A Brush with Death

“I don’t see why you’re still punishing me for this. It’s not like I did anything wrong. I could have not said anything. Who knows when you would have figured it out, with your tunnel vision and all.”

Ori hit me in the back of the head with her staff.

“Oww!” I yelled.

“Did that hurt? Do you want me to rub it for you?” Ori asked with mock sympathy.

“Yes, actually,” I said.

Ori rubbed the swollen bump on my head.

“That feels a lot better, thanks."

“No problem,” said Ori, clubbing me a second time.

Suddenly, I noticed a distant rumbling. As I turned to look back across the valley, I saw what was making the commotion–a herd of armed centaurs were galloping toward us.

“Run!” I shouted, as the first of their arrows came down not ten feet away.

Thankfully, we were not too far from the foot of a mountain, below which stood a forest with dense underbrush. We ran for it as quickly as we could. Ori outpaced me, as I felt an arrow pierce my back and saw a quarter of my life vanish.

“Ouch! These guys are crazy strong!” I thought.

They were getting closer and so were their arrows. Any second a few lucky shots might have ended me. Ori reached the trees ahead of me. Just as I was about to the tree line there came a deathly silence. I looked back and saw that they were only sixty feet away now, and were readying one last volley. I dove for cover just as the arrows came raining in on me. I felt one pierce my arm, another my thigh, as I tumbled into the thick bramble. I felt Ori wrap her arm tightly round me. We crouched down and waited, struggling to keep our breathing quiet until we thought they had gone.

“What was that about?” asked Ori.

“I don’t know. Maybe a bug? There’s no way there are supposed to be herds of aggro centaurs out there, right? I mean that valley is practically the starting area, and two of those arrows would have killed you for sure. Maybe even one.”

“It’s a good thing I’m faster than you,” said Ori.

“It’s these short goblin legs. I’m taller than you in real life and much faster.”

“Sure you are,” said Ori, teasingly, as she cast heal on me.

“That’s it! When we get out of here we’re having a race, and I’ll prove that I’m faster than you.”

There was no need to correct me, we both realized what I had said was impossible. “Deal,” she said with a smile.

We didn’t dare go back to the meadow now, so we set off through the bramble. With the barrels I was carrying, progress was extremely slow, nor did it get much better when the brambles gave way to steep embankments of black lava stones. Perched one on top of the other, they shifted and rocked, and threatened to hurl us down the slope with every step.

Suddenly, something dislodged the stones high above us, and a rockslide of heavy boulders came crashing down on me. I was narrowly able to dive out of the way before it swept past, smashing down into the ravine below.

“Wow, that was a close call,” said Ori, as she helped me up onto the ridge where she was standing.

“No kidding,” I said.

We descended the ridge and found ourselves in an old growth forest with tall trees. Besides ferns, there wasn’t much underbrush to speak of and the going became a lot easier. Eventually we came to a clearing in which stood a number of small thatched huts.

“Not much of a town, is it?” I remarked, looking around at the six or seven dwellings.

“I bet someone here could use our help,” said Ori.

“Probably,” I answered. Truthfully, I didn't really care. I lay down in the shade of a tree and looked up at the sky, watching the clouds drift overhead.

“Hey Bastian!”

“What?” I yelled back, too lazy to look up.

“I found something for us to do.”

“I don’t want anything to do!” I called back.

“Come on, I found a quest,” Ori protested.

“Alright, I’m coming,” I said, reluctantly.

“That lady said she can’t find her daughter, so I think we’re meant to go find her.”

“Yippee,” I said, sarcastically.

“Oh, come on. It will be fun!”

“I think we’ve already established that we have different ideas of fun.”

Ori went around the village asking after the girl and finally got a lead that she had been seen heading up the mountain that morning.

“Okay then,” said Ori, “up the mountain we go.”

“Do we have to?” I asked with a sigh.

“Would you quit complaining? What’s that?”

As we rounded a corner on the mountain path, we could suddenly hear the sound of rushing water. Soon we came upon a steep gorge, at the bottom of which flowed a rushing river. Spanning the gorge was a rope bridge. Ori was undaunted, and she was already a good ways ahead of me, when I started across the jittering bridge with trembling steps. Soon she reached the far side, though I was only halfway across. Suddenly the rope swing snapped, and I plunged down into the canyon and the thrashing water below. As I hit the water, a strong current sucked me under. Without my arms I was powerless to escape the rushing river, and the barrels dragged me down to the bottom. I thought I was going to drown when suddenly a hand latched hold of me. With the last of my strength I struggled to find footing and managed to breach the surface of the river for the first time since I had plummeted into it, two hundred feet upstream.

“I’ve got you. It will be alright.”

I looked up to see Ori, one arm tightly around me, the other clinging to a rock. The river was still flowing fast, and there were white rapids in places, but it was not moving as quickly as below the bridge.

At last she managed to get me out of the torrent onto dry land. Her orange hair plastered to her forehead in rivulets of deep red, as we collapsed onto the dusty earth.

“Thanks. Oh, you saved me!”

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Eutopia sure is more dangerous than I first thought.”

“Yeah, that’s the third time today I’ve almost died. I wonder…”

“Look!” she cried. “Up there on the ridge. Does that look like a girl to you?”

“No. Probably. I don’t know. We aren’t seriously still looking for that NPC girl are we?”

“We’ve come this far–survived the obstacles they put in our way: we ought to claim our reward.”

“Whatever you say,” I muttered, stumbling after her.

We switchbacked our way up the gravelly slope to where we had seen the girl on a large rocky outcropping. The mountain seemed made up of a giant pile of boulders, and they formed all kinds of caves and passages one could hide in or climb through. At last we found the way through to the girl.

“You’re Lucy, aren’t you?” asked Ori, bending down and speaking gently, just as she would to a real little girl. “Your mommy sent me to look for you because she was worried about you.”

“You know that isn’t a real little girl, right?”

Just then I saw something moving in the shadow of the rocks out of the corner of my eye.

“Ori, did you see that?”

“See what?” she asked.

“Never mind, let’s just get out of here. I have a bad feeling about this place.”

“Come on Lucy,” said Ori, taking the girl by the hand. We started down the mountain, but just as we were about to go back the way we had come, a huge minotaur climbed over the top of the rocks and dropped down in front of us, menacing an enormous, bloody axe.

“Something tells me we don’t want to fight this guy, run!” I shouted.

We clambered back around the rock face. There was a small hole on the other side, and Ori pushed Lucy through.

“Go,” I said, “I’ll hold him off. You know I can’t fit through there.”

“I’m not leaving you!” she cried.

“You have to,” I said. I shoved her down into the hole and turned to face the minotaur. He was closing in on me, not more than twenty feet away now. He struck at me with his axe, and I dodged away, out onto the rocky outcropping. The drop was a hundred feet or more, and I knew if the fall didn’t kill me the ensuing explosion of my barrels would. The minotaur raised his axe, and I stood frozen, unable to see any outcome which didn’t end in my demise.

“No!” yelled Ori, leaping over the rocks and striking the minotaur in the back of the head. The next thing I knew she was grabbing my arm, trying to drag me away, but the minotaur had only been startled. He raised his axe again, ready to cut us down.

“Stop!” said a voice, which seemed to come from everywhere. “I said 'STOP!'” In an instant Pasqual appeared before us, catching the huge axe in his hand. “You were told to leave the girl alone,” he said in an angry tone.

The minotaur snarled.

“Go! Back from whence you came!” he commanded, and the beast obeyed.

“You, you tried to have me killed,” I stammered.

“It would have been easy, but Orine kept getting in the way.”

I looked at Ori. She lay on the ground, apparently lifeless.

“No!” I shouted, “what did you do to her?”

“Relax, she’s only paused. I don’t want her to hear the conversation we’re about to have.”

“Why do you want me dead?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t be here. You aren’t like the rest of them. You don’t belong in Eutopia.”

“Why? Is it something I did? I can’t remember…”

“Want to understand? Come with me. We’ll go to another place in Scuba, and I will tell you everything you want to know.”

“If I come with you I’ll be leaving Eutopia, and not coming back?”

“Yes,” said Pasqual.

“But then when we’re done talking…I’ll die?”

“We all die. Believe me when I say coming with me would be best for everyone.”

“What about her?”

“Especially for her. You’ve done nothing but slow her down.”

“That isn’t true. I've helped her,” I said.

“Maybe you helped her at the start. Although she only needed that help because she saved your life. But from here on, you can be nothing but a hindrance to her.”

“I can still help her,” I said.

“More than a real party? Leave now and I’ll see that she joins another party, a strong one. One which can help her reach her full potential and give her the greatest possible chance of getting the Panacea.”

“What’s wrong with me being here?”

Pasqual sighed. “The Panacea can’t cure you,” he said.

“It can’t cure me?” I said.

“That’s right. And since Panacea won’t work on you, there isn’t any reason for your being here.”

“No! It doesn’t matter if I can’t use the Panacea myself. I want to see her through to the end of this.”

“Is that really what you want, even if it spoils her chances to live? Or are you just being selfish?”

“It’s not selfish to want to live. It isn’t selfish to want to stay here with her. She taught me that. She wouldn’t want this. I’m staying.”

“Fool, we will both come to regret this. Mark my words. And don’t you dare forget what she’s giving up. Not for one second.”

“I won’t. I swear. She won’t have any reason to regret having me in her party.”

Pasqual scoffed. “We’ll see about that,” he said. Then he vanished.

It took a minute before Ori came to. When she did, she looked up at me in bewilderment. “What…what happened?”

“You saved me. You knocked the minotaur over the cliff, but hit your head pretty good.”

“How long was I out?” she asked, sitting up.

“Only a couple minutes. Come on, let’s go get your reward,” I said.

“Right,” said Ori.

One hundred gold pieces was all the reward for our trouble, but we comforted ourselves with the thought that there might be points associated with the quests that we couldn’t see.

“That’s odd,” said Ori, as we were relaxing under a tree that evening.

“What is?”

“I barely got any gold or experience from that minotaur.”

“Maybe you didn’t actually kill him. It’s possible he survived the fall somehow.” I said, trying to act natural.

“Ugh! Too bad! I’m sure he would have been worth a ton!”

“Yeah,” I said laughing, “I’m sure he woulda been.”

“Hey, I’m really sorry about today,” said Ori. Her tone was serious.

“Sorry? What are you sorry about?”

“About forcing you to come along on that silly quest. It almost got you killed.”

“Are you crazy? That’s what I signed up for. Don’t you dare stop almost killing me!”

“I have saved you every time though,” she said, smiling.

“Yeah, you really have.”