Crystalfire Keep

by J. A. Cipriano

  While I’m normally on your wavelength, Max, Kayla chimed in, can we afford to waste that much time? Changing Gems isn’t a quick process in a fight. If we at least start with someone socketing them, the worst that happens is that they have to get moved and exchanging Gems is no faster or slower than putting one in alone.

  She wasn’t wrong, and I found myself nodding to her suggestion.

  Crysta finished her last buff, summoning Loi again as a Water Weird again. So, like, who has some slots they could clear safely without totally mucking up their build? The whole harmony thing makes me think the stones should be together in some way. Her gaze danced between Vanni, Kayla, and me, her thumb rubbing her Ring of Promise again.

  Memories of our trials in the Vale of the Three Wolves ran through my mind. All the Lykos packs and their beliefs on harmony, everything the One, the three-headed spirit they revered, told us, it all replayed itself and inspiration struck. I found myself staring at my open palm, eyes focused on my own Ring of Promise. Could that be the answer … or at least an answer?

  I’ve got an idea. I clenched my first and looked around at the Knights, all eyes now on me. Kayla and I, we have a Gem socket each that is, well, fused between us. It’s a whole Promised thing, and I don’t think the Filter will let me say more than that.

  Oh. Vanni was rubbing her chin. I wondered if that’s what was going on with that Boulder Hurl thing.

  What Crysta said next probably turned to Filter-speak to most of our friends, but I know Kayla and I got it loud and clear. Totally cool! Vanni and I picked Stronger Bonds at Trust 25. That was when our Rings went gold, which considering someone always wanted gold rings …

  It was a happy accident, Vanni smiled thinly.

  So, for those of us that just got an earful of farm animals, Dunya griped, I’m going to guess that when you mentioned this fused slot thing that you think that you’ll socket one of the stones and Kayla’ll socket the other in your super-special love place?

  Merina palmed her face as a cascade of groans echoed from the others. That is such a terrible way to put that, kiddo.

  Dunya seemed proud of herself even as I found myself flushing a little as I answered. Yeah, basically, though with a lot less sexual innuendo.

  It’s as good a plan as any, boss, Burndall announced. No one else has a better idea, do they?

  No one did.

  Kayla squeezed my shoulder and smiled. Let’s do it then.

  I passed her the Elohjin Lightstone as I changed out the Boulder Hurl Gem for the Zoajin Darkstone. I simply couldn’t think of Kayla in any other way than a light in my life now, an angel as I said before, so giving her the black void of the Darkstone simply could not compute. Where the Boulder Hurl icon had been on my hotbar, there was now an utterly black icon of the Darkstone itself, with no tooltips or any feedback if I mentally prodded it. The moment after Kayla socketed the Lightstone into her own Ring of Promise, both Rings let out a spark for a brief moment as a faintly glowing golden icon of the Lightstone appeared above the Darkstone icon, the now-familiar chain link joining them.

  Your Zoajin Darkstone and Kayla’s Elohjin Lightstone are now Fused!

  The effects of this Gem Fusion are unknown. Currently, both stones are inert, so they will have no effect if used at this moment. This tooltip will update as new information is discovered.

  “Well,” I muttered aloud, “that’s cryptic.”

  “But it worked, after a fashion,” Kayla added before dropping back to the raid chat. If the stones couldn’t be used as Active Abilities, we couldn’t have been put into the Fusion sockets.

  Then we must have faith that we’ll figure it out, Vindril proclaimed with a firm nod. Lead the way, sarge.

  I nodded firmly and smiled at Kayla. “Take us away, Mina.”

  She returned my nod, took a centering breath, and wove the intricate motions of the Portal spell. The watery disc popped into existence before us and, ready for anything, we plunged through, back into Crystalfire Keep for our final battle.

  24

  Though the Keep’s rally room was now opened to the rest of the place and manned by Four Kingdoms soldiers, we didn’t stop to take in the scene. A good five minutes or more had slipped away while we had sorted ourselves and decided the dispensation of the ancient weapons. Time was of the essence as we rushed down the stairs into the Knight-Commander’s quarters. The Wardstone Chamber Keystone materialized in my hands as Sir Copperholt, waiting by the hatch to the lower levels, was already talking in our general direction.

  “Oh, good!” he proclaimed. “You’ve arrived. As you can see …”

  I ignored the aging knight as I think we all did. As he continued to prattle behind us, we didn’t need his narration to see things were exactly as the Mountain King had told us. Bright, flickering shafts of light shot from the slight gap under the trapdoor and the entire thing radiated a fierce heat, baking temperatures that reminded me of our trek through the Western Desert of the Fire Sultanate. As if to emphasize the urgency of the situation, the hatch rattled, a faint hiss of steam and smoke puffing out of one side in an imitation of a pressure cooker.

  The only reason I didn’t sear my hand opening the thing was that it, like the portcullises downstairs, opened under its own magic the moment I pressed the keystone into the socket on the edge closest to us. The moment the lid popped open, a furious gout of black-cored flame, a wisp of the Flames of Wrath, blasted up out of the hole, roaring up through the staircase and into the rally room above. The Fire-Modded Elemental Bulwark Vanni had put up was the only thing that left our eyebrows intact and our Health Points untouched.

  “This is so not good,” Crysta shouted above the roar of flames. “Like, totally the opposite of good!”

  Though the initial spurt of fire passed, intense heat continued to roil up from below. It was only by a miracle (or developer intervention) that the metal staircase hadn’t melted yet. From the hissing and popping, it was only a matter of moments before another burst shot up from below.

  “Shields?” Merina asked, her athletic frame already coiling to begin a dance.

  Vanni and I nodded in synch. “Shields,” I said, “and layer them.”

  Kayla spun her Elementium Staff to Support mode as she began conjuring Ice Shields on across the raid as Crysta fired a charged arrow upward, the arrowhead bursting into a swirling Wind Wall that wrapped around us. To finish the layers, Merina moved through the Waltz of the Diamond Princess, the air around us crystallizing into one more shield.

  That amounted to almost thirty percent of our maximum Health in Damage Shields and a flat thirty percent off ranged attacks. If that didn’t get us down the stairs, well, we were already screwed.

  “Let’s move it!”

  With that, I rushed down the winding, white-hot stairs, every step letting out a sizzle as my Elementium greaves hit the glowing metal. The footing felt soft, and I feared that each and every motion would send the entire thing collapsing to the bottom of the stairwell, a distant twinkling fire below. Every few feet did set off a flash of Fire damage, the immense heat eating at our layers of protection.

  You gain the Bane ‘Overheat’! For every 2 seconds you remain in this area, you will suffer 0.5% Fire Damage!

  The crystallized air began to crack, and water streamed off the icy crust over our bodies, even as the swirling winds tried to cool the air. The ruby glow of the Elemental Bulwark was constant, never fading from the constant press of heat against it. Still, things held together as we passed what I figured had to be the halfway point, from the level of the courtyard and into the depths.

  The increase in popping and crackling below us made me think that our luck was about to fall apart. That constant glow at the base of the stairs pulsed with a sickly black color for a moment before swelling like a baleful star. A wash of heat flew over us, and a column of fire was, pardon the pun, hot on its heels.

  Ingrained reflexes took over and even though I wasn’t sure if it would help, considering our unusua
l position. I took a step and thrust my brand-new shield downward, invoking my Walking Wall Gem. Vanni had the same idea, throwing her shield downward at a slightly different angle, trying to keep our Walking Walls overlapped while still covering more area. The two protective auras barely snapped into place when the Flames of Wrath struck.

  Our shields began to glow with the infernal heat and the remaining protective spells around Vanni and I shattered under the onslaught, but the Walls held. Spurts of flame licked around the edges of the overlapped wards, skittering up the crystalline shaft and scorching the rock, but no one behind us was hurt, safe behind us. The concentrated burst only lasted for a split-second, but to me, it felt like minute had passed under the blasted heat.

  “I can reshield on the move,” Merina called out as we dropped the Walls to push on. She had a point, the Overheat Bane was still active, so Vanni and I would start taking damage any second.

  Kayla overruled that in a moment. “That’ll hit your EP too hard! We have a whole fight ahead. I’ll spot shield.” She was already throwing an Ice Shield on me as she spoke. “Go! I’ll catch up.”

  As the soothing cold washed over me, I nodded. “You heard the lady.” I stared down again, trying to take the steps as fast I as I could. Though Merina bit her lip, she didn’t object and kept up with everyone else as we went.

  Kayla dropped from the middle of the raid to being left behind as she wove a second Ice Shield on Vanni, but I fought the urge to look back again. Trust, that was what I had drilled into my head time and time again, and it was the watchword I now tried to live by not just in my relationship with Mina, but with all my friends and family, old and new. She said she would catch up, that she would be fine, so I trusted in that.

  How she did it was a bit of a surprise, though.

  As we rounded into the last section of stairs, emerging from the narrow tube of the stairwell into an immense chamber that had to be the wardstone room, an echoing cry of “Look out below!” rang down from above.

  I barely had a chance to look up before Kayla hurtled past me, her body pulled into a foot-first arrow, her hands pressed to her skirts to keep her robe from flaring around her. I don’t think any of us had a thing to say, especially with what awaited us below, and nothing was necessary to say as Kayla shouted an arcane word once she was in sight of the scorched ground, a flash punctuating her Dimension Door as she teleported right to the ground.

  “Show off!” Dunya shouted as we barreled down the rest of the stairs. Despite the blistering heat filling the room, somehow it felt more, well, regulated here and the Overheat Bane passed as we came out of the stairwell. Though her mouth was open behind her scarf to say something else, Dunya’s words died in her throat as we made the last turn to take in the full extent of the room we were in and more importantly what was inside of it.

  As I first noted, it was immense, and unlike the upper Keep, it was more natural, less shaped and sculpted by Craggar hands. No doubt before the mighty conflagration at the center of the room, the glowing quartz walls were cruder and faceted. Now, though, the intense heat had melted and smoothed the crystal, giving the walls and ceilings an oddly glassy appearance, only serving to make the already-wild light thrown off by the flames a dizzying kaleidoscope.

  Dominating the center of the room were two equally impressive things, the things that cut off Dunya’s words and left us all a little speechless. Rising up as from the floor, an extension of the glowing rock more than a separate artifact, was a towering spire of pulsing, faceted stone, the great Wardstone of Crystalfire Keep. Unlike the walls and ceiling, the wardstone had not partially melted from the heat and its inner light, while still flashing with chaotic colors, was untainted by streamers of corruption as the rest of the Keep was. For now, the mighty magics worked into it held fast but with what surrounded the spire, that was a hold that wouldn’t last long.

  For around the wardstone danced a fire of an intensity and fury I had only seen gazing out from the Flameward Bridge into the Rift. Ever-changing, red-orange flames that roared around a core of oily black, what lay before us was more than a manifestation of the Flames of Wrath, one of the four Elements of Conflict that kept Elementalis asunder. This was the Flames themselves or at least some core of it, something I knew from the wave of pure, unchecked anger that washed over us as the nameplate above the inferno came into resolution.

  The Heart of Wrath, Element of Conflict hovered above the swirling curtain of flames as some dark shape seemed to coalesce in its heart, like a horned skull, indistinct and shadowy even as two eyes of sickly blue-green flame came to life with it.

  “And so the ignorance and hubris of the Mountain King show their heads again,” a booming voice, rustling and crackling like a fire itself, echoed through the chamber. “More fuel for me, more hate and anger and misunderstanding of what lay before your mortal eyes!”

  Those baleful eyes seemed to focus on our little band as we struggled to move despite our every intention. I couldn’t speak for the others, but the raw force of the Heart’s malice pressed on my heart, even though my logical mind deduced it was an effect impressed by the NSAF gear’s tendrils in my brain

  “Why do you struggle against your natures, little elements?” the voice continued. “Even the Primal Light falters in the end, as did the Elohjin did when they waged war with the Zoajin, only for the cause of their opposite natures. It is no different with you little ones. Each of your Four Kingdoms, your very elemental spirits lay in opposition, in conflict with another. Give into your wrath at those who oppose you and give yourself over to conflict.”

  The dark shape seemed to draw closer, and I could see it had shadowy wings as well and was the size of two men with four times the wingspan. “Embrace us and never fear to be taken from the Cycle. Deny us and fall to the corruption regardless, as the Primals did before you!”

  To my surprise, as the wash of emotion that kept us in check faded, we didn’t immediately move into normal play. Instead, we shifted into an NPC dialogue interface, except we were all in focus as a guild, with only two glowing options laid out above the Heart of the Flame’s burning shape. Embrace or resist.

  Raid quest ‘The Flames of Wrath’ updated!

  Updated objective: Cleanse the Flames of Wrath -OR- Embrace the Flames of Wrath!

  Even in what seemed to be so straight-forward a moment, the developers offered a choice. That was the heart of EO, wasn’t it? They made this game so you could choose. Choose your avatar, choose your path, choose your goal, choose your friends, and even choose how you ended the story. Every task set before us, I began to realize, had a thousand ways to overcome them, through knowledge, through power, through creative Gem use, or through teamwork.

  Maybe this was a choice that ended with the same result. Maybe you had to fight the Heart either way, but I didn’t put it past K-Pat and his devilish masterminds to allow that option, the quick and easy exit by doing the wrong thing, giving in to the bad guy but getting a quick time to finish this wing of the dungeon. Who knew what the repercussions of that would be though and, oddly, could you live with yourself with that choice when the NSAF gear made this all feel so real, right down to the emotions funneled right into your nervous system?

  I took a deep breath and took in the moment. No one immediately shouted out an answer. Even Dunya seemed to be reflecting on everything to this point, a remarkable talent for someone her age. As I let it sink in, I noticed that on my hotbar, a small sliver of a color was starting to fill the chained icons of the Darkstone and the Lightstone, every so slowly growing with the moment.

  My eyes immediately turned to Kayla, the rest of the world around us out of focus and seemingly slowed, even the fire barely moving. Her blue eyes locked with my gaze and I knew she had seen the same thing I had, a thin, hard smile of determination forming on her lips. Turning the rest of the way, I looked over our entire band.

  Misfits, castoffs, fanboys, rebels, rich kids, poor folks, too young, too old, too different. All accurate w
ords to describe us. That made me smile a little more as I said, “So, do we give it the answer we know is right or do we take the easy way out? Do we beat this thing, or do we take the quick win to save a few minutes on our timer?”

  Crysta bit her lip, knowing what was at stake. Vanni found her Promised’s hand and squeezed it hard. The Ranger glanced over at the shorter woman and nodded. “Like, this rotting banana flinger can go to Sea World! Let’s kick him between the uprights!”

  Burndall laughed wildly at that before grinning fiercely. “We didn’t come this far to shake hands with the bad guys.”

  “Race you to cut him in half first?” Dunya quipped as she drew her scimitar.

  “Only if you slowpokes somehow beat me to him,” Vindril grunted before nodding to me. “Quit isn’t a word they taught me up above, Shale, old geezer or not.”

  “You know I’m with you, Mr. Shale, whatever path that is.” Nahma’s expression was strangely serious as he drew his daggers. “Even if that’s into the mouth of the beast itself.”

  Wazif laughed, the polar opposite of his former Guildmaster. “While I don’t think I share that flair for the dramatic, this thing sounds like so many other horrible people I meet every day, above the dive and in it. I’m sick of sitting back and taking it. Let’s do something about it for once.”

  “My dances aren’t for anger or strife,” Merina smiled. “They’re to help my friends and make people happy.”

  The resolve of my friends made my heart swell and my lips curl into a grin. Their thoughts and intentions mirrored my own as I turned back towards the Heart. “That says it all, I think. We’re not going to stand by and let you destroy this world. I for one have seen the power of harmony and the truth in love so we deny you!”