Court of Thorns: A LitRPG Story

by C. J. Carella

  He turned to the people who had decided to stay. Aristobulus, Amelia, Glorificus, Gosto, Grognard, and K-Bar. They had different reasons for not venturing out and Hawke hadn’t tried to talk them into coming along.

  “If we’re not back in two days, assume we aren’t coming back in time to do any good.”

  “In that case, we’ll try to walk back out of the Labyrinth, or get ourselves killed in the Deepest Pits and respawn at the entrance,” Grognard said.

  “We can probably make it to the surface without dying,” Amelia said. “Depending on how much things have changed by then.”

  “Warning Akila and the Sunset Valley of what’s coming is important,” Hawke went on. “Maybe the city can bring in enough Adventurers to stop the incursion. The temples can call champions to help out and the Council of the Wise might get off its collective ass and do something.”

  Hawke felt bitter about Jake not helping out more directly. The Eternal mage claimed he was preparing to intervene but needed more time. Well, time was about to run out. Unless Hawke got lucky and managed to pull another Hail Mary.

  “All right. Stay safe. We will be back in two days. Hopefully with a full raid party behind us.”

  There were three portals in the antechamber. One led back to the Emerald Wing, another at the opposite end of the room that opened into the Deepest Pits, and the third one, off to the left as they entered, that was their destination. Alba, Artos, Tava, Blaze, Luna, Rabbit, Digger, and Hawke entered the portal two at a time, with him in the lead.

  A bright flash of light heralded their arrival at Crystal City.

  * * *

  The sights were impressive. The fact they had to stand in line a little less so.

  “That’s something you don’t see every day,” Hawke muttered, looking up at the sky.

  They had arrived at a circular room with a single arched exit out. Two Iron Elemental guards (both level 40 Elites) had curtly directed them to come out and stand in a line. The portal had been inside one of a dozen semispherical structures set on a stone-paved plaza on top of a hill. From it, they could see Crystal City’s spectacular skyline.

  A huge dome encompassed the city, several miles high and wide enough to reach over the horizon. It was transparent, and through it Hawke could see the Elements themselves fighting each other or pushing against the barrier keeping them away from the city. Massive shapes made of white vapor, red flames and deep blue water stood next to moving mountains. Some had disturbingly humanoid features like faces and hands, others simply moved back and forth like impersonal tornadoes or tsunamis. Hawke couldn’t tell if they were attacking the dome or simply looking at the city inside like children watching an aquarium. For several seconds, all he and his friends could do was gawk at the sights. The endless swirling clouds produced intermittent flashes of light in every possible color combination, although they weren’t bright enough to overcome the primary lighting source of the city, a miniature sun floating from a thin tower that rose a few miles above the settlement.

  And then there was the city itself.

  Dozens of stylized skyscrapers clustered around the sun-needle, each made of a single type of color glass. Hawke hoped they had invented magical elevators, because those things were at least as tall as the Empire State Building, if not taller. Their shapes varied: some were simple cylinders without windows or any other features, so plain that Hawke thought they might be solid objects without interior rooms. Others were elaborately decorated, with columns and balustrades on jutting balconies, showing there were apartments or offices in every one of their hundreds of floors.

  Crystal City was at least ten times larger than Akila. Hundreds of regular buildings, four or five stories tall, spread out as far as the eye could see. The party’ view on top of a hill only gave them a glimpse of the local version of downtown and a handful of districts. Other, taller hills obscured the rest of the metropolis, although out in the distance Hawke could see a huge tower made of silvery metal, shorter but no less impressive than the glass buildings that gave the city its name. He wished the party had time to explore it.

  But before they could do anything other than look, they had to wait in line.

  The plaza with all the gates had a fairly large crowd, all people who had emerged from one of the portals. At the direction of the metallic guards, everyone formed into orderly lines that converged on a single exit. The hill was surrounded by a crystal fence that glowed with magical energy. Hawke figured that trying to leap over or break through the boundaries of Gate Hill Five (the name was prominently featured in a floating notification over the exit) would not be good for anyone’s health. He spotted thirty metal guards and ten humanoids in robes who looked like bureaucrats or magicians. Four of them stood by the exit, briefly interviewing each group of visitors before letting them enter the city proper.

  Besides the local authorities, Hawke and his gang found themselves sharing space with a good hundred other travelers, clustered in small groups of four to six members or standing in line by themselves. Most of them were clearly Adventurers; their motley armor and gear, mostly of Masterwork Quality or greater, was a dead giveaway. About half of them were humans from cultures that Hawke hadn’t encountered during his travels: their complexions and clothing suggested interesting mixtures of Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American and African civilizations. A tall man with an Egyptian-looking striped headcloth leaned on a bronze staff while chatting with a heavily armored dark-skinned warrior with a lion-headed helmet; next in the line, a handful of pale-skinned men wearing Scottish kilts and bonneted hats fingered their long swords and small shields as they looked around with amazed expressions that matched Hawke’s.

  There were plenty of non-humans as well. A group of Dwarves in angular metal armor that glowed like neon lights waited silently near the front of the line. Their weapons looked like a weird combination of musket and wand, with some kind of crystal at the end of the barrel that suggested the weapon shot energy beams rather than bullets. A pair of Ogres, male and female, looked nervously at the smaller people around them; they stood over eight feet tall but were so wide at the shoulder they had a squat appearance. Their faces were hairless and had broad, coarse features, but they were close enough to humans that only their size and their floating stat boxes made them stand out.

  There were also two groups of Arachnoids in the line. Neither belonged to the Murk variety Hawke was familiar with. The larger subspecies looked like giant tarantulas covered in light brown hair; their humanoid upper bodies had pointy ears and curled ram horns on their heads. The other kind had sleek green bodies with red and black markings; their upper torsos and heads were smaller and looked a bit like Goblins. His True Sight identified them as Sun and Jungle Arachnoids, respectively.

  An Arachnoid for every type of terrain, I suppose.

 

  The Fae are utter assholes, aren’t they?

 

  Like I said.

 

  I’ll keep that in mind if I need to throw my weight around, Hawke thought. Although right now it’s probably not a good idea, Archon or not.

  Most of the people in line were level thirty or thereabouts; a couple were above the city’s level cap of forty. Hawke’s party was not quite on the bottom of the pile, but definitely on the low end. He spotted a few servants and bodyguards with levels in the teens or low twenties, but most everyone was a good ten levels above that.

  “Hey,” Artos whispered in English. “An Eternal just stepped out of one of those portals.”

  Hawke looked around and spotted the new
arrival. A medium-sized man, wearing a loose purple overcoat with wide sleeves over equally loose pants, with a black hat that made Hawke think of what the Pilgrims of early US history wore, except the hat was smaller and seated higher on the guy’s head; he was also wearing some kind of black cap underneath it. His features and the cut of his clothing seemed Asian to him, although not the Japanese-like gear Horosha had been wearing:

  Bak Sun-Ah (Human, Eternal)

  Level 32 Dragon-Hunter, Sorcerer, Summoner

  Health 2,142 Mana 7,109 Endurance 2,120

  Bak Sun-Ah was headed toward the end of the long line when he spotted Hawke and Artos. He waved at them and headed in their direction with a grin on his face.

  “Hey, you Americans? Want to help a brother out?” he said to them in accented English.

  “He’s trying to cut in line,” Artos whispered.

  “Let’s see what happens,” Hawke said, and waved back. If the guards didn’t mind, he had no objections with helping out a fellow Earthling. And the guy seemed to be pretty formidable. Maybe they had found an ally.

  “Where did these guys find a freaking pair of half-dragon kitsunes?” Bak muttered in Korean as he walked up to the group.

  “We sort of adopted them,” Hawke replied in the same language, courtesy of his new abilities.

  “WTF? You speak hangukmal?”

  “It’s a magical power,” Hawke explained while he glanced around to see if the guards objected to the new guy joining his group. A trio of Sun Arachnoids behind Hawke’s party buzzed and clicked disapprovingly, which his new language gift translated as ‘Great. We’ll be here all day.’ Nobody objected too strongly, though, and the guards didn’t seem to care.

  “That must be nice,” Sun-Ah – Hawke suddenly understood that Bak was his family name, not his first name – said in English. “You guys were playing Eternal Journey Online, no? Ended up on this Isekai trip?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Cool story, bro. Nice to meet you all.”

  After the introductions, they exchanged the cliff-notes versions of their life stories. Sun-Ah’s wasn’t all that different from theirs, except that he appeared in the continent of Zhon-Gon instead of Terra Nostra. He’d appeared with half a dozen other players from South Korea, and they had joined forces for a while, eventually forming their own guild, traveling to a Realm known as Shambhala, and running an entire city. There had been a falling out between them, however and Sun-Ah was striking out on his own.

  “I heard about the war about to kick off,” he concluded. “And that the Red Spear Sect is looking for Eternals. So here I am, to level up and get rich!”

  “War? What war?” Hawke asked.

  “You haven’t heard? The Fae Courts are at war. The Unseelie are being hunted down all over the city and the Seelie are hiring mercenaries. It’s going to be glorious!”

  Twenty-Nine

  “Glorious is another word for being in deep crap,” Hawke said.

  “I feel you, homie,” Sun-Ah replied. “It’s rough, but you gotta do what you gotta do, no? And it’s not so bad. When you get up in levels, you can live it up. I was top dog, back in New Sabi, where my old guild ended up. We ended up running the whole city, you know? If I hadn’t fallen in love with the wrong woman, I’d still be there.” He sighed. “I know things are going to get better. Higher Realms, am I right?”

  From the looks of it, the Korean player’s experiences had been a lot less traumatic than Hawke’s. It must be nice, not having to worry about the fate of tens of thousands of people. But from the unhappy expression on Sun-Ah’s face when he spoke about falling in love, things hadn’t been a complete cakewalk for the guy, either.

  “In any case, when did this war start?”

  “Like yesterday. I was at the Hall of Doors, checking the want ads, you know? Oh, you probably don’t know, you can’t get to the Hall of Doors until you hit level thirty, meaning no offense. The boards lit up. A Seelie Grand Lady made the declaration right here in Crystal City, that’s why I figured I’d drop by and see what’s up.”

  As Sun-Ah finished speaking, Hawke realized they had made it to the end of the line. The two officials waiting there wore silvery robes and could have passed as very tall humans – each was close to seven feet tall – if it wasn’t for their fire hair and eyes. Not red hair, but hair that was literally made of Elemental Fire. More flames glowed brightly from their eye sockets, which looked like pools of lava. A quick glance at the male Demi-Elemental as he waved them over convinced Hawke that the gate bureaucrats weren’t anybody he wanted to mess with:

  Ip Horran (Demi-Elemental)

  Level 40 Elite City Official

  Health 6,970 Mana 8,200 Endurance 6,970

  “Let’s see,” Ip said. “Seven sapients, two sentient beasts. Six arriving from the Common Realm, one from the Hall of Doors. None of you appear to be Demonic, Undead, or Unseelie, so you are free to enter.”

  The City Official made a gesture and nine glowing spheres appeared before him. “These tokens will return you to your place of origin. You will need to use the Departure Gates on Gate Hill Seven.”

  Everyone grabbed one of the floating spheres and dropped it in their inventory or container of choice.

  “Welcome to Crystal City?”

  No entrance fee? That’s a refreshing change.

 

  “Thanks for letting me hang,” Sun-Ah said as they left Gate Hill Five behind. A broad avenue led to the city proper. “I got to get going, though.”

  “Wait. We’re looking for Adventurers to take on a level thirty Labyrinth boss. Interested?”

  “Hm. The XP won’t be worth the hassle, but Labyrinth bosses drop primo loot. When are you doing this?”

  “In a day, hopefully. We don’t have much time to get it done.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll join in if you pay for the exit fee from the city plus, say, five platinum over and above my share of the loot.”

  That sounded pretty expensive, but having a level 32 caster around would help replace Zippo’s lost firepower. “Deal.”

  “Awesome beans.” Sun-Ah handed Hawke a card. It had a detailed drawing of the Dragon-Hunter. “My calling card. You just think at it and I’ll hear you. But don’t ‘at’ me unless you’re ready to go, bro. I’m gonna be busy finding some dancing girls, you feel me, homie?”

  “Sure,” Hawke said, pocketing the card.

  Saturnyx said.

  Just like cellphones, Hawke thought grumpily before sending the card into his inventory, where it should be safe.

  “Catch you later, peeps,” Sun-Ah said before heading out, whistling some tune Hawke was unfamiliar with.

  “That’s the happiest player I’ve met,” Artos commented as the Korean Eternal disappeared into the crowd.

  Hawke nodded. “He’s adapted to the Realms better than any of us. Maybe there’s a lesson there.”

  “Where do we go from here?” Alba asked, looking somewhat intimidated.

  Akila was the biggest settlement she’d seen, and the size of Crystal City must be overwhelming her. Truth was, it was overwhelming Hawke a little. He felt like some rube stepping out of Penn Station and seeing New York up close and personal for the first time. Luckily, he wasn’t a rube, and he had a few cards up his sleeves.

  “I have a plan,” he said in a confident voice. “First, we wait for Desmond to stop trying to sneak up on me. Then we ask him for directions.”

  He turned to the cloaked man who had been working very hard at getting close to the group without being noticed. Desmond the Destroyer lifted the hood that hid his features and glared angrily at Hawke, clearly wondering how he’d been able to see through his high-level Glamour.

  “Leara sends her regards,” Desmond said, sticking to his assigned script. “She would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience.”

  “It’s a small world aft
er all,” Hawke muttered. “Let me guess. She detected me when I arrived and sent you to fetch me while we waited in line.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Hello, Desmond,” Alba said in an icy tone.

  The Engraved Warrior blushed. “Hey, Alba.”

  ““Congratulations on your advancement on the Path,” she added.

  “Uh, thanks. You too.”

  “Now that we’ve all caught up, let’s go see Leara,” Hawke said.

  Somebody had gone through a lot of trouble to move a bunch of gaming pieces there. Might as well see what the other pieces wanted.

  Thirty

  So this is Saul Valentino, Hawke thought.

  There was little resemblance between the male High Fae sitting on a comfy chair and the lanky human who had run a tabletop version of Eternal Journey and sent unsuspecting people into the Realms, decades before the online game came out. The Fae version was taller, with dark black hair instead of light brown, and moved with a sense of grace that Saul had lacked in the memories Hawke had examined. The mocking eyes were the same, though. So was the half-sneer, half-grin on his face. That guy had fooled a gamer named Greg into going to the Realms, where he had become the dreaded Domort the Necromancer. He and his girlfriend might be allies, but they weren’t friends, not by a long shot.

  Panadel and Leara welcomed Hawke’s group in a mansion in the Rainbow District. Unlike the rest of Crystal City, which favored straight streets, buildings of shaped Elemental Earth or glass, and orderly planning, the Fae enclave was full of twisted alleys, structures made of giant acorns or still-living trees, and the occasional baroquely-ornamented mithril building. Hawke’s Order-attuned senses were repulsed by most things there as well as by the two Fae agents. As expected, they were agents of Laughing Man; he could now see the Mark of the chaotic Maker on them. His inner Archon felt nothing but loathing for them.