by A. J. Markam
The Priest tore Stig off of his head with one hand and threw him across the room, where he smacked into a pew.
“Ow,” Stig grunted in a monotone voice.
“Good job, Stig!” I yelled.
“Thanks, boss,” Stig’s disembodied voice floated up from beneath the bench.
Just as I cast my Darkfire, Alaria fired off one of her fireballs –
But Jastoth ducked down behind the pulpit. The fireball crashed into the wooden surface and splintered it into burning shards.
At least I knew his soul was slowly roasting in black flames.
“Come out, Jastoth,” Alaria yelled, “and take your beating like a man. Which is always the way you doled them out to me.”
Suddenly the Priest reemerged from behind the pulpit – but this time he clutched an ivory staff.
I started to cast my Darkbolt, but he threw up a glowing sphere of energy all around him. Two seconds later, my Darkbolt dissipated harmlessly off it.
“Crap, he really must have become a Priest, because he’s got a Shield of Faith going,” Alaria snarled. She fired off another couple of fireballs that harmlessly exploded against the glowing sphere.
Since nothing we were doing was having much effect, I checked out Jastoth’s stats.
Uh-oh.
He was a Level 9 Priest with 540 hit points. Not that far above me – but I was only a Level 5 Warlock, and I only had 230 Health.
Of course, I had a succubus and an imp.
“What we do?” I asked Alaria.
“Just keep hammering him!” she yelled.
So we did. I tried Darkbolt, Darkfire, Soul Suck, even Unholy Quartet. My four imps burst out of the church floorboards and began firing at the priest. Alaria kept after Jastoth with her fireballs, and Stig contributed his little fizzing missiles as well – but it was all to no effect. Every attack blasted harmlessly off the shield.
Meanwhile, the bastard was hitting us with some sort of lightning that kept draining my life. At least his attention was divided amongst the three of us, so none of us bore the full brunt of his attacks – which is what kept us all alive.
Unfortunately, there was a very dangerous side effect of our fight: all those deflected fireballs had scattered embers all over the place. The silk tapestries caught fire first. Then the wooden floorboards began to smoke, and eventually a few burst into flame.
The couple dozen parishioners who hadn’t already run away began to run for the exits.
The Priest didn’t seem too concerned about the safe of his flock. He kept flinging lightning bolts willy-nilly, with no regard for who was running around behind us.
“Guys – protect the villagers!” I yelled at my two demons, and they did their best to draw off the Priest’s attacks from the churchgoers.
Jastoth’s energy shield started to flicker.
“Keep on him!” Alaria shouted. “Just a few more seconds – ”
But Jastoth suddenly ran as fast as he could between us, following the villagers outside into the night.
“After him!” Alaria yelled, and the three of us spilled out of the flaming church and into the open meadow.
All around us, hundreds of churchgoers watched in terror as they huddled with their families.
The Priest’s shield flickered once more, then completely died.
“This is it!” Alaria shouted joyfully. “We’ve got him now!”
Unfortunately, that was when he pulled out the big guns.
He slammed his ivory staff into the ground and called out, “By the powers vested in me as her priest, I call upon the Goddess Chalastia to my aid!”
There was a thunderclap, and a column of light blasted down from the sky.
Alaria, Stig, and I stumbled backwards as a 15-foot-tall ghostly figure of a woman materialized. She was wearing white robes, and her face was cast in shadow – except for her mouth, which looked dour and disapproving.
“Oh shit,” Alaria whispered.
“Uh oh,” Stig muttered.
I have to admit, I was pretty unnerved, too. I selected her as a target, and this is what I saw:
Goddess Chalastia
Level ????
Hit Points – 1 Billion
Ohhhhh crap.
She didn’t even have a level. All she had to do was lift her pinky and we would all get obliterated.
Not to mention she was a goddess of chastity, and here I was hanging out with a demoness who had sex with men in their sleep.
“Who dares call upon my name?”the goddess asked in an unearthly, echoing voice.
The Priest was overjoyed, and flung out his arms to both sides like he wanted to give her a big bear hug. “It is I, great Goddess – Jastoth, your faithful servant! By the promise of this staff, it was my call for help you heeded! Now show your followers your might, and destroy these heathen with the power and grace of your purity!”
There was a long pause, during which the goddess did nothing.
The Priest stood there with his arms flung out to the side, still waiting, his grin looking more and more forced by the second.
Finally the goddess spoke.
“No… I don’t think so.”
Jastoth’s shit-eating grin didn’t budge, but you could hear the disbelief in his voice. “…what?”
“I have watched for many years as you bandied my name about, priest. Watched and waited for my faithful followers to realize you were a false prophet, and rise up and cast you out. But they did not.”
She turned to the villagers standing around staring at her in goggle-eyed wonder.
“Do you not understand my Holy Words? I am the goddess of PURITY, not of CHASTITY – and by that I mean purity of SPIRIT. I wish for you to do good unto one another. It has little to do with the sexual act. Do not lie to others in order to take pleasure with them, and be kind to one another if your desires do not align. This is what I ask, not celibacy. And certainly not shame for being mothers and fathers, nor for the act that brings children into the world.”
She turned back to Jastoth.
“But YOU – I have seen what YOU do in the shadows, little Spider, and it repulses me to no end.”
My jaw nearly hit the ground.
Did she just call Jastoth the same name that the bandits had used for their evil contact?!
It wasn’t just me who heard it. The Olmsteds cried out in horror, too – especially the wife.
We didn’t have to wait long for the goddess to clarify herself completely.
“I have watched you send truly evil men after my followers. I have watched as you sold children into slavery, and murdered and violated my people.”
She gestured with one slender hand towards me.
“I have seen you slander a good man who fought against your evil.”
Then she pointed at Alaria.
“And I have heard the cries of women you abused so many years ago. I have stood by silently, hoping my people would take matters into their own hands. I will be silent no longer. I hereby strip you of all your priestly powers.”
She held out her hand, and Jastoth screamed in agony as he fell to his knees. Sparkles of light emerged from the guy’s open mouth like a cascade of embers from a bonfire.
I saw his level drop from 9, to 7, to 5, all the way down to 1.
His Mana bar completely disappeared – it literally just ceased to exist.
“Furthermore, I deliver you unto your enemies.” She looked down at me and Alaria. “Do with him as you wish.”
Alaria looked at her distrustfully. “If I do, are you going to come down on me for not forgiving him, or some crap like that?”
The goddess smiled grimly. “I am the Goddess of Purity, child – not Forgiveness.”
Alaria looked over at me.
I shrugged. “He’s all yours.”
She walked over to the defrocked priest as tears streamed down his face.
“Please… Alaria… have mercy…” he sobbed.
“Like the mercy you had on me all th
ose years ago? Like all those times you beat me – berated me – used me? That kind of mercy?”
“I was wrong… I know I was wrong… but I’ve changed, I swear I have…”
“Seeing as you were just trying to kill me two minutes ago, I don’t know that I believe you.”
“Please… I’ll do anything to make it up to you… anything…”
“Anything?” she cooed.
Uh-oh.
I knew that voice.
I also knew when I heard an open-ended, ambiguous request that could be interpreted multiple ways.
He should have said, I’ll do anything to make it up to you IF YOU SPARE ME.
Even that wouldn’t have been good enough. She probably would have ended up burning up his junk, or cutting off his balls or something. From my experience, he would have to write out an ironclad legal contract that not even a platoon of lawyers could pick apart.
I almost felt sorry for the guy.
…almost.
Naaaaah… not at all, really.
“You can make it up to me with a gift,” Alaria said sweetly, and cupped his cheek with her hand.
“Yes?” he asked hopefully, thinking he had sweet-talked his way out of it.
“Your life,” she snarled.
Fire flared in her hand. Suddenly his whole head was ablaze, and he screamed.
Alaria held him there, her face a mask of hatred – then pain… and then finally relief as his body toppled to the ground and the fire went out.
“This is the end of all those who would pervert my teachings and do evil in my name,” the goddess intoned.
“All praise Chalastia!” the villagers called out with trembling voices.
Suddenly, ‘1500 XP’ appeared in the air – followed by light, blaring trumpets, and the words ‘Level 6.’
In addition, a new icon appeared in my action bar – something called ‘Self-Sacrifice.’
I didn’t get a chance to inspect it before the goddess turned to Alaria and me.
“Do no harm to my other followers. Otherwise, I thank you for your service. You are free to go.”
Then she turned to the villagers.
“I hereby command you to honor my festival thusly: go home, forsake your physical burdens – and make more children to worship my name.”
“All praise Chalastia!” the villagers cried out, now a little more enthusiastic.
The goddess sighed. “Really, people, it’s not that hard. Stop listening to assholes who tell you to hate each other, and be good to one another. Just remember that.”
Everybody just stood around looking at each other in surprise. Nobody had ever heard a goddess speak like that before.
“All… praise… Chalastia…” they murmured, a little unsure of themselves.
The light shimmered, the goddess disappeared, and suddenly there were only humans in the dark meadow.
Well, plus a succubus and an imp.
“Don’t forget this,” Alaria said, and picked up Jastoth’s ivory staff from the ground.
I took it from her. As soon as I did, the staff’s attributes appeared in a window.
Scepter of the Servant:
+40 Intelligence
+20 Stamina
+10 Critical Strike
Which was all very impressive, but I’d seen it before when I accepted the quest. What surprised me was a message at the bottom of the window, a property I’d never seen before:
One time use only – as a servant of the goddess, you may call on her for help
So that’s what the priest had been talking about with all his By the promise of this staff, it was my call for help you heeded mumbo-jumbo.
Too bad I wasn’t one of her priests – that ability would have come in pretty handy.
Although it hadn’t really helped Jastoth at all.
On the other hand, you could argue that he wasn’t really her servant at all – that he was exactly what she’d said: some asshole who had lorded over everybody and gotten them to hate each other and their own bodies, while exploiting them for his own evil purposes.
I looked more closely at my new ability, Self-Sacrifice. For only 20 units of Mana, I could channel my own life force into either Stig or Alaria.
Pretty cool. Now I could make sure that my two demons’ hit points didn’t fall below a certain level. And I could use Soul Suck to replenish my own hit points. Which meant I could basically use a never-ending transfer of power to keep them (and myself) alive.
I had a sneaking suspicion, so I checked just to make sure. Yup, it was actually more expensive in Mana to summon Stig or Alaria than it was to keep them alive: 50 mana for him, and 100 mana to summon her. That’s why Self-Sacrifice was potentially so valuable in a fight.
“Why are you so happy?” Alaria asked.
I looked over at her, instantly pulled out of my daydream. “Oh – I just leveled up, that’s all.”
Then I thought, Why did I even bother? She’ll just ignore the comment about gameplay the way all NPCs do –
But she shocked me.
“What you mean, ‘level up’?” she asked.
I stared at her. I had been playing the game for years, but no NPC had ever questioned me about any of the slang I used or topics they overheard. You could talk about presidential politics, the newest movies, how your computer crashed the other day – whatever. It didn’t matter. The NPC was always going to ignore it unless it had to do directly with the quest of raiding the Castle of Whatever and getting the Orb of Whatsis.
Except… she hadn’t ignored my comment. She’d actually asked what I meant.
Sort of like when the farmer had made a joke about my skunk smell.
I guess she’d actually done the same sort of thing when I mentioned a sports bra.
Was this what my supervisor had meant about changes to the AI?
John had said that the NPCs could learn and better interact with the players. Was this what he was talking about?
I didn’t want to go too much into it, so I simply said, “Well, with more experience, I grow more powerful. I just reached the next level, that’s all.”
“So did I,” she said. “I got my Fire Whip back.”
“What do you mean, you got it ‘back’?”
“Every time I am bound to a new master, I am limited by his power, so I lose most of my abilities. But as the master grows more powerful, I grow more powerful, too. Is that what you meant by ‘leveling up’?”
“Exactly.”
She nodded. “Then we should level up as much as possible.”
“Amen to that.”
I looked over at Stig. He was the center of attention in a small crowd of children. Apparently the kids were petting him. He didn’t exactly seem to be enjoying himself, but he tolerated it – sort of like a grumpy cat who didn’t want people touching him but was resigned that it was going to happen anyway.
I glanced back at Alaria. She still had a look of unease on her face.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She looked me and asked with a hint of desperation, “Can we get out of here?”
“Sure,” I said and gestured with my head back towards town. “Let’s go back and get some sleep.”
The townspeople were dispersing anyway. Now was as good a time as any to leave.
“Stig, let’s go!” I called out.
The imp eagerly extricated himself from the village children and trundled along behind us as we set off through the woods.
“What’s going on?” I asked Alaria.
“It’s just… I don’t know whether to be happy or sad. Actually, I feel both.”
“I can understand why you’d feel happy – but why sad?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to kill him for so long, and when I finally did… the experience wasn’t exactly what I’ve been hoping for.”
“Revenge is a dish best eaten cold,” I quoted.
She looked at me. “What?”
I smiled. “Old Klingon proverb.”
; According to Kill Bill, anyway.
Alaria frowned. “Klingon? I’ve never heard of them before.”
Considering that they came from an old television show, and she lived in a computer-generated fantasy world where there was no such thing as a television, there was a pretty good reason for that.
“Never mind,” I said. “You’ll never meet one, anyway.”
“The thing is,” she said, looking far away into the darkness of the forest, “it’s not that I didn’t enjoy killing him so much as there are others out there I want to kill, too.”
“You mean… other masters you had?”
She nodded.
“Was Jastoth the worst?” I asked gently.
“Far from it,” she said, her voice cold.
Suddenly she got another glimmer in her eye, and she turned to look at me. “Did you have plans for us? You and me, I mean?”
My heart skipped a beat.
Well, actually, I would love us to go back to the inn, share a bottle of wine, get drunk and fall into bed –
“W-what do you m-mean?” I stuttered.
She smirked knowingly. It was almost like she could read my thoughts.
“I meant, do you have any plans for adventuring lined up.”
Now that she mentioned it, no, I didn’t. I had no more outstanding quests.
“No, why?”
“How would you feel about going to kill somebody else?”
I frowned. “How many ex-masters do you have, anyway?”
“Nine that I want to kill,” she said, then corrected herself. “Eight now.”
“Eight?!”
“Well, I am relatively young,” she said defensively.
“That’s not what I was – ”
A new window appeared:
One Down, Eight to Go
Help Alaria avenge herself against her eight ex-masters.
Beneath was a list of ‘Accept’ buttons, and next to each one was an XP amount. They were pretty damn impressive, offering more points the further they went along: 5000 for the first, 10K for the second, all the way up to 200,000.
Wow.
200,000 Experience Points… I knew I wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough yet to take on whoever that guy was, but all that XP combined would probably get me up to Level 75 at least.
Why the hell not.
“Okay, I’m in,” I said.
