Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  I grimaced at those words and pressed my lips together instead of ordering Moro to attack again. If he was really invulnerable, it’d be a huge waste of mana. Luckily for me, while he concentrated on casting the spell, he seemed locked in a power pose, panting and gaping his ugly mouth at the ceiling.

  I took that opportunity to slip past him and try to slap his ankle with my sword as I went. Just like Roark said: still nothing happened to his health. By the time I reached the other end of the cavern, at approximately 24% stamina now, the gold glow disappeared from his health and he had recovered 20% of his HP bar. Fuck! That must have been a kind of last-ditch spell that he cracked out when worried. I couldn’t see his mana bar but I imagined that he had a few more of those in him, at least.

  “Double your efforts,” I cried, hoping that they had trump cards up their sleeves that they just weren’t sharing with me yet. “Use abilities now. Don’t hold back.”

  “He’ll just heal,” I heard Ryken yell over. “Get him to just above 50% and then stun him again. Then we’ll all use our strongest abilities.”

  “The magic comes from the sword,” Roark called over. “We could aim at the gemstones instead. Give the word.”

  They were both trusting me to call the shots. Ryken sure talked a talk, but it looked like right now he had trust in me. He was letting me be the party leader, they both were, and I hadn’t screwed up yet.

  I thought about it for a moment, noticing that my mana was steadily rising back to full. I did have a trump card, but I had no way of knowing whether or not it would work. I dodged, this time gaining a level in it, which I hastily dismissed as I sprinted to the other end. “That’s the last of my stamina,” I panted. “Stun him, someone. I’m saving my mana.”

  “You want us to go full out anyway?” Ryken asked, and I could hear the resignation in his disembodied voice.

  “Yes,” I said, my limbs shaking from exhaustion as I leaned back against the wall. The boss had almost yanked his sword from the ground at the other end of the cavern. Time was ticking away for me. “Balls to the wall, fellas. Let’s finish this or die.”

  That spell had messed this up so badly. They started off with what looked like two normal shots just as Azhul got his sword free and looked around him to see where I’d run off to. His health got to 55%. I pulled in deep breaths and tried to relax, but my stamina was still just one dodge away from the fatal ebb.

  A thick stone catapulted with extra force from the shadows, almost immediately after the first one, and caught him halfway through his sprint directly in the skull. It almost left a visible dent, and Azhul stopped running and bent forward, swaying on his feet.

  Almost there. My mana got to 95%. I nodded to the guy’s sword but Moro didn’t move.

  Attention! You don’t have enough mana to cast Lesser Domination.

  Crap, OK, I hadn’t been expecting to, really. I had no idea how much it cost, but it was going to be a lot.

  “Roark,” I called, just as Azhul lifted his head again and lurched forward. No sooner had I yelled, though, than a flurry of four bolts shot through the air and slammed one by one into his side. When the final one hit, the monster staggered back.

  “Almost recharged,” Ryken yelled. “But only one left.”

  Mana at 97%.

  Attention! You don’t have enough mana to cast Lesser Domination.

  The boss was at 25% health after that flurry of strong attacks. When he recovered, he would either raise his sword because he’d been about to use that attack, or he would check his health and heal. Mana at 99%.

  Attention! You don’t have enough mana to cast Lesser Domination.

  Fuck. I pulled in a deep, deep breath.

  “As soon as you can, Ryken,” I ordered through gritted teeth. Stamina at 15%. A dodge would leave me in the death zone.

  Azhul straightened up slowly and opened his mouth. “Now!” I roared. The stone sailed through the air and…

  ...missed.

  I heard a strangled string of cursewords from the shadows as the boss swung his sword upwards in an arc and caused stalactites to fall.

  That was new.

  I backed up tight to the wall to avoid them as they exploded onto the stone below. “Roark?” I called. “How long til recharge?” There was no response. “Roark? Are you hit?” I heard more swearing coming from Ryken, and had no idea what to think. And I didn’t have time to think, anyway.

  Mana was at 100%. Now or never, Moro.

  The text didn’t appear. I scrambled to my feet as the boss’s eyes began to glow with his healing magic, and then saw out of the corner of my eye as Moro threw back her head and let out a silent howl. The glow snapped from gold back to his normal watery, dead grey. The sword was imbued with a white energy and, before our eyes, it twitched in the monster’s hand, and then Azhul gripped the hilt tight and roared as he plunged his enormous, evil-looking curved sword straight through his gut and out the other side.

  His HP dropped to 1%. I ran towards him, heart racing, watching my stamina deplete and not caring. Excision raised high, I stabbed it into his thigh, again and again, feeling like a gnat attacking a bear. My stamina drained further as Azhul continued to roar in pain. Then his cries stopped and I stumbled and fell to the ground.

  You have defeated Azhul Na’kur (Level 20)

  You have gained 375 EXP!

  Congratulations!

  You are now Level 7.

  You have gained 1 Attribute Point.

  You have gained 1 Skill Point.

  He shrivelled and blackened and I lay splayed on the ground beside him, face red and damp with sweat. I had never run so much in my life.

  “You alive?” I heard Ryken ask as he dissolved from the shadows and appeared at my side again. “I guess maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t hid, but then we wouldn’t have been able to predict his moves.”

  “You treated me like a tank, and I’m not a tank,” I panted.

  “You know why it had to be like that. Roark and I have strong projectiles, and we could hide” he said, looking around him with a frown.

  “I get it,” I said, trying to mask the annoyance from my voice. “Where is he?” I waited until I ticked back up to 11% stamina and then pushed myself to my feet again. I felt light-headed, exhausted, and the panic and adrenaline were far from faded. “Roark,” I barked.

  “Oh, no, oh shit,” Ryken muttered, jogging over to a nearby pile of rubble. Roark was partially hidden by dust and stone, and his hair and face on closer inspection were stained dark red.

  “Shit,” I hissed as well, kneeling beside Roark’s body and checking his pulse.

  “Idiot, check his vitals,” Ryken said, but he looked pale and panicked. Roark’s HP was still there. I let myself breathe. But he was at just 2 or 3%. “Bandages, now. All you have. What level of First Aid are you?”

  “One,” I said bitterly, pulling the spool of bandages from my pack and handing them over. He looked at me grimly, but I thought I detected something in his expression that was different from normal. He wasn’t annoyed with me. Maybe there was, dare I even think it, a glimmer of respect?

  Ryken mumbled to himself, as if trying to remember something, as he carefully wrapped bandages around Roark’s head, and then I helped lift the rubble off of his body. When his HP was up higher we pulled him out of the crash site. I held up his arms and legs as they were bandaged, too, and then a couple for good luck around his ribs. It was great: in this world, bandages were essentially magic, and could help instantly heal even things like broken bones, depending on the level of the healer’s First Aid.

  After a lot of hard work and moving him around, his HP got up to just below half and his eyes opened. He cracked a smile. “What’d I miss?”

  I resisted the urge to slap him on the back to celebrate his return, and instead helped him onto his feet. He looked at me, covered in stone dust and grime and sweat, and then down to his own body, and grinned.

  “We’re alive, boys,” he said, his vo
ice a croak. “Sorry I didn’t help at the end. You won, though. Let’s see what the beast had on him, shall we?”

  A warrior lives to see his next battle. A rogue lives to see his next great loot haul. I grinned back at him and the three of us searched the boss together for what he had.

  “Nice,” Ryken cried, the first to pull something from his pockets. A coinpurse heavy with gold — heavier than anything I’d ever seen before. “Three way split?”

  Roark said nothing to argue. I looked at them both, my lips thinned. “Are you serious? Split it equally three ways?”

  “Well, we did the most damage. That’s normally how it goes,” Ryken argued.

  “You sat in the shadows, safe and sound, and fired off potshots here and there!” I cried. “If I hadn’t been here you would have died!”

  “He … he did land the killing blows,” Roark relented, though I saw the greed sitting behind the kindness in his eyes. The cracks in his high Charisma score starting to show? “But you couldn’t have done it without us.”

  “No,” I said. “We couldn’t have done it without any of us.”

  “So three ways,” Ryken said again. Forcefully, this time.

  “How much is there?”

  He counted it out into piles. “800 give or take. Three ways, that’s 260 gold each, or so.”

  I resented his approximation; it seemed like a way to cheat me out of money. “I just risked my life for this,” I said through gritted teeth. “And I’m going to do it again, if the legends are right, to keep you all safe and sound. I think whoever risked the most deserves the most.”

  “Whoever did the most damage,” he argued, “which was Roark. And then me.”

  “Bullshit,” I spat.

  “Either split it equally or you give more to us,” he said with a shrug. Then looked at Roark. “Right?”

  “Does it really matter?” he asked, which actually confused me a little because I could see the way he was looking at the money. At all of it. “Just split it three ways. Matthew expended the most effort. You expended the least. It’s hardly fair that you are the one to fight this.”

  “Fuck that,” he started, but fought no further. Charisma wins out again. I made a pact to myself to increase mine even further when I could. He split it into three piles, haphazardly and with a permanent glare, and then slid the money over to us all.

  “Thank you,” I said, a little shittily, and put my coins away.

  While the others continued to search his pockets, I checked for rings and found none. Then my gaze landed on the sword. I inspected it to see if it was a ‘real’ object; maybe one that I could think about taking. It was three times the size of any sword I had ever seen.

  Azhul’s Falchion

  Very Fine Quality

  Attack: +14

  Req: Strength 15

  Spells:

  Greater Heal Surge

  It only needed a Strength score of 15? To wield that huge thing? I walked to the shining hilt and pulled it up, feeling the extraordinary weight, and then untied its sheath from the giant’s belt and slid it back inside, with great effort.

  Then I attempted to unsheathe and swing the sword, and felt the weight dissipate into something almost manageable — but not quite. The sword hurt my dominant arm a lot and I was forced to drop it again. When I did, I noted that it had shrunk to a third of its original size. So weaponry also scaled to our size? That was great to know.

  While they muttered to themselves about some necklace that I assumed I wouldn’t much care about, I slipped my new Attribute Point into Strength, feeling the power roll through my body. I picked up the sword again and swung it through the air. Yes. Definitely yes. +14 attack? I had no idea if I would be able to use skin magic if I already had a spectre — I seemed to remember hearing that people could only use one or the other? — but the sword was badass either way.

  I clipped it to my belt and clipped the shortsword with its sheath onto Azhul’s belt while Ryken and Roark continued to secretly discuss treasure with their backs to me. The shortsword was suddenly three times the size, and though it was not dirty or chipped, it just looked like a sword — and they hadn’t been staring it in the face for the last few awful, pulsepounding minutes. Whatever they’d found, I decided they could keep it.

  “Let’s go get the god’s treasure,” I ushered them on. They exchanged a couple more words, and then Ryken pocketed his new necklace and turned to me with a disingenuous smile. Fucker.

  “Let’s do it,” he agreed. “Gotta be quick, no idea where they are.”

  “Right,” I said, and followed as Roark strode to the far wall and kicked away some small piles of fallen rock.

  “In here,” he said. We followed him closely and packed into a small room with a beautifully large, ornate chest in it. Ohhh yes. A treasure chest.

  “Unlock it,” Ryken ordered, shifting greedily from foot to foot. Roark obeyed without dropping his smile, and slid a silver pick into the lock and jiggled it around. The pick snapped. He looked confused and tried another. It instantly snapped as well.

  “Looks like … it can’t be picked. The key will be around here somewhere, right?” He stuck his head back into the main chamber and his expression hardened. “It’ll take us forever to find it. The room is in ruins!” His eyes darkened and he swore loudly, which echoed right back to him.

  “Ryken,” I said, nodding to the exhausted kid. “The statue?”

  He snapped back to life and patted himself down before pulling the small jade figurine from inside his leather jack. He frowned and looked up at me. “I … I don’t see how this woman fits inside that keyhole.” I saw him resist the urge to slam the statue onto the ground, smashing it, and nearly commended him for it … but then I had a thought.

  “I’ll go search the giant again,” Roark said with a shrug. “Call me back in if something changes.”

  “Give it,” I said to Ryken. There was a heavy pause, but then he handed it over. I turned it over in my hands. It was really very beautiful. Carved as if by the gods themselves, it was so perfect. So perfect that no one would possibly ever think to let anything happen to it.

  I threw it at the stone floor, and as it shattered into a million tiny green pieces, Ryken let out a shriek and clamped his hands to his mouth. I knelt down and ran my fingers over the broken jade until my finger and thumb pinched a tiny metal shard. My heartbeat kicked up a notch and I pulled it up. Ryken, who had been letting off a string of confused expletives, let his mouth hang open.

  “You were right?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “Guess so. You glad I came?” I was totally pushing it with that last comment, and I was rewarded by being shot a weird look. “Never mind.”

  The shard squeezed into the lock and rattled around for a while. I stuck out my tongue in concentration, and then finally it caught on something and I was able to turn it 180 degrees.

  There was a small click, and then a louder click, and I eagerly ran my fingers around the lid, before pausing and then deciding to eye it up for traps. What did traps even look like?

  But I actually did spot something. A tiny, almost invisible like a spider’s, thread was attached from the lid of the chest into a tiny hole in the ground. If I had yanked it open, the thread would have snapped.

  Congratulations! Perception has reached Level 1!

  “Roark!” I yelled. He rushed back in, eyes wide under his bloodied bandages.

  “What? Did you…” He stared at the chest. “Did you?”

  “Yeah, we got it, but there’s a trap attached. Can you disarm it?”

  He nodded, excited, and gestured for me to give him space, which I did. There was a pop, a bang, and a cry of excitement as Roark set off the trap safely, and then opened the chest. Ryken and I hurried back over and crowded him as he lifted out the large velvet bag inside the chest.

  Ryken snatched it, too eager to wait, and tipped it out into his hand.

  Nothing came out.

  “Wait, what?” I demanded
. “They beat us?” I shook my head. “That’s impossible! They got past all the enemies, past that guy, and past the trap? And then unlocked and locked it again? How? When? How?”

  Roark squinted, and then smiled.

  “What? We’re fucked, why are you smiling? We’re screwed here. What are we meant to do?” Ryken was yelling. “All that for less than 300 gold? Bullshit!”

  “Inspect the bag,” Roark simply said.

  No One’s Burden

  Legendary Quality

  Intelligence: +5

  Wisdom: +5

  Infinite carrying capacity

  “Oh…” I finally let out. “That’s the treasure?” We were all silent. “I mean, it’s cool and all, but that’s some godly treasure? It looks so worn and…”

  “Shoddy,” Ryken finished for me.

  “The Falchion wants what the Falchion wants,” Roark said with a shrug, and took it back from Ryken to fish around in it. He stuck his arm in up to the shoulder, and though the bag was small, it took it all; his arm disappeared inside it.

  Attention!

  You have been playing Spectres & Skin for your allotted time of 7 days.

  You must select Log Out within the next five minutes, or you will stay within the game for the full agreed time.

  Huh. My death hadn’t disabled the automatic warning. I dismissed the text: I couldn’t afford to get distracted right now.

  I couldn’t help but shake my head in disbelief. “But why would they want this bad enough to kidnap somebody? To do all of this? Why? Whose idea was this?”

  “That’d be mine,” a cool voice that I would describe best as ‘smarmy’ came from behind us, echoing through the chamber. We all wheeled around and stared through the archway to the chest room. In the centre of Azhul’s lair, beside his fallen body, stood five men. Four were dressed in full body armour, one without a helmet, who I recognised as Artur. The other three had obscured faces.

  They hadn’t spotted us yet, or the Burden, and so Ryken gestured for me to obscure my face and my wolf. If any of the people there had Maledictus, they might spot Moro and decide that the time to fight to the death was now. While I was exhausted and drained. And Level 7. I couldn’t have that. I nodded and silently replaced my leather helmet with my shadowy cowl. I called Moro to the farthest corner of the chest room, just in case, and I concentrated hard on obscuring her. I immediately felt my heart rate increase, but the wolf dissolved into thin air.