by S. R. Witt
Time resumed its frantic pace, and the goblin watched in horror as he killed his friend.
It wasn’t a sure thing, but every dodge gave me a chance to trigger my sneaky new talent. If it went off every third or fourth attack, and I was getting poked at eight times every five seconds, that was double the damage I could inflict with my stiletto. And if I got lucky…
A second stretched into ten, giving me time to suck in my gut and let an impaling spear thrust plunge past my belly and into the back of a goblin fighting Bastion.
This was going to work. I just had to keep moving, keep dodging, and the goblins would kill themselves.
Bastion howled with fury and severed a goblin’s leg with a backhand swing of the longsword. Fire flew from the weapon, and I revolved with my brother to keep from getting my face burned off. We came to rest facing in opposite directions, confusing the goblins and giving us a moment’s breathing room.
“What are you doing over there?” Bastion demanded.
My words slurred as time dilated and a spear thrust that should have plunged straight through my guts whiffed by and buried itself deep in the ass cheek of the goblin to my right. “Staying alive,” I shouted as time whirled back to full speed, “and killing goblins!”
We were winning. Against all the odds, it was happening. Half of the goblins, even including the ones who’d joined the fight after it began, were dead. Blood leaked from their scattered bodies and transformed the snow into crimson mud that sucked at our boots and steamed in the winter air.
Then I saw the source of the fiery flashes and crashing thunder.
She stood on the same hilltop Bastion and I had used to stake out the merchant’s home. Her golden hair flowed in the winter wind, and a cape of white feathers fluttered from her shoulders. A blazing orb of light shot from her hand. It streaked toward us, growing larger and brighter.
Thunder rolled, and the world exploded.
CHAPTER FOUR
The fireball smashed into the mass of goblins attacking us. It exploded on impact, shaking the earth and hurling flames in every direction. Dead goblins flew through the air and crashed into the snow. They left bloody smears where they landed, and none of them moved.
Bastion leaned into the explosion and braced his sword against the muddy earth to keep from getting blown off his feet.
I, on the other hand, was tossed into the sky like a rag doll. A pile of dead goblins broke my fall. I was lucky none of their weapons had stabbed me in the gizzard when I landed on them.
Smoke and steam obscured my vision. I struggled to my feet, unable to see or hear anything. My head felt like the fireball had gone off inside it, and it took me long seconds to realize I wasn’t dead.
“What the fuck was that?” Bastion shouted.
It took me a few more seconds to clean the mud and blood from my eyes. My ears were still ringing, but I could hear. A little. “I don’t know,” I shouted back.
The blond woman with the feathered cape glided down the hill toward us. She flicked her fingers at a whimpering, wounded goblin, and a dart of fire put the thing out of its misery. “I didn’t know—”
Bastion wasn’t in the mood to hear her out. She’d come within inches of blowing us straight to hell along with the goblins. “You almost killed us!”
She held her hands up, palms out. “There were so many goblins, I couldn’t tell—”
Bastion stomped through the mud and waved his sword in her face. “Who did you think they were fighting?”
The woman’s temper rose to meet Bastion’s accusation, and flames crackled from her fingertips. “It was a calculated risk. If I hadn’t done something, you’d both be dead!”
Getting into the middle of the fight between Bastion and the stranger looked like a worse idea than battling the goblins, but leaving Bastion on his own wasn’t an option.
Best case, he’d knock this lady’s head off. No laws governed player-on-player violence outside of Frosthold’s walls, but killing someone who’d only tried to help us seemed like a good way for Bastion to lose his shot at becoming a paladin.
There was also a very real possibility she’d just flash-fry us both if it looked like the argument wasn’t going her away. We were pretty good in a fight, but she was throwing around serious firepower.
“Thank you,” I said. My words sounded fuzzy and indistinct to my damaged ears. “I think we would have been all right, but thanks for the help.”
Bastion glared at me, jaw clenched. “She almost killed us.”
A shrug was all I had to offer in her defense. “I didn’t lose any health from the explosion. I’m pretty sure this deafness will pass. It was close, but no blood, no foul, right?”
An uncomfortable silence stretched between us. Even the goblins stopped whining and chose to die in peace rather than gain the attention of three very pissed off adventurers. A muscle alongside Bastion’s jaw jumped as he ground his teeth. I was sure he was about to skewer the woman.
I braced myself to run, but something shocking happened.
Bastion sheathed his sword and extended his hand. The rage leaked out of his face, and he forced a hard, but apparently sincere, smile. “My apologies. The heat of combat made me rash. I am Bastion, and I am at your service.”
Then he freaking bowed.
This paladin business was really going to his head.
But, I had to hand it to Bastion. His apology worked.
The fire dancing across the woman’s fingertips died, and she returned his bow with a smile and a delicate curtsy. “And I apologize for my carelessness. It takes much of my concentration to harness the power of fire, and it is difficult to hold it for long. Had I waited, I feared the spell would dissipate from its pattern, or I would have been too late to be of any use.
“My name is Indira, and I humbly beg your forgiveness.”
My hands never strayed from the hilts of my stilettos during the exchange. I was no veteran of online gaming, but I knew this was not how gamers talked to each other after a near-death experience. Bastion was holding back because murdering another character wouldn’t play well with the paladins, but what was Indira getting out of this?
She turned her sharply angled eyes in my direction. They were a startling sapphire blue shot through with fine threads of glowing crimson. “And you are?”
Mumbling a half-assed apology seemed like a worse offense than skipping the mea culpas altogether. Plus, I hadn’t blown anyone up or threatened any lives, so I jumped ahead to the introduction. “My name is Saint. Thanks for not blowing me up. And, you know, for killing some of these goblins.”
That earned me a stiff nod from her. The motion shifted her hair to reveal the tapered tips of her pointed ears. Neat. She was an elf. “I am glad to see you both survived. Were you also here to rescue the merchant?”
Bastion and I froze. My brother said nothing, which was a nice change of pace. “We, uh, were just heading back from hunting and stumbled into the goblins attacking this house.”
Her eyes narrowed as she weighed my words. “Intriguing. Did you have any luck in your hunt?”
Words caught in my throat. This was the farthest I’d been from Frosthold. I had no idea what kind of hunting lay beyond the newbie areas.
Bastion jumped in and saved me. “Not much. Saint got nervous once we left the newbie area and wanted to head back. Then we ran into these goblins.”
Indira grinned. “That was quite the invasion. I’m surprised you didn’t get the message warning you it was starting.”
That was weird. Why wouldn’t we have gotten the warning about an invasion when we were in its path? “We didn’t get any message.”
Indira’s eyebrows lifted. “No message at all? Curious.”
“And what were you doing out here?” I can get prickly when people act suspiciously toward me. “Out for a midnight stroll?”
The elf waved away my question with a laugh. “No, not at all. I was on a quest to, well…”
She gestured toward the
cottage.
It was in ruins. The goblins had busted through the windows, kicked in the door, and even burned away part of the roof. The merchant was dead in the mud, his throat slit and his eyeballs missing from their empty sockets. The goblins had stripped him of his fancy robes and ostentatious jewelry but hadn’t gotten far with any of their loot. Indira’s last fireball had burned them to a crisp.
“You were sent to save the merchant?” I asked.
“Of course. I thought you might have received the same quest.” She shrugged like it was no big deal.
Except it was a very big deal. If the Shadows sent me here to rob the merchant and deliver a message about how ill-advised it was to give information to the Hoaldites, then the priests must have sent someone to protect their source.
And that meant they knew someone was coming to give him trouble.
Which meant someone inside the Shadows was feeding the Hoaldites intel on our operations.
My stomach rolled over, and my heart skipped a beat. This was not good.
“No,” Bastion said, jumping into the uncomfortable gap in our conversation. “Just hunting. Shame about the merchant.”
Indira shrugged. “On the plus side, we all earned some great experience from that fight. We should split up the loot and head back to town before the goblins come back for seconds.”
There wasn’t much loot to split. The goblins had only a few copper coins each, wore crappy armor, and wielded even crappier weapons. I let Bastion gather up our share while I watched Indira from the corner of my eye.
Whether she knew it or not, she’d outed herself as a potential enemy. No one trying to save the merchant I’d been sent to shake down was playing for my team.
And that made me very curious about the power she’d thrown around. “If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of spell were you using against those goblins?”
She smiled, and a faint blush touched her pale cheeks. “It wasn’t all my power. I had this.”
A circlet of gold, surrounded by a veil of scarlet fire, appeared in the palm of her outstretched hand. She held it close enough for me to get a good look at it.
FOCUSING LENS OF PRIMAL FLAME
Object Class: Primary
Object Power: Unfettered
Rarity: This is a quest item.
The magi who dares to embrace the Primal Flame may gain ultimate power, but none may enter that cauldron and leave unchanged.
This Lens allows the magus to exceed their normal limits when harnessing mana to power spells based on the element of fire.
As long as the item is held in your main hand, and you remain motionless, there is no limit to the number of mana points you may harness for casting a spell.
Beware, magus, for while there are no limits to your power when wielding this item, its use may attract the attention of powers greater than your own.
“Nice,” I said. “I take it you’ll lose it when the quest is over?”
“Yup. Wish I could keep it, but it’d be more than a little overpowered if every starting magus got one of these just for taking a low-level quest. It has to go back to the guild master as soon as I’m finished here.”
She slipped the Focusing Lens of Primal Flame back into the belt pouch on her right hip.
“Well,” I said, trying not to stare at her pouch, “I guess it was nice meeting you. Have a safe trip back to town.”
“Not yet,” she said. “I need to go check out the merchant’s home and get proof of his death.”
Bastion wrinkled his nose. “Kinda grisly for a quest.”
Indira waggled her fingers at my brother and shot me an impish grin. “The ways of sorcery are dark and mysterious. It is not for the faint of heart or frail of stomach.”
Bastion grunted his disapproval, but I saw a chance and took it. “I’m pretty good at spotting things. I’ll take a peek with you.”
She hesitated, and I felt the opportunity slipping away. “It’s the least I can do, seeing as how you saved us from a messy end at the hands of the goblins.”
Flattery did the trick. She swelled with evident pride at my words. “Oh, now the truth comes out.”
Bastion puffed up to defend his honor, but I didn’t give him a chance to blow it for me by telling her we’d almost beaten them by the time she showed up.
“I admit,” I said, “it was getting a little sloppy there at the end.”
With that, I took her arm and led her away from my brother.
The merchant’s home was a disaster. Every room was thrown into disarray. We searched the entire home but found nothing and no one.
We returned to the merchant, who lay outside the front door with a halo of blood leaking from a gaping gash in the back of his skull.
Indira hiked up her white robes to keep them out of the blood seeping through the snow and crouched down next to the merchant.
The snow made her unsteady, and I reached out to brace her with one hand on her shoulder.
“Careful, wouldn’t want you to get gunk on your robes,” I said.
“Thanks. I’m not quite as nimble as I’d thought, I guess.” She pulled a small dagger from her belt and snipped off a locket of gray hair from the side of the merchant’s head. “That should do it.”
She stood, and steadied herself against me as she did. Perfect.
“Thanks for your help,” Indira said as we returned to Bastion. “Though I didn’t actually need it. Unlike the favor I did for you.”
Ouch, that stung. Bastion bristled, but we still needed to get back to town without raising Indira’s hackles. “We’ll return the favor one day, I’m sure.”
“We shall see,” she said. “And now, I must be off to inform my guild master of my disappointing failure.”
When we parted ways, I forced myself to hide my nervousness and shake Indira’s hand. She stared into my eyes as we said our goodbyes, but didn’t try to light me on fire. If she knew why I’d really come out here, she didn’t seem inclined to push the issue.
And if she knew I’d picked her pocket, she didn’t mention it.
Sometimes, even now, I wish Bastion had pushed her just a little harder. Maybe he could have goaded her into a duel or something.
Winner takes all. Two adventurers enter one adventurer leaves.
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
Indira walked away from me and into the snowy night, feathered cloak fading into the darkness, never knowing how hard we were going to screw each other over in the coming days.
CHAPTER FIVE
After Indira had left, my brother and I picked over the goblins to make sure we hadn’t missed any hidden treasure. All we earned for our trouble was more stinking goblin blood staining our armor.
Bastion clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, that could have gone a lot better.”
He didn’t know the half of it. A blinking red icon in the bottom corner of my vision demanded my attention. The quest log message added to my woes.
PROVE YOUR LOYALTY, CONTINUED
Setback! You failed to deliver the message to the merchant. Even worse, the merchant is now dead which will surely alert the Hoaldites. They’ll know we discovered their informant and will be out for revenge.
Even worse, you were unable to gather much-needed funds from the merchant. To make up for this operational shortfall, please return to the Grandfather of Shadows and pay a penalty of 500 silver pieces.
You have twenty-four hours to return to the Society of Shadows and face the consequences of your failure.
Instead of earning money from this mission, I’d racked up 500 silver pieces in new debt. Things just kept getting better.
I wondered how much the Lens I’d stolen from Indira was worth. Maybe I was wrong, but it seemed powerful enough to make any magus drool. If I could find a newbie with the cash, maybe this trip wouldn’t be a complete waste.
Bastion nudged me with his elbow. “What are you thinking about?”
I frowned and decided to keep my little heist to myself. “S
omething doesn’t feel right about this. Why would the game give Indira a quest opposed to mine?”
Bastion steered me away from the battlefield and toward town. He carried the treasure we’d looted on one shoulder in a motley bundle bound together with scavenged leather cords the goblins had used for belts. “You’re thinking too hard about this. It was bad luck we came when we did. The elf was probably here to deal with the goblin invasion.”
“Maybe.” Bastion and I hadn’t received a warning about the goblins, but Indira had. But something still felt off about the whole mess. The timing was too coincidental for my taste.
My brother nudged me with his elbow. “Let’s pick up the pace a bit. I don’t want to still be out here when Goblin Invasion Round Two kicks off.”
The walk back to Frosthold felt much shorter than the hike out to the merchant’s cottage. After the shenanigans with the Friendly Fire talent, I had to wonder just how much DWO messed with our sense of time and place. Sure, it was a virtual reality, but the details were so precise and the sensations so convincing Invernoth felt more real than the waking world.
Still does, to be honest. Even after all that’s happened since those early days.
The gate guards eyeballed us as we approached their post. Instead of their usual gruff demeanor, they greeted us with surprisingly friendly smiles and hearty cheers. “Welcome home, heroes.”
Bastion and I exchanged confused glances. Frosthold’s guards were, at the best of times, kind of jerks. When we’d left town, these same guards had warned us not to come back too late because they might mistake us for monsters and shoot us full of arrows. Now they were calling us heroes and welcoming us to the city?