Unforeseen path, p.5
Unforeseen Path, page 5
“What do you need us to do, Pherala?” Ashely asked like she would to anyone else on her team. It took repeating the question twice before the Centauride’s terror-filled eyes would turn away from the Wraith Hound pack to acknowledge her, “How do you want to do this?”
“The Pack is on our side,” Connor soothingly said, patting Ankou and Herne on the necks as he stepped between his pets and the Centauride.
“They’re wraith-cursed,” Pherala said with an undertone of fear in her voice, “Our legends say such monsters hate the living and feed off of their life essence.” Her golden eyes studied the dark gray pack defensively surrounding the Light Elf as they faced down the slope towards the hidden enemy while coming to a decision. “But I’ll readily admit their connection with you seems to be very different,” a conflicted look flashed across her face, “and we’re desperately going to need their help if we’re going to pull off this escape.”
“We’ll pack up all of the iron bolt cartridges on the Bone Sleds and any arrows the rest of you can give to the cause,” Pherala said in a tone that brooked no argument, “While the raid hides in your spider-holes,” she flashed the players that she’d asked to join them with a smile, “the rest of us will be doing our best to get the enemy to chase after us. If that works, once the Hobgoblins and their Plague Hunters have passed, I’d suggest you meet up with the stealth raid at the graveyard and head back to the Sulfuric Springs with all possible haste.”
“I didn’t say we were calling off our harassment-,” Kyarina began to argue as many of the Devil Dogs and Valkyrie players bristled at the thought of running from the enemy.
“Hold up, and let Pherala explain,” Ashely barked, catching everyone by surprise.
Ashley had decided to just put the Centauride into the slot of being one of her soldiers. It was just easier that way. So, if her Scout was dropping a truth bomb on her, she was at least going to listen to her soldier’s reasoning.
“Thank you,” Pherala said, dipping her head in thanks. Jerking her chin at the growling Wraith Hounds, she continued, “Even the wraith-cursed can sense the Plague Hunters from here. They are the Hobgoblins pets that they use to run down their four-legged enemies,” her mouth curled in distaste, “and are one of the beasts they used to push my tribe from the Plains of Atoll. One diseased bite from the monsters and you’re infected.” She visibly shivered at the memory. “Death quickly follows afterward.”
“Is that why you want us to fall back to what, BrokenFang Hold?” Kyarina asked, sharing a glance with Ashley, “And why can’t we just circle back around to harass the enemy like normal once we outrun these Plague Hunters?”
“You don’t outrun Plague Hunters once they’re released,” Pherala hauntingly said, her face hard as she met the Valkyrie woman’s dismissive smirk head-on, “And if we can’t hold their attention, you’ll find out what I’m speaking of quickly enough.”
“We’ll take your words under consideration,” Ashley hurriedly said, stepping between the two of them as the Wraith Hounds began to grow tenser, “For now, what should we do?”
“Pack up the BAMFs on the Bone Sled, so if the spider-holes don’t work, they won’t be lost to the enemy,” Pherala said, glancing at the Dread Herd, “with Zror’s herd’s help, we should be able to keep ahead of the Plague Hunters even with the extra weight.” The Centauride nodded to the players that she’d selected. “Then, we’ll do a run at the enemy and try to get them to chase us. If we’re successful-”
“We won’t be taking a trip to the graveyard,” Ashley finished, nodding in understanding as everyone grimaced. Giving the Centauride a nod of thanks, she turned to the raid, “Alrighty people, let’s get moving. We’ve got,” she glanced at Connor.
“Maybe five or ten minutes tops,” he said, after a moment.
“We’ve got five minutes to get the sleds loaded up and into our camouflage spider-holes!”
It was a tight squeeze. Both guilds worked hard to get the BAMFs anchors out of the ground and loaded up on the sled. There was some disagreement on the number of quivers to share out from everyone’s personal supplies but as Ashley succinctly pointed out. If they were discovered by the enemy, it sounded like they wouldn’t be able to respawn at their gravestones to recover their gear.
That point caused even more of a ruckus, but one that everyone finally grudgingly agreed made sense. By the time five minutes had gone by, both Bone Sleds were loaded up and heading out while the rest of them hurried up the ridge to disappear. The trickiest part about the whole situation was that they were simply guessing at how close the enemy was before they were within Darkvision range. Not that it exactly helped that their spider-holes were on the backside of the slope.
“Make sure you crawl over the top of the ridge!” Ashley commanded as everyone hurried up the slope.
“Why the hell would we do that?” Jorgen, one of the Valkyrie Warriors, asked as the Devil Dogs dropped to the ground to scurry up the remaining distance to the ridge.
“Because you’ll clearly stand out against the skyline to anyone looking up the slope in this direction,” Vector Fisher, a Frost mage / Warrior / Priest, irritably snapped, “So stop complaining and get down on your hands and knees!”
“Wait,” Lylirra Valkyrie, a Frost mage, suddenly said, “What are you guys talking about again?”
“Um,” Vector stuttered in surprise, “How best to keep hidden from the enemy when crossing a ridge.”
“Damn, my fault,” Lylirra apologized while trying not to smile, “It sort of sounded like Jorgen was trying to talk me into some bedroom shenanigans for a second.”
“Hey now,” Jorgen protested in indignation as everyone chuckled, “I never asked like that before.”
“Sure, you haven’t,” Kyarina teasingly said, giving the rest of the raid a broad wink.
“Now we know why you never get any lovin,” Vardrid added with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Ew, burn,” the raid chorused as Ashley gave Lylirra an appreciative nod.
Joking hard always helped release tension in their guild and, from everyone’s reaction, it helped to take the sting out of Vector’s words. The other woman simply gave her a wink as they hurriedly crawled over the hilltop. Crouched low, they hurried down the far side of the slope to the camouflaged trap doors as the Devil Dogs began helping the Valkyrie players inside.
In one way, it was better that the spider-holes were on the opposite side of the hilltop and out of sight because if any of them had been seen by the enemy, it would help make them think they’d actually run for it instead of hiding in place. As she and Shelly made sure the trapdoor lids were well blended into the ground cover, Daiki, Allen, Vector, and Matt began making tracks further down the hill. They’d gotten about half of the false trails laid when the sounds of nearby fighting came to their ears.
“How far away do you think they are?” Shelly asked as they began carefully wiping their footprints away.
“Not far enough,” Daiki muttered as Allen and Matt hurried over to them.
“The rest of you need to get into your spider-holes,” Vector ordered as the rest of them nodded.
None of them balked at the ex-Cav Scout taking the lead. Being ex-military, all of them knew much about each other’s MOSs and deployment history when they were on active duty. Vector, like her husband Killtet, was skilled in infiltration deep inside enemy lines and was the best out of all of them at camouflage and hiding tracks. That was why the rest of them simply nodded and followed orders.
Though Ashley was from a Cav unit, she wasn’t an expert in forward observation due to her support and command role. Even so, she was trained in much of the same skills as Vector which was why she was second to the last to go into her own spider-hole.
“Let’s hope this works,” Vector murmured in a low voice as he held up the trap door for her. By then, the numerous sounds of running feet, inhuman shrieking howls, and guttural commands being bellowed out from many throats on the other side of the hill were all too close for comfort.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Ashley agreed, unlimbering her new shield and sword before dropping into the earthen hole with her knees tucked up to her chin.
The darkness was complete as Vector hurriedly sealed her inside and moved on to his own spider-hole. To say it was cramped would’ve been an understatement. They hadn’t truly been expecting to need the fallback position, but if there was one thing Marines and Cav Scouts loved to do, it was digging holes, Ashley jokingly thought. Most of their training emphasized digging some sort of foxhole or observation blind whenever they took up a defensive position for any length of time.
At least, the holes were shallow enough to crouch down inside. While that made the space that much more claustrophobic, on the plus side, they’d be able to pop out and fight relatively easily if they were discovered. She just hoped the Valkyrie players didn’t have a problem with the tight spaces, Ashley thought, hearing Vector’s ruffling sounds stop as he got his own spider-hole sealed up.
It always surprised her that the innovative hidey-hole wasn’t all that original. In truth, the camouflage technique had been used by Humans since the dawn of time. It was copied from an arachnid creatively named a Trapdoor Spider. Though, she’d argued that modern special operations teams had taken the technique to a new level.
To Ashley’s surprise, they didn’t have long to wait. It had only felt like they’d been waiting for a minute, when an inhuman shrieking howl rang out from, what she assumed, the hilltop. The disturbing sound snapped her out of her contemplation as savage growls filled the air. Next, she heard the sounds of many clawed feet as the creatures raced down the slope. A half-second later, they were over the top of their position snuffling the ground loudly as a large pack of something began searching for their missing prey.
The stench of the monsters made her skin crawl. It actually made the rotting flesh of Zombies smell pleasant in comparison, Ashely thought in horror as a cold shiver ran down her spine. These things must be the Plague Hunters that Pherala had been talking about earlier. A part of her wondered what the disgusting beasts looked like as the noise above them got louder.
No … no … no! Ashely urgently thought as she heard the pack begin digging at the rocky ground with their paws in confusion. It was crazy that she could smell the creatures’ overwhelming stench even through the sealed trapdoor. As Ashley gipped the hilt of her blade tightly preparing to burst out of her spider-hole, she suddenly heard part of the pack take off further down the slope. From the sound of it, the creatures had found the false trails that the guys had set up.
While that was a relief, the problem was it took only one of the monsters to get lucky and snag the lip of one of their trapdoors. It wouldn’t take much for a Hobgoblin to recognize the regular shape embedded into the ground. Imagining that she wasn’t the only one starting to freak out at the commotion, Ashley made sure she was still on raid chat as she began mentally typing.
“Give a shout if your cover is blown and the rest of us will come out swinging!” Ashley sent to the raid, getting a handful of confirmations back almost immediately. She obviously wasn’t the only one getting wound up.
Closing her eyes, Ashley did her best to calm her beating heart as cold trails of sweat began running down her back under her armor. There was something about waiting to be discovered by snuffling monsters that made your skin crawl. If they were all going to end up dying, she swore that she’d rather just get the shit over with sooner rather than later. Her eyes cracked open to slits as the trapdoor above her began shaking from the digging claws of an especially excited Plague Hunter. She was about to say fuck it and attack when a guttural bellow caught her by surprise.
“Það er greinilega ekkert þeirra heimska dýr,” an angry Hobgoblin snarled as a solid thwack rang out above her. The digging instantly stopped to be replaced with pitiful whimpers as the gravelly voice cruelly continued, “Farðu að veiða með restina af pakkanum þínum!”
For a long second, she held her breath waiting for the expected sound of the trapdoor being forcibly removed. One … two … three, Ashley silently counted the seconds down, prepared to slaughter as many of the ugly pumpkin-headed bastards as she could before they could cut her down. It was almost a letdown when she reached a hundred twenty seconds. That’s when she noticed the massed sounds of clawed feet passing by overhead were all but gone.
“So, does anyone have a clue as to how long we should wait before checking to see if the coast is clear?” Kyarina suddenly asked, not bothering to type the message out.
“Good question,” Shelly said, choosing to forgo mentally typing out the message too, “What do you think Ashley, Vector?”
“I’d wait another three minutes just to be safe,” Ashely replied, after automatically checking the time on her HUD.
How many minutes had it taken for the Hobgoblins to reach the hilltop after they’d cleared the other side? It was a good question. Was it five or ten minutes? Ashley mulled the problem over while the seconds ticked down, silently glad that she’d had the sense to listen to Pherala’s advice this time around.
What was stuck in Ashely’s head was that the Centauride must have had the right of it. The Hobgoblins would’ve had to have been waiting for them to go after the BAMF parts this whole time. They had the intelligence to pick up when their stealth group had entered their camp and had used that distraction to ambush their main raid.
It was a terrifying thought. If Pherala and Zror hadn’t picked up on that, there was no doubt in Ashley’s mind that the Hobgoblins would’ve managed to capture the rest of the components they needed to craft their own BAMF. The last thing she wanted to have to do was explain to everyone how they’d fucked up and been outwitted by a bunch of in-game monsters. Before she could mentally flagellate anymore, Vector’s voice sounded in her ears.
“I’m gonna take a peek now.”
There was a long pause as Ashley held her breath waiting to see if they’d been suckered by the Hobgoblins again or not. There was a slight scuffling sound of rocks and earth being moved as she pictured Vector carefully titling up the trapdoor enough to look all around them. She let out a sigh of relief at the ex-Cav Scout’s next words.
“The coast is clear, but hold up a second longer,” Vector said in a low whisper, “I’m gonna check the backside of the hill just in case.”
Ashley didn’t hear a sound as Vector moved out. In her mind’s eye, she could see him carefully crawling back up to the ridge to have a look around. It might sound ridiculous, but she honestly didn’t trust these Hobgoblins not to have another trick up their sleeves.
“It’s all clear as far as I can tell,” Vector’s voice came a few minutes later. As they all carefully began crawling out of their spider-holes, the ex-Cav Scout continued softly, “If you switch to normal vision mode, you’ll be able to see the force that they sent after us towards the east.”
Keeping low to the ground, Ashley carefully crawled out onto the ground, before fitting the trapdoor carefully back into place. As she looked around at the rest of the raid, it looked like everyone else was playing it safe. Rising up to a crouch, she scanned the plains towards the east and gulped at what she saw.
“Un-fucking-believable,” Ashely muttered under her breath in horrified awe.
There was a stretched-out line of Hobgoblins that had to be several thousand in number long jogging in the direction that she assumed Pherala and Connor had headed in with their Bone Sleds. While that was bad enough, it was the disgusting packs of misshapen monstrosities ranging out ahead of the pumpkin-headed bastards that made her skin crawl. Not that she could see the creatures clearly but what she could make out in the shimmering moonlight was terrifying to behold.
They were nearly half the size of a terrestrial horse but much thinner and moved like a pack of hungry wolves across the plains. As her eyes studied them, she swore it looked like their skin was sloughing off their emaciated bodies. Boy was she glad that she’d listened to Pherala on this one, Ashely thought, shivering at the memory of their awful stench.
“I think it’s safe enough for us to start heading for the graveyard,” Vector suddenly said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Take the lead, Vector,” Ashely said, after getting a nod from Kyarina, “and let’s move out.”
Chapter Five
(Monday, May 12th / Day 22 of The World.)
(Startum Ironwolf waking up and logging in outside of Darom.)
Beep … beep … beep
Throwing my covers back, I sat up on the side of the bed while automatically reaching for the smartphone on my nightstand to dismiss the alarm. Even though it was five o’clock in the morning, I was instantly awake. As I stood up and stretched to my full height, I silently marveled at how much better a good night’s sleep could make you feel as the ligaments and bones noisily popped throughout my body.
Well, that was more like two solid nights’ sleep and a half-day off, I mentally corrected myself, grabbing the large water cup from the nightstand and heading for the bathroom. Taking care of business, I downed the cup of water, cleaned up, and jumped in the shower. I was out in just a few minutes instead of soaking up the wet heat like most mornings.
Toweling myself off, I was amazed at how well I felt. The crippling soreness of overused muscles that I’d had during the first three weeks of playing was nearly gone. I’d been mostly there about a half week ago, but then we’d been forced to ride all day long for three days straight to keep the horde of Orcs at bay. After that, I’d been barely able to walk after logging out. It was such a relief not to be constantly in pain that I’d nearly forgotten how that felt.
Not bothering to get dressed, I headed to the kitchen feeling like a new man. Instead of going to the espresso machine first, I popped open my laptop and started up my favorite playlist. As the song “Die for you” started playing, I hummed to myself, “This could be the day I die for you …” as I started breakfast and turned on the espresso machine.
