by Pavel Kornev
Like black lightning, Scarecrow came down from the sky but a nonchalant sweep of the white hand disembodied him, turning him into scattered whiffs of darkness which the freezing wind swept away.
“The Darkness has no power over this place anymore,” the witch smiled. “No one can prevent me from finding out what you really are.”
Once again her long, thin fingers ran across my face. The witch frowned. “This is a mistake. This is all wrong!”
Her pale-blue nails reached into my eye socket, extracting my eye.
For the first time in ages I felt pain. Not the fake virtual pain but the real-world stuff, real and uncompromising, the kind which can make you pass out, the kind which can make you go nuts.
Still, madness is a luxury a deadman can’t afford. I screamed my head off but just couldn’t lose my mind. The pain just wouldn’t stop. Black blood poured out of my eye socket, freezing on my face. The white bitch watched me curiously, undeterred, as if I was some sort of exotic animal.
The Restore the Mountain Temple quest is complete!
Experience: +5000 [42 529/43 000]; +5000 [42 573/43 000]
The system message assaulted me with another paroxysm of pain. My ice fetters prevented me from convulsing. My mind faded.
The witch gave me another pat on the cheek. “A prohibited merge of two entities,” she said softly. “Requires an immediate intervention.”
She raised her hand.
Neo ran out of the cave. He seemed to have grown a few years. His modest Disciple status had given place to a much more serious Knight tag. He was level 28, no less.
The white witch’s bodyguards moved toward him, then stopped.
“A creature of Light,” the witch identified the boy.
Losing all interest in him, she once again dug her fingers into my mutilated eye socket. Blood went everywhere.
“Uncle John!” Neo gasped. “What are they doing to you?”
Straining my numb tongue, I whispered, “Bless me...”
The boy startled. “Uncle John? What did you say?”
“Bless me!”
“Yes but-”
“Do it!” I rasped, feeling something cold and alien trying to reach into my brain.
Neo threw caution to the wind and spread his arms wide, summoning his heavenly patron.
A blinding silver light went right through the white knights without hurting them. Ditto for the witch. My dead flesh, however, hissed as it took fire like a piece of roast on a barbecue.
“Again!” I screamed in a masochistic vigor.
Neo didn’t let me down. A fiery whirlwind scooped me up whole, burning me and scattering my ashes. Killing me.
Which was exactly what I needed: death.
7
ROCK. DARKNESS. Blood.
Scarecrow had been a good boy. He'd taken my charmed skull to the abandoned sanctuary of the Angel of Darkness. Still, something wasn’t right. Something was different. Not as it should have been.
Blood! It was pouring down my face, trickling onto the flagstones and accumulating in tiny swirls and motifs, its dark crimson flooding the damaged symbols.
What the hell? I was dead! I couldn’t bleed!
But that wasn’t all. I was clutching the stone skull in my right hand while my left was holding something round, something that burned my palm with its unnatural icy cold.
A frozen eyeball?
My eyesight seemed to have split. I could see things from two different angles, and my mind had a hard time trying to come to grips with it.
I couldn’t think straight. Bouts of nausea flooded over me.
What the hell? When you respawned, all the previous injuries were annulled!
Still, I was holding my own eye in my hand. Blood continued to gush out of my eye socket. I was dying — dying from blood loss!
Straining every muscle, I sprang to my feet. The flagstones underfoot cracked, collapsing.
I came round in pitch blackness which was much more than just absence of light. Darkness enveloped me, supporting and holding me in its gravity-defiant embrace. The dungeon had expanded; now it was enormous, both its floor and ceiling disappearing out of sight as if the tile which had given way under my feet had opened a portal to a different universe.
“I thank thee who shared your power and blood with me!”
The voice sounded out of nowhere, scaring the hell out of me. The darkness thickened even further, releasing a clot of such impossible blackness it could turn the brightest day into the darkest night.
Somehow I managed to recognize it. This blob of darkness was in fact the disfigured vandalized angel whose statue had caught my attention during my first trip to the dungeon.
The Angel of Darkness stared at me, then said without even trying to conceal his disgust,
“A deadman!”
I coughed up blood, then smirked in a reckless bout of defiance, “It’s not as if you’re very much alive either, is it?”
The dungeon boss began to grow, making me feel like a tiny grain of sand he could grind into the finest dust. Having said that, could he really? Seeing as he seemed to have taken a liking to my dead blood?
Indeed, I heard a doomed sigh.
“Very well, deadman,” the Angel of Darkness uttered. “What is it you want? Tell me.”
He assumed his former shape and reclined on his throne which floated in the sea of pitch blackness. I stood cap in hand in front of the otherworldly patron angel of the Spawn of Darkness clan (or was it just one of his incarnations?).
Still, we weren’t proud, were we? We knew exactly what to ask him for.
“My eye!” I croaked. “Some white bitch has taken my eye out!”
I hear a chuckle. The Angel leaned down, brought his disfigured face close to mine and blew into my bleeding eye socket.
A dark fiery tornado ravaged through my head, throwing me down onto my back and twirling me in its grip. It didn’t last very long though. Soon the swirling had subsided; the bleeding had stopped.
But I was still clutching my frozen eye in my hand.
A Sacred Gift of the Darkness
Perception: -5
Intellect: +5
I felt my scarred eye socket. “What the hell? I wanted you to put my flippin’ eye back in!”
The Angel laughed. “Sorry, deadman,” he admitted calmly. “I can’t. If I spend more power on healing your injury, I might have to deny my help to someone infinitely more worthy. Or I might inadvertently offer the Lights an advantage they don't deserve. It’s all about the balance. Nothing personal, sorry.”
I growled with fury and disappointment. Suppressing a bout of cussing, I decided to appeal to his logic. “Balance-wise it’s a bit shitty, don’t you think? You might have exerted some power but you haven’t put my eye back in! I can’t keep holding it in my hand all the time, can I?”
“Put it around your neck,” the Angel said without concealing a smirk.
“How do you want me to fight without it?”
The Angel of Darkness stared at me. His gaze penetrated the deepest corners of my digital soul, ruffling through my memories and sorting through my most secret thoughts and desires.
“Well, maybe if we consider this an advance,” he said pensively.
“Whatever!” my voice broke half-word. “What is it you want?” I added unenthusiastically.
“I want a shard of the Sphere of Souls,” the Angel announced.
I didn’t ask how he, the patron of the Spawn of Darkness clan, could have found out about my artifact. My reply was curt and precise,
“Eat shit!”
The Angel shook what was left of his index finger at me. “Your shard should never, under no circumstances, fall into the Lights’ hands. Deal?”
I paused, thinking, then nodded. “Deal.”
It wasn’t as if I was going to enter into any kinds of negotiations with clans of Light. I wasn’t interested in selling the fragment, anyway; all I cared for was getting access to the Kingdom of the Dead.<
br />
The Angel took the frozen eyeball and winced as if it physically hurt him to hold something still bearing the imprint of the Light witch’s will. I even thought he might discard it. Instead, in one imperceptible twist of his hand, the Angel drew the flamberge from behind my back and slammed the eye onto its steel pommel.
“What the hell?” I demanded, watching in dismay as the sword’s rusty blade began to cover in a fine flurry of the whitest frost. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m relieving you of the necessity of carrying your own eye in your pocket,” the Angel replied calmly.
This was a good lesson. You should be doubly careful with your words when you strike deals with supernatural creatures.
The Gaze of Frost (Deadman’s Set: 9 out of 13)
Damage: 20-26
Accuracy: +17%
+17% to your chances of dealing critical damage
+13% to your chances of freezing your opponent to death to each undulation of the blade used in the blow.
Cold damage: temporary paralysis or 9 pt. health per sec for the duration of 9 sec.
+9 to Perception in combat
Status: unique
I weighed the transformed flamberge in my hand. I knew better than trying to attack the Angel with it (even if this was one of his weakest incarnations).
“The Lights will never get the shard of the Sphere of Souls,” I said meaningfully. “The question is whether the Spawn of Darkness can get it?”
Now that the blood had stopped gushing from my eye socket and I didn’t need to constantly hold my eye in my hand anymore, I felt much more confident.
The Angel seemed quite amused. “I suggest we make a deal,” he said good-naturedly. “You give the shard to my servants when they ask for it. And instead, I’ll bestow a fraction of my own power on you.”
His words rang with sarcasm laced with curiosity. He seemed to be toying with me, offering me a bait on a sharp hook. If I swallowed it, I’d never set myself free. My every consequent deal would become another tiny step toward hell.
A fraction of his power? I don’t think so! I wasn’t going to sell myself so cheaply. If the truth were known, I wasn’t going to sell myself at all.
“Your servants must let me go to the Kingdom of the Dead. Otherwise there’ll be no deal,” I quipped, not intending to horse-trade.
The Angel pensively rubbed his mangled face with the stumps of his fingers as if running through all the possible scenarios, then leaned back on his throne and shook his head. “They ain’t gonna do it,” he said, then raised his hand, motioning me to remain silent. “But! The clan has considerable difficulty trying to collect the Sphere of Souls. And if you could offer them, say, two fragments instead of one...”
“Where do you want me to get it from?” I demanded, indignant.
“I think you know the answer to that,” the Angel replied with all the guile of the serpent in the garden of Eden. “I suggest you give it some thought before you reject my offer.”
He seemed to be reading me like an open book.
The blinding light in Neo’s hand, the fiery tornado, the knight in red-hot armor...
He was right. I should give it some thought. If the other fragment hadn’t been sold yet... and if we managed to find our attackers and repay them in kind...
If, if, if! This was all academic. By the same token, it could solve so many things. This was the question of my own life.
“The fragment you lost hasn’t yet turned up at either the Light nor the Dark camp,” the Angel said, exhibiting remarkable knowledge of these things. “Find it, and you’ll be granted passage to the Kingdom of the Dead. I’ll make sure you do.”
“And what if I fail?”
“Then you’ll have to give up your own fragment unconditionally,” the Angel announced. “And you will beg the Spawn of Darkness to kindly take you along.”
“This is crazy!” I said, unable to restrain myself. “What kind of cannibalistic terms are these? And what’s with that fraction of your power?”
He gave me a meaningful smile. “Have you heard of the Dance of the Darkness school of combat? Its disciples are the best fighters in this Universe. They’re unslayable. I could teach it to you, deadman.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. An advanced dodge! Admittedly, the cheese in his mousetrap smelled delicious.
This was all or nothing.
Really, what was I risking? The Spawn of Darkness’s leaders had made it perfectly clear that they weren’t prepared to take us on their Kingdom of the Dead raid. The Angel had just confirmed it. Had he lied to me? Possibly. But if I took him at his word and managed to procure another fragment... that would make things so dramatically easier!
All or nothing. This was cheese in a mousetrap. I was playing against an expert cardsharp.
I shook my head. “The fragment doesn’t belong to me alone. The will of the Mistress of the Crimson Moon...”
The Angel snapped his fingers impatiently. “Leave that to me! Do you accept it or not? Decide quickly! We’re running out of time!”
Anxious, I looked around myself. The inky-black darkness surrounding us had begun to dispel, shrinking, pierced by beams of bright light.
‘Yes or no?” the Angel asked point blank.
“Will I be the first to enter the portal to the Kingdom of the Dead?” I asked, unwilling to leave this to chance. “No one will enter it before me?”
“Yes, you’ll be the first. The absolute first.”
“I accept!” I exclaimed.
We shook on it.
The broken stone fingers squeezed my hand in their vice-like grip. “You should steer clear of the Light Gods’ territories,” the Angel warned me.
Then the darkness dissipated.
I came round on the slab of granite drenched in my own blood.
What was that now? Did that mean that everything I’d just seen was only a feverish delusion?
I touched my left eye socket. My fingers traced an ugly scar. The bleeding had stopped; the wound had healed.
And the flamberge! Its undulating blade was now covered in fine patterns of frost, its hilt burning my fingers with icy cold. My crystalline eye glittered where the steel pommel used to be.
I looked up at the vandalized statue. It glanced back at me without even trying to conceal its smirk.
You have received a new quest: The Two Shards of the Sphere of Souls for the Spawn of Darkness.
Dammit! I cussed but decided not to open it just yet. The entrance to the cave glittered with flashes of white light. It could only mean one thing: the white witch was back and she was looking for me.
Steer clear of the Light Gods’ territories, I remembered the Angel’s advice. I shook uncontrollably. Easier said than done!
Suppressing a bout of panic, I hurried to utter the return portal activation formula. The light was burning even brighter, its sharp white rays dispelling the gloom and blinding my single eye as I feverishly rattled off the unintelligible words not even bothering to pronounce them right. I just needed to make it!
The portal popped open. I dove into its ragged shadow. A moment later I was already rolling over the cobblestones of a dark inner court.
I made it!
The moment I thought so, I bumped into someone’s steel greaves. My body reacted on its own accord, squirming, as I shot aside in a convoluted backflip combo.
Flamberge at the ready, I froze about ten feet away from my opponent.
Oh wow. How’s that for Dodge?
Chapter Four. The Dead Burglar
1
A SOMERSAULT, A BACKFLIP, a swing with my flamberge! An unnatural cold burned my fingers. The world had grown brighter, coming into focus. My blindness was gone. What's more, I seemed to be able to somehow control the situation around me. It was as if I'd been snapped out of virtual reality and transported back to the good old world of isometric graphics.
Thanks a bunch for your gift, mister Angel! I laughed, lowering the sword
. I had no one to fight: the person I’d stumbled into as I’d rocketed out of the portal was none other than Goar the green-skinned orc paladin.
He chewed on his meaty lip. “What happened to your eye?”
I winced but chose not to explain anything now, just took out my mithril mask and put it on.
The orc shrugged, balanced his sword on his shoulder and headed for the arch. “Let’s go. Isabella’s waiting for us.”
I shuddered. I tried not to even think how she’d react to my promise of surrendering the fragment of the Sphere of Souls to the Spawn of Darkness.
Having said that, did she really need to know? The most important thing now was to get the other fragment. If we did, then we’d come up trumps. But in that case, we had to do something about the vampires.
“You coming?” Goar asked impatiently.
“Yes! One moment!” I hurried to open the stats window a I walked.
Oh wow. The Angel didn’t do things in half-measures, did he? He'd promoted me to Apprentice straight away, thus unblocking my ability to improve Dodge until level 35. I promptly invested all the available points into the skill and paused, admiring the result.
Dodge: 30
Not bad at all!
And then a realization struck me. Intellect! I’d exchanged Perception to Intellect, hadn’t I? That had to have affected my magic skills!
Indeed, the Lich had received an additional spell levels 1 to 3. It wasn’t much but could come in handy, I suppose.
“John!” the orc barked, losing his patience. “Move your ass!”
Ignoring the interface windows, I hurried after him. Immediately I discovered a considerable drawback in my current condition. If holding the flamberge in my hands had endowed me with some sort of universal knowledge, then for the rest of the time I virtually couldn’t control the area to my left.
That wretched eye!
I had no idea how to adjust myself to this situation. Still, there was nothing I could do about it. I had to carry on living with one eye.
