Into the Darkness: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Axe Druid Book 4)

by Christopher Johns

  “True, and we need her out of here.” Jaken smiled behind me and opened his arms, “Mornin’ Manly!”

  “Oh, Jaken, not so loudly, if you please,” The halfling woman said, then groaned, she looked as though she might be ill at that moment.

  “You sit here, and I’ll get you some food and a root.” Yohsuke sighed as he stood and moved toward the kitchen. He came back a few minutes later with a loaded plate of food, a glass, and a special root on the tray.

  “Chew the root,” Muu offered it from the tray, careful to keep his voice low. “It helps dull the headache and the hangover a bit.”

  She took it gratefully and popped the whole thing into her mouth before spitting it out a second later into her hand. “Nasty.”

  “It is, but it helps.” I chewed on my own. Now, I’ve never tasted gym socks and ass before, but with this thing in my mouth, I may have preferred that taste.

  She chewed it for a minute longer, then spit it into a napkin to toss away later, then tucked into her own food. “Mmm, this is so good!” She spoke between bites. “So, we’re still headin’ to the Great Below, right?”

  “You are still welcome to join us, if you like?” I tossed her a roll from the center of the table. She grabbed it and nodded appreciatively.

  “You good to pay your way on chow?” Yohsuke had begun to gather plates to take back to the kitchen.

  “I’ll join you, if you don’t mind it. I can kick up some fresh game as well, so you don’t need to purchase as much. If this was one of your doin’, I’d love to have a fresh meal!” Had to give it to her. She could be endearing.

  “Nice of you to offer.” Yoh nodded to the rest of us, “seconds anyone?”

  Muu’s arm shot up so fast it was a miracle he hadn’t flown from his seat.

  “Fat lizard piece o’ shit,” the gray elf’s good-natured grumbling made Muu grin more.

  “Well, it’s really only going to be a matter of finding a way to get into where we’re going for now.” I turned to James. “Any luck finding anything out?”

  The dragon-elf shook his head, but it was Manly who spoke, “Y’all need a way in? There’s rumor of one northwest of here, on the other side of the mountains, ‘bout a day or so outside of Lindyburg. Out that way toward the capital of the nation, Zephyth.”

  “Can you take us there?” James asked excitedly, his excitement making his deformed wings flare a bit, walloping Jaken and making the Paladin curse softly. “Sorry.”

  “Well, access to it is kind of restricted.” Manly pulled out a pipe, a long and dainty affair. She tapped the item into another handkerchief, pocketed that one and pulled some tobacco out of her inventory to pack it. “Y’all mind?”

  We shook our heads, and she nodded her thanks as she struck a wooden match and took a couple starting puffs to light the tobacco properly.

  With a sigh of pleasure, she turned back to us. “There’s a guild called Nimran’s Flame in the capital that controls it in the name of the king and their own interests. Now, the king don’t have exclusive rights to it, but the guild has been known to let folks in from time to time if the coin is right.”

  “So, if we can get orders from either one, we’re in?” Muu offered for the sake of clarity.

  “Reckon so.” Her brow furrowed in thought, a double gout of smoke bursting forth from her nostrils like a dragon. “The guild are religious types, though. So y’all will have to be okay with them spoutin’ at you a bit.”

  Muu’s ridged brows raised. “Do you know which one?”

  I looked at him oddly, but before I could say anything, Manly answered, “I think it was…Yerlila, the Shade?”

  “The shade?” Jaken looked like his curiosity was piqued.

  I had to admit, mine was.

  “Do you want a lesson in religion, or to get things in order and be on our way?” James said, then huffed.

  “Religion please.” Muu raised a hand once more.

  Manly, being a good sport, patted his leg. “You sir, can ride with me on my cart, and I’ll teach you what I know. But we can get a move on if you like. Did y’all give him your gift already?”

  “Gift?” I raised my eyes to my friends, and Manly thumped the table.

  “I never was all that good at keepin’ secrets, my apologies y’all.” The halfling woman held her hands up as if to defend herself, and the others just smiled.

  “We all pitched in and bought one of the eggs.” Jaken reached into his lap beneath the table and pulled out the object in question.

  You seem to have a stronger connection with all of the other elements, so we thought that we would see to it that wind was included this way. Yohsuke spoke through our earrings. Let’s make sure we keep what we can do on the hush. We don’t know her that well.

  “Yeah.” Muu grinned. “So, make like a duck and hatch it already.”

  “How?” I took the egg into my hands. It was maybe the size of a football, ovular and slightly warm against my palms.

  “Well, creatures like this with elemental affinities are rare, so ain’t much that’s known, but I reckon if you were to match the element of the egg in your hands for a bit, it may hatch.” Manly took a long, final puff on her pipe before adding a small drop of water from a glass to it, then sliding it into her pocket in a handkerchief. “What’re you plannin’ to do with Higgins?”

  I’d thought about that as I was dressing. He needed to be somewhere he was safe, and with people who would care for him. But with something to do.

  “Vrawn, would you care for Jarlenill while we’re away?” I turned to her as I spoke, and she seemed confused. “The large reptile who woke us this morning?”

  “Does he need that much care?” The large reptile seemed to gather that we were speaking of him, his thumping steps trailing our way.

  “Just feed him twice a day, and he will be fine.” Manly smiled as she reached down to stroke his massive shoulder. “He ain’t a picky eater neither, so if you get him some greens, fruits, meat, he’ll have it all.”

  “Thank you, Manly.” I bowed a head to her. That information was valuable. “I’ll leave money for food, and I’ll talk to him about what is expected of him so that he isn’t too much trouble.”

  “If he will promise to behave, I will care for him.” Vrawn looked decided. Maebe reached out and grasped Vrawn’s hand beneath the table and whispered something against her shoulder that made the other woman relax markedly.

  “You’re leaving, and the green one is going to care for me?” Jarlenill’s eyelids flicked shut, then open again.

  “Yes, and I would like to ask a very important favor of you.” I took a deep breath, collecting my thoughts before speaking again. “Please, don’t bite anyone unless you feel there is danger, and you will know when there is, as you seem smart. Please, be good to the children, some of them may be afraid of you at first, but the braver ones won’t take long to find you and want to play with you.”

  “I have never cared for strangers touching me.” Jarlenill hissed.

  “Don’t think of them as strangers. The people who live here will love you and treat you like family if you will let them. Especially Vrawn, the green one, who will be kind enough to watch over you for me while I’m away, so long as you will behave.”

  “What am I? A nestling?” His forked tongue scented the air for a heartbeat. “Behave. Feh. Fine. I will be fed, and I will defend the small ones. But I do not care to be climbed on as if I were a tree. I may swat them if they irritate me.”

  His large, whip-like tail slapped the ground with a loud crunch. Oh fuck. If that thing were to hit a kid full force… “How about you don’t swat the kids, and I may be able to get a live rodent thrown into your meal plan every so often?”

  His head bobbed up and down. “I find this agreeable.”

  I turned to Vrawn. “He’s promised to behave and not whip the children with his tail when they irritate him in exchange for a live meal every so often.”

  “I believe that can be arranged.�
� Vrawn nodded her head once, but it was Maebe who stood and stalked over toward the reptile.

  “Translate to him for me,” Maebe ordered me softly. She knelt down next to where I sat so that she was about eye to eye with Jarlenill and spoke, “If I find out that any of my children have been harmed by you, in any way that wasn’t meant to save one of them from greater harm, I will kill you myself.”

  As she spoke, the temperature around us dropped lower, dangerously so, and the shadows deepened while I spoke for her.

  “I have lived long enough to know that no matter what I say, she will not trust me, nor do I care. But since the nestlings are important, I will do what I can for them. See that the live food comes, and they will not be punished for their coming insolence.” His tongue flicked almost dismissively. “And I will not bite any but those who deserve it.”

  I was honestly a little stunned that he had seemed disinterested in Maebe’s threat, if not downright standoffish against her.

  “What did he say?” She asked, a small hand on my shoulder squeezing lightly.

  “That if live food was coming, they wouldn’t be punished for their coming insolence.” I put a hand out to ward Maebe away from the creature, but she didn’t move.

  “He bargains well.” she raised an eyebrow and nodded to herself. “Then we are set to leave.”

  Vrawn stood and walked over to Jarlenill and thumped his head with her great hand. The reptile hissed but made no move to bite her. She walked us outside, and all of us moved toward Manly’s cart and gathered around.

  “There’s a path over the mountains I’ve used that’s about a day’s hard ride west of here if I’m mappin’ things correctly.” Manly patted Humphrey so that the large swine would wake up. “We can get there tomorrow afternoon or the day after if we push ourselves.”

  “We go at a moderate pace,” Yohsuke stated, eyeing all of us as if we might disagree, we didn’t just because this was how he had been in the Marines as well. “Zeke, you have Kayda on overwatch, Bokaj, and Tmont can scout, and the rest of us will move with the cart. Zeke, I want you focused on trying to get that egg hatched. However, you gotta do it, you do it. Capiche?”

  “Aye corporal.” I rolled my eyes to give him shit, but it was a solid plan. And I was curious as to what was in the egg.

  James laughed at my joke, and everyone set to gathering themselves up for what they would need. Maebe and Vrawn were speaking to each other, so I gave them some space. After a minute, I felt something tugging at my sleeve and turned to see the shadows at my feet, pulling me and Maebe smiling at me.

  I walked over to the two of them. “Hello.”

  “Hello, yourself.” Vrawn pouted at first, her sullen look leaving as quickly as it came. “I’m sad you both will be leaving so soon, but I want you to know that I’m going to do my best to watch over things while you’re gone and that I will miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.” Maebe kissed Vrawn’s knuckles as she stared into her eyes. “Until we meet again, I leave you with the children.”

  Vrawn leaned forward and kissed the other woman on the forehead. “They’ll be fine. But they will miss you.”

  Maebe looked sad, so I reached over and took her hand. “You’ll be back to see them as soon as you can. The only reason you wanted to come in the first place was so that we could introduce you to the drow and hopefully keep them from being brought into the Fae realm power struggle.”

  “It is for good reason that I go.” Maebe nodded, more to herself than anyone else with a stoic look of self-contemplation.

  “It is,” Vrawn agreed, then turned her beautiful blue-eyed gaze on me. “I will miss you, too.”

  I couldn’t help the boyish grin that came to my face as I reached out and pulled her closer to me. I shifted into my human form mid-pull and pressed my lips to her own in a rough kiss that stole both of our breaths away.

  When we parted, I murmured, “I’ll miss you too. Stay strong and be safe.”

  There were no words after that. No tears, though my heart pounded, and I yearned to stay just one day longer, we were off.

  Chapter Four

  We watched the mountainous stone through the trees, our pace a manageable one, as we wound our way through the forest westward.

  “I still can’t believe y’all got them fancy mounts from whistles.” Manly beamed again at Thor, the kirin I rode on snorting majestically under her watchful gaze.

  “We all got really lucky in this.” Jaken smiled from his own mount. We were trying not to talk too much about ourselves just yet.

  “So, religion time, yes?” Manly leaned back on her bench as Muu nodded excitedly. “What gods are you aware of?”

  “Uh, well, Radiance, Fainne, kind of, and um, Mother Nature.” Muu’s ridged brow furrowed in thought.

  “That’s a start, though it is surprising that you don’t know more of the nine.” Manly’s eyes flitted about our surroundings. “First, Mother Nature is akin to a god, she’s not actually one. She’s the embodiment of the will of this plane of existence, the very planet we are on. Some other realms have the same kinds of beings, though they’re not gods, they’re mighty powerful and ain’t to be trifled with. Lady Radiance, well, she be the one what brought light to the world, and her brothers and sisters assisted her in making life.”

  Jaken rose up beside us on his summoned battle charger to add, “She’s worshipped by a lot of folks, especially humans because they say she gave them birth from the soil and water of the realm, then breathed intelligence into them.”

  “‘Preciate that, Sir Jaken.” Manly grinned.

  “Jaken, please,” the paladin insisted.

  Manly nodded, then turned her eyes to the front. “Fainne be the god of the dwarves, smiths, and crafters. Most with the talent to make, owe some sort of praise to him, and worship through their makin’s and followin’ o’ his Way.”

  “Makes sense with what I had heard before. Cool.” Muu nodded as if he were mentally checking off boxes.

  “After him comes Uk’Beth, god of war and warriors.” She chuckled to herself. “You wanna take a wild guess as to who may worship him?”

  Muu didn’t even hesitate. “Melee fighters and those who owe their victories to physical prowess alone.”

  Seeing the odd looks on the woman’s face, mine, and Jaken’s, he added quickly, “When she said the name, I remembered something from Zhavron, he mentioned an orcish god I thought by that name.”

  “Well, that’s absolutely correct, good ears, Muu.” Manly thumped his arm amicably. “Well then, this next one be one I know you’ll hear of soon. Nimran, god of compassion and storms. I don’t know how the guild of zealots got their name, considering they’re a bunch of people with various backgrounds, near as I can tell, but they’re not to be trifled with, either.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t help the question. Kayda was above and ahead of us. The skies clear, and the forest quiet.

  “Well, that’s on account o’ their treatment o’ their god’s will. See to them, compassion means that they kill anything that gets in the way o’ protectin’ the weak.” She frowned. “Sometimes, even the weak themselves if it means others suffer less. They hoard power and money to gather strength, and seein’ as they’re the ones what found the dungeon, they offered to let the king and his folks use it if they could be given premium rights to it and be left alone to ‘worship’ as they see fit.”

  “And I’m guessing that they have been allowed?” Jaken said, then growled. “Like, if we try to get in there without permission, we could start a war or something?”

  Manly nodded. “Nobody dares to face the storm o’ their wrath, not even the king and queen. They’ll rise up to defend it, don’t you fret.”

  Muu frowned slightly. “I see.” Then he frowned. “Wait, I thought you said they worshiped Yerlila?”

  “They worship both Nimran and Yerlila,” Manly explained patiently. “They hold to Nimran’s love o’ his sister—weird one, that one, got a sister complex—and
while they offer protection to the weak, they make regular sacrifices o’ those they deem ‘too weak’ to the Shade. Yerlila is the Goddess of Death. That’s part o’ what they ultimately do when they ‘protect the weak’ and it’s not s’posed to be all that pleasant.”

  “And what’s this about a dungeon?” James asked, curiously.

  “Oh!” Manly fidgeted excitedly. “There’s a dungeon they’re said to rule over’n share with the capital occasionally. Rumor has it that it goes deep enough to butt up against our destination. Might be a good idea to check into gettin’ in there. I don’t know of too many easy places to get to that go into the Great Below, and none of ‘em less than a few days from the capital, so it’d likely be worth the trip there to get into the place.”

  A knock on my shoulder grabbed my attention and I turned to see Yoh staring angrily at me. “What?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Get that egg hatched, Zeke.”

  I sighed and checked my spell inventory and noted that I had not one single wind spell, except for my wind elemental form. I could do that first, but I would need to come up with a more permanent solution.

  I called the egg into my hand from my inventory, fell back to the absolute rear of the party before shifting into my wind elemental form. It was hard to hold the egg, seeing as though I didn’t really have any kind of hands, but I concentrated on sending my magic into the egg in my…grip?

  At contact, the green along the shell thrummed to life with luminous energy. For the duration of my shift, I was able to keep the lights on, as it were. But afterward, I would have to wait until the cooldown was over to do it again.

  That was a completely inefficient way of doing it.

  I dug out my messenger raven and sent my question to Xiphyre. “Hey, Xiphyre, I have an issue with an egg that I’m trying to hatch. It needs elemental energy, specifically wind, that I don’t really have any spells for. Would there be a way to convert normal mana into wind-aspected mana with an enchantment?”

  The raven figurine in my grasp came to life, the green wings moving, then a spectral purple raven fluttered into the air and toward the village as fast as it could.