Elusive Prey

by Cheek, Jason

  “That’s a good question,” Domenic said with a shrug. “Which is why I sent Pounce to check out the southern graveyard.” Seeing that the warrior wanted to argue, he held his hands up so he could explain.

  “Look, I probably got a good four or five hundred of those guys just as they were respawning in.” Domenic said, glancing over at me for support before continuing. “Jay’s guess that the gravestones would be packed up with the fortress was right. We just don’t know what that means in terms of player respawns.”

  Before anyone could add in their two cents on the subject, a large Lynx appeared at Domenic’s side. Everyone jumped in surprise at the predator’s sudden appearance, but settled down once they realized it was Domenic’s pet. What did get everyone keyed up was how agitated the Lynx was as it nervously paced around my friend with its tail whipping around in vexation. Not that my friend’s alarmed outburst helped any.

  “What do you mean we have to get out of here now?” Domenic demanded in exasperation, as all of us listened in on the one-sided conversation. He was obviously talking out loud to his pet so the rest of us would partially understand what was going on. “If the players can’t respawn at the site of our fortress because their gravestones are missing, then what’s the freaking problem?” He threw up his hands in frustration. “So what, you can see dead people. Great! Now, how many of those dead people can respawn and attack us?” There was another silent exchange that ended up with Domenic throwing his hands up in frustration. “What the hell are wraiths?”

  Instead of responding, Pounce suddenly blinked away. He reappeared ten feet away a split-second later with his fur standing on end. Almost simultaneously, Domenic staggered and cried out as if he’d been attacked. Leaping away from him, the Dark Blade of Lord Kayden cleared its sheath in the blink of an eye as I struck at the shadowy claws that had appeared in my friend’s shadow. Instead of biting into misty flesh, the blade just whipped through the air hitting nothing as Gutirrg, Domenic’s Gnoll companion, hurriedly rushed forward to pull his liege lord from the shadowy creature’s clawed embrace. As soon as Domenic’s shadow moved due to the angle of the sunlight, the shadowy creature let out an incoherent screech and disappeared.

  “The fuck!” Kenzie exclaimed, drawing her blades as she leaped back with her eyes wide-open. Whatever had sprung out of her shadow shimmered away in the sunlight almost instantly as more shouts of fear and pain began ringing out around us.

  The reaction from both raids were nearly the same as the ring of weapons leaving their sheaths echoed between the rocky cliffs of the gauntlet, while glowing fists of various types of magic prepared to lash out at the unseen attackers. In both Domenic’s column and my raid, more players and people of The World seemed to be coming under attack from the shadowy creatures while confusing commands began being shouted out in raid chat. At the same time, Neristhana and Ulia shoved me back trying to protect me while the rest of my companions surrounded me with their weapons drawn and terror shinning in their eyes.

  “Wraiths!” Ulia fearfully hissed, as more people began coming under attack. Almost as if she were quoting an old saying, the Swordswoman muttered under her breath. “It is said on the Plains of Atoll that direct sunlight is the only thing that can hold such evil at bay.”

  “That or possibly a Beast-Kin Spirit Shaman,” Neristhana nervously added, as her eyes scanned the shadows around us with dread. “If this had happened at night, we’d all be dead.”

  My mind kicked into overdrive upon hearing the word Wraiths as my mind tried to review all the lore I’d ever heard about Shades and Wraiths. I tried to listen to the anxious words being tossed around by my companions as my eyes studied the ghostly forms randomly assaulting both raids. Out of nowhere, people’s shadows were coming alive with fangs and claws. Just moving out of the way seemed to disrupt the attacks, but within seconds those same people were targeted with follow-up attacks. Several people got off a Shadow Bolt or Frost Blast at the indistinct shapes tearing into them but to no avail. It was like magic attacks and weapons did nothing to hurt the creatures.

  That in itself was odd. In Dungeons and Dragons, Shades and Wraiths were supposed to be beings of the Planes of Shadows and still partially existed in the real world. While they were resistant to non-magical weapons, silvered and magic weapons along with spells could hurt them. Ghosts, Phantasms, and Shades were battled similarly in most MMO style games. Usually, that was because the concepts for such creatures originated either directly from Dungeon and Dragon’s lore or were pulled from the same ancient tales of ghosts and ghouls from Earth’s mythology. Through all of the confusion, I heard a familiar voice shout over the excited jabber.

  “Pounce says you can’t fight these things. They’re Wraiths from the Realm of Shadow that have been attracted here due to all of the newfar souls unable to respawn at their gravestones!” Domenic urgently shouted at me from where Gutirrg had pulled him away to as the Gnoll did it’s best to protect him. “We’ve got to get out of the area or they’re going to suck the life out of us!” With a thought, I invited Domenic’s raid to join mine as I began bellowing orders.

  “Alright people, follow me!” My voice rang out over the fear and confusion as I began running towards the mouth of the gauntlet. “We’re getting the fuck out of here! Now get your asses moving!” Pushing my way through the Uten Syn guild and the players that were trying to fight the shadowy monsters, my voice cracked like a whip as I forcibly shoved people ahead of me. “I said to move out! You can’t fight them with the weapons we have!”

  Within half a minute, the entire raid was quickly making their way across the ruined landscape for the nearest defensive wall. Seeing that my troopers had dug in at the last wall of fortifications, I hurriedly called Tengsly to me. The message was short and sweet. Within seconds, the Flying Squirrel was racing ahead as I turned to a wide-eyed Yun. Seeing that he’d lost nearly two hundred hit points, I spammed a Regeneration on him and everyone else that showed up with damage in my raid interface. I ended up spamming Regeneration out seventeen more times, before realizing that Yun and everyone else’s health weren’t recovering.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I shouted to Yun. “Why isn’t your damage healing?”

  “It says that I’ll have to rest for an hour for my hit points to recover!” Yun hollered back, as his eyes tried to look everywhere at once. “The thing went through my Holy Shield and armor like it wasn’t even there!”

  “This sucks, Star!” Sarka complained from where she ran on my other side. “I swear, you have the worst friends ever.”

  Throwing my hands up in the air at the nonsensical comment, I scanned through everyone’s health with one eye as my other watched the Kayden troopers forming up to move out. It was then that Tengsly came flying back to me. A moment later, Assault Leader Dell’s voice sounded in my head. Dell reported that they hadn’t come under attack by any Wraiths, but would move out as soon as everyone was formed up. He also promised that he’d alert the troopers at the head of the gauntlet. Tengsly didn’t bother coming to rest on my shoulder, but took my next message for Domenic and flew off. I was just starting my own search for information, when Krishna, Lyeneru, Angie, and Gaelin caught up to me.

  “What the hell are Wraiths, Star?” Krishna shouted out, as soon as he felt like he was close enough for me to hear him.

  “No clue,” I yelled back, as we ran for the shattered gateway. “I’m pulling up the in-game Wiki now. Do Lyeneru or Gaelin know anything about these things?” The surprised looks on both Krishna and Angie’s faces said no as I turned back to mentally type in the words into the search screen floating before my eyes. A surprisingly difficult task while running and trying to listen in on Krishna and Angie’s conversation with their companions. As soon as the internal webpage popped up, I turned my focus on reading up about Wraiths and dying in The World, when I heard Thomas suddenly call out behind me.

  “Dude, what the hell are those things?” Thomas vehemently asked, as he and Kenzie join
ed the makeshift command group.

  “The in-game Wiki says they’re evil spirits from the Realms of Shadow that are attracted to the souls of the dead. Supposedly, they can be drawn into an area if a mass group of players are repeatedly dying and doing corpse-runs to their gravestones. It says here that, if they mass in great enough numbers, they can cross the threshold and attack the living,” I yelled back, as I closed the link and searched for any additional pages on the topic.

  “I wonder if that’s why the Chaos Storm Alliance were mostly running from the southern graveyard instead of respawning at their gravestones,” Kenzie thoughtfully asked, as Thomas and I looked over at her in surprise. It was a damn good question. Before either one of us could comment on it further, Tengsly came flapping up to me. Immediately, Domenic’s voice sounded in my head.

  ‘Pounce is saying that Wraiths hunt the space in-between life and death. If too many newfar spirits are continuously running back to their bodies, they attract these spirit monsters to the area. I wonder if that’s why the players sieging us stopped respawning at their corpses near the end of the first week of the siege. If there are enough Shades or Wraiths in one area, Pounce says they can start to cross over into our realm and attack the living. Night is the worst, but he says they can even use a creature’s shadow if its daylight. Oh, he also said five hundred and forty-seven newfar were captured inside the fortress and their ghosts are nowhere to be seen.’ Finished delivering Domenic’s message, Tengsly settled on my shoulder as I quickly did a search on sieges in the Wiki.

  Unfortunately, that was a dead end. The in-game Wiki didn’t have anything but the basics on conducting a siege. There was nothing about gravestones being moved around by the enemy or trapped inside a fortress. Probably, this was just one more in-game bug we’d discovered by accident. Swiping the window away, I saw the faces of my friends impatiently staring back at me for answers. Quickly, I went over the gist of everything I’d researched and that Domenic had explained.

  “So that means what?” Thomas asked, his eyes glazing over as he read something on his HUD. “The players captured in the fortress will be out of combat for up to five hours?”

  Pulling up my own notes, I quickly found the Emergency Hot Fix that applied:

  Imprisonment: Players can now only be imprisoned for up to five-hours by NPCs and Monsters. Once the five-hour time limit has been reached, the player will be given the choice of respawning at the nearest graveyard, the nearest graveyard outside of the current area, or to the last friendly city they left. In addition, this time period can only be served while the player is actually logged into The World. If a player is captured in PVP within a training area, the time limit is only a maximum of five minutes after which the player will be given the choice of respawning at the nearest graveyard, the nearest graveyard outside of their current area, or the nearest friendly city. If a player is captured in PVP outside of a training area, the time limit is only a maximum of five hours after which the player will be given the choice of respawning at the nearest graveyard, the nearest graveyard outside of their current area, or the nearest friendly city. For PVP, the player does not have to be logged into the game to complete the required time out.

  “Looks that way,” I agreed, after reading through the text.

  “Didn’t Fylreh report that the invasion force numbered a thousand?” Sarka asked, as she followed the conversation.

  “So what does that mean for the remaining four hundred and fifty-three players then?” Unalia suddenly asked, from where she kept pace next to Tinyr. “Weren’t their gravestones trapped in the fortress too?” Looking between our thoughtful faces, she asked a question that made all of us pause. “If those Wraiths are hunting newfar ghosts running back to their gravestones, does that mean you can die as a ghost?” As one, we looked to the silent Rani that was running along with us, albeit no longer surrounded by my companions.

  “What, are you giving me permission to speak now?” Rani asked in a self-satisfied tone at seeing the look of annoyance that flashed across my face. Without waiting for an answer, she continued taking on an educating tone. “Of course players can die even as ghosts. Seriously, how else did you expect V-MMORG to balance out large scale PVP?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  (Jacob Mister-Griefer – Fatal Midnight Guild Leader in the gauntlet and southern graveyard)

  Your gravestone has been captured by Vengeance Burnslinger and is currently unavailable. Do you wish to return your spirit to the nearest graveyard automatically or make your way back to the nearest graveyard on your own?

  “Gah! This is such bullshit!” Jacob, aka Mister-Griefer and the guild leader of Fatal Midnight, screamed in aggravation at the eerie ghost world around him. With a snarl of frustration, he casually dismissed the inane message away as the corpse countdown reset to five minutes. Fuming in anger, he took off for the fortress, once again, muttering under his breath. “Seriously, how the fuck did someone even capture a gravestone in the first place?”

  This entire day was going like shit. First, he had to keep his mouth shut while that Evil Sandra bitch prattled on about how his guild was a worthless piece of shit because they’d been ganked by those Shadow Assassin NPCs while still in Stealth. Like any of her people would have done better! And if that wasn’t enough, she’d stuck him with that loud mouthed Shapo Xela and her team of fucktards to “help them” take the fortress while she went after the main prize. What a complete fucking bitch! Jacob mentally raged. And now, after sucking up and enduring all of that ass kissing bullshit, this happens. Running through the last wall’s shattered gate, Jacob threw his arms in the air and wordlessly screamed in frustration.

  “What the hell is a fucking Moonshine Elemental anyway?”

  That was the most annoying part of all of this. Whatever had killed him had done four thousand points of damage. Four … fucking … thousand … points … of … fucking … damage! And that was with him at the rear of the raid! How was something like that even possible? On top of that, as a level 42 Rogue, he’d been rocking it with nearly three thousand hit points! It should’ve been impossible for him to be one-shotted! That wasn’t even the worst part of all this shit. If Jacob had died, that meant at least half of his entire raid had died along with him. If he didn’t get back into the game and fix this shit up quick, he’d have to put up with that stupid bitch being all up in his grill again! Jacob was just coming up to the top of the rise about halfway to the fortress’ outer walls from the last wall of the gauntlet, when he stumbled to a stop.

  “Where the fuck is the fortress?” Jacob roared to the ghostly world around him, as he stared unbelieving at the empty hole in the side of the mountain. “It was freaking here just a second ago!”

  Staring down at where the fortress had been, Jacob did his best to try to understand what he was seeing … or wasn’t in this case. Come on, a fortress didn’t just get up and walk away in the course of a few minutes. This all made no sense at all, Jacob fumed in frustration. Jogging down the slight slope, he stepped into the cave opening where the main defensive wall had been just a few minutes earlier and looked around in confusion. There were no corpses, no gravestones, and most of all, no fucking fortress. This whole day was turning into a pile of stinking shit and it wasn’t even half over. Jacob was trying to decide what to do next, when a cold wind blew through his soul.

  It was that cold wind before a major thunderstorm on a warm summer day. You know, the freezing wind that hits ahead of a major storm only this one was without all the detritus being picked up and blown around. As the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, Jacob’s ears picked up a sound that sent shivers down his spine. Whatever the noise was it was just at the edge of his hearing. If pressed, Jacob couldn’t have said, at first, what it was that disturbed him so much about the otherworldly sound, but, the more he focused on it, the greater the feeling of absolute dread that began to rise up inside his heart. Whatever it was, it flipped the flight or fight switch of his primitive mind and g
ot the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

  The time dilatation from the effect made him feel like he’d been standing frozen in place and shaking in fear for minutes, when, in truth, the foreboding pall that had covered over the ghostly world around him hadn’t taken more than a few seconds to form. In that short time, Jacob’s peripheral vision began registering flittering shadow-like forms darting about the backside of the cave. As his eyes focused on the jerky movements, the shapes quickly took on a more substantial form. It was almost as if his seeing them brought the creatures more into his reality. Each lumpy misshapen shadow had glowing red eyes and spectral-white fangs that looked like some Lovecraftian horror come to life.

  It was in those split-seconds of gibbering terror that Jacob realized that these flittering nightmares were actually some sort of Wraith-like predator. As their nightmarish forms became visible to his eyes, he could see that they were feeding on screaming humanoid forms that were being plucked out of the aether around them. It was in that horrific moment that Jacob realized the souls of the dead they were feasting upon could only be those of his guildmates. Everywhere he looked shadowy wolf-like creatures with tentacle-like limbs rippling from their backs were tearing apart his people and eating them alive. The low sound that he’d been hearing this entire time suddenly transformed into the distinctive screams of the dying and the ravenous sounds the misshapen shadow monsters made as they rent bone and flesh.

  This was the first time he’d ever seen another soul in this ghostly realm, but it only seemed to happen when the Wraith-like creatures caught their prey. The majority of his guildmates were simply trying to escape the gruesome fate of being eaten alive as they ran for their lives towards the cave opening where Jacob stood. Most were missing arms or had gaping bites taken out of their bloodless torsos, while the few that were missing their legs fitfully tried to crawl to safety. None got away. Jacob noticed that a handful of his guildmates were trying to fight back against their spectral foes, but it was to no avail. Those individuals were ripped in half and shoved into gaping maws still screaming in defiance.