In the moments after Drew’s transformation, all was silent save for the poor fool’s pitiful mewling.
When the silence was broken, it was by a barbaric roar that caused Layla to shriek in surprise, and sent both Voril and Oleg hurtling towards the door, makeshift weapons drawn.
A quick glance out the window showed Damien the source of the noise - a dozen or so orcish warriors, each wielding oversized axes and practically foaming at the mouth with apopleptic rage charged along the narrow path that connected the tavern to the smithy. They moved with a confidence Damien envied, completely unphased by the fact a misstep would ostensibly dump them screaming into the fathomless abyss.
“Damn it all,” fumed Voril. “They’re like wasps with a grudge. Why are they attacking us after all these years?”
He looked towards Damien, as if he would have any answers.
How the fuck should I know? We killed their leader years ago.
Beyond the fast-approaching tide of orcs, a pair of figures stood on a slender bridge of land that connected the smithy to a newly arrived building. Damien recognised it immediately as the town barracks and, for a moment, half hoped to see the well-armed and armoured men and women of the militia come surging out to aid in the town’s defense. The town guard had always seemed to match the party level-for-level; it was Sam’s way of ensuring his murder happy party didn’t decide to stage a coup and claim the village for their own.
But no guards were charging out of the building and, while one of the two figures standing at its entrance cut an imposing figure, the other was a slightly built woman in the robes of a cleric or mage.
The taller figure, towering over her at what must have been eight feet in height, looked vaguely familiar to Damien. He was a mountain of oiled muscle, dancing pecs, flowing honey blonde hair, and what looked to be not a six-pack, not an eight-pack, but a ten-pack. The man’s physique defied logic in the way that only a teenager’s imagingings could conjure, and he knew only one man so obsessed with Conan the Barbarian that he’d basically recreate him.
Murray was here.
The presence of a friend - even an estranged one - lifted Damien’s spirits. As the first orc crashed into the tavern’s sturdy door, causing the windows to either side to shake in their panes, he called Dukayne into his grip, sorted his mental hand, and prepared to fight off the sons of bitches.
Behind him, Drew was stirring, aided by Magda.
“Easy, lad,” she soothed him, hiding her disdain for the godkiller well. “You’d best be on yer feet for what’s about to happen.”
Drew was still too out of it to take in the situation.
“Whaddyadoin?” he slurred. “Lemmego.”
Magda guided him to the bar with a firm yet forgiving hand, gently pushing him into a stool before going behind the bar. The rattle and clatter of her preparing some kind of concoction was drowned out by the sound of splintering wood, tortured steel, and fevered breathing.
The orcs had come.
He met the first of them with his shield, grunting in pain and surprise at the reverbation the impact sent dancing up his arm. An axe arced towards him in a killing strike, but Voril deftly turned it aside with the heavy head of his hammer.
Focus, he chided himself. The Stone of Escape isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.
While he had no visual way of knowing it, he felt sure that his action points had reset at the end of the previous encounter. The card he had accidentally played - Tavern Brawl - would now be in the discard pile, leaving him one more card to draw.
1. Powerful Strike
2. Cleaving Blow
3. Parry
4. Shrug it Off
5. Unorthodox Tactics
6. Whirling Assault
He brought Dukayne up from behind the guard of his shield, roaring his defiance as the enchanted blade cut into the unprotected flesh of an orc’s belly, spilling a pile of steaming entrails out onto the tavern floor.
As this happened, he subconsciously drew a card to add to his hand - molotov cocktail.
He felt the change in weight at his hip, and did not need to glance down to know a bottle filled with alcohol and stoppered with an alcohol-soaked rag now hung at his hip. Not the most useful card to have drawn in the circumstances, but it might come in hand.
Powerful strike time, he thought, feeling Dukayne surge forward in a brutal overhead strike. It struck an orc right in its hideous, tusked face, splitting it open like a ripe pumpkin and spattering its fellows with blood and glistening brain matter.
Two were down, but the remaining orcs were now flooding into the room, their combined bulk enough to force Damien, Voril, and Oleg back into the common room. Layla had retreated as far as the stairs, ready to dash up them should an orc break through the wall, while Magda was in the process of feeding a brownish concoction to a dazed Drew.
What the hell is she doing?
Behind the orcs, Damien was relieved to see that the robed figure was approaching, her hands dancing in the air as she worked magic. The big fellow, inexplicably, was stooping to pick something up off the path.
Cards, Damien thought. I bet this is his first time here.
And then all thought fled his head, as a trio of orcs began a whirling dance of vicious blades that threatened to end all thought forever. It was all he could do to keep them at bay.
—---------
Murray wanted desperately to help Sharin and the others, but the dizzying sensation had driven him to his knees.
“Stay here,” Sharin had ordered him as she left, muttering an incantation that conjured a translucent bubble of bluish light around him. “I’ll help the others while you recover.”
She did not strike an imposing figure as she left, but she nonetheless strode towards the rear of the orc advance with confidence, her hands dancing and her fingers stabbing the air in strange, arcane patterns.
Got to help, he muttered to himself, fighting down the urge to vomit, got to help.
The dizziness had brought him to a halt before the booster pack and, despite the chaos of the scene playing out in the tavern, he felt an odd compulsion to pick it up. It was the same feeling that compels a nauseous man to lie down on the cold tile of the bathroom floor.
With shaking hands, he peeled open the booster pack, finding a kind of solace in the familiarity of the action. He’d never been able to afford to buy cards as often as his friends - even Damien - and he had learned to savour those moments when he could add to his collection without having to beg, borrow, or steal.
The new card smell soothed his nausea further, and he quickly shuffled through the cards, anticipation building as he got towards the rear of the pack. That would be where the rare card would be.
1. Rage
2. Reckless Strike
3. Claymore
4. Rage Unending
5. Hard to Kill
6. Potion of Healing
The commons were all familiar to him. He hadn’t taken the time to look at the packaging, but this must have been a berzerker starter deck. The odds of getting all berzerker cards in a single pull were infinitesimal.
1. Death Defying Leap
2. Chainmail Bikini
3. Savage Bite
4. Prayer of the Mountains
And the rare card, as if drawn by fate itself, was the card that had inspired his entire character: Fell Wind of Anossus.
As if the drawing had been a cure-all, he felt strength returning to his limbs and clarity returning to his head.
Welcome back, Murray. You are Fudgerod the Flatulent, a level 1 human berzerker. Choose your hand.
Was it possible to see and not see writing? To hear and not hear?
He did not have time to deliberate on his choices. He could see that the orcs had already forced their way into the Goose & Child. Through the window, he could make out two bearish figures flailing about recklessly with oversized hammers, while a figure he recognised as Fred the Fighter danced with blade in one hand and shield in the other.
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Instinct guided his choices. He remembered well the basics of the game.
He could have a hand of five cards, not including equipment. The claymore materialized over his shoulder in the impractical way fantasy artists like to draw weapons, while - much to his discomfort - the chainmail bikini appeared on his well-oiled body, pinching in some places while providing precious little cover in others.
Ugh. Girl card.
Still, it was probably better than hurtling into the fray naked.
The healing potion, too, appeared at his hip, a softly glowing red liquid in a stoppered crystal vial.
He made his decision quickly, doing his best to remember the rotation he had liked to carry into battle back in high school.
1. Death Defying Leap
2. Rage
3. Reckless Strike
4. Prayer of the Mountains
5. Fell Wind of Anossus
This is insane, he thought to himself. These fuckin’ cards aren’t going to make a lick of difference against real, breathing orcs swinging real fuckin’ axes.
But he knew instinctively that it would work. Had he not seen the well-oiled physique of Fudgerod the Flatulent in the mirror? Had Sharin not only recognised him, but remembered their fledgling romance.
For better or worse, he was in the game now, and dwelling on the practicalities of that would only get somebody killed.
Taking a deep breath, he pictured Death Defying Leap, tensed his legs, and pushed off from the cobblestones.
—---------------
Drew couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. He must have taken a bad batch of something, because he didn’t recognise this pub, these people, or the bunch of angry green dudes who had just burst into the place.
Each of them was an object out of his nightmares - grotesquely muscled, faces contorted in rage, mouths held open by jutting tusks, and the stink of sweat, piss, and filth washing off them like the abbatoir.
His arm hurt - throbbed - and his eyes hurt. Where’s Benji?
Thinking the question only made him feel worse. He had vague memories of his brother swearing and threatening to kill these people, and then something had reached up out of the darkness and taken him.
The scene before him played out in a delirious slow motion - three men fighting against three times as many of the green monsters. They reminded him of those orcs out of Lord of the Rings, only they smelled worse and moved faster. That Aragon fella had been able to kill a whole bunch of them without raising a sweat, but these three guys were fighting desperately just to keep on their feet.
Should probably help, he thought absently, looking around for something he could use as a weapon. The best he could muster was a sturdy looking liquor bottle.
He was about to get up and take a swing at one of the green bastards when he recognised one of the men fighting.
Damien. That fucker killed Benji.
But was it Damien? At one moment, he could swear he recognised the arsehole’s face on the big, muscled figure in armour, and the next it was just some dude out of a fantasy movie.
The whole thing was only worsening the dizziness and nausea he felt. He decided to sit back down and let it play out.
Weirdest fuckin’ dream.
Welcome to the game, Drew. What is your name?
“Huh?” he asked the room, barely audible over the shouting and clangor of battle. “I’m Drew.”
Welcome to the game, Drew. You are Drew, a level 1 human fleshcrafter. Choose your hand.
“What the hell is a fleshcrafter?” he asked. “Who the fuck are you?”
The voice had not come from the orcs or the men fighting them, nor had it come from the chunky woman hiding behind the bar with a rolling pin in her hands. It hadn’t come from the pretty young thing on the stairs, either.
A glossy packet lay atop the bar. Had that always been there?
Pick it up, that same voice urged him. Open it.
His hand moved unbidden to the packet. It had fantasy shit all over it, and a picture of some tortured S&M arsehole on the front. He was all veiny and red like a two-day erection.
Open it.
He did, tearing the package open hastily. Inside were cards with more fantasy shit on them. Was this that nerd shit that Damo and his friends had played in high school? What the hell was going on?
The cards didn’t make a lick of sense to him. He shuffled through them without reading.
1. Bone Blade
2. Rapid Regeneration
3. Eye Spy
4. Spider Hand
5. Healing Potion
6. Rage Injector Rig
7. Obscene Growth
8. Sentient Tumor
9. Spiny Eruption
10. Vomit Acid
“What is all this shit?”
All at once, he felt things happening to his body. A sudden change in weight at his waist drew his attention to a glass bottle hanging off a belt he didn’t remember putting on that morning, and he saw that leather straps now ran over his shoulders. The straps were covered in wires and tubes.
What in the Al-Qaeda?
Choose your hand.
“How the fuck do I do that? What even is a hand?”
Across the room, the man that looked like Damien ripped his sword out of one of the orcs, spilling black blood out onto the floor. Another orc immediately moved into its place, slipping in the blood and being hammered in the side of the head by one of the big guys.
That made four dead orcs on the ground, and eight more still snarling and throwing themselves around.
“Just pick five cards” the sword-wielder shouted. “Any five!”
“Don’t tell me what to do, cunt!” Drew spat back. “You fuckin’ killed Benji, you dog!”
The exchange made the attackers aware of Drew for the first time, and now two of the ugly green motherfuckers came striding towards him.
Oh shit.
“Just pick, you stubborn prick!”
He grabbed the cards and tried to make head or tails of them. Which of these ugly fucking cards did he want, and why was he having to choose them while a fucking -
He shrieked and threw himself to the side seconds before an axe with a blade bigger than his head thunked into the bar. It sank in so deep that the orc swinging it had to put a foot on the bar to try and prise it loose.
The second orc was not as reckless, and its swing instead bisected the stool Damien had been sitting on.
Fuck me, that was close.
The fall had spilled some of the cards out of his hands and onto the sticky floor. Five of them, to be exact.
That makes things simpler.
The cards that remained in his hands read Bone Blade, Spiny Eruption, Vomit Acid, Rapid Regeneration, and Sentient Tumor.
What sick fucker drew these!?
While one orc wrestled with his ax, the other stood over Drew and smiled, a hideous grin that sent strands of drool down onto the prone fleshcrafter.
The ax came up and Drew’s life flashed before his eyes.
It hadn’t been much of a life. Not really.
—---
Murray shouted in mixed surprise and excitement as his leap carried him out over the black void and towards the tavern. He had never felt such power in his legs, and the sensation of flying through the darkness was giddying.
It was only as he drew nearer to the tavern’s wall that he realised he had miscalculated the direction of his death defying leap. Instead of landing in the doorway like a Marvel superhero, he instead slammed into the exterior wall with the force of a wrecking ball.
The resulting explosion of wood, nails, and glass shredded an orc that had been standing over somebody who looked suspiciously like Drew or Benji - he could never tell the cunts apart - and carried Murray straight into another orc that was wrestling to get its axe out of the bar.
“Honey!” he laughed maniacally. “I’m hoooooooome!”
And then, as he had done so many times in the past, he turned, cupped his arse cheeks, and cast Fell Windo of Anossus.
A great green wind roared from betwixt his cheeks, the fetid stink of its withering the flesh of the first few orcs it contacted. They shrieked, vomited, and clawed at their eyes as the fell scent worked its deadly magic.
The next few orcs, shielded from the worst of it, were nonetheless overwhelmed by the raw stink of Fudgerod’s gift. Watering eyes, gagging throats, and burning nostrils were all the distraction Voril, Oleg, and Damien needed to cut down the remaining orcs.
That only left the one Murray had knocked to the floor. Beneath the cloud of deadly air, the orc struggled to free a boot knife.
Murray didn’t need a fancy card to know what to do. He drew his Claymore - Bessie - and brought her down in an executioner’s stroke. The orc’s stupid head rolled across the floor, coming to rest between the legs of a startled, blood-soaked, and screaming Drew or Benji.
“Which one are you?” he asked, striding over to help the poor bastard to his feet. He had been partially buried in the tavern’s ruined wall, but took Murray’s ridiculously muscular hand and allowed himself to be hoisted to his feet.
“I’m Drew,” he replied. “I’m, uh, a fleshcrafter?”
“Fudgerod,” Murray replied with the biggest grin he could remember smiling in some time. “Fudgerod the Flatulent, Fell Wind of Anossus, Brutal Belch of the Ninepig Halls, and Ravager of Ladies. You need to work on your titles.”
A gauntleted hand came to rest on Murray’s shoulder and he spun to face his foe, ready to pummel an orc’s face with a bare fist.
It was only Damien as Fred the Fighter.
In the real world, Murray and Damien had unresolved issues that they would someday need to talk about.
In here, Fudgerod and Fred were old friends and battle brothers. They embraced as such.
And outside, a low warhorn announced the coming of yet more orcs.
“Shall we?” Fred asked, wiping orc blood from his face and turning to face the now enlarged front door.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Fudgerod growled in reply, mentally playing the Rage card and feeling raw adrenaline pulse through his already jacked body.
“You might want to get over here, Drew,” Fred suggested. “And play that Bone Blade card.”
“Bone Bla-”
No sooner had the words crossed his lips that the image of the card leapt from his head and into gruesome reality. His arm, still hurting from whatever had happened to it early, screamed in pain as it reshaped itself into a long, wickedly sharp blade that extended from his elbow to where his hand used to be. Blood and viscera spattered the floor at his feet.
“I think I’m going to vomit…”
“Save it for the enemy,” Fudgerod laughed. “Give ‘em hell!”
And the orcs came.