Chapter 1—Chubb Takes a
Beating
Issana Windwalker died for
the ninth time at the hands of an ogre named Chubb.
Bits of her spattered the
trees and rocks in a tacky, wide swathe.
Her death cry tore from her,
sounding much more like frustration than demise. At least to her own,
make that Senara's ears.
It really ticked her off that
she spawned into the forest and Chubb always seemed to be camping on
the exact spot, waiting for her, every time. Fat
tub of smelly lard.
“Go find someone else to PK, you son of a fatherless goat,” she
yelled, banging the keyboard with her fist. Then she hit the talk
button and yelled it again so Chubb could actually hear it while he
scampered around picking up the magical items she'd dropped.
“It's what you get when you
sign up to be Guardian of Kofur, Issy Baby. If you wanna dump the
Seal of Kofur and do something less violent, it can be arranged. Then
we can hang out and make cute little half ogre babies,” said the
piece of yak stool who'd targeted her.
“Lard Butt can actually
talk,” muttered Senara. She pressed talk. “Oh please. The stench
of your unwashed body would kill me for reals. I'd no sooner hang
with you than eat my own foot, let alone bear you babies. I'm going
to end you, you bucket of—“ she eased off the talk button to
continue the rant in private since her thirty seconds of grace period
was almost up. And since her southern mother would pop a vein if she
heard such trash going out over the airwaves. Not that she would,
since Mom was thousands of miles away, now, on a buying trip.
Senara took a few sanity
moments to break away from the game and fetch a can of soda from the
fridge. The sound of the lid popping broke the silence left by the
ending of her Celtic podcast music. She dragged the frosty can across
her cheeks and forehead and plunked herself back in her desk chair.
She had a whole lot of other
things she wanted to say to Chubb the Grub but couldn't while she was
a ghost. She would have to re-spawn and, armor-less, kick Chubb clear
to Offenheim if she was ever going to get any of her stuff back. She
jammed her thumb on the talk button anyway. “With pleasure, you
boot-licking toadstool,” she ground out. “Let the bloodbath
begin.” She wiped her hands against her My Little Ponies pajama
pants, cracked her knuckles, and hit the button that would start the
carnage.
Issana Windwalker was
normally a vision to behold. Massive power packed into a
well-muscled, very buxom, gorgeous blond elf, wearing silver armor
etched with Celtic knot work, a silver, egret-plumed helm, and tall,
silver-embossed boots. For “at home,” she wore flowing blue,
purple and indigo harem pants, an indigo top, and no shoes. She could
still trash people and take names if she was attacked in her woodland
fastness. It happened.
Senara took great pains to
make sure Issana's description and that of her hold, Cloudcroft, was
something visually stunning and commanding respect. Dudes took a girl
seriously if she looked the part and could show some imagination. At
least that's what she always told herself.
Gamer eejits were clueless
about two things: One, Issana Windwalker might look like a harem girl
but she was actually a 102nd
-level elf paladin mage who could kick a demi-god's butt with one
foot nailed to the floor and no healing potions. And two, she was, in
real life, a twenty-one year old brown-haired, bespectacled bookstore
clerk named Senara O'Brian, who had trouble killing ants. That last
fact she told no one on the game. Who
knows, anyway? Maybe half of those buff knights were actually
pencil-thin, all-elbows cross dressers or sitting in prison for
peeping, she
thought as she ran through the Everlost landscape.
Now, after spawning, and
dressed only in a light shift, she avoided traps and bad situations
like a pro. She had a date with a certain shopkeeper to get the
prized Player Killer sword of in-cluing better known as PK Swansong.
There wouldn't be time to run to the Morningstar Mountains to fight
for her normal enchanted armor.
She passed two hills, a large
lake, a couple of villages and a small castle before she got to
Berkilflot, the village where Fomor Bob had his store. She had a
great rapport with Bob old boy. He saved all his good stuff for her
in return for taking out the trash. It made her chuckle every time
she took out a noob who was making himself a nuisance. She'd walk in
just like an NPC or non-player character and do “boot-to-the-butt”
and the kid would find himself sprawling on the ground outside the
store. She'd laugh insanely when he ID'd her and found out what level
she was.
“What can I get you?” the
good Bob asked.
Issana batted her eyelashes
and asked for Swansong. “Got some Chubb clubbing to do.”
Bob grinned. “That dude's
got it coming. I'm guessing you want a health potion or two.”
Issana glowered at him. “Um,
no. Don't need it. But I do need to know if Chubb's got some kind of
a donation buff that lets him kill far above his level.”
“I'll look.” Bob
disappeared into the “back” while Issana cooled her heals
checking out the merchandise. She had just enough money to buy back
the Crystal Gauntlets and pay for Amalice the Seamstress to imbue
them with special pounding powers.
Bob brought out the sword and
tested the edge with a grin. “Swansong with a special edge. I think
you'll like her. And Chubb does have a donation item. He payed twenty
five Euros for an amulet of PK-ing. He wears it on his breech clout.”
“Real money? Brother. The
little weasel! I knew he had something good. It's how he killed me
nine times in a row. He must be selling my armor at the Ba'along
Bazaar. Those losers will take anything, lost, stolen, or hocked.”
She examined the sword and deemed it sweet. “Thanks Bob.” She
tossed him a bag of coins and ran off to the Seamstress' shop.
Hopefully it would take Chubb enough time to sell her stuff, that
she'd get where she needed to be and fully prepared.
Just as the Seamstress had
finished with the Imbuing and Issana was paying for her services, the
Seal called her back. Chubb, of course. She was already under attack
when she wielded the Crystal Gauntlets. Her health had dropped to
next to nothing as the pounding began.
“What the—?” Chubb
yelled as she smashed him a couple of inches into the solid rock.
Issana grinned. “Taste the
rainbow.” Bam! Bam! Crash!
He tried to hit her again and
missed, due to losing several centimeters of aching height. An arm
went flying across the meadow and it wasn't hers.
Issana said, “Run away if
you want to live.” It would be her only suggestion. Most guys
wouldn't bolt, and found themselves flitting back to their spawn
point as wispy ghosts. Chubb was no different. When he croaked, he
dropped a smelly breech clout, a large club and three copper coins,
and fluttered away, yelling about cheaters.
Happy
dirt nap, Nasty,
Senara thought as she fingered the buttons to dispose of the breech
clout so Chubb couldn't immediately come back and arm himself in it.
The fly-ridden thing probably had magical powers since he wore
nothing else but that freaking amulet.
Just the thought of that icky ogre running around naked makes me want
to hurl.
Issana
pocketed the coppers, tossed the club into a nearby pond, and went to
meditate for a couple of minutes in her Cloudcroft hideout. That was
the only thing she'd forked over real money for. It really paid off
to have somewhere to relax in and store her plunder. Too bad she
didn't have closets full of the Silver-chased Armor suits, like
Batman and his uniforms. Those she had to win in battle.
She was just about to the
middle of her meditation, and thus half healthy, when the Seal pulled
her back. “Unbelievable!” Senara screamed, pounding the keyboard.
Crumbs bounded up and resettled in the cracks between the keys. One
of them must have lodged beneath the “hit” button she'd macro'ed,
because she pressed and pressed and couldn't engage.
Just as her health neared
red-line and she was going to actually wield her fancy sword,
something big plowed into the hapless ogre. Almost instantly Chubb
found himself with no remaining limbs of any sort. “Why for you
kill Chubb?” he whined at the massive, shining knight standing over
him.
Muscle Man ignored him,
favoring Issana with a grin after taking off his helm. The guy was
mountain-sized and his helmet hadn't even mussed up his glorious
golden hair. You could probably see the gleam of his flashing white
teeth in the depths of the Gorfingel Gold Mines. He swept into a deep
bow. “Are you well, my lady?”
“Um...quite.” Issana
polished the blood off her gauntlets as the last of Chubb's health
fled, leaving him a wraith. “Chubb was just dying.”
©2017 by H. Linn Murphy
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