Stealthcaster Read online

  “Gallowind is a vast and fascinating place,” Woody replied. “You could walk through these trees endlessly for months and not see everything. There are many magical corners of the wood that even I have not seen.”

  Lionel looked up and around at the surrounding trees.

  “Doesn’t look especially magical, just looks like… trees.”

  Woody smiled. “Spent enough time in here and you will see what true magic looks like.” As they walked deeper into the trees, a brief, cascading light flickered through the leaves ahead, a strange pale blue, snapping in and out. Solomon hesitated, looking toward the light, and Woody came up on his right, his eyes narrowed and glaring.

  “What is that?” Solomon asked.

  “Stay here for a moment,” Woody replied, pulling out his sword and progressing further, walking carefully through the long grass and trees. The Harefolk went into the thick foliage, vanishing from view and was gone for a few moments.

  Solomon and Lionel looked curiously at each other until finally Woody shouted from the other side of the line of trees.

  “Friend Solomon! Come! Quickly!”

  Solomon launched into a run, Lionel close behind, and they burst through the trees, then came to a halt when they saw the empty clearing. Woody was standing among piles of scattered refuse by the looks of things, smashed and broken twigs, scattered straw, small piles of rocks and stones. Mixed among the broken wood and torn leaves there were small shapes laying among the grass, several of them sparking with bright blue color.

  “What the—?” Lionel asked, reaching for his broadsword.

  “No,” Solomon interjected, holding out his hand. “Don’t.”

  “You know who they are,” Woody said, looking at him.

  Solomon nodded, stepping forward and lowering to a squat, bringing himself down to ground level. One of the small shapes set in the grass between his feet, shaped like a miniature figure, curled in a fetal position, surrounded by a glistening of bright, blue lights.

  “Are those… people?” Lionel asked, bending down.

  Solomon nodded and the figure on the ground stirred, trying to crawl to her feet.

  “Gossamer?” Solomon asked, and the figure looked up at him. Reaching out with his hand, he scooped up the small faerie creature, lifting it has he stood, cradling it carefully so as not to hurt the small being. Upon closer examination, she seemed relatively okay, far better than many of the others scattered about.

  “Please watch where you step,” Woody cautioned to Lionel, who was coming close, and had drawn close to placing his foot down upon another glistening shape.

  “My apologies,” the paladin said, moving away from the prone form.

  “Gossamer?” Solomon repeated, leaning down to the small fae cradled in his palm. He didn’t know her well, but he’d met her on his last voyage through Gallowind as a mouthpiece for Wiscilla the Dryad, allowing him to communicate with her, even in the middle of the corrupted forest.

  “Solomon?” the small figure asked in a squeaky voice. “Is that you?”

  “What happened here?” Solomon asked, glancing around. “Where did all of this come from?”

  Gossamer came up into a seated position, leaning within Solomon’s palm, running a hand through her matted, shimmering hair.

  “This… this is Draeslamere. Our home. It is usually cloaked in magic, but we were doing work for Wiscilla. While our attention was diverted, the Sharak-Ku were able to see through our veil.”

  “Did you say the Sharak-Ku?” Woody asked, stepping carefully toward Solomon.

  “Indeed,” Gossamer replied. “Wiscilla put us in charge of surveillance. A roaming band of Sharak-Ku abominations struck a ship on the Forked Tongue, and others have been seen throughout this part of Gallowind. Wiscilla has been working with the Amazons, and wanted us to set up watch throughout this region.”

  “Sounds like they found you before you found them?” Solomon asked.

  “Our pools of magic are not limitless,” Gossamer replied, her voice edged with a slight bite of frustration. “We used much of our natural energies to enhance our perception. The veil faltered, and although we did see them coming, the Sharak-Ku were too strong and ravaged our entire village.” She stood in Solomon’s palm, her tiny, transparent wings beating with rapid patters. Slowly, she lifted off, hovering in the air. Her shoulders dipped slightly as her wings slowed, but she compensated and lifted again, regaining at least some of her composure in midair.

  “This is not the first time the Sharak-Ku have hunted us and ravaged our home,” she whispered. “It is becoming all too common.”

  Around them, some of the glowing figures were stirring, making movements in the grass, reaching for small, narrow swords, using broken sticks to help them stand. Still many others remained laying prone in the grass and dirt, some of them flickering lightly, others a depressing, lifeless dark.

  “I fear this time may be the last time,” Gossamer said quietly, looking around her. “They weren’t satisfied to just ravage our village this time. They were out for blood.”

  “What can we do?” Woody asked and Gossamer looked at him with a faltering smile.

  “We need medicine. Healing. We need to restore our magic and our strength before we can even rebuild our village.”

  “Can we help?” Solomon asked, his eyes glancing at Woody, trying to gauge his response to the question.

  Gossamer looked down, as if ashamed to be needing help from someone like him. Woody took a few steps closer, drawing near to the flying figure.

  “Please, Gossamer,” he said earnestly. “Let us help you the way you helped us.”

  The faerie lifted her chin and looked at them both.

  “You heard me mention that this is not the first time the Sharak-Ku have attacked us. There have been others.”

  Sol nodded.

  “The last time, we lived in a village due north of here. Not by ourselves, but with some Elvish companions. They lived in a wooded alcove of lush, rich vegetation, a source of great natural magics, unlike most others, even here in Gallowind.”

  “What happened?” Lionel asked, joining the group.

  “Several months ago,” Gossamer said, the memory still evidently painful for her, “in the night they came. We think they were demons, sent by the Sharak-Ku, possibly even Rulaaz himself. They swarmed the village, massacred every single Elf they came across. A few escaped, and we were able to slip away as well, but until now, we have never returned. Our scouts believe there is still evil there somewhere.”

  “So… how does that help this situation?” Solomon asked.

  Gossamer nodded.

  “Yes, yes, I am getting to that. As I said, it was a source of lush, magical vegetation. There was a certain flower there, a pale pink glowerlilly. It is like nourishment for us. We don’t need it to survive, but it has certain restorative properties for the fae.”

  “We will travel to these ruins,” Woody said. “We will retrieve these flowers.”

  The Quest for the Healing Flowers

  Gossamer and the Gallowind Fae have been grievously injured in a Sharak-Ku ambush. Travel north to the ruins of their homestead and retrieve sixty stalks of GlowerLilly, then return them to Draeslamere to restore the fae to health and power.

  Quest Class: Uncommon

  Quest Difficulty: Very Difficult

  Success:

  Retrieve 60 GlowerLilly

  Current Status: 0/60

  Rewards:

  2000 XP

  Class Specific Magic Item x 1 per party member

  Increased Relationship with the Gallowind Fae

  Charisma: +1

  Penalty:

  Decreased relationship with the Gallowind Fae

  Charisma: -1

  Do you Accept: Yes/No

  “Woody,” Solomon said in a quiet voice. “If we do this quest, you realize that delays our search for your clan members. Are you okay with this?”

  “It is not preferable, friend Solomon, no, but I
don’t see that we have much choice. The Gallowind fae are an ancient force within these woods, if they were to die off, it would upset the balance of magic. Provide the Sharak-Ku with yet another advantage that I cannot permit.”

  Solomon nodded and accepted the quest.

  “Take care, Solomon,” Gossamer warned. “As I mentioned, our scouts still sense evil throughout the north wood here, and you must all proceed carefully.”

  “Carefully is our middle name,” Lionel said with a broad smile, and drummed his fingers on the pummel to his broadsword. Gossamer smiled pitifully and fluttered her wings moving away from the party and back toward her injured comrades.

  Chapter 18 - Scavenging the Ruins

  * * *

  The hours passed surprisingly quickly as the party moved north toward the village ruins. Before they’d left, Gossamer had cast a location spell, which had consumed much of her remaining magic, but it had created a beacon in Solomon’s HUD, showing him precisely where the old town had been located. The distance didn’t look far in a digital world, but the forest seemed endless as they moved north in search of the ravaged village. The glowing beacon grew in size and intensity as they walked north, getting brighter as they grew closer, and the trees began to thin into withered, narrow trunks, some of them battered and shredded. One tree was still embedded with a trio of arrows, rammed deep into the wooden trunk, sticking out like odd tail feathers.

  “I think we’re close,” Woody said, and Solomon nodded. Venturing from the path they were on, they found themselves in an open area, vast and wide, far wider than any clearing they’d come across before, but it was tough to call this empty space a clearing, because it was far from clear. Crushed, ruined houses littered the landscape, and not the tiny stick houses of Draeslamere, but larger, more regular sized houses, mostly made from wood, sticks, and woven leaves, but large enough to at least fit human beings. Among the smashed and caved in structures, looking more closely, they could see the smaller residence of the fae folk, twigs and straw smashed into near pulp, barely visible in the grass. The village was far more wide than deep, stretching out to the west and east, almost as far as they could see, and there wasn’t a section of the once impressive elvish village that wasn’t currently ravaged beyond repair. A large structure that had once likely been a central meeting place actually had three of its four wooden walls, but the fourth was cleaved down the middle and caved inward, tilting the leaf roof at an odd angle. Around and between the clutched houses, several skeletons were visible, strewn about at odd angles, bones bleached and dried, the remains barely looking humanoid at this point.

  “By the stars,” Woody whispered, eyes lingering on the bones. “Who would do such a thing?”

  Solomon lowered to a bent-knee crouch, narrowing his eyes and looking at the remains, activating Deeper Insight. He absorbed what he saw, his enhanced skill processing the images they came in, and providing some raw data to him as they did.

  “Those are elf remains,” he said quietly. “The bones are somewhat lighter than a normal human’s, but here’s the thing…”

  “What?” Lionel asked, bending down and looking over his shoulder, as if he might offer some detail himself.

  “They’re totally picked clean. At the risk of being gross, bones like that, if they’d been decaying in the woods for months as Gossamer suggested, there would be… uhhhh.. stuff on them. Like gross stuff. But there isn’t.” As he was saying this, Solomon thought for a moment that perhaps this was just how the game was rendering the skeletons, and perhaps he was putting too much thought into this. It was a concern he dared not speak aloud. Even though Woody seemed to have some perspective on the more game elements of this world, Solomon highly doubted he was programmed to recognize that his whole world was a game.

  “I believe you are correct,” Woody said, stepping toward one of the skeletons. “Every scrap of flesh, muscle, or what have you has been ripped or torn away. Leaving just the bones behind.” He stood again, looking around the wrecked village, concern etched in his fur-covered features.

  “What’s wrong?” Lionel asked.

  “The Sharak-Ku are nasty, evil creatures,” Woody replied, “but they are not scavengers. They have little concern for monetary value or consumption of organic material. Even the abominations would consider it distasteful.”

  “So you’re telling me this is something else?” Solomon asked.

  “I do not know,” Woody replied, “but there is a lingering darkness still here. The same sort of energy I felt from the pit fiend whom we vanquished.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Solomon said nervously, holding up his hands. “Don’t even tell me that some remnants of G’Lorath are still around. I died once fighting that asshole. I’m not doing it again.”

  Woody shook his head. “It’s not G’Lorath himself, I’m certain of that. But it is something tracing his energy. Leaving behind scraps of it. It leaves a stench like a trail of fresh refuge.” His nose twisted at the comment and he glanced around once more. “Ah, but first,” he said, his voice quickly regulating. “The glowerlilly.” He pointed one thick, furry appendage toward a clutch of haunting purple flowers, blowing gently in the light breeze. As Solomon looked at them he could see that the entire town was flooded with them, a fact he hadn’t noticed until right now.

  “Our quest is to retrieve those flowers, yes?” Lionel asked. “Nothing more?”

  “Correct,” Solomon replied, though he was feeling much of the extraneous nervousness that was bleeding from Woody, a sense of sinister foreboding that he did not like and that he had not felt in this part of the wood since they’d driven away G’Lorath and Rulaaz. He didn’t much like it. The feeling gnawed at him like a hungry parasite, digging into his guts and churning there, twisting things up inside. It was a feeling beyond nervousness, it was full on foreboding, and even skated the scant edge of terror. It was a feeling he was not accustomed to. Even in the real world, Solomon wasn’t afraid of much, often times that reckless abandon was to his detriment, so this strange, sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach was a very unwelcome sensation indeed.

  “You feel it, too, don’t you?” Woody asked, looking at him. “The darkness that persists here? The energy?”

  Solomon nodded softly, not wanting to admit it, but feeling as if he had to.

  “Let’s focus on picking the flowers and worry about the darkness later, huh?” Lionel asked, his own eyes darting from wrecked house to wrecked house with uncertainty.

  Solomon nodded and they moved to the patch of flowers, colored like a hot, summer midnight sky, slowly plucking them from the ground, and placing them within Solomon’s enchanted pouch. For a few moments they moved through and went through this process, Solomon checking his screen from time to time to see status.

  Quest Alert - The Quest for the Healing Flowers

  Gossamer and the Gallowind Fae have been grievously injured in a Sharak-Ku ambush. Travel north to the ruins of their homestead and retrieve sixty stalks of GlowerLilly, then return them to Draeslamere to restore the fae to health and power.

  Retrieve 60 GlowerLilly

  Current Status: 42/60

  Rewards:

  2000 XP

  Class Specific Magic Item x 1 per party member

  Increased Relationship with the Gallowind Fae

  Charisma: +1

  “Eighteen more,” he said and Woody nodded, moving toward another patch, bending to pluck the flowers from the ground.

  A low chittering caught their attention, almost like the sound of bones rattling. Solomon felt his heart picking up speed, ramping up in his chest, thumping mercilessly. Swiftly, Woody scooped up the remaining eighteen flowers and handed them to Solomon, who put them into his pouch, then they collected as a group. The chittering has subsided, but was still audible, though it sounded more like teeth clicking than bones.

  Teeth clicking… or claws.

  “Time to go,” Solomon said. As they stepped toward the southern fringe of town, a sudden, sha
rp cold chill ripped through all three of them, a razor cut of frigid air, and simply by instinct, Woody looked toward the east.

  “They’re here,” he said quietly. Almost inaudibly, his voice a hushed, petrified whisper.

  “Who—” Solomon asked, following his gaze, and then he saw for himself.

  There was a group of them, around a half dozen, their skin a pale, worn-bone white, each of their four limbs long and narrow, as if the skeletons underneath were only barely covered by tightly wound muscle and leathery flesh. Long, dark claws extended from twisted feet and slender fingers, and they clicked on the rocks as they drew closer, walking an all fours. Bony spikes punched up through their shoulders and burst through other patches of their off-white skin in tight clutches. What Solomon truly focused on were their faces. The fact that they didn’t really have faces as one might traditional see them. Their narrow heads split down the middle, vertically and spread open into singular face-sized maws brimming with jagged, razor teeth.

  Abyssal Scavenger

  (Sinister demon with the power to slip between worlds)

  Level: 10

  HP: 145/145

  MP: 185/185

  Skills:

  Bone Claw Slash

  “Scavengers,” Woody hissed, slowly drawing his sword from its sheath.

  “You’ve seen these before?” Solomon asked in a hushed hiss.

  Slowly, the six scavengers spread out, making room for a seventh figure who approached, actually walking upright instead of on a hunched quartet of long limbs. This seventh figure was tall, taller than any of them, Sol was pretty sure, even taller than Lionel who had him beat by several inches. His shoulders were sloped and covered with a drapery of dark, thick cloth, a hood pulled up over his head so his features were obscured. He (Sol assumed it was a he) carried a long, withered staff in his right hand, his robes torn and tattered, fluttering out in the same cool breeze that they currently felt.

  He stood amid the Abyssal Scavengers, standing tall and rigid, each of them looking to him as if he were some kind of pack leader. He stood before them, them huddled around like pets, like anxious attack dogs just waiting for their command.