FIFTEEN:
King of Wolves
From the time they walked into the bookshop, Kaz spoke about nothing but the magical wonders of food. While Roark searched through the overstuffed shelves for the Trade Skill books, the enraptured Thursr reminisced fondly about the juicy tenderness of meat and its smoky, fire-crisped skin. As Roark searched the titles and debated which areas of specialty would come in most handy—carefully marking the spine of each book they would need with one black claw—Kaz exulted in the remembered crunch of vegetables between his teeth and the warm fullness of nourishment in his belly.
Roark was frankly getting sick of hearing Kaz rehash his limited experience with spices when he ran across a leather-bound Cooking Trade Skill book, its letters gilded with handsome gold leaf. He’d already marked Calligraphy, Blacksmithing, Cartography, Tailoring, and Enchanting for Kaz to buy. The Thursr had picked up each marked tome without missing a beat in his seemingly endless soliloquy about food.
The ghost of a smile tugged at Roark’s lips. He wondered whether Kaz would even notice if he marked the volume on Cooking. They had just enough gold left for one more Trade Skill, and they would need to eat, after all. He scratched his thumbclaw down the leather-bound spine, then nodded to Kaz.
“That’s the last of it,” Roark said low enough that only Kaz could hear. “We’re running out of time before our heroes respawn. Let’s get these paid for and back to the citadel.”
Kaz nodded, picking up the Cooking skill book, his onyx eyes skipping over the gilt letters on the cover as he added it to the stack under his left arm.
“It is truly a wonder of innovation, taking the muscle, bone, and fat of a creature and holding it over a fire,” he said, starting toward end of the row of shelves. “Kaz would love to watch the …”
The Thursr’s thought trailed off unfinished and he came to a halt at the end of the aisle. Roark waited. Eyes bulging wider than ever before, Kaz snatched the leather-bound book off the top of the stack and brought it up to within an inch of his face.
“This cannot be,” he whispered, turning back. “Roark will learn to make food?”
“No, all my Trade Skill Slots are going to necessities.” Roark pointed at the Thursr’s broad chest. “Kaz will learn to make food.”
There was no warning. One moment Kaz was standing at the end of the row, the next he had Roark in his tree-trunk arms, crushing the breath from his birdlike Changeling chest.
“So kind!” Kaz blubbered, fat tears falling on the top of Roark’s leathery blue scalp. “Such a treasure! No Troll has ever—but Kaz will—for Kaz to be chosen, out of all Trollkind—lowly Kaz—now cook because of Roark!”
The few other patrons in the hushed silence of the bookshop leaned around shelves, searching for the source of the disturbance.
“Hold it together, man!” Roark hissed with the small amount of air left in his lungs. With some difficulty, he extricated himself from Kaz’s crushing grasp. “You’re drawing attention.”
Kaz dragged the back of one wooden O-Rogiri bracer across his nose with a long, wet sniff.
“Kaz is sorry. Today has been filled with more than Kaz could ever have dreamed.”
The overwrought Thursr managed to pay the bookseller without bursting into tears again, then he and Roark stepped out into the bright sunlight.
“We need to get back as quickly as possible,” Roark said as they pushed through the never-ending bustle of the bazaar toward the fountain court and citadel portal. “Once I’ve unlocked the Calligraphy—”
He stopped abruptly as three familiar forms turned the corner ahead of them.
“That little turd burglar’s gonna be in a world of hurt,” the archer said, his voice scraping down the back of Roark’s neck like nails on a slate. “Grief me. Like hell he will. You d-bags better have your A-game on this time.”
The heroes from the cell, a red-faced PwnrBwner_007 in the lead, were coming right at them.
“Oh sure, we’re the ones the blame.” RogStarKel rolled her yellow eyes.
Apparently, the trip to the bazaar had taken longer than Roark expected. The trio had already respawned and were headed toward the marketplace, most likely to buy some weapons and armor for their next run at the citadel.
Roark grabbed Kaz’s arm and wheeled him into the shadowed alleyway to their left.
From the street, Roark heard PwnrBwner_007 ask, “Hey, was that... Did you guys see that?”
“Anything interesting you’re looking for?” a honeyed voice asked Kaz. It was the elf they’d seen selling to the hollow-eyed human and olm earlier. “I’ve got a little something for every occasion.”
They needed to move and fast. Roark had dealt with illicit peddlers like this lanky elf many times in the back alleys and dark places of Korvo and a hundred other cities across Traisbin. He gave the peddler the only no the elf would understand, shouldering past. His tiny Changeling body barely ruffled the elf’s seven-foot-tall form, but the impact of Kaz’s solid bulk sent the merchant sprawling into the grime-caked wall.
“You know where to find me,” the peddler called at their retreating backs. The two kept right on moving.
The alleyway came to a T, and Roark directed Kaz down the left path.
“I’m losing my mind, man,” PwnrBwner_007’s voice drifted down the alleyway behind them. “That damned Troll is getting to me—I could’ve swore I just saw it!”
“You probably just overdid it on the Ritalin. Come on already, we need to gear up if we’re headed back over there.”
Roark put on an extra burst of speed. The alleyway dumped out onto a side street. Roark stopped Kaz at the mouth, looking up and down the street for PwnrBwner_007’s raiding party.
“It’s clear,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to the citadel before they do.”
Struggling to keep the guise of mindless familiar in place, Roark led the way through the twisting and turning streets to the fountain courts. The one bit of good news was that the heroes still had to shop the marketplace and make their way back to the citadel on foot, while Roark and Kaz could simply use their portal scroll. That would buy them a little time. Hopefully it would be enough.
Roark barreled into the shimmering violet rift, followed close behind by the clacking and tocking wooden armor on the Thursr. The chill of Hearthworld portals poured over his leathery Changeling skin, and within seconds, he was blinking away the purple-green afterimages of the sunlit fountain court as his eyes adjusted back to the dim torchlight of the decrepit library. Kaz stumbled to a stop beside him, reeling uncertainly, arms outthrust for balance.
“All right, first thing—” Roark cut off sharply as the sound of ringing steel and the clatter of armored boots on stone assaulted his ears. It couldn’t be PwnrBwner_007’s party, but with the number of raids the citadel faced each day, it was almost certainly another band of heroes attacking.
A dying scream echoed off the stones. One of his fellow Changelings had just met an untimely and violent end. Roark pulled out his rapier and dashed from the library, Kaz’s heavy tread clomping along behind him.
In a room near the end of the corridor just past the torture chamber, they found a pair of heroes in mismatched plate mail, one hacking at a shadow on the floor, her shining katana throwing up sparks. The other chopped into a toppled wooden desk with a pair of war axes. The bloody, hacked-apart corpses of Stone Salamanders littered the floor. The room must have been their nest.
The hero with the war axes—an olm by the looks of his bulbous head and wide pale eyes—let out an undignified shriek as a Level 3 Stone Salamander appeared just to his right. The snarling creature was trapped between the remains of the desk and the corner, covered in gore, and his filigreed vial flashed a warning over his head. Gashes all over his body wept bloody tears, but the creature lunged and snapped at his attackers like a rabid mountain wolf.
“Over here, Brit!” The olm spun on the spot, dealing out slashing damage. He and the woman were slightly higher levels th
an PwnrBwner_007 and his party, and he wielded his dual axes with wicked precision, but he and his companion had both taken heavy hits themselves.
Before Kaz could lurch into the battle, Roark stopped him. That tough little stone bastard and his family had done the majority of the job for them, but they couldn’t afford to take severe damage right before PwnrBwner_007’s trio returned.
Instead of rushing in, Roark pulled out two of his remaining three scrolls. He broke Fireball open with the curved claw on his thumb, casting it at the heroes with a blinding flash of red-orange light, like a concentrated sunrise in the small room. The olm and woman screamed, instinctively shielding their faces from the blaze. The red bars over the heroes’ heads dropped by several points. Suddenly, they were hovering near half Health.
Without giving them a chance to recover, Roark snapped the seal on the next scroll and cast the Spectral Hands spell at their feet. The dusty parchment ignited in a flash of pale blue light, and Roark’s Health dipped a few points in response. Ghostly hands ending in long, spindly fingers erupted from the floor, grabbing at the heroes’ feet and ankles, trapping them in place.
“Now!” Roark shouted, bolting in with his Slender Rapier. He needn’t have bothered giving a signal at all: Kaz was already bellowing a war cry and charging in with his Khopesh raised high.
The heroes tried to defend themselves, cursing and shouting as they slashed awkwardly, but couldn’t move to a better position with their feet held fast. In a handful of brutal attacks, Kaz and Roark finished them off—the Stone Salamander fighting viciously alongside them in spite of its waning Health and myriad of bloody wounds.
It wasn’t until the heroes lay dead on the floor and the Spectral Hands had melted back into nothingness that Roark realized he’d just wasted two-thirds of his remaining one-off scroll spells on a creature that would respawn in two hours. But it didn’t feel like a waste. The vicious little salamander had been surrounded by the corpses of his family—cornered, outnumbered, and dying but still fighting. If that sort of grit didn’t deserve a rescue, then nothing did. In truth, Roark saw a bit of himself—his fierce pride and willingness to fight—inside the vicious little beast.
At the edge of the room, the Stone Salamander prowled, eyeing Roark and Kaz warily. It bared needlelike teeth and growled menacingly. Clearly, the creature expected another attack and was ready to make its last stand.
Slowly, Roark knelt and held out a hand.
The creature must have caught the scent of the meat from the market lingering on his fingers. It slithered over, skittish but curious, and sniffed them. A wide, sticky tongue darted out, tasting the last traces of grease and yanking Roark slightly off balance as it pulled back in.
Roark chuckled and righted himself. Without making any sudden moves, he reached out again. A growl rumbled in the salamander’s throat. Carefully, Roark rested a soothing palm on the creature’s cool jowl. The growling quieted, and the creature’s fat, paddlelike tail twitched.
[Current World Stone Authority: Greater Vassal 1/3]
[Use Soul-Forge? Yes/No]
“What do you think, you bloodthirsty little maka-ronin?” Roark whispered to the creature, scratching soothing circles on its skin. “Want to come with me? I promise I’ll bring you significantly more battles than you’ll find hiding in here.”
The salamander chirped and leaned into Roark’s scratching.
“It’s settled, then.” He triggered the Soul-Forge.
Awareness entered the creature’s wide, rolling eyes, and a new notice appeared.
[A Stone Salamander is a lesser beast. To proceed, you must name your Greater Vassal.]
“Easy,” Roark said. “Maka-Ronin, the king of the wolves, ruler of the mountains.”
[Macaroni has become your Greater Vassal!]
“What?” Roark blinked, certain he was reading the letters wrong. “No! Maka-Ronin! Mak. A. Ro. Nin,” he enunciated. “The two don’t even sound similar!”
Behind him, Kaz giggled.
Roark rounded on the Thursr with a glower. “I said Maka-Ronin—you heard me! How do I change his name?”
“Roark cannot change a name once it has been accepted by the creature,” Kaz said, a toothy grin stretched across his face.
At Roark’s feet, the Stone Salamander’s flat tongue darted out and stuck to his knee, demanding more head scratching. The nameplate [Macaroni] hung prominently over the creature’s head.
“Macaroni,” Roark muttered darkly, scratching between the creature’s shoulders, just behind its neckless head. “I better have leveled up from this.”
SIXTEEN:
The Art of Lettering
As it turned out, Roark hadn’t leveled up, but he was close. Very close. Roark hurried to loot the corpses of the Stone Salamander-killing heroes, Macaroni slithering along behind him like a faithful hound. The creature, at least, didn’t seem to mind its ridiculous name. Kaz watched uneasily as Roark turned out the heroes’ Inventories. Sadly, there wasn’t any time to inspect the weapons, armor, and oddments they’d retrieved; PwnrBwner_007’s party could be on their way back to the citadel at that very moment.
“Let’s go.” Roark dropped the pilfered items into his Inventory and headed out of the massacred salamander nest into the stone corridor. “We’ve got to prepare for our heroes’ return.”
Macaroni’s coloration shifted until he was invisible against the stone floor, but Roark could feel the salamander at his side, fat legs waddling along. Kaz hurried to follow, stumbling over Macaroni’s paddlelike tail as he pulled up alongside Roark.
“Will Roark and Kaz reset the traps?” the Thursr asked.
“Unfortunately, these raiders aren’t stupid. Short-sighted, perhaps, but not stupid. They’ll be expecting traps now,” Roark said, eyeing the O-Rogiri armor complete with menpō faceplate that Kaz had not yet removed. “We may yet be able to take them by surprise, however.”
As they turned a corner, Macaroni’s sticky tongue slapped against the back of his calf. Roark shook his head. Two minutes a Greater Vassal and already spoiled rotten. He reached down to scratch the bloodthirsty little monster’s camouflaged head, eliciting a satisfied chirp seemingly from the flagstones.
“Perhaps we can come up with one that utilizes all of our new resources,” Roark said, mental cogs turning furiously. He would need more spells for the plan he was forming.
When they made it back to the cell, Roark was relieved to see that all five corpses were still there among the debris and sprung traps. Their window of time was closing, but it hadn’t shut yet.
“What should Kaz do?” the Thursr asked.
“Whatever you like for the moment,” Roark said. “I need to study if we’re to get the better of these heroes.”
Kaz shrugged and picked up the dented and spiked coffin lid from the dismantled Blackthorn Bed. This he began balancing on one rough blue palm. Macaroni crawled up the farthest wall and watched the precarious spectacle with warily rolling eyes.
Taking his cue from the Stone Salamander, Roark retreated to a corner where he wouldn’t be crushed by falling coffin lids and pulled the Calligraphy Trade Skill book from his Inventory. The book was large and bulky, the exterior covered in supple brown leather, golden lettering carefully engraved upon the spine. Calligraphy and the Art of Lettering, it read. Reverently, he cracked the book open, balancing it in his undersized palms.
The first few pages spelled out in painstaking detail the correct way to hold a pen and position one’s arms and sleeves so the ink wouldn’t be smeared. Roark raked a claw-tipped hand across a scalp that used to be covered in hair and skimmed the section on the proper dipping of nibs and blotting of fresh pages. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to push away the frustration. These were all minor mechanics of writing that he’d studied extensively at the academy. His instructors hadn’t even let him touch a real pen or inkpot until he could perfectly demonstrate his understanding of them with a wooden practice stylus and empty pot. He didn’t
need a refresher on the basics.
Just as he was beginning to think he would run out of time and have to fight the heroes unprepared, he came to a page of handsome letters calligraphed in lilting black scrawl. A notification appeared.
[Congratulations! You have learned the Trade Skill Calligraphy. You only have (4) Trade Skill Slots, are you sure you would like to add Calligraphy? Yes/No?]
That sure beat the bloody hells out of studying. If he could’ve gotten his hands on an arcane tome like this when he was five, he could’ve saved himself a whole year at the academy. Without a second thought, Roark selected Yes.
Gold light bloomed from his skin, and an ascending chime rang through the cell.
[LEVEL UP!]
Roark quickly dismissed this and the accompanying notification that he had ten undistributed Stat points. Those would have to be dealt with later. Right now, he had spells to write for the upcoming confrontation with PwnrBwner_007’s raiding party.
Roark dug the soulbound Initiate’s Spell Book out of his Inventory along with the pen and inkpot he and Kaz had found in the crumbling library. His left palm began to tingle as the spell book levitated just inches above it. He dipped the pen in the inkwell, then braced himself for the inevitable notice that he could not perform this action for some newfound reason and pressed the nib to paper.
[You are inscribing a spell in Initiate’s Spell Book!
Inscribed Spells may be used (1) time per inscription. Once cast, the Inscribed Spell will disappear from the Initiate’s Spell Book and must be re-inscribed before being cast again.
Warning: There is a two-hour cooldown period between casting and re-inscription of spells!]
Roark grinned, his hands shaking with excitement and relief. He was allowed to write once again; all was well in the world. He’d handled this strange land the best he could on his wits alone, but now he could reach into his bag of familiar spells and cantrips—those old weapons that he’d staked his life on more than once in his home world. With magick, he could make all things right. Eventually.
Rogue Dungeon Page 11
