Deadman's Retinue

by Pavel Kornev

  I slipped inside and put the window frame back in its place, then ran toward the door and pressed my back to the wall, listening.

  Footsteps approached. A gray-headed old man entered the room, apparently attracted by the noise, and headed right for the window.

  I felt like shit. The servant was so old and frail. But I couldn’t help it. It was his life or mine. Besides, he was only an NPC. Everything around me was only a game!

  I stepped behind him and buried my black dagger in his chest. He died instantly.

  My pangs of conscience didn’t last. As soon as I found a bunch of keys on him, I promptly forgot all about the old man I’d just murdered. Almost waltzing with joy, I slid out of the room and locked the door.

  The corridor took me to an impressive wide staircase. I crouched behind it to study the spacious hall. A guard in a shiny cuirass and matching helmet sauntered below, a saber at his side. The third floor landing, however, seemed to be empty. I got the impression that the house was deserted and these few servants were its only occupants.

  Would be nice, wouldn’t it?

  For a while, the guard kept walking the length of the hall like a clockwork toy. Then he sat down on a bench, which wasn’t very good news because he was sitting sideways to me.

  Still crouching behind the balustrade, I descended to the ground floor, took a coin out of my purse and lobbed it into the far corner. The moment the guard turned, attracted by the clinking noise, I jumped at him from behind and buried my dagger deep into the base of his skull under his helmet.

  Bingo. This time, my Eviscerator skills had worked out in the best possible way. The tip of my dagger sliced through his spine and the blow itself had resulted in some crazy combination of injuries which killed the guard on the spot.

  I was stealthed and deadly! Yes! Not the perfect killing machine yet, but not exactly a whipping boy, either.

  The guard’s wound virtually didn’t bleed, so I dragged the body into a neighboring room and frisked it, becoming the proud owner of the staff which controlled the building’s alarm system. I walked over to the front door and touched it with the staff. The shimmering veil of protective charms rustled as it disintegrated, freeing the entrance.

  Get your asses to the front entrance now!

  My message must have had its effect on Goar because he wasn’t long in coming. Soon I heard scratching at the front door and let Goar and Arkha in.

  “Lock the door after yourselves,” I said. “Keep quiet!”

  Goar did as he’d been told. “Have you found the entrance to the basement?”

  “Not yet. But it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  I was right. The basement door happened to be right there in the hall, just next to the staircase. All we had to do to get to the lab was go down twenty steps into a short dark corridor.

  Strangely enough, the lock on the lab door was very simple. I opened it with one of the keys from the guard’s bunch. No protective charms, no mechanical traps, nothing.

  “Too easy,” I murmured, remembering my torturer’s all-too-convenient indiscretion. My heart missed a beat. I wouldn’t put it past him to lurk in ambush somewhere nearby, waiting for us do his dirty work for him.

  “Could it be the house’s new owners changing locks and stuff?” Goar suggested.

  I shrugged and pushed the door. It opened with a quiet creak, revealing an empty room with a vaulted ceiling. Its floor was covered in a thick layer of dust.

  We froze warily in the doorway, then Arkha whispered a short spell. A bright little tongue of flame flittered into the room, its light dispersing the shadows. After a moment’s hesitation, Goar entered the lab and pointed at a pentacle seared into the stone floor.

  “Here,” he said.

  Indeed, if you took a closer look you could notice the quivering of hot air above it. As we approached, we could sense the unpleasant heat emanating from it.

  Goar pulled off his steel gauntlet and ran his bare hand through the air next to the column of hot air.

  “It’s scorching hot,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “This just has to be the portal to the Inferno!”

  “Let’s do it, then?” Arkha asked.

  “Yes, you’d better start casting your protective spells,” I said. “Goar, don’t open the portal yet! Wait for my command!”

  Goar grumbled something but chose not to argue. Arkha started circling him, crooning a quiet song and swaying her hips, raising her hands high in the air. The bronze Hand of Fury dangling around her neck glinted every time it caught the reflection of the little wandering flame which now hovered motionless at the center of the ceiling, sending yellow spots of light around the room.

  I had no intention of watching her shamanic rites. Instead, I walked outside and started setting up the traps I’d received from Lloyd. One of them made the air thicken, hindering the movements of anyone who might try to follow us; the other turned the corridor into a fiery furnace. Neither was anything special in and by itself, but together they presented an insurmountable obstacle for a certain level-59 paladin even if he arrived here in command of a bunch of mercenaries.

  By now, I didn’t have the shadow of a doubt that Garth had mentioned this place to me on purpose. Which meant we had to be prepared for anything at all.

  When I returned to the lab, Arkha had already completed her dance. Goar’s black armor now shimmered, enveloped in a cocoon of cooled air.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Will have to be, for a few minutes,” the paladin replied. “Are we doing it?”

  “Yes!”

  He nodded, lingering, then took a resolute step into the pentacle.

  The floor trembled as the pentacle collapsed into the fiery abyss, taking Goar with it. A wave of scorching heat assaulted me, so burning hot that I could hear my skin sizzle. I hurried to step back to the wall. Arkha promptly followed my example and stood next to me, casting me an unkind glance that sent shivers down my spine.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I warned her.

  She bared her teeth in a meaningful grin. I hated to even think what it implied. Still, Arkha didn’t attack me.

  “You’re really lucky I’ve got a short memory, you white-skinned wuss!” she said. “I can’t remember everything that had happened before I jumped into that wretched grave! No desire to retaliate whatsoever.”

  “It makes two of us,” I grinned albeit fully alert to any surprises on her part.

  Just then the flames rose up again, disgorging Goar. His magic protection was gone, his armor breathing heat, his gauntlets clutching something which looked like red-hot coals.

  “Catch!” he shouted.

  I dodged aside just in time. The magic skull rebounded off the wall next to me and rolled across the floor, leaving a scorched trail in the thick layer of dust.

  “Are you crazy?”

  Goar shrugged.

  “What’s that, then?” Arkha asked curiously, stepping toward the skull.

  I beat her to it, grabbed the artifact and very nearly screamed with pain as the hot rock burned my fingers even thorough the thick leather gloves.

  Would you like to unpack the archived data?

  Yes / No

  To hell with the data! I slipped the skull into my inventory and waved my burned hands in the air.

  “When is the money coming?” Goar asked, then froze and listened intently, throwing up a warning hand. ”There’s something wrong here.”

  Arkha closed her eyes, focusing. “Someone’s coming,” she agreed.

  Goar and I activated our portal scrolls simultaneously — but nothing happened as if some powerful magic was blocking the portalways.

  We were locked in the basement!

  I heard furious hissing coming from the entrance. The air exploded in a flash of crimson. I heard angry voices outside and dashed toward the door.

  A group of armored warriors were s-l-o-w-l-y picking their way through the jelly-thick fiery furnace of the corridor, its ceiling p
ouring molten rock on their heads.

  Not Garth’s mercenaries, no. Nor the Light guards.

  Those were Dark warriors! The Spawn of Darkness, to be precise!

  What the hell?

  Their avant-garde counted a dozen fighters, all levels 80 and above. Plus they were constantly buffed up by all kinds of priests and sorcerers who’d escaped the fiery trap. And leading them was none other than the Duke of Inferno, impatient to get into the lab!

  All this hoo-hah just to get me?

  It only took Goar a moment to appraise the situation. “Hold on!” he shouted to Arkha, grabbing her and pulling her after himself into the still-open portal to the Inferno. He must have thought that their chances of survival were higher there. Why shouldn’t they be? His portal scroll was sure to work down there!

  I really should have followed them and activated my own scroll, but... pointless. I’d burn alive there before I could do anything.

  And burning alive wouldn’t be so bad, but what if the game mechanic played another trick on me by ridding me of my skull again? I couldn’t die, but neither could I turn into a bone dragon right here and now!

  The Duke of Inferno seemed to be taking the fire trap better than his soldiers. By now, the flames had begun to subside, probably courtesy of their support group of wizards. I whipped out the demon-summoning rune Isabella had given me, activated it and flung it out of the door.

  Hell answered my call. The demon arrived to my summons.

  He was huge, powerful and very angry: a good megaton of hellish fury.

  His horned towering bulk blocked the corridor. The demon bared his terrible fangs and brought his rather blood-chilling scythe onto the Duke’s back. Not expecting the attack, the Duke collapsed to the floor while the infernal monster swung round and lunged at his men.

  I stealthed up and followed in his wake — but by then, the hell’s flames had expired. The Duke jumped back to his feet and cleft the demon with one precise swing of his fiery whip.

  Too easy! Suspiciously so.

  Still, Isabella definitely knew what she was doing. The actual infernal monster was concealed within the demon’s body. The streaks of his blood turned into tentacles which grasped several enemy warriors at once, constricting some and devouring the others. The monster had grown considerably in size — and no amount of combat magic, not even lightning bolts, seemed capable of harming him.

  I barely managed to slide down the corridor before his enormous bulk blocked it completely, cutting me off from the Duke of Inferno who was now trapped in the lab. Still, I had enough on my hands as it was. A few of the warriors had noticed the suspiciously deep shadows which concealed me. Their swords swished through the air. I stood directly in their path and had no means of dodging them in time. If I didn’t want to die, I had to act fast.

  Shadow Leap!

  I dove forward. The warriors’ swords sliced impotently through my dematerializing body which crumbled to atoms before their very eyes. I was already by the staircase where all the sorcerers were huddled. Unhesitantly I put Rotten Fang to good use, seeing as this folk was useless in hand-to-hand.

  A poke in the eye, a swing, a slashing blow on the neck! I heard a scream and the splattering of blood gushing out of an artery; then I somersaulted out of an ice staff’s path, slicing through another enemy’s tendon as I did so and stabbing yet another in the kidney while tripping up a particularly absent-minded mage.

  I had to run. I had to escape.

  Faster, faster! I might have been swift but not deadly enough yet to finish off the whole caboodle without the risk of falling victim to some paralyzing spell or a fireball.

  A crossbowman on the stairs! My Dodge swung my body to one side. The crossbow twanged, ricocheting off the stairs.

  I lunged at the crossbowman and pushed him down the stairs to trip my pursuers, then grabbed at the banister and vaulted my body onto the second-floor landing. The air behind me was blue with cussing.

  I stood facing two gladiators armed with a net. There was no way I could get past them.

  Would you like to unpack the archived data?

  Yes / No

  Yes, dammit! Yes!

  Unpacking the archived data.

  Update in progress: …5%...10%...15%...20%...

  Gradually I was becoming stronger and faster, but why did it take them so long? This was unbearable. Once again I stealthed up and leapt to one side, escaping the net which glanced off me. The nearest gladiator tried to grab me without seeing me. I stabbed him in the neck just over his cuirass and kept on running.

  I wasn’t gonna make it. No way.

  Update in progress: …30%...35%...

  The Spawn of Darkness were so brazen they had sent a whole landing party to the capital of Light. The building was teeming with their fighters! And these weren’t some fame-greedy newbies: these were seasoned warriors from the clan’s military elite!

  Why would they do that? There had to be more to it than revenge, surely?

  In any case, we’d soon see who was going to screw whom! The data kept pouring into my digital body, rapidly transforming it. Me heartbeat calmed down; my skeleton began to stretch, growing bundles of muscles which normally would be way too powerful for a puny rogue. My clothes began to rip at the seams as my skin covered in bone growths...

  Update in progress: …40%...

  The second-floor corridor was blocked by two crossbowmen and several knights with two-handed swords. There was no way I could slide past them, and trying to engage them was downright suicidal, considering I had a chase in close pursuit. I had only one option: escape.

  I dodged the powerful swing of a flamberge and darted upstairs to the third floor. A single warrior stepped toward me, safe behind his full-length shield. The visor of his closed helmet emitted an orange flame; his free hand was swinging a flail topped with a spiked fireball on a chain.

  For a brief moment, I thought I was looking at Barth Firefist although it wasn’t him, of course.

  The Dark warrior stepped toward me, swinging his lethal fireball in a complex trajectory directly toward my head. I ducked, sensing the fireball swoosh past, its spikes very nearly getting caught up on the hood of my cape.

  Update in progress: …45%...

  I heard two rather wooden-sounding bangs, one after the other. Thump! Thump! The moment I decelerated, the two bolts hit me, one of them bouncing off my bone armor while the other sank into my body. The wound wasn’t very deep though, an inch at most.

  But most importantly, I sensed no pain at all anymore. None at all. Nada.

  Update in progress: …50%...

  The flailing fireball swung back, ready to gain more momentum and knock seven shades of shit out of me. Without hesitation, I leapt onto my enemy and punched his closed visor nice and hard. The spikes that had grown on my own knuckles pierced his armor with remarkable ease — in fact, my blow was so strong that it knocked the helmet off his head.

  The warrior staggered, trying to keep his balance. I punched him in the stomach, then grabbed him with both my hands and, without any effort, lifted him over my head and hurled him onto my pursuers who rolled all over the floor like scattered bowling pins.

  Yes! I was swift and deadly!

  A inhuman growl escaped my throat.

  Update in progress: …55%...

  With one open hand, I intercepted a bolt of lightning which tried to strike me from below. The electricity only gave me a light jolt while the following fiery tornado very nearly swirled me in its hot embrace, easily burning through my defenses. My sorcerer’s talent was only just coming back to me, way too weak to use it.

  Having said that, some of my Lich arsenal had already returned to me. I used the magic lasso to pull the pyromancer from behind the warriors’ backs, ripped his throat apart with one blow of my clawed hand and legged it again.

  Update in progress: …60%...

  A shadow flitted past me. An enemy rogue unstealthed just as he caught up with me, very nearly slicing throu
gh my tendon. I managed to jump in the air at the last possible moment, letting his predatory shiny sword blade travel unhindered through the air. Without showing any surprise, the killer took another swing with his glaive, this time topped with a sickle, intending to trip me, but it was already too late.

  My transformation had already affected my upper body; my arm had grown so long that it easily reached for my stubborn pursuer, brushed its nails across his face, then hurled him down the stairs right under the feet of the Spawn in hot pursuit.