Day Three

My sentence today was: “Ow…what the hell! I told Tanris I wasn’t ready for that level of spell craft”

I was never one for the ‘real’ world. The ones in my head were always much more interesting. I could spend hours, as a child, in my back yard pretending to be a princess or a warrior saving the day. So when I got my first computer at fourteen a whole new world was opened up to me. I never knew there were so many people just like me. Longing to get lost in the fiction of magic, or space, or other planets. Online gaming came quite naturally for me. It was easy to create characters and back stories, and engulf my self in a world that only existed on a server somewhere half way across the world. To me this was my real world, and my friends in it meant more to me than anyone I had ever met in the ‘real’ world.

Like many people do I had alined myself to a rag-tag group of people close to my level of experience to create a clan. There was me, Vela, a tenth level human mage. Tanris, a ninth level warrior elf. Grange, a twelfth level dwarf assassin. And Kai, a 10th level human cleric. We were a close clan, we had been playing and fighting together for almost a year now. We didn’t know each others real names or where we lived. Only what was in the game- the game was real. The game was all we needed.

One not so important day we were messing about looting towns and building our collective gold stash so that we could download a new expansion pack that was only available to buy with in-game currency.

” We should go on a quest for gold, looting like this is going to take forever” said Grange.

“Agreed” Kai said “We are still 100,000 gold pieces away from our goal and at this rate it will be next month before we have enough to purchase the ‘Black Winter’ expansion. By that time everyone will have it and we get slaughtered by the Grublings. They have had the expansion for a week already”.

“Ok, which quest should we pick?” I said. I knew this had been a topic of fierce debate for a few days now. Tanris and Kai wanted to do the ‘Elemental Sacrifice’ quest. But I knew that I could not do that, it required spells that I had not yet mastered and I didn’t feel strong enough. I needed more XP. Grange had my back, he knew it would be a suicide mission for me, and we both felt that the ‘Spinsters Wife’ was a much better choice. They both rewarded 100,000 coin but the ‘Spinsters Wife’ would take us significantly longer. “You know where Grange and I stand on this debate”.

“Actually” Grange started “I have been thinking about this. I believe that you have the skill and spells required to complete this quest”.

“What?” I yelled

“If we play our cards just right Kai can stun the black walkers with an incantation long enough for you to finish them off with a fire and ice spell” he said.

“We have been over this a hundred times, the timing is too precise, if anything goes wrong I will die.” I stated.

“Not if I heal you” Tanris said. “I have enough magics to heal you because of my elf heritage, and you can do this Vela”.

“So everyone is agreed on this plan?” I asked. Everyone looked around at each other and began shaking their heads. “Fine, I don’t want to argue anymore. Lets just get this over with. I picked up an orb of solaris last week that can regenerate my character without loosing any XP. So when this plan fails horribly, and it will, I can at least salvage myself.”

The next day we all headed to the edge of the Black Forest where the entrance to the ‘Black Winter’ quest was. Everyone was decked out in their best armor and weaponry. It was going to take everything we had to beat this thing. This would be the hardest quest we had ever attempted. Too hard if you asked me. But since no one did, here we are, ready to give it all we have. We started in, Grange leading us. I was a close second since this was basically a quest built for mages. Tanris and Kai followed closely. We had just cleared the brush when a fire ball flew out of the left and headed right towards me. I shouted a spell to block the hurling ball of flaming ice but it didn’t work. It hit me square in the chest launching me from my feet. The sensation was weird. It burned as I felt my extremities freeze. When I hit the ground I was in a block of ice, unable to move and barely able to breath.

“Retreat!!!” I heard Grange yell in a muffled voice. “We cant do this without her, there is no time to unfreeze her.” Kai came up and grabbed me, dragging me along he raced to the brush that we had entered from. Tanris was deflecting ice arrows best he could to give us cover. Once we were out of the forest the others tried to get me out of the ice. Kai tried an enchantment- nothing. Tanris just stood there while Grange took his huge mallet and slammed it into my chest. The ice began to crack. He hit me again and the ice broke. The spell was broken.

“Ow…what the hell! I told Tanris I wasn’t ready for that level of spell craft” I screamed “I almost died back there”.

“Sorry” they all spoke in unison.

“Guess we should head over to the ‘spinsters wife’ if we are ever going to get enough coin to buy this damn expansion pack” Grange huffed and began to walk away.