The Siege Of Dornwich

There wasn’t much for John to talk about with Eddie and Robyn after that. Neither one of them had any more questions for John… at least not ones that they wanted to actually ask him after the conversation they had just had about his kingdom. They reassured him that they were going to try and find a way to help him get to Daniel and then silently waited for him to leave. Based on the pursed lips and anxious faces he found on the both of them, he figured that they were both waiting for him to leave so that the two of them could gossip about him or his kingdom. Since the conversation didn’t seem like something he wanted to hear, John relented and climbed his way back up the uneven steps at the entrance to Eddie’s basement, and then began his long trek back to Robyn’s house.

John didn’t even finish the journey before he became distracted with other thoughts and problems.

The most distracting thing he found himself thinking about was what went down with Eddie and Robyn. Even though he wasn’t running or jogging, he could feel his heart racing in his chest as he considered the things that Robyn and Eddie could be saying. Did they figure out what had gone down with his mom in the kingdom based on that one conversation they had had? Did they know what had been happening between him and his mom before that if they were watching him? Did they care?

The last question was something that he couldn’t take his mind off of. It made his heart beat faster and faster until John could feel his stomach turning just thinking about the answers to that question. He had to distract himself… so he focused on what he needed to get done.

First things first, if he wanted to take on Daniel, then he needed to level up some more. He needed to get strong enough so that he actually stood a chance the next time that he was pulled into a fight against another person. Secondly…

John stopped in one of the nearby alleyways and looked down at his hand. The ring, Daemon, was visible on his finger once again. There was no ominous or baleful green glow emanating from it at the moment, but John felt like the glow would certainly return at a later point. It didn’t look like it was doing anything at the moment, but after seeing it light up in the room with Eddie and Robyn, he felt like it may have had something to do with the hallucinations he had seen of the two of them. There was no way that he knew of that could confirm it, but… as soon as the suspicious thoughts and feelings passed through him, Daemon began to glow on his finger again. He tried to pull it off as sunlight reflected off the emerald affixed to the top of it in green rays and became impossibly bright once the light had bounced off it… but the ring didn’t budge. It clung to his finger so firmly that he could feel it pulling at the skin on his hand when he tried to yank it off.

It was bound to him and refused to let him go, even though John felt as if most of his soul had healed back up after he had ingested the Mana potion made by the Cabal. He still had some problems with his soul marked down on his character sheet, curses not given to him by the ring from the past week that still affected him, but those were problems for another day. For the time being, if the ring was affecting his decisions in some way, then he had to find a way to get rid of it.

Daemon
Ring Of The Trickster - Legendary Artifact
This thick, crystallic band was created as a gift for its last wearer, the Practicus known as Michel. In its spawning, the ring was made through three different processes. The first involved inscribing it with runes. The etchings and sigils of various spell words and glyphs were infused into its very being and can often be seen in the shapes of some of the bubbles that remain permanently frozen inside the crystal band itself. The second part was a piece made for Arcane conduction, a Mithril frame to fit around the wearer's finger comfortably. The last piece lies in the form of a large, green emerald, within which a soul of greed has been permanently trapped to power this ring. This ring is no simple item.
This ring has a name.
+Gives use of the ability 'Step.' Step allows the user to physically move from one place to another once at the cost of a small portion of Mana (20 MP). Stepping does not require additional Mana depending on distance, but does gain an increased cooldown timer depending on how far the user has moved. To step somewhere, you must be able to at least either see the target location or have seen it at least once. Stepping cannot be used to escape from a barrier or travel between kingdoms.
+2 Endurance.
-ERROR, This ring will not allow you to make use of its other abilities or see them.
-Cursed: This ring has one true owner. For any other wearer to use this ring, aside from Michel, they must sacrifice power at a true cost. Mana will not work for powering this ring. To use one of the abilities of the ring, a person other than the true owner must power the ring at the cost of their own soul. If the user's soul is used completely at the expense of these abilities, the user's soul joins the soul of greed inside it for all eternity and is also thereafter used to help power it. This ring cannot be taken off unless it allows you to.
RP: -80

Only he couldn’t get rid of it. True to the information given to him by his Observe ability, John could not remove the ring. He was cursed, and as far as he knew, there was no way to get rid of the curse. Still, after looking at the ring’s information again, John found himself staring at the pop-up and the changes in it. When he had first stolen the ring, it had not allowed him to see that Endurance stat boost that it gave to its user. It had hated him thoroughly… and now the relationship score he had with it had gone up by over a hundred points. It still didn’t like him, but he now had a better relationship with it than he did with Frank or Vanessa.

That realization brought a frown to his face. The ring shouldn’t have been able to read his thoughts, but there were other ways of divining truth and answers from a person that didn’t involve reading their mind. The ring had no mind that John knew of, just a soul, and as far as he could tell, the ring did not want him dead. Hell, it had even saved him during his fight with Michel. He wanted to know its intentions, but to learn that… he had to find a way to divine some answers of his own.

Tyrea was the first person to jump to mind. Tyrea or Hestia. If the redhead **** didn’t have some kind of information for him about enchanted and cursed items, then Hestia had to. The goddess had been able to wave away the corruption of necromancy from him like it was nothing, and while it may not be the same, she still had to know something. The only problem was that he didn’t know how to contact Hestia. She was a god, so… praying seemed like it could be a possibility, but when he looked around the streets of Springfield, just the idea of dropping to his knees and talking out into the open air made him feel ridiculous, even in an empty alleyway like the one he had stepped into.

Thankfully both of the answers that John had for those problems involved him going back to his kingdom, to a place that he was more than happy to try and hide in. He was so ready for it that John didn’t even bother finishing his walk back to Robyn’s house before he opened the screen for his Kingdom and hit the button to enter it. He just did it. The world around him dimmed with the touch of his finger to that glowing screen. The air thickened and grew heavy like smoke, only there was none around him, and John felt his breathing start to slow. His heart calmed almost immediately as soon as his giant tent reappeared around him, and John **** himself to breathe in deep. The smell of sweat and ale mixed with the fresh, strangely sweet, and dusty breeze in a way that made him smile and almost recline back into the comfort of his fur-laden bed, if not for the fact that his bed no longer sat in the middle of the room.

The furs that John normally slept on were nowhere to be found. His chest of gold jewelry and silks had been shoved over to the far side of the abode and was left largely forgotten. Next to it sitting atop another nearby chest was Dofi, his Gnomish ****. The little woman was almost as naked as she had been when John had left. Her large, pale, heavy breasts and wide, womanly hips were only barely covered by the dozens and dozens of golden chains that had been looped around her limbs and her waist. Her long pink and red hair was brushed back behind her, shoved out of the way as she stared down at her lap and held her hands over the reddish tuft of pubic hair above her little womanhood. The hair was short like it had been shaved recently and then allowed to grow over the past couple of days and made John wonder how it was that the people in the Kingdom actually groomed themselves. It was a short thought that he let go of almost immediately. He saw the glimmer of gold sitting on her short fingers and smiled unconsciously when he realized that each digit on her little hands had a thick, bejeweled ring slipped over it. Her hands dug into her soft, full thighs as she sat in place, scratching at her own white skin in slow repetitive movements. Only, the movement wasn’t to arouse herself… it was more like she was trying to ease a nervous energy out of her body. Her giant, round glasses hung low on the tip of her button nose as she continued staring down.

When John appeared, she didn’t look up. She didn’t notice him. She just stared down at her little crossed legs and bounced nervously in place, biting at her lips like she was waiting for something.

“Master?” Urga was the one to address John first. His other ****, the Orcish warrior he had first fought against in the kingdom, craned her head up before John could so much as ask about what had happened to the bed. She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t hear him, he hadn’t even taken a step. Yet, her head tilted up to the ceiling, her jade-hued nose flared, and she smelled him anyways. Urga was not sitting down like Dofi had been. The Orcess was standing. She hadn’t dressed either, though to be fair she hadn’t put any clothing on since the first time she had slept with John. Her large, fat breasts swayed with her subtle turn as she breathed in John’s familiar scent… and her calloused hand tightened on the sword that she had gripped in it. John’s gaze fell to the weapon she kept close to her wide hips and swallowed dryly.

She wasn’t a swordfighter, she was an archer. Yet, she looked like she was ready for a fight.

“What happened?” he asked, and this time it was Dofi who answered him. Her voice trembled and squeaked as she spoke like it always did, but this time…

… her voice was no louder than a whisper.

“The elves are here.”