Jim runs around the corner in our direction. Panic is an expression I’ve learned to read on people’s faces and it’s clear on his. Walter has his bow ready.
“Sorry about that one,” the thief says, sliding between us as three large Goblinoids walk around the corner.
“I thought they patrolled in pairs,” the archer says, loosing arrow after arrow. Each hits a different Goblinoid.
“One of them was in an office,” Jim replies, getting to his feet.
“Janice?” Virgil asks, hefting his sword.
“I’m ready. The area of my AoE heal covers the width of the corridor and I’m centering it on Chuck, so don’t move too far back or forward.”
I glance at the team list. We’re all at max after our rest. We haven’t reached the first intersection, and this is our third fight. Jim drew a pair of them from the T-junction heading toward the center of the building without intending to. He was scouting ahead, and they saw him.
Or so he claims.
My paranoia is falling in love with him and his open dislike of me. Ignoring it and its claim that Jim is purposely finding monsters to get me killed is causing a slow, if steady, drop in my willpower.
I nod at Virgil when the orc looked in my direction. This is our part.
We run at them and score the first blows. I can’t hit as hard as I’d like. The corridor limits how much I can swing my bar, so it’s mostly thrusts and their hide soaks up a lot of that damage.
Virgil is better equipped for these fights. The point of his sword is better against the thick hide.
When my health hits the halfway point, I’m surrounded by a pale blue glow and it goes up nearly to the three-quarter mark. Healing us costs Janice nearly half her mana, but she regains it quickly enough I can see it happen with just that glance at the window. What she can’t do anything for, is how tiring these fights are.
I can take more damage, so I force two of them to focus on me, to beratement from my father’s voice.
My health drops below half again, and I glow as I slam the end of my bar through the Goblinoid’s chest. Even as my health regenerates, the slashes from the other bring it further down.
I punch it as hard as I can in the face, and my hand breaks, only to heal from Janice’s magic as it staggers back, giving me time to pull my bar out of the dead one. I block its next swing, but it staggers me. The next hit is overhead and blocking it brings me down to a knee.
It kicks and opens my side. I glow again, but it flickers before my health bar moves. I’m up, shoving it back, then land a series of jabs before it batters my bar aside. I turn with its slash, minimizing the damage, but the impact sends me against the wall, and when I turn to face it, claws are already coming at my face.
My father calls me names for having let myself be used like this. To be sacrificed so they could walk over my corpse and take all the glory.
I berate myself for the same things. I know not to trust people. I should have seen that Jim wasn’t the aberration in the group, but the clue that I couldn’t—
The sword’s point through the Goblinoid’s chest comes within millimeters of piercing my own, and the way my Employee of the Month armor is tattered, I don’t know if it would have protected me. The sword moves up, slicing through the Goblinoid’s upper body and spraying gray-red goo everywhere.
It falls and Virgil stands behind it, panting and grinning.
“Level seven,” he announces, drops to a knee, and falls to his side.
“Janice!” Walter yells as he drops next to the orc, pushing him on his back, and checks his vitals.
On the team screen, I don’t see any red left in his health bar, but his name is glowing softly in gold.
Janice crouches and places a hand on his chest. “Come on, Vir, tell me it’s going to last just a few more seconds. Oh, you better fucking not have taken more damage than I can heal right now, or I am going to kill you.”
Her hands glow, but I don’t see anything happening with his health.
“This is your fault.” Jim comes at me, knife in hand, and stops when I turn my gaze on him. Fear is an expression I have an easier time reading. I watched my father cause it in so many people as I grew up. Whatever he sees on my face, it scares him.
“I didn’t ask any of you to come. You made that decision.”
“If she wasn’t—” he closes his mouth. “If he dies, I’m going to murder you.”
Virgil gasps, then coughs. He turns on his side and throws up blood. Janice is pale.
“Jim, go look around and make sure we didn’t attract anything,” Walter says. “Jim! Stop fucking around. We’re in no state for another fight. We have to know if we need to retreat or we can wait here.”
The thief looks at me, snarls, then vanishes.
You’re going to have to get him before he gets you.
I try to ignore my father’s voice.
“You okay?” Virgil asks me. He barely has a sliver of red in his health.
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I nod. “What was that, berserk?” I ask. Hanz mentioned it’s something he has, a race ability.
“Fuck no.” The orc tries to sit and Walter helps him, dragging him to the wall for support. “I’d be a mindless killing machine with that. I am not putting points in it. It’s a class ability. Stalwart. Lets me keep on fighting until it’s over.”
“Then he keels over and dies,” Walter adds.
“Still breathing,” Virgil points out.
“Barely,” the archer says.
“Thanks for saving my life,” Virgil tells Janice, who is regaining some color.
“Just how low were you?” she asks.
He shrugs. “I don’t get that information. All I see is that I’m out of health.”
“It’s what we all saw,” I say, “on the team screen.”
“There’s nothing coming this way,” Jim says, reappearing.
“Good.” Virgil rests his head against the wall. “Then we’re safe until we’ve healed.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” the thief says, glaring at me.
“Drop it, Jim,” the orc orders.
“He nearly got you killed!”
“He took on two of those things basically by himself, Jim. It’s the only reason I was able to kill mine.”
“By going all Starward. If Janice hadn’t spent all her mana on him, you wouldn’t have had to do that.”
“I have to target someone for the spell to trigger,” she replies.
“Then you should have targeted Virgil, not him.”
My father’s running commentary is in turn amused with how they are almost tuning on one another, pissed that I let them force themselves on me and exasperated that one of them had to save my life.
I close my eyes and remain as still as I can to speed up my healing.
I really don’t give a fuck who’s pissed at whom right now, so long as they let me heal so I can end this and get out of this God-forsaken city.
* * * * *
Virgil peers around the left corner. “The meeting room’s the best place for the boss to be located.”
“Kind of obvious, don’t you think?” Janice says. “If I’d designed this, I certainly wouldn’t go for the one place everyone will assume is the right one. My money’s on the conference room through those doors.” She points to a set ahead of us.
“I’m with Janice,” Jim says.
“Big surprise there,” Walter mutters.
Virgil looks at me. “No idea.”
The tension is still loud enough I notice it, but now that we’re all healed, courtesy of Janice regaining her mana much faster than any of us do our health, they no longer sound about to stab each other.
“We really should clear the floor,” Walter says. “No matter where the boss is.”
“We kill the boss and all the monsters go away,” Jim says.
“I don’t think that’s how this is going to go,” Virgil replies. “Game instances usually either send you out the moment it’s over or provide a quick exit route. We’re on the fifth floor and we’re going to have to walk back down. I’m with Walt. The safest thing around is to clear the floor so we don’t have to deal with them afterward.”
“Getting to the boss guarantees we have a place to rest,” Janice points out.
“We don’t know for sure,” Virgil replies. “For all we—Chuck, where are you going?”
I head for the doors. “I’m going to do something, instead of sitting here wasting time.”
I shoulder the doors away hard enough one of them breaks off the frame.
* * * * *
Not your brightest idea, my father says smugly as Janice heals me. I can read the anger on her face, but she doesn’t say anything.
The conference room she thought would have the boss, didn’t.
What it had, instead, was a dozen Goblinoids, three of which were the roaming guard models, three who could move on walls and ceilings. Three I’d never seen before. Their arms and shoulders were covered with spikes, and with a flick they couldsend those things flying at us. We only won because they didn’t regrow during the fight.
Or if they’d been better with their aim. They injured half of the Goblinoids trying to hit us. It was still a close call.
“Next time, Chuck, can you not just go off on your own and force us to come to your rescue?” Virgil asks.
“Next time,” I reply, “you can do more than sit on your ass.”
“Chuck,” Janice
*exclaims.
I glance at my willpower, which is now below one fifth. Whenever I regain some from the fights, Jim opened his mouth and not smashing his face in made me lose that.. Now, the others are going to have to deal with me being blunt.
More blunt than before.
“Just marching in without a plan is a great way to get yourself killed,” Virgil says. He’s healed. Janice healed him first, then Jim, then Walter, and finally me, now.
“The plan to deal with the roaming patrols nearly got you killed,” I counter and Janice slaps my shoulder. “What?”
“He saved you, twice. The least you can do is to treat him with some respect.”
I glance at my willpower. “No, not really.”
“Chuck,” Virgil says, and the tone stops Janice from talking. “I think you owe us an explanation for why you’re tuning into an asshole.”
No, you don’t.
“If I lose too much willpower, I hit things. He’s been forcing me to go through a lot of it not hitting him. So I can’t afford to be nice and waste the little I have left. How’s that for a fucking explanation?”
“Very blunt,” Virgil says.
“And assholely,” Walter adds.
“Hey,” Jim says. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Shut up, Jim,” the orc says, then looks at me. “Chuck. Are you interested in Janice?”
“What?” I look at her, at him. What is he talking about?
“Jim and her were a thing. She’s been doting over you from the moment you got here and he’s jealous.”
“Why the fuck would I be interested in her?” I ask Jim and he steps forward, glaring.
“Are you saying she—”
“Enough!” Virgil yells. “He’s not interested in her, so fucking calm down, Jim.”
Janice’s slap on my cheek resounds and silences the others.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“Why would you be interested in me?” she demands.
“I’m gay,” I tell her through greeted teeth. “Is that fucking enough for you?”
“You are?” Walter asks. “You don’t look it.”
I close my eyes. “Can we not get into this while I don’t have the willpower to spare? I don’t fucking care what I look like to you. How you feel about me not being attracted to you, or that she doesn’t care about you. The one thing I care about is getting the quest I was given done. And all this isn’t helping.”
“You could—” Virgil closes his mouth as I glare at him. “Janice, finish healing him.”
“I don’t think I—”
“Janice, we don’t have the time for your hurt feelings. Chuck could use work on his social skills, but he’s right, we have a job to do and we’ve been letting stupid stuff get in the way of it.”
King of understatement, isn’t he?
Her hands on me are more like she’s trying to shove me away this time, but my health goes up again.
“We’re going for the meeting room,” Virgil says. “The sooner we finish this, the better I think we’re all going to feel.”
“That room’s clear,” Jim says, now next to a door. “And it’s got doors to the meeting room. You’re not going to believe what it’s been turned into.”
I head to the door in that room. There is a small window and through it I look at something out of a horror movie mad scientist’s lab. There are tables with beakers, glass tubes, something sparking. The back wall is a mess of wires and tubes and other things attached to it, all radiating from a central point.
I count six Goblinoids standing among the tables and I can’t see this side of the room.
Movement catches my eyes as someone in a lab coat stands and puts a box on the table. He’s humanoid and short, much closer to human, and not related to the Goblinoids in any way. The lab coat doesn’t fit well, or he wears something bulky under it to make himself seem more imposing, by the way it’s too far from his back for it to be—
He reaches for something across the table, stretching the lab coat and spines pierce it. They remind me of those on a porcupine, but thicker. Now that I know to look for them, I see they didn’t pierce the coat, it has slits to let them go through. A lot of them.
Well, now I know that he’s not going to be the problem. His guards are.