by G. Akella
My feet became entwined by dark tentacles growing right out of the sand, the chat log flashing a message about being rooted and sustaining a small amount of periodic damage. With the Silence worn off, Varkas teleported to the edge of the arena and froze, arms stuck out in front, seemingly harnessing power for some nasty surprise. Think again! With a growl, I dispelled the root with Jump, appearing right on top of him. The attempt to interrupt his cast didn't work—bosses always had a maxed out focus skill, and interrupting them required a special attack which I didn't have. A Tongue of Flame struck Varkas for 4,000 HP, in return for which I got a Spear of Darkness to the chest. Pfft! 600 HP, is that all you got? I thought, knocking him down again with a kick to the chest. Taking full advantage of our level difference, I worked the knocked-down dark mage over with my blade, alternating special attacks and landing back-to-back crits for 15,000 damage. His health bar down to half, Varkas teleported to the center of the hall, and threw up his arms, threads of dark gray flowing from his staff to the sand. As they touched down, the earth opened up, revealing rotting extremities of the undead rising up from the ground. With my Jump coming off cooldown, I didn't feel like waiting for the zombies to climb out of the earth. Porting right to the boss, I hacked away at him, ignoring everything else. Another Freeze proc interrupted Varkas' cast of Summon Undead. A number of undead had already crawled out from underground and were laying into me with their decomposing paws, but I paid them no mind, focusing all damage on the boss. A sharp pain shot through my upper back; downing a healing potion automatically, I realized there was no target left to attack.
Attention! You've earned a unique achievement, First in Ruined Palace Wing. You and your allies have been granted a permanent 1% increase to your physical and magic damage.
Apparently, even a level 85 final boss could be a pain in the butt. Kicking away the head of a zombie who'd croaked right after its master, I bent over the pile of bones obscured by a ragged dark robe. Damn! It pays to be a dark mage nowadays, I snorted. Twenty five gold and three rare plate pieces: helm, pauldrons and boots! Why the hell wasn't this stuff dropping for me before, when I could have actually used it? Oh well, with the current penalties for dying, having spare lower-level equipment couldn't hurt. To sum up, completing the dungeon netted me over fifty gold and three rares. Unusual quality items and all the other junk needed to be sold, along with the trash still remaining from Ghorazm Ruins. With nothing else for me to do here, it was time to move on to the archives. Giving the testing hall one final lookover, I started toward the exit.
As the key turned in the ancient lock with a grating screech, I yanked the door and scrunched up my face from the stench of decay. Master Prant had been gravely mistaken when claiming that the archives were well protected—whatever the fire had spared could have easily been destroyed by dampness and rodents. But as I stepped inside, I realized that things probably weren't as bad as they seemed.
The interior of the archives was almost the carbon copy of the place where I'd talked to the old Chinese-looking demon. The difference was the condition—this space was much more rundown. Patches of mold covered the dark brown wood of the shelving; some had collapsed and were now obstructing already narrow passageways. And the smell! The revolting smell of rats! I didn't actually see the rodents, but signs of their activity were in clear sight—almost nothing remained of the books and scrolls that had either fallen from the upper shelves or lined the still-standing lower ones. The rustling sounds to my left suggested that the local residents were presently devouring something in that direction, but I had absolutely no desire to observe this process. The mini-map displayed the exact spot of the books needed for my quest, and it was in the opposite direction of the rats' feast. As for what I personally needed, it was all the way down the hall.
When I'd first come to see the archivist, I hadn't even thought to ask where to seek the information I needed. This wasn't all that unusual for me—in my past life I had the amusing habit of forgetting to take my purchases after paying for them at the register, but this case was compounded by the vision that had swept over me in the middle of the conversation. You try thinking clearly after butchering all sorts of abominations for ten minutes straight, then dying in a blaze of fire. Anyway, I'd had to visit the old man again later to clarify what exactly I needed to find.
Putting the heavy manuscripts away into my inventory, I was cursing Master Kuan and his disciples for handwriting these monstrosities, and the smart-ass devs for good measure. Why would a book have such unwieldy dimensions? How would anyone actually read it? Not that it mattered much to me—three hundred and fifty pounds was a lot in the real world, but here in the game I wasn't going to hurt my back or anything. The quest books had preserved just fine—given their position on the upper shelves, some seven feet off the floor, the rats hadn't gotten to "reading" them just yet. Or maybe it was that they cared about the history of Ashtar Dominion no more than I had...
The rack I needed was standing by the far wall. Or used to stand, rather... Tossing aside the largest, mold-covered chunk of wood, I examined what was left of the contents stored in the fifteen-foot-tall rack. There were about twenty parchment scrolls in all, scattered amid the rat feast leftover. Oh, how I hated rats! They had devoured everything they could find, though the scrolls on the floor looked perfectly untouched. Perhaps the parchment's flavor hadn't agreed with the rodents' palate, having been treated with some kind of chemical solution or imbued with magic. Or maybe the clever bastards had simply saved the scrolls for a rainy day.
Suddenly I heard a croaking sound and froze, listening. The sound seemed to be coming from behind the wall. The rodents rustling in the archives were a distraction, but listening closely you could still make out somebody's shallow breathing. Upon examining the wall, I noticed a long crack, its edge showing from behind one of the still-standing bookstands. What could it be? Gerid had mentioned something about a prison adjoining a ruined western wing. There must be a cell behind the wall, with some poor bastard trapped inside, I thought with a shrug, then returned to my own affairs. Hey, I never claimed to be Robin Hood, especially when I was plenty busy myself.
So, what did we have here? I carefully picked up sixteen surviving scrolls off the dirty floor, stepped aside to one of the bookstands and, leaning back against it, began looking through my findings. All the scrolls were roughly four inches in diameter and twenty inches in length, comprising one to ten sheets of thin parchment paper. The first six were covered with strange tables; the seventh described an animal called "Nyorkei, a serpentine creature up that reaches eighteen feet in length and nearly seven hundred pounds in weight. The Nyorkei slithers along surfaces like a snake, using eight pairs of short legs to propel its torso..." I pictured the freak to myself, then put the scroll into my bag in case I later decided to enter its contents into the chronicles. I finally got lucky with the fourteenth scroll, which contained just one sheet of parchment. But that one sheet constituted a fairly detailed map of the Free Princedom of Krajde.
As Prant had said, the princedom comprised two provinces, though the second one, Gilthor, could be deemed a province only in a very loose sense of the word. Roughly one third of the size of Antarra, the princedom's main province, Gilthor was situated to the southwest, surrounded on all sides by Aerimean Mountains. The Krajde Citadel—the object of my quest—was located in the south of Antarra, which, in turn, split into nine territories of roughly equal size. In all, the main province boasted two small towns and seven castles. Running across Antarra to the south was the Ithele River, springing from deep in barbarian lands and flowing into the great Lake Indis in the west. The princedom bordered Ashtar and Rualt dominions to the north, and barbarian territories to the east.
But there was only the map, and not one word about the curse or the events that had taken place in the princedom two hundred and eighty years ago. I drew a heavy sigh. The journey into this ruined wing hadn't brought any clarity, but at least I now had a map. I folded the scroll and was a
bout to transfer the data onto my world map when the world suddenly shifted from under my feet...
The sun was inching toward the horizon, distant and hazy. Its crimson rays, though waning, illuminated the rolling plains, covered with sickly vegetation, abutting the captured citadel. Lending a rosy glow to the ruined gate tower, the rays infiltrated the courtyard like enemy troops through the breached stone walls. The dust had already settled, and the wind was sweeping westward the leftover smoke of the wooden structures that had been razed in the assault. Some of the punishers were inspecting the captured stronghold—businesslike, without needless fuss; others were pitching camp outside the main gates while mounted getare troops patrolled the territory within visibility range.
A dark-haired tifling stood on the lip of a pyramidal donjon inside the captured fortress. Clad in a suit of black plate with golden engravings, he watched the sunset with a grim expression, hands folded over his chest. The menacing features of his face were punctuated with a strong chin beneath a hawkish nose, but most of all by his eyes—the yellow eyes of a man accustomed to deciding who lived and who died. His figure was cloaked by the unseen aura of might; even the wind seemed reluctant to touch the flaps of his long vinous cloak. The demon was unperturbed by the hundreds of disfigured corpses filling up the donjon's upper platform, nor by the smells of blood and death hanging in the air.
"The citadel is empty, my lord," said a short thin tifling as he approached. He wore a black robe, its open hood revealing the sharp, predatory lines of his face. "We've looked everywhere. The light ones managed to slip away somehow, though I don't sense any traces of a portal. But then..." he turned to the cubic altar, set in the center of a colossal hexagram, marked at the edges by broken bodies in bloodied gray robes. With a sigh, he continued, "It will be a while before anything specific could be sensed here. Perhaps Saad Khor could offer an explanation?"
"You say the light one left on his own, because..." uttered the lord, his posture unchanged. His voice sounded flat, almost distant, but this voice never failed to still the blood in the veins of the uninitiated. Thankfully, Prince Sajtore—the head of the searching party and one of the most eminent figures in Balliose, Alcmehn's foremost dominion—was anything but uninitiated.
"Yes, my lord. If he's in possession of the crafted artifact, that would explain a great deal. And all signs point to the fact that the disavowed had succeeded in completing the ritual."
"You think the humans came for the artifact?"
"Doubtful," the tifling motioned at the carcass of the citadel's master lying on the castle floor. "That bastard was infamous in equal measure for licking the boots of his superiors and butchering his own people like cattle. When the dispossessed rose up and locked themselves up in Xantarra, a town at the mouth of Ithele, one of the Twice Cursed taught the locals to open portals to Karn. Vill and Syrat took great care to keep their ward safe from exposure—this is why we've only just now found out about it... I am sorry, and willing to accept any punishment for this oversight," the prince concluded with resignation.
"You think that the humans rebelled?" said Ahriman, his voice booming like thunder, ignoring the searcher's last sentence.
"One of the castle's vaults is filled with bones," said the head of one of Alcmehn's most powerful magistrates in a dry, indifferent tone. "Thousands of sentients: humans, demons, elves, dwarves... Yes, I think that the humans had somehow managed to ascertain the time and place of the next raid, and had arrived here several hours before us."
"What of the princedom?" turning away from the setting sun, the overlord finally looked at his subordinate.
"The princedom is in ruins," said Sajtore. "Only four castles have been left more or less intact. We've cleared the central city that this one had destroyed," the prince nodded toward the former free lord's carcass, half-buried by the rubble. "The getare rode ahead, buffed by our mages, and obliterated four more castles where similar things had been happening as to this place, and that could be ported to from the Gray Frontier."
"How many survivors?"
"Nearly all the local survivors are currently safe behind the walls of aforementioned Xantarra, and in three of Gilthor's settlements. Their numbers are few—no more than one in ten had survived. Would you like them eliminated?"
"No need," Ahriman shook his head. "Expect all sorts of things to crawl out of the woodwork the moment we leave. The Pale of Oblivion will keep out the cursed gods, but it won't stop all the small stuff. Let the locals handle it. I'd rather not have a chunk of the Gray Frontier over my shoulder. Nor should this citadel be razed to the ground—the ritual was conducted here," the overlord inhaled loudly, then exhaled as if to calm himself. Then he turned to the cubic altar. "I regret that the light ones beat us here, and that Erisjat was able to slip away. I'd make his death last an eternity..."
"Erisjat's soul didn't go into the Flame," Sajtore shrugged.
"What?!" the overlord's hand gripped the searcher's shoulder as he drew the prince to him and peered into his eyes.
"Master Laenor says that Erisjat's soul was consumed by some artifact." The huge yellow eyes were like quicksand, sucking him in, crushing his will. It had taken all of the prince's inner strength to keep his voice from trembling.
"One good news, at least," Ahriman removed his hand from his officer's shoulder, and turned toward a new arrival.
A fifteen-foot-tall monster in matte black armor was walking up the staircase, approaching them. His eyes were slanted and bloodshot, his face almost triangular, like a bird of prey's. The demon's step was heavy on the corpses strewn all around; even the stone slabs seemed to sag under his weight.
"Speak!" Ahriman commanded flatly when Prince Saad Khor had stopped and bowed his head before the overlord.
"He passed into the Flame, taking with him Krass, Nir and Ssaridakh," the giant bellowed, his voice like a peal of thunder. "Here's what I found amid his things."
The golden chalice seemed like a thimble on his massive gnarled palm. The overlord took the object in silence, shook his head, and handed it to the searcher.
"Aye," Sajtore nodded. "It is an accumulator. Most likely, the artifact was used by the light one."
"How is it possible that seven of my finest warriors couldn't kill a human mage without taking losses?" Ahriman's voice sounded weary and distant, as though the overlord were somewhere far away.
"It's my fault," the general hung his head lower still. "We didn't expect the human to be so strong. He'd had time to prepare for battle, and we'd planned on taking him alive at first..." the giant concluded with a heavy sigh.
"It all checks out," the searcher noted sourly. "The artifact was destroyed, allowing the mage to oppose the Throne Attendants. I'm sorry, my lord, but—"
"Sajtore," the overlord interrupted. "See that the Pale is erected—you and the necromancers have twenty four hours. And you," Ahriman shifted his heavy gaze on the general. "Pull your troops out of the princedom by morning. Dismissed."
Once alone on the donjon, Ahriman peered intently at the chalice nestled in his palm, still resonating with traces of a great spell.
"I'm sorry, too," he said, crumpling the metal as if it were paper, his voice—and his eyes—betraying a deep-seated vestige of anguish...
I blinked, allowing the familiar contours of shelves and bookstands to manifest into view. I was on my butt, leaning against one of them—evidently, this time the vision had forced me off my feet. My head was spinning, and my mouth was a desert. Fishing out a flask of water, I took several big swigs. That helped.
No more than five-six feet away sat a large rat—and another few dozen behind it—watching me intently with black beady eyes. The rodents must've gotten sick of their paper diet, and were hungry for flesh. Good thing I had armor on, otherwise they might have already started feasting on me. Forget it, I ain't your pantry to raid, with a flash of the middle finger, I unleashed a Stone Disc that smashed into their midst and ripped apart the bodies of six hapless rodents, spattering blood a
nd guts all over the place.
"You wanted flesh, have at it," I quipped after the scattering survivors.
Grimacing from the headache, I rose from the floor and tried to bring my thoughts in order. Was that the local alpha dog I'd just seen? Well, the guy instilled respect, no doubt, after seeing fifteen-foot-tall behemoths groveling before him! What sort of combat form does he have? No, better I didn't know that—sometimes the less you know, the better you sleep. What else? It appeared that there were still some locals in the princedom that Erisjat hadn't gotten to after selling out to the dark gods. Also, according to the overlord, the Twice Cursed weren't in control in Krajde anymore, though the princedom was riddled with undead that had risen after the massacre orchestrated by the treacherous bastard.
But most interesting of all was the artifact—that black little ring that seemed to have started all this hullaballoo in the first place. It was the ring that Ahriman had been after! Oh, he might have planned to push back the dark gods from his borders, but his main goal had really been the crafted artifact. What was this bloody ring that had compelled one to sell out to cursed gods and butcher thousands of sentients, and another to march several legions and raze castles to the ground without a second thought? Finally, the overlord's reaction to the artifact's destruction seemed odd to me, as if there had been something personal there.
But really, what was that ring? One to rule them all a la Tolkien? I snorted. Put it on, and you're master of everything and everyone! Now, I wasn't so greedy—I'd settle for my own personal Nazgûl. But if I did get that ring, I wouldn't pull a Frodo and schlep hell knows where for no good reason. I'd just keep the ring, and the hell with my do-gooder award. But don't get me started on Tolkien—that whole backstory with the rings always felt fishy to me. Nine rings to humans, seven to dwarves, three to elves—sure, I'm with you so far. But why the hell did Sauron of all people get to keep the ring that controlled the rest? It reminded me of a parable: drinking chamomile tea will transform a tiger into a house pet—all of you have to do is make the animal drink it... Case in point, what in the world would compel all those leaders to put on the rings in the first place? And how were the leaders chosen in the first place? Did they get together once a year like the UN to shoot the breeze about the state of the world? Or was Sauron personally touring every kingdom, advertising his wares? Don't get me wrong, I had nothing against the grandmaster of fantasy—if not for him, I might be chasing after little green men in the Cygnus constellation or mowing down Aquilonians in Cimmeria... But enough of that, it was time to split this joint.
