Citadel of Smoke: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 4)

by Carrie Summers

  Emerson closed the messenger app and headed for his office. The best thing he could do right now was comb through every data packet that had been sent between Owen’s implants and Zaa’s servers. They probably wouldn’t tell him much, but anything he could glean from the traffic might be of use to Devon. It was the best he could do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  AS THE MOB of returning players neared the player encampment, Devon sped up to match pace with Torald. The dents in the paladin’s armor fractured the sun’s glare like wavelets rippling the ocean, and his helm sat slightly askew, but when he saw the remnants of the attacking force making desperate strikes as the players closed the noose on their furry mass, his face hardened with resolve.

  “Vermin,” he spat. “Let Veia’s light smite you. Let the creator’s wrath purge your corruption.”

  Jeremy, having caught up with the pair, cast Devon a questioning look as the paladin’s Constitution buff, Divine Purpose, popped into Devon’s interface. His eyes seemed to be asking whether Torald had really just used the word “smite.”

  Devon nodded.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Takes all kinds,” he whispered.

  Oblivious, Torald glanced at them. “You partied yet?” he asked Jeremy.

  The troubadour shook his head and pulled out his harmonica as if he were drawing a blade. He grinned crookedly. “But I’ve got tunes.”

  Torald hesitated. Assuming he had the gaming history most players did, he was probably remembering terrible earworms contracted from other bards. In the last decade or so, some sadistic game developers had decided the best audio effects for bardic magic ought to be nauseatingly catchy yet repetitive.

  “I recognize that look,” Jeremy said with a laugh. “It’s not like that. It’s pretty cool, actually. I started with some old rock melodies from the 2030s, but I’ve got all kinds of variety now. Some crazy harmonica riffs from Led Zeppelin to Mozart to Pennywise Staple.”

  Torald raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never even heard of that last one.”

  “See? Variety. Pennywise Staple is some new duo from Seattle.”

  “Old or new Seattle?”

  “Old city, apparently. The scene is huge down in the reconstruction zone. There’s some crazy stuff going on where a group of musicians is trying to use machines to play the Tangle like a stringed instrument.”

  “The Tangle?” Devon asked.

  “It’s the nickname for the cables they’re using to bind the downtown together in case of another major quake.”

  She nodded, only vaguely understanding what they were talking about. In 2041, a major earthquake had hit the Pacific Northwest and devastated the corridor between Vancouver and Portland. She knew that there’d been a movement toward reconstruction, but she hadn’t really followed it.

  “Anyway,” Jeremy said, glancing toward the last scraps of the melee, “can I get an invite?”

  Apparently, Torald decided to risk the earworm infection, because moments later, Jeremy’s status window appeared in Devon’s group interface. With a ridiculous flourish, Jeremy raised his harmonica and played the intro to some song that Devon thought was from the old band, the Smashing Pumpkins. But regardless of the artists, the buff landed in her UI. She focused on it.

  Heartened

  No matter how crappy you feel, the right tune can provide a little lift, you know?

  2 Endurance | -10% Fatigue Gain Rate

  Devon nodded appreciation, and Jeremy winked. After taking a breath, he played a few bars of the Imperial March from the classic Star Wars films. Devon stared at her UI, waiting for the buff, but nothing appeared.

  “I think I resisted or something,” she said.

  Jeremy grinned. “I’ve just been practicing that for fun. It never hurts to have an anthem when you walk into a room, right?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Meet you guys at the brawl, okay?” he asked. “I gotta grab my weapon.”

  “Speaking of,” Torald said, glancing at Devon’s legs. “You want to run and get your pants?”

  “I think he just wants to watch you change,” Jeremy said.

  The paladin’s face turned beet red, and Devon glared at the troubadour on his behalf. “I’m totally fine if you boot him from the group,” she said. “And I’ll grab them after we’re done clearing the mobs.”

  “You won’t be saying that when you see my elite combat prowess,” Jeremy said with a wink as he trotted off into the grass. Watching him go, Devon wondered how he knew where to search. She’d been in headlong flight from the beaver morphlord when she’d died. It would probably be easier to get Gerrald to make her new pants than to comb through acres of savanna for her old pair.

  The loud smack of a flat tail against packed earth dragged her attention to the fight. Scanning the fray while on approach, she’d thought that the attackers had been reduced to otterkin and muskrattons, but in the time she’d been focused on Jeremy, the beaver morphlord had somehow reappeared.

  Probably by shape-shifting from its creepy human form.

  Torald grinned. “And here I thought we were out of luck. Up for getting some sweet, sweet revenge?”

  Devon nodded as she cast a Shadow Puppet on the pool of darkness at her feet. “Hell yes.”

  Around fifty yards from the encampment, Magda’s status popped back into the group interface. Apparently she’d survived the demise of the rest of the party, but her hit points and mana were low. Devon spotted her aura when they stepped past what seemed to be an armory pavilion, racks of unfinished weapons and under-construction armor pieces lined in neat rows around an anvil and a pair of workbenches. The druid stood at the outer fringe of the battle, fixing the melee with a look of intense concentration. After a few seconds, she nodded, and her eyes glowed green. An awakened otterkin shrieked as the Heartwood spell took hold and rooted the animal to the ground while impaling it with branches from the inside out.

  You receive 345 experience!

  “Pretty good tactic,” Torald muttered. “She’s choosing targets she can kill with one cast so that they don’t aggro her.”

  “What about faction aggro?” Devon asked, thinking of the usual NPC behavior where damaging a monster drew the attention of its friends.

  “The running theory on the gaming sites is it depends on the monsters’ intelligence and alignment. These guys are pretty smart, but that’s countered by whatever whacked-out effect the awakening stones cause. I doubt there’s a lot of loyalty. More likely, I bet when they see her felling their kin with a single blow, they decide to focus on easier targets.”

  Details on faction aggro were yet another thing Devon had missed by not combing the various forums and chats for information. While she was faintly tempted to get down on herself for being ignorant, for the most part, she didn’t really care. Besides, since Veia was supposedly tweaking the game rules all the time, monster behavior might be completely different next week. Better to rely on what she learned by playing than old information gathered by the community.

  Torald glanced back at the cleric who had been trailing a few feet behind. “Ready?”

  In response, light flowed from the cleric’s hands to Torald’s body. The man nodded.

  “Prepare for retribution, you foul beast!” the paladin shouted. “Veia’s wrath comes for you on a gleaming chariot!”

  As he ran into the fray, Devon waited for another buff. She watched the air surrounding him for the telltale shimmer of magic. But neither arrived.

  Apparently, he’d just said that...for fun?

  Devon wasn’t about to make the mistake of drawing aggro again. This time, she wouldn’t inflict damage on the boss until Torald had managed to get the beaver thoroughly pissed off.

  But she didn’t want to stand around twiddling her thumbs. Following Magda’s example, she squinted into the brawl. She ran her focus over the tangle of human combatants and furry attackers, and health bars appeared then vanished as her gaze passed over the cre
atures.

  You have gained a skill point: +1 Combat Assessment

  Congratulations! You have reached tier 2 in this skill. You can now gain snapshots of an enemy’s status very quickly. Beware, however, because this information is less reliable at lower levels. Gain skill within the tier to improve your accuracy.

  That was nice. She’d assumed that increasing the skill would give more accurate information, but she hadn’t considered that she might be able to get a quicker picture of the field of battle.

  Spotting a low health bar on a snarling little muskratton that was ankle-biting another of the paladins, Devon nailed it with a Flamestrike, tier 1 to avoid splash damage and drawing aggro from other mobs.

  You receive 132 experience!

  She nodded to herself. The small experience number relative to her level meant that she hadn’t stolen the experience from the player or group who had done the majority of the work in whittling down the monster’s health.

  Magda picked off a couple more mobs with what Devon thought of as her leaf blower attack while Torald smacked his mace into the morphlord’s flank. Finally, the beaver stopped swiping randomly at the crowd of players and turned its focus on the paladin.

  “Ah yes!” the man shouted. “You recognize divine vengeance. Prepare your best defense, for you will soon meet your maker.”

  Devon shook her head. She supposed she didn’t have much room to judge someone’s role-playing since she basically lived in the game and saw herself as the guardian and protector of a whole settlement full of digital creations. More than that, she thought of them as her friends. And Torald saw himself as a holy knight of their creator goddess. So yeah. Maybe she shouldn’t laugh inside when he started talking about smiting things.

  But still.

  It was kind of funny.

  She gave him a few more seconds to establish solid aggro, then launched a pair of Flamestrikes. The morphlord was down to half health or so, and the berserk effect appeared to have worn off—at the very least, it had weakened to the point where the mob wasn’t one-shotting players by severing their heads.

  She winced as the animal’s tail came smacking down, sending reverberations through the earth. When it lifted, a very flat human groaned and then vanished, leaving behind what looked like a minor health potion. She shook her head. Had it really been the random number generator that had decided to respawn her without pants? Or was the Relic Online universe just amusing itself at her expense?

  As a much-diminished ball of otterkin writhed past, fleeing a rogue who was struggling to target a backstab, the buff icon for Jeremy’s Heartened ability regained color and pulsed as he stepped into range and played another few bars of the old rock song. She hadn’t noticed that it had been grayed-out when he was out of range, but it made sense.

  As he trotted up beside her, cape rippling, she glanced at the contraption balanced on one of his hands.

  “Uh, what’s that?”

  He grinned and turned his hand. Half the accordion dropped like a slinky toward the earth. It groaned out a god-awful chord as air rushed in.

  “My weapon. Duh.”

  She blinked. “Does it kill by forcing people to dance the polka?”

  He smirked and whipped his wrist around, sending the dangling half of the instrument flying toward the fleeing heap of otters. With a loud blat, the instrument connected and knocked one of the beasts from the pile. It lay stunned for a second before the rogue leaped forward and plunged in a dagger.

  “One-handed blunt, baby,” Jeremy said as Devon cringed.

  She glanced at the buff icon, which had started to fade again. “Your buff’s going.”

  He turned toward her with what she could only describe as a shit-eating grin. “And now for some of those answers you were wanting. Technically, I’m heavy on the support side. But I can’t just sit around playing the harmonica all the time if I want to help in combat. Most Troubadour buffs can function as a group effort.”

  The beaver was still focused on Torald, giant yellow teeth clacking. The paladin blocked with his shield, setting loose sprays of plaque, saliva, and sparks. Devon cast Phoenix Fire on the beast’s hindquarters, wrapping the mob in what looked unpleasantly like a lava diaper.

  “A group effort? Like we’re not busy enough?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Hey. I didn’t make the rules. I just follow them. If you want to stay Heartened, you have to sing a round.”

  “What?” She nearly fumbled while casting Freeze at the otterball before it got out of range. The rogue nodded at her in appreciation before sawing through the ice to cut the throat of an otterkin that dropped out of the heap.

  “I recommend Row, Row, Row Your Boat or Frere Jacques.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t sing.”

  “I don’t. Well, sometimes I join in. But mostly I just get things going and you guys pick up the slack.”

  Whipping his accordion back, he pulled up his harmonica in his offhand and played the first few bars of Row, Row, then looked at her expectantly.

  Devon shook her head. “Have you ever heard me sing? There’s nothing heartening about it.”

  “You can hum.”

  “No!”

  “Dude, it’s not like you’re being judged or anything. And it could be worse. The top-tier spells give mega bonuses for more complicated stuff. Fugues in four voices and such.”

  Devon just shook her head. As the buff icon started to fade again, Magda dropped an insect swarm on the morphlord, then sighed.

  “Christ,” she said before launching into the first lines off Row, Row. Her voice was clear and alto, for some reason reminding Devon of fresh air and a rushing river. Probably something to do with her druidic abilities.

  When the woman reached the end of the first line, Jeremy gave a conductor’s flourish and cued her.

  Devon gave him her most disgusted look as she started singing. “Row, Row, Row your boat”—her voice cracked, and Jeremy winced as he picked up the third part—“gently down the stream.”

  On the first repetition of the song, Torald and the cleric looked at the singing trio as if they were insane. But as Jeremy stepped into the melee, laying about with his accordion and proudly belting out the nursery rhyme, the paladin reluctantly joined in.

  The cleric looked more likely to flee than sing.

  Devon envied him.

  Finally, with a deep whine from its massive bellows of lungs, the beaver morphlord sank to the ground and died. The savanna chimed.

  You receive 5498 experience!

  Congratulations! You have reached level 21!

  Devon was so distracted by the message, she forgot to stop singing. As she brushed away the popup, she realized the group was staring at her. Silently.

  “A lovely rendition,” Jeremy said with a smirk. “If a little off-key.”

  Devon clamped her lips together. “Asshole,” she said after a moment.

  The morphlord had been the last rodent-thing standing, and in the calm that followed its death, players moved through the motionless bodies and activated the loot process by touching daggers and swords to the pelts. Torald pulled a small skinning knife from his belt and went down on a knee beside the beaver, which had made a partial transformation after death, patches of gray flesh replacing the slick fur.

  Curling a lip, he grabbed a long yellow tooth from among the pile of items the beaver left behind as it disintegrated. “I’m not even sure I can sell this.”

  A couple of the items shimmered slightly, indicating that Devon had the rights to loot them. She stalked forward and scooped them up.

  You have received: Morphkin Pelt Section

  One of many patchwork sections of pelt. Be glad you got this and not a big flap of gray skin. Because Gerrald would probably love to find a way to clothe you in that.

  You have received: Morphkin Charm

  Carved from soapstone by the artisans of the Drowned Burrow, this charm is used by morphki
n to gain entrance to their home even while shifted into the humanoid form many have begun to assume.

  Use: Casts Water-Breathing on the group.

  Recharge time: 20 minutes

  Duration: 10 minutes

  “The Drowned Burrow? Anyone get loot related to that?”

  The other group members looked at Devon and shook their heads.

  “Never heard of it,” Torald said.

  Abruptly, the paladin yelped, causing Devon to jump and nearly lose her footing. “What?”

  He pointed behind her where, as if nothing had happened earlier, Bob came swirling across the camp and booped her nose. The paladin took a couple of steps back. “You aren’t planning to use that thing again, are you?”

  Devon shook her head as she glared at the wisp. “No. I only have two eardrums, and I don’t think they can survive many more ruptures.”

  The wisp expanded and shrank in a small sigh. “Some people just don’t appreciate my considerable talents. Regardless, I didn’t come here to be demeaned by a bunch of infants.”

  “Infants?” Magda asked with a raised eyebrow. She seemed ready to see how Bob handled being incorporated into a leaf tornado.

  “When you’ve watched the brief flare of countless lives over a millennium, the struggles of mortals start to seem almost cute,” Bob said in its most obnoxious know-it-all tone. “Humans, in particular, are rarely half as wise as they imagine.”

  Devon rolled her eyes. “I assume you showed up for a reason. Otherwise, perhaps you should go contemplate eternity elsewhere.”

  Bob whizzed around her head. “Right, that.”

  Bob is offering you a quest: Drowned Burrow