Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  You have received the debuff: Exhausted- An exhausted creature can only move at 50% normal speed, take one normal atk without any double or dual and if using 2H weapons can only atk every other round. Gains no STR bonus to dmg and takes -20% to atk.

  You have received the debuff: Pained- A pained creature is in great pain and unable to act normally. They take 2 pts of non-lethal damage each round and get -20% on AC, -20% to atk and -50% on concentration checks.

  You have received the debuff: Partially Paralyzed- A paralyzed creature cannot move at all including attacking or dodging. Lose all AGI-related bonuses and the chance that any blow against you will be a critical hit is increased by 50%. Further, critical dmg is increased by 50%. Chance for coup de grace is increased by 20% Casting can only be done with concentration penalty of 50% (Partially paralyzed- only applies to lower extremities).

  You have received the debuff: Stunned-Stunned creature is unable to atk/cast or anything. +50% chance to crit against stunned creature (does not stack with Paralyzed).

  You have received the debuff: Broken (Multiple)- Debuff customized to match which bones have been broken. You have broken both legs and two ribs. Movement rate reduced by 95%. Due to spinal injury, the broken legs do not cause the Pained Debuff, but the broken ribs have caused Pained Debuff and further present significant risk of internal injury if you move.

  The debuffs had faded away as Emily had healed him. First, he had lost the Stunned debuff, then Pained debuff as his ribs were healed, and eventually, he lost the Broken debuff and just moments ago the Exhausted debuff had faded. The one debuff that wasn’t leaving was Partially Paralyzed and that was the one that terrified him. He remembered as a boy having a friend who had a sledding accident which resulted in a neck injury and ultimately led to his friend being a quadriplegic. Ever since then, Dave had convinced himself that being paralyzed was a fate worse than death. He had even argued with Emily when filling out his will regarding medical treatment saying that if he was ever to receive an injury that would result in paralyzation or amputation of a limb, he didn’t want the medical treatment and instead wanted to be allowed to die. That had been an argument that had gone on and off for over a month until Emily had finally shaken her head in disgust and just let him be. He knew, or a part of him knew that her arguments were logical. There were all kinds of people who had meaningful or even extraordinary lives after severe paralyzation or loss of limbs. Yet, when Emily tried to get him to watch documentaries about those people who had overcome such losses, he was unable to do so. They only infuriated him, and she finally relented. He just wanted to hang onto his irrational fear. Some people were afraid of heights, some of spiders. In fact, there were more phobias than he could count, so why couldn’t he have his own irrational fear?

  Except now, it wasn’t just an irrational fear. Now it was something that was happening to him. He didn’t understand why his legs wouldn’t work. Emily’s magic had restored all of his health points and all the cuts, bruises, and even broken bones that he had suffered had been healed. So why could he not feel his legs?

  It was that terror that was rising up in him. The concern that not only was he going to have to face his long-term nightmare but also that it was going to happen at a time when it would most impact his family. He went through the mental gymnastics of the entire situation. If he had lost the use of his legs back on earth, while it would have sucked, he still could have earned a living as an attorney and provided for his family. Here, he was worse than useless. He was dead weight for his family. Because of him, they had almost been swarmed by those little tree sapper creatures and now because of him, they were moving at a snail’s pace. It was only because they had been so close to the edge of the forest that they were able to escape the fire.

  He would have told them to leave him behind, but he knew such words would have been futile and only would have added to his family’s fear. The only good thing was that they were past the section of land with tree stumps, so those were no longer an issue. From what he could tell, the second sun was starting to rise already, and they were headed along the riverbank, not too close to the river. They seemed to be moving northwest. Each time that Mira had enough mana stored up, she would summon another horse. Emily had even given her mana regeneration ring to Mira in order to accelerate the process, and after she had summoned four extra horses, she also conjured magical weightless chainmail for Emily, Mira, Jackson, and even Sara. Each set sized itself to the target recipient of the armor automatically. Based on how it compared to his scale armor, he was half tempted to learn the spell himself as it was exactly the same bonus as his scale armor and didn’t come with the weight encumbrance that his armor did. Of course, that was all assuming that he could regain the use of his legs.

  Several hours passed in relative silence as the horse’s pace was limited by how fast he could be dragged along in his improvised stretcher. Even at their slow pace, they had progressed several miles. If he were to guess, and he never had been very good at guessing speed or distances, Dave would have guessed they were traveling at about four to five miles per hour. Dave kept focusing on his legs. Willing them to move, trying to push with mana down his spine, not sure exactly how to go about it but aiming to somehow restore function to his legs. He didn’t know exactly how Eloria worked, but from what he could tell, he ought to be able to walk again. He was completely healed and at one hundred percent health, but still no sensation or movement. A part of him kept blaming himself for the stupid decision to roll rather than landing on his legs. Another part of him kept insisting that he was weak and should just give up because this was all in his mind, and if he had a strong enough will, he would be able to push past this.

  Even more insidious was the sibilant whisper that he heard in the back of his mind, “You should just end it. You are nothing but dead weight for your family. What kind of man are you anyway? You can’t protect your family. You can’t provide for your family. They’d be better off without you. If you really loved them, you’d take that dagger out and end this. If you don’t, you are going to have to watch as they die or starve or suffer from exposure all because you are holding them back.”

  Dave was no stranger to depression. It had plagued him in the past. It was hard to be a person who placed so much of his sense of self-worth on what he could do for other people or how he could fulfill his duties and not struggle with a lack of self-worth at times. Everyone fails sometimes, but for a person with his mindset, every success was only the bare minimum expected of him and every failure was another black mark proving that those successes were just flukes. Yet, somehow this voice seemed different. It was almost as if someone else was speaking into his mind.

  He craned his neck looking around at his family. Seeing Emily riding along with Sara in front of her, held tightly in her arms. He saw the obvious love for her daughter and when she saw him looking at her, she saw the smile and mouthed words, “I love you.” Dave knew that Emily was aware of the depression he was struggling with now. She knew him well enough to know that was where his mind would automatically go. Yet, he felt a warmth all over at her mouthed words. They didn’t seem forced. They seemed to be a genuine outpouring of warmth to him. He always had trouble accepting her love for those same reasons of feeling unworthy, but something was different this time. Maybe it was that he knew just how helpless he was, how much of a liability he was, and yet somehow, she was standing beside him. Her face hadn’t conveyed pity, but a brave determination and an unconditional love. If he didn’t know better, he would have almost sworn that he felt a tingle go down his legs at that moment.

  Dave continued scanning his surroundings to see the rest of his family. He saw the almost excited grin on Mira’s face, and why not? A few days ago, she was a young woman struggling to find her place in the social hierarchy of high school, now she had a purpose, and, in many ways, she had shown herself to be the most powerful and resourceful member of their family. If there was any doubt, the magically conjured horses they were ri
ding were a clear reminder of just how much she was helping the family out.

  Looking over at Jackson’s face, he saw a grim determination. He knew it was killing Jackson that he wasn’t able to level up like his parents and sister had. After all, Jackson was almost as much of a gamer as Dave was, and so he could understand how much that would be affecting the boy. Yet it wasn’t fear or depression written on Jackson’s face. It was a powerful sense of determination. He was set on finding a path forward and that made Dave proud. Proud of the man that his son was already becoming despite only being thirteen.

  Dave drew a certain level of confidence from the looks on the faces of his wife and children. If they could persevere so boldly, then how could he possibly consider giving up. He started to go back to pushing his thoughts and trying to will his legs to move when he heard off in the distance what sounded like people calling out for help. Emily and Mira brought their horses to a stop along with the packhorse and Dave’s stretcher pulling horse. Jackson on the other handed continued forward, even pushing his horse harder.

  Seeing that Jackson wasn’t stopping, Emily called out to him to come back. At first, it seemed as though he was going to refuse and just keep going before finally wheeling the horse around in a broad circle and heading back toward the rest of them.

  “What do you think you were doing, young man?” Emily put on her best mom voice.

  “Well… it's just that I’ve never ridden a horse, and it was hard to control it.” Jackson spoke slowly as though considering his words. Emily could hear the fabrication in his voice, but she chose not to call him on it.

  “Mom, we have to do something. There are people calling for help. You are always talking about how we have to help people less fortunate than ourselves.” Jackson said, trying to keep the smirk off his face.

  Emily, like most parents, hated it when their children threw their own words back in their face. She hesitated before finally saying, “Yes, but I was talking about raising money, gathering supplies, or even volunteering at the local soup kitchen. This isn’t the same thing at all. This is dangerous.”

  “But it was dangerous when you went to Africa on your mission trip. You could have gotten malaria or gotten caught by those rebels and when you were in South America, you could have gotten kidnapped by those cartel guys. You may think that we don’t know about all of this stuff, but we overheard you and Dad talking about it.” Jackson’s voice rose in tone and his words tumbled out faster and faster as he felt the feeling of indignation rise within him.

  Dave stepped in at that point, at least verbally. “Stop that right now, young man. You will not speak to your mother like that. I don’t care how hard the last few days have been on us all. You will respect her.”

  Hearing his father’s rebuke, Jackson hung his head. A couple of times he lifted his head up as though to defend himself but ultimately ended up just staring at the ground.

  All their conversation came to a halt as a pained scream sounded from a short distance into the woods. Jackson looked up finally, but instead of defending himself to his father, he simply said, “Nelsons always do what’s right,” and then dug his heels into the sides of his mount, which leapt off in the direction of the screaming at full speed. Emily called for him to stop to no avail. Within three strides, the horse was at maximum speed, and it only took a half dozen seconds for it to cover just over three hundred feet. Mira ordered her horse forward and yelled back, “I will protect him.”

  Dave and Emily looked at each other in horror until Emily said, “I have to go help them. I’m leaving Sara here with you.” She lowered her youngest daughter from her spot on the horse to the ground. Dave watched helplessly as his wife and two children galloped away from him. Sara crouched down next to him and asked what to do. Dave didn’t want to put Sara in danger, but his quick reasoning told him that without Emily and Mira, he would have no way to protect Sara, so he ordered her to help him out of the scale mail armor.

  Meanwhile, Jackson had reached the location of the screaming. He saw three men huddled together with their backs against a tree. Two of them were barely able to stand, and only the man in the center was still holding a long-handled ax in his hands waving it to hold back a group of at least twenty horned drey hounds who surrounded the tree. From the way the ax was drooping in his arms, even Jackson’s inexperienced eyes could tell that the man didn’t have much more fight left in him. Jackson thought his only chance was to see if he could distract some of the hounds from the men so they could escape. He wished that there was room for him to ride upon his horse and to then swing his mace, but they were within the forest and there was no way that he would be able to maneuver his horse within that space.

  Accordingly, he took one of the globs of orangish goopy material he had collected out of a burnt tree sapper and flung it directly at one of the hounds that was closest to the men at the tree. The glob flew through the air and struck the beast much harder than he had expected with an incredible force that snapped bones and drove the injured beast into the ground. Jackson was as stunned as the pack of drey hounds seemed to be by his sudden interruption.

  That moment of stunned glaring between boy and wild pack may very well have saved Jackson’s life because in that instant his horse, seeing the eyes of nearly twenty predators staring hungrily at it, wheeled and bolted back toward its summoner. As Jackson reached Mira, who while racing toward him raised her hand to cast a spell, a milky white glob shot off of Mira’s outstretched hand to explode into an incredibly sticking ten-foot-wide spider web which initially tangled up five of the hounds since they were so closely grouped together. The weight and force of the drey hounds was not enough to tear the webbing from where it had anchored on the ground resulting in yelps as they tangled up together and then were further tangled up as their packmates who had been immediately behind them ended up running into them and being stuck together in the webbing.

  Mira grinned even as she watched her handiwork and accepted the high five from her brother as his mount came up next to hers. Riding up behind them, Emily was already casting her Minor Blessing spell and a second later its power landed on all of them, granting each 37 temporary HP and a 16% boost to both attack and evasion.

  “What are you two thinking? We need to get out of here while we can.”

  “Mom, we can’t. There are three men trapped in there. We have to lead the monsters away so they can escape,” pleaded Jackson, trying to make his case with Emily.

  “Both of you need to shut up. We either fight or die now because Dad won’t be able to get away fast enough.” Mira’s voice cut through the tense stare between Jackson and their mother. Then her good upbringing took over, and she said a quick sorry to her mother for yelling at her.

  Emily turned away from the kids and saw that all of the hounds were busy trying to tear the webbing apart to free those that were trapped. A closer look showed her that there was a much larger hound at the center of the trapped hounds, so apparently, another alpha was leading this pack. She decided that there was little choice and that they needed to be organized. “Jackson, you need to use your mace on any of them that get too close to Mira. I’m going to sneak around and try to hit them from behind with my sneak attack. Mira, I need you to try to stick them up again if you can cast that spell again and then do whatever you can to keep them busy and away from Jackson.”

  Both the kids nodded, and Mira raised her hands again, waiting for the last two seconds on the cooldown before casting the spell again. Just as soon as she shot another glob of webbing off at the cluster of horned drey hounds, the alpha had burst forth from the first cluster and was charging straight at them. Jackson’s horse was so terrified by the massive charging hound that he fell off its back landing with a thud on his side. This left him vulnerable to the alpha lunging at his foot. Jackson cried out as the alpha’s jaw crushed down on his right lower leg as if he was trying to split a bone to get at the marrow. The only thing that saved the leg from being broken was the reflexive action he
took swinging his mace broadside against the beast’s face as it hung onto his leg. He lacked any real leverage to put real power behind the blow, but it was enough to crush the vulnerable eye socket and blind the alpha on one side. This resulted in the alpha letting go of his attack and whimpering much as any kicked dog would do back on earth.

  As Jackson faced his own battle, Mira fired off her charm spell at the largest of the free drey hounds other than the alpha. She had thought about targeting the alpha but was unable to do so before Jackson had hit its face. She worried that any attack from Jackson would break her charm. With the five-minute cooldown on that spell, it was highly unlikely that she would get another chance to cast it. As soon as she felt the charm take hold, she ordered that hound to attack another of the untangled hounds. Out of the corner of her eye, Mira saw Jackson desperately trying to hold the enraged alpha at bay but was afraid if she let up on the horde for even an instant, they would be overrun.

  Emily had successfully snuck around the distracted hounds and launched her first surprise attack against one of the smaller hounds. Her plan being to pick off the weakest first. For this first attack, she triggered her dagger’s active effect to cause an automatic critical strike resulting in (75) damage. The problem was that even with her sneak attack and extra critical strike damage, it still wasn’t enough to kill the hound immediately. Even as she pulled her dagger back to strike again, she felt the hound thrust its horn into her arm. She moved around it but only barely as the extra evasion granted by her blessing spell allowed her to move just enough for the horn to only glance off her leather armor.

  After Sara helped Dave unbuckle his armor, he was able to pull himself up onto the horse. He wasn’t able to ride the horse as he couldn’t grasp onto it with his legs, but he was able to use the rope bridle to pull himself up, and then while hanging over the side of the horse like a sack, he was able to swing Sara up onto the back of the horse too. Painstakingly they got the horse moving after the others but couldn’t get the speed out of it that the others were able to get. As the horse trotted forward, within a few seconds he was able to take in a scene out of his worst nightmare. He had already seen each of his children separately put in danger but now he was seeing his wife and two of his children each fighting for their lives all at the same time. Emily seemed to have finished off at least one hound but was now being attacked by two others. Her healing magic was incredibly impressive but didn’t give her any real offensive capabilities and unless she could sneak attack, she would be very limited in how much damage she could inflict. The only thing that he did appreciate about her fighting style was how her amazing gracefulness allowed her to glide around the two hungry beasts attacking her making them seem awkward.