by Edwin McRae
The giant creature dropped to the ground with a thump and went perfectly still. For a moment Karina thought it was playing dead, one of nature’s silliest survival mechanisms in the inquisitor’s opinion. Then it started to heave and swell, and Karina had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen.
“Gas!” she shouted. “Retreat!”
Maribella wrenched something wet and glistening out of the creature’s thorax before performing a two-stepped leap off the monster’s abdomen. She landed in the mushrooms, sending a cloud of spores into the air. Durk, to his detriment, was slower.
As he turned to run, sinewy valves opened in the mushraptor’s sides. Out poured a wave of sulphurous vapor. The gas was so thick that Karina lost sight of him for a moment. Then the big man stumbled into view, his shield and mace discarded, his hands scrabbling at his throat. One glance was all Karina needed to know that Durk was a goner. The glands around his neck were so swollen that there was no hope of him catching even the smallest breath. He looked pleadingly at Karina and took a trembling step towards her. The inquisitor felt a brief tinge of guilt, a moment where she felt genuinely sorry for this simple man. He’d wanted to please her, that was all, and now he was going to die for it. She extinguished the spark of empathy inside her before it flared into something inconvenient. She’d seen inquisitors go that way before, crippled by compassion. They were used as examples to harden the acolytes. The devotion of inquisition was a lifelong journey. There was no stepping off the path to entertain the misgivings of the conscience.
Karina made sure she looked Durk in the eye, sharing his terror until death finally took him. Then she scrambled clear as the gas cloud expanded and dissipated. After several minutes, the vapor was gone and a final spasm passed through the mushraptor’s carcass.
Your party has killed a Level 16
Mushraptor Matriarch.
Your XP reward per party member = 80 XP
Your party currently consists of two members.
Maribella rose out of the mushrooms and shook spores from her fur like a dog shaking off water. Karina found it quite adorable. The captain caught her staring and cocked her head to one side.
“Something wrong, madam?”
“Not at all,” covered Karina. She pointed at the slimy, organic lump that the wardog still held in her claws. “What’s that?”
Maribella shrugged. “Brain, I think. It smelled important so I took it.”
“You should keep trusting that nose of yours.”
“Smelled the gas coming too. Thank you for the warning, though, and for the False Courage. I was quietly shitting myself before that.”
“Yes, I noticed. You’re welcome, captain.” She glanced at Durk. The dead man’s mouth was gaping wide. His tongue was blue and three sizes too big. “A shame about our pack mule.”
Maribella barely spared the corpse a glance. “Maybe I should change. Put my gear back on.”
“Let’s have a look into the pit first, shall we? I want to know where my altar has gone.”
“Yes, madam.”
The wardog led the way and peered over the edge. Her ‘huh’ told Karina it was safe enough to look for herself. The altar had fallen roughly ten meters onto a mass of woven silk. The strands had proven strong enough to resist its not inconsiderable weight. Within the shrouds, Karina could make out forty or so oblong pupae and countless semi-formed mushraptors shifting sleepily inside them.
“Let’s head back to camp,” suggested Karina, “and fetch a salvage crew before this latest brood
hatches.”
“Good idea, madam.”
“Oh, and captain, not a word to the troops about your alter ego. They may not grasp the full beauty of your transformation.”
The wardog’s blue eyes narrowed. “No-one’s ever called me beautiful before.”
“Let’s just say that you’ve at last grown into yourself,” said Karina with a smile. She pointed at the pupae below. “You’ve hatched out of your cocoon and spread your wings. Unfortunately, when we get back to camp, you’ll be surrounded by grubs, not butterflies.”
Maribella nodded and smiled, her tongue lolling over her sharp teeth. “Point taken, madam.” The wardog looked to Durk’s prone form and the pile of offal that had once been Colik. “It’s actually kinda handy that mother mushraptor killed Colik and Durk before I had to. Not really the types to keep their traps shut about something like this.”
There was more than a touch of pride in Karina’s smirk. “A shame we didn’t catch you earlier, captain. I think we could’ve made a fine inquisitor out of you.”
Maribella gave her a fang-filled grin in return. “I’ll pop behind the Agrovesh statue. Wouldn’t mind a bit of privacy while I change.”
“I shall cover my ears too.”
“That’d be nice, thanks.”
Karina did as promised, turning her back and pressing her palms to ears. The latter did little to muffle the piercing howls as they slowly turned into screams.
18
[Mark]
Mark dropped the trapdoor back into place with a thunk, closing off the rank atmosphere of roasted flesh that wafted up from the chute.
“Pretty dark in here,” remarked Vari.
With a whisper of “Truelight”, Arix lit up like a glowstick, bathing the chamber in a warm, golden hue. A statue of the Goddess of Despair loomed over them, her beautiful face marred with anguish, her delicate hands curled into claws. While her body had been carved from quartz, her eyes were obsidian orbs of the deepest black. The Altar of Solmora lay at her bare feet, an ebony coffin carved by the trembling hands of some tortured artist.
“Nice trick that,” said Mark. “You’re a human lightbulb.”
“Bit more than that, innit. Look down.”
The floor was made of hexagonal tiles, each engraved with a symbol that looked to Mark like kanji drawn by a goth. Thanks to Arix’s Truelight spell, most of the tiles glowed a dull red of warning. The exceptions stood out like islands in a red sea.
“Truelight’s actually a sense traps spell, eh?” mused Mark.
“Secret doors, too.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust your abilities, Arix,” said Vari, her distrust more than evident, “but maybe you should step on those tiles first?”
“Or Sid, maybe you’d like to check them out?” suggested Mark.
“Indeed. Touch me to the floor and I’ll see what I can do,” agreed Citadel.
“Fucking hell, you’re a suspicious lot,” said Arix, shaking his head.
“Better safe than sorry,” answered Mark as he set Citadel down on the closest of the safe tiles.
“This is a false floor,” reported Citadel, “suspended above a pit lined with steel spikes. The tiles engraved with the tree-like symbol are in fact pillars capable of supporting weight. I naturally can’t see if those tiles have been identified by Arix’s Truelight ability, but if there is indeed a correlation then the spell’s accuracy would seem bonafide.”
“See?” Arix stepped onto the first tree tile and bounced up and down a couple of times. “A little trust wouldn’t hurt, you know?”
“Sorry, Arix,” said Mark. “Just wanted to be sure.”
The executioner shrugged and then picked his way across the safe tiles to the altar. Mark and Vari followed suit. It was only when they reached the altar that Mark noticed the book, a heavy, leather bound tome lying atop the engraved stone. From a distance he’d taken it to be part of the altar’s warped construction. There was writing on the cover, but nothing that Mark could decipher, at least not without some arcane assistance. He flipped through the pages. The writing was the same on every sheet of yellowed parchment; intricate, beautiful, and utterly incomprehensible.
Vari peeked around his shoulder. “You feeling as illiterate as me right now?”
“Afraid so.”
Arix sighed. “It’s just a fucking book. Probably full of thees and thous about people we don’t know and shit what doesn’t matter coz it happe
ned ages ago.”
“I take it you don’t stop to read tomes much?” wondered Mark.
“Shit no. Waste of good playtime.”
“Do you click through the dialogues as well?”
“Sure do. If the info’s not in the UI then it’s TLDR.”
“But the lore is where you actually find out why you’re completing a quest, not just how.”
“I complete a quest because I’ll get an XP payload and some loot. What more reason do I need?”
“Not the romantic type then, eh?”
“Fuck you very much, warlock,” scoffed Arix. “I’m plenty romantic. It’s just that when I read a book I do it in my armchair with a nice drop of merlot. Got a cozy spot in the mezzanine that overlooks the Thames. Sunny too.”
Mark laughed. “When I visited London I didn’t see the sun for three weeks. When it finally broke through the clouds I just stood in it and grinned like a goon at the sky. The locals thought I was nuts.”
“Sounds like a horrendous place,” said Vari.
“Probably a fuckload nicer than Credence,” retorted Arix, a little defensively.
“Anywhere is nicer than Credence,” Vari pointed out. She turned back to Mark. “You don’t have a language spell up your sleeve, do you?”
“Actually, yes I do.”
He took a closer look at Cunning Linguist to make sure it was up to the task.
Cunning Linguist
Enables the spoken and written understanding of any language.
Tier 1: Allows for a solid understanding of the target speech or text. Enables good comprehension for 30 minutes. Subtleties such as humour and double meanings may be missed.
“The well-read warlock is the not-dead warlock.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
Good enough. He dropped the spell into an empty slot and murmured “Cunning Linguist”.
“Cunnilingus? What do you think it is? The karma-fucking-sutra?” Arix pressed his first and second fingers to his lips and waggled his tongue between. Mark didn’t find it funny, and by Vari’s expression, neither did she.
“Could you please keep a lid on it for a minute, Arix?” he asked, failing to keep the frustrated edge from his voice.
“Fine, fine. Keep your hair on, Mister Prude.” The executioner passed Mark a candlestick. “Light that so I can take a look around.”
Mark took the candle, drew Volcanic Bastard and touched the blade to the wick. It flared instantly. As he tucked his sword away and looked at the cover of the book, the name of the language came to him. Vorasii. The title and the author byline shimmered for a moment before transforming in English.
“The Breaking Dawn - Sacrificial Rites by Ishka the Devout” he read aloud. “Ever heard of the Breaking Dawn, Vari?”
“Afraid not. So you can read it now?”
Mark skimmed over the first page and made a “tsk, tsk” noise. “The writing is pretty flowery.”
“How flowery?”
“Like this.” He cleared his throat and recited a particularly purple passage. “Thus shall the detritus of creation clamber from its abyss of despair. Thus shall the forsaken become the cherished. Thus shall the despised become the delight of those who would welcome the dawn.”
“Too much starweed, I’d say.”
“Starweed?”
“A narcotic herb. You smoke it. Most users just go starry-eyed and giggly, but some get long-winded and prophetic.”
“Pathetically prophetic?”
Vari grinned. “Profoundly pathetic.”
Mark laughed and kept reading. “From what I can gather, you were right on the money with your prediction.”
“Are you calling me prophetic?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He caught her hand and pulled her in for a kiss. Some would think it odd to be flirting over a sacrificial altar, but he was a warlock, she could tear a person’s flesh open with a mere whisper, and this was Reign of Blood.
Vari gently pulled away and tapped the book. “Eyes on the page, good sir. I want to know how right I am.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He read on, his mind grudgingly adjusting to the florid language. “Yup, this confirms that the Altar of Solmora is just one of three altars needed for the Breaking Dawn ritual. The others are the Altar of Khorlvah, Goddess of Hope, and the Altar of Agrovesh, Goddess of Fury.”
“Agrovesh, she’s the Karaji war goddess.”
“Maybe inherited from these people, the Vorasii?”
“Could be, yes. Makes me wonder about the statue we saw, back where Braemar-”
“Where we lost Braemar,” Mark finished for her. He put his hand on the small of her back and drew her closer. “The winged lady with the trident?”
She rested her head against his chest. “Different from how she looks in Karajan, but Fury and War seem to fit together.”
“Shit.” Mark’s heart sank a little.
“What?” wondered Vari, looking up at him.
“If that was Agrovesh then her altar was probably nearby.”
“Do you think we should go back for it?”
Mark shook his head. “Based on where Arix said the reiver camp was, chances are they’ve found it already, or at least locked the area down.” He turned the page. “We’re better off doing as Arix suggested.”
“Ambush her here?”
“Let’s just hope she doesn’t bring her whole army with her.”
He peered at the script, deciphering the next few passages. As he focused on them, the letters transformed from esoteric symbols into the Roman alphabet. It was like Google translating a web page.
“Okay, so once the altars are bathed in something called the Waters of Life, nightmares incarnate will rise from the earth to ‘end the nighttime of ignorance’ and usher in the ‘daylight of epiphany’. Sounds like corrupted creatures crawling out of chasms to me.”
“Me too,” agreed Vari. “And the Waters of Life means blood. At least it does in Figurist lore.”
Mark sighed. Sacrifice of all kinds seemed to follow him around like a bad smell, even from RL into FIVR. His real life had been one big sacrifice to other people’s dreams; bosses, ex-wives and mothers included. Now other people were sacrificing themselves for his dreams. Denniston, Dayna and Braemar. No, he admonished himself. Denniston, Dayna and Braemar all died for Garland. Not for him, and not because of him either. If he kept saying it to himself often enough, he might just start believing it.
“Something wrong, Mark?” Vari asked.
“We have to stop Karina from completing this ritual.” It was true, but it was an evasion of the question. “If she gets full control of the Chasms of Corruption, Garland is in serious trouble.”
“So is Karajan. No chance of freedom when the reivers have that kind of power at their fingertips.” Vari gently pulled away from Mark and fixed him with a hard look. “We might have just found our own solution to the Chasms of Corruption quest.”
“Really?” Mark had a bad feeling about this.
“Whoever controls the chasms can close the chasms.”
“What? We make the sacrifice? We complete the ritual?”
She pointed at the book. “All the instructions are there, aren’t they?”
Mark flicked through the pages and found one that appeared to lay out the Breaking Dawn ritual step by step, starting with a detailed description of how the sacrificial subject had to be of Level 6 or greater, and how their throat would need to be slashed open, their body suspended upside down so that at least three liters of blood could be captured, one liter per altar. The callous precision of it all made Mark feel a little sick.
“I’ll need to read over it all properly, but it looks like it’s all here.” He looked over at Arix who was working his way along the closest wall, using Truelight to look for secret doors. Mark waited until Arix had moved around behind the looming statue of Solmora before leaning in towards Vari, close enough to whisper. “Who would we sacrifice? The book says it needs to be someone of Level
Six or over.”
“Inquisitor Karina,” Vari whispered back. “She has to be at least Level Seven if she’s leading an expedition of hundreds.”
“And if we don’t manage to take her alive?”
She drew closer so that her breath tickled his ear. “Arix is Level Seven.”
“Physik Perception strikes again?”
“Yes.”
Mark grimaced, wishing she hadn’t suggested what he’d already been thinking. “He has the luxury of coming back to life, too. But then again, so do I.”
“You can’t read the ritual when you’re dead, Mark.”
“I could teach it to you first. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble remembering it.”
“No, but I’d have all sorts of trouble when it came to slitting your throat.”
“It would be for Garland.”
“Fuck Garland! I’m not doing that to you.”
“Maybe I could do it to my-”
Vari stepped back and shook her head. “We’re not having this conversation anymore!”
“What conversation? And why wasn’t I invited?” said Arix, his radiance washing over them as he stepped out from behind the statue.
“Just talking about how we’re going to capture Inquisitor Karina and sacrifice her,” Mark explained a little too quickly.
Arix raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“So that we can complete the Breaking Dawn ritual, take control of the Chasms of Corruption, and close them for good.”
“You know how to perform this Breaking Dawn thing?”
“Yup, it’s all in the book.”
Arix looked suitably abashed. “I take back everything I said about reading in-game tomes.”
“Really?”
The executioner's abashment dissolved into a mocking grin. “Fuck no. Why bother when I got lore nerds like you to do the reading for me?”
Mark gritted his teeth and exchanged a frustrated look with Vari. “Did your explorations turn up anything interesting, Mister Hardcore?”
“Mister Hardcore. I like that. Must see if the url is free when I get home. And speaking of which, I can see one little flaw in this genius plan of yours.”
