Hell to Pay (Ascend Online Book 2)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “I wouldn’t consider her entirely blameless in this,” Molly allowed. “But given what we’re about to head into, it’d be best if you cleared the air between you two.”

  “You’re right. Best if I get this over with right now while there’s still time,” I said with a sigh, turning my head towards Quinn. “Meet you over at the crafting area?”

  “Sure thing,” Quinn replied. “I’ll prep your gear and we’ll see if we can get your new cuirass fixed up in time.”

  “Thanks, Quinn,” I said to the mage before giving Molly a quick peck on the cheek as I made my way out of the room. “I won’t be long.”

  Chapter 19

  Leaving Molly and Quinn behind, I retraced my steps back towards the common room, feeling the weight of everything I had said to Isabella earlier in the day fall upon my shoulders. Intellectually, I could understand why we had been kept in the dark with regards to the political workings between the guilds, and I could even understand why the other Thief Lords had decided to keep both Edith and Ransom a secret.

  What I was having trouble processing, however, was the chilling disregard that the other Thief Lords had displayed when their involvement had been found out, seeking to simply pay us off as an apology.

  Technically, they admitted their involvement, though, I thought to myself, remembering Stroud’s explanation of events back at the sewer hub. They hid the whole thing for as long as it served them, but the moment it was in their favor to tell the truth, they did.

  My mental train of thought paused for a moment as I walked past a group of fully kitted-out thieves that were making their way towards one of the entrances back up to the surface, the five of them chatting confidently amongst themselves as they outlined a plan of attack on whatever target Isabella had assigned to them.

  Taking in the sight for a moment, I felt my brain lurch forward as a subconscious revelation finally bubbled its way to the surface.

  Damn it, I’m such an idiot! I’ve been thinking of them like they’re normal people! I kicked myself as I tore my eyes from the departing thieves and glanced around me as if seeing the guild’s headquarters for the first time.

  Here I was in a deep underground hideout that had been purposefully designed not to be found by what passed as the law in Ascend Online, living a life as a criminal, completely surrounded by ruthless cutthroats, smugglers, and pickpockets. There really weren’t any truly good people around me. The reason why I was having such a struggle in coming to terms with how I was feeling was because I had been trying to apply a Real-Life view of morality onto them.

  Everyone here was guilty of at least something that would have had them ending up in prison had they done it in reality. Hell, in contrast, some of the things that I had done since I had started playing Ascend Online had a good chance of landing me in Eberia’s prison if I were ever caught. Up until this moment, I had considered my choice to be a Criminal Player as an academic point, something that simply affiliated me with one faction within the city rather than the other.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Everyone that belongs to a Thieves Guild is a hardened criminal, having survived long enough to make it up from a gang, I realized as I thought through the typical recruitment process that the Thieves Guilds employed. And anyone who has managed to rise high enough to become a Thief Lord would naturally be the most ruthless and pragmatic of them all.

  I shook my head as I tried to switch my mental gears on how I had been looking at the Underworld and what it truly meant to be a Criminal Player in Ascend Online. I’d thought I’d known what sort of tough moral choices I would be facing and had managed come to terms with them, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how limited my experiences had been.

  So far, all I had done in this game that had actually tested my morality had consisted of breaking into a few dozen buildings, then raiding the place, or roughing up a few unruly gangs that had stepped out of line. Thinking about it even further, I realized that everything I had done up until this point had been carefully orchestrated by Fairfax as he put Molly and me through the trials. I almost had a feeling that we had been soft-pedaled through the hard choices that the game would demand of us if we decided to stay on the Criminal Path. Just to make sure we weren’t overwhelmed and rejected it out of reflex.

  It worked reasonably well…at least until Fairfax died and I confronted Cayden. I closed my eyes as I recalled the dwarf’s death. It had taken him some time to die after I had shot him in the throat, and the memory of him slowly gurgling to death wasn’t one I was about to forget anytime soon.

  Had I not killed him, Cayden would have been a permanent threat and would have never forgiven me for killing his entire gang, I mentally justified to myself. He would have bided his time until he had an opportunity to strike back at me, and I would have likely found myself back in his torture chamber again.

  I slowly worked through my revelation as I continued my walk through the length of the guild headquarters, causing the chambers and people moving through them to blur around me. Eager to get my mind off of my spiraling thoughts, I brought up my quest journal and skimmed over my two active quests, realizing that both of them had updated without my notice.

  Quest Updated! No Honor Among Thieves!

  Betrayal! Your meeting with the Council of Thieves has implicated Thief Lord Dorian in Fairfax’s death. However, when confronted with the accusation, Dorian attempted to kill you and all of the other Thief Lords. Through sacrifice and blood, you managed to survive his treacherous attack, all of the remaining Thief Lords agreeing on one course of action: War.

  Tell Isabella your plan of attack: 0/1 (Timed: 87 minutes remaining)

  Find Dorian: 0/1

  Discover what Dorian has planned: 0/1

  Quest Updated! The Heist!

  During your meeting with the Council of Thieves, you have learned that both Edith and Ransom were recruited by Thief Lord Dorian into his guild, The Damned, and was indirectly responsible for hiring you to infiltrate the Arcaneum. Given the scope of Dorian’s betrayal in [No Honor Among Thieves], the Thief Lords of Eberia have tasked you in recovering the Artifact that you stole as well as finding both Edith and Ransom.

  Find Edith (again): 0/1

  Find Ransom: 0/1

  Recover the Stolen Artifact: 0/1

  (Optional) Recover Memory: 0/1

  Going to have to move fast, I told myself, just realizing now that there was a time limit associated with the quest as I turned the final corner that led back towards the common room. I still need to meet up with Quinn to see if I can Re-Forge that chestpiece before we all need to head out.

  Silently rehearsing what I was going to say to Isabella, I walked into the common room, surprised to see that in just the short few minutes that I’d been gone, it had managed to nearly empty itself.

  Isabella doesn’t waste time, I noted with silent appreciation as I walked into the room and spotted her standing by a larger group of thieves.

  “Elmar, as requested, you and your group will be assigned to the Adventurers,” I heard Isabella tell a heavily muscled half-orc that was standing in front of her before she spotted me out of the corner of her eye. “I expect that—eh, Lazarus, you’re back? Is something wrong?”

  “No.” I waved off her look of concern. “I actually just wanted a moment to talk with you before we all left.”

  Pursing her lips, Isabella stared at me for a moment before nodding once.

  “Alright,” she stated, before motioning towards the half-orc she had been talking to earlier. “But before that, I would like to introduce you to Elmar, one of our best bruisers, and the rest of your team.”

  “Team?” I echoed with a slightly confused expression as I extended my hand to the half-orc, counting the group gathered around us. “I didn’t think we had enough bodies for us to have our own team, let alone a dozen!”

  “We all volunteered,” Elmar replied in Isabella’s stead as he grasped my hand and gripped it
tightly. “Adventurers always seem to end up where the fighting is the thickest, and after what that bastard Dorian did to Fairfax, we all want our pound of flesh, either from him or from his followers. You’re our best ticket to getting that.”

  “We won’t turn away help,” I told the half-orc with a small grin as I looked towards the group of assembled thieves, seeing all of their eager expressions. “But at the same time, we’re planning on jumping right down the dragon’s throat. Molly’s picked out six of The Damned largest hideouts closest to the hall that the noble heirs were killed at today, and we’re looking to hit each of them back to back. Are you all ready for that kind of heat?”

  “Sounds like a fucking party for the ages,” Elmar said with a fang-filled grin, despite his eyes taking on a faraway look as he understood my meaning. If we were focusing on hitting the hardest and most heavily defended hideouts that The Damned had, casualties were going to be inevitable. Turning his head towards the group, Elmar quickly barked, “What do you all think? Can we keep up with Lazarus and his crew?”

  A disembodied chorus of cheers and profanity echoed from the group of cutthroats gathered around us as they all expressed their excitement.

  “We’re ready for anything you got, Adventurer!” a voice called out.

  “You’re going to have to worry about keeping up with us, scrub!” a second voice shouted.

  “Just fucking watch us!” a third chimed in, even louder than the others.

  “I think you have your answer there,” Elmar told me with a raised eyebrow. “The Damned won’t know what hit them.”

  “Damn right.” I nodded in approval towards Elmar and the rest of the thieves while silently hoping that the majority of them would survive the night.

  “We’re counting on you to make a big impact tonight,” Isabella said, addressing all of us as she spoke. “You’re going to be one of the largest groups on the streets tonight and the only one with Adventurers—on our side, at least.”

  I saw a wave of nervousness cross Isabella’s face at her last statement.

  “As I’ve told the other groups before you, our primary goal for this war is the complete and utter purge of Dorian and his guild,” Isabella continued, giving each of us a hard look as she spoke. “But in order to do that effectively, we need to make sure that nothing escapes our notice, and that requires information. If, during your assaults, you come across anything that may help expose other cells belonging to The Damned or anything that pertains to the dark magic that Dorian has been using, collect it and bring it to me or one of the other Thief Lords as quickly as possible.

  “It may be the difference between interrupting whatever Dorian has planned, or having Eberia descend into civil war,” Isabella finished morbidly.

  There was a short pause after Isabella finished speaking, everyone quietly mulling over just how close the city was to descending into anarchy. Looking at the faces of everyone gathered around us, I could tell that they knew all too well what a civil war would do to Eberia as it tore itself apart from within.

  “Finish getting ready and make sure that your gear is in order,” Isabella ordered while looking at Elmar, breaking the awkward silence that hung over us. “I’ll speak to Lazarus privately in the side room.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Elmar replied somewhat somberly as he gave me a nod. “We should be ready within the hour, Lazarus. Just let me know when you’re ready to move out.”

  “I will,” I acknowledged as I turned to follow Isabella, who led the way to the same spare room where she had set up a temporary office what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Closing the door behind me as the two of us entered the room, I didn’t waste any time in broaching the subject that I had come back this way for.

  “Isabella, I came here to apologize about how I behaved around the other Thief Lords,” I said, watching the blonde-haired woman’s expression go flat as she turned around to face me. “I was angry about their betrayal and how they simply tried to buy us off. I-I’m not used to that way of thinking, and while it’s not the best excuse…I was caught off guard and reacted poorly.”

  Staring at me intently, Isabella said nothing as her green eyes bored into mine. Silence filled the air as I waited for her to say something, if only to berate me, then throw me out of the room.

  “Fairfax and I…were lovers,” Isabella finally whispered, her throat visibly twitching with emotion as she spoke. “And have been for nearly twenty years.”

  Eyes widening, I felt my jaw drop slightly as Isabella continued speaking.

  “You said only a fraction of what I wanted to say to them,” Isabella ground out slowly as she struggled to get her grief under control. “I wanted to kill them where they stood…”

  Isabella coughed as she cleared her throat and looked at me with misty eyes. “I knew we could have killed them where they stood and blamed it all on Dorian, but…”

  “…that would have likely cost us Eberia,” I finished in sudden understanding.

  “It would have,” Isabella agreed as she crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “And Fairfax would have never forgiven me for that. He loved both Eberia and the guild far too much to see it go to ruin, even with the stranglehold that the king had on him for the majority of his life.”

  “I wish I’d had a chance to get to know him better,” I said with a deep sigh, unsure of how to process what I was feeling. Here I was, living in a virtual reality completely divorced from real life, yet I found myself mourning a digital entity, one that I had barely known for three weeks.

  “Fairfax and I weren’t fools,” Isabella continued in a husky tone as she looked towards the ground. “We knew that our relationship would likely end with the other’s violent death. Very few have ever had the luxury to die of old age in the Underworld. Yet for all that rationalization, we never anticipated a betrayal of this magnitude.”

  “Did you really have that many problems bringing Molly and me into the Underworld?” I asked, remembering what Stroud and Smiling Jade had said. “It seems to me that all of this started because of us.”

  “The other Thief Lords were highly resistant to the idea,” Isabella admitted. “More so than either Fairfax or I ever realized, in hindsight. They all wanted to take a wait-and-see approach, and to allow the majority of Adventurers to disperse away from Eberia before beginning any recruitment.

  “We, on the other hand, didn’t want to recruit the dregs that stayed behind,” Isabella said while motioning to me. “We wanted to lay claim to the best candidates as early as possible, before they left the city and sought their fortune out in the wild.”

  “I was close to leaving,” I admitted as I thought back to Launch Day. “Had I not seen Molly lift a key from a blacksmith in the marketplace and decided to follow her, I would have likely left with the rest of the Adventurers to Coldscar.”

  “And we would have missed out on the chance to recruit you.” Isabella nodded in understanding. “Given the asset that both you and Molly have been to the guild since joining, I daresay that Fairfax and I had the right approach.

  “But more importantly, if it weren’t for you, Lazarus, it is likely that we would have never found out what happened to Fairfax.” Isabella looked at me intently as she spoke. “I would have simply assumed he was delayed in meeting with the king and turned my attention towards the conflict brewing between the nobles. All the while, Dorian and the other Thief Lords would have continued to work behind our backs.”

  “Do you think that the others had any idea of what Dorian has been planning? With Edith murdering the noble heirs and whatever he had us steal from the Arcaneum…” I asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable on how much had hinged on my coincidental discovery of Fairfax’s body.

  “No,” Isabella replied after a moment of thought. “They fully admitted that they knew about Edith and Ransom and that their role was to masquerade as independent contractors within the Underworld. But when I asked them about both the Arcaneum and the summoned devils, they we
re surprised beyond measure.

  “The more I think about what you and Molly have told me, the more I’m inclined to believe that Dorian orchestrated the heist to frame both you and Molly,” Isabella told me in her normal tone, the raw emotion in her voice having faded away. “But something went wrong and Edith was forced to improvise.”

  “You think it relates to the sigil?” I asked, feeling the ever-present energy of the strange rune pulse on my chest. “Edith…was twisted by something the last time I had fought her; it was almost if she had been partially transformed. She also accused me of ruining whatever she had planned.”

  “I truly do not know,” Isabella said with a resigned shrug. “But unless we stop whatever Dorian has planned tonight and present his head to the nobles, I don’t think it will matter. So much has happened in the last two days that I had never dreamed was possible, and yet my stomach is in knots, fearing that it is likely going to get much worse before it will get better.”

  “We’ll see it through to the end,” I told Isabella confidently, despite sharing the same twisting sensation in my stomach. “We’ve managed to get this far, and we have Dorian on the run. It’s only a matter of time before he makes a mistake, and then we’ll tear him to pieces.”

  “I hope so,” Isabella replied with a thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It may be dramatic for me to say, but I believe that the fate of Eberia depends on our actions tonight. Should we fail…all might be lost.”

  “Then we better not fail.”

  Chapter 20

  We were all huddled on either side of Quinn, pressed hard against the wall as the mage slowly conjured a burning orb of fire in his hands. Standing half a step behind him, I momentarily tore my eyes off the growing fireball and glanced behind me, checking on the remaining members of our team that filled the long hallway. Scanning their faces, I saw that they were all intently focused on the heavy wooden door ahead of us, bloodied weapons held high in their hands. Feeling Molly’s hand touch the small of my back as a shimmering shield enveloped me, I turned back towards the door and gripped my sword tight.