I hope I’m not making a mistake.
Hawke watched Taggan place his cousin’s wrapped remains inside his Backpack of Holding, something that hadn’t occurred to Hawke. It seemed a disrespectful thing to do to someone’s body, but on the other hand they didn’t have time to bury the fallen Warrior. He probably should have done that for the Volunteers they’d had to bury in shallow graves along the way. He resolved to return and recover their bodies for a proper burial in Orom.
On the other side of the Necromancer’s breeding tube room was a corridor lined by a dozen metal doors with small slits at eye level. A quick glimpse through them found that most were empty, but three had prisoners inside. They were a large Arachnoid, a Wolf-Man, and a tall green-skinned humanoid that his True Sight identified as a Fae Scout, seventh level, with no name on his status box. The first two simply glared back at him, but the Scout grinned and spoke in the Common Fey language:
“A Fae-Blooded! Truly and it is a happy day! Will you free me, Brother?”
“Beware,” Tava told Hawke. “Father says that it is dangerous to freely do a favor for any pure Fae. They will think less of you and repay your generosity with betrayal.”
Hawke nodded to her before turning back to the prisoner. “We have business to attend to. When we are done, we will talk.”
He was careful not to promise or offer anything. Oaths had power in the Realms, but even the most innocent comments could be held against you by the Fae. He had picked up those bits of lore during his Sidhe Awakening. The Fae Scout’s smile didn’t waver. He sat back down in his cell and said nothing. Just as well. They kept moving.
That’s going to be trouble, Hawke thought as he moved to the end of the hallway.
No killing without cause!
The door leading out was trapped, big surprise. It was a magical trip wire connected to a high-energy spell. Hawke decided not to be fancy, moved everyone a safe distance, and sent a Mana dummy to trigger the trap. A Death Cyclone was activated and proceeded to murder the Tulpa with an obscene amount of damage. That was a nasty spell, so nasty that Hawke kinda wanted to learn it.
Are you telling me I shouldn’t try to learn Death magic? Hawke asked the sword as he cautiously approached the door.
“What can I say?” he said as he tested the door. It swung open without incident. “I like to live dangerously.” He turned back to his team. “We’re good. I’m going to take a look ahead. Wait for me here.”
Hawke turned on Shroud of Twilight and moved quietly into a smaller lab. That one was more than familiar: the reclining slab in the middle and the bizarre metal contraptions surrounding it were identical to the one he’d woken up on after the Necromancer hijacked his Reincarnation. Under the reclined slab was a set of magical Inscriptions that crackled with Mana discharges. There were a handful of metal tables on one side of the room. Three were occupied by naked figures: a male Elf and two women, a Gnome and an Orc.
Don Juan (Elf, Eternal)
Level 1 Ranger
Health 21, Mana 24 Endurance 22
Players! This was the place where they were sacrificed. Where was the bastard? Hawke looked around but saw neither the Necromancer nor another way out. Except… There was a metallic circle off on one corner, about the size of a manhole cover, only it was made of bronze and had dozens of magical sigils and runes carved into its surface. Hawke turned on his Mana Sight and saw the remnants of a spell slowly rotating above it like an engine winding down. As the spell spun around, he recognized the code from a teleport spell. That damned circle was a teleport pad! But the worst part was, the spell and even the metallic disc on the ground were beginning to disappear, being taken to wherever it had sent the Necromancer.
He just used that spell a few minutes ago at the most. The Mana hasn’t dissipated yet. He can’t be that far away! Hawke thought and stepped on the circle.
“I have a plan,” Hawke said, feeding mana into the vanishing spell. The code began to firm up again. He added more power. Screw that guy! He wasn’t going to let him get away.
Hawke, what do you think you’re doing? Tava screamed at him through Saturnyx’s link. The sword was tattling on him.
The spell was all there, but he only had seconds to act. He could tell that nothing was missing, although he still couldn’t identify what it did. But there was no time to waste. He poured power into the reformed spell until, at seventy-five Mana, it went off.
Everything went dark. The saddest part was that he was getting used to that sort of thing.
Saturnyx?
No answer. Hawke tried to access his Party Interface. Nothing there, either. He was either a disembodied spirit, or had ended up trapped in a sensory deprivation chamber. That usually happened when a goddess wanted to have a private chat with him, but he doubted any gods were involved in this case.
Hello?
[What in the mother-loving blazes are you doing here?]
The new mental voice had a similar intensity to Saturnyx’s, but turned up to eleven. It felt like it was coming from much closer than the sword had ever been, even in their more intimate moments. And it echoed all around him, inasmuch as a bodiless entity could have an ‘around.’ He recognized the voice, of course.
It was the Greg the Necromancer.
Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all.
Forty-Six
Wassup, Greg? Hawke called out.
[You are really beginning to piss me off, Paladin. No, wait. That’s a fake tag. A Twilight Templar? Never met one of those before.]
It’s like a Paladin, but better. Why don’t you show yourself so we can talk like men?
The darkness began to dissipate. Hawke still couldn’t feel his body, but his point of view was now hovering four or five feet above a glowing disk in a room very much like the one he had just left, except there were no tables or metal slabs, and the Necromancer was sitting on a comfortable looking armchair. Behind him was an Abomination, the ugliest model he had seen yet, with its eyes looking in slightly different directions, a face only a mother could love, and a hunchback poorly disguised by a black cloak.
Eegor/Igor (Undead)
Level 12 Servitor (Elite)
Health 720 Mana 120 Endurance 600
“That’s a little better,” the Necromancer said. “Eegor, go get me something to drink.”
“My name,” the creature slobbered as it slouched away. “Is Igorrrr.”
Greg chuckled. “Old joke. You Gen-Z losers wouldn’t get it.”
“How old is that movie?” Hawke asked him. He still had no control over his body – he couldn’t even see where his body was – so he figured keeping the crazy bastard talking was the best thing to do. As soon as he spoke, he realized the sounds were coming not from his nonexistent mouth, but from the floating light below him; it was vibrating and producing a slightly pitchy version of his normal speaking voice.
“Old enough,” the Necromancer replied.
“I remember seeing bits of it. Black and white, right? Nineteen forties?”
“Seventies, actually, but don’t worry about it. What do you kids say nowadays? Google it, next time you have a chance.” Gregory laughed at his own joke. “I normally don’t entertain in my sanctum sanctorum, and I’ve had my fill of talking to the latest batch of idiots the Arbiters have
sent to the Realms. You people are pathetic and disgusting.”
The Necromancer scowled at him as he went on: “The only reason you are still alive is that I want to know how you managed to follow me in. That spell is not only highly secret, it requires two separate devices to work it, both soul bound to me. You are going to tell me, and then I’m going to make you bind your Reincarnation point to this room.”
That seemed to be the traditional way to deal with Eternals you didn’t want around. Torture until you agreed to respawn somewhere nearby, allowing your captors to kill you until your Identity was erased. Nasty business, and if Hawke managed to get the drop on Greg, it was exactly what he would have to do to the Necromancer.
“You aren’t giving me much of an incentive to talk, Greggy,” he told the Lord of the Dead while he concentrated. He couldn’t move without a body, and apparently couldn’t cast spells, either, but he still could turn on his Mana Sight.
“Your body is trapped between teleports,” the Necromancer said. “I let your mind come through, but it is still attached to said body. So I’m going to put just a little bit of stress on your flesh and blood components. Tell me how much you enjoy having every nerve ending you’ve got being pulled apart.”
Hawke only half-heard the threat; he was too busy examining the bizarre Mana pattern behind the entire place. Everything he could see wasn’t real, from the Necromancer himself, to the hunchback bringing back a metal chalice filled with some liquid, to the furniture and walls. They were thoughts given shape through magical energy, a more sophisticated version of the constructs he used to trigger traps. But where was it coming from?
The Necromancer was casting some spell that Hawke was sure would hurt him like blazes, so he turned on Timeless Mind, trying to find the origin of the projections. Everything went into slow-motion: the Necromancer’s gestures came to an almost complete standstill, and the next syllable of his spell became a constant droning sound. Hawke kept analyzing the construct until he saw the source, about one third of the way into his allotted time. Gregory was the source of all of it. The room and everything in it were inside the Necromancer’s mind. A dream? No, he had the feeling that Greg thought he was in a real place. He was being duped by the illusion just as much as Hawke had been.
Doesn’t matter what it is; I just need to find a way out. Things were moving slowly, but were still moving. Hawke followed the trail of energy towards its source and tried to link to it. He pictured the magical connection between him and his Soul-Bound sword, as well as when he used Gift of the Martyr, and tried to copy the energy ‘pipeline,’ except this time it was aimed right at the Necromancer’s mind. Things clicked into place like a key turning a lock. And then he became somebody else.
1987
He dropped the battered Poul Anderson novel and the near-mint copy of Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy right onto the counter. “How much?” he asked the big guy at the register.
“Three-sixty.”
Greg grumbled – he only had a twenty on him and it had to last him the entire week – but paid the man, stuffed the books in his backpack, and left Book World, the used bookstore where he spent a lot of his free time and too much of his money. He was running late, and this game was supposed to be something special. Better than that D&D Immortals campaign that he had run and everybody had hated. He had loved that setting; pretending to be gods was awesome. His players hadn’t agreed, though, and everybody had quit after two weeks. Idiots. The new group was better. Cooler. Saul Valentino was the Dungeon Master, and he was a weird guy but also a cool dude, a smooth operator. Always with two babes hanging out with him, two hot chicks who supposedly liked to game. Greg had never met any females who even pretended to be interested in gaming.
As he walked toward Valentino’ place, he felt his pulse quickening a little. A lot of it was the rapid pace of his walk. It was the poundage, always dragging him down. He was pushing two-fifty and his love for fast food and sodas made it impossible for him to go below that. Last diet he had tried, he’d managed to go from obese to merely fat, and after that, he’d just given up. Giving up was easy for him. He’d given up on college back during Junior year. He’d hated the teachers, his roommates, everything. Hating came easy to him. He loathed most people, and the feeling was mutual. Making friends wasn’t easy, and keeping them was as hard as keeping the weight off. The last guy he’d thought was a friend had walked out of his Immortals game and told him to fuck off.
Greg shrugged. Screw him. Them. He was about to play in a brand-new game with two hot girls and Saul Valentino, who wasn’t a friend but was cool as hell, and if the game went well, maybe they could all hang out. It might even be worth tolerating people for a while. Most people in his experience were idiots, and he often couldn’t stop himself from letting them know his opinion.
Valentino lived right next to the local comic show. That was where they’d met, while Greg had been checking out the latest Uncanny X-Men. Saul had noticed the bag of dice inside his open backpack – truth was, Greg had been planning to drop a couple of comics in there if he thought nobody was looking; he didn’t have a lot of money and comics were getting pricey – and asked him if he was a gamer. Which he was, of course. D&D mostly, but he’d also tried Gamma World Third Edition and couple others. And now whatever this was.
One of the girls answered the door. Total Goth chick, wearing dark leggings and a black t-shirt, her pale skin in stark contrast to the jet-black dyed hair and makeup, complete with enough mascara to make her look like somebody had given her two black eyes.
“Hey, it’s that Greg guy,” she said over her shoulder before giving him a bored look. “Come in. We haven’t started yet.”
“Gnarly,” he said, and she sort of chuckled.
Saul Valentino was sitting on a plush armchair; he waved casually at him. He was a tall skinny dude, like six three at least, with a big mane of dirty blonde hair that made him look a little like the guy from Twisted Sister. Saul wasn’t good looking or athletic, but something about him, some sort of animal magnetism, made people listen to him. He had a reputation as some sort of occult weirdo, maybe even a devil-worshipper, but Greg had laughed at enough Jack Chick tracts to dismiss that sort of bullshit. Besides, there were chicks in the game. The Goth walked into the kitchen while the cheerleader came out, a sexy redhead that seemed like the polar opposite of the Goth, but they both hung out with Saul like they were both his girlfriends. Maybe they were. Maybe he wouldn’t mind sharing.
“So, what are we playing?” Greg asked Saul after he sat on the couch across the table.
Saul smiled. “It’s something I made myself. I call it Eternal Journey.”
Forty-Seven
I’m inside Greg’s head, reliving his memories, and I really don’t give a crap about any of it, Hawke thought after he finally was able to break out of the weird movie-like experience of watching the world through someone else’s eyes.
His glimpse of the 1980s had so far showed him a couple of cool-looking cars, a bunch of people smoking in the street, and lots of big hair. Nothing he really cared much about, and he didn’t have time to relive Greg’s alien abduction, which he’d figured was coming up next as soon as the 80s hair band wannabe had mentioned Eternal Journey. Hawke wasn’t sure they had computer games back then, and if they did, he was pretty sure they weren’t online. They probably didn’t even have the Internet. But they’d been abducting people back then, too.
What now? The ‘movie’ as seen through Greg’s eyes was frozen on the redhaired girl’s boobs, which looked nice and snug under a Til Tuesday – whoever they were – t-shirt that was a couple sizes too small for her chesticular area. Hawke had somehow figured out how to push the ‘pause’ button. He thought about speeding it up instead, and things began moving up crazy fast and their voices turned all Alvin and the Chipmunks. He watched the hair band guy talk Greg through character creation and being an Eternal, and Greg, who sounded like an asshole at every speed, decide he wanted to play a Necromanc
er.
He sped it up a little more, saw them rolling dice and writing things on paper, all very old school, and then hair band guy and his girls started laughing when a cloud of black smoke surrounded Greg and he disappeared. Hawke wondered if the same thing had happened when he had been taken. None of that mattered, of course.
What am I doing here?
Maybe if he rummaged through Gregory’s memories, he would find something he needed. Or figure out how to escape. But the guy had been around for decades. He couldn’t go through that at any speed that would let him understand what was going on. What he needed was Google, or some kind of search engine. What to look for, though? Hawke really wished Saturnyx was able to talk to him; she had a lot more sense than he ever would, even if her go-to answer was to kill everybody before they became a problem.
The construct. I’m trapped inside it, and I think Greg is too.
His superhuman Intelligence didn’t make him particularly smarter, but it did give him near-perfect memory. He visualized the weird Mana structure behind the illusion where the Necromancer’s teleport had taken him, and then tried to find its pattern with while he ran through Domort’s memories at high speed. Years flowed by in a matter of minutes; he caught glimpses of Greg behaving like a typical murder hobo, but with extra Undead help, He watched Greg burn down a city and run away. That happened a lot. Greg was a murderous bastard, but he was also a coward. He ran away, over and over again. Hawke sped things up again until he found the energy pattern he was looking for. He rewound the ‘movie’ back a bit, found the right moment in time, and mentally pressed ‘play’:
Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Page 27
