"Bastard," Killum muttered, and then pulled his sword. "Die, abominations!"
"Abominations? I like it!" Rand cried. Goblin blood covered him, eyes wild with battlelust. "Kill the abominations! Wahoo!"
Side-by-side, Rand and Killum marched forward slaying zombies. Fergus and Tiana followed, backing up as they killed ghouls coming up behind the group. Asha floated above throwing fireballs in both directions.
"What? Oh no," Asha cried, and fell from the sky. "Aaiiee, dammit."
She dropped to the ground in the middle of the goblins and hobgoblins, and appeared to twist her ankle upon impact. Then a goblin bit her wrist, enabling him to pull her sword away.
"Asha!" Killum screamed.
"No!" she cried, and hit the goblin with a fireball.
The goblin thrust the sword into Asha's chest before falling away to burn up. Killum fired lightning bolt after lightning bolt, slaughtering zombies all around Asha's still writhing body. To his horror, zombies dropped to their knees around her, sinking their teeth into her bare flesh.
"Hurry! She's still alive," the battle-mage screamed.
All four of them rushed the zombies around the sorceress. Killum saw red, his mind and soul consumed with fury and horror. They cleared the zombies away in seconds, and he dropped to his knees to pull her into his lap.
Asha looked up with horrified eyes, blood flowing from her nose and mouth. She gurgled, gasped, and spewed hot blood in his face.
"I'm…sorry," she rasped out. "Meet….you….Knares…"
And the life faded out of her eyes. Killum stared down at her a long moment. For the first time, he thought the Game had gone too far, become too realistic. His mind and heart screamed for his friend so brutally butchered, and then she slowly faded away.
Killum knelt there shaking, as his friends continued to fight off the zombies.
Chapter 18
"We need help, battle-mage," Fergus shouted.
Killum jumped up and thrust his sword through the neck of a ghoul. Then he chopped off the arm of another, before turning and taking off the head of a hobgoblin. Rand stepped in front of him to kill a goblin slipping in to attack.
"Thanks," he said. "Let's clear a space so Fergus and Tiana can use their bows."
"You didn't happen to buy a sleep spell, did you?" Tiana asked. "It'd be easier to kill them if they were snoozing."
He chuckled. Not a bad suggestion, but sleep spells were notoriously unreliable. What would put a human to sleep might energize a goblin, or make an ork super aggressive. But he had a couple of spells that might help.
"How about a little disorientation?" he asked. The battle-mage stepped back from the fight, letting Rand handle the onslaught alone for a few seconds. He concentrated on the desired spell, that he'd purchased at Spells'R'Us. And then cast it out at the ghouls. "Disorientate!"
He didn't have to say anything, but Killum mostly did. It felt right to do so, and it helped his comrades to know what his spell was doing to their foes. Asha occasionally shouted her spells, too, but mostly she cast in silence. He was working on her.
The ghouls all stopped at once, swaying and looking around in confusion. Rand cried out in joy, and charged them. His battle-axe left red ruin behind, even as Tiana's arrows thudded into ghoul hearts. Fergus continued to shoot at the goblins, so Killum turned towards the remaining zombies.
The battle-mage concentrated on his other spell. Despite knowing the Spell of Disorientation worked on the ghouls, he wanted to test his other spell. So Killum threw the Spell of Temporary Blindness at the hobgoblin and goblin zombies.
"Blindness!"
There was a slight pause in their attack, but then they continued as if nothing changed.
"Well, that didn't work," he muttered, and started swinging his sword. Zombie blood flowed and splattered, as heads, arms, and legs flew left and right. Soon Rand and Tiana finished off the ghouls and joined them.
"I think they are blind," Fergus said. "But they can still hear us, so continue fighting."
That was fine with Killum. He especially wanted to slaughter the goblins, since one of them killed Asha. Despite the fact her death put the sorceress a day behind them, he understood at a primal level how horrific it was to die in that world.
They went through pure hell before being respawned.
"Ha! We did it!" Rand shouted, shaking his gory axe at the heavens. "I am a warrior! Bring on your unholy hordes, Lords of Darkness!"
"Can someone please knock on wood," Tiana said. "Rand, shut up. If you jinx us, I swear I'll kill you twice."
"Don't even joke about killing him," Killum said, walking over to where Asha died. He picked up her purse, sword belt and scabbard, and then pulled the sword out of the dead goblin. After cleaning the sword, he sheathed it. Then pointing at Asha's Robes of Concealment. "I'll carry her weapons and purse, but you can wear her magic robes, Tiana. You're used to using invisibility as a weapon."
"Cool!" she said, snatching them up.
"Have any of you died in this realm?" the battle-mage asked as he retrieved his Wolfsheart Spear. They shook their heads, watching him with wary eyes. "It's bad. Real bad." Killum stopped and shuddered, feeling nauseous. "When I died, it may have been the most traumatic, horrific experience of my life."
"How so?" Tiana asked.
"It was like going to Hell for ten to fifteen seconds. I swear, demons were biting me, ripping the flesh off my bones, and otherwise terrorizing me."
He couldn't continue. And worse, he knew Asha had just experienced it. He didn't wish that on anyone, especially not one of his friends.
While Rand cleaned his axe with a scrap of cloth from a dead goblin, Fergus and Tiana went around collecting their arrows. They had to cut more than a few of them out of the bodies.
Killum looked up the road, spotting a gully cutting into the surrounding forest. Greenish water with swirls of blood red trickled in the streaming coming out of it. That had to be the dungeon, Goblin Gully.
You've been offered Quest to Conquer Goblin Gully! Death and danger are assured, but the rewards are unknown. Do you accept this quest? Yes or No?
"Why are the rewards always 'unknown' and the danger assured?" Killum asked. The others nodded, looking up at their prompt. He shook his head woefully, and answered. "Yes."
Congratulations! You've accepted Quest to Conquer Goblin Gully. Fight to the death! No quarter given or received! Let the glory be yours and conquer!
"It's the glory," Rand said. "That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. And the experience points."
Killum glanced at all of the dead goblins, ghouls, and hobgoblins. Their butchered, blood-splattered bodies were scattered all about, including in several piles. They weren't fading away like Asha had, or mobs did in the previous realm. That was another element of realism he wasn't sure he liked. Also, their victims' blood continued to soak the players' clothes.