“If we choose to go to Klade, the road from there doesn’t lead anywhere besides Eastgate. Glasswind would be the better option.” Bo was kneeling next to Benjamin as they both inspected the flower. Benjamin had told them it would take only a modicum of mana and intent to make it bloom, and then it would whisk them away to their chosen city.
”Wherever we go, we need to decide soon.” Sasha was looking around at the crowd that was forming around them. No one was acting overtly hostile yet, but this city was the domain of Arturus; any of these people could be Reapers, or informing the Necro Drifter of their movements.
Elijah decided to break the stalemate about where to go. “Benjamin, you’re our mage. You make the call; don’t say it out loud, just activate the flower.”
Benjamin looked like he wanted to protest, but Elijah and Nicholas’ stern looks halted him. Nicholas understood Elijah’s concern immediately and backed him up. “Do it, Benjamin.”
The mage stood and held out a hand. A thin stream of mana flowed from his hand to the flower as his face wrinkled with intent. The stream tapered off, and the flower bloomed, spreading its petals invitingly to the party.
”All aboard,” Elijah whispered, and stepped onto the flower.
The potent scent of flowers invaded his nostrils as petals flared around him. The magic had a physical sensation to it, similar to when Annika had run herself across him with her short-range teleport. It felt warm and kind, like the embrace of a lover. It made him shiver. There had been something weirdly intimate about the way she had acted towards him; he didn’t think he was just imagining it, and this magic was no different.
The flower magic dropped him inside a Temple of Fate. He stumbled at the sudden shift, causing several people to look on in wonder and stare. He turned to catch his companions as they came through. Each of the men stumbled slightly as they came through, but Elijah helped them to stay upright. Sasha came through last, stepping through as if it were second nature to her.
“Alright, Benjamin, where are we?” Nicholas asked once they had all gotten their bearings.
”Klade,” Benjamin grunted. His eyes flickered from side to side quickly, though they were unfocused. He was obviously deep in menus, though Elijah couldn’t tell what exactly. “Thought Glasswind was too obvious.”
As the sun began to set, the party was relaxing in a group bath at one of the many inns that littered the city of Klade. The hot water eased his muscles, though did little for his mind as he relaxed in the pool. The last time he’d been near any large amount of water, he had drowned, and those memories flooded back. They’d had to coax him to go anywhere near the water, making him feel safe around it with calming words and gentle touch. Still, he chose to stay on the shallow end where he could sit with his head still above the water.
He looked over at his friends, trying to distract his mind.
His eyes glanced over at the large, toned form of Nicholas. His armor normally hid away much of his physique, as well as the alterations his new class had forced upon him. Now, wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks, it became apparent that he wasn’t fully human anymore. Patches of bark grew thickly at his joints, his knees and elbows being the most obvious examples.
He knew Nicholas could quickly expand the growths into full body armor, reminiscent of full plate. Nicholas caught his eye, and he glanced away. He worried Nicholas might take it the wrong way; he had been staring after all. Thankfully, the heat from the pool hid the blush he felt forming across his cheeks.
”This is nice,” Nicholas’ deep voice rumbled. “We haven’t really had a chance to sit down and relax as a group since before the dryad glade.”
”We would have if Benjamin hadn’t taken off to train after the fight with Arturus,” Bo grumbled as he floated on his back in the middle of the pool.
Benjamin sent a splash of water at the rogue, making him lose focus on floating and thrash about. “I was tired of being the lowest level in the party. Don’t blame me you squandered your time with ‘diplomacy’ or whatever you were doing.”
Benjamin had definitely corrected that problem. He was the first of the group to hit level twenty and finally entered the Journeyman-tier. Elijah was looking to be the second closest, with only a few hundred experience points separating him from leveling up from nineteen to twenty. The rest of the party was close behind him, and they’d likely all join the Journeyman-tier within a battle or two of each other.
”That reminds me, we never found out what everyone’s second trials entailed.” Sasha swam over to sit next to Benjamin and Nicholas. She was just as graceful in the water as she was walking, and Elijah couldn’t help but admire how she moved.
She told the others what Elijah already knew. Her trial had been to keep as many soldiers alive as possible in an enormous battle. It had been a harrowing experience, and he could tell that there were parts of it that still haunted her. Elijah had been meaning to ask her about it, but there had never been a right time to do it.
Next was Elijah; he told them about the dryad version of himself and the rough battle that had ensued. Benjamin couldn’t help but laugh as Elijah described how Bitter Dryad had chased Bitter Root around the dryad version of himself, and Bo begged Elijah to recreate it with his familiars.
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”We don’t want to get kicked out of here, Bo,” Sasha laughed. Once again he felt bad for not telling them about the kiss that he had shared with the game’s AI in dryad form. He didn’t know why he was so intent on keeping it a secret, but something in the back of his mind told him it was the right call.
Finally, it was someone else’s turn to share. Nicholas took the initiative and recounted his story.
“I was sent back into another memory. Long before the Mother became a goddess of the dryads. I think it was long before she was even born.” Nicholas’ eyes darkened, and Elijah could see the bark beginning to creep over his limbs as he recounted his trial. It was instinctively moving to protect him.
”I’d thought it was weird that the Guardian was the only male member of the species. Just didn’t make sense to me. Turns out that it wasn’t always that way.”
”So what? Was there some kind of event that killed off all the males of the species?” Sasha asked, her hand resting gently on Nicholas’ shoulder.
He shook his head. “Not a single event. Several. Throughout their history, two entities have always sprung forth. The Heartwood Mother, who we met during the trials, and the Heartwood Sovereign. Female and Male, through them the Heartwood trees birth new dryads.”
The story enraptured Elijah. This kind of rich world-building for a simple quest that only one player would ever experience was astounding to him. He wondered if there were similar missions that people could partake in that didn’t reward a unique class and quest, but some part of him knew that wasn’t the case. This was Nicholas’ unique story, and nobody would ever experience it again.
”I lived through the deaths of several of the previous Sovereigns,” his voice had a hollow tone to it as he reached up and placed his large palm over Sasha’s small hand. “Not like it was with the Mother’s memories. I actually took the place of the Sovereigns. I felt every death. Humans hunted them for their limbs, which were used to make several powerful weapons. It took me a long time to realize the goal of the trial was to end the cycle.”
”Jesus,” Bo whispered. “I can’t believe you went through that and are still sane.”
”Who said I was ever sane?” Nicholas asked before shaking off his melancholy mood and looking up at Bo. “What about you, Bo? What’d you have to do?”
Bo rubbed his neck and sank under the water for a moment, several large bubbles welling up to the surface. He seemed to stay down there for too long, and Elijah got nervous. Bo wouldn’t have purposely drowned himself to get out of telling his story, would he? Nicholas got up from his spot and reached into the dark water for the man, but his hand came up with nothing.
”Bo. I can still sense you as long as you’re in the party.” Sasha pointed toward the exit from the pool area where Bo had re-materialized from Stealth.
He looked sheepishly back at Sasha, then shook his head and left the group bath.
”Well, I guess that’s par for the course for our sneaky rogue,” Elijah grumbled, leaning back into the water. “What about you, Benjamin? If I remember right, your robes were pretty burnt up when you came out.”
Benjamin nodded, trying the same thing that Bo had done, but Nicholas grabbed him before he could slip beneath the water. “Sorry, pal, only works once, and you’re not a rogue.”
Benjamin rolled his eyes and huffed. “Fine,” he grouched. “It really wasn’t anything spectacular. First, I got transported to a world covered in ice, then to an underwater kingdom, a castle suspended in the air, and finally the plane of fire.”
“Each one had its own little mission to complete. In the ice world, I had to win a race against elves with skates attached to their feet. Then the castle in the air, I had to scale to the highest tower. And in the fire world, I had to survive several waves of lesser Hellspawn. Stupid things, really.”
”What was the point of all that?” Elijah asked. “It seems that so far everything we went through was leading us to an upgrade; what did you get out of it?”
”Nothing,” Benjamin said with a shrug. “Each of the challenges seemed to try to lead me to choose a specialization for my mage class. A little obvious when you think about it. Ice magic would have made the race a breeze, same with the castle and air magic. Except I didn’t want to specialize, not in any of the elements anyway.”
“How’d you pass it then? The goddess said that we’d all completed our trials,” Sasha asked him.
He slowly spread his hands apart and then brought them together in a clapping motion. “Amazing what a well-placed ‘Thunder Clap’ can do, or a well-timed ‘Flame Bolt’.”
”So you cheesed it?” Elijah asked with a hint of amusement coloring his words.
Benjamin shrugged. “I don’t want to be just another elemental mage. I like the utility that comes with my current class. Though, I do have my eyes set on something bigger.”
”What would that be?”
Benjamin smirked, leaning back in the water. Before his head dipped below the surface, he whispered. “You’ll see soon enough.” A bright flash appeared where he had been along with a sloshing effect as the water around the mage was pushed away and then collapsed in on the air bubble created by his teleport spell.
Nicholas rubbed his eyebrows and groaned. “Bo is rubbing off on him; I’m not sure I like that.”
Sasha settled in close to him again. “You don’t need to like it. Benjamin is young and impressionable. He’ll learn from those around him. We just need to be good role models for him, because right now we’re the only ones he has.”
The weight of Sasha’s words hung over the both of them. She was right, of course; they were all stuck in this game. Benjamin was young, still figuring out how to be an adult, so they had to do right by him. Had to help him grow as a person. It hopefully wouldn’t be long. They’d made fast progress through the Beginner and Apprentice-tiers, but they weren’t even a fraction of the way to getting Elijah to the Celestial-tier. The first Celestials had taken three years to make it; Mara had taken five. He hoped he could manage it in a year or less, but that seemed unlikely even with his ability to manipulate the game.
He let his head slip beneath the water, visions of the inland sea that used to be Nethy springing to his mind immediately. The panic of causing their trapped state being overwhelmed by the panic of drowning again. He’d been through it once before, so drowning should be easy now, but the fear was worse than before knowing how it felt. The only easy day was yesterday, a phrase he’d heard several times growing up.
