by Eric Ugland
“You lie,” the man hissed.
“Never. You may rightly accuse me a thousand other crimes,” The Fayden said, “likely none as bad, perhaps, as what you accomplished. But I do not lie. And I should remember how you were caught — I am the one who did it.”
I looked over at the man, and shook my head slightly. “How did you get caught?”
“I got lost,” the man said softly. “The bloodlust grew stronger than me. It took over, and I could not find my way free from the maze in my head, in here,” he jammed his finger against his skull over and over again.
“He was a horror that stalked the nights,” the Fayden said softly. “Hunting. Men. Women. Children. Did you care what you hunted?”
“Yes. I started as a hunter. Deer. Rabbits. But I grew bored. I wanted to hunt the more dangerous game, man. So—“
“That’s horseshit,” I said. “Man is the dangerous game? What the hell are you on? There’s nothing at all dangerous about man here, not compared to things like yellow slimes. Or demons. Or dragons. Humans are nothing.”
“See,” the Fayden said, sitting on the bench and casually crossing one leg over the other, “you may try to disguise who you were, but the truth remains. You wanted to kill things, but were too cowardly to go after anything that might have actually hurt you.”
“No!” the man shouted.
The Fayden waved his hand dismissively. “It matters little to me why you did what you did or even what you did,” he said. “I come to offer you the one thing you want. Exit.”
“You will grant me that?” the man asked.
“He will,” the Fayden said, pointing to me.
The man laughed maniacally, and reached out through the bars as far as his weakened arms would let him, pushing harder and harder to reach just another inch. There was a crack, and the man cried out in anguish, but he didn’t stop pushing.
“Release me!” the man screamed.
“What am I doing here?” I asked, getting up from the bench and moving back away from the cell.
“Drain him,” The Fayden said.
“No,” I said, “I’m not killing him. I—“
“Underneath it all,” The Fayden said, somehow managing to silence the man with a single upheld finger, “you seem a gentle soul. It is interesting to note that. Of all the people I have met, from this world and others, you hold life more sacred than most. This man, this shell of a man, is not worth saving. He has no chance at life, only kept here as a memory and an experiment. He has been used to study more tortures than you can imagine. He has been killed multiple times. Brought back from the edge of death even more, and been imprisoned for nearly four hundred years. And yet, look. He has not aged. He has not succumbed to illness or hunger or thirst. Merely a burgeoning insanity. There is no way he will walk out of the room we stand in. He will never see this sunlight again. He is not allowed to kill himself, though he has tried.”
As if to punctuate that, the man slammed his head against the bars as hard as he could, but it didn’t seem to do any actual damage.
“I may have designed that particular spell a little too well,” The Fayden said. “Suffice to say, you draining him will offer him the only mercy he can possibly hope for, or expect. And whatever you may think of him, or his crimes, it is safe to say that he has long since paid for them. Death is his only exit from this peculiar little hell.”
“Kill me,” the man said softly, his head against the bars and his voice barely above a whisper. “I will not return. Set me free.”
“Your drain spell the only thing I have come across that might kill him,” The Fayden said. “And it will provide an answer to my hypothesis about what ails you. If you want to progress in this world, you need to do this.”
“What if I refuse? Will you terminate our—“
“You may refuse. I will never order you to do anything, but I hope you understand the import I am placing on this action. And I ask you to do this not just to hopefully find out how to solve your problem, but also to atone for a mistake I clearly made.”
“Do you did put him here?” I asked.
“I did.”
I thought for a moment. “So you made the daggers? You enchanted them, and that’s — he’ll respawn in there if he dies.”
“Ah, the Dagger of Perpetual Return,” he said with a wry smile. “I fear I cannot take credit for that. But yes, he was remanded to this space because of that. I, however, did the work on the cell. It is because of me that he cannot be killed any longer. He said he would not return if killed again, and George didn’t want to lose this specimen. So, drain him. Or not. It is up to you, but know that I think it is the course of action.”
“Kill me,” the man said. “Please.”
I didn’t know what to do. Killing the man didn’t seem right. But what was right anymore? This guy wasn’t attacking me, and I definitely wasn’t in any danger from him, but maybe there was some measure of mercy in killing him. He’d been in the prison for four hundred years. I shuddered thinking what that would be like if it happened to me.
“You sure?” I asked the man.
“Yes,” he replied, his eyes surprisingly calm.
“Are you ready?” I asked the Fayden.
He nodded.
I gathered the mana inside myself and moved it around a little, still not sure. Then I prepped the spell so I could cast it as soon as I touched the man, not wanting to give him a chance to do anything to me.
“Give me your hand,” I said through clenched teeth, trying to keep hold of the spell.
The man put his hand through the bars one more time, not trying to grab me, just setting it out and holding it there.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
I touched his hand and cast Lesser Drain.
It felt like a jolt of electricity going through my arm. Then, everything went black.
Chapter Seventy-One
I was staring up at the ceiling of the cell when I woke up. My body ached, and my head throbbed in pain.
“Tell me what happened, Clyde,” The Fayden said from his perch on the bench by my head.
“Ugh,” I replied.
“Does it always happen like that?”
“The spell?” I asked. “I think it takes into account how healthy a person, uh, or target might be. I’ve definitely been knocked out by it before.”
I pushed myself up to a sitting position, and looked at the remains of the man inside the cell. It was hard to tell it was a man. Or that it had been a man. I blinked a few times, trying to get my eyes to focus again. The spell had hit me hard. I pulled up the notifications.
Whizz-bang! You’ve absorbed the following from Thomas Cutbush: +2 Dexterity, +4 Agility, +3 Constitution, -3 Wisdom. +18 Backstab, +12 Stealth. You additionally gain the abilities Creeping Shadows and Shield Personal Information.
GG! You’ve killed Thomas Cutbush (lvl 51 Serial Killer).
You’ve earned 0 xp! What a mighty hero you are.
“I lost wisdom from that,” I said, shaking my head.
“Interesting that you can lose things,” he said. “I was not expecting that.”
“Yeah, well—“
“Hold still,” he said.
He reached his gnarled hand out and set it on my head. I felt a pulse of magic run through me.
The Fayden nodded a few times.
“I need a moment to think,” he said. “Let us head back home.”
I got back to my feet, swaying a little. I had to swallow the growing nausea back down — I didn’t have time to be sick.
Keeper Wichel was sitting at the card table, playing a version of solitaire.
“Is it done?” Wichel asked.
“It is,” The Fayden said.
“Mind telling me how you did it?”
“Trade secret,” The Fayden said.
Wichel threw the cards on the table, but smiled. “I suppose we owe you again, old man.”
“The apprentice was the one who did it. You owe him.”
I took the coin, thanked the man softly, and we left.
Back up the stairs, down two blocks to a house with a blue door.
“What’s this?” I asked. “Where are we?”
“What do you mean?” The Fayden asked, looking around. “I needed a door.”
“Just any door?”
“A door with a keyhole that isn’t being watched,” he said.
He pulled a key out of his sleeve, unlocked the door, and ushered me through, right into his hall. Then he walked right by me, and shut the door. I looked at the door, which was definitely no longer blue, and now led to the stairs.
“Is that,” I said, “I mean, can you just make any door go to anywhere?”
“Hrm?” He asked, turning around with his finger on twirling his long mustache.
“It’s a spell, right? On the door?”
“A custom little bit of magic, yes. Makes living down here easier.”
“Can you teach it to me?”
“In time. You lack the control or the mana to cast it. Travel in that manner is, well, barely possible.”
I was about to point out that he could do it without a second thought, but he’d already started walking away, muttering to himself. I could see his right hand drawing things in the air, his fingertip leaving faint glowing trails as it moved, while the left hand kept twirling his mustache.
There was a soft scraping sound coming from my side, and I saw Snickers pushing a chair my way. He bumped it up against my legs, and basically forced me to sit down. Then, he hopped up into my lap, curled his bulk into a circle that barely fit, and put my hand on his head.
I gave the little dragon some scratches.
Which, obviously, was not enough. He wanted more. So, while I was watching The Fayden, I pet the dragon.
A bit of time passed, and Mrs. The Fayden came over with a tray. As she set it down, a table appeared beneath it. The tray held three thin glasses of a yellowish liquid, a bowl of grapes, and a plate of cheese and crackers.
“Thought you might be peckish,” she said.
She dropped into a chair next to me. I really needed to learn the instant furniture spell.
“I am, thank you,” I said, popping a grape into my mouth. “Does he get like this often?”
“From time to time,” she said, holding her glass and taking a delicate sip. “Sometimes I think it is for show, that he does not want me to know quite how fast his mind works. So he will have already figured a problem out, but he wants to make me think he is still mulling it over.”
“Seems a bit much to do just for you.”
“He still thinks he needs to catch me.”
“Haven’t you been together for, um, generations?”
“Love does strange things.”
“I guess it does.”
The Fayden kept pacing back and forth through the hall, paying no attention to us.
I ate some cheese, a few crackers, and drank what turned out to be lemonade, a bit on the sweet side, but tasty nonetheless.
“Dearest,” The Fayden called out, facing the wrong way, “if you needed something removed, where would you go?”
“Like a carbuncle or tumor?” Mrs. The Fayden shouted back, right next to me.
The Fayden whirled and looked over at us.
“No, nothing physical,” he replied. “A character trait. Spell. Ability, something along those lines. Where would you go for that?”
She frowned and leaned back in her chair. Slowly, deliberately, she took a sip of lemonade, and let it sit in her mouth a moment.
“That is a very difficult question these days,” she finally said. “You cannot do it.”
“I know that,” he said. “If I could, why would I be asking you?”
“Unless you did not want to do it.”
“I cannot do it. I want to do it, but I cannot. So, suggestions.”
“Winterhall?”
“Dead.”
“The whole thing?”
“Just the one person in Winterhall who would be able to do that.”
“Oh, how did he die?”
“Jealous lover, but also not that important. I daresay there is a little bit of a time element here.”
“Why?”
The Fayden pointed at me.
“Why are you pointing at me?” I asked.
“Your drain skill is more insidious than I realized. I fear it will not end well for you.”
“Why? Is it keeping me from leveling?”
“On the one hand, yes, it is. Very much so. From what I have observed, and I suppose there is a fraction of a chance I might be incorrect, but I do not think I am, you need to earn the XP required to level every creature you have drained in order for you to go up a level.”
“Wow.”
“But it is worse, because it is not just having to earn three human’s worth of XP. It is the amount of XP required to move them up another level. So, looking through your list of who you have drained—“
“You can see that?”
“Not exactly. I am going off what you have told me and what I have seen. Stop interrupting.”
“Sorry.”
“What was I saying? Yes. For that rather high level prisoner you drained just this very day—“
“Maximus,” Mrs. The Fayden snapped, “what did you have him do?”
“It was a required experiment,” The Fayden yelled back, “and I would have you both stop interrupting me!”
“I didn’t interrupt you that time,” I said, holding back a smile.
“It is nice that you are so amused by the situation,” he said. “But I do not find it the least bit funny. That man today, he was level 62, yes?”
“That’s what the notification said.”
“So you will now need to earn, among all the others, the amount of XP required to take a human from level 62 to 63. Which is a very large amount.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. And that is just one individual. You have also, if I remember correctly, taken in a high-level corpse-king?”
I nodded, starting to see how bleak this was.
“Just those two alone would make it nearly impossible for you to get to level 10. And beyond? The math required for you to get to level 20 is staggering. Simply staggering amounts of XP. If you were to set up an abattoir to kill unique creatures of increasing difficulty, there might be an outside chance you could get to level 15. Maybe.”
“Are levels that important?” I asked.
“Yes,” they both said at once.
I picked at a small bit of fuzz on my shirt, feeling a pit in my stomach growing.
“But there is one more thing,” The Fayden said softly. “This spell of yours takes some aspect of your target, and brings it into yourself. In the beginning, I thought as you, that it was just a transfer of points and abilities. However, I fear it is something more.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“Here I will need my lovely wife to give me a little assistance.”
“Of course,” Mrs. The Fayden said.
“Cast Greater Species Identification, and pay attention to what you see.”
She nodded, and I felt that unmistakable tingle of magic dancing around my body.
“As a newcomer to this world,” The Fayden said, “he would have started out pure Elf of the Sun and Moon.”
“That is not what I see,” she said.
“Wait, what?” I asked, suddenly feeling very nervous. “What do you see?”
“You have trace amounts of other species in you,” she said. “A bit of human, the tiniest slice of zombie (so odd), some other creatures, and corpse-king.”
“Okay,” I said, letting out a breath, “so I take a little of the target into myself.”
“Right,” The Fayden said.
“Which is problematic by itself because you will, at some point, cease to be elven. Likely cease to be yourself. You might lose your personality, your memories, those things about you that make you you.”
“So if I stop draining people,” I said, “ooh, or if I just drain elves--“
“Before I answer that question, tell me if you have drained an additional corpse-king since the first time we met.”
“No,” I said, not liking where this was going.
“Then even if you stopped using the spell entirely,” he said, “I fear it would not be long before you are subsumed by the corpse-king you are slowly becoming.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
“The hell did you say?” I asked, standing up and accidentally spilling poor Snickers onto the floor.
“Your first visit here,” The Fayden said, “I checked you over and saw you were not full elf. You were a mixture of things, but tiny amounts. The second time you arrived, I checked again, and you had boosted the human percentage, but also the corpse-king. Today, I checked you directly before and after you drained the immortal. There had been no growth of human before, but a small growth after. There had also been an increase in corpse-king. Whatever you did, however you did it, the corpse-king you drained is growing in power inside you. It will subsume you before too long.”
“How long?”
“I do not rightly know. It certainly seems like the additional drainings spur things along. If I had to do the math—“
“Do the math,” Mrs. The Fayden said.
“I am doing the math!” he hissed. “Within four months you will be equal parts corpse-king and elf. I do not know if there is a tipping point, or if you might be overthrown. Or even if that happens. I suppose it is entirely possible you will just become a corpse-king, but still be yourself. In a way. I cannot be sure.”
I sat back down in the chair, not blinking, willing my brain to think. I closed my eyes, and pulled up my character sheet.
Clyde Hatchett - Lvl 9 Rogue
Traits
Race: Elf of the Sun and Moon
