Hell to Pay (Ascend Online Book 2)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “Why did you do it, Cayden?!” I chopped my blade down at Cayden’s head, only to be stopped again by a glimmering force shield.

  The dwarf simply sneered at me as his free hand began glowing with a sickly green aura and a thin ray shot out, hitting me in the arm.

  Cayden hits you with [Ray of Sickness]!

  You have been afflicted with intense nausea!

  Instantly a wave of sickness passed over me, causing my stomach and bowels to roil. I tried to summon every bit of willpower I had to keep myself from doubling over, but failed. Retching uncontrollably, I fell to one knee, my stomach clenching viciously as it reacted to the spell’s magic. I slashed weakly at Cayden as he danced around me, easily evading my attack.

  Fighting through the sickness, I managed two staggering steps before Cayden’s zombie grabbed me once more. But, instead of throwing me this time, the undead creature slammed his rotting fist into my face, causing my vision to blur in an explosion of pain which made me drop my sword with a heavy thud.

  The zombie landed two more hits by the time I was able to regain my senses and free myself from its rotting grip, which allowed me to dodge a brutal, slow-moving punch that would have certainly killed me. With nowhere else to go, I forced my way inside the zombie’s reach, fighting down an entirely new wave of nausea as the creature’s putrid stench threatened to overwhelm me.

  What now, Lazarus? I asked myself, staring up at the massive wall of decaying flesh before me with nowhere to escape to.

  Caught hesitating too long, the zombie’s arms enveloped me in massive hug and begun slowly crushing me against its rotting chest. Feeling my face sink deep into the wet, necrotic flesh, I began to panic, my hands pulling chunks of weeping flesh free from the zombie’s body as I tried to escape.

  A suffocation alert appeared in the corner of my vision and gradually began to count down as my body began to thirst for air, my heart thrashing wildly in my chest. I felt my ribs begin to crack as the pressure intensified, driving my face even deeper into the zombie’s body.

  I’m out of options, I thought to myself resignedly, not having accounted for Cayden having such a powerful minion at his disposal. If he were still alive, I knew Fairfax would have skinned me alive for making such an amateur mistake and rushing in without proper reconnaissance or support.

  The thought of my dead mentor flashed before my eyes as I pictured him lying on a table somewhere below me. I felt a surge of rage pulse from the sigil on my chest, reminding me of its presence, begging to be released.

  If I’m going down—I felt the rage well up inside me as I activated the sigil once again and embraced the torrent of energy that surged through my body—I’m going to take the house down with me!

  Charged with a newfound strength, I thrashed in the half-ogre’s grip, fighting against its unholy strength as I tried to free myself. Surprised by my sudden increase in strength, the zombie’s grip slipped, allowing me a chance to catch a single, glorious, rot-filled breath of air. Revitalized, I used the opportunity to attack the creature, digging my hands deep into its abdomen, ripping and tearing at everything I could find.

  Bloated and rotting intestines fell on the ground as I tore through the zombie’s soft stomach, rending a massive hole in its gut. I heard Cayden shouting something that my rage-filled state couldn’t comprehend, focused entirely on disemboweling the zombie. Liquid fire coursed through my veins as I ripped chunks of flesh from the zombie’s body, barely feeling the creature regain its grip around me.

  As I dug through the zombie’s insides, I felt my fingers hit its hip bone and immediately forced them even deeper, a desperate and daring plan forming in my mind.

  Grabbing the bone firmly, I began to pull upwards, gradually lifting the hulking zombie off the ground. I felt its legs sway under me in confusion as the magic powering its undead brain simply couldn’t comprehend what exactly was happening to it. Maintaining my grip, I leaned backwards, letting the zombie’s weight tip me over as I arched my back.

  Leading the creature straight over my body, I completed the lethal suplex with an earthshattering crunch and an explosion of gore as its head smashed into the ground.

  Twisting my body, I allowed the once again lifeless corpse of the half-ogre to fall to the side. Wasting no time, I launched myself up to my feet, grabbing my fallen sword as I stood and scanned the room for Cayden. I spotted the dwarf a short distance away, staring at me with a completely terrified expression. I shot forward and swung the blade in a vicious arc with every single ounce of rage-filled strength I possessed.

  Eyes widening at my sudden attack, Cayden thrust his arm out, desperately trying to conjure yet another force shield in an attempt to block my sword.

  This time, however, he was just too slow.

  Catching him before the spell could fully form, my sword sliced straight through the jaundiced dwarf’s wrist, sending his hand falling uselessly to the floor. A spurt of blood gushed from the stump as Cayden pulled it to his chest.

  “Ahhh, my hand!” I distantly heard his voice penetrate the wall of rage that clouded my vision.

  Not letting up in my assault, I smashed the hilt of my sword into the wounded dwarf’s mouth, watching a pair of teeth sail into the air as his head reeled backwards and slammed into the wall behind him. I followed up with a vicious knee to the stomach, bending the crime lord over as he gasped for air.

  Grabbing a fistful of hair, I yanked Cayden away from the wall and pressed my sword into his neck, preparing myself to saw straight through it. Rage filled every fiber of my being, demanding revenge for Fairfax’s death. I felt my hand tremble as blood began to weep from a shallow cut on Cayden’s throat.

  N-No. I tried to push the sigil’s rage away, feeling the energy flowing through my body begin to slow. I need to question him, I need to find out what happened here.

  Gradually, my crimson vision began to clear, leaving me standing in the dull orange light of the room, looking down at Cayden’s bloody face.

  “I can sheee now why she wanted that ssstupid sigil…” the broken dwarf whispered, slurring through his shattered teeth. “It makess you into a monster.”

  “She?” I demanded, my eyes widening in surprise. “Who the hell are you talking about?”

  “You don’t remember? Of course you don’t!” Cayden chuckled morbidly. “Why elssse would you be wasting your time here with me?”

  “What happened, Cayden?” I demanded, shaking the dwarf violently. “How did Fairfax and I end up here?”

  “Fuck you,” Cayden hissed. “You killed nearly half my gang…more if you made it out of the basement. Why ssshould I tell you anything?”

  I killed nearly half his gang? How much happened to me last night? The thoughts swirled around in my head as I scowled at the crime lord, staring deep into his eyes. I saw defiance, mixed in with the faintest glint of fear. He’s afraid of me, but afraid of this woman even more.

  That just won’t do.

  Gritting my teeth, I backhanded the dwarf, sending him sprawling across the ground and crashing into the desk. The impact sent the box sitting on the desk falling, causing it to land right on top of Cayden and bounce off before breaking open and spilling a wide variety of items to the floor.

  Half a dozen gleaming daggers and crossbow bolts bounced everywhere, followed by the heavy, rattling clatter of a familiar shape I had thought lost.

  My crossbow.

  “You had it!” I barked at the stunned dwarf, scooping down to pick up my beloved weapon. I couldn’t help but check it over, having dearly missed its comforting weight on my side.

  Irontwine Crossbow

  Slot: Main Hand and Offhand

  Item Class: Magical

  Item Quality: Good (+15%)

  Damage 30-35 (Piercing)

  Agility: +6

  Durability: 120/120

  Base Material: Iron

  Weight: 1.3 kg

  Class: Any Martial

  Level: 12

  Setting my sword aga
inst the wall, I grabbed the string and cocked the crossbow in one smooth motion while nocking a bolt in place, my strength more than enough to reload the device without needing to brace it against the ground.

  I saw Cayden slowly regaining his senses after his collision with the desk, his eyes landing on the crossbow in my hand. Before he could say anything, I took careful aim and fired a bolt straight through his knee.

  “Aaaaah!” the dwarf screamed as the bolt shattered the joint and imbedded itself deep into his leg.

  “Who is she, Cayden?” I asked the dwarf menacingly as I reloaded the crossbow and pointed it towards his other knee.

  “Aaah! Stop! Stop!” Cayden gasped, waving his remaining hand in the air. “I’ll talk!”

  I nodded, smiling grimly as I motioned with the crossbow. “I’m listening.”

  “Ssshe’s a new player in the city, an Adventurer like you,” Cayden hissed through his broken teeth. “Wears a massk around her face, so I can’t tell you more. She was alone, though; don’t think she’s had time to set up a network just yet.”

  “That doesn’t help me very much, Cayden,” I warned the man, shifting my aim towards his crotch. “Do you have anything actually useful to tell me about her?”

  “She brought you in!” Cayden practically shouted as he realized what I was pointing at. “I have no idea what happened to you, but you were completely worked over. Cut, beaten, bruised, burned, the works! You should have been dead!”

  I frowned for a moment, before motioning for the dwarf to continue.

  “She said that you had stolen something from her, and pointed to the sigil on your chest,” Cayden continued. “She paid me twenty gold to cut that stupid thing from your chest and give it to her.”

  Twenty gold?! I tried to not let the surprise show on my face. There were very few players in Eberia that would be able to afford that much at this early stage in the game. Unless they had substantial backing from another NPC faction.

  “So why didn’t you?” I waved a hand at a nearby window, indicating the time of day. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been out for an entire day, and yet the Sigil is still on my chest.”

  “We tried.” Cayden shook his head, his eyes taking on a faraway look. “The moment we tried to carve that sigil from your chest…you went berserk.”

  Cayden looked right at me. “You killed nine of my men before my pet was able to beat you back to unconsciousness. After that, we kept you fed and drugged. Our plan was to stuff you in a coffin and throw you in to the harbor later tonight.”

  “How nice,” I replied sarcastically, even if I did completely understand Cayden’s reasoning. “What about Fairfax? You should have known that the death of a Thief Lord wouldn’t go over easily in the city.”

  “You think I don’t know that?!” Cayden retorted hotly. “Ssshe fucking brought him too! An hour after she dropped you off!”

  “And you just accepted it?” I asked incredulously, my voice echoing my disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell her to fuck the hell off when you knew who Fairfax was?”

  “I tried to,” Cayden explained. “But she insisted, and when I tried to get her to leave…she disintegrated my other pet as easy as day.”

  I couldn’t help but look over at the massive mound of rotting flesh on the ground, silently imagining having to fight two of them at the same time.

  “You should have gone to your Thief Lord, then,” I told the dwarf. “Then turned her in.”

  “And what would that have gotten me?” Cayden asked. “She had already killed Fairfax, and was an Adventurer like you! Dying means something completely different to your kind! I wasn’t about to get on her bad side by pissssing her off.”

  Shaking my head at the dwarf, I asked one final question. “What were you supposed to do after cutting the sigil from my chest?”

  “Take it to Stone Sailor’s Pier tonight,” Cayden answered quickly, sensing that the questioning was about to come to a close. “After midnight.”

  Quest Updated! The Heist!

  After a brutal interrogation, Cayden has revealed to you that a mysterious woman was responsible for bringing you to the Undertaker headquarters in hopes of removing the Sigil of Rage from your body, but has no clue to her real identity. Once he removed the sigil, Cayden was supposed to bring it to Stone Sailor’s Pier, tonight.

  Meet the mysterious woman: 0/1

  Find party members - Molly, Ransom, and Edith: 0/3

  (Optional) Recover Memory: 0/1

  I scanned the quest update before dismissing it from my vision. At least I have a lead to follow now, even if it seems that the Undertakers weren’t directly involved in whatever happened to me and Fairfax.

  I sighed, looking down at Cayden’s bleeding form. “Seems to me like this was all a terrible misunderstanding, then, if what you’re saying is true. You really didn’t have a choice but to do whatever this woman wanted.”

  “Hell of a misunderstanding,” Cayden agreed, waving the stump of his arm at me. “But I’m willing to let it pass.”

  “You know what I hate more than misunderstandings, though?” I asked thoughtfully, cocking my head.

  “Eh?” The dwarf’s voice sounded nervous. “What’s that?”

  “Loose ends,” I replied as I shot Cayden in the throat.

  Chapter 5

  I knelt on a nearby rooftop a short distance away from the Undertaker funeral home, watching orange flames dancing into the night sky as fire began to consume the building. After killing Cayden, I recovered my throwing daggers, spare crossbow bolts, and lockpick set that had spilled from the knocked-over box. Then set about ransacking the office.

  Well aware of all the tactics thieves and criminal used to hide things, it didn’t take me long to discover a secret compartment in the necromancer’s desk, containing a booklet written in Cayden’s steady hand. Scanning through it briefly, I realized that it outlined the entirety of the gang’s activities, including transactions, profits, safe houses, and a list of fences that were always open to buy and sell the various items that the Undertakers acquired. A nearly priceless item, considering the information it held, and one that wasn’t likely to change with the Undertaker gang effectively destroyed.

  Molly or one of the other guild members would be better suited to make complete sense of all the information the booklet contained, but a cursory look on the last few pages of the booklet had a list of transactions that caught my eye.

  Two dozen Seraphinite Crystals – Deliver to HP.

  Eight yards of both Silver and Gold Filament – Deliver to HP.

  Three intact skeletons, two Human, one Elf. Dry and clean – Deliver to HP.

  Twenty yards of Human or Elf Skin, cut in one yard increments. Needs to be fresh – Deliver to HP.

  I had no idea who HP was, or why they needed such an exotic list of items, but I was hesitant to believe that Cayden had told me everything. Whoever this woman was, she clearly knew her way around the Eberian Underworld, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she had prior contact with Cayden before dumping mine and Fairfax’s bodies there.

  Another avenue to investigate if the pier doesn’t pan out, I told myself as I patted the chest pocket containing the booklet.

  The booklet wasn’t the only thing that I had found, though. Secured in the same secret compartment, I had discovered a stash of coins containing twenty-nine gold pieces, eight silver pieces, and thirty copper pieces, the sum of which nearly quadrupled my total net worth in raw coinage. As if that weren’t enough, however, I had pried a plain gold ring from Cayden’s severed hand and was lucky to find that it happened to be enchanted. Looking down at my hand, where I had put the ring on for the time being, I brought up the item’s description.

  Ring of Willpower

  Slot: Ring

  Item Class: Magical

  Item Quality: Good (+15%)

  Willpower: +2

  Base Material: Gold

  Weight: 0.0 kg

  Class: Any

  Level: 12


  Not a very useful item for me, I thought with a shrug, shifting my glance away from the ring and towards the burning funeral home. But probably worth two or three gold to a caster.

  The sound of shouts and rushing feet from the street alerted me to the arrival of the fire brigade, a team of specialized mages that used both water and ice spells to put out fires, or at the very least keep them under control.

  I frowned slightly as the mages set about blasting the now raging fire with torrents of water and ice. I had hoped for the fire I’d set to have more time to burn and destroy the building entirely.

  Giving Fairfax some semblance of a burial while destroying the evidence, I thought to myself as I turned to leave, then heard several loud cracks echo through the air. Wheeling back towards the building, I saw the structure sag as something critical inside gave up, then began to collapse in on itself. The mages below me retreated away from the building as the flames suddenly rose even higher into the air, sending a massive plume of smoke into the night sky.

  “Rest in peace, Grimm,” I whispered, feeling a strange sense of loss fall upon me as I turned away from the fire. The Thief Lord may have only been a digital entity within the game, but in the few weeks that I had been playing Ascend Online, he had made a lasting impression on me. Despite being one of the lowest-ranking members of his guild, he made it a point to treat both Molly and I as valuable members, taking the time to train and mentor us.

  Swallowing hard, I buried my grief as I left the rooftop and began my trek across the city, choosing to avoid the streets for the time being. I still didn’t have a clear picture of what had happened to me yesterday, but at least now I had a few leads to follow. After traveling a block away from the fire, I was surprised to see a prompt and a mail symbol appear in the corner of my vision.