Oz tossed the sword on the skeletal corpses. He unfastened his belt and slid the sword onto the leather then worked it back into his belt loops. The scabbard was about to fall apart, but it had lasted the skeletons who knew how many years. It might get him through this adventure before it completely disintegrated.
“We should move on,” Thandroot said. “The fog's lifting and I can make out the entrance ahead.”
I followed Thandroot’s gaze.
The temple rose out of the swampland. I assumed the walls were once beautiful thanks to the long green and yellow leaves that marked the location, but now it had been overrun with weeds and vines. They snaked all over the sides and roof creating a latticework of rot. A doorway hung askew because the foundation had shifted allowing the building to lean to the left a good ten or fifteen degrees. The steeple had broken off and crashed into the roof. Crystal shards the size of small cars had fragmented and lay like giant fingers atop the reliquary.
“Look at that place. It must have been beautiful at one time,” Karian said in awe.
“Yeah?” Oz shrugged. “Now it looks like a giant pile of shit.”
Thandroot stifled a laugh and without a word set out for our destination.
“YOU GUYS HANG BACK. I’m going to scout ahead,” Oz said.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked.
“You got something better?” Oz asked. “I thought all you did was zap spells around. Got one that can reveal what’s in the temple?”
“No,” I said.
Oz shrugged and moved away from us.
“Let him have his moment. He’s obviously out to prove something,” Karian said.
“Prove he’s a jerk,” I muttered.
A pool of shadow obscured the entrance, and that was where Oz stopped. He didn’t move for a few seconds, and then I realized he wasn’t even there anymore.
“Woah,” I said.
“Aye. That lad has the ways of the Calia Rai about him. Knew it the minute I saw him,” Thandroot nodded appreciatively.
“He didn’t always have that way about him. When we got here he wasn’t this insufferable,” I said.
“Just finding his way, I suppose,” Thandroot said.
We huddled together and waited.
Goose pimples broke out over my skin as something moved in the mist to the east of us. Shapes appeared and then faded again. There were at least a half a dozen of them, and they were stealthy as hell. Maybe not so much as Oz but it was enough to make my forehead sweat.
Karian must have seen them too because she turned and reached toward her belt and put both hands on her knives.
“More skellies?” I whispered.
“Don’t think so,” Thandroot said. “I sense the living.”
“Maybe more adventurers,” Karian said as she moved closer to the building.
“Are you going in?” I whispered.
“Just finding cover in case we have to duck out of the range of missile fire,” she said.
Before I could join them, the group broke free of the fog and came into view. I clutched my staff tightly and prepared to hit them with a cloud of acid. The shapes appeared, but I held them and built up the spell.
Before I could trigger it, I recognized the leader of the group, and let the spell fade from my head.
He was blue to me now, as were his companions. He didn’t look any better than the first time I’d met him, in fact, he had swamp gunk and vines hanging from his head in a weird hat.
“Hello, Burp,” I waved.
The goblins paused in their step and as a group brought their weapons to bear.
“You?” Burp grunted and gestured to his warriors before advancing.
“Me,” I nodded.
Burp lowered his rusty sword and came forward oblivious to the fact that we were well armed and more than a match for them.
“Pretty gem,” Burp said and touched his chest piece. He had figured out a way to mount the green stone to his armor, and that surprised me. I had assumed they would take the gem, sell it, and then get drunk on whatever piss goblins consumed.
“You know that thing?” Thandroot reached over his shoulder for his maul.
“Yeah. Met him on the road the other day and struck up a deal. His name is almost unpronounceable, so I call him Burp,” I said.
“Damned odd friends you’ve made,” Thandroot frowned. “Can’t trust goblins as far as you can toss a dozen of them. Petty, stinking, ugly, little curs.”
“Burp’s not so bad,” I said.
He wasn’t, provided he and his merry band of little green nightmares weren't trying to kill us.
“Glad you like the gem, Burp. Why are you all here?” I asked him.
“We saw pretty light. Come. Find treasure,” Burp said. He scratched between his legs and then smelled his fingers.
“Gah,” Karian turned away with an ashen face.
“What is it with you guys and treasure? Don’t you have anything else to do like go home to your wives?” I asked more for a laugh than anything else.
“Wives make us treasure hunt,” Burp nodded sagely.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Karian muttered.
Oz materialized in the doorway, and said “Boo!”
One of the goblins shrieked and loosed an arrow from a crossbow. It flew over my head and thunked into the doorway above Oz’s face. The goblins chittered and grunted at each other but Burp was the loudest as he, I assume, screamed at his subordinates.
“The hell was that?” Oz ducked, turned slowly, and stared at the barb stuck in the wall.
“You idiot,” Karian seethed. “Why did you think it was a good idea to jump out of a fallen shrine, in the middle of a fucking swamp haunted by dead stuff, and yell BOO!”
“I thought it would make you all laugh,” Oz protested.
“How hard would you be laughing if you woke up at the binding stone because Burp and the Goblin’s band of merry green munchkins shot you in the head?” Karian asked.
Thandroot laughed uproariously.
“She’s got you there, lad,” Thandroot said between guffaws.
“Fair enough,” Oz said. “And if any of you care, the room beyond is free of threats. I found the big iron door on the floor, so all we have to do is figure out how to open it.”
“Let’s get to it, then,” I said moved toward the door.
“Just going to take the lead after I made sure it’s safe?” Oz said.
“Fine. You lead the way,” I waved my hand toward the door.
Oz “pfft’d,” and walked back into the temple.
I GUESS Burp and his band decided not to tag along even though I had not invited them.
They set up a small campfire area on a vestibule near the entryway to the temple. Two of the little green goblins ran outside and returned a few minutes later with pieces of putridfangs. Presumably so they could roast the meat.
Burp offered me a raw piece that smelled like expired fish and rotted cabbage, so I politely declined. At least the little bastards no longer wanted to kill and eat us. They were welcome to all of the meat they desired, so long as I didn’t have to eat any.
The shrine was a surprisingly large room considering it was supposed to be nothing more than a nod to a god. Not a proper church, so to speak. I had assumed it would be a little place with a picture on the wall and maybe a few magic gems or some shit set in the walls.
Instead, the room was rectangular with rows of pews that had given up the ghost to the elements. They lay in clumps of rotted wood and vines sprouted through the remains. The shrine at the back of the room bore a faded image of Leefser, but the walls were pocked, I guess from treasure hunters digging out whatever gems had once adorned the motif.
“This place is a real piece of shit,” Oz said. “I looked around, and there weren’t any skeletons or others monster types. Wait until you see this door, though, it’s a bitch-kitty.”
“Maybe Thandroot can blow it up with another one of those grenades,” Karian
suggested.
“Thunder. We call them thunder,” Thandroot said irritably.
“Right. Thunder. Can you blast it open?” Karian asked.
“Probably not. More than likely there’s a way to open it. Maybe a latch or hidden button,” Thandroot said.
We spread out and approached the shrine itself. The floor had a half inch of slime-covered water over it, and each step was an exercise in balance as I tried to find purchase.
“Damn,” Karian said.
Karian had made it to the center of the room and stared at the floor. She dropped to a squat and touched the large square object. I made for her location and let out a low whistle.
The door was no joke. It was flush with the floor, and there was no visible way to open it. I knelt next to Karian and stuck my fingers in the disgusting water. It felt like a layer of oil floated on top, but I found the edge of the portal and ran my fingers along its perimeter. The door was certainly broad enough to admit us, but it didn’t have anything resembling a latch to spring open to allow us to lift the metal sheet.
“Did Ansalon say anything else about how to open this thing?” Oz said as he joined us.
Thandroot moved along the outer edge of the room until he reached the shrine. He felt along the wall, and then around the dilapidated podium.
“Not a peep. Ansalon said to go through the door, fight to the shard, and then bring it back to town,” I shrugged.
“Maybe check the quest in your book? Did it open up more steps or something?” Oz prodded.
“I don’t think so. How would it suddenly add new hints?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s a magic fucking book that documents everything we do?” Oz said, clearly frustrated.
I stood up and dug out the book, flipped open to the quest section and looked over our current objectives. I read it again and then offered the book to Oz.
Oz ran his finger over the page as he read and said “huh.”
“Oi. I think I’ve found the key,” Thandroot called to us.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A loose stone,” Thandroot removed a chunk of the wall and lowered it to the floor.
“Let me check it out first,” Oz said. “I had some other special training with the Calia Rai guys, if you know what I mean.”
“You can disarm traps? That’s what you meant?” I said to Oz.
“Yeah. Got a crash course,” Oz shrugged but apparently liked the fact that I recognized his new skills.
The brick had to weigh a good fifty pounds, but Thandroot handled it like it wasn’t any heavier than a paperback book.
“Bad,” a voice grunted from behind us.
I spun and found Burp in the doorway. He shook his head and pointed at Thandroot’s location.
“It’s cool, Burp. We were sent here on a quest, so it’s all good,” I said.
Burp shook his head again and backed away with his minions close behind.
“What’s wrong with him?” Karian asked.
“Hell if I know,” I said.
“Seriously,” Oz said as he made for Thandroot. “It could be trapped.”
Oz didn’t finish his sentence because a series of clicks sounded throughout the room.
“Well that’s just great,” I barely got out before the hissing began.
I grabbed Karian’s hand and turned for the door, but it was too late. The noxious gas had no discernible color, but it had a smell. Rotten egg salad, heavy on the mustard, with a hint of an acid designed to melt off your face.
We didn’t make it to the entrance. We didn’t even make it a single step.
The gas filled my lungs. The burning was immense like I had sucked in a roaring fire. My brain screamed for me to stop breathing while my body begged me for air. I clawed at my eyes because they had become two orbs of agony. My exposed skin slacked off my body, and that was a brand-new experience in pain.
So that’s how we died.
Again.
24
LIGHTS OUT, SALLY
There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that you spend hours and hours, in a game, trying not to die. It’s just a game and not real life. As games got more and more advanced, culminating in the current fad toward all things Virtual Reality, developers became more and more devious about how deaths in games could be handled. There was an online shooter named Squint and Fire that allowed a person’s killer to dance on the corpse of their victim before lowering their trousers, and dropping a deuce.
In online role-playing games, the cost of dying could be anything from losing some experience to all of your gear and maybe a hard fought for level. The worst games to me were built on permadeath, that is, the concept that when your character was killed in a game, that was it. Game over. You didn’t come back.
These grew out of an old variety of games known as roguelikes. Ancient games that got their start on Unix and found popularity among indie game developers. Couldn’t play them myself because the thought of losing a character, after countless hours, was too hard to fathom. But I was familiar with their history because I had read everything I could get my hands on regarding the history of RPGs.
I kind of wished we had permadeath in our current reality. It might have saved me from non-stop stupidity, and allowed me to wake up back in our world.
No weird lights, lassitude, or floating on waves this time around. No soothing female voice, nor words telling me to seek my destiny against some uber-powered bad guy. Nope. Just immense pain, suffocation, throat burning like sulfur, and then my eyes practically popping out of my head as I gagged to death.
Then everything went completely black.
How long was I gone this time? It could have been a few seconds, could have been a year for all I knew. The complete absence of all thought was akin to being put under anesthesia. They tell you to count or to talk about something, but as the drugs enter the IV it’s a race against time to see how hard you can fight them, and I don’t care who you are. Once they are in your system, it’s lights out, Sally.
I blinked my eyes and spat.
The brackish water was horrid, and it threatened to find a way down my throat hole. I coughed, spit again, and I thought I was going to puke. My vision came back, and I found another shape next to me. I rolled over and put my hands into the cold water, then got my knees under me. All I could think about was the burning in my lungs. The searing pain in my throat, and my eyes melting in my skull.
Christ!
I dreaded it but I checked my HUD and found I had lost all of the experience in my current level, and my bar was back to the beginning. It was only a few hundred points, but it felt like I had been cheated out of a lot of money in a poker game.
0/800
Then my thoughts moved to other things as I got a look at the body next to me.
Karian lay on her stomach, and she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.
Then I saw Oz in the same state and looked away.
This was awkward once again.
“I hate dying,” I said.
“What?” Karian lifted her head and looked around our immediate area. Then she saw my naked body and her eyes went wide. Then she ran her hands down her sides, and her eyes grew even wider.
“Hi,” I said.
“Don’t look.” Karian scrambled to her feet and covered her breasts with her arm. Her other hand shot downward.
“I’m sorry,” I said and attempted to look anywhere but at Karian’s naked body. My eyes fell on Oz’s butt, and I regretted the change of scenery.
“Fuck me,” Oz said as he looked around, then he saw Karian and smiled.
“Don’t even,” Karian warned.
“What? I’ve been in an epic fantasy world for a few days, and I haven’t seen a naked woman even once. How could Boris Vallejo have been so wrong?” Oz argued.
“This is so ridiculous,” Karian said as she backed away until she had her back to the binding stone.
Karian ducked behind the lantern’s post and used it f
or cover.
“Holy shit!” I screamed and jumped to my feet.
Another figure had suddenly appeared next to us. One second the ground was empty except the filth, and vines, leaves, and chunks of ceiling and walls, then there was a naked dwarf.
“Ach. That’s not a pleasant experience,” Thandroot rolled over onto his back and stared up at the sky.
“What in the actual fuck?” Oz exclaimed.
“You’re one of us?” Karian called from behind the lantern.
“Dude,” I said as I took in his form.
“Long story, lads, and lasses, we can talk about it later. Right now we have another problem. If we don’t get back into the shrine those goblins are sure to make off with our gear,” Thandroot rolled to his feet and waddled off.
“That ain’t right,” Oz said. “Did you see that thing?”
“Huh?” I asked still thinking about the fact that not only was Thandroot from our world, but Karian was buck naked a few feet away.
“His, you know. It’s just so damn…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Like a baby’s arm.”
Karian rustled around behind the lantern and then came back into view with a bunch of leaves still attached to a vine adorned across her chest.
“Would you two idiots pull it together and get back in the shrine? I don’t want to spend any more time out here, in the cold and damp, with no clothing, and both of you staring at me,” she chastised us.
“But he’s one of us,” Oz protested.
“Figure it out later. Now go,” Karian shooed us.
“Ladies first,” Oz held his hand aloft.
“Oh, no. You’re not both staring at my ass.”
“So you’re going to stare at ours?” Oz protested.
“I can assure you that is the last thing on my mind. Now scoot,” Karian waved her hand and nearly spilled the collection of vines from her body.
“Sorry. I’m hard of hearing. Do what?” Oz put his hand to his ear.
“I said go!”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed as we headed back into the temple.
SHARDS OF REALITY: A LitRPG novel (Enter the Realm Book 1) Page 25
