“He is doing better,” she said in a low voice.
“I think he just needed to grow up a little. I know I did.”
She smiled at him. “I remember the first time I saw you, coming to the rescue of the damsel like a knight from an epic poem.”
“Yeah, and the damsel turned out to be a vampire. Sorry for threatening you that day, by the way.”
“You told me you would feed me my own arrow!” she said with a laugh. “Others would have been far cruder. You were doing what you thought was best. And you cut a fine figure, even in your battered armor. You seemed young and naïve, but I still found you dashing and handsome. I had yet to discover how strong you truly were” She leaned against him. “Your armor makes for a poor cushion, my darling.”
“Soon as we get home, I won’t wear anything made of metal when I’m around you.”
“Father would not approve of us consorting while still courting.”
Hawke checked the timer app that was included with his map. They had a few more minutes before Phase Three. “I think I can take care of that.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean...?”
“Unless you object, of course.”
“It is rather sudden, but I don’t mind. Not at all.”
Hawke walked over to where Kinto was sitting. The Hunter was using a sharpening stone on his spear. Hawke noticed its Durability was down a few points. When he had time, he would use his Arcane Blacksmithing abilities and try to fix everyone’s gear. But he had other things to do first.
“Kinto Primes,” he said formally.
The Hunter stood up. He might have been smiling as he did, but he looked as serious as usual a moment later. “Speak your piece, Hawke Lightseeker, Son of Hector.”
“I would like your blessing to ask Tava for her hand in marriage.”
“Have you a household of your own?”
“I have money. I will buy a house in Orom. I will swear an oath to that effect.”
“No need. I trust you, Hawke.” His smile was now plain to see. “Ah, to be young again.” Kinto turned to his daughter, who had followed Hawke and was standing by his side. “What say you, daughter of mine? You have been of marrying age since you turned eighteen, but you were in no hurry to form a household.”
“I say yes, Father.”
“Then ask her, Paladin – and more than a mere Paladin, it seems. You have my blessing.”
Hawke went on one knee and said the words. They were fairly similar in both cultures and they even required a ring, which embarrassed him to no end when he realized he didn’t have one. Gosto saved his bacon.
“Here,” the young Druid said, handing Hawke a simple silver band. “It’s a Ring of Dexterity. It only increases it by one point, but Tava can use that more than I. Use this.”
“I will get you something a lot better to replace it,” Hawke told him, and placed the ring around Tava’s finger. She wasn’t the crying type, but she looked downright radiant when he stood up and they kissed. He noticed that Nadia was grinning and wiping her eyes. Everyone cheered.
Thank you. And you are next.
He could almost hear a smile in her mental voice:
They enjoyed a whole minute or two of bliss before the message they all had been dreading appeared:
Phase Three Has Begun
Fifty-Six
“What’s next?” Nadia asked as people got ready for trouble. “We’ve had a horde of minions, then a pack of big monsters. A Boss?”
“Yeah,” Hawke said. “If this is the final phase, a Boss would make sense.”
“By which you mean a powerful single entity, correct?” Tava said. “An Undead lord of great power, I’d wager. We must be prepared for magical as well as physical attacks.”
Crommen and Egg were buffing everyone again. The bonuses against Undead attacks and effects had helped keep everyone alive. Hawke hoped that their magic would be enough against the new threat. Everyone got set behind the barricades and waited for the enemy to show up.
“It is getting closer! Over here!” Hawke warned the group and cast all his buffs again, followed by Consecrated Ground. The Dwarves came to his side of the slope. Time to see what an open-world Boss looked like in this ‘game.’
They felt its presence before they saw it. An oppressive sense of impending doom hit Hawke with almost physical force. Fear and despair washed over him, trying to make him surrender to the inevitable or run away in uncontrollable panic. He shook his head as a new message appeared:
You have resisted: Terror Aura
He glanced around. The Dwarves looked pale but were standing their ground. Desmond had dropped to his knees and was trembling uncontrollably. And Nadia screamed in terror and tried to run past the barricade. Tava brought her down and held her tightly until Egg walked over and dispelled the fear effect from both of the low-level Eternals.
“I’m sorry,” Nadia said as she composed herself.
“Happens to the best of us,” Hawke told her and Desmond, who nodded grimly and picked up his weapon.
“There!” Korgam called out as the former commander of the doomed legions came into view.
Hawke saw a man on a skeletal horse, wearing a burnished bronze breast plate and a crested helmet, with a red cloak thrown over one shoulder. He looked normal, just a slim man with a slightly oversized nose, not a skeleton or a zombie, but the pale purple aura around him and his mount, not to mention the stats Hawke could see, belied his appearance:
Legate General Marcus Agustino Pertinax (Undead)
Level 8 Wraith High Lord (Elite)
Health 1600 Mana 2000 Endurance 1600
Moments after the Wraith came into view, half a dozen translucent figures emerged from the ground and surrounded the Legate General like a ghostly bodyguard.
It figures that a Boss will have a group of minions with him, Hawke thought bitterly. More importantly, the minions were identical to the spirit he had encountered in the Undead Lair, confirming that this Event was the work of Domort the Necromancer:
Wraith Servitor (Undead)
Level 7 Ghost (Elite)
Health 210 Mana 350 Endurance 280
There were six of them. This was going to be messy.
“I can keep the big guy busy while the rest of you handle the lesser ghosts,” Hawke suggested.
“You will need at least a healer to assist you, Paladin, even with your mysterious powers,” Korgam said. “The rest of us will make short work of the spirits and come join you.”
“I’ll do it,” Gosto said.
“Okay. Everyone else, hold the hill until the Servitors are gone.”
A second after Hawke spoke, a bolt of black energy hit him like the wrath of an angry god. An angry god like Cthulhu. Maybe Cthulhu’s dad’s boss.
“Hawke!” Tava shouted as he teetered on his feet. Even with all his buffs, he was down to twenty-nine Health.
Holy crap, that’s an insta-kill on anyone else!
“Heals!” he shouted to Gosto as he activated Twilight Step to close the range before Ghostly Julius Caesar could fire off another of those spells.
He double-backstabbed the Wraith High Lord for a satisfying four hundred and thirty-eight points of damage and placed Consecrated Ground under the ghost general and its horse while Gosto dropped 25-point heals on Hawke as fast as he could. The Legate’s horse reared and spun in place, letting its rider materialize a long cavalryman’s saber in his hand and try to decapitate Hawke. He blocked the blow with one of his swords – and took 69 points of Undeath energy as purple-black energy flowed from the place the blades met and burned him right in the soul. Without his ongoing heals and Gosto’s spells, he would have gone down. Even worse, the Wraith r
egained 69 points of Health at the same time. The bastard had some sort of life-draining attack!
Hawke ducked under the Undead’s backswing and restored his Bulwark of Light instead of counterattacking. He needed that extra force field. Meanwhile, a peek at the Party Interface showed Korgam’s status going yellow as he lost a bunch of Health while tanking the six Wraiths. Nobody was having a good time.
He got a couple of hits in while keeping away from the Wraith’s sword, but a moment later another bolt of anti-life energy hit him; the spell was the sort that couldn’t be dodged. His Health went from almost full to the low double digits. Another Twilight Step let him return the favor, but where he’d been near death twice, he’d barely decreased the High Lord’s Health by half – and the Event Boss was regenerating 20 Health per second. In forty seconds, it would be back to full, faster than that if the Wraith landed a couple more hits with its life-sucking saber.
Hawke ducked more slashes and landed a Hammer of Light and a few sword blows, which brought the Undead bastard down by another hundred points. He figured out the cooldown on the Undeath spell (Unholy Bolt, according to Hawke’s Combat Log) the High Lord was using: eight seconds. His timer app let him know he had four seconds to go. He renewed his Bulwark of Light and did another Twilight Step backstab.
The Legate was waiting for it. Hawke’s teleport ended with him landing two hits (without the backstab bonus) in exchange for getting speared through the gut by the Wraith’s saber, which killed his damage-absorbing shield. A moment later, Unholy Bolt dropped Hawke’s Health down to eleven. Before the Event Boss could finish him off, Hawke used Shadow Step, the Darkness version of his Twilight go-to spell, to escape to a shadowy area under a nearby tree and used all his healing spells to recover. He could throw a Twilight Aura around himself and become invisible, but then the Legate would be free to rain death upon his friends. He needed to maintain aggro even if it killed him. He tried to increase his level to eight to trigger the healing effect, only to be informed all level increases were frozen until after the Event ended. Damn the Arbiters!
“Over here, ugly!” he yelled at the High Lord as it looked around for him. He added injury to the insult via a Hammer of Twilight. Hawke ran towards the Legate.
The Wraith met him halfway, spurring its skeleton horse forward and holding its saber straight as if it was a lance. Hawke timed it just right, rolled under the saber’s point and landed a slash on the rider’s leg that did extra damage thanks to its mount’s momentum. As the Undead rode by and began to turn around, Hawke launched another Twilight Step. The Legate moved with inhuman speed, twisting in the saddle to strike Hawke down as he appeared to its rear.
Except Hawke set his landing spot in front of the Wraith this time.
He didn’t get the full backstab bonus, but he inflicted another couple hundred damage on the monster. Even with its regen, it was getting down into the low hundreds. If he could only…
The Unholy Bolt hit him just as he remembered its cooldown had expired. He staggered, surprised he wasn’t dead, and realized Egg had added his healing to Gosto’s restoring most of his Health in the nick of time. His Party Interface showed him the Dwarf fighters moving to join the fight. The minions were all gone, and several of his people were injured but none were in danger. The plan had worked.
“You’re gonna be one sorry sumbitch,” he told the Wraith before he and his friends terminated its Undead ass.
Phase Three Completed.
Wraith High Lord Slain (1/1)
EVENT COMPLETE
With the Final Death of its general, the Legions have returned to their unmarked graves, where they will rest uneasily until some great power calls upon them again.
Fifty-Seven
Congratulations! For surviving the Event, you have earned 1,050 XP.
Your Contribution to the Event has earned an additional 500 XP
You have found: 4 gold, 8 silver
You have found: Greaves of the Battle-Mage (Masterwork Quality, Set Item)
Current XP/Next Level: 9,403/10,000
Okay, maybe the Arbiters can be sort of fair, sometimes, Hawke conceded as he examined his newest piece of loot. The bonus XP had been great. Maybe even as good as what he would have gotten if he had killed all those monsters outside of an Event. The new item even matched his existing set:
Greaves of the Battle Mage (Masterwork Quality)
Item Level: 10 (Minimum Level 5).
Damage Absorption: Physical 18/40%; Elemental (All) 12/20%; Forces (All) 5, 10%. Agility Penalty: 0. Stealth Penalty: -12% Speed Penalty: 0%. Durability 111/250. Requires Heavy Armor Skill.
Attribute Bonuses: +1 to Strength, +1 to Dexterity, +1 to Constitution, +10% speed.
Set bonuses: Two pieces: +50 Mana. Three pieces: +10% Damage Resistance (All). Four or more pieces: +100 Mana; Reduce Casting Time by 1 second or 10%, whichever is better.
“This is great,” he said as he equipped his new leg armor piece. “Too bad I don’t get any bonuses for having five pieces of Battle Mage stuff.”
“Very true,” Hawke said.
The mists had vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and the late afternoon’s sun shone down on the hill. The skeletal remains were gone as well; a few downed trees and holes on the ground were the only evidence that they had been real. The group unanimously agreed to set camp on the hill they had used as a last-ditch fortress and spend the night there. Everyone wanted a break. They were also busy examining the prizes they had earned for fighting off the Undead horde.
Kinto had received an Enchanted Bow at least as good as the one he had given Tava. She had gotten a leather breastplate – Leather Jerkin of the Forester – with improved damage resistance and hefty bonuses to her Attributes and Skills. Gosto and Nadia had gained Enchanted-quality staffs, tailor-made for their respective classes, and Desmond had a shiny greatsword. Speaking of which…
“You could use these,” Hawke told the former gamer, handing him his Greaves of the Warrior. “They are better than those starter boots and have some Attribute bonuses.”
“Appreciate it,” Desmond said. “Hit level four, too. Putting all six points in Strength.”
Hawke almost suggested he might want to put some points in Constitution, but thought better of it. He had made a lot of progress turning the guy from a resentful potential traitor into someone he could count on. Handing out unsolicited advice might spoil things. Let him figure things out on his own, he told himself. Saturnyx didn’t add any commentary, so he figured he’d done the right thing. She was like Jimmy the Cricket, if Jimmy the Cricket could behead someone in a single swing and would love doing it.
The Dwarves had gotten plenty of goodies as well, and two of them – Korgam and Egg – had leveled up.
“Congratulations on your advancement on the Path,” Hawke told the Dwarven Adventurers, using the formal way to say ‘Gratz.’
“That was a grand battle, Lightseeker!” Korgam said. “Life in your company may be many things, but boring is hardly one of them!”
“It has been a pretty busy couple of weeks,” he admitted.
“And it is time to fulfill certain promises, now that the mists are gone, along with the Undead,” Egg said.
The Priest of Gaon had replaced the small leather cap he’d used to cover his bald pate with his Event reward, a silver Half-Crown of the Sages which reminded Hawke of a beauty contest winner’s tiara. It looked out of place over the Dwarf’s homely features but gave him a +4 boost to his Intelligence, Spirit and Willpower. Egg should be happy with his reward, and for reaching level six, but his serious expression didn’t show it.
Hawke nodded. “Yes, it is time. Anyone who wishes to hear this, gather around.”
Everyone did, except for Tava, who was off looking for arrows with Gosto. He’d already told her everything anyway, during one of their private talks.
“First of all, I will ask all of you, except for Kinto and Gosto, who I consider to be family, to swear you will not reveal any of this to anyone. I assure you that this knowledge is neither evil nor against your principles. Neither will it be used to bring harm upon you, your family and clan, and your people,” he continued; Saturnyx had helped him craft the oath. “If any of those assurances are not true, the oath is invalid and you may do as you please.”
Egg spoke first. “Under those conditions, I have no objections; I do so swear. To keep the knowledge you will share with us regarding your special magicks, I do so swear. To never reveal that knowledge without your express consent, I do so swear.”
Everyone repeated the words, including Desmond and Nadia, who were more curious than concerned.
“The short version is this: my true class is no longer Paladin of Light. I am a Twilight Templar,” Hawke said. “Or, as I like it to call it, a Paladin Ninja.”
The long version and the Q&A that followed lasted through dinner.
* * *
“Our watch is over,” Tava told Hawke later that night.
Hawke checked his timer app and nodded. She was right, almost down to the minute. Her internal clock was damn good. They woke up Crommen and Taggon, who had the third shift. Tava gestured at him to follow her to the far side of the hilltop clearing where they sat down together.
“We are betrothed now,” she added.
“And waiting for the wedding night isn’t the way you guys do things, right?”
She laughed softly. “Only the most prude amongst the prude wait until then. The promise is as good as the wedding vow, and only the worst kind of villain would break it. I also visited Priest Patros before we left, so I’m in no danger of conceiving a child unless I wish to have one. Which I do not for some time, and that is something that should wait for after the wedding. I will not birth any bastards.”
They’ve got magical birth control here?
“I want to be with you, Hawke.”
Twilight Templar (The Eternal Journey Book 1) Page 34