Masters of Strata (Deepest Dungeon #2) - A LitRPG series

by G. D. Penman

  The hand that had been held out flat to accept Jericho’s punishment splayed out on the ground as the Archduke tried to stop itself from toppling. The soft palm was still exposed to the whipping. With every blow, Phalanx grew louder and louder. “Say you love me? Say you love me? Say you love me?”

  Then, with one last crack of the whip. Jericho’s voice echoed back no more. He practically collapsed with exhaustion, his broad shoulders sloping and the whip hanging in his grasp like it was some kind of unbearable weight. The last echo was soft as a whisper in a lover’s ear. It made all the hair on the back of Martin’s neck stand to attention. “Say you love me?”

  Jericho unleashed what was left of his Vengeance with a thunderclap. Shadow chased up the whip to spread across the Archduke’s palm. This time, the noise the monster made was not some secret that Jericho didn’t want to hear. It was a moan. Muted but full throated and enough in itself to make Martin uncomfortable.

  He had no idea what the noise was meant to be until Julia dashed into his field of vision, staff dangling useless in her hand. “Make it stop. Martin, please. Make it stop.”

  There were tears pooling in her eyes. Martin didn’t even know that Sythvans could cry. But he was quite certain that he could not tolerate whatever this thing was doing to her. The moan reverberated out now. Deafening loud, and enough to set the faces on the floors and walls vibrating sympathetically.

  Julia dropped to her knees, hands clapped over the patches where he supposed her ears might be. “Make it stop. Please. Don’t listen.”

  Martin was distracted by all of this human drama. Lindsay was not. She had gone to her happy place, and that happy place was a blur of knives, carving into the side of the Archduke’s ankle. Once in a while, a dagger would flash one color or another. A glimmer of shadow. A flare of red. Her carefully calculated rotation of abilities timed to maximize the damage she could deal in any period of time.

  That was what they should all have been doing. While the masks were black, they were meant to be dealing damage. Martin pulled free of Julia’s begging hands and charged to Lindsay’s side.

  Trinity Strike flared to life and he slammed the full length of the Creedblade into Phalanx’s hand. Through its hand. Biting into the masked stone below.

  [Phalanx has suffered 21 light damage]

  The Archduke’s blood flowed freely now, the pale flesh-streaked pink with it. All the dead faces on the floor filling up with red.

  Moans followed Martin’s strike. Lewd and moist. Cutting off abruptly when he twisted his sword free. Lindsay’s voice echoed from Phalanx’s faces. “That must be why the ladies are practically breaking down your door.”

  Even Lindsay was distracted from her campaign of destruction by that one. “How?”

  “Not important. Focus.”

  Martin should have paid attention to his own advice. The other hand of Phalanx was swinging beneath him now, and it caught him a glancing blow across the back that threw him down.

  [Skaife has suffered 8 bludgeoning damage]

  Lindsay had leapt clear the moment the ruined hand that Jericho had been working over came their way, but Martin was on the wrong side. It didn’t matter that he was already scrambling back to his feet before the blood had a chance to soak into his fur. By then, the Archduke was already spinning.

  Hands slammed down again and again, making certain there could be no shelter beneath it when the beams of light from its masks blazed out.

  Swept from his feet, Martin was rolled over the back of one hand in a tumble before the next one came down hard on the other side of him.

  [Skaife has suffered 16 bludgeoning damage]

  Another one of those would be one too many. He cast Healing Touch and made a desperate leap for the dubious safety beyond the turning hands.

  [Skaife has recovered 15 health]

  One of the great black nails sliced a line across his back as he went.

  [Skaife has suffered 4 slashing damage]

  The dance went faster and faster. The beams of blinding light no longer leaving afterimages, but instead burning a bright new sky onto Martin’s world. A solid sheet of light that made him keep his head ducked down to maintain his sight.

  This time it was his voice echoing down, juddering through the air displaced by Phalanx’s wild spin. It took him a moment to remember when he’d said the words out loud instead of just in his head. “I just want to die. I just want to die. Just want to die. Just want to die. Want to die. Want to die. Die. Die. Die! Die! Die!”

  The Archduke didn’t seem to be making any attempt to actually hit them with the blast. The others were all standing there staring at Martin in the strobing light. Sympathy, fear and disgust on their respective animal faces.

  Martin didn’t parse that it sounded like he was declaring an intention to commit suicide until a moment later, then he shook his head to the others. Context was everything and these little snippets that Phalanx regurgitated stripped that away.

  The light overhead cut out and the ranting stopped with it, echoing to silence.

  Martin readied his sword for the next round, taking one step closer to the limbs beneath the skirts before some instinct made him look up.

  The blackened masks of the Archduke were falling.

  Leaping back, he managed to avoid the impact, but that too was a distraction. Everything Phalanx did seemed to be a distraction. Maybe it was completely deranged, doing all of these things for no reason, but Martin still felt like there was some design behind the choices it made. Some pattern.

  Where the masks had been, there were holes. Gaping openings in the tower of flesh that now disgorged great clouds of heavy black smog. It rolled down the length of the archduke, hit the floor and then blossomed out in every direction. All the movement of the monster had come to a halt. Even the skirts that had been swaying back and forth after the last dance came to a standstill.

  Like its work here was done.

  The smog rolled out and there was nowhere to go to escape it. Martin gasped in one last breath of clean air then charged right back in. If Phalanx wanted to stand still and get hit, he was happy to oblige.

  The smog coiled up around his legs as he went. Seeking out the gaps in the wax and flowing inside him. It didn’t matter that he was holding his breath. The smog moved of its own volition. It pushed between his lips. Up his nostrils. Into his ears. Even into his eye, turning everything murky and dark.

  The strength left him for a moment as the chill settled in.

  [CURSED: Consumed by Darkness]

  Blinking his eye shut showed no stat drain, and Martin couldn’t understand what this curse actually did until he opened his eyes. He wasn’t where he’d been standing a moment before. He was marching forward. He wasn’t telling his legs to move, yet on they went. He wasn’t telling his hand to spin his Creedblade like a majorette’s baton either, yet there it went. Blazing bright in the new shadows that the curse had brought to his eye.

  Mind control. It wasn’t ideal, but it could have been a lot worse. At least Phalanx had taken him instead of one of the others. If they had to fight an evil Lindsay they all would have been hard pressed. Jericho would have been a real danger too if he was up against the group, and if they lost their healer to this curse then it wouldn’t much matter because they wouldn’t survive whatever phase came next. He was the best option to lose to the enemy, really — he had limited potential for destruction, with so many of his abilities set up to provide buffs to the others over dealing direct damage.

  Lindsay stepped forward out of the fog, and Martin tried to call out to her. To warn her that his body wasn’t under his control. That was when he saw the smog coiling around her too. Two of them? That seemed unfair. There was no way that Jericho and Julia would be able to take on both of them.

  The smog began to clear and Martin could see the other two clearly now. Their eyes clouded. Their movements marionette mechanical. All four of them? All four of them were cursed? How was that fair? What was the poin
t? The whole idea of mind-control mechanics in a fight was to break up the party. If it affected all of them then how would they attack?

  Lindsay’s dagger slammed into his gut, lifting him clear off the ground.

  [Skaife has suffered 14 piercing damage]

  Oh no. He hefted his Creedblade, still lit up with Smite.

  [Tesra has suffered 24 light damage]

  [Tesra has suffered 30 slashing damage]

  It was in Lindsay’s face. Splitting it down the middle. He had done that, and he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t even close his eye as blood bubbled up out of the wound.

  She hadn’t been as badly beaten as him during the boss fight. She was nimble when the curse wasn’t holding her still to take her beating.

  Julia’s staff swung through the air, hammering into Jericho’s face again and again as her own moans of pleasure slipped out of his dangling, broken jaw. The dark shadows of the curse coiled and intermingled with the crackling aura of vengeance that grew larger and larger around him.

  He had to watch as the blade was dragged out of her. The pale mass of her brain exposed to the air. He had to watch as it came down again and again.

  [Tesra has suffered 31 slashing damage]

  [Tesra has suffered 29 slashing damage]

  “More time lost. More time wasted.” Jericho’s words. Jericho’s voice. Coming from Lindsay’s cracked beak.

  She lifted her daggers high and plunged them down into Martin’s chest.

  [Skaife has suffered 19 piercing damage]

  [Skaife has suffered 19 piercing damage]

  He fell to his knees, the last flickers of life draining out of him as he brought up his empty hand to Lindsay in supplication.

  Over on the other side of the Archduke, all of Jericho’s vengeance lashed out at Julia in one great explosion of darkness. She was torn apart by the blast, even as he toppled over to bleed out.

  Adriel has died

  Jericho has died.

  “I’m sorry.” Julia’s voice. His mouth shaping the words. This last cut wasn’t clean or pretty. The flattened tip of the Creedblade bit into Lindsay’s chest, and painfully slow it pushed in deeper and deeper.

  [Tesra has suffered 4 piercing damage]

  Tesra has died.

  Martin fell back, the last strength that the Archduke had pushed into him stolen away as the smoke rose from his body, the curse’s purpose complete. His lips still moved in time to Phalanx’s voice, but he couldn’t hear what it was saying.

  Skaife has died.

  Darkness swallowed him down. And then out of it, words appeared.

  [240 minutes until rebirth]

  Seventeen

  The Closing Gyre

  Four hours. That was the rest of the day’s gaming time wasted. By the time they made it back down to Phalanx for a second attempt the whole guild would be ready for bed. They had lost a whole day.

  Martin hung there in the void, calculating the damage they had dealt in his head. They must have been close to taking Phalanx down, even if it had the same massive health pools as the previous Archdukes, adjusted up for the increased difficulty. The curse must have been the fight’s final phase.

  There were two potential triggers that he could see. Either the three blasts with the beams unlocked its ability to curse, or enough damage dealt to it would put it into the final phase. If it was damage, the curse was unavoidable, but if it was the blasts then they just needed to hit it with enough damage before it could churn out the three rounds of what Lindsay had dubbed “laser eyes.”

  Jericho might be the key to that second option. If they could get his Vengeance store up high enough before the fight began, drop on all their buffs and have him unleash everything right up front, it might work. If Lindsay was turning out maximum damage as always, he’d be able to pick up some of the slack. If it was all down to the number of blasts, they might make it.

  But if that wasn’t what triggered the curse, he was locked out for eight hours. Another lost day. They couldn’t afford another lost day. He definitely couldn’t. He needed a solution to the curse. He couldn’t just hope that they’d avoid it.

  He logged out of the game to the sound of his phone buzzing softly under the bed. Staccato, not the steady thrum of an incoming call. He rolled off the mattress, still trying to blink his other eye open, and fumbled for it.

  Lindsay dominated the messages, as usual. “What the ass was that?”

  Then there was a picture of some reality tv star falling off their chair. And another of the same image with a crow’s head superimposed over the pseudo-celebrity’s. Then an animated gif of a crow falling off a bird table. She was relentless.

  Martin tapped a reply, fast as he could before she drowned it out. “Call it for the day.”

  Another crow looking surprised.

  “Now that I’ve seen what it can do, I’ve got a plan.”

  An ancient cartoon still of a whiteboard with “Step 3: Profit” highlighted.

  “We’ll get it next time.”

  Words, finally. “Alright dude. If you say so. What the hell was all that backchat stuff about? I get they could record our voices and play them back, but some of that was private conversations. You know?”

  Blowing out a long breath he typed back, “I am very aware.”

  “J + J are having conniptions.”

  He couldn’t help but smirk. “Conniptions?”

  “Juliet ain’t talking.” An image of a snake with its head colored in bright red.

  “Romeo is screaming.” A howling wolf.

  Martin turned the phone away from his face for a moment to get his composure back. “How long have you been collecting animal memes?”

  “Forever and ever and ever.” He could almost hear the sing-song voice that she would have put on if she was saying it out loud.

  In the middle of typing back “Figures,” the regularly scheduled call came through, and his thumb hit the green icon to answer it before he knew what was happening.

  He bit down hard on the startled little noise that tried to escape his mouth. His head was still in Strata, in numbers and stratagems and monsters. He needed to switch gears on the spot.

  “Hello?”

  “Good evening, am I speaking with Martin?” Female voice. Midwestern accent. Neutral. Truth or lie? If they had his biometrics, then they’d detect a lie as soon as they ran his voice through the machine. His biometrics were tied to this phone account. No point arousing suspicion. If they knew anything they’d already be here.

  “Yes.” He had to be normal and neutral and tell them nothing. How did normal people speak to strangers on the phone? He’d only ever had telephone calls in professional settings, so he defaulted to that script. “How can I help you?”

  “We have been trying to reach you for several days.” She gave good phone voice, calm and pleasant but with a matronly tone that made Martin instinctively want to avoid disappointing her in any way. It was a smart play. “It seems that the card payment for your hotel stay the other night failed because our records were incomplete, so we just need to confirm your address so it can be processed.”

  “Hotel stay?” As ploys went, it was pretty transparent, but effective. A snare. If he gave the details for them to process they had his address and confirmation he was at the hotel where they’d already tracked him. Pity he’d booked it in another name. “When was this meant to be?”

  That was a nice open statement. He confirmed nothing. Gave nothing.

  “Two nights ago. Normally, we would have resolved this at checkout, but you didn’t go through the proper procedure.” That slight chiding in her voice. Guilting him into paying. Guilting him into giving himself away. Did they think that someone paranoid enough to jump out of a window would succumb to this kind of softball treatment?

  “I think you’ve made some kind of mistake.”

  “No mistake, sir.” She was good. Goading him into either lying or telling the truth. Did they have some sort of vocal reader on the call
searching for nervous breaks in his voice, hitches in his breathing?

  He had to commit one way or the other, so he went hard into the lie. If they were reading his voice, an emotional outburst would screw with their results. “What are you playing at, lady? Is this some kind of scam? What are you trying to pull here? I didn’t stay in any hotel. I haven’t left this house in a week.”

  “There is no need to raise your voice, sir.”

  He raised his voice even more. If they had a reader on the line he hoped the operator’s eardrums burst. “I’m not falling for your shakedown. I’ve had my card details stolen before, and I’m not falling for this again. Where are you calling from? Give me your number. I’m calling the police.”

  The line clicked dead.

  He’d done it. Wrecked any sort of lie detector, spooked their spook and fed them a story that could explain how his account was tied to the hotel booking under another name.

  Flopping back on the bed, he tried to breathe. It felt like there was a breath caught somewhere in his chest. Talking to people always made him feel this way, but it was so much worse now. That dull sense that he’d made a mistake somewhere had grown to monstrous proportions. He’d almost call it a sense of doom now. Like when he could hear Strata calling in his dreams. That sense of inevitability. Answering the phone. That would usually have been the mistake. Yet, if he’d ignored it for another day it would have tipped over from weird into suspicious, and there would be jackbooted corporate thugs kicking down his door.

  Even with the replies he’d given, there was no doubt that some analyst was working it over, back and forth. Comparing their gathered data on him to the story he’d told. Unless they’d outsourced, the Masters would find that he’d logged into Strata during the time when he was meant to be away from home. Hell, there was even a global notification about his guild during the time he was supposedly in the hotel. Not on the second night, but the first. That had to be a matter of record somewhere. Even if the Masters had no record of it, Martin knew that it had gone out on social media.