by Adam Drake
But it was enough. As I hit the wall of the gorge I activated my sure-footed ability. My feet locked into place on rocky perches. For a few moments I hung on for dear life. The sound of the lava falls roaring down into the abyss was deafening.
An indicator on my view screen told me that my avatar was close to passing out from the heat exposure. I needed to move, and fast.
Upwards I climbed, taking care to have good hand grips as my feet would be doing most of the work. As I pulled my way up my avatar's health status improved a little. Soon, I reached a ledge. But before I hoisted myself over I switched on my Shadow ability. Now would be a bad time to be spotted.
I peeked over. The ledge extended back several paces exposing a path that followed the edge of the gorge. A wide tunnel entrance opened wide to my right.
My avatar started to shake. The strain of the fall, the heat, and subsequent climb had finally gotten to her.
I pulled myself over and lay flat on my back for a few moments. It was enough for my avatar to recover and for me to stand.
Suddenly, a pair of Rock Golems emerged from the tunnel. I froze and double checked to see that my Shadow was still active.
The two large creatures sauntered by and followed the path up the ledge. They hadn't seen me.
After a few minutes they followed the path around a turn and vanished from sight. I sighed in relief.
They were heading upwards whereas I needed to keep going down. Or so I hoped. I moved to the other side of the ledge and sat up against the wall, blending more into the shadows there. While I had a quick rest, I called up my quest log.
'The source for the Demon King's ability to enter this realm is near. Find and destroy it.'
Okay, I thought. Had to be a door, or rift? And if I found it, how the heck was I expected to destroy it? And wouldn't the Demon King have something to say on the subject?
I shrugged. Got to do as the quest log says, even if I'm still clueless.
Another Rock Golem appeared from the tunnel. I went still, but felt confident the shadows I crouched in added to my invisibility.
The Rock Golem walked by, but when it reached the spot in front of me it paused. My heart froze in my chest.
The Golem turned its head, and I found smoldering yellow eyes looking at me.
Uh-oh. I can't fight one of these things on my own.
I glanced to my left and right. No room to escape. When this thing attacked I would be in deep trouble.
For a few moments it stared at me. Or so I thought that was what it was doing. Then, it reached forward.
Fight time! I thought, tensing up. My sword was now in my grip. The moment I raised to swing it I would be visible, but I'd wait until the last moment to strike.
The Golem reached toward me, then over my shoulder. I froze. From the rock wall behind me it grabbed at something. It wrenched away a piece of blue ore and held it up to its face, staring at it.
Then its lower face cracked open to form a mouth, and it stuffed the ore into it. It bit down, and the ore cracked.
The Golem then continued walking, chewing on its snack.
I sagged with relief. Once the creature had turned out of view I darted into the tunnel it had emerged from.
I was really tired. Logging off and getting some sleep felt like a wonderful idea, but real world priorities needed to wait.
Keeping to the walls I edged my way down the tunnel. I did not encounter any more Rock Golems or anything else, but I kept up my guard.
The tunnel ended at a huge opening, and beyond I could see a massive cavern of some kind.
Cautiously, I entered.
The place was gigantic. Easily larger than any chamber or cavern I'd ever seen before.
It was circular in shape with a high vaulted space above that vanished from view. Although it was brightly lit, I saw no torches or glowing stones. It had to be magically powered.
On one side of the vast cavern were different piles of blue ore shaped into a kind of pylon. There were hundreds of them arranged like a bizarre rocky orchard. Each blue ore pylon emitted a blue ray of light that shot out to the far side of the cavern.
These beams of light struck what I thought was a huge round lake in the floor. But the dark waters that sucked up the lights were something else entirely. They were clouds. I was looking down into another realm. Red lightening flashed deep within these clouds.
It wasn't a lake at all, but a portal. The blue ore must have been feeding it somehow. Maybe, even keeping the portal open?
The other section of the massive cavern was empty. Just flat featureless ground that stretched out to meet the walls. A huge archway led to a sloping tunnel, and from my vantage point I could make out the far entrance. It looked to lead outside.
Then it hit me. I was inside the Demon Spine that loomed over Ashbrook. The Demon King's domain.
What to do? I checked my quest log, but the message had not changed. I looked over at the strange forest of glowing blue pylons. Those must be keeping the portal open. If I could stop them, would the portal close and cast the Demon King back to the Demon Void where he came from?
There was one way to find out.
I ran across the chamber until I reached the closest pylon. It towered above me. The entire thing emanated a low hum and pulsed a blue light up toward its top. From there the light shot straight out to vanish into the large portal in the ground.
Not certain of what would happen if I touched it, I backed up a few paces and summoned a full quiver of arrows. Then I aimed and fired.
The arrow struck the pylon at its thickest point and instantly the ore cracked and shattered. Its light winked off and the beam which fed the portal stopped.
Huh, I thought. This is going to be easy.
Something at the corner of my eye snagged my attention. At the last moment, I dodged and rolled along the ground.
Someone charged over the spot I had been in and then crashed heavily into another pylon, which in turn crumbled and its light winked off.
I shook my head and looked at the person who just tried to kill me.
My jaw dropped in shock.
It was Thorm.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
For a moment I stared at him, stunned. What the heck was he doing here?
He was hunched over from his charge into the pylon and stood.
His face had warped to the dimensions of a potato, with the remnants of a blonde mustache smeared across his jigsaw face. What remained of his bright armor had broken and the metal shards fused with his bloated flesh. One arm had elongated to touch the ground and his great broadsword stuck out from the ball of meat that had been a fist. All his flesh was laced with thick black veins.
This was not Thorm. Not anymore. It was his old avatar now under the influence of the Demon King.
Before I could take solace in the fact the real Thorm was prancing around a field chasing pigs with a wooden sword, this Mutant-Thorm vomited a geyser of black fluid at me.
I scrambled out of the way as the horrid liquid splashed where I had stood.
Keeping back, and circling to his side, I assessed the situation. There was no way I could take him on my own. Not even close. This mutant version of Thorm was far more powerful than the real Thorm had ever been.
I needed to stay out of its way and destroy the pylons, of which there was so many. It would take awhile. And the entire time I needed to keep Mutant-Thorm from bashing me or vomiting me into an acidic puddle.
Mutant-Thorm raised his huge sword-fist and charged.
I Shadowed and dodged to the side. The mutant swung wildly, and looked about in confusion, unable to see me.
I ran through the pylon orchard to the other side, then took aim with my bow and fired into one of them. It shattered and its blue light beam winked off.
There was a roar, and I turned to spot Mutant-Thorm lumbering toward me. He knocked over two pylons in his haste and their beams went off.
Hey, I thought. I may be on to something.
Back into Shadow and instead of dodging I ran right past him. When he reached the spot where I had stood he swung the sword-fist against another pylon which collapsed. Another beam died out.
Okay, this might be fun.
For several long minutes I played this suicidal game of peek-a-boo with the lumbering monstrosity. Each time I fired at a pylon, he'd come running over like a bull in a china shop, knocking pylons over, and then swinging at the spot I had vacated.
He was doing a better job at destroying them than me.
Soon, over two thirds of the pylons were blue rubble on the ground. The light feeding into the portal had dimmed significantly.
But once I shot at the next pylon, the ground shook violently. Mutant-Thorm fell over, crashing into more pylons.
The shaking continued.
When I hit the next pylon, the shaking intensified so much I had to keep my sure-footed ability continuously active.
A chat request popped up on my screen.
Annoyed, I opened it as I dodged another charge from the Mutant-Thorm.
Mudhoof was on the screen. “Vee! You're alive!” He looked to be running.
I rolled out of the way of a sword-fist swing and went into Shadow as I scrambled around a pylon.
“Where are you?” I whispered. Mutant-Thorm thumped by, one huge eye scanning around for me.
“Coming to you now!” Mudhoof said.
I looked around and spotted him in the distance at the very far edge of the cavern. Feign ran along beside him, robes billowing about.
I was about to offer a grateful response when I spotted two other figures appear from a side tunnel behind Mudhoof. They ran at top speed to catch up to the minotaur and mage.
It was the centaur-samurai and the stone mage.
“Look out! Behind you!” I shouted. On the screen, Mudhoof spun about, but I didn't see more because Mutant-Thorm had heard me.
The contorted monster blindly slammed his sword down at the spot my voice came from.
I jumped but not before the huge knuckles of his fist glanced heavily off my back. The contact sent me sprawling in a heap along the ground where I crashed against a pylon.
As I tried to get me senses back, the ground heaved and shattered before me. I scrambled back grasping at the ore pylon for balance, my sure-footed ability switching off having used it too many times that day.
A chasm gaped before me and the pylon I hung on to suddenly crumbled. Shouting in surprise, I slipped over the edge.
With both my hands I clung to the chasm edge. Behind me came a roar. Mutant-Thorm, having regained his balance spotted me and charged.
This would not end well, I thought morbidly. I pulled myself up, but I wasn't fast enough.
When Mutant-Thorm reached the chasm edge he raised his meaty sword-fist to smite me for the last time.
The ground he was on suddenly shifted and with a mighty crack, broke off. It dropped straight down, taking the monstrosity with it. Even as he fell, the thing took a swing at me.
I had to heave my body up and curl my legs under me as the sword clanged mere inches from my butt.
Then I saw the Mutant-Thorm vanish into the dusty darkness of the chasm, roaring all the way down.
I finally got myself up over the ledge and crawled a safe distance away. But what was really safe anymore?
A glance toward my friends told me they were joined in full battle. Mudhoof, armed with his uber ax, traded blows with the centaur who wielded a long handled halberd. Feign was back pedaling away from the stone mage who cast boulders at him. As the boulders shot forward, Feign summoned a large wedge of ice in front of it, deflecting the rolling projectile enough to miss crushing him. But I did not know how long either one of them had.
The portal swirled like an angry black whirlpool. The blue beams of light were now a handful, and it seemed that dashing the last of them would close the portal for good.
As the ground continued to heave and shift, I managed to stand. The last of the pylons needed to be destroyed. This was it. Only a few more to go.
A loud voice echoed throughout the huge cavern. “You dare defy the One?” It said.
I looked. There, in large entryway stood a huge figure I'd hoped to never encounter again. Death personified and the giver of re-rolls.
The Demon King.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For a moment I could only stare at the massive figure of the Demon King.
He was a god. I'd never heard of anyone killing a god before, let alone taking one on in battle.
I was a fair distance from him, but the others were much closer.
Feign had frozen the stone mage who was encased in a block of ice. The ice mage turned to face the approaching Demon King. He, too, stood paralyzed with fear.
The centaur-samurai appeared to have the upper hand dueling with Mudhoof, but when the Demon King appeared he looked in the god's direction. This was the opening Mudhoof needed. The minotaur struck, and the centaur was cut in two; human half tumbling one way, the horse half the other. The centaur-samurai's inventory items all spilled into a neat pile on the ground, ready to be claimed.
Mudhoof waved his arms in the air in victory. His chat window was still open at the corner of my vision. “I get your stuff! I get your stuff!” The gleeful minotaur sing-songed.
“Mudhoof! Look out!” I cried into the chat screen.
The bull warrior whirled around and looked up.
The Demon King glided into the huge chamber and glared down at my friends. He raised his wooden staff up and smashed its end to the floor.
The ground heaved and buckled. I fell over and conked my head on a pile of ore. Above, the Demon Spine cracked and huge chunks fell. Large rents opened up revealing the blue sky above. I did not know how long this place would remain standing.
Feign had turned to run, but the impact of the staff was too great. The floor cracked open next to him, and both he and the frozen stone mage fell from view.
Mudhoof had lost his balance and lay on his side. He gave the Demon King a venomous glare.
I regained my senses and stood. This time I did not hesitate and fired into the nearest pylon; its light winked out and the portal gate rumbled. The clouds within sped up, swirling faster and faster.
The Demon King turned to look at me. “Stop that, worm,” he said, his voice louder than the cracking stone around me. “Or I will have my minions feed upon your flesh for an eternity.”
My response to his goofy dialog was to shoot another pylon.
The Demon King roared, and glided in my direction, raising his staff.
“Hey, Demon Twit!” Mudhoof shouted from the chat window. “Catch this!”
I looked to Mudhoof in the distance. He heaved his ax over his head with both hands, then using all his strength threw it. The uber ax was like a silver buzzsaw as it whipped through the air.
Amazingly, the ax buried itself into the shin of the Demon King.
The god roared, again, this time in pain. He stopped and pointed his staff at Mudhoof.
“Watch it, Muddie!” I cried, but it was too late.
Black lightening arced from the tip of the huge wooden staff and struck Mudhoof. The minotaur staggered back, black magical light exploding against his chest.
But nothing happened. Mudhoof stood against the magical barrage but did not mutate or transform like Thorm had.
The Demon King stopped the assault, no doubt perplexed.
In the chat window, Mudhoof held up the little white crystal. “It worked, Vee! Go figure!”
A roar from the Demon King brought more debris down from the ceiling. He glided toward Mudhoof. The minotaur had managed to tick off a god.
“Get out of there, Muddie! Head back to the tunnels!” It was the only real option he had.
Mudhoof shook his head. “Can't. This is it. It's up to you. Keep doing whatever it is you're doing. I'll try to slow him down a little.” He glanced directly into screen. “It has been an honor questing with you, Vee.”
“No, Muddie!” I yelled. “Don't!” But it didn't matter.
Mudhoof lowered his horns, snorting steam from his huge nostrils. Then he charged straight at the approaching Demon King.
“RE-ROLL!!!!!” He shouted.
The Demon King stopped, pulled his staff back and swung it down like a colossal golf club. It hit the maniacal minotaur with incredible force.
