The door to my inn room exploded off of the hinges, immediately vanquishing any thoughts of sleep that were still lingering in my mind. It clattered along the ground and came to rest over by the table at the side of the room.
Before I really knew what was happening I rolled out of bed and stood facing the door. Walking into the room was a man with long green hair that reached down to at least his mid back. His fine and thin features were mostly hidden by a distinct suit of silver colored steel armor. On his chest was the all too familiar appearance of a set of large green antlers. I clicked my tongue. What the fuck was one of the Verdant Knights doing here in the middle of the night?!
The knight stepped slowly into the room. He had a longsword already drawn from its sheath and he held it in my direction. This was the firs time since the first night I’d stayed here that I was really glad for having such a big room. Thanks to its size, the knight was still a pretty large distance away. He wouldn’t be able to get to me immediately. Before he did, I had to think of some way out of this.
Behind him, I could see a group of other people all standing in the hallway. Their green robes made me assume that they were the same priests we’d seen the day before… but what were they doing here? I’d never heard of even an NPC being able to not only come into a safe zone, but enter into an inn room like this… had we been too careless?
I Walked slowly to my right, inching over to a small nook built into the far wall of the room that housed one of two windows. The moonlight pouring through cast a silver light across the floor but as I moved in front of it the room darkened.
The knight took one more step into the room and I found myself instinctively shying backwards away from his blade.
“Adventurer Corian. For your transgressions against these woods and their protectors you are to be judged by the spirits!” The man said.
“You’ve got the wrong guy! I don’t know what happened to that deer, and I really don’t know what you want me to tell you!” I pleaded. If there was some sort of line that would get the knights to stop and just hear me out then I was determined to find it. Unfortunately, the knight shook his head. His green hair flowing from side to side.
“You lie. We saw you at the scene of that horrid crime. But do not fear your death. When you fall to my blade, your spirit will be questioned and you will bear your sins to prove your guilt. Should you be innocent, however, the forest shall give you its blessing in the next life! Either way, your tale ends here.” His voice was thick with malice, and as he spoke his mouth twisted into an awful smile. For supposedly being a just and true knight of the forest, something felt… wrong… about this guy. A bead of sweat dripped down my face.
He lowered his body and leveled his long sword towards me. His back foot pushed against the floor and his left hand moved to the top of his blade. Wait… that was! Shit!
I barely had time to react before the knight’s body shot forwards. I leapt back with all my might and prayed. My back impacted the glass and for a minute I thought that I’d bounce off and be run through by the knight’s own Step Slash… but just as I’d started to worry, I felt the cool material pressing against my back give way. The window shattered and I felt myself begin to fall. From inside the room, I heard the sharp sound of the knight’s attack, followed by a frustrated click of the tongue.
“Do not let him escape! The vermin who desecrate these woods must be purged!” He said.
“Of course, Sir Atras!” a symphony of voices called from inside the building. Nothing’s ever that easy, huh?
Due to jumping out of the window backwards I wound up landing at a pretty awkward angle. I did my best to roll but that didn’t stop my HP from dropping by about five percent… I guess that made sense, I had just dropped a full story after all… not that I had time to think about something like that right now.
As soon as I pulled myself to my feet the door to the inn burst open and a green cloaked woman began to call to her fellows. I didn’t wait for them to show up, instead I took off at a sprint towards the main road.
Maybe I could get out of town. Maybe I could make it to the guild hall and find someone or something there that was capable of keeping me safe. Right now I just couldn’t stay here. Not with one of those knights prowling around… Especially not when it seemed like they really wanted to kill me.
I wound down the three side roads that connected a path back to the entrance to the town, hearing the sounds of shouting and searching in the distance. It wasn’t just coming from the inn… these guys were all over the place!
Fortunately, the trip back to the main road wasn’t blocked or guarded. Though I did hear people shouting just off of the narrow paths I was taking, I made it out onto the street in one piece.
I slid out onto the main road and briefly looked right, towards the direction of Origin. My instinct was to leave the city, but even from here I saw that was not possible. Green cloaks lined the road and patrolled the street by the entrance. I didn’t waste any more time considering that as an option and turned my attention towards the guild hall, picking back up into a sprint. As soon as they spotted me, the green cloaks along the road all joined the chase.
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I was hoping that at least the main road would have some other NPCs or if I was lucky some players that could help me, but the whole town felt deserted… it was as if I was the only one here.
A clicking noise caused me to look back over my shoulder and as soon as I did I veered to the side in a desperate move. Not half a second later, a crossbow bolt whipped past where I’d just been standing and clattered off of a nearby building. Great, now I was being shot at…
“These annoying guys…” I groaned, spurring my legs to keep me moving further and further away from my pursuers. There was little that I could do about the archers… except… wait…
There was one thing I hadn’t used yet, one way to make sure that at the very least I wasn’t about to get shot in the back of the head. I guess that a trial by fire was better than nothing…
Of course I was thinking about my new thrown weapon skills. Specifically the ones that involved knocking arrows and stuff out of the air, but as I ran down the road I reached down and hastily grabbed a stone. I probably only had one shot at this… if those green cloaks were the same level as those knights, even one random arrow probably would do enough damage to kill me…
The sound of a crossbow loosing a bolt came from behind me and I turned, throwing the stone with all my strength. Around half way through the motion of the throw I felt the invisible hand of the system changing my form. I smirked and whipped the stone out of my hand. I didn’t wait to see the results, but the sound of metal scraping against stone, followed a few seconds later with the sound of an arrow cutting through some underbrush told me that the projectile had been knocked off it’s trajectory.
Still, I couldn’t stay on the main road. This place was crawling with soldiers, and in the wide open and fairly straight road I’d be at a massive disadvantage when it came to dodging arrows or attacks. Furthermore, if the way to Origin was blocked, there was a good chance the way out past the guild hall was as well. I was boxed in, and so my best bet was to lose these guys in the maze of paths that made up the town.
I ducked off the main road and began winding my way through the narrow streets. It was risky, the town was almost like a maze after all and there was no way that these guys would’t know how to get around a place they lived so close to, but staying on the main road meant getting cut off or caught. I was sure of that.
There had to be something I could do to shake them… if I could just get a few minutes to myself there was a chance I could puzzle this out and find a place to lay low while the search concluded, but at the moment that didn’t seem likely.
The only thing that I was able to do at this point was run. Put one foot in front of the other, and use what precious time that I wasn’t making decisions to try to come up with some sort of plan to escape the town. Maybe find a way over the fence somewhere and run back to Origin… I doubted that the knights would follow me all the way back to the starting city, though that boss we’d fought the other day had been able to cross zones as well so there were no guarantees. Ugh, this was a pain in the ass!
No matter how I ducked dove and twisted my pursuers never gave up. Sounds of shouts and calls from surrounding roads pushed me further and further into the maze of paths, I’d already long since completely lost my bearings. It was only a matter of time before… shit!
A pair of green robed soldiers slid into view along the path in front of me. They leveled their crossbows at me and shouted in alarm. All I could hear from every direction were the sounds of other people closing in. What do I do? What do I…
A shimmer in the darkness drew my eyes to a thin path I hadn’t noticed leading off of the road I was on. It was coming up fast. For a second I thought I could see the faintest silhouette of golden eyes gazing out of the alleyway.
I didn’t have time to ask questions. I threw myself around the corner and a moment later the sound of an arrow smashing against the corner where I’d just been standing sent a shiver down my spine.
Sure enough, running ahead of me was a very familiar visage. The spirit that had appeared in the woods… it felt like it was looking back at me over its shoulder. It was lower to the ground this time, almost like it was running on all fours… like some sort of animal.
Its golden eyes vanished around another corner so suddenly that I almost fell over trying to push myself around the turn. All around the sounds of my pursuers were ever present in my ears. With each beat of my virtual heart I felt my blood coursing through my body desperately willing it to run that much faster. I had to get away.
I burst around another corner and skidded to a halt. my eyes went wide.
It was a dead end, but the spirit didn’t stop running. It leapt forwards and phased through the short wall at the end of the path, disappearing from sight. I clicked my tongue. Was this where I was supposed to stop, or… no… This had better work!
Putting all of my faith in my intuition I picked up all the speed I could, and as soon as the wooden pathway ended I leapt as high as I was able and tucked my knees up to my chest.
My feet passed a few inches above the wall and I extended my legs down to catch my body on the other side, but…
My heart sank. Below me was nothing… Well, there was something, just not ground. It turns out that the hill at the west side of town wasn’t a hill so much as it was a cliff, and from where I jumped I could only see the tops of trees that littered the forest below me. It took every ounce of effort I had not to scream as I plunged towards the ground.
The impact was surprisingly mild for how far I’d fallen. I thanked the treetops for that, though hitting nearly every branch on the way down had dropped my HP even further. A quick glance showed me that I was only at about half health. If I made it out of this alive, potions were definitely the first thing that I was going to be looking into…
I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. Fog rose up from the forest floor and hung in the early morning air. Though it was still definitely summer I felt a chill run across my body. The visibility was so bad that I could only see about three rows of trees in any direction before the forest was eaten by the fog.
Sparing a passing glance up towards where I’d jumped from, I heard nothing. Not the sound of boots. Not the shouts of soldiers and knights. Nothing. I couldn’t even really see past the canopy towards the cliff that I’d jumped down. It was an unsettling feeling and immediately made me feel like I’d lost my bearings. If I didn’t have access to a map at the wave of a finger I never would have realized which way I’d come from, and which direction led away from the town.
I turned to the West and started moving away from the town. Just as I’d started to walk further into the fog, that same pair of golden yellow eyes stared me down. After a moment, the spirit turned its gaze deeper into the fog-swept woods and began to walk northwest, further into the forest.
Not waiting for those knights to realize what had just happened, I hurried to follow the thing that, up to this point, had only led me into deeper and deeper trouble…