Nightmare Keep (Euphoria Online Book 2)

by Phil Tucker

  Delphina was fully healed, and probably had her mana points back. She immediately set to weaving a cat’s cradle of glowing red lines, then threw the construct toward where Lagash in my body was curving in toward her. At the last moment she ducked behind a column and disappeared.

  I gritted my teeth and put on a burst of speed, activating Suicide Charge, Demon Speed and Unstoppable Wrath once more. I fell upon Delphina just as she unleashed a spell upon me, causing my vision to blur and begin to fold in on itself as if I were staring through a kaleidoscope tube, but it was too late for her. I swung my falchion with grim ferocity, and she died.

  A moment later, my vision cleared. Lagash emerged from behind another column, and I stared mutely down at Delphina as she faded away.

  Neither of us said anything, and for the first time I was able to make out the slow grind of the revolving pillars.

  “We’re outclassed here,” said Lagash. It was truly weird hearing my own voice. “This keep’s meant for much, much higher levels. It’s not just the mobs that are too tough. We’re failing to understand how the keep works. How to solve it.”

  “Solve it?” I asked, sinking into a crouch so as to take the weight off my wounded leg. “Yeah. I see what you mean.”

  Lagash sheathed the Void Blade. “We already know the keep’s larger on the inside than without. Which means there’s no limit to how many encounters we might have to face. Forcing our way through could be pointless.”

  I forced myself to think, to draw on the years of gaming experience I’d accumulated, to engage the gamer mindset that had helped me overcome and outwit so many scenarios.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’ve been approaching this as if it were a real, set map. I’ve not been meta-gaming or thinking strategy at all.” I snorted. “Just survival, really.”

  “Right.” Lagash crouched before me, eyeing the damage I’d taken. “You could stand to think more about survival, though. I’m partial to that body.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” I winced as I shifted my weight. “Going from my character to yours was like upgrading from a golf cart to a racing car. Your options here are pretty overwhelming.”

  She tried not to smile too smugly and barely managed. “You’ve got a decent setup yourself. I’d not appreciated how versatile darkblades are. Even in a room this well-lit you’re pretty good at hit and run.”

  I laughed. “Whereas you seem like you can run through walls with this body. Strength twenty-four? Con twenty-six!?”

  “Yeah.” Her smile faded. “Any idea how we can swap?”

  I surveyed the room with its revolving mirrored pillars. “Nope. Maybe the effect only works while we’re in here.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’ve put a lot of work into Lagash. I want her back.”

  For a moment, I was tempted to ask about the player. Was she a boy or a girl? What was their real name? But I set that urge aside. “That makes two of us.”

  “Fair enough,” Lagash said. “So. Thoughts on our next move?”

  I rose experimentally onto the balls of my feet. The orc body was completely healed. I felt light, lethal, and explosive. “We need to find a way to get in touch with Lotharia. She didn’t appear here to fight us, and spoke to me at the start in a way that made me think she was somehow mixed up with the keep. So let’s leave the room, see if our bodies swap back, then try to summon her somehow and get more answers.”

  “Deal,” said Lagash. “What’s your connection to her? You guys involved?”

  “No,” I said, but coming from Lagash I didn’t feel embarrassed or defensive. It was a clinical question. “Not yet. I guess we were developing feelings for each other, maybe. But nothing had happened.”

  “There’s got to be a reason she was pulled in deeper while Vanatos was just recycled as a mob,” she said. “No ideas?”

  “She was heavily tainted by a necrotic staff when she ran in,” I said. “But then again, Michaela being undead means she was necrotic, too.”

  “Michaela vanished just before I could kill her,” said Lagash. “The only one who did. Perhaps there’s a connection there.” Lagash drew the Void Blade, then nodded toward the door at the far end of the hall. “Let’s see what lies on the other side.”

  17

  I stepped through the doorway into the hallway beyond. It was bare and lit by infrequent torches that gave way to darkness perhaps twenty yards ahead. No doorways, no decorations.

  I activated Darkvision. The hallway beyond the torchlight extended for another few yards before turning into a tunnel of unworked stone; it was as if the builder of the keep had lost hope and abandoned his attempt to civilize a cave system.

  Lagash stepped up behind me and we glanced at each other, expectant. Seconds went by, and no reversion took place. After perhaps thirty seconds or so, I sighed. “Looks like the swap’s not so easily undone.”

  Lagash twisted my face into a scowl. “I’m really starting to hate this place.”

  I turned back to the hallway. “You’re starting to sound like Delphina. All right. I’ve no desire to enter that cave system up ahead. Ready for something different?”

  “Let’s do it,” said Lagash.

  I hesitated, unsure how to proceed, then stepped up to the wall and placed my hand flat against the stone. It was cool to the touch, slightly damp, and I felt the fool as I closed my eyes and tried to reach out in some way for Lotharia.

  I thought of her face. Recalled the way her lips would curve when she was happily surprised. The single vertical bar that would appear between her brows when she chewed over a problem. Her laughter, her habit of chewing on a strand of hair when upset.

  Lotharia wasn’t her avatar. She was the player behind the image, and as such I tried to focus my thoughts on her. Tried to summon the warmth she evoked in me. The way her wry comments had drawn my laughter even when I’d been on the brink of despair. Her own secret pain that had darkened her eyes on more than one occasion.

  Lotharia, I thought. Are you out there?

  I tried to sense an answer. From the darkness behind my eyelids, I tried to envision her swimming through the stone toward me. Emerging from whatever prison she was held in. I could feel the powerful pound of my body’s pulse. Became aware of the sound of my own breathing.

  Focus, I told myself, and pushed past that physicality back out into the darkness, the shadows in which I’d made my home these past few weeks. Lotharia!

  Nothing. I stepped back and dropped my hand, fighting hard to control my bitter disappointment.

  Lagash’s gaze was flicking from me to the wall, eyebrow raised. “And?”

  “And nothing.” My orcish body imparted a rumbling growl to my words. “Not sure what I was trying to do, and it clearly didn’t work.”

  Lagash rubbed at her – my – jawline. “Then perhaps there’s an angle we’re not considering—”

  “Chris?”

  Lotharia’s voice made me jump. Her face emerged from the stone, pushing through as if rising from a pool of molten lead, eyes wide and sightless, her face as pale as alabaster.

  “Lotharia?”

  She was staring at Lagash, of course, but turned to me, confused. “Chris?”

  “Here,” I said, stepping forward. “Lotharia, it’s me. We’ve switched bodies.”

  “I’m fading,” she said, voice quiet, resigned. “The me in Lotharia dwindles. Where are you? I can’t wait much longer.”

  “Ask her—” began Lagash but I waved her short.

  “How do we get to you?” I asked.

  “I’ve been watching you,” she said, face starting to sink into the wall. “Like mice trapped in a maze with no exit. Watching you through the walls that are your prison. In this place designed to trap another…”

  “Lotharia,” I said, fighting for calm. “How do we get to you?”

  “I can’t wait much longer
,” she whispered, the stone wall closing over her ears, seeping up around her cheeks. “I’m in the darkness, Chris. I’m in the dark.”

  Then she was gone.

  “Damn it!” said Lagash. “This girlfriend of yours is fucking useless at actionable advice.”

  I stared at where she’d disappeared. Such loneliness. Such sorrow. The thought of her very sense of self dying away while we fumbled around in these fights was excruciating.

  “Call her back,” said Lagash. “And this time let me do the talking. Simple, direct questions.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “She told us everything she could.”

  “Which wasn’t enough,” snapped Lagash. “How did—”

  I raised a hand. “Wait a minute. Think on what she said.”

  “That she’s watching us through the walls,” said Lagash. “We knew that.”

  “No, we surmised, we didn’t know. Now we do. These corridors and hallways are a maze meant to trap us. So moving forward is a waste of time. That’s confirmation. We need to move out of them.”

  Lagash stood silent. I could feel him fighting for patience, for calm.

  “At the end there. She said she’s in the darkness. Waiting for us.”

  “Right?” Lagash’s tone was strained but calm once more. “I imagine it’s pretty dark inside a stone wall. How does that help us?”

  “My avatar,” I said. “My ability called Shadow Step. It allows me to move from one place of shadow to another.”

  “I know,” said Lagash. “I used it to—oh.”

  “Exactly.” I couldn’t help but grin. “In the past I’ve not always known where to direct it, have done Hail Mary kind of moves that have popped me out in random places. Maybe we can try that.”

  “And use Shared Darkness to bring you with me.” Lagash ran a hand through her hair – my hair, damn it – and then smiled back. “OK. Sounds like a plan. Any pointers?”

  “You can kind of aim where you want to come out,” I said. “Activate the power and then will yourself into the wall. With a little luck, it’ll lock onto the closest darkness in that direction and take us there.”

  “Well, all right then. Let’s kill these torches so I can save on mana. Your avatar is down to five points. Come on.”

  We jogged down the length of the hall, pulling torches from their sconces and grinding them against the floor, putting them out till at last we were swallowed by a darkness so absolute I could barely make out my own hand even with Darkvision. Lagash reached out to take hold of my shoulder and I drew both falchions.

  She took a deep breath and the the darkness writhed. There was a moment of piercing cold, and suddenly we were through.

  We emerged into a bewildering new reality. Gone were the walls, the floor and ceiling: we stood upon a massive branch of glistening silver material the size of a redwood tree that extended before us only to divide into further branches, connecting with others in a manner I could only compare to images I’d seen of neurons in our brains.

  This forest of connecting silver strands was illuminated by a soft, pearlescent glow, and hung in the void, growing smaller and fading into the gloom in every direction. There was no wind, but the air was frigid, as if we’d stepped into a walk-in freezer, and my breath puffed out before me.

  The sheer immensity of the drop into nothingness caused me to fall into a crouch, and I placed a hand on the silver surface of the branch only to find it sticky and cold. With disgust I pulled my hand free, dozens of strands of goo stretching from my palm to the branch only to attenuate and finally snap.

  “What the hell?” whispered Lagash, slowly turning in a circle by my side. “What is this place?”

  “I’ve no clue,” I whispered back.

  “Look,” said Lagash. “You see over there? I can make out a hallway.”

  She was right. Stretching through the darkness was a shadowy corridor, translucent and barely discernible against the black. Faint specks of light burned where torches hung, and I followed its trajectory to a large room that I realized was the feasting hall in which we’d fought.

  Now I knew what to look for I saw hallways and corridors all around us, floating in the void. They moved slowly, changing their configuration, some fading away altogether while new ones appeared as if birthed by the shadows. Some held mobs within them, groups of warriors or eldritch-looking monsters standing quietly as they awaited visitors. Others were altogether empty.

  “Just like she said,” whispered Lagash. “A maze. We’d never have broken free.”

  The scope of the keep’s innards was chilling. I tried to trace our path back to the ground floor with its kitchen and entrance, but kept losing the trail. Hallways branched off into new rooms, stairways descended to new levels – we’d never have been able to return.

  “What is this place?” I asked, repeating Lagash’s own words. “I’ve never seen a dungeon like it.”

  “Me neither,” she said. “My best guess is it’s a dungeon for level forty or fifty players. If I’d known this was what we were getting into I’d never have agreed to come, Vanatos be damned. Hell, I’d not venture in here without an archmagus.”

  “That’s it,” I said, standing once more. “That’s what this is. A trap for an archmagus.” Pieces slid into place, clicked, and I was filled with a sense of certainty. “This must be Albertus’ doing. He gutted the keep and replaced it with… this, whatever it is, in an attempt to trap Jeramy. It’s all just an extremely potent trap.”

  Lagash shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Universal Doctor try to trap a player? Dungeons and quests are designed to challenge and reward, not capture and trap.”

  “We’re still trying to figure that out,” I said. “All we know is that Albertus turned on Jeramy in its attempt to acquire his ‘treasure’. This was part of its plan, but I’m guessing it failed, since Jeramy is supposed to be meditating within his tower.”

  “I still don’t get it,” said Lagash. “Albertus controls all of Euphoria. By definition, there can’t be a ‘treasure’ it can’t acquire. Or have created.”

  “Feel free to come up with a better explanation,” I said. The cold and silence were getting to me. “For now, we’re still no closer to getting free. None of these strands or branches or whatever they are seem to lead anywhere but into the dark.”

  “It’s some kind of web,” said Lagash, raising a foot so that sticky strands stuck to the sole. “And if it’s a web, there’s got to be a spider somewhere.”

  “Xylagothoth,” I said.

  “Exactly. We find it, we kill it, we get out.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine. As good a plan as any. So. Just start walking?”

  “Unless you want to jump.” Lagash moved forward, each step accompanied by a sticky squelching sound. “At least this gooey stuff means we’re not likely to slide off into oblivion.”

  Gravity held us to whichever branch we walked along. When we reached a bifurcation and opted for the right branch that rose up steeply before us, our ‘down’ oriented toward the new branch’s center. I quickly lost all sense of direction, but that growing concern ended when we came across our first cocoon.

  It was a humanoid shaped hummock layered in sticky silk. We stopped; then, with a sense of inevitability, I moved forward and carefully used the tip of my stone falchion to slice open one end.

  “Damn,” whispered Lagash, crouching beside the slit and tearing it open to reveal a waxen face beneath. It was that of a young man, noble in bearing and with flaxen hair strewn across his features. He looked dead, purple around his eyes, lips white.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “No,” said Lagash.

  “Maybe a previous victim of the keep, then,” I said.

  “Maybe.” Lagash sighted along the length of the branch on which we were walking. “Look. More up ahead.�
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  We didn’t recognize the woman in the second hummock, nor the older man in the third, but the fourth contained Falkon. The sight of my friend’s dark features reduced to an ashen pallor shook me hard.

  “He should have respawned in the meadow,” I said. “He died. What the hell’s he doing here?”

  “Trapped,” said Lagash. “If that’s what this place is, then death is no escape.”

  “For, what, the duration of his session in Euphoria?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Falkon’s player works in Euphoria’s IT. If he’s lost his avatar, he’ll be working even now to help us out.”

  “Yeah, fine,” said Lagash. “But remember how slowly time moves here? Help from him could be days or even weeks off.”

  I studied my friend’s profile. Such was the realism of Euphoria, so vital and alive had Falkon seemed, that it really felt as if I were studying a corpse. With a shudder, I drew back. There was nothing more to be said. We stood and resumed our hunt.

  The uniformity of the strands was numbing. Only the occasional hummock broke up the monotony of walking along their sticky lengths. I sheathed the stone falchions and strode ahead, at first eager to find some sign of the spider’s presence, but eventually slowing into a trudging march. The wonder of shifting my center of gravity as I chose different branches along which to walk soon lost its novelty, and even the translucent hallways that morphed in the air before us soon became little more than a background pattern I tuned out.

  What if Xylagothoth chose not to reveal itself? It could defeat us by simply hiding, allowing us to run ourselves ragged in a futile pursuit. Where was Lotharia? I searched the distant branches for some sign of her presence – a shadow, perhaps, a retreating figure – but saw nothing.

  Frustration grew within me. Was it the orc’s nature that was influencing my mood, or my anger alone? I wanted action. Resolution. I hated this trudging limbo. Ever since I arrived in Euphoria I’d had a plan of attack, a means to progress, whether from level to level or goal to goal. Even when Vanatos had kicked me out of Castle Winter I’d moved from one desultory objective to the next, crossing items off my list till I’d run into Brianna.