The rest of the ambushers reached melee range. Gosto interrupted his spellcasting to block a Warrior’s sword with his staff. Hawke backstabbed the attacker, killing it instantly, and sent a Bolt of Life at Desmond. The second heal allowed the Eternal to free his leg and go onto the attack, launching a war-cry – Fearsome Shout – that froze every Murk Arachnoid within twenty feet for a couple of seconds. By the time the monsters had recovered, Desmond had beheaded two of them with deadly back-and-forth swings of his two-handed sword.
Hawke caught a trio of attackers with a one-two combo of Dazzling Light and Burning Light: the cone of energy killed one of them outright and left the other two dazed by the spells’ brightness as well as stunned by the sheer agony that came from having their exoskeletons partially broiled. Before the survivors could react, Hawke stepped forward and skewered them both at the same time, one with each of the Saturnyx Twins.
Two giant boulders smashed onto him a moment later. Each spell did over a hundred points of damage, which his armor and defenses mitigated to a total Health loss of seventy-two. The double whammy and a few injuries he hadn’t even noticed getting had him down to nearly half his normal Health. He turned to the Shamans. There were still over a dozen Warriors on their feet, and three were attacking him, but he contented himself with parrying or dodging their blows while he fired off another Hammer of Light. The Shaman’s energy shield vanished like a popped soap bubble, but it took no direct damage. At least, not until Alba emerged from the shadows behind it and backstabbed it to death.
The other Shaman began to turn against the new threat, but the Shadow Assassin used a spell of her own: Shadow Leech, which sucked away a large chunk of the target’s Mana and prevented it from spellcasting for three seconds. That Darkness spell was death on wheels, and Hawke had been happy to learn it; its only drawbacks were its short range and long cooldown.
While Alba finished off the last Shaman, Hawke concentrated on defending Tava and Gosto while Desmond went on a one-man killing spree. The Warrior’s two-handed sword sent Arachnoid limbs flying, and their counterattacks barely scratched his armor. The Eternal wiped out half of the surviving enemies by himself. Hawke and Tava took care of the rest while Gosto kept everyone in good health.
For Slaying Your Foes, you have earned 90 XP (10 XP diverted towards Leadership).
Current XP/Next Level: 16,203/18,000. Leadership XP: 387/1,000
“What a rip-off,” Hawke grumbled as he made sure everyone was healed.
“Got no complaints,” Desmond said. “Hit level seven, even though the Party robbed me of like a hundred points of XP. Alba hit fifth level as well.” He gestured to his girlfriend, who was calmly looting the bodies of the Arachnoids.
“Grats to both of you. And sorry about the lost XP. It will pay off, hopefully.”
“Saw Nadia go down,” Desmond added. “Fall broke her legs and then three spikes ran her through.”
Hawke shook his head. “My AOE heal didn’t do enough to help her. My fault. We were lucky we didn’t lose anyone else.”
“I know.” Desmond hesitated for a second. “Um, will you tell her I’m sorry? When you see her?”
“Sorry for what? It’s my fault she died.”
“Sorry for everything, I guess. For being a dick.”
Things between Desmond and Nadia were still tense. She had talked him into playing Eternal Journey Online long after it was known players were disappearing. He felt she had led him on and then rejected him even after they were trapped together in a hostile world. Being with Alba was helping, and conveying an apology would hopefully help some more.
Of course, all that squishy stuff paled in comparison to the life and death situation they’d been in. The Murk Arachnoids had murdered over twenty people just on the off-chance they could kill a few of Orom’s defenders in a carefully-orchestrated ambush. His friends could have died. Nadia would be traumatized by her fourth death, but she would live. If Gosto or Alba had been in her place, they wouldn’t be looking forward to waking up in three or four hours at the Temple of Shining Father. They’d be gone for good.
Hawke felt like crap about losing Nadia, but he still automatically collected the floating bags over the Arachnoid bodies. His loot had amounted to nine silver and five copper denars, as well as a handful of minor potions. Killing low-level cannon fodder didn’t pay off.
“This was on me,” he added.
“We all knew it was dangerous to follow the raiders,” Tava said.
“I don’t know if bringing you, Alba or your brother was a good idea. What if…”
She leaned closer, whispering: “What if Brunes had murdered Gosto and my father when he came by our lodge and tried to take me by force? That would have likely happened in a few weeks or even a few days, had you not been there. We all live as long as we live, and not a moment longer. If my brother falls, I will mourn him and live on. Much as you will if I die.”
“I don’t want that to happen.”
Her smile was sad. “My love, when did what we wanted have anything to do with whatever shall pass?”
Hawke looked at the corpse-strewn cavern. None of those Arachnoids had gotten what they wanted, that was for sure. All he could do was his best, and hope it would be enough.
Nine
Getting out of the cave was harder than dropping in.
The Arachnoid Shamans had used Earth Magic to open a temporary pit under the group’s feet and then closed it afterwards to keep them in the dark. Unfortunately, nobody in the group had an equivalent spell. They had to explore the cavern until they found an exit. Hawke kept his Enlightenment spell up as he walked around. He didn’t find the exit – Alba did – but his spell detected a hidden compartment on a rock wall and, inside, a chest.
I know. Traps, he told the sword. Instead of messing with the box, Hawke sent it to his inventory. Something to save for later, in his abundant spare time. Alba led the group up a ramp that came out of one of the trapdoors Hawke had detected before falling into a pit. They made it outside, to everyone’s relief.
“Any suggestions about my new level’s stats?” Desmond asked Hawke as they all walked back to Orom.
“Your Mana is on the low side. Not sure how much a Warrior uses it, though,” Hawke said. “I never read the game’s rules. I usually didn’t, not until I’d played a game for a while. Never expected my life would depend on knowing them.”
Desmond laughed. “I feel you. Yeah, most abilities eat both Mana and Endurance. So, you think Spirit is the way to go?”
“Intelligence too, but it’s mostly Spirit.”
“Yeah, I didn’t even put any points on Intelligence. Strictly average.”
“Well, increasing it doesn’t exactly make you smarter. You get a better ability to focus, remember things, stuff like that.”
“Good enough. Two for Intelligence, four for Spirit.”
Alba caught up to them. “Are you two plotting something?”
“Never, sweetheart,” Desmond said, leaning over and kissing her. He looked happy enough.
It feels good to be a second-hand matchmaker.
Hawke didn’t feel like arguing. He would have probably lost anyway.
* * *
From what Tava and other townies had told Hawke, the Temple of Shining Father hadn’t been a popular spot before the Undead attack. Most people had personal shrines to their gods, and only went to visit Patros and his novices when they needed magical healing. The Temple had gained a larger following since the zombie crisis, when over a third of Orom’s citizens had ended up seeking refuge there. There were half a dozen w
orshippers paying their respects to Shining Father when Hawke and Tava came in; they exchanged greetings with them and headed for the area behind the statue of the leader of the Olympian gods, where Nadia and Desmond had set their respawn site.
“What happens to you, when… you come back?” Tava asked while they waited.
“You wake up a moment after you die, at least that’s what it feels like. And you remember it all; the pain, things going dark. Not fun. It fades away, though, fairly quickly. Surprisingly quickly, to be honest. After a few days, I could look back on getting eaten by a bear without getting upset. But those first moments are bad. Being alone when it happens is worse.”
Tava hugged him.
“I was lucky. Saturnyx was with me both times. That helped a lot.”
“You are the sweetest.”
“Makes sense. It’s no picnic, getting killed, but if the pain stayed vivid in my mind, I’d probably turn into a confirmed coward.”
“I have seen you throw yourself into a torrent of dragon-fire,” Tava told him. “None may call you craven in my presence. Not even you.”
“It was a fire lizard, not a dragon.”
Tava laughed; Saturnyx had included her in the joke.
“I did use my head, didn’t I? But yeah, if that stuff still bothered me, I wouldn’t be able to laugh about it, I don’t think.”
They stepped back a little. Hawke had never seen a Reincarnation from the other side, so he was more than a little curious about it. It started with a dimming of the lights all around them. The Temple had candles along its walls to dispel the gloom of the late afternoon, but their brightness diminished noticeably for several seconds. Hawke felt a powerful presence hovering near or above him. It was something he had only experienced twice before, when he had met the goddesses Vitara and Tenebra. A moment later, the presence disappeared and Nadia was lying on the ground, clutching at her chest and screaming in agony. Or rather, screaming from the agony she had felt moments before, from her point of view.
Hawke and Tava held her tightly while she recovered. He felt her relax in their arms; it felt damn nice to hold two beautiful women who cared for him as much as he did for them, as well as knowing Saturnyx was watching over him like a bloodthirsty guardian angel. In that moment, he realized he could never abandon any of this. If it became possible to visit Earth and come back, he would – he still missed friends and family there – but he couldn’t trade that old life for what he had here.
Nadia kissed him deeply and he responded, hoping Priest Patros wouldn’t throw them out of the Temple for their scandalous behavior. Tava held them both while they did, and nobody said anything, so he figured it was okay.
“Thank you for being here,” she told them.
“I told you weren’t alone anymore.”
She nodded. “This time wasn’t as bad. Felt my legs break, that was bad, and just after you healed me, I got stabbed twice by those rock spikes. Critical hits, according to my combat log. It happened quickly, at least.”
“I’m sorry it happened.”
“There was something else, though. I think so, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
“Between the moment I felt everything went dark to just now, when I opened my eyes, there was a pause. I was floating in total darkness, but I wasn’t alone. Somebody was watching me. Calling to me, or maybe trying to drag me away. I’m not sure, but it scared me a lot. That never happened to me before, and it worries me.”
“We’ll figure out. Now, would you ladies care for some pizza at the Copper Kettle? I’m buying.”
“You’d better, Your Eminence!”
* * *
The Copper Kettle’s pizza of the evening was sausage and onions. Not Hawke’s favorite, but Dorrham made him a whole pie with only sausage, so that was fine.
“Desmond sent his apologies, by the way,” he told Nadia as they ate.
“Did he? He hasn’t been really talking to me much, outside business.”
“I think he’s getting over things.”
She nodded. “Glad to hear it. Maybe we can all be friends, like we used to.”
“It would make raiding and dungeon-crawling a lot more pleasant, that’s for sure,” he said. “And that’s what we’re going to be doing for the foreseeable future.”
“Yeah. Wonderful.”
“Speaking of wonderful, I have a theory about what happened when you respawned,” he told her. “But nobody is going to like it.”
“I can’t eat anymore, so you might as well spit it out,” she said, pushing her plate aside.
Hawke grabbed the leftover piece and wolfed it down, onions notwithstanding, while Tava nodded and ordered another round of drinks for the table. He realized that the Ranger was getting more than a little tipsy. He had never seen Tava drunk before. She might have never been intoxicated until now; the wine they drank at her father’s house had been pretty weak stuff and he was sure that Kinto didn’t allow his kids to get blotto when he was around.
“Okay,” he said. “I think it might have been the Necromancer.”
“Shit,” Nadia said.
“Pork shit,” Tava added, and giggled. “We’ll feed him to the pigs, and that is what he’ll become. Pork shit!”
“Maybe it’s time to switch to some nice herbal tea, sweetheart.”
“Why? I’m enjoying the wine.”
“Why do you think it’s the Necro?” Nadia asked him.
“He figured out a way to force all the Eternals in the area to spawn where he wanted. Maybe he is trying to do the same to anyone who tries to respawn near his territory.”
“Well, forget about getting a good night’s sleep. Maybe Tava has the right idea,” Nadia said, and took a long draught of the full cup of wine that Dorrham’s new server had put in front of her.
“Yes!” Tava said, emptying her own cup. “Another round!”
“Are you all right, Tava?”
She slammed the empty cup on the table, causing several patrons to stop their conversations and look at Hawke’s table. “Am I, my darling intended? Am I all right?”
He put his hand over hers. “Tell me what is wrong.”
“People keep dying. The Caseres. My friend Kora, who tried to kill me when she turned. I chased her like an animal and put an arrow in her.”
“I was there. You were doing the right thing.”
“It happens to all of us. I know it. My father taught me that. Growing up in a hunting lodge, you see it every day. Everything dies.”
Tava took a deep breath before continuing. “I’ve mouthed those very words to you, darling, thinking myself above such worries. But sometimes it feels wrong. I feel sad and empty, thinking of the dead.” She looked at her empty cup. “So, this is what wine does to you. No wonder Father always warned me about overindulging.”
“It’s been a rough day. Come on, let’s go home. Tomorrow, we’ll set a date for the wedding, okay?”
Her dark mood lifted. “Truly? I had never given much thought to such things, but now… Yes, what better way to deal with death than to celebrate life?”
“Can’t think of any,” he said.
Ten
The local calendar was ten months long, and some of the months’ names were pretty similar to the ones Hawke had grown up with, although the order was different. The current month was Maia, marking the end of spring. It was the twenty-fifth of Maia; Hawke had arrived at the Realms on Aprilis fifteen. And Tava wanted to have the wedding on Kintilis, which c
ame after Juno, because of her father’s name, Kinto, meant ‘the fifth’ in Vulgate and Kintilis was the fifth month of the year. In the local calendar, the year started in spring, in the month of Mars, to be exact, named after a god of war that nobody worshipped anymore.
Tava also insisted that the wedding date couldn’t be the first, seventh, or fifteenth of the month, which were considered ill days for such things. They’d settled on the tenth of Kintilis. In a little over a month, Hawke would be a married man. He mostly smiled and nodded and let Tava work out the details. Nadia offered to help as well. Tava had few female friends growing up. One had married and moved three weeks’ travel away, near the city of Alipnia. The other had been Kora, the girl the vampires had turned. She and Nadia were turning into bffs.
Hopefully he would only need to show up, say his vows, and enjoy the honeymoon. He had bought her a proper engagement ring, spending three gold in the process. The way Tava had grinned at him when he gave it to her – and shown him just how happy she was later that night – told him he’d done well. Nobody was going to throw him a bachelor party, and under the circumstances it would be kind of silly anyway.
Saturnyx told him while he left the house and got some business done.
“They are called thongs,” Hawke said. “I don’t think I want my second fiancée stripping for my first wedding’s bachelor party, and believe you me, that’s something I never thought would be coming out of my mouth.”
People lowered their heads as they passed him by in their customary show of respect. Nobody seemed angry or upset about seeing him, but most of them weren’t exactly ecstatic, either. There weren’t elections in Orom, although Hawke wanted to build up a Town Council and have at least some of its members be selected by the local people; something like union reps for different factions in Orom, maybe. One for the farmers, one for the common laborers, and maybe another for the merchants, although they probably could take care of themselves.
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