elf to pick up his bow and get himself settled once again, before addressing him directly.
“Are you now clear about the situation with our allies, Sub-Leader Zuvnabod?”
“Crystal, sire,” the Dark Elf exclaimed, as he snapped to attention.
“Then return to your post,” Mike unhappily growled, as the Shadow Assassin disappeared before my eyes. Movement ten yards above our heads caught my eye as I saw a shadowy outline immediately reappear on a tree branch in Stealth. Obviously, Shadow Assassins must have some sort of shadow walk skill to be able to do something like that, I thought, as Mike took off once again at a run. With a last glance at Fylreh’s impassive face, I took off after my friend with Helgath and Neristhana at my sides with the Devil Dogs right behind us. As we disappeared into the woods at the opposite side of the graveyard, I sent a parting message to Neysa.
‘Stay alert and be safe. I’ll let you know if I need you to come and get us.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Neysa unhappily sent back.
‘Then learn how to stealth,’ I replied without hesitation. ‘Otherwise, get used to staying behind on stealth missions.’
A mental sniff of disgust was the only reply I received as Neysa ended the active connection between us. It wasn’t that I was trying to be particularly mean, but I was pretty tired and crabby by now. It was nearing four o’clock in the morning and I’d be lucky to be in bed by six at this rate. And besides, I didn’t want to have to argue with her every time I went off on a stealth mission.
‘You know, she’ll probably pick up stealth just so she can go with us next time,’ Helgath’s voice gently came to my thoughts as I struggled to catch up to Mike’s flittering shadow.
‘If Neysa can figure out how to stealth, than she can be part of the team for the next run,’ I replied flippantly as I felt more than saw Helgath’s smile.
“That’s our Star, making friends wherever he goes,” I heard Kenzie’s sarcastic comment to Zhou as I flipped her a bird over my shoulder.
I didn’t hear her response, but the three Devil Dogs continued their discussion in low voices as we made our way down into the valley. By the time the forest ended, we had a mostly clear run to the mouth of the gauntlet almost two and a half miles away. Mike slowed down enough for me to catch up to him as we headed off at a flat run. Before we’d gone half a mile, he glanced over at me with a grin.
“Good job back there, by the way,” Mike said, as his eyes constantly searched the valley ahead of us for any enemies. “I wasn’t sure if you had that in you.”
“Whatever,” I said, still annoyed at the asshole’s comments. “He’s lucky I didn’t just hack him to death and resurrect him just to make my point clear.” Seeing Mike’s surprised look, I rolled my eyes.
“Sorry about that,” I said, in a tired voice. “This whole thing with being Lord Ironwolf of the House of Kayden kind of gets into your head.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Mike said, as his mask slipped to show the exhaustion on his face. “It’s the same with being the Head of Midnight for the House of Tuin’Dyrr.”
“It must be rough,” I said, commiserating with my friend. “At least, my people aren’t a bunch of stuck-up, pompous ass munchers.” Ignoring Sub-Leader Chuzedros angry huff behind us, I looked into my friend’s laughing eyes. “Seriously dude, what is it with haughty Dark Elves?”
“What did you expect, Jay?” Mike said, laughing out loud at the pissed off look on my face. “Of course they’re supercilious and condescending, they’re Dark Elves!”
“I don’t know why you’re saying it like that,” I said, unhappily grumbling at my friend’s lackadaisical attitude. “My group of Dark Elves are nothing like that.”
“Then they must not be Dark Elves!” Mike said, letting out a belly laugh. “You should have seen how they acted in Baernathrad, the capital. It makes my people look like pikers.”
“Shouldn’t we try being a bit more stealthy if we’re sneaking up on the enemy?” Kenzie’s voice called out from the back of our group as Mike apologetically waved his hand over his shoulder.
“You really have a group of Dark Elves that are nice?” He asked, in a lower voice.
“Yeah, a group of Shadow Scouts that were assigned to the Royal Army,” I said with a shrug. “They were slaves aboard a Sea Orc squadron that I took out.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” Mike said thoughtfully. “Probably why they don’t act like they have sticks shoved up their asses.” Looking at Helgath sideways, my friend’s voice lowered even more.
“So, what’s up with the monster-girl?”
“Helgath’s not a monster-girl,” I said, sounding somewhat miffed.
“I wasn’t talking about the Half-Orc,” Mike said, giving me a meaningful look.
“You know she has a name,” I ground out angrily, as my friend held up his hands to calm me down. “If Jill’s starting shit again, I swear I’m going to-“
“Chill out, man. Besides, it wasn’t Jill,” Mike said, doing his best to calm me down.
‘Even if it was Jill, I knew the bastard wouldn’t tell me, I thought as my blood began to boil. ‘Fuck! You didn’t see me getting into her and AJ’s business about swinging, did you?’
“Dude, it’s all over the forums,” Mike hurriedly explained, as he saw the fury in my eyes. “Half of the people are pissed off that you somehow managed to get a female centaur as a sexpot, while the other half are jealous as hell.” Seeing me calming down somewhat, he gave me a shit-eating grin.
“Look at it this way,” Mike said, dodging my halfhearted punch. “Your stream can’t be any worse than that Rome TV series that came out in the early two-thousands,” my friend’s chortling laugh made me blush to my toes as he continued in an unconcerned tone. “Besides, the controversy means more money for our Twitch Stream, right?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see what the commotion is all about,” Mike said, still laughing it up. “But I have no desire to see your hairy arse …”
Unfortunately, the ribbing didn’t stop there. It just continued to get worse and worse as we made our way towards the battle happening in the distance. You would’ve thought Kenzie would have been telling Mike to shut up and keep his voice down, but, instead, the three Devil Dogs joined in on the fun as everyone laughed it up at my expense. Kenzie was the worst, while Zhou and Darkhorse kept it polite. Even Neristhana had a twinkle in her eyes that promised this whole thing would be brought up at a later date when we were alone. It all came to a head when Sub-Leader Chuzedros suddenly realized who everyone was talking about. The look of absolute horror that came to her face sent Kenzie reeling onto her back doubled over in laughter.
Crossing my arms, I looked down at Kenzie who was rolling on the frozen snow in laughter as the anger and hurt inside of my chest began rising to the surface. Before I could get truly indignant, Mike stopped cracking jokes and got Kenzie to settle down. Zhou and Darkhorse hadn’t taken it as far and had quieted down once the comments got a little too much on the risqué side.
One look at the anger slowly simmering in my eyes got Kenzie to straighten out as she suddenly realized that they’d all gone a little too far with the jokes. That, or the warning look in Helgath’s eyes made the rogue think twice about pissing me off further. Climbing to her feet, she quietly apologized along with Zhou and Darkhorse, before we got moving again. Slowing down for me to catch up, Mike gave me an earnest look.
“Hey man, you know I didn’t mean any disrespect by all of that,” he said, somewhat uncomfortably as we neared the far side of the valley. “I was just funning with you, man.”
“Yeah, I know,” I stiffly waved him off, as my eyes took in the mouth of the gauntlet. “Things didn’t work out exactly as either of us expected and I’m still pretty sensitive about the whole thing.”
Of course after
hearing that, Mike wanted to talk about what all happened, but this really wasn’t the time or place, so I told him we’d discuss it later. For now, we had a job to do and, to be honest, I was a bit too wound up to share my feelings with him about it now. On top of that, while we’d both gone through some nasty relationships in the past, Mike was still actively dating while I wasn’t interested in anything deeper than a hookup. Then again, he never had a crazy ex-girlfriend that wouldn’t stop stalking him and his friends either. Trust me, until you’ve gone through that yourself, it’s hard to commiserate with someone in that situation.
The banter basically died after that as we focused on reaching our destination. Helgath must have felt the turmoil of my feelings, because she ran closer to me than normal. Instead of gripping my bicep like usual, she changed her tactic and brushed up against me to let me know she was there. At first, it just made me more annoyed, but, after a bit, it slowly started settling my nerves.
By the time we were half a mile out from the gauntlet, we could see players’ running back to the battle field from the direction of the southern graveyard. That prompted us to play it safe and switch into Stealth mode. While that kept us hidden, it unfortunately cut our movement speed to about half. At least, it gave me plenty of time to cast Identify on the stream of players. A quick scan showed me that most of them hadn’t bothered to recover their health or mana. Looking at the field of easy kills, I couldn’t help but sigh at the sight of so many potential victims.
“Damn, that’s really going to suck for Domenic,” Mike unhappily said, as he followed my gaze. Seeing the confused look on my face, he explained what had been going on up till now. “I’ve had my people hunting their respawns and camping the graveyards ever since we showed up yesterday. Initially, we managed to keep the worst of the pressure off Domenic for that first day by camping the graveyards. Last night, it all blew up in our faces. I divided my people up into a group of twenty watching the pass and three groups of forty on all three graveyards, but there were so many enemy players flooding into the area that we were forced to switch over to hit and run tactics to stop us from being overwhelmed.”