World of Eternia: The Complete Collection

by Antony W. F. Chow

  While his avatar is performing the spell, the player switches over to magic screen view, and use his virtual reality gloves to choose the knight as the target of his spell. The spell caster directs the knight to rise straight up in the air until the recipient's feet is at ground level. Lucious clicks on the “Enter” icon to confirm the spell, and switches back to normal screen view. Once his avatar's in-game verbal and gestural components have been provided, a purple glow slowly envelops the armored knight, who begins to rise. “Hold onto my staff!” the mage quickly yells out to remind the cavalier.

  “How do I move?” Wesley asks as he tries to adjust his balance to the spell effect, while maintaining his grip on the precious staff.

  “Normally, of course,” Lucious replies in a tongue-in-check manner. “The spell allows your avatar to ignore the natural law of gravity. So you can move up and down in thin air, and also horizontally. However, I would advise you to move quickly and get yourself back on solid ground before my levitation spell expires; the duration is only ten seconds,” he explains in depth.

  “Oh, okay,” the cavalier answers as he obeys the spell caster's warning, and quickly makes his way to the other side of the gap. Wesley moves deeper into the passageway on the other side of the gap, and sees a continuation. He avoids verbalizing his groan at his discovery.

  The mage looks back at the other two party members. “So . . . who's next?” he grins.

  Conrad looks at the battle mage as if he is insane. The big man takes a few steps away from the edge. Turning around to face the gap, he runs at full sprint and leaps in the air like a majestic, powerful lion. He easily makes it across the three foot gap, with room to spare, and lands on his feet.

  Wesley sees the crazy leap towards him, and quickly backs away from the edge to make space for the athletic man to land on the cavalier's side of the gap.

  “Show off,” Lucious mutters under his breath as he begins his arcane chant again to levitate himself and the priestess across the gap.

  Diana hears the remark, and covers her mouth to stifle a giggle threatening to escape from her lips.

  * * *

  “Man, does EDE want to entertain us or torture us?” Lucious moans. The party has been slowly navigating the seemingly never ending passageway for the past hour. Given the likelihood of more booby traps, the pace has slowed to a baby's crawl.

  “Probably both,” Conrad replies. He is equally unhappy with this turn of events, but handles the tedium much better than the younger man. If only I had my mp3 player, he thinks wistfully as he reminds the endless bus trips for baseball games as a minor league player. “Oh, by the way, let me ask you something man. When you were casting the levitation spells, you were doing some weird Tai Chi thing with your hands. What was that all about?” he asks out of curiosity.

  The two spell casters look at each other, as if asking who should answer the unenlightened question.

  Diana sighs and decides to oblige the barbarian. “To answer your question, you need to understand a bit about magic,” she begins.

  “Magic? What about it?” Conrad interrupts.

  “That's I'm trying to explain! Hold off your questions until I finish,” she shoots him an annoyed look.

  He offers her an apologetic smile.

  “As I was saying, magic for spell casters require two components: verbal and physical. It's really a balance of the two in WoE. Clerical prayers have a longer verbal component, but very minute physical component,” she explains.

  “Like your cross!” Conrad blurts out.

  Diana puts her hips to her hips, and glowers at him for a few seconds until he pantomimes zipping his lips. She sighs and continues. “Yes, like my cross, which serve as a conduit to the Gods of Eternia.” She turns to the bemused mage. “Your turn, partner.”

  Lucious taps his staff on the floor, and offers her an elaborate bow. “As our scholarly priestess here said, magic requires a verbal and a physical component. For mages, the focus for our magic is our staff or wand. When I was casting those levitation spells, I didn't have my staff with me,” he reminds the curious barbarian.

  “Oh right! You lent your staff to Wesley to hit the trigger on the wall blocking the passageway,” Conrad shares his understanding of the mage’s point.

  “Very good, sir. You're smarter than you look,” the battle mage notes with approval.

  Walking in his customary spot at the front, Wesley is listening to the conversation as he leads the party through the long passageway. Man, what a backhanded compliment, he thinks in bemusement. Be careful, Lucious. Conrad is smarter than he looks.

  “So without access to my focus item, I had to create magic the long hand way, with elaborate hand gestures. It takes more time to cast without the focus, time which I might not have if I'm facing monsters in combat and my spell casting could be interrupted by taking a hit,” Lucious continues with his explanation.

  “So if I'm fighting a hardcore magic user, say a lich, then I just need to disarm his focus to impede his spell casting ability?” the barbarian speculates. If that’s the case, then fighting spell casters will be a breeze.

  “Not exactly,” the priestess jumps back into the conversation. “A lich is an undead spell caster who is tethering his soul to this mortal realm through his focus item, which could be anything that was significant to the lich during his mortal life. The focus could be something in the monster’s physical possession, or it could be located nearby but not on his person. So it's a special case with a lich as the focus item is what allows this creature to continue its existence in this world. Again, the focus item has to be something significant to the lich while it was alive; it could be ring, a hat, a book, a bowl, or just about anything,” she lectures.

  “Let's not get too deep on liches,” Lucious interrupts. “These creatures are rare. In the year that we have played WoE, we have never encountered a lich even though there are occasional posts in the forum boards from adventurers that come across one somehow. Why bother lecturing us on something we're not going to face?” he remarks.

  Wesley shakes his head and turns to look at the naïve young man. “If you play the law of average and consider all the monsters that we have faced in this game so far, then we are due to encounter a lich. Besides, it's quite possible that the campaign designers saved a lich for special occasions, like this mission. Heck, we never faced a chimera before, either, until this mission,” he reminds the mage.

  Lucious shoots the cavalier a doubtful look, but reminds silent. He notices something ahead and points. “Look, an opening dead ahead!”

  The party as one turns to the spot pointed out by the mage. The descending path ends in what looks like the opening of a large cave. Anxious to leave the never ending tunnel, the party quickens its pace and makes its way to the opening.

  Skritter-skritter!

  “What was that?” Conrad tries to peer into the dark cave, but can't locate the source of the noise he just heard. He pulls his ivory club off his belt loop, ready for some action!

  “I didn't hear anything,” Lucious replies.

  “Can you give us more light to fill up the entire room?” Wesley requests.

  “It will drain my mana reserve a bit, but I think I can whip up something short term,” the mage replies. He holds out his right hand, with his fingers spread out and his palm facing upward. “Nert-ciko-wind-zipy-milt-ergy-wixx-uoff,” he chants softly. Suddenly a tiny ball of flickering light appears in his outstretched hand. The player switches to magic screen view, and directs his summoned Will-o'-the-wisp to enter the cave, fly up to the ceiling, and glow as brightly as possible.

  The tiny air elemental zips into the darkness, and flies in a swirling pattern upwards until it hits the ceiling. Gathering all its strength, it unleashes a bright light that illuminates the entire cave.

  “That's an expensive spell, isn't it?” Diana remarks, once her eyes readjusts to the light in the big cavern.

  “Summoning this Will-o'-the-wisp will suck up 20% of my man
a bar right off the bat, because I'm not an Air Mage. Remember, an elemental specialist caster gets a 50% discount on spells from his favored element, but pays double the cost for spells from an opposing element. Furthermore, controlling this air elemental drains another mana point per minute. Thankfully, the long walk through the passageway allowed my mana bar to recharge completely. The levitation spells I cast didn't use much mana, so I'm fresh and my mana pool is completely recharged,” the battle mage explains. He looks at the melee fighters and says, “Let's clear out this cavern before the Will-o'-the-wisp drains all my mana.”

  The two men stand at the entrance of the enlightened cavern and see six man-sized holes in the rough surfaced wall directly opposite from the entrance. The cavern itself is an elongated oval in shape some forty feet wide, five feet across, and two floors up. The holes are stacked in two rows of three horizontally. The entrance to the cavern is placed right in the middle of the long sided wall.

  The cavalier quickly turns his head from side to side, scanning the room for any hidden dangers. He finds the room empty. A quick tilt of his head to the ceiling uncovers nothing neither. He marches into the room, signaling that the room appears to be safe, and the rest of the party enters after him.

  Out of curiosity, Conrad walks over to the other side of the cavern and examines one of the holes on the uneven wall. The hole he has chosen is the lower right one. He tries to peer into hole, but his eyes cannot see anything inside. He looks back at the spell casters, who are standing in front of the entrance. “Can I have my torch back, Diana? I want to see where these holes lead to,” he explains.

  Skritter-skritter!

  The barbarian feels a rush of air heading straight towards his unprotected back. He instinctively drops to the ground. Remembering that he is standing next to the wall on his right, Conrad rolls his body to his left side. He raises his tower shield to cover his body, and feels his shield absorb a powerful blow. Clang!

  The remaining Strangers stare in horror at the sudden appearance of a red Giant Centipede, with dozens of thin, moving legs attached in pairs to segments that make up an elongated red-colored torso. At the top end of the torso is a set of huge, sharp mandibles that could easily cut a man in two. The centipede twitches its antennas in the air, and quickly backs into the hole. Skritter-skritter!

  “Back up, Conrad!” Wesley calls out as he turns his head back and forth along the wall with six holes, fully expecting the centipede to emerge from one of the openings again.

  Keeping his tower shield facing the hole in front of him, the barbarian sits up and quickly rises to his feet.

  Skritter-skritter! The giant centipede suddenly pops out of the upper left hole. Sticking just its head out, its antennas twitch in the air as the monster tries to get a reading of the location of its prey. Not sensing anything within reach of its mandibles, it quickly backs into the hole again. Skritter-skritter!

  Lucious turns to his leader. “Should I collapse the holes and crush this bug?” he suggests.

  Wesley eyes the six holes on the opposite wall for a moment to contemplate the suggestion, and shakes his head. “That's a negative,” he inadvertently drops into his military jargon. He closes his eyes for a moment and reopens them to clear his mind of his old, familiar military lingo. “No, what I mean to say is that this monster seems to be a guardian, a gatekeeper if you will, to the next portion of our campaign. I don't think the dungeon designers placed another hidden door for us to find here in this cavern. It is apparent to me that they want us to defeat this WoE version of a whack-a-mole encounter, and move on to the next stage,” he shares his train of thought freely with his party members.

  “How are we going to get this bug? It disappears back into its lair faster than we can get in position to hit it,” Conrad pats his ivory club into the palm of his left hand with apparent frustration. "It's one thing if each party member could stand in front of a hole and whack the centipede when its head pops out. But we only have four adventurers to cover six holes. So obviously that won't work," he adds.

  “How about this then?” Diana chimes in. “Since these six holes are obviously interconnected, all we need to do is keep one of them open for us to pass through after the monster is defeated. In the meantime if five of them are collapsed, we just have to wait for the centipede to rear its ugly head out of the remaining hole, and then smack it down,” she proposes while pantomiming an uppercut against a phantom opponent.

  “That's a good plan,” the cavalier offers his assessment. “If no one else has a better idea,” he looks at the two men and sees them both shake their heads, “then let's do it!” Turning his head in the battle mage's direction, he asks, “Any ideas on collapsing just five tunnels? Obviously, you can't create an earthquake to collapse all the tunnels, and then recreate a new tunnel with Move Earth spell.”

  Lucious mentally checks his spell book for something powerful enough to collapse the tunnels, but still allow for one of them to remain open. “This is a toughie,” he starts to reply after a moment of thought. “Normally I would just create an Earthquake to collapse the tunnels and crush the centipede in between. But given our need to maintain one of these tunnels, the spell would not achieve this objective. No, I need something that is still earth-based, like Earthquake, but with more refinement. The best solution I can come up with is Move Earth again, but use the spell in a different way,” he answers.

  “Sounds good to me,” Wesley replies. “I need you the leave the lower middle hole open. This opening gives us a strategic advantage compared to the other ones. I need you to collapse the hole above that first, but allow room for an alcove where Conrad could jump down for an ambush from above.” He looks at the other members. “Once the giant centipede emerges from the hole, we need to take it out fast, before it could scurry back into the hole.” He turns back to Lucious again. “Better yet, if you could use your Move Earth spell to impale the monster in place once it's out in the open, that would prevent it from retreating back into the tunnel. Can you manage that?” he asks.

  The mage shoots him a doubtful look. “You're asking me to block off five big holes, and then impale the monster in place? I don't think I have the mana to accomplish all that plus maintain the Will-o'-the-wisp,” he shakes his head while directing a thumb at the small flickering ball of light above their heads.

  “What if I share my mana with you?” Diana offers.

  Lucious turns to face the priestess. “I appreciate the offer, but the Succor Prayer is an inefficient exchange that yields only one point of health or mana to the recipient for every two points offered by the giver. Besides, if you run out of mana then we have no way of healing until you regenerate your mana pool,” he replies.

  “I will give you just enough mana to supply your Move Earth spells,” she insists.

  “Just take her on her offer, man” Conrad opines. “We have no way of moving beyond this stage otherwise. This is no time to be shy about seeking the lady's help,” he grins.

  The mage shoots the big man an angry look. Stop trying to make me look bad in front of her, he thinks angrily.

  “We're a team, Lucious,” Wesley adds while still facing the wall full of holes. “We do whatever is necessary to win,” he reminds the young man.

  “Fine,” Lucious snaps. “Let's get this over with.” He moves his avatar back to the entrance of the cavern, and lowers his character. He kneels on the ground and wills his torso forward until his head and both palms touches the ground. In truth, he hates this spell because it requires him to be in such a humble position, one that he would never adopt with his real life body. Clearing his mind of all extraneous thoughts, he chants the arcane words of the Move Earth spell: “heth-voke-putu-masu-move-heth-voke-putu-masu-taal!”

  Lucious switches to magic screen view, and directs the reshaping of the environment. The player directs the stone to close off five tunnels. He remembers to leave amble space for an alcove in the upper middle tunnel. He closes off the intersection connecting the six tunnel
s to an unseen seventh tunnel, leaving intact just the lower middle tunnel and the hidden tunnel. After one last check over his input, he finally clicks the “Enter” icon, and switches back to regular view to watch the environment change.

  The changes in the interconnecting tunnels squeeze the giant centipede out of the upper right tunnel and force it to crawl into the lower middle tunnel.

  Conrad sees the alcove form in the upper middle tunnel. He makes a running dash towards the hole and launches his massive body into the air. He grips the edge of the alcove with hands, and slowly pulls himself into the alcove.

  Diana sits down on the floor next to the prostrate mage, and begins her Succor Prayer: “Oh gracious Gods of Eternia! Heed my plea to Share my strength, to another servant in your names! Amen.” She reaches down, places her hand over his, and squeezes his hand softly.

  Lucious feels her hand over his, and turns his head inside his virtual reality headset. At the upper corner, he sees his mana pool being replenished as the number keeps increasing. Let's finish this before she is completely drained herself, the mage reminds himself. Looking through his headset again, the battle mage sees his large comrade climbing into the newly formed alcove, and wait for the barbarian to set himself in position. "Just give me one minute to replenish my mana," he announces.

  Wesley replies. "Whenever you're ready, man."

  The minute ticks away in silence, but the centipede still does not crawl out of the remaining hole to attack the party.

  After the minute countdown, Lucious says, "Let's begin." Grinning to himself, the battle mage directs the stone to rise from the ground inside the tunnel, and poke the large insect's rear segments.

  The giant centipede is surprised by the sharp pain, and scurries out of the tunnel. Skritter-skritter! It senses one of the small, soft shelled creatures standing outside the tunnel's entrance, and opens its deadly mandibles wide, ready to snap the prey in two!