by Rachel Aaron
It took several minutes for his escort to gather the courage to carry James outside again. When they finally left the hut, James craned his head back to see what monster had caused this. What he saw made him wish he hadn’t.
Far down the empty main street behind them was a truck-sized gnoll covered in heavy iron plates. His burning eyes marked him as undead and explained the smell, but it was his size that squeezed the breath from James’s lungs. He was easily ten feet tall, much taller than James, which was a problem. Undead or otherwise, there was only one gnoll in all of Red Canyon who was taller than a jubatus, and that was the Chieftain of Chieftains, final boss of this area.
Gore Maul.
Sweat trickled through James’s fur as he realized how close he’d just come to death. If Mr. Three-Point-Five-Skulls had caught him tied up like this, that would have been the end. Even if he’d been free, James wasn’t sure he could have taken him. The fifty-level difference didn’t mean much against a monster like that when he was gearless and alone.
Thankfully, Gore Maul wasn’t looking in his direction. The giant undead gnoll had stopped at one of the town’s many smithies to talk with the blacksmith inside. He must not have liked what the smith had to say, because a few seconds later, there was a roar of displeasure, and James watched in horror as Gore Maul picked up the anvil with one hand and smashed it down on the screaming smith who’d been using it, flattening the gnoll instantly.
James’s captors started to run after that, charging through the town at breakneck speed. As they went, James arched his neck left and right, searching for some sign that this was more than just a military installation. Women, children, anything to show there were gnolls here who weren’t soldiers, but he saw nothing. Every brown-furred hyena-man he saw was armed, armored, and doing martial work of some kind. The forges in town rang constantly, and the stone huts were black with ash from the round-the-clock fires. As they passed a yard full of completed catapults, James had to wonder just how far off the full-scale assault was.
His captors slowed down when they arrived at a place that smelled of blood and fresh mud. Held backward on their shoulders, James couldn’t see what was making the stench, but there was no way he could miss the trails of death magic flying over his head. The black streams blocked the light from normal magic whenever they overlapped in his vision, making the whole world flicker. Snickering wickedly, his escort set him down, turning James around to show where they’d brought him.
He was standing at the edge of a muddy pit. Larger than a football field, it was wide and deep with steep sides reinforced in places by large wooden timbers. The shape plus the high ring of packed-down dirt that surrounded the pit reminded James of a sunken arena, but no gladiators could have fought here, because the floor was filled with a forest of gory wooden spikes.
Spikes covered in bodies. James staggered back into the paws of his snickering captors. No wonder this place was full of death magic. There were dozens of corpses impaled on the spikes at the bottom of the pit, their faces frozen in the terror of their final moments. Worse, one glance was enough to see that they were all players. Without the interface, he couldn’t see their nameplates anymore, but there was no other explanation for why there would be bodies from five different races here, all wearing the classic mismatched armor of low-level questers.
As he stared at their lifeless eyes, a cold dread began to spread through James’s chest. Up until this point, he’d only pondered what would happen if he died. Not being able to resurrect the Schtumple Brothers hadn’t really told him anything. They were non-player characters, and they’d clearly been dead for hours before James had found them. No matter what state their bodies were in, though, players who died always came back to life with their gear at the nearest shrine, time-lost ruins, or graveyard. When that happened, their old bodies disappeared, but these player bodies were still lying where they’d fallen. From the flies and the smell, he knew that some of them had been staked out here all day.
Struggling not to be sick, James forced himself to look harder, searching the corpses for any sign that he was wrong. Maybe these weren’t players after all? Then his eyes caught sight of a shiny bar of dark metal in the hands of a dead Cleric, and his hopes fell.
If he needed more proof, that was it. The Eclipsed Steel Staff was a random drop from Dead Mountain Fortress. The only way to get your hands on one was to be a raider or buy the weapon from a guild. There was no way the NPCs here could have done either of those things, which meant those were dead players down there for certain, and they definitely hadn’t respawned.
James’s breath quickened as the implications of that landed. He could die here, and die for good. He was still working through the shock of that when the gnolls started pushing him toward the edge of the pit.
He fought back, body-slamming the shorter hyenas as he struggled against the ropes, but the dog men just snickered and pulled their weapons, poking at him with their swords and axes until his feet were at the edge of the pit.
They were about to push him over onto the bloody spikes below when a nasally, almost mechanical voice cried, “Stop!”
James’s would-be executioners froze. Balanced on the edge of the pit, James didn’t dare look to see who had saved him, but he caught a glimpse of a staff covered in crystals and feathers out of the corner of his eye.
“Me want this one,” said the strange voice, the metallic words speaking over what sounded like yipping and clicking of teeth. “You give!”
As close as he was to death, James was sorely tempted to look anyway, because for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what was speaking. The yipping was definitely gnoll, but the mechanical voice sounded like a bad sci-fi robot. Hearing both together felt like being in a badly dubbed movie, starring gnolls. He was still trying to work it out when his captors barked back, growling low in their throats.
“No!” cried the strange auto-tuned voice. “You kill all players so far. Your hate has been fed enough blood. Me claim this one!”
Magic followed the words, followed by the familiar smell of lightning. James’s captors backed off after that, snatching him away from the pit and dumping him into the mud face-first. He was spitting dirt out of his mouth when a hand grabbed the rope that bound his feet and started dragging him, face-down, back down the street.
James strained to arch his back so that his face didn’t drag in the mud, but his shirt pulled up and stuck around his neck, piling up dirt and probably gnoll droppings. It got worse from there as his rescuer-slash-captor left the dirt to pull him across paving stones, a rough, splintery bridge, and finally, up a flight of stairs. By the end of it, James was feeling battered and grosser than he’d ever been. He was still struggling to get his shirt down from around his head when a door creaked, and he was pulled into a surprisingly clean, floral-smelling hut.
Wiggling, James finally got his tangled shirt down from his face to find himself lying on a floor of mill-cut boards—very expensive by savanna standards—covered in green-and-gold rugs. Even more interesting, though, was the nature magic that hummed through the whole place. Every crystal, feather, and painted hide hanging from the hut’s walls and ceiling had the hum of magic in them. There was something powerful coming from the back of the house as well, but James was only able to get a slight impression of it before his captor let him go.
Taking advantage of his new freedom, James rolled himself over to finally see the face of the gnoll who’d taken custody of him. It was an old hyena-man with a broken fang and a scar closing one eye. Just like the hut, his clothes were covered in gems, crystals, feathers, and claws that were all glowing with tightly woven magics, though thankfully no deathly-black ones. The streams of color that rose from the old gnoll were all blues, whites, greens, and browns, and James sighed in relief.
Until he saw the collar.
A large, deathly-black obsidian collar was locked around the old gnoll’s neck. It was throbbing with magic, but a type James couldn’t see very well. Si
nce he’d had no problem seeing every sort of Naturalist magic, his best guess was that the collar was sorcery or necromancy or maybe both. The sense of dread that emanated from the black metal certainly made James think necromancy was involved. Just looking at it made him want to cringe. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to wear the damn thing.
The old gnoll cleared his throat, making James jump. Embarrassed to have been caught staring, he pushed himself into a sitting position with his bound hands and tried to make a better first impression.
“Hello,” he said tentatively.
The gnoll stared at him, his one black, beady eye examining James’s tattered clothing.
“You can speak the Language of Wind and Grass,” James went on. “That surprised me. I didn’t think your kind had the throat for it.”
In response, the gnoll pulled his knife. James tried to scoot away, but the old hyena was surprisingly quick, his hand darting down to cut the ropes that bound James’s feet. Relieved but confused, James turned to let the old gnoll cut his arms and hands free as well. Released at last, he fixed his filthy shirt as best he could, trying to knock the mud clods out of his fur without making too much of a mess of the pin-neat house.
When he’d finished, the gnoll spoke at last, opening its mouth to yip and yelp. As it barked, the collar pulsed darkly, and the mechanical voice issued forth. “Did you kill four hunters with lightning on the trade road?”
James jerked back. He’d known something weird was going on, but he’d never have guessed the horrible collar was a translator. But while this gnoll’s barking sounded just as animal-like as the others’, the mechanical voice was clearly speaking his words. It even carried a bit of his inflection. Accusation, in this case.
James sighed. There was no point hiding the truth. If the old gnoll wanted revenge, he’d have let the others toss James into the pit. Since he hadn’t, James decided to take a risk.
“Yes.”
“You are player, then?” the gnoll said, looking him up and down. “No one else so young and so powerful.”
James started to squirm. Every time someone asked him if he was a player, it had ended badly. But he was in it now, so he answered truthfully again. “Yes.”
“Are you ‘level-eighty Naturalist’?”
James blinked. “Um, yeah. I’m a level-eighty Naturalist.”
The old gnoll nodded as if that was exactly what he’d wanted to hear and put up his knife. “Me called Thunder Paw. You, Player, come with Me.”
With that, the old gnoll turned on his paw and trotted over to the door that led to the back room of the hut. Curious, James stood up to follow, bending over slightly to avoid hitting his head on the gnoll-height ceiling.
The moment the old gnoll cracked the door, the smell of fresh water poured out. Thunder Paw opened it only enough to slide his body through, motioning for James to follow. Wincing at the tight squeeze, James obeyed, contorting his body to wiggle through the tiny opening. When he came out on the other side, what he saw made him gasp.
They were standing in a room that must have once been a sleeping chamber. Now, though, its floor was painted wall-to-wall with a bright-turquoise seal. In the middle of the magical markings, a globe of pristine blue water nearly as tall as James hovered in midair, and floating at its center, curled into a ball, was a gnoll pup.
“Whoa,” James said, leaning in to examine the water ball. He’d been able to see magic for less than a day, but even he could tell how flawlessly the spell had been constructed. Every flow of power fed neatly into the others, leaving nothing to waste.
“You really know your stuff, Thunder Paw,” he said in awe.
The gnoll waved the compliment away. “Me Naturalist long time,” he said. “Now your turn.” Thunder Paw turned to James, clunking his feather-covered staff on the floor. “Me save you life. Now, Player, heal him.”
“Me?” James squeaked, pointing at the flawless spell. “Dude, you’re a way better Naturalist than I am! What can I fix that you can’t?” He glanced at the little pup sleeping inside the water. “What’s wrong with him, anyway?”
Instead of answering his question, Thunder Paw leaned down to place his paw on the seal that covered the floor. The blue markings pulsed when he touched them, and some of the water inside the sphere pulled away from the pup’s arm. Immediately, there was a hiss as blue-white ghostfire ignited, devouring the pup’s fine fur. Thunder Paw took his hand away again at once, and the watery seal closed back in, smothering the ghostfire.
“I see,” James said gravely.
Thunder Paw’s lone eye showed his heartbreak. “Me not strong enough to put it out. Need strongest Naturalist. You level eighty. You strongest.”
“Right,” James said, pushing up his muddy sleeves. “Stand back, then.”
He had no plan, but he didn’t need an angle to save a gnoll puppy from becoming undead, and this was a problem he might actually be able to help with. Ghostfire was a status effect that came part-and-parcel with any undead dungeon. Gray Fang’s cleansing hadn’t worked on Lilac because she’d been afflicted with death magic, not actual ghostfire yet, but James had cleansed the Once King’s cursed fire off of other players loads of times. Of course, those conflagrations were normally on the surface since the ghostfire was usually applied externally via ghostfire weapons. When he peered at the life energies inside the boy gnoll, though, James was alarmed to see the fire simmering inside his major energy veins.
That didn’t look good. He didn’t have the game’s interface telling him if the status effect could or could not be cleansed anymore, though, so he wouldn’t know until he tried. Fingers crossed, James started weaving the Cleanse spell. As he put it together, plucking magic from the air, he made sure to add more water than usual. Water was a very effective cure for most ghostfire-related problems, and he had a feeling this one was going to take a lot to extinguish. The damn stuff was magical napalm.
He gathered the magic until he could hold no more. Then when his arms were coiled with huge ropes of turquoise magic, James shoved his hands, and the spell, into the bubble of water, pushing magic into the pup hard. Maybe too hard, because the boy cried out in pain, but James didn’t dare stop. If this was going to work, he needed to completely overwhelm the ghostfire, flushing it out once and for all.
It looked like it was working. The life magic in his spell hooked onto the pup’s vital energy, creating a channel for all the water James had gathered to pour inside him. The ghostfire hissed and spat as it came in contact with the bright-turquoise magic. Encouraged, James kept up the pressure, chasing the fire as it shifted and slid, but every time he put it out in one place, it would reignite in another. Minutes ticked by. James’s whole body ached from the effort of channeling for so long, but he couldn’t stop. He was so close to stamping it out. So close. But then, just when he felt he was finally gaining the upper hand, the water magic he’d gathered ran out. His mana faded, and the spell fell apart.
The moment his hands dropped, Thunder Paw rushed forward to undo the seal. James grabbed the gnoll by a hairy shoulder to stop him.
“Don’t,” he said. “I failed.”
Despite all the water he’d poured into the pup, he could still see spots of ghostfire flickering like embers deep inside his thick life energies. The flames spread as he watched, racing to reclaim their previous positions. If not for the crushing weight of Thunder Paw’s seal, the cursed fire would have consumed the boy completely.
“I’m sorry,” James said quietly, turning to the grief-stricken old gnoll. “I’ve cleansed ghostfire before, but never this deep.” His shoulders slumped. “I’m just not enough.”
It wasn’t his fault, but James felt terrible all the same. FFO had always been the one thing he was really good at. Beating the toughest quests, getting the rarest items, finding areas of the game no one else had—he’d always been able to do what most players could not. For years, this world had been the one place where he wasn’t a failure. Now it was real, and he stil
l couldn’t do what mattered.
The bitter defeat that followed that thought was a depressingly familiar sensation. But no matter how bad James felt, nothing compared to the look of utter despair on Thunder Paw’s face. “Who is he?” James asked gently.
“Son of Me son,” the Naturalist said in a small voice. “Last of line. Rest of family undead. He all Me have left.” Thunder Paw’s one eye swiveled to look at him. “You level eighty, the strongest. You last chance to heal him.”
The gnoll shook as he finished. Tail down, legs shivering, the snaggletoothed, one-eyed hyena-man started whining softly as he clung to his staff. It was a pitiful, heartbreaking sound, and as it went on and on, something inside James snapped.
“Don’t give up yet,” he said fiercely, grabbing the old gnoll by the shoulders. “I almost did it! I just didn’t have enough water magic in the spell. If I can get more, I can save him.”
The gnoll shook his head. “You strongest. There is not more.”
“But I’m not the strongest,” James said. “I had power, but I lost it. You need a real healer, and I’m afraid you got me instead. But this isn’t over yet.” He leaned down, looking the gnoll in the eye. “How far are you willing to go to save him?”
“Anywhere,” the gnoll said instantly.
“Would you fight monsters?” James pressed. “Travel to the end of the world? Make a deal with the gods?”
The gnoll nodded rapidly, and James nodded back. “Good,” he said. “Because that’s what we might have to do. Just don’t give up just because the first player you tried is a loser. I might not be able to heal this, but there are stronger cures for ghostfire than the Cleanse spell. Pan-elixirs, Unfallen Water potions, things like that. And if we can’t get one of those, I have a friend who’s a top-of-the-world Cleric. No lie, he wears robes sewn from the high clouds blessed by the Sun itself. Surely he can heal your grandson. We’ll find him if we have to, but you can’t quit when you still have a chance.”
