by Jason Cheek
“Talk about a guild of cheating bastards,” Noskulls swore under his breath. Hell, they were doing a public service taking these losers out.
In truth, Noskulls was mostly here to get some payback against Startum for daring to interrupt his fun with that little Gnome whore. Well, that, and for making his life a living hell in Delonshire. Seriously, how many motherfucking players watched that shithead’s freaking Twitch Channel anyway? Noskulls swore, it was impossible for him to enjoy a beer without some Carebear getting into his face about the whole thing.
Twisting around, Noskulls got to work on getting the arrows out of his back. He figured the best thing to do was to get his health back up to a hundred percent before throwing down. It took some work, but he finally was able to push the fletching up high enough to reach it with his hand and pull the shafts out. This fucking realism system sucked for shit like this. He was just sucking down a Health vial, when a scrabbling noise caught his attention.
“Who the fuck is there!” Noskulls demanded, as he drew his blades and dropped into a crouch.
“Help me,” a little girl’s voice pitifully cried out on the other side of the ledge, “help me … please.”
“What the fuck is a kid doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Noskulls muttered under his breath as he sheathed his blades and started to carefully make his way to the edge of the cliff. If he got lucky, maybe he could use the brat as a hostage in case one of those Ranger Patrols found him.
The edge of the ridge was rocky as hell and Noskulls didn’t want to accidentally lose his footing. Getting down on his hands and knees, he began carefully crawling up to the edge of the drop off. The brat was probably part of some fucking quest. You know the ones, save little Sussy and get her back home to her mother or some stupid shit like that. Probably got lost while watching over her sheep or something equally as stupid.
“Help me … please.”
“Hold your goddamn horses,” Noskulls grunted, as he peered over the edge of the cliff. Seeing nothing but blackness, the Rogue switched off his Darkvision and tried looking again only to see a straight drop to the valley far below. “What the fuck?”
“Help me,” there was the sound of a stone being knocked off of the boulder behind him, “Help me … please.”
“How the fuck did you get behind me,” Noskulls snarled, as he jerked back from the edge of the cliff and spun around. Seeing the shadowy shape on top of the large boulder behind him in the moonlight, he hurriedly switched back to his Darkvision. “Get over here you little brat!”
“Help me … help me!”
“Ah, fuck my life,” Noskulls swore as he looked up into the fanged-filled maw of the most buttass ugly monster that he’d ever seen in the game. It had grey-black skin with splotches of hair on the back of its neck. Instead of claws, it had cloven hooves that it used to perch on top of the boulder. The viscous saliva dripping from its black lips steamed in the cold night air as the beast rose above him in all of its disgusting glory.
Noskulls swore he felt his balls shrivel up tight against his body as he looked into the beast’s blood-red glowing eyes and triggered Identify. Not that seeing the information Grimmur the Vile, Level 53 Elite Cruor Beast, appear over the monster’s head made him feel any better. Especially not since he was only Level 25.
“Help me … help me!” a little girl’s cry suddenly came from the left side of the boulder where a trio of smaller Elite Cruor Beasts suddenly appeared out of the darkness. Another “Help me … help me!” drew Noskulls’ eyes as another pair of the beasts came slinking around the opposite side of the boulder. As if that wasn’t freaky enough, the Named Boss on top of the boulder suddenly perfectly imitated Noskulls’ voice, “Ah, fuck my life!”
“Gah-” that was as much of a scream as Noskulls got out before the beast lunged at him and ate his face.
In the blink of an eye, Noskulls appeared in the graveyard as he unconsciously lurched back into a gravestone. Immediately, the glowing red letters asking him if he wanted to resurrect at his corpse or release in the graveyard disappeared. Not that Noskulls was particularly paying any attention since he was way too busy trying not to freak the fuck out. That was the first time in The World that he’d been killed by a monster like that. Talk about a death that freaked you the fuck out.
Angry at his own reaction to having his face eaten, Noskulls angrily began heading back to his body at a run while doing his best to ignore the jitters he was feeling. Heading up the mountain to Fang Pass was a whole hell of a lot easier as a ghost. The landscape flew past his eyes as he ran without any feeling of exhaustion or being slowed down by gravity. The only problem was that it seemed to be taking him forever to get back.
Noskulls was starting to sweat when the timer ticked to four minutes and he was only at the fortress guarding the pass. He’d hoped to have picked up another graveyard further inside the NPCs territory. That would’ve at least allowed him to graveyard hop deeper into the area if needed. Noskulls’ saw his problem a moment later as he realized he had gotten lost on some outskirt of rock that wasn’t even near the trail that led down the other side of the mountain. Noskulls realized that he must have gotten turned around while he was trying to escape the Rangers targeting him from the walls. No wonder they’d let him get away, the Rogue thought sourly.
By the time Noskulls reached his corpse, the countdown timer was down to the last ten seconds. Shaking his head in disgust, he did his best to find an out of the way spot within the fifteen-yard radius allowed by his corpse. Being so close to the edge of the cliff, that unfortunately didn’t leave much in the way of options for him. Grimacing at the thought of being eaten again, he hunched down as flat as he could against the ground and selected resurrect.
“Okay, now where the fuck are you?” Noskulls muttered under his breath as he scanned the area around his body. Though his vision was partly blocked by the boulder, he didn’t see any of the Cruor Beasts around his gravestone. Talk about a bunch of disgusting monsters. Whatever developer that came up with those things was one sick motherfucker, Noskulls thought, as he raised up on his haunches.
“Ah, fuck my life!”
Noskulls froze as he heard the words come directly from behind him. Only, this time, instead of it being in his own voice, it was said in the same little girl voice that had suckered him to the edge of the cliff as before. Embarrassingly enough, Noskulls couldn’t stop the unconscious whimper of fear that came from his lips as the Named Boss’s hot breath literally began breathing down the back of his neck.
Not even thinking about the consequences of his actions, Noskulls did the only thing he could think to do and leaped off the side of the cliff.
Chapter Twenty
(Oránn Énméarrul working with Prustine Hollysharp in the Sea Elf city of Auris Shaeras.)
“That makes absolutely no sense!” Honey Mistborne roared at the Gnomeling that was testing her patience to the extreme. The Water Shaman would’ve long ago told the annoying female to choke on her droppings and left, if not for her ex-slave friend Lara Moonshadow’s efforts to keep her calm. Honey understood that the Air Shaman wanted to pay their rescuer Lord Ironwolf back for everything that he’d done for them but dealing with this obnoxious engineer was worse than a fang-ache. As the hackles on the back of her neck stood on end, she unconsciously raised her voice with each word as she tried to explain the problem for the hundredth time to Hollysharp, “The Water Shield should only block liquid and, even then, a particular type at that. Having it block everything will mean that the first time the ship is attacked the Water Shield will fail and flood the ship with sea water!”
“A Beast Kin, of all races, is going to try telling me,” Hollysharp shrieked as she floated in front of the Badgerkin with a hand on her hip and her thumb pointed at her small chest, “Me! How to design a revolutionary magic vessel!”
“Honey is not telling you how to engineer your vessel,” Lara Moonshadow said, as a warning growl reverberated deep in her chest, “the Wa
ter Shaman,” the Grimalkin highlighted the term for the Gnomeling female’s benefit, “is giving you her professional opinion on the best use for the element that she’s mastered and that you’ve requested her assistance with to best serve Lord Ironwolf’s needs.”
“She’s trying to tell me what type of magic is best used to shield the vessel-” Hollysharp began to go off, when Lara’s fur suddenly stood on end as she cut the Gnomeling off.
“The Water Shaman is telling you the best way to protect the underwater vessel from being flooded by water, while I,” Lara said, showing the engineer her fangs, “the Air Shaman you’re supposed to be working with due to my expertise, is giving you a better option for protecting the underwater vessel from attack and random encounters with the sea life of the ocean.” The Grimalkin’s whiskers twitched in annoyance as her emerald-green eyes focused on Oránn, “If you have any doubts about Honey’s professional opinion, run it by Oránn since you seem to prefer her opinion above our own.”
“Gggrrr,” Hollysharp wordlessly said, clenching her teeth together in frustration as her sky-blue eyes swiveled to the Sea Elf, “Oránn, tell these ignorant hairy females that they’re wrong so that we can all get back to building my vessel.”
“Actually Holly,” Oránn said in as friendly of a tone that she could muster, hoping against hope that she wasn’t about to burn the bridge that she’d just made with the extremely rude engineer, “this is a perfect fix for the whole problem about flooding the vessel with water if the external shield is breached in combat.” She nervously ran a webbed hand through her spikey-green hair. “I’d still keep the extra shielding around the hatches as a just encase but-”
“Gggaaahhh,” Hollysharp screamed, throwing her hands up over her head in exasperation as she began swimming away from the trio, “Do any of you understand what another magic shield is going to mean for mana accumulation crystal usage?” Looking back at their uncomprehending faces, she angrily pointed at the black coral ship. “That’s a total of twenty accumulation crystals.” Not seeing what she considered to be the proper outrage at such an insane amount of crystals, the Gnomeling tried to put it into what she considered to be layman’s terms.
“That’s basically the same amount that would be needed to purchase five trader ships like the Wind Dancer if they didn’t have Flame Spitters.” Seeing the proper reaction this time around, Hollysharp turned back towards the black coral ship as she continued bitching up a storm about having to run new runic lines of power for the additional Air Shield.
While Oránn didn’t truly understand the worth of the mana accumulation crystals in land-dweller terms, the price that Femdi Deepwater had quoted them in the amount of Black Coral Armored suits for the House of Kayden forces was steep to put it mildly. At least, it would be for the amount of work it was going to take for them to build the five thousand suits of armor necessary to pay for the first batch of twenty crystals that they’d purchased. That didn’t include the cost they were going to have to pay for the next twenty mana accumulation crystals that they’d ordered from the Gnomeling Captain. The Sea Elf Master Builder’s internal contemplation was disrupted when the Badgerkin female turned to her.
“Aren’t you going to give the esteemed Prustine Hollysharp a hand with etching out the needed runic lines of power?” Honey mockingly asked as her blue eyes locked onto Oránn.
“You do realize that I’ve had to work under that pompous Gnomeling Engineer for an entire week before the two of you showed up?” Oránn asked in an indignant tone. Not that she blamed the Badgerkin female in the least for being riled up at the Gnomeling’s attitude.
“It can’t have been that bad for you,” Lara said in a strained voice as her ears flattened in anger against her skull, “She at least respects your Water Shaman capability.”
“Trust me,” Oránn said, forcibly trying to keep her voice even, “that change only occurred the day before you arrived.” The dark blue skin of her cheeks darkened to nearly pure black as she angrily thought back to the first few days that she had to deal with the obnoxious Gnomeling. “Up until then, she treated me no differently than she has the two of you.” Conflicted emotions crossed her face as she met both of the Beast Kin females’ gazes. “If not for the need of my people for Hollysharp’s expertise, I would’ve beaten her to within an inch of her life the first time she’d called me a Fish-Elf.”
“A Fish-Elf?” Honey choked out before she could stop herself, “Why a Fish-Elf of all things?”
“Oh no,” Lara said as her eyes got wide, “she accused your people of-”
“Interbreeding with fish,” Oránn finished for the Grimalkin female.
“Is that how Sea Elves came to live under the ocean,” Honey asked in astonishment, unable to hold back her tongue in spite of herself as the Sea Elf female gave her a pained look.
“Wow, that sounds just like how Badgerkin came about,” Lara snarkily said, “but you know, with a Human instead of a fish.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean it like that,” Honey said, letting out a heavy sigh, “it’s just ...”
“That Hollysharp is vexing to deal with for all of us,” Lara diplomatically finished, as she gave her fellow Beast Kin a warning elbow in the ribs. This was the first time that either one of them had felt like they were getting a handle on the odd situation that they’d found themselves in. If not for the promise that they’d given to Lord Ironwolf to assist with crafting the new vessel, they would’ve given Hollysharp a piece of their minds with a couple solid blows to emphasize their distaste for her caustic tongue.
“That is the understatement of the year,” Oránn agreed, as she glanced back at the animated Gnomeling that was still bitching up a storm. Holding up a hand to stop the two females from explaining further, she continued in a tired voice, “Hollysharp will be impossible to work with until she calms down and gets the runic lines needed to power the Air Shield engraved, which means, regardless of her disrespect for your individual races, she recognizes the logic of your argument.” A wry smile came to her lips. “Not that it will make much of a difference when she asks for your assistance with creating the rune for the Air Shield.”
“She’ll still be obnoxious to deal with,” Lara said in understanding.
“Nonetheless, this is how we serve the needs of our people,” Oránn said, nodding in agreement. Offering both Beast Kin a polite bow, she excused herself, “If you’ll excuse me, I must go now to work on the projects needed by my own people to fight against the Sekolahian Empire.”
“If my Air Shaman expertise can be of use to what you’re building,” Lara said, bowing her head, “I’d be happy to lend my assistance to an ally.”
“We’d be happy to lend our aid to an ally,” Honey corrected her friend, as she floated forward and bowed.
“You both honor my people and our alliance,” Oránn said, feeling somewhat conflicted at the Beast Kins offer of help.
While Sea Elves weren’t used to asking for or receiving help from Land-dwellers, especially not from Beast Kin that were so physically at odds with those of the sea, she nonetheless couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of comradery with the females. If they came together in a solid front, maybe Hollysharp would be forced to treat them with a little more curtesy. Not only that, her people could use all the help they could get in preparing for the next push by the Sekolahian Empire.
“Right now, we are busy engraving runic lines of power on the Red Coral that has been grown to hold the defensive towers that Lord Ironwolf described for the defense of Auris Shaeras,” Oránn explained, “After watching Hollysharp work, I came up with a design that will allow us to use the full power of the mana accumulation crystals against any direction of assault. The only difficulty of the design,” her cheeks darkened in embarrassment as she admitted her error to these two land-dwellers, “was that it has created the need to engrave leagues of runic lines of power. So, any assistance with that difficult task would be greatly appreciated.”
“That’s not a
problem,” Lara said with a flick of an ear, “we have little to keep us busy while we wait for Lord Ironwolf’s return.”
“Besides, I believe learning the runic art of engraving would be much easier coming from you than Holly-Twat,” Honey added, as the three females shared a knowing look.
“If you’ll follow me,” Oránn said as she began slowly swimming towards the exit, “I’ll explain the basic concept for the design and then teach you the engraving process.”
It was going to take much longer for Oránn to make the trip back to Auris Shaeras than usual due to the land-dwellers slowness in the water. Although that wasn't really a big surprise, Sea Elves were used to the land-dwellers being clumsy in their watery environment. While in the past many of her fellow Sea Elves would’ve thought this proved the inferiority of the other races, Oránn now understood that there were other abilities that these land-dwellers possessed which was worthy of respect.
Besides, she’d heard from numerous Red Coral Knights that the realm of air and land held many of its own difficulties that their people had trouble facing. At the time, she had not thought the differences worth noting. That was mostly because of the belief that Sea Elves were superior to that of the other races within the Norden Region, which had always been based on their race’s ability to function on both the land and under the sea. Though, ever since their entire race and civilization had been nearly destroyed by what they’d previously considered to be an inferior species, that belief had been shaken to its core. All of the survivors were now left to question their societal beliefs that had led to such brutal deaths for so many of their fellow Sea Elves.
