Scott hit Bro_Fo with another healing spell before the final Merfolk Overlord copy nuked him. Bro_Fo jumped into the air and slammed the fishman with a Superman-punch, his Spiked Heavy Gauntlets of Sapping stealing away its last sliver of Health. Fishman’s HP bar flashed critical, then the Overlord slapped to the ground dead.
Gold light shined off Bro_Fo in a full-body halo, and an ascending chime rang off the cavern walls. Level 15. Only five more to go before Scott could collect his paycheck.
While the kid ran around looting everything in sight, Scott leaned against a massive stalagmite near the mouth of the room. The other guys lounged around nearby, some against the wall, one sitting on a tablelike broken column swinging her feet so that her heels tinked against the stone.
“Meh,” [TankieMcTankerson, the tank on the column-table said, shrugging her shoulders. “I’ve had better.”
“Fuck you, you ain’t had any,” [BarryCuda], their Blackguard Rogue, said.
“I had your dad and your brother,” Tankie said. “Your mom asked if she could join, but I told her I don’t do donkey shows.”
The Blackguard made the Up Yours sign at her.
“I’m talking about this boss,” Tankie said. “I was expecting something cool after all these jank caverns, but that was so freaking meh. You want a legit boss fight, I got three words for you: Roark the Griefer.”
Scott flinched as if she’d hit him, then looked around to make sure nobody had seen. They were all nodding and agreeing with Tankie.
“Have you been in the citadel since they set up that teleportation thingy?” [Mark_Proper_the_Third] asked. “It’s balls crazy. Walk in and suddenly you’re somewhere else ten Trolls deep.”
“Are you guys talking about Trolls?” Bro_Fo asked, looking up from the Merfolk Overlord, but still shoveling loot into his Inventory. “I thought you guys were supposed to be serious gamers, not little baby bitches. I could one-shot a Troll like bam!”
Scott snorted. “Yeah, no you couldn’t.”
“Yes, I could. Watch me, dickweed. We’re going there next, the whatever...”
“Cruel Citadel,” Mark said.
“Sweet,” Bro_Fo said. “The Cruel Citadel. I’mma make that dive my beeyatch.”
“Have fun getting your ass handed to you,” Scott said, pushing off the stalagmite.
“Wait, where’re you going? You can’t leave! Drake—I mean, Bad_Karma told you to help me power-level. You can’t quit until I’m at 20.”
Scott stopped in his tracks and looked around at his fellow mercs. “Everybody raise your hand if you’ve made a successful run at the Cruel Citadel since Roark the Griefer set up shop there.”
Mark and Tankie both shook their heads, and BarryCuda cracked up laughing.
“Me either.” Scott looked Bro_Fo dead in the eyes. “And I’m a level 28, and I got a specialty class and a Unique weapon. I’ve played my ass off down in the citadel, and I still haven’t made it out alive.”
As he said it, Scott realized it was true. The Griefer might be a total jerkoff cheater with his fake pirate accent and bullshit OP mods, but he had forced Scott to grind harder and get more creative with his strategies than he’d ever had to before.
But Bro_Fo wasn’t having it.
“We just cleared a Tier 4,” the little douchebag said, crossing his arms and smirking. “I think we can handle a couple of bullshit Trolls.”
“Whatevs,” Scott said. He headed for the almost-hidden tunnel behind the massive treasure chest and cranked the conch affixed to the wall beside it. “I’m done with that shit. Have fun getting camped. I’m outtie five thousand.”
Legion of Sticklers
FROSTRIME WAS A PORT city locked in perpetual winter.
Its buildings ran right up to the frozen docks and traced along the waterfront in both directions. Even as it swept inland from the sea, the squat wooden structures were covered in layers of salty ice, as if the ocean spray could reach each and every one, no matter how land-locked. Massive crystalline stalactites hung from eaves, glistening in the pale yellow light of the moon. Some of these had reached the ground and formed huge, hazy columns of solid water. It was the enormous jagged icicles that didn’t touch earth that made Roark a tad nervous. These looked as if they could crush even a Jotnar of Azibek’s size flat if they happened to break off. He made certain to pass well out of their path as he slipped through the shadows, just in case.
Now and then, between the businesses and houses, Roark caught sight of the wide-open ocean to the north stretching off to the horizon. The Wareling Deeps. A dark, jagged shape floated miles off shore, well above the choppy black waves. Chillend Prison.
From this distance, Roark couldn’t gauge the island’s size, but it must have been massive. The self-taught mage in him was intrigued. His primary mission was to infiltrate the prison and jailbreak their merchant, but he would have been lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he was equally as excited to get close enough to inspect whatever spells or enchantments kept the huge chunk of permanent ice high above the surface of the water. There were untold applications for something like that. He couldn’t help but envision launching an attack against Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield from a floating chunk of rock the size of a small town and armed to the teeth with earth-work fortifications and enchanted siege weapons.
The sound of heavy boots on wood and the loud groan of the trodden frozen boardwalk brought Roark’s attention back to his first order of business. Ahead, a pair of olm Legionnaires rounded a corner and started toward him. They were odd looking creatures, olms, a strangely salamander-like folk with slimy slick heads, slightly bulbous eyes, and paddlelike tails nearly scraping the frozen ground. In some ways, they reminded Roark of Mac, albeit in his Stone Salamander form—as though, perhaps, they’d shared a common ancestor at some point in the far distant past.
The Legion of Order’s presence was heavy in the port city, patrols walking nearly every street Roark had come to so far. They were easy to identify, both because of their racial alignment and because of the blue-and-gold tabards they all wore over their armor or robes, emblazoned with a spiked crown and a heavy-headed scepter. Roark kept his head down, the hood of his cloak obscuring his face in shadow much like Zyra’s, and skirted the pair, letting them pass. When they were far enough away, Roark doubled back and tailed the pair.
A dusting of snow began to drift down from above, swirling and eddying on the wintry breeze like currents in a river. Passersby pulled their cloaks a little tighter or hugged themselves and cursed the weather. To Roark, however, the snow felt like home. If the air had smelled a little more like pine and stream than salt and fish, it would have been perfect. He could almost picture Korvo, his home city. Ghostly moonlight glimmering on the peaked rooves of the village. Women in brightly colored dresses decorated with shiny tin coins and men in dark jerkins over vibrant shirts making their way down neat, snow-blown streets.
When the Tyrant King, Marek Konig Ustar, had come to power, Korvo’s streets had filled with beggars, street urchins—of which Roark had been one—and never-ending patrols of Ustar soldiers in their snake-jawed helmets and woolen cloaks, sporting the Tyrant King’s seal, a winged serpent. Now, ghosting through the streets and alleys of Frostrime, doing all he could to avoid drawing the patrol’s notice felt brutally familiar. Though it felt like eons ago, it had been little more than a month since he had slipped through the streets of his home city avoiding the Ustars.
Of course, this time the plan was to find the most opportune time to get arrested without drawing undue suspicion rather than circumvent a group of heavily armed and armored soldiers out for his blood. And there was the matter of Kaz and Zyra elsewhere in the city, working at the same objective. Still, the feeling of having been in this exact situation before was hard to shake.
The pair of olm Legionnaires Roark had attached himself to wore gleaming silver plate mail beneath their tabards, gold-threaded cloaks billowing behind them in the wind.
> From what Roark could piece together from the scenes of Hearthworld history he saw whenever he died, and what Mai, Griff, Zyra, and Kaz had told him, the Legion of Order had started out as the olms’ attempt to bring order to the chaos left behind by the great war between the Infernali and the Malaika. This was why nearly all Legionnaires in the Order were olms. As the only race who hadn’t chosen a side in what they believed to be a nonsense war, the humanoid salamanders trusted no one but themselves to govern Hearthworld with logic and intelligence. And so, they subjugated the rogs, humans, and elves of the world, killing any who wouldn’t submit while allowing those who would to remain on their thrones as puppet dictators. Apparently, there was some olm emperor out there whom all these sovereigns answered to.
“Oy, you!”
Roark froze, certain he’d been made. A dozen excuses for following the patrol sprang to mind while he searched for escape routes and readied defensive spells. He managed to quell the flight instincts, reminding himself that his goal was to be arrested, not avoid it, and put on the startled expression they would expect.
But the Legionnaires weren’t looking his way. The larger of the two, a muscle-bound male with a shining ivory buckler hanging over his shoulder, pointed into the darkened niche where two walls and an ice column formed a small windbreak. A huddled mass in rags, too lumpy and bent for Roark to discern age, sex, or race, stumbled out of the shadows.
“According to Frostrime bylaws,” the larger Legionnaire began, “section eighteen, paragraph six, line two, no living being is allowed to loiter on residential or commercial property overnight.”
“Oh no,” the mass said, waving rag-wrapped hands. “No, no, I wasn’t staying, your tidiness. I was on my way to my roosting spot, not stopping here, that’s the truth.”
“Get going,” the smaller Legionnaire snapped, raising a gauntleted fist glowing with orange magic. “Find a legal place to stay tonight, or we’ll find you a spot in the prison ferry.”
The mass nodded and bowed and backed away. “Yes, yes, of course, your very orderlinesses.”
They watched the homeless beggar go, then returned to their patrol. The foot traffic was growing heavier the farther inland they traveled. Roark followed behind the Legionnaires, watching them check the clothing and weapons of passersby as if the fate of the world depended on each and every one. Their inspections either ended in an approving nod or an order to “Get that rusty excuse for a sai refurbished, woman,” or “Faceplates independent of helmets are required by section four, subsection B, paragraph five to cover no more than one-third of the face or be removed while within Frostrime city limits, pal.” They stopped and cited an innkeeper for having a sign in disrepair—which as far as Roark could see, had little more wrong with it than a scrap of peeling paint about to chip off—and a few minutes later, a tavern musician for exceeding the local noise limit.
They even inspected the many other pairs of Legion soldiers patrolling as they crossed paths.
“Get that rivet repaired, Legionnaire!” the shorter Legionnaire snapped at one of his comrades. “If I see it hanging again, I will report you for negligence as defined under OLO uniform regulations.”
The reprimanded soldier scowled and pointed at the accusing Legionnaire’s mail. “You call that ‘polished to a shine befitting the face of progress and civilization’? Have that blemish gleaming by morning or I’ll write you up.”
Both returned to their route, amphibian noses in the air.
“He’d better have it affixed by morning,” the larger Legionnaire said. “If he doesn’t, his partner will make sure he does ... or she’ll be guilty of failure to report an egregious wardrobe malfunction.”
“She would have to have been blind not to see it in the first place,” the shorter one said. “I’m writing them both up with the Praetor when I get back.”
The larger one nodded his oblong head sharply. “Can’t have standards falling amongst the troops. We are the example for the barbarians, after all.”
Roark had seen authority corrupt otherwise normal men to executing their neighbors in the streets for speaking out against a tyrant, but he had never seen it wielded against a man who dropped a bit of trash on the boardwalk and didn’t pick it up. While the chastised hero scuttled away, muttering curses under his breath and shoving the potion cork he had failed to properly discard into his Inventory, Roark chuckled to himself. Each silent puff of breath was betrayed by a white plume of steam.
The Legionnaires had already moved on to measuring the distance between a frozen-over rain barrel and the wall of a nearby tavern with a shining golden ruler.
“Perfect,” the larger one announced, straightening back to his full height.
The shorter one nodded with satisfaction. “You can always count on Willam to keep the Ocarina in order.”
In the distance, a ship’s bell began to chime the hour.
“There’s eight bells. Care for a regulation-sized mid-shift cup and tavern inspection?”
“Always.”
The shorter one opened the door for the larger, inspecting the screws in the handle plate as his partner passed. A welcoming rectangle of light fell across the trampled snow, and a soft thread of airy music drifted out into the night. Both disappeared as the Legionnaire closed the door behind his swaying tail. Lucky for the musician it did, Roark thought, or she would have been cited for exceeding the noise limit.
Roark waited a few moments before sidling up to the door himself—though not long enough to draw the attention of other patrols. The Legionnaires he’d been following might seem like nothing more than fussy wankers obsessed with enforcing every letter of the law, but it wouldn’t do to forget that this was the same Legion of Order that had imprisoned and left Mai’s husband to die for nothing more than a drunken brawl. As harmless as they looked, he would need to stay alert and be smart.
He cast Glamour Cloak, slipped off his hood, and stomped the snow from his boots. Then he opened the door. It was time to get arrested.
Misdirection
A WALL OF HEAT AND the smoky scent of meat roasting over a woodfire engulfed Roark as he stepped into the Frosty Ocarina. He hadn’t paid much attention to the cold while he was out in it, a side effect of growing up in a similarly harsh environment and his own single-minded focus on the mission at hand, but he was grateful for the warmth. A massive firepit had been built into the floor of the tavern and lined with river stones big enough to crush a hound. The long bed of embers in it radiated bright light and heat and doubled as a cook fire. At the far end of the pit, an iron spit slowly twirled, roasting the immense shank of some unknown colossal beast. The pit was lined on each side by benches where patrons could warm themselves, share a drink, a smoke, and a story, and listen to the musician playing her ocarina.
Surrounding the benches and the firepit was a strata of tables, many of them occupied even this late at night. These weren’t the crude, rough-hewn long tables of the citadel or their grimy alternative in the Sulky Selkie and One-Eyed Unicorn. Here each table was smoothed and polished to a high shine, the chairs of the same lofty quality. There were no elaborate carvings or inlays, simply an inconspicuous tastefulness that seemed to emanate comfort and quality. Though not a carpenter himself, Roark had known enough woodsmiths to spot the telltale signs of a master crafter even at a distance.
The clientele, too, seemed to be a cut above the rabble Roark had seen in the Averi City establishments. Wealthy, refined, and reserved. The few heroes sitting in on games of cards or warming themselves on the firepit benches looked balefully out of place among the well-dressed Hearthworld natives.
Careful not to linger overlong in the doorway, Roark shook the quickly melting snow from his cloak and headed for the empty bench with the best view of his Legionnaire friends. At his full Jotnar height, he had to duck to avoid knocking into the exposed beams of the ceiling, but with the Glamour Cloak in place, none of the tavern’s inhabitants could see his true form. Once again, he looked to the rest of the
world like the Roark von Graf of Traisbin—noble, rakish, perhaps just a touch down on his luck if the leathers and untailored cloak were anything to judge by.
He took a seat on the bench just in front of one of the wide timbers supporting the Ocarina’s second floor and leaned his invisible leathery wings against the wooden post where no one would trip over them and call his disguise into question.
An elderly olm glided over dressed in breeches and shirtsleeves as fine yet understated as anything his patrons were wearing. The tavern’s owner, no doubt.
“What might I bring you on this winter’s night, traveler?”
“Spiced wine, if you’ve got it.” In truth, Roark would have preferred an ale, but it wouldn’t do to be seen with a commoner’s drink in an establishment like this. The wealthier customers would notice immediately and dismiss him as beneath them, hampering his chances of pulling off this next bit in his scheme.
The olm nodded elegantly and glided away to the kitchen, his fat-padded salamander tail swishing behind him.
Roark leaned in toward the firepit, stretching out his hands and rubbing them vigorously, playing his part while he checked in on the Legionnaires he had followed. Both were at the bar, sipping from clay mugs and eyeing the patrons for anyone who might be thinking of raising their voice or setting their goblet a bit too close to the edge of the table. To all appearances, they had settled in for a while.
Good. Getting arrested without making it look as if he wanted to get arrested would probably take most of that while.
Roark turned his attention to the other occupants of the tavern. Three of the six occupied tables were deeply involved in genteel games of cards.
“Your spiced wine,” a grave voice at his right said, nearly making him jump. Roark hadn’t seen the olm returning from the kitchen. Perhaps the elderly salamander had some sort of shadow stealth ability like Zyra’s.
Troll Nation Page 10
