Forever Fantasy Online

by Rachel Aaron

  A shudder went through her and Tina shrank into the floor. No, she thought. Not him. Please not him.

  As silent as his name, the Assassin walked through the crowd, his expression damnably hidden behind his ninja mask. As he leaned down, Tina closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his anger, the hatred on his familiar face as he struck her, too.

  But he didn’t. Instead, SilentBlayde leaned down and pressed a delicate kiss to her forehead just below her copper hair. Even through his mask, Tina swore she could feel his warm lips as soft as a feather on her cool stone skin.

  “That’s for saying you’d do anything for us,” he said softly.

  Tina’s eyes popped open to find him staring at her, his eyes gentle and sad above his mask. And it was that—not the slap, not the resentment—that finally pushed her over the edge. She curled into herself, crying as silently as possible because she couldn’t do anything else. SilentBlayde dropped down beside her, putting his arm around her huge, shaking shoulders as she quietly fell to pieces.

  Chapter 12

  James

  The gnoll Naturalists were good enough to heal James and Arbati. The rush of magic felt incredible, as always, but after his wounds closed, James still felt hollow and tired. Looking down at himself, he realized he could see where the new life magics were reinforcing—but not yet absorbed by—his own natural lines. It would probably take time and actual, legit rest before the two magics fully integrated and he felt whole again. Until then, he’d just have to be gentle with himself. Fortunately, he was—at least temporarily—the Chief of Chiefs, which meant he could delegate.

  As soon as the healing was done, James ordered Thunder Paw to purge the city of any remaining undead. Looking joyously bloodthirsty, the old Naturalist agreed right away. He trotted off with a few hundred of the town’s warriors, and soon the quiet night was punctuated by the sound of bloody crunches.

  Meanwhile, a pack of elderly gnoll grandmothers arrived with food and water. James and Arbati dug in greedily, chugging waterskins and tearing into piles of jerky with their fangs. It was James’s first real meal since yesterday, and the super-spicy dried meat tasted amazing, even if it did make his eyes water.

  As he ate, James asked the gnolls if there were any other players left in the city, but all he got was a lot of shaking heads. The remaining gnolls couldn’t speak English or the language of Wind and Grass, but every time James said the word “player,” they would point at the bloody pit.

  Choking down the last of his food, James walked back down into the drained lake. As his bare feet landed in the gory mud, he wished he’d done this the other way around, searching before eating. Fighting to keep his dinner down, he checked the bodies but didn’t find anything he didn’t already know. All the players in the pit were hours past the six-minute resurrection window. Dead for real, in other words.

  But while there was nothing James could do for them now, there was still something they could do for him. The gnolls had only low-level equipment and nothing in his size, but other than the wounds that had killed them, the players’ bodies were untouched. James, on the other hand, was filthy and practically naked. It felt wrong, but if he was going to finish what he’d started tonight, James needed gear. So holding his nose, he started searching the bodies for something he could wear.

  His first target was a jubatus Naturalist who’d died with a spike through his head, leaving his armor undamaged. James was pulling the body off the spike to claim the robe when he stopped.

  He did not want to wear robes. As appropriate as they were for his class and magic, there was no way he could run or fight properly in such a long, heavy garment. He was much more drawn to the dead elven Assassin’s leather armor. Back in the game, jubatus and elves had had the same base body models, which meant it would probably fit. It looked nice, too. Much more fitting to the work he would actually be doing than the stuffy caster robes.

  Smiling, James pulled the elf down to claim his armor, but as the corpse slid off the spike, his eager grin faded. Looting kills was such a normal action in FFO, he’d never thought much of it. Reality, however, was proving very different. There was no loot window or neat list of items. James had to strip the clammy, bloody leather off the elf’s reeking corpse. Even after he managed to get it free, he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to put the armor on. The congealed blood coating the inside smelled like death to his sensitive jubatus nose.

  Promising himself he’d clean it thoroughly, James tossed his “new” armor up onto the side of the pit and resumed rummaging through the bodies. Five minutes later, he’d acquired two healer rings and an amulet. But while these were far less disgusting than the armor, touching them gave James the same incomplete feeling that the staff did. He could feel the magic woven tightly within the items, though, which gave him hope. If items were still magical, then there had to be a way to properly equip them.

  He was heading out to test his theory when he spied another dead Naturalist. He’d ignored her before because she was too low level for his needs, but she was the same level as the gnolls. More importantly, she was clutching a sapphire staff topped with a floating collection of twinkling crystals that James recognized, and that gave him an idea.

  Prying the lovely weapon from her stiff hands, James apologized for his theft and quickly left the pit. Arbati and Thunder Paw were waiting when he climbed out, staring at the bloody armor he’d collected with matching expressions of horror.

  “I know,” James said before they could say a word. “But we need these more than they do right now.”

  He waved over a helper then, piled all the armor and jewelry into a basket and handed it off to a group of gnolls with orders to wash everything in boiling water and lye. While Thunder Paw translated, James picked up the blue staff.

  “I have a gift for you,” he said to Thunder Paw when the other gnolls had scurried off. “This is the Azure Starlight Staff.”

  The moment he held up the sparkling staff, all of Thunder Paw’s horror at grave robbing vanished. The old Naturalist’s one eye was as wide as an egg as James laid the elegant golden rod crowned with floating blue crystals in his paws.

  “Me cannot use something this mighty, Chief James,” Thunder Paw whispered, his awe clear even through his collar’s auto-tuned voice. “There is too much power here to control.”

  “It looks that way,” James said, holding up a finger. “But there’s a trick to this. I know you’re at least level thirty because you’re using the same armor and staff as all the other gnoll Naturalists. This item looks higher level because it’s a rare drop, but it’s actually for your level.” He pushed the staff into Thunder Paw’s hands. “Just give it a try. I bet you’ll find its potency easier to control than you think.”

  Thunder Paw swallowed nervously and took the weapon over to a nearby bench. He was examining it when Arbati grabbed James by the shoulder.

  “Why are you arming the gnolls with better weapons?” he hissed in James’s ear. “Have you forgotten that they will be our enemies when this is over?”

  “I’m hoping that if we keep being friends, we won’t have to go back to being enemies.” James whispered back, picking up his own staff from where he’d leaned it against a log. “Just give me a minute to watch Thunder Paw. He’s about to show me something very important. Why don’t you go look for a new weapon of your own?”

  He’d expected Arbati to balk at that, but to his surprise, the warrior nodded and jogged off. Suddenly alone, James turned and resumed studying the gnoll Naturalist.

  Sitting on his bench, Thunder Paw laid the staff across his legs and began staring at it intently. James walked over and sat down beside him in the same position with his Eclipsed Steel Staff and waited. After several minutes of picking at the Azure Starlight staff, Thunder Paw grabbed a string of his own mana and started weaving through the middle of the staff.

  James winced. Aside from the glowing magic, it looked disturbingly like the Naturalist was tying the weapon to himse
lf using his own guts. It was working, though. The Azure Starlight Staff was binding itself to Thunder Paw as he watched, its power merging with his as he made it part of his magic. That seemed to be the trick, so James plucked a bit of his own magic and started trying to poke it into his own weapon.

  It wasn’t pleasant. Being a cursed metal, eclipsed steel was uncomfortable to touch magically. It contained no actual death magic that he could feel, but the magics inside were twisted in strange ways. Unlike the Azure Starlight, whose floating crystals chimed musically whenever you moved it, James heard whispered, malicious words whenever he focused on the black staff in his lap. But he could also feel its power, so he kept searching, poking the staff’s magic for whatever Thunder Paw had used to start the binding.

  Finally, after several minutes, James found an opening. In the center of the staff, right where you’d place your hand, loose threads of magic were dangling like ripped-out wires, probably from the death of its previous owner. Smiling, James started feeding his own magic into it. He was making good progress when something growled.

  “You should not do that, Chief James.”

  James jumped, losing his hold on the magic. He hadn’t heard the gnoll stand up, but Thunder Paw was suddenly right in front of him, his scarred face fearful. “That weapon is cursed,” the Naturalist said, pointing at the black staff in James’s lap. “It talks to itself. We should bury it, not keep it.”

  James shook his head. “I need it. I don’t know how it ended up here, but this is the only high-level weapon around that I can use. Hell, it’s better than the staff I lost. I can’t pass this up.”

  The old naturalist sniffed in distaste. “It is cursed,” he said again. “You should not let such magic into yourself.”

  “Duly noted,” James said, smiling at the gnoll. “Also, no offense, but I notice you’re suddenly speaking more eloquently.”

  “It is because of this,” Thunder Paw said, holding up his new azure staff. “Me have never held such smooth power. It makes words leap to my mind and improves my memory. Me finds that Me can harmonize with the translation collar much more quickly now.” He looked at the beautiful staff in awe. “It is amazing.”

  “As to be expected of an artifact crafted by Celestial Elves during the Age of Skies,” James said with a grin. “Now, if you’ll pardon me for a minute, I’ve got to finish my own upgrade.”

  He was about to pick up the staff again when a paw settled on his shoulder. “Please don’t,” Thunder Paw whined. “That metal is a sin against the gods. Even the wind dislikes it.”

  “It’ll be fine. Trust me,” James said confidently. “Believe it or not, this staff is a pretty common drop from the Dead Mountain trash mobs. There’s probably a hundred raiders out there right now with this exact same staff, but I might never get a chance at another weapon of this caliber again. Even if my spare gear is still safe in the bank at Bastion, who knows when I’ll be able to get to it. We need this power tonight. I can’t take on the lich without it.”

  That earned him a sad nod. “Be it your will, then. Me will find our remaining officers and ready an attack force.”

  “Thanks, Thunder Paw.”

  The Naturalist shuffled away, and James resumed the binding ritual. He plucked a fresh thread of mana from his chest and painstakingly wove it into the frayed magic hanging from the staff. With each knot tied between him and the weapon, the incomplete feeling faded a fraction. Halfway through, he started to feel the weapon itself. Not just touching it, but as if the staff were part of him, like a limb. Then when he tied the final knot, the empty space in the magics was filled completely, and the staff settled into his hands like a joint snapping into place.

  “Life is suffering. Death is salvation. All must die to be free.”

  James’s head snapped up. He’d heard the words clearly, but there was no one there. Just gnolls preparing for battle, and none of them had a collar like Thunder Paw. Hands shaking, James looked at the weapon in his lap. Then feeling slightly foolish, he whispered, “Excuse me?”

  But no more words came back.

  ****

  “We have no remaining officers,” was the report from Thunder Paw half an hour later.

  James looked up from the freshly cleaned leather armor he was fastening around his chest. Now that he knew the trick, he’d bound the level-thirty Assassin’s armor as well as the two healer rings and the healer amulet. It was a hodgepodge mix of stats, but James loved the feeling of being stronger and more magical too much to care that his build wasn’t optimal.

  Having started the day effectively naked of stat-boosting gear, James had been amazed at the difference the level-eighty staff made. Creepy start aside, the Eclipsed Steel Staff was everything he could have wanted. Using his mana was a breeze now, increasing the amount of magic he could safely control fivefold. The boosts from his new rings and amulet had been less impressive but still so noticeable that James couldn’t help but wonder what Tina and her raiders must be like. He had one item from the Dead Mountain, but most of the Roughnecks were fully decked out in the stuff. It must feel like being a demigod.

  “How are there no officers?” James asked Thunder Paw as he fastened the final buckle. “I thought the undead were training the gnolls into a formal army. Shouldn’t there be a full chain of command with units and so on?”

  The one-eyed Naturalist shook his head. “All of our army’s leaders were made undead so the lich could control us. Any officers Me didn’t kill in the purge were recalled to the lich’s lair at the bottom of the Red Canyon.”

  “Damn,” James muttered, glancing out of the hut he’d been using to change at the armed gnolls waiting for them in the street. “We have plenty of trained fighters, but they’re just a mob without officers.”

  “But we fight for the Grand Pack!” Thunder Paw insisted, stamping his new staff. “Everyone here is ready to die to take back our home!”

  The army of gnolls outside barked and yipped in agreement, and James nodded.

  “Good,” he said, grabbing his new staff. “Because there’s no way to make this not ugly.”

  James paused to do some mental math, converting the Red Canyon dungeon he remembered to the new size scale then rapidly estimating how many gnolls could fight shoulder to shoulder in the corridors. Once he had that number, he ran damage-to-health ratios to try to pre-calculate casualties to see how many soldiers they’d need to win without bringing in so many that they got piled up.

  The whole thing only took him a few minutes, but what really shocked James was the fact that he’d been able to do it at all. Thunder Paw had already shown him what adding Intelligence could do, but James hadn’t realized just how big a jump was possible until he’d bound a staff with over three hundred Intelligence. The resulting jump made him question what intelligence really was. According to how he felt, it was sharper senses, amazing math skills, fantastic spatial reasoning, and a wickedly improved memory. He would’ve killed to have this power back in school. Now, though, all he could do was spin his new brainpower as fast as possible to come up with a plan that wouldn’t get them all killed.

  “Stop overthinking things,” growled Arbati, stalking into the hut. The warrior had a new sword—a green-glowing, two-handed blade he’d claimed from one of the dead Berserkers in the pit—and from the way he was gripping the handle, he was itching to use it. “We don’t have time for complicated schemes. There’s only a few hours left before dawn breaks. If we don’t smash the lich’s orb before then, my sister will be worse than dead. You command the gnolls. Send them down, and let’s go!”

  “We can’t just rush in,” James said calmly. “The path down the canyon is narrow and heavily guarded. Superior numbers don’t matter if you’re all channeled into one tiny space. If we charge down blindly, our whole army will die before we reach the dungeon’s entrance.”

  He tapped his claws against his staff, thinking the problem through. Without officers, there wasn’t much he could do in terms of fancy formations. Al
l of his orders would have to be the sort that fit in one shout, but that actually gave James an idea. He’d already seen people in massively multiplayer war games tackle this kind of problem. Why wouldn’t it work with gnolls?

  “Time to channel Roxxy,” he muttered, giving himself a shake before stepping out into the street where the masses of armed gnolls were assembled.

  “Listen up!”

  All the hyena-people jumped and turned to face him.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, so we’re going to keep this simple,” James said, doing his best impression of his sister’s raid-leader voice. “If you use an ax, sword, or spear, group up on Arbati. If you have a bow, you’re following me. If you use magic, you’re with Thunder Paw. If you have no weapon or magic, but you still want to fight, go grab something you can use as a shield. Benches, doors, actual shields, whatever. You have five minutes. Go!”

  The square erupted into a frenzy of rushing gnolls. They ran all over the place, trading weapons with one another and ripping wooden doors from nearby houses. As the time ticked down in his head, James knew that most of the gnolls would not make it back in the allotted time, but that was part of the plan. By setting a hard limit, he ensured he was only getting the ones who obeyed orders the best and quickest.

  When time ran out, James divided the gnolls who’d made the cut into squads by weapon. Then he split the ones who’d arrived with “shields” evenly amongst the three groups so that everyone had cover. When all the gnolls were where he wanted them, James raised his voice again.

  “Everyone has to do two things!” he called, holding up two fingers. “First, stay by your group’s leader at all times. Second, do not fight alone! If they catch you alone, you will die. Stay together, follow orders, and we can do this!”

  The gnolls howled in response, lifting their weapons and makeshift shields. James raised his own staff in reply, pointing the way down the road toward the canyon rim.