War Aeternus: The Beginning
Page 21
He’s going to die! Ling put all of her focus into a quick but well-aimed shot, nailing the guard in the back. She gave herself a quick cheer when she saw Lee make it to his feet and nocked another arrow, preparing to fire again. Unfortunately, her second target wasn’t going to be struck nearly as easily as her first. The guard was holding a giant tower shield, and it blocked off nearly his entire body. She really only had two options: she could either aim for his feet or his head. The problem was that she wasn’t confident enough in her abilities to be certain that she could land an arrow in either of his feet with him shuffling about as he was. Even worse, his head was protected by a helmet that would probably turn away any arrow she was lucky enough to strike him with.
What do I do? Not wanting to waste any time, she made a split-second decision. The shield, then. She let out a breath of air and released the arrow where she could only hope his foot would be in the next moment. There was a good chance that the shaft would either get stuck in the shield without doing any damage or miss entirely, but that was just a risk she had to take. With a loud thunk, the arrow struck right on target. Years of hunting tiny, fast-moving woodland animals paid off as she was able to predict just the right spot. Her heart began pounding against her rib cage harder than she could ever remember it doing before, and she fired yet another arrow.
Yes! She cried out in elation as her second arrow sank into the man’s leg just above his ankle next to the other. The man stumbled and collapsed forward, clearly unable to put any more pressure on the wounded leg. He collapsed face-first into the dirt, dropping his shield and trying to catch himself with his hands. She lined up another shot and released. The arrow soared through the air and sank into the man’s unprotected neck with a soft thunk. The man grabbed his neck where the arrow sank in, but there was nothing he could do. She released a final arrow and it sank through his hand and into his neck, right next to the last. He wasn’t dead yet, but she knew it was as good as done.
She lowered her bow after the fourth shot and glanced behind her to make sure that she had a clear escape path. With a start, she realized that Lee was charging toward her. Just as he ran past, he collided with another man she hadn’t even realized had been coming for her. She jerked her attention back to the freshly-downed guard, and when she was certain that he hadn’t even moved, she turned back just in time to see Lee run inside of a building with the other guard just behind him. Within seconds, the guard was pounding on the door and shouting curses, making it clear that none of his friends were inside the building. With his momentary safety in mind, she turned and unloaded a barrage of everything left in her quiver at Miller’s opponent.
With an almost third-eye level of perception, the man backed up and dodged the first arrow without a problem. Unfortunately for him, Miller was able to land a hefty stab right into his gut as he dodged the first whizzing barb. Impaled as he was on Miller’s spear, there was no way for the guard to even try to and dodge the second arrow, which struck into his arm. Before Miller could even extract his weapon, the third and fourth arrows struck deep into his rib cage, finishing off the poor man where he stood.
You have killed Caperknee. You have been awarded 35 copper, one copper longsword and 45 Experience.
Miller turned to Ling and gave her a strange hand gesture with three fingers and a huge smile. “You ruined my fun,” he laughed. “I don’t think I’ll have any more for a while, so I was savoring it. I was making it entertaining for Augustus!”
Sure you were. It looked more like you just couldn’t make any headway at all. Ling just glowered at the ungrateful Firbolg.
“Wait, where’s Lee? I thought I came with the scrawny man, not the tall woman.” Miller’s head started spinning around like an owl’s as he looked for Lee.
“He’s in that building,” Ling answered, pointing at the structure the guard had been trying to get into moments ago. Wait, the guard! He’s gone! Did he get in?!
Her eyes stretched open wider than the time when she tried to swallow a mouthful of raw peppers on a dare, and her feet were already carrying her forward before she even realized that she was moving. I have to reach him. I have to reach him before it’s too late.
She tried her best to open the door when she reached, but it wouldn’t budge. It’s locked? How did the guard get in?! She panicked, heaving against it with all of her might.
“Out of the way. I got this.” Miller pushed her aside like a bag of rice with one hand while grabbing the door with the other. He heaved backward, and on the first attempt, he practically pulled the door off its hinges. “Lee!” he said so loudly it left a ringing in her ears. “Lee, are you safe in there?”
As Ling got back up after being pushed over by Miller and walked through the door, she saw a room full of people wearing rags all staring at a bed in silence.
“What’s going on?” Ling asked Miller who had stopped his intrusive push forward.
“Shh!” Miller cut her off mid-question.
Why should I be quiet when no one’s talking? Ling was about to ask, but in that moment of silence, she heard it. It was faint, but it was a man’s voice coming from the middle of the crowd.
“When I’m gone, remember what Augustus has done for you . . .” The voice paused. Each second it spoke, it grew a little softer. “Remember that he gave you your freedom by teaching you to take it for yourself. That, if you’re patient, and if you think well, an opportunity will always come for those with faith. Just don’t let it pass by . . . Don’t take it for granted . . . Don’t be . . .”
Gone? What’s he talking about? Who is gone? What’s gone? What’s going on? She pushed her way through the crowd. That voice . . . It can’t be his, can it? She felt her heart beating erratically in her chest again. It was so loud that it was starting to cover up the soft chuckling sound coming from the middle of the room. When she finally made it through to see what the slaves were crowding around, there, in the middle of the room, was Lee. His eyes were closed, blood was stained across his chest, and a creepy smile was plastered across his face. Then his body slowly tipped over.
No, no this can’t be! She stared at the man in front of her, the man she had so many questions for. “No! You can’t die yet, you son of a troll!” she yelled as she closed the distance between them. “Can someone help him? Bandages? Gauze? Alcohol? Something?” she shouted at the crowd. “He can’t die yet! He can’t die yet . . .” The words hurt as they tore through her dry and ragged throat.
Chapter 7
Name: Lee
Race: Human
Class: Herald - None
Level: 5
Health: 42/150
EXP: 368/750
Primary Stats:
Power 15
Toughness 15
Spirit 15
Secondary Stats:
Charisma 5
Courage 5
Deceit 1
Intelligence 30
Honor 1
Faith 3
Skills:
Unarmed Combat: Initiate Level 2
Swordplay: Initiate Level 3
Sneak: Initiate Level 3
Cooking: Initiate Level 1
Divine Skills:
Golem Sculpting: Initiate Level 5
Appreciative Drunk: Initiate Level 2
Ow, Lee thought as he took a deep breath. Ow, ow, ow. The sensation of pain continued up and down the side of his chest as he took another breath, which only seemed to irritate the situation further. He reached over with his right hand to cover the wound. “I’m still alive?” he asked aloud, regretting the choice to speak and use air right away.
“Surprise to me too,” a voice laughed from his side. It took him a second to recognize the voice as his friend Wolfe, and then another for his eyes to focus enough to actually see his buddy.
“What . . .?” Lee rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and blinked a few times in an effort to dispel the blurry, hazy vision. “What happened?”
“No one really knows here either, other tha
n the fact you managed to get famous before me. What’s with that, anyway? Aren’t I, with my dashingly handsome face and beautifully chiseled jaw, supposed to stand in front of your spotlight?”
“You mean the spotlight, right?” Lee tried to correct Wolfe’s improper use of a turn of phrase.
Wolfe just doubled down on his joke. “No. The big one can be taken by others. I’m only handsome enough to steal attention away from an ugly kid like you. I mean, you know that’s why we’re friends, right? So that I can go to a bar and look great next to you?”
Lee chuckled at his friend’s twisted sense of humor, but the second his chest expanded, the stabbing pain came back. Jerk. It wasn’t the fact that his friend had called him ugly—it was a common enough insult that the two habitually hurled back and forth at one another when they hung out anyway—but that the long-running joke had amused him enough to make him laugh.
“So, what . . .?” Lee looked around at the hospital room. He was guessing that all of those stupid insurance premiums had gone to good use for once since they had placed him in a private room, but he was a little disappointed that his mom, dad and the rest of his family weren’t there. Lee tried to get his bearings, even though he knew full well he was on a bed in a hospital, and there was nothing worthwhile to see. There was a vase with a few flowers with a ‘get better soon’ card stuck to it with his parents’ signatures, several empty cups of gelatinous stuff on a tray near Wolfe, a few empty chairs with coats on them and an open window with an ashtray beside it.
You really shouldn’t move too much. I think that hospital gown was built for a petite woman at best. If you start moving about, you’re going to get arrested for indecent exposure and crimes against humanity,” Wolfe chided, urging him not to try and get up.
“Ah . . .” Yeah, I guessed as much. “So, where was I? How did I end up here?” More importantly, how and why am I not dead in the other world?
“Not too sure, Mr. Meme. We were hoping you could fill in the details about how you got your wounds, but the long and the short of how you ended up here is: Harambe.” Wolfe shrugged, pulled a cup of gelatin dessert from his pocket and grabbed the plastic spoon out of one of the empty cups.
“Harambe?” Lee winced. No, don’t laugh. It still hurts.
“Yeah, Harambe,” Wolfe chortled. “That’s exactly what was reported, and there is security camera footage to back it up.”
“Back what up?” Lee asked, unable to piece together what his friend was hinting around at.
“Well, sometime early in the morning a couple days back, a giant, massive, like five-hundred-pound gorilla came bursting through the streets and into the hospital carrying you. He dropped you right at the front desk and bolted.” Wolfe’s chortle evolved into a full laugh as he told the story. “Everyone was apparently so shocked that they didn’t even react until after the gorilla was gone.”
“Gorilla? Did they find it? Is it okay?”
“Well, coincidentally, there were a few cops on the scene before Gorilla Joe showed up, but after the actual Harambe incident, none of them wanted to be the guy who shot Harambe No. Two, so they tried to tail it instead and see where it was going after it busted out of the hospital like a superhero crushing through a toy movie set.”
“And? Did they find out where it went?” Lee already knew the answer before Wolfe’s head even started to shake.
“No, it turned around into a back alley and vanished. Either way, everyone on the Internet went crazy over the security camera footage when it was leaked. Your parents have been fighting off the news stations day and night to keep your room empty of reporters and police who are curious about how you ended up with a stab wound and broken ribs. Which, seriously, how did that happen?”
“Some violent, messed-up game.” Lee did his best not to lie—he wasn’t that good at it anyway. “Not something I want to go through twice,” he said, moving a hand to his side where the wound was. He had no memory of being carried about by an overgrown ape, but he clearly remembered what had happened before he lost consciousness. For some strange reason, he was having mixed feelings about how at peace he had felt right before he was certain he would die.
“You need to pick your girls better.” Wolfe shook his head as he misinterpreted Lee’s words. “I mean, you take off from work, and you end up spending most of the days in a hospital? What kinda play was she into that there was a gorilla close enough to rescue you? I swear, man, why don’t you just let me hook you up with a normal girl?”
Wolfe continued on for a few minutes, but Lee had stopped paying close attention to him. Something in the room had caught his eye instead. There was a small blue jay sitting on the windowsill, staring at him and studying his every move as if it was a geek, and he was an Easter-egg-stuffed trailer on BlueTube.
“Actually, now that you’re famous, you might not even need my help. You just might be able to score with a decent girl, even with that mirror-breaking face of yours. I might just not— Hey, are you there?” Wolfe finally noticed that Lee wasn’t putting any effort into the conversation. “What are you looking at?” Wolfe turned to see the small bird that had captivated Lee. “Oh, yeah, that guy has been there for a few days. Your dad tried to shoo it off when he went to sneak a smoke earlier, but the thing just doesn’t move. Maybe you should take it as a pet after you get better.”
“Maybe, but . . .” Lee closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to think of an appropriate lie that he could pull off. “I was just looking at the sky. Sorry, I’m still in a bit of pain. Do you mind opening the window and letting me get some fresh air?”
“Sure.” Wolfe shrugged as he got up and did just that. “Need anything else?”
“Is there a taco place nearby? I could definitely go for a double chalupa with extra cheese and ground beef,” Lee joked. He would have laughed at his own bad joke too, but he knew it would hurt too much to make it worth it.
“Yeah, no problem at all. I’ll go get you something right away.” His best friend in this world started heading to the door without a single complaint at the sudden request.
He really is a good guy, Lee thought, feeling bad for tricking him.
“Oh!” Wolfe stopped right at the door, turned and said, “But don’t move around. At all. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the doctor said your insides are incredibly messed up. If you had shown up at the hospital a second later, you’d probably be dead. They said there was only a thirty percent chance you’d pull through, and only time will be able to stabilize the rest they couldn’t fix up. You’ve had some severe internal bleeding, organ damage and some other fancy-schmancy, highfalutin words for injuries that still aren’t healed, so don’t get out of that bed unless you have to. There is a button next to you, so if you need to use the restroom or something, just press it and let a nurse help you out. Try to get the redhead with the tattoo on her back if you can, she was looking like a strawbe—”
“Go on. I got it,” Lee said, quickly interrupting his friend before he could go into too much lascivious detail about the staff.
“I’m just saying . . .” Wolfe grinned and gave Lee another wink before finally leaving.
It wasn’t more than a minute after Wolfe had left that the bird flew into the room. As soon as it left the windowsill, it began changing into a monkey which landed in the chair Wolfe had just vacated so neatly it looked like it had been levitated into position.
The monkey grinned broadly. “Welcome back from the dead.”
“I take it I have you to thank for carrying me here?”
“You take it right, so learn to worship the correct deity for once, you ungrateful little whippersnapper,” Augustus chided.
“How though?” Lee questioned. “I thought you said that I would be dead for good if I died in the other world”. He was starting to hope that his assumptions about Augustus—that the drunken deity had lied about more than just how much Intelligence Lee had—were spot on. Maybe death in that world wasn’t the end after all.
“Wait, why is it lucky that I passed out?” Lee wondered.
“Don’t you remember? When you’re passed out or asleep, I can warp you back to this reality. It’s what I did last time, so I did the same this time. You might not have noticed the prompts because you were blathering on and on like an idiot, but when you closed your eyes and went to sleep, you had seven new NPC followers. Since every two followers equal a twenty-four-hour reprieve back into your own world at your level of faith, it meant that you had a three-day hometown visit stored up. I just assumed your answer to ‘would you like to go home again?’ was ‘yes’ and warped you back.” Augustus explained the whole thing matter-of-factly, and when he was finished, he pulled a bottle of sake from thin air and began drinking it. “And, oh my Me, I’ve never been so long without you, baby,” he crooned lovingly, stroking the wooden container.
“Huh?” Lee was shocked, partly by the explanation and partly by Augustus’ reaction to the liquor.
“What?” Augustus’s monkey face contorted. “What are you judging?! I had to watch to make sure you’d be okay, and given the fact that your relatives and relations have occupied this room twenty-four seven in shifts, I couldn’t very well just pull out a glass and drink in front of them. Do you know how ridiculous that would look? A blue jay drinking blue vodka?”
“And you worry about looking ridiculous?” Lee couldn’t stop himself from laughing this time. Even at his rib cage’s expense, the idea of Augustus the Shapeshifting Drunk being worried about appearances was just too much.
“Well, I am kind of trying to keep a low profile.” The monkey pointed to the TV that was muted hanging in the corner of the room. “They’ve already been freaking out enough over my first visit to the hospital. Didn’t want to give them more material during my second one.”