by S. R. Witt
Indira shrugged and pointed at me. “At least it’s not a total loss. I can still get the reward for turning a thief in.”
For a moment, I thought she was kidding. She smiled at me, but it was a cold and calculating thing, not the grin of friendship. “How did you know?”
The elf rolled her eyes. “You aren’t as sneaky as you think you are. I called you a thief back in the Wenderly place. Then there was the atrocious lie you told about your ability to see in the dark. You weren’t exactly trying to hide what you were.”
She was right, and that stung most of all. I’d trusted her, trusted all of them, and now I was going to pay the price for being such a fool.
Even Mercy was appalled. “Indira come on. You can’t do that. You’ll ruin him.”
The magus shrugged. “I didn’t spend the past three days traipsing all over the back end of hell and getting turned into a bald-headed freak, to come home with nothing. You promised me treasure. And I’ll have it, one way or another.”
I wrestled with the truth. If I told Indira I had the Burning Key, could I convince her not to turn me in?
No, that would just push her toward fucking me over. Even Bastion had turned against me when the Dominion was on the table. Indira was already pissed off, so I could only imagine the hell she’d drop on my head if she knew I had the Key.
If she wanted to turn me in, she could. I’d deal with it later. “If that’s all our friendship means to you,” I tried, “I guess you can go ahead and claim your reward. What difference does it make, anyway?”
Indira shrugged. “I’m sorry. I told you there had to be some payoff for me. I’m not playing this game for charity. I have things I want to accomplish, and the reward will help me reach my goals. I’m sorry if it hurts you, but you lied to me.”
That was the ultimate problem with everyone online. I didn’t know Indira, at all. She’d been my companion and ally in-Game, but outside? She could be anyone. This could’ve all been one epic troll she was using to earn laugh points with her friends. There was no point in trying to convince her otherwise. “Good luck.”
Indira nodded, waved once more, and patted Cringer on the shoulder. “All right, well, I guess we’ll see you back in town?”
I gave Indira a one-fingered salute and shook my head. “You’d better hope you never see me again.”
She threw me a weak pout. “Well, if you’re going to be like that, good luck to you, too.”
And just like that, they were done with me. Indira turned her back and stalked across the snowy plain with the dwarf by her side.
Mercy called down from her perch. “You think they’ll beat us back?”
I gestured to the fiery chasm surrounding my patch of snow. “I don’t see how we’ll catch up to them. I don’t even know how I’m going to get off this hunk of rock.”
Mercy grinned at me. “You think we have to walk the whole way to Frosthold?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What, you have a magic carpet somewhere?”
Mercy chuckled. “This is the problem with you. You get so into the game, you forget that it is a game. Do you really think the devs expect us all to walk everywhere we want to go? You didn’t even know about the fast travel system?”
My jaw fell open. “Then why didn’t we just fast travel back as soon as you found me?”
Mercy shrugged. “I thought you were looking for Indira and Cringer. Your brother maybe? I don’t know.”
I groaned and threw my arms up in exasperation. “How does it work? Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Mercy reached into the air between us and made a quick gesture with her fingertips. “See—”
The map was twenty feet way from me. “How the hell am I supposed to see that?”
“Oh,” Mercy said. “Let me share it with you.”
Her fingers danced through the air, and the map split into two perfect replicas. She shoved one in my direction, and it floated down to hover in front of my face. I had to remember to ask her how to do that trick when we were safely back in Frosthold.
“This map shows us everywhere we’ve been.” She tapped her map, and a pair of glowing green dots appeared on mine. “That’s us.”
Another tap lit up a bright white spot far from our current position. “And that’s Frosthold.”
“So how do we get from here to there?”
Mercy groaned. “I swear, you don’t know anything about the game part of this game. Tap the white dot.”
I did as I was told, and a small menu appeared over the map.
FAST TRAVEL OPTIONS
Fast travel to Frosthold?
Set waypoint at Frosthold?
Change hometown to Frosthold?]
I reached out and tapped the fast travel option, feeling more than a little foolish. I really did need to read the manual.
The option flashed red, then yellow, then red again.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Mercy scanned the horizon. “Only a few things can block fast travel.”
“Such as?” People being obtuse was really starting to get on my nerves.
“Well, some magical barriers can stop it, but I don’t think that’s it. I’ve fast traveled back to Frosthold before.” She kept looking, one hand shielding her eyes from the blowing snow.
“Can you not tell me what it’s not, and say what it is?”
“You also can’t fast travel to someplace you’ve never visited. But we both been to Frosthold.”
I was going to kill her. “Tell. Me. What’s. Going. On.”
Mercy pointed across the snow. A hulking black figure limped through the snow, a massive club dragging in the snow beside it. At this distance, it was hard to make out details, but the enormous death’s head helm was impossible to miss.
“You also can’t fast travel if you’re currently being threatened by an enemy.” She lowered her finger and drew her bow. “And I reckon this guy qualifies as an enemy.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Yark crossed the snow with the implacable, unrelenting pace of a glacier. His armor, once gleaming steel, was blackened and ruptured from the intense heat he’d endured. His skull-like helm was cracked, and its jagged gaps revealed horrifying blisters and glistening, abraded flesh. His eyes were filled with a crazed hatred, and he aimed his massive club at us. “You.”
The single word traveled across the frozen wasteland like the voice of God. It contained hatred, rage, and something I hadn’t expected. A bitter, bottomless grief that elicited sympathy almost as much as fear.
We’d taken everything from Yark, his friends, his leader, his very purpose for existence. And now, having survived that pain, having emerged from the virtual hell we’d created from the snowy landscape, he was coming to return that pain to us. He was through with it, and he wanted someone else to carry the burden.
Lucky us.
As he closed the gap between us, I realized Yark wasn’t dragging his club. That was a tree in his hand, and he planned to use it to bridge the gap between us.
Mercy fired an arrow at the ogre, but Yark’s massive armor plates deflected the missiles like stones skipping off the surface of a still lake. He was a monolith of blackened metal, an elemental force of destruction coming to grind us under its heel. We were done.
But we weren’t going down without a fight.
Mercy fired a last shot at the closing behemoth and glanced at me. “Where the hell are you daggers?”
I hoped she couldn’t see me blushing. “I, uh, lost them?”
Yark lifted the tree onto its splintered truck and let it fall across the gap.
Mercy flicked her short sword down into the snow next to me. “Make yourself useful.”
I snatched the weapon up and gave it a few practice swings. It was heavier than my stilettos, but it seemed to work on the same principles. Hold the hilt, point the sharp end at your enemy, poke, and repeat. “Let’s do this!”
Mercy kept firing arrows, trying to slow the ogre or injure him, bu
t she had no success at either. Yark shrugged off every shot and kept right on coming.
The ogre drew his club from the sheath on his back and crossed the makeshift bridge without hesitation. The tree bowed under his weight but didn’t crash into the fiery depths.
Mercy fired another shot at Yark, but he swatted the arrow out of the sky with his club and roared his fury at her. Ignoring me for the moment, he snatched a chunk of ice from the snow and hurled it at her.
The improvised missile crashed into Mercy’s left leg, knocking it out from under her. I watched in horror as she lost her balance and fell. She dug her fingers into the heat-softened earth at the edge of the drop. She dangled from her precarious grip, struggling to get her bow back onto her shoulder so she could use her other hand to climb without losing her weapon.
The ogre grinned and hoisted another ball of ice. It reared back for a throw I knew would kill Mercy if it landed.
“I don’t think so,” I shouted and rushed Yark.
My left foot landed on his right hip, and I grabbed his collar with that hand. My fingers closed over the blackened edge of his armor, and I used my grip to raise myself over his shoulder. Before Yark could react to my presence, I drove the short sword into the space between his helmet and his breastplate.
CRITICAL STRIKE!
Damage: 90 health
Yark the Ogre’s throat is slit and his jugular is severed!
Yark the Ogre is bleeding severely! (30/second)
Yark the Ogre is stunned! (10 seconds duration)
BRACERS OF THE STRIKING SERPENT ACTIVATED!
SUCCESS! 50 health damage!]
My attack had done all I’d hoped, and more. Most of Yark’s health bar was gone, and the blood jetting out of him would drain the rest before he could recover from being stunned.
I jumped free, not wanting to get pinned between Yark and the ground when he collapsed.
Mercy couldn’t get her bow in place, and she couldn’t pull herself back up with one hand. She glanced back at me and offered a nervous grin, which was my only warning she was about to do something stupid.
She pulled herself up as far as she could with one hand, pushed her feet into the wall, and jumped.
Her jump was clumsy and off-balance, and she flew through the air with her arms and her mouth open wide. She tossed her bow to the snow and stretched both arms out in front of her as she neared the butte where Yark and I waited.
She wasn’t going to make it.
Mercy’s claws just missed the edge, and she vanished without a sound.
“No!” I ran to where she’d fallen and stared into the fiery depths below.
Mercy’s golden eyes set into her pale face returned my stare. Her claws were stuck into the shale face of the butte, five feet below the edge.
I saw the problem at once. Her claws were wedged deep into the brittle stone, but if she tried to move them she’d end up peeling the shale away like an old scab. There was no way to climb this stuff. “Help.”
Her bow was in the snow next to me. I grabbed it, threw myself flat on my belly at the edge, and held the bow down to her with both hands wrapped around one end. “Grab hold!”
“It won’t hold me,” she warned. “It’ll snap in half.”
“Take it,” I commanded. “We have to try something.”
Her forked tongue darted over her scaled lips. She pulled one hand free of the wall and grabbed hold of the bow with the other. “Pull,” she said.
I scuttled back from the edge, worming through the snow as I tried to haul her out of the chasm. She held onto the bow with one hand and used her other to dig into the wall and keep some of her weight off the fragile weapon.
When her hand grabbed the edge, I switched grips from the bow to her forearm and yanked her onto the butte. She scrambled up, and we tangled together, then collapsed into the snow.
I laughed, relief and terror at war inside me. “That was close,” I gasped between laughs.
“Saint,” Mercy said, her voice low.
“You should have seen your face,” I said with a choked laugh. “You thought you were dead. Hell, I thought—”
“Saint!” She barked and rolled away from me, pointing at something out of my line of sight.
I rolled onto my feet and snatched the short sword from the snow. To my shock, I saw the ogre was still on his feet.
Yark shuddered. His body vibrated from the tip of his head to the soles of his feet. He was having a seizure, a final death rattle that would end with him collapsing onto his knees and his last breath whistling out through the hole I’d punched in his trachea.
“Yeah! Take that, you big son of a bitch!”
Yark’s shoulders slumped. The business end of his enormous weapon thudded to the ground, though he still held the handle in one hand. He wobbled for a moment, and a terrible sound grated through his damaged throat.
Too late, I realized he was laughing.
I watched in horror as a pale blue aura surrounded him, and his health bar refilled. An empty glass flask fell from his other hand.
The asshole had a healing potion. And it was a lot more powerful than the one Bastion had given me.
His club moved so fast I was flying through the air before realized I’d been hit.
That left me with just a handful of health points. I landed at the edge of the chasm. If he’d hit me any harder, the blow would have killed me outright or sent me sailing into the abyss.
Before I could get back on my feet, he turned his attention to Mercy. She twisted to the side, but his club still clipped her shoulder. The attack wasn’t enough to kill her, but it sent her sliding through the slush of the battlefield. She rolled, came up to her feet, and fired another shot at the ogre’s face. It pinged off his helmet, but the attack rattled him enough to give Mercy room to run circles around him.
Running in circles was our only real chance at survival. Unless we could get over the tree bridge Yark was guarding, we were trapped with the ogre in a space so small he could catch us without any real effort.
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and crawled back to my feet. We could do this. It would be hard, and we had to hope he didn’t have another potion tucked away somewhere, but there was still a chance. I rushed forward, ready to jump up and stab him again
Mercy fired another arrow, and then pointed her finger at me. “No, you idiot. Run!”
I skidded to a halt. She fired arrow after arrow, one, two, three in a pattern that pinged off Yark’s cracked helmet one after another.
She couldn’t kill him by herself. None of her arrows had caused any real damage to the ogre.
She was, on the other hand, really pissing him off. Yark was so furious he wasn’t even paying attention to me. All he could think about was killing the little thing shooting arrows at him. And every shot that landed on his helm stunned him for just a second, keeping him from charging at Mercy.
I realized what she was doing, and my heart ached. I couldn’t do this again.
“Run!” She fired two more arrows at the ogre, and then one at me. I knew she wasn’t trying to hit me, but it still stung. “You have to get out of here!”
She dodged another of the ogre’s attacks, but her roll was clumsy, and she didn’t come up shooting. She was tired, her arms and legs would give out soon.
There was only one way off the butte. I ran across the bridge Yark had left behind.
I pulled open the map and pressed the icon marking Frosthold’s location. It flashed red, then returned to white.
The bridge. As long as it was there, Yark could come after me. The game still considered him a threat.
“I’m sorry,” I shouted and kicked the tree’s splintered trunk. It slipped through the snow and mud and tumbled into the chasm.
And then I left Mercy to die.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Fast travel wasn’t as much fun as I’d anticipated. The world around me lurched, and my vision shrank to a pinhole surrounded by a swirling aurora of di
storted color. There was a moment of intense disorientation, and my insides felt like they’d moved to the outside of my body via a new orifice in the top of my skull. Imagine a giant cramming an inch-wide straw through the top of your head and sucking all your thinky bits through it.
That’s fast travel.
!!!WARNING!!!
You are no longer welcome in the city of Frosthold. A warrant has been issued for your arrest, and you have been branded a thief.
As a result, Fast Travel cannot return you to a safe point within the city, but will instead leave you 100 yards outside its walls. You will have approximately 30 seconds of invulnerability during which time you cannot be detected, attacked, or otherwise harmed. This will give you sufficient time to seek cover from the local authorities, should you choose to do so.
!!!GOOD LUCK!!!
That message hovered in the air for the 15 seconds I was suspended in the space between spaces that was fast travel. Then a small timer appeared in the lower right-hand corner of my vision, and I fell a couple of feet onto the snowy ground.
The timer ticked away the seconds so loud it was all I could hear for a moment.
A pair of guards patrolled Frosthold’s walls, and another couple was stationed in front of the gates to the east of my position. They hadn’t seen me yet, but they would as soon as the invulnerability I’d gained from fast travel wore off.
10 seconds gone.
Time to move. There was a low hill to my left, and I scurried over and ducked behind it.
Safely out of sight, I tried to hide.
SUCCESS! You skulk in the shadows, unseen by your foes.
