Deserts Of Naroosh

by Bradford Bates

  Turning away from his first target, Tim cast Divine Light on the healer. He didn’t know how long the bosses would stay stunned after the phase change, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be long. If they could get the healer down, the rest of the fight would be a cinch.

  The healer’s health plummeted as the group's attacks started landing with regularity. It didn’t take much longer for the first of the trio to hit the floor dead. As soon as the healer’s corpse hit the deck, the other two bosses broke from paralysis and looked for something to kill.

  Cassie went to tangle with the warrior as Tim turned from the fight and ran for ShadowLily.

  “This is going to hurt.” He ripped the first arrow free from her arm.

  The other two arrows looked to be sticking through more vital areas. He was hesitant to pull them out. It wasn’t as if he were a doctor. One wrong yank and he might not be able to heal her in time.

  ShadowLily growled through gritted teeth, “Just do it!”

  Tim clasped the next arrow and ripped it free from her shoulder. A quick Healing Orb gave her enough health that he felt comfortable tearing the third arrow from her side. He yanked out the last shaft with a grunt of effort, and she fell to the floor. His heals washed over her fast enough that he knew she was alive, but she hadn’t moved since landing.

  With a cry of rage that would have made any ancient tribal warrior proud, ShadowLily sprang to her feet and charged back into the fray. Tim watched her run and finished topping off her health as she went. The scream she unleashed echoed off the walls in a wild blend of ruthlessness and pain that would have made anyone facing her have second thoughts about the validity of their decision.

  Reminder to self—don’t get on her bad side.

  Tim hated to admit it, but seeing her dive into battle without a care for her safety was kind of hot. Not that he wanted to spend his days pulling arrows out of her, but there was something to be said about watching a hot woman kicking major ass. She was fury personified, and he loved it.

  With the healer down, the remaining nagas changed their tactics. The magical shield caster kept an array of different-sized shields floating around them in concentric circles. The warrior used small gaps between the spinning shields to attack Cassie. Each time he lashed out, it left a small opening for the party to counter. It almost felt like they were back in a stalemate.

  Right until ShadowLily went to work.

  Tim didn’t know how she did it, but somehow the assassin followed the warrior boss’ halberd back through the shields. Once she was inside the barriers, the two remaining bosses never stood a chance. The shield-bearer went down, and they polished off the warrior with ease.

  The boss’s bodies swirled away in beautiful golden motes of light and in their place was a single golden chest.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Loot is why I wake up in the morning.” Cassie grinned as she approached the chest.

  Tim watched the tank move to the box as his smile formed. Loot in The Etheric Coast was a blessing for the group leader. He didn’t have to worry about distributing the goods because the loot pools so far seemed to be individualized. A character placing their hand on the chest equaled shinies straight into their inventory. Not to mention all the coins and any other knick-knacks were randomly assigned when the first person opened the trunk.

  One less thing to worry about.

  At some point, Tim was sure the chests might start containing more crafting materials or something else they’d want to toss in the guild bank for when some of the others picked up crafting hobbies, but until then, looting was life on easy street for this guy. It didn’t even matter who went first unless you were the superstitious sort.

  Cassie stepped away looking pleased. “Shoulder Guards of the Dancing Bull.”

  “Sounds about right.” Lorelei blew Cassie a little kiss as she stepped up to the chest. Laughter escaped the ranger’s lips as she looked at her item's name. “Guess that’s karma. I got something called Hood of the Screaming Squirrel.”

  “Probably has awesome stats.” JaKobi laid his hand on the chest and frowned. “Didn’t know that socks counted as loot.” The fire mage took a moment to equip them, and his frown turned upside down. “Socks of the Meditating Bear. Increases my mana recharge rate outside combat by fifty percent.”

  Tim thought those socks would come in pretty handy in certain situations. The healing shack specifically came to mind. He wondered how much healing he could do when his mana pool was damn near infinite. JaKobi would probably use the item when he worked on his new spells. The guy was always trying something new or tinkering with something old to tweak it.

  Looking over at Tim, ShadowLily turned and pointed at the chest. “You go first. I don’t want to go after sock boy.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Tim wasn’t too worried about the socks. In fact, he wouldn’t mind a pair of his own.

  Trinket of the Smiling Monkey

  This item can be added to any piece of jewelry and will provide +1 to a random stat. Trinkets can be removed and reapplied to another item after twenty-four in-game hours.

  Everyone was watching him expectantly. “Trinket of the Smiling Monkey.”

  “You do smile an awful lot.” ShadowLily laughed as she stepped past him toward the chest.

  Tim had to agree that he did find himself smiling more than ever. Why not? Things were going well. There was a lot in his life to be thankful for, and the future looked pretty bright. It didn’t pay to focus on the negative moments in life when the fun ones were so much better.

  “G-string of Ineptitude.” The assassin met each of their gazes, daring them to laugh.

  When no one had the courage to crack up at the item name ShadowLily took pity on them and did it herself. “Seriously guys, it was a joke.”

  Instead of a G-string, ShadowLily pulled a dark green gem from one of her pockets. The stone was too dark to be considered an emerald, but Tim couldn’t think of any other way to describe it. The stone was cut and polished. Someone had obviously taken great care when creating it.

  ShadowLily tossed the stone into the air before catching it deftly with her other hand and tucking it back into her pocket. “Jewel of the Viper. Increases my chance to poison a target by one percent.”

  Tim stared at ShadowLily as though he’d never seen her before. “Deceptive, brilliant, scary, and funny. How did a guy get so lucky?”

  Leaning in close, JaKobi spoke in a very fatherly tone. “You see when a viper meets a monkey...ughuff.”

  Cassie stepped past the fire mage rubbing her elbow. “I think what he meant to say was, let’s head back to the other room and see what we can find.”

  “Exactly what I was trying to say,” the fire mage wheezed.

  Taking pity on JaKobi, Tim hit him with a Healing Orb. “I thought it was funny.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” He put an arm around Tim’s shoulders as they walked back to the main room. “So when a monkey and a viper…”

  Cassie shouted over her shoulder, “What are you two talking about?”

  “A man’s work is never done.” JaKobi dropped Tim a sly wink and ran to catch up with his lady.

  Tim kind of hoped the fire mage would have another trick up his sleeve when it came to solving the next puzzle. While he liked doing the puzzles in some games, he had to be in the right mood unless they were interactive. Searching a room for clues was cool in the movies but not so cool when a person had to spend hours doing it themselves. A little mental work and a whole lot of fighting was just the right balance when it came to game time.

  Can’t heal when there isn’t damage.

  The next room they faced would be interesting. Tim understood how Vitaria could mix a person and a snake. That was kind of like a centaur. How did she blend a cat and a person? He didn’t know exactly how it would work, but with the dark goddess involved, it would probably be horrific.

  As the party entered the main room, JaKobi strode confidently up the ramp to the c
ontrols. He looked around at the others to make sure no one else wanted a chance to search the room or a stand at the console before he went to work on solving the puzzle.

  After a few moments of moving the tiles around, the fire mage looked at Tim. “Care to do the honors?”

  Lorelei stepped forward. “For God’s sake.” She smashed her hand down on the button. “Let’s get a move on already.”

  Tim looked from the console to the doors as they opened and back at the console. He remembered the original pattern, and now looking at the new one he had no idea how JaKobi had made the adjustments. As far as he could tell there weren’t any clues scattered around the room, and not being able to figure it out instantly like his friend was bugging the shit out of him.

  Pointing at the command console, Tim demanded, “How?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, I just kinda looked at the tiles, and they all made sense.” JaKobi shrugged in an effortless way that implied he was going with the flow. “Happens to me all the time. I just kind of roll with it.”

  Tim felt like he’d had a few of those moments since coming into the game. When they happened, it was usually better not to question it and assume it was the goddess looking out for him. So instead of feeling a little worried like he normally would, Tim was kind of excited to see what came next.

  Cat people. Who comes up with this stuff?

  Cassie was waiting at the entrance to the next boss chamber with her hands on her hips. She rolled her eyes as Tim approached. “Let me give this a try. Be careful, don’t take chances, and try not to die.”

  Smiling despite the knock on his constant harping about attention to the details, Tim placed a fingertip alongside his nose. “Got it in one.”

  “All right then, let’s get this party started.” Cassie moved into the hallway.

  The tank clearly didn’t share his penchant for taking things slowly as she moved into the corridor at a jog. If this was a mirror of the last series of rooms, he understood her desire to get it over with. Cats in cages and human body parts on the ground, how scary could they be a second time around?

  Tim didn’t mind that there was a darkness to what was happening here. He always felt better about killing things when he knew he was smiting evil. It wasn’t very heroic to go around smiting peasants, but vanquishing evil was another story altogether.

  Cassie froze in place, and Tim realized maybe he’d spoken too soon.

  This room indeed mirrored the other room, only this time some kind of large cats filled the cages. He wasn’t a huge cat guy, but he was pretty sure they were leopards of some sort. Whatever breed they were, the things certainly looked deadly enough without modification. Maybe he’d been wrong all along. Cats were more sinister than snakes. Who hadn’t seen a video where a cat knocked something perfectly good off the table just to see it go splat?

  The leopards were kind of a paradox for the room. They weren’t particularly scary in the cages, kind of like visiting the zoo. At the zoo, they didn’t feed the cats human corpses. At least he hoped that the people had been dead when they were tossed inside. As far as he could tell none of the bodies had hands. Wouldn’t be easy to fight for your life without fucking hands.

  The only difference between this room and the gladiatorial arenas of Rome was the Romans didn’t normally cut off the hands of the people they fed to the lions. Wasn’t sporting enough, and all they cared about was putting on a good show. It was amazing how the world changed. One day there were giant arenas of people fighting to the death, and the next, football players filled them.

  A pretty nice change considering getting tossed around and eaten by an animal was a horrible way to go. It didn’t matter if it was in the wild or an arena. Being torn apart by a shark, lion, or bear had to hurt. There was a movie where a guy got mauled by a bear, and it was one of the most horrific things he’d ever seen. Maybe the images stuck with him because now and then on the news you heard about someone getting eaten while camping. The rub usually being that the victim was a huge nature person.

  The animals didn’t give a fuck.

  Tim wasn’t a nature guy. He was a city boy. While he had fun getting out of the city and fishing for a weekend with his dad, he would much rather be back at the house killing a few beers and going on a dungeon crawl or two. There was something to be said for the convenience of home and the delivery of pizza.

  Oh man, he really missed pizza.

  Joe was going to have some work to do when they got back. Tim would charge the man with making the perfect pizza. He could almost taste it now. One of the leopards screeched, drawing his attention back to the bodies, and his appetite died instantly.

  The rest of his party was waiting outside the boss’ room, and he hurried to catch up while pushing the images of the cats enjoying their daily meal out of his thoughts. The last thing he wanted to think of before going into a fight was ending up like one of the people in the cages so he focused on the task at hand.

  Tim reached the group and decided to try a new approach to taking on a fight. “I trust you guys. Let's buff up and play it by ear.”

  “Really? I miss my normal ‘take it slow, don’t do anything stupid’ pep talk,” ShadowLily chided.

  Tim motioned for them to get moving. “I don’t remember seeing anything like the last fight before, so getting our eyes on the room and playing it safe isn’t going to help much.”

  Turning slowly, he met each member of the party's eyes one at a time. “Plus, you never let me down. Why start worrying now?”

  “I kind of like this new side of you.” The assassin almost giggled. “You're going to have to keep it up if you want us to take you seriously.”

  Lorelei snickered. “Keep it up, God, you straight people are the worst.”

  ShadowLily blushed. “This time I wasn’t trying for innuendo. I swear.” She placed a hand over her heart but couldn’t keep the grin from her face.

  The ranger gave her a flirty wink. “I’m just jelly because I don’t have anyone to talk shop with.”

  “What, are you kidding?” JaKobi stammered. “You want to talk about hot chicks? I’m all in.”

  “It’s not quite the same, but I appreciate the effort.” Lorelei checked the string on her bow. “I’ll stick with the ladies even though they don’t value the female body as much as I do.”

  Tim gave JaKobi a high five. “Boys night!”

  “Yeah, buddy!” the fire mage exclaimed.

  “Men.” Cassie shook her head before pulling Lorelei into a hug. “We might not be into chicks, but don’t let that stop you from talking about them with us. We're all in this together girl. We want you to be happy.”

  ShadowLily joined them. “For real, anything you need we’ve got your back.”

  The three of them broke apart, and Lorelei had the hint of a smile curling at the corner of her mouth. “I hope when we get back, there might be a farm girl or two that was grateful for our intervention.”

  “Everyone likes farmers. They even have their own app,” JaKobi snarked from behind.

  Before anyone could retort, Tim tried to intervene. “Lorelei can break the farmers’ daughters’ hearts after we take care of business. Until then, focus.”

  Cassie snorted. “Fine by me. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner I get a beer and a bath.”

  The tank’s ready check went off without any fanfare this time, as the group dialed down the banter to focus on the upcoming fight. With no objections to starting the battle, Cassie led them into the boss' chamber. The air inside this room was as warm as the last, but the heat was dry where the other was humid and moist.

  Tim didn’t expect to see much water in this room. If he remembered correctly, most felines abhorred the stuff.

  There wasn’t a lot to see as they moved farther in. So far in the wide-open space, the only defining part of the landscape was a large swath of six-foot-tall grass in the center. That, and there appeared to be bars welded all over the chamber’s sides and ceiling.

 
The big difference from the last room was the bars didn’t look like they led to cells. It was more like they were monkey bars set about a foot off the ceilings and walls. They were the kind of thing you’d see in a monkey enclosure, but monkeys certainly weren’t the only creatures that enjoyed climbing and jumping from things.

  Cats loved to climb and jump. A room like this would be a paradise for them if they could grip the bars. Looking around the room didn’t give him a ton of hints. In a space like this, attacks could come from anywhere. Above, behind, hidden in the grass. The Blue Dagger Society was in for one hell of a fight. The room wasn’t the ideal spot for a battle, but the odds were never stacked in the player’s favor anyway.

  Cassie stopped moving forward and held up a closed fist for the others to stop and stay quiet. She lowered her arm and pointed at something moving through the grass, then it leaped onto the wall and climbed until it reached a hidden exit at the top of the room.

  The cat had human fucking hands instead of paws, yet somehow also looked to have razor-sharp claws.

  “That’s not something you see every day,” JaKobi whispered.

  A second cat yowled as it ran from the grass to another hidden door on the floor of the room’s right side. A cacophony of others answered its screech. The leopards were almost acting more like a pack of wolves to coordinate their attack.

  Cassie squared her shoulders and screamed into the swaying grass, “Bring it!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  A square platform rose from the grass in the center of the room.

  “Everyone on the platform!” Tim screamed as he ran forward.

  There was no way to be sure, but it felt like getting on was the right idea. Not having the strength or skill to jump super high, getting to the platform before it lifted out of reach was paramount to his dignity. The last thing he wanted was to ask two of the women to throw him on top of the damn thing.