Chapter 2 - Death and Resurrection

Oh, ok, some sort of dream. Absolutely lucid, granted, but some kind of fantasy. Ok, he could get on board with this. It might be fun even, to fill the shoes of some variety of sorcerer he thought, as he swished his flowing silken robes around with confidence, moving between tables. Then he met a sight that was too familiar to be a coincidence. Seated at the same table, squinting in his direction, a tall and magnificently dressed elf whose fine leather and proud antlered helm were in sharp contrast to most the other patrons. Aside from his fellows, that is, which included a squat green-haired man with shiny oil-coated armor and razored axes protruding from shoulderguards, a black-masked pair of eyes with glowing pointed daggers at his sides, and a proudly pink-and-gold-armored bald man with a grin on his face.

Jason returned the squint and then made his way hastily toward them. Riz? Josh? Pat? Alex? Is it really you guys?

"Yeah, we don't know what the hell is going on, we all, in turn, stumbled out of that broom closet into this place. It's gotta be some kind of hallucination or something," said one of them.

"Did you lose power too?" Asked Raleigh, pink-breasted metal bouncing as he spoke.

"Yeah, kind of, it was weird-" Jason was cut off. The elf was waving over another, an intimidating, yet short, man with ornate dragon skulls and finely carved animal tusks adorning his armor. He was trailed by a very large, yet very sedately mannered white cat whose teeth could likely take off the head of any patron in the room with ease.

"What the fuck?" came a raspy wheeze, as the dwarf sat down next to peers.

"Stephen."

"Aye- I mean, uh, yeah it's me," grunted the dwarf, clearly struggling to speak without a jovial accent.

One-by-one, the men spilled out of the broom closet, not turning a single head, and took a seat at an old, cracking wooden table. The chairs creaked and groaned under the weight of swords and breastplates. A barmaid had moved over to them to serve beer in rusted dusty old stines. There were a few circular tokens of copper that were to be found among their many satchels and leather bags tied hastily to their belts. The beer was putridly strong and had a tang that burned their teeth, like nails left out to rust away in the rain.

Each of the friends told a similar story: they had been at their computer. Either the computer went black or the entire room went black. A few of them stepped away for a moment, a few prodded at their machines. They all had experienced an intense squeezing and noise and ripping feeling. And then they were here.

"So it's either some kind of crazy dream," Stephen was saying, "or I got zapped with a full 110-volt load when I tried to turn on my computer and this is it; the afterward."

"We all are here," commented Alex, "or are we all impressions of each other's subconscious?" The thought dazed the men with confusion and there was silence, as they sucked the acidic liquid between their teeth.

"Well, yes and no," said Josh. "I mean it is real for me. But that has nothing to do with it being real for you," he gestured to his comrades. "Maybe only one of us is experiencing all this, maybe we all are".

On an enigmatic note, more draws of stale beer were taken by the men.

After leaving the floating bits of rust near the bottom of their caked stines, the men had pooled and dropped off the copper coins with the barmaid, and moved out onto the street. It was bustling here. Peasants, traders, soldiers, and women alike were moving about the square. Men shouted their goods for sale, children hollered and chased each other around stone statues in the distance. The group had decided they were to look around, determine where they were, and have some fun while this lasted.

Eavesdropping was simple in such a crowded place. They moved as a unit, farther into the trade district and found a pair of guards that looked bored.

Moving toward them, Josh signaled one of the grey-armored men and said, "excuse me, can you tell me where I might find some work?"

Though his gnome stature was the shortest of the group, the guards both looked quite impressed at the quality of his polished garb. "Well met, adventurer!" There was a short and awkward conversation, as one would expect between men of varied dialects, and they all moved off toward the Dwarven district, as advised.

Many corners turned and blocks later, the men could see a thick billow of smoke high above: that was a dead giveaway of Dwarven activity nearby.

"It's so much bigger than I thought," said Jason. "Stormwind".

"Yeah," agreed Garrett. "In the game this walk takes maybe 30 seconds, we've been going for like ten minutes now".

The men found their way into another bustling tavern, hoping to overhear something that might place them on a timeline. Some mention of the latest treachery to plague the city or gossip about what military movements have lately been made.

Before even finding a table to occupy though, a scene played out before them.

It was a barwench, let's call her that, for lack of a less offensive descriptor that appropriately described her demeanor and dress. Dragged by the hair up to the counter, a filth-coated dwarf with a grizzled leather vest slammed her head down on the bar.

"This blimey wench tried to make off with me coin purse!" he growled at the barkeep.

"Aye, if this' true, ye will have ter answer ter the district guard."

Then, with little warning and a loud and crisp tone, Garrett blurted out, "oh GAY! It's an R.P. server!"

Crickets met those words. The scene was on pause, the dwarves looked bafflingly over at the newcomers. Other patrons leaned over for a better look at the man that had belted those curious words of nonsense. The awkwardness poured in on them.

"Uh," Raleigh said, elbowing Garrett sharply in the ribs, "let's get moving". The men exited hastily back out onto the streets and an uproarious laugh was to be had by them, complete with Pat performing a precise impression of Garrett's coothless slip.

The men had decided to get their bearings in other ways. They would exit the city and head for Goldshire, which was about a sixty second walk.

"There we can find some new player leveling up and see what happens when he dies," Jason explained.

"What do you mean?" asked Alex.

"Well, we've got to figure out the ruleset here. I mean, if you die in this 'game', are you dead-dead? Or can you be resurrected?" Jason continued.

"You don't have any idea how to even do that, Jason," shot Stephen.

"Fair," he replied, "but there is one way to figure it out".

As the men walked, Garrett snapped his fingers violently. A spark spit toward his face. "Hey guys! Look at this!" he exclaimed, as he showed off.

The friends all brainstormed and ran trials as they walked. Alex had his eyes squeezed closed tightly, as he muttered under his breath. Pat was hunched over, holding his breath, and walking with a careful stalk in his step. Josh stuck his chest forward and led them down the path. Raleigh was envisioning halos of gold, shimmering on the ground around him, trying to will them into being.

What ought to have been a one-minute walk ended up taking most the afternoon. The orange sun hung low over distant mountains as they approached a modest wooden building, with a hand-painted sign that read 'Goldshire' and then below that line, 'BEWARE OF GNOLLS'.

---

"Here comes one," whispered Stephen, who was squinting around, as his cotton-white toothy wildcat crouched comfortably at his side.

They were all tucked into the brambles of a patch of weeds, trying to remain nonchalant. The poorly dressed human stood his ground firmly, began to wring his hands with concentration, grinding his teeth, and an orb of deep blue protruded from his gripped fingers, as he hurled it at a rabid-looking dog in the distance. Ice shards crashed into the dogs matted coat and the beast fell to the ground with a squeal.

“Nice! Did you see that?” blurted Garrett. “That must’ve been forty yards!”

The human in dirt-brown robes turned toward the exclaiming clump of weeds and gave a curious look to the incongruent grouping of legs and arms and shoulderpads and helmets protruding out from the stalks and vines.

“Well met!” called Josh, in an attempt to smooth over the very strange sight.

The man nodded, then moved swiftly away. An audible grumble cut the air, as everyone turned to Raleigh.

“I am freakin’ starving,” he said.

“Me too, I have this craving for a salad,” said Alex to raised eyebrows.

There was a good chuckle at the misfortune of Alex experiencing life as an elf and, after a moment, the group of men were walking down a wide pebbled path toward the inn.

“Do we have enough coin to buy anything?” asked Jason.

“We’ve got only two copper pieces left,” Josh tallied.

Arriving at the inn, now all seven realizing their stomachs were void of nutrition, the men mulled about, working out how to fill themselves.

“Can we just kill an animal or something?”

“How would we even do that? The most any of us has been able to do is Garrett, who can basically conjure a match in his palm,” replied Stephen.

“That’s not going to hurt any animal big enough to eat, let alone kill it,” interjected Alex.

“What if,” said Pat in a low voice, as he shifted his head about, so as not to be overheard. “I can turn invisible; at least I think I can. What if I stealthed into the kitchen at the back of the inn and brought back some stuff for us?” he finished.

The men looked at each other. Stephen was quite right that Garrett had been the only one of the seven showing anything that resembled super-human ability. Could Pat really make himself entirely invisible?

“Well, you’re the rogue. I say test it out, see if it works,” said Jason.

There was ten minutes of standing around in a shaded corner behind the inn, well out of sight of the road that cut through the area. Pat pressed his eyes shut tightly, screwed up his face, and took on an almost feline posture. So far the most that had happened was he tripped over a root ball and got a chance to taste the dirt, as he tried to slide his feet quietly across the earth below.

Finally, there was a puff of - not smoke - a puff of something; maybe vapor. It bent the air around it and curved inward on itself. And where Pat had been standing a moment ago was vacant. The men exclaimed in awe, as they watched a skinny pair of footprints appear in the loose dirt below, moving right toward them.

The footprints pressed into a springy patch of soil just in front of Alex, who took half a step backward. Then in a flash, Alex sprung back as if pushed hard. He landed with a thud on the ground and, as the dust cleared, the men cheered, seeing that Pat had reappeared, with Alex in a horizontal bear hug.

“Very funny, asshole, get off me!” Alex barked.

“Haha, alright I just wanted to see what would happen if I attacked someone,” Pat said. He climbed to his feet, then continued, “so you couldn’t see me until I tackled you then?”

“All we saw's the footsteps in the dirt,” confirmed Stephen.

“What did you see, Pat?” inquired Jason.

Pat described his experience; how everything was a little bit grey hued, as if someone had turned a saturation dial or something. He could see only the outline of himself and his weapons as he looked down, and then as soon as he pounced onto Alex, with a hushed popping sound, he sprung back into existence.

The group was soon sitting down in a small clearing, pushing twigs and needles aside. The rogue unloaded an armful of thick-crusted bread and strips of dried bore meat, along with a couple of apples Josh had used his unwieldy axe to eviscerate into pieces for sharing.

Alex sniffed at a stale piece of bore meat as a cat checking for poison, turned his nose up at it, and scooped up the other fares.

"So, you Pat, you could use that trick to your advantage," Alex said through a mouth of crunchy bread.

"What do you mean?" asked Pat, chewing.

"You could sneak into the ladies room or something, take in a bit of a show."

There was some scoffing and some appreciative chuckling at the idea. In the end, Pat said he'd consider it, though he was likely just placating the elf.

Night fell and the chill seeped into the bones of the men. They had decided to simply sleep where they lay, after having such an eventful day they were all exhausted. They lay on damp dirt, each shivering, but too tired to do much about it. Jason thought he would probably wake in his too-small apartment to his brightly smiling wife when he next opened his eyes. This had been quite a ride, but he was ready to get off; he had a pair of kids that were missing him at home.

---

It wasn't so much the crack of bright red sunlight piercing the lids of Raleigh that brought him to, nor was it the aching of his bones or the throbbing in his hip that was the result of hours of laying motionlessly atop a pile of plate metal. There was a grunt, a sharp poke to his midsection, and a pungent scent of dead rats and past-prime cheese that tickled his nose. He shot upright and was immediately aware of the danger looming directly overhead. Green skinned and brown toothed - men I guess you'd say - were jeering at him through jagged rusting iron plates that covered their torsos and faces.

There were four of them in total. Ugly in appearance and mannerism, the grunting orcs pressed spear tips and sword shafts against the necks of the groggy group of men.

"What the hell! Who the hell! Where the hell!" stammered Jason.

"Just play it cool," advised Josh. Now the scenario unfolding upon the men was clear. A group of four muscular and well armored orcs had happened upon an oblivious and disorganized camp of seven men. They had drawn their weapons and poked at their targets to get them to stir. One of the orcs was holding a sword to the throat of Jason, binding his arms behind his back with a single fist. Another had a pair of daggers, or more like giant fangs carved roughly into pointed stilettos, and was looming over Garrett and Alex, who were still laying horizontally. A third menace, purple cloaked and hooded, was beginning to conjure a large red donut-shaped sphere in his hands, moving toward Stephen who was trying to push himself to his feet, while a deep blue fluid-bodied humanoid mass was pressing conjured fingers and muscular arms into the throat of the squirming fanged cat at Stephen's side.

There was more grunting still, as if a decision was being voted upon by the brutes. Josh spoke again in barely more than a whisper, instructing the men to keep calm. He told them of the shield on his back: he needed a diversion, then he would whip his shield around his front and slam it hard into the ground beneath them. Raleigh didn't understand how dropping his shield onto the dirt at his feet would help the situation, but he felt the intensity of his friends words, the gravity of the situation, and the determination with which the armored warrior next to him commanded him and his comrades. He had to try; what other option was there?

With the determination of a wolf sinking teeth into still-warm flesh, Raleigh closed his eyes and opened his mouth. The shout was something not of himself, a noise that never had passed his lips before. It was a desperate call of prayer and a vengeful judgment of wrath altogether. The words shot down his body, into his feet, and scorched the ground outward, as if lighting the soil beneath on fire. The orcs all four jumped backward, hesitating, for just a moment. But that moment was all Josh needed. He swung around violently, in a single movement bracing his shield in his arm, and slammed the ground hard with it. The earth shook, even his allies were a bit taken aback by the force that rung from his muscular arms. The orcs were stunned, they wore looks of confusion and pain, and they seemed to lose themselves for a time.

Jason screamed violently. The Orc binding him dropped the pressure squeezing against him and fled, running in utterly random directions, as if overcome with sudden madness. Stephen had already nocked an arrow to his bow and struck his advancer expertly in the side of the head, just between cracks in the metal plates of his helm. The Orc fell to the ground completely dazed. The gentle-mannered cat at his side struck out viciously and sunk teeth into the blue-glowing mass of flesh that was subjugating it.

The cloaked Orc that had been swirling red energy before them had stopped as well. And that was enough for Garrett to cry out in brutal vitriol, out of his palms hurling purple and blue and pink blasts of sheer energy, as fluidly as flicking excess water off just-washed hands.

But it wasn't enough. Coming to, the spear-wielding Orc clashed against Josh, steel on steel screeched, as Josh was pushed backward. An overwhelming pain, like his head was splitting apart, burrowed into Alex, as the warlock beared down upon him in a state of lust, as if inflicting pain upon a victim thrilled him. The other two orcs pushed back as well. The fanged daggers plunged into the leather vest Pat wore and as they were extracted by the Orc, crimson shining blood trailed. Pat groaned, as if struck full-strength by a metal bat. He spit and sucked in air, and in a moment of desperation, reached into a pouch on his waist, pulled out a fine grey powder, and threw it into the face of the assassin. The Orc wretched backward, grabbing his eyes, completely disabled. Pat then went to work. Well rehearsed jabs and slams and slices, like a chef breaking down a chicken carcass, and Pat was dominating the situation, in total control over his subject.

Josh was now two-on-one desperately throwing his shield in front of his face, absorbing blows and grunting and gasping for air. Jason called to Josh in panic, and as if he had meant to, sparks of gold shot from his palms and toward Josh, who sucked in the energy and hummed with its imbued strength. Josh's eyes glowed red and he pushed back hard against the orcs, as Jason channeled power into his ally.

Stephen had put distance between himself and the scuffle, and was rapidly unleashing a torrent of arrows onto all four green-fleshed beasts. Alex was suddenly void from the situation, but in his place was a violently orange wild cat, which was ripping and biting and pressing in against the subjugation of the robed warlock. Raleigh gripped a massive hammer in his hands, and swung it at the sworded Orc, dazing and bashing and unleashing utter chaos onto the target.

It must have happened all in seconds, but the men found themselves with four green-skinned masses of bleeding flesh at their feet. They all sucked in air hard, hearts beating violently against ribcages. They had won.

"Holy shit this hurts," grunted Pat, reaching into his side and pulling out blood-covered fingers. His breathing was irregular and he winced as he crouched and sat onto the ground.

The men looked at each other, "what do we do for him?" they all wondered aloud.

"Well, if this were the game, me or Jason would just heal him and he'd be good as new," offered Raleigh.

"But how?" asked Jason. "We just performed some crazy magic because we were being attacked; mine was all adrenaline, I don't know how I did those things," he finished.

None of them fully understood it, really. When pressed, they were able to harness some super human abilities: precise accuracy with a bow, magic spells of smiting from fingertips, apparent expertise at dueling dagger-to-dagger. It was all a bit of a haze. But the one thing that was clear: Pat was suffering. Blood seeped out from under his armor and pooled on the ground and no one knew how to help him.

"Alright," said Alextaking the helm, lifting Pat into his arms, and taking steps toward the silhouette of the inn far in the distance, "we are taking him to town, hopefully someone there is less retarded than all of us".

The walk was excruciating. Something about stepping over stones, one foot in front of the other, and listening to nothing but the labored gasps of breath from a good friend. It unnerved them. Failing to control the situation made Josh uneasy and he picked up the pace, taking on some of the weight of Pat's limp legs.

Pushing the wooden-hinged door open to the inn with force, all six pairs of feet stepped over the threshold and scanned their surroundings. The barmaid was busy clanging in the kitchen. A mother and three young children sat around a small stool of a table, crunching on meager bits of bread and meat. And a lone man sat, eyes down, head shaved, pouring over the contents of a book. Jason made a move for the man, plainly a friar of the adjacent Northshire basilica.

"Brother," he said, in his most authoritative impression of a powerful priest, "I need your assistance with this man". He gestured toward the threesome of Alex and Josh, who braced Pat.

The men all hurried upstairs, as instructed by the friar. "Set him down on the table and take off his vest," the shiny headed man instructed. They did so. There was muttering under his breath, complicated wrist movements and then sparkling light began to trail from the chaste man's fingertips, seeping into the very punctures of Pat's open gut. They encircled the area and slowly, as thread and needle, pulled close his wounds.

"Ugh," Pat let out, crudely.

"What's it feel like?" asked Josh in morbid curiosity.

Pat sat up, shook his head, sneezed, said, "it's like warm water, washing out the pain". There was a good deal of general relief, but not from Jason. He was focused intently on the movements and words of the holy man performing before him.

"What words are you speaking while you heal him?" he inquired of the friar.

"But... Surely you know, a brother of your stature," replied the fellow priest, with the slightest flash of envy in his eyes, as he surveyed Jason's garb.

"Well, I'm - I've been plagued as of late - I haven't been able to. I tried, I mean to say," he stuttered, failing to bring up a convincing reason as to why he was not able to perform the task himself.

"Say no more words, brother. My prayers are with you," the friar said piously and took Jason aside, plainly not wanting to embrass the man in front of others.

Twenty minutes passed, during which time Jason and the fellow priest spoke in hushed and hurried tones. Pat regained his strength, while Raleigh washed caked blood off vestments. The others mulled around, pondering their own powers.

Alex was in the corner, whispering to himself, fingers dancing in front of his face. "I should've been able to help, too," he admitted as Stephen moved toward him and slunk down the wall to take a seat next to his brother.

"We will figure it out; don't dwell on it," reassured the hunter. "We'll master our skills in time. Raleigh too will be able to help, once he figures out how to harness his magic".

The group departed from the friar with a multitude of thanks and moved back out onto the street. It was plain they needed more practice to control their abilities. As they walked down the road, a grim sight met them. A man lay, face down just along the path, clothes having been ripped off his body, several puncture wounds visible on his back and arms and neck. Flies buzzed around as the men surrounded the corpse.

"Well, did you figure out from that friar how to resurrect someone?" asked Garrett of Jason.

"Yeah. Lemme try it out, it's actually pretty simple, I'm sure I can do this". He raised his arms in front of him, closed his eyes, and began to chant a song-like prayer. The corpse began to glow, rise a few inches off the ground, and then hastily slumped back to earth.

"Nope. It's not working."

"Well it looks like it ought to, he started to glow, did you see that?" asked Raleigh.

"Yes, that is when I completed the prayer. Like, I did it, I performed the sacrament, but he didn't respond," said Jason.

"It's like his body started to respond, but there's no soul left in there to take over," mused Alex.

"I wonder-" and with that, Jason snuck off the path toward a patch of trees that looked ominously uninviting. He looked silly but determined, as he tried to step lightly, nearly slipping over his robes. Confused, the rest of the men followed.

A short while later, they were tucked behind a tree, a small group of slimey-teethed gnolls with matted fur and patchwork bits of leather draped across their bodies as armor just visible beyond. The plan was to wait. And to witness a fresh kill. And then to attempt a resurrection on a man that had only just died.

It took patience, but after a time, the group witnessed a sad scene of a lone traveler, likely a peasant of some type, poorly armored and bouncing toward the gnolls unknowingly. He was quickly dispatched by them, then the group jumped out from the tree and finished the distracted gnolls off cleanly, as the young peasant slumped face-first to the ground.

Pat was pulling his daggers out from the torso of a clump of fur and bone and guts, "this is disgusting," he shuddered, scraping the damp blades against a patch of weeds to clean them.

Garrett was hovering about, surveying the carnage for anything useful to himself or his fellows. Oddly, there were a few copper coins to be had (what the hell gnolls do with currency is beyond me).

Jason was executing  the prayer he had just learned, carefully using the precise hand movements and tones of voice. The dingy peasant's body glowed, hummed, raised slightly off the ground, and then in awe, his body snapped into animation, as he fell to his knees crouching, clutching his stomach in pain.

"Are you okay?" Raleigh inquired, moving quickly toward the now-breathing man.

There was a moment of grunting, as the feebly dressed man gathered his composure and pushed himself to his feet, with the help of Raleigh. Words of gratitude were exchanged, the young man spoke with an unsure crack in his voice. Josh, performing as a seasoned and brave soldier, suggested the man stick to the path, and they all walked back together. There, the man split to the west and the group of men looked at each other.

"So it's clear now. We can bring back someone from a fresh death. But not a corpse whose... Spirit has left?" pondered Stephen.

That seemed to be the rule in this very odd universe in which the men, for now, inhabited.