by Dante Doom
“Ah, crap! Why’d you do that?” Van asked. The rest of the players all began to shout, as well.
“Not cool!” Dolly gasped.
“I’ll kill you all!” Kylian said.
“Oh no!” said Sahara.
“Silence!” Clara bellowed, causing them all to stop talking immediately. “Now then, I’m going to ask you again, Semimodo. What do you know?”
“Alright, alright, please stop killing my team!” Van said. “I’ll talk if you let them go.”
“Of course, we will,” Clara said. “We aren’t savages like the Melvanians.”
“Fine, fine, what do you want to know specifically?” Van asked.
“What are his plans for this battle? Does he know about our detachment?” she asked. “Is he planning something special?”
Van shrugged. “I don’t think he would know about you guys hiding out here; you’re too far from the battle.”
Clara waved to her guards and they began to move towards Dolly.
“Wait, wait!” Van said. “Okay, okay, okay, I’ll talk!”
“That’s more like it,” Clara replied as she waved at the guard to stop their advance. “Now then, what is he planning?”
“Ahhh, okay. Fine,” Van stammered, trying his best to look like he really was flustered. “There is a large force moving in from southwest of here. They’re going to wait on your movement and, as soon as your forces get moving to reinforce the battle, they’re going to push hard into your rear flanks.”
Clara frowned. “Hmmm, it sounds like a reasonable tactic. My scouts haven’t seen anyone, though.”
“Yeah, well, you know how stealthy and careful Captain Edwardson is; he’ll have some kind of clever ambush figured out,” Van said.
“Hmmm,” Clara said as she looked around. The men were all watching her and a few of them seemed rather nervous. “I suppose it is possible that he’s somehow gotten a force around us. But, we are formidable. How big of a team are we talking about?”
“Twelve hundred players,” Van replied.
“That’s not nearly enough to take us down,” Clara said. She shook her head. “But if they strike when we’re moving… damn.”
“Ma’am, we have enough time; let’s go fight them and mess them up!” said one of the soldiers. The rest of them all cheered and shouted in agreement with the statement.
“No, that’s too much of a waste of time,” Clara said. “We would do best to stick to the current plan.”
“With all due respect, Clara,” said one of the players, who was named Thornton and was a wizard dressed in golden robes. “Your choice is crucial here. If we get derailed from behind while we’re trying to reinforce the flanks, we’ll be dead on arrival. It would be far better to take care of a strike force coming up behind us right now instead of dealing with them later.”
“Thornton, what did I tell you?” Clara asked. “You’re not in charge of this unit anymore. General Allus clearly stated that I was in command.”
“This isn’t about politics,” Thornton said. “This is about getting things done the right way. We need to pool our minds together.”
“Like you listened to my advice back at that river?” Clara asked. “I’m not interested in anything that you have to say about this matter any further. I will make my decision on my own.”
“Well, I’m taking my own team and we’re going to take care of that strike force,” Thornton said. “Regardless of whether you like it or not.” He started to walk away, but she reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, hard.
“Desertion is punishable by death!” she hissed. “I will not have you, of all people, undermining me.”
Van glanced over at Sang. She slowly nodded to him. It was time for the second part of the plan. Now that a clear dissenter was recognized, all it would take was a little bit of persuasion to get them to follow after Van’s ruse.
“If you think for a moment—” The wizard was interrupted as Sang broke free of her shackles and rushed toward Clara with a small knife.
“Die!” Sang shouted. “For Capello!” She leapt forward and slash her blade across Clara’s face.
“Ah! Restrain her!” Clara shouted as she shoved Sang off of her. Blood began to fall from her cheek, but the wound was superficial at best. “Are you kidding me?” she muttered as she wiped the blood off of her face. “You really think that you can kill me?”
“I think I can poison you,” Sang said with a smirk.
“Ah, crap!” Clara shouted once she realized that her health was rapidly dropping. “I need an antidote, quickly!”
“See this?” Thornton shouted, throwing his arms wide. “She can’t even keep her prisoners under control! If anyone wants to take care of this army before they obliterate us, follow me! If you’re interested in just waiting for them to kill us in the heat of battle, I suggest you stick around with her.”
Much to Van’s surprise, the entire group of soldiers began to rapidly mount up. He had underestimated how bored they would be with hanging around. His plan had been risky, but it was working beautifully. He couldn’t believe his luck.
“I’m dying here!” Clara said. “Don’t any of you guys have potions?”
“I can heal it,” Bidane said. Clara shot a look over at her. “If we walk.”
“Are you kidding me?” Clara hissed. She turned to see that most of the camp was rapidly moving out. No one was paying her any mind, instead listening to Thornton’s orders.
“Walk us out of here and you get a healing spell,” Bidane said.
“Damn you all!” Clara hissed as she rushed over and forced the rest of the party to their feet. “You had this planned, didn’t you? Did Thornton put you up to this? I doubt there’s anyone over there.”
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” Van said once his own arms were free.
“There, you’re all free. I held up my end of the bargain, which by the way I was going to do anyway. If you get a reputation for being a liar to prisoners, you lose all interrogation credibility,” Clara said.
“I think you’ll want to work on your reputation for being a leader,” Kylian said. This elicited a chuckle from the group.
“Laugh all you want, but that mouthy upstart’s just friends with the king, that’s all. He’s terrible at this game.”
“Yet, he seems to be the one in charge,” Sahara said.
Clara growled, but did nothing other than cross her arms.
Bidane waved her hands as she cast a cure spell that rid the woman of her poison.
“Hey, you jerks are with a mercenary company, right?” Clara asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“You guys recruiting? I’m sick and tired of getting passed over for favoritism,” Clara replied as she watched the last of the soldiers move out of view. “I know you were lying to me. It all makes too much sense. You get yourselves captured, you hope that someone will believe your story, and then you kill me so it causes panic. Not a bad grift.”
“What are you talking about?” Van asked as he turned to his team. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Come on!” Clara said. “I’m pretty good at this game. I’m a warrior, and I’ve got great sword skills.”
“Always could use an extra sword hand,” Kylian mumbled to Van.
“I get you, but can we trust her?” Van asked. “What if she betrays us?”
“She’d have to leave the kingdom in order to join, meaning that she’s forfeiting her war bonus and her rank,” Kylian said. “Would be a pretty crappy trade-off to get revenge on a couple of nobodies.”
Van nodded. “Alright, if you want to join, come to our camp at midnight after the fight. If you haven’t deleted your allegiance by then, we won’t accept you.”
“And how will I know if this isn’t some prank?” Clara responded.
“Trust, I guess,” Van said.
“No reason to join us if you don’t trust us,” Kylian replied.
“I’ll think about it,” Clara said as the team wal
ked away from her. Off in the distance, Van could hear the bleating of horns and the calls of runners who were rushing back to the now barren campsite where the army had once been.
“Nice work, Van,” Kylian said as they hurried back to the cart where Kenwar was waiting for them. Much to Van’s relief, Kenwar was still sitting there.
“Thanks—I’m honestly surprised that it worked as well as it did,” Van replied.
“I’m surprised that only one of us died, and that it was Capello,” Sahara said.
“I was positive they’d stab me,” Sang said. “But I guess they were too busy thinking about fighting our nonexistent army.”
“I still think the plan was a terrible idea,” Bidane grumbled.
“Terrible or not, it worked,” Van said. “Edwardson’s not the kind of guy who’s prone to giving people resources and hints. It seems that he likes to give people impossible tasks and then trusts them to find a solution. Even if we’d all died in that plan, if we’d achieved our goal, we would have found the best solution.”
“I understand,” Bidane said, “but I don’t get why we needed to risk everyone.”
“If we weren’t all there,” Sang said, “it would have made our escape far harder.”
“You can’t realistically expect us to have escaped from that size of an army?” Bidane asked.
Van groaned. The real reason he’d wanted everyone with him was so that no one would be alone with Kenwar. He was growing far more suspicious of the man with each passing hour, and he didn’t want any of the party associating with him more than necessary.
“Quit your whining,” Kylian said. “We won, and that’s all that mattered. The reinforcements are gonna spend forever trying to chase some nonexistent army and, without relief, the Kyrissian forces are going to be wrecked. Don’t be a crybaby.”
“I’m not being a crybaby—I’m just trying to understand a tactical decision,” Bidane said as they all climbed into the back of the wagon. Kenwar didn’t say a word; he merely cracked his whip, causing the horses to move back toward the home base.
Tension continued to build as they rode. Bidane didn’t say another word, but her furrowed brow and frustrated expression were all that Van needed to know that she was feeling agitated with the entire situation. She normally wasn’t that big of a fighter when it came to making decisions, but something was bothering her. If he didn’t handle it now, it would probably come back to bite him in the long run.
Van slid over to where she was sitting and just looked out at the plains. Neither of them spoke. The creaking of the wagon wheels continued for some time until finally she looked over at him.
“I don’t feel like either you or Kylian respect me,” she said. “Don’t think that I don’t know you two have been talking behind my back.”
Van nodded. “We have been talking, discussing other business about his nephew, but he’s definitely not in charge of any kind of decision making if that’s what you’re thinking, and we haven’t been talking about you.”
“Alright. But you always look to him for advice,” she said as she faced toward the plains again. “I’m starting to wonder if you’re really as fair a leader as I think.”
“Look, we took a vote when it came to this adventure. It came up five to three,” Van said. “Everyone has an equal say here.”
“Do they?” Bidane shot back. “Because when I see everyone vote, I know for a fact that Sang is going to vote with you, Kenwar is going to vote with you, and Kylian also always votes in your favor. So how fair is that? I don’t know what kind of favoritism or sweetheart deals you have with these guys, but it’s clearly stacking the deck.”
“Hey, they all have a choice to go against me if they want,” Van replied. “But they have chosen to vote in my favor because they trust me.”
“I trust you, too!” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t vote against you.”
“Of course not, that’s why we have the voting process,” Van replied. “But I’m not some kind of master manipulator, if that’s what you’re thinking. Sang supports me because we’ve been adventuring together for a long time and she’s aware of my decision-making process. Kylian trusts me because he’s got a good gut. Kenwar… well, I’ll be honest, Kenwar isn’t particularly on good terms with me, but he follows whatever Sang does.”
“I just don’t have any idea what’s going on and…” Bidane paused. “And I know there is something more than what you’re telling me. I don’t like being out of the loop.”
Van sighed. If she was smart enough to pick up on their urgency, she wouldn’t believe anymore of his lies. “Look, I can’t tell you what is happening, because frankly, it’s a tall glass to swallow. Only Sang, Kenwar, and I know what we’re really up to here.”
“I don’t like working without some idea of what’s going on,” Bidane replied as she crossed her arms.
“Yeah, I get ya, but trust me, it’s really important.”
“What could be so important in this game that it would require secrecy from your friends?” she asked.
“You’ve got me there,” Van said. “It’s kind of hard to understand from the outside, but if you could please, please trust me, I promise that at some point you’ll understand.”
“I don’t like it,” Bidane said. “I think I might just bail on this team. No offense, but if I don’t have the whole story, what’s the point? I have a right to know what you’re up to.”
“I would completely understand your decision, Bidane. But you’re not thinking about the big picture. Yes, you might not like the fact that there’s some kind of undercurrent, and yeah, you’re probably worried about what our endgame is. But think about it like this: we’re on the fast track to success. We’re winning plenty of fights, getting tons of cash, and we’re about to seriously be propped up for our activities here. We are the literal gravy train right now; do you want to hop off of it? And do what? Post ‘LFG’ on your name tag and wait around for adventure?”
“I’m not saying that I’m unhappy with the amount of experience we’re getting. That war bonus is going to be stacking up very quickly…” Bidane said. “I’m just… I’m just getting fatigued from all of the hushed words and whispered half-truths.”
“I promise that, at some point, you’ll know what’s up,” Van said. “But right now, for the good of the team, you’ve got to be on the outer circle of this. If you can stomach that and trust me, we’ll keep getting along just fine. We can keep moving and we’ll get plenty of treasure and experience points.”
“Fine,” Bidane said. “But you better make good on your promise. As soon as you’re able to, I want to know the whole damn story.”
Van extended his hand. “I promise that you’ll hear the entire thing.”
They shook, and turned their attention out to the battle that was slowly coming into view. It was clear that the Melvanian fighters were easily repelling the last of the major invasion. Without any back-up arriving, the ranks of Kyrissians were unable to determine what to do, and had opted to continue fighting instead of retreating. It wasn’t the worst decision, because if they were to break ranks and retreat, the Melvanian horseback fighters would easily chase them down and slaughter those who were running.
As the battle began to wind down, though, Van could see that the Melvanian flag was being hoisted above the tower. The words Battle Over floated above the tower. There was a loud cheer from all of the soldiers as the combat indicator immediately disengaged. Hundreds of players who’d been on the losing side ran off, no longer able to fight back. An experience summary appeared in front of Van.
Van had participated in wars before, but he was still shocked at the sheer amount of experience he had earned right here. It was more than enough for him to move up to the next level. The best part was that this battle hadn’t even been a major one. It had just been a small fight to protect a strategic point. A few more days of this kind of fighting, and they’d easily be able to stroll into Bloodrock without a problem.
He pulled up his character sheet to see what kind of options he would have now.
There were some really good options for a bard here, but since he was going to be engaged in a large amount of battles that would require mass inspiration, he chose to improve his Rallying Speech power. This would add 10% damage resistance to all of the players who heard the speech, and for a full hour, meaning that they would be able to ignore 1 point of damage for every 10 taken. It didn’t seem like much, but over the course of an hour-long battle, those points would really add up.
As everyone worked on leveling up, Van glanced over at Jet. It had never occurred to him until now that the dragon might have stats, as well. He pulled up the dragon’s character sheet.
Much to his surprise, there were a large amount of undistributed skill points. Apparently, the dragon was leveling every time that Sang was, but neither of them had known about it. He grabbed Sang and pulled her aside.
“What’s up?” Sang asked. “I cannot figure out if I want to add another arrow to my Multi-shot ability, or if I want to buy that one power that lets me immediately go into Stealth after killing a target.”
“Always take the Stealth skill one,” Van said. “It’s the perfect tactical skill. But I wanted to bring your attention to Jet.”
“What about him?” Sang asked as she looked at Jet. He was lying on the ground, snoozing happily. For a dragon, he wasn’t a particularly active creature. He mostly just laid around and sleep, even during fights. Most players ignored him because they assumed that he was just a non-combat NPC.
“We can level him up!” Van said. “He’s got stats and everything!”
“Why didn’t we think to check before?” Sang asked.
“Too much going on,” Van replied as he patted Jet on the head. The dragon burbled back at them.
“Isn’t language a skill?” Sang asked. “If we upgrade its language, it should be able to speak more clearly to us!”
“That’s perfect!” Van replied. Despite all of the travel and physical growth of the dragon, it hadn’t learned much English except for their names and the occasional swear word. Sometimes it would speak gibberish at them, which Van assumed could be the alien language, but he just wasn’t sure.
