by ilo man
The farmlands petered out towards noon, replaced by rolling dales. Their route was now deserted, and though they’d only passed a few southbound travelers, none had seen Fin; none had seen a lonesome woman traveling north, none had seen The Wanton Witch.
“Are we sure?” Vinnie eventually asked.
“Sure what?”
“That’s she’s gone north—that she hasn’t just…you know.”
“She’s no quitter,” Angel muttered, but there was doubt in her tone.
They left the road late afternoon, their journey already establishing a pattern. Angel weaved her way through copses and bursts of bushes until she found a secluded spot near a little pond. An ample bank offered them a quiet place to camp out.
“You build the shelter; I’ll go hunt,” she told him, tethered the horses on a long leash and then slipped into the trees.
Vinnie did what he could, draping a blanket, fashioning a poorly constructed frame out of branches and then attempting to build a fire. Angel returned, two freshly slaughtered rabbits hanging from a pole. She laughed at his feeble attempts, but then showed him how. Once she had the fire going, a pot dangling over, and a decent shelter up, they sat back and smoked.
“What the fuck would you have done on your own?” She asked.
“Rolled under a bush,” he told her.
“You first, or me?”
“For?”
“A bath in the pond, guessin’ we’re both smelling a bit ripe.”
“You go first; I’ll be the lookout.”
She grinned. “Cool, and if you like what you see...” She shrugged. “Only if you’re the outdoors sort.”
He sat back, watching her as she stood and stripped. There was no doubt about it, Angel was one, sexy woman. She played to him too, lingering before her cute ass went under the water, turning as she sank breast-deep. His virility played merry hell with his mind, with his balls, pressure building, and his dick about to whistle like a boiling kettle. Every sinew in his body strained to hold him on that bank, to prevent his running in and jumping her there and then.
“Your turn,” she said after a while, emerging, dripping wet.
He darted in, his boner throbbing, the cool water helping calm him. His gaze kept straying back to Angel, just a blanket covering her modesty.
“Why’s the water glowing gold?” she asked, all of a sudden.
Vinnie heard laughter.
A vague memory crossed his mind, a thought, an unheeded warning.
The pond shone gold against the near-night backdrop. Vinnie assumed it was the setting sun, some reflection of its amber. Then he felt cold fingers around his shaft, tearing at his ring and pulling on his cock. He screamed and thrashed around as blue faces glared up at him. Twisted faces, girl’s faces, nymph faces, lips curled, snarling at him, pulling at him.
He saw the flash of a blade and started truly panicking.
“Nymphs!” he shouted.
“Yeah, the little beauties are everywhere.”
“No, nymphs!” He cried. “They fucking hate me!”
The nymphs pulled him under, into their now fevered frenzy.
The blue bitches swirled around him, glints of silver, flashes of white fangs. They reached out and snatched at his cock, his ring, tearing at his chest and clawing at his eyes. Vinnie tried to get purchase, to push off for the bank, to forge out of the turbulent water, but the nymphs just grabbed at his feet, upending him.
His lungs were near bursting, his eyes bulging with pressure. He needed air. The surface of the pond shimmered above him. Then crimson curled over his view, like strands of floating red smoke, and he saw a brown pole darting down, spearing his attackers, and slaughtering the little things with ease.
Angel’s free hand pulled him up, her other still plunging the spear down like a blacksmith’s hammer, relentless, swift, turning frenzied blue to swirling red. The little nymphs tried to counter, but fear had spread through their wide eyes, and they began to back away. Angel dragged Vinnie onto the bank, dumping him on it and going back in. She pulled a nymph’s corpse out.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “What the fuck did you do to upset the nymphs—they’re one of the most docile races in the land?”
“Not when they’re trying to pull your dick off,” Vinnie replied, gasping for breath, trying to calm his pounding heart, staring at the dead nymph. “Why’d you want her? We’re not going to eat…”
“You daft prick,” said Angel. “That one’s for Little Red to feast on. A varied diet will do her good.” Angel winked at him, retrieved Little Red, and plunged the core straight into the nymph's heart.
“Something you should be doing,” Little Red said, scolding a still shivering Vinnie.
“Here, take a few of these. They’ll stop the bleeding and heal your cuts.” She tossed him a bunch of health potions.
Vinnie put the fire between him and the little pond, his eyes darting around, searching out the shadows for any sign of enraged nymphs. Angel set to work roasting the rabbits, seemingly unmoved by the recent events.
“So, are you going to tell me why the nymphs attacked you?”
Vinnie sheepishly relayed his tale.
“This Lavender’s going to be trouble,” Angel decided. “Seems she’s spread the word about the ring—especially if it’s got to a remote pond like this, and if she’s told them to attack on sight, they’ve probably got word back to her—or are on their way to.” The fire crackled, Angel’s words making Vinnie’s blood run cold. “We’ll have to keep an eye out, Vinnie—look out for Lavender. I don’t think you’ve seen the last of her.”
“Shouldn’t we…move?” He said, staring out over the now tranquil pond.
“We’ll have a job keeping away from water for the whole trip. No, they’ll regroup, plan the next attack—I doubt they’ll try again without Lavender or Thetis. Like I said, nymphs are timid creatures. They’ll need a player leading them now. They won’t forget that lesson in a hurry.”
Vinnie nodded. First the Witherer, then the rogue, and now the nymphs were after his blood. He looked up at the dark blue night. “It’s going to be a long journey.”
They ate and then moved fifty yards back from the pond. They slept slightly better there. The next day they vowed to find better shelter for the night.
That day, they saw a black line snaking towards them and smoke on the horizon.
They rode like the wind, closing on the column, hoping beyond all hope to find Fin at its head, leading refugees to safety. Angel led him away from the road, finding a spot where they could watch without being spotted.
“They’re all NPCs,” She hissed, looking out from the bushes, down on the desperate file of broken folk.
Vinnie shuffled forward.
Hand drawn carts, children in rags, mothers with babes in arms all shuffled along the road. They were downcast, defeated, and dead on their feet, yet fear clearly kept them stumbling on. Angel made to scramble forward, but Vinnie held her back.
“We can’t help them. With luck, they’ll make Hundenwyrdich in a few days. Tinderell will take them in.”
Angel nodded, biting her bottom lip. “I’ve never seen it before—normally if there’s a squabble, the NPCs stay put, clean up the defeated side and pour ale for the victors. This is new. This is bad.”
“We need to find out if they’ve seen Fin.” Vinnie shuffled farther forward trying to get a better look.
“Let’s carry on, but off-road. They’ll have to camp up for the night. We’ll see what we can find out then.”
Vinnie nodded, his eyes straying north. The clouds were ever thicker. The mauve lightning intermittently illuminated their underbelly, flashes framing the Twin Mountains with its lurid hue. Their day soon turned gray, as clouds gathered over them like heralds of doom. The countryside around them lost its vibrancy, turning to a drab olive and leeching out the last of their hope. Cold wind sought out every exposed bone, spits of spiteful rain were a final insult.
They made slow pr
ogress, their off-road trail erratic. Angel’s hand rested on her sword’s hilt. Vinnie’s stayed in his pocket, ready to twist his ring in an instant, thankful for Fallon’s hole.
“Something’s up,” Angel whispered, looking to either side of the glen they traveled along—no more than low-banked grassy hills with shrubs for cover.
Angel drew her sword.
Vinnie made to pull his staff.
“The Morningstar,” she told him. “Deadlier on horseback.”
The sky blackened farther. Rain drizzled down.
Vinnie swore the glen’s rock-pocked slopes closed. He swore they steepened. His feelings soon confirmed as the glen became no more than a cut of stacked rocks. He felt cornered, caged, trapped in the rocky defile like a corralled pig being herded to its slaughter. The air about them changed. It grew heavier.
They came like a scrambling wave of vermin, like rats fleeing a flood. Angel struck out with her blade, slicing and chopping. Dire creatures attacked them, shadow aggressors, four-legged but not naturally so, stooped, bent and broken by evil. Green-skinned—a sickly hue—with deranged eyes and raking claws. They pounced flowed over the ridge like a tide of death.
Vinnie’s horse reared, whinnying in terror.
His eyes narrowed, his heart stopped beating, and a cold efficiency took him over. He swung his mace in deadly, devastating arcs.
One after the next, the demon-spawn attacked, met by mace and blade. Bodies stacked around them, twitching and bleeding. His breath became heavy, labored, as his energy plunged. He swung his mace with a great heft, a vile head exploding with crimson gore, but Vinnie lost his balance and fell, his horse rearing and bolting, but soon vanishing under a pile of their vile assailants. Vinnie scrambled to his feet, smashing down with mace, sweeping its evil-tipped head with abandon. Angel barely held them back, their swarm relentless, endless.
Back to back, they fought, both with ragged swings—tiredness their new foe.
“Get closer to me!” Little Red shouted in his mind.
Vinnie edged toward the fallen horse, the pile of frenzied beasts over it solely intent on devouring the horse’s flesh and picking its bones clean.
“I’m coming to get you Little Red!” Vinnie cried, and redoubled his efforts, swiping harder, bones crushing under the mace’s fury. “I’ll save you Little Red!” Valiant blood now coursed through Vinnie’s pumping veins.
Little Red laughed. “Don’t be a dick. I’m saving you.”
The ground shimmered, moving under Vinnie’s blood-soaked boots. Angel grabbed hold of him with her free hand. “Earthquake!” she screamed.
The beasts hesitated, then the rocky ground opened up, a shallow rent swallowing a whole line of the dread things. They screamed in confusion. The rocky jaws slammed shut with a sickening crunch, blood shooting up in a crimson curtain, and then welling in a ruby line. The instant it closed, another gray maw opened, more beasts tumbled in. It shut with a gradual crunching like the ground had bitten off more than it could chew. Blood spurted up in a line of small geysers. More hungry rock-mouths, more crimson scars, the beasts turned and fled, but the ground kept snapping at their heels.
Soon, just two islands of firm land remained. Angel and Vinnie stood on one. Little Red’s core sat on the other.
“I just leveled up,” crowed Little Red, and Vinnie began to comprehend her power. Leaning on his mace, eyes wide, he couldn’t make up his mind if he was impressed or terrified or a little of both.
Level 5!
Your demon has reached level 5.
Congratulations! Little Red has reached an important level. At level 5 she can form her own dungeon, and you will be named Lord of that place. She will be able to influence her surroundings, manipulate all stone, earth, and wood within a twenty-five feet circle of her core. She will be able to leave her core once she’s formed her dungeon, but no farther than her sphere of influence. She will be able to snare any plants or creatures that stray into that area.
Her power will be limited by her ability to assimilate units of life-force—what you term as mana. As she cannot produce mana, in the same way your mana replenishes, she must lure sources of mana into her area of influence. Her ability to store mana is limited by her level. The size of her storage pool is influenced by your own level as well using the following formula: (LRL + HOTCL) x 100 = Mana Pool Available (MPA). Where LRL = Little Red’s Level and HOTCL = Yours. Little Red’s current available mana pool is therefore (5 + 6) x 100 = 1,100. The status of her pool is full, due to the number of crackcrawlers she recently consumed. Once she has formed her dungeon, the level of her dungeon will also factor.
As you have helped your demon to this important level (mostly did it herself though—and saved your ass in the process), the land rewards you with 2000 XP. Once her core is planted, you will receive a further 5000 bonus and become titled Lord. You now have 14,300 XP and are 5,700 XP short of level 7.
To commence the construction of the dungeon, you must plunge the core into the ground at your selected location and say the sacred words:
“Oh Demon Core, oh Demon Core,
Build me a dungeon
Thanks.”
Once done, your core cannot move except by building its way along.
Do you understand? Y/N
Vinnie swayed a bit, trying to comprehend everything.
“Why am I a HOTCL?” he asked.
Angel then muttered two words that invariably meant things were about to go tits up one way or the other.
“Oh fuck.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
An arrow fizzed through the air, thumping into the ground between Vinnie’s feet with a dull thud. Vinnie looked up to see a hooded archer standing on the defile’s ridge, aiming his next shot right at Vinnie’s guts.
“Where are the crawlers?” the bowman barked.
“Ermm,” said Vinnie, wondering how to explain.
“They ran off behind us, we hid,” Angel shouted back.
An arrow thumped into the ground between her feet.
“Don’t lie to me. The blood-soaked grass tells me otherwise, the bloody remains of your horses tell me you were caught unawares.”
“Dark magic,” shouted a voice from behind. “They are servants of Sivatious—pin their hearts to the grass and let’s get on.”
Vinnie turned to see a row of men and women all topping the ridge behind.
“We are against Sivatious—on our way to join The Wanton Witch,” Angel growled. “Let us pass or suffer the same fate as the crackcrawlers.”
“I’ll ask politely one more time. What happened to them?” the first bowman called. “If I don’t like your answer, then you get pinned.”
“I used magic,” Vinnie lied, judging it was time he stepped in and sorted things out. “I asked the ground to swallow them up, and that’s what it did.” He edged closer to Little Red. “We are from Hundenwyrdich. I studied under The Wanton Witch and her Elven Core, Tinderell. I bring white magic to battle Sivatious. I am the great Vincent Iron Cock!”
The second he said it he realized his mistake. The lines of archers started chuckling, shoulders twitching. He desperately tried to recover.
“We will battle Sivatious, his Orcen Core, and Goblin slave. This I vow!” Vinnie eyed his foes, nodding, feeling pumped and powerful.
“Then you’re mad,” a woman’s voice rang out. “And you’ll die like the rest of the players who tried.”
Vinnie turned to see a woman atop a white destrier and cresting the ridge of the cleft they were in. The horse jumped majestically down and landed nearly on top of Little Red.
“Shall I make an example of her, Vinnie?” Little Red asked.
“Why not,” Vinnie growled. “You, lady, underestimate me—” and then he looked up, and his mouth dropped open. “Atrixa?”
The ground under Atrixa shimmered, shifted, and Vinnie shouted “No!” A crack snaked between the destrier’s hooves, a jagged line of impending doom. “No!” Vinnie screamed and ran forward
.
“Vinnie?” Atrixa said, her voice unsure, her wide eyes staring as the ground underneath her opened up.
“Whatever it takes, Vinnie,” Little Red’s voice chuckled in his head.
“No, Little Red, not now!”
The crack slammed shut. The fizz of an arrow caught him unawares. Pain exploded in his shoulder. He spun like a top.
“No!” Atrixa cried.
The ground shook again.
“No!” cried Little Red. Angel darted to Vinnie’s side, catching him as he fell. “No!” Little Red growled, her rumbling tones making the cleft vibrate, waking its rocks, tossing bowmen into its cleft. “You hurt my master!” she cried, but only Vinnie could hear.
Atrixa jumped off her horse, dashing to Vinnie’s side. He gasped, struggling to breathe, pain lancing through him. Atrixa offered him her arm, squeezing a healing bead and dribbling its elixir into his open mouth.
“Don’t, Little Red, don’t kill these folks. We need friends,” Vinnie pleaded.
“But they tried to kill you!”
“Heal me instead,” Vinnie told her.
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Vinnie,” Vinnie said. “Call me Vinnie.”
A warm wash of red flowed over him as her mana infused him. Gentle hands lowered him to the blood-soaked ground. Both Angel and Atrixa looked down, confusion painting their expressions. Both then backing away, fear in their eyes. He held up his hand, saw it was encased in red, glowing, and cried in pain as his body ejected the arrow, its snap sounding out as it fell to the ground broken in two. The red receded, and his pain left with it. Vinnie woke up but said nothing out loud.
