Gaia's Rebirth Box Set

by Caiden Walker

  At three hundred gold a piece that was almost a thousand gold needed just for three horses. Even if they sold everything in their packs, Ash didn’t see them coming up with that kind of gold. Of course, once they defeated the orcs and Gaia, there was the rest of the orc’s stolen treasure. Hopefully that would bring in a pretty penny.

  She tried not to think of all that lovely hermit dwarf treasure now lying under several tons of fallen rock and rubble. What a waste.

  On the bright side, surely Nika or Evan would think of a way to gain the gold they needed for the mounts. The trip would be possible with even just one horse. It simply wouldn’t be the quick journey that their leader wanted. For her part, Ash was in no big rush to get back to her normal life at all. Walking would be fine with her.

  The item store hadn’t really held many new items. The only thing really worth noting and investing in was the new wardrobe item for Nika. Saving money for a horse certainly didn’t stop her from buying it.

  It was pretty, and functional for the desert, which Ash guessed made sense. It was a full length, very lightweight, white cloak with gold trim and embroidery. The cloak was beautiful and would work to keep the virtual sun’s heat from reaching her virtual body.

  In this world, a lot of the programming relied on the player’s brain to fill in the gaps. In the desert, the bright, burning sun beating down on them relentlessly would supply their brains with all kinds of data and things to do. Things like making them thirsty and extremely hot and uncomfortable came to mind as good likelihoods.

  There were also cloaks for the rest of them, and each of them bought one to protect them from the wicked sun’s beams. If their minds thought they would help, they would. That was just the nature of the game.

  With their new wardrobe items folded nicely into their inventories, they found the accommodations for players. Griffondale had been a bit of a shock to Ash when they’d first arrived.

  This was not a well-established town that had withstood Gaia’s ruin. No, this town had been built from the ground up within the last month. Or so, at least, that was how it seemed.

  The buildings were simple log cabins, tents, and tepees. The biggest difference was that this town was the opposite of modern. There was no running water or electricity anywhere. So no communication station for one thing.

  The player room was actually a large canvas tepee with a cloth divider in the center making it into two rooms. The furniture, if you could call it that, was nothing more than a series of huge, soft pillows strewn around the inside. The pillows were large enough to lay full out on one of them, or double them up to create a couch or seat of sorts.

  Everyone picked out a cushion and crashed. They would sleep for a few hours, until the sun set, and then make their way back to attack the sleeping orc camp.

  Ash was really torn with the thought of cutting out her own nap and taking one last hunting trip for the few experience points she still needed. But in the end, she joined the others for their nap.

  The clincher for her decision was the beautiful Tyler, who had pulled up his cushion next to hers so that they could snuggle while they slept. No amount of experience points in the world would have been enough to pass up that offer.

  They shoved their pillows together to make one large bed, and Ash lay down with her back pressed up against Tyler in the typical spooning fashion. Nothing was going to happen here beyond cuddling. Not with the others all in the same structure. But it still felt really nice. Really, really nice.

  When Evan woke them up, the inside of the tepee was dark almost to the point of blinding them. Then Louella brought out her lantern and the soft glow illuminated the inside.

  One good thing about the game being virtual was that Ash didn’t have to worry about the drool factor. Player’s didn’t drool.

  They gathered around the center of the tepee and laid out their plan. It was short, simple, and hopefully would allow them to get through the next few hours with their goal in hand. The desert portal.

  On the way back to the orc’s camp, they only came across two groups of enemies. But that was enough, and once the last of the second group had fallen, Ash heard that wonderful whisper. She was level ten and the Blizzard attack was now available for her to use.

  Best of all, the Blizzard spell wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill ice spell, no this game started ice magic off with a bang rather than a whimper. It was an area of attack spell. Making it more than possible for her to damage several orcs at the same time. With their twenty percent night-time penalty coupled with the slowness she could inflict through her attacks, they should all be able to avoid the orcs’ attacks pretty easily.

  Especially with the Amazon WarCry in place beforehand. The only part of the battle that had her a touch concerned was Gaia herself. This was the goddess’s first actual appearance in the game. And if it was Ash out in the real world trying to delay them, she’d do it by making Gaia unbeatable. Which was why she was worried.

  A quick look around at her companions told her they most likely had similar thoughts.

  They reached the save fountain, and each touched it before heading off to do their respective part of the plan. For Ash, that meant heading to the orc’s food supply. If setting it on fire would work as a diversion for a pixie theft, it would certainly not hurt to add a touch of confusion to the orcs in battle.

  She reached her destination with no outcry from the enemy and waited. It didn’t take long.

  Soon, the night was alight with flaming arrows, each hitting their mark in a sleeping orc. Really, Dean, Ash thought briefly, fire? Against orcs? Plain arrows would work just as well, and you could fire two of them at once. She hadn’t thought it necessary to warn him of that, but it was too late now. At least a flaming arrow was still an arrow and should do the trick, even at half the rate of arrows he could accomplish in the same time frame.

  Ash launched a fire spell at the supply house and then ran to join the others. If there was one thing the orcs valued as much as their food, it was their treasure, and Louella had set off a localized earthquake under the tree house that held their treasure chest. The very important tree fell heavily out into the forest, and several orcs ran to regain the treasure before it scattered, even though they were currently engaged in battle. Everyone had their priorities, even if they were programmed in.

  The orcs that didn’t run after the falling treasure were caught between the members of the party. Surrounded on all sides by flaming arrows, a hacking slashing ax-welding Amazon, a ferocious tiger beast with an extremely fast sword, a twin set of pixies throwing nature magic at them, and now an ice-throwing mage.

  It was pretty much over soon after it began. They would still have to deal with the stragglers that had run, but the battle was over very quickly. Evan hadn’t been kidding about the night penalty on these creatures. Had they known it would be this easy, they could have done this a full day earlier, or more.

  Of course, just when it looked like the battle was won, Gaia showed up in all her glory.

  And she was glorious. This version of Gaia stood close to eight feet tall, making even Nika look a bit shrimpish. And every inch of her was beautiful perfection. You could easily tell this, because although Ash would not have thought it possible, Gaia was wearing even fewer clothes than their resident Amazon.

  Her long legs and arms were bare, save for writhing golden snakes about her ankles, wrists, and biceps. And her entire costume consisted of what appeared to be three well-placed leaves. Not overly large leaves, either.

  “Get it together, Dean,” Ash yelled, as he had gone immobile at the goddesses’ appearance. She had been wrong when she thought players couldn’t drool. It just took the right circumstances.

  Dean swallowed but seemed to snap out of it.

  “You have trespassed upon my forest and brought harm to my creatures,” Gaia said, her very voice nothing but a passing breeze rustling through the trees. You would think it would be hard to decipher, but every word was registered into t
heir brains as if by magic itself.

  “I will stand it no more,” the goddess continued. “Humans have destroyed this planet I so lovingly provided for them. Now they will pay for their crimes.” Her eyes traveled over to Louella and Evan, widening just a bit in surprise. “You stand with humans?” Her voice raised in outrage. “Then creatures of nature or not, you shall share their fate as well.”

  There was another reason beyond surrounding the orcs that they had spaced out their party members. Gaia was powerful, but she couldn’t hit all of them at the same time with an area of effect attack if they weren’t all in the same immediate area. As it was, she seemed to take the most exception to the flying pixie. Possibly it could have something to do with the fact that she used nature magic in her attacks on Gaia’s creatures.

  As the goddess drew in her power, the wind absolutely disappeared from the forest. Well, not totally accurate, that. It didn’t disappear, it relocated itself into Gaia herself. As the wind flowed into the goddess, creating a swirling vortex around her, it started taking the pixie with it.

  For a brief second, it looked as though she would be a party fatality, but then she broke out of her panic and threw her lasso toward a large tree branch. She missed the branch, but Evan ran for the rope and grabbed it in time to keep her from being sucked into the goddess.

  He slipped the noose around his body and effectively had the pixie now on a tether. Which only served to make Gaia even angrier and widen the scope of her attack to include him as well. Inch by inch, tiger strength or no, they were being drawn into the goddess’ vortex.

  Then Nika gave her WarCry and a never before seen aura appeared around the Amazon. The berserker ability! She’d activated it. Now was the time to throw everything they had at Gaia.

  She was drawing in the wind, right? Well then, maybe she’d like a little fire with that. After all, fire was a well-known enemy of nature from the very beginning of time.

  “Fire arrows, now, Dean,” Ash yelled, throwing one fire spell after another not on the goddess herself, but on the small twigs and leaves the wind was taking into her.

  Soon, Dean’s flaming arrows followed and bits of flame could be seen circling the goddess in the wind surrounding her. She raised to full height and gave a battle cry of her own, seconds before Nika’s ax began chopping at the beautiful and very deadly creature before them.

  Then instead of fighting against the deadly draw of the wind, Evan cut the rope between himself and the pixie and let the force of the wind pull him directly into the goddess. Within seconds, Louella followed him. Shortly after, Gaia realized her error.

  Now she was not only fighting forces from without her but within her as well. In a heartbeat the wind died, dropping the tiger and pixie onto the ground before her. From where Ash stood, she could see that the pixie’s wings were shredded.

  She tossed a full party heal spell, one of her new level ten perks, and quickly downed a mana potion, readying several health potions to throw to the others when they needed them. Now that the wind had died down, she was focusing her fire spells directly onto the leaves that covered Gaia’s most personal spots. Surely that would distract her?

  “Enough!” The goddess cried, rising high into the air, away from the slashing blade of Nika’s flying ax.

  “You think have won, you puny humans? I could finish you here easily, but it would be far too merciful a death for the likes of you.” She made a motion with her hands and a swirling portal opened behind her. “You wish to battle me again? Cross my desert and if you survive to reach the other side, we’ll meet again. When I am in a much less merciful mood.”

  And she vanished.

  “We won?” Dean sounded more than a little surprised. He wasn’t the only one.

  Louella gave a sad laugh. “I wouldn’t call it an outright win,” she said, looking at her torn and bloody wings. Ash threw her another healing spell, but the wings remained broken and shredded. Their beauty and functionality was destroyed.

  “Nika?” Ash asked, her eyes watering up at the pixie’s sadness over her wings.

  The Amazon knelt down and touched the delicate fibers. “Your healing isn’t working?”

  Ash just shook her head, not trusting her voice.

  Louella dashed a hand across her eyes, sniffling. “It’s okay, really. I mean I could probably even make myself a bigger, better pair, but that really would be cheating wouldn’t it?” She raised her head and looked at the portal. “Besides, that would take time that we don’t have.”

  Dean was still eying the portal. “Will it stay open now? I mean, is there a time limit or something?”

  They all looked to Evan, who shook his head. “No, it’s well and truly open to pass back and forth between the forest and desert areas now.”

  Ash chewed the inside of her cheek. “At least that’s how it was originally designed, right?”

  Nika nodded. “I’m with Ash. If they can somehow see that we’ve opened the portal, I don’t think they’ll leave it open long.”

  “So save and go through?” Ash asked. As much as the battle had been exhilarating, she really didn’t want to have to do it over again.

  “What about horses? We’ll need them, won’t we?” Dean asked, squinting through the portal at the brightness beyond.

  “Just beyond the portal is a town where we can purchase mounts,” Evan said, “and unless they close the portal, we can always come back to buy them here too.”

  The save fountain wasn’t far, and it didn’t take them long to make it there and back to the portal. It remained open and swirling. All that could be seen beyond it was a terrible brightness.

  They all held hands and walked through together.

  The other side was much as they had expected. As Evan had said, they stepped into the back of a very well-lit town. There appeared to be a party going on. A huge celebration of some sort. There were people dancing and singing in the streets and a passing girl threw braided flower necklaces around their necks as she passed them.

  “Well, this town seems like a happy place,” Dean said, his eyes darting back and forth over the scene before them.

  Knowing Dean, Ash figured he was looking for the buffet tables.

  “Thank God you made it through!” a familiar voice cried out from behind them.

  They all turned to see Blake Nolan standing there. That in itself was surprising enough, but the fact that all he was wearing was a big, bright red bow around his nether regions with lettering that said ‘With love from VirTech’ just added to it.

  A slow smile crept over Nika’s lips as she oh-so-slowly drew her ax. “Oh, this is going to be fun,” she said.

  Blake started backing up, then gave a squeal and started running.

  Nika gave her WarCry and followed.

  The End…For Now

  Desert

  Gaia's Rebirth: Book Two

  Copyright © 2018 Caiden Walker

  All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce, copy, or distribute this work in any form without express written permission from the author.

  Please note that this is a work of fiction. All characters, settings, and companies contained within these pages are fictional. Any resemblance to existing people, settings, or companies is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE: You Can't Kill Him

  "Well, we can't kill him," Evan growled.

  “Sure we can.” Nika drew her axe and cut Blake's head off in one fluid and graceful movement. She'd had a lot of practice in the last hour. Which was one of the reasons they were all sitting on the small stone wall surrounding the town's save fountain. It saved time.

  Shortly after having his head lopped off, a protesting Blake reappeared beside them.

  "The problem," Nika said glaring at the newly rebooted Blake, her possible husband, "is making him stay dead."

  "Hey!" Blake cried. "How many times are we going to go through this before we can get on with it, win the game, and get our lives back? Repeatedly cutting off my head isn't getti
ng us any closer to the final boss battle with Gaia, you know." He tried giving her a glare of his own, but it just didn't work.

  After all, he was the reason they were all stuck in the game to begin with. Well, him and his evil deal with VirTech. Without their help, he'd never have been able to pull off what he had done. Now, since they'd cast him to the wolves, or in this case the beta testers, she realized that he had just been a pawn to them. A means to an end.

  He was right about one thing, though, much as Nika hated to admit it. She needed to refocus and move on. It was just harder than she'd ever imagined, having the man she thought she'd loved sitting beside her. Especially when she most definitely didn't feel that way now. If she really could kill Blake, he'd be six feet under by now.

  "If we are going back to the game and everything, I do have a question about something that's been bothering me," Ash said.

  "Ask away," Nika said.

  "We waited until dark to attack those orcs, right? That battle and the first run in with Gaia didn't take that long. I mean, we kicked butt pretty good back there." There were general murmurs and nods of agreement. "So why was it bright daylight when we crossed the portal into the desert? Is the time different here?"

  Nika shook her head. "No, but we didn't have any way to know when players would cross over. So the game is set up so that it's day no matter when they cross. We wanted to give them a sense of where they were going even if they made the portal jump during the night."

  Ash looked confused. "Then time going forward will be different?"

  "No, we're just in for a very short night tonight. Which is probably for the best," Nika said, giving Blake one last glaring stare. "As much as I hate to admit it, we do need to get started with the game again. The jerk showing up in the game must mean they are getting close to finishing their plan, if they haven't already. We need to be out of here sooner rather than later." She pointed to the sun, now much lower than it had been an hour ago when they'd arrived. "See?"