The Red Plague: A LitRPG Trilogy (The Last Warrior of Unigaea Book 3)

by Harmon Cooper

  Using his finger, the middle phalanx of his pointer finger to be specific, he gauges the distance from our current position to the Rune Lands, just outside of Tagvornin. He bites his lip for a minute as his mind cranks into gear. “We’ll be there at dusk, at around seven o’clock, give or take ten minutes. Is that what you predict as well, Sam?”

  Sam nods, clearly impressed that he’s come up with such a calculation using a finger.

  “Do I even want to ask how you figured that out?”

  Lothar grins at me. “Of course you do. My middle phalanx measures a distance of 1.75 miles on my map. I counted how far we have to travel, and then thought of an equation that accounted for a twenty-five percent increase in travel every time Sam’s spell is cast added with our averaged walking distance, which seems to be a little over a quarter of a mile before Sam is able to transport us again. I can show you the equation, if you’d like.”

  “I’m good.”

  “You are the smartest NPC I know,” says Florin.

  “I have a giant brain!”

  (^_^)

  A final pink flash and we arrive on the borders of the Rune Lands. Everything is white here, the trees are iced over and snow drifts jut out from the sides of the main road.

  Our breaths are visible.

  Lothar asks Sam what time it is and when she tells him, he shakes his head with disappointment. “I told you that we’d be here within a ten minute time frame; we’re here fifteen minutes before seven.”

  “It’s fine, Lothar,” Sam tells him.

  “Yeah, we have more important things to handle, such as the fact that it looks like all of Tagvornin appears to be evacuating. But still, it frustrates me.”

  From our vantage point on a small hill, we can see that there are numerous tents, caravans, people, and livestock, the Tagvornin camp decorated by the occasional fire. The southwestern part of the camp is where the soldiers are staying, the guards in their red and black armor near the siege weapons.

  There are also wolves, lots of wolves, ranging in color from black to white.

  “Shall we?” I ask as I take a step down the hill. “Wait.” I hand Florin my lavender cloak and my Masking Hat. “Put this stuff on.”

  “A purple cloak?”

  “The color lavender is on trend right now, trust me. The old you was technically at war with the Tagvornins. I’m guessing they knew something about you coming to the north, otherwise they wouldn’t have put their military where they did. Anyway, you need to keep a low profile.”

  “I see,” he says as he takes the clothing from me. “If you suggest I keep a low profile, then that’s what I’ll do.” He places the cloak over his shoulders and puts the hat on. Seeing him in my outfit only reminds me of how stupid I must look when wearing my lavender cloak.

  I really, really should have thought hard about that purchase.

  Buyer’s remorse, what can I say, Oric?

  Thanks for the vote of confidence, Eric.

  The Tagvornin encampment is poorly organized, and much to his delight, Lothar isn’t the only giant around. Others are visible on the horizon; the makeshift pathways that divide the encampment into sections are designed to accommodate those from Tael.

  I’ve forgotten just how remote the Rune Lands can feel, this remoteness played out in the general appearance of Tagvornins. They are fierce, men and women alike, and they stand out in a crowd, less because of their red armor and more because of their other attire.

  Tagvornins wear clothing made of leather and fur, what you’d expect from a northern population. Their haircuts and face tattoos are what set them apart from those that hail from other regions of Unigaea.

  Every single Tag, regardless of age, has their head shaved.

  The women only have the front portion shaved. The back is still long and the way it’s braided can indicate a number of things. Young girls have three braids, women of marrying age two braids, married women one long braid, and widowed women no braids at all.

  So, business in front, party in the back.

  The men have shaved heads and beards of varying length to make up for the fact they can’t get warm on top. Most wear akhlut caps with strips of fur hanging down to cover their ears. The older men have tattooed dots above their eyebrows; the younger men wear something akin to a black kilt but longer, and with leggings beneath to fight off the cold.

  Shit if it isn’t cold here.

  I can feel the wind blowing in from the Seleucid Sea, the air chilling my bones. It’s too dark on the horizon now to see the Red Plague, but it doesn’t take long for us to hear about its approach and the required evacuation.

  “Damn city guards,” a man with a filthy beard rambles as we pass, “forcing me to bring my happy ass here.” He drops a bottle of wine and cries, “Come and take it! And fuck you!” he screams at Lothar.

  Lothar stops and looks at him curiously for a second. “I believe he has had too much to drink,” he finally says.

  “I will kick your giant ass!”

  “You cannot reach my giant rear with your foot,” Lothar informs the drunk.

  “Holy shit, Lothar, you make this too easy. Let’s keep this party moving.”

  Wolf trots ahead, Sam on his back. I see a woman in official clothing standing at the crossroads ahead. She holds a torch, and points people who speak to her in various directions.

  “Wolf, ride to that woman,” Sam says, and man’s best Tagvornin friend follows her orders.

  “We will have to run to keep up with her,” Florin comments as they take off, “which is odd because she cannot run.”

  I turn to Florin, my finger pointed at his chest. “Yeah? It’s your fault she can’t walk, you piece of shit. If it weren’t for Lothar and her, I would have strung your ass up back at the battle. I haven’t forgotten you shot me with two fucking arrows, and seriously, we never went over this, but how the hell did your arrows go through my armor and not break it?”

  “I do not know,” he says. Try as I might to detect some type of combative tone, none is present.

  “Ah,” Lothar says as a man riding a hairy Metican horse curves around him, “they were likely arrows created for Florin by Broken, the now dead Arcane Mage. Algomagic. That would explain it. It would also explain why your armor is intact, and a good thing too. That is rare armor!”

  Sam and Wolf come back around before I can lay into Florin any further.

  “Recent arrivals are camping over there.” She points to the west. “And we can’t continue north until at least morning.”

  “Who says we can’t?”

  Lothar snorts. “Likely the Tagvornin authorities, Oric.”

  “They can’t stop us.”

  “They have patrols out; the Red Plague has caused a lot of looting, and not just by goblins.”

  “Common looters,” Lothar adds, “although that’s a stereotype, and goblins hate being profiled.”

  “They do?” Florin asks. “I can’t recall.”

  “Like hell you don’t,” I say bitterly.

  Sam glances from Florin to me. “We should rest for the night, and reach the plague itself tomorrow.”

  “About that,” Lothar begins to say.

  “We can discuss this later,” I tell him. “Let’s get out of this intersection.”

  There’s nothing special about where we choose to camp aside from a couple of tree stumps, one of which is big enough for Lothar to sit on. More gracious than I remember them being, the Tagvornins carry rocks over and form a fire pit for us.

  They even get a fire going.

  “Why’s everyone being so nice?” I ask Sam, who now sits with her back against a tree stump.

  “I believe many of them have gone into crisis mode.”

  “It’s nice to see their crisis mode involves helping strangers.”

  We’re silent for a moment as Lothar tells Florin a giant joke that seemingly has no punchline. Florin eventually laughs, but it’s definitely forced.

  “And for dinner?” I ask
aloud, hoping the Obelisk hears me. At the mention of the word dinner, Wolf looks at me and licks his lips. I wait for rabbits to run up to us and die at our feet.

  After nothing happens, I clear my throat and try again. “And for dinner?”

  “It looks like we will have to catch it ourselves tonight,” Lothar says.

  “And by we, you mean me, right?”

  “I can help you, if you’d like.”

  “It’s fine.” I stand and stretch my arms over my head. “I can hunt.”

  “No need for that,” we hear a voice call over to us. An old man with a cane approaches, his back hunched and a crooked grin on his face. His eyebrows are bushy, his beard long and twisted at the end. “We’ve got plenty of food to go around.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Lothar says.

  “It will be necessary, giant friend,” the old man says. “I tell you all what, it has been a hell of a day. We’ve been traveling for hours now, and we aren’t that far from the outskirts of Tagvornin. Talk about slow moving. Ever had Blue Melon honey? It’s kind of like that. I’ll tell you what, I could go for some of that stuff right about now. My wife used to make it all the time, now she’s too busy raising our grandkids. Where the hell are those little ankle biters? Julian, Ricky, Bubbles, get your asses over here!”

  Old man comes up offering us food and starts rambling? If that isn’t the start of a quest, I don’t know what is.

  This gets me wondering about quest updates. They’ve stopped appearing, which is odd.

  I glance at Sam and she gives me the ‘your guess is as good as mine’ shrug.

  “We don’t have time for a quest,” I tell him with a sigh.

  “A quest! My boy, the world is being destroyed! Now, of all times, and by the light of the northern god now means now, now is not the time to talk of quests! Not now! It’s a mass exodus, and by mass I mean me and your ass, well asses, so take the fucking handout, as Unigaean welfare is a rare thing indeed!”

  “Not in Tael,” Lothar says, his finger in the air. “In Tael, everyone is on a form of township welfare, which is why there are so many giants at the Solidus academies. Our tuitions are subsidized by those who stay and work in Tael, and we in turn pay back into the system once we are able to publish or find employment.”

  The old man stares up at Lothar as if he had just spit on his head. “You know, if I had a hard-on for every time a giant told me of the boons of Taelian socialism, my offspring would be visible from sea to sea, as far as the eye could see. What I’m trying to say here is I’d be fucking a lot, and I don’t fuck much nowadays, if at all, because of erectile dysfunction. What? Didn’t learn about that in Solidus, did you?” he asks Lothar.

  “Erectile dysfunction wasn’t my area of focus, no.”

  “How’s this for an area of focus?!” Cane in hand, the old man crosses his arms and chops at his crotch.

  “Pardon?” Lothar asks.

  “Chop, chop, giant!” the man cackles and Wolf turns to him, his lips lifting into a snarl.

  See, Wolf? You get me, I want to say, but Wolf is now Sam’s wheels – not the best way to refer to him, but it works – and I haven’t ridden him all day.

  Kind of odd, actually, as a lot of my day to day travel time is usually spent on Wolf’s back.

  Sam holds her wand up. “Enough. We’d be honored if you’d feed us, as long as we don’t have to hear about Tagvornin erectile dysfunction and Taelian socialism. What did I just say? Fuck, I’m hungry.”

  He taps his cane against the ground, his eyes wide and a toothy grin painted across his face. “In that case, young lady, I’ll keep the phallic discussions to a minimum. Please, join me!”

  “And I’ll keep quiet about Tael,” Lothar promises.

  The old man snorts, but doesn’t say anything as he leads us away from our campsite. Wolf looks over his shoulder at me, and I swear he rolls his eyes.

  Yeah? Me too, buddy.

  Chapter Seventeen: Mistaken Identity

  With bellies full we return to our campsite, glad to be rid of the crazy old kook. It turns out his grandkids – Bubbles, Ricky, and Julian, I believe – aren’t actually related to him. They are just kids from the campsite next door. In truth, he had no children. Or a wife.

  Go figure.

  Still, he fed us, and kept the conversation within the boundaries proposed by Sam.

  After our fire is going again, thanks to some shrub gathering from Lothar and Florin, the five of us relax, watching as the flames flicker and spark.

  Tomorrow’s the big day.

  Or it isn’t.

  We have more than one day, and we still don’t have a plan other than what the Obelisk has suggested.

  Sam yawns and brings the blanket up to the bottom of her chin.

  Wolf is next to her, already asleep, and as he snores lightly, Sam scoots down so only her head is propped up by the tree stump. A real trooper, this one. I really don’t know as much about her as I’d like to know. And to think, she’s been to countless Proxima worlds yet continues to spend her free time here.

  I guess Unigaea will do that to you.

  Everything is very random here, predestined randomness, and I need to keep reminding myself that all these chance encounters do play parts in a bigger narrative, something that only an all-seeing being such as the Obelisk can interpret and fully understand.

  Then why can’t she figure out the source code bomb, the Red Plague? And what happened with the quest updates? Does she still know what is going on?

  Maybe it is something too big for even her to tackle, maybe the fact that the bomb is alien technology limits her understanding of it.

  Maybe we are going about this all wrong, Oric.

  Got any better ideas, Eric?

  I drift off not long after having this thought, and awake a few hours later when Lothar’s stomach grumbles. I sit up, my hand already on the hilt of my Splintered Sword. It’s well past midnight now, a murky crimson gloom overhead.

  “Wolf,” I whisper.

  The big Tagvornin canine’s blue-green eyes settle on me. I nod to where Florin should be sleeping, and he looks over there.

  The fucker is gone.

  I remove Sam’s head from my shoulder as softly as I can. I move around her and approach Wolf, who is already sniffing at the ground.

  “Anything?” I ask him. He looks up at me anxiously. “Trust me, I know you’re not that type of dog.”

  Florin could have only gone two directions, either away from the camp, which would have been the smart thing to do, or towards the center of the encampment, which would have been the dumb thing to do.

  Wolf keeps sniffing until his tail perks up.

  “Found something?”

  He turns in the direction of the encampment, and I follow him as he sniffs his way through a lane separating our campsite from another. The people in the other campsite are still awake, gathered around a fire, their breath visible as they tell stories and laugh. I call over to them and a woman with a single braid on the back of her shaved head turns to me.

  “Have you seen anyone go by wearing a cloak and a hat?”

  The woman spits and points in the direction Wolf is sniffing.

  “Um, thanks?” I tell her as I pass.

  The overall clutter increases as we move closer towards the center of the Tagvornin camp. People are louder in this quadrant, drunker too. The crisp air is tainted by the scent of burning wood. A breeze from the east makes me wish I had some fur to wear.

  I never was one to dress in weather appropriate attire in Unigaea. Not my style.

  And that’s why your ass is shivering, Oric.

  Asses can’t shiver, Eric. Wait, yes they can.

  My inner monologue with either the Obelisk, myself, or both, reminds me why it’s better for a guy like me to have people around him. I’m just glad the two voices in my head aren’t on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

  “Night market!” a kid at the end of the lane shouts.

&
nbsp; He points to the left, and the couple in front of me turns to the market. I’m just about to go the other way when Wolf looks up at me, and nods his head toward the market.

  “If that’s where you think he is ...” I turn to the kid. “Hey, did you happen to see a guy come through here in a purple cloak and a hat?”

  The kid shrugs. “Night market!” he shouts to a person behind me.

  We wind through the maze that is a Tagvornin night market.

  I’ve visited one, back when I was the mayor of Ducat, and never could understand the appeal of shopping in the dark until a Tagvornin city official explained that the vendors offer their best discounts during this time, especially on perishable goods.

  My thoughts skip from my past to the reason I’m at the night market right now. If Florin is here, I’m going to find him and when I find him …

  I hop behind a stack of crates just in time.

  Florin stands about forty feet away from us, his get-up clear in the faint light provided by the night market’s candles. A sack of food flung over his shoulder, he discusses something with a burly food vendor.

  He’s buying food? Maybe it’s so he has something to eat for his escape.

  I point to Florin, and Wolf licks his lips. While Florin discusses prices with the vendor, we sneak around the back, past a man selling Grope’s shed jerky, of all fucking things, and once we’re about two yards away, I crouch behind a barrel of grain.

  “... That’s the lowest I’ll bloody go,” says the food vendor, a thin man with a thick British accent.

  “Fine, I thought I’d ask anyway,” says Florin.

  “Right then, pay up. I’ve other customers that need tending.”

  “And you’re sure this is enough for a giant? I’m unaware of how much food a giant will eat.”

  A giant? I glance down at Wolf and I swear he shrugs his shoulders. Is Florin getting food for us?

  My thoughts are interrupted by a series of shouts. I peek around the corner to see …

  Tension spreads across my chest as my muscles tighten. Two men, clearly Drachma Killers by the look of their garb, surround Florin.

  “Found you,” the spiky haired blond one growls. “The man in the lavender cloak, huh? You’re the motherfucker that killed …” The man sighs angrily and the shorter Killer next to him takes over, shoving Florin.