Forsaken 337 BC

by Sharon Leslie

  They followed the grotto path as it wound its way toward an underground waterfall they could hear in the distance. Calling for a halt, Lesley grabbed the militia captain making him wait, over the noise of the waterfall Lesley could hear a woman crying. Cain increased his stride nearly running toward the crying woman. Turning another corner, Cain came across a middle-aged, good looking woman who was crying, she was naked and fastened by a rope to an iron pin driven high up into the grotto wall.

  The rope had been pulled tight causing the woman to stand on her toes, straining her whole body. Cain moved toward the woman who flinched at his approach. Daphne noticed the woman’s reaction so she walked over to her and wrapped her in a hug, she supported the woman while Cain cut through the rope. Daphne told the woman, "Everything will be OK. You go with these two Amazons and they will look after you." Daphne handed the woman over and Cain thanked her then as he turned around he noticed a wooden door set into the grotto wall. After he checked and found the door was locked, he looked but could find no key, Cain choose to kick the door open.

  One solid kick against the lock, and both the lock and door turned to worthless junk. The sound of the lock breaking and wood splintering elicited a scream from the other side of the door, followed by more crying. Cain pushed the remnants of door open. Inside, naked and tied to a bed was a beautiful eighteen or nineteen-year-old woman who took after her mother in her looks. There was another bed where a younger girl, nearer ten, was tied hand-and-foot to it. Only she of the three females wore her clothes.

  :Perhaps one of the three had morals, even in a game where anything seems to go,: Cain thought.

  "I guess this is where those three will respawn," Sophie said, pointing to a third empty bed. They let Violetta have a good look around the room and grotto. Three minutes later Cain was pleased since Violetta found no trace of Erebus' magic or altar. Once the two naked females and the younger female had been released they calmed down, more so as one Amazon found their clothes and returned them to the naked women. Now clothed, Cain could tell they were less stressed as they drank from his magical water flask.

  The young girl held onto her mother's embrace and thanked the DreamBabes for saving them. The mother asked, "Is my husband alive? Three men who captured us told me he would die if he didn't follow their commands and kill a man called Joseph. They brought us here fastened my youngest to the bed and stripped my eldest daughter and myself. One of the three who dressed like a priest molested me as I was stretched on my toes and helpless, hung from the wall. He promised to be back and continue what he started."

  The woman looked up at Cain, he could see her mind working and as she came to the only conclusion; nodding his head saying, "Yes, I am Joseph, and yes, your husband is still alive. We will take you back home once we begin to secure the grotto. A few of us will stay so we can deal with those three men when they respawn back in here. Is there anything I can say to the man who dresses like a priest on your behalf?" The woman said what she would like Cain to do then he sent everyone barring Daphne, Myrina, Violetta and fifty Amazons back to Olimpiakena.

  "These women will protect you as you return to your husband. I am sorry for the harm done to you. I will carry out what you asked," said Cain as the woman and her daughters left the grotto. "We need to turn the grotto into a secure base and hard point, then we can control who gets access to the potassium nitrate. At a quick estimate, I would say there is around three or four thousand tons of the stuff lying around. If we control this deposit, we can make our own black powder and produce small clay pot hand grenades and explosive pouches. We didn't make the changes to this time-line, but we will use Jason's blatant cheating against him and his players," Cain said.

  Daphne created the walls for a small barracks and six large houses, all built into the side of the small tor. Once she had finished those she used her Geomancer skill to build a wall. She made it thirty feet high and fifteen feet wide, in total a large and long two thousand yards of solid wall all around the hill. With a single large opening for the wild horses to enter or leave. After she completed the wall, Daphne moulded the large boulders together making a double wide doorway into the grotto. Cain asked if Daphne could make a watchtower at the side of the hill near the entrance, which she did, making the tower fifty feet tall. She wrapped a covered staircase around the outside to the top platform.

  Cain erected Bounty inside the grotto and the DreamBabes and he retired for the night, forty of the Amazons entered their barracks in Bounty, while ten Amazons took a two-hour watch. Cain organised the meal while Daphne worked and Myrina used her Sea Eagle, Josephine, to carry out a long-range scouting mission. Daphne called Myrina when she finished and waited for her to bring her mind back from sharing her vision with Josephine.

  "We have Olimpiakena secured, its people have been reminded about the gods and their obligation tomorrow. The leader who lost his hand is now with his family, almost everyone is happy, well apart from the JW Killers clan," Toni told Cain. She prepared to leave Olimpiakena and bring all the Amazons and twenty of the town's militia to the sacred grotto.

  Violetta asked Daphne to make a chamber inside the grotto, where they could position a new travel-post. Once built, Violetta installed and blessed the travel-post. Lesley used forty Amazons to carry sacks of potassium nitrate to Pyrgadikian. Once there they found Nithey and the VETS who were expecting them and they accepted the sacks with pleasure.

  Nithey asked and Amazon to pass a message on to Cain, he said, "We will use the potassium nitrate but first we need to make a fine black powder of charcoal, finely crushed sulphur and mix it with the nitrate. We will then use the powder and make some crude hand grenades, explosive pouches and lengths of fuse cord. We have had made and tested small, thin walled clay storage pots.

  "They can be filled with a mix of black powder and a handful of ruined arrowheads or bronze casting shards. If they work as well as we expect we will all be happy." Cain, Toni, Daphne, Violetta and six Amazons, equipped with their Doru, were waiting for the priest and his two bodyguards to respawn. They waited patiently talking about what Myrina had seen through Josephine's eyes as she scouted.

  From Myrina's scouting they knew where there was the large herd of wild horses as they were not on the hill as the handless lord expected. Cain knew it would be useful if everyone in his large force could be mounted. Bethany said, "I can help and tame the horses. It will be easy for me to make and enchant a token once braided into the horses mane, the horse would act as if someone spent time and broke it.

  "I will make is so the enchantment will over a few months dissipate, by which time the horses would not realise any difference." Cain knew having a large trained mobile force as the Amazons were able to be would change the outcome of many battles.

  The three JW Killers clan players respawned on time, first the priest then twenty seconds later both his body guards respawned. Each player laid still as they had two Dorus pointed at their hearts and one at their heads. Cain began to question the players about the JW Killers clan, which caused the bodyguards to purposely kill themselves as they refused to talk. The priest, a player called Thorn Tonian, who was dressed as the priest said, "Hey man, they forced me to join them, forced me into the role I am playing. I hate it and I want out. Please can you help, I heard you can help and I want out of the JW Killers clan."

  Violetta who was outside the room whispered to Bethany who messaged Cain, ^B^ He's lying, he is trying to cast a coercion spell on those in the room; he freely follows Jason and by extension Erebus. ^

  "Do you think we cannot tell when you are casting a coercion spell Thorn?" Toni said. "Do you think we are feeble minded for your cloying magic to sway our minds, bringing us over to Jason's camp?"

  "Who spoke to you bitch?" Thorn snapped and snarled, looking at Toni. "Jason was right you are a cold frigid whore. You refused to put out for him and now those around you will pay," turning his head to look at Cain, he said. "How is playing with legs, working out for you? Shame when the game
ends you will still be legless. What will your women think of you then, stumpy?" Cain, Daphne and Toni laughed at Thorn's outburst.

  "Well, you can tell Sir Hardy or Giant Dick, maybe even Speedy Pete we will find all of your binding points, and keep taking them away from you until you have nowhere left to run. Tell Jason next time you speak, Cain here is a way better lover than Jason ever could've dreamed of trying to be," said Toni. Cain asked his women to leave him alone with Thorn, they refused as they wanted to witness Cain taking justice for the abused woman. Cain began to cut the clothing off Thorn,

  "What the fuck are you doing, kill me so I can respawn you legless bastard. Wait until I get my hands on you in the real world, I’ll smash your pathetic body into pulp. You don't deserve these beautiful women, you..." Thorn screamed, and continued to scream as it felt like Cain had cut strips of skin off his body. Thorn believed Cain cut them in strips two inches wide and a foot long.

  "No more please I'll tell you everything you want to know, please don't, just kill me. What have I done to deserve this," sobbed a hoarse Thorn.

  "You see there lays the problem Thorn. You have done so many bad things to players and NPCs, where do I begin," Cain said.

  "It's a game, its only a fucking game, nothing counts we are stuck in here and nothing counts. Why should I have to pay for the fun I have, it is normal to abuse players and NPCs, nobody cares."

  "I care, my wives care. This is what the woman, who you hung from the wall and abused, you threatened her to continue when you came back. She asked that I make you suffer. Have an unpleasant dream while you wait to respawn," said Cain as he cut the artery in Thorn's groin. Cain his DreamBabes, Violetta and the Amazons in the grotto all watched as Thorn bled out and died.

  "What was the ice for and why did he scream so much?" Sophie asked. "The ice you made me was so cold when I placed it on his skin he thought I was making cuts, the melted ice he thought was his blood. The only cutting I did was when I cut the artery in his groin, the rest was his all in his mind."

 

  "How do we break the connections they had making this their respawn points," Violetta asked.

  "Easy," replied Toni. " We claim them as our own," Which Toni, Daphne and Cain did removing any trace of Jason's men from returning to the grotto.

  < Remember ladies we need to reset our respawn points back to Bounty, C>

  Chapter 36

  Delivering The Message

  They captured the grotto and destroyed the respawn points of the three JW Killers clan players, Cain and his wives exited the grotto and moved outside the new wall. They stood and became more business-orientated than normal players. Daphne, had a lot of experience horse riding as a teenager, she represented the EC state, 'The Netherlands' at three-day eventing. She designed the saddle and tack, for the horses the Amazons were steadily collecting.

  Their mounted Amazons rode the horses they'd captured seven days previously amongst the herd of wild horses. They laid down over the necks of their mounts and rode next to a wild horse, where they dropped a circle of rope containing Bethany's enchanted token around the wild horses head. Once the rope was on the wild horse's neck, the enchantment changed the mind of the horse. The horses went from wild flighty creatures to broken malleable mounts which would accept riders. Daphne and the handful of Amazons were loving every minute of rounding up the beginnings of Cain's mobile force.

  Daphne had the leather workers in Mantabele, Petrabele, Agiasobele and Pyrgadikian, turning out the saddles and tack. It took nearly five weeks to make the thousand sets of equipment and most of the cured leather each town had. One of the VETS, ShezzaRA, was an ex-cavalry officer in the real world, put together a manual of training and manoeuvres for mounted troops. His manual helped the Amazons who were foot warriors learn how to ride and fight from the back of a horse.

  Cain spent time and developed a more compact recurve bow with a shorter draw, ideal for firing from horseback. Bowyers made the new designed bow in Mantabele, Cain already knew the quality of their work and they supplied the Amazons. Cain made their work easier as he produced sixteen bow format jigs. After they began the shaping of all the parts and dry assembled them, they were ready to glue and heat cure. Cain had some builders make four large ovens which held four bow rigs. Each bow once glued then heat cured for four hours in the oven was reedy to be used. The bowyers turned out sixty-four bows a day and produced over nine hundred bows in less than three weeks.

  The standard arrow was a thirty-eight-inch beast, was no good for the new bow so Cain designed a new thirty-two inch arrow. The new arrow was slightly thicker than the previous arrow which Cain also developed. Cain had fletchers in Mantabele and Petrabele produce the new arrows. In four weeks they made enough arrows for each Amazon to have four quivers of thirty, a staggering ninety-eight thousand arrows.

  Toni remembered seeing an old film about knights fighting from horses, their horses wore armour matching the knight. She told Cain their horses needed at least some protection, which he agreed. Toni had female cloth workers in each town and city where they had travel-post connections, make adjustable armoured sheets for the horses.

  The armoured sheets had hundreds of tiny pockets sewn into them, held closed by a flap and string tie. Those pockets were home for a composite bronze disc, clipped over a hard-fired ceramic disc. As the sheets were a standard design, it made armouring the horses easy. The most complicated piece of armour was the head and neck piece.

  Lesley came up with a design that used flexible wooden plywood rings, these were hinged and clasped at the sides. They padded the rings with sheep wool to prevent rubbing. Using shaped plywood for a chest piece, Lesley had the composite bronze and ceramic discs screwed in an overlapping pattern. The pattern gave the horse as much as an inch of hardened armour on its most vulnerable point, when charging men with spears.

  In static testing that Lesley carried out, she found the composite discs turned a spear's thrust with ease. The flexible neck rings and chest pieces, were the most time consuming items to make, took nearly six weeks to equip all nine hundred horses.

  With the Amazons, Cain and his DreamBabes now trained as mounted fighters, they were ready to leave Olimpiakena. Enoch, Rahab, Ruth and Naomi, worked as a team in trawling through the data on the SPQR servers. They looked for any clues as to story outlines and side quests the code hack had generated. Enoch told Cain,

  {You have a solid following of three hundred and sixty-eight million watching what you do each day. Surprisingly you are the largest watched group in Forsaken on an hour by hour basis. The number of viewers increase during the nighttime as people have become voyeurs.} Enoch and the other AIs continued to work on trying to access Jason's server which he left behind in Paris.

  As they left Olimpiakena, they had thirty covered wagons following the mounted force, carrying the majority of their arrows, Doru, Shields and food. Each rider carried enough grain in saddle bags to feed their horse for two days, their aim was to let the horses graze at night while being hobbled.

  They reached Vamvakena five hours after they left Olimpiakena. There was a delegation outside the walled town, seated under a large white awning. The delegation sat at a table piled with food and the men were eating, served by a mixture of scantily clad young women and men.

  ^T^ I don't like this, they seem way too comfortable in sitting outside, while we approached with a large mounted force. ^

  ^C^ Let's see what they have to offer before we fill them full of arrows. Send a company out to either side and circle the town, see if they are playing at being silly buggers. ^