by G. D. Penman
Words didn’t seem to be sufficient, but Martin mumbled them out anyway.
“I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
Speckles looked genuinely surprised. Martin was more than a little surprised at himself too. The story and setting in games had always been secondary to him; useful information to help hone his tactics, but never an emotional burden.
He really hadn’t started his day expecting to end up feeling bad for a bunch of made-up frog-people. When he was rational about it, it seemed ridiculous.
A hush fell over the village. The Anurvan peered out from behind their doorframes. Speckles was letting out reverberating croaks as they walked, calling out to the others in their own tongue. It didn’t seem to be sufficient to draw them out of hiding, but it was enough to keep Martin safe from a last-minute pitchfork-and-torch panic.
An enormous Anurvan, almost twice the size of Speckles and the rest, sloughed out of the central hut. The smooth skin of the other frog-folk was cracked and weeping on its humped back. Its cataract-coated eyes were almost as big as Martin’s hands.
When it finally spoke, its voice was deep enough that Martin would have worried about it vibrating out his fillings in the real world.
“Gods below! Why you bring to us?”
They were speaking in the player language for his benefit. This was showmanship. They wanted him to know what was being said.
Speckles stepped up. “This one no hurt. This one dry-friend. Fight bad.”
Martin assumed that was a comment on his ethics rather than his combat skills. “I mean you no harm. I’m just passing through.”
“Mean no harm,” the ancient Anurvan wheezed. “What you mean, no matter. You come, bring more from above. Much hurt.”
This pidgin language stuff was starting to get on Martin’s nerves. He added learning in-game languages to his long list of tasks for the next friendly settlement they reached.
“I promise I will do my best to shield you from any harm that I might have brought with me.”
“You know nothing. You carry hurt. Call out to hurt.”
Was this frog trying to psychoanalyze him? “What?”
The Anurvan leader lurched forward, throwing out its spindly arms to keep it from falling on its face.
“You take Tear. You bring hurt!”
The Rain Tear Crystal? Martin called it out of his inventory. It was still exuding a trickle of clear water, but now it was also pulsing slowly with a dull blue glow. Like a homing beacon.
In the distance, Anurvan started screaming. Beneath the lattice of the village, waves were rolling as something huge and moving ever closer displaced the still water.
Speckles stared at the stone in horror, frozen in place with its head bobbling up and down as the other Anurvan in the village began scattering and fleeing, diving right off the edge and into the murky depths.
“No. You say you no hurt. You say you fight bad.”
“I do.” He drew his sword. “I will.”
A tooltip popped up.
Level 5 Rare Quest: Defender of the Frogs
The Anurvan of the Second Deep have suffered greatly at the hands of the Morasses and their creators. Defend their village from one of the daily assaults.
Victory conditions: Slay 1 Invading Morass.
Speckles couldn’t be convinced to head in the direction of the coming doom, but it did reach out to smear some strangely floral-smelling slime over Martin’s eyelids when he tried. Martin was so shocked that he just stood there for a moment before the green-tinted jelly evaporated away.
[New Ability: Swamproot Sight]
Just as his Night Vision allowed him to see into the darkest corners of the dungeon, so did this new green filter on his sight allow him to make out the root paths and walkways beneath the surface of the swamp.
They weren’t exactly glowing, but they were clear enough to manage. Martin patted Speckles on the back with what he hoped was a reassuring grin and then strode off in the direction of trouble.
Without his Anurvan honor-guard, the swamp had taken on a darker aspect again. The sweeping waves heralded something huge and monstrous, and while Martin was pretty sure what form it was going to take, the waiting was still hellish.
The walkways began to thin the further he got from the town, and the fewer walkways there were, the more his mobility was going to be impaired.
He could wait, lure the thing closer in to the village and try to tackle it there, but if he failed then that would leave the frog-folk with no chance to flee. It was a balance between what he knew was the best tactical sense and this newfound urge to play the hero.
Water sloshed up to batter across his shins as he waited. Games had never brought this out in him before. They’d been puzzles to solve, or more frequently a grind to endure before he could get to the challenges that he savored, but this was more like something Lindsay would do. Charging off to fight because she cared about some NPC. It was crazy. Yet he was here, doing it.
The Invading Morass wasn’t any bigger than the last one Martin had faced. If anything, it looked smaller, since it was up to its waist in water, but he could still feel the hair on his back standing up in fear, or anticipation. When there had been four of them against a Morass, it had been a challenge. Now he was alone.
He told himself that it was only a game, but it felt like a lie. All his senses were telling him that he was really here, that he was really facing off with something huge, ancient and powerful.
He conjured the Rain Tear Crystal out of his bag and held it up. The dull blue pulse of it lit up the water’s surface and made the Morass seem even more primordial with just its upper half exposed. The eyeless face turned towards the light like a flower tracking the sun.
“You want this?”
In reply, the monster let out a rumbling tectonic groan.
Martin blinked the stone away and then roared right back. “Come and get it!”
The Morass surged forward, throwing a wave ahead of it that nearly cost Martin his footing. He did not want to end up in the water. The moment he left the walkway was the moment he lost the fight. Getting sloppy wasn’t an option.
He let the Morass take the first swing – a huge over-armed thump that set the whole root-path vibrating beneath the surface and nearly bucked him off his feet when he dodged aside.
[MISS]
Those huge trunk-like arms were coated thoroughly in stone fragments, so he didn’t bother blunting his sword on them. Instead, he cast Halo. This close up, the Morass took the full blast in its featureless face.
[Invading Morass is blinded]
Martin didn’t even need to dodge the next swing, or the one after that. All he had to do was keep his balance, scrape his sword over the back of his bracers for an extra buff and stab into the mossy center of the beast.
[Invading Morass suffers 14 piercing damage]
He hauled his sword back – he’d learned his lesson from the Night Ravager about weapons getting stuck – and he almost overbalanced in the process. The walkway bounced again as the blinded Morass hammered in futile fury at the space where he’d been.
[MISS]
This was working. Martin could hardly believe it. He was going to win. He cast Rite of Retribution as he found his balance, then he started swinging.
[Invading Morass suffers 12 slashing damage]
[Invading Morass suffers 8 slashing damage]
Precious moments of blindness were ticking away. Any moment now, the Morass was going to see him, and it was going to hit him. He needed to be ready. With a grunt of effort, he took one last swipe at the Morass’ defenseless chest.
[CRITICAL HIT: DOUBLE DAMAGE]
[Invading Morass suffers 24 slashing damage]
The next sweep of its arms was right on target. It abandoned its attempts to crush him in a single blow, aiming instead to knock him from his perch. Martin was ready. He didn’t try to duck or dodge the pillars of stone swinging at him, choosing instead to dive right up and over them
, casting Rebuke down at them as they scraped under his belly.
[MISS]
Martin hadn’t been sure that would work, but as he scrambled back to his feet amidst the massive splash that he’d created, he saw it had worked too well. The force of his Rebuke had toppled the Morass forward on top of the walkway, and now, instead of righting itself, it was hauling its mass up onto the straining roots. If it couldn’t knock him off, it was going to drag the whole structure underwater instead.
With a roar, he charged forward, hacking at the stony arms, desperate to loosen its grip.
[Faceless Morass suffers 1 slashing damage]
The stone armor was too resilient. The water was almost up to his chest. Celestial Strike set his sword ablaze and he swept that glowing blade down again. Hacking straight into the Morass’ mammoth shoulder. Snapping vines like sinews.
[CRITICAL HIT]
[Invading Morass suffers 16 light damage]
[Invading Morass suffers 16 damage]
One whole arm came away from the central core of the Morass, vines and lichens straining out to each other across the gap and catching at Martin’s armor instead. They hooked into it, pressing through the gaps to tangle in his fur below. He had to leap back before it got a grip on him, and even then he could still feel some stray strings of vine wriggling against his skin.
Denied the opportunity to add a rat-man arm, the tendrils struck downwards instead, plunging into the fertile water. Martin blinked to check his cooldowns then readied his sword for his next attack. If the Morass got some distance, it could destroy him with its superior reach. Staying close was his only hope.
He’d only made it two steps forward when suddenly the walkway lurched beneath him. Flexing. As if it had suddenly come alive.
The Morass had turned its blank face towards him. How could something with no features beyond moss look like it was smirking? The vines from its wounded shoulder now hung beneath the surface of the water, and they were starting to thicken and grow darker. This monster added biological matter to its mass. That was what the description said. Only…it was trying to add the whole root system.
This time, when the walkway flexed, it wasn’t just the spasm of a new-found muscle; it had malice. It flicked Martin right up into the air, tumbling him head over tail until he landed with a sickening crunch right on the Morass’ waiting fist.
[Skaife suffers 31 bludgeoning damage]
It didn’t hurt. It was amazing just how much it didn’t hurt as all the life was hammered out of his body. He tried to draw breath, to speak or curse, but nothing was forthcoming. The Morass let him slide from atop its craggy fist back onto the walkway.
His broken body was so numbed that even the cool lapping of the water couldn’t penetrate it. He couldn’t believe he had still held onto his sword.
Darkness pressed in around the edges of his vision. One more hit was all it would take. He pressed his eyes shut and spotted the one ability that he hadn’t used yet. Healing Touch.
[Skaife regained 15 health]
Life seemed to flow back into him from that glowing touch, bringing motion back to his limbs and pushing the numbness away. With a gasp, he flung himself to one side. The Morass brought its trunk-arm down so hard that it tore right through the roots where Martin had been lying just a moment ago.
Bouncing and rolling with all hope of footing long lost, Martin plunged into the water. He choked as it rushed into his open mouth. Pain might have been withheld by the game but drowning came with a whole host of other awful sensations. He could feel the water in his lungs, and while there was no burning, there was no air either.
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
It was just luck that brought his flailing fingertips in contact with the walkway, and only sheer willpower that let him drag himself back up into the air. He coughed out the foul tepid water and gulped in air that didn’t taste much better. He never wanted to do that again.
Behind him, the Morass reared up, one arm fused hopelessly into the walkway and the other upraised, ready to smite him back down into the drowning deeps.
Time seemed to slow as the stone-capped fist came rushing down towards Martin. It was as if he had all the time in the world to wrap both hands around his sword hilt and swing it up so that the blade pointed straight at the landslide punch that was headed his way. Celestial Strike lit up his blade just an instant before the blow fell.
[Faceless Morass suffers 16 light damage]
[Faceless Morass suffers 16 piercing damage]
[Skaife suffers 32 stamina loss]
[Skaife suffers 4 EXHAUSTION damage]
With a grating scream, the Morass jerked away, cradling its wounded arm against its chest.
Martin’s sword was sticky and green with sap and algae. His mind buzzed with numbers. He wasn’t sure exactly how much health these creatures had, but he knew he was close to its limit.
The only variable that he didn’t have from the fight earlier was how much damage the others had dealt to their Morass before he arrived. It couldn’t have been much. They couldn’t have been engaged with it for long, or Lindsay would have either found some way to catastrophically injure herself or to do something heroic to the lumbering creature that would have rendered Martin’s involvement moot.
One more hit. That was all it would take. One way or the other. He wouldn’t survive another hit and neither could the Morass. He wondered, briefly, if whatever intelligence drove the monster understood that. If it would behave differently now that its end was in sight.
He staggered to his feet and hefted his sword once more. Celestial Strike took 10 seconds to refresh. There wasn’t a chance he’d survive that long. He couldn’t rely on it to penetrate the Morass’ armor. If he wanted to hit it somewhere soft, he was going to have to do it the old-fashioned way.
Running was practically impossible, and the water seemed to suck at his feet when he tried to jump, but with the Morass tethered to the walkway, it wasn’t like he had far to go.
Martin sailed through the air in a crooked arc and slammed right into the Faceless Morass’ namesake. He hammered his sword down into it before he could fall.
[Invading Morass suffers 14 piercing damage]
[Invading Morass has died]
Skaife gains 480 experience.
Defender of the Frogs
1/1 Invading Morass Slain. Return to Quest Giver.
A little bark of laughter escaped Martin’s lips. He’d done it. He’d won. The Morass began to tumble apart beneath him, the coils of vines releasing lumps of moss, hunks of stone and a bounty of seeds and dried-out mud into the swamp.
Martin started to sink into the decaying creature. The dying vines which had been lashing about aimlessly suddenly seemed to regain their purpose. They coiled around him, tightening as the whole hulk sank down into the water.
Martin couldn’t bring his sword to bear. He couldn’t get free. Down and down he went, the chill of the swamp creeping higher and higher up his legs as he gasped in panicked breaths.
He was going to die, and not in the painless way that he’d chosen to sacrifice himself last time. The water and the dragging vines crept ever higher as he tried to close his eyes and stay calm.
This was a good death. He was dying for something that mattered. Maybe not out in the world beyond Strata, maybe not even to the other people playing Strata, but to him this victory mattered, and if this was the end of his playing for the night then so be it.
The water closed over the top of his head. His whole world turned murky and brown. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath.
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
The sensations of drowning set his whole body convulsing. There was no pain here in Strata, but that didn�
��t mean suffering wasn’t on the cards.
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
[Skaife suffers 1 water environmental damage]
His wretched little rodent body involuntarily jerked and pulled against the vines. Every instinct he had – man or rat – was screaming at him that he had to find air. That he was dying. The numbness might have been worse than pain. At least with pain he would have felt something instead of this absence.
He closed his eyes against the encroaching darkness and watched his health bar shrink. It was only a game. It was only a game. This wasn’t death. He couldn’t feel water pressing inside his real lungs. This wasn’t the real world. It was only a game.
Finally, when panic had almost broken through that mantra, the notification he had been waiting for appeared.
Skaife has died.
When he opened his eyes, he was floating on the surface of the water, the light all around him dimming towards darkness and the pale hourglass hovering above his sodden grave.
[60 minutes until rebirth]
An hour instead of half an hour. The punishment grew with each death. It was over. He’d go to bed. It was probably long past due anyway. Normally, frustration would have kept him up another hour, but this had been a good death. Satisfying. Like he had earned his rest. If he had a mouth at that moment, he would have smiled.