Hope Engine

by Andrew Lynch

  Two down, nine to go. I heard a few more rattles between the grunts of effort and pain, and it seemed that Ixly had taken a toll on their numbers too, and the skeletons were actually down to six.

  ‘My song is about to end! Twenty seconds!’ Ixly shouted as he saw me trying to make my way through the horde.

  I lined up another Shadowbolt. ‘I don’t know what that means!’

  The skeleton lost a bit over half its Life and turned to charge. Good thing they were brainless and didn’t know how to either zig or zag.

  ‘My Song of Defiance! My defence spell!’

  Once that went down, he’d be done.

  The next Shadowbolt shattered the mindless thing charging me. Ixly splatted another. Four skeletons, and ten seconds. Easy enough. We’d kill two each. My two would need four Shadowbolts, and at two seconds a cast, the maths worked in my favour. Nothing could go wrong.

  The first Shadowbolt hit its mark, pulling the skeleton away from Ixly. I decided to get fancy and cast the next bolt at another skeleton, just to make sure I was pulling my weight in this fight. It landed and pulled the Mob. Perfect.

  Back to the closest skeleton. Line it up. Cast Shadowbolt for the kill, and…

  “Not Enough Mana To Cast This Spell.”

  In hindsight, I really hadn’t been paying much attention to that little blue bar in the corner of my screen, shrinking with every spell cast. I simply hadn’t needed to before. Unfortunately, now I was a caster based warlock without any mana, and with two skeletons heading towards me.

  ‘Gurim!’ The little, amorphous blob turned part of its blob towards me. I’d call that its head. It had recharged its Dark Lance ability, and luckily pets worked on a timer system that didn’t require their owner’s mana. Twenty second recharge, but two skeletons. Physical skills just happened. They didn’t require a specific ability, so…

  ‘Dark Lance the first skeleton, then stay in that form!’ I shouted.

  Did I need to say this out loud? Probably not, but it made things seem not only more real, but also, more cool.

  Gurim slurped forward a few steps and intercepted the skeleton, landing a solid Dark Lance to the chest. I lunged forward, bursting through the shattering skeleton, grabbing the hilt of Gurim in both hands, and before I had time to think had managed to catch the enemy’s dagger on my own blade.

  So fucking cool.

  I leapt backwards, keeping the sword between myself and the skeleton. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing here, but I felt much safer with my weapon between us. Made sense – worst case, it would skewer itself, and I’d win.

  I made a stab or two in the skeleton’s general direction, but these were some twitchy Mobs, and it darted back without a problem. I needed to play it safe. One hit, and my Shadow Clone was gone.

  The skeleton lunged forward, getting inside my guard. I pulled my sword back as fast as I could, but only managed to knock its head with the hilt. It moved with the blow, circling around me. I threw myself to the floor, and felt a jagged knife catch my robe on the way down. I rolled over and managed to get the sword between us again. My legs too, if I needed some extra limbs. It was odd that I felt significantly safer on my back than I had when standing.

  Sure enough, the skeleton tried to close, and I kicked out with a leg, getting a satisfying crack from its knee. It stumbled back, but I hadn’t done enough to actually break the leg. Also, my arms were beginning to tire from holding the sword. And that’s why there was a Strength stat in the game.

  I took advantage of the momentarily stunned skeleton to get back to my feet. I checked my mana. I was close to another Shadowbolt. But I wouldn’t have time to cast it like this. I had the mana to try a Soulburn – wouldn’t do enough to kill the pile of bones, but would have slowed it, maybe making this easier – but again, the cast time was too long.

  My Malign influence was having its effect on Mind and Luck. Maybe the minus to Luck had been what allowed me to parry the first attack? My only option was to cast my instant DOT, Heart Freeze, and hope the minus to Agility and Charisma turned the tide. More the Agility than Charisma, I guessed.

  I raised my off hand and cast Heart Freeze with a snap of my fingers. The icon for the spell appeared next to my Malign influence icon beneath the skeleton’s nameplate, and “12” pinged away from its Life bar. I could, in theory, hold it off long enough for the DOT to kill it, but I was just as likely to get stabbed. Offence is the best defence, they say.

  The skeleton had recovered, and I could have sworn that I saw it glance above its head when the Heart Freeze icon appeared there. Could they see their own nameplates? No time for that now. I charged.

  Say what you will about the cracked and dry ground of the Dead Wood, it was brilliant at keeping your footing. No chance of slipping. Well, unless you were really unlucky. I held Gurim above my head, and brought it down at the skeleton, who jumped to the side. A better fighter than me would have been able to turn the blade in mid-air and end the fight there. Not me.

  Gurim slammed into the floor, but I knew if I relented, I’d feel a dagger in my ribs before I could recover. I dragged Gurim from the ground in a diagonal upper cut. The skeleton attempted another sideways dodge, but it was too slow. It lost an arm, and I lost Gurim, the inertia too much, and he flew into the air, just over the skeleton’s head.

  Not missing a beat, the skeleton’s dagger broke flesh and sunk deep into my ribs, piercing my heart. A one hit kill.

  Then my Shadow Clone broke.

  In the blink of an eye, I was stepping out of a nearby shadow that hadn’t existed a second ago. A wave of disorientation hit me before I managed to realign my surroundings with my mind. I was behind the skeleton. I stepped forward, grabbed Gurim from where he’d landed point first in the ground, and using all my might, made an overhead swing, crashing into the centre mass of my undead foe, cleaving the now clueless skeleton in two.

  Fuck yeah, Shadow Clone OP.

  Chapter 31: Chain Loot

  A slow, repeating boom filled my ears.

  It was clapping. Slow, and restrained, from nearby.

  I turned to see both Bri and Ixly leaning against a ruined wall, long ago reclaimed by the Dead Forest.

  Gurim dropped his shape, returning to a blob of purple, glowing darkness.

  I smiled. ‘Pretty good, huh?’

  Ixly nodded, but before he could say anything, Bri held up six fingers. ‘Six. All on my own.’

  ‘Nope. I helped. They were DOTted up. I’m taking a solid ten percent of the effort on that one.’ I pointed to Ixly. ‘You too. Sure, you were tanking them, but really, it was that sweet minus to Luck and Mind aura, right?’

  Again, Ixly was about to say something, but Bri cut in.

  ‘I mean, you had a double handed sword with a serious range advantage. If you’d had any skill, you’d have killed him much sooner.’

  ‘Still killed him, though. Hand to hand combat.’ I made karate chopping motions with my hands as I walked to join them by the wall. ‘As a warlock without any melee skills. I mean, come on, right?’ I couldn’t keep the grin from my face.

  Finally, she relented.

  ‘I mean. I’ve seen worse. I guess.’

  Ixly chuckled. ‘He could have died. A most inopportune time to do that, I’d say.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Bri agreed. ‘That sounds like something he’d do. Die just as he’s needed most.’

  ‘Your sarcasm can’t touch me today,’ I said. ‘I’m feeling far too awesome. I’m an official badass.’

  Bri rolled her eyes and looked to Ixly. ‘You playing a song of plus ten to ego?’

  Ixly pushed himself off the floor and made his way over to the nearest skeleton. ‘I can’t say I am. Maybe he’s caught it from you.’

  I mock gasped. ‘Oh, damn. The dino man calls out the plant girl. How will she respond?’

  She cast Withering Glare on me.

  I mean, she didn’t. That wasn’t an ability. But it felt like she did.

  ‘She
will go and loot her kills. Away from the petty ignorance of you boys.’

  ‘Sulking in a corner, gotcha.’ I shot her a thumbs up.

  She took a step towards me, and I took a step back, holding my hands up in surrender. ‘Only kidding. Sorry.’

  She shoulder bumped past me, and went to looting. I ambled over to Ixly.

  ‘Might have gone too far with that last one.’

  He put a rib back in the pile of assorted bones. ‘She’s not as sensitive or as quick to anger as she leads you to believe. Consider that, maybe, she is playing a character, and enjoys being a foil.’

  ‘A foil? Like… tin?’

  I heard a small, possibly disappointed sigh, under his breath. ‘A foil, as in something that reflects, and allows others to shine brighter.’

  ‘You lost me.’

  ‘She plays the butt of the joke, because all jokes need a straight man to work.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘So, she’s a butt. I’ll tell her you said that.’

  ‘No, I–’

  ‘I’m kidding! Come on, I’m not stupid. Also, that might actually be too far.’

  ‘That… might be true, yes.’

  I pushed a femur out of the way with my toe. ‘Any good loot?’

  ‘A few reagents that my Geeko can play around with, but not really. A load of daggers if you want?’

  ‘I suppose we are going to have to arm a militia, right? If we don’t find anything better, these will do.’

  ‘Most visitors to Thanis will have their own weapons, but it’s possible some won’t, true. I’ll stash them for us.’

  I clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Great, thanks.’ A comment he made ran through my mind, unbidden. ‘Say… a while ago, you said you’re from Norway, right?’

  Still on his knees, he grunted an affirmative.

  ‘And when I said I was from England, you seemed – I dunno, skeptical? Wary? You know, some kind of emotion. What’s up?’

  He hesitated for a moment. ‘There are communication laws. Sanctions, actually.’

  ‘Really? Wow, Norway must be really strict.’

  ‘Not just Norway. It’s the whole of the world.’

  ‘Oh. I hadn’t heard of any of these. And isn’t the point of all this that the communication barriers are being broken down? Freedom of cross-language speech, or something?’

  He shrugged. ‘You should check your own loot. Don’t want to miss anything.’

  He was tensing up, and I figured that this line of questioning must be on the verge of breaking one of those sanctions for him, so I backed off. ‘Yeah, okay. Sure.’

  The two skeletons I’d killed from Ixly’s mob had rusty daggers, but nothing else. The chain wielding skeleton captain, on the other hand, had a “Damaged Breastplate” and a “Prisoner’s Chain”.

  I navigated to my inventory, that also showed my equipped gear on a lovely looking model of me. Huh… turned out I needed to shave.

  My Dirty Robe counted as overwear since it was so baggy, meaning that all of my other slots could still be accessed. This was perfect, because some games would make a robe be your chest piece, and the protection on the breastplate was much higher. The logical consequence then would be people running around in just a metal breastplate and nothing else. Lewd.

  ‘Hey, if anyone finds some boots, that would be great!’ I shouted to the team. Bri laughed evilly.

  I still had my initial starter undergarments, but those were pretty much just sacks around my feet. I was sure if I had the pain settings closer to realistic I’d be complaining about them all the time.

  I equipped the Damaged Breastplate, under my Dirty Robe. It was a thin plate cuirass that had rust eating away at the edge, and still had a fist size hole punched through the centre from where Gurim had struck.

  The breastplate gave a percentage of defence. It gave 5%. In comparison, my robe gave 1%. I had to assume that meant any damage taken was reduced by that much? Maybe I needed to ask. It hadn’t seemed relevant when a cloth robe had been my only concern.

  Now on to the exciting stuff. The weapon.

  I could use it one or two handed. One handed, it wrapped most of the chain around my arm, allowing it to act as an armour piece, or be let out to whip people. Two handed, it seemed to be the same as the one handed whip, but with a faster attack speed and more accuracy.

  It could be changed on the fly, so I didn't have to commit to anything right now. I equipped it in my left hand, wrapping most of the chain round my forearm, and holding the rest looped in my hand. I still had my trusty rusty knife, given to me by Horace, but I’d yet to actually use it in combat.

  There wasn’t anything else of interest on the skeleton captain, so I headed over to where Bri was… not there. I saw the piles of bones she’d racked up as kills – all six were on the edge of the precipice they’d almost forced her off.

  I looked around, but couldn’t see any sign of her. Ixly was mooching around, putting daggers in a sack. She could have moved further into the ruins, but there were no tracks. Not that I was a skilled hunter, or anything, but still. I waded into the pile of bones she’d created and looked out at the surrounding Dead Wood.

  Eyes! Ixly and his “she’s a piece of tin foil” theory. I panicked. Nope, we’d pissed her off, and she’d run. She caved under the pressure, and decided to save herself from the impending siege of Thanis. Shit. Well, I couldn’t blame her. It sounded like she needed this game for a lot of private reasons I didn’t understand. She was just being realistic. This was her escape, and we’d just teased her, so she called it quits. It didn't change anything. Just lowered our odds of survival.

  I heard the sound of rocks clinking together. Odd. Again. And again. I stepped closer to the edge and peered over. Nothing. Wait, yes – chips of stone were tumbling down. It wasn’t the highest cliff in the world, and I wasn’t sure it actually counted as a cliff. On one side it was a gently rolling hill, but on this side it was a sheer face. Maybe ten metres to the canopy of trees below. Not huge, but still potentially lethal. Actually, the incredibly spiky trees would probably kill anyone before they hit the ground.

  I got onto my hands and knees and shimmied up until I was almost looking back on myself down the cliff. Turns out the precipice was on an overhang, and a certain druid was…

  ‘Bri, you terrified me!’

  She looked up at me, holding onto the cliff one handed without fear. ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought you’d run off.’

  She went back to doing her thing. ‘Classic case of projection. I’m not afraid of a little skirmish with some Light scrubs.’

  ‘Possibly fair. But, umm, what are you doing?’

  Both of her arms were transformed into her animal form, much like she’d done when she healed me that first time. And when she threatened me that second time. One claw was dug deep into the rock, keeping her steady, and she was chipping away at a protruding boulder with the other.

  ‘What does it look like? I’m mining.’

  ‘Oooh, professions, right. Wait, you’re a druid and a miner? Shouldn’t you be a herbalist or something?’

  She shot me a quick glare. ‘Did you just assume my profession?’

  ‘No. Nope. Sorry. Anyway, how was the loot?’

  ‘Rusty scrap metal. Basically nothing.’

  ‘You want it?’

  ‘Scrap metal? It’s a bit beneath me, really.’ She gave me a small wink between clawing at the mineral node. ‘All yours, knock yourself out.’

  ‘Nice, thanks. Do you need help up, or…?’

  Finally her claw lodged on to something harder than the rest of the stone, and she pulled free a chunk of raw ore. It gave the standard lack of information when I tried to focus on it. She stuffed it in a vine pouch that was hanging behind her from her waist, and in a few powerful moves, was back on solid land.

  I carefully backed away from the edge before returning to my feet. Good thing I did, too, as Gurim was blobbing around behind me, acting like a dark infused banana s
kin.

  ‘Ruins in the Dead Woods,’ I said. ‘I figured it would literally just be dead trees. Everywhere.’

  ‘Mmm, features. Yeah, who’d have thought that,’ she said absently. ‘Old guard towers and villages get abandoned all the time. I mean, how could there be a population of skeletons without a population of living at some point in the past?’

  ‘You say that like they’re a natural evolution. Undeath isn’t what naturally occurs after dying… right?’ Talking of natural undead, a thought occurred to me. ‘Hey, why couldn’t you have used your Charm Nature on these guys?’

  ‘What part of them looks natural to you?’

  ‘I mean, they’re bones. Bones are natural.’

  ‘Not how things work. You can’t charm inanimate objects. I think. I’ve never actually tried. Maybe I could make a really enthusiastic pet rock for you?’

  ‘Tempting, tempting – but no. So what are they?’

  ‘They are dark magic. It would be more likely that you could charm them. I mean, warlocks don’t get a Charm Dark spell until much later, but you know what I mean. So yes, the bones may be natural, but they aren’t doing anything. It’s the magic connecting them that is the acting force.’

  ‘Definitive proof that what they once were, is truly gone, I suppose.’

  She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes.’

  ‘Hold on, though. Gurim is dark magic, and skeletons are dark magic. So why did his Dark Lance attack deal damage? Wouldn’t the same element have a resistance or something?’

  ‘All of the natural elements have counters. Basic things like fire beats ice. Nature magic lies outside that grouping on its own. Then you’ve got two other groups. Nature and Arcane. They are different sides of the same coin. There’s no arcane without nature, and all nature is naturally magical. So they have a resistance to each other, but no weaknesses with anything else. Finally you’ve got the opposites, light and dark magic. These two get weird, which is normally fine because only two classes have any light of dark spells. Warlocks and priests. Any light attack beats all defensive spells. Any dark defence, beats all offensive spells.’