“And I like you, Hawke. You’ve got the rugged good looks of a softcore romance novel character, and the way you look at women and smile… Well, let’s just say if you were onstage in a theatrical production, there wouldn’t be a dry seat in the house. And, honestly, I was never lucky in that department, back on Earth. Even before I became obese and diabetic and lost a leg.”
Her story, and her reasons for continuing to play Eternal Journey Online even after it became clear that doing so could make you vanish into thin air, had hit Hawke hard. He felt bad for her, but also admired the way she’d just out and said it. He valued honesty quite highly. He’d much rather someone told him a truth he hated than a pack of lies to try to make him feel better.
“Nadia…”
“So yeah. Jump my bones, dude! Tava told me she wants us to. Legally, she said I would be your mistress and that you cannot propose to me until after you two get married. Fine with me. I’m tired of sleeping alone, and I’m not looking to get hitched to the first dark and handsome guy who comes along. Although she keeps hinting at some secret I need to be let into before I agree. So spill the beans and let’s do it. Us.”
“That’s more of a show rather than a tell kind of thing.”
“Oh, really?”
Under the banter, Hawke got the feeling that Nadia was more than a little nervous and trying her best to hide it. He walked over to her and took her lightly in his arms. She was almost a head shorter than him, which made her well below average for an Elf. Her slender frame was surprisingly strong, however, and she held on tightly to him. She leaned back against his arms as he kissed her.
“Is that it?”
“Well, no. Just trying to break the ice. Now, and this isn’t a crude come on, I need you to touch my sword.” She giggled. “By which I mean the actual weapon.”
“Does it get bigger, like the Thundercats’ sword?”
The only Thundercats Hawke knew of was a crap show on the Toon Network, but he just said, “Not exactly,” and placed the hilt of one of his blades on her hand.
A moment later, they were somewhere else. The first time Hawke had entered the pocket dimension Saturnyx called her home, it had been a flat disk surrounded by a red mist. It had been pretty disconcerting, to say the least. Since then, Tava had been helping the Fury do some decorating. Hawke had no idea where the curtains turning the disk into an enclosed space came from, or the bed and mattress set, or the carpets. Neither of the women had seen fit to answer his questions, and he hadn’t cared enough to push. The place now looked like a nice bedroom floating in the middle of nowhere.
Sitting on the bed was Saturnyx. Her bright red hair was neatly parted down the middle and someone – Tava, most likely – had braided it. She was a muscular, powerful woman with impressive breasts and piercing eyes that always seemed to be burning with pent-up anger, even when she was smiling broadly. Which she was. The Fury was doing her best to make a good first impression. She was even wearing clothes for the occasion, although the sheer shift she had on did little to hide her figure. It was also thin enough that both Hawke and Nadia could see that she was either very cold or fairly excited.
“Hi,” Nadia said uncertainly.
“Nadia, this is Saturnyx. My sword, yeah, swords, but there is only one of her. We are in her domain. She is also my second fiancée.”
“Holy shit.”
“Greetings, Nadia Morganna,” Saturnyx said. “After watching you during these past days, I hold you in high esteem. You have courage and dedication, and exhibit none of the innate treachery of your Fae ancestors. I think you would be a valued sister-wife, should you ever decide to join our union.”
“Uh, thanks?”
Nadia looked at Hawke with a clear ‘I can’t even’ expression on her face.
“I think we need to go back to the real world, Saturnyx.”
“Of course.”
They returned to the office. Nadia was still sitting on his lap and clinging tightly to him.
“Are you okay?”
“That was… She is a… what?”
“A Fury. She was human, a few thousand years ago, but then her soul was transformed and she became like an avenging angel for the gods.”
“I know what Furies are. The Kindly Ones, the Greeks called them, and it was meant very sarcastically. There were three of them.”
“From what she’s told me, there were more than three of them but those were the first ones and the leaders of their club or military unit. We haven’t really spoken much about her life back then.”
“And you are engaged to her, as well as Tava.”
“Perfectly normal for this culture.”
Nadia rested her head against his chest. “Hearing your heartbeat makes me feel better, I don’t know why.”
He kissed the top of her head. “It’s a complicated situation. I totally understand if it’s too complicated for you.”
“How do you do it? Handle being with two women at once, and now me?”
“Well, I don’t want to sound arrogant, but you wouldn’t believe the things you can do with a Constitution of forty-four. It’s sort of like overdosing on Viagra, minus the bad side effects.”
“Okay, then,” she said, squirming a little on his lap. “I’m beginning to get it.”
She squirmed a little more, the kind of contact that got you charged Champagne Room rates at strip clubs back on Earth.
“Okay. I’m willing to be your mistress, for now. With an option to upgrade.”
“Sounds great to me.”
“And I would like our first night together to be, well, just us. Is that okay?”
He smiled. “You might want to tag in Saturnyx at some point, but I’ll be happy to oblige if you don’t.”
It was a good first night. And Saturnyx got tagged in by the third quarter.
Six
Back to the present:
Hawke watched Orom rising from behind the low hills of the Highlands Forest.
His walk back to town followed almost the exact path he had taken the first time he had made it there, a few weeks ago, although it felt like it had been a lifetime. The woods that gave way to pastureland and tilled fields hadn’t changed, and seemingly neither had the walled settlement in the distance. Hawke knew that wasn’t true. When he first arrived at the town, its population had been over six hundred greater than it was now. Some had left for nearby villages and were slowly returning, but most of the missing were gone for good, dead at the hands of Orom’s former Prefect or his Undead minions. Ultimately, at the hands of the Necromancer.
He was going to fix that, Hawke promised himself. He was going to…
An arrow struck the back of his head.
The impact didn’t penetrate his helmet, but it made it ring painfully. He rolled away a fraction of a second later, his blades out, and wrapped two defensive spells around him as he looked for a target for his Hammer of Light.
“You were thinking instead of paying attention to your surroundings!” a familiar voice called from a copse of trees.
“Damn it, Tava!” he said. “You know it’s dangerous to sneak up on people like that! I could have blasted you before I knew it was you.”
“Could you, now?”
He still couldn’t see where she was. “I could just blast all those trees with Burning Light. See how you like getting a nice million-lumen sunburn. Or…”
Without dropping a beat, Hawke unleashed a Dazzling Lights spell at the area where Tava’s voice was coming from. “Or I could do this!” he shouted. No answer, but she had to be stunned and blind for a few seconds. He rushed towards the trees.
And tripped on a snare somebody had hidden at ankle level. Hawke fell on his face and felt someone land on his back.
“Dead,” a soft voice said as the point of a dagger tapped the side of his helmet. Another tap followed, this one on the base of his neck. “Dead.” And finally, a thir
d fake stab clicked against the base of his spine. “And dead.”
“Women will be the death of me,” he said without bothering to get up.
Alba Bastardes
Level 4 Shadow Assassin
Health 63 Mana 39 Endurance 60
Her stats didn’t seem very impressive, but the amount of damage she could generate when striking out of ambush or if given time to coat her blades with poisonous Mana would impress anybody she didn’t kill outright. If she had been attacking Hawke for real, he would be down a couple hundred Health already. After a few seconds straddling him, she rolled off of him so he could get up. She looked very different from the friendly brunette who had tended tables at the Copper Kettle. Then, her long light brown hair had been held back by a simple ponytail; now it was tightly wrapped in a bun under a leather helmet that hid her Mediterranean features, leaving only her hazel eyes uncovered. Her strong and curvy body was equally covered by the rest of her leather armor. No chain mail bikinis in the Realms; leaving skin exposed was a sure way of having it pierced, burned, cut, or worse. She no longer looked like a happy-go-lucky barmaid but what she had become: a deadly Shadow Assassin.
“Tava was right. You are a grand fighting man and a fearsome magic-user, but also a, what was that Eenglees term? Ah, yes. A dumbass,” Alba said sweetly. “A dumbass with a nice body, although it was far more pleasing to be on top of it when you were wearing less ironmongery.”
“Don’t you start now,” Hawke said, getting up.
He and Alba had had a one-night stand on his second day on the Realms. However, despite what some might think, he wasn’t trying to marry or sleep with every desirable woman he met, saw, or heard about. He and Alba were just friends, as well as mentor and mentee. Hawke was helping her master the ways of the Ninja. Which was why the fourth-level Shadow Assassin had managed to get the drop on him. He was a damn good teacher.
Quiet, you.
“Okay, I give up. Where is Tava?”
“Look to your left,” Tava said.
He did, following the sound of her voice, and saw nothing but an orchard about two hundred feet away, with only an expanse of grass in between. Grass that someone’s sheep had eaten nearly to the roots. There was no way…
Another blunt arrow smacked him on the back of the head. It had come from his right.
“Okay, smartass.”
Tava appeared out of thin air, standing in the middle of an open field. She looked like some magnificent hybrid between a Miss Universe contestant and a mixed martial artist champion, with wavy brown hair and wide green eyes that currently sparkled with amusement as she unstrung her Enchanted-quality longbow, a gift from her father. Her fire lizard leather armor was tight in all the right places, serving as a visible reminder of just what a lucky man Hawke was.
Tava Kintes (Human)
Level 8 Ranger
Health 130 Mana 159 Endurance 125
“How do you like my Ring of Ventriloquism, darling?” she told him.
All the Adventurers involved in overthrowing Prefect Felix had gotten some nice magical items as part of their rewards. Tava had refused to tell him what her magical doodad could do. Throw her voice around seemed to be the now-obvious answer. Sounded like a neat trick to open up an ambush, if you could conceal yourself.
“And who taught you to turn invisible?” he said. “Kinto?”
She shook her head. “My seventh-level gift, Camouflage. It is a Nature spell. I wish I could share it with you.”
“And you do not need to ask me where I learned Shroud of Twilight, my esteemed teacher,” Alba added.
“Yeah, that one’s on me.”
One of the first things he had asked all of his friends was to cross train with each other. Most special abilities in the Realms were spells, and members of different classes could learn those spells, provided they had access to the proper Elements or Schools of Magic. It took time and effort – about twenty hours of mental training – to pass on the knowledge, but the benefits were certainly worth it. The biggest hurdle was unlocking new Elements or Schools. Nobody he knew had figured out how to do it other than by gaining them as part of their Class or, in his case, absorbing an Element-attuned Mana Node. Only a few spells had been shared so far, but as they went up in levels, Hawke hoped that would improve.
The only Adventurers who had refused to participate in the spell-exchange program had been the Sterns, the Dwarves who had followed Hawke to Orom in the hopes of acquiring mining rights as well as power and treasure. Their clan had strict rules about teaching their magic to outsiders; at the least, they were obligated to charge extortionately high prices for their lessons. Hawke hadn’t pushed the issue.
Tava skipped towards Hawke to give him his customary hug and kiss. “Did you succeed?”
“What do you think? I own that Node now. And hit level thirteenth.”
“Well done. You are fortunate we are here to humble you once and again, or your arrogance would know no limits.”
“Yeah, it’s a valuable service,” he said absently, thinking mostly about how good it felt to hold her in his arms. Life was good.
And he was prepared to do anything to defend what he had.
* * *
Fighting the Guardian, taking over the Node and getting ambushed by a couple of deadly hotties had been Hawke’s version of a vacation. As soon as he crossed Orom’s main gate, waving away the salutes and other shows of deference from everyone he met along the way, his real work began. Tava kissed him goodbye and headed off to her father’s hunting lodge. Now that Kinto was the next Guard Captain, she and her brother had to take care of the lodge’s dogs, and vegetable garden. Life went on, and Hawke kept getting surprised by how much work it took to get anything done in a world without power tools, phones and the Internet. You literally had to walk a couple of miles just to move around town, burning tons of calories and wasting a lot of time.
He started by paying a visit to Katros the Smith. Hawke wished he could take the time for more lessons in Arcane Blacksmithing, but his visit was to check on the status of the new pump parts he had ordered for the town. One of Orom’s wells had gone dry when the ancient pump system working it had broken down. Hawke had figured out what the problem was, but was waiting for a few pieces to finish the job. Katros had plenty of excuses but no parts; the smith promised he would have them made by the end of the week. Hawke sighed and went back to the Keep.
First Sergeant Marko was on duty. The second-level High Guard saluted him. “My Lord Prefect,” he said formally.
“Save that stuff for parades and formal occasions, Marko,” Hawke told him, not for the first time. “I still remember you shaking me down for some coppers, back when I was a broke-ass Adventurer.”
“And you will never let me forget, Your Eminence,” the guard said with a rueful smile.
“All part of the job,” he said on his way to his office, where his new Mistress of Coin awaited.
Hawke had not met Antana Setes until after he’d helped liberate Orom from the Undead. The merchant and co-owner of Orom’s largest general store and workshop had not crossed paths with him during his visits to the town. He had spent most of his time at the Copper Kettle, his favorite tavern and inn, with visits to the Temple of Shining Father and Katros’ Smithy. If he had been there for more than a handful of days, he would have probably visited the Setes Warehouse, where people went to buy all kinds of useful goods: threads, fishing hooks, earthenware plates and bowls, preserved foods, and a few high-ticket imports from faraway places like Akila to the east or Alpinia to the southwest.
Antana was a middle-aged woman with the tanned and lined face of someone who had spent a lot of time out in the sun. The merchant was often on the road, taking the few exports the town produced and bringing back new goods to sell at the store she and her sister ran. Her reputation as an honest trader and the recommendation of several people Hawke respected h
ad gotten her the job. She looked up from a pile of papers on her desk when Hawke came in. She worked out of the former Prefect’s office now.
“Your Eminence,” she said formally.
“Your Coin Star,” Hawke replied.
Antana grimaced, but she’d given up on trying to convince Hawke to stick to formalities. “You have an appointment with the prospective Town Clerk in an hour,” she told him.
“I know. Anything I should know before I spend some Town Mana?”
“Tailor Decimo’s heirs have sold his store but are asking for an extension on the Town’s fees.”
“Sure, give them an extension. Would six months be enough?” Hawke said.
“That would be ample time, your eminence.”
The tailor had been murdered, along with his wife and children, on Hawke’s first night in Orom. He hadn’t been able to save them, but he sure as hell could try to make their surviving family’s life a little easier.
“Anything else?”
“There are still fifteen vacant buildings in town – four hovels, six homes, two warehouses, and three villas – as a result of the recent unpleasantness,” the Mistress of Coin went on.
Antana had spent the brief but deadly zombie apocalypse holed up in the general store, along with a small army of neighbors and servants. They had fought off three Undead attacks on their own. If she wanted to refer to those terrifying days as ‘the unpleasantness,’ she had earned that right.
“Not including the Prefect’s manor and my villa, right?”
Among the abandoned buildings was a nice ‘villa’ on the southern hills section of town, a short walk from the Shining Father Temple. Hawke had purchased it from the town for fair market value (fifty gold denars, based on the town’s tax assessment records). The three-bedroom (and two servant bedrooms, plus a central courtyard that would be great for barbeques as soon as he had a grill made) house was being cleaned and furnished by a small army of townsfolk under Tava’s direction, since as his fiancée it was her house as well, and she cared more about that sort of thing than he did. The only thing he’d asked for was an oversized bed.
Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Page 4
