by Baron Sord
“Which one,” I muttered, looking at all the damn dead trees. There were still hundreds rooted in the ground.
“Is one of them holding your sister?” Layna asked.
“I hope so.”
Dad walked up to the closest one and started hacking away, his blade glowing green as he chopped and chopped. “This bark is harder than concrete.”
“Keep chopping,” I encouraged. I didn’t know what else to tell him. Out of nowhere, another wave of dizziness hit me. I nearly fell down, but Layna caught me.
“Are you okay?” she asked, concerned.
I shook my head, “I need to sit down.” She helped me lower myself to the mud.
I didn’t want to look at my stats, but I did. It had only been about 20 minutes since I’d caught the plague, but I’d already lost 2 points from every attribute, and dropped down to level 8. I wasn’t worried about my attributes. The lowest ones, Intelligence, and Respect were still at 23. They’d still be at 7 by the time I ran out of Health, at which point I’d be dead. Unless… shit. What happened when Jason’s Force of the Law spell ran out? I’d lose 15 attribute points across the board. When that happened, my Intelligence would drop down to 4. If I’d learned anything from that Jungle Harpy Witch’s curse, it was that a lower Intelligence would affect me in ways I didn’t expect. When I’d started the game, I’d had a 10 Intelligence. What would a 4 be like? Would I be an imbecile? And what would happen if we hadn’t found Emily and my Intelligence dropped down to a 3 or 2 or 1? That had me worried.
KingFarthurT:> Jason! Can you cast another Force of Law on me in 30 minutes?
SigurdDärksvärd:> If I have any Mana left.
I cringed. How much Mana was he spending? It didn’t matter. He had his hands full with those Tyrannoaks. Asking him wouldn’t make him have more.
I sighed to myself, not sure what to do about it. The good news was, I had at least half an hour before I ended up with half a brain.
Dad sat down next to me and Layna to take a rest. “Damn tree is made of steel.” Although he’d hacked away a tremendous amount of bark and wood, he hadn’t cut very deep. “No wonder these things have 1000 armor.”
“Layna,” I said. “What about your sword? I know it’s not meant for cutting down trees, but would your golden mana help with the tree?”
“It might. Let me try.” She charged her blade to maximum and stepped up to the trunk.
Dad backed away.
“Remember,” I said, “there’s a body in there. Try not to kill it.”
“Right. Here goes nothing,” she said before swinging her sword down in a wide gold arc.
FWAZZ!!
Her blade cut a deep gash in the black bark.
“Nice,” I grinned.
She charged her blade and cut again, this time from a different angle. “I made a wedge,” she said. “We can knock it free with Walter’s axe and see what’s inside.”
Dad axed the wedge out in three swings and it bounced into the black mud.
I stepped up to the trunk and peered into the 2 inch slit that revealed a dark hollow cavity inside. I saw something, but it was too dim to see exactly what. “Layna, can bring your sword over here? Maybe you can light up the inside with some Mana.”
Layna did as requested and we peered inside.
A comatose man was locked inside.
“It’s not her,” I sighed as I stepped down. “Let’s try another tree.”
“Should we get him out?” Layna asked.
I stared at her.
She frowned, “He’s trapped too.”
I grumbled, “You’re right. But you’ll have to do it with your sword. I can’t use mine.”
She nodded, then set about carefully cutting a hole large enough for us to pull the man out. He fell forward and we sat him down gently in the mud, leaning him against the trunk.
The man wore plain white peasant garb and an elaborate silver necklace with smokey black diamonds. Unlike rune dude, this guy didn’t have any runes on him anywhere. Or a muzzle over his mouth.
“Hey, buddy. Wake up.” I shook his shoulder. “Wake up, sleepy head.”
“That necklace is Profane magic,” Layna said. “It’s probably keeping him unconscious.”
“Should we take it off?”
“I don’t know. If we do, it could have ill effects.”
“Ill? Like what?”
“It could kill him.”
I sighed. “Then can we leave him here? I don’t have all day to help this guy. I need to find my sister.”
Saddened, Layna nodded.
I knew what she was thinking. Or I thought I did. Logic said this guy was somebody in the real world. He’d been kidnapped too. Or he was an AIPC, and this was the only life he had. Either way, he deserved to be set free. I heaved a sigh. “We’ll make sure he’s okay later. Okay?”
Layna nodded reluctantly.
“SCREEE-OOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!!”
I looked up and saw the dragons and the Wyrm tumbling in the sky in a spinning ball of wings and claws. The hooded rider still clung to the back of the evil Wyrm, but suddenly he was thrown clear and fell through the air.
For a second, I was certain the hooded Mind Wraith would smash into the ground and die instantly. Because that’s what happened when you fell out of a low flying airplane without a parachute. The Mind Wraith’s descent slowed to a stop well before he hit the ground.
“Shit,” I grumbled.
Then he floated slowly down into the midst of the dead tree graveyard. With any luck, he’d just sit where he was and have a cup of tea. But I knew that wouldn’t happen. He’d either fly up to his Wyrm or go fight Jason. Or try and kill us. We were certainly the easiest targets.
Instead, the Mind Wraith lifted his sword and pointed it up at the dragons.
GRA-GOOOOOOOONG!!!!
A black shockwave, the biggest one yet, launched skyward and hit the dragons and Wyrm dead center, knocking them apart. The Wyrm beat its wings hard, trying to recover as it whipped and coiled through the air like a gigantic flailing rattlesnake.
Then, the worst happened.
“SCREEE-OOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!!”
The white and black dragon broke free from the chariot, which soared off course and eventually slammed into the ground. The chariot was intact, but now it was stuck in the mud.
“SCREEE-OOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!!”
Like Jason had said, the white and black dragons went at each other with a vengeance, biting, clawing, tearing away with hind legs, trying to gut each other as they twisted and spun in the air. White and black blasts fired from their snouts, but instead of twining together in unity to attack a common foe, the intense energy blasts tore holes in wings and knocked away sprays of dragon scales that left smoking gashes in their blistering hides.
“We need to find Emily,” I said, hustling Dad and Layna to the next tree.
While Layna surgically cut away chunks of wood, I couldn’t help but watch the dragon fight.
The Wyrm Wraith had recovered its bearings and rocketed toward the two dragons.
Frustrated, I shouted at the dragons, “No! Stop fighting each other, you idiots! That Wyrm is going to kill you both!”
Instead of doing that, the Wyrm coordinated its attack with the black dragon. Both beasts tore away at the white dragon from two directions.
Dad was watching too and said, “This looks bad.”
The Wyrm suddenly snaked itself around the white dragon’s body like a giant python and coiled tight. The white dragon was immobilized while the Wyrm beat its mammoth wings, keeping them both aloft.
I gasped, “What happens if the—”
“SCREEE-OOOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!!”
The black dragon hooked all 4 sets of claws around the white dragon’s neck and blasted its head with black energy at close range.
For long seconds, I couldn’t see the head of the white dragon.
When it finished blasting, the black dragon quickly released the white dragon’s neck and beat its
wings, retreating.
The Wyrm uncoiled itself and slithered away through the air.
The white dragon sagged and fell straight down, its wings trailing behind it. The remaining black energy was blown clear of the white dragon’s neck. The massive head was gone, the neck now a smoking stump.
KA-PHOOM!
The white dragon’s corpse slammed into the ground, throwing up waves of mud.
The only thing good about this moment was that the dead dragon hadn’t crushed any more of the dead trees, any of which might contain Emily.
Dad muttered, “This is really bad.”
The black dragon and the Wyrm hovered in the air, beating their wings. They weren’t doing anything, but the black dragon’s predatory eyes were pinned on me.
KingFarthurT:> Hey Jason?
SigurdDärksvärd:> What?
He was pissed.
KingFarthurT:> Did you see that?
SigurdDärksvärd:> Yeah, I saw that.
His irritation was white hot.
KingFarthurT:> Tell me you can control the black dragon.
SigurdDärksvärd:> Not anymore. The white dragon is the counterbalance to the black. Without him, the black dragon is a free agent. My guess is, now he’ll side with the wraiths, since they’re evil, and come after us.
Time to tally the score thus far.
The good:
Jason = Level 111.
Jason’s 8 or 9 remaining soldiers = Level 35 each.
The bad:
Mind Wraith = Level 150.
Wyrm Wraith = Level 144.
Black dragon = Level 77.
The dead:
Dad, Layna, and me.
And Emily, wherever she was.
The Mind Wraith pointed his rusty sword at the graveyard of dead trees.
GRA-GOOOOOOOONG!!!!
A black shockwave blew over half the forest.
Hundreds of trees all over the plateau pulled themselves out of the ground.
I waited for them to swarm all over us like an army of giant black ants.
They didn’t. Instead, hundreds of them opened up their trunks, followed by hundreds of white bodies flopping out into the mud. The bodies slowly stood. All of them oriented on my group and Jason’s. I started examining them at random as they lurched toward us with murder in their blank white eyes.
The Possessed
Level: various
Health | Stamina: 100+ | 100+
Mana | Mind: 100+ | 100+
Size: Medium
Armor: various
===============
Good | Evil: -| 100
Law | Chaos: - | 100
===============
“Oh, man,” I grumbled. “Don’t tell me Emily is one of these freaks.”
“If she is,” Layna said, “we can take her back to the Oracle in Skyland. She can cure your sister no matter what evil magic has possessed her.”
“How are we gonna get her there?” I gazed over at Jason’s chariot, which was lying on its side in the soupy black mud and already sinking. “Our ride is gone and we don’t have time to walk thousands of miles back to Skyland. She has to be here. We need to find her now, and she needs to log out and tell us where she’s being held in Bangkok.” I didn’t want to say out loud that if we didn’t find her now, we might never get her back.
“Agreed,” Dad said with grim determination.
Layna nodded with conviction, “Then we’ll find your sister and figure this out ourselves.”
I looked over at her and gazed into her intoxicating eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here, Layna. I mean it.”
“Me too.” She squeezed my gauntlet briefly.
“Hey, are any of these people AIPCs? I wouldn’t want to accidentally kill any.”
Layna squeezed my arm affectionately and gave me a quick smile, “They’re not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I can feel the presence of my people when they’re near. All of these unfortunate souls are players like you.”
I nodded uncertainly. “As long as you’re sure.”
She smiled, “I am.”
“If these are all mind-locked PCs, what happens to the ones we kill?”
She said, “They’ll re-spawn in the nearest safe zone, which is over the border in the Freelands. They’ll be safe there.”
Dad said, “Then maybe we should kill all of them. So they can get home.”
I said, “That might be our only option.”
The blank white eyes of the approaching horde of pale white Possessed were pinned on us as they lumbered forward, moaning and hissing and spitting from their grimy black mouths. The hulking Tyrannoaks marched amongst them on crunching limbs of wooden steel, their faceless bulks projecting pure evil menace.
There was no way the three of us could deal with this entire evil army while we searched for Emily.
KingFarthurT:> Jason? Can you and your men handle the Tyrannoaks?
SigurdDärksvärd:> I’m about to have my hands full with my pet dragon and his new pals. But don’t worry, my men will handle the trees.
KingFarthurT:> But there’s only a few of them and hundreds of Tyrannoaks. We need more firepower.
SigurdDärksvärd:> Relax. I’ve got one ace left up my sleeve.
KingFarthurT:> It better be the Ace of Clubs. A gigantic club. One the size of a battleship.
SigurdDärksvärd:> It’ll be bigger than that.
KingFarthurT:> What?
SigurdDärksvärd:> Remember we were talking about a Fist of the Northstar moment?
KingFarthurT:> Yeah?
SigurdDärksvärd:> Keep your eyes open. Here comes the real deal. I don’t know if it’ll be enough to stop these guys, but it should buy you some time to find Emily.
The creeping horde marched closer and closer. They were nearly on top of us.
KingFarthurT:> You better do it now, Jay. I mean right the fuck now.
I charged my saber full of Mana. I couldn’t kill the oaks, but I could kill the Possessed. I just had to make sure I didn’t kill Emily. If that happened, she’d re-spawn in the Freelands and all of this would be a waste.
Beside me, Dad glowed green for a moment before morphing into his big green grizzly bear form.
The ground rumbled, knocking me down to one knee.
An intense earthquake shook the entire plateau.
About 50 yards away from Jason, the ground broke open and a huge 10 foot by 10 foot cube of solid black stone pushed upward. It rose higher as more cubes pushed up from the ground directly beneath. Centered under the black cube was a layer of 9 cubes arranged in a 3x3 checkerboard pattern of 5 black and 4 white cubes. The collection of cubes shed hunks of mud as it pushed higher, revealing a 2x2 layer beneath the 3x3. It didn’t stop there, continuing to grow. As more and more of it came out of the ground, it grew taller and taller until it was towering overhead, a massive checkerboard structure of white and black cubes.
“What the hell is that?” I said.
Layna shook her head, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Then it moved. Stone grinding on stone.
“It’s a giant cubic checkerboard man made of stone,” I marveled.
Walter_Simon_Byrne_1978:> That thing is 100 feet tall.
“Is that an exact number,” I chuckled out loud, completely blown away by what I was seeing.
Walter_Simon_Byrne_1978:> I count 10 cubes high, so probably. If you count the torso and head, it has 28 cubes. The 4 limbs consist of 7 each for a total of 28. 28 and 28. Balanced. Jason’s always saying the Law is all about balance.
“You are such a nerd, Dad,” I grinned. “Now I know where Jason gets it from.”
Walter_Simon_Byrne_1978:> I’m your dad too, nerd. You have the same mother as your brother, so that makes you a nerd, you nerd.
I smirked and flipped him off.
Dad the green grizzly bared fangs and growled at me.
I ignored his empty threat and gazed up at the giant ston
e man, “Whatever that thing is, it’s fucking incredible.”
Walter_Simon_Byrne_1978:> Your brother is quite the badass for a nerd.
“Yeah.” I examined it.
Mountainaut of the Law
Level: 130
Health | Stamina: 55,000 | 55,000
Mana | Mind: - | -
Size: Gigantic
Armor: 100,000
===============
Good | Evil: - | -
Law | Chaos: 3333 | -
===============
Well now.
And I’d thought my 6760 Armor was high.
Nope. Not even close.
Now we had a fighting chance.
The big guns were balanced, namely Jason and this Mountainaut versus the black dragon, the Wyrm, and the Mind Wraith. But that meant the rest of us mere mortals had to handle all these Possessed and hundreds of Tyrannoaks. I didn’t see how the Mountainaut was supposed to help.
The towering stone man took a step forward, lifting it’s checkerboard leg in slow motion. No, not slow. Just the appearance of slow, like a Boeing 797 coming in for a landing at 200mph.
BWA-FOOM!
The leg of the Mountainaut crashed down on one of the larger Tyrannoaks, flattening it. Then it swiveled slowly and kicked two more, sending them bowling into several more behind them. Bark cracked like gunshots, dozens and dozens of branches and roots and trunks flying in seven different directions.
Problem solved.
“Woooooo YEAH!” I shouted, jumping in the air and pumping a fist.
“Yes!” Layna clapped her hands, giggling with excitement.
It was amazing to watch the Mountainaut’s cubes move. They either pivoted on their center axes with loud grinding noises, or one cube flipped entirely from one stone face to another by pivoting along adjoining edges before clacking loudly into place. Completely unnatural and jerky, but still somehow vaguely human movement on a gigantic scale. The best part was, every time the thing moved, the huge stones made a tremendous thundering noise that boomed across the plateau.
Ka-CLACK!!!! Ka-CLACK!!!! Ka-CLACK!!!!
It was as intimidating as fuck, and it was fighting for us.
The Wyrm Wraith and black dragon launched themselves at it, blasting away with geysers of black energy. All of it blew harmlessly off the surface of the Mountainaut. That was the beauty of 100,000 Armor. Thing was impenetrable. It kicked several more Tyrannoaks through the air and stomped two more into the mud.
