The Burning Pass

Much to the disappointment of the Tribe, John didn't immediately charge for the Burning Pass as soon as he reappeared. He waved hello to the many Orcs that had followed him to Eldham and sighed when most of them just stared at him expectantly rather than wave back. As much as he would have liked to go straight into the nearby dangerous and mountainous zone, he felt tired. He needed sleep, so he left the tribe to their own devices and retreated back to his own tent. He frowned at the makeshift camp that had been set up around him on the way there. Eldham was thoroughly destroyed, more than Bleakfield had been. There were no ruins or frames left behind from old buildings for the Tribe to build their homes upon. They couldn't work with the environment. After all, everything they had around them to work with was just empty, open space. There were no trees, no half destroyed wooden walls to hang tarps and pelts from. They just had to use their largest pieces of furniture to help hold their tents up.

John's tent was probably one of the few exceptions to that situation, as well as Mub's and his other pack member Rugga’s. Since John didn't actually have any furniture, his group was **** to bring poles to help hold the tent up. His horse had been the one to drag it behind him as they traveled, and now that they had been there for a while, John found the tent already set up by one of his slaves. He assumed that Dofi the Gnome girl had been the one to put the tent up since Urga wouldn't have been able to see what she was doing, but when he stepped inside the tent, neither one of them was anywhere to be found. John sighed heavily as the Orcs gathered once again outside of his tent...

... and then he collapsed into the piles of fur and hide that Urga had been using as a bed. It still smelled faintly of sweat and sex, he realized after he had taken his first breath in the comfort of the makeshift mattress. He didn't know exactly how one was supposed to clean a fur pelt like that... or rather a pile of fur-covered hides, but he made a note in the back of his mind to ask it to be done later on.

For the time being, he just wanted to rest.

There were no dreams to be had while John was asleep, no strange apparitions of things that he had never seen before that inexplicably appeared to him that night. At most, he just saw memories. He caught glimpses of moments that had happened since he had first gotten his powers and slept quite heavily for a good long while. Most of the memories were slow to start, like his descent into the Abyss had been. He dreamed about meeting Grace, explaining his powers to his mother, 'showing' his powers to his mother. He saw the first time that he met Urga... and how she gradually went from subtly scowling and growling at him at every moment when they interacted to at least trying to sneak discreet glances at his crotch in the moments between when she would curse him like a poor ****-master. He dreamed about school, his home, and the Gym... and then he started seeing Michel.

The blonde, giant kidnapper that worked for the Cabal. It was easy memories at first, training and sparring with the large man over the course of the week that John had bothered going into work at the Gym, and then he was dreaming about the surprising moment he had when he found Michel in the Trap Barrier at the park. His astonishment was cut off almost immediately, switching paces from a moment of confusion into something much darker like somebody had flicked the switch to turn off a bedroom light. He saw through his own eyes as he stood over the man who he had once thought to be his friend, but his gaze was locked onto the spot where his fist had punched a bloody hole into the center of Michel's torso. He was looking through eyes he knew to be his, but he couldn't look away. He was paralyzed and **** to watch. The only thing he could do to find a reprieve from the sight was try to focus on the things on the edge of his vision, but even that turned out to be a trap when he found himself looking at Grace's limp body again.

The memory switched and he was staring at her unmoving form alone. His heart pulsed once loudly in his ears and Grace's body jumped with the sound of a gunshot. She shook... unnaturally, but thankfully only once... or at least until his heart throbbed again. His was stronger and louder the second time, and Grace's body shook more, so much more that he tried to close his eyes to look away. Yet it didn't stop. Every heartbeat made it worse, and after each time he saw it; his heart would pound away faster and faster until he couldn't find a moment where Grace wasn't shaking. Michel's hands tightened around his throat and John choked briefly, his vision going dim.

He couldn't hit the giant... because he couldn't control himself enough to look away until he lost so much air that he was **** to wake up with a loud gasp.

John shot up from the fur and hide like he truly was ripping free of a murderous grasp all over again. There were no achievements to congratulate him on this one, and truth be told, he was thankful that he didn't have to see them at that moment. For once, he found a brief moment of happiness in his life to be away from video games, but something about that same happiness made him feel sick like it was wrong for him to feel that way. He pushed away from the bed, still covered in a thick layer of sweat, and began peeling the clothing that he had stolen from the mall away from his body. He idly noticed another presence in his tent halfway through stripping, but the fact that Urga hadn't interrupted him told him that he must have been gasping and making a lot of noise during his sleep already.

"What's up, Urga?" he asked and watched as the Orc tilted her head at his strange question. He didn't really care enough to try and phrase it in a way that she was used to at the moment. When he finally finished taking his clothes off, he tossed them into his inventory and switched on the set of armor that he was going to need for the Burning Pass.

"The Tribe is almost ready to leave. After we finish packing this tent, they will all be ready to follow you," she grunted, and John watched as she squeezed her finger tightly around something in her grasp and then stood up to leave. She turned for the exit to the tent, and John nodded slowly and used his fingers to try and comb his sweat-slick hair back into something a little neater.

"Thank you, Urga," he said, and the Orcess abruptly paused upon hearing him speak. She scowled again while still facing the door but, with her head turned slightly back in his direction, the expression didn't go unnoticed. She held it for a couple of minutes as John finished making himself presentable, like she was debating on whether or not she should try to scold him for speaking so kindly to her again or something like that... but her scowl eventually disappeared instead. She turned back to John with a frown on her face, and just as he was about to pass her to leave the tent too, she stepped up to the young Gamer.

"Here," she grunted, with a blunt tone that took him straight to the point that she wanted to get to. Her hands shoved against John's chest, finding the spot where he stood before they slid across his torso slowly, her fingers led the way for her as Urga felt her way over to John's arm and then he watched as her fingers began to fidget around the thick limb. He didn't even necessarily realize how much bigger his biceps were until he felt Urga starting to touch them, squeezing at his body like she was also just realizing how he had changed. A satisfactory grunt left the Orcess' thick lips when she finally pulled her hands back, and before John could ask her why she did that, a faint jingle resonated from the spot where she had touched his arm.

John turned his head to look at his bicep again... and then blinked as he stared at the pair of silver bells that had been tied around his upper arm. The red piece of silk that the bells had been affixed to rustled slightly with the breeze as Urga immediately opened the tent's entrance flap, leaving a faint cloth dragging across his skin as he stared at the item. After a couple of seconds passed, he touched the handmade armband that Urga had made for him and exhaled slowly as it rang with the slightest movement.

At the very least, Urga could hear his location now. He just had to be wearing the bells.

"Thank yo-" he tried saying when he finally looked back up again, but the Orcess was long gone... so he left too.

Unfortunately, Urga was nowhere to be found when John left the tent. She disappeared from his immediate line of sight and left him to deal with his plans to go through the Burning Pass rather than try to thank her for what she had given him. He smiled as he walked by the groups of Orcs that had been waiting for him for so long, but none of them smiled back. They stared at him as he made his way over to his horse, the giant brown steed was somehow being held in place by the little Gnome **** Dofi, and Mub greeted him upon his approach.

"The Tribe was beginning to think that you had fled from the challenge in fear," Mub chuckled and clapped John on the back. The Gamer climbed atop his steed and took the reins from his **** with a shake of his head.

"Nope. It's just been another busy day," he grunted back at the Orc and watched as Mub grinned at him, his toothy smile spreading wide enough to show off his great tusks.

"More flying bumblebees?" Mub asked with a suggestive raise from his eyebrows... but John simply stared at him with a blank look. After a couple of confused seconds had passed them by, Mub jabbed a thumb back towards the Gnome that had been holding the reins for him and gave a subtle thrust with his hips.

"Oh! No..." John answered finally and then watched as Mub frowned. There was a fun conversation that he probably missed. On top of that, Mub brought up a good point. Thinking back to the events of the day, John couldn't think of one occasion other than what had happened that morning where he got to get his dick wet. He needed to get laid... at least after he had finally traversed the Burning Pass. "Just a bunch of other shit," he grunted and then gestured for Mub to mount his horse as well.

Both Mub and Rugga followed John's lead as soon as he gave the go ahead to start traveling again. For the second time since John had kicked Dullong's ass, the three of them marched forwards at the head of the Tribe with their heads held high. Their slaves followed along immediately behind them, and then everyone else after that, but John found himself a little more curious about the arrangement the second time around.

Despite the strange hierarchy of the Orcish Tribe, the only position that seemed to matter in marching was the one at the front of the Tribe. The rest of the camp, including the Elders, came along in random spontaneous positions. They could be anywhere behind the leaders, just as long as it somewhat resembled a long, thick line of people. For some reason, the travel order wasn't as detailed or complicated as he expected it to be for what seemed like a race of barbarians and warriors. They weren't uniform in design and marching. They were just careless... so careless that some of them just fucked some of their slaves while they rode along on horseback.

John blushed after he noticed it happening the first time. He barely noticed it after a slight turn of his head while they were moving. An Orc slowed down enough to stop next to one of his own captured humans, and with one meaty hand, he picked the girl up and pulled her into his lap. Her pleasured cries were soft enough not to echo out to the front of the Tribe if John wasn't listening for it, but now that he had noticed it... it became all he could hear...

...so he heard it every time it happened along the journey, and it happened quite a lot.

Eventually, he found some distraction in talking with his pack members. Mub was the person he came to enjoy conversing with the most, and for some reason, Mub seemed to like talking with John as well.

"What is this?" the Orc asked at one point after they had finally came close enough to the mountain pass for John to at least get a glimpse of the place at a distance. The term mountainous didn't do it justice. The earth stretched up so high in the area that John found himself actually staring at spots where it looked like the dirt and clouds might meet.

"What? What is wha-" John paused as Mub reached out and pointed to the new armband that Urga had given him. It jingled slightly as John lifted his arm up for the Orc to see and then smiled at his Pack Member. "Oh, it's... Well, I'm not actually sure what it is. Urga gave it to me," Mub blinked at him.

"She... she gave you a favor?" Mub said, and both he and his other Orcish packmate, Rugga, turned to look at John with raised eyebrows. "Congratulations."

"Wha- Why is tha-?" John asked and then stopped. With a furrowed brow, he cast Observe on the bells jingling from his upper arm. The pop-up that came up for the item did not actually have the standard orange-ish screen for John to look at. It was similar, for the most part, except for a special black trim that faded into existence on the edge of the screen.

The Archer's Eyes.
This red strip of silk has been decorated with a pair of distinct silver bells. Normally, this item might work as nothing more than a piece of decoration for a weapon or some armor, or perhaps a sled of some sort, but this time the item has been given some importance. This item was gifted to the Gamer by Urga Shelor, a **** who created this so that she might always find him and so that he could always wear a token of proof for her acceptance of her newfound position in life.
While Worn:
+50 Relationship points with Urga Shelor.
+20 Relationship points with Lagash Shelor.
+1 Agility.
+10% Chance of success when convincing Urga Shelor to do something.

John nearly choked when he realized what it was that his **** had given to him. His eyes nearly bulged out of his skull as he finished reading through the pop-up and dismissed it with a shaky hand, but his surprise must not have been so incredibly evident since Mub didn't immediately start laughing at John’s expression. Instead, the Orc gave him the simplest explanation possible.

"She must like you," Mub grunted, and Rugga looked away. "Or she thinks you're weak. After all, you do not punish her." John frowned at that sentence. He had spoken with Urga. If anything, his lack of action in certain areas made it seem like she might dislike it more at those times. Maybe she gave it to him because of what he did to Dullong?

He was going to have to ask her at some point to find out.

Eventually, they arrived at the Burning Pass. John would have liked to say that, with more time, he could have tried to create a better map of the area and found the safest way through... but one glance told him how wrong he was about that. His initial plan was immediately thrown out the window. The Burning Pass was bigger than he had ever conceived it to be. Thick, jagged spires of rock and earth stabbed far, far up into the sky above him until they actually disappeared from sight. The grassy ground they had been walking along died out as they got closer and closer to the stone pillars that framed each pathway into the Pass, like the dirt itself had become hostile to plant life as soon as it reached that earthen gate. Bits of rock and ash covered the ground and the tallest points of each spire like it had been coated in gradual layers of snow... except that the Pass was not cold enough for that kind of winter weather.

If anything, the Burning Pass felt like it was exactly that... Burning. Grey and greenish clouds surrounded the mountainous region for miles on end, but John didn't notice the subtle shift in color from the sky above until they were already a few miles deep into the area. His throat dried up with the lack of moisture in the air, and when he turned his head towards his pack mates to ask for water, they shook their heads and gestured for him to be silent. There was no drink to be found in the Burning Pass, they needed to ration out what they already had for the journey ahead.

Eventually, the Tribe finally reached the deepest parts of the mountains, and the color scheme around them shifted once more. The giant spires of rock and earth **** all paths to meet through one giant singular divide in the earth, and the ground changed from its somewhat healthy brown and grey shades to a horrible hue of deep black. The scent of something rotting filled John's nostrils as they pushed further on and, every now and then, something around them would hiss and blow yellowish steam up out of the ground. The Orcs began tearing what bits of spare cloth that they had brought with them after they reached that point, and Mub passed one piece to John.

"Tie it around your head. You don't want to breathe in the air here if you can avoid it," he told John, and while the Gamer followed his instructions, he didn't feel like a simple piece of cloth would do much for them.

The region looked poisonous... and they were supposed to walk through it. Actually walk. They had to let the horses go when the first signs of hissing yellowish steam started to scare the steeds. Their rides were sent to run back along the paths and out of the Burning Pass while the Tribe continued to move on ahead, and move they did. The sounds of sex and conversation that John had grown used to hearing quickly died off. Instead, coughing fits became the most common noise that he could detect. The air grew stuffy... and then it felt like it started searing John's lungs at certain points. He nearly collapsed as his chest felt like it burst into flames from the inside and was pulled back before he could drop to the ground in the middle of an area with... strangely wet ground.

-5 HP!

Mub yanked John back just as another hiss of steam exploded out from the spot where John had been standing, and before John could thank his pack mate for saving him, he looked at the ground and watched as it sizzled beneath his feet. He was wearing armored boots, thankfully, but most of the Tribe was naked. The thought made him glance back to his **** Urga and where she was at in the line with the rest of the Tribe, but she had stopped right behind John. She turned her head back and forth as they both stood there, straining to hear the sound of the bells on his arm and sending the strip of cloth across her face wavering, but she looked fine for the most part. Every now and then she would shift her weight between each foot whenever it seemed like the ground would grow to be too hot for her.

He really did have to lead them, he realized. Not just from one side to the other. He had to find the spots where it was safe to step and show them where it was that they needed to walk. The problem was that those spots seemed to shift as time went on. While John tried pulling them around the pockets of steam and rot that made his armored boots sizzle and burn, a scream sounded out from behind them as a new pocket erupted out of the ground in the middle of the Tribe. The nearby people jumped and ran away from the sudden explosion of heat that immediately killed off a small group of Orcs that had been standing where the steam had come up, and John was **** to take a moment to try and rein the group back together again.

It wasn't easy. They had to keep moving just to try to avoid getting burnt, but most of the tribe didn't want to keep going by that point. John had to scream at them to move just to try and get them past the scalding pockets of heat that kept ripping out of the earth and told them that they had **** but to go forward by that point... but forward became hard to find.

A gentle green fog descended on the area around them, obscuring so much of the tribe's vision that it left them with only a few yards of clear sight. They came across a strange yellow dust that covered the ground in a light layer, leaving their footprints blatantly visible as they tried to walk through it... but more than that was the sound that came when they reached the middle of the valley they found in the center of the Burning Pass. At first it was hard to make out what the sound was. John could have sworn that he heard rock grinding rock and shifting as the tribe finally came to a small cliff of stone. It couldn't have been taller than eight feet, it was so short that John could see the ledge above him even in the fog... but on top of the ledge, the shifting rock got louder and louder. It jumped in volume, like a hundred rocks had been dropped off one of the nearby mountainsides, and started hitting the ground in a giant clump... only each 'rock' that hit fell with a daunting, metallic rattling noise.

The tribe came to a stop at the cliff as John tried to peer around through the fog for the source of the noise and remember to keep quiet like Mub had told him to, but there was nothing around. Nothing that he could see. Eventually, he climbed the rock face and pushed up to try and find the source of the sound. The Tribe did not follow him. When he got to the top, he had to push himself to his feet as quickly as he possibly could, and then he nearly fell back off the cliff with a yelp as he found himself face to face with a giant skull.

It wasn't humanoid, that much he could identify immediately. The skull was too large for that and too... familiar. When he looked at it, he found himself thinking back to his history classes and trips to various museums. He had seen pictures of things like this, normally they had giant tusks and were covered in brown fur though. This one had its tusks broken off and was scorched beyond belief. It looked like a mammoth skull.

"Holy shi-" Again, the grinding and clinking of heavy metal filled John's ears. He turned to look in the direction of the noise as the sound got closer and closer to him until eventually he had to put his hands up into a defensive stance. He readied himself for combat, to lead the Tribe through the Burning Pass like he had promised, and then furrowed his brow as the first giant chain link fell to the ground in front of him. The first link in the chain that John could find was immediately followed by the second, which hit the dirt with the metal grinding noise that he had heard earlier as well as a heavy 'thunk,' and then that was followed by a third, and a fourth.

Link after link of dark, heavy iron piled before John as he stared at it confused... but it didn't do anything more than gather in one place. It just sat there, like some kind of limp metal snake that was waiting for him to do something. At first, he tried just strafing from side to side in front of the pile of chains, but before he could even go to inspect the thing closely, the links began to follow him as he moved, cutting him off at every side. After a couple of moments, he finally gave up and decided to ask Mub about it.

"What the hell is this?" he called out and waited for a couple of seconds. Mub answered him with a quiet peek over the ledge towards John.

"That is what stops people from traversing the Burning Pass." he called out, and John looked back at him with a frown. That?

"The... chain?" he asked and watched as it rattled and withdrew from him slightly, as if reacting upon hearing the sound of his voice.

"No! Not the chain!" Mub grunted and glared at the Gamer. "The chain just restra-" John didn't hear the rest of Mub's sentence. Instead, their conversation was interrupted as a single rumble cut off all other noise in the Burning Pass, shaking the air around them with the sheer **** of the growl that came eking out of the fog and then actually robbed John of one of his senses when that growl inexplicably grew into a feral roar.

He even got a Deafened status effect from it.