21: Death Bard

“So, that’s the tree?” Paisley asked in a whisper.

We were hunched close together inside a bush, peering out from behind the leaves at the massive twisted willow tree at the center of a clearing. It towered up to forty meters high, but if it'd grown it branches out straight it could've gone much higher. The whole tree was more twisted than the minds of the people who had taken my legs.

Its leaves were strangely beautiful, though. I’d been expecting something dead and decaying, but instead, despite the twisted nature of its branches, the leaves were a verdant, almost glowing green colour.

“It’s so pretty,” my newly regained friend said, her fingers landing on my forearm. “You need the sap, you said?”

Her touch startled me, and I turned to look into her deep, expressive brown eyes. The gentle fluttering in my stomach that had been bothering me since I'd seen her again exploded in intensity. I had to catch myself as the world seemed to tilt sideways, pitching me towards her.

"Y-yeah," I agreed softly, my voice sounding very small. "I have a pat, I mean, a tap and a bunch of empty vials in my inventory. It's probably um, it's probably guarded, so—"

I cut myself off, scrunching my eyes closed as heat suffused my cheeks. Get it together Keiko, you utter wreck of a fairy. Yeah, she's cute, and yeah, she's been really nice and helpful. Doesn't mean you have to make a fool of yourself every time you meet her eyes.

Her soft, quiet voice pried my eyelids open again like a pair of forceps. "Are you okay?"

I took a steadying breath and nodded. It was a lie, though. Something was so damn different about the vibes between us now. It was like I got a little static electric shock from her every time she smiled, or touched me, or met my gaze with hers. Surely I wasn't… no, no, I wasn't. We didn't need that shit. Things were already way too complicated between us, even if she didn't realize it. I just needed to get myself licked, that's all.

A snort escaped me as I had the last thought. It felt so weird to say that—Get myself licked. Because, I had… parts. Ugh, why were all the words for ‘pussy’ so awkward. I really wished there were a simple and easy way to refer to it—An equivalent to ‘dick’.

My amusement turned into a full bark of laughter as I became consciously aware of my train of thought. Shut your terminally lonely brain-cell up, Keiko, and get to work. You can have a minor existential crisis over your vag later. Ugh, even that sounded off.

"Why did you laugh?!" Paisley asked in alarm, urgently pushing her way out of the bush. "Crap, I needed the element of surprise with these guys, I'm a glass cannon. They'll take me out for sure. This is going to hurt…"

Drawing my sword, I stepped up beside her and did something very, very out of character for me. I leaned over and playfully brushed my lips across her cheek. I remembered her saying she liked it when people did that. I think. I think I was going a bit crazy, to be honest.

"Start blasting, Pay," I said with a grin. "I'll keep them off you."

To add to the effect, I shifted to a one handed stance with my sword and summoned the anvil into my left hand. Twirling it by the spike was a mistake, however, because I almost dropped it. Damn thing was really heavy.

Paisley rolled her eyes and laughed. "Go on then, brave knight. Defend me."

Raising my anvil and sword together, I did just that, blocking the first strike from the claws of a wooden ghoul. I followed through with a quick, darting slash across its throat, taking care to remember how the style guide had laid out the patterns.

The Ascendant Fae samurai used a style that was unique to them, and I had been doing my best to learn it through the little instructional class videos I had. The style was called Sleet Storm, and it focused on a barrage of lightning fast strikes to put the enemy on the back foot, followed by huge powerful strikes.

I modified the forms to accommodate the anvil in my left hand, using it to block and parry blow after blow. My sword, always shining with the subtle white and pink light of Imbue Strike, was easily able to chop bits off the ghouls, but the anvil was what really impressed me. Fingers, legs, arms, and heads snapped like the twigs they were every time I brought it down. It did some serious damage, and it had me wondering if I could figure out how to make a small off-hand warhammer that could double as an anvil. How cool would that be?

Unfortunately it wasn't all sunshine and broken bones—my Strength was only just high enough for me to wield it, and I was running into problems.

I ducked a wild, leaping attack from a gnarled wooden ghoul and placed the horn of my anvil in its path. The spike caught in the flesh of its stomach and I used that leverage to redirect its screaming body down into the ground. Paisley placed her left hand down on its thrashing head and gave a sharp whistle. A writhing mass of inky black tendrils surged out of its body and ripped it apart like some sort of alien horror.

God, I forgot how terrifying Paisley’s class could be. Its name was Eldritch Bard, or something, and it was a third tier evolution. She’d gained it after stumbling upon a troupe of wandering Dwarven necromancers. Its name was pretty innocuous considering that the class fell under the glass cannon mage archetype.

The weapons it used were pretty unassuming too. Around her wrists was a strange set of pipes, basically a pan flute in bracer form, and they were absolutely covered in random occult shit. Tiny charms hung from the intricate string knotwork that bound the flutes together, ranging from tiny bones to little metal beads. They were super strange to look at, but it was their power that she called on now.

Her soft voice rose into a quiet hum, and her hands followed the sound up into the air. The sound began to judder as she laid another note in over the top, then another, and another.

The awful sound reached a crescendo and stopped, as though it had passed beyond mortal hearing. From the space above her hands, little gray blades flickered out, slicing, cutting, and dismembering the enemy in an orgy of damage numbers. I noticed, interestingly, that the numbers weren’t actually that high, and it was just the massive number of projectiles that allowed her to do so much damage.

“Phew,” she gasped, breathing heavily. I tried desperately not to stare at the rise and fall of her chest.

“That was pretty amazing,” I said, watching her in awe. I’d seen the skill before, but it hit different when it one shot everything within a ten meter radius.

Paisley blushed and threw me a one-shoulder shrug. “It’s not actually that useful in endgame content. It’s an early ability I got for small group content before I specialized into single target damage.”

“Well, it looked fucking badass,” I told her truthfully. Then I realised I hadn’t asked what her class was as Keiko. “So uh, what is your class anyway?”

“I fit into the mage assassin role, but the lore name is Eldritch Bard. It’s a kinda whacky offshoot of dwarven necromancy,” she explained, then added in a rush, “But not like, raising zombies and skeletons kind of necromancy, that’s gross. Dwarven necromancy is all about putting the dead back where they belong. It’s like actual death magic, instead of what everyone normally calls death magic, which should really be called undeath magic, in my opinion.”

“I am aware,” I chuckled, giving her an amused look. “I have played this game before.”

Her pale cheeks went just that little bit more pink. “O-oh. Yeah. Sorry…”

“You’re a bard, though, which means you use that whistling and humming to cast your spells?” I asked, pretending to be intrigued. I mean, I was intrigued, her class was cool as hell, but Keiko wouldn’t know any of this.

“Humming, throat singing, whistling, graceful hand movements, dancing, all that shit,” she agreed, nodding happily. “It’s all about the performance.”

“That’s so badass,” I said. It really was fucking cool too. The sounds she made would always take on this creepy, otherworldly tone. It sounded terrifying and had on more than one occasion caused players to run away in PvP.

She smiled and turned her attention towards the tree again. "It's fun. Uh, anyway… about that tree?"

"That tree is about to get tapped and milked," I said, expression impassive, but voice dripping with innuendo.

"Ew," she laughed, wiggling her hands at me like I was some sort of bug she could shoo away. "Never describe it like that again."

Now that my mind was conjuring up some very nasty images, I had to agree with her. "Yeah, you're totally right. That is very gross."

"Unless we're talking about titty milk," she amended thoughtfully.

The number of emotions that I packed into the look I gave her would have made a car full of clowns proud.

Seeing my expression, she giggled, "What? Lactation is a perfectly valid kink. Not mine, but the idea doesn't repulse me."

"I'm going to pretend this conversation never happened," I said, my voice strangled and oh so confused. "I'm going to go and tap the tree now so I can suck its lifeblood out like an old school vampire. A nice, horrifying, non-sexual vampire."

"No sparkles?"

"No sparkles."