by Rachel Ford
Then he heard Jordan scream – a high, shrill sound. And a second later, the aperture overhead seemed to go dark, and something large and covered in metal collided with him.
Chapter Eleven
It was only when the object said, “Fiddlesticks,” in Jordan’s voice that he realized what had happened. Someone – or something – had thrown her down the pit, straight into him. He started to push himself up, and heavy ropes thumped down over them.
Which elicited a “criminy,” from Jack. “That was the ladder.”
Then something large and heavy slammed over the mouth of the opening. Dirt and pebbles fell down onto them. Jack fought to free himself from the ropes, and so did Jordan, which ended up pitting their two energies against each other. “Ouch,” he said, “you hit me.”
“Stop pulling on the rope. You’re knocking me over.”
He was about to argue, and point out that she wouldn’t have a problem if she’d let him get out first, when the clacking of bones drew both of their attention. They yelped in unison, and scrambled together to free themselves from the ropes. He got out first, and helped pull her out after.
“Potion,” she said. “Drink your potion.”
He nodded, and went for his inventory. But then he paused. He still had discovery scrolls at his feet, and one ring to ID. He grabbed the scrolls, and then delved into to his inventory.
He fished out the plain gold band, and worked the identification spell’s magic on it.
Ring enchantment discovered: undead slayer. Use conventional weapons to kill the undead.
He grinned and slipped the ring on his finger. Then, he switched back to play mode. And he drew his sword again.
“What are you doing?” Jordan asked.
But he didn’t respond. He just raised the weapon, loosed a scream, and charged for the approaching bone monsters. He swung for the first one as he reached the throng. It crumpled backward under the blow, screeching as it went down. He kept going, driving the blade through the space in another’s rib bones. Somehow, even though the space looked like empty air, it did damage. He drew the blade back and went for the next one, this time with a wide, neck-high swing. He severed the creature’s neck bones, and its skull clattered to the ground a few yards away while its body collapsed into a pile of dusty bones.
He heard Jordan behind him, casting spells and hacking through bones. He kept going, until he was in the center of a throng of about a dozen. He swung in every direction, dealing damage with each blow. He spun round and round, slashing and jabbing as he went. And for a minute, he was able to keep the monsters at bay.
Then, one of them got a strike in, and the same paralyzing fear shot through him. It had to be a magical effect, he knew that. But it didn’t make it easier to shake. The fear was as real and terrible as anything he’d ever felt in real life.
The delay gave the monsters the opening they needed. They fell on him from every angle, siphoning away his life and filling him with terror. He felt frozen, literally and metaphorically. He didn’t have the will to fight or to move or even think; but icy particles crawled up and down his skin, freezing him still.
Then a blast of fire sent them all sprawling – the skeletons, into a million pieces, and Jack, a few yards back. A moment later, Jordan rushed over and offered him a hand. “You okay?”
He nodded numbly. “I think so.” He was almost out of health, but he didn’t see any baddies in the vicinity. So he’d have time to heal.
“You have to be careful with those guys. Too many hits, and they can paralyze you. Here: take a healing potion.”
He did, and downed it. His magicka, he saw, had been ebbing back all this time. He’d be able to cast a few spells if he needed. “What the heather was that spell you used?”
“Atomic fireball. Once you level your fire magic high enough, you can unlock it.”
He whistled. “You killed them instantly.”
She nodded. “Yeah: it’s an instant kill for anything under level seventy-five. Massive damage to everything above that. But you can only use it once a day.”
“You shouldn’t have wasted it,” he protested.
“Wasted it by saving your life?”
He frowned. It sounded bad when she put it like that. “I would have been fine.”
“No you wouldn’t have. A few more hits, and you’d have been dead.”
“I just hope we don’t need it later.”
She shrugged. “Well, don’t go rushing in half-cocked, and we won’t. Now come on: we’re not going out that way. We’re going to have to fight our way through this.”
“What are we up against?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t played the full version of this level; just the parts I worked on.”
“Wait, you don’t know what we’re doing?”
“I mean, I kind of do. I just don’t know everything.”
Which was a perfect opening for a, “You don’t know Jack.” So, of course, he took it.
She shot him a death glare, but otherwise ignored the comment. “I didn’t really see what threw me down here. But it felt cold as ice, so it had to be undead. And there are necromancers here. Necromancers and vampires. It could be a vampire’s lair, or a necromancer’s.”
“Or a necromancer vampire,” he declared sagely. “Maybe it’s a vampire with an interest in the undead. I mean, you live forever, you’re going to need a hobby, right?”
“Next time, I’m going to let them kill you.”
“Be careful. The necromancer vampire will find me, and turn me into one of his undead minions.”
“You couldn’t possibly be more annoying than you already are, so…”
He grinned and started marching into the torchlit passage. “Come on, Jordan. We have to get out of this mess you got us into.”
The tunnel was damp and earthy, and lit by torches set into sconces in the dirt walls. Jack found his mind wandering to blastomycosis, and the kind of fungal infections you could get from damp earth. He had to remind himself that this was just a videogame, and that the tunnel posed no real risk to his health.
He’d covered several yards, and run through the blastomycosis sequence of thoughts, when Jordan sprinted up after him. “Sleeping on the job, Jordan?”
“Nah. Just collecting all the gold you left behind.”
He paused. “Wait, gold?”
“Yeah. That horde of skeletons dropped quite a bit of it. And gems, too. You could say, I collected quite the jackpot.”
He hadn’t even thought of looting the dead. He’d been too keen on getting away from the bony bastards. But he nodded. “Good. I’ve been short of cash this whole game.
“It is good. But I don’t see how it affects you.”
He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “You left it. Anyway, I killed them all. So the loot’s mine.”
His frown deepened. “What do you mean? I dealt some serious damage. I know for a fact I killed that one guy with the head slice thing.” He made a chopping motion toward his neck.
“And I gave you a bunch of supplies. We’ll call it even.”
Jack spent the next fifty yards of dank tunnel arguing the point. But then they reached the end of the path, and spilled out into a great, wide cavern. A ring of rock and earth circled the interior, and then immediately dropped away to a lower level, and then a lower, and another. It looked like a giant, inside out, upside down version of one of the kransekake almond ring cakes his Norwegian grandmother used to make, where, the top layer started large, and each subsequent ring got a little smaller than the one before. The last level was a good one hundred feet below them, and he could see digging tools, a bench and a bedroll, and a tunnel mouth leading off in the opposite direction.
There were tunnels on each of the ring layers too – at least one, and as many as five, depending on the layer. The topmost level – where they stood – was crisscrossed with wooden bridges leading in eight different directions, like spokes on a wheel. One sp
oke led to a workbench, another to a treasure chest, and a third to a rickety set of stairs going downward. The rest went straight for passages – four different directions, excluding the one they’d just come from.
Jordan grinned when she saw it. “Ohhh…I remember this one.”
“You built it?”
“No. But I saw the maps for it. It’s one of the biggest dungeons in the world.”
“Great. Exactly what I didn’t want.”
“There’s a couple of ways out. But they require keys – or a companion with the lockpicking skill. You know, a thief or a rogue.”
“Which I don’t have. Even if I hadn’t lost my companions.”
She nodded. “So, we should get going.”
“Let me guess…we need to go all the way down to that bottom level.”
“Probably. I don’t know for sure. I don’t know how they dispersed anything, or what kind of enemies we’re up against. I just saw the maps.”
“You don’t know Jack,” he sighed.
They decided to scout the other tunnels on their current level before descending. Jack avoided the rickety benches, and stuck to the earthen ring. It took a little longer than the direct route, but he’d already plunged through one set of old boards. That was enough for the day, as far as he was concerned.
The first passage led to a single, octagonal chamber with a strange altar in the center, and chests in the corners. Jordan stood back to let him loot the place. He found human flesh, crow brain, lizard tongue, and a handful of other, equally disgusting substances in the first seven chests. The eighth yielded a huge coin purse, which brought him up to five hundred and fifty gold. Then, he headed for the altar.
A single, gold encrusted human skull sat in the center. Jack surveyed it for a long moment, and shrugged. He’d already filled his pack with human flesh. What was a skull too?
He reached out and lifted it off the altar. At the same time, fire rained down from the ceiling, and electricity arced out of niches on the wall. He heard Jordan scream. He screamed too, as his health plummeted fifty points a second.
He tried to run, and got exactly one step from the altar before he died.
They respawned at the tunnel mouth where they’d first entered the cavern, overlooking the entire chamber. Jordan glanced askew at him. “Great job there, sticky fingers.”
“How was I supposed to know it would kill me? You could have warned me.”
“I told you, I don’t know what they did with the map. I don’t know where the treasures are, or traps.”
“You don’t know Jack.”
“If only…”
They headed back to the same chamber. This time, Jordan stayed outside, and Jack went for the skull. He died almost instantly, as before. But Jordan survived unscathed, and once the electricity stopped, and the fire receded, she went into the room and cast a spell.
Jack’s health meter ebbed back, and his body rose from the ground. “What was that?”
“Resurrection spell. You can only buy the spell book from a priest, but it’s handy if you plan to do any of the side quests where you have to keep an NPC alive.” She grinned. “Or, if you’re playing with a greedy bastard who is willing to risk death for gold.”
He grinned. “Hey, I got it, didn’t I?”
She just shook her head at him, and let him loot the chests as before. Then they backtracked to the main ring, and made their way to the second passage. His one led to a series of halls, with small chambers off it. Most were unoccupied storage rooms, with low level loot. One had a hell hound behind a wooden door, that took a big chunk out of Jack’s backside. Otherwise though, they met with minimal resistance.
He scouted through the rooms, and was about to return with little to show for his efforts when a patch of green a few feet above his eye level in one of the storerooms caught his attention. He paused and scrutinized the object. It was some kind of leafy plant matter, sticking out of a small, black cauldron.
Jack frowned, and headed for it. He had to stand on tiptoes, but he managed to grab the pot. A thought flitted through his mind.
Added to inventory: witch’s brewing station, portable
“Uh…Jordan? What’s a witch’s brewing station?”
“Ohh, sweet.”
“It’s a good thing, I take it?”
She nodded. “You can brew your own potions with it. You need a fire for most things – you can either make one yourself, or use someone’s hearth, or whatever. But you can collect your own ingredients, and make stuff: potions, poisons, hexes, you name it.”
Jack grinned too. “Sweet. How do I use it?”
“I’ll show you when we get to a fire.”
He nodded, and urged her onward. The third passage led to an earthen staircase going down. “That’ll lead to the lower level,” he decided. “We’ll go there next.”
The fourth passage led to a series of chambers, all of them shut up with iron bar doors – locked doors. The cells beyond lay bare but for rough cots or bedrolls.
Jack shivered. “It’s some kind of prison.”
Jordan nodded. “We better check if there are any prisoners here.”
He hesitated. Prisoners meant trouble: it meant people to free, or avenge. Worse, it meant guards and alarms – all of which meant time wasted. “Maybe we should just go.”
She frowned at him, and pushed forward, and he followed, grumbling to himself and trying the doors one by one. They didn’t budge.
About halfway down the main passage, they stumbled on a cell that had an occupant. A woman sat inside sobbing quietly, arms wrapped around her knees.
“Miss?” Jordan asked.
The woman started, glancing up at them with eyes red from crying. She was filthy and discolored. She wore a ragged cap that obscured her hair, but her brows were a dark brown color. Her tears had carved chasms in the accumulated filth on her face, and he saw pale, waxy skin there. He couldn’t see much else. But under all the dirt and bruises, Jack guessed she must be around thirty or thirty-five years old.
She scrambled backwards, until she’d pressed against the wall of her cell. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Three options presented themselves to Jack.
We’re adventurers, here to rescue you, my lady.
Who are we? Who are you, wench?
And,
We’re here to free you. But – not for free.
He hesitated. Now that Jordan had got him involved, he couldn’t leave this woman, of course. But he figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask for pay either, would it?
Jordan answered before he got a chance to, though. “We’re adventurers, here to rescue you, my lady.”
The woman sobbed with relief. “Oh, thank the gods. I’d given up hope. But you must find my son. Those monsters, they took him this morning. You have to find them, and stop them.”
“What are they going to do with him?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The wizard – he does evil things, unnatural things. He makes the dead walk again. He fuels the dead with the living.”
“A necromancer,” Jordan said.
“Cool,” Jack said. He wanted to get out of the game, it was true. But, well, he hadn’t fought a necro yet, either.
“You must save my son,” the NPC said again.
Four possible responses appeared in his thoughts.
Of course, my lady, at once.
Of course, my lady – as soon as we get you out of there.
Not worth the trouble, lady. Unless you’re willing to make it worth our time, of course.
And,
Not my problem. Good luck, lady.
He picked the second option. It was pretty clear Jordan intended to play the hero, so he decided he might as well do it right. “Of course, my lady – as soon as we get you out of here.”
The woman, though, shook her head. “Save my son first, Adventurer. Come back for me. But every moment his peril grows.”
He sighed. “Fine.” At the same time, a light
, chipper tone rang out of nowhere in particular, and an alert flashed through his mind.
Side quest started: The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Objective: find the missing child
Chapter Twelve
“We’ll need to find the keys to her cell anyway, and they’re probably wherever her son is,” Jordan said as they descended the earthen staircase. Jack had opted to shy away from the wooden steps, for both personal comfort and stealth reasons. Here, they were exposed only to whoever might be in the stairwell, whereas out there, the steps were exposed to anyone on any level who happened to glance into the main cavern. Plus, he figured he wouldn’t fall through the floor here.
“They’re probably with the necromancer.”
She nodded. “So how do you want to play this? Are we exploring the whole map, or just wrapping up the quest?”
He considered for a long minute, and then sighed. “What the heck: we’re already here, we might as well explore the place. Who knows what we might find. Anyway, I want to get to a fire so I can play with my cauldron.”
Jordan laughed at that. “Good. I want to explore.”
He didn’t, but the fact that he’d be exploring with Jordan and not an entourage of squabbling NPC’s did help boost his enthusiasm.
The second level followed the same pattern as the first, with passages leading off the main ring, and rope bridges running from side to side. Again, Jack avoided the rope and followed the more circuitous route. He found another workbench, which he paused at long enough to realize it would be of little use to him: it was an armorer’s bench, and he didn’t have enough supplies to make or upgrade anything.
Then, he followed the passages, one after another. He found more storerooms, a kind of barracks full of unoccupied bedrolls, all lined up in an orderly fashion, and empty chests, and a room full of corpses. They were human bodies, mostly, with a few orcs and elves mixed in. The smell was atrocious. He covered his nose with the back of his hand. Jordan wasn’t in a VR unit, so she didn’t get hit with the stink. She shook her head, though. “Well, I guess we know what the necromancer does with visitors.”