Forsaken

by Cebelius

  Abram snarled silently as he followed Sif through the portal and began to ascend the stairs with Angie at his heel and the dwarves following her.

  You want to see willpower? Okay, fucker. You got it.

  There was a pause, then Hantu Raya surprised him.

  'Forgive me, Abram. There's nothing to prove. Please, have them wait a few minutes. Come up with a spell that will make this climb possible for you. You have all the affinities, it should be easy.'

  As he took one step after another, he stared at those words, his mind whirling as he tried to figure out what possible motivation Hantu Raya could have to flip the script like this. Their relationship wasn't exactly adversarial, but it wasn't cordial either. He and his familiar were not friends. This sort of about-face was out of character. It stank of ulterior motives.

  He glanced at his stamina bar, saw it steadily if slowly depleting. Slowly, but not nearly as slowly as it had when he'd been descending these stairs. He did some quick mental math and figured he had about ten minutes before he was redlining.

  You can't swap spells while I'm under pressure. Does this count? Abram asked.

  'Yes. We can come up with something, though, and when we rest, we can swap.'

  Abram shook his head and kept going.

  'Abram. I cannot be the one to design the spell. It has to be you. My contract doesn't allow me to do this for you.'

  Noted.

  'Abram-'

  Shut it. I'm tired of your mockery, tired of your mind games. You're right. I should have thought of something, but I didn't, and I will be good and goddamned if I let it be known to one and all that I'm the weak link here.

  Hantu Raya's text bar faded out, and after that, Abram's trial began.

  He distracted himself thinking about all the things he wanted to do to the Mor when he finally secured her. He thought about ways to kill everything in Svartheim. He thought about how badly he wanted to ask Sif what was going on with the hobgoblins. Now that she was back in her mountain she should be able to sense what was going on with them.

  Yet with the dwarves following along right behind him, he couldn't ask her. It would be out of character for him. He cursed the role he'd assigned himself, all-knowing wizard. What a crock. The devil was in the details, which is where he should have been.

  I don't know anything I really NEED to know, he thought miserably. And as he thought, he climbed.

  His stamina bar flashed at him, and climbing got harder, but he didn't stop. The pain started as a lactic burn in his thighs, then continued to increase. Another ten minutes passed, and yet he climbed.

  Time slipped by until it lost all meaning and he existed in an eternal now. There was no room for thought in the eternal now. His muscles trembled with fatigue and he poured every ounce of will he had into forcing them to keep going. His very bones began to ache. His feet bruised, and pain shot up through the balls with every step he took. Yet he continued, forcing his body to keep moving.

  Eventually, his mind seemed to completely dissociate from his body, and the thoughts came again, this time with no will behind them. They were there, but he couldn't pay any conscious attention to them. He simply watched them float by.

  It's just like when I first got off the table, he thought dully. I should never have been able to move. But everything worked. Why? Because this is a goddamn game, that's why. And in a game, anything's possible. In a game I walked on skinless feet. This is nothing compared to that. Keep stepping. Another. Another. Is this the last step you can take? No? Take one more. How about now? No? One more.

  "Stop!"

  Abram set his foot down, then paused as the shout cut through the haze he'd fallen into. He tilted his head as Angie — with an edge of desperation in her voice — declared, "I need to rest."

  "Very well."

  It was the armored dwarf just behind her that spoke. His voice marked him as a male, but his helm was on and Abram couldn't see his face. Not that he'd have known him anyway. He'd never been officially introduced to any of them. He didn't care who they were. They didn't matter.

  Red shirts. All of them.

  He half-turned to press his back to the stone, but instead found himself leaning against Angie as she hissed in his ear, "What are you doing?!"

  "Stepping," he murmured, then sagged. Without his complete concentration to keep them in place, his legs simply failed.

  Angie wrapped him up and cradled his body as she sat on the steps. He offered feeble resistance as he wearily asked, "What are you doing? They'll see."

  "I don't care. Abram, you're not invincible."

  "Not trying to be," he said, his mouth on autopilot. "Just ... climbing stairs. Nothing to it."

  She shook her head and squeezed him gently as she murmured, "Abram ... Abram, you can't do this. For a while I thought you had some sort of spell on. You should have had a spell. The wizard I know would never have put himself through this, what is wrong with you? You have to tell me! I can't help you if you don't tell me you need help!"

  "I ..." he trailed off, and felt deeply ashamed. He couldn't bear to admit that he'd just been stubborn, that he'd let his familiar goad him, and then rejected an apology meant to prove the goad hadn't been deliberate, may even have been accidental.

  "I'll heal," he muttered instead, his eyes flicking up to his health bar. Of seventeen hit points, he had nine left. He'd literally walked himself half to death on the stairs.

  "Twelve hours. A little less. I'll be right as rain."

  Angie shook her head and squeezed him. "Please, Abram. Don't do this. You're going to destroy yourself."

  "Nah ... pain is just weakness leaving the body. Hehe. Always wanted to say that ... and mean it."

  'You're delirious.'

  "He speaks," Abram said, unable in his weariness to simply think the words.

  'Yes, you idiot! I apologized! I was sincere! Accept it, and think of a spell! Do not waste this chance Angrboda is giving you!'

  Sif knelt near them and murmured, "Abram, we have a problem."

  "'Course we do," Abram said, chuckling as he shook his head. "I did something stupid ... so of course the game fucks me. What is it? Hobs break through to the Great Stair? Coming to get us?"

  "Not the hobs."

  Sif glanced up over her shoulder, then back at him with wide eyes.

  "My brother."

  "A bergsrå like you?"

  "Not like me. He has every physical advantage I lack. Where I am weak, he is strong. Where I am small, he is huge. His ability to shape the stone is weak, but sufficient. The hobs have control of all of Svartheim once more, but my brother is coming for me … for us."

  Abram thought about that for a moment and paradoxically, being given a problem to solve dulled the agony. The pain was just an impulse. A false feeling sent by the system. He could log out anytime and get rid of that. The problem though, that was as real as anything could be on Celestine.

  He tilted his head as he thought about the spells he already had, and the solution was so simple that he started chuckling despite himself.

  "How far away is he? Is he coming down the stairs?"

  "He'll be here in a minute or two, and yes."

  "All right, we'll do this the easy way."

  Sif looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. "There is no easy way! We have nowhere to go, we're trapped on the stairs!"

  "So is he. Unless he can fly?"

  Sif shook her head, then looked at Angie as she asked, "Is he insane?"

  "Ask me, not her," Abram snapped. "And the answer is yes. I am crazy, mad, insane. Be thankful for that, because I'm about to kill your brother for you."

  "How?"

  "How else? With magic. Hell, you could do it if you wanted to. Just melt the stairs under his feet and he'll fall to his death."

  Sif shook her head. "He can stop me. I can shape the stone around him but he'll always have control of what's in reach."

  "Melt the stairs on either side of him, trapping him."

  S
if thought about that, then shrugged as she said, "He would jump. He can cross these gaps and corners. Once he sees us, that's what he'll do, and if I stop him from coming down far enough to get to us, we can't get up."

  "Is he smart?"

  Sif blinked, then squirmed and said, "Not particularly, does it matter?"

  "Intelligence always matters. Stand me up."

  Angie began, "Abram, you need-"

  A roar announced the presence of the troll coming down for them, neatly interrupting her. It echoed down the shaft and he glanced up, but Sif's brother was still out of range of his dark sight.

  "-to save everyone from the big bad mountain troll coming to gobble us all up, yes," Abram said hastily. "Stand. Me. Up."

  She hoisted him to his feet, and he turned to see that the dwarves, one and all, were staring fixedly at him. Those with helms on were unreadable, but the paragon and trades were giving him dubious looks.

  Time to up my presence again, he mused, grinning.

  He gathered his will and made his voice firm as he said, "Another troll, this one working against us, is on its way. The bergsrå is confident there is no way to talk ourselves out of this, so it's a fight. I'm going to cast a spell to make this easy, but you lot need to cooperate."

  "What do you need us to do?" Brenna asked.

  Abram waved a hand idly as he said, "I'm going to cast a spell on several of you. Once I do, all you need to do is turn around and go back the other way for one-and-a-half turns. Got it?"

  "And what if this spell of yours doesn't work?" one of the armored dwarves asked.

  "Then you be ready for a not-at-all-fun fight."

  Abram checked his mana, then pointed at Sif and said, "Images, 1."

  His mana dropped from 87 to 85, and he grinned. Now that he had the fire affinity as well as chaos and illusion, each image only cost him two mana instead of the previous five. The whole party's worth of illusions would cost him twenty-six mana in total, which would leave him plenty for the other half of his plan.

  Pointing rapidly at each in turn, he gave them one image each, including himself, then made a shooing gesture as he said, "Back down the stairs, double-time!"

  The dwarves moved, and their images did as well, but since there was only one way to go all of the images, instead of moving randomly, went reliably up the stairs.

  Abram started down himself, only to have Angie catch him as his legs refused to function and he almost fell to his death.

  Recovering, he said, "Carry me, quickly! We need to be in place within about ten seconds or so."

  As his lover carried him bodily down the stairs with Sif hot on her heels, Abram coiled his hands tightly against his chest, and power began to build between his spread fingers, glowing with an increasingly brilliant radiance.

  "Kah ...." he muttered, doing his best to suppress a smile.

  Hantu Raya's text popped up immediately. 'Abram, no.'

  "May ..." Abram continued, unable now to keep the shit-eating grin off his face.

  'Oh please, for the love of all that's cool, don't say it.'

  "Haaaaah ..."

  'It doesn't matter! It's not part of the activation! All you have to do is push the damn thing! You look like an idiot! WE, look like an idiot!'

  Abram watched his mana bar plummet as more and more of his power sank into the fire between his hands. He noticed with satisfaction that above them, just rounding the bend in the stairs, his image had a similarly brilliant ball of energy, marking him as the perfect target for a big dumb monster to try and interrupt.

  "Maaaaay ..."

  'NEEEEEEERD!'

  A much louder roar sounded from almost directly overhead, and they all felt the vibration in the stone as something massive leapt into sight above them, crossing the entire hundred foot gap of the shaft the Great Stair was set in to slam directly into Abram's image on the stairs now above and across from them. The creature looked like a cross between the cave troll from Fellowship and the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. It was a truly ugly, hideously strong-looking thing ... but it didn't matter. Abram had it dead to rights. His mana hit ten, which was the cut-off for the last part of his plan.

  "HAH!"

  He pressed his hands out, launching the fireball across the gap. It was such a glorious moment that he realized as he watched the spell fly he was laughing like a maniac, and it was a mental effort to stop himself long enough to fling his hand toward the monster and scream, "Grease!"

  The fireball impacted and the explosion bloomed, its roar drowning out that of the monster, who'd had just enough time to turn toward the real wizard after obliterating his Image.

  The grease ignited, but not before its influence magnified the explosive force of the impact to slam the troll against the wall behind him. His body bounced, skidded on the burning but still slick grease, and the roar of the fireball's explosion faded into an animal scream of pure terror as the troll slid straight out into empty space and plummeted.

  Abram leaned out and watched as the brilliantly burning monster fell ... and fell, finally bouncing once off the stairs before slamming into the capstone floor of the shaft with a practically inaudible thump.

  "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do that," Abram said, turning as he started to dust his hands.

  His legs chose that moment to give out again, and were it not for Angie catching him he'd have followed his latest victim down the shaft.

  "Okay," he said ruefully. "I'm done being cool. Angie?"

  "Yes, Abram?" she said, looking down at him with an odd mixture of wonder and exasperation on her face.

  "Would you carry me for a while? I checked, and I'm pretty sure my legs are shot."

  Angie shivered, her lips quivering, then she scooped him up in her arms as she tipped her head back and laughed.

  "I may be crazy," he murmured just loud enough for her to hear, "but I am also a goddamn genius."

  She bent her head to kiss him, then gave him a squeeze.

  "Yes lover. Yes you are, and I will gladly carry you."

  Abram leaned into her, then chuckled and whispered, "Wish you weren't wearing armor."

  Angie giggled and whispered back, "Leaves us both something to look forward to."

  As they resumed the climb, Abram closed his eyes and focused inward as he thought, Well?

  There was a long pause before Hantu Raya's text floated by.

  '+1 Presence. Nerd.'

  26

  Evil Wizard's First Rule

  Abram opened his eyes.

  He was slumped against Angie, who was herself asleep as she leaned against the wall just inside the chamber Sif had made. They were almost all the way up the stair, and Abram had been resting since the encounter with Sif's brother.

  I should probably talk to her about that. I remember her making noises about wanting to save him.

  'It did not seem to me that he was in any mood to be saved.'

  Yeah, almost as if he didn't like us or something. Morning, Hantu.

  'Presuming it is, in fact, morning. I don't know about you, but I have no idea what time it is.'

  Anytime within six hours of me waking up is morning, thus spake the Lord.

  'Nerd.'

  Abram smirked and shook his head, then glanced around. Most of the dwarves were already up, but a few were still snoozing. One was using his armor as a pillow, which struck him as a bit too try-hard.

  Sif wasn't around. He leaned carefully away from Angie, who didn't wake. Abram stood and moved out of the relatively small space to stand on the stairway outside. He hiked up his robes and relieved himself, which made him feel immensely better, then glanced around and saw Sif seated below him in the corner where the stairway turned in its long orthogonal run up the shaft.

  He frowned, thinking it unlikely she hadn't noticed him doing the morning business, then realized that she couldn't see him because she was outside sixty feet, which he was pretty sure was her visual range. His mini-map legend put her at around eighty feet away. />
  Folding his hands into his robes, he walked down to her and settled on the last few steps before the square platform that marked the turn. Sif was settled into the back corner of the wall as far as it was possible to be from the edge, and she looked up at him.

  Abram glanced back to ensure there was no one else out of the little hidey-hole, then turned to her again and pulled his cowl down to reveal his face.

  "You want to talk about it?" he asked.

  Sif blinked, her blue-on-black eyes searching his face for a moment before she said, "You haven't really been sympathetic before now. Why ask?"

  "I'm not, not really. I haven't ever had anyone willing to listen to and understand me, so I don't get the appeal personally. I've heard it helps though."

  Sif tilted her head a bit, then glanced away and shrugged. "Why not? I don't blame you. My brother turned against me before any of this started. He was always cruel, small-minded."

  Her lips twitched, and she blinked rapidly as she stared off into the darkness. "He was the last family I had though. Now I'm alone."

  "Nah, you've got me and Angie. We'll stay with you."

  "For a while," she said. "But you have grand ambitions. Angie wants to see the world. Eventually, you'll leave."

  Abram couldn't dispute that. "Well, perhaps," he conceded, "but I won't leave you alone. The dungeon will be rebuilt. We'll restore its ecology and you'll have associates, perhaps friends, depending on your predilections. Svartheim will always be the place where I started, and I'll come back even if I go abroad. The place suits me."

  He folded his arms over his knees as they looked at each other. "You can always come with us. I figure you won't want to, but if you change your mind and there's no harm in it, why not?"

  "I'm practically worthless outside my mountain," she said, a bitter edge in her voice. "This last week has made that pretty clear to me."

  "You gave us advance warning and helped us when we needed to know the lay of the land. If it weren't for you we might have died to Kappi."

  She blinked, her focus moving from the middle distance to him. He offered a slight smile, then glanced back up the stairs again to make sure he was still in the clear. He was, so he turned back to her. "You might not be a combat monster, but you're indisputably useful, whether you're inside your mountain or not. When we first met, I thought you were just a damsel in distress. You aren't. You've got nerve, and you're willing to do what it takes. You didn't waste any time trying to talk your brother down. You saw him coming, realized what he was coming for, and told the right people without hesitation. If you hadn't, he would have caught us before I could get set, and we'd have lost people. Given how big and ridiculously strong he was, we may have lost everything. You're the reason that didn't happen."