Age of Victoria, page 19
“No,” I said again while staring at the Colonel. My blatant rejection of his instruction had him trying to rise from his seat. I had expected this though, his actions before had surprised me, but now I would not let him try and protect me in the name of civility and social standing.
Grabbing the Colonel’s shoulder, I used the full measure of my new strength to hold him seated. The strain was real, I was holding him to his seat with my arm held out straight and from a sitting position myself, but it wasn’t something he could overcome with direct force. The fact that I could hold a fit man to his seat in such an overwhelming way put clearly my argument.
“No Colonel. Women in this world are not weak. Any of the three of us could defeat you in direct action. Women can defend themselves in this world far more ably than in the last. We have fought in this new world, and we should help in the defense,” I said as I held Markus until he calmed himself.
When he finally stopped straining against my hand, I gentled the pressure and tapped my fingers on his shoulder. From the chair beside me, Annie held up her hand and formed a swirling ball of fire, the crackling heat radiating out even as her upturned hand rested directly below it. Annie’s display of danger was eye-opening, but it was Emma’s that drew the Colonel back in his chair. Emma gently muttered while the room darkened then pointed over her shoulder where a puddle of darkness coalesced into a skeletal form that stepped from the shadows. The goblin skeleton’s jagged teeth clicked as it snapped its mouth open and closed for a moment then it settled behind Emma’s chair with both hands gently resting on her arms, its glowing eye sockets just barely peeking over her left shoulder.
“We are more than capable of handling ourselves. The mansion needs to be barricaded and protected. You are right; you need to be the last line of defense against the horde. But we should venture forth and attack these camps. Unlike the last event where the creatures appeared out of thin air, this event says they are gathering at the Den and preparing to attack. We should move through the darkness, get close, and attack these creatures,” I said.
The Colonel was still staring at Emma’s skeleton as I described my plan, but at the idea of us venturing out into the night he shook his head.
Before he could reject my plan, I interrupted him, “No, Colonel. We will be doing this. It’s the best plan, and we know how these creatures react. If it is anything like in the dungeon, we can safely thin our enemies. Sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but you can’t stop us. We need to do this, and you need to defend the mansion so that we can fall back if needed.”
When he saw that Robert supported me and that Annie and Emma seemed confident in the plan, he looked away before nodding. I had hoped that pressing upon him the need for his protection of our fallback point would convince him that I didn’t see him as cowardly, but I wasn’t sure if that would come through clearly. I loved the Colonel, but I wouldn’t let him shove me back in the social box when we were so close to freedom, and this was a matter of life and death, and his plan would lead to death.
“Fine. In the morning you will find this horde and attack the camps. Be careful, if your father returns and I have to tell him that any of you died, I don’t think I would survive the discussion,” he said with a self-deprecating smile.
I hated to push like this after he had capitulated, but we had little time, “Actually, I suggest that we go now. We can attack under cover of darkness and escape if need be. We discovered in the dungeon that sleep is no longer a necessity for survival but only for mental recovery.”
The Colonel glanced at Robert who nodded in agreement. Once he received approval from Robert, another male, he reluctantly agreed. I was annoyed that it took confirmation from Robert to get the Colonel to admit the validity of our plan, but I won agreement for our actions so being upset about the process seemed silly. Annoying, but I was sure to meet other disagreeable and difficult men in our journeys so I should become used to it now.
Rising in concert, we set out on our duties — Markus to prepare the mansion and us to defeat the horde.
Chapter 28
Laying full length in the grass, I stared at the goblins surrounding the campfire. The fire I was near had nothing but level three goblin warriors. Beyond the fact that it was on the edge of the camp, it’s lack of higher level monsters was why it was chosen for our first attempt at this deception. I could smell the wet grass and dirt that was inches from my nose, with my head tucked down only the top of my hair was visible if a monster looked my way. All I could do now was wait for the signal.
Far across the collection of campfires, I watched an eerie green light suddenly appear and float away from the camps. The goblins on the far side of the camps stood and started a hooting call and then rushed out into the darkness. When the goblins closest to me failed to attack, I jumped up and struck the nearest one from the rear with a sideways slice across the back of the neck. The heavy blow combined with offensive stance and surprise, easily removed the monsters head, the red critical damage number flying away with more than double the little creature’s health. Without slowing, I leaped and delivered a two-handed attack on another of the goblins at this camp. By this point, the rest were aware they were under attack, and they charged me together. This was when my sister's fireball impacted at my feet and slaughtered most of the gathering monsters.
The fireball was also the signal that Annie could see the enemies returning from the minion’s distraction. Using the skeleton with a cold light as a disposable distraction was perhaps a bit heartless, but seeing that the skeleton was without a heart and was a puppet for Emma, it seemed appropriate. Annie’s second fireball quickly ended the few goblins which had survived the first blast and together we escaped, ignoring the dropped loot. The point of this was to end the threat, and maybe gain some experience, not gather more rusty swords.
Our escape was a bit skewed, and we ran across a group of approaching goblins. Most of the goblins chased us into the fields beyond the forest. We chose this camp specifically as it was closest to the edge of the trees. After running about fifty feet into the field of grass, the goblins stopped and just looked out into the darkness for many long minutes and then returned to the camp fires. We were lucky it was a new moon and that it was so dark out, on a full moon we would have been plain to see for miles. The grass was not high enough to hide us if there had been more light.
Annie was holding her side when the goblins finally returned, and we rose to retry our attack.
“You all right?” I asked.
With gritted teeth, she yanked a bloody arrow from her side then held it up with a blood-flecked grin. In a sane world that sight would have convinced me that my sister was soon to be meeting her maker. In this new world of insanity, the sight brought me comfort. The debuff was going to fade, and her health was recovering. Robert’s hand on her shoulder and the gentle golden glow of his most efficient heal said that she would be well handled.
Creeping back to the campfires took almost half an hour of our slow movements. Most of our time was spent waiting and checking to see if a sentry had been placed at the most prominent approaches. Strangel,y the behavior of the creatures within the Den continued outside in their camps. They were uninterested in what happened at other camps unless roused to act. Even if they noticed our movements in the darkness, they didn’t attack. At worse, the monsters snarled and returned to looking at the fires.
Ducked down low behind a tree stump I sent a message into chat to keep my instructions silent.
Victoria [Warrior lvl 9] - Emma, you handling things where you are?
Emma [Necromancer lvl 9] - I’m fine. A had to hide while a goblin peed near me.
I could hear Annie snort next to me, to which I threw a dirty look. I wasn’t sure if she noticed it because of the dark, but she settled into silence so I would let it go.
Victoria [Warrior lvl 9] - They behave like we predicted. I want you to group up with us and we will start clearing the camps.
Emma [Necromancer lvl 9] - Moving.
I had noticed a weird phenomenon with the chat window. The easier it was to send text, the less formal our mode of speech became. Posting a single word response in a message would have never have passed Emma’s mind before the apocalypse. I had read Emma’s writing when we had been growing up, her mother had ruthlessly trained her handwriting to match the upper crust. I liked to think Emma’s mother was preparing her to marry some merchant’s son or someone else of a high station that needed a good wife. But the idea of a single word message would have been anathema to all of us. Control of the written word was essential, and a letter was one of the few ways you could completely control an introduction or interaction, to blatantly throw that away with a single word would be tragic. Now though, it was possible to send a single word of a message to anyone in our party with but a flick of a thought. It made more ‘off-the-cuff’ conversations possible.
My musings were broken up when Emma’s form slunk out of the darkness at the edge of the trees and joined the rest of us as we huddled and watched a camp. I say ‘joined,’ but it was more like Emma ‘stumbled over,’ Robert. I heard some stifled giggles from Emma as she cuddled up against Robert’s prone form. The accident was allowing Emma to snuggle next to Robert unobtrusively. Given the giggles from Emma, I wasn’t sure if she had been a ‘stumble’ or more of an ‘intentionally tackled.’
Victoria [Warrior lvl 9] - Professionalism people, we are at war, and these creatures want us dead.
I hated to break up the canoodling, but I could hear my father chastising me to focus on the mission. Odd, since father had never said such a thing to me before, but I was confident that would be what he would say in this situation. Emma’s white toothed grin flashed across the darkness at me before the sounds of the movement grew silent.
I loved both of them, but Emma could become distracted by Robert’s tight pants at the worst of times. Robert was always a gentleman, so I never had to worry about his hands straying to Emma while something important was being dealt with. But, if Emma happened to have a chance for roaming hands, well, Robert was perfectly willing to accept that call to action. Troublesome, but cute in its own way. Robert had a normally reticent nature, confounded by societies take charge demanding behavior, while Emma -sweet, sweet, Emma- was required to stifle her naturally exuberant actions. In this new world, they were both free to act as they would, and that meant a much shyer Robert and a far more direct Emma.
With my goofy happy grin and daydreaming of Emma and Robert’s love story, I almost missed Robert’s signal to advance into the west most camp. The west camp was slightly further away from the rest of the campfires, its closest neighbor had been the one we just cleared out during our testing of the goblin’s behavior.
Pulling myself over a stump, my movements as silent as I could make them, I crept forward. I might as well not have bothered given that the goblins turned to me as I approached. With my new confidence in the goblin’s continued idiotic behavior, I triggered my warcry skill and charged. One of the goblins in the group was an archer, perhaps the one who had winged Annie on her last escape, but it had been hunched over with his bow behind him out of sight when I approached. My failure to see the archer could have been a worry as it restrung its bow in haste, but a taunt had it focused on me instead of my family. A comment about where he liked to store his arrows could do such.
Emma’s giggle, moments after my taunt, was evident even over the clanging of swords against armor and a goblin’s grunt of pain. It was amazing what sounds would carry even during a life and death battle. Father had told a tale of a subordinate passing wind in fear during a cannon battle, flatulence perfectly timed between the roar of the single cannon, but I had thought it a jest to garner laughter from his daughters. Now I didn’t think so. The idea that someone would giggle, or pass gas, or do any number of things during the chaos of battle, made perfect sense to me. Even the whimsy of musing about bodily functions while methodically removing limbs seemed normal now.
The crowd of goblins surrounding me, each attack doing small but persistent damage, was thrown back by Annie’s explosive offense. Only one goblin seemed to be alive after the explosion, but Emma’s lifetap spell of sickly red and green ended that before I could step forward. Our plan called for us to retreat the moment the goblins were dead. If the timing were perfect then Robert’s large heal, beginning to be cast some time in the middle of the battle, would land as I was retreating to the group. With me being the only melee combatant, except for the skeleton, I would be ahead of the group, and they would remain further back. The hope was that they would be safe while I drew attention. Emma’s main aim was to watch for approaching stragglers or patrols. If they found themselves attacked by a group of monsters while I was finishing up multiple enemies, things could be difficult. Emma and Annie’s snare spells would be used to drag their attention away, and then we would quickly retreat. Utilizing the arena snare-and-retreat tactic was the backup plan.
Given the odd forgetfulness and the refusal to leave their camps, a retreat was always the first option. We could always let the goblins calm down and then return to try again. Whatever these Old Ones had done to these creatures, they had damaged their minds. They made useful cannon fodder in large numbers, but elite warriors they were not.
Then, the windows of information agreed. Only one of the goblins in the camp was an ‘elite’ like the ones in the Den. He was also named differently from the rest.
Shan-Dar Clan
Gibbles - Elite
Beast Tamer - Lvl 6
This opponent is beneath you.
I kept my eye on ‘Gibbles’ as we cleared camps. The grossest part about this goblin was not the drool dripping from his mouth, or the way he ate with both hands without tool or cutlery, it was what he was eating. We had found our traitor, and the poor cat had not received the reward it had desired. I should have felt vindicated that a traitor to my family was receiving just punishment, but the fact that it was just a small animal that wanted food: that hurt. Either way, that goblin was trouble, and we would need to end him the same as we would the rest of the camps.
Chapter 29
We continued our hunting throughout the night, the fact that we didn’t need to sleep was pushed for all it was worth. Sometime around two in the morning, we had an event update.
Waves survived 1/10.
This update almost had me cheering, though I refrained since we had been working through killing the camps as silently as possible. It was silly; the goblins knew we were here -some even watched us as we killed off other camps- but it still felt like we should be silent. Using my war cry skill as quietly as possible had me making a weird coughing-bark sound.
I had worried that we could kill for the entire period of the timer and still not reduce the wave. The ‘Cleansing’ event had monsters appearing out of thin air. It was possible those creatures had been conjured from some far off plane of existence to our front walk, a terrifying idea. A far more disturbing idea was that those monsters had been created, ex nihilo, right there and then. The ‘Old Ones’ seemed curiously restricted in ways I couldn’t define. It would be in line with previous restrictions if they were able to recreate the waves at the end of the preparation phase. The counter ticking off the wave gave me confidence that we were making progress. I silenced the little voice inside me that whispered that the wave could be reset to zero and the camps refilled when the timer ends. That would seem to fit the arbitrary rules as well.
At around six the first rays of light started to peek over the horizon and we were joined by the Colonel. I was discomforted to see him across the fields, a saber from the mansion’s game room striking at beetles as he approached. When Annie had noticed him we had backed out of the forest to invite him to the group. He had explained that he needed to gain experience as well and had stationed Philip to guard the mansion. It was unlikely that any goblins would approach with us hunting them here, so it was a sound strategy.
There was an awkward moment when the Colonel tried to give us battle directions. Robert spent a few moments staring at his shoes being unwilling to correct his uncle but also clearly being unable to accept his instructions either. The Colonel had noticed the silence, but he seemed to want to bull through with sheer stubbornness. I could see his point of view. He was a veteran of multiple battles, he was the only one who had held a command, he must see us as little more than children. But as I kept having to remind myself, this was a new world.
“Colonel, this will sound rude to you, but we are the veterans of this new world,” I said.
I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. I had never suffered controlling men well and to have someone I cared for behaving this way caused me more angst than I would typically feel when dealing with such a man. There was no polite way to tell someone that they were acting the fool, but I wasn’t going to fight a running retreat through the woods either. The Colonel’s plan was perfect for the old world, I would agree wholeheartedly, but for this one where we could simply approach and attack, it was impractical.
Mainly since the number of camps had grown even as we killed.
The Colonel’s mustache twitched at my criticism, but he remained silent.
“For the first camp, please watch, we will show you what we have been doing, and then you can join in on the next one. Before we begin, have you distributed your stat points?” I asked.
The quick nod to my plan told me the Colonel would play along with my actions, but at my question he looked into the distance, checking his character sheet I assumed before he focused back to me.
“They appear to have been assigned by this world without my attention. Some in agility, some in vitality, some in strength.”
I winced at that but shrugged, that some of his stats had been assigned in agility was unfortunate, but we couldn’t change it now. I would be sure to inform him of my distribution method when he leveled up next. Given the level of the monsters and the multitude, it was clear he would level eventually.
