The second Arachnoid’s swing connected solidly on Hawke’s back.
He gasped as he felt metal chopping into his flesh and his shoulder blade. His armor and aura mitigated the damage to fifteen points but the agony and the sheer force of the attack sent him crashing to the ground. He rolled on his back, ignoring another burst of pain, and saw the Warrior come at him, big chopping sword raised for a finishing blow while the one he had wounded tossed aside an empty potion bottle and rushed forward; its Health bar grew back to near full status.
Healing potion! The unfairness of a bunch of low-level mobs being equipped with healing potions angered him almost as much as the fact he was about to be killed.
Screw that. Instead of waiting to die, he rolled into the Arachnoid’s legs, spoiling its attack, and stabbed its underbelly. It was armored, but once again Saturnyx was up to the task. The first stab made the Warrior rear up, trying to get away from him, but he let his shield hang from its straps and grabbed one of its legs. Hawke held on as the spider-man dragged him along, stabbing it over and over. Its Health bar went down to zero and he barely had time to scramble away from the slumping body before it fell on top of him.
The cheater who’d healed itself hadn’t attacked. Instead, it was swinging a bell back and forth, making it ring loudly. It stopped when Hawke chopped its head off with a sideways swing, but the damage was done. A loud buzzing came from the direction of the Arachnoid village just as one of the skeleton demons poked its ugly head out of the side tunnel.
You’re not an easy sword to love, he thought.
Hawke shook his head and kept going. The second side tunnel was a good fifty yards away, and the arachnoid settlement about a hundred yards past it. He glanced behind him and saw the demons were chasing after him and they were moving much faster on the wider tunnel. This was going to be close.
He’d taken twenty-three points of damage, but his Healing Aura was fixing him at the rate of six Health per second. He was fully healed by the time he reached the side tunnel, chased by the skeleton demons and what sounded like half of the Arachnoid village.
Any chance the spider guys and the Undead demons will fight each other? Hawke asked Saturnyx as he took the tunnel.
Hawke thought about finding a big stone somewhere and driving the sword into it, leaving it for some other unlucky bastard to find a thousand years from now. Instead, he ran into the side tunnel. After two hundred feet or so, he reached a corridor, something built of blocks of stone rather than a natural cavern.
That ‘Master’ was uncalled for, he said as he ran.
The freaking spider monsters were gaining up on him. Sure, he had killed a bunch of them, but they didn’t have to make it personal. He went left. The corridor went on for another hundred feet – and ended on a door made of stone. Or a stone wall with a decorative carving shaped like a door. Either way, it was closed. Hawke looked back just in time to see a javelin flying right at him. He blocked it with his shield and saw the Arachnoids and demon skeletons had joined forces and were moving steadily towards him. A Warrior and an Undead demon led the way, while workers threw light spears over their heads. Two more missiles flew his way; both missed.
Hawke leaned back against the door. It had no give to it. Keeping his shield between him and the advancing monsters, he felt behind him with his sword hand, looking for a door jamb or a keyhole or anything.
Thanks. He didn’t know exactly what to do, but damned if he was going to ask the sword. He concentrated as if he was casting one of his Paladin spells and felt his power awaken and touch the door. A rumbling sound of stone moving aside told him he had succeeded.
“The power of Light, bitches!” he yelled at the approaching monsters and backed into the chapel.
The arachnoids were throwing more spears at him, so he ducked off to one side, out of sight, and took a look around. The chapel was a circular room with six statues on pedestals along its wall. They depicted a woman in flowing robes, a warrior-princess of some sort, a man with a staff in one hand and a set of scales on the other, and some dude with the head of a bird that looked a lot like the Egyptian god Horus. Maybe if his Lore skill were higher, he might know who everybody was.
A marble altar stood in the center of the room. A glowing jewel-encrusted golden chalice rested on it. The glow didn’t have the same hue as his auras; it was a clean yellow rather than golden, more like natural sunlight. Just looking at it made him feel warm and refreshed. The effect was real; his Endurance, which had gone down below ten, started improving by several points per second. Without thinking about it, he let his shield drop and reached for the chalice, stepping back into view of the monsters and ignoring the spears still being thrown into the room.
The moment his fingers touched the chalice, time stood still. Hawke was paralyzed.
Oh, crap.
Ten
A spear froze in mid-air a few inches past Hawke’s face.
He couldn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the spear; the motion had caught his attention the moment he touched the chalice, and now he couldn’t even look down at the altar. He was trapped like a fly in amber.
Saturnyx?
No answer. Either the sword was being snooty again or she was frozen as well. This couldn’t be good.
“Greetings, Eternal,” somebody said behind him.
Hawke instinctively turned towards the voice and found that he could move again. He also realized he was somewhere else. The circular room, the statues and the altar were gone. All he could see was a woman clad in flowing white robes; she looked exactly like one of the statues he’d just seen.
“I am Vitara, Goddess of Life. When you touched my sacred vessel, you attracted my attention, Paladin of Lumina. You serve my dear sister, after all, and the interests of Life and Light are closely aligned.”
Yikes, Hawke thought. The first thing that had crossed his mind as he heard the goddess speak had been a vulgar thought about ‘touching her sacred vessel.’ He hoped that Vitara couldn’t read his thoughts.
I’m just a second-level peon! I shouldn’t be having meetings with goddesses!
“I normally do not consort with mortals, or even demi-immortals such as yourself, but the situation is dire and one uses what tools one has at hand. An influx of Eternals has reached the Realms, one of unprecedented size. Thousands of people from your world have been brought here. Never have so many arrived so closely together. Very soon, your presence will have a profound effect in the Common Realm and, as you inevitably grow in power, other Realms as well.”
Hawke started to say something like ‘Why don’t you send us home, then?’ but had a sudden onset of sense and stayed quiet.
“One of the Makers is involved – I suspect the Laughing Man – so we mere deities or even the Arbiters cannot obstruct your arrival. Some of my brethren have instead taken subtle measures to destroy most of you, ensuring you never become a threat. The fate you narrowly escaped through the help of Lumina is but one of those measures.”
The pile of dead gamers I found. And holy crap, Laughing Man? Laughing Man Productions created the damn game!
“Gloriana, our sister Sophia, and I are of one mind in this. If there is need for more Eternals, killing them is worse than pointless. Your arrival may precede some disaster your kind is meant to prevent. It is far preferable to guide the newcomers so their powers can be used for the bett
erment of the Realms. That is why I chose to speak with you instead of smiting you for the sacrilege of taking what is not yours.”
Do not touch goddesses’ sacred vessels from now on, Hawke told himself.
“I ask two things of you. First, to follow the tenets of the Triune Goddesses: Gloriana, Sophia and I, Vitara:
“Protect the innocent, punish the guilty, and learn the wisdom to tell them apart.
“Be merciful to those who do no harm and enact retribution on those who do.
“Seek and value peace while preparing for war, for war is inevitable and peace only possible through victory.”
I can do that, Hawke told himself. He kept his mouth shut, though.
“And if your fellow Eternals will not follow those tenets, swear in our names that you will oppose them. Swear that you will seek to protect the Realms and those who dwell therein. Swear you will do so and I will grant you my Blessing.”
You Have Been Offered a Quest:
QUEST: To Follow the Tenets of the Triune Goddesses
Make an oath as required by the Goddess Vitara. This is an ongoing quest.
Rewards: Gain Vitara’s Blessing (you will learn three Life Magic spells and gain +20% experience when you fulfill quests while keeping your oath; more rewards will be available at higher levels).
Penalties: -30% experience penalty from quests contravening the interests of the Triune Goddesses. Each breach of the Tenets will result in a loss of 10% your accumulated experience. Three breaches will cause the quest to fail.
Failure Penalties: If the Quest is abandoned, you will have broken your Oath to a Deity: -10,000 Global Renown, -10,000 XP. If your total Experience is reduced below 0, you will die and respawn with a loss of 4 Identity.
Accept? Y/N.
Holy Mother of Mercy! Having gotten in trouble already thanks to his big mouth, Hawke decided to take a moment to consider the Quest before making a decision. Accepting the quest would be a big commitment on his part when all he wanted to do was go home. On the other hand, telling no to a goddess could have its own consequences. And the Tenets seemed fairly reasonable. The possibility of fighting other Eternals wasn’t appealing at all, however. He had never liked PVP, players-versus-player situations. On the third tentacle, nobody in this world was a non-player character, either. Everyone was a living person. He’d killed several people already. They might look like spiders, but they had lives, families.
“What say you, Hawke Lightseeker?” Vitara said just as he made his decision.
“I say yes, Goddess of Life, I do so swear,” he said. The words of the pledge came out of his mouth as if he had memorized them. “By my Life, Power and my Soul, I swear unto you, freely and of my own free will, that I, Hawke Lightseeker, will follow the Tenets of the Triune Goddesses as you have spoken them and will oppose any Eternal who seek to break them, until my Identity is erased or my oath is dissolved by mutual agreement. Three times, I swear to do as I have said. Let the Arbiters witness my oath and the Makers punish me should I forswear myself.”
And this time I had time to think about it, so I only have myself to blame.
“Three times, your word is given,” the goddess said, and Hawke felt a second presence nearby, one more powerful as Vitara herself, watching the oath. “Luck be with you, Paladin.”
“Thank you.”
She grinned at him. “And don’t ever think again about touching my sacred vessel, child. You couldn’t begin to handle it.”
Holy…
Eleven
…Crap.
He was back at the chapel. The spear flew right past his face and bounced off the circular wall as Saturnyx finished her warning:
Never mind, Hawke told her. He noticed that the chalice had disappeared. The door out. Where is it?
It’s all good, he reassured the sword as he ran to the magic door. I made a deal.
The Arachnoids had hesitated when they got close enough to see the chapel, but the lead demon skeleton kept coming. As soon as it reached the entrance, however, the Undead burst into flames and was reduced to ashes in less than a second. That made the spider people even more reluctant to come in. The Workers kept throwing spears at Hawke as he reached the door, used his mojo and opened it. Nothing hit him, fortunately.
Hawke stepped through – and stopped just before he fell off a sheer cliff.
There were no stairs, or any trace there had ever been stairs. The door led to a nearly flat wall of rock, a straight drop down. A river roared by, sixty feet below the doorway. No, not a river. Those were freaking rapids, the sort of thing you needed a kayak and delusions of immortality before you plunged into them.
WTF?
You think?
My what?
My inventory, you mean.
While being berated by his sword, Hawke had been putting his stuff into the inventory. The armor went first, then his shield, shoes and finally his clothing. A spear got him on his now-bare forearm, but his Shield of Light was still on and he only took two points of damage, which translated to a shallow cut. It still hurt. He couldn’t see the sun, but from the way the mountains were casting shadows across the river, it was setting behind him.
You’re next, he told Saturnyx.
Hawke sent the sword into his Bonded Vault and looked behind him as he hurriedly cast Aura of Light on himself. Several arachnoid warriors had finally decided to enter the chapel. When they didn’t burst into flames, they charged him, buzzing like a nest of angry hornets.
He jumped towards the raging waters below.
* * *
Congratulations! You have learned the Swimming Skill at Level 1.
Part of him wanted to scream “I already knew how to swim!” but the rest of him was too busy trying to stay alive. He hadn’t bothered picking up swimming during character creation; in most games, people just knew how to swim and all they had to worry about was running out of stamina while underwater. Not this one, worse luck. Lucky for him, he’d been a decent swimmer as a kid, although it had been a while since he’d used the skill. Unluckily for him, either his Hawke body hadn’t developed the proper muscle memory, or swimming in gosh-darned rapids was beyond his skill level. Whatever the reason, he was dying. Knowing that if did he would respawn on top of a pile of dead Eternals drove him to even more desperate efforts.
He tried to reach either shore as the powerful current carried him away, but all he managed to do was keep his head above water for brief moments before the rushing waters rolled him under again. The river ran down a sharp slope that wasn’t quite a waterfall but still pretty bad. He was underwater more often than not. Even worse, he’d smashed into several big rocks already and each hit had shaved off a sizable chunk of his hit points. Health pool, the stupid-crazy part of Hawke that obsessed about stupid details reminded the rest of him as he kept struggling to reach dry land.
Congratulations! You have raised Swimming to level 2.
He had swallowed half of the damn river and was freezing and down to a dozen hit points and less than ten Endurance, but, hey, his Swimming skill was finally reflecting reality. Progress!
A moment later, a fallen tree saved his life, but only after almost killing him.
Hawke didn’t even see the half-sunken trunk. He’d just felt his feet touch the bottom of the river while his head was above water, which he took as a good sign, when he smashed into a hunk of wood, hard enough to see stars. His Health bar began to flash red and he noticed a broken off branch had stabbed one of his arms. Only his Aura of Light kept him alive. But he’d stopped moving; the river kept trying to drag him over the tree trunk, but Hawke flailed around until his numbed hands managed to grab ahold of a branch. He glanced around and realized the tree had been near the shore – and that it reached all the way there.
Dragging himself along the trunk the rest of the way wasn’t all that hard. He crawled out of the water, muttering stuff about damming the damn river and turning it into a lake. He cast another Aura of Light on himself and summoned his blessedly dry clothes. As he dried himself off and got dressed, he glanced at the darkening skies. The moon – it looked like a normal half-moon – was up, but so was a huge spiral galaxy that ran from horizon to horizon, at least as bright as a full moon. Millions and millions of alien stars filled the sky. Wherever he was, it wasn’t Earth, wasn’t anywhere near Earth.
I’ll figure it out, he thought. He was too tired. His Endurance bar was low, but beyond that his mind and body were spent. He curled up under a tree and all but passed out.
That was how Hawke’s first day on the Common Realm ended.
Twelve
The baying of dogs woke him up.
Hawke sat up with a start, his hand reaching for a sword that wasn’t there. That made his heart try to leap out of his chest, until he remembered he’d put everything of value in his inventory – pardon my French, my Bonded Vault – before the river almost did what spider monsters, Undead demons – a totally unfair kind of creature – and a swarm of bugs, also Undead, hadn’t been able to do. A mental command brought Saturnyx to his waiting hand.
Twilight Templar (The Eternal Journey Book 1) Page 6
