Age of Dragons Online

Chapter 10: The Second Message

Chapter 10: The Second Message

            Caught off guard, Nadran stared at his arm and drew his swords, looking at them as well as his own body, and was startled to see a dark aura surrounding both him and his weapons.  Completely perplexed, he watched the dark aura swirl around his body and swords like a black mist.  Umm… what in the world is happening!?  Did Golkav poison me or something?  Or is this my “skill?”  If it is, I’m not quite sure exactly what it is or what it does, but it’s definitely not what I expected.  Of course, it might just be poison, a glitch (unlikely), or some kind of bonus for beating a boss.  Wait, “JUST be POISON?”  That phrase sounded really weird – Nadran imagined what he would say if the aura really was poison.  “Oh, it’s just poison.  That’s a relief.  In that case, I’m only going to die a painful death instead of having some weird skill set in a virtual game.”  Yeah, I should phrase things better, or my mind’s going to go off on a wild tangent.

            Nadran laughed aloud at his ridiculous train of thought, then noticed that the surviving players were still staring at him, their eyes full of extremely unstable emotions.  Oops… I probably shouldn’t have started laughing after killing something while being surrounded by a dark aura… they might get the wrong idea.  Judging by the looks in their eyes, it was too late.

            “He… he’s one of the monsters!”

            “He can’t be human!”

            “He is with the Forces of Darkness!  He’s evil!”

            Only one of the fifteen survivors (a couple were killed by Golkav’s spheres when he attacked Nadran and missed) seemed sane.  “Um, guys, are you O.K.?  Didn’t he just save us?”

            Starting to become worried from so many wild (and completely untrue except for the sane person’s statement) accusations, Nadran sheathed his swords, and then raised his hands in front of himself.  “Hold on,” he pleaded, “Let’s think about this reasonably.”  However, they were not to be so easily swayed.  As they accused him of everything from witchcraft (he had to resist laughing at that one, especially since a witch in this game was probably fairly common and not any more evil than, say, a mage) to being Volzan in disguise, they heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and stopped talking to see who it was.

            It turned out to be players, who were presumably in the rooms Nadran passed as he climbed the tower, and who heard the death cry of Golkav, so they climbed the tower to investigate.  Nadran quickly tried to figure out how to make the dark aura dissipate, though he had no idea how to do it.  Umm… black aura, could you please, you know, dissipate or something?  Much to Nadran’s astonishment, it worked, and the aura seemed to get sucked up into the center of his body, vanishing.

            Everyone who came to the top of the tower to investigate finished climbing the stairs, and they spread across the space.  Before anyone could ask what happened, however, the sky suddenly darkened ominously, and a thick fog swirled in, somehow in such a great quantity that it even blanketed the top of the tower 100 feet off the ground.  Seemingly out of thin air, a hooded figure of Volzan appeared, creating an eerie echo of the “tutorial.”  Nadran tried to move, but his feet were stuck to the ground, and he couldn’t lift them.  He looked around to see hooded Volzan figures standing solemnly in front of everyone, for the fog was not thick enough to obstruct his vision, just add to the otherworldly effect.  Nadran then looked toward his Volzan – and froze.  The Volzan before him was leaning back in a large, tan armchair and drinking a cup of tea.

            At a loss for words, Nadran stared blankly at the Volzan before him, so clearly different from the grim, identical figures facing everyone else.  He was not, however, the only one to notice this anomaly.  He received several confused glances in his direction, and when he made eye contact with someone, he shrugged, indicating that he was as bewildered as they were.  Nadran once again turned to face the Volzan before him, who had finished taking a sip of tea, and was now leaning back, legs crossed, his teacup, loosely held in his fingers, resting on his knee.