For The Guild (Emerilia Book 2)

by Michael Chatfield

  “What’s the best part?” Dave asked, firing and releasing, sending two arrows in as many seconds into a draugr not fifty meters away.

  Dave ducked and looked at Steve’s grinning face.

  “You admitted it was funny!”

  “How’s that?” Dave rose and fired, taking a draugr in the face.

  “Process of elimination!”

  “Well, you want to process these guys to elimination?” Dave fired at the draugr, ducking back into cover to change to his sword and shield as traps started going off. Magical artillery had been going off for the past hour.

  “Dude, that’s like, wow. Was that some kind of terrible pun? I think my ears hurt from that. We need to work on your joking, dude,” Steve said with a sad expression.

  “You don’t have ears and it’s not so bad that you have to look like someone killed your fricking puppy!” Dave said, looking over the barricade.

  “Dave, the joke killer—may he forever remain punless.” Steve got to his feet.

  “You know that thing you do where you open your mouth and sounds come out?”

  “You mean talking?”

  “Yeah, that. Stop it.”

  “Holy shit, Dave, I think you might be getting a hang of this whole joking thing.” Steve, honest to God, looked surprised, right as he slammed his axe into a draugr so hard that it sent two others to the ground.

  Dave shook his head and moved into the fight, holding two blades with golden runes down their sides. He lost himself to the fight.

  Most people thought that it’s about nice and clean moves, about using your styles against another’s. Mostly it was acting, reacting, listening to your instincts—except that one that told you to run away and hide—and sticking the pointy end into the bastard any way possible. If it looked pretty, then you were usually some pompous dickhead or used to duels instead of actual fighting.

  Dave moved fast; his grace and style was economy of motion, landing multiple hits, kicking draugr back, jumping out of the way of blades, and raining holy hell on top of anything that was near him.

  Buffs increased his speed and blessed him.

  Light mages were doing their best, wearing down the draugrs and blessing the fighters, making every hit stronger and draining the draugrs of their power. Not one made it past the Stone Raiders’ lines, stopped by the massed metal of the fighters.

  While the mages played their part supporting the line, they weren’t heavily engaged in the battle yet. While they focused on wearing the draugar down in the distance so the Stone Raiders weren’t overwhelmed, many of the mages and support held their abilities back. Using them now would just be a waste if they were to fight anything stronger.Dave’s blades left two slashes of light in their path as draugrs let out their pained wails.

  Steve giggled and laughed.

  “Fuck! We’ve got to go bowling! This shit is too funny! Like a bunch of crappy toothpicks!” Steve devolved into outright laughing.

  Dave smiled even in the middle of battle. Steve was a good person to have by your side—annoying when he was bored, but he had your back in a fight.

  The draugr were landing hits on him, but his armor and Strength were not something to be laughed at. Few of the attacks had breached his steel layer; none had made it past his true Mithril armor.

  “Fore!” Steve’s axe slammed into a draugr, tearing it asunder and sending it flying.

  Dave couldn’t hold it anymore. He chuckled, turning into full on laughing. A shield formed in his hand as he slammed a blade away. The stress that had been weighing on him fell away—the fear of death, of fucking up, and of knowing that this was real.

  He could come back from the dead, and so what if he fucked up? He had his guild around him; they would help him. He had made his armor to support him, but he hadn’t even started to try to see what it was capable of. He was always sitting back and analyzing a fight.

  He wasn’t living it.

  For once he stopped thinking of the parties; he thought of the movement. He acted and reacted.

  A smile appeared on his face. His world had been turned upside down in just a few short months, yet Emerilia was everything that he desired. He had wanted to get away from the drudgery of Earth and he had come to Emerilia in order to do that. This was his home; this was his refuge and where he belonged.

  Somewhere along the way, he had stopped thinking of this as a refuge and started to see it as a job.

  Something seemed to click for him. He was not better when he was fighting, thinking about the outcome of every block, of every little feint. Rather, he was at his best when he was doing what he wanted to do because it was fun—because he enjoyed it. He loved smithing and he had been able to make something great.

  For that moment, Dave stopped thinking and planning for the future; he focused on the here and now. I’m fighting hordes of zombies for the control of a secret civilization. A smile spread across his face.

  ***

  “It seems that he has awakened.” Anna moved through the draugrs, leaving a path of destruction in her wake.

  Deia jumped onto a barricade, flipping out of a draugr’s reach as she looked towards Dave.

  His hood was up, but she could see his smile as he moved through the draugr. His weapons changed with the blink of an eye: a shield to defend, a blade to attack, a maul to break defenses. He was a wrecking ball, his natural Strength enhanced and aided by his ability to use any and all weapons.

  He didn’t need to obey the fight. He could dictate any fight of someone with similar skill, changing his own weapons to adapt to his attacker. It was as strange as it was shocking.

  Deia landed. Her blades moved to fend off the would-be attackers, taking a hand here, a skull there. Fighting with two swords was fast and hard work, taxing on the Stamina and a person’s concentration.

  “Woohoo! Who doesn’t like some zombie killing!” Dave yelled. A massive spear flew from his hands as he impaled three draugr; it turned back into swords that cut through two more, before another spear appeared in his right hand and slammed into a fifth target.

  He fended off an attacker with his left blade, holding out his hand as his spear returned to his grasp.

  “Down!” Steve called out. Steve’s axe came right over Dave to cut apart the draugr he’d been fending off.

  “Thanks, dude! Yo, so, what you thinking about for your new legs and arms?” Dave asked, as his spear changed into a sword and he dove into battle.

  “Well, I don’t know. More power would be nice. Having just a week of charging is a pain in the ass. I know I get more from killing people with the axe, but damn, it only gives me back the power I spend while fighting.”

  The two of them are talking like they’re out on a hike, not in the middle of some battlefield. She continued to fight and started actually listening to the Stone Raiders as they fought.

  “Yeah, dude, did you see that new Olehb armor? Stuff looks dope!”

  “Man, I swear, you like whatever has the most gems and carvings in it,” another said.

  Deia glanced over. They were level 110; being Stone Raiders, they were probably closer to 200, not going up levels to keep growing their stat points faster.

  “Damn, guuuurl! That scimitar is fucking sweet. What are the stats on that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know? It’s like two hundred-ish damage, but then it’s light so the DPM is pretty high. Got ice effect to slow enemies down so you can get more hits in.”

  “Shit, I’m a lightning kind of person. That possible paralysis is nice, though slowing down your attacker would be pretty sweet.”

  “You thought of trying out a cursed blade or maybe poisoning your blade?”

  Deia continued her battle, confused. With the rangers and Dwarves, they had talked little, focused on fighting. The Stone Raiders were talking about everything from some television show that they had watched to how they had got a different color on their armor. Deia made her way closer to Anna. The draugrs were decent beasts, but they were slow
. Their only real threat was their numbers.

  “Why are they all just talking?” Deia asked.

  “Hmm? Duck!” Anna spun her blade below her waist and then above.

  Deia stood up as the wind blade passed, cutting off heads or leaving deep gashes across the draugrs nearest.

  “We’re fighting and the Stone Raiders are just talking,” Deia said.

  “Well, for them, battle is kind of normal. They fight all the time and even if they are killed, they’ll come back. I guess the talking keeps their minds active as they work. Most of them talk about different skills and weapons—a few talk about asinine things. It keeps people talking and working together.”

  “So weird. I didn’t realize that they talked so much.”

  “Well, with Boran-al, they were still finding their footing mostly and it was a big raid. When things get tense, then they usually get a bit quieter, trying to focus on the battle ahead. Though, if one of them starts talking, then the others join in. How stressed do you feel right now?” Anna asked as Deia guided a two-handed great sword away, her other blade cutting up the draugr’s side as lines of fire cut into his chest.

  She cut down another, not really focusing on the fight but rather taking a step back from it.

  “I’m calmer. This seems easier, as if it isn’t a real threat. I’m kind of detached,” Deia said, confused by her own words.

  “Exactly. That is one of the biggest advantages of the Players. When they are fighting, they’re testing their opponents and seeing what works the best. What’s the worst that happens? You start over again. However, fighting all the time can get boring. Talking to others, trying out new things—that can add interest to the whole game.”

  “I never thought of that. It just seems so…wasteful.” Deia frowned as she fought, taking the time to look over the draugrs. They weren’t all that good with their movements. The more she stopped trying to hack them to death and see what they were doing, to figure out their motions, the easier it was to kill them with less effort.

  “Talking while fighting is usually a bad thing—can distract, you have less energy and so on. The Stone Raiders never thought of that when they started off and now they do it anyway. This is their escape from their boring reality. Their friends are here and they talk about anything and everything. Most of them will never meet one another in what they think of as real life, only interacting through long-distance communication.” Anna must have seen Deia’s confused look as she laughed. “They’re an odd group, though they’re all the better fighters for it. Stress, fear: all of it goes away as they fight and game.”

  “It is—different.”

  “Well, we’ve only got like three hundred more draugr to go,” Anna said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Check your notifications.”

  Deia got clear of the draugr and checked.

  Quest: Aleph Homecoming

  You have arrived at an unknown Aleph City.

  To return the city to the governing power of the Aleph, you must hold your position in the city for 20 waves.

  Wave: 5 of 20

  Attackers: 320/1,000

  Rewards: ???

  “So weird,” Deia said.

  “The weird part is the counter in between waves that counts down before the draugr get into bow range.”

  I have a ton to learn still. Like talking while fighting. Why are these Players so weird?

  Chapter 22: Traction

  Sato felt haggard. After the information he had been given by the Dwarf Halfling called Dave, it had taken him a month to get it to the security force’s top officers.

  They dismissed it as voodoo, as magic—as some kind of ploy to waste their resources. Sato hadn’t been deterred, even when people talked of his demotion as if it was a sure thing. People started to distance themselves from him though he was determined to show them the proof.

  He’d turned to his old trade school friend. While he had been learning to work with radios, taught how to fight and work, to be an asset to humanity and the station, Edwards had been pulling systems apart.

  People had scowled at him, getting angry for him breaking systems, until they realized that he was improving them. He was unconventional, with nearly no understanding of social conventions. Sato found the man interesting, as he quietly went about his work, never asking for praise, and only doing it out of interest and curiosity.

  He failed many times, but more than once, his ideas had worked; it had given him a workspace to work in. No one was willing to work with him, however.

  “Are you sure about this?” Sato looked to Edwards as they looked at what looked to be a metal rod. It had odd characters engraved into its side and it was being powered by a cobbled-together Jukal core.

  Edwards grinned and shrugged. “Nope!” He pressed the big red button.

  Fire poured out of the end of the rod. Edwards did a little jig as Sato looked on, his mouth hanging open.

  They didn’t understand how Mirrors of Communication worked, but they knew how to make them. They had worked with a melding of Jukal technology and human tech to stay alive.

  “After all of that, I thought that the others might be right, that I might have been given a load of shit,” Sato said to himself as Edwards hit another button. The flame stopped as Edwards opened the case and held the rod.

  “Perfectly cool to the touch. A man must go with his gut, not always his mind, Sato.” Edwards passed the rod to the other man.

  “Now, we have a meeting to go to!” Edwards headed out his office door.

  Sato followed him, still holding what Dave had detailed as a staff of destruction. It was far simpler than what was mentioned in the notes.

  “Where are we going?” Sato asked as they stepped into a pod that whisked them across the combined asteroids that made up their home.

  “Councilwoman Wong,” Edwards said.

  “What? Why?” Sato asked, thoroughly confused.

  “Well, you military types thought this was a bunch of shit. I need some clearance before I can start taking the information and turning it into stuff.”

  “This is a military matter.”

  “Nope. Your people said that it was useless. Now, we’ve seen that there is something of use to it, we’ve got to see, got to check that I can use it.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about how or why you made your tech?”

  “Well, of course I do, but I don’t want you military types running all over my lab telling me what I can and can’t do because they start thinking that it’s useful again.” Edwards tapped Sato reassuringly. “Don’t worry. The civvies have this now and you can be sure that we can beat the military heads together. Did you read about this Emerilia place? Filled with humans of all kinds of backgrounds. Might be grown from tubes, but they’re as human as me and you.”

  “Some will probably argue against that,” Sato said, fresh out of optimism as he realized the reports and history that he had read from Dave was not just some made up story, but a reality. Humans grown to populate a world; others grown to think that the planet was just a game. Sato’s mind moved to how people playing war games in simulators were more likely to take larger risks than in real life. For the people who didn’t realize Emerilia was real, they would—and were—doing crazy things just to defeat what they thought was a game.

  It explained how the Jukal Empire looked to be fine, despite having a diminished fleet.

  “A prison without any walls, but the ones created in their minds,” Sato said as the pod stopped and Edwards got out.

  They walked up stairs. Edwards barged through checkpoints. People tried to stop him, but knowing who he was, their efforts weren’t that forceful.

  The guards outside the councilwoman’s chambers did stop them, however. “Business?” one asked.

  “Tell her, I know how to use Jukal technology and that there is a planet of multiple human species that the military is ignoring.”

  Sato winced as the guard looked grave. He might be
the guard to the councilwoman but he had undoubtedly been picked from the military side of the asteroids.

  “I will let her know.” The guard moved into the councilwoman’s office as three other guards watched Sato and Edwards.

  The guard returned after a few moments. “She will see you now.” He held the door open for them.

  “Thank ya!” Edwards walked into the room.

  Sato nodded to the guard, trying to get across his thanks for the guard’s demeanor.

  The guard nodded, acknowledging it.

  The door closed behind Sato as Edwards was already talking.

  “So I tried it out and it actually worked! This Dave Dwarf dude is saying that he can create the same results with his body! He thinks that there are nanites throughout his body that with time and training get stronger, allowing him to do more things. To keep people engaged in the game, they’ve got magic and swords and bows. All kinds of stuff, though it’s nothing like what we’ve got. Their Mithril, as Dave explains it, is like the personalized armor on the war king’s personal guard that we saw. Hard as hell to get through with anything less than hell-bore cannons. They’ve been the ones keeping back the aggressive species and like damn, I need you to tell me that I can play with this stuff so I can figure it out! We might finally be able to figure out the secrets of the Jukal, which, in a kind of backward way, are the secrets of our fellow humans trapped on Emerilia, because they’re the ones making it. The Empire is just taking it all, putting their seal on it, saying it’s theirs and selling off the plans to people; it’s nuts!”

  “Communications Officer Sato, could you tell me what he is trying to say?” Councilwoman Wong looked like a thirty-year-old lady who could stand in the middle of the storm and still easily pass out orders. There was an innate strength to her that was uncommon in most.

  “Councilwoman.” Sato bowed. “I received a communication from a Dwarf Halfling calling himself Dave. He sent me a file on various pieces of information from a place called Emerilia…” The story was a long one, taking some time for Sato to highlight how he had been unable to gain interest from his commanding officers who had written off the communications with the mirror that Dave had used as a distraction: first, having someone calling themselves a wizard on it, and another supposedly a Dwarf, a mythical being.