“Yeah, me too. Didn’t really want to admit it though.”
“I get the feeling. No one wants to be the first to admit they're tired.”
I really did love us, we fit together well in terms of just about everything. It was one of those relationships that I was sure was going to last forever and ever.
“You reckon we could sneak in a quick nap before they show up?” Gerald asked, breaking my focus on how perfect we were for each other.
“Yeah, why not? I’m sure they’ll wake us up when it gets here.”
Turns out that we probably should’ve just stayed awake, probably would’ve been less painful that way.
It’d been maybe an hour, but it’d felt like an eternity as we rose out of the bed like zombies, my hair frazzled and throat drier than the Sahara, Gerald’s glasses askew and his breath like garlic paste that’d been left out in the sun.
We weren’t exactly people ready.
The guy who delivered our food didn’t seem to mind though, giving us our two bottles of water, a small plastic tub of salad dressing, a glass container of lasagne, and a metal mixing bowl of salad while apologising profusely for the way that the two meals had been transported.
I’m not sure which of us answered him, or if either of us did, but as I started to eat I could feel energy returning to me like I’d replaced my batteries, a feeling that was clearly shared with Gerald.
“So good, right?” Gerald asked as he dumped some more salad onto his lasagne and poured a bunch of salad dressing on the mess of cheese and lettuce.
“Oh yeah, when did you come up with this?”
“Must’ve been a while ago,” he replied between mouthfuls, “it was back when we first found that wood elf.”
The passage of time started to make a bit of sense after that, though it still wasn’t exactly clear as to how we managed to skip over most of the day doing a quest that wasn’t even a quest.
“We should go back.” I declared, finishing my meal as dramatically as I could.
“Home?”
“What? No, Tarthirious.”
It’s only now that I realise I probably should’ve talked to Gerald more about his wanting to return to the place where we would be under constant threat of terrorist attack, which is how I saw home at that point.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t great with handling any of his emotions at that particular time.
“Why?” Gerald asked with genuine confusion and what sounded somewhat like anger, “Sorry, I just figured you’d be done for the night and that we could maybe turn in early, get ready for Will’s visit tomorrow?”
“I get that,” I replied as I got to my feet, “but… I’ve been holding back, you know? I wanna get back in there, get out of that forest, see if I can get another level up before Will shows up.”
Gerald didn’t understand it, a fact that was made clear with the dumbfounded look on his face, but luckily he’d decided to give me a few concessions for the obvious reason.
“Alright then, let’s get to it.” he said as enthusiastically as he could, “I’ll get rid of this and meet you in a tick.”
“Thank you,” I replied without facing him as I climbed back into my chair, “see you in a bit.”
Armelia: Chapter 17
I’d been trotting around on Shadow-Stal for a good five minutes before Gerry finally came through the trees puffing and wheezing.
“Sorry,” he heaved, “got lost.”
I didn’t bother asking him ‘How?’ because I knew it would just lead to a long story about how he’d done something somewhere and then one thing had looked like another that he’d past at some time.
Instead I went with a simple “It’s all good, I really wasn’t waiting that long. Where to?”
“Do you even need to ask?” he asked with a smile as he climbed onto Shadow-Stal, “Let’s get the Hel out of this forest.”
I didn’t need to be told twice and immediately went to work riding Shadow-Stal hard along the forest’s increasingly winding road, ignoring all manner of mystical creatures and enticing caves as the sounds of hooves crumpling the ground under us into a fine powder pushed me forward.
Before long we’d burst out of the forest, leaving the trees and creatures behind us and bringing a new set of rolling hills and cascading clouds into view, the bright midday sun shining through and bathing us with a light that had started to seem foreign during our time under the cover of the green canopy.
“Free…” I muttered as we slowed down, Shadow-Stal in desperate need of a break.
“What was that?” Gerry asked, reminding me that he was there.
“Oh, I was just saying that it’s good to be out of the forest.” I replied with a good deal of confused stuttering, “We’re still a while off from the hideout, do you just wanna zip over there or..?”
“Nah, I reckon we should do as much as we can before we get there. Besides,” Gerry said, pausing for a few seconds as he undoubtedly scrolled through his journal, “that mission’s probably gonna go on for a while. I’d rather do a few quick ones to get you some easy XP over the course of an hour or two than sinking our entire night into a single dungeon.”
“True.” I said with a smile, a relaxed sigh escaping me, a tide of relief washing over me knowing that I wasn’t going to be dragging Gerry along on a series of weird tangents that only I enjoyed, “Besides, last thing we want is to fail out of the dungeon partway through.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how I’d feel if we wasted our entire night on one thing that we never even got around to finishing.”
And that’s when relief turned to stress as I realised that, while we weren’t going to be spending the entire night fighting through one dungeon, we may very well have ended up spending it trying to decide what to do.
“Follow our noses ‘til we find something worth stopping for then?” Gerry suggested, pulling me back to reality and bringing back my relief.
“Sounds good.” I replied before turning my focus back to landscape around us.
I wasn’t really taking anything on, I was just getting out of my head while we trotted along.
It was weird, feeling so off I mean. My mind and emotions were swinging all over the place with no rhyme or reason.
I thought about blaming what was happening out in the real world at first, between Aunt Irma and everything else, but it wasn’t that. There was something else that was burrowing into the back of my head, making me anxious and paranoid about every little thing.
Perhaps I wasn’t as pumped up as I thought, maybe I’d jumped back in too quickly.
And then I heard the snarl.
Armelia: Chapter 18
The rumbling growl didn’t draw much attention from me at first, Tarthirious wasn’t known for how quiet it was after all, but then I heard it again.
Closer.
Further.
It was coming and going from all angles at once, and I wasn’t sure if there was any point in bringing it up with Gerry.
“Do you see any wolves?” Gerry asked, eliciting a silent ‘Thank the Gods’ from me.
“No, but I hear ‘em. Sound bug?”
“How many times are we gonna blame glitches before we realise it’s never a glitch?”
I wanted to give Gerry a laugh, I really did, but the snarling had stopped sounding like a warning to leave and had become something closer to a threat.
“Well, whatever it is, and whatever we’re doing, we’re pissing it off.” I said as I pulled Shadow-Stal’s reins and brought us to a halt, “You seeing anything?”
“Forest behind us, fields and mountains around us. Unless we’re getting threatened by a herd of horses or goats, I don’t think we’re up against anything visible.”
“So, what? Mage’s pet gone walkies without its leash?” I asked, trying to insert brevity where I knew even I didn’t want it.
“I’m thinking more along the lines of a shadow beast of some sort…”
I want to say I heard it, that my situati
onal awareness wasn’t completely useless when it came to what was directly above me, but lying isn’t really my style.
And because I’d been so deaf and blind, it was Gerry who ended up paying the consequences, getting plucked from our saddle with a surprised shout before getting thrown fifty feet up the road where he crashed and tumbled.
Armelia Fireheart aggravated a Winged Lycan.
Level 54 Winged Lycan, HP: 33500/33500.
Winged Lycan discovered.
Journal entry made.
“How!?” I shouted as I rolled out of my saddle, narrowly dodging the angry beast’s claws as he took another swoop, “In what way have I aggravated you!?”
It was nigh impossible to keep track of, its black fur darting across the sky as its leathery wings beat the air, but that wasn’t going to stop me from blindly firing off lightning bolts like a madman.
“You alright!?” I called over as I saw Gerry struggle to his feet.
“Yeah… Gimme a second though.”
A quick glance over in his direction revealed that he’d taken quite the hit, a good pint or two of blood pooling around his feet as he tried to pull off a healing spell that clearly required some level of focus.
The beast took another failed swoop for me, my quick roll to the left stopping him from flinging me off into to some unknown field, but I wasn’t fast enough to dodge the sharp claws that slashed across my cheek and sent me tumbling to the ground.
Winged Lycan used slash.
75 damage inflicted.
-5 bleeding damage per minute.
HP: 6425/6500.
“Ow.” I said flatly as I got up off the ground and started looking around for the winged tit.
Equipped Armelia’s Long Bow.
“Come on then…” I whispered as I nocked an arrow and watched the creature come diving back for another attack, “show us those pretty teeth of yours…”
It was close, almost too close in my opinion, when I made a last second decision and adjusted my aim, loosing the arrow and leaping out of the way before I saw if it had hit.
I held my breath, but not for long as the bat-like-wolf-like-person-like thing let out a pained yelp and crashed into the ground behind me.
Critical Hit!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 19/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 130/6500.
I spun around and fired another arrow into the beast’s unharmed wing, but that proved to be unnecessary as it twitched uselessly along the ground.
Yeah, bat wings aren’t known for their tensile strength, yet another smart addition by the devs.
“Nice job,” Gerry heaved as he finally showed up, his wounds patched up and his fists wrapped in what looked like boxing gloves made of thorns, “I always forget about the wings. Hey, you’re blee-shit!” he yelped as the flightless but still very much alive monster barrelled into him at full speed.
It’d have been funny if I didn’t need him to win the fight. Actually, it was still pretty funny.
“Can I get a hand!?” Gerry shouted as he did his best to pummel the creature with his spiked fists while it went to work at carving a good deal of his flesh away.
I wasn’t sure what it was that he expected me to do, they were zooming off faster than I could run, and certainly wasn’t good enough at archery to hit the beast.
“Armelia!?”
“Ugh, fine!” I shouted back, nocked an arrow, arched my back, and loosed it in their general direction.
Expecting nothing to happen, I turned to the uncharacteristically calm Shadow-Stal and went to climb up onto the saddle, but then I stopped as a yowl that could be heard from miles away bounced its way along the road and back to me.
Critical Hit!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 20/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 140/6500.
Being partway through the animation for mounting, I was stuck with a gruelling second-and-a-half of climbing instead of facing what can only be described as logic defying luck.
It was hard to see, granted, but even before I started riding toward Gerry and the Lycan I could tell what’d happened.
My arrow, seemingly of its own volition, had sailed through the air, ignored my personal inabilities, and skewered the angry tackler’s calf.
Unequipped Armelia’s Long Bow.
Equipped Sparky McStabby-Stab.
Electricity flashed and wrapped around my blade as I rode hard toward the slowly rising monster, its leg and wings being wounded increasing its undeniable rage toward Gerry and I.
But that didn’t matter, I was within slashing distance and taking a massive swing by the time it’d risen to its full height.
The swing connected, a splash of blue and white light mixing brilliantly with the spray of red that burst from the Lycan's gaping neck wound.
Critical Hit!
+1 Singlehanded Blade Skill.
Progress: 31/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 150/6500.
The beast had taken the hit like a champ though, completely ignoring the wound in its neck and letting out a bloodcurdling roar as I turned back to face it.
Its HP was below a third, but that third was all it needed to take me down.
I got ready to take a battering, charging at a monster that was charging at me seeming like a bad idea to say the least.
“You ready boy?” I asked the huffing Shadow-Stal, his feet slamming into the ground as he fought the urge to attack.
The lycan made a break for me, its powerful legs sending the mess of black fur and teeth propelling toward me at a rate of knots.
The first hit wouldn’t kill me, course not, but the subsequent ones after it pinned me to ground sure as Hel would.
And then it was gone.
Well, I say gone, but I guess I should really say ‘disappeared’, replaced by a tree like a disagreeable uncle in a Christmas photograph for the Stalin family.
I was stunned silent for a few seconds after that, waiting for the tree to grow teeth and attack me, but instead ended up jumping as the Lycan plummeted from the sky and landed with a disturbing crunching sound not two feet in front of me.
“What?” Gerry laughed, coming around the new tree with a big smile on his face, “Thought I was out for the count, did you?”
End of Conflict Report:
Grand Gerry the Good: 1x Level 54 Winged Lycan.
Armelia Fireheart: 1x Level 54 Winged Lycan.
Total experience awarded:
Grand Gerry the Good: Max Level Reached.
No Experience Points awarded.
Armelia Fireheart: +2250 XP.
Progress: 2400/6500.
Armelia: Chapter 19
Having healed up after forgetting I’d been wounded, we’d restarted our journey and summoned our pets so as to give them a bit of fresh air.
They were being absolutely adorable, to the point where I couldn’t help but smile at Miss Fluffy-Scaleskin as she moved along on the ground just ahead of Shadow-Stal’s hooves, occasionally looking back at us and then slithering further ahead like she was the one guiding us down the road.
“Well, that was fun.” Gerry said, looking back at the corpse we’d left a few hundred feet behind us, “Shame he didn’t have much on him though. You sure you don’t want any of his claws or hair?”
“Nah,” I replied, shaking my head but not taking my eyes off my pet, “alchemy’s not really my thing, and I reckon it’d just take up space.”
“Isn’t your pack limitless?”
“Yeah, but it’s still a right prick of a thing to scroll through all the junk. I reckon that’s the only reason it’s still in the game, carry weight really isn’t that much of a focus when you think about it.”
“True. So… what do you wanna do next?”
I shrugged and let out an amused sigh as Gerry’s snake came up beside mine after lingering behind us for a while and started nudging her playfully, “We ought to come across a
town soon enough. I know we seem to just be bouncing around the towns, but I-”
“It’s alright, no need to explain yourself,” Gerry said with his calm and knowing voice, “I quite like it actually. Means we have plenty of places to fast travel to for later.”
“Exactly, I’ll never understand people who just discover the major points on the map. Quests almost always end up being in between the big cities.”
“I know, right? It’s so good to be able to just go ‘Oh, that object I need is right next to X town, I’ll just flit there and then back over to Y town and collect the next one.’ It’s a real time saver, in the long run anyway.”
I always enjoyed our little talks, they’d almost always reveal some other way that he and I were incredibly similar, or at least showed that we were compatible.
It was good feeling that way with someone.
“That was weird though, huh?” I said before realising that I’d offered Gerry absolutely no context, “That thing just comin’ out of the air like that?”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, definitely. I honestly thought for a second there that a giant had picked me up or something.”
“That would’ve been fun.” I replied with a little laugh, “You reckon we’ll see any large-scale battles soon?”
“You mean like that battle with the mages?”
“Nah, I’m talking large-scale. It’s been ages since I’ve been a part of something like that. Like that army that tried to get us back at the tower. Course, I’d want an army at my back as well.”
“Ah, yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever done one of that scale if I’m being completely honest. I remember the guys back at the office all got together for a weekend to do one, but I blew it off.”
“Why?”
An uncomfortable silence settled over us after that, hanging there for a good five or six seconds before Gerry finally said “Because you weren’t gonna be there.”
“What?” I let out with laugh before I could stop myself, “Why the Hel would you skip on something like that because I wasn’t there? When was this?”
“I dunno,” Gerry replied abashedly, “three, four months ago?”
Legends of Tarthirious: The Complete Collection Page 49
