The Monolith

by Stephen Roark

  Midwife.

  That’s all it said. No level listed. I turned to Rey, who looked just as confused as I was. I glanced back at the old woman, sitting alone in her chair in the middle of the woods.

  Maybe a quest starter? I thought. Or some other kind of NPC? Why else wouldn’t she have a level by her name? Still…something about it didn’t feel right.

  Beside me, Rey dropped her arm and let her scalpel hang by her side. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s check this out.”

  “Wait, Rey,” I tried to warn her, taking hold of her wrist. “Could be a trap.”

  “I’m sure she’s just an NPC,” she replied. “She’s got no level! Let’s see what quests are like in this game!”

  She tugged her arm away from me and walked forward towards the old woman. As she got closer, the woman seemed to notice her, and glanced up briefly before looking back down at the ground.

  “Baby…gone…,” she kept on singing. “Gone, gone…”

  “Hello,” Rey said softly as she reached the woman. My axe at the ready, I walked up behind Rey but kept my distance. “Are—are you all right? Have you lost someone?”

  Finally, the woman looked up, and when she noticed us, stopped rocking. Without the rhythmic sound of creaking wood, the woods felt suddenly quiet and even more uncomfortable.

  “Well, well, well!” she cackled. “What a couple of right cute Gigglemugs you two are! Come from Weeping Hills I presume?”

  Rey glanced back at me and did one of those semi-excited shrugs before turning back to the woman. “Yes, we did! What are you doing here? Do you need help?”

  “Ohhhh,” the woman groaned, putting both hands on her chair to brace herself as she got to her feet. Her whole body quivered as she got her legs under her, and instinctively, I reached out and took her arm to keep her from falling. “An old lady like me need help? No, no I don’t think so, young lady. You, on the other hand…”

  It happened so quickly I almost couldn’t process it. The old lady moved so fast she was nothing but a blur. Her right hand went into her sleeve and found a serrated knife, barely longer than my hand. I tried to turn to keep her from getting behind me, but she was just too quick. Then, I felt the blade against my neck.

  Its cutting edge chattered across my throat, spilling my blood and tearing away every last bit of my remaining health.

  “Clay!” I heard Rey shout as my strength faded and my legs went out from under me. The last thing I saw before my vision faded to black was the old lady dashing towards her with unparalleled speed, and driving the pointed end of her blade into Rey’s chest.

  The world went black, and all I could think was, nice one, Mizaguchi. Real nice.

  DEATH TAKES YOU!!

  A pale silver light formed in front of me, grew and expanded until it was all I could see. A high pitched hum rose from somewhere and gradually the light faded and the world came into view. I looked around and found myself standing back at Weeping Hill, bathed in the glow of the lamppost at the center of the town square.

  “Not as easy as other games, is it?” I recognized Jacob’s smug voice and turned around to find him standing wide-legged with his arms crossed over his chest, his Bone of the Great One in his hand.

  He really was pissing me off—implying that I was some kind of newb who’d never played a Mizaguchi game before and didn’t know what I was doing. Player killing was allowed in Blood Seekers, and if I’d had a couple more levels on me, I would have taken great pleasure plunging my axe into his chest.

  “The Midwife,” I replied. “She had no level listed on her—”

  “You noticed that, huh? Yeah, that’s one of the Weeping Hills’ many traps. You’ll learn to watch your ass from now on.”

  My hand tightened on the handle of my axe as he smirked at me, cocky with his one level lead he had on me.

  Just wait until I grind a little, buddy, I thought, glaring back at him. Something flashed in the corner of my vision, and I looked down to see a red square icon set with a yellow star. As I focused on it, it expanded into a text box.

  You have been slain! Your Quintessence remains on your body waiting to be retrieved. In addition, a 5% penalty has been applied to all of your attributes. Earn more Quintessence to reduce this penalty.

  I couldn’t help but smile. It was a brutal penalty for a brutal game, but instead of feeling angry or defeated, I felt inspired—ready to get back out there and take on the world. If Jacob thought for one second that this first death was going to hold me back in any way, he was wrong.

  I heard something behind me, and turned around to see Rey appear at the lamppost, her body materializing amidst a flurry of silver wisps that spun around her before drifting apart and vanishing into the air.

  “That bitch!” Rey cursed, slamming an angry fist against her thigh. “What kind of shit was that?!”

  Smirking, I stepped over to her. “Think that’s bad? Check out your death penalty.”

  I watched her eyes as she found the icon and read the cruel words I’d just read. Her lips twisted like she’d just smelled something rank and awful. I nodded and chuckled.

  “Yup. Nice, ain’t it?”

  “Mizaguchi wasn’t lying was he?”

  “Not by a long shot,” I said, twirling my axe in my hand. “Come on. Let’s go get rid of this.”

  I knew he was going to do it. He just couldn’t resist. As we walked away, Jacob called out to us. “Sure you don’t want some help this time?”

  “No, we’re good, Jacob,” I called back. “Thanks.”

  “Suit yourself!”

  “I will!” I muttered so only Rey could hear it.

  “You still got a bug up your ass about him?” she asked me.

  “Dude acts like he knows it all,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “Level 2 and he walks around like he’s max-level!”

  A cluster of hard moss cracked beneath my sole as we passed the last building out of town and made our way towards the tree line. I redirected us toward the spot where we’d entered before.

  “You sure you’re not just jealous?” Rey teased me as we approached the woods.

  “Of a level 2? Don’t make me laugh.”

  Using my axe, I slashed a dead limb off a tree in front of us, clearing a path into the forest. As I stepped through, I heard Rey mutter to herself behind me. “That’s not what I meant…”

  10

  The Madness and the Monolith

  “The Midwives think themselves strong. Hah! What little effort it takes to deliver a child of the plague. After all, how careful must you really be with a corrupted fetus?”

  —Grecia the Witch

  We retraced our steps easily, passing the place where we’d fought the Corrupted Villager. I’d hoped he’d have respawned, giving us a chance to kill him again and work off some of this death penalty, but no such luck. My health had sunk from 105 to 90, which had me feeling even more vulnerable than before. We stayed super wide of the group of villagers we’d passed earlier, and slowed as we approached the Midwife’s territory.

  “There they are,” Rey whispered as we peered through the thick shrubs between us and her. Our bodies lay on the ground a few feet from where she sat rocking back and forth again in her chair.

  “Gone…gone…gone…” she sang as though she were reciting some mad nursery rhyme composed in an insane asylum.

  “Think she’ll agro if we go up to them?” Rey asked.

  “Tough to say,” I replied, eyeing up the distance. “But probably.”

  “We could try outrunning her.”

  “What are you, a pansy?” I asked her. “You called her a bitch. Don’t you want to kill her?”

  “We don’t even know what level she is!” Rey protested. “What if she’s like that Ravenous Beast and is just impossible to kill?”

  “This is a low-level area,” I replied, shaking my head. “She’s got to be killable. Tell you what—I’ll sneak around the back and hit her from behind. If I’m lucky, it’ll score a massive. W
hen she starts attacking me, you go in with everything you’ve got and I’ll try to riposte her.”

  “Clay, she got us both with one hit last time.”

  “I’m going in, Rey,” I told her, crouching down and eyeing the route I was going to take to get around her. “If you’re not up for it, just head back to town and ask Jacob to hold your hand.”

  Rey’s lips twisted into a knot and she scowled at me as she drew her Mortician’s Scalpel and held it at the ready. “Just don’t miss your shot,” she warned me.

  “Never. This is a skill-based game, remember?” I winked at her, and staying low, I crept through the trees in a wide arc, staying out of what I estimated to be the Midwife’s range. She’d given up singing, and was now humming to herself as she rocked, the slow creak of the chair the only other sound to be heard.

  I stepped over a rock slab and the sole of my shoe slipped, causing me to stumble. My foot came down on a small branch, and it snapped loudly. I dropped to my knees and took cover behind a fallen trunk. The Midwife’s humming stopped but I didn’t risk looking back at her. If she saw me, it would blow the whole plan, and I knew I’d hear no end of it from Rey. So I waited.

  Finally, the humming began again and I peeked out to see her rocking back and forth like nothing had happened. I kept moving, and it wasn’t long before I was looking at her back, hunched and covered with scraggly hair the color of bone. Gripping my axe tightly, I stalked carefully towards her. Again, she began to sing.

  “Little baby…little baby…why…why do you…sleep?”

  One foot in front of the other.

  The wind scratched my cheeks as I moved towards her. I felt the weight of my weapon, the thickness of its handle and the balance of the blade. I had one shot at this and I had to make it count.

  “Gone…gone…gone little baby,” she cooed. “Gone…gone…”

  I was close enough. I stopped, choked down on my axe so I was holding it by the last possible inch of the handle, raised it high above my head and brought it down on the old hag’s neck.

  Doooooooommmmmm!

  The sound of steel rang out in the most satisfying way as I scored a massive blow and I watched with delight as at least a quarter of the old woman’s health vanished. Massive red letters appeared above her.

  97

  “Who dares?!” she shrieked, leaping to her feet with the same incredible speed I’d witnessed earlier. But this time, I was prepared.

  In one swift movement, she slid a hand into her sleeve, withdrew the serrated knife she’d used to kill us both before and lashed out at me with an arcing attack that would have cut me from groin to sternum. Would have.

  I was ready for her this time, and threw myself backwards out of the way. The wretched blade cut nothing but air. Rey emerged from the bushes, her scalpel low and ready to strike. My axe swooshed through the air, striking the Midwife’s left arm. Blood poured out and she howled in rage, dashed forward and stabbed at my chest. Awkwardly, I did my best to parry the attack with my axe, and managed to make contact, but the blade still caught my chest and peeled off a quarter of my health bar.

  As the old hag reached back for another attack, Rey slammed into her and drove her Mortician’s Scalpel into the Midwife’s lower back. It didn’t score a massive blow, but the damage was good, and Rey wasted no time following up with a series of strikes that had the old woman at half health before she could whirl around to face her.

  She struck out, slashing Rey heavily across her stomach, dealing tons of damage, but I wasted no time scoring an attack of my own. I brought my axe down like I was chopping wood, and carved open the woman’s back. Blood sprayed everywhere.

  MASSIVE!

  The Midwife’s cry echoed throughout the woods like a banshee’s screech. She spun around to face me, and as her knife plunged through the air towards me, I raised my Blunderbuss and fired.

  Perfect.

  I roared with delight as I hit my riposte and the old lady dropped to her knees, extra-vulnerable to my next attack.

  “Take this!” I shouted as I dropped my firearm, clutched my axe with both hands and gave her everything I had. What was left of the Midwife’s health vanished as my blade embedded itself in her skull. I yanked hard and freed my axe and the terrible old lady groaned, face-planted in the dirt and vanished.

  “Take that, bitch!” Rey hollered, vaulting into the air with one arm stretched above her head. I stepped forward to the gorgeous, swirling stack of sweet, succulent Quintessence and grinned at her as the tiny orbs spun around us both, and watched as my 5% death penalty was wiped away.

  “Lot of Quint,” I remarked. “More than those villagers.”

  I reached down to the glimmering loot stack at my feet and retrieved 11 vials of Soothing Syrup.

  “You get five,” I chuckled.

  “Five what?”

  “Soothing Syrup,” I replied.

  “How many are there?”

  “Eleven.”

  “What?!” she gasped. “Why do you get more?”

  “Because I’m a Meat Sack!” I said emphatically. “And I’m going to need to heal more than you are.”

  Rey frowned with disapproval. “So, you gimp yourself and I get screwed on loot? Nice plan, Stan.”

  “Hey, is there any way to give you these without like…handing you five vials at a time?”

  “There should be,” she replied, opening her character sheet. “Ah! Trade window.”

  She did something, and an icon pulsed in the lower corner of my vision. I glanced down at it and it expanded into a two columned window with my name on the left and hers on the right.

  The 11 vials of Soothing Syrup sat together in a stack in my inventory. I selected them and a slider appeared. I dragged it from 1 to 5, then dragged those 5 over to Rey’s side of the trade window. I pressed the confirm button and my name went green. Rey accepted, her name turned green, and the window vanished. I heard a satisfying chime as the vials moved to her inventory.

  “How much Quintessence was that…?” I muttered, glancing over at my character sheet. I was shocked at what I saw.

  The Corrupted Villager had given us both 35, but the Midwife had earned us a whopping 180. Hovering my fingers over my progress bar showed that I needed 724 Quintessence to reach level 2, but when I selected my Vitality skill, a green up-arrow appeared, showing that I could spend 190 Quintessence to raise it one point from 5 to 6.

  “Uh oh,” I smiled. “Here comes the fun part.”

  “You mean spending our Quintessence wisely and not completely gimping our characters so we have to spend hours and hours grinding later?”

  “Exactly!” I pressed the green arrow and heard a chirping sound like a quick series of high piano notes. My Vitality went up to 6 and my HP increased from 105 to 126. “Okay, it looks like 1 point of Vitality gives you 21 HP.”

  Rand—Level 1

  Vitality: 6 HP = 126

  Toughness: 5

  Strength: 5

  Skill: 5

  Viletaint: 5

  Intellect: 5

  “I’m going to raise my Skill to 15,” Rey said, doing so. “Glass cannon for life!”

  “Come on,” I chuckled. “Let’s get our Quint back off our corpses.”

  “Wait, what’s that?” Rey asked, pointing down to my feet. Another object glimmered in the grass below me. For some reason, I’d assumed the Soothing Syrup was all that the Midwife had dropped, but apparently there was more. I reached down and grasped at the gleam and heard the sound of an item entering my inventory. I opened my character sheet and found it. It was a tiny stone, amber colored with pointed crystalline shards poking out in every direction.

  Kidney Stone—Appears useless, but somehow seems important. Maybe someone knows what to do with it? Oh, and it stinks to high Heaven!

  “What is it?” Rey asked. I replied by reading the item description to her. “Ew! Does it seriously say that?”

  “Sure does,” I laughed. “This game is awesome.”

&nbs
p; Rey stood motionless for a second, then frowned. “My mom’s calling me from the other side. Can we go back to town real quick and log out?”

  “You’re bailing on me already?” I teased, slinging my axe over my shoulder.

  “You know my mom,” she replied. “She won’t let me eat dinner if I don’t come when she says to.”

  “Oh, come on. Your mom’s nice.”

  “Yeah…” Rey replied. “I should get going anyway.”

  “Is there a way to recall or anything?” I asked, opening my character sheet. At the very bottom right was a grey button that looked like a slab carved from stone:

  RECALL

  “Oh, I found it,” I said, hovering my fingers over it. “We good to go?”

  “Yup!”

  I pressed it and felt myself being whisked away.

  The world again went dark, but only briefly. The light of the lamppost shone through the black, expanded and grew, and I found myself back in the center of the town square in Weeping Hills. I braced myself, half expecting Jacob’s voice to ring out with some pretentious comment, but none came. I turned and looked around, expecting to find him leaning against one of the shacks, grinning a smug little grin at me, but the town square was deserted.

  “Huh,” I muttered as Rey materialized behind me.

  “Hey, where is everybody?” she asked, looking around the empty village.

  “There,” I said, pointing to the edge of town where a small group of players were standing, gazing out at a field of dead crops covered in a blanket of mist.

  “What’s going on?” Rey asked. I shrugged and started walking towards them. They were muttering quietly to each other as we approached.

  “What the Hell was he thinking?”

  “Just out of the blue like that?”

  “And did you see his face?”

  Jacob was standing at the front of the pack, hands on his hips, staring out at a bloody path that had been cut through the wilted vegetation that hung listlessly beneath the cold moon.