Expedition- Summerlands by Nathaniel Webb

Author:Nathaniel Webb [Webb, Nathaniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912701933
Publisher: Level Up Publishing
Published: 2019-08-08T22:00:00+00:00

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It took a whole day to get all the gold up from the dungeon. Golden Apple took point, leading teams of NPCs with bags and boxes down to the treasure room I’d stumbled into. Each trip was accompanied by at least one member of Hearthammer, camera on of course, and usually two since Cass didn’t trust them and Noah kept volunteering. If the seasoned adventurers were annoyed by his constant questions, they didn’t show it.

Dr Agony and I had found Hearthammer and Golden Apple together, in the midst of a heated argument about which door to take. Noah actually jumped when I tapped him on the shoulder. I was relieved beyond words to discover that my friends had all made it out unharmed, but it had been close. The shifting walls of the dungeon had separated them almost immediately, with gold dogs hard on their heels. Cass’s face was like stone as she described how she’d run out of arrows and just about resigned herself to being eaten when Valkyrie of Golden Apple appeared around a corner and plunged both her knives into the gold dog’s brain.

Rad, Valkyrie, and Wolfheart had indeed gone the other direction in that first hallway at the bottom of the stairs. If they hadn’t, they would have reached the treasure first; instead they spent an hour exploring dead ends. They’d turned around to look for Dr Agony and discovered Hearthammer fighting for their lives. It seemed that if Golden Apple hadn’t shown up when they did, I’d be heading back to Wellpoint a solo act.

It was a slow hike around the Wyvern Peaks, through Dann’s Teeth, and back to Wellpoint. The NPCs hauling our treasure couldn’t move as fast as we all wanted, but Dr Agony flatly refused to let us share the load and give our hirelings a break.

Cass kept her stream up the whole way home, which was a relief, because after the head-spinning events of the last few days all I wanted was privacy. Golden Apple didn’t chat much along the way and mostly kept their cameras off as well, other than nightly check-ins that coincided with prime time back home. Around the after-dinner campfire, they answered messages, checked stats, and posted to social media, their faces blue-white masks in the electronic glow of their handhelds.

We arrived in Wellpoint at the end of our third day on the road, sweaty, dusty, and sore. At least I was. Cass insisted that we go straight to the Expedition Hall and Dr Agony only put up token resistance as we passed his house in the Burbs. His three partymates disappeared promptly into their own homes.

Donna Markan lived on the third floor of the Expedition Hall in an apartment about the size of Keats’s back home, as I discovered when Dr Agony let himself in and began shouting for her to wake up. She appeared from a back bedroom in a knitted wool robe, looking disheveled and pissed off.

“How many goddamn times, James—oh, hello, darling!” She had noticed me, standing halfway hidden behind Dr Agony, my eyes roving over her homey apartment.

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