-35 HP!
The towering creature lets out a roar that would wake a dormant volcano. Its lips pull back as it turns to Deathdale, baring and gnashing its teeth.
It goes for her just as Wolf attacks it from the side. Wolf manages to get hold of the creature’s back, and holds on just long enough for me to get in close and drive my Splintered Sword into its flesh.
-68 HP!
“Shit!” I scream as Wolf is tossed off. The akhult flat out ignores me as it hops over to Wolf, its four paws leaving deep prints in the gathering snow.
More wind and more snow flurries make it hard to see the action taking place before me.
I can hear Wolf crying out for help as the beast gets its jaws around his neck.
Rage.
I run towards the sound, my fists shaking with rage, my body filled with an anger I can barely contain. The power given to me by the Obelisk comes over me, multiplying my strength and my defense.
Blurred vision.
Rage!
A numbness to my very core.
I scream with fury as I descend upon the akhult and bring my blade into its side.
-98 HP!
The orca-wolf hybrid cries as I pull my blade out, its dark blood flicking onto the snow. Wolf scurries away, his neck wet with ichor. The creature goes onto its back legs and comes down on top of me, its tail whipping in the air above its head.
My actions no longer my own and with time at a rapid eye-blink, my new electrically charged shield appears in my hand. I slam it into the monstrosity just as a blast from Deathdale’s eyepatch cuts through anything in its path.
The blast takes the akhult’s tail off and I meet its front side with my electric shield.
-351 HP! Critical hit!
The orca-wolf goes to its side and I leap on top, my hands on its jaw.
As unadulterated power rages through me. I begin prying its jaw apart as if it were a crocodile, even as its razor-sharp teeth cut into my flesh, even as it swipes at me with its claws in a fit of terror.
My muscles bulge as I snap the creature’s mouth open.
Instakill!
“No … ”
The snowstorm spins around me as my thoughts coalesce. My knees buckle and my strength gives way.
Blackout.
Chapter Eighteen: Deathdale Moves in for the Kill
The hourglass shatters and the glass splinters away as my mind twists into an endless knot. There is a light in the distance, a faint beacon of ill-gotten hope. Oric Rune, Eric Renfro – we are one. I am he and he is me, and there’s nothing the crimson sky or the jagged Chicago skyline can do about it.
Confusion contusion.
My mouth is dry, my throat is parched, and my bones are cold but my skin is on fire; the Proxima Galaxy beckons me closer with open arms, her stars knifing my psyche. A whirling galaxy on repeat, a screensaver of biblical proportions, a snowstorm of sharp stars.
I blink my eyes open and suck in air.
My nostrils flare and the scent of rock and ash registers. Digital dream existence blurs into focus, and I feel something warm at my side, something familiar.
Wolf makes a whimpering sound as he stands over me and starts licking my face. His breath smells like shit, his tongue soft and sticky. I push him away half-heartedly, my hand naturally landing on the hair of his neck.
The blood from earlier is gone, and I’m just about to ask what happened when I see Deathdale’s shadow looming before me, a shadow created by a fire she has started at the entrance of the cave.
You’re in a cave, I think. I sit up and lean my back against the cave wall. You’ve traveled some distance, somehow. She must have done it. Wolf too.
It helps to analyze how I’ve gotten here, to get a grip on my tainted neuronal reality. Another breath in and I remove Deathdale’s blanket. I gaze at her with true appreciation on my face.
“My rage … ” I start to tell her. She simply nods, having seen it before. “I still don’t understand it fully. But I had to do something; that thing had Wolf by the neck. It would have killed him.”
The Solar Mage offers me a bowl of warm liquid.
“What is it?”
“Healing.”
Deathdale gets to her knees next to me and lifts the bowl to my lips. There is no taste, but the liquid is thick, fibrous. I finish guzzling the goo and the bowl disappears as it returns to her list.
+215 HP!
“Thanks,” I say, my mind going from sheer delirium to heightened awareness now that Deathdale is close to me.
“I like you,” I tell her in a whisper. I curse myself in my head – where is my MIND ability when it comes to romantic crass? I clear my throat.
“What?”
“Never mind what I just said. It’s the, um, medicine talking. Whatever you gave me. It’s buzzing in my stomach like strong kombucha … Feels good, though.”
“Glad to hear it.” She smiles as she presses the hair out of her face.
“Um … ” I glance at Wolf. “You healed him too?”
Deathdale nods, her eye locked onto me in a way that tells me she wants something more.
No way.
I massage my temples for a minute. I must still be hallucinating. Definitely. Rage has got me all sorts of fucked up.
“So, um, let’s talk. Lots to talk about.”
She nods and takes a seat next to me. Both of us now face the fire she’s lit at the entrance to the cave. The flames lick seductively at the cold, crisp air, the fire dancing before us.
Seductively? I shake my head at this last thought. What the hell am I thinking?
Get out of your own head!
“What is it?” she asks.
The struggle is real.
“Nothing,” I say as I rub the back of my head. “My mind is a broken faucet continually dripping sewage into the polluted river of my thoughts. Or something like that. I don’t know why I’ve all of a sudden become so pathetically poetic. I blame the rage and your medicine. You make this yourself?”
She chuckles. “Bought it, warmed it.”
“Cool.”
Silence permeates the space between us for a moment.
“I’m feeling good – better – like a million bucks, or a million lira is more like it. Ahem. But enough about me.” I clear my throat again. “And we can talk about the fact that a hybrid between a wolf and an orca shouldn’t exist later. Dammit, Wolf almost died back there. My rage keeps knocking me out after I’ve made my kill. I believe there may come a time when it knocks me out before I can get somewhere safe, or at least, safe enough.” I gulp at that thought. “So there’s that.”
“Respawn.”
“Yes, I could respawn, but … ” I gulp again. “I’d lose Wolf. And besides that, the world is dying. There may not be a Unigaea in the future if we aren’t able to do something. But that’s not what this is about; that’s not what I want to ask you. I want to tell you what the Drachma Killers did to me, why I plan to take them out, and then I want you to tell me what they did to you.”
She nods.
“And it will take more than two or three words.”
“I understand.”
Wolf rests on the ground, his head tucked between his legs. Deathdale to my right, Wolf to my left and a fire blazing before me, I feel at home, at ease. I relax a bit further and notice that the Solar Mage is sitting close enough to me for our bodies to touch. I begin my explanation of what happened to me.
“... and that’s pretty much it,” I tell her after I’ve finished. “The Drachma Killers destroyed the thriving village I’d built from the ground up. Like a coward, I took my own life rather than face their torture.”
As I say this last part, Deathdale’s expression sours.
“I know I was a coward; you don’t have to remind me.”
“It’s not that,” she finally says.
“What do you mean?”
“You did the right thing.”
(^_^)
Deathdale looks away from
me and to the fire. “The Drachma Killers,” she says bitterly.
“Yes?”
She takes a deep breath and smooths her hand across her face. “I was traveling with a caravan to Tagvornin. My last avatar, I mean.”
“I understand. Go on, please. What happened?”
Terror blooms across her face. “They came riding out of nowhere, the skin of people they’d recently killed hanging over the backs of their horses. They’d skinned them whole … first thing I remember. It was daytime and I could see the skin, the hair, the drying blood. Their boneless faces like Halloween masks.”
“Shit.”
She nods. “The Killers surrounded us. We tried to fight back. I wasn’t strong enough. Just a merchant. They tied me to a wagon wheel, gagged me.” She sighs deeply. “They brought the other merchants before me, male and female. Killed them one by one. Raped their dead bodies, made me watch. Laughed like hyenas … ” Her voice trails off.
“I get it,” I say bitterly. “They’re sick, twisted, the motherfuckers.” Wolf places his big head in my lap and looks up to me. “We’ll get them.”
“They turned to me,” Deathdale says, her voice wavering. “It was late afternoon now. One of them started a fire and boiled oil. They pulled my head back and poured the oil into my eye.” She touches her patch. “The pain. I couldn’t log out. Then I passed out. Woke up naked, I remember that. Somewhere else. My body splayed open. One eye gone. In and out of consciousness as they cut my limbs off. Started with my right arm. Left arm. Leg. And that’s when I died, I think.”
“And you respawned as a Solar Mage. How long after?”
“Weeks. I couldn’t … just couldn’t come back to Unigaea. Other Proxima worlds out there. But I didn’t want them to get away with it. So I came back, and I was gifted a rare class.”
“And the eye they took?”
She exhales deeply. “Now the most concentrated source of my energy.”
“Can you see out of it? Weird question. I mean, when you move your eyepatch.”
She shakes her head.
“It seems like the Obelisk gave you this power to remind you of what the Drachma Killers did. I don’t know if this is to your advantage or if it is somewhat of an insult.”
“Advantage.”
I nod in agreement. Seeing Deathdale take out dozens of people with her eye only reminds me that everything happens for a reason, no matter how cruel that “everything” is.
“Agreed, although I don’t know how I’d react if I were Cyclops.”
The seriousness leaves her face. “From X-Men?”
“Yeah. That’s what your power reminds me of. You spawned with the eyepatch, correct?”
She nods.
“And if you lift the flap, it just blazes out … or do you will it or something?”
“I don’t will it. The eyepatch stops it from constantly firing.”
“See? Cyclops. No pun intended.”
I picture Deathdale with the eyepatch off, a constant stream of light pouring from her face. Good thing she spawned with the patch.
“Well, now that we’ve both confessed our reasons for revenge, um, tell me more about you. I mean, you up there. My name is Eric Renfro up there. I’m from Chicago, and I’m permalogged in using my UBI to pay for it. Which is a scam, really.”
“Universal Basic Income?”
“No, that’s a necessity since Humandroids have replaced – what is it? – fifty percent of the workforce? Something like that.”
“Something like that.”
“Imagine what it’ll be like in thirty years.”
“I try not to.”
“What’s your name up there?”
“Blanche.”
“Just Blanche?”
“Chmilenko. Blanche Chmilenko.”
“Okay, so where are you up there? Are you on UBI?”
“Yes. Calgary.”
“You’re Canadian?”
“Is that odd?”
“No not at all. I love Canadians. Well, I guess that’s not how I wanted to say that. I mean, we are pretty much the same, Americans and Canadians.”
“Except for guns, language, and social services.”
I laugh. “Well, there’s that. You know what I mean, though.”
“I do.”
Silence moves like a slow cloud over our conversation. We both stare at the fire as it flickers, lost in thought about god knows what. My thoughts jump like a crazed monkey from life in the real world to what Deathdale has just told me about the Drachma Killers to the first time I met her in Tin Ingot.
It’s weird how thoughts work, how they hardly stand still yet they can crystallize as quickly as they can berate me, a thousand miles a second.
Somewhere in all this cranial chatter – damn you, MIND points – Deathdale’s hand moves from her lap to my leg, close to Wolf’s snout. His tongue comes out and he licks at her fingers.
“He’s a good dog.”
She moves the hand up my chest until it rests naturally at the side of my face. Her fingers are warm to the touch, even with her black glove on.
“Are you sure about this?”
You’re an idiot, Oric, I think as soon as the words leave my mouth.
Deathdale’s face softens. “You aren’t very smart, are you?”
“That’s not what my stats say,” I joke as I press Wolf’s head away. He protests, but gets the picture as Deathdale slowly shifts into my lap.
“Not what I was expecting,” I mumble as she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me. Deathdale pulls back and stares at me long and hard, my heart fluttering as she moves in for the kill.
Chapter Nineteen: Canal Views
I don’t know anything about the general happiness of clams, or what it is they have to be happy with in the first place. That said, if a colloquial saying fits, why attempt anything else?
I sigh audibly, happy as a fucking clam.
Deathdale is cuddled up next to me, her porcelain skin warm against mine. I push her blanket off my body and focus on Wolf, who sleeps next to me, snoring lightly.
I’ve heard that dogs take on the illnesses of their owners. If the owner has a skin condition, the dog will inevitably get a skin condition, or if the owner has a cough, the dog will have a cough. Surely this is just superstition, but as I look at Wolf, I wonder what my condition is and if he has somehow taken it on.
Insanity. Bloodlust.
I smile at this thought as I turn back to Deathdale, my hands on her nude body. I touch her breasts and she stirs, her warm hands falling onto mine.
Her hands aren’t quite hot to the touch, but if she holds mine for too long, I start to lose hit points.
Odd.
“I have food,” she purrs.
I consider this. Sure, I’d like some meat, but whatever gerbil food she has will probably hit the spot.
“Meat too.”
“Well, that settles it.” I hop up, nude as the day I was spawned, and start doing jumping jacks. “It’s cold!” I say, my breath visible.
Deathdale sits up and pulls the blanket to her chest.
She has a full bed set, apparently, including a fold-out mat big enough for three people. I’ve already made a mental note to get one, and I act like an idiot for a moment longer as I hop up and down in the air. Boys will be boys, and my jumping jacks are in lieu of full on celebrating that I’ve scored with the hottest Solar Mage I’ve ever met.
Dammit, I’ve become a man-child.
“Why did you stop?” she asks.
“I didn’t want you to watch this thing flopping around for too long.” I give my proof of digital manhood a flick and my skivvies appear on my body. The rest of the armor comes – the easy way to equip stuff – and I’m dressed up before Deathdale can take her next breath. I’ve even gone with long sleeves, just to keep me a bit warmer.
“Well, we were supposed to talk strategy,” I say as I make my way to the entrance of the cave. Wolf follows, sniffing the air as soon as we’re outs
ide.
“And?” Deathdale dresses instantly too; I turn to find her walking towards me, not quite a seductress but not far off, with a small package of food.
“I have a plan.”
“Wolf.” She bends and pets the Tagvornin beast. She opens the package and a solid slab of uncooked meat falls out.
“Damn, I’ll have what he’s having,” I say as Wolf goes to town.
She hands me a smaller package.
“Or this.” I unwrap the package to find a sliver of fish wrapped in seaweed and brown rice. One bite later and I’m in heaven. “Hey, not bad!”
I eat quickly and once I’m finished, I equip one of my magnolia-pine-cone IEDs. “So about my plan. There don’t seem to be pine cones up here, but I have two of these, and we can get more pine cones at the market in Drachma. Plus I got toy soldiers to fill them with to work as shrapnel.” I wave away the skeptical look on her face. “I guess I should explain that better. Here, check this out.”
I toss one to her and she examines it.
“Consider it a bomb. The pine cones are filled with Aramis weed, Aramis being some place on Tritania. Heard of it?”
“Another Proxima world.”
“Bingo. Anyway, if I light the fuse, or if someone else lights it with, ahem, with her solar power, it explodes. So it is a pine-cone IED, for lack of a better term.”
She gives the IED back to me and I inventory it. I pull up my herb list and scan through it, reminding myself of what I have.
Mandrake Flower (6)
Sunset Root (1)
Jatla Root (1)
Wizardous (1)
Karuna Seaweed (11)
Yellow Bonnet (4)
Cinnamon Flower (3)
Aramis Weed (3)
Burn Bush (3)
“Yeah,” I think aloud, “that could work. Here’s what we could do. I’ll swim up under the Drachma Killers’ headquarters, which is in the Canal District. Once I’m under there – remember, I can breathe underwater now – I’ll affix IEDs to the main structures keeping the place up. I’ll spread the rest of my burn bush and Aramis weed around the IEDs, creating a sort of web. You attack the place with your solar power from afar. Boom.”
“How will you make it stick?”
The Drachma Killers (The Last Warrior of Unigaea Book 2) Page 16
