by Edwin McRae
He'd died before seeing what became of Vari and Dayna, but the best he could hope for was that they had somehow escaped into the woods and were waiting for him right now. Mark had to admit that it was more likely they were dead or in the captivity of the reivers.
He got to his feet, dusted off the leaf mould, and checked himself over. His chainmail was gone, replaced by the leather armor he’d been wearing at the very beginning. His reiver helmet was gone too, but at least his longsword was there. Or rather, a new version of his longsword was there. It and the leather armor were clearly his default kit, his “noob gear”. When all else was lost, at least he’d never be unarmed and butt naked.
With death such a fresh experience, Mark decided against settling down to sleep, even though it was well beyond midnight. Instead, he used the moonlight to pick his way back to the trail, confident that he'd at least be alone on the road as he made his way back to where he had fallen. He still found himself checking left and right, scanning the darkened trees to ensure his moonlit walk was a solitary one. And he was alone, for quite some time, until he wasn’t.
First it was just one wolf, trotting through the undergrowth, as calm and cute as a dog jogging down a street. She stopped, sat down on her haunches, licked her chops and regarded him with bright, amber eyes. Mark rested his hand on the pommel of his sword and stood very still. The wolf was joined by another, a male this time, and then two more, smaller and fluffier versions of their parents. And then the entire forest around Mark seemed to rustle and crackle as the rest of the pack arrived. There were twelve in all, of various ages and sizes, and they all regarded him calmly.
Trying not to imagine the feeling of fangs tearing through his flesh, Mark straightened up, making himself seem as big as possible. With the help of Arcane Edge, Mark felt confident he could carve the wolves up for the XP. But this was their home. He was the dangerous intruder here. Not them. He slowly and carefully drew his sword, angling the flat of the blade so that it caught the moonlight. The gleaming metal had the desired effect. Considering him to be either too risky or too strange to be an easy meal, the wolves trotted away into the forest, leaving Mark to heave a sigh of relief.
He sheathed his sword and carried on until he finally reached the patch of dirt that had witnessed the demise of his former life. He found no dead version of himself lying there. In fact, there was nothing to show of his passing other than a slightly darker patch of dirt that still wore the stain of his blood. The reivers must’ve looted him before moving on.
Curiosity won out over morbidity as Mark wondered if his dead body simply faded away after a little while, as was the convention, and then reformed at his respawn point. It would explain some of the time gap between death and awakening, but not all of it. If only he had access to an in-game camera, he could use it to record his own resurrection. But as of yet, he'd not found any extra-game functions. Instead, he consoled himself with the thought that he wouldn't be meeting himself as a meat puppet under the control of some reiver figurist. And that, of course, led him to thinking about Vari.
He searched the area as best he could in the glow of the moon, even risking the occasional call out into the gloom in the hopes of hearing Vari’s or Dayna's voice in response. Nothing answered beyond the scampering of startled forest creatures. No Vari. No Dayna. Not even any horses. Clearly, the reivers had gathered up their mounts as well. Still, Mark was glad of his utter failure. He hadn't found any bodies, so no news was good news.
That didn't mean Vari and Dayna were necessarily alive. The reivers may have killed them and simply taken the bodies along for the ride, but Mark considered that unlikely since those same reivers had chosen to leave his body behind.
Just as well too. Had his corpse dematerialized whilst draped across the back of a horse, the reivers would surely have backtracked to investigate the site of Mark’s death. And they probably would’ve tortured Dayna into telling them about his tendency to respawn. Not that he was confident Dayna would offer any fight whatsoever in his name. She’d likely cough up her entire “Mark Wiki” before the first fingernail was pulled out.
He checked his notifications, just in case, to see if his quest status revealed an update about Dayna's condition or demise. Once again, he found nothing.
Deciding that he needed to treat Vari and Dayna as if they were alive until he had evidence to say otherwise, Mark set off down the trail, able to follow the deep wagon tracks even in the dim light. He walked until the first rays of morning light hit the tree tops, and glowed upon the worn battlements of the crumbling ruin before him.
His nighttime travels had brought him to the edge of a large clearing. The ruin was a large and formidable fortress that he could only describe as a ‘citadel’. It had a citadel vibe rather than a castle vibe or tower vibe. Mark was no expert in medieval military architecture, but something deep in his mind, or rather, something deep within his character class told him that the blackstone edifice he was looking at was indeed “a Citadel”. And probably with a capital “C” as he’d just pictured. The Citadel, in fact.
The Citadel
Ancestral home of the Warlocks of Garland. The Citadel has been a seat of power and center for learning for numerous warlocks over the last few centuries. The Citadel was built by Zevryn the Everborn, founder of the Order of the Warlock.
That, thought Mark, explained all of the flavor text on his abilities. He quietly hoped he would get to hear from some other warlock forebears too.
You have received “The Warlock’s Back Passage” quest.
Locate the concealed entrance and gain access to The Citadel via the catacombs.
Within the bowels of this formidable fortress lie the secrets of the warlocks that have gone before you. Should you, a warlock, be unable to enter The Citadel in the conventional manner, try finding the entrance to the catacombs. This tunnel was used as an escape route for warlocks in times of prolonged siege and other situations of general desperation.
As a warlock, you have been blessed with the ancestral knowledge of The Citadel's construction and should be able to instinctively locate the concealed entrance. Should you fail in this endeavour, you are clearly not worthy of the title ‘Warlock’.
The Warlock’s Back Passage? Mark was too bamboozled to even chuckle at the juvenile humor. He’d not been aware of the warlock class in any version or expansion of Reign of Blood. Yet this little snippet of lore claimed that warlocks had been around for several centuries. If that was the case, why had he never encountered a warlock before? Had something happened to them all? Was he the only warlock left? Had there been other warlocks, surely The Citadel would be in better shape, happily occupied, hearth fires burning and other such creature comforts in situ.
Taking a moment to scan the fortress more closely, Mark could make out signs of habitation, but they weren't of the warlock kind. There were reivers on the walls, judging by their spiked helms. The wagon trail ended at front gates that looked far newer than the dilapidated monument they were attached to. And yes, there were fires burning, but they were braziers and torches, there to illuminate intruders to the reivers’ makeshift holdfast.
Congratulations!
You have completed the "Slaver’s Way" quest.
You have discovered the location of the reiver slavers and the captured villagers.
Your XP Reward = 25 XP
You have received the “Slaver’s Bane” quest.
Free the captives currently held by the reiver slavers.
At least ten captives must survive for this quest to be considered complete.
Mark hated to think just how many reivers he might be facing within those crumbling walls. Still, he'd given himself no choice but to find the entrance to the catacombs, get inside the citadel, and do his best to free Vari, Dayna and the captives. This was a quest chain, and although it had gotten a little complicated along the way, Mark was not a gamer to give up on any quest in the offing. Except when it involved slaughtering wolves or any other innocent
wildlife. Quite the contrary, he prided himself on completing every proper quest that he came across, even the escort ones. He quelled an involuntary shudder at that last thought and glanced at the sun.
It was rising rapidly over the trees so Mark had little time to waste. He skirted the edge of the clearing, following a feeling that was at first just an inkling, then grew into a sense of belonging, and finally became a biting urge to sit down and stay right where he was. The entrance stone took a little bit of revealing. Mark scraped it clean of moss, leaf mould and dirt until finally he could make out the edges and the symbol carved in its center.
Trusting his instincts, he placed his palm flat on the sigil and willed the trapdoor to open. It was a bit of a "here goes nothing" move, but the stone responded with a grating and scraping that sent a flock of finches thundering up from the undergrowth around him. Alarmed, Mark knew that the sentries on the walls would’ve seen the sudden disturbance of birdlife, and were bound to come and investigate.
Preferring the unknown to a predictable and painful death, he clambered down the stone steps and into the gloom of the catacombs.
8
The tunnel was pitch black. Mark had no idea how he was going to stumble his way through it without getting hopelessly lost or falling headfirst into some spiked pit. Not that he had a lot of choice. With reivers surely incoming above, there was no going back. So he did what he usually did when going to the toilet in the middle of the night.
As a rule, Mark would refrain from turning on the light out of fairness to his sleeping recently-ex-wife. Yes, he got the odd bruised shin and stubbed toe thanks to her propensity to rearrange the furniture on a whim, but that’d been a small price to pay to avoid her grumpiness in the morning after a broken sleep.
He shuffled left, arm outstretched, fingers reaching, and willed himself not to think of the potential slimy or spiky encounter he might be about to have. He breathed a sigh of relief as his fingers touched cool, smooth stone, then gasped with shock as a pale, silvery light spread out from beneath his fingertips. The light poured into the intricate, runic carvings that adorned the rock, and traced its way along the swirling patterns, filling them like silver filigree on a king’s golden goblet. Soon the entire left hand wall was a glowing tapestry of arcane symbolism, stopping only as the tunnel took a sharp turn to the left up ahead.
Mark pressed the fingertips of his right hand to the opposite wall, his blood flowing with a fresh dose of adrenaline, and stepped back to observe the reaction. Once again, silver light poured from the point of contact into the grooves and notches of the wall’s carvings, spreading and filling until also disappearing around the corner. The patterns reminded him of the celtic designs he studied at school in Art History. They resembled briar or twisting rose bushes, rendered with a perfect balance of line and negative space.
Mark couldn’t help but chuckle at himself. He was in the tunnel of a dungeon, about to sneak into the bowels of an ancient fortress, the ancestral home of his character class, and here he was gawking at a couple of glowing walls like a boy seeing his first christmas tree. Then again, it genuinely felt like these lights, these patterns, had been laid on just for him. He would normally have gagged at the concept. He religiously avoided any story that used that tired old “chosen one” trope. Reign of Blood had always been great at treating a player like ‘just another adventurer’, one of the main reasons Mark had chosen it over so many other VRRPGs on offer.
He shook his head. No, most likely, the magic in these walls had simply sensed his character class and responded accordingly. This was warlock territory, after all.
Aside from the intricate carvings, the tunnel was even and smooth, so much so that it looked to have been burrowed out by some species of giant worm or maggot. He dreaded meeting the tunnel’s creator, a distinct possibility if his theory was correct, so Mark hastily pressed on. To calm his anxiety, he simply took his next step, and then the next, until he was walking swiftly down the tunnel, ready to embrace whatever came his way. Well, not embrace, exactly. Try as he might, Mark couldn’t completely rid himself of the mental image of a gigantic, oozing, maggot maw.
The tunnel wound through the earth, perhaps avoiding harder sections of rock or perhaps making itself harder to detect by diggers from above. It occasionally branched off into small caves, equally smooth and perfectly formed. These had been storerooms once, judging by the earthenware jars and rusted corner bindings of chests now rotted into dust. Mark kicked a couple of the jars until they shattered, because that’s what you did in ARPGs, and stooped to examine their precious contents: dust, dust and more dust. He didn’t bother with a third. This clearly wasn’t one of those games that filled random pots and chests with showers of gold and rare weapons.
Eventually the tunnel ended, but not as Mark hoped, in a ladder or stairway leading up into some secret corner of the Citadel from which he could launch his rescue. It ended in a pile of rubble. Judging by the dust and dirt crammed between the various stones and boulders, this rockfall had happened a long time ago.
Looking up, he was met with rugged stone, a sure sign that the fall didn’t go all the way to the surface. Mark searched for a way through but found only a few cracks big enough to slide his flattened hand into. He could see the silver light of the wall beyond, but there was no way he was going to squeeze through to reach it. Not in his current condition.
The Ethereal Flesh spell might come in handy, he thought. Certainly more useful than it had been during his attack on the reiver captain. Perhaps he should’ve chosen and tried out Doppelganger instead. Although, if he’d done that, he’d be completely up shit creek without a paddle now.
Mark pulled up his abilities list to see if there was a chance he might gain some sort of self-propulsion ability in Ethereal Flesh at a higher level.
Ethereal Flesh
The warlock becomes like the mist, non-corporeal and untouchable. In this state, the warlock retains his senses of sight and hearing but in every other way is unaffected by the physical world. Equally, he cannot directly affect the physical world whilst in ethereal form.
Tier 1: The caster becomes an inert mist for up to 20 minutes.
“Meat and mist are one and the same.”
- Zevryn the Everborn
For the first time, Mark noticed the tiny pentagram hovering just above the description and ordered it to reveal its secrets.
Ethereal Flesh:
Tier 1: Inert mist for up to 20 minutes.
Tier 2: Can move as a cloud at a Level 1 human walking speed. Duration as Tier 1.
Tier 3: Can move as a cloud at a Level 1 human running speed. Duration as Tier 1.
Tier 4: Mist becomes moderately caustic to organic material and corrosive to non-organic material. Duration as Tier 1. Speed as Tier 3.
Tier 5: Mist becomes extremely caustic to organic material and corrosive to non-organic material. Duration as Tier 1. Speed as Tier 4.
Wow. So at Tier 5 he could chase people and melt them with his own vapor particles? That was both utterly gross and seriously cool. The more he learned about this warlock class, the more he liked the sound of it.
But how was he going to propel himself through the cracks in the rockfall? A light breeze, that was the answer. Just enough air movement to nudge him forward so that he could seep between those rocks. He wet his index finger in his mouth and then pointed it skyward like he’d seen characters do in Wild West movies. The side of his finger, the part facing away from the rubble, caught a light chill. Good, there was a draft coming his way, probably from some fissure that went all the way to the surface. It wasn’t strong, but hopefully it’d be enough. He wasn’t sure what would happen if his mist cloud got stuck amongst the rocks. What if he ended up materializing within the rubble? He had visions of minced meat, bone fragments and blood thickened with stone dust.
Mark considered drawing a new spawn point in the dirt on the tunnel floor and then discounted the notion. If there were reivers outside the tunnel entrance,
blocking his escape, and he couldn’t find a way forward, he could potentially be trapped here, no matter how many times he died. Sure, he might eventually fight his way through the reivers but it was probably easier to just leave his spawn point out in the woods, obscured and relatively safe.
He closed his eyes, held his breath, and willed his body to disintegrate. Being only the second time he’d done it, Mark found the sensation as equally strange as the first time. It was like those times when he was drifting off to sleep, when his body felt light enough to rise up off the bed, an organic blimp taking flight.
His eyeballs became a mere coagulation of vapor droplets, and although he could still see, his vision was clouded and distorted, as if he was looking through a rain-streaked window. He watched the rubble grow closer, the breeze pushing him forward, then his vision narrowed sharply as he poured into the cracks in the rockfall. He felt the increase in pressure, the rocks pressing in, followed by the sudden release as he burst out the other side. He figured toothpaste experienced something similar. Of course, that reminded him that he hadn’t brushed his teeth since the morning before his arrival into Garland. Yuck. He was going to have to do something about that.
This final thought, mundane as it was, got Mark through his final, anxious moment as his lagging wisps took their merry time to waft through the cracks. There was still a chance he might return to normal with an arm or leg firmly wedged between the stones. Would he have to saw a limb off with his sword to escape? Thankfully, he didn’t have to find out. The final foggy tendril rejoined his cloud and Mark willed himself back into his flesh-bound form.
This side of the tunnel was almost identical to the other side, curving to the left a short way ahead. And it was around that corner that Mark encountered his first denizens of dungeon-kind. Four of them, their hooked and hairy feet locked onto a meal at which their mandibles were furiously working on. Dark abdomens rippled beneath their chitinous backs as muscles contracted to push consumed flesh into their stomachs. The meal itself dangled out of the wall, most of its carcass still contained within the small tunnel it had burrowed. The creature was sickly-white, limbless, and almost featureless apart from the toothy sphincter of a mouth that now gaped wide open in death, drooling a viscous yellow sludge. Mark suspected it was an infant version of the monstrosities that had formed these tunnels.
