“Wait.” Sara pulled the stolen wooden cart to the side of the dirt road once they’d gotten a safe distance away from the King’s sprawling land. “So, there was another group in there rescuing someone?”
“Yeah,” Cody said, lounging in the back of the wagon. “And that old dude I escaped with said something about his daughter or something, but I was like… really not into it.”
“So, the King is actively kidnapping people?” Raven scoffed, leaning against the buckboard. “Makes sense.”
“Not really,” Mark puzzled, pushing his glasses up. “King Dong is supposed to be completely boring, by-the-books, and absolutely non-aggressive.”
“Are you kidding me?” Raven gawked at him. “King Dong has done nothing but aggressively spread his military expeditions into the depths. We were just there, Mark. The Shafted?”
Mark blue-screened. “Wait. What happened to The Rock?”
Raven cocked her pale head. “The Rock hasn’t existed since before I was born. The last Rock, Dwayne Johnson, was killed when the King sent men down to forcefully take over the Dwarven kingdoms. The King completely abolished the title. Now, Roman Reigns acts like he’s The Rock down there, but King Dong officially made his title ‘Pebble Reigns.’”
“How…” Mark was speechless, his world-building crumbling around him. “It… he…”
“Was the King doing this before Craig arrived?” Sara wondered, trying to establish a timeline of corruption.
“I was born way before then, so yes,” Raven confirmed.
“So, what is he doing kidnapping peasants?” Simone wondered.
“My question is, why do we care?” Cody shrugged, picking at a splinter on the wagon bed. “I mean, we can’t face a King that’s actually capable and powerful. We’re just a fucking couple of Level 5 vape shop employees.”
Sara shuddered at the thought of just being an employee again. It burned a fire in her soul that she had to quickly contain to focus on the more pressing, bizarre tactical question she couldn’t get out of her head. “Cody. You said the other rescue group looked like us?”
Everyone stopped.
Cody cocked his head, thinking back to the awkward kitchen standoff. “Yeah. I mean, the face and horns were different. It’s definitely different people, but the party composition was exactly a Tiefling Bard, a Wizard, and a Ranger.”
Something about that felt deeply… wrong to her. What was it? A mystical, metaphysical level of ick washed over her just thinking of this mirrored group operating in the same world.
“Regardless of the composition of this rival party,” Mark shook his head, pulling her back to reality. “We should help free the slaves.”
“Mark.” Sara looked hard at him, tapping her clipboard. “We were barely confident coming out here just to get Cody, and now you want us to break back into the King’s heavily fortified estate?”
“No,” Mark responded, his voice dropping an octave. “I want to lay siege to it. I’m not going to let people fuck my world and my people up anymore!”
Sara had been deeply concerned for Mark's mental state since they got here, but she wasn’t going to let his newfound messiah complex send them straight into a meat grinder. “We have a combined party level of twenty, Mark. We are a poorly optimized, Dex-and-Charisma-heavy team without a dedicated healer, and you want to lay siege to the King’s home? We aren’t talking and doing crafts here. This is real.”
The pain was obvious on Mark’s face as his 22 Intelligence processed the brutal mathematical reality of her statement. “But those people…”
“What people?” Cody said. “There is only a guarantee of seven people trapped in there, and who knows what their alignments or actual motivations are. I don’t think risking our necks is worth it for some strangers.”
“Normally, I would side with Mark on this one,” Simone sighed, her Elven ears drooping. “But Cody is right. If this was the Dairy Queens, that would be one thing. This is the King, Mark. A King that has clearly been busy kinging outside of your purview for decades. We walk in there, we don’t walk out. I just got this body. I am not giving it up for a suicide mission.”
“It’s also a source of almost infinite cash,” Mark raised an eyebrow, deliberately trying to tempt Sara's manager brain. “Can you imagine the amount of money we can make selling that estate's wine beyond what Party Mart has in stock?”
“Do you want to stomp on fucking grapes?” Cody asked. “I don’t. And who the hell is going to pick the grapes? You? Mister Four-Strength?”
“We can get the Shafted to do it,” Mark responded quickly. “That’s what we hired them for, right?”
“First of all, we aren’t hiring them,” Sara said sharply, shutting that line of corporate thinking down. “I thought you told them that yourself. They aren’t disposable resources; they are people. Second, there’s no logistical way we can get in there. I am not picking a war with King Dong when we still haven’t even opened for business or dealt with Craig.”
“What’s that?” Simone cocked her head, her Ranger ears twitching toward the wind. “It sounds like… another wagon.”
They all grabbed their weapons and prepared, trying not to look overtly aggressive. Cresting the hill behind them was another wagon—a massive, fancy-looking royal coach flanked by two heavily armored mounted guards, heading directly down the road toward the King’s land. It was moving at a full, desperate dash and looked like it was not about to slow down as the two outriders detached from the coach and charged straight at their parked wagon.
“Fuck,” Sara’s stomach twisted.
As they closed the distance, she saw the gleaming symbol emblazoned on the guards' flowing white capes: a bright golden hot dog. These weren’t just normal local soldiers. These were the Golden Wieners, the King’s personal elite bodyguards. To them, Sara's party looked exactly like a group of heavily armed bandits blocking the royal road.
“That’s the King's guard!” Sara yelled. “Run!”
Simone snapped the reins, but it was too late.
Two expertly fired heavy crossbow bolts slammed into their conjured draft horses, instantly dematerializing the magical beasts into wisps of smoke. The wooden wagon crashed hard into the dirt.
The two mounted Golden Wieners dropped their crossbows and drew their gleaming broadswords, closing the distance in seconds.
Sara’s eyes pulled wide as the lead rider reared his massive warhorse back to swing directly at her on the buckboard. Pure instinct took over, and she deftly dodged the lethal strike—thank you, Dex roll. Before she could even recover her balance, the second guard swung his blade down at Cody in the back of the wagon. Cody dodged so quickly it looked like he didn’t even move.
“You’re a Golden Wiener?” Cody yelled up at the heavily armored rider, his Jester instincts flaring. “More like a Cold Peter!”
The literal action stopped. The riders rode a wide, tactical circle, turning their horses back on the wagon, but the entire group just stared at Cody, mouths completely agape at the sheer stupidity of the insult.
“Failed my Taunt check,” Cody shrugged, casually rolling his shortsword in his furry paw.
Sara processed the battlefield as quickly as her brain allowed. She knew exactly what she had to do, but she didn’t want the rest of the team to find out about the Drow's true power level this way. They were out of options.
“Raven,” Sara commanded, her voice turning to ice. “Unleash.”
Raven didn't hesitate. She ducked an incoming broadsword swing from the first guard, grabbing onto the barding of his charging horse as it passed, letting the momentum violently yank her off the wagon. Displaying terrifying Brawler acrobatics, she pulled herself smoothly up behind the armored rider and brutally shoved him off the moving horse.
The Wiener hit the dirt with a sickening crunch, but his high Constitution allowed him to move to get up almost immediately.
Raven snapped the horse's reins and charged directly at the second rider. The second Wiener squared his shoulders and spurred his own mount forward to meet her. Raven still held no weapon, but returned the charge fearlessly.
Just before the two massive warhorses collided, Raven pushed up to her feet on the saddle and jumped straight through the air at the oncoming Golden Wiener. She connected perfectly, burying her shoulder deep into the guard’s armored chest. The sheer kinetic force of the Level 11 strike brought them both to an instant, mid-air halt as their horses ran blindly past beneath them.
“Holy fucking shit,” Mark’s eyes went wide as the two bodies crashed into the dirt. “Did she just fucking spear a Golden Wiener off a Clydesdale?”
Raven pushed smoothly to her feet and casually cracked her neck. The guard she had speared groaned, slowly pushing himself to his feet. He threw his dented gauntlets down and picked his broadsword up from the ground. Raven dipped and dodged his furious, ringing swings with absolute ease.
The first guard had recovered and charged the wagon on foot. Simone ran, planted a boot on the side of the wooden cart, jumped clean over the Wiener’s helmet, and landed out in the open field. She drew her bow and fired a snapshot that went wide left.
The Wiener swung his blade at the buckboard. Sara jumped from the wagon, accidentally whipping his face with her Tiefling tail on the way down, momentarily staggering him.
Mark fell backward off the wagon into the dirt, throwing his hands up and casting frantically.
“Cat’s Grace!” Mark pointed a glowing finger at Cody, who shimmered with a vibrant yellow aura for a moment.
Cody jumped directly in front of the staggered guard and shoved his shortsword into the small, unarmored opening at the side of his breastplate. The guard grunted, grabbed his bleeding side, and brought his heavy iron boot up, pushing the Catfolk back with a devastating front kick.
Sara gripped the leather handle of her scavenged shortsword, feeling the nervous sweat soaking into the grip. Cold fear gripped her chest as she raised the blade and swung it wildly at the guard. The highly trained Wiener easily raised his own sword, effortlessly parrying her blade completely out of her hand.
Sara gasped, her arms wide open. She didn't have time to block the heavy, armored elbow crashing directly into the side of her head.
CRUNCH! Sara’s vision flashed blinding white. A crushing, sickening ache bloomed across her skull as the Dazed status effect took hold. She stumbled backward.
Simone let another arrow fly, burying it deep into the weak point at the back of the guard's knee. He fell heavily to one knee, still managing to deflect Cody’s follow-up strike, and desperately pulled a curled brass signal horn from his hip.
Mark raised his hands, his 22 Intelligence calculating the acoustic trajectory, and thrust his magic directly at the guard's gut, casting a heavily modified spell.
“Make Hole!”
A large, magical aperture formed instantaneously in the Wiener’s lower stomach, bypassing his armor entirely. But it was a fraction of a second too late. He had already blown into the brass mouthpiece.
THBRBRBRBRBRBR! The pressure of the horn blow magically rerouted through the new hole in his bowels. A massive, wet, acoustically amplified fart erupted from the guard's stomach, creating a concussive shockwave that literally rattled Sara’s teeth. She fell to a knee, her vision blurring from the stench and the noise.
Raven ducked a lethal swing from her own opponent and glanced back, seeing Sara collapse to the ground.
Absolute terror swallowed the Drow's expression—immediately followed by something much, much darker.
Raven pointed a single pale finger at the guard she was fighting, casting her innate Drow Darkness. A sphere of impenetrable, inky blackness swallowed them both.
For half a second, horrific, wet, crunching sounds echoed from inside the void.
Then, Raven stepped calmly out of the dissipating shadows, her fists dripping with blood. The guard did not follow.
She bolted to Sara. The ground beneath their boots was already beginning to rumble. A massive swarm of mounted reinforcements was cresting the horizon, charging furiously their way in response to the blast.
Raven grabbed Sara's arm, pulling her roughly to her feet. Sara shook her head, fighting through the daze. They couldn’t outrun a cavalry charge on a broken wagon, and they couldn’t summon enough magical horses to carry them all without doubling up and slowing down to a crawl.
Sara looked frantically around. There was nothing but the open field and the dense, gray forest.
“To the trees!” Sara yelled, staggering as she forced her legs to run.
“Come on,” Raven commanded, grabbing her hand and steadying her balance.
Everyone abandoned the wagon and ran for the forest, their boots pounding against the dirt as fast as their stats would allow. Sara had no idea what was actually in these woods, but it had to be better than facing another Golden Wiener, or twenty of them at once.
They crashed violently through the dense brambles and leaped over fallen trees, Simone deftly leading the pathing through the brush. The edge of the forest filled with the thunderous sound of heavy hoofbeats.
Fuck, they were fast. The party kept moving deeper into the gloom, but the Wieners were gaining ground rapidly, their armored warhorses crashing through the foliage. Mark was already falling behind, his four-Strength lungs burning.
“Firewall!” Mark screamed. He turned and thrust his hands toward the canopy, erupting a towering, roaring wall of magical flame directly behind them, cutting off the path.
It was no use. The heavy cavalry simply powered their armored mounts right through the flames, slightly singed but undeterred. They were nearly on them.
Then, Sara saw it.
Just down the side of the wooded hill..A hole in the ground. Just big enough for them to get through but jagged and mostly covered by brush. It was pitch black, but her Tiefling darkvision could see that it went deep into the earth.
It was their only choice.
“This way!” Sara diverted her path, sprinting to the edge of the hole. She looked down into the abyss as the rest of her party caught up, the sounds of shouting guards echoing through the trees behind them. She couldn’t see the bottom.
Raven didn't hesitate. She jumped first, her dark form quickly vanishing out of sight into the gloom.
Mark followed with a terrified yell, then Cody leaped in after him.
Simone ran up to the edge. She grabbed Sara’s hand, giving the Tiefling a brief, terrified look.
Together, they jumped into the dark.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Encounter Cleared.]
[XP Awarded: 4,000]
[Level Up Available! Unspent Attribute Points: 10]