Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series

by Darren Pillsbury

  When even that asshole barbarian had looked visibly moved, Eric knew he had them.

  And it had all been a bunch of bullshit.

  Oh, he didn’t want them to go in the cave, that much was true.

  Not so he could save them, though. The goblin, barbarian, and fish could die immediately and never respawn, as far as Eric was concerned.

  And the dwarf was a pain in his ass, so if he disappeared, all the better.

  Mira… eh. He could go either way on her. She was hot as a dark elf, so… nice to have her around to look at.

  But Daniel… he didn’t want Daniel to die.

  And he especially didn’t want Daniel to know what was coming. He just wouldn’t understand.

  Besides, it was better if they stayed behind. For the first time on the quest, it would be them slowing him down and not vice versa.

  All in all, a really good speech.

  But that hadn’t been the only thing he’d been practicing.

  Once he was far enough inside the cave not to be seen, he held out his hand and whispered, “Luxos.”

  A small white light sparked in his palm. As it slowly rose into the air, it grew in size and intensity. By the time it hovered five feet overhead, it was bright enough to illuminate twenty feet in every direction.

  The one spell he absolutely knew he would need in here was the one he’d practiced the most.

  He picked his way carefully through the cold, damp cave. It reminded him of a bigger, cleaner version of the sewers under Blackstone – just as dark, but with fresh water running through a natural streambed carved out of the rocky floor. It was actually quite beautiful, in a gloomy sort of way.

  Sixty feet inside the cave were the remnants of what had once been the city’s defenses. Eric had wondered why such a valuable place would have had no way to defend itself. Turned out it did: three different sets of giant iron doors, fifty feet tall and ten inches thick. There was also a giant iron portcullis with openings for archers and spear carriers.

  The doors were housed in gaps carved into the mountain, and could be pulled out across rollers set into the floor. They were left wide open now, but in their time they could have repelled just about any army imaginable.

  Of course, according to Simik, the real threat hadn’t come from outside. Nothing had been able to protect them from what actually wiped them out.

  A hundred feet past the doors, the cave turned into something much more: an underground city. Shops and homes had been carved right out of the rock walls – hundreds and hundreds of them, side by side and stacked atop each other, stretching deep into the mountain. Windows here, doorways there, and stone steps leading up to second stories.

  But something bad had happened here, and not just the ravages of time. Bits of smashed glass lay on the ground, glittering beneath Eric’s light. Rusted iron doors hung precariously off their hinges.

  He peeked in one window and saw bones littering the floor. They were shorter and squatter than a human’s. Maybe a former occupant from centuries before.

  The bones were also chewed and scored with teeth marks. Maybe by a current occupant who hadn’t left yet.

  When Eric turned around, he caught a glimpse of tiny eyes, shining in the spell light, peering at him from one of the windows. But by the time he directed the light over to look, the eyes were gone.

  In spite of his powers, his throat tightened.

  Should I summon something?

  …not yet.

  He kept walking, his footsteps echoing on the lonely street.

  The cave ceiling expanded upwards another hundred feet, where the light of his spell showed an upside-down forest of stalactites.

  That was when he heard it: a throaty growl, low and rumbling, mixed with a hissing sound.

  He stopped and waited, his heart thudding in his chest.

  Something slinked out of the shadows, slow and deliberate, not fearing him at all.

  A chimera. Two heads – a savage lion, and a demonic goat with five-foot-long horns.

  Actually, make that three heads: an anaconda-sized snake that arched and weaved above the creature like a scorpion’s tail, but with six-inch fangs instead of a stinger.

  It was repulsive and majestic all at once.

  In other video games he’d played, chimeras breathed fire. Whether this one did or not, he wasn’t about to wait to find out.

  “Xatho mylopik,” he said, figuring that the least powerful spectral demon would do.

  Unfortunately, only the lion’s eyes glazed over – and it immediately began shaking its head and rubbing its face against the stone floor, as though it was resisting the thing now inside it.

  Uh oh, Eric thought. It has three separate brains, souls, whatever –

  No need to take chances with the other two.

  “Vexicra nomadik, vexicra nomadik!” he shouted, and dark smoke shot through the air into the mouths of both the goat and the snake.

  Their eyes glazed over with black immediately.

  But when the lion raised its head again, the eyes were bright and glittering – and pissed off.

  Just as Eric was about to speak, the lion opened its mouth.

  A spark bloomed in the depths of its throat, and a plume of fire shot out of the lion’s jaws.

  Eric dove through the open doorway of an ancient dwarven home, although not in time to completely escape the blast.

  Warning! Minor burns.

  -10 hit points. 95/105 hit points remaining.

  His right leg hurt, but it wasn’t too serious.

  What was serious was what would happen if the thing decided to stick its head in here and flood the room with fire.

  “Vexicra nomadik!” he yelled as he scooted his back against the stone wall.

  Off to his side, flames boiled through the doorway and lit the room with an orange glow.

  For a brief second he saw the stone table, the metal bowls and plates with food long turned to dust, the bookcases filled with crumbling books, the bones and skulls littering the ground.

  Then the light died, and he was in darkness again.

  Ten seconds went by in silence before he cautiously lifted his head above the nearest window to look out.

  The chimera was standing in the pale glow of his spell light, breathing heavily – but all three heads were docile and black-eyed.

  Eric walked out slowly, seeing if his presence would cause the beast to react.

  It did not. It merely stood there, the snake head weaving above the two others, all six eyes pure black.

  “Turn around and lead the way,” Eric commanded.

  The beast obediently turned around and walked ahead of him deeper into the cave.

  A couple more friends like these and this’ll be a snap, he thought.

  Although he resolved not to stint on the level of demon next time he needed to possess something.

  54

  Daniel

  Daniel paced nervously beside the crystalline pool.

  They hadn’t heard anything from inside the cave since Eric had entered – and that had been ten minutes ago.

  “I’m telling you, something’s wrong with that boy,” the Simik growled.

  The dwarf didn’t mean that Eric was injured (or worse). His entire contention was that Eric was up to no good and knew something the rest of them didn’t.

  “No one as incompetent in battle as that fool heads into the Mines of Alark alone,” Simik argued. “If he didn’t have some trick up his sleeve, he would have been back out here nine minutes ago with something snapping at his heels.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “For a thousand different reasons. Because he needed us to get this far, but no farther. Because he has some secret design he doesn’t want you to know. Because of money, power, some devious alliance – take your pick.”

  Daniel shook his head. “He’s my best friend. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “I see you’re perfectly capable of lying to yourself, though.”

&nbs
p; Daniel turned away in irritation and looked at Mira. “What do you think?”

  She glanced up at the cave. “Well… it is kind of weird that he hasn’t come back yet…”

  “Let’s go in aftah heem,” Drogar said as he sharpened his ax on the ground.

  “Why?” the goblin asked. “You don’t even like him.”

  “No, but I’m BORED. Go-eenk aftah him is at least something to DO. Who goes on a freakeeng quest and then stops right before dey get to da goot pahrt?”

  Suddenly there was a splash. They all looked over at Lotan treading water in the middle of the pool.

  “I checked it out, and there’s definitely some sort of tunnels at the bottom of this thing, like lava tubes or something,” the droth said. “I’ll bet you they go deep inside the cave. I could swim in and take a look, see if I can find him.”

  “No,” Daniel said. “I’m not dividing the group up again.”

  “You know I’m way better in the water than out of it,” Lotan argued gently. “We’d have to divide up eventually anyway.”

  “Dat’s true,” the barbarian agreed.

  “This’ll just be pure reconnaissance, nothing else,” Lotan promised.

  Daniel sighed. “Can you even see in the tunnels? Aren’t they pitch black?”

  “Uh… yeah, that’s the one problem…”

  “I can help with that,” the dwarf said, and went over to the pack horses. He pulled half a dozen foot-long crystals out of a saddle bag and handed one to the droth in the pool. Daniel took one too. The stats came up in a text box:

  Enchanted lumos crystal.

  Fixed luminance equivalent to one lantern.

  1 mana point per 30 seconds of illumination.

  Not bad. The crystals would drain their mana over time, but everyone could just take turns being light sources while the others recovered.

  “Where’d you get these?” Daniel asked.

  “The market. If you thought I’d go to the Mines of Alark and trust our light source to some beginner mage, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

  Daniel made a face and turned back to Lotan. “Be careful. Don’t let this drain your mana and leave you stranded in the dark.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And if you see anything nasty down there, don’t fight – just run.”

  “Okay. See you guys soon!” the droth said happily, and plunged down into the depths of the pool. They watched as he reached an overhang at the bottom of the underwater grotto and disappeared from view.

  “Two down, five to go,” the dwarf muttered.

  55

  Eric

  The cave changed the deeper he went. The stream turned into a series of ponds, which seemed to be fed by a network of underground rivers.

  The dwarf village gave way to a series of smithies, filled with tools and anvils and long-dead fire pits. The stream had apparently been used to temper the dwarves’ creations, because the water was diverted into a dozen stone troughs next to each station.

  After the smithies came a series of metal tracks that spun off into dozens of small tunnels. Here and there sat a wooden cart, long since rotted down to its rusty iron wheels and undercarriage, spilling out chunks of ore on the ground.

  Picks littered the ground, too – some of them embedded in black, wolf-like skulls. He wondered what creatures the skulls came from, but figured he would find out before the day was over.

  Inanimate objects weren’t the only things he encountered.

  Three more times he was accosted by creatures in the darkness; three more times he summoned demons and possessed them. By the time he was finished, he had an assortment of nightmarish bodyguards:

  The chimera. A twenty-foot-tall cyclops with a gigantic horn in the center of its skull, carrying a knobby club as big as a man. A gigantic tube worm with cilia-like appendages that propelled it along the cave floor, and a mouth big enough to swallow a car. And finally, a ten-foot-tall spider with eight eyes turned black by the possession.

  As repulsive as the undulating worm was, it was the spider that freaked him out the most. Maybe it was something so familiar blown up to gargantuan size. Even though it was his servant now, he kept his distance… just in case.

  He ignored the smaller tunnels and kept walking until he came to a fork in the cave. By now the water had disappeared underground and the stones underfoot were completely dry.

  Though he had memorized the map he had drawn, he still took it out to be doubly sure.

  Take the left passage, then look for the third small tunnel on the left.

  Ha, he thought grimly. A series of ‘sinister’ paths.

  He took the left path and kept walking until it opened up again into a gigantic cavern of stalactites. The stalagmites had long ago been removed to make way for rails and mining carts.

  He had walked maybe fifty feet when he heard the noise.

  Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch

  It was faint at first, but it was growing in volume.

  And it was coming from straight overhead.

  He sent the light up into the air to see what was making the sound.

  Suddenly dozens, then hundreds of bodies spilled out of holes in the ceiling and began skittering down the sides of the walls like geckos.

  They were humanoid in shape, but with long, wolfish heads filled with jagged teeth.

  I KNEW I’d find out what those skulls were from.

  But unlike wolves, these things had no fur – maybe not even skin. Their black muscles were corded and bunched over their bodies, and fingers and toes ended in vicious claws. Their eyes were red and reflected the glow of the light like a thousand tiny rubies in the darkness.

  Because that’s how many of them there were – at least 500, and growing by the second.

  A text box appearing in his line of sight:

  Vlasok

  Level 25 Terrestrial Monster

  Hit points: 2000

  Attacks: Biting, slashing, blunt force

  Damage dealt: 50 – 1000 hit points

  Strength: 20

  Intelligence: 3

  Dexterity: 20

  Endurance: 20

  Willpower: 3

  “ATTACK!” Eric screamed at his monstrous bodyguards, and began yelling at the top of his voice, “Ixotinak asotidal! Vatid conotrix! Hstero myklexinot! Blamok natorus! Vulpist anostika! Kaliston jhalhib! Peratoz otomnix!”

  As his demons burst out of dark smoke and joined the chimera and ogre and others, the vlasoks started shrieking as they attacked. The snarls and screams echoed across the rocks, and the cavern was plunged into a symphony of violence worthy of the darkest circles of hell.

  56

  Daniel

  The sounds coming from within the mine were faint but unmistakable.

  It sounded like thousands of damned souls screeching in rage and torment.

  “What the hell is that?” the goblin asked nervously.

  “I don’t know, but I vahnt to go fight eet,” the barbarian said, leaping up from the ground with his battle ax held high.

  “Let’s go!” Daniel yelled, and led the charge up the stone steps into the mine. “And be ready for anything!”

  Daniel went first, his brightly shining crystal showing the way. Mira ran alongside him, an arrow drawn and at the ready. The barbarian and goblin followed close behind with blazing crystals of their own. Simik brought up the rear, shaking his head in worried aggravation.

  They rushed along the stream, past the blast doors, through the dwarven village, past the smithies and the mining tracks.

  The screams intensified and doubled in number the further they went – but not once did they encounter a single living thing, other than a few rats that scurried off into the darkness.

  They were rushing past one of the ponds when Drogar shouted in frustration, “Vhen are we go-ink to fight sometheenk?”

  As though in reply, the water exploded next to them.

  The entire group shouted in fear and turned to attack –
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br />   “Guys, guys!” Lotan said, waving his glowing crystal in surrender.

  Daniel breathed a sigh of relief to see his teammate. “Well?”

  “Other than that screaming,” Lotan said, “there’s no sign of him. In fact, there’s no sign of anything.”

  “What?!”

  “No monsters, no dungeon bosses – nothing. Granted, I didn’t get very far, but the ponds are fed by underwater streams, so there’s probably more back there somewhere.”

  “What the hell?” Mira muttered. “Is this the most overhyped dungeon ever, or did Eric manage to clear it out somehow?”

  Daniel’s stomach knotted up. He knew it was impossible that a game environment like this existed purely to house rats and ruins. And he and everyone else knew that there was no way a bumbling mage could ever hope to go up alone against a series of dungeon bosses.

  Simik’s words began to gnaw at him:

  He needed us to get this far, but no farther. Because he has some secret design he doesn’t want you to know.

  In the distance, the screams were doubling, tripling, quadrupling in both volume and horror.

  “Stick to the water,” Daniel said to Lotan. “See if you can find something, but don’t fight unless we’re there to back you up – got it?”

  The droth nodded, then dove back into the pond. They watched the glow of his crystal move underwater at a furious pace, then recede into the darkness.

  As soon as he was gone, Daniel plunged deeper into the mine, leading his band of adventurers towards the howls of savage chaos.

  57

  Eric

  The battle raged, and corpses piled up by the hundreds.

  His lieutenants acquitted themselves well. The chimera blasted the creatures with fire, sending them running around the cave in screaming agony, bodies ablaze as they fell and writhed on the ground.

  The ogre bashed the creatures with its club, crushing half a dozen vlasoks with one blow.