Lost Lands: The Game - Atlantis (15 page)

It didn’t make it right but it still gave him hope for the future.

Chapter 16

Cozad spent his days wrestling with the dark
er side of his personality.

Already a loner in the real world, Ed had always enjoyed the quiet solitude of his job as the night manager of a
metal fabrication plant. He only had ten employees to check on and they were all old timers that had been at the job longer than him. He left them alone to do their work and they made him look good to the corporate suits, a perfect pairing. It was his personal life that had always been in shambles. Divorced four times, he was currently not talking with his live-in girlfriend. They more or less tolerated each other and if not for having different schedules, they would’ve split up long ago. It was probably a combination of all these factors that influenced him to create a Dreadknight in the game.

The game
. It was so simple on the other side of the screen.
Lost Lands
was a safe place where he could excise his inner demons without fear of breaking the law and much less expensive than seeing a psychiatrist. He could just pretend to be a minion of Chaos and work out his frustrations in the game. Rape, torture, murder, mayhem, intimidation, fear and pain were all tools of the Dreadknight. It was all harmless fun…until now.

Ed
constantly struggled against the Cozad mindset which wanted to do all those dark things. Not just wanted to do them, he longed to do them. He had awakened the last two nights covered in sweat. While his dreams of torture and rape haunted his waking hours. Unsure that he could control his desires, Cozad had awakened on the second day and headed south into the woods to be alone.

*   *   *   *   *

Arieal had similar problems. The darker side of her nature called to her but nowhere nearly as strong as Cozad’s. Her problem was more of a personal nature. She felt guilty about not being at home with her family but her real anxiety was that she didn’t think she felt guilty enough. She was enjoying the freedom of self granted to her by crossing over. Not having to juggle her kids’ schedules, dinner plans, paying bills, balancing the budget and every other part of modern daily life was extremely liberating. Currently all she had to worry about was…nothing.

Besides
, the late night rendezvous with Tao had been mind-blowing. Annie hadn’t been with a man for nearly twenty years. She enjoyed a more alternative lifestyle and was completely satisfied with it even though society still ostracized those in the gay community. Although deep down she knew that she loved her current girlfriend, the spark had been gone from their relationship for many years. Not once had she ever given in to the temptation to have an affair. It wasn’t right. Not that it was against her beliefs or anything, she just didn’t feel it was right to cheat on her significant other.

But here…here she was someone else and that was a freedom she relished. Her only problem at the current time was w
ondering when Tao was going to get back so she could jump his bones once more.

*   *   *   *   *

Bjǿrn and Moira spent the days together. It didn’t matter what they did, they just spent their time together. They had been married for three decades this past December and both realized that the end of life was close for them. Back in Alaska, they were both in their seventies and Kaslene’s health was fading fast. She was on oxygen twenty-four – seven, took lots of meds daily and hadn’t been outside their home in over five months. While Earl’s health was better, he wasn’t a spring chicken either.

This trip inside the game was a wonderful
diversion from reality that they both needed. The one difference they had over the rest of their companions was that neither of them were afraid to die. They had lived with the inevitable for so long, death was more of a constant companion than an adversary.

They were
spending the morning on the lower platform which the companions had begun to call the ‘kitchen’ since it was where the cooking area was set up and it seemed that everyone tended to congregate on that platform, just like the kitchen back home. Moira was baking. She had cooked every meal since they arrived. Not being tied to an oxygen tank, she was able to delve into a hobby she missed on the other side. Bjǿrn was just sitting back, enjoying the quiet morning and watching his wife cook. If this wasn’t heaven, it was about as close as he could get.

Unfortunately, the morning quiet was broken by
the sound of a shrill horn to the west. Moments later, another sounded to the north.

Bjǿrn
and Moira calmly picked up their weapons and climbed down to the forest floor. They knew the wyvern riders had found them. They had been expecting this. The only question remained was how the encounter would play out. Moving into the clearing just outside the tree camp, they counted twenty wyverns with riders circling the camp. Bjǿrn calmly planted his seven foot claymore into the soil and waited.

Moira
leaned her head on his shoulder and gently caressed his back. “This is the end my love.”

Bjǿrn
had seen the look of hatred on the riders’ eyes and knew that she was right. “True, but I wouldn’t change the last few days for anything. I love you, I always have and I always will.”

Seeing the wyvern riders begin their
attack, Moira leaned up on her tip-toes and kissed her husband for the last time. “You have always been my rock and I thank you for that. This isn’t how I thought I would go out but its better this way. I love you.”

Bjǿrn
returned the kiss. “At least we’ll be together. The thought of living without you has haunted me these past few years.” Taking a two-handed grip on his sword, he pulled it free. “Let’s show these bandits how Americans fight.”

Moira
grinned. “Don’t you know it!”

Stepping back to be outside the range of her husband’s blade, she began casting her spells. The trees, grasses and insects of the forest answered her call.

*   *   *   *   *

When
Adak, the commander of the wyvern riders, saw the two strangers exit Camp Five it answered many questions about his brother’s missing patrol. Even from this height, he could tell that the large blue-kilted warrior bore the mark of the Atlanteans. They had obviously killed his brother’s patrol and taken possession of the camp. Since no dragons were on the way up to confront them, these two were probably just the rear guard charged with the task of holding the camp while the dragon-riders raided nearby.

Adak
signaled his flight of five to peel off and to remain on over-watch while the other three flights attacked. He wasn’t going to get caught on the ground by the Atlanteans. As his men began their attacks, he had to admire the calm demeanor of the Atlantean and his companion. They did nothing more than talk, kiss and separate. They didn’t seem in a hurry or even concerned about the diving wyverns. This actually worried him more than he cared to admit.

Just before his raiders reached them, the
tattooed warrior shape-shifted into a huge were-bear. Instead of running away from the diving serpents, it attacked. It was rather frightening. The were-bear’s sword glowed with an unnatural light as it cleaved through wyvern and raider flesh alike. His men shot arrow after arrow at him. Some hit, some didn’t. Many of the raider’s crossbows seem to warp and explode in their hands. While others found that their swords were suddenly so hot that they could no longer hold them. Mere seconds into the attack and Adak counted four of his wyverns down and at least two more injured but flying…barely.

He could tell that both of
the Atlanteans were injured as well but neither seemed to be ready to surrender. Knowing he didn’t have a choice, he ordered his flight into the attack. Looking over his shoulder at his second in command, he yelled over the wind. “Concentrate our attacks on the female! She’s the spellcaster!”

Seeing him nod,
Adak turned his attention back to the task at hand.

*   *   *   *   *

Moira wiped the blood away from her eyes with an equally bloody hand. She could see that her husband was also injured from the way he moved but she knew that it was nothing serious. Looking down at the arrow protruding from her stomach, she couldn’t say the same thing. The only reason she was still standing was the use of a simple spell which dulled the pain. Glancing at the sky, she watched as the wyvern riders began their next run and knew it would be the last. They had injured the raiders but not enough to make them flee. They wouldn’t be able to stop them on the next pass and they both knew it.

Bjǿrn
grunted from the pain. Most of his injuries were minor but the one slash on his back from one of the wyverns burned like fire. As the reserve wyverns joined the next pass, he knew they wouldn’t survive. Glancing at his wife, he noticed the arrow in her gut and gash on her forehead. He crossed the twenty feet which separated them. “This is it doll.”

Moira nodded. “I know. I just hate the fact that we are going to be killed by some low level bandits.”

Bjǿrn let the change back to his human form come over him. “It could be worse. It could’ve been some goblins.”

Moira laughed. “Yes
, there is that.”

Bjǿrn
glanced back at the wyverns and knew they only had a few seconds left. Picking up his claymore with both hands, one on the tang and the other on the blade, he asked, “Blaze of Glory?”

Realizing what he had planned, she copied his actions with her staff and nodded. “On the count of three?”

Bjǿrn said, “One…”

They both raised their weapons
high above their knees while Moira said, “Two…”

Bjǿrn
looked up. The lead wyvern was only fifty feet away and closing fast.

“Three!”

Husband and wife slammed their weapons over their knees with all the force they could muster.

*   *   *   *   *

Adak wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t the type to lead a charge and it saved his life on this day.

His flight had fallen in behind the
survivors of the first run and seeing the two Atlanteans calmly talk in the face of certain death made him hesitate. He didn’t know what they were planning but he knew it wouldn’t be good for his men. However, the resounding explosion when they broke their weapons was not what he was expecting.

Every wyvern and raider in front of him was engulfed in
an enormous fireball.

Adak struggled to keep his serpent in the air as he banked hard to avoid the deadly inferno. The sudden turbulence nearly knocked him from the saddle but he managed to hang on and direct his steed to the ground. It wasn’t his best landing but he was alive.

Looking around, he only spied three other wyverns and riders on the ground. The rest were gone. There wasn’t a single sign of them or the two Atlanteans, just a charred piece of land.

*   *   *   *   *

Arieal hadn’t been very deep in the forest when she heard the shrill call of the hunting horn and knew that the wyvern-riders had found them. Running through the trees in reckless abandonment, she arrived at the clearing just in time to witness Bjǿrn and Moira’s last act of defiance.

She had heard of the Blaze of Glory spell before
, everyone in game had, but relatively few ever used it.

In game it was a combination spell and action that an avatar could take. It involved sacrificing a mighty magical item and releasing all spells and abilities an avatar had in one monstrous blast. It wasn’t used in game
very often because that avatar would no longer be available for play. In essence, it was a way of sacrificing your avatar to gain a victory. It would be a costly victory since only master level avatars had the ability. It had taken Annie three years of playing three or four hours a day to get her current avatar to master level.

Unfortunately, she was a bit too close to the blast and it knocked her backwards into a tree. The last thing she remembered before the
cool blackness of unconsciousness claimed her was seeing a few of the wyverns land nearby.

*   *   *   *   *

Cozad was deep in the forest when he heard the shrill call of the hunting horns. Due to echoes of the tree filled valley that he was in currently, he couldn’t tell from where the sound originated.

As the Dreadknight began the process of backtracking to the tree camp, he felt the ground tremble
and heard the explosion. He knew at that moment that something extremely bad had happened. Rushing through the trees, he came out of the woods just in time to see four wyverns and riders fly off to the west. The bound form of Arieal could be seen draped across the saddle of the lead serpent.

Of Moira and
Bjǿrn there was no sign, at least not until he studied the ground around the area of the explosion and read the tale of the battle in the dirt. Seeing nothing else to be gained by standing there, Cozad moved in the camp and began packing foodstuffs and other supplies. He knew that Tao would be back soon. They weren’t going to let anyone capture one of their companions, at least not without a fight.

With a companion in trouble, the Ed mindset and the Cozad mindset were in total agreement
and for a few moments, he was at peace.

*   *   *   *   *

Kastle followed Tao as they rode through the trees. He couldn’t help but admire the way the samurai sat easily on the horse and how it seemed to respond to his every signal. Even though Kastle was born and raised in Texas, he had never been on a horse before being pulled into the game nor had he taken the skill while leveling up of his character. It always seemed a wasted skill but now, he regretted it.