Guilds at War
The Eternal Journey, Book Four
By C.J. Carella
Published by Fey Dreams Productions, LLC
Copyright @ 2020 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact [email protected]
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This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Books by C.J. Carella
The Eternal Journey
Twilight Templar
Lord of the Dead
Labyrinth to Tartarus
Guilds at War
Court of Thorns (forthcoming)
Warp Marine Corps
Decisively Engaged
No Price Too High
Advance to Contact
In Dread Silence
Havoc of War
Warp Marine Corps (The Complete Series)
The Bicentennial War
To the Strongest
They Shall Not Pass
Victory or Death
The Bicentennial War (The Complete Series)
New Olympus Saga:
Armageddon Girl
Doomsday Duet
Apocalypse Dance
The Ragnarok Alternative
New Olympus Tales:
The Armageddon Girl Companion
A Crucible of Worlds
Outlands Justice
Short Story Collections
Land of Gods and Monsters
Heroes and Rogues
Beyonder Wars:
Bad Vibes (Short Story)
Shadowfall: Las Vegas
Dante’s Demons
Prologue
Huntmaster Laryn still remembered being alive.
His old state of being had not been exactly pleasant. Few of the Fae knew much joy, only brief episodes of pleasure while watching the suffering or downfall of others, or indulging in some decadent pursuit. Such feelings never lasted long, being quickly replaced by an emptiness that demanded to be filled but rarely was. Their near-eternal lives were spent chasing one fleeting high point after another, always wanting more. Nevertheless, it had been preferable to his current state.
As an Unliving, he no longer felt anything. Even the urge to serve his creators lacked any passion. It was merely a drive that only resembled hunger because it needed to be satiated, but brought no sense of satisfaction or even closure. Even the brief moments of joy of his previous existence were denied to him. He did as he was told, and neither the magnitude of his accomplishments or the suffering they inflicted on others brought about any sense of victory or regret. On the few occasions when he had enough time and leisure for contemplation, Laryn examined his previous existence with what one might call it yearning, although that was too strong a word.
He had been defeated, suffering a reversal so complete that it would have driven his old self into a murderous rampage, or even to seek his own destruction. Here and now, he simply reported his failure and awaited new orders. The remnants of the Fae he had been were deep inside him, howling in utter torment, but they did not concern him. He used them to empower certain abilities, that was all.
Suspended in utter darkness, with only the Maker’s presence to keep him company, he finished the report. The initially-successful invasion of the Labyrinth had collapsed. Interlopers severed his connection to the Dungeon that he had used as a beachhead into the Infernal Realm, cutting off reinforcements. Laryn had barely managed to escape. When he finished telling the tale, the Maker revealed the identity of the architect of his defeat. It had been the same Fae half-blood who had destroyed his army of Wild Sidhe in the Green Cauldron.
If he had been able to feel anger, Laryn would have raged against Hawke Lightseeker. As it was, he simply noted that defeating the Champion of Order would require greater efforts on his part.
New instructions were delivered to him, imprinted directly into his mind without the use of words, a procedure his former self would have found agonizing. Powerful spells and enchantments were woven into his body, designed to hide his true nature from all but the most powerful senses. Others protected him from the wards and inscriptions designed to destroy his kind. After the process was complete, Laryn was transported near the mortal city of Akila, where he would prepare the way for a Great Plague of Undeath.
And, incidentally, where he would confront Hawke Lightseeker for the third and final time.
* * *
Desmond the Destroyer woke up from one nightmare to another.
“Wakey-wakey!” Leara said, her piercing voice almost as painful as the poke with a sharp dagger she delivered at the same time. She liked to use the weapon as her version of an alarm clock. Desmond was usually awake before his mistress, but whenever she got up before he did, the hateful voice and a couple of dagger prods made his mistake painfully clear.
Desmond rolled out of the large circular bed that Leara took with her everywhere she went. The two minor wounds she’d inflicted on his hide – five and six damage, respectively – were healed before he was done summoning his gear from his Bonded Vault. The pain wasn’t a big deal, not anymore. Desmond had learned the hard way just how much agony he could tolerate. He followed the Fae out of her tent, a huge colorful thing that wouldn’t have been out of place in a circus. Leara made a gesture, and the forty-foot wide contraption promptly disappeared into her Vault. You didn’t need an inn when you traveled with the Grinning Dancer.
Today, Leara had chosen to look like a blonde girl, human and athletic. The Cheerleader, she called the persona, using the English word. She spoke English as well as a native, and claimed to have lived on Earth for decades, running assorted missions for her lords and masters. Desmond watched her Glamour with mild interest. She had used sex to entice him into her service, but after he had sworn the right oaths, she only slept with him when it suited her, and it wasn’t always a pleasant experience. Leara liked to play some bizarre games.
With another gesture, she summoned a pair of Fae Warhorses, massive beasts with wide mouths full of sharp teeth that betrayed their carnivorous nature. Desmond had seen one of those things bite off the head of an Orc Berserker a couple of weeks ago, when a group of bandits had unwisely decided to attack Leara and her manservant. Riding one of those monsters was like surfing a tsunami wave. They moved as fast as a car, except cars didn’t pummel your ass with every massive step they took. The mounts shimmered for a second before assuming the appearance of normal-looking riding horses, although Desmond knew that was just an illusion, a Glamour, just like Leara’s appearance or the name, species and stats on the status box floating over her head.
Over the past few weeks, Desmond had learned that the Fae lived in an ever-shifting dream state, reshaping their environment as it suited them. Their world was full of lies, and the worst part was that those lies often became reality. And he was trapped, sworn into the service of a High Sidhe, the worst of their kind. He felt a panic attack coming up.
Trapped! Can’t get out! Can’t leave!
“You’re upset,” Leara said, sounding concerned. Another lie.
“No, I’m good,” Desmond said, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. If he lost his cool, she would punish him.
“Here.” She handed him a small flask. “Drink this.”
He did. The fru
it-flavored liquid had as much alcoholic content as eighty-proof vodka; he felt it burn all the way down his throat and chest. That wasn’t the only ingredient, though. The potion numbed his fear and despair, made them something remote, detached. He stopped caring about being bound body and soul to a cruel and possibly insane Fae woman. Everything was okay. He had gained a lot of levels and some great gear in her service. He was okay.
“Better?”
He nodded, and she ran her fingers lightly over his face.
“Good. Maybe after today’s ride, I’ll let you ride me for a bit. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” he found himself saying. “Very much so.”
“You’re so cute. Now, get on your horsey. We are going East!”
“As you wish.” She liked that phrase from The Princess Bride a lot.
He didn’t ask her why they were going east. He had quickly learned not to ask too many questions. After recruiting him, she had taken him to a Dwarven city, where they had murdered a merchant and his bodyguards. Then they had traveled north, among the Orc nomads that dominated the plains there. They had infiltrated one of their gatherings and killed a Shaman who had been forging a great alliance of tribes. After that, they had wandered around, doing nothing specific besides engaging in some recreational serial-killing. The victims were people who weren’t likely to be missed. Travelers, prostitutes, beggars. Leara didn’t care, just as long as she could entertain herself with some casual torture-murder.
Trapped. Can’t get out.
The thoughts were still there, but the potion made them distant, less urgent. He only wished that the numbness would last forever.
“We are going to the Ruby Empire,” Leara deigned to explain. “To the city of Akila. You remember the place, don’t you?”
“Yes.” That was where everything had fallen apart. He and Nadia had been a team until they went to that cursed city and she had abandoned him.
“It’s going to be an old-fashioned reunion,” she went on. “Hawke Lightseeker is headed there as well. Wait until he gets a load of you.”
Desmond no longer recognized the face he saw in the mirror, except on the days when Leara made him look like his own self. The things she had done to him had changed him irrevocably, both physically and mentally. Regardless, the thought of seeing Hawke again brought a smile to his face.
He might be trapped. But he would enjoy getting some payback.
One
“This isn’t working!” Hawke shouted as he held on for dear life at two thousand feet.
Killing it a little too fast. The sudden lurch flung Hawke against the improvised leather and steel harness keeping him attached to the Drakofox. For a sickening second, he felt himself sliding free of the straps, but a quick grab at the handles in front of him – they weren’t reins; Blaze went where he wanted, and Hawke could make suggestions, that was all – prevented him from falling off. At their current altitude, Blaze would have about fifteen seconds to catch him before he hit the ground. The kit could probably manage the feat; he was surprisingly nimble for a thirteen-foot long beast. But Hawke didn’t want to find out one way or another.
“All right, no more diving or speeding,” he told his adopted son.
After stopping in midair, Blaze was hovering in place, his wings spread but unmoving. The furry wings helped him steer, glide and brake, but they weren’t what kept the silver-white critter aloft. Magic handled that, lots of it. They had discovered that Blaze burned through one Mana unit per second to fly when he was carrying Hawke, which didn’t sound like much until you figured that translated to sixty Mana per minute and thirty-six hundred Mana per hour.
Blaze regained power at the rate of eighteen Mana per minute; he could fly for a maximum of thirty-something minutes before running out of juice, and that was if he wasn’t casting spells or breathing fire, which also cost Mana. Gliding could add a few minutes to his flight time, but his range was limited. By himself, flying cost Blaze only half as much energy, giving him a bit over an hour of solo flight range. Hawke’s dream of spending the rest of his adventuring days in the saddle of a flying mount had been crushed.
And then there was the issue of the saddle itself. Orom’s leatherworkers had done their best, but the contraption and its straps kept stretching out under the stresses generated by the half-Fae, half-dragon beast. Whenever Blaze accelerated or decelerated too abruptly, Hawke was shaken back and forth, which had a way of loosening the straps holding him in place. Even with magic, physics was a cold, uncaring mistress.
Hawke checked the straps. Several had come loose, and he couldn’t tighten them all without bending too far down and risking falling off.
“Nah. Take me down, please. I’ll see if we can fix the saddle and harness on the ground.”
Hawke didn’t have to ask where the Drakofox had gotten that bit of dialog. When he and Blaze had imprinted on each other, they had forged a psychic connection as strong as the one between him and Saturnyx. And now that Blaze had become an Ethereal Drakofox, capable of reading minds, Hawke’s brain was an open book to the giant fuzzball. All kinds of trivia had found their way to the white-furred monster. It would be more annoying, or even worrisome, if Blaze weren’t devoted to him, and vice versa.
Taking care not to toss him off the loose saddle, Blaze descended toward the road where the caravan was making its way to Akila. They were on the third day of the seven-day trip, assuming the weather held out. The wagons and riders had left the Sunset Valley Domain a day ago; the Legion’s Highway they were using was in poor shape that far out. Even Roman-style roads began to fall apart if nobody maintained them. As a result, the nine-wagon caravan was moving at little better than a walking pace. Hawke was using the opportunity to practice his dragon-riding skills, just in case he found a dragon he could ride at some point.
“Watch it, furball,” he said with a grin as he walked to rejoin the travelers.
The lead wagon was manned by Korgam Stern, a Dwarven Adventurer who led the local chapter of the Stern Company, a mining and mercenary consortium dominated by the clan of the same name. He handled the two horses pulling the covered vehicle with the ease of someone who has done a lot of traveling. His red beard was currently divided into two braids dangling from his chin. In combat, he would tie the braids behind his neck, using the thick matted hair as an extra cushion between his neck and his heavy armor.
“Look at ye, coming down from the sky like something out of an epic song,” Korgam told Hawke.
“Yeah, you should have seen me trying not to lose my lunch and crap my pants when I was up there,” he replied, walking alongside the wagon and easily keeping up with it. “Songs don’t mention that part, do they?”
The Dwarf laughed. “Some drinking songs do, the ones composed by those who know great deeds consist mainly of walking until yer feet are nothing but sores, eating cold meals in the dark, and being so bored ye’d wish for dragons just to have something to do.”
“Good to know.”
Korgam’s wagon was full of ingots of iron, copper and silver. There were even a couple of gold bars inside, each worth close to two thousand gold denars. Hawke knew the miners had also gathered some mithril, but they were keeping that in ore form, because a high-level Arcane Smith could improve the metal magically during the smelting process. Nobody in Orom was qualified for that sort of work, so the untreated ore was sitting in a strongbox
at the bottom of the wagon. There had been jewels and other valuables, but those were kept in a precious Purse of Holding. After paying Orom their cut, of course.
Hawke looked back at the other wagons, strung out in a loose line that stretched over a couple hundred feet from end to end. Tava was riding Luna on the ground, staying off the road and trailing the caravan to keep everyone safe. Digger, Hawke’s pet monster, which looked like the bastard child of a lobster and a scorpion, was off the side of the road, skittering along without a care in the world. A couple of Eternals, graduates of Tava’s Ranger School, led the way, examining the road and its surroundings for signs of trouble.
The vehicles held local wares to be sold in the big city: furs, rare herbs and other alchemical components, barrels of olive oil, which had dozens of uses and was always in demand, honey and beeswax, also easy to sell, and a few other things. Other than the alchemical components, none of the stuff was worth a lot of money; most of the merchants who had joined the caravan were looking to buy stuff in Akila rather than sell. They were bringing some goods mostly to help defray their costs. Their plan was to come back with tools, barrels of wine, fabrics, and other items that Orom couldn’t produce, at least not in the quantity that the people of the valley – and more recently, the Arachnoid tribes in the surrounding mountains – needed.
One of the wagons held Arachnoid trade goods. The spider people had domesticated a variety of subterranean critters that produced all kinds of exotic stuff. Instead of wood, for example, they used assorted kinds of chitin or a resin-like substance that one of their equivalents of sheep secreted. The materials were tough, lighter than wood, and waterproof. As soon as trade opened between the two communities, one of the local merchants had realized the potential for the plastic-like components and acquired enough of them to fill a wagon, to see what prices they could command in Akila. If the investment paid off, the Arachnoids would do very well. They had little use for coin, but their aversion toward mining meant they were always short of metal weapons and tools. Trade would improve everyone’s lives on both sides of the equation. That was the sort of situation that made Hawke glad to be in charge of the Domain.
Guilds at War: The LitRPG Saga Continues Page 1