by Terra Snover
Chapter 4
The Fire
The Ns were running around with buckets of water, desperately trying to quelsh the flames that were now raging through the city. I saw a Human child crying, standing outside the wreckage of her burning house, a man holding the charred flesh of his arm, a Vampire woman desperately trying to unpin herself from the broken body of an airship. It was chaos. I didn’t know where to start, it seemed like everyone needed my help, but I was barely able to stay standing myself. But even if I was broken, I had to try. I moved over to the Vampire woman and grabbed the metal she was trapped under. “On three, push as hard as you can.” She gave a nod. “Okay, one, two, three.” I pulled as hard as I could, and between the two of us we managed to move the metal off her. “Thank you, my Queen.”
“Yeah, glad to help, but now you need to do something for me. Go help get those fires under control.” I pointed to the closest inferno.
“Yes, my Queen.” She stood up and ran to the well to get the necessary water. I moved over to the man with the hurt arm. “Are you okay?” He shook his head, not looking up to me, all his attention was on his arm. I looked around and spotted an Imp player. “You there!” The player looked around, confused. When he realized I was talking to him he ran over to me. “Do you have a greater healing potion?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Good, use it to heal this man.”
“Um, why?” he asked, looking even more confused.
“Because I am your queen!” I bared my teeth at him.
“Yeah, like, these aren't cheap, I’m not going to use it on some random dude.” My appreciation for players was fading quickly.
“You do it and get a reward,” I said, hoping the System would take the hint. It did take the hint, giving the player a quest to heal the hurt N. Like a trained dog, the player healed the N whose flesh turned from a chard black to the peach color the rest of his skin was. “Let it be known that for every hurt person you or your kin help, they will get a similar reward.” And just like that the System gave a citywide quest for every player in the city. I then grabbed the healed man’s arm and looked him in the eyes. “Now, I need you to go help that little girl.” I pointed to the crying girl.
“Yes, my Queen!” He jumped to his feet, probably just now noticing who he was talking to. He ran over to the girl and lifted her up, speaking words I couldn't hear. I walked around the corner to see a cluster of Hellspawn gawking at a burning building. “What are you all doing just standing there?! Fire doesn't hurt our kind, go help get people out of these buildings!” With my words they all jumped into action. I moved onto the next cluster of people, gave orders, then the next, then the next. After hours of moving around telling people what to do, I noticed that the sun had gone down and the plumes of smoke had lessened to a point where I could now see the stars. I was dead tired, my voice was rough and my health was still a hair away from my death. I was currently sitting on the outer wall of the city, away from just about everyone. I reached over my heart and felt the now dried blood that coated my shirt. I let out a sigh and leaned back, taking a look at the sky. I still enjoyed the skybox that was the night sky of AO. I laid there for probably an hour just watching as the stars slowly moved along the sky. “You look like you are an inch away from death.” Gelm the Necromancer came walking up to me.
“Well, good thing you are around, that way if I die you can bring me back.” I waved my arm at him as I spoke.
“Hellspawn are very hard to bring back,” he mused as he slowly lowered himself next to me.
“Good to know…” I paused and looked into his eyes. “What do you need?”
“Oh nothing, my Queen, I was just helping the relief effort when I spotted you up here.”
“And you decided to bug me?”
“If you would like me to leave, I can.”
“No, no, you are fine.” I shrugged.
“Thank you, my Queen, my bum leg was starting to bother me.” He looked up to the sky. For a few minutes we didn’t say anything. Just taking in the little twinkling lights that hung above us.
“Gelm, I may have a job for you.” I looked at his old, wrinkled face.
“May have?”
“This isn’t a demand, I would like your help.”
“And what can I help you with.” Gelm maneuvered himself to face me more.
“I would like you to start looking into magics that could help prevent something like this from happening to the city. Magical shields, fire proofing of buildings, water casting items, anything that could help.”
“I should be able to do some things like that, but know it will come at great expense; I will need quite a few things to be able to do such things.”
“Just do whatever you can, I don’t want my people to suffer like this anymore.”
“How benevolent of you, my Queen.”
“Don’t tell anyone I actually care. It would ruin my reputation.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Good man.” I gave a weak smile, I was in far too much pain to be able to give a real one.
“My Queen, may I enquire what happened today?”
“Really, I don’t know a lot, and that’s making me angry.”
“Well, my Queen, may I suggest calling upon your spy network?”
“You can, but I don’t know if I’ll actually do it.” That weak smile I had a few seconds ago, yeah, it was gone now. I knew exactly what he was hinting at, he wanted to speak to Leon.
“I know you have your differences with Leon, but he is still a skilled individual. He may be able to shed some light on this surprise attack.”
“Why must you make sense? If you were a raving loony I could ignore you when you say things I don’t want to do.”
“You still could ignore me, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea.”
“Ugh, fine, I’ll get in contact with him,” I mumbled in defeat. If I wasn’t in such bad shape I could have gone a few more rounds of defiant verbal sparring with Gelm, but alas, it was taking all my willpower to talk at all.
“I think you made a good choice, my Queen.” Gelm slowly got to his feet; I could hear his bones creak as he moved. “If you will excuse me, I’m going to see what else I can do to help. Thank you for your time, my Queen.”
“Thank you, Gelm, your counsel is always helpful.” I watched him as he hobbled down the nearby stairs of the wall.
I also tenderly sat up and groaned. “Well, now is as good a time as ever. Wind’s Song.” And with those simple words I cast the messaging spell and pictured Leon’s dumb face.
“Leon, I need to call you back. There was a huge attack on Void City from an unknown enemy today. There was massive damage to the city and the head culprit of the attack got away. Whatever you are working on can wait.” My words came out quickly and with almost zero emotion. I paused for a few moments, deciding if I wanted to add anything to the message spell. I couldn't think of anything. I let the image of Leon drift away, and as I did so a silver butterfly made of light and the words I spoke coalesced in front of my face and fluttered off. The small flicker of light grew faster and faster until it was so quick and so far even my insanely good vision couldn't track it. That message spell should be arriving to wherever Leon was in a matter of minutes to hours, depending on how far he was from me. It would have been faster for me to portal closer to the Alliance zone then send the spell, but I wasn’t super keen to be seeing Leon, so the longer I could metaphorically drag my heels the better.
“Well, I should be getting back to it,” I mumbled to myself as I stretched my arms and wings. I really didn’t know what it was but I did know I needed to get back to the castle, I couldn't just stay here on the wall. I needed to heal up and the only way I could do that was with sleep. I hated sleep here in AO, there were no dreams, no feeling of rest. One moment you were laying down and the next you were awake. But it was the only real way I could get my health back to full. Wait, no, there was one other way and it was far better than
rest. I smiled and got to my feet. I put out my hand and portaled to the castle.
Once I arrived, I avoided everyone, lurking behind corners, darting from door to door. I really just wanted to get some time to myself, and a soak in the hot springs was exactly what I needed. I managed to get to the baths without anyone important seeing me. I stripped off the bloody clothing I was wearing; this was harder done than said. The blood and ash had turned into a glue-like substance, making it feel less like stripping off my clothing and more like pulling off a scab. Eventually, I managed to get the mess of fabric off me and I stepped into the water. I watched as the black soot dissipated into the murky mineral-rich water. I let out a sigh as I moved deeper and deeper into the enormus bath.
There was a soft dripping sound as the moisture of the bathhouse coiled and fell to the water below. One of these droplets hit me square in the forehead, making me shudder and sink my body deeper into the steaming water. I watched as my health slowly returned; us N0s couldn't use healing spells to get back to full health, it was apparently a balance thing so we wouldn't become unkillable, but we could heal naturally. Things like sleep and healing hot springs would do the trick.
“My Queen, are you in here?!” I heard Tilln call from the bathhouse door, her words echoing across the large bath.
“Nope, there is no one here! This voice you are hearing is just your imagination!” I shouted back.
“I found her!” Tilln shouted to my apparent search party.
“Ignore the voice that you think is Var Zargronith!” I was calling as Tilln rounded the corner of the entryway.
“My Queen, we were worried.”
“Nothing to worry about, just a stab wound in the heart, nothing a good soak can’t fix.” I sunk a bit lower into the water and blew some bubbles with my mouth.
“You were stabbed in the heart?!” Tilln exclaimed, her eyes darting above my head for a split second, probably checking my health bar. “My Queen, we need to get you into bed so you can recover.”
“Nope, bathtime.”
“But, my Queen!”
“I said bathtime.” I narrowed my eyes at her, letting her know I meant business.
“I… Well… Sigh, as you wish, my Queen.” Tilln sounded defeated. “May I ask what we should do about the prisoners?”
“Prisoners?”
“Well, I say prisoners, but the enemy stopped moving after the battle.”
“Why in the world would they do that?” That was so dumb, why shut down their army just because of one loss?
“I don’t know, my Queen, but there are a lot of the creatures.”
“Hum…” I pondered for a moment. “Give them to Alexander. I bet he would love to tinker with the clockwork men.”
“As you wish, my Queen.” Tilln bowed. She then turned to the door but stopped and looked back to me. “My Queen, may I ask you something?”
“If you must.”
“What did these things want?”
“They wanted to kill me and take over the Empire,” I said like this was nothing.
“Are they allied with the Alliance?”
“I don’t think so, otherwise they would have coordinated an attack with the other forces. No, I think this was a new force that we’ll need to deal with.”
“Understood, my Queen. I will tighten our defences!” Tilln turned back to the door and exited the bathhouse. I let out a sigh. Why would the Game Masters make a new force and have it attack me right before the Alliance got a power boost? Why tell me that the Machina would be joining me and then have them attack? What the hell was going on? My ponderings were cut off by a purr of a voice coming from behind me. “Ah, I see, taking a post battle soak. I knew you were a creature after my own heart.” It seemed after Tilln left Hell’a replaced her. Hell’a was already stripping off her thin black dress, letting it slide down her extremely thin body to the floor. “It has been some time since we last bathed together.”
“Yeah, I guess it has,” I grumbled. That was by design, Hell’a had a way of making me uneasy, especially when we were alone.
“Well, we shall enjoy ourselves tonight.” She took a step into the steaming water. The ripple she made as she moved slowly traveled across the top of the spring until it hit my body. “That was some battle.” Hell’a moved to the spot right next to me.
“I didn’t see you or your clan there.”
“We were a bit late to the party, it took some time for word to get to us. But we did help with the boarding parties of those flying ships.” She smiled, showing her fangs. “Those will become very useful if we can figure out how they work. We will be able to strike the Alliance with a power they won't be able to deal with.” Hell’a was right, maybe that was why this happened?
“Var, you were stabbed in the heart!” Amber rushed into the bath.
“I’m fine!”
“You need to rest!” Amber shouted back to me. I noticed Ral close behind her.
“Really, I’m fine. I just want to sit in this bath and relax! Will you all just let me do that?!”
“I’m sorry, Var, I’ll leave you be.” Amber started to leave.
“Nope, you two are joining us,” I informed them. There was no way I was going to stay in here with only Hell’a!
“What?!” Ral looked nervously around the bathhouse.
“Like I said, you two get undressed and get in the bath.” I pointed to them then the water. “This is not a request.”
“Var, I…” Amber blushed. “Sigh, as you command.”
“So forceful, I do enjoy that in a lady.” Hell’a licked her lips.
“Hell’a, you are incorrigible…” I placed my pointer finger and thumb on the bridge of my nose and squeezed.
“Oh, bath party!” I looked up as soon as I heard Thaz shout. “Count me in!”
“Thaz!” I shouted and got to my feet.
“By the Void,” Ral mumbled and turned an even deeper red when her eyes locked on my naked body.
“Yes, that’s my name.” Thaz smiled as she took off her boots. “Oh, is it okay if my friend joins us?” I looked to see that there was another Lamorea standing next to Thaz. The name tag above her head read, ‘P-12,321, Lily So’rad.’ I squinted. Really, that was the best name Lily could come up with, Lily So’rad? Not to mention how she looked. She had the exact same braided hair, the same golden eye color, same height, the only difference was the orange fur covering her body.
“Yes, you can bring a friend.” I slowly slid back in the water.
“Thanks! Oh, and I’m Lily.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lily,” Hell’a said, narrowing her eyes at Lily. Knowing Hell’a and how smart she was, she was piecing together that this player was in fact Lily the GM. I looked over to Amber and Ral and saw two unexpected expressions on their faces. Ral looked pissed, she was glaring at Lily. Amber, on the other hand, was ignoring Lily all together, she was doing that thing where she was looking everywhere but at the person. I puzzled at these two for a moment. But I didn't get to puzzle long because a gray fuzzy cannonball came splashing into the pool. Apparently, being held hostage by a videogame didn’t slow Thaz’s playfulness and insanity. There was a huge splash and water came cascading over my head. A moment later, the top of Thaz’s head came poking out of the water. “Charming, as always, Thaz.” I squinted at the drenched Lamorea.
“Girl, if you get my hair wet again I’ll slit your neck and drink all your blood.” Hell’a bared her teeth at Thaz.
“You would need to catch me first,” Thaz giggled, and started to paddle across the water. “Come on, you three, get in here!” Thaz motioned at Amber, Ral, and Lily. It took Ral and Amber a long time to undress considering all the armor they had on. I tried to not watch Amber get undressed, it wasn’t cool to order someone to strip down then watch them as they did so. I looked around the bathhouse for something to hold my attention. And there was Lily, someone I had to, more than likely, fake not knowing. “So, Lily, how do you know Thaz?”
�
�Oh, we met the other day on an adventure and have been inseparable ever since.” Lily eyed me, and the look she gave was one of please, don’t make this hard. I caught her meaning and was about to move on but it seemed Hell’a had other ideas. “Lily, you look so familiar, have we met before?” Hell’a mused. It was easy to tell Hell’a had figured exactly who Lily was, but she was set on digging for more information, like she was known to do.
“Maybe I have been playing from day one.” Lily cracked a fake smile. That was the perfect response for putting Hell’a on the defensive. It was an answer to her question, but in a way Hell’a couldn't respond.
“I see.” Hell’a seemed annoyed she was shut down so easily. It was kind of nice seeing her get shut down for once.
“So, Var, it seems like we missed some insane things today.” Thaz moved close to me. “What are you going to do with those skyships? Can I have one? I could be a sky pirate! I would fly the open skies of AO and take what I want for Queen and Empire!”
“I’ll think about it.” How could she be acting like nothing was wrong? But Thaz had always been an enigma to me.
“I want a fast one, oh, and can I paint it purple and silver, also I’ll need a crew and-”
“Thaz, I said I’ll think about it, that was far from a yes.” I placed my hand on her head like you would to calm down an excited puppy.
“But she brings up a good point; how will we distribute those mechanical marvels? I would also like to request some for my kin.” Hell’a moved a bit closer to me as she spoke.
“Everyone, leave her alone!” Amber exclaimed as she moved into the water. “She doesn’t need to make any decisions right at this moment, nor does she need to give any favors. She is your queen and you will treat her with the respect she deserves!”
