Lincoln spoke calmly as he drove his shovel into the dirt. 10 of us had volunteered to bury our dead. The Rabbitfolk had agreed to bury their own. “She’s gonna be quiet for a while.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “I know. I just wish she’d say…something. Ya know?”
Lincoln nodded. “I do. Whatever she went through out there was traumatic in more than a few ways at the very least. It’s going to take a bit.”
“She’s a Level 5 Shifter. You think she’s gonna want to be a healer or…”
“How do you know she’ll even want to be a combatant?”
I hadn’t thought about that before. I had always just assumed that, after she got back, she’d be leveling up and fighting alongside us. “You don’t think she should?”
“I think you had 30 combatants and you lost about half of them in an afternoon.” Lincoln must have seen the look on my face because he quickly continued. “I’m not saying it’s your fault or that it wasn’t the right call. I’m saying that fighting out here is dangerous, J.”
I nodded as we kept digging. “So…the Wolves?”
Lincoln gave a laugh. “So there was a cave up north, on the Oklahoma border. Inside was this giant wolf elite. Me and a few guys I had met up with ended up taking it down. Then there was a litter of 5 puppies. Two quests popped up. We could either kill them or raise them. We decided to raise them and got a special skill out of it. [Mount Tamer]. They were full grown in a month and started to breed.”
“Just like the horses we have here. Everything made by the game reproduces and grows faster.”
Lincoln nodded. “We decided it’d be pretty bad ass to ride wolves around everywhere. That’s what we did.”
“Who’s the ‘we’?”
“Uhm…kind of a funny story. I ended up breaking into a prison." He saw my face and gave a chuckle. "I don't know, the prison was abandoned and I figured it’d be good for some kills. Plus, there was something unique about breaking into what I broke out of. I didn’t expect to find 20 Level 1s cooped up in a cafeteria.”
“Twenty?”
“Yep. I told them everything they needed to know and about half decided to come with me. We grinded up their levels and most of them decided to be a Ranger like me. They seemed to have thought I knew what I was doing. A few chose Rogue. Eventually, we were up to 14 players and then we found the wolves.”
“So…how the hell did you show up deus-ex machina like that?”
“Ever since the Crusade tried to kill me, I've had a bit of a stick up my ass about the whole thing. With our levels up, we decided to start doing some damage. We've been raiding small camps, attacking trade caravans, etc. When the Crusade got vassalized, nothing changed but the targets. We tried to take down a slave camp and failed...quite miserably. Eventually, we got word of a troop movement over here. There wasn't a chance in hell of us taking them down solo, so we had to wait.” He gave me a grin. “Seems like you really pissed them off. Good shit, J.”
“So you’re a terrorist then?” With a smirk, I watched the words roll right off him.
“I’ve been called a lot worse. We have managed to not kill anyone who didn’t try to kill us first. Lots of burning wagons and destroying supplies. We found a crate of crafted bows and guns heading to an outpost along I-20 and stole it. We got ourselves some fancy gear.”
“So be realistic…how fucked are we?”
His face got slightly darker as he gave a fake laugh. “After starting a war and killing a whole company of soldiers? Incredibly.”
--------------------
Theresa approached Cain, who was sitting on a chair outside one of the doors in the Pony. “Whatchya doing?”
Cain gave her a smile and a shrug. “Guarding.”
“Whatchya guarding?”
He rolled his eyes. “J’s sister.”
“How’s she doing?”
“I’m not sure. I go in there every hour or two to make sure she’s alive. So far she hasn’t woken up, or at least pretending that she hasn't woken up.”
“You look tired.” She was right. Cain had been awake since he had gotten down from Whispercreek. Hell, he had been awake for days before that too. Whispercreek was a disaster from run down buildings to cramped taverns. Everything there was shittier. Everyone here is desperately waiting for townsfolk to release quests while everyone in Whispercreek is desperately trying to manage their giant quest logs. ‘Kill 0/4 Rats’, ‘Collect 0/8 Treekin Logs’, ‘Mine 0/6 Iron Ore’...it went on and on. Cain was doing everything he could to get it up and running and he was tired.
“Nah, I’m doing fine. How are you, Tess?”
“You don’t have to play tough with me, Cain.” Theresa gave him a look.
“I’m not playing tough. I’m fine. High wisdom stat or whatever.”
She snorted. “My wisdom stat is at least double yours and I’m exhausted. You can show a little weakness you know. Jeremiah isn’t going to take your town from you if you fall asleep.”
“No…I’m doing a good job and I’m going to keep doing a good job.”
She shrugged. “Fine…suit yourself. Want me to go in and check in on her?”
He nodded, rubbing his hands in his eyes and sitting back in the chair with a sigh.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Theresa opened the door, stepping inside. Cain had his back to the door and all he could here was the faint, “Cain…can you come in here please?”
He stood up. Had she finally woken up? He walked inside to see the bed and room empty. “Fuck.”
--------------------
Jeremiah sat around a table with Graham, Lincoln, and Nick. A large mat was placed in front of them. The mat held a map of the area as well as a notebook and pencils. “I hear what you’re saying Graham, but if we do that they’ll just starve us out.”
Graham shrugged. “It’s our only shot. No one in the modern era has gone through a city siege before on either side. If we just stay put…they might fade before we do.”
Nick shook his head. “They can rotate people. It doesn’t work if it’s just a one month on and one month off job for them.”
Lincoln rubbed his head. “So you’re outnumbered uh….hm…16 combatants to about 2,000?”
I nodded. Lincoln stared at the map. “Who decided to fight these guys head on again? There was a reason we were doing what we were doing and how we were doing it."
“8 of us did.”
Lincoln sat back in his chair and stared. “Jesus.”
Graham looked at me with an inscrutable face. “J…we can apologize. We can say that you lost it after seeing your sister and snapped. Hell, we can say they attacked us first. There aren’t any survivors. We control the narrative here. We could still get out of this.”
I shook my head. Abilene Crusade had killed a man that wasn't involved for the deaths of one of their soldiers after we had surrendered. What would the Red Liberty do after we took out a whole company? “No…there’s a way out of this. There’s a way to do this right. There’s a way to win.”
Graham put a hand on my shoulder that I shook off. “J, this is real life. The good guys don’t always win. The people with the guns and the money do. They’ve got better gear and 100 times the manpower and who knows how many times the gold. Anything they don't have, they can just buy off the Market. We don’t stand a chance.”
I looked at him. “We can-”
Cain stormed into the meeting hall. “Jeremiah! J!”
“What?”
“It's Katrina!”
“Did she wake up?”
“She’s gone.”
I stood up. “She’s what?”
“She’s…” He looked almost scared to tell me. “She’s gone.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “Okay…we need to find her.”
He nodded. “Alright. I’ll start-”
“He needs sleep.” Theresa had walked in behind us.
“What? No I don’t!” Cain snapped back at her.
“He’s exhausted, J. He’s been going 23 hours a day for days.”
I nodded. “Okay…Cain, go take a-”
“I don’t need a fucking nap. I’m not a child.”
“No one called you a child, man. I’m just saying you should-”
“I can do my fucking job, J.”
Graham stepped in for me. “Cain, go take a rest. We’ll find her.”
“I-”
“Go take a rest, Cain.” When Graham was decided on something, he had a way of easily convincing just about anyone.
Cain turned on his heels, making sure to stare Theresa down on his way out.
I scratched the back of my head. “What’s going on with him?”
Graham shrugged. “He’s stressed. We all are. This is a traumatic and stressful experience. We did just watch half our fighters die today.”
I couldn’t help but notice the subtle accusatory tone in his voice. “Alright, fine. You all want to roll over and be Red Liberty slaves?”
Lincoln shook his head. “It’s too late now.”
“What?”
“It’s too late. Me and the guys watched them come into a camp of about six guys. The Liberty offered them a place to stay and the campers refused. They said they didn’t wanna get into something they didn’t know anything about. The Liberty leader stepped forward and grabbed the head of the camp. He basically said that they needed to come with him voluntarily or otherwise. The camp guy punched him. Hell, it was more of a shove. It looked like a reflex more than anything else. He apologized, but it was too late. They cut him to pieces and arrested the other five. They were on there way to a slave camp when we broke them out.” Lincoln looked at me. “You didn’t just punch a squad leader in the face. You killed a whole company, J. You killed 61 of their guys and one of those was a captain. If I know anything about Armistice, and I know a little bit, he’s gonna be on a warpath.”
Graham blew air throughout his nose. “Alright, so…we’re in a war and we need levels. The leaderboard has Armistice at Level 34. He might be able to crush all of Harehill by himself at this rate.”
I nodded. “So what’s the fastest way to level then?”
Lincoln shrugged. “Dungeons do well.”
“We have two left in Shackleford. Breckridge is a 21-30 zone and we can get some decent kills there.”
A quiet voice from the corner of the room was that was just loud enough to be heard over the conversation spoke up. “I don’t think I’m ready for Breckenridge quite yet.”
We all turned to see Katrina sitting in a chair on the far end of the meeting room. My jaw dropped. “Kat! What the hell are you doing here? How did you get here? Why’d you leave the room?”
In front of all of us, Katrina shifted from her human form into a small black cat before transforming back into her human form with her long dark hair flowing down her back. “Shifter.”
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“Long enough to know that we are in trouble. What’d you get yourself into, J?”
I sat back in my chair, gesturing to the map. “I haven’t seen you in more than half a year and that’s what you’re focused on?”
“I’d like to see you for the next thousand years. Six months really isn’t a big deal. Immortals...remember?”
I nodded. Everyone kept bringing up this immortality thing, but either the weight hadn’t set in on me yet or I just didn’t care as much as other people did. “It’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you too. Stop being weird and tell me how I can help.”
I looked around. “Do we have any low levels who want to fight?”
Nick nodded. “I’ve had a few people come up and ask me. A lot of people are scared and a lot of the gatherers and crafters want to start doing some damage or at least be able to protect themselves. I thought about hosting a training class tomorrow afternoon to let the lower levels get some experience. I figured we’d head out to the Treekin colony down by the highway. My fireballs incinerate those things so if anyone gets in trouble I could shut it down quick.”
“That’s a great idea, Nick.”
Graham nodded. “What about us?”
“We’ll go up to the Sickletail Nests and Breckenridge and get some work done there. I figure we probably have a few days or so before anyone gets overly concerned about Raphael missing. I figure we have about two weeks before anyone decides what to do about it and maybe a month before anyone attacks. The downside of a massive bureaucracy is dealing with a massive bureaucracy.” I looked around at the group. We had a plan and we were going to find a way to make it work. We were survivors.