“OK, I admit, that smells good,” Kendra said as Eric turned over the Cultroraptor meat on the barbecue. He had a lot of meat on the grill, enough that he was experimenting with both unseasoned and a few different methods of seasoning the meat.
“In hindsight I should have spent a point on cook skill 0, I've always wanted to be a good cook.” Eric replied, basting one of the slabs of meat with a teriyaki sauce.
Tilly opened another bottle of Earth beer, and heard Guidry say “Get me one too ya?” She opened another bottle and handed it to the cajun soldier. King got up and got his own bottle. Eric's old boss John grabbed one too.
Eric brought out the first slabs of meat, cutting it into slices half an inch thick but still four inches long. He started to put together 'sample plates,' with the different seasonings. The others eagerly grabbed pieces, trying it out. “Delicious!” King exclaimed. Everyone else agreed, and surprisingly everyone agreed the version with no sauce or rub was the best tasting.
The friends ate, drank, and talked for a few hours, joking about their different jobs and abilities, reminiscing about Jenkins-and pouring one out for him, and just relaxing after a tense few days.
Eric got serious. “So, I went ahead and got another ability. Then I tested it.” He paused, “You know how we said we were hiking the area between Rincon Peak and Mica Mountain to look for a rift?”
Kendra figured it out first, “You found a rift?” She asked, excited.
“I found a rift, but I haven't explored it. I don't think anyone else has either. Anyone here want to check it out?”
John was the only one not interested, so he headed home, and King radioed his base. The expedition quickly became an official mission for King, leading to a quick stop at the base so Guidry and King could grab supplies.
The five of them took a Humvee into the hills. King had second platoon follow the group, riding in four more vehicles. After Thomson's demise, more of the soldiers in the company had 'snuck' into the rift, often with King's tacit support. King had then moved most of the troops who made that choice into second platoon, giving him a force with some extra punch. They even had a medic who had picked up a 'cleric' class. That he was a Mormon led some of the other troops to jokingly say they didn't want his god healing them, but everyone knew they were just joking-if things got hot they would be happy for the healing and not sweat the religion.
Thanks to military politics, King hadn't been promoted yet and was still XO, another Major had been found and put in charge of the company, but Major Jonah Young was part of what was being called the pro-rift faction. He was happy with his XO 'scouting' rifts and had signed off on this trip.
The terrain was rough but the Humvees were still able to traverse it. Sometimes the vehicles would have to swing around a ravine or cliff, or even backtrack when a valley turned out to be (for purposes of wheeled vehicles) a box canyon. As the terrain became more wooded and rough, there were more such delays, and their travel slowed. Still, after a while they were moving downhill, and then Eric spotted it. He called out, “There, a bit to the right.”
Guidry turned the vehicle and quickly spotted the tear in reality. A jagged purple oval rising from a clearing in the woods. It took another quarter hour to reach it, but then the platoon made a rough perimeter and King called in the location. Luckily the Arizona Army National Guard still had a few companies, so one would be assigned to the location-and a road would be built to get supplies there.
Once the 'paperwork' was finished and the regulations were satisfied, Eric led his friends into the rift.
The other side was still dry forest, but it was darker. The trunks of the trees were nearly black, the branches spread wide and the leaves were sparse. The sky was darker, even the earth was dark, like wet dirt even though it was dry, dust swirling with the wind. The rift was in a small clearing, and a narrow dirt road crossed through the edge of the clearing.
There were no sounds of birds or forest creatures, Eric wondered if that was a response to the humans appearing through the rift. Animals often freeze and quiet when something new appears. The other possibility was that there was no life in these woods.
To the left, at the top of a small mountain, was a dark stone castle. It looked as though the road might lead to it. Eric checked his quests:
Congratulations, you are the first through this rift, do you wish to claim this rift?
Quest given, break a few bones defeat 8 skeletons.
Quest given, which way did they go? learn what happened to the former population.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Eric accepted ownership of the rift. Then he frowned, “Did you all get a quest to find out what happened to the former population?” The others nodded.
Kendra said “I'm not sure I like the part about 'former' population, especially since we are supposed to kill skeletons. I've played enough video games to know what we are looking at.”
Captain King pointed at the Castle, “Should we start there?” The rest of the group nodded.
They moved to the road, and began walking uphill towards the castle. As soon as they left the clearing what little light they had from the sky disappeared. Captain King and Kendra pulled out flashlights, King affixing it to his rifle and Kendra holding it in her left hand to scan the ground in front of them so no one would trip.
A short while later they heard noises on the road up ahead. Everyone quickly moved into the woods. The sound was a combination of creaking and clacking. After a few minutes, a horse drawn wagon moved down the road-well, a horse skeleton drawn wagon. The eye-holes of the horse and the skeleton driver were filled with a purple light, and neither horse nor driver seemed to be paying attention to anything but the road.
Eric turned to the Captain, “You are the one with military experience,” he whispered, “What should we do?”
Captain King said “let them get as close as possible, then attack, we will be attacking from their back quarter by the time we act, so they are unlikely to see us. Also, you attack the horse, we will take the driver. I'm worried that only your light spell will work.”
Eric nodded, and as soon as the wagon passed the group, he threw both of his Sun Bolts into the horse, a moment later a hail of gunfire hit the driver, who disintegrated under the attack. The horse didn't fare any better, its head being shattered along with its spine. The wagon stopped on the road, and the group moved to the wagon.
Inside the wagon they found neatly stacked bones. Arms, legs, ribs, spinal bones, metacarpals, phalanges, etc. There were also three buckets of some sort of white paste.
Captain King quickly got them to pull the wagon to the edge of the road and slam it into a tree, which spilled one of the buckets of white gunk over the bones. As King arranged the parts of the horse by the 'crash site,' it gave the paste time to harden into a cement like mass, congealed around many of the bones. King said “Hopefully this will look like a crash, at least to a cursory investigation. We want to keep our actions hidden.”
Curious about how the horse counted, Eric checked his quest:
<
Quest break a few bones, defeat 8 skeletons (2/8).
<
Obviously the horse counted.
As the group got back on the road, they began to have a tense conversation. Tilly asked “What was that stuff?”
King answered, “Either bones to repair broken skeletons, or to make more, but I didn't see skulls. The way that white paste glued the bones together, I think it might have been a repair paste of some sort.”
Eric asked, “So what, they have a bone based society?”
Captain King just shrugged.
They realized they were getting closer to the castle and quieted down. As they approached, they saw the gate was open, and skeletons were moving into position. They were forming into large formations, 10 skeletons wide and 10 deep, blocks of 100. There were 7 blocks already and skeletons were continuing to pour from the gate.
Kendra said “I don't think we should try to take them on,” and Guidry just snorted.
“Ya tink?” He gave a short laugh, “Maybe we jus ask them nice like to only fight us a few at a time?”
“Yeah, for now we will watch, but I'm a bit worried.” Captain King said.
As they watched, the skeletons continued to leave the castle, until 15 blocks of troops were formed up outside. A skeleton in a purple robe walked out in front of them, and then suddenly turned, staring directly at Captain King.
“Retreat,” he hissed, and all five of them ran for the gate. They soon heard clanking sounds as skeletons rushed to follow them. Eric glanced behind him and sent a Sun Bolt into two of the lead skeletons, who dropped their spears and collapsed. “Good idea, Guidry, grenades.” King ordered, and the two military men pulled pins and dropped a pair of fragmentation grenades behind themselves.
A moment later, a pair of explosions bought the group time, and they reached the rift well before the skeletons.
“King, what should I set the rift to?” Eric gasped.
“What do you mean?”
“I can set the relationship between our worlds, anything from war to allied. I set the rift to the orcs to trade.”
“Trade sounds good about now,” King said, as they moved to the troops that had been left behind to set up the defensive perimeter. Those troops didn't look to confident after seeing their XO run out of the rift looking terrified.
Eric tried to set it, but it was set on 'conquest,' and all the other options were grayed out. “I can't change it, it is stuck.”
“Stuck on what?” King asked.
“Conquest.”
“Well fuck, I guess we fight then.” King said, “Maybe it was something we said, or how we started blasting as soon as we arrived?”
A moment later, the first skeletons began to exit the rift. King yelled, “They are hostile, don't let them take a bridgehead!”
The 34 troops that had dug in around the rift were disciplined, firing only enough to destroy the skeletons as they came through. But it was taking several bullets to take down each one that exited the rift. One after another, the skeletons moved through, were pulverized by a spray of bullets, and went down. Soon the area outside the rift was a pile of white, splintered bones and bone dust. Eric used Sun Bolt, each time taking a skeleton without help, but he ran out of mana quickly. Tilly moved forward a few times, shattering a foe with her spear before being forced to jump back as multiple skeletons used their own spears to jab at her.
Then Eric saw a soldier stop firing. The woman quickly grabbed a new magazine and seated it in her weapon, but Eric asked her, “how many clips did you bring?”
“Magazines, not clips, and we only have two spare mags each. This was my last one.” She answered.
Eric guessed that at least 300 skeletons had already moved through the gate and been destroyed. The solders had slowly moved backwards as the mass of skeletons on this side had grown, Eric guessed there were about 50 now.
King yelled, “first squad, two grenades!” Two of the soldiers pulled out grenades and threw them into the mass of foes, and an explosion threw bone chunks over everyone. Still, they kept coming through. Eric remembered how there were at least 1500 skeletons, they had only destroyed a quarter of them, and were running out of juice.