She reaches out to me, places her bloody hand on my forehead, and lifts her wand. One pink flash later, and we’re much closer to the woods that line the Western Splits.
Florin coughs, and stirs.
He blinks his eyes open and notices that I’m still holding him by the hair. “Where? Who are you?” I push him away and he scoots backwards, only for Wolf to greet him, the Tagvornin beast snarling and gnashing his teeth.
“Holy shit!”
“His memory is completely wiped?” I ask Sam.
“It appears so.” A healing potion materializes in Sam’s hand and she throws it back, her shoulders raising as the potion takes effect. She equips a second one and goes to town. “Better,” she says, her voice no longer raspy. She sits on the ground now, her legs awkwardly placed to her side, her face partially obscured by the shadows of the night. “But my legs … and the Blood Drain is still in effect.”
“Can your healing spell take care of both those things?”
Sam shrugs. “The Blood Drain, yes, my legs … I don’t know. It’s not something that could theoretically heal on its own. We’ll have to see. I should be able to take care of the arrows sticking out of your back, though.”
“These old things?” I turn my back to Sam, showing her the arrows. It hurts, but I’ve felt worse pains than this. “They’re all the rage in Paris.”
She offers me a bloody grin. “Let me heal you first.”
My face hardens. “Absolutely not. I can do with my arrows a little bit longer.”
“Will someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?” asks Florin, still bewildered.
“Your memory has been wiped,” I tell him bluntly.
“By whom?”
“Her.”
“Why is she so bloody?”
“Because of you.”
“Me?” He looks genuinely surprised. “What did I do? Why is my nose bleeding?”
“Because I punched you in the face.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because you are an asshole, and most assholes deserve a good punch to the face, yet most are usually lucky enough to avoid one. You, on the other hand, are not one of the lucky assholes.”
He rubs his chin for a moment. “And this is your Wolf?” he asks, his eyes cautiously tracking my canine companion, who stalks in front of Florin now, ready to tear him to shreds at a moment’s notice.
“It is.”
“Please call your dog off.”
“I’ll think about it, Florin.”
He touches his chest with his good hand. “So, I’m Florin.”
“You are.”
“What can you remember?” Sam asks, curious now. “How far back?”
“I am dead, an RPC, I remember that. I remember all those details. I can’t remember any details regarding who I am now, or why I’m here in … where are we? Clearly a Proxima world, I get that part. That comes with the territory of being an RPC.”
“Shit,” I look down at Sam and nod, impressed. “Your attack completely wiped out anything and everything he knows about Unigaea. Or so it seems.”
“What’s on your dashboard?” Sam asks.
“My dashboard … ” He lifts his finger and his eyes flicker. “A map and what appears to be a war being fought on it. Red markers and blue markers.”
“Can you access your personal history?”
After a moment he shakes his head. “It’s blank.”
“Fuck me, Sam, that’s a crazy spell. I’m surprised it didn’t … ” We both look at her bloody hourglass.
“It did,” she says, showing me the crack that hadn’t been there previously.
Wolf barks as Florin gets to his feet. “What happened to my arm?”
“You tripped coming down the stairs.”
Sam chuckles. “Don’t listen to him. You fell off a griffin.”
“A griffin?” He shudders. “Why would I … I was riding one, wasn’t I?”
“You’re catching on, Florin.”
He locks eyes with me. “I hate that name.”
“That makes two of us. What would you prefer?”
“My real world name was Fred, but you know what, fine, call me Florin.”
I’m just turning back to Sam when I feel the skin on my back tighten. The two arrows drop to the ground.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I tell her.
“It’s fine,” she says from her position on the ground. “I couldn’t stand looking at you with those things sticking out of your back. I’ll recharge quickly and cure the Blood Drain spell. I’m afraid I’ll need new robes as well.”
“Who shot arrows at you?” Florin asks. “Don’t tell me it was me.”
“It was you.”
(^_^)
Sam waves her hand over her body, her body awash with pink magic. “It worked,” she says, breathing heavily now.
“I really can’t tell.”
She offers me another toothy red grin. “Oric.”
“What?”
Her grin fades as she holds up her hourglass.
“Is it still warm?” I crouch next to her, still heartbroken to see her legs splayed out.
“It is, but it’s cooling down. We should be able to use Time Skip soon.”
“What about your legs?”
“I’ll deal with them later. I just focused the spell on Blood Drain.”
Wolf growls at the amnesiac and he cowers. “Please, call off your dog!”
I move a few steps away from Florin, who is occupied with a pretty pissed off pooch. “And you’re sure we can’t just kill him?” I say under my breath.
“Oric.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said my name in the last two minutes.”
“We can’t. He could be valuable.”
“How?”
“To end the war. We’re riding north after this, to the Rune Lands, and after that …” Sam shrugs, the whites of her eyes contrasted strongly against the crimson tinge of her skin. “There may not be an ‘after that,’ but if there is, having that cocksucker may prove useful.”
I smile at the sometimes bawdy, always lively, Hourglass Mage.
“I’ve aged again,” she says, “I can feel it.”
“Really?”
“But what can you do? This is my avatar. Let’s get back to Lothar, and from there, you and I can travel to Warp Rider. We’ll leave my leg situation for the morning. I need a fucking break from all this.”
“Seeing the pyro afflicted got to you?”
She nods. “Among other things. Florin, come over here.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, still wary of Wolf’s snarling.
“We are transporting somewhere. He won’t bite you, unless Oric tells him to.”
“And I still haven’t decided whether I should tell him to or not,” I call over to the governor of Stater. “So get your ass over here.”
Florin meekly makes his way over to us, cringing as Wolf barks.
“Good boy,” I tell Wolf after I’ve whistled him over. “Keep your eye on this fucker.”
Florin starts to say something but swallows hard instead. “Okay, am I supposed to touch you?”
Without saying a word, Sam places her hand out and Florin drops down to touch it. She touches me with her other hand, and I place my hand on Wolf’s head.
We’re gone in a flash, and Lothar damn near shits his pants when he sees Sam covered in blood and the governor of Stater to boot.
“What!?” He falls off his meditations box, causing a small quake as he lands on the ground.
“Relax, Lothar, we’ll explain.” I lift Sam up and hold her in my arms. “Any place you’d, um, like to sit?”
“What happened to her legs!?”
“She fell while attached to Broken’s back.”
“My word! And did it kill him?”
“Sam did, got the scepter too. As for this asshole, Sam blasted him with Memory Rot and now he can’t remember the time when he was just about the bigge
st douche Unigaea had seen in ages.”
“How much does he remember?” Lothar’s eyebrows lift, his oval glasses reflecting the light from the battle in the distance.
“He knows what he is, an RPC, and he remembers details from his former life, but not much else,” I say.
“Fascinating.”
“I’m glad you’re interested because you two are hanging out here tonight.”
“We are?” they both ask.
“Yup, Sam and I are going to her ship.”
“What about your legs?” Lothar asks her.
“I don’t know if I can heal them yet, and I don’t feel like testing it now. Magic usage continues to take its toll. Tomorrow.”
Lothar pouts. “You’re leaving me here again?”
“You have company this time,” I say as I pull my hand back and ‘pat’ Florin’s back.
“Hey!” he shouts as I slam my open palm onto his back again.
“Be courteous,” I tell Florin, “or the giant might smash you.”
“I will do no such thing!”
Sam laughs. “Lothar, find out what you can about the effects of his Memory Rot. You have rested some, yes?”
“Yes, while you two, three,” he glances at Wolf, “were off having fun.”
“Good. We’ll be back in the morning.”
“Wolf too?” he asks Sam.
She looks to me and I shrug. “I mean, he’s never been on a spaceship before.”
“Spaceship?” asks Florin.
I pull Sam aside. “You think we can trust that Florin will actually stay here? What if he regains his memory?”
She considers this for a moment. “Do you have any rope?”
Chapter Fifteen: My Digital Raison D'être
Once I’ve gotten Florin tied to Lothar’s meditations box – and no, he doesn’t particularly enjoy it but at least I didn’t hogtie him, as I had previously suggested – Sam and I prepare to travel to her vessel in the Proxima Galaxy.
“This is going to be strange, Wolf,” I tell the Tagvornin killer as I scratch him on the neck. “But you’ve already gone through a teleportation or three tonight, so what’s one more oddball trip? You have food on your craft, right?”
“Of course,” says Sam.
“Dog food?”
“We can manage.”
I smile at Wolf. “I really hope you aren’t as afraid of empty spaces as you are water.”
Sam’s Blueshift wristband warps around her wrist and flashes green. “Let’s go. Come here, Wolfie.”
As Wolf cautiously moves over to her, I turn to Lothar and remind him to keep an eye on Florin.
“I can’t go anywhere!” Florin says. “And you have done nothing to fix my broken arm!”
“In the morning,” I tell him. “Unless you’d like me to break a leg to go along with it.”
“No, let’s do it now.” Sam’s wand appears in her hand and she aims it at Florin.
“Are you kidding me?” I ask her under my breath. “We got him right where we want him. Don’t give him any advantage by fixing his arm.”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
Even though she shouldn’t, Sam blasts Florin with her Speed Heal spell, and his arm heals right up.
“It feels so much better now,” he says. “Thanks!”
Florin wasn’t keen on having his wrists and ankles tied together to a rope attached to Lothar’s box, but we figured it would make it more difficult to escape. Even though he now has usage of his hand again, I have my doubts whether he’d even try to escape.
And if he does, there’s a big rock next to Lothar’s meditations box. Much to the giant’s chagrin, he’s been instructed to pummel the governor of Stater with it if he so much as twitches funny.
“Let’s get this over with.” I place my hand on Sam, she lifts her wrist, and away we go.
Traveling through digital space and time isn’t as odd this time as it was the last go around, but it’s not me I’m worried about. As soon as we spawn I turn to Wolf, who nervously looks around at Sam’s bedroom. He pants, paces, and looks up at me in a panic.
“Easy, boy,” I say as his eyes take in my clean-shaven form. “It’s me, your best friend.”
Sam stands poised on the balls of her feet in her Proxima smuggler outfit, sleek, form-fitting, and classic. Her brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and as she approaches me, Wolf starts barking at her.
“He doesn’t recognize me either.”
“It’s Sam, Wolf, relax.”
She lets him sniff her hand and he finally calms down, but only until he sees her floor to ceiling windows that showcase a twinkling galaxy outside.
Wolf bolts over to the windows, tracking whatever it is dogs track when they’re bugging out as he paces back and forth, whimpering loudly.
“You’ll be fine.” I turn to Sam. “You promised food. I believe that will chill him out.”
“Food it is. Ramjet, dog food, please.”
Sam’s silent AI, or at least he’s been silent every time I’ve been here, quickly gets to work at the espresso bar at the far end of the room. The wall shifts forward, and a tray extends out from the wall, a nice bowl of meat in the center of the tray.
Upon further examination, I see that the bowl is filled with steak cut into perfect cubes.
“Holy shit, can I have one?” I ask after I’ve smelled the food and placed it on the ground for Wolf, who, like most animals when given food, has become completely oblivious to the worry that once ailed him.
I hear the whir of mechanics behind the wall and another tray emerges, a bowl of cubed steak at its center.
Damn it feels good to be on a spaceship.
“Nice!”
“That’s not human food.” Sam laughs as she takes the bowl from me. “Trust me there, if you’re hungry, we’ll have something much nicer.” She places the bowl on the ground. Wolf sucks down the rest of the meat he was just working on, and goes for the second bowl.
“Slow down, buddy,” I tell him, knowing all too well that my request will fall on deaf ears. “At least swallow first!”
Sam laughs. “Remember the food I had back when I was Sam Raid the Illusionist, the piroshki dish I made you?”
I recall the dish and it being delicious. I nod, watching as she takes a seat on the couch.
“That was Ramjet’s recipe, but I perfected it in Unigaea.”
“Your AI is active with you when you’re there?”
She nods. “He is always with me. Consider him my in-game monitor.”
“Even when we almost did it?” I ask, remembering our experience in the bandit’s hut.
Sam laughs. “Yes, is that odd? He is generally reserved, unlike other AIs. He’s been with me since the start, knows everything about me.”
“I see. Well, nice to meet you, Ramjet.” I wave awkwardly at the wall. “So what was this about food for us?”
Sam tells Ramjet to surprise her and also orders a bottle of wine. A metal oval lifts from the ground, startling Wolf. He returns to his food just as the top of the polished metal oval telescopes sideways, revealing a bottle of wine and two wine glasses.
“Food will be ready in a few minutes,” Sam says. “How about a glass of wine to tide us over?”
(^_^)
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…
Sam is next to me in a silky nightgown. She’s fast asleep, and the stars flickering across both our naked, blanketed bodies add a touch of surrealness to the scene.
Tomorrow, we ride north.
The point of my existence, my digital raison d'être, is hard to comprehend at times.
Which is why you shouldn’t dwell on it, Oric.
Thanks for the reminder, Eric.
I move to the side of the bed as quietly as I can. Once I’m on the floor, I sit with my back to the bed, my legs crossed. Before I can even motion him over, or make any noise to indicate he should join me, Wolf is at my side.
He licks my hand, and star
es up at me with his big, blue-green eyes. His ears relax. He’s happy and content.
“You’re a damn good animal.”
Wolf tries to crawl into my lap, and I can’t help but laugh. “You’re too big, dammit.” I swear the beast thinks he is kitten-sized sometimes. I push him away and he tries again. “I’ll lay down with you,” I whisper, “just relax.”
I lie down and Wolf lies down across from me. I get a whiff of his dog breath and almost push him away. “Jeez, Wolf.”
He whimpers in a playful way.
“Shhhh, you’ll wake Sam. Turn the other way.”
He stares at me curiously for a moment.
“You know what I mean.”
Wolf gets up and flops back onto the ground.
“Sam is going to give me hell about cuddling you over cuddling her,” I tell him.
All that has recently occurred comes back to me. From the wine we drank to the sushi we ate – sushi on a spaceship! – it was nothing like the trauma we had experienced just an hour earlier, Sam with her legs broken, blood gushing from every orifice, the burning afflicted all around us.
From this my mind skips to Deathdale, her solar power and its aftermath. I hate that she will be forever a mystery, a memory. And all that led up to that, nearly being drowned by a sea dragon, surviving a meteor attack, watching the arrow pass through Sam’s neck in the bandit’s hut.
And you want to go back to that?
I consider this for a moment, and the fact that Unigaea has given me what equates to Stockholm syndrome. But where else would I go if not Unigaea?
There are other Proxima fantasy worlds, Tritania being the most popular, but none give me the same buzz as Unigaea, none are quite as dangerous, powerful, moving, mysterious.
Chicago.
To go back to Chicago would mean having to confront my past. I’d have to face the fact that I’ve been permalogged for so long, that I have no job, no prospects. A real loser, at least in an archaic definition of loser. So many people are permalogged in now that it’s not nearly as taboo as it was back in the 2050s.
The Millennials that are still alive don’t like it, but then again, they were always bitching about something, usually about never getting what the previous generation received. Baby Boomers, I believe, or was it Gen X?
The Last Warrior of Unigaea Box Set: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure Page 51
