This is the end, I thought, hanging back. When she saw me, the fairy lit up and waved, beckoning me over.
“Hey, Scyth!” she called, her voice too hoarse for such an ethereal creature. “Over here!”
Yeah, sure. It was obvious what they wanted me for; to crush me and feed the fairy a healing black cube.
“Whaddaya waitin’ for?” one of the ogre’s heads rumbled, shaved except for a topknot.
“Hurry up, damn it! Get over here!” the second head said in a surprisingly high-pitched and well-read voice, his hair a red mane.
I shook my head and stepped back.
“Oh, Nether!” the fairy swore and scampered over to me. She stretched out a hand. “Come on, there’s three cubes over here, we’re saving them for you.”
“For me? Who are you?”
“The name’s Lil’ Star, now hurry up!” the fairy answered in annoyance. “We’re from the Green League, buddy! Mama Kusalarix heard from Bargrivyek, the all-seeing and all-round prince of all things informational, that you, pal, were about to go through the Ordeal. Me and Mano and Hano here happened to be awaitin’ judgment in the Kinema slammer. Word came in from outside that the chosen one of the Sleepers needs help and support. We volunteered, to cleanse our good names of… um… it doesn’t matter. The point is, the League pulled some strings and the judge sentenced us to Trial by Ordeal instead of death.”
Lil’ Star’s tale was accompanied by Hano’s deep-bass commentary and Mano’s high-pitched whine. The ogre towered over the three black cubes like an immovable boulder. A few convicts looked on from some way away, but they didn’t have the courage to attack the ogre. Judging by the fact that they weren’t fighting each other either, the group was together.
“Come on, suck ‘em up,” Lil’ Star nodded at the cubes of divine gifts.
Both the ogre and the fairy were already up at level 16, so I “sucked ‘em up” without hesitation. And the first cube gave me a pleasant surprise, a reminder of one of my patron saints.
+3 to level. Current level: 10.
Great Gift of Fortune: +7 Vitality.
Either the goddess of luck had organized this or I was just lucky, but I’d gotten exactly what I so badly needed! The next rewards were just as encouraging:
+2 to level. Current level: 12.
Great Gift of Shezmu: +4 strength, +5 damage (Shezmu’s Punishment).
+1 to level. Current level: 13.
Medium Gift of Veles: +3 defense.
“Follow me,” Mano whined. “Stay behind me,” Hano rumbled.
“Don’t go looking for trouble,” Lil’ Star warned me. “Let the ogre take out the trash, your job is to loot the cubes.”
Of course, I went looking for trouble right away. The group of thugs standing between us and the center of the arena was, as it turned out, standing guard over the great gifts. In that center, a special cube like the one Nergal The Radiant had dropped so generously for me appeared every five minutes.
The bandits tore apart a centaur that tried to get through, nearly came to blows over the loot, then saw our group and spread out. There were eight in total, and half of them began moving off to the sides, trying to flank us.
I glanced at the number of remaining survivors: 97. Less than 10%.
I was surprised by the variety in the group: a lopher, a minotaur, a titan, an elf, a kobold, a dryad, a naga and a human. How did they unite? A pointless question, and a second later it flew out of my mind completely.
Mano’Hano, who had so far shuffled along with deceptive slowness, now suddenly moved with incredible speed and hit the lopher so hard with his club that the elephant-person flew twenty paces. The monstrous strike killed the lopher, but we didn’t get the loot: a brawl began over the black cube. The minotaur won. Roaring triumphantly, he charged and tried to impale the ogre on his horns, but was too slow: Hano and Mano had time to block. There was no victor in the crash of skull against stone club. Even the horns survived, but the impact shook the minotaur hard enough for the ogre to finish the combination, bringing the club down hard enough to split the bull’s skull. I didn’t see whether he was dead — I was fighting too, covering our flank.
A level 10 elf leaped at me and a level 6 kobold went for Lil’ Star. The fairy dodged and disappeared while I jabbed my spear at the elf. The bastard was nimble and agile — he took half my health with rapid thrusts of his knife, but I won the exchange; four spear strikes was enough to take him down.
Spears +2. Total: 6.
Before picking up the loot, I span my head anxiously, looking for Lil’ Star. I thought she’d died, but I was wrong; the little fairy was fluttering through the air! Her wings were fixed, her health recovered — she must have picked up the black cube from the dead minotaur. The kobold growled, barked, jumped up and down to try and catch the fairy in its claws, and grimaced as she pelted him with stone after stone. The little fairy had great aim.
I finished off the rage-blinded kobold, grabbed the black cube from the elf and rushed to the ogre’s aid.
+1 to level. Current level: 14.
Lesser Gift of Huracan: +1 to speed.
Four attackers surrounded my unexpected ally, and the entire brawling group had moved around twenty paces closer to the arena’s center. The ogre was fighting a titan and naga while a dryad and a human shot at him unpunished from a distance. The dryad, apparently the same one who broke my nose in the cell, threw stones from a slingshot. The
