Viridian Gate Online- Doom Forge

by J. A. Hunter

  During my quest to assemble the pieces of the Jade Lord Set—and unite the six named Dokkalfar clans in the process—I’d learned that the Nangkri dynasty had a strong alliance with the Dwarves, once upon a time and way, way back. And that alliance had eventually resulted in the downfall of the dynasty after they’d accidentally released an ancient dragon, Arzokh the Sky Maiden, during a mining operation. I’d had no idea just how strong that alliance was, but a glance at those paintings, those tapestries, told me it had deep roots.

  The rooms, and there were so many it was almost hard to keep track of them all, were likewise preserved. Leather lounge chairs, velvet divans, high-backed chairs and long banquet tables perfect for entertaining guests. There were mirrors, art, and stained-glass windows positively everywhere flooding the castle with light and vibrant color. We found a number of well-stocked libraries and plush studies, but all the books were of the more mundane variety. There were guest rooms with pillow-topped mattresses and copper, claw-footed tubs. A huge kitchen with a pantry that had seen better days.

  Aside from the food, everything was remarkably well preserved.

  There were no mobs. Anywhere. And Cutter didn’t find a single trap either, which once more set warning bells off in my head. But most disconcerting of all? We didn’t find anything that even hinted at the lost tome we’d come to find. It took us hours to search the place—there were five main levels and a host of towers—and hours more to tear through the books in the many libraries, and after all of that we’d come up empty-handed. Around 9 AM we took a break in one of the dining halls—a vast room with thirty-foot ceilings, a crystal chandelier, and a fireplace bigger than my old IRL apartment.

  We were eating dried jerky, cheese wheels, and chunks of crusty bread. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but it still managed to taste like heaven—like all food in V.G.O. We ate in a tense silence. We’d already spent a big chunk of our morning here, and we were still no closer to finding Carl’s book. Which meant we were no closer to getting into Stone Reach or unlocking the secret behind the Doom Forge. I pulled up my interface, checking the time. I had about three hours before the clock rolled over on my Death-Head timer. And when that happened, I’d get punched in the face with the first in a long line of nasty debuffs.

  “Well, what do we do now?” Abby finally said after finishing off a piece of bread. “I feel like we’ve gone over this place with a fine-toothed comb. But if the book is here, I don’t know where. So do we keep looking, or do we cut our losses and head back?”

  “We’ve already spent so long, though,” Ari piped up, a piece of bread no bigger than a thumbnail in her hands. “It seems like we should probably just finish. Keep going until we find it.”

  “Nope,” Abby replied. “That’s the sunk cost fallacy. It’s the idea that you keep dumping time or money or effort into something because you’ve already invested a lot—you need it to work. But there’s no guarantee that if we keep going, we’ll find anything.”

  Everyone was quiet for a long beat.

  “But it has to be here,” Carl said, his voice resolute and determined. More so than I’d heard out of him... since ever. “We’re so close. I can feel it. There’s no way my order would send me here unless there was a way to complete the quest.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The links between Eitri and Nangkri were too strong to ignore, but I didn’t know what else to do. I sat silent, deep in thought, staring morosely at the fire blazing in the fireplace. Abby had kindly gotten it going for us, banishing some of the cold from the air.

  The answer came to me a few minutes later as I watched the flames dance and bob like anguished specters. It was a bolt of pure inspiration. “The smokestacks,” I said softly, mind whirling. “When we flew in, I saw a whole slew of smokestacks. Chimneys. Probably connected to a forge or foundry. Carl,” I said, eyeing the Cleric. “You said that Eitri came here to work when he wasn’t down in the Storme Marshes, right?”

  “Right,” he said, excitement flickering to life in his eyes. “But we haven’t found anything that looks like a workshop or forge.”

  I shot him a finger gun. “Right on the head. We’ve found just about everything else. Beds. Dining halls. Libraries. But not that.”

  “And there’s no way a demigod of the forge wouldn’t have an operational forge inside his own giant Keep,” Ari mused out loud.

  “Exactly. Those smokestacks tell me that his workshop is here. We just missed it somehow.”

  “How, though?” Abby asked. “Seriously. We’ve searched this place from top to bottom. Every level. Every room. Every hallway. Every book. Cutter, you didn’t find any sort of secret doors or hidden rooms, did you?”

  “Not a one. If there’s something hidden around this bloody place, it isn’t hidden by mechanical means.”

  “But what about non-mechanical means?” Ari piped in. “If this Eitri was a demigod, then it’s possible he had access to higher magics.” She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “In the Realm of Order, illusion magic is as common as air. And illusions can’t be detected by most Rogues—I know that from experience. It takes either a powerful Dispel Magic spell or...” She faltered. She took to the air, wings buzzing with manic life as her color turned a brilliant gold. Excitement. “Or someone like him.” She jabbed a tiny finger straight out at Carl. “Back in the Smoked Pig. You saw right through my glamor.”

  “Yeah.” Carl shrugged one shoulder. “One of my Passive abilities is True Sight. Lets me detect evil, pierce illusions. That kinda thing.”

  “That has to be it,” I said. “There’s a workshop here somewhere, but we missed it because we didn’t know what to look for. Give me a second.” I pressed my eyes shut, recalling the image of the Keep as we approached from the air. The neat row of chimneys had been near the back of the Keep, butting up against the sheer face of a rocky canyon. I ran through the layout of the Keep in my head. That had to be near the kitchen. Had to be. “Come on, I think I know where we need to go.” I pushed my chair back with a screech.

  We tore from the banquet hall, took a flight of stairs down, and dashed along the main corridor, taking turn after turn until we were back in the kitchen. The room was massive and filled with the standard kitchen fare. An open-faced brick oven. Wooden tables and counters. Racks filled with cast-iron pans, sheet trays, and enormous stockpots. The shelves were full of foodstuffs that had seen their best days several hundred years ago. None of that seemed especially suspicious, but an arched stone fireplace against the right wall had caught my eye the first time we’d come through.

  There was a metal grate in front—a standard safeguard—and the floor inside the fireplace was covered in age-old black soot and ash. All perfectly normal. The thing that really stood out, though, was the sheer height of the archway. Had to be nine feet tall, easy. Big enough for someone like Eitri to walk through without so much as having to stoop. The fireplace was also against the eastern wall, which, hypothetically, was where the smokestacks should’ve been.

  “Here.” I nodded toward the fireplace. “You see anything out of the ordinary, Carl?”

  The Cleric shuffled forward, a mixture of uncertainty and trepidation marring his movements. He hunched forward, hands on his knees, nose scrunched, eyes squinted. “Huh,” he grunted. “There is a weird symbol right in the middle of the wall. Not very big. Maybe the size of my palm.” He stuck his arm straight out, pointing at bare stone wall. There was no mark. No ward. At least not one that I could see. “Hold on a sec.” He straightened, edged his way around the upright iron grate, and inched forward until his face was less than a foot away from the soot-stained wall.

  “Yeah, right there.” He extended a plump, quivering finger, tracing some unseen mark etched into the stone. As his finger moved, golden light blossomed along the fire-blackened stones, revealing a strange rune of swooping curls and angular lines. I’d never seen anything like it before, though that didn’t mean much. I barely qualified as a Runic Scrivener. As Carl finished tracing the final twi
st, the wall shimmered and groaned.

  The bricks broke apart, turning, shifting, somehow folding in on themselves in a Tetris-like jigsaw puzzle until the wall was simply gone.

  In its place was an arched doorway that connected to an enormous room of black stone, red brick, and heavy iron.

  “We sure this ain’t the Doom Forge right here?” Forge asked as he took a few tentative steps into the enormous workshop. It was easy to see why he might ask.

  The place was three times the size of the Crafter’s Hall’s smithy, and that was easily the biggest, best-equipped forge the Alliance had in its control. Along the back wall were several stone forges, their smokestacks rising up and up, along with a brick-lined smelter. Huge wooden quenching barrels were set up near each forge. Racks of raw ore and processed ingots lined another wall. There were metal- and wood-topped workstations. Anvils in all shapes and sizes, and more tools than I’d ever seen anywhere.

  There were also several weapon racks and armor stands, though sadly they were empty of finished products. No book to be found, though I felt now more than ever that we were headed in the right direction. And I thought I saw our next step, straight ahead.

  In the very center of the forge was a strange pockmarked silver disk, four feet in diameter, set directly into the marble stonework so it sat flush with the rest of the floor. A dizzyingly complicated set of runes and glyphs twisted around the circle, spiraling inward. Nobody else seemed to notice the metal ring—far too preoccupied with the expansive workshop and all its goodies—but that was only because I knew they couldn’t see the violet energy radiating up in cold waves of power. Calling to me. I’ve been waiting here, just for you, Jack, it seemed to say.

  My feet carried me forward, almost with a will of their own. The black handprint on my forearm—a gift from a dying Murk Shaman, now covered by my bracer—throbbed with a dull pain.

  I dropped to a knee next to the odd metal ring, forged from Darkshard ore, and reverently traced my fingers over the runes in front of me. Arcane power thrummed, little jolts of energy sizzling up through my fingertips, then racing along the length of my arm. I’d seen one of these before, back in the Darkshard mine. The same place I’d first discovered Devil. This was a portal, the making of which I didn’t fully understand. One which opened a semipermanent rift to the Shadowverse. I continued to run my fingers over the pitted surface, tracing the grooves in the metal.

  The throbbing palm print, branded on my skin, pulsed in time to the beating of my heart. Wisps of inky shadow leaked out, transforming into a violet mist.

  The icy cold in my arm grew in intensity, the throbbing now painful; my Spirit gauge took a sharp nosedive a moment later as I triggered my Shadow Stride ability, pushing that power downward into the ring as though I were trying to pull someone into the Shadowverse with me. But instead of slipping through the gossamer-thin wall between the planes, all of my Umbral power funneled directly into the ring like water into a dry sponge.

  I pulled my hand away as the pain became too much to endure, and as I did a dark portal erupted inside the confines of the ring. It looked almost like a free-standing door, built from pure shadow energy. I couldn’t even begin to fathom why the portal was here—what use would the Keep’s owner, Eitri, possibly have for something like this?—but I knew that the end of our quest lay on the other side of the shimmering gateway.

  “Guys,” I croaked, feeling a bit light-headed and wobbly from opening the portal. “Guys,” I said again, this time my voice stronger. Surer.

  “Yeah, what is,” Cutter started, but cut off as he caught sight of the portal. “Oh bollocks,” he said, running a hand through his dirty-blond hair. “Shadowverse, eh?”

  “Shadowverse,” I said in somber confirmation.

  “I knew this was too bloody easy.”

  “Wait,” Carl said. “What is that?”

  “Unless I’m completely wrong,” I replied, “this is the way to your book. Time to go find out what’s on the other side...”

  The Other Side

  IT TURNED OUT THAT Void Terrors were on the other side. So. Many. Void Terrors. Enough that I’d put one of the unspent proficiency points I’d been hoarding for once I hit level 50 into my Void Terror skill. I hadn’t found a creature that could rival Devil or Nikko and her pack members—Kong and Mighty Joe—but I wanted to be ready in case I ran across something that would make an excellent addition to the team. Better safe than sorry.

  The Void Terrors waylaid us almost the moment we set foot in the cold colorless world of the Shadowverse. And it seemed this place was making up for not having any mobs in the main compound by having twice the number shoved down in the warren of craggy stone hallways that ran below the mansion. We’d been at it for two hours—nearly endless combat with hardly a breather in between bouts.

  “Forge, take point!” I yelled as a fresh wave of hell rushed us from down a twisting corridor.

  This time it was brood of nightmare-inducing creatures called [Void Strikers], scuttling, insectoid creatures that looked like a bad mashup between an enormous scorpion and a centaur. Each was the size of a horse, perched on six armored legs covered in cruel barbs, and sported two—yes, two—stinger-tipped tails, which oozed a viscous purple venom. Protruding from their bug-like frames was a humanoid torso protected by heavy chitin as tough as the toughest plate mail. The Strikers had arms sprouting from those torsos, but each limb was capped with wicked claws powerful enough to take off an arm or leg with ease. A too-human head littered with a host of glassy-black eyes finished the horrifying creatures off.

  Nightmarish only began to cover them and all the other horrors skulking around down here. Still, this wasn’t our first team dive. And after two hours of grinding, we had this down to a science.

  “Abby, dual fire walls,” I barked. “Carl, trigger Focus Aggression. Ari, augment with Transfixing Orb.” In a heartbeat, roaring flames exploded from the floors on my left and right. Those walls were as straight and precise as a surgeon’s incision, tapering inward, forming a natural funnel and choke point where Forge waited with his battle-axe raised. Cutter crouched behind the beef-slab Risi, using him as a living shield. Every few seconds he would slip to one side, hurling a conjured dagger at the Terrors frantically trying to get past the flame walls. His blades sliced through their chitinous armor, opening deep wounds that spewed blue-black blood.

  Ari’s wings fluttered with manic life as she moved into position, the blue glow from her body bouncing off the walls. She raised her minute hands. A moment later, a trail of orange and purple zipped straight up like a bottle rocket and exploded by the ceiling in a shower of brilliant, strobing light. A hypnotic attack, which distracted any enemy stupid enough to look. Instead of guttering, the strobing light lingered in the air, growing in intensity. The colors shifted from orange to crimson to azure to emerald to violet then back again, washing the room in a never-ending kaleidoscope of light.

  A handful of the Void Strikers stopped dead in their tracks, inhuman eyes raised up, reverently fixated on the beautiful ball of light. Some wasn’t all, though. Transfixing Orb was less effective on higher-level mobs and creatures with increased Intelligence. These things qualified for both.

  Carl—positioned near the rear of the formation, not far from Abby—chanted, and a crimson glow built around him in a nimbus of light. His feet shuffled as he waved a wooden rod, capped by a metal ball the size of my fist. His Cleric’s scepter, though it looked more like a cheerleader’s baton if you asked me. Nevertheless, he was an awfully effective spellcaster, and it was oddly nice to have a proper Cleric on the team for once. As he finished his spell, the light around him fizzled and disappeared, reappearing around Forge a moment later. That bloody light looked like the cloak of an ancient god of war.

  The encroaching Void Strikers immediately homed in on the tank, throwing themselves at him with hateful passion—pretty much ignoring everyone else in the process.

  Carl’s chanting changed, Life Tether activating
around him in a shroud of gold. A wrist-thick strand of magic snaked out, connecting to Forge’s back, feeding him a constant supply of HP and Stamina. Meanwhile, Abby hurled fireballs, Amara fired corrosive-tipped arrows from her enchanted bow, and Cutter continued corralling the creatures with his flashing blades.

  Under normal circumstances, I would’ve leapt directly into the thick of things, using my Shadow Stride ability to make it to the back of the enemy formation—taking out their casters, then systematically working my way through the ranks, ensuring they couldn’t mount a proper defense. Unfortunately, since we were already inside the Shadowverse, my most potent ability didn’t work. At all. And my second most potent ability, Night Cyclone, was likewise just as useless. Probably for the same reason. I couldn’t rip a hole in the Material Plane to summon the vortex, because I wasn’t in the Material Plane.

  So instead, I played the role of DPS caster, support fighter, and occasional Cleric—casting buffs, auras, and throwing out Dark Shield to intercept nasty ranged spells.

  The Void Strikers had quite a few of those, it seemed. A trio of the monsters loitering near the back hurled bolts of shadow power from their swaying scorpion tails. The attacks were not so different from my own Umbra Bolts, but were far larger—each orb the size of a basketball—and hit like a pro MMA fighter. With a flick of my left hand, I summoned Dark Shield. A churning semi-translucent wall of purple and black took shape in front of Forge a moment before the Umbra attacks hit. The orbs of power exploded on impact, wind and light rushing out, the force of the assault pushing me back a step.