by Rick Scott
Its HP is dropping. It’s working!
Witch Spider uses Flurry Attack!
What the heck?
I pop Active Dodge as the spider’s legs become a blur. I blur as well, shifting though the multi-hit attack. I come through unscathed, but then I see something that sends my heart leaping into my throat.
You are no longer spellbound.
“We’ve got to kill it, now!” Aiko yells, panic in her voice.
She’s right. One cast, and we’re both dead! “Backstab it, and use Perfect Dodge!” I shout to her. “Give it everything!”
A split second later, the beast faces away from me as Aiko lands her Backstab and removes a huge chunk of its life, getting it down to a quarter.
“Damn it!” she shouts. “My Perfect Dodge is down!”
Oh no . . .
I can’t see Aiko from behind the spider, but I hear her cry out as the creature hits her. She loses 5% of her health. And then she starts screaming, hysterically. “Reece! Take it! Take it!”
Crap! She can’t be coming undone right now!
I Hide and charge attack with another Backstab, spinning the monster back toward me and lowering its health to 18%. “Assassinate it when you can!”
Aiko buffs herself with Shadow Haste and chops it down to 15% with a flurry of attacks. My heart stops when I see the Witch Spider raise its front legs, magic runes swirling around its body.
The Witch Spider readies Thunder Storm!
“Now, Aiko! Now!”
She activates the ability, buffing herself, and then releases the attack with a shout. “Die, you witch!”
Aiko uses Assassinate!
Aiko fails to Assassinate the Witch Spider!
NO!!!
Aiko lets out a curse. “It’s all you now, Reece! Do it! DO IT!”
I target the thing’s face as I buff myself with Assassinate, and then throw my arm back for a charged attack.
Please work . . . please, please, please.
I release my hit.
Reece uses Assassinate!
My blade flies, plunging deep into the beast’s forehead, releasing a spray of putrid black blood. Its HP drops to zero as the message I’ve been praying for appears.
You successfully Assassinate the Witch Spider!
You defeated the Witch Spider!
You gain 350,000 experience points.
The mammoth creature wails and flips onto its back, sending the ground shaking as its legs spasm in a violent death throe. Then it stills, its appendages curl up, and its screams fade to a whisper.
Relief washes over me and my knees go weak. Thank God . . .
Aiko comes running out from behind the monster, but stops short with a look of pure terror on her face. “Reece . . .”
I wonder what has her so spooked and fear that maybe there’s a second Witch Spider behind me or something—until I look at my HP.
7/1222 HP
Oh my God.
Panic seizes my chest as I look back at her. “Aiko?”
2/1222 HP
Aiko vainly reaches out to me, like I’ve just fallen off a cliff, but am already out of reach. “Reece!”
Maybe if I can—
-3/1222 HP
. . .
. . .
Chapter 31: Death.exe
Nausea filled Bruce’s stomach as he stared at the dead boy hanging in the stasis pod outside the observation window. He’d always looked dead, but now Bruce knew he actually was. There would be no coming back for him. No reanimation from his state of torpor. The vital signs on the front of the stasis pod were evidence of that. While there was still a slow, shallow pulse, the hint of brainwave activity that was normally there had flatlined.
Bruce wished he could say his nausea stemmed from that alone. But it came in reaction to the emotion he’d felt when he’d received the message that one of the expedition members had perished . . . and that it wasn’t Gilly.
He’d felt relief.
God forgive him . . . he’d felt relief, happiness that it was someone else’s child who had died up there on the surface, and not his own. It had lasted but a split second, but now he couldn’t get that shameful memory out of his head, nor the guilt that came with it.
“Shall I contact his mother?” Dennis asked, standing beside him.
More nausea rose. How could he possibly face that woman now?
“No,” he said eventually. “I’ll do it.”
At least that would buy him some time.
“Are you sure?”
Every cowardly instinct in him wanted nothing more than to pass the buck to Dennis. To go missing and be unavailable when Gina Roberts arrived to learn the news that her son Ryan would never regain consciousness. He had seemed like a good kid, too, for as short a while as Bruce had known him. And if Gilly liked him, he probably was. A new emotion pierced him now—grief. Pure, raw, and real. Grief for this young boy who had been lost on his watch.
He swallowed back the hard lump in his throat and managed a nod. “I’ll contact his mother. I’ll see her personally. It’s the least I can do.”
* * *
I don’t feel anything except cold.
Inexplicable cold. It’s dark. All I see is darkness.
Am I still alive?
I remember dying, seeing my HP flash into the negative. I’m still thinking, though, so I must be still alive. Right?
I try to speak, but I can’t. I have no voice. No mouth. No body.
Where am I?
Light emerges in the darkness. Tiny at first, but it grows rapidly as it rushes toward me. I break through it and burst into existence screaming. Falling. Streaming colors flash past me in a kaleidoscopic tunnel of spinning lights.
And then I stop.
Abruptly.
I’m standing.
In darkness.
But I sense something, other things here in the darkness with me. My heart races. A low gurgling sound rumbles through the nothingness, and a primal fear seeps into the core of my being. What is this place? Am I in some kind of hell?
I search for my HUD and find it still there, but everything is all screwed up, as if it’s been corrupted; the number and character stats appear as random symbols and garbled words.
Something comes flying at me out of the darkness, crashing into an invisible barrier made of hexagons. My heart leaps into my throat as I cry out and jump back from it. Then I see that it’s a person. She’s small, and blonde, and looks familiar. Her blue eyes are wild with panic as she slams her fists against the barrier.
“Help me!” she cries hysterically. “Please, help me!”
What the . . . ?
And then I recognize her. She was my brother’s teammate from the Shards, the little girl with the huge sword; Amanda, or something. She died, though. She died in the wild zone, lost to those dogs who nearly devoured us, according to my brother. My God, is this what death is really like?
“Let me in!” she wails, tears flowing from her eyes. “Let me in!”
I shake my head, helpless as I press against the barrier. “I . . . I don’t know how!”
The blackness erupts with a red-orange glow as an ear-shattering wail fills the air. In the darkness, the silhouette of a giant emerges, its throat made of fire, its face a stark white skull. The light gives form to the alien world that surrounds me. It’s not crystal here, but blackened volcanic shale that stretches to the horizon. Above me, the darkened sky is aglow with the crescent sickles of two moons, one larger than the other.
Where the heck am I?
More wails erupt as, all around me, the fiery mouths of the giants emerge. There must be hundreds of them! The girl, Amanda, beats on the wall faster. “Please! Please! Don’t let them eat me again!”
Something snatches her up from in front of me, scooping her into the air. Her screams become shrill cries as she’s delivered into the mouth of one of the giants. Then I hear her no more, her death cries drowned out by the mind-scrambling wails of the monsters.
They crash into the wall next, causing me to jump back, and I slam into another wall behind me. I’m in a cylinder, or tube of some kind. They crash into it again and again, and it begins to shake and weaken with crackles and sparks. My mind is beside itself. What kind of fate is this?
My mother, Citadel, everything I was fighting for evaporates in the pure horror of this existence. This nightmare realm. I want out.
I want out!
My feet leave the ground as I’m sucked upward at tremendous speed, leaving the giant monsters and their nightmare world to shrink into the distance below me. I fly higher and higher, and see that I was wrong. There weren’t hundreds of them. There were thousands. Millions, maybe. Miles upon miles of blackened earth covered by the glow of their fiery maws, like a roiling volcanic sea. They shrink to fit the size of a continent, an enormous land mass surrounded by dark oceans. As I rise higher, I see the curvature of a planet, dark and lifeless, adorned by two moons in a vast sea of stars.
Then it flashes away from me as I enter the tunnel of spinning colors again, rising instead of falling.
I cry out in pain as a bright white light engulfs me.
* * *
My eyes shoot open, and I feel myself rising into the air. I suck in air with a gasp and pant like I’ve been holding my breath. My feet touch the ground, and my head begins to clear. The pain subsides. I’m in a hut of some kind, with a thatched roof and walls. Across from me, I see Aiko, breathing heavily, bent over with her hands on her knees, drenched in sweat. Next to her is another elven woman, but much older, with silvered hair and faded gray robes.
I’m alive . . .
“Thank the Shards!” Aiko says, winded, before she runs in to crush me in an embrace. “I thought I was going to lose you there.”
I don’t know which I’m more stupefied by: the survival of my near-death experience, or receiving a hug from Aiko. I return the embrace, which I realize for her is more an expression of relief, but it’s warm and comforting all the same, and exactly what I need after what I just experienced.
“What happened to me?” I ask when I’ve regained my composure a bit.
“Your companion carried you a very long distance to bring you to me,” the older elf woman says. “You are very fortunate to be alive.”
I look up at Aiko with newfound awe and appreciation. “You carried me?”
She lets out a little laugh. “Trust me. It was a workout. You’re heavier than you look. I didn’t know if I was going to make it. Your timer had nearly run out. Three minutes to spare.”
Holy crap. For me, it had felt like just a few seconds. But here, it had been close to an hour? My heart swells with gratitude and elation as I hug her again. “Thank you, Aiko . . . thank you so much!” My eyes well as I think about that nightmare place, about that poor girl stuck down there, and how close I came to being trapped there as well. “You don’t know what you just saved me from.”
She nods and looks down at me knowingly. “I do. I’ve been there, remember?”
That she has. Twice. But did she see what I saw? It would explain her panic attacks if she did. Now is not the time to ask, though. “Where are we?”
“Elnor Village,” the old elf woman says. “I am Lyndria, the village elder.”
“I’m Reece,” I say. “And thank you, too.” I take her hands into mine and give her as polite and heartfelt a handshake as I can manage. “Without you, I would have been a goner. Thank you for raising me.”
She smiles graciously. “It was the least I could do. You removed a great evil from our lands. The Witch Spider was growing stronger by the day, and its territory had invaded our forests.”
You gain +100 Favor with Elnor Village!
Favor Level in Elnor Village increases to Level 1
[Town administration is now available.]
Oh geez, not again . . .
“If you’d like to stay a while and help us restore it, we’d be most grateful.”
Do you wish to claim Elnor Village? (Y/N)
Running one village is hard enough. And after what I just witnessed, I’m not sure what to make of everything right now. If that truly was death, then it’s not what we think it is.
It’s something much, much worse.
I need time to think it all through, and I can’t do that with more distractions. “Um . . . as much as I’d love to, we have a task we need to fulfill to the north.”
It’s the truth, but I’m even weary of that right now. How does any of this fit in with what I just saw?
“Understood,” Lyndria says with a nod. “At least rest a while before you journey on. I’m sure your friend, here, might need it.”
“You can say that again . . .” Aiko lets out a laugh. “Come on, Reece. Let’s go grab a beer.”
I’m sure it’s just a figure of speech. Elves don’t sound right chugging beers, after all.
But right now, I think I could really use one.
* * *
Bruce Peters stared at the vitals display on the stasis pod in disbelief. The brainwave activity that was flatlined moments ago now undulated with a slow but steady sine wave. How this was possible, he didn’t know. And frankly, he didn’t care.
The boy was alive.
Thank God . . . he was still alive!
“Guess you can cancel that house call,” Dennis said wryly next to him, a stupid smirk on his face. Was that another dig? The software engineer probably figured he was more relieved at not having to face the boy’s mother than he was elated that the boy was alive, in and of itself.
It irked him, but only because he was partly right. Since when did he become such a terrible human being? “No . . .” Bruce said, “I’m still going.”
Perhaps not today . . . but he would. Soon.
Dennis creased his brow. “And tell her what? Nothing happened. It was probably just a sensor glitch.”
“A glitch? You’ve seen something like this happen before?”
Dennis stiffened, like he’d just said something he wasn’t supposed to, but as quick as it had come, it left, and he shrugged nonchalantly. “Not usually for that long a period, but . . . yes, it happens from time to time.”
If there was one system Bruce didn’t know well, it was the internal workings of the Shards. For that, he had to rely solely on Dennis, and at times, Bruce wasn’t sure if the software engineer was always giving him the full story or not. Dennis was competent and experienced. He’d even traveled to the surface in his younger years, something Bruce would never dream to do. But still, Bruce wondered just how many other “glitches” Dennis was aware of that he wasn’t. And what they truly might be. “Set an automated alarm on each of them. I want to be notified the second it happens again.”
“Will do,” Dennis said. “But let’s hope it doesn’t, eh?”
Dennis ended his statement with a Cheshire-cat grin, and Bruce wasn’t quite sure how to take it. Maybe this was all some kind of game to him. He opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped himself. No, Dennis wasn’t acting out of sorts. He was acting exactly how he normally did. It was Bruce who had changed. He cared now, whereas before, the excursions were simply statistics and performance measures.
And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
Maybe he’d go visit Ryan’s mother sooner than later, too.
“That’s right,” Bruce said. “Let’s pray it doesn’t happen again.”
Chapter 32: Rest and Reconciliation
The cool breeze that blows across the tavern veranda feels as refreshing as the mug of honey-sweetened lemonade in my hand. It’s not a beer, but it’ll do; especially since I probably wouldn’t like the taste of beer anyhow. Across the table from me, Aiko has no such qualms about alcohol, and is already sipping on her second glass of chilled elven wine. Its midafternoon and we seem to have the tavern porch mostly to ourselves. It’s a small establishment, with a kitchen and dining hall inside, and a few tables and chairs set up under a wooden awning out front.
I almost can’t b
elieve I’m in a place like this, considering where I was just a few moments ago. If that place was hell, then Elnor is most definitely a slice of heaven. It’s as if the forest and village have combined into one, with huge redwoods growing in and around the buildings that make up the town. The architecture is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, made of finely crafted wooden frames and plastered stone walls, but instead of thatched roofs, they have gardens and vines growing right on top of their homes. It’s an amazing sight that blends effortlessly with the tall trees. A true Garden of Eden.
The people here are equally exotic to me. Most if not all of them are elves, and while they smile at me, they’re not exactly friendly. They stare at me mostly, and I’m not sure if their gawking is due to my race, or the fact that I’m a Shard Warrior, or just a stranger in general. Aiko seems to get plenty of stares, too, but for totally different reasons. Compared to the other elven women I see, Aiko is a veritable supermodel, and the attention she attracts from the male elves is almost laughable. One of her would-be admirers makes the extra effort to greet her with a big smile and some phrases in elven.
I’m not sure what he says, but Aiko returns the greeting, and then adds some elven of her own. The guy flushes bright red, and then runs off looking embarrassed. Aiko lets out a cackle.
What the heck?
“What did you say to him?” I ask.
Aiko grins. “Your ears are probably too young to hear.”
“Huh?”
She laughs again, but I get the feeling she’s probably right.
“How are you feeling, by the way?” she asks, taking a sip of wine.
“Me?” I shrug and mimic her, taking a sip of my lemonade. “I should be asking you that question. I’m not the one who just ran a marathon with a Ninja on her back.”
