World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (18 page)

Soon enough, an opening
appears before her. The priestess continues onward without
hesitation, and finds herself in a cemetery! Startled by the
unexpected sight, she stares at rows upon rows of graves, some marked
with headstones and others without, dotting the field in front of
her. There are no trees, no sounds of insects or birds, no signs of
life at all. It is as if the field has been embraced in the bosom of
the death god. Diana turns around, only to find that the tunnel has
disappeared, leaving her behind to face whatever the dungeon
designers have in store for her.

A horse cries in the
distance, and the ground shake as the horse starts galloping in her
direction.

Diana unhooks the bolas
from her belt, and starts spinning the weapon in her left hand in
slow, steady rhythm, ready to unleash it at the fast approaching
horse.

The thundering gallop
grows louder and louder as the horse approaches her position on the
otherwise silent field. The adventurer narrows her eyes when she sees
a black horse in the horizon. The horse is clearly of ill
temperament, baring its teeth as it stares at her with its dark red
eyes. Her jaws drop when her sight is directed to the rider grasping
the reins over this wild horse – a headless man dressed in black
and holding a pumpkin in his right hand! The pumpkin has a set of
eyes, a nose, and a grinning mouth carved into the head sized
pumpkin. The eyes are glowing dark red, with an evil aura emanating
from the rider.

Diana bravely stands
her ground despite being in the path of the evil creatures. She spins
the bolas more rapidly, preparing to send the short-ranged weapon at
the wild horse's front legs to entrap them. Suddenly, she sees the
headless horseman lift up his right hand, and throw his pumpkin head
at her! She instinctively dives out of the way, and the pumpkin
explodes on the ground behind her. BBBOOOMM!

The player feels her
physical hands sting in shock as feedback from her avatar receiving
major damage from the explosion. “Oh crap!” she blurts out as she
glances at her health bar, and sees a 25% hit to her health bar. As a
spell caster she has half the health of a warrior like Conrad or
Wesley. Diana makes her avatar curl into a ball, pulling the cloak of
fire resistance around her body and rolling on the floor to
extinguish the flames.

The priestess unwraps
the cloak off her body, and sees the headless horseman standing ten
yards away, facing her direction. The pumpkin head is slowly
materializing again in the horseman's right hand. Diana's eyes widen
with alert at the prospect of taking another hit from the pumpkin
explosion, and quickly pulls out her slingshot. She breathes a sigh
of relief when she sees that the cloak has protected the wooden
weapon from the explosion. She starts running toward the still
stationary enemy.

A few intense, pounding
heartbeats later, the pumpkin head is fully materialized, and the
horseman flicks on the reins, urging the horse to gallop towards the
human. As the distance between the two combatants shorten from ten
yards down to five, four, three . . . the horseman lifts up his right
hand, ready to toss the deadly pumpkin head again!

“Oh no you don't!”
Diana shouts as she expertly aims the slingshot at the pumpkin head,
and releases the rubber band. The half pound stone pellet flies
through the air, and punches a hole through the pumpkin head.

The impact causes the
pumpkin to explode. KABOOM! The fiery explosion envelops both rider
and horse, immolating the duo and quickly reducing both to ashes. The
shock wave from the explosion knocks the priestess to the ground.
Crack! Diana winches at the sound, knowing that some of the flasks of
holy water inside her backpack broke when she landed on her back
.
I'll sort it out later
, she thinks to herself as she
slowly gets up.

Sqwik.

The adventurer freezes
for a moment when she hears the unexpected sound. Diana turns her
head slowly, intently examining her immediate surroundings as she
tries to locate the source of the sound.

Sqwik-crit.

The priestess looks
down at her feet, and sees the earth slowly shifting, as if something
is trying to crawl to the surface. Staring at the spot on the ground,
she takes a few steps back, and starts to untie the bull whip from
her waist.

Finally, a skeletal
hand breaks free from the ground!

“Oh no you don't!”
Diana says as she moves forward and starts stomping on the revealed
limb, cracking it and breaking the hand. Crack! She stomps on the
ground near the hand, hoping to get the rest of the newly resurrected
skeleton.

The priestess looks
around, and see dozens of undead struggling to break free of the dirt
and sand, and rise to the surface. “Are the dungeon designers
really that into whack-a-mole?” she complains aloud with disgust.
She takes a knee on the ground, and quickly removes her backpack.
Sticking her hand in the now soaked pack, she rubs her hand against
the holy water and starts to smear her whip with the water. She
reaches her hand into the pack, and pulls out an intact flask of holy
water. She slowly pours the water along the length of her whip, until
the flask is empty.

The priestess takes a
glance at the ground, and sees that the skeletons have started to
rise from their former resting places. She quickly straps on her
backpack, and runs toward the half risen undead. She stomps on an
uncovered arm. Seeing an uncovered skull nearby, Diana pulls the
entire length of the whip back behind her body. Remembering to aim
her thumb at the direction of the skull, she brings the whip forward.
Crack!
When she sees
that the end of the whip has wrapped itself around the skull, she
yanks hard on the whip for its retrieval, remembering to cock her
left arm back and to the side, away from her body. The whip pulls the
skull free from the rest of its skeletal body, and the undead quickly
turns to dust.

Diana looks around, and
decides to head for the greatest concentration of nearly risen
skeletons. Pulling her mace out of its loop at her belt, the
priestess goes on a holy rampage, attacking with her whip in her left
hand and her mace in her right hand. Bam! She slams her steel
ball-on-a-handle melee weapon down on a skull, and the skeleton
quickly turns to ash. Crack! She takes aim at another skull with her
whip, and yanks to decapitate the skeleton.
Thank
the Gods of Eternia these appear to be low level skeletons, or else I
wouldn't be able to kill them off that easily,
she thinks.

Bam-crack! Bam-crack!
The holy warrior attacks with a methodical rhythm, not allowing any
of the skeletons to lay a hand on her. Her health bar is down by a
third, and she does not have the time to spare on a healing prayer
right now. The priestess repeatedly swings down with her mace, and as
she pulls back her weapon she unleashes a crack of her whip. After
doing this one-two sequence almost two dozen times, her mace
harmlessly bounces off her target. The player checks her stamina bar,
and sees that it is completely empty! "Damn!" she blurts
out in frustration at her mistake.
I
got carried away with my melee attacks, and forgot to keep track of
my stamina!

Suddenly, skeletal
hands grasp her ankles from the ground, keeping Diana firmly in
place!

Seeing no choice but to
utilize her holy powers now, the priestess pushes her head down until
her chin touches the cross on a necklace around her neck. She starts
to chant a prayer to Turn Undead: “May the Gods of Eternia take
pity on these lost souls! May the Gods of Eternia return them to
their eternal rest!” A powerful, white glow emanates from her body,
and instantaneously expand in a blinding flash of light in a ten yard
radius. All skeletons touched by the holy light immediately crumble
into dust, returning to their eternal rest.

Diana shakes the dirt
and ash from her white robe, and breathes a sigh of relief now that
the long skirmish is finally over. It has been a long time since she
had to fight solo like this.
Good
thing these guys are low level mobs,
she thinks to herself
again. The player quickly checks her player log, and sees that she
had just knocked out fifty skeletons, along with the much more
powerful headless rider.

Suddenly, Diana hears
the sound of galloping in the distance, forcing the player to turn
her attention back to the field of the dead. “What now?” she
groans aloud. “It's almost unfair the way the dungeon designers are
stacking enemies one on top of another, without giving me a break to
recharge my energy,” she complains. “Time to hide!” she
decides, in order to recharge her stamina and mana bars.

Surveying the field,
Diana sees a nice, shallow grave with a headstone and jumps into the
fresh pit without hesitation. Sitting up, she quickly scoops the
dirt, and dumps them over her legs and torso to cover them up. She
leans back until her head is inside the grave. The adventurer lifts
up her arms, and blindly scoops dirt from her surroundings and
spreads it over her head. Finally she folds her arms, and tries her
best to shift the dirt on her torso to cover her arms. Then she
waits.

Clog-clog-clog. The
horse takes a leisurely jog along the path. At the command of its
master, the horse stops in the middle of the cemetery, where piles of
scattered dust drift as the wind blows softly along the ground.
Finally, the rider dismounts, and kneels down to examine the dust
more closely. Suddenly, the rider stands up, casting his eyes about
his surroundings, as if something is amiss. The mysterious rider
slowly walks around the field, as if retracing the path of the
conflict on the battlefield that had just ended.

With the senses of a
bloodhound, the newcomer continues walking along the cemetery until
his tracing takes him to the make-shift grave. Abruptly, the rider
reaches his hand into the earth, and pulls out the hidden priestess.

“Wha!” Diana cries
out in surprise. Her eyes widen in fear at the sight of her captor –
a death knight! Feared heralds of the death god, death knights
resemble skeletons in outward appearance. However, they wear knightly
armor, with the black circle symbol of death on their chest plate.
Powerful warriors in their own right, their most feared ability is
the “Finger of Death,” a once-a-day power to expel a living
creature's soul from its mortal shell at the mere touch of a
fingertip.

“Foolish girl,” a
raspy, scratchy voice leaves the death knight's mouth as he stares
into her face with his glowing red eyes through a pitch black helmet.
A black aura of death surrounds the foul creature. “You dare hope
to hide your living soul from
me
?” the death knight scoffs
as he holds the priestess up in the air by the collar of her white
robe.

Diana kicks out with
both legs against the knight's armored chest, and pushes back,
causing her robe to rip as she wrestles free of the enemy's grasp.
She quickly backs away from him further as she pulls out her
slingshot.
Damn it
,
she swears to herself,
I don't
have the mana to use another Turn Undead on this enemy. Probably the
way the dungeon designers scripted it
, she realizes
sourly.
They made waste my
stamina and mana on the low level skeletons, and now they are having
fun watching me squirm in the presence of this boss level monster
,
she fumes.

The death knight laughs
when he sees what she is holding in her hands. “You think that pea
shooter will do you any good?” he taunts.

“Only one way to find
out,” the priestess retorts bravely, showing absolutely no fear of
her enemy. She pulls back the thick rubber band, and lets go. Whack!

The half-pound stone
pellet punches a hole through the undead monster's chest armor. “How
is this possible?” the fallen knight hollers in pain. His armor is
supposed to be top notched, and practically invulnerable against
non-magical weapons!

“Easy," Diana
quips. "My pellets were gathered as stones from church grounds,
polished up into round ball pellets inside a church, cleaned in holy
water, and finally blessed by the head priest of my church. They do
quite a bit of damage to undead creatures, like yourself,” Diana
generously explains the origin of her special pellets. This is why
she has been reluctant to use her slingshot in the previous
encounters, to save her ammunition for special undead monsters like
the death knight. “Round two,” she adds cheerfully as the
priestess unleashes another blessed pellet into his chest.

The death knight
stifles his cry as another hole is punched into his chest, and tries
to rush the human with his hands out. "It's time for you to meet
Death, little girl!"

Retaining a firm grip
on her slingshot, Diana keeps back tracking away from the death
knight. She makes sure to stay beyond well the reach of the dreaded
Finger of Death. In the meantime, she snaps pellet after pellet at
her fearsome foe. Soon, she reaches into her backpack's side pocket,
and finds the pocket empty. “Uh-oh,” she utters.

Seeing that the pesky
priestess has run out of those blasted pellets, the death knight
charges her with renewed fury. He mentally commands his undead steed
to quietly sneak upon the human from behind.

Diana drops her now
useless slingshot, and pulls out her steel mace.
I
can still use this mace to knock his hands away from me
,
she thinks to herself as she hops backward again.

Suddenly, her back
knocks into something hard, and she is unable to back away any
further. Taking a quick glance back, she sees the death knight's
skeletal steed turned on its side, blocking her path!

“Got you!” the
death knight calls out with his raspy voice as he is about to touch
the human's back with his Finger of Death.