The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

  I brought myself up to my feet and looked around for my sword but it was nowhere to be seen, the ogre must have kicked it as he’d passed me, or stepped on it burying it forever perhaps.

  ‘Oh no…oh no no no no no’ my mind whispered to me as the ogre discovered my new location. It scratched its head as it saw me before letting out another colossal roar and readied itself to charge again.

  “Out of my way!” the man who’d scowled at me earlier pushed me aside with ease and took my place before the ogre. “Bloody noobs” he muttered under his breath as he took up a defensive stance and retrieved a second small hand axe from within his armour. It didn’t seem like it was going to be enough to me but far be it from me to tell this guy how to fight.

  When the ogre came within striking distance of the man, he simply took one large step to his left which kind of made a mockery of my heroic dive, then threw one of his axes at the back of the ogre’s head. With a sickening crack it impaled itself into the creature’s skull and within another second, the ogre had fallen to the ground in a lifeless pile.

  “Holy shit that was impressive!” I commended the man, but he didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even respond as he turned away from me and disappeared into the crowds. Clearly I wasn’t worthy of his attention.

  As I searched for another enemy to pit my will against I noticed that there was becoming a distinct lack of monsters with which to fight. All around me were men with armour and swords, but seemingly no little green bastards. I eventually came to the conclusion that the battle had been won, and as to affirm my realisation, a huge roar erupted from closer to the city walls to indicate our victory.

  We all stepped forward to the city gates where one man in shining silver armour stood taller than the rest and when I was able to see him completely I could see that it was because he was standing atop two dead black ogres who’d had their heads removed from their bodies.

  The man had flowing blond hair that floated in the gentle breeze, just like how every heroic prince was always depicted in tv, film and picture.

  “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more or close the wall up with our people dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility, so let’s kill all of these green motherfuckers!” he finished his speech with a wicked smile and a roar of laughter erupted from the ranks all around me. That certainly wasn’t how I’d remembered Shakespeare’s Henry V, and I didn’t think old Willie would have appreciated such blatant plagiarism let alone the artistic misquote.

  He stepped down from his ogre-podium and with one hard front kick, he booted the wooden gated to the city open and swept inside.

  ‘Wait, we are attacking the city?’ I thought as my fellow humans filtered through the city walls. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I was sure that we’d be defending it from the cutthroat, ruthless monsters at the gates. ‘Are we the bad guys here?’

  My question was somewhat answered when I watched the events unfold before me. The creatures that’d been behind the walls weren’t trained warriors, they were smaller, women and children of many different races – all the traditional ‘monster races’ - who were running for their lives. None of them were retaliating to the ruthless slaughter and torture of their kin. My kin, however, seemed as though they were having the time of their lives. They cornered female goblins and stabbed at them with their swords, revelling in their cries of pain. They kicked and punched smaller ogre children to prolong their suffering before dispatching them. I could take no more when two men started undressing one of the female goblins.

  “Stop it!” I cried as I put myself between the men and the gobliness. I could hear her crying over my shoulder, but it hadn’t seemed to have any effect on her attackers.

  “And why would we wan’ a do tha?” one of them asked in a heavy accent, bearing down on me menacingly.

  I didn’t really know what to do without any kind of weapon, so I pushed the man as hard as I could with both of my hands and shouted “RUN!” over my shoulder to the frightened female.

  She made her escape and I watched as she scurried off and out through the gates. I however, was not so lucky. My push hadn’t done anything other than surprise the man, and once he’d gotten over that, he hit me hard in the temple with the hilt of his sword. My vision faded to black and I felt my knees hit the ground just a moment before my chin did.

  Sano hits you for 15 damage

  Unconscious – 5 minutes

  I found it strange that this person had been given a name where the goblins I’d fought were simply listed as generic ‘goblins’, but I couldn’t ask any questions about that right now – I just had five minutes of darkness and silence to think things through. I watched the counter tick away to zero and by the time I’d come to I was still on the stone floor, only alone now. Either ‘Sano’ had thought he’d killed me which was unlikely, as he’d used the hilt of his weapon on me which must’ve been on purpose, he’d been distracted by some other helpless creature that he’d wanted to attack, or he’d felt I’d learnt my lesson. ‘I bet hurting things smaller and weaker than him makes him feel like a big man’ I thought to myself. Something inside told me that this wasn’t over.

  I could hear voices carrying through the pathways that spidered throughout the city and bringing myself to my feet I thought it prudent to follow my ears.

  The streets were all littered with the blood and bodies of fallen goblins. I didn’t see a single human body but noted with sorrow that all of the fallen creatures were the women and children of the city I’d seen pre-unconsciousness. I was right to ask if we were the monsters in this little event, we were.

  When I found the source of the voices, I saw Sano, scowler, the blond hero and about twenty other human warriors sat on crates surrounding a roaring fire. They watched me as I approached cautiously.

  “’Ere e is. The one what stopped me givin’ that goblin bitch a good seeing to.” Sano was the first to speak.

  “I also watched him let a few of the ones outside the wall go when he had a chance to kill them. It sounds like this one might not be the right kind of…stuff,” the scowler added. He spoke as though he had a plum in his mouth, a stark contrast to how Sano spoke.

  “You’re a new one, aren’t you?” The blond man asked as I joined them. “…yes, haven’t even chosen a name yet,” he answered his own question.

  I was a little taken aback by his statement.

  “How… how did you know?” I asked.

  Sano started laughing in the corner of my field of view. But the blond man didn’t give him the chance to speak. “Let me give you a little gift, my goblin loving friend. Travellers like us,” he gestured to everyone present “that is, real people, have a little something called ‘analyse’.” The smoothness of his voice made me feel physically sick, like I’d eaten too many sweets. “While you are looking at me now, why don’t you think ‘analyse’ and see what happens?”

  I did what he asked without hesitation, it didn’t sound like a trap and they outnumbered me terribly anyway so I couldn’t really be increasing the danger I was in no matter what I did.

  Name: Theodore

  Level: 23

  Race: Human/Male

  Attributes:HP: 201/201MP: 20/20

  Strength:-Unavailable-

  Wisdom:-Unavailable-

  Social:-Unavailable-

  Skills: -Unavailable-

  Equipment:-Unavailable-

  The character screen was nothing I wasn’t used to from other games I’d played in the past and I safely assumed that the ‘unavailable’ stats were due to the level difference between us, or that they were simply for him to know and for me to find out. When I dismissed the screen, I noticed that above Theodore’s head had appeared a red bar which clearly indicated his health. As I scanned the group, each of the others also gained health bars and every single one of them was completely full.

  “I fink ‘e likes it” Sano chuckled as I tested out my new ability. ‘How had this cretin
managed to get a place in Freedom?’ I thought as I remembered that Theodore had revealed to me that he was actually a player and not a simple pre-programmed NPC. That made his actions so much more despicable.

  “You’re all…Travellers?” I made sure to use the correct terminology over ‘real people’.

  “Hard to believe isn’t it?” Theodore answered and subtly gestured towards Sano. “There are nearly thirty ‘lucky winners’ amongst us now. If you ask me they shouldn’t be letting just anyone in…but I guess they have their uses.” He trailed off, but he’d clearly understood and answered my surprise at Sano – the man was at least five social classes below Theodore.

  “Let’s kill ‘im,” Sano interrupted as he stood up. “The filthy goblin-fucker.” It seemed that he’d managed to crack the code somewhat of our ongoing conversation. Good for him.

  The irony wasn’t missed on me that he was actually the one that could have held that particular title, but I didn’t care to share that thought.

  I held my hands up in surrender but before I could speak, Theodore interrupted him again.

  “Now now Sano, is that any way to treat our guest?” his voice smacked of sarcasm, but I had to admit it was better than being killed by this cretin.

  To my delight, Sano sat back down, muttering something quietly under his breath.

  Theodore picked a long leg of meat from the fire and bit into it, tearing the flesh from the bone with a lip-smacking slap. “You must be hungry” he announced after emptying his mouth cordially and he gestured towards the meat on the fire.

  I looked closely at what he was offering before stretching out my arm to take my fill, it looked like lamb shanks and honestly smelled quite good. I approached the fire and almost started to stretch my arm out to grab a joint but something stopped me. To the right of the fire was a huge black pile of goblin women and children who were covered in blood and missing all of their limbs. The realisation hit me like a train that these ‘travellers’ were eating them. It was their meat that smelled so sweetly on the fire.

  I straightened my back and pulled away from the meat. “You’re fucking eating them?” I shouted. I could hear Sano and a few of the others chuckling.

  “It’s really quite good,” Theodore explained calmly. “Come now, there really isn’t much else to eat around here…”

  “But…you’re eating goblins?” I stammered.

  “And in the real world, people eat cows, sheep, even dogs in some parts. What’s wrong with a little virtual goblin?” Theodore had a point, but it didn’t change anything for me. I couldn’t take my eyes from the gruesome pile. He took another large bite of the leg in his hand which I now noticed had a slight green tint to it. I couldn’t help but want to vomit.

  “I…can’t…I just can’t” I protested, fighting back the overwhelming feeling of sickness. I didn’t have time to even think about how I was going to be sick in a virtual world.

  “Oh, I insist,” Theodore stood as he spoke, approaching me with the cooked goblin leg outstretched.

  I started to backtrack before my back made contact with Sano’s front. He under-hooked my arms and clasped his hands at the back of my neck in a kind of full nelson. Theodore reached me and squeezed my cheeks with his left hand to open my mouth.

  I squirmed and struggled as hard as I could but Sano was just too strong. It was just as well that he wasn’t controlling my legs as well though, as I kicked the meat from Theodore’s hands and it fell harmlessly to the ground. I noticed a distinct flicker of anger cross his face before he smiled again.

  My breathing was heavy and I didn’t want to say anything – I had the feeling I was in enough trouble as it was.

  “I think it might be best if you just left,” Theodore said as he turned away, showing his back to me. “Back to the forest with your fucking little goblin mates, eh?”

  Sano released his grip on me, understanding his new instruction.

  “I can just, go?” I asked in surprise. This certainly wasn’t something I’d been expecting of Theodore and his band of merry shits.

  Theodore didn’t turn to look at me when he spoke. “Of course, we aren’t savages. Well, not all of us anyway.” His tone was dripping with double meaning and I didn’t like it at all.

  Not wanting to carry the conversation any further, I turned away from Theodore, passed Sano and begun to walk slowly and cautiously towards the city gates that we’d breached earlier.

  I’d managed just ten steps before I heard the loud twang of a bowstring. The next feeling was immense pain for just a second before a freezing cold engulfed my body and I noticed an arrowhead protruding from the front of my skull just in my field of vision.

  Theodore hits you for 82 damage (Stealth)

  You have died. Respawn in 1 hour. You do not have a dedicated respawn point. You will be respawned at your last entry location.

  Note: As you are below level 5, you will not suffer any permanent penalties for your death. Once you respawn you will have the buff:

  Resurrection for three minutes. In this time, you will be unable to deal or receive any damage.

  Chapter Three, Generosity

  F

  or an hour, I watched my death over and over again. It wasn’t like the kill-cams that I was used to from video games, rather my memory just replayed from my own perspective over and over with the pain I’d felt included. It definitely wasn’t something I’d want to experience again.

  ‘That absolute bastard,’ I thought as I awoke and sat on the ground precisely where I’d first entered Freedom Online. I walked to the wood’s edge where I knew I’d be able to see the city walls from and peered across the open field once again. I didn’t expect to see a raging battle this time, and rightly so the city looked peaceful. Even from this far away though I could see the black smoke rising above the city of the fire that those sick bastards were using to cook and eat their fallen enemies.

  There didn’t seem to be any bodies littering the previous field of battle though, which either meant that the game had reclaimed them itself, or Theodore and his party of cannibals had gotten to them first. Either way, it made me feel pretty bad and very guilty.

  ‘I’d helped them do this’ I thought. I’d made the assumption that the city was under siege by these monsters and that I was helping the good guys. How wrong had I been?

  Something that Theodore said stuck in my mind, I hadn’t chosen a name for myself yet. I decided to use the analyse skill on myself and was happy to see that it worked.

  Name: ???

  Level: 1 (5%)

  Race: Human/Male

  Attributes:HP: 25/25MP: 0/0

  Strength:1

  Wisdom:1

  Social:0

  Skills: Analyse1 (5%)

  Equipment:None

  I picked the name I’d always used when playing role-playing games, Tandy. Of course, it sometimes had to be ‘TandyIsHere’ or ‘TandyPandy’ but inside Freedom, either no one else had already chosen it or the game didn’t prevent duplicates. Either was a possibility really, given that the game was so young and the playership limited.

  Thinking about Theodore, as much as I wanted to pay him and his crew a little visit (and possibly slit their obnoxious throats), I knew that at my current level and of course alone, I’d just be killed again straight away, probably giving them experience and a good laugh – not to mention having to sit through the death cam all over again. No, right now I needed to find somewhere else to exist. One day, when I’d grown stronger I’d be back for Theodore and Sano. I swore it. Fuckers.

  For now, I needed to get as far away from those sick bastards as physically possible, the last thing I wanted to do was run into them on a dark night whilst I was simply trying to play the game, so instead of approaching the city, I skirted the treeline to the right and started to blaze my trail on my own terms.

  After a few hours, I noticed my shadow growing longer and the air becoming cooler, it was turning into night and I had no idea what new dangers that would
bring. My thoughts turned to shelter as an immediate priority and then to food and water shortly afterward. It dawned on me that if Theodore was totally willing to eat goblin skin, then finding food on my own might not have been the easiest thing to do, after all, something must’ve driven him to it in the first place right?

  Ever prepared I decided that I would need to make shelter, especially if when night came there were dangers to face, or if it became simply too cold to survive in the open.

  I collected fallen branches wherever I could find them and brought them back to a small clearing just inside the treeline. I didn’t fancy delving too deep into the woods, but I also didn’t want to make camp right out in the open.

  Some of the branches I found had started to be swallowed up by the vines along the woodland floor, and as I collected them I made sure to also pull the vines back as far as I could before ripping them away from their roots. By the time I had finished collecting, I had a large pile of branches stacked neatly on the ground and many lengths of vines beside them.

  Lashing the branches together with the vines wasn’t too difficult. I began to build an apex frame from the ground, fashioning my own wooden tent without any material other than what the land had provided me with. As I finished lashing a makeshift door together, the sun had completely disappeared, and stars were now visible in the dark night sky.

  I found a large tree trunk that must have fallen some time ago and dragged it outside of my new home to be used as a campfire bench. I smiled as I compared my little shelter to those that I’d created in my youth at the end of the garden wham making ‘bases’ of ‘forts’.

  The last thing I needed to do now was build an actual campfire to fully justify all those years my parents had forced me to attend the Scouts.