by A. J. Markam
Meera unfurled her white wings to their full ten-foot wingspan, flapped them, and took flight.
I noticed the gnome Rogue inching over, trying to get a look up her toga.
“Dude – quit trying upskirt my angel,” I snapped.
The gnome blushed, knowing he was totally busted. He stepped back as the entire group laughed – except the female elf, who threw him some serious side-eye.
Meera didn’t get far, though. As soon as she reached the top of the walls, she thudded into some kind of invisible force field.
“I can’t go any further,” she called down. “There’s some sort of barrier.”
“I figured they weren’t going to make it easy on us. Come on back down.” I turned to the others. “I’ve got this spell that lets me visually scout ahead. Let me try to send it up over the walls, even though I’m pretty sure it won’t work.”
Hodin nodded. “Worth a shot.”
I cast my All-Seeing Eye and sent it twenty feet up in the air. Since I saw whatever it saw, it felt like I was flying. It was especially freaky looking back down at our little group and seeing myself down there with Meera and Stig.
The Eye couldn’t get above the invisible barrier either.
“No go,” I told the others.
“Can you use the spell as we run the dungeon?” Hodin asked. “Give us a little advance warning of what’s coming?”
“Sort of. There’s a three-minute cooldown, and the spell only lasts 30 seconds at a time. Let me send it through the center doorway while it’s still active.”
“Go for it.”
The Eye zoomed through the gap and was stopped by the hieroglyphics wall eight feet past the doorway. Now I had a choice of left or right.
I directed the Eye to float 20 feet to the left and turn the corner.
The barrier turned out to be a blind wall whose only purpose was to make sure we couldn’t see past it. It was hiding a gigantic courtyard filled with sand and a central fountain. Nothing else.
“Uh-oh,” I said, “we’ve got a big open space with nothing around. Sure sign of bad shit to come.”
“Can you see anything else?” Hodin asked.
“Hold on, I’m sending it out – ”
The Eye was halfway across the courtyard when the 30 seconds expired and it winked out of existence. Suddenly I was back with the others in the entrance corridor.
I was curious, so I brought up my map –
Nice. Everywhere the Eye had traveled was now un-greyed, and I could see the pathway I’d taken.
“Everything I saw is on my map now, but I didn’t get far enough to know what’s beyond the courtyard,” I said. “So which way do you want to go?”
“Always go right, right?” the Druid said.
That was a common saying in gaming. Besides the whole ‘sinister path’ stigma about the left (that’s what ‘sinister’ means in Latin – ‘left’), lazy programmers in half-assed games would often put the best path on the right.
Not always in OtherWorld, though. There weren’t any lazy people working for Westek.
Well, except for that asshole who’d created Hark Silo and the Century Chickenhawk.
Right now, we basically had a one-in-three shot of the saying being true.
Hodin shrugged. “Might as well. The empty space is either going to be boring as hell, or just plain hell. Anybody have any objections?”
No one did.
“Alright, then – ‘right’ it is,” Hodin the dwarf said, and pulled his war hammer off his back.
The gnome Rogue unsheathed two razor-sharp knives that were almost as long as he was tall, and the Fire Mage readied her staff.
Then we all ran down the sandy corridor to the far end.
Once we turned the corner we found an open area with ten trolls milling about. They all had scimitars and 6,000 hit points apiece – 60K in total.
If I were by myself, they would have slaughtered me.
But with five of us, it would be a fairly even fight.
“I got these Lawrence of Arabia motherfuckers!” Hodin yelled, and rushed directly at them with a whooping scream.
As the tank, his job was to engage hostiles and take the heat off the rest of us, drawing our enemies in to attack him and only him.
Which he did admirably.
The trolls all looked at him in surprise as he leapt five feet up in the air and came down swinging.
“AAARRRRHHH!” he roared as his hammer bashed in the first troll’s head.
The others descended on him, scimitars clanging against his plate armor. They didn’t strike any mortal blows, but every swipe shaved more hit points off him.
But the Druid was shooting spirals of yellow energy into Hodin, replenishing his hit points almost as fast as the trolls could take them off.
The elf and I opened fire – her with some sort of molten rock missiles, and me with Doomsday.
The gnome went into cloaking with a whoosh sound, though I could still see his footprints racing across the sand. A second later they disappeared, and one of the trolls got knocked to the ground as though he’d been jumped by an invisible midget.
Excuse me. Little person.
Stig started casting fireballs. They weren’t terribly effective, but every little bit helped.
But Meera… god DAMN.
She let out a startling battle cry as her sword ignited.
FWOOOOSH!
Then she unfurled her wings, flew eight feet above the ground, and sliced off the arm of the nearest troll like a Jedi cutting through butter.
“Holy shit,” I heard the elf mutter next to me.
Hodin’s hammer had some Mjolnir-like properties beside just its appearance. He threw it 15 feet up in the air and it came slamming back down three times as fast, sending out a shockwave that blasted the trolls onto their backs.
As the corpses multiplied, golden numerals flashed through the air – 850 XP, 850 XP, 850 XP. Within seconds they became background noise and I barely noticed them.
My Doomsday spells kicked in after 20 seconds, and three of the remaining trolls fell dead. Between Hodin’s hammer, Meera’s flaming sword, the fire-elf’s lava bolts, my Soul-Sucking, and the invisible midget (Excuse me, little – ah, fuck it), we made short work of the others.
“Nice,” Hodin said as he surveyed the dead bodies scattered around him. “Good work, people. Okay, Ian, loot away.”
I went from body to body finding what I could – a couple silver coins here, a healing potion there. I didn’t need it because of Soul Suck, but it would fetch a couple of silver from a local apothecary.
Meanwhile, the guys in the group were all ogling Meera.
“Where did you get that sword?” the Druid asked.
“It was given to me when I joined the Heavenly Host of the All-Father,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Uh… okay…”
“That was hot,” the gnome said as he came out of cloaking with a Whoosh. “Chicks with flaming swords are fuckin’ hot.”
“Please, no bad words,” Meera sniffed disapprovingly.
The gnome stared at her, then looked over at me. “Is she fuckin’ serious?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“I said no bad words,” Meera snapped at the gnome.
“Meera, don’t lecture other people about their language,” I ordered.
She opened her mouth to protest, but the collar glowed and she shut her mouth. She looked pissed, though.
“Wow!” the gnome said. “Did she just shut up because of that neck thingee?”
“Yup,” I said as I looted the last troll.
“Man, I gotta get one of those for my girlfriend.”
“Like you HAVE a girlfriend,” the female elf said.
“When I GET a girlfriend!” the gnome shouted angrily.
“Like that’ll ever happen,” the elf retorted, and the entire group laughed.
“I’m ready,” I announced. It had been a fairly good take: about 40 silver worth of coins
and things I could resell.
So about 0.0001% of what I owed Varkus.
Great.
“Let’s rock ‘n roll,” Hodin said, and led the way through the maze.
The next thing up was a small courtyard with fountains on both sides. As soon as we entered, giant cobras reared up, spread their hoods, and started slithering towards us.
My heart started beating faster in a way it hadn’t when we encountered the trolls. There’s just something about seeing scary creatures from the real world coming at you that’s not the same as facing down marauding fairytale creatures. You could tell your brain Those cobras aren’t real all you wanted, but your brain was too busy shitting its drawers to listen.
“Snakes… why did it have to be snakes,” the Druid said with a familiar cadence to his voice.
“Nice – Raiders of the Lost Ark,” I said. “You guys are my kind of geeks.”
“Fearless and inventive!” Hodin laughed as he launched himself right in the middle of the serpents.
I grinned. “+1 for the Jabba quote.”
The cobras were unpleasant to deal with on a psychological level. Imagine a snake as big around as your wrist sinking its fangs into your shoulder. (Shudder.) Not to mention their venom gave a five-minute debuff of -10 to your hit points.
For the non-geeks out there, that meant your maximum available Health dropped by 10 points every time a snake bit you, which meant that you were easier to kill for the next five minutes as the venom wore off.
So if you had 500 Health and a cobra bit you, for the next five minutes you only had 490 hit points. Get bit ten times and you only had 400 hit points.
The Druid could increase our hit points to their temporary maximums, but he apparently didn’t have the means to remove the poison debuffs.
Despite all that, the cobras were easier to kill than the sand trolls. After we finished them off I went around and snapped off the fangs, which would bring a silver apiece on the open market.
We continued through the narrow sandstone walls and came across a dozen giant scarab beetles that ranged from the size of Jack Russell terriers to German Shepherds. Unfortunately, they moved as fast as Chihuahuas on crack.
Just like with the snakes, the creep factor was high – but we killed the scarabs relatively quickly, mostly thanks to the Fire Mage. She had a particularly effective AOE spell (Area of Effect), meaning she could hit multiple targets in a given area.
She twirled her hands and the sky boiled dark with clouds above us. Seconds later, a storm of flaming hail blasted down like some sort of miniature meteorite shower/Biblical plague. The tiny chunks of burning rock slammed into the scarabs and scorched them viciously. All that was needed after that were a few Doomsday spells from me and a bit of cleanup from Hodin and the gnome.
Each dead scarab yielded an iridescent piece of carapace worth 50 coppers. I picked up 12, so basically 6 silver. Not bad for a bunch of bugs.
Next we came to an empty courtyard with six-foot-long, rectangular raised mounds in the sand. They looked a lot like freshly dug graves. Groups of four mounds were scattered throughout the courtyard, though we easily could have threaded our way through them.
“What’s in these?” Hodin wondered aloud as he poked the nearest mound with his hammer.
“I don’t think that’s a good – ” the elf Fire Mage started, but didn’t get to finish her sentence.
The sand in the mound shifted and a Ghoul clawed its way up out of the ground. It was basically a zombie – a desiccated corpse with grey skin. Its hollow eye sockets and open mouth spilled out sand as it stumbled to its feet.
3000 hit points. Not bad at all.
Only problem was, as soon as one of its withered feet hit the grave-mound next to it, it woke up its neighbor – which started a chain reaction. Every time a new Ghoul clawed its way up out of the sand, it woke up the one right next to it.
Thank God there were only four in this clump, and that they were far enough away not to trigger another group.
We were winning easily when Hodin made the mistake of throwing up his hammer and doing his shockwave thing.
As the concentric circles of force blasted out around us, they triggered every single grave within the blast radius. Within seconds we went from fighting four Ghouls to getting swamped by sixteen.
“SHIT! Sorry, guys!” Hodin yelled.
It wasn’t a big deal. It was definitely a harder fight, and it kept me busy casting Doomsday – but with Meera’s flaming sword hacking and slashing, we came out on the other side of the fight without losing anybody. As I went around and picked up a silver from each Ghoul, the Druid healed us all.
“No more poking at mounds,” the elf snapped at Hodin.
“Not even if they’re on a hot chick,” the gnome Rogue joked, and all the guys laughed.
“I do not understand,” Meera frowned.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
The collar glowed slightly, and she got a placid look on her face. “Very well.”
Damn I was loving that collar.
After the courtyard with the graves, we went around the wall at the far corner –
And found ourselves at a dead end.
“Dammit,” Hodin swore.
“What was that about always going right?” the gnome ribbed the Druid.
“It’s fine,” I said, and pulled up my map. Yup, the entire right corner was now fully illuminated. When I entered the dungeon next time, I would know exactly where not to go. “We got some good intel out of it.”
“Back to the entrance, I guess,” Hodin said, and we ran back the way we’d come. This time we were careful not to trigger any rectangular mounds. We’d already killed all the other baddies on the way, so we got back to the graveyard in record time.
“So, left or center?” the elf Fire Mage asked.
“I vote center,” the Druid said.
“Who on the left hurt you?” the gnome joked. “Hillary Clinton?”
“NO POLITICAL JOKES,” the female elf shouted.
Hodin sighed. “Before you all kill each other, let’s go kill the monsters first. Hey Ian, you said it was an empty courtyard, right?”
“That’s all I saw.”
“Well, we’re already here. Might as well do it.”
We went through the center doorway as a group. As soon as we were on the other side of the blind wall, I realized that it wasn’t just a wall – it was an L-shaped stone with a 20-foot-long base which provided a solid platform for us to stand on.
We paused on the stone and looked out at the empty expanse of sand, vast as a football field. Out on the ‘50-yard line,’ the fountain dribbled water from tier to tier, finally emptying into the wide circular reservoir at the bottom.
Other than our platform and the walls all around us, the fountain was the only other structure made of stone in the courtyard.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the gnome muttered.
“Never tell me the odds!” Hodin yelled, and ran out into the courtyard.
Over to his right, the sand began to move like something was burrowing up under it.
“HODIN, TO YOUR RIGHT!” the elf screamed.
Hodin had just enough time to turn when the sand erupted and a gigantic worm burst out of the ground. It looked like a miniature version of the desert monsters from Dune – thick as a tree trunk, with several lines extending down from the tip of its blunt head. No eyes or appendages, just mottled beige skin.
The sandworm reared ten feet up in the air, though at least half of its body had to still be beneath the surface. Then the lines on its head separated and opened like the petals on a hideous flower, revealing a pink fleshy interior covered with hundreds of small, sharp teeth.
It roared like a cross between the Predator and a walrus, then slammed down into Hodin.
Shit, we were in the movie Tremors.
“DAMMIT!” the dwarf roared as he got plowed into the sand. Then the worm’s monstrous jaws began to gnaw at his
plate armor.
“HIT IT!” the Fire Mage yelled. She cast some sort of lava blast that erupted from the sand right under the worm, and I zapped it with Soul-Suck.
The gnome Rogue raced towards Hodin, but he didn’t get even halfway there before a second worm erupted from the sand beneath him and swallowed him whole.
“HOLY SHIT, did you see that?!” the Druid shouted. “It swallowed him like a pill!”
“Is he still alive?!” the Mage called out.
“He’s still showing up on my Healing Window, so – holy SHIT – ”
The Druid was reacting to the appearance of two knife tips through the skin of the sandworm – poking out from the inside. The blades tore along the flank of the worm like a zipper unzipping. Out came the gnome, covered in yellow gunk, clawing his way from the wound like a nightmarish birth.
“And I thought they smelled bad on the outside,” the gnome coughed.
I grinned. Anybody who could quote Han Solo after being eaten alive – well, let’s just say he’d redeemed himself for the upskirting incident.
The gnome was low on hit points, though. Passing through the gullet of a worm was apparently not without its stresses.
Unfortunately, the monster was still alive. It turned around, opened its mouth –
GLOMPH.
“IT ATE HIM AGAIN!” the Druid yelled.
Stig looked up at me with a terrified What the hell have you gotten me into? expression.
“Hang back,” I warned him, then looked at Meera. “You too.”
“Is he still alive?” the Mage yelled as she cast a flamethrower spell on the worm trying to eat Hodin.
The Druid checked his windows, which only he could see. “…nope.”
“YES I AM!” the gnome roared as he raced from behind us out onto the sand.
What the hell?!
Then I remembered that the graveyard was only 50 feet away on the other side of the wall.
If you’re going to die, it’s good to do it as close to the respawn point as possible.
“AAAAAAAH!” the gnome shrieked as he jumped through the air, landed on the worm, and began to slice and dice like a miniature Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
“Jaxos, keep healing Hodin!” the Fire Mage yelled. “Ian, let’s help Brak!”
I assumed she meant the midget, so I switched my attack to the nearest worm. Cutting it open from the inside had done significant damage, and a lava attack and some Soul Sucking finished it off.