“Lothar! Throwing knives!” Sam shouts, her wand cast before her and pointed directly at Lady Blacknor. I look to her and she nods insistently as pink magic swirls around her wand. “Do it!”
“Got it!” I grab the handle of one of my knives and with one fluid gesture, pull back and launch it at Lady Blacknor. I miss my target, her heart, but the knife does graze the side of her exposed arm.
-13 HP!
“Metastasize wound!” A blistering pink blast from Sam’s wand strikes Lady Blacknor and everyone, including Deathdale and Wolf, glance up to the dais.
“What … what have you done?” A look of horror spreads across the Metican leader’s face as the wound turns green and the infection spreads up her body. White magic swirls around the wrists of her nearest male attendant. Sigils appear in the air as he tries to heal her, all to no avail.
The wound spreads, grows with infection, boiling pus, as it moves up her shoulder and to her chest.
Lady Blacknor drops to her knees.
Blood appears in the whites of her eyes as the infection spreads further across her body, her sunburst yellow clothes withering away. “Kill … them … ” she says through parched lips. “Kill … them … all.”
Instakill!
Lady Blacknor falls face first onto the dais.
“Holy shit, Sam!”
Sam lowers her wand, slightly out of breath now. “I can’t cast any more magic until the hourglass finishes,” she says, pink energy evaporating off her weapon of choice. I see the antique hourglass necklace and the sand slowly falling from the top to the bottom.
The ground shakes again and this time it isn’t Lothar. A group of city guards come galloping into the arena. They carry harpoons with ropes attached, clearly meant to take down the giant.
“Lothar, protect Sam!”
“How?”
Fuck me, I think as I whistle for Wolf. “Kill them if they get near her, dammit! You’re bigger than them! Fight back, dammit!”
“But I’m a … ”
I ignore the bleeding-heart giant as Wolf comes around. I hop on, keeping low as we go to meet the incoming guards. We juke them out just in time and move around to their side, Wolf putting the SPEED points I gave him to good use.
We loop around and go for the wrecking-ball approach.
As we advance on them, as those with pikes turn towards us, I drop one arm around Wolf’s neck and lower both legs on one side of his body. “Faster!” I say as I try not to choke him, my weight pulling him to the side a bit.
I let go and both feet hit the ground running. I launch myself forward, propelled by digital physics. Wolf skids to the right just as I fly in the air with my blade drawn at the first warrior female.
-169 HP! Critical hit!
Her arm comes off at the elbow, my knee cracks against her horse’s skull, and I bring them both down, causing a small amount of injury to myself.
A beam of solid light cuts through the battlefield.
Deathdale’s blazing eyepatch attack partially vaporizes six of the mounted female warriors and their horses. The parts the light doesn’t touch are left smoldering, crackling as they burn to a crisp.
Gruesome. A quick glance over my shoulder and I see Deathdale with energy charging around her. Meanwhile, Lothar stands in front of Sam, his attackers closing in.
Deathdale turns to them, two scorpion tails of light forming out of her lower back.
Wolf slams into a woman just about to stab me with her pike. -69 HP! -74 HP! - 85 HP! He tears at her neck, spritzing the air with blood.
I go to meet another female warrior holding a harpoon. She eyes me fearlessly, a large dagger in her hand just as a horn sounds off in the distance.
I glance up to the corners of the arena, the foreboding crimson sky overhead.
More are on the way.
I swipe at the warrior before me with my Splintered Sword, hoping to finish this one quickly. She parries left, lunges at me with a dagger – her attack stopped by my Stater armor – and rolls away.
Wolf barks as the guards who weren’t fried by Deathdale’s beam of death-light form a circle around me. A few have pikes; others have short swords. Their horses neigh as they close in, ready to kick their legs up.
“Give up now,” says the lead woman, whom I recognize as the heavily armored city guard who greeted us on the city limits. She brandishes two swords. “You won’t win this fight.”
“We didn’t come here to fight you,” I say, spitting blood. “It is Lady Blacknor who is to blame for all this.”
The lead guard’s lips curl. “How dare you mention her by name, Player Killer filth!”
“You aren’t going to win this one, so let me give you a little advice,” I say as I catch my breath. “If you’re the toughest of the Metican warriors, use it to your advantage. Your people damn sure need a leader, especially now. So take charge.”
She lowers her weapons ever-so-slightly.
“Let us go and live to fight another day. What’s your name, milady?”
The woman gulps. She still has her blades pointed at me, but a flash of light behind her eye tells me she is considering what I’ve said. “Desdemona.”
“Lady Desdemona,” I say with a soft smile. “Call your guards off. You will not win this fight – not now, not ever. We have a Solar Mage and an Hourglass Mage. A giant too, for what that’s worth.”
“Temporal Decay!” Sam shouts from about forty feet away, completely oblivious to our conversation.
The guards surrounding Lothar take a step back as their weapons crumble to ash.
A pink trail of magic hovers above Sam’s wand as she turns to us. The pikes and short swords pointed at me crumble into a fine dust, leaving the female warriors weaponless with a pile of dust at their feet.
“Enough!” A dash of cunning spreads across the face of Lady Desdemona. “We will let them leave,” she says in an authoritative voice, her lips curling, “and they shall never be allowed to return.”
The warriors around her turn to their newfound leader.
“If this is an issue,” she announces to those gathered, “you can bring it up with me tomorrow, after my coronation ceremony.”
The two women warriors next to Lady Desdemona take positions at her sides. They keep to her as she walks to the dais, and they stop in front of it. Weaponless yet fierce as ever, the two women stare down anyone who dares look as the new governor of Metica takes the stage.
Lady Desdemona kicks aside the shriveled body of Lady Blacknor and calls one of the attendants over. The manservant gives her a dagger made of gold, and she cuts her finger and drips a bit of the blood on Lady Blacknor’s body. Once she’s finished, she points at the nearest group of mounted warriors.
“Escort them to the city limits.”
(^_^)
“I wasn’t expecting that!” Lothar says once we’ve reached the outer limits of Metica. “We just witnessed a Metican coup, apparently the second in the last few weeks.” He runs his hand through his tangled red hair. “How crazy was that?”
The mounted warriors that escorted us here keep a perimeter about two hundred feet away from us. The two from the battle are still weaponless, thanks to Sam’s magic, but the others who have joined them are loaded to the teeth.
“Let’s just get to a place we can rest for a moment,” I tell the scholarly giant. “We can hash things out once we get there. Truth is, we got lucky. Really lucky. Lady Desdemona could have continued the fight and there are more of them than us, so eventually we would have been overwhelmed.”
A cold breeze blows past.
“The weather seems to be getting worse.” Lothar lifts his big foot and places it on a table-sized rock. He takes off his oval glasses, polishes them on the front of his blue tunic, and focuses on Sam. “I never thought it would be possible to speed up the decomposition of a weapon. Have you tried it on a structure such as a wall or a building?”
“I have not, but it’s not a bad idea.”
“Huma
ns?” Deathdale asks.
“No,” Sam says tersely.
I hop off Wolf and he sits on his haunches. He pants for a moment, stands, finds a standing puddle of water that was likely frozen last night, and drinks from it. “What other spells do you have?”
“I have been given several spells.” She equips a large, leather-bound book filled with loose paper. “But I’m not able to use some of them yet.”
With a grunt, she opens to a page filled with symbols and Unigaean writing.
“Can you read that?” I ask.
“No, but I understand it. Weird to say.” She flips to another page. “This part is mostly about Time Mages of the past, their history. There can only be one at a time. Apparently, they all use the same book, this one, which is why there are advanced spells I can’t read. Again, I understand it, but can’t make out the details. It’s like reading a wet newspaper.”
“A what? Kidding. And that technically means you can read it.”
“You know what I’m trying to say,” Sam says as she stops on a particular page. “Earlier, I cast Metastasize Wound on Lady Blacknor. This apparently works with any injury,” she says, pointing at a diagram, “and it leads to instant death. There are some other strange spells in here, like one that can turn a person or creature back into a baby.”
“A baby spell?” I nod.
“It’s called Fountain of Youth.”
“Can you freeze time or anything?” Lothar drops his meditations box to the ground and sits on it. He peers over Sam’s shoulder as best he can at his size.
“Not yet, but the spell is in here.”
“What about Speed Time or Reverse Time?”
Sam hesitates. “They are both in here, but I’m not at the correct level to use them, and I don’t think I’d use them anyway.”
“Why not?” Deathdale stands in her Tagvornin fur jacket with her arms crossed over her chest.
“There’s a caveat with those two. When I use it, my hourglass cracks. Once it breaks, I die. The Obelisk explained this to me. As my hourglass wears, I age; if it’s cracked, I age even faster. It’s my handicap – the ultimate handicap if you ask me.”
“I wouldn’t wear it around my neck if that were the case,” I say.
Sam removes the necklace and places it on a stump. “Try to break it.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
A lasso made of light cracks into the side of the hourglass. The antique doesn’t even wobble. We both look to Deathdale.
“She’s right,” the Solar Mage says as her weapon filters away.
Wolf whines as he senses some tension between the three of us. “What is it?” I ask him. “Hungry?”
“Like I said, it won’t break.” Sam glares at Deathdale for a moment and turns to Wolf once he barks again. She places the hourglass necklace back over her head and equips a large bag of jerky.
Wolf practically does a backflip, so excited he is to slam some jerky.
“Here you go, boy!” she tosses him a piece and he leaps into the air to retrieve it.
“Where’s my piece?” I ask.
“Will you catch it in your mouth?”
“I’ll try.” I take a good-sized hunk of jerky from her and pop it in my mouth. “Where’d you get this stuff? Shit is good!” I stop chewing. “Wait a minute, this stuff isn’t from Grope the shed guy, is it?”
“Who?”
“I wish I had some jerky my size,” Lothar laments.
Sam laughs. “Sorry, no giant-sized jerky today. And who’s Grope the shed guy?”
“You should know,” I tell her as I chew another piece. “He’s the guy who makes all the shed jerky back in Tangka. The same guy whose shed I beat down when we infiltrated Tangka, the guy who keeps making himself known in my little narrative.”
“Well, he’s not in my narrative. Never met him.” She takes a bite of the jerky. “I picked this stuff up in Tin Ingot.”
Wolf eats as much jerky as Sam will give him. Once I’m finished gnawing on a particularly chewy piece, Sam turns to me and asks, “So, fearless leader, what’s your plan?”
I smirk. “I thought you were the leader.”
“No, that was my last avatar. Now I’m just a lowly mage.”
Lothar snorts. “That’s not true!”
My face grows serious. “You two know very well what we are planning next.” I clear my throat. “We are heading to Drachma and it will take us a day to reach there. You both are still invited.”
“You’re serious?” Sam asks.
“Dead.”
Deathdale nods in agreement. She takes something wrapped in seaweed from her inventory list and starts eating it.
“I don’t agree with your actions,” Lothar says, “but there isn’t anything I can do to stop you, so we’ll stick to the plan. We’ll go to Tael and wait for you two to come that way. We have a handy magnifier in our library there for smaller texts. I may be able to help interpret parts of Sam’s Book of Time.”
“Good idea, you two go there and we’ll meet you.”
His glasses drop to the end of his nose. “It is a pity you’re choosing revenge over the Red Plague, but at the rate it is moving – theoretically, of course; we won’t know until we get up to the northernmost part of the Rune Lands – I believe we do have a bit of time. Not much though. So you two should hurry.”
“We will.”
“Be safe, Oric,” says Sam, her eyes filling with worry. “We need you. The Obelisk chose you, for whatever goddamn reason, to try to fix the source code bomb.”
“She’s right,” Lothar says, “be safe. I don’t want to see any harm come to you or your wolf. He seems very smart. Smarter than any dog I’ve ever met.” He sighs. “I wish the powers that be gave us giant dogs. There are other giant animals, but not dogs. I’ve always wanted a dog.”
Quest update!
You have decided to continue to Drachma with Deathdale. Sam Raid and Lothar Shane will ride to Tael, and once you have completed your personal quest, you will join them in Tael.
“Got it,” I mumble as I instinctively swipe the quest update away.
Chapter Seventeen: The Snow Must Go On
It’s hard to shake the look Sam Raid gave me before I turned east. A mix of apprehension and disappointment, her visage continues to burn a hole in my psyche as Deathdale and I make our push to the coastal city of Drachma.
It isn’t long before we are greeted by a mild snowstorm, nothing to write home about, but it is cold, and I’m kicking myself in the ass for not getting a jacket or something …
“Wait!” I call to Deathdale, who levitates before me.
A quick scroll through my inventory and I come to the lavender cloak I picked up outside Tin Ingot. I put the cloak on and bring the hood over my head. Warmth doesn’t come instantly, but at least the wind isn’t as cold as we continue on our way.
“What?” I ask when I see a grin lift her cheeks. “It’s all I have.”
Rock formations pepper the landscape between Metica and Drachma. No mountains, but there are tons of small caves in which we can take shelter, caves famous for the psychedelic mushrooms that grow in them in the early morning.
A wind separates Deathdale and me, carrying with it an avalanche worth of snow. I squint, looking for the bit of light that surrounds the Solar Mage’s feet as she moves.
“Hold on, boy,” I tell Wolf as I pat him on the neck. He slows, the black fur on the back of his head covered in specks of glittery snow.
He barks and his ears press back.
“What do you see?” I ask, my hand instinctively going to the hilt of my Splintered Sword. I’ve seen this type of snow in real life, back in Chicago, snow so cold it presses through your clothing and chills your bones.
We travel forward slowly, waiting for some indication of Deathdale.
As soon as the winds settle, we see the Solar Mage now a good seventy-five feet in front of us. She’s still in her coat and her dress-like armor, the tips of which flutter in t
he wind as she speeds forward.
“Hey!” I call and Wolf picks up his pace, his feet kicking up what looks like white dust. He pants now, the snow thickening at his feet but not yet past his ankles.
Once we’re caught up and the wind has finished, I turn my thoughts to Drachma, and what I know about the coastal city. Man-made islands linked by canals and bridges make up the eastern half of Drachma. Most of the guildhalls and homes of richer merchants are in the Canal District, as it is known, which is infamous for its pricey real estate.
That’s where they’ll be.
The Drachma Killers practically own Drachma, and anyone that so much as looks at them funny, quickly meets their death. The politicians, the governor, the merchants, anyone who is anyone in the city pays tithe to the Killers.
I nod as an odd plan solidifies in my mind.
It could definitely work, but we’ll need to scout the place out first.
This was why I took my avatar, why I became a Player Killer, and sure, it is brazen as hell to go up against a guild three times my current level, but there are more ways to skin a cat than direct confrontation.
Something moving in the distance catches my eye. The wind picks up, and I catch the black fin of something twice as large as Wolf moving towards us.
(^_^)
A fin?
“Deathdale!”
Snow spins into the air as an enormous creature leaps into the path between us. The orca-wolf hybrid snaps its teeth at us and for the first time in as long as I can remember, Wolf yelps and backpedals away from the creature.
[Akhult, Level 13]
A blast of light knocks the akhult to the side, but does little to cut through its thick, black skin. Below its eyes are white circles – its orca ancestry, also evident in its tail that ends in two flukes. The rest of the creature, including its intimidating stance and razor-sharp teeth, is all canine.
My Splintered Sword in hand, I dismount Wolf so we can add an extra combatant to the fight.
Another blast from Deathdale turns the snow to water and cuts off the tip of the akhult’s fin.
The Drachma Killers (The Last Warrior of Unigaea Book 2) Page 15