by Pavel Kornev
“Isn’t owning just one shard enough to interrupt this?”
“The shards aren’t unique. You just need to gather a certain number of them,” Isabella explained and flashed a strange smile. “There’s a proper power struggle going on. Just the time to catch some fish in troubled water!”
I thought I would have a stroke.
“You’re not planning on selling the shard, are you?”
“What nonsense,” the dark elf snorted. “This is a pass to the Kingdom of the Dead! We’re going to look at the balance of power and offer it to the one who needs it the most!”
I nodded in agreement and asked, “How do you imagine that happening?”
Isabella drew a line in the sand with the point of her staff and declared, “I will open a portal to the Tower of Darkness.”
The red-haired boy almost jumped for joy.
“We’re going to the capital of the dark side? Hurrah!”
“We?”
I exchanged glances with Isabella whose eyes displayed just as much surprise as mine, but she immediately composed herself and started to draw a complex design with her staff.
“Kitten, the boy has grown attached to you!” the priestess said as she started to fill the portal she was preparing with power. “Now it’s your load to bear.”
“Why the hell?”
“The dungeon quest has not closed completely and the boy is part of it. There’s nothing else we can do. We are responsible for our pets.”
I cursed.
“Kitten, stop swearing in front of children!”
I swore again, but kept it to myself this time. The quest probably hadn’t closed properly because the game considered me to be an NPC, which meant that it would probably remain frozen until I came back to life. Did this mean the boy would follow us around the whole time? They won’t even kill him! Child characters had complete immunity to all types of damage in this game.
Just my luck.
My heart began to weigh heavy and it became somehow uncomfortable to be on the riverbank. The sun was reaching its zenith and the shadows were turning into a thin strip, so I wanted to get to the Tower of Darkness as soon as I could. It was the capital of the dark side of this world.
I had no idea how much a player using Incognito would be accepted, but I doubted that it would be worse than the playpen, where a powerless undead was being killed by hyperactive newbies time and time again.
“It’s ready!” Isabella declared, when the complicated diagram on the sand started to burn with black fire. “Kitten, don’t fall behind!”
The priestess was the first to disappear into the black flame and the boy dropped his fishing rod and ran towards me, bouncing as he went. I didn’t wait for him and stepped towards the portal.
A moment later, I was knocked off my feet and rolling along the sand!
Shackled soul attack!
Death Magic: Immunity
I rose on one knee in confusion, noticed a shimmer in the air and rolled aside. The spirit missed me, but then another joined it, flying in from the river and tearing a path through the reeds in its way.
I entered stealth mode and rolled along the sand again.
Shackled soul attack!
Death Magic: Immunity
Stealth mode: Off
Damn it! Spirits couldn’t harm me in any way, but they were great at knocking me out of stealth mode! They could see the invisible!
I bounded back up to my feet, but I wasn’t fast enough. A fireball flew out of the reeds and exploded, leaving a deep crater of melted sand.
The explosion immediately took off a quarter of my Health. The raincoat started to burn, so I had to roll along the ground to extinguish the flame. Without stopping, I made a forward roll towards the portal, but a shackled soul was waiting for me and hit me in the chest throwing me back. Whenever I tried to move towards the river, its companion would smash into my side!
I leapt in another direction, entered stealth mode and tried to run... Who cares where! Another hit on my back sent me sprawling into the sand. The spirit pushed me down to the ground and a new fireball found its mark. I was engulfed in flames and it wasn’t easy to put a magical fire out.
In the end, I ended up burnt from head to toe and only one hundred points of Health separated me from death. This was bad, incredibly bad...
“So, we meet again!” Garth Deathblade shouted from the reeds. He’d managed to get himself up to level 35 and get the Soulcatcher profession. The white-haired necromancer held a staff covered with complex engravings with a shining crystal at the top in his hands. “I had to spend quite a lot on my preparations, you scum, but trust me, it was worth it!”
It was worth it? No wonder! Garth intended to sell my skull to Kogan’s goons and the banker under investigation would definitely be happy to pay the money to shut the mouth of a key witness for the prosecution.
Lost. I was lost!
Garth opened his mouth again, but I didn’t listen to him and immediately took off and went straight into stealth mode as I went. The shackled souls went to cut me off to stop me reaching their master, while zombies rose from the sand around him, but I had no intention of carrying out a suicidal attack. I managed to dodge a soul that tried to attack my legs at the last moment, grab the enchanted skull from my inventory and send it flying into the middle of the river. Far away. Where it was deepest.
The second shackled soul immediately knocked me off my feet and a burning flame immediately exploded towards me. Before I went to be resurrected, I heard how Garth scream, “Noooo!” as he was cheated of his prey yet again.
Yes!
Chapter Four. In The Circle Of Death
1
THEY SAY THE DEAD never get tired. Like hell they don’t!
They get incredibly tired.
I ran and my Stamina was relentlessly sinking into the red. The narrow road twisted between the steep hillsides but I couldn’t climb them — by the time I’d reached the top, my pursuers would have had a hundred opportunities to pepper me with arrows. The barking behind my back got closer and closer. Those were no village curs, those were infernal hunting dogs.
I was being hunted.
And everything had actually started rather well...
STICKY RIVER SILT, waterweeds and the ripples on the river above my head.
I was underwater.
I already had had experiences with resurrection in puddles, but I’d never ever come back to the game at such depth. Yet I still kept lying still in the river silt without moving and gathering my thoughts. I was waiting.
Water drained power from immaterial beings so the shackled souls could never get me from the bottom, but I had no doubt that the stubborn necromancer would find some way to get the artifact he needed so much out of the water.
My skull.
When a long shadow cut through the body of the water and the small fishes scattered I never made a move. I could remember very well how I’d drowned a rogue and wanted to repeat that dishonorable trick again. War is war...
The bottom of the boat approached and a rope with a rock tied to the end went to the bottom. The boat was carried a little downriver by the current, but then the rope went taut and held it in place. That was when a man dove over the side.
Garth spent some time swimming over the river bottom and looking for my skull and then surfaced, swimming with all his might to try and overcome the strong current. He soon reached the boat and climbed back on board, but then dove again and went deeper. This time, the necromancer chose the right direction and saw the whiteness of the skull among the waterweeds, but decided not to risk it and surfaced again, to my great disappointment. It was only after getting his breath back that he went for his coveted prize, paddling fiercely and kicking with his legs.
I burst out of the sticky embrace of the silt like an underwater monster. Garth tried to avoid me, but he moved too late so I grabbed him around the waist and dragged him to the bottom. The necromancer thrashed around desperately at first but t
hen he recognized how pointless it was and tried to stab me with his dagger. This didn’t help him either — movements were slower in the water, so he couldn’t make a hard thrust. The blade just left a shallow scratch.
While I held onto the necromancer with one hand I spread out my fingers on the other and stabbed at him with my black claws which easily cut through his flesh.
Claws of Darkness! Damage: 110
Stun! 00:06... 00:05...
The necromancer immediately stopped twitching and went limp, a thin line of bubbles escaping his mouth towards the surface of the water. I didn’t wait for my opponent to stop being paralyzed, I pulled him under me and sunk my teeth into his skinny neck.
Fearsome Bite!
I ripped out a huge chunk of flesh with my jaws and the water was colored with the carmine taint of blood. Even though his wound was serious, the necromancer started to come back to his senses, so I had to grab him with both arms again and use all my strength to press on his chest and squeeze the last of the air from his lungs.
It helped, as Garth twitched, opened his mouth and drowned.
Player Garth Deathblade has been killed!
Experience: +1500 [6119/6220]; +1500 [6163/6220]
Undead: You have gained a level! Rogue: You have gained a level!
A pathetic three thousand experience points for a level 35 necromancer?
Some sort of penalty must have been applied because I sent the same player to be resurrected in a very short time period.
I would have spat with disappointment, but my mouth was full of water.
To hell with it!
I started to search the lifeless body of my enemy and swore again. My only prize was his money pouch. Anything was better than nothing.
I put my enchanted skull into my inventory and pushed myself off the bottom with my feet to try and get to the surface, but to no avail. I had to crawl towards the anchor and climb up to the boat using the rope. As soon as I got out of the water and climbed over the side of the boat, I heard a splash behind me. It made me jump and grab my flamberge, but it was a false alarm — the red-haired boy was swimming towards the boat.
“Uncle John,” he shouted as he gripped the side. “The portal has closed!”
“I see,” I sighed hopelessly, put the sword aside and opened the game menu.
Over the time since the portal’s closure Isabella had literally smothered me with personal messages and the longer time went on, the angrier they’d become. I should have replied and calmed her down, but I only had read-only access to personal messages, the same as all game chatrooms.
“What’re we going to do?” the boy asked as he climbed into the boat.
“We’re going to go to the Tower of Darkness by river,” I replied without hesitation, as the shard of the Sphere of Souls was in the hands of the priestess.
“How cool!” the boy happily sat behind the oars. “It’ll take us about four days! What an adventure!”
I wasn’t too good at the geography of the world of Towers of Power, but as far as I could remember, the capital of the dark side was located on a bunch of islands in the delta of the Azure River. We might well have been traveling along one of its many tributaries right now.
The boy worked the oars, while I went deep into the game stats. I invested the points I got when I raised my levels into increasing Strength, Agility and Dodge, but it wasn’t as easy with my profession specific skills. Every top level combat move provided access to a whole branch of other moves which could then be combined, so I was overcome by the number of variations in which my character could be developed.
Suddenly, a red flash came from the sandbank where we’d made camp, which was now rather far away. I couldn’t know for sure, but I didn’t have many doubts that this was Garth returning to the game. It seems that he’d decided to have some additional insurance and fixed his resurrection point in advance.
Damn.
I was sure that the necromancer would have no difficulty in tracking me and than no river would save me. It would be foolish to underestimate my opponent and think that I’m cleverer than everyone else. That would be the path to ruin.
I swore again. Then I looked at the red-haired boy. Neither Garth nor his shackled souls could harm him as he was saved by the immunity given to him by the developers. I didn’t know whether that also applied to theft, but who’d think of pickpocketing a little urchin?
“Hmm...” I cleared my throat. “Young one, I wanted to ask you something...”
“Yes, uncle John?”
“Can I ask you to store something for me?”
“Yes, of course, leave it with me,” the boy replied without a care in the world.
We were talking about my life and death, so this sort of carelessness cut me a little, but after a little thought I still called up the quest generation menu.
Store the skull until I take it back. Get to the Tower of Darkness. Find Isabella Ash-Rizt.
At the end, I made the reward for the task one gold piece and saved the conditions.
“I’ll get it all done, uncle John!” the red-haired kid promised, his face lighting up with a dimpled grin.
I really didn’t want to part with the skull so much that I wanted to grind my teeth, but I overcame myself and gave it to the boy. I immediately came to and checked that I hadn’t made a mistake and that the crystal skull was still in my inventory. I hadn’t thrown it away as I’d intended to sell it once I’d reached civilization.
“Row us to the shore,” I asked the boy and jumped out of the boat into the shallows. I parted the reeds with my hands as I walked directly to the sandy bank.
“Uncle John! Where are you going?” the boy asked in distress.
“Keep rowing!” I demanded. “I’ll find you later!”
The boy became gloomy and frowned, but at least I didn’t have to ask him twice as he started to work the oars again. The boat floated away.
I had a heavy heart, but I got myself together and continued onwards. The reeds were soon behind me, but tall sedge started to cover the flood meadow so I could pick up my pace a bit.
I needed to get away from here as fast and as far as I could.
Immediately!
Garth couldn’t stay in-game for twenty four hours. If I held out until the time that the necromancer would have to stop his chase, I’d win a day or maybe two for the boy, who was taking my enchanted skull with him. It would no longer matter whether the necromancer would be successful in his search or lose track of me. Even if he caught up with me and killed me, death would immediately throw me many miles away. A win-win situation!
The further the boy could manage to row away, the harder it would be for Garth to find us next time, which was why I really needed to win at least some sort of head start from fate...
THE PURSUERS FELL BEHIND. I looked back from time to time, but saw no sign of pursuit and continued running at an even pace. When my Stamina went into the red I slowed down to a walk, but I never stopped even for a moment.
I ran and walked. Walked and ran. And got further and further away from the river.
The meadows changed to fields of fruit orchards. I jogged along a road which was rutted with cart tracks, ready to hide in the tall grass at the first sign of danger, but my surroundings were empty of people. Here and there, I could see clouds of black smoke rise up to the sky — they were from the burning villages and homesteads.
I tried to avoid battlegrounds, but I didn’t always manage to do so. I came across hanging bodies on the roadside trees and the remains of bonfires full of human bones. Dead horses and armored knights lay strewn across a trampled field of wheat. Fattened crows circled in the air overhead. The standard of the Order of the Fiery Hand lay in the mud at the crossroads between two country roads. A little further along a body lay in pieces in a ditch, then another one and more. Some of the severed limbs continued to move.
The Lord of the Tower of Decay was trying to impose his rule upon new lands, but when steep forested mountai
n slopes started to appear up ahead it became clear that the army of the dead was not doing particularly well.
The air was full of smoke that floated along the ground, fountains of fire occasionally flew up to the sky and something exploded and made loud noises beyond the trees. Screams and the clang of steel rang in the air. There were more and more roadblocks on the roads. Apart from the orange banners of the Order of the Fiery hand, with their black trim there were the occasional black and white banners of the Night League. The paladins of light summoned fire elementals for assistance, while the followers of darkness summoned infernal beasts from other planes of being, ones that didn’t care whether the victims they tore to pieces were dead or alive. The tall and hunched figures of demons that strode among the tall wheat inspired fear with their very appearance. They were surrounded by a palpable aura of fear.
Do the dead know no fear? I wasn’t so sure...
There were very few of the walking dead around. They either crawled out of their lairs at night or the army of light had managed to achieve overwhelming supremacy here. The rare Death Disciples paid no attention to me, due to my neutrality. I had way more issues with the reconnaissance groups of light side players and sometimes I only avoided discovery at the last moment by diving into the bushes or the tall grass.
When darkness fell, I finally had to leave the roads and go straight through the fields. Fires burned at every crossroads which was even remotely important and the risk of coming across an especially observant watchman overcame all logical limits. Conjurers knew how to see the invisible, so stealth mode might not even help.
Should I use Incognito? With a heavy sigh I looked at my hands with their long black claws. I had to find some gloves first.
When the trampled and burnt fields and the rotting corpses that littered them were behind me, I went deep into the forest, looked for an animal track that snaked among the trees and started to run again. The chance of a random encounter in the thick of the forest at night was not too great and even if I came across someone, I would be sure to have the time to hide in the bushes. It was too dark in the shadows of the trees for normal people.
