The Omen, page 20
part #5 of Eden's Gate Series
Chapter Twenty-One
2/4/0001
Knock, knock, knock.
Are you fucking serious? I thought. It had been less than a minute since Dr. Winston left, and already, someone else was knocking on my door. Were people going to be knocking on my door all night? I glanced around to see if the doctor mistakenly left something in my room, and once again considered that it could be Jenzyn coming back to ask for something else.
I marched to the door, swung it open, and standing outside was Keysia, holding a tray with a large loaf of bread, jam, and a small basket of fruit on top.
“Hey, I brought you some food.”
I glanced down at the food again and could tell the bread was warm just from the fresh aroma rising from it. It was simple, but it looked delicious.
“I promise it doesn’t have any horse meat in it.”
I smiled and motioned my hand inside. “Come in.”
There was no table for Keysia to set the tray on, so she set it on the middle of the bed before tilting her head to the side. “Who was that man I saw leaving your room?”
“A friend,” I said.
“Is he a Reborn?”
I don’t know why the question startled me, but there was something inside telling me not to reveal anything about Dr. Winston, but there was an equally powerful trust that I had in Keysia that overrode the feeling. “Yeah, he’s a Reborn too.”
“Kind of weird that I’ve never seen him before, but he’s here in Barbarosia visiting you.” She took a deep breath, shrugged, and suddenly seemed to lose interest in the subject. “I hope you enjoy your food,” she said before stepping for the door.
I rattled my head. “Wait. You’re not going to join me?”
She smiled shyly, but then took a small step further into the room. “I can…”
“You can?”
“I can if you want me to.”
Oh, god, I thought. Do NPC girls in Eden’s Gate need constant validation like the ones on Earth do? Please tell me this isn’t part of Dr. Winston’s ‘pleasure and pain’ theory.
I wanted to say, Why would I ask you if you’re going to join me if I didn’t want you to join me? but I thought better and went with. “Yeah, of course, I do.”
Keysia nodded, and her smile widened as she moved to sit on the bed beside the tray.
I joined her on the other side, picked a grape out of the basket of fruit, and popped it in my mouth. “Mmmm,” I moaned.
“Good?” she asked.
I nodded.
Her eyes rolled over the tray of food as if she wasn’t sure what she wanted to eat, so I picked up the warm loaf of bread, broke it in half, and handed her a piece. “Come on. Eat up.”
She nodded, grabbed the bread, and started munching on it slowly.
I chewed on my half of the bread as well, and there was a slight awkwardness in the air—maybe a little shyness between the two of us. With all the craziness of the day, I hadn’t really had time to think about our kiss in the Peace Temple. It was the first time we had been alone together since then, and this time, we were in a safe place—not cooling from the heat of battle.
“I’m glad Sora’s okay,” Keysia stated.
“Me too.”
“I can tell how much you love her.”
I bobbed my head. “Yeah… I do.”
She smiled. “She’s a lucky girl.”
I felt a bit of tingle rush over my skin, and I scanned over Keysia’s frame, once again struck by her splendor. Any guy would be lucky to have a woman as beautiful, strong, and playful as she was, so it was a bit of a rush to have her compliment me that way.
There was a brief pause as I thought of how to respond. “I had fun today in the temple.” I shook my head and looked down slightly. “I mean, not the weird gas and toxic monsters, but I had fun adventuring with you.”
“I had fun too.”
I grinned and took another bite of my bread.
Keysia’s head suddenly dipped, and her shoulders slumped. “Look, I know that I’m a dark elf Gunnar, and—“
“Stop,” I interrupted, holding up my hand. “I don’t care if you’re a dark elf. You know, I care about you.”
She looked up, and her eyes were sparkling. “You do? Even though—“
“Yeah,” I interrupted again. I pushed the tray out of the way and scooted myself closer to her. I had wanted to take charge and make a move on Keysia when we were in the temple, but I never got the chance. But there in the room, there was nothing stopping me. Our whole group was tired after all the hard day’s work, and we had nowhere to go the rest of the night.
I still wasn’t sure if I was making the right decisions, but it felt like a crime to keep brushing aside my feelings. If Keysia liked me and I liked her, why not do something about it? Jax had made his choice with Rina, and I was pretty sure Aaron was getting sex whenever he took trips to trade in town. He was glowing a little too much when he returned to Edgewood. And there were probably lots of Reborns seducing NPC after NPC as they spent their time in Eden’s Gate. Why was I being so cautious about someone I genuinely adored?
It had been more than a month, and any hope that I was going to find Rachel was starting to wane. I still wanted to get my name in the Arena, just in case she was out there, but there was a good probability that she simply wasn’t in the game. And while I liked Adeelee just as much as I like Keysia, she was Princess of the Vale; she seemed virtually unattainable.
“Come here,” I said, and before she could move herself, I grabbed her hand and pulled her into a kiss.
The kiss began softly, much like the kiss that had happened in the Peace Temple, but after just a few seconds, our heads were turning and I darted my tongue inside of her mouth.
She immediately jerked back and placed her hand up to her lips. “What was that?”
“What?” I asked.
“You stuck your tongue in my mouth.”
I darted my eyes to the side. “Yeah, and?” I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders “You don’t like it?”
“Is that how Reborns kiss?”
I grinned mischievously. Again, I had forgotten she was an NPC. “Yeah, we do that sometimes.”
“Oh… interesting.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you… want to try again?”
She nodded, and I wasted no time leaning in.
Again, we kissed, and again I darted my tongue into her mouth. After a few moments, she seemed to catch on, and copied my motions. Within a minute or so, she kissed me just as well as any female I had kissed back on Earth—which, unfortunately, wasn’t that many.
I pulled away from her after a while and looked her up and down. Her lips were covered in moisture and suddenly looked a little swollen. Her eyes were wide open, and her chest was heaving with each breath.
Basically, she looked hot as fuck.
I leaned back further and grinned, feeling my confidence swell. I had entered Eden’s Gate as this guy—this guy who was lucky enough to have a girlfriend, but who had never been good with women. I was the uptight guy who found it hard to connect with people and had no real friends or family. Sometimes I had felt like I had nothing to live for at all. I was a good person, but I was closed off, cautious, and to some degree I hated the world, for the sour hand I had been dealt.
In 22 levels of Eden’s Gate, I had come so far. I was the leader of an incredible guild filled with awesome friends, and I was being handed so many opportunities to do something for myself.
Keysia was one of those opportunities.
Or an experience.
Or both.
Or maybe something more. I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that I wasn’t going to be the same guy I had always been. Sometimes I needed to loosen up and let myself be wrong, because if I didn’t take a chance at being wrong or fucking things up, I’d never do anything right.
And I’d never enjoy my life to the fullest either.
“Do you think they have any wine downstairs in the tavern?” I asked.
“Wine?” Keysia asked. “Didn’t you loot a bottle?”
I bobbed my head and showed my teeth. “Yeah, but I don’t want any reminders of that dirty dungeon right now. Or we could get some fresh mugs of beer, or whiskey… or whatever you like to drink.”
“Wine sounds nice, but I haven’t had it since—“
“Wine it is,” I interrupted. “Let’s go grab a bottle... or two.”
Keysia nodded, but her eyes were still wide, and she seemed taken aback by my sudden charge.
I turned back to her as I headed for the door. “And I think you should stay with me tonight.”
Her eyelids shot up. “You want me to stay with you tonight?” As the words left her mouth, her eyes lowered, and I could see a hint of pink entering her colorless cheeks.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I want you with me tonight.”
She swallowed hard and looked shyly to the ground. “I would… really like that. But… I didn’t bring anything appropriate to sleep in.”
I grinned devilishly, grabbed her hand, and pulled her out the door with me. “Don’t worry. You won’t need anything.”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes shot open as I picked up my pace, dragging her down the hall. “Gunnar!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
2/5/0001
My body felt hot… too hot.
The sound of something crackling entered my ears. A scream... A cry… I felt too tired and disoriented to care.
Boom! Thunk!
The sudden crashing sound was too loud to ignore, and my eyes shot open as I sprung upright. I was sitting in the bed of the inn, and I could see flames engulfing part of the wall near the door, and a beam had fallen from the ceiling.
Beside me, Keysia lay sound asleep with a blanket pulled over her legs and stomach, her breasts fully exposed.
“Keysia!” I yelled. I grabbed her shoulder roughly and shook her. “Wake up!”
“Whaaaat?” she groaned and placed the back of her hand against her head. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a fire! We’ve got to get out of here!” I shook her harder.
“What? Fire?” Her eyes slowly eased open, and when she finally caught sight of the flames, her lids sprung open, and she rose up quickly in bed. She, covered her breasts with her hands, looked frantically from side to side, and jumped up as soon as she saw her top laying on the floor nearby.
“Forget your clothes!” I yelled as I jumped out of the bed only in my boxers.
Boom!
The noise outside was so intense that it shook the room. I could tell from the light it was morning and when I ran to the window, I was shocked at what I saw. Men were scrambling in every direction, swinging swords at each other. Some of them were shooting magic from their hands. Not all of them were human. There were a few elves shooting bows, dwarves swinging axes, and I even saw a Barbaros on an elephant throw a spear that landed in the back of an orc. None of it made any sense.
There was a loud shrieking noise, and when I looked towards the sky, a massive dragon was flying overhead. “Oh shit…” I whispered. My heart was pounding, and I almost forgot that the room behind me was burning.
The people on the ground began to scatter, but before they could get away, the dragon opened its mouth and spewed a sea of fire, scorching at least half of them all at once. The screams of them all were terrifying.
There was a crash behind me, and when I turned, the door to the room been broken down, and Sung was standing there beside Jeremy.
“We’ve gotta go, Gunnar, fast!” Jeremy yelled.
“What the hell is going on?!” I asked.
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to go now!” He waved his hand and looked to the side, cautious of the nearby flames that were only growing bigger every second.
Keysia had managed to put her clothes on, despite my advice, and we both ran out of the room, following Jeremy and Sung.
When we reached the tavern portion of the Inn, Sung and Jeremy started running for the door, but I yelled out to stop them. “We can’t go out there! There’s a dragon!”
“We’ve got to go!” Sung yelled. “The room is going to collapse!”
I turned around, looking for another way out. My sense of direction told me that the door they were heading for was in the same path as the crazy battle, so if there was a back door or a window we could crawl out of, maybe we could go that way.
“Now, Gunnar!” I heard Keysia yelled. “We’ve got to go.”
When I turned back around, the door to the inn was wide open, and there was a bright light shining from outside. Jeremy, Sung, and Keysia were all gone. It seemed like they had run out without me.
“Wait!” I yelled.
There was a loud crackle right above my head, and I could see that the flames had almost completely engulfed the ceiling. Ash and small pieces of wood were falling down like rain, and a large beam holding the second floor was shifting. Any second, it was going to fall.
I took a deep breath and sprinted toward the exit, and as soon as I reached the door, I could hear the wood from above crashing down behind me. I instinctively threw my arm over my eyes both from the brightness of the sunlight outside and from the shocking sound of destruction behind me.
“Let’s give a big round of applause for our challenger, Gunnar Long!” a pompous voice said loudly.
I pulled my arm from over my eyes, and blinked a few times as confusion overwhelmed me. I was standing in the Arena… or some Arena. It looked much like the Arena in Highcastle, but I could tell by the missing mountains behind the stands that I was somewhere else. I turned around, trying to figure out how I had gotten there—trying to find the door to the inn—but instead, I only saw a wall.
“Never turn your back on your enemy,” a snaky voice said. It sounded like the Meijir, and fear of taking another set of magical stars to my back caused me to duck and turn back around.
Around me, there was nothing. Only matted dirt and a packed arena filled with people standing on their feet.
“Kill the Reborn!” someone yelled.
“Kill him!” another person yelled.
All the way across the arena, I could see someone else. It was merely a haze of someone, but it appeared to be walking towards me and becoming clearer and clearer with each step.
I reached for my sheath to grab my sword, but when I grabbed air—still wearing my boxers—I took a step back.
“Use your magic, Gunnar!” someone yelled. “You do not need weapons!”
I looked for the voice, and could see a robed man in the stands. His voice was familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where, and he was too blurry for me to make out.
“Gunnar!” the person marching towards me said.
I squinted at the approaching figure, and a within another two steps, the blurry figure became crystal clear. “Rachel!”
Rachel grinned, stopped, and bent her legs as if she were ready to fight. In each hand was a dagger, and she was decked out in a set of leather armor that was etched all over—much like the Heritage armor I had previously acquired. It was something meant for someone much higher level than me.
“Rachel…” I said again.
“Rachel is dead!” she screamed and started running towards me at a breakneck speed.
“Use your magic!” I heard the voice from the stands scream again.
“Kill the Reborn!” someone else yelled.
Confusion was overwhelming me. I stood straight, and held my hand out to Rachel as if I were about to cast a Fireblast, but I couldn’t bring myself to shoot her.
As I hesitated, I felt a sharp pain enter my spine, and I suddenly lost all feeling below my waist. It was hard and cold. I knew immediately that I was going to die.
“You must be conscious of the people around you,” I heard the snaky voice say again.
My vision began to turn white, and without a doubt, I thought that I had been backstabbed by the Krazir. When the blade was pulled from my back, I turned around as I started to fall.
Skin… not fur... the build of a normal man. My vision was too distorted to make out my killer, but whoever killed me had been human.
Chapter Twenty-Three
2/5/0001
I shot up straight in my bed, and immediately reached for my back. I felt no pain, but my body was burning hot, my head was pounding, and I was covered in sweat.
“What’s wrong?” Keysia asked as her eyes began to slowly part. She shifted in the bed beside me. The blanket was pulled over her legs and stomach, but her breasts were fully exposed.
I breathed heavily as I shook my head. “Nothing… ugh… just a bad dream.”
Another fucking dream? It was the second night of strange dreams in a row, and unlike the only other memorable dream I had since I had been in Eden’s Gate—at the Thorpes Inn—both latest dreams had been violent, strange, and had a wide cast of characters. They didn’t feel like dreams either; they felt like I had really been there.
I glanced down at Keysia, topless on the bed. She looked exactly like I had remembered her in the dream.
Maybe that meant nothing, since I was lying right beside her and I had surely seen her the same way the night before, but it still seemed odd. No matter the case, I had to chalk it up to alcohol. After all, my first dream had come right after a night of drinking.
Keysia groaned, rolled out of the bed, and immediately started looking for her clothes, which were scattered all across the room. I smiled as she stood and started getting dressed, showing off her slender, feminine frame.
Though I couldn’t remember the fine details of the night before, I remembered the overall gist of what happened. We had an amazing time, and she pretty much blew my mind.
And yeah… now I knew that things in Eden’s Gate worked pretty much like they did on Earth. The plumbing was the same, the feelings were the same—if not more intense—and the emotions were real. I also found out that ‘elven pie’ was even tastier than ugh… elven pie. If it weren’t for my throbbing hangover and the strange dream, I would’ve pulled her back into bed for breakfast.
