Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “You had me at grand table,” Janus said eagerly, his attention sliding over towards the other adventurer. “Shall we take a peek?”

  “I’m already there,” Riggs replied in a matching tone, the pair shuffling off to look at the largest table that had been set behind the row of others, it being completely filled with a variety of items. Giving the pair a chance to scan over everything, Ritt and I passed the next half-minute with a bit of logistical small talk before the pair suddenly returned.

  “So, we both want the Ring of Power,” Janus said.

  “Who wouldn’t?” I replied with a snort, it taking me a second to realize what he was actually referring to. “Oh, you mean the one on the table there.”

  “In absence of the other one…yeah, that’d be nice,” the spellsword replied, his gaze turning towards Ritt. “So what do we do next? Throwdown until one of us says uncle?”

  “That’s an option,” the merchantman said with a nod, vaguely motioning towards the freshly swept battle ring. “Or, if you’d rather other options, you have a best of three rock, paper, scissors duel, or you take a chance with the dice.”

  “Pff. Those other options aren’t as fun as having a dance in the ring,” Riggs said with a note of disappointment.

  “Which is why the stands are as full as they are,” Ritt answered without missing a beat. “So what it’s going to be? If you both can’t agree on something, then it’ll be the dice by default.”

  “I’m more than happy with a dance,” Janus said eagerly, glancing over towards his newfound rival. “What do you say, pussycat?”

  “I say if you call me pussycat one more time, we’re gonna be having some fightin’ words in that ring,” Riggs answered with a growl, the smile on his face belying any trace of actual hostility.

  “Well, hopefully, you’ll bring more than just words,” Janus said as he took a step towards the sand-covered arena. “Because let’s dance, pussycat.”

  “Oh, you went there, little man!” Riggs exclaimed with a hearty chuckle, the man moving to follow without a second’s hesitation. “Let’s make this happen! Duel it is!”

  “Aw yeah, this is going to be great!” Ritt replied as the two adventurers practically ran into the ring, ready to face off with one another. “I was hoping they’d choose to square off! You sure you can’t stay for this, Lyrian? It’s going to be something, I can feel it.”

  “As much as I really want to, I’m afraid I need to keep moving,” I said, feeling a bit torn about the decision even as I made it. But I simply had too much to do before the day got away from me, especially with tomorrow being my off day when I’d be taking my rest cycle.

  Among other things as well too, I thought as I said goodbye to Ritt and slipped away before the match between Janus and Riggs could start, my mind already eagerly looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.

  Once I was free, I circled the active part of the arena and made my way towards its rear where the smaller dueling rings and training yards were, or rather where they had been. Over the last couple days, they’d all been taken over as a place for us to store, organize, and distribute the impossibly large collection of weapons, armor, and other various pieces of equipment or supplies we’d already recovered. Given the huge variety of stuff that was salvaged, it was a task in itself to figure out what was worthwhile to offer to the other adventurers and what was better off to be simply claimed by the town or donated to the crafters.

  But that was after the items or supplies in question had even been recovered and brought back to Aldford.

  Adding in a layer of difficultly to our task in sorting out the spoils was the fact that they’d been scattered everywhere, be it immediately outside of Aldford where the orcs had camped or out even as far as the plains, the broodmother having chased the orcs that far before losing interest. That meant that before being even able to distribute the loot, we had to scour the surrounding landscape to find it in the first place and bring it back to the town. It was a particularly time-consuming process that taxed even the two-hundred-odd adventurers that I’d sent out to help gather everything, the game deciding not to help us by consolidating the equipment of the orcs killed by the broodmother into one colossally-sized loot bag.

  Hopefully, though, now that the sun’s come out and is starting to dry everything, we’ll be able to speed the recovery efforts along a little faster, I thought as I picked my way through the area, letting my feet lead me towards where I sensed both Constantine and Sierra through our party link, eventually finding them and a handful of others busily at work sorting through what we’d recovered thus far.

  “A-alright, s-so this one here is a…Dagger of Bloodletting,” I heard the rogue say in a chattering tone as both he and the scout came into view around a group of crates filled with items, the man holding a crimson-hued dagger in a trembling hand. “Level twenty-eight, decent stats, and has a chance to inflict a bleeding effect as the name suggests. I’d peg this as t-table two, maaaybe table three material. What do you think?”

  “I say we go with table two for now, and maybe promote it to table three if we find more than one of them,” Sierra answered as she turned to give the weapon a brief glance. “A matched set would be a hell of a lot more valuable, or maybe we can pair it with something else. We always need more big-ticket things to offer up.”

  “Th-that’s true,” the half-elf agreed with a nod, his attention shifting in my direction as he spotted me. “Oh, hey there, Lyr, y-you’re b-back. How’d things go? Any sign of life from yours truly?”

  “Not today,” I replied with a shake of my head as I glanced back at my friend, still somewhat unused to see him dressed in the thick layer of furs that he was currently wearing despite the already hot morning air around us. “Though got some interesting notes from Hido about both Mozter and Ignis, as well as the location of a few more of their hunting camps farther up north. I’m sure they’ve been abandoned by now, though.”

  “We’ll take what we can get,” Sierra stated with a shrug, half inspecting a cracked orc helmet as she spoke. “Did he say anything specific about the pair?”

  “Nothing about Mozter and only a small note about Ignis,” I said as I joined the pair, updating them on the details on my conversation with Hido before changing the subject, glancing over towards Constantine as I did so. “And how about over here? How are things going?”

  “P-p-pretty well, all things considered,” the rogue replied, catching the subtle query behind my question. “I’m s-still freezing, b-but the furs and sun are helping a lot and th-the work is helping keep my mind off things. J-just another f-four more days to go, and hopefully, I’ll be out of the woods.”

  “And you still know that you can take a bit of a break for those four days, right?” I asked, well aware of the effects that the corruption had left on Constantine after he’d reached his limit during the battle. “Several of the others who’ve been fully corrupted have. No one will think anything of it.”

  “I know, and I m-mean I might, come day three or four,” he replied with a shaky shrug. “But right now, I’d rather help where I can and st-stay busy. And b-besides, I kinda don’t want to lose my street cred. W-what are people gonna think if they heard that a Canadian can’t h-handle a little bit of cold?”

  “A magical curse affecting your soul isn’t exactly a little bit of cold, Constantine,” Sierra said in a dry tone. “And especially right now when you’re suffering from what again? A fifty percent cold resistance penalty?”

  “It’ll g-go down to twenty-five percent once the fourth day is over,” the rogue replied a little defensively. “I think I’ll be able to manage that easy after. Or easier than this, at least. I mean, I’ll have to. The corruption is stuck on me until we can find a cure.”

  “And I’m sure we will at one point, but you don’t need to burn yourself out before then,” Sierra said, holding her hand up gently as the man turned to look her with a vaguely frustrated expression. “Look, we won’t push you on it, but we want yo
u to know the option is there if you need it.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it t-too,” Constantine replied, his features smoothing as he glanced between us. “I…just don’t w-want to miss out on things. I know it’s dumb, but I feel bad that I m-missed out on the end of the battle—and then more on helping out until I got used to dealing with this. I d-didn’t even get to see you train a raid mob into the orc camp! That must have been epic!”

  “More like epically terrifying,” Sierra said looking a little unsettled at the memory. “For me, or us rather, it was a terrifying run of near-death the whole way. And that doesn’t even include the prep beforehand as we lured her out of her lair. Half the time while we were avoiding pulling the broodmother early, we were tripping into other creatures and thinking that the noise would bring her along anyway. It was nerve-wracking.”

  “I can only imagine,” I replied, having heard the story of hers and Kilgore’s mad dash through the forest with the giant behir on their tail. “But still, now that it’s all paid off, you have to be still feeling great about that!”

  “A little,” Sierra said before going on to shake her head, a large smile coming across her face as her composure finally broke. “Oh, damn, I can’t hide it from you guys as easily as everyone else. Hell yeah, I feel good! I’m going to be chasing that high until the day I die! How many people can say they dragged a giant lizard into a horde of orcs? Not many, that’s for sure!”

  “D-definitely not!” Constantine replied excitedly. “Oh, I c-can’t wait for the feed for that to hit. It’s going to be unreal. P-people are going to lose their minds.”

  “I have no doubt,” I agreed, the three of us continuing on with our banter as we began to sort through the endless pile of items, the topic of our own loot eventually coming up. “So, you guys see anything come by yet that we should be trying to snag? I’m currently three-forty-one in line for the loot, so I have a long way to go till my turn hits.”

  “There might be a few things that were stashed away to be, uh, discovered a bit later when my number, three-eighty, comes up,” Sierra replied a little evasively. “A wristband, a ring, and a shiny bow that I will fight everyone and anyone for tooth and nail so I can get it, so help me god.”

  “S-same here,” Constantine added. “Though I’ve only f-found a necklace so far that I have my eye on. Maybe something else will jump out at me. I’m not t-till near the end, five-twenty-two.”

  “Huh, well, I guess I better start sorting through my own stuff and see about laying a few items to the side where no one else will find them,” I said, picking up a cracked bone sword that appeared to be broken beyond repair and tossing it into a salvage bin. “Hey, I don’t suppose you guys would have happened to trip over any of Zhul’s gear yet, have you? Big dark armor and such?”

  “N-nah, would have definitely mentioned that,” Constantine replied. “No one’s brought anything in th-that matches that yet either.”

  “Hm,” I grunted with a little disappointment. “Then I guess he really did manage to escape after all.”

  “That or he got eaten by the Broodmother,” Sierra replied. “And we might not get an update until we have proof that he actually died. I mean, we didn’t get the update about Sthera until Trivium messaged you, right?”

  “That’s true,” I said with a frown. “But then back at the gardens, we did get an update about the other garden being blighted without actually seeing it or getting a message from them either.”

  “C-could be because we were closer at the time,” Constantine suggested.

  “Maybe,” I replied, the explanation as good as any of other ones that we’d been able to come up with. Whatever the case however, I couldn’t help but use that opportunity to check over the final battle’s summary once again, the sight still surreal to me given everything that we’d experienced.

  Battle Summary Update! War: The Town of Aldford vs. The Dread Crew & Orc Tribes of Khudazal

  Saturday, April 27th – The Second Battle for Aldford

  Outcome: Decisive Victory

  Allied Player Casualties: 591

  Allied Non-Player Casualties: 0

  Allied War Assets Destroyed: 78

  Enemy Player Casualties: 9

  Enemy Non-Player Casualties: 3487

  Enemy War Assets Destroyed: 346

  Captured Slaves Freed: 41

  War Objectives Completed:

  Kill Sthera the Deathspeaker: 1/1

  Kill the Siegebreaker: 1/1

  Stop the Orc Invaders: 1/1

  Defeat the Dread Crew: 1/1

  Rewards:

  Glory Points: 101

  Experience: 150,000

  Leadership Experience: 50,000

  “I guess we’ll just need to wait and see what comes our way,” I said as I finished reading the summary, still marveling over how things had turned out. Not only the part with us winning the battle, but also with me personally getting enough experience to jump all the way to level thirty-one even though I’d just hit level thirty during the battle. “Maybe we caught a break and he really was eaten.”

  “If he was th-then we’ll have another thing to thank the b-big momma behir for,” Constantine said. “In addition to however m-many hundreds or thousands of orcs she ate and crushed.”

  “True enough,” I said with a half shrug, something about the warlord’s ambiguous end rubbing me the wrong way, but one that I also couldn’t argue with, given how close we’d come to defeat. “Though I imagine that she’ll be something for us to worry about in the coming days. Especially since she knows where Aldford is now.”

  “Maybe. But how about we make that a bridge to cross later. Right now we have plenty of other stuff to worry about. Such as this thing,” Sierra replied, holding up a slightly scarred chest piece made from a dark hide that I couldn’t identify as she spoke. “This looks like it’s table four worthy, anyone disagree?”

  It was with that question that we all fell back into our work of sorting, the next couple hours passing by in a steady flurry of items and chatter. It wasn’t until the arrival of both Halcyon and Caius that we found ourselves pulled out of our routine, the pair looking visibly excited, and perhaps a little nervous when they arrived.

  “Ah, there you guys are! We’ve been looking all over for you!” Halcyon exclaimed as they spotted us. “Oh, man, we have news to share. Huge news. Epic news.”

  “Is it that you’ve taken a class in suspense?” Sierra asked in a dry tone as we all turned to look at the pair as they picked their way through the various crates and boxes around us. “Because if so, I think I’m going to need to have words with your teacher.”

  “What? No,” the mage replied, looking confused for a second before he shook his head quickly, clearly unable to contain himself. “It’s about Trivium and the others. Caius and I here just logged back in from our chat with them, and oh man, did they drop a bombshell on us. I’m still wrapping my head around it, but damn.”

  “Hal, I say this with love, but please start wrapping up quickly, because if you don’t, I will wrap this around your head instead,” the scout said, picking up a bar of dark iron that was lying on a table beside her. “Because you are being a big tease right now, and it’s starting to stress me out.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands in front of him defensively. “But don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”

  “I’m sure I won’t,” Sierra stated impatiently.

  “Right, so anyway…as I was saying,” Halcyon continued, pausing for a second to collect his thoughts. “We had our conversation to catch up with Trivium and his group, and like we saw in the battle summary, they did manage to not only kill Sthera, but they also routed her army in the process.”

  “They did? That’s great!” I exclaimed, the summary being the only scrap of news that we’d managed to get from the other group. “With her dead and Zhul missing that leaves Khudazal leaderless.”

  “And the other Arakissi tribes in the fens too,” Caius chimed in with a
nod. “Without Sthera’s backing, they all pretty much collapsed overnight. Some into in-fighting, others against one another. From what we were told, it’s a chaotic mess across the board.”

  “It sure sounds like it,” I replied, relieved to hear that they were all doing well. “So what are they doing now then? Just hunkering down and waiting until it plays out?”

  “Well, not exactly, no,” Halcyon said, exchanging a glance with Caius as he replied. “They took advantage of the chaos to push ahead again. All the way to Khudazal, actually.”

  “Wait, they made it that far?” Sierra demanded, her earlier impatience having vanished in light of the mage’s words.

  “Farther actually,” Halcyon said, his earlier excitement that he’d originally arrived with reappearing. “Because when we spoke, he said that his people were in the process of securing the city. Or at least what was left of it.”

  “What do you mean, what was left of it?” I asked, suddenly hearing my heart start to thunder in my chest. “Did…did they attack and take the city by themselves?”

  “No,” the mage replied with a shake of his head. “That’s just it. They didn’t have to take the city. It was already razed by the time they got there.”

  Epilogue

  Wednesday, May 1st, 2047 – 3:00 p.m.

  Marcus’s Condo

  “…so then he puts his arm around your mother and says, ‘Hey, girl, what’s the drop rate on that dress you’re wearing because I think it’d be better on the floor.’”

  “Oh my God, he did not,” I replied in shock to my father’s voice emanating from above as I busily ran a cloth across the kitchen counter in front of me, cleaning the mess I’d made while preparing the meal that was currently cooking in the oven.