6 Back to the Past

I find myself in a cave with two other people and a giant floating eyeball with tentacles and eyeballs at each end. What was I doing here and how did I get here? I have no clue. We came in from one way, which is now blocked by boulders. I'd be holding a great sword, while one companion would be wielding two wooden scimitars. I don't see how that'll do against this floating eyeball. The other one would be wielding a rapier.

"Looks like there's no way out of here." The guy with the rapier would say.

"You both ready?" Dual wielding wooden scimitars gets his into stance whilst asking.

"Alright, give me the buffs Claudio!"

Claudio is the guy with the rapier, he starts invoking some secret elven magic. Wait, how do I know it's elven magic? What? But anyways, the dual wielder started looking much more hyped, and so did Claudio. Where's my buff?

"You should feel it now Moru!" Claudio says

This Moru person is the one with the dual wielding scimitars. Dashes toward the giant eyeball then does a running jump. The eyeballs on the tentacles would be shooting out lasers. While Moru would be in mid air, he gets hit by a laser, and he looked like he was paralyzed as he doesn't move away as soon as he lands. I rush in to try to drag him back.

"Careful with the Zombie Beholder's laser!" Claudio warns

One of the eyeballs point towards my direction and lights up, before it could shoot a laser towards me,

Claudio appeared with his rapier and cut off the tentacle. It almost looked like he used a teleport spell to get in range. I reach to Moru and grab him by the arm. He felt rock solid.

"Get him out of there!" Claudio shouts

"I can't he's rock solid, it's like he got petrified!" I replied

The zombie beholder opens it's mouth and tries to bite Claudio. Claudio was fast enough to back away while dodging one of the lasers being shot towards him. I dashed towards the zombie beholder with my great sword ready. I felt pretty powered up, so I just slashed at it. He gets hit and some green liquid start to drip out from the wound I inflicted with my great sword. As it was bled out, I went in for another attack but this time I failed to hit. Despite being such a big target, it was able to float out of range and evaded my attack pretty quickly.

"Claudio, purify Moru?" I ask

Another laser gets shot at Claudio, which he dodges easily by casting his fly spell. He creates some distance between them then faces towards me.

"You might want to distract him as I cast the purification spell!" he replies while dodging another laser

"Alright, I got it!"

I go in closer to attack the zombie beholder with the great sword again. I cut off another tentacle, and it screams. The sound it emitted is very disturbing to hear. It's like hearing all the cries and shouts of children in a deep dark voice. It gets in closer towards me, I move back a bit as I wanna keep my social distance. It opens it's mouth widely, and it smelled so foul. I already moved 20ft away from the zombie beholder and readied my sword for an attack in case it gets in any closer. It does go in closer and tries to bite me, which I was able to sidestep easily swinging my sword around in a horizontal circular pattern. The sword connects slashing the side of the eyeball, which bled out some more green liquid. I leaped back keeping my distance. It faces towards me again and tries to shoot out a laser. Before the tentacle could shoot a laser, Moru was already free from being petrified and had charged towards it and slashed from behind. The zombie beholder screamed again and faced towards Moru. It was too slow so Moru jumped high right when he got to the side of the zombie beholder, using the tentacles to support his jump. He pulled a tentacle and he moved midair right on top of the beholder, whilst slashing with one wooden sword, landing on the other side of the zombie beholder. He rolled forward barely dodging the laser that was shot behind him. It almost hit his back.

"Don't just watch there! Help me out here and kill this zombie!" He shouts at me

"I'm working on it!" I reply, obviously knowing we can't win.

The zombie beholder floats upwards again out of our reach, randomly shooting lasers everywhere. Moru was agile enough to dodge everything. While I was barely dodging them. Claudio didn't have a hard time, as most of the lasers were aimed towards us who are on ground. Claudio saw this as an opportunity and unleashed a sword technique. With his rapier, he thrust it towards the zombie beholder piercing it's eyeball. It bled out even more. He backed away with his rapier as the lasers were aimed towards him. He dropped down to dodge them and used his fly spell again to keep him afloat above ground.

"I have an idea, but I need you to give me a huge push!" Moru shouts toward me

"Keep him distracted for a while Claudio!"

"Sure thing, but your plan better work!" Claudio replies

Moru and I move away a bit as he explains his plan. We would dodge some laser that were shot towards our direction occasionally.

"Ready to do this?" He asks

"This might work, but it's risky." I reply back

"We got no other choice!" He replies

I put my sword on the ground horizontally facing upwards. With all my non existent strength, I was surprise to lift it up as Moru gets on it. With the push from the great sword combined with his jump boost, he was speeding upwards toward the zombie beholder. The zombie beholder saw him approaching so he aimed the next lasers towards him. Claudio supported by casting a light spell spell causing Moru to light up, shining brightly. The shine was able to blind the zombie beholder lowering the accuracy of the laser. The laser was shot, and it missed Moru barely hitting him again. Moru got behind the beholder and was right under the ceiling. He changed position hitting the ceiling with his feet, and did another jump from that position tackling the zombie beholder. The zombie beholder falls down fast. While mid air, Claudio unleashed another sword technique, wherein he rapidly pierces the zombie beholder in multiple spots with his rapier. The zombie beholder took in all the hits unable to dodge them and hits the ground. As he landed, I had charged up my next attack. My sword was turning green and on fire. I wasn't within melee range and I still swung it. To my surprise it shot out a slash of green flame.

"You fool!" Claudio shouts just right after as I've released the attack

I was confused but in a split second I saw the tentacles all aimed towards me, and shot out lasers. I wasn't fast enough to dodge so it counter attacked with a laser. I could faintly hear Claudio shouting my name before the laser hits me. As soon as it does everything went black.

"Hey, wake up. It's night time already, it's time we discuss our strategy."

Ravenna wakes me up. I rub my eyes.

"Claudio.." I murmured to myself.

"Claudio? Who's that?" Ravenna asks

"Someone with elf magic."

"Elf magic? That elf must be a Bladesinger then. I'd like to meet him."

"Er, not possible Ravenna."

"Why not? You know him, so you can probably introduce him to us."

"Let's just say it was all just a dream"

"You dream of guys?" She gave me that suspicious squint

"No, nothing, never mind that." I reply embarrassed, but it's not what she thinks.

I glance around the area, and there seem to be more people here. This place looks like it got more active, a lot of elves showed up. Judging by their looks, they're most likely to be dark elves. Since most dark elves tend to be rogues. One of the rogues go towards our table.

"You guys are the famous assassins from the Land of Dusk right?" He asks

Hearing the place Land of Dusk brings back some memories. Land of Dusk was known as the Holy Land before the war. According to history, the Holy Land used to be the strongest country in the whole world. But after the great realms' war. Most of the countries fell into despair during the war when the Holy Land lost the war. They were completely destroyed by the powerful devils. It's been a long time and most countries that fell have started rebuilding. Like the Holy Land became Land of Dusk, and many more.

"Yep, that's us!" Razz proudly declares.

"So how did you all meet? Just curious, since we know each other here well and you guys are the only ones that are new here. Maybe you could share your story to us, and we could share you ours." The elf replies.

With that, many other dark elves started gathering around us. Curious to know how we started as a group. Our adventure, and all that. We looked at each other, mutually agreeing to tell them but deciding who should do the story telling. I glanced at Razz, because from the speech with the elf queen I think he should be the one to tell the story. The other members were also glancing at him, but he just kept staring at Seph. Seph isn't the type of person that would talk a lot, only when she's needed to. So it was a big no.

"It was simple really." Domotraus begins to talk.

I forgot Domotraus was even here, I feel bad for him for having such a low presence. Lately his effectiveness in the group wasn't that good. I thought about it for a while, during the battle of the ogre in the forest, he was pretty much like an average assassin. While in the battle in the goblin cave, he got destroyed easily by that berserker guy. In the abandoned church fighting that captain knight, he also wasn't of much help. If anything, Razz has been doing a lot. I guess he wasn't just an average joe with magic.

"We were each given a job individually to hunt assassinate specific people in an organization located in the Land of Dusk. The country had an issue of a knight betraying the kingdom. Said knight started gathering other knights, bandits, basically anyone who could fight. With that they made an organization, they would ambush goods that were being transported to the Land of Dusk, thus shortage of goods became a problem there. The cause was never found out until the king of the Land of Dusk decided to make a scout party. The scout party was annihilated, but they left one person alive to give pass on the message. With that, the king had given us each a job to wipe out the core founders of that organization. We didn't know about each other, until we had met in the battlefield. After we had completed that job, we got to know each other more. Eventually we became a group travelling to other countries doing more job requests. With that, we became known as the Assassins of Dusk. That isn't really our group name, but soon we'll decide to name ourselves with something nice."

With that shared by Domotraus, we started listening to the other stories and adventures of other rogues. Some time passed by, and we decided to discuss our next plan.

"Alright let's see what we got so far. First we're wanted dead or alive here in Antornth. We got Cilan Mamoru to take down. That's pretty much it for now, the first quest is pretty much over since our client is dead." I discuss with the team.

"So where do we go first then? How do we take down this Cilan Mamoru?" Razz asks

"No clue yet, but I think I know where to go." Seph answers

"Well then, where do we go?"

"Since we know that Cilan Mamoru is dead, what I'm thinking is someone must've summoned him back. So we should go to Nizari, the land of the dead. There should be a lot of necromancers there who could assist us." She answers Razz.

"Nizari huh? We haven't been there for a while. Wasn't that the place we the doppelganger incident took place?" Razz asks again

"Correct. We should have a good reputation there, since we were able to assist them with it." Ravenna answers

"Alright it's set then, let's go to Nizari." I say

We were given new set of clothes, some food, and a few useful gears then we went on our way. We left the Thieves' Unity hideout and we quietly made our way to the gate, there would be two guards guarding. They noticed us and blocked our way.

"Halt!" Guard 1 shouts.

"Identify yourselves." Guard 2 orders.

Ravenna gets in closer to the guards and uses a charm spell on them.

"We're from the Erudite guild, and we would like to pass to travel to Nizari." She says

One of the guards fall is affected by the charm spell. Said guard is under her charm spell, thus he begins to start being a simple person.

"Nizari? Are you sure? That place has a lot of undead, that place isn't safe for a lady like you. Allow me to escort you there." charmed guard says.

"Hold on, you five look familiar. From the Erudite guild huh? I'd like to know your reason for wishing to travel to Nizari, and please take off your hoods." the other guard says.

Seph immediately takes action and throws a dart at the guard that wasn't affected by the charm. The dart hits the guard's neck. He collapses to the floor and begins to snore.

"Continue guarding the gate, and when someone asks what had happened here. You tell them that a goblin came with a poisoned dart and we went to chase the goblin." Ravenna orders charmed guard.

With that we made a run for it, it should take around 10 minutes or so before the guards on the walls to notice that we escape. We've gone far enough, deep into the same forest we traveled when we were heading towards the village. We stopped and took a breather under a tree after securing the perimeter. No guards or monsters nearby. Domotraus and Razz started eating, while I checked on the things we received from the Thieves' Unity.

"So what do you guys have? I got five darts,a short sword, and a world map in the bag they gave me." I say

"I got this magic crystal which I used earlier to cast magic, 50ft hempen rope and a dagger. Wanna trade for the short sword?" Ravenna asks

"Well sure, we'll just buy more stuff in the next country later anyway." I gave Ravenna my short sword and got the dagger.

"So what's that long covered stick there, Razz?" I ask

Razz takes off the cover and reveals a long sword.

"The sword of that crushes it's foes in a single swing, the sword that destroys all, the sword destined to save the world, the swo-"

"It's just a long sword, he's just spouting nonsense." Domotraus interrupts Razz.

"Come on Dom, why'd you gotta ruin it?" Razz grumbles.

"Well here's what I got. four poisoned darts, which renders people to become asleep, I got two daggers and a pouch of ball bearings. Most likely this pouch contains a thousand of them." Seph says.

"Well you guys got something nice, I got this bag. It's empty. I guess I really need to buy some equipment" Domotraus says.

"Maybe that's a magical item? Mind if I check it?" Ravenna asks

"Sure thing, go for it." Domotraus would continue eating.

"Identify item" she chants

"This bag has infinite space inside, this is the Bag of Holding"

"For real?!" Domotraus looks surprised

"You can have it back." She tosses the bag of holding towards Domotraus, which he catches easily.

"Here have a dagger, something to protect yourself with." Seph passes a dagger to Domotraus.

"Right, this'll have to do for now I guess"

I checked the map and the nearest kingdom would be the country called Zlatan. There are a lot of half humans and some monster races living there, with a human ruler. This king is known to be evil and merciless. His name is King Garnett , I don't know how he became the king there but we should be cautious of what happens. Zlatan is one of the countries that was able to protect themselves from the demons and devils.

According to history, King Uranius made Zlatan surrounded by sand. Basically a desert, and with that the next king, King Artus, had a special talent in the power of area illusion. He was the reign king during the Great Realms' War. With his Area Illusion magic, he's able to create an illusion strong enough to fool attackers and drive them away from Zlatan. Wish I had this power, it would be so helpful. Imagine stealing right in front of someone, but they don't notice it because of some illusion magic casted.

"We're still pretty far from Nizari, so we'll first go to Zlatan. We take a stop there and see how it goes before we go to Nizari. Once that's done, we can pretty much head to Nizari and worry about the undead." I tell them.

"I remember something about Zlatan." Seph tells us

"Oh care to share?"

"Naturally. During a job request in Zlatan, I encountered a group of strong individuals. They're as strong as the Elven Knights in Antornth. Though they act independently, we should still be cautious of them. You could say they rule the kingdom, since the king doesn't care about their actions. But if it goes against the king and his plans, only then will the king take action. So yeah, if we ever encounter them. Don't start a fight with them, it'll only cause us trouble." She explains

"The more you know..." Razz comments.

Our short rest ended and we started moving again towards Zlatan.