The Road to Red Thorn

by Blaine Hicks

  The star-creeper’s grip faltered and the grendel was able to draw in some desperate breaths of smoky air before being dropped unceremoniously to the ground. The star-creeper chose to save itself and stumbled past Radley while trailing flames. It fell clumsily back into the brown river with a sizzling hiss.

  Then, everything was calm again. The persistent bubbling of the river replaced the chaotic tumult of battle. Radley turned and examined the grendel who lay prone in the mud. He selected the magnifying glass icon from his HUD when it appeared.

  Familiar (unnamed) - 187/1447 HP

  Status Effects:

  This familiar is in pretty bad shape.

  This familiar is stunned for 11 more seconds.

  This familiar’s right arm is dislocated.

  Despite the grendel's designation as Radley's familiar, he didn't yet have the confidence to offer the wounded creature aid. He wasn’t even sure how to help it. Ultimately it didn't matter, because behind him the star-creeper had returned and was slowly pulling itself back onto the shore. Radley heard the water draining from it as it rose from the water. The fire was out but hot wisps of steam and smoke coiled off charred sections of its body. It stepped stiffly up the muddy bank as if testing the integrity of its legs. Radley didn’t wait for it to make the first move and began jogging up the riverbank towards the treeline. He only paused long enough to analyze the enemy again.

  Elder Star-Creeper - 445/1750 HP (aggro)

  Battle consideration: This Elder Star-Creeper is level 64. This creature has reduced mobility. You are still no match for this creature.

  With a four second crackle of static, the monster cast a new spell that changed its exterior. The coating of green leaves on its back and arms turned grey and melted into a hard, glossy bark. This was obviously a defensive spell that would make any further damage by Radley unlikely. To make matters worse, all Radley’s spells were now on cooldown and he couldn’t dream to match the monster physically. He knew he stood no chance and turned his jog toward the forest. Then he picked up speed and sprinted, knowing the star-creeper was close behind joining him in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

  The dense forest was actually a big help to Radley. The star-creeper didn’t scamper as well among the trees as it had over the muddy riverbank. Even with the terrain advantage and the star-creepers reduced mobility from being burned, Radley was still outclassed. In a distance race he would have stood no chance, but this was a sprint and just over the crest of the first hill, Radley saw what he was looking for; the sundew vine lay directly ahead. Radley ran towards it and hurdled the dangerous obstacle at nearly full speed. He slid to a stop on the far side where he landed, then turned to face the oncoming star-creeper.

  The sentient plant wasn't stupid and knew not to stumble over the vine in its haste to catch this obnoxious bug. In a feat of amazing agility, it began a graceful cartwheel which became a sort of back-handspring sending the creeper into the air and over the vine...but Radley was ready. He remembered how the grendel had reacted to the sundew and figured that any intelligent creature in this forest wouldn’t be fooled easily into touching the vine. Just as the star-creeper sailed over it though, Radley stomped down on a thornless segment of the vine. He had decided to kill the star-creeper even if he had to die with it.

  Quick as a lightning strike, the vine snapped upward to grab whatever had disturbed it, but Radley was already pulling his foot away. Despite being fast, the vine was much faster and would have caught Radley easily if it hadn't encountered the star-creeper first. The sundew caught the springing plant mid-air and quickly targeted it as the offending prey. Tight bundles lined with noxious thorns coiled and tightened in the blink of an eye.

  Radley was left to retreat a safe distance. The star-creeper was not as lucky and could not get away. It struggled frantically until the thorns penetrated its glossy armor and began to secrete their toxin.

  The struggling slowed and the vine began to retract toward the distant maw at the top of the ant hill. Radley moved closer to the bundle to get a better view. One remaining star-creeper limb hung limply outside the tightly wrapped vine. Radley analyzed it.

  Elder Star-Creeper - 52/1750 HP (aggro)

  Battle consideration: This Elder Star-Creeper is level 64. This creature is paralyzed. This creature is in awful condition and unable to fight.

  Radley’s heart started to beat quickly with anticipation. He wanted to steal the kill again. The star-creeper experience could fuel another 4 levels of progression and it was already disabled so the risk seemed pretty low. His best option was to attack the limp arm as the bundle slowly moved through the forest.

  He tried kicking and scratching the limp limb with his claws, but his physical attacks did no damage. No matter what he tried, it was ineffective. The grey glossy skin was impossible to penetrate with his claws. He was like a baby trying to chop down an oak tree by gumming it like a chew toy. It felt a lot like his first fight against the rabbit who had been double his level. His physical skills simply weren’t a match for the level 64 creature.

  Radley considered going back to find the knife that the star-creeper had lost but worried it would take too long and he would miss this opportunity. Instead, he waited for his stone fist spell to complete its cooldown cycle. He checked the star-creeper’s status again and found it unchanged. The grendel had mentioned, that the sundew liked fresh food and only incapacitated the prey before a meal. Once its prey’s struggling had stopped, the sundew vine stopped squeezing and no more HP was lost.

  When his stone fist finally came off cooldown Radley ran ahead of the slow procession to prepare his attack. He uttered the spell’s incantation and closed his hand into a fist. The dark purple shard enveloped his arm from his elbow to his knuckles. When the bundle passed, he attacked the star-creeper’s exposed limb with everything he had. The defensive spell was still active, so the attack only did 8 damage, but it was more than his scratching claws had achieved. The sundew didn’t seem to notice anything and just kept reeling in its catch.

  Radley’s fire palm was the next spell to finish its cooldown. Just as before, he intended to make the spell count. He shouted the spell’s incantation and slammed his palm into the star creeper’s limp arm. The spell triggered and fire exploded against the star-creeper. Just as before, the potency of the fire spell was unusually strong against the sentient plant and the magic flames spread easily. Before Radley could stop it, the fire spread over the sundew vine that encased the rest of the star-creeper.

  The vine finally noticed Radley but had no tolerance for his magical fire. A trailing portion of the sundew vine forward before Radley could react. The abrupt attack separated Radley’s head from his body. His HP bar dropped to 0 before his addled mind could even register the pain flaring through his exposed nerve endings. His head landed just a few feet away and Radley lived long enough to watch his headless body tumble to the ground before everything went black.

  “YOU HAVE DIED”

  The glowing golden message of his death hung in front of him in the void. Unlike his first death - by psycho rabbit - Radley was completely surprised by his second death and was still screaming when he appeared in the black space. For some reason, the golden light of the death message soothed him, and his screaming faded until he could process what had just happened. He had a brief impulse to log off, but of course, that wasn’t an option. He slowly reached for the respawn button with a shaking hand. His finger hesitated for a second. You can do this, he thought and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He pressed the button and darkness consumed him once more.

  CH. 28 A Subtle Truce

  Radley was reborn for the third time and felt the familiar wrappings of his snakeskin stretched tightly around him. He hated this part of respawning but had no choice except to accept this reality. He methodically began the process of escaping. For the third time he split the skin open and wormed his way out. It was still exhausting, and he wondered if it would ever get easier. Putting some points into s
trength might help, he thought.

  When he was finally free, he looked around to get his bearings. He was on the bed of moss at the rocky outcrop where he’d spent the night. The scent of smoke lingered but the firepit was long cold. His disorientation quickly faded, and he carefully stood. He wanted to hurry and return to the site of his death before his familiar fulfilled the promise to eat his soul shard.

  He picked up the snakeskin. Keeping it was kind of creepy, like saving toenail clippings, but leaving it felt wasteful too and he was past worrying about propriety. At a certain point he had to be realistic about his situation. He was a snakeman, carrying a bundle of his own skin as he hiked naked through a forest of ubiquitous death, back to a pet who would probably kill him, eat him, and bathe in his blood when he got there. Now that he thought about it, carrying skin around was the least of his problems. He rolled up the skin into a tight bundle and set off, following the same path he had traveled that morning, but this time moved much more quickly. He wondered with a sick feeling if the grendel really could use his spirit shard to escape their familiar bond. He wondered if it was already coming for revenge. The last thing he needed was another high-level monster out for his blood. He had been shaken by the pain and brutality of his beheading and didn’t want to repeat the experience twice in one day...or ever again.

  Radley followed the same northernly path he had taken earlier in the day. He glanced at his stamina bar to try to keep his pace maximized and realized something had changed. His Health bar’s maximum had increased from 90 to 123 HP. He was moving too quickly to navigate through his menus without tripping, but it could only mean one thing. He must have leveled. Leveling meant he had killed something which meant, he had successfully finished off the star-creeper just before losing his own life. The realization put a smile on his face. It meant that if he could survive his reunion with the grendel, then the deadly plant’s ambush would end up a nice boon to his character progression. He may have gained some more luck or even better, some other, more helpful attribute. Of course, if the grendel fulfilled his promise and killed him repeatedly, that benefit would be nullified.

  Radley made quick progress, but it came at a cost. He was being loud. He knew traveling fast was a gamble, but he was more scared of the grendel waiting for him at his destination than those he might find along the way. Somehow kicking up leaves and thrashing past tree branches didn’t attract any monsters. His brisk walking didn’t burn stamina as quickly as sprinting, but he was still exhausted after an hour of hiking. The biggest downside to his urgency, was that he couldn’t review his waiting notifications, which he badly wanted since leveling was the highlight of his new life. His willpower kept him focused on walking, and pacing himself to minimize his stamina decline.

  He made it to the river in about half the time he expected but it still took almost two hours. The fact that the grendel hadn’t killed him yet gave him hope that the shard of experience still waited for him where he’d died.

  At the river he turned right and made his way along the bank to the site where the star-creeper ambushed them. The sundew vine that had blocked the path was conspicuously missing now and further down the river so was his grendel. There was plenty of destruction left behind by the powerful battle. He gathered his grendel hide where it had been dropped and checked to make sure it still held his sports bottle and stash of coins. It did. He added the much thinner snakeskin to the roll before returning the leather bundle under his arm. He eventually found his walking staff in a tree but couldn’t remember how it got there. With the bundle organized into a single roll under his arm and the walking stick in his other hand, he entered the forest to find the location of his death.

  Just inside the treeline a shimmering glint of metal caught his eye. It was the star-creeper’s knife, half buried in leaf litter. He set down the walking stick and picked up the knife. It was simple but looked well-built. He inspected it.

  Heavy Bladed Bowie Knife

  Weapon type: 1-Handed Slashing

  Damage: 16-18

  Quality: Average

  Effects:

  Requires 20 strength to wield normally.

  Every third hit does double damage.

  Value: 8000 c

  The knife didn’t seem overly special, but he wasn’t ready to leave loot behind. The projected value was decent, and it wouldn’t require much room to carry, even if he couldn’t use it himself. Radley unrolled his leather bundle and added the knife to his ever-growing treasure bounty. When he picked the bundle back up, he noticed a new notification icon in the shape of a barbell flickering at the edge of his vision. The weight of what he carried would now slow him down. He didn’t have time to fix it and anyway he wanted to hang on to everything he had so he did his best to endure the debuff and hurried onward to find his spirit shard.

  When he finally reached the area of his death his stamina had almost bottomed out. He would be defenseless if another battle was required. He saw the grendel, sitting on its haunches, waiting for him. Just beside it hovered the shard that marked the location where Radley had died. His familiar seemed to be guarding it. The grendel watched him approach through the trees and broke the silence first. You stomp through the forest like an elephant trying to dance. How you can be so small yet so loud is a mystery to me. If any other grendel were around you would already be dead.

  Radley wasn’t in the mood for the attitude and responded with a similar verbal jab. “It only sounds loud because your ears are ridiculously large.”

  The beast grinned a toothy grin and seemed to relax just a little bit. My ears are impressive little bird, but flattery will get you nowhere with me.

  Radley nodded at the subtle truce and asked, “Then what will get me somewhere with you?”

  The grendel eyed him for a moment before speaking again and when it did, the tone was less curt than usual. I owe you death for entering my territory. I owe you an eternity of pain for enslaving me. I owe you endless misery for your stupid arrogance...but now, with the object of revenge within my grasp, I also owe you my life.

  Radley wasn’t sure what to say to this, so he held his tongue and eventually the grendel continued, Three times since yesterday, I have been held in the grasp of death and my life was spared by you. The star-creeper are rare around here, but formidable hunters. They pray on grendel like cattle. Fighting it off was no small feat and is nearly unheard of among our kind. I cannot ignore your part in it... Perhaps Rad Fabulous, you have earned a second chance.

  Radley smiled at his familiar’s use of his game name since he had never given it. The grendel apparently had access to some of his information as well. Considering this lecture to be a truce of sorts, Radley moved forward to retrieve the spirit shard, but just as he reached out and touched it, the grendel added, I’ll wait until the next time you die before I consume your shard and grind your bones to dust...

  ***

  The retrieval of his spirit shard returned Radley’s apparent lost experience and increase his character to level 10. He spent some time checking around the area for dropped loot but found nothing. The sundew vine must have carried everything off. Despite the fact that he had dealt the killing blow, Radley didn’t plan to contest the ownership.

  The tentative allies turned north, returning to the river and Radley wondered absently if the grendel could carry his bundle of supplies. He decided not to ask. Partly because it was culturally insensitive to expect the grendel to carry a rolled-up skin of another grendel, but mostly because he was still scared to ask the monstrous familiar for any favors. Not being killed again was enough. As they walked, Radley finally took the time to review his prompts that were by then, several hours old.

  *Consuming this water leaves you feeling blessed with ‘Refreshing Draught’. Stamina regeneration is increased by 10% for 1 hour. *

  Radley read the prompt twice trying to remember again what it could br referencing. It was the second time he had seen the ‘refreshing draught’ notification. So much had happened si
nce the previous day that he couldn’t even remember the last time he had drunk water. He was actually pretty thirsty now and couldn’t drink anything because he had poured the water out of his sports bottle. It was now holding his grendel teeth, fangs and gold coins. That's it! Radley thought as he made the realization. The last time he’d drunk any water was from the sports bottle before he had filled it with loot. It had been filled with water from his home. The water trickling out from his sink must have provided the buff.

  He thought about it again then hesitated because he didn’t remember getting the prompt when he was in the house. He’d had quite a bit going on at the time so it's possible he’d dismissed the notification without reading it. He shrugged the doubt away. With the realization that the water from his house might have magical properties, he was annoyed now that he had dumped it. His attention turned back to his prompts.

  *You have learned the skill “Group fight” (level 1)*

  *You have learned the skill “Disarm” (level 1)*

  *You have failed the agility check and do not land on your feet.*

  *You have failed the constitution check. You are stunned for 4 seconds.

  *You have reached level 3 in “Ambush”*