Chapter 25

The boys were obviously excited, talking loudly and quickly (in that island tongue where every third word is complete gibberish to my ears) as they swung their new staffs about.

I leaned against the wall in the far corner of the room as I interacted with the Portal store. I was mostly dumping useless (to me) stuff and clearing up space in my inventory and picking up another healing potion for sale ‘outside’. While on the road it was easier to convert items to Silver than to sell it to Norms. I’d tried packing up some items and mailing them to bidders on Me-Bay, or pulling out some trash at pawn stores and selling it there. The payout was a bit better but it was just a drag to have to do, and I’d mostly given up on selling things that way.

Mace quickly took charge of the rowdy mages and shouted them down. A huge black man in full armour exerts quite a bit of authority.

While I rooted around the ‘armour’ their dad had found, Mace whipped his new recruits a bit and ran them through simple drills for strikes and blocks, confirming that they had a basic set of skills with their new weapons. Their ‘magic’ attacks were pretty pitiful. Our ‘Ice Mage’ had the ability to freeze a small patch of water that we’d dumped on the floor or frost-over a small piece of ground within a 5-meter or so range (maybe he could keep my beer cold?). Since I hadn’t been introduced to him by name I arbitrarily called him Frosty.

The unnamed ‘Earth Mage’ could shift a small piece of the stone floor here in the Start room. Maybe he could move it a few inches. Presumably he could shift a small patch of earth when we came across some. Basically it was enough to trip up anyone who wasn’t aware of it, and just really annoy them if they were prepared for it. Mace had me attack them (gently) and they tried to trip me up while holding me off by themselves. Against a single zombie or skeleton they should be ok, as long as they didn’t panic. So long as they had some ‘Frontliners’ or ‘Tanks’ up front between them and any large group they should be fine too.

We dressed them in whatever gear their dad had procured. It wasn’t much. Old football helmets, heavy and nearly perfectly round, with some shoulder and shin pads that were honest-to-god leather ... they must have been nearly a century old. Mace had me pull out some light ring-mail ‘hoodies’ that I had packed away and they slipped them on top of the pads. They wouldn’t do much against blunt impact or piercing weapons but blades should mostly slide right down them.

The boys needed settling down again at this point and Mace managed it without raising his voice toomuch. We explained about my curse, and the idea that while it hindered me, it was actually a real buff (positive effect) for them since their staffs were primarily crushing weapons. After that excitement died down, we all trotted down the stairs before we linked up and entered the portal at the bottom.

I’d expected to get the standard ‘big graveyard’ that the Blues were known for. In all my reading online I’d never heard of any variations besides the size of the graveyard and the number of large mausoleums.

If nothing else, the oddball Blue Portal at the Harbour Inn on Elsie’s Bay was going to become famous for something besides its location.

We’d arrived on a small, foggy path of rock and sand that lead down to a rocky beach. In the distance, maybe two kilometres away, was a washed up shipwreck that looked maybe like an old Spanish sailing galleon?

Mace organized our alignment and unsurprisingly he put the two boys on the wings; two steps back and one step to the outside of us. They were warned to watch for corpses digging themselves out of the earth, rocks, and sand both in front, and behind us. Frosty was encouraged to try freezing the wet sand around any skeleton he saw digging itself out.

We didn’t have long to wait. Less than five steps onto the beach and our first opponents excavated themselves out of the sand. Looking closely I could see that they were in all sorts of initial positions, face down, on their side, on their back ... it was like they’d been washed up on the beach and not buried in some traditional manner.

The earth Mage held back passively, looking for a chance to trip up an advancing skeleton, or maybe put in his own strike with his staff if there was an obvious opening. I was fully engaged but I was only managing to block attacks and not making any real headway with this first opponent.

I had no fears for Mace, once he managed contact with one of these bone racks, it was done for. On my side of the beach it was a different story. I’d been expecting an old rusty cutlass and small shield or maybe long knives, but my opponent had a long two-handed boarding pikes or harpoon and my axe wasn’t well suited to fighting an enemy with reach.