by Eric Ugland
Eastbound and Town
The Good Guys Book Eight
Eric Ugland
Air Quotes Publishing, Inc.
Copyright © 2020 Eric Ugland
Cover by Sarah Anderson/No Synonym
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of Fiction. Of Fantasy. All of the characters in this novel and series are fictional and any resemblance to people living, dead, or undead is purely coincidental and surprising. Mentions of places are incidental, accidental, and mostly inconsequential. The magic and spells have been researched in absolutely no way whatsoever, and any ill-effects after you attempt to cast them are completely on you.
Also, that which you seek, should you be seeking, is at the end. Smooches.
Also by Eric Ugland
The Bad Guys - Epic LitRPG/GameLit
Scamps & Scoundrels
Second Story Man
Skull and Thrones
Roseland - Private Investigator Mysteries
Series One
Series Two
Series Three
To Hammy H Mouse
You are the best mouse I know.
Chapter One
I entered my new world falling, and not knowing which world it was.
But the fall was short — maybe six feet — with a soft landing. I almost disappeared into deep snow.
I thought about my health levels, and then I saw my three little bars. Well, my red health bar and my blue mana bar. The spot where there had been a green stamina bar was just a little slash now.
“Vuldranni,” I said, breathing a deep sigh of relief.
I jumped up out of the deep snow to see only white all around me. I was in the middle of a blizzard. On the other side of the Empire from my home.
“Fuck.”
I pulled up my character sheet to see what happened after my death, if anything.
Montana - Lvl 26 Burgmann
Traits
Race: Royal Fallen
Height: 6’5”
Weight: 410 lbs
Eye Color: Hazel
Hair Color: Blonde
Renown: 375 - Some appreciate what you have done for them.
Statistics
HP: 510
STAM: n/a
MP: 748
Active Effects: Frightful Presence
Attributes
Strength: 101
Agility: 36
Dexterity: 39
Constitution: 70
Wisdom: 24
Intelligence: 32
Charisma: 32
Luck: 37
Unassigned points:
Skills
Riding - improvised (Lvl 1)
Falling (Lvl 3)
Animal Handling (Lvl 5)
Investigate (Lvl 1)
Harvesting (Lvl 5)
Swords (Lvl 25)
Unarmed Combat (Lvl 11)
Axes (Lvl 22)
Large Weapon Throwing (Lvl 28)
Jump (Lvl 6)
Stealth (Lvl 3)
Improvised Weaponry (Lvl 5)
Swimming (Lvl 17)
Spears (Lvl 41)
Warhammers (Lvl 25)
Light Armor (Lvl 5)
Heavy Armor (Lvl 8)
Fishing (Lvl 9)
Carving (Lvl 6)
Crafting (Lvl 5)
Wooden Weapon-Making (Lvl 1)
Skinning (Lvl 11)
Detect Traps (Lvl 45)
Lumberjack (Lvl 21)
Intimidation (Lvl 10)
Surveillance (Lvl 1)
Birding (Lvl 1)
Archery (Lvl 20)
Tracking (Lvl 24)
Fletching (Lvl 10)
Shield (Lvl 40)
Internal Monster Butchering (Lvl 1)
Politicking (Lvl 1)
Abilities
Darkvision
The Sword of My Enemy is My Sword
Iron Will
Make An Entrance
Stand Tall
Regal Bearing
Rallying Cry
Art of Movement
Labyrinthine Recall
Detect Mimic
Indomitable
Swift Tracker
Veritasium
Detect Metals and Minerals
Tremorsense
Unbreakable Skeleton
Imperial Favor
House Scion
That’s not Pain
Armored Hide
Battle Frenzy
Multiple Minds
Boons
Powerful Build (Mister Paul) - You are bigger than you look. For all strength roles, you are counted as one size category larger than you actually are.
Regeneration (Mister Paul) - Outside of combat, your body will repair rather quickly. Given enough time, it’s possible you will heal from nearly any wound.
Gift of Gab (Mister Paul) - Should you encounter a language you do not understand, as long as you hear at least three words of it, you will understand it, and speak it, perfectly.
Monstrous Companion (Typhon) - You have been gifted a companion from the god Typhon. Your companion is immortal, though if reduced to 0 HP, he will be forced to return in a different form, chosen at the whim of Typhon. You may absorb your companion for a temporary boost to your abilities, but the boost will only last until Typhon sends another companion your way.
Indicium
Coggeshall Heraldic Achievement (complete) - You are granted permission to use family buildings as you see fit, granted control of family funds, granted permission to use the family name, granted permission to name an heir, granted permission to expand the family, granted permission to bestow aspects of the Coggeshall Heraldic Achievement. You gain ten levels in the skill Shield. You gain the ability Imperial Favor. You gain the ability House Scion.
Eona’s Blessing of the Spear - Eona blesses you with +10 spear, +7 swimming, +5 fishing, +10% movement in water, +3 Agility
Indicium of Imperial Prerogative: Magic - You are permitted to perform magic within the Empire of Glaton
Royal - You are identified as being of Royal Blood, and gain the abilities Stand Tall and Regal Bearing
Dungeon of the Ancients Indicium - You gain the following skills and/or abilities: Duelist, Labyrinthine Recall, Detect Mimic 20 ft, Detect Traps +45 levels, Swift Tracker, Veritasium, and Detect Metals and Minerals
Slayer: Death Bringer - As a living embodiment of death, know that you cause Frightful Presence. Your enemies now have a chance to be frightened when they are aware of you. You do an extra 10% damage to any creature below half health. Each death you cause brings you 1% of your health in return.
Slayer: Death Bearer - Congratulations on the slaughter. For each new entity you kill within the time limit, you receive an additional 5% XP. Your enemies now have a chance to be frightened even when they are not aware of you, but you are within 20 yards of them.
Typhon’s Mark of the Beast - Typhon blesses you with +10 intimidation, tremorsense, labyrinthine recall, and +5 Strength.
Zothys’ Blessing of the Protector. You gain 25 levels in shield and +3 Constitution.
Eona’s Blessing of the Hunt - You receive +20 skill levels in Archery, +15 skill levels in tracking, +10 skill levels in fletching, +10% harder to detect while moving, +3 Dex
Titles
Imperial Duke of Coggeshall
Prince of Eonneque
Fürst of Vreijuirag
Count of Duhamel.
Count of Helgand.
Count of Dunnismeer.
Count of Whitelock
Count of Michelgrove
Count of Daroonga
Count of Braewood
Count of Kingshills
Count of Wolveshire
All lesser titles minimized.
Languages
Goblin
Imperial Common
Mahrduhmese
Infernal
Hobgoblin Battle Cant
Night Goblin
Ursusian
Lutra
Northern Kobold
Carchedonian
Spells
Lifeform Identification (Lvl 1)
Heal Other (lvl 3)
Humus (lvl 1)
Basic Object Identification (Lvl 3)
Tame - Greater (Lvl 1)
ManaBomb (Lvl 1)
Everything looked good, and it didn’t seem like I’d lost anything from death. It had been some time since I’d gained a level, and that meant, in my head at least, I was close. The snow stung as it hit my face, at least the little bit of it that was exposed. I felt for my beard, and smiled. It was full and glorious once again. All the burning and acid and cuts had been healed when I respawned. So, you know, bonus.
Like my earliest respawning, I got my basic kit. It was buried in the snow around my feet. Another bonus: I had on another white-fur suit that fit my current frame. I had clothes that fit! That in itself was almost worth dying. Almost. Dying sucked. It was still painful, still filled my brain with the horrible memories of death, and I knew there’d be plenty of nightmares in the nights to come.
“Fuck,” I said again. But the wind was blowing fast enough that it felt like the cold air just whipped my words away.
I knelt down, grabbed all the various bits and bobs of gear, and put them in my poorly-made knapsack. Well, it was just a regular knapsack, but that meant I couldn’t just stuff whatever in it. I had to actually be concerned with inventory space again.
“FUCK!”
I needed to get off the peak. The wind was only getting worse, and even with my strength, I could see my health bumping up and down as I froze, then regenerated, then froze, then regenerated. It was time to make a little snow cave somewhere and wait things out.
As I looked around for my best route, I realized something magical. I could go back and find the God-Sword and Shield I’d lost the first time I respawned. I smiled again. It was almost enough to make me look forward to the next day.
I headed down the mountain just a bit to get out of the wind as best I could. Then I got to work digging my own little snow cave. Yay Boy Scouts.
Chapter Two
I laid down as best I could in the small space, and watched the snow race by. Laying around doing nothing was the worst. It made me annoyed, because it meant there was time to think. And thinking was the worst.
And since I was thinking about not thinking, I inevitably started actually thinking. Initially about home. For the first time, home wasn’t Detroit. It was Coggeshall. I thought about the valley, and the people I’d left there. Skeld. Ragnar. It was a harsh reminder of how alone I was. It was the first time I was alone in, well, months. There were always people around me, people coming to talk to me, people asking me what to do. And now, nothing. Just me.
I missed those people.
Well, I think I missed being important. Of course I knew I was still important, but not immediately. And that thinking pushed me into thoughts of home. Home-home. Of Detroit. Thinking of the Club. And the girl. Mainly the girl. That was the common problem with thinking. Stupid girl. Stupid me.
I laid there in the snow, unable to stop thinking about the girl until I absolutely forced her out of my mind by going over of all the rote, boring stuff I needed to get done. I thought about roads and taxes. Of industry and... I started to nod off.
I was either running out of oxygen, or my brain seriously wanted to remain ignorant of things like that.
A quick poke of my pick axe through the roof gave me another breathing hole. A rush of cold air against my face, and I woke up right away. I didn’t want to take the chance of having to respawn again just because I’d made a crap snow-cave. That’d just be embarrassing. Not that I’d have to tell anyone, but still.
I wanted to get my valley explored prior to winter settling in. Given how wet the place seemed, with all the lakes and rivers and the like, it seemed like we’d be looking at heavy snowfall throughout Coggeshall. And once that snow came in, there was no way we’d be able to mosey out and about. That had to be mission one once I got back. Which brought about the problem of getting back. How was I supposed to get back?
I could sprint. All the way across the Empire. It might not take that long. If I had an average, or above average running time, then I could possibly be in the neighborhood of twenty miles per hour on flat ground. But with no real knowledge of the distance I needed to cover, there were too many variables to make any reasonable guess. Plus I’d have to get across the WarWaters again. And also it didn’t seem like I could ever get more than a hundred yards without a quest coming up, a problem to solve or an asshole to kill. So more likely it would take an age and a half to get across the Empire. But what choice did I have?
I shook my head and I closed my eyes. I was going to have to run.
Chapter Three
The storm blew itself out while I took a little snooze. And I didn’t die.
I pushed out of the snow cave and stood proudly in the sun, nearly blinded by the combination of light and snow.
I hiked back up to the peak to take a peek around. Mountains. Snow. Ice. Rocks. There was a lot of beauty to take in, but none of it was exactly ringing the bells I needed rung. I stood about where I’d spawned in, and I tried to remember where I would have put the big shield down, and which direction I’d gone sledding. I was pretty sure I knew the track I needed to take. Well, eighty percent.
I started down, pulling the pickaxe from my rope-belt to keep it handy. If I started sliding, it was going to be my safety net. My safety hammer?
The snow was deep, especially where the wind had blown it into drifts. Some were easily as big as me, which made me worry about falling in a hole somewhere so deep that I got buried.
It made me ponder starving to death. As in, could I starve to death? Or would I just shrink and shrink, having damage done to me by my starvation, but all the while have my regeneration keep kicking me back up to healthy? That was nightmare fuel all on its own. I needed to make sure I didn’t get trapped somewhere.
I figured I was on the right track when I got to a smallish cliff, since I remembered getting some pretty big air on the way the first time. I decided to just jump down it, since it was only about fifteen feet.
I fell right into at least ten feet of snow. It was terrifying; I just disappeared. All the light vanished, except a tiny hole above me, a small sliver of light blue. Hello, claustrophobia. Luckily the snow was still fresh, so it compressed nicely. It wasn’t an overwhelming challenge to dig a horizontal tunnel back to daylight.
I followed a general path down until I got to a larger cliff, one too big for me to jump. I took my time climbing down, my hands pretty much numb by the time I got to the bottom. But I was at the bottom and I hadn’t died, so that was certainly nice. In following the downward path of the landscape, I came to a large bowl. I would have remembered going around something like that. I went a little farther through the snowy terrain, but it was clear this was not the path I’d taken on the shield.
I looked back up at the peak and sighed. Time to start trudging back up.
I canvassed the mountainside over and over again. Down and up and down and up. It always started with confidence, feeling sure I was following the correct path. But the feeling would quickly dissipate as I made my way back down the mountain, inevitably coming to a point I knew I’d never been to before. I wound up at impassable walls,
massive rock fields, and even a glacier I knew I hadn’t ridden a shield across. The mountain was just too damn big, and I couldn’t find the right crevasse to climb down.
I sat there in the cold, staring out across the snowfields. Then I looked up at the peak again. I could go up and hike down once again, hoping to find the amazing sword I’d left behind. But why would I do that? Did I need the sword? Would it really make me significantly better at fighting? Could it make Coggeshall safer?
Yeah. Probably.
It was a god-tier weapon. That meant I could kill gods with it, right? I mean, maybe. I doubted that was a possibility, but it could certainly cut the heads off goblins. And damn were there goblins to kill.
But I could just as easily kill goblins with a regular sword. Or hell, a chunk of rock would do the trick. Or you could use their own grisly limbs. I’d done it all.
Combing a mountainside to find a crevasse I’d only seen while racing by, totally out of control, was more difficult than I anticipated. Maybe if I had gone right down the mountain the day I died, maybe then I’d have had a chance. But there was no telling if the thing that ate me would have just eaten me again.
The sun was still rising in the sky. It wasn’t quite noontime yet, and I still had one packet of rations in my bag. There were better things for me to be doing with my time, like marching back across the Empire to get back to my people and, well, do whatever it was Nikolai would yell at me for not having done yet.
I brushed the snow off my pants and started down the mountain. Stomping through the snow as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Of course, I did have a care — I had plenty of cares in fact. But I’d had so little time off between cares lately, so I decided to take advantage of it.
Down I went. The bit of sunshine the morning gave me disappeared as clouds came in, letting me know another storm was on the horizon. To make things worse, I came to another dead end. Well, not really an end so much as a giant fucking ice-covered cliff. It seemed like the mountain just decided it had had enough, and so, sheer cliff. More than sheer, I realized as I carefully looked over the edge, it was actually going back a bit convex. So when I climbed down — if I climbed down — I wouldn’t even be able to use my feet. I’d be stuck hanging free with my arms.