Orc Glitch- The Mad King

by KJ Harlow

  “Ssssh. Don’t move.”

  Kai released his grip and pulled Cal towards the shadows. Hyten’s wind blew over the top of the walls of rock, unable to penetrate the path they were on now. He pointed ahead of them where a pair of shadows stretched high against the side of the rock face. One of them had wings that it seemed to ruffle irritably.

  Cal looked at Kai. A soldier and an eryn.

  “We should kill them,” Kai whispered, eyes glowing with bloodlust.

  Cal usually didn’t agree with Kai’s proclivity to take lives needlessly. This time, he found himself nodding with his comrade. Natasha’s head severed from her body flashed up into his mind and he shook his head violently. Something had died inside him that night he was forced to kill her. Or maybe something had come alive, he didn’t know yet.

  “Maybe he’s on patrol. Fetter and Co would have come back this way after…”

  “Yes,” Kai said quickly. “He would have told them that we would be coming.”

  “There are probably more of them ahead. Once we kill one, we need to kill them all, because if one raises the alarm, we’re boned.”

  Kai gave him a weird look then nodded. “These guys respawn, don’t they?”

  Cal nodded tersely. “Good point. A fraction of a moonshift, maybe a quarter before they re-appear.”

  “So we have to kill off all these guards within a quarter of a moonshift?” Kai stretched his neck out of the shadows. The way the rock shelves were formed, it was hard to tell how long the path went on for. It was like a maze hewn straight out of rock 20 feet high.

  “And don’t land any mortal blows to the eryn. Torso, arms, legs are fine. Chest, head no. Best thing to do is to get the player first.” Cal remembered the first fight they had with Hector and Laish. He couldn’t forget the relief he saw on Laish’s face after he cut Hector’s head off. Fairshade was the priority now, but the eryn’s behaviour wasn’t insignificant. He needed to find out what the hell was going on.

  Metal clinked on metal as the soldier came into view. Cal and Kai shrunk further back into the shadows.

  “Looks like another boring night, hey Ygrette?” He was tapping his sword into his mail-protected hand.

  Examine.

  NAME: ?????

  CLASS: Dresham Knight

  LVL: 18

  HP: 187/187

  MP: 167/167

  NAME: Ygrette

  CLASS: Eryn Defender

  LVL: 25

  HP: 251/251

  MP: 261/261

  The eryn didn’t answer. She looked a lot like Laish, except her blonde hair was shoulder length. She held her Spartan helmet under one arm, ignoring the human’s attempt at an ice breaker.

  The human came to a stop, turned to the cliff face and started slashing at it. “Hyah! Hargh!” Ygrette walked out of sight while the human sparred with the cliff.

  “You keep an eye on the eryn. Make sure she doesn’t disturb me.” Cal pulled out his axe. He had left it at the arena and Javal had had someone else pick it up, clean it and return it to him. He stared at his reflection for a moment on the side of the blade. “The player is mine.”

  By the time he had turned around to investigate the disturbance of rocks, the only thing keeping the nameless soldier’s head on his neck was the chain mail that Cal hadn’t managed to cut through. Cal wiped the blood off his face and pushed him over, his head rolling on the ground. More shadows stretched out over the rock face and Cal swung his bloodied axe around. Ygrette had her arms raised, her helmet back on her head. She had one look her master’s head staring sightlessly at her and smiled.

  “Hyten above, thank you.”

  Kai shoved her forward and Cal took a step back, hefting the axe over his shoulder. “How many of you are there patrolling the area?”

  She looked at him, her crystal clear eyes illuminated by the moon. “Why should I tell you?”

  “I know you don’t willingly support the king or his soldiers.”

  Ygrette smiled again, flicking a glance at her master’s corpse. Beads of light had already started leaving his body. Damn it, would the other soldiers be able to see it from their vantage points?

  “There are sentries scattered all along the rest of the path. I’d estimate there are just under a dozen.” The respawn light now surrounded Ygrette.

  “I’d ask you to be careful, but it seems that–” the end of her sentence got cut off as the drops of light surrounded her and pulled her towards the sky.

  Cal looked down where the soldier’s body had laid. Nothing was left to suggest there had been a scuffle: no corpse, head, not even a drop of blood on his axe or on the ground.

  “So there are more of these guys through there.” Kai gestured around the corner.

  Cal grunted. “Let’s continue.”

  There were more sentry soldiers posted on the path ahead, exactly twelve in fact. It turned out that they hadn’t noticed the death of their earlier comrade and were unprepared for the wrath the orc and werejaguar rained upon them. Cal and Kai took it in terms either lopping the head off or driving a flaming spear through the surprised soldier while the eryn coldly looked on. Not once was there a look of remorse on their face. For a class called defender, they did a pretty crappy job at it.

  Three soldiers with their accompanying eryn greeted Cal and Kai at the end of the rock maze. Before they could even pull their swords out, Cal cast Earthquake. The eryn defenders scattered just in time, avoiding the earth craft. Cal swung his axe at them and cast Earth Wall in an effort to stop them from interfering with Kai’s soldier-directed stabbing frenzy. Again, their efforts could have been described as half-hearted, at best. It seemed that the moment their masters died, they couldn’t care less about them.

  “Who is your queen? What has happened to her?” The eryn – three male, one female – looked amongst themselves with uncertainty. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t get them to talk. It almost seemed like they were afraid of being heard. Cal watched them the light surround them and take them away.

  “Why do you care?”

  Cal walked out into the open, away from the cliffs. “About what?”

  “About them?” Kai gestured back with his lance in one hand. “The eryn and their queen.”

  “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that Laish attacked you all out of nowhere that all those moonshifts ago? Don’t you want to understand why Zkar died?” Kai was silent. “As much as I hate Fetter and C for what they have done, I still want to understand their motives.” Cal turned and faced the werejaguar. “No one does something for no reason.”

  “Reasons won’t bring back the people that you have lost,” Kai growled.

  “Maybe not, but at least it helps us to understand each other. And really, isn’t that all we want? To be understood?”

  He turned away and kept walking, leaving Kai to dwell with his thoughts.

  King Fetter’s Camp

  There were a collection of large, white tents that loomed up less than 100 yards ahead. Torches were lit and driven into the ground at the entrance. Triangular hoof prints and wheel tracks extended out from the tents, heading north. Cal and Kai sidestepped out of the torchlight, slowly edging towards the collection of large tents.

  “Is he still there?” Cal whispered, craning his neck to look through a gap between tents.

  “I don’t know,” Kai responded. “I’m not sure if anyone’s there.” They walked around the perimeter of the camps, stopping directly behind the camp in line with the fires.

  “Hold on.” Cal held a finger up to his lips. Kai stared at him with his red eyes, now expanded wide to let in as much light as possible. Voices murmured from inside the camp. There were at least two people, talking quietly. Cal crept forward a few more steps, settling himself at a larger back between two of the tents.

  “…going off on my own. Kill some beasts. Level up. Better than serving under King Spastic Midget.” That had to be one of the soldiers.

  “Do as you will.” A calmer voice. Fem
ale.

  “You know you can’t do that…” another woman’s voice. Uncertain, quiet, almost whispering. Cal stepped between the tents, trying not to trip over the pegs driven into the ground.

  “Cal!”

  Cal glanced back at Kai standing rooted to the spot. He turned back and shuffled closer.

  “Why?” The first voice demanded.

  “Because…” The second woman’s voice said tentatively. “Because it’s not allowed.”

  Four figures were there, two soldiers bearing the Dresham brand and their eryn. The woman’s voice belonged to a soldier, who was sitting down by the campfire. She was hunched over, wringing her hands then clasping them tightly. The man was standing over her, hands on his hips. The two eryn stood side by side, square to the confrontation.

  The male soldier turned around, cupping his forehead in his hand and looking up. “You know what else is not allowed? Trapping people in a game forever!”

  “I think what Susanna meant was that you are not allowed to desert the king after you have signed up to fight in the Battle of Urath.”

  Cal froze then jumped. He turned around, Kai had followed him after all, lance in hand. He glanced at him then turned back.

  Susanna kept quiet, not looking up at the other soldier.

  “Mind your own business, Feer.”

  “Don’t talk to Feer like that, Col.”

  Col the soldier spun to the other eryn that had been quietly watching the exchanges until now. “Oh so now you’re turning on me too, Parsh?”

  Parsh looked markedly different to the other female eryn Cal had seen so far. Her hair was short, spiky and tinged with gold and red. She had a proud, sharp chin and high cheekbones to go with them. Her light-blue eyes glimmered in the flames.

  Examine.

  NAME: Colin Greaves

  CLASS: Dresham Knight

  LVL: 27

  HP: 267/267

  MP: 280/280

  NAME: Susanna Busto

  CLASS: Dresham Knight

  LVL: 21

  HP: 228/228

  MP: 244/244

  NAME: Feer

  CLASS: Eryn Defender

  LVL: 31

  HP: 240/240

  MP: 281/289

  NAME: Parsh

  CLASS: Eryn Defender

  LVL: 47

  HP: 508/508

  MP: 555/555

  Shit. This was bad. The first three Cal and Kai could handle. But Parsh was the strongest eryn they had seen so far, even stronger than Laish.

  “Let’s go,” Cal jabbed a finger back the way they came past Kai.

  “If you have a problem with your post, you should speak with Lord King Fetter,” Parsh said.

  “As if he’s going to do anything about it!” Col exploded. “If it wasn’t for the Hooded Maiden, he would be nothing.” He spat into the fire.

  Kai had already slipped out from between the tents and back out into the open. Cal stopped halfway, not wanting his rustling around to attract enemy attention.

  “He’s the same as us, Col,” Susanna said quietly. “He’s just someone who played ValorVale and got stuck.”

  “That’s bullshit. Total bullshit. You know what I heard?” Cal shuffled a couple steps back towards the middle of the camp. “Fetter is not a typical player.”

  “Yes,” Susanna said. “He’s extremely powerful. C gave him his powers.”

  “Yes, but not just that. What happens when we die?”

  Cal didn’t see Kai’s increasingly frantic gestures. “We respawn,” Susanna responded.

  “Yes.” He leaned into the fire and Cal took another half a step towards them. “He doesn’t. He dies, like actually dies.”

  A lot of things happened at the same time: Cal lost his balance and fell into a tent post, knocking the entire thing over. At the same time, pearls of light started appearing all around the campsite as the members of the patrol he had killed and their accompanying eryn respawned. Cal got to his feet, his hand on his axe but not before a sword flicked underneath his neck.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” The camp fire played havoc with the shadows on Col’s face, twisting his smile of triumph until it almost looked like a grimace of pain. Cal slapped his free hand onto the ground and a pillar of dirt uppercutted the soldier. Parsh launched herself towards him, sword back but was immediately blasted by a fireball.

  Kai leapt into the fray, his Blood Lance ablaze. He drove it towards Susanna, who deflected his attack straight into her leg. She cried out and Feer suddenly appeared crashing his buckler into Kai, knocking him off balance. Keeping one hand on the lance, Kai yanked it out of her leg and regained his balance…

  …only to be knocked off his feet by a sweep from Col. Kai twisted in mid-air, drove his lance into the dirt and used the momentum to fly-kick the soldier. Col dodged and slashed at Kai’s leg.

  Parsh grabbed Cal around the neck with one arm. He acted out of pure adrenaline, aiming an Earth Wall beneath her and pushing her into the air. Sort of pointless for a winged warrior, but better than getting stabbed in the back.

  “Kai!” His comrade was alternating between launching fireballs through the camp that was fast appearing with more and more soldiers and eryn, and swinging wildly at anyone who tried to come near him. His left leg was bleeding badly.

  Cal lifted his axe into the air and drove it towards the ground. Earthquake would help them escape, but it wouldn’t be long before they caught up to them. A well placed kick smacked into his wrist, forcing him to release the axe before he could complete the attack. It thudded into the ground, the boot that kicked him stepping on top of it. Once again, an arm came around his neck, an accompanying sword inches away from his snout.

  Col sauntered up to Cal, jabbing his sword into his chest plate.

  “Who are you?”

  Kai was on one knee, each additional sweep of his lance draining more of his energy. His mana was already completely spent.

  “Answer me or I slit you throat right now.”

  Yes! Do that, then we’ll respawn and that will buy us some time. He glared at Col and said nothing.

  “Col.” The first soldier that Cal had slain jogged up to him. “This was the orc and werejaguar that Lord King Fetter warned us about. They attacked us just beyond the Gale Cliffs.”

  Col cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You are the ones who defied Fetter?” He snorted, placing his blade flat against the left side of Cal’s face. He abruptly turned it square then slid it across Cal’s cheek.

  -5 Damage!

  “So you’re the human stuck in an orc’s body.”

  Cal spat at Col. “At least I’m not serving under King Spastic Midget.”

  Col wiped the orc blood off his sword and regarded Cal. “And you’ve been eavesdropping on us.” His mouth quirked up. “He might be a stammering dipshit, but he’ll pay me well for bringing him the talking orc and his pet.”

  Kai roared at Col, fighting at his restraints. Feer kept his sword against Kai’s neck while Susanna stood off to the side, nursing the cut on her leg.

  “You’ve got the right idea, though. It’s pretty cool doing your own thing, killing monsters, levelling up as much as you want.” Cal maintained the stare with Col. “Not having to fight in some bullshit Battle of Urath.”

  Col slammed his fist into the side of Cal’s head. He staggered but Parsh held him firmly.

  -10 Damage!

  “None of your business, Gollum.” That was wrong on so many levels, but Cal was too busy trying to stay conscious to object to it. “You there. Yes you. Bring the prisoners’ cages and carts inside the central tent. It looks like this shift wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.”

  26

  Lightblade

  20,156th Cycle

  15-Hyten

  Gong!

  Level Up!

  Level Up!

  You have been allocated 20 points. Use these to improve your base statistics.

  The cart hit its 100th pothole and C
al’s head cracked into the wooden cage

  “Give me back my lance!” For someone who had barely eaten for seven or eight moonshifts, Kai was still pretty feral.

  The soldiers took it in turns pushing his cage, making sure that they stayed well away from his razor sharp nails.

  “Shut up, you fucken furball!” Col rammed his shoulder into Kai’s cage just as they hit another pot hole. The soldiers to the right scurried away as the cart crashed into the ground. It had rained for an entire nightshift, water seeping into the dirt making it muddy and the going even slower than it already was.

  “You.” Col pointed at Cal. “Can’t you get it to shut up?”

  Cal didn’t respond. He was too busy arranging numbers on a virtual screen.

  “Cal!”

  Cal tsked. “What?” Col pointed at the cage on the ground. The soldiers stood in a semi-circle around the toppled cage, not wanting to move any closer.

  “Kai.” The werejaguar was silent. “Kai!”

  “Release me!”

  “How much longer before we arrive at Thaylia?” Cal asked.

  “Half a moonshift, one tops.” Col turned back around. “You can see it there, see?”

  “Let us leave our cages and walk the rest of the way there. You can bind our hands and keep our weapons.”

  “Orc–”

  “And we won’t attack you or your people anymore. Deal?”

  Col crossed his arms. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Cal stared at him witheringly. “I’ve always wanted to say that,” he chuckled. Who are the real terrorists here?

  Kai flung a fist-sized rock that he had picked up off the ground, narrowly missing Col’s head. “Alright, alright, you win.” He gestured to his soldiers to right the cage but none of them moved.

  “Kai. They’re going to release us. Don’t kill any of them, OK?”

  Kai withdrew his arm and glared at Cal.

  Col could only coax the soldiers to open the cage if the eryn had their weapons pointed at Kai. They jumped back as Kai stepped out, splashing mud onto the knee-high boots of a disgusted eryn.