Once we crossed the river, we ran as fast as we could towards the village where the portal was located. Glancing behind we saw that Death13 was not following us. Wiseazz’s distraction had worked.
It took us an hour, but we finally reached the village of the Raks and I felt like we were only one step from ending all our troubles. Too bad, for our troubles had only begun.
We approached the guards at the village gate without any fear even though they drew their swords, ready to kill us. We raised our hands in submission.
“We have not come here with any harmful intentions,” I said.
“Hey weren’t you two among the ones who left our village only a few hours back?” one of the guards asked. My eyes searched for Humabel, but he was not among one of the guards tonight. Yes, he had nearly killed me once and he was someone who lived for gold, but at the same time it would have been better had he been around.
“Yes,” I said. I noticed that the other silent guards were surrounding us. I was not getting a very good feeling about this. “We just came here to use the portal again.”
“Unfortunately that is no longer possible,” the guard said and I didn’t like the look on his face at all.
I frowned.
“Why?” I asked. “And where is the other Rak, Humabel? Isn’t he the one who helps players use the portal?”
The guards all laughed. I exchanged glances with Lovebird. Like me she didn’t seem to have much of a clue of what was exactly happening.
“Humabel is history,” the first guard said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. The more the Raks spoke, the more I felt fear creep up my spine. Something was definitely amiss here.
“We killed him,” the first guard replied, and then he licked his tongue, “and the village is going to have a good meal of him tonight.”
Was he talking about eating Humabel? My heart only sank further.
“I don’t get it,” I said, “wasn’t he one of you? Why would you do something like that to him?”
“We are Raks you see,” the first guard said, “and in our society no crime is left unpunished. Humabel was refusing to equally distribute all the gold he had been acquiring by helping the players use the portal. So we had to deal with him. And then, after killing him we decided to have a feast out of his corpse tonight.”
“But what has it got to do with the portal?” Lovebird said, and she didn’t seem interested in the talk about eating Humabel. She was concerned more with getting to Dinoland.
“The portal is gone,” the first guard said, “nobody knows what happened to it. Even Humabel was crying, saying something that he hadn’t realised when the number of times the portal could be used was over. It didn’t make any sense. None of the stones remain in the place where the portal was.”
No portal? That meant not going to Dinoland.
It also meant that the Raks would not behave nice with us.
The first guard then rubbed his hands in anticipation.
“And since we are done giving the explanations, we are going to—”
I landed a kick on his face before he could complete his sentence. My heart drummed in my chest for I didn’t even have my sword, neither did Lovebird.
The other guards swung their swords at us. Lovebird kicked the groin of one of the guards, while a couple I was able to paralyse. They were of higher levels though and it would not be possible to maintain the spell on them for long. I turned to the first guard, who was still wincing in pain, his nose bleeding from my kick.
I reacted fast. I pulled out his sword from his sheath before he could pull it out himself. And with the sword, I was able to block the attack of another of the guards on Lovebird. The two I had paralysed would defreeze any moment now, and this scared me. I was able to land a few hits on the guard who was attacking Lovebird, and he died. I so wished I had the Ravana sword at this point. The first guard charged at the two of us, even though he didn’t have any weapon. But he was baring his fangs and I knew even those fangs could cause some serious health loss. Lovebird picked up a fist size stone from the ground and threw at him with force. Her aim was perfect for she hit him right on his nose, that I had already broken earlier. As he clasped his nose in pain, I used the distraction and ran to him and was able to land a dozen hits on him, so that his health fell steeply. But before I could kill him, the other two guards that I had paralysed revived.
“I got them,” Lovebird said. She picked up the fallen sword of the Rak whom I had killed earlier and with this she met the attack of the two guards. I meanwhile finished off the first guard. And then I went to help Lovebird deal with the other two.
It took us a good while, and both of us suffered health losses, but ultimately we were the ones who got out of the fight alive. The Raks had dropped some health vials and we quickly collected them. They would definitely come in handy.
Just then I heard a cry.
It was one of the Raks inside the village, who had seen us kill the guards. I was pretty sure that we would have to deal with quite a few Raks if we didn’t flee now.
“Run,” I said to Lovebird. Both of us grabbed each other’s hands and ran away from the village, even as about a dozen Raks came running, waving swords.
Chapter 32
We kept running for a good while, and it was only when we were sure that the Raks were not pursuing us, when he slumped down against a tree to rest. Lovebird burst into sobs. I embraced her, even as tears streamed down my own eyes. Why did this have to happen? Couldn’t things be easier? Why did the portal have to disappear when we most needed it?
A sudden fury got hold of me. I pushed Lovebird aside and I began to hit the tree with my fists. I watched even as stinging pain shot up my arms and my health fell, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about any blasted thing at that point.
“How are we going to get back to Ravana?” Lovebird said in between sobs.
“I don’t understand why this has to happen to us,” I said. “Why should that portal disappear?”
Very abruptly Lovebird stopped sobbing.
“Hey, can’t there be other portals around?” she said. I stopped hitting the tree immediately. Why, there had to be other portals, right? It was not like there was only one portal in the entire world of Prithvi, right? I had been really stupid. I quickly opened my map. I focussed in concentration, trying to find out the differently hued dots from the countless dots that were in the map marking the Rak villages.
“Now what is this?” I found myself saying. I had seen a differently hued dot. And I was sure that it was a portal. But the thing which totally blew me away was the fact that it was moving. It seemed to move very slowly in the map, but the map covered many kilometres. Judging by that, the dot was moving at the speed of at least a hundred metres a minute.
I turned towards Lovebird.
“How can an entire village be on the move?”
“Are you sure the dots signify villages?” Lovebird asked. She didn’t have a map yet so she didn’t know much about it. But she had a point. Yes, the dots did signify villages, but the darker dots signified portals. For the dot of the village from which we had only just run away was still there. However, it had become less dark and it was now hued in the same way as the other villages.
“I think the portal is moving then,” I said. “But how can that be possible?”
“Unless someone is carrying all the stones that form the portal?” Lovebird said. That was a possibility.
“So what do you say? Should we go after the moving portal? Maybe we can catch up with whoever is carrying it and then we can ask them to let us go to Dinoland?”
Lovebird nodded.
“That should be what we do,” she said. Both of us got up. I looked at my health, and I had to drink a health vial. Giving in to frustration really was a lame idea. It clouded the mind and stopped one to find out possible solutions to problems. Thankfully, Lovebird had been more clear-minded. Had she not told me about the map then I would probably be still hitting t
he tree like a maniac.
The two of us pursued the portal. It was really moving fast. For at least half an hour we relentlessly went after it. It was moving very erratically, constantly changing directions.
And then, all of a sudden, the portal changed its direction for about the twentieth time and it directly came towards us. I signalled Lovebird to stop.
“It’s coming towards us!” I said so that her eyes widened. She nodded.
We waited in tense silence. I began to see a white light through the gaps in between the trees, but I couldn’t exactly make out whether it was a person carrying a torch of some sort or if it was something else.
I gulped, as the light suddenly pushed past some plants, such that we had a clear view of it.
It was an animal.
A deer of sorts.
Except it wasn’t made of flesh and bones and skin, but of pure light.
“That is the portal?” Lovebird asked me confusedly.
I checked the map just to be sure.
The map was reflecting the exact movements of the frantically moving deer.
“Yes,” I said. At the same I found it really hard to believe that the deer could be the portal. It didn’t make any sense at all. The portal was formed of some kind of magical stones… and here was a deer of light. Was the deer some kind of spirit of the portal? Maybe the deer came to existence because the portal had been used a set number of times? There were so many possibilities that I felt like my head would burst, even as I constantly kept turning my head with every movement of the deer.
“How can we use it as a portal?” Lovebird asked. Her question was valid, but my curiosity had been piqued and all I wanted to know was the mystery behind the deer. And then, the deer began to run directly towards us. It was coming so fast, that if it hit us with its antlers we were sure to lose a lot of health. Just before it could hit either one of us however, Lovebird and I leapt opposite ways so that the deer zoomed past from in between the two of us. But it didn’t seem interested in hurting us, and it took off in another direction immediately.
“Let’s go after it,” I said, “before we lose a view of it.”
We began to follow the deer. At least an hour went by. There were times when we completely lost sight of the deer. But thankfully the map was there and it was reflecting the exact movements of the deer. None of us knew what we would exactly do if the deer stopped and we could reach it. Could we ask it to transport us to Dinoland? Could the deer even understand human words? We didn’t know, but we felt like pursuing the deer would somehow solve all our problems. The lively movement of the deer was at a contrast from some of the grim things we had had to witness that night.
Finally a pond came into view. By this point, we were in the remote areas of Rakshasha territory. There weren’t even many villages near us, which was a good thing, since otherwise some Rak might have seen us running around and then that would have created some unwanted problems.
The deer stopped at the very edge of the pond.
“Is it going to drink the water?” Lovebird asked.
“A deer of light drinking water?” I said, as the deer lowered its head towards the water, “Where would the water even go? A stomach of light wouldn’t be able to hold it, right?”
But the deer didn’t drink the water. Instead it leapt into the pond, landing on the water with a big splash. And then it dived below. Lovebird and I ran to the edge of the pond and we looked down into it. We expected to see the deer of light below the surface of the water, but it wasn’t there at all.
“Where did I go?” Lovebird asked.
So that's how our only ray of hope was going to disappear? Had we spent the last hour pointlessly chasing it? Trying to find an alternate way to get to Dinoland probably would have been a better idea.
And then, without telling me a thing, Lovebird suddenly jumped into the pond. Water splashed against my face.
She swam about the surface of the pond for a while. She was frowning hard.
“The water feels… weird,” Lovebird said.
“Weird? In what sense?” I asked.
“It’s just… it’s hard to describe,” Lovebird said. And then she went under the surface of the water. I bent down near the edge of the pond and waited for her to resurface.
A minute went by, and she didn’t. My heart began to beat fast. First the deer had disappeared, and now… Lovebird?
No, I couldn’t accept that. I leapt into the pond. The moment my body came in contact with the water, I felt a queer sensation overcome me. The water felt more like some sort of gas and there was a very tingling kind of sensation that it brought with itself.
I dived under the surface of the water after taking a deep breath. The moment I did so, the surface of the pond disappeared. I tried to swim back up, but couldn’t. My heart hammered in my chest.
Lovebird. I should find her.
I began to swim down. I spotted a figure that was unmistakably Lovebird. A good distance below her was a spot of light that I believed was the deer. And there seemed to be no end to the depth of the pond. It just seemed to extend indefinitely in all directions. My lungs screamed for air, but I forced myself to swim towards Lovebird.
My vision began to fade and I saw stars as I neared her. I felt like I could go on no longer. I just had no oxygen left in me… my health was falling rapidly. If I died, I would respawn exactly where I was, so that shouldn’t be bad, right? Lovebird turned towards me and then I blacked out.
After a moment, I felt soft hands shaking me. I forced my eyelids to part.
It was Lovebird. We were still in the pond.
But… I could breathe!
“I can breathe!” I said to her, and was even more surprised that it was possible for me to speak under the water. Lovebird smiled.
“Yes, it’s not water that we are in,” Lovebird said, “it seems to be something else, and it’s possible for us to breathe it much like oxygen.”
Well, it was a game world after all, at the end of the day. One of the creators might have simply decided to create a pond under which it was possible to breathe. Besides… this place was not exactly a pond, was it?
“Why can’t we return to the surface?” I asked Lovebird.
She looked at me with a face that said, “How can I possibly know?”
“Fine, where is the deer? It was what we came after.”
“Down there,” Lovebird said.
The two of us began to swim towards the deer. The animal of light finally seemed to have come to halt.
We approached it slowly, careful to not alert it in any way such that it would run away, and we had already chased the animal enough.
The animal turned its head towards us.
“Why did you follow me here?” it asked in a male voice.
I was a bit taken that an animal should be able to speak. But in a place that contained all kinds of mythical creatures, from Raks to Dinomen, I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
“We need to go to Dinoland,” Lovebird said, before I could answer the deer.
“What for?”
“It shouldn’t matter,” Lovebird said, “you are a portal, aren’t you? Transport us to the place in Dinoland where we want to go. We will pay you all the gold you want.”
The deer broke into a laugh.
“You don’t want to go to Dinoland now, not anymore,” he said, so that Lovebird and I exchanged confused looks. “If you were after any quest, it was already completed by somebody… probably a long time ago. A very long time ago.”
“What do you mean?” I said. The deer wasn’t taking much sense.
“You will know,” the deer said. “It’s a pity you followed me here. You really shouldn’t have.”
At that very moment, I felt a very abrupt constriction in my throat. As if the water had turned in to actual water that we couldn’t breathe any more. Lovebird was struggling too. She tried to speak but only bubbles came out of her mouth.
I grabbed her arm and began to kick
my legs hard, swimming up, hoping that we would surface. And after a few moments of intense effort we did. It seemed like whatever magic had taken over the pond in the past few minutes was gone and the pond had once again become a normal pond. Lovebird and I swam to the edge of the pond and pulled ourselves onto the edge. Both of us were soaked with water. We took a few moments to catch our breath. Then we realised that the place had quite changed. The forest was so different! The trees were all shrivelled up, and they barely had any leaves. And the sky up above was less black and more like a very dark shade of crimson.
“What exactly happened?” Lovebird asked, shocked as myself at the great changes that had come in the short interval of time that we had been in the pond. And then, as if to answer her question, a notification appeared in my vision.
You used a time machine.
You are now 1000 years in the future!
The world of Prithvi has changed based on all the things that had occurred in your original time period.
Lovebird too seemed to have received this message. And she looked at me with wide eyes.
“We time travelled?” she said.
I felt my limbs go weak, just thinking what exactly this implied. A chill overcame me. I looked at Lovebird, horrified.
“Death13 won,” I told her. “The quest to awaken Ravana was not completed in time.”
Lovebird stood up, as if refusing to believe that. She shook her head.
“But what if someone else completed the quest?”
There was a simple way to find this.
“Why don’t you press the log out button and see?” I said to her. I couldn’t do it myself, for I was a perma player. I was totally independent of my body and I had done it voluntarily, unlike her.
Lovebird nodded earnestly. Then she seemed to concentrate on her menu. However she looked up with blank eyes.
“The log out button is not there,” she stated.
I felt like someone had landed a very hard blow to my chest. After all our struggles we had lost.
“Death13 won,” I simply said. “And it happened a thousand years ago.”
Rohan's Calling Online Page 37