“Zen, do you smell burnt toast?” Katz—who else?
The roar grew louder though, so either I was becoming progressively insane or it was something real. It grew and grew until I was sure we were right on top of it.
“Zen, you’re shouting," Mac informed me when I told her. I could hear her just fine, but the roar was such that I’d bellowed into her ear, sure she wouldn’t be able to hear me.
While I stammered an apology, she turned to the others. “Alright, guys, if anything’s going to happen in this dungeon, it’s going to be soon. Keep your weapons handy.” I was grateful she had taken me at my word, even if I had nearly deafened her with it.
Weapons were eased in their sheathes and shoulders were shrugged in anticipation.
The final room was big—bigger than any other we’d been in—and against one wall, through one wall, flowed the most energetic torrent of mana I’d ever seen. A river unconstrained by gravity.
“Varb, could we get some light for a sec?” Mac requested. “I want to see these.”
I closed my eyes and dismissed Dark Vision as the light flared into existence.
“Oh wow," Varba breathed. Initially, I assumed she was referring to the river of mana that dominated the room, but her attention was on the edges of the flow, where an entire field of crystals bloomed, completely transparent. Varba took a step forward and pushed the light ahead to better illuminate the crystals. Rainbows danced across the room for an instant, and then everything went black, leaving us blind.
“Weapons up!” Mac barked. “Hold position.”
Light blinked into being above Varba’s head only seconds later, and we circled up, scanning for enemies.
“What happened, Varb?” Mac demanded, not taking her eyes from the shadows at the edge of the light.
“It just went out," Varba responded. “Hell if I know.”
I’d seen it though. “There’s mana there, behind the crystals," I announced. “Tons of it, like a river. The light hit it and got swept away.”
“Alright. Everybody stay back for now. Zen, is it dangerous?”
There was only one thing I could think to do to find out. I approached the river with my quarterstaff outstretched and carefully touched the tip to its surface. Nothing.
“Are we sure he’s not just making it up?” Katz snarked behind me.
Frustrated at the jibe, I lowered the staff and reached forward, carefully touching just the tip of my finger to it. Still nothing. Slowly, I pushed my entire hand inside.
A new light bloomed in the room, dim at first, but growing steadily. If Varba’s light had been more powerful I probably wouldn’t have noticed. The auger was shining on the back of my hand as if it were a coal being blown back into life. In astonishment, I watched as one hundred thousand stored mana flashed by. One hundred fifty. Insane! With this much mana...
“Zen,” I heard Mac announce behind me, “time to fight.”
I looked back to see what was happening. Mac didn’t sound too worried.
And she shouldn’t have been, it seemed. Across the cavern from the crystals was a tall wall of rough stone, perhaps thirty feet tall. A wall that appeared to be shedding. Chunks of gray rock fell soundlessly away from its face in surreal fashion, until I realized none of the rocks were hitting the floor. Instead, they were spinning apart and filling the air with the murmur of delicate wings.
“Are those butterflies?” Katz asked incredulously.
They did appear to be—too many butterflies to count. Each hovered just out from the surface of the rock, using their foot-long wingspan to wait for yet others to emerge.
“Can you handle them?” I asked Mac. “I’m getting some crazy mana here.”
“Looks like it," she called. “They’re butterflies—how hard could it be?”
“Don’t fight too hard," I admonished.
She grinned at me over her shoulder and gripped her javelin. “I won’t.”
The auger was blinding when I turned back around, and I jerked it from the flow. I didn’t want it to burn out. The light from the auger began to dim immediately as it broke the surface, and I decided to wait a few seconds before submerging it again. Just because it had infinite capacity didn’t mean it had similarly infinite throughput, and the amount of mana cascading through the stone was truly enormous. Just in the short time I’d spent talking to Mac it had passed four hundred thousand.
At that point the butterflies had all pulled away from the stone and were hovering toward the ceiling in ordered ranks.
“What are they waiting for?” Katz growled.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to get me some XP!” Mac responded, grunting the last syllable as she released a javelin into the swarming mass.
There was nowhere for the butterflies to go, and her javelin tore straight through a wing, downing one of the enormous insects.
In response, the swarm broke toward us, filling the air with an angry drone as they funneled together into a column to attack. The party readied to swing at the bugs, but the butterflies veered away before getting close enough. Instead, as each swung away, they released a tiny dart of white light that streaked toward the group like a hurled spear. Me’Almah caught the first few with her shield, but it wasn’t long before Slynx took one straight to the chest.
“They do 2 damage?!” he complained. “This is going to take forever!”
“Just get to Level 10!” Mac snapped, whipping yet another javelin at the dive-bombing butterflies. With the bugs all bunched so close, she was able to injure three with one throw.
“Does anyone else feel like they’re playing Galaga?” Katz quipped.
I turned back to my work. The auger had almost dimmed completely, so I thrust it back into the river. There wasn’t much else I could do, so as it charged I examined the crystals.
Whereas they had been beautiful in the light, they were fascinating up close. They weren’t just mana-dense, they were mana-solid. Completely opaque to my ethereal vision in a way I’d only ever seen with the auger. Without exception, every other thing I’d seen had a flow to them. Mana would move through them, sluggishly or frenetically, but it would move. If mana was water, these crystals were ice.
I grabbed one of the smaller gems protruding up from the field on a thin spire, and snapped it off, hoping to study it more later.
In a soundless puff, the crystal disappeared, becoming invisible to my regular sight but leaving behind an unbelievable tangle to my ethereal sight—as if I’d opened a can and a snake had jumped out. The stray mana that fell into the current was immediately swept away, leaving me standing in a pile of free mana that was slowly dispersing into the cave.
I checked the auger momentarily, before searching for a crystal that was already free. Seven hundred thousand!
It was then that I felt the first sting, the bite of a horsefly amplified by ten. I slapped wildly with my left hand and struck a fragile wing. The butterflies had stopped their orderly assault and were now simply swarming the group. Me’Almah swung her shield savagely in defense of Varba, but there wasn’t much she could do. The swarm attacked from every direction. The others fared similarly, although being able to commit to attacking kept them just a bit safer. Butterfly bodies simply flowed around and past them.
It wasn’t until my vision was entirely blocked by buffeting wings, and my attention entirely taken with painful stings, that I realized the insects were attacking me in particular.
“Zen!” I heard Mac cry.
“Just take out as many as you can!” I responded—I refuse to admit to squealing—. “Get us to 10!”
The press of furry bodies was so close I had to spit out wing dust, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. And so, with my head down and my eyes squeezed shut, I flailed behind myself with my staff, feeling the barely-there resistance as it met with soft insect bodies. I could see my health bar even with my eyes closed, and watched as it drained precipitously away. Even against stings that only dealt 1-2 damage, my HP wasn’t going to hold up long.
All according to plan.
Chapter 36
Needling attacks gave way to a body blow that knocked the wind completely out of me, and suddenly I was flying end-over-end, the sky and the ground nothing more than a jumbled blur. The human body isn’t really made to roll though, and my face did a wonderful job of stopping my tumble. I lay there for a moment, staring in disbelief at the sunlit dirt beneath me and waiting to catch my breath.
“Oh dear. We hadn’t considered that," Hen’Darl clucked. “I suppose we had no way to know…”
All I could do was groan as bewilderment faded and agony arrived. Something felt wrong with my right shoulder, and the left side of my face blazed with pain where it was pressed into the hardpack. Where was Varba when you needed her?
My silent question was answered by concurrent roars that broke the silence of the forest road.
“Oh my god, Zen—what happened?”
Mac’s voice. I was still in no state to move, so in response I simply groaned again, more loudly, more insistently.
“Slynx, help me roll him over! Careful with his arm. It looks broken.”
I moaned with pain as my face peeled away from the road, and the dead weight of my arm shifted. “Where’s Varba?”
“She and Almah were the last. They’ll be here in a few seconds.” She looked at Hen’Darl in bewilderment. “What happened?”
“These cynosures are tools that have only ever been used with spirits. Not until the players came would they have been of use for corporeal beings. The entosects were at a full skitter when the first portal opened, and it followed us at speed. I could not bring them to balk quickly enough and...” The wizened orc gestured helplessly at my broken body.
“So it’s like Zen got thrown out of a car going thirty," Katz concluded. “Wow, Zen. Someday karma’s going to have to drop you into a whole pile of scantily clad muscle daddies—just to even things out.” He patted my leg. “Better you than me—about the roadrash, I mean. I fully intend to be there for the muscle daddies.”
“Just get me Varba!” I wailed. “And what’s a muscle daddy?”
As if summoned, two more resurrection portals tore into existence, first depositing Me’Almah and then Varba. The goblin woman clicked her tongue reprovingly as she looked me over.
“I almost feel vindicated after everything you’ve dragged us through this last week," she chided. “Almost.”
In the space of a few casts, I was on the mend, though it was a slow process. Varba wasn’t able to fix my broken arm and clavicle, but she was able to set them. Apparently she’d been a nurse in real life. Hen’Darl did me the favor of casting a sleep spell to spare me the pain, and I woke up to find that still more of my tunic had been cannibalized to form a sling.
“Just two days out of the closet and already rocking a belly shirt?” Mac taunted as she helped me up. My face felt hot as I stood, but I refused to hide my midriff. It couldn’t be helped, and so I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Instead, I let Mac hand me onto one of the entosects Hen’Darl had led out of Kalsip for us to ride, and I struggled onto its back one-handed. Varba stayed nearby to keep an eye on me, and I fed mana to her and Katz for buffs. With Aura and Wind at Your Back applied to each of us, we flew down the forest road. It was a smoother ride than a horse could ever manage, and with my fragile shoulder I was glad of it.
Wind at Your Back wasn’t an expensive spell, but to utilize it to its full potential it required multiple stacked castings, each of which added only a marginal speed boost, but also reset the duration of the buff. Soon the upkeep had outstripped our natural Mana Regeneration, but I wasn’t concerned. The agglomerate had over nine-hundred-thousand spare mana, with more being added by the second. We would blow through the forest and be back to Hearthstead in hours.
Hen’Darl, who had remained awake for nearly two days straight in order to facilitate our escape, requested we lead her mount so she could rest. None of us were inclined to begrudge the woman anything. Had she not managed to pass me the portable cynosure during the confusion of our faked scuffle with her and Garinold, had she not managed to secrete it in her robes while grabbing my wrist on our return from Burgat’s Hollow, or even had she not managed to smuggle it out of Impresium, our plan would have failed. In effect, she was the plan. Impresium thought to have planned for our immortality, but as gamers we’d simply had more experience with it.
We woke Hen’Darl in the early afternoon upon reaching Hearthstead, and she slowed her mount, taking time to soak in every last glimpse of her abandoned home, the village she had made her life’s work to lead and defend.
“Be well, Hearthstead," she finally announced, then determinedly turned her mount toward the road ahead.
Epilogue
We reached the refugees from Hearthstead the next day and slowed our pace to match theirs. We needed to make haste, but there was no way the entire community of women, men, and children would be able to maintain the velocity we’d kept during our flight.
Hen’Darl disappeared almost immediately upon arrival, and Huth'Ga joined us soon after.
“She sleeps,” the village leader assured us, “but what she has told me gives me hope. Other players escaping on the same day will keep suspicion from falling on Hearthstead, and will, at the very least, give us more time to flee. We near the edges of the Boundless even now, and we must hope Leonald will be too busy playing at war to search for us there. We will have time—time to build Hearthstead anew for my people.
“As for the six of you,” she said, addressing Mac. “Where will your path take you now? The Boundless is a wild land, and some would say I am a fool to lead my people there. Still, it is a land that has much to offer the foolish,” she grinned, all tusk, “and the brave. My people would be glad of your company, and of the protection you might provide, as seedborn and as players.”
Mac glanced around at the rest of us to see whether there were any strong opinions. Not seeing any, she addressed the war mother. “Cogneid hasn’t been especially hospitable these last few weeks, and it sounds like all of the nations are scooping up players the same way. We will stay with you, at least until we figure out a place for ourselves in this world. Thank you for the invitation.”
Huth'Ga nodded, pleased, and then saw us settled into a wagon where we could sleep.
“Guys,” Mac announced coyly as we settled in. “Have any of you looked at your menus since we reached Level 10?”
Curious, we all did so.
“Oh. My. God," Katz announced. “Zen’s not special anymore.”
And sure enough, I wasn’t. Just under the Skills item on the main menu was a new heading: Classes.
In a garble of half-formed thoughts and speculation, we tore into the new UI, which opened to a screen of stars that replicated that of the Spells UI, only as vast as the Milky-Way. Fortunately they were also arranged in trees, and those readily available to us were bright, ready to be acquired.
I set to modifying the UI to my liking, separating the trees from each other, though the sheer number made even that a daunting task. I kept the most applicable ones close, and applied labels to them with a thought. Combat. Spellcraft. Tradecraft. Trees I considered useless were pushed to the outskirts. Statecraft. Mercantilism. Subterfuge. It wasn’t a true separation though. Classes from disparate trees hinted at being related, and looking at just a few of these made it clear there could be huge benefits in mixing trees. I greedily eyed a class called “Arcane Architect” that suggested a link between Trade and Spellcraft Classes.
After a while, conversation died down, as each of us made wide-eyed plans for the future development of our characters. Katz was agog for a class titled “Spellslip” that mixed rogue-type classes with those of a mage. Varba was waffling between “Priest” and “Druid,” which offered different mixes of utility and healing. Mac was diving deep into an “Elementalist” class, and eyeing the benefit of becoming a “Fire Seed Savant,” which offered to increase her elemental resistance, and therefor
e to decrease the likelihood of lighting herself on fire. Slynx was looking at a full-on berserker build, for which he received many a disapproving look from Varba. Me’Almah was assessing how the Stoneskin effect from her Earth spells might be best incorporated into her tanking.
I, on the other hand, was awash with confusion. I already had several classes, which were now displayed in place of “Inept” alongside my name and level on my Character Sheet. “Mage” was the class most heavily used. That one included Concentration, Static and Dual Casting, and Muscle Memory. “Arcanist” was the next, with my Ether spell opening the door to awesome talents in addition to Ethereal Form. What confused and concerned me was the penultimate class, the class encompassing my Flow spell and serving as a prerequisite for “Etheric Enchanter,” where my Static Flow subskill lived. I’d accessed the class without reading its name, and was surprised to find the word “LOCKED” transposed over the entirety. Curious, I left the skills view and retreated to view the class as a whole.
Godslayer, the title read.
“Godslayer,” I whispered. The title felt to be an accusation, and coming three days after defying my religious beliefs in order to come out—religious beliefs that were none too solid at the moment—it was a little on-the-nose. Still, I hadn’t actively destroyed any gods that I knew of, and the thought of killing Kalvah, the only in-game god I’d met, seemed preposterous. And so, I left it. Out of sight, out of mind. I certainly wasn’t going to announce it to the party. Katz would have had a field day with the title.
I slept for nearly twelve hours that night, and when I awoke in the twilight of dawn, it was once again due to a quiet rustling. Hoping to see the offending critter this time, I stayed still and waited for the sound to repeat. Scritch scritch scritch. I tilted my head slowly toward the sound, which was coming from under the rough blanket I’d covered myself with to keep out the nighttime chill. I couldn’t see any movement, but the scraping continued. Cautiously, I maneuvered my left hand into place and gripped the blanket, before throwing it aside in one smooth movement.
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