Tinker, Tailor, Giant, Dwarf ( LitRPG Series): Difficulty:Legendary Book 2

by Gregg Horlock

  I took the Old Serpent’s Sting out of my bag and handed it to Ozreal. He seemed reluctant to take it at first, but I pressed it into his hand.

  “I’m going to try something,” I said. “But if this doesn’t work, you have to keep going. Take the dagger to the Greyes and have them destroy it.”

  5HP lost (Total: 65 / 152)

  “We’re not leaving you, Janus,” said Smoglar.

  I fixed him a stern stare and then spoke to him, my voice resolute. “This is about more than just us. If we all die here, the dagger will be left on the steps for anyone to find it. That can’t happen. Run, and make sure you get to the top.”

  “But-”

  Smoglar didn’t have time to finish his sentence, because Dereck grabbed him and pulled him away.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” said Ozreal.

  With that, I listened as my friends ran up the steps. They had to make it, and I hoped this would give them enough time.

  The lavaguanas were five steps away from me now. Seeing that I had stopped, they moved forward warily, slithering up the stone. Their eyes were fixed on me, and I saw forked tongues curl out of their mouths.

  I stared at them. Another message flagged up to tell me I had lost HP, but I ignored it. I tuned every out around me until I could see nothing but the beasts advancing toward me.

  I opened my mouth and started to speak. I imagined how the lavaguanas would sound when they communicated with each other, and I pictured myself making the same sounds. I felt my words twist into their minds.

  Suddenly, the lead lavaguana stopped. Seeing that, the rest of them stopped too, until they all just sat and stared at me. When I saw that they weren’t going to advance, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Animal Whisper successful

  Animal Whispering increased by 20% (35% until level 3)

  Seeing that the creatures weren’t going to attack me, I turned and ran up the steps. I was racing against my own health bar now, and every ten metres closer to the summit I got, my health dropped.

  When I finally reached the top step my HP was just 10, and I knew I wouldn’t make it. My stamina dropped to zero, and I lost my balance, falling onto the stone and hearing my nose crack.

  Then a hand grabbed me and dragged me to my feet. I saw Smoglar in front of me. Behind him, resting at the top of the mountain, was the home of the Greyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The air at the top of the peak was cold, but at least it didn’t drain my HP as I gulped it. I got to my feet and looked around. We stood on the peak of the Assipian Mountain. Smogashe valley was behind us, and I watched as the lavaguanas scuttled down the steps and then across the hard crags. A shot of lava lit the sky, making a slow arc until it reached its peak and then fell back to the earth.

  If I took the health that my friends had left, tipped it in a vial and then drank it, it still wouldn’t have been enough to fill mine completely. It was lucky that the lavaguanas were gone because in our current state we couldn’t handle even one of them between us.

  I looked beyond my friends and at the home of the Greyes not far away. It truly was amazing. On either side of the entrance were two giant statues of men wearing robes that covered their eyes. In their hands they held torches, and I saw that flames twisted at the ends, burning strong despite the winds around us. The mouth of the structure was dark and gave little clue to what lay beyond. The guild house itself was made of stone and it stretched high up above us. Ivy was twisted on the surface, and etchings were carved into the rock. It gave it the feel of a primitive temple, although I knew that the Greyes hadn’t been around that long.

  “Let’s go inside,” said Smoglar. “I’m freezing.”

  We followed a path that was cut into the surface of the mountain. It made a slight curve over the stone and up to the guild house entrance. As we approached, I saw that a man was sat outside. Despite the cold, he only wore a robe that was in tatters, and his bare feet stuck out from the end of it. His face was covered in dirt.

  I looked at him, and I realised it was the beggar I had seen back in Dry Gulch, and again in Iskarg. The first time, he’d asked me for money and I had obliged. Was he following me?

  “Spare some CR?” he said.

  “How the hell did you get up here?” I asked.

  The beggar shrugged his shoulders. “If you need something enough, you’ll make the journey.”

  I didn’t understand. If it had taken us an airship to get here, how had the beggar made it on foot, and how could he possibly have gotten through Smogashe valley?

  That was a question for later. I looked ahead and saw the shadows of the Greye guild house. The darkness seemed to cling to the doorway as though it was made of something dense, and I couldn’t see beyond it. From inside, I heard a humming noise.

  I took 10CR and some rat meat and skin out of my bag and handed it to him.

  “You can cook the meat and sell the skin,” I said. “Good luck to you.”

  “And good luck to you, Janus.”

  I turned to face him. I had never told him my name. My pulse started to fire, and for a brief second, I wondered if he was a Serpent assassin sent to kill me. But if that was the case, he could have tried it in Dry Gulch or Iskarg, and he hadn’t.

  “The Greyes know we’re here,” said Ozreal, peering into the darkness ahead.

  The sound of humming grew until I realised that it was made by a collection of human voices. I turned away from the beggar and took a step toward the entrance. Now that we were here, there was something strange about it. I was aware that the Greyes had purposefully made their home difficult to find, and that they might not welcome my presence here.

  “There’s always the chance they’ll be hostile,” I said, facing my friends.

  “If that’s the case,” said Smoglar, “It’s too late for that. We’re on their doorstep.”

  “I suspect that if they meant us harm, we’d have felt it already. The Greye guild doesn’t procrastinate,” said Ozreal.

  This was it, then. It was time to meet the Greye guild that I had heard so much about. I climbed the final step in front of me and then stood at the entrance. The darkness was so close that I could feel it, yet I still couldn’t see anything beyond. Taking a deep breath, I walked through. It was like breaking a screen of cobwebs, except after I had stepped through it, nothing clung to my skin.

  The humming sound abruptly stopped. We found ourselves in a room made of cold stone that had a golden hue to it. The ceiling was fifty feet above us, giving the interior a grand feel. Archways connected cylinder pillars together and supported the structure. Someone had carved symbols into them. I didn’t know what they meant, but their style reminded me of the ones I had seen on the cover of the book in the library.

  It was a far cry from the house of the Tinkers guild. The Greyes had built their base in such a way that it seemed like it had been standing for centuries. It felt like it was a natural part of the mountain around it, rather than just a building placed on top.

  Across the room where the long floor seemed to end, a chain hung from the ceiling. On the end of it was a giant blue stone that glowed. The chains were wrapped around it, holding it in place, and the edge of the stone was suspended two feet above the stone floor.

  On either side of us were small flights of steps that led up to mini archways. When I looked to my left, I saw that robed figures now watched us, with one stood in each archway. To our right was the same thing.

  “Why do I suddenly feel trapped?” asked Dereck.

  The robes ones made no indication of moving, yet there was something sinister about the way they watched us. I became aware that we’d come here uninvited and probably unwanted, and that the Greye guild might not want to talk to us.

  I pulled my dagger out and equipped it. No sooner was it in in my hand than one of the robed figures raised his arm in the air. As he did, a blue light drained from the giant stone suspended from chains. It drifted across the room and soaked into the figur
e’s fingertips. The figure pointed at me, and I felt my dagger fly out of my hand and then clatter across the room.

  Smoglar gripped his axe and Derek held his sword. We looked at each other, realising that in our haste to destroy the Old Serpent’s Sting we’d made a fatal assumption; one that relied on the fact that the Greyes had helped defeat Necrolor. Just because back then they had assisted the Halons, it didn’t mean that the Greyes were a force for good.

  The rest of the figures drained blue light from the stone. Seconds later Smoglar’s axe flew from his hands, and Derek lost his grip on his sword. The trinket around Ozreal’s neck was dragged over his head and thrown across the room.

  I pulled a bomb out of my bag. Without giving them time to drain from the stone, I lit it. As the fuse burned, I wondered where to throw it. There was a row of the figures on either side of us, and I knew that as soon as I hit one of them, the other row would turn on me. In the end, it didn’t matter which side I chose because the odds were stacked overwhelmingly against us.

  I turned to my right and went to throw the bomb. Just as I lifted my arm, I felt the fuse fizzle out and the bomb casing shattered, covering my shoulder in gunpowder.

  “You’ll have no need for that today,” said a voice.

  Footsteps came from the direction of the entrance and then echoed toward us through the room. I saw a figure come our way, and as they got closer, I realised that it was the beggar. He walked until he was just a few feet away and then drew back his hood.

  I had never seen him properly before. Now that I did, I saw that one side of his face was covered in blue tattoos. They weren’t of pictures or symbols but instead were rows of small blue spheres. I didn’t have time to count them, but I guessed that there must have been nearly fifty. With his hood drawn back, he looked much younger, probably around the age of my brother Thomas.

  He turned to face the hooded figures who watched us.

  “Reveal yourselves,” he said.

  I heard a rustling sound as all the figures drew their hoods back at once. When they did, I saw that they were men and women of all ages and all races, from human to elf to dwarf. All of them had blue spheres tattooed on their faces, and the further down the line I looked, the fewer spheres they seemed to have. A man at the end only had one.

  “You’re wondering how they took your weapons from you,” said the man.

  “We’re wondering a lot of things, beggar,” answered Smoglar. His face was red and he looked ready to right. Although I was glad to see my friend start to return to his old self, this was not the place.

  The man ignored Smoglar and instead stared at Ozreal.

  “You know, don’t you, mage?” he asked.

  Ozreal nodded his head. “I do.”

  “Go ahead. You may speak my name.”

  “Helblake Crowley.”

  Helblake solemnly raised his hands in the air. The room around us was almost silent, save for a faint murmur as the figures watching us began their hypnotic humming again. As Helblake held his arms above him, he gave us an appraising look and then opened his mouth.

  “Ding ding ding,” he shouted, smiling at Ozreal. “Ten points to the winner who knows my name!”

  The humming stopped, and then I heard the figures around us titter.

  “Oh come on,” said Helblake. “Lighten up a little, will you? Hardly anyone finds their way up here, and I’m tired of messing around with this lot. I like a joke from time to time, so what?”

  Then he looked around. “Come on guys,” he said. “Don’t you all have things to do? Get to it, chop chop.” He clapped his hands together to hurry his guild members out of the room, and the figures under the archways dispersed.

  While the guild around us became a hub of activity, Helblake turned to us and pointed.

  “Let me guess,” he said, half-closing his eyes. “Ozreal, Janus, Smoglar, Feidan and Dereck, right?”

  I looked at him strangely.

  “I must be psychic,” said Helblake.

  “Our names are written above our heads,” I said.

  “Nothing gets by you, tinker. I also do card tricks and knife throwing. I like to perform for the guild officers sometimes; it helps keep morale up. You wouldn’t believe how much it can sap when you’re so isolated. The lads and lasses have been excited to see you.”

  “Excited, how?” asked Feidan.

  “We’ve known you were coming for days,” said Helblake. “Yurol spotted your airship a hundred miles beyond Iskarg. Besides, your path has been leading you here for a long time, Janus. I was starting to wonder how long it would take you.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “You saw me in Dry gulch, and then in Iskarg, remember?”

  “I remember,” I said. “So you’ve been following us?”

  He nodded. “I have. But come, I can see you’re all in a sorry state. Follow my friends through the arches and they’ll heal you.”

  I knew my health bar was worryingly low. For a second I wondered how we were going to leave this place without the airship, but I knew that question would have to wait. Smoglar looked at me warily.

  “It’s okay,” said Helblake. “If we wanted to hurt you, you would already be a pile of ash. And I’m sorry about your hand, dwarf. Some of my friends are great healers, but alas, they won’t be able to give you a new hand. The best we can promise is a full health bar.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, looking at Smoglar. “We could use some healing.”

  We started to walk up toward the archways when Helblake placed his hand on my shoulder. “Not you, Janus. You and I have a lot to talk about. Come.”

  As my group walked up to the archways, Helblake walked across the room. I followed him until we stood in front of the blue stone that hung from the ceiling. Far away it had seemed to glow, but as we got closer I saw that it was dull, and it radiated a sense of cold. My friends were gone now, leaving just Helblake and I stood in the room.

  “You’re here about the dagger, aren’t you?” he said.

  “You know about that?”

  “The Greyes have known about it for a while. We knew that it was lost, but had no idea when it would resurface. We never imagined it would fall into the hands of a tinker.”

  “I was a little surprised myself.”

  Helblake turned and stared at me. “But you’re not just a tinker, are you?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s so much more to you, Janus.”

  There were so many mysteries in Re:Fuze, and I was beginning to have my fill of them. It seemed that everyone wanted to talk cryptically, from the mystery viewer who watched me, to the note that told me to find Ozreal. For once, I just wished someone would speak plainly.

  “I can see you want answers,” said Helblake. “I might not have them all, but maybe I can illuminate something. Tell me, what’s your motivation?”

  I wondered what he meant. I had a quest log full of things to do, and I wondered if he could see them. I decided that there was no point hiding anything from him.

  “I want to kill Herelius Rouge.”

  “No small feat,” said Helblake. “But that’s your goal; not your motivation. Why do you want to kill him?”

  “He murdered me on my first playthrough,” I said.

  “You were called Chimera at the time, weren’t you?”

  How did he know that? Did he know everything? I nodded. “That was my name, but it was short-lived.”

  “So you are driven by hate, is that fair to say?”

  I guessed I was. I hated Herelius for killing me when I was a newbie. It was the sheer arrogance of it, and the complete lack of empathy. I hadn’t asked to stumble on his conspiracy, and at the time, all I had wanted was to play the game. He could have spared me and let me walk away, but he chose to kill me. I felt my cheeks flush with anger.

  “Fury won’t take you very far,” said Helblake, “except down a path filled with darkness. But you’ve heard those words already, haven’
t you? There’s something in you, Janus; a light. But I need to see if it’s the right kind.”

  The stone in front of us started to glow. I heard a sound come from it, but it wasn’t a hum this time. It was more like the sound of hundreds of voices whispering all at once, so many that they drowned out each other’s words. I sensed danger from the stone, and I backed away from it.

  “When we choose people to join us, we make them touch this mineral. We call it the Judgement Stone. Now, we’re not stupid. We know it doesn’t have a mind of its own. Yet it has powers. Those who wish to join the Greyes must touch the stone.”

  Putting my hand on the stone seemed like the last thing I’d want to do. “And then what happens?” I asked.