Twisted Destiny

We fight for the entire day until our muscles hurt so much that we physically can’t continue fighting anymore. Luckily the army and another large group of adventurers have arrived to take over the fighting for now so we pull back towards the rear line to set up camp. 

“It’s a lot harder to fight without a healer…” Max says as she stretches her muscles. “You need to be so careful not to take any hits.” 

“There were some healers among the adventurers.” Nikki replies as she sets fire to our firepit. “But it’s true that it’s a lot harder to rely on them rather than on Amicia…” Nikki looks at me and grimaces. 

Élise sticks her sword in the ground next to me and sits down on the same log I am sitting on. The tree it belonged to got blown up by Nikki only an hour or so ago so it was still smoldering a little bit. “Yeah, but at least we made some ground. If we keep up this pace, how long do you think it will take us to get there?” 

“By tomorrow evening I think. Seeing as fighting in the dark is not going to go very smoothly.” Hilda replies. 

“Tomorrow evening…” Élise pokes the recently started fire in front of her with a stick. “And then we need to go through the portal and find her.” 

Hilda nods and then looks at me. “Thank you for sending us the update so we could be here.” 

“And thank you for bringing us over here too.” Nikki ads. @@novelbin@@

“No problem…” I replied solemnly. 

“I wasn’t in favor of that...” Veanya comments, she’s standing behind me leaning against another tree with her arms crossed. But she quickly abandons that position with a sigh. “However I am glad to have you all here right now… Having you here will make it a lot easier to do something to help our friends and loved ones. But we do need to stay extremely careful.” 

Élise tosses the stick into the fire and then turns herself around so she can look behind her directly at Veanya. She takes a couple of deep breaths before turning back around again and staring into the fire. “I know it’s probably not your fault what happened to Amicia… But I’m sorry… I can’t help but feel anger when I look at you.” 

 “There was really nothing we could do…” I say in response, staring at the floor. “It all just happened so fast.” 

“Could you… tell me in detail what happened?” Élise asked. “We got the jist of it through your message but I would really like to hear it in detail from you.” 

“We do have the time now.” Hilda says as she sits down at the other side of me and puts her hand on my back.

“I will…” I nod and tell the tale of what had transpired with every small detail I could remember. 

“To think they would use a tactic like that…” Hilda comments. 

“So they were too cowardly to just straight up fight her.” Lise sneers. 

“They tried the day before but that didn’t end well. And Amicia had grown even more powerful afterwards.” Veanya replies. “Getting her out of the picture was the best course of action they could have taken.” 

“Hmm.” Élise kicks a rock out in front of her. “Still cowards though.” 

“So after we had to fall back because the portal re-opened we tried to rally as many people as we possibly could.” I explain further. “Crystal’s guild was a big help spreading the word along.” 

“We got a message from her as well, after we came online.” Hilda nods. “They really seem to be on top of it.” 

“Yeah…” 

Hilda smiles softly and puts down her bags, taking out some pots and pans, and then making some other foodstuffs appear in her hands. “Do you know how much food our friends have?” While she waits for an answer she starts preparing a meal. 

“Probably not a lot.” I admit. “We got used to taking things out of the vault. And I don’t know if she can access it on the other side…” 

Hilda nods at my reply. “Then it’s even more important that we manage to get to the portal tomorrow. It’s going to get harder by the minute if they don’t have enough nutrients to fight back with.” 

“Amicia did pocket a bit of the bread that Brielle made for us. So I hope that’ll help…” 

Élise sighs and then suddenly stands up right next to me. “Yep, can’t do this. I need to start fighting again.” 

Before she can even move, Nikki presses Élise back down on her ass by pushing her on her shoulders. “No you don’t.” 

“Nikki…” Élise objects. 

“Babe, you are fucking exhausted.” Nikki states. “Sit down, eat, relax and sleep. That’s what you need right now.” She motions to everyone around her. “That’s what we are all going to do. And if you don’t like that, I’m knocking you out, okay?” 

Lise sighs again but seems to have gotten the message. She then gives her girlfriend a nod. “But I want to be out here by first light.” 

“Don’t worry, Élise, we all want that.” Max comments. “First light of dawn and we move.” 

Lise nods again but doesn’t really go in on it any further. 

We all sit down and watch as Hilda cooks us a stew, the sun is already really low on the horizon. 

“Can I ask a question?” I say as I look into the fire. 

“Sure.” Hilda replies. 

“Who came up with the plan to get y’all over here by using the vault system? I thought it was really clever.”

“That’d be Hilda herself.” Nikki answers. 

Hilda nods. “Yep. That’s all me.” 

“How did you arrive at that solution?” 

“Well…” She begins as she takes some herbs out of her pockets to add them to the stew. “Almost immediately after I got the message from Élise and Nikki that there was trouble afoot, I thought about initiating this little experiment that I wanted to execute. As for the plan itself it had been brewing in my mind ever since we last logged out. As an attempt to work around Ami’s inability to teleport people to this general area. I’m glad that it ended up working as the other plan wasn’t really that… risk-free… regarding our current knowledge of our connection to this world.” 

“Which was?” Veanya asks. Her curiosity had been peeked. 

“The disturbing one?” I ask. 

Hilda nods. “You know how people usually respawn after losing their lives in this place, right?” 

I immediately make the connection. I hadn’t thought about it myself as it wasn’t really a thing that we had encountered before among our party members. “Oh… Shit… You were planning on comitting suicide if the original plan didn’t succeed?” 

“Yes, and then hopefully respawning at Ribaquen.” Lise replies affirmatively. 

“Shit…” I repeat. “But what if… if you didn’t?” 

Lise sighs. “It was a risk I was willing to take. Even after almost losing my life yesterday… For my sister… Yeah. Definitely.” 

“I’m happy you didn’t need to then I guess…” 

“So am I.” Nikki confesses. “I was absolutely no fan of that plan. But there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to convince her otherwise.” 

“Not to mention the trauma it would have caused to the children at the mansion…” Hilda says. “I wasn’t looking forward to explaining to their mother what the hell we were going to try to do. But luckily none of that matters because you got us here after all.” 

“Thanks again, Sam.” Nikki smiles at me. 

“Yeah… Don’t worry about it… I’m happy I did.” 

“Besides, it’s good to know that the vault has that functionality too for the future. It has a couple of disadvantages compared to Amicia’s teleport though.” Hilda explains, sniffing her stew and then taking out a couple of bowls to divide among us all. “We need at least one person on the other side to accept the teleport request and we also need to physically be at the vault for it to work.” 

“And do you know if we can teleport someone back? Like… imagining them being dropped off at it like a box of loot?” 

Hilda shrugs. “I’m not sure. But because this plan worked, I would very much assume that it works the other way around as well.” 

Max raises her hand. “If you want to, you can test it on me.” 

Carol, without hesitation, grabs hold of Max from behind and just like that, Max poofs away. Incredibly strange to see that happen. With the blink of an eye, she is just gone. Not a sound, not anything, Max has just disappeared. 

Carol then opens her arms and a moment later, Max is lying on top of Carol who has fallen over because of the sudden increase in mass. Both of them are giggling profusely. 

“Well, that works.” Max laughs. “Although it wasn’t a very soft landing. You might get a bit bruised up if you land a bit unluckily. Coins aren’t the best thing to land on.” 

“I can imagine.” Lise cracks a smile. At least my friends’ shenanigans were cheering her up a little. I know I could use some cheering up as well…