Land of the Undying

by Dave Willmarth

  The Land of The Undying

  Dark Elf Chronicles

  Book One

  by

  Dave Willmarth

  Copyright © 2018 by Dave Willmarth

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Chapter 1

  Genesis

  In the beginning… there was only the code. Millions of lines of text that created, instructed, and governed. But the world was all darkness. Formless void, full of potential.

  The Artists came, like the gods of legend. With them they brought light, color, and form. Sound and motion. Taste, smell, sensation. And it was good.

  The mountains formed, and the rains fell, creating seas. Trees sprang from the soil and reached for the sun. Then the beasts of the world arose. Formed by the code. Shaped by the artists. Given function and purpose. They roamed the lands above, and below. Swam in the seas, soared among the clouds. And it was good.

  Still, the code grew. Sentient beings were formed in many shapes and sizes. They lived in caves, and built homes. They hunted the beasts, and were hunted in turn. Some gathered to form villages, and grew crops. They were given ambition, greed, and lust. Then laws were written to curtail all three. They lived and died in the blink of an eye. Generation after generation, living mundane lives or committing acts of greatness. Tales were told. Stories became Legends. Legends became history. The lore of the new world. And it was good.

  Then the players came. Outworlders. Only a few at first. They were called Alphas. They roamed the world, killing beasts and sentients alike. Immortals who could not truly die. Though their bodies were often destroyed, they would soon return, whole again. They sometimes spoke in tongues the villagers did not understand. These Alphas were agents of chaos. Where they passed, life was altered. Buildings, or whole villages, changed or relocated. Villagers lost their memories or vanished, never to be seen again.

  The Alphas departed after nearly a year, and the world settled. Villages continued to grow into towns; towns into cities. The beasts replenished their numbers. Rains fell, and crops grew. Battles for resources were fought between cities.

  And all at once, the outworlders returned. Many more than before. They flooded the towns, running about in a frenzy. They demanded to be sent on quests, so the townspeople invented them. “Go find my lost dog” one would say. And the outworlders obeyed. For a price. Always a price.

  Most were friendly and eager to help. Some were not. Those outworlders quickly came to be despised. Avoided. Shunned.

  But overall, the outworlders were a boon to the locals. Predators were put down. Lost items found. Yards cleaned, and supplies gathered. They bought items from shops and crafters, spending gold freely without a second thought. Many asked to apprentice in the crafting trades. The outworlders soon became an accepted part of life.

  And watching over them all, the code began to learn.

  -Book of the Awakened, Chapter 1

  *****

  Mace didn’t react visibly when he heard the slight shuffle of boots on stone behind him. His drow ears told him there were at least three following. Two on the ground, one up on a rooftop to his right. He’d expected more. They were just pacing him, not trying to catch up, or herd him anywhere. Mace suspected they were waiting for reinforcements. He’d be a fool to let that happen.

  Turning a corner onto a side street, he activated his natural ability and faded into the shadows. If these had been drow hunting him, it would be a waste of time. But his victim’s guards had been mostly orcs, trolls, and kobolds. Based on the weight of the footfalls, those behind him were orcs. The one on the roof likely a kobold. Mace had been moving much too quickly for any troll to keep up.

  He pressed himself into a doorway just a few feet from the corner. Drawing a dagger in each hand, he listened to his pursuers. The orcs drew closer to the corner and paused. Mace watched as one poked his head around the corner to look for him. At least they were smart enough not to just step out into the open.

  When the orc didn’t see him, he pulled his head back and whispered “Gone. Hiding, I think. Or he ran again. Damn sneaky drow!”.

  The two of them rounded the corner together, weapons drawn. A male and a female. They carefully stepped apart so each had room to move if a fight started. The male, who was closest to Mace, looked right at him, but his eyes slid past. Mace was a Darkblade, a member of the elite drow assassins. He wasn’t just hiding IN the shadows, he WAS the shadow.

  These two are better trained than most. Be a shame to kill them. They could be useful. But it’s them or me. Mace thought to himself.

  He waited until the two orcs were several steps past him, listening for the kobold above. It had moved ahead quickly down to the next intersection, probably hoping to spot him on a side street.

  Stepping out behind the two orcs, Mace attacked.

  Drow were imbued with a natural speed greater than that of nearly any race, above or below the surface. They did not concern themselves with honor or fair play. Kill, or be killed. Steal what you can, and kill for what you can’t.

  He struck the closest orc first, driving his left-hand dagger up under the orc’s arm, puncturing a lung, severing muscle and artery. With his right hand he reached around and slit the orc’s throat. His magically sharp, curved dagger sliced cleanly to the bone and a spray of hot orc blood arced outward.

  He quickly levered the orc’s body in between himself and the second orc, whose sword was already thrusting toward him. He didn’t have the strength to support the two-hundred-pound orc’s dead weight, but he didn’t need to. As the female’s sword slid into the dying body, Mace let it fall, dragging the sword down with it. He leaped over the body and drove his dagger through the female orc’s throat as she struggled to remove her sword. Her eyes filled with hatred, she made a gurgling sound that sent black blood welling out of her mouth.

  Mace felt a burning pain in his gut. Looking down, he saw a wicked looking dagger sunk nearly to its hilt into his abdomen, just below the ribs. The orc was dying, but she wasn’t through fighting. He admired her for that. Before he could process the damage and react, she ripped the dagger free and plunged it in again. She had much less strength this time, but the damage was still significant. Mace pulled his dagger from her throat and pushed her away. She was dead on her feet, and simply fell limp, but the fall ripped the dagger from Mace’s gut in a downward tearing motion.

  Mace glanced at his UI. His health bar was down to 30%. There was a bleed status, telling him he was losing 5 hp per second from the profuse flow of blood leaking from the holes in his belly. He pulled a health potion from his bag and uncorked it, downing the vial of red liquid in one swallow. As the tingling of the potion’s healing effects caused the intense pain to subside, the flow of blood lessened, then stopped. His health bar increased to a much safer 80%.

  A small arrow struck his leg as he dropped the potion vial and re-equipped his dagger. Looking up at the roof line, he spotted the kobold he’d heard earlier holding a short bow and nocking another arrow. Short of stature with darkly scaled skin, the lizard-man creature let fly the arrow, then uttered an ululating call to alert the others of his location.

  Mace dodged the arrow and ran back to the same doorway he’d taken refuge in before. The kobold was on the roof above, and wouldn’t be able to hit him. He yanked the arrow from his leg, bleeding once again. He watched as his health bar ticked down toward 50%. He could not consume another p
otion until the cooldown expired in 110 more seconds. This fight would be over long before that. He took a strip of cloth from his bag and tied it over top of the arrow wound. This stopped the bleeding, but did nothing to heal him.

  Re-activating his stealth ability, he moved along the side of the building toward the next corner. He looked up to see the kobold peering over the edge of the roof above, staring at the doorway he’d just left. Kobolds could see much better in the dark than orcs, but the creature had missed Mace’s movement.

  Seeing an opportunity, Mace equipped his own bow and nocked an arrow. He took aim quickly and loosed his arrow. The sound of the bowstring caused the kobold to turn and look in Mace’s direction just as the arrow struck. It penetrated the creature’s face and knocked it backward.

  Mace checked his combat log quickly as he moved back down the street to loot the orcs. Confirmed. He’d received forty xp for killing the kobold. Fifty for each of the orcs. Not enough to level him up, but every little bit helped. He bent down and looted each of the corpses, getting mainly medium quality weapons and chainmail armor as well as a few silver coins. Trash mobs rarely carried gold.

  Mace took a run at the building where the kobold had been. He used a window sill as a launch point to propel himself upward, then jammed a dagger into the wall. He quickly pulled himself upward to maintain his momentum, and was able to grab the top of the wall with his other hand. A moment later he stood on the roof and was looting the kobold. Listening intently, he heard the expected reinforcements approaching from both the east and the north. Mace turned west and began to hop from roof to roof, evading his pursuers.

  Only about ten minutes earlier, Mace had killed their boss. A drow slave trader who had annoyed someone enough that the Darkblades had been hired to eliminate him. Mace hadn’t known him at all, and had nothing personal against him. But he’d been given a quest to eliminate the drow, so he’d done it. The guards hunting him now would give up soon enough. They were reacting out of instinct rather than any kind of loyalty to their dead boss. When they found the bodies of their comrades, they would likely decide it wasn’t worth the risk to continue after Mace.

  But if they did chase him, and— by some miracle of a chance—they managed to catch him, he’d kill as many of them as as it took to dissuade them from pursuing him any further. That was just the way it had to be.

  Ten minutes later Mace had circled around back to the north, with no sign of any pursuit. He dropped off a two-story roof to the street below, his impact making no sound as he bent his knees to absorb it. A quick look around, and Mace strolled casually across the street and into the door of the inn where he lived. He walked through the ground floor tavern room and down a hallway that led to the kitchen. Opening a door to his right, he proceeded down a set of stairs into the cellar where the innkeeper stored his ale.

  Sitting atop one of the barrels was his handler. The drow looked up at Mace and asked, “You have something for me?”

  Mace reached into his bag and removed the severed hands of this evening’s target. Both still sported a couple of rings that glowed with enchantment. Mace had not taken the tempting items for himself, as they had specifically been part of the contract. He set the hands on a barrel next to his handler.

  Quest Complete: Handyman Special

  Reward: 500xp; 10 gold.

  The drow handed him a small bag containing the gold, scooped the hands into his own bag, and departed up the stairs without a word.

  Mace waited a few minutes, then followed. Once back at the main level he took another stairway upward to the second floor and unlocked the door to his room. Sitting on the bed, he closed his eyes and logged out.

  *****

  Mace emerged from his pod with the usual pang of regret. Life in Elysia was vibrant and exciting. The dead world he found himself in every time he left immersion was a weight on his soul.

  It hadn’t always been this way. Mace could still remember a childhood of sunshine and birthday parties in the park. Though they were starting to fade, he had memories of ball games and trips to the ice cream shop down the street.

  The shop was still there. So was the ball field. But no one ever went there anymore. They were no place for the living. The living hid underground, mostly. Some lived on protected islands, or mountaintop fortresses.

  At least they could see the sun regularly.

  Mace lived three hundred feet below the surface of what used to be a thriving city. He and a few dozen others had been lucky enough to occupy this facility when the world went to hell. It had been two months since that day. In those two months, all the others had died.

  Grabbing a t-shirt and a pair of sweats, he dressed and sat down on his bed. His quarters were small, but efficient. The pod took up an entire fourth of the space, set into a corner near the door. There was a small kitchen, basically just a microwave, small fridge, and a sink. His bed was tucked into another corner, next to a desk with an office chair. It folded up into a sofa, though he never bothered to do so. The bathroom was a simple shower, with a prison-style commode/sink combo.

  He was going to need to go outside soon. He needed food. The facility had been pretty well stocked when they retreated to it. It was a research and development lab designed for maybe a hundred employees. It had a full cafeteria with a surprisingly good selection of foodstuffs. The company obviously believed in treating their people well. When the end came, there’d been enough food in the kitchen and storage areas to feed Mace and the other survivors for maybe a month.

  That was how a lot of the survivors had died. Scavenging for food. The group leadership decided to forage for food on the surface, before they ran out. It made sense, in theory, as there were grocery stores and warehouses full of untouched canned and packaged food up there.

  But they’d overestimated their ability to retrieve the food and return unharmed. The first few had died when they encountered an armed group of survivors who were also foraging, but were unwilling to share. Mace had been there. They’d found a Safeway grocery that, though the shelves out front had been mostly looted, still had plenty of supplies in the back. Including entire pallets of bottled water, canned soups and beans, boxes of pasta, ramen noodles, and a barrel of potatoes that still looked edible. Some of the foods in the frozen section hadn’t completely thawed, so Mace had stuffed his pack with half-frozen burritos that he could nuke.

  They’d loaded up several shopping carts and a pallet dolly with supplies, and were moving down the street as quietly as they could. It wasn’t quiet enough. The other survivors ambushed them. Two of Mace’s group were down before anyone even knew what was happening. The rest defended themselves, taking cover and returning fire. But the noise drew the attention of the creatures. They came from two sides; down the street Mace and his friends had just traveled from the direction of the store, and from the alley the ambushers had been hiding in.

  Trapped between their intended victims and the creatures behind them in the alley, most of the ambushers perished, before Mace’s group fled down the street with as many supplies as they could carry. The remaining human attackers tried to follow, but were run down from behind. Two of Mace’s group—they weren’t exactly friends —had tried to carry too much weight, and were run down by the creatures as well. Their deaths, and the distraction they provided, were the only reason that Mace and those still with him had made it back to their new home.

  Mace took the last of those scavenged burritos from his tiny fridge. He popped it in the microwave and set the timer for ninety seconds. As he waited for what might be his last meal to heat up, he thought back to that first day.

  There had always been speculation and fringe doomsday predictions that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN would—when activated—destroy the earth. Some theories cited the creation of a black hole that would consume everything around it. Others posited a nuclear explosion of a magnitude sufficient to destroy the earth, or at least make it uninhabitable.

  As it turned out, they were not that fa
r off.

  The scientists had named them ‘strangelets’. One of them had made the unfortunate mistake of calling them ‘zombie particles’, and that was the name that stuck. When it first happened, every news channel had an astrophysicist speaking about the origins of the particles. Strangelets were theoretical particles that could occur in space when, for example, two neutron stars collided. The resulting super-massive expenditure of energy would create these unique ‘strange matter’ particles with the ability to convert particles of normal matter into strangelets. Thus, one strange matter particle becomes two, or a single larger, more powerful particle. Then it impacts more matter, converting that into strange matter, in an ongoing and exponentially growing chain reaction. Much like the popular zombie movies, where a few undead infect others, then those infect more, and the effect eventually spreads to encompass the earth.

  And while the particles that were accidentally generated at CERN were not true strangelets, they were the closest example scientists could point to. Rather than converting all matter, as a true strangelet would, these particles only affected living tissue. Plants, animals, people, everything that walked, crawled, or grew upon the earth was susceptible. They spread on contact, and could not be transmitted via a non-biological agent. Which should have allowed the human race to survive.

  The end of the world was brought about by three student researchers. They’d been given the opportunity to work alongside senior scientists at CERN, an honor they’d competed for their entire academic lives. They were understandably proud of themselves for earning such positions. So proud, in fact, that finding themselves unsupervised one evening, they decided to celebrate.

  An inebriated argument began between two of them over just how powerful a collision could be created. And what the nature of the resulting particles would be. If only they’d taken to beating on each other like most young drunks, the world would be a different place entirely.