8- Seems Like A Dumb Play

It turned out six level 4’s were just enough to handle a level 9. Darryl had just woken up, as evidenced by the series of locks that disengaged on the front door to his house. Rivera and Niederhauer each looped a length of chain around his hands and pulled taut just in time for Dane’s eagle familiar to drop a short sword directly on his head. He saw this coming, and tried jerking out of the way, only to take the sword high in the back. The eagle went up to the roof, where Daniels straddled the triangular eve and held a barrel of swords.

Guzman shot him directly in the face with the first crossbow, at point blank range as soon as he’d straightened up. Pugh followed this with a throat shot.

Darryl screamed out in pain and surprise, then didn’t anymore, because Dane’s eagle dropped a sack on his head, and went back for a second sword while Rivera efficiently snapped the arrows off, then ripped the bag down and cinched it tight.

“You are in the United States of America and are subject to its laws, Darryl,” Daniels called down. “You stole the property of an American citizen and called it your own. You stole from these people, and you’ve been extorting an entire village. God only knows what happened to the people who used to live here. You a murderer, Darryl?”

Meanwhile, Patrick and Bob began knocking furiously at their front doors nearby, wondering just what in the devil was going on. The upturned carts with the rain barrels and barrels of dross steel piled in front kept them from getting out.

“We’re going to kill you, but we understand that won’t be enough.”

Darryl took another shot to the face and howled in pain. He surged forward, yanked hard on the chains, and managed to pull himself a few feet forward. It was enough for Rivera to edge into his house, and then for the two of them to wrench his arms back, pinning him to the doorframe. Though it ended up being harder for the eagle to hit him with the short sword, it wasn’t impossible. Instead of dropping the short sword on him, the eagle swung it around inexpertly and dealt just a few damage at a time.

Daniels slid down to where they’d piled a number of crates and barrels, then climbed down. The fight hadn’t gone out of Darryl just yet, and there was every chance Patrick and Bob would figure out they could come save their buddy. However, they’d have to fight a squad of actual Army Rangers without their dragonite paladin leader… and they’d also have to fight the ring of townsfolk standing outside Darryl’s house, armed with pitchforks, daggers, short bows and hand scythes.

“We’ve had a talk with the folk here, and they’ve explained everything. They’re here to do what we don’t have the time to do. This isn’t our mission.”

“Wait–”

Darryl had enough time for just that word, before several of the burlier fellas rushed in and stabbed him in the guts with their pitchforks. He had nothing else to say after that. More of them came in, but even more pushed past and took up positions at his bed. In short order his extra weapons, shield, and a whole sack of coins emerged from within the house. The others kept up the hack and slash until the panel announced Darryl had been killed.

Niederhauer chuckled. “The village takes its revenge! Man, in our D&D group back in Kabul it was usually the opposite… PCs would go on a crazy killing spree around town and murder all the townsfolk.”

Pugh laughed. “You guys had D&D night too? At Camp Kinney we called it F&F. Felonies and Friends. Sometimes we called it Fightin’ and Fu–” he caught the gaze of a little kid a little ways off. “Uh… Fornicatin’.”

“Destruction & Disregard for the law.” Niederhauer laughed.

Friggin’ murderhobos. Dane watched the body, but glanced over toward where Patrick and Bob were watching through the slivers of window they’d been provided. He noted a bit of shadowy movement in Bob’s house. He had the eagle go and drop a few short swords down Patrick’s chimney just to be sure the little bastard didn’t get any funny ideas of climbing up through it and raining dozens of arrows down on them multiple times in a row.

They didn’t have long to wait on Dane’s most pressing question: what in the devil was going to happen once Darryl died? Daniels had died but respawned in his bed. He hadn’t been able to find out if there was now a rotting version of Daniels chilling underground with half his loot.

Darryl’s body slumped to the ground and gave up a list of items that could be looted. The townsfolk weren’t interested in his armor, which Niederhauer took, or the one ability card that popped up. That disappeared almost as soon as Dane laid eyes on it. Some other bits and bobs too: a magic pendant, a ring, and some more coin.

Inside the house, a spectral Darryl was beginning to appear in his bed, already with his hands up. The pitchforks went through this spectral Darryl for a few seconds before he fully incorporated, and then they started doing damage to him. He flung a couple of them across the room before they got chains around one hand, and then the other. Then they started in on him again.

Glass shattered behind them, and a shield golem pulled its shield fist back through. Daniels jumped up and went with part two of the plan, rushing over and shouting.

“Oh, you broke your own window, did you? Seems like a dumb play for someone who wants to have a safe spawn point. Guess you’ll have to live in fear of the townspeople coming in to murder you in your sleep.”

The shield golem froze.

“Yeah, how long does that golem of yours stand in front of your broken window and keep people from coming in? The duration on that thing, what… eight to ten hours? Pretty sure when we were fighting those crocs it was an hour exactly. And by the way… is it fireproof?”

Thirty minutes later, Darryl had lost all his non-core cards, was down to level 2, and was weeping uncontrollably. He now possessed nothing of value. Three townsfolk had his blood-covered bed on a cart with two donkeys. Along with a dozen combat-ready, pitchfork-wielding men, the cart and the bed were now headed southeast toward the border of the anomaly.

The other two ‘town protectors’ had made their sullen way out when Daniels called them.

“How old are you?” Daniels demanded.

“Nineteen,” Bob blubbered.

“Yeah,” Patrick said. “Nineteen.”

“And this idiot?” He jerked his thumb back to where Darryl was now being chained to his horse.

“Twenty-three.”

“Too young to know any better. Listen to me very carefully. Darryl is out. These fine people are carting his spawn point back to the edge of the anomaly, and he will wake up in the custody of the US Army. You two have the choice: you can exit the anomaly, go back to your homes in your old lives, and you won’t face charges until the people here have been restored to their former selves and we can get a better reckoning of what transpired here. The other option is to remain in the anomaly, not here of course, but make lives for yourselves doing something other than terrorizing this place. The only thing you will be taking from people going forward is quests, is that understood?”

Both boys mumbled something.

“I couldn’t hear that!” Daniels shouted, inches from their faces. Dane had strong Basic Training tremors. Both of them jumped halfway out of their skins.

“Yes. Yes sir!” Bob said, and Patrick followed. The dwarf was now sobbing.

They put the townsfolk in charge of Bob and Patrick’s house arrest for the remainder of the day, with explicit instructions to burn both houses down if they tried anything. A fire pit was dug, a fire lit, and the rag-covered arrows readied before Daniels and his people moved out.

Daniels waited until they got out of earshot before he called a huddle. “If anyone ever finds your spawn point, and you die, you make damn sure to run hell for leather in those three seconds you have, when you’re invincible, understand me?”

***

Frontier justice. The words had been hanging in front of Dane for an eternity since their time with Darryl and his goons. He’d just participated in literal frontier justice, the sort of thing that he and his friends used to yell at bartenders when they’d get cut off at closing time on a raucous Saturday night. He looked over at the more and more robotic face of Rivera, over the tufty pink hair of Guzman, Neiderhauer’s scales and to the short and squat form of the LT and wondered how much of what had happened was them, and how much was their new personas coming to life.

He sighed. It didn’t matter. Here they were, humping their rucks up a set of hills, skirting the major roadways filled with their rickety old wagons and carts. He wondered if those had once been Subarus and Toyotas. Brand new 2022 Toyota Oxen-led wagon! Buy now with 0% APR! This world was nuts.

Pugh was smiling and grinning next to him, not changed one bit, staying his old human self the whole step of the way. Above them all circled the eagle, glinting and gleaming in the wispy blue of a partly cloudy day.

“What are we going to do now, sir?” Pugh asked. They’d just topped the rise of a woody draw, and Dane was looking at the proceeding decline with relief. “Are we going to grab the Five straight away, go all Shock and Awe on their asses?”

LT turned his grizzly red-cheeked face, looked at him, and put up a single hand. “When we get close, we’ll set up observation and get eyes on target. But right now let’s all halt just here and take a break. My damn species barely has knees and my legs are killing me.”

Neiderhauer barked a laugh and the rest chuckled a little. All but Rivera.

“Was that a joke, sir?”

“Sure was, Sergeant. But to be frank, these dwarves could actually use a little more knee knob. It isn’t pleasant to be rucking with legs shorter than my torso.”

Guzman smiled, her high Charm seeming to make her shine. “I think it looks cute. You waddle and you remind me of one of those dancing teddy bears from cereal commercials. Just, you know, with a beard.”

“And chainmail,” Pugh added.

LT Daniels laughed, a whole hoot and a half, and Dane shuddered. This was his dwarf personality taking over, no doubt about it. There were a lot of adjectives in the world that could be appended to the LT but not a single one of them was jolly or a synonym thereof.

The squad of them found places to sit and relax, laying down packs and pulling open drawstrings to get at the meals inside them.

“I don’t get it. What is the humor in weak and slow, knobby bone meat legs?” Rivera asked. All of them turned to stare, eyes wide and not just a little freaked out. But he wasn’t staring back or slavering in any way. He wasn’t about to pennywise the LT either. He had sunk down to sit upon a boulder, and had his chin in one hand, his elbow upon his knee, the perfect representation of universal contemplation.

“What the fuck, Rivera?” Neiderhauer yelled.

“Yeah, you used to be cool man,” Pugh added, his white teeth flashing.

Rivera looked up. His face had emotion now, but just traces of it. A scrunched up metallic face lined with confusion.

“I don’t know. My heart doesn’t beat. My chest is cold, and somehow that feels strong. I don’t get tired or sore. And that feels godlike. I . . . I’m not feeling like myself.”

Dane did one more circle of the hill with his eagle and brought it in. He didn’t want to have to deal with the distraction of commanding it while also taking a deserved breather. Marching wasn’t easy on gnome knobs either. Also, there was a deep conversation to be had here. One that he was both dreading and relieved to finally have a chance to share.

“We are changing. All of us. Well, except maybe Pugh. My guess is that this system, whatever it really is, it has racial dispositions and archetypes. And those are mixing with the real us.”

“Laddy, this is the real me, hearth to stone,” the LT pronounced, then slapped his hands to his mouth, a shocked aura to his eyes.

“I’ve been watching it for some time. I think —” he paused, assessing Rivera with his own eyes rather than the skills of the world system, “I think that the more alien the physiology, the more of a change that occurs. Rivera, you’ve become this kind of golem-robot thing, so you’ve changed the most. And sir, you’ve unbecome the most serious and on target hoorah, essentially a golem-robot human, so you’re changing a lot as well.”

Rivera grunted while the LT’s eyes went wide, his mouth a comical O. “Why I never —”

“Would have said those words in that order. He’s right, sir,” Guzman piped in. The sparkle of her Charm silenced them again. All but Rivera.

“I have become a danger to the mission. I should return past the boundary and reclaim myself.” He stood, his stone body and metal head creaking and clanking, birds cawing and fluttering away in every direction. “I will return as soon as I am able.”

Lieutenant Daniels stood as well. “None of that, Rivera. You are an NCO in the US Army and a ranger to boot. Plus a hell of a fighter. Dane, is he dangerous to us? Use that scan skill or whatever it is called.”

Dane got off the ground and walked over to the towering golemite. Rivera could pancake him with a single punch, he thought, looking up across the four feet that separated the top of his head to the bottom of Rivera’s jaw. The only thing that would stop him from doing just that was this new world’s hit point system.

But, he trusted him. Looking up at the giant figure, Dane couldn’t see any indication that his race was a monstrous one inclined towards evil things. He looked back at the LT, who was now stroking his beard and had gotten a pipe from somewhere to toke from the corner of his mouth.

“I trust him.” Dane tilted his head up, trying to meet Rivera’s eyes. “I trust you, Sarge. You aren’t going to do us any harm.”