Chapter Thirteen

  Miles extended a hand, and a spear appeared in his grip with a flash of blue light.

  At that exact same moment, a slingshot appeared in Derrick’s wooden hands.

  The slingshot went thwap, and Miles grunted in surprise when a small glass bottle struck him in the chest, shattering on impact. As soon as it was exposed to the air, the ink-colored potion inside exploded into a curtain of thick black smoke, enveloping the entire shore in less than a second.

  “Now!” Derrick shouted.

  Miranda spun around, her cape billowing out behind her, and grabbed Jeremy’s hand. She, Aaron, and Derrick were all holding golf ball-sized orbs that glowed with a pale blue-white light. Raising them over their heads, they hurled them into the ground, shattering them against the creek’s bed and releasing what seemed to be a pillar of luminescent fog.

  Miranda hurriedly pulled Jeremy close as wispy tendrils of cloud reached out to wrap themselves around them. Jeremy instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, but the light was already fading…

  Leaving them right where they had been before.

  “Ashes!” Derrick spat just as Miles came rocketing out of the black smoke cloud.

  “Rain of Barbs!” he yelled. His arm became a blur, thrusting out with his spear faster than any human should have been able to move, until the gray iron tip seemed to be striking everywhere in Derrick’s general vicinity at once.

  Derrick reacted quickly, leaping out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. Miles’ spear caught him in the arm, and he cried out as it pierced him straight through. Miles ripped it free, spraying little green droplets of chlorophyll all over the stream, and a bar appeared over Derrick’s head.

  Jeremy had played enough video games to recognize a health bar when he saw one, and his heart dropped into his stomach when Derrick’s began to fall. It only went down a little bit, but it was enough to bring the full weight of their situation crashing down on him.

  These people wanted to kill them. All of them! The revelation left him feeling lightheaded, and if Miranda hadn’t been holding onto him—

  Miranda wasn’t holding onto him, he realized as his legs buckled and he splashed down into the stream.

  He reflexively gasped, and water shot up his nose. His hands scrabbled against the mossy creek bed until he was able to find purchase and push himself up. His head broke the surface, coughing and hacking, and the sound of metal ringing against metal immediately reached his ears.

  Struggling to breathe, he got to his feet and looked around wildly until he caught sight of Miranda. She was a few yards away, spinning wildly with a pair of daggers in her hands as she and Zara engaged in a lethal dance.

  Miranda struck with the silver dagger in her right hand, but Zara deflected it with a swing of her buckler. The white-haired woman followed it up with an overhead strike from her tomahawk, which Miranda knocked aside with the black dagger in her left hand.

  “Disorient!” Miranda yelled.

  Zara leaped backwards, and Miranda's cape missed her by a fraction of an inch. She landed six feet away, and something appeared in her hand with a blue flash. Whatever it was, she flung it at Miranda, and it streaked through the air like a bullet. It caught the edge of Miranda’s cloak as she completed her spin, piercing the fabric but not touching her, and was hurled away.

  Jeremy flinched when it came flying towards him, but it just plunked harmlessly into the water in front of him. Tearing his eyes away from the fight for a moment, he tentatively reached out and plucked it back out of the stream. It was a little black dart.

  PARALYZING DART:

  RENDERS THE TARGET IMMOBILE FOR THIRTY SECONDS.

  A moment later, he was nearly bowled over again when Aaron’s enormous axe struck the water, sending a six foot tall wave rushing downstream.

  Miles narrowly sidestepped the attack before raising his spear and plunging it into Aaron’s side. The giant grunted in pain, but his health only fell by a few points. Then, to Jeremy’s surprise, he grabbed hold of the spear with his left hand, keeping the Magebreaker from pulling it free, and swung his axe again.

  “Ashes!” Miles cursed, forced to let go of his spear to dodge the attack.

  A series of sharp clangs rang out as a barrage of metal shurikens bounced off the back of Miles’ cuirass, and he spun around to see Derrick standing with his back to the cliff, slingshot in hand. A flash of blue signalled that he had pulled another handful of shurikens out of the…wherever it was…and in a blur of motion he let them fly as well.

  As soon as Miles was facing the other way, Aaron yanked the spear out of his body and hurled it into the forest. Blood spurted from the wound in a way that made Jeremy think he was going to be sick, but it only took a couple seconds to scab over.

  Another flash came from Miles as he summoned a heater shield to his left hand just in time for the shurikens to bounce off it. As the metal stars splashed into the stream around his feet, a morningstar appeared in his right hand. Before he could close the distance between him and the living tree, though, a shadow fell over him, and he ducked and spun a split second before Aaron’s axe could take his head off.

  While Aaron recovered from his titanic swing, Miles whirled around and slammed his morningstar against the side of the giant’s leg. Again, it only lowered the giant’s health by a sliver, but it succeeded in knocking his foot out from under him, and Aaron fell face down in the stream with a gargantuan splash. His health continued to drop even after the attack ended, and the word BLEEDING appeared over his head.

  Another shuriken whizzed through the air, bouncing off Miles’ shield, and a bolt of panic shot through Jeremy. That one would have gone straight into his ear if he hadn’t blocked it, likely killing him. Jeremy was more than thirty feet away, as safe as he possibly could be in this situation, but seeing the scarred man come within an inch of losing his life was enough to make him feel lightheaded.

  While Aaron bled into the creek, Miles returned his attention to Derrick. Holding his shield up in case he shot any more shurikens, he dashed across the stream, raising his morningstar as he did.

  Aaron lurched to his feet, his jaw set against the pain, and raised his hands to catch Miles—just as Isaac grabbed him by the wrist and hurled him back down into the water.

  Jeremy blinked in shock. How in the world had Isaac, who was barely qualified to be called skin and bones, managed to do something like that?

  Then he realized that Isaac was growing before his eyes. Muscles even larger than Aaron’s were sprouting all across his formerly skeletal body, making him look like some kind of human balloon. He grew taller, until his head brushed against the leaves hanging above him, and when he took a step toward Aaron, it was like throwing a boulder into the stream. The ground shook slightly, and a small shower of pebbles cascaded down the side of the cliff, plink-plunk-plonking into the water below.

  As Jeremy stared, sure that he had actually lost his mind this time, Isaac’s box appeared over his head again—but it had changed.

  ISAAC CAIN

  LEVEL 21 BLACK MAGE

  (DEATHGATE SHAMAN)

  THRAZNAK DRAGONFANG

  LEVEL 26 GLADIATOR

  (MOUNTAIN GRAPPLER)

  A spray of water hit the back of Jeremy's head, pulling his attention from the dueling giants, and he turned to see Miranda skidding to a halt just a few feet away.

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  “Mir—” he began.

  “Not now!” she snapped, and rushed back toward Zara, teeth gritted. The white-haired woman tried to fend her off with a swing of her tomahawk, but again Miranda blocked it with her black dagger. Then, before Zara could recover, she held her silver dagger out to the side.

  “Binding Blade!” she yelled, and spun.

  The dagger slammed into Zara’s buckler, and the Bounty Hunter’s axe scored a deep cut on Miranda’s left arm.

  “Miranda!” Jeremy yelled as her health went down.

  “You idiot!” Zara snarled, her eyes alight with animalistic rage. “You can’t use magic around a Magebreaker!”

  She swung again, this time aiming for Miranda’s neck, but the blue cloaked woman recovered at the last second. She hopped backwards, just out of Zara’s reach, and then kicked her leg almost straight up into the air. She was too far away for it to actually hit Zara, but it sprayed water directly into her face. With her opponent momentarily blinded, Miranda…

  Turned and ran, grabbing Jeremy’s hand as she sprinted past him.

  “What are we doing?” he yelled.

  “We have to find the edge of Miles’ nullification field!” she answered, as if that were supposed to make the slightest amount of sense.

  “Break Gravity!”

  Miranda spun, slinging Jeremy forward, and he once again plunged face first into the stream.

  Miranda leaped into the air and cartwheeled to the left just as Zara streaked past feet first. It almost looked as though she were falling, her body parallel to the ground itself. Gravity quickly reclaimed her, though, and she flipped upright again before splashing down into the creek.

  “Break Gravity!” she yelled again, and without moving a muscle she surged back the way she had come, throwing up two jets of water behind her as her legs dragged through the stream.

  Miranda landed half a second later, just in time to block Zara’s attack with her black dagger. But instead of striking with her silver one, she threw it straight up into the air.

  “Silverwing!”

  Jeremy gaped as she vanished in a flash of light, only to reappear right above Zara’s head. The silver dagger was back in her hand again, and she lashed out with it even as she fell. Zara dodged out of the way, but wasn’t quick enough to avoid taking a nasty looking cut on the back of her neck. Her health bar dropped by a few points, but she barely seemed to notice.

  Watching them, something clicked inside Jeremy’s brain. Miranda was level nineteen, while Zara was only level seventeen. While the idea that video game stats would have any effect on real life…or whatever passed for real life now…sounded completely insane, he had no idea how else to interpret that information.

  Even looking at it through that lens, though, what he was seeing didn’t make any sense. Miranda was two levels higher than Zara, yet Zara’s attack had dealt more than twice as much damage to Miranda as Miranda’s attack had dealt to her.

  If either of them noticed, though, they didn’t care. Whirling back around to face her opponent, Zara ducked as a glowing dagger slashed right above her head.

  “Binding Blade!” Miranda yelled even as her attack missed.

  “Break Gravity!”

  Zara sprang straight up into the air, far higher than any human should have been able to jump, and her foot connected with Miranda’s chin as she shot upwards.

  Miranda stumbled backwards a couple steps, her health bar falling again, and then promptly launched herself into a backflip just before Zara came back down, slamming her tomahawk into the stream right where she had been standing.

  “Break Gravity!”

  Zara surged forward again. Jeremy still had no idea how any of this was supposed to work, but he guessed that Break Gravity must have been some kind of spell or ability that Zara was using.

  Whatever it was, it closed the distance between her and Miranda in the blink of an eye, and Zara raised her tomahawk to attack again. The sound of metal clashing against metal rang through the forest as Miranda blocked it with her black dagger—which promptly began to glow with blue light.

  “Ha!” she barked into Zara’s face. “Freezing Riposte!”

  Zara’s eyes widened, and she had just enough time to throw herself to the side when an intense gust of wind blasted through the woods, seemingly coming out of Miranda herself. A sparkling layer of ice appeared in the stream, shooting forward in a straight line from where she stood.

  The white-haired woman didn’t manage to get out of the way in time, and the entire right side of her body was instantly encased in ice. Her health bar plummeted until it was almost half empty, and she toppled forward to land face down in the stream.

  “Come on,” Miranda said, reaching for Jeremy’s hand again. “We need to go before—”

  “Break…Gravity!”

  Zara shot back out of the water, colliding with Miranda and knocking the cloaked woman clean off her feet. The impact was so strong that it shattered the ice around Zara’s body.

  For a moment the two of them lay next to each other in the water, but then they were up again. Zara’s buckler connected with the side of Miranda’s head, knocking her down a second time. She kicked Miranda to make sure she stayed down—and then turned toward Jeremy and raised her tomahawk.

  Suddenly, it dawned on him that all he had to protect himself was shirt that looked like it had been dipped in acid.

  “Leave him alone!” Miranda screamed, grabbing Zara by the ankle. With her other hand, she threw her silver dagger into the air. “Silverwing!”

  They both vanished in another flash of light, reappearing twenty feet above the stream. For a moment they seemed to be wrestling in midair, but then Zara planted her foot in Miranda’s face, kicking her down into the water.

  “Break Gravity!” she yelled, flying another ten feet upwards before falling back down. Miranda was already getting back to her feet, but she was knocked flat yet again when Zara landed right on top of her.

  Jeremy watched, sweat running down his face as he waited for Miranda to surface again, but she didn’t. Zara’s foot was planted right on her head, holding her underwater. Miranda’s health bar appeared again, and it slowly began to fall.

  Ashes and flame, he thought dumbly. That psycho is actually going to drown her!

  Miranda was thrashing, her arms and legs sending the water into a frothing frenzy, but she couldn’t throw Zara off of her. The white-haired woman didn’t look like she weighed much, but she was applying pressure in just the right spot that Miranda couldn’t squirm her way out from under her.

  Jeremy stood there, watching in panic as his oldest friend and ex-girlfriend died in front of his eyes. He desperately wanted to help, but what could he possibly do in a situation like this? Whatever insane world he had found himself in, he didn’t belong here. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t use magic. Magic wasn’t even supposed to flaming exist! Reality itself had been turned inside out, and there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it. He clenched his fists in helpless frustration, and—

  There was something in his hand.

  He looked down and saw the black dart he had pulled out of the water before. In all the chaos, he had completely forgotten about it. PARALYZING DART, the little box above it said. He could tell just by looking at it that the tip was sharp enough to pierce skin with even a light touch.

  He looked up at Zara, who had clearly forgotten about him. And why shouldn’t she have? He was as much a threat to her as a dandelion was to a real lion. Unless…

  Not giving himself time to think, cursing himself for being an idiot, Jeremy charged forward.

  Zara turned to look at him, but she was half a second too slow. Raising his hand, he drove the dart into the unprotected flesh of her neck. Her buckler slammed into the side of his head half a second later, and stars flashed before his eyes as he collapsed into the stream.

  Zara raised her axe to finish him off…

  PARALYZED

  She collapsed into the stream like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Miranda erupted out of the water half a second later. Her health bar was nearly empty, and she lashed out with her daggers in a desperate and vicious attack. Then she froze, blinking in surprise when she realized that Zara wasn’t there.

  The white-haired woman was lying in the stream, her face just barely above the surface as she scowled up at the sky.

  Miranda looked at Jeremy. “Did you…”

  He nodded mutely.

  She blinked again, then shook her head. “How in the…you know what? It doesn’t matter. We need to go!”

  She dashed across the stream, making sure to step on Zara’s face in the process, and grabbed his hand. With her other, she raised her silver dagger.

  “Wait!” Jeremy blurted out. “What about your friends?”

  Miranda paused, then glanced over at where Derrick and Aaron were still fighting. Neither of them seemed to have taken too much damage, and Derrick had done something to stop Aaron’s bleeding. They were clearly struggling, though.

  Isaac had knocked the axe out of Aaron’s hands, and the two of them had resorted to clobbering each other with their bare fists. Derrick was doing his best to keep Miles at bay, but as a cleric and a long range fighter, there was little he could do besides continuously backpedal and shoot shurikens for Miles to block with his shield.

  “They don’t want my help.” Miranda’s voice was soft, and Jeremy could hear the pain in her answer. Then she hurled the silver dagger as hard as she could into the distance. “Silverwing!”

  Jeremy’s stomach lurched as the world around him turned silver—but it was immediately overwhelmed by another feeling.

  An amazing feeling.

  Time felt like it had stopped, leaving him suspended in that bright silver void, and when he glanced at his hand he realized that his veins had lit up beneath his skin with a bright green light. The sight should have terrified him—it looked like someone had injected pure radiation into his bloodstream—but it felt so incredible that the only thing he could think was that he hoped it never stopped. He felt stronger than an Olympic athlete. Like he could jump right over the moon itself if he wanted!

  OBJECTIVE COMPLETE:

  DEFEAT OR ESCAPE FROM THE SHIELD WARDEN GUILD.

  As the energy roared through his system, another bar appeared in front of his eyes. At first he thought it was his health bar, but it was going up instead of down. It filled itself in a matter of seconds, going over the top and emptying itself out to start filling up again. When it was about a quarter of the way full, it finally stopped, and the little 3 next to it changed to a 4.

  PRIMARY QUEST:

  REACH FAEN’S HAND SAFELY WITH MIRANDA JACKDAW.

  OBJECTIVE UPDATED:

  PICK YOUR CLASS AND BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY.