The Dragon's Wrath: Shadows in the Flame (26 page)

Creaking of the hull unnerving us even more, I drew my axe and released it into the thick flesh as lightning and shadow magic flew through the sky. Barely cutting into the armored arm of the squid, I stole a glance at my petrified crew and bellowed.

“ATTACK OR DIE!”

In a flurry of movements, magic was shot forth as thunder cracked the air around me and screams and shouts were heard. Consumed by the moment and instinct taking over, I blindly attacked the arms attached to the ship as I managed to hack off a three-foot section. With the arm violently retracting back into the ocean, two massive tentacles with large clubs adorned with serrated hooks, barbed hooks, and swiveling hooks erupted out and began to wildly swing about as it tried to grab whatever it could, blind to what was behind the wooden sides of the ship.

In an instant a man was knocked overboard by the backside of the club as another was wrapped up. Extending my hand and shooting out a pulsating tether of electricity, my arc lightning immediately repelled the creature as it dropped the severely wounded man and pulled back.

Golden hands aglow behind me as axes were swung ferociously around me in an attempt to dismember the creature, sections and chunks of the kraken’s arms fell to the deck of the ship as blue blood splattered about. Pulling my axe back once more, I attempted to meet the tentacle club as it swung by and clashed with the insane weight and force of the creature. The impact dislocated my shoulder and broke my arm as the axe lodged deeply into its flesh.

Retracting its tentacle in a blur that could hardly be seen amongst the white water that was splashing all around us, the axe handle was ripped from my hands as an intense sharp pain shot through my body and nearly turned my vision entirely white. Emanating from my arm and shooting up through my shoulder and down through the forearm, I clenched my teeth as my vision started to return only to witness another man being knocked overboard and into the cold waters.

Leaning over the side of the boat as I stared back into the eye of the beast, I jumped overboard and into the water. Hitting the water headfirst, I immediately opened my eyes and took one stroke in order to position myself in front of the gigantic black eye. Raising my functional arm and opening the palm of my right hand, I continued to hold my breath as I shot an arc lightning straight into the eye of the monster.

The dissipating energy barely reached as I kicked and swam closer to the eye of the monster, only to suddenly be jerked to the side as I struggled to hold my air from the impact. Sharp burning sensations registered all over my body as I was whipped from side to side beneath the waves and arrows and magic continued to rain down.

Then as if by chance or luck I was released and thrown to the surface with my head breaking out and gasping for air. Choking on the water that had managed to enter my mouth, I turned back down and faced the creature that appeared to be shifting its position. Releasing its arms from around the ship entirely, it retreated down into the depths as anger filled my mind. It was running… it was escaping.

My eyes burning a bright red, I used a flash step underneath the waves and quickly appeared directly in front of its eye once more, pulling a knife from a sheath on my chest, I reached out with my broken left arm as the pain nearly did me in and grabbed at the lip around the eye. Holding on as it dragged me down with it, the pain forced my left eye shut as I winced and plunged the dagger into its eye with my right hand.

Twisting my grip and pulling on the dagger as it sliced down through the open eye, odd sounds of a high-pressure liquid being squirted out could vaguely be heard as numerous arms wrapped around me and overwhelming pain enveloped me. Dozens of intense burning sensations filled my entire body as the hooks stabbed through me and my vision turned black.

Pulled into a cloud of ink with thirty or forty holes throughout my body, my mind was starting to shut down from the pain as I somehow managed to hold my breath. Barely conscious, I could sense the creature moving me about as I traveled rapidly through the water. Clipping something hard with my waist, I could no longer feel my legs.

My dagger still in my hand but with hardly any strength left, I found myself surrounded by soft warm flesh that constricted and hugged me at every turn. With the presence of the hooks no longer able to be felt and with a texture different than the arms and tentacles, my mind was lost as to what was going on.

I couldn’t feel anything but the mushy flesh… of the insides of the squid. Realizing the situation, the miraculous epiphany brought me back as I took the knife and ran it along the interior of the squid. The hard surface being the beak of the squid, I had been swallowed whole sans my legs and was now traveling through the mouth and down towards the esophagus and eventually into the stomach. Then another light flashed before my eyes as I let go of the knife. The brain of a squid was near its mouth… between its eyes and behind the beak or jaws. The heart was further down by the stomach.

I was entering the stomach now… I was near the heart.

My air nearly gone and my blood loss already nearly fatal, with vision blank and only the senses of my burning body contacting the flesh of the squid, I made up my mind. Curling up as best as I could, I began to draw what little power I had left as my consciousness began to fade.

Fading in and out as I mentally mouthed the words.

“
Through power.”

“Darkness turns to light.”

“Render all to ash….
”

“Dis….”

“…char….”

“…ge.”

And then as if I had reached salvation, there I was in the realm of blues and grays as the pain had left me and my mind had returned to a state of normalcy. A sense of calm washing over me as the world turned to emptiness.

I had died yet again and the results of the hunt scared me.

Sitting down in spirit form, I stared up at the river in the sky and watched as the currents took it far out to sea. If my knowledge of the game was right, this was Bergenheim’s spirit graveyard. This was where players went when they died.

The fight was quick, maybe no more than a minute in actual action yet I watched multiple warriors get knocked overboard and into the ocean. One man was severely wounded but Katherine had started a holy light to heal him. Kate was still standing behind me when I dove down… I only hoped she was still standing now.

If I accepted the resurrection penalty and came back to life, all of my current questions and doubts would be answered. Yet if those answers were bad… I, well, I didn’t want any more bad news. My eyes began to grow heavy as my emotions got the better of me, thoughts of losing Kate after losing Selene… of losing more men and women to the fight after losing so many already, it was beginning to affect me.

To be left with nothing but the ashes of the fallen once again… or in this case, perhaps left with nothing but the memories of the drowned. Maybe that’s why I did it. I wasn’t sure why I dove down into the depths after the creature. A spur of the moment decision, an instinctual reaction to the monster getting away after having suffered casualties.

The creature was killable, I knew that.

I realized that during the fight, that we had the upper hand and that we were making progress… that the monster could be killed. When it retreated, my hopes and dreams went down into those depths with it. My chance to save my image in the public’s eyes, my chance to prove to Annalie that no task was too difficult, and lastly, to prove to myself that it could be done.

It had to be done.

My decision was made and my resolve was tested, this was the result. I couldn’t run from the outcome as the ending had already been reached. One would have to face the consequences of his or her actions. That was a lesson I knew all too well.

Accepting the resurrection, I was immediately hit with four golden beams of light as my level increased the same respective amount. A gigantic amount of experience had been granted as I opened the combat log and glossed over the details.

The [Minor Armored Colossal Squid] had been killed.

It was dead… the kraken… was dead.

Standing in the center of Bergenheim near their bonfire, all of the feelings of regret faded for an instant as a surge of pride hit me hard in the chest.

“I did it,” I mumbled to myself as I struggled to contain a grin.

But no sooner than the feeling had arrived, all sense of pride disappeared in an instance as the reality sunk in once more. I still didn’t know who survived. Activating the Soul Link with Katherine, it opened without issue and a sigh of relief escaped my lips before I telepathically messaged her.

“Katherine are you okay?” I asked in a hurry.

“Oh Sigurd, oh you’re alive!” she said with a panic that was out of character. Sighing over the mental link, she then hesitated for a second and seemed to regain her composure. “Hah… I suppose you don’t die though. Even so it sends my heart into a flutter… I wish you wouldn’t do that to me.”

“I’m sorry, I had no other way,” I said with some reservation as I paused to ask the next question. Scared of the answer that might come, I forced myself to ask anyways. “The… the troops, how are they… we-were casualties suffered?”

A long pause came after the end of my question that only served to worsen my feeling of remorse and guilt. Ten seconds lead to twenty then eventually to thirty as no reply came back. My nerves were being tested as my emotions were on a rollercoaster of highs and lows, my patience running thin, I couldn’t wait for an answer any longer.

But I did wait, I held my tongue and waited.

Then almost three agonizing minutes later the reply finally came.

“I’m sorry for the delay dear,” she said with a cheerful tone. “We lost the ship.”

Confused by the tone and the word choice, I was completely baffled and dumbstruck by the response. Standing in the middle of Bergenheim with players now staring at me due to my sudden appearance and the four golden beams being a very rare if not highly improbable sight, I was completely lost as to what Kate had meant.

Waiting for her to clarify, I stood there with blank eyes and vision blurred. Focusing on nothing as the people stared and walked by, they were invisible to me as my mind tried to process what all had happened.

“Sorry again,” she said after another minute had passed. “Busy swimming at the moment, we’re all accounted for and are being helped aboard the sister ship. Where are you now Sigurd, where should we head to?”

Hearing her words brought instant relief to me as a single tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. A single tear of happiness that everyone had made it out… they were all safe. My emotions had been wound up more so than I had realized. I was emotionally compromised and no matter what I told myself, the loss of these… people, these individuals were hard to take.

They were more than NPCs to me.

Days, weeks, and months spent with them had established them at the level of friends… they were nearly inseparable from a real friend, save for the fact that I could only interact with them in-game. The thought of losing them was as bad as the thought of losing a friend in real life… and that was a problem.

I had a serious problem.

“Sigurd?” she asked again. “Are you there dear?”

“Ah… yeah, I’m in Bergenheim,” I replied while my mind wandered. “Take your time getting back… make sure everyone is safe, be careful please.”

Sitting down and leaning my head back into the fire, I let it burn away some hairs as I ignored the pain and tried to clear my mind. Leaning forward after the majority of my hair on the backside had been singed off, I decided it was time for some personal changes. We would return to Dragon’s Breach and carry on with my original plans but there would need to be distance between me and the men and women that served me.

Maybe… maybe not.

Accepting the fact that friends could be lost in war was a reality I faced and in this game it was no different. There was no need to distance myself from my friends out of fear of mourning their deaths. We all die. Everyone will die at some point, to grieve is normal.

There was nothing wrong with worrying about the safety of your friends.

My problem was with the level of emotion, I didn’t want it to be as strong as it was… but that was one of my flaws. Nonchalant and uncaring, apathetic to life in general but when it came to losing someone, that was the one real emotion that hit me hard.

It was the one thing that told me, I was still normal.

There was nothing wrong with me.

“Just a little emotional,” I whispered as I let out a laugh and stood up.

Kate would be arriving in thirty minutes most likely, given that the location of the kraken wasn’t all that far from the port town. Heading over to the inn where we had gathered in the morning, the daylight would soon pass but with the night came the opportunity for a new day.

I lost a longship but gained something in return. The ability to captivate an audience. In my possession was the only game footage of a successful fight with a sea monster. A kraken… a [Minor Armored Colossal Squid] that granted far too much experience. It was a raid encounter on the high seas. Open world Player versus Environment at its core.