Neverfall: The Dark Path (Book 2): A Gamelit Lit RPG Series

by C. Wintertide

  “Special how?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Only someone destined to be on the Dark Path can wield it.”

  Luke was stunned into silence for a moment, but then he shook his head, and gave out a sharp laugh. “That can’t be! Christopher is… you’ve seen a little bit of him! He’s not… that’s just not him. Besides, he’s only used the staff to focus his own spells, not to use any in the staff itself, unless healing is a Dark Path power.”

  “You do not understand.” She sighed again. “He shouldn’t have been able to touch the staff, let alone use it as a focus, if he was not a Dark Path walker.”

  The saliva in Luke’s mouth dried up. He didn’t think that Christopher was hiding his true nature from them all these years. It was more that he feared the game itself would force Christopher down this path. Wasn’t it weighing every action, word and thought? Could it somehow misunderstand Christopher’s nature and twist it somehow?

  Gloria, seeing his distress, quickly said, “But I’m sure I’m wrong. I must have misunderstood what Manon told me about the staff. Your friend is a highly moral person. He’ll stay in the Light, I’m sure, especially because it means so much to him.”

  21

  SHADOW

  After his conversation with Gloria, Luke dropped back so that he was behind the two rogues. He tried not to look at Christopher, who was absorbed in his Map. He had the Dark Path on the brain. Were all of them going to be Dark Path walkers? That would be rather ironic since they were attempting to be heroes. The real question became: what made a hero?

  Did it mean that one stuck to one’s principles, even at the loss of friends? Luke thought that sounded cold. Like Cassie had said to Christopher, choosing one’s ideals over real people was not admirable. So was being a hero doing everything one could to save people, even if it meant sacrificing one’s ideals?

  Going down the Dark Path was a minor thing compared with someone’s death. Though it was more an ends-justify-the-means thought process. For anything less than saving people, it might seem too extreme, but Luke thought that it might be the only thing he could truly follow in Neverfall. He shook his head. He would do what he had to do. And if he was strong enough, his friends wouldn’t have to find out what their limits were. He would take on the burden for them.

  He realized that he hadn’t yet checked the Help Chat to see if the Neverfall devs answered his question about Marty. He should know whether they could actually save the Beta players. He brought up his Menu, and went to the Help Chat. His heart thudded heavily in his chest as he saw there was an answer to his inquiry.

  There is no change in Marty Fleumenbaum’s condition. How were you aware of his name? Did you break through to his real self?

  Luke let out a breath. Marty was still alive. He wasn’t, seemingly, in any more distress than before his soul was taken. Hopefully, this meant that Marty might still be able to be saved. As to answering the devs’ questions about how he knew Marty’s real name, it would mean he had to tell them about the Matrix-like effect he was seeing. He didn’t want to reveal that. Considering Alicia’s reaction to it, he worried what the devs would think. So he answered it vaguely.

  No. Found out information another way. Please tell me if there’s any change with his condition.

  He focused on the Send button, and then closed out of the Menu. His ears perked up as he heard Cassie asking Gloria more questions about the Nightshade Guild and other Neverfall trivia. Luke wasn’t sure if Cassie liked the other rogue, or if she was just trying to pump her for information. Either way, it was useful.

  “So I hear that the Nightshade Guild are the only ones that will buy stolen loot,” Cassie remarked.

  Gloria nodded. “It amazes me that the dullard shopkeepers can always tell when something’s stolen or not. I could literally strip their stores down in one night to the floorboards, and they’d not have any idea I did it. But give them one candlestick that I yanked from a rich person’s mantlepiece, and they scream to the skies!”

  Luke grinned. The only reason the storekeepers likely knew was because it was part of the programming. But to Gloria it seemed like the dull-witted shopkeepers suddenly turned eagle-eyed or even psychic.

  “What other benefits are there to joining?” Cassie prodded.

  “High-level training in all the sorts of things that a rogue needs from lockpicking to assassination,” Gloria explained.

  “Assassination?!” Cassie was all agog. “Who do we assassinate?”

  Gloria laughed. “Oh, it could be anyone! You won’t see much call for it in Lethbridge, but in the capital city all of the nobles are trying to pick off their rivals. The merchant class is even more bloodthirsty, wanting their competitors dead left, right, and center. There’s quite a bit of gold to be made that way.”

  Cassie’s brows drew together. “Do tell me that there is more gold awarded as you rise up in levels. Because right now, we can barely afford health and mana potions!”

  Gloria nodded. “I recall how difficult it was when I first came here. It seemed like I was scratching at the dead earth for something, anything, to steal and sell. It does get better, but to be truly flush with cash, you have to be clever.”

  Luke wanted to ask Gloria about where she believed she’d been before she’d entered Neverfall, but he worried that he’d break the flow of their conversation. Yet Cassie seemed to read his mind as she asked it instead.

  “You know, before you came to Neverfall you must have been some rich person yourself,” Cassie pointed out.

  Gloria frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “This game is truly revolutionary. I mean, like nothing else. To be part of the Beta, you had to have tons of money to spend. And it wasn’t just that they needed people who could afford the equipment, but also, I think, they wanted to encourage investment. So you must have been one of those rich people that you now steal from.”

  Gloria let out a dry, slightly disbelieving laugh. “I can’t quite imagine that! Me, one of those useless women who glide about mansions with nothing to do but look pristine and pretty?”

  “I highly doubt that. You could have been some high-powered executive that just needed a break from the grind, and knew a unique and amazing opportunity when you saw it,” Cassie pointed out.

  “That sounds… better.” Gloria actually smiled kindly down at Cassie. “And what about you? Who are you out in this real world?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m a highschool student. Last year before I’m supposed to head out to university,” Cassie explained, but there was something bleak in her tone that Luke hadn’t noticed before, and she used the word “supposed” which sounded like it wasn’t certain.

  Gloria heard it, too, and she turned a concerned expression towards Cassie. “You don’t seem keen to go to university. There’s a rather brilliant one for magic users in Regoath, not to mention the elven schools of learning. Not that they let anyone but high elves in,” she said, the last under her breath.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure what I want to do. My parents are…” Cassie’s eyes skittered back towards Luke, but then she pressed on, “My parents are splitting up as soon as my brother and I go to college.”

  Luke bit back a gasp that nearly escaped him. He’d had no idea. Cassie and Christopher’s parents had always seemed so content together. He admitted that they weren’t openly affectionate towards one another, but it was always civil if not warm.

  “They are waiting until you are on your own to make this change?” Gloria guessed.

  Cassie nodded and her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “It’s not that they are going to split up that’s upsetting. It’s that they stayed together for Christopher and I in this loveless marriage, fighting behind closed doors, thinking that we wouldn’t notice, for years. They honestly thought that finding out that their entire relationship has been a sham for half a decade would be better somehow than being open about their problems! As if Christopher or I would want them to be unhappy just because divorce might unsettl
e us. Living with people who don’t love one another is far worse anyways.” Cassie shook her head. Her cheeks were flushed with anger, and he saw a wash of angry tears in her eyes. She swiped at them with ragged movements. “Forget that I said anything. I don’t even know why I told you this. You’re a stranger and--”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger. You don’t have to worry about my reaction to what you’re saying, and manage my feelings and your own about the subject,” Gloria offered.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Cassie said with a nod after long moments. She looked in control again, and clearly wanted to speak about something else. “What about you? Do you remember anything about your husband back in the real world? You said you had dreams about him.”

  A sad look crossed Gloria’s face and she shrugged. “From the moment I met Manon here, we were together. What does that say about my feelings for the husband in my dreams?” She shook herself. “People are complicated. They can hold two mutually exclusive ideas in their heads, and somehow not suffer cognitive dissonance. I could have a loving husband at home that I adored, while here I had my lover who I adored just as much.”

  “So…” Cassie’s cheeks colored as she asked this next part, “Can you have full sex in Neverfall?”

  “As opposed to half sex?” A smile tugged at Gloria’s lips.

  “So you can? Oh, my God, you can!” Cassie squealed before dropping her voice, her eyes shining, her cheeks burning. “With anyone? Anyone at all?”

  “Yes, but why? You have your eye set on someone?” Gloria asked.

  “No, it’s just I imagine that you can have experiences here without the… uhm, emotional baggage.” Cassie was really blushing now.

  Luke was blushing now, too.

  “Ah, so you basically want some physical release without emotional attachment?” Gloria guessed.

  “Maybe! Okay, yes, I’d like that,” Cassie admitted, which had Luke shaking his head in amusement, but not surprise. Between the two of them--between all of them--Cassie had been the least romantic. Boyfriends had come and gone from her life without leaving much of a mark. He’d hardly met some of them. “My friends and twin are the ones that really matter to me. They’re the ones I have emotional time for, you know? I don’t want to waste it on someone that I really only want to have a physical thing with.”

  Gloria nodded. “I can understand that. I can assure you that there are plenty of opportunities for you out there. But don’t assume just because you think this is a game that they will.”

  Cassie didn’t get a chance to respond as Mack joined her and Gloria.

  With Cutter slung over one shoulder, Mack stomped up beside them, and asked, “Did you kill Bonecall when you were our level, Gloria?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure what level I was in your parlance. But, I wasn’t half as strong as I am now. But Manon and I, plus several other people, bound together to take him on. I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. That’s how we discovered he respawned.” Her shoulders twitched then, and a look of dissatisfaction crossed her face. “But Bonecall’s power is far greater now than it was when I first encountered him. He’s spreading like a cancer. While I had thought it was useless to kill him multiple times, it appears that if he is not sent to respawn, his evil grows greater.”

  Luke thought on this. Were Bonecall and his master, the Lich King, getting too powerful because there were no players to fight them? Other than Manon and Gloria, he hadn’t seen anyone around Lethbridge who was a Beta player to take care of them.

  “What do you know about Shadewell?” Alicia asked. She already had her cudgel in her hand.

  “About half the size of Lethbridge. Mostly a farming community. The forge had brought some life to it, but after the destruction of it, people stayed away. They foolishly thought it was cursed,” Gloria answered.

  The forest suddenly came to an abrupt halt, and a field was spread out before them. Unlike the fields around Lethbridge where there were miles of golden grain waving in the wind, grapevines with dark purple fruit just bursting to be harvested for wine, or other ripe crops, this field was dead. Even the dirt seemed stripped of life. It was an unhealthy gray color. There were furrows between the rows, but not even the remnants of vegetation to tell Luke what had once grown there. And it wasn’t just in this field right before them. As far as the eye could see, there was desolation.

  Alicia stepped up beside Luke and sniffed. “I smell a fire and…” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Rotten flesh.”

  Luke was glad that his sense of smell was nowhere near that sensitive, but then the wind shifted and came from the direction of some low homes far in the distance. The bitter scent of burning hair and a sickening, almost sweet scent of burnt meat, flooded his nostrils. His stomach flipped and his breakfast of porridge nearly came up.

  Christopher stepped out of the woods, still staring at his Map. He, finally, glanced up at the real world. “Ah, we’re here.”

  “Where are we exactly?” Mack lifted an expressive eyebrow.

  Christopher pointed to the east. “The road that the goods were being brought along is just there. You can see a hint of white line among the brown fields. Edmund’s information is that the trader bringing his goods disappeared just around… ah! There! I can see the broken-down wagon, can’t you?”

  Luke caught sight of a wagon with the two front wheels busted off and the back two twisted almost all the way around. The white fabric above the wagon was partially ripped and flapping in the wind.

  “Oh, the horses.” Cassie’s voice was taut with emotion.

  Luke understood why. In front of the wagon were two large carcasses. The horses that had been drawing the wagon were on their sides, clearly dead.

  “I do not see anybody moving over… oh, wait, what is that?” Mack stuck out a finger as a shaggy head lifted from behind one of the horse carcasses.

  “Oh! It’s the alpha wolf! Mack, give me some jerky!” Christopher said excitedly.

  “Jerky? Oh, your Beast Pact spell. I think your friend is not going to be interested in jerky considering he has plenty of horse flesh to consume,” Mack pointed out, but gave Christopher a piece of jerky anyways.

  “It is merely part of the spell. It’s not truly the food aspect of it.” Christopher took the jerky, and strode quickly across the dead fields towards where their wolf was eating.

  “I suppose we should be glad that our wolf isn’t eating the trader,” Cassie said weakly.

  “We do not actually know that he has not eaten the trader,” Christopher observed. “We cannot see the other side of the wagon.”

  “That’s so… helpful of you to say, Christopher,” Cassie responded with a shake of her head.

  “Just because our wolf may have devoured another human--”

  “Or elf,” Luke added.

  “Or elf,” Christopher agreed.

  “Or dwarf,” Gloria added. “Many traders are dwarves. If they leave their mountain homes they tend to travel.”

  “Ach, let it not be a dwarf. Then I’ll have to do some prayers for a fallen brother or sister,” Mack groaned.

  “You would?” Christopher perked up. “That’s really quite… kind of you.”

  “Would those prayers be said before or after you loot their body?” Cassie grinned.

  “During,” Mack said with a wicked smile.

  “Why did I even think for a moment you could act nobly?” Christopher sighed.

  “I have no idea,” Mack agreed.

  “It will not be an orc, that is for sure,” Alicia pointed out. “No orc could be killed by a single wolf.”

  “Where is the rest of his pack?” Cassie sounded sad as she looked for the other wolves, which, thankfully, were nowhere in sight.

  “I don’t think that one wolf could have caused that much destruction. It looks like the wagon was forced off of the road. The horses panicked and fled, but didn’t get that far,” Luke peered at the destruction.

  They were about
fifty feet away now. The dry, dead earth puffed up around their boots. There was the occasional call of a carrion bird that had Luke’s head jerking up, but no one and nothing approached them. The wolf raised its head again from its meal of the horse. Its muzzle was stained red.

  “Everyone, stay here while I go and commune with our friend,” Christopher urged.

  Christopher walked forward on his own. Luke kept his hand on Dragon’s Claw’s hilt, but he didn’t have the same fear as before when Christopher first did this. Christopher sketched that strange symbol with the tip of his staff in the air. The gold letter broke apart and streamed towards the wolf. It surrounded the wolf, which blinked as if waking up. Tongue lolling out, the wolf leaped over the horse’s carcass and trotted to Christopher eagerly. Christopher dropped down onto his haunches, and offered the wolf the jerky. It was devoured eagerly, followed by the wolf licking Christopher’s hand and face. He laughed and petted the wolf before standing, and gesturing for them to join him.

  “Our friend remembers us,” Christopher said. “It was much easier to perform the spell this time on him.”

  Cassie was immediately dropping down to scratch between the wolf’s ears, and coo about what a fuzzy baby it was.

  “Will he mind if we check out the wagon? We need to find Edmund’s goods,” Luke said, as he was already scanning the ground around the horses. “Maybe just assure him, we won’t eat the horses.”

  “Oh, yes! He’s one of our party… for as long as the spell holds,” Christopher said the last with a frown, as Cassie was laughing with the wolf licking her face. Thankfully, the blood had disappeared from its snout, and it must not have had horse-breath from the way Cassie was enjoying the tongue-bath.

  Luke headed over to the back of the wagon, thinking that the goods would most likely be inside the wagon itself. But when he got into the back and looked about, while there were only boxes and bags of materials from beans to nails to sugar, nothing stood out as belonging to Edmund. He got down, frowning.