I awoke to a world blurred at the edges, the sounds of battle echoing like distant thunder in my ears. For a moment, I lay there, disoriented, trying to piece together the fragments of my memory. The last thing I remembered was the overwhelming onslaught of magic from the Warg Knights, their spells crashing into me like waves against a cliff, and then... darkness.
Checking my character sheet, I saw that I was at 230 hitpoints, a comfortable and confusing level of health digits that didn’t make sense given everything that I remembered. I groggily lifted a hand to my face, realizing that in my slumber I’d shrunk back down to size.
What happened? I asked Jeldorain, whose spirit regarded me with a cocked head.
Intense pain debuffs. Hovering on Death’s Door debuff. Magical anarchy debuffs. A quick cast of ASSERT and Frostweave Healing. Honestly, champion, it might be better to ask what didn’t happen. When you passed out, I took over and did what I could, fast, before I passed out as well.
The fog in my head began to clarify and sharpen, and I thought about the battle. Jeldorain’s ASSERT had been a tremendously successful Hail Mary. Cancelling out most of the spells and magical items in the vicinity, the knights would have been faced with a strange and uncertain battle with Ike and Kevinar, neither of whom was a slouch when it came to mano a mano.
It was hard to imagine that they’d won. But then again, I wasn’t dead. I sighed, sitting up and peering around myself. The smell of burning pitch and charred wood still scented the destroyed camp, but it was lesser now, and older. Small fires still burned here and there, casting eerie shadows on the destroyed tents and scattered debris, and a few more bodies of Warg Knights lay near, their mounts slaughtered as well.
Walking in my direction was Kevinar. The dark elf’s goggles were dusted with light gray ash, a fact that apparently didn’t concern him since he made no move to clean them. He came to my side and put a hand on me, grinning.
“Despite their well-earned reputation, it would seem that the much-exalted knights of the Goblin Empire could still use some work on their fighting skills. Without their enchantments, they really weren’t much mightier than anyone else.”
“We won?” I asked stupidly, still unable to believe it.
“That demon power of yours did the trick. It killed one of my swords, but without their wards and with their spells out of play, our enemies were well easy to drive off.”
I nodded, again surveying the field of battle. Ike was a few feet away, tending to his own numerous wounds and slumping against the ruin of a cart. Brandosyeus, though, was nowhere to be seen.
“Brandosyeus?” I asked.
“Alive. Scouring the camp for survivors to heal. I think he was disappointed that you made it.” Kevinar looked out over the camp pointedly. “The camp is lost, and many have fallen. We need to regroup, assess our losses, and decide what to do next.”
“I’ll go heal Ike, then we should join with Brandosyeus in finding survivors.” A growl croaked through my body, a Hunger debuff flashing into my vision. “Probably we should eat as well.”
And find your weapon, oh great strategist. I swear, I will never understand the summoning that brought you to this realm.
Standing up, I went over to Ike, tending to him while making small talk. The kobold was usually an earful, but now he was simply a heap of tired and broken, the fire in him quenched. I’d do something about that after everything else was taken care of, but for the present I decided it was best to let him rest.
I stomped off in the direction of where I’d last seen my icearigama, and let out a tremendous sigh of relief when I found it. The ASSERT spell hadn’t ended its charms, and I’d grown attached to the weapon as well. It was powerful and I couldn’t afford to lose it.
I returned to Ike and joined up with Kevinar, then the two of us stepped into the heart of the camp. Small crackles of flames punctuated the mostly silent ruins, but as we searched, we found a person here and there, slowly forming up a ragged group of survivors and sending them back to Ike as we made our rounds. There was loot as well, though not much of it since the place had obviously been well searched through during its sack. Here and there, within the shredded and scorched tents, small stockpiles had been stashed away, found easily by Kevinar’s clever eyes. We took it all as we came across it, vowing to go through it later when things were a lot less immediate.
There was a lot of junk as well. The ground was littered with the remnants of what had been not just a base for rebels, but obviously a vibrant community: broken weapons and charred pieces of cloth lay mixed in with small figurines and children’s toys. A vague sense of sorrow filled my soul as I spotted a cloth doll half-buried in the dirt, its head elsewhere.
Kevinar whispered through the debris on my right, his expression grim. A plodding noise behind announced the arrival of Ike, looking much better than he had. He nodded at me as our eyes met, a somber look over his face as he bent to inspect a fallen banner in the dirt. I lifted it, examining the tattered and soiled fabric before letting it flutter back into the mud and soot.
Moving around the sword-ripped fabric of a fluttering tent, we spotted Brandosyeus. He had just taken to setting a panpipe to his lips, a dozen refugees sitting in a circle around him and gazing hopefully at his hopeless face. Blowing his first notes, a small amount of calm and healing weaved around us and I smiled.
Despite the horror scattered around us, the music still worked and still instilled hope.
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He looked at me, looked into my eyes, and waved with his other hand, a motion that further raised my spirits. Despite the many rings of desperate resistance and broken barricades I’d seen, filled with the bodies of those who dared fight, it made me realize that all was not lost.
The Goblin Empire wouldn’t get me and I would fight for these people. Even if there wasn’t a portal at the end of it all.
As I continued forward, my reverie was broken by a faint sound, a barely audible moan that came from beneath a collapsed wagon. Rushing over, I seized it up and tossed it to the side, looking into the dirt to find our next survivor.
Lying amidst the wreckage, barely distinguishable from the debris surrounding her, was a high elf clad in a light armor breastplate over top leather armor and breeches. Though battered and bruised, she exuded other worldly beauty, a sort of glow that had to be magical. She was tall and slender, her silver hair lustrous despite its dirty tangles, framing a face that, while marred by bruises and grime, retained its noble grace. Her eyes were a deep shade of forest green, and her ears were larger than normal and pointed like a Vulcan.
She gasped and panted, the weight off her body finally allowing her to breathe. Staring at me, her eyes widened, but she made no move. Kevinar knelt down by her side, offering his hand to her. She took it, sitting up and coughing hard.
“Are you friends?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Last I checked,” Ike said stumping into view. She smiled weakly, her eyes brightening. “You’re safe now, Seljin,” he continued, moving to her other flank.
“That’s a relative word,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “We were safe this morning.” Leaning against Kevinar and using his shoulder for assistance, she stood up. “That cart — I thought I was a goner. The debuffs were piling up. It’s going to take some time for them to disappear.”
Ike apparated a flask of water from his inventory, uncapping it and offering her a swig. “Not worth thinking about. We’ve got to get everyone together and assess the situation. What exactly happened here, Seljin?”
Seljin took a shaky breath. “It was... it was a massacre,” she began. “They came at dawn, a horde of goblins and their Warg Knights. We... we weren’t prepared. They...” Her voice broke, and she paused to collect herself.
“There was so much chaos,” she continued. “At first they surrounded us, then demanded our surrender. It didn’t look so bad. There weren’t that many. Then, when we refused, a goblin walked the perimeter, chanting words as he dug a line in the dirt with his sand.”
Ike growled. “I’d bet gold against copper that was Schustak.” Seljin looked at him, her eyes confused and questioning. “I’m sorry, Seljin, go ahead. I’ll shut my maw.”
“When the circle was complete, everything around the camp was somewhere else. It was like the camp had transported into a great hall, a barracks room packed full of soldiers. The magic required to do something like that . . .”
“That isn’t a spell. It is the function of an artifact,” Kevinar growled. “One that was thought lost ages ago.”
My mind began to spin as they talked. Teleportation? Powered by an artifact? My icy heart beat more quickly as Jeldorain cottoned on to my thoughts.
Sure there is no way it can bring you back to your realm?
No harm in asking, I responded. Meekly I put up a hand and the lot of them stared at it in surprise, their conversation halted.
“What is this artifact? And can it help me?”
Seljin’s pretty face scrunched into a frown. “Who is this, and why is he interrupting our debriefing?” She coughed hard, obviously under the effects of multiple physical debuffs.”
“This is Ryan and Jeldorain. The goblins fused the two together and were using us to train them into a great warrior general for their ranks. Almost assuredly by the same mighty druid that you spotted using the artifact.”
Seljin cocked her head, confusion even more evident on her face. Ike sighed.
“Look, it’s a long story.”
“It is the Orb of Nethershift,” Kevinar stated. “Created by the Archmage Ilyandor during the Age of Shadows. Housed in the Great Temple of Ilotha, God over my people, for a thousand years. We used it to leave the surface, and to raid villages. The power of its teleportation is immense. It can reach anywhere, or so the clerics said.”
My eyes flared wide, frost puffing from their edges. “I could use it to go home?” I asked.
A notification appeared before my eyes:
Quest: Highway to Home
Difficulty: Elite
Objectives: Retrieve the Orb of Nethershift by any means available. Find a being powerful enough to use it. Go back to where you came from.
Rewards: Return back from whence you came. 5000 XP.
Penalties: Used improperly, the Orb can burst asunder, merging worlds or dimensions into one.
A sob escaped my lips, and Seljin startled, scooted backwards in the dirt. I could go home! Beside me in my mindspace, Jeldorain patted me on my ethereal shoulder.
Don’t forget, champion, that there’s something you need to do for me first.
Quest: Free Jeldorain
Difficulty: Elite
Objectives: Find information on means by which to remove yourself from within Jeldorain’s body. Utilize this information to make it so.
Rewards: Freedom
Penalties: If done without a suitable host to return to, your spirit will become a ghost, destined to haunt the environs in which you left your body.
I will, I responded.
Eyeing me closely, Seljin continued her tale. “The hall’s warriors fought us an hour before they broke through our defenses. We took to street fighting, fought back as best we could. At some point it all shifted back here, no mark to show it’d ever been gone, but the soldiers already here, their wagons in tow, they came with. There were too many. They set fire to everything...” Her gaze drifted to the burning remnants of the camp, and she closed her eyes, letting out a stuttering sigh.
Kevinar gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “Did anyone else survive?” he asked.
Seljin nodded slowly. “Some were taken... prisoners. They’re heading out, probably towards Gharag City,” she said, her voice laced with fear and despair.
“They’re gone then,” Ike said. He stared in the direction they’d headed, his toothy maw twisted and lips pursed.
“It’s a big blow,” Kevinar added. “But it doesn’t have to be the end. Are we going to get them?”
“I’ll get them. I’ll tear through their entire kingdom if I have to,” I stated, pictures of the orb dancing in my mind.
Ike nodded. “Yeah, we’ll move. The staff is powerful, obviously, so that’ll be part of the objective. Probably Ryan already has a quest for it, given the circumstances. We’ll get Brandosyeus if he’ll come, and as many volunteers from the survivors as we can. But this is going to take time. I want you all to listen to me on this. We can’t just barrel into the capital and pretend its some dungeon quest. If we could do that, we’d have done it a long time ago. We move forward as we can, we make allies, good will, and try to help those that need helping. I’ve got a quest to save the prisoners, and I don’t know that I’ll be able to. But at the end of it all, what we need to do is clear. We need to make enough of a nuisance to draw out the Empire and keep it on its toes.”
“And then find Schustak and steal the orb?” Kevinar asked.
“Oh no, more than that. We’re going to take the orb, help Jeldorain, save the prisoners, send Ryan home and kill the emperor. Be ready for hells, boys, because from here on out it’s war.”