Eight Era, cycle 1721 – cycle of the squatting dog, season of Unkh, day 290

Stirgar had slunk off. He liked Amaka; she often forgot she’d summoned him, and that gave him time to pursue his own interests. Thank the devils for inexperienced summoners.

He purloined the purse from an inattentive trader as he strode to the guards’ quarters and shook his head as he noticed that no one was on watch. He chuckled to himself; it was almost as if they wanted him to be involved in a little subversion; mortals were so quick to forget! The Hell Wars were only five millennia ago!

The guard rooms were lit with coal burners, and no one had thought to create a few air holes; if Stirgar had but a few days, he could stifle the air flow and get at least half the guards killed through carbon monoxide poisoning. Stirgar’s palms itched, but he resisted; he was hatching other plans.

A guard rounded a corner and stopped as he spied Stirgar, who belched, waved at the guard and continued on his way. The guard hesitated, took a step towards Stirgar and offered a challenge.

‘Who are you?’ the guard asked. He was blunt, with no room for preamble – a promising future clearly lay ahead for this guard.

‘Stirgar,’ the garğ replied.

There was a silence as the guard waited for something else.

‘What are you doing?’ the guard queried after an awkward moment.

‘Looking for the captain,’ Stirgar lied without hesitation.

‘He’s down there; take the left, then the second right. There’ll be two guards outside.’

‘Right you are,’ Stirgar said before turning on his heel and striding off purposefully.

The guard was uncertain, but he was reassured on watching Stirgar’s confident stride, so the guard walked away.

Stirgar continued on his journey, going deeper into the castle until he came across a locked door. After pulling a set of lock picks from his pocket, he applied them to the lock, breaking the first three before getting lucky with the fourth; the lock clicked, letting the door swing back an inch, so Stirgar slipped through.

The room was deserted; dust covered half the room and there was a distinct smell of staleness. Stirgar slunk around until he stumbled across few distinct footprints in the dust. However, even without the footprints, he would have known where to go. It was like a game of ‘hot and cold’; as he picked his way through the corridors, his skin tingled more as he grew closer to his target until even his teeth started to tingle. Dust continued to obscure the objects in the rooms, but Stirgar did spot a few expensive-looking items to pilfer, such as a few bits of silverware, a few pieces of Omani jewellery, some expensive pottery and rugs, an entire tapestry and some paintings – a lot of good stuff overall. Even in a world constantly on a knife edge, luxury items were worth more than small armies – if they were master-work quality.

Finally, he reached a reinforced door that his feeble lock-picking skills couldn’t open. He scratched at the brick wall, but it seemed sturdy, and his bond with Amaka wasn’t strong enough to use her abilities, so he was a bit stuck.

‘I sense your presence, daemon,’ came a feminine voice from inside the room.

Stirgar jumped up, grabbed the bottom of a window and pulled himself up until his head was poking through the window.

Name: Francesinha (isn’t that a sandwich?)

Race: one of the fire spirits, probably – Folkair

Affiliation: didn’t Zetuvit win dominion of that realm?

Influence: 78,336 (medium level – it’s probably best not to get on the wrong side of this one!)

The figure was a woman with rich-red hair, red eyes, a deep-red blush to her cheeks and – put it this way – her lipstick wasn’t blue. She watched Stirgar with sharp, alive eyes.

‘A garğ? I didn’t think your kind were still fashionable,’ Francesinha stated, her eyes narrowing.

‘We still get summoned from time to time; sure, it’s mostly through people reading obscure text, but it’s a steady flow nonetheless,’ Stirgar explained.

‘And what brings you here, beast?’

‘You, as it happens. I noticed this containment spell a mile off; well, how could I not? Thought I’d come and check it out.’

‘And now you’ve sated your curiosity?’

‘Well, I know that you’re in a desperate spot, so I’m wondering what it’d be worth to free you, aren’t I?’

‘I won’t be beholden to one of level 18.’

‘You say that like it means something; but me? Well, I’m one of those who feel that loyalties and oaths apply only to home; once we’re summoned, well, then it’s all daemons together. I’m willing to offer a free slate, outside of the Great Game. Whilst we’re here, anyway.’

‘And in return?’ Francesinha asked cautiously.

‘It seems to me that they’re using you to charge some sort of spell or soul crystal, which means you face oblivion if they suck you dry – the kind we don’t return from. So how much is your life worth?’

‘Not servitude. I won’t swap one prison for another.’

‘That’s not what I’m after. What I want is for me ma; she’s up for sponsorship, and she’s got a few humans in the closet. So you – and any who owe ties to you – will ignore her. In return, I offer you your life – completely and unreservedly.’

‘What kind of secrets are these to offer a deal without complications?’

‘The normal kind – duplicity, tertiary ones and favours; you know, the good stuff. You don’t bring it up, ignore any comments you may overhear, abstain from any votes she’s involved in, and we’re square.’

‘And your human?’

‘Ah, well, this is the best type of deal; she gets nothing,’ Stirgar said happily. ‘Oh yes, that’s my kind of good deed: the kind where someone else misses out. I get help for me ma, and Amaka gets nothing. Ooh, and I bet you’d have given her a really good reward, yeah?’

‘For freeing me? I’d probably increase all her attributes by ten.’

‘And she’ll get nothing!’ Stirgar cried, and then burst out laughing; he laughed so hard and for so long that he ended up wheezing on the floor, struggling to breathe. ‘Oh devils, that’s good. It’s not a reward unless someone misses out. I think I’ve got an erection.’

‘And you’ll swear this pact in blood?’ Francesinha enquired, finding nothing strange about Stirgar’s selfishness. She was a daemon herself, after all.

‘What? Oh yeah, you’ve got a pact,’ Stirgar confirmed. His palm started to split and spew blood, as though someone were cutting into it with a razor, until a strange symbol had appeared on it: the daemon langue outlining their contract.

‘Very well,’ Francesinha said, and her own hand gushed blood as her side of the bargain was etched into her hand.

‘How fast can you dislocate?’ Stirgar asked, looking around the room cautiously.

‘Instantly.’

‘Great, I’ll disrupt the holding spell. The room looks sturdy, but in case it’s not, it’ll probably be best to dissolve your corporeal form as quickly as possible.’

‘This laminar confinement spell has been running for many years.’

‘So? It’ll dispel like any laminar confinement spell, be it a day old or a millennia.’

‘Yes, however, it will cause a significantly larger eruption.’

Stirgar nodded. ‘In my pants.’

‘I mean, the building may not hold up.’

Stirgar shrugged. ‘It’s not my castle.’

‘Very well, a most efficient decision.’

Stirgar rummaged in a pocket and pulled out a strip of paper with writing on it that was similar to kanji. He spat on it and let his bloody hand mark the paper. When the spit and blood met, the writing glowed, and he flicked the paper at Francesinha. The paper flew through the air, struck the invisible barrier surrounding Francesinha and stuck to it in a most unnatural way. Stirgar dropped to the floor and walked away. When he’d gone a safe distance, he raised two fingers and said,

‘Dispel.’ The sudden explosion was muffled, but it caused the castle to shake as though hit by a local earthquake.

*

A short while later, as Stirgar left the guard house, he felt so good about stealing Amaka’s reward from her that he decided to treat himself. He stuffed cloth into the air holes of the corridors and put charcoal in the coal burners. Carbon monoxide is an untraceable poison that wouldn’t appear on the guards’ status screens as they suffocated slowly. A lot of guards would die that night, and it wasn’t even Stirgar’s birthday.

*

Battle log:

Shared kill from Stirgar

Guards, level 24, 36 x 21 poisoned with carbon monoxide

13,640 experience points

Level up! Level 18 (21,603 experience points to the next level)

Amaka’s blood ran cold; twenty-one guards? Twenty-one? Guards! What had Stirgar done? Amaka shot to her feet. Syeda lay in the bed next to hers; she was a sweet girl, and she was going to go insane when she learned Stirgar had killed twenty-one guards!

Amaka stalked over to Syeda and placed a hand carefully over her mouth. ‘Syeda, Syeda, wake up,’ Amaka whispered, repeating it louder until Syeda’s eyes started flickering in wakefulness.

‘Now stay calm, okay?’

On noticing a hand clamped over her mouth, Syeda started to toss her head and pull away; Amaka held her firmer to stop Syeda crying out anything incriminating about killing the guards, but after waking to find someone trying to smother her, Syeda fought harder.

‘Calm down, you silly cow,’ Amaka hissed as she tried to hold onto Syeda; if she’d still had both arms, this would have been easy, but as it was, Amaka had to use her thighs to pin Syeda down.

Syeda looked up fearfully as someone restrained her on the bed, and her fearful look became bemused as she noticed Amaka.

‘Good, you’ve calmed down; do you promise not to scream?’ Amaka asked.

Syeda nodded.

‘Good.’

‘If you wanted to have sex, you only needed to ask, mistress,’ Syeda offered.

‘This isn’t about sex!’ Amaka nearly shouted in affront before catching herself. ‘This isn’t about sex, but about the messages you’re no doubt waking up to,’ Amaka said more softly.

‘Which ones?’

‘The ones in the battle log.’ Amaka climbed off Syeda’s bed, still ready to clamp her hand down over Syeda’s mouth.

‘The 10,000 experience points?’

‘Don’t you mean 13,000?’

‘It’s reduced from my curse, remember?’

‘Oh right, but doesn’t it say… well, how you got it?’

Syeda shook her head. ‘You’re the party leader; I don’t get that information.’

Amaka cursed. The whole scene could have been avoided.

Quest completed: right hand of a god

You’ve completed your side of the agreement.

Reward: 10,000 experience points (11,603 experience points to the next level)

You may also have an extra reward. Choose between a map (as they’re always popular) and a big battleaxe. Oh, wait, you’ve only got one arm, so make it a throwing axe that returns to you or, I don’t know, a level up for your village. There, that’ll do.

Right hand of a god? What had that quest been to do again? Amaka frowned and then remembered something about freeing her deity’s friend. And that had involved killing guards? Was her deity evil? Amaka needed to have a conversation with Stirgar, but away from Avalia and any prying ears. Amaka chose the reward for the village; if she was going to benefit from blood money, she should give it back to the community, as blood money given to a charity purified it – or so Amaka believed.

Quest update: envoy of the lady 3

Your lady is pleased, so have some stats. You seem to like random skills, so take these: ↑ cartography, ↑ wheelwrighting, ↑ chandlering, ↑ weaving, ↑ thatching.

Quest update: envoy of the lady 4

Continue impressing to further progress this quest.

Now what was this about? Five useless professions? Well, the cartography might be useful, but the others were pointless. Then again, this was a near-medieval world, so maybe these professions were still in use? The castle had tiles, but the houses at the first village Amaka had come across did have thatched roofs, so maybe she could put it to use. What was a chandler anyway?

Chandler: using beeswax or tallow to make candles, soap and other things.

What? What a random skill!

Tallow: beef fat rendered into a solid.

Eww! Why was this world obsessed with killing things? Maybe chandlering was a useful skill; she’d make soap out of beeswax and wash herself with that instead of death.

‘I’m glad you’ve mentioned the experience. Actually, it reminds me – how do you want me to spend my skill points from levelling up?’ Syeda asked.

‘What? I don’t care,’ Amaka replied, distracted.

‘Is there any way in particular you wished me to develop to better complement your own attributes?’

‘What? No. Why?’

‘Well, the best teams are made from people who make up for each other’s weaknesses.’

‘Obviously, you’ve got both arms, so that makes up for my main weakness, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Oh, so should I be strength based?’

‘What? No. Go for speed and dexterity and things, to keep out of danger. I don’t really know much about this crap. I’ve only really played shooting games, and I tend to play as a camping sniper, so I have no idea about swords and spells and stuff. Do something you enjoy, even if it isn’t useful, as if you’re happy, you’ll be better in the long run. You want some real advice? Go and find someone who actually knows stuff. Long-term planning is good, but we – or at least, I – don’t have a clue what we’ll be up against, so the only advice I can think of is we need to be sneaky and cunning. If we come up against a big, bad motherfucker, then we need to be able to either rig some traps to take them down or to slow them down whilst we leg it. I’m not a fan of face-to-face fighting – being that close to powerful beings scares the crap out of me – so let’s go for guerrilla warfare and cheating.’

‘Okay, I like the sound of that. That spider gave me nightmares.’

‘Exactly. Yes, we could play for strength, but there’s always someone bigger and stronger. The key to any battle is surprise, so we should play for that. And you’re naturally active, so speed and agility will also keep you out of danger.’

Syeda nodded. ‘Right, so I’ll spend half my points on physical stats and save the rest for when I have a better idea of my specialisation, for some sort of asymmetric tactician class.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s a branch tree that has things such as spy, saboteur, insurgence and rogue classes in it.’

‘That doesn’t answer anything, but thinking about specialisations gives me a headache,’ Amaka stated, pressing her temples between her palms.

There was a sudden loud crash and a crunch of breaking wood, followed by the sound of screaming; Amaka and Syeda ran out of the tent.

A large wagon had been tipped over nearby; Amaka’s new skill outlined one of the wagon’s wheels in red, showing that it was broken – rather obviously, as the metal ring around it’s diameter was half torn off.

An old man was chatting animatedly to a group; apparently, he’d had two of his pigs snatched off the back of the wagon, and the crowd listened attentively to his rather flamboyant tale. Amaka and Syeda approached, with Syeda open-mouthed and enjoying the man’s tale, but Amaka frowning, irritated by the clear lies in his story. By the fourth retelling of the story, the old man was being chased by a swarm of beedrill and had lost an entire wagon to the swarm.

‘It’s the north; war is coming and it’s sending the fiends south!’ someone called from the crowd.

‘It can’t be; they’d never get through the bogs and forests,’ scoffed a man at the back.

‘That depends on how many fiends are running, doesn’t it? Even the high-level monsters will eventually have their fill of blood, which will let some fiends flee south,’ a large woman suggested.

‘What’s this all about?’ Amaka asked Syeda.

‘Well, remember what Ben said? There’re high-level monsters in the forest and bogs to the north of here. Usually, these lands are quite tame; you get low-level monsters skirting the boundary of the woods, but any that venture too deep are killed, so these lands are mostly peaceful.’

‘So this activity is unusual?’ Amaka wanted to confirm.

Syeda nodded. ‘If the beasts are from the north, then yes. We get fiend attacks occasionally. What’s it called…? Migration, that’s the word. We get monsters attacking on migration, but it’s not the right season for that. So something has scared the beasts to the north, and they’ve entered the bogs, crossed the river, fled through the forests and reached us. Now if they were level 100 plus, then that’d make sense. But we’ve had attacks from level 10 upwards, so how can they avoid the big beasties?’ She shrugged. ‘It must be due to the numbers.’

‘Something is scaring large numbers of monsters south?’

Syeda nodded and swallowed. ‘Must be. Maybe an archfiend, a raid boss or something. I’d have said daemon, but I think Stirgar might have said something.’

‘I think I understood that; some of it at least.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ Syeda asked.

‘Oh yeah, I’m meant to do something about this. I forgot; I’m not used to leading,’ Amaka apologised, looking around. She spotted Helmhock and the other elders leaving Avalia’s village gates, and she walked over to him.

‘Mornin’. We heard the noise; what’s going on?’ Helmhock asked.

‘Not sure; I’m guessing it was some sort of bird attack. It made off with a couple of fat pigs,’ Amaka explained. ‘People seem to be getting restless, so it’s probably best to get them moving ASAP.’

‘Well then, why haven’t you said anything?’

‘What? Me? I’m not giving a speech!’

‘Someone needs to tell these folks we’re off, so no one gets left behind, right?’

‘Look, I’m happy to take a lead in times of hardship – as nobody’s really looking at you because they’re more concerned with looking around for an ambush – but just stand up and start talking? No, sorry. I’ll stand nearby, maybe over there, whilst you talk; I can’t do speeches.’

‘Ah, that’s a shame, that is,’ Hemlock said, shaking his head. ‘Because it’s not like you have a choice!’

With that, he drew in a deep breath and let forth a piercing whistle; as he did so, cries emanated from the outskirts of the encampment, and a mass of people stampeded across the camp – some just trying to stay clear of the others, and some with terrified looks and giving furtive glances over their shoulders.

‘What’s this?’ Scale asked, reaching out an arm and grabbing a goblin by the throat. ‘Toothsayer, what are you fleeing from, grey skin?’

Toothsayer looked back through the crowd and then back at Scale. ‘Boars!’

‘Oh, I like boar; it’s better than beef!’ Syeda declared.

‘Not these ones; boars make for a tough fight,’ someone else said.

‘Not Brodep-something boars are they? I ran into a giant boar and it looked a beast!’ Amaka exclaimed.

‘They’re short-bristled boars,’ Toothsayer confirmed.

Amaka looked around until she spotted one of the boars.

Race: short-bristled boar

Short-bristled boars are an adventurer’s nightmare: they’re territorial, they have tough hides that are resistant to most damage types and they offer no experience!

Genus: Suidae

Class: U

Affiliation: Bacchus

Harvestable items: tusks, hairs, feet, eyes

State: angry

Level: 10

Health 500/500, stamina 500/500, magicka 500/500

Boon: 25% earth-magicka resistance, 10% physical resistance from thick skin

Curses: none

Bestiary increased

‘They’re only class U,’ Amaka observed.

‘Don’t let that fool you; boars are bastards,’ Toothsayer said to scattered approval.

‘If you’re killed by a class U, is that this world’s version of the Darwin Awards?’ Amaka asked, pulling out a morning star and testing its weight.

‘Do we get to keep what we kill?’ Syeda questioned as she eyed a particularly fat-looking boar.

‘Who’s eating boar tonight?’ Helmhock roared, and the group ran forwards.

This was Amaka’s first real fight since the boss battle, and she felt her body respond fast; there was a coiled strength in her body that she wasn’t used to. The increase in her stats was addictive, almost euphoric. She could get used to this – it was exhilarating!

She ran at a boar that was engaged with a frightened man; she used the distraction to attack the boar from the side and sink her axe into its flank.

Battle log:

Short-bristled boar caught by surprise attack, +12.5% damage, resist 10% physical damage

Final damage is 20 damage points, 480 damage points remaining

The boar’s life counter hardly flinched, and the beast turned to face her, its beady eyes blazing with indignation. It charged forwards, butting her with its head, and Amaka bought her axe around to block it, but her attempts were feeble, and the axe was knocked from her grasp as the boar’s tusk struck it.

Battle log:

Blocked strike, 50 impact-damage points

Strength test failed, so you’ve been disarmed

Amaka stumbled back, pulled a thin blade from her belt and threw it at the boar, somehow impaling it in the eye.

Battle log:

Luck stat-check passed: lucky throw

Your attack has been augmented by your luck factor

Short-bristled boar caught with VP strike, dagger to the eye, for 75 damage points, 405 health points remaining

Short-bristled boar’s left eye reduced to 0 health points and has been permanently blinded

The boar squealed and charged away from Amaka, who let it flee; after all, killing it wouldn’t give her experience points, and it was proving not to be worth the hassle, so she turned to face the other boars.

New skill: thrown weapons

New skill: one-handed axes

‘You did well there, girlie,’ an elderly female said; she was holding a claymore that had a second claymore attached to its hilt, like a helicopter rotor, and she was holding it over her shoulder like a woodcutters axe.

‘Er, thanks, ma’am,’ Amaka responded, studying her.

Name: Darleen Royd

Race: orc

Orcs are an extremely community-minded race; a slight against one orc is often taken as a slight to the entire tribe. As such, this has given orcs the label of being an aggressive race.

Genus: Common

Affiliation: the Fates (warning: the Fates are opposed to the nature of your affiliation, so act with caution)

Specialisation: Klingenherr

Class: C

State: composed

Level: 51

Health 6,199/10,200, stamina 1,273/15,300, magicka 1,550/2,550

3 gates opened, 5 shen points activated, 6 chakra points cleansed

Endowment: unknown

Curses: unknown

‘My name’s Darleen, and this is Schadenfreude,’ Darleen said, motioning towards her weapon.

‘It’s… er… big,’ Amaka replied.

‘Yep, and about as tactful as me,’ Darleen declared with a big smile. ‘So you’re the one they say is going to lead us now?’

‘Possibly, possibly; if that’s okay with you?’ Amaka asked hesitantly.

Darleen shrugged. ‘I got bitten on the thigh by a kakakow, a type of lizard.’

‘Kakakow?’ Amaka was clearly unimpressed.

‘They’re named after the noise they make, a kind of throaty “Ka, ka, ka, kowwwww”.’ The last “w” was held for a few seconds. ‘Anyway, the buggers’re poisonous, and I ain’t been able to get a cure, so now I visit a healer every few days and can’t risk going out on quests anymore.’

‘Doesn’t the poison expire? All status effects I’ve seen so far have a time limit on them.’

Darleen shook her head. ‘This thing metabolises in the blood, so unless I get it cured, it ain’t going anywhere. Now I teach duel wield; you interested?’

Amaka held out her stump. ‘Not really.’

‘Ah, talk about expensive healing. Reckon yours’ll cost more’n mine.’

‘I didn’t think it could even be healed?’ Amaka enquired, not allowing herself to get her hopes up.

‘Oh most things can be cured – if you’ve got the coin or the FP.’

‘FP?’

‘Faith points; if you have an affiliation, you can visit a temple that has a statue of your deity; you can make that temple your official temple, and then – in your stats – you’ll have affiliation, deity name and the temple name attached to it. That’ll let you accrue faith points, which can be used to buy just about anything – if you’ve got the points. If you don’t have a deity yet, you can get one.’

‘Argh! In-game currency. Boo! But how can I find a temple with a statue of my deity?’

Darleen shrugged. ‘Beats me.’

‘So why don’t you cure yourself with these points?’ Amaka asked. The whole thing sounded too good to be true, so she was looking for the catch.

‘Oh, I spent mine a long time ago. I bought a second life, old Schadenfreude here and a few other things. Now I don’t have enough to be cured.’

‘A second life?’ Amaka was confused.

‘Yep, I bought that some fifty years ago and used it when I got killed by a crockodore.’

‘What do you mean used it? Go slower.’

‘A second life is… well, what it sounds like: you die, and then you come back. I was killed by a crockodore about thirty years ago. The next day, I woke up nude in the temple I had set as my main temple. I used the second life up and lost a few levels, but all in all, it was totally worth it.’

‘You can come back from the dead?’ Amaka probed, amazed.

‘Not so much; the way it was explained to me was that as my body died, my soul left it, but before passing through the veil it was rerouted to the temple where a body was made for it. So, technically, my body died, but I didn’t. I don’t rightly understand it myself; I was never into the eternal verities, but whatever,’ Darleen concluded with another shrug.

‘Is this enough? I ask you whether you want to live in fear and cower away, flinching at every change of the wind?’ a voice called out, using mana-enhanced volume.

‘Good lords above and below, what is that man planning now?’ Darleen enquired, looking off into the distance.

Amaka turned to see a crowd gathering. ‘Is that To-thingy’s voice?’

‘The essence of man is his home values, his home life, and what kind of home is this? No father and no husband worth his salt wants his family to live like this!’ Torent continued, for it was indeed him.

‘Unfortunately,’ Darleen explained, resting her sword against her hip, ‘for decades I’ve kept my husband under heel, then this man turns up, and suddenly, my husband gets “ideas”.’

‘A man is honest to his fellow man; are the guards of Avalia honest with us? Do they die with us? They cower behind their stone walls with their iron doors; a man must be fearless in the face of his enemy, or they’ll return. A village must be built on home values; the homes here have been raided, the village has no foundation and the bedrock is rotting! The esteem of a village is tied to its army; they’re in equilibrium. Well, you tell me where this village stands with its guards who hide? As men, we’re required to think, fight and breed, to raise healthy young boys, but living a life behind a vegetable stall whilst soppy guards cower robs us of our virility. Every man has the right, nay duty, to serve his people and to protect his woman, yet we aren’t allowed to join the guards. Without spending time in uniform, how can we master our bodies and hone our swordsmanship? So join me as I hold my hand out to you, and together we can create a new land – a new home where we can strive to better ourselves through sweat, where our young can mould themselves in the heat of battle, and our woman can tend to their soft and gentle natures, so that their natural feminine beauty can shine through!’ the man declared.

There were cheers to this, and Amaka wondered suddenly why a man this popular riled her so much. Perhaps she was in the wrong? Perhaps she should let him govern the village? After all, she didn’t want to lead. The problem was that, rightly or wrongly, she thought he was an odious man and refused to bend her knee to him.

‘Now I shall lead you to a new home where we can grow in strength together. Join me, brothers; join me and usher in a new era!’ he concluded.

There were cheers and calls; even Syeda was jumping up and down, clapping her hands.

‘What are you clapping for? He doesn’t even know where Tumbleswood is,’ Amaka said, and she cuffed Syeda around the head.

Syeda managed to dodge most of the blow and stuck her tongue out. ‘Well then, we’d better lead them. Cloud!’ she called.

She received a loud howl in reply before Cloud appeared with a dead boar held between her teeth. Amaka’s stomach lurched at the sight, and she looked away quickly.

There were cheers from the group as Minion appeared and stood beside Cloud, the two knoxes having become the impromptu mascots of the new village; after all, knoxes were known to be powerful fighters and loyal animals.

‘What do you want? It’s a bit late to defend your mistress,’ Amaka grumbled, placing her hands on her hips and looking at Minion, who barked in reply. ‘Oh really? That’s your apology?’

Minion knelt down and shimmied over to Amaka on her belly.

‘Oh no, that’s not going to work. That’s three fights you’ve missed now,’ Amaka chided.

Minion whined and gave Amaka puppy dog eyes, though this “puppy” had eyes the size of dinner plates.

Amaka stamped her foot. ‘That’s not fair; your eyes are massive!’

Minion yapped and licked Amaka with a tongue roughly the width of Amaka.

‘Yuck! Fine, you’re forgiven!’

Minion barked happily and bounced around; her tail knocked over Syeda, who was rubbing Cloud’s belly.

‘Calm down, you daft thing!’ Amaka commanded, grabbing Minion and skidding as the knox danced playfully.

After picking herself backup, Syeda asked excitedly, ‘So are we going now?’

‘Well, I don’t think we can travel in the dark, so it’s a bit late in the day to start out now; we’d only get a few hours in before we’d need to set up camp. With this many people, it’ll be best to get up before dawn and get marching as day breaks.’

‘That’s a good plan,’ Helmhock concurred, nodding.

Syeda and Amaka turned round in surprise, not knowing he was there.

‘I was listening to the speech; he always had a way with words, and I thought I’d better come over to see you,’ Helmhock explained as he spotted the surprise on the faces of the two girls.

‘Okay, hold on; I have everyone’s info still,’ Amaka said, pulling up a mental prompt and looking through her old messages.

You have formed a party.

‘Okay, so that’s the party formed; I’ll send a party message about setting off tomorrow and leaving just before sunrise,’ Amaka confirmed before sending the message.

‘I’ll be there,’ Helmhock said, reading the message and nodding. ‘I’ll spread the word to the others I know who’ll want to join – the trustworthy lot.’

Helmhock nodded once more, waved and set off to spread the word.

‘This is going to be a problem,’ Amaka stated, and she began to bite her lip.

‘How so?’ Syeda queried.

‘Well, there’ll be those who are with us and those swayed by the speech; that’ll cause groups to form, which isn’t good.’

‘Why split? Let Torent lead.’

Amaka shook her head. ‘Sorry, I don’t trust him.’

‘Well, the first thing is to get set up, and then we can worry about division.’

‘These things have a habit of spreading quickly, but you do have a point. I’ll have to think about it. There’s just so much to do, and I still don’t fully understand how this world works,’ Amaka confessed, biting her lip once more and trying to create a mental checklist. Whatever system it was that had created the quest list didn’t let her create her own prompts.

‘Wiflebeast, are you coming?’ A breathless voice asked.

Amaka and Syeda turned to see an out-of-breath human boy looking at Amaka with near hero (heroine?) worship.

‘What?’ Amaka asked, her thoughts tumbling at the sudden interruption.

‘They’re heading off now!’ the boy stated.

Amaka blinked. ‘What? Wait, slow down. What’s happening?’

‘There’s a band getting together to chase the fiends and get Terry’s goods back.’

‘Who?’

‘The man who’s cart was attached.’

‘How are you going to track the creature? It sounded like a bird attack.’

‘Can’t you do it? They say you can track blood through a maze!’

Amaka half opened her mouth and caught sight of a group of children close by; they all had a similar dejected air, with well-worn clothes and faces aged beyond their young years, and they all had the same look of hope/adoration when looking at Amaka.

‘Sure; sure, I can do that,’ Amaka answered, and then she cleared her throat. ‘Minion!’

Minion bounced over to Amaka, who caught her by the collar, swung herself onto the knox’s back with a smooth, balletic movement and steered her over to the broken cart.

‘Get the smell, girl; smell the claw marks. Got it?’ Amaka commanded.

Minion sniffed around and found a trace of the scent, before leaping forwards and setting off, picking up the pace as she left the confines of the camp.

‘Good girl, go, go,’ Amaka urged her onwards, gripping her firmly.

There was some confused commotion behind her, but Amaka ignored it and clung on for dear life as Minion opened her stride and tore over the ground. As they reached the tree line, the top of Amaka’s nose, right between her eyes, started to tingle and itch uncomfortably, anticipating slamming headlong into a tree. So Amaka nuzzled her head deeper into Minion’s fur.

As Minion slowed, Amaka poked her head up, was promptly slapped by a tree branch and fell off Minion.

Battle log:

slash damage, −15 health points, fall damage, −2 health points, 883 health points remaining

Affliction: bleeding, −1 health point per second for 3 seconds, 822 health points remaining

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

After getting groggily to her feet, Amaka wiped away a smear of blood and looked around. Minion was a short distance off making remarkably little noise for her size. As Amaka followed Minion, Cloud and Syeda caught up.

'Where’s Minion?’ Syeda asked, and she was immediately answered by barking. ‘Never mind.’

When they reached Minion, they spotted a half-hidden cave, and Minion was looking up and barking at something.

‘I guess we go through the cave?’ Syeda questioned as she got down from Cloud and pulled aside the moss that was concealing part of the opening.

‘Why?’ Amaka asked.

‘If you find a cave and you need to get to something above it, the cave is usually linked to it,’ Syeda explained with a shrug. ‘The world is simple like that.’

Amaka watched Minion prowl through the cave entrance. ‘She seems to agree.’

No sooner had she said this than Minion bolted out of the cave, stood facing the forest and growled at some unseen presence. There was a soft, subtle, susurrating sound, which caused the hairs on Amaka’s neck to tingle; unconsciously, she pulled an axe from her belt and scanned the ferns. Minion sank to a crouch and stalked forwards, her paws landing soundlessly and her body flush against the floor. Amaka nearly jumped out of her skin as Cloud appeared next to Minion; Amaka hadn’t even noticed Cloud move.

There was a snapping branch behind Amaka, and she turned to see Syeda frozen there, her eyes wide and embarrassed.

Amaka turned back to watch the two knoxes stalking something. Minion pounced; there was the loud yowling of a large cat in pain and the growl of Minion tangling with the animal. Cloud adjusted her position slightly before leaping, but just as Cloud’s muscles contracted, a shape burst from the bushes, bit into Cloud’s thigh and started wrapping around the hind legs of the knox.

‘Nightclaw, go; Silverwing, come to my aid!’ came a voice, cutting through the sounds of Minion’s fight, which stilled quickly. A large, winged creature – something like a 5-foot-wide, purple-and-silver moth – appeared through a fractal rent in the sky. ‘Silverwing, use poison wind!’

The moth flapped its wings in a quickening tempo, and a vile, sticky air swept over them.

Battle log:

poison, −15 health points, 867 health points remaining

Affliction: poison, −15 health points every 3 seconds for the next 5 hours

Affliction: muscle spasms

You’ve inhaled a poison, which is causing your muscles to cramp uncontrollably. All physical actions have a 15% chance of failure for the next 5 hours.

Luck augmentation: luck check passed, chance of failure reduced to 5%

Amaka covered her mouth with a sleeve and cast her gaze around; she spotted a man watching the fight from behind the cover of large fern tree. Amaka used her teleportation to appear beside the tree, under the cover of its branches. She crept forwards on her hands and knees, the low branches nearly tangling in her hair, and with a burst of speed, she rose to her feet and wrapped the curve of her axe blade around his neck.

‘What the—!’ the man exclaimed before Amaka pressed her axe into his neck.

‘Call them off,’ Amaka whispered, hoping her soft voice would exaggerate the power of her position.

In a blur of motion, someone sprinted from Amaka’s blind side, locked Amaka in a painful grasp and threw her aside.

Battle log:

pierced by claws, −27 health points, 840 health points remaining

Affliction: bleeding, −1 health per second for 5 seconds

Battle log:

strike tree, −314 health points, 526 health points remaining

Affliction: bleeding from being impaled on a branch, −3 health points per second for 68 seconds, will rise to 33 points once the branch has been removed

Amaka groaned and groped around for the branch; she looked down and spotted part of it sticking out of her navel – her beautiful, sculpted, smooth navel! She’d have a scar now, another to add to the growing list. Now her stomach, once her favourite feature, would be marred.

Amaka cast a healing from her rings, and the delirium passed quickly; she gritted her teeth and tried to break the branch one-handed. She looked up to see Syeda and Minion attacking a massive figure, whilst Cloud was wrestling with the giant boa.

The man Amaka had held at axe point was on the ground, holding his neck as blood oozed out. A golden light enveloped him, and he brought his hand away from his neck gingerly and called out in a loud, clear voice, ‘Halt, who are you people?’

‘Who are we? You attacked us; who are you?’ Syeda replied, her voice slightly shrill.

‘We didn’t mean to attack you; your beasts attacked my pets. If I banish them, will you call off your knoxes?’

Syeda nodded and grabbed Minion by the mane. The man nodded in return and banished his animals; they disappeared in twisting fractal patterns of violet and purple.

‘Good boy; wait,’ Syeda said, letting go of Minion.

The large man grunted, turned away, and then stepped up to Amaka and pulled her free of the branch. Amaka gasped and her breath was taken by the pain; it was the only reason she didn’t scream.

‘I’m Lahcen; the minotaur is Bo,’ the man said. He was a short, stockily built man, with a beard nearly as long as his hair and a vest that had the head of a creature he’d skinned left on it like the hood on a hoodie.

Bo was clutching a circular shield that was around half the height he was, and he was nearly 7 feet tall. He had the body of a human but was covered in bull-like leather, and he had cloven feet and a wide, flat face with curved horns. His shape looked like three extremely muscular men had been fused together.

Name: Lahcen Fajr

Race: human

Genus: Common

Affiliation: Dhat-Badan

Specialisation: summoner

Class: C

State: cautious

Level: 37

Health 1,850/1,850, stamina 1,850/1,850, magicka 2,103/3,700

1 chakra point cleansed

Endowment: unknown

Curses: unknown

Name: Bo

Race: minotaur

Minotaurs were created by Ares to command his armies; the bovine element is taken from the zebu bull and not the common bull, reducing their intelligence as a crude-yet-efficient method of protecting against mental resistance. Their skins have been treated to make them impervious to piercing and slash damage, and it’s said that they feel no pain.

Genus: Spartan

Affiliation: Ares

Specialisation: aspis

Class: B

State: confident

Level: 35

Health 7,875/7,875, stamina 7,500/10,500, magicka 1,700/1,700

2 gates opened, 3 shen points activated

Endowment: unknown

Curses: unknown

‘Syeda,’ the girl said, introducing herself. ‘Cloud, Minion and Amaka.’

‘What are you doing out here?’ Lahcen asked, his words etched with ire.

‘We’re looking for the fiend that attacked the wagon,’ Syeda explained.

Lahcen studied Syeda for a moment. ‘You’re the Lara child? I’ve bought from your parents a few times.’

Syeda nodded.

‘Well then, you’re not trained to be out here; you shouldn’t have come out alone.’

‘She isn’t alone,’ Amaka declared, wiping her bloody hand over her thigh.

‘Amaka was it? And you are?’ Lahcen enquired.

‘Not accountable to you,’ Amaka answered.

Lahcen let out a bark of irritation. ‘We’ve patrolled these woods for years and never seen you around, and you… you’re a child! Barely level 6 from what I remember. What makes either of you two think you’re safe out here? You should have left this for trained people!’

‘I’m level 12 now,’ Syeda replied proudly.

‘Congratulations, you have the stats of a child; leave this for the grownups, little girl,’ Bo rumbled in a deep voice.

Lahcen shook his head. ‘That’s still too low; the weaker monsters here are level 30, so you shouldn’t be alone in here.’

‘She isn’t alone,’ Amaka reminded him.

‘And who are you, girl?’ Bo asked.

‘One who’s blessed with free will,’ replied Amaka.

‘Do you have any idea how often people like you have to be rescued out here? Get a guide or stay on the roads,’ Lahcen ordered.

Amaka decided to give Lahcen the benefit of the doubt; he didn’t sound like a typical macho male, but someone made angry by others’ stupidity, which she could relate to.

‘We’re not alone; we’ve got two knoxes, which are basically level 30, and the two of us. We’ve taken out a giant spider and an undead abomination.’ Amaka summoned Stirgar. ‘Oh, and him.’

Stirgar appeared, dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, with what looked like a cooked human calf in his hands.

‘He’s level 19,’ Amaka confirmed. ‘How have you out-levelled me?’

‘I get experience for different things,’ Stirgar said with a shrug.

‘Okay, so you’re not amateurs, but you shouldn’t take someone under level 15 out with you; it’s bad practice.’ Lahcen stated.

Syeda nodded.

‘What are you nodding for?’ Amaka accused Syeda.

‘That’s actually common practice,’ Syeda explained.

‘Well, you never told me! She came of her own volition!’ cried Amaka.

‘I thought you knew,’ apologised Syeda.

Amaka made a displeased noise.

Lahcen rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Look, you’ve got this far and did well against us. Why don’t we stick together for now?’

Amaka shrugged. ‘Makes sense. So since you’re also here, I take it that you also traced the scent to this cave?’

Lahcen nodded and pointed up. ‘There’s an outcrop where something has nested; we need to head up through the cave until we find it. But before that, we should share our skills and abilities so we know how best to fight together.’

Amaka crossed her arms. ‘No offence, but I’m not about to share all my secrets with you.’

‘That’ll hinder our team work, but I guess I can understand it to a degree; however, I assume you’re planning on joining that new village, so you’ll need to trust people eventually.’

‘I don’t see why the village will need that kind of information.’

‘To assign patrols and parties to protect the village and search the nearby area.’

‘That can happen organically, with people coming forward after they’ve created a party they’re comfortable in. You want to force us into a party – and I’m still not sure we need you. This could just be an elaborate trap. I was with the group sold to the caroks, and maybe you’ve been sent to finish us off?’

‘I’d never do such a thing!’ Lahcen stated angrily, cutting his hand through the air.

‘I believe that much, but I’m still not giving you information you can use against me.’

‘Look, you’re clearly new to this area – I’ve never seen anything like you – and maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I’m not asking you to list all your attributes and skills, as we also know the importance of personal information, but it’s considered polite to at least share what type of fighter you are, and if you’re fast and resistant, strong and resistant, fast and stealthy, etc.’

Amaka nodded. ‘I can agree to that much. We’re both agile fighters; I have more power in my strikes, but Syeda is the more agile. We’re both fragile in defence, but I have some skill in stealth and ambush.’

‘I’ll say; I never even noticed you in the trees,’ Lahcen admitted.

Amaka continued: ‘I’m not sure what else to say. We’re still relatively low level, so there isn’t that much to us; we’re scrappy. We specialise in fighting those of higher levels, I guess; we’ve done it a bit.’

‘And your beast?’ Bo asked.

‘The knoxes? They’re new, so we’re not sure what they’re capable of,’ replied Amaka.

‘No, that,’ Bo said, pointing to Stirgar.

‘Mage, long range, all-round incredible and well endowed. I’ll give your wife a good seeing too if you’re struggling in that department,’ offered Stirgar.

‘Lots of close range; that’s troubling,’ Lahcen stated, stroking his beard.

‘I deal in defence and blocking, and I specialise in rapid response,’ clarified Bo.

Lahcen nodded. ‘You go up front with those two. Send the knoxes out in front to find traps and ambushes. We aren’t the worst-matched party, but I’ve seen better, especially as I’m a summoner, so I keep back – well out of the fight – and let my familiars do the damage. Technically, I guess that means I’m long range if you think of the animals as tools.’

‘That’s a bit callous,’ Syeda chided.

‘Not for a summoner. A beast-tamer finds a creature and makes a bond, and when the creature dies, unless the tamer has some ultimate skill, the animal is dead. The trade-off is that they have constant companions but risk losing one for good. However, I either use a spell to create something to fight or I make a pact with a race and then summon one of them to fight alongside me. If they lose health, they’ll be banished but not dead, so I need to wait for a cool-down to resummon. Also, they’re out for a certain duration, which means I spend most of my time alone. I considered being a tamer, which means you get a greater affinity to the animals, as I love pets; however, it does mean that you need to find and then tame an animal and risk it dying. My way, I can buy scrolls and make a pact through that, and then have monsters I’ve never seen before fight beside me, but I don’t get the love and friendship that tamers do.’

‘So two long range, two close-range attack, two scouts and one close-range defence,’ Bo concluded, counting on his fingers. ‘If we can balance this, it could really work, but it’ll take some team work.’

‘Agreed,’ Lahcen said.

‘Assuming we don’t stab you in the back first!’ Syeda added playfully.

‘No offence, but after that little scuffle back there, I think we’re safe,’ Lahcen responded.

‘Meaning?’ Amaka replied hotly.

‘Well, we were winning,’ Lahcen stated, and as Amaka opened her mouth to reply, he gave her a big grin and a wink.

Amaka let out a breath slowly; she needed to work on her temper. ‘So what’s the plan? Are we actually looking for something stolen or just killing this creature because it attacked first?’

‘Personally, I’d like to trap it and sell it to a beast-tamer. Don’t look at me like that! I said beast-tamers love their pets! We could chase it off, but with all the monsters appearing suddenly from the north, I’m not sure that’s an option. So would you prefer to kill it or trap it?’

‘I can’t imagine chasing off monsters is a popular choice; most people would be after the experience points, wouldn’t they?’ Amaka asked, and she bit her lip.

‘Unfortunately, however, there are some of us who believe that we can’t just go around killing everything. Nature needs balance,’ Lahcen clarified.

‘And the big guy agrees?’ queried Amaka, jabbing her thumb at Bo.

‘I have a blessing that means if we’re judged to have won the fight – even if the opponent survives – I get the full experience reward,’ Bo told them.

‘Wow, that’s an amazing blessing!’ Syeda said excitedly.

‘It’s been useful,’ Bo agreed, ‘but it does mean that if I’m judged to lose a fight, I lose experience points, including the gods judging the fight being unfair and refusing me all experience points, on occasion.’

‘No experience?’ Amaka asked flabbergasted.

‘None; zero experience because I was too high a level or outnumbered something, which is why I prefer travelling with Lahcen; his beasts don’t count as an advantage,’ explained Bo.

‘I have some experience in entering trapped areas, so I should probably go first,’ Amaka volunteered.

Bo grunted and nodded; it was an area in which he had little skill himself.

‘I shan’t ask how you acquired such a talent,’ Lahcen said with a smile.

Amaka’s mouth dropped open at the implication. ‘I’m not… I haven’t,’ she blustered.

‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,’ Lahcen replied with a soft laugh.

Amaka strode past him with as much dignity as she could muster before pausing at the entrance to the cave and activating her all-seeing-eye skill as the knoxes bounded into the cave.

‘There’s nothing obvious,’ Amaka said as she entered slowly, ‘only a ton of guano.’

‘What’s guano?’ Syeda asked.

‘Just another term for bird shit,’ Amaka confirmed. ‘Not surprising as whatshisname said he was attacked by a flying creature.’

‘Terry said it was a griffin,’ Syeda declared, a hint of awe in her voice.

‘He said a lot; I get the impression he likes attention,’ Amaka replied wryly.

‘True. I studied his wagon, and whilst I agree it was a winged creature, it was no griffin,’ Lahcen said.

Bo sniffed the air loudly; it was impressive just how loud his sniffing was. ‘I smell bats.’

‘Are bats bad?’ questioned Amaka.

Bo shrugged. ‘It depends on the race.’

Amaka had to agree.

‘Cloud and Minion don’t seem concerned,’ Syeda suggested.

Bo nodded.

‘I agree; I trust their noses. They’d let us know if anything high class was around. They sniffed out my familiars quick enough,’ Lahcen stated.

‘They’ve never been around during a fight; I trust their cowardice,’ Amaka retorted grudgingly.

‘Knoxes? Cowardice? Not so,’ Bo disagreed, shaking his head.

‘I agree; if they’ve avoided conflict, then you must be new owners. Knoxes are extremely loyal when bound, but they are spirited creatures,’ added Lahcen.

‘They test you,’ declared Bo.

Lahcen agreed. ‘True, it could be a test.’

‘Or we just got a defective pair with a proclivity for soppy kisses; not all knoxes will be brave and heart strong,’ Amaka muttered darkly.

Lahcen laughed.

‘This isn’t so; a knox’s affection is tied to its loyalty. If they’re loving, then there must be some other reason they chose not to fight,’ Bo explained.

‘Huh. Curious,’ Amaka pondered, nibbling her lip as she did so.

The cave was small and littered with rotting leaves and other uninteresting detritus. Amaka assumed the cave was a dead-end and that Syeda’s rule of “all caves located near a quest are related to said quest” seemed to be false.

‘That’s it; this cave is just a coincidence,’ Amaka concluded with a shrug.

‘It’s unusual… almost unique,’ Lahcen responded.

Bo started his loud sniffing again, snuffling around like a bloodhound. ‘I smell fresh air,’ he declared, looking up at an otherwise insignificant part of the cave.

They all moved, and Amaka’s vision showed her a broken rope ladder and a hole in the ceiling.

‘Nice catch! It seems we head up,’ she suggested. She jumped, caught the ladder and then tried a one-armed pull-up; her arm shook as she strained, but she failed to pull herself up. ‘Little help,’ she requested.

Bo grabbed her around the waist and pushed her up.

Amaka scrabbled around with her feet until she caught the ladder and started to climb up slowly.

‘Yet another opportunity for Minion to avoid a fight,’ she added as she looked down.

‘Such is life,’ Bo said.

Amaka looked bemused at that statement.

This level of the cave contained luminescent fungi that gave off enough light for the group to see by, and there was a small bundle near a campfire.

Bo used his foot to sift through the campfire. ‘Smugglers,’ he concluded.

‘What makes you say “smugglers”?’ Amaka asked.

Bo shrugged. ‘Because of the hidden entrance.’

‘What would they be smuggling?’

‘Looks like cherry wine,’ Lahcen said, picking up a bottle and examining the label.

‘Cherry wine; what’s that?’ Amaka enquired as Syeda made appreciative noises.

‘It’s a high-quality wine made in Bardhurst; it offers some heavy buffs to stats, but the black cherries it’s made from are hard to harvest, so it’s illegal to export it, and anyone found with it outside of Bardhurst is likely to be robbed.’

Syeda told them, ‘I knew a boy who was caught smuggling black cherry stones out of Bardhurst.’

‘What became of him?’ Bo asked.

‘He was executed for treason; I think he was impaled on a red-hot poker, so the wound was cauterised as it punctured through him, and he was left to die.’

‘For a few cherry stones?’ Amaka asked horrified.

‘They’re only found in the mountains of Bardhurst, and the wine offers a perfect 10 buff to physical stats, so it means that their army can defend their borders from neighbouring baronies; without the wine, they’d be attacked, so they take the wine seriously,’ Lahcen explained.

New quest: ill-gotten gains

You’ve found a still-active smugglers’ hideout; if you catch the smugglers, you may keep their swag, gain entry to the illicit market, or capture them and hand them in to the authorities.

Amaka ignored the quest; she had no intention of hanging around the cave for that long, but she did spend some time harvesting alchemy ingredients, or she attempted to. Her clumsy attempts resulted in less than one portion of rock moss and a pile of mushrooms of a type she couldn’t determine.

New item: rock moss (0.5)

Uses, unknown, 0.0 kg

New item: unknown mushrooms (x4)

Uses, unknown, 0.0 kg each

Stirgar sneered at Amaka’s attempts and harvested the remaining items. Amaka wondered if she should give up on her harvesting attempts, but she wanted the rewards for reaching higher levels of the skill; after all, it was a simple skill and free experience.

Amaka glared at Stirgar’s pompous backside and stuffed the mushrooms in her mouth, chewing aggressively.

New skill: piercing the veil

You’ve gained the ability to see through the mundane and into the superdane, the oblique and the vertex of the parabola – the nth dimension.

Amaka ran her tongue over her teeth; her tongue started to taste like cotton, and her teeth were starting to judge her.

‘If this is a hideout, then there’s bound to be an emergency exit; that’s our next objective.’ Lahcen seemed unconcerned that his left eye had become an endless abyss that sucked in all light until Amaka was unable to see or even sense the existence of the universe outside. Then the eye blinked, all existence flowed back out and his eyes became opals.

‘There’s no shift of air,’ stated Minion from the floor below.

Amaka eyed the ground with caution; it was always there – the sky sometimes disappeared but not the ground. What did it want?

‘I don’t like the supercilious nature of that wall,’ declared Amaka, and she entered into a staring contest with the far wall, waiting for it to reveal its agenda.

‘Maybe it’s hidden behind some moss?’ queried Lahcen.

A patch of the wall was smeared with pastel colours and spoke in iambic pentameter so that the syllables of the words were stressed. Amaka could tell they were stressed from the angle of the clef as it passed by.

‘What goal do hands have?’ Amaka reached out and grabbed a patch of air that had started to unwind at the seams. ‘The air is breaking! Don’t let go! Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Go. Go.’ Amaka was stuck in a time loop – her mouth was stuck repeating the same word as time stuttered. ‘Go.’

Skill: piercing the veil

Your mind is free – you can open yourself to thoughts no one else accepts. What is the concept of “indoors”? Why do the stars watch us? If space is full of stars, why’s it so dark?

Amaka was now making clicking noises to distract the walls, which were using echolocation to spy on her. The ceiling started to undulate, and great viscous blobs melted away to reveal a panorama of vibrant, matte colours. The ceiling and walls boiled and turned into a gentle stream, which Amaka had to wade through. The various dimensions of the room changed, and instead of dimensions, they became wavelengths of pastel colours. An old trireme made out of the gelatinous flesh of Syeda sailed the stream from the melted walls, and Amaka’s mouth became full of the taste of the colour of five o’clock.

New item: Nightmother’s wart

You’ve discovered “Nightmother’s wart”, which is a hallucinogenic mushroom.

Well, if you will insist on shoving everything into your mouth… Have you never heard of salivatory herpes?

Skill increased: foraging 13

Amaka immediately stuck three fingers down her throat until she vomited.

Skill: piercing the veil

What is zero? How can there ever be nothing? Even when you lose something, it causes an absence, which is a negative value; it’s never truly zero.

Amaka panicked; that made sense! What was nothing?

Resistance check: drug-induced hallucinations

Partial success

Resistance increased: mental resistance 31; every level is equivalent to 1% resistance

Amaka forced herself to be sick a few more times.

‘What’s going on?’ Lahcen asked; he’d turned around at the sound of dry heaving.

‘Just raising my foraging skill,’ Amaka declared unselfconsciously.

‘Read a book, yeah?’ Lahcen suggested.

‘It’s free experience,’ Amaka replied with a shrug.

‘A book can increase it as well; although it isn’t as quick because you need to study and actually understand the book, but you can get as much as five levels. Depending on the book, of course,’ Lahcen said.

‘Surely more than five levels? Any book that could take me from 100 to 105 should get me from level 5 to 40 surely?’

Lahcen laughed good naturedly. ‘Any book that could give you that type of boost… Well, you wouldn’t understand it at level 5.’

Amaka thought about this; she supposed if you took level 100 to be university level – even PhD level – then you couldn’t expect a high school student to understand it. ‘I get your point,’ she conceded. ‘You know, when I was tripping, I felt like this wall was watching me,’ Amaka stated, walking up to a wall and looking it over carefully.

‘You’re acting on a feeling you got whilst drugged?’ Bo asked; he obviously found the whole thing distasteful.

‘There was something about it, but I can’t put my finger on it,’ Amaka muttered to herself.

‘The mushrooms,’ Lahcen offered.

Amaka let her eyes unfocus; looked at the right way, it almost looked like a picture frame because the wall had a strange square mark on it. It was only subtle, where the grain of the rock was interrupted.

Amaka ran her hand over the bottom of the square, where there seemed to be a little indentation, and found her fingers had sunk into a hollow. She felt around and discovered a lip of stone, which she pulled on experimentally. The lip moved forwards, and the entire square frame moved; she tugged on it some more and found that it was, in fact, a well-hidden hatch.

Skill increased: perception 9

‘I’ve got something,’ she called to the group, and she climbed through the gap that had been revealed. The hatch was on a weight, so it closed on her foot as she climbed through, and she was left in darkness until the others caught up with her.

Amaka crawled out of the tunnel and onto a small ledge, which she followed round to a large platform with a bird’s nest taking up more than half of it, complete with an ugly bird nesting in it. The bird had large, bulbous eyes; a beak with many cracked and chipped edges; ruddy feathers, many of which were stuck at odd angles; large patches of missing feathers; and strange, hand-like protuberances on the ends of its wings.

Race: orphanbird

Although orphanbirds are capable of flight, their poor level of grooming means that individual orphanbirds are often unable to fly. Orphanbirds are scavengers, stealing not only food but nests – like the cuckoo, the orphanbird will lay its eggs in another bird’s nest, often eating the other eggs.

Genus: Vulgaris

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a genus but more of an argot allocation for creatures that have a similar set of unconventional habits (such as the nematode and the gaslight catfish, which lay their egg clutches in faecal matter).

Class: C

Affiliation: Cloacina

Harvestable items: unknown

State: hungry

Level: 35

Health 1,750/1,750, stamina 1,750/1,750, magicka 1,750/1,750

Boon: none

Curses: none

Bestiary increased

The orphanbird locked an eye on Amaka and squawked; it flapped its wings, squawked again and a yellow light crisscrossed its body.

‘I think we should back off.’ Syeda had an edge of fear in her voice.

There was a smell of ozone as the lights continued to spark around the orphanbird; it built to a crescendo until a lance of light spat forwards and struck Amaka on the chest. Amaka was thrown backwards from the impact and crashed into Syeda with incredible force. They were both tossed through the air; Amaka was thrown off the ledge and down to the ground some 15 feet below.

Battle log:

Struck with 400 lightning-damage points, 350 health points lost, 500 health points remaining

Strength test failed, you’ve been hit with the knock-back ability

You strike Syeda for 75 impact-damage points, 425 health points remaining

Struck by the ground (or you strike the ground) for 85 impact-damage points, 340 health points remaining

Burned by lightning strike, −50 health points, 290 health points remaining

Amaka coughed and a cloud of smoke left her mouth. ‘Owie.’

There was a burst of noise from above, and the sky distorted eerily as Lahcen summoned one of his creatures. The orphanbird appeared, throwing itself from the nest and flapping its overlarge wings – though it gained hardly any height – as it retreated from battle. Suddenly, Syeda launched herself from the ledge, her cornrows trailing behind her, as she leaped and struck the bird with her staff. The orphanbird let out a shrill squawk of pain, and its flight was arrested by the impact. It landed awkwardly with a few feathers shaken loose, like an overstuffed pillow. Syeda somehow alighted after the orphanbird and rolled as she did so, coming forwards without any break in the flow of her movements. The bird thrust its head forwards to peck at Syeda, who slammed her staff into the floor, used it to spin like a pole dancer and struck the orphanbird’s beak with a swift kick.

Amaka checked the outcome of Syeda’s attack.

Race: orphanbird

Genus: Vulgaris

Class: C

Level: 35

Health 1,730/1,750, stamina 1,750/1,750, magicka 1,750/1,750

Only 20 health points! Amaka was starting to love the crazy girl, but she really needed to get Syeda stronger.

The orphanbird caught Syeda’s staff and pulled it away. Syeda stuck out a hand acrobatically, caught the ground with her palm and cartwheeled back, bringing her foot up nearly parallel with her head to kick her staff out of the bird’s beak. The orphanbird scratched at the dirt and kicked up a spray of gravel into Syeda’s face. She staggered back, rubbing at her eyes as the orphanbird charged forwards, its wings flapping like an angry swan.

There was a terrible sound and a streak of movement as Cloud tackled the orphanbird and tore into it with claws and teeth; blood was soon flowing from numerous cuts on each of them, and the sounds of snarling and shrill squawks were spine-chilling.

There was the shriek of a bird of prey, and a streak of dark brown tore through the air with enough force to buffet Amaka and cause her to stagger aside. The shockwave slammed into Cloud and the orphanbird, and it tossed them apart. Before either could react, a second, less-powerful shockwave struck the orphanbird, and it staggered a single step backwards. Third and fourth shockwaves hit with decreasing power, and Amaka spotted a bird a short distance away that was launching the concussive strikes.

Name: Wildwing

Race: Dyche

Named after its discoverer, Raymond Dyche, who found this bird in the plains of Arkýnia, it’s known for its brown-and-white plumage. It’s understood to attack by using supersonic shockwaves, and its other most common form of attack is to dive-bomb its opponents and attempt to strike them with its beak.

Genus: Avian

The most common genus for flying creatures.

Class: D

Affiliation: Lahcen Fajr (summoned creature)

Harvestable items: none (summoned creatures disappear upon death)

State: alert

Level: 27

Health 1,350/1,350, stamina 1,350/1,350, magicka 1,350/1,350

Curses: none

Bestiary increased

‘Wildwing use airstrike!’ Lahcen commanded.

Wildwing glided for a moment, as it reduced the distance between itself and the orphanbird, before angling its wings and starting to lose height. As it’s speed increased, it stopped on a dime and beat its wings twice, creating blasts of compressed air that struck the orphanbird like physical blows, the second of which hit Cloud as the knox pounced.

‘Hey, watch it!’ Syeda shouted, stamping her foot.

‘Control your beast more; you’re letting it run free!’ Lahcen retorted.

‘I don’t control her; she’s a free beast,’ Syeda stated.

‘Her instincts are honed from fighting with others of her kind; commanding her helps her to adapt her technique,’ Lahcen explained.

Sounds like Pokémon, Amaka thought.

The orphanbird screamed; its voice changed pitch, and the bird itself shimmered as its voice duplicated until there was an octet of orphanbirds.

Orphanbird, use ‘double team’! Amaka thought, using a phrase from the Pokémon lexicon.

Race: orphanbird clones

The clones of the orphanbird share its health, stamina and magicka. There’s no original orphanbird, so if an orphanbird produces six clones and you defeat five, no matter which five, the remaining one will become the original.

Genus: Vulgaris

Class: C

Affiliation: Cloacina

Harvestable items: unknown

State: hungry

Level: 35

Health 200/219, stamina 189/219, magicka 145/219

The eight orphanbirds split up, and each sought out a target. Two of them attacked Wildwing, seemingly having chosen the target at random.

‘Wildwing, dodge!’ Lahcen shouted.

Wildwing did a bird version of a barrel roll as the two orphanbirds closed the distance, each summoning a spark of lightning to its beak tips, which lanced backwards over its body. The sounds of electrical discharges grew as the two orphanbirds strengthened their spells. As they arrived on top of Wildwing, their spells connected and shot out towards their target. Wildwing had the agility of an acrobat and twisted like a corkscrew, dodging the lightning by inches.

Lahcen made a fist and pumped it. ‘That’s it! Now blade wind!’

Wildwing flew at the birds with its wings outstretched, and a turbulent stream of air was created by its passing. It flew close enough to the orphanbirds for its wings to nearly touch them, and they were buffeted by its airstream as they cried out in pain.

‘Follow up with an airstrike!’ Lahcen instructed.

Obedient as ever, Wildwing complied; the two orphanbirds were unable to dodge, and they lost height from the sustained attacks, now being hardly 4 feet off the ground.

Lahcen queried, ‘Still alive? Okay, Wildwing, use blade wind one more time!’

The resulting attack sliced through branches on the nearby tree, and the two orphanbirds dropped to the ground, looking battered and exhausted but still in the fight.

‘That’s it, Wildwing; you’ve won this! It’s time to finish with a flourish – silver dust!’ Lahcen’s voice was full of triumph.

Wildwing started to move in a way that showed this last attack had a long cast time (the time until the spell was ready), and presumably, this long cast time was why Lahcen had waited until the orphanbirds seemed to be unable to fly.

The two orphanbirds spread their wings and moved in tandem before ending this sort-of dance with their beaks touching. In a slow brightening of light, the orphanbirds fused into one, and this single orphanbird – which had the combined life, stamina and mana of the two birds – took to the skies to attack.

In spite of the spell being named “silver dust”, Wildwing created a dark aura that spiralled and condensed into a small orb. As the darkness spiralled, it allowed slivers of light through – which is probably where it got the “silver” in its name from. Whilst Wildwing focused on the attack, the orphanbird concentrated a spark of electricity into the tip of its beak, which sparked down its body, and it struck Wildwing with a powerful blow that tossed the Dyche through the air in a double hit: one from the actual strike of the orphanbird and the second coming in the form of a magicka backlash from the incomplete spell. Wildwing crashed to the floor in an ugly heap, one of its wings twisting below it.

‘No! Wildwing!’ Lahcen cried in duel anguish, from both the pain felt from the death of a creature he cared for and also because the death of a summoned creature (even if it would appear alive in its own world) meant he couldn’t summon a new creature – of any type – for the next 5 hours.

Bo jumped from the ledge and landed on his shield. He sprang into the air and spun around, his shield held out. His shield had taken on a blue glow from the impact with the ground, and Bo slammed it into the combined orphanbird. Blue light flared, and the orphanbird flew backwards from the impact before dispelling in a puff of white smoke.

‘Grand slam!’ Bo shouted, and he beat his thighs with his arms and thrust his hips.

‘You’re supposed to shout the name of the move before you use it,’ Lahcen reprimanded with a laugh.

An orphanbird swooped in a tight circle around Bo before launching itself at him. As it increased in speed, it seemed to elongate. Bo brought his shield arm around and caught the orphanbird on the lower beak.

‘Pigeon peck!’ Bo named his move, and yet nothing seemed to happen.

The orphanbird continued past him – stretching out some 8 feet before the back of the bird started to catch up to the front and a shockwave rippled out, catching Bo in the chest before he could bring his shield down. His shield was glowing from the impact with the orphanbird, but the orphanbird didn’t seem to have sustained any damage.

Bo then moved like a baseball player and launched his shield. ‘Counterstrike!’

The shield seemed to home in on the bird; it curved slightly in the air before striking the orphanbird on the side, and this time the strike threw the creature sideways. Bo held out his arm and summoned his shield back to him; it dematerialised before rematerialising on Bo’s arm.

‘Shield call!’ Bo’s voice was full of pride at the move.

A second orphanbird circled above Bo and let out a shrill cry.

Affliction: cutting cry

You’ve been afflicted by the cutting-cry skill; your physical-defence stats have been reduced by 5%.

The two orphanbirds started their lightning spell again, and sparks of yellow lightning shot off erratically as they started to circle Bo. He turned with them, studying them carefully, with the electricity crackling as it sparked like little lightning spears. Bo held his shield up protectively and tried to sprint free of the circling birds, but when he passed the arc of their flight, a flash of light zapped him, and he was unable to move his shield in time to absorb the strikes.

Banging his shield with his fist, Bo psyched himself up. He tucked his head down, held his shield up, and charged into the electric barrier. He made it only a few steps before being tossed back into the circle. He punched the ground, let loose a roar of determination and charged forwards once more. The barrier spat and sparked, and Bo released a bestial cry of fury and plunged into the pain as the barrier started to solidify around him in a constant surge of energy.

But Bo was not to be beaten, and the barrier sputtered and failed as he forced his way out and stood there panting, bits of his skin burned and peeling, his health low, his horns blackened and steaming, but his shield nearly incandescently bright. His shield had absorbed a large portion of the damage and stored it, and now it was, metaphorically speaking, fit to burst with power.

The light from the shield seeped into Bo’s body and down to his legs.

‘Triumphant hippo!’ Bo shouted facing the sky.

Suddenly, he was sprinting forwards at a tremendous speed, and his shield flashed out and struck an orphanbird. There was a cacophony of noise and a complementary dance of light as the shield discharged its stored magicka. The light lanced off, and many charged beams struck the second orphanbird, which was flung through the air, flopping like a rag doll. When the light and noise had faded to blinding after-images and a buzzing tinnitus, all that was left of the orphanbird clobbered by the attack was a dissipating cloud of smoke.

‘Morning titan!’ Bo roared, panting and sweating heavily, but with a wild glint of victory on his face.

Amaka cast an eye over the two newcomers whilst chewing her lip once more. She could fight the orphanbird if she made a quick change into her altered form and teleported behind the thing for a few critical back-attack hits. The problem was that her alter-form ability (her pounamu-skin spell) and teleportation were what she considered her trump moves. As such, she wanted them kept secret – these two were friends now, but what about in the future? What if they blabbed about her abilities to others? The one thing she’d learned from watching anime and reading manga was the importance of keeping your abilities hidden. Also, she’d had a boyfriend once who always read strategy guides on the games he was currently playing, so he could use it to come up with plans to beat the bosses before he met them. She didn’t know much about games, but if that ex (who was a keen gamer) needed to know the moves of bosses before the fight, then that should also relate to this game-like world. She didn’t want someone knowing all her skills and plotting how to negate them and kill her. It was proving to be a cruel world after all.

All this meant that she’d have to fight without using those two moves. Unfortunately, that meant she had to fight with only one arm and without any ranged abilities. That was a distinct gap in her arsenal.

She pulled a throwing knife from her belt, pleased at the foresight of having bought them. Her throwing stats were terrible, but the only way to increase them was through action!

One of the orphanbirds spotted Amaka, and it attacked her using an arcing dive. Amaka easily dodged this, but a second orphanbird then dive-bombed Amaka; she was unable to dodge the attack completely, and sharp talons ripped through her clothing and flesh.

Amaka stumbled; the talons didn’t cut clean but instead tore at her and almost picked her off her feet. She turned her stumble into a run and watched the shadows of the orphanbirds to gauge when to duck. The two birds were moving in counter-circles to each other when one swooped at her; the other dove from the opposite side in an attempt to catch Amaka out. The claws gouged chunks of flesh from her shoulders, back and even her neck on one occasion, leaving her with a nasty bleed icon.

Affliction: bleeding, −5 health points per second for 123 seconds, 687 health points remaining

The treeline was inches away, and Amaka threw herself at a hedge, forcing her way through it. The orphanbirds screeched in rage as thick branches blocked them from their prey. They circled around and flew into the canopy of leaves and branches. It was easy to follow their progress: the sound of their wings striking branches and the visual disturbance in the foliage were clear indicators. So Amaka sprinted towards the commotion and used the opportunity to throw rocks into the ruckus; any strike would increase some of her stats, and Amaka wasn’t one to play fair. Here was a prime opportunity to… What was the phrase her ex used? Grind – that was the expression.

When the first orphanbird finally broke through the trees, Amaka dropped her rock, braced herself and pulled out her hammer. The orphanbird’s wings glowed silver, and it swooped down and struck Amaka with a wing, which hit her like a steel bar. Amaka took the blow and brought down her hammer, knocking the beast to the floor with the impact.

Battle log:

Orphanbird attacks with stinginglwing ability, −75 impact-damage points, 462 health points remaining

Attack orphanbird with blacksteel mace for 65 impact-damage points, orphanbird has 135 health points remaining

As she got back to her feet, having been knocked down during the fracas, Amaka used her healing to stop the bleeding.

The second creature broke through the trees and attacked Amaka with its beak, channelling an electrical spell, and Amaka swivelled to face it side-on and brought her hammer up in what her fighting style called “riptide”, her fighting style having been taught to her by a creature with an affinity for water after all. The timing was spot on, the beak cracked as Amaka’s hammer walloped it, and all three combatants were hit with the magicka backlash.

Battle log:

Luck stat-check passed: lucky strike

Your attack has been augmented by your luck factor

Orphanbird hit with critic damage, strength check of orphanbird’s beak failed, beak has been broken, 125 damage points, 10 health points remaining

Orphanbird hit with mana backlash, mana backlash area of effect 15 yards of electrical magicka damage of 32 points per second, backlash lasts 5 seconds

You’ve been hit with electrical magicka damage, 32 damage points suffered per second, damage reduced due to magicka resistance

There was a double pop sound as both orphanbirds disappeared in a puff of white smoke.

Syeda ran forwards as the creature swooped down to tackle her. She staggered in her run, and then leaped up, placed one foot on the beast as it passed through where she’d just been, kicked off the orphanbird and spun in the air, whipped her staff out to hit the creature on its underside, and landed with a flourish. A shockwave of sound stuck Syeda as an orphanbird channelled its shrill cry into a funnel of sound, which dissipated as the funnel widened; this meant that as the bird swooped closer, the shockwave was intensified, dropping Syeda to the floor from the intensity.

A fierce howl sounded close by, and the shockwave attack was broken off as gouts of flame burst from the bushes and covered Syeda’s assailant; just then, Cloud appeared, biting down on a flamethrower and with wisps of flame curling up around her muzzle. Lying on the floor, Syeda shifted her weight to her arms and then pushed off the ground so as to land on her feet. Syeda performed an aerial cartwheel (without touching the ground with her hands), snatching up the staff up instead.

Cloud hadn’t been a passive bystander; she’d been firing gouts of flame like a mortar team. Now, she summoned a flame of deep yellow and cast it at Syeda, who looked terrified as the fire approached her and stuck her staff out protectively. The fire struck the staff and spread over its length; Syeda’s eyes lit with a glint of malice (although on her it looked more like the mischievous glint of a child spotting the cookie jar). This time, as Syeda braced herself for another attack, she was in a half-crouch and she shot forwards to leap into the air, spinning like a top, and the flames from the staff warped around her.

The orphanbird didn’t fancy its chances, and it veered away from Syeda instead of trading blow for blow. There was a commotion close by as the last remaining orphanbird, which Bo had been fighting, climbed into the air. The two remaining orphanbirds joined back together as one before flying off as quickly as it could.

‘A goodly amount of experience,’ Bo announced.

‘Ah shit, I forgot to disband the party,’ Amaka cursed as her interface recorded the shared experience throughout her open party, which was the party she’d made from the survivors of the carok den. ‘Oh well, they weren’t worth much.’

‘Where’s that daemon of yours got to?’ Lahcen asked, looking around. ‘I don’t trust him to be out of sight.’

As if summoned by the use of his name (and being a daemon, that may well have been the case), Stirgar wandered into view with egg yolk and egg shells plastered all over his face and stomach.

‘I was just having a snack,’ Stirgar replied.

Syeda staggered into view holding her head.

‘Are you okay?’ Amaka asked, hurrying over.

‘I got thrown into a tree, but Minion revived me.’ Syeda rubbed Minion affectionately on the muzzle.

‘Minion knows healing spells? And where were you during all of this?’ Amaka looked Minion directly in the eye; Minion didn’t seem fazed in the slightest.

‘Maybe she doesn’t feel like you deserve her yet?’ Lahcen shrugged. ‘We’ve completed the quest, so we can return safely.’

Amaka frowned. ‘I haven’t had a quest completion notice, but I could have sworn I had a quest for this. I’ve got so many of the bloody things it’s hard to keep up.’

‘Well, if you didn’t get a quest, then why are you here?’ Lahcen queried.

Amaka shrugged. ‘I risked my life getting those people out of the carok den; I’m not going to let some ugly bird mess with them.’

‘Ah, you’re a hero,’ Bo said, overhearing the conversation.

‘What? No! I was a girl scout, so that was my good deed for the day,’ Amaka invented wildly. She’d helped because, well, she just had. She didn’t want to think too much about it and what it meant about what kind of person she was becoming. She was worried that if she thought of herself as a “hero”, then it would change her.

‘You saw people and danger, and you needed to help out,’ Bo declared with a nod.

Amaka waved off Bo’s words. ‘Just shut up; let’s loot the cave and get back.’