Rebirth Online 4

by Michael James Ploof

  “Yup!” she said as she leapt out of bed.

  I watched her perky cans bounce as she ran over to the dressing room. She returned a few seconds later in a sweet set of glowing silver robes lined with pulsing purple hems.

  “What do you think?” She did a little twirl and smiled at me.

  “Epic,” I said. “Beautiful.”

  Tweak was already in the kitchen whipping up breakfast, and I took my coffee out to the balcony from the dining room and gazed at the camp of villagers. My girls joined me, and when the people saw us, they cheered joyfully.

  “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” I said to my guild mates.

  “Now that we have villagers, we need to start opening up some trade routes,” Cecilia noted, ever the business woman.

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked as she furled her brow and scrolled through her interface.

  “There’s a band of gnomes about an hour’s ride from here. They’re ore miners.”

  “Perhaps we can trade our future crops for ore,” Kit suggested.

  “You’re a quick one,” Ember said shaking her head.

  Kit laughed it off.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I told Cecilia. “You want to head out in a little bit?”

  They all agreed, and I contacted the stable master through my interface and told him to ready the horses. My guild mates and I could communicate with the head NPCs in our village through our interfaces, and to the villagers we appeared in a floating orb. They thought it was magic, but then again, they were programmed to think that way.

  We set out to meet with the gnomes a half hour later. The sky was blue, the weather was pleasant, and the mood was light as we traveled into the hills. Cecilia took the reins as navigator and led us down an old road that might have once been a trade route. The hills grew steeper and the road more winding, and to my dismay, we came to a dead end. Before us, a sheer cliff loomed, rising hundreds of feet into the air and offering us no route around in either direction.

  “This is it,” said Cecilia as she tapped on her interface.

  “What do you mean, this is it?” said Tweak. “It’s a damned wall.”

  “Wow,” said Ember. “For a dude living in a VR game as a purple monkey, sometimes you lack imagination.”

  “Ever heard of a secret door, Tweak?” Kit asked as she began running her hand along the smooth stone.

  I too searched the stone, but my hands felt nothing. There were no grooves, no spots that gave in to pressure, and no ancient runes that we might riddle through.

  “I found something,” said Nanaya. She pointed at the hard stone beneath our feet, and we all stepped back.

  “There’s something written in the stone,” said Kit.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” said Ember as she joined her on her knees.

  The two of them began pushing aside the dirt when Tweak stepped in.

  “Excuse me ladies,” he said and began casting a simple spell. They stepped back, an he extended his right hand. From it, a gentle breeze issued and blew away the dust and dirt.

  Strange writing was revealed, and as I tried to figure out which way was up for the foreign words, Cecilia tapped her interface and translated.

  “If you are a friend to the gnomes, jump up and down and shake your bones.”

  “Shake your bones?” said Tweak. “What the hells that supposed to mean?”

  “I think it means just what it says,” I told him.

  “So we’re supposed to jump up and down and wiggle around? Man, that’s some dumb shit right there.”

  “Right?” Trinity added. “I thought we’d have to wait for the light of the moon, or there would be a thrush bashing a snail shell.”

  “It is what it is,” said Cecilia. “Ready?”

  “I guess,” said Tweak, and I shrugged.

  “On three,” Cecilia instructed us. “One, Two, Three!”

  We all began hopping up and down and shaking our arms. We looked ridiculous, no doubt, but what happened next made us look even more stupid.

  The floor suddenly dropped out from under us, and the next thing I knew, I was sliding on my ass down a dark tube.

  “I told you that shit was stupid!” Tweak screamed as we slid into the unknown.

  When we finally emerged into the light, we all landed in a heap in the middle of a small chamber. I untangled myself quickly and shot to my feet, ready to unleash a fireball on the first monster that I saw. But there was no monster, only gnomes, two of them to be exact, and they were staring at me through a shimmering forcefield.

  “You are now prisoners of the great Moondar. Please put your weapons and all possessions in the corner and proceed to the processing chamber,” one of the gnomes instructed.

  “Say what?” said Tweak.

  “I think there’s been a mix-up,” I began, but the other gnome quickly cut me off in a voice that reminded me of the Lollipop Guild.

  “You are now prisoners of the great Moondar, please put your weapons and all possessions in the corner and proceed to the processing chamber! Stupid human,” he added under his breath.

  “Maybe they don’t understand the common speech,” the other gnome suggested.

  “It’s called common speech for a reason, you nit!” said the first.

  “Look,” I said, summoning a fireball into my right hand. “We’re here to speak with your leader. I am Samson, King of Ozara, and I am interested in beginning trade negotiations with your honorable people.”

  “King who of what?” the first gnome asked.

  “King Samson of Ozara,” I repeated with a small bow.

  “You ever heard of him, Gendrick?” the gnome asked his comrade.

  “Nope, never heard of him. You ever heard of him, Dindin?”

  “Nope.” The gnome shook his head and waved us off lazily. “Do as you have been told and proceed to the—”

  “We’re not proceeding to fuck all!” Trinity told them. She stalked toward the forcefield between us and them and slapped it with her enchanted sword, sending sparks flying. “Now let us out of here and bring us to your leader, or so help me god, I’ll shove this sword up your asses!”

  “Looks like these slaves are flawed,” said Gendrick.

  “I agree,” said Dindin.

  “Beginning termination process,” Gendrick told us. “Please wait.”

  He pressed something out of sight, and the walls to my left and right began to move inward. The room grew smaller, and I realized pretty quickly that the gnomes meant to crush us.

  “So much for diplomacy,” I said and conjured a Magic Bolt. I unleashed my spell, aiming at the middle of the forcefield, and it exploded with a deafening retort in the small, rectangular chamber.

  When the sparks stopped flying, I noticed that I hadn’t hurt the forcefield at all. Worse yet, the walls were still closing in.

  “We’re going to be crushed!” Kit cried.

  Tweak ran to the wall to the left and slammed a shoulder into it, but the wall kept coming, pushing my ape friend across the floor. Trinity tried to wedge her enchanted sword in the corner as the wall slid forward, and my other guild mates tried spells, brute force, and weapons, but the walls kept on coming just the same.

  In about ten seconds we were going to become a Heavy Metal Thunder sandwich.

  “Listen to me!” I told the gnomes. “If you kill us, we will only return. And when we do, we’ll bring an army with us.”

  “Boring…” Dindin sang.

  “Goodbye, stupid human,” Gendrick added as he grinned and waved.

  “Fuck this,” said Nanaya, and we all backed up, knowing what she had in mind. She performed a series of intricate hand gestures and released her magic, and her body began to bulge and grow. Three seconds later, my guild mates and I were sharing the small chamber with a five-thousand-pound white dragon.

  Nanaya thrust herself against the forcefield that separated us from the gnomes, and she let out a howl of pain when she made contact. But the forcefield began to sputter a
nd spark, so she attacked it again with her incredible mass. Two more hits and she went flying through the window and landed among the gnomes.

  “Go, go, go!” I urged my guild mates, and we all hurried through the large bay window.

  The stones slammed together in the chamber behind us, and I turned a scowl toward the two gnomes, who Nanaya was now dangling upside down.

  “I told you that you’d regret not letting us out,” I told them both.

  “You never said that,” said Dindin, looking to his bald friend for backup.

  “Yeah,” said Gendrick. “You said that you would return with an army.”

  “Listen, you little smartasses,” said Trinity as she brought her glowing sword dangerously close to their necks. “It’s time to shut up and listen. Understand?”

  The gnomes shared a confused glance.

  “Are we supposed to answer?” Dindin asked.

  “Yeah,” said Gendrick. “You can’t tell us to shut up and then ask us a question. That’s just confusing.”

  Trinity rolled her eyes and glanced at me pleadingly. “Can I kill them? Please?”

  “That depends on them.” I knelt and came face to face with the upside-down gnomes. “Are you going to bring us to your leader?”

  Gendrick laughed nervously. “Of course, of course, why didn’t you say so?”

  “We would be happy to bring you before the great Moondar!” Dindin added.

  I nodded to Nanaya, and she put the gnomes down.

  “Just this way, just this way,” said the gnomes in unison.

  Nanaya returned to her succubus form, and the nine of us followed the gnomes out of the observation chamber and up a flight of stairs that spiraled upward for perhaps two stories. We walked out onto the landing, and all of us stopped and stared in awe.

  Before us was a large gnome city.

  Unlike Aeorock, with its halls of natural stone, rising and falling rock formations, and great, reaching pillars, the gnome city was all squares. The chamber itself was square, the buildings were square, and even the bricks beneath our feet were square.

  “Welcome, stupid human, to Oretown,” said Dindin.

  Gendrick elbowed his friend in the ribs and shot him a scowl, before glancing back at me with a smile. “I must apologize for my dim-witted friend. Kidnapping makes him nervous. What he meant to say was, Welcome, stupid human, to Oretown, home of the great Moondar.”

  “Just bring us to the king,” I said, pushing them along.

  I could tell that this was a mining town without the help of the obvious name. Wagons pulled by strange, beetle-like creatures came and went through square holes in the walls, and conveyer belts moved stone and ore into foundries that bellowed smoke up into square vents in the ceiling. There was soot everywhere, but there were also dozens of gnomes hanging from ropes or atop scaffolding, scrubbing away at the walls.

  Thousands of gnomes were busy going about their day throughout the city, but hardly any of them paid us any mind. We were led through the center of the city, which was like a Minecraft maze of square building stacked atop each other. I soon became lost given the uniform design, but when we came to the biggest square of them all, I knew we had been led to the great Moondar’s abode.

  Deep horns blared from atop the building, and the big doors opened outward. We stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the building, and a shadow appeared in the doorway. Whoever it was, they were tall, much too tall for a gnome, who looked to top out at about five feet. But the shadow in the door was at least eight feet tall, and when it moved it didn’t appear to walk, but glide.

  When the figure moved into the light, I was surprised to see a gnome woman with the tallest, squarest hat I have ever seen.

  “I give to you, the great Moondar,” said Dindin with a bow.

  Chapter 5

  “Greetings Moondar,” I said with a bow. “I am Samson, King of Ozara.”

  “I’ve never heard of you,” she said in a high-pitched but pleasant voice.

  “Yes, well I have heard of you,” I explained. “Your ore and your metal are well renowned, and I have come seeking to trade with you and your honorable people.”

  “Trade?” she said, tapping her chin. “Trade interests me. Please, come, dine with me and we’ll talk.”

  Two gnome servants led us into the square palace. The place looked to have been build out of thousands of large cubes of white marble, and I marveled at the strange architecture as we followed the great Moondar into a dining room, where servants waited to tend to their queen.

  “Please, sit,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  I took a seat to her right, and my guild mates found chairs beside and across from me. Very steadily, Moondar sat in the big chair at the head of the table, careful not to let her tall hat slide off her bald head.

  Moondar was cute for a gnome, with a little button nose, big eyes, and big floppy ears. Despite her small appearance and cherubim features, there was a shrewdness about her, a cold practicality that was reflected in the uniform architecture of her city.

  “The food will be out shortly,” said one of the servants. “Can I interest any of you in a beverage? Goat’s milk perhaps?”

  “Milk is fine,” I told him.

  Cecelia nodded, and Moondar looked pleased.

  “Tell me,” said the gnome. “What is it that you have to trade, King Samson?”

  “Our crops will be coming in soon. And we could provide you with fresh grains, fruits, and vegetables on a semi-daily basis.”

  She nodded, seeming pleased by the prospect. “And in return?”

  “In return we would need your refined ore for our blacksmiths, and perhaps I could employ some of your craftsmen. Your people are renowned tinkers.”

  “I am aware,” she said absently. “We already do trade with the human farmers north of here. But their produce is not the best quality, and they are far away. By the time they get it here half of it is already wilted. If you can provide a sample of your wares, then we may be able to strike a deal.”

  “Excellent.” I said raising my glass of milk. “We can have some to you within the week.”

  “Very well, I look forward to sampling your wares,” said Moondar, and she too raised her glass.

  We drank, and I tried not to grimace when I tasted the warm goat’s milk. I hid my sour expression with a “Yummm,” and put the glass down.

  “Enough of business for now,” said Moondar. “Tell me of this kingdom of yours.”

  I answered Moondar’s many questions over a breakfast of greens, and we left the gnome city shortly after noon with well wishes to all. As we rode home, I smiled to myself and soaked up the sun. Once the deal with the gnomes went through, we would have all the ore that we needed to fortify our army and continue building our city. It was turning out to be a good day, and I was eager to get to the mage trainer in Aeorock and learn my new spell.

  We were about a half hour from home when Trinity suddenly stopped her horse in the road. I reined in my steed next to her and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Something’s not right,” she said as she scoured the surrounding forest.

  Kit and Cecilia sniffed at the air, and both of their ears perked up at the same time.

  “Orcs!” Cecilia screamed, and the forests burst to life.

  A dozen orcs emerged from the right side of the road, and a dozen more leapt from the foliage to the left. More dropped from the treetops and landed among us, and one even emerged from beneath a mud puddle in the middle of the road.

  I blasted the first orc I saw, hitting him with a fireball and sending him spinning through the air back into the underbrush. My guildmates attacked at the same time, but the orcs were undeterred, even as they were blasted by our spells. Trinity, Stormy, and Ember instinctively created a perimeter around the rest of us and kept the attacking orcs at bay with sword and dagger and axe. The orcs were all level 60 and up, but we were a highly skilled guild that worked like a well-oil
ed machine, and soon we had the orcs beneath our blades.

  “Surrender now or die!” I bellowed as I held a fireball in each hand.

  The orcs all looked to those next to them, and with a nod from the biggest of them all, they tossed aside their weapons.

  A slow clapping began in the woods, and I looked to the oak tree that the sound was coming from. Just then a beautiful female orc with a real-world player tag floating above her head sauntered around the big oak.

  “Not bad,” she said with a grin.

  Zoe Stormbreaker

  Level 65 Orc

  Ice Mage

  “You lead these orcs?” I said as I squared on her.

  “I do,” she said with a grin. “And the seventy-five others that have you surrounded.”

  “What do you want?” I asked. I was curious about the woman. She had somehow gained the loyalty of a tribe of NPC orcs, and she was about as hot as an orc could get. Her green-skinned body was sleek and tight. She was tall, perhaps five foot ten, with emerald eyes and tightly braided black hair. Her breasts were modest, and her waist thin, which only accentuated her curvaceous hips and pert ass. She wore black leather armor that was nothing more than a glorified bikini, knee-high boots with sharp points at the end, and light pauldrons on her shoulders with dark blue gems embedded in them. A long ice blue cloak hung from her shoulders, and it looked large enough to cover her entire body if need be.

  “I want everything in your inventory,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Bitch, are you for real?” Trinity asked.

  “Very much so,” Zoe said with a critical once-over of the blonde warrior.

  “You know that you just ambushed the mutha freakin’ King of Ozara?” Tweak asked with a laugh.

  “King?” said Zoe, and I nodded at her, then enabled my title display.

  She glanced above my head, reading my name, title, and level.

  “Samson Sullivan,” she said with sudden recognition. “It is you.”

  “In the digital flesh,” I said with a grin. “So, if you want to avoid a war, I suggest that you call off your dogs.”