Forsaken 337 BC

by Sharon Leslie

  "We were so worried you were gone so long, but now you're back. Emily thought you were not coming back, she cried herself to sleep last night. She was worried, to be honest it worried us all, depressed us even," Toni calmed Lesley, returning her kisses and hug.

  "We can speak later, we're here now. What has been happening?" she asked Lesley.

  "We took nearly three days to reach Kerabele, then we started to layout the plan for a fortified settlement, with space to grow. During the first night a single Ogre attacked us, more like stumbled into the far edge of the fortification area. It was a good job we had all the bows, Areto told me they usually kill hundreds of people before they either walk away or they somehow manage to kill them.

  "We drove it away, it kept swatting at the arrows like they were annoying insects. Myrina spoke to Athena and Cybele, they told her there should not be any Ogres on this island. There are none in the code, even the enhanced code does not have Ogres. Emily, took the whole of Alpha and Beta and tracked the Ogre. She said it was easy as it left a trail of destruction where it walked. The Ogre came out of a small cave. Emily wanted to go inside but had a bad feeling about it. They found a goat nearby and encouraged the goat to go inside, on a length of rope.

  "The goat made no noise, but the rope was cleanly cut, the fibres all melted together like a laser made the cut. Emily spent six hours piling rocks into the cave entrance, jamming them in tight hoping they would stop the Ogre when it tried to come back. It came back that night and seven nights since. Only last night it brought two more Ogres with it. We have been lucky, nobody received major injuries nor was anyone killed.

  "It followed the same pattern each night, it comes out of the cave walks around as though it is trying to find something then two hours later it goes back to the cave. It has been doing this for the past eight nights," Lesley said.

  :Rahab, find out why we have been away longer than we thought, please.: Toni asked.

  "Where is Bounty?" Toni asked. Lesley pointed to the largest of the old buildings, saying it was inside. "How long till sundown?" One of the Amazons walking past with a shoulder of sawn planks, replied, "two hand spans."

  Toni asked Lesley if she would go find Daphne and bring her to Bounty. Rahab passed the news to Enoch who told Cain who had been checking the construction with Daphne. Cain left Daphne who used her Geomancer skills, she wanted to create a rock-lined moat around the palisade. Toni, Lesley, Bethany, Daphne and Cain entered the building and stepped into Bounty.

  "So, from what you're telling us," said Toni. "These Ogres are putting in a visit for three maybe four hours acting like they are looking for something, then going back to the cave. I think Daphne could explore the ground the Ogres are searching, we can check if someone has buried something of theirs. If we find it, we can return it somehow, but first we need to search for whatever they are looking for."

  "How long Lesley, has passed in the game since we left? We have been nine RTH so that should have been three- and three-quarter days of game play," Cain said

  "Something has gone wrong, for you have not been here for eleven days. We asked Cybele, but she did not understand our question. It was not like we could come out and say. Who has increased the game speed?" Lesley said.

  :Enoch, can you check the game server, ask John to run diagnostics on the game speed. I think Lesley hit the problem on the head. Somebody has increased the system conversion rate.

  :We were out for all intents ten hours, that would have been over four game days, not nearly twelve. If we are right, it seems one RTH is now thirty hours of game play, not the ten we are used to. Can people's brains cope with such an increase?: said Cain.

  {Cain, you are correct. Something has changed the game play ratio, each RTH is now thirty hours of play. In answer to your question not the ten hours game play ratio to one RTH works. Running the brain at three times the speed will have additional issues. There has been no research on the effects at three times. I know Rahab found research and is telling Toni what she found.

  {John says somebody used one backdoor still open in the game code, increased the game clock speed. He is looking at slowing it down. He is talking to the system EI, but she is a little preoccupied and is using up loads of resources. John thinks she is trying to become an AI,} Enoch said.

  [Toni, I found research on what higher ratios of game speed to RTH does to a brain. Humans can cope easily with one to ten or one to twelve. Cambridge University, Coombe Hall, they carried out research on death row prisoners. Four of the prisoners went brain dead at one to fifty, two suffered seizures at one to forty. Whoever set the speed ratio as one to thirty is cutting it close. I think you need it back to normal as soon as possible, rather than leaving it until later. It may need another patch to happen though,] Rahab said.

  Toni and Cain shared the information their AIs gave them. There was little they could achieve in the game. Sophie entered Bounty as they were talking. She threw her arms around Cain and cried on his shoulder.

  "I thought you had left us. It is nearly twelve days since you became mindless avatars. I know the Amazons took it in their stride, but we knew you should have been back eight days ago," Sophie wiped the snot from her nose on the back of her hand, before wiping it on Cain's top as she held on to him.

  "I, we are so happy you are all back, so will the Amazons be happy too. I think Areto and Myrina have been missing you, though they keep themselves occupied on at night. Like Lesley and I have," Sophie said.

  "I've been a good girl. I've been waiting for you to tell me to go and sleep. I didn't want the call to interrupt me during making love, so I abstained for a while. Now you're back I can indulge as much as you're both able," Bethany said smiling at them.

  Chapter 24

  Ogre Go Home

  {Cain, John found where somebody, possibly Jason or one of his people used one of the game code backdoors, they accessed the game system and increased the speed variable. It is as you all worked out. The new speed is, one real time hour, equals thirty game hours.

  {John is writing a piece of code with the system EIs help, he hopes they can finish and install it within the next hour. They believe once the code is installed the game speed cannot be adjusted, unless the system EI needs to change the speed for certain events. On a note regarding your Paris trip, press and news channels are running with the story of a terrorist organisation falling out, caused the fighting and destruction.

  {Rahab has traced the three soldiers from the military academy who let you out the front doors. She has purchased their families' homes using the military charity. To cover what she has done, she also did the same for the solider you killed, and another thirty-six soldiers from the Paris area. John will let the news leak to the press tomorrow, their release will say the charity has organised a raffle for military personnel and provided a family bonus to those who serve, who society normally overlooks.

  {Marcy is going house hunting, or location hunting to create their own safe house. She has reviewed the details we have on Lesley in Frankfurt. Rahab hacked the hospital patients' records, and she noticed Lesley has been struggling for the past three months, that is why they put her into her game hoping it would help stabilise her.

  {Sophie's POD is the safest of the two, being in Milan. They have over three hundred patients, hooked into Forsaken for medical research, Sophie is one of those. They are hooked in via a common address, which will make identifying her difficult, but not impossible. Marcy has arranged for an independent specialist to make a visit of the whole hospital. We will send two of Marcy's team with them so we can identify Sophie's POD, and make plans on how to extract her first,} Enoch said.

  Cain listened to Enoch while he looked over the plan of the new enlarged town. He mapped the plan against the HUD map, and was impressed with the size his wives made the new town.

  {Cain, John and the system EI have uploaded the code fix, the RTH to game hours is back to one to ten. Enjoy your return, those wives who stayed inside the game have missed you
r loving. John thinks the only way for the time to change again is if the system EI actively makes the change, and that does not seem likely,} Enoch said.

  Cain passed the news Enoch gave him, everyone was pleased about the RTH to game hours ratio returning to normal. Myrina and Areto entered after Cain finished telling the news. Myrina jumped onto Cain nearly knocking him to the floor. She rained kisses all over him, then she turned to Toni while Areto with equal exuberance kissed Cain too.

  Sophie told them, "The Ogre will be back in two hours. We have tried blocking the entrance with large wooden spikes, though I don't think they will work as nothing else has," she added. One hour later, all the welcomes exchanged, Cain thought his lips would fray from the kissing. They followed Sophie and all the Amazons, barring three squads keeping a watch over the fortified town.

  They arrived at the cave and were ready for action, when like clockwork they could hear a portal activating, followed by bellows of pain. The bellowing stopped, Cain could feel beneath his feet vibrations as wooden spikes were broken into piles of kindling.

  It took the Ogre less than four minutes to clear the wooden spikes away. As it exited the cave the portal disgorged another Ogre, followed by a third ten seconds later. Everyone kept clear and watched, the three Ogres searched the same location, every night they had been coming here. Cain had an idea and asked if they tried talking to the Ogres, nobody had.

  :Enoch, could we try to use your linguistic skills and try to communicate with the Ogres?: Cain asked.

  {We can try but I think these Ogres come from another realm, or game. I checked on the information we hold and can access on Forsaken's creation; we could find no mention of Ogres. Rahab is checking all current games and games in development, she will let Toni know once she has finished,}

  Cain stood with his wives and the Amazons as they continued to observe the Ogres, he could tell they were communicating but not see nor hear how. Cain asked Enoch, who said he had the same thoughts.

  [Toni, found them, well I have found where the Ogres are coming from: a game in development at SPQR. They are creating a virtual reality game for young teens called Ogre Wars. They based the developers in the sub-basement in London. Their small server array is in the same room as the development Forsaken servers. One quest is the Ogres search for and find a powerful artefact on a different world.

  [The artefact will enable them to unite the clans and fight against the humans and Elves. Somehow or someone has made a semi-permanent link between the games. The reason you cannot damage the Ogres is they are not really here in Forsaken. Should you travel back to their game through the portal you could damage them there, but we don't know what would happen to you. It would be better if you could produce an artefact which the Ogres could take back with them. Once they have the artefact, then that portal link along with the Ogres should disappear,] Rahab said.

  Toni shared the information, and they all tried to think about what they could do from inside Forsaken. Myrina said, "Why do we not have Cybele or Athena create an artefact for them. Then the Ogres can take it back with them, then they would be no longer a problem."

  "How about something like Moses' staff?" said Cain. "Moses and his men killed the last of the giants, who the bible called Og. Og, Ogre, sounds the same don't you think? It could be the writer of the Book of Numbers, the history of the Jewish tribes and Moses, in their sojourn in the wilderness. Wrote Og in place of Ogre, an Ogre whom they killed during that time. If we supply the Ogres with a healing staff a staff like Moses had, then that could be enough."

  "I can make a staff with two enchantments," Bethany said. "I need a staff that will hold the mana and spell framework. Though I suggest we make an axe and give it fire and healing, so it has a double use. Personally I think an Ogre would welcome an axe rather than a staff. I recall none of the Ogres being magicians in books I've read, which had Ogres in them."

  They were in agreement and left the Ogres alone and went back to Bounty. Cain was glad Athena blessed him, as he made love to each of his wives and Toni twice. He began with Toni and ended the evening with Toni. As he cuddled her her thought back to how the night started as his wives laid exhausted on the bed cuddling and touching. He recalled kneeling beside the bed his head between Toni's legs, his mouth kissing her vagina, his tongue circled her clit.

  They swapped positions as they neared their climaxes, Toni instigated the change, and moved doing a reverse cowgirl. As their wives encouraged them, Toni bent backward, and Cain took her breasts in his hands squeezing and pulling her nipples. Toni moaned as her orgasm built, Cain's penis filling her as they moved as one.

  One final deep filling thrust from Cain pushed Toni and himself over the edge, they came together while the others watched. Twenty minutes later, they were fast asleep, Cain in the middle of a huddle with Toni and Bethany on his shoulders.

  When they awoke, Cain washed, dressed, ate then left Bounty and worked at the small forge left behind by the town's blacksmith. Cain worked his Blacksmithing skill to create an axe large enough for an Ogre; the first time he used his Blacksmithing skill for such a large weapon. As Cain was working at the forge his DreamBabes soon joined him working in the camp, while Bethany researched and practising her Enchantment skill in Bounty. She discovered making a fire enchantment for a large weapons was easy, as she already perfected that skill on arrows.

  Six hours of mental manipulation in casting and creating enchantments Bethany created a healing enchantment. An enchantment which, when triggered, activated an AOE healing spell, which would heal all those in the area giving then a twenty-five percent boost to their health.

  Cain finished the huge axe, the double bladed head weighed thirty pounds, he mounted the head on an iron wood shaft. Bethany engraved the spell framework on the axe head using her skill. Writing both spell frames cost her nearly all her two hundred and ninety points of mana.

  With the axe finished and enchanted they took it to where the ogres searched. Three hours later two ogres exited the portal, they found the axe within twenty minutes, both howled and bellowed as the first ogre picked up the heavy axe. They returned to the portal and disappeared from Forsaken. Cain hoped they would never return to the game again as he did not think they could be killed. A loud crash followed by the ground shaking and a plume of dust billowed out of the cave. Once the dust settled Sophie peeked into the cave, she noticed the ever-present glowing portal had vanished.

  "No sign of a portal, the axe must have been the object for which they were searching," Sophie said.

  Training and Building

  Returning to the town, Cain and his DreamBabes agreed the outcome was worth remembering, and they held a celebration feast with all the Amazons. Lesley and Sophie used Bounty to produce the food and drink they needed. Three huge fires were lit, and were the focal points where they consumed the food and drinks. They were still singing as the sun peeked over the horizon.

  Bethany, Daphne and dozens of Amazons had hangovers, which Sophie cleared. She cast three AOE healing spells around each of the fires. The spell made everybody feel as though they had a good night's sleep, as it erased any signs of a hangover or tiredness some players and NPCs had.

  Sophie took Toni and Cain to the planning tent where they looked at the changes she had drawn for the fortified town. Cain was impressed seeing the new length of the town's walls, and the size of the land Sophie had set aside for the citadel.

  Cain took a charcoal stick and added a dry moat around the whole of the town and sketched a plan for a large forty-by-forty yards barbican, which would control access to the citadel. He told them the barbican would house most of the town's militia.

  Daphne was in huge demand, she not only created the moat encompassing Kerabele's outer wall. Initially, she spent the first day in having the earth push up the first of the five courses of granite blocks. These were in the areas where the wooden palisade needed building. The blocks were four-by-three-by-two yards, and dry joined. The areas for the ballista towers and
observation towers, Daphne left for later until her Geomancer skill increased a level.

  Once finished, Daphne went outside the town to a nearby hillside and created a quarry. Here she had some of the earth move and created flat fields at the edge of the forest, the rest she moved and filled the head of a small valley. Once filled it created a level, well-drained field the size of twenty American football pitches, one hundred and seven thousand square yards. With moving the earth, Daphne could see the exposed rock and granite, sending out her magic she cut the ground into two sizes of manageable blocks; the larger one was a one-yard square block and the smaller one nearly brick-sized eighteen by four by four inches.

  As she finished, she realised she had spent three hours creating the blocks like an automaton, Daphne received a reward from the system. The pop-up informed her she was now a level eight Master Builder.

  With mastering the new sub skill, and increased her Geomancer skill Daphne found she could make the walls and buildings easier, using less mana and stamina. Daphne talked with Cain and Toni, together they agreed to make additional improvements. Using half of the Amazons to pull down the palisade, Daphne followed along and built the outer town wall, ballista towers with entrance gates, and watchtowers. Pulling all the resources from the earth. The outer wall Daphne created was seamless in its construction, and faced with white marble, two feet thick. Creating the walls, ballista and observation towers took Daphne two days.

  Daphne thought the hardest constructions would be the barbican for the citadel entrance, which Cain designed and the combined temple for Cybele and Athena. As Daphne looked at the two sketches, she let her Master Builder gift flow and merged it with her Geomancer skill; she completed both major buildings in half a day.