Sigil Online: Paragons

by Jeff Sproul

  “It’s not worth it,” Brenda said. “Just wait here like always. Don’t even touch this stuff. We don’t know what it is for sure, so best for you to stay out of it. I’m going to go find somewhere safe to stand.”

  “Alright, good luck,” said Riley as he took a couple steps back, but was still able to see the rest of the group. There wasn’t anything to hide behind, so he’d have to wait out of sight as best he could.

  Brenda nodded to him and then ventured a few steps into the foam. She looked around and spotted a large rock nearby. She kept an eye on the rest of the team as she made her way over and climbed up. Once she made it to the top of the four foot tall rock, she realized that none of the black foam was on top of it. She kept her crossbow out and surveyed the area.

  Todd approached the center of the room. The amber glow of the crystals that made up the cave, would glint off the black foam. Todd hadn’t detected any unusual odor to the stuff. He placed his hands on his hips and looked around, able to see most of the cave from his current placement.

  “I don’t see anything,” he called out, then turned around to watch as Seth and Erica approached his location, but kept a cautious distance from him, just in case.

  “Yeah this is definitely weird,” said Seth.

  Riley did his best to look from the cave of the tunnel, but all he could see were the others. He noticed an odd shimmer at the top of his vision and glanced up towards the ceiling.

  Brenda had noticed the same thing and looked up as well. “Guys!” she called out, being a fair distance from the others. “There’s some weird glowing things falling from the ceiling.”

  Todd, Erica, and seth, all looked up.

  Almost like the lightest snowfall, numerous orange-glowing specks were descending from the ceiling. They couldn’t have been any bigger than the size of a grain of sand, but their glow made them look a tiny bit bigger.

  “Part of the boss encounter? We must’ve triggered it when we came in,” said Todd. “Some sort of delayed effect perhaps?”

  “Maybe,” Seth mused. “Maybe the creature is camouflaged on the ceiling, like that angler creature that tricked Riley.”

  A short time passed as the glowing embers fell. Seth reached up and held his palm beneath one of them. When it landed upon his hand, nothing happened. The glowing ember rested on his palm. He didn’t take any damage or anything. It was almost like his own white-hot energy orbs, but these embers weren’t hurting him. What sort of purpose did they serve? He looked back up to the ceiling and noticed that there weren’t more embers coming down. There was only a several-foot high section of air that the embers were descending in. He looked around and watched as the embers came to rest on the floor around them. Or more precisely, the foam.

  Seth blinked as he looked between the ember in his hand and the embers on the foam. “I think we should—”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence, before every ember in the room exploded.

  Riley watched a hundred micro-explosions consume the room. His eyes widened as he stood paralyzed with his mouth open.

  The foam caught fire and burned, casting the entire room in hot flame.

  “Guys!” Brenda shouted from the rock she’d taken refuge upon. She could just barely make out the other three in the fire and spoke. She created a healing bolt and slotted it into her crossbow.

  “Not so fast, healer!” a female voice came from behind her.

  Brenda’s eyes widened as she turned around. A pair of hands grabbed her arms tightly. A dull red light appeared at the edges of her vision as she realized she was now taking damage. None of the explosions had touched her, and the fire couldn’t reach her up on the stone.

  In the corner of her eye, she caught a blue shimmer that slowly encapsulated her arms, emanating out from the person that had appeared behind her.

  “What the hell?” Brenda shouted. She tried to pull away, but she wasn’t physically strong. The blue frost sealed her arms, preventing them from moving. She pushed back with her legs to knock her assailant off-balance, but the other person was able to keep her in place. The frost continued to cover her shoulders, her torso, and then down her body to her legs. Then, finally, it crept in on her head and sealed her in a coffin of ice.

  Riley watched in horror as a black-cloaked figure with blue hair, froze Brenda. He hadn’t noticed until it was too late. The cloaked figure had seemingly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Brenda.

  With wide eyes, he looked out to the fire. The foam had been consumed and the fire was dying out. The smoke lifted to fill the ceiling of the chamber.

  Seth was on the ground, but he seemed to still have some movement. It was likely that he had taken a debilitating effect, or a ‘debuff’ due to the amount and type of damage that had assailed him.

  A stone mass stood where he’d last seen Todd. The earth-mover must’ve shelled himself in when he realized what was happening.

  He didn’t see Erica, but then realized she wasn’t on the ground anymore. His eyes followed a column of smoke and saw numerous vines stretching down from the cave ceiling, with a sort of vine-wrapped bulb on the end, which then lowered to the ground and opened up, depositing Erica on the no-longer burning floor.

  She ran over to Seth and checked on him. She then turned her head to look to Brenda. “Heal!” she called, but the moment the word left her lips, she saw Brenda’s frozen body. “Brenda’s down!” she shouted. She lifted a hand and opened her inventory. She had to have some sort of healing item!

  The stone enclosure protecting Todd broke away. He pushed the earth from around him, just in time to catch what Brenda had said. “I have some items!” he said as he hurried over to Erica and Seth. But as he closed in on the last six feet to his companions, a dozen orange embers descended around them, and exploded.

  Riley knelt in the tunnel’s entrance. The embers had fallen through the smoke, and were already descending upon his new friends when he’d spotted them. His lips parted to speak, but it was too late. Another series of explosions rocked the cave.

  When the smoke cleared a few seconds later, three black-cloaked figures were standing in the vicinity of Erica and Todd. Seth was nowhere to be seen, but there looked to be one of his items on the ground. Which meant, Seth was dead.

  Todd and Erica quickly noticed their assailants and began moving earth and vine in protection of themselves. One of the cloaked figures threw chunks of ice, while another sent tiny orange embers from his hands, that would explode seemingly at his command. The last was able to spew black foam from his palms, which would burn when the explosions of the embers touched them.

  Riley watched them fight for their lives. He looked over to Brenda. Her character was still alive, but she had to be taking slow frost damage. If he could reach her, he could get her back into the fight and they could repel these PKers, which was the term used for players who sought to kill other players. ‘Player Killers.’

  Riley took a deep breath. His body didn’t want to move. He’d worked so hard for the last month to get this far. He should just run! He could find others to fight with. These guys would abandon him if it meant that they could survive, right? He bit his lip. What if there was a fourth cloaked figure, waiting for him? It didn’t seem like they were concerned about him for now, or maybe they hadn’t spotted him.

  He looked back to the intense fight between Todd, Erica, and the PKers. He then looked back to Brenda.

  He leaned up and took a single step back.

  A low growl emanated around him in the tunnel. He whipped his head back as something moved upon him. It was so quick, all he saw was a black shadowy mass and hundreds of gray teeth rushing towards him. His vision flashed red as he took damage, just before darkness enveloped him.

  Chapter 8: Rare

  Riley waited to be greeted by two doors. One that would say ‘Create a Character’ and the other that said ‘Exit.’

  His vision flashed red, despite the darkness around him. He felt as though his body was being pressured on a
ll sides, as if something was squeezing him. Then, he realized he wasn’t dead yet. He was trapped in something. The bright red flash in his vision was now just a very dull light at the corners of his eyes. He felt a liquid presence around him, and he found it difficult to breathe. There was an intensely sharp acrid smell of metal and decay.

  Was he...inside some monster?

  He shifted his shoulders to move his right hand. The walls around him were sleek and squishy. He managed to move his fingers just a little. He tried to summon his status screen, but it was no good. He couldn’t move enough to do it.

  The red within his vision was slowly creeping in and encompassing more of his vision. He had to be taking damage from something. If he had been eaten by whatever it was he saw, then it was likely that he was in its belly, which meant stomach acid of some kind.

  Which meant, he was being digested.

  He had no idea what the creature truly looked like, other than all those teeth that would’ve taken a chunk of his health on the first bite. He felt as if he was moving, but in what direction and how fast? He had no idea. All he could do was be squished and digested.

  Minutes passed.

  The red in his vision kept increasing.

  More time passed. Had it been five minutes? Ten? Twenty? He had no sense of time as this monster carried him around in its stomach.

  This was how his second character was going to end? In the belly of some beast? After a month of work, he was going to have to start over from the beginning. He twisted around inside his fleshy enclosure. Damnit. It should just kill him already, so he could get back to leveling! Now he was just wasting time. He had no way of escaping and he was slowly losing health minute by minute. Why couldn’t the creature of just killed him and saved him time? What sort of sick joke was this? What kind of developer would code this sort of monster into the game?

  More time passed.

  His crimson vision was almost entirely encompassing his sight. He couldn’t have much health left. Five percent, at most. He kept his eyes closed and waited for the red vision to fade so that he knew he was dead and he could just start over.

  He doubted he’d find another group as easily as he had when he met Seth. Now, Seth was dead and it was anyone’s guess as to who was going to make it out of that fight alive. He should’ve tried helping Brenda, in any small way that he could. Maybe if he’d had the courage to do so, he wouldn’t have been eaten. But then again, he could’ve been dead already if he’d gone into the room after his comrades.

  Riley felt his prison constrict around him. There was a strange sense of momentum. Short movements, followed by sudden stops.

  A loud roar echoed down to his ears.

  There was an explosion, which seemed somewhat muffled.

  Riley felt his coffin smash into something. Then, there was stillness. The pressure all around his body alleviated in an instant. The intense red color in his vision faded, but only in such a way as to show him that he was no longer losing hit points, but that his health was still very low.

  His eyes crept open. The amber glow of the caves welcomed him.

  Three figures stood before him.

  “What the hell?” came an unfamiliar male voice.

  “What kind of loot is this crap?” came a young woman’s voice.

  “Is that a player?” asked a female voice from the figure in the middle.

  The figure in the middle took several steps closer as Riley ever-so-slowly eased up into a sitting position. He blinked rapidly. “Hello?” he asked, completely bewildered by what had just transpired.

  “Maybe if we kill him, we get loot?” asked the woman on the right.

  “Can any of you heal?” Riley asked. “I’m like...really low.”

  “Carla, go ahead and help him,” said the young woman approaching him.

  “You sure? I don’t see any loot, and that thing looked like a rare to me,” said Carla, the woman on the right. She had pink hair and a blue zipped-up jacket. She wore a pair of black pants and looked to be of native american descent. But Riley wasn’t too sure. He was really bad at placing people’s ethnicity.

  The middle woman knelt down in front of Riley. She was definitely of some asian background. She had soft and thin features, but her blue eyes bore a curious intensity. She had black hair down her back and wore a purple long-sleeved shirt with a hood hanging down the back. She had on a pair of blue denim pants and black shoes. “So who are you?” she asked. “I’m Laura. This here is Carla...who should be healing you,” she said, taking another glance over to the other young woman.

  “Fine, fine,” Carla murmured as she flicked her wrist and flung a green lotus flower that drifted swiftly over to Riley’s chest. Upon contact, the dull red in his vision slowly faded bit by bit. The healing didn’t seem to be a strong burst, but an ‘over time’ effect.

  Regardless of how her healing worked, Riley smiled, “Thanks, I’m Riley. I um...” he trailed off, still a bit confused as to what was going on. “So I’m not dead,” he said.

  “Did you want to be dead?” Carla asked, her arms now crossed against her chest.

  Riley’s eyebrows lifted. “No! Not at all!”

  “What happened? How did you end up in that monster?” asked the man to the right of Laura.

  “That’s Chase,” Laura offered.

  “Yeah, nice to meet you,” Chase said, his own hands were in his pockets. He wore a pair of dark gray slacks and a loose black blazer with a white button-up shirt beneath. He had short black hair and dark mahogany skin. He definitely looked to be the oldest one in the group, maybe thirty, or so? Where Carla seemed roughly in her twenties, the same as Laura. Of course, none of that mattered when you could make your character look any age you wanted.

  “I was with another group,” Riley spoke up. “We got attacked by some PKers wearing black cloaks. But I’m just a tier zero, so I wasn’t in the fight. I ended up getting eaten by whatever that monster was. I didn’t get a good look at it, it snuck up on me.”

  “Another group? And PKers?” Chase asked. “Hmm, three black-cloaks, huh? Might be those guys we’ve spotted around a few times in various areas. We haven’t seen anyone else besides you in here, today.”

  Laura spoke up. “The monster that ate you, was this weird fat bat-like thing with a crazy maw-mouth. It had this huge bulbous stomach and large wings. It had four feet and it shot out these weird cord things from its mouth, which I guess might’ve been its teeth. It was kinda fast, but it didn’t have a lot of health. We weren’t expecting much loot when we killed it, but we sure as hell weren’t expecting you.”

  “Sorry,” Riley offered. “Not like I wanted this to happen. I thought I was done for. I’m really glad you guys found it.”

  Laura looked Riley over. Her eyes stopping at his hands. “Are you still hurt?” she asked.

  “My health is back to full,” said Riley. He looked over to Carla. “Thanks again.”

  “Sure, sure,” Carla murmured.

  Laura reached out and took a hold of Riley’s wrists and pulled them out and up to her. “You said you were a zero?” the young asian woman asked. “And you’re not hurt? Then what’re these marks?”

  Riley blinked and looked at Laura, then followed her gaze down to his hands. There were two semi-red cuts on the base of his palms. He slowly pulled one hand from Laura’s grasp and reached over to trace a finger over the cut. “I don’t know, maybe that thing left me with some debuffs which aren’t showing up in my vision,” he said, which was likely if a debuff lasted for over an hour. He then used that same hand and gestured to open his status screen.

  He checked his status. He had full health, but he didn’t have any bonus effects. It seemed as though the food he’d eaten earlier at the bunker had worn off.

  “Damn, my food-buff wore off,” he murmured. “Oh well, I guess I—” his sentence was cut short as his gaze had risen up to the top of his character screen.

  -

  Riley

  Level: 23

/>   Tier: One

  Status: Healthy

  Hit points: 100%

  Buffs: x / Debuffs: x

  Stats:(+5)

  Power: 5

  Constitution: 15

  Toughness: 15

  Mind: 5

  Stamina: 8

  Dexterity: 5

  Luck: 5

  -

  Riley’s jaw had lowered as he stared at his character screen.

  “I’m...tier one,” he whispered.

  He’d even gotten the ‘five stats across the board’ that a player got when gaining their first powers. He even had five bonus points he could place. But if he was tier one, how did it happen? What powers did he have?

  “I thought you said you were a tier zero?” Carla asked. “How do you not even know what tier you are?”

  Riley shook his head and then looked back at his hands. “Sorry, I think…” he trailed off a moment as he rose to stand. Laura stood as well and took a step back, watching him curiously.

  Riley turned to face away from the three that had rescued him. He focused on his hands and thrust one of his arms out, as if he was punching with the palm of his hand.

  A spear-tipped cord shot out from his palm and stretched out all the way to the wall he’d directed it at. The tip lodged into a soft portion of the wall and the cord went tense, as if it was being tugged back against Riley’s hand.

  “Woah!” Riley gasped in a soft breath.

  “The hell?” Carla spoke up. “That’s like what the bat was doing!”

  “Did you gain powers from that thing eating you?” Chase asked.

  “I think I did,” Riley said as the spear-tip detached on its own and the one-inch thick cord drew back all the way to his palm until the spear-tip was hiding back beneath the skin, just under that cut-like opening they’d been inspecting earlier.

  “Well, congrats on hitting tier one, Riley,” said Laura, her hands finding her hips.

  Riley looked amongst the three players that had saved him. “Thanks, again. Seriously, I would’ve died if you hadn’t come along,” he said. “But I think I should try and find those guys I was with.” He then took a glance around and realized he had no idea where in the amber caves he was.