by A. J. Markam
I realized why he was so angry: of his army of 10,000, there were probably only a few hundred left.
Basically, my best play at this point was to get him so angry that he killed me quickly.
Wasn’t going to happen, though.
“No,” a dark, Spanish-tinted voice called out from behind the orcs. “He is mine.”
SHIT.
Krort and his remaining soldiers looked around in shock. Through a gap in their numbers, I could see Shyvock, standing alone in a field of corpses.
“FOOL!” Krort bellowed. “YOU have been a thorn in my side, as well! Bring me his head!”
Ten orcs detached from the group and started towards Shyvock.
The Hunter calmly lifted up his bow and fired three arrows at once. While they were still a blur in the air, the three arrow tips each exploded into three smaller parts, and the resulting shrapnel struck nine of the ten orcs between the eyes.
The shot probably wouldn’t have killed them had they been at full strength, but they’d just survived a brutal battle and were low on Health.
Nine bodies fell to the ground at the same instant, leaving one unlucky fellow to look around him in shock.
He raised his eyes to the Hunter, then slowly began to back away.
“COWARD!” Krort roared, and motioned at the lone survivor. Another ten orcs leapt forward and cut him down mercilessly.
“Blue Priest!” Krort snarled. “Show this fool who he is dealing with!”
Dorp hunched over and did his James McAvoy/Professor X thing – and then stood back up, his face both confused and frightened.
“WELL?!” Krort demanded.
“It’s not working,” Dorp said in his helium Eeyore voice.
“WHAT?! Summon his worst fear!”
“That’s the thing,” Dorp whined. I could hear the panic in his voice. “I don’t think he’s afraid of any– ”
His words were cut short as an arrow pierced his neck.
I watched in horror as the poor demon clutched his throat. He looked at me in a panic – Help me! – then fell to the ground and disappeared, leaving only the arrow and his white robe behind.
Krort stared at the ground, dumbfounded.
Then he turned back to Shyvock and pulled his battle ax from his back.
“KILL HIM!” he roared as he led the charge towards the Hunter.
Every remaining orc followed the general.
Shyvock just calmly walked backwards and fired exploding arrows at them, felling them in groups.
Krort was the last one left standing – partially because he was the most powerful, but also because he wasn’t a foot soldier, and had taken the least amount of damage during the battle. He bellowed in rage as Shyvock hit him with an arrow that exploded in his chest – and yet he kept going.
I could see his hit points dropping rapidly, but he still raised his massive battle ax above his head, ready to strike the Hunter down –
But rather than retreat again, Shyvock actually stepped forward.
The orc general buried his ax in Shyvock’s shoulder, splitting the leather armor like a watermelon rind.
Shyvock stepped in even closer like a boxer might, right next to Krort’s body.
My view of the altercation was hidden by the massive orc, who almost completely blocked Shyvock from view. For a second I allowed myself to hope that my two enemies would kill each other –
But the orc didn’t make another move. He just stood there… and then slowly leeeaaaned backwards and fell WHAM! onto his back.
In his gut, right under the rib cage, was the handle of a giant Bowie knife.
Shyvock limped over to the body, knelt down, and pulled the knife out of the corpse with a shhhuck sound.
Then he looked up at me. “Time for you, now, little warlock.”
Fuck, fuck, FUCK –
I blasted him with Soul Suck, hoping to take advantage of the grievous wound in his arm, but he still had over 40% of his hit points. My Level 24 spells barely made a dent.
As my blue lightning pierced his chest, he calmly sheathed the knife, whipped out his bow, and nocked a single arrow.
He aimed it at me, and I saw his hand jerk –
I dove hard to my right, hoping that a miracle would occur in the game’s algorithms and I might dodge the arrow.
No such luck.
Because he hadn’t fired.
He’d just twitched his hand to fake me out and make me think he was going to fire.
I dove to the ground, and then he shot the arrow right into my chest.
THOCK.
I screamed – more from frustration than pain, although it was still plenty painful.
Over half of my hit points, gone – just like that.
I’d started at 75% Health. Now I was down to 32%.
As Shyvock limped towards me, he pulled a small vial from his belt, uncorked it with a flick of his giant thumb, then opened a small vent in the faceplate of his mask. He shoved the neck of the bottle through the hole, tilted up his hand, and drank.
I couldn’t see anything in the gaping hole that Krort had left in his armor – no skin color or texture that would tell me whether he was an orc or some other race – but I could see one thing for sure: his Health meter zoomed up by a good 15%, putting him back at 55% of his hit points.
Once he was finished with the healing potion, he threw it off to the side, where it landed atop a pile of dead orcs.
“You have caused me a great deal of trouble today,” Shyvock said, his stride slightly improved.
He leaned over, clamped his right hand around my neck, and lifted me into the air so that my feet were dangling off the ground and I was staring into the black, glass eyes of his mask.
“All of this suffering… all of these dead… for 10,000 gold.” He shook his head. “You would think these fools would have just paid me. Then they might have all walked away alive. But know this: no matter how many die, I always get paid.”
“I… I’ve got the money,” I wheezed as his massive hand choked me.
“Why did you not say so?” He held out his other gloved hand. “Give it to me.”
“I… don’t have it… with me,” I choked out.
“Then you do not have it.”
“I can tell you where to get it. Even more than 10,000, probably. Maybe ten times that amount.”
Shyvock’s hand eased up around my neck. “Tell me, and I will spare your life.”
Now that I could breathe, I saw that I had been working at cross purposes to my own best interests.
I had panicked, afraid to die – but that was exactly what I SHOULD do in this situation.
After I’d realized my error, I did everything I could to correct course.
“Fuck you, you stupid, goat-fucking, inbred son of a bitch. I’d rather die than you get your hands on that gold.”
I was trying to enrage him, in the hopes that he would snap my neck and I would immediately resurrect somewhere 100 miles away.
No such luck.
The Hunter regarded me with his soulless Darth Vader eyes, then chuckled.
“Good try, little warlock.”
He opened his hand and dropped me to the ground, where I crumpled into a pile.
Then he went over and sat down on the nearest clump of orc bodies, as easily as if he were settling back into an easy chair. “Tell me where the gold is.”
“I told you to go fuck yourself.”
“This could go very easily for you, or very hard. I would advise the former. Tell me where the gold is.”
“NO.”
He got up calmly from his throne of corpses and walked over to me. I freaked out, turned, and tried to scrabble away across the grass – until I felt a giant hand grab my foot. He lifted my leg up in the air so that I was dangling face-first in the grass.
Two seconds later there was a blinding pain as I felt my ankle snap 90 degrees to the right.
“AAAAAAAH!” I screamed.
It wasn’t a mortal woun
d, but it was a very painful one.
The whole ‘Poisoned Arrow’ and ‘Torture Arrow’ bullshit was DEFINITELY going down in the QC report.
Not to mention that 5% of my hit points went away just like that, leaving me at 19%.
Shyvock let go of me. My broken ankle hit the ground with an excruciating burst of new pain that shaved off an extra 1%.
Then he reached down and picked up the other foot, and dangled me in the air exactly the same way. “Where’s the gold?”
“No, please, don’t – ” I babbled.
“‘No, Please, Don’t’ – is that a city? A region I am unfamiliar with? Somehow I do not think so. Where is the gold?”
“Please, I’m begging you – ”
“You do not have to beg, just tell me where the gold is.”
I gritted my teeth and prepared for the pain. “Fuck you, you overgrown – ”
SNAP.
“AAAAAAAH!”
I screamed in pain as my other ankle was obliterated, and then screamed again when it hit the ground.
12% Health.
Despite my attempt to face death bravely, my panicked desire to avoid excruciating pain overrode it. I tried to crawl away on my hands and elbows, dragging my useless feet behind me through the grass –
I felt the heavy weight of his foot clamp down on the side of my right knee.
“Where’s the gold?” he asked.
Fuck, this is a hundred times worse than the ‘Do you have it?’ game.
“What are you going to do to me if I tell you?” I asked.
“I will let you go.”
“And pay off Varkus for me?”
The bounty hunter chuckled. It was an ugly sound. “Probably not.”
I twisted my body and looked up at him, enraged. “So you’re just going to steal the money?!”
“‘Steal’ suggests that I did not work for it. I have worked very hard for it, little warlock.”
“Why don’t you just take me back to Varkus? That way you get the bounty plus whatever you recover from the – ”
I stopped myself before I said it.
Shyvock noticed. “From the what?”
I just stared up at him, dreading what I knew was going to come next.
He put a little more weight on my knee. I winced, but I didn’t say anything.
“To answer your question,” Shyvock said, “I know that if I brought you to Varkus, you would tell him about the gold, then I would forfeit a certain amount to him. Why do that when I can keep it all for myself? If you tell me where the gold is, I will let you go. You will have to take your chances with other hunters, but at least you will be alive. So tell me: recover the gold from what?”
“Fuck you.”
He put all his weight on my knee, and it snapped like kindling.
“AAAAAAARH!”
I know it was only at 50% sensation, but the pain wasn’t the worst thing. It was the horror of watching your limbs get twisted in a direction they were never supposed to bend. I couldn’t even imagine how painful this would be if I were at a hundred percent sensory level.
But now I was down to 6% Health.
Just a few bits of torture more and I was off the hook.
Then Shyvock did something I didn’t expect.
He reached down, flipped me over onto my back, and pinned one massive hand against my chest. With his free hand he pulled out one of the vials from his belt, flicked off the cork, and jammed it into my mouth.
No – NO, GOD DAMN IT –
I tried to block it out with my tongue, but he punched me in my solar plexus. It wasn’t much more than a love tap, but it made me gasp – and suddenly the fiery healing liquid was flowing down my throat.
Whatever the fuck he had given me, it was some good shit, because my health points zoomed back up to 70%.
I could feel my knee and both ankles pop back into place. If they weren’t entirely healed, then they were at least functional again.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would’ve been happy.
These were not ordinary circumstances.
“MOTHER FUCKER!”
I had to fight back tears of frustration. I’d been so close, so goddamn close to getting away through death.
Not any longer.
Shyvock walked back over to his throne of corpses and settled down on the bodies. “I have many more healing potions, little warlock. For one as weak as you, they should keep you alive for a very, very long time. Or I could break you until you are near death, then let you recover as long as it takes until you reach full health, at which point I will torture you again. Either way, I will get the information I want. Recover the gold from what?”
I just lay there on the grass, looking up at the clouds in the sky and cursing my luck. Maybe I could log out and get the fuck out of here –
“Or,” the Hunter said, “I could leave you and go hunt down the metal succubus you are traveling with.”
I looked up in alarm.
“Yes… I thought so,” Shyvock said in a self-satisfied voice. “You shield her from me at every opportunity. She is not just a servant to you… she is something else entirely. You fear her death more than your own. Otherwise you would not go to such extraordinary lengths to protect her.”
I cursed myself for having tipped my hand.
“If I tell you, you’ll leave me alone?” I asked. “And you’ll leave her alone, too?”
“Yes. And if you do not tell me, I promise you, I will torture you to the brink of death as many times as I possibly can. And then I will wait for her to return to you, and I will take her apart in front of you, piece by piece.”
I believed him.
“The gnome has it,” I said.
“The gnome?”
“The warlock I’ve been following. He’s the one who supplied those war golems to the orcs. They paid him in gold – I don’t know how much, but a lot – and then he took off with the other half of the golems for God knows where. But he has the gold that the orcs gave him in a little iron box.”
“I see.”
We stayed like that for half a minute in silence – me on the ground, him on his throne of dead bodies.
“Well?!” I shouted. “That’s the information you wanted! Go get it!”
The Hunter picked up Krort’s battleax from the ground and set it upright so that the handle was pointing towards the sky. Then he folded his hands over the bottom of the handle and leaned on it, like he was an old man contemplating the mysteries of life. “There is just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I do not know if I can trust you.”
“What else do you want from me?! It’s the truth! You threatened me with everything – that’s the answer!”
“But how can I know this for certain?”
“I don’t know! Take me with you on your fucking bat thing!”
“That would be one solution, except that your metal companion killed my mount. So I will have to go after this warlock on foot. The other problem is that perhaps this warlock is so powerful I cannot overcome him. For one thing, he has a dozen of these ‘war golems’ at his back. No matter how great a hunter I am, there is no way I can overcome that disadvantage – especially if this warlock is anywhere near as powerful as I am. So I propose an alternate solution.”
“What?”
“Just like knowing the environment in which you are going to hunt your quarry, you must know the quarry as well. I studied a great deal on warlocks. I also watched what you and your companions were doing. You were able to all come back from the dead – and then you were not able to anymore. Then, at the very end of the battle, I saw you using a spell to create a grave marker. I want you to create one of them here, right now.”
“Why?”
“Because it is how you resurrect yourself. If you die, I do not want you to suddenly be transported to some far-off land. I will leave you here tied up. Once I have the gold, I will return and free you. Even if you somehow manage to die in my a
bsence, you will come back to life right at this spot. Thus I know that you cannot commit suicide and suddenly be out of my reach.”
Shit. He knew all about Gravesite and resurrection.
Still, I tried lying my way out of it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do not make me get up from this seat again, little warlock. You will not enjoy it.”
“I’m telling you, you’re mistaken! I don’t know how to do what you’re asking!”
Shyvock stood up slowly from the pile of bodies.
“I warned you,” he said as he began to walk towards me.
I scuttled backwards across the glass. “Stop!”
“I think not.”
He was towering over me, preparing to reach down –
“I’ll do it if you swear that you’ll leave me and the succubus alone!”
Shyvock paused, then stood up straight. “If you create the grave marker, I promise to leave you and the succubus alone. IF what you have told me is the truth about the gnome, and if I am able to recover the gold.”
“You can’t just ‘promise’ – SWEAR,” I demanded. “Swear on whatever you or your people think is holy. Your ancestors, your heaven or hell, I don’t give a shit – just swear so that I know.”
“Very well. I swear on the souls of my ancestors, on the names of all the great hunters of my clan who have preceded me, that I will not harm you or the succubus – IF you will create a grave marker, and IF you have told me the truth about the gnome possessing the gold.”
I lay there for a second, trying to determine if I could trust the fucker. There wasn’t any magic hullabaloo to go along with his oath, although that was to be expected. He was a Hunter, not a demon. He might’ve been terrifying, but he wasn’t magical.
“All right,” I muttered. “All right, just… back up.”
Shyvock backed up about ten feet, crossed his arms, and waited.
I gritted my teeth and prayed I was making the right choice here. Then I hit ‘Gravesite’ on my action bar.
Immediately my hands began to move of their own accord, and black trails floated from my fingers down to the ground. The dark energy formed a latticework, adding more and more to the lace-like structure of shadow, and there was a flash of light.
When it was all over, a gravestone stood there, half buried in the ground.
