World Tree Online: The Duchess of Hammers: 2nd Dive Begins

by M. A. Carlson

first. There was a skimpy dress, two dancing torches, a pouch of coins and a few vials of ‘Love Potion No 2’. I was half-curious and half-repulsed by the potions.

  Moving on, I went to the corpse of the . What looked like pajamas, I assumed were actually some kind of robes or light armor. I assumed wrong, there were indeed pajamas.

  Silk Pajamas - +5-Armor, +50-Charisma

  Very powerful pajamas, no wonder he almost enthralled me. The last thing I found on his body was a book.

  Ancient Grecian Spell: Adonis Aura – In ancient times Adonis was the lover of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of love. It was said he exuded a magical aura that was able to attract the attention of even a God. Active Aura has a 5.00% chance to enthrall a nearby player or citizen regardless of standing, effect improved by 0.01% per point of Charisma. Those affected reduce the effect by -0.01% per point of Charisma.

  Okay, that was a way too powerful of a skill. I knew the right thing was to turn it over to Lieutenant Saaya, but even he had acknowledged not all his soldiers could be trusted.

  “Destroy it,” said Heath, surprising me. I forgot he was there again. “No one, no one in this game should have that ability. Not you, not even me.” There was no accent, no bravado or fooling around in his demeanor, he was all business right now.

  More than that, I could sense this was important to him. If I failed to live up to his expectation here, I might lose his friendship. Or worse, he might decide I’m an enemy.

  I took out of one the torches I had collected from the fire dancer. I touch the flames to the book, watching it catch fire and burn away to ash.

  Aphrodite is watching you!

  “Bye-bye,” came the collective call from my friends in the other room.

  “It was Heath, I’m innocent,” I protested. “This time,” I added as an afterthought.

  Chapter 21

  It took another 20-minutes before everyone felt recovered enough to risk looking outside of the jump point office.

  “Looks clear,” said Rose, ducking back inside the windowless office.

  “Heath, you want to check it out?” I requested, looking to the hidden rogue.

  Heath rolled his eyes but went anyway, opening and closing the door quickly and silently.

  “Think he’ll take long?” Rose asked, trying to pass the time.

  “Probably not,” I said. Heath was generally good at his job. I still didn’t know what was up with him lately, hopefully when all of this Ardentia mess was sorted out, we would have a chance to talk. I hoped I had earned a little more of his trust when I destroyed that scroll. “He’s only checking nearby alleys and streets, making sure it’s all clear for us.”

  The sudden scream from outside the door had us all rushing outside only to see a dead cultist, but no sign of Heath.

  I barely saw the before it attacked Baby . . . tried to attack Baby. Heath was there suddenly, stabbing the assassin in the neck, a critical plus ambush bonus, it was a one hit kill and probably saved Baby’s life.

  “Those were the only two I found. I didn’t mean for the first one to scream like that. I wish you hadn’t run out like that when you did, I almost didn’t get to that one before it sent Baby for respawn,” said Heath, his ‘Stealth’ skill deactivated. “I’ll try to keep it quietlike next time.” And just like that, he reactivated his ‘Stealth’ skill and vanished from sight of the group and moving out of range of my ability to see him while he was using ‘Stealth’.

  “He can be downright scary sometimes,” commented Olaf.

  I nodded in agreement. It was also clear to me now that Heath didn’t seem to have any problem killing humanoids like the rest of us did. He didn’t seem to take pleasure in it, which was a good thing, it really was. Still, I wasn’t completely comfortable with his lack of caring about the dead citizens, even if they were crazy cultists.

  “Which way, Rose?” I asked, looking to our tank for direction.

  “That way,” said Rose, pointing to the southwest.

  The walk was eerie. The streets were completely vacant and aside from the occasional, unexpected experience notification, we heard and saw nothing of the Ardentia Guild. Heath was clearly taking this seriously, that or he was having a lot of fun without me or the others trying to arrest his prey.

  Soon the city turned sparse, with fewer and fewer buildings until it gave way to fields of vegetables.

  “We’re getting close,” said Rose, as we cleared a field of tall corn.

  The experience notifications had stopped as we began traversing the corn field, so either we had made it past the stealth minefield of assassins, or Heath just wasn’t finding them and vice versa with them finding us.

  Now that we were clear of the tall corn, the landscape ahead of us changed. A gravel road marked the barrier between the corn field and a rocky, gravelly mess of roads and paths crisscrossing ahead of us as they eventually merged with the road. Not far from the main road there were mounds of gravel, stacks of bricks and large stone blocks, and a little shack with an open counter attached to it, probably a shop of some kind.

  “That’s a lot of marble,” said Olaf, admiring the stacked stones for a moment.

  “There must be a quarry nearby, that would explain all the wheel ruts in the dirt and gravel,” said Micaela, surprising me.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one surprised when she addressed the group of shocked expressions, “What? I know stuff.”

  “Anyway, the guide is pointing us past the stones and rocks,” said Rose, leading us ahead.

  It didn’t take long to navigate around the rock depot. Just ahead of us now was a massive pit, I could see it was walls of stone going down several stories. There was also a single winding ramp going down. And there, in the distance, at the back of the pit were tall marble pillars and a triangular marble roof with a carved frieze that reminded me of some of the pictures I’d seen of the Ancient Greek Ruins, not that much of them remained in the real-world. Still, I couldn’t make out what the frieze depicted from this distance, but I had a feeling that was our final destination. There was a single path leading from the ramp, on either side of the path was a large dark pool of water.

  Pulling back to the more pressing obstacle, there were dozens of Ardentia Guild members patrolling up and down the ramp. And standing at the bottom of the ramp was a giant. Not a large ogre, but an actual giant, easily standing twice Olaf’s height, maybe three times his height if the way the giant dwarfed the two Ardentia members standing on his shoulders was any measure. They were too far down to properly gauge their levels, but I had a feeling that was the next boss fight, assuming the Adonis was the first boss fight.

  “Easy mode,” said Heath, dropping his ‘Stealth’ next to me. Thankfully, I saw him coming this time, so I wasn’t startled. “We just pull one patrol at a time up here and out of sight from the other patrols, a little stab-stab, zap-zap and Bob’s-your-uncle, we win.”

  “And when the patrols coming up do not see other patrols returning?” Vari asked, poking a giant hole through Heath’s plan.

  If this had been a normal game where the enemies were stupid programs that followed preset rules, his plan would have been fine. This game was anything but normal.

  “We can still pull them up here, it should at least stem the tide,” suggested Heath.

  Vari shook her head. “Best bet is to attack, charge the ramp, breaking each group as we go. By the time we reach the first turnabout, they should have hunkered down, taking more defensive measures.”

  “Guys, stop,” said Olaf, grinning from ear to ear. “I have an idea,” he said, his gaze looking away from the group.

  I followed his line of sight and my grin was quick to match his.

  “Yeah . . . I can admit it, Olaf’s idea is much better,” said Heath.

  “Feels a bit like cheating,” commented Baby, trying and failing not to laugh.

  “Don’t care, awesome!” Micaela cheered, giddy with excitement.

>   “It’s on,” said Olaf, giggling.

  The Ardentia never saw it coming. Okay, they totally saw it coming, it was hard to miss a rolling stone ball of death and destruction, let alone the dozens Olaf and Micaela had shaped from the marble blocks, and the ramp was the perfect delivery system. But they certainly didn’t expect it, talk about thinking outside of the box.

  “I wish we had popcorn,” said Rose, watching the stone orbs roll down the ramp, running over any poor Ardentia not fast enough to outrun it. Several of them tried to jump off the side of the ramp to the next tier down. They landed hurt, usually with a broken leg or legs.

  “I didn’t think the turnabout would be sloped just enough to roll the stones back the other way,” said Heath. “And yeah, popcorn would be good.”

  “What is this ‘popcorn’ you speak of?” Mardi asked.

  “Heated corn kernels, they pop when the shells breaks, forming these soft bites of food. You can add all kinds of delicious toppings to them. I’m a traditionalist myself, I prefer melted butter. Olaf prefers his a little sweet, so chocolate drizzle or caramel,” answered Micaela.

  “That does sound tasty,” said Vari.

  “Oh, it is,” Rose assured them.

  “Can we stop talking about food,” I requested, feeling a little queasy. After watching the balls of death steamroll a gnome, leaving a bloody smear on one of the stones, adding to the dozens it had already accumulated, it left me feeling decidedly not hungry. I know this was the most effective way to deal with this, but I didn’t really consider the death toll, regardless of the experience gains.

  “I’m with Bye-bye, how can you think about food watching that?” said Olaf.

  “Sorry, guys,” said Rose first, feeling slightly ashamed. “I guess, it was just so cartoonish, I didn’t really stop to even think about the fact several or even dozens of them would die in the process.”

  Properly chastised, we all watched as the orbs rocked up the final turnabout and began its final decent toward the giant at the bottom. The giant stepped back and held his hands out in front of himself, bracing for the stone orbs. The balls impacted, driving the giant back a few steps, he casually dropped the first two he caught behind him and reached out to catch more of them. Still, more of them got through than he stopped, each one hammering at his legs, undoubtedly knocking down a significant portion of his health but failing to kill him.

  “Capture any of the survivors if you can, otherwise give them a quick death,” I ordered, feeling sick to even give the order. I wanted to go down there and see if I could save them, but I wasn’t so unrealistic to believe they would all be willingly captured at this point.

  We took our time going down the ramp. There were a lot more survivors than I thought there would be and none of them were really in a place to be able to fight us. Thankfully, most of them surrendered and we were very fortunate Vari had brought along a lot of shackles. Once they were shackled, Baby healed them up enough to prevent imminent death on the mortally wounded of them.

  When we got to the last ramp we heard a loud grunt of effort from the bottom.

  “What was that about?” Olaf asked.

  “Not sure,” I replied, nothing looked out of place, just the giant , and the two humans, , standing on his shoulders. Then one of the humans raised a whip and cracked it against the giant’s face, spurring it to act. Soon it was picking up the stone orbs and throwing them back up the ramp and starting them rolling down again.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” I said, having no idea how we were going to survive the very trap we had just used.

  “I have another idea,” said Olaf, taking the lead and running down the ramp. About halfway down, Olaf produced a handful of bombs and set them against the stone wall and lit the fuse. “Fire in the hole,” Olaf shouted, running back toward the balls of death.

  “3!” Olaf shouted.

  “2!”

  “1!” he shouted, ducking low and covering his head and ears, an action we were all quick to mimic

  I’m not sure covering our ears did any good but the concussive blast and the accompanying explosion, opened a large hole in the quarry ramp wall.

  “Everyone inside,” ordered Olaf. “Rose, shield-wall the entrance, Baby keep Rose alive.”

  We all huddled into the newly blasted cave, it was a tight fit, but we all made it inside. The sound of the rolling boulders continued to get louder until the first of them clanged off Rose’s shield and continued down the path. Not all the orbs hit her shield but enough of them did that Baby had to work hard to heal Rose after each impact. Vari and I even started adding our own healing spells to the mix.

  When it was all finally quiet, and the dust settled, Rose risked peaking outside first, looking up the ramp for more boulders.

  I followed just behind her, though I was looking down the ramp to the giant and his two slavers. The giant was down, his health bar completely gone, at some point the orbs must have taken out his legs causing him to fall forward where more stones pummeled his face. All I saw of the slavers was a limb or two under a boulder or the giant. I guessed they were either crushed when the giant fell or crushed by the stone orbs after the giant fell, either way, they too were dead.

  “I don’t think that worked out the way they planned,” commented Olaf, his eyes fixed down range.

  Finally, I looked up the ramp. I wondered how many of our prisoners survived that second round of boulders.

  “Baby, Vari, let’s go up and see if any of the prisoners survived,” I said, feeling dread for what we were going to find.

  It was bad, less than a third of the twenty or so Ardentia we had captured survived the second round of stone orbs.

  Finally, we met back up with the group at the bottom of the pit.

  From up above, I saw the single path that led to the ruins and the pools of water on either side of the path. At first, I thought the pools looked dark just because they were far away from our viewing point and there was little light. Up close, the pools weren’t just dark due to poor lighting, but actually black, and not quite water, more like sludge or tar, there was a strong possibility something lived in that tar or that the tar itself was alive, the bubbling didn’t help allay that worry.

  “Vari, have you ever heard of this place?” Baby asked.

  Vari frowned. “I knew there was a quarry here, a lot of the stone Root City uses is purchased from here, its not the highest quality marble but given its proximity to the city, the price is low enough. I never heard anything about this temple though.”

  “Is it a temple?” I asked, not sure if it was just a ruin.

  “I think so,” Vari replied.

  “Sounds like the kind of place the Ardentia would make their headquarters. Might be perfect for a fallen love Goddess,” Mardi added, spitting as she said the latter.

  “Any idea what the sludge is?” Olaf asked, looking at the pools with worry.

  “One thing at a time,” said Rose, breaking out a square of food.

  “Mana, health and stamina, make sure you are all topped off,” ordered Olaf. “I don’t like the look of that sludge, I don’t want to be crossing that path unprepared.”

  My mana was fine but my stamina not so much. It was also about time to renew my buffs. It took a few minutes, but we were quickly prepared to march.

  The sludge continued to bubble and hiss as we passed between the two pools. I was constantly expecting something to lunge out of it, or for it to lunge at us suddenly. But nothing, nothing at all. Nothing happened until we were on the other side of the path when the path turned into the same sludge, trapping us at the temple itself with nowhere to go but inside.

  “Follow me,” said Rose, about to step inside.

  “Wait,” I said sharply, stopping her from stepping forward.

  “What? What is it? Is there a trap?” Rose asked rapidly, taking a hurried step backwards.

  I hadn’t stopped her for a trap, though it was a
good idea to look for one. “Heath, can you check for traps?”

  The hidden thief nodded and set to examining the entrance.

  “We should look around. This exterior might give us some clue as to who, or what, is inside,” I said. We had gotten this far on a lot of luck and some really out of the box thinking. I didn’t think we’d be so lucky again.

  “Good point,” said Rose. “Okay, everyone, start looking around for any writing or out of place symbols.”

  We spent a good fifteen to twenty minutes combing over the exterior of the temple but found nothing of note nor did Heath find any traps.

  “Olaf, give me a boost,” I said motioning the triangular roof and the carved frieze, now that we were close enough I should be able to read some of it or piece together something useful.

  The ogre easily lifted me to standing on his shoulders and giving a decent view of the relief carved into the marble. A frieze usually told a story about a God or Goddess the temple was dedicated to. I just had to figure out who was represented.

  The first image was of a woman, someone important probably, she was beautiful but so were most women carved by the Ancient Greeks, unless they were monsters like the Medusa. Still, I would bet this was Aphrodite, the Goddess of beauty and love. Though she was beautiful, the way she was pointing at the next figure felt cruel. It was another woman and next to her a bull then a bullman, the minotaur. It was the story of Pasiphae. But it went past the first minotaur. The frieze showed an army of minotaurs. Then Pasiphae using her army of minotaurs to wage war against Aphrodite. The minotaurs took heavy losses, but they were a plague upon the land, destroying Aphrodite’s temples, burning couples and destroying any visage of love they came across, constantly weakening the Goddess until at long last they drove her deep into the earth, into the last refuge she possessed, the only temple her husband ever built her. It was also a prison, meant to stop her from cheating on him. But there was more, the relief showed Pasiphae following the Goddess Aphrodite into the temple, becoming trapped with the weakened Goddess where the two immortals fought a constant battle, neither ever overcoming the other.