She groaned and climbed to her feet. Shadow-plane phasing did not stack well with Lithe. Jeremy knew they both diminished contact with the physical realm but must have decided it was better to hit her with a crappy spell combo than let the serpent keep eyeing her. Anyway, it seemed to have worked. The beast’s gaze was back on Chen. With a mental flick of the hand, Devon dispelled the shadow-phase effect while leaving her own magic in place.
The serpent began to weave a different pattern in the air, the warm-up for another attack. Devon’s instinct was to prepare a specific defense. But the Lore didn’t cover this. Best she could do was keep some terrain between her and the monster.
Chen had one job, and he did it well, keeping attention by hacking at the beast’s scales. For all the damage he inflicted, though, he might as well have been trying to chop down a tree with a butter knife.
Devon began to edge around the chamber, back to the wall, toes skimming the ground. With a roar, the serpent whirled. A fin sliced out from the side of her body and slid straight through the armor on Chen's weapon arm. Devon gasped as his arm fell away clean, the greatsword clanging off stone before splashing into the acid.
"That sucks," she whispered.
A bolt of glowing energy from the astral plane arced across the room and smoked as it hit the stump of Chen's arm, cauterizing the wound. The warrior gritted his teeth and drew a small warhammer with his remaining hand. Meanwhile, Maya's demon screeched and shot across the chamber. Like curdled smoke, it hovered in the air before the beast’s face, fire building in its core. The monster seemed to scoff, and with a breath of toxic fog, sent the demon back to the hell plane.
Devon reached the far side of the cavern and eyed the terrain between her position and the serpent's back. A crest of rubbery spikes hung down the monster’s spine, reminding her of kelp on the beach. It wouldn't be easy, but Devon could probably climb using the crest for handholds. She took a deep breath, planning her movements.
A tortured shriek ended with a gargle. Devon froze. For just an instant, Chen's legs stood upright before toppling. The rest of him—torso, head, and armor—were shadows sliding down the serpent's gullet.
Devon could only stare—it had happened so fast.
Chen was gone, just like that.
A red glow lit the far platform as Maya screamed and channeled her rage. The little halfling jabbed a hand into her reagent pouch, pulled out the Phial of Deification, and broke it open beneath her nose.
Celestial light filled her body, and she sprinted forward to take the warrior's place. She yanked out a belt knife and brandished it in the direction of the serpent’s belly.
Devon shook her head. What had Jeremy said about being so deep in the shit they might as well undress and jump in the acid?
As Maya reset her feet in an awkward combat crouch, a pair of daggers streaked from the shadows and slammed into the beast’s fin, pinning it to her body. Devon grinned in approval at Owen’s aim. Maya might not survive longer than the duration of the deification effect, but at least she wouldn’t lose an arm.
Wrenched from her paralysis, Devon took three quick leaps across islands of stone and vaulted onto the serpent's back. Though they'd looked like slippery rope, the spines were razor-sharp. She grimaced as the edges sliced through her leather gloves. Blood poured from cuts in her palms, making her grip slick.
She jammed a hand into her belt pouch and pulled out her Phial. Like Owen had said, no fight seemed worthy of expending a mythical treasure. But like the saying went… you can’t take it with you.
Devon squeezed the Phial, shattering the delicate glass. Wisps of golden mist rose from her fist, and she inhaled deeply.
Power flooded her body, rocketing her in-game statistics and abilities to their maximum.
Devon was invincible.
She grabbed one of the serpent’s spines, yanked, and felt it tear away in her grip.
Easy, tiger.
She scrambled the remaining distance to the monster’s head as easily as dashing up a ladder. Planting herself atop the beast, she squeezed the sides of the queen’s head with her thighs.
“Yeehaw, cowgirl,” Owen called from somewhere in the shadows.
Thevizh freaked out, writhing back and forth and cracking her head—along with Devon's body—against the dangling stalactites. The g-forces were fighter-pilot bad. But Devon had become a god.
For the next three minutes and thirty seconds, anyway.
She held on tight with her legs and yanked a dagger from her belt. The serpent's head was wider than a horse’s back, and Devon strained to reach far enough to strike at the thin membrane covering the monster’s ear hole. Even with god-like abilities, the serpent's wild flailing threw her aim off. Again and again, the point of the dagger skittered off diamond-hard scales. On the floor of the cavern, Hailey began to glow. Leaves materialized in the air and swirled around her in a whirlwind.
Thevizh froze as an interlocking lattice of ironwood roots wrapped her from tail to flicking tongue.
“Cage of the Forest! Nice!" Owen yelled from somewhere in a hidden recess of the cave.
Hailey shrugged a single shoulder. "Finally found the trainer."
Unfortunately, the ironwood had covered Devon's strike zone. She dug the tip of her dagger between the root and the beast’s scales. No use. Not even a Dagger of the Sun could penetrate an archdruid’s casting.
She leaned the other way. Same story on the other side of Thevizh's head.
Murphy's stupid Law.
It didn't matter; archdruid or not, Hailey's spell didn't last long against the bog serpent queen. With a mighty shudder, the beast shattered the cage. Devon struck and missed again as the infernal writhing resumed.
With another burst of magic, Hailey transformed into a raven the size of a horse. Shrieking, she beat the air with massive wings then dove at the serpent's eyes. Her talons clinked off unbreakable transparent scales.
This fight wasn't about whittling down the beast. Even if they could inflict damage, they'd never last long enough to get her below half health. This was all about Devon.
She stabbed again, felt the blade scrape against scales.
Like a surprise blow to the kidneys, her strength fled. Suddenly, it was all she could do to hold on.
Three minutes and thirty seconds. Had it already been so long?
The serpent thrashed to the right, smashing Devon's leg against a dangling spike. White pain was chased by cold numbness, and Devon glanced down to see her leg had been crushed. She whipped her head around, looking for Jeremy as she wormed fingers between a pair of scales to try to keep her grip.
Her eyes locked on a slumped form, half in and half out of the physical plane. A pair of spines pinned Jeremy’s corpse to the cavern’s stone wall. Her throat constricted. At least she'd seen Chen’s demise.
With a roar of anger, Devon made one last desperate stab at the monster’s eardrum.
And to her shock, her blade punctured the membrane.
The serpent stiffened, and time seemed to freeze.
/Well. This is unexpected./ The monster’s low and sibilant voice lanced into her mind. /My only weakness… In through the eardrum to puncture the poison sac in the roof of my mouth./
Devon was sliding, her deadened leg dragging her off the crown of the serpent’s head. Beneath her, reptilian flesh shuddered as the toxin spilled through the queen’s veins.
/It was supposed to be impossible, you know. A flaw in my design that none but an immortal entity could exploit./
“Yeah, and we killed you anyway, shithead,” Devon said as she lost her grip and tumbled. Usually, she could land on her feet from twice the height, but with a leg crippled… this was going to hurt.
/And as such, there's one last failsafe. I cannot let you live and walk away from this./
“Wait, what?”
Air rushed into the monster’s slitted nostrils as she inhaled deeply.
Oh. Crap.
"Evacuate! Run, you guys!" Devon yelled a split-second before she smacked the ground.
Too late. Thevizh exhaled a brown cloud.
Necrotic fog. The single type of damage for which there was no resistance. Devon hit the ground, hard. The air left her lungs, but she refused to breathe in the deadly fog. No use; the poison soaked through the membranes in her eyes, sank through her pores.
She tasted death in the back of her throat before her vision went black.
You were slain by Thevizh, Bog Serpent Queen.
Permadeath has been enabled for the final day of uptime for Avatharn Online.
You may not respawn.
A single button appeared in the interface superimposed over her vision.
Logout
***
2057 - St. George, Utah
The seals on the VR pod released with a pop and a quick rush of air. Moments later, Devon’s vision returned, shunted back from the pod’s technology to grant a red-toned view of the backs of her eyelids. She cracked them open, grimacing at the low-quality LED lighting that VR parlors were so fond of. The machine began peeling electrodes off her forehead, neck, and the tips of her fingers, leaving behind spots of coolness where her skin had been sweaty beneath. She raised an arm and dropped her hand over her eyes.
That was it then. Her final logout. Now what?
Stretching, she swung her legs over the edge of the pod and stood. Stillness hung like a pall over the parlor—back at corporate headquarters for Pod People, management was probably drinking funereal toasts and offloading whatever stock they could. Without Avatharn Online, public VR parlors would either need to invest in extra sanitation equipment to service the erotic immersion industry, or they’d have to scrape by on subscriptions from die-hard immerso addicts until another game title achieved critical mass. If that ever happened. The shutdown had been such a surprise. No real warning, no apparent reason. Just a message that had announced the end four days ago.
Even though a few hours of Avatharn uptime remained, barely half the pods were occupied. The seals on those were locked down tight, and red warning text glowed near the emergency handle. No doubt, the people inside the capsules were walking around the commons of half a dozen major cities in the realm. Saying tearful goodbyes. Waiting for the lights to go out.
Devon shuddered. She needed to get out of here before they woke up.
Stupid game. And what a crappy way to finish out five years of her life. Killing me is supposed to be impossible so I’m going to nuke your party with necrotic damage? Seriously, what the hell?
She wondered if the others had received the same message. Minus Chen and Jeremy, of course. They’d already been ejected by the time she’d struck the fatal blow.
Unfortunately, Devon would never know what the rest of her group had experienced. That was the point. No goodbyes, no contact afterward. Otherwise, they’d never be able to move on.
The pod closed behind her. The seals engaged with a whine, and antiseptic mist hissed as it filled the apparatus. Tubes gargled as the spray got sucked back out. Even so, the pods almost always smelled faintly of the last occupant. She curled her lip. That was one good thing about the shutdown—no more public VR pods.
With a deep breath, she started walking toward the glare of afternoon sunlight through the glass front door.
“Hey! You forgot your timecard,” the pale-faced attendant called.
She didn’t look back. “I don’t want it.”
“There will be other games.”
“Not for me. Got to get on with my life.”
Besides, the card probably held just fifteen or sixteen more hours of pod use. And since she was a cheapskate and went with a biometrically-locked timecard, she couldn’t even sell it.
Just like she could no longer resell items, quest escorts, or any of the other in-game commodities she’d used to supplement her crappy day-job wages.
She shoved the door open and stepped into a wall of Southwest heat. Time to start over.
Again.
Chapter One
THE DECREPIT VEHICLE, an old six-wheeled army truck converted to an open-top tourist bus, creaked and groaned as the driver AI eased it over ruts and bumps. Emerson swayed in his seat, knocking shoulders with a bored-looking teenager. The kid kept glancing his way and rolling his eyes as if looking for an accomplice in his objection to being dragged along on a hokey Wild West adventure. Between the broiling desert sun and the group sitting in front of the kid’s parents—eleven highly enthusiastic people in matching yellow T-shirts printed with a logo for their family reunion—Emerson didn’t blame the kid for sulking. But he didn’t have time for commiserations. He slipped on his augmented reality glasses as an excuse to avoid interaction.
Rather than activating the glasses’ markup to get the full Wild West overlay atop the scenery and actors, he focused on the woman guiding the tour. Devon Walker. She didn’t look like the stereotypical hardcore gamer. No stark haircut or implanted mood beads glowing in response to her EM field. No obvious tattoos. Her ordinary light brown hair was tied in a low ponytail. She was just… normal—and he had to admit, fairly attractive. If not for the detailed history he’d received from the PI, he’d have assumed she did administrative work somewhere. Or maybe that she still lived with her parents while finishing college.
She didn’t look like someone who’d left home at sixteen. Before that, she’d had a barely-speaking-terms relationship with her single mother and the mother’s string of temporary boyfriends. Devon had been on her own for six years now, cobbling together gaming income and temporary jobs to afford a cheap studio apartment that she kept clean but never decorated.
"Get down!" Devon yelled, almost convincingly. She ducked and dragged a replica six-shooter out of the faux-leather holster on her belt. The bus jounced over another series of ruts, probably hand-constructed for authenticity. In the front rows, the family reunioners laughed and gasped as Devon squeezed off a series of blanks, aiming for actors who leaped from behind artfully placed blocks of sandstone. A middle-aged man yanked out a toy gun and started shooting at the nearest “bandit.”
The actors fell one by one, shot down by the expert marksmanship in the bus. Moments later, the slope to the left of the road began to rumble, and then dirt and pebbles sprayed as an explosion rocked a mine tunnel cut near the top of the nearest bluff. Devon cringed and slapped a hand on top of her hat to hold it on as rubble tumbled down the slope.
The tourists gasped and cheered.
Finally, the bus stopped at the gates to a chintzy fort, square walls made of skinny logs with the bark still on. A man wearing a sheriff’s vest stalked out, bow-legged. Either he had hemorrhoids, or he was trying to look like he’d just got off a horse.
"Escape the ambush, did you?" he asked jovially, then widened his eyes as he glanced at the road behind the bus. He drew yet another pistol, laid it over his wrist, and fired a blank over the top of the brush. Another actor yelped, stood, and executed a twisting fall into the dust.
"You missed one," he said with an exaggerated wink. "But I might still take you on as deputies."
The teenager beside Emerson groaned. “You can’t tell me this isn’t as lame as it gets,” he hissed to his parents.
The gates creaked open, exposing the trampled-dust interior of Fort Kolob. The bus trundled in and lurched to a stop. Emerson caught Devon’s longing look toward the city of St. George, Utah. He didn’t blame her. He was looking forward to heading back as well, if only for the air conditioning.
Along one edge of the fort, another tour group was lined up to fire real pistols at straw targets. In a far corner, sway-backed horses stamped in the heat, heads low. As Emerson hopped down from the bus, last to exit, Devon herded the group toward a trestle table on the side opposite the firearms. Another woman stopped by the table on her way from the staff area to the shooting gallery. She wore her dirty blonde hair in tight braids and had a wide-brimmed hat pulled l
ow on her forehead.
"Well now,” she said. “Another pack of new settlers. In case you don't recognize me by the exhibition posters you saw on your way out West, the name’s Annie Oakley. I'll be giving you some tips on sharpshooting later on."
With her back turned to the main group, “Annie” rolled her eyes at Devon who contained a smirk. Emerson took a seat at the end of the bench, not wanting to be trapped in the middle of any loud conversation from the reunion-goers. Plus, he was hoping to speak to Devon when she wasn’t busy—provided he could figure out something to say without making a fool of himself or freaking her out. He really should have sent someone else to do this, but his control-freakishness had gotten in the way. He only had so much discretionary budget, and he really didn’t want someone else screwing up his plans.
Over at the shooting gallery, a couple parents were loudly encouraging their son. The kid, probably ten and clad in clothes a size or two too tight, raised a pistol. Head turned to the side, eyes clenched shut, he squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand. He dropped it and started bawling.
Emerson didn’t miss the look of exasperation that passed between Annie and Devon.
Unfortunately, as soon as Devon saw the servers coming with plates of honest-to-goodness char-broiled steaks, she slipped away and exited the open center of the fort through an unlabeled door.
Emerson moved his food around on his plate and sipped his water. A hot steak under the glare of a ninety-degree sun just wasn’t appetizing. He dabbed his lips with a napkin, stood, and sauntered toward the shade of the wall—and the door where Devon had disappeared. From inside, he heard her greeting coworkers in a dull voice. Cutlery clinked against dishes, and somewhere in the recesses of the room, water was spraying, probably into a sink.
The door didn’t say employees-only, so Emerson shrugged and pushed through it into—as he’d guessed by the sounds—the employee cafeteria. Devon was standing by the checkout kiosk carrying a tray holding a floppy-looking veggie burger and some kind of fruit cocktail. She set the tray beneath the imager then held her wrist into the scanning field.
Temple of Sorrow: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 1) Page 2