Exodus of Gnomes (God Core #2) - A Dungeon Core LitRPG

by Demi Harper

  Ris’kin and I bared our teeth. That seemed to finally make up its mind. With a screech, the creature limped along the ledge and slithered over the side, making its sulky way back down to the magma lake from which it had presumably emerged.

  Swift went to high-five Cheer, but the other scavenger was leaning heavily against the wall. Her stamina was almost gone; a red symbol had appeared above her head which, once I examined it, helpfully pointed out that she was ‘Exhausted.’

  They’d lost most of their belongings somewhere along the way, presumably when the water had dragged us all to the cave below, but the crafty little hoarders still had plenty of useful supplies stashed upon their person. Swift fished around in her pockets until she unearthed what looked like a handful of dried mushrooms, which she shared with Cheer. She offered one to Longshank, but he politely declined. The hunter was already chewing on a slice of raw fish, carved from the fangfin that had dared ruin his leg. Ris’kin and I accepted a chunk of that ourselves. It was surprisingly delicious, once you got past the fact that it was, well, raw fish.

  The brief rest replenished a modicum of the gnomes’ stamina, though Cheer’s exhaustion status did not disappear. According to the Augmentary, until she was fully rested she would suffer reduced movement speed and strength. Given the urgency of our situation, that was less than ideal.

  Another minor setback was Longshank’s weapon. The spearhead was gone, lost inside the pyromander’s lava-like body. The wooden haft was burnt off at the end, but was still usable otherwise, and Swift was able to shorten the haft and replace the spearhead with one of the white crystal shards they’d hacked from the caves below.

  I glanced impatiently at the timer while they fixed it. On one hand we didn’t have time for this. On the other, an attack by another pyromander while we were unarmed would be an even bigger delay if not a disaster.

  Longshank nodded approvingly when she handed the spear back to him. There followed a brief conversation between the two gnomes, after which Longshank nodded again and then turned his back on the scavengers. Swift sat beside Cheer once more. The exhausted scavenger was already nodding off to sleep, and Swift allowed her to rest against her shoulder, keeping her own eyes warily upon the pit.

  “They’re staying behind,” I realized. Swift had clearly recognized that her fellow scavenger would be unable to keep up and had elected to remain behind with her rather than delay our progress any further.

  Or perhaps they’d spotted a secret treasure trove en route, and were waiting for us to leave so they could plunder it for themselves. I felt a rush of affection for the scavengers. They’d been thorns in my side since the very beginning; they’d been the last of my original denizens to join my Faithful—I’d never seen anyone worship so grudgingly—and their fierce independence made them notoriously unreliable.

  They were pains in the arse. But they were mine.

  I’ll come back for you, I promised.

  There were various passages all around the ledge—this place really was like the Heart—but Ket was already leading us up the spiraling stairs. The sprite’s attention was entirely focused on reaching the top; her earlier confusion was gone, and I knew we were heading the right way. Longshank, Ris’kin and I did the only thing left to do, and followed.

  Fifty-Seven

  Not Part of the Plan

  Benin

  Benin followed Coll down the trail. He felt somewhat weak, though it was no physical affliction; more that he was still mentally reeling from the previous day’s events.

  “You sure the tiny shiny bloke’s all right?” asked Coll.

  “Bekkit? He’s fine.” He waved a hand dismissively, glancing down at the half-asleep sprite hitching a ride between Pyra’s shoulder blades.

  “Haven’t heard his high-and-mighty voice for a while, is all.”

  “He’s just a bit weak. Terrestrial Body isn’t meant to be active for long periods of time.”

  Coll was quiet for a while. Then he asked, “What happens if he’s away from Corey for too long?”

  Benin had his suspicions, but was reluctant to voice them before the weakened sprite. To his surprise, though, Bekkit himself spoke up.

  “A sprite’s essence is sustained by the ambient mana within its Core’s Sphere of Influence. With that connection broken, I must forge a new one or subsist entirely on my own reserves. Once they are depleted…”

  Coll nodded grimly. He was as familiar as any Guild member with the dangers of burnout, though it felt odd to Benin that the same concerns afflicting mortal adventurers should also apply to beings like sprites and even God Cores.

  Burnout had once been Benin’s biggest fear. He’d had it drilled into him for so long that his affinity’s volatility made it a likelihood—no, a certainty—that he’d suffer an early death as a result of its misuse, like almost every pyromancer in the Guild’s recent history. Yet not only had Bekkit taught him greater mastery of fire, he’d also opened him up to connecting with the other elements as well—a feat he hadn’t even known was possible. He’d been lied to for years, stifled, made to feel inferior and dangerous.

  Another thing I’ll be sure to make Varnell pay for someday.

  Dark thoughts swirled around him as he and Coll continued down the mountain. Then another consciousness flared within his own. The emberfox caught his eye, and his mouth twitched into a smile. She turned away, nose in the air as usual, but her tails swished with satisfaction rather than annoyance. He could feel it through their bond, reminding him of the feats he’d achieved the day before.

  Though he felt guilt at his actions’ unexpected consequences—washing Corey away downstream had definitely not been part of the plan—he couldn’t help but secretly rejoice. Not only had he established his first successful paired portals, he’d also finally accomplished what he’d longed for since the Menagerie: he’d bonded with the emberfox.

  He’d been lost, panicking, caught in the grip of chaos. His own portal had been about to drain him dry whensuddenly there was a second presence in his mind; the sucking magic was drawing from a lake of fiery mana, sparing the paltry trickle that remained in his own globes just in time.

  No longer on the verge of self-destruction, and encouraged by Bekkit’s voice shouting in his ear, Benin had rallied. Using the techniques the sprite had been drilling into him this whole time, he focused all his energy on splitting the inflow of the emberfox’s power. After successfully quartering it, he’d drawn from the ambient mana of his surroundings to convert three of the four streams to earth, air and water until the portals were balanced once more and could be dismissed.

  It was only then that he realized what had happened. Still coughing water from his forced, but thankfully brief trip underwater, Bekkit explained that the Core was gone. The sprite had sounded shaken. Not surprising, all things considered. He’d almost drowned, and now he was stuck in his terrestrial form until he could be reunited with the Core.

  The Core’s priest—Gnole or Gnile or something like that—had already rallied the gnomes and begun leading them up the mountain. The only one who remained behind with Benin and Pyra was Ajax, the warrior-gnome they’d rescued from the Marsh Zolom’s disgustingly distensible gullet. Thankfully, they’d crossed paths with Coll, who was just returning from the top. Hyper-aware of their near-disastrous decisions to leave the gnomes alone in the past, he and Coll had accompanied them to the summit—shouldering as many supplies as they could so as to minimize the wagons’ load on the steep paths—and then waited with them for hours.

  When Corey didn’t show up, though, he and Coll decided they should descend the mountain to search for him. Perhaps he’d washed up somewhere along the stream.

  Though Bekkit seemed certain Corey would find his way back to the tribe, he agreed that it would be prudent to at least make sure the worst hadn’t happened. It had been an entire day since the incident at the river, after all.

  The trail was more treacherous in the dark, the sun setting on the far side of the mountain
, but just enough light lingered for them to avoid any missteps that would lead to them breaking their necks. A smattering of stars had already pushed their way into view on the velvety blackness of the eastern sky. Benin found himself gazing up at them. It was strange, this feeling of accomplishment; like things were finally coming together and going his way. He rather liked it.

  Coll stopped abruptly, and Benin almost walked into the back of him.

  “Why are we—”

  Then he saw what held the other man’s gaze.

  On the trail before them was a figure. A deeper darkness among the shadows, it stood unassumingly in the center of the trail, blocking their way down.

  Pyra growled. Glancing down, Benin saw that her ears were flat against her head, and her tails were twitching threateningly like fiery snakes. His eyes widened as a series of impressions floated through the bond, coalescing in his mind as semi-solid concepts. She-man. Anger. Hurt. Danger.

  The figure reached up with one hand and drew back her hood. He still couldn’t quite see her face, but as she came closer, the faint starlight let Benin pick out details of her appearance. Her hair didn’t reach her shoulders; it stuck out in various directions, stiff and spiky as though full of leaves and mud. Her cloak was heavy and ragged, and smelled even worse than his and Coll’s clothes, as though she’d been sleeping rough for months.

  She took another step closer, and Pyra’s tails flared in warning. The orange glow illuminated the woman’s hair, revealing hints of red beneath the mud and dirt, and Benin finally saw her face clearly.

  Coll gasped. Benin took a step back, as appalled as he was confused.

  It… it can’t be.

  “Lila?”

  The woman smiled coldly, though there was no humor in it, and the expression’s forced cruelty could not hide the pain in her eyes.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked.

  Fifty-Eight

  Misconceptions

  Tiri

  The sound of a key turning in a lock echoed down the stairs into the study. As the heavy door was hefted open, Tiri quickly and carefully replaced the hollow stone bust before retreating among the shelves.

  One by one, the chemspheres on the wall glowed to life as the Guildmaster descended the steps. Tiri watched him through a gap between the books.

  “Evening, Gardos,” he sighed as he settled into his usual chair. He pulled a silver bowl across the table toward him and murmured an incantation. Purple-black smoke swirled up from the base of the bowl, lighting up Varnell’s face with a faint sickly glow.

  The Guildmaster bowed his head over it, peering into the bowl, then suddenly frowned. He pulled his head back and glanced at the statue on the plinth, presumably just realizing his greeting had gone unremarked. “Gardos?” he called.

  He waited, then shrugged and returned to his scrying bowl. “Come on, Mornier, get on with it.” He shifted impatiently in his chair.

  Tiri’s ears rang like she’d just set off an alarm glyph. Gardos had told her the truth.

  Lila is alive.

  She swallowed bile. The numb shock that had overwhelmed her quickly gave way to a rush of relief and joy. But that was already being pierced by darts of confusion and horrific realization.

  Her injuries must have been terrible. And she knows we left her there to die. She must hate us all so much.

  Unable to deal with the possibilities of Lila’s current mental state, Tiri’s mind retreated, focusing instead on small details of her immediate surroundings. Like the smoke in Varnell’s scrying mirror. Something had been niggling at her since she first saw it. Something about the color...

  Then she recalled one of the books she’d come across during her early research. A useless tome, it had mostly been focused on horoscope scrying. A ridiculous school of thought, obviously, but one interesting nugget she’d gleaned from it was that starsigns—or Aspects—had changed after the Shattering. Worlds across the cosmos had been destroyed, stars extinguished, and though their light still traveled the unfathomable distances across the night sky, astral mages had confirmed their sources to be gone from existence.

  The book had listed the colors associated with each current starsign, asserting that even were a mage to be disguised with glamor, the smoke of their scrying would reveal the celestial alignment under which their magic first appeared in the world. The purple-black light that currently painted Varnell’s tired-looking face had not appeared on the list. That meant it belonged to a mage from before the Shattering, which meant the color shouldn’t exist anymore. Clearly Varnell was not that old. Which meant—

  Something chittered near Tiri’s feet. She looked down to see the strange creature that had accompanied Varnell on his previous visit. It was staring back up at her with bulbous black eyes, half-hidden behind a fringe of blue-gray fur. It clicked its mandibles urgently.

  Her first thought was that she wished she had Benin’s Arcane Sight ability so she could identify the creature properly. Scales and fur? Mandibles and teeth? What sort of bizarre hybrid was this, and who had made it?

  Her second thought, which should probably have been her first, was, Oh damn. He knows I’m here.

  “Greetings, Tiriani Moon,” said Varnell. His head was still bowed over the scrying bowl, but his familiar stared up at her intently.

  She had a thousand questions for the despicable Guildmaster, but one was at the forefront when she stepped out into the open study area.

  “Lila is alive?”

  She’d meant it as a challenge, but it came out more as a plea.

  “Mornier? Yes. Still alive, and still as ever my loyal agent.”

  What? Why? How?! she wanted to scream.

  “If she’s so loyal, why did you send her on a death mission?” she asked instead.

  Varnell raised an eyebrow as though he had no idea what she was talking about. “Excuse me?”

  “You wanted us gone. All of us.” She pulled out a piece of paper—the original requisition for their expedition underground, taken from among the pile of papers she’d found in Lila’s room.

  Recognition flitted across his face. “Ah. That was a difficult decision. I lamented making it.” His face was grave, his voice sincere. She might have believed him, if not for the tendrils of intent she’d already gotten from the ink of his signature on the paper itself.

  “That’s a lie.” She was even hardly surprised to hear the confidence in her voice as she declared the Guildmaster a liar to his face. So much had changed lately; just a few months ago most people would have agreed that Tiri was the kind of person who wouldn’t say boo to a goose (a phrase she’d always found rather odd; in her experience, getting close enough to a goose and then deliberately startle it was not something a timid person would do).

  “You lamented only the inconvenience. You were confident this would solve more than one of your problems, and you congratulated yourself on orchestrating such a neat solution.”

  Thank you, Detect Intent.

  He narrowed his eyes. He was properly looking at her now, and his mask of concern had dropped, as though he was finally considering the possibility that there was more to her than he’d first thought.

  How flattering.

  “Would it make you feel better if I told you I regret it?”

  “No, because the only reason for that is the hassle we’ve caused you by not dying obediently like you wanted.” She needed no ability to tell her that. “What about the pyromancers?” she asked, before he could try and talk himself out of things again—or decide to simply turn her into dust with a click of his fingers. “Why kill them?”

  Unconcealed hatred flashed across his face, and she had to force herself to stand her ground and not take a step back. His eyes darkened.

  “The world will not miss them,” he said coldly.

  Varnell’s familiar scuttled underneath the table and curled up by its master’s feet. He reached down unconsciously and brushed its head with his fingers.

  “To answer your first question
,” he said, “I had reason to believe Mornier had developed… misconceptions. About our work. About me. Misconceptions that would have me hounded from the Guild like a beast.”

  Misconceptions. Right.

  She nodded toward the bowl and its purple-black smoke. “Is that your patron’s Aspect?”

  He froze. “How dare you,” he said in a strangled voice. “Are you suggesting I am a—”

  “Warlock? Yes, I am.” She took a step closer, her own eyes fixed on the bowl’s swirling contents. “Strange sort of color for someone who calls himself the ‘Lord of Light,’” she observed lightly.

  “You know nothing about me or my patron,” he snarled.

  “I know a lot more than you think.”

  Gardos had said the book by Ar’bek Kitt—the one that had referenced the elven gods—contained the clue to Varnell’s power. What little she’d read of the account had mentioned two beings: the light elf god, aka “The Lord of Light”; and the night elf god, aka Garim R’ok or “The Tyrant of Darkness.” According to Kitt’s account, both gods had mysteriously disappeared centuries before after one had betrayed the other.

  She hadn’t had enough time to think about it—she suspected that even if she had years that wouldn’t be enough time—but the cogs of her academic mind were whirring, piecing together the clues to complete the puzzle.

  The book’s title had referred to “the art of soul-shifting.” It had referenced elvish gods of light and dark. The Guildmaster sitting before her was a half-blood light elf, a warlock whose patron called himself the Lord of Light yet whose Aspect was dark as sin and ancient beyond comprehension.

  “Your patron,” she said, watching his face carefully to gage his reaction, “is Garim R’ok. The former god of the night elves. The one they called the Tyrant of Darkness.”