by Edward Brody
Wynnizen stumbled several steps forward and shook his head. Sung followed the Barbaros’ path and raised his dagger for another stab, but Wynnizen turned and wildly swung his bloodied sword.
Wynnizen’s blade cut deep into the side of Sung’s leather chestpiece, which was enough to drop Sung to the ground, draw an immediate surge of blood, and completely knock him out of the fight.
“I’ll kill you all if I have to!” Wynnizen yelled, rage burning in his eyes. He stomped towards me and started swinging his blade like a madman.
I stepped back and dodged his strikes while Jenzyn jumped on his back. She tried to scratch his neck, but the bigger Barbaros elbowed her, grabbed her roughly and yanked her to the ground.
Wynnizen pressed forward until my back was against the wall, and I dodged another swing before holding my hand out to release an Arcane Missile. Though I didn’t want to cause any unnecessary damage, things had reached a point of no return. Wynnizen was out of control and going to kill someone if he wasn’t stopped immediately.
As I started to release the missile, Wynnizen’s eyes suddenly went wide, and his back and shoulders straightened awkwardly. He stopped dead in his tracks and dropped his sword. A strange stuttering sound exited his mouth, and he looked down slowly, like a robot powering down.
I continued to hold my hand out, confused as to why he had dropped his weapon, but then I saw small metal tips peeking out from his abdomen.
The tips retracted, and Wynnizen dropped to his knees. Standing behind him was Trynzen, shaking slightly but showing sharp fangs and angry eyes. He was wearing his now bloodied razor claw on his hand and was slowly pulling his elbow back. “Not hurt friend!” he yelled, before thrusting his weapon forward, once again, this time in the back of Wynnizen’s neck.
The second attack may have been unnecessary as no real reaction came from Wynnizen’s body. His head bobbled, and his eyes stayed wide and unmoving. When Trynzen pulled the claw back, Wynnizen fell into a heap on the ground.
You have gained 2,300 XP!
I swallowed hard and pulled myself up straight. Though there were many things that needed to be addressed, my first thoughts went to Sora and Sung.
I stepped over Wynnizen’s body and hurried towards Sora, pausing at Trynzen, who was still shaking and looking down to his dead brother. I put my hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Thank you, friend.” Though I had the mind to say more to him, there were more pressing issues at play.
When I reached Sora, I could tell she wasn’t dead due to the way her chest rose up and down. I rubbed my hand across her fur, then grabbed her by the neck and gave her a gentle shake. “Sora, wake up…” I muttered.
“Give her a few minutes,” Jenzyn said as she reached around to grab her sore back and stood on wobbly feet. “The potion he used only lasts a few minutes. She’ll wake on her own soon.”
I nodded and rushed over to Sung who was applying a bandage to his nasty wound.
“How are you doing, man?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about me,” Sung said and tilted his head towards the orc who was laying on the ground, groaning low and clutching her child. I noticed the baby had gone silent, which worried me a bit.
I heeded Sung’s advice and hurried over to the orc. “Are you okay?”
The orc’s eyes were glossy, and her eyelids looked swollen. She glanced up to me and then to her baby. “Please find my husband,” she said, gasping. “Tell him of my death and have him care for our son.”
You’ve received a quest offer: A Mother’s Plea!
The orc mother would like you to find her husband, report her death, and return their child to him.
Reward: 16,000 XP
Do you accept this quest? Accept/Decline
I read a bit of the quest prompt that appeared in front of me, but stopped halfway, shaking my head. “You’re not dead yet,” I said as I reached into my satchel for a bandage and a healing potion.
“I am…” the orc gurgled and swallowed hard. She moved her paw away from her chest and turned to her side a bit, revealing a large pool of blood that had formed on the ground. Her eyes lowered. “I feel this is my last breath. There’s no time. Find my… Rithnar. His name is Rithnar… the Wastelands.” Her voice grew weak.
“Wait, wait!” I said as I gripped a health potion and popped the top.
“He will raise him... he will… love and cherish our child…please… pleeee…” Her voice trailed into silence, her eyes closed, and her head slumped forward and to the side.
“No, no, no…” I rattled as I grabbed the orc’s face, forced her mouth open, and poured the potion’s contents down her throat. “Talk to me, lady. I’ll help you get your baby back to your husband—just talk to me.”
You have accepted the quest: A Mother’s Plea!
Normally, people would perk right up after drinking a health potion, but most of the liquid simply spilled out of the orc’s mouth. I stopped pouring halfway as the baby started slipping out of its mother’s arms.
I lifted the child, and as if it could sense that something was wrong, it immediately began to cry again.
“Oh, damn…” I groaned and bit the inside of my cheek. I had gone through all the trouble of saving the orc, but she ended up getting killed anyway. Though she would’ve died if I had left her under the wagon, I still felt a tinge of responsibility for bringing her to Jenzyn’s house for questioning. If I had simply let her go when we arrived to Barbarosia, her death would’ve never happened.
“This is bad…” Jenzyn said as she approached me from behind.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed, shaking my head, “but at least the child wasn’t hurt.”
“Not only the child,” Jenzyn said. She looked at Wynnizen’s body. “I have a dead Barbaros and a dead orc in my home. This will not end well.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Barbaros do not kill other Barbaros,” Jenzyn said. “Such a thing is punished by either exile or death.”
“He was going to kill someone. It was self-defense,” I asserted. I looked down to the orc. “Actually, he did kill someone.”
“Which makes it even worse,” Jenzyn said. “Orcs and Barbaros have vowed peace… An orc murdered inside Barbarosia…” She shook her head. “If people find out about this… I don’t know. It will be a fiasco, that’s for sure.” She closed her eyes and pressed a paw to her temple.
“The one who killed her is dead, and we’re all witnesses to it,” I said. “Surely, everyone will understand.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” Jenzyn explained. “We may be at peace with the orcs, but there is still much distrust between our two races. Wynnizen’s death could be looked at in the wrong light. Blame could be placed on the orcs, and some of the less rational folks may push for revenge.”
“But Trynzen killed him…” I spoke. “The orc was innocent.”
“If they find out that Trynzen is responsible for any of this, then… I don’t know.” Jenzyn looked to Trynzen and shook her head. “This is not good. I can’t let it happen.”
Trynzen’s shoulders slumped, and his anger seemed to melt into sadness. He looked down to his bloodied claw and then to his brother. “Trynzen kill… kills Barbaros.” He fell to his knees and his razor claw clanged when the blades tapped against the floor. “No kill… No kill orc, no kill brother.”
“Hey,” I called out to him. “You’re not responsible for this.”
“I need to find Mylynzen,” Jenzyn said. “He will know what to do. Wait for me here, please.”
I looked to the crying baby and then back to Jenzyn. “Yeah, okay, but what do we do about this thing?”
Jenzyn signed and shook her head. “I don’t know. Just try to keep it quiet for now. We can’t draw any attention to us until we figure this out.”
I glanced at the baby again, swallowed hard, and gave Jenzyn a slight nod. “Okay, we’ll wait for you.”
As Jenzyn fled out the door, I turned my attention to th
e baby and took a deep breath. Growing up, I had no brothers or sisters to take care of and never reached the point of having children of my own, so my experience with babies was limited. Most everything I knew about little kids came from television or watching how strangers handled theirs.
The child was very much an orc with its green skin and exaggerated canines, but its small size, five fingers, and baby movements made it feel similar to a human child. It had a pug nose and slightly pointed ears, but it also had a full head of thick, dark, human-like hair. Its large eyes were just like a human baby’s, and some of its teeth weren’t fully developed yet. It looked frail and innocent—not nearly as fearsome as its adult counterparts.
I gently scooped the child higher, and it’s crying immediately got louder. I stared down at it, unsure what to do, but between its cries, it seemed to catch a glance of me and quieted. Its brow creased, and it looked at me with shifty eyes, as if it were confused as to why a foreign creature so different from its mother was suddenly holding it.
“Umm, yeah,” I said low. “Stay calm, little fella.”
The baby’s chin trembled, and tears formed around its eyes before it burst into crying again.
“Shhhh,” I continued. “Don’t cry… Don’t cry…”
The baby was having none of it.
“Maybe we should just kill it,” Sung said dryly. I glanced to my guildmate and noticed that he had stopped his bleeding and was back to his feet, adjusting his gear.
“That’s pretty heartless.”
“It’s an orc…” he said.
“I get you, but don’t you have any empathy after talking to her?” I motioned towards the body lying on the ground.
“Yeah,” Sung said. “But it’s still an orc.” He strode to the table where the half-eaten food ration was still sitting and picked it up. “Anyway, I was just kidding. Try this.” He tossed the ration, and it landed on the floor beside me.
I adjusted the baby so that I was carrying it with one arm, and I immediately felt how helpless it was. It wasn’t much heavier than a bottle of water, but it was much more fragile. I could tell by how easily I could shift it that a hard fall or maybe even squeezing it the wrong way would be enough to kill it, and that made holding it unnerving.
I carefully picked up the food ration, and like I saw the orc do earlier, I pinched off a small corner from it. I bobbed my arm up and down softly a couple times and held the tiny piece of ration up to the baby’s lips.
The baby just continued crying and didn’t even seem to notice the food.
I stuck the food up against its mouth and rubbed it against its lips, and the baby finally parted them between cries. When I dropped the food inside, the baby’s eyes shot open, and it calmed as it began to chew. It looked up to me with eyes of curiosity as it consumed the small piece of smelly ration, and I quickly reached for another piece.
“There ya go,” Sung said. “It was just hungry.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But should we call it ‘it’ or ‘he’?”
Sung shrugged. “I don’t know… Does it matter? I’m still having trouble looking at any of them as more than XP. It’s the first baby I’ve seen, but I’ve killed way too many orcs in games to see it as anything else.”
“Game?” Trynzen asked. He was pulling his razor claw off and putting it away. “Trynzen want to play game!”
I smiled as I placed another small piece of food ration into the baby’s mouth. I was glad to see Trynzen returning to his normal self—if you could call any part of him normal. Even with the dead bodies right by us, he had seemingly forgotten that he just killed his own brother at the mention of a game.
I grabbed a few pieces of the ration and tossed the rest of it at Trynzen. It landed with a flop on the floor near his feet. “How about that, Tryn?”
Trynzen snatched up the remainder of the food ration, but before taking a bite, he creased his brow and eyed me curiously. “One and then two?”
I chuckled. “That’s all we’ve got for you now, but you don’t have to do anything for it. You did great today. It’s all yours.”
“Trynzen’s!” he shouted before biting a chunk off and scurrying up against an empty wall to eat the rest, as if one of us was going to take it back from him.
Sung walked over to me and looked down at the baby. “You know, he’s actually pretty cute.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Disgusting, but cute.”
I laughed. “Oh, come on…”
“Wait ‘til he grows up,” Sung said. “Maybe I’m bitter after all the fighting we did in Edgewood, but…” He shrugged. “Let me hold him.”
I raised an eyebrow to him. “I can trust you with him, right? You’re not going to snap its neck, are you?”
“Psst, nah,” Sung spat and held out his hands. “Gimme.”
I took a deep breath and handed the baby to Sung. He pulled the baby close to his chest, expertly, then smiled as he looked down to it. He tapped his index finger against the chin of the baby and raised his eyebrows at it. “Hot damn, you’re adorable, aren’t you?” He shook his head at the baby, and his grin widened.
The baby smiled, flailed its arms around and started giggling.
“Seems like you’ve done this before,” I said.
Sung made a couple of kissy noises at the baby, raised his head up, and shrugged. “My girlfriend and I had plans of having a child.” He looked to the wall, sighed, and was lost in thought for a moment. He shook his head. “Before I came here, of course.”
“Do you regret it?” I asked.
“Not having a baby?” Sung asked.
“Coming here.”
Sung shook his head. “Nah, I love it here, but I do miss Aoi.”
“Your girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” Sung said with a nod. He looked straight ahead at the wall. “I hope I’ll see her again.”
I felt a strange tinge in my stomach, as Sung’s longing to see his girlfriend reminded me of Rachel. I hoped to see Rachel again, but I wasn’t so sure if I felt the same way about Rachel as Sung felt about Aoi. He didn’t hesitate to call her his girlfriend, and it was clear he still had deep feelings for her as well. They had even made plans to have kids, while Rachel and I had only been together a short time. Still, it was a bit weird that he had never mentioned her before and didn’t seem to be making much effort to find her. That didn’t really make much sense to me, since finding Rachel had been one of my top priorities and something I still hadn’t completely given up on.
“Did she login to the game?” I asked.
Sung shook his head. “No, but I told her I was coming here and asked her to join me when she’s ready. She cried and cried, talked about our future together on Earth and all that… I felt super guilty.” Sung shook his head. “But I’ve got forever in here now. Hopefully she’ll come around.” Sung sighed then turned his attention back to his baby.
I could feel Sung’s pain, but I was also having trouble fully processing his story. If I put myself in Sung’s shoes, I wasn’t sure if I could’ve made the same choice. He was a gaming genius back home and had it all—money, fame, and apparently a girlfriend that he loved. He had a future. How was he able to leave all that success behind so easily? And why? He joined after launch day, so he knew what he was getting into. Had something happened on Earth that he was hiding?
Eden’s Gate offered immortality, so perhaps I was thinking too small—still thinking with my Earth brain. Maybe, like Dr. Winston, he simply realized that a hundred years of a great, fulfilling life on Earth couldn’t compare with a million or more years in Eden’s Gate, where Sung could theoretically duplicate what he had on Earth an infinite number of times over. When I thought of it that way, his choice seemed a lot more reasonable.
Father…
I looked over to see Sora stand to her feet and shake the cobwebs of slumber from her head. You’re awake.
What happened? I…
Sleeping potion, it would seem.
Sora looked tow
ards the dead bodies on the ground. It looks like you handled things on your own, but how did the orc woman die?
An accident, I projected. It was that guy’s fault. I raised my chin towards the dead Barbaros on the ground. Such a shame that it happened.
Strange to see you empathetic to orcs after what you’ve been through.
The door suddenly swung open, and Jenzyn stepped inside.
Right behind her was the eye-patched Barbaros, Mylynzen, nicknamed the ‘Great Tamer’ by other Barbaros. He glanced at Sung, Sora, and then made brief eye contact with me as soon as he entered. Worry was etched across his face, but he bobbed his head slightly in greeting. “Pleasure to see you again, despite the circumstances.”
Sung and I both nodded and Sora raised her lips a bit, showing her fangs. She clearly remembered being captured and caged by the tamer.
His eyes found Trynzen. “So, he really has returned. Welcome back to Barbarosia, Trynzen.”
Trynzen’s head twitched erratically at the sight of the Great Tamer. “Mylynzen friend Jenzyn. Trynzen remember Mylynzen.”
Mylynzen turned his attention to the bodies on the ground, and he took a deep breath while his jaw tensed. “Glenetzyn will kill Trynzen if he finds out about this,” he muttered.
“I know,” Jenzyn said.
“And he may come for you too, even,” he added. “This is your house, after all.”
“I know,” Jenzyn said again.
Mylynzen trod over to the dead orc. “And this…” He pointed his finger at the body. “This is more than just a little dangerous. If an orc corpse is found in your house, the speculation begins…”
“I know,” Jenzyn said yet again.
“Some will say the orc was a spy or that the orc attacked first. After all, why would a Barbaros attack an orc in our own city? And the orcs are already fighting our neighbors to the west.” Mylynzen sighed. “Others may blame you for orchestrating something. They’ll ask why you have an orc woman in your home at all. They may think you broke the peace treaty and are bringing us closer to war. And if Ergoth gets word and takes it the wrong way…” He swallowed hard. “I hear he isn’t as passive as the last orc King. It could be the kind of match that lights a new war.”