Stealthcaster Read online

  “Oh, there’s something we can do,” a voice echoed from behind Megyn. She turned and her mouth creased into a soft smile.

  Solomon Herrick stood in the grass, framed by rows of the forests he had just emerged from. Lionel stood on his left, with Woody on his right, and a small group of Harefolk collected behind him.

  “We can ride down these Sharak-Ku scumbags and kill them. We can kill them all.”

  Chapter 31 - Together Again for the First Time

  * * *

  “Sol!” Ella shouted, running over to him. They embraced quickly, though the expression on Solomon’s face never shifted from the hard-edged angry glare.

  “So the Sharak-Ku did this?” he asked, looking around at the burnt ravages of what used to be a thriving Amazon village.

  “Yeah,” Megyn said walking to him and putting a hand on his arm. “Do you think we can do that?”

  Solomon looked at her.

  “Woody, Lionel and I ran into a group of Sharak-Ku up north, they had the Harefolk trapped. Pretty sure they were going to kill them.”

  “What did you do?” Megyn asked.

  Lionel’s eyes lit up.

  “He glowed like magic and cut one of them in half. It was totally awesome.” His eyes flashed, but then narrowed somewhat. “Ummm… I mean— he did what was necessary. For the good of the party.”

  Solomon chuckled.

  “It was pretty awesome.”

  “Is Queen Soracia truly gone?” Woody asked, his face screwed into a worried expression. “They’ve taken her?”

  “They have,” Esmelda replied. “She didn’t go willingly, and she took a few of them down first, but yes, they have her.”

  “How long ago?” Solomon asked.

  “Hours,” Esmelda replied. “Not long.”

  “Were they walking or riding?”

  “Walking.”

  Solomon looked at Megyn who met his gaze and held it for a moment.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Esmelda said. “These Sharak-Ku are deadly and dangerous. You can’t fight them alone.”

  “We killed three abominations on this last quest,” Solomon replied. “We did that alone.”

  “And now my clan is aligned with us and ready to help,” Woody said.

  As if on cue, a notification appeared.

  Congratulations, you have completed the Quest!

  Preparations for War

  Part 04- Gather the Harefolk

  Woody’s brothers and sisters are on their way south from the Grove, but are a few days overdue. Travel north into Gallowind Wood, retrace the path to the Grove, find the Harefolk and bring them back to Thorathon Village so they can assist in the conflict with the Sharak-Ku.

  Rewards:

  1500 XP

  Reputation with Soracia: Friendly

  Reputation with the Harefolk: Trusted

  Charisma: +1

  Lionel smiled broadly and looked at his hands as he consumed the experience.

  “Level five!” he shouted triumphantly. “Oh man, grinding hard quests with you higher level players rocks!”

  “Oh, man!” Solomon shouted. “Oh man, oh man, oh man!”

  “What?” asked Megyn.

  “1500 XP for completing the quest… Level six! Level freaking six!” Even as he said it, the warm white light enveloped him, swarming and swirling around him, signaling his evolution.

  Congratulations, you have reached Level 06!

  Level: 06

  (66% to next level)

  XP: 16785/25500

  HP: 325/325

  MP: 250/250

  You have been awarded:

  05 Stat Points to Distribute

  STR: 14 CON: 12 AGI: 18

  CHA: 14 LUK: 11 DEX: 18

  WIS: 10 INT: 16 STA: 12

  Your dilligent progression continues – onward and upward!

  “Wait, what?” Ella demanded, her eyes widening. “How did you pass us again?”

  Solomon smiled. “We faced down some serious bad dudes. Sharak-Ku, an Elf necromancer,”

  “He wasn’t a bad dude,” Woody corrected, squinting at Sol.

  Solomon shrugged. “We nailed a bonus quest, too. Helping the fae. I earned this kick ass amplification crystal that—”

  “Solomon,” Esmelda interrupted. “I understand that you visitors enjoy trumpeting your accomplishments. But we have larger things at play here. Our queen remains missing.”

  “So you’re saying we can go after her?” Solomon asked, grinning slightly.

  Esmelda closed her eyes and blew out a long breath.

  “I remain concerned,” she said quietly. “Our numbers are not large. I’m not crazy about dividing our forces. But I see few other options.”

  “Ohh yeah,” Solomon replied. He looked at Megyn and Ella. “Get ready. We’re mounting up.”

  “Me, too,” Lionel said, coming up behind him. “I’m level five, I just distributed my stat points to strength and stamina. I’m topping out around 3oo HP. I can actually help you now.”

  Solomon nodded. “All right. You’re in.”

  “Me as well,” another voice said and they all looked at Kydel as she approached from the town. “Queen Soracia is ultimately my responsibility. I must play a role in getting her back.”

  “We can spare no others,” Esmelda said, shaking her head. “I’m not even crazy about sparing all of you.”

  “It’ll be worth it,” Solomon said. He held his chest and shoulders high, an air of confidence in him as he spoke. As he paused, he triggered his HUD and looked at his stats screen. He had five points to distribute and as he diverted more into the StealthCaster class, he knew where he had to slide those points. He’d been totally ignoring wisdom and mostly ignoring intelligence. He knew that had to stop. In a matter of seconds, he shuffled his stat points where he wanted them to be.

  Level: 06

  (66% to next level)

  XP: 16785/25500

  HP: 325/325

  MP: 250/250

  STR: 14 CON: 12 AGI: 18

  CHA: 14 LUK: 11 DEX: 18

  WIS: 13 INT: 18 STA: 12

  Getting this done, he looked over at Esmelda again as she continued to speak.

  Esmela nodded. “Very well,” she said. “Take a few moments, get ready, then be off. We’ll coordinate our main forces and prepare a follow up attack on their western perimeter.”

  “Good plan,” Woody said. “Meanwhile I’ll work on building our forces.”

  “Before you go,” Ella said, walking toward him. “I need to talk to you about something.” Woody nodded and the two of them pulled away, chatting among themselves. Kydel walked off with Esmelda to start gathering more weaponry and Lionel joined them, leaving Megyn and Solomon standing alone.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Sol,” she said quietly.

  “Me, too,” he replied. “I mean… glad you’re okay.”

  She looked away for a moment.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I— I almost died,” she said quietly. “Not this last quest, but the quest before. These little lizard guys. Kobolds. They looked like total pushovers, but they got me pretty good.”

  “Hey, but you made it,” he said, smiling.

  She didn’t smile back.

  “What’s bugging you?”

  “How— how did you do it?” Megyn asked, this time looking hard and long at her friend’s eyes. “You died, and just climbed right back on the saddle. What did that feel like?”

  “It wasn’t fun,” he replied quietly. “Messes with your head a little bit.”

  “I didn’t even get killed and it messed with my head,” Megyn replied. “I mean, I could feel the pain. The sword strikes, the bleeding, feeling my life flowing out of me. It was real.”

  “It feels very real.”

  “I keep remembering it. Running over it time and time again in my head. I’m afraid it will mess me up in the middle of battle.”

  “Good,” Solomon replied. “Let it. We need to treat these battles like they
’re serious. We can stand here and say time and time again how this is all a game, it’s all just lines of code and none of it is real. But I think you know as well as I do, for the three of us, this is as real as it gets.”

  “You think so, too, huh?” Megyn asked.

  “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  Megyn’s breath caught slightly, a low rattle in her throat.

  “Dammit, Brock,” she whispered, cursing her brother’s name. It was her brother Brockton, after all, who had goaded them all into breaking into APEX to try and get an early look at Shyft 2.0.

  “You think he’s— in here somewhere?” Solomon asked, looking around the virtual world that surrounded them.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I would have thought if he was here, we’d have seen him by now. We all spawned pretty close to each other.”

  “We’ll keep an eye out for him,” Solomon said softly. “Once we take care of these snake jerks, we’ll see what we can do to find your brother.”

  Megyn nodded. “I just hope I don’t freeze up.”

  “You won’t,” Solomon replied. “Listen, there’s nobody I more want fighting by my side than you, okay? You’re tough, you’re strong, you know how to kick some ass. We’re going to ride through these trees, catch up to those snakes and rip them apart.”

  “If you say so,” Megyn replied.

  “I do,” Solomon answered.

  “So are you guys ready or what?” Esmelda asked, coming back over, a bag thrown over her shoulder. Judging by the shifting contours of the canvas, it was filled by weapons and other gear.

  Soracia’s Rescue

  Locate Queen Soracia and rescue her from her Sharak-Ku captors

  Quest Class: Very Rare

  Quest Difficulty: Exceptionally Difficult

  Success:

  Rescue the Amazon Queen

  Rewards:

  2000 XP

  Reputation with Soracia improved

  Reputation with the Sharak-Ku reduced

  Penalty:

  Queen Soracia dies

  Accept: Yes/No

  Nodding as he did, Solomon accepted the quest. He squared his shoulders and looked back to Thorathon, letting his breath hold within his tensed lungs.

  The next hours blurred past in breathless clutches of endless movement. Ella and Locratia taking turns, along with the other magic users, pelting flames with Ice Daggers, warriors running to the Forked Tongue River to fill buckets before charging back and dousing the flames. Desperately pulling Amazons from burning buildings, slowly but steadily knocking back the fires and rescuing who was still alive to be rescued. All along the way the makeshift firefighters and rescue personnel moved among the fallen, among the motionless and among the soft groans of the injured. They focused mainly in putting out the fires, attempting to stop the raging inferno before it grew completely out of control, and deep into the night, the orange fires had been mostly reduced to dull smolders, the air filled with a choking gray smoke, obscuring the sky and setting everyone to coughing.

  A group of Amazons had separated and retrieved the ancient oak, beginning to craft the weapons out of the material, moving into the forge to do the work that would require their most intense focus and concentration.

  Solomon’s muscles ached, his shoulders and back sore with pulling victims from burning buildings, lifting and tossing water, helping to smash down buildings that were already too damaged to salvage.

  Smoke filled the air around them, a persistent charcoal fog and he felt a nugget of doubt and regret wedged deep within him. Regret for not being here to help the Amazons when they needed him most. Doubt for his outlandish confidence when he spoke to the others about his conflict with the Sharak-Ku deeper into Gallowind.

  The truth was, the Sharak-Ku were formidable. Three of them had very nearly killed them, and by all rights, a group not much larger than that had stormed the Amazon stronghold itself and nearly leveled it. He’d strode from the trees extolling confidence and arrogance, convincing those around him that they could track down these warriors, eliminate them and rescue the queen. The truth was, as he stood there, watching the buildings burn, tasting the soot on his tongue and smelling the smoke in his nostrils, he had never felt more lost in this huge virtual world.

  Fighting was all he’d done since arriving here, so naturally, fighting seemed like the obvious next step. But could they really fight the creatures who had done this? Did they really and truly have a chance?

  The low ripple of orange fire burned in his eyes as he watched, seeing a village that was the closest thing he’d had to a home in this world barely clinging on to existence.

  Yes, he would fight. They would fight. Because he didn’t know what else to do.

  But at the end of the day, he had little confidence that any of them would make it out alive.

  Chapter 32 - Off to the Races

  * * *

  Ducking low, Solomon snapped his arms, lashing the horse with the leather reins, sending it hurtling swiftly ahead, hooves slamming on the packed grass of Gallowind Wood. Trees blurred past them on both sides, streaking into mixed browns and greens as they charged through the open path between the thicker edges of the forest. Ella clung tight to her own horse, these being more lithe riding horses compared to the larger transport behemoth she’d been riding to retrieve the ancient oak for the bows and arrows.

  Ella looked over her shoulder, sighing as she surged forward, wondering when things might just slow down a little. Wasn’t this supposed to be a game? Weren’t games supposed to be fun? Instead this game had just been one endless crisis after another, jumping from one emergency, one quest, one battle to the next before even getting chance to decompress from the last. She truly hoped this wasn’t what Shyft 2.0 was going to be like for eternity.

  Solomon slowed slightly and she caught up with him, looking over. He turned met her gaze, purposefully slowing his horse even more so they could ride side-by-side.

  “Something bothering you, Ella?” he asked nodding toward her.

  Ella shrugged as much as she could while angling the horse forward.

  “Just wondering when things might settle down, you know?”

  Sol nodded. “Yeah, we kind of spawned right in the middle of this thing, huh?”

  He was right, Ella decided, but she also decided that it kind of fit. She’d played her fair share of RPG’s and MMORPG’s in the past, and generally yes you did drop right in the middle of some action, and you usually had to play that out before any time to rest and get your bearings set in. It just so happened the action they dropped in the middle of was a protracted war between the Amazons and the Sharak-Ku, and they had to play their roles.

  “Up here,” Kydel called from the front of the pack, twisting around and gesturing to a grove of trees a few meters off the beaten path. “There is water there, our horses should drink, we should strategize our next moves.”

  Solomon nodded and slowed his mount, guiding the large beast to the grove, with Ella and Lionel falling in behind him. Megyn came around a moment later, still riding the back of Tyson, who wore a lopsided smile, looking every inch the oversized puppy and not the least bit like the ferocious Dire Wolf he had been when they’d all run into him the first time around.

  Slowly they each brought their rides to a halt and dismounted, stretching their tired limbs.

  “Megyn,” Kydel asked, nodding to the ranger. “The map.”

  Megyn nodded and pulled out the Map of Gallowind, handing it to Kydel who unfurled the paper and looked at it. Simultaneously a digital version of the same artifact activated and it faded into view within everyone’s status screens. It shone in a luminescent green hue, the outline of various regions and landmarks glowing in all of their vision, the range of Devil’s Mouth Caverns halo’d in a brightening red. Their location was indicated by an outline of a figure in pale blue.

  “So which path do you figure they’re taking?” Solomon asked, looking at the map in his eyes, trying to trace their curren
t trajectory.

  Kydel thought for a moment, her eyes tracing some shapes over the paper in her hands.

  “We are fortunate that they don’t know we have this,” she said, rustling the map to indicate what she was referring to. “They are likely taking an easy route, following various roads and paths back east toward the caverns.”

  “So if we choose to take a more— direct route, we could potentially intercept them first?” Solomon asked.

  Kydel nodded. “We are running a few hours behind them, but we’ve been moving far more quickly. If we continue that fast pace and move in a direct northeast trajectory, cutting through the forest instead of following the existing roads, we could potentially meet up with them a few kilometers west of the Sharak-Ku stronghold.”

  Not far away, the horses and Tyson slurped noisily at the small pond they had stopped near. They’d spent a chunk of the night battling the fires at Thorathon and had departed almost immediately afterward. The moon was full and high in the sky, a rippling, bulbous reflection in the shimmering water, flanked by a scattering of tiny stars. Ella looked into the grove, a collection of squat trees, each one full of leaves, bursting outward into rounded stalks, and her nerves settled slightly. This world, as dangerous as it was, was also truly beautiful and not for the first time, she felt especially fortunate to be caught within its web.

  “So we continue on our current pace, cutting a diagonal line through Gallowind north and east,” Kydel said firmly. The route glowed into formation within the map in their HUD and they each nodded as they mentally added that route to their internal navigation, ensuring they’d keep the proper direction and movement as they went along.

  “Take a few minutes,” Kydel said. “Rest up. It’s already been a long night, and it will be longer still.”

  Solomon walked over to the pond, stopping next to Ella, and looking out over the trees and water as she was doing.

  “Doing okay?” he asked. “Any better?”

  She shrugged. “A little. It is beautiful here, when you get a chance to stop and enjoy it.”