The Dragon's Wrath: Shadows in the Flame

by Brent Roth

  Chapter 85: Camping Corpses

  (Tuesday, December 7th Game Day / Sunday, April 25th Real Day)

  “We’ll set up camp here,” I yelled out to the men as they waited in the boat.

  Taking the sail down and then jumping into the water with gear still inside, every member of the crew kneeled down and placed a shoulder underneath the boat and then stood up in unison.

  Lifting the boat out of the water with ease while I remained on watch, they carried the boat to the designated location a hundred or so yards away from the shore.

  Placing the boat down in a small snowy clearing, it would serve as a makeshift shelter for the time being as we gathered wood for a fire. The forest that we had decided to camp at was about a mile and a half west of FWB’s village and easily within their territory.

  If they were watching their [Player Population] tab they might have realized our presence but with so many people coming in and out of this region the likelihood of them understanding the numbers was slim.

  In essence we were fairly safe here.

  “One unit on me,” I said clearly. “The other defends the boat.”

  Taking turns, Sigsteinn’s unit joined up with me first as we headed out into the forest towards the village. It was still in the middle of the daylight hours and from the sounds coming out of the forest, there were players nearby waiting to be hunted.

  “Keep low and flank,” I whispered as the sounds of the players grew louder. Creeping through the packed foliage and pines that were no more than a few feet apart in places, the winter wonderland provided more than adequate cover to conceal our approach.

  Taking the point position while one warrior and caster circled out to the left along with a warrior, mage, and priest moving out towards the right, we had successfully surrounded the two players that had been oblivious to their surroundings.

  “Ugh that was so easy,” said the younger of the two.

  “Nothing in this forest can resist our magic,” said the robed one with a characteristic grin. “It sucks man, this stuff is boring. We should go further south, there’s nothing here.”

  “I know, why’d the guild leader want to move up here… we should have stayed where we were,” replied the caster with the fur coat as he crouched beside the slain wolf. Taking a rope out, he began to tie it around the wolf’s legs and then started to drag it in the direction of the village. “Twenty minutes and we found one wolf… this blows.”

  As the two turned their backs to me, I quietly pulled my bow and nocked an arrow with a second arrow ready in the quiver positioned at my hip. Drawing the bowstring with my right arm while on one knee, I lined up the first shot with the back of the exposed head of the robed player. Slowly inhaling and allowing the string to slip off my fingertips, a soft thwack soon followed. Immediately pulling another arrow without breaking stride or needing to reset position, I nocked the second arrow and drew back once more.

  Leading the second target slightly, I released again before the first arrow had found its mark. Tracing the trajectory of the second arrow’s flight toward the head of the player with the fur coat, the first arrow hit the robed man as he collapsed forward onto his face.

  The arrow pierced straight through the tip of his spine and into the back of the skull and delivered an immediate kill as the second player turned slightly only to find himself falling sideways as an arrow had struck his temple.

  Appearing out of the brush directly in front of the fallen players, Sigsteinn and his unit walked up to the corpses and stopped before them, inspecting them while I covered the roughly eighty feet between us.

  “They didn’t drop any coin,” called out the lone female in the group with a hint of sadness in her voice. “Poor fellows, not a coin to their name. I was hopeful we could get a drink or two out of it… Gods weren’t willing this time.”

  “We’ll take the wolf as compensation then,” I said with a smile. “All right you guys know the drill, decide between you lot who the two heaviest are.”

  Setting up a small campfire in front of where the two players had fallen, two of the males were busy getting comfortable on top of the corpses while the rest of us sat around the fire. Carving up the wolf to pass the time, the walk from the village in spirit form should take the players maybe five minutes at the most.

  Since they died without any warning or realization of what was happening, I was somewhat counting on them returning to their corpses none the wiser. There was a chance that they would alert their guild members but without any understanding of their situation, I highly doubted they would raise alarm.

  A sudden gasp broke the silence as only the crackling of the fire had been heard for some time. Eyes filled once again with life, the two players had resurrected only to find themselves in an iffy situation.

  “Hey guys, welcome back,” I said, starting our conversation with a smile. “I’m glad you could join us by the fire here, more the merrier they say, right?”

  “What the fuck,” blurted out the one in the fur coat.

  “Umph, I can’t move,” said the robed one as he began to panic.

  “Now, now, calm down guys,” I began to explain. “Don’t worry it’s nothing strange or weird, no magic restraints or anything like that. You’re just being sat on, that’s all.”

  “Do you know who we are?!” let out Mr. Fur with a muffled shout as he couldn’t quite vocalize all that well with the weight of the man on top of him constricting his chest. “When the guild finds out about this, you’re fucking dead!”

  “Ah, I’m glad,” I said clearly with an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Thank goodness, for a moment I thought you might not be related. That would have been a real shame.”

  “Ugh, what do you want?” asked Mr. Robes, as he was clearly more restrained in his behavior compared to Mr. Fur.

  “What Do I Want?” I said with a slight draw, emphasizing each word. “Well, that’s simple really. I have a few questions you see, answer them and you can be on your way. No tricks, no games, answer honestly and you’re free to go.”

  “Bullshit, all this for questions?” spat out Mr. Fur. “You’re full of shit, I’m not tellin’ you nothing asshole. Wait ‘till I get out of this, you’ll regret fucking with us!”

  “Oh that face and tone,” I replied with a frown and a deepening of my brow as if I were truly upset. “You want revenge don’t you? The evil man who burnt down your village is now camping your corpse, you must want revenge right?”

  The sudden realization of who they were dealing with was shown clearly across their faces as they both locked up for a split-second. Nervously looking around as they were most likely messaging their guild members to come and assist them, I figured I had no more than five minutes to interrogate them.

  “You can’t escape us,” said Mr. Fur angrily with bits of saliva flying about. “You’ll want to quit the game when we’re done with you, think you’re hot shit, you ain’t nothin’.”

  “You silly rascal,” I laughed out as I covered my face with a hand. “Please turn those thoughts around and do a little introspection for me. You see, you attacked me first completely unprovoked. You came and burned my village down to the ground, killed my NPCs, killed my Companion… yes, my NPC Companion. Do you realize the significance of that? Ah, no matter, that’s beside the point.”

  Stopping myself as I waved my other hand, I had to get myself back on track before I got too caught up in the matter of Selene. The acceptance stage had come and passed but there was still some lingering anger residing deep down. Having regained my composure, I began my tirade once more.

  “Have you never heard of the phrase or the warning, to not poke a sleeping bear or to not enter the lion’s den? I mean, that’s kind of what you did there. The only difference is that most animals stick to their territory… I’m not restrained by such thinking. Ah that’s not to say I’m an animal, barbaric maybe, but I tend to be more humanlike on a day-to-day basis. At least I’d like to believe that. Who knows?

&nb
sp; “But really guys, the whole thing is really comical, really. You marched along and into my territory fifty-some strong, so Ancient Roman-like by the way, and decided to raid me the old fashioned way except without the generally accepted Declaration of War. Sneaky and underhanded, I almost have to praise you there.

  “The only problem though is that you picked the guy that happens to specialize in raiding. You march, I sail. You’re slow, I’m fast. You’re weak, I’m strong. Do you get the picture I’m trying to paint here?”

  “Wh-what’s your question,” interrupted Mr. Robes after a second.

  “Dude shut up, don’t tell him anything.”

  “Now, to continue,” I said with a light wave as if I were shooing off the previous conversation. “I want some information and if you answer me sufficiently, you’re free to go. I’m a man of my word and you can believe that.”

  Tossing a small, thin slice of flank steak onto the fire, I let it roast with the intention of filling the air with its aroma. The fire itself was far too small and the smoke was hardly visible in the thick forest with its crowded canopy, so there was little to worry about there.

  “Ah sorry, where I was,” I said, resuming the conversation. “Now that we’ve cleared the air and you understand where I’m coming from, let me ask you this. Why did you pick my territory of all territories to attack, why a location so far removed from civilization and why or how did you come to know of me?”

  “Fuck you prick,” said Mr. Fur for the last time.

  “Hey, hey. Come on now, get your act together here,” I bemoaned. “Ugh, this just won’t do, we can’t have you being that way. You’ve totally gone and ruined the mood with your antics. No, we can’t have it. Sorry but you’re out of the picture.”

  Motioning to Sigsteinn who happened to be sitting on him, I made a cutting gesture in the air as I shook my head from side to side. With a slip of the knife Mr. Fur departed the scene with another small penalty to his experience being the only hit he would take.

  “Ah, sorry you had to see that,” I said with a hint of sorrow. “Your friend, he just doesn’t understand the meaning of tact. One really should learn to be tactful. So, my question still stands, what could have possibly motivated you to choose my territory so far away? And of course, who put you up to it?”

  “Why should I answer that?” he replied sensibly.

  “Comply and you’re free to go and I won’t bother you if I happen to run into you again,” I answered quickly. “Refuse and you will be hunted until I grow bored of slaughtering you. If you choose this latter route be warned, if you think you can escape me in the North… well, I have a bridge to sell you and no that bridge is not filled with peace and rainbows. It goes straight off the cliff and into a hole you can’t see the bottom of. Those are your options, now why did you attack my territory?”

  Taking his time to think over his reply, I flipped the steak that was currently cooking and continued to stoke the fire. Three minutes had already passed since the interrogation started and two minutes were roughly all that I had left.

  I needed to speed things up.

  “And…?” I asked with my hand moving in a circular motion.

  “The guild leader decided on it,” he began to explain. “He said there was a… um, player up in the North that was targeting us… that if we wanted to settle in the North we needed to take him, err, you out.”

  “So you say,” I said somewhat seriously. “So who really put you up to it?”

  “I don’t understand, the guild leader said-“

  “No, where did this information come from, that I was up there and that I was targeting you?” I said, immediately cutting him off.

  “Uh I uh, don’t know,” he answered.

  “Really, think harder.”

  “The uh, beta meetings yeah, they got the information about you from there, the uh host had it up on the presentation, and one of the meeting members shared it.”

  “Milly perhaps?” I asked with a slight hesitation.

  “No she um, she was asked by the guild leader to do it… she doesn’t even play anymore,” he replied, much to my surprise.

  “So Emily shared the information at the meeting and a member was there and relayed it… is what you’re telling me?” I repeated in an effort to confirm the statement.

  “Yeah, something like that, I don’t really know… I’m just a small guy… that’s just what they told us, that’s what the guild leader said okay, look I’m just helping my guild out man, it’s nothing personal, it’s not like I’m trying to target you.”

  Leaning back slightly as I took in all of the information, the story somewhat added up but was still missing a few pieces. Milly attended the meetings but wasn’t the one to suggest the plan, Emily shared the information but that was to everyone present, and the guild leader was told by someone that I was targeting them... so in the end, Milly was used by her guild and the events led to her quitting the game.

  Emily was responsible for the information.

  And then the guild leader, I needed to question him.

  “Interesting, I’ll look into this information. If I find out you’re lying to me, well, liars have a special place in my memory. You’re free to go, unharmed as I said.”

  Motioning for my other warrior to get off him and let him up, I stood up along with the rest of the unit as we began to pick up our belongings. With only a minute to spare, we needed to vacate the area before an entire guild came bursting through the bush.

  Slinging the remains of the wolf over my shoulder, I nodded at Mr. Robes and started walking in the opposite direction of our boat. Only to be interrupted by the caster before I could even take two steps.

  “What about the wolf? That’s mine,” he questioned.

  With a grin appearing on my face and the faces of my troops, I turned back slightly and gave my reply, “Don’t push your luck kid, you can have the steak on the fire.” A wink following soon after, my parting words were simple, “The wolf’s mine.”

  Chapter 86: Regather

  (Wednesday, December 22nd Game Day / Friday, April 30th Real Day)

  After five real-time days spent harassing the FWB players in their own forests, the time to relax was finally at hand. A day off sorely needed, mainly so I could go over all of the details that I had gathered. The interrogations were generally successful and the running theme as far as those details were concerned all seemed to corroborate Mr. Robes’ testimony. There were other details of course but for the most part the stories all added up to roughly, one slightly hazy yet large picture.

  Emily provided all of the information that they needed and somewhere down the line, someone believed that I was in the way and was planning to forcefully remove outsiders from the North. The rumors had floated around the meetings for quite some time and that eventually led to discussions of who would carry out a preemptive strike before I became too powerful. Someone had to do it for the greater good.

  A curious thing, really.

  I was certainly amassing an army but it was for my own protection. My village was growing as I prepared and developed an industry to establish my own kingdom… so in a way, their thinking wasn’t necessarily wrong. To think that I would care about what some small guild was doing almost three hundred miles away from me was quite a stretch.

  This was all speculation on my part though.

  Piecing together the larger picture from the hints and clues of the guild members while pulling additional information from the forums, blogs, and streams to supplement my theories, everything was a best guess, an educated assumption. Despite all of my theories though, the more interesting aspect to the information was the fact that I was being portrayed as a villain with some diabolical scheme. Someone or something had moved FWB’s guild leader to action.

  Once he had made his decision to move, he convinced guild members to infiltrate and scout the place out in an attempt to get the upper hand. It turned out Milly wasn’t the only one sent out into the North after all.
Multiple players were sent throughout the North and reported back in every so often as the main army moved north.

  When Milly found me in the forest she didn’t know if I was the man in question or not but went along with it. Following me for an entire week while building up a small level of trust with me, until I relented and put a small amount of hope in her that she might be telling me the truth… ignoring the gut feeling that she wasn’t.

  I wasn’t expecting anyone to attack me for a few more months at the least anyhow, even with the knowledge that guilds were mobilizing further away. My territory was so far removed that it seemed silly to consider an attack within three months of the game’s launch. We weren’t even past the beginner zones and stages yet.

  At worst, in the back of my mind I figured she would scout the place and spill out details like a curious traveler might. That would be about as harmful as Emily’s sharing of information in the meetings.

  Hah, was I wrong there.

  By the end of all those interrogations, Milly seemed more the victim of circumstance than a willing participant. Pressured by guild members into a role she didn’t want then forced to witness and experience the results of her actions.

  She even quit the game due to it.

  That brought me back to my thoughts on how the game was far too realistic at times and some people didn’t have the mental fortitude to realize that it was only a game. This reality was hard to separate, I knew that first hand. Some experiences in this game were hard to shake. I was still having nightmares about drowning in that cave.

  At the end of the day, I was glad I didn’t do anything to her the second time around. She was as guilty as the rest but if the trauma was so great as to force her to quit, then the damage was done and there was no need to go any further.

  Yeah, she was still guilty in my mind.

  Maybe she was coerced into the act, that was a definite possibility but at the end of the day carrying out the actions remained up to the individual. If she refused to do so, then she wouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with.