//------------------------------//
// 29- Into the Woods 
// Story: Bound by Scales 
// by FrostTheWolf 
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Bound by Scales- Into the Woods




It had been some time since the four… or should I say five of us had set out on this journey that Tina had planned out for us and for the past ten minutes, we have been going through a rather dark and also damp cave tunnel that was suppose to lead us to where we were suppose to go next. Funny thing was, Discord had the idea of letting Leona be ahead of the rest of us because of the fact that the glowing fire coming off of her was what he considered as a ‘perfect substitute’ for a wooden torch. I wasn’t sure if that was just clever thinking or for him to get inside Leona’s head, but whatever the case, it still worked out for us as we were seeing the light at the end of the passageway.

Once outside though, all of us were greeted by fully grown trees with green leaves and a bunch of grass and plants all around us. It seemed kind of trippy at first, but soon I understood the reason why once I heard Tina speaking again. “Welcome to the Forest of Tranquility!!” We all heard her declare cheerfully as we took in the scenery and saw a wooden signed that had the name of the forest on it. But I had a feeling that this was going to change rather quickly.

“Tranquility? Seriously?” I heard Shayne question Tina’s suggestion before she began talking. “You mentioned earlier that the entire kingdom here is under this Handsome Sorcerer’s curse and you’re talking about Tranquility? That just seems… what’s the word?”

“INCONSISTENT?” Aurox suggested.

“Yeah, that. What Aurox said.” That, along with the fact that a chilling breeze began to set in really made me worry about what would happen next. Not to mention the possibility that Tina may actually be considering to change the setting… again.

“… Damn girl, you bring up a valid point. Gimme a second and I’ll come up with a new name for the forest,” That moment from Tina had the entire mood of the place around us change dramatically. Some of the apples that were on some of the trees rotted away til there was nothing left, the leaves that used to be on the branches of the trees were gone and-. Oh god, did she seriously have to add some hanging men from the branches of those trees!?! Spike’s still a kid in dragon years! He can’t unsee that now! “I got it!”

Now the name that was originally on the sign was scribbled out. The new name was no longer The Forest of Tranquility, but was now named The Forest of Being Eaten Alive by Trees.

“You have got to be kidding me…” Leona said, eye twitching as she looked at what Shayne had caused. And just when she thought that was the tip of the iceberg, once we came down the hill, some of the stumps that were originally in the ground now emerged as angry treant monsters.

“DAMN! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted trees!!” Captain Wuzz shouted, both startled and caught off guard by the sudden change in setting. “Kill ‘em with fire!! FIRE I say!” I’m not sure if he was trying to reference something or telling me to actually use fire related attacks against these guys. Either way, we needed to change tactics.

Since I couldn’t bring out Norok and Ruvaak Iiz to rip through them to shreds, I instead changed the element of my pulse to fire so my standard attacks can dish out more damage to these guys and hopefully clear a path. But the whole adventure in itself was a team effort… and-. Wait, what’s going on with Leona?

When I turned to look at her, she was gripping at my left shoulder like she was frozen there in shock. Either she was afraid of the monsters we just came across… or she was having some sort of traumatic flashback.

“Woodmon, the Woomon are rebelling…” she muttered, eyes glossed over. And there’s answer number two. Fan-freaking-tastic. Getting an idea though, I looked towards Garbuckle and McBiggun for a moment as they finished off one of the other treants that was attacking them.

“Guys, I got an idea, but I need you guys to have all the treants in the area rounded up in one place!” I told them. They were going to ask why, but soon noticed that we had little time to be asking questions. So, McBiggun used his strength to smash a few of them into one another while Garbuckle had a few orbs of fire hover above the group. Catching onto what I was thinking, Wuzz fired several arrows at one of the orbs while I fired off a few shots with Hawkmoon at the others. The result was a raining fire storm as it burned all the stumpy’s and treants to cinders. Clearing a path to the point that all that remained was the ash that was scattered in the wind.

“Hey, I think I see something farther down the trail.” Garbuckle pointed out in the distance as there was a small reflective light shining at us on the ground. When we got closer, Leona hopped off my shoulder and had a look at we found. A small pile of jewels as she handed one to me and kept one for herself to keep. Why? I’m not sure… and honestly, I did not want to question her motives right now.

“You found a jewel on the ground… maybe the queen left it behind to mark her trail?” Tina suggested, leading to McBiggun then speaking up afterwards.

“If that’s the case, we should follow the jewels and it might lead to where the queen could be.” I have to admit, McBiggun caught on with that rather quickly. But just as we got out of this area so Leona could personally take a breather, we all heard a new voice then speak up and as I looked at my ECHO device, it turned out that this new person… was actually the Handsome Sorcerer.

“You know, this forest grew from the corpses of my enemies, isn’t that a kick in the ass?” He said in a taunting and overconfident voice, laughing a little as I noticed Garbuckle and the others look a little uncomfortable. “Maybe after I kill you and your little band of adventurers here, a fern will grow out of your body or something. People like ferns. You ever noticed that?” Dude, if you’re trying to make mother nature look creepy, then you hit the nail right on the head with that one. Either that or you’re just tempting us to set every tree on fire while we walk through this place.

“You are going to wish a fern would grow on your corpse when I get through with you!” Leona roared as she pulled my ECHO to her face… her flames having turned black during her moment of rage.

“Leona, calm down please,” I ushered, looking back at her. “I don’t think we need to deal with anymore trees right now. Let’s just keep going and hope we can find this queen soon.” It wasn’t much, but hopefully that would calm her down… I think.

“He made me remember the fall of my Ponyville, I will NOT cool down till he is ash!” Leona growled, her fur standing on end. At least her flames turned back to red from that foreboding black. At this point, I wasn’t even going to ask about what happened because of how angry she was. But I did hear something else from McBiggun farther down the path… and covered a bit in webs as he crushed what looked to be spider eggs with his bare hooves.

“Found another set of jewels farther down the path, but there were spiders that ambushed us,” The Gladiator informed us, pulling off some of the webbing that was on his armor and returning to the group. “After that, the path splits into two roads. The main one down this way and there a side path that leads to what ah think looks like a forge.”

“Maybe there was someone at the forge that saw the queen while they were working.” Wuzz scratched his chin, thinking of an idea. “Let us press on and investigate! Huzzah! Onward, my companions… and sidekick!!” Okay, is he seriously just trying to make Leona ticked off right now or is he trying to be in character?

Leona though was in no mood for his shenanigans though and proceeded to light him on fire, literally. “Hey, I was just joking!! No friendly fire!!!” The Archer shouted, all while I facepalmed at him for making the stupid decision of trying to be humorous around Leona. But even after that though, we were about to find out that stopping by the forge… was not exactly the best decision.

“Hey bucko, where do you think they’re going?” Tina asked as we were still trying to take in the scenery a little.

“I…… think they’re exploring. Why? Is that going to be a problem, Tina?” Aaron asked her as we then heard her response. But when we did… I had a feeling that we were going to have a bit of a problem.

“Yeah I… didn’t get the chance to balance out the combat near the forge so…”

“OH NO…” Aurox groaned, and ironically, I was thinking the same thing he was. Because a few moments later, a giant treant that was about over twenty feet tall soon towered over us. With the title being ‘Ultimate Mega Badass Treant’. Before any of us were able to do anything though, including Leona wanting to have a pillar of fire erupt from underneath it, we heard Tina took matters into her own hands. “WAIT, HOW THE HELL ARE WE SUPPOSE TO KILL THIS THING-?”

“My bad, MY BAD!! I can fix this!!” She said, just as the treant disappeared and was replaced by only a couple of treants and a few skeletons with swords and bows before personally declaring the changes. “There. COMBAT BALANCED!!”

They were immediately dealt with by a handful of fireballs courtesy of Leona. “Tch, not even a warmup. I need something to vent on…” She muttered darkly.

“We might find that something in a few moments.” I assured her as McBiggun, Garbuckle and Captain Wuzz went to the forge itself to investigate. As it turned out, it was abandoned and the owner was either dead or one of the skeletons that we’ve been seeing already. Speaking of which, some of those skeletons were there to reforge some of their equipment from the looks of things and to our surprise, there was also a few chests there too. Opening them provided potions for Garbuckle and arrows for Wuzz’s quiver while investigating the interior of the forge had McBiggun discovered a sharpening stone to help refine the edge of his claymore. Other then that, there was nothing more we could salvage here from the forge before going back on our way.

It didn’t take us long to get back on the trail and even with us having to go through even more killer spiders, we happened to notice the gatekeeper we met earlier at the end of the pathway and waiting by what looked like a rather large gate.

“Oh for f*ck’s sake…” She muttered to herself, only before noticing something off the the right of the giant gate. I heard her mutter that the symbols themselves were in Orcish script as she began to translate what was written. “It says here that we need to… bathe the artifacts in the juices of blah blah blah blah… Well, it looks like you need to collect some bloodfruit.”

Well, if one thing’s for sure, Tina really has a habit of leaving out important details. Especially when she’s voicing other characters and people. Though, the rest of the group right now had the same confused expression I had right around now. But it was McBiggun that actually did the talking right around now. “What the hay? What’s a bloodfruit?”

Ironically, both McBiggun and Aaron asked their question at the same time (just with a small difference in dialect) and Tina was able to respond to it shortly afterwards. “It’s a red squishy fruit that you can find over… HERE!” And just like that, we saw a tree with three ripe fruit the size of apples… on a tree… surrounded by a pool of blood… with a horde of bloodthirsty and savage orcs in between point A and point B.

Well, that escalated quickly.

Seeing this gave me an idea though and one that might help out Leona in a sense as well. “Well Leona… you said that you wanted to vent on something right? How about you try those guys for size?” Leona seemed… unmotivated at first. But that was until she heard the Orcs actually shout at us. Saying that they were going to eat us alive, starting with the little lion cub.

I had a feeling that this would happen. Cue the rage sequence in three… two… one…

“I AM NO LION CUB!” Leona screeched before being consumed by fire and charging at the orcs like some kind of enraged fire elemental. Torching the camp everywhere as we used the distraction to make it to the other side. We looked at each other for a moment before Wuzz asked something.

“So who exactly is going to get the bloodfruit anyways? Do we need to draw straws or-.” Honestly, the sooner we got what we needed, the sooner we could proceed. So, I decided to step forward into the lake in order to go grab it. But just as I picked the bloodfruit off of the tree… the tree began to move.

“Woah woah woah… you never mentioned that the bloodfruit was on the treants.” Shayne then spoke up as I prepared to use my dragon arm to yank off the other two fruits.

“Uh yeah… I forgot to mention that. Think you can be badass enough in order to pull off the fruits without killing them first?” Two words… Challenge Accepted. Besides, I was already pulling them off by the time she said that and once I did, Leona came back to us as she set the trees ablaze before landing in the blood filled lake.

“I AM THE DARK SUN GOD LEONA! FEAR ME!” Leona roared as she splashed about before slowly sinking into the blood lake, the last thing to vanish below the surface being a paw. Sighing, I bent over and picked her up out of the lake as she coughed a little bit.

“You okay there?” I asked, making sure that she was okay and that I don’t need to give her CPR or anything like that.

“Give me your clothes…” Leona said, looking like a drowned rat. Not even questioning her reasons why, I took off my jacket and gave it to her.

“Wait a second, why would Leona need Ken’s jacket?” We heard Shayne ask as we got out of the lake and made our way towards the gate.

“I guess she needs it in order to dry herself off after taking a swim in that lake.” Tina replied as Leona looked back at me and got in my shoulder again.

“WHY DRY HERSELF OFF? THE BLOOD OF HER ENEMIES CONTAINS NUTRIENTS THAT WOULD MAKE HER STRONGER-?” Aurox said, shortly before Shayne cut him off. “Yeah, I don’t think we need her to be even MORE powerful than she already is right now. Besides, if she likes the taste of blood, we’re probably going to have some problems.” That was something that I could agree with.

By the time that we returned to the gate, Apple Pills told us that to open up the pathway, we needed to smear the fruit onto the artifacts that held the door together. McBiggun tried questioning it, but all that he got was a shrug as she dozed off… again. So, taking one of the fruits we collected and giving another one to Garbuckle, we smashed them onto what looked like an iron plate that was on the poles in front of the gate. And just like what Apple Pills was trying to tell us, the juices from the fruit soon reacted with those plates and opened the door for us. Allowing for us to keep moving.

Yet, once we got on the other side, there were a couple of things that stood out in the ‘Immortal Woods’ the moment we set in. First, there was the fact that there looked to be a small base camp set up by an old wagon. Then, there was the fact that there looked to be some knights nearby.

“Hey, look at that. Maybe those guys can help us out somehow-.” Shayne began to speak, shortly before being interrupted by Tina a few moments later.

“Yeah… about that… Those knights aren’t exactly friendly…” We heard her say, shortly before hearing Aurox ask a follow up question in response.

“HOW COME?”

“Those knights believe that the Handsome Sorcerer is a god… and that anyone trying to go against him, including adventurers, are demons… which also includes you guys.” Tina explained as a few others, including Leona, decided to take a rest for a little bit while I watched one of the knight’s in particular cross a bridge and enter a base camp they set up. That was when I got an idea.

“You guys rest for a little bit. I’m going to go see if the knight’s know anything about what the Sorcerer is planning.” With that, I began to cross the bridge and hide behind a nearby wall as I got both my blade and Hawkmoon ready for if I did have to fight. Overhearing the current conversation between Tina and the others in the process as I got myself ready.

“Wait, don’t you think this would be a risky move for Ken to be making? I mean, does he even have the stealth capabilities of a Rogue or a Hunter?” Aaron asked.

“Why of course! His current items even give him a boost to his speed and sexterity!” Oh god… Tina, why did you have to say that?!

“Uhh… don’t you mean dexterity?” Shayne asked, trying to help Tina with correcting what she just said.

“Ehh, call it what you want…” Oh good. I’m glad that’s over with-. “But I think AJ may prefer what I said with the amount of time she spends with him.” WHAT THE HELL!?! TINA, WHY!?!

With that mental outburst though, my feet shifted a bit… and the noise caught the attention of the entire camp. Including the Storm Templar that had just arrived… Just my luck. “Judgement day is upon thee!!” Yeah… hate to break it to you, but I’m going to be taking a rain check on that one.

Out of the small camp, there was the templar, two squires, a knight, two archers and a paladin. Knowing what I remember from these enemies; Paladins can make their allies stronger and heal themselves along with activating a shield to protect them, Archers can be an annoying pain in the ass (especially if they’re the fire archers), Squires were the easiest ones out of the group to take out since they had weak armor and weapons while the knights were a little more difficult. However, the Templar was also a concern since they could deal shock damage to anyone with a swing of their hammer.

So the order of elimination was like this… Squires, Archers, Paladins, Templar, Knight. I say knights last because unlike Templars or Paladins, they did not have any special abilities at all that would make them a higher priority. Both the Squires soon tried to attack me as I used my blade to parry theres along with sweeping my leg around to throw them off balance. While they were down, I opened fire on the archers, taking them out within a couple of shots before the Squires came at me again. Placing Hawkmoon away, I now used my arm to grab one of the squires as he was charging and just tossed it at the other two while all four of them were now set on fire before they fell to the ground and turned into a pile of ashes.

This too also extravagantly made things less difficult. But now, I had to take on three of the more… tougher opponents. The other guys were rather… predictable, but these ones would be a bit more tricky. For one thing, their armor would be able to protect them if I used any fire abilities like I did with the Archers and Squires. My earth pulse wouldn’t work since their armor could also protect them from that too and most energy attacks and ice they could just easily shrug off. Normal attacks with my swords and weapons could still hurt him, but it wouldn’t deal out a lot of damage.

That was when I remembered something… I still had my bow. Summoning it, I then checked my inventory and the quiver that appeared on my back as I grabbed the first arrow I could pull out. Luckily for me, it was one of the explosive arrows that she had constructed recently as I placed the knock of the arrow on the bowstring and drew it back all the way. “Dear god, I hope this works…” I muttered while looking for a target.

But as it turned out… there was one thing I overlooked earlier that happened to be nearby. There was a barrel in the campsite… one that was colored green and had a corrosive logo on it. Hunh… looks like I did have luck on my side. Firing the arrow, it collided with the barrel and exploded, casting out massive amounts of poisonous sludge that ate away at their armor and soon themselves. The explosion also dealt a considerable amount of damage to their health and with the corrosive barrel as an added bonus, three knights fell to the ground.

Or as Tina would put it… “Knighty knight, dumb knights! My brother just taught you SOME MANNERS!!” Anyways… once I got closer, I began to remember where I was exactly. This place was an old crypt that looked to have been previously a temple. But that was not quite what I was surprised about.

What I was surprised about was the fact that by a nearby bonfire, there was someone that was labeled as ‘Fallen Hunter of Ash and Cinder’. Which was odd because the person itself looked like one of those characters from Bloodborne, but turned into a skeleton and died somehow… Not to mention that it looked like he needed my help. “S-so cold… light the b-bonfires… need souls…”

“Wait, how come Ken is doing a side quest right now? Wouldn’t the rest of the party be doing this with him?” I then heard Aaron ask.

“It’s because everyone else is tired out… Going to sleep…” Tina said, still taking the role of the narrator.

“But we aren’t tired-.” For some reason, I was able to hear one of the other party members, Garbuckle, through my ECHO device. But he didn’t exactly get far with trying to tell Tina as she took matters… into her own hands.

“I said GOING TO SLEEP!!!” Note to self… don’t let Tina babysit the kids unless it’s really necessary. Well, at least this gave me a reason to help this guy now… speaking of which, what other sidequests did I happen to come across?

I thought of that as I was making my way towards the first bonfire and for a moment, I took out my ECHO to see what I actually had. Mainly, there was a couple of them that stood out to me. There was this main quest we were going on as a group… and two side missions. One from the person that I just met… and another one that I happened to somehow get from Mr. Torgue. How was beyond me, but since I had an idea of what exactly this would entail, I decided to save this one for later and focus on the current one that the hunter gave me. This would be a time for me to actually used my fire pulse because normally, an incendiary weapon would be used to light the bonfires.

I just had to do some improvising. Lighting it up with a small ball of flame… and putting a few small spheres down around the fire itself. Normally, this quest would have you face off against some skeletons that would disappear sometimes and would be a constant pain in the ass. But this time around, I came prepared… and when the skeletons teleported into the area, they stepped on the ‘gift’ I left for them and exploded. Leaving me with collecting the souls that dropped.

However, I was not done just yet. According to the objectives, there were three bonfires I had to light and four souls to get at each one. The second one was at an ancient crypt that was to my left and the final one was behind me and too my right. Even though the one to the right was closer, I had to go left since I needed to light these ones in order to properly collect the souls.

Yet, once I got closer, every skeleton in the crypt rose from their grave and went towards me. So much for keeping quiet… Well, there was always plan b… and that was to take them all down before they could get too close. Which was rather easy since I had not yet light the bonfire needed to attract the skeletons I needed to defeat to collect the souls so I could deal with these idiots first… and that was rather easy since a few well placed sword swings was able to knock off the head from the rest of it’s body.

As I finished the last of those guys off and crippled a few of the giant skeletons that were towering over me a few moments ago, I lit up the next bonfire and used the same method as before when it came to dealing with the skeletons that had the souls. Allowing for me to quickly get the souls, move to the next bonfire, rinse and repeat one more time. Once I got all the souls that were needed, I began to make my way back to the fallen hunter as I presented him the souls I acquired.

The souls themselves began to restore the body of the fallen as the flesh returned to his bones along with him being able to breath and stand again. However, his first reaction to this… was something I did not expect in that moment.

“Okay, the hell happened?” he said as he stood up. I saw that he was taller than me as he looked around. “When did I get here? And who are you?” He asked as he looked at me.

“Uh… My name is Ken… and you just had me get souls for you earlier… Wait, are you a displaced by chance?” Oh god, what did you do THIS time, Tina?!

“Yes, do you want my normal name or my long title name?” he asked me.

“Isn’t your title ‘Hunter of Ash and Cinder’?” I asked, looking at him with my arms folded. He looked at me a bit confused before I sighed a moment and began to explain. “Yeah… it may be a bit difficult to tell you what’s going on, but are you familiar with tabletop RPG’s? Bunkers and Badasses?”

“Uhhh, no… sounds like a D&D clone.” he said as he looked around. “But for Tabletop RPG’s, yeah I played a few.”

“Bunkers and Badasses is the Borderlands 2 take on D&D… And since my Cousin is Tiny Tina, she’s been having other displaced randomly portray other NPC’s… for you, I originally found you as a talking skeleton that needed me to retrieve you some souls because something happened to you,” I explained. “What do you remember before ending up here?”

“Hmm, I remember going out to check on something and when I got there something hit me over the head and then… here.” he said. “Also names Jace what’s yours?” I smirked a little, looking back at him and telling him my name again. “Ken… Oh I know you, never seen you yet, honestly I thought you be taller.”

That… caught me by surprise. “Wait, how do you know about me?”

“I was told by a friend,” he said as he tilts his head. “Don’t remeber the name that well but she was shiny.” Whoa, wait a second… That sounded familiar… could he mean-.

However, before I was even able to get a question in, I got a notification popping up out of nowhere as some weird demonic knight creep showed up and was laughing sinisterly at us. ‘-=n00bkiller=- has invaded your world’ was what it said… and all I could do now was just facepalm myself in response for this. Really Tina, did you have to go this far?

“Who is tha- oh wait, you're the jackass that knocked me out!” Jace said annoyed.

“Want me to shoot him in the head for you?” I asked, looking back at him as I drew out Hawkmoon just in case. “Or would you like to tear him apart?”

Jace didn’t say anything as the knight came charging at us. I got ready until a dark purple scythe appeared out of nowhere and sliced his head off. The knight took a few more steps before falling over with no head.

“Really? Noobkiller, that’s just awful.” he said.

“Last I remember, this quest was a way to reference Dark Souls,” I told him, looking back at the fallen knight. “I’m going to take a guess by the outfit that you’re somewhat familiar with it?”

“Dark souls,” he said as he frowned a bit. “Yeah, I know that quite well.”

“It was a toss up between either that, Bloodborne, or both of them to be honest…” I sighed, now remembering what I was going to say before I was rudely interrupted. “Also, would that someone you mentioned earlier happen to be Ri?”

“Ri… Oh yeah I know her,” he said with a smile. “Nice lady, fun to but no I mean someone who look gold, I think her name starts with ‘I’ or something.”

“Ita?” I replied.

“Yeah her,” he said with a chuckle.

“I met them both. She see’s me as her brother,” I replied plainly before looking all around for a moment. “How do you know her by chance?”

“Giant monster came into her world and I was following it.” he said simply. “Also helped her with her regain her memories,”

“I see… Well, I think everything’s good right now,” I said, looking to see no monsters appearing or anything like that. “The least I can do now is send you back. Want my token?”

“Sure, hold on for a second.” he said as he looked at where he was sitting. He bent down and picked up a katana with a red cloth wrapped around its hilt and a shotgun. “Don’t want to leave you two here.” Despite this looking weird, it did not distract me from going into my inventory to pull out the Onyx Scale that was my token and handing it to him once he had a free hand.

“Thanks for that, you sure you don’t want any help?” he asked. “I’m pretty good in a fight.”

“I got three to four others who had fallen asleep a little while ago. I think we can handle this.” I insisted to him as I looked back at him. “If I do need you though, I’ll make sure to call on you for help.”

“Alright then, wait aren’t you supposed to get something for completing a quest or something?” he asked.

“Just some XP and stuff on the side mostly… So, where to send this huggabutt off to?” Really Tina? Now is when you decide to talk? That’s just bad timing. Jace looked at me for a moment then shrugs.

“Well, see ya.” he said as he just disappeared.

“WHA-!? Just… HOW DID HE DO THAT-!?!” Tina shouted, surprised and also as if she was demanding an answer like the Queen of Hearts on Alice in Wonderland.

“Don’t question it Tina. I stopped questioning some things once I met Ken and Revaan a long time ago.” I heard Aaron say to try and calm her down. With that in mind, I shortly made my way back to the mini campsite as I noticed the rest of the party waking up from what seemed to be a very small nap.

“Hey, what exactly were you doing over there?” Wuzz then asked, looking back at me.

“Just… exploring,” I said to him while pulling out my ECHO device. “Took care of a sidequest while I was at it. Only other sidequest I somehow got seems to be one from Mr. Torgue before we left town.” Around the time I was explaining this, I also seemed to notice McBiggun and Garbuckle waking up too.

“Any description to it at all?” Wuzz then asked out of curiosity. I looked at it and… to be surprised, there was a small and rather vague explanation attached to it.

“All it says is… LFG Level 52 VH, bring Sniper Rifle… that’s the most simplest, yet most confusing description for a quest I have ever seen,” I had a small feeling of what would happen next, but I just decided to play along. “However, from what it shows on the map, it looks like we can complete this while we’re out here.”

“If that’s the case, let’s take a moment to do that first. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?” I said, tapping it with my finger. Not before long though, we started to hear Mr. Torgue shout at us to the point that the sound of his voice put out the campfire that we had originally set up.

“QUEST TIME, HUMPADUMP!! A very dangerous monster, whom you should kill, is hiding out nearby… END OF QUEST BRIEFING!!” Well… at least it was brief… despite it being pretty loud.

“What was he talking about?” McBiggun asked, confused at what he was trying to say.

“I think Mr. Torgue wants us to slay a monster that’s in the area not far off from here,” Wuzz then spoke up. “Perhaps two of us should go investigate while you two get prepared.”

“Wait… what do you mean by that? I thought Leona was with you.” I asked, a little bit confused by what Captain Wuzz meant in that moment.

“She is,” Garbuckle sighed, taking off his cap to reveal Leona sleeping on top of his head. “She insisted for her to sleep under my hat and to only ask for her help when necessary.” Well that explained a lot… I guess we’ll go take care of this real fast before we have anymore distractions throughout the course of this journey. It took Wuzz and I a few moments in order for us to be able to reach the location on the map, but once we were there, we found three ponies there that strangely resembled some of the locals I’ve seen around Ponyville once or twice.

What stood out though was that each one of them had a name above their heads, almost as if this was some kind of online game. The names were xXDatAdventurerXx, [720NoScope]Headshotz, and lastly… 420_E-sports_Mastah.

I definitely had a good feeling of what was about to happen next. “Hey, you another adventurer? Come to kill the monster too?” The first one asked, only to be cut off by the second member of the trio shortly afterwards.

“Well, buzz off!! He only spawns like every ten minutes and we were here first!” She snapped at us, pointing her sword at us in a threatening manner. I knew that… whoever it was, they wouldn’t put up much of a threat.

Then there was the third guy… “420, E-SPORTS!!! LOLOLOL!!!”

Around now was when Wuzz looked back at me and began to whisper a little bit. “Are these guys for real? I mean, we are in Tina’s game but… seriously?”

“Just roll with it for right now and have a crossbow or your bow at the ready,” I advised him, remembering what exactly would be happening next afterwards. “It’ll come in handy for the next objective after this.” Shortly after I said that, the first member of the trio alerted everyone that the ‘monster’ was spawning and for them to get ready. Of course, the monster itself looked like a normal undead monster that would come at you all the time. I watched as their attacks did little to no damage to the skeleton as I prepared Hawkmoon for when I had a clear shot.

The first chance I got, I fired one round and took it down rather quickly. However, what came next from the trio was… not pleasant. “Alright!! We got the kill!!!” At the sounds of that, the Ranger that was right next to me was not quite happy… and neither was Mr. Torgue for that matter. In fact, he went on to express his disliking of this on my ECHO shortly afterwards.

“WHAT!?! Now we have to wait FIVE MINUTES for it to respawn! THIS IS TRULY OUR DARKEST HOUR!!” I sighed for a minute… shortly before noticing the third pony looking at the both of us and laughing in a way that he was taunting us.

“E-SPORTS 240 SPEEDRUNZ!!!” Okay, that was just taking it too far. Luckily for us, Mr. Torgue now had a perfect ‘suggestion’ for us to get back at these three jackasses.

“IDEA!!! If you can make those three players ragequit, you can kill the monster yourself!” Discord and I looked at each other in confusion before listening to the last of Mr. Torgue’s instructions. “If you kill one of ‘em with a melee, headshot the other one with a sniper rifle and desecrate the last one’s corpse, they’ll definitely rage quit!!”

Wuzz snickered at the last part. “Pfft! He seriously wants us to decorate a dead body?”

I shook my head and sighed, trying to see if he would actually understand me. “No, he means desecrate… like teabag them…”

“He wants us to decorate a dead body with teabags?” Oh my god, I’m beginning to regret having this guy with me for this mission. Sighing for a minute and trying to compose myself from the temptation of smacking Wuzz in the face, I looked back at him and thought of a more… simpler course of action.

“Just… focus on the one to the right that needs to get shot in the head. Let me deal with the other two.” I told him. Surprisingly, I watched him conjure a weapon with his magic… one that I recognized from Borderlands 2 that strangely fit the theme of the game we were in. It was a legendary Hyperion sniper rifle named the “Longbow” that, when fired, all of its ammunition resembled that of crossbow arrows. Pretty clever if I do say so myself. So, while he fired a bolt at the second guy of this trio, I used my own sword to parry the first guy and take him down. Using my arm, I pulled the third one over to me and pummeled his face into the ground… all while I was crouching over the first guy.

“Ah, that’s it!! When I respawn and get back to my corpse, you’re dead!!!” Well, that’s one down for all three of them. Now we just need to do that again and then they can leave us alone. “CHEAP KILL! CHEAP KILL!! I’m coming back!!”

“YOLOSWAG!! E-SPORTS 240 SPEEDRUNZ!!!” Okay, can we make that last guy shut up already? I really want to get this over and out of the way-.

“I’m back!! That boss is mine!!” The first guy shouted as he respawned along with the third doofus of the trio. For both Wuzz and I, we just needed to rinse and repeat what we had down previously so we could easily get them out of the way.

“Uninstall!! Just uninstall your game and get back to your baby raising simulators! Adventurer’s are so OP!!” The second one, which Discord had to take out with the Longbow, shouted at us in rage for that moment. All while the other two members of their party had different responses… with each of them being rather… weird to tell you the truth. “YOLO!! YOLO!! YOLO!! YOLO! #YOLO!”

“Alright! With them gone, you can kill the monster yourself and get the credit for it!” Mr. Torgue told us. This time, the monster was a much bigger skeleton with plated armor and a heavy shield. Providing us with more of a challenge this time as it took us a bit in order to make sure we killed the monster this time… Which was rather quick. “NICELY DONE!! Come on back whenever you’re done!”

And now with that out of the way, we can get back to the main mission now. Going into my ECHO and setting it aside, I put the main quest Tina had for us up as we called the rest of the party back to our current location. When McBiggun and Garbuckle did get back, they both looked at us in confusion as one of them spoke up. “What was that all about?”

“Trust me… It’s better if you don’t know…” I only told them that because I know that it would be better for them not to know and keep their sanity rather than lose it with me trying to explain everything to them. That was also when I noticed something shiny caught my attention as I looked to see some more gemstones nearby the entrance to the nearby bridge. Along with two other piles of jewels halfway across the bridge and on the other side. “Hey, look! It’s the jewels the queen left behind!”

That caught everyone’s attention immediately as we all figured out what to do and began to cross the bridge. On the other side, some basilisks began to come out of the walls of the ravine nearby, having us fight through them once more as we saw Apple Pills on the other side once again. Once we got even closer, we could tell that she was obviously frustrated since the path forward was blocked off… again. “Are you f*cking kidding me!?!”

Though, it was also then that Tina soon realized something. “Oh right, I almost forgot that we needed someone important here for this part. You guys wanna take a break or something while I figure this out?”

“WAIT… WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT-?” Unfortunately for Aurox in that moment, Tina soon found a way to solve her own problem.

“I GOT IT!! Then the gatekeeper says…” We heard Tina speak shortly before Apple Pills examined the writings on the wall nearby the boulder that was blocking the path forward. “More orcish bullsh*t… It says that… ‘You must retrieve the white knight for only they can open the way’.”

“And I know just exactly where the white knight is… way POINT!!!” She shouted, having a new waypoint pop up on my ECHO again. Only this time, it was back in the opposite direction of where we once were, causing all of us to have to backtrack all the way back to the crypt that Discord and I were at before the party was reformed. So… more walking… just brilliant.

“Why do we have to walk back there again?” Wuzz asked, looking at us as we decide to run across the bridge instead of just casually walking like civilized people.

“Well, if this white knight is the only person that could open the way forward, then he must be an ally that can help us,” I told him as we took a detour from the normal path upon finally going backwards to where we originally were and taking the side route to an empty ravine. Only thing was… the place we went too just made Leona sulk a little and try to hide herself in embarrassment.

You have discovered: ‘That one blimp you destroyed’.

Well… that was awkward. But not as awkward as what we were about to find out firsthand. That this white knight was not a he… but a she. “You look up in the distance to see the white knight in all her badass and heroic glory!! It’s Athena!!”

Are you freaking kidding me right now, Tina?! Seriously!?! “What the hell?” I heard Shayne ask as we now saw three dragons emerge from behind Athena (and luckily, none of them looked like duplicates of Revaan).

“We’ll talk later! Right now, help me fight this thing!” She ordered, pulling out her sword and shield as the dragons began to converge on us. Two of them were red while the last one was a green. And unlike the first two, in which case breathed fire, the last one had a corrosive breath that could tear through McBiggun’s armor like it was paper.

Thinking ahead, I summoned my bow and got it ready with the explosive arrows that Tina made for me. There was a reason to this… and it was because even if it was a green dragon and moving around in the sky, any explosive projectiles that hit it could severely damage the dragons and force them to land on the ground. Making it easier for some other party members like McBiggun and I to use our swords against them.

So, using my bow, I grounded each one of the dragons one by one before allowing McBiggun to land the finishing blow on each of them. Discord himself took out the last one by knocking a special onyx colored arrow on his bow before shooting it to cripple his wing as the last one came down with a thundering crash.

Yet, just before I thought we were able to catch a break with what was already thrown at us, that was when something else happened. That being with Athena the moment we got the chance to talk to her again. “Thanks shawty, you da best… I owe you one.”

“I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS…” Aurox mumbled. Ironically, I was thinking the same thing at the time. Just as Tina did some more lines for Athena.

“You fought well, girl. I’d be honored as hell to join your quest.”

“Wait a minute… Tina, Athena talks like that…” Shayne spoke up to her as I looked back at everyone else. Out of everyone we knew that was displaced here, Shayne and Aurox had talked with Athena a couple of different times along with Aaron. And both of them had the same opinions on this matter.

However, Tina didn’t give a crap about it. “She does when I’m voicing her, girl…”

“Yes… For shizzle. Now let’s go…” She insisted, putting the sword she had back in it’s sheath before taking out a weapon that was quite different from one of the ones that I had seen her use when she and I had briefly fought a long while ago. I recognized the weapon though. It was, to my surprise, a gemstone colored Maliwan SMG. It was still the same shock variant like with her plasma caster back at the Hollow, but I think she chose this weapon to match the color of her clothes. Which reminded me of the Shadowplay skin from Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

Leona herself though, who just propped herself onto my shoulder again, just sighed. “Whoop-dee do… we got someone else to come with us… Now can we get out of here before-?”

“Hey girl… I was in that blimp looking for the queen… until somebody burned it down…” That stray comment from Athena had Leona’s cheeks bloom a bright red shade as she tried to hide herself behind me. Hoping that Athena would change the subject again. Yet… things didn’t go as planned.

“MY BAD!!” Yep… Torgue just had to ruin the moment, did he-? “I WAS JUST WANTING TO SEE IF THE LION CUB AND THEM WERE TRUE BADASSES!!!” And now, he just made it worse.

Which, in addition, also made Leona pretty angry because of how she was acting already and how Torgue basically blew things out of proportion again. “ … Permission to burn him alive when we get back to town? Because he’s SO gonna get it once I-.”

I only had one answer for that kind of question. “Permission denied.”

“ … You can do that?” My only response was to drop my head down and facepalm myself as we began to go back to where we left off and where the gatekeeper was waiting for us. On the subject of changing the topic though, we could hear Shayne happen to ask Tina something to see if she could give them some hints.

“So Tina, who exactly is this queen anyways? What are we even looking for?” Well, that seemed reasonable. More reasonable than Leona’s question a few seconds ago at least. Yet, there was a small feeling I had that made me think that asking Tina that kind of question… would not exactly provide a helpful answer.

“She is the most beautifulest person in the history of ever. She’s got legs for days!” Case in point, that just now. “The same can be said for the princess that is her daughter as well… Y’know, since they were both kidnapped together and stuff.”

Crossing the bridge back over now, we could hear Aurox’s collective response to Tina’s answer now as he groaned a little. “WOW… THAT WAS UNHELPFUL… CHILD?” He paused for a short moment, before speaking up again. “TINA!” Wait, did he seriously just pause in order to try and remember what’s Tina’s name?

“Sorry, was thinking about them legs! Just… MHM!!” Okay, either she was originally spending way too much time around Moxxi or somehow she’s coming up with these responses on her own. Fortunately, at this point, we were approaching where we had previously left Apple Pills, who… in a sense… seemed relieved to see all of us again.

“Fina-f*cking-lly!! It felt like you guys were gone for hours!” She originally snapped at us before seeing Athena. “Oh good, you’re here… Raise your righteous sword or whatever, fine lady…”

Athena’s only response was one word… well, more likely only one letter depending on how you heard it. “Kay.” Holding the blade she had in her sheath upright, a massive surge of light soon flowed around her as the rocks that were originally blocking the path opened up, allowing for us to move forward. To be honest, we all heard something from Apple Pills right around then, but it was her just repeating the same information that Brutalight told us back in town. So, instead of just standing around and hearing her chit-chat… we instead decided to proceed forward up the hill in front of us and to that massive tree in the distance.

“That… isn’t going to come out and attack us now, is it?” Garbuckle asked once we got closer. Following more of the gems that were on the ground to the top of the hill as we trekked upward, with Athena and the Gatekeeper not far behind us.

“Ah don’t… think so,” McBiggun responded afterwards, looking around and being completely surprised by everything around us. “Just what is this place though?”

Turns out, Athena was the one to answer that question. “This… is the Vitality Grove. It’s where the Tree of Life first took root. It holds all the good and natural magics in the world,” She said before turning to the four of us. “The queen must’ve come here to reverse the sorcerer’s curse.”

That may have sound nice and all… but there was one problem. The queen wasn’t exactly here. In fact, there was no sign of her presence anywhere. The last pile of jewels was roughly a few meters back, but there was nothing that was anywhere close to the base of the tree or around it.

Yet, as we heard that, Apple Pills spoke up once again as she proposed something… but with her current state, she still looked to be in a state of… well, whatever happens when you get high. I rather not know, because I stay the bloody hell away from that. “Hey, uh… Ah think I read that we can undo this meer curse by ourselves with a simple ritual,” She said, before looking back at me. “Ya’ll got that last bloodfruit right? Give it here so we can get this sh*t done and then find the queen ourselves.”

“Wait… we have an extra bloodfruit? Since when?” Shayne asked Tina, right before we heard another voice interject.

“We had to use two of the three bloodfruit that we collected earlier to open the gate out of the forest. Meaning that we still have one more left in our inventory,” Aaron explained to Shayne before speaking up again. “But still… reversing it ourselves? That sounds like a setup for a trap.”

“Hey, the queen isn’t here and it sounds like this gatekeeper knows what she’s doing if she was able to help us out of the forest,” Shayne pointed out. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“LOTS OF THINGS…” Okay, if there’s anyone I have to agree with in this current conversation, it would surprisingly be Aurox. Still, we went along with what Shayne said as Garbuckle handed the last fruit, letting Apple Pills crush it as the juices mixed with the water that was around the base of the tree.

As the ritual first began, we watched the tree itself be wrapped around in green nature based magic from the looks of things as the Gatekeeper began to recite the ritual. “Gods of the old magics, give me the strength to undo the horrible curse…” However, at this part… something did not feel right. It first started when the leaves were beginning to dry up along with the bark, not to mention the lighting that almost startled Leona. It was then followed by the magic slowly changing color from green to yellow. “… that was cast by the handsome, intelligent, and super awesome Sorcerer…” Oh crap… This can’t be good. Now the yellow changed to red as the leaves burned up and the magic that was once present… was now evaporating. “Ho dum shi vah, ho dum shi vah, ho dum shi vah!”

The ground shook around us as the sight of what looked like the entrance to four tombs spawned from the ground as Athena noticed the problem as well. “Oh crap.” We were tricked… and now Apple Pills was nowhere to be seen. Not to mention that the crypts were opening as skeletons began to charge at us. Son of a-.

“Ghost king spell, BOOYAH! FACE!!” Oh come on, now? Why did the Sorcerer just have to speak up right now? “Handsome Sorcerer here. See, I kidnapped your queen and princess like, three hours ago. They’re already locked in my tower, but thanks for helping me summon the ghost king though… Have fun dying!”

We all then heard a gasp from Tiny Tina as she was narrating what just happened while all of us were trying to do evasive maneuvers and figure out a strategy to get out of this situation, alive. “Wha? The gatekeeper was ACTUALLY the Handsome Sorcerer in disguise all along?! PLOT TWIST!!!” And there goes my left ear.

Shayne herself was the first one to comment on that, and she was possibly just as surprised as the rest of us were right now… I think. “Wait… that makes no sense-.”

“PLOT TWIST!!!” And there goes the other ear. Tina!! I barely had a lot of time to try and get everything situated because before you know it, some of the smaller skeleton pawns were trying to overrun me while King Skelly wanted to use his hammer to pound us into the dirt. One of the main differences between the King and the Pawns though was that unlike the smaller ones, the King happened to have a big set of armor. I could use my corrosive shots, but since there was no flesh underneath and was held together by magic, it wouldn’t actually do a significant amount of damage.

Though, when I turned to Garbuckle… something he did might’ve actually made this fight a lot more easier. “Magic Missile!” From his claws, a series of purple glowing projectiles lauched forward from his hands, striking the king. I remembered that in Borderlands 2 when this dlc came out, there were a few grenade mods that acted like ‘spells’ from Dungeons and Dragons. I honestly did not expect though that one of Garbuckle’s abilities from his game would be treated like a grenade in this one. Including the part where the king was now covered in Slag.

Now trying to dish some more damage, I brought out my bow to use the C4 arrows again and kept myself at a distance before opening fire. The properties of Spike’s spell had taken on the Slag element, which according to Borderlands lore, made enemies covered in slag take more damage to other weapon variations. Including Explosive. “Okay, guys. I got a plan,” I told them to catch their attention before speaking up. “Focus on the King’s body. Garbuckle, whenever you can, use Magic Missile on them. From what it looks like, our weapons deal more damage after you hit them with it.”

“Got it!” Garbuckle replied with a Salute. Shortly before McBiggun raised an eyebrow and looked back at me. “Why the body? Can’t we just destroy it all at once?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied back, noticing a bit of magic from the kings body twitch around the neck. “I think after you take out the body, you then need to destroy the kings head separately. Wuzz, you and I will focus on the heads of the kings when the bodies are done. Careful, I don’t think there’s only one of them though.”

“There isn’t!?” Almost everyone replied, startled. Which just lead to me mentally facepalming myself in response.

“Guys, four of those tomb entrances just popped up out of nowhere the moment the tree of life lost it’s power. One of the kings just happened to spawn from that same tomb,” I explained, trying to have them see the connection I was seeing. “Four tombs, four kings… Come on, guys. We got this.”

We all soon immediately got to work after that, even to the point where Leona had placed a fiery enchantment on McBiggun’s sword to where it would set nearby skeletons on fire. One by one, each one of the skeletons kings in order rose up and went after us. And ashes to ashes, they all fell down… after attacking and shooting them multiple times of course. Leona also helped Garbuckle and McBiggun with taking care of the bodies while Wuzz and I used our bows to quickly take out the heads. On the last head though, Wuzz had an idea and rounded up all the skeletons in a line… before having his outfit change real quickly to that of some japanese archer.

“Ryu ga waga teki o kurau!” From that single shot, two japanese dragons soon followed the single arrow. The arrow landed directly on the skeleton’s head as the rest of the attack turned the remaining skeletons to shattered bones and limbs.

“Did he just… use an Overwatch reference?” Aaron asked, bewildered by what just happened.

“What’s an over watch? Is it a special watch you wear over your clothes or something, huggabutt?” Honestly, I can’t deal with this right now… especially with everything that had happened already and with thinking about what might happen later.

“We’ll… tell you later. Let’s check in with Athena.” Shayne proposed, which everyone around me also agreed upon. Approaching Athena, she soon began to congratulate us for completing that fight… along with telling us where we need to go next.

“As a representative of the Queen’s imperial guard, I, Athena, dub you: A knight of Justice, friendship, cookies and stuff… Congratulations, you earned it,” The gladiator/knight told us as she cleared her throat before speaking once more. “Anyway, if you are looking for the queen, the sorcerer’s got her. You need to cut through the Dwarven slave mines to reach his tower. Be careful though, from this point on, it’s possible that the Sorcerer will use mimics to catch you off guard.”

That just lead to a bit of confusion among the group as Garbuckle raised an eyebrow. “Mimics? What in the world are those?”

“Mimics are monsters that take on the disguise of loot chests. If you get too close, it’ll try to eat you with it’s teeth. My advice… when opening chests, back the hell up first. They’re as slow as hell… so if you give yourself some distance, they shouldn’t be that much of a problem.” She told us before walking away for a moment. Until Sir McBiggun called out to her.

“Wait, where are you going?” He asked, confused as to why she was leaving.

“I need to restock on my curatives. All the healing items I had in my inventory were destroyed when the airship I was on burned down. Don’t worry, I’ll catch up with you later.” With that, she ran off before disappearing into the tunnel that was at the bottom of the hill. Looking back at everyone, we soon made it through the exit tunnel that was at the back of the former grove and made our way through the chasm that was beyond that and to the bring that was along the mountainside. And to the entrance of the mines.

I’ve got a really bad feeling about what’s going to happen next.




End Chapter 29