by Albion, Rex
New Quest: Rescue the Sacrifice (Optional Side Quest). What does a hero do when he hears a woman in distress? Do you accept this quest?
That was a bit of a no brainer at this stage, of course he would. He was hardly going to leave someone to whatever dark fate the tentacle god worshippers might have planned for them. Unless perhaps tentacle monsters were what they sacrificed, and then he might face a bit of a dilemma.
Vandal accepted the quest, while listening intently for guards in case they surprised him. He checked the detailed text of the quest next. “Free the prisoner the cultists have taken and save them from a fate worse than death. Save them from being sacrificed in a ritual to worship a dark god and forever being damned. And also save them from death too. That goes without saying.”
Funny. But the reward was a minor health potion so that would be nice.
Now that his eyes had adjusted again, he was able to see an opening in the passage wall, with more of the rust-proof iron in the shape of bars. He’d found a prison cell.
It was time to rescue a damsel in distress.
Chapter Three
Vandal advanced down the corridor, trying to regain his dignity after jumping like a frightened rabbit when the lantern came on. There was still no sign of guards, so he went straight to the cell and peered inside.
The bars were floor to ceiling ones, with a section fashioned into a door but there was no light inside the cell, so the prisoner was mostly in shadow, hunched up in the corner. He could really only see the vague outline of a person sitting on the floor.
“Hello? Who's there?”
“Who do you think, you brute?” came a defiant voice.
“Oh. Right. Well, if that’s your attitude I suppose I should be going then. I’m sure you’ll get rescued another day.”
“Rescued?”
“Yes, that is the general idea, isn’t it? I make my way into the cultist’s lair and rescue their captive.”
The figure in the shadows moved, standing up and coming into the light, though not all the way to the bars. She was a fairly bright shade of green all lover, save for accents of reddish colouring around her long pointy ears, lips and nose.
The young woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and curvy with it. Not to a ludicrous extent but still generously proportioned if she’d been a human, which she clearly wasn’t. He was pretty sure that the prisoner was a goblin. He’d seen enough marketing material to work that out, though it had mostly shown characters in later stages of the game, who looked more impressive, it was still easy to tell.
There wasn’t any doubt because she seemed to have visited the same clothing shop as Vandal had. Her garments looked more like medieval beachwear, than clothes. A leather loincloth and a similar bra, both just as tattered as his, and leaving equally little to the imagination. Definitely a goblin, and not something like a nymph or whatever else might be green in the game.
Vandal realised she’d been sizing him up just as unsubtly as he’d been sizing her up. Her eyes ran up his muscular legs, across his flat, well-defined six-pack, over his impressive pecs and up to his powerful arms. A bright pink tongue licked her lips and she considered him carefully before she spoke again.
“You’re not a cultist,” she said. There was no name on her portrait, just three question marks where it would be available. The guards hadn’t had names but had been showing up as Cultists along with their level one status.
“Neither are you. What happened to you?”
“I got captured by the cultists a few minutes after I logged in for the first time.”
“You’re a player?” Vandal asked.
“Yes, I am. Couldn’t you tell?”
“You’re the first player I’ve spoken to. How long have you been here then?”
“About half an hour I suppose. I spawned right outside the cave mouth,” she replied. “What’s your name?”
“Conrad. I mean, Vandal Lionheart,” he said, correcting himself.
“I’m Roxy Lickspring,” the goblin replied. An experience notification popped up showing they’d both got a small reward for a social exchange. The question marks over her portrait disappeared and her name replaced them.
“New Acquaintance: You have made a new friend, contact, or ally, Roxy Lickspring, Awoken. 25 XP.”
“Lickspring?” he said, unable to stop himself from smirking. After she gave her name, other information appeared on her portrait. It wasn’t particularly helpful to find out she was a goblin, but the species might be a bit less obvious with more obscure types of fantasy creatures, he supposed. He imagined it would be tricky to tell a dryad from a naiad. Her class was shaman, and it also bore the label Awoken to indicate she was a player.
“Yes. Does it work? I think I can change it for free during the first day, otherwise you have to do a quest to get a name change scroll,” Roxy said. “You have to pay a cash fee too.”
“I suppose it depends on what you wanted it to do for you. It’s a bit suggestive,” Vandal said.
“That’s good to hear, it’s supposed to be.”
“You wanted it to sound... saucy?”
Roxy nodded. “I didn’t want people thinking I’d wandered into the wrong game. I suppose you picked Lionheart because you’re going to be so brave and heroic.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously, which he’d never seen eyes do in real life, but he could have sworn there was a subtle lens flare effect when she said, it.
“Yeah, that was the idea. It’s not too subtle, is it?”
“Subtlety is sometimes overrated,” Roxy said. “Did you get Vandal from the comics, or because you’re a big, savage, barbarian?”
“The later, but the rest works too. Where’s the accent from? I can’t place it. New Zealand?”
Roxy laughed. “No, the home counties. England, around London,” she added when she saw his confusion.
“Want to guess where I’m from?”
“I’d guess the USA, somewhere in the northeast but not New York. Am I close?”
“Vermont actually so you’re pretty close. Sorry, I’m no good with accents, no offence intended,” Vandal said.
“None taken. I could see you were distracted anyway,” Roxy said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because my eyes are up here, genius,” Roxy said, putting her hands in front of her animal fur bra and miming a lifting motion. “You’ve been staring at my tits most of the time.”
Vandal cleared his throat, “I apologise, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Roxy shook her head, “It’s fine. At least I know they worked.”
“Worked?”
“As I intended. I spent quite a lot of time on the character screen before logging in, to make sure I’d picked the best starting appearance,” Roxy said. “I’m glad it was worth it.” She gave him a big wink, her thick black eyelashes somehow making it more effective. It was turning him on, her curvy body, all five feet of it. His cock was responding as if she wasn’t a green skinned goblin, with large, pointed ears that stood out almost horizontally from her head.
“Well in that case, should I feel bad or not?”
“Maybe I want you to feel bad?” Roxy suggested.
“Maybe you do. It’s funny, I just realised that you haven’t got any of the piercings all the goblin ladies in the artwork did. I thought they were standard.”
“No, they’re a cosmetic option. I almost did but I thought better of it.”
“You don’t think they’d have suited you?”
“No, I wanted to spend the points on more Wisdom. I can get pierced in-game later, if my partner would like that. That was another reason. So, I could do it for them, if I met someone cool.”
“You’d get pierced for a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?” he said, not wanting to assume her preferences.
“Probably not, that, but for someone special who liked it, I might,” Roxy said, cryptically. “It’s not going to happen if I don’t get out of this cell though.”
Vandal l
aughed, unable to help himself as a thought crossed his mind.
“Mind sharing?”
“Sorry, it just struck me that I’m here in this fantasy game and talking to a British goblin woman. So, weird.”
“How do you think I feel? I’m talking to an American barbarian. That’s not an accent I associate with epic fantasy.”
“No, me neither. It always seems much better when it’s done in a British accent. Don’t American accents just sound too modern in fantasy films to you? It ruins the immersion for me.”
“We do all the best villains too,” Roxy pointed out.
“Pretty much. Pretty much. I’m surprised to find you in here though, it seems a bit of a rough way to start. I can’t believe they set a spawn point for new players right outside a quest location like this, where you got captured immediately. That’s so sloppy, I wonder if the rest of the game is badly planned, I hope I’m not wasting my time,” Vandal said.
“It’s not a bug, it’s a starting quest I got offered when I was doing character generation,” Roxy said.
“What? I don’t get it. A quest to get kidnapped,” Vandal said. “That’s a bit weird, for a heroic game.”
“Haven’t you ever rescued a maiden in a game before?”
“Yeah, but NPC’s. We’re the players, we’re supposed to do the rescuing, it’s our job.”
“Maybe you want to rescue people? Maybe I like being the one getting rescued? Did that cross your mind?” Roxy asked, smiling at him through the bars. She was shamelessly eye-fucking him as she talked, making no attempt to hide the way she was sizing him up.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh,” Roxy nodded, biting her lip as she looked him up and down slowly. “It’s hot. I’m the damsel in distress, you’re the big, strong, brave barbarian warrior, come to save me from a fate worse than death.”
“Actually, my quest says I’m supposed to rescue the sacrifice,” Vandal pointed out. “I think your fate is death too.”
Roxy nods. “Isn’t it scary? If you weren’t here to save me, can you imagine the terrible things those nasty brutes might have done to me? I don’t have to, I heard them talking.”
Vandal swallowed hard. He could imagine it. He could imagine all sorts of horrible things and all sorts of rather wonderful things too. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple.
“I can see you’re thinking about it. It’s not hard to imagine what such wicked men might do with me, on their pagan altar, before their ritual, is it?”
Vandal shook his head. If it were a story in a book, she’d surely be stripped naked, perhaps violated before they concluded their dark ritual. But this was a game, and she wasn’t an NPC but a real human. Just like him.
His throat was dry, which was a strange realisation, that the game had that level of fidelity. He croaked an answer, “I don’t think you’d like what they’d do to you, if it were a horror game. I think in this, they’ll just sacrifice you.”
“After stripping me naked though. Sacrifices need to be naked don’t they. You can’t be tying clothed women to your altar to sacrifice to a dark god,” Roxy said.
“No, probably not. Stripped naked and sacrificed. Sounds terrifying, what if I hadn’t come along right now. I suppose you could log out into ASSET.”
Roxy shook her head. “I can’t log out, it’s not permitted. I have to stay here until the quest is done.”
“I might not have logged in. You could have been here indefinitely.”
“No, I knew you were coming,” Roxy said. “I just didn’t know when. It might have been hours or days, but I knew someone would be coming to rescue me.”
“How could you know?”
“Because it’s part of the story for the fantasy. I’m here because I wanted to be rescued, and the quest was offered to me when I was getting ready to login. So, the idea is for me to be rescued, and the fantasy doesn’t work for me if I’m not,”
“Yeah, but it could have been days before anyone like me came to this specific dungeon.”
“Could it? How did you get the quest and when?”
“About an hour and a bit ago. I logged in and I was in the starter town. I looked around a bit and the guard captain came up to me. I thought he was about to tell me off,” Vandal admitted.
“I’m not surprised, you’re wandering around with hardly any clothes on,” Roxy said. “He might have thought you were a flasher.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit much, isn’t it?”
“I can see the appeal,” Roxy said, licking her soft, pink lips slowly and winking at him. “It doesn’t look like much from an armour standpoint, but you can’t deny it shows off that six pack and those big arms well. What happened next? I want to hear this.”
“Thanks. I suppose I picked this look deliberately too. This leather is a bit chafing though, I’ll admit,” Vandal said.
“We’ll soon be able to get that off you, I’m sure,” Roxy said.
“I was thinking of a shirt under it.”
“As long as it’s not too concealing, that could work too,” Roxy smiled. “But I’m getting distracted,” she said, with a longing look and a soft sigh. Vandal felt himself respond to that. Roxy, or whatever her real name was, was quite bold. “Do go on.”
“The captain asked me if I was an adventurer and looking for something to do. When I said, I was, he said, he had a small task for me, just come here and investigate some disappearances. He made it sound easier than it looks,” said, Vandal. “I’m not sure it’s a job for one level one player.”
“A big tough barbarian like you? You can handle it. I bet you’ve got a mighty weapon you can use, haven’t you, Vandal? I know the men love these games so they can play with their big two handers.”
Vandal almost choked on that one and had to swallow again before he could reply without making an idiot of himself. He drew his shortsword and held it up, it glowed very faintly as it got nearer to her, “Oh that’s original, he said, out loud.”
“I don’t think it likes me,” Roxy laughed. “Elvish, I assume?”
Vandal nodded, “I’m pretty sure it is. It’s a bit of an easy nod, right?”
“Don’t tell me you’re not a fan of the greatest books ever,” she teased. He couldn’t lie, of course he was, even the films and the show they were supposed to be doing. She looked him up and down. “Maybe given your choice of character class, you prefer another franchise?”
“I can’t lie, I’m a fan of it all. I’m still waiting for a TV series about a Cimmerian though.”
“But you still acknowledge The Lord of the Rings is the best, right? You’re not one of the fans of season eight of you know what, are you?” Roxy asked, squinting at him suspiciously.
“Absolutely not, I’m still hoping the books finish better and I love the Professor’s work, it’s even good without the scouring.”
“Oh my, be still my beating heart.”
“Something I said?”
“Hearing a guy talk about the Scouring of the Shire does things to me,” said, Roxy. She made an appreciative sound as she chewed at her lip, waving her hand in front of her face as if she were burning up. “It’s so disappointing when you meet a cute guy, and he’s all about the films. It makes me think he has to run his finger under the words and sound them out.”
“I wish they’d filmed all of it, including Tom Bombadil, but perhaps they’ll do a reboot one day that’s even better. The books are amazing, the films are wonderful, but I must say there’s a trend I approve of that’s made it to New Albion,” said, Vandal.
“What might that be?”
“The goblins are so much sexier.”
Chapter Four
Roxy giggled. “Flattery will get you everywhere. Speaking of which, let’s talk about your impressive weapon.”
“You mean Stabby?” said, Vandal, holding up the glowing weapon.
“You cannot call it that!” said, Roxy, laughing. “Seriously though, where did you get it?”
“Just over there, in a se
cret room I found. There’s an entrance up top.”
“Does that mean we can get out without completing the main quest?”
“Yes, and I’m not sure we could handle it. There’s a lot of them. What if they come back? We should probably stop talking before they hear us.”
“They’re not coming back; they don’t do patrols. We have plenty of time to talk,” Roxy said.
“Don’t you want to get out immediately?”
“Oh my, you don’t get this at all, do you?” Roxy giggled. “Did you ever think about this, Vandal? Rescuing a damsel in distress, from the clutches of the bad guys.”
Vandal nodded. Of course he had. Practically every time he read a book or watched an action film, someone needed rescuing. Even the hero. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Did you imagine finding just what you needed to get there in time, and nothing bad happened until you were almost done rescuing her, right? Then maybe you were almost out, about to save her, and you had to fight off some guards,” Roxy said. “Is that close?”
“You read my mind.” She had too, that was how it went. You had to rescue the woman, and in his fantasies it was always a woman of course, and then the fight started. “So, as soon as I open this door, you think the guards will coincidentally appear? That’s probably a good point.”
“Now you’re starting to understand how the game works.”
“I suppose before I let you out, I should find you a weapon, right?” Vandal said, following through logically. Roxy was smart. A clear thinker. He liked that.
Half the fun of these games was working out how to do the impossible, especially when you started out with rags, broken shields, rusty weapons or whatever beginners’ items they let each character have. Together, they could make a great team, if they thought alike on things like that. Work smarter, not harder was a reliable way to play most games, Vandal had found.