A thin layer of fluffy snow covered the fields of rotting crops. It did little to hide the scent of decomposing grass, that had had just enough time to start thawing before another cold snap immortalised it for a few more days.

“Anna, slow down,” Farrah called out for what must have been at least the fifth time that hour.

“How come running is a skill, but walking isn’t?” The woman replied.

Her voice was strained and she was lacking air. Talking didn’t come easy after a long day of basically running, and the cold wind that swept through the grasslands didn’t help. At least the snowing had stopped. Otherwise, they would have had to wait it out under some dead tree; not because of a lack of appropriate clothing, although Farrah’s jeans and Anna’s boots were far from waterproof, but because of the lack of visibility.

“Devs, there’s something up ahead!” Anna stopped in her tracks. “It’s your turn to scan,” She added, as she squinted into the white fields.

“I’m getting low on Power, babes,” Farrah spoke, before activating that skill, and pulling up her minimap.

Scan

- Directional

- Radius

Cost: 5P per 500 meters from focal point.

“Yellow dot. It’s a zombie,” Farrah spoke, zooming in on her map.

“Yeah, no shit,” Anna muttered, as she swung her SA80 over her shoulder. “It’s like a ghost. I can’t fully make it out. What type is it?” She asked as she tried to adjust the windage of her scope, her other arm firmly on the barrel grip.

“Ghost? Like transparent, with tentacles? Would you use the words ‘glass human’ to describe it?” Farrah asked. She didn’t call her friend out for messing with her scope at a time like now. She trusted Anna to shoot the mutated creature without the scope if needed. “It’s one of the wraiths, a domain variant. A shot through its head should do it.”

“Okay,” Anna fired several bursts.

Farrah covered her ears, taken aback by the reckoning those shots had created. When she opened her eyes, she was almost surprised by how undisturbed and unbothered the surrounding snow was. It was almost as if Anna had amplified the noise of her weapon instead of using any of the power upgrade skills.

“All good?” She called out, already walking in the direction of the zombie she’d just taken down.

“Yeah. Did you really need to spend a whole magazine on it?” Farrah caught up to her.

“Nah,” Anna sighed. “It’s just, you know? It’s like with your hatchets. And Tommy and his stupid fire axe,” A smile flashed over her pale lips. “You know. Gotta let out some steam.”

“Yeah, babes, no worries,” Farrah nodded with a smile that almost passed as understanding. She was more concerned about the ammo wasted.

They stopped over the corpse of the mutant. Five openings, none quite regular enough to be attributed to a single bullet, hollowed out its head. Its neck and shoulders looked like someone had taken circular bites out of them. Its chest area had become similarly disfigured. Translucent viscous blue-ish goo slowly ran down the wounds and into the soil. It didn’t seem to have any distinct organs, and its body distorted the image of the brown rotting grass underneath it.

“That was overkill,” Farrah said it.

“Yeah,” Anna muttered in response as she sniffled and ran her gloved hand under her nose. She sniffled again, and read something off her screen. Farrah was just about to prompt her to read it out loud, but Anna cut her to it, “Hey Devs, how about we call it a day?”

“I thought you’d never offer,” Farrah nodded at Anna with a smile. “Let’s find ourselves a cosy spot to rest. I still have 4 quests I need to do, and I’ve been thinking about going back to that car factory to grind on my guns.”

There were a few seconds of silence before Anna finally laughed at the joke. Farrah didn’t do the condescending thing of asking what was wrong. It had only been five weeks since they’d buried Antonio, Zachary, and Mr. Doyle. The winter had been very rough. There hadn’t really been enough firewood, and one bad case of flu led to pneumonia, and eventually to the trio deciding that it was best to give up than to turn. They’d buried them behind the barn, in what they all knew would become a vegetable batch the second the snow melted for good. Anna’s uncle’s farm had more graves than cattle by the time they set out to collect skills again.

“4?” Anna asked, as she finally allowed Farrah to lead the way to a nearby wooded patch, “I thought you had 5. Did you finish the poison one? I thought you still had three days to go on it.”

“I’m not counting the one I’ve been stuck with since the start. Yeah, technically 5. Actually,” Farrah pulled up her screens.

Stats

Skills

Goals

Other

Power

Luck

Conditions

Goals not fulfilled

Exhaustion

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Poison II

Broken arm

Stats

Skills

Goals

Other

Goals

· Kill a person

· Survive 4 cycles of natural poison

· Find six black bricks engraved with the Domain code.

· Kill a special unit with an mele weapon without spending Luck or Power.

· Discover all the unit types.

Give Up

“I wish it’d tell me how many of the unit types I have left to find. I am slightly regretting taking that one now,” She spoke, as she continued walking.

Anna didn’t reply.

----------------------------------------

Late afternoon came before they could reach any proper shelter. The sky had never been as clear, and the snow reflected pinks and yellows from the setting sun. Ahead, a lonely oak tree rose from a fenced-off clearing. It had seen the fall of empires, the rise of dukedoms, and the little green buds along its baren branches sang the hymns of Ages to come.

Farrah lifted the rusty latch that kept the animals and the machinery away from the tree. Its thick branches had sheltered the grass below it from the snow, allowing small wildflowers, and patches of Snowdrops to thrive in its cold shadows.

“This will do for the night,” Farrah threw down her rucksack, not paying much attention to the flora, before kneeling by it and pulling out a white plastic tablecloth and bits of string.

“You should put that away,” Anna came behind her, patting her shoulder.

“Right, we’re not going down the pneumonia route,” Farrah ignored her as she got up and started looking for a good place to tie the makeshift roof.

She didn’t pay much attention to her friend, who dropped to the ground and pulled out some snacks – broken crackers and an energy bar hardly qualified as food, even if it was the only thing they’d eat that day – and her metal water bottle. She swooshed it around, checking that the half-litre of her uncle’s homemade cider hadn’t frozen, which considering its alcohol content would have been highly unlikely, before taking a big gulp of it.

“Pneumonia,” Farrah reminded her as she threw the string over a branch, threaded it through reinforced metal eyelets on the tablecloth, and hoisted it up.

A noise too similar to a sob to be a chuckle came from where Anna was sat. Farrah snapped around, to finally look at her friend. She seemed lost deep in thought, as she tried to spot something at the bottom of her mixture of ethanol and apple juice.

“What’s up babes?” Farrah asked as she let herself fall by Anna’s side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and pulling her close.

Anna nested her head between Farrah’s chest and shoulder, ignoring the unpleasant sensation of plastic against her cheek.

“Do you remember how that one winter, when we got drunk after church, went out to get those jam croissants and kicked that bike in the canal?”

Farrah chuckled. The warmth of the memory seemed to spread through her entire body. Those were the good days. And even the bad that happened then wasn’t comparable to the End.

“Yeah,” Farrah replied. She outstretched her left hand, as much as Anna’s weight on her shoulder would allow, and her friend took it, interlocking their fingers in that familiar way they’d done it ever since they’d become accomplices in mischief in second grade. “Although, you were the one doing the pushing, and I was the one paying for ‘damages to private goods’,” Farrah added with a chuckle.

“Your mum paid for that. It was what, not even half a grant?” Anna smiled. That wasn’t the kind of money she could ever throw into a canal, but all the payslips and the loans had become so meaningless in the past months that these sorts of incidents became almost comedically ironic.

“Oh, and that time I accidentally scratched Marco’s car and broke off his side mirror,” Farrah remembered, while they were on the topic of property damages.

“Yeah, “accidentally”,” Anna made air quotes with her free hand as she smiled. “The only thing more accidental than that was when you’d shredded Mr Possoz’s absence registry,” she chuckled.

“I still don’t know how that binder ended up in my bag, made its way all to the warehouse with me, and somehow fell into the shredder,” Farrah smirked.

Stealing that thing had been her parting gift to the school. She was lucky enough to have parents to drive her to school whenever strikes or military drills took place. A lot of other kids didn’t. And if they accumulated too many absences, their diploma would get invalidated, no matter the grades they actually got. She knew it hadn’t ever been her place to decide who passed and who didn’t. And she’d known for a fact that a lot of students skipped because they had work or scheduled hangouts. Maybe it had all been a power trip for her, but she’d do it again if given the chance. She’d do it all again if life ever gave her a way back, to before the Fall.

“Watcha thinking?” Anna asked, as she poked her in the side, before sitting up and taking a sip of her drink.

“Just about all the crap we pulled off in school. Oh, like with the goldfish,” She chuckled.

“Yeah, I still have Mr. Fahrenheit – had,” She quickly corrected herself.

“Hey, he had a good run. How many goldfish could say they lived in a lab sink for two months? It’s a miracle he didn’t get fish diabetes then with how much everyone was overfeeding him.”

“Yeah, he was a fun school pet…” Anna said. All the joy and nostalgic bittersweetness was gone from her voice.

Before Farrah could pry about what was on her mind again, she reached out to her hip holster and handed her the pistol. Her boyfriend had gotten the thing to work through a combination of his crafting skills and in Farrah’s opinion a butt-load of luck. It didn’t have a model or a make and was made from parts that he’d found around the abandoned military base they’d explored in the late autumn. It shot 9mm cartridges, and had never been referred to as anything other than ‘the pistol’. More than a weapon, it was Anna’s keepsake.

“I wanted for Tommy to do this, because he’s not like us, and it’s unfair to ask you,” She began.

“Fuck. No, no, no,” Farrah jolted up, creating distance between her and the weapon her friend was handing her.

She had known Anna for all her life, and maybe she should have picked up on it sooner. She should have checked in with her more… But then Anna also knew Farrah as well as Farrah knew herself. She was one of few people who could lie to her unnoticed…

All the questions flashed through Farrah’s mind. How?

“I messed up the timer on a quest. Thought I’d get rid of it, but I didn’t,” Anna replied with a weak smile.

Why –

“What would you have done? You’re not Him, you can’t make miracles happen,” She pressed her lips together in a shrug. It was what it was, and it was too late for either of them to do anything about it.

“Fuck,” Farrah swore, running her hand through her hair, with too much force for the gesture to have its calming effect. There was nothing left to say that Anna and her didn’t know. There wasn’t any debate about her not doing it. It was her best friend’s request. If she could take that bullet for her, to reset her quests and let her live, she would. But she couldn’t.

“I am really sorry,” Anna spoke again. “But you know I can’t do this myself.”

Farrah nodded. She knew. She wiped tears from her eyes as she tried to think of something to say. But thoughts were running too fast through her mind, leaving nothing but a white void behind.

“Back at the farm, with my uncle, with Margarett, with Oliver, it should have been you,” Anna continued. She put away the alcohol and the food, and played with the straps of her backpack, unsure of what to do with her hands. “We wasted too much time, so many bullets, so many quests … Between everyone there,” She looked up at Farrah. Her blue eyes were filled with genuine regret. “You will live. You’re the only one who had too many quests on the first day and survived,-”

“That’s not the same Anna, those were easy. I got lucky-”

“No, no, no.” She shook her head with almost uncharacteristic determination. “You’re part of His plan Devs. Whatever lies ahead, you have a place in it,” She raised a hand towards Farrah, stopping her from interjecting. Her gaze had returned to the flowers peaking through the snow, “and I don’t. And that’s okay. I just wish – I wish it wasn’t you. If it could have been Tommy,” She apologetically looked up at Farrah again.

Farrah took a deep breath and nodded. The immortality of her soul was the last of her concerns right now. She nodded again, before kneeling down by Anna and taking the pistol.

“I’ll miss you,” She whispered, as she drew her friend in for a hug.

Anna wrapped her arms around Farrah, and they remained like that for a long while. Neither of them dared to sob or cry. This wasn’t the end, they both knew they’d see each other again, but it didn’t really make it any easier.

The sun vanished behind the horizon, and a strong, almost howling, wind replaced it. It made the unfinished camp roof flap and create a ruckus as it hit itself and the tree.

The two women nodded and pulled apart.

“It’s been fun Devs,” Anna attempted a smile.

“Don’t you dare make fun of Hubert when you meet him,” Farrah replied, forcing that same expression. Tears were forming at the corner of her eyes, but she hoped it had gotten dark enough for Anna not to see them. “I’ll miss you.”

“Me too,” the other woman whispered.

“Now, a crown of righteousness awaits you. Rest in the peace of Christ, knowing that your life was a gift to us all, and your memory will be cherished forever…”

The pistol shook, and it wasn’t clear if it was because of the wind, or her not-fully-healed right arm. And the shot was surprisingly silent. Or maybe the whole world had just become too loud.

Goal complete: Kill a person

Reward

Permanent luck increases of 5% of current value at a minimum of 1

Skill: Luck Surge - Expert

Farrah breathed in, and out. She tried to make the air go deeper through her lungs, but she simply couldn’t. It was getting dark, and if not for the fluorescent strips on the sides of Anna’s ski jacket, she wouldn’t even have known where she lay.

A blast of wind ripped the tablecloth from the tree branch, hurling it away where it would never be found among the sea of white that rippled over the rotting crops.

Farrah took that as her cue to get a move on.

She picked out a few flowers and knelt by Anna. She arranged her body against the tree, and laid her on her back, so that blood would stop running down the gaping hole in her forehead. She undid her short braids and moved her hair in a way that would partially hide the bulletwound. She puffed up her jacket’s hood, so that it’d serve as a pillow, and slid the flowers into her hands.

She stayed by her side long enough for the cold to get under her jacket, and the snow to soak through her trousers. But morning was taking too long to come. So eventually Farrah got up, and changed into dry clothes, embracing the sting of the wind and the snow as she did so. She swung her rucksack over her back, next to Anna’s rifle. She put her Glock 17 in Anna’s backpack, and Anna’s sidearm into her hip holster. Then, she hung Anna’s backpack over her chest, with only one strap to allow for some range of movement.

She whispered a final goodbye and headed out into the storm. Her right hand protested as it gripped aground the flashlight, but it was that or the barrel grip of the Steyr AUG in her left hand, so eventually the pain numbed and subsided.