He snorts. “Good. We don’t want your kind here anyway.”
“You’ve made yourself clear,” I say as I step in front of Deathdale.
I don’t like the way she has her head cocked at the orc and, while I like a good fight as much as any other player, this one would end very poorly for the ugly fucker.
“We’ll be on our way now – that is, unless you’d like to see what it feels like to be roasted from the inside.”
“Sick fucks,” the orc says as he steps aside. He doesn’t pursue us, which is good for him, and it takes us another ten minutes to wind our way out of the neighborhood.
The funny part about this district is how “hidden in plain sight” it is. If you didn’t know the wealthy people of Tin Ingot lived here, you’d miss the steps that lead from the main city street to the district and would be completely oblivious to it.
Wolf barks and a few passing drunkards turn to us. I place my hand on his head and turn my attention to Deathdale. “How would you like to travel tonight? Should we rent a horse for you or, um, are you going to ride Wolf with me?”
She shakes her head.
“Please, just talk to me. You were silent all through dinner. You must know it’s awkward as shit, right? Plus, it’ll make it hard in the future to plan out what we’re going to do. Before you say anything – ha! – here’s an idea: How about you just say short answers, like two or three words? What do you think? You don’t have to go into any great detail, but it will allow us to communicate.”
“Okay.”
I nearly lose my footing as a smile lifts Deathdale’s cheeks.
“Good! A little communication goes a long way.” I clap my hands together, excited to have someone to talk to. “What do you say? Shall we ride Wolf or find a horse?”
“I have a new skill.”
“Five words?” I count them again on my finger. “I’m impressed.”
She shakes her head at me as a ray of light spirals from her ankles to her heels and returns back to her ankles. Seconds later, the Solar Mage floats about eight inches off the ground and propels herself forward.
“Whoa!” I say as I start jogging to catch up with her. Wolf barks and chases after both of us. A city guard just getting off his shift looks from us to a pub across the street. He shrugs, removes his shogun-like helmet, and heads to a pub called The Whore’s Head.
“How long can you go like that for?” I ask as she slows.
“A while.”
“Good, because I’d like to cut some of our travel time down tomorrow by getting as far north as we can today. It’ll take us a day and a half or so to get to Metica. The sooner the better.”
I mount Wolf and scratch him behind the ears. “Think you can keep up with her?”
He barks as Deathdale takes off, floating close to the ground with the bottom of her heels encompassed by light. She speeds past a rickshaw man pulling a young couple and zips around a small donkey hooked to a cart in the middle of the street.
Wolf follows close behind her, panting as he trots.
The wind through my hair makes me feel alive. Seeing Deathdale speeding in front of me as if she is on a hover board is a sight to behold, her revealing armor flapping and nearly giving me a view of her ass cheeks.
Nearly.
I am male, hear me roar.
This last thought is suddenly distasteful to me, which I assume is because of my attribute boost in MIND. Why must men roar and beat their chests, and why am I promoting that behavior? When in doubt, blame MIND, as it seems to be the culprit behind most things. It’s an odd type of shame, the type you feel when you have a thought you know you shouldn’t be having.
Be professional, Oric.
She’s not my fucking coworker, Eric. And why shouldn’t you be having thoughts like that? I think as we near the city gates.
My inner debate is interrupted by a few people yelling and pointing to the sides of the main boulevard. I suppose a Conan-looking guy riding a big-ass Tagvornin wolf and chasing a floating Solar Mage isn’t something they see every day, not to mention the fact that both are Player Killers.
“This isn’t a show!” I call to a group of girls who have stopped to watch us. The youngest of the bunch shrieks, turns, and hugs her sister.
So much for making a friendly exit.
“Let’s go!” I press my body closer to Wolf’s, feeling his muscles move as he tears after Deathdale. She’s faster than hell, and I don’t believe for one minute she’ll be able to sustain this kind of travel indefinitely.
“Whoa!” A city guard jumps back as Deathdale blazes past the city gate. He does so again as Wolf and I come racing along. “Hey!” he calls after us, but we’re long gone by the time he can get his weapon out, not that it would have done him any good.
The fields surrounding northern Tin Ingot are mostly used for grain.
There isn’t a tree in sight, and under an early crimson evening, Deathdale and I speed along a dirt road with wagon-tire grooves permanently cut into the soil. She’s still making record timing, and Wolf is breathing pretty heavily to keep up the pace.
“Let’s slow a bit!” I call after her. She stops and Wolf whips past, only to slow so she can catch up.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, immediately cursing myself for asking her a dumb question. This gets me contemplating whether my question is indeed dumb, and why I’m overanalyzing it in the first place. I know the culprit – MIND – and maybe I should leave that attribute alone once I level up again.
Or not. Hell, if I dump everything in there, I could become the smartest Player Killer Unigaea has ever seen! Ha!
You’re an idiot.
I grin at Deathdale and she doesn’t say anything to me as she presses forward.
Thank God you can’t read my mind.
As she moves, the wheat fields to her immediate left lean towards her, as if attracted to her energy. A spark of light in the distance catches my eye and I point to it. A hill a least a mile away looks to have a campsite on it.
I wouldn’t normally disturb the campsite, but the arrangement of the fire catches my eye.
Rather than a single flame, six flames form a semi-circle.
Some kind of ritual?
My feelings on shamanism – and religiosity, for that matter – make me wary to investigate what may be happening on the hill. But before I can really make a decision about it one way or another, Deathdale cuts into a field of dirt.
I guess that settles that, I think as Wolf trots after her.
As we get closer to the hillock, I notice the fires are actually effigies shaped into human forms. They burn slowly, likely fashioned from the oaks that surround the Eastern Split Mountains, which are known for their slow-burn properties.
The hair on the back of my neck stands to attention as we approach the bottom of the hill and I see the charred bodies all around it.
Adding to my apprehension is the fact that the bodies have been arranged on their backs, with the tops of their blackened skulls facing up the hill.
Deathdale drops to her feet and takes a few steps forward, the fire crackling and the flames whipping in the air atop the hill.
“Is that a person?” I ask as I see something slide down one of the effigies. The flames ripple and spit blue sparks.
A female hits the ground and stands, her body awash with flames like the Human Torch.
The other effigies move as flaming people slide down to the ground.
Six people who appear to be burning alive now stand at the top of the hill, looking down at us.
“Pyro affliction.” As soon as the words leave my lips, I hop off Wolf and brandish my Splintered Sword.
(^_^)
Two of the men, their bodies engulfed in flames, run down the hill flailing their arms over their heads. “Get back, Wolf!” I cry, stepping before him.
I go to meet the first man, heat radiating off his body as he swings his flaming arms at me.
-86 HP!
I slice right th
rough his arms and the flaming appendages go whizzing over his head. “Careful!” I manage to call out to Deathdale, who has pulled her blade of light out and is set to engage the other burning man.
The one I’ve just disarmed swings at me with his stubs, his maw wide as he screeches. Fiery strands of saliva connect the top of his mouth to the bottom, and as he screams, bits of flame flicker from his lips.
Our surroundings heat up. I pivot to miss his fiery stubs and bring my Splintered Sword down onto the back of his neck.
-274 HP! Critical hit!
His head separates from his body and his torso turns to me, his chest heaving up and down. He brings one of his stubs up and I cut it off at the armpit.
-43 HP!
The rest of his arm goes spinning away and I follow through by swinging my blade around and cutting his leg off at the knee.
-59 HP!
“Fuck!” I say as the pyro-afflicted man hits the ground and starts crawling towards me as best he can with one good leg and half an arm. Flames lick his body as he picks up speed, the grass beneath him catching fire as I backpedal.
Pyro affliction is a condition without a cure. Once it takes a person’s body, the particularly viral fire takes over their basic motor functions, using the person as a host. They are like zombies, and cutting off an arm or a leg will do little to stop their advances.
Any living being a person with pyro affliction touches either dies or turns, depending on their will. The blacked bodies all around the hill are a testament to how many people didn’t make it through the transformation.
“Don’t let them touch you!” I shout to both Wolf and Deathdale.
With no idea how deep Deathdale’s knowledge of Unigaea runs, I take it upon myself to inform her of just what it is we are up against. “If their flames touch you, you’ll become one of them!”
The four on top of the hill slowly begin making their way towards us, their shoulders slinking up and down as they track our movements, a trail of flames in their wake. Their leader, one of the females, stands back just a bit, letting the other three move forward.
I’ve got bigger problems.
The only way to stop the pyro-afflicted is to cut all their heads and limbs off and let them burn eternally, keeping them from moving around. Miraculously, the one on the ground is still able to slither fairly easy.
He lunges towards me and lifts his belly off the ground like a striking cobra. I roll to his left, avoiding the flame trailing behind him, and bring my Splintered Sword down onto his last leg.
-57 HP!
He cries out and, seeing an opening, I lead my blade in a scooping motion and take off the rest of his arm. -31 HP!
Not a moment too soon, either.
As Deathdale swings her blade up, splitting her opponent’s body in half, and as Wolf barks on the sidelines, two of the pyro-afflicted descend upon me.
I run to my right, giving myself a little more space before I try to address them. They lay chase, faster than I would have expected, and once I’m in the clear, I swivel around to meet them.
The first swings her arm and I step into it, moving left just in time to slice through her burning flesh and cut her arm away.
-74 HP!
Wolf sprints forward. “No! Back! Get back!”
The flaming woman swipes her other arm at me and the man accompanying her, on hands and feet now, charges as flames spark off his body. I jump out of the way and latch onto Wolf, who charges back towards Deathdale as I hold on for dear life.
I get my footing and hop on, only to see the two pyro-afflicted speeding towards me, their bodies bright beacons on a very near horizon.
“Let’s go, Deathdale!” I call out. It’s too risky. I know this, and I’d rather not botch what I’ve apparently been put on Unigaea to do by turning into what amounts to a flaming zombie.
But the Solar Mage has other plans.
As the four pyro-afflicted surround her, a blinding column of light blasts down from the crimson heavens, the cylinder of energy completely engulfing Deathdale. Wolf skids to a halt and I shield my eyes as the light thins and brightens her skin until she’s glowing.
The four standing pyro-afflicted stop dead in their tracks.
The first to fall is the one whose arm I took. She begins convulsing, the flames bouncing off her body and sending sparks into the night sky as she falls to her knees.
The others follow. The leader still tries to reach out to Deathdale but falls and lands in a pile of flames, inches away from the Solar Mage’s heeled boot.
Deathdale’s knees buckle.
“Wolf!” He gets the gist and tears off towards the Solar Mage, careful not to touch any of the raging flames. I leap off him and land in a run, my face covered in sweat.
Deathdale passes out and I don’t quite catch her – I wish it were that easy – but I do perform something like a baseball slide, allowing her to fall onto my body rather than the hard soil.
As light as she is, it isn’t hard for me to lift the Solar Mage over my shoulder and carry her over to Wolf.
It’s only then I notice how hard I’m breathing, each breath painful as the air fills my lungs.
The heat.
Six bodies burn all around us, amidst crisscrossing trails of flames. I place Deathdale on the ground and wipe sweat from my face.
“Why do we keep meeting like this?” I ask her, recalling the time in Rial Resort Town when she overexerted herself and I had to carry her. “You’re powerful,” I tell her as I crouch before her, “but you already knew that.”
Wolf sits on his haunches and bends forward, pressing his cold nose against Deathdale’s gray hair.
“Careful,” I tell him as he nudges her. “My guess is she’ll be out for a while, recharging. Apparently, the game treats this the same way it treats an injury – so she can’t logout.”
This gets me thinking about what she’s doing right now, or what I was doing, for that matter, when I was beaten to an inch of my life. If I exist completely in a neuronally constructed fantasy world, and I pass out, what happens to my mind? Where does it go? Is this yet another example of a poor misappropriation of Schrodinger's cat, or is it simply a form of digital inertia?
I shake my head at the question as the fire flickers not too far away from us.
Not now. Get to safety.
“Let’s find somewhere to camp,” I say as I bend forward and lift Deathdale, fire flickering all around us. “Anywhere but here.”
I don’t need to look at the gruesome scene of flaming dead bodies to come to the conclusion that there are better places to camp. Once I have Deathdale situated on Wolf, I secure a place behind her and hold onto her waist with my arm as Wolf moves away from the campsite.
To my surprise, Deathdale’s hand comes alive and she squeezes my arm.
Chapter Eleven: A Giant Surprise
Cold air from the northeast swoops over the prairie land situated between the Eastern and Western Splits. After riding for a good hour, we stumble upon a communal campground, noted for its circular pattern of rocks, and take refuge in the shared safe space that doesn’t allow combat within its perimeter.
The frigid wind reminds me of where we’re going – the Rune Lands – and the change in temperature makes me regret not starting a fire. After fending off the pyro-afflicted, a burning campfire was the last thing I wanted to see.
That, and the fact that my skin is still hot from the flames an hour later, keeps me from gathering brush and equipping my fire-starter kit.
Deathdale rests next to Wolf and for all I know, she may log out in the morning as soon as she wakes. She did that once before, on Karuna Island, and if she logs out I will again be alone, my only companion a giant Tagvornin wolf and the voice in my head.
It’s not that bad, Oric.
You’re right, Eric.
“No worries,” I tell myself as I sit down with my back against one of the big rocks making up the perimeter of the camping space. I wouldn’t mind cuddling up next
to Wolf, or Deathdale for that matter, but I don’t quite know how she would react to wake up next to me, and I’d rather not be boiled alive from the inside like the pyro-afflicted she killed.
I’m surprised that even worked.
I’ve dealt with the pyro-afflicted before, those damn flaming zombies, back when I was mayor of Ducat. A group of ten or so came from the Eastern Splits and we were lucky to defeat them.
You didn’t defeat them, I remind myself. Like anyone with enough money and power, I let others fight my battles for me.
“And now you are the last warrior,” I whisper half-jokingly as sleep comes over me.
Part of me wants to chastise myself for this, especially after some of my actions over the last two days, but there is nothing about the “last warrior” moniker that says I need to be moral, or just for that matter.
It simply is how the Obelisk has christened me – branded me.
As I blink my eyes shut, I’m suddenly standing in the lagoon in Hashmonean, the Obelisk before me in her stunning dragonfly-esque armor. Golden glitter is splashed across her face and her disco-ball eyes are locked onto me. As she moves towards me, four vampiric mermaids lift from the water, their naked breasts perky and their wet hair matted to their faces.
“You’ve been busy,” the Obelisk says, her voice that of a thousand hissing insects.
“Is this real?”
She rolls her head back on her shoulders. “Does it matter?”
“This is a dream.”
“Your life is a dream.”
“I am dreaming within a dream.”
“You are.”
“Why have you come here?”
“To remind you of your task.”
“I was betrayed,” I whisper, bringing things back down to the real-enough world. “Governor Talonas tricked me. He killed Sam Raid; he killed all those people. It was a false flag, a ruse. But I’m over that for now. I’m heading north.”
“Yes. To see to the Red Plague.”
“I’m making a pit stop along the way.”
The Obelisk studies me for a moment, her heavy gaze boring a hole through my head. “I am aware.”
“Where is Sam? Will she return? Has she respawned?”
The Last Warrior of Unigaea Box Set: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure Page 29