39. Locke #2
I know Cipher is listening to these thoughts, but I don’t care. Let him feel what true human emotion is for once. Let him be jealous. I’d be just as jealous if he were here touching her, being touched by her.
“Watch out,” I tell Vesper, reaching out to tug her to the right away from the large mound she’d been about to sink into. It could be a rock beneath the snow.
Or a person.
We should be looting their corpses, but something about it feels .
. . wrong. We hadn’t had any qualms doing so in the Verdant Nexus.
But here, in this section where bodies are frozen forever in time, I can’t bring myself to check their inventories.
When Vesper doesn’t either, I know she feels the same.
“Thanks,” she says, smiling at me.
Her hand wraps around my forearm briefly in gratitude, and though we’re both wearing heavy clothing, there’s a spark where her hand rests.
“I do not know whether you are a romantic, or just pitiful,” Cipher goads in my mind.
I don’t bother responding.
Steve pulses behind us. “Like, I could really use a burger right about now,” he declares. “Anyone else?”
I glance at him. “A burger?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know what a burger is, Lockey Poo!
” At my look, his rings spin faster. “It’s only the juiciest, most delectable food in the world.
Imagine this: a perfectly toasted bun stacked with a hamburger patty, some melted cheese on top of that, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, mayonnaise, ketchup, and the soul of a pedophile.
” I jerk my head sharply toward Steve as he moans thinking about it.
“Yum. Ugh! I could just burn in hell thinking about it.”
My eyes meet Vesper’s before I look back at the floating creature. “Did you just say you eat . . . souls?”
Steve giggles. “All angels eat souls, Lockey Poo. Duh!”
I straighten. “Should we be worried about ours?”
Steve laughs again. “You’re such a silly goose, Lockey Poo!
You don’t have your souls on you right now!
Not while in the Harrow. Those are kept under lock and key until you exit.
” His rings stop spinning. “Of course, if you, like, die here, your soul becomes fair game.” They spin again at a normal speed.
“But I’m sure that won’t happen. Not to a big, strong Bone Breaker like you! ”
It should be impossible, but I’m even more unnerved by the Ophanim than before.
Still, I force myself to turn back forward, putting the monster at my back, trusting that he’s speaking the truth.
Of all the ways to die here, somehow, dying by Steve’s hands—rings?
—feels like a particular brand of “fuck you” I’d rather avoid.
We walk in circles for what feels like hours once we get near the Minor Boss marker.
When I check my buffs, I realize it actually was longer than the few hours I thought it was.
The white snow and the howling wind just sort of blend together until I get lost in my thoughts of how much I hate snow and ice and cold.
The snow builds up until it’s literally to our knees so we have to start high stepping just to push through.
I’m sweating after an hour of the slow drag through the snow, panting with the effort.
Vesper isn’t much better off. My legs are longer than hers so she ends up sinking past her knees.
She can’t really high step anymore, so she just uses her thighs to shove through the snow, leaving a strange looking trail behind her.
Every so often, I look behind us, expecting to see the Leech coming at us again, but thankfully, I don’t.
It’s only a matter of time before he finds us again and we’d be particularly easy to track right now.
The benefit of the Shatterlands though is just how vast and empty it is.
He’d have to cross back and forth for days to find us and even as a Tier Five Leech, there isn’t nearly enough life force available here to heal himself.
He either went back to the Verdant Nexus to wait us out, or he’d gone ahead, both of which are something to worry about.
With the way he’d looked at Vesper, that won’t be the last time we see the bastard.
I check my buffs again. “I’m down to four hours,” I announce, pausing my trek to take a deep breath. “I don’t think we’re going to find the Minor Boss here.”
Vesper blows out a puff of air. The little puff of air billows from her lips in front of her, reminding me just how fucking cold this place is. “Should we just head for the border of the next region then?”
“We can stay and continue to look,” I reply, “but once my winterberry wine buff runs out, we’re going to be very limited on time.”
She nods. “We should just go to the next region before it runs out. We can look for this Minor Boss on our way back through tackling the major ones. Isn’t the major one close to here as well?”
I shrug. “It’s somewhere here. No way to know where.”
“Then we’ll come back,” she decides.
She turns in the direction of the blacked-out border and shoves her way three steps through the snow, her teeth grit against the effort it takes. I smile at the movements.
“What if I walk in front of you?” I ask. “You can walk in my trail and it wouldn’t take as much effort.”
“Oh my god,” Steve says. “What a cutie patootie you are, Lockey Poo! So sweet! So romantic! I bet you could carry her with your big strong arms and save her the trouble entirely.” He flares brightly. “Just look at those arms . . .”
I ignore the Ophanim, knowing that Vesper would never allow me to carry her so far, and move in front of her. Instead of taking high steps, I start to shove through the snow with my legs, clearing a path for her to step. She follows, sighing as it becomes far easier to walk.
“That’s so much better,” she admits. Her hands come up to touch my waist from behind, holding on as we push through the snow. I tense, my thoughts latching onto the small bites of electricity that tingle my skin where she holds.
“You can hold me tighter,” I say before I think better than it. “Or press against me.” I clear my throat. “If you need to.”
Smooth, Cipher purrs in my mind.
But her hands press a little more firmly into me, and I don’t regret it. Even if Cipher continues to mock me. At least I can feel her touch.
Cipher makes a sound in my mind that sounds half between a scoff and a growl. But he doesn’t speak.
“We shouldn’t have to go—”
I’d been about to comment on how close the border is. Four hours should be plenty of time to reach it without worry. Before I can get the words out though, I’m interrupted by the system notifications.
BOSS BATTLE INITIATED: DEFEAT DEBBIE
Debbie hates intruders and has such good camouflage, players rarely survive her wrath. Running is futile. Congrats on your death!
The roar that explodes around us would shake the ice off the trees in the Ice Grief Orchard if we were close enough to it.
For the first three seconds, I don’t even see this “Debbie.” We’re looking around us, searching for her, trying to figure out what it is that we’re going to be killed by.
The roar grows louder and the sky above us starts to let loose more snow.
The snowflakes begin to swirl around us, almost as if the Minor Boss brought it with her.
“Uh, we’re just passing through, Debbie,” Vesper tries. “We aren’t here to hurt you.”
“Fuck that,” I say, pulling my hammer from my inventory. “You heard what the notification said. She’s definitely here to hurt us.”
We’ve fought relatively easy creatures for other Minor Bosses.
The arapaima has been the easiest so far, and even that had drained us.
They’ve gotten consistently more difficult and the last Minor Boss battle almost killed us.
I start to regret the decision to look for this Minor Boss when I hear another roar.
I really regret it when I finally get a clear look at Debbie.
She blends into the surrounding snow so well, I almost wouldn’t see her if she wasn’t moving.
She’s massive, standing twice as tall as I am and three times as thick.
She’s covered in flowy white fur. She stands upright on two legs just like us, her hands so big, I have no doubt she could grab my head and pop it between one.
Her face is dark and horrifying, her snout long and lined with the sharpest of teeth.
Teeth that are stained red.
Great horns are on top of her head, darker in color than her fur. That’s the only reason I can really see her. The horns and her horrifying face. If she turns around, we won’t be able to track her.
“Whoa, Debbie,” I say, taking a step back into Vesper. “Stay over there.” When she takes a step toward us, I add, “Please,” just in case. It had worked at the safehouse.
It doesn’t work now.
As I focus on Debbie, a menu pops up beside her.
DEBBIE
Abominable yeti, chaotic evil
Ha ha. Run.
That’s it. That’s all it says.
We are so fucked.
Neither one of us can run in the snow, not with it this deep. As we move to the side, Debbie disappears, blending into her surroundings so well, she’s just gone. We have barely any weapons and we’re on a time constraint.
I glance at Vesper. “Run for the border. I’ll distract her.”
“Are you insane?” she snarls. “I’m not leaving you here to die.”
“At least one of us should survive—”
“Shut the fuck up, Locke,” she spits as she draws her blade. “We’re fighting our way out of this together.”
Or we die together.
I blow out my breath and raise my hammer. Alright then. If this is how I die, so be it.
“Would you like to know your chances of survival?” Cipher asks, popping back in as Debbie bears down on us.
“No!” I snarl, rushing forward with my hammer raised.
“Fifteen percent,” Cipher answers anyways.
Fifteen percent shocks me. Mostly because we’d had less than one percent chance of surviving the orca pod and yet we had.
“You’re telling me we have a higher chance of defeating this thing than the orca pod?” I snarl.