I’m not that strong, he tells himself, I need to get closer.
With his eyes open now, he keeps to the shadows along the inner wall of the guild. His vision pane registers all sorts of minor details but his main focus is minute disturbances and impressions in the soil and the direction they lead. As he concentrates, a long scuff mark takes shape, almost like …
Someone was dragged.
He focuses completely on the trail to the exclusion of all else; nothing is as important as finding Tamana – he will follow the drag mark until …
… until it simply vanishes. The faint traces of footprints are still there, but no drag mark.
Zaena has all four swords out and is trying to cover his ass in all directions at once as Ryuk pauses to consider. He slows and controls his breathing, closes his eyes and expands his consciousness outward to search for any other sign of Tamana.
Nothing. Nothing. Still nothing … there! Like the last curling wisp from an extinguished cigarette, a tendril of white magic has made its way through the merest crack beneath a cellar door just two meters to the left of the guildhall entrance.
“It’s her,” Ryuk whispers, trying his best to contain his excitement, “Tamana is in that cellar.”
(0)__(x)
Zaena runs her hand along the lock holding the door down tight. Fashioned into the head of a griffin, it’s about the size of a cantaloupe.
Ryuk points his weapon at it. “Should I?” he asks.
“They’ll know we’re here,” she whispers, “are you sure?”
“I know she’s in there,” he says, excitement coursing through his veins.
“What if she’s not … ”
“She is, I know it,” he gulps. “I feel it.”
Zaena nods. “Do it, then. You shoot, I’ll grab the loot, and then we scoot. No fighting if we can avoid it.”
“Got it, and agreed. No fighting if we can help it.”
“Once I bring her out, we’ll climb there.” She points to the shadowed portion of the wall nearest to them. “I’ll go up first, then Tamana, then you.” Ryuk’s face tingles as she holds it for a moment. “Are you sure you can do this – that we can do this?”
“I’m sure,” he tells her.
“Good. Then blow the lock.”
The Thulean steps aside and Ryuk lets one go. The griffin lock and a good-sized chunk of door explodes into flinders; Zaena smashes through what’s left and sprints in.
Ryuk’s mouth is suddenly dry and his pulse pounds in his throat. He puts his back to the wall and shoots two marbles left and two to the right for some distraction and misdirection.
He steps out from the wall, turns, and angles his last three up onto the roof. He swaps out magazines as the marbles detonate one after the other; the cries of anger and alarm from inside are sweet music to his ears.
The Shinigami can cast algospells, he thinks, and a faint greenness prickles at the edge of his awareness.
There’s been lots of yelling and hollering, but so far no return fire, so he steps out again and puts an explosive black marble through every window he can see.
Fuck you! He arcs the last marble in the magazine onto the rooftop.
He’s inserting fresh magazine when Zaena bursts out of the cellar with Tamana slung over her shoulder, a manic look in the Thulean’s eyes.
“This her?” Zaena turns to show him her prize. “Is it!?”
His heart skips a beat when he sees Tamana’s bruised face and white hair matted with blood. Her stats appear and hardly notices them.
Tamana Nakamura Level 2 White Warrior
HP: 2/138
MANA: 0/79
ATK: 52
DEF: 19
MATK: 12
MDF: 38
LUCK: 3
“Tamana! Tamana!”
“No time! Take her, let’s GO!” Zaena drops handcuffed Tamana into his arms and leaps for the wall. She scales it, spots a sword-wielding Shinigami running for Ryuk’s position and perforates him with a swarm of flying steel.
From the guildhall, an incandescent ripple of magic sears through the grass and narrowly misses Ryuk. It blasts a meter-wide trail of destruction across the courtyard and out through the back wall of the complex.
“Hurry!” Zaena shouts. Ryuk jumps over the newly vitrified soil and hands Tamana up to the anxiously awaiting Thulean. He pops his magazine out and inserts the one with clear marbles. He aims at where the giant magic day-spoiler originated and zings one away.
“Freeze enemy!”
His simple request fails, but not necessarily to his disadvantage. A large ridge tears out of the ground and rips through the foundation of the Shinigami’s guild quarters, smashing into the wall, danger close.
Come on, come on…
Another blast of magical return fire gouges a smoking crater in the space Ryuk just vacated; a black-clad swordsman sprints around a corner and charges in, his katana raised for a killing blow. Ryuk pops him center of mass with a clear marble; a mutant sticker vine bursts out of his chest and wraps him like a mummy.
His scalp prickles as Zaena heaves him into the air. “Freeze enemy!” He fires another clear marble and his health drops by half. Backfired! “Kuso!”
An orb lifts out of the front of the courtyard with an old man in its center.
Dark Mage Level 35
HP: 590/590
MANA: 325/325
ATK: 19
MATK: 137
DEF: 166
MDF: 283
LUCK: 22
The bearded mage’s eyes are ablaze with hateful fire as a vortex of yellow energy spins from his shoulders down to his fingertips.
It’s him! The robed figure from the Natty Dread game! Ryuk fumbles the next words as the marble sails through the air. “Freeze ENEMY!”
Freeze ENEMY!
The clear marble connects and time stands still. Oddly enough, his party members are still able to move.
“We have to hurry!” he tells Zaena, “I don’t know how long we have!” He gulps.
Seeing Tamana lie there bound and bloodied gives him a sinking feeling in his chest. Still, they have her; she can be healed and most important is that she’ll never die in Tritania. The only real difference between an NPC and an RPC is the origin of their source code – NPCs are written; RPCs are grown.
“Ryuk!” Zaena slaps his cheek. “Cause some more distractions!” Tamana’s body lifts into the air and Zaena lowers her to the alley on other side of the wall. Refocused, Ryuk pops the magazine of clear marbles out, returns it to inventory, and inserts the last magazine of black marbles into his weapon.
The Natty Dread mage hangs suspended in his energy bubble – a giant, can’t miss target, and Ryuk lets two go right at him. The Mage’s force bubble neutralizes them completely. No explosions, no nothing.
“I’m going down now!” Zaena shouts.
“Hurry,” he tells her, “my marbles don’t seem to work on the mage and I have no idea how much time we have! Hurry!”
Ryuk switches to his magic slingshot. He loads a knife marble in, keenly aware of the fact that the mage is starting to reanimate within his sphere of energy as time undialates. As he pulls the pouch back and the marble forms its sharp blade. He stretches the bands as far as they’ll go and the slingshot warms. His muscles quiver and he strains to hold in place.
Come on, you fuckers.
“Let’s go!”
Ryuk relaxes the tension on the slingshot, crouches, and finds her ghost limb on the edge of the wall. As the mage comes back to life, he latches on, and rappels to the ground.