“I did say they were violent!” Thrainul’s companion said. He was a lanky guy wearing chainmail, a grey cloak, and a captain’s cap, also bandaged from head to foot. “Three hundred and twenty, Thrainul, and it’s a deal!”
“What?! That’s not right!” the zwerg exclaimed, wide-eyed at my dramatic entry. “Rocky!”
“Yes, Cap! I think we’ve mixed up the boxes!” I heard the Gravekeeper’s familiar voice coming out from the barge. “This is our lost boy! I guess we left an empty coffin in the cargo hold!”
I couldn’t understand anything. The bandaged walking mummies were getting closer, steel and nets in their hands, but Thrainul leaped forward and wedged himself between us.
“Stop! This isn’t your client!” he yelled. “This is my passenger. We got him here by accident! An honest mistake, it happens...”
“Jeez, talk about making an impression,” he told me quietly. “Where have you been? I did tell you to come back in three hours...”
The mummies put their weapons away, laughing and swearing profusely, and returned to their work. I had already realized that they were local NPCs who, like Rocky, belonged to the Gravekeepers faction. By the way, he had already left the boat and stood next to me. I couldn’t see anything under the bandages on his face, but judging by the sparkle in his only eye, he was grinning.
“Welcome to the Hole, my young friend!” he said. “Put your flaming sword away. It hurts our eyes. We’re not used to such bright light. What do you have there, a spell? Do you want to sell it?”
“No,” I replied curtly, putting the sword back into its sheath. The incident with my emergence was over, and things were back on track: Thrainul and the mummy in a captain’s cap were counting the coffins, cursing and haggling, and the other Gravekeepers resumed piling them up on the shore next to a large stone staircase cut right into the bedrock. Upstairs, in the dim light, I could make out the outline of some buildings illuminated by a greenish glow. I shivered; it was unusually cold there, and rare snowflakes danced in the air.
“Do you want to take a walk around the Tomb, smoothskin?” Rocky let out a coarse laugh, noticing my stare. “We have an hour before Thrainul deals with the trade. I don’t recommend you go alone, however. I can give you a tour for a good price.”
“What is this place? Who are the Gravekeepers? Why is everyone bandaged? What’s inside the coffins?”
“Oh, so many questions!” He laughed again. “Let’s do it this way, my young friend. You’ll treat me to a drink in the nearest pub, and I’ll answer your questions. Deal?”
* * *
The town was extremely weird. What had he called it, the Tombtown? It seemed like a fitting name. Drowned in the darkness that enveloped everything, it looked like foxfire glowing in the woods at night, and all I could see were the cliffs just outside. The only waymark was a bright ray of light beaming down from a tall tower above the water—a beacon of sorts.
“Why is it so dark here?” I asked, glancing at system time.
“Dark?” Rocky chuckled and finally understood me. “Ah, that’s what you mean! This is the Hole, man! There’s no sun, no moon, no sky. It’s always night here!”
The perpetual twilight was illuminated by the soft green glow of crystals hanging from crooked lamp-posts, which only served to make the scenery more malevolent. One-third of all the houses on the rocky shore looked abandoned, glaring at me with dark empty slits for windows. An odd crust of mildew and pale slimy mushrooms covered the stony walls. Pieces of roofing and rust-colored ash crunched beneath our feet. Cobwebs were omnipresent, just like shadows, blanketing the windows of abandoned homes, fluttering in the wind and flickering under the dark roofs. Apparently, it had never occurred to local residents to clean up.
The streets were mostly empty save for a rare passerby, all of them looking like each other’s twins. Some wore ordinary clothes, while others didn’t care. Still, everyone had a thick layer of bandages covering their faces and bodies. A strong smell of decay hung in the air.
“This is my favorite place!” Rocky pointed at a door set ajar under the sign of a foamy beer mug. “Don’t be scared, come on. Everyone’s welcome at Blind Widow’s. It’s a respectable establishment. Just wear your hood up.”
The tavern was completely empty with not a single visitor in sight, and the long tables were covered with a thick layer of dust. It didn’t look like many people frequented it. Rocky sat down, carefully wiped the table with a big lacy handkerchief he pulled out of his pocket, and had a quick word with the creature that appeared behind the counter. Going by the dress and the bonnet, at some point, it used to be a woman, but everything else was hidden under the bandages.
She brought us a tray with two tall tankards and a plate of round pies. Rocky immediately emptied his pint mug and gave me a rakish wink with his only eye.
“Come on, drink, don’t be afraid! This is the famous Tomb Pale Beer!”
I raised the mug and gave a suspicious look to the muddy white liquid that was slightly bubbling. It didn’t resemble beer and reeked of decay—or maybe it was the tankard or the bandaged hands that poured it? I wasn’t going to find out, which is why I suppressed a gag reflex and carefully put the “pale beer” back on the table.
“Too bad!” Rocky remarked. “Local cuisine only seems disgusting, but after you take a while cruising the Hole, you start realizing how great it is. Finger-licking good! You won’t eat the worm pie either? Why did you come to the Hole, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, only real weirdos come here. Thrainul calls them perverts, actually. Players keen on local exotics. So you’re not one of them?”
“Yes, I’m here to do business. I hope I won’t have to stay long.”
“We’ll see. Everyone says that.” He winked at me again. “So you’re sure you don’t want the beer? Then I hope you don’t mind if I drink it. I could order you some mushroom wine. Do you want some?”
“No, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, you’re paying. So what questions do you have, smoothskin? About the Gravekeepers and this place?”
“I’m not so certain anymore that I want to know that.” I chuckled.
“But you have to!” Rocky laughed. “All right, so listen up. There’s a reason why the Hole’s considered a closed zone. Getting here is far from easy. And the Tomb...this is a place for the cursed ones. For freaks. Some wounds cannot be healed even by death, and the public doesn’t always like that. You players know so many nasty ways of killing, and even without you, there’s no shortage of experts. In short, those who have too many death marks come here to avoid burdening their loved ones. Some of them become Gravekeepers and escort new pilgrims. Got it?”
I got it. When you received a new injury in Sphere, the game asked you whether you wanted to keep a scar. Most of the time, I refused, although I did leave several marks as mementos of battle. I had never thought about what might happen to immortal NPCs who respawned at their home resp point. By default, they resurrected without any marks, but there might be exceptions. So a curse? I shuddered imagining what an NPC killed by a Grand Fire, a Pool of Acid, or a Hungry Darkness might look like. That explained why all of them were wrapped in bandages and some walked with a drag as if put together from parts. I wondered if such curses worked on players, too.
“So it’s the same with you?” I asked Rocky as he gobbled down the “worm pie.”
“Mutilated? Yeah. It’s a long story. I don’t want to revisit it. There was a scuffle... Well, now I’m cursed with Unhealing Wounds. Not uncommon here.”
“All right, so that covers the Gravekeepers,” I said. “But what was in the other coffins?”
“Fresh meat. New settlers. Thrainul sometimes makes money by ferrying new residents from other worlds here.”
“That’s why some of the coffins were wrapped in chains?”
“Well, many aren’t eager to move here.” Rocky snickered. “Some of them are can be violent. That’s why we
have to make sure they’re bundled well. As our captain says, safety first!”
“So you’re on Thrainul’s crew?”
“Yeah, I don’t like sitting onshore. Of course, I risk getting new scars, but at least I’m not bored!”
“Have you seen all of the Hole? I need to get to the Isle of Madness.”
“The Isle of Madness?” Rocky immediately turned serious, pressed a finger against his lips, and then slowly made a cuckoo sign. “Are you out of your mind, man?”
* * *
“No, no, and no!” Thrainul bellowed. “Not in a million years! You have no idea what you’re asking about!”
“I’m prepared to double the payment.”
“It’s not even about money! Look!”
The captain produced a timeworn atlas and pulled a map from it, rolling it open on the table. The corners kept trying to fold, and Thrainul pressed them down with whatever he could find—a compass, a massive coaster, and a dagger. The map showed the world of the Hole, and I started to examine it, curious about local geography.
Dagorrath was a huge underground ocean inside a cave of unimaginable size. It had no continents, but the procedural generator had generously endowed it with numerous islands—several dozen, at the very least. Judging by the icons of settlements and seaports, many of them were inhabited. Whirlpools, stylized pictures of monsters, lots of blank spots—the map hadn’t been explored in full.
“Look, we’re here.” Thrainul thrust his fat finger at a large rocky island in the northwest. It was marked by a pyramid icon.
“I’m charting a course here—we need to get our cargo and new passengers—and then taking them here.” He outlined a serpentine route.
“So? Where’s the Isle of Madness?”
Thrainul pointed at a large blank spot in the center surrounded by pictures of mythical sea monsters. The largest of them had sprouted its tentacles across a third of the map, representing a giant octopus or a kraken.
“Somewhere around here! I’ve never been there myself. Some think it’s a myth told by madmen,” the zwerg said.
“This is the Sea of Terror.” His finger was still on the blank spot. “Everyone steers clear of it. It’s full of nightmarish creatures, and the deeper you go, the more Dread you get. I only reached seven points once, and the crew started to go mad. See?”
Yeah, the Magister’s mission turned out to be nowhere as simple as I had thought. Find Svechkin on the Isle of Madness in the Sunless World and get his compass! It was starting to dawn on me that Svechkin had a good reason to hide so deep in this Hole. The Magister hadn’t told me a lot about their conflict. From the looks of it, the second developer really didn’t want anybody to find him. So far, I had no idea how to solve this problem without knowing half of the conditions, but I did have several aces up my sleeve.
“Fine. What is the closest island to this place?” I asked. “An inhabited one, with a port where I can hire a ship and a crew?”
“Ha! Such a sweet summer child!” Thrainul replied. “The closest is the Scale, here. It’s an outpost used by sea monster hunters. But you won’t find a ship there. Actually, you won’t find one anywhere. Nobody will agree to take a ship into the Sea of Terror. People who go there don’t come back.”
“Where are the resp points? Does every island have one?”
“Yes, all faction settlements do. It’s not that simple with them, however. You need to find the right approach. Have you seen the Gravekeepers? The others are even weirder.”
“Can you get me there?”
Thrainul coughed, then scratched the back of his head. Going by his behavior, I realized that he was about to puff up his price, and the entire conversation was only a prelude. Well then, let’s haggle.
* * *
We sailed away, leaving the Tomb behind us, its green lights glowing above the sharp fangs of cliffs. The upright ray of light slowly faded away, transforming into a thin line on the horizon. We were surrounded by complete darkness dispelled only by the ship’s lanterns used as navigation lights. Still, all they could illuminate were a few feet of black, still water that emanated a nasty stench. I already knew that there was no wind or underwater currents there.
Thrainul’s iron turtle was crawling in an unknown direction, its propellers on. We were above the surface and, as far I understood from the captain’s words, weren’t going to submerge.
The level of Dread increased the further away we moved from port and finally reached three points. Dark shadows flew above the ship, and Rocky and others fired their bows and multi-charge crossbows at them, dragging their prey onboard with fishing spears to show off. I managed to get a look at one: it was a giant bat with a seven-foot wingspan. They were the only “birds” in the Hole. The crew passed their bodies down into the galley to be cooked—any meat was a prize catch.
We traveled for at least three hours. During that time, I inspected the ship from top to bottom and talked to Thrainul’s entire crew that consisted of a dozen NPCs: Gobbler, the large and slightly haughty navigator; Stormbreaker, the gunner who had hated me at first sight; Drumba, the physician; and finally the fishman seeker, an all-around weird guy. Rocky and a few other Gravekeepers were the heart of the boarding team. I also saw the astounding Clay People, large brown golems who toiled in the hold all day long, turning the metallic handles that transmitted an impulse to a complicated gear system that powered the screw propellers. The six silent giants with oversized muscles in their arms and bodies handled the heaviest and dirtiest work on the vessel. As far as I understood, this fascinating submarine could run both on the golems’ muscle power and the odd furnace engine with a fire elemental connected to the mage reactor. Thrainul preferred to use the Clay People to save on the precious ellurite fuel.
Three hours after we had set sail, we saw a crimson haze on the horizon, as if from a giant fire, and the smell of burning hung in the air. We were approaching the Ironguard, the largest port in the Hole and the only town connected to other worlds. That’s where the Abyss portal that I had unsuccessfully tried to storm led. Ironguard was populated by tieflings and demons and sometimes visited by players—mostly Pandorum toadies and stray tourists. Thrainul was going to fetch the people from the latter group—two “madmen,” as he called them, who had paid him a generous sum for a voyage through the Hole’s underwater ocean.
I wasn’t going to tell these accidental companions my history with Pandorum. In Sphere, everyone was willing to double-cross each other; backstabbing was par for the course. That’s why I cited circumstances and logged off for a while. When I returned, we were already boldly sailing away from the haze and the sharp metal spires of Ironguard’s harbor.
When I came out on deck, I saw two new passengers. The players, a man and a woman, were talking to Thrainul, who was standing at the steering wheel. When I came closer, I was relieved to notice their blue positive karma. The woman, a tall brunette in a blue cloak, gave me her hand. Her handshake was firm, like a man’s.
“Nice to meet you, HotCat! I am Fayana Fly.”
The tags above her and her companion’s nicknames informed me of their clan: Pioneers.
Chapter 9
PIONEERS!
I knew that name. The clan of explorers and mapmakers, they strove to become the first to visit the uncharted places of Sphere, compile maps without gaps, catalog new NPC factions, and add nameless monsters to the bestiary. They loved the romance of the frontier. I had long since bookmarked their website and community and often looked through their news, videos, and reports, all of which were full of interesting information. While planning the blockade of the Northerners’ carebears, I had used their exploratory insights.
“I know of you. I’ve heard a lot,” I said, grinning as gallantly as I could. “I’m your constant reader and watcher.”
Fayana’s hand lingered in mine, and she gave me a warm smile in return. She was quite attractive, especially if you liked tall brunettes with a firm chin and the eyes of an iron lady. Next to her comp
anion nicknamed Bonus, Fayana was clearly the leader.
“We’re on an exploratory mission,” she said. “Charting this world and recording a video of its inhabitants, filling out the list of monsters... We don’t have much data, and we want to get a full picture. What about you?”
“I’m here on business, trying to reach the Isle of Madness,” I told her the truth.
“The Isle of Madness? What kind of place is that?” Fayana asked, surprised.
“A myth told by captains in the Hole,” Bonus said, stroking his mussy blond hair. “It’s not on any map!”
“Like hell it’s a myth!” Thrainul boomed into his beard. “It’s not on any map, true, but I know several captains who landed there. Or, rather, I used to...”
Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series Page 11
