The Prisoner of Arabella

by Matthew Kent

  “What is that smell?” Synon said, making a disgusted face.

  “Brimstone,” quipped Harut. “That's the smell of old time religion.”

  Synon gave him a blank look, not catching the reference as I and the rest of the Angels chuckled.

  “Speaking of brimstone,” BarbieQ replied and pointed across the span and up. “It looks like we are going to need to send more of it their way.”

  Her gesture indicated a group of goblins glaring at us across the distance. She took careful aim, and a bright pearl of orange and red light shot out from her finger. The motion was like a streak across my vision. I knew it was partly from my eyes having adjusted to the darkness around us, but still it was almost disturbing. Then even before we could comment there was a roar as her spell exploded amongst the group. It blew two of the heavier, armor- clad goblins from the rocky shelf. One screamed as he plunged to his death. The others were scattered and sent stumbling about, blinded by the blast worse than we were. Soon though the survivors were stumbling towards us, yelling what I assumed were threats and curse words.

  We set ourselves to receive their charge. Mikail’s stance was set to the side of the tunnel wall away from the drop off, the others arrayed on the side. Our positioning forced the goblins to come at us and have their backs to the ledge, a definite disadvantage, I thought. Even as they charged at us, the mages and Synon sniped at the onrushing foes. Just before they got to us, another group burst out of a passage in front of us and charged with the first.

  Being in the middle of combat is a terrible time to think and have ideas; the dumbest of ideas seem sane while under fire. Most soldiers will tell you it's not the other guy’s soldiers that scare them, it's the amateurs that do. Why? Because you never know what they will do. Professionals have been trained. They have a set rules of engagement, and you know their weapons and tactics. An amateur, on the other hand, may try to be a hero. Why is being a hero bad, you ask? Because heroes get good people killed. The other part they don’t tell you is that the guy being the hero often buys the farm in a new and interesting way while getting those good folks killed. Moral of the story: don’t be a hero.

  Still, I used some of my spells even as I played my songs. That's why a third, smaller group of goblins led by an orc surprised me from the rear. The first sign they were there was when I heard a scraping of steel on stone.

  “Behind us!” I shouted as the orc hit me.

  Shield Bash. You take 71 damage and are knocked back.

  The rush and subsequent shield bash sent me reeling, and the knock back sent me over the ledge .

  “No!” Tekadan yelled as I went over.

  But I tried to be calm as I called up my magic. Those goblins thought they were clever? Well, it was time for me to show them I’m not so easily killed. I cast Levitate on myself and shot back toward the ledge I had gone over. The game mimicked real world physics in most ways—I had started my fall and nearly reached terminal velocity in the three or four seconds I took to cast my spell.

  My momentum slowed, and I was rocketing back up. In the few moments I had been gone, the battle had went against us. Harut was down, Appolyon was backed up but gamely fighting. BarbieQ had a pile of smoking bodies before her. She sang and danced, and her arms slung spells and fire, and goblins died while Mikail fought and taunted them away from the party. I assessed the situation, took out my lute and played Mass Healing, and cast individual spells of healing on the party members. In seconds, Herut was back up fighting, and Samael had the pressure taken off of him so he could heal and fight.

  I was surprised when one of the goblins tried to be a hero and ran toward me only to jump off of the ledge, teeth bared in a rictus of hate and glee, his arms over his head with his hands locked around the pommel of a dagger. Even as he jumped, I allowed myself to float to the side. The look on his face as he saw he had missed me was comedic, though he tried to swing his blade at me as he passed me by.

  “Yargh!” I heard him yell as he plunged down into the depths. I couldn’t help the smile plastered on my face.

  To punctuate this death, I shot out Magic Missiles. I was surprised to see five missiles shoot from my hand and impact one of the goblins, taking him to his knees even as an errant strike from Mikail’s great sword severed the monster’s head from his shoulders. We soon finished the fight.

  “They never run, do they?” I said.

  “No,” Mikail said, his shoulders slumping with fatigue. Samael tossed him a green stamina potion, which he drained. “They can’t back down. You have to fight until one of you is dead. But they get experience just like we do, though they only get the one life.”

  “It's a waste, really,” Appollyon said. “That was one of the reason the Arabella project was transferred over to the NASA program and the Mars mission.”

  “I hadn’t heard that story,” Harut said. “Was that when Morner was involved with it?”

  “Yeah, enough jawing though. These youngsters don’t want to rehash old history. Let's get headed to the top to clear this place out,” Mikail said.

  “If we ever get a chance,” I said, “I’d love to hear the rest.”

  Mikail nodded at me then clapped me on the shoulder.

  Chapter 23

  Who ever said the fight to the top is the toughest fight you will ever love never had goblins trying to shove a sword through them while others fired arrows and dropped boulders on them.

  The higher up the spire we fought, the more we experienced a change in the enemies. The goblins grew to be fewer but greater in strength, with heavier armor and more powerful weapons. They were also joined by smaller goblinoids. They were about three feet tall, slender green-skinned humanoids. They looked like elves that had been squished down and twisted. They were the ones shooting arrows and dropping stones.

  “Damned kobolds," Samael said.

  “Wait, kobolds?” I asked.

  “Yes, kobolds. They are goblin kin,” he replied with some heat in his voice. “What did you think they were?”

  “I don’t know. They don’t look like the kobolds I killed in the first mine.”

  “What are they, though?” Synon asked.

  Samael snorted.

  “Depends on who you ask, but most would agree they are a pestilential vermin that needs to be removed. They are worse than cockroaches,” Samael said warming up to his diatribe.

  But even before he could get into the meat of the matter, more heavily armored goblins attacked us, and this time they had magic users backing them up. I pushed Samael out of the way of a green arrow—it splashed against the stones behind us, and I heard a sizzle as the substance reacted to the stone.

  “Tekadan, take out the mages first. Apollyon, Harut, and BarbieQ, drop the fighters. Lorcan, backup heal, and Synon, snipe their mages and healers,” Mikail ordered as he received the brunt of the charge.

  Even before Mikail had finished speaking, Tekadan had vanished from view. I counted three large goblins in heavy chain mail, five or six kobolds in leather, and six mages. This would be a rough fight, but fortunately we had moved to a gallery in the mine, so I was less likely to be thrown off a cliff.

  I focused on my job of healing and buffing our people. My songs were a huge benefit, but I had realized my character was over powered. I had two differed sources of magical power and some fairly impressive spells and songs to draw upon. How, you ask? Well, my songs drew on my stamina, while my magic was powered by mana. This was why my character had three primary statistics. This was not typical—mages only drew on mana, fighters drew on their stamina pool, and some rare warriors like paladins and some Eastern classes like the sword saints drew on both but had the stats to only support one pool. It didn’t hurt that I had gotten several stat boosts early on. These had made my character tough, but my character was only as tough as I was.

  The walls of the shaft were raw and unfinished stone. They showed the tool marks used to gouge them to get to the meteoric iron inside them. There came a deep rumbling from
above us and the smell of ozone, a scent I’d always associated as a sweet smell with a hint of chlorine, and a humanoid shape came into view, its body made up of roiling black clouds with flashes of lightning like a thunderstorm come to life.

  And we were in its way.

  I focused on it trying to identify what the monstrosity was.

  Level 22 Storm-Golem. This is what happens when someone loves storms way too much.

  “Oh, what fresh hell is this?” I heard someone say through the fighting.

  A kobold lurked behind the creature, clad in oft-patched robes covered in rattling bone ornaments and waving a short staff.

  X - X - X

  “Ma’am, could you look at this reading?” Logan said as he looked back to the on-duty supervisor. She was a squat toad of a woman with the personality of a pit bull, but he had to admit she knew what she was doing.

  “What is it?” she asked as she pulled up his screen onto hers.

  “Pod Xc-107ax34 is showing a temperature spike in the core,” Logan said as he watched her response to his report.

  She reviewed the data then went back into the service logs.

  “Why didn’t they replace the circuit?” she asked musingly. “That pod should have been down checked.”

  “Ma’am? Your orders?” Logan inquired. He could see her think as her face grew contemplative.

  “Monitor it for now. If it goes up five degrees, then we do an emergency shut down. As soon as that pod is done for the day, down check it until it’s repaired and in spec.”

  Her orders given, she went back to work.

  “I’m just curious why don’t they use the emergency log out with the pods for the players who are locked in?” the technician asked.

  She sighed and looked over at him. “The long and the short of it is that something has over ridden the emergency log outs on those pods, and no one knows what it is,” she said before going back to her own board.

  X - X - X

  “Does anyone even know how you fight a walking thunderstorm?” Mikail asked.

  I was as stumped as he was, but I had one idea.

  “Harut, cast ice spells at it to see if that cools it down,” I yelled.

  Even as I did, the first fork of lightning shot out from the monster’s outstretched hand. It flew toward BarbieQ, striking her in the chest and sending her flailing back against the wall. I saw her health bar drop nearly to empty. I played Song of Healing and hoped that it wouldn’t be enough to draw the monster’s ire.

  The good news was that its bolts of energy were also hitting the goblin melee fighters. Harut threw a globe of ice that struck the beast is its side, and there seemed some effect as it slowed. It returned the attack with one of its own its energy balls, lashing back at Harut and sending the mage sprawling.

  The beast was destroying our party, along with the last of the goblins. There was a reason battles between knights were not fought in thunderstorms, I thought, as one more of the goblins fell with steam and smoke rising from its armor. The scent of charred pork wafted up. I spammed my healing songs, and when I could, cast my spells.

  After I cast Magic Missile on the thing, my spell had healed the monster a few hit points.

  You cast Magic Missile. Your Magic Missile heals the Level 22 Storm-Golem by 41 HP.

  ““No!” I yelled. “Electric-based attacks heal it. Barbie, see if fireballs have an effect.”

  She was standing, if just barely. The kobold I had seen was gibbering and dancing in the background, and that bit of attention I wasn’t paying to the fight almost cost me my life as a bolt of lightning shot toward me, and Tekadan pushed me out of the way.

  “Pay attention!” he shouted as he rolled off me and ran to the side, dodging another attack.

  Apollyon to the side was now casting ice spells. They were having an effect on the monster, if only slowly. This fight would be long and drawn out. I could tell.

  “Lorcan, can you cast that ice song once more?” I looked at BarbieQ and tried to remember what I had done to channel the song.

  As I focused, I saw Mikail charge the Storm Golem. His sword struck out, and lightning leaped to his body. He collapsed. Samael healed him even as more lightning came in on us. Then my song took hold.

  Born of cold and winter air

  And mountain rain combining…

  The Storm Golem froze as my spell hit. The lightning died as the molecules inside it slowed. The beast shuddered as Tekadan jumped on its back and seemed to back stab and kill it even as lightning arced across his body. As the monster fell, I saw the kobold shaman running up the ramp screaming, “You no take. Ours! She ours.”

  We still had at least one more to kill.

  X - X - X

  “Emergency shut down. There is an energy spike. Shut it down! Shut it down now!” she said as the security camera switched to the pod in question.

  They could see the arc of energy playing over the outer shell and the bubbling plastic. The shut down took too long, she thought.

  “Emergency response teams have been dispatched,” One of the other technicians yelled. “Fire suppression engaged.”

  “Get me the life signs,” she said, even knowing what she would see.

  X - X - X

  Goblin corpses littered the ground.

  Our own injured lay on top of the goblin dead. The monster had fallen with Tekadan atop its corpse. I rushed over to check on my friend.

  The others were moving, but Tekadan lay there.

  “Hey bud, get up. We have bad guys to kill,” I said shaking him.

  He didn’t stir, and then his name grayed out and his body just lay there.

  “Tekadan, not funny, man. Get up,” Harut said. “Samael, can you get him up? It says he is concussed.”

  Samael stepped up, but before he could lean over to cast healing Tekadan’s body faded. It was still there on the ground, but the colors had muted as if the life and light that had colored it had gone out completely.

  I looked up at the others. We had all moved up around him.

  “Mikail?” I asked.

  “I’ve heard of this,” he said sadly and stooped down next to his friend. “It happens rarely, when a player dies in the real world.”

  I saw him swallow, then he reached down with one hand to close his eyes. The others walked over and stood around us.

  The Angels bowed their heads, and I copied them. Then Mikail spoke. “God, our Father, Your power brings us to birth,

  Your providence guides our lives, and by Your command we return to dust. Lord, those who die still live in Your presence. Their lives change but do not end. I pray in hope for my family, relatives and friends, and for all the dead known to You alone. In company with Christ, who died and now lives, may they rejoice in Your kingdom, where all our tears are wiped away. Unite us together again in one family, to sing Your praise forever.”

  “Amen,” we said together raggedly.

  “How…” were the only words Synon had.

  “We’ll find out eventually.” Harut said. “For now we go on.”

  BarbieQ stopped next to him and leaned down placed a hand on his chest. “Goodbye, Captain Hilts.”

  I felt drained. I’d never had too many friends in life. Closing my eyes, I centered myself, took up my lute and played. I’m not sure what I played, other than random notes.

  I looked up at the others. “Let’s go kill that fucking shaman.”

  Chapter 24

  We went through the remaining kobolds like a dose of salts; they were broken into groups of two or three. They didn’t stand a chance. It was tougher on us, as we were missing our scout and non-ranged DPS, but the kobolds died just the same. Mikail seemed to have an added fury to the swing of his sword, and the mages added ferocity and bite to their spells.

  The top of the spire was a large open room. There was a figure on a dais, and before it stood the shaman we assumed had spawned the Storm Golem that had killed our friend.

  Beside him there were three other kobo
lds. They looked to be elders of the tribe, stooped with age, bent with wisdom, and full of power. This was going to be a very tough fight, and then there was the figure on the dais.

  “Stops right theres, humans,” the kobold said, glaring at us. “Why you invade home? Why you kill? You no take queen, she ours, she ours.”

  We were all looking at each other with shifty eyes. When there came a loud crack in the silence, the shaman stopped in mid-tirade, then fell over.

  We looked to where the sound came from, and Synon stood there, lowering her fusil.

  “What?” she said defensively. “He would keep talking until they were ready to attack.”