by Ryan Rimmel
As I listened to the banner flap in the breeze, I realized I needed some sort of fabric material that I could make into a harness.
Nice banner.
A leg bone and an arm that still had its hand attached, for some reason, were quickly mended together. Thankfully, my grabber proved long enough for me to reach out and snatch the flag. Getting it off its pole and back into the cell was a bit more challenging, but, with my high Dexterity, it was nothing too serious. Soon, I was looking at the banner as it fluttered in through my jail window.
Attaching it to the nubs of several bones I’d stuck to the brick, I managed to get the cloth strung through tightly. Then, I wrapped it around my shoulders and started walking forward. For the briefest of moments, nothing happened. I had just enough time to let my heart sink into my stomach before I heard a scraping sound. Inch by inch, I dragged the brick out of the wall. After what seemed like an eternity, it fell free and smashed to the ground.
Looking into the fissure, I realized I shouldn’t have been worried about smashing it. The only thing in there was a small metal box, rusted from age. Opening it, I found a tarnished, rusty key. I excitedly pulled it free, dropping the box. Then, I tapped the key several times on the wall, clearing it of rust.
That act also caused the key’s bit to shatter, falling away into dust. I glared at the dust particles and broken key, cursing my life. I was just moving on to cursing the gods of Ordinal when my Improvised Tools skill kicked off.
● You have found an item that can be used as a lock pick!
Chapter 3 – The Great Escape
“And finished,” I announced with a click, as the cell door swung wide open. I stepped through the door and withdrew my ruined lock pick. The broken key’s shaft was now beyond even being used as a lock pick. I dropped it, and the metal tinged off the floor.
I was now in a long, straight hallway with several doors leading to the cells. I closed my former cell’s door. The ice-cold draft from in there was still causing me shivers. The inner hallway was much warmer, comparatively. It must have been above freezing, which was heaven compared to the frozen room I’d just left.
“Any luck?” I thought to Shart. He was still trying to lock down where I was on Ordinal.
“Not yet,” replied the demon. “I’ve isolated it down to somewhere near where you were supposed to spawn.”
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I found some sort of blocker located where you should have spawned. I can’t interact with it very well, but it doesn’t seem to be an
“So you mean somewhere near in the continental sense?” I asked, placing my hands in my armpits. I’d seen Falcon on maps. It wasn’t quite the United States' size, but it was close. “Well, I’ll just poke around here then.”
“Certainly! Do feel free to do stupid mortal stuff,” snarked Shart.
“I’ve just left the cell, Shart. Maybe I can find a nearby town or something that you can use as a reference point,” I stated. This place made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Aside from the trapdoor I’d fallen through and the multiple skeletons, there was the fact that there were other prisoners present. Speaking of which…
“You are out,” came the husky voice. I heard movement on the other side of the hall. A woman was standing just inside the cell. She was a tallish brunette who looked disheveled. I walked over to stand in the hallway next to her door.
“Yup! I said I was getting out, and out I am,” I replied, looking inside her cell. She had a fire, warm blankets, and a bed. I would have stood here anyway, regardless of the company. Just the warmth from the door was a great relief.
“Could you get me out?” she asked hesitantly, adding a hasty, “Please.”
I gestured toward the floor, “My lock pick fell apart right after I opened my cell door. Nothing I could do for it.” That wasn’t the half of it. Standing next to her door, I could see her lock clearly. It was of Masterwork quality with maximum Durability. Mine had been shoddy quality, with only a few points of Durability left. I doubted I could have picked her lock with all my proper equipment and unlimited time.
“There are guards upstairs. One of them has a set of keys,” she said.
“I was kind of trying to sneak out,” I replied, thinking. My current operational plan was to escape, get established again, and kill Charles. It was always a good time to kill Charles, and letting her out didn’t really help me with that.
She inhaled and stared at me. “You will go upstairs and get the keys. You will unlock this door and my shackles.”
● You are the subject of a Word of Command. Resistance check, Critical success. The speaker does not know their command has failed.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied in seeming confusion. Turning toward the stairwell, I vacated her presence.
“That didn’t affect you at all,” said Shart.
“Nope, but now I’m curious as to why she has that skill, and why she’s locked up,” I replied mentally. I carefully crept up the stairs. “Plus, I didn’t feel like arguing. If she thinks I’m doing her bidding, she isn’t going to make a bunch of noise and alert those guards. I can just leave if it looks too dangerous.”
“She’s probably just a prisoner, like you,” stated Shart. If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I would have missed the slight hesitation in his voice.
“No, I couldn’t read her name tag. It was being obfuscated somehow,” I said.
“So, an important prisoner?” asked Shart.
“Possibly. There might be some information up here that I can use to confirm that,” I replied.
“Crafty! I like it,” replied the demon as I reached the top of the steps. The door was propped half-open. There was no one nearby, allowing me to sneak out into the main area without risk of detection. The structure seemed to be some sort of large hunting lodge that doubled as a prison for wayward clerics, along with whatever the husky-speaking woman was.
There were four half-drunk, partially unconscious guards lying about the room.
“Sheesh, if they are going to make it this easy, I might as well help her,” I thought, following one guard as he rose and staggered into the kitchen. The kitchen was a small, isolated room off the main hall. There was a butcher’s block near the doorway, and a large serving hatch that connected the kitchen and the dining room. The massive fireplace in the corner was a nice touch, I thought. I grabbed a knife as I walked through the doorway and moved in behind the guard. The butcher’s knife was hardly a weapon, but the drunk target was hardly a threat.
● Guard: Level 12
● HP: 140/140
● Stamina: 140/140
● Mana: 20/20
As the guard cut a slice of ham for his sandwich, I slid in behind him. By the time he spread the mayo on his bread, I’d stood up, grabbed him by the neck, and drawn the dagger across his throat. At least, that’s what I’d attempted to do. As soon as the blade touched his neck, my grip slackened. The weapon clattered to the floor, leaving both of us staring at my erstwhile weapon.
“Well, that shouldn’t have happened,” I stated casually.
Then, he started screaming.
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good. What the hell are you doing?” Shart mentally yelled at me.
“I thought you couldn’t see what I was doing,” I yelled.
“I can obviously hear you, Dum Dum,” replied Shart, “What are you doing?”
“Trying to slit his throat,” I cried back. I shoved myself off the guard and flipped over the counter behind him. I frantically looked for something else I could use to murder him. There was a point in the not-too-distant past where that would have bothered Jim, but I wasn’t that Jim anymore. I grabbed two more knives from the butcher’s block and tossed them, one at him and the other at the group of rapidly approaching guards. Both pieces of cut
lery flopped through the air like an anemic three-year-old had tossed them.
“You are a Cleric!” screamed Shart. “You can’t fight with edged weapons! They cause wounds that bleed.”
That caused me to pause for a moment. I was playing First Edition all over again. The Cleric wasn’t able to fight with anything other than a Blunt Weapon. The
“Oh, feck me,” I yelled out, rolling past the confused guard and searching for something blunt and sturdy.
“It’s an Easterner,” yelled one of the guards. Two more broke into the tiny kitchen and attempted to surround me. I was flinging everything I could find that didn’t have a sharp edge on it. Guess what? Objects without sharp edges don’t do much Damage to anyone wearing armor. Even these lackadaisical guards were still fully suited up in their leather. I needed a blunt weapon. I grabbed the nearby butcher’s block.
“A butcher’s block is blunt, Dum Dum” mentioned Shart.
“This thing only weighs one pound and is flimsy,” I grunted looking for something more massive.
“Try to take him alive,” yelled the second guard, stepping toward me. I flipped through the serving hatch and got into the main room, only to run, face-first, into the largest of the guards. He was level 16 and looked very upset with me. He was also raising a truncheon to strike me. My one saving grace was that he was surprised to see someone stupid enough to run right at him. I front flipped over him, kicked him in the back of the knee, and grabbed the weapon out of his hand with my Quick Steal perk. The truncheon promptly sailed right out of my hand, clattering to the floor next to the massive guard. He picked it up, smirking nastily at me.
“The back edge is a sharp edge, you idiot,” he said. “We use these for beating the clergy.”
Oh, that’s clever. The massive guard drove the truncheon into my gut, causing me to double over. A stun effect locked me down.
“We can still use Blunt Weapon skills on the little beasties, though,” he stated, holding up the truncheon, while casually kicking my stunned form.
I realized the boot to my midsection didn’t do very much, due to my Resistance perk. With me at level 15, my Defense was high enough that someone making an off-handed, well, off-footed, attack into my midsection was about as damaging as dropping a sheet of paper on me. The guard also realized that, so he hit me with his truncheon again. That did mostly Bludgeoning Damage, and my Resistance perk didn’t help very much against advanced Damage types.
Staggering back to my feet as the stun effect wore off, I used Fancy Footwork to avoid most of his next several strikes. Two of the guards ran into the room, leaving only one in the kitchen. I flipped through the serving hatch from the main room into the kitchen, snatched the ham, and landed next to the surprised fourth guard. He stared at me for a moment. I was surely the most nimble first-level Cleric he’d ever seen. He snapped out of his shock and readied his weapon to strike me, so I smacked him in the face.
● Ham Strike: Damage 2.
I hit him with the ham like a club. As far as bludgeoning weapons go, I couldn’t recommend a bone-in ham. While the system considered the bone to be a one-handed bludgeoning weapon, the massive wad of spongy meat absorbed most of the impact. Coupled with my anemic strength, that was enough to cause the “weapon” to splatter against his shoulder greasily. My lack of edged weapons meant that the wounds I could make were superficial, greasy bruises. He chuckled, so I grabbed the ham in both hands and him again.
● Powerful Ham Strike: Damage 6 (2 + 3 ranks of Powerful Blow), Secondary effect: target is moved 3 logs, Stun: target is stunned for 3 seconds. Note: Improvised Weaponry will suffer 20 points of Durability Damage if used for a Powerful Blow. Your bone-in ham had 4 Durability and is now Broken.
I had several ranks of the Powerful Blow skill for two-handed bludgeoning weapons. That didn’t aid the weapon much; it was still just a ham with a bone in it. It did send my target flying, though. He sailed through the air like a kite about to crash into a telephone pole. In and of itself, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but I knew how Powerful Blow worked. I’d hit him in the only worthwhile direction in the whole kitchen.
● Your target has landed in the fireplace and is engulfed in flames. Your target will take 22 points of Damage per second until your target can escape.
Even while stunned, you could scream.
“Yup, that is certainly not a very terrible wound,” I commented, as the grease splatter on the man’s face ignited, further adding to his misery.
“Oh, Really, you bastard,” one of the other guards yelled, running back into the kitchen. I used that as an excuse to leap back into the main room, directly into the arms of the most massive and most irate guard. I tried to struggle free, but, at my current strength level, I was like a small child trying to escape an enraged father. One of the two guards now in the kitchen ran out, the other having become preoccupied with pulling their burning companion out of the fire. The furious guard grabbed his truncheon and aimed at my midsection.
This was where, in the movies, I would perform some acrobatic maneuver and cause the oncoming man to hit his teammate. This was not a movie. I probably only weighed about 110 pounds, soaking wet, and the massive guard behind me knew how to hold someone steady. The truncheon slammed into my midsection with a hearty thud.
● You have taken 9 points of Bludgeoning Damage. Mitigate has reduced that Damage to 5 Bludgeoning, 4 Damage. Your Defense has reduced the 4 Damage to 0. You take 5 Bludgeoning Damage.
“Did his Health bar move?” asked the guard facing me, as he continued to beat on my stomach.
“I think so. Try aiming for somewhere else,” grunted the gigantic guard holding me steady. In my experience, “somewhere else” always meant the balls. I drew up my legs and activated One Punch. Thankfully, the perk counted any unarmed attack as a strike, so driving both feet into the guard was allowed.
● One Punch: Damage: 187 Stamina = 187 Damage. Target is knocked back 18 logs. You are being restrained. You will suffer 1/2 knockback Damage.
What happened next was interesting, to say the least. The guard who had been aiming for my two best friends took the hit square in the chest. He promptly exploded into a fine red mist that splattered into the face of the third guard who had just popped out of the kitchen. That guard had decided, by now, that his friend was well onto the path of being a gourmet meal. Now, he was blinded by his other friend’s blood, which caused him to fall back into the kitchen.
I went flying backward, still being held by the enormous guard. He had no option but to come with me, unless he wanted to release his grip. He didn’t have time to figure that out. We arched across the room, slamming into the head of some sort of deer-like, taxidermized creature. My Mitigate resisted the 12 points of Damage the horns caused, after the horns finished ripping through the largest guard’s chest. That impact didn’t kill him, but a giant, gaping hole in the chest causes one heck of a Bleed condition on Ordinal. He collapsed onto the floor in a gushing pile of blood.
That left the last guard, who was frantically rubbing sticky red liquid out of his eyes. He stumbled around the kitchen for a bit, screaming, before deciding it was time to run. I let him. He was covered in rapidly cooling blood, and it was below zero outside. The fact that he was wearing leather armor, comfortable for a lodge but not a nighttime run in the freezing cold, was just the icing on the cake. He wouldn’t make it one league in these temperatures.
That was fortunate, because I’d blown my entire wad of Stamina. I activated my Second Wind perk and recovered 75% of my bar.
It turned out that the guy I’d exploded had the key. It was really lucky that I had my Great Explorer perk. I’d managed to sniff out the only key in the building, even though the explosion flung it deep i
nto the side of a stuffed koala. I stood there, basking in the warmth and trying to figure out a way to clear finely misted blood out of my everywhere.
“Are you going to leave or help the woman?” asked Shart, voicing my new moral quandary.
Instead of doing either, I cleaned my hands and made a sandwich.
Chapter 4 – Peachy Princess
My sandwich was terrible. I blamed the absence of any ham and the slight coating of blood all over the meal. Mainly, it was the lack of ham.
“I guess we should rescue her,” I said, after a long moment of reflection. Old Jim would have saved her right off. New Jim was a bit of an asshole. Of course, Old Jim had let everyone down and gotten Jarra killed. He was a simp and needed to go.
Still, she was right here. She might even be able to tell me where I was.
Marching down the stairs, I paused for a moment to study myself in a small sheet of polished metal. The guards must have been using it for a mirror, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. They were all a bunch of ugly-ass people. Given that I was mostly naked, I spent a reasonable amount of time scraping myself off. Finally, I was only a slightly sticky, smelly, off-shade of red. I went back upstairs and stole some clothes from the guards’ coat closet, so I was wearing proper winter attire for heading outside. In the lodge, I was broiling, but it was still better than being naked.
I knocked on the door, and the woman walked over to it.
“It sounds like he gave you some trouble. Let me out of here, or I will make it worse,” she snarled.
“What?” I growled back at her. At that moment, I realized that she had sent me off to die against the guards. In hindsight, assuming I had died made much more sense than what actually happened.
“You’re alive?” she replied, looking out the window at me. Properly looking into the room, I noticed a small stream of blood dripping down from the ceiling.