The Dragon's Wrath: Ashes of the Fallen (33 page)

She only had eight seconds left.

Calling out for a healer, yelling for a priest, none responded.

I glanced at Katherine but saw she had spent all of her mana.

She was kneeling on the ground next to Selene, holding her hand as she silently wept. I gently wrapped my arms around Selene in the midst of the battle, elevating her head slightly so she could breathe easier.

She was down to three-percent now.

Six seconds.

I frantically looked around as the NPCs were too far away and too mired in conflict to react. Staring at Kate, her mana was recovering far too slowly, she would be late.

Selene turned her eyes to Kate and struggled to bring a smile to bear as she weakly spoke, "be strong Kate."

Then to me, she said, "take care of my sister."

Gulping down the lump in my throat, I hugged her tightly while Katherine squeezed her hands, with her tears rolling down onto the ground below.

As Selene lay dying in my arms, she asked me with a hoarse whisper that could barely be heard, "you're going to kiss me, right?"

I could only smile and nod, "yeah."

Moving in, she placed her hand on my face, and after the long kiss she lightly slapped me, as she had the first time we kissed, in front of the earl's men. Looking me in the eyes, she brought a light smile to bear as tears filled her eyes, then she closed her eyes for the last time.

She was gone.

The system notification popped up a second later.

Confirming what my eyes had already told me.

What my hands had already conveyed.

She had gone limp, and on this strangely cold day in the North, the warmth of her body was slowly dissipating, away and back into the earth from which it came.

[Your Companion, Selene, has died.]

A few seconds later, Katherine had recovered the requisite mana to use a [Holy Light] and she immediately tried casting it on Selene, but it was to no avail.

You couldn't heal the dead.

Even I knew that.

Sorrow and sadness overwhelmed me for a split-second only to be replaced by rage as a fire blast hit me in the face and melted skin and fat dripped down onto my lap. Turning my head slowly with half my face melting off, I stared at the casters that were slowly being pushed back.

The warriors had mounted a comeback, and with every player that fell, the stamina of my soldiers overwhelmed what few were left.

Then, my eyes caught something familiar.

Milly.

In the back, behind the casters that were now too busy fending off the warriors that had charged into them, she was watching the scene unfold.

She met my eyes, and in that instant I knew what would come next.

Milly, was going to die.

Glancing at Selene once more, I gave her to Kate as I gauged my health, mana, and stamina bars. My health level was critical, at nineteen percent. So too was my mana, at under ten percent. Stamina, well, that was fairly low as well.

It didn't matter, it was enough.

I had a second to live for every half-percent of life, ticking down even now.

I didn't need more than ten.

Eyes clouded, my mind was consumed with anger, with rage… I was burning literally and figuratively with flames still flickering in the wind off my shoulder. I began to walk towards Milly, with no weapons in hand and only enough mana for a single flash step. I was going to end her, here and now.

End her before she could retreat.

Before she could utter a word, of excuse, of apology, or insult, I didn't care what it was, I wanted to hear silence.

Breaking into a run with my eyes locked on her, she stood still like a deer in the headlights. Frozen in shock or fear, I didn't know.

I didn't care.

Realizing her predicament she started to turn, began to run in the opposite direction as her light frame and agility build aided her retreat… but she was too slow. I was faster, far more developed, with all of my time spent grinding, all of the development put into my weak legs that didn't allow me to run in real life.

I was fast in this world.

I was far faster than any of them.

Catching up to her, she was within thirty feet as she glanced back at me once more. At that very moment, I flash stepped and traversed the distance between us almost instantaneously as the bolt of lightning carried my body from my past location to my new destination in the blink of an eye.

Rematerializing out of the lightning like some spectral being, I thrust my good left arm out and grabbed Milly by the throat. She struggled as I lifted her off the ground and began to squeeze. Fumbling for her weapons and trying to speak, I crushed her throat and continued to constrict her breathing.

She was suffocating, right before my eyes.

She deserved it.

She deserved all of it.

It wasn't painful, no… not nearly painful enough.

The game had restrictions for these things… sure, it looked real, but it wasn't.

Milly didn't feel anything except, maybe some restriction on her movements. Her eyes were probably fuzzing up, becoming cloudy and dim as her strength left her. But, the game didn't let you feel any such suffocation.

I learned that, when I wondered if you could drown.

You didn't feel any of that.

Too traumatic, some people said.

Yet my face was burning, my arm hurt, my sides… my chest, my abdomen, all burned and stung when I was stabbed and sliced. That was fine, for those of us in the Ultra-Realism program. And everyone felt some pain from the cuts and stabs, from the impact of magic. Giving her a painless death like this was far too kind.

Maybe, I should have burned her to death.

Dropping the lifeless corpse to the floor, I stared at it in disgust.

My health was low now, around fourteen percent left.

It took me exactly ten seconds.

And then an errant frost bolt impacted me, but I didn't budge.

Turning my head slightly in the direction of the mage that cast it at me, he couldn't see my health and didn't realize that another cast would be the end of me. He was scared, having witnessed everything that had happened, while he shot wave after wave after wave of spells towards me, and towards my brethren throughout the fight.

My family, my NPCs, my… people, he had put them in harm's way.

My entire village was burning down to the ground as I stood and watched the mage turn tail. He wanted to run, to escape, to retreat from my vengeance.

He was going to get away.

And then a golden light engulfed me and brought me back to a comfortable thirty-two percent health, halting the bleed-out and restoring me to partial functionality.

Katherine, most likely.

Yeah, he wasn't going to get away.

Starting to run after the escaping mage, a quick glance to my side had shown that the battle was won. A pious victory by all accounts, it wasn't a victory worth celebrating. The corpses that littered the field were numerous and the wanton destruction was vast, my village was destroyed and at least twenty of the thirty-one warriors had fallen.

Eight warriors had joined the chase with me, as we ran after the handful of mages attempting to escape. All of the melee players were accounted for, in body bags. Now, it was the backline's turn to meet the same fate.

We cut them down, one by one.

Their nonathletic bodies betrayed them as they tried in vain to outrun us.

It only took a few minutes, to finish the slaughter.

Stopping in the middle of the forest, with my village a few hundred yards away, I stared at the rising smoke as I contemplated my surroundings.

My situation had changed.

I failed.

Chapter 65: For Far Too Many

(Monday, September 23rd Game Day / Tuesday, March 30th Real Day)

Twenty-four hours had passed by the time the funeral procession was ready.

The longship returned with goods and good tidings, only to find the village in ruins and their friends slain. That was the reality, of the actions a guild decided to take.

It wasn't long before the news hit the web, as a few guild members decided to stream the entire encounter live. They broadcasted their own demise, for thousands to see, and for hundreds of thousands to watch at a later date.

I was now a celebrity, and an infamous villain.

My brutal actions were seen as disgusting by white knights, fools to the so-called cause, rising up and clamoring for my destruction. It bothered them… that I would eke out justice indiscriminant of race or gender. How could I, brutally choke a girl?

How could I, slice one's face off?

Worse, how could I slit a throat?

Disgusting, that's what I was.

Of course, some others saw it differently.

I was the unwitting victim of an attack, a surprise attack by a cowardly guild. Onlookers and outsiders didn't even know that Milly was a spy, but they knew the rules of engagement in the game.

You declared your intent, honorably, or you didn't, dishonorably.

They chose the latter.

The fact that they lost, to what most players later realized was a troop of NPCs and one singular player, made me famous. The fact that I was utilizing lightning magic, a rarity in this game, made me special. Toss in the parts with my close-combat fighting, and utilizing a halberd in various ways along with an axe and knives, and I was the coolest kid on the block.

But what did it matter to me.

Selene was dead.

Barkley was dead.

Twenty-three warriors were dead.

My village didn't have a single building left.

All I had left were these hands of mine, the gear on my back, and my fellow NPCs, livestock, a farm, and a longship. I guess that was a long list of positives, but I would have traded them all to bring Selene back.

She… wasn't supposed to mean much.

Yet, here I was, anguishing.

I was more attached than I realized.

I was angrier than I thought I would be.

Katherine and Selene were basically my world within this world.

That wasn't right, but that's how it worked out.

Staring at the funeral pyres that had been set up, the twenty-five pyres were all in a single line along the mountain's walls. A small clearing, flat and with plenty of space, was going to be their resting place.

This was a funeral, for far too many.

The fire was lit by one of the warriors, as I stood quietly by and watched Selene's pyre start to burn. She was dressed with all of her gear, weapons, and what items survived the original cabin fire. The only thing I kept was her necklace and a ring. The necklace was for Katherine, the ring… for me.

Keepsakes, for sentimental reasons, I guess.

It wasn't long before her body was completely engulfed in the flames, as the pyre funneled oxygen in such a way to burn incredibly hot. There would be nothing left when it was all said and done, only the ashes of the fallen.

The fires would burn all night, and would be tended to in the morning.

After an hour, most of the NPCs had returned to the one building that was still serviceable. The lodge had only partially burnt down, missing a roof and parts of the second floor, but the underground section remained intact.

The NPCs stayed there for now, as the elements weren't that bad this time of the year. Some of the NPCs stayed out in the open, preferring to camp out on the grass. Others, stayed with me and Katherine, as we sat along the mountain side and watched our friends burn.

Friends, as I called them, even though they were only NPCs with Artificial Intelligences. They weren't even real. Selene… wasn't real. Yet, after months of time being spent with them on a daily basis, they were a part of my life.

Now, they were no longer there.

She was no longer around.

And I was at fault.

No.

No, I wasn't at fault here.

The ones that wronged me were Milly and her guild. They were the ones that started this. In my anger, I researched the unknown, hoping to find answers as to why they did it. Why would someone randomly attack me, all the way up north?

I had my ideas, my suspicions.

It was common to attack rival guilds, to eliminate competition; I knew that was the case. When Emily put the target on my back, I knew this day would come.

But, for a guild to travel to such great lengths to attack me… that bothered me, deep down. They were a small guild, filled with a handful of Alpha and Beta testers, some that were even from my area, which I found out, after a little internet stalking turned up some pertinent information.

Milly, was a local.

I had probably met her once or twice at the Meetings.

A small world, as they say.

They were connected with other guilds, primarily filled with players of the same ilk, and had struggled in the Central Kingdoms and thus decided to try their luck in the North. That wasn't anything new, nor was it news to me.

Their territory was actually a very small one though.

Two-hundred miles south of Andal, down near the very border of the Northern territories, and about five miles off the coast. They were situated on a river that drained out to the ocean. It was a small river at that, one only ten feet wide and two to three feet deep. They had a few buildings and a couple of NPCs too, as they were starting to build up their infrastructure.

They weren't powerful, not in the least.

Their seventy or so active guild members were of average level, in the high twenties and low thirties, with a couple in the forties. By comparison, I was in mid-fifties with boosted stats from the Ultra-Realism program.

I was basically nearing two-hundred in effective level.

As a jack of all trades, a red mage, a hybrid… my power spike was the early mid-game and the very late-game. I was in the middle of that first power trip, where skills and proficiency came easy and having two or three from different paths let me create effective combinations beyond the normal scope. 

They didn't stand a chance alone… they didn't even hold a candle to me.

Yet, they picked a fight.

They had sealed their fate.

I was coming for them… and their allies too.

Their homes would burn, their NPCs would be slaughtered, and they will be hunted wherever they go. There is no place on this continent I can't reach, that I can't raid.

They would pay.

This was personal.

This was the Viking way, after all.