“Summoner okay?” Luna asked but her normal meow was much louder and deeper, coming out almost as a growl. Then Jace saw why.
Sitting on her haunches where the troll had been was Luna, except she was huge! She had grown to the size of a mountain lion or maybe even a tiger. Just past his familiar was Charlena, who was gawking at the small tabby turned giant.
“She can grow?!” gasped
Jace put away his weapons and walked over to Luna, using his fingers to scratch her shin. “Since when can you do this?”
Luna looked smug. “Since blood.”
“Blood?” It took Jace a moment, but he remembered he had smeared her with the mana infused blood hoping it would strengthen her. When he had done it, it hadn’t appeared to do anything. He had been wrong.
“And you can just grow big like this?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said smugly. “Use mana.”
“It uses mana?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly, she shrank down to a regular sized cat. She was her normal self for only a moment and then she faded away.
“That was amazing!” Charlena said excitedly and Jace couldn’t help but agree.
Chapter 42
“Since when can she do that?” Charlena asked as they both recovered from the fight.
Jace flinched, rolled his shoulders as the wounds healed. Sometimes, he felt the healing hurt nearly as much as the actual damage. “Back when I anointed the chief. I MIGHT have taken a little blood and anointed Luna.” He winked at her.
Charlena gave him a mischievous look. “You might have? I see. And now she can grow big?”
“I guess the blood gave her that ability. But it seems to use up a ton of mana. She was only in the shape for a minute and it burned through all of her mana.”
“Poor thing. When can you re-summon her?”
He checked his HUD. He was at about half his mana and health at the moment. “A few more minutes.”
Charlena glanced over the edge of the road to the fifty-foot drop below. “Think the troll had any loot?”
Laughing, Jace walked over to the edge. “If so, do you really want to walk all the way down there and get it?”
“I guess not,” she said.
After a few more minutes, Jace summoned Luna, giving her all the mana and health he could.
As always, it felt like his insides were being yanked out, but he fought down the pain and finished the summoning.
Charlena rushed over to Luna and petted her. “You’re such a good kitty!”
After lavishing Luna with affection for a few more minutes, they continued up the road. They walked on for several more hours. The higher they went, the more the temperature continued to drop. It forced Jace to keep his cloak wrapped around him at all times just to stave off the chill. They kept walking until the sun dipped below the mountains and night came.
“Jace,” Charlena called out. “I need to log out. I have some homework I need to catch up on. Will you be alright until tomorrow?”
Teeth chattering, Jace looked back and nodded. “Yeah. Hopefully, we’re not too far from Skystead.”
Charlena walked up and hugged Jace, her body heat temporarily providing him some extra warmth. “See you tomorrow.” She planted a quick kiss on his cold lips and then backed up and went glassy eyed.
Alone now, Jace turned back to the road and began walking. He looked down at Luna. “It’s just you and me now.”
The familiar turned to Charlena, sniffing. After a moment, she turned back. “Yes.”
To keep warm, Jace broke into his familiar jog/walk sequence. It helped, but the temperature had dropped precipitously since the sun had gone down. If he didn’t find the village soon, he’d need to find a cave or other shelter and make a fire.
Luckily, there was no frostbite in the game, but he was shivering so much it made focusing almost impossible. Jace found it interesting how the game had implemented certain aspects of the environment, like shivering and chattering teeth, but not other parts, like losing fingers and toes to frostbite. He guessed it wasn’t very heroic to lose fingers because a player was caught outside.
Luna hissed next to him and his frozen fingers scrambled for his weapons. He looked around but saw no enemies.
“What is it?” Jace looked down at Luna, flattening herself against the ground. Her gaze was skyward. He suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Looking up, he saw the amazing star-filled sky of the VEIL. That was all he saw until he caught a glimmer of movement. As he zeroed in on it, he realized something was blotting out the stars in the eastern sky. Whatever it was, it was moving. It was moving his direction. And it was big.
Jace scrambled off the road as quickly as he could, maneuvering himself and Charlena under a thick pine tree. There were only two possibilities. One, it was one of the gnomish flying ships. Jace had ridden in one once and some of them were the size of a galleon. But gnomish flying ships, while common in the gnomish lands, are not often to be found in human lands.
The other possibility seemed much more likely. It was a dragon. Considering it was coming from the direction of the swamp, it seemed likely that it was the Raagaax, as the saurians had called it, the swamp dragon. But what was it doing this far west? Was it hunting?
“Dragon,” Jace sent Luna silently.
“Yes,” said the little cat.
They stayed quiet while the dragon flew closer. As it did, Jace began getting a familiar feeling in the back of his mind. It was the same feeling he’d had back with Diana. The longer he waited, the strong it got. Could it be coming from the dragon?
Could a player really have been put inside a raid level monster, like a dragon. Should he reach out to the player, try to get the dragon’s attention? Jace knew they had no chance against a raid level monster. If he got its attention and it just decided to investigate, it could just end up killing him from the sky before he ever got a chance to talk to it. Or, it could be insane like Big Cheese. Either way, he couldn’t risk a long walk back from Sinking Springs. He’d lose his body and all of his belongings long before he could make it back here.
The black shadow across the sky flew closer and closer to their location, and Jace involuntarily backed into the shadows. The feeling was stronger, but he couldn’t be sure it was the dragon. He stayed still since he knew dragons had the eyesight of an eagle. Even in the dark, it could spot them if they made any movement that attracted its attention. Player or not, he didn’t want it’s attention.
The seconds ticked by as it flew over them, blotting out the stars. Jace held his breath as the dragon continued west past them and he lost sight of it through the trees. As it did, the feeling subsided. “Looks like we lucked out.”
Luna looked up at him, ears still back against her head. “Yes.”
Jace started to leave the safety of the tree when Luna screeched in his head. “No!”
He stopped and looked at her. Her voice had sounded terrified. “What is it?”
“Dragon near,” she said, freezing him in place.
“How near?”
Luna just looked up at the sky, her little eyes darting around to the west. Jace followed her gaze, but even with the Cat-Vision she granted, he saw nothing. She had been right too many times for him not to trust his familiar. So he stayed hidden.
The chill was getting worse now that they weren’t moving. Since he couldn’t build a fire, he needed to figure out another source of heat. He looked over at Charlena, remembering the warm hug she had given him. He moved in close to Charlena’s body and draped his cloak around both of them to trap in their body warmth. Her proximity helped, but he wished the real Charlena was here so they could really huddle together for warmth.
Jace wasn’t sure how much had passed, but Luna’s voice in his head abruptly brought him to full alert. “Dragon coming.”
He felt the feeling returning, that strange attraction came. It had to be either the dragon, or something riding the dragon. Scanning
the sky, he spotted it coming from the northwest. The dragon was moving quickly. Within minutes, it had flown directly over them and then turned due east, back towards the swamp.
He waited until the shadow had completely disappeared from the sky. When Jace could no longer see it, he turned to Luna. “Is it okay to move?”
The cat’s ears weren’t as far back and it started to leave the shelter. “Yes.”
Bundling himself in his cloak, he left the safety of the tree and walked back to the road. He scanned the sky in every direction, making sure the dragon had circled around. There was no sign of it anywhere.
Turning back west, Jace began alternating jogging and walking to keep himself warm. This time, he kept one eye on the road and the other eye to the sky.
He kept up the pace for another three hours before the road flattened out and Jace realized they were near the top of the mountain. If the village wasn’t up here, maybe he could at least see its lights on the other side of the mountain.
“Keep your eyes open for lights,” Jace told Luna.
“No lights,” Luna responded.
“You don’t see any?” he asked.
“No lights,” she repeated. “All dead.”
Jace stopped and looked down at her. “What do you mean: all dead? You mean the village? Skystead?”
His familiar looked up at him. “All dead. Dragon bad!”
Jace’s head was spinning. Did she mean the dragon had killed the entire village? How could she possibly know that?
“How do you know the dragon killed them?” he demanded.
Luna’s ears went back a little. “Hear.”
“You heard the dragon attacking the village?”
“Yes.”
Jace’s head was spinning. Had the dragon really attacked Skystead? Had it killed the entire village? Why? Had it been looking for food? Wouldn’t there be plenty of food in the swamp? Was it looking for treasure? Or was this a territorial thing?
Another, more frightening, possibility occurred to Jace then. Could it be a player inside the dragon? And the player was doing whatever they wanted? If it were a player, could even a full raid bring it down? What would happen when a player, unbound by rules of a monster, met a group expecting certain behavior?
Jace brought his attention back to the problem at hand. He needed to find Skystead and discover whether it truly had been destroyed.
They broke out into another jog. Jace stopped looking in the sky and focused his sight on the road and surrounding mountainside. He looked for any lights that might be a telltale sign of the village’s location. Within fifteen minutes, Jace had found the village - and his answer.
As he rounded a bend in the road, the area opened into a flat mesa. On the mesa were the ruins of homes and shops. Jace looked around at the total devastation the dragon had wreaked. Not a single building still stood intact.
“You were right,” he said aloud to Luna.
“Yes,” she responded quietly. “All dead.”
He trusted Luna, but he needed to see it with his own eyes. He needed to search and make sure there were no survivors. If he were honest, he also needed to search and find anything useful he could use. He’d been planning to buy more provisions and cold weather gear in Skystead. That wouldn’t be happening now unless he could scavenge some.
As Jace got closer to the structures, he realized the dragon hadn’t razed the buildings with fire. They had been melted by some sort of extremely potent acid. It dissolved things into sticky puddles of goo that he was careful to avoid. Unfortunately, that meant most of the items in the houses had been completely or partially destroyed.
Each building he searched only confirmed Luna’s assessment. Everyone was dead and there was nothing worth taking. The town was just… gone. Eventually, he found the graveyard - or what was left of it. Every tombstone had been dissolved away, leaving only puddles of gray goo.
Jace should have gotten a prompt to change his respawn spot. The graveyard was the normal respawn point for players. Whenever a player walked into a graveyard they hadn’t bound themselves to, it always prompted to bind there. There was no prompt for him. It was as if Skystead had been wiped from the game map.
A regular monster wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t wipe out an entire village, including the graveyard. Monsters wouldn’t understand the significance of the graveyard - that it was a place where players spawned. But a player. They would know. They would understand exactly what it was. That meant one thing.
The dragon was a definitely a player.
Chapter 43
Jace saw the truth of it. The dragon was a player and he was destroying the towns around the swamp to prevent players from teleporting in for a raid. It wouldn’t stop players indefinitely, but it would slow down the players from reaching him.
None of that mattered to him at the moment. He had come to Skystead hoping to get a caravan to Whitecliff. Once word spread that there was no Skystead, there would be no caravans. Not to mention, caravans would make a much more obvious target for the dragon player.
With the dragon having destroyed the bind point, they couldn’t make Skystead their respawn location. If they died, they would respawn all the way back in Sinking Springs. That would mean they’d be right back where they started, only without gear or money.
Angry and frustrated at the events, Jace looked over the ruined husk of Skystead. He wouldn’t even be getting a single night’s respite. There was nothing for him here and every reason to put as much distance between him and dragon as possible. He had to push on to the next town.
“It looks like no fish and chips for us,” he told Luna.
Luna looked at the village sadly. “No.”
He turned away from what used to be Skystead and continued down the road. Jace struggled with the despair seeping into him. Or was that just the biting cold? Probably both, he decided as he trudged slowly down the western road. Nothing had gone according to his plans and now he wasn’t sure if he could get them to the next town. Heck, he didn’t even know what the next town was, how far it was or where it was! He still had the weird feeling he associated with a monster player but there was no sign of the dragon.
Luna seemed to sense his sullen mood and rubbed up against his leg. Looking down at her, he smiled, but there was no real joy in it. He wasn’t sure how far he had walked, lost in his dark thoughts before something jarred into awareness. He’d been walking in a haze and it was several steps before his mind registered the hissing sound from Luna.
Freezing in place and drawing his weapons, he looked back at his familiar several paces behind him. The player feeling was stronger now and he feared the dragon was nearby. “What is it?”
“Something,” Luna sent him. “Watches.”
Jace looked around but saw nothing in the snow-covered foliage. Whatever it was, it was good at hiding. It couldn’t be the dragon, could it? “Do you see it?”
“No. Smell.”
“What does it smell like?”
“Like troll,” she told him.
Jace blanched. Charlena was still in auto-follow. He couldn’t take down another troll by himself, even if Luna could change into a big cat for several seconds. Did he try to make a run for it? How fast could trolls run? Having seen how quickly it had changed him in the last fight, he didn’t think he could outrun it over short distances. But was the troll the player or was the player nearby and the troll happened to be here too?
A flicker of movement caught his eye and his head snapped towards a large mound of snow near a tree. He looked up and down the tree, trying to identify the movement. Had it been a bird? Some snow falling?
He took a step closer to get a better look when the mound of snow suddenly stood up and began scrambling up the hill. Whatever it was, it was nearly as large as the troll. Like the troll, it was covered in long fur, but unlike the troll they’d killed, this thing’s fur was pure white.
As it scrambled away, it was saying something. “No! No! No! No! Not again!”
<
br /> Jace stared after it for a moment before realizing that it had been the player he sensed. “Wait!”
The thing stopped and ducked behind a tree, turning to stare down at him with two enormous brown eyes. It didn’t say anything, but just blinked a few times as it considered him.
“Are you a player?” he asked. “Trapped in a monster body?”
The creature's gigantic eyes opened wide. “Can you… understand me? You… you know what I am?”
The voice was rough and deep, but he had the distinct impression it was female. There was also a desperate quality, which Jace could understand. He thought back to the Big Cheese and hoped this person hadn’t gone insane.
“What’s your name? You real name?” he asked the creature.
“Mika Mizuno,” it replied, still staying behind the tree trunk that didn’t really hide its large body.
“My name is Jace Burton,” he told it. “I was like you. I hopped from monster body to monster body until I figured out a way to make myself human.”
“You made yourself human?” she asked, its tone hopeful and desperate. At least, Jace thought Mika was a female name.
“I did. And I can tell you how to do it too,” he told her. “Can you come down here so we can talk?”
Mika looked around fearfully. “No, no. We can’t talk here. There are trolls and other people and a dragon. Follow me. I know a safe place.”
With no other words, the large white creature turned and ambled up the slope. Jace watched her for a second and then started after. Moving gracefully for a creature of its size, Jace found it hard to keep up with her. As he followed, he took the time to examine her in his HUD.
Yeti
Level: 8
She was a Yeti. Jace had never run into a Yeti as Mordred, so he wasn’t sure what abilities they may have. He saw she was several levels higher than he was, which meant she was probably as dangerous as the troll. If she was insane like Big Cheese, he couldn’t take her down without Charlena. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He wanted to help these people, not condemn them to everlasting insanity.
VEIL Online - Book 1 Page 28
