Unfortunately, we can’t control time. It slips through our fingers like water: you can cup your hand as tight as you want but water will always find a tiny crack to escape through.
The previous night had been quiet and remarkably warm. It looked like springtime had finally arrived in No-Man’s Lands, gradually reclaiming them from the recent snowstorms. Snow was melting all around the city and the valley, revealing the ugly remains of the once-majestic Ennan civilization.
Springtime. My wife Sveta loved it a lot. She found joy in birds’ chattering: this was a signal for her to get us out on bonfire picnics in the woods. She was the main driving force in our family, inventing all sorts of outdoor entertainment. She also loved to dance. I often barged in on her singing into her hairbrush. Oh yes, she loved springtime... a proper one, not the kind we had here.
Also, my Calteans weren’t exactly a cheerful bunch at the moment. We hadn’t been in the mood for dancing just lately.
I’d managed to convince my commanders to let the newcomers into the city. Also, Badwar had announced that they were going to stay with us even after the protection expired. Wise decision. They wouldn’t be able to escape the Nocteans, anyway. And even if they could, they had nowhere to escape to. Even in its deplorable current state, Twilight Castle still offered some sort of protection.
Pike and his Northern Wolves had stayed too, for more or less the same reason.
Unfortunately, none of them had expressed any intention of joining our clan. The Calteans were too proud to betray their own colors. In the real world, that would be highly commendable — but here, reputation was key and my reputation with the other clans left a lot to be desired.
We’d fortified the wall as best we could. The blacksmiths hadn’t stopped for two weeks, the ringing of their hammers echoing across the valley. I didn’t even notice the sound anymore.
Others were busy hunting and fishing, amassing food supplies. The siege might last a long time. All the men were armed: as we already knew, the Nocteans took no prisoners.
Calteans were terribly headstrong. Okay, I’d more or less expected that from the fugitives but definitely not from my own Red Owls who’d refused to share their “green” weapons and armor point blank. There was nothing I could do, despite the fact that I’d been the one who, in true fire-bringing Prometheus style, had shared the revolutionary tools with the Red Owls to begin with.
“We’ve given them food and shelter,” Droy had told me last night. “That’s more than enough. Don’t forget that we know Badwar better than you do.”
No amount of me telling him that we were all in the same boat facing the Noctean invasion could smash the brick wall of his reasoning. Just another proof that you couldn’t ride the game system. No matter how stupid Droy’s arguments might have sounded against the rational logic of my own, I had no chance of ever convincing the machine. The AI which controlled my Captain would never override the existing script.
“Look!” a young voice exclaimed.
I looked up. The boy who’d been helping the builders on the wall stood up straight, pointing his hand.
Nocteans. Just to please. The moment the protection expired, they were here right on cue.
The familiar call of our bugle came from the East Tower.
“Here we go,” I whispered, peering into the distance.
The Nocteans were legion. Like a powerful river, the horde flooded the valley, pouring down the hills toward the city. Their howling and roaring had drowned out all other noises. My back erupted in a cold sweat.
“Arrows! Quick! Whatcha starin’ at? Have you messed your pants already? To your positions!”
Those were my sergeants barking orders from the north wall: the last bastion standing between the Calteans and their death.
The city had now turned into an angry disturbed beehive ready to assault the intruding bear.
I watched as the defenders, fast but efficient, took their places on the walls. Pritus and his assistants fussed around the Brocks and the glaive throwers. He’d recruited local boys and girls into his special artillery squads. They looked suitably nervous and excited.
I watched them, suppressing the desire to interfere. Pritus seemed to be doing just fine. He’d already gained some experience in commanding them, and his tuition had proved its worth to everyone during the recent mock drills. Dressed in light “green” armor, they were now trying to do everything they’d been told, bringing the glaive clips and rolling the already-prepared boulders toward the Brocks.
Pritus was walking among them, tapping his hand on his small bag where he kept the charged Charms of Arakh. On top of the seventy I’d had before, I’d managed to replicate another twenty-two. That was all I’d had time for, as the Replicator had turned out to have a twelve-hour cooldown. Still, it was better than nothing.
The Caltean warriors awaited their hour by the gate below. Judging by their expressions, some of them couldn’t wait for the enemy to approach, impatient to see what the Ennan machines could do: they certainly inspired confidence.
A slight panic arose in one of Pritus’ teams fussing around a Brock. The man himself was on the wall checking glaive throwers. I nodded to him and hurried down to check on his group.
Right, what did we have here? Aha. One of the boys couldn’t find the firing lever because they hadn’t inserted the Charm of Arakh properly.
I quickly rectified their mistake. The boy looked at me, his beardless face crimson with embarrassment. Wait a sec... that’s a girl!
“You’ve done good,” I gave her an encouraging smile. “A bit nervous, that’s all. It’s gonna work fine now.”
I summoned Boris and leapt into the saddle. In one smooth wingbeat, we were already soaring over the camp.
The Nocteans appeared even more numerous from above. The entire valley had already filled with their gray bodies and growling jaws. A true avalanche of death about to crush our tiny camp.
Growling and baring their teeth, the Nocteans rolled toward the wall which had become the only barrier separating us from certain death.
Predictably, the ruins of the lower city had slowed down their advance. It wasn’t as easy as the table-flat valley, was it? They had to thread their way among the ruins, climbing and scrambling over them.
The first screams of pain came as Nocteans began stumbling into our traps. We’d expected them to advance through the lower city which was why we’d set up plenty of nasty surprises for them over there.
The snow had turned crimson where they’d walked right onto the sharpened stakes and pikes of our traps. The first system messages started coming in, dutifully reporting our enemy’s casualties and the XP received.
When they were about five hundred feet away from the wall, I signaled Pritus to begin.
His orders resounded below. The Brocks were the first to kick into action. We’d already filled their barrels with large rocks the size of a dog’s head. Now they showered the advancing monsters like a flock of deadly birds.
A blast of screaming and wailing assaulted our ears as the rocks reached their targets.
From the wall, it looked as if someone had spilled red paint onto the white canvas of the valley. Spots of crimson kept blossoming everywhere, bringing more agonizing deaths to the demoralized Noctean crowd.
Now the second volley.
That was it. We’d choked their advance. The Noctean leaders bellowed their orders in vain: their hairy soldiers were fleeing the battlefield shrieking with horror.
The sky turned dark with the barrage of arrows and even more rocks which fell upon the fleeing cannibals like swarms of angry wild bees. Caltean cheers added to the cacophony of wailing and screaming.
Done it. The Nocteans were retreating. One nil.
I signaled to Droy to let him know I was going on a quick recon. Once he nodded, I told Boris to take off.
* * *
I’d spent until midday checking the area. In the end, I was completely exhausted — but at least I knew what to expe
ct from the enemy.
The leaders of all five clans met me by the gate grim-faced, awaiting the news.
“How many are they?” Laosh asked as soon as I landed by the wall.
“Fewer than I expected,” I said. “Two thousand max.”
“That means the horde is still on its way here,” Lavena said confidently.
“I agree,” I said.
“Those bastards breed like rabbits,” Badwar spat.
Gukhur turned to Pike, “I think we were followed by their avant-garde.”
Pike nodded, frowning. He still blamed himself for Amai’s death.
“If that’s true, then those were the young ones,” Crym offered.
“Which is good,” Droy spoke. “They’re impulsive and undisciplined. Good for us.”
“Did they attack while I was away?” I asked.
“Three more times,” Orman said. “We have no casualties. They lost at least a hundred and fifty soldiers.”
“You assembled your machines just in time, Keeper!” Badwar growled. “Without them, we’d have been right in it.”
All the others voiced their agreement. Crym gave me a hearty slap on the back as was his habit.
My relationship with Pike and the other clan leaders instantly changed to Friendly.
Much better.
“I’ve checked the whole area,” I continued my report. “They’re nowhere to be seen outside this valley. Currently they’re busy devouring their dead and wounded.”
“Did you see their leader?” Lavena asked.
Was it my imagination or did her voice quiver ever so slightly when she said this?
“I think so,” I replied reluctantly.
“Why, what’s the problem?”
I rubbed my forehead. “He’s sort of puny. I expected to see my old friend, Shaggy. He was huge. But he wasn’t there.”
“And this, what did you call him, the puny one? He wasn’t white by any chance, was he?” Badwar asked.
The others tensed up.
He was right, come to think of it. The Noctean leader’s white markings had indeed stood out from the gray crowd.
I nodded. “He was. You’re right.”
“Dammit!” Badwar growled.
“He’s a Kerook,” Gukhur hissed. “He brought them here!”
I looked at Laosh, expecting an explanation.
“As you must have noticed, there’re two types of Nocteans,” the shaman began. “The normal ones and the shapeshifters. Normally, the strongest shapeshifter becomes the leader of the whole pack. But there’s also a third type. These are called Kerooks. They can control the packs’ leaders. The stronger the Kerook, the more Noctean packs he can submit to his will.”
“Two thousand soldiers, not bad,” I murmured. “Whatever he is, he’s not weak.”
The Nocteans kept attacking us non-stop throughout the night. They only stopped early in the morning in order to drag away their dead and feast upon them. I even got the impression that their leaders had sent their men toward our arrows and stakes on purpose.
They would roll onto the wall like sea surf onto cliffs, dying in their dozens but also claiming the defenders’ lives. Several times they’d managed to scale the walls and push us back temporarily, but every time our warriors had enough fearless courage to throw them off the walls onto the sharpened stakes of the moat.
Our allies had lost fifty warriors in the last twenty-four hours. The Red Owls had no casualties so far.
Noctean losses were immeasurably bigger. Still, fifty dead was too many for our small and badly organized army.
And this was only the first day of the siege! If it went on like this, there’d be no defenders left standing after a month of such round-the-clock attacks.
That wouldn’t be so bad but what drove me crazy was the Calteans’ reluctance to unite. Each clan had its own camp, seeing as we had plenty of space for everyone, including all the refugees and their numerous livestock.
Thanks to my lessons that Droy had communicated to the rest of the Red Owls, their camp was nothing short of perfect even if I say so myself. The newcomers, however, had turned their campsites into pigsties. That especially applied to the Northern Wolves with all their sheep and horses.
That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad — but the last twenty-four hours had made me realize that I’d grossly underestimated the sheer scope of the looming catastrophe. What had I been hoping for, thinking that the Red Owls could defend the city on their own? Between the Noctean horde and the players’ clans they honestly stood not a chance in hell. Even with our recent addition in the face of the Northern Wolves and highland clans we were unlikely to last until the end of the week.
That’s what happened when you entrusted an army to someone who didn’t know jack about the art of war.
How I wished I could send it all to hell and press the Logout button. I’d have loved nothing more than to see my girls, Sveta and Christa. I could use a shower and a meal out. I just needed some sleep, come to think of it.
“Keeper! Sir Keeper!” a child’s thin voice awoke me from my musings.
“Eh?” I looked around me. “Sorry, what is it?”
A girl of about seven years of age stood below the wall waving her hand to me. “Keeper! My father asks if you will see him!”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“It’s Keaven!”
Keaven. I remembered him. He was one of the masons clearing the stone debris. I should be grateful to them for the prompt restoration of the walls.
I came down to her. “Okay, show me.”
The girl — her name was Ula — ran in front of me toward the Red Owls’ camp. Soon we stopped by an impressive-looking pile of rocks.
Her father greeted me, then invited me to come closer for a look.
“We just cleared this pile as normal,” he spoke in a rapid patter. “We were just about to move on when Povel hit a piece of metal with his pick. We cleared the earth away and then we saw this,” he gestured at the ground at his feet.
I peered in the direction he was pointing at. My back erupted in goosebumps.
I stepped toward their discovery. My Map icon began to flash. A new mark appeared on the map of Twilight Castle.
It looked like my masons had just discovered the entrance to the city’s Throne Room.
Could that be it? Were we safe now?!
* * *
Master Satis had been almost right about the notes of Arwein. The Throne Room was indeed located in the very heart of the Castle. The only difference was that it was under the ground, not above it.
The door discovered by Keaven opened with ease. Not really a door but rather a hatch. The game engine habitually highlighted the right key in the bunch given to me by the city’s old Keepers.
The door opened, revealing a deep tunnel below. I dove into it under the stares of the crowd which had already gathered around me.
Having received no warnings about any high-level monsters lurking inside, I decided to proceed. The tunnel was rather well-lit by the green moss which the Ennans had used instead of lamps and torchlights.
I descended the last few stairs and stepped into the wide doorway.
The system helpfully kicked in,
Welcome to Brutville Halls!
Oh. Did that mean that the Throne Room was the same as Brutville Halls?
What, was that it? This was my final destination set by the Reflex Bank?
The mind boggles. Me, with my meager gaming experience and even less confidence?
I began shaking uncontrollably. My whole life in Mirror World flashed before my eyes.
My first full immersion. Myself, lying in a capsule helpless and dumbfounded, barely able to move while the virtual world blossomed around me in full sound and color, a true miracle of our century.
The Spider Grotto. The Steel Spider Queen.
The Citadel wizard’s tower. Boris’ first flight which had scared the hell out of me.
My first virtual death back
at the Nameless Isles. Defeating the Lich. Meeting Droy. The battle with the Darks and the Calteans’ acceptance of me.
And finally, the Ennans’ Forbidden City.
I struggled to focus. Awesome as it was, I still had to do one last thing. I had to activate the fabled Twilight Obelisk which so far was nowhere to be seen.
The Brutville Halls met me with desolation and spooky silence. I had to agree with Arwein who’d left a brief message about this place. Unlike this famous traveler of old, I hadn’t been to any of the places he’d praised — like the Emerald Palace of the Alven prince, the Brown Deserts of the Narches or the boundless moors of the Dwandes. Still, I’d been in some other places in my lifetime just as majestic as these. And I had to agree: here, the game designers’ imagination had indeed added a new meaning to grandiose.
I turned my head this way and that, studying the incredible décor. The ceiling was in fact much higher than it had appeared from the outside, its vaults supported by a multitude of columns bearing unusual patterns of intertwined letters, symbols and images.
Lamps hung from the ceiling every several feet, glowing with the same omnipresent green moss which clung to them, enveloping their fancy shapes.
I walked across the hall, casting curious glances at the columns. Each had its own unique design telling a complex story. The unknown craftsmen had done an amazing job retelling fragments of somebody else’s life: the person’s birth... two armies about to lock in combat... Two small figures on the farthest column held their hands, surrounded by a cheering crowd... on the next column, the same two figures were sitting on thrones, reaching their hands out to the onlookers. This must have been a royal wedding, followed by the newlyweds’ happy reign.
When I’d crossed the entire length of the hall, I indeed came to two thrones mounted on a small pedestal. They differed in size but were covered with the same fancy carvings. These must have been the thrones I’d just seen in the picture, once occupied by the royal newlyweds.
The Twilight Obelisk (Mirror World Book #4) LitRPG series Page 20
