by Wolfe Locke
“It’s fine. Let’s go,” Seraph growled, trying to warn her off trying that again. “She knows the way. Apparently, she can take the lead.”
Rolling her eyes, Sadie kept walking, her tone heavy with sarcasm. “Thank you for letting me show you the way to safety, Seraph. That’s very gracious of you.“
“Yeah, sure, I’m right behind you, man,” replied Jack. “I’m just a little out of breath still; that run was a killer.”
Seraph looked behind toward Jack and addressed the Nether Demon. “Rosebud,” commanded Seraph. He had an idea. The Nether Creature was resilient and could offer Jack some protection he wouldn’t have otherwise. “Watch out for Jack. I know you need to rest, but occupy his shadow and keep him safe. Defend him, and make sure to stay on him at all times. If he dies, you lose your contact with this world, and I will not summon you again.”
“Yes, Cousin. As you command. I will protect him,” came the reply as Rosebud stepped onto Jack’s shadow and descended into it.
“Hey, that’s my pet you’re bossing around. Don’t I get a say in any of this?” complained Jack with a mock offended tone.
Both Sadie and Seraph responded in unison with a flat, “No.”
“OK, listen up you two,” said Seraph, looking first at Jack then Sadie as they moved down the road. Even if things were different than he had remembered, the Inn would still be close to the business district, and they were in the business district. Therefore, it should be nearby. “We need to get to the Inn. If what Sadie said is true, it’s going to be the only place in this city currently safe for us.”
“Alright, Seraph,” replied Jack. “I’ll keep my eyes open. I’m ready to lie down and sleep this one off anyway; don’t take this the wrong way, but I need a break from you two. Not a long one. Just a few hours to get some sleep, get some food, sleep this nightmare off, and then wake up, rinse, repeat.”
The sound of Sadie’s footsteps let him know she had taken off. Seraph turned around and saw that Sadie was taking a turn down a side road in almost the opposite direction he was heading.
Jack’s right. I need a break too, thought Seraph as he ran to catch up.
Sadie cast a glance behind her, the hint of a smirk on her face when she saw that Seraph had realized his mistake. “Nothing is going to be as you remember, Seraph. The Inn used to be nearby, but it was decided that it needed to be moved closer to the entrances of the other dungeon floors in the center of the town.”
“Oh my god,” complained Jack bitterly, his voice echoing into the distance, drawing a quick look of rebuke from both Sadie and Seraph. “That’s going to take forever, and it’s dark now if you guys had forgotten. What happened to all the monsters on the streets? Did we forget about that? And I don’t know about you guys, but I literally can’t make another sprint like we just did—even if it is to save my life. I’ll literally die if I have to do that again.”
With how loud the man was being, Seraph briefly considered silencing him before dismissing the idea. Already Seraph’s future plans were dependent on the man—and being loud would draw the attention to Jack, which Seraph wished to avoid.
“It won’t take long, and you will sprint if you need to, Jack, because you will die if you don’t. No one is so lazy to quit when their life is on the line,” Sadie added as she looked about in all directions, keeping her head on a swivel as they walked. “But, please… hushed voices.”
“Are you sure?” challenged Seraph. Hometown was a massive city; to traverse it on foot was cumbersome and time-consuming. Time-consuming when time was not on their side; every second outside, exposed, was dangerous. “We might be better suited attempting to commandeer one of these shops or houses.”
Sadie shook her head. “Those are all considered hard locations. You can’t force your way into one. So long as they keep the locks active and the doors shut, the World Dungeon and its monsters honor the designation of Safe. But if they break that seal, the designation of safe ends until the door is shut and locked again. No one is willing to put themselves or their loved ones in danger just because they hear screaming and yelling from the other side of the door. No, it’s not an option; we need to get to the Inn.”
Seraph was irritated by the answer but said nothing to refute it. Internally, he knew that her assessment was correct, but being wrong sat with him poorly. I need to check my pride; he admitted to himself, but he was still concerned about the distance to the Inn, wanting to limit their exposure to.
“That’s pretty fair, right? How are we going to get there safely?” he asked, his voice low, following behind the elven woman as they crept along the street.
A sad frown appeared on Sadie’s face. “It’s not as far as you think,” she replied. “This isn’t the massive city that you remember. Things are different now; I keep trying to tell you. It’s only a few blocks away. A quick five minutes if we stay out of danger and keep a low enough profile to not attract any attention.”
That’s close then. That distance is much shorter than I remember, Seraph thought as the problem weighed on his mind. “Notification Request: What population can the city of Hometown accommodate?”
Notification: The city of Hometown can house a total of 22,341 persons. Currently, 21,543 persons reside in Hometown. Additional lodging can be procured by expanding the Hometown Inn, acquiring Guild Halls, and building settlements on other dungeon floors.
With a quick assessment, Seraph realized something terrible. The city was much smaller than it had been in the past. While Hometown may not have been able to house the entirety of the human race, it had accommodated plenty—with room for over two-hundred thousand people and more once the Elves had been disbursed. But based on the little they had traveled, and the short distance they still needed to move to reach the center of Hometown, it seemed to Seraph that the city was many times smaller than the city he had once known.
The weight and enormity of the task before him hit Seraph. The World Dungeon was going live soon, and they were already almost at full capacity. A war had been fought over these grounds in his past life, but they had not hit capacity till years into the game, not days and weeks.
He would have time to worry about that later. “Sadie, just how far away is it?” asked Seraph in hushed tones, keeping his eyes peeled, monitoring both the road and the sides of the buildings as they moved along, not yet seeing anything.
Lifting a hand to silence him and motioning for the group to stop in place, she pointed down the road towards the rooftops of the last building. Seraph’s eyes strained to see what she had noticed, and he allowed his vision to increase as he shut off his other senses and looked again. At the top of the building, a hideous undead clung to the edges of the windowsill, its grey flesh tight and corded with muscle. Bone spurs protruded from the soft prominences of the skin. Seraph couldn’t see the head or the eyes, but judging from the posture of the thing, it was looking for prey. They would need to be careful.
Returning his vision to normal so he could rest his eyes from the strain, he acknowledged he had seen the monster with hand signals. Sadie crept over to him and whispered in his ear, her voice barely perceivable, “Once we get to the end of this row of buildings, the street will open up, and we will be in the central plaza; you’ll be able to see the Inn then, and we should be able to make a run for it.”
Creeping along to avoid attention, Seraph passed the message to Jack, telling him with hand signals when to move and when to stop, his attention focused on the monster lurking near the rooftop.
Chapter 7: The Inn of the Withered Fig
* * *
Now with the last remnants of light gone, under cover of night, Seraph found a weakness to his racial advantage to see in the dark. The constant glow coming off the lamp posts had an adverse effect on his dark vision, irritating his eyes and distorting his field of view the longer he looked. This was a weakness Seraph deemed needed keeping to himself, as he was positive that Sadie and Jack had no such issue. If life in the World Dungeon had tau
ght Seraph anything, it was to assume if even one other person knew a secret, then everyone knew the secret. Then everyone would try to exploit it.
In the absence of his dark vision, Seraph did have a way to continue without handicapping the group. Focusing his attention on his hearing, and directing his energy away from his compromised vision, Seraph was able to keep up with the group. Using the sound of Sadie’s light footsteps to keep pace with the elven woman and Jack’s heavy, clumsy steps to maintain accountability of the man.
Seraph’s pulse quickened as he noticed the sound of shuffling feet from all around him, both far in front, behind, and down the side roads. Enemies were starting to approach and would be on them soon. The three of them needed to get to safety before whatever was approaching could swarm them.
He turned his attention back to the monster on the windowsill. Even with his poor vision, Seraph could roughly approximate it, and when the thing suddenly jerked its body up, lifting up from the side of the building, Seraph couldn’t help but notice. The thing’s arms spread out as its body primed, suddenly leaping from the building and landing forty to fifty feet away from him. Shaking off the impact of landing, it ran away from the group on four muscular arms. A Stalker, Seraph realized—a type of feral undead that was more beast than anything.
With his enhanced hearing, Seraph heard the stalker run towards the sound of the incoming shuffling of feet, followed by the sound of a short struggle, and ending with a loud crack and the heavy smacking of teeth tearing into flesh. They had been lucky that the Stalker on the wall had run off, leaving its post to feast on something other than weary travelers like them.
Not to be undone. As Sadie noticed the stalker jump off the building, she immediately doubled her pace, taking advantage of its absence. Seraph followed closely behind her, his footsteps careful and measured. They still needed to be cautious, though the Stalker had left. It was only one monster out of maybe hundreds they could encounter before finally reaching the safety of the Inn of the Withered Fig. When the three of them cleared the remaining buildings on the strip, Seraph was happy to see the road open up into the central plaza.
“Now all we need to do is get across without any problems” said Seraph as he tried to look ahead, recognizing and counting the eight great gates that ringed the edges of the plaza. Lights appeared around each of the Gates to illuminate them, their light shining vividly in the night, further distorting his vision. Nearby he could make out the general shape of an elevated iron slab. That would be the teleport platform, he thought. The return point for the players as they transport back into Hometown. Maybe not everything has changed.
From behind him, Seraph’s heart dropped as he heard Jack say, “Hey, lady? Are you OK?”
Returning his vision to normal, Seraph turned around and was relieved to see it was just Sadie, stumbling on the broken pathing, making far more noise than was safe. Somehow when he had been distracted by the lights of the gates, she had slipped past him and dropped back to either check on Jack or walk the rest of the way with him. Seraph hadn’t thought Jack needed to be supported but figured Sadie knew more about the man’s limits than he did, having managed Phase I.
Seraph’s heart was pumping, warning him of danger, and flooding his body with alertness, even as he saw a sign that he thought likely advertised the Inn of the Withered Fig. Once they were able to secure lodging for the night and could get safely behind the walls, Seraph promised himself they would all sit down and brainstorm solutions to the pile of other problems they needed to tackle.
“Not a good time to get lost in my thoughts,” Seraph muttered to himself in irritation. Before turning back around, he whispered to Jack, his voice projecting towards the man, hoping Sadie would hear it. “She’s fine, but we need to keep moving. Keep your voice down; we’ve at least one monster behind us, and we don’t want to draw anymore to us.
Not waiting to see if Jack heard him, Seraph turned around as Sadie screamed as she passed him, pulling him to his senses. “He’s not talking to me, idiot. He’s not talking to a person at all; that’s a Wraith Mother using a glamour to charm the both of you.” Running towards Jack, she pulled her shortsword up and held it at the ready to attack as she whispered arcane words of the lost elven language over the blade, activating the magical aspect of the sword. The blade turned pure white as she brandished it at the Wraith Mother.
Seraph looked at the woman he thought was Sadie as her glamour became undone, the flesh of her face rotting away before his eyes, leaving gaps and holes in the cheeks and showing decaying teeth accented by shriveled gums. The hair was falling out in clumps, leaving thin wisps of grey and white hair, an undead monster, holding onto Jack by withered arms. “Jack, get away from her!” Seraph yelled as he ran behind Sadie, his Cat’s Claw at the ready. But Jack didn’t respond. Seraph noticed that Jack appeared to be in a comatose dazed state, oblivious to his surroundings as he was held by the wraith.
“He can’t get away from her. He’s trapped. Both of you fools have been too busy taking in the city like a couple of human tourists on vacation instead of paying attention to my warnings!” yelled Sadie in anger as she stabbed in a quick thrust aiming for the undead’s brain, trying to avoid harming Jack.
As the blade descended, the white light burned away even the vestiges of humanoid appearance, showing the true self of the wraith—a husk. The monster tried to turn away from Sadie’s blade but was too slow, the thrust of the sword deadly accurate as Sadie managed to sever the head from the neck. As the undead’s head dropped from its body, the entire monster dissipated into ashes that scattered into nothingness.
Even with the wraith's destruction, Jack didn’t return to normal, remaining in his comatose state. “Seraph, just grab him and carry him,” commanded Sadie, taking control of the situation as more of the Wraith Mothers began to appear all around, coming up from beneath the streets, pushing through broken tiles, stumbling through alleyways and side streets. They came from everywhere to swarm the still-living.
For a moment, Seraph felt genuine unease. He was unsure of how to proceed from this point. He currently had four abilities: Cold Hands, Thousand Handed, Heart of Darkness, and Starfall. He doubted Starfall would work on the undead, and he couldn’t proc Heart of Darkness. Seraph knew he could combine Thousand Handed and Cold Hands, but he could only maintain that for a few seconds at most.
Pushing away from the thoughts of the danger around him and how to handle it, Seraph picked up Jack in a fireman's carry. Even with his younger body, so long as he was supplemented by the strength he had gained from the dungeon, and with the use of the right form, Seraph could carry the man indefinitely. The only concern he had was that Jack was still unresponsive.
“Follow me,” commanded Sadie as she moved closer to him, brandishing the white sword in front of her.
Together, Sadie and Seraph moved out across the plaza, the enchantment of the white sword anathema to the undead, turning them aside and allowing the three of them safe passage as she bore the brunt of the work to get through.
For a second, Seraph thought he heard Jack trying to stir, mumbling something as he was carried across his shoulders, but when Seraph gave a sideways glance, all he saw was Rosebud appear from within the darkness, its ivory grinning face and yellow eyes coated with black blood as it chewed on a shadow creature it had freshly killed—another enemy Seraph hadn’t seen coming.
Briefly, Rosebud gave Seraph a smile of gluttonous contentment. It was then that Seraph knew that Rosebud had been feeding well off of the shadow monsters that Sadie had warned them about. Seraph filed this information away for later; this was not an ability that a simple pet should possess. Nether demon or not, Rosebud was more than he appeared to be. For now, it served the interests of the group.
“Keep moving!” yelled Sadie as they continued their mad dash across the plaza. They reached the halfway point between the eight dungeon gates, each leading to a different floor of the dungeon. On Sadie’s face, the strain of maintain
ing her weapon’s active enchantment was evident as beads of sweat formed on her brow. Her efforts and the ability to turn the undead away were the only things keeping the three of them alive as the undead mobbed all around them, unable to get close.
They were almost to the Inn of the Withered Fig as they passed by the eight dungeon gates. But one gate, in particular, caught Seraph's attention. The gateway to the second floor of the dungeon, ringed with yellow lights that lay nearest to the Inn. All the portals blazed with red light—a warning from the World Dungeon that players were not yet ready for the danger inside. If things hadn’t changed, those lights were personalized. The yellow light signified a dungeon floor that an adventurer could enter with a reasonable expectation to live at their current level.
“Jack, you need to wake up,” said Seraph as they kept moving. He needed his hands to be free to help Sadie, and right now, he couldn’t so long as he was carrying the man. Briefly, Seraph thought about abandoning Jack and using the man’s death as a way to draw the undead to quickly cover the remaining distance from the center of the plaza to the Inn, but he decided against it. He had invested too much in the man already, and he had no guarantees that his efforts with Jack would pay dividends. There were simply too many unknowns.
“He’s not going to wake up,” replied Sadie breathlessly, and Seraph felt the darkness on his back shift as Jack’s pet moved in acknowledgment.
“It is true, Cousin. This one has been Ghost-touched; he will not wake soon. If he wakes at all,” explained Rosebud. "My magic keeps him alive by the power of our pact as I work to lend him the power which has been taken."