Welcome to Eden: A LitRPG/Fantasy Gamelit, page 19
William could see that, impressively, only the ground that had been turned and planted on had been soaked by the storm, leaving everything else still bone dry and solid. To his amazement, green shoots instantly shot forth from the ground to a height of easily over a foot all across the watered ground.
“My Lord William, I’d like you to meet Lensa,” Adena said sweetly while raising an arm towards the woman who still remained kneeling on the ground.
“Forgive me, my Lord,” Lensa coughed as William reached out a hand for her to help herself up with. She took it and daintily raised herself to her feet. “These spells can really knock you for six!” she explained quietly and still in quite some visible discomfort.
“That was a spell?” William blurted out before thinking, “you’re the mage aren’t you!” He exclaimed as the pieces of the puzzle in his mind slotted into place.
“Indeed I am,” Lensa curtsied at his introduction. “Do you approve of the rain?”
“You bet I do,” William replied, “Look at those crops! I’ve honestly never seen anything quite as impressive as that!”
“The crops, I am afraid I cannot take any credit for. All I did really, was make it rain,” Lensa nodded her head at Adena, who in turn nodded back to the mage. “Can I assume that you have never witnessed magic before?”
“You can,” William replied honestly with a smile on his face that he couldn’t seem to get rid of.
“Then you must come and talk to me soon,” Lensa replied, “but for now I must rest. These spells…” She trailed off as she walked past William and Adena towards the Heroes Hall.
“Your crops…I can’t believe it!” William couldn’t help but reiterate his awe and wonder to Adena, “look at them!”
Adena simply smiled back at him with a knowing expression and nodded her head slowly. “Just you wait until the first harvest,” she replied.
Character Sheet
Character:
Level 8
Combat
Level 5(+1)
Stamina:
Level 2
Constitution:
56
Wisdom:
1
Health:
1450
Mana:
100
Strength:
105
Mag. Str:
50
Phys. Def:
65 > 75
Mag. Def:
10
Charisma:
10
Luck:
10
Leadership:
1
Land Ownership:
1
Persuasion:
Level 1
Unarmed Combat
1
Magical Affinities:
Fire:
1%
Water:
0%
Earth:
0%
Air:
0%
Life:
0%
Death:
0%
Weapons
Movement
Spear
Level 4
Sprint
Level 2
Bow
Level 1
Dodge
Level 2
Non-Combat Movement
Crafting
Climbing
Level 1
Woodwork
Level 1
Swimming
Level 1
Fire
Level 1
Exploration
Hunter-Gathering
Mapping
Level 4(+1)
Foraging
Level 1
Abilities
Hunger Strike
Examine
Level 3(+1)
Javelin
Level 1
Ignore Pain
Equipment
Leather Tunic
Leather Boots
Leather Belt
Steel Shin Guards
Steel Pauldrons
Iron Helm
Rusted Wydale Spear
Chapter 15
William had slept better that night, as he felt like his camp had begun to achieve something. He knew the walls, although incomplete were a big deterrent to any attackers that may have been planning their assault on the camp, and the Heroes Hall had been completed to a standard that his woodworkers had been content with. Food, water and shelter were to be his three main concerns – and they now had enough of each of these resources to exist comfortably for some time, providing of course that Adena’s crops were as good as he knew they would be. Everything seemed to be progressing just so well that William couldn’t help but feel like it might have all just been too good to be true.
“I wanted to take a few warriors out today,” Onas said nonchalantly to William over a mouthful of particularly succulent apple. “To see about saving those taken from the city. I think everything else is in order now,” he concluded.
“I was just thinking the same thing actually, I wanted to ask how many people you think should be going?” William agreed.
“Well it’s going to be more of a raid and less of an attack. There probably isn’t going to be a full nest at the moment, so they’ll likely be in a cave to the east, or south. I say a party of six should be enough, plus we already know what we’re doing,” Onas was definitely enjoying his apple as he spoke, his eyes not leaving it as he bit into it, sucking the dripping juice loudly each time a bite caused it to overflow. Definitely not the same response that others seemed to have as they grimaced through bites of the succulent fruit.
William thought for a moment before he replied, he did want to get to know his warriors a little better and this seemed like a great opportunity to do so. “So, if we take Virion, Nym, Rydel and Ronon, that should be enough?” he asked. He already knew what these elves were capable of and that just made everything a little easier. Plus they were the best warriors he had.
“We? We?” Onas repeated sarcastically. “Do you really think it wise for the landowner and the leader of these people to go on a hunt together?”
“Honestly, I would normally agree with you, but I don’t think there is anywhere safer for me to be than right by your side. Besides, like you said, this is a raid, not an invasion – and also, you can’t keep me locked up within these walls forever you know, the devil makes use of idle hands and all that.” William retorted with a grin.
“The devil makes use of idle hands,” Onas repeated under his breath. “I like that. It seems that there may be a few things you may yet teach me, Lord William. Why not, let’s do it your way and see what we can do together.” He stood up and raised his long mace from the ground with a metal-on-wood scraping sound and up to his shoulder. The action looked like it took no effort at all, though William knew just how heavy that thing was and grimaced at the thought of the long, sharp spikes at the balled end coming into contact with any part of his anatomy.
Onas had then left the Heroes Hall, and William heard him shout the four names that he had suggested loudly into the camp. He really needed to learn how to do that effectively rather than having to hunt for people whenever he needed to talk to them. He idly wondered if it was an ability that Onas had, or if he simply had a terribly commanding voice.
The group each dressed in the armour of their previous spider excursion and held the weapons that they had also previously wielded to great effect – after all they really had no choice – there were no other weapons within the camp yet save for a few swords here and there, but even they were decaying at a rate of knots. They didn’t look a glamorous bunch, or even the deadliest, but they all knew that they had taken down an entire nest previously, so this shouldn’t be a great ask of them with their enemy being weakened and reduced in number.
“Can I ask you about the others?” William questioned Onas as he quickened his pace to walk alongside the large elf.
“You can ask all you like, but I won’t be telling you anything I shouldn’t,” Onas replied matter-of-factly. “What would you like to know?”
“…its…Sara,” William managed to force the words past the lump that formed in his throat. “Why was she in prison?”
Onas looked down at William whilst he walked, and he could see the pain hidden behind his eyes. “Sara was a victim of circumstance,” Onas replied solemnly whilst slowly shaking his head. “She should never have been there.”
“But why was she there?” William insisted, meeting Onas’ gaze.
“Sara had the misfortune of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. She was married off to another family by her father when she was of age, but her heart already belonged to another. She was unable to control her true desires and that is the reason that she ended up in my care,” he replied. “The… devil makes work for idle hands?” He tried.
William thought back to the conversation that he and Ronon had had about how he himself had ended up in the prison tunnels.
“Ronon?” William said quietly and slowly as he turned to look at Ronon who walked behind him. The elf already had tears rolling down his cheeks as he nodded slightly at William to let him know that his assumption had indeed been correct.
“She should never have been there,” he growled under his breath, trying his hardest to replace his pain with anger. “At least that scum has paid for it.” He chewed on the words as they left his mouth.
William tried to put two and two together again, but he couldn’t manage to figure this one out for himself. “So you got revenge on him?” he finally asked.
“No!” Ronon spat, “but Onas did.” He raised his chin at Onas’ back. “Stabbed him right through his venomous mouth. There’s no way he’ll be sending anyone to the cells again,” an evil wry smile flashed across his face as he recounted the man’s death.
“…Serrin?” William asked as his eyes widened.
“Don’t you speak that name in my presence,” Ronon snapped quickly in response.
“Oh I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say,” Onas called over his shoulder towards the two men in a kind of sing-song tone.
“What? Why?” Ronon questioned as he became increasingly on edge.
“William here was the one who distracted your friend Serrin so that I had the opportunity to feed him my sword,” Onas said, still without turning to look back at them.
Ronon grabbed a hold of William’s wrist before he could pull it away. His grip was tight and urgent, and his eyes were open wide.
“William. You have no idea what this means to me. You have my thanks now and forever. I know that Sara would also thank you for what you have done for her and for me. Please, if you ever need a favour, please ask it of me so that I may compensate your actions,” Ronon had become enthusiastic and from his eyes, William could tell that the elf now saw him in a very different light.
“I’ll hold you to that,” William smiled at Ronon as he withdrew his hand. “I’m sure I can think of a few nasty tasks I can come up with around the camp.”
Ronon winced slightly but straightened his back, “whatever you think is right…” he spoke slowly and sincerely.
“You are one gullible son of a bitch,” Nym laughed as he struck Ronon on the shoulder. “He’s pulling your ears!” he exclaimed as William smiled broadly at both of them.
Nym swung his spear across the back of his neck and hung his arms over it in a ridiculously relaxed manner considering their intended destination. “So I suppose you’ll be doing your research on me next?” he exhaled loudly as he spoke in obviously false exasperation.
“He was too arrogant!” shouted Ronon in a very condescending tone. “Nym was one of the guard, a marksman archer on the wall. One day when he thought he would show off just how far he could fire an arrow to a group of young women, he hit one of the patrols. When the group came running up to the wall, one of them had an arrow stuck right in his foot. It caused a brilliant scene!”
“I bet he was hopping mad!” William stifled a guffaw as he replied.
“And you’d be right” Virion missed the joke and spoke levelly. “He kicked up a fuss with the higher ups in the city and it seemed they were all too happy to sentence old Nym here, the fool!”
“They were always jealous of me anyway,” Nym replied. “And look where it’s got them now!”
“Hang on. If you’re a marksman, then why didn’t you pick up a bow when we went after the spiders?” William asked loudly, choosing to ignore the last comment.
“How many spiders do you think you can kill with a bow and some arrows? Ten? Fifteen? Then what? Sit back and let the little bastards eat me alive? I don’t think so. I want to feel the life leak out of the little bastards…” Nym trailed off as he balled a fist angrily.
William thought about that for a second, but he knew that Nym was right, it wouldn’t do to fight a numerous enemy with limited ammunition. “So that just leaves Virion and Rydel, right?” he said aloud suggestively. He had remembered that once Onas had referred to Virion as ‘Virion the thief, so he’d had a pretty good idea what had happened there.
“Well I got caught,” Virion said as though leading on from Williams thoughts. “I tried to take some of the nice armour that those guards had, and I guess they didn’t want to share. As for Rydel, everyone knows he’s just a prison snitch – put in there to make sure everyone was playing by the rules.”
“Prison snitch?!” Rydel called out in fury. “How dare you, you filthy rotten thief!”
“See, it’s things like that that make it all so clear. Uptight posture, an expert with special weapons…” he gestured to Rydel’s pair of hand axes, “you have guard written all over you!” Virion sneered.
“That’s because I was a guard you son of an ogre,” Rydel replied with some exhaustion. “I got arrested not long after I’d told that idiot Serrin that I wouldn’t be helping him steal resources from the city. Apparently, he’d twisted it to make it all sound like my idea!”
“And a fine job he did too,” Onas chipped in distantly.
“Why didn’t you say something?” William asked.
“I did say something, but Volnuss believed the tale that Serrin wove. Made it sound like a bloody conspiracy. I’m actually surprised he didn’t get Onas thrown in prison too,” he explained.
Onas didn’t interject this time though William was sure that he was still listening.
“Onas? Did you know about all of this?” William asked quietly in the direction of the giant elf.
Onas stopped walking abruptly this time, causing the entire group to bunch up into each other before coming to a halt. He began to speak quietly as though he was about to spill the beans on his biggest secret. “This little group that I put together was by no accident. Every person in it was someone that I either found trustworthy or had a reason to dislike Serrin. I didn’t want to take any chances that his actions were not his alone.”
Thinking back on the stories that he had been told, William thought that indeed these prisoners were not proving themselves to be really bad people, quite the opposite in fact. They had been imprisoned for essentially minor misdeeds or as the result of the actions of other people. Most of them even had a reason to hate Serrin – the man who had proven himself to be a traitor to the city.
“Do you think there are others?” William asked.
“I would be surprised if there wasn’t,” Onas replied as the group started to walk again. No-one else spoke up though, as his words played on each of their minds.
As time went by, William became increasingly aware of a quiet movement in the forest around him. It wasn’t like before, the trees hadn’t been entangled with webs and darkness, rather everything was as it should have been, other than the absence of ambient noise and the inclusion of these ominous fleeting shadows that he could never quite seem to get a firm hold on.
“There!” Nym shouted as he pointed at a large tree trunk ahead of them. William had to squint to try to see what he was talking about and as his eyes drew into focus, he could see the eight black needles that rounded the trunk, keeping a spider’s body hidden and out of their line of sight. The group raised their weapons before them as they moved as a bunch toward the half-hidden ambusher.
The spider’s legs gave away its position only by their presence, they telegraphed no intent or motion as the six elves took each cautious steps slowly and quietly forward until they were in all but touching distance of the terrible appendages. Nym, who had been the one to spot the creature took the pleasure in striking the first blow. He swung his spear in a downward arc and separated two of the sharp legs from both themselves and the tree trunk with its sharpened tip.
To William’s amazement, the spider did not scream in pain. Nor did it fall from the trunk to adopt an aggressive stance. The severed legs simply fell to the ground and lay there without any further reaction.
Onas rounded the tree to regard the waiting enemy in slight confusion. “It’s a trap!” he announced. “Everybody away from the trees!” he continued with urgency to his voice. “Now!”
