by Taj McCoy El
Mayah’s face darkened. “You just had to jinx it didn’t you?”
Margaret put a knuckle to her teeth and inhaled with a hiss. “Oooh, yeah. I may want to watch that.”
“You may….” Mayah nodded her agreement.
“After that faux pas dear, I’m going to skip the hug. See you in a few days?”
“In a few days,” Mayah agreed
Margaret said, “Take care dear,” and gave her one last hug in spite her saying othewise.
If Margaret’s ears could’ve remained as she faded from Majesta, she would have heard Mayah say, “Well, at least she didn’t say anything about being in the city when it gets dark.”
✽✽✽
Margaret tried to remove her helm but her thin almost skeletal arms lacked the strength. It was a drastic change in comparison to her in-game features. It took her a moment to adjust to being back in the real world. She let her arms fall to her sides, out of breath and dizzy from just that minimal exertion. As her disorientation faded. She fumbled around with her fingers until she found the nurse’s call button and waited.
Her movements had awakened her pains. Her skin felt raw and her bones were spikes of ice only dulled by the narcotics the nurse would bring her. She had spent 17 hours and 30 minutes in the game and her last dosage had worn off hours ago. The fact that she didn’t need a dose while immersed made the pain feel fresh. Her mind was clearer than it had been for some time due to the lack of painkillers. and that clarity made the pain sharper as well.
Margaret was in hospice and had opted to forego the treatments for her illness. The medicines that may have saved her at some point had stopped being effective and only served to give her a wretched, nauseous numbness that wouldn’t allow her to think. If the nanite surgery had been approved by the national surgical Association she might have had a chance. But the politicians found something wrong with the data and sent it back to be tested again. It would take another two years at least before the treatments would complete their trials.
Margaret didn’t feel good about Leaving Fluff alone in-game. But right now, she didn’t feel good, period. She didn’t want to have to leave again and come back to this pain.
She gritted her teeth as a wave of agony rolled through her shins, pushing lightning fast up her spine to her shoulders where it collected, creeping up her neck to stab into the back of her brain. The pain eventually faded, leaving her body like air slowly leaking out of a punctured tire. As the last of it left, she caught her breath. She had her thoughts back for a moment and made a decision that would not be to her daughters liking.
Because the tumors were in her brain the pods no pain function only partially helped. But it had helped enough to keep her power of attorney from her youngest daughter’s hands.
She called up her crysweb account, entered the newest contact she had and began typing, “Dear Mr. Bannon…”
8.8 Gift Boxes
“Well, at least she didn’t say anything about being IN the keep when it gets dark,” Mayah exclaimed. “Like who would say, ‘No, I’m going to sit here and ignore all those mobs waiting to give me some XP.’ And for days!!! Nobody that I know would do that. Besides, I need to test the efficacy of a few items I might have created. This may complicate things a bit though.” She tapped her chin nervously. Mayah found herself wishing she had someone to talk to, now that Margaret was gone. She looked around the clearing, sighing loudly. She walked over to the campfire and threw some wood onto it and sat down.
She pulled out her runebook and spoke to it, "I guess it’s just you and me now.” She opened the book and looked for the last rune she cast on Grax.
Water (D)
The waters of death. Throw a dart of watery death. Instead of flowing downhill these waters flow towards life. It will absorb any life it comes into contact with, along with creating a necrotizing effect destroying any living tissue. The effect may be so strong that the necrotized flesh will fall off the host organism allowing the Water (D) to penetrate further into the organism’s body doing more damage. It will drain 15% of the target’s health points each second for 5 seconds.
Example: if target has 100HP the first tick will take 15HP leaving 85HP. The next tick will take 13HP which is 15% of 85HP
So that’s what happened…It wasn’t the water, it was what the water destroyed. I hit him in the spine and the water got into his body and ate into his spinal cord. Ouch. He’s definitely gonna be mad. She continued reading.
Water (D)
Level:
1
DP:
HP-15% damage per second (DPS) over 5 seconds
Mana cost:
300MP
Cooldown:
180 minutes
That is way OP. No wonder the cool down is so massive. I definitely want to level this. This is going to be secret bomb ingredient #1. She went to the next rune she had used.
Labyrinth (W)
This water rune will create a maze of water in 360 degrees of an enemy’s vision. The Labyrinth will confuse the target’s sense of vision with a reflected image of you, pointing them away from you. Labyrinth will move with target creating a mobile maze. In higher levels the size of the labyrinth will grow.
Labyrinth (W)
Level:
1
Duration:
1 minute
Mana cost:
175MP
Cooldown:
6 minutes
Well I need to find out what six of them do. Hehe. That brought her to the next rune she had used to kill her friend.
I gotta stop thinking about it like that. It’s too morose.
Fight (S)
Fight will split a portion of your shadow to become a shadow clone. Clone will inflict 10% percent of your damage, have 10% of your HP and have a range limit of 10 feet from caster. In higher levels you will be able to create more clones they will do a higher percentage of damage and have a longer range. Damage will be higher against shadow based life forms or magic. Fight (S) is weak against light.
Fight (S)
Level:
1
Duration:
1 minute
Range
10 feet
Mana cost:
75MP
Cooldown:
6 minutes
Mayah quickly cast Fight and a shadow appeared in front of her. It sat cross legged with its back to her. When she looked right, it looked right mirroring her image. She imagined it being on her left and trained her eyes on the spot she wanted it to be and the shadow slid across the ground with the shadow showing her its profile. She stuck a hand out in front of her the shadow emulated the movement perfectly. She focused on moving the shadow from place to place.
Ding!!!
Your party has defeated:
Skaduweesp
Level:12
XP: +60
1175XP till next level
Mayah looked towards the keep beyond the wall of rock wondering why Vergie hadn’t returned to the shadow. The shadow turned as well. She looked back at her book and wished that the runes would sort themselves into some type of order besides the order she found them in.
Ding!!!
You have unlocked Runebook Assistant
Welcome to the Runebook Assistant.
It looks like you’re trying to sort your runes. Would you like some help with that?
Y/N?
A tiny binder clip popped into view above her book. It did a quick dance shedding fairy dust from its wings, and then settled down on the edge of her book to look at her with oversized eyes. Mayah selected yes.
Runebook Assistant:
Would you like to sort by Order Acquired, Alphabetically, or by Path?
Date/Alphabet/Path?
Mayah selected path.
Runebook Assistant:
After sorting by Path would you like the runes to be arrange by Order Acquired or Alphabet?
Date/Alphabet?
Mayah selected alphabetically sorted. Her
rune book glowed for a moment before rising from her lap and slowly spinning in the air. The assistant danced around the book shaking a ton of fairy dust on the cover and the pages. She witnessed the runes swimming across the page rushing to get into the order she had prescribed. The runebook floated back into her lap and closed itself.
Runebook Assistant
New table of contents created.
Is there anything else I can help you with?
Y/N?
Mayah selected no and turned to the front page of her runebook and was astonished to have a comprehensive list of all her runes classified by path and alphabet. This is what she saw.
Elements in order of Vorto Alignment
Death
(Spirit Tetrad)
Air
(Element Tetrad)
Fire
(Element Tetrad)
Light
(Spirit Tetrad)
Shadow
(Spirit Tetrad)
Water
(Element Tetrad)
Earth
(Element Tetrad)
Life
(Spirit Tetrad)
Death (D)
Acid, Darkness, Free, In, It, Water
Air (A)
A, Against, All, And, Are, Begin, Bewitched, Can, Centuries, Change, Created, Cursed, Death, Earth, Eternity, Evil, Existence, Facing, Fire, For, Found, Guards, I, Into, Is, Knowledge, Lost, Majesta*, Names, Of, One, Our, Power, Riddle, See, Soul, Strength, That, The, These, This, Those, Through, To, Tome, Who, With, You
Fire (F)
A, Over, Shield, Tomb
Light (Lt)
Lost, Place, Safety, Your, Were
Shadow (S)
A, And, Death, Depths, Ease, Ends, Fight, Learn, Land, Of, One, Power, Real, Repository, Shadow, Solve, Summon, These, Until, Was, What, Whose, With, You
Water (w)
Air, And, By, Can, Death, Deeper, Grasp, Hall, In, Is, It, Keep, Labyrinth, Light, Look, Must, My, Of, Place, Runes, Safe, Spike, The, Things, This, Time, To, Words, You
Earth (E)
And, By, Enter, Find, Have, Hidden, Life, Mage, Ba'alquion*, My, Selaizar, Sweeping, The, This, Took, Was, Words, You
Life (Lf)
Allow, Battle
The Elemental and Spiritual Tetrads instantly caught her attention. The ordering was done by Kalima Vorto, The disembodied voice in the Hall of Runes.
The order begins with death and ends with life just like the legend says. But why is that important? Mayah filed that thought away for later as there were more runes to understand.
The next thing to stand out were the two runes with asterisks. She tapped the first one in her list and the runebook’s pages flipped and landed on the rune she had tapped.
Yay! Hyperlinks…
She studied the rune.
Majesta* (A)
*This rune has been sealed by the Emperor of Majesta. Using this rune in any fashion will redirect the runes energy into the caster and cause instant death. All runist will find this message in their runebooks. If the rune is used, unactivated in a trap the runist who set the rune will die upon activation. If the rune is taught to a non-runist second party and the second party activates the rune, the runist who taught the second party the rune will die. If this rune is… (Continued)
The description went on for two thirds of a page, describing in great detail the many ways that a runist could die, and lose reputation with the Majesta Empire before the words faded from view. Underneath a small tab that simply said, “See More” blinked at her.
Nope not today. That looks like a long list of death. No need to be bored AND scared whilst I’m all alone. But I do need to read it all soon. Got a feeling there’s something hidden in all that jargon.
Mayah turned back to the table of contents and tapped the second rune with an asterisk.
Ba'alquion* (E)
*This rune has been sealed by the Emperor of Majesta. Using this rune in any fashion will redirect the runes energy into the caster and cause instant death. All runist will find this message in their runebooks. If the rune is used in an unactivated trap the runist who set the rune will die upon activation. If the rune is taught to a non-runist second party and the second party activates the rune, the runist who taught the second party the rune will die. If this rune is… (Continued)
Okay, more of the same. I’ll get to it.
Back at the table of contents she noticed the disparity in the number of runes in each path. Air topped the list with 48 runes. The next highest was water with 29. Shadow runes had 24 that was only half of Air. Earth had 18 and light had 5. Fire had 4 and that included her shield rune. Life only had 2 runes. Mayah quickly turned to those pages praying for some type of healing spell. Judging by the description, Mayah’s hope of creating a healing spell today was dashed. Most of the runes had names but no effects.
Looks like it’s gonna be experiment time.
Mayah quickly flipped through her mental rolodex of in-game needs:
Get out of game…
Get a Tank to protect me while I’m stuck.
If I’m stuck, I need Heals.
Tank and heals are pretty much on the same level right now. Looks like it’s study time and I only have four-ish hours before Grax comes back. I have to make something better than a bow tie… Better than a bow tie… She bit the tip of her thumb before turning back to her book.
✽✽✽
It had been two hours since Mo had been cut free and led upstairs from the basement. As the knockers lounged around their hideout, the looks from the knockers ranged from ambivalent to non-existent. There were however a few sneers peppered in for good measure. All of the looks however, made Mo a bit uncomfortable.
Bonkers had sent his men to the information stand with messages for Mephi and Ziggurast. Mo had been waiting anxiously for Mephi and Ziggurast to show, but he tried not to show it. He sat in an armless wooden chair, in the opposite corner from the door of the 30x40 foot room. One arm was lackadaisically thrown over the back, and he slouched, which allowed him to do two things. One was to comfort his rolling stomach; his nerves were on end. He was surrounded by nearly thirty men in various stages of banditry. He could feel the killing intent from some and imagined that he smelled the blood from the others. The second thing was to hide his emotions. These men might be killers, and as real as it may seem at the moment, this was only a game. Since Mayah got stuck though, it made him wonder.
A knock at the door drew some looks and some ignores. The brutish knocker by the door casually opened it and stepped out of the way. In walked Mephi stepping past the brutish gent and looking around the room. He was followed shortly by a smoothly floating Ziggurast. Mephi’s eyes scanned the room and locked on Mo. Mo’s heart jumped for joy but he kept his cool composed demeanor and sent a message through party chat.
Booms: Stay on your toes. They called for friendship but might sign on as enemy.
Mephi: Got it. If they cause a stink, I’ll double it.
Ziggs: Thank god, I don’t have a nose…
Mo waved his friends over and sat forward placing his forearms across his thighs maintaining a relaxed demeanor. As they got closer he stood up and straightened his clothes.
“Good to see you guys.” He grasped forearms with Mephi.
“You too, man,” Mephi expressed happily.
“beep- Good to see you bro. -boop” Ziggurast spun in a full circle. Mo knew he was scanning the surroundings and filling in their maps. On top of that he was tagging the knockers and there were a few tags that floated in mid-air above nothing.
