“Oh, shit!”
Sixty-Seven
There were some bits of good news mixed in with all the bad ones. Hawke tried hard to find the silver lining in the giant dark cloud of crap he was in as he and Saturnyx (now partially clothed with pieces he had cut out of the Necromancer’s robes) followed the trail of Gregory Ballantine.
The first thing was, even though he had been transformed into a first-level noob, Hawke’s Attributes had followed him into this dream or whatever it was. Which meant that he was a first-level noob with a Constitution of 37, among several other superhuman stats, giving him Health, Mana and Endurance Pools that most fifth-level Adventurers would kill to possess. Also, his Perks were still active, including his High Sidhe abilities.
Secondly, although he no longer had access to most of his spells, the Necromancer Class automatically unlocked Darkness, Death and Undeath Magic, which meant all his Darkness spells (but not the Twilight versions) were at his disposal. And he knew three new spells, none of which he particularly liked:
Congratulations! You have unlocked a new Element: Death
Congratulations! You have unlocked a new School of Magic: Undeath
Minor Death Curse (Death)
Time to Cast: 2 seconds(instant). Cooldown: 6(4) seconds. Cost: 4(2) Mana. Duration: Permanent. Range: 25 yards. Effect: Inflict 1-4 Death damage per level to a target, every second for 6 seconds.
Raise Zombie (Undeath)
Time to Cast: 15(12) seconds. Cooldown: 10(8) minutes. Cost: 15(12) Mana. Duration: Permanent. Range: 10 yards. Effect: Raise a fresh corpse from a sapient species, turning it into an Undead servant. The zombie will have the same level as the caster. A maximum of one zombie can be controlled per level. Additional zombies can be created, but are not under the caster’s control and will wander around, seeking to kill and feed on the living. The spell can also be used to take control of an unbound zombie, at the same cost of raising one.
Steal Life (Death)
Time to Cast: 1 second(instant). Cooldown: 8(6) seconds. Cost: 6(4) Mana. Duration: Permanent. Range: Touch. Effect: Steal 2 Health per level from the target; this can be used to heal any wounds the caster has.
Besides his superhuman stats and his new spells, Hawke had the starting equipment of a first-level Necromancer. He had woken up wearing Shoddy Robes with no value as armor; he had cut it down into a sleeveless tunic and he and Saturnyx had used the rest to fashion her a short skirt and a halter top. It wasn’t exactly fashionable but at least they wouldn’t get arrested for indecent exposure. Besides that, he had gotten a pair of sandals and a Shoddy Quality dagger that inflicted a base of 1-4 points plus one third of his Strength Attribute, and had a sixty percent chance of breaking if he ever did more than twenty points of damage in an attack. Their only other weapon was a shovel (with a wooden rather than metal head) that they found in the graveyard, and which Saturnyx was currently wielding.
From the looks of it, Greg had raised a zombie from a fresh grave and headed out to a nearby town; Hawke could see a few lights in the distance. Their plan was to follow his trail and kill him; neither knew how this living memory worked, but killing the guy who had put them there felt like the right place to start.
As they walked, Hawke examined Saturnyx:
Saturnyx Demons-Bane (Human)
Level 1 Dedicant
Health 75 Mana 100 Endurance 75
“What is a Dedicant?”
“One who does battle in the name of her gods. Dedicants focus on combat and lack the spellcraft of Paladins or Priests. We can augment and heal ourselves in a number of ways, but cannot ‘buff’ others, as you like to put it.”
“And your Attributes are all at around fifty or so, aren’t they?”
“Now that I have been reduced to my human self, yes.”
“That’s cool. I mean, this is cool. Gives me a taste of what things will be like when we figure a way to free you from the sword.”
“In more ways than one,” she said, and didn’t sound happy at all. “The madness that drove me into accepting a disembodied existence is still within me. I can feel it begin to grow. In a few hours, a day at the most, it will consume me.”
“Okay,” Hawke said. He turned his Mana Sight on her, and he saw what she was talking about. There was a giant ball of concentrated rage around every one of her Chakras. She was one unkind comment away from ripping somebody’s face off. Since he was the only person in range, he told himself to be very careful with his choice of words. He also realized he was alone in his head for the first time in a while, and that he missed having Saturnyx there.
After a fifteen-minute walk, they could see a walled village in the distance, lit by several out of control fires that had started among its houses. They also heard screams of terror coming from the settlement. This was a remake of Greg’s first night on the Realms, when he had gone off to start a zombie apocalypse and murder almost dozens of innocent people.
“Come on,” Hawke said, and started running. Saturnyx followed suit, and soon left him behind. Those Attributes of fifty really made a difference, he reflected as he did his best to catch up. He saw her slow down when a couple of shuffling figures came into view: zombies.
Shambling Corpse (Undead)
Level 1 Zombie
Health 22 Mana 16 Endurance n/a
The creatures headed towards Saturnyx, arms outstretched and moaning like damned souls. She swung the wooden shovel and batted the closest Undead’s head clean off its shoulders. When the other came closer, she shoved it to the ground instead of destroying it.
“Do you wish to take control of it?”
Hawke hesitated. “I still can’t believe this isn’t a violation of the Tenets.”
“Not truly,” she said, keeping the zombie pinned down. “The soul of the victim has already fled this body, gone to meets its fate. What remains is dead flesh, under the control of a near mindless entity using the corpse as a vehicle. Other forms of Undeath affect souls as well as bodies. Vampirism, for one. Not this simplest of Undeath spells, however.”
“Okay, I’m sold,” Hawke said and went through the casting motions. The language of the spell was different than the stylized form of Latin that used, or, in the case of Nature spells, High Fey. This was a guttural, harsh tongue whose words he didn’t recognize at all. When he was done, the zombie stopped struggling and looked at him, waiting for instructions.
Follow. Defend me.
The zombie obediently rose to its feet and stood behind him. “Okay, then.”
The gate to the village consisted of a big wooden door that wasn’t mounted on hinges but was simply carried into place and secured with two sets of crossbars. Somebody had moved the crossbars from the inside and let the door drop to the ground. Hawke saw running figures being chased by more Shambling Corpses. From the looks of it, Gregory was killing people and then animating their bodies, just for the hell of it. That degenerate bastard needed killing.
Hawke sent his zombie after one trying to hammer its way into a house, then used Shadow Step to teleport to an area of darkness close to another Undead. He didn’t quite get close enough to backstab the creature, only to wound it. It took several stabs with the crap dagger he had to finish it off. During that time, Saturnyx ran from one Shambling Corpse to the next, smashing heads with her improvised weapon and screaming in uncontrollable rage. She was controlling her anger enough to go only after the Undead, but Hawke wasn’t sure how long that would last.
Gregory stepped out of one of the village’s houses and blasted Saturnyx from behind with a Minor Death Curse. She screeched like a banshee and went after him, bashing three more zombies to re-death along the way. Hawke charged in as well, grimacing when the Necromancer hit Saturnyx with the same spell a second time. The cumulative damage of the first-level spell wasn’t dangerous to someone with her Health, but the damage would accumulate over time and become a threat.
She didn’t give him the chance, however. Before Hawke could reach the Necromancer, Saturny
x beat him to death with her shovel.
Everything went dark.
* * *
Hawke woke up back at the cemetery, wearing the same clothes, and with Saturnyx lying by his side, naked once again.
“Freaking Groundhog Day,” he grumbled. “Killing him sent us back to relive the memory all over again.”
He had a really bad feeling about the whole situation. If he was trapped inside an endless memory loop, what was the Necromancer doing out in the real world?
Sixty-Eight
“If slaying Domort did not release us, what will?” Saturnyx asked.
For the first time since he had known her, the living sword seemed to be at a loss. Hawke could sympathize. In the Realms, killing was the solution to a lot of problems. Sometimes, it was too easy not to bother looking for alternatives, especially when it came to somebody truly awful like Greg. Maybe having to think instead of relying on mindless violence would be good for both Hawke and his sword.
They headed back towards the village, except that this time they didn’t bother getting Saturnyx dressed. The Necromancer’s robe had no defensive value and the Fury didn’t care about being naked; the only things she missed were her inherent weapons, the barbed chains that normally replaced her hair and the claws and teeth she could produce on command when she was a spirit of vengeance. She did pick up the wooden shovel, with which she promptly crushed every zombie they encountered.
Everything was the same, down to the screams of terror and the moaning creatures. Hawke headed straight for the house where the Necromancer was, letting Saturnyx smash aside any Undead that got in his way. Right on cue, Greg stepped out, a Minor Death Curse glowing purple in his hand. Before he could cast the spell, Hawke punched him in the face, pulling his punch a bit because he didn’t want to kill the guy. Greg still recoiled from the impact, bounced his head against the doorsill, and fell on his ass, grabbing at his spurting nose.
“Try casting a spell again, dickhead,” Hawke told him in English.
“Who ah ooh?” Greg said, his speech distorted by his battered nose. He froze when he saw Saturnyx behind Hawke, holding the bloodied shovel and looking like the personification of death that she was even in human form.
“Shut up, Greg. I really want to kill you, but I need you alive for some reason.”
But why?
Hawke tried his Mana Sight on the Necromancer and found a big mess. Everything in sight, except for him and Saturnyx, were projections of Gregory’s mind. They were inside another illusion, just like the one that had kept Domort entertained in his pocket dimension. He could see Mana tendrils coming out of the back of Fake Greg, the zombies, even their victims, all going… where? Hawke decided to follow them to their source. To the real Greg.
“Can you watch my back while I try to find the real Necromancer?” he asked Saturnyx.
“None will disturb you.”
He kissed her. It felt more real than the times he visited her in her personal realm. Better. He wanted to tell her he would do anything to find her a new body and free her, but he restrained himself. Promises had too much power in the Realms.
“Just don’t kill him,” he added. “But you can break his bones if he tries anything.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Saturnyx said, and smashed the Necromancer’s left knee with her shovel. “He might have been trying to cast a spell,” she added as an explanation as Greg howled in agony and grabbed the broken limb as if trying to push the fractured pieces together.
Hawke shrugged and to work.
After a few minutes of meditation, he detached his perceptions from his surroundings. He distantly heard Saturnyx dealing with another wandering zombie: a swing and a sickening crunch as an Undead skull got turned into mush. He set that aside and concentrated on the tendril coming out of Fake Greg’s back. It seemed to go on forever, eventually disappearing out of sight. Unlike the Dimensional Pocket’s illusion, this one seemed to be farther away from the real Greg’s mind.
Following the psychic tendril led him to a glowing sphere floating in the air. Bits and pieces of memory flashed through the energy globe like clips from a hundred movies. He recognized some of them: Greg’s fateful game night with Saul Valentino and his girls, Greg raising the dead in the village, and, disturbingly, a vision of Hawke himself in his full suit of armor, screaming in rage as he fought. That had been the last fight with Greg, although he couldn’t remember being that angry when it happened.
None of that mattered. The important thing was that the floating sphere had to be a conduit to the real Greg’s mind. Last time, he had escaped the mind trap by teleporting out of this. This time, he was in a section of Greg’s mind and needed to go deeper in. Hawke turned his focus on the sphere, trying to figure out how it worked. There were several kinds of Mana rushing around the construct: he recognized the frequencies of Death and Undead magic, the colors of emotions – the real Greg was both terrified and excited – and something else, a different energy flavor or spectrum that matched the tendrils linking the Necromancer’s living memories to his mind. That had to be Mind Magic.
A cry of pain made Hawke turn around. He opened his eyes and saw Saturnyx on the ground, half a dozen zombies biting her as they held on; the bodies of several others lay next to the broken shovel. Fake Greg was chanting a spell, grinning evilly despite the broken leg.
“This is all an illusion!” she shouted at him. “Do not stop!”
Hawke projected twenty Mana into a spherical shape and tried to alter it to match the type of energy that he had tentatively identified as Mind Magic. He made the sphere vibrate with different harmonics, twisted and turned it, and changed its color, picking up more knowledge about the force that made the Realms into something special, different from the universe he had called home.
Like he had mused some time ago, the ‘game rules’ that dominated the Realms were hacks on reality itself, and those special bits of code that the Makers had used to rewrite the laws of physics could themselves be reprogrammed, changed to suit different purposes. And he was beginning to figure out how to do that.
One more twist, and the Mana tendril now matched the frequency of the type of magic that had created the living memory.
Congratulations! You have unlocked a Primal Force: Mind!
You have learned three new spells: Astral Projection, Communion, Send Thought.
You have acquired a new Mana Channeling Ability: Alter Magic
ERROR. Prerequisites not met. Achievement Unlocked. Prerequisites not met. ERROR.
The notification flashed past his eyes. A moment later, Hawke found himself in a disembodied state for the second time in a few days. Or was it the third? He was beginning to lose count and still didn’t like the experience, not one bit. And, somewhere in the total darkness that was the only thing he could see, he heard a male voice crowing in triumph.
“I’ve got you now, you cocky bastard! Triggering a System Error is an offense punishable by Oblivion.”
Sixty-Nine
“Hello?” Hawke called out in the darkness.
“What the..? You’re not supposed to be awake!” the voice replied. “This is just more proof you need to be purged from the Realms. You are nothing but an unevolved monkey with delusions of grandeur. I’m tired of watching you while you mess things up.”
“Wait a second, Vice,” a female voice broke in.
“What for? To give one of his goddess pals a chance to plead for his life? This shithead is breaking all the rules. Someone is tilting the random number generators in his favor. It’s got to stop.”
“Think about what you just said, Vice. Someone is putting their thumb on the scale to help him out. Are you sure you want to get on their bad side?”
“Damnit, Nona,” the male speaker – Vice – said. “Erasing him is perfectly legal. If they didn’t want their pet wiped out, they should have left a note to that effect. They can’t punish me for doing my job.”
“Not legally, no,” Nona replied. “But just i
mage all the extralegal ways one of the higher-ups can mess with you.”
Vice began cursing. Hawke realized they were speaking in English, although Nona had a distinctive accent – Russian or Eastern European, maybe? None of it made any sense to him, but he let it slide; he needed to concentrate on saving his life.
“You guys are Arbiters, right?” he said, startling Vice into silence. “Maybe we can help each other.”
“You can’t even help yourself, monkey-boy,” the male Arbiter snarled. “But you’ve got friends in high places. Lucky you.”
“Greetings, Hawke Lightseeker,” Nona said. “You are speaking to Arbiters Vicesimo and Nonaginta. You should consider this a rare honor, granted to only a few denizens of all the Realms.”
“Totally honored. I’m proposing to make a deal. You let me slide on the whole System Error thins, and I will owe you a favor, payable whenever you want. Happy to swear an oath to that, with only one condition.”
“You want to set up conditions?” Vice growled. “On us?”
“Yeah. I do. Like Miss Nona said, if you kill me, you’re going to be in trouble with whoever has been helping me out. But you can still try to screw me in other ways. If you give me a break, I will do something for you. I’m just a fourteenth level scrub right now, but I’m planning on moving on up, as quickly as possible.”
“You’re a ticking time bomb,” Vice replied. “You not only unlocked Mind Magic six levels before you should have been eligible to do it, you now know Death and Life Magic. As soon as your mind integrates with your body, you have a good chance of dying for good.”
“I survived mixing Light and Darkness together. Twilight Templar, you know? I figure I can get the opposing Elements to behave. And I made an oath to the Triune Goddesses not to harm the innocent and punish the guilty. I’m sticking to that, so any oaths I make to you can’t contravene their Tenets.”
“You think that because we sound like you, we are human like you used to be,” the male Arbiter said, now sounding more amused than angry. “We carry on with our old personalities the way one of you might wear an old sweater. Nostalgia and comfort. But we are no longer anything like you.”
Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Page 39
