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

by Stephen Roark

  “Seriously?” Gehman groaned. They came up behind me and stepped into the tiny room. I could feel their disappointment.

  “All this way for nothing,” Kodiak said simply.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing here?” Gehman asked, circling around the room, looking for secrets.

  “You tell me.” I shrugged, taking a seat on a raised ledge of stone by one of the small windows.

  It felt like all we were running into were setbacks. Sure, Gehman had gained some levels, but he was still almost half of Kodiak’s and almost three times less than mine. My armor had been a big find, but my weapons were still not up to snuff. I had absolutely no idea where to find Jack, and if we were ever going to get to Sheol, things needed to start looking up significantly.

  “Look at this,” Gehman chuckled. I looked up to see him standing at the candelabra. “What’s the deal? Some weird altar for sacrificing people or something?”

  Gehman leaned forward and blew out the candles.

  Something loud crashed behind us and I looked up to see the door slam shut. The flames at the center of the room roared as an immense wind swept through the chamber.

  A trap! I realized as the bonfire shot up like someone had poured a tank of gasoline on it. Instantly, Kodiak was at my side as we watched the fire twist and distort as a figure began to take shape.

  “Gehman!” I shouted. “Get over here!”

  Gehman instantly dashed over to us and got behind me.

  “I’m sorry—!”

  “It’s fine,” I snapped. “Just be ready. There’s no telling what’s coming.”

  The figure began to take shape as the figure continued to grow. The figure was humanoid, at least eight feet tall, and clad in tattered robes like a monk or a priest. The flames began to fade as the enemy solidified.

  Whatever it was, it was undead, wearing a dark iron crown covered in rows of spikes and barbs. It held two swords, one with a flaming blade and the other sparking purple with electricity. I inspected it as it turned towards us.

  The Bishop of Chilgrave—Level 212.

  “Oh, no…”

  20

  A Twisted Fate

  Before anyone could move, the Bishop spun with terrifying speed. His swords cut through the air and I barely had time to duck out of the way, throwing myself into Gehman and knocking him to the ground.

  The Bishop cried out, his voice distorted and rough, like metal scraping on metal.

  “Re-release from torment!” he roared, bringing his flaming sword down towards me.

  I managed to deflect the blow, but not enough. It glanced off my dagger and slashed into my shoulder, instantly removing a quarter of my health.

  “Don’t let him hit you!” I shouted. “He’ll one-shot you both!”

  “The door’s locked!” Kodiak screamed. I turned to see him pulling on the doors with all his strength. Whirling around, I ducked and rolled out of the way of the Bishop’s next attack and came up behind him.

  I used Ambush, but the attack completely missed, as though there was an invisible shield around the boss of the castle.

  This is bad…I thought as I activated Rush and followed up with all my cooldowns. Some of them landed, but the damage was absolutely inconsequential. The Bishop’s health bar had barely moved as he spun around and brought both of his swords down towards me.

  I leapt into the flames at his feet, taking some damage, but far less than what I would have taken from a blow like that.

  This is it, I thought. We’re all going to die.

  “Release!” the Bishop cried out as he swept his flaming blade towards me. It barely nicked my back, but the pain was incredible and another massive chunk of my health vanished.

  “Jane!” Kodiak cried out, leaping into action.

  “No, stop!” I shouted, but it was too late. Kodiak drove his dagger home, but the Bishop’s health bar didn’t even move. The sparking electric sword cut through the air towards him, slamming into his chest and decimating his health pool. He was so low I could barely see the tiny sliver remaining.

  “Release!” the Bishop cried out, bringing his flaming sword down for a killing blow.

  But just before the blade reached Kodiak, the Bishop stopped, halting midswing like he’d just glitched out or the server had lagged hard.

  “Wha…?” Kodiak stammered, quickly using a Health Kit charge to get his health up past half.

  “What’s happening!?” Gehman shouted as the Bishop leapt back. It was as though Kodiak was poisonous or something, or the Bishop had thought better about killing him.

  But—that wasn’t possible. The Bishop was an NPC, a monster coded into the game to fight players. There was nothing else to it. Right?

  “Re—release me from the torment!” the Bishop cried out, his limbs flailing in front of him with no control. He spun and slashed his sword against the wall, sending chips of flaming stone across the room. “Release me!”

  Release me!? I thought as I used a charge from my Health Kit.

  His voice was like low burning electricity coursing through rusted metal, quivering with an overload of power. He thrashed violently, spinning across the room and slamming into the opposite wall.

  “What’s he doing!?” Kodiak shouted, scrambling over to me.

  “Something’s wrong…” I replied as I watched the boss go haywire.

  His body snapped to attention, like someone had cast a possession spell on him, and he whirled towards us, both swords aimed straight at us.

  “Move!” I cried out, shoving Gehman out of the way as the Bishop charged. I tried to get out of the way, but there was no way I could compete with his speed. The tips of his swords sped towards me and I accepted my fate. I closed my eyes as I prepared myself for the killing blow, wondering where it was I would respawn and how much of a setback it would be.

  But the blow never came.

  Stone exploded on either side of my head and my eyes snapped open to see the Bishop’s swords embed themselves in the wall behind me. At the last possible second, he’d moved his blades just enough to miss me.

  But why?

  His face was merely inches from me, a cruel, undead visage with sunken cheeks and dark hollowed eyes. His features contorted, as though an internal struggle was raging within him.

  Another glitch?

  His mouth opened, revealing a dark pit like a black hole that could swallow me up whole if he chose to.

  “Re—re—release me!” His voice shook me like a strong wind as his body began to shake. His blades twisted in the stone beside me, as if he was fighting to pull them out, while at the same time resisting. It was as though two completely different personalities were fighting for control within him.

  “Please!” his voice cried out, chattering out of his body with a deep, undertone of bass. “Hellllpppp meeeee!”

  An epiphany hit me like a light bulb shattering in my skull, and I was instantly taken back to Gehman’s hut, the moment when we’d been reunited and he’d staggered towards me, completely devoid of any humanity. And then I realized the truth.

  Quickly, I opened my character sheet and selected the admin page. There it was: the button labeled “Restore.” I pressed it instantly.

  The golden glow emerged from my hand and a fierce wind swept through the room, whipping the flames of the bonfire around and around like a fiery tornado.

  “Helllpppp meee!” the Bishop cried out. “N—no! Die! You will all perish!”

  The Bishop tore his swords free from the stone and raised them to strike. But I stepped forward and thrust my hand against his chest.

  He shook as though he’d been hit by a bullet. His body froze and the golden light began to funnel from my hand into his body, spreading through his undead corpse, bursting from his veins like sunlight breaking through the clouds.

  The Bishop cried out with two voices. One was screaming in agony, and the other, hysterically laughing—almost crying.

  “What’s happening!?” Gehman shouted from somewh
ere across the room.

  Golden light spewed forth from the Bishop’s open mouth like a hot laser. His eyes expanded as the light poured out from the blackness, until his entire body radiated like a star about to go supernova.

  The Bishop screamed. “Y—yes! Thank y—”

  Before he could finish, the Bishop’s body exploded out of existence, torn to bits by the golden light pouring out of me. Something hit the ground hard where he’d been standing, and I looked down to see the naked body of a man lying there completely unconscious.

  My friends were shocked. Neither of them spoke, but a smile crept over my face, and I wished to myself that Jack had been there with me to see what had just happened and my stereotypically D remark.

  “Whoa.”

  21

  Curafin

  “Is that—is that a player!?” Gehman gasped, taking a hesitant step forward.

  “It sure is,” I replied, looking down at the boy lying motionless before us. He wasn’t quite a boy, but wasn’t quite a man either, and I wondered whether I was looking at his character avatar, or whether he was glitched out like me, and I was looking at the real him.

  His body was thin and lean, but

  “But how?”

  “I had the idea when we saw those Horngrin and ogre things fighting on our way here,” I told them. “Their behavior just didn’t make sense. I thought it might have been possible that they were players trapped in monster’s bodies.”

  I gave Kodiak and Gehman a minute to let that sink in. The man at our feet still hadn’t moved, and I took a moment to inspect him.

  Curafin—Level 85.

  “So—this guy was trapped in the Bishop’s body?” Kodiak asked, but it was more like he was saying it to himself and trying to make sense of it all. “And you…restored him? Like you did with Gehman?”

  “That’s right,” I nodded. “I could tell by his voice and the way he was struggling not to kill me. He could have, but he didn’t.”

  “So, Curafin was fighting against the programming of the Bishop?”

  “I guess so,” I replied. “It makes sense.”

  “Yeah, sort of,” Kodiak said skeptically. “How would a player’s consciousness ever be merged with a pre-programmed boss?”

  “How does becoming Sunken work?” I shrugged. “Some kind of code interruption maybe? A wall between the player’s consciousness stream and the server? I don’t know. But it’s happened.”

  “You know what’s really scary?” Gehman said quietly. “When I was Sunken…I was just lost. I don’t remember most of it. I didn’t recognize you when I saw you. But he—he seemed like he knew he was trapped, and was begging for help…”

  Gehman was right, and I shuddered at the thought of being trapped like that, aware of what was happening to me, but with absolutely no escape. Curafin’s mind had been held hostage, his will subject to the programming of The Bishop. Stuck in purgatory with no possible way out, and if I hadn’t showed up to release him, he would still be trapped there.

  “I can’t imagine—” I started to say, but was cut short as Curafin stirred at my feet.

  “Ugh…” he groaned, raising himself up onto one arm. He blinked several times, as if clearing a fog from his eyes, then looked up at me.

  “Thank you,” he said gently, his voice barely a whisper.

  “You’re welcome,” I replied simply.

  “I thought I’d be stuck there forever.” He sighed with a heavy sigh as he got to his feet.

  “Oh!” I gasped, shielding my eyes from his exposed lower half.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You’re uh…you’re naked,” I told him.

  Curafin looked down and when he saw I wasn’t lying, his cheeks went red as ripe tomatoes.

  “Oh, uh…sorry about that!” he stammered, quickly clamping both hands over his midsection. Still keeping my eyes averted, I glanced at the ground and saw the Bishop had actually dropped a small pile of loot, and among them was his tattered robe.

  “Here!” I said, quickly snatching the robe up and handing it to him. Curafin took it and immediately equipped it. It looked a lot better on him than it did on The Bishop. It didn’t look nearly as tattered or torn up as it had been, and almost looked new. It was a dark grey with faded golden fringe around the neck and cuffs.

  “That’s better,” he chuckled, obviously embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”

  “No need to apologize,” I said quickly. “I’m just so sorry about what happened to you.”

  “Tell me about it,” Curafin replied. “I was trapped here for—well, I don’t know how long, actually. How long have we been here?”

  “Almost five weeks,” Kodiak replied.

  “It feels longer than that,” Curafin said sadly as though sifting through painful memories. “How did you do that, by the way?”

  “She’s special,” Gehman said with a grin.

  “Oh, yeah?” Curafin replied, raising his eyebrows. He tried to be discreet, but I saw him quickly check me out. “How so?”

  “Well, that’s a long story,” I told him. “But the gist of it is that I escaped Carrethen. I killed The Ripper and sent everyone home.”

  “Wow, seriously!?” Curafin interrupted. “You killed The Ripper?”

  I frowned indignantly. “What, a girl couldn’t kill The Ripper?”

  “No, no, no! That’s not what I was saying,” he protested quickly. “I’m just—I can’t believe I’m meeting you. I mean—you’re a legend!”

  My frown turned into a bashful smile. “Well, thanks. So, anyway. I killed The Ripper, returned home, and then was contacted by an artificial intelligence named Wintermute. He created a backup of Carrethen and sent the souls of the dead there. That’s this world.”

  “I see.” Curafin nodded slowly. “The last thing I remember before this was a raid by some PKs on my town, Ferrenwood.”

  “Wintermute sent me here,” I went on. “Gave me the power to restore players from their Sunken states.”

  “Sunken?” he asked.

  “Wow, you really have been trapped here,” Kodiak remarked.

  “I’ve never been outside this castle,” he said sadly.

  “We’ll fill you in on the way out,” I told him, glancing down at the remaining loot from The Bishop. His flaming sword lay at my feet. “Anyone use Longswords?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Daggers for life.” Kodiak grinned.

  “Well, I’m a mage,” Curafin replied, opening his character sheet. But whatever he saw confused him. “Or at least—I was.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, first of all, I’m level 85 and that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Were you 42 and a half before?” I asked him.

  “Yeah!” he replied. “How’d you know that?”

  “Everything’s doubled here,” I explained. “This place has gone crazy, it’ll take some getting used to.”

  “Well, on top of that,” he continued, “all my experience points are unassigned. “So, I guess I could use Longswords if I wanted to.”

  “What were you before?” I asked.

  “A mage,” he replied. “Mostly heals.”

  “We could use a healer,” I told him. “Like—really badly.”

  Curafin was processing. I could see it on his face. Building a character in Call of Carrethen could be a daunting task for anyone. Assigning experience points to the right skills and attributes and training the right skills could make someone a beast, but it could also gimp your character completely. Staring into an unassigned pool of 95 levels of experience would be a daunting task for anybody.

  “Ugh,” he grimaced. “I don’t even have a wand! That flaming sword of his doesn’t let you cast spells with it, does it?

  He laughed miserably but his joke actually gave me an idea.

  “Wait a second,” I said, thinking out loud. “You know, my buddy Jack was an archer who picked up Void Magic. “What if you were a badass mage who also us
ed a sword?”

  “Would that work?” Gehman asked.

  “Probably not to level up with,” I replied. “As you’d have to pick one or the other to survive early on. But now? He’s got 85 levels worth of experience to play with.”

  “Hmmm,” Curafin muttered, scrolling through his character sheet. “Wait a second—what are these skill tree things under the magic schools?”

  “That’s new also,” I chuckled. “Something left over from an early build of the game maybe.”

  “Wow!” Curafin remarked with excitement. “There’s all kinds of stat buffs under the Spirit tree of Protection magic. If I dumped a ton of experience into that tree, I bet I could buff my Sword up to a pretty respectable level.”

  “It’s a big risk,” Kodiak chimed in. “Especially considering he doesn’t have a wand right now to buff himself with, or any spell scrolls.”

  I looked at Curafin, who was glancing at me with a twinkle in his eye. “I like the idea,” he said with a smile. “A badass mage with a flaming sword? Too cool.”

  And then, without hesitation, I watched as he allocated all of his available experience points.

  “You know, Curafin,” I said, “I think I’m going to like you.”

  22

  Undiscovered

  We made our way back down the castle tower and out the way we came in. Nothing had respawned, so it wasn’t long before we were stepping outside. Thankfully, it wasn’t raining, but I glanced around just to make sure the werewolves weren’t back—they weren’t.

  “So, this is where I’ve been living,” Curafin remarked, turning around to look up at Chilgrave Castle, barely standing beneath the stormy sky. “Nice weather we’re having.”

  “It’s always like this,” Kodiak told him. “Never stops. Thunder, lightning and rain.”

  “And more rain,” I groaned.

  “So, where’s the nearest town?” Curafin asked. “I need to pick up a wand and train my spells. I’m feeling pretty useless here.”