Clan Dominance - the Sleepless Ones 2

by Dem Mikhailov

  “Then why the hell are you yelling? This coast of love we’ve just visited is scary enough by itself; the insanity location is like sandpaper on my skin. We’ve only taken a brief look at it and seen nothing but ashes and burnt wood. Should we really risk going forward? Although... All right, I agree. Let’s go into the mist and stay for a longer while, a few more paces in. We might see a monster or two; you never know. If we do, we’ll step back and ponder this in greater length. I wonder how wide the range is here...

  “Range” in Waldyra was the word used for the monsters’ growth in levels; this particularly concerned linear locations such as raid dungeons. The monsters near the entrance were usually Level 10; the next floor below would be Level 20, and so on, up to the last location. The range depended on many factors, but it was usually around five to twenty levels. In the worst-case scenario, given that the mobs on the coast of love and dreams were around Level 60, the insanity location could have a surprise in stock such as an encounter with a monster whose level would be 80 or 90. Gosha, the banker strategist, must have screwed up in a major way at some point.

  On the other hand, it was hard to assume anything. No fire monsters; water seemed devoid of life, too, even though I never dove deeply enough. There were lots of mobs on the coast of love, but none of them aggressive at all, and with no self-preservation skills whatsoever. I didn’t know about Madness; Kyre might have known something, but she remained shut like a clam.

  “You decide, boss. Do we stay put, look around to see what’s in the mist, or go back to level up?”

  “We go into the mist,” the girl replied instantly, and stepped forward to lead by example.

  I shrugged in a resigned way and followed her, glad that I’d left the most precious item in my personal room.

  Kyre’s back disappeared in the misty haze, and I followed her immediately. On the very next step my foot was in a thick layer of ash halfway up to my knee, with gray clouds of ash rising into the sky. A deep mark appeared on the neck of the girl standing in front of me; a droplet of blood trickled down the back of her head, leaving a dark stain. So it has begun.

  “You’re bleeding again,” I said casually, turning away and scanning the landscape slowly.

  “So you must have turned into an evil maniac again,” Kyre grunted in a seemingly carefree manner, but I could still feel the pent-up pressure. “I think I’ll refrain from looking you in the face.”

  “I’ll be much obliged,” I was genuinely happy not to have to see the bloody mask with mad eyes of blue ice again. “Do you see anyone?”

  “Just ashes and bones,” Kyre shook her head. “Nothing else. Where does all the ash come from, anyway?”

  “From the clouds,” I replied. “Not kidding you. Take a look yourself.”

  “I’ll be...”

  I only saw it a few seconds ago myself — the mass filling the air kept falling and settling down, albeit very slowly. And the stormy gray clouds kept bringing it on in whirlwinds, taking it any which way and then splitting it into tiny specks beginning their long and joyless journey downward.

  Clouds bringing dead ashes instead of life-giving water. Some landscape...

  “I can’t see a monster anywhere, not even one of the puniest kind,” I grunted angrily, looking at the broken silhouettes of trees burnt to char. “You give the orders.”

  “We go onward,” Kyre replied in a muffled voice, without facing me. “I’ll take the right side.”

  “I take the wrong one, then,” I twitched a shoulder, obediently turning my head to the left. “And I’ll cover the back.”

  “Let’s go,” Kyre placed her shield in front of her and started onward, me staying at the back and running my hand all over the Rain of Fire scroll nervously.

  We’d only made some twenty steps, looking around attentively and looking behind every tree and pile of ashes. But that wasn’t where the danger lay.

  “Ouch!” Kyre’s whole body twisted; she turned on her heel, mad as if stung by a hornet, and the next second I was looking at the blade of the sword in front of my face. “Why?! What the hell are you doing, Ros?”

  “What the hell?” I roared in reply, backing away clumsily.

  “That’s what I should be asking you!”

  Kyre didn’t follow. She put her shield behind her back, freeing her hand to get a tightly-wound reddish scroll from her back.

  “Hold on a second! Kyre!” I yelled, realizing my mad partner would only need to say a few words to send me to the respawn location.”

  “Why did you do it?! Answer me!” She raised the hand holding the scroll; all she would need now would be to activate it. Those insane blue eyes became bloodshot, and the disfigured mouth twitched in an evil grin. I could even begin to process it.

  “Do what?” I yelled in return, also raising a Fire Torrent scroll to the skies raining ash. “Would you care to explain before we both burn? Come on!”

  “You know what you did!” The girl sobbed loudly, tears leaving bright tracks on her ash-covered wounded cheeks. “Why, Ros? Just why? I’d trusted you like the total idiot that I am!”

  “What are you talking about? You were walking quietly, then just turned around and started yelling at me! Are you completely crazy?!”

  “You! Gosha was right when he said you couldn’t be trusted! You scum! You bastard! You’re somebody’s agent, right? I’ll burn you to ashes!”

  “This is rich,” I whispered, putting my hand down slowly. I threw the scroll onto the ground, sat down near it, and made a point of crossing my arms on my chest as an evil cackle escaped my chest, filling the location of insanity with half-mad laughter. “So I’m scum and a bastard, and Gosha says I shouldn’t be trusted? Thanks for filling me in, girl. Come on. Do it.”

  “Do what?” The reply came from a bloodied figure barely resembling Kyre.

  “Burn me. Isn’t that what you want? Then what are you waiting for!”

  “So I shall! Hold on a second... I get it! You want me to kill you and fail the mission!” Kyre hissed. “Then you’ll tell Gosha that I screwed up without really knowing what I was doing and demand your thirty silver pieces? You’ll get nothing! I know it!”

  “Kyre! Paladin, wake up! If you want to burn me, get on with it. If you’d like to talk first, would you start with telling me what this fuss is all about, eh?”

  “W-what?”

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I repeated, reclining on a bed of ash wearily and placing my arms behind my head. “Damn... I have to tell you, I’m really tired.”

  “Are you kidding me, Ros?” Kyre shook, and I sensed a crack in her decisiveness.

  “I’m not kidding, Kyre; I just don’t understand. Let me say it again: I was merely following you, looking around, at which point you started yelling, waved your sword at me, and grabbed a battle scroll.

  “It wasn’t like that! I mean, it was at the end, but first you hit me in the back!”

  “What?” I felt like I’d just had an electric jolt. “Me, hitting you?”

  “Yes, you! First you’d been trying to find out about the books, and when I said nothing, you decided to kill me and take them from my backpack! What are you doing, Ros?” Kyre sobbed again, taking a few steps back. “I really trusted you, did you know that? I was thinking...”

  “Hey! I didn’t do it! I never attacked you! Why the hell would I do anything like that?”

  “You’re from another clan, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your damned clan and your secret game, playing silly, and all of this crap! Give me none of this, Kyre. Let me say it again: I never touched you. Or turn on your brain, girl. I have a top-level scroll in my hand. It would just take me two words to send you to a respawn location. Why the hell would I have to hit you from behind, considering that you have lots of HP and good armor on your back? If you want to think of me as a traitor, it’s your business, but don’t call me an idiot.”

  “Ros! Stop lying, please... Have you seen you nickname’s co
lor? It went red when you attacked me. You have the color of a PK.”

  “Give me a second,” I mumble, hastily pulling up the character information interface and seeing nothing but a calm green icon, grunting, puzzled, “Are you color-blind? My status is green as any cucumber.”

  “You’re shitting me! I can see...”

  “Shut up for a moment!” I roared as I clicked a few pictograms, making the virtual interface visible for other people than myself.

  A shining rectangle appeared in the air. I pointed my finger to the corresponding element, asking,

  “See it now? Or do you need glasses, too?”

  “Oh, come on... Oops... It is indeed green.”

  “It is indeed green, isn’t it?” I mocked as I slowly shut down the screen. “Kyre, you know it; if I’d really wanted to kill you, I would have done it a long time ago. Now tell me what the hell is happening. Just stay calm and try not to let emotion overcome you.”

  “I was walking,”

  “We were walking,” I said, getting an ugly look in return and covering my eyes not to see hers, framed in fresh blood.

  “We were walking. Then there was a short crimson flash taking about a hundred HP off. According to the signals, someone hit me somewhere underneath my left shoulder blade from behind... And you were wearing that ugly grin, and your nickname was in red lettering like any PK’s.”

  “Would you like me to show you my status again?” I inquired politely.

  Having heard a derisive grunt in return, I rose to my feet with a disappointed sigh as I chuckled, raising my face to the sky and menacing it with my fist.

  “What’s the matter, Ros?”

  “Didn’t you get it? It’s the insanity location. You’re most likely the bloodied victim, and, judging by your colorful description, I am an evil maniac with an ugly smile and a traitor to boot.”

  “Oh... So, you mean...”

  “That’s right. I never touched you, Kyre; it was the system. It dealt you some damage, you saw a crimson flash, it pointed the vector of the attack right at me, and painted my nickname red. That was that. More than enough for you, I guess. If you hadn’t held on at the very last moment, I’d have been respawning right now. The result would be a failed quest — if what you’re saying about the players having to reach the final destination is true.

  “I’m not lying!”

  “But you realize you’ve been stu... Uh... Mistaken?”

  Kyre’s response was silence. Then the ash-covered plain became filled with an insane bubbling laughter, instantly changing into a choking yell of pain. It was a woman yelling, judging by the sound.

  “Kyre, did you read me well?”

  “I did,” the girl drawled somberly. “Sorry. You could really have made me respawn. I haven’t even thought about the scrolls. Sorry, Ros. Please, forgive me... I said a lot of ugly stuff.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I sighed, took a step closer, and nudged the girl forward. “Off you go. And you must bear in mind that I have a very powerful scroll in my hand. Two words, and you’re a charming blob of mist before you realize what’s happened. If something like that happens again, don’t trust your eyes; you’re just being used as a mark.”

  “Whose mark?” Kyre laughed, shaking her head. The hair became visibly less dark as the thick droplets of blood scattered everywhere, and I ducked automatically lest one of these “presents” should get me in the eye.

  “Uh... Would you like me to go in front? As someone who’d lost the trust of his comrade?”

  “No. I will do it myself. The noblest one should choose the way. Sorry once again, Ros,” Kyre said as she activated Lesser Healing. “But some of it is your fault, too. With an evil face like that and that crooked grin...”

  “All right, I forgive you. And I’m not going in front; no way, José.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “Well, you’ve described it yourself — a strike from behind, and a flash,” I spread my arms, having forgotten that Kyre could see none of my gestures.

  “So what?”

  “So everything! Haven’t you ever heard about what men fear the most?”

  “I haven’t...What would that be?”

  “It’s when you walk on quietly without touching anyone, and then feel hot breath on your neck and a sharp pain in...”

  “Ros!”

  “I’ve shut up already...”

  “I no longer want to be in front! Why don’t you lead?”

  “Nope... You’re a paladin, so you should lead. A warrior of god has to be patient when faced by trouble.”

  “Damn!”

  “What?”

  “It happened again!” Kyre stomped her foot furiously. “A flash, some HP loss, the attack vector’s pointing at you.”

  “Did it take off much?”

  “Not really, but it’s irritating! Ros, please...”

  “I get it already,” I said gruffly as I took a few paces forward to be in the lead. “Off we go.”

  Some ten paces on, something red flashed before my eyes. A quick glance of the interface confirmed that a tenth of my HP had vanished. I turned my head around to glance at Kyre, and grinned a bitter lopsided grin — Kyre’s nickname was triumphantly red in the best traditions of a player killer.

  “Did you get hit?”

  “Sure did. And the vector’s pointing toward you, you meanie,” I replied nonchalantly, keeping the same pace. “Don’t look at me, look around you. This doozie is hardly the only problem we’ll face here. Hell’s bells! It took off some more HP!”

  “You discuss it so casually, Ros!”

  “Well, yeah,” I shrugged, placing a healing spell in my left hand. “What else would I do? Start blaming you?”

  “Well...”

  "I believe you, Kyre. This is why I’m OK with you being behind. Also... Have you ever been in a real forest? Or the Siberian taiga, better still?”

  “Forest, yes, obviously. Taiga, no.”

  “Some people are so uncultured,” I sighed in a defeated way, which earned me a grunt of indignation from Kyre. “But you have seen mosquitoes, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have!”

  “Well, imagine us walking through the Siberian taiga... uh... after a wildfire, and mosquitoes pestering us. It’s no use fighting those little blighters, which is why you just deal with their tiny bites and go on, get it?”

  “OK...”

  “Speak up!”

  “I said OK, I get it!”

  “Now, freeze,” I commanded, stopping instantly. “We’ve arrived. I have a gut feeling that we’ve reached our destination.”

  “You don’t need a gut feeling here,” Kyre caught up with me. “We definitely have.”

  I’ve looked at the landscape, clicking my tongue thoughtfully, and then automatically activated Lesser Healing, placing my hand on my chest and waiting for my HP bar to get to the maximum, and then put the hand on Kyre’s shoulder, still scrutinizing the location.

  “It’s a strange feeling,” the girl said, looking at her shoulder sidewise. “I’d just been attacked by you, and, lo and behold, the next moment you’re healing me.”

  “I was attacked three times in a row on our way here. The system sure has its fun; all of this is unimportant. What’s the plan?”

  “Uh...”

  “Exactly.”

  The conversation was interrupted for a while as we stared beneath our feet again, trying to realize what to do next. There was a lot less ash in the air here, and I could see all the tiniest details.

  Seen with a bird’s eye, the Insanity location would look like a deep soup bowl with a wide flat rim. At the very center there was a piece of white ice; the rest was all covered in ash. At that particular moment, we were standing at the beginning of a shallow slope that would become steeper about a dozen paces on, leading to the very bottom of the location. If I was seeing things clearly, the last fifteen feet or so was just a vertical wall of earth, packed tight and charred. And, for some reason, I was c
ertain that we’d never be able to get out, regardless of our skills or spells. It would be a one-way ticket.

  “Like a bowl,” I said out loud. “And no one knows what kind of soup it contains...”

  “And I was thinking about ant lions... Ouch! Another hit! I’m no longer afraid, but irritated no end! And I’m sick of this damn mumbling by now! Heal me.”

  “It does indeed look like an ant lion’s den,” I agreed, healing Kyre. “With ashes instead of sand. Well, make up your mind. If we head on, there’ll be no turning back. We haven’t seen any monsters, but this location is full of surprises.”