by R K Billiau
“When you want something done right, I guess you have to do it yourself!” Cora shouted and I had just enough time to shout, “Oh, I plan to!” right before a chaos bolt from her hand flew directly into my chest. As the bolt slammed into me, the energy was transformed into some kind of miniscule flea-like bug and within seconds, I found myself completely covered in the tiny biting things, my debuff bar filling up. Poison, Disease, Bleeding, Pain. I screamed, which turned out to be an awful idea, as the things scurried into my mouth and down my throat, causing me to retch and vomit.
“That’s the second time I’ve seen you puke like that, Hudson. First the spiders, now this. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of tiny little bugs too?” She laughed as I remained unable to focus, moving specks of bugs dotting my vision, and I felt the toe end of her boot meet my face. I heard my nose crack, and blood rushed from it as the force knocked me backwards.
The bugs were… everywhere. My entire body itched and tickled and burned. I could barely concentrate well enough to focus on a spell, and I hoped I could get Dose of Chaos to backfire again. I spent fifty points into it, amping up a flame spell and casting it on myself, my arm stretched out pointing my palm at my core.
It didn’t backfire this time, but it did the trick anyway as a gout of flame the size of a compact car engulfed me. Instantly all the small bugs popped like popcorn, being incinerated by the blast of flame and heat. Along with my clothes. And my hair. And nearly all of my health.
I fell backwards, toppling back over into the water of the fountain, grateful for its cool embrace. I could have done without the sizzling flesh sound, though. That gave me the heebie-jeebies. My wounds closed and my health began to regenerate, but my head still felt suspiciously bare as I came out of the water.
I opened my eyes to the entire horde of gromlins surrounding the fountain and me. Cora had not been idle as I parboiled myself.
I cast Mana Orb, and molded it into a baculus, and figuring I might as well go for broke, I dumped one hundred and fifty points of Dose of Chaos into it. Thankfully this time the energy came out of my Zeal, draining it to nothing, but leaving me with a brilliant silver rod of energy that looked like one of those laser swords from that failed movie franchise a decade or so back.
At the swipe of Cora’s hand, the gromlins leapt in to attack and I swung my baculus like I had been taught, but I received no resistance like I expected. The energy sliced a gromlin clean in half, like I was playing one of those vegetable samurai games. The lack of resistance caused me to overextend and I lost my footing and fell over, which was the only thing that saved me from being tackled and molested by more little gray men.
I swear I looked like I should be one of those drunken masters by how little time I spent on my feet in this fight. At least they got to be drunk, though. I, on the other hand, had to be stone cold sober as I witnessed my shiny laser sword slice cleanly through the fountain, effectively erasing a large chunk of the stone wall holding the water in, and causing it to pour out all over the ground.
I cursed as the fountain stopped spraying water and my expendables stopped regenerating.
“You know,” Cora said, and I looked up to see her examining her fingernails, “you are ridiculous.” She held up her hand and all the gromlins stopped trying to get at me, standing in place and watching their mistress. She was close to me now, and I half considered tackling her. “You’re like a bull in a china shop with that chaos power you have,” she said. “You obviously don’t know how to use it and you just keep hurting yourself. If you join me, I can help you control it. It doesn’t have to be like this, Hudson. You can join me and be in power.”
“What is this? A bad movie where you’re trying to get me to join the ‘dark side’? I’m not going to turn on all my friends because of some stupid game mechanic. Besides, you disgust me. How many men have you been with since you’ve been here? In like, what, a month? You can’t even get anyone to like you without using game given seduction skills. You feel big and bad now, Cora, but this power won’t last long. You disgust me. The Archon of Chaos will ditch you for the next person that comes along willing to sell their soul to the devil.”
Her face screwed up in anger and she pointed her palm toward me, glowing black energy forming in it. “I hate you!” she screamed, and she released a chaos bolt straight at me.
I swung my shining silver energy baculus like I was hitting a home run, slamming it directly into the energy blast. “Yeah, you’ve said that before!” I yelled back at her. The black bolt of energy collapsed in on itself at the point where my baculus made contact, shooting out errant blasts of black energy towards me and everything in my direction, shattering my energy sword thing and vaporizing my hand up to the elbow. A debuff icon popped in my HUD, showing an arm with an X through it.
The chaos bolt reversed direction, flying off my now extinct baculus straight at Cora, her eyes wide and her mouth opened in surprise as the deadly black energy hit her full on, enveloping her head and instantly turning it into ash, sending the rest of her body crashing to the ground after a very creepy few seconds of her standing headless.
I breathed a sigh of relief, then jumped as all the gromlins around me suddenly cried out in pain, grasping their heads. Just as suddenly they stopped, and I thought about casting another Mana Orb when most of them ran off into the village hooting and hollering, babbling in a strange language and downright wrecking the place. They ran around jumping on things, grabbing torches and lighting anything on fire that wasn’t already burning. They seemed to revel in destruction for destruction's sake.
I was annoyed they were wrecking such havoc, but even more relieved that they weren’t taking it out on me. My eyes darted to the ground, where three gromlins still laid that hadn’t seemed to recover from the strange affliction that had fallen upon them when Cora died. They slowly stirred and I braced for a fight when one of them looked at me and spoke.
“Hu... Hudson?” it asked, and it was my turn to look as surprised as Cora had right before her own energies killed her.
“Uh, yes?” I said.
It moved its mouth around as if it had a hard time remembering words. “...am Caden. Help?” it, no, he asked.
“Caden? You’re okay! Er, sort of.” I looked at the other two gromlins that were recovering, and I thought I saw something in their faces I recognized. “Are you guys players, too?”
They blinked dully at me, then as if they had to think through molasses, nodded their heads. The village was well and truly burning now, the air so choked with smoke it felt hard to breathe. The rest of the horde was still screaming and carrying on like they were at the year’s hottest gromlin rave.
I was a mess; my health was nearly empty, as were most of my other expendables from the constant usage of Dose of Chaos. The debuffs were eating me alive now that there was no awesome magical fountain left for me to regenerate at, thanks to, well, me.
“We need to get out of here,” I said and helped the other two players back to their feet. They were wobbly, but I helped them over to the wall. I clawed over it myself and plunked down to the ground next to the disoriented players. With a groan, I heaved myself up and gathered them together. We started walking, leaving behind the only home they had ever known in this world to burn to cinders.
Chapter 47
My heart raced. I could feel the heat from the fire that ravaged the village behind us. But there was no time to turn around, no time to go back and try to put it out. No time to save any more gromlins, if there were even any more left of sound mind. We had to get to the kids, and we had to get the kids to the tribe. There were no other options.
My health was draining slowly as we ran. Poison just wasn’t fading, and Disease was preventing me from healing. I slowed to a walk as my Stamina bottomed out.
“Okay, Caden and uh... I know I have met you guys but honestly, I’m not that great with faces so please forgive me if I don’t recognize you.”
The grubby little gromlin in girl clothes rasp
ed out a word. “Claire...” as she pointed to herself then to the other male gromlin, “Jon.”
Well, that answered who they were. “Look guys, I’m probably going to die soon.” Their eyes bugged out with worry. “No, no, wait,” I said, holding my palms out, “it's not a big deal, I can respawn right here. I’ll only be gone a few minutes. I just wanted to warn you. I’m debuffed to hell and back so I don’t think I have long.”
When we finally made it to the forest edge, after making sure no one was following us, I stopped. I was thankful the village was in the middle of a plain where even the tall grass wasn’t tall enough to hide. No one had followed us. My chest heaved from the sprint, and with my arms on my hips, trying to suck as much oxygen from the air as I could muster, I finally turned around to see the village.
It was lost. The flames had leapt between every building, consuming the thatched roofs near instantly before moving onto the next. Smoke billowed over the village, and in the darkening sky, I could see the gray smoke rising in the air. Even from our distance, I could hear as the wooden buildings gave into the flames and caved in on themselves. The next time I saw this place, if there was a next time, it would be a pile of ashes.
“I sent Cora to respawn, and I have no idea where she will spawn, but I’m hoping it’s far away. Just stay put here, you’ll be okay. Your friends in there…”
“Not friends,” Claire said, “not friends, horde.”
I shrugged. “Okay, sorry, your little not-friends over there should hopefully be distracted enough. Doesn’t look like any of them chased us. All I’m trying to say is, stay put. I’ll try to be back as quick as-” Then I died. I wondered how strange it must have looked for me to be standing there talking and then just fall over dead.
As deaths go, it wasn’t that bad. The poison didn’t burn or anything like that, so I was happy. My plan was to respawn as quickly as possible, but when the darkness cleared, I found myself in the smaller antechamber of the Adjudicators temple.
Sitting in the comfortable chairs were the Adjudicator and Minuitt.
“Ah damn. This isn’t going to be fast, is it?” I asked.
“Greetings my Quaesitor, I have something to discuss with you,” the Adjudicator said.
“You know... I really need to get back. There are people- er, things- waiting for me,” I said.
“This won't take but a moment,” Minuitt said in her short business-like voice. She stood up, her business suit so dark it felt like I was being pulled into it. I looked around and noticed that my shadow actually was being pulled toward her.
“Okay, what do you want?” I asked.
The Adjudicator looked pointedly at the Archon of Magic. “I have allowed my good friend Minuitt here to speak with you. She has asked me a favor, and I have agreed, on the condition that you also agree.”
This was the part about working with archons I didn’t like; the whole ‘feeling like a pawn’ part. “Okay, what is it?” I asked Minuitt.
She smiled, her arms crossed over her chest. “I require a vassal.”
“Great,” I said. “I’m taken.” I pointed to the Adjudicator.
“Hudson, please be polite to my guest,” it said, admonishing me.
I sighed. If being polite would get me out of here quicker, then I would do it. I looked at Minuitt, “I’m sorry, how can I help you? I’m already a vassal.”
She nodded at me. “I wasn’t talking about you. I want your friend.”
“My friend? What friend?”
“I want your friend, Madison, to be my vassal.”
I let this idea turn over in my mind. I had no idea what Madson would think about it. She had accepted a role as a System Cleric to help the players get access to the system features, but she had also shown that she loved all the magic-y elements of this world.
“I mean, I can ask her, but I can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. She is pretty happy being a System Cleric...”
“She would not lose her access to the main system skill, and would still be able to teach it, fulfilling her role in that regard,” Minuitt said.
“Well, that’s good at least, but like I said, I can’t force her. How would I even get her to be your vassal, anyway? Doesn’t she have to find your temple or whatever?”
“Or complete a powerful act of magic that allows me to interact with her...” Minuitt said.
“Or that,” I said. “So what is it exactly you want me to do here? You know we have this whole situation with the Archon of Chaos going on, can you help with that?”
The Adjudicator stood up at this point and began to pace. “We cannot directly interfere in this. It is against the rules,” it said, more to Minuitt than to me.
“We are not directly interfering, merely giving information. Besides, the Chimera has more than bent the rules to get to where it is now. I think a slight tweak is warranted,” Minuitt argued.
The Adjudicator harrumphed. It made an actual sound like “harrumph” as it folded its arms across its chest. “It goes against my nature.”
Minuitt rolled her eyes at the Adjudicator. “Our alliance allows for us to work together in accordance with both our natures. You know this.”
I felt like I was getting some inside baseball talk here, and while I only had an idea of what it all meant, I kept silent to gather as much information about the archons as I could.
The Adjudicator frowned at Minuitt, who smiled back at him and batted her eyes condescendingly.
“As you wish, you relay this information then. My acquiescence is my contribution,” it said to her.
Minuitt turned to me, raising her hand, palm up like she was swearing in during a trial. In a puff of smoke and a flash of light, a rolled-up piece of blue paper appeared in her hand. “If you build this, she should be able to perform the act necessary to get my attention.”
She handed it to me and I opened the roll of paper. It was blueprints to a Mage’s Enclave- a rare building. I had no idea what it did, and the blueprints didn’t say, but it was something magic-y. The blueprint showed a round building like one of those domes that looked like a marble half-buried in the dirt.
“What’s this do?” I asked.
“Build it and see,” Minuitt replied.
“It is something that can help you in the coming danger,” the Adjudicator said, turning to face me. “If you wish to bring safety to those around you, then you must focus, Hudson.” I swear the Adjudicator enjoyed being cryptic. I put the blueprints in my inventory.
“Okay, well this has been... enlightening, but I really do need to go. There are some people turned gromlin that need me.” I turned and started walking away but paused and faced them again, holding up the blue paper. “I will see about this.”
Minuitt inclined her head to me and I embraced the light. The last thing I heard the Adjudicator say as I left them behind was, “Focus, Hudson.”
As the bright swirling lights faded into reality, I watched the gromlins scatter. Apparently I spawned a little too close for comfort.
“Sorry about that, guys. We better move, the wolves will be out soon,” I said. They stared at me for a few seconds, then turned back to the engulfed village. I don’t know much about gromlin emotion, or if there even was such a thing, but their shoulders seemed to hang forward and their heads hung low. I patted the tough, naked shoulder of the one closest to me. “It’s going to be okay. We will figure this all out and we can rebuild.” I waited and no response came, but I knew we had to get moving. “We better go. There’s no time to waste.”
I opened my map and pinged a handful of times, which received multiple pings in response. I smiled. I hoped so badly they were all okay and couldn’t wait to be back with Madison and company. This day had been so crappy, a group of familiar faces would be nice. Although I couldn’t even stomach to think about how the kids must feel. Ripped from their home and parents… ugh.
“This way,” I said, angling our path towards the pings. We ran, and I had to really work to keep
up with my gromlin friends. Which was surprising seeing how short and squatty their gromlin legs were, but man they were agile little things. Having to constantly dodge trees and brush, I had to open my map and ping the big group often, since it was so easy to accidentally veer off track.
I don’t know if the game felt bad for us or we were just lucky, but we hardly came across anything in the forest. The first glob that was unfortunate enough to be in our path exploded to goo in seconds. Clearly our little party was not in a mood to mess around, and the gromlins were on it like white on rice, and the thing popped in a spray of blue slime before I could even throw my Mana Orb in. The next few we came across were defeated just as quickly.
I wished I had a way to know time, because it felt like it had been hours of running. The sky was dark and the forest quiet, but I had no idea how far away the group was. They hadn’t ever made it back to the village before Ryan went off to intercept them and point them towards the old tribe. But this forest was huge, and there must be plenty of ways to move through it back to the cave. It was as if we were running through empty, black space with merely a general direction and no idea of the distance.
My empty Stamina bar forced me to walk, and I pulled my canteen from my inventory and took a long drink. My gromlin friends slowed with me. They had been quiet the whole time, but never having spent any time with a gromlin before, I didn’t know if that was the norm. They were naked except for their primitive clothes that barely covered them. I didn’t know if they had any inventory to speak of, so I held out my canteen.
“Water?” I asked.
Gromlin Caden quickly accepted my offer, tilting his head and the canteen way back, taking a long pull. He wiped his gross gromlin lips and handed it to Gromlin Claire, who then passed it to Gromlin Jon. I’m glad they seemed to be coming around, and I knew they were themselves somewhere under that rubbery skin, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be drinking out of that canteen again.
I pinged the mini map again and waited for a response. I knew the kids must be sleeping, but surely, they were smart enough to keep a guard awake. Annoyed at the lack of response, I pinged probably more times than necessary, and finally got a single ping in response.