by M Helbig
The only positive part of my second fall was that I could now at least see. Granted, the only things I could see were dirt, a small bit of the horizon, and a pair of blurry red shoes.
“Aim for his shoes,” I said. “If we can damage them, he might lose his super-speed.”
“I’ll try.” Olaf’s words were followed by a crash and grunt of pain.
“I lost my club,” Alizia said, “but I’ll try to tickle them when he comes by.” Another crash came from her direction and her HPs lowered to 65%.
“Don’t even bother trying to stand,” I said. “Just swipe at his feet.”
Thirty seconds later, Decrona grunted for what seemed like the fiftieth time. “I’m trying but all my spells hit only air. He’s too fast. We need a different plan.”
Alizia cursed. “I could try lulling him to sleep with my sultry siren’s song.”
“Don’t,” Decrona groaned. “We’re in enough pain as it is.”
I barely managed to keep my grip on my bow as the arrow flowed harmlessly through the spot where I was sure his feet would be. The king gave another one of those haughty, insufferable laughs that echoed across the landscape. As I raised my head to curse, I caught our status bars again. My curse stuck in my mouth.
“Has anyone taken any damage since you stopped trying to get up?” I asked.
Decrona and Alizia said “yes” in unison.
“Me too,” Olaf said. “His mace cracked me twice in the midsection. It took the wind out of me. I even had Sneak on the second time, but he saw through it or remembered where I was.”
“And did you happen to notice the damage numbers from any of those hits?” I asked.
Everyone was silent for a good twenty seconds before Olaf responded. “You’re right. My HPs haven’t moved.”
“My HPs have actually gone up a point from natural regeneration,” Alizia said.
“Mine too!” Decrona said.
The blurry form of the king’s shoes approached again. This time I tossed my bow directly at it, and as expected, it passed right through him. A hearty laugh immediately followed.
“Definitely an illusion,” I said. “Everyone, stay down. I have a theory.” I closed my eyes and pushed myself up. I strongly suspected the illusion was knocking us down not through any kind of force, but by taking advantage of our assumption of his next actions. The laughter was getting steadily closer, and I focused harder and harder on how the darting king was not real, until he was only a few feet away.
“Fall down!” the king said from much farther away.
I moved toward the new direction of his voice. As I got closer, the wind began to blow directly at me, growing stronger with each step. At thirty feet away, I tried to summon my bow, but nothing happened. I’d forgotten I’d already thrown it at him. The force grew exponentially stronger at ten feet away. There was no way I’d be able to able to get in range to use my sword. It took everything in me to just keep standing. My attempts at spellcasting were a complete failure. I could barely get through the first motion with my fingers before the whipping wind blew them off course.
“Everyone close your eyes so the illusion can’t affect you, and then walk toward the sound of my voice,” I said. “He seems to have some sort of wind attack that gets stronger the closer you get.”
“If we do that, will you give us candy—or better yet, healing potions?” Alizia asked.
“The Kobold King is right in front of me,” I said. “And he told me he’s actually an animatronic piñata full of candy and healing potions.”
“Goodie! And I just found my club too.”
I spouted mostly gibberish until the group’s voices got so close I could feel Olaf’s breath beside me.
“So, how many potions does he have inside of him?” Alizia asked.
I grinned. “Lots. I hear he even has one that tastes like passion fruit.”
“Ooooh. That’s my favorite flavor.”
My mental self-congratulation was short lived, as Decrona let out a scream. My breath caught when her HPs shot down to 61%.
“I’m neither a king nor a piñata,” Decrona said between curses.
“Sorry,” Alizia said. “You both look alike.”
“We’re not even the same gender!”
“Like there’s a difference on elves,” Alizia said.
“How can you even tell what we look like? Your eyes are supposed to be closed.”
Alizia giggled. “They are. I swear it was an accident.”
I rushed toward the sound of Alizia’s voice as fast as the wind would allow and grabbed her. “I need you to move straight ahead.” I gave her a friendly push.
She began to move, and I risked peeking a few seconds later. As expected, she’d turned almost ninety degrees, so I rushed toward her and corrected her course.
“Horus, I didn’t know you felt that way,” Alizia said.
I gave her another push. “I don’t—I mean I like you as a . . . Just walk forward until you can’t anymore.”
I peeked again, and this time she was walking straight ahead. The form of the king came charging past her with his mace held high to bury it in my skull. I trusted my logic, not what I was seeing, and closed my eyes before the blow landed. A slight breeze blew over me, but I felt nothing else.
“Alizia, stay where you are for now. Olaf, make some noise.”
Olaf complied, and I moved toward him. I hazarded opening my eyes quickly to get my bearings and gave him a push. “Now move forward until the wind stops you.”
“Will do!” Olaf said.
Unlike Alizia, Olaf went exactly where I wanted him. I repeated the process with Decrona and then made my way forward. We were positioned in a semi-circle with the king in front, right on the edge of the plain, before the bushes.
“Now what?” Alizia asked from the far left. “I can’t even raise my arm to smack him.”
“Nor can I complete a spell,” Decrona said closer to my left.
“It’s real wind,” Olaf said to my right. “So Sneak doesn’t help.”
I opened my eyes for just long enough to use Inspect and found my plan was working. The constant casting of what looked to be a channeled spell along with the illusion had taken him down to 47/500 MP. “Keep trying to press forward,” I said.
“Now hold on there,” the king said. “Why don’t we strike a deal instead?”
Quest: I Dub Thee Lord Horus of the Plains Kobolds
Description: King Kobalathil Kobold I has offered to make you a baron in his kingdom.
Completion Objective: Let King Kobalathil Kobold I go.
Reward: Title: Kobold Baron
“Ooh,” Alizia said. “I’ve always wanted to be a baroness. What type of castle do I get, and where are my subjects? Also, where’s the gold in this deal? I’ll need it to commission my noble portrait and decorate my new castle. Tapestries aren’t cheap, ya know.”
“Kobolds don’t build castles or much of anything permanent; they’re nomadic,” the king said. “Err . . . I mean, yes. You’ll get a very large castle with lots of gold for tapestries.” The king’s voiced seemed to be slowly moving away as he spoke.
“Yippee! Now just let up on this wind, so I can get close enough to accept—”
“Alizia, no!” Decrona screamed.
Another scream came from my left.
“My God,” Olaf said. “Alizia, stop hitting Decrona and focus on the boss.”
“That wasn’t me,” Alizia said. “Must have been the Kobold King hitting her.”
“I wasn’t hit,” Decrona said. “Horus, Olaf, are you both all right?”
I could see the group’s status bars even with my eyes closed, and since none of us had taken any damage, I risked peeking. The king was nowhere in sight, but I figured out his location when another scream came from the bushes a hundred feet away.
“Open your eyes, guys,” I said. “I don’t think we need to worry about his illusions.”
I pointed them toward the bushes. Upon arrival
, we found King Kobalathil Kobold pinned down by two furball tentacles while an illusion of him frantically darted back and forth trying in vain to convince the mindless monster that it should be falling over.
“Should we just leave him here to his fate?” Olaf asked. “It seems fitting.”
Alizia took a few more practice swings as Decrona desperately backpedaled to get out of her reach. “Nuh-uh. I want revenge for him running out on our deal.”
“This is basically free experience, and I’d imagine he has at least one good item on him.” Decrona summoned her sling.
Olaf nodded and made his way toward the king. Before he could stab him, a sudden idea hit me, and I yelled for him to stop.
“Don’t kill the king yet. If we kill him, that will free the furball’s tentacles and we won’t be able to get to his corpse to loot.” A second later, the furball’s third tentacle made an appearance and pulled Olaf to the ground.
The furball yanked the thrashing king into the blue pulsating mass at its center. When the king got half an arm’s length away from it, the blue mass separated in the middle and opened to form a mouth. The king’s face went in first, sparing us from hearing his screams.
“But if we kill the furball, the king will be free again,” Decrona said.
“So what,” Alizia said between swings of her club. “Then it’s piñata time again!”
“Take the king down to a sliver, then kill the furball, and then finish off the king.”
“Could you perhaps hurry?” Olaf asked as he slid across the ground.
“No time for piñatas. We’ve got to save baldie.” Alizia smacked the king’s legs and lower torso—the only portions of him still exposed in the mindless monster’s mouth. Decrona and I rushed to help her and in about a minute had him down to 3%. We moved to the furball. With its tentacles occupied, it had no other defenses and quickly went down.
The furball’s mouth dropped open, and the king slid out onto the ground. He was so disoriented that he offered no resistance. Alizia celebrated the king’s defeat by closing her eyes and taking a few whacks at his corpse.
“That’s very disrespectful,” Decrona said. “He was royalty after all.”
“You’re only saying that because he looks like you. Besides, Horus mentioned he has potions in him,” Alizia said.
“Horus only said that to motivate you to attack him,” Decrona said. “The king will not break open and reveal potions or candy.”
I nodded in confirmation.
Alizia stopped whacking the fallen king, shrugged, and then went back to hitting him.
Decrona sighed and knelt over the furball.
Decrona has looted a Blue Furball.
You have received 1 silver as your share of the loot (out of 6 silver).
As group leader, Decrona has been granted the loot: a Furball Tentacle and Furball Liver.
Unfortunately, both items were used in trade skills and not useful to anyone. Since it didn’t look like Alizia would be slowing down anytime soon to give us a chance to loot the king, I decided to check out my notifications from the recent battle.
You have failed the Quest: I Dub Thee Lord Horus of the Plains Kobolds.
You have gained 1 skill point in Inspect! 15/25
You have gained a total of 9,130 (8,300 +830 Group Bonus) Experience Points! 13,496/40,000 to next level.
You have received -2,000 Faction with the Plains Kobolds! Total: -3,174 Plains Kobolds (Despised).
Olaf finally had enough and yanked Alizia’s signpost/club from her hand.
“You may have this back when we finish looting,” Olaf said.
The pout didn’t quite look right on Alizia’s giant face. “No fair. You didn’t take Decrona’s sling away when she kept pelting that slug I was trying to loot last week.”
“That is because it wasn’t dead.”
“It was mostly dead, so I should’ve been able to mostly loot it. Besides, those things move so slow it’s not like anyone can really tell when they’re actually dead anyway.”
Olaf grumbled something about notifications and status bars under his breath.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Decrona slid around the back of Alizia and leaned down to the battered form of the former king. Now that he was dead, I wondered if there was a new king of the kobolds or if we’d finished off his entire kingdom. The possibility that Alizia was now their queen—as she’d delivered the finishing blow— crossed my mind, but I had no idea how kobolds chose a new ruler.
Decrona has looted King Kobalathil Kobold I.
You have received 1 gold as your share of the loot (out of 4 gold).
As group leader, Decrona has been granted the loot: Bronze Scepter of Authority.
“Oooh, a scepter!” Alizia squealed. “I’ve always wanted to be a queen. I’ve already got a headdress to be my crown, and with the scepter my look will be complete. Now to find a tribe that will take me. Say, can we track some more kobolds down? They have a vacancy.”
“Alizia, have not you won enough lately?” Olaf asked. “Perhaps it is time for someone else to take this one.”
“But I’m the only one who uses maces, and it has Charisma on it.” Alizia looked the normally docile Olaf in the eyes and when he didn’t back down, she let out a sigh. “Fine, as long as they take up blunt weapons too.”
Item: Bronze Scepter of Authority
Slot: Main Hand
Rarity: Rare
Damage: 9-13
Speed Rating: 4
Stat Bonus: +1 WIS +2 CHA
Weight: 11 Pebbles
Description: The perfect accessory to show off your authority or to make subjects realize your authority if they start to get uppity with you.
When my mind began to go back and forth on the damage compared to the speed, the game helpfully converted those two numbers into a ratio to compare it to my Family Heirloom. The scepter did 2.25 damage per second—going up to 2.31 when my Dexterity and Strength factored in—and my sword had a 1.5 base damage per second and 1.55 after stats. Quite the jump, but since I was going for the Archer class, I’d primarily be using a bow.
“I don’t want the scepter,” I said.
“I do not as well,” Olaf said. “My trainer said Sneak Attack will only work with swords or piercing weapons.”
Decrona distractedly stared at the corpse, and I could barely hear her mumble, “Out.”
Alizia clapped her hands. “Gimmeee!”
Decrona reluctantly handed the item over, evidently so she could go back to staring at the corpse even though it was now fading into the ground.
“Decrona,” I said. “Is everything all right?”
Decrona jumped back as she finally noticed my waving hand. “Hmm . . . Oh, yes. My apologies. I just got a message from one of my contacts who says he has some more info.”
Alizia pretended to put on glasses and then write in an imaginary book. “Interesting. The patient has begun to see her books as people and has for some reason assigned them to the male gender. Be sure to continue monitoring her and not leave her alone with any books, especially if there’s dim lighting and romantic music.”
“Is it about Nyytro?” I asked. “Has your contact found him?”
“Nyytro? I’m not sure. My guy will only tell me the specifics in person, as he’s paranoid about Pyrite reading our messages. When we reach the city, I’m going directly to him. Don’t wait up for me at the inn tonight. I may not make it back until it’s late. I’d like to consult a few of my other contacts as well.”
Alizia looked up from her imaginary book. “And what will you do if your contact is checked out from the library? Will you cheat on him with a thesaurus?”
Olaf burst out into laughter and then apologized. For once, Decrona managed to shut out Alizia’s silliness. I desperately hoped she was finally learning to ignore Alizia and not that she was absorbed in the serious reason behind meeting her contact. We needed them to get along, or our group would not survive.
Dun-Dun-Du
ngeon!
As we made our way back to the city, Alizia continued to pester Decrona with questions, like whether she’d been tested for termites recently and whether she’d asked her contacts how many times they’d been checked out by other women before her. Decrona steadfastly ignored her, and as soon as we went through the city gate, excused herself. I still wasn’t sure if she was in a hurry to get away from Alizia, or if it was due to her contact having something very important to tell her. I secretly hoped it was the latter, but with Alizia’s big mouth, figured it was probably the former.
Alizia wanted to go straight to our inn—more specifically the bar—but we managed to convince her to join us in asking the various NPCs and players if they had any new information about Kasper or Nyytro. She only agreed on condition that she get to ask in the other taverns. Against our better judgment, we let her do that unsupervised while we asked in the shops.
Several hours later, we settled back at our usual inn with nothing to show besides Alizia’s new black eye. Decrona lethargically opened the door right as we ordered. Somehow, she looked even more bedraggled than the rest of us. Despite her eye, Alizia was in an oddly chipper mood.
“Olaf, I have some good news and bad news,” Decrona panted out.
“Bad news first.” Olaf nibbled on his lip nervously.
“The bad news is that I didn’t get to my contact in time, and he left.” She eyed Alizia as she said that. “The good news is that he left a message that said he found something about your son and agreed to meet again, as long as we get to his current location in two days. And, drum roll please—he’s currently in The Outpost of Fen.”
Olaf almost leapt out of his chair. “I don’t know where that is, but let’s go!”
“Exciting, I know. Why is Alizia’s eye like that?” Decrona asked. “Stupid question. A better question would be, why it isn’t always like that?”
“I’d offer to make us match, but I don’t want us to ever look alike in any way.” Alizia tried winking at Decrona but winced from the pain instead.