by Dante Doom
As Sang observed the way Van was able to rally the team, she wondered how hard it must be to get an entirely volunteer organization whipped into shape. Everyone in the group had different ideas, goals, and agendas, but here, Van was able to masterfully pull everyone in the same direction. Regardless of the low-stakes nature of gaming, it was still a very impressive display of leadership.
“Hold up!” Kylian said, stopping suddenly and drawing his broadsword. They had been moving through the Crags of Thunder, on the main road, for a few hours, and hadn’t encountered a single problem. Now, Kylian seemed deathly afraid.
There was the sound of footsteps above them then, and Sang realized that archers had been sneaking around in the cliffs overhead.
“Stop right there!” called a voice that echoed through the canyons. A tall man wearing golden armor and a helmet with horns atop it strolled out in front of the party. Behind the golden armored man were six other soldiers, all wearing the same kind of armor but with no horns on their helmets.
“My name is Reginus Valorsteel,” said the horned man, brandishing a longsword as he stepped up to the party. “And who is in charge of this band of ragamuffins?”
“Hey, who are you calling ragamuffins?” Bidane shouted. “Also, what the hell is a ragamuffin?”
“I think it’s bad,” Dolly said.
“My name is Semimodo, the bard of glory and thunder,” Van said as he walked right up to Reginus. “And this is my fearless crew.”
“Who aren’t ragamuffins!” Bidane called back. The rest of the team heartily agreed with her.
“I see. Well, this is unfortunate,” Reginus said, “because you happen to be crossing right through my territory. Without my permission.”
“Hey, the crags are public space,” Van said. “The nearest city’s ten miles from here.”
“If you look at your map closely,” Reginus said, “you will see that my territory extends all the way up to this pass.”
“Look, are you trying to rob us?” Van asked. “Because we have plenty of forces and we’re not going to go down without a fight.”
“Rob you? Goodness, no! I’m merely affirming the Kingdom of Huar’s right to defend its territory. There are plenty of other areas that you can pass through. This isn’t one of them. Leave, or we will be forced to expel you through force.”
“Hah, you going to sneeze us out?” Bidane asked. “I say let’s kill these bastards!”
“Kill them?” Capello shouted, snapping out of his usual trance. Sang had observed that, unless there was a fight or talking about fighting, he never paid attention to anything.
Capello drew his axe and made a blind charge for one of the golden thugs. Steel clashed as they began to fight back.
“Kill them!” Reginus yelled. “Kill them in the name of Huar!”
Utter chaos broke out around Sang. Arrows began to fly from the clifftops where the archers had been waiting, swords clashed, and screams of rage pierced the air. Sang drew her bow and began to fire at the archers who were aiming at the fighters in the party. Her arrows moved swiftly and were able to deal damage to a few of them, provoking their attention. In unison, all six of the archers above aimed their bows at Sang and released.
“Crap!” Sang gasped, but before she could be riddled full of arrows, Sahara leapt in front of her and raised her hands high.
“WALL OF WIND!” Sahara screamed at the top of her lungs, causing a powerful gust of wind to burst out of her hands, knocking all of the arrows aside. “I can cast for as long as I have magic points!” Sahara called back to Sang. “You shoot them and I’ll protect you!”
Sang nodded and began to fire concentrated bursts of arrows at her opponents, taking her time to aim. By not letting the urge to shoot quickly overtake her, she was able to aim better and, in the process, took out two of the archers. The wall of wind was constantly blowing the concentrated arrows of her opponents aside, protecting her from all damage.
On the hand-to-hand front, things weren’t going so well. Van had been knocked onto the ground by Reginus and he wasn’t moving. Sang wasn’t sure if he was dead or not—she was too far away from him to see what his status bar was. She needed to move closer, but as long as the archers were focused on her, they wouldn’t be attacking the warriors. She was picking them off one by one, but not fast enough to get into the fray with the others.
Capello and Kylian were fighting back to back, fending off the six golden armored soldiers who were encircling them. They were fierce, but outnumbered heavily. As steel clashed and battle cries were unleashed, it was growing clear to Sang that the fight would be over soon.
“A little help here!” Bidane cried as she ran toward the back of the group, where Sang and Sahara were. Bidane’s white robes were soaked with blood and she was clutching her arm.
“Wow, how are you not dead?” Sahara demanded upon seeing that Bidane had only ten health points left.
“Reginus is coming! I need to pray—distract him!” Bidane said as she knelt down and pulled out a book of prayers.
Sang snapped off two more arrows, killing the last archer before turning her attention to the golden warrior strolling up to them.
“I’ve got this!” Sahara said as she stretched out her hands and pointed them toward Reginus. “Power of flame, I—oof!” she screamed as Reginus punched her in the jaw, knocking her out in one square blow.
“Why are wizards so bad in this game?” he wondered aloud as he turned his attention to Sang.
“Die!” Sang shouted as she fired an arrow at the man, but the arrow bounced off of his golden armor. The words Insufficient Pierce floated above his head. Crap. Her arrows weren’t strong enough to break through. This was going to suck.
“Well, I was honestly just trying to get you idiots to leave our territory,” Reginus said. “You attacked first. But oh well... experience is experience, I suppose.” He swung his longsword at Sang, but she narrowly dodged it.
“Oh, no, you don’t! I’m not going down that easily,” she said as she drew her own short sword and took a stab at him. He quickly parried her blow. Steel rang out as they clashed their blades together. He was very quick, but Sang’s stamina was high enough for her to survive by parrying. Each time she blocked or dodged, however, her bright green bar would dip.
“Nice try, ranger, but you don’t have a chance in hell of winning this!” Reginus said as he flourished with his sword and knocked the blade clean out of her hands.
“Ah, crap!” Sang said, holding her stinging hand.
“Now then, I believe it’s—” His triumphant words were cut off as a flash of light erupted all around them.
“My prayer has been answered!” Bidane shouted. “I cast Mass Revive!” The flash of light struck Van, Kylian, and Sahara, all of whom had been lying on the ground in critical condition. The three quickly stood back up and immediately reengaged with the fighting. The enemy soldiers were surprised and were soon cut down by Kylian’s attacks and Van’s misdirection. Capella, however, still lay motionless on the ground, probably dead.
“Crap!” Reginus said as he turned his attention to the charging Kylian. As he tried to block Kylian’s blow, Dolly suddenly appeared behind him and dug her daggers into his back, hard. He gasped and tried to turn to face what had assaulted him, distracting him from Kylian. The older fighter stopped right at Reginus and swung with all of his might, lopping the man’s head clean off.
“Nice!” Sang said, high-fiving Dolly. “That was a perfect use of an invisibility potion!”
“No time for celebration!” Kylian said as he pointed at a larger group of golden armored thugs advancing towards them in the distance. “Looks like the reinforcements are here. Someone grab Capella’s corpse and let’s get out of here!”
Sang rushed over to Van, who was busy rummaging through the fallen enemy soldiers’ inventories.
“What are you doing?”
“Check it out!” he said, leaning up and dangling a necklace. “It’s going to come in handy
.”
“We don’t have time for looting,” Sang said. “We just spotted a ton of reinforcements coming from the north.”
“Well, at least they aren’t coming from the way Reginus came. Let’s get out of here,” Van said.
Chapter Five
The canyons and crags weren’t suitable for horses to travel through and Van’s team was wearing relatively light armor—meaning that Van’s crew had an advantage when it came to travelling quickly. After a few hours of hustling, it was clear the enemy had long given up chasing them.
“Oh man, I cannot believe we got into that bloodbath!” Van said, shaking his head as he wiped some remaining blood from his jaw.
“That stupid nephew of yours!” Bidane shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Kylian. “If it wasn’t for that jackass, we probably could have just talked Reginus into letting us through. Instead, he had to go berserk and just attack. Worst of all, this counts as a negative mark against our whole group!”
“Capella’s a stupid kid, but he didn’t mean to cause this kind of trouble,” Sahara said. “He wasn’t paying attention and thought it was time to attack.”
“You’re really standing up for him?” Bidane asked, pressing herself incredibly close to Sahara. “You almost died! Do you know how much it sucks for a wizard to die? How many spells would you lose?”
Sahara sighed and looked at her feet. “All of them. I would lose all of my spells.”
“Exactly,” Bidane said. “There was literally no reason for him to risk all of our lives by getting into some kind of needless fight!”
“Come now,” Kylian said, “we’ve been through worse problems than my nephew jumping the gun on a fight. If you think that Sir Reginus had anything other than violence on his mind, you’re woefully naive. The only thing that Capella did wrong was attack first, incurring a penalty on himself.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that he would have attacked us,” Van said as he stepped in between the shouting members of the party. They had gotten very heated, and everyone was up in arms. Capella was nowhere near the group; he had respawned somewhere far off, making the argument even more pointless. “But regardless of who was going to attack who first, I want to make it very clear to this group: we are a team. We are not here to point fingers, blame one another, or shout. If we have a problem, we’re going to solve it through an arbitration process.”
“Feh, your arbitration process can go right to hell,” Bidane spat.
“Sure, you say that now, but think about it,” Van said. “Right now, we’re arguing over one problem. We’re an adventuring party full of many different people with different ideas about how things should work. As we grow larger, we’re going to continue to have problems. Do you want to handle each problem on a case-by-case basis? Or would you rather have a system in place that handles all of the problems automatically?”
Bidane chewed on those words for a moment. She nodded a little. “Okay, I understand what you’re saying. So how does this arbitration process work?”
“It’s simple,” Van said. “If there’s a complaint, we bring it up during the camping phase. We discuss it, bring the charges up, and allow the offending party to defend themselves. Then we have a group vote and, if the party votes guilty, I then mete out a punishment that fits the crime.”
“Sounds pretty simple,” Bidane said. “But why do you get to be the one to choose the punishment?”
“Because I’m in charge,” Van said. “And I’m going to make decisions that are in the best interest of the group.”
Bidane shrugged at that and began to walk away. “Fine, okay. Whatever—we’ll handle this matter in arbitration when we camp.”
Van grinned. “Perfect; glad that worked out.” He turned to face Sang, who had been hovering nearby. She had been watching with curiosity, but hadn’t said a word during the argument.
“Nice work,” Sang said. “You think up that system on the spot?”
“Nah, it’s always how I handle disputes. It works because it cuts down on the drama, reduces the chances of infighting, and most importantly, since camping takes place after several hours of fighting and exploring, everyone tends to forget about the problem unless it was really serious,” Van said with a chuckle.
Sang nodded. “Good thinking. So…” she paused and took a deep breath. “We need to keep moving. We can’t afford to wait for Capella to get back here.”
Van shrugged. “Look, I understand your desire to move, but we’re pretty banged up here. It’s gonna take a few hours for Bidane to use all of her healing spells to repair us, and we’re out of potions. Getting to Bikorn tonight just doesn’t seem feasible.”
“I’m not trying to be pushy here, Van,” she said, “but you’ve got to realize that we’re on a timer. If we don’t get some kind of results soon, I’m going to be in a ton of trouble with my supervisors.”
“I know, I know,” Van said. “But I can’t push them any further. It would be reckless and would probably get most of us killed. The only way to Bikorn is to push through this side of the mountain, and there are a ton of Trolls and Rocktossers waiting down there. Unless you have some proposed method of getting us through dangerous territory unnoticed, we’re going to have to hang out here.”
“What about Reginus’ forces? Won’t they be looking for us?” Sang asked.
“There’s a lot of places for a player to hide,” Van replied. “If they wanted to search for us, it would take them days to comb a fourth of this mountain. We’re going to be safe.”
“Look… we just don’t have time!” Sang said. “And I don’t know what to tell you other than that we can’t waste another day waiting to get to Bikorn.”
“Fine,” Van said, throwing his hands up. “If you feel like you have some method of circumventing a ton of dangerous obstacles so that we can get down the mountain faster, go for it. But until then, the rest of us are going to be focusing on healing and building up a camp so we can rest for the night.”
Van hastily walked away from Sang, fuming from the conversation. Her insistence and pressure were beginning to wear down on his nerves. He had worked incredibly hard to move the team at a breakneck pace, and it still wasn’t enough for her. Yes, he understood that the government had recently come under threat of investigation by some blustery senator, but it wasn’t his problem. Sang was the CIA operative with experience, so she should be able to convince her bosses that the project wasn’t going to wrap up in just a few days. Instead, all she did was pressure him.
Van glanced over at his compatriots, who were busy working on the camp. Bidane had created a shelter by running a tarp over rocks, Kylian was digging a well using one of his survivalist skills, and Sahara was lighting fires to illuminate the area. While he had only been travelling with these characters for a few days, he found that he preferred their company to Sang’s. They were fun, jovial, and above all, they were grateful. Even though it had been a rocky start with him trying to lie to them, they had accepted his leadership and were performing admirably. Even in spite of a major hiccup with Capella attacking a small army, they had managed to stay cohesive enough to rally and win the fight. They were Van’s kind of people, and he sincerely felt an aching urge to just stay in the game and forget all about the alien hunting nonsense. Yes, it was important that he helped save the world, but did he really have to feel so unappreciated for his hard work?
As Van pondered the situation, a loud clamor caught his attention. There were shouts of excitement and a yapping sound. He glanced up to see that the entire party had gathered around Sang, who was holding Jet in her hands.
“Whoa!” Sahara said, slowly reaching her hand out to touch the dragon. Jet nipped at her fingers, causing her to jump back.
“Is that a real dragon?” Kylian asked.
“No way, it’s some kind of illusion spell or something,” Bidane said as she placed a hand on top of Jet’s head. Jet seemed to like her, and allowed her to touch him.
“It’s real, alrig
ht,” Sang said. “My very own dragon companion!”
“This is crazy!” Sahara said. “I thought only Draco pros got dragon mounts!”
“Well, I actually did a very important quest a while back,” Sang said, smiling at the group. They were all so enamored with the dragon that no one bothered to look at Van as he approached.
“I’ve never heard of a quest that could get you a dragon…” Kylian said. “And I’ve been playing this game for a long time.”
“It’s true,” Van said. “She did some special event or whatever; landed herself a dragon egg. It hatched a while back.”
“Well, this is definitely our team mascot!” Bidane said. “Hah—other jerks have to ride horses, but we’re going to be riding a full-grown dragon!”
There was a triumphant cheer from the rest of the group.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Sang said. “There’s only one way to help this little guy grow.”
“How?” Sahara asked as she tried to touch Jet again. He snapped at her fingers a little harder this time, but wasn’t quick enough to nab her.
“We need to get down to Bikorn as soon as possible,” Sang said, causing Van to grimace. He couldn’t believe what she was about to try. “I believe there’s a merchant in that general area who has access to a special kind of food source. That will increase the growth speed of little Jet.”
“Whoa!” Sahara said. “If we can get him to grow faster, everyone is going to want to join our mercenary company!”
