by K.N. Lee
Also By L.C. Ireland
The Fatal Series
The kingdom of Aldrin has been overrun by the living dead. Long-lost Prince Izayik may be the only one who can save his people from the undead … if he can avoid joining them.
Fatal Heir
Fatal Court
The Collective Series
Deafened by her kidnappers, young musician Ama must escape from her captors using the magic music she can no longer hear.
Follow the Music
The Seven Sisters of Silverleaf
Encountering incredible beasts and horrible curses, the Delaroe sisters must protect their family, their home … and the secrets their parents left behind.
Horrid
Bravery
Questmaster
Jessica West
An island adrift in a world gone to Hell becomes an even smaller place when the weight of its future lands on one person’s shoulders.
Questmaster
“Take out the casters and ranged dps first. Kanaan, keep me alive.”
Everyone nods their acknowledgement, but poor Kanaan can’t keep the worry off his face. I get it. Being the healer of the group is a heavy job. You have to keep everyone alive. Most importantly, you have to keep your tank alive and I’m the tank. If I die, he’ll die and we’ll all respawn in town and it’s game over. Not only will we not get another chance to complete this task, but the town elders will boot us from the running altogether.
“Kanaan, listen to me, as long as we don’t totally wipe, we’re fine. You can resurrect everyone else as long as you and I at least survive crowd control. All right?”
A deep breath seems to bolster his courage and this time he nods with more conviction.
“Good. Eli, Sam, Baezu, Jozani, I’m going straight for the shaman first. Assist me until she’s dead, then hit the remaining casters while I tank Gordon Sorven. Do not touch him until everything else is dead.”
A chorus of voices murmur, “Got it.”
I’m sure they do have it, but Baezu’s cocky. And, if I’m being totally honest, he’s probably the better tank anyway. He’s a trained warrior, built for tanking. But I rolled lead on this, and we have to stay on the same page. He’s a wild card. I really don’t know how keen he is to follow a girl tank. Only one way to find out.
“Okay, on my mark, we go.”
I turn my focus to the crowd of spiked tumblers below, playing in the shade of the forest. They could almost pass as cute if it weren’t for the serrated edges on the exoskeletons covering their backs. The shaman is near Sorven, almost hidden in shadows, so that’s handy. At least I won’t have to chase him down after she’s dead. On the other hand, he and the shaman will be all over my ass. It can’t be helped, though.
Checking the position of the other mobs one last time, I set my mind to a path and commit my body to the charge.
The shadows near me expand, reaching out to embrace me, slipping across the ground at my feet. As they touch me, dark energy lights up every nerve ending, sending a thrill of anticipation through me. Closing my eyes heightens the sense of urgency. When I feel like I can’t hold still another second, I seek out the location of the shaman with my mind’s eye.
Locked onto her dark energy, I raise my blades in preparation for the strike and let go, giving full control of my body to the shadows.
The blow staggers the shaman. She stumbles backwards a few steps, but doesn’t fall.
Crap. I had hoped it’d be enough to at least stun her.
One gnarled hand wrapped in a sickly green glow shoots forward and the soil at my feet bursts upwards.
I’m trapped in a tangle of roots. Frantically hacking away at them, I’m too distracted to notice the ethereal ice spike until it lodges in my shoulder. The magic dissipates almost immediately, but the damage is done.
Thankfully, a rush of soothing healing magic dispels the worst of the damage. Kanaan’s heal lands just in time, briefly filling my vision with a soft, blue glow. I’m back to 100%, but his spell does nothing about the slowly fading roots entrapping me.
As I raise my machete to hack at them and free myself, Sorven’s mace finds my exposed side.
My scream is born more of frustrated anger than anything else. This is sloppy tanking. The damn roots distracted me, sent me into a panic to escape. I hate being trapped.
Sorven’s pulling back from his swing, moving against his own momentum.
That works in my favor, as does the speed I’ve trained for a dozen years to maximize.
Free of the vines, I whirl in a half circle, the sharpened edge of my machete slicing into Sorven’s back and side and arm.
Dark brown blood gushes from the wounds and he wails in misery.
Unfortunately, my spin exposed my other side to the damn shaman.
Another ice spike drives through my flesh and jars my ribs.
Kanaan panics. “Tier’an!”
I understand his terror—this is his first real battle.
“Kanaan, just keep me alive. That’s it!”
My dagger comes to hand too easily, almost as though it’s been waiting for me to draw it. Gathering a bit of shadow magic, I toss the small but deadly weapon. Propelled by the dark energy and drawn by the shadows surrounding her, my blade instantly finds its mark in the shaman’s chest. Unfortunately, her armor prevents the weapon from doing too much damage.
But at least the roots are gone now, faded back into the ether. That means I can move, but it also means the shaman’s spells have refreshed. She can cast again.
And that’s exactly what she’s doing. Instead of the green energy I expect, black shot through with red tendrils snake out my way.
The shaman’s life-stealing wisps plunge into my chest, and Sorven steps forward to strike again.
Please just keep me alive, Kanaan.
Shadows behind Sorven beckon me and I point my machete at his chest, knowing they’re waiting on the other side. The instant I let go, they pull the weapon toward Sorven with enough momentum to bury the blade in his sternum all the way to the hilt and drag him back several paces toward the trees.
In the space between moments, where shadows loom the largest and almost anything is possible for me, I use the shaman’s own dark energy and the shadows enveloping her to transport her directly before me.
The sword strapped to my back is free before I can even think to pull it out and I’m swinging down in one fluid motion on instinct alone, compelled by the shadows and dark energy surging through me.
The shaman tries to scramble away from me, but it only saves her from being cleaved in half. Instead, the long blade carves a path down the front of her, but not deep enough to slice her completely open.
Arrows shoot into her from behind me: Jozani, my druid.
My own shaman, Eli, hurls his own ice spikes at her as well. I’m assuming he has Sorven rooted, otherwise the boss mob would be on me right now. Good thing I didn’t have Eli root him first. That distance is going to save me. That and the blue rush of Kanaan’s healing magic.
Sam rushes past me, a blur of swirling blades.
Baezu’s pure melee style means he’s always the last to arrive. But once he attacks, the shaman goes down fast under a flurry of powerful blows from his giant hammer.
Kanaan sends another wave of healing magic through me. I’m not quite 100%, but at least the chill has retreated.
With the shaman dead, the others can take care of any minor mobs left. As long as Baezu is standing at my side, I know Jozani and Eli are fighting from a safe distance, hidden in the woods around us. With the exception of glancing blows here and there, I probably won’t see Sam again until the fight’s over. My burst speed is unique, but Sam’s got me beat on endurance.
Baezu and I keep Sorven busy until Sam, Eli, and Jozani have the other mobs under control. Then we focus all our efforts on the boss mob surrounded by the corpses of his fallen allies.
Baezu and I could have taken him down on our own if he wasn’t regenerative
. Damn healing mobs. Better than a summoner, though.
A trio of arrows litters one side of Sorven while one of Eli’s ice spikes stabs into the other. Behind him, opposite Baezu and me, Sam’s blades are only visible as glints of steel in the light.
Sorven raises one massive razor claw and lands a savage blow to Baezu, slashing his gut open.
A soothing blue glow envelops my warrior as he staggers. The heal is just enough to keep his intestines from spilling out and closes the gap in his flesh, but he’s so pale he’s almost white.
His eyes darken as he goes into a berzerker rage, swinging wildly but landing blows far more often than not. Continual heavy blows stun Sorven so he can’t even cast a quick heal on himself, much less anything that would damage us.
I hang back while Baezu’s out of control, gathering the shadows in anticipation of what’s to come and focusing on the dark energy inside Sorven. That darkness draws me like nothing else.
Sam’s whirling slows. Because Baezu is no longer predictable, Sam has to be careful he doesn’t accidentally slice our hardest hitter.
Joz and Eli are still shooting Sorven with poisonous arrows and ice shards from both sides.
Baezu’s energy wanes severely, the berzerker rage draining away from him as his swings slow, then halt.
This is what I’ve been waiting for.
Sorven is seriously wounded, nearly dead. But he could still heal.
Propelled by the dark energy of the shadows I’ve gathered within myself and around him, I surge forward again.
The strike is devastating.
Spinning around as fast as I can, I grab Baezu and start dragging him away from the melee.
A final volley of arrows descends on Sorven and he drops to his knees then falls forward on his face. Joz timed her big release perfectly.
Sorven tries to push himself up, but his arms are weak, trembling. Still, he could recover.
But Eli has been waiting for his big moment, too. Balls of hail the size of my head rain down from the sky.
I barely manage to drag Baezu out of the way before the ice storm pummels Sorven’s body and anything within a five-meter range of it.
Sam is waiting a few paces behind me. I didn’t even see his retreat. His speed is a little freaky even to me.
Kanaan approaches cautiously. “Is it dead?”
“Yeah, you did good, Kanaan. We all did. Get Baezu healed up. Eli, Sam, help me loot these corpses. Joz, check the chests. Make an inventory as you go and we’ll roll when we get back to town.”
As everyone goes about their tasks, I have to take a moment to appreciate my team.
These are the best of Neissfold. Well, half of them. There’s Benoit’s team, too.
Of my teammates, I try to imagine which one could be the next questmaster.
Eli is the smartest person I know. Sam is inarguably the fastest. Baezu is definitely the strongest. But which one is all three? Maybe Joz. She seems pretty well rounded. Maybe me. Who knows?
As long as it’s not Benoit, I don’t care.
Well, scratch that. I do care. I care because the next questmaster could end up like Sorven.
There was a time when he was the best of Neissfold. Instead of finding a way off of the island, he—like so many who came before him—became a boss mob to beat. And now he’s just another corpse to loot. Whoever becomes the next questmaster, their fate is likely similar. Then the next round of hopeful questmasters will have a new boss mob to defeat.
With a heavy heart, I bend down to strip Sorven’s corpse of any usable potions or equipment and the one thing we really came here for: his Amulet of Amari.
This is how our most precious relics are passed down from one questmaster to the next.
Task accomplished, we head back to town in a hurry. We want to be well out of range before Sorven respawns. That is, in my opinion, the worst part of all this.
None of us can ever truly die. Some believe our island is cursed. Still others believe the people themselves are damned.
Either way, we have to get off this island. I sure hope things are better somewhere else.
The rising sun barely filters through the thick canopy of leaves above us, but Eli’s wand and spellbinder and Kanaan’s staff provide enough light-blue glow for us to find our way home. We run into a few small groups of spiked tumblers, but no more boss mobs. There are only two this far north, and Benoit’s team was assigned to the other one.
I laughed aloud when Neissfold’s elders delivered the news.
“Potential Questmaster Almed Benoit, your team shall find and slay corrupted questmaster Aubrun Beringer, collect his Amulet of Amari, and return to Pine Ridge Refuge within two days’ time.”
Beringer is a summoner, therefore hard to beat unless you know how. Even if you manage to kill all the mobs surrounding them, they’ll just summon more. You have to kill the boss mob first, but the trick is to do so without allowing the rest of your group to die. Even though this is my first time tanking, I listened to our trainers and learned from them. For his team’s sake, I hope Benoit did, too.
The oaks around us thin out some and more pines appear. We aren’t far from home, and we haven’t even been gone a full day. Finding and slaying Sorven was almost too easy.
A high-pitched shriek pierces my ears and makes my eyes water. “The hell was that?”
The color drains from Kanaan’s face. “Kimber.” With no other warning, he’s sprinting away, north, back into The Grove.
“Kanaan, wait! Sam, go after him.”
I could use shadow magic to leap to him, but I’ve never done it without causing damage so I don’t want to take the chance. Looks like I’ll have to run. Sam can run circles around Kanaan, but stopping him is another thing. With his sister in danger, I doubt Sam will be able to restrain Kanaan. The best we can do is follow him.
Joz keeps up with me, but I can hear Baezu panting and struggling, falling further and further behind. He’ll get there when he can.
I can’t check Eli’s position, but I’m assuming he’s somewhere to my left.
We break the treeline to the west of Pine Ridge and The Grove, at the old abandoned cathedral.
Benoit and his team, minus two, are battling wave after wave of reanimated corpses and ethereal ghosts, not the boss mob.
Idiot.
Kimber is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Benoit’s other ranged dps, Alya. He must have had them fighting side by side. Never put your two ranged fighters together. It’s too easy for a powerful mob to take them both out with a single area effect spell.
Kanaan’s frantically scanning the scene even though Kimber’s gone, his eyes darting back and forth between mobs and Benoit’s remaining teammates. “Kimber!”
“She’s not here, Kanaan. She’s probably back at town, with Alya. She’s fine.”
It should be a comfort, death isn’t an end for us. But it’s not that simple.
I reach out to touch his shoulder, but he’s beyond reason. He shoves my hand away. Regardless of the fact that Kimber’s spirit has respawned in the safety of Pine Ridge, he’s furious, and I don’t blame him.
Beringer killed his sister. It doesn’t matter that she’ll respawn. The fact remains: he killed her.
I know what we have to do.
“Eli, shake it up. Joz, Sam, we’re on Beringer. Kanaan gets the killing blow.”
A sickly green glow envelops Eli’s hands. We wait as he roots the boss mob, then gathers cold magic to slow it down. Finally, he calls down the massive hailstorm that will take Beringer down several notches. Unlike Sorven, this mob can’t heal itself.
When the sky stops raining death, Kanaan leads the charge. I let him get the first hit, then I move with the impossible speed of shadows, landing a near-fatal blow when I crash into the mob.
Joz’s arrows zip around me, Sam, Kanaan, and Benoit’s team. Somehow, she’s able to find even the smallest openings between us as we’re moving and take advantage of them.
A comforting blue glo
w washes over all of us. Eli can’t heal us as well as Kanaan, but he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve to help keep us alive. Our fighting style has to accommodate the lesser healing, though. Instead of going toe to toe with Beringer, we have to dodge and strike. Dodge and strike. Eli’s initial slow spell and my stun help limit Beringer’s damage.
Kanaan lets out a guttural cry and I know Beringer’s end is near.
Benoit yells, “No!”
Too late, though. Kanaan uses the crystal atop his staff, and the magic he’s able to channel therein, to slice into Beringer’s neck.
Dark green blood oozes from numerous cuts. He staggers back a few paces, then falls flat on his back. All the mobs he’d summoned die with him, the corpses sinking back into the ground and the haunts fading to nothing.
“You assholes!” Benoit roars. “You kill-stealing bastards!”
Kanaan’s fury is still barely contained, but his voice is low and deep. Dangerous. “You got my sister killed.” His fists are so tightly clenched, his skin is stretched thin and white over his knuckles.
I’ve never seen him this way before. He’s a worrier, not a warrior. This isn’t like Kanaan at all.
With his trademark sneer and a roll of his eyes, Benoit says, “She’s fine, but you can bet your ass the elders will hear about this.”
Beside me, Kanaan’s shaking, barely under control.
“Get over yourself, Benoit.”
Kanaan turns away, already heading back to town I’m sure. I can’t resist the chance to taunt Benoit.
“You can still loot the Amulet and everything will go on as planned.”
I know better, but I want to hear him say it. I want to see his face as he works through the implications.
Benoit’s shaking his head, exactly as I expected he would. “Silly little girl. You don’t understand the rules, do you? I can’t loot a mob unless my group did the most damage. That mob?” He flung a hand out toward the rapidly decaying corpse. “That’s your loot.”
Okay, I’m not even going to try to pretend to be a good person right now. I’m happy as hell Benoit doesn’t get his Amulet. I’m not even trying to hide the grin stretching my cheeks.