Monstergirl Quest, page 3
I tossed my broadsword aside – the durability was down to 94/600, anyway – and took the enchanted weapon, instead.
STEEL FIRESWORD
WEIGHT: 10 LBS
DURABILITY: 800/800
CHARGE: 100/100
EFFECT: FIRE DAMAGE DURING ATTACK
“Nice,” I said as I examined the sword.
I noted that, instead of a metric for ENCHANTMENT, this weapon had one for CHARGE. I guess that stat changed once a weapon was properly enchanted.
Whatever. The little details of this world could wait. Right now, I had an enchanted weapon, and I was itching to use it.
I made a save point then doubled back to the circular chamber. I met no resistance along the way, but my patience was going to start running thin soon.
As far as intro dungeons went, the crypt was pretty useful for teaching me about my powers, but I was ready for fresh air and sunlight.
The rest of the crypt was entirely barren. I passed a few more tombs, but there was nothing worth looting. And nothing to fight.
I wouldn’t have minded wandering this dank, musty crypt for an hour if I could at least have some fun along the way. But there was nothing, just seemingly endless hallways and crisscrossing antechambers. In the upper right-hand corner of my vision, I saw that the map was nearly complete.
I grunted, realizing there was a large hallway just up ahead that I hadn’t visited yet. The exit must have been through it. I hoped so, anyway, because this crypt was getting tiresome.
Yet, I resisted the urge to fall into a false sense of security. The closer I got, the more I could hear them.
They were groaning, hissing. Skeletons, at least a few of them. I listened more closely. When I did, I could hear the subtly different groan of another lich.
No wonder I hadn’t met any resistance after defeating that first lich. There was a second undead wizard, and this one must have sensed that I took out its counterpart. I leaned against the wall, listening some more.
Then I heard it: A gust of wind. With it, came the smell of grass and flowers, leaves and tree sap.
No doubt about it: The lich had marshaled its remaining forces by the exit, waiting to ambush me.
Fuckers were indeed intelligent. But guess what? I was tired of playing around. And I had the steel firesword.
I grit my teeth, made a save point, then rounded the corner, letting out a loud battle cry as I held my sword up high and prepared to attack.
********
There were five skeletons in all. Of the undead footsoldiers, three were armed with iron broadswords, while the other two had iron spears.
The three with the swords formed a rough semi-circular perimeter, with the spear-wielding skeletons standing dutifully by the lich. The lich, clearly the ranking undead here, had its back to the exit. Its ruby red eyes flared bright with hatred when it saw me.
I was in no mood to fuck around. With its footsoldiers coming at me, the lich didn’t launch any fireballs my way. There was no point in that, because it would have fried its minions along with me.
I hacked, slashed, parried and pivoted. The firesword’s enchantment worked upon attack, so when I hacked my blade toward a skeleton, the magical steel sparked with bright, deadly fire.
Though that skeleton parried my attack, the fireball nevertheless reduced its broadsword to dust. I grinned happily then finished the skeleton off with a fiery stab through the chest.
I made short work of the other two sword-wielding skeletons, but when I was done with them, the lich hurled a fireball my way.
Now that I was accustomed to the physics of the magical attack, I absorbed the fire easily with the Soulguard. The skeletons with the spears came at me. I slammed my armored fist into the first one, just to see if the gauntlet’s magic absorption had any effect on physical attacks.
I grunted in satisfaction when my armored fist impacted the skull and caused a bright red fireball to engulf the skeleton’s head.
Another good nugget of info.
I finished off the final skeleton then turned toward the lich. Unlike its minions, which I supposed were too dumb to feel complicated emotions, the lich had no such luck.
It was more intelligent than its undead footsoldiers, yeah, but that intelligence meant that it could also feel fear.
The lich turned to flee, grabbing at the exit’s door handle, but I merely strode casually toward it, firesword raised high.
I was the Champion of the Mananymphs, damn it. There was no way I’d let some undead wizard go marauding through the world outside this crypt.
With a quick blade through the chest, the final lich went down. Then, across my eyes:
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
ENCHANTMENT SKILL INCREASED +1
LEVEL 2 REACHED!
Alright, now this was what I wanted to see. Of course, I wanted to get much higher than Level 2. Hopefully I could double or triple that number before the day was over.
Also, I realized something interesting. Though my mana gauge was still empty on my stat screen, my enchantment skill had gone up. I guessed that merely handling an enchanted weapon helped increase that skill.
I took a moment to examine the enchanted blade.
STEEL FIRESWORD
WEIGHT: 10 LBS
DURABILITY: 770/800
CHARGE: 82/100
Awesome. I’d hacked through a half-dozen undead while hardly damaging the blade’s durability or magical charge. Now, I just hoped that the weapon would last long enough for me to find a town or an outpost, where I could get my bearings and, hopefully, some information about this world.
I pushed the exit door open. It squeaked loud on the hinges and brilliant rays of golden sunlight flooded inside, happily blinding me.
I stepped outside and took in the warm gusts of spring air blowing over the hills of the sprawling mountainous, forested landscape before me. “Holy shit, this place is beautiful,” I said.
“Yes, and hopefully you can keep it that way,” said a female voice behind me.
I turned around, ready for another fight, as the short, slender assassin-looking girl stepped out of the crypt behind me.
She wore a form-fitting black leather suit with two daggers resting on each hip. She had a matching black mask over her head and face, with a pair of thick, dark-lensed goggles over her eyes.
I probably should have been worried, because obviously this deadly woman had been following me…but her body looked so damn good in that leather suit that I couldn’t help but grin.
“And who might you be?” I asked as I lowered my gauntlet and sword.
The little assassin sighed. She was, at most, four-feet tall. Short and shapely as she might have been, the small woman radiated a subtle deadliness, like a predatory animal at rest.
She stepped out into the sunlight and peeled off her mask, which only revealed her face, and I recognized her instantly.
“You again,” I said, grinning as I recognized the girl who’d given me the Soulguard back at my shop.
“Gamelord,” she said, nodding respectfully, though she kept those black, weary eyes cautiously trained on me. “You did well in there. When Ciara told me she found another Champion in the human realm, I’d been worried. Humans are often ill-suited to the enemies in our reality.”
I shrugged. “Well I’m the Champion, right? What are a few liches and skeletons compared to me?”
The short assassin girl shot me a cocky smile. “A few apprentice liches and minor skeletons,” she corrected me.
Chapter Four
The landscape was pretty enough, but it was still hard terrain to cross, and the assassin girl said it would take us a full day to get to Homehold.
The assassin girl walked fast. Back before I had the Soulguard, I would have had a hard time keeping up with her.
“So, Ciara,” I said. “She’s the one who brought me here?”
The girl nodded. “She’s the most powerful of the Mananymphs.”
“So whoever’s imprisoned her at Homehold must be even more powerful,” I said.
She shook her head. “Ciara is not in Homehold,” she corrected me. “Currently, she is being held prisoner elsewhere.”
“Let’s go find her, then,” I said.
“She is in no true physical danger as of yet,” the assassin girl said as we strode side by side through a dense forest. “For now, we have to focus our efforts on saving Homehold. Tell me, what did Ciara tell you of your mission?”
The pretty, short assassin girl had a certain swagger to her walk. I’ll just say that the leather outfit only served to accentuate her features. Still, it felt wrong to stare, and I made sure that I didn’t linger on her, um, attributes.
“Not much,” I admitted. “Whoever’s holding her prisoner interrupted us before she could finish.”
The assassin girl grunted, then spit into the grass. “Monsters, all of them,” she said, just barely able to keep her anger in check.
“Well, there are some things I don’t understand,” I said as we made our way through the dense woods. The sunlight was filtering down through the canopy overhead, casting the ground in alternating shades of golden sunlight and cool shadow.
“I can explain to you what I can,” the assassin girl said.
“For starters, and this is just me speaking in practical terms, why would she summon me to that crypt? If she wants me in Homehold, why not just transport me there?”
The assassin girl paused, took a deep breath, then turned to me on a dime. “Earthman, I know that you are not yet accustomed to our ways here,” she said. “But please, you must understand that the crypt where you arrived is hallowed ground.”
I put my hands up apologetically. “Shit, I didn’t mean any offense. What was that place, then?”
Her hard, dark, eyes suddenly softened, as if she were reliving a painful memory. “A millennia ago, before the rise of the Empire, the powerful necromancer King Darkheart rose up from the frozen wastes of the south and made war on Homehold. He drove the people out, into these mountains. The battle was so hopeless that the Mananymphs summoned a Champion.” She sighed. “That one had also been an Earthman. He was brave, he was tough, but he was no true Champion.”
“So…I’m not the first ‘Earthman’ to come here,” I said, frowning. Somehow, the idea that I was the first brought a smile to my face.
“No, you are not,” she said. “However, Ciara hopes that, unlike that Earthman you will not turn out to be a Failed Champion. That one, he lured the Dark King’s forces onto that hill and waged guerilla warfare. Finally, he lured the Dark King himself into that crypt, where the Failed Champion and his men made a last stand.” She lowered her head, nodding reverently back in the direction from where we came. “The Failed Champion slew King Darkheart, but died of his wounds soon thereafter.” She gestured to the Soulguard. “That gauntlet lay in that chamber, where the Failed Champion fell, until today. Until Ciara told me to bring it to you.”
She took a long, distrustful look at me, before promptly turning around and starting back through the trees again. I hurried to catch up to her.
That story, while informative, had suddenly given me a bad feeling. “So wait a minute,” I said. “Does that mean that I might not be the Champion of the Mananymphs?”
“You might be a Champion, to certain Mananymphs,” the assassin girl said. “The Failed Champion had indeed been a Champion, yet not of all Mananymphs. The Champion of all Mananymphs is on a higher level than any other.”
“Oh, alright,” I said. “So I’m the Champion of all Mananymphs?”
The assassin girl shrugged. “That’s not my place to say,” she answered. “Ciara believes that you are. That’s what’s important.”
“Okay then,” I said, not quite satisfied with the answer. “Well, what about you? You haven’t even told me your name.”
“And I will not,” she said, giving me a sideways glance. “Not until I’ve been convinced of your loyalty to Ciara.”
I reached out with my right hand and caught her by the wrist to stop her. The moment I did that, she took her free hand, snatched one of those nasty looking daggers from her hip, and slashed it lightning-quick toward my throat.
I grinned as I caught the blade in my gauntlet. “Easy now,” I said. “I’m just trying to show you that I’m an alright guy.”
“You very well may be,” the assassin girl answered. “Ah, but you aren’t very detail-oriented,” she said, much to my confusion.
She shot me a cocky grin. That was when I felt that cold metal nipping into my wrist. I glanced down, where I held her by the wrist. She’d managed to snatch her other dagger from her hip, hold it at an angle, and press it just above my radial artery.
I laughed. “I have a feeling that you’re going to be a tough nut to crack,” I said as I released my hold on her dagger.
She pulled the other dagger away from my wrist. A single bead of blood welled up from the small nick in my flesh then trickled down my forearm.
She stuck the daggers back into her belt then started through the trees again. I kept pace alongside her. She gestured to the bit of blood on my arm. “If you’re going to save Homehold and help us banish King Darkheart once and for all, you’ll need to be more attentive than that.”
Then, it just kind of slipped out: “It’s hard to pay attention to anything else when I’m staring into your eyes,” I said.
The assassin girl glared at me…though I noted just the faintest hints of red in her cheeks, as if she were blushing.
“Don’t get familiar with me, Earthman,” she said. “Or you’ll find that necromancers and their undead minions aren’t the most lethal beings in these mountains.”
I smiled, but just then, processed what she had said a moment ago. “Hold on,” I said. “You told me the Failed Champion killed the Necromancer.”
“Aye, he did,” she answered. “But a wicked creature like Darkheart can’t be put down for good, not by a Failed Champion.” She gave me another quick look. “So hopefully Ciara is correct, and you can slay the Necromancer before he unleashes his forces on Homehold again.”
I considered this for several minutes. Yet, I couldn’t deny that there was something else on my mind, something a bit more pressing.
“So are you, like, taken?” I asked. “By a man?”
She glared at me, giving me one hell of a wicked side-eye. She rested her hands on those daggers on her hips. “Any man who would seek to take me would very promptly lose his man bits, Earthman.”
I had to laugh at that. This one was a firecracker, alright. “Okay, geez, it was just a question. Don’t go trying to cut off anything important.”
The assassin girl grunted and turned her head, but I was pretty sure that I caught a trace of a smile on her face. “Quiet now, Earthman,” she said. “We’ve got miles and miles to go and, already, you talk too much. Lucky for us, you sound so stupid that any goblins, upon hearing your insipid Earthen tongue, would be too disgusted to ever want to take a bite.”
I laughed again. I didn’t know why, but the more I talked to the assassin girl, the more I enjoyed her company.
I was a glutton for punishment, I guess.
********
God damn, we put some miles behind us. And the rough terrain made the long trek even harder. Even so, we were still several hours from Homehold as dusk fell. Lucky for me, the assassin girl had already set up a camp in a nearby cave.
Overhead, the sky turned a dark shade of velvet. I’d been a city boy most of my life, so I’d never seen a proper night sky. It wasn’t completely dark yet, but already the sky was alive with twinkling stars and strange constellations.
I followed the assassin girl around a winding path halfway up a nearby hill. There was a long rock wall, mostly concealed by overgrown bushes near the path. By the time we arrived at her cave, my legs were burning.
But then, I got a notification:
ATHLETICS SKILL INCREASED +5
LEVEL 3 REACHED!
“Well I’ll be damned,” I said to myself. “All I need is five skill increases to go up a level.”
The assassin girl looked back at me, confused, and stopped at the foot of the cavern. “What did you say, Earthman?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just some ability the Soulguard has given me. Second Sight, Ciara called it.”
The assassin girl nodded. “The Soulguard is a valuable tool,” she said. “In time, you’ll learn how to use it well…I hope.”
She ducked into the hole and I followed her inside.
She had some sort of striking match that she sparked against the cave’s wall, giving us meager light to find our way. The cave wasn’t deep, but it had a sharp corner up ahead, with a longer chamber lying ahead of that.
Then I realized the functionality of it. Around the corner, the assassin girl had set up a small camp, complete with a fire pit. Having placed the fire pit around this dark corner, she’d be able to light a fire without attracting attention.
Despite the strength and endurance boosts from the Soulguard, I’d need to get proper equipment soon. My sneakers weren’t made for this kind of hiking, and my jeans were too cumbersome for all this climbing.
“I’ll need supplies once we reach Homehold,” I said. “What should I do for money?”
The assassin girl waved me off as she lit a flame in the fire pit. It went up almost instantly, casting us both in its warm orange glow. “Trust me, you’ll want for nothing,” the assassin girl said. “Duke Gladios waits on you as we speak.”
“I take it that this duke character runs the town?”
The girl nodded. “He descends from a line of kings, back before the Empire,” she said. “Ever since the Emperor took power, those kings have been demoted to dukes. Still, he’s a wealthy man. More importantly, he’s a just man. You’ll be able to count on him.”
The assassin girl crouched by the fire, warming her hands. Just like before, my eyes were drawn to the shape of her, her toned legs, her soft curves…
I shook myself out of my trance, grinning to myself at how she’d maneuvered her dagger up against my wrist, hours ago.
“So, c’mon, tell me about yourself,” I told her.
STEEL FIRESWORD
WEIGHT: 10 LBS
DURABILITY: 800/800
CHARGE: 100/100
EFFECT: FIRE DAMAGE DURING ATTACK
“Nice,” I said as I examined the sword.
I noted that, instead of a metric for ENCHANTMENT, this weapon had one for CHARGE. I guess that stat changed once a weapon was properly enchanted.
Whatever. The little details of this world could wait. Right now, I had an enchanted weapon, and I was itching to use it.
I made a save point then doubled back to the circular chamber. I met no resistance along the way, but my patience was going to start running thin soon.
As far as intro dungeons went, the crypt was pretty useful for teaching me about my powers, but I was ready for fresh air and sunlight.
The rest of the crypt was entirely barren. I passed a few more tombs, but there was nothing worth looting. And nothing to fight.
I wouldn’t have minded wandering this dank, musty crypt for an hour if I could at least have some fun along the way. But there was nothing, just seemingly endless hallways and crisscrossing antechambers. In the upper right-hand corner of my vision, I saw that the map was nearly complete.
I grunted, realizing there was a large hallway just up ahead that I hadn’t visited yet. The exit must have been through it. I hoped so, anyway, because this crypt was getting tiresome.
Yet, I resisted the urge to fall into a false sense of security. The closer I got, the more I could hear them.
They were groaning, hissing. Skeletons, at least a few of them. I listened more closely. When I did, I could hear the subtly different groan of another lich.
No wonder I hadn’t met any resistance after defeating that first lich. There was a second undead wizard, and this one must have sensed that I took out its counterpart. I leaned against the wall, listening some more.
Then I heard it: A gust of wind. With it, came the smell of grass and flowers, leaves and tree sap.
No doubt about it: The lich had marshaled its remaining forces by the exit, waiting to ambush me.
Fuckers were indeed intelligent. But guess what? I was tired of playing around. And I had the steel firesword.
I grit my teeth, made a save point, then rounded the corner, letting out a loud battle cry as I held my sword up high and prepared to attack.
********
There were five skeletons in all. Of the undead footsoldiers, three were armed with iron broadswords, while the other two had iron spears.
The three with the swords formed a rough semi-circular perimeter, with the spear-wielding skeletons standing dutifully by the lich. The lich, clearly the ranking undead here, had its back to the exit. Its ruby red eyes flared bright with hatred when it saw me.
I was in no mood to fuck around. With its footsoldiers coming at me, the lich didn’t launch any fireballs my way. There was no point in that, because it would have fried its minions along with me.
I hacked, slashed, parried and pivoted. The firesword’s enchantment worked upon attack, so when I hacked my blade toward a skeleton, the magical steel sparked with bright, deadly fire.
Though that skeleton parried my attack, the fireball nevertheless reduced its broadsword to dust. I grinned happily then finished the skeleton off with a fiery stab through the chest.
I made short work of the other two sword-wielding skeletons, but when I was done with them, the lich hurled a fireball my way.
Now that I was accustomed to the physics of the magical attack, I absorbed the fire easily with the Soulguard. The skeletons with the spears came at me. I slammed my armored fist into the first one, just to see if the gauntlet’s magic absorption had any effect on physical attacks.
I grunted in satisfaction when my armored fist impacted the skull and caused a bright red fireball to engulf the skeleton’s head.
Another good nugget of info.
I finished off the final skeleton then turned toward the lich. Unlike its minions, which I supposed were too dumb to feel complicated emotions, the lich had no such luck.
It was more intelligent than its undead footsoldiers, yeah, but that intelligence meant that it could also feel fear.
The lich turned to flee, grabbing at the exit’s door handle, but I merely strode casually toward it, firesword raised high.
I was the Champion of the Mananymphs, damn it. There was no way I’d let some undead wizard go marauding through the world outside this crypt.
With a quick blade through the chest, the final lich went down. Then, across my eyes:
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
ENCHANTMENT SKILL INCREASED +1
LEVEL 2 REACHED!
Alright, now this was what I wanted to see. Of course, I wanted to get much higher than Level 2. Hopefully I could double or triple that number before the day was over.
Also, I realized something interesting. Though my mana gauge was still empty on my stat screen, my enchantment skill had gone up. I guessed that merely handling an enchanted weapon helped increase that skill.
I took a moment to examine the enchanted blade.
STEEL FIRESWORD
WEIGHT: 10 LBS
DURABILITY: 770/800
CHARGE: 82/100
Awesome. I’d hacked through a half-dozen undead while hardly damaging the blade’s durability or magical charge. Now, I just hoped that the weapon would last long enough for me to find a town or an outpost, where I could get my bearings and, hopefully, some information about this world.
I pushed the exit door open. It squeaked loud on the hinges and brilliant rays of golden sunlight flooded inside, happily blinding me.
I stepped outside and took in the warm gusts of spring air blowing over the hills of the sprawling mountainous, forested landscape before me. “Holy shit, this place is beautiful,” I said.
“Yes, and hopefully you can keep it that way,” said a female voice behind me.
I turned around, ready for another fight, as the short, slender assassin-looking girl stepped out of the crypt behind me.
She wore a form-fitting black leather suit with two daggers resting on each hip. She had a matching black mask over her head and face, with a pair of thick, dark-lensed goggles over her eyes.
I probably should have been worried, because obviously this deadly woman had been following me…but her body looked so damn good in that leather suit that I couldn’t help but grin.
“And who might you be?” I asked as I lowered my gauntlet and sword.
The little assassin sighed. She was, at most, four-feet tall. Short and shapely as she might have been, the small woman radiated a subtle deadliness, like a predatory animal at rest.
She stepped out into the sunlight and peeled off her mask, which only revealed her face, and I recognized her instantly.
“You again,” I said, grinning as I recognized the girl who’d given me the Soulguard back at my shop.
“Gamelord,” she said, nodding respectfully, though she kept those black, weary eyes cautiously trained on me. “You did well in there. When Ciara told me she found another Champion in the human realm, I’d been worried. Humans are often ill-suited to the enemies in our reality.”
I shrugged. “Well I’m the Champion, right? What are a few liches and skeletons compared to me?”
The short assassin girl shot me a cocky smile. “A few apprentice liches and minor skeletons,” she corrected me.
Chapter Four
The landscape was pretty enough, but it was still hard terrain to cross, and the assassin girl said it would take us a full day to get to Homehold.
The assassin girl walked fast. Back before I had the Soulguard, I would have had a hard time keeping up with her.
“So, Ciara,” I said. “She’s the one who brought me here?”
The girl nodded. “She’s the most powerful of the Mananymphs.”
“So whoever’s imprisoned her at Homehold must be even more powerful,” I said.
She shook her head. “Ciara is not in Homehold,” she corrected me. “Currently, she is being held prisoner elsewhere.”
“Let’s go find her, then,” I said.
“She is in no true physical danger as of yet,” the assassin girl said as we strode side by side through a dense forest. “For now, we have to focus our efforts on saving Homehold. Tell me, what did Ciara tell you of your mission?”
The pretty, short assassin girl had a certain swagger to her walk. I’ll just say that the leather outfit only served to accentuate her features. Still, it felt wrong to stare, and I made sure that I didn’t linger on her, um, attributes.
“Not much,” I admitted. “Whoever’s holding her prisoner interrupted us before she could finish.”
The assassin girl grunted, then spit into the grass. “Monsters, all of them,” she said, just barely able to keep her anger in check.
“Well, there are some things I don’t understand,” I said as we made our way through the dense woods. The sunlight was filtering down through the canopy overhead, casting the ground in alternating shades of golden sunlight and cool shadow.
“I can explain to you what I can,” the assassin girl said.
“For starters, and this is just me speaking in practical terms, why would she summon me to that crypt? If she wants me in Homehold, why not just transport me there?”
The assassin girl paused, took a deep breath, then turned to me on a dime. “Earthman, I know that you are not yet accustomed to our ways here,” she said. “But please, you must understand that the crypt where you arrived is hallowed ground.”
I put my hands up apologetically. “Shit, I didn’t mean any offense. What was that place, then?”
Her hard, dark, eyes suddenly softened, as if she were reliving a painful memory. “A millennia ago, before the rise of the Empire, the powerful necromancer King Darkheart rose up from the frozen wastes of the south and made war on Homehold. He drove the people out, into these mountains. The battle was so hopeless that the Mananymphs summoned a Champion.” She sighed. “That one had also been an Earthman. He was brave, he was tough, but he was no true Champion.”
“So…I’m not the first ‘Earthman’ to come here,” I said, frowning. Somehow, the idea that I was the first brought a smile to my face.
“No, you are not,” she said. “However, Ciara hopes that, unlike that Earthman you will not turn out to be a Failed Champion. That one, he lured the Dark King’s forces onto that hill and waged guerilla warfare. Finally, he lured the Dark King himself into that crypt, where the Failed Champion and his men made a last stand.” She lowered her head, nodding reverently back in the direction from where we came. “The Failed Champion slew King Darkheart, but died of his wounds soon thereafter.” She gestured to the Soulguard. “That gauntlet lay in that chamber, where the Failed Champion fell, until today. Until Ciara told me to bring it to you.”
She took a long, distrustful look at me, before promptly turning around and starting back through the trees again. I hurried to catch up to her.
That story, while informative, had suddenly given me a bad feeling. “So wait a minute,” I said. “Does that mean that I might not be the Champion of the Mananymphs?”
“You might be a Champion, to certain Mananymphs,” the assassin girl said. “The Failed Champion had indeed been a Champion, yet not of all Mananymphs. The Champion of all Mananymphs is on a higher level than any other.”
“Oh, alright,” I said. “So I’m the Champion of all Mananymphs?”
The assassin girl shrugged. “That’s not my place to say,” she answered. “Ciara believes that you are. That’s what’s important.”
“Okay then,” I said, not quite satisfied with the answer. “Well, what about you? You haven’t even told me your name.”
“And I will not,” she said, giving me a sideways glance. “Not until I’ve been convinced of your loyalty to Ciara.”
I reached out with my right hand and caught her by the wrist to stop her. The moment I did that, she took her free hand, snatched one of those nasty looking daggers from her hip, and slashed it lightning-quick toward my throat.
I grinned as I caught the blade in my gauntlet. “Easy now,” I said. “I’m just trying to show you that I’m an alright guy.”
“You very well may be,” the assassin girl answered. “Ah, but you aren’t very detail-oriented,” she said, much to my confusion.
She shot me a cocky grin. That was when I felt that cold metal nipping into my wrist. I glanced down, where I held her by the wrist. She’d managed to snatch her other dagger from her hip, hold it at an angle, and press it just above my radial artery.
I laughed. “I have a feeling that you’re going to be a tough nut to crack,” I said as I released my hold on her dagger.
She pulled the other dagger away from my wrist. A single bead of blood welled up from the small nick in my flesh then trickled down my forearm.
She stuck the daggers back into her belt then started through the trees again. I kept pace alongside her. She gestured to the bit of blood on my arm. “If you’re going to save Homehold and help us banish King Darkheart once and for all, you’ll need to be more attentive than that.”
Then, it just kind of slipped out: “It’s hard to pay attention to anything else when I’m staring into your eyes,” I said.
The assassin girl glared at me…though I noted just the faintest hints of red in her cheeks, as if she were blushing.
“Don’t get familiar with me, Earthman,” she said. “Or you’ll find that necromancers and their undead minions aren’t the most lethal beings in these mountains.”
I smiled, but just then, processed what she had said a moment ago. “Hold on,” I said. “You told me the Failed Champion killed the Necromancer.”
“Aye, he did,” she answered. “But a wicked creature like Darkheart can’t be put down for good, not by a Failed Champion.” She gave me another quick look. “So hopefully Ciara is correct, and you can slay the Necromancer before he unleashes his forces on Homehold again.”
I considered this for several minutes. Yet, I couldn’t deny that there was something else on my mind, something a bit more pressing.
“So are you, like, taken?” I asked. “By a man?”
She glared at me, giving me one hell of a wicked side-eye. She rested her hands on those daggers on her hips. “Any man who would seek to take me would very promptly lose his man bits, Earthman.”
I had to laugh at that. This one was a firecracker, alright. “Okay, geez, it was just a question. Don’t go trying to cut off anything important.”
The assassin girl grunted and turned her head, but I was pretty sure that I caught a trace of a smile on her face. “Quiet now, Earthman,” she said. “We’ve got miles and miles to go and, already, you talk too much. Lucky for us, you sound so stupid that any goblins, upon hearing your insipid Earthen tongue, would be too disgusted to ever want to take a bite.”
I laughed again. I didn’t know why, but the more I talked to the assassin girl, the more I enjoyed her company.
I was a glutton for punishment, I guess.
********
God damn, we put some miles behind us. And the rough terrain made the long trek even harder. Even so, we were still several hours from Homehold as dusk fell. Lucky for me, the assassin girl had already set up a camp in a nearby cave.
Overhead, the sky turned a dark shade of velvet. I’d been a city boy most of my life, so I’d never seen a proper night sky. It wasn’t completely dark yet, but already the sky was alive with twinkling stars and strange constellations.
I followed the assassin girl around a winding path halfway up a nearby hill. There was a long rock wall, mostly concealed by overgrown bushes near the path. By the time we arrived at her cave, my legs were burning.
But then, I got a notification:
ATHLETICS SKILL INCREASED +5
LEVEL 3 REACHED!
“Well I’ll be damned,” I said to myself. “All I need is five skill increases to go up a level.”
The assassin girl looked back at me, confused, and stopped at the foot of the cavern. “What did you say, Earthman?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just some ability the Soulguard has given me. Second Sight, Ciara called it.”
The assassin girl nodded. “The Soulguard is a valuable tool,” she said. “In time, you’ll learn how to use it well…I hope.”
She ducked into the hole and I followed her inside.
She had some sort of striking match that she sparked against the cave’s wall, giving us meager light to find our way. The cave wasn’t deep, but it had a sharp corner up ahead, with a longer chamber lying ahead of that.
Then I realized the functionality of it. Around the corner, the assassin girl had set up a small camp, complete with a fire pit. Having placed the fire pit around this dark corner, she’d be able to light a fire without attracting attention.
Despite the strength and endurance boosts from the Soulguard, I’d need to get proper equipment soon. My sneakers weren’t made for this kind of hiking, and my jeans were too cumbersome for all this climbing.
“I’ll need supplies once we reach Homehold,” I said. “What should I do for money?”
The assassin girl waved me off as she lit a flame in the fire pit. It went up almost instantly, casting us both in its warm orange glow. “Trust me, you’ll want for nothing,” the assassin girl said. “Duke Gladios waits on you as we speak.”
“I take it that this duke character runs the town?”
The girl nodded. “He descends from a line of kings, back before the Empire,” she said. “Ever since the Emperor took power, those kings have been demoted to dukes. Still, he’s a wealthy man. More importantly, he’s a just man. You’ll be able to count on him.”
The assassin girl crouched by the fire, warming her hands. Just like before, my eyes were drawn to the shape of her, her toned legs, her soft curves…
I shook myself out of my trance, grinning to myself at how she’d maneuvered her dagger up against my wrist, hours ago.
“So, c’mon, tell me about yourself,” I told her.
