Despite our exuberance, we didn’t immediately come across any monsters to fight. The overgrown cobblestone street was empty as far as the eye could see. This, admittedly, was not especially far since the street wasn’t straight and buildings got in the way. Even at the first intersection, a smaller street that crossed diagonally, there was nothing we could see to fight. Then again, we were still within arrow range from the city walls, and presumably guards patrolled close to Echeirn, so it may just have been that monsters had learned, by now, to avoid this area.
By mutual assent, we didn’t go into any of the buildings. Safety was a concern—having a roof or wall cave in on us or a floor give out beneath us wouldn’t be high up on the fun continuum—but other reasons were more important. Chiefly, our concern was our ability to fight in small spaces. The bow was my weapon of choice, but even my spell really was easier to manage with a bit of distance between me and the target. Moreover, Tabitha relied on Tamakotz to protect her from attack, something the elemental might not be able to do when moving from room to room. Ambushes, after all, would be much easier to launch in indoor combat.
“Doesn’t seem too dangerous out here,” Tabitha commented. “The guards seem to be a little overzealous in protecting children from hazards that don’t seem to exist.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I temporized. “There’s plenty of risk for children in those old buildings even if there aren’t any monsters around at all.”
“But why would they go in?”
“To explore! When I was younger, there was an old, abandoned house in the woods across the street from my grandmother’s house. Well, more of a shed than a real house. I climbed up a tree and got onto the roof and pretended it was a pirate ship, looking out over the river. I think I read a whole book up there, perched on a rotten roof with the shingles falling through holes.” I shuddered a little, looking back at how risky that had been. And I was the stay-at-home, don’t-do-anything-dangerous half of the twins. What had my sister maybe done that had been riskier?
“You think kids here would do that?”
“Maybe not all, but certainly some would. Children are curious and they explore. In a way, that’s their job—it’s how they learn about the world. And they usually have no understanding of death or danger. Teens, in particular, think they’re immortal.
“I used to explore and play in the old, abandoned WWII bunkers and gunnery installations along the coast, ignoring the ‘no trespassing’ signs, and I’m sure plenty of others did, too.” I pointed at the nearest building, “These are far easier to get to than those were. Of course, there weren’t any city walls and guards at the gate, but still….” I shrugged.
Warming to the subject, I continued. “My mother told me stories about how she and her friends used to go down to the beach and explore the little sea caves and tunnels that were revealed when the tide was out. She made me promise to never, ever, ever go in one. I don’t know what happened, but maybe she lost a friend when she was younger. Instead, when I went down to the beach, I used to climb all over the rocky cliffs overlooking the water. One big wave, and, well … I wouldn’t be here today.”
My mother’s stories of her youth were also how I learned that foxglove was a dangerous plant. There were very few things she had made us promise to not do: not entering the sea caves and never messing with foxglove were among the exceptions. So was staying away from that old house in the woods, once she had heard the story. However, if I saw foxglove here—or something that looked like it, anyway—I’d gather it. Most likely it would be an ingredient for Alchemy.
Tabitha looked at me with a hint of surprise in her expression. “You sound like you were a bit of a tomboy when you were younger.”
“Ah, well…. Um….” Argh! My manly pride…. I was a boy, not a tomboy…. Besides, I wasn’t really an outdoorsy child. It was just that playing in the woods near Grandma’s was a more attractive option than helping weed the garden. And going down to the beach was only once every couple weeks, except during winter. Usually when I had been told to “stop lurking around in your room and go outside” I had gone to the library or taken the bus to Michelle’s house, instead, or I had wandered around in the drug store, looking at all the knick-knacks, like miniature glass unicorns, porcelain faeries, or polished rocks (typically agates, quartzes, or the like).
“Anyway, yeah, besides the buildings, I think there’s a simpler explanation. We’re hardly the first people out the gate. Stegnar and his band of brothers were before us, and who knows how many other Travellers have already gone out. I think the monsters, if there were any this near to town, just haven’t respawned or repopulated yet.”
Tabitha looked thoughtful. “I think you could be right, Sis. But, then, if we’re looking for those two girls, maybe we should be looking in the buildings, perhaps?”
I shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. The guards did say it had been hours since the girls went out, however. So, I don’t think they’d be this close to the walls still. Probably. Maybe.”
It might have been a good time to take the Tracking skill, not just for attempting to look for the girls, but also for attempting to find some monsters to dispatch. But despite my tendency to decide on impulse after procrastinating … it would be a bit of a waste if more than one in the group—and the group was far from complete yet—had Tracking. Like Cartography, or any other group-support skill, that was something that only one person really needed. And with limited skill slots, an unnecessary duplicate would be close to a complete waste. So … I waited, and ignored the little whisper in my mind that said to just take a skill and be done with it.
As we were talking and walking, the surroundings gradually transitioned from a wide, overgrown street with decrepit buildings clustered together to a more narrow street with buildings both spread further apart and set further back from the path. Most likely, they were former houses with overgrown yards.
It was in one of those probable yards that we had our first encounter with the local wildlife. “There! Something’s moving over there! It might be a monster!” Tabitha pointed to our right and I readied my bow.
About thirty feet distant, the overgrown grass near the side of the building was shaking and we could faintly hear various grunts and snorts as whatever it was made its way slowly along the side of the former house, moving in our direction. Finally, I got a glance of black and brown and was able to do a quick inspect:
Young Boartle (Lv 3)
Health: 100%
Mana: 100%
Hostile
“A Boartle, whatever that is, and it’s hostile. Are you ready?”
Tabitha nodded, and with an imperious gesture, urged Tamakotz to get into position to intercept. I nocked an arrow and drew it partway back, aiming for where I thought the monster would come into sight. When again I caught a glimpse of black and brown, I fully drew the arrow and quickly released it.
The arrow leaped from the bow and travelled in a shallow arc to strike at our putative foe. There was a pained squeal, suggesting that my arrow had hit, and then a truly monstrous—but not very large—shape charged out of the grass toward us.
The Boartle was, apparently, some unholy combination of boar and beetle: a short-tusked pig with six legs; gleaming black chitinous armor on its back, sides, and head; and a large, Y-shaped horn that looked more dangerous than the tusks.
“Twenty percent down already!” Tabitha exclaimed as Tamakotz moved to intercept the charge. The elemental did … something … and the Boartle’s charge was slightly deflected to the right, to head toward Tamakotz rather than toward me. “That will make things much faster!”
She may have been delighted, but five hits to kill a monster was more than anything except the bosses in the tutorial. It would be slower for me. On the other hand, this wasn’t exactly the area for teaching how to fight, so perhaps most of the tutorial fights had been deliberately trivialized.
Nevertheless, three hits or five, it would have been difficult to do either quickly enough to prevent damage from the Boartle’s charge.
Speaking of which, the monster squealed in rage when its attack didn’t send the elemental flying. Tamakotz stoically took the hit, which chipped off a small, but noticeable, fraction of its health. The elemental then countered with a double-fisted hammer strike that didn’t appear to do much damage in return.
I was also quickly discovering a difficulty with archery that always seems to be glossed over in traditional games. Tamakotz, tanking the monster for us, was necessarily right next to the monster … and very much in my way. I wasn’t confident enough of my own abilities—even with the skill guides still on—to be able to hit a small section of the moving target that was the unblocked part of the Boartle. And even if I was confident, the bit of the monster that I could see was part of the armored back and sides. An arrow might not even hurt it, there.
While Tabitha was chanting a spell, I sent a Mistshard toward the Boartle, first making sure that I definitely was targeting it. Mistshard, at least, should path its way to the target, something my arrows certainly couldn’t do. Then, I started moving to the side, trying to get out of the straight line between the monster, the elemental, and us. For a moment, my mind was distracted as it tried to set up a high-school geometry problem to determine where I should move to since triangles were clearly involved, but I shook my head to clear the thoughts away and kept moving to the side.
Shortly thereafter, I figured out that it would be better for me to move to the side and forward, otherwise I’d end up at least as far away from Tabitha as we were from the fight at the start in order to get a good enough angle to shoot past the elemental.
Tabitha’s spell was apparently a heal-over-time variant of a healing spell. Fortunately, the regeneration she applied to her elemental mostly offset the damage it was taking. I could see her having trouble, though, in really long fights since the regeneration effect probably wouldn’t stack … and without any good damage source of her own, all her solo fights would be fairly long. On the other hand, Tamakotz did seem to have a fairly substantial health pool, so maybe the elemental could outlast its opponents in a fight.
Finally, I had a clear enough line of sight to the Boartle. I paused, took careful aim, and arced another arrow into the Boartle. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a glancing hit and didn’t do nearly as much damage as the first hit had. Quickly, I shot again, but….
Unfortunately, my aim was a bit off since the I hadn’t taken enough time to line up my shot.
SWOOSH—the arrow leaped from the bow and bounced off Tamakotz’s side with a thunk audible even from dozens of feet away.
“Oh, sorry! Sorry!” I was afraid that was going to happen, which is why I had moved, but I still wasn’t good enough with the bow to have prevented it from happening at all. What would have been a miss if I had been playing solo turned into friendly fire.
Fortunately, my arrow didn’t seem to do any damage to the elemental. I was glad that’s one area where the developers didn’t hew as closely to “as realistic as possible” like they had with other areas.
Even if the elemental wasn’t damaged by my errant attack, it still turned its head to glare at me with those glowing green eyes.
“Sorry! I’ll take more time to aim next time!”
Tabitha and I finished the fight without taking any damage ourselves, but Tamakotz was down by nearly a third of its health even with Tabitha keeping Regeneration active on the elemental the whole time.
Together, we fought several more monsters. Nearly a dozen more Young Boartles, three Lowland Rats, and even some weird plant monster called a Strangling Rosewhip fell to our combined might. However, that last monster was able to attack from range in a number of ways. We were able to stay out of the way of its whiplike tendrils, but it also shot three-inch thorns and had some manner of attacking with its roots, burrowing through the ground to wrap around legs. At the end of that fight, I was nearly half-dead even with Tabitha keeping Regeneration active on me, too.
My Dodge skill got a good workout, going up by a point, but even so I spent nearly half the battle with my dagger instead of my bow, chopping at the woody grasp of the Rosewhip’s roots to free myself from its entanglement.
Along the way, both my Archery and Spellcasting skills leveled up to 4. Archery’s increase gave me another point in both Agility and Reflex, and from Spellcasting I got two points into Brilliance. More importantly, those skill-ups also brought my skill point threshold high enough that I, too, leveled up, reaching the lofty heights of level three.
During a brief bit of downtime to meditate and recover mana, I spent the five unassigned AP that I had gained with the increase in character level. Two points went into Agility, bringing it to 14 base, and 18 with the points from Archery included. Two points went into Brilliance, bringing me closer to another secondary skill slot; my base Brilliance was now 13, but I had an additional 7 points from my skills, so by my next character level, possibly sooner, I’d reach that threshold of 25.
The last point … I put it into Charisma. What? It was already my highest attribute, at 18 base before the point. Granted, a good third of that was from the Empathy perk I had unlocked, but between that, the Little Sister title, and my new outfit, my total Charisma had already exceeded 30. The next closest was Agility, reaching to 25 with equipment considered after the two points I had just put into it. I was just boosting what was apparently going to be one of my strengths. For a moment, I had a faint twinge of regret that I hadn’t taken the Tallemaja character that had initially been suggested, since that subracial archetype was definitely Charisma-focused and would have further strengthened the gains I had made, but I doubted I could have been called Little Sister as her.
Anyway, none of the loot we gained from the monsters was particularly interesting: a variety of “pieces of chitin,” one “pristine Boartle horn,” some small animal bones, and a single “Vial of Rosewhip Nectar,” which as an Alchemy ingredient went to Tabitha. Along the way, I found a few Gathering nodes, and collected some more Unidentified Mushrooms as well as some Dragontooth Roots (from a yellow flower that reminded me of a dandelion) and a small handful of bright orange Wild Dwarfberries.
We had been fighting and gathering for a few hours (I had hit Tamakotz only seven more times), and the sun was starting to sink low to the west when we heard the sounds of someone else fighting. Or, rather, we heard the sounds of a fight and someone, a young girl by her voice, screaming for help.
Both Tabitha and I broke into a run. However, the Ghost was at a disadvantage due to her racial and subracial movement speed penalties, so I was first to crest the small rise and see the ongoing fight. Two girls were fighting a much larger version of the Strangling Rosewhip that had given us so much trouble earlier. Or, rather, one girl was still fighting and the other was effectively immobilized by the plant monster’s four tendrils, one to each of her arms and legs. The plant monster wasn’t apparently strong enough to rip the girl limb from limb, nor were the tendrils able to exert enough force to lift her very far off the ground, but the girl was very obviously in a terribly bad situation. While the first girl hacked away at one of the thick, vine-like tendrils in an attempt to free her friend, the monster was slowly, inexorably reeling in the captured girl toward a vast, thorn-lined maw.
Gigantic Devouring Rosewhip (Lv 7)
Health: 68%
Mana: 15%
Hostile
They had clearly been able to hurt it, but not enough to do them much good. Both girls were in pretty rough shape. The one restrained was hovering around 15% health and her friend was a bit over half, but she obviously didn’t have healing magic and the other wouldn’t be able to get to her healing potions, if she even had any.
Without even pausing to think, I targeted the girl in trouble and cast Mistshard at her. It would take a while for the slow-moving spell to reach her, but it was the first opportunity I had to use the spell in its healing mode. “Tabitha, as soon as you’re in range, start healing her and have Tamakotz go after the monster!”
I had no idea whether the plant monster counted as Darkness- or Earth-based damage, but while I was waiting on Mistshard’s cooldown, I began casting Elionne Embrace on the most vulnerable girl. It would use up a good portion of my remaining and rather small mana pool, but that’s what potions were for. Maybe I should have put a point or two into Willpower when I had leveled….
As I was reciting the spell’s activation chant, I was running down the slope toward the fight. Neither my bow nor my spells would do much to free the captured girl, so I’d have to get into melee range and join the other girl in hacking and slashing with my dagger. As soon as the protection spell was cast, I immediately sent another Mistshard toward her, now down to only 16 mana. With a full minute cooldown, however, I’d be in combat before I could get another Elionne Embrace cast, and a ten-second cast time would make that difficult to do in melee range. Really, it was a spell that was supposed to be cast in preparation, rather than in the heat of the moment….
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
So, instead of casting another spell while waiting on Mistshard’s cooldown, I drew an arrow and fired it toward the main body of the plant monster. I didn’t have time to aim—who can aim while running downhill anyway?—so I wasn’t expecting to hit anything vital. However, the monster was large enough that the arrow should hit somewhere and at least get its attention.
It wasn’t quite a broad-side-of-the-barn target, but the leafs and petals and woody body of the plant were enormous. That thorn-lined maw certainly looked big enough to devour the girl whole!
They say that even the best-laid plans often go awry, so it was no surprise that hasty, on-the-spur-of-the-moment plans don’t quite work as intended either. By the time that I had closed half the distance, the arrow had struck the Giant Devouring Rosewhip, and it certainly got the monster’s attention. I attempted to dodge an incoming barrage of thorns, tripped, and tumbled out of control for a dozen feet or so before I managed to scramble back to my feet. Badly bruised, but not peppered with thorns, I winged another Mistshard toward the girl just as Tabitha crested the rise and was able to cast Regeneration.
Between our combined healing efforts, the captured girl was back up to over 80% health, though it was still depleting as she took damage from the tight vines restraining her and stretching her limbs to the limit. I then felt a cooling tingle spread across my skin as Tabitha landed a Regeneration on me. My interface updated to show a little, pulsing green plus icon where other status effects, like stun and confusion, had been displayed in the past. I hadn't noticed it the last time, but I had been too busy trying to disentangle myself from the last Rosewhip’s attack. That, and the interface was designed to be non-intrusive. I had to deliberately look at the interface for it to really come into focus.
Slightly ahead of me, the ground rumbled and bulged, a tell-tale sign of an impending attack if this Rosewhip operated like the one we had already fought. I dodged to the left just as a massive spike of a root erupted from the ground not too far from the path I had been taking. I avoided being skewered, but it added another element to the combat. That would be far more dangerous of attack to be hit by then the entangling roots from the previous fight. Situational awareness was a must!
I shot one more arrow, and then I was close enough to switch to melee combat. Stowing my bow in my inventory, I drew my dagger and slashed as the wrist-thick, ropy vines that had snared one of the girl’s legs.
I spared a glance over my shoulder and saw that Tamakotz wouldn’t be joining the fight. The elemental had been snared by a giant glob of gooey sap spat from the Rosewhip. While it wasn’t doing any actual damage to Tabitha’s elemental, Tamakotz was effectively immobilized and would be terribly vulnerable to one of those root-spike attacks. Tabitha had Regeneration active on all five of us, the four girls and one elemental, but beyond that she didn’t have much to contribute to the fight. Hopefully she would be able to stay unharmed by the thorn barrages, root spikes, resinous globs, and whatever other tricks the monster had, or this fight was going to go south very quickly!
The girl with the twin daggers shot me a quick smile and hollered “Thank you!” as I joined her in hacking at the vines. As I sent another Mistshard toward the monster’s mouth, the girl, too, was chanting even as she was constantly in motion, never keeping her feet in one spot for more than the blink of an eye. I didn’t catch much more of her chant than a final “Zephyric Agility” and “Windcutter.”
While she was finishing her chant, the ground beneath us began to rumble. “Watch out!” I shouted and surged forward, drawing my dagger along the tendril as I did so, and the girl launched into an acrobatic tumble that didn’t fail the way my attempted dodge-roll had when I had fought the giant skeleton. We both narrowly avoided the root spike, but the girl had returned to her rapid strikes even as I was still recovering my balance. Somehow, I had moved much further than I had intended!
The clue was on my interface. Two new icons joined the flickering pulse of Regeneration, a winged boot and a blade with a swirl around it. Apparently, I had been the target of her spell and the probable boost to Agility from “Zephyric Agility” was the cause behind my enhanced movement.
Together, we returned to hacking at the binding tendrils, my Rough Bronze Dagger seemingly sharper than before, and the young girl directed a shout to her friend, “Stay strong, Gabby! We’ll rescue you!”
It took about another minute, but both she and I severed the plant’s tendrils nearly simultaneously. This freed the other girl’s legs, but now all her weight, slight as it was, was on her much-abused arms. And the two remaining restraints were both high enough that they were out of immediately reach.
Both severed tendrils pulled back away from us, retreating toward the main body of the monster. Whether it was to hide, to wait and regenerate, or to wait for a future attack, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that they weren’t flailing at us in attacks now.
I spared a glance at the girl I had been fighting alongside. She was shorter and smaller than I, and while I hadn’t invested any points into Strength, I could probably pick her up. “If I lift you, can you pull yourself up on the vine and cut it from there?” I asked.
She shot me a surprised glance.
“I don’t think we can reach it, otherwise. You cut her free, and I’ll shoot some more arrows at the main body.” Dagger back to my inventory, I squatted down and interlocked my fingers. She stepped on my linked hands and placed a hand of her own my shoulder for balance. She couldn’t be much more than sixty or seventy pounds, even with her obviously “new player” outfit and short leather cuirass. The cuirass looked much like a leather bandeau worn over her white blouse, with only a single strap over her left shoulder to keep it up. It didn’t look like it offered much protection, but, well, no player would be sporting high-level equipment, yet.
With my low Strength attribute, I doubt I’d be able to carry the girl very far, even as light as she was, but it—and a bit of determination—was enough to lift her high enough that she could reach the vine. With both hands on the vine, she swung back and forth and pulled herself up like a circus acrobat, already starting to cut and hack at the tendril the moment she was wrapped atop it. Only with one dagger, though. She still needed to hold onto the monster.
Fortunately, Plan B—activating Hidden Nature and then being tall enough for me to simply reach the vines—wasn’t needed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to reveal that form to anyone just yet.
The tendril dipped lower when she was upon it, confirming my suspicion that the monster couldn’t lift that much weight too high this far removed from its main body. After seeing that she was indeed going to be safe, well as safe as possible, up there, I re-equipped my bow and started taking aimed shots at the main body of the Giant Devouring Rosewhip.
Somehow, during my ongoing struggles with the viny tendrils. Tamakotz got free of goo that had restrained it, and was even now approaching the monster. It was coming in from a bit of an angle to my line of sight, so I didn’t yet need to worry about a hastily shot arrow hitting the elemental again.
Between hacking at its “arms” and shooting at its body, we had taken the monster to under 50% health. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be an enrage threshold since no new attack patterns appeared. Just the root spikes and thorn barrages. There wasn’t even another glob of resin shot to immobilize any of us.
“Got this one!” a voice called above me, and I looked up to see the girl swing off one vine and catch the other even as the severed tendril started to flail about and recede. The captured girl was now hanging from only one arm, and I rushed over to hold and lift her, to take some of the weight off that one arm. She was sobbing in pain, but managed a weak, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” as I caught her legs and lifted somewhat.
I steadied her, my arms protesting this second heavy-duty effort, but I told them to shush. They surely weren’t hurting as much as the other girl’s arms were.
Three things happened nearly simultaneously.
The girl I was holding was cut free, and I had to bear all her weight as she fell, sliding down in my grasp; hastily I converted the hold to a “princess carry,” supporting her weight and keeping her from falling to the ground. The first girl shouted “Whoa!” and jumped free of the tendril that was retreating back to the body of the monster. She landed lightly on her feet and bounced over to us.
And the main body of the monster died in a great, booming explosion.
“Thank you for rescuing us! I thought we were goners for sure! That monster ambushed us and grabbed Gabby before we could even do anything! I could have run, maybe, but I couldn’t leave my sister behind! Oh, I’m Abigail, but friends—that means you now!—call me Abby!”
If someone had asked for a crossbreed of sugar, caffeine, and youthful exuberance, the young elf certainly would have been a contender. Her gestures were wide and expansive, her short chestnut curls bounced with nearly every movement, and she seemed to speak with more exclamation points than even Sunrise Sparkle had. She looked, and sounded, like a ten-year-old on a sugar rush.
“Sisters?” Tabitha had heard that key word. “You’re sisters, too? I’m Tabitha, and you’ve met my Little Sister, Madelyn Alexis.”
I looked between the two girls. They were more than sisters, they were functionally identical twins, though the one who had been captured wasn’t an elf: same hair color and style; same dusky skin; same youthful build; and even the same basic outfit of calf-high leather boots, short shorts, and a blouse that looked like a button-up tee-shirt. They even had the same minimal armor, that half-length leather cuirass with one shoulder strap, but the straps were on different shoulders. Until they got new equipment, that would be one way to tell the two apart.
Besides personalities, one hyper and one quiet, the only other semi-obvious clue to distinguishing one from another was their eyes. Both had mismatched blue/green eyes. Abigail—Abby, that is—had the green eye on her right and Gabby—Gabrielle?—had her green eye on her left.
“Oh!? Are you two sisters IRL?” The girl turned toward Tabitha and took a few bouncy steps in her direction. “Gabby and I aren’t, but we should have been! So we are now, here! And…,” she gestured in mine direction, well, probably in Gabby’s direction, and then paused. “And, oh! Hey! Screenshot time!”
She focused intently on me, and Tabitha nodded. “Indeed.” And I was subject to two intense stares.
In my arms, Gabby squirmed a little bit and looked up at me. “Um, thank you for catching me, but you can set me down, now.” She smiled shyly at me, and her dark cheeks had a hint of a blush to them.
In a moment, so too did mine. “Oh! Ah, yes. You’re welcome, and sorry. I was, well…” I lowered her to the ground, and she moved to stand slightly behind me, hiding from the two intent stares.
“It’s Gabrielle here, by the way.” Her voice was a near whisper. “But Abby calls me Gabby, and you can, too, if you want.”
“Awwww….” Abigail looked as if she was pouting, “I was one off from a dozen screenshots! You could have held her a little longer! Also….”
With a song-song voice that sounded younger than even her appearance suggested, she continued, going off on a different tangent. “Gabby and Madelyn Alexi— Wow, that name really is a mouthful! We need to shorten it. Abby and Gabby and,” she looked at Tabitha, “Tabby and….” She tilted her head in thought, contemplating me. “Maddie? No! That sounds like you’d be angry all the time! Ally? That’s it! You’re Ally, now!”
From behind me, Gabrielle spoke up, a bit louder and more forceful that her personality would have otherwise suggested. “No! You can’t call her ‘Ally.’ That’s my name.”
“Don’t be silly! Your name here is Gabby.”
“But if you say ‘Hey, Ally,’ I’m going to answer out of habit.”
“You can get out of the habit!” Abigail was walking back toward us. “You’re already answering to ‘Gabby,’ so you have a new habit. Besides! Besides, wouldn’t it be neat to share a name with her?” She flung her arms wide, turning it into a spin, before staring at the two of us again.
Hesitantly, Gabrielle responded. “Well, um, well… I guess. Um. I guess I wouldn’t mind, if that’s what she wanted.”
If she hadn’t been standing behind me, and if I wasn’t only just a little taller than she was, I would have put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “That’s alright, Gabby. I don’t want to make things confusing for you.”
“Not Maddie,” Abigail was saying as she walked a little closer, “And not Ally, either. Hmm, Lynnie? No, the stress is wrong. Oh, I got it!” She took my hand and gave it a firm handshake. “Pleased to meet you, Lexy! And thanks again for saving us!”
Lexy? But that’s what….
“Oh, ‘Little Lexy,’ I like the alliteration.” Tabitha was beaming.
From behind me, “It’s cute. I like it.”
All three were unified; it looked like I didn’t have a choice. And while I had never let anyone but my twin, not even Michelle, call me Lexy or Alexis before, it looked like it would be my nickname in two worlds, now.
“Lexy it is, then!” Abigail was beaming. Then she started singing again, “Gabby and Lexy, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N—”
“A-bi-GAIL!” Gabby’s voice was a cross between exasperated and embarrassed. “Act your age!”
“I am!” She stuck her tongue out at her sister. Well, semi-sister, since apparently they weren’t sisters in reality, but keeping those designations qualified would quickly become a hassle.
“Act your real age, then.” For all that she seemed generally shy, Gabrielle was quite able to stand up to her sister.
“You’re the one that made us little!” Once again, Abigail stuck out her tongue and made a face, but sighed and became a little bit more serious. “Oh, all right. But being nine is fun. Being seventeen is boring!” She then glanced at me and gave a longer look to Tabitha. “So, we fought one big monster together already. Shall we make it official and join parties?”
I sent them both a friend request, and as I was doing so, the interface updated to show their portraits below Tabitha’s; Tabitha must have done the party request. It was only then that I noticed something missing.
“Hey, what happened to Tamakotz?”
Tabitha shook her head, “He died in the fight. It looked like you weren’t going to be able to do enough damage to finish of that Rosewhip, so I had him walk into the mouth of the monster and activate his self-destruct. It finished off the monster, but now he’s on a much longer cooldown.”
Abigail looked interested, “That’s what the boom was? Who was Tamakotz? How long of a cooldown?”
“My elemental summon,” Tabitha explained. “Tamakotz is a ‘Basic Spirit of Stone,’ an earth elemental that was tanking for us. Normally his cooldown is four minutes after death or unsummoning….”
“And now?” Abigail inquired.
“Twenty-four hours. Minus the time we’ve been talking.”
It turned out that the earth elemental, and probably other elemental summons, had a self-destruct ability that could be triggered in dire straits. It did enormous damage to an area, even for a tier 1 basic elemental like Tamakotz, but it had an enormous cost to go with it. Not only did it put the particular summon on a day-long cooldown, it also disabled the entire skill for twelve hours. Even if Tabitha had any other summoning spells learned, she wouldn’t have access to them for a while. Because she had it slotted as a secondary skill, we didn’t know if having the skill disabled would affect the attributes it would have increased if it had been a primary skill, but either way, it was a significant drawback. Self-destructing elementals wouldn’t easily turn into a common tactic.
Abigail grew bored while Tabitha was explaining the details, and set off to examine the monster’s corpse—or the scattered remains of it anyway. One thing I had discovered, playing with Tabitha, was that loot didn’t automatically go to inventory when in a group. The common stuff did, but rare stuff remained to be divvied up at the party’s discretion. Gabrielle stayed by my side, but when Tabitha was done explaining, the young girl spoke up.
“Um. If it isn’t too much trouble, can you help me look for my sword and shield? I dropped them when I was grabbed by that monster.”
It didn’t take too long to find her weapons. They were just a few dozen feet back from where she had been suspended when Tabitha and I had joined the fight. But….
“A wooden sword and shield?” Tabitha sounded surprised. “Even if it’s still newbie equipment, shouldn’t the tutorial sword be metal, at least?”
Gabrielle shook her head, “I can’t use metal,” she explained. “Um, not iron anyway. It’s part of my racial restrictions.”
“That’s … insane!” Tabitha did more than just sound surprised, she now looked it, too. “That’s a really big penalty, worse than how slow I am. Can I ask what you are? I thought you were an elf like your sister, but the gate guards thought you were biracial.”
“Huh? The gate guards…?”
Tabitha then explained the quest we had received, and Gabrielle’s eyes got wider and wider during the telling of it. “You got a quest to find us? This game is really something else.” She shook her head in disbelief, and after a brief pause, she picked back up the earlier thread. “Um, and I’m not an elf or biracial. Not technically. I’m a faerie. Sort of. The race is called Faetouched.”
“You’re Tallemaja?” I inquired. True, I probably could have Inspected her to find that out, but I kept forgetting to use it.
Gabrielle nodded. “I liked its description, but it was probably a bad choice for me. I’m going to be a Knight to protect Ginn— I mean, Abby.”
I thought back to what I remembered from when the game suggested a Tallemaja character for me after the glitch: vulnerable to and can’t use iron (which probably included steel), boost to Charisma and reduced difficulties when doing anything with Charisma, and that aura that prevented some monsters from seeing the character as hostile at first. It seemed like she had chosen, maybe, one of the worst possible races to try and tank with. Well, maybe except one of those Harpy subraces; having wings instead of arms and hands would likely make it very difficult to use a shield. Me, on the other hand, with Hidden Nature granting additional Defense and Tauros Toughness reducing incoming damage…. In a min-max world, I’d be the tank and Gabrielle would be the one tossing extra points into Charisma.
“Don’t worry about it, Gabby,” I began. “It may be a little more difficult at the start for you than for someone who can wear and use iron, but that just means that it’ll be a bigger achievement. It’s more satisfying to beat difficulties to achieve something, right?”
She smiled shyly and nodded.
“Oh, and once we’re not newbies anymore,” Tabitha added, “I’m sure we’ll find you something you can use. Fantasy games usually have magical metals or other things to make weapons and armor out of. Maybe it won’t be mithril or adamantium, but it will be something special.”
Gabrielle nodded again. “I … I guess that makes sense.”
“In the meantime,” I smiled at her, “we can work together. A group of four can do more than a group of two can, right?”
Once more, she nodded. “Y- yes, you’re right. Thank you!” She gave me a hug, not at all like the one-arm-around-the-shoulder or the squeeze-tight-like-a-stuffed-animal hugs that Tabitha had given me. It reminded me a bit of the way my twin had hugged me when we were younger, in the rare times Lex had been feeling demonstrative. Sisterly, but not quite. It wasn’t just a quick hug either, but almost as if she was seeking comfort. Hesitantly, I hugged back … just as Abigail came bounding back.
“Hey, girls! Guess what I found!? It looks like the plant was guarding a— Heeeeeey! Screenshot time again!”
Blushing, both Gabrielle and I hastily pulled back and looked toward Abigail, though neither of us actually met her eye.
“Awwwww. You were moving in the second one; it’s all blurry! But, hey! I want a hug, too!” Bouncing like a caffeinated kitten, Abigail pounced at me and gave me a quick hug before I could react. Then she was hugging Gabrielle. She looked as if she might have been thinking about drawing us all together into a group hug, but instead bounded off to the as-of-yet-unhugged Tabitha and half-tackled her, exclaiming “So you don’t feel left out!”
I nearly laughed at Tabitha’s expression. She had clearly been feeling a bit left out, but here a little-sister-type was choosing her rather than Tabitha being the one to initiate. She apparently didn’t know how to react.
Finally, Gabrielle asked, “What did you find, Abby?”
“I found a dungeon entrance! Probably! There’s stairs down behind where the plant’s body was, and there’s this glowy, misty, white, ovaly thingy floating in the tunnel, blocking the way. It’s probably an instance entrance! Come on,” she started tugging at Tabitha’s hand, “Let’s go explore it!”
Tabitha shook her head, “I’m sorry, but with my summon down, I’m half-useless until I can bring him back up again.”
“But Gabby can tank for us!”
Gabrielle shook her head, “I don’t think we’re ready for a dungeon, Abby. If that monster was guarding it, the dungeon is probably tougher than it is and we are.”
“But we beat it! Well, with Tabby’s and Lexy’s help, so we can beat this, too! It was only level seven, and we’re three and three and three and three, so level twelve!”
Tabitha placed a hand on Abigail’s shoulder. “Maybe we can look in tomorrow, after Tamakotz is ready again?”
“I think Gabby might be right,” I added, “If it is an instance, it’s probably tougher, so we should all be at full strength, which Tabitha won’t be until she can summon her elemental again.”
Abigail looked a bit dejected. “But I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Gabby and I won’t be able to play all day.”
“We’ll wait for you,” I promised. “We’re friends now, and we’re a group now, and groups do things together, right? Let’s go back to town so we have a good place to meet up at. That way, if someone is early, they’re not waiting out here all by herself. It might be risky if that Rosewhip respawns.”