by N H Paxton
The smell of incense being burned wafted to me on the breeze as I stalked ahead, my focus razor sharp. Finally, I arrived at the excessively decorated temple, covered in stained glass and carved marble.
“Hello, young one. What may we do for yo—eh, is that person dead?” The clergyman at the entrance to the temple, a tall and thin Risi with long black robes and a pointed hat, took a step back from me as I trudged up to him, his face a picture of disgust and general fear. “W-w-why—what?” He couldn’t even formulate a basic sentence.
“Need healer, need bring her back, can help?” I was hopeful, as I was too exhausted to try anywhere else.
“I’m sorry, sir, we can do nothing for the dead, aside from offer thoughts and prayers on your behalf for their souls.” He regained his pious appearance and bowed toward me, like he was doing me a favor.
“Is like entire world then, before it went boom.” I shook my head, my fatigue starting to become painful. I had spent so much time focused on getting Ina to the temple, I hadn’t thought about what would happen when I arrived.
“I’m not sure what you’re going on about, sir, but if you would please take the body elsewhere to be handled, and make room for, ahem, tithing attendees, I would appreciate it.” The overtly pious Risi turned his clerical charm back on, moving ever closer to the temple entrance.
“This is disaster.” I had known the world before would offer “thoughts and prayers” for things that happened to others. It made people feel good, knowing they were “trying” to do something for other people, whether it had an impact or not. It looked like the developers had carried that over into V.G.O. Someone had a sick sense of humor. “So, where can bury her?” I was tired, and I just wanted to know what I could do to put her at rest.
“Oh, yes, we offer burial services here, for a modest fee. That way, she cannot be brought back by dark powers. Would you be interested? The price starts at five gold and goes up depending on the type of internment you would like.”
My mind lingered on the term “dark powers” for just a moment. If Ina could be brought back to life through dark magics, if such a thing could be found in the world, perhaps we could be together again.
I shook my head at the thought. It was selfish of me to even consider such a thing. Ina wouldn’t want to be brought back like that. She died honorably, and I would hate to see that memory of her done wrong. Regardless, I was pissed at the temple for charging such an exorbitant rate. These bastards were taking advantage of people who were grieving. Rowanheath must have had a capitalistic economy.
“Derr’mo,” I swore. “Is too expensive, who has money like that much!?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but that is the fee. It is expensive to employ a priest. If you’d prefer, there is a burial field outside the city, but we cannot guarantee its sanctity.” The clergyman had backed up even farther, and his hands now pressed against the side of one of the ridiculously large doors. My face must have been turning bright red, because I could feel the anger in my cheeks.
“Where. Is. Field?” My words were punctuated with fury. It took everything within me to not scream at the man.
“Oh, it’s right outside the city, just to the south. It’s a free burial site, but you’ll have to dig the grave yourself.” He pointed toward the south wall, then backed away, bowing as he disappeared into the shadows of the temple interior.
“Idiot.” I didn’t have time for his games, so I turned and headed off in the direction he had indicated.
“Have a blessed day, sir!” the man shouted as I was walking away.
“Every clergyman the same, ‘give money to God, be blessed, take away sin.’ Is same here as Earth.” I trudged out of the city, feeling incredibly defeated.
It took me another hour to get to the burial field, but it was exactly as the clergyman had said. And, thankfully, there was a shovel by the sign that indicated the field’s purpose. I collapsed under the great weight, both physical and psychological, of what I had been carrying. Ina rolled off my shoulders with every lack of grace I could have possibly managed. I looked her broken body over, and tears fell from my eyes unbidden.
“Oh Ina, how I have done you so wrong.” Even though I felt terrible for it, I took the time to remove her gear, save for her armor. That I left, an heirloom from her family.
I dug the necessary grave, with great effort, and placed her within. I crossed her arms over her chest and lay her sword overtop. She looked shockingly at peace, despite the way she had died. I stood there for a few moments, staring at her, before starting the painful process of covering her body with the loose dirt. I couldn’t keep track of the amount of times I stopped and wiped tears from my face, but it was a great deal.
“You, uh, you okay?” A voice from behind startled me.
I spun around, crossbow immediately in my hand. I was greeted by a young man, maybe in his twenties, with deep olive skin and long black hair. He was Imperial by race, but his clothes said he was likely a farmer or a laborer.
“Ah, sorry, been rough day.” I put the crossbow back in its place on my belt and turned back to complete my incredibly grievous task.
“I lost someone too.” His voice was gentle, almost peaceful. He stepped beside me and threw some little purple flowers on the freshly covered mound of dirt. “Was she a friend, a lover?”
“She was, yes.” I stabbed the shovel into the ground beside me and leaned heavily on it. “The best.”
I smiled sadly, in spite of myself. Here was this young man, who was at the graveyard, mourning his own loss, and he had the kindness to give my beloved a parting gift as well.
“As they all are, my friend.” He knelt down and crossed himself in a familiar, almost religious way. “May she find peace in the afterlife.” He waved his hands through the air in a series of quick motions, and a gently glowing white rune began to take shape. He finished, then clapped his hands together. The rune solidified, then turned to dust, falling gently on the grave, like fresh snow.
“What is that?” I stood in amazement that someone I had just met would put so much effort into whatever it was he had done. It looked like magic.
“It is a purification ritual,” he said as he stood. He groaned and faltered, but I managed to catch him. “Ah, thanks. It is difficult to keep this field pure, but I do it because nobody else will.” He clapped me on the shoulder and clasped my wrist firmly. “I am Gandel, this is my lichyard. And as far as your friend is concerned, she will rest easily.” His smile was soft and reassuring.
“My thanks. Ah, your service, how much is?” I was sure he was going to try to gouge me, now that he had already performed the ritual, but he shook his head.
“No, no, I am not like our ‘brothers’ in the city. My service is to the souls of those departed. I require no fee.” He smiled wide as he stepped away. He threw a hand in the air and walked off. “So long, Vlad!”
“Yes, tha—wait, how do you kno—” I didn’t even get the question out before he disappeared in the air. There wasn’t a trace of his existence left, aside from the purple flowers left on Ina’s grave, and the gentle white dust covering it.
What did I just come into contact with? I looked around and saw nothing else, not a single person anywhere nearby, aside from the city gate guards far in the distance.
“Vlad must be tired. First, man is speaking, then turn, and man is gone. Game has strange way of showing mercy.” I shook my head, but I couldn’t get the smile off my face. I knew Ina’s soul would be at rest.
I pulled up my interface to check the time. It had been nearly three hours since I set out in the morning. I needed to get back to my job quest.
The Immovable Object...
Timeline: 1 day post-cataclysm, 08:45
I STOPPED IN A GENERAL store on the main street of Rowanheath on my way back to the sewers. I needed to buy a few things before I headed back into the abyss, including some more tobacco. I also spent a few minutes asking after some high-potency alcohol, something equivalent to vodka from Earth, but to no
avail.
I did, however, discover that Eldgard had thin paper, the kind used for transfer writing. I decided to buy some and perform a little experiment of my own and was delighted to discover that I could roll my own cigarettes. It took a solid couple minutes to make a batch of five, so I decided to keep them in reserve for emergency situations.
I returned to the entrance to the cavern much better prepared, lit my torch, and headed back inside. This time, I would finally make it to the Plague Tunnels, and I would finally finish this quest which had tormented me for days on end.
I spent the time I was walking enjoying some of the finer, slightly more expensive tobacco I had acquired. The pipe smoke helped to take my mind off the entire situation, and made the journey much more pleasant.
After a short while, I arrived at the place where Ina and I had died, and I stopped. Something inside me fought continuing on, because it meant leaving Ina behind. But I had already done that—I had already moved beyond this whole thing when I buried her in the field, and before that when I had her buried in Russia. Even then, when she was riddled with cancer, I had more or less known I would have to move on. What I didn’t expect was how hard it would be when I had to actually step beyond a physical marker of what culminated as the last dying moment of our relationship.
“What are walls?” I pulled another thick drag from the pipe as I leaned against the wall, which was scorched from the fire mage’s attack what seemed like an age ago.
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them. Without any kind of warning, I was standing in front of my Earth self. He stared at me, and I stared at him.
“Walls? You know what walls are, Vlad.” Earth Vlad pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it, taking a couple puffs from it. For the first time since coming to Eldgard and V.G.O., aside from in my dream, I was able to speak in perfect Russian.
“Walls are just the world’s way of locking us in.” I responded in kind, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke from the pipe.
“Indeed, they are chains. They keep us from being who we want to be, who we deserve to be.” Earth Vlad leaned against the wall as well, a smile on his face as he rubbed the end of the cigarette out against a stone block.
“They keep us from becoming truly powerful,” we finished in unison.
There was a quick swirl of emotion within me, some mixture of peace, and a driving force. I tapped the bowl of the pipe out against a stone brick, leaned forward off the wall, and took that fateful step, moving me beyond the barrier I had erected for myself.
“Is time to become powerful.”
I was back to the irritating broken English, but I was moving forward, and that was what mattered. I had only taken a few steps before I heard the familiar squeaking of the damned rats behind me.
It sounded like a great deal of them, and I was not about to let some stupid rats get the best of me. I didn’t have a lot of time, at least not mentally, to deal with the garbage of the sewers, but I wasn’t about to just run either. I wanted to be out of this hell as soon as possible, to put the memories of loss behind me.
I pulled my compact crossbow and fired off a bolt. It soared through the air with the precision of a professional dart thrower, punching through the eye of the lead rat. The rat sank to the floor with a spasm.
Two of the remaining four rats charged at me simultaneously, but I was prepared. I dropped my torch, slid another bolt into place, ripped the wire back, and snatched the dagger off my hip. I held it out sideways, hoping to catch one of the rats with it if they lunged. I lucked out as one of them jumped at me. I managed to move my dagger just fast enough to get it between the beast’s jaws.
I brought up the crossbow and fired it point-blank into the side of the creature’s skull. Foul-smelling goop poured from the wound as the Plague Rat fell to the ground.
I used the opportunity to kick its body at the other one, which didn’t dodge in time. The corpse smacked into the second rat, knocking it away. The dead weight of the rat’s brother was too much for the creature to move quickly, and it gave me a chance to stab the thing repeatedly with my dagger. It took a good number of strikes, but it finally died.
The other two rats were watching with a curious intelligence, waiting for me to be done with their obviously less-intelligent friends.
One of the last two rats hissed loudly, while the other started to back away. I wasn’t sure if I had won the fight or if they were regrouping, but I chose to taunt them like a moron.
“Yes, go back to stinking hole. Ignorant stupid creature!” I spat on the ground while I fed another bolt into my crossbow. I was getting better at reloading the weapon during combat, but I would need to find a way to make a magazine of sorts later. Manually reloading every single time was becoming a complication that I could not afford.
“Not ssssstupid.” An unexpected voice with a very firm lisp came from behind the one rat who had stayed. First, I only saw a pair of glowing green eyes, about waist-high. Then I saw the gleam from a weapon shimmering in the light of my discarded torch. “Not asssss sssssstupid assssss man.”
Out of the darkness stepped the second most terrifying thing I had seen since coming to V.G.O. It was a half-rat, half-man creature. It carried a short, curved sword in its hand. The blade was notched in a multitude of places, and it looked terribly shoddy. I did not, however, doubt the creature’s effectiveness with the weapon.
As I looked at it, really focusing, a tag popped up above its head. [Plagued Kobold], it read.
“Oh, yes, might have misspoke.” I did my best to not let my fear show on my face, but creatures often have a way of sensing fear.
“No, time for apologiesssss over. You kill family. You will pay.” It didn’t hesitate before it rushed at me, the curved blade swinging everywhere.
I backpedaled, but tripped over my forgotten torch. I landed in a heap, completely undefended. I rolled as quickly as I could to try to escape the beast and managed to get a small distance between myself and it before there was a deep, piercing agony in my leg.
A debuff threw itself across my vision.
<<<>>>
Debuff Added
Poisoned Fangs: You have been injected with a virulent poison, dealing damage of 1 HP/sec; duration, 30 seconds.
<<<>>>
A rat had latched onto my calf. I battered it with the handle of my crossbow as I shouted curses.
In the chaos of me beating on the rat, I accidentally discharged my crossbow. The bolt deflected off the ceiling and buried itself in the shoulder of the rat-man, who howled in rage. At least I scored a hit. I looked around for it quickly, while trying to escape, but everything was chaos.
“Get off leg! Now!” I slammed my leg hard against the stone floor, and I was rewarded with the sound of snapping bone.
The Plague Rat released my leg and tried to scamper away, but I had apparently broken one, if not more, of its legs. I reached back and stabbed it as hard as I could, my dagger biting deep into its flesh. It stopped squirming only a half-second after that, but I didn’t have time to celebrate.
The rat-man was standing over me, its sword raised high for a killing blow.
“No,” I whispered as I had a flashback of dying under the onslaught of the other players. I yanked my arm back and threw the dagger as hard as I could, hoping, praying, that it would distract the creature long enough to give me time to run.
The dagger went wide, but the rat-man suddenly squealed. I watched as fire crawled up its body, eating up the grease and disgusting years of mats in its hair. The torch must have ignited the creature’s tail.
It struggled and shrieked, throwing itself around on the ground, trying desperately to put the fire out, but I was having none of it. I gathered myself up and brushed off my clothes. I loaded another bolt into the crossbow, letting the burning creature crisp.
It finally stopped smoldering, but its body was still covered in huge, deeply scorched areas. Its breath came slow, and it looked at me with an extreme kind of fear as
I stood over it.
“I have thing to be doing. You are in way.” I looked it square in the face and buried a crossbow bolt between its eyes.
I reached back to the bolt pouch I had on my belt and noticed it was starting to run fairly low. I had several bolts left, but I needed to make sure I used them sparingly. I thought for a moment about whether or not I could make bolts, but tabled that thought for another day. I needed to get to my destination.
I searched the corpse of the rat-man and found a few silvers. Nothing like literally doubling your money from a single kill.
I collected my torch and kicked the battered sword into the stream of stink that was ever present in these sewers. I took a quick swig from one of my last healing potions and chucked the glass vial behind me. It broke with a satisfying shatter as I walked farther into the darkness. Despite all of the things I had done since coming to Eldgard, I had never felt more badass than I did at that moment. I collected my thrown dagger and carried on.
It was only a few more kilometers before I reached an impasse. I stood in a gigantic hallway made from ancient stone that was a completely different color than the rest of the sewers. That wasn’t the only difference. The awful stagnation of the sewer was gone. This place was completely locked down. It looked thousands of years old.
I traced my fingers across the place where the stone changed, feeling the differences in the way they were produced, the way they were two different temperatures.
I felt unusual, something itching the back of my mind, like anxiety or fear. It was eerie, but the sudden fear didn’t stop there. Before me stood a doorway that was easily the height of two tall men. It was round, like a vault door, and had sickly green runes carved into the front. They released a worrying light that made my torch completely unnecessary.
“Well, find big door, make big bomb, blow up big door. Is simple. Except, no bomb.” I rolled my eyes and shrugged as I began my inspection of the impediment before me.
I first looked at the runes closely, hoping to find some kind of pattern, maybe a clue in their creation. Nothing came to me as I stood, poring over them. I pulled my pipe from my pack, filled it with tobacco, and lit the bowl. I puffed, I stared, and then I puffed again. The smoke filtered past my eyes, tinged green from the glowing runes on the doorway, but it did nothing to improve my understanding of the door.