Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series

by Darren Pillsbury

  Crap –

  Without thinking, he ran as fast as he could to the horse’s side. As it kicked backwards in panic at the tentacles, Daniel managed to avoid its hooves and grab the burlap bag and pull it out of the saddle.

  With one sweeping motion he threw off both the bag and the scabbard.

  The sword gleamed bright in the sunlight as he swung it overhead –

  THOCK!

  The tentacle split in half, green blood spewing everywhere.

  The horse tore off and raced up the grassy slope, the upper half of the tentacle still squirming around its leg.

  “Get back, get back!” the dwarf yelled.

  “Vee kahn keel eet!” the barbarian roared as he continued slicing tentacles.

  “It’s not worth it – get back, get – ”

  Suddenly a tentacle snagged the barbarian’s leg, and his feet were pulled out from under him as he disappeared into the water.

  “NO!” Daniel screamed. He waded in, hacking and slashing –

  “NO, BOY!” the dwarf shouted, grabbing him by the arm, trying to pull him back. “He’s gone – ”

  Suddenly Lotan the fish-man erupted from the water, swinging his sword in one hand, hauling the barbarian to shore with the other.

  “HELP HIM!” Daniel screamed at the others.

  Mira redoubled her efforts, sinking arrow after arrow into the creature’s tentacles.

  The goblin splashed into the water, scything and slashing for all he was worth.

  And Daniel broke free of Simik and hacked at the tentacle still holding the barbarian’s leg.

  Even Simik relented, and began pounding the thing’s other tentacles with his hammer.

  Finally Daniel cut through the slimy arm, and Simik and Vlisil scrabbled over to help Lotan drag the barbarian up onto the shore.

  The creature must have decided it had had enough. It retreated with the one horse carcass and a quarter of its severed limbs back into the pond, where the surface foamed green with its blood.

  Drogar the barbarian lay there on the ground, coughing up water in the grass, trying to catch his breath.

  The rest of the group stood there, panting, staring at each other in shock –

  Until the goblin cried out, “WE WON!”

  Everyone burst into a cheer and a whoop of joy.

  Well, almost everyone. Not the dwarf, although he did smile, which was a first as far as Daniel knew of.

  Almost as welcome were the increases to his stats:

  Sword fighting: +5

  Dexterity: +2

  Strength: +1

  “Hey – hey – I leveled up!” the goblin whooped.

  Simik looked at him as though he was crazy. “‘Leveled up’? What goblin nonsense is that?”

  Drogar staggered to his feet and clapped the fish-man on the back. “Holee crahp, mahn, you are a bahd mofo!”

  “I told you guys I was good with bodies of water,” the fish-man beamed.

  “Thonks, guys, you saved my ahss,” Drogar said. He looked gratefully around the group –

  Until his eyes fell on something further up the lake bank.

  “YOU!” he roared.

  Daniel looked around.

  There stood Eric about thirty feet away from the pond, exactly in the same spot as when the attack had begun.

  For the first time since the melee began, Daniel realized that everyone had attacked the monster –

  Except Eric.

  His best friend looked distressed and embarrassed as the barbarian singled him out.

  “YOU, you cowardly little preeck – where were you?! Even the gobleen and the fish guy fought that freakeeng thing – but where were YOU?!”

  “I’m – I’m not really good enough at the basics yet,” Eric said apologetically.

  “I don’t care!” Drogar shouted as he stomped up the bank. “You could have helped – you could haf done sometheeng, anytheeng – ”

  “Why don’t you get mad at the dwarf, huh?” Eric snapped. “He’s the one who picked the damn pond with Cthulhu in it!”

  “It’s a quest, dumb-ahss! You’re supposed to fight monsters – but you and your stupeed rings and necklaces – what the hell good are they if you do not fight, huh?” The barbarian began stabbing his massive finger at Eric’s chest, forcing him backward with every poke. “Why the hell didn’t you fight, you coward?”

  Eric’s face contorted in rage. His hands clenched into fists at his side.

  He was no longer embarrassed – he was livid.

  Daniel had seen that look before, and he didn’t like where it might lead.

  “Hey – HEY!” Daniel said, running over, putting himself between his best friend and the barbarian. “He’s a beginner, he already said so.”

  “They’re beginners – they fought,” Drogar shouted, pointing back at Vlisil, Lotan, and Mira. “You’re a beginner – you fought. Why didn’t he?”

  “Come on, man,” Daniel said, trying to pull the barbarian away. “Chill.”

  The barbarian let himself be led away, though he scowled the entire time.

  “Only ‘cause you helped save my life, doot,” he said to Daniel, then turned back to Eric. “But YOU – you better freakeeng FIGHT next time, man, or I’ll keel you myself!”

  “Just try it, you overgrown roid rage bastard,” Eric snapped.

  “YOU LEETLE – ” the barbarian roared as he started back up the slope.

  “STOP!” Daniel shouted, and stepped in between them with his gleaming sword out.

  The barbarian halted and fumed.

  “This isn’t helping things,” Daniel said as calmly as he could to Drogar. “You said it yourself – I helped save your life, so do me a solid, huh? Just… go. Let me handle this. And don’t say anything else.”

  “But – ”

  “GO.”

  “We need to go get the horses anyway,” Simik announced brusquely, “or it’s going to be a hell of a long walk.”

  What the dwarf said was true: only half of the horses were visible, and they were tiny dots in the distance, having run far away to escape the thing in the pond.

  Drogar scowled, but finally turned and followed the others as they trudged back to the road in embarrassed silence.

  Daniel turned to his friend. “You alright?”

  “I could’ve handled that,” Eric snarled.

  “I know, I know,” Daniel said calmly. “I was just trying to help.”

  Eric stared after the barbarian, his eyes two focused points of hatred. “That asshole – he’s just like Trent Lockner!”

  Daniel had to think for a second. The reference was another world away, a place with schools and homework and boredom instead of goblins and monsters and quests.

  The school bully. The jock king of high school.

  Who, it just so happened, had picked on Eric the day before.

  “He’s not like Trent. Trent’s an asshole. That guy – ” Daniel looked up towards the road at the hulking barbarian. “He’s just some keyboard jockey from Romania who chose an oversized body. Back in real life, he’s probably five foot two and has horrible B.O.”

  Eric looked at his friend – and suddenly the storm clouds broke. He laughed, however grudgingly.

  “Well, we know he speaks ridiculous English,” Eric snorted.

  “Yeah. Don’t let him get to you.”

  “…I won’t.”

  “Alright, let’s go,” Daniel said, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

  “Don’t forget your scabbard.”

  “Oh yeah…”

  Daniel retrieved the jewel-encrusted sheath from the ground, then reached for the discarded burlap bag.

  “I think you can probably wear it out in the open now,” Eric said, amused. “Everybody’s kind of seen it already.”

  “…oh yeah…” Daniel said, but he still grabbed the burlap bag. “I’ve still got to smuggle it back into Blackstone, though.”

  “If we even go back to Blackstone. Maybe we’ll go someplace
better after all this is over.”

  “Maybe,” Daniel said. He sheathed his sword, hooked it to his belt, and walked back towards the group with his friend. “Maybe.”

  47

  Mira was the first to ask about it. “Where’d you get that sword?”

  He hated to lie to her, but he was too ashamed to tell the truth.

  Or the whole truth, anyway.

  “I, uh… remember when we met in Blackstone, and I said I’d tell you what I’d been up to?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, when we first entered the game, Eric and I became apprentices to a thief. It, uh… didn’t work out. Eric took off to become a mage, and I left. When I did, I kind of… um… helped myself to some of the stuff he had lying around.”

  She smirked. “Like enough gold coins to pay for a quest?”

  “…yeah.”

  “And that sword, too?”

  “…yeah.”

  She laughed. “Why’re you acting so guilty? You were stealing from a thief – I’d say he deserved it.”

  He thought of the old man dying on the floor of the mansion.

  “Yeah,” Daniel said, and forced himself to smile.

  After that, he found his horse, swung up into the saddle, and helped track down the others’ rides.

  During the next half hour, he retold the story twice – once to Drogar, and again to Lotan and Vlisil when they asked, Dude, where’d you get the sweet sword?

  He noticed that the only person who didn’t ask – besides Eric, who already knew where it came from – was Simik.

  That didn’t come until later that evening, once they’d stopped to make camp for the night.

  The sun was going down over the horizon in a beautiful furnace of pink and orange as the dwarf ordered everyone around.

  “You – barbarian – gather big logs. We’ll need it for a fire to last all night. Goblin – you get the kindling. Droth – help the goblin. The rest of you, get to cooking. The ‘swordsman’ and I have to practice.”

  Vlisil looked up petulantly. “Why does he get to practice sword fighting and the rest of us have to work?”

  “Because he’s paying me a gold piece a day, and I wouldn’t even be here if not for that, so get to work,” the dwarf snapped.

  “But… I don’t know how to cook,” Eric said.

  Everyone turned their eyes to Mira.

  “Don’t look at me, you sexist pigs,” she said. “I don’t know how to cook just because I’m a girl.”

  “Fine – you two gather kindling, and the goblin or the droth can cook.”

  Simik was met with a look of blank faces from the others.

  “Does anyone here know how to cook?” the dwarf fumed.

  “Dere is not a microwaaf here,” the barbarian said, suddenly abashed.

  “What in Ygart’s name is a ‘microwaaf’?!” the dwarf raged. Before anyone could attempt to answer, he shouted, “Never mind! Eat some of the jerky from the pack horses and I’ll cook dinner when I’m finished, damn it! Come, boy, and bring your fancy rat-sticker!”

  Daniel followed the dwarf several hundred feet away from everyone else. Once they were separated from the others, the dwarf held out his hand. “Let me see it.”

  Daniel handed it over.

  Simik pulled the sword out of the jeweled scabbard and inspected the blade. “Might I inquire as to where you got this?”

  “Uh… you know…”

  “No, I don’t, or I wouldn’t have asked. Although I would wager the same place you stole all those gold coins and diamonds.”

  Daniel blushed from shame. “Maybe this was a bad – ”

  “Do you know anything about this sword?” the dwarf interrupted.

  Daniel swallowed, then shook his head silently.

  “It is a dwarvish blade, forged by a master craftsman named Gronil over 300 years ago. It was presented as a gift to a human nobleman – Lord Naughton of Esquitaine – who fought side by side with the dwarves in the Battle of Vimylt. His bravery helped safeguard the dwarves’ lands from a marauding army of orcs. Lord Naughton’s descendants still live in Blackstone to this day. In fact, their ancestral house was burglarized three nights ago, at which point this sword and a great deal of money was stolen. Not to mention that the lord of the manor was murdered by the thieves.”

  Daniel felt like he was going to throw up right then and there. He looked shamefacedly at the ground.

  “Now, I won’t go into the fraught history between Blackstone and the dwarves – how the House of Naughton actually betrayed my people eighty-some years ago in order to acquire their lands. And I won’t lie and say that I’m not happy that this sword, the handiwork of a great and honorable member of my tribe, is no longer in the possession of a family universally despised throughout the dwarven world. And yet, it distresses me that I might be in the company of the cutthroat who took it. Or perhaps in the presence of two of them.”

  Daniel opened his mouth, trying to explain – but no words would come out.

  “However,” the dwarf continued, “today I saw one of the culprits use that same sword to save a comrade – a worthless gromk of a Hurokian who can barely string together a comprehensible sentence – simply because they were both on the same quest. Mind you, I even urged this thieving scoundrel to save himself and let the barbarian perish – but he ignored me, and waded into battle with a vicious monster with no thought given to his own safety. And because of that act of bravery, he – with his comrades, and this sword – he saved the barbarian’s life.”

  Daniel looked up, his eyes wide, suddenly hopeful.

  “So… I cannot say that the sword is in unworthy hands, as it was just three nights ago when it hung in the halls of the House of Naughton. But having proven himself honorable once, I would expect that same human – who now knows of the history of the sword – to return it to its proper place. For eighty years the dwarves asked for this sword back, and it was never returned – but we would never have thought to steal it. It was a gift given in good faith, and no such thing should ever be stolen back. Likewise, an object so imbued with honor should not be dishonored by the actions of a man who should know better… who is worth better. I trust that once this quest is through, you will return it to its rightful owners. As a matter of honor. Because stolen valor is no valor at all.”

  The dwarf sheathed the sword and held it out.

  Daniel took it back with trembling hands and nodded. “I… I will. I promise.”

  “Good, then. We should begin our training for the evening,” Simik said, and went about the lesson as though nothing unusual had been said.

  But as he lay by the dying fire that night, gazing up at the stars, about to log off and return to the real world, Daniel swore to himself:

  I will return the sword.

  And somehow, I’ll make everything right.

  48

  They logged off at night when their characters went to sleep, took a couple of hours’ break in the real world, and then came back to play during daylight in the Shattered Lands.

  Things were a little odd sometimes. When Drogar’s time difference caught up to him – after all, he was in Romania in the real world, ten time zones away – he would just go along on the quest like a zombie, sitting up straight in his saddle, not saying anything. When he fought, he would do it on autopilot with no emotion at all. And then suddenly he would be back, shouting things like “Doot!” and “Hell yah!” as he fought his way through enemies.

  As an NPC, the dwarf had no idea why the barbarian acted oddly at times, but he definitely had his opinion on the matter: “I prefer him when he shuts the hell up.”

  “Amen,” Eric agreed.

  Daniel practiced swordsmanship a couple of hours every evening.

  The dwarf taught them all the basics of cooking, allowing them to level up their skills so they wouldn’t starve.

  And there was a lot of horseback riding.

  Other than that, the rest of the trip went like any good quest: a lo
t of interesting bumps in the road.

  There was the beautiful woman in the woods they found tied up and hanging upside-down twenty feet above the forest floor. She screamed in pain and pleaded with them to release her, warning them of the psychopathic knight who had imprisoned her this way. When they cut her down – against Simik’s protests – it turned out the coils of rope were hiding harpy’s wings and clawed hands and feet. Once freed, she flew and slashed her way overhead until one of Mira’s arrows brought her down.

  Then there was something Simik called a belethok – a rampaging, moose-like creature that nearly trampled them to death in a swamp. Lotan saved the day by swimming up under the monster and gutting it with his sword.

  Next was a swarm of humanoids that looked like spiders – eight arms, pale fleshy skin, and red eyes. They bound up the goblin and Mira in silk-like strands they vomited from their mouths – that is, until Drogar and Daniel hacked and sliced their way through and sent the loathsome creatures scrambling back to their nest.

  There was a small band of orcs they had to engage in combat; a hydra-like creature with eleven heads; and even a rival band of adventurers they fought until realizing that they were human players and not NPCs. After the confusion was sorted out, they all agreed to let bygones be bygones and went on their way.

  The entire time, Daniel’s fighting prowess grew by leaps and bounds. He leveled up twice, and gained stamina, strength, and fighting skills.

  So did the others. Mira increased the accuracy of her shots to deadly precision. The barbarian turned into a nigh unstoppable force. Even the goblin became a scrappy little underfoot fighter. And Lotan was their secret weapon every time he got into a body of water.

  The only person who made virtually no progress at all was Eric.

  He would hang back from the action, casting ineffectual attacks and blocking spells that added virtually nothing to the battle. His ice attacks were weak, his fire attacks were pathetic, and his blocking could barely stop a single blow from an enemy.

  His healing spells were the worst of all. He could contribute maybe five hit points at best during battles, and that only sporadically. Basically, everyone would attack in a tightly coordinated plan – and if they were wounded, they would back off until they had sufficiently recovered, often with little to no help from Eric.