Viridian Gate Online- Doom Forge

by J. A. Hunter

  Carl carefully rolled up the scroll, hands trembling minutely, then handed it back to me.

  “It is legit,” Cutter replied, hands folded behind his back, staring down his nose at them. “And hows about you don’t give us any more bloody lip or Captain Raginolf will find out about it. And then maybe it’s you who’ll be filleted alive with a blunt war axe, eh?” He offered her a cocky, lopsided grin and waved her out of the way with one hand.

  The corporal’s face turned an alarming shade of red, though she held her tongue. “Well, go on then,” she said, jerking her head toward the staircase and the doors beyond. “You’re clear. Just try not to make a mess of our crime scene, huh? We have Valtarii Diviners from Coldpass coming out in the morning. The less you disturb the bodies, the better.” She nodded at the rest of the guards, who begrudgingly parted like the Red Sea, leaving us a narrow path between the press of their bodies and weapons.

  Cutter sauntered forward, not a care in the world, and the rest of us followed in his wake.

  We climbed the seemingly endless stairs and headed through the heavy wooden doors intricately carved to showcase various scenes of Khalkeús.

  Inside was the set of a slasher flick.

  Blood and bodies everywhere.

  The main hall was rectangular and rather narrow; elaborately decorated masonry columns bearing flickering torches marched down each side, supporting a vaulted ceiling. The columns on each side of the hall formed a series of arched arcades, and beyond those were low-ceilinged wings lined with pews. At the far end of the temple was a nave with an impressive statue of Khalkeús, studded with jewels. Before the statue was an altar and a lectern with a book propped open.

  The place would’ve been beautiful if not for the corpses and body parts strewn around like toys some neglectful kid had forgotten to put away. Limbs in a pile. Pools of congealed blood. Splashes of dark crimson liberally coating the walls.

  Carl raised his hands to his mouth, unshed tears building in his eyes. He dropped to his knees and vomited all over the floor. After a long beat, he wiped at his mouth with the back of a hand, then regained his feet. He looked dazed. Traumatized. As someone who’d largely been confined to a non-adventuring, non-combat role, seeing this level of human carnage was probably a first. And even for someone like me, who’d seen more than my fair share of bloodshed, this was sickening.

  “Oh my God,” Carl choked out as he moved among the bodies. “Why would they do this?” he asked, standing over the fallen body of an elderly man with a long, wispy beard. “I mean, these guys weren’t exactly the friendliest bunch, but just butchering them like this? What would possess someone to do this? It’s... Well, pardon my French, but it’s fuckin’ senseless.”

  “Senseless cruelty, it is what Darklings do,” Amara said matter-of-factly. “It is the way of things. But it is cruelty with a purpose. The bodies, they tell the story. Look.” She padded forward until she stood near a thickset female Dwarf whose throat had been cut from ear to ear. “They started with her. Look at the footprints, at the way the body is slumped. No doubt Peng pushed for information about the Doom Forge. Perhaps the priests refused to talk, or perhaps they simply didn’t have answers to give. Either way, Peng—or one of his lackies—killed this woman as a show of force. Nice. Clean. Quick. A warning of what would happen to the others.

  “But see here.” She moved away from the woman and over to a younger bearded man, his hair thinning badly on the top. His throat had likewise been cut, but it also looked like he’d been fed into a buzz saw—shallow nicks, cuts, and lacerations decorating his exposed flesh. “They went to work on him next, and instead of simply killing, they maimed. Slowly torturing him so as to draw out words. Either from him or from the others. Still, though, these priests, they would not talk.” Everyone was silent as she moved over to a body nearby, similarly mutilated, though this one was also missing his hands.

  Abby looked as physically nauseated as I felt.

  Forge was as stoic as a statue—a Marine who’d seen carnage before and had hardened himself to it—while Ari perched on his shoulder, her illusion dismissed. She’d turned a shade of deep, sorrowful purple, her wings curled inward in defeat. Cutter, on the other hand, looked positively furious. Cutter was many things—a drunk, a thief, a gambler, almost impossibly lazy, even an occasional cutthroat—but he wasn’t a fan of straight-up murder. Killing he could do, so long as it was necessary, but senseless slaughter like this bothered him, even if he tried not to show it.

  “Still, they would not talk,” Amara continued, “and so Peng increased the brutality. By the time he got to him”—she pointed toward the bearded man near Carl—“he was simply enraged. Look at the savagery. It was not carefully administered as with these others. It was done by a man driven by hatred. By sheer frustration and overwhelming need. Once this one died, he turned his men loose.” She gestured toward a group of dead Clerics piled together in front of the altar at the far end of the temple. “After this one refused to talk, he knew there was nothing to be gained, so he had the rest slaughtered like cattle.”

  Carl cleared his throat and pulled his eyes away from the dead priest at his feet. “I don’t wanna be in here anymore. I never wanted any of this, and I...” He faltered. “I don’t want to see this. Let’s just head over to the library, see if we can find what we’re looking for, huh?”

  No one protested, and though it was likely the bodies were still loaded down with gear, no one even mentioned the idea of looting their corpses. It wasn’t the decent thing to do.

  Solemnly, we threaded our way through the carnage, avoiding the pools of blood and the discarded body parts, making for the nave and the altar. At the back of the temple, there were a pair of doors, one to the left, another to the right.

  “That one leads to the living quarters,” Carl said, nodding toward the door on the right. “This way to the library.” But instead of going on, he paused, lingering before the lectern with the book propped open on top. After a moment of hesitation, he slipped around behind the stand.

  “This is the ritual book.” He traced his fingers over the open pages. “Used to have to sit through endless prayers and boring stories. Never thought I’d find myself missing that. Mind if I say a quick prayer for them before we go?” he asked. “It’s what they woulda wanted, I bet.”

  “Of course,” Abby said, offering him a sad little smile.

  Carl grunted, nodding. He bent over and pulled a golden cloth stole from a compartment in the lectern and slipped it on around his neck, the fringed tassels hanging past his waist. He flipped through a few of the pages until he found whatever he was looking for, then cleared his throat and began to chant. The prayer was soft at first, though amplified by the vaulted roof above. I only understood snippets of the invocation, but bits of it sounded oddly familiar.

  “Supplices deprecamur pro anima famuli tui...” His words took on a rhythmic cadence, golden light enveloping him in a swirling cloud. “Quen de hoc saculo tw venire iussisti.” The words grew in power and strength, his voice becoming a booming thing while the light burned ever brighter. “Et in mansionibus sanctorum et in luce sancta permaneat.”

  I squinted against the light, which had gathered around his head, forming into a halo while a pair of enormous golden angel wings sprouted from his back. The whole room shook as tongues of brilliant light flashed out, gently caressing the corpses of the fallen.

  “What in the hell is happening!” Forge yelled, glancing around wild-eyed. His words were drowned out a second later as a set of bells—even though there were no bells to be seen anywhere in the temple—rang out like a peal of thunder, deafeningly loud. I slapped my hands against my ears, trying to block out the sound, but that didn’t seem to mute the noise even a little. And then, just as quick as the noise and light had come, it was gone.

  The corpses were gone as well. The blood scrubbed clean, the temple’s interior restored to immaculate glory. Carl stood behind the lectern, mouth agape, his hands raised in aw
e. Golden tattoos ran around his fingers and sprinted over his palms in elaborate swirls and loops. “Oh shit,” he said after a long pause. “That’s not what I meant to do.”

  “And just what did you do?” Amara asked, voice sharp and cutting as a razor blade. “You said you were going to offer a quick prayer, not eradicate all the evidence. What do you suppose the guards will think about that?”

  Carl facepalmed, a panicked look overtaking him. “Everything just keeps going wrong. I swear to God I didn’t mean to do this! Seriously. I just offered a short benediction that we say over other locals that kick the bucket. Nothing special, right hand to the Lord above. But when I finished the chant, I got a notice saying because I’d invoked the ritual as the last active acolyte in good standing with the temple, I’d been promoted.” He paused, gulped, and licked his lips. “To the Arch Justiciar of the order.”

  Cutter threw back his head and crowed in laughter, the sound carrying through the temple. “This is the best thing to happen all week. From outcast to head Cleric in less than a day. Brilliant. You’re either the worst bloody acolyte that’s ever walked the face of Eldgard, or you’re an absolute genius. Still.” He paused, glancing around. “Amara’s right, can’t imagine the guards will be happy you destroyed their crime scene, even if you are a high priest now. Best we get moving before they pop in to check on us, eh?”

  “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” I said. “Forge, why don’t you post up at the entrance. Try to buy us some time if the guards do come poking into our business.”

  “On it, hoss.”

  Carl shuffled out from behind the lectern, still marveling over the swirling golden tattoos crawling all over his skin. He absently ushered us into a much more traditional library than the one we’d stumbled upon in the bowels of the Shadowverse beneath the Iredale Hold. Neatly ordered shelves were filled with neatly ordered rows of books. There were several polished tables for study, oil lamps burning merrily on each—the flames likely revived by whatever spell Carl had unwittingly released during his benediction.

  There were also elaborate tapestries detailing different scenes from the order’s long and winding history, plus more than a few display cases holding pitted daggers, broken pottery, or discarded bits of shriveled parchment.

  I pulled open my inventory, retrieved the ring I’d taken from the secret alcove, then pulled up my interface to inspect it a bit more thoroughly.

  <<<>>>

  Eitri Spark-Sprayer’s Signet Ring

  Item Type: Relic

  Class: Ancient Artifact

  Base Damage: 0

  Primary Effects:

  Cast Forge of Revealing Light (1) per day

  Sometimes clear sight is the most powerful tool of all...

  <<<>>>

  No real benefits, but after all the riddles and secret doors we’d stumbled across down in Eitri’s summer home, it wasn’t hard to guess what I needed to do. I slipped the ring onto my index finger. “Not sure what Forge of Revealing Light does,” I said, “so it might be a good idea if everyone shields their eyes. Wouldn’t want to get hit with a temporary blindness debuff.” With the warning out of the way, I lifted my hand, palm out, fingers spread wide, and activated the once-a-day spell.

  The ring turned white-hot, the heat singeing my skin, and light rolled out in a wave. I clenched my eyes shut and waited for a three count before opening them again. Everyone else was likewise blinking their eyes, scanning the room for any sign of illusion magic or some obvious rune that would lead the way.

  “There,” Carl said, thrusting a finger toward a floor-to-ceiling tapestry depicting some ancient scene of a priest standing guard against the advance of a shadowy titan as tall as a building. The Cleric stood with his back straight, a jewel-studded scepter raised high in defiance, golden light shooting from his free hand while a cluster of dirty-faced men and women took refuge behind him. “It looks, I dunno. Sort of hazy. Transparent, maybe.” He was right. The tapestry hadn’t moved, and the image was the same, but it looked almost ethereal—a wavering mirage on the horizon.

  Carl moved over to the tapestry, extending a hand to examine the item. But when he went to touch it, his hand simply passed through, here one moment, gone the next. He braced himself, mustering his resolve, shoulders knotting up, then stepped through, vanishing into the fabric. “It’s fine,” he called, voice mildly muted by the odd illusion between us. “There’s a descending staircase. Looks like it leads to some sort of hidden basement.”

  “You heard the man,” Cutter said, rubbing his hands together in greedy glee. “Time to go coax out whatever secrets this place is hiding.”

  Words of Warning

  THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE, secreted behind the tapestry, let out into a musty old room, the air stale and heavy, the floors covered in grit and dusty. It was completely dark—no fires burned, no magical torches illuminated our way—but Abby quickly fixed that. She conjured a small orb of fire, which hovered above her outstretched palm, its orange light spilling over the rough-worn floors.

  “Hold on a sec,” she muttered, inching over to a nearby wall. “Looks like we got a wall sconce over here.” There was a flash and the light took hold, burning merrily at the end of a mounted torch. “One more second,” she muttered, hustling across the room, dress swishing as she moved. She lit a second torch and a third. The room was on the small side of things with none of the fancy flourishes I’d come to expect from Eitri’s characteristic hidden chambers.

  The floors were rough sandstone, plain and unadorned, just like the walls. There were no relics here, no mysterious bookcases or carefully preserved tomes. Certainly not the treasure vault Cutter was likely anticipating. But the room wasn’t empty. Affixed to the far wall, illuminated by the greasy, flickering light from the old torches, were three iron plaques, each the size of a car door. The metal was as thin as paper and glimmered softly despite the age and dust.

  “What are these?” Ari asked, zipping across the room, her body now a vibrant green, the light splashing off the first plaque. She squinted and canted her head. “This one’s a map, isn’t it?” She gestured at the plate with one tiny hand. It did indeed look like a map, with fine script writing etched into the metal, both above and below the image. Problem was, it wasn’t in any language I recognized.

  “Let me have a look,” Carl said, shouldering his way past us until he stood directly in front of the first wall plaque. He stroked his beard, nose scrunched, as he regarded the image. “Ari,” he said, nodding toward the script. “Hard to read in this light, can you hold it steady for me, huh? Maybe turn that whole glow thing up a few notches?”

  “Sure thing.” She beamed, wings beating at a frantic pace as she rose, her internal light intensifying until she burned like a mini star.

  “Thanks,” he grunted before mumbling under his breath. “Writing’s old,” he offered offhandedly, more for him than us. “One of our passive abilities is called Arcane Insight. Lets Clerics identify magical item properties, decipher ancient text like this, and learn casting languages at four times the rate of normal players. But I only have one point in it, so I kinda suck ass. I can only make out every two or three words. Might take me a hot minute.”

  He pondered, continuing to rub his beard while he grumbled and talked to himself. “Okay,” he finally said. “So this one says something to the effect of ‘Paper is corruptible and subject to the ravages of time and theft, so they’—whoever they is—‘left these things as a memorial against the turning of Kronos’s wheel.’ Now, I think this one here”—he tapped on the steel, ping-ping-ping—“was definitely carved by Eitri. You can tell by the blocky text and the hard angles on the consonants. Looks just like the script in the book we recovered.

  “And Ari’s right. This is definitely a map to the location of the Doom Forge.” He leaned forward, hands planted on his knees, nose only a handful of inches from the surface of the metal. Slowly he ran a finger over the surface, gaze flicking along the text. His plump digit continued runni
ng from point to point, until finally coming to a herky-jerky halt near what looked like a jagged ridge of script. He canted his head to the side, bewilderment tattooed across his face. “Well what in the hell is that supposed to mean? As twilight falls,” he read slowly, “the Shadow of the Giant becomes the Headsman’s Blade. Awesome. That’s not super-duper vague or anything.”

  He straightened, arms crossed, one finger tapping at his chin. “The Giant and the Headsman’s Blade. Headsman’s Blade. Giant. Headsman’s Blade. Giant.” His lips puckered into a thin line. “Nope, sorry. I got nothing. But I’m guessing this is some clue about the location of the entrance, and since I’m not a complete moron, I’m betting it only shows itself as twilight falls.” He frowned. “If you give me some time, I can probably find some reference to the Giant and the Headsman’s Blade in the books above. And if it’s not there, maybe the wikis will have something.”

  “Well, bugger me good,” Cutter said. “Maybe you’re not such a worthless sod after all.”

  “Um, not sure if I should be flattered or insulted... So, thank you, I guess?”

  “Could the clue be on those other metal plaques?” Abby asked.

  “Huh. What’s that?” Carl replied, distracted.

  “The clue about the entrance, could it be on one of the other plaques?” she repeated.

  “Ehhh. No, I don’t think so. The first one tells us where to find the place, but the rest of these seem to tell us what we need to do once we get there. And if I’m reading this next one right, finding the entrance to the forge is the easy part.” He scooted over to the next plate and hunched forward, hands on his knees. More restless muttering followed. “This one says the entrance gets you into a new section of ruins. Something called.” He paused, leaning forward even farther, reading a line of text at the bottom. “Yeah. Something called the Judgments, I think, which sounds super promising.”