Lord of the Flame: A LitRPG novel (Call of Carrethen Book 2)

by Stephen Roark

  “When we get some bolts, can you guys power-level me?” Gehman asked excitedly. “This is the highest I’ve ever been, and that’s sad.”

  “Of course, dude,” I replied. Groups shared experience in Call of Carrethen. Gehman was much lower level than us, and would only get a fraction of the total XP, but it would be better than whatever he’d get leveling on his own.

  “Awesome.” Gehman smiled, swinging his smith’s hammer in the air, fighting an imaginary monster. “All I’ve ever fought were low level Horngrins outside Stoneburg.”

  “Well, you’re going to need to work on your swing if you’re going to fight anything harder than that,” Kodiak replied, needling him a little bit.

  “I know that!” Gehman protested. “Gimme a break or I won’t upgrade any of your stuff!”

  Kodiak smiled and kept his mouth shut.

  “Hey, Gehman,” I said hesitantly. “Have you seen any of the others? Baltos? Jack?”

  “Just Xavier and Cavey,” he replied. “But I lost them in the battle after escaping Sheol.”

  “What battle?”

  “The Redeeming Blood,” he replied. “A guild run by this girl Rayne. They tried taking down the Lord of the Flame,” he continued. “That’s how we managed to get out.”

  “But then they attacked you?”

  “Not all of us,” Gehman replied. “Just the ones who had sunken.”

  “They can tell that easily?” I asked. “What if you just died once or twice? How many times do you have to die before you get to the point where…?”

  “Where I was when you found me?” he asked, finishing my sentence.

  I could only nod.

  “It takes a while,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I couldn’t really say.”

  “But you can tell even after a single death,” Kodiak added. “You just start looking…sickly. Like an undead or something.”

  “But what’s the point of attacking the Sunken?” I asked. “Don’t they just die and come back again—but more sunken?”

  “Rayne and her guild have found a way to kill them,” Kodiak said grimly. “Permanently.”

  Thunder clapped above us and again, the rain began to fall. We quickly made our way to the cover of a small glade of trees, thankfully devoid of any monsters. I shook the wet from my clothes the best I could, but felt the chill already beginning to sink in.

  “But how can she do that?” I asked. “I thought permadeath wasn’t a thing anymore.”

  “No one knows,” Kodiak shrugged. “It could all just be a rumor really—”

  “It’s not a rumor,” Gehman said quickly. “I was there. I saw her do it. She has this enormous black sword. Drove it right into the guy in front of me—a Sunken. He dropped dead and exploded out of existence.”

  “But you got away.”

  Gehman nodded. “I’d died twice and could already feel myself turning,” he said, sounding almost ashamed. “But I managed to slip away during the battle.”

  “What killed you?” I asked. “Are people fighting in Sheol?”

  Gehman paused before he spoke, as though he was reliving a painful memory. “You have to understand…once people started to go Sunken…there was just no stopping it.”

  The rain had become a torrential downpour, cascading from the sky in thick sheets, making it impossible to see beyond the trees of the grove where we’d taken shelter. I could feel the cold creeping into my bones, slowly but surely taking me over. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was how it felt to become one of the Sunken.

  “A few people tried to escape early on,” he said, his eyes on the ground in front of him. “The Lord of the Flame killed them easily. They respawned and tried again. Then again and again and again until they were shadows of who they once were. They were Sunken, fully and completely. Then they started to attack the rest of us.”

  I thought back to what had happened at Gehman’s hut, the way he mindlessly came at us without recognition or understanding, just swinging his hammer like some kind of zombie.

  “It spread like a plague,” he said quietly. “We fought them off the best they could, but one person would go down, and then another, and then another. If Rayne hadn’t attacked when she did…I would have never gotten out of there.”

  “You escaped,” Kodiak said. “And then you went Sunken anyway.”

  Gehman burst out laughing, but it was a sad laugh, and he looked as though he was on the verge of tears. “Yup! Good ol’ Gehman! Nice guy Gehman! Tried making my way across the world to Stoneburg all on my own, Bindstone to Bindstone, dying along the way. I don’t even know where I was when I lost myself completely. Must have wandered back to my hut on autopilot. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the ground with you standing over me.”

  It hurt to picture Gehman trying to make it through the Dark World on his own, escaping Sheol only to fall victim to some other player or the corrupted monsters of what was once Carrethen. Someone as nice as him didn’t deserve such a cruel fate.

  It was a very un-D-like feeling, which may have been attributable to the fact that my avatar was gone, but I felt bad for him and reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re with us now, Gehman,” I told him. “And you don’t have to worry about going Sunken again. I’ll never let that happen.”

  Slowly, he raised his eyes to mine and looked at me. After a moment, a smile formed on his face. “Yeah, how did you do that anyway?”

  “Oh, man,” I laughed. “God-like powers or something like that? I don’t know. This whole ordeal makes my brain hurt.”

  “So, is that the plan, then?” Gehman asked. “Get to Sheol and help the Sunken?”

  “It’s more than that,” I told him. “I’m supposed to get everyone out of here and back home.”

  “How do you do that?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “I wish I knew.”

  12

  Cragrock

  Night began to fall over us as we made our way across the western road, sweeping over us like an icy blanket. I hadn’t been to Cragrock since beta, but remembered it was a quaint town on a hill overlooking a broad sweeping river. When we arrived, the river was still there, but what I remembered of the town was not.

  Like Stoneburg, the buildings were a shell of what they once were, almost as though the entire town had been destroyed by an army. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though some of them were missing entirely. The windmill that had spun lazily on the hill above town had stopped completely and was missing several of its blades. The whole place felt like a ghost town.

  “Charming,” I said sarcastically.

  “The Bowyer’s hut is still standing,” Kodiak remarked, pointing to a small cottage sitting beneath the overhang of an enormous tree. “Hopefully the merchant’s there too.”

  Out of habit, I kept my eyes peeled as we came down the road into town, watching for any potential threats. I couldn’t imagine anyone would be spending much time in town here in the Dark World, but it was still no reason to let my guard down.

  The general merchant’s hut was completely obliterated, with only a single corner standing. It looked as though the game had constructed the roof but without any of the structural walls, causing it to crash down onto the ground and collapse into a pile of lumber.

  I groaned as we approached the Bowyer’s hut and saw the door was completely missing.

  “Doesn’t look good,” I muttered as I stepped inside.

  “Good day, travelers!” A voice rang out. I looked up to see a cheerful looking NPC standing behind a low counter. “Interest you in some of my wares!?”

  “Oh, damn!” I said, breathing a sigh of relief and running my hands through my hair. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Look at that!” Gehman said loudly from behind me, causing me to jump. “He’s here! Does he have any arrows?”

  I opened a trade window and smiled. “He does. Kodiak, can you lend me some Pareals?”

  “It’s easier if I just buy them for
you,” he replied, stepping up beside me and opening his own trade window. “Do you have Fletching? Because if you do, I can just buy you some Shafts and Arrowheads. They take up less pack space and you can make your own later.”

  “I must,” I replied, opening my character sheet and scrolling down. “Yup! And, wow—it’s at 425.”

  “Easy,” Kodiak said slyly. The sound of coins rattling rang out as he made the exchange.

  “Thank you kindly!” The merchant smiled.

  Kodiak turned to me and opened a trade window where he placed ten bundles of Crossbow Bolt Shafts and ten bundles of Crossbow Arrowheads. They were completely basic, low level stuff, but it was better than nothing.

  “What now?” Gehman asked excitedly. “Anywhere around here we can get me some levels?”

  “I’m not too familiar with Cragrock,” Kodiak replied, gazing around.

  “I haven’t been here since beta,” I said. “But there used to be a few camps of skeletons to the Southwest—a graveyard, if I remember correctly.”

  “What levels?” Gehman asked.

  “Low 40s I think,” I replied. “Not much for Kodiak or me, but we could help you clear those camps in no time. I think they also drop studded leather armor that I could use.”

  “Awesome, let’s do that,” Gehman replied, turning to go.

  “Hey, wait a second,” I said quickly. Gehman stopped and spun around. “What are you going to fight with? Your smith’s hammer?”

  “Yup!” He grinned. “It’s a combination item, works as a weapon or a trade item. Pretty sweet, huh?”

  “All right, as long as you’ve got something,” I replied, setting off in the direction of the graveyard.

  The cold had finally settled in my bones, driven there by the rain that had barely let up since it had begun. An icy, silvery moon had risen in the sky, casting the world in a ghostly glow. The once vibrant, exciting world of Carrethen was gone. Only the Dark World remained—infected, broken and corrupted by Wintermute’s backup, and for the first time in a long time, I felt unsure of myself.

  I prided myself on always being ahead of the game. Whether it was insider information from the leaks or the developers themselves, getting a copy of the game ahead of time as a beta tester, or just diving in head first at launch and figuring everything out before anyone else, I was never behind the 8-ball. But now, I was the least knowledgeable person in the Dark World, while at the same time, the only one who could save it.

  We trudged on in silence, our heads ducked in an attempt to shelter ourselves from the rain while deep puddles formed at our feet. Rolling thunder cascaded above us and something big moved on a hilltop far to the east. I didn’t even want to think about what it might have been.

  “Hey, what’s that over there?” I asked, pointing upriver. It was hard to make out, but there was definitely a battle of some kind going on.

  “Somebody fighting?” Gehman asked, peering into the distance.

  “I don’t think it’s players…” I said slowly. The figures were humanoid. One set looked like a mutated form of Horngrin, and the other some kind of lumbering ogre. They were both twisted and bizarre looking, but that wasn’t what was bothering me. What was bothering me was the fact that both groups were fighting each other.

  “What—what are they doing?” Kodiak asked.

  “It looks like they’re fighting each other,” I replied, watching as one of the Horngrin brought a mace down in a savage blow against one of the ogre-like things.

  “But that’s not possible,” Gehman said with concern. “Right?”

  “Not supposed to be,” I agreed. Call of Carrethen had strict rules about NPCS and monster interaction. NPCS wouldn’t attack players or monsters unprovoked, and monsters never attacked each other. Ever.

  So what was going on?

  “Have you ever seen something like this, Kodiak?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied. “Some kind of glitch?”

  “Must be…” I said, thinking. The Horngrin moved in a way I’d never seen before. They were too far away to inspect, but there was a chance they were just some high level version of the mob I’d yet to run into, and a glitch had caused them to just go aggro on anything around them. But then, why weren’t they fighting each other and only the ogres?

  It just didn’t make sense.

  “Let’s keep moving,” I said, turning away from the enigmatic sight.

  We pressed on until we reached the edge of the river and followed it to the south to a shoddy stone bridge over some rapids that took us to woods on the other side. The growth wasn’t too thick, which allowed us to progress easily, and it wasn’t long before I spotted the graveyard.

  “This it is,” I said, breaking the long silence. I pointed ahead of us, but as we grew closer, I realized there was a problem; the graveyard was completely empty. Letting my head drop, I sighed with defeat and leaned against a tree beside me.

  “Where are the skeletons?” Gehman asked. Kodiak must have given him a look as he said nothing further. I’d encountered nothing but obstacles since arriving in the Dark World, and it didn’t seem like that was going to change any time soon.

  “Other ideas?” I asked, turning around. Kodiak just looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  “There’s some high level stuff if we push farther south towards Kelthuin, but Gehman won’t be safe there. Pretty much everything could one-shot him.”

  “So, I’ll stay back,” Gehman suggested. “Just in range to gain experience when you guys kill stuff. How about that?”

  I shrugged. It was an idea, but not a very good one. But what choice did we have? Wandering around aimlessly wouldn’t get us anywhere, and we’d just be wasting more time that should have been spent looking for Jack and the others.

  “Fine, I guess,” I said finally, giving in. “I just wish this rain would stop—”

  I didn’t finish my sentence. I heard something, a sound on the wind that stopped me. Singing.

  The words were mere whispers, almost lost among the wind and rain, but they were there. I cocked my head to the side and listened.

  “What is it—?” Kodiak started to say, but I held up a fist to silence him.

  “Listen,” I whispered.

  “Till the seas go dry, my dear…and the rocks…melt with the sun…”

  It was a girl’s voice—a ghostly voice, pained and soft, singing slowly as if unaware that anyone was listening. A hush came over the group as her words floated gently through the rain, like a small glimmer of light among the darkness.

  Listening intently, I stepped forward slowly, trying to hone in on the source of the singing.

  “I will…love the still…my dear…”

  The haunting tune danced among the headstones, threading its way through the woods from across the graveyard.

  “This way!” I hissed, motioning to my companions.

  “While the…sands of life…shall run…”

  I moved as quickly as I could, moving past the cold stones jutting out of the dark earth, following the sound of the voice as it whispered across the wind.

  “And fare thee…well…” The singing stopped, and I heard the sound of crying. I moved slowly as a stony crypt came into view, dilapidated and crumbling, on the verge of falling over. Its large stone door lay on the ground, smashed to pieces. A faint, flickering orange glow shone from inside.

  “Fare thee well…” the voice wavered. “My only love…”

  I turned to see Kodiak behind me, dagger in hand. Gehman stood behind him, his face white, clinging to his hammer in a valiant attempt to be brave. Drawing my daggers, I nodded to Kodiak and we pushed forward towards the open mouth of the crypt.

  13

  Anwi of Alexandria

  My hands tightened around my daggers as I grew closer to the door leading into the crypt. I had no idea what we would find, but whoever it was, it was definitely a player. The flames of a small bonfire came into view as we approached, and then I saw her—seated behind the flames,
leaning on the most massive sword I’d ever seen in my life, was a beautiful girl.

  Her hair was the color of moonlight, and she wore a monstrous set of dark silver plate mail with heavy pauldrons. Over her breastplate was a chestnut brown tabard with a faded golden sigil of a sun. On the stone beside her was her helm and shield, and on the walls around her were countless bones, as if the very walls of the crypt had been built from them.

  With her head down, she hadn’t noticed us yet. I watched as a tear dripped from her eye into the flames below. She opened her mouth again, and a chill ran through me as she began to sing.

  “And I will come again…my love…though it were…ten…ten…ten thousand miles…”

  I inspected her:

  Anwi of Alexandria—level 95.

  “That’s a pretty song,” I said quietly.

  Slowly, as though lost in her own thoughts, Anwi looked up. I saw no hostility in her grey eyes, only a glimmer of hope, like we were the first people she’d encountered in a long time.

  “Oh, hello,” she said softly, her voice like the most delicate of bells ringing gently through the night. “How are you? I am Anwi of Alexandria. Are you too seeking The Fallen God?”

  I glanced back at Kodiak and Gehman, who were both as confused as I was. This girl was decked out with high level gear, and probably could have taken all of us down if she wanted to, but there wasn’t a single hint of malice in her. If anything, there was a vulnerability that made me uneasy. I couldn’t help but feel as though the Dark World had beaten and clawed at her for so long that she was on the edge of defeat.

  “The Fallen God?” I asked finally.

  “Yes,” she replied simply. “A woman named Rayne. Do you know her?”

  I glanced back at Gehman, but he just stared back at me, not knowing what to say.

  “I’ve heard of her,” I replied. “Why are you looking for her?”

  “I’ve lost my companion,” she continued sadly, her eyes seeming to focus and not focus on me at the same time, as though she were lost in a sea of painful memories. “Hectar. He is a gallant knight—have you seen him?”