by Galen Wolf
Gawain: Easy, Kay.
Kay: Have you seen this f**** mess? They’re all over the f**** place. They’ve slaughtered half the regiments we had on the Welsh Walls.
Gorrow: So the city’s not taken?
Gawain: No. We’ve still got a chance.
Kay: Not much of a chance. Hours? Days?
Gawain: Remember your chivalric code, bro. We don’t give in.
Kay: Yeah, but.
Bors: Any chance you can join us, Gorrow? We could sincerely use any help you can give us.
Gorrow: Of course.
Kay: Better late than never.
Gorrow: I’ll be there as quick as I can. And with something.
Kay: With something? Sounds interesting. What?
Gorrow: Something useful.
Kay: Do tell. Or are you just full of wind?
I’m about to lose my temper, but that wouldn‘t be wise. I just type.
Gorrow: Wait and see.
I almost gave the game away, but I didn’t mention the vorpal weapons.
Bors: Sounds good. Looking forward to seeing you. Don’t be late!
Gawain: Yeah, seriously, sooner is better.
Gorrow: I’ll do my best.
I return to the game in front of me. I sigh. ‘The city hasn’t quite fallen.’
Robin laughs, like the fate of Caer isn’t so important. He says. ‘Then what are you guys doing here? Last time I saw you, you were heading to Clitheroe.’
‘And Pendle,’ Tye says.
‘Further still to come back. So why?’
Tye’s face hardens. ‘We’ve got some crystals for you.’
Robin looks puzzled. ‘Crystals? For me? Why do I want crystals?’
Fitheach shakes his head. ‘Shut up, Tye. It’s not him that wants the crystals.’
Tye turns his head quizzically. ‘No?’ Then he pauses, still covered in goo. ‘Oh, yeah. That’s right.’ He nods at the ogre mage. ‘Hey, can you get rid of this stuff, please?’
Robin grunts at the mage who dissipates the goo spell with a click of his fingers.
‘Happy now?’ Robin says.
Bernard pleased to be goo-free, leans forward in his saddle. ‘Do you have a forge?’
Robin says, ‘Yes. It’s to the west of our main clearing. Why?’
‘Can I use it? I’ve got some things to do before we fight Quetzalcoatl the dragon.’
Robin gives a low laugh. ‘I see. You’ve come back to fight the dragon? As, I recall, last time you got pasted.’ He looks rueful. ‘We all did. We always did.’
There’s no point me brooding about the fall of Caer so I join the conversation. ‘But we think we might have a chance now, if we make adjustments to our weapons.’
‘Secret weapons, eh? Care to share what you’ve learned?’
Tye says, ‘Like hell, one-eye. Once you know 0ur secrets, you won’t give us our shit back.’ He says the word carefully with emphasis so that it would be obvious to a complete idiot it’s not really poop at all, but Robin knows that, anyway.
I say, ‘So, if you could lead us to the forge, then that would be fan-dabby-dozy.’
The one-eyed ginger ranger shrugs. ‘Sure. Come with me.’
The other rangers disappear into the woods as we follow Robin to the Merry Men’s main clearing. I see Little John and nod but we have a mission and no time to chat.
I dismount Spirit and the others leave their mounts tethered with him in the glade. Birds are singing, and the sun shines pleasingly through the canopy of leaves. I smell charcoal burning and as we take a left, we come into a smaller glade. Here a muscly halfling labours with a huge black hammer, smacking it down on a glowing sword on a black anvil. There’s a hut here and a water butt as well as the anvil. The heat from the well-stoked forge hits us as we come closer. Robin introduces the halfling. ‘Here’s Tiny, our Blacksmith.’
Bernard takes things out of his inventory and arranges them. There are weird boxes and metal contraptions that I don’t understand that are something to do with the Alchemy Skill-set. He mutters to himself as he arranges them, trying to get everything right. ‘Hey, Fitheach, come here.’
Fitheach steps over and they engage in a whispered conversation. Robin watches them scornfully. Tye takes this time to log off as he’s not needed.
I still need to ask Fitheach who that rogue is that he thinks I know, but he’s busy so I ask Robin, ‘Hey, we think we were being followed when we left. Do you remember there was a shifty figure hanging around when we were here last?’
Robin nods. ‘Yeah, we saw him go after you. One of Satanus’s boys, we think.’
‘You know who it was?’
‘No, no idea. Just some evil rogue. Didn’t bode well, but hey, not my problem.’ Still watching Bernard and Fitheach who are obviously trying to work out a new procedure, he says, ‘So what’s this thing you’re doing to your weapons?’
Tiny the Blacksmith has stopped his hammering and is observing my guys too.
‘Wait and see. But if we kill the dragon, we want our stuff.’
‘Your glamoured shit wagons? Sure, sure. A deal is a deal. But we still haven’t been able to break the glamour.’
I wink. ‘Nor will you. Tye is a genius.’
Robin raises an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
The saint and the alchemist set out more stuff. Fitheach brings out the string bag with the glowing spiders.
Robin raises and eyebrow. ‘Glowing spiders in a string bag? I have absolutely no clue what you’re going to do with those…’
As it looks like they may be some time, I decide to check in with Grimdark at Silver Drift.
Gorrow: Grimdark. How’s it going in the dungeon?
He answers after a few minutes.
Grimdark: Sorry, Gorrow was on a bio break. A big one, if you know what I mean. Yeah, it’s going good. We levelled the dungeon!
Gorrow: Cool. Any more trouble from Maligon?
Grimdark: No, it’s been fine. Not see him since. He must be happy with his Magic Mirrors, playing with them somewhere.
Gorrow: That’s what I’m worried about. We shouldn’t have put such good loot in the dungeon.
Grimdark: The good loot is why people come back. What harm can he do with those mirrors?
Gorrow: Plenty. He can cross the whole realm of Logres in one step from one to the other.
Grimdark: But he’s got to place each one. So he has to get into a vulnerable place first before he can do any real harm.
Gorrow: That doesn’t reassure me.
Grimdark: Hey, so Caer has fallen? You all ok?
Gorrow: It hasn’t fallen yet.
Grimdark: So, are you there yet?
Gorrow: Not yet, no.
Grimdark: Thought you were heading there with all urgency?
Just then there’s a hoot of delight from Bernard. I come back to the game again. ‘What?’ I say.
‘We did it!’ Fitheach yells, dancing on the spot. Bernard comes and claps hands on my shoulders and kisses me. ‘We did it!’
I push him away. He shows me his alchemical sword which now has luminous edges. ‘We put the light damage on my weapon.’
‘Okay!!!’ I’m excited now.
Robin says, ‘So, you added light damage to the weapon because?’
I say, ‘Light damage is good—’ but Bernard interrupts me. ‘You seriously didn’t know that the crystal dragon Quetzalcoatl is vulnerable to light damage? After all this time fighting it? Are you really dumb, or…?’
Robin colours up. ‘Hey, now.’ He’s about to say more then he looks interested. ‘It’s resistant to poison, fire, cold, holy, etc, etc, we never had any light weapons. But you’re saying…’
I say, ‘Exactly.’
His eyes light up. ‘If you put light damage on our weapons, then we can kill it.’
Just then Tye logs back in. ‘Did I miss anything?’ We all ignore him.
Bernard narrows his eyes. ‘No way, buster. We kill the dragon, then we get our wagons back. If you kill the
dragon, you’ll keep our wagons.’
Robin steps back, hands up in a placatory fashion. ‘Of course we’ll give you your stuff back.’
Bernard glares. ‘Like shit.’
Robin grins. ‘Exactly. We don’t even want your shit.’
Fitheach says, ‘No, I’m with Bernard. Anyway, we only have half the bag of spiders yet.’
I ask, ‘Did you have to kill the spiders?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, Bernard sucked the light from them.’
Bernard looks pleased with himself. ‘Yeah, no spiders were harmed in the making of the light weapons. I don’t like to harm living creatures.’
I remember him coo-cooing over the baby Jabberwocks. I draw my sword and hand it to him. ‘Can you fix this for me please?’
Bernard gives me a salute. ‘Sure can, Sir Gorrow. My pleasure.’
I watch how he gets Fitheach to stand by some kind of glass box. It has a hinged side which is down. Fitheach puts the mouth of the string bag to the open side of the box and whispers encouragingly at the glowing spiders. It’s true, there’s only half of them left in the bag. I see the others are wandering round the forest floor nearby, now completely black with no light coming off them at all.
The still-glowing sugar spiders one by one enter the glass box, feeling their way with their long hairy legs. They are like tarantulas but luminous ones. They aren’t as bright here in the outdoors as they were in the cave, but you can still make out their phosphorescent glow.
Once all the spiders have wandered into the glass box, Fitheach takes way the now empty bag and puts it in his inventory. Bernard closes the glass box with the flick of a finger. Then he attaches a rubber hose to an outlet in the box. The hole is too small for even the spiders to climb out, but they just sit there patiently, flexing their many legs.
Bernard takes the end of the hose and attaches it via a tube in a cork bung to a glass flask. Then he mutters some stuff and seems to do something on his HUD. Amazingly, there’s a cloudy vapour in the spider box and he extracts the light from the spiders until it hovers in the air as a strange luminous cloud.
The light is coming out of the spiders and they grow dimmer and the vapour cloud gets brighter. The spiders don’t actually seem to mind having the light sucked out of them at all. The luminous vapour is pretty bright now it has all the light from the spiders concentrated in it. The rubber hose is opaque, so we can’t see the vapour travel along it, but within seconds, the vapour fills the collecting flask, moving from the spider box into the hose. Then the collecting flask is full of glowing stuff and the dark spiders are wandering around. Fitheach lets them out of the box and they scuttle into the leaf litter on the glade floor.
Once all the vapour is in the collecting flask, Bernard disconnects the hose from the glass box and puts his thumb over the end. He then wanders over to Tiny the Blacksmith to use the forge. He must have done this before with his own sword but I was too preoccupied with talking to Grimdark and thinking about the impending fall of Caer.
Bernard has my sword, and he sets it on the forge. He produces a wooden sword mould from his inventory and closes the lid round my sword. Then he attaches the rubber hose to the sword mould and sits watching it and also watching something on his HUD.
Tye is standing by, a little bored. He goes on his knees playing with the spiders, getting between my knees and distracting me from the light infusion and then Bernard says, ‘Should be done.’ He opens the sword mould and takes out my sword. ‘Here,’ he says, handing the sword to me.
I take my sword in my hand and examine it:
Refolded Crystal: 900 Base Damage
+50 cold damage
+150 fire damage
+ 480 holy damage
+ 300 light damage **NEW**
anti-lycanthrope Star Silver
30% knight bonus
20% mounted bonus
5% demon slayer
5% dropsy
+30% Divinity Skill bonus
Running Damage: = 2175
I chuckle. It looks pretty mean. I turn to my comrades. ‘Let’s go get that dragon.’
22
Dancing With A Dragon
We sneak into the dragon’s glade the way we did the first time. The glade looks as peaceful as always — trees in full leaf; the sun shining through them, birds singing from the trees and the stream running brightly through the glade. There is a heap of treasure up against the grey rock walls of the cliff at the back of the clearing. Among the gold is the clear crystal dragon’s egg — the loot for those successful in killing the dragon.
We are stooped line abreast. Robin Hood is with us and so is Friar Tuck for extra healing. Tye stands there, but as he only has fire spells, he can’t do much. Bernard grips his sword hilt and is looking grim. Fitheach has light spells that will do some damage, but if he sees us getting hurt, I know him, he’ll switch to healing. I gave him a briefing before we entered the dragon’s glade that he should forget us and leave the healing to Friar Tuck. I hope he’s listened to what I said.
Tye whispers loudly, ‘Where’s the dragon?’
‘Duh,’ Bernard says in great irritation. ‘It’s invisible. That’s why it’s called an invisible dragon. Like it was last time.’
Tye snaps back at him, ‘Hey, keep your hair, on Uncle.’
Bernard snarls. ‘I’m not your freakin’ uncle.’
‘Easy guys, this isn’t helping.’ I look at Robin. ‘Listen, will you do me a favour and step forward to draw the dragon out of invisibility?’
He raises both his eyebrows. ‘Really? You really said that?’
‘You can’t hurt it so, honestly it doesn’t matter if you die. And you’re bound here.’
‘So are you now.’
It’s true, we remembered to bind at the milestone for the Forest of Bowland, but there’s no point us being one-shotted before we can hit it.
Robin’s still not buying this suggestion so Friar Tuck shrugs and says, ‘I’ll do it.’ I put a hand on his shoulder and hold him back as he prepares to step forward. ‘No, we want you to heal.’ I look again at Robin. ‘Robin, I need you to do this.’
He snorts. ‘Fine, fine,’ and runs his hand through his ginger hair as if he’s working up his courage. His one eye blinks. ‘Okay, here goes nothing,’ then with a roar he breaks cover and rushes forward.
The dragon’s on him instantly. It emerges from nowhere, its sinuous form crystallising in the air. It is a huge winged lizard, long tail, long body, wickedly curved claws of opalescent gold. It unfurls its wings, opens its jaws and breathes. A cloud of white catches Robin Hood full on as he is halfway across the glade, and he is turned instantly into a cloud of floating thistledown.
‘Pretty though,’ Tye says and I scream my battle cry and run at the monster.
The dragon’s breath weapon is instant death, but it needs a while to recharge. I don’t know exactly how long but it won’t be turning me into thistledown soon. It rears up a huge foreleg to swipe at me, but I dodge left and cut down with my sword as I go.
- Immune to Cold Damage
- Immune to Fire Damage
- Immune to Holy Damage
- Immune to Bleed
- Immune to Vorpal
- Immune to Anti-Lycanthrope Effect
- Immune to Demon-Slayer
- Immune to Dropsy
- You hit Crystal Dragon for 300 Light Damage>
I hear Fitheach yell in triumph and I know he’s blasted it with one of his light spells. Bernard rushes in under its belly and jabs up with his alchemical sword. He’s got lots of damage types on his sword, but I’m betting that the new light effect is the only one going through. Still that’s maybe 900 damage on the dragon between us all. I don’t know how many hit points it’s got, but it must count for something.
The dragon snarls and snaps at Bernard. He jumps back, and it misses with its fangs but it swings its left claw and rakes him. I see lines of blood spring up through
his brown shirt.
Friar Tuck standing at the back, concentrating on the fight, shoots Bernard a healing spell and I see the alchemist enveloped in a silvery glow. ‘Thanks,’ Bernard grunts and jumps forward to attack again.
Fitheach is firing light spell after light spell. He’ll run out of mana soon.
I square up, put up my shield, visor down and advance towards the dragon’s head. I attempt to taunt it to get its aggro. I’m far tankier than Bernard— two hits like that and he’s a goner but I should be able to take more punishment.
‘Hey, you freakin’ invisible freaky lizard freak!’ I yell.
It turns, sees me and blinks. Then it opens its jaws and for a second I think its breath weapon has recharged. But it snaps at me. I put up my shield, but it knocks me back and I stumble and fall over a tree root.
I get up, run forward and hit the dragon again for three hundred light damage. Bernard jabs it in its side and I see luminous blood ooze down the silver scales of its crystal flank. Thank God it’s bleeding. This might even be easier than I thought. I leap to my feet and shout at the dragon again, but this time Bernard has its aggro. That gives me a chance to stick it for another three hundred.
Damn, the thing doesn’t even look tired, never mind dying.
Friar Tuck fires healing spells at Bernard, but it looks like the alchemist is taking damage faster than Tuck can heal. I jab the dragon again. Bernard’s in a bad way; the dragon leaps up and stamps him with its back foot. Tuck heals and now Fitheach’s stopped firing offensive spells and is joining in healing Bernard. I don’t want him to do this and I yell out, ‘Stop it!’ but the saint doesn’t listen.
