Goddess Complete

by Michael Anderle

  “But if you were to specialize, you’d have grown your spells’ power much more quickly.”

  Chloe thought about that, remembering the battle she’d had with Holly and Molly. She couldn’t believe it had only just sunk in that Holly had only used shadow magic and Molly had stuck with stone.

  “The more you use the same strain of magic, the more powerful it becomes. It’s something we learned pretty early on by playing with a few different spells.” Molly leaned back on her elbows, face turned to the sun. “I connected with stone, so that’s what I went with. There’s normally stone around to play with.”

  “Same with shadow,” Holly said. “Even if it’s bright, there’s always enough power in our own shadows to manipulate. It’s lots of fun. Maybe you two should specialize as well?”

  Chloe looked at Gideon and they both immediately shook their heads. “If it’s a choice between power and diversity, I know what I’ll pick any day,” Chloe stated.

  “Me too,” Gideon added, although his face showed that he was deep in thought.

  Holly and Molly shrugged. “Still, maybe it’s worth giving your students the option. It could benefit them mightily.”

  And that was exactly what they did. Although Chloe hadn’t hesitated in making her choice, when the groups regathered, she gave them all the choice and informed them of the progression benefits specialization had. That afternoon she saw better results than anything she had seen thus far, causing yet another increase in her skill levels.

  Skill increased: Tutor (Lv 2)

  Although you prefer your own methods, you’ve left the path open for your students to choose their own way. The key to being a solid instructor is to nourish your students, not push them in one direction. Keep this up and the benefits will continue to grow.

  Bonuses: +4 intelligence

  (NOTE: Increases in skill override any previous bonuses gained from the skill).

  Samsun, who had up until that point been a level 3 mage who had struggled to form even the most basic of spells, immediately found his formerly hidden confidence.

  The poor guy had spent days trying to master all of the elements but had found that there was one missing from Chloe’s repertoire that he was dying to try.

  When Chloe came over to check on their progress, she had been distressed to find that Samsun was doubled over, his back heaving, with strange bubbling sounds coming from his shadowed face.

  “Samsun?” Chloe pulled his shoulder and helped him upright.

  Samsun had the biggest smile on his face, his hands throbbing with a grim purple energy that leaked dark liquid onto the ground. Small acidic bubbles rose and popped above his hands.

  “I did it.” He beamed. “A new spell, Toxic Injection.”

  He told Chloe that the spell could be imbued into weapons or could be combined with ingredients when preparing food to be eaten by enemies, creating an undetectable poison. She raised her eyebrows, happy to see his progress but disturbed by his chosen direction.

  Still, progress was progress, and Chloe had been concerned about Samsun up until that point. A few hours later, his level and spell ranks had grown by 2.

  Each night, they gathered for a debriefing with Chloe. After day six, she was so impressed by their progress that she told them all it wouldn’t be long before they were ready. Still, mages were slowly making their way forward, and when they reached the hundred and twenty mark, Chloe began to get excited.

  “I really think we can do this,” she said to Gideon one night as they were on their way back to the castle. They had had a particularly good day of training, their students were advancing beyond expectation, and their numbers were swelling. “I think we’ll find Shikora soon.”

  “Finally,” KieraFreya exclaimed. “And then I’ll be free of you.”

  Chloe chuckled. KieraFreya’s words were not laced with the venom they had once been. When they had started on their journey, part of her had genuinely feared what would happen when the armor had been collected and the task was complete. But over the months since that time, she felt they were finally at peace. They might actually end it all as friends.

  They approached the gates, passed the guards, and began to make their way to the palace.

  “Chloe,” Gideon asked, his voice trailing off into nothing as they walked.

  “Mmm?”

  “Do we know how we’re going to open the rift? I mean, we’ve got mages, and we’re bonding as a team, but how are we going to, you know, do it?”

  Chloe arched an eyebrow. It was a question she’d been pondering ever since they had split into groups and begun their training, which had made the whole thing seem more real.

  “I don’t know,” she said simply. “I have my theories, but I don’t think we’ll know until it’s time. We’ll likely have to hack into the etheric, that’s for sure, and I’m guessing KF will provide some kind of boost.”

  “That’s your plan?” Gideon confirmed, unimpressed. “You might as well just fire your magic into the sky and hope for the best.”

  Chloe nodded. Truth was that she spent time each night riding into the forest on Bolt, looking for the Wrangler. The ancient guardian obviously knew a lot about the process, having given them the knowledge to follow the path they were now pursuing. If anyone had the answers, it was him.

  Only he was impossible to find. Chloe followed the paths she had taken with the others, but the location where his house had been was now vacant.

  Just last night, Chloe had employed Sir Wingsalot in her cause, flying the terror-daxil over the canopy of trees, hoping the creature would be able to pick out the giant with its sharp eyes.

  But her search had been fruitless.

  I have a feeling we will meet again before too long.

  The Wrangler’s words echoed in her head, words she felt like she knew the meaning of. She had to trust her gut to access their intent.

  They made it to the palace a little before nightfall and supped with Therese and Abe, catching up on all the latest gossip from across the kingdom. Chloe and Therese caught the king up on the clerics’ quest by reading the messages they received from Ben throughout the day, and soon they finally found themselves back in their rooms preparing for bed.

  As Chloe lay on the soft linens, she stared at the blank ceiling, listening to the soft murmur of voices from the city below. She imagined the swirls and patterns were the portal to the Nether Realm, seeing the dark shape of a horse leaping out of the rift and galloping toward her.

  “What’s going to happen at the end?” she asked the darkness.

  She felt KieraFreya contemplating this. “I honestly don’t know. This whole process is unprecedented. Nothing like this has happened to a god or goddess before.”

  Chloe opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. When she remembered that KieraFreya could read her thoughts and being silent wouldn’t work, she said, “What will happen to me? What will I become?”

  The question would have no answer until the end, but there were infinite possibilities. On the one hand, Chloe considered that she might keep all her powers and abilities. She might also keep her strength, her spells, and her attributes.

  On the other hand, there was the very real possibility that by uniting KieraFreya with her horse and freeing her to return to the gods, Chloe would be stripped of everything. That she would revert to her first hours in Obsidian, naked, defenseless, and alone.

  “You’ll never be alone,” KieraFreya comforted her. “You’ve got people who love you. People who will ride with you until the end. That’s more than I ever had.”

  “How do you know?” Chloe asked. “Your memory was nearly wiped. Maybe you’ve got a whole fleet of friends up there.”

  KieraFreya shook Chloe’s head. “If that were true, they would’ve come for me ages ago. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of anyone except that little shit Fukmos in the last thousand or so years. Count yourself lucky, kid. You’ve got more than friends, you’ve got a family. That’s a hell of a lot more than
I’ve got.”

  Chloe contemplated her words. Maybe KieraFreya was right.

  “Part of me thinks I’d be better off in your shoes at the end of all this,” KieraFreya told her softly. “At least you know you’ll be okay. I have no idea what’s waiting for me up there.”

  Chloe continued to stare into the darkness, her mind on the gods, a subject she still knew very little about. She closed her eyes and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ben wondered if he had somehow drawn the short straw.

  He was several days into his journey with the clerics, and the whole thing had been jam-packed with excitement—but not the good kind.

  He and Heather had led the clerics and the willing warriors and rangers through the forest and out toward the villages, with no more bother than a handful of ghouls and a sentient tree that had trapped several warriors in its roots until Ben had had the genius idea of threatening it with a torch.

  The tree had relinquished its hold, allowing them passage, but Ben was almost certain he could hear its whispers following them the rest of the way.

  Arriving at the first village, Hidesdown, had been an eye-opener. The infected were everywhere, but they acted differently than those that had attacked several nights ago.

  These infected strolled around lazily, only going into a frenzy when they detected healthy people nearby. When they attacked, they were quickly dispatched by the fighters, which caused a strained relationship with the clerics. Those worthies were beside themselves, wanting to try to heal everyone they saw.

  “We’re going to have to compromise,” Ben said, taking control of the situation as a teary-eyed cleric batted at an unbothered warrior clad top to tail in armor. “We’ll save everyone we can, but we can’t allow them to attack us. We have to take this threat seriously. Try not to kill whenever possible, but don’t let your compassion cloud your sense.”

  On their exploration through Hidesdown, they discovered several healthy citizens cowering around the village. They were malnourished and terrified, unable to believe that soldiers had come to rescue them and give them food. Some were hiding in bins and basements, others on roofs and in pantries.

  It took them a good few hours to round up everyone in the village and secure the area. There was a large hall in the center of the village where they brought infected who had been tied and bound to allow the clerics to do their work.

  Heather took the lead, demonstrating with Veronica how they had expunged the darkness. The clerics who were lower levels teamed up in larger groups, while the more experienced were able to manage in pairs.

  Soon ghostly trails of darkness filled the air, each thread of the disease drifting up through the gaps in the roof and disappearing into the atmosphere.

  “Where do they all go?” a young cleric with flaming red hair asked Heather and Veronica.

  “We don’t know,” they replied, wondering if they were really helping the situation or if all the pieces of darkness were re-gathering for a second attack.

  Ben oversaw the warriors who guarded the hall. Occasionally more infected would lazily stroll out of the trees, spot the healthy fighters, and whip themselves into a frenzy as they mindlessly began running toward them. These would be shot in the leg at first to try to keep them alive long enough to save them, but this couldn’t be achieved in every case.

  When they were finished with their cleansing and those who had been infected were left to heal, Ben, Veronica, and Heather set about bringing everyone inside. Night had already fallen, and rest was needed by all.

  They set up a guard watch to rotate every few hours and, aside from a pair of stubborn infected that the guards managed to wrestle inside and hand to the clerics to heal, they passed the night quietly.

  When they’d reached the next village the following day, Ben had expected to have it go much the same. What he hadn’t expected, however, was for a united force to aim their weapons and try to attack them upon arrival.

  They had just crested the hill and seen the small collection of buildings a short distance ahead when they had heard the thunk of an axe embedding in wood.

  Ben had called everyone back, ducking behind the hill and using his skills to look ahead.

  There was a line of dwarves, their faces muddy, some of them bruised and bloody. Their axes were held high, ready to attack whoever came at them.

  “Who goes there?” a gruff voice shouted.

  Ben glanced at some of the warriors, thinking it would be better for a dwarf to talk to the dwarves. He hadn’t yet experienced it in Obsidian yet, but he knew that many MMORPGs fostered old resentments between elves and dwarves, and he didn’t want to take that risk.

  A young dwarf with a beard only to his chest volunteered, cautiously waving a white handkerchief and proceeding forward. Though the dwarves were on their guard, they allowed him to move forward, and soon he managed to get them into the town.

  “Our village was full of the scum,” Beldro, the dwarf who had thrown his axe, said as he guided them into the village and took them to their local tavern, a place that looked like it had seen better days. The tables and chairs had been upturned and were covered in blood.

  “What happened to them?” Ben asked. The group set about righting the chairs and tidying up as they took their seats, the other dwarves explaining that they hadn’t used the inn since it had all happened, but it was the only space big enough to accommodate everyone.

  “No idea. One minute they were upon us, our guys fighting for our lives, and the next thing we knew, they’d all turned and fled in the direction you all came. Can’t say we were sad to see them go.”

  Ben looked at Veronica, both thinking the same thing. The gods had somehow intervened, guiding them away and toward the city.

  “Well, not all of them,” a smaller dwarf with a scar across his lip said.

  “Aye, not all. Some of them are still here. We’ve got them chained up and locked away. Couldn’t bring ourselves to kill them once we caught them. They’re family, after all.”

  He showed them down to the tavern cellar, where growls and screeches could be heard. When they opened the door, half a dozen infected strained against their chains to reach them. Barrels of ale and mead had been knocked over and spilled all over the floor.

  “Nothing’s going to bring them back,” Beldro said sadly.

  It wasn’t until Veronica followed his eyes that she realized he meant the alcohol.

  “Well, Jesus did once turn water into wine. Maybe we clerics can do something for your precious booze.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Beldro clapped. He paused suddenly, eyebrow arching. “Who’s Jesus?”

  “Never mind.” Veronica giggled. “I think we should prioritize the infected, don’t you?”

  They bent to their work, several clerics crammed into the cellar. When the first of the shadowy demons was released, Beldro and several of his men threw themselves to the floor.

  The ceiling was thick concrete, meaning that the darkness couldn’t pass. It thrashed around wildly until it found the exit up the stairs behind them. They heard it screeching out of the building, cries of alarm coming from the other dwarves as it exited.

  “Four more to go.” Heather laughed. Veronica joined her, and soon they had cleared yet another town, instilling enough confidence in the dwarves of the village that they elected to follow Ben and the others on their mission to rid the land of shadow.

  And so the pattern went for several days. They visited nine villages in total, bringing a good number of infected back to the side of the light. Along the way, they only lost a few of their number, and by the fifth day, they had gathered an army of almost four hundred dwarves.

  This did, however, bring problems of its own.

  “How can we accommodate them all?” a shrill-sounding dwarf they had recently brought back to health asked. Her hands fondled the tangles in her hair. “There’re too many. I can only sleep twenty!”

  Ben looked around, exasper
ated. As their numbers had grown, their mission had gotten easier. In each town, they’d brought around more clerics and taught them how to cure the infected. However, now that they had found themselves in a small hamlet at night, it seemed that there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone to sleep inside.

  Ben turned to Heather, Veronica, Talbot, Huk, and Leonie. “Any ideas?”

  “Send some back,” Leonie suggested. “Our numbers are beyond what we need to do what we’re doing. I’m sure Chloe would be happy with the help.”

  Ben pondered this. He sighed, coming to a conclusion. “We’ve got no choice. Make it so.”

  “What about the forest? Won’t it be dangerous at night?” Huk asked.

  “No more dangerous than any other time,” Heather said. “Besides, these dwarves have lived here all their lives. You think they won’t be able to survive the woods?”

  Ben was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who volunteered to go to the city when asked. The village dwarves, it seemed, were big fans of the city, and a few had never been there. They jumped at the chance to head toward the tall stone walls and see the city they spent their lives providing for.

  Ben watched them go with a fond smile, sending his prayers along with them. He knew Chloe would be pleased to have the additional numbers in the city if what was to come was to be as dangerous as they suspected.

  When morning came around, Ben and the KieraSlayers rallied the others and continued their trek west. Heather warned them that the town they were headed to, Rivermere, was one of the largest outside Hammersworth and had the biggest potential for things to be awry.

  “Rivermere is where my brother was sent to heal the infected. He says it was overrun, infected in every cranny and corner.”

  Ben tried to imagine it, the scene more like something out of a zombie series than the MMORPGs he was used to. Infected stumbling aimlessly around as the winds blew and the days passed.

  “Better bring our A-games, then, eh?” he replied, following the bank of a river that chuckled along beside them.