Oh, fuck.
There was that giggling sound behind me again, and this time I was sure I didn’t imagine it. I whipped around, staring into the darkness. It was too dark to see but I thought I saw movement out there, wisplike shapes floating between the trees. I’ve been stumbling closer and closer to my yellow marker during the day, making good progress, but all thoughts about the yellow marker had been thrown out the window after the sun set. I knew I had to stop for the night, set up camp but it was like I was urged forward, as if every part of these dark lands was unfriendly, hostile even. And I had walked and walked in some unverbalized hope of finding a place where the overwhelming feeling wasn’t that I would die and be torn to pieces if I stopped even for a second. I had to muster all my restraint not to start running blindly into the woods. And that was then I had heard that giggling behind me, as close as if a person had walked a couple of steps behind me, the light airy giggle of a young girl. I had looked over my shoulder, seen nothing and with my heart hammering, continued. And then I had heard it again. And when I turned, it was like an aggressive chill of wind blew past my head.
Now, I blinked and stared into the darkness, my mouth completely dry and my heart running amok. I was losing my battle with my nerves. If I only could wish myself out of this goddamn forest.
I gasped.
There were shapes out there, slowly coming at me, floating at me. I heard a slow whisper of a laugh, not a laugh – laughs! – because suddenly they were all around me.
Oh, crap.
Give me an enemy I can see. An enemy I can fight. Were these enemies really here, or just in my head?
Even Cloak had deserted me.
Another one of those cold gusts blew past me.
I turned and ran.
The lingonberry shrubberies brushed at my feet; the pine branches whipped at my face. I had my arms up and ran, blind with fear. I ran until I ran out of steam, and that was by a small stream of water, at the foot of a rocky slope. Moonlight had broken through the black clouds and the water swirled in shades of silver.
I looked back into the woods.
No wind spirits, or wraiths behind me. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though. Spirits and wraiths, if the horror movies were something to go by, wasn’t something you just outran.
It turned out I was right about that. I saw something in the woods. Could’ve just been a trick of the lunar light spilling between the trees, but the hair at the back of my neck rose. I saw the shapes clearly now. They looked like uncooked shrimps, maybe three feet tall, translucent with spectral arms that ended in claws. They came floating between the trees, maybe ten of them. I had four charges in my knife.
I couldn’t kill them. I couldn’t outrun them.
What could I do?
Then the wraiths stopped, they hung where they were gently bobbing up and down. I looked between them; eyes wide with fear. What was happening?
Then, the wraiths withdrew. I saw a larger shape, deeper in the woods, emanating a soft light. There was something with that light that washed the fear out of my body. All jagged edges became instantly smooth.
It was a shape of a women. She was naked, her long golden hair covering her breasts. She walked towards me, unhurriedly carrying a crooked staff taller than her. She smiled at me and the last of the tension released the grip of my body. I had turned to warm water, and I couldn’t feel my body anymore.
I smiled back at her.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, her smile a mystery concealing both the moon and the sun, her eyes a radiant silver. She moved like water, gently flowing. I couldn’t wait for her, but my body was numb and gone so I couldn’t go to her. She parted her lips.
Something pierced through.
There was something moving in here mouth, something black and shiny.
She smiled again and I saw the error of my ways. She wasn’t to be distrusted. She was to be admired, devoted and her smile washed my mind from unclean thoughts. She was perfection.
“Kraah!”
NO! CLOAK! DON’T TOUCH HER!
Cloak dove into the spectral beauty, tussling her golden hair before taking off again. She swinged her staff at him, her face an angry snarl, her silver eyes bleeding over into black.
“Kraah! Kraah!”
Cloak was behind me now, on the other side of the stream, his crowing eager and insistent. I dared a look over my shoulder, he was bouncing left and right, kraahing his head off.
I looked forward again. The spectral woman still came at me, a sombre smile and pleasant eyes, but I stared at her mouth.
Her cheeks suddenly bulged. A glittering dark mandible popped out of her mouth, and then another from the other side.
Oh, hell no.
Her face split up and peeled back to reveal a contorted demonic face, eyes burning a furious red. The rest of her golden attire fell to the ground as a used-up costume and revealed a sinewy body that looked like it was lacquered black, the body of some kind of insect, fingers long and sharp as knives.
I had seen enough.
I turned and sloshed over the stream, anticipating the stabbing pain when she bore down on me with those clawlike hands.
I stumbled up on the other side, whipping around.
She, I still thought of her as a she, stood on the other side of the stream, hunkered down, arms out from her sides, wiggling her long fingers as if getting ready to make the jump and run me through.
“Kraahh!” Cloak said and jumped up on my shoulder, as if to mock the creature; and that was when I realized, it couldn’t follow me across the stream.
I stuttered half a laugh, that was part relief and part incredulity.
Cloak had known. These were his lands. I was a stranger here, he was not. The stream marked a border. I had no idea what horrors awaited me on this side of the stream, but it couldn’t be worse than the thing staring at me from the other side of the stream. I looked at it and hit examine:
Dark Redana level 54
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Even though not either demon nor lecra, the Dark Redana is considered the Queen of the Corrupted. She shares similar traits with the more common Siren but instead of snaring the hearts of men, she rips it out. The Dark Redana secrets a scent that draw other corrupted to her, bending them to her will. The hormonal glands of the Dark Redana are one of the most sought-after ingredients in advanced alchemy and sell at a premium.
Ah, is that so? Call me a jerk. Call me a coward but that bitch was out to kill me and now she paces back and forth like an angry dog, unable to get to me. Premium price, eyh? I’m not letting this go to waste.
I pulled my bow of slow out of the inventory and nocked a steel arrow. This was the highest-level mob I’ve encountered and I had no idea what it would take to bring it down. I pulled the string and fired the arrow at the side of her head. It hit the Redana’s temple with a loud smack, making her shriek and stumble. She clawed furiously at the air. The woods on her side of the stream were suddenly teeming with the prawns, jerking back and forth, not knowing what to do. My display confirmed my initial suspicion. They were wind wraiths, ranging between level 12 and 20.
It took three arrows to take down the Redana. When she toppled face first into the stream I was awarded with 7.000 XP, moving my progress bar noticeable to the right, and an achievement that gave me 1000 silver. Nice.
I had my eyes locked on the wraiths as I waded out in the stream. One of the Redana’s grotesquely oversized hands was stretched out, like she was climbing a horizontal wall. The wraiths continued zipping from side to side, but some of them darted forward, as if to attack me.
I grabbed the cold hand of the Redana; it was like grabbing a glove of hard polished wood, and pulled her corpse to my side of the stream.
Now, what to do with it?
Should I… dismember it, trying to find the glands?
No, I hadn’t even been able to cut that frog open in biology class. Dismembering things wasn’t in my repertoire. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to tell a gland from a tonsil.
I looked at the corpse and got an idea.
I grabbed it by the waist and lifted it a couple of feet, Christ she was a weighty lady, and then just thought about my inventory.
She vanished from my hands, the air making a popping sound as it rushed in to fill the vacuum she left.
I looked into the inventory and laughed. I had five new items in there. Skull of Dark Redana x1; Bones of Dark Redana x 24; claws of Dark Redana x10; skin of Dark Redana x1; Glands of Dark Redana x4.
The prawns zipped back and forth on the other side of the stream, seeming agitated at me disrespecting the corpse of their dark queen.
I needed to get out of here. Needed to keep going northeast, and that meant I needed to get up on the hill that stretched along the stream. I just hoped it wouldn’t turn into a mountain.
When I was halfway up the hill, I saw the first remnants of and old wall. I was at the old border, the one that had been before Warnheim was united. I guessed it would be a very wise idea to not step over to the other side of that crumbling wall. I would’ve guessed that the reason the Redana and the wraiths hadn’t been able to follow over the stream had less to do with the stream itself than the fact that it seemed to be part of a forgotten border between two ancient kingdoms.
When I reached the top of the sloping hill, dawn finally broke. In the grey light of the new day, I saw the forests stretching out in all direction, going from a deep ember green, to grey to a faint blue in the far distance. I also saw the remains of a tall structure to the northeast, where the pine forest turned from grey to blue. It corresponded roughly with the marker on my map.
“What do you think about that, Cloak? That must be it, don’t you think?” I said, grinning.
“Kraah!” Cloak said, ever supportive, and flapped his wings, brushing the side of my face with his feathers.
I needed to push on but the nights ordeals had taken their toll. I needed to eat and catch some sleep before I continued. I would never, ever, be able to sleep in these woods after dark fall, so if I wanted some shut eye, I needed to grab it now.
I roasted some meat and carrots for breakfast. I think Cloak wolfed down his portion faster than I did mine. Then I folded my blanket to a pillow and laid down on the white moss, close to the fire.
“Keep an eye up, will you? Wake me up if you must.”
“Kraaah!”
“That’s a good boy.”
I woke with a pain in my neck and the taste of copper in my mouth. The sun stood high on the sky and the fire was out. Cloak came swooping down from a pine tree and landed in the soft moss kraaahing.
“I know, I know. No rest for the wicked.”
I rubbed my face and got up, and without further ado, I trekked on.
By midday I was down the slope, on the other side of it, and was working myself through the thick woods, thinking about bears, wolves, and armoured grizzles. They were bound to be here but with some luck they had easier prey to hunt.
Please enter the new battle area. Fail to do so before the time is up, and you will be eliminated. You are currently, inside the battle area. You are, not in the danger zone.
I looked over my shoulder, no sign of the red glow. I was deep inside the new battle area. I tried to calculate how much time had passed since the last reduction and I got the feeling that the game makers were hurrying things up; bad for ratings having people stumbling around in the woods without much happening.
I wasn’t complaining. The sun was still high in the sky but soon it would begin its downward trajectory, setting the bluish horizon on fire. When darkness fell, the horrors of the night would come with it.
Some moments later:
Bong!
Contestant number 38, eliminated.
Nadir had bitten the dust. Tristan had jumped another xxx in points. I trudged on. I couldn’t see the spire of the crumbled building when in the deep woods, but I had a feeling that Cloak was directing me. He would flap of my shoulder, do a sweep above before landing in a pine tree further away, kraahing at me. I walked towards that tree every time he did it, putting all my faith into this black bid of the wild. He had saved my bacon twice when the Dark Redana showed up, and he had signalled to me – even if I had been to dumb to understand it – that Tristan had been approaching when we were down in the abandon fortress. I would continue to trust this bird; it wasn’t as if I had any choice.
Bong!
Contestant number 40, eliminated.
I pulled up the scoreboard just to get confirmation of what I already knew. Luke Grayson was out of it, and Tristan jumped another 850.000 points.
Remaining contestants: 4
The sun burned between the pine trees in a deep orange. Dusk was in full swing, and darkness would fall within the hour. I pawed at my hip, making sure my obsidian dagger was still there.
Then, I popped out of the woods into a large, circular clearing that was paved with stones, weeds growing in the cracks. The tall, broken structure in front of me was odd looking. The first three floors looked like a squat castle with heavy fortifications, the right side of the wall collapsed as the front tower that seemed to have taken a direct hit and had crumpled but not fallen; it sagged precariously and looked like it could slide right of its broken base any time. But, from inside the castle, a tall conical pillar rose, at least six stories high, like the needle int the world’s largest sundial. Maybe it was, I thought, looking at the circular paving. Some sort of religious building, for sure, left to oblivion. The name indicated on the map was The Ruin of Castle Rohina.
I walked up to the main gate, a heavy looking arc of a yellowish kind of stone.
While I did, I got another notification of a player biting the dust. One of the cautious ones, and Tristan had earned another 25.000 points. It didn’t matter how many points he got. Didn’t matter if he was level 21 or 22 when he showed up. If I was to win this fight, I couldn’t be expected to fight fair, and I had no intention to.
Through the gatehouse I saw a circular inner baily with the pillar at its centre, a row of stables in the long swerving wall. To the right in the gatehouse there was a narrow flight of stairs, the black steps ascending into darkness. I went up them and came up in a naked stone room with holes in the floor. Ah, murder holes. I knew about them. When the enemy tried to pass through the gate house, the defenders stood up here and fired down upon them or poured boiling oil over them.
Nifty.
From both sides of the room other stairs led up to the second floor. I went up the right set of stairs and came out on the battlements, a cold breeze ruffling my hair. The crenelated battlements ran around the inner baily with guard towers at 12, 9, 6 and 3 o’clock. Or at least I guessed it had been a guard tower at 9 o’clock, but the collapsed wall at that section made it hard to tell for sure. It wasn’t a big fort. It had been built solely to protect the spire. Was it magic or was it marking a magic place? I had no clue but obviously the magic has dried up since the place was long abandoned.
Please enter the new battle area. Fail to do so before the time is up, and you will be eliminated. You are currently – inside the battle area. You are – not in the danger zone.
What? Again? The Game Control was definitely herding Tristan towards me. But that was okay. I had the outline of a plan, and when darkness fell, I preferred not to wait any longer than I had to.
Then, the most anticipated announcement of the evening came:
Bong!
Contestant number 32, eliminated.
I chuckled, not because I found the demise of William Walker funny, but of the merry thought that the player hiding behind number 32 could be Tristan, creating a historical anticlimax. One lucky shot was all it took, but poor William Walker hadn’t had that luck. Tristan had gained another 25.000 points and now it was just me and him left in the tournament.
Well, fuck you, William Walker. I just had to do it myself, then.