Court of Thorns: A LitRPG Story Read online

  Seelie Ambassador Starborn had been targeted by three high-level Revenants. They managed to kill enough of her bodyguards to prompt the Rikkarr Sidhe to take action herself. As Desmond watched, the glowing figure made a gesture and the glowing light spheres around her flew towards the Undead like so many magic missiles, shredding them in a matter of seconds. The recently-raised zombies near her suffered the same fate a moment later. That part of the battle was done.

  Desmond turned to the nearest reanimating bodies and hacked them to pieces. Those poor bastards were Revenants, but they had lost most of their levels, either when they were killed or during the transformation. They posed little threat to the high-level personages and their surviving guards. They were soon wiped out. Peace returned to the blood-drenched ballroom a few seconds before Desmond’s Augment engraving wore off, leaving him exhausted and struggling to stay upright.

  “Easy there, darling,” Leara whispered to him in English, supporting his nearly three hundred pounds of solid muscle with an arm around his waist. ‘Wouldn’t do to have my fearsome pet collapse in the middle of a major event.”

  “Thanks,” he said, not meaning it. She laughed.

  The place was a mess, and it soon became apparent that several important Fae were missing, including the Gray Court Godmother. Laryn or one of the other high-level Revenants must have kidnapped them.

  “The Court of Thorns needed live subjects to perform their aberrant necromancy,” Panadel said, uncharacteristically serious. “All the missing are Greater Beings, Tier 1 or higher. If turned, the results will not be pleasant.”

  And that was just one issue. The other one became apparent a moment later, as Ambassador Starborn floated into the middle of the ballroom and addressed the gathering.

  “The Unseelie Court brought this plague unto us,” she said, her voice resonating inside Desmond’s body. “They brought Undeath and murder into our bosom. There can be only one response to such depravity.”

  Everyone around the Rikkarr Sidhe held their breath, waiting for her decree.

  “War.”

  “WAR!” shouted the members of the Seelie delegation. They had suffered the least from the attack, but seemed to be the most vengeful among them.

  “WAR!” the Wild Sidhe roared.

  Even the city delegation began to call for war against the Unseelie.

  “Oh, shit,” Leara muttered.

  Twenty-One

  The hillside cavern was tiny in comparison to the huge underground jungle the party had left behind, but had enough room to house the original giant boar or the deformed thing that had replaced it. Scattered bones and other remains were strewn all over the place, including some weapons and armor pieces. There were probably some valuables mixed in with all the decomposed body parts, but Hawke didn’t intend to search them. There was no time to waste. An impact on the blocked cave entrance made the ground shake a little. Definitely no time.

  “Where to?” he asked Amelia.

  “Down there, at the end of the chamber. Naruto discovered a hidden passage. Had to disarm some nasty traps to get through it. It opened into a tunnel that leads straight to the Gatekeeper.”

  “All right. Alba and Artos, you’re with me. Everyone else, see about keeping the cave entrance closed. Maybe drop a few more spells to keep the critters out. After that, make sure you’re all topped off. Don’t make coffee, ‘cause we ain’t staying.”

  Everyone nodded and went off to do their assigned jobs. Hawke moved toward the narrowing end of the cavern. His Enlightenment spell was on. He had upgraded it recently, learning the Major version from Artos. Between the spell’s ability to find hidden things and his Advanced Mana Sight, spotting traps was almost ridiculously easy. Almost. They cleared three magical constructs designed to hit anyone who came too close with a variety of deadly spells. There was also a mechanical tripwire that would trigger a landslide. Those were the easy traps.

  A few steps beyond the entrance, hundreds of glowing Chaos lines crisscrossed the tunnel, making it impossible for anything larger than a hummingbird to fly through without touching at least one of them. Only Hawke could see the energy latticework; his whispered warning stopped Alba before she walked into it. He suspected that touching those energy lines would be deadly. At the very least, it would curse the target with a heavy dose of bad luck. He’d seen Chaos spells like that during his fight with the Undead Troggs beneath Akila: they gave the target a nasty case of Murphy’s Law. Whatever could go wrong would. Among other things, one of those spells had triggered one of his Timeless Mind side effects. At worst… Chaos could turn victims literally inside out.

  In the middle of the Chaos network was the actual trap, a layered construct with four linked triggers, including one that activated if you disarmed the outer traps first. Some of the spells linked to the trap were familiar: Death Curse and Death Cyclone, plus the good old Fireball. He could kill those spells without triggering the traps, but there were three others he didn’t recognize. His new ability, Chaos Spike, might have done the trick, but the traps contained thousands more Mana than he had; he couldn’t put enough power into the ability to disrupt the spells. Even if he could figure out a way to take care of the Chaos bubble, it was going to take them a good thirty, forty minutes to disarm the trap.

  The cavern shook again. They didn’t have forty minutes.

  Tulpa time.

 

  I’ll take some precautions, but we can’t take the time to do things the safe way.

  Hawke had everybody give him all the buffs and protective spells they knew before moving to the far end of the cavern, where they sheltered behind another Wall of Stone and Gosto’s Dome of Earth, among other defenses. When everyone was set, he summoned a Living Shadow and sent it into the trapped area. The Darkness elemental was shaped like Hawke and knew a few of its spells. It walked into the Chaos bubble and began to dissolve, taking shocking amounts of damage every second. It lived long enough to reach the trap, but didn’t trigger it. Hawke had been afraid of that; the construct wasn’t considered a valid target by the trap’s magical senses.

  He created a Tulpa next. A blob of grayish fog molded itself into a humanoid shape and became solid. He’d raised his level to three with the ability after a lot of practice, but the Mana puppet still couldn’t do very much. The important thing was that, for all intents and purposes, the construct had the same aura that Hawke did. Every trap he had encountered treated it as a living target. A perfect way to set off traps without endangering anybody. Except that some spells could reach him through the connection to the construct.

  After layering several protective spells over the Tulpa and giving him 3,000 Health by spending the same amount of Mana, Hawke drank a potion to recover the spent energy, activated Elemental Dome as an extra layer of protection, and sent the construct out. The Chaos network began attacking it immediately, but it wasn’t badly damaged until it reached the trap – and triggered it.

  Everything went black.

  Hawke was lying on his back. His eyes were closed, and he discovered that he didn’t have the strength to open them. He couldn’t move. Even breathing seemed like more effort than it was worth.

  What?

  Saturnyx announced before speaking to him.

  Mostly. Hawke didn’t like the sound of that. While he waited for his body to start working again, he accessed his notifications. Even through his closed eyelids, he could see the floating icons that had been part of his existence since appearing in the Realms. Most of them were the usual crap, but the Combat Log let him know he was in a world of hurt:

  You have been struck by Soul Shatter!

  Your Health, Endurance and Mana have been reduced to 0.

  In Extremis
Activated. Death averted.

  You have been afflicted by Shattered Soul. If you die while afflicted by Shattered Soul, you will not be able to Reincarnate or be resurrected by any means, but experience Final Death instead. Shattered Soul will remain in effect for 48 hours, 59 minutes.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Hawke shouted, sitting up and startling Tava, who had been kneeling over his prone body. “Sorry, honey,” he added as she hugged him.

  What the hell hit me?

 

  “Is the trap gone?”

  “Yes,” Tava told him. “You almost got yourself killed – again – but you accomplished that much. Dumbass.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “About a minute,” Grognard said before Tava could respond. “And we’re running short of time. The critters outside want back in.”

  Hawke could hear the continuous pounding. Well, he’d pulled off that dumbass move because they didn’t have much time. Might as well make use of what he’d bought, even if it meant a chance he’d die for real. Forty-eight hours with only one life to lose. A lot could happen in two days.

  Does anyone else know? Hawke asked Saturnyx.

 

  And I will not let you die, my darling husband, Tava told him.

  Blaze added.

  Great.

  He wasn’t thrilled that all his close friends and family knew about his vulnerability, but it would have been worse if everybody else did. They might grow more cautious, or decide that maybe turning back or waiting was a safer option. And he figured that Zippo and maybe Amelia would love to see Hawke kick the bucket. He didn’t think any of the former Herders would be heartbroken, either. Maybe Artos and Glorificus; he’d saved their asses twice, after all. In any case, it would be bad for morale if they knew their party leader was one screw up away from perma-death.

  Doesn’t matter. Not getting killed is part of every plan.

  Another loud impact on the cave obstructions reminded him that they needed to get going.

  “Did you guys find the secret entrance?”

  “Alba and Artos just did,” Grognard reported. “We’re ready to go.”

  “We also found a chest,” Artos said, walking up to Hawke. “Trapped, but we got to it. Got a dozen Master-level potions. Want one?”

  “I’m covered, thank you.”

  Before they left Akila, Hawke had spent most of his personal gold on potions, scrolls and other adventuring necessities. He had thirty Master Mana Potions, four of which were in his Dispensary, ready to be delivered straight into his bloodstream at a mental ‘click.’ He was good to go. And damn hard to kill. As long as he remembered not to pull idiot stunts like using a Tulpa to trigger an unknown spell trap.

  Soul magic is nasty as hell. I should learn some.

 

  I am that good, true, Hawke thought without a hint of modesty.

 

  Twenty-Two

  “It looks the same,” Amelia said, wonder – and suspicion – in her voice. “It’s the only place in this hellhole that hasn’t changed.”

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Hawke commented.

  It really didn’t. The tunnel leading toward the Gatekeeper’s Chamber was simple dirt, lined with roots on its walls and ceiling that acted like support pillars, as if they were traveling beneath some great tree. On the plus side, they’d traveled almost three hundred yards without running into a trap or a monster mob. And the entrance to the passageway had closed neatly behind them. They no longer had to worry about Gullinbursti and its minions.

  “It’s safe all the way to the end,” Amelia went on. “It was, I mean, when we went down here.”

  “Tell me again about the Gatekeeper.”

  “You know everything I do,” the mage said. “It’s down there, it’s powerful as heck, and we won’t get past it unless we meet its price.”

  She grimaced as she went on. “That idiot Gerrod started posturing and threatening it. The Gatekeeper just killed him. Poof, and he was down on all fours after Reincarnating right where he’d died. The weirdest thing is, I remember being there, but I don’t remember what the Gatekeeper looked like. I think it messes with your memories, on top of everything else.”

  “Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Hawke said. “Let’s take it easy, everyone. Unless you don’t mind losing Identity.”

  Nobody looked like they wanted to start trouble, even Zippo. Hawke hadn’t addressed the Fire Wizard’s latest misdeeds yet, mainly because there hadn’t been much time. Maybe after they got past the Gatekeeper. Speaking of which…

  The tunnel reached a new chamber. Unlike the vast cavern they had left behind, this was a built structure, a room made of marble, its roof supported by two rows of columns of the same material. On the opposite end of the tunnel entrance was a large glowing oval, clearly a magical portal. Other than the columns and the gate, the room appeared to be empty.

  “Just got a notification,” Grognard said. “If I step into that room, my respawn point will get moved there.”

  All the other Eternals got the same message. Except Hawke, of course. He didn’t have a respawn point, not for another forty-seven and change more hours.

  “So far, it’s just the way Amelia told us it would go,” he told the group before walking into the room.

  The rest of the party followed and soon everyone was inside the enclosed space. As soon as the last person had stepped in, a floating head appeared next to the magical gate.

  “Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” a powerful mental voice echoed inside Hawke’s head. From the looks on everyone’s faces, they were all hearing it.

  The floating head was surrounded by a bright yellow aura. Its features were broad and almost cartoonish, looking like something drawn or crudely sculpted rather than an actual living being. It smiled widely at the gathering.

  “Greetings, Gatekeeper,” Hawke said in a formal tone. “We seek passage to the lowest level of the Emerald Wing. What do you wish in return?”

  “Hawke Lightseeker?” the floating head telepathed, sounding upset. “Eff my life.”

  “Uh, do we know each other?”

  “I know who you are,” the floating head went on in a normal tone of voice. “I’ve been waiting for the Powers that Be to send somebody down here and fix this mess. Just my luck that they sent you.”

  “You’re an Arbiter,” Hawke said.

  “Yeah. Keep that to yourself, all right? I get all the crap details as it is, and if word gets out that I gave secrets away I’m off to the Breach.”

  “So this place really is a damn theme park, isn’t it? You are an actor pretending to be some magical Gatekeeper!” Hawke told the floating head. He was surprised at how angry he felt. People were dying in this theme park!

  “No, you imbecile. None of this is a game. Certain elements in this frame of reference work like a game in some ways, but believe me, this is all serious. And this station is important. The Gatekeeper encounter is an evaluation center. I show up when a group with potential manages to find it.”

  Hawke noticed that only he and the ‘Gatekeeper’ were moving; everyone else in the party appeared to be paralyzed. “What happened to them?”

  “I’m having conversations with each and every one of them, of course. And I’m being a proper Gatekeeper to them. Only reason I’m speaking to you like a person – which is more than you deserve, by the way – is because your file was flagged
by Arbiter Vicesimo his own damn self.”

  “You work for Vice.”

  “Yeah, and if you call him that to his face, he will kill you or make you wish you were dead. Don’t get too uppity with people who make gods dance to their tune, monkey-boy.”

  “Thanks for the warning. What can I do for you, Arbiter? You just told me how powerful all of you are. Why don’t you just reset the Labyrinth and erase all the Chaos crap in it?”

  “Can’t.”

  “A Maker is involved, right? The Undeath guy, Vaz-something or other? Doesn’t seem like his jam. So there’s more than one of them involved.”

  “You were smart not to use his name, monkey-boy. Names have power and you never know who might be listening.”

  The sad truth was that Hawke had forgotten the evil Maker’s name, but there was no point in letting the Arbiter know that. “Anyway, I’m here to investigate the Labyrinth changes and to put a stop to it. Can you help me with that?”

  “Well, first off, I will charge you all the minimum price for going through the gate. That’s a big favor. Normally, getting through requires accepting a hefty quest, giving up a valuable piece of gear, or sacrificing power – Experience, as you gamer types like to call it. The price is supposed to hurt you in the wallet or the guts; the whole thing is a test to determine how you behave in the face of adversity. A measure of your potential.”

  “Potential for what?”

  “For further use. You don’t need to know any more.”

  “Okay,” Hawke said with shrug.

  “I will take the minimum from each of you. A thousand XP. I will also provide some insights about them that they may not like.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can’t share that. Gatekeeper-client confidentiality, you know. You only get my insights about you. Here they are: you are arrogant and impulsive. Stop it.”

  “Now you sound like my wives.”

  “Lucky guy. You might want to cut back on leading from the front, especially for the next couple of days. You are quite mortal at the moment, you know.”