Kirk’s eyes snapped open. He was in a seated position, leaning against a wall, with his sheathed sword lying across his outstretched legs. For a moment, he couldn’t comprehend where he was and what was happening. Then he heard a quiet, even breathing to his left and turned his head to look that way. He saw Nina who sat next to him, her side pressed against his, her head resting on his shoulder. A lock of her light hair fell on her face in her sleep, and he gently tucked it behind her ear. Nina didn’t awaken – both of them were exhausted.

The memories came rushing back to him. He remembered being attacked by the naked sorceress after they exited the elite dungeon. By the time they killed the hellhounds she’d summoned, Melinda had used the teleportation spell and vanished with all her people, leaving Nina and Kirk no choice but to return home. When they got to their camp, night had already fallen. They both were dog-tired and wanted nothing more than to go to bed. However, Kirk was afraid that the sorceress might attack them during the night, so he suggested he keep guard over the camp while Nina get some rest. Yet Nina refused to be sleeping while he would keep a sharp lookout for the entire night. He tried to reason with her that she needed to rest, but she stood her ground. She could be very stubborn sometimes. So after locking the gate, they climbed on one of the guard towers, and at some point, they both fell asleep. Kirk couldn’t even remember who had drifted off first or how it’d even happened.

What did wake me up, though?

He looked around but didn’t spot anything suspicious. The night was peacefully quiet. Then he heard the sound of flapping wings. At first, he thought it was just some winged insect-like creature flying by, but then he realized he was wrong. The sound of beating wings was loud and powerful. Whatever this creature was, it must’ve been enormous. And judging by the proximity of the sound of the wings beating the air, the creature was very close – somewhere above the camp.

What the heck is that creature? Kirk thought, wondering what kind of monster it was. He’d encountered lots of different critters in the forest, but most of them were terrestrial. Huge mosquito-like monsters were probably the only flying creatures he’d fought so far.

He turned his head to his left and whispered, “Hey Nina. Wake up, Nina!”

He shook her a little, but she was so fast asleep it took him some time to finally be able to awaken her. When she lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him with sleepy eyes, he put his finger to his lips.

Immediately alert, Nina whispered, “What’s wrong?”

Kirk silently pointed his finger up. Nina looked up, but all she could see was the roof of the guard tower. For a second, she couldn’t comprehend what caused Kirk to be so disturbed, but then she too heard the sound of flapping wings.

“What is that?” she whispered as her eyes went wide.

“I don’t know yet,” he replied quietly. “I’m gonna check.”

He stood up and turned around. He carefully stuck his head out in the open and looked up. What he saw made his heart shrink with fear. The creature that hovered up in the air looked semi-human. It had a female body, but its arms and feet ended in huge claws, and its knees were seemingly designed to bend backward instead of forward like the legs of a normal human being. Its enormous wings flapped continuously as the monster bobbed up and down, making the creature kind of hover in approximately the same spot. Its face was elongated, resembling an animal snout with sharp pointed teeth.

The face of the creature was vaguely familiar.

“What the hell is that?” he whispered.

“It’s her,” Nina gasped next to him, having stood up to take a look at the creature too. “It’s the sorceress!”

It took him a moment to realize she was right. “What the hell happened to her?”

“She turned into a monster,” Nina stated the obvious.

“But how?”

“I dunno. Magic?”

At that moment, the sorceress cast a fireball. It streaked downward and hit one of their houses. The magical projectile exploded on impact, and the wooden structure immediately burst into flames.

After that, everything happened so fast Kirk hardly even had time to grasp what was happening or to form any sort of plan. One after another, Nina and Kirk climbed down the ladder from the guard tower. By the time they both stood on the ground, the sorceress had set the other three houses on fire. It was really hot inside the camp now, the flames from the burning houses rising high in the air, lighting up the night almost to the level of daylight. The fire had also spread to the pointed logs that formed the walls around the camp.

“We’re gonna burn alive,” Kirk coughed. “We gotta get outta here.”

They began to run for the gate, but before they could reach it, the sorceress noticed them. She launched another fireball, and it hit the ground between them and the gate, the force of the explosion hurtling them backward. Kirk jumped to his feet and ran to Nina lying on the ground.

“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching down his hand to help her up.

“I’m fi—”

At that moment, they both heard the flapping of wings as a huge shadow passed over them. For a second, Kirk thought the sorceress was about to pounce at them, but she instead landed at the gate ahead of them. She threw the heavy bolt aside with surprising ease and swung the leaves of the gate open. Her men who had been patiently waiting on the other side poured into the camp.

“Fall back,” Kirk shouted to Nina.

“But where—”

Kirk grabbed her hand and led her back into the middle of their burning camp, both of them running as fast as they could. Behind them, they heard the flapping of powerful wings as the sorceress launched herself up. The crack of gunshots reverberated through the air, the magical bullets zipping past them.

“No,” the sorceress yelled at her men from high up in the air. “Try to take them alive. But if they are too much trouble, feel free to kill them both.”

Kirk and Nina stopped and turned around. Two of the attackers stood at the open gate to prevent them from leaving while the rest of the sorceress’s people were advancing at them. They’d slung their rifles and crossbows over their shoulders and drawn their longswords instead.

“Michael isn’t among them,” Nina said.

“I noticed,” Kirk said through clenched teeth.

“What do you think she did to him?”

She most likely killed him for some reason, Kirk mentally replied but didn’t voice his thoughts as if being afraid that saying it out loud would make it the case.

Nina looked up at the winged sorceress hovering up above the camp and shouted, “Where’s Michael? What did you do to our friend, witch?”

“He served… his purpose,” Melinda replied.

Her screeching voice and the implication of what she’d just said made Kirk’s skin crawl.

“What do you mean?” Nina asked. “What’d you do to him?”

“I sacrificed him… to a great demon,” the sorceress replied. “In exchange for this wonderful form.”

Nina wanted to say something but couldn’t. She’d wanted to believe that Michael could be still alive, but that hope had just been shattered. She looked like she struggled to hold back tears. Seeing her so grief-stricken made Kirk furious.

“You turned yourself into an obnoxious monster in exchange for his life?” Kirk yelled to the sorceress. “You’re fucking crazy! You’re gonna pay for what you’ve done to our friend!”

“Bring it on, boy,” the sorceress screeched at him.

Nina was almost crying by that point. Kirk put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Nina, we gotta fight. They’re almost on top of us.”

The sorceress’s men were getting dangerously close to them, longswords held tightly in their hands.

“But what can we do?” Nina said. “There are too many of them. And… I’m not feeling too well. I’m tired… and don’t feel like fighting again.”

“We have no choice, Nina,” Kirk said. “We can’t give up without a fight. We cannot let the sorceress win.”

He drew his sword. Nina tried to stop him, but before she could, he launched himself at the approaching men. Just like Nina, he was tired. Since they escaped from the elite dungeon, they’d hardly rested. He fought furiously, blocking his enemies’ strikes with his sword and dodging their attacks, but the lack of rest was taking a toll on his body. He couldn’t move as fast as he usually did, and every now and then, his enemies managed to catch him with their longswords. One minute into the battle, he was already bleeding from numerous superficial wounds. Yet it failed to faze him, and he continued to fight his enemies with the same determination as before.

At some point, he managed to pierce one of the men with his sword. When he pulled his blade free, the man began to fall back. His hand suddenly shot forward and grabbed hold of the front of Kirk’s tunic, dragging him down. They fell on the ground, the man on his back, Kirk on top of him.

He was about to strike his attacker with his fist, but what he saw in his eyes made him stop. The man was looking at him with gratitude in his eyes.

“We don’t want to fight you,” he croaked, blood trickling from his mouth. “The sorceress… makes us do it. The staff… break Melinda’s staff and we’ll be free.”

Then his eyes glazed over. The man’s hand released his tunic and fell lifelessly down. Kirk got to his knees. After sheathing his sword, he picked up the man’s rifle and stood up. Pointing the gun at the other attackers, he said to them, “Freeze, or I’ll shoot you all.”

It made them pause but only for a moment. Kirk backed up until he reached Nina. Still pointing his weapon at the approaching men, he said to her, “Can you immobilize the sorceress with your magic for a moment?”

“Why?”

“No time to explain. Can you do it?”

“I can try,” Nina said. “But I don’t know if it works. Her resistance to magic must be very high.”

Nina held her hands up and cast a spell. As she’d predicted, her magic failed to immobilize the sorceress completely, but it somewhat slowed down her bobbing in the air. Kirk brought his rifle up and took careful aim at the sorceress slowly hovering in the air. He curled his finger around the trigger, and the rifle cracked, firing a magically created bullet. It hit the sorceress in her wrist, and her hand opened, the staff slipping from her grip.

“Yes,” Kirk exclaimed.

Tossing the rifle aside, he burst into a run toward the spot where the staff was going to land. The sorceress tried to fly down toward her staff, but Nina’s magic still affected her, slowing her down. By the time the staff dropped to the ground, Kirk had already reached that spot. He wasted no time grabbing the staff and breaking it over his knee. The crystal that emitted a bluish glow faded out. The magical staff was useless now, but just for good measure, Kirk hurled it into the fire consuming the nearest building.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“No,” the sorceress screeched from above.

A huge shadow covered him.

“Kirk, look out,” he heard Nina scream.

He looked up to see the winged sorceress pouncing down at him with her clawed hands outstretched in front of her, ready to tear into his flesh. Before she could reach him, though, a gunshot rang out, and the sorceress jerked as she was hit by a magical bullet. She dropped down a few paces from him. Before she could even stand up, another bullet drilled into her body. Hearing her screech in pain and rage was so satisfying.

Drawing his sword, Kirk made to run toward the fallen sorceress to finish her off, but somebody stopped him by putting a hand over his shoulder. He looked back and saw one of the men behind him. At first, Kirk tensed, but he then realized the man meant no harm to him. Now that the staff was broken, the men no longer obeyed the sorceress.

“Thank you for freeing us, friend,” the man said. “Let us deal with Melinda now.”

“She killed our friend,” Kirk said. “I have to avenge him.”

The man squeezed his shoulder harder. “I know. She killed him before our eyes. We all hate that wretch for all she was doing to us. We suffered for so long because of her. Let it be us who will kill her. We’ll avenge your friend’s death, I promise.”

Finally, Kirk nodded. At that moment, there was the flapping of huge wings. Kirk wheeled around in time to see the sorceress launch herself high in the air.

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “We won’t let her go.”

The crack of gunshots reverberated through the air as the now-free men fired at Melinda. He screamed in pain every time a bullet tore into her body. Kirk ran over to Nina, shouting to her, “Let’s get outta here.”

“But what about the sorceress?”

“These people will take care of her,” Kirk said as he took Nina’s hand and led her toward the gate.

The two men who stood there stepped aside to let them pass.

“Thank you for freeing us,” one of them said. The other one nodded his gratitude.

Kirk and Nina ran out of the burning camp, which had all but been reduced to ash by that point. They were going to start from scratch, but at least, they were alive.

“Where do you think… you’re going,” the sorceress screeched from somewhere behind them.

Kirk glanced back over his shoulder to see the sorceress hover above the burning camp. She was surrounded by a bubble of a magical shield, which flared briefly where bullets hit it. The sorceress held out one hand, casting a spell. Some sort of magical projectile flew from her hand toward them at impossibly high speed. When Kirk realized Melinda had targeted Nina, he shoved her out of the way, and in the next second, he felt the projectile hit him. The force of the impact spun him around, whipping him to the ground.

“Kirk,” Nina yelled, jumping to her feet and running to where he’d fallen.

“I’m fine,” he said, getting to his feet.

He got no damage at all, but in his vision popped up a notification telling him he’d just received a negative status effect of some sort. He called up his stats to examine it.

“What the hell,” he muttered after reading the text of the status effect.

“What?” Nina asked. “What’s wrong?”

“It says I will turn into stone in about forty-eight hours.”

“What?” Nina asked, shocked by the news. “What should we do?”

He looked back. The sorceress was still surrounded by the magical shield she’d created. The men fired their rifles at it but were unable to shatter it. The sorceress launched fireballs down at them, killing off her former slaves one after another. Kirk had a bad feeling the men wouldn’t be able to win the battle. Still, they continued to relentlessly fight her. Their hatred toward her must have been much stronger than the fear of death.

“Let’s get outta here while we can,” Kirk said.

For the next minute, they moved through the trees away from the camp. Then Kirk suddenly yelped and collapsed to the ground. Scared out of her mind, Nina dropped to her hanches next to him.

“Kirk, what’s wrong?!”

“I don’t know. Something’s happening to me.”

He sat up, leaning against the tree trunk behind him. He took off one of his boots to take a look at his foot. He saw some of his toes had turned into stone. He couldn’t move or even feel them anymore.

“It’s already happening, Nina.”

“Oh my gosh,” she gasped. “What should we do? Let me try to heal you.”

But Kirk knew it wouldn’t help. Nina knew it too. The negative status effects couldn’t be cured either by magic or potions. You just needed to wait until they wear off over time. There was no other way to get rid of a negative status effect. That’s how things worked in this world.

Nina cast a healing spell on him, anyway, but sure enough, it didn’t help at all.

“What do we do, Kirk?” Nina asked, looking at him with wide-open eyes, being scared even more than he was.

He suddenly realized he could no longer hear the sounds of the battle behind them. He looked back from around the tree trunk. Their camp had been burnt to the ground. However, illuminated by the silver moonlight, the sorceress still hovered above the remains of the houses.

“Look at what you made me do,” her screeching voice echoed through the forest. “I killed my people! My own people! You made me do it! You hear me, you dirty cunt? You!”

“Has she noticed us?” Nina whispered.

“I don’t think so. While she can’t see us, she knows we are somewhere nearby.”

“It’s your fault,” the sorceress screamed through the night air again. “Yes, I’m talking to you, you dumb cunt. It’s your fault! Yours!”

“What does she mean?” Nina whispered.

“Don’t try to make sense of what she says,” Kirk replied as he shook his head. “She’s totally crazy, and there’s nothing more to it than that.”

“And now you’re going to watch your friend slowly die,” the sorceress continued. “How do you feel about that? After he dies, you’ll be alone. Absolutely alone! In a world full of monsters and enemies! How do you like that, you dirty cunt?!”

The sorceress went silent as if to let what she’d just said sink in. Then she continued, “But you can still save him. If you manage to kill me, the status effect I’d put on him will vanish. There’s no other way to get rid of it as you should know yourself.”

Nina looked at Kirk, but he shook his head.

“No. You can’t fight her in your current condition. She wants to kill you, and she will if you go after her. You know, she was actually aiming at you, but I shoved you out of the way and accidentally stepped in the path of her projectile. She probably wanted to put the status effect on you so she could have leverage over me and make me come to her.”

“But why? She couldn’t have enslaved you anyway, because her staff had already been broken by that point.”

“I dunno. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she just wanted to make me suffer by making me watch you slowly turn into stone. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just get out of here.”

Kirk stood up, and Nina got to her feet too.

“But where can we go?”

“Any place that is far away from here will do.”

“But what about the status effect? How do we get rid of it?”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“But the only way to—”

Kirk turned to her to look her in the eyes. “Nina, we can’t fight her right now. Both you and I are too tired. If we try to attack her, we’ll be dead – and that’s exactly what she wants.”

At that moment, they once again heard the sorceress’s screeching voice reverberating through the night forest.

“I’m gonna give you twenty-four hours to think about what I just said,” Melinda screamed. “You hear me, you dirty cunt? Twenty-four hours. Return here at the remains of your camp tomorrow to fight me. If you’re not here at this exact time tomorrow, I’ll assume you don’t care about your friend, and you won’t see me again. And then you will have to watch your friend slowly turn into stone and die.”

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Kirk said as he began to walk away from the burnt remains of their camp.

For the next several hours, they walked through the trees, not knowing where they were headed. Every now and then, they checked the map, and at some point, they realized they’d ventured into the part of the forest where they’d never been before. With every passing hour, it was getting harder and harder for Kirk to walk. Nina draped his arm over her shoulders to support him. At some point, there was a flash of lightning and the roar of thunder in the sky. Immediately after that, it began to pour, drenching both of them to the skin in mere seconds. Trembling from the cold and clinging to each other, they continued to trudge forward through the trees.

Then Kirk suddenly fell. He could no longer walk, for both his legs had turned into stone reaching a couple of inches above his knees. He sat up and leaned against a tree trunk behind him.

“Go,” he said to Nina, yelling to be heard over the relentless downpour. “Leave me and go. There’s no reason for both of us to die here.”

Sure enough, Nina wouldn’t listen to him. She hugged him tightly, sobbing quietly into his shoulder. They remained in that position for a little while as the rain kept coming down in sheets, drenching their clothes. Despite the cold and the pouring rain, the warmth of their tightly embarrassed bodies somewhat shielded them from the harsh conditions surrounding them. Finding comfort in the shared heat of their bodies, they clung to each other more tightly to ward off the cold.

Then she lifted her head, her full lips seeking his. He instinctively jerked away from her. She pulled her head back to look at him with a perplexed look in her eyes. He hesitated for a moment before saying, “There’s something I should’ve told you a long time ago, Nina. I swing the other way.”

She just stared at him for a few seconds as if not quite believing his words.

“Really?” she finally asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I swear I’m not.”

She burst into a laugh. Only it was a bit of a hysterical laugh, and there was no mirth in it at all. She stopped laughing as suddenly as she’d begun.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?” she asked accusingly.

“Now that I think about it, I realize I should most definitely have told you a long time ago. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Maybe I thought—I don’t know—that you’ll maybe get over me someday.”

Nina shook her head. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“So you don’t like me at all?”

“I like you very much… as a friend. I value you a lot as both a person and a friend. That’s why I want to tell you again that you should leave me. I’m a dead man. I can’t even fucking walk anymore. And you can’t carry me—your Strength attribute isn’t that high—so you should go.”

“I’m not leaving you, so shut up.”

After that, they went silent for a few seconds.

“It doesn’t really change the way I feel about you, you know?” Nina said. “I mean I can’t suddenly not love you anymore.”

Nina’s cheeks heated as she realized it was the very first time she said to him that she loved him.

“I know.”

After a moment, she said, “So that’s why you never bathed with me in the river no matter how many times I invited you. You never so much as take a peek at me. Guess now I know why.”

“Well, that and somebody also had to stand guard while one of us was in a vulnerable position,” Kirk said. “This forest is full of dan—”

He suddenly went silent as he saw a glimpse of movement somewhere behind Nina. He stared intently in that direction, but no matter how hard he peered into the darkness he couldn’t see much. Heavy thunderclouds hid the moon, reducing the visibility to just a few paces. The heavy downpour didn’t help either.

Then there was a flash of lightning, and everything got brightly illuminated. In that brief moment, Kirk saw that there was some strange creature a few yards behind Nina. It was standing completely still with its back turned to them. It kind of looked like a human being. It had two arms and two legs, but that’s where the similarity to a person ended. The creature had a misshapen body, and its arms were too long. Its skin was deathly pale and devoid of any hair. That was all that he managed to discern before everything was plunged into darkness again.

“Nina, there’s something behind you,” Kirk said to her.

Immediately alert, she jumped to her feet and spun around.

“Where?” she asked, struggling to see anything in the darkness.

“Over there,” Kirk said, pointing in the right direction.

Then there was another flash of lightning, and Nina finally saw the creature too.

“Is that… a person?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

The creature must have heard them because it turned around and began to walk toward them in an unsure, shambling way. When the creature got somewhat closer to them, they saw it seemingly had no eyes. The creature seemed to be completely blind. It had two small holes where a human nose would’ve been and two long pointed ears. Its open mouth was way too oversized and filled with large pointed yellowish teeth.

When the creature opened its scary mouth and outstretched its clawed hands toward her, Nina launched a fireball at the creature. The magical projectile exploded on impact with the monster’s body, hurling it back into the darkness.

“Is it dead?”

“I think there are more of them,” Kirk said as he spotted dark shadows moving toward them from different directions.

During another momentary flash of lightning, they saw dozens more similar creatures converging on them.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Nina shouted as she cast another fireball, the magical projectile illuminating the darkness while flying toward its target.

Kirk tried to get up but couldn’t. He knew he was screwed, but he didn’t want Nina to die with him, so he tried to reason with her one more time.

“Nina, please run while you can,” he pleaded with her.

“I already told you,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m not leaving you.”

During another brief flash of lightning, Kirk saw that the number of mutants had doubled. Nina noticed that too.

“How come there are so many of them?” she asked. “Where did they all come from? What’s going on here?”

She continued to launch fireballs at the humanoid mutants, but their steep numbers didn’t seem to decrease at all. There were so many monsters around them that even if Nina had a sudden change of heart, she wouldn’t be able to get away – the two of them were completely surrounded by the blind mutants now.

Nina fired away at the monsters as they continued to shamble closer and closer to them.