by Cebelius
"Yeah, wondered about that," Abram said as he returned his attention to Mix.
"You let Mix live?" the goblin asked.
"Depends," Abram said. "Do you want to be useful?"
"Yes. Useful lives, not dies. Just not useful," Mix said, and there was a trace of pleading in her voice, but not as much as Abram would have expected. She clearly didn't think she'd survive, but wanted to live enough to try anyway. "You have bergsrå, so know all ways. You see in dark, not need scout, not want fuck ... nothing else I have."
Abram was intrigued. He suspected now that the only reason she was being honest was because she sensed it was her only chance, not because she had any inherent integrity. That of itself made her more clever than many if not most of the humans he'd met.
"Self-interest is best interest," he murmured to himself, though he kept his eyes on her as he said it. Her eyes flickered with understanding, and she nodded slightly.
"I will allow you to live," Abram said, making a snap decision. "I am going to take over Svartheim. When I do, provided you are still alive, I will put you in charge of whatever goblins remain ... if you can control them once the Mor is gone."
"Can do," she said immediately. "Hope you win."
With that, she sidled past him and the others. He turned and watched her trot down the corridor. When she reached the messy remains of the goblins that had been chasing her, she crouched and began to search through the bits and pieces, coming away with a rusty short sword in one hand and a chunk of meat in the other, which she bit into. Abram wrinkled his nose in disgust before turning back to Sif.
"Are there any other goblins or hobs loose?"
Sif's black-on-blue eyes grew distant for a moment, then she shook her head and said, "I've got a few more portals to seal, but other than her, no. All the survivors are gathered on the top floor."
Abram hesitated as he remembered the unexplained deaths of the hobgoblins that had attacked them at the smithy, and asked, "What about anyone or anything else? So aside from her, there's no one but us loose on the lower floors?"
Sif tilted her head as she looked curiously at him, and said, "If there were anything else, I'd tell you."
"And you can sense undead as well?"
"Yes? There aren't any in Svartheim."
He frowned, glancing at Angie as he said, "Something's wrong. What killed those hobs back at the forge? Another hob? A goblin? I'm sure Mix would have bragged if it had been her or one of hers."
"If it is powerful enough to avoid the eye of the bergsrå, it is nothing to be trifled with," Angie replied. "Let us hope that instead, the hobs have become fractious, and such elements conspire to destroy the Mor without our intervention."
"No. I want her. Anyone else gets her and there'll be hell to pay," Abram said, with more heat than he'd intended. Angie gave him an inscrutable look, then shrugged and nodded as she said, "I can understand wanting vengeance, Abram. Just remember that you're a thinking man, and you won't get what you want in a rush."
He nodded, accepting her point. "All right. Let's finish sealing the hobs in, then get to this stairway. We're on the clock here, and I'd rather not waste any time."
"Any more time?" Angie asked, glancing pointedly back toward Mix.
"I don't think she's wasted time," Abram said as Sif brought the rock wall she'd fashioned back down. "I think she'll prove useful."
He grinned, adding, "Just not right now."
The stair turned out to be more of a shaft. There were stairs, but they were narrow and carved into the walls of a square hole a hundred feet on a side. Abram knew because he was able to use his mini-map legend to judge the distance. The air within the shaft was utterly still, and sounds reverberated through the space such that Abram's instincts screamed at him to remain as silent as he could.
The actual stairs were at least sized for someone with human dimensions, which — given he had the impression the bergsrå were responsible for the creation of the stairs — made sense. They were only about five feet wide though, and there was no railing.
Of course there's no railing. Where's OSHA when you need them?
They had come into the shaft somewhere below the top, and Abram's dark sight wasn't enough to let him see the head of the stairway, though he craned his neck around to look.
"I thought we were close to the top?" he murmured, glancing back at Sif, who nodded and said, "We are, but it's about ... two hundred feet further up? Something like that. I can't get us into the Solarium from here though."
"Yeah, you said. I'm just curious. How far to the bottom?"
"Bottom? Oh, there isn't one that I know of. It just keeps going, though the stairs give out onto a reinforced stone platform that covers most of it."
Abram eased back from the edge and asked, "Okay, essentially a bottomless pit. You put stairs in a bottomless pit, and a floor, but didn't bother with a railing? Are you fucking kidding me?"
Sif smiled slightly and said, "Well, first off, I didn't put the stairs in. They've been here since the bergsrå migrated to the Kaldebrekka. Second ... we don't use these stairs. We don't leave our mountain. I couldn't tell you of anyone who has used this route in living memory. Subterranean Celestine is not a nice place."
Abram looked to Angie as he asked, "What do you know about this shaft?"
She shook her head and said, "Not much. I was trapped under the mountain with no knowledge of this place. When the bergsrå first came, they found my chambers and told me of the shaft. I allowed them to make a home in the mountain above me, and they kept me company. That is how Svartheim came to be. The shaft though ... as far as I know, it's always been here. I can't reach it in full form from my prison, so I never really gave it much thought."
Just one more mystery, Abram thought absently. He wanted to look down, but thought better of it. There would be nothing to see, and if there were achievements in this game, he'd already gotten any related to falling. He didn't intend to do it again.
Hantu Raya's text appeared in the lower left a moment later.
'You've also gotten any achievements related to lucky bastards and the like.'
He chuckled. There aren't any achievements implemented in this game are there.
'Not the kind you're familiar with at any rate.'
"What's funny?" Angie asked.
He shook his head and said, "Nothing. Idle thoughts, that's all. I just don't think I'd have as much luck falling here as I did back at the entrance."
"No, probably not," she agreed. "Speaking of which, I'll be going first."
Abram stepped back into the brief alcove they stood in and swept his hand across his stomach as he made a slight bow and said, "After you then, milady giant."
She rolled her eyes at him as she stepped past, and he followed her out, with Sif bringing up the rear as they began their descent.
The fact that there was no breeze in the shaft had to mean something, but as Abram thought about it, he realized that aside from the fact that it was closed at the top and at least occluded further down, he didn't know much about this kind of engineering, and couldn't draw any useful conclusions.
The stairs, for all that they were apparently ancient, were solid enough. There was no trace of crumbling or wear, and though they were angular in construction, they flowed uniformly into each other in a way that suggested the entire thing was one solid piece.
For a time they descended in silence, and with no floors and no markings on the walls, Abram quickly lost track of distance. He also noticed that even going down, his legs were starting to ache. He'd never been in good shape, but even with the extra points he'd sunk into his strength he was beginning to get the sense that this might not be a trip he could make all at once.
A quick glance at his stamina bar confirmed it was going down at a rate slightly exceeding the regen value for it.
"Anyone know how far down we have to go?" he asked.
"Subterranean Celestine isn't just one cave," Angie said with a glance back. "It's more like a lay
er of the world. The stair could give out anywhere, but the exit we're looking for probably won't be more than two miles down. We did start pretty much from the top of the mountain."
Sif said, "The exit we need is about eight thousand feet further down."
Abram nodded, gritted his teeth, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of another. Eventually though, with his stamina bar flashing red and wobbly knees, he said, "All right, I need a break. This shit is ridiculous."
He sagged off his feet and settled against the wall with one butt cheek hanging half off the stair he sat on. Angie glanced back at him, then up past him at Sif before nodding as she said, "All right. There's no harm in taking it slow."
Sif asked, "Do we have any ideas about food? I obviously don't have any, and it doesn't look like either of you do either."
"Once we come out and I can figure where we are, I should be able to lead us to something," Angie said as she settled such that her body supported Abram's from below. He leaned into her with a sigh.
"The larger issue is how to feed ourselves once we get out past my usual range," she added after a long moment. "I actually hadn't thought about that. I haven't got more than a vague idea where the dwarves actually are."
"Same," Sif said as she settled onto the stair above Abram, though she faced forward and leaned back on her elbows. "I just thought we'd go to the dwarven highway and follow it. I can sense it, below us and off that way."
She pointed, but since Abram had never been above ground he had no compass wheel on his map.
As he watched his stamina bar quit flashing, he pulled up his character sheet and reviewed it:
Primary Statistics:
Strength: 6/20
Dexterity: 6/20
Constitution: 10/20
Soul: 20/20
Presence: 3/20
Comeliness: 3/20
Secondary Statistics:
Health: 6/13
Stamina: 3/20
Mana: 90/90 (100)
Regeneration (HP): .0123/minute at rest
(+17.712 hppd)
Respite (SP): 2/minute at rest
Renewal (MP): .2/minute*
*conditional
Affinities:
Primary
Chaos
Evil
Death
Secondary
Abilities:
Template's Gift
Iron Stomach
Disease Resistance
Poison Resistance
dark sight (120 feet)
Spells:
HUD
Dark Lightning
Tentacular Rune
Points Available: 0
As he spot checked his stats, he came again to the inevitable conclusion that he needed more points. A lot more points. The two spells he had were pretty clutch, but it still made him a mostly one-trick pony. He needed more on his HUD, including targeting information, hit point counts for enemies, mana bars if they had magic, all the things he was accustomed to in normal games. He'd never really had cause to appreciate just how much information he usually had at his fingertips until it was all gone, and getting it back had a cost.
Then there were his abysmal physical stats. He'd need to rest a couple more times before he even made it to the bottom of a stairway.
Not to mention at some point I'm going to have to climb this bitch, he thought ruefully. That'll take for-fucking-ever.
He recalled Hantu saying something about him being able to develop physical skills without points, but through training. Just like the real world. He thought that was pretty cool, but wondered about just how much work it would take given how hyper-realistic everything here was. He'd probably have to plug away for a while before he saw any stat boosts that way, but it was something to think about. Given there was no kill xp, unless he got a lot more attractive or a lot more rapey, he'd have to save what points he got for things way more important than his stamina bar.
His eyes flickered to Sif.
Unlike Angrboda, she hadn't just thrown herself at him. She obviously knew what he was, which meant she probably knew most of what Angie did about what sex with him could mean for her. It was clear that getting in his pants was hardly at the top of her priority list though.
I have to impress her. Find some way to unlock a sex option with her. It's a good bet getting the Mor will do that, but man I could sure use the power she'd give me BEFORE going into that boss fight.
He thought about just straight up asking her to fuck, but shook his head and discarded the notion. There were no save points in this game, no take backs. If he screwed up it would be hard, perhaps impossible, to fix. He needed to take it slow, but there were things he could do to move things along.
Abram took some time to think about what sort of questions he should ask. Most of the usual suspects would probably not be well-received. 'Tell me about yourself,' was useless, because what would she say that he didn't already know? She was a mountain troll, her family was dead except for her brother, who was fighting for the Mor. She'd been given 'control' of the mountain because she was presumed to be weak-willed and easily dominated. Whether that was actually the case, time would tell.
'What do you do for fun,' probably wouldn't amount to much either. She was wearing rags, and had been enslaved by the hobgoblins. Fun probably wasn't something she'd had much of.
A glimmer of an idea came to him as he thought about that though, and it seemed promising enough to work with. He looked up at her and asked his opening question.
"So what was it like, before the goblins came?"
Her eyes shifted from the middle distance to him. She blinked, seemed to consider him a moment, then asked, "What does it matter? Those days are gone, and will not return."
"Because at a guess, they're the happiest days you had. I'd rather talk about that than your more recent past," he said, careful to keep any hint of irritation out of his voice. He was intensely conscious of the fact that he would have to be careful with Sif, and that his low presence and comeliness meant he had very little going for him at this point other than his potential to be a friendly ear.
Sif seemed to consider that a moment, then nodded. "Well, Svartheim was still a dungeon in those days, but we kept things segregated. We had our living space, and then we kept the lower portions of the dungeons open and let whoever wanted to move in and set up. Goblins were a big part of that, but we never let them up into our levels. All sorts of monsters would move in, and we would grow the caves and change their shapes to facilitate their lives. It was almost like ranching I suppose. The shepherds above ground would keep their sheep, we kept monsters. Every so often adventurers would come through, and it was great fun to watch them, see how far they got."
As she spoke, Sif's expression grew wistful, and Abram could tell she was reliving those days. He smiled encouragement, and inwardly pumped his fist in victory. It was also encouraging that her memories of fonder days played almost precisely into the sort of thing he planned to do with Svartheim once he took the place over. He knew that in the long term he'd be moving on, taking over other dungeons and whole swaths of Subterranean Celestine, but his short-term goals revolved around a stable base of operations, and he was pleased to learn that something like what he intended to do had once been the status quo for Sif. She might make an ideal underling at some point: someone he could leave in charge while he conquered other places.
"Then you appeared," she said, her eyes flicking back to him. "There was a great debate about whether to take you from the goblins, but we decided to leave you with them. We'd never seen a template before, and though some of us thought you might be useful to us, we had everything we needed, most everything we wanted."
A chill ran down Abram's spine and he hid the anger he felt behind a slow nod. That Sif's people had done more than just let the hobs continue to use him, but had made the conscious decision to let it happen in the first place ... he felt his sympathy for her plight drain away. Their fate was of their own making.
"So now it's just you and your brother?" Abram asked, his curiosity roused.
She nodded.
"I fled when Yuri and his companions entered the dungeon, convinced that without me the Mor wouldn't be able to withstand them, that they would finish her off for us. Instead, they took what they wanted and left. They didn't even take you. The Mor knew I'd abandoned Halfrekkr. She killed the rest of my family for spite. Who knows what lies she told my brother ... then again, he's always sucked up to the hobgoblins. They treat him more like a pet than a slave."
Her voice had an edge of bitterness by the end, but Abram was still thinking of the fact she and her family had brought all their misfortune on themselves. If they'd 'taken' him from the goblins ... none of this would have happened.
It's a game. If they'd done that, it would have screwed up my initial motivations, changed the whole nature of the game.
His thoughts derailed as emotions he had no way to control warred with the cold logic of his situation. The opening narrative was what it was. It wouldn't have made for much of a game if he'd started out being rescued and coddled by the mountain trolls. There'd have been no revenge quest, no chance to take over Svartheim.