by James Hunter
With a yelp, Sam spun on a heel and bolted for the tree line before Octavius or one of his buddies got another clean shot. While Sam ran—weaving left and right so it would be harder to target his fleeing back—he sent his tome zipping around to the rear, unleashing a folded star at the Mages still standing at the mouth of the secret tunnel every time the spell was off cooldown.
He didn’t look back and didn’t stop as he got past the low-lying brush and into the cover of the tree line, which would shelter him from any of the deadly spells the trio might hurl his way. Sam quickly ducked behind a broad oak, then fished a health potion from the leather bandolier slung across his chest. He popped the cork with his thumb, then forced the concoction down, gagging a little from the syrupy consistency and the sickly-sweet taste of over-ripe fruit.
The grossness was well worth the result; energy and a sense of well-being rippled through him, instantly knitting torn flesh back together. His whole body itched and tingled as the magical brew took full effect, but the odd sensation was gone almost as quickly as it had come. In an instant, he was back in fighting form.
Sam slipped the empty glass vial into his Unending Flask—waste not and all that—then popped his head around the trunk of the tree, scanning the wall. There was no sign of Tullus or Finn, but Elsia held an orb of flickering fire in each upraised hand, marking out her and Octavius even in the dark. The pair of them were scanning the landscape, but Sam knew that was a useless endeavor thanks to the darkness laying over the countryside like a thick winter quilt.
“It doesn’t matter!” Octavius shouted into the night, his voice ringing crystal clear in the still area. “You won’t survive an hour out there! You’re out of the city walls at night, and the spells and shouting are going to bring everything to this area! You’ve only prolonged the inevitable, trading in one death for another. When you respawn, I’ll be waiting for you! You hear me, you traitor? I’ll be waiting!”
As much as Sam hated to admit it, Octavius wasn’t wrong. A branch cracked not far off, and in the distance, a ghostly howl pierced the air. It was going to be a very, very long night… or a very short one.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam bolted left and unleashed a Paper Shuriken at a lunging, rust-colored fox the size of a pony. The folded ninja star embedded itself in the creature’s neck and chin, finally eating away at the last of its health. It dropped with a meaty *thud*, kicking up a small plume of dusty earth. Sam didn’t have a moment to breathe, though, because a second fox was closing in on his right, fur bristling, black lips pulled back from fangs that gleamed silver in the moonlight. Sam considered launching Shurikens at the ferocious beast but immediately decided against it.
Contrary to Octavius’s assertion, he had survived for more than an hour. The monsters were thick as flies on a fresh carcass, and they were way more powerful and bloodthirsty than when he’d ventured out with Dizzy and the rest of the Wolf Pack crew. They were bigger. They moved faster, hit harder, and worked more efficiently. Most importantly, they didn’t quit. His time stumbling through the wilderness had been a near-constant onslaught of attacks from bear-sized bunnies, pony-sized foxes… Only Bill being able to tell where the enemies were around them was keeping Sam alive.
The darkness was not his friend, and if he had needed to rely on his eyes, he would have been dead a dozen times over. On a positive note, his Paper Shuriken attack was deadly effective against these unarmored foes, but he was quickly learning that his new class had one significant limitation that might just end up getting him killed—paper.
Although casting the spells via Origami Activation cost next to nothing, actually sitting at… one-point-five-four Mana per use, he was severely limited by the amount of paper he had on hand. Run out of magical paper, and you were out of spells. He could assign spells to tomes while enemies were in range, but it cost about four Mana a second until the process was complete. Bill said that interrupting the process would be a bad idea, and it seemed there were always enemies in range and ready to interrupt him out here. All of this meant that he couldn’t risk using any of the extra books he had stashed away in his flask.
Sam did have one trick left. With a snarl, he summoned his new Quill Blade. Twenty-three Mana vanished from his Core, and the oversized ostrich feather jutting from his cavalier hat took to the air, shimmering and morphing as it leaped into his outstretched hand.
In an instant, the cobalt feather was coated in gleaming silver, ghostly blue runes running down the length of the blade. The quill-portion of the oversized feather was wrapped in supple, black leather and acted as a sword hilt, and instead of a proper pommel, there was a spiked, silver nib that, according to Bill, actually wrote quite nicely.
Bill claimed that at higher levels, a well-trained Bibliomancer could actually inscribe some spells on the air itself—no paper required—creating near-impenetrable wards and mystic barriers. The feathery plumage acted as the weapon’s cutting edge, while the tip was more than sharp enough to impale any creature unlucky enough to get in range. Once again, it seemed that his channeling skill was reducing the Mana cost to maintain the blade, as his Mana only slipped away at just over four and a half points a second.
The fox in front of Sam snarled and darted in low, slathering jaws spread wide, but Sam was ready for the attack. The foxes were fast, true, but they were rather predictable and seemed to follow a relatively small number of scripted attack combinations. That meant that, after a while, it was easy enough to predict what they would do and where they would go. The feint right and lunge in low was almost always followed by a ferocious leap. Sam sidestepped right as the fox launched into the air. He brought the Quill Blade screaming down like a woodcutter’s axe, catching the furry critter mid-flight.
The jagged, razor-sharp feathers bit deeply into the fox’s shoulder, chomping through twenty points of its health. On a fox during the day, that would have been enough to end the fight. Not here, not now. The fox let out a yelp as it tumbled to the ground but quickly gained its feet. At least Sam’s counterassault had crippled one of its front legs, severely slowing its movement rate. Another blazing-fast slash across the distorted neck ended the fox before it had a chance to evade and recuperate.
Experience gained: 420 (240 Dartmoor Fox x4 + 180 Bunny-Bear x 6 (Mystically altered creatures)).
Skill increase: Paper Shuriken (Novice IV). Big gains for having this spell for only a couple hours! Murder spree or something else going on?
Skill increase: Magical Origami (Novice IV). Hard for a derivative skill to outrank the skill it comes from, know what I mean?
Skill increase: Origami Activation (Novice II). Activate lots and bunches of various abilities to rank this up faster! Repetition makes for slow learning.
Breathing hard, his stamina ridiculously low and his health at just over sixty percent, Sam banished the Quill Blade from his hand before it could consume any more of his Mana. The feather shimmered and darted back to the brim of his hat, just a gaudy plume once more. He was once again thankful for his training with Sphinx. If it wasn’t for the Rogue’s instruction in bladed weapons, he’d already be long dead.
“You have a spine, don't you?” Sam grinned at the groan he got in reply. Maybe the ‘Legs’ thing would vanish if he kept this up. “Problem is, I don’t think I’m good enough to keep us alive until dawn. These attacks a
re getting worse, and any noise we make brings more of them to us. Plus, sooner or later, I’m going to run out of spells. Once that happens, it’s only a matter of time before my stamina gives out and these things overwhelm me. We need a plan, Bill.”
It wasn’t the worst idea Sam had ever heard, but he suspected it wouldn’t be that easy. He could easily envision himself clambering to a high bough, falling asleep against the tree… only to wake up to find a pack of hungry wolves circling the trunk, but the book’s words did give him an idea. Sam headed over to a monstrous fir tree that went up, up, and then up a little more, rising impossibly high above the canopy overhead. It was a bit of a gamble, but if Sam could get to a high enough vantage point, he might be able to find a spot which would act as a good defensible position.
So up he went, clambering hand over foot, slipping from one branch to another until he was fifty feet in the air. His stamina was draining each second that he was climbing, so he needed to take frequent breaks to stand on a branch. It didn’t take Sam long to spot Ardania’s outer wall, a sinuous serpent of gray stone snaking its way across the wild landscape. From the total darkness on the land, sunrise was still four or five hours off. Heading for the wall right now wouldn’t do him any favors—just the opposite.
It would leave him out in the open with no cover, no place to run, and nowhere to make a stand if things got tough. He did, however, spot what he hoped was a cluster of rocks jutting up from a heavily wooded section a good distance off. Thank goodness for moonlight. He squinted, brow scrunching up as he studied the stone formation. He could be wrong, but it looked like there was a dark fissure in the rock face.
“Bill,” he whispered, thrusting one finger toward the rocks, “you think that’s a cave?”
“What if something is… in there?” Sam’s tired and paranoid mind was working through all the possible ways this plan could go horribly wrong.
“That’s not in any way happy-making,” Sam replied, his addled mind losing track of proper word choices.
Bill waited but got no reply.
“If it’s not a bear’s den? If it’s something worse, like a secret dungeon?”
Eighteen seconds later, a second book was filled with the magical requirements for Paper Shuriken. “Did that take longer to activate? Hey… why is it called Paper Shuriken if I keep throwing out ninja stars? They are different things.”
Sam sighed and began to descend the tree. They set off through the thick press of trees, moving at little more than a snail’s pace since they had to navigate the forest under the cover of darkness. Sam’s perception had reached the minimal level, so at least he was no longer working in a deficit, but it was still nearly impossible to see anything. The thick canopy overhead blocked out most of the watery, silver moonlight, and the tangle of small shrubs and jutting roots lining the forest floor threatened to trip him up at every possible turn.
One hour of hard trekking and another fox ambush later, Sam shouldered his way through a copse of pines and emerged in a starlit clearing with rocks protruding from the ground like a spiked crown.
Experience gained: 60 (60 Dartmoor Fox x1 (Mystically altered)).
This close up, it was clear the fissure he’d seen in the rockface was, in fact, the entrance to some sort of cave system. How deep the cave went, he couldn’t say—not without going in and exploring more thoroughly. Sam dropped into a crouch and watched the entrance for a few minutes, staying utterly silent. There was no discernible movement, and he didn’t hear any monstrous roars echoing up from the cave depths. Still, this now seemed like a terrible idea.
Staying in the open was a worse idea, and deep down, he knew it. Decided, he stole from the tree line and noiselessly padded across the meadow. He decided not to summon his orbiting tomes just yet since a trio of glowing and whirling magic books would almost certainly get him spotted, but he was ready to summon his Quill Blade at the first hint of trouble.
The fissure was rather narrow, and he had to turn sideways to make it through the passage. After a few feet, the rocky crevice expanded dramatically, opening up into a large chamber with rough walls. The stink of musky fur and the metallic tang of old blood hit him in the nose like a roundhouse kick to the face. Pungent. Overpowering. Bestial. He took a step, and something crunched then snapped beneath the sole of his boot, the sound like the report of a rifle in the enclosed space. Lining the sandy floor was a myriad of yellowing bones. Most of them were from bunnies or foxes, but a few suspiciously long femurs could’ve easily come from a human.
Yep, this cave definitely belonged to some sort of animal. If whatever lived here happened to be home at the moment, it would know there was an intruder thanks to the shotgun blast of snapping bone. Suddenly, Sam was deeply regretting that he hadn’t let Sphinx show him some of the fundamentals of stealth. But that was why parties existed—because a game like this wasn’t meant to be soloed. No one could do everything. He was just in the unenviable position of having no other choice, no options, and no friends to rely on. If he made it out of this alive, he planned to rectify that.
A shaft of moonlight illuminated another tunnel at the far side of the small cavern. It snaked out of sight, presumably leading deeper into the earth. Sam absolutely didn’t want to delve any further—knowing that certain death likely awaited him below—but he couldn’t stay here with a potentially deadly enemy at his exposed back. Running had served him well so far, but this time around, Sam knew the best course of action was… well… action. If he was going to survive until morning, he needed to clear the cave system.
He cracked Bill’s pages and summoned his bound books from their holding reservoir in Bill’s Soul Space. The tomes appeared around him in a flash of light and began their slow rotation around him. Sam wanted to conserve as much of his magic as he could, so instead of summoning his Quill Blade, he pulled his dagger from the sheath at his belt, his knuckles white as he clenched the hilt. With that done, he summoned Papier-Mache Armor once more; a whirlwind of pages swirled out from one of his books, encasing him once more in flexible, ink-covered
conquistador armor. He winced as he saw how thin that book was getting.
He was as ready as he was going to get, and stalling was a bad idea. The passageway at the end of the chamber hooked sharply left, then curved back on itself for ten feet or so. The moonlight from the entrance didn’t reach this deep into the cave system, and he shouldn’t have been able to see a thing… yet there was a faint orange glow emanating from just up ahead.
Sam didn’t disagree with Bill, but he didn’t dare speak and risk further alerting any potential enemies that he was here. Despite the fact that everything about this situation was sending up red flags, Sam pushed on. They’d already worked through this plan, and this was still their best option of surviving the night. The passageway curled away, ending at a carved staircase with torch-lined walls.
Sam faltered, knowing that Bill was probably right. Yet, his gamer sense was tingling; this right here was quest fodder. Turning back was the smart thing to do, but whatever mystery lay at the bottom of this staircase was probably game-changing. Yeah, if he ventured any further, he might die, but even if he turned back, he was probably going to die anyway. Dying in a night-dark forest, devoured by a bunch of hungry, overgrown rabbits was certainly not any better than getting run through by a bandit’s blade.
Better to go out in a blaze of glory with the potential upside of a huge quest or a ‘first to accomplish’ reward.” Feeling a heady rush of exhilaration, he whispered, “Nope. Get ready to fight. We’re going in.”