by N H Paxton
“You... you... YOU!” I rose from the ground and chugged a Health regen potion I had snatched from my belt.
The pair of Travelers who still stood just laughed as I pulled my crossbow with one hand, and the dagger Ina had given me with the other. I knew I wouldn’t use the dagger to its full effectiveness, but it was more of a distraction.
I shouted as I rushed the large Risi. He shifted his stance and spun his axe in his hand so that the blunt side was facing me. I tried something I had seen before in fighting movies, but had never attempted: a feint. I took a wide step with my left foot as though I were going to move there, and the Risi drew his axe back like a baseball bat. I then dropped to my knees, and he swung his axe. It soared right over my head, but just barely.
I fired my hand crossbow at his chest, but I must have struck a loose stone in the floor with my leg right as I pulled the release. My body was jarred, changing my firing angle, causing the bolt to smack into the side of his head. It didn’t down him immediately, but it was obviously painful because he spun with his axe and collapsed to the ground, yowling like an annoyed cat.
The Murk Elf drew his paired swords and took a step forward, his blades both up in the air. I collapsed onto my back, and the paired weapons swung through the air. Wow, the same basic tactic had worked twice in a row! Either I was insanely lucky, or—hhhckkkk was the sound my throat made as I caught a foot directly on my chest, forcing the air out of my lungs. The edges of my vision went black. Maybe being flat on the ground wasn’t a great decision.
“Thought you would shoot me in the fucking face, did you, you little shit?” The Risi stood over me, his crushing weight pushing my Stamina points lower and lower as he put more weight onto me. “I don’t take kindly to insults.”
He pushed down with considerably greater force, and I felt my ribs snap. I tried to shout, but there was no air in my lungs.
“Hey, hey, hold on. How is he going to remember not to mess with us if we just kill him here? What if he’s an NPC, and he doesn’t respawn?” The Murk Elf was speaking, but I couldn’t focus on his face. Everything was starting to blur, and the words they were speaking were heavily distorted.
“You didn’t have much of a problem with me zero’ing that one chick, though.” The Risi was tilting his head, his axe hefted on a shoulder. His face was turned to where Ina was lying, his attention waning from me, and I was able to almost breathe again.
“She killed our mage, man. And she’s not dead yet, but whatever happens to her now: that’s not my problem.” The Murk Elf wrung his hands in the air like he was washing them, then shrugged hard.
The red bar that showed my life force was flashing insistently, pulsing brighter with every passing second. I expected to die right there, but the pressure on my chest disappeared entirely.
“Ah, yeah, good point. We won’t get the XP for killing them, but at least they’ll have learned a lesson not to fight back.” The Risi laughed raucously as he put his axe into a sheath on his back. He dropped his torch next to my body as he turned to walk away.
I struggled to breathe, my body refusing to allow me the simple necessity of oxygen. I turned my head and saw Ina, her eyes open but glazed over.
“I... na...” I croaked out her name, scrabbling to try to get my body in motion. I had to get to her, I had to save her, I would not lose her. I had saved her once before, and I could do it again.
Our eyes met and there was a sudden moment of lucidity in her gaze. Her lips moved, soundlessly, but I knew what she was saying. “I love you.”
Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her shallow breathing stopped. An intense and powerful rage welled up inside me as I looked at her body, broken and shattered, her arms and legs in odd, unnatural directions.
“What about Gavin?” I was hearing the idiot Travelers talking. My strength was starting to return, and things were making sense again.
“Eh, we’ll pick him up back at the keep. His own fault for being so squishy.”
I moved without thinking, my body nearly rising of its own accord. I felt my hand grasp steel, heavy, unexpected. I felt my legs move, but I wasn’t entirely sure I was in control anymore. My body stumbled and fought for purchase as it ran at the back of the Murk Elf. My hands raised the sword and drove it deep into his neck.
“What!?” The Risi turned in time to see his friend’s body collapse, the sword Ina had carried sticking out of his neck.
That was it, that was all my body could do, but I didn’t fall. Instead, the Risi grabbed me around the throat with one giant hand and pulled me to his face. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath was terrible—why was I focusing on these stupid details? I was about to die! Focus, Vlad, focus!
“Just couldn’t leave well enough alone, eh? Had to go and stab Jacobin in the neck. You’ve got one chance to explain yourself before you make an enemy of the entire Viridian Empire.”
His grip was insanely strong, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. I had a brief moment of clarity as I hung there, my body hanging on by a thread, as my Health points sat at 1.
I spat in his face, then, through a choked gasp, I managed to mutter Poshyal ’na hui.
“What the hell did you say, dipshit?”
“Fuck you,” I croaked.
His face contorted with rage as my spine gave under the crushing force of his grip. He threw my body to the ground, and the world faded to black.
Time of Death: 13:30
Timeline: Day of Cataclysm, 21:30
I awoke, screaming with lungs I didn’t think I would have. My body burned everywhere, and I hurt in so many places, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I looked around the room, which was dark, empty. Somehow, I was back at the inn, but Ina was not. There was noise downstairs, but I wasn’t capable of caring.
I had a red icon sitting in the corner of my vision, as well as a message. The message indicator was red, but it wasn’t flashing, so it wasn’t an emergency indicator. That was fine, I needed a minute to get my bearings. I pulled up the debuff. It was much worse than I had imagined.
<<<>>>
Current Debuffs
Death’s Curse: You have died! You have lost 843 XP! Skills improve 20% slower; duration, 8 hours. All XP earned reduced by 15%; duration, 8 hours. Attack Damage and Spell Strength reduced by 20%; duration, 8 hours. Health, Stamina, and Spirit regeneration reduced by 25%; duration, 8 hours. Carry Capacity -23 kilos; duration, 8 hours.
Death’s Sting: Suffer extreme physical discomfort and waves of weakness; duration, 4 hours.
<<<>>>
That was miserable. There was no way I was going to be able to do anything with that lingering. I needed to get to the tunnels and finish this quest—no, what the hell was I thinking? I needed to get back to Ina. I needed to find her body and bury her properly. I had to. I had no choice in the matter.
Ten minutes later, I managed to sit up in the bed. My vision swam and the room spun, but I held on. My emotions, however, did not. I first thought I was going to vomit with the force of my sobs, but I didn’t. I just cried. I held my face in my hands as my tears flowed over my fingers, pouring down onto the floor below me.
I couldn’t believe she was gone, again. I had lost everything once already, and now I had lost everything again. First, it was to an unimaginable evil, the darkness of cancer, and then to an unavoidable fate in Astraea, and now to the Viridian Empire. Was I destined to lose everything I loved? I refused to admit it at first, but now I understood. I was never meant to be happy, I was meant to suffer. The dark gods of oblivion apparently had a mark on me, and I was to suffer forever.
I sat in the inn room for just a minute before deciding what needed to be done. I would head back into the tunnels, I would find Ina’s body, and I would bury her the way she deserved. She wouldn’t rot or be picked apart by the rats, not if I had anything to say about it.
I clenched my fists as I rose from the bed and was flooded with nausea. I braced myself against the wall, but the feeling passed.
I pushed out the door and headed downstairs. I was greeted by the Dwarf, who shook his head at me and gave me a soft smile.
“Eh, run about by them Imperial bigots, were ye?” He seemed to know what had happened, and he handed me a small pack of supplies. “Here, these are fer ya, sorry about yer lady friend.”
“Thanks. Is painful, but will pass. Maybe.” I nodded and headed to the door, but before I could leave, he shouted after me.
“Watch them Imperial Travelers. They’re going through every city, running amok and roughing up people who aren’t aligned with the Empire. Lots of people are leaving town, lots of others don’t come back. Most of us city folk, we do okay, but the Travelers, well...”
His words lingered in my head as I exited the inn and took off down the alleyway.
Eventuality Always Reality...
I FOLLOWED MY MAP DOWN to the sewer entrance; it only took a half hour. Dirk must have taken us on a longer route in order for the Imperial players to have time to get into position.
“If Vlad finds Dirk, will destroy him utterly.” I was pissed at him, firstly because he had indirectly cost me my beloved Ina. And secondly, because I knew, when we first started following that idiot, that we were going to run into trouble. I just hadn’t expected it to be so big.
I opened the bag the Dwarf had given me, which I had ignored beforehand due to the crushing debuff of Death’s Sting and the fresh pain of losing Ina, and I was pleased to find a few things I had totally neglected to gather on my way down to the sewers, like a torch, some coins, three food rations, which were basically extra-thick jerky, and a pair of red vials I was quite familiar with: Health potions. I pulled the torch out and gave it a quick light with the flint and steel Ina had given me when we were journeying to Rowanheath, then put the rest of the items into my inventory.
I was only a few minutes into the tunnels when I heard that all too familiar squeak from the last time we had come down here. I ground my teeth together, regretting coming down without another person, but was pleased to find that the Plague Rats ignored me for the most part.
“Tunnels are rat nest,” I said as I walked down the same path we had taken before.
I was only a few meters from where I knew Ina and I had been killed when I heard laughter echoing down the tunnels. It was the Risi again, laughing about how they were waiting for me to come back.
“Maybe they’ll both come back and we can kill them both again!” His voice carried for an eternity down in the sewers, even above the dripping of water and the rushing of fetid fluids.
“Nah, the woman’s body didn’t vanish—she was an NPC. Kind of sucks, she was a hottie. Didn’t have any decent loot either. Just a bunch of garbage. Not even worth the inventory space.” That was the damned Wode that Ina had slain. I was hoping he was suffering from the same kind of debuffs I was, but wasn’t betting on it. I didn’t want to fight, but I needed to get to Ina’s body.
“That stupid Dawn Elf, I can’t believe he killed me.” Jacobin, the Murk Elf, was already back in the sewers. Did they have a secret path into the tunnels from wherever they resurrected? I had only been back about an hour at this point, and he died moments before I did. What was going on?
“He was fierce, to the last.” There was a series of laughter.
“Hah, no he wasn’t! That dude was a turd. Squishy and ugly as hell!”
“His girlfriend killed you, didn’t she? Don’t talk about squishy, idiot.” Another round of laughter before everything went silent quickly.
“Hey, shut up, I think I heard something!”
I heard metal unsheathed, and then there were boots moving in the silence. I shoved my torch into the putrid water nearby, plunging myself into darkness. I was hoping that they would just walk past me, down another tunnel, and leave me be so I could get to Ina.
The flickering of their torches grew brighter as they approached, and my heart caught in my chest. The sounds of their boots grew closer, and I started to panic, but then I remembered that I had the stealth skill. I crouched down and shifted into stealth while slowly walking backward, trying to retrace my steps without sight.
“It kind of sounded like someone walking, Darvis.” The Wode’s voice carried through the chamber to my ears, overly loud.
“Yeah, it definitely did.” The Risi was the first one I saw as the torch rounded the corner.
I tried to back away as far as I could, but I was pulled out of stealth the instant the torchlight hit me.
“You little bastard.” His face went red as soon as he saw me crouched there. “Thought you would get the drop on us, did ya? Well, I’ve got news for you, asswipe.” He bellowed loudly as the air around him shimmered and glowed, his muscles expanding before my eyes. “You’re gonna die again!”
I didn’t even get a chance to stand up before he was literally flying through the air, his axe coming down with the force of a ten-kiloton bomb. It hit the ground where I was standing just a half second before, as I did everything in my capacity to scamper away. Chunks of stone flew in every direction. The blow had left a crater in the stone blocks in the ground.
“Oh, hell no, son.” The Wode threw his hands through the air and a gout of flame blew through the darkness at me.
I was engulfed in a scorching inferno, and everything was agony. My Health bar plummeted, but it stopped when the flames died. It didn’t matter, because the next feeling I had was a piercing pain in two places in my chest as the Murk Elf put a pair of longswords through my chest.
My body seized violently and my Health vanished into nothingness.
“Idiot, coming back here.” The Risi shook his head at my destroyed body.
The last sounds I heard were the Murk Elf’s shrill laughter and the Wode’s voice. “Peace out, loser,” he said as I spiraled into the darkness again.
Time of Death: 22:45
Timeline: Day 1 post Cataclysm: 06:45
Everything was familiar, as I woke in the inn room, screaming again. The Sting of Death was a truly cruel mistress. I tried to sit up and get myself sorted. I tried to fight back a solid wave of nausea, but ended up vomiting on the floor of the inn room anyway, not that I had anything in my stomach aside from dried jerky.
I recovered from my disappointing experience and pulled up my interface. It was 06:50. I had lost a great deal of time. It looked like the death process took about eight hours each time. Man, that was a serious loss of productivity.
I pulled open my messages this time, since I had plenty of time, and I wanted to see what the information was anyhow.
<<<>>>
You have died!
You have lost 0 XP!
All attribute and proficiency points that were unused are now gone!
Remember, even in V.G.O., death has consequences!
<<<>>>
“Well, is shit.” I hadn’t realized that, when I died last time, I lost all of my points. I had saved a few for when I completed my class specialization, but now it was pointless.
I hung my head low as I sat on the bed, looking for answers in the bile I had left on the floor. No insight was forthcoming, and I highly doubted that I would be able to figure anything out without some kind of help. After all, how much help had Ina been? She had taught me nearly everything.
An idea struck me like a thrown brick in old Russia. I would gather her body and take it to a healer. Surely they could bring her back! And if I couldn’t afford it, I would find a way to pay, even if it meant I needed to sell everything on my person.
I pushed myself off the bed and steadied my stance. First, I needed to get back to her body. The thought of dealing with those players again made my stomach churn—not that it wasn’t already from the incredible pain of Sting of Death. I stepped out of the room and headed downstairs to find a few Travelers and various other people eating breakfast in the common room.
The Dwarf greeted me in his customary way. I stopped to apologize for the mess in my room, and I handed him a silver. He smiled and the coin disappeared into
his pocket.
Heading down to the sewers was much quicker this time, since I pretty much ran the entire way. I was on a mission, and I didn’t care about my Stamina, until it ran out completely and I had to lean against a wall to stay standing. I smoked my pipe for a bit while waiting for it to refill so I could take off again.
I trudged through the sewers, following the map again, until I came across Ina’s body. It was right where she was killed; the other players hadn’t decided to rifle her body aside from taking her currency, which I was thankful for. I would have been furious if I had found out they had looted her broken body. I did what I could to collect her effects, tucked them into my inventory, and then braced myself to carry her all the way back to the main city.
“Okay, Ina, is going to be journey, but Vlad is here.” I was speaking more to reassure myself, because I wasn’t entirely sure this would work. It was a long shot, for sure, but I needed to try.
“Hrgggggggg,” I groaned as I lifted her battered body up and over my shoulders.
I tried to spread the weight evenly in order to have better balance, but she was just heavy. I had never carried a dead body before—well, aside from Bruno’s, which I’d more or less dragged through the house. I started walking, taking short, trudging steps.
It took me a solid hour to reach the entrance of the sewers, where the sun was rising to greet me, that stupid cheery bastard.
“How dare it have cheer on morning like this?” I groaned through clenched teeth as I carried her body up the rickety steps and into the alleyways.
I remained unassailed for the duration of my trip to the local temple, which I had asked a native about on my way to the sewers. I discovered that I could mark locations on my map and had done just that in order to find my way to the temple. The path meandered through the city, but I managed to stay on track until I heard hymns being sung.
