We tread carefully down a nonexistent path through the trees. Regis a few paces ahead. Old habits were hard to break and I felt guilty for using him to stamp down a path for me to follow. I bit the inside of my cheek to distract myself…and walked right into him. This was becoming too common.
“Shh.” He put a finger to his lips and gestured ahead. I peered around him and saw a large group of rats feeding…on the rats I had left there before. Gross! I suppressed the urge to gag, the stench was so awful. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Oh, right, I was distracted by myself.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “How do we get them?” I mouthed as he turned around. He shrugged at first, then his ears visibly perked and I caught a glimpse of a smile. He motioned me to stay put as he moved further upwind of the feasting rodents.
What he did next was surprising.
I actually lost sight of him as he moved through the underbrush like a beast stalking its prey. Was his job really a warrior? He moved like a thief. Out of nowhere, a silver glint flew through the air and imbedded itself in the back of a rat’s head. It keeled over, dead. A brown flash and another rat was on the ground, its neck broken. I had never seen him do something like that before.
By now, the other rats had stopped eating and were turning to gang up on Regis and the beast didn’t leave himself much in the way of escape routes.
Idiot.
I pulled out my own knife and circled behind the main body of rats. They were all squeaking and crawling over one another in an effort to taste some juicy wolf meat. I shivered as I got into position, trying my best to copy Regis.
“Here it goes,” I muttered. I pushed off and jumped, screaming like an Amazon and landed on the back of one of the creepy rodents. It stank like putrid meat. No time for any more observations. My knife had already found its throat and bitten into it. Blood sprayed the ground in an arc, hitting the other rats. Some were twisting to see the new threat. It was all the time my beast needed. He tugged his knife free of one rat’s skull and caught another in the belly as it leaped at his jugular.
After another few horrifying few minutes, the ground was soaked in blood; rat, beast and celestial. Carcases were everywhere, some still twitching. I sank to my knees and panted, not caring that the air tasted like rotting flesh and tainted blood.
Regis nudged me with his foot. “Come on. You still need wolf fangs and coal.”
I gave him a tired glare. “Meh.” Very intimidating. I just wanted to sit there for the next few days if possible. Fighting hand to claw was exhausting. I didn’t even have the energy to flip him off. Being a warrior can suck.
A sigh. “Come on Pandora.” I felt him move behind me, didn’t care. Then he hauled me to my feet. I wobbled for a handful of seconds, trying not to face-plant. Balance regained, I brushed off the dirt coating my legs.
“Do you often touch girls so casually?” I asked, sarcasm dripping steadily from my voice. I mentally slapped myself. Not only had that been one of my favourite lines around Immortal Fire, but how I said it then made me sound like a bitch.
It didn’t seem to faze him at all. Until I watched the portion of eyebrow I could see shoot up and disappear into his hair. He recognized that phrase alright. This was bad. Very bad. Either way, I would proclaim innocence until he dug up enough proof. Not likely, I wouldn’t let him get any in the first place.
He opened his mouth to say something. Except he never even had time to start his sentence. An arrow flew over his head and imbedded itself in a tree. I stared at the quivering shaft in disbelief. Well, that was until I heard a familiar girlish giggle. I followed the path the arrow had taken until my eyes landed on a figure that I could recognize anywhere. I unconsciously glared. Her boobs were hanging out of that green thing she would defensively call a dress.
Dianna stepped into plain view, wearing a tiny little green band-aid of a dress that left the top half of her breasts exposed, barely covered her butt and clung obsessively. I should mention that there was a small hole to show off her bellybutton and the matching thigh high boots. I was cold just staring at her. Or maybe that was because her eyes were blue with long blonde hair to match? So different from the brown colour I was used to seeing.
Regis recovered first. “Deanne? Is that you?” he called to her. His ears were perked high. “You picked an elf again?”
Her long ears twitched happily. “I know that voice! Fire?” She ran over and pushed his hair back from his face, laughing. “It is! Ha! You look so different with those cute little ears!” Fondling them, she actually managed to notice my poor, left out self, standing in the middle of a bunch of dead rats. “Who’s that and where’s my sister?”
Right here.
He gently pried her hands away from his ears with an embarrassed smile. “Hey Deanne.” He took hold of her wrist and pulled her closer to me, for whose benefit it was unclear. Maybe he just didn’t want his ears molested again and was diverting her attention. “This is Pandora. I met her back in town.”
I gave my sister a quick wave and a “hello,” before finally setting to work on skinning one of the rats.
“I’m known as Artemis now. And where’s Swan?” Dianna was pouting. “I haven’t found her yet.” She tapped the long strap that held her quiver against her back and tightened another loop of leather holding a pouch to her hip. I couldn’t decide if she looked like a modern idol or a badass elfin archer.
A shrug was Regis’ reply. “Haven’t seen her yet. Maybe she changed her name too?” He chuckled low. “We should find her. She may have already annoyed someone to death.” Now both of them laughed, a joke I shouldn’t have been privy to.
The hides were piling up beside me. Fifteen with the one I was finishing. A quick cut and the skin separated from the muscle. It wasn’t exactly perfect but it seemed passable for someone who had no knowledge in skinning animals. Next were the leg bones. As the knife parted the flesh, I could still hear the rumbling of Regis’ voice harmonizing with my sister’s. Jealousy spiked though I knew I had no reason to feel that way. Dianna – no Artemis – wouldn’t consider approaching Regis and vice versa.
“Pandora? You alright?” Regis’ awkward tone snapped me back to virtual reality. I looked down at the rat I was cutting up to get at the leg bones and realized I had been hacking away at it. The whole body was little more than a literal bloody mess.
“Heh…heh, heh…heeehhh…” I smiled awkwardly and rubbed the back of my neck, a habit I’d picked up from Fire months ago. Regis and Artemis were both staring at me with confused looks on their faces. “I’m alright. Really!” I added the last word in because Regis stepped forward as if to protect me. Likely from myself. He stopped and shrugged off my moment of craziness.
“Fire; I mean Regis, you aren’t done your beginner quest yet?” Artemis pointed at his knife. “Are you trying to decide what class to pick?” The expression of innocent curiosity on her face made me want to tear at something with my teeth because I currently couldn’t do anything to step between them. Stupid me, thinking that pretending to be another person was a good idea. I put the knife between my teeth as I pulled out my first bone. I made note not to do that again later, rat blood tastes like mud.
I felt a hand tip my head back and the knife was gently pried from my jaws. “Still need two rat pelts and coal before I can choose,” came the reply from behind me. I rolled my eyes back in a vain attempt see behind my back. I sighed and gave up, sitting cross-legged and resting my head in my palm, I watched as Regis settled beside me and finished the work I’d started… with a lot more efficiency. “I’ll probably go with the Saber class.”
I raised an eyebrow and for a moment, his eyes met mine. “…You know absolutely nothing about the job classes in this game.” A plain statement.
I shook my head. “Nope.” The only ones I knew were for mages and archers. Mages could be either of the Elemental class or the Necromancer class while archers were bards or rangers. I was always the Elemental class mage, Dianna the Ranger class archer. Badass long-range team. A warrior to me was just that, a warrior. Since when did they have classes?
Regis’ pile of leg bones was growing impressive. “Most games have three classes, Saber, Berserker and Lancer. Universal has four: Assassin, Berserker, Lancer and Saber. Assassins use small blades, Berserkers use their fists, Lancers use spears and Sabers use large blades.” He shot me an evaluating look. “You should go with the Assassin class.”
I opened my mouth to snap at him for being sexist but he shushed me. “The Saber class blades would only hinder your movements. Most of them are extremely heavy.” He stabbed the knife into a de-boned carcass and took my hand in his own, pressing against the bones in my wrist. “A heavy weapon would inhibit movement here. Assassin class blades are all light. They’ll be easier to handle.”
“Regis, you better not be cheating on my sister,” Artemis called. She was quietly checking the string on her bow while sneaking looks at me.
“Shut up,” he retorted. She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand in an obvious attempt to be cute. I rolled my eyes; I was used to her weird antics online.
I pulled my hand away reluctantly. “Thanks for the advice.” My mask hid my smile, leaving only the curiousness in my eyes for Regis to judge me by. This was a new facet of his character of which I had not been aware. I felt like a raccoon with something shiny in its paws, I wasn’t letting go of it. Maybe pretending I wasn’t myself wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“Perhaps we should get wolf fangs for you Pandora, yes?”
Artemis’ mention of another list item caught my attention. A sidelong look at Regis revealed he was done stripping flesh from bone. I sighed and gathered up the pelts and bones, stuffing them all inside the virtual backpack. I didn’t give him time to object, he was too nice for his own good.
“Let’s go.”
Ten minutes of walking through the trees later and I had all the information on my sister’s new character that I needed. A level 9 ranger class elfin archer named Artemis who specialized in agility. This had brought my attention back to my own stats.
<| Level: 11 | Name: Pandora | Race: Celestial | Gender: Female | Unspent Skill Points: 15 | Luck: Unknown |>
Yes! Finally, I had something to work with. I moved my newly attained skill points to where I wanted.
<| Health: 50 | Mana: 20 | Attack: 6 | Defense: 5 | Strength: 10 | Range: 6 | Agility: 6 |>
While I had been silently cheering myself on for my excellent new stats, my partners had stopped and were standing very still. I looked around curiously, wondering what was going on. Regis had his knife in his hand and his ears were twitching, his lips set in a grim line. Artemis was nocking an arrow, carefully pointing it at the ground to avoid hitting one of us by accident. I almost asked, “What is it?”
Then I heard it.
The quiet yips of a pack of wolves. I slid out my own knife, still covered in rat blood. They smelled us. We were suddenly the hunted. I felt them rather than heard them patiently get into formation. Artemis was aiming an arrow into a dense brush and I was turning my head in an attempt to catch sight of one so I could attack it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Regis’ half smile begin. It grew, spreading across his face until his teeth showed. A breeze swept through our little trio, stirring his hair. Blue-violet eyes with a beast lurking within showed through his hair.
The breeze died. He leapt. Artemis fired.
I was left doing nothing like an idiot.
Something heavy hit me from behind and knocked me down. I coughed out blood as the system read out how much health I had just lost. A whole ten points. From a fall. Really?!
Ow.
Regis rolled off me, wrestling with a wolf that was fighting to get at his neck. I staggered to my feet. “Damn wolves!” I screamed and axe-kicked the wolf in the head. It swung its dazed head at me, giving Regis time to get a better grip on his knife and bury it in the wolf’s neck.
It gurgled. He shoved the furry beast off his chest and stuck out a hand. I took it and rocked him to his feet. I laughed faintly; he was a blood-spattered mess.
“Ahem.”
I looked over my shoulder. Artemis was delicately spinning an arrow between her fingers, having taken care of the other four wolves while Regis and I had taken out one. She wore a triumphant smile and winked at us. He and I smiled back at her.
She tossed us both small red vials. I caught one, pulled down my mask a bit and downed its contents quickly, feeling my health restore itself. I pushed the mask back up and burped, feeling instantly better.
I stared at the small potion vial. “Thanks,” I said.
Artemis smiled then frowned, looking off behind me. “Regis, drink it.”
I glanced back there too. He was prying a single fang from the jaws of every downed wolf. “Pandora, go grab a lump of that coal over there.” He pointed absentmindedly and I turned in that direction. If I had been in an anime, a sweat drop would have gone down the side of my face.
An abandoned mine cart stood alone, in the middle of nowhere, full of coal chunks. I actually laughed. “You gotta be kidding me,” I murmured. I walked over carefully; checking each step, certain there was going to be a trap.
“Pandora, just pick up a lump of it. It won’t bite you.” He stood, brushing off his pants, with a palm full of fangs. Only now did he take a swing of the healing potion.
I scowled but obediently snagged a rock and ran back to their laughing selves. He passed me the fangs and we started back toward the newbie village.
“Guys,” Artemis ventured, “we should definitely form a team.”
Eh?
“Sounds good,” Regis agreed. “We’d need at least one mage and priest though. If we find Swan she’d fill the mage role well.”
No I won’t.
He glanced down at me. “Say something. We’re including you too.” He ruffled my hair, cracking the drying blood in it. I scrunched up my face and he laughed.
I thought for a moment. “If we have both classes of mage, a priest is unnecessary. Our short and long range skills would make up for any extra damage we could take.”
He made a sound low in his throat that sounded like an agreement. “Likely.”
“So what would we call ourselves?” I asked, unable to think of anything.
“Dark Sky.”
We both looked at Artemis and asked the same question. “Why?”
“Because we’re as ominous as an approaching storm.”
We all laughed and started jabbering back and forth of possible configurations we could try, recruitment methods to use, anything and everything. We were still talking rapidly even as the newbie village came into sight. I slapped Regis on the back, yelled “Race ya!”, and took off. He and Artemis sped after me, laughing. We had a team, a name, our gaming future plotted out for us.
How I wish it could have stayed that way.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,238 Literary Works • 673,049 Reviews
Well hello there, here to review your second chapter, as promised!
Alright, my first impression: again, this is good, and a pleasant read. There's more description in this piece as well, probably because you're describing people and objects instead of a larger background. However, there were still grammatical imperfections, again, mainly due to punctuation. Going into detail below, we have:
Watch out, you want to be careful with tense confusion, that 'tread' there is in the present while the rest of the piece is in the past. Thus, it should be 'trod.' Furthermore, after 'trees,' that full stop there is not only grammatically incorrect but also jarring. Thus, replace it with a comma. Not strictly necessary but helpful would also be a comma after '(...) old habits were hard to break, [b]and, I felt guilty (...).' It adds a slight pause there, see what I mean. And also, about that last line ('this was becoming too common') that would imply she runs into Regis often, which would imply a slight timeskip since the first and second chapter -- I mean, that's obvious there was, however, it also implies events happened between that, and... yeah I think maybe you could edit or clarify here. Just a thought.
So, these rats here. Where do they come from? Do they have, like, hidden nests from which they appear mysteriously? Or what? Also. One thing, it's good you're adding the detail of the stench, however, it's actually pretty vague. I mean, unless people have smelled dead giant rat before, they won't know how it smells, so a comparative would be nice. Say, meat left out too much in the sun, or maybe feces. Or something. It's rather easy to make a joke out of it too. Or at least a witty remark which your MC is so prone to. And that last line again, after the '(...)? Oh, right (...).' That confuses me. What exactly do you mean by it?
From what I gathered, Beasts are pretty big. How exactly does he hide in the underbrush, exactly? Stealthy movement is fine, granted, but camouflage? Hmmm. Secondly, what be this silver glint, pray? That's confusing, though I could guess at it, it's still not clear. Thirdly, 'imbedded' should be 'embedded.'
I'm sorry, what? I mean, how has he not left himself a route of escape? From what I see in this chapter, there's a whole wide open space. Unless you meant '(...) turning to surround Regis.' That would make slightly more sense.
Should be Carcasses .
On another note, they're drenched in rat blood. How does that feel on her skin? How does that taste? Smell? Is she close to throwing up, and if not, is her gut that steely? Furthermore, wouldn't she, at some point in the future (later chapters, of course, so I wouldn't know) contract some sort of horrible disease from the rat blood? It's not exactly healthy, if you see what I mean.
And now, a note about Immortal Fire. I assume he's another player. A real person, not an NPC. So, I guess, in this society, people don't have the slightest concern in falling in love, marrying, and possibly engaging in sexual relationships with a pixelated figure they probably don't even know in real life? That's an interesting inhibition. You might want to elaborate on that. And shed some light on Immortal Fire's background. If she's obsessing over him, she has genuine feelings (probably), so the readers might feel his background, or how they met, would be important to know at some point.
I dig the description, though you might want to explain why she's such a slut? Or dresses like one, at any rate? I mean, the scantily clad elf ranger/mage is a stereotype, but it's grown kind of boring, unless there's a really good reason for it. See what I mean?
Again, these stats. How do they pop up? And refer to the previous review for my opinion on them.
Nice and suspenseful ending you have there, I see.
Alright, recapping:
I reiterate, this is well-written, but you have some issues with grammar and description. The novel is progressing fairly well, I'm interested to see what will happen next.
Hope this helped
~Ita
CHAPTER 2!!!! -happydance-
I enjoyed this chapter just as much as the first one. My only complaint is, dang it why can't Pandora just come out and say she's Swan to Regis?! It's getting super suspenseful already waiting for Regis and Artemis to find out who Pandora really is, or if they ever do. (Can you tell I'm an inpatient reader? Only two chapters into it and I want the truth flat out on the table) Anyway, I don't really have much constructive crit for this chapter. I really liked it and if there were grammatical errors, well I was so caught in the story I didn't notice...
I sympathize a lot with Pandora. It seems like in each of the fights so far she hasn't really found her fighting niche. Ugh, I want more!! I really love this story a lot, and I can't wait to hear more about the other 53 characters! Just don't make them too crazy in depth, because I can guarantee many readers won't be able to keep 53 characters straight--like knowing who's who all the time.
Answer time!
1) No, those 53 characters are all players. The NPCs are sorted differently, though the same thing applies.
2) Yeah, the teams will have "allies" and will be under one generalized name. Though the "making allies" bit isn't too far off, them joining together in actual factions is way off. (Hint: wars over land take a lot of people ;P)
3) Haha, I've played a lot of RPGs and a constant theme is the "conveniently placed item." Really, half the time it's just lazy code writers but sometimes it's in such an ironic spot that it's a good thing. ^_^
Off to memorize types of weapons!
(oh, and thanks saying my combat writing is cool ^_^ I used to be awful at it >.< It's harder than it looks to sum up the adrenaline and simple action, rather than thought, in words.)
Second Chapter YAAAAAAAAAY! (Realy like your DF series). And like I said in my first review I like the idea of the people being trapped inside a game and it was pretty neat how you named the chapter, and Artemis being the Greek goddess of the moon. Review/Question time
1)Do the 53 Characters include people like NPCs?
2)Can teams eventually form a sort of faction of their own and have their own faction building, or is team just another name for faction?
3)I've never been the best at it but the way you describe the combats pretty cool, especially the way you put everybody helping everybody else out.
4)Her suspicion about the coal-cart was well thought of too because a cart in the middle of nowhere? hmm.....
P.S.
This is the second example of why I've been following you on the story
One of the questions last chapter was "Does she meet her sister?" Well, yes. Now anyway. Though I'm not sure why people wanted them to meet last chapter, that would be just a little too quick.
Since there will be a lot more characters (I think last count it was at 53!) who have names, personalities, teams and the like who will be used more than once, I'll try to limit the number of introductions per chapter. I have plans for a game-wide tournament soon, which is why there are so many characters! After all, you need a lot of teams to compete with!
And to make a point, nothing about each character is decided arbitrarily. I spent a lot of time on each person, carefully choosing a name, a job, a race, a personality, even a back-story. Everyone is how they are because they have to be that way. So...no dissing me about names >.< Even the strange ones.
Oh well, to whoever read this, thanks and please review?
~Blood