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

by M. A. Carlson

  “Better safe than sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, Jack, what’s the worst that could happen?” Rose asked, earning shouts of dismay.

  “How could you say that?” Baby asked, looking at her sister with a look of betrayal.

  “What?” Rose asked, looking slightly confused by the outburst.

  “Never say ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’, its like inviting trouble,” Baby instructed her sister.

  “We are all going to die horrible deaths,” said Mardi, burying her face in her hands. “And to think, we were so close to making it.”

  “Guys, you’re being ridiculous,” said Rose, rolling her eyes.

  “If we die, I will haunt you,” said Mardi, glaring at our resident tank.

  “Whatever,” said Rose, stealing a piece of my bacon.

  “Anyway, now that we are definitely all hands-on deck,” said Heath. “Mardi, what are your plans for the day?”

  “Not sure, Major Daws said he would be stopping by this morning,” said Mardi. As if the Major heard her talking, there was a chime from the entrance hall and a knocking on the door.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Heath, standing from the table.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, sliding my plate with a few remaining strips of bacon to Rose. I followed Heath out of the dining hall.

  “Its just the door, I think I can handle it,” said Heath.

  “I know, but I wanted to talk to you,” I said.

  “Oh great, what now?” Heath asked.

  Sensing he wasn’t in the mood for a serious conversation, I veered off into a curiosity. “Nothing big, I just wanted to ask you about the daggers. How did you know to attack them?”

  “Oh, that,” started Heath. “Well, you remember those coded love letters I found our first day in the manor in the spy’s room? Well I broke the code.”

  “Awesome,” I said. Well that was handy and a bit too . . . easy. “How did she know about the daggers?”

  The door chime rang out again, followed by more knocking.

  “Oh, so check this out. Lady was a double agent of some kind,” said Heath. “She had been spying on the Ardentia for years for some guy. Believe it or not, I think me catching her actually helped her. In her last few letters, she was begging her employer to let her quit. I guess she was afraid of getting caught.”

  “How was she able to spy on the Ardentia? They put enchantments on all their people,” I said.

  “In her first letter she talked about successfully killing one of the women and taking her place. I guess the Ardentia don’t regularly check for their enchantments. Typical arrogance,” explained Heath.

  The knocking on the front door became more insistent.

  “We’re coming, keep your shirt on,” I yelled toward the door just a few feet away. Looking back to Heath, I said, “Wow, that is really cool.”

  “Yeah, got quite a few skill levels to my espionage from that,” said Heath, undoing the locks on the front door.

  “Did it ever say who she was working for? Other than the Ardentia?” I asked, as Heath undid the last lock.

  “Not really,” said Heath, opening the door. “The letters from her ‘lover’ were always signed ‘Alone’. A codename, I’m sure.”

  My eyes widened at that bit of knowledge.

  “I’m here for my fiancé, you will turn her over to me now,” said a voice from the open doorway.

  Looking to the source I was confronted by a dwarf with two pistols, one pointed at my head and the other at Heath’s. He was short, even for a dwarf, and beardless. His hair was perfectly parted and weighed down with gel, the sides and back of his head were shaved short. And resting at the corner of his mouth was a lit cigar. All this was topped off by dress pants, a formal white shirt, vest and tie. And there, hovering over his head was a nameplate, .

  Heath didn’t react well to the threat, kicking out, he knocked the dwarf back a step, causing both guns to fire. Thankfully the kick had at least diverted the shots. The pistol aimed at me, hit me in the shoulder, spinning me around and dropping my HP to 1,234/2,010.

  I don’t know if Heath was hit, all I heard was the slamming of the door and the rush of feet.

  “What happened?” Rose asked, wearing her full armor and both shields at the ready.

  “Not sure,” said Heath, looking completely uninjured. “There was a dwarf at the door, said he was here for his fiancé.”

  “And the gunshots?” Rose asked.

  “I kicked him, he fired,” answered Heath. “Bad shot too, he had Bye-bye and I point blank and his missed the kill shot.”

  “I was still shot,” I said, climbing back to my feet, my left arm completely useless.

  There was a hammering on the door, much louder than a knock.

  Thankfully, Baby healed me, restoring function to my arm.

  “Um guys,” said Baby, peaking out one of the windows. “I think we’re in trouble here.”

  I went to one of the other windows to take a look for myself.

  “Understated much,” said Heath from another window.

  There was an army of dwarves outside the manor.

  “Check the back,” ordered Olaf, his hand cannons out, he was already loading them with shells.

  Heath nodded and ran toward the back of the manor. He returned a minute later. “No good mate, they have us good and surrounded.”

  “Mardi, is there another way out? A secret escape tunnel or something?” I asked, looking to the Duchess for help.

  “Of course there is, follow me,” Mardi said, leading us back to the sitting room we first met in. She twisted a carving on the fireplace, causing the floor of the fireplace to sink into the ground revealing a stairway.

  “They opened the door, go, go, go!” a voice on the other side of the door shouted.

  Olaf cursed, firing both hand-cannons down the stairway. He then lit a bomb and tossed it inside the hole. “Fire in the hole!” he shouted. The bomb exploded, shaking the whole house.

  I looked at the stairway again to see the tunnel it led to had collapsed.

  “Well that is unfortunate,” said Mardi. “Now we are trapped, you big lummox.”

  As if the situation couldn’t get any worse, the sound of breaking wood from the entryway suggested they had finally broken down the door.

  “Run for the stairs, we need to create a choke point,” I ordered, already running out the other door from the sitting room.

  “There they are!” a dwarf shouted, , chasing us as we ran up the stairs.

  “Why are the Stonebreakers here?” Mardi asked as we started up the stairs.

  “Not just them, Cap Alone is here himself,” I said. “I think we know who hired the Ardentia Guild now.”

  “That does not make any sense,” said Mardi. “I have never even met the man. Why would he want me?”

  “Why does any powerful man want a powerful woman? More power,” Heath answered, taking the steps two at a time.

  “Less talking, more moving, we need to get upstairs and into the hallway now,” ordered Rose, her shield slamming against the closest dwarf chasing us. Her hit was a good one too, it knocked the dwarf back and cost him his footing on the stairs. He fell back, knocking down the next two thugs and slowing the small army behind him.

  “Are we really going to fight off an army?” Vari asked, the young dwarf was shaking with fear.

  “If we have to,” said Rose. “That said, I’m sure Bye-bye has a plan.”

  Did I have a plan? Not really. I really was thinking about fighting off a small army of mafioso dwarves.

  “There is another stairway at the other end you morons,” shouted one of the dwarves from the bottom of the stairwell I couldn’t see.

  “And now we’re going to be surrounded,” said Heath.

  “The roof! Is there an access to the roof?” I asked, looking to Mardi again.

  “Yes, this way,” Mardi answered, rushing partway down the hall
and opening a door. She quickly started pulling out brooms and mops and other cleaning implements and throwing them down the hall. “We need to climb.”

  Mardi disappeared into the closet first with Heath right behind her. Olaf, Micaela and Vari followed.

  “Go Jack,” ordered Rose, her shield-wall blocking off the hallway from the advancing dwarves.

  “Back up to the door first,” I said, “I can buy you some time, we just have to be ready to run.”

  “Right, your pigs,” said Rose, referring to my ‘Boar Charge’ spell. She starting to slowly back up toward the door. “Baby, get up there now.”

  “Not yet,” Baby shouted back.

  “Baby, stop arguing and go,” ordered Rose.

  Baby growled and turned to fly up. There were several twang sounds from behind us, I turned just in time to see Baby start falling from the air, riddled with crossbow bolts, her HP was completely zeroed, she fell lifelessly, her body thudding hard on the floor then vanishing.

  Rose cursed and screamed. “Baby! You bastards, I’ll kill you all!” she raged.

  I had to physically drag Rose toward our escape hatch.

  “She’ll respawn, we have to save Mardi and Vari,” I tried to reason with her.

  An explosion rocked the hall, knocking me into the closet, my health plummeting again and my ears ringing.

  “Jack, run,” ordered Rose, through the haze.

  She was quickly overrun, dozens of the Stonebreaker Dwarves swarmed her like bees, her life plummeted and there was nothing I could do. Even my ‘Boar Charge’ spell would probably kill her with friendly fire before she could get away.

  I climbed the ladder as fast as I could, slamming the roof hatch shut behind me.

  “Rose and Baby?” Micaela asked, seeing me alone.

  “Didn’t make it,” I said grimly.

  “They will respawn, where do we go?” Olaf asked.

  “We jump to the next roof,” I said, pointing to the roof of the house next door.

  “What are we waiting for?” Heath asked, as the sound of something pounding on the closed roof hatch began.

  “I’ll tank if it comes to fighting,” I said, equipping my phalanx shield, to be ready.

  “Lead the way, Bye-bye,” said Olaf, aiming his hand-cannons at the roof hatch. “I’ll trail. Vari, you stick next to Bye-bye, heal him as best you can. Mardi next, then Mic and Heath.”

  I nodded my agreement, looking to the next roof. I ran, jumping across the short gap between the buildings, easily landing on the next rooftop.

  I heard Olaf’s cannon firing behind me. Thankfully he was across the roof just after, already reloading his hand-cannons.

  “They are on the roofs,” yelled one of the dwarves from below us.

  “Get ahead of them, kill anyone that gets in the way. I want my fiancé,” ordered the voice of Cap Alone, I had only heard him speak once but I would not forget it anytime soon.

  “Things aren’t looking good, mate,” commented Heath.

  He was right, this certainly felt like a no-win situation. Still, I had to believe there was a way through this. We didn’t come this far in this quest to protect the Duchess only to fail now.

  Ahead of us on the next roof over, three emerged.

  “Kill them fast,” ordered Olaf, charging ahead, his hand-cannons firing, removing almost 70% of the one of the thugs HP, his horns took out the rest as Olaf activated a skill I hadn’t seen before, I could best describe it as a Bull charging.

  I leapt at one of the other two, hammering home with my spear, one-shotting him, a -1423-HP notification floating up from the body, but no skill notification. “Come get me,” I taunted the last one with my ‘Order: Taunt’ spell. I raised my shield just in time to block a swing from one of his two axes. The second axe managed to score a bit of damage, chopping -121-HP from my health, thank goodness Vari was there to heal me or we would be in real trouble. I countered with a ‘Jab’, dealing a -228-HP of damage, it wasn’t much due to the reduced damage of wielding the spear one-handed, but it was plenty to help me keep agro, not that it mattered as Heath appeared from ‘Stealth’, stabbing him in the neck, removing the rest of his HP in one hit.

  “Keep going,” I shouted, running for the next roof. Just as I was about to jump, an explosion was set off behind me, sending me hurtling forward. I landed roughly on the next roof, rolling a few times. I heard the thud of someone landing next to me but the ‘Concussed’ debuff made it hard to tell who it was.

  “You gave us a good chase, lad,” said the familiar voice of Cap Alone. He was close, too close.

  I tried casting a ‘Cleanse’ on myself, hoping against odds it might remove the ‘Concussed’ debuff. No such luck.

  “Why?” I mumbled.

  “What’s that?” Cap asked.

  “Why?” I asked again, slightly clearer though still slurred.

  “This little lady is going to make me a God,” said Cap.

  Through my blurred vision I watched him lift the body that landed next to me over his shoulder. “Bring him,” ordered Cap. I barely registered the quest notification that filled my vision.

  Quest Alert: Guarding the Duchess of Hammertown (Recommended Level 6-8) – Failed!

  You’ve been offered a contract to bodyguard the Duchess for five-days

  Penalty: Enemy of Hammerton, Loss of Reputation with City Watch, Loss of Reputation with Royal Guard.

  I saw several shadows approach me and felt a hard hit to the back of my head then blackness.

  I snapped awake kind of suddenly, jerking back and slamming into hard metal bars.

  “Easy, Bye-bye,” said the voice of Olaf. “You’re alright.”

  “None of this is alright,” snapped Rose, from somewhere nearby.

  I blinked several times, trying to take in my surroundings. If not for my ‘Perception’ subskill ‘Dark Sight’ I am not sure I would have been able to see anything at all. I was in a hanging cage a few feet off the ground. I saw Olaf in a cage to my right and Rose across the room from me. I looked around for my friends and saw they were all here except for Heath.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We were captured, that’s what happened,” snarked Rose irritably. “I respawned in the graveyard and they were waiting for me. Someone shot me with something then I woke up here.”

  “Same thing happened to me,” said Baby.

  “What happened to you after I died?” asked Rose.

  Olaf relayed the story of the chase across the rooftops and the explosion that separated us, including the failed quest notification.

  “I still can’t believe we failed that quest,” said Olaf. “We’ve never failed a quest before . . . and those penalties . . . I just don’t see any way we could have survived that.”

  “What happened to Vari? She was next to me when that explosion went off,” I asked.

  “Not sure if she survived. I saw her roll off the rooftop,” Olaf answered sadly.

  Finally, I asked about our final missing member, “What happened to Heath?”

  Olaf snorted angrily, sounding very much like a bull just then. “That traitor. After the explosion separated us, it was Mic, Heath and I, the Stonebreakers were quick to surround us. Then that traitor, he looks at me and says, ‘Sorry mate, not worth dying over a failed quest, catch ya later.’ Then vanished, he left us there to die.”

  I closed my eyes, it hurt to even hear that. I couldn’t believe Heath would betray us like that.

  “After that, we fought hard, but we were simply overwhelmed. Sent us for respawn,” said Olaf.

  Micaela sobbed.

  “What happened to Micaela?” I asked, concerned for my friend. I had never heard Micaela so sad or down. The woman was usually bottled sunshine.

  Olaf looked remorseful. “She doesn’t know what happened to Vision after we died, worse she hasn’t been able to go into the spirit realm to try and find out. Whatever these cages are made of, they completely nullify magic. Sh
e can’t even talk to the totems in her inventory, all of which are also locked up tight.”

  “I swear, Heath will pay,” said Rose, lashing out.

  I understood her anger. Today had possibly been the worst day of gaming I had ever experienced since I started playing World Tree Online. We lost a major quest and suffered severe penalties for it. We lost our friend to betrayal. And now we were in cages.

  Hanging there in silence I wondered what would happen next to us. When light started filling the room, I looked for the source, a dwarf was entering the dungeon carrying a torch.

  “Much too dark in here, I have told those idiots to leave the lights on when we have prisoners,” grumbled the dwarf, using his torch to light several others spread around the room followed by a brazier in the center of the room. “Ah, that’s better,” said the dwarf, a .

  “Let us out of here,” demanded Rose.

  “Oh, is that all?” the dwarf asked, fiddling with his keys. “It would seem I do not have the key, guess you will just have to hang around until the boss decides what to do with you.”

  “You can’t do this to us,” growled Rose.

  “And what are you going to do about it? Maybe you have not noticed, but you are the prisoner here,” teased the dwarf.

  “Leave us,” said another dwarf, I hadn’t heard coming. This one was rather gaunt looking, thin even. This dwarf wasn’t listed as a random Stonebreaker mafioso, his nameplate called him . He was tall for a dwarf, his long hair looked unkempt too, which didn’t fit for a barber of any kind. His black robes suggested he was something much darker than a simple barber. The only thing that reflected he might be a barber was the obsidian straight razors hanging from his belt.

  The jailor quickly scurried out of the room and hurriedly up the stone steps.

  “I should thank you,” said the Barber, pulling up a chair from the wall. “I knew we would have to deal with the Ardentia if they succeeded, it would have cost us time and resources, but you did the heavy lifting for us. Unfortunately, it also forced our hands. The public daylight abduction of a Duchess is no small thing. Even now, I have no doubt the Royal Guard and the City Watch are scrambling to find us. They won’t, but they will try.”