Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  Simultaneously, while landing, she thrust out her left hand and cast her Minor Blessing. Sara was too far away, but she was still able to effect herself and Mira, granting a 27 bonus temporary health and 22% chance to attack and also slammed her right hand down trying to drive the point of her dagger into the back of the massive frog’s head. While her spell went off without a hitch draining the 50 mana from her and converting it into a potent enhancement for Mira and her, her dagger attack was less successful. In fact, it was a spectacular failure. Even with the piercing enchantment, it failed to gain purchase in the thick horned armor covering the top of the amphibian’s head. This was one of those moments where the uploaded skills Emily had received were a poor replacement for actual combat experience. She had been so vested in that strike that when the dagger barely pierced an inch into the thick protective covering, she wasn’t prepared for the frog’s lurching leap that followed, and she instinctively released the dagger in an attempt to hold onto her precarious perch. The dagger flew out of her reach and onto the ground several feet away as the frog bucked wildly, demonstrating why it was a bullfrog. Clinging on for dear life now, Emily felt the rough ridges of the frog’s armor cutting into the unprotected skin of her palms and fingers. Fortunately, the rest of her was covered in the tight leather wrap and so fared much better but was still going to be bruised. In her mind’s eye, she saw that every second she hung onto the back of the frog, she was taking approximately (2) health in damage and more viscerally, she could see the blood starting to slick her hands with the result that it was even harder to hold on.

  Every second she clung on was eating into her bonus health, but at the same time, she was terrified to let go, knowing she would be flung off and that the beast would be able to attack her with those vicious looking horns atop its forehead. Yet, what choice did she have? She would have to count upon her newly enhanced agility to save her, and so it was that hours of sci-fi marathons Dave had forced her to watch with him came out as she let go shouting, “Geronimo.”

  Mira had her own hands full. She had felt like a force of nature as the flames had rushed forth from her hands. She could tell that the heat was scorchingly intense, but it didn’t seem to bother her hands at all, and not so much as a fingernail had been blackened by the intense flames. While the rush of mana and the wave of flames was exhilarating, actually witnessing the impact the flames had was much harder to take. Mira had a soft heart for animals. She remembered the time that she had cried after an eight-year-old Jackson had shot a baby rabbit with a friend’s BB gun in their backyard and that was nothing compared to the obvious agony the three frogs subjected to her flames experienced. Who would have guessed that a frog could cry, but that was exactly what it sounded like, at least for the two on the sides. The central frog didn’t do much of anything other than become a charred husk. Hopefully, it didn’t suffer much. The other two frogs were clearly burned badly, but not so badly that they didn’t charge forward at her. She went from sad about the frog’s suffering to utter terror as two one-hundred-and-fifty-pound horrors rushed toward her in a pain-induced rage. Since her Flame Fan spell was on cooldown and uncastable, she planned to cast her Ice Dagger spell, hoping it would take out at least one of her two opponents. It appeared that her mom had one of the frogs in hand and was riding it like a bull. She felt the effect of her mom’s Minor Blessing spell protecting her, but on the other side, the situation was much different. The fifth uninjured amphibian terror had charged much faster than the two that she had injured and was already attacking Sara who was encompassed in a golden sphere of magical energy, presumably from her talisman. Mira made a snap decision and switched her spells to cast her most expensive spell as quickly as possible, hoping she could still evade the charge of the two monstrosities aimed right at her. Her Minor Charm Enemy spell cost fully half of her total mana at 75, and she could only hope it would affect the frog that was attacking Sara.

  The cast seemed to take a split second longer than either of the other spells she cast, and the surge of mana was much more dramatic. That extra second of casting was just long enough that the first of the two frogs ended its charge, pushing its armored skull with horns and all into her midsection. Mira felt the air pushed out of her in an explosive gasp, and she felt the euphoric feeling of her mana forming the intended spell start to twist out of her control. Transpiring over an instant within her mindscape, she felt the mana trying to turn back on her. Her will battled against it, trying to maintain the form of the spell in her mind as she had learned to do when the spell was uploaded into her brain. It was sheer agony, such that she didn’t even feel the cracked ribs the flat of the bullfrog’s head had caused on impact. Her mind was on fire and in that instant, all she could do was try to wrangle the mana back under control as a restrained groan escaped her lips with the small amount of air remaining in her lungs. In reality, the battle for control of the mana took only a fraction of a second, but to Mira, as her mind was razed by fiery pain, it felt like an eternity. She lost all sense of what was going on around her as her mindscape became the entirety of her existence. The teenager was faced with a struggle unlike any in a life where previously the biggest challenges she faced were balancing academic success with social popularity. Now her mind pushed and pulled, fighting to contain the mana in the spell form without letting it escape, unsure what type of damage wild mana could do to her body or even her very soul. Finally, painfully, she forced the mana to do what she wanted, and her Minor Charm Enemy spell leapt at the speed of thought across the space between Mira and her target. For all of that effort, she had a quick notification cross her mind’s eye as she was still midair on her way to the ground from the charging blow of the first bullfrog.

  Congratulations!

  You have successfully made a concentration check and maintained the casting of your spell despite a distraction.

  She thought, “A distraction? That’s what cracked ribs from a head-butting monster is called?” But she had no time for humor as her short flight ended with a hard crash upon the ground. Between the impact of the frog and the inevitable impact with the ground, Mira sustained a total of (32) health damage because in her concentration, she had not been able to use her enhanced agility to roll with the blow. Before she could respond, the second bullfrog ended its charge by pouncing upon her. Its weight caused a small amount of damage (4) but the real danger was the way the beasts jaw opened wide and its mouth pushed forward to cover her entire face, the reek of its breath secondary to the immediate burning of its acidic saliva all over her face. She couldn’t breathe and terror set in as asphyxiation and burning started to drain her health at a staggering (5) per second. At this rate, she would be dead in less than fifteen seconds.

  Completely unaware of the battle the girls were engaged in, Dave and Jackson had settled into the mundane task of picking up firewood. They figured it would take a couple of trips to carry enough wood to cook dinner and be sure of having enough kindling for the entire night, especially given the existence of two suns. They were unsure how long the night would be. Since they were having to range further into the woods to find sufficient dead wood on the ground, they started making a stack of wood near the tree line. As they started talking about eating dinner, it suddenly dawned upon Dave that they only had limited dry rations and that it might be worth cutting off a hunk of the boar to cook for dinner. He had absolutely no idea how to butcher a hog, but he chose to believe that he would at least be able to cut off a piece of meat from its rump. Considering his lack of practical skills, Dave couldn’t help but feel that his life as a lawyer had not prepared him very well for life on Eloria.

  Jackson dropped off another armful of sticks into the growing pile of wood and then ran to catch up with his father, who was slowly walking over to where they had left the boar carcass. As they got closer, Dave wondered in passing why there weren’t any scavenger birds around the boar’s carcass. He didn’t have to wonder for long though as when they got within thirty feet of where the body l
ay, he heard a low growl which triggered a primal fear within him. Clearly, there was a predator around, but he couldn’t see it. He looked around frantically scanning side to side while stepping back and raising his left arm out in a bar to keep Jackson from moving any further forward while his right hand eased the sword out of his sheath. It was then that he saw the yellow eyes of what was clearly a large cat raising its head up from where it was crouched behind the body of the boar it was feeding on.

  Seeing a challenger for its dinner, the young flame lynx stood up. He was barely out of his mother’s den and seeking to find a territory in the Merkwood to call its own. Flame lynxes were neither solo predators like the tigers of Earth nor pack-like hunters such as lions. Rather, they tended to travel as just the mated pair and their kittens. A young male like this one, though, had to leave the den eventually and find first a territory and then a mate. As the Nelsons had found out earlier with the boar, even the prey animals in the Merkwood could be dangerous and so this young flame lynx had not eaten very well since going out on his own. This combined with his inexperience, both in general and with men specifically, made him completely unwilling to give up his feast.

  Dave took in the appearance of the big cat before him. It was approximately six-feet long including its short tuft of a tail. On all fours, its head was probably a few inches below Dave’s waist, and it was a bit lean with ribs showing. Most odd was the short bristly mane which stood up straight upon the back of his head and neck almost like a mohawk but appeared to be composed of fire rather than hair. Thinking quickly, Dave realized that the cat was about to charge him and called out to Jackson, ordering him to stay back and watch for an opening but not to do anything until the cat was busy attacking him.

  In less time than it took Dave to spit out his instructions, the flame lynx was up, hopped over the carcass of the boar, and was charging directly at him, a snarling four-hundred-pound engine of destruction intent on ending him. If Dave hadn’t already pulled his sword from its sheath, he wouldn’t have been able to do so in the time it took the flame lynx to cross the thirty feet between them. As it was, his forethought and the cat’s inexperience fueled impatience would prove to be the key factor in this matter. Remembering his grandfather reading him Burroughs tales of John Carter saying that no cat was a match for a man with a sword, seemed to provide him with a pale reflection of the reality he faced. Still, he sidestepped as quickly as he could to allow the cat’s momentum to carry it past him and then lunging forward with a quick thrust of his longsword, he caught the flame lynx just behind the shoulder blade and his sword went in deep. What John Carter hadn’t known or perhaps Burroughs hadn’t imagined was that the sheer momentum of a four-hundred-pound bundle of bone and muscle with the agility of a cat would strip that sword out of his hand in an instant. He had scored a critical hit (34) likely multiplied by the puncturing of a lung and yet the cat was still very much alive. As its turn had ripped away Dave’s sword, it also served to bring the flame lynx face to face with Dave. A quick swipe of a paw hit Dave in the side (18) even as he was trying to pull out his backup dagger. The cat was simply faster than Dave, and the kick that he threw against its head was not strong enough to do any serious damage. A second paw flashed out in a blow that likely would have opened Dave’s abdomen but for the blow that the cat took from the morning star version of Jackson’s mace. The boy had snuck up as instructed while the flame lynx’s focus was on his dad and swung with full power at the back of the cat’s head. Again, it turns out that even a strong, agile beast is slowed by having more than a foot of steel shoved into it, and the cat was too slow to dodge Jackson’s blow, which landed across its skull with the sickening sound of cracking bone. The combination of a sword puncturing its lung, a cracked skull, and its recent lack of food were enough to prevent the flame lynx from rising. The flaming mane upon its nape started to flicker and sputtered out completely as Dave struck the killing blow by sliding his dagger across the cat’s exposed neck, severing its carotid artery. This triggered a notification.

  You have defeated: Immature Flame Lynx Level 6. XP: 36 x .9 (numerical penalty) /2 = 16.2 x 2 (killing blow bonus) = 32.4 x racial bonus 50% -Net gain = 48 (all XP gains rounded down to the nearest whole number).

  You have 3 new character points available. Total of 4 unspent character points.

  Due to the lower racial bonus, no killing blow bonus and level zero penalty, Jackson only got 2 XP but was still glad to make a bit more progress.

  After reading the notification, Dave got up off of his knees and placed his hands against the bleeding wound in his side. Freak, did Eloria hurt. He had never been hurt so badly so many times in such a short time as the last few hours. The wound might not kill him immediately, but without proper medical treatment, it would certainly get infected, but he figured he would be able to cross the short distance to where Emily was with the girls, and she would be able to heal him.

  Dave started to walk in the direction of the river but started to stumble within a few steps, clutching at his side as the movement tore at the wound. It was somewhat shocking to look down and see blood running through his fingers as they were clasped over the wound. Apparently, this was much worse than he had thought. Even as he started to wobble, Jackson asked, “Are you okay, Dad?”

  By way of answer, Dave started to fall and was glad that Jackson was able to step up and provide a shoulder to lean on. It was a bit humbling to need support from Jackson, but he wasn’t in a position to turn it down. A further notification popped up in his mind’s eye.

  You are bleeding. You will lose health at a rate of 2/minute until the bleeding is stopped.

  Great, this is just what he needed. The initial blow had only caused him (18) health damage, and he assumed that was due to the splint mail that he was wearing, but the blow was obviously powerful as it caused a rent in his armor. He wouldn’t have wanted to see how much damage the flame lynx’s claws would have caused if it wasn’t for the armor. Now, reading the notification, he had just over an hour to live if he couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. Maybe, it was shock or maybe it was trust in Emily, but he was strangely calm even as that realization struck him. Dave’s first thought was to send Jackson running ahead to bring Emily back to him, but upon thinking about it a bit more, he wasn’t willing to let Jackson cross even that limited quarter-mile on his own. Eloria had proven time and again that unexpected attacks could appear from out of nowhere, and Dave wasn’t willing to put his son at risk even to try to save his own life.

  “Looks like your old man is gonna need some help getting back to Mom.”

  “I got ya, dad.” Jackson was glad to be helpful to his dad, and so, the two of them began a hobbling pace to cross the uneven ground back to where they had left the girls. Dave groaned with each step. Otherwise, they might have heard the sounds of combat sooner, but as it was after crossing about a third of the distance, they started to hear a screeching noise but couldn’t initially place it. Hearing that did make them increase their pace. Dave was trying to run with Jackson’s support and got a notification that his bleeding had worsened, and he was now losing health at a rate of 3/minute.

  When they had crossed half of the distance, they were able to see that some sort of fighting was going on between a group of the same giant horned bullfrogs that had attacked Sara down by the river. It was difficult to tell exactly what was going on, but they could see that Sara was surrounded by a golden bubble, Emily was fighting a single frog off to the side, and there was apparently at least one dead frog. What was most confusing was that it looked like Mira was lying on her back while two other frogs were fighting, which made no sense at all.

  Terror struck Dave again as he saw Mira appearing to be very hurt and lying prone. This urged him to move forward even faster and resulted in another notification warning him that the bleeding had increased to (5) health/minute. Bleeding or not, he needed to get there, now. He couldn’t take this. First Jackson, then Sara, and now Mira. He needed to protect his children
.

  Emily let go of the bucking beast but was able to flip and then roll with a grace beyond anything she had ever known before. She rolled straight from the ground to her feet and was able to jump over the frog as it charged straight at her. Her eyes started scanning the ground for where her dagger had been thrown while trying to dance out of the way of the frog’s repeated charging attacks. Relief surged through her as she saw the dagger and began to run toward it. Just as she had nearly reached the dagger, she was hit by something in her low back that felt like a sledgehammer, and she took (6) health damage. The blow knocked her slight frame to the ground hard, but again her agility saved her, and she rolled limiting any injury. She ended up with her hand less than a foot away from where the dagger lay, when another blow struck her leg at the point of her ankle, causing her to cry out. It felt like her ankle had been broken and she took (12) health damage. Looking toward her foot, she saw that the frog’s tongue was extended more than ten feet out of its gaping mouth and was seemingly stuck to her left leg at the ankle. As she tried to shake the sticky appendage off her foot, it became clear that her ankle wasn’t broken. In fact, it probably wasn’t even bruised based on how it felt, so apparently the temporary health granted by her Minor Blessing spell did not protect her from the pain of an attack but did protect her from the actual physical injury.