by S. R. Witt
Ambush!
Critical Hit!
Thrown projectile damage X3.
Opponent stunned!
Even better. The life bar next to the swordsman's head shrank by a quarter and a flashing ring appeared over his head.
My attack gave Bastion the moment’s reprieve he needed to recover his wits. With a shout, he smashed the blazing torch into the swordsman’s forehead. Sparks flew and the swordsman staggered back a step, his head sagging on his shoulders.
“Yes!” Bastion shouted. He curled his other hand around the torch and reared back for the killing blow. The swordsman struggled to lift his head, and I knew he was a dead man. There was no way he could avoid my brother’s attack.
I turned my head away. My stomach couldn’t handle seeing a man’s head turned into Jell-O.
That's how I missed Bastion getting his ass kicked.
My brother’s victory cry transformed into a yelp of pain and dismay, dragging my eyes back to the combat.
The swordsman had managed to intercept the killing blow. The blade's edge sheered through the torch and left Bastion holding a stumpy handle. The ring of stars vanished from around the swordsman’s head and he was back in the fight. With a terrifying warcry, the man regained his feet and retreated. His blade sprang up into a defensive posture much more quickly than I would've imagined possible, given the weapon's size. He wiped the beer and blood from his eyes with the back of his forearm. “I'm gonna make this hurt.”
Bastion scrambled for cover and cast about for a weapon of some sort. The sword sliced through the space he’d only recently occupied and shattered a wooden table on its way to the floor. Bastion sprang past the weapon's tip, which was buried in the wooden planks of the floor, and sprinted for the bar.
The swordsman tore the weapon free from the wood and missed Bastion’s legs by inches. Splinters flew in every direction as the wood cracked and flew apart.
Time to hide. I shifted position and made a bee-line for a shadowed area of the bar, but our enemy wasn't having any of it.
Spotted!
Hide in Shadows skill cooldown: 30 seconds.
At least I wasn't standing close enough to the swordsman to have my head cleaved off when he spotted me. But that cooldown meant I wouldn’t be able to hide again for half a minute, which was more than enough time for the swordsman to turn me into julienne fries.
The swordsman's left hand dipped into a pouch at his belt and emerged like a striking snake. A trio of thin spikes flew at my face and I scrambled for cover. The missiles screamed past my head and buried themselves in the wall behind me. A little slower, and my head would have sprouted some new holes.
This guy was not playing.
Bastion didn't have much of a chance in this fight. He was a great player, knew the games inside and out, but he wasn't a brawler and he didn’t have the levels or in-game skills to defend himself. The swordsman, on the other hand, was built to kill. I don't know what the Devs were thinking when they dropped this guy into the starting area, but he was a stone-cold murderer.
And what he really wanted, more than anything else, was to chop my brother's head off and feed it to me.
“Run!” Bastion screamed.
He didn't need to tell me twice.
With my Hiding skill busted for the next 30 seconds, I was reduced to scrambling over tables and putting as much furniture between myself and the sword-wielding maniac as possible. I yanked chairs over as I ran and spilled drinks on the floor. I kicked a burning table behind me on the slim chance that it would deter him from chasing me down and driving seven feet of sharpened steel through my spleen.
Again, there's no truth in the idea that if you die in the Game you die in the World, but after the beating we'd taken in the alley I knew getting killed would hurt like blazing hell.
Plus, getting killed meant getting separated, and that would put an enormous crimp in my brother’s best-laid plans. I feel bad enough about what happened, about how all this ended, how much worse do you think I’d feel if I’d let my mother die, too?
Bastion, for his part, did a great job of getting the killer off my trail and focused on him. He flung chairs at the guy, pushed tables toward him, and generally made a nuisance of himself.
“Hey, burning man!” He shouted, proving once and for all that he is not good at the insult game. “Over here.”
Bastion shoved a table across the damp floor and the swordsman swatted it aside with the flat of his blade. The table shot across the tavern and smashed into a wall so hard it threw chunks of wood and slivers of broken glass in every direction.
The shrapnel caught Bastion in the face and drove him back, one hand pressed to a gash in his forehead. Blood ran into his eyes, blinding him. He swiped at it in a desperate attempt to clear his vision, but there was no time. The swordsman was only a few yards away and Bastion couldn’t see him to retreat.
And I couldn't stand there and watch my brother get sliced up like a rack of ribs on the Fourth of July. But if Bastion wasn't a fighter, I'm not even sure what you’d call me.
A runner?
A pacifist forced into unfortunate circumstances by events beyond his control?
A coward?
Yeah, that about sums it up. I hate violence. It looks vile, it feels vile, and even doing it to other people makes me a little queasy. But I had a feeling I was going to hate watching Karl get violenced right out of existence even more than I would hate it if I didn't do something.
The thrown mug had done the trick before, so I gave that another shot. The swordsman was on to me, though, and knocked the clumsy missile out of the air with one mailed fist.
I hurled another cup at his head, and he didn't even bother to move, just bobbed his head back and watched it sail wide and smash into the wall. He gave me a quick grin that showed more teeth than a biting shark and went after Bastion.
The sword scythed back and forth in front of the man, smashing tables aside and narrowing the gap between its tip and Bastion with every passing second. Bastion threw himself up onto the bar and slid over its wet surface. The sword came after him, descending in a shrieking sheet of flame, and the sharpened steel chewed through the hardwood bar with a single stroke.
The swordsman raised his weapon from the ruins of the bar, and I knew that Bastion had about two seconds to live. Then I wouldn't have a brother in this world, I'd have two half-brothers separated by a bloody gap.
There was no way I could fight this guy. He'd carve me into bite-size chunks before I could do more than scuff his boots. The thrown mug was a lucky shot, and Bastion had followed it with another lucky shot.
The killer still had half his health left and it looked like his sword could do enough damage in a single stroke to kill Bastion and me. But that didn't mean I was helpless.
I didn't need to fight him, I just needed to stop him from killing Bastion. I moved toward a shadow and prayed my hiding skill was active again. I was only going get one shot at this, and I couldn't afford to blow it.
CRITICAL SUCCESS! You have increased your mastery of the Hide in Shadows skill. (Rank 5)
Max rank for level 1 achieved!
Ooh, look at me. A critical hiding success. On the other hand, I guess, don't look at me?
There was a table right next to the pool of shadows I’d hidden in. The floor was soaked with beer and wine and all the other booze we’d thrown on the floor in our attempt to run from this bastard. I hoped that made the wood slick enough for what I had in mind.
I charged and my hands hit the side of the table. It slid forward and I threw my weight behind it. It raced across the floor with almost no resistance, gaining speed as it neared its target.
The swordsman saw me coming, but he was leaning into the downward stroke aimed at Bastion and there was no way for him to dodge.
The table hit him just below his waist and threw him off balance. Like I said, I'm not much of a fighter, but I'm tricksy, like a hobbit.
The swordsman flailed his weapo
n in a vain attempt to stay upright. It spat flames in all directions, but it didn't keep him on his feet. He stumbled forward into the bar and one leg shot through the gap he’d created.
I gave the table another shove and the swordsman flopped over the bar, his sword arm flinging out.
“Gotcha!” Bastion shouted from behind the bar. He lunged up onto his feet and brought the warrior’s foot with him. Off-balance and with no way to support himself, our enemy flipped up and crashed down onto the table I'd rammed into him.
The table creaked under his weight, but didn't break. His sword arm, however, did. The weight of the weapon was too much for his bones and they snapped with a gruesome series of crackling pops. His hand lost its grip and the weapon spilled onto the floor. Standing at the table, I looked down into the swordsman's eyes.
“Do it!” Bastion screamed. “Kill him!”
It wouldn't take this guy long to get back on his feet. Even with a broken arm and only 25% of his hit points remaining, he was more than a match for Bastion and me. One lucky shot from his sword and we’d be dead. I couldn't let him get back onto his feet.
His head hung over the edge of the table, greasy hair dangling in front of me like a curtain. I didn't have a weapon, but I did have leverage.
I curled my fists in his hair, up close to the crown of his head. Then I dropped all my weight down, as hard as I could.
There was a sound I'll never forget. It was like breaking twigs, or crushing a fistful of uncooked pasta in your fist, only much louder.
It was a terrible noise, a mortal sound that created an audible separation between the me I am now and the me I was one second before that moment.
I get it, it's just a game. But there's something about killing a man with your bare hands that changes you.
It changes you a lot.
My brother stared at me with wide eyes. “That. Was. Awesome.”
In most games, bodies dissipate almost as fast as you kill them. You see them fall and a few moments after you empty their pockets, they're gone. Even if you don’t loot them, corpses tend to disappear back into the digital void in thirty seconds or so.
For some reason, Dragon Web Online leaves the carnage scattered around for everyone to enjoy.
The swordsman stayed on the table, staring at me. His head was cranked backwards at an unnatural angle, and his throat was an ugly shade of purple. Did I do that?
My stomach rolled as the memory of bones cracking and cartilage snapping free of its moorings echoed in my skull. Yeah. Yeah, I’d definitely done that.
I shrugged. “Thanks. It was him or us, you know? I mean, it wasn't like we could let him get up off the table then we were going to be friends, and he’d buy us a beer, maybe cook a steak…”
Bastion shrugged. He eyed me warily and stepped toward the sword on the floor. The flame had gone out, but it was still a fine weapon. It gleamed in the torchlight and the edge sang like a razor blade as my brother sliced it through the air. “Do you mind if I take this?”
For a moment, I thought my brother was kidding. When had he ever asked me if it was okay to do anything? And that look, like he was nervous.
I thought he was putting me on, acting like I was a badass worthy of his fear. But there was something in his eyes that told me it was real. He was afraid. Afraid of me.
Bastion turned away and swung the sword a few times, admiring its heft.
I took advantage of his distraction to loot the fallen swordsman. He had a selection of coins, a ring, and some other junk I didn’t bother to catalog as I scooped it out of his belt pouch and dropped it into mine. I’d look at it later, when Bastion wasn’t watching. There was bound to be something good in there.
What? I killed the swordsman, you know. Me.
I deserved something for my trouble, don’t you think?
A moment later, a faint hissing sound filled the air and the bodies around us, including the swordsman, came apart. They sizzled like bacon on a grill, slowly turned blue, and disappeared one high-definition pixel at a time.
Congratulations! You have completed Against the Bloody Brotherhood, Part 2. Return to the quest giver to claim your reward and begin Against the Bloody Brotherhood, Part 3.
“We did it, bro.” He clapped me on the back and steered me toward the door. “We’ve vanquished the bad guys and claimed the leader’s weapon. We’re friggin’ heroes.”
“Yeah,” I said to myself, struggling to forget the sight of the swordsman’s head bent back over the edge of the table. Struggling to banish the memory of his neck snapping. Struggling to purge the sight of his unseeing eyes. “Yeah. Heroes.”
Chapter Eighteen
The smith was happy to see us, despite the late hour. I wasn't sure what the relationship was between in-game time and the World, but it was well-past midnight in the little village. Razor-sharp pinpricks of starlight shown through gaps in the lead-colored clouds hiding the night sky. Moonlight limned the horizon, and the faint blush of deep purple velvet on the opposite horizon told me the sun would make its appearance in the next few hours.
The smith took one look at our blood-splattered clothes and bruised faces and opened the door. “Thank you, oh, thank you.”
He led us to his kitchen, once again, and shoveled a platter of food—hard biscuits, soft cheeses, some sort of cured meat wrapped up in its own crispy skin—at us. I was hungry, but followed Bastion’s lead. He scooped food off the platter and it vanished, loaded into his in-game inventory.
I searched around for a moment before finding the tiny pane of empty boxes in the lower left-hand side of the Game’s interface. I roamed over it with my eyes and it expanded to fill my vision. As I lifted items off the platter, they obeyed my mental command and disappeared from my grasp and reappeared in the inventory panel. I almost filled the 4x4 cube. I really needed to upgrade my inventory slots, or I’d run out of room to store loot during real adventures.
A running tally of items entering my inventory floated up along the right side of my vision, but it was far too fast for me to read and I didn't understand half of what I was seeing. Scrimberries? What the hell was a scrimberry?
His inventory stocked with food, Bastion hammed it up for the smith’s benefit. “And thank you, good sir, for your generous offer. I wouldn't normally take items from a man who has been the victim of so much ruthless predation thus far, but we are down on our luck ourselves. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
The smith shook his head. “No, defeating the Brotherhood is all any of us could ever hope to ask. They had nearly taken control of the town and were it not for your timely arrival, I'm certain they would have enslaved us all.”
“Then maybe we deserve more than your leftovers? Scrimberries, my man? You could've at least fronted for some prime rib or a tasty slab of steak.”
That’s what I wanted to say, but didn't. What I actually said was, “There are no guards hereabouts? No one to aid you in your time of trouble?”
I was getting as bad as Bastion.
The blackmith gave me a sad shake of his head that spoke volumes. The happiness was banished from his face, and I felt terrible when grim resignation replaced it. “We are isolated from the Duchy’s capital. The men at arms are busy fighting back the Noctivagant Incursion, and they have precious little time to deal with more mundane crimes. If it hadn't been for you, I don't know how long we would've lasted under the Brotherhood’s heel.”
Bastion wrapped an arm around the old man's shoulders in an awkward, but hearty, hug. “Never fear, good sir. We will stay in the village as long as necessary to make sure everything is all right. We wouldn't want any of the ruffians returning.”
That was an understatement. I didn't want to ever see any of those guys, ever again. There's no telling what they’d do to me if they knew I was the jerk that killed their boss.
Bastion and I had gotten lucky, that was about the size of it. That fight could've gone the other way so easily, it made me shudder to think about it.
> The smith slipped out from beneath Bastion's arm and gave us a gracious smile. “It is good to know there are heroes in this part of the world, once again. What with the coming war and all of the evils spreading, I feared we had lost our best and brightest long ago.”
Lore Updates: Noctivagant Incursion, Third Screaming War
I glanced at the Lore tab on the interface and marked it to read later. None of what I skimmed seemed very pleasant.
Reaching the end of his hospitality, the smith yawned and raised one finger. “There is one last thing I would like to do for you. I know it is not much, but every hero needs a weapon to call his own. I have a selection you may choose from, if you so desire.”
With that, the smith guided us back through his small home to his workshop. A heavy forge smoldered in one corner, dripping heat and light from its massive grate.
For such a small shop, the old smith’s workplace contained a large assortment of sharp and pointy things. Bastion gravitated toward a selection of swords that looked both sharp and ridiculous. Their blades were all four to six feet long, with hilts so ornate and oversized I didn't know how he would ever hold them. He ran his fingertips along one of the weapons and I could see he’d fallen in love with it.
Who could blame him? It had a ruby the size of my fist set into the end of the pommel, and its crossguards were styled after grasping, skeletal arms. The silver blade held a repeating pattern of crimson swirls, and its edges were so keen I had to look away to avoid blinding myself.
The old man cleared his throat. “I'm sorry, those are for display purposes. What you're looking for is over here.”
The smith gestured at a jumble of weapons in a plain wooden crate. My heart sank as I took in the old, not at all shiny, selection of swords, knives, and other implements of destruction.
