Dead Man Gaming

by A. J. Markam

“Russell – get over here!” Jen shouted. “I’m not going to be able to withstand a direct onslaught from this guy!”

  As if on cue, a silver-plated cannonball slammed into the back of the male vampire, who cried out in pain as he fell to the floor.

  “As ordered, one dung-stained goblin, coming up!” Russell yelled cheerily as he slammed his hammer down on the vampire’s spine.

  For any human in the real world, that strike would’ve been a paralyzing blow – maybe even a killing one. But the male vampire just roared as his hit points dropped to 70%.

  70%.

  This guy could have killed me with one flick of his finger, but a direct hit from Russell’s hammer only cost him 20% of his overall hit points.

  This was insane.

  Slothfart wasn’t doing any better against the sister. She kept sneering at him and taunting him with things like, “I’m going to enjoy mounting your head on the wall! Maybe I’ll make garters out of your innards!”

  “Maybe you can use my dong as something, too!” he yelled as he went after her with the sword.

  Sira Borellian might have looked like a 98-pound skinny chick, but she packed the power of ten NFL linebackers. She grabbed Slothfart by his chain-mail armor and launched him across the room. He landed on the table, splintering it all to hell.

  “Guys,” Richard said calmly, “perhaps we need to think about a strategy here?”

  “Richard’s right – everybody, concentrate on the brother, he’s got fewer hit points!” Jen yelled. “Ignore the bitch until the other one’s dead!”

  Instead of re-engaging the sister, Slothfart ran for the brother. He started slashing him from one side with his scimitar. Russell started bashing him with his hammer on the other, and Jen slammed him with bolt after bolt of ice.

  “No – damn you!” the brother roared as his hit points rapidly dropped.

  The sister screeched and attacked Slothfart from behind.

  “Richard – concentrate on keeping Slothfart alive, but everybody else, kill that blond bastard!”

  Richard shot wave after purple wave of healing energy into Slothfart, who was weathering the sister’s attacks as best he could while delivering his own strikes against the brother.

  Under the combined onslaught, Brantum was nearly powerless. His hit points fell to 20%, then 10%, then only 1 or 2% remaining.

  “How did you say you can kill a vampire, Richie?” Slothfart asked. “Wasn’t there something about decapitation?”

  With a silver flash of the orc’s scimitar, the vampire’s head separated from his body and flew through the air.

  As soon as it happened, there was a burst of golden light all around me, and the words ‘Level 9’ appeared, followed by You have earned a new talent point! and the appearance of a new Skill icon.

  I didn’t have time to enjoy the moment, however.

  There was a scream of horror – not just from the sister, but from the mother up on the balcony as well.

  “NO!” she shrieked. “You vile peasants – you’ve killed my only son! Prepare to die the most excruciating death imaginable!”

  “Ignore her!” Jen yelled. “Focus on the sister!”

  Slothfart turned around and started giving back to the sister as much damage as she’d doled out. Russell joined in with his signature cannonball move and slammed into the sister’s belly.

  Suddenly a high-pitched shriek – so horrible, so earsplitting that it felt like a drill in my eardrums – rang out through the ballroom. We all fell to our knees in agony.

  The scream finally let up after what seemed like an eternity, but my eyes were still watering, and I could barely get to my feet.

  “She has some kind of sonic attack!” Jen yelled. “Kill the sister, then focus on the mother!”

  The sister’s hit points were dropping rapidly, but she was still handing out punishment to Slothfart and Russell. At one point she tossed them both aside, and then began to hover five feet above the ground. She still had about 10% of her hit points left.

  “You are all going to die – ”

  She didn’t get to finish the sentence, because Richard leapt up in the air, transformed into a puma, and came down on top of her.

  Normally it wouldn’t have been enough to finish her off – but the difference was, they landed on top of the table.

  The splintered, jagged, wooden remains of the table.

  A spike of wood punched through Sira’s back and poked out of her chest.

  The puma tumbled off of her, obviously hurting – but as Richard returned to troll form, he directed swirls of purple energy into his own body and healed himself.

  The girl vampire gasped one last breath, then collapsed.

  “You SWINE!” the mother howled, and begin to levitate in the air and move through the ballroom. “You will pay for my daughter with your souls!”

  Then she screamed again, her banshee’s wail threatening to rupture all of our eardrums.

  That is, until the rain of ice stalactites slammed into her from above. The mother hit the ground with a two-foot-long shard piercing her middle. It wasn’t enough to kill her outright – after all, it was ice instead of wood – but it took a good chunk of her hit points with it.

  “You loathsome worms,” she screamed, “I will flay the skin from your bones – ”

  And then suddenly she was encased in ice from head to foot.

  “Shut up, bitch,” Jen snapped, then yelled at the others, “Take her out!”

  Russell and Slothfart didn’t have to be told twice. They ran over and began wailing on her like they were smashing rocks on a chain gang.

  The vampire matriarch shrieked her ultrasonic scream and blew the ice away from her, then proceeded to wrack us with unimaginable pain. Everyone staggered backwards, which gave her time to get to her feet.

  The woman only had a couple more hit points left when Jennifer shot a ray of frost and encased her head – and only her head – in ice.

  “Finish her off!” Jennifer yelled.

  Russell was in front of the vampiress, and Slothfart was in back of her. They exchanged a look, nodded, and then lunged at her at the same time.

  The goblin’s hammer slammed into the matriarch’s chest from the front, and the orc’s scimitar cleaved through her waist from the back.

  The two halves of Baroness Madela flew off in different directions, her body torn in two.

  “Well, if that doesn’t kill her, at least she’s decidedly less mobile,” Richard quipped.

  He shouldn’t have been so lighthearted, though. The battle wasn’t over yet.

  The remaining vampire’s voice boomed angrily through the hall. “You’ve slaughtered my children… you have destroyed the love of my life… and now I will see you rot in hell for the rest of eternity.”

  The patriarch reached out with his arms, and snaking bolts of scarlet energy tore out of his hands and into the air. They looked like tendrils of fog, except they glowed a bright neon red and crackled like ten thousand volts of electricity.

  A different strand grabbed every single person in the hall by the throat –

  Except for me.

  I don’t know if it was because I was in Stealth and he didn’t know I existed, but the crimson energy didn’t touch me.

  The wisps of red fog begin to strangle them. Actually, it was a like a combo of strangling and electrocution. I saw my friends’ hit points drop dramatically as they were lifted off their feet and screamed in agony.

  I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea how to stop it or how to get them down.

  Suddenly, the red fog dissipated, and they all dropped in crumpled piles onto the floor.

  “Insignificant gnats,” the vampire sneered as he levitated over the banister and lowered himself down to the floor. “You think you can challenge me, Kieris Borellian, in my own house? When I signed away my soul for immortality, did you not think I would anticipate someone like you would come someday? Did you not think I would gain the power to destroy you all?”


  “Richard, heal Russell!” Jen yelled. “He’s got to take the aggro or we’re finished!”

  “On it,” Richard coughed, and shot out purple bolts at Russell.

  The goblin raced over the ground and threw his hammer. It slammed into the vampire’s side, knocking a few percentage points off of him, but the baron did little more than wince.

  Next Russell threw his shield and knocked off another percentage point or two – but the old bastard pulled a new trick. He dissolved in a flash of darkness, then zipped behind Russell and reappeared in human form. It was like watching a black-colored lightning strike.

  The vampire kicked Russell in the back and send him tumbling head over heels.

  “I am going to do as my daughter suggested,” the Baron said. “I’m going to mount each of your heads on my walls, so that I might mock you for the rest of eternity, you insignificant worms.”

  Slothfart rushed at the vampire. The scimitar flashed and inflicted a few percentage points of damage, but didn’t do much else.

  The vampire grabbed Slothfart by the throat and slammed him into the wall so hard that stones were knocked loose all around him. As a result, the orc’s hit points dropped by 25%.

  “Should I heal him?” Richard yelled.

  “No,” Jen yelled, “focus on Russell! Seth, drink whatever potions you’ve got!”

  “Okay!” the orc yelled, and pulled a vial of red liquid out of his bag. He popped the cork off the top, drank it, and then threw the glass away.

  Meanwhile, Jen was slamming the vampire with every ice weapon she had in her arsenal. She was slowly dropping the bastard’s hit points, but not by much.

  Russell leapt up again and slammed into the vampire head-on. Another couple of percentage points down, but the Baron was still at 60% – and everybody else in the room was barely hanging on.

  Then he started up the neon fog again.

  “Oh crap!” Slothfart yelled as the fog gripped him by the throat. Again, everybody but me levitated off the ground, kicking their legs and struggling to breathe as the red fog electrocuted them.

  Even more disheartening, the vampire’s hit points were creeping back up. I could see them increasing little by little as my friends’ hit points slowly drained.

  Slothfart was the first to go. The orc had sustained a massive amount of damage with a minimal amount of healing from Richard, and apparently the red flask hadn’t been enough to lift him above the danger point. I watched helplessly as his hit points dropped away to zero, and then suddenly his body disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  That was the point at which the fog ran out, and everyone in the room collapsed on the floor.

  Well, everyone but me and Slothfart – because the orc was gone.

  “Should I resurrect him?” Richard called out. “It’ll take 15 seconds – ”

  “No, there’s no time!” Jen yelled. “It’s a war of attrition now! Richard, heal Russell – Russell, hit the vamp with everything you’ve got!”

  Russell screamed, “Bloody bastard!” and ran as fast as he could straight for the vampire. First the hammer and then the shield slammed into the patriarch –

  And a column of fire rained down from above.

  The vampire screamed as his skin blackened and charred, and his jacket and shirt were reduced to ash. His face, his hair, and every bit of his upper body was turned completely black.

  Then he roared in rage, and the burned crust on his upper body flew off. What was left was a pulsating mass of red muscle, with two glowing red eyes glittering out of a horror mask of exposed tissue.

  “Why didn’t you hit him with Holy Fire before?!” Jen yelled at Russell.

  “Nobody said anything about fire hurting him!” Russell yelled back.

  “Well, hit him again!”

  “I can’t – it’s got a two-minute cooldown!”

  The vampire’s hit points had dropped down to 20% – but he was still very much alive.

  “That was painful, goblin,” the vampires snarled. “Here… let me show you.”

  Suddenly the Baron disappeared in a burst of black shadow, then reformed right behind the little Paladin.

  “Russell!” Jen screamed. “Look out!”

  There wasn’t time for the goblin to react, though.

  The raw-meat arm gripped Russell by the neck, lifted him into the air – and then bashed him headfirst against the table.

  There was a sickening CRACK! as the goblin’s hit points dropped to zero.

  A second later, his body disappeared.

  “Richard, it’s just you and me now!” Jen yelled she flung ice attacks at the vampire. “You gotta keep us alive until we can finish him off!”

  “Can the others make it back?” Richard shouted.

  “They’d have to fight through everything we didn’t kill on the way here – so there’s no way they’ll get here in time! Just keep healing yourself and me, and let me try to deal with him!”

  And so it went – ice attacks slamming into the vampire, knocking off a percentage point or two; Richard healing Jen as fast as he could; and then suddenly the Baron came up with a new trick.

  He thrust his arms out, and hands turned into black mist. Out of the darkness flew dozens of tiny, flapping bats that screeched as they shot across the ballroom floor.

  Jen screamed as the bats slammed into her, knocking off hit points with every impact. Richard was trying to heal them both, but he began to succumb to the bat attack as well.

  As soon as the bat attack died away, the vampire strode towards them. “You have fought well, I grant you that. Valiantly, even. But you are nothing more than common scum… and that is why you could never beat someone like me.”

  Then he began the crimson fog assault again, heaving both Jen and Richard off their feet, electrocuting and strangling them at the same time.

  I watched in despair as their hit points dropped dangerously low. I checked my action bar frantically, hoping against hope that my latest skill was some kind of vampire nuclear bomb.

  Shadow Strike.

  When I hovered my finger over the icon, words appeared: Strike from the shadows without leaving Stealth.

  Any other time, I would have been overjoyed. I can stab people and still stay invisible? AWESOME!

  But even with this new ability, I knew there wasn’t much I could do. There was no way my daggers were going to be able to inflict much damage, but I couldn’t stand by and watch my remaining friends get slaughtered.

  I looked over at the table, at all the jagged pieces of wood jutting up, and recalled how Richard had body-slammed the daughter into the pile.

  Can we do that again? I wondered.

  Then I thought, Wait – what if I could bring the pile to HIM?

  I checked my action bar again. Shadow Strike said nothing about using a weapon. Or at least, didn’t specify that it had to be a specific type of weapon.

  Maybe a piece of jagged wood might qualify…

  I might as well take a shot. If I failed, I died with them, and we were all in the same boat. If I succeeded – well…

  Still in Stealth mode, I ran across the hall to the shattered table.

  Saying something or bumping up against somebody would take me out of Stealth – but would picking up an object?

  I was about to find out.

  One of the shards of wood glowed the faintest yellow around the edges. I grabbed it and pulled it out of the pile of wreckage.

  It was like a ready-made dagger, sharp and pointy.

  I turned around. The vampire was still in the middle of his crimson fog onslaught. Richard and Jen were dangling ten feet above the ground, their hit points almost at zero.

  The vampire was down to maybe 15% hit points.

  Would it be enough?

  “And now, you two little toads,” the Baron snarled, “say hello to my wife and children when you see them in hell!”

  First I pushed Fleet Foot. Then, as I raced right at the vampire, I thought Shadow Strike!
/>   And I slammed the stake between the guy’s shoulder blades.

  It was like driving a wooden spike through a piece of raw pot roast.

  He screamed and fell to the ground. As he did, the red fog cut out.

  Jen and Richard tumbled to the ground and collapsed in a heap, barely alive.

  The vampire rolled onto his side and stared up at me. Or stared through me, more accurately. I hadn’t come out of Stealth yet.

  Shadow Strike worked!

  “Who…?” the vampire asked, his voice quivering in rage and agony.

  “Me,” I said as I raised my foot, came out of Stealth, and slammed my boot down on his chest.

  The wooden spike had apparently stopped halfway into the vampire’s body. Apparently Fleet Foot gave my foot stomp a little extra power I hadn’t been expecting. My kick forced him all the way down onto the ground, and the spike shoved all the way out of his chest, its sharp point jutting out through the muscle.

  Above his head, the hit point meter dropped to zero.

  He screamed in agony, and then exploded in a swarm of black bats. They flew past me, flapped up towards the shadows along the ceiling, and then dissolved into nothingness.

  I looked around at Jen and Richard.

  Richard said calmly, “I think I can speak for everyone when I say, ‘Holy shit.”

  “I’ll second that,” Jen said, shocked.

  Suddenly ‘4000 XP’ appeared in the air – and both Jen and Richard were suffused in a golden light.

  Not only that, but somewhere outside the walls of the mansion, I could have sworn I heard two voices scream in excitement.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “It’s Seth and Russell,” Jen said.

  “Where are they?!”

  “They must have resurrected in the servants’ graveyard outside.”

  The place I’d reappeared when the ghosts killed me.

  “So you guys all guys leveled up!” I exclaimed.

  “We did,” Jen agreed as she staggered to her feet. “Thanks to you.”

  Richard healed Jen with a wave of purple energy, but he looked at me as he spoke. “I think I can speak for everyone again – and especially Seth – when I say, ‘I knew it was a good idea to bring you along.’”

  I beamed, happier than I’d been since I entered the game.