Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3)

by Akella,G.

  "How do you even drink this?" she grimaced, tossing me the near-empty container, and took several deep breaths.

  "Your manner is especially aristocratic today," I sniffed, putting away the flask.

  "Suits me just fine," Vaessa shivered from the chill, and wrapped her mantle tight around her—the woman had categorically refused to wear plate. "Did I miss the fun part?"

  "That depends," I took out the signet ring received from the goddess, and handed it to the magus. "This is for you. Your mistress said you're a big girl now."

  "You saw her?" the tiflingess' hand froze midway to mine.

  "No, I just happened to become a master jeweler while you napped!"

  "What else did the mistress say?" Vaessa took the ring from my hand gingerly, slipped it onto her ring finger, and held out her hand in the classic gesture, admiring the ornament.

  "That she'll be in touch. Especially now that you can behold her without harm to yourself."

  "What?" the woman asked, unable to look away from the ring.

  "Did I say something confusing? Or did you lose your hearing while the goddess took over your body?"

  The goddess?! My body?!"

  "Hart almighty!" I spat on the ground in exasperation, and proceeded to recount all I remembered of the battle.

  We sat in silence for a while. The demons under James' command were raking all the bones scattered across the battlefield into one giant heap. The magus was in her own thoughts.

  "I just don't understand you, dar," Vaessa finally broke the silence. "You speak of the gods as though seeing them, let alone talking to them, is a common occurrence for you. All my life I've dreamed of seeing the mistress with my own two eyes, if only for a moment."

  "So, what's the problem? You'll be seeing her soon," I decided to keep mum about the vacancy with her name on it. Let that be a surprise.

  "You're insufferable, Krian," she sighed. "There's just one thing I regret..."

  "What's that?"

  "That I'm not a succubus! Those foolish women in the city don't know any better! If only I were one, I'd—"

  "Now, now," I smiled. Seeing that the woman had fully recovered, I got up and fixed her with a serious look. "Believe me, I would love it if you were a succubus," I said with a sigh, then turned around and made for the carcass of the slain monster.

  "Dar, a word?" James' voice stopped me mid-stride.

  "What is it?" I said, turning his way.

  With a nod to his men, the tifling hurried over, a hand on his scabbard to hold it steady.

  "I wanted to apologize for not believing you then."

  "Is that all?" I sniffed. "Don't sweat it, James. I didn't believe myself at the same."

  "Then there's the matter of the castle. You see, it's—"

  "The castle is yours. It's your birthright."

  "But..." the warrior stammered.

  "No buts," I put my hand on his shoulder, and peered into his eyes. "I haven't captured my castle yet, but you don't doubt anymore that I will, do you?"

  "No doubts whatsoever," the tifling replied with total earnestness.

  "Good," I nodded. "In the meantime, I hope you will allow your castle to serve as the Steel Wolves' temporary headquarters."

  The tifling stepped back, sliding his blade midway out of his scabbard, and declared ceremoniously, speaking into the raid channel for all to hear.

  "I, James dar Elnar, the heir to La-Kharte Castle and all surrounding villages, do solemnly swear for all eternity that any member of the Steel Wolves clan, no matter what happens to them, will always find food, shelter and protection under my roof!" Sliding his sword back in with a clang, he nodded to me, then spun on his heels and was off to tend to the still-growing mountain of corpses.

  If any other player were to read my mind at that moment, they would no doubt dismiss me as a total loon. And no wonder! It had been fifteen minutes now since my clan killed a unique boss, and one that was way, waaaay out of our league. It was the moment ninety nine percent of people played for—the sacred moment of loot! And I wanted nothing to do with it... What could the monster have on him? More junk that would have me waking up in cold sweat? Forcing me to put the lives of people I'd come to care for deeply on the line? Hart!

  Holding my breath as best I could, I stepped over a tentacle and put my palm on the slain monster's cirrhotic hide. There was a blinding flash that dazed me for a moment, and I took a step back. A thick pillar of light shot up from the beast's lifeless bulk into the sky, then burst into a myriad twinkling specks that rained down on the ground like fireflies. As the specks danced their mesmerizing dance overhead, a magical melody began playing in my head. The demons all froze in awe of the wondrous sight: necks craned, mouths agape. Even the sky seemed to change color from crimson to a gentle cerulean. I heard a child laughing somewhere on the edges of my consciousness, as the specks of light drew closer, gathering all around me. Frolicking like tots at a playground, the specks began flowing into me, filling my chest with a warm and gentle glow.

  You've earned an achievement: Liberator of Shackled Souls. You and your allies are granted a permanent 95% resistance to Dark magic.

  I stood there, transfixed, afraid to move lest I disturb the entrancing dance of the souls we had rescued. A translucent orc figure appeared in the air to my left. The six-and-a-half-foot warrior in chainmail stood there, powerful arms folded over his chest, sizing me down. A battle-axe at his waist, a gruesome scar across his face, a sigil of a crescent with upturned ends on his chest. His whole demeanor radiated tremendous inner strength. At last the warrior let his eyelids fall in a sign of approbation, and his silhouette dissipated in the air. The rest of the illusion receded along with him. There followed a total silence for nearly a minute, after which the air exploded with cries of excitement. My soldiers were gesticulating wildly and talking over one another about what they'd just witnessed. Allowing myself a smile for their unbridled enthusiasm, I put my palm on the dead boss once again.

  Twenty thousand gold and about one hundred vials, most of the alchemical variety. Laying the vessels down on the ground carefully, I called for Reece and Schen. Sadly, there wasn't anything similar to Shaartakh's Venom, so I kept only two Potions of Greater Healing for myself. Thirty four rares and fifteen epics in the 180-230 level range, ten of which we could use. And finally, the stars of the collection, three scalable epics. A bow, a cloth belt, and a tank breastplate.

  Iceblood Cuirass.

  Chestguard: plate.

  Durability: 3789/4100.

  Epic scalable.

  No minimum level.

  Armor: 764.

  +100 to strength.

  +100 to vigor.

  +162 to constitution.

  +18.1% to damage absorption.

  +36.2% to vigor regeneration.

  Weight: 35 lbs.

  Armor of Kagan Khort.

  Caelteran's Bone Bough.

  Bow: two-handed.

  Durability: 2489/3000.

  Epic scalable.

  No minimum level.

  346-401 damage.

  +231 to agility.

  +50 to vigor.

  +80 to constitution.

  +5.4% to critical hit chance with a physical attack.

  +3.6% to immobilize the target on impact.

  Weight: 10 lbs.

  The bow of Caelteran, the hero of the War of Chaos.

  Sash of Lost Souls.

  Waist; cloth.

  Durability: 3489/4200.

  Epic scalable. An item from the Celphata's Greatness set.

  No minimum level.

  Armor: 181.

  +141 to intellect.

  +140 to spirit.

  +80 to constitution.

  +36% to undead summoning points.

  +18% to spell power when using Dark magic.

  Weight: 2 lbs.

  Sewn by the dead Master Yeo out of screams of lost souls

  Man, what a day for Vaessa! Two scalable epics, including one from a set. The stats o
n these three items were automatically adjusted to my level, but the magus was six levels higher, so both the ring and the belt should add more stats for her. The bow would obviously go to Salta, and the breastplate to Aritor.

  The haul from Shaartakh had been completely different—it would be a long time before any one of us would equip the epics he'd dropped. But then the demon had been killed by Altus, whereas here the system must have calculated the level of the creatures fighting the boss, and spat out level-appropriate loot. Out of the remaining epics, I gave six chainmail pieces to Salta to distribute among the archers, a plate girdle with strength went to Iam, a healer's breastplate to Reena, a pair of gloves to Hagedia, and a ring with intellect to Reece. All of them were still above the characters' level, but I didn't want to store them in the treasury. All rare items and the remaining five epics—two leather pants, a leather helm, a two-handed axe and a paladin's two-handed mallet—I handed over to Schen. He didn't need my help distributing the rares, and the epics I'd take with me and eventually sell off.

  Curiously, the demons' reactions to being awarded such presents were rather underwhelming. Most players would float on cloud nine for a solid month after scoring an epic, whereas my clanmates were pretty reserved when accepting their upgrades. Nor was there any complaining about unfair loot distribution and the like. After thinking it over, I reasoned that while for many players the pursuit of such items was a big motivation for playing, my demons were driven by somewhat different goals. Out of all the dropped items, the only one I kept for myself was a rare level 180 charm looted off one of the skeletons.

  There were also a handful of viscera and suspicious looking scraps of hide that I handed over to Reece without delay, trying my best not to breathe. Funnily enough, the mage wasn't breathing either. The difference was, while I held my breath from the unimaginable stench oozing from the entrails, Reece was breathless with trepidation. The Lord's corpse further contained seventeen rare and one epic recipes; when I saw the latter, I couldn't help but cry out in jubilation.

  Ice Serpent's Breath.

  Recipe: Enchanting.

  Epic.

  Tools: Enchanter's Kit.

  Reagents:

  greater void shard (10).

  magic dust (40).

  Applies an effect to bows which has a 10% chance to freeze the target on impact.

  I didn't care one bit that a greater void shard was comprised of ten lesser ones, which, in turn, only had a five percent drop rate when disenchanting level 170+ uncommon quality items at 170 enchanting skill. There was no shortage of undead in the princedom, so I didn't anticipate us wanting for reagents. But the bump in crowd control afforded by a dozen archers rocking a ten percent chance to proc freeze would be tremendously useful to my century. Out of the seventeen rare recipes, six were for blacksmithing items level 200 and above. Unfortunately, all the recipes required mithril, which we didn't have yet, so I wasted no time unloading all the scrolls and some more miscellaneous reagents on Schen—let him work it all out with our crafters. That brought the list of loot on the boss to just two items: a parchment scroll, darkened with time, and a bracelet bearing the same sigil I'd seen on the chest of the phantom orc.

  I picked up the scroll carefully. Whoa! An artifact! I had never held one of these before. Artifacts in the Realm of Arkon were unique objects that couldn't be equipped or used as a weapon. Well, sure, I could conceivably smack someone upside the head with this scroll, but it wasn't likely to result in anything useful. There were all kinds of artifacts, though personally I'd only heard of two: Myrt's Staff and Kalgeni Shell. The first—the staff belonging to the head of the human-worshipped pantheon of light gods—was located in the god's main temple in Vaedarr. An ordinary length of wood at a glance, in the event of a siege the staff boosted the defenders' morale by thirty and their mana regeneration by ten percent. According to legend, the god was so enthused over the temple erected in his honor that he decided to leave his old apprentice's staff inside it.

  As for the shell, it was discovered on some remote island by Count Kalgeni, who wasn't yet a count at the time but an ordinary pirate. In return for the tiny sea creature's home he received a full pardon and a county from the human king. As a result, any naval vessels built in the dockyards of Artana, the main Erantian port, was rendered immune to fire, whether from magic or incendiary shells, by bringing the shell aboard it before it was taken out to sea.

  It should be noted that the game's administration never made any information about artifacts publicly available. Everybody knew that they existed, but nothing about what they were and where one would look for them. The forums were rich with yarns about personal artifacts that allegedly tripled their owner's stats when carried in their inventory. Except all those tales were most likely garbage—if anyone did own an item like that, they would have either put it up for auction or kept their find a secret, considering the ungodly amount of money such a trinket would fetch.

  The scroll in my hands didn't boost my stats. It was, in fact, simply a map displaying the location of Cathella the Spectral City, which looked to be just over two hundred miles to the southeast. The map showed neither the road to the city nor the city itself, but only a small circle on the world map of Demon Grounds, marked by the color black. What secrets lay behind the walls of Cathella if it took a bloody artifact just to indicate its location? I pulled out the map received from Vaessa and compared its hieroglyphics against those on the scroll. Everything seemed to match. I sighed with resignation. Something was telling me that the warrior god's gauntlets guarded by the dragon—who, according to the magus, was no less formidable than Nerghall—weren't the most valuable item to be found in the city. Which meant the dragon wasn't the most powerful creature I should expect to find there.

  The final item on the boss' body was a crescent-shaped gewgaw roughly four inches in length. Knowing full well what would happen after I picked up the damned thing, I called Reece over and filled him in on what to expect. Then I took a seat next to the carcass and tried to focus. What did I have to look forward to this time around? Another journey through time? Most likely. And I had a pretty good idea who my host would be—that same phantom orc I'd seen earlier. Hart only knew how badly I wanted to avoid handling that bauble. "Basically, just keep an eye on me," I said to the mage, who was growing rather tense, and reached for the shiny object...

  "Master orc! Master orc! You must withdraw your cohort! Right there, past the mountains! You must go, time is running short!"

  "What?!" roared Karrosh. "What are you babbling about, human?"

  The courier looked pretty comical with his cross-belt bearing Prince Daar's colors all awry. He couldn't be older than thirteen winters, and if it weren't for his eyes bulging with fear, Karrosh would have thought that his former rival had decided to prank him. He creased his forehead, remembering the time he'd seen this kid in the prince's retinue. The same sharp features and hooked nose—could the prince have sent his own son??

  "Death lies there! The entire cavalry is retreating from the valley!"

  "Tell me everything, boy. From the top," Karrosh put up his hand sharply, and the chuckles behind him ceased at once.

  "Vill and Syrat have taken Velial's side! Beasts from the Gray Frontier are attacking from the direction of Varuta. There's an endless sea of them! Ingvar and Dhoresh are badly wounded and cannot keep fighting, the infantry is on its last legs. Kahella ordered to withdraw and try to at least save the cavalry. Your kha'an has been warned, and will be taking all the orcs west, through the gorge." Standing up in his stirrups, the kid closed his eyes and took two deep breaths, which seemed to calm his nerves. "We're out of couriers, so my father... I mean the Lord Commander sent me to you," he concluded in an even voice.

  There followed a brief silence, broken only by distant sounds of battle. Fixing his clan chieftain's insignia mechanically, Karrosh looked at his tribune with one eye narrowed.

  "What are you thinking, Ohten?"

  "I find it hard to b
elieve, but if the human is telling the truth, then a lot of good orcs will pass to the Land of Eternal Hunt this day," rasped a gray-haired orc, his hand gripping the broad hilt of his falchion.

  The springs floods were just beginning when the war had begun. After invading human lands from the south, the Netherworld's army spared no one in its path. Erantian cities had been put to the torch, her castles razed to the ground. Velial's host was marching impetuously toward Vaedarr, leaving only death and destruction in its wake. So great was the danger that Kha'an Rehan, the grand chieftain of orc clans, had decided to lend aid to the humans, his sworn enemies. Whether or not the decision had been his or he'd been pressured into it by the gods didn't matter. What mattered was that before the month was done, a hastily amassed orcish horde of fifty thousand fighters had entered the contested human lands. The Bloody Spear clan alone, of which Karrosh an Gort was chieftain, had brought some two thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry.

  The gods had decided to stop the demons in Fertan Valley. Six human legions and twenty five thousands grunts had found and taken up higher ground. Orcish riders, joined by the combined force of the princes' heavy cavalry, had fanned out west, gearing up for a flank attack against the demons who were storming the infantry ranks. The din of hammers pounding on wood hadn't stopped for two solid days as the legionnaires fortified their already advantageous positions. And then, at last, the throng of demons poured into the valley from the south.

  Fighting alongside yesterday's enemy wasn't easy. His troops couldn't hide their hatred at the sight of Prince Daar's banner, whose lands bordered those of Karrosh's clan. To be fair, the human knights responded in kind—the blood feud between them was simply too deep. It truly felt like fate's cruel joke when the kha'an had ordered Karrosh to back up their mortal enemy's heavy cavalry. And now the prince was sending them his own son to warn them of danger? Could it be a trap? Or...