Couch Potato Chaos- Gamebound

by Erik Rounds

  Hello, friend Hermes.

  “Kaze, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me you died.”

  No, actually, I’m here on a mission from the princess. I have the Orb of Air with me. Much has happened since we parted ways. I meant to thank you for saving my life, by the by. Nobody has ever saved my life before.

  “Bah, forget it. It just worked out that way. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”

  Will you accompany me to the castle? I must meet with the king as soon as possible.

  The dwarf looked at the ground and fiddled with his beard. “Well, the thing about that is, Penryth the red dragon is in the castle, and he’s none too happy with me right now. I’m trying to give him some space so he doesn’t incinerate me.”

  What? Why is he angry with you?

  “I refused to give him your location after I respawned. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  We shall see about this. Come with me.

  The dwarf reluctantly followed Kaze through the city and toward the castle. The guards let the pair through without incident. They were directed to the war room, where they found the king meeting with several elven nobles as well as the dragon Penryth. The war room was large enough to accommodate all of them, though Penryth did take up a sizable section of the room.

  Everyone was understandably upset about the appearance of Entropy in the night sky just days earlier, their fears now realized. There was no longer any doubt about the nature of the threat.

  Hermes and Kaze had to wait outside for several minutes until they were given permission to enter.

  The elven lord stood at the head of the great mahogany table. The table itself was a rare monster drop that the scan identified as an Exquisite Mahogany Table. Nobody in Etheria had the faintest clue as to what mahogany was, only that it was of a particularly high quality.

  Penryth focused on the smaller steam dragon as he entered the room. Kaze! I am overjoyed that you have returned to us. You should not have followed the bipeds.

  Kaze lowered his head to the ground. Are you very angry with me?

  No. I understand why you wanted to go with them, foolish decision though it was. It is enough that you are returned to us. The large red dragon sniffed at the air. Why do I smell dwarf? Hermes, is that you?

  Hermes, who had been hiding behind the door and hadn’t entered, stepped into the room. “Penryth.”

  I thought I had made it clear that I would slay you if I ever saw you again. It is fortunate for you that you are in the high lord’s castle.

  “Hey, I didn’t want to be here either.” Hermes indicated the little dragon. “It was his idea.”

  Kaze, why have you brought this dwarf into my presence?

  Kaze raised his head from the ground and thought-spoke, This dwarf died to save my life. We were fighting an enemy many levels above us, and he sacrificed his life to save my own. His final moments were spent recovering my health. I owe him my gratitude and respect.

  The red dragon stomped across the room, very nearly damaging the mahogany table as he went. He lowered his nose until it was inches from the dwarf, who tried to back away, but he was already against the wall.

  Is this true, dwarf?

  “I… er… that is to say, I suppose so. I didn’t think it was that big a deal. He needed health, so I fed him a potion. The Jabberwock killed me a few seconds later.”

  The dragon drew his head back, and a thoughtful look crossed his face. It appears I misjudged you.

  “It’s no big deal. Forget it.”

  This is impossible. No dwarf has ever given his life to save a dragon. Your folk have shown my kind nothing but hate and disgust. Not since the days before King Dourmal’s rule.

  Hermes looked uncomfortable. “Well, I’m glad you’re not angry at me anymore. Does this mean that you won’t kill me after all?”

  Indeed. Tell me, Prince Hermes, if you were to become King Under the Laundry Mountain, would you let us back in and return our eggs to us?

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. I don’t think it’s especially likely that I will ever become king, however.”

  At that point, King Iolo Questgiver stepped forward. “Kaze, what is that box tied around your neck? I sense a powerful energy coming from it.”

  The steam dragon approached the elven king. Take it. This is the Orb of Air. The player took it from Captain K’her Noálin, and your daughter send me to deliver it to you.

  The elven king took the small box from the dragon’s neck and placed it upon the table. When he opened the box, a glowing orb lay nested within. Eddies of wind played in patterns within the globe.

  The elf spoke to a male attendant, who left the room and returned minutes later with a thick metallic box etched with intricate designs. King Questgiver put on a pair of gloves before removing the orb and placing it into the box. After shutting the lid, the king turned to Kaze.

  “Well done, Kaze. You have done this kingdom a great service. I wish to hear about my daughter. How does the princess fare?”

  Kaze spent the next long while relating their adventures. About the flying monkey attack and how he’d joined her in the bizarrely rabbit-themed dungeon. He spoke of their travels together, the pirate attack, and how he single-handedly took down three pirate dirigibles before the rest could get away.

  The following morning, Penryth and Kaze left the castle on their journey to Dragonholm at the North Pole. They had much to do and not much time to do it. The Dragon Kingdom was joining the quest for the orbs. Their days of idleness had passed.

  The time had come to amass an army.

  Chapter 38

  The Bog of Most Likely Death

  It was early morning the following day, and the last remains of breakfast was being cleared away. The inn’s continental breakfast didn’t offer pancakes, unfortunately, so Tasha had to settle for French toast. Tasha sighed a pancakeless sigh. Life is so hard when you’re me.

  Henimaru had stayed in a different room than Tasha, but he had still joined them for breakfast before departing on his own journey into Zhakara.

  “And now, my wife, I must take my leave. My journey leadeth me to the south, toward the human lands. Though the rescue is yet a daunting task, thanks to thee, I now have hope. If I am successful, I promise to annul our marriage as soon as I returneth with my offspring to more civilized lands.”

  Henimaru took Tasha’s hand and kissed it before leaving through the swinging bar door.

  The group drank their caffeinated beverages in silence for several minutes. “He wasn’t such a bad… toad-person,” said Tasha. “So, where do we head from here?”

  Princess Kiwi set down her soymilk vanilla chai latte. “Belcross is less than a day’s ride from the perimeter of the Bog of Most Likely Death. There’s an outpost right outside the bog. We’ll use their save point before venturing into the bog.

  “It will take us several days of travel through the bog to reach the Spiral Tower. At the top of the spire lies the Orb of Life. It is protected by an impregnable field that can only be crossed by a person that the orb has allied with. The Orb of Life was once allied with my father, King Questgiver. With luck it, will ally with me as well.”

  “So, there’s a chance that we won’t be able to retrieve the orb at all?” Tasha asked.

  “There’s always been that possibility. We’ll need to climb the interior of the Spiral Tower to reach it. Father said that the interior is a dungeon, so we’ll need to fight our way to the top floor.”

  Tasha didn’t look very pleased. “So once we cross the Bog of Most Likely Death, climb the tower, and retrieve the orb, we’ll be two-sixths of the way done with our journey, right? There are six orbs and even getting this one has been a considerable challenge.”

  “Pfffpt… pppft, pffpt,” suggested Slimon.

  “Okay, Slimon’s right,” Tasha said. “I’ll bet this one is the hardest to acquire and the rest will be easy by comparison.”

  “Well,” Ari said, “there’s no time like the
present. Let’s head out as soon as we finish our drinks.”

  The fairy Trista knocked on the side of the jar from the inside. “Listen, how about you idiots just let me go? You don’t need to drag me with you all the way to whatever certain death you have in mind.”

  Tasha picked up the jar and held it at eye level. The fairy balanced on the bottom of the slippery glass jar. “If we let you go, you’ll just try to murder us and kidnap the princess again.”

  “That’s right, exactly!” the fairy said, then she clamped her hands on her mouth. “Uh, wait. No, I meant that I won’t do those things. Honest.”

  Kiwi took the jar and held it up. “Why do you want to kidnap me? I’ve never done anything to you.”

  The fairy put her hands on her hips. “I couldn’t care less whether you get kidnapped. You’re just another contract to me. The only thing that matters is the honor of my ninja village, and that means fulfilling our contracts. It’s nothing personal.”

  Kiwi looked angry. “It’s nothing personal? You want to take my freedom away and turn me over to a madwoman. Do you know what she’ll do if she captures me?”

  “That isn’t relevant to my contract. Listen, if you jerks aren’t going to let me go, could you at least add some air holes? It’s getting pretty rank in here.”

  “Air holes?” Tasha considered. “I guess we could do that.”

  “Or”—Pan giggled—“we c-could leave the jar… ajar! Get it? B-because it’s a jar, and the lid would also be ajar.”

  Tasha gave her a dry look. “Pan, we can’t be friends anymore.”

  Pan looked like she was going to tear up.

  “Oh my god, bad joke! Sorry, it’s just a saying in my world!”

  Fortunately, even though the jar itself was unbreakable, the lid wasn’t. Tasha used her utility knife to poke a few holes in the jar’s lid. She even stuffed a small piece of French toast into the jar with her before leaving the inn.

  The rest of the day was spent riding southward toward the bog across the open terrain. Since they’d left Slime’s Row, they had been attacked by various assassins, but they were surprisingly weak and easy to take down. It was almost as though the queen wasn’t really trying. Still, not being attacked by flying monkeys and evil queens was a blessing whichever way you looked at it.

  With luck, the ninjas wouldn’t cause any additional trouble. Their ninja boss wouldn’t be able to order her minions to attack, what with said boss being imprisoned in a glass jar.

  The journey south was largely uneventful. On the other side of a lake, a pack of brontosauruses was grazing, and it was fun watching them do their thing. Back home, nobody would believe her, so she snapped a few photos with her phone.

  The mobs were fairly tame in this area. They encountered some level 14 gelatinous cubes that Kiwi was able to take out using fireball spells. At their level, the XP wasn’t worth much, but Tasha did receive a notification that Trista had leveled up twice. It was never Tasha’s intention to help her enemy level up, but at this point she had little choice in the matter. The only way she could ensure that the fairy wasn’t a threat would be to take her with.

  The outpost was a small settlement that bordered the bog, bordered by a wall composed of wooden pikes that jutted out from the ground. As she entered the small settlement, a bored dwarven guard let the group through without looking up from his trashy romance novel.

  After registering at the save point, Tasha spoke to the stable master about arranging lodging for Denver and the riding chickens. It was painful for Tasha to part with her friend, but it was for the best, and only for a little while. Kiwi had cautioned her that the Bog of Most Likely Death was no place for a chicken or a velociraptor.

  They spent the night at the inn before setting out. That evening after eating, Princess Kiwistafel gathered everyone together.

  “Tomorrow we are going to pass through the Bog of Most Likely Death. It will take us about three days to pass through it and reach the Spiral Tower.”

  Pan raised her hand. “Pan, you don’t need to raise your hand,” Kiwi said. “If you have a question, just ask.”

  Putting her hand back down, she asked, “Why is it c-called the Bog of Most Likely Death?”

  “Well, let me explain. It used to be called the Bog of Certain Death, but then somebody made it through to the other side, so they had to rename it to the Bog of Most Likely Death. The person who made it through the bog was my father, which means I do have some information that will increase our chances of surviving it.”

  “We’re all ears,” Tasha said.

  Kiwi blinked. “What does that mean?” She touched her ears. “Are you teasing me?”

  “What? No! It’s a figure of speech. It just means we’re listening.”

  Kiwi seemed to simmer down, but she still gave Tasha an odd look. “Yeah. Okay, as you might have figured out from its name, it’s a bog. That means we’ll be waist deep in bog water. You might want to wear galoshes. Since Lord Designer is constantly changing monster spawns, I have no current information about what kind of mobs we’ll be up against. Since we’ll need to slog through water, we’ll be at a tactical disadvantage.”

  “Pfffpt!” said Slimon, whose body gyrated in time with his words.

  “Yes, dear. Because slimes are aquatic, the terrain will actually give you an advantage.”

  “This doesn’t sound too bad,” Tasha said. “Are the mobs super high level or something?”

  “No, as far as I know, the monsters won’t be higher than level 30. There might be some zones with higher-level monsters, but we can avoid them. The mobs aren’t the real danger in the Bog of Most Likely Death.

  “The entire bog is covered in a miasma that causes a confuse debuff. The effect only lasts about ten seconds, but every breath you take restores the debuff. The confuse effect can cause you to lose your sense of direction, mistake friend and foe during battle, and will destroy any semblance of battle strategy. The reason travelers nearly always die in the bog is because the confuse debuff causes them to become hopelessly lost and attack one another.”

  “Do you have some sort of plan to get us through?” Ari said.

  Kiwi tapped at the air in front of her, and a bracelet appeared in her hand. “This is a bracelet that nullifies the effect of confuse. The kingdom’s armory only had one in stock. There are many that block 80% or 90% of confuse debuffs, but they would be useless in the bog since every breath you take causes confusion. I’ll wear it so that I don’t waste all of my MP attacking you guys in combat.

  “The miasma only reaches about a dozen feet above ground level, so Slimon can reach a tentacle above the miasma when he needs to breathe. Slimes can go for hours between breaths if they need to.”

  “Pfffpt!” confirmed Slimon.

  “Is the confuse debuff anything like being drunk?” Tasha asked.

  “No,” said Kiwi, “being drunk causes you to lose your inhibitions and make irrational decisions. Being confused causes you to lose your understanding of what is real and what is illusion. You may do or say absurd things while confused that seem reasonable at the time.”

  “As Slimon and I will be the only ones unaffected by the debuff, we’ll lead the way to the Spiral Tower. Any questions?”

  Pan raised her hand. “C-can we just wear really tall snorkels?”

  Kiwi thought for a minute. “That’s crazy enough that it might actually work, but we don’t have any twenty-foot snorkels. For now, let’s just go with my plan.”

  The next morning, they set out into the bog. Tasha had never actually seen a real bog before, so she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Turned out, walking through a bog was essentially walking through waist-high muddy water. Sometimes the water only made it up to her knees, though. Movement was much slower than it would have been on dry land. There was the occasional area of comparatively dry grass set upon a hill they could stand on.

  Each step involved wading through a cold swampy liquid, and when Tasha’s galoshes found purchase, it was n
ot on firm ground. Every so often her legs brushed against some kind of bog vegetation.

  And there were bugs, loads of bugs zipping around all over the place. The bog was awash in insect life, and they all swarmed around Tasha, their potential foodstuff of choice. The bug bites were annoying but didn’t deal more than one heart worth of damage every half hour. The bites itched and stung like hell, though. Slimon even cast recovery spells on the party every so often. Tasha was constantly hounded by insect life, and in addition to them feeding on the party, they were loud. The sound of buzzing and chirping was so overpowering that it made conversation difficult unless they were standing right against one another.

  As she continued to travel further into the bog, a dense miasma drew in around the group, making it hard to breathe, and just as Kiwi had warned, the “confuse” debuff appeared on Tasha’s HUD next to her hearts. Visibility was severely limited, and she could only see a few feet in front of herself.

  Tasha didn’t feel confused, despite what the debuff said. Everything seemed totally normal. She followed behind Kiwi for a while, but then decided that it would be more interesting to go off on her own. There was a caterpillar wearing a monocle that she wanted to strike up a conversation with. Maybe they could share a spot of tea. It was a bit off in the distance, so she started to move toward it. Just as she got close, a tentacle wrapped around her and brought her back to the group.

  “Pfffpt,” Slimon said.

  “Yeah, whatever. You’re not the boss of me.”

  They continued in this fashion for the better part of an hour. Sometimes one of the party would go off on their own, but Slimon kept bringing them back. At one point he suggested tying ropes around the confused party members so they wouldn’t wander off. Before he could put that plan into effect, though, there was an attack.

  There wasn’t any warning. The thick miasma caused the gathering mist to be all but invisible.