by Troy Osgood
Contents
PROLOGUE
I. PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
II. PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Epilogue
About Troy Osgood
FROM THE PUBLISHER
GRAYHOLD
©2019 TROY OSGOOD
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.
Print and eBook formatting, art provided by Jackson Tjota, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.
Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2019
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE
“Sorry, guys. This lag is killing me tonight,” Redfire said as his hit points dropped to zero, and his avatar disappeared from the screen. His image on the group bar grayed out, joining the two others that were already grayed.
It was killing everyone, the worst it had been in a long time. There was always lag. The servers could only handle so much and with millions playing at the same time, there was bound to be some lag but what they had been dealing with the last hour had been horrible.
They would have canceled the dungeon raid if they had known it was going to be this bad. No one wanted to deal with it, even with their high-priced VR rigs. But by the time the lag hit they were already halfway through the dungeon and doing pretty well. They had run this same dungeon before, they knew what to expect and were feeling on top of their game.
Firefrost Mountain was home to the Jotuns, a race of blue-skinned giants. It was also home to a special set of Artifact Armor. Each of them had pieces, and they all wanted the rest. There was better armor in some of the newer dungeons but they were all completists. They wanted the achievement of completing the Firefrost Armor.
Now only two of them would get pieces.
Two Jotun Sentries lay to the sides of the Firefrost Throne Room. Their bodies were sparkling, indicating there was loot to be had. But first, they had to deal with the Jotun Chieftain himself.
Dravogr The Icebane swung his greataxe, the head as tall as a human. It slammed into the icy ground of the room that was carved from the mountain itself, the two characters jumping to the side. Cracks formed in the ground; such was the giant’s strength. Sparks flew across the ground, blue lightning streaks erupting on impact. The axe had a debuff. Besides the high damage taken from it the debuff would cause a slowing effect that lessened the character’s attack speed and power, it also caused a lightning-over-time damage.
Getting hit by the axe was not recommended.
And they were down a healer.
But Groven and Hall knew they had this fight.
Even with the lag.
Having Redfire the Bodin Shaman in the fight would have helped.
“We got this,” Groven said over the voice chat.
“Hell yeah,” Lysandra yelled out.
The Elven Druid, their healer, had been killed just before Redfire. The lag had been especially bad for her. The connection she had was always bad, her VR rig wasn't as good as the others, but she was good at her class and they all liked her. Some other groups would have ditched her a long time ago, but the Dragon Riders were not like that.
A close-knit group of friends even though none had met in real life.
“I just hope the Duelist gloves don’t drop,” Darkdagger muttered.
Hall ignored them all, concentrating on what he was doing.
His job was that much harder as he was the only DPS.
Groven, as the Warden tank, was using his threat abilities to keep Icebane busy and distracted. If Lysandra had still been connected, Groven would have been standing still and taking most of the hits. A stationary target was better for Hall’s abilities. There was also no way that Hall could take a hit from Icebane’s axe, called Frostbite, one of the rarest drops in the game. Being a Skirmisher, Hall was limited to only leather armor. He needed to be able to move quickly. High Agility kept him from being hit, most of the time, but the low armor meant he couldn’t take any big hits.
He especially couldn’t risk taking a slow debuff.
From behind Icebane, Hall crouched low and pushed himself up using his Leap ability, one of the Skirmisher’s Class Abilities. As he jumped into the air, he stabbed out with his spear using the Leaping Stab ability. Once, twice, three times. With each hit, there was a sharp explosion of light, and Icebane roared. Hall glanced at the health and energy bars that hovered over the giant. The attack had done a lot of damage. Icebane was down to a quarter of his health.
He landed on the giant’s shoulders, wishing that Screech, his dragonhawk companion, was still alive. The companion’s bonus attack would have been helpful.
From the Jotun’s shoulders, he stabbed with his spear. A normal attack but still pretty effective with all the bonuses stacked from the weapon itself and the buffs he currently had applied. The timers were in his favor on all of them. None would fade before they should have had Icebane defeated.
Hall leapt off the giant, flipping backward, and used his Flying Aim ability to throw a javelin. Icebane was turning as the weapon hit. The end quivered from where it stuck out of Icebane’s eye. Hall landed about fifteen feet from the fight, watching the bonus damage from the successful attack disappear from Icebane’s health bar.
“Good shot,” Darkdagger said, slightly mumbling.
“Are you eating?” Lysandra asked, her voice disgusted.
“Sorry,” Darkdagger replied. “Eating the leftover candy. Didn’t get many trick or treaters this year.”
Even though their characters were all dead they were still able to watch as none would have hit the respawn button. They wanted to see this fight.
Hall stood up, watching Groven charge in. The Firbolg Warden swung his war hammer at the Jotun’s chest. The hammer’s head was on fire, green flames dancing around the carved silver head.
Pulling another javelin from the quiver on his back, Hall ran toward the fight. He drew the javelin back to throw it when he felt the world slow down. Everything started to stutter and slow. Groven’s hammer seemed to skip as it swung toward Icebane. Hall f
elt his arm creep forward, his fingers releasing the javelin. It was like he was running through water.
“Lag spike,” he said through the group chat, and even that was stuttering. He could hear a strange feedback through the channel.
The world shifted. That was the only way to describe it. Everything seemed to completely freeze and shake. He saw multiple images of Groven and Icebane, each seeming to slide out of sync with the others.
“What the hell!” Lysandra exclaimed. “Never seen a lag spike like that.”
“I’m disconnected,” Redfire cursed.
“Me too,” Darkdagger muttered.
“Same,” Lysandra growled.
“Come on,” Groven said. “This last blow should do it. Come on,” he continued, repeating the words.
Hall tried to talk but he couldn’t. He could barely hear the others through the feedback. It hurt his ears, a strange humming and squawking. The words of the others echoed, repeating themselves and duplicated. Out of sync.
Then, it stopped.
Everything sped up to normal speed. Better than that Hall realized. He saw the javelin streaking toward the target. Saw the bright light, flames spreading across Icebane’s chest as the hammers damage-over-time effect was activated.
Icebane’s health bar dropped to nearly zero. The javelin struck and took it a little lower.
“We got this,” Hall said excitedly.
He waited for Groven to respond, for any of them to say something, but his words were greeted with silence. His voice didn’t sound the same either. There had always been something a little mechanical about his voice through the chat but now it sounded normal. Like it did in real life.
Weird, Hall thought as he gripped his spear, ready to deliver the final blow to Icebane.
Then, he stopped. Something was wrong.
Groven was frozen, still somehow stuck in the lag spike. The avatar did not move. But he did not look like he was stuck in lag. No shaking or stuttering. All the details of the avatar were tight and defined.
And Icebane was moving.
The Jotun Chieftain was pushed back by the hammer’s strike, green flames spreading across his body but he recovered quickly. Too quickly. With a growl the giant raised his axe high with two hands. Angered, Icebane swung at the frozen Groven. The blow struck, and Groven just exploded.
He didn’t fade from the game like normal when a character was killed. He just exploded into thousands of lights, little pixel-shaped pieces. They spread everywhere into the air then settled to the ground in a small pile before they quickly faded from existence.
“What the hell?” Hall said in the voice chat.
Or he thought he had. Icebane turned like he had heard Hall speak.
“Groven?” Hall asked skidding to a stop as the weakened Jotun completely faced him.
Icebane’s health bar was still shrinking as the damage-over-time effect worked but he was still dangerous. There were no slow or attack debuffs on him. Not now. He was at full speed and strength, and one blow would end Hall and this raid.
“Guys,” he asked taking a couple steps back from the advancing Icebane. He really needed some encouragement from the others right now. “Guys?”
Silence. Why weren’t they responding?
They were all disconnected. All four. Which was weird. Even if they were disconnected from the game servers the chat was on a separate server. It still should have been active.
Cursing he leapt out of the way of a swing of Frostbite barely in time. Only his class's high Agility and Evade skill kept him from getting hit. He ran around behind Icebane and leapt up. Three times his spear hit the giant, three bright explosions.
And three wounds that leaked blue blood.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed again as he landed on the icy floor, slipping a little.
Another oddity, as never before had he slipped on the throne room floor. The icy look had just been graphics, not a game element. At least, not in this raid.
“Guys, are you seeing that?” he asked, watching the blood leak down the giant’s side and splatter on the ground.
When did creatures in the game bleed? There was no gore setting to adjust.
Icebane stumbled, falling to his knees. He still held his axe but had no more strength to get up. The green flames started to fade but the damage had been done. Hall saw burn marks across the giant’s body. Fresh and raw.
“Was that some kind of patch?” he asked, standing up, not really expecting an answer but it was habit.
He advanced on the weakened giant. Icebane’s still visible health bar was very low, barely any red showing.
Hall leapt up into the air, spear pointing down. None of the others would see the cool finishing move, one of his favorites, but he did it anyway.
The spear struck, bright lights erupting as well as a fountain of blood. Hall saw it hit him, felt drops hitting his check where his leather helmet didn’t cover the skin. His feet landed on either side of the spear wound, driving the spear in deeper.
Icebane’s health bar blinked rapidly, indicating it had gone to zero.
Hall was breathing heavily, leaning against the spear shaft.
Breathing heavily. Breathing. He was breathing.
Not breathing in real life. His avatar was breathing.
“What the hell?” he said again.
This encounter was so strange.
Icebane’s body was not shimmering. Neither were the Jotun Sentries. Something was wrong. There was always loot to be had. Icebane was a guaranteed drop. At least one piece of the Artifact green-level armor would drop with each kill. Random drops, but there were always drops. The Sentries were good for at least some gold, maybe getting lucky with an orange-level item drop.
But nothing. None of them had any loot.
The mountain started to shake, pieces falling from the ceiling above. Stone crashed against stone, large cracks appearing across the ground.
Hall stumbled as he landed, jumping off the giant’s body.
More and more stones fell, ice chunks flying.
He felt the sting as a shard cut across his cheek.
“Damn,” he cursed and reached up.
The cut was stinging, and the gloves came away with blood on the tips.
He was bleeding. His avatar was bleeding, and he felt the cut.
The shaking intensified, great blocks of stone falling and crashing, sending larger and larger chunks of ice through the air.
He had to get out of there.
Reaching into his pouch, Hall pulled out his Townstone. He ran his fingers over runes that started to glow a bright blue. The world around him seemed to grow foggy, graying out as the magic took hold.
He felt weird, a great weight against his body. He started to shrink, everything around him growing larger and fading.
Where was the black screen? When the timer on the Townstone’s activation ran down the thirty seconds, the screen would go black and then come back, and he’d be where he had last set the stone.
Everything around him faded away, and all he saw was white, a bright white. Then that changed to a solid black. Dark.
Hall felt no more.
CHAPTER ONE
The black faded away, and Hall could see colors. Indistinct, foggy, at first. They quickly became more substantial, and he could start to see familiar details.
His Townstone had been locked to Timberhearth Keep for a long time now, Hall’s favorite town on the zone of Edin. The inside of The Green Craobh Inn’s Portal Room was not as he remembered. Thick log beams stacked tightly on top of each other, the three walls featureless with an open arch in the other. It was similar but not the same. Something was different.
And the room was empty.
He couldn’t remember the last time the Green Craobh’s Portal Room, or any Portal Room, had been empty. There were always avatars in the room. Some just teleporting in, others kneeled down and resting.
He heard a sound behind him, a slight whooshing, and turned only to b
e pushed against the wall.
“Hey, look out,” someone said roughly as they walked through the arch.
Hall could hear the footsteps walking down the stairs and into the common room. What he found odd was that someone had bumped into him. The VR rigs allowed for people to run into each other and the avatars to feel the effects, but the Portal Room was one of the few spaces where that feature was deactivated. They were so busy with incoming traffic that no one would be able to move because of the constant bumping.
He leaned against the logs and tried to calm down.
There was just so much weird.
And he still hadn’t heard from any of the others. They should have logged back in by now. His guildchat was empty as well. Where was everyone?
Hall passed through the arch, running his gloved hands along the familiar wood. He could feel every crack, every knot. The texture felt so real. He knew what logs should feel like, and that was what the walls felt like.
There wasn’t much noise as he descended the wooden stairs. Normally the Inn’s common room was full of talking, always a level of noise as people talked out of chat and the random background noise the game generated to make it feel like a crowded Inn in a vibrant frontier town.
Wanting to check something he tried to pull up the User Interface by double clicking his right thumb and forefinger together, the VR rig equivalent of a mouse click. Nothing happened. Odd, he thought, trying to picture what the Interface looked like.
As soon as he thought about it, the Interface appeared as an image in front of his eyes. Normally the UI was a large square that took up the entire screen. The size was still the same, basic look, all the options still there, but it was faded and translucent. He could see the walls of the stairwell through the Interface, foggy and blurry. Using his eyes, moving them up and down, he scrolled through the options to the audio tab.
