Beast Queen: A LitRPGGameLit Action Adventure (Monster Slayer Online Book 2) by R.R. Virdi

Author:R.R. Virdi [Virdi, R.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Reciprocity

Voices, distant and stretched into inaudible whispers, floated around him. He couldn’t find the strength to open his eyes. They’d been sewn shut by unseen threads with lead weighing them down.

“Hey.” Three thin pillars of coolness brushed across his cheek. “Hey, Devrim?” Fingers pressed to his eyelids, gently pulling on them.

Distant motes of pale light flickered amidst the blurriness of his vision. He blinked several times to clear it, shying away from the hand by his face. The speaker’s visage lost some of the haziness the longer he stared at them. “Keeley?”

The havahneko woman nodded, placing a hand to the side of his head to cradle him. “You scared the shit out of us when we found you.” She bit a corner of her lip, chewing over her next words in silence. “The place was on fire, and you were pinned under a part of the fallen roof. We could barely make out your health bar. The fire would have finished you had we not gotten there fast enough. Erik and I hauled you out but…” she trailed off, sighing.

Mental cobwebs, threaded with the fatigue from earlier, lined his mind. He worked slowly to process what had happened. Realization hit him like a hammer on brittle ice an instant later. Dev sat up. “Haven—Tom’s home! What happened?” He shook his head, blearily glancing off into the distance as he summoned his menu. His health had returned to full in the time he’d been unconscious. A small relief.

Keeley remained silent.

“Keeley? What happened?”

The havahneko gave him a thin smile, refusing to meet his eyes as she looked at him. “A lot.” She swallowed a visible lump in her throat. “Tom’s home—it’s gone.” The single word quivered like the last chord of a guitar, thrumming until it drove the message into him.

Dev’s stomach knotted and it felt like two hands clasped around the hollow of his throat, squeezing tightly. “What?” His own voice sounded far off and softened.

“Tarna, that bitch, set fire to a couple of important places. We didn’t… We couldn’t save them all. We were busy chasing off stragglers and trying to save more important things. And some hunters didn’t leave the field because of their friends.”

Dev’s face scrunched at that, puzzled by what she’d meant.

“We lost some people.” She shut her eyes, moisture lining the space where her lids met. “Want to know the worst part? I barely got to know any of them. They were just newbies who’d loaded in and made their way to New Haven. Too dumb to listen and get to safety. People who we lost track of in trying to rush players out. They just…” she choked off a light sob, clearing her throat. “We fought to stop this kind of stuff. It wasn’t supposed to happen, not again.”

Devrim got to his feet, brushing himself off. He reached out and pulled Keeley into a tight hug. “This is the last time. We’ll end this. I promise.” He squeezed her harder before loosening his hold. “I’m going to set out to make this right.

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