Court of Thorns: A LitRPG Story Page 6

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Hawke replied.

  Kassia’s grin vanished. “Do you hesitate because of my daughter? The invitation can be extended to her as well, although she has but a tithe of your potential. We will make room for her. Or even your guild, if you willingly accept the Red Spears as your patron.”

  I may have just screwed the pooch.

  Saturnyx advised him.

  “I do appreciate the offer,” he said in a more diplomatic tone. “But I cannot accept it right now. I have obligations that need to be met before I make such decisions.”

  You’ll meet many whose first impulse will be to use you, or eliminate you so that their enemies can’t. Jake Duchamp’s words echoed in Hawke’s mind. He had no intentions of joining a guild or sect, whatever a sect was, but if he left the possibility open, maybe Kassia’s patrons wouldn’t hold a grudge. He had enough enemies already.

  Kassia began to say something else when they both noticed someone had joined them in the atrium.

  “Hello, Mother,” Tava said.

  “Tava. You look beautiful.”

  Kassia embraced and kissed her daughter while Hawke stood up and watched the awkward family reunion.

  Tava accepted the display of affection with a flat expression on her face. The two women disengaged and stepped away from each other, and Hawke noticed that Blaze and Luna were perched on the roof of the villa, looking down on the patio; the two Drakofoxes were angry. So was Rabbit, Tava’s Dire Bear; Hawke could hear him growling somewhere outside the house. All three of them could pick up on Tava’s mood. This was no happy family reunion. The only critter who didn’t give a damn was Digger, who was taking a nap in the back yard; sleeping was the lobster-scorpion’s favorite pastime.

  “Congratulations on your advancement on the Path,” Kassia told her daughter. “And so quickly, too!”

  Tava had reached level 21 during the trip to Akila. When she and Kassia had last spoken, she had been level 14. Making seven levels in a couple of months wasn’t unheard of, but it didn’t happen very often. In Tava’s case, she’d gotten there by near-continuous adventuring, including clearing an entire Dungeon and participating in a major Area Event. Risking her life a bunch of times, in other words. Hawke had found a way to reduce the risk, but when he thought about all the times she’d been one bad roll of the dice away from death, he felt a little sick to his stomach.

  “Things have been rather eventful in the valley,” Tava said. “Not at all boring, you might say.”

  Kassia stiffened, unhappy at having her own words thrown back at her face. When Tava had asked her why she had left Kinto, she had replied ‘I couldn’t take the boredom anymore.’

  “So it seems,” the older woman agreed after a brief pause. “You have achieved in a few months what took me several years to reach. Times of upheaval have a way of doing that.”

  Tava nodded and began to say something before visibly containing herself.

  I want to shout at her, but then I will show myself to be a child, she sent to Hawke via Saturnyx.

  I’m sorry, he replied.

  “We will be having dinner this evening,” he said out loud. “You and Horosha are more than welcome to join us.”

  “That would be lovely,” Kassia said. “I will join my beloved and come back then.”

  Having her stay at an inn instead of at his home was outright insulting, but Hawke couldn’t make himself offer his hospitality to the woman. Neither did Tava. Kassia left without much ceremony.

  “I used to think I hated her,” Tava said after her mother was gone. “But that was just childish anger. Truth is, she is a stranger I only dimly remember. But a part of me still wants to please her. I’m confused.”

  “Family can be like that,” Hawke told her.

  His family had mostly gotten along, except for his sister, who had come back from college hating everything her parents stood for. There’d been plenty of angry words at Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, until she stopped showing up altogether. That wasn’t the same, of course. His sister Rebecca might one day grow up and figure out that her parents loved her. Tava’s mother wasn’t going to change.

  “She wanted something from you, didn’t she?”

  “You were right.” Hawke said and told her about Kassia’s offer. “Do you know who the Red Spears are?” he asked.

  Tava had no idea. Neither did Saturnyx, surprisingly enough.

 

  “Well, if I end up annoying them, at least they aren’t an ancient club of badasses.”

 

  “We’ll see.”

  “Do you think Mother would retaliate for refusing her offer?”

  “Not sure yet. I figure that we’ll find out over dinner.”

  “But if she threatens you…”

  Hawke grimaced. “Then I’ll explain to her that messing with me is a real bad idea. Nicely.”

  Interlude: The Malleus Mallum

  “Why so glum, Ari?” Amelia Blueflame asked as the four Eternals rode towards Akila’s infamous Labyrinth.

  Aristobulus Highgarden shrugged. “I’m not looking forward to dying again, that’s all.”

  “You got to have a positive attitude,” said K-Bar, the only fighter type in the team. They were supposed to link up with some Imperial soldiers at the fort watching the Labyrinth, but until then they were on their own.

  “I’m positive the Imperials are sending us off to get killed,” Aristobulus replied.

  “So what? We’ll surprise them, pay off our debt to society, and move on,” the former Marine said. “Maybe we can form our own Guild afterwards.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” Amelia agreed. “As long as you mind your manners, of course.”

  K-Bar grimaced. “You know I never messed around like that. The Herders had terrible leadership. No discipline.”

  “I know. And we couldn’t do anything about it, not without having Kaiser sacrifice us to whatever dark god he was following.”

  Aristobulus nodded at that. Nobody in the Herders had known about the entity inside Kaiser’s head, not until Hawke had told them when he visited the prisoners. But the news hadn’t been as shocking as one would expect, at least not to Aristobulus. He’d figured there was more to Kaiser than met the eye when he used Mage Sight on the Nerf Herders’ leader and saw large concentrations of Undeath and Chaos magic lurking under the surface. Aristobulus had never shared that tidbit with anyone, though. He’d been too scared to rock the boat. Kaiser had terrified him before he knew there was more to the leader than met the eye.

  “If we do strike off on our own,” Amelia went on. “We can’t be anything like the Herders. Picking fights with the local government was stupid. And when we move on to the higher Realms, it’ll be even dumber to act like murder hobos.”

  She gave the fourth member of the party a look as she spoke. Zippo grunted and lowered his red hood further down, covering most of his face. The Fire Wizard was the most powerful magic-user in the group, having made it to twenty-first level, but the guy was nuts. Aristobulus didn’t know why the authorities had released him. Sure, everyone had sworn multiple oaths to the City Core and the entire Olympian Pantheon, but you never knew what Zippo would do. The nutjob hadn’t committed any major crimes during his tenure in the Herders, surprisingly enough, but that was due to Kaiser keeping the mage busy with trips to the Malleus Mallum. Zippo actually liked going there. Which was the most likely reason he was still alive.

  Aristobulus shook his head. They were the last survivors of the guild, except for a couple of guys that Hawke Lightseeker had taken under his wing.
And the slaves, of course. All the other ‘active duty’ Nerf Herders were gone. Like Naruto, they were executed multiple times until they were zeroed out. And most of the executions involved torture. Not a pleasant way to go. Being sent off to scout the area around the Labyrinth wasn’t exactly safe, but Amelia was right; things could be much worse. They had been spared, and they still had enough Identity to survive a few deaths without forgetting who they were or where they came from. When your Identity stat dropped into the single digits, however, you might as well be dead. You still retained your personality but you no longer knew the life that had shaped it.

  “Trouble ahead,” Zippo called out. He had sent out half a dozen Fire Sprites, weak but agile Elementals that were scouting the area around the party.

  “What do you mean?” Aristobulus said.

  They’d ridden on this road several times before. It was continuously patrolled by the Ninth Legion’s cavalry and there were outposts and villages every six or seven miles. It was as safe a trip as there could be in the Realms. There had been trouble in the area but not this far from the Labyrinth. The plan had been to assist the Imperial patrols while Archmage Jacobus assembled the rest of the team that would enter the Malleus Mallum itself.

  “The village people. Something ate them,” Zippo said before giggling like a loon.

  The next village over – Aristobulus couldn’t remember its name – had been too small to offer much comfort to travelers, he and his fellow gamers had usually just ridden through and ignored it. Zippo’s words prompted the rest of the team to spur their mounts until they reached a slight rise overlooking the settlement. The Fire Wizard had been right.

  Half a dozen houses had been stomped flat and the rest were missing walls or even their entire thatched roofs, as if something the size of an elephant had reached down and bit off chunks of the structures. Scattered among the ruins were bodies. Some had been stepped on; the disturbing sights made Aristobulus squirm in the saddle as he fought not to throw up. And they weren’t the worst of the bunch: a few barely distinguishable corpses looked as if their killer had chewed them up and spat their mangled remains out like so many chiclets. Others were covered in some kind of green fungus, though.

  “What did this?”

  “One of the big ones,” Zippo said. “Third floor boss from the Emerald Wing. But something is wrong with it.”

  The Fire Wizard paused as he communicated with its scouts. Then his expression became a mixture of terror and exhilaration. “We are going to die.”

  “I never went through the Emerald Wing,” Aristobulus said. “What are we dealing with?”

  Before the Fire Wizard could answer, a roar that would have done a T-Rex proud echoed through the forest on the other end of the village. Tree foliage began to shake as something made its way through the woods.

  “I didn’t do the Emerald Wing either,” K-Bar said, equipping his armor and gear while the Exalted Warhorse he was riding, a big, armored beast, snorted a challenge. The eighteenth-level Warrior-Knight was as tough as any fighter in their former guild, but floor Bosses were a class unto themselves. Running would have been the logical course of action, but large creatures were surprisingly fast. If they tried to escape they would only die tired.

  “It’s coming,” Zippo said.

  Aristobulus dismounted and called up his battle screen: three rows of spells appeared before his eyes, low and to the right so they didn’t block his sight. He began activating his buffs and summoning this go-to Elementals: an Ifrit and two Earth Warriors. The Fire Elemental was a broad-shouldered humanoid, seven feet tall and made of solid flames, wielding a spear. The Warriors were humanoid shapes crudely sculpted from mud. They growled at the Ifrit before moving to the opposite side of the road. The pets didn’t like each other but would do their jobs.

  Amelia had summoned three Elementals of her own: a Greater Whirlwind rose over the group like a mini-tornado with a humanoid face in its center, and a pair of Undines emerged from a pool of water that hadn’t been there a moment before. The Undines looked like two women made of a liquid with the deep blue color of the ocean; they weren’t much in a fight but had access to a number of useful healing spells.

  Aristobulus didn’t like calling Elementals: the critters cost a lot of Mana that couldn’t be regained until they were dismissed or killed. But with only one frontline fighter between the four of them, they needed someone who could tank whatever the ‘big one’ was. Mages and wizards didn’t do well in close quarters combat. Even worse, they didn’t have any dedicated healers with them. The Undines would help, but other than that, they were limited to potions and the few feeble heals wizards could learn.

  “What’s the boss like?” he asked Zippo, who had surrounded himself with a Fire Shields and summoned three more Ifrits, each bigger and tougher than Aristobulus’ and armed with long flame scimitars. Showoff.

  The Fire Wizard giggled again. “Go see for yourself, old man. We’re gonna get killed, but might as well go out with a bang.”

  Aristobulus clenched his teeth but didn’t say anything. He was only twenty-three years old, but when he created his character for Eternal Journey Online, he’d gone for a Gandalf-Dumbledore look: long white hair and beard, wrinkles, the whole shebang. It wasn’t like he used online games as a dating service, after all. And now he was stuck with that look until he spent some big bucks on a magic facelift. Most of the Herders had learned not to give him a hard time about it but Zippo didn’t care.

  He turned to Amelia. “How about you? Been to the Emerald Wing?”

  “A few times,” the Elemental Mage said. “The main boss on the third floor is Zorgon the Preserver. Lesser Nature Dragon. Size of a school bus, covered with scales made of bark, got teeth made of thorns and trees growing on its back. Nasty.”

  “Fire should take care of that,” Aristobulus said. He was no Zippo, but he’d mastered that Element and knew all the main spells. He put them all on his floating ‘action bar’ so they would be ready for casting. Then he used Farsight to take a look at the approaching monster.

  “What is that?” he gasped.

  The creature’s size and vaguely draconic shape were the only things that matched Amelia’s description. Instead of leaves and mud, the monster was covered with moldy black-and-green toadstools. Its earthy skin was overgrown with diseased-looking moss instead of the leafy branches of a Nature Dragon. One of its yellow eyes was twice the size of the other, and its head was deformed, asymmetrical, like something an untalented child had begun to sculpt out of mud before getting tired and leaving it unfinished.

  Aristobulus looked at its stats and shuddered.

  Zorgon the Defiler (Chaos-Tainted Lesser Nature Dragon)

  Level 18 Elite Boss

  Health 6,840 Mana 9,000 Endurance 4,500

  A named boss was always bad news: they had unique abilities and better stats than most monsters of their level. But someone had taken the dragon and transformed – mutated? – it into something else.

  “I wish they’d given us our guns back,” K-Bar grumbled after Aristobulus projected an image of the monster for everyone to see.

  Aristobulus nodded. They’d lost all their expensive rifles after Hawke had unleashed an Undead army on the Herders. The special weapons had run out of ammo anyway, and most of them had been left behind or destroyed during the battle. The handful that had been stowed into Bonded Vaults had been lost when their owners were executed. K-Bar was back to using his medieval weapons. Too bad.

  The monster came into view seconds after everyone had finished their preparations. The monstrosity roared again and charged, each stride looking deceptively slow but covering a shocking distance. Running wasn’t an option, except maybe for Amelia, who could make her Air Elemental carry her away. Even that would be risky; the whirlwind couldn’t fly very high or far with a rider aboard. The three magic-users had elite mounts, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t be able to outrun the monster coming their way. They had to fight or be picked off one by
one.

  The Warrior-Knight rode forward. The Ifrits and Earth Warriors followed the charging rider while Aristobulus and his colleagues began firing off spells. Fiery missiles rained down on the monster – and did minimal damage, ten or twenty points instead of the thousands they were supposed to inflict. The critter’s resistance values were off the chart!

  “How did you kill it?” Aristobulus asked as he switched to lightning spells and saw no increase in damage.

  “Fire, of course,” Zippo said as he delivered Major Fireball. The flaming missile did more damage, but a few hundred points weren’t going to destroy the monster in time to do them any good. “Not working so good now.”

  Amelia switched to Water and sent a Greater Flaming Ice Spike flying towards the monster. The missile shattered on impact. Two hundred points of damage. Not good enough. Above her, the Greater Whirlwind was tossing lightning bolts that barely scratched the mutant dragon.

  “It’s using Chaos magic to shield itself,” the Elemental Mage commented, the calm tone of her words contrasting with the way her hands were shaking as she prepped another spell. Aristobulus couldn’t blame her. They had been through too many fights to panic easily, but the misshapen monster charging them was something else.

  The mages had time to deliver another volley before K-Bar and the Elementals made contact with the charging monster. Their spells did some damage, but Zorgon was regenerating at an ungodly rate. The boss’ Health bar was almost at full when it lunged forward and tried to chomp down on K-Bar. The Warrior-Knight had been expecting the attack, however: he leaped from the warhorse, which disappeared a moment later, neatly avoiding the attack. His flying somersault would have won the Olympics back on Earth and was performed while wearing over two hundred pounds of armor and gear. K-Bar landed between a pair of toadstools on the dragon’s back and stabbed it with a two-handed thrust. The Masterwork Quality sword sank deeply into the beast and Aristobulus saw its Health bar finally dip significantly.