by Alex Mulder
Luke nodded, and then looked over at Tess. She was still watching Katrina and Anna, but when she felt his eyes on her, she turned back and dipped her head, acknowledging his pain.
“Katrina…” Luke crouched next to the fellow guild leader. “I’m sorry that this happened. We’re going to put a stop to it.”
Katrina didn’t say anything.
“Don’t get yourself killed, Kato.” Silverstrike nodded to his sister. “And don’t get Tess killed either.”
“The same goes for you, Silverstrike,” said Luke. “And I’ll keep Emily safe.”
Silverstrike frowned slightly at the use of his sister’s real life name.
I don’t have time to play family counselor right now.
“Kato, there’s one thing you should keep in mind going forward.” Karou leaned in close so that their conversation was quiet enough to keep from disturbing Katrina’s mourning.
“What is it?”
“Each of the Elemental Wells has a major quest associated with it,” he said. “You’re going to have to pay attention and stay focused to get through each one of them.”
“I’ll manage,” said Luke.
Tess set a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll manage.”
“Good,” said Kaoru. “I’ll help Silverstrike with the guild alliances before going undercover. Keep us updated on your timetable with private messages. I’m not sure how long this is all going to take.”
Luke nodded.
“And one last thing.” Kaoru took a deep breath, and extended his hand. “Thank you. I’ve only known you for a short time, and I’m sure you’ll brush this off as a baseless compliment, but you live up to image of the Hero of Kantor.”
Luke wanted to correct him, to tell him that it was just a stupid nickname, and that he was just a normal player. But he didn’t.
“Thanks.” He turned to Tess. “Are we all set on food?”
Tess nodded.
“Then let’s get moving,” he said. “We have no time to waste.”
CHAPTER 13
Anna is dead. She’s never coming back.
It was hard for Luke to accept it. His anger had slowly subsided once he and Tess had started off, but in its place he felt a combination of guilt and responsibility that weighed down his every step.
The two of them were headed for Shahidi’s Vengeance, which meant that they would first have to go through the Msitu Wilds. Luke’s experience in these lands was limited to a single quest he’d gone on before the Battle of Kantor.
The sight of the jungle looming at the edge of the desert reminded him of the strange monsters he had encountered. Luke again thought of Tess and worried.
“We could end up stuck in the jungle overnight…” Tess’s voice was quiet. “I brought a small tent just in case…”
“Right.” Luke sighed.
“Luke, you don’t have to worry about me,” she said. “I know you’re going to anyway. But you don’t have to. I’m 7 levels higher than you.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Luke.
What level was Anna? Does it even matter when we’re fighting Arbiters?
The landscape rose into a high sandy cliff face on the border of the Sarchia Desert and the Msitu Wilds. Luke slowed to a stop in front of it.
“Looks like we have to climb.”
The sand made the task much more difficult than he’d been expecting. He had Tess go first, and she leaned over in front of him on all fours, clawing more than climbing as she made her way up.
“Hey, careful,” said Luke. “You’re kicking sand into my face.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to go first!” Tess shifted and her foot hold crumbled.
“Whoops!”
Tess fell backward, directly into him. Luke blushed as she collided with him and his hands made contact with her breasts in his clumsy attempt to stop her from falling. They tumbled for a moment before he was able to stop the momentum down the sandy cliff.
“Nice going.” He gently nudged Tess in the shoulder. She reached over and poked him in the ribs.
“I’m sorry! This cliff is really steep!” She rolled her eyes and then pulled her staff off her back. “Let’s try a new tactic.”
Tess glowed blue for a moment, and then bright white light washed over the both of them.
“Haste,” she said. “We should be able to run it if we get a decent start.”
She took Luke’s hand into hers, and the two of them charged up the cliff. The sand flew behind them as they sped back the steep incline. As they reached the crest gravity pulled back on them threatening to stop their momentum. They had just enough speed to make it over the edge.
The top of the sandy cliff gave way to a grassy knoll lightly adorned with various shrubs and bushes covered with an assortment of fruits and berries. Luke turned back in the direction they’d come from and caught his breath.
“Wow,” said Luke. “I never realized that there was such an elevation shift between the desert and jungle.”
The Sarchia Desert covered the majority of the south eastern part of the continent. Luke could see Dunidan’s Rest in the distance, a miniscule, walled settlement on the horizon. A couple of other zones in the desert had guild halls, but none of them were as developed as The Consulate’s base.
“It’s beautiful,” said Luke.
“This is where we live,” said Tess. She reached over and ran her hand through his hair and smiled. “Hey, I brought some of the vegetables that I’ve been growing on the farm with us. Do you want to stop for an early dinner?”
“Sure.” Luke saw that his stamina bar had been greatly depleted by the sand cliff.
Tess smiled and began pulling food out of her pack. Luke took a seat on the grass beside her and wiped his hands on his armor, hungrily eyeing her offerings.
“The Msitu Wilds are full of edible plants and herbs,” said Tess as they ate. “Look, there are Lenberries growing right here. And that’s Jessbark on the trees.”
“Not bad,” said Luke. “How high did you have to get in your herbalism skills to start spotting that stuff?”
“I don’t know, I’m not sure that’s it. “After a while, you just get a sense for the world. It’s easy to spot, even without high level skills.” Tess nibbled on a scone as she handed him a large, maroon colored fruit
Luke took a bite out of the fruit. Sweet, savory, citrus flavor, a cross between a tomato and a mango exploded into his mouth.
“Oh wow,” said Luke.
“I didn’t grow that one,” said Tess. “But I traded some of the stuff we did grow for-”
“Hold on.” Luke stood up, turning toward the jungle. “Do you smell that?”
Tess stopped eating and looked up.
“No,” she said. “What are you-”
The ground shook beneath their feet, only slightly at first. Luke grabbed Tess’s hand and pulled her away from the edge of the cliff.
“What’s going on?” she asked. Luke shook his head.
There was a flash of red and orange light originating from deep within the jungle. A second later, the two of them were tossed into the air as the earth jumped underneath their feet. An explosive boom came from the jungle along with it, loud enough to make Luke’s ears ring and force his heart to skip a beat.
“Luke!” Tess helped him to his feet.
“That…” Luke stared off into the jungle. “Oh my god…”
A thick plume of smoke was rising from the Misitu Wilds, not far away from where he and Tess stood. There was something else that Luke could hear, more and more clearly as his hearing began to return.
Those are screams.
“Come on!” He grabbed Tess’s hand and pulled her forward into the jungle. “We have to hurry!”
The jungle foliage was dense and made travel difficult. Luke pulled out his sword, doing his best to chop a path through the vegetation as they went. Tess followed close behind him, spells at the ready and staff in hand.
After a couple of minutes, the two spilled
out into a tiny clearing and saw that a small farm, three buildings and a couple of wheat fields, was on fire. Far off in the background Luke and Tess could see Shahidi’s Vengeance, the volcano’s crater dripping with lava.
“Help!” An old man was standing outside of one of the burning buildings. “Please, help!”
Luke sprinted over.
“Is anyone inside?” He stared at the building, the roof and walls were already almost consumed by the flames.
“My wife and daughter!” The old man was sobbing. “My… family.”
ELEMENTAL INFUSION: ICE
Wielding his magical, frozen sword, Luke chopped through the front door of the house. The heat of the flames was overwhelming, enough to make each step a feat of willpower. Luke spun his sword in fast circles, canceling out flames wherever the blade touched them.
“Luke!” Tess was screaming from outside. “It’s too late, Luke!”
The fire licked at the exposed sections of Luke’s skin as he forced himself deeper into the death trap. There was a doorway in the back of the room, blocked by fallen beams. Through it, he could see a burning human figure, poised as though to shield another smaller figure from the flames.
God damn it…
The building creaked and Luke was forced back by a wave of heat. The roof in the second room collapsed, burying both figures in burning wooden shards. Luke’s arm caught fire, and a hole formed in the floor underneath him.
Bright white light hit Luke from the side, damaging his health bar but also knocking him through a weakened section of the burning wall. He instinctively began rolling in the grass, putting out flames that he hadn’t even realized were burning on his body.
“Fuck…” Luke took a deep breath and sat up. “They’re still in there! I have to-”
“Luke…” Tess was frowning, on the verge of tears as she walked over to him. “They’re gone, Luke.”
Fire completely engulfed the house and the entire structure collapsed in on itself. The fire burned even more intensely, forcing Luke and Tess further back. The old man was on his knees, slamming his fists into the ground his body racked with sobs.
“No…” The man shook his head and shuddered. “No! This can’t be…”
I couldn’t do anything… If I’d just been a moment quicker, acted a little bit sooner…
“Please…” The old man had made his way over to Luke. Tess watched him carefully, as though she was treating him as a threat in his grief crazed state of mind. “Please, traveler…”
“I… I did the best that I could,” said Luke.
“They’re gone…” The old man slapped his hand against his head several times in quick succession. “My family is gone, and it’s all because of the demon. Please, if you have any sympathy for me at all… find Shahidi.”
“What?” Luke shook his head in confusion.
“The volcano is a cursed formation. The demon controls the eruptions.” The old man’s eyes were full of angry, unbridled intensity. “Shahidi claims to take vengeance, but for what? In reality it just kills, and creates ruin!”
“The demon…” said Luke. “What is it? Why is it doing this?”
The old man shook his head.
“Please,” said the man. “Do it for my family. Do it for the other settlers, the other lives that it’ll destroy for its own entertainment.”
QUEST ACCEPTED: The Vengeance of Shahidi
Is this the quest that Kaoru was talking about?
“We were planning on heading up there anyway,” said Tess. “I guess we could-”
“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you!” The old man grabbed Luke by the shoulders. “But that was my… my family.”
For a moment, it looked as though the man was going to say something else, but his face twisted into emotion, and his hands slipped from Luke. He stared down at the ground numbly and said nothing more.
“We have to keep going,” said Luke, standing up.
“Is it alright for us to just leave him here?” asked Tess.
Luke stared back at what was left of the burning building and felt a lump form in his chest.
“We’ll check in on him on our way back,” said Luke. “Once we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
And once I’ve administered justice on this family’s behalf.
The man’s sobs could still be heard as Luke and Tess made their way forward, deeper into the Msitu Wilds. Shahidi’s Vengeance loomed on the horizon, the crater glowing an ominous red and spewing black smoke into the sky.
“There’s so much death, Luke. Everywhere we look.” Tess pulled in a little closer to him, grabbing onto his arm. “And now we have to climb to the top of… that.”
Luke nodded and hugged her reassuringly.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “We can do this.”
“That poor man…” Tess looked over her shoulder back at the farm they’d left behind. “His grief seemed so real.”
“He’s an NPC, Tess,” said Luke. “And he’s part of this quest. I’m not sure if it’s something we should read too deeply into.”
“We were talking to him, Luke, and he was talking back to us.” Tess sounded as though she was working something out for herself with her words, gently musing her way into a better understanding of the world.
She has a point.
“If he had told us that he was a player, would we have believed him, and accepted it?” Tess’s question came out as no more than a shaky whisper. “What’s the difference between us and him? Between… me, and him?”
Instead of answering her with words, Luke pulled Tess a little closer to him and planted a kiss on her head.
The ground began to slope up sharply. Luke was surprised that they hadn’t encountered any enemies, given how perilous the Msitu Wilds usually were.
Is it the smoke, or something else?
Slowly, the vegetation and trees began to thin out. The ground turned to hard, porous obsidian as Luke and Tess stepped out of the jungle and onto the caldera of the volcano.
“Oh my god…” Tess squeezed his arm, and Luke understood exactly why. The sky above them had turned blood red, broken up by clouds of smoke floating around the volcano’s crater.
The path in front of them was studded with large boulders, sections of the volcano blown apart by prior eruptions. It was going to be a difficult climb, and something began rushing toward them from out of the rocks that threatened to make it even more difficult.
“Look out!” Luke pushed Tess out of the way and unsheathed his sword just in time to counter an attack from what looked like a giant spider, jet black except for a single red line running across the back of its thorax.
DEATH SPINNER: A fire breathing species of Yvvarite spider found only on and around Shahidi’s Vengeance. Unlike many other varieties of spiders, it has a propensity for hunting in groups. Kills by wrapping its enemies in webbing, and then setting them aflame.
“Luke, there’s more of them!” Tess waved her hand wildly at two more Death Spinners approaching from his other side. Luke moved to finish off the first one, but it wrapped his foot in webbing, tripping him up.
CONJURE SWORD 3
MIRROR IMAGE 3
With three copies and three swords, Luke was still able to attack and defend as the arachnids moved in for the kill. Each of the ethereal copies could take a single hit for him, blocking damage like shields that would shatter in the name of protection.
Damn it, these things are fast!
He tried to attack each one of the Death Spinners with a conjured sword, but they were too agile for it to be an effective strategy. Instead, he set all three of them on the first spider, the one he’d already damaged. Two of them found their mark, skewering the monster to the ground. With his physical sword he finally managed to cut loose the webbing restraining his feet.
“Luke!” Tess was casting her offensive holy magic wildly as the other two Death Spinners descended on her. It didn’t appear to be doing much, and the spiders launched th
eir webbing at her in response, wrapping her up into a silken cocoon before Luke could run to her aid.
I can’t lose!
PIERCE ATTACK 3
Luke launched forward, striking one of the Death Spinners attacking Tess and putting himself in between her and the other. The closest spider leapt into the air. Luke raised his sword to counter, but it flew over him instead, spraying flames from a tiny opening near its mouth.
“Aaagh!” Luke’s health dropped to half of its maximum, and continued dropping as the flames on his back sapped away at his health. Something clicked in his head, and he remembered his newest combat ability.
HOLY REGENERATION
The spell would heal him over time, regenerating his health at a slow, but constant rate. It was enough to counteract the flames, but Luke ducked into a combat roll to brush them out for good measure.
“Come on!” Luke screamed at the two remaining spiders. They approached him more warily than they had before. Luke pulled his conjured swords back to him and began spinning them around his body, creating a whirling shield of blades.
One of the Death Spinners leapt toward him, immediately followed by the other. Luke still had all three of his mirror images left, and he turned so that the attacks landed on them instead. Immediately he countered, striking each of the spiders once with his own sword and three times over again with his magical blades.
And that was it. Luke didn’t waste any time, rushing over to Tess and cutting her out of the web cocoon. She took a deep breath of fresh air as soon as her face was clear and then coughed.
“That was disgusting!” she cried. “Oh my god, I can never let that happen again!”
Luke smiled at her.
“Well, you better try to be a bit quicker on your feet then!”
Tess hit his shoulder playfully.
“Come on,” he said, helping her to her feet. “We have to keep moving.”
CHAPTER 14
The mountainous volcano grew even steeper as Luke and Tess continued to climb. The rock underneath their feet was warm. It felt almost alive. The sky was dark, but with all the smoke, it was hard to tell if the sun had set.
