by M J Sweeney
“Nice and quiet-like. Easy does it; let’s get a little further into the bushes, no?” The breath in my ear stank of old wine and garlic. I complied. Whoever it was seemed bigger and stronger than me. We shuffled further into the forest.
Despite the dim light, I still had good night vision. I could see there was more than one of them. When Weasel-Face manifested out of the gloom, I grunted.
“Pleased to see me, squirt?” He grinned, but it didn’t reach his cold eyes. “I thought not. Now, before my friend behind you there lets you go, there’s a couple of things to cover. Firstly, you disobeyed. And naughty boys get punished for that.” He tapped his long proboscis of a nose knowingly. “Not nice that you told all your friends. It’s made operations a bit harder of late. So, it’s now official. The guild-master has banned you from Geras Anandiel. Kill-on-sight orders. So don’t come back. Final warning. No more easy road for you, eh?”
There seemed to be at least two more rogues standing further back, one of whom I actually recognised. Elz. The pale, skinny teenager from the Eragdas Ruins. What was he doing here? He also looked decidedly unhappy… but then again, he’d looked like that before. I heard a ding from my interface.
Turning my head again, I squinted back at Weasel-Face, trying to read his icon details again. Nothing. He was wearing his dirty studded leather armour and holding a short sword in one hand and a smallish kind of tomahawk in the other.
“You trying to see my particulars, squirt? You’ll never know. It’s one of my superpowers. Before you die, just know I am higher level than you. A lot higher level.” He promptly faded from sight, like an illusionist’s trick, only I knew it wasn’t an illusion. “Kill him,” I heard from the shadows.
The man behind slammed his dagger through my armour and into my lungs. “Unggh…” was all I could manage. Before I could get a good look at his face, he too faded from sight. Not having a significant weapon other than my knives, I did a few things in quick order.
First, I tried to run. Already feeling blood loss and my life leaking out, I also tried yelling, “To arms! Betrayed…” but it came out barely as a whisper. I quickly activated Breath of Life and charged at the nearest tree, some ten metres distance. That got me out of their immediate range, I hoped. I was bleeding badly, so I activated Heart of Oak next. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, but felt it when some thrown implement sliced into my shoulder, cutting me. Shit! Where did that come from?
I started circling around the tree, but I didn’t get more than two steps before a sword pierced my back. Fuck, that hurt too. A lot. I kept trying to move, but my legs seemed to have gone dead beneath me. I felt a second impact as a small axe crunched into my sternum, over my heart. There was nothing I could do. I felt blood fill my mouth, and then the last thing I heard was, “Now, what to take…”
Chapter 26
I died… and was reborn.
I must have been unconscious for a time, because the void around me took a while to fade. When I came to, I did so slowly, the darkness of death slowly receding into the natural darkness of the night. I was in my Tree. She was welcoming me with a soothing kind of tree-song, but I could also feel a deeper anger and disturbed pride at her core, not happy at all that I had been killed. The birds that normally nested in her boughs circled around in one great cloud, also clearly disturbed. Eventually they calmed, settling down for the night once more.
My heartbeat steadied, and Tree’s anger steadied along with it. I was in her heart-space, at the core of her physical being—the junction between the roots and trunk. I could see out, though I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but I was fully enclosed in the wooden bower that had been my birthplace.
I felt my cracked ribs and back slowly repair themselves, muscle tissue by muscle tissue, bone by bone. My pumping heart also slowly repaired, and gradually, with a last painful pop, my sternum slowly aligned back into a normal position. I lay there panting for a time, crying softly. Death is no joke. Being reborn is good, great even, but the pain of it was serious stuff. The twigs and leaves sprouting at my right elbow were completely wilted, and the one on my left side had fallen off entirely, dead. Definitely low vitality on all counts.
Then I noticed that Tree was also damaged, and permanently at that. A number of branches had sheared right off, splitting from the main trunk, and many leaves had fallen. It looked like she had been hit by a thunderbolt… and perhaps in a way, she had. I got really mad then, envisaging different ways I might kill Weasel-Face.
/ You Have Died and Been Reborn / Respawn Point Found
/ 15% Experience lost from current Level and all current Skill level /
/ Divine Favour Temporarily Reduced by 13% /
/ Respawn Reduced by 13% /
/ Impairment Status /
[Ruptured Liver. Perforated Bowel. Cracked Sternum. 38% Health and Stamina Reduction until proper bed rest]
Gods, that sucked! Fortunately, I had been at 68% experience for my level, what with the extra training I had been getting, so -15% penalty for death brought me down to 53%. A few skills, such as Lore and Light Armour, dropped down a point, but the others I could handle. The real blow was when I looked up Divine Favour and Respawn.
/ Divine Favour (skill) / 25 (38)
Regain one point per day
/ Respawn chance permanently reduced from 100% to 87% /
[Note I: each death reduces the chance of respawn a further 13%, as per Isserad’s Luck]
[Note II: Elite Asura have respawn reduced by 11% per death, as per ‘Bast’s Nine Lives’]
/ Luck permanently reduced by 3 points /
Shit! I didn’t know any of that. I knew that permanent death was always a possibility, but half of the appeal of coming to this world was definitely semi-immortality. This put a whole new spin on it. Basically, after three or four deaths you were toast. The odds of coming back once respawn shrank below 50% was not good. Things were dangerous enough already, but now this. I had falsely assumed that the respawning chance—Divine Resurrection—was a lot higher than that, and relatively permanent. Gods, it would probably take me a little to wrap my head around this.
There was also a bit of a nasty reduction to luck on each death—from 1-7 points—RNG courtesy of Isserad. Respawn may have been good (well, if I’m honest, it’s truly great), but the losses were bad all round, and going to be an ongoing problem too. I could feel the pain of the loss of luck hanging around my head like a black cloud. Ominous, and a rather nasty source of paranoia. No wonder some adventurers turned to becoming a merchant or civilian—one or two deaths were enough to sober one’s attitude for sure.
I also discovered that shit-eater Weasel-Face had taken my Ring of Fire Resistance. Rutting rodent-headed asshole!
For almost two days, I recovered in Tree, needing no food and absorbing water from her well, up through the roots.
In a way, it was good to be back, even if the circumstances were truly shitty. I kept trying to plot my revenge, talk myself out of it, then start all over with elaborate and fanciful ideas of invading some underground guild hideout. But that line of thinking was futile, as I could do nothing about it from here. In the end, I just recovered, enjoying the company of Tree and the birds as best I could. It didn’t take me long to decide what to do. Once I’d calmed down enough, I decided I had been lucky so far, with only one death, thank Isserad. So I said a few prayers to the God of Chance—couldn’t hurt, right?
I left Tree with a fond farewell. Despite my still recovering health, I went with a determined run, gliding through the forest at my best speed. As I had died with nothing but what I carried, and some health cakes stored in my potion belt, I made good time as I headed north. I did feel naked without my spear, but now held an improvised long club from one of Tree’s fallen branches. Better than nothing.
As the miners had been heading south, I hoped to either catch up with them halfway or at least follow them up the pass into the mountain. After all, I was only a day or so behind them.
; I ate the last of my health-cakes for sustenance and drank from streams, but otherwise did not stop for three days. It took me two days in the forest, and when I saw signs that a group of dwarfs had passed into the mountains recently, I trailed up behind. I was a little more careful with my pace along the mountain pass, but it was not particularly steep or narrow. As I was unfamiliar with the environment, I took time to make sure I was safe as could be.
In the end, I found the dwarfs camped out in front of the mine, taking rest after their initial exploration of the first level. Some had abrasions and what looked like blisters. One of the miners was attending to their wounds, as he had some basic medical craft.
“Elf is back!”
“Cordaen!”
“Where you been, lad?”
“What happened?”
“Good to see yer, lad.” Ligan offered me some dwarf tea (I think it had some kind of whisky in it) and told me to sit by the fire. I complied. I was still a little weak from my ordeal, and three days without proper food hadn’t helped. The health-cake would keep me alive, but it sure didn’t feel comfortable. Now that I was out of health-cakes, I would have to buy some more from Drognad.
I told the dwarfs a little of the story—the fight with Hagard, and his friends looking for revenge. For some reason, I didn’t feel like mentioning Elz.
“B’aint right, it just ain’t right,” one of the dwarfs kept muttering. They all nodded in sympathy. They had heard the fight off to the side of their camp, but had been too late to intervene. As they had found my body and spear, but then my body had disappeared, the dwarfs had wondered if I’d be back at all. Fortunately, they’d taken the weapon with them.
I groaned more than once as I propped my be-socked feet near the fire, my ribs and back complaining. Ligan looked at me with concern.
“You be right, lad? To help us on the morrow? Won’t be no shame if you take a day or two of rest,” he offered kindly.
“No, it’s all right, Ligan, I should be good by the morning.” I paused. “Besides, I don’t want to leave the lads a healer short, no?”
I got a few more murmurs of approval, and we all bedded down for the night. I looked up my interface alerts.
/ Impairment Status /
[Liver (repaired 95%), Bowel (repaired), Sternum (repaired) - 5% Health Reserved]
/ Brotherhood of Shadow, Guild of Rogues / Disliked
[Kill-on-sight]
[Banned from Geras Anandiel]
/ Secret Quest / Discover the Purpose of the Brotherhood of Shadow
/ Secret Quest / Discover the Purpose of Elz the Rat
I hadn’t seen these updates when I first woke from death. Brotherhood of Shadow?—I thought the name a little presumptuous for an adventurers’ guild, but what did I know? The psychological part of being on the “hate list” was the worst for me. In other games I had played in the past, you knew death wasn’t that painful—no one could steal your gear, and even a blatant PKer could only do so much. This was totally different.
I looked up dispositions in relation to adventurer-guilds, and found that the “Banned from Geras” thing was a joke. Their guild-members and associates would not buy or sell equipment to me, and wouldn’t offer me quests and other related help. But that was it. They couldn’t prevent me from leaving or entering the city, or anything else.
Even the kill on sight orders were a bit of a joke. I mean, unless there were hundreds of high-level assassins in this guild, the kill order could only be accomplished under certain circumstances. No one would want to get caught, and the more they targeted a single person, the more chance there was that I and my friends could retaliate—or the local authorities would imprison or execute them.
The last two notifications and quests were interesting. I had no idea how to go about the last one, but I had a couple of ideas for the others. Maybe I’d corner that skinny teenager Elz and he could tell me a few truths about the Brotherhood. I found that thought appealing.
I did hope the rogues weren’t still trailing us, as a bunch of snoring dwarfs did not necessarily provide the best cover. That particular fear was proven to be a little unfounded the next morning, when Ligan began dismantling a few wire alarm traps. He must have set that up after I went to sleep, clearly concerned about further retaliation. Perhaps we were far enough from Geras that Weasel and Co. wouldn’t bother us. I retrieved my pack and spear from my faithful horse and checked the rest of my gear, which was in order. Fortunately my Bag of Holding was still there and intact.
Ligan sent us all links to group with him as the warrior in charge, each of them appearing as mini bars on the upper left of my semi-visible status screen. It faded to nothing when I wasn’t giving it attention.
The mine was, well, a mine. It had three levels—narrow tunnels that meandered in chaotic directions and sloped up or down unexpectedly. The first level was mostly played out, but did have some burrowers lurking around—hence the wounds. That was as far as the dwarfs had gotten on the first day. They still needed to finish exploration of the upper level. On the next day, we would most likely begin exploring the mid-level, where more of the creatures lurked.
The tunnels were mostly just under two metres in height, and up to about two metres across. It did vary, though, sometimes less, sometimes more. I did not have to crouch much, and only needed to be careful with my spear, bumping into corners or poking one of the dwarfs. They all wore chainmail armour and carried axes and pickaxes, with a couple of them also holding shields. No one had hammers, as I was told that the worms’ iron-armoured hide resisted such weapons. They advised me to use the spear as I could, saying it should be quite effective.
Two dwarfs in front, one of them Ligan, carried shields and held war-axes. The two in the middle had torches and pick axes. Then there was me, followed by two more at the rear, one with a torch and war-axe, the last with a large two-handed pick. They all carried extra one-hand pickaxes strapped to the back of their packs.
The dwarfs were quiet and focused as they walked, and took it really slowly—I mean, really slowly. We would walk a few paces, stop, check a few things, and walk again. Periodically, one would knock the wall with a weapon. At first, I thought they were checking to see if the structure was sound, hoping the roof wouldn’t cave, but then I realised they were actually trying to attract attention. Occasionally, Ligan would consult his mine map and mark off locations as explored as we came to them. Many of the walls, particularly as we went further in, started to look like Swiss cheese. A number of holes lined the floor and ceiling, so we had to be careful where we stepped.
“The worm-holes b’ain’t everywhere,” one fellow explained to me, “Else structure would come down on all of us. Tunnel-worms like air as much as rock, and a full tunnel collapse’ll kill ‘em just as well as us. They have this instinct, see, to only burrow so much—keeps the structure up, but still allows them free passage. See?” He pointed at one hole in the roof, and showed me there was at least five to ten metres between that and the next hole. Each hole was around eighty centimetres across. Big worms?
I didn’t have long to wait to answer that question. There was a grinding noise from the wall where one lad was knocking, so the torch bearers stepped back and the others stepped in. I stayed back.
The dark purple and black worm-head snapped its large mouth at the miner knocking on the wall. It had rows of serrated teeth on the inner rim of the mouth, and on the outer rim, a few sucker-like tentacles—I wasn’t sure what they were really—which lashed out at the dwarf. He raised his shield, and one of the suckers latched on the surface and pulled him closer.
One of the miners with a pick got in close beside the worm and levered his pick around the first ring of its tubular body. The flesh split apart, revealing a hard plate—iron-like in appearance, but bleeding thick purplish blood closer to the softer, narrower gaps in its armour. Then he pulled. The worm squealed shrilly. Another of the miners did the same from the other side, his pick first clanging on the worm’s armoured iron hi
de. The other three dwarfs, with Ligan and his shield to the front, stood guard. Slowly, the first three dragged it out.
I could see it also had little miniature suckers that stood out from its flesh in places, emerging from in between the iron rings, which it was using for traction. This made it vulnerable, though, and exposed the softer inner body. Once it was more than halfway out (it was over four metres long) the axe-wielder abruptly chopped at the thinner, vulnerable section in between its plates. It quickly tried to close up, but lost traction even further and slid out completely. It was not slimy or scaled, but smooth with black and purple swirls of metal. It had no eyes. It released its suckers and tried to rear up, lashing out at the axe-wielder. It caught him on one leg, a few of its tentacles pulling at the chain links, little tentilia penetrating into his flesh.
Seeing no more worms, the other miners began hacking at the creature while the two with pickaxes kept it somewhat pinned and the first armoured section a little open and vulnerable with its skin partly peeled back. I manoeuvered a little behind the axe-wielder and managed to place my hand on his back, applying Breath of Life. From the group statistics bars in my upper left view, I could see his health bar start to even out and return. Eventually, Ligan made a great hacking chop at the creature’s neck and severed the head. It died, a thick purple-black ooze of blood seeping forth.
Holding an empty jar, I nodded for permission from Ligan, and he waved me forward. I collected some of the blood. One of the miners checked near its tail end and shook his head, finding nothing.
For the next three days, we cleared the upper and mid-level using the dwarfs’ strategy. Sometimes two or even three or four worms would attack, but they didn’t have the same swarm instinct the armadillos had. When more than one attacked, one of the miners with a shield would play possum, and simply keep his shield up and let it drag him to the tunnel mouth until the shield sealed it shut. The worms did not seem to recognise that kind of stalemate, and would vainly keep trying to draw the shield and dwarf in. The other miners could then hack at the first worm without too much trouble.