by A. J. Markam
“So you do not have it?” Zoran asked.
“No.”
“Then you will have to come with us.”
The entire crowd was watching us with intense curiosity. I couldn’t say I blamed them – bounty hunters collecting their target wasn’t something most players witnessed on a day-to-day basis.
“You know Shyvock?” I called out.
“I do,” the Monk replied.
“He came after me, too. I killed him.”
That was slightly stretching the truth. Actually, Alaria had blown up half his face and Grung had blasted him with a war golem energy cannon into a volcano. And then Alaria had almost sacrificed her life to put him back in the volcano for good.
But it had been my plan, so I was gonna take credit for it at the moment.
Plus, when trying to intimidate bounty hunters, it’s never a good idea to say, Yeah, my friends totally whipped his ass. Although one of them’s not here and the other one’s a crystal now.
My not-exactly-100%-accurate boasting worked. The Shaman and Air Mage glanced at each other, like they were the tiniest bit worried.
Not Zoran. He just smiled. “Well, I shall be supremely careful as I capture you, then.”
Before I could answer, he dropped to one knee and slammed one fist into the ground, and a circular shockwave of blue light ripped across the cobblestones.
I – and every other player within 50 feet – got knocked off our feet.
The only exceptions were Cirra and Sketterex. Thanks to Cirra’s powers, the two had levitated into the air above the shockwave. Zoran’s punch must have been a preplanned standard in their bag of tricks.
I slammed into the ground, as did Soraiya and Stig next to me. Fugly shot off my shoulder into the air and hovered there with Wylla.
As I tried to scramble to my feet, the Shaman and Air Mage attacked.
A hurricane gust of wind blew me head over heels in a somersault across the cobblestones.
At the same time, two spirits rose up from the ground around me. They were glowing white specters, their bodies made of floating wisps of ectoplasm. They looked like somebody had constructed a ghost costume out of toilet paper, then shredded it with a knife until it was a tattered mess just barely held together by a thousand little strands.
They zapped me with blasts of red energy, and their combined attack shaved 5% off my hit points.
Not fun, but a fuck of a lot better than Shyvock’s -25% arrows to the chest.
I hit one with Darkfire as I struggled to my feet. “Soraiya – ”
I barely got out her name before Zoran sprinted over to me and slammed a glowing blue palm-strike to my chest.
The blast of energy sent me flying ten feet back in the air, and I went crashing to the ground again.
9% blow to my Health.
As I struggled up onto my elbows, a shadow passed over me.
I looked up to see the Air Mage hovering 20 feet in the air.
She swiped her hand to the side, and a stinging blast of air slashed across my face.
Did you know that you can actually cut steel with compressed air? Take a small enough aperture with a shitload of air pressure rushing through it, and you can slice through titanium.
I was guessing the attack on my face was a low-power variant of that. Still only took off 2% of my Health, though.
Thank God there was no gore in OtherWorld, or my face would have been a bloody mess.
These three assholes had gotten me down to 84% without me getting a single return shot in.
They were handing me my ass on a platter, I’d give them that – but they’d made one incredibly stupid mistake.
They’d included another couple of dozen players as collateral damage in their initial attack.
Zoran’s little ground strike hadn’t just hit me and my demons. It had also knocked 20-plus bystanders off their feet.
There was an unwritten rule in OtherWorld: don’t fuck with another player unless you’re prepared to fight him. If it was an inadvertent attack, some might let it go – but most wouldn’t. It was a chest-thumping, macho thing (even if most of us were a bunch of nerds in real life).
Oh, you fucked with me? AWWWW, boy-eeee, it’s ON NOW!
Suddenly Zoran, Sketterex, and Cirra got slammed from 20 different directions all at once.
Frost blasts, arrows, Rogues’ knives, swords, fireballs, war hammers, flying shields – all three bounty hunters got hit with a variety of attacks.
Now, granted, not many of the players were higher than Level 20, so the attacks were more annoying than harmful on an individual basis. But add them all together and they did some real damage. The Monk, Shaman, and Air Mage each lost a good 20% of their hit points in short order.
They counterattacked immediately. Zoran did a spinning move with blue energy that forced everybody back. Cirra summoned a small tornado that ripped through the crowd, and Sketterex hit a number of people with red bursts of supernatural flame.
But most importantly, the other players’ attacks gave me a quick breather to formulate a plan.
“Soraiya, take the chick in the air!” I shouted. “Stig and Fugly, mess with the dead guy! I’ll handle the Monk!”
Soraiya shot up into the air and headed straight for the Air Mage.
Stig teleported over in the Shaman’s face and began bitch-slapping him from within clouds of black smoke.
Then Fugly started spitting acid loogies at him. From the dead guy’s screams, I was pretty sure at least a couple of them connected.
And I hit the Monk with Terrify.
It was usually a good spell when you had several assailants. It would send one of the attackers running for the hills so that you could concentrate on the others.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
A computer window appeared:
Zoran is immune to Terrify!
Well, shit.
Zoran turned to look at me, a grimace on his face. “Your attempt to frighten me was unpleasant, Warlock – but Monks of the Golden Dragon Temple are trained to repel both mental and spiritual attacks as well as those of physical strength and magic.”
“Well, fuck it – have something else, then,” I shouted as I conjured four imps.
They appeared in puffs of smoke around Zoran and began to hit him with fireballs.
Unfortunately, he pulled some Matrix-type shit out of his sleeve.
His skin glowed blue, and then he moved like one of the Agents that Neo fought: blurry duplicates of his limbs and upper trunk moved in every direction at once.
A dozen arms swung through the air and pummeled the imps in the face until they exploded into flames.
It was sort of like watching the Hindu goddess Kali get into a fistfight.
Once it was all over, the blurry arms all solidified back into the Monk’s original two.
“Care to try me in hand-to-hand combat?” Zoran smirked.
Uh, no.
But just as I was about to unload another attack on him, I heard a voice above the din of the crowd:
“MAKE WAY FOR THE VOSSIAN GUARD!”
The players parted as 30 soldiers in golden armor raced from the edge of the coliseum, their swords and shields out.
Zoran looked mildly annoyed, then yelled, “Cirra! Let us retreat!”
Far above our heads, Cirra was evading and countering Soraiya’s bat-winged attacks.
As soon as she heard Zoran, though, the Air Mage sent Soraiya tumbling with a blast of wind. Then she raised her hands, and both Zoran and Sketterex were lifted from the ground in a rush of air. All three bounty hunters disappeared into the clouds.
The golden-clad soldiers raced over to me.
“Damn, I’m glad to see you guys!” I called out. “That was – OW!”
The nearest guard clocked me over the head with the pommel of his sword, driving me to my knees.
I instinctively started to cast a spell. Black flames danced on my hands –
Thirty swords and spears sudden
ly pointed at my head from every direction.
I did a quick select on the nearest soldiers.
Levels 25, 27, 22, 29.
I could handle one of them easily. Two or three, no problem. Maybe even four or five. I had Soul Suck, after all, so I could heal any damage they did to me.
But 30 at once?
Not gonna happen.
I stopped casting the spell.
Up in the air, Soraiya and Fugly were hovering and waiting for a sign. Stig was standing over with the crowd of players, watching anxiously.
I surreptitiously shook my head ‘no,’ then flicked my right hand like Get out of here.
Soraiya and Fugly took off, and Stig melted into the forest of boots and robes.
I started yelling at the soldiers. I was pissed they had attacked me, but I also wanted to distract the guards and give my demons a chance to disappear.
“The Monk and those other assholes attacked ME! I didn’t do anything but defend myself!”
“QUIET!” shouted a soldier with a big, red, Roman-esque plume on the top of his helmet. I was assuming he was the officer in charge. “Search him!”
Rough hands gave me a once-over. They couldn’t search my bags – the rules of OtherWorld stipulated that the contents were off-limits to them – but there were a couple of items I was wearing they grabbed.
One guard held up my Wand of the Dead, which I had to wear on my belt to access its power-boosting stats. “Look – a wand. He’s a wizard of some sort.”
Another guard slapped my chest. Feeling a lump, he reached inside the neck of my shirt.
“What’s this?” he jeered as he pulled out the necklace with Alaria’s dungeon core crystal.
“That’s MINE!” I snapped, then realized in terror that I couldn’t hear Alaria’s voice anymore. She was no longer in touch with my skin –
But she was touching the guard’s bare fingers.
He dropped the crystal like it was a baby rattler and stumbled a few steps backward. “AAAH!”
The necklace hit my skin again, and I heard Alaria mutter, - Uh oh…
“What did you do?!” I whispered.
I found out from the guard first.
“It SPOKE to me!” the guard cried out.
The officer frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”
“I don’t hear it now, either – only when I touched it!”
“What did it say?”
“It called me a pig fucker!”
The entire group of soldiers burst into laughter.
“You didn’t,” I whispered, filled with dread.
- I just told him to let me go! Alaria protested.
“‘Let me go, pig fucker’?”
- Something like that, yes…
“It’s enchanted, I tell you!” the guard yelled angrily. “It’s witchery!”
“Don’t say anything,” I whispered again as the officer with the crested helmet came over and yanked the crystal out of my shirt.
“Hmm… I don’t hear anything,” he muttered.
“I think he might be… you know,” I said as I whistled and made a cross-eyed face.
Wrong thing to say.
The officer glared at me, then pulled the chain over my head and completely off my body.
“HEY!”
“We’ll see what the Duchess has to say about this,” the officer snarled, then pointed at his men. “Take him to the Court!”
10
The guards marched me out of the coliseum and back into the streets, past the beer gardens and outdoor markets. Hundreds of rubbernecking players and NPCs watched in curiosity as we passed by.
We left the grungier part of the city and entered a picturesque series of smaller streets with walls covered in ivy. Eventually we came to an elegant castle surrounded by cloistered passageways and decorative canals. We passed over a tiny stone bridge into a grand hallway, and from there entered a throne room.
Actually, I don’t know if ‘throne room’ is the appropriate term, since the officer had mentioned a Duchess. But whatever you wanted to call it, the place was filled with dozens of finely dressed courtiers.
I could hear two English-accented voices arguing loudly as we entered.
“M’lady,” a man’s voice said, “the Church of Eternity is merely concerned about a source of great wickedness in the land.”
A woman’s voice, feminine but cold, answered sarcastically, “And a source of great income, as well. But I am sure that never entered your mind, did it, Emissary.”
“M’lady, please. I am sure you can see that the issue is not one of economics, but of morality – propriety – ”
“What I can see is that the Church of Eternity is ever eager to extend its grasp to any asset that can fill its coffers and stuff its insatiable maw.”
The man scoffed, though he sounded somewhat amused. “I must say, your husband was never quite so blunt.”
“Not to your face. But while the Duke was still alive, he espoused the same opinions I do, only in private. I am merely more forthcoming when I tell you that though the Church may have its claws embedded in Vos, you will never tear away the greatest jewel in our city’s crown.”
“Some might say the greatest jewel in your crown. After all, it is not so much the commoners who benefit as it is the Vossian royalty, hm?”
“You overstep your bounds, sir!” the woman snapped. “It is the people’s dungeon, not mine!”
The guards escorting me pushed through the last rank of courtiers, and I could finally see the two people arguing.
For a second I could have sworn it was Cersei and Tyrion from Game of Thrones. They certainly resembled the two characters from the show.
The woman – the Duchess? – was sitting on a chair on a dais above the rest of the room. She was attractive in an ice-queen sort of way – short blonde hair, thin nose, haughty expression, slender curves beneath her purple robes.
The man was a dwarf. Not the OtherWorld variety that forges iron and has a beard down to his navel, but a little person.
As soon as I saw him, I immediately felt bad about all the times I’d used the term ‘midget’ in my mind.
He had well-coiffed hair and a neatly trimmed beard that ended in a point on his chin. He wore austere black robes – but they appeared to be silk, and every finger shone with a gold ring studded with precious stones. In addition, there was a symbol embossed in silver thread on the back of his robes: a sword interwoven through the two loops of an infinity symbol.
The captain of the guard cleared his throat. “M’lady Duchess, I beg your attention.”
The dwarf glanced over with an incensed look. “We are in the middle of a diplomatic meeting!”
“No, we’re done,” the Duchess said dismissively. “What is it, Captain?”
The man gestured towards me with his head. “We found him fighting three other miscreants in the courtyard of the dungeon.”
“You would interrupt an Emissary of the Church of Eternity to bother the Duchess with some riffraff off the street?!” the dwarf asked indignantly. “Chop off his head and be done with it!”
“Say what?!” I yelped.
The Duchess glared at me.
“You there – no one gave you permission to speak. And YOU,” she said pointedly to the dwarf, “are NEVER to speak on my behalf, or you will find your OWN body minus a head, Church of Eternity notwithstanding. Are we understood?”
“My apologies, m’lady,” the dwarf said with an obsequious flourish and bow. It was so over the top that it was obvious it was a fancy, passive-aggressive Fuck you.
“If you’re going to kill me, I’d like to know why!” I said angrily.
“I should have you killed merely for speaking out of turn!” the Duchess said, raising her voice.
The little guy apparently wanted to mess with the Duchess some more, because he spoke directly to me. “Fights in the coliseum area are punishable by death. Or didn’t you know that?”
“WHAT?!”
�
��Apparently not,” the little guy smirked.
“Why?! People go into the dungeon to fight! Why would you kill them for doing it on the outside?!”
The dwarf clucked disdainfully. “Mustn’t interfere with the local economy or the orderly collection of monies.”
The Duchess glared at the dwarf but didn’t say anything.
“It wasn’t my fault!” I protested. “I was attacked!”
“Quiet,” the Duchess snapped, then turned to the captain. “What happened to the others?”
“They escaped.”
“What,” she said sarcastically, “did they fly off into the air?”
“Actually… yes, m’lady, they did.”
“Oh,” the Duchess said, and frowned. “How odd.”
“Another odd thing: when we searched him, we found this on his person,” the captain said as he fumbled with a pouch on his belt. “One of my men swore it spoke to him when he touched it. He’s not normally the type given to drink, so I find it very strange. Perhaps the court wizard should inspect it?”
He held up Alaria’s crystal – and the Duchess and the dwarf nearly shit a brick.
The Duchess actually stood up from her fancy chair, and her already pale face turned a couple of shades whiter.
The dwarf, meanwhile, turned away from the Duchess and faced me full-on, his face in absolute shock.
A computer window suddenly appeared before me.
Game of Boners
Well, at least the game developers weren’t being shy about their influences.
Use your wiles and cunning to make alliances, thwart your enemies, and discover what the hell is going on!
5000 XP
Gold: To be determined
‘To be determined’?
Huh… that was interesting…
I quickly hit ‘Accept.’
“M-my apologies, sir,” the Duchess stammered to me, then flicked her hand impatiently at the soldiers surrounding me. “Unhand him at once!”
The guards on either side of me quickly stepped back.
O-kaaay… what the fuck just happened?
“I am so sorry,” the Duchess continued. “Had I known you would be arriving, I would have prepared a fitting welcome!”
