by Ember Lane
The buzzing noise grew to a crescendo. Fear threatened to overwhelm Lincoln’s resolve. He saw Griselda shifting nervously, Flip’s golden eyes wide. The noise threatened to defeat Lincoln on its own. It felt like it had to explode, that wherever it was surely could contain it anymore.
Dread beasts burst into the square from each of the alleyways to the side, a hundred eyes blinking with the fire from the lanterns. A mess of silver as two swarms of beating wings fanned out toward them, rolling like a wave of all-consuming death. The stench of metal all around.
“Spread out a bit,” Griselda hissed, but the dire creatures were on them before her words had fully spilled.
They were bats, yet not. They were crows, yet not. Screaming through the air, piercing screeches now drowning out the hum of their metallic wings, the rush of their swoops, razor-like silver talons bared. Lincoln slashed in fury, sliced in fear, but the swarm fell on him, as if he were their sole target. Their teeth tore into him, biting and ripping at his flesh. His sword useless, he threw it aside, desperately reaching for one of his knives, grabbing it and the first of the clawing beasts. He sliced across its neck and grabbed the next one, tucking his head in for miniscule protection, grabbing on instinct.
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
He tossed one, then two and three away, but more covered him. He smelled burning hair and saw glimpses of yellow magic, and felt helping hands trying to pull him up, but still the bats swooped, and he still grabbed them, sliced them dead and tossed them away. The pain was too much…
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
He felt his energy wane, and fleetingly dreamed of dying, but redoubled his efforts as he thought of starting all over again. The pain was terrible, excruciating, not something anyone should endure. He grabbed another, a lump of his own flesh coming away as he tore the thing off him. A slice and it was gone. More burning, the stench of frazzled fur sticking to him. The taint of scorched metal cloying at his nostrils.
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
Damage! Mutant bat bites you for 30 damage!
It was agony. It was never-ending. His mouth screamed “No more!” Yet he carried on ripping them from him, rolling, and trying desperately to crush them. His blade got ripped from his hand as another bat bit down on him. The dampness of his own blood surrounded him. Rents in his flesh became more normal than the flesh itself. The mutant’s relentless frenzy blurred Lincoln’s mind, and he desperately tried to shut out the pain. His motions now no more than that—the thrashing of a dead man. But in a final act of victory, they pulled his arms apart, and exposed his belly, his meat, and flesh.
“No!” he screamed, accepting his fate and opening his eyes, but when no new searing pain ripped through him, he saw Griselda looking down.
She had her knees on his shoulders, and a vial in her hands. Ripping its top off, she poured it down his throat. “It’s all right. It’s done. You killed them all.”
Lincoln felt his health roar back. The screaming agony all over his skin calmed.
He heard Belzarra say, “Hardly, I killed an awful lot.” He saw her looking down, saw her pass Griselda another vial. “This one should heal his wounds. He’s quite the mess.”
Gulping it down, Lincoln sat up, checking his stats. He felt dazed, confused as he tried to emerge from the nightmare of the attack, the stupor of the healing potions and his body’s euphoric response to its mending.
“Seems they preferred builder flavor,” Jin said with a grin. “I picked off about a dozen or so, but they were just too close to you.”
Flip circled Lincoln, breathing hard, as though he had excess energy or adrenaline to burn. “Have you met Morlog, for that was certainly her design?” Lincoln looked at the prince, but Flip merely rolled his eyes and pointed to the balcony. The figure was still there, silhouetted against the lanterns. Lincoln was sure he could see the blur of wings fluttering away behind her. “She’s the worst—at least the others have ambition. Though Belved likes his slaves, and Pellevere likes her citizens downtrodden, Morlog likes hers…modified… Morlog rules The Variant."
“She’s still there, so it can’t be over,” Jin said, and he loosed an arrow at the god.
Lincoln heard a skittering sound, like nails on glass, and looked up at Morlog, but noticed everyone else looking straight up in the air. Dread filled him as he raised his head and followed their stares.
It hung in the center of the ceiling, some dire creation, a splicing of other monsters. It had the body of a fat snake, the head of a dragon, four limbs ending with fearsome, taloned claws. A tail like a rattler and wings like a newborn bird and no more than stretched pink skin over knuckled bone, completed the thing.
Lincoln pushed his weary bones up, nearly dropping to his knees with renewed pain. He looked around the carnage for his sword and found it poking out of a pile of bat corpses, its pink steel shimmering among their gory metalic and rancid flesh. Looking back up at the beast, he sheathed his bloodied sword and took out his staff.
Clearing his notifications, noting he’d leveled in swords, picked up 1000XP and opened the skill Dodge—though he had little clue why—he certainly hadn’t managed to get out of the way of many. Lincoln glanced around for the others, and they waved him toward them as they formed a circle in the center of the square. Now closer to the being standing on the terrace, he saw it was a woman. Flip told him she had Morlog’s likeness, and now Lincoln knew the look of the twisted face that went with that name. Jin fired an arrow at the beast clinging to the ceiling. A signal for the battle to begin
“I started the first fight, might as well start the second,” he muttered.
His arrow hit home with a wet thud. Belzarra sent a ball of magic up to the mutant and another at Morlog. The likeness of the god easily ducked out of the way. The creature let loose a terrible scream and fell from the ceiling, plunging straight toward the adventurers. At the last minute its wings shot out breaking its fall, and it swooped for Lincoln.
He saw it coming, the skin of its fanned wings, its hellish mouth ready to strike. Still unsteady from the healing potions, still reeling from the last attacks, Lincoln tried to react, but a second too late. Just as its gaping maw was about to strike him, Griselda dove for him, shoving him away, then swinging around as her foot caught the force of its jaw’s momentum. Her scream raced through him, shocking him to his core.
Jin jumped in front of Lincoln, standing over him, firing arrow after arrow. Belzarra backed up to him, launching bolts of magic up at the thing, and Flip looked down offering his hand.
“This is no time to sleep,” he said, but his voice didn’t carry the humor well.
Lincoln looked up. The mutant was clinging to the ceiling again. Belzarra’s magic merely shimmering around it, but not looking like it was doing any harm. Jin’s arrows, Swift’s arrows, just bounced off its hide or plunged into it and hung limply in place. Then Lincoln saw its body bubble, like it had swallowed a bucket of balls, and they ran up and down its torso.
Griselda hobbled to his side, a health potion in hand, and Crags stood a ways back. He had a small bow in his hand, an arrow nocked and flaming with black fire. The beast flew down, arcing like before, screaming like before, and then split into five. Five monsters and five gaping maws bore down on them.
Belzarra sent bolt after bolt at them; Jin and Swift struck home with their arrows. Griselda braced, her ax ready: Flip's sword raised, and Lincoln had his staff back, primed for a strike. Crags held his bow ready, its black flaming arrow aimed up. Just as the beasts closed, swooped down in their final arc, Crags switched his aim and sent his arrow straight at the figure looking down from the balcony.
Lincol
n’s staff struck home, crunching against a horrendous, twisted head. The force sent the beast flailing away, sent shivers up his own arms. He saw Griselda’s ax shimmer as it swept in an arc beheading another. A flaming arrow from Jin, and a ball of fire from Belzarra dispatched another, but one broke through and dove for Lincoln, the last one for Crags. “Call on your chaos magic!” Crags barked, firing another imbued arrow at the figure on the balcony, just as the beast’s terrible jaw clamped around the gnome and scooped him up with a vicious bite.
Lincoln screamed defiance at the beast soaring down on him, reaching inside himself for the magic Crags had demanded. Strange words fell from his mouths, words he didn’t understand. His hand shot out and a blast of black light radiated out.
You have used the dark chaos spell, Spell Of Slumber. Sleep will come to all in its influence, sleep will go, and come again. Duration = Uncertain, Range = Unknown.
Two of the mutants plummeted down, the one holding Crags dropping the sleeping gnome. The thing on the balcony toppled off, still afire with black flames from Crags's arrow. Now that’s a great way to win a battle, Lincoln thought, before he fell to the stone floor, already snoring.
He woke, though he couldn’t be certain he wasn’t dreaming, and saw that everyone was asleep. Cronis lay away from them all, and Jin and Flip looked like they’d tried to claw their way to one of the slumbering mutants. Crags was deathly pale, a horrific bite out of his side. Griselda lay prone, her ax in her outstretched hand, Belzarra close by, snoozing too. Everything appeared hazy, like he was looking at the scene through Griselda’s blindfold. The distinct feeling that he had to do something, kill something, occurred to him like an afterthought. He picked up Griselda’s ax and dragging it along behind him, he ambled to the first beast. A single tone filled his head, a ringing, like an elongated chime.
The ax was heavy, and Lincoln’s energy felt drained, feeble, but he knew he had to kill the slumbering beast. He had to kill it before he woke, no, before it woke—he had to kill it before it woke. Straining with everything he had, he raised the ax’s blade and let it drop on the beast’s neck, severing it cleanly. That done, he fell to his knees. As his eyelids became heavy, he saw another of the mutants raise its head wearily up. He knew that spelled danger, but he had to sleep; he had no choice, and so he slept.
Nightmares disrupted his slumber, and he opened his eyes again. He looked around for the beast that had woken, and saw that it had moved. Now it lay asleep with its jaws clamped firmly around Flip’s leg. He reached around for Griselda’s ax, but it had moved and was back in the dwarf’s hand close to Flip’s body. Lincoln crawled toward it, tiredness washing over him. He grabbed the ax, thankful that Griselda had taken it most of the way for him. Picking it up, he dropped it on the mutant’s neck, and pulled Flip’s leg from its mouth.
Flip stirred, just as Lincoln’s eyes grew heavy. Lincoln wanted to tell him to kill all the beasts, but Flip was already crawling away from him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mutant that resembled Morlog stir, and he understood that was bad. He decided he’d tell someone in a moment, and rested his head, succumbing to the spell.
The next time he woke, he felt better—not quite so sleepy. He forced himself to sit up, and came face-to-face with Morlog. “You’re not real,” he told the thing.
Lincoln felt confusion wash over him. Morlog was just a kid, a little girl, but a truly frightening one. She had fangs, and wings, and reminded him a little of a bigger harpie, like Marngs. Her gossamer wings fluttered. Not a girl, no girl like he’d ever seen. Never a girl.
“You cannot win,” she told him, her foul breath washing over him and then she began to grow, to shoot up until she towered over him. Her hands became slender, taloned blades, and she brought one hand high, swiping down toward his unprotected head. Lincoln began to lift Griselda’s ax, but he was way too slow. Just as the talons threatened to slice him in two, a blade thrust up between them, slicing her hand at the wrist.
“You’re welcome,” said Swift, and then he pitched forward, asleep before his face kissed the stone flags.
The tall, thin girl screamed, but then collapsed in a heap of blusters and snores. Lincoln carried on raising the ax, taking an inordinate amount of time to do it. His eyes became heavy again, and he dropped the ax down. Falling to his knees, he marveled at the blade’s sharpness, as it split the mutant likeness of Morlog in two.
Cronis stirred briefly, barked something, but Lincoln hardly heard it as he welcomed his nightmares again.
16
The Lament of the Crimson Mage
“Never, ever, use that magic again,” Belzarra said, standing over a waking Lincoln, her hands on her hips. “Chaos magic? What are you, nine?” Then she collapsed and fell asleep.
Lincoln looked around; everyone was out for the count. All the beasts seemed distanced from their heads or cut in two, so he guessed the danger was over. He sat up, not feeling too bad again and wondered what Belzarra meant by her comment. “Nine?” He decided she must have still been foggy from the spell, and what an odd spell it was too. Had they just fought a battle while half asleep?
He checked his notifications and scrolled through a load of damage reports, slumber reports, and a final one giving him 1500 XP for his part in vanquishing the mutants. He felt a glow build in his stomach, swirling around, seeping along his veins, reaching his fingertips, his toes, every part of him. He stood, levitated until he was level with the first balcony, whereupon he stretched his arms out, feeling awake, alive, the remnants of the chaos spell were bleached from his blood.
Congratulations! You have leveled up. You are now level 8. You have 6 unallocated Attribute points.
Lincoln fell to the stone floor, surrounded by the blood, the metal, and the guts of the mutants, by the bodies of his sleeping friends. Friends: yes, that was the right word. He looked at his stat board, and pondered his points. Should he allocate them to politics to speed up the builds? If he was traveling away, would it have any effect? Would his settlements actually lose the influence and slow? How long was he likely to be away for?
Name: Lincoln Hart. Race: Human. Type: Builder.
Age: 46. Alignment: Mandrake. XP: 15,495.
Level: 8 Profession: Lord. Un/Al pts: 6. Reputation: Somebody.
Personal
Health Points: 360/360 Energy: 230/230 Mana: 10/0
HP Regen: 20/Min EN Regen: 23/Min MA Regen: 1/Min
Attributes: (Level, Bonuses)
Vitality: (13, 23), Stamina: (15, 8), Intelligence: (1, 0),
Wisdom: (1, 0), Luck: (12, 0),
Strength: (8, 10) Agility: (13, 10)
Skills: (Level, % to next level, Boosts %, Level Cap)
Divination: (4, 88, 0, 25), Stealth: (4, 22, 0, 8), Commerce: (6, 66, 0, 40), Pickpocketing: (1, 0, 0, 6), Brewing: (14, 1, 0, ∞), Perception: (4, 67, 0, 10), Blades: (12,1 9, 0, 14), Close-Q-fighting: (14, 33, 0, 18), Staff fighting: (12, 89, 0, 26), Swordsmanship: (8, 33, 0, 10), Magic: (1, 0, 0, 3), Concealment: (2, 33, 0, 10), Night vision: (5, 46, 0, 12), Rope law: (4, 60, 0, 8), Dodge: (1, 45, 0, 15)
Talents: None.
Quests: Cleanse Starellion. Status: Incomplete. Reward: Unknown
Clear the forest of fifty satanshrooms. Status: Complete. Reward: Claimed
It was impossible—an impossible choice. The Builder was designed to build. He’d already put points into his own attributes when he should have put them into the city’s stats. Like all games, to be good, effective, you had to specialize, and he was caught between a promise and an open, inviting path.
Yet, looking at it differently… If he did take over Brokenford, if he did expand, he would be able to grow rapidly. To get more points, to gain resources from more mills, farms, and quarries, he needed to see the land to understand how to do that—how to grow the best way. Was he Unity? Could he be Unity? Or, more to the point, could he make Unity a blend of warrior and clerk, of builder and butcher.
He stood, and walked around the chamber. The carcasses of th
e bats, the bodies of the mutant, lizard-like things had all but dissolved, leaving behind some bronze-colored metallic wings, some gold coin, and the odd dagger—mostly useless stuff to him, though the coin was always good for research. He crept over to the corpse of the fallen mutant god, and looked into her ichor and guts seeing a package about the size of a lengthy book buried within the slices.
Bound by a golden rope, as soon it was free of the body, the mutant’s flesh and blood evaporated. He undid the rope, letting it fall to the floor, and saw it was in fact a box. He lifted its lid to see a note and a small iron key on an iron chain. It looked unsubstantial, like the lock it opened was merely perfunctory.
“Another key?” he whispered to himself, holding it up and watching it spin in the lamplight.
Looking back into the box he saw a note. He slipped the key over his wrist and took out the note, but the key and chain jumped straight off his wrist and back into the box. The box snapped shut. Lincoln tried to open it, but the lid was clamped tight.
He slumped back down on the floor, placing the box between his legs. He took the note and unfolded it so he could read it, but as his eyes looked over the words, they vanished. Wondering, he placed the note on the box and watched as it sank into it, the golden ropes then rose up and slithering across, then tying themselves up. He heard Warrior’s laughter in his mind.
“A teaser, but not for you.”
“What is it?”
“It is something that should have been found by another.”
