Save State Hero 3 -ch 4-

Chapter 4

Edmund felt his entire body lock into place as Zeus sprung to life.

In the same spot the bastard always did.

Ryker promptly pushed Claire and Shirley to the sides and was blown apart by Zeus attack.

Rather than waiting around to listen and watch everything go wrong again, he turned around, and went toward the portal Dot was opening.

“I gave Claire the note!” Iren said cheerfully as she walked through the portal with Edmund, Dot, Harper, Alina, and Ellie. “She didn’t look surprised but said thank you.”

“Yeah, she’s had to watch him die a lot,” confessed Edmund. “It was hard on me watching it happen and I’m not the one in love with him. It’s a good thing her memories don’t carry over from one to the other.”

Iren made a noise that sounded a lot like a raspberry, threw an arm around Edmund, and jerked him into her side.

“I wish my memories carried over. I feel like I’m missing out. It really sucks,” complained the Green Dragon, easily overpowering Edmund and keeping him right against herself. Even when he wore Legionnaire armor he just wasn’t a match for her.

“I mean, I don’t like it either, but it’s not so bad. The notes help a lot,” Harper argued. “I’m sure our sweet Teddy is just doing what he thinks is best for us.”

There was a loud pop as the portal closed behind them. They were standing in an open field. One that stretched out endlessly with grass.

Edmund nodded his head, opened his Save-states, and put one down. This would be a fine jump point for information gathering he imagined. If it turned out to be unneeded he’d just over-ride it.

At the moment, he had only four useful Save-states, and two that weren’t being used at all.

“Okay, I’ll open a portal to Vince’s world now. We’ll just need to figure out what goes wrong and where and go from there,” Dot advised. “I did take a peek at it when Ryker was bringing everyone together. It genuinely looked like Vince was fighting some sort of massive deity level event.”

“That kinda sounds turbo fucked,” Edmund offered up, turning to look at the sorceress.

“Right?” Alina replied with a chuckle. “It sounds like it’s right up there with that big ass frog that almost ate us.”

Edmund let out a soft laugh at that and was carefully wrangled away from Iren and glanced over. Alina was there and she was giving him a once over. Clearly looking to make sure he was whole and healthy.

Since Alina had recovered a great deal of her memories, she’d really blossomed as a person. She was a lot like the woman he’d fallen for in the apartment at the end of the world.

A woman that made a joke or two, often smiled for him, and fussed over him.

“I’m alright. I did get shot in the plate carrier though. That hadn’t happened before. That fight is always so mad,” Edmund said and tapped at his plate carrier where he’d been hit. It still ached. “I swear it’s just about the most random place ever. So many edge cases happen there that I can’t even begin to describe it.”

“I dislike edge cases,” complained Ellie. “You get hurt in edge cases. That lightning Super hero was an edge case before you ask. Their lightning could go more than one place and it was a bit random.”

“Ahhhh, I was going to ask, thank you. That makes a lot of sense,” Dot said, lightly patting one hand into the other. “Well, we’re here. This is Vince’s world. He’s right over… there.”

Looking to Dot, then the line of her arm, Edmund froze in place.

A very large monster was on the horizon. It was impressive and horrifying at the same time.

It did unfortunately remind him to a degree of the beast that nearly destroyed him and Alina when they were trying to eliminate Zeus.

Standing quite tall, Edmund could see even at this distance that it would be a considerable issue to deal with. He had the feeling that modern weapons wouldn’t be able to do much immediate harm to it.

That it would be more likely the monster would fall over due to the extra weight of lead being fired into it, than to die to those rounds.

A demon, really.

“It reeks of injustice in a way that I can’t even describe,” Alina complained, her left hand coming up to press to her nose. Her right hand still held the sword she’d been using in the battle with Zeus. Gore still ran down it’s length and dripped to the grass.

Surprisingly, none of them had died in the fight with Zeus and his people.

Iren had been the only one to come close.

She’d nearly caught her end when she started cheering for Claire when she caught hold of Ryker and just about sucked his tongue out of his mouth.

“Well, I get the impression this is one of the points in time that Vince needs help,” Edmund murmured as the massive demon began trundling forward. “I can only assume this is where he needs Seville’s help as well as Leila’s.”

“That makes sense,” Harper agreed, dressed out in full Legionnaire armor including a helmet. “I think most anyone would need help with that thing.”

“I can try to question some trees if we can find one,” offered Ellie. “This is a Dryad world after all. The Dryads from Vince’s world are always a bit… wild… but very kind women. They’re a lot of fun to talk to and ask them to share stories.”

“Oh? Wild?” Dot asked sounding very curious. “There’s no Dryads on my original world that I know of. How are they more wild than you?”

“Uhm… a lot of them have been in some ugly fights. Killed a lot of people,” explained Ellie, shrugging her shoulders. “The vast majority of them have a great deal of combat experience or training. I’m somewhat of a domesticated dog and they’re very large, hungry, and wild gray wolves.”

“I think I prefer my domesticated Dryad,” Edmund said and then let his rifle hand down to his side side. His left hand came out and caught up Ellie’s right. “Faith always seemed a bit much to me, I wouldn’t even want to imagine what a Vince-world Dryad would be like.

“Probably run me into the ground while giggling all the while. Or something worse.”

“Well,” Ellie said with a deep laugh, her head tilting to the side. He caught her throwing a look his way. Her eyes had lit up and were glowing intensely. “Vince world Dryads tend to form large harems around their chosen and engage in wild multi party orgies with their chosen.”

“I… yeah, I like my domesticated Dryad,” Edmund reaffirmed. “Love my Domesticated Dryad. A lot.”

“Me too. Hard enough to fight her with my basic human peasant girl looks,” complained Dot. “Worse if I had to fight multiples of her.”

“I dunno, after seeing your Evil Camgirl look I prefer the peasant girl,” stated Edmund as they watched the giant Demon trundle along. “I’ve also seen your Emo-edition, you know. I very much prefer your current self.”

“Emo-edition,” Dot murmured.

“Ryker killed your uncle in that one,” answered Edmund as the Demon began to swing  and kick at what was likely people that they couldn’t see. “Rob. That was his name, Rob. Ryker killed him. You were very… different in that one. Though, your tower was interesting.”

“You were a very sad version of Dot that Teddy pitied deeply, because you weren’t the person you are to him, as you are, today,” Ellie explained.

The Demon had picked up several people, tossed them into his mouth, and was now moving once again.

From where he stood, the entire situation looked pretty messed up.

Without Seville and his overwhelming strength, his near invulnerability, I can easily see why Vince and his people would struggle. Because at the end of the day, Vince is an amazing man with some leanings into divinity, but he’s still less than whatever that is.

Shaking his head, Edmund turned around and went to Ellie.

The buxom Dryad was wearing armor similar to his own as well as a large backpack, though no helmet. Thankfully it fit this time. Dot and Harper were the only two that could fit their standard Legionnaire armor.

“Uhm, yes, Teddy?” Ellie asked in a warm tone as he approached her, her lips curling into a smile.

“Need the Log, Aenor,” Edmund replied with a smile as well. He carefully took her by the shoulders and gently turned her about to get at her backpack.

Retrieving it quickly, he laid it against Ellie’s backpack and tapped in a very simple request. To know where Leila was. He specified it as “Vince’s Leila” to make sure it was the right one.

“I’m the needy Princess,” Dot muttered almost to herself with a tone that didn’t sound very pleased. “He is constantly saving me. I… I’m the needy princess and… and he knows I live in a tower. I’m… a horrible trope and it’s not a joke.”

“Leila is apparently in… Australia,” Edmund said after the log gave him the answer. “Dot, could you come over here, read off the coordinates, and pop us open a portal to a nearby area?”

“Of course, of course,” she said with a soft exhale. “What’s the damsel in distress to do after being saved?”

“Teddy complained a lot about rescuing princesses that kept needing to be saved,” Harper offered in a very teasing voice. “You know. When we sat on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, day after day, as childhood friends do. Deep into the night. Playing video games.”

“Ugh,” Dot grumbled as she stared at the log for several more seconds. Turning she splayed her hands out in front of herself and a swirl of magic came out of them. They formed into hard lines, swirling curves, and in some cases, zig-zags.

If he was being honest, this was the first time he’d really watched her work magic. Normally he just stared past it, through it, or didn’t try to look into it.

She really is Ryker’s apprentice. It looks a lot like his by and large.

A portal opened up in the next moment and Dot stepped to the side of it, grasping the with with her hand.

Iren went in first, followed by Alina, then Harper.

Edmund held onto the log and then moved in next, followed by Ellie and finally Dot, who closed the portal down behind herself.

“It’s very… open,” Harper said, her head turning one way, then the other. “This is worse than where we were. The sun feels very bright.”

“It’s trying to kill me,” grumbled Alina before taking several steps forward and putting herself in Iren’s shadow. “Save the sexy vampire girlfriend, Dragon-waifu.”

Laughing, Iren made an odd motion with her shoulders and then her wings popped out of her back. One of them slid out over the top of Alina, the other moving over to cover Ellie who had quickly moved toward the Dragon.

“Yes, yes, rely on the Dragon-waifu,” Iren chortled. “I’m the fucking best because I take care of the other trope-girlfriends. Say it with me girls. Dragon-waifu.”

“Dragon-waifu,” Ellie and Alina said in concert without any negativity. They seemed to be quite happy to be sheltering under the Dragon’s wings.

“It is rather bright here,” Harper agreed, still looking around. “It really is desolate, too. There’s nothing alive that I can tell anywhere. At all. It feels like a blasted wasteland.

“And no, that’s not an Australia joke. It just genuinely feels like it.”

“Yeah, it does,” concurred Edmund with a click of his tongue. He gestured at the landscape around them. “Where’s Leila then?”

“Don’t know but the z-axis had them partially under ground, I think. I think they probably hide during the day. Which I can’t blame them for,” Dot said and lifted her up wrist up. She tapped at it several times, engaging the computer that was onboarded into the armor.

Legion is just too much sometimes.

“That dude is so hefty it’d take more than one snap just to get rid of half of him,” Edmund muttered, looking back to the massive demon.

“Ha, right?” Harper said. “He’d come in with the line of ‘I don’t feel so good’ let out a burp, and move on. As if it were just a passing issue. Hardly an inconvenience.”

Dot pointed in a direction causing them all to look in that direction.

“That way. I didn’t put us that far away because I figured we’d have to jump out of this Save-state anyways,” she admitted. “Even if we landed atop them, it wouldn’t matter much other than for the information gathering.”

Nodding his head, Edmund began moving in the direction indicated.

The area they were on, rolled slightly as they moved. A slight incline that he hadn’t realized was there even as they tromped along.

“We’re all kinda tropey,” Dot remarked. “Part of me wants to ask Adeena about it, but I’m actually terrified of what her response would be.”

Alina let out a huff, turned to look at Edmund, and pouted.

An actual pout was on the vampires full lips and she looked at him in an almost pleading fashion.

“Teddy, would you ask Adeena why we’re all living tropes? For me? But don’t tell me if it’s something I don’t want to know. Just… let three or four days pass and then Save-state hop? Please?” she asked in a voice that was so far from what he expected from her, he tripped.

Edmund’s feet got tangled up in one another and he hit the grass. Only to end up sliding downward on his knees and elbows.

The hill they’d been on was now a downward slope to the other side.

“Wow, Dev,” Iren said with a loud laugh, it sounded as if she were jogging after Edmund to catch him. “I know I gave you shit about having a personality like a two-by-four, but I didn’t think you’d go pouty swim suit model and show me up.”

“I like pouting. He likes me pouting. He likes me being tender to him, too. Why not be all of that? I don’t have a reason to be aloof,” answered Alina just as Edmund felt Iren catch up to him. Alina grabbed him by the belt and hauled him up, then brushed him off tenderly. “It’s not like I need to keep my distance from him either and… I was just… I’m happy now.”

“Yeah? I’m glad to hear that. Also, found the gnome,” Iren muttered. “Shit. We’re definitely late, I guess. Ew… she’s… gooey.”

Edmund looked ahead of himself and he saw what Iren was talking about. It was indeed a gnome in stained clothes. She was in a stage of decomposition where she was indeed sticky and gooey looking.

The stink was pretty bad as well.

There was no one else here other than the gnome, either.

“Well, that answers that,” Edmund muttered. “We’ll have to see if we can’t use the log to track it back to where she arrived. How she died. Though… I think Vince said that there was two other people with her. Only one corpse though.”

“Yes,” Alina murmured, walking up next to the corpse. “She… smells like injustice. I think one of the other two might’ve killed her. She smells like murder. Murder and… deep regret. Deep, howling, regret.”

“Like… regret so deep they killed themselves?” asked Harper. “Because that’s a corpse in that little tuft of grass isn’t it.”

Edmund turned and looked further up. He could see a pair of bare feet sticking out of the grass.

“Shit,” he said as Iren put him down on his feet. He walked over to the grass and moved some of it out of the way. It was a corpse alright. “She… definitely looks like she killed herself. Her throat is missing? But I don’t see a knife or anything. Maybe her hand? She does seem to have claws. But I can’t imagine doing that.”

“That’s a lot of hair. And a tail,” Dot murmured after having joining him and looking into the grass. “This just went all sorts of wrong. Didn’t it? They ended up out here. Something happened. She killed the gnome, then killed herself.”

“That’s what I’m feeling from it,” agreed Alina with a sigh. “Overwhelming and horrifying guilt. It’s guilt so deep that I can’t even… I can’t… it brings me to tears.”

Reaching up, Alina lightly brushed at her eyes. In a way that he had seen Harper and Dot do.

An attempt to dislodge the tears without smearing makeup everywhere.

“It’s like how Teddy feels all the time. With how much he’s sacrificed for everyone,” she continued. “Oooh, it took me so long to get used to his own feeling that I’m particularly vulnerable to this.”

“Oh yeah… you said he smelled,” Iren said with a snap of her fingers. Then reached down and grabbed the corpse and lifted it out of the grass. It was just as gooey as the other one. She carried it over to the gnome and laid it down next to it. “So… the red one killed the gnome, then killed herself. That’s two out of the three. Where’s the third?”

“A treasure hunt I suppose,” Ellie said and then sighed. “I’m actually able to speak with a small sapling seed growing in that grass over there by the way. It fed off a heart. The gnomes heart. The one who killed herself had taken a bite out of it, then stabbed herself in the throat.

“There was no third member here. No third individual. They didn’t make it this far. We’ll need to backtrack but… I don’t see much in the way of anything I can talk to.”

“Dearest Dot?” Edmund said and looked to the sorceress. “Want to use those beautiful runes of yours and give us a direction? I could ask the log but… your magic is impressive.”

Alina made a tongue clicking noise, her eyes flicking to him and fastening to him.

“I’m hungry,” she stated in a cutsey voice paired with a small smile.

“You… when did you become so childish?” Dot asked in a laugh, her hands coming up and then quickly forming spells. Eager to please despite what she’d just said to Alina. Quickly forming the runes and making somewhat of a show of it.

Then the spell coalesced and a strange being of lightning flew out of her spell. Then a second one, that was a small lizard. Both flew away from her in different directions.

“They’ll search. And while the log could tell us where the third person easily enough,” Dot said, watching as Alina was carefully undressed Edmund’s wrist from his sleeve. Then lifted it up and bit into it with a care that everyone could see. “I think my familiars will provide us with the information we need and without too much of an issue. Beyond that though, we’ll need to know what’s nearby and what’s a problem and what isn’t.”

“You’re going to be a pain if this is your actual personality,” Harper said, looking at Alina, who merely raised her eyebrows innocently. Harper sighed, smiled at Edmund, then looked to Dot. “I agree. We should see if we can figure out which way they came from and go that way. We’ll need to figure out when they arrived and how to get them back and at the right time.”

Harper said the last looking to Ellie.

“Oh? Oh! They came from that way,” Ellie murmured, one hand gesturing to the east. “Sorry, I was chatting with the sapling. He wasn’t sure on timing and he said the time is strange here. I get the impression that where-ever this is, is suffering some type of magical calamity.”

“I love calamity’s. They get me killed, then Teddy feels bad, and I have to buy new ‘Ready For Teddy’ clothes when he tears it off me the next time I come back,” Iren said and then nodded her head with feeling. “All my Ellie notes tell me about it.”

Edmund, took in a breath, held it, then let it out. This was fairly insane if he was being honest, but he was deeply enjoying himself.

“I… really hate the Ellie notes as of late,” muttered the Dryad. “I’m not into this fetish at all. I have no idea how Faith enjoys it as deeply as she does. I just don’t get it.”

Pretending not to hear that, or even think about it, Edmund silenced his thoughts.