by Charles Dean
“Great. Kitchens, no chance you heard the plan?”
“If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it,” Kitchens climbed up on his new Drake. Then, facing the bear and girl he shouted out to his daughter, “Minx, do what Darwin says. We’ll be right back.” He then spurred on his mount to push its way through the entrance with him on it, surprisingly unscathed.
Kass hopped up on Toothifer and followed after him. “Are we splitting up?” she asked. “Like you go one way and gather them, and I go the other? Or are we going to make the run together, all at once?”
Kitchens did his best to look over his shoulder at her as she tailed him. “I have no preference. You think it’ll go faster if we split up?”
“It can’t hurt. Do you want the right side or the left?” Kass felt pretty comfortable with her flying abilities after only one ride.
“There is nothing right about this, so I’ll take left on the first split,” Kitchens replied, failing his pun delivery. “Also, have you noticed something off about the mounts?”
Kass looked at her Drake. “What do you mean?”
“How do they understand us? If Darwin is their sire, why do they listen to our commands? What causes them to distinguish us from--Oh, there’s my left! See you!” Kitchens’ drake pulled left and disappeared from sight.
What the heck? You can’t start a line of questioning like that and leave instantly, Kass though as she frowned. But he’s not wrong. There are a lot of things that I just don’t get with the pet system. Why does Fuzzy Wuzzy, a mob-based NPC, react and behave as if he were a real-life domesticated pet? Kass’s concerns with the issue consumed her concentration as she soared high above dozens of packs of Blue-Drakes on her way to the end of the dungeon.
Given the nature of the dungeon, it wasn’t hard for Kass to figure out where the end was. She could see it from halfway across the dungeon as she flew several stories above the black platform. There, at the end, was an incredibly large, circular platform twice the size of a football field with a giant dragon sitting in the middle. The drakes were mostly all blue in color, and one or two were darkly-scaled enough to almost verge on black, but the big, full-bodied dragon was irridescent. It had feathers in the place of scales, and it had a tail that was almost as long as its entire wing span, which was already massive in proportion to its body.
When she met up with Kitchens near the front of its habitat, even he couldn’t stop himself from commenting on the creature. “That is indeed an interesting monster.”
“Yeah, I don’t know who designed it, but it is definitely the right mix of beautiful and terrifying.”
“Like a good date,” Kitchens joked from the other side of the boss’s zone, this time actually drawing a laugh out of Kass.
Beautiful and terrifying? What type of dates does he go on? Oh well, time to get a ton of EXP! she thought enthusiastically as she eyed all the enemies in sight. “Shall we?” she said, straightening her back, throwing on her most grumpy face and using her best Darwin voice impression.
“Sounds good,” Kitchens tapped the back of his Drake’s head causing a fireball to shoot out of its mouth at the last pair of Drakes on his side. “Come on AzurWrath, let’s get out of here!”
Kass did her best to mimic Kitchens’ fireball switch, then took off as well. “Let’s beat them back, Toothifer,” she said, holding firmly onto his scales as they passed camp after camp of Blue-Drake’s on the way, shooting fireballs to gather up each group’s aggro. The fire didn’t hurt the drakes at all, but just one attack had the same effect as hitting a hornet’s nest with a baseball bat.
Even though the crowd of winged beasts chasing after Kass kept growing, she was able to maintain a rather sizable and safe distance between her and the closest of them. It wasn’t that they were pausing before following her, it was that she wasn’t slowing down for them, and they took a minute to get into the air and build speed after her. By the time they were up and chasing her, both she and Toothifer were over 150 feet ahead of them. It would have been a smooth and easy trip if it weren’t for one detail--Kitchens was ahead of her.
When she got to the entrance of the dungeon, she found herself with a heavy flank of aggro from the Blue-Drakes that Kitchens was leading on the side, and they were heading in the same direction at roughly the same speed. As one of the drakes that Kitchens had dragged along got closer and closer to Kass, she instinctively started to create space. The problem was, it wasn’t an instinct she should have listened to. The further she got away from it as it tried to come at her while still chasing Kitchens, the more she realized that if she didn’t beat the entire group of them, she would be trying to fight through bodies and bodies of drakes to clamor through the exit.
Crap, why didn’t I think of this before we split up. Kass found herself really starting to worry. If they beat me to that entrance, it’s over, and I forgot to set my new bind stone as the Panda King’s town. If I die, I’ll end up going back to the original bind stone I set. That’ll send me all the way back to Valcrest on noob island!
As the fear built up, she knew she had to do something, but couldn’t figure out what. They’re immune to magic, so I can’t even enchant to slow them down . . . Except, maybe, just maybe, they aren’t immune to everything. Kass grinned. Is this what Darwin feels like when he comes up with one of his ideas? she thought, lifting herself just a bit on Toothifer’s back, high enough to hold her staff with both hands, but low enough that she didn’t get slammed off her mount’s back by the heavy wind their speed was generating. Frost Step, do your trick! she prayed as the spell took hold around her and subsequently Toothifer.
Within moments, the Blue-Drake she was riding had the same familiar blue trails of cold mist flowing out of its four feet and off its wings that she had seen creeping off of Darwin’s every time she had buffed him with the spell. Did it work? She looked around at the flying fiends on her left. So you got the full effect, Toothifer? Now for the tough part.
She hugged the neck of her mount tightly and pulled him softly left so that he started heading straight to the entrance, faster than his competition. The movement speed buff from the Frost Step spell was just enough to help her pull ahead of her pursuers, but she still had to dodge them as she flew past some of the ones in front. One even tried to claw Toothifer’s wing off, but a quick hiss and jerk from Toothifer, without Kass’s prompting, left the wing intact.
When she finally got to the front of the crowd, Kass felt overwhelming relief. There was enough room to cleanly make it through the tunnels without an issue. After she got through, she and Toothifer turned around to watch the massacre. One by one the Blue-Drakes died, opened their newly red-eyes, and climbed through to the other side, each of them lining up in a crescent around the entrance like vultures gathering around a dying man in the desert.
It’s like a right of passage, she observed, noting the mechanical nature in which they would enter a savage, clawing beast and exit a silent, tamed pet. I can’t tell if he’s reviving them, or remaking them.
“Do nothing which is of no use,” Kitchens commented as he climbed down from his Drake, AzurWrath.
“Hmm?” Kass replied, confused.
“For all of Darwin’s rage as the kin of fire, he is still a child of war whose actions show an understanding beyond what his words reveal,” Kitchens walked over to give Kass a hand to help her climb down. “Every move he makes is calculated.”
“And?” Kass didn’t follow. They were killing the beasts because they needed to get to the end of the dungeon unharmed and have a distraction for the boss.
“Do you think Darwin believes that the four of us with flying mounts now at hand could defeat the boss?”
“Yeah, he has that type of confidence.”
“Then it only stands to reason that this army is not for the boss,” Kitchens said, pulling out his katana. “If every action Darwin makes is designed to yield a certain fruit, then what crop shall these seeds yield?”
Kass sat puzzled on top of her dr
ake, which was fine for the conversation since Kitchens had already left to help Minx and Darwin with clearing the mobs out of the hole faster. The thing that had her befuddled the most was that Kitchens was right. She knew she should probably be trying to piece together what an army of Blue-Drakes was for or even thinking about what her own next step would be, but she wasn’t. Instead, she was staring at Darwin as he baptized the Blue-Drakes, one by one, with a single thought running through her head: Was his friendship with me one of use?
Darwin:
Darwin looked over at the Blue-Drakes. He wanted to bring them all into the fight, but half of him was uncertain it was the best idea. Minx had managed to kill the first target of hers without issue, and he had managed to kill most of the Drakes in a few seconds each. He didn’t know exactly how EXP splitting worked, but he knew that if he brought every single one of the Drakes with him, he would be shorted a lot of EXP. Therefore, not wanting to divide his EXP 20 or 30 ways when 8 was enough, one for each member and one for their mounts, he decided he needed to figure out exactly how many he needed to bring and how many he could leave to farm respawns like he had done several times before with the Turtle-Wolves in the old silver ore mine. He probably also needed to . . .Daniel and them!
“Guys, we got a problem,” Darwin flatly announced to the group. “If Daniel and them show up while we’re mid dungeon, whatever Blue-Drakes we leave at the entrance are going to probably be butchered before they realize they are friendly.”
“Nuh Uh! No problem! No Sirree!” Minx shook her head from atop Fuzzy Wuzzy.
“It’s not?” Darwin turned to look at Minx, who was at that time cutting a piece of wood off of a tree.
“Nope! Course not! Fuzzy Wuzzy is here!” Minx gleefully finished pulling a large swath of wood and bark off.
Darwin blinked twice as he stared at Minx in silence. Did this the loopy carefree kid just out think the rest of us and solve a problem before we even realized it was going to be one? “You mean, Fuzzy Wuzzy is going to tell Daniel and them not to kill the red-eyed drakes? You do know that other than me, you seem to be the only one who can understand him, right?”
“Yep yep!” Minx bounced as she nodded then pulled out her daggers and attacked the stripped off piece of wood. “That’s why we leave a sign!” She held up the freshly carved plank. On it, in rather big words, was written a very simple set of instructions: Red Eyes Good! Not Red Eyes Bad! Only Kill Drakes Without Red Eyes! PS. Please Pet Fuzzy Wuzzy.
That’s . . . actually brilliant. Darwin couldn’t help but laugh as a smile grew across his face. When Minx gave the sign to Fuzzy Wuzzy, who obediently held it up, it was somehow the funniest thing Darwin had seen in weeks. Watching Fuzzy Wuzzy hold up the sign with his front paws and slowly shuffle on his two hind legs as if he were a person trying to walk with pants down around his ankles, was enough to make not only Darwin but the other two laugh loudly as well.
“Well, that’s one way to solve the problem. Do you think that, after the dungeon, we can get Fuzzy Wuzzy to hold a sign for a lemonade stand?” Kass chuckled, her grin growing faster than Darwin’s. “I think now I’d actually like to see Fuzzy Wuzzy get that banker’s cap from Burizza, the polar bear boss in the first dungeon, and open up a Fuzzy Wuzzy Emporium. We could sell everything from armor and weapons to clothes--just no rugs. He might find them offensive.”
“What? Not all rugs are bearskin, Kass. Also, how about hair dye? Can you imagine Fuzzy Wuzzy with a different color for his fur?” Darwin joined in musing upon shopkeeper Fuzzy Wuzzy. “I bet purple would be a good color on him.”
“We could get him to dye himself red, and then he could hide in a sunset and completely vanish from sight,” Minx offered. She then made a poof noise as she waved both her open hands in front of her face. “Ninja bear, not just for snow bears.”
Minx, who didn’t seem to understand why all three of them were laughing, just ignored them and walked over with Fuzzy Wuzzy to the entrance of the cave, where she promptly maneuvered him so the sign would be visible to anyone approaching the dungeon.
Kitchens, jovially laughing with the two, ended the fun though. “I think it’s about time to get moving unless you want to wait around for Valerie and the rest.”
“No, even though this is dungeon is clearly ranked higher than average, there is still the chance that another group may find it and try to clear it.” Darwin walked towards Minx at the entrance, signaling the other Drakes to join him inside the mountain.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Early bird gets the worm,” Kitchens said, going through with his Drake, AzurWrath, before any of the others even reached the entrance.
Next, Kass and Toothifer popped through the hole without a word. Kass kept chuckling, but Darwin wasn’t sure why. Darwin could only guess that it was because she was still picturing Minx and Fuzzy Wuzzy standing beside the cave entrance with the sign as if they were hitchhikers trying to get noticed.
While they were crawling through one at a time, Darwin noticed one drake was even darker than the others. The scales varied in hue from beast to beast, some bright blue and some tinted dark to almost black, but this particular one was black as freshly poured asphalt at night. Holy mother of awesome clichés! Darwin started to find himself just as excited as Kass had been earlier. That’s a black dragon! He quickly glanced at Kass and Kitchens to see if they noticed it, and then just hopped into the cave behind the drake before the next one came up in line and climbed up on its back. This is so cool, he thought.
Unlike Kass, who had managed to embody a squeegasm when she saw the Blue-Drakes for the first time, Darwin did his best to maintain his cool demeanor as he took off into the sky on his new black dragon. “Alright, Kass, run the same path as last time, and make sure Minx keeps up. Just point and let the ZombiDrakes know where the enemy groups were so we can have them camped before the respawn. Kitchens, you run the path you ran last time, and I’m going to follow you,” he commanded from atop his black mount.
“Do I have to ride one?” Minx asked from below. “Can’t I just walk?”
“Do you want to have to fight a pack of six of them if things go wrong?” Darwin worried that the comment might have been too close to home for her.
“Fine, I’ll get on one. But his name will be Scaley Waley, and he better be friendly with Fuzzy Wuzzy,” Minx crawled up the tail until she sat atop the neck of the nearest Drake.
“Got it. Let’s go, Minx! Let’s prove that we’re faster than the boys!” Kass shouted and took off. Minx, her new Scaley Waley and half the Blue-Drakes chased after Kass. Minx looked like she was holding on for dear life as her new mount reached faster and faster speeds.
“We could go super fast and try to beat them there,” Kitchens started to lead AzurWrath off for a moment as he calmly flew down his route with Darwin, “or we could have a cup of tea, let them think they won and be the happier for it.”
“Do you have any tea in your inventory?” Darwin wouldn’t put it past Kitchens.
“Unfortunately, no,” Kitchens said, frowning.
“Then I suppose that only leaves us one option.” Darwin was about to shoot off with his new flying ride when Kitchens held up a hand for him to wait.
“But, in lieu of tea, I do have some nice cold Japanese sake that I may have picked up in town. For some reason, no matter how long I keep it in my inventory, it will always stays chilled.” He pulled a bottle with odd Japanese words on it out of thin air. “Will this do in the absence of tea?”
“I suppose it will, but is there any reason you’re stalling me?” Darwin questioned the man who was already pouring out two glasses skillfully.
“A father must always let his daughter believe she won,” Kitchens smiled, “and it’s rare that I get to drink with a friend these days.”
“Fair enough,” Darwin eagerly flew close and took a cup of the sake that Kitchens had just poured, “but let’s not be too slow about it. We still have a boss to kill.”
“Indeed. Kanpai,” he
said, raising his glass.
“Cheers,” Darwin raised his glass and then took a sip. It was a weird experience, drinking sake in the middle of a dungeon on the way to a boss.
Kitchens took another sip of his sake, and then, after a moment, he finally asked what had clearly been on his mind. “You’re going to try to kill the Panda King after this, aren’t you? That’s why you keep stealing everything we kill that has any value, right?”
“I’m afraid I won’t have a choice. Those ninjas were sent before we had even hinted of treachery. You know what he’ll do once he finds out we didn’t kill his enemies, but empowered them.” Darwin found himself enjoying the taste of cold sake much more than the thought of what was to come.
“So you wish to cast the first stone?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I’d rather avoid fighting altogether. Any fight will lead to death on both sides. And last time I checked, death isn’t a good thing no matter how you get there. Also, I have no claim on the lands, but my people have been forcibly made into vagabonds, so I’m going to have to settle down eventually. They deserve to rest their head on their own pillow in their own home one day.” Darwin took another sip of the sake. The entire situation, two men sipping sake and discussing politics atop winged serpents in the middle of a dungeon on their way to a boss with dozens of Blue-Drakes following them, was surreal and nothing like his usual gaming experience; but, for some reason, Darwin rather enjoyed not grinding for a change, a thing that he would never have imagined in his life before Tiqpa.
“And this is where you wish to make that last stand? In a dead volcano?” Kitchens made an obvious point of looking around. “Seems almost too fitting given I’ve been calling you fire.”
“I’m hoping it’ll be less of a last stand and more of just an average week day,” Darwin chuckled.
“Are you going to bolster your forces past only a few players and NPCs?” Kitchens wondered aloud. “I imagine if you were to tell people that they could ride their own Blue-Drake, you’d have volunteers from among the high-Level players in the region.”