Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  The lack of space brought up the most pressing issue now, the lack of bathroom facilities. Jackson has already gone and stood at the side and peed off, but neither Emily or the girls were inclined to do the same and there was only so many times that she could tell an eight-year-old that she just needed to hold it. The hope being that once Dave got back, they would be able to cook some food on the ground and find a safe place to relieve themselves. Emily had to wonder if stuff like this happened in the games that Dave played. Somehow, she didn’t think that potty problems would have been a part of any popular computer game.

  Just as she felt her last nerve beginning to fray and was on the verge of snapping loudly at Sara, she heard Dave shouting up at them from the base of the tree. Thank God, Dave might have sung off-key so badly in church that she had eventually asked him to just mouth the words so as not to disrupt the experience for the people in the pews around them, but in this instance, his voice was a very welcome sound. Emily and all the kids moved toward the edge of the platform to be able to look down at him. After this, they had a shouted conversation in which it was finally agreed that they would let the kids climb down to save the magic of Mira’s ring. She would climb down first in case of any accidents at the bottom, and Dave would position himself to try to catch whoever fell. Never mind that catching even a child Sara’s size in his arms from a fifty-foot fall would do to both him and Sara, they really needed to save the ring in case they had to quickly get back up the tree and as Dave kept saying, Eloria isn’t Earth and the rules are different.

  If it weren’t for her high levels of anxiety and uncertainty about where they found themselves, Emily would have been laughing with childish glee at the ease and speed with which she was able to descend the side of the tree. She didn’t know exactly what a 28 Agility would have translated to on Earth, but she was absolutely certain that she had never seen an Olympic gold medalist display as much grace and ease of movement as she was right now, and it was laughably easy. She made it the full fifty feet down in seconds and a part of her wanted to climb right back up, it had been so much fun. After she reached the ground though, she got serious, signaling for Jackson to start climbing down. She had flashbacks to memories of a much younger Jackson climbing trees in the backyard of their old two-bedroom ranch. It was the first house they had owned before Sara was born. Even then, Jackson had been bold and adventurous, and while she worried, she had been such a proud momma of how he could climb trees even as a young boy. The racial bonus that he got to agility and the easy branches and numerous knobs on the truck of the tree made it so he was climbing down steadily. She still breathed a sigh of relief when he made it down, but now came the hard part. Sara had to climb down. Her tiny frame seemed even smaller as Mira let go of her hands, and she started holding onto the knobs one at a time, her little feet searching for a secure spot. Her relative lack of height meant that the climb, which had been easy for Jackson, was more testing, but even now her beginning classes in gymnastics were coming into play, and it looked as though she would make it down without any problem.

  Before climbing down, Emily had cast her Minor Blessing spell, which affected herself and all three of the kids, granting them a load of extra health which would hopefully be enough for at that moment about halfway down, Sara started to slip. Holding on by only one hand with her feet dangling and a pitched scream coming from her lips. Emily’s responded far quicker than she ever could have before and was almost immediately climbing monkey-like up the side of the trunk toward Sara even as Dave began casting his Minor Enlarge spell. Emily reached Sara and was hanging onto the tree next to her, but for the first time, she really noticed the diminished strength her Elorian body had compared to on earth. That moon elf racial penalty to strength made her not quite strong enough to hold Sara and climb down the tree at the same time. The best that she was able to do was to hook Sara’s hand in hers and swing her body down, holding onto a short branch with her legs. This motion lowered a dangling Sara’s feet another eight feet closer to the ground and Emily had to hope that she was low enough for a now nine-feet-tall Dave to be able to catch her, because one way or another Sara was falling, their sweaty hands no longer able to hold onto one another.

  In the end, all that motherly worry was for nothing as Dave was able to catch her with no real trouble and any damage that Sara took from the fall was absorbed by the temporary health she had been granted by her mother’s blessing spell. Her eight-year-old body falling only eight feet to Dave’s much enhanced waiting arms caused him no damage and only felt like the time he had worked in a sandbag line trying to brace the levees in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina.

  After catching her, Dave pulled her close to him and saw that she was more shocked than scared. He held her tightly to himself, careful not to squeeze too hard with his nine-foot frame but knowing full well that Emily would be beside them in an instant, insisting to hold Sara herself. Sure enough, Emily descended from the branch she hung on with a quick flip and bounce off of the side of the trunk to redirect some of her momentum. If Dave hadn’t been busy trying to sooth Sara, he would have made a comment about how Emily moved like a character out of The Matrix. Soon though, Sara was in her mother’s arms and Dave was signaling for Mira to begin her descent. Mira might not have had her mother’s superhuman agility, but she was still amazing, and it took her less than a minute to descend the full fifty feet.

  Once all the Nelsons were assembled on the ground, they saw that Dave had gathered up several stacks of firewood and what appeared to be a crudely butchered side of a boar. They all discussed what had happened over the past five hours, Jackson practically begging Dave to detail out each of the fights while Mira was more interested in how much he had leveled up and how many character and stat points he had now. Emily had to cut the conversation short though as they had less than two hours until the second sun was fully set, and they had already discussed how bad of an idea it would be to be stuck on the ground without a fire. Tasks were assigned and the efficiency of the world’s greatest type of bureaucrat, that of a working mom, was put on display. Each of the kids was assigned a task. Jackson gathered or dug up rocks to form their fire pit, Sara put the stones he gathered into a ring about ten feet in diameter, and Mira helped Emily stack the wood and set up a crude stand to hang a spit from so they could roast some of the meat. Meanwhile, Dave was sent to the river with their cooking pot to get as much water as he could carry back without spilling it.

  As they busily went about their tasks, the Nelsons were all subconsciously glad to have chores to do as it kept their minds busy and off the stress they were feeling. They all managed to complete their tasks without any interference from indigenous wildlife. Emily had skinned the side of the boar that Dave dragged back with him after his morning hunting expedition and it was now roasting over a fire courtesy of Mira. She had stopped her parents from trying to start a fire with flint and steel insisting that she wanted to try doing it with her flame spell. After a bit of an argument about how that was overkill and could start a forest fire, Mira convinced them that she could learn how to focus the spell into a tighter cone and just affect the fire pit. Since neither Dave or Emily knew if it was possible but wanting to believe their daughter, they pulled back with Jackson and Sara and let Mira try her thing. Watching her rattle off the few words of magic, the spell seemed to take longer to go off than it had when they fought the armored bullfrogs the day before, but this time instead of a broad wave of magical fire in a one hundred and twenty-degree arc, the flames started out as a forty-five degree arc and Mira seemed to be able to compress them even further. Obvious signs of struggle showed on Mira’s face as she fought and forced the spell into an ever-tighter arc until finally, it was more of a stream of fire shooting off her hands.

  As she finished her spell, Mira jumped up and whooped out a, “Yes, I did it,” but then she seemed to become distracted with that look that Dave and Emily had come to associate with someone looking at a notification they received in their m
ind’s eye.

  Finally, Mira turned to her parents and said, “I’m being offered the opportunity to take a class. I got this notification.” After which, she read the notification to them.

  Hidden Quest Found: Class Determination - you have found and met the qualifications to receive a class. (1. Surviving a concentration check in combat. 2. Shaping magic outside of its intended spell form.) In Eloria, classes are not easily earned, all have significant benefits and equally weighty requirements. Each class has seven ranks known as tiers.

  Class offered: Sorceress (Base)- Tier 1

  Class Benefits: +10% Intelligence. Cost of Quickened Spells reduced to +5%/second decreased. +2 effective levels in up to 3 schools of magic, or +3 effective levels in up to 2 schools of magic, or +7 effective levels in up to 1 school of magic.

  Class Restrictions: May never learn spells from more than a maximum of 3 schools depended on which class benefit is selected. May never know more than 3 spells per tier per school of magic.

  Class Purpose: Mastery of a small selection of spells. Make them your own, shape and control them.

  Class Advancement Requirements: Obtain tier 2 in level. Learn 3 spells in all chosen schools from tier 2. Quick cast 6 different spells in combat situations.

  “So, what do you think I should do? Oh crap, it’s giving me a countdown of five minutes to decide or I automatically accept.”

  Dave and Emily looked at each other, but he took the lead. “Well, the question is: does the description of a sorceress define who you want to be in Eloria? It sounds like it will make your spells faster and give you a small bump in Intelligence and casting level, but it also limits the different types of magic that you can learn or use, and even within the types of magic, it limits how many spells you can have.”

  They discussed it back and forth, weighing out the pros and cons, but based upon her reaction to his initial question, Dave knew almost immediately that Mira didn’t want to accept that class, so it was no surprise when she told them that she turned it down. Interestingly though after that, she got another notification that she told them about.

  Quest Obtained: Gain Class: meet the requirements for any class.

  Rewards: 200 XP (base class), 1000 XP (rare class), 5000 XP (epic class), + varies dependent upon obtained class.

  Penalty for Failure: Barred from obtaining a class.

  Deadline for Quest: Base class: prior to reaching level 20, Rare class: prior to reaching level 30, Epic class: prior to reaching level 40.

  Dave thought the sorceress class seemed pretty lame compared to Emily’s class, but he supposed that made a certain level of sense given that it was a base class compared to Daughter of Redemption being a rare class. It raised all kinds of questions and they discussed ideas about classes and so on. It was a bit reassuring that they were able to find the requirements for at least one class. As they talked, they finished cooking dinner and watched the moonlight drifting down through the foliage overhead. It was beautiful and for a short time, they found laughter around the fire.

  Sadly, as the evening continued and became darker, the sound of predatory animals seemed to increase to the point that eventually Sara was scared, and it became clear that they needed to get back up on the platform. Mira used her ring to float first Jackson and then Sara up above while Emily climbed up the side. Once ensuring that they were all safely up in the tree, Dave put the fire out and then began climbing up himself. He used the climb up as an opportunity to practice his Minor Binding spell. It was an interesting experience. He could make his hand stick to the side of the tree completely so that he was unable to feel a difference between hand and tree.

  Just over one hundred miles to the west, inside the remains of a human logging village in the duchy of Oppenheim, the last human survivor screamed as his goblin tormentors tried to elicit every bit of entertainment that they could out of him. The things they had done to him for the past two days had been unspeakable, but at least he wasn’t one of the women. Even in his agony, he had wept for the things perpetrated upon the women and often girls far too young. At times, he had struggled against his bonds in an attempt to strike back against the evils he was hearing, or failing that, to put the women and children out of their misery. When he did finally succeed in crushing the skull of the last girl left for their torment, it was a kind of mercy, but it reaped him pain beyond even what he had known before from the enraged goblins. The only saving grace was that the goblins who had been saving that one last girl for the end were sent into a senseless state of anger by being deprived of their prize. Add to that the drunken state that all but a couple of unfortunate goblins who had been ordered to guard duty were in, and it actually said more about the vile imagination of the cruel torturers than about their patience.

  As that last scream escaped his mouth, his spirit also escaped his body and an end came to his torment. This only served to further infuriate the goblin forces. Even under the best circumstances, goblins were not known for their tactical planning or foresight and these were far from the best of circumstances. Instead of waiting as they had been ordered, the sixteen goblins remaining in this now nameless village gathered up their weapons, what remained of the ale they had found in the village, and all of the pretties that they had collected as souvenirs and started to move as quickly as they could to the east, following the southern bank of the Seinna in their rage and lust for blood.

  Several hours later as the first sun began to rise on the goblin raiding band and the drink began to wear off, the shaman was forced to fend off demand after demand that they find a dark place to hole up until second sunset. At first, he pushed all of the goblins away. He was, after all, by far the highest level of the goblins and had been hand-picked by the chieftain for this mission, although both he and the chieftain had had different reasons for being happy to see the shaman heading up this mission. Eventually though, and once he had hammered into the heads of the other goblins that they would only stop when he decided, he capriciously decided to stop. He sent a scout ahead to try to find a place for them to hide. This land was so different from the mountains he had grown up in. It was flat. Ugh, he didn't like it or the lack of nooks to hide in. Yet here they were having traveled less than half the distance to the next village and already more than three hours past the first appearance of the burning sun. When one of the scouts reported that he had found the husk of an ironwood tree which had been burrowed out and which was large enough to let the entire raiding party sleep inside it, the shaman started to direct all of his people to follow the scout to that location.

  The shaman waited until all the goblins were inside before entering the hollowed-out tree core himself, not from any misguided sense of duty or concern for the goblins under his command, but rather because he needed the time to ensure that his magical anchors were firmly attached to the skeletons which he had animated in the village. This was a spell taught to him by the death knight, Draznei’kai, and while not a powerful spell, it represented half of the tier 2 spells that the shaman knew. The skeletons would only remain animated as long as he continued to feed mana into them, so he was only able to animate four of the undead creatures with his current mana regeneration rate. Thinking about the death knight brought a grimace to the shaman’s face. He might not be much of an intellect by human or elven standards, but he was smart enough to know that they were disobeying the orders given to them by the dark being, and so he already started to fabricate lies to explain the reasons for the premature attack.

  Just as the goblins were hunkering down to await nightfall, Captain Maxwell Smart had all of his squad assembled outside of the royal stables and they were making quite a fuss. Max knew that the reason and their ultimate destination was need-to-know information, but he also knew that an entire squad of the Purple and Gold trying to leave undetected in the middle of the night would only lead to all sorts of rumors and perhaps even to them being tracked. With this in mind, Max had decided that subterfuge was better than secrecy in this instance. He an
d Leyna, the squad’s spy, had been planting word to any ear that would take it that the squad was headed to the western front to see how the war efforts were going. It certainly would be unusual for a squad of the king’s personal troops to take part in large scale battle, but given the rumors about how poorly the army was faring, it might be accepted by enough people to be generally believed. It was impossible to stop all rumors, and the city practically had eyes and ears everywhere ranging from professionals like Leyna to little street urchins passing information for coppers.

  Once Max was certain that enough of the eyes that needed to see them had seen them, he had Hastert, the squad’s mage, start casting copies of his Summon Spectral Horse spell. It was a powerful tier 3 spell, and each casting drained nearly a quarter of the mage’s mana pool even with his various items that helped enhance his mana, and worse, each casting consumed a portion of the powdered onyx that he had poured out into a pile at his feet. After three castings, Hastert started sucking down a pair of light blue mana potions. These types of potions came in different quality ratings and varied between those that instantly restored a chunk of mana versus those that restored a larger total but did so over a period of time. From what Max could tell, the ones that Hasert was quaffing down were high quality of the type that restored mana instantly and each one was probably giving him back about 200 mana. The old mage must have had a cast-iron stomach because Max had yet to be able to stomach more than one or two mana potions back-to-back and thinking about that didn’t help him with the realization that he was going to have to drink mana regeneration potions if he was going to keep his class skill, Forced March, active. It was a skill unique to his class and required a significant drain on his mana, but at his level, it would enable him to make his squad or their mounts move just over twice as fast as they would otherwise be able to.