The Savage Realms
Willard Black
THE SAVAGE REALMS
Copyright © 2018 by Literary Rebel, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, cryptocurrencies, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Book and Cover design by www.LiteraryRebel.com
First Edition: November 2018
To Bau Bau,
Whose Online Exploits Inspired This Book
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Afterword
About the Author
Chapter One
Allison Bowers saw the puzzle for the first time during her lunch break. She sat at a chipped Formica table in the break room of First National Investments and Loans on Second Street in downtown Brooklyn, picking at a bowl of ramen and scrolling through her news feed. The headline read,; Play Savage Realms for a Chance to Win 10 Million in ByteCoin. She had heard of the game, of course. Who hadn’t? It was the world’s largest online role-playing game, though Allison was only vaguely aware of what that meant. She was seven the last time she played a computer game, and it entailed training ponies to jump.
The advertisement was wedged between a story about stock market worries and war in the East. She almost scrolled past, looking for something to cheer her up, or at least entertain her for the next twenty-seven minutes. Her eyes went to the clock on the wall. Twenty-four minutes, she corrected herself.
A coffee maker made an odd hiss and gurgle noise in the corner, and the smell of molding food floated up from the sink. Harsh fluorescents reflected on green and white linoleum that made squelching noises when anyone walked on it. Allison’s lunch for today was chicken-flavored ramen. She had splurged and used two packets of noodles, but she saved the flavor pack. She would use that in tomorrow’s lunch. Tomorrow would be more of the same. Every day was the same. She imaged what she could do with ten million in ByteCoin. I could do anything I wanted, Allison told herself.
Her mousy brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and a thick cable-knit sweater swaddled her bony frame. She had runs in her hose and her black flats were barely clinging to her heels. She pushed thick glasses up the bridge of her nose and clicked on the link. Why not? It couldn’t hurt to have a peek.
The video opened with a low base note and showed her a primitive world of armor-clad warriors and sorcerers throwing lightning bolts. The music climbed to a crescendo and an announcer with a deep voice promised a world of excitement, adventure, and detailed quests. Then came the part about the ten million. The creators of the Savage Realms had hidden the money in the game, and the only way to find it was to solve a puzzle. Allison had to click another link and certify she was over the age of eighteen. She entered her date of birth, tucked an unruly strand of brown curls behind her ear, and hit submit. A moment later, a map and a string of numbers appeared on her phone. It also came with a ticking clock. She had a total of thirty seconds before the numbers and the map disappeared.
Allison sat up a little straighter. Her eyes, magnified by the thick lenses, flashed over the string of digits. It was a poly-cryptic-sequential number order with a self-alternating base. She reached up, found a stub of pencil behind her ear, and quickly scanned the break room for paper. She settled for a napkin. The thin material ripped several times as she copied out the numbers. Her heart was beating very hard. She just got the last digit down on the coffee-stained napkin when the timer ran out and the map disappeared. But the map wasn’t the important part. Allison held up the napkin and stared at the string of ones and zeroes. How many gamers could break a code like that? she wondered. How many people in the world could break a code like that? Maybe a dozen, she decided, and most of them were academics, more interested in books than video games.
Allison sat there staring at the puzzle, her ramen noodles forgotten and turning to cold mush. If she could figure out the base, she could decipher the whole thing. It was a logarithmic problem, one she had encountered in college before her father got sick and she had to drop out. Her professor had claimed they were among the most difficult equations in the world. Even the fastest computers would need days to crunch the numbers and spit out an answer. She remembered sitting there in the lecture hall, looking at the board, convinced she could solve the problem. It wasn’t pride, not exactly. She had always been good with numbers, but this was something else; some part of her brain took in the problem and instead of seeing an unsolvable riddle, glimpsed light at the end of a very dark tunnel. She didn’t have the answer, not yet, but she could get there.
If only, she told herself. She sat in the cheap plastic chair, swinging her legs and staring at that scrap of napkin until the door opened and her boss stuck his balding head in.
“Earth to Allison.” The collar of his shirt was stained yellow and his teeth were little brown beans stuck in pink gums that made Allison sick to look at. He pointed at his wristwatch. “You were supposed to be back at your desk three minutes ago.”
“Sorry, Mr. Ratcheck,” Allison muttered. She hurriedly scraped the rest of the ramen noodles into the trash and then, after a moment’s hesitation, stuffed the napkin into the pocket of her skirt. Ratcheck watched her the whole time. She pushed past him
out of the break room door and he said, “Tardiness is no different than stealing, Ms. Bowers.”
Allison muttered another apology, ducked her head between her shoulders like a scolded dog, and hurried to her cubicle.
Chapter Two
Mercer reined in his steed and swung down out of the saddle. He was a towering man in a chain mail shirt and soft leather boots crusted with many hard miles of dirt and grime. A wild mane of black hair shot with early streaks of grey framed his weathered face. A broad sword hung on his left side and a battle axe on his right. He preferred the axe. It was a heavier weapon, and Mercer could get his weight behind it. He reached into a saddlebag, felt around, and brought out a hunk of hard bread that tasted like chalk in his mouth.
Somewhere, a machine sent a compound of proteins, carbohydrates, and essential fats into his physical body, but that thought seemed distant and illusive, something he understood but could not quite grasp here in this hoary old forest of gnarled trees, twisting roots, and jagged rock. The air smelled dank and wet with the last vestiges of stagnant summer heat still clinging to the forest. Autumn was fast approaching, and soon the air would turn cool and crisp. A canopy of broad green leaves and beards of grey moss blocked out the last of the daylight. Shadows pooled in the hollows of the old trees, giving them leering faces with grinning smiles. An owl hooted in the distance.
The big grey destrier snorted, stamping at the hard-packed earth with her front hooves. Mercer patted the beast’s neck. His voice sounded like distant thunder. “Easy girl. Here, have a bite.”
Mercer fed the last hunk of bread to the animal and patted her flank. The destrier tossed her head in appreciation. Her ears cocked this way and that, following the sly sounds of small animals creeping through the underbrush. The horse didn’t like the Deep Wood any more than Mercer. They had been here before and barely made it out alive. And these days were more dangerous than most. If the various beasties and baddies weren’t enough, now every player in the Savage Realms was on the hunt for ten million in ByteCoin.
A damn fortune, Mercer thought. Not that he had any hope of finding that money. He had seen the puzzle. The map covered all of the Savage Realms and the numbers meant nothing to him. He had squeaked by in high school algebra, but that was the very last time he had done anything more than simple addition and subtraction. Multiplication and division still gave him trouble. Still, it was worth a dungeon crawl on the chance they would get lucky.
His companions appeared around a bend in the trail, riding at an easy pace. Hooves made a steady clip-clop-clip-clop which seemed to get caught in the branches. Noise didn’t travel far in the Deep Wood, as if the trees themselves gathered up the sound, catching it in their grasping limbs.
“Are we close?” Drake asked. He was a bent and wizened old figure with sloping shoulders and a streak of white in a black goatee that stuck out like wiry bristles. His long face, darting eyes, and hooked nose gave the impression of an overgrown vulture.
Mercer motioned through the trees. “It’s just beyond that ridge.”
“Hell of a long ride for nothing if you ask me,” Trix said. She slid down from the saddle and arched her back, letting out a long moan in the process. Her blonde hair was up in a ponytail and dull black leather hugged her slender frame. She carried a dozen throwing knives crisscrossed over her hips, a curved short sword at her back, and a threadbare satchel stuffed with lockpicks, booby traps, and trip wires. God only knew what else.
Mercer shrugged. “It’s the only dungeon in this corner of the Realms we haven’t checked.”
“I told you we should have searched the desert,” Drake said as he lowered himself down with a grunt of effort.
“If it’s not here, we’ll head back to Tanthus, get fresh mounts, and work our way west tomorrow,” Mercer told them. “But we came all this way. We might as well have a look.”
“Let’s cloak the animals,” Drake said. “I’d rather not be here when the sun sets. This old wood gives me the creeps. Did I tell you two I died here once?”
“You told us,” Trix assured him.
“Several times,” Mercer added.
Drake flashed an angry look at Mercer. “You wouldn’t be so flip if it had ever happened to you.”
They led their animals up a rocky incline and tethered the beasts to a low-hanging branch. The horses huddled together for protection, tails swishing and eyes rolling in their sockets.
“I lost it once,” Trix told them. She reached into her bag of tricks and brought out a line of fishing wire, along with a dozen small globes the size of baseballs with crude pull tabs. The little balls were some of Trix’s own design. She went about stringing her homemade booby traps in a perimeter around the horses while she spoke. “Not here though. I was in the Chasm with a group trying to defeat the White Worm. This was in the early days, back before I knew anything about the Savage Realms.”
“What happened?” Mercer asked.
She set the last of the traps and straightened up. Her leather armor creaked. “Never even made it to the lair,” she said. “Got waylaid by a group of raiders.” She shivered at the memory. “Couple of bad days for me.”
Two years they had been running together and this was the first she had mentioned it. Dying was bad enough for a man in the Savage Realms. For a woman, if death didn’t come fast, it came slow and brutal. Mercer laid a hand on her shoulder. “The only thing in here is spiders.”
“Poisonous spiders,” Drake corrected. He reached into his saddlebags for three vials filled with a sluggish green concoction and handed them out. The potion would cure the effects of poison, but it tasted like a mouthful of bile. Mercer was hoping he didn’t have to use it. The feeling was mutual. All three of the adventurers had been stung or bitten before. The worse stomach flu you ever had couldn’t compare, and that was just for starters. If you didn’t cure it fast enough, the sick that came up would burn your throat and leave you physically exhausted.
With their mounts tethered and booby traps set, Drake stepped back, etched an arcane figure in the dank soil, and sprinkled a pinch of bone-white powder before intoning a cantrip. As the last syllable dropped from his lips, the horses shimmered and disappeared.
Mercer watched it happened. The effect always fascinated him. The illusion wouldn’t stop someone, or something, from blundering into the horses, and he could still hear their snorts and whinnies, but they were gone from sight as if they had never existed in the first place. Drake had an excellent memory for spells and incantations. He carried dozens of spells in his head and pulled them up at will. Mercer never had the smarts for figuring out the arcane language required to cast magic in the Savage Realms. He said, “That spell has paid for itself a hundred times over.”
“And all you bring to the group is a battle axe,” Drake said. “Any fool can swing a sword.”
“I’ll remember you said that when we’re in the dark surrounded by spiders.”
“Now, now, boys,” Trix said. “Don’t fight.”
Mercer led the way through the underbrush along a narrow defile and up a steep grade, over jagged rocks, to a dark opening set in the earth and half buried by a moss-covered stone etched with eldritch runes. A rank breath wafted from the opening, carrying with it the scent of death and decay.
“How did you ever find this in the first place?” Drake asked.
Mercer shrugged. “I may not have a head for spells, but I remember geography. Once I’ve been to a place, I can usually find my way back.” He loosened his sword in the scabbard. “Let’s get this over with. By nightfall, this forest will be crawling with dire wolves and worse.”
They moved toward the opening and heard voices coming up from the depths, followed by echoing footfalls and the scrap of shifting rocks underfoot.
Chapter Three
Two hours later, Allison was at her desk with a headset on, explaining to an angry investor why he was getting charged an extra 10 percent for making early withdraws on an IRA. The man on the other end of the
line was having none of it. He had scrimped and saved all his life to stash away a little over a million dollars. Now he was fifty-nine, out of work, and needed the money.
Join the club, Allison wanted to tell him, but she didn’t dare. Instead she calmly recited the terms of the IRA which were clearly stated in the paperwork he had signed when he opened the account and reiterated that, furthermore, the 10 percent penalty was levied by the federal government and not the bank. Nothing she said seemed to help. Nothing ever did. The fifty-nine-year-old out-of-work electrician harangued her for ten solid minutes before threatening a lawsuit and hanging up.
Allison pulled the headset off, closed her eyes, and rubbed her temples. Three more lines were blinking on her monitor, calls waiting to be answered. More irate customers waiting to scream at her.
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