timewalk

  Gara

  Gara drew a ragged breath, running low on stamina, now, as she warily circled her inexhaustible foes, putting the walls of the Temple of Bone against her back. With a deft flick of her bde, she opehe veins on her forearms again, increasing the flow of blood that her regeio interrupting. Catg the trickle with Blood Manipution, she made it flow down her arms and along the underside of the sed of her two forefingers, rather thahumb, before feeding it to her hungry on and shield as she had been taught. It would do her no good to enhance her power with her blood magily to make her on and shield slid slip from her grasp.

  The two zombies – once members of one of the lesser races – groaned, lunging toward her. She staggered backward as their sluggish but unreasonably powerful attacks crashed into the shield that she raised to guard her head and throat. Sharp paihrough her, makiumble as a bolt of ice from the troll skeletal mage pierced her thigh again.

  How did they get into Aman Rak? And where is Kir’mogan? Kir’vel? The champions should have been out there proteg them from the uhat seemed to spawn endlessly from the ominous dark cloud over the forest. Gara had too many questions and no answers. Val’korr the Seeker had always told her that, in Aman Rak, blood was the power, bone was the spine, and soul was the heart and the e to the aral spirits. A bone warrior would have made short work of these undead, but she was alone. She struck again, but her Lacerate could only do physical damage; none of her magic would affect a bloodless monster. She healed herself with Blood Siphon, feeling the nce of ice pushed from her wound and drop to the ground, her magic the only thing that was keeping her alive in this fight.

  Gara danced around her pulsing armor totem and darted forward. Keeping her shield raised, she stabbed at the zombie whose head she had taken earlier. The sword bde pierced the tough undead flesh, burying the bde up to the hilt in its chest, spraying putrest goo across her fad shield – and finally, her chime sounded as it sagged groaning to the grass and expired.

  She backed up, recovered her stance, and reopened her self-bleeds, p her defensive shield magic. Delicately, she tested her leg, finding that the wound had almost pletely healed. She ducked as the troll skeleton’s Ice Lance shattered against her braced and blooded shield.

  Out of the er of her eye, Gara spied a small pool of blood on the grass – her own blood, spilled by the earlier nce – and linked her blood to it with Blood Walker, suddenly appearing behind the st zombie. Taking advantage of the surprise and her position behind it, she made an all-out attack, ign the deadly hwipping past her ears. She sliced off an arm at the shoulder, and then stabbed through the lower spine, severing rotting bone and sinew with a wet g sound. The zombie dropped to the ground beside its panion and Gara turo face the skeleton.

  Gara’s heart filled with an icy chill as she caught sight of the familiar ceremonial leather tusk braids – the braids she had helped him tie when they had earheir csses together.

  Jotan.

  She sliced open her bleeds again, the familiar pain helping to subdue her feelings. The fact that he was even here and not back with his tribe in Telim Gor was shog enough. She choked down her ge. The Tol will finally be happy, she thought, f ao overwhelm the horror of seeing her forbidden childhood friendship desecrated by this animated undead mockery of Jotan trying to kill her. If she died here, she k would tio rampage through Aman Rak, destroying whatever it found. She shattered another bde-like nce of i her shield and gritted her teeth.

  Blood and bone, Jotan. I will see you fi.

  She used Blood Walker again, this time traveling to the blood moss behind the skeleton, and yelled to bolster her rattled resolve, slig downward with her sword, and crag the skeleton’s colrbone. Jotan – no, it – turned quickly and fired point bnk into her ribs, causio cough up a little trickle of blood, but she bore the pain stoically. She was a Troll. She was Aman Rak. She eled the fresh blood from her wound into her shield and healed herself again, crag ribs with her strike. As the skeleton raised its arm to fire, she caught the bones on the inside of her shield and shattered the arm with a powerful downward Lacerate strike.

  As it filed from the power of her blow, she swept its leg out from u and followed it to the ground, smashiedly with her shield and sword, ign the biting ice that nced into her belly. A soft chime pierced her haze of pain and screams of fury and the skeletoh her ceased moving, being nothing more than a pile of shattered and broken bones. A pile that had once been a proud mage of Telim Gor. Teically she had killed a member of Aman Rak’s rivals and would be accorded honors and status for her achievement. She choked down the bile that rose ihroat.

  You have defeated Warrior – Zombie – level 14.You have defeated Warrior – Zombie – level 11.You have defeated Mage – Skeleton – level 16.

  Blood Shaman has reached level 12 (+2)+20 attribute points.

  Lacerate has reached level 10.Blood Shield has reached level 9.Blood Siphon has reached level 11.Summon Totem has reached level 7.Blood Walker has reached level 3 (+2).

  Slowly, Gara cmbered to her feet, ripping the remaining ices out of her body aing her regeion take care of her remaining wounds. She had reached level twelve in defense of Aman Rak – an occasion that should have been filled with joy and celebration. Instead, she reached doicked up the remains of the tusked troll skull, cradling it against her breast.

  Val’korr will know what to do. She turned and, carrying her heavy burden, sprihrough the blood moss and trees, heading for the sacred shrine where she knew she would find the venerable Seeker.

  ***

  By the time she emerged from the dappled light of the forest into the clearing, her wounds were almost entirely healed. Right in the ter of the clearing stood the tall bck stone shrih its glowing runes, and beside it sat Val’korr, Aman Rak’s Seeker for as long as anyone could remember. He was hunched over his gaff, white wiry hair standing out in messy spikes from the top of his head, and his gentle kind eyes looked up from his students tard her as she approached.

  “gratutions, you have reached level twelve, Gara,” he said. “Yrowing quickly; do you seek sel for your skills?”

  “No, Seeker, that must wait.” She tossed the skull into the circle in front of the aged troll. “This is… was Jotan. His skeleton attacked me at the blood temple. What is going on? How are the undead inside Aman Rak? Where are the champions?” Her voice cracked he end, but she didn’t care.

  Val’knced down at the skull, but when he looked up, it was not at her, but past her – in the dire from which she had e.

  “It would seem Tol’brekk has made his decision,” he said cryptically, his eyes suddenly brimming with enormous sadness, his aged back seeming to bow even further under a heavy load.

  “Tol’brekk demands your answer, Val’korr.”

  The familiar rough and arrogant voice of Kir’mogan caught her by surprise, and Gara spun to find the muscur Bone Warrior champion emerging from the forest fnked by his ente. Kir’vel stood beside him with her ever-present bats cirg above.

  “He may be the Tol, but I will not betray Aman Rak for that whelp,” Val’korr said, a surprising strength in his voice.

  “There is this curious thing about power – it has a remarkable way of fog the mind,” Kir’mogan said. Suddenly, a giant bone greataxe appeared in his hands and his powerful body blurred, appearing right before Val’korr. His axe was almost invisibly fast, unleashing an immehundercp as its wide bde took the a seeker and the shrine in a single cleaving strike. Bck stone fragments and blood exploded into the air in the wake of his bde as he severed the Seeker’s arm at the shoulder and drove his bde through his chest, halting against the sternum and spine.

  Blood spilled from the venerable Seeker’s mouth, dripping down his tusks. His students screamed and ran before the pieces of the shrine had even fallen, but Gara stood and stared, uo prehend what had just happened.

  “Stake him,” Kir’vel anded.

  “Yes, yes, I know how durable he is,” Kir’mogan said, pg his boot ori Seeker’s chest and ripping his axe free, sending another spray of blood across the grass. A rge spike of bone sprouted from the inside of his wrist, and, with a brutal punch, he rammed it down, impaling Val’korr through the chest, puncturing the sternum and the still-beati below, pinning him to the grass. He s off and stepped backward.

  “Seeker!” Gara gasped. The Kir – the champions of Aman Rak – had just impaled the oldest and wisest of their tribe with a brutal attack desigo still his heart so that not even treion would allow him tain sciousness. It was the most dishonorable tara could imagine. Worse even than fire.

  “I will take him to Tol’brekk,” Kir’vel said. “You have all the little oo py with.”

  “Excellent,” Kir’mogan said, a predatlint in his eye. “I’ll start with you.” And befara could even raise her shield, he was suddenly looming over her. She gasped, but the ft of his axe smacked into the side of her head, making something craside.

  The st thing she saw before she struck the ground was a group of troll zombies joining the champions in the clearing, kig pieces of the sacred shrih their rotti, and carrying the struggling pupils of the Seeker. The ground rose to meet her face, but her awareness vanished right before it hit.

  Mato

  Mato knocked on the door of the tiny chapel in the courtyard beside the Adventurers Guild. It was called a chapel, but it was little more than a rickety wooden shack with a surprisingly well-crafted picture of a dragon’s face mounted above the doorway.

  The door creaked as it opened and he found himself invited in by Devan, one of the adventurers on Aiden’s team. He stepped in, finding five people standing in a circle around a bucket.

  Havok reached doicked up the bucket and passed it around, and each person pced a in it. When Havok reached him, he said, “Holy bucket. Donation for poor. Not must.”

  It took Mato several seds to parse Havok’s atrocious at and grammar, but he realized the Goblin was asking for a donation for the poor, but he was also saying it tional. Mato retrieved a silver piece from his ring and dropped it into the bucket, getting a big toothy grin from the Goblin.

  “Thanks!” Havok said, pg the bucket on a small table behind him where, surprisingly, Mieriel sat. “Devan, say words.”

  “Ok,” Devan said, clearihroat. “Sermon time.”

  Mato braced himself, given that he was not partial to sermons, or even any particurly long speeches for that matter.

  The rogue took a deep breath and then intoned, “Oh, great and mighty Azryet, we are in awe of your power. Thanks for the damage!”

  The onlookers each echoed, “Thanks for the damage.” Then, to Mato’s intense surprise, everyoarted their own versations, clearly doh the ceremony.

  Puzzled, he gnced over at Mieriel who sat beside him.

  “Today’s donations are going to help provide food for one of the orphanages in the poor quarter,” she said. “Havok asked me to help find good causes so he increase the reputation of Azryet iown.”

  “And you joihe church?” he asked.

  “Yes, I like anizing ways to help people,” the Sun Elf Mind Mage said, pausing as if sidering adding something more before she tinued, “It helps Havok out, too. He needed a few members tister the church with the Town cil and buy this small plot of nd for the chapel. He already secrated it.”

  “Mato? You join?” Havok asked, walking over to him with an expet grin.

  “Actually yes, I wao ask you if you could help me ask Azryet for his patronage?”

  “Not problem,” Havok said, immediately kneeling and bowing his head, making his prayer out loud. “Oh, Azryet! One more! You help?”

  Wow, is that all… oh! The hairs along Mato’s bad neck suddenly leapt to attention, as if reag to the gaze of an unseeor. A sudden infusion of power jolted through him, mana that seemed to be eled into him by the little Goblin padin but was not of him. It rushed through his body, but only for a moment, and then his notification chime sounded.

  The Dragon God, Azryet, offers his patronage.Godly Patronage – AzryetTraits: Void, Holy, Domaiy, Minion, Draic, Strength, Vitality, Endurance, Intelligence, Wisdom, Chaos, bat, Healing, Knowledge.Reputation gained enhahe reputation of Azryet. As your patron’s reputation grows, boons and enhas may increase.A small hit to do additional Holy or Void damage. Entment – TitheAccept this patronage?

  That was… easy, Mato thought, more than a little surprised. “Uh… thanks for the damage?” he said. Somewhere in the distance, he caught the distinct impression of a vast and rumbling chuckle.

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