by Ryan Rimmel
“No, I have a quest to heal someone with a compound spinal fracture,” I answered.
“You picked a bad quest,” she replied, snuggling down further into her furs. “No, I can’t fix a Permanent Injury of that sort. Fixing that kind of injury would require multiple perks that I never bothered to take.”
“What are you specialized in?” I asked. Julia examined me carefully.
“That’s not a very polite question to ask someone,” she said finally. “However, if you must know, I specialize in barriers. I’m a damage mitigation caster. If I was at anything approaching my full power, we could walk through this forest naked without anything hurting us in the slightest.”
I lowered my head and mentally spoke to Shart, “Well, that’s a bust.”
“She’s not walking around naked right now is she?” asked Shart. “You humans and your fixation on jiggly bits.”
“Not that, dipshit. I mean about her being a damage mitigation caster,” I hissed.
“Not every divine caster is going to specialize in heavy-duty healing. Most people prefer to not take Damage in the first place,” stated Shart.
I tried to restore communication to Windfall, but I was unsuccessful. Grumbling, I checked my menus and found that I could only initiate a conversation with Windfall for fifteen minutes a day. I could still modify the town in the tabs, and I had something like a basic messaging app with Mar, but I wasn’t going to be able to talk to anyone again until tomorrow.
“It’s a shame I can’t have a steady communication channel with someone other than you,” I said.
“Why? Bored of me already, Dum Dum?” asked Shart distractedly. “Am I not providing you with the lively conversations you have grown accustomed to?”
“You wouldn’t have to listen to me ramble quite so much,” I replied.
“Yes, that would be nice,” stated the demon in a bored tone. The way he said it made me the tiniest bit suspicious.
“You red zit! Who can you let me talk to?” I growled.
“Seriously, why am I surprised you didn’t figure it out already? I’m able to link to you due to the remnants of our bond. You have an intact bond with Badgelor,” stated Shart.
“I’ve never been able to communicate with him through the bond before. We’ve always had to talk in person,” I said.
“Well, I wasn’t in Limbo before. I also figured out a new way to piggyback on our bond. With this last flip of a switch, I’ll be able to see what you are seeing,” stated Shart. With no further warning, my eyes began to burn. “I was able to copy the
“So, you can poke around on my character sheet again?” I asked.
“Not quite that good. I’m actually using the feed from your eyes. When you ‘look’ at your character sheet you are using a mental projection. No dice there, I’m afraid,” said Shart. “Anyway, let me try this out next.”
Suddenly, everything tasted like the color purple.
“Where the feck is Angwin?” boomed Badgelor’s voice in my head.
“In Falcon,” I replied, trying my best not to grab my head with both hands.
“Tell me something I don’t know. Falcon is huge,” answered Badgelor angrily. “Wait, Jim?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Oh, feck me, that little arse cross-wired our brains, didn’t he?” asked Badgelor.
“I managed to accomplish a tasty feat of Spiritual Magic, thank you very much,” Shart responded.
“Oh, feck me, proper! I can hear him, too,” grumbled Badgelor.
“What happened to SueLeeta?” I asked.
Badgelor didn’t say anything for several seconds. I grew considerably anxious, before he finally responded. “SueLeeta and the dummy left town. He had to go meet up with the king, and SueLeeta couldn’t bear to be around the broken idiot. She says she’s going to find a healer.”
“Fenris? How bad is he?” I asked.
“He’s still unconscious,” replied Badgelor. “He’s dying, Jim. Ashe has been there daily, but she’s not nearly a good enough healer to fix this. We are going to need a Cleric who specializes in Permanent Injuries.”
“We could heal that,” I said. Badgelor and I had Regeneration. It allowed us to repair almost any injury.
“No, we couldn’t,” replied Badgelor after a moment. “More accurately, we couldn’t heal it in time for it to matter. Injuries like that require hundreds of thousands of Hit Points to recover from, all the while you are wasting away. Even with the wee demon boosting your healing rate, and assuming both of us were scarfing healing potions, an injury like that would set us back for years, if not longer. “
“I wouldn’t think it would be that much more complicated than a limb,” I said. With all my gifts, along with a steady supply of medicine, a missing arm would take a month or two to recover.
“Your Mana network binds to your spine,” stated Shart, “And everyone has one, even if they aren’t using it.”
“Charles knew right where to hit him,” stated Badgelor. “It was one of his favorite moves. If you can find a healer who can fix him, which is unlikely, then it's going to be a massive resource sink to heal him up properly.”
“I know that strategy. Armies used it frequently in Earth’s wars. You attack someone with a weapon designed to wound them badly, not to kill them. Then, that wounded soldier is out of action, as well as a second healthy soldier to take him off the field,” I said coldly. “That sounds like Charles. He was breaking Fenris, so someone had to stop fighting to save him.”
“Aye, that’s exactly what Charles would do,” agreed Badgelor. “I have no idea where you are going to find the herbs required to heal Fenris. You have healroot here. That’s at least a good base, but you are going to need some rare herbs, as well.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “What about Glorious Robert?”
“Wet dummy is getting his boat ready. He intends to sail out and find you,” stated Badgelor. “We didn’t know where you would respawn, so having a ship that could go anywhere seemed useful. He is one crazy bugger.”
“Don’t like ships?” I asked.
“Sailing the seas is dangerous,” replied Badgelor. “I have a bead on you now. I’m heading your way, but it’s going to take ages to get there.”
“I thought you weren’t built for overland travel,” I stated.
“I’m not,” replied the badger, “but I have some tricks, if need be.”
I felt a tapping on my shoulder and hastily cut the connection. The amount of mental effort required to use this new communication method with Shart was very different from normal. The fact that Julia had managed to come up right next to me and tap me on the shoulder was not comforting. I would definitely have to ensure that I was in a safe place before trying to talk to my companion again.
“You’ve been staring off into space for ages now,” she said. “Did you go up a ton of levels or something?”
“Just two,” I replied, stretching my neck.
She looked at me for a moment, nodded, and began pulling her heavy furs around herself. They seemed redundant with the magic she could throw around, but, then again, the extra protection couldn’t hurt. It was light out now, so I cast Endure Elements on myself; she did the same to herself. As I worked my magic, Julia smirked at me. Then, with a nod, both of us left the safety of the cave.
“Careful, I think there are bears about,” I said, searching the local area for bear tracks. I still didn’t see any, so we kept moving. It took a few minutes to find a trail that headed, more or less, downhill. Once I did, we began briskly walking. I noticed a strange, wooden V-shaped track next to the path.
“Log flume?” I asked, punching the side. The rotten wood caved in, revealing nothing but ice and snow inside.
“Those are everywhere around here,” Julia replied. “There’s plenty of wood, and the King’s River runs right by Angwin.”
I ran my finger down one of the mostly intact boards, pulling back a splinter. That was another thing that movies got wrong. Going down that flume like a water slide would be painful. They built flumes as quickly and cheaply as possible.
We were still above the snow line. However, as we crested a slight ridge and looked down, we finally saw Angwin. It appeared to still be miles away and thousands of feet below our vantage point.
From what I could tell, Angwin was a decent-sized town, butting up against the river. Two great sawmills stood at the water’s edge. Even from this distance, I could tell that the builders had gone through great effort to artificially split the river. Doing so allowed more water to be pushed near the mills, before it all tumbled away in a waterfall. The road we needed to take was visible from here. It cut right through the city. That seemed the only place to continue downward, unless one had some substantial climbing equipment.
“We can make it there by afternoon,” stated Julia, heading down the game trail. I watched her walk for a moment, but, in all those furs, it wasn’t entertaining. I began slowly following her. She suddenly halted as if stunned. I looked around but still didn’t see any bear tracks.
“I guess there aren’t any bears after all,” I said.
● A Drop Bear has attacked you. You suffer 47 points of Damage from a sneak attack!
Chapter 12 – Drop Bears, they are real and terrifying
“Run,” I screamed, as I clocked the third bear off me. Your average Drop Bear looked like a cute, but rabid, koala bear on meth. They were larger than koalas, though. I guess, if a koala bear had taken steroids for a year or two, they might be the average size of a Drop Bear. I turned just in time to see another unnatural horror drop from the trees. It landed on Julia with a dull thud. She shrieked, before a powerful shock wave exploded from her. The furry terror went flying off into the distance.
Instantly, I was mentally transported to a forest surrounded by wild cats. Every step I took was its own private shitshow. For a bare moment I stood frozen until Shart screamed, “Jim, puma check!”
I shook off the memories. I quickly ran through my puma check and barely evaded another Drop Bear. I managed to swing my mighty bat around, connecting with the creature’s head for a grand slam. My breathing got ragged as I searched everywhere at once.
“Julia, puma check!” I yelled.
“There are pumas too!” she screamed. She did not do her puma check properly and a Drop Bear fell straight towards her. Who didn’t know how to do a proper puma check?
“I Shall Smite Thee,” I screamed, activating my Smite spell.
● Smite: On a successful hit, adds 1-8 Damage plus bonus Damage equal to 5 times your Charisma modifier. Damage is doubled vs. Undead.
These little bastards were just normal, horrible animals. With Smite and my bat, I was able to deal around 30 Damage per swing. Unfortunately, the little gremlins had over 150 Hit Points. They also tended to vanish into the trees once I’d hit them the first time. Julia was having a bit more luck with ranged attacks. She had a Holy Bolt that would track creatures that injured her, even if they ran off.
“We got this,” she declared. She lit off another Holy Bolt into the trees. “How many could there possibly be?”
***
“Their numbers are basically limitless!”
Phillip sat in the drafty inn, enjoying his breakfast of eggs and Drop Bear. The meat was gamy, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was expected in the high mountains. The old man serving him was chatty. As he poured Phillip a mug of hot WakeUpJuice, he continued talking.
“Yup, worst season for Drop Bears we ever had, and no adventurers willing to quest for them,” he rambled, gesturing toward the mountain. “See that high ridge over there? We had to abandon that entire face of the mountain; they were so thick.”
Smiling, Phillip continued eating. Tracking down a stationary object was always easier than trying to catch something on the move.
***
“Keep moving! There are too many of them!” I shrieked, clubbing at another fecking Drop Bear with my bat. The trick was to keep them out of the trees. If you kept them out of the trees, they didn’t have easy access to the healing bark they kept chewing. It was not a great solution, but it did solve the problem of their never-ending Hit Points. I powered forward on a pathway leading to a small clearing. It should provide a bit of a respite. There were no trees overhead. Julia suddenly ran past me, a Drop Bear attached to her chest.
“It bit me in the boob,” screamed Julia, who had failed her puma check. Julia’s heavy robes had been torn open down to the waist. In an older sex comedy, the effect would have been hilarious. Here, it garnered a different reaction from me. It was hard to find anything funny or attractive after you saw what I saw. A man-eating koala trying to rip a breast off a screaming, twisting woman was one of the most horrifying things I had witnessed on Ordinal. And I’ve seen some shit. After casting a healing spell, I got rid of the beast, smashing it with my mighty bat. However, the Drop Bear had not released its grip as quickly as anyone would have hoped. The result was a bit stretchier than I imagined.
Julia looked down and screamed louder than she had before. I stood open-jawed.
“If you cast a healing spell while the injury is still happening…,” I started. Julia glared at me.
“The affected area becomes semi-plastic for a moment. That is why you have to wait until the attack is over; otherwise, you can have unnatural stretching,” she said, unable to look at her chest. Her eyes suddenly teared up. “Be honest, are they still even?”
The word came to me, unbidden, “Nooooo.”
Despite the horrors she had so far managed, Julia’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “How am I going to catch a man with one of the girls looking like this?”
I tried not to say anything. I really did. I did not succeed. “Maybe you could lasso one?”
***
Su-Kar sat quietly in the finest inn she could find. It was not great, but it was a fair shot better than the dive the idiot had chosen. Sure, it cost quite a bit more, but she was willing to pay to sleep in a real bed for once. Her main concern now was a more external issue. She spoke slowly and carefully, in an effort to keep her voice cultured, “Am I to understand there are no cosmetic healers in town?”
“No,” cringed the owner.
Su-Kar seethed. When she’d finally gotten to a mirror, she’d seen that the damage to her face was far worse than she had initially assumed. It was going to take some serious effort to restore her to her former beauty. When she found that Cleric, she would peel his skin off before killing him. Maybe, just maybe, she’d let Phillip help. He did have a talent for brutality. Actively planning the horrors that she would inflict upon O’Really’s body was the only thing keeping her sane at the moment.
Phillip had assumed that they would come in from the eastern trail. Thus, he had gone to the old, ramshackle inn. That was stupid. They would be coming in from the northern route, assuming they had any common sense whatsoever. The dumb local beast de jour, the Drop Bear, inhabited the entire mountain but favored the eastern trail. The paths swept over and under each other, as they crossed ridges and other landmarks. How the Drop Bears remained on the eastern trail was a mystery to everyone, and not one Su-Kar had any interest in solving.
***
“The trail to the south,” screamed Shart. I continued to stare at a signpost that had been knocked over. “Use the southern trail!”
“I think the sign pointed to the eastern trail,” I said.
“I saw that sign. It was in pieces. You need to get onto the southern trail. Go south,” screamed Shart. “They are right behind you!”
I looked at the thin bridge, then back to Julia. Gesturing to the south, I said, “I think we need to go that way!”
She joined me at the signpost. “That way is probably just as good as any of the others. I think it might actually even be the eastern trail.”
“What do you mean ‘might’?” I
yelled, as we quickly made our way toward the bridge.
“The trails overlap this far up. It could be any of them,” she yelled. Then, she cast another Holy Bolt at a Drop Bear.
“That’s just great!” I yelled, slamming my bat into another Drop Bear, as it swung its way toward us. They were like evil monkeys, swinging on the underside of the bridge. We were well past the halfway mark. The narrow rope bridge swung violently, as entirely too much weight was placed upon it.
“Even if we are, I don’t think one trail is going to be much worse than any of the others,” Julia continued, blasting yet another Drop Bear.
“We are running south. That must mean we are on the southern trail,” I commented. I leapt off the bridge, slamming my bat into yet another Drop Bear. In my mind, I was sure I looked like the pitcher in Bases Loaded for the old Nintendo.
“The trails use Angwin as their reference point. There is no southern trail to the mountains,” screamed Julia.
“The northern trail then,” I groaned. If the trail went south to the town, you would have to leave the town from the north.
“Hopefully, we are on the right trail,” Julia shot back. A dozen more Drop Bears swarmed the bridge. The princess prayed for a moment, and a massive blast of wind erupted past her onto the bridge. Several of the cursed bears fell off the bridge, landing hundreds of feet below. The bridge shook violently, and all the ropes popped. Moments later, the bridge followed the Drop Bears into the abyss.
“Hey, this is the eastern trail!” I said, pointing to an intact signpost and dashing toward it.
“Whatever. One trail is just as bad as the others,” groaned Julia.
***
It was well after noon when Phillip finally wandered over to Su-Kar’s inn. They initially attempted to refuse him entrance, of course. Phillip was an uncouth lout. However, after a few tiresome minutes, he either bribed or threatened his way in. Upon being allowed inside, he walked over to Su-Kar. It took him less time than expected. She would have to pay the next innkeeper more to keep Phillip out.