Guild Wars Chronicles: Chapter 6
There’s no place like your guild…
Tags: Guild Wars Categories: Features, PC Features
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jun 22nd, 2005
Author: Ember Cole
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I looked around the green, peopled expanse of the city and wondered where Cas, Mil, Ayame and Xib were now, what they were doing, thinking, what battles they might be fighting.
A young woman – younger even than me – approached and broke me out of my wistful thoughts. She was shorter than me; but then, most women were.
“Hi there!” the stranger said in a perky, “pretty pretty princess” voice that caused me to dislike her instantly. “Whatcha doin’?”
I tried to suppress my frown.
“Waiting for my friends,” I said.
“Oh!” the pretty pretty princess said. “You mean your guild? You’re a part of one? That’s so cool! I’ve been trying to find a guild of my own, but I’m new to the area and don’t know a lot of people. I really think it would be cool to have some friends, if only I could find a few…”
I knew that if I didn’t speak up, she’d likely continue with the heavy-handed hinting until I either gave in and invited her to join my guild, or she exploded; neither option seemed particularly attractive options, so I spoke up.
“Look,” I told the princess-sounding girl, “my friends seem to have disappeared. I have some time, some things that need doing. I could use some help. It sounds like you do, too. Maybe we could—”
“Oh, that’d be SO great!” Princess nearly shouted, jumping up and down in a way that made all her tiny, jigglier bits, well… jiggle tinily. “So what’s the name of our guild?”
“Hold on,” I said. “I don’t even know your name, princess.”
“Buffy Xander,” she replied.
“Well, Buff,” I told her, “I wasn’t inviting you into a guild. I was suggesting we help each other out a bit. Just until we complete the tasks at hand.”
For a fraction of a second, her face frozen, stricken, but in a blink it was gone, replaced by her typical, perky disposition; I wasn’t sure which I preferred.
“Well, that’s great just the same, I do have some things I want to take care of, but who needs a commitment beyond that? I mean, we barely know each other and besides, it might not even work out. Our skills might be too much alike and you never know…”
I let Buff continue but my thoughts drifted back to my guild members, suddenly gone, as though gathered together and whisked away to some holy convocation of some sort; a convocation of which I was not a part. I bit my lip and tried to think of where they might be. I knew Cas and the others saw me in much the same light as I saw Buff, and made a mental note to be kind to her, in spite of herself. Yet, for the moment, I was secure in the assumption that Buff would be able to go on and on for at least an hour without further replies from me.
I was surrounded by skeletons, taking a pounding and unable to unleash the fury of a firestorm that might vanquish them because I was too busy trying not to swallow my own teeth. I had wanted to get back into the battle, but this was not quite what I had in mind.
I called out to Buff, who had disappeared around a corner of the crypt, up ahead. She replied.
“You should come here!” she shouted back. “There’s some really cool stuff. You might like some of it!”
I took a blow to the back that sent two of my loosened teeth flying from my mouth and down an abyss.
“Kinda busy here!” I shouted back. “Skeletons! A little help?”
And then she was back, looking on, bemused.
“Oops!” she said with a little-girl giggle. “There’s more of them than I noticed. Sorry!”
A couple of the skeletons turned in her direction. She began casting and the diverted attention freed me up to try again as well. Too late, I noticed we were both casting the same fire spell.
“No!” I shouted – and then blackness came. I woke up at the resurrection shrine and immediately raced back down into the depths of the crypt, hoping I wasn’t too late. Instead, I found Buff sitting atop a pile of dry bones – the skeletons who moments earlier had so easily dispatched me.
“See?” she said. “No worries about them anymore.”
I was struck silent for a long moment.
“But, how did you—”
“Never mind that, come see this,” Buff said, tugging at my arm like a child. I followed reluctantly. Rounding the corner of the crypt, I saw what she had been so excited about. It was a strong, powerful-looking twig; no, more than a mere twig – a branch. A branch adorned with a bright, fiery jewel.
“It’s—” Buff began, but I cut her off.
“I know what it is,” I replied. “I thought it was legend. But here it is.”
“I think you should have it,” Buff said.
“You found it,” I demurred. “You could wield it as well as me.”
“I insist,” Buff said. “I’ve found what I need. Take it. I may be able to wield it as well, but not wield is as well as you.”
I approached the spell staff with the same sense of awe young Arthur must have been overcome with when he first approached Excalibur. I ran my fingers along the aged bark, touching it like a lover, before finally holding it in my grasp. As soon as I had it in my hands, a realization dawned. I whirled on Buff.
“You’re not just an elementalist, are you?” I said. “No elementalist could pass this on to another.”
“It is a weapon worthy of you, not me,” she agreed obliquely.
I considered the crypt, the way she’d handled the skeletons on her own in my absence and it all clicked into place.
“Necro!” I shouted, causing echoes and the fluttering of bat wings. “That’s what you really are!”
She smiled a sickly smile. “We all have our quirks,” Buff said.
I had no problem with necros; I had even considered that path myself once, and our guild – the old one – included at least one other. But for such a small, impish, perky young thing to be a necro? That caught me by surprise. She had seemed the pretty pretty princess so recently; the image of her communing with the dead didn’t fit just yet.
“Consider the weapon a gift,” Buff said. “I’m sorry if I was a bad companion. I had fun!”
And with that, she skittered down the crypt corridors faster than I cared to even attempt to follow. I thought again of my missing guild-mates. Like Buff, I had had some fun on our little adventure in the crypts. It had been a rewarding day, as the new, legendary staff in my hands attested. But even so, it wasn’t the same. With my guild-mates, there was familiarity, strategy, a sense of family. All of that had been missing with Buff.
I sighed and began the journey out of the crypts, hoping against all odds that my guild-mates would soon reappear as quickly as they’d vanished. At least now, I knew I valued their company, however incompatible they seemed at times.
Go on to Chapter 7
Go back to Chapter 5
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Tags: Guild Wars
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jun 22nd, 2005 and is filed under Features, PC Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
