Sam’s shoulders come up and she dips back into an attack position.
“I’m serious, Sam! She’s mine!”
Lightning trickles across the sky, rain roars and thunder shakes the ground. I wipe the water away from my face, feeling the cold metal of the gauntlet on my arm.
Deathdale’s sword swells with brightness as she puts one heeled foot in front of her and leans back on the other, getting into position.
Wolf is suddenly at my side, to my right.
“Stay back,” I tell him. He whines anxiously as he begins to move around in tiny circles. “If I die, stay with Sam. Get her out of here.”
By this point, everyone, Tagvornin and Tanka militiaman alike, have made a pretty large circle around Deathdale and me. Even Sam is watching, not yet able to continue leading the battle.
I approach Deathdale with my St. Lucia Buster Sword drawn.
I’ve seen her fight, and I know she’s fast and unpredictable. I know what she’s capable of. My best bet will be to guard and hopefully, hopefully, find an opening to get an attack in. Hell, a foot will do.
If I can overpower her, I tell myself. Even the voice in my head is stripped of its normal confidence.
We’re just a few feet away from each other now, watching to see who’ll attack first. Light flickers behind the Solar Mage’s good eye. Other than that she’s expressionless, like she was when I first saw her at the Spider House Pub.
“I don’t want to do this, Deathdale,” I say through clenched teeth, as water pours down from the crimson heavens. “I don’t want to fight you. I saved you. You saved me. That means something.” I wipe my face again. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“It means we’re even.”
I take a step back, shocked that the woman has actually spoken to me. Deathdale’s voice is whispery-sweet; it hardly matches her stone-cold-killer visage.
She lifts her blade of light and lunges for me. I go to meet it with my buster sword.
I press forward, my eye on my buster sword as the side touching her blade starts to glow red. “I don’t want to fight you! I want … ” I take a big gulp of air and press forward. “I want to save this world, this crazy online world – Unigaea! That’s what I want!”
The redness continues to spread down my blade as our swords grind together. She’s terribly strong, and it takes all I have to keep her from overpowering me.
“Unigaea is under attack!” I shout as the redness approaches the hilt of the sword.
Her other hand flares up and she blasts me directly in the chest.
I’m flung backwards onto a stack of dead Tagvornin. I crack the back of my head against his armor and I’m seeing stars by the time I’m able to sit up.
My vision pane flashes as Deathdale slowly approaches, a cat to a mouse, slinking her hips with each calculated step.
At the very last moment, she veers off to the right and stabs her blade of light into the ground.
She brings the blade back and stabs it into the ground again.
(^_^)
I glance left to see Sam, her hand glowing pink. The glowing energy ripples up her arm in tendrils.
She’s created an illusion of me!
Confused, Deathdale takes a step back and catches the real me. By this point, I’m on my feet again not ready to face the inevitable.
“Rather than fight me … join me!” I plead with the all-powerful Solar Mage. She approaches me coldly, the way one would approach something they both hate and never cared for.
We circle each other for a moment, our hair matted to our faces from the rain.
“Just hear me out, dammit.” I tell her, my voice growing in confidence with each word.
She swings at me, an arc of light following her blade, and I sidestep her attack.
“Hear me out, dammit! There are two things I want to do if I survive this battle.”
Deathdale jabs her blade forward and grunts in annoyance as I block it with my buster sword.
“The first is to save Unigaea, starting with Tangka!”
She swings at me again and I go to meet her with my weapon. It doesn’t take long for her solar-energy blade to begin changing the molecular structure of my buster sword. As redness spreads down the central ridge, I glare into Deathdale’s face and say, “The second is to slay the Drachma Killers. All of them.” With that I push her away and again bring my sword to the ready.
Suddenly, her blade of light disappears. Her face twitches as she stares me down with one eye.
“You know them, don’t you?” I whisper.
Silence spreads like poison gas over the battlefield as the intensity of the rain increases.
“You want it too, don’t you?” I ask softly.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam shouts over the torrential downpour. “Kill her!”
“Don’t you?” I ask softly.
She lifts her chin and looks down at me over the bridge of her nose.
“Talk to me; I heard you earlier. I swear I heard you … ” I shake my head. “If you want to join me in slaying the Drachma Killers, first help me drag the Tagvornins out of this town, out of Tangka.”
I spit a mixture of water, blood, and mud onto the ground.
“I owe that to the Player Character who gave her life blood to save mine. If you help me, together we can both get revenge.”
Finally, Deathdale nods.
After a deep breath in, I slowly lower my sword. “We can ride north, to the Rune Lands, the source of the Red Plague and the home of the Drachma Killers. What do you say? Two birds, one sword. What do you say?” I ask, my voice growing louder.
Deathdale turns to the group of Tagvornins on wolfback and anchors her body with her back foot. She lifts her eye patch and sends a concentrated beam of light through their ranks.
As raindrops drip down our faces, as our hearts share the song of revenge, we battle the Tagvornins until every last one of them has gasped their last breath.
Epilogue: First we Feast
The process of rebuilding is always cathartic, and I would have liked to do more of it in Tangka, but there were other things I needed to attend to. Still, that didn’t prevent me from helping out for two full days under a solid crimson sky, starting with moving bodies into shallow graves and ending with a long afternoon of aiding a guild of framers start the long process of rebuilding homes. I even helped rebuild the jerky guy’s shed.
I can hear the townspeople now, their whispers behind my back and eventually, their acceptance that a Player Killer was actually a hero. As quickly as I became their enemy just by showing my face, I became their friend.
It’s amazing what saving someone’s livelihood can do. Faux altruism in the hands of a devious individual can mislead an entire population, in Unigaea or the world up there. And while I appreciate the speed at which everyone has accepted me, this same alacrity has cast some doubt upon its legitimacy.
I worked until early this morning, digging a series of trenches around the northern entrance to Tangka. These trenches will soon be filled with sharpened beams of wood, their points facing outward. A chokepoint and quite the barrier to any who make the poor decision to try and retake Tangka.
Truth be told, I’m exhausted, but I wanted to squeeze as much as I could into the two days of jumpstarting the town, and squeeze I did.
I also feared the Tagvornins would return.
They didn’t, and if they had, Sam and I would have met them full force. Still, we were lucky. There are parts of Tangka that will never be the same, and the battle that took place in the town square is already inspiring poetry.
Not long from now, songs will be drunkenly sung, legends will be hyperbolized, art will be commissioned, children will reenact the battle and those who partook, should they be alive, will be weary to speak about how close they came to early graves.
I can see the art now – a woman riding a wolf hoisting her magnificent golden lance, a man with a sword nearly the length of his body tearing through the Tagv
ornin front lines, a mysterious Solar Mage lifting her eye patch and damn-near searing the tapestry of the game-time continuum, the black rain illuminated by the dark redness of the clouds, the lightning, the grief-stricken look on the faces of those that took fate into their own hands and drove the daggers into their chests.
And Deathdale, who disappeared immediately after helping us win the battle … Something tells me I will see her again soon.
Hell, I know I’ll see her again.
I’m the one that gave her the keys to my hideaway home, which I stole fair and square from the bandits that were terrorizing those fishermen. Because of the, well, sunburns she had already given a few of Sam’s militiamen, I had a feeling that having her stick around would create some conflict.
When the Battle for Tangka was over, I grabbed Deathdale by her shoulders, told her about the place, gave her the keys, and instructed Wolf to take her there.
She obliged and Wolf returned hours later, riderless.
So she’s probably there, or at least she may be monitoring the place, knowing it is where I’ll go to meet her when I’m ready to head to the Rune Lands. I swear she spoke to me, even if it was a single line, and hopefully when I see her again, I’ll be able to get her to open up about why she too wants to end the Drachma Killers.
“Glaring at the ocean never helped anyone.” Sam Raid approaches me from behind and pats me on the arm. “You want to swing your broken sword at it too?”
My Splintered Sword is sheathed across my back; it was the second thing I did once the battle finished, after I sent Deathdale away. I got my throwing knives too, but kept the new crossbow pistol given to me by Governor Talonas.
“It’s quite handy,” I tell her. “If you ever want to spar, I’ll show you what I mean.”
“Spar?” Sam laughs as she passes me, her body brushing against mine. “I don’t think you’re the type that would do well against a woman like me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that I’m a bit out of your league.” She smiles at me, and I get the sense that there is more to her smile than meets the eye.
“Oh?”
“I’d kill you and take Wolf for myself. He’s a real cutie, when he isn’t maiming people.”
Sam is beautiful, fit, and young, but her feisty magnetism and last-minute cleverness far outweigh her appearance. Anyone can be pretty in an online world, but it takes a special kind of person to have a personality that shines beyond the carefully crafted facade.
“Well, then we’re out of each other’s leagues,” I finally say after I can’t think of a better response.
She walks in front of me, her hair fluttering in the wind. Sam is in the same armor she’s worn since I first met her in that militia camp, but she’s removed the chest plate and the attached epaulets, and now wears a white, cotton tank top and a necklace with a gear on it.
She glances over her shoulder at me, catches my eyes, smiles, and looks back to the sea.
“You ready for another bath?” I ask Wolf, who rests in the middle of the average-sized boat, whimpering.
The aquaphobic canine pants, licks his lips, and re-buries his head in the place between his two front legs. Waterfright is a real thing, and Wolf is living digital proof of it.
“You weren’t kidding when you said he was afraid of water,” Sam calls over to me.
“No, I wasn’t.”
I join her moments later, and for the next twenty minutes or so, neither of us say anything as we stare out at the calm waves.
(^_^)
I’m surprised to see the Port of Stater lined with so many people. They cheer and wave the Stater flags, which consist of an upside-down trident surrounded by two griffins. People from all walks of life have come to see us, from Stater high society and their silk robes to the shoeshine boys and their tattered duds.
A hero’s greeting.
Wolf is having none of it.
He doesn’t pay any attention to the people until our boat is close enough for him to jump onto the dock. Once he lands on solid-enough ground, he does a quick circle, making sure he has room, and then he pushes his way through the crowd, as far away from the dock as he can get.
I glance past the people to see Florin Talonas and his host of advisors and guards. He stands on a riser and as soon as Sam and I take the plank, he silences the crowd by having his security detail bang on the fronts of their shields.
“The man you see here is no Player Killer,” he informs the people gathered after they’ve quieted. Even with the red backdrop of the sky, hope is suddenly tangible as the great statesman continues to speak. “Well, that is to say, he’s not a Player Killer in the traditional sense.”
Everyone laughs at his odd joke, including Sam, who stands next to me with her hands on her hips.
“He did slay many a Tagvornin.”
The crowd starts to cheer.
“And through his brave actions, and the brave actions of the Tangka militia, led by Sam Raid … ” He raises his hand to Sam and the people applaud even louder. “The Tagvornins were driven out of the south and have, for lack of a better term, become someone else’s problem.”
The crowd hoots and hollers. Once they’ve died down he says, “Oric Rune and Sam Raid are heroes. They proved to those from the Rune Lands seeking to come here that we, the southerners of Unigaea, will defend our territory! We will defend our homes and our families!” He raises a single finger into the air. “The Tagvornins, and any foes that seek to disrupt our ways of life, will be defeated!”
The people cheer, wave their flags, and chant. “Stater! Stater! Stater!”
I grin at everyone, give them a quick wave, and look to Sam.
“What?” she asks so only I can hear. “You’re not a hero’s welcome kind of guy?”
“Hardly.”
Governor Talonas waves his hand and the people settle. “Come forward, Oric; come forward, Sam. Please, I implore you, say a few words.”
Sam makes a gesture towards me as if to say “he’ll do all the talking.”
“Say something!” a youth with long, black hair shouts.
“Speech, speech!” a brunette with bright-blue eyes calls over.
I grimace as I make my way down the plank and onto the dock. The crowd parts as they did for Wolf, and people clap me on the back as I pass. They congratulate me, smile, offer their daughters – at least I think one guy did – and tell me they’ll buy me drinks next time they see me.
I’m up next to Governor Talonas in no time. He places his arm around me and lifts my hand into the air.
“Play along,” he tells me through a gritted smile. “I’m doing this for you.”
“For me?”
“Oric,” he says, turning back to the crowd, “please tell us about the battle. Share with us what you experienced!”
A few of the drunkards raise their bottles of liquor and cheer me on. Everyone else is quiet, waiting to hear what happened at the Battle for Tangka. They are quiet long enough for the squawk of the seagulls and the creak of ships tied to the dock to again take over the airwaves.
“Um … ” I clear my throat, waiting for my wittiness to kick in and once it doesn’t, I give the crowd my most sincere shit-eating grin as I say, “We won!”
Sam, now to my immediate right, elbows me in the side.
“We won!” I shout, louder this time.
“That’s not what the elbow was for,” she hisses.
The crowd exchanges glances in silence, gauging how they should respond. Finally, one of the younger women in front throws both fists into the air and cries, “We won!” The chant starts up, mob mentality at its most visceral. “We won! We won! We won!”
I glance to Governor Florin, who quickly reads the apprehensive look on my face. He clears his throat, takes a step back, and one of his advisors steps forward to continue interacting with the crowd.
“Let us depart,” he says to me. “Some people just aren’t good with large crowds.”
> “It’s like you’re reading my diary or something,” I tell him. Damn you, wit, I think. The logic of when you present yourself is baffling!
“Right,” he says, “let’s retreat to my seaside manor.”
Once Sam joins us, the governor, along with his retinue of heavily armed guards, begins to escort us to his seaside retreat.
Wolf stays at the back of the entourage, his head low as he suspiciously keeps his eyes on our surroundings. He too isn’t used to people actually liking him, and I’m quite surprised he doesn’t take a sailor’s hand off after the brave soul tries to spank him on the rear.
“I’d better watch Wolf,” I say to the governor, who is lost in conversation with Sam about the efforts to rebuild Tangka and how he’d like to donate to the cause.
I let his guards pass me so I can get up next to Wolf. He looks up at me with big puppy eyes, still unsure of what all the commotion is about. “It’ll be over soon,” I tell him as we move onto a seaside lane filled with small tchotchke shops.
I’d feel better about the comment if I didn’t know what the future held.
Unigaea is on the verge of death, I remind myself. If we can’t stop the source code bomb, even if it is moving slowly, there will be no Unigaea in the future.
It’s hard for me to stomach the thought as I walk beside Wolf, as my thirst for revenge rises to the surface. My personal quest to rid this world of the Drachma Killers should take a backseat to the Red Plague, but if the world is dying and the Killers are along the way to the source …
I relax my grip on Wolf’s mane and he looks up at me.
“Two birds, one sword,” I tell him.
He pauses, licks his lips, sniffs the air and as he does so, his ears twitch.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” I ask.
Wolf continues on, as if I’m no longer speaking to him.
Once we’ve passed the Governor’s personal seafruit farm, we enter his estate and from there, the courtyard.
A long table hosts an enormous roasted pig with a seafruit sticking out of its mouth, its eyes replaced by large, black olives. Around the pig are small finger-food dishes and silver utensils. At the far end of the table, placed in an upraised hammered-glass beverage dispenser, is an amber liquid, clearly some type of ale.
The Last Warrior of Unigaea Box Set: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure Page 18
