Adam Drake - Blackout

Thorm shook his head. “My apologies, commander, but I am afraid another matter has come up.” He gave me a wink.

Gravely disappointed the commander said, “I understand. We will still move ahead without you although your absence will be felt. Mayhap another adventurer will take up our cause.” The last was said with a pointed look at me.

Amused, I quickly said, “Sorry, sir. But I am the reason he must leave in the first place.” Some quest givers were quite persistent.

“I understand,” the commander said. Then he turned to Thorm. “Now for your reward as promised.” He reached into a small chest which sat on the floor next to him and pulled out a large sky-blue feather. It gave off a metallic glint in the light. “A Pegasus Feather.”

Thorm took it and smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

I blinked in amazement. “You’re on a special mount quest?”

Thorm nodded and stashed the beautiful feather into his inventory. “Yup. This only makes the second feather, with maybe a dozen more to go. Then there’s the magical saddle quest and another to free a featherless horse from an air castle, or something. I haven’t looked to far ahead on the requirements.”

“And you’d have a Pegasus for a mount? I flying horse? Dang,” I said impressed. “Maybe I should start that one, too.”

Thorm chuckled. “If you do, be ready to kill a lot of orcs.”

The commander said, “Your quest is complete. Good journeys to you, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Thorm.

A system message appeared.

Thorm Brightsword has attained a new level. Congratulations!

“Ding,” said Thorm casually.

“Gratz!” I said.

“Gimme a minute to distribute my points.”

We walked out of the chamber leaving the commander to worry over his map.

Outside, Thorm paused to scrutinize his Holy Knight skill tree.

Now I was safely away from the rabble of would-be bounty hunters, I felt it safe to remove the Mute All Players option in my settings.

The moment I did, a chat request appeared in my lower vision. Bishop The Red, again. With a scoff I canceled his requested.

“Hmm,” said Thorm pensively.

“What’s up?”

“Can’t decide on how to spend my points.”

I laughed. “You’ve been at this level for how long, and you’ve never taken any time to consider what you’d do with the points once you got them? It’s my main obsession.” Truth be told, owning the Cloak of Shadows had put a kink in my leveling plans. The abilities it granted me negated some Shadow skill branches, like Phase. Now I needed to consider other skill branches.

Of course, if someone killed me and took the Cloak then my character would be pretty gimped as a result. More than gimped, actually.

I tried not to get irritated at the prospect.

“Okay,” Thorm finally said. “Done.”

“Where’d ya put ’em?”

“Initiated a Hit Point Regeneration ability, which I didn’t have before. After that near death encounter with the orcs I think having it passively active might save my butt in the future.”

“Good call,” I said, a little jealous. No hit point regeneration for Shadows, unfortunately. We’re Health Boost addicts.

“So, Wally’s Womp,” Thorm said. I’d filled him in on my entire situation. It was good to have an ally on board.

I took out the map the Locators Guild cartographer had given me and unfurled it.

It had changed from when I first looked it over. Before, I was in Ingot’s Perch and the route of gates started out from there. But now I was in Farewell Falls. The map had adjusted itself to take that in account presenting a new route.

“Lots of gates,” Thorm said. “I think I spend half my time in this game just traveling to the next one.”

“Yeah, but I’m grateful that this game even has fast travel. There are hardcore servers without it. Takes weeks, even months to get anywhere. And do not get me started on how those players get to other planets.”

“Okay,” he said, looking at the map. “The first gate is just north of here.”

We both mounted and rode out of the keep’s entrance. The soldiers there cheered. By completing the commander’s quest Thorm had raised his reputation with this group fairly high.

“I’m a rock star!” Thorm said.

Past dead bodies of orcs and humans, we rode away from the keep and its carnage and into the forest. Within a few minutes we found a narrow dirt road and followed it north.

“Any word from Mudhoof?” Thorm asked as we thundered along. His snow-leopard ran with a strange loping motion.

“None,” I said. “I’ll try him again.”

I sent the chat request and waited, bidding my time by watching the forest pass by. It soon became apparent Mudhoof was still unavailable or just didn’t want to answer. I canceled the request.

Part of me felt Mudhoof was angry, but I tried not to let it bother me. Or maybe I was just making a big deal out of nothing.

The terrain changed, and the trees thinned out to the point we were running across a grassy plain. Far in the distance I could see the circular outline of a travel gate.

Thorm turned to say something when he looked past me. “Look over there.”

I did.

Close by, a river meandered its way through the plains. At its edge were a group of adventurers who looked to have recently slain some orcs. Orc bodies were everywhere, and the victors were busy looting them. But what gave Thorm concern were a few of these players were looking in our direction with intense interest.

A group that size wouldn’t be threatened by a pair of players riding by.

Then it hit me. Maybe we were being assessed. If they happened to be bounty hunters, things would get interesting fast.

As we moved on past, the players who watched us turned to speak to the others. Soon all of them had stopped looting and stared. Even over this great a distance they could pull up our information.

And my character’s information prominently displayed its bounty status.

“Not good,” I said, and glanced at the distant gate. Still far.

“Yup,” Thorm said. “And here they come!” The other group had all summoned mounts and began to ride straight at us.

“Maybe they just want to use the travel gate, too,” I said, but couldn’t convince myself. About twenty players were now coming after us at full speed.

“You certainly have a large fan base, Miss Valesh,” Thorm said.

“Everyone wants an autograph,” I said with a forced laugh. This was annoying. All because of Ogden Trite.

It became apparent we’d reach the gate well before the group would catch up with us. They shouted. Some even tried firing arrows at us but came up short.

We focused on pushing our mounts to their maximum speed. The travel gate sat on a patch of barren earth surrounded by tall grass.

“Once we’re through, we’ll make a b-line straight to the next gate. Eventually they’ll get bored or we’ll lose them,” Thorm said.

I nodded as we charged up to the circular travel gate, its silver surface shimmering like water.

The moment before we jumped through the gate I glanced back to find some of our pursuers alarming close. Their expressions were intense.

These guys weren’t going to stop. What the heck was I going to do?

Then we crossed over the gate’s terminus and the world changed.

Thorm and I emerged at a seaside port at the edge of a large city.

A myriad of ships were docked here, loading and unloading goods. Stacks of crates and boxes formed a mountain range down the wharf. There were people everywhere, mostly workers.

A small group of players were next to the gate, about to use it.

Without slowing we ran right past them, and I nearly knocked over a sorceress in a black robe.