The guards had come to meet us.
“Level up, coming right up!” Sheika shouted with glee, and launched herself off the sun-flier. I wasn’t far behind, while Farelle ran to the front and nocked an arrow from atop the airship.
I stared at the roiling bodies surging towards us like a tsunami, a mix of fear and excitement in my belly. If we overcame this, it’d be epic. But seeing all the enemies we faced, that was a big if.
It didn’t matter, though. We had to cut our way through. Absalom had to be stopped, so us players could go free. Even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave, we had the right to be able to choose.
I set my stance, then examined of the Valyn guards to see what exactly we were up against.
Valyn Palace Guard (Level 15) - These sky elves are battle-hardened and determined to keep their deities unbothered. Like all sky elves, they are relatively quick and agile, and tend to favor lighter armor and weapons. “Death from above! And anywhere else I choose to deal it.”
Prognosis: Not good. I grit my teeth, hoping I was ready for this, as the first of the Valyn guards reached us.
I spun into action as two guards ran at me, one leading with a spear and the other wielding a falchion and winged shield. Twisting the head of the spear aside with my knife and slipping past it, I dealt the guard a glancing blow to his head, knocking him aside, while I met the attack of the other with a backhand blow. Even a slight hit from my Jeweled Longsword of the Stars was effective, the bonus damage also sending my enemy further off-balance. The guard blocked with his shield and counterattacked, but I was already dodging back, my knife sheathed and my hand upraised. I cast Icy Plume, slowing and damaging my two assailants. I didn’t bother with Basilisk’s Gaze, as I’d found out in the Citadel that it wasn’t effective on these high-level guards. With precious few seconds in which to act, I stabbed first the spearman then the sword-and-shield guard in the gap of their visors, scoring high enough crits to end both of their lives.
No sooner had they fallen did three more replace them. Hopelessly outmatched, I cast another Icy Plume, slowing them enough to take out one with another blow to the head. But the others kicked into gear then, and drove me back across the courtyard as I barely fended off their swords. I took two minor hits to my side and leg, and though they were glancing blows, the guards hit hard, and I was knocked down a quarter of my health bar.
Letting all my thoughts go, I let my training with Farelle take over. Somersaulting between the guards, I slashed at the backs of their legs, hoping to hamstring them with my combat skill. But their calves were protected with armor, and my blades clinked helplessly off. To make matters worse, the two promptly retaliated, and I cried out as blows burned across my back and shoulders. My health plummeted to 40%.
But I hadn’t used all the tricks up my sleeve yet. I sprinted away from my two assailants back towards the two I’d just felled, sheathing my dagger along the way. When I reached their bodies, I equipped my Mithril Sword of Thirst and turned to face my pursuers with both swords drawn. I hoped this would work as well as it had in training.
I started to spin, engaging the combat skill Spinning Blades, which would theoretically deal damage and disorient any enemies caught in its midst. Of course, it also left me vulnerable to attack. Still, I braced myself and spun right at the guards, and was soon rewarded by cries of pain. The guards fell back as my blades started cutting into them. As my Mithril Sword of Thirst began absorbing mana, I saw my blue meter slowly creep up. By the time my opponents fell, I’d taken another hit and my health was 30%, but I’d nearly filled up my mana again. Considering Icy Plume was the only thing that had kept me alive thus far, I figured it was worth the trade-off.
But there was no end to the guards. As the next three broke off from the mass to engage me, I risked a glance at my companions. Farelle was launching arrow after arrow from atop the sun-flier, but as I watched, two Valyn leaped with wing-boosted jumps towards her, forcing her to drop her bow and draw her sword. In front of the airship, Gorget roared and swung a huge hammer back and forth, throwing back swaths of guards that still dove at him, trying to bring the giant man down. Now I knew why I hadn’t been swarmed myself. Sheika was harder to spot; she wove everywhere among the masses, and where she went, sky elves fell. They were starting to jump away like pigeons startled in a city park now, becoming wary of her darting blades and subtle magic.
I didn’t have any more time to look, as the three guards were on me. I cast Icy Plume twice in a row and took down two of them, but the third sprung loose of the spell after that. My stamina had been rising back up during my brief remission, but as I parried blow after blow, it started to bottom out. Black spots began appearing in my vision, and my breath was coming heavy. I started making mistakes. One blow slipped in, then two. I was down to less than 10% health.
But I refused to let this guard be the end of me. Letting loose a hoarse yell, I rallied the last of my strength and went for the kill, lashing out in a desperate gambit with both weapons. The Valyn effortlessly batted them aside with his shield and me to the ground. Then, standing over me with a satisfied smirk, he raised his sword and brought it down.
I gasped as the blade entered my side. Through the haze of pain, I watched the last of my health slip away. I couldn’t channel Minor Healing; it needed too much time to work, and it wouldn’t succeed when I was already stabbed through. I couldn’t move for the shock of the pain. We’d come so close, and now it was all coming to a halt. Who knew where I’d respawn, or if we’d get this opportunity again. Maybe they’d go on without me. Maybe they could complete our quest. But considering all that had happened, I figured I was an integral part to this. Could I really die now?
Just as the last of the red meter disappeared, I saw a notification pop up in my vision. Though I guessed it was the death message, through some masochistic urge, I brought it up.
You are now Level 10! (+10 Status Points, +4 Attribute Points)
I wasted a split second in mute amazement before I thought to bring up my stats and assigned the 10 SP to health. It was enough to accept the level up. My health bar, nearly translucent with its emptiness, shot back up to 100%, as did my stamina, mana, and spirit meters. The sword that was stuck in me sprang out of me, sending the Valyn guard stumbling back.
I grinned as I kicked to my feet. “Hasta la vista, baby,” I said to the guard, and stabbed him in the eye. My bejeweled sword glowed hot, and the sky elf fell back, head sizzling and paid back in full for nearly killing me.
Leaving the rest of my level up for later, I rushed back into the fight fully revitalized. Alternating Icy Plume and Spinning Blades in some good ol’ fashioned sword and sorcery, I carved my through to Farelle, who still fought atop the sun-flier. The Satyr was holding her own, but unlike me, she wouldn't have a level up to save her. Laughing like a maniac, I hacked into the back of one sky elf, cut out the legs from under a second, and ran one through the back who was, appropriately enough, about to backstab her. Farelle whirled around, sword raised and eyes wide, when she saw me.
“Marrow!” she gasped. “You were down, and I thought—”
“Not now! Behind you!” I leaped past her to intercept another guard’s thrust and kick him back. He obliged, only to leap into the air with a beat of his wings, rising a dozen feet about us, before diving towards us. I didn't let him get that far, but downed him with a burst of Icy Plume, and finished him off when he crash-landed at our feet. My mana was nearly gone, but it needed to be done.
“We need to get to the palace!” I shouted at her. “There's too many to fight!”
She kicked one savagely on the face that was trying to mount the sun-flier, and he fell back into his fellows, her hoof leaving a bloody gash in his face. “We can't hold them there either!”
“You got a better idea?”
She hesitated a moment, then the idea ripped from her as she parried and counterattacked. “Just use that damned ring, you idiot!” she snarled.
I couldn't believ
e I hadn't thought of it before. We had little chance of surviving, much less forcing our way to the palace, if I couldn't get us an army. And fast. If even Farelle was telling me to use it, then it was far past time to try again.
“Ava!” I yelled as I tried to parry two blows, and one snuck its way in. “Ava!” I shouted again as I retaliated against the guard whose thrust had hit, and kicked away the other. “Ava! I need you to come now! I need to use the Ghost Ring!”
But as I killed these two guards as well, the Specter didn't come. Despite my own situation, I worried what had happened to her. But either way, it looked like we were on our own.
Unless… unless I could reach her some other way.
“I'm shifting!” I called to Farelle.
“What?”
But with my assailants hovering a few feet away, I took what promised to be my only chance. “Vad’vandul!” I shouted, and silver mist began curling around me.
“You're leaving us?!” Farelle shouted at me, voice rising with anxiety. “Now?!”
“If the army won't come, I'll bring them!” I said. But my mind was concentrated on another place. On a place I'd never seen, and had probably only fabricated.
My body became air, then less than air. Then, pushing it further, as far as I could go, I became nothing.
“Marrow?”
I opened my eyes, but there was nothing to see. Everything was black around me. “Ava?”
“Marrow. What are you doing here?”
“Where are we?”
The Specter sighed. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
I couldn’t feel anything, sense anything. All that was left was my consciousness and, somehow, a voice that wasn’t a voice. “Where are we?” I asked again.
“An afterlife even Specters can’t come back from. Faze-aught, I heard it called once.”
If I’d had eyelid to blink in dumb surprise, I would have. “Wait. You’ve been phased out? Why?”
But I knew why. This damned game of the gods.
She confirmed it a second later. “Because I was helping you end the war in the heavens.” She sighed again. “I hope you know I did all I could.”
“I know that.” I hesitated only a second before I blurted out what I wanted so desperately to be true. “I’ll get you out of here, promise. I’ll find a way and do it. If the gods can do this to you, they can undo it, right?”
“I don’t know, Marrow. But you…”
“I’ll be fine. I’m just a visitor here.” I sure hoped that was true. “But to help you get out, Ava, I’m going to first need your help again. I need to raise an army, and now.”
“Do you know what you’re asking?”
I remembered Sheika’s guide Salo, and how loathe he was to give any of the Spectral commands away. This would give me power over a whole people, a whole race of people, across a whole continent. “Yes. And I promise, I’ll only use it for good.”
“Then you’ll only use it this time. To settle the game. Promise?”
I hesitated. It was hard saying I’d give up such an immense power. But I knew what I had to do. “Okay. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” I heard the smile in her voice. “Okay, I’ll give you the command to bring the Specters to you and bend them to your will, and the word to dismiss them.”
“Okay.”
“First, Faq’duhl. Then, Tal’shur.”
Faq’duhl. Tal’shur. Perhaps the two most powerful words in all the Everlands. “Got it.”
“Then you’d better return. You know the command for leaving the Spectral plane?”
“Yeah, yeah, Salo taught me.” I mimed taking a deep breath, then said very clearly. “Nan’faldo.”
“Goodbye, Marrow,” Ava said, sounding sad to me.
“I’ll be back, Ava. I’ll come back for you…”
Then I faded back into the chaotic world of the flesh.
As soon as my body materialized, before I even looked around or could see properly, I shouted, “Faq’duhl!”
Then my vision came, and I saw a Valyn face leering before me. An all too familiar face. The vicious captor from the Citadel.
“Miss me?” he sneered, then ran me through the gut with his sword.
I gasped, and my health plummeted. But I wasn’t dead yet. As the Ghost Ring burned on my finger with my command and silver mist began rising up around us, I groaned and tried drawing myself off the blade. But the bastard twisted and grinned in my face. “No escaping this!” he hissed.
I spat in his eye. “You neither. Kill!”
The sky elf’s face twisted in momentary confusion, then morphed into horror as he understood. My army of Specters had fully materialized around me, and stared with deadly hate at him. With a swell of yells like a torrential wave, and they set about my enemies, sweeping through them as a killing mist.
The sky elf stared about him in astonishment, and I took the opportunity to draw my dagger and take a stab at him. But he hadn’t forgotten about me, and though the tip of the blade dug into his cheek, it only barely cut before he caught my wrist. “Not so fast!” he gasped. “You may have called a fell magic, but it will die with you!”
He twisted my wrist and the knife fell from my hand. But I had my other one up, and I cast Icy Plume in his face. At this of close range, even the mild spell was excruciating, and the bastard screamed and lost hold of his sword and me. I kept it up as long as I could before falling to my knees, the falchion still lodged in me.
Hissing with pain, I drew out the blade, the unnatural feeling of steel in my body almost freaking me out too much to continue. But I managed it, and with some measure of health and stamina left, I stood. Despite the Major Bleeding condition, I had enough strength to deal with him.
“Miss me?” I mocked him, then swung the sword into the back of his neck.
I slumped down next to the Valyn’s corpse and stared about me with my hands pressed to either side of my wound. All around, the Specters were almost finished massacring the sky elves, and I could now see what fates had befallen my fellow party members. Sheika had gained the top of an orb-mounted brazier, and stared about with something like bemusement. When she saw me hunched over on the sun-flier, she immediately leaped down and began running towards me, dodging around death-dealing Specters. Gorget was also easy to spot. He’d stopped swinging that big hammer of his and now leaned on it and let my army do his killing for him. Farelle, however, I couldn’t spot immediately.
Sheika reached me, and already had a red potion in her hand. “Drink this,” she said, and I obeyed immediately. I was glad it was red. If any leaked out of my gut, I didn’t want to know it.
The healing set in immediately, as it had before at the collapsed stone bridge, and in no time the wound had sealed to a pink line and I could sit up straight again. “Where’s Farelle?” I asked as soon as I could.
Sheika shook her head. “Last I saw, she was atop here.”
Though I was still unsteady, I rose to my feet and started looking on either side of the vehicle. She couldn’t have gone far. Maybe she was taking shelter underneath somewhere…
Then I saw her.
My breath caught. “No,” I whispered. “No!”
The Satyr was crumpled in the shadow of the sun-flier, legs knocked askew, eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky. Farelle was dead.
27
Absalom’s Fate
“Do something!” I said desperately to Sheika, barely taking my eyes off of my companion’s still body. I couldn’t believe she was gone. I wouldn’t believe it.
She shook her head. “Resurrection spells are super rare, and I don’t know any. Gorget?”
The giant man had come ambling over. “I don’t have anything,” he said glumly. “Sorry.”
I grit my teeth. “The Ghost Ring. I have to be able to do something with it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Sheika warned. “Not unless you want her to become a Specter. The Dominion Rings don’t have power beyond their element, and life isn
’t within the Ghost Ring’s purview.”
“So what do I do?” I demanded angrily. “Just let her die?”
“I had a companion die once,” Gorget said softly. “I know how it feels.”
I didn’t want to hear that right now. “She’s not gone yet. She’s not gone.” My eyes traveled up from her body, to the palace we’d fought so hard to get to. “She’s not gone yet,” I repeated, calmer, more resolute. An idea had formed in my head.
I bent down to Farelle and gently eased her into my arms, then lifted. She was heavier in death than she had been in life. I tried not to think of it as I took one step towards the place, then another, ignoring the Specters standing about staring at me from either side, and my two party members staring from behind.
“What are you doing?” Gorget asked in his low rumble.
“Saving her the only way I can.”
“The gods?” Sheika asked from just behind. “That’s not a good idea, Marrow. We need them to stop their game for more than one woman’s life.” She hesitated. “One NPC’s existence.”
I ignored them, but Sheika’s words hooked into me. Was I crazy for caring this much for a NPC? But she wasn’t just a NPC, not anymore. I felt as if a friend were really dead, felt every bit of the pain and regret. I thought over all the things I could have done better to her, and how I had failed her. If it felt real, if she was every bit as real as any other person, with the same amount of nuance of thoughts and feelings and desires, did it matter that she’d been created by and within computers?
I didn’t know, and right now, I didn’t care. I was going to follow what my gut said was right. I was going to find a way to bring her back.
I ascended the stairs leading up to the palace. Each step was a strain on my stamina, but I pushed myself. Farelle was right; I should have increased my strength while I had the chance. I smiled a bit at the irony that this was what I would have used it for. It did occur to me that I had AP to spend, especially since a quick glance at my notifications showed I’d gained three more levels from my mass killing. But I couldn’t bring myself to attend to any gaming elements right now.
Absalom’s Fate Page 22