These guys had just been dumping all their experience into their quickness, and that was part of the Bleed philosophy. Get a group together and swarm down a monster. With everyone swinging away as fast as they could, even dealing minimal damage individually, the damage would eventually stack up, and they could overwhelm the target. If enough of them ganged up on me, I’d be in trouble.
Too bad for them—there weren’t enough of them.
I activated Battle Cry, knocking them both off of me. The one with the short swords looked like the lower level of the two, so I went after him first.
Warrior’s Charge stunned him, and I slashed him across the chest. The blow did enormous damage and cleaved off half his health. He gasped as I followed up with a stab that dropped him below 25 percent.
His buddy with the axe leapt at me, but I whipped around and used Frenzied Slash. The one hit decimated his health and dropped him below critical.
“Oh, God!” he yelped as he raised his axe to deflect my next blow. But it didn’t come.
I didn’t follow up. One more hit and he’d be dead, and I wasn’t about to just kill these guys.
“Stay away from me,” I growled, raising my sword threateningly at him as he cowered, clutching his axe like a shield.
“Okay, okay, okay!” he stammered. I turned to his friend who threw both hands in the air.
“Okay, man! Relax! We’re cool!”
“Yeah, I bet you are…” I replied.
“Hey, I know you!” he blurted out as he recognized me. “You’re Jack! The one The Ripper told us to kill!”
I scowled back at him as I put my sword away. They weren’t a threat anymore. But as I looked behind them, I saw something that made my heart sink.
It was a horde of Bleed players, and my mind instantly went back to the Witching Woods when we were being pursued by the seemingly never-ending swarm of skeletons.
It was like a battle scene out of Braveheart, only they were the English with their entire army behind them, and I was me. Just me.
Quickly, I turned in the other direction and started running as fast as I possibly could. Every time Warrior’s Charge came off cooldown, I used it to gain a burst of speed.
I was fast, but it looked as though the high-level members of the guild had joined in the pursuit and had taken the same approach to their character builds and dumped all their experience into quickness. They were all gaining on me, and with their superior numbers, it was doubtful I’d be able to take them all on.
Join or die…
There was nothing to do but keep running.
55
Stoneburg Lost
The Bleed army was hot on my heels. I couldn’t help but think back to the Stone Giant we’d encountered just outside the Crimson Catacombs.
Now I know how he felt, I thought sarcastically as I leapt over a boulder and ducked through the branches of a grove of low trees. It wasn’t a place to hide. They’d find me instantly and had definitely seen me go in. But if I didn’t figure out something quick, they’d catch up with me, and then I’d be in big trouble.
I exploded out of the grove and saw I was approaching a river. I boosted over it easily, landed in the mud on the other side and kept running.
“Get him, boys!” someone shouted from behind me.
Shit! How am I going to lose them!?
Arrows struck the bank behind me as I raced on.
The ground sloped up to my left, and I boosted up it quickly. If there was a big enough drop-off on the other end, I could use the Bindstone Shard glitch to get back to Mountain Retreat. But when I reached the top, I saw it was just another hill.
“Shit!”
They were catching up on me and it seemed as though there was nowhere to escape. I tore down the hill as fast as I could and set my sights on a cluster of trees in the distance. It was my only hope of finding a place to hide.
I dashed through another Horngrin camp, veered around a tall rock and that’s when I heard it.
“Jack!” a voice rang out.
Cavey!
I stopped in my tracks and spun around to see Cavey’s face peeking out from a slit in the rock face. He motioned to me.
“Get in here! Quick!”
“Cavey! What the Hell!?”
“Get in here, now!” he hissed.
I leapt forward and tried to wiggle my way through the crack, but there just wasn’t enough room. My armor scraped against the stone, wedging me in like a peg for a hole two sizes too small.
“Shit!”
“Take your armor off!”
Quickly, I pulled up my character sheet and unequipped all of my armor and slid it into my inventory. Instantly, I felt lighter, but more importantly, I was smaller. Cavey snatched my hand and yanked me into the darkness.
Something clicked, and I heard the sound of stone scraping against stone and turned around to see the crack I’d just come through closing behind me. The glow of outside light grew smaller and smaller until finally, we were smothered by darkness.
I moved to pull out my Glowbug Bauble, but before I could, a light sprang to life in front of me. A blue flame, twisting and flickering at the tip of Cavey’s staff, illuminating his face with a soft glow. He looked tired, angry, and beaten down. Slowly, he moved the tip of his staff to a pile of sticks at his feet. The bonfire sprang to life, casting light across the cave. It was small, and apparently led nowhere.
“Cavey!?” I gasped. “What—what are you doing here?! I was at Stoneburg and I didn’t see you—”
“Stoneburg’s lost,” he replied. I could hear the pain in his voice and felt it in my chest.
“What happened?”
“After you left… some things happened,” he said slowly. My heart sank. “The remaining Mercenaries banded together with what was left of Sinful. They came back for a raid—we managed to fight them off, but then something worse happened.”
“Bleed,” I said grimly. “Yeah, I just ran into them.”
“They came with unstoppable numbers,” Cavey said slowly. “We didn’t even bother fighting. They gave us a choice—”
“Join or die,” I said, finishing his statement.
“Join or die,” he nodded. “We had no choice.”
I couldn’t believe it. Never had I once considered the possibility that Bleed would take over Stoneburg. Sinful, The Mercenaries—they had been the main threats we’d all been worried about. Bleed hadn’t even been part of our world, except for the brief encounter at the Iron Mountains.
I couldn’t help but think of the Borg from Star Trek the Next Generation. It seemed as though Bleed operated by the same set of… principles.
Suddenly, a thought sprang into my mind like a bolt of electricity.
“D!?” I blurted out. “And Baltos? What happened to them? Are they okay!?”
I couldn’t imagine D bending the knee to a zerg guild like Bleed. Baltos would join, and I wouldn’t fault him for that, but D?
“They’re with Bleed now,” he replied.
“Even D!?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes,” he nodded. “He wanted to fight. I could see it in his eyes. But there were just… there were just too many of them, Jack. We had no choice.”
“But you got away?” I asked. “How?”
It took him a moment to answer. “I ran…” he finally said. “I was coming back from leveling and they didn’t see me. I watched from the trees. A couple of them spotted me but I managed to outrun them. I found this place while hunting one day and lost them here. Since then—since then I’ve just been on my own.”
“Damn…” I muttered as I stared at the flames that burned between us. They reminded me of the anger I’d felt the day that I left. The day that everything changed. The day that I—killed Chaucey.
No matter how hard it had been, I had convinced myself that it was the right thing to do, because it was the only thing to do. I’d made a choice, and I still stood by it. But then I’d made another choice. The choice to leave. Had that b
een a mistake?
“Where did you go, Jack?” Cavey asked slowly, as if reading my mind. “Why—why did you leave us?”
56
An unlikely Ally
Cavey’s question hung in the air like some kind of toxic cloud that I dared not touch. I felt stupid, small, and pathetic. I’d abandoned my group. I was a deserter who had left before the battle even began. Cavey had lost more friends than I had—how was I supposed to explain to him that I “needed some time?”
I was weak, and I always had been.
I’d had a chance to kill Chaucey but didn’t have the heart to go through with it. And because of that, more people had died.
I’d left Stoneburg. I’d abandoned my friends, and because of that, they were now prisoners.
I could have brought them with me. I could have taken them all to Mountain Retreat. There was more than enough room. I could have stayed in Stoneburg and fought. Or at least surrendered with my friends. And then I’d be with them.
Can’t you do anything right!?
My fists were clenched tightly at my sides as I stared down at the flames of the bonfire. It took me a long time to answer, and when I finally did, I knew my explanation wasn’t good enough.
“I just—I needed some time, Cavey,” I told him miserably. “Killing Chaucey… it just really messed me up and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I still kind of don’t.”
Cavey didn’t respond, and it took me a few moments before I could bring my eyes to his. But when I did, I didn’t see what I’d expected.
I’d expected anger, disappointment—maybe even resentment. But to my surprise, he actually looked like he understood.
“I get it, Jack,” he replied.
“You do!?”
“I do,” he nodded. “You know, sometimes I’d tell the guys I was going out to do some leveling, but I’d just go down to the other side of the lake and sit for a while. I’d just look at the sky and try not to think, ya know?”
I thought about my nights in the courtyard of Mountain Retreat, staring up at the stars and watching the twisting colors of the aurora overhead.
“I wish—I wish I could just log out and see my family,” I replied. I hadn’t planned on saying it. It just came out. It was a strange moment of vulnerability for me. I’d been trying so hard to put those thoughts out of my mind in order to survive in Carrethen, but for some reason, standing in the cave with Cavey, away from the rest of my friends and wondering what had become of them, I just needed to talk about it.
“I know what you mean,” he replied. “Where are you from, Jack?”
“Boston Sprawl,” I replied. “You?”
“Montana.”
“Never met anyone from Montana before.” I chuckled. “Got a lot of… horses there?”
“Oh, sure!” Cavey laughed. “We all have horses in Montana. Keep them in the house like dogs!”
It was strange. Montana, Boston—it felt like we were talking about a strange world we’d only heard about, rather than swapping stories about where we’d come from.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“17,” I replied.
“And are you—actually a dude?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I am. You?”
“36-year-old divorced man,” he said, puffing out his chest, pretending to be proud.
“Old man,” I joked.
“Isn’t it funny?” he replied. “In real life, we’d never run into each other, and unless I was your teacher or something, it would probably be creepy for me to be hanging out with you.”
“Creep,” I smirked.
“Dickhead.”
We both laughed. It felt good to laugh, to joke with someone after being on my own for so long. Back with my friends. But not all of them.
“Where are they, Cavey?” I asked.
“Fort Keth,” he replied. “In the middle of the Plaguelands.”
“That doesn’t sound fun.”
“It isn’t,” he replied. “It’s literally on the other side of the continent, and I have no idea the best way to get there.”
“How did they get there?”
“Someone in Bleed had a portal,” he replied. “I went back to Stoneburg one day to see if they’d left and I heard them talking. Apparently, it’s a good place for farming mats and Pareals, so they send all the new recruits there to work. Basically, slave labor.”
“Except in Carrethen, their slaves never get tired,” I scoffed. Cavey nodded.
“Well, we have to get to them,” I said simply. “Get them the Hell out of there.”
I moved to the cave wall, looking for the mechanism Cavey had used to open and close the door.
“Jack…” Cavey said. I knew he was skeptical, but I didn’t care. I found the switch and slapped it with my palm.
“Don’t try to talk me out of it,” I told him as the stone rumbled and the crack began to widen. Sunlight began to pour into the cave. “I already bailed on them once. I’m not going to do it again.”
“You don’t even know where you are going,” he told me as I squeezed through the rock and stepped outside. I immediately opened my character sheet and reequipped my armor.
“I’ll figure it out,” I replied. “It’s on the map, right?”
“Jack,” Cavey replied. Now that I knew a little bit more about him, I couldn’t help but think he was sounding like a parent. “You’ll never make it on your own.”
“So, come with me,” I told him, turning around to face him.
“Jack, it’s just—it’s too far,” he replied. “It would take us weeks, literally, to get there.”
“Then it takes us weeks—” But I wasn’t able to finish my sentence. From behind Cavey, a figure was sprinting towards us at top speed. He wasn’t wearing a Bleed tabard, but I was still wary and quickly inspected him.
No—way! I thought as he approached.
Cavey had yet to see him, so I pointed over his shoulder. Cavey turned around just in time as the man leapt at him and began pummeling him with his fists. The blows however, barely registered any damage.
“Give Og fish!” Og growled. “Give Og Fish!”
I burst out laughing as Cavey realized what was happening.
“I—I don’t have a fish!” Cavey stammered, tripping over himself as he backed up. Og wasn’t wearing his infamous loincloth anymore. He’d upgraded to some kind of armor that resembled something a samurai would wear.
“Give Og fish!” he repeated.
“I don’t have one! Jack, do you?”
“Nope.” I laughed.
To my surprise, Og stopped swinging and stood up straight, letting his fists fall to his sides. I glanced at Cavey, who was looking at me like the world had suddenly stopped spinning. I shrugged.
Og opened his mouth and spoke. “I can get you to Fort Keth. But you have to take me with you.”
57
No More Pulling Punches
I was stunned, standing there with my mouth hanging open like a little kid who’d just seen his first magic trick. Cavey was equally shocked, and we both looked at each other. Finally, I turned back to Og.
“Uh… what now?”
“I have a portal to Fort Keth,” he replied. “I can summon it for you, but you must let me go with you.”
“You can talk!” Cavey blurted out.
“Of course I can talk,” Og scoffed. “It’s called roleplaying, dude.
“You’re like Silent Bob.” I chuckled, wishing D was around to appreciate such a perfectly timed movie reference.
“Only not fat,” he replied.
“Wow, okay,” Cavey said, shaking his head as if to shake off the shock of Og actually talking like a human. “So, you have a portal to Keth?”
“They summoned one in Stoneburg,” he replied. “After the group went through, I snuck up and tied to the portal. I can summon it for you right now if you’re ready.”
“Let’s do it,” I replied, drawing my sword.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, le
t’s slow down here a second,” Cavey said cautiously. “Why do you even want to do this, Og? What does this have to do with you? You’re a solo player, right?”
“What do I care?” Og replied indignantly. “Stoneburg is my home, dude. How am I supposed to run around punching those Bleed idiots asking for fish if all they wanna do is kill me?”
Silence.
Then, I burst out laughing. It was the most amazingly absurd, honest answer I’d heard since arriving in Carrethen. Og wasn’t motivated by power or anger or revenge, or even survival. All he wanted to do was have fun, and Bleed was getting in his way of doing that.
“I figure you and your friends are the only ones who can free Stoneburg from them,” he went on. “Or go up against The Ripper and get us all out of here.”
“You don’t think Bleed can do that?” I asked him. He shook his head.
“Those idiots couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag,” he replied. “All they know is numbers. How to swarm people and overwhelm them with pure numbers. The Ripper’s too smart for that, and I don’t think he’d let a group beat him. That would go against his rules.”
“Good point,” I nodded.
“Jesus, Og!” Cavey exclaimed. “You’re level 68!?”
“Damn strickity,” Og replied proudly. “Just ‘cause I act dumb, don’t mean I am dumb.”
“Why weren’t you doing any damage when you hit me then?”
“Pulling my punches,” he said with a smile. “If I’d used my nekode on you, you’d be a corpse right now.”
“Oh, is that right?” Cavey retorted.
“Nekode?” I asked. Og responded by equipping two claw weapons on either of his hands, making him look like some kind of samurai wolverine.
“These babies.” He smiled.
“Ah, I’ve seen those before,” I replied, thinking back to fighting Osiris in the Catacombs. “Never knew what they were called.”
“Some people like cestus. But I like these.”
As Og brandished his X-Men claws in front of him, I felt my confidence starting to grow.
“How many men do they have at the fort?” I asked. “Have either of you actually been?”
“I have,” Og replied. “It’s mayhem generally. The Plaguelands are swarming with monsters.”
Call of Carrethen: A LitRPG and GameLit novel (Wellspring Book 1) Page 24
