We continued walking for Kingdom’s Edge. It’d been enough time that I was pretty confident we were getting close, but I really had no way to tell. Not only were we lacking a map, but because of the forest’s constant tall thicket of trees surrounding us, we wouldn’t even be able to see the mountain range in the distance until we got close.
I was still itching to kill something by the end of the day, but I wasn’t so lucky as to find another Anacap or anything like that. No, by the time the sun had set, we hadn’t found anything at all, much to my annoyance. I wanted – needed – to get stronger.
“Think we should go ahead and set up for the night?” Erani asked. “You… don’t look too good. I think you need some rest.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “And no, there’s still some daylight left. The whole kingdom’s hunting for us now, remember? We should go further while we still can.”
“Yeah, but you really–”
“I said I’m fine. Need to Level up, that’s all. I’m at 325 out of 500, and I’m tired of being Level 9.”
“Are you sure? You sound like you need to rest.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Just… Can you distract me? Tell me a story from your life, or something. I really need to get away from myself for a bit.”
Erani sighed and looked at me worriedly. We walked in silence for a moment, before she finally spoke up, “Did I ever tell you about how I ended up becoming a Sorcerer?”
“No, you didn’t.”“Okay, so I’d just recently turned twenty, and I wasn’t actually planning on getting a Class. I mean, I’d thought about it as a kid and everything – who hasn’t – but it’s not like I had any big ideas about my life as a Classer at that point.”
“Don’t tell me you got yours on accident, too,” I laughed.
“No, no. I mean, that isn’t really possible for Sorcerer. You know the requirements for getting it? You have to kill a monster of at least Level 10 while holding a Spell Crystal in your hand.”
“Oh, yeah, that’d definitely take some pre-planning.”
“Yeah. So, at this point, my sister had already gotten her Class as an Enchanter and picked up some work in Carth, but she still came to visit me often back in Ordensville. Only this time, as a celebration of me turning twenty, she decided to take me to Carth for the first time. I’d never been before, but after hearing her stories of the big city, I knew I just had to go. Now, she had friends of her own in Ordensville, so she went partying with them, hitting up the local tavern while she was in town before she was ready to take me, and by the time she was sobered up, it was already dark out. But she wasn’t worried about it, and decided to take me to Carth regardless of the night.”
“Really? Through the forest at night?”
“Okay, so maybe she was only a little sober,” Erani laughed. “But she did have a good reason for her confidence. She was young, but already a damned good Enchanter, and had built herself a Wand of Lightning Strike. It only had three charges, but being able to cast Lightning Strike three times is generally enough to get you through any fight with a monster you might find on those public roads.”
“Yeah. Lightning Strike, isn’t that, like, a hundred-fifty Mana Spell?”
“Mhmm,” she nodded. “One-sixty-five, to be exact. So in total, that Wand had almost five hundred Mana stored in it. Hell of a protection, if I do say so myself. Anyway, we headed out to Carth. It was my first time really going outside those town walls, so I was scared out of my mind, but my sister really comforted me,”
“I’m sure the Wand did a bit of that comforting, too,” I laughed.
“Well, yeah, that too. But as we were walking, I started seeing these eyes appear in the dark. One set, then two, three, until, on one side of the road, there had to be at least a dozen of them. My sister noticed them too, and we backed off, so that the road was between us and these things. I could only barely see what they were in the dark – a pack of Stripeks. Just these sets of yellow glowing eyes, staring at us and pacing back and forth. They didn’t seem to want to cross the road, though. I guess they didn’t know how strong we were yet, and didn’t want to risk attacking us. But whatever those things were, I could tell they were hungry.”
“What’d you do?”
“Well, my sister readied the Wand, and cast Lightning Strike. The bolt of lighting tore through the forest and hit a few of them. Killed them instantly, of course, but there were still a lot more. They backed off some, but didn’t flee. They still just sat there. We didn’t know what to do. So we just kept walking, and the Stripeks followed us. They stuck to their side of the road, and we stuck to ours. We stayed facing them as we walked. Every now and then, one of them would test the waters a bit, putting a foot on the road for a moment, or charging for a couple steps, then backing off, but we held our ground. But then one of them got confident, and charged at us for real. So my sister shot another one at it. Killed it, but there were still at least a half dozen left.”
“And then you only had a single charge left, right?”
“Yep. Not nearly enough to handle them. When we were moving, they got more confident, so we hunkered down, kneeling down right there on the ground and facing the monsters. They stopped too, just kept staring at us. My sister told me that they were just waiting for us to show weakness. That they were waiting for us to get too tired to stay awake, or to take a moment to lay down, and they’d strike. So we had to stay up and ready. If they attacked us, we’d die for sure, but a couple of them would die, too. And they probably just wanted to wait until they were sure none of them would.
“Well? How’d you escape?”
“I’m getting there,” she laughed. “So there we were, facing off against the Stripeks. The eyes in the dark. They just wouldn’t leave us alone. And so we faced off like that for what felt like forever. Must’ve been hours we sat there freezing our asses off in the night, waiting for these Stripeks to attack. Because I knew that if they attacked us, we were taking at least one of ‘em down with us. And how else could it end? It was the middle of the night on a road coming from a small town. No reason for anyone to come and help us, no way for us to get out of it. But we sure as hells weren’t going to make the first move.”
“So?”
“Well, I’m not sure if you’ll believe me when I say this, but, so, okay. We’re sitting there, Lightning Wand in hand, waiting for the Stripeks to attack, right? Dead of night, dead silent. And in the distance, I can just barely start to make out a noise. Sounds like this weird, steady banging, like metal on metal. And it’s getting closer and closer. And then, coming from around a bend in the road, I see this bright, flashing light. It’s flashing over and over again with that banging coming along with it, and whatever it is, it’s just charging down the road! We all look over – me, my sister, the Stripeks – and as it gets closer, I can make out what it actually is. It was a person! This big, armored guy, buckler in one hand and hammer in the other, just banging his weapon on his shield over and over as he sprints down this road at top speed. Just this bang, bang, bang, and every time his hammer hits his shield, there’s this blinding flash of light. Must have been a Talent or a Martial Art or something.”
“…What in the hells?”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” she shook her head. “But once he got close, that loud banging and the bright flashing lights, it scared the Stripeks off! They just ran off into the woods, and the guy kept sprinting down the road past us. Didn’t even look at me as he ran by. Just kept banging his hammer on his shield and sprinting along ‘till he was out of sight. And after that, we just got up and kept walking to Carth. Didn’t know what to think of it. I don’t think I’d even believe my own memory if my sister hadn’t seen it, too. It was such a strange sight, it’s still burned into my head. Just this guy, sprinting down the road in full plate armor with a hammer and shield, hitting them together as hard and fast as he could, a huge flash of light bursting out every time. Can’t forget it.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Nope. Never. And y’know what? I don’t think I ever will. I mean– do you believe in divine intervention?”
“What, like the gods coming down to the material world to interfere with our lives? No, not really. I’ve always felt like they probably don’t care about us. Compared to them, we’re like ants in the dirt. Why?”
“Well, I didn’t buy too much of that stuff, either, until that night. But I’ve thought and thought, and I just can’t think of a single explanation for what happened other than a god deciding to save us.”
“Why’s that? Don’t think it was just luck?”
“No, I don’t. I mean, think about it. Why was that guy running down the road with his hammer and shield, banging them together to make all that racket? There’d be no reason to do something like that if it wasn’t because he saw what was going on between us and the Stripeks. He had to have been doing that to scare them off on purpose. But then, if he was trying to help us, why not stop and stay with us to make sure we were alright? Or in case the Stripeks came back?”
“What if he was in a hurry to get where he was going, and didn’t have time to stop?”
“Even then, he didn’t even look at us while he was running. Seriously, not a glance. Anyone would at least look over, give a nod, something. And besides, I mean, I believe that you can get lucky, but really? That someone would come by just in time, ready to save us, just sprinting along like that?”
“Unlikely things happen every day,” I shrugged.
“Well, you think it’s unlikely it was divine intervention, right? Maybe that was the unlikely thing that happened that day.”
“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “Fine. But this was a story about how you got your Class, right? What happened from there?”
“Well, we got to Carth unscathed, but I felt mentally traumatized. I really thought I was gonna die there! Made my peace with the world and accepted it and everything. And, well, I just didn’t wanna feel powerless again. Sure, I was thankful that the guy came and saved us – whether it was really a god or not – but I didn’t wanna rely on chance like that ever again. So, well, I decided to get Classed. Funny thing is,” she laughed, “I actually chose Sorcerer to begin with because I knew you could get Lightning Strike with it. But you only get offered Lightning Strike if you choose Darkblast as your first Spell, so I’ll never even end up getting it. It was because of that requirement to get the Class - killing a monster while holding a Spell Crystal. I knew I’d need a Crystal, so I decided I’d grab one that would work with the first Spell I’d choose for my Class, and then I decided I’d need to look into the different options given to the Sorcerer Class, and so I bought a book, and then another one, and suddenly I knew everything there was to know about any choice you could make and its strategic implications before I’d even gotten the damn Class. And I ended up going with the classic Firebolt.”
“Well, that’s as good a reason as any to go with a Class, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess. But listen,” she got serious. “I told you that story for a reason. I just… I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to feel powerless, and like your life is hanging on a single gamble, in someone else’s hands. And I know that dig for power that you do afterward, that desperate search for a solution, so that you never have to put your life in another person’s hands again.” She clasped her hands around mine. “I want you to know that it’s going to be okay. I’ll always be here, and I hope you can think of me as a part of you, not as another chance you sometimes have to take.”
I looked at her for a moment before hesitantly grabbing her hand back. “Thanks. But… it’s not that easy. I mean, we kind of have a fundamental difference in knowledge, sometimes. And I hate it, but it’s true. Sometimes, I’ve already experienced an entire situation, and you haven’t, and, well, I can’t rely on you in those situations. I have to do them myself, or at least make the decisions myself, and most of the time it ends up with me taking a gamble that I don’t want to take. There’s no other solution to some problems. Or, at least, there are no other solutions that I can come up with in the moment. We need to get stronger – I need to get stronger – because sometimes the entire situation relies on me.”
“But if you keep pushing yourself like this…”
“I’m going to be okay. I just… fuck. My head hurts so bad, and I feel so out of it sometimes. I just need an outlet. It feels like I’d be pushing myself more if I didn’t take it out on something every once in a while.”
“What? That doesn’t sound normal. Are you sure it isn’t–”
“Shh.” I held out a hand in front of me, eyes wide. Scuttling through the trees, I saw something. A large brown insect, familiar in shape and size. It moved again, and I got a better view. The same monster I’d fled from when I arrived at Ordensville, when I met Erani for the first time. The gigantic scorpion monster moved through the trees. We must’ve stumbled into Banestinger territory without realizing it. With a sudden movement, it turned its body, spotting us and readying itself for a charge. Its gigantic, sword-length stinger dripped with deadly venom.
It was time for a rematch.