Gabrielle’s posture flopped as they dragged her ahead. She mumbled something.
He’d let her down—simple as that. His dumb plan had collapsed, and this playthrough was finished. The only thing left was to enjoy a sacrifice—good footage. Perhaps the Trolls would be lenient. That monthly tribute had to count for something, right?
Around the Town Square gathered thirty Trolls. They danced and sang in tongues to the rhythm of a dozen drums spaced evenly around the sacrificial post, which was now tipped with a jade carving of a monkey head. The monkey’s eyes were twinkling stars.
Faenin’s mate stared blankly at the storeroom’s door, her rags soiled and singed around the edges, for a ring of green and blue fire burned around her, seemingly fueled by nothing. By magic. And there, at the rim of the gathering, Faenin watched with four other Sun Elves. Three males and one female, all malnourished to varying degree. But they were all quite beautiful. They were truly a fair race like in many other high-fantasy settings. Tripe, but familiar. Rowan liked it.
Jin’tal, waving her staff as though it were a giant stirring spoon, cackled to the rhythm of the drums, chanting a spell. Magic poured from her staff’s emerald as a stream of sparkling points of light, a funnel of shamanic power keeping the flames alive. She croaked a word louder than the rest. Silver daggers rose from the flames and circled in on Faenin’s mate.
And Gabrielle, crazy ol’ Gabrielle, was clapping and giggling to this depraved scene, bobbing up and down like a happy overgrown sunflower. She knew how to play her part well. This was making great footage.
Rowan tried to join in, but the Troll’s grip on his arm was crushing to a torturous degree, his lack of Constitution not helping here. Faenin was not helping here; his pitiful eyes bored guilty holes into his chest. Why did he have to stare like that? He should’ve protected her. It was his own damned fault. Pathetic.
Jin’tal declared: “It is… time! Zar’took! Take the life of this Sun Elf scum… and hear our plea! Grant us gold! Grant us… iron! And… reveal the true faces of these… imposters!” Her staff pointed at Rowan and Gabrielle for a heartbeat, then at the jade monkey head.
Rotating, the six daggers formed a semicircle in front of Faenin’s mate. Those pristine edges glinted green, sharp enough run a bear through. Fear emerged from within those slanted green eyes.
“No!” Faenin bellowed.
The Trolls laughed at him, threw pieces of trash and half-eaten mushroom-pike kebabs. Savages.
“No! Help her!”
“Ehehehehehehehehe,” Gabrielle laughed, now dancing with the Trolls. She was a jungle girl missing only a palm-leaf skirt and vine tiara, her arms flailing to the tribal music. “Hinga hooga! hinga hooga! Hinga hooga!”
“Curse you, Demons!” Faenin’s voice broke.
“Hinga hooga! Zar’took will smite ya!”
The daggers drew back. Jin’tal said two words in that magical language, her voice echoing over everyone else.
Faenin was a defeated man. His face contorted, hideously if that were possible. He cried.
A spark ignited in Rowan He had to do something, needed to. These Trolls didn’t deserve life. All thirty Agility points activated, he drove his free hand into the Troll’s arm. Fingernails dugs deep, drew blackish-blue blood. The Troll hissed, and its grip loosened enough for Rowan to break free with an elbow to its ribs. Not a millisecond spared, he dashed through a gap among the dancers, jumped onto flaming embers. He winced in the pain, then threw himself at Faenin’s mate.
Six sharp points drove into his back, piercing and shredding flesh and bone.
Pain. Pain. Then more biting pain as blood filled his lungs and stomach, geysered up his throat into his sinuses. His health bar drained to a fraction of a fraction. A final dagger sliced into his heart and skewered him all the way through. His eyes briefly failed. He hadn’t ever felt such pain, and this was apparently reduced many-fold.
If nothing else, he saved a hot Sun Elf girl, his body pressed against her ample bosom. Her wide eyes and wavy onyx hair was mesmerizing up close. Simply beautiful. She wasn’t anything comparable to his wife Gabrielle, of course.
13
Sometimes, the worst happens.
Minor Food Poisoning (19 hours remaining)
-5% maximum Agility and Constitution stat points
Belly aching, Gabrielle refused to glance at that glowing red debuff icon taunting her for eating those tasty, tasty raw mushrooms Row had forced her to leave behind. Instead, she danced to her heart’s content. Her arms pumped to the beat. Her hips swayed to the rhythm. Her legs hopped one to the other, taking her on a merry journey around the totem pole with the partying Trolls. Now this was her type of game. “Hinga hooga! Hinga hooga!” she sang with them.
Then, between a drum and a child Troll, Row sprinted through with incredulous speed like a cheetah right at the totem—as the knives were about to claim Faenin’s unreasonably pretty mate! Dummy! He spread his arms protectively, and the knives planted themselves into his back. Blood sprayed and gushed from his mouth. He collapsed onto her, his face on her neck. It looked like he was attacking her in all the wrong places, irking Gabrielle in all the wrong ways. However, there was no reason to fuss. That Sun Elf was just an NPC, a bit of data in a computer. Nothing more, nothing less.
The drumming stopped. The Trolls froze as if the whole game paused. But Jin’tal’s pretty staff didn’t stop feeding magic into the jade monkey head.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle kept on dancing. “Hinga hooga! Hinga hooga!” The wires in her head were short circuiting, the situation too farcical to process at a human speed.
Row is dead! Uh oh. Uh oh. What to do? What to say? Keep dancing!
“Hinga hooga! Hinga hooga!” Why did he have to do that? Just when Gabrielle was winning over their trust again. She tore her eyes from him, the bloody sight now too grotesque for them to bear. His upper body was broken at a horrible angle, bent like a pancake hanging from a fork. His dirty linen outfit was more blood than linen, dripping. It looked all too real, as though he died for real, taken from her all too soon. Though this was just a game—he was alive, she mentally repeated to herself. Still alive! Not dead! She declared, arms wide, “The dummy is dead! Aahahahahaha!”
A Troll said, “This one has lost its mind.”
“The dummy is dead! The dummy is dead!” Her aching belly worsened slightly as she pulled a muscle under the rib. “Ding dong the dummy is dead!” Dead, but not really. Phew. Non-terminal. That ridiculous dream from not long ago threatened to float to the surface, Rowan dying in her arms from cancer of all things. No, he wasn’t dying for real. No way. He was a healthy boy with no instabilities or illnesses whatsoever. She yanked the memory of that damned dream back down where it belonged.
The trolls started to unfreeze, and Jin’tal cackled her grossness. “Let her be! It is… no matter! Zar’took will also take this imposter. He is… no Demon!” Her mystic chanting resumed, staff waving in figure-eights and spirally circles.
“Hinga hooga! Hinga hooga!” Gabrielle sang, the party in full blast again, the drumming vibrating in the air.
She let her body be lost to the sacrificial ritual dance, her mind going at a million miles per hour trying to spin up a solution to this icky mess. What could be done now? Her partner in crime was dead, and he was without doubt going to respawn at that nightmarish Orc camp. Maybe it was really over. These Trolls would never part with a hundred gold and let her build a Town Hall. Row was right—time for a redo. Time to just watch the show.
Jin’tals arms spread eagle. She yelled a single mystic word at the top of her lungs. The jade monkey head made a high-pitch whistling noise and glowed a blinding green light. A beam shot into skies, parting the clouds, and something massive was coming from way out there.
Somehow not dead, Rowan coughed and gurgled blood. “Draesear.” His voice was layered with a distorted echo. “Hear my call. I offer you these Woodland Trolls, and the corpse pile in the forest. Unleash our sealed power, a
nd cast these Trolls into the pit of fire.” His dying eyes sought out Gabrielle. “Come. Drink. There isn’t time.”
“Kay!” she chirped and simply went with the craziness.”Oh, Row! You’re actually dying! I thought ya were just playin’ around!” Voice breaking, she pretended to weep over her dying husband while squeezing him like wringing a warm bloody sponge. He did mean drink blood, correct? Like a Gabby-shaped mosquito, she sucked from from a gushing wound under his neck where a silver dagger punched out a slit hole. The taste of smooth, salty iron filled her mouth, coated her tongue, and flowed down her throat. She almost threw up as the gross liquid glopped into her tummy.
Then the fun came.
A rush unlike any other swept her body from ear to toe. Her heart was the definition of jittery, bouncing from rib to rib. She swallowed a second mouthful. Incoherent Troll noises were static in her ears, and a brain-wrenching pulse was hitting the side of her head, bumping her back to the joys of Sunday morning baking. She could smell the chocolate again! She was Gabby the unleashed, and something even more delicious was was coming. Something spectacular was coming forth from deep within her being…
And from up there—from the clouds.
A cosmic horror approaching, from behind the moon, a shadowy figure emerged through clouds. Its head was the size of mountains, its dual horns curved forward like a bull’s. Its dark maw parted. And the flames of Hell burned within. Brimstone and charcoal scents, and a hint of chocolate, blew down on the gathering.
Draesear’s low voice rumbled throughout the valley, “Shaman Jin’tal… Rowan LeMort… Your requests have been granted, but not all.”
Jin’tal stepped back. “Who speaks?! You are not Zar’took!”
A mighty, mighty roar blasted from Draesear’s maw. Ghostly fire consumed the world.
Gabrielle stared a happy loving colors. Her feet fell forward. The ground was pulled from beneath her soles. She tumbled through a fun place.
A multitude of colors, sounds, and smells assaulted her senses. Words couldn’t fully describe what she saw while she fell—like patterns within patterns constantly changing and folding in on themselves, infinitely complex, infinitely woven with sweet scents and the voices of angels singing lullabies. The cubes morphed into spheres, which shattered into tiny cones and squiggly shapes she didn’t have names for. It was like being in high school maths class again in this world of weird geometry. Was this heaven? Or Hell? Was she dead? She didn’t mind. She merely giggled and went with the flow, went with this journey toward the light.
Then from her heart, a spike of magnificence erupted and branched outward to her limbs and fingertips. The heat, the power flowing through her veins, ignited with an odd mix of pain and pleasure, perfectly balanced with each other, consuming her flesh. Her inner fire baked her alive as though she were a muffin. Hopefully, she wasn’t going burn like the last batch.
Hehehe.
Reality shattered, and she was sent flying through something entirely different. Trees the size of skyscrapers stabbed the sky, and they grew from the sky, and they grew in the air, roots suspended nowhere and everywhere.
The chatbox faded back in, shaking.
Tasha NaMuso (To Gabby LeMort): What’s happening? Your entry on my friend list is flipping out!
Something is definitely flipping out over here! Like me!
Another shatter. Another flip of her body. Another world devoured her whole. Stars floated by, as though she were flying through outer space. But how could she breathe? The air was sweet and sour.
Shatter. Another world, and another. For whole minutes, for seemingly hours, she burned and gazed transfixed into the multiverse. Worlds of sand, of glassy pyramids, of coral reefs and two-headed sharks came and went like hallucinations in a house of mirrors.
“Weeeeeeeeeeee,” she sang as she was sent flying through a world of giant ice cream cones and other sweet goodies. She could eat forever, but when she licked, reality shattered a final time.
Hard brick patterns pushed against her spine. The cloudy night sky was back, the pretty twin moons shining through. Her breaths came at a nonexistent pace. And everything was on fire, literally. Every last wooden building was burning, smoke filling her lungs, but she wasn’t uncomfortable. She breathed the black smoke as though it were clean air.
A gold game window unfurled in front of her nose.
Fate Event: Demonborn
With help from the Woodland Trolls, your Demonic self has been unsealed from deep within. Unlike the mundane, unchanging Humans, Demons may grow to possess a range of strengths and weakness—and ultimate powers at great cost. Choose your path wisely in your character sheet.
So Row somehow pulled through. Or maybe it was my Luck points. Definitely the latter.
Gabrielle stood. The Town Square was empty, and things were screaming bloody murder from not far away. “Hehehehe… sweet.” Her voice was bolstered with a minuet distorted echo, nigh unnoticeable if she weren’t listening to herself. And her hands… The skin on the back of her hands and arms was stark gray, bordering ivory white toward her palms. She ran a finger down her ribs, prodding her new body for weaknesses. The skin was smooth and soft yet firm as moist clay with a permanent dusty-like texture she hadn’t ever felt before. Not Human was the only way to describe it.
Sudden pings cascaded at the right.
Rowan LeMort suggests you to retreat.
Rowan LeMort suggests you to retreat quickly.
Rowan LeMort demands you to retreat this instant!
The chatbox was shaking crazily.
Rowan LeMort (Party Chat): Get up!!! It’s coming for you!!!
She blinked. Her eyes jittered left and right.
Gabby LeMort: What’s coming?
Rowan LeMort: Just RUN for the GATE!!!
Gabby LeMort: Kay! ^_^
And she was running, the roar of something terrible nearing from the right. Was this part of the hallucination? It surely felt as so in her aching belly. That food poisoning debuff hadn’t been cured. Grrrrr. How could mushrooms so delicious be so tainted?
14
Moments earlier…
Draesear, the Demon Lord of Chaos, shrieked into the night, releasing control of a lowly Demonborn’s tongue.
Drowning in blood was uncomfortable, Rowan had once thought, but drowning in his own blood in this world was a different experience, one which he would ask for seconds if it weren’t for the wrenching claustrophobia that came next.
An ashen palm, tattooed with carved runic symbols, reached down from the heavens and guided Rowan feet-first into a black bottomless pit opening in the brickwork. Blood was squeezed from his lungs, and Draesear’s red-hot finger was pushing down on his skull, but he was not burned at the touch. His wounds were healing from the magic seeping into him.
He descended into an indescribably euphoria. All five senses were sharpened, and he gained a sixth that he didn’t have a name for—magical energy, a type of heat he could see. But this magic sense was woefully limited to a less than inch in each direction.
He didn’t know how long he had fallen down the tunnel when polygons and curved shapes all sizes spiraled around him. Lines and points distorted, gyrated, and shattered into more complex shapes, which then shattered into even more complex patterns. Beautiful, like an infinite Mandelbrot zoom except in three dimensions.
When angelic figures flew around him, soprano opera sang at a slow tempo. Were they angels? Or Demons? He couldn’t say; they were only ghostly silhouettes among the fractals, and the fractals were sweet, he tasted, as pieces of shattered triangles landed on his tongue. Magic itself was sweet, bitter, spicy. All flavors.
Despite all the loveliness, a foul odor permeated the beauty, a hideous overtone to the mathematical perfection he couldn’t quite spot. He caught a humanoid-esque figure in the far distance. A boy? Those childish eyes were bloody and festering with maggots, and his skin was rotted, but Rowan wasn’t sure. The image had come and went too briskly.
He check
ed Gabrielle’s party entry only to find her icon faded out. Much of the game interface was missing or grayed-out. The logout button, thankfully, was available, and a glass tear at the bottom was gradually emptying of blood. A helpful window expanded.
[Divine Intervention] Race Change: Demon (89%)
Requires Demonic Heritage.
Catalysts used: Demonic Blood
Ah, so that’s why Draesear wanted Gabrielle to drink my blood.
But she had only drank a mouthful while he had guzzled and drowned in cups worth. How much slower was her transformation?
The tear finished draining, and the fractals shattered one final time. Blueish yellow flames flared up his face, and then he was back at the Town Square, healed. A golden window expanded before him, but there was no time to read. Mayhem was unfolding in real time. Molten lumps were raining from the burning skies.
Rowan sidestepped a ball of falling sulfur, then sprang into a drunkard’s run, unused to this new Demonic body. Trolls were rolling on dirt, doing all these could to smother their flaming hides, a chorus of agonized howls crying all around. Their suffering was delight to behold.
Over there, by the unfinished town hall, Jin’tal and her personal guard were casting unimpressive water spell skills in a futile attempt to save this settlement, the Sun Elf slaves aiding with water buckets ferried from the lake. But Draesear had left.
Gabrielle was also gone—totally gone from this world.
Her party entry, however, was bright and colored—alive and logged-in. But she off dozing at a faraway land. Rowan couldn’t stop from taking a breath of relief, inhaling smoke. A coughing reflex didn’t follow even after three lungfuls. The smoke had a characteristic charred wood taste minus the overpowering sulfur. It dawned on him: he did not need to breath anymore.
From the left, that larger guard Troll seized Rowan by the arm in a powerful grip, spear at the ready. “Trickster! What have you done?!”
Demonborn's Fjord Page 11
