by Edwin McRae
Having been blessed with a fast metabolism, Mark had never had to worry too much about gaining weight. But in the real world, he would have self-deprecatingly described his body as skinny-fat. He didn't do much exercise, and his work day consisted mostly of taking orders, hiding in the toilets, and driving a forklift, so his real-world muscles were really just there to stop his bones from falling apart. But now he was able to marvel for a moment at biceps, pecs and even the faint outline of a six pack. It wasn't a Hollywood-fit body, but it looked like it could do a little bit more than lift an energy drink to his lips or walk the ten meters to his car, the only demands he usually ever placed on his meat and potatoes carcass.
He washed his newfound muscles in the stream, slipped his shirt back on, and wriggled into the chainmail. It fitted perfectly, but of course it did. It wasn't much use having gear in a game that only fitted certain body types. Class types, yes, but in every other way, gear needed to be a one-size-fits-all affair. He popped the spiked helm on his head and gave himself a quick once-over in a side pool. He wasn't sure if he looked like a warlock yet, but he was glad to leave the noob image behind.
When he got back to camp, Vari had taken it upon herself to cook the mushrooms that Dayna had brought in from the woods, along with some watercress she’d found near the stream. Once again, the three ate in silence until it was more than Mark could stand.
"Dayna? Just wondering what the plan is from here."
Dayna gave him an icy look as she picked cress from between her teeth with a fingernail. "Follow the trail, kill the slavers, free the villagers."
"Do we know how many slavers there are?"
Dayna shook her head. "Too hard to tell. There's no way they can cover their tracks, not with that wagon, but they’ve been smart enough to mess them up so I can't count their numbers."
"Fifteen," Vari added from the other side of the fire.
Dayna looked none too pleased to be corrected by a reiver. The disgust on her face said it all, but had the good grace to note a valuable source of information when she found one.
"Fifteen, plus the six we've already killed, makes twenty-one. Is that a pretty standard number for a reiver raiding party?”
Vari nodded. "Five scouts, fifteen warriors, one officer."
Mark did the maths in his head. "Cool, so we only have ten warriors, four scouts and an officer to deal with." He completely failed to keep the skepticism out of his voice. "And there's only three of us."
Dayna scoffed. "Barely two. I'd have to be a complete idiot to take a reiver deserter on a quest like this."
Vari kept quiet, looking to Mark instead, who quietly cursed himself for not spending a little more time involved in the guilds. He had no idea how to handle party dynamics, especially conflicts.
"She saved our asses, Dayna. It would make no sense for Vari to do that only to dob us in later on. And I can't imagine that reivers are particularly forgiving of deserters, so she's probably facing an even worse fate than we are, should we get captured."
Vari visibly blanched a little at the suggestion as Dayna eyed them both impatiently. "Fine, but at the first sign of trouble, I put an arrow in her guts, and then you straight after."
Mark sighed. "You know, Dayna, I may not know much about making friends, but I do know that it's generally bad form to keep threatening your potential allies with high velocity skewering."
Dayna snorted, a short, sharp bark of a laugh. "Forgive me for not trusting a reiver who seems to delight in killing her own people. And don’t get me started about a man who appears out of nowhere and then comes back to life after a mortal wound."
Vari looked the question at Mark who waved it away dismissively with his hand. The respawn thing would have to wait. "I'm still working that shit out for myself. As soon as I know anything, you two will know it too. After all, it’s not like I have anyone else to talk to around here."
That, at least, got a couple smiles out of them. Perhaps he wasn't quite so bad at this party dynamics thing after all.
Dayna got her feet and proceeded to kick dirt over the remaining embers of the fire. "Let's get moving then. The longer we wait, the more those villagers will suffer."
Mark stood as well, for the first time realizing that he and Dayna were roughly the same height. "Any chance we can take a few of those reivers out before the main event? Pick them off in ones or twos? I'd rather not go into open battle completely outnumbered."
Dayna's smirk was nothing short of vicious. "That's possibly the smartest thing you’ve said since we met, Mark."
Mark delivered her a mock bow. "There's more where that came from, I promise." He jabbed two thumbs at himself. "I've been doing this kind of thing for quite a while."
The only response he got was another snort, and a soft giggle from Vari. Dayna strode off to her horse as Vari moved to stand beside him.
"You have a long road ahead before you will impress that one, Mark."
Mark looked to Vari, noticing that her eyes weren't black as he'd first supposed, but a very dark brown. "And who says I'm trying to impress her?"
If he stopped to think about it, Vari was probably right, he did feel the need to impress Dayna, which was ridiculous, considering she was just an AI.
Vari shrugged, still smiling. "No one needs to say anything. That's what I like most about you two." Then she walked over to stand beside Mark's midnight mare and motioned for him to follow. "It seems I'll have to ride behind you. I don't think Dayna will agree to my sharing her horse."
"Yeah, you're probably right there."
He mounted up, took Vari's proffered hand, and pulled her up to sit behind him. He felt her hands slide around his waist, and even through the chainmail it made him feel just a little more comfortable than he had at any point since arriving here. He made a couple of sharp clicks in his throat to let his horse know they were on their way, and followed Dayna out onto the trail.
5
They rode mostly in silence that day. Dayna lead the way, occasionally calling a halt to check for tracks and do whatever else it was that rangers did. It had never been a class that appealed to Mark. He preferred to go down the magical pathways in the games he played, figuring that if he ever needed to strike off into the wilderness like some crazy survivalist, he could always do that in the real world. Magic, now that was something to be treasured and appreciated in the virtual. If Mark had to name one vital ingredient that was missing from the recipe of his life, it was definitely magic.
Vari didn't talk much, neither questioning him nor sharing much about herself. He figured it made sense, considering her backstory, what her AI mind believed she’d been through. She likely had a lot of processing to do, and Mark was happy to leave her to it. He had plenty of processing to do for himself. He brought up his character stats, finally having the time and headspace to do some concerted character analysis.
Mark
Designation: Player
Class: Warlock - Level 3
Progress to Level 4 = 50/100
Body: 13
Mind: 10
Spirit: 13
HP: 39
EP: 39
Skills
Swordplay (Tier 2)
Horse Riding (Tier 1)
Spells
Terrifying Manifestation (Tier 1)
Second Skin (Tier 1)
Spells on offer
You have 3 spell slots remaining.
Arcane Edge (Cast cast = 6 EP)
Ethereal Flesh (Cast cast = 6 EP)
Doppelganger (Cast cast = 6 EP)
Alternatively, you may wish to save your spell slots for ‘found’ spells.
Although it was vaguely comforting that he was going to respawn in this version of Garland, his first death had been more than enough to force Mark to consider the stakes of his actions. He did not want to experience such a disturbing and agonising experience again any time soon. Never before had in-game death felt so starkly real, another mystifying decision on the part of the Reign of Blood d
evelopers. He needed to know his abilities and build what he hoped would be a resilient character that would save him from further trauma.
Naturally, at least for Mark, he focused on his magical abilities first, and took a few moments to delve into the descriptions of his existing spells, reading both carefully in turn.
Terrifying Manifestation
Summons a phobia from the victim’s subconscious and presents it to them as a terrifying vision.
Tier 1: The vision only lasts a few moments and can be ignored if the target is strong of will or is somehow mentally prepared for your psychological assault.
“No terror is more palpable than one’s own.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
Okay great, thought Mark, a quick and easy way to momentarily distract someone, and give them a nasty little fright into the bargain. That explained why Dayna had become so "hand focused" when he'd cast Terrifying Manifestation on her in the village. There's not a great deal a ranger can do without fingers, so Mark could only imagine what sort of mutilated horror Dayna had envisioned for herself, and the helpless terror that would’ve accompanied it. He felt a touch of sympathy for her, but then he only needed to manifest the feeling of an arrow in his neck to quickly get over that.
Second Skin
Forms an invisible, magical barrier that envelopes the warlock’s entire body.
Tier 1: The barrier will absorb the impact of a single strike from a non-magical weapon.
“My wife was rather surprised when it was the platter that shattered, not my face.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
It was always nice when the flavour text was short and sweet, although he had no idea who this ‘Zevryn the Everborn’ was. He supposed he’d find out at some point, but for now came the more important task of selecting his new spells.
Arcane Edge
Imbue a weapon with eldritch fire that will increase the baseline damage.
Tier 1: The recipient weapon’s baseline damage is increased by 50% for 5 minutes.
“Feelings expressed with an otherworldly kiss.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
Otherworldly kiss? wondered Mark. Very creepy, thank you Zevryn. But still, “instant flaming sword”. He liked the sound of that.
"Why are you smiling?" asked Vari, now peering over his shoulder.
"I've got a new spell I’d like to try out, probably on the next reiver I meet."
"Will it hurt them?"
"Very much."
"Good."
Mark felt her body relax behind him. He wondered what else could have happened to her to make her hate her own people so much. Then again, she'd said something along the lines of, "of their people, not their way". That made sense. He was a New Zealander, but it's not like he enjoyed going to rugby games or swilling beer by the keg. There were, he knew, about as many different types of New Zealander as there were people who lived in New Zealand. Vari might be a reiver, but she was Vari first and foremost.
Ethereal Flesh
The warlock becomes like the mist, non-corporeal and untouchable. In this state, the warlock retains his senses of sight and hearing but in every other way is unaffected by the physical world. Equally, he cannot directly affect the physical world whilst in ethereal form.
Tier 1: The caster becomes an inert cloud of mist for up to 20 minutes.
“Meat and mist are one and the same.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
Sounded like Zevryn knew his particle physics. And it was a handy spell if Mark wanted to slip through cracks in walls or avoid a mortal blow, but he couldn’t envisage needing to turn into a cloud of vapor all that often. Still, disappearing in a puff of smoke would be a neat trick to try out at the next kids birthday party he encountered.
Doppelganger
Creates an illusion of image, scent and sound that is the identical copy of the caster.
Tier 1: The doppelganger can appear up to 10 meters away and lasts for one minute.
“My darling wife aside, I tend to prefer my own company.” - Zevryn the Everborn
Arcane Edge was a no-brainer. He had to have it. But as for Ethereal Flesh and Doppelganger, he could see the potential in both. Perhaps it was better to postpone his second choice, to wait until he needed one or the other to get himself out of a sticky situation.
As Mark made his selection and then waved his character sheet away, another thought occurred to him. He turned his head so that Vari could hear him more easily.
"Last night, you recognized that I was analyzing Dayna's stats. Does that mean you've looked at ours?"
Mark felt her body shift a little as she shook her head. "Not yours. Dayna's, yes."
"Meaning, you didn't look at mine or you couldn't see it?"
"For some reason, you simply came up as blank."
"I've been called many things, but never ‘blank’ before."
"Sorry." And she sounded it.
"No, no, it was a joke."
"Oh."
Clearly not a funny one so he quickly pressed on. "So, nothing at all?"
"Nothing."
"Has that happened to you before?"
"It's fairly normal, especially when you are trying to read someone who has a higher level than you."
It didn't quite add up. Mark had been able to get a surface read of Dayna, and she was a level higher than him. Perhaps it was a player/NPC thing. The game allowed him to read NPCs, but didn't allow NPCs to read him, a player. It seemed unfair, but it made sense. Although Mark was reluctant to take a leaf out of Dayna's book, he would be foolish to completely trust either Dayna or Vari, especially with anything as potentially damaging as the strengths and weaknesses of his character build.
"Since you told me that you’re a figurist, I should at least tell you that I’m your bog-standard fighter-mage. A bit of swordplay, a bit of magic. Nothing special." A sensible lie, but a lie, no less.
For all he knew, he was telling the truth. Perhaps being a warlock was just that, a fancy name for fighter-mage.
"Thank you, Mark."
"What for?"
"Trusting me."
Mark simply nodded, keeping his mouth tightly shut while he rode out the hot flush of guilt as it crawled up his neck and touched his cheeks. Vari didn't say anything else to him that day, not until Dayna called them to a halt just as the sun dipped below the forest canopy.
The ranger turned in her saddle, a thin-lipped smile of determination on her face.
No, thought Mark. Not determination. Anticipation. Dayna was looking forward to the task ahead and Mark wasn’t sure how comfortable he felt with that. Sure, he’d killed many times in Reign of Blood, but this was all feeling a bit different somehow. A bit more...real.
He did his best to mentally shake those concerns off as Dayna spoke.
“Time we thinned their numbers.”
Mark raised an eyebrow at that. “Where are they?”
A hint of scorn passed over Dayna’s face like the shadow of a moving cloud. “The scouts have spread out. Two outriders on the right, two on the left, and one on point as an early warning to the rest, maybe even a decoy for bandits.”
“There’s bandits in these woods too?”
Dayna shrugged. “Some find Garland life too...restrictive.”
The Garland he’d experienced in earlier versions had always been too busy with war to bother restricting its citizens all that much. Lawlessness had been pretty rife with most villages fending for themselves, hence the hot demand for questing adventurers.
“And you can tell all of this from some footprints?”
“Dirt doesn’t lie.”
The hardness in her eyes told it all. On the pecking order of trustworthiness, Mark came in under dirt. Probably under mud and just above dung, although the latter was likely just wishful thinking.
“So I guess we follow these tracks of yours and pick the scouts off one by one.” He looked over his shoulder. “Sound okay to you, Vari?”
“I know a healin
g spell or two, if it comes to that.”
“Hopefully it won’t. But I have a couple of tricks I’d like to try as well.”
Dayna didn’t bother to hide her disdain. “No magic unless I say so. I don’t want either of you fucking up my aim.”
“We’re just eager to help, Dayna.”
The ranger answered with a sharp “hmpf” and pointed her horse into the woods.
“We’ll take that as a ‘thank you’, eh?” Mark whispered over his shoulder.
Vari laughed.
They left the horses tethered in a small glade, and Mark took the opportunity to reset his respawn point. Following the guidelines that floated before his eyes, he drew a pentagram in the dirt with his sword and then hid it with a layer of leaf litter. Vari watched with interest but refrained from comment, respecting his privacy. Dayna simply rolled her eyes and set off after the scouts she was tracking, forcing Mark and Vari into jogging to keep up with her.
It wasn’t long before they were hunkered down under the cover of some ferns, watching two reiver scouts, a male and a female, making love against a tree.
“Seems a shame to interrupt them,” whispered Mark.
Dayna shook her head. “I was hoping they’d be further apart so I could shoot one after the other without either noticing. This way, I’ll have to rush my second shot. Might just wing them and then they’ll scream the whole troop down on our heads.”
