Viridian Gate Online- Doom Forge

by J. A. Hunter

  Sweat broke out across my brow, and my arms quivered under the pressure of the spells.

  But the barrier held.

  Once the attack subsided, I dropped the shield and launched a barrage of my own. With a thought and an effort of will, I summoned Umbra Bog—that still worked at least—miring the spellcasters at the rear of the attack formation, then hit them with my pound for pound most devastating AOE spell: Plague Burst. I seldom used it. True, it caused an absolutely epic amount of damage, but unfortunately it didn’t have the good grace to distinguish between friends and foes like Night Cyclone. And that included me—I was just as susceptible to the poison gas it conjured as anyone else. Suicide by toxic cloud was never pleasant and tremendously embarrassing to boot.

  But this was the perfect setup, since I was out of the direct heat of the fight.

  “Burst, burst, burst!” I called out, letting everyone know what was coming just in case they were planning anything reckless downrange. My left hand whipped through the air in a complex series of gestures: flick, twirl, snap, fingers splayed out, hand curling into a fist as raw power trickled out of my palm. A moment later, a rancid yellow fog—thick, billowing, and deadly toxic—bled from the air, swirling around the magical Void Strikers. It seeped through the thin joints between their rigid exoskeletons and clawed at insectoid eyes. It looked a bit like they were melting, thick purple ichor oozing out like pus as they died slowly.

  Abby significantly sped that whole dying thing up by casting Rain of Fire, bringing down a torrent of blazing embers right on their heads. They shrieked—a high-pitched, undulating warble—then promptly keeled over, reduced to goopy piles of gore. The plague cloud dissipated a few seconds later, the area now safe.

  Without their spell support, the last of the Void Strikers crumbled with a single push. Forge charged, axe carving a path forward. Ari—surprisingly effective with her tiny sword—and Cutter followed in his wake, hacking, slashing, and dancing through the now chaotic ranks. A little ranged assistance from Amara, Abby, and myself put the final nail in the coffin. Carl avoided direct conflict, of course, but kept chanting the whole while, wicking away minor injuries, dropping regen and resist poison buffs, using Focus Aggression to keep most of the heat firmly on Forge.

  Quick. Easy. Effective. Minimal damage on our end.

  Once we were sure all the critters were well and truly dead, we took a few minutes to loot the corpses.

  The Terrors didn’t carry much by way of loot items—no swords, shields, or armor. But killing them delivered a decent amount of XP, and they all carried a handful of coins, mostly silver, though the occasional gold as well. The biggest thing, though, was the crafting ingredients. Shadow Escorn Powder. Void Striker Venom. Umbra Chitin. Bootlace Fungus. I wasn’t a Forager or an Alchemist by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d never heard of anything like this stuff. Which made a certain sense.

  If these were ingredients naturally spawned in the Shadowverse, then only a handful of folks would be able to harvest them.

  It was shortly after we’d finished clearing the corpses when the first of the Death-Head debuffs sideswiped me from out of nowhere, landing like a lightning bolt of white-hot agony. Frying my nerve endings in an instant. I dropped to the floor, clutching my guts, eyes watering as waves of heat and nausea rolled outward. Suddenly, that lightning strike of pain morphed into a raging forest fire, rampaging through me, traveling up and down my limbs. I rolled onto my side and dry heaved over and over again. Nothing came out, but by the time I was done, my ribs and back burned from the strain.

  A prompt flashed as the pain finally started to wane and fade like a bad dream:

  <<<>>>

  Debuff Added

  Diseased: As a result of the Death-Head Mode, your body is slowly dying! You’ve been afflicted with Death Head’s Disease. Attack Damage and Spell Strength reduced by 15%; Health, Stamina, and Spirit regeneration reduced by 25%; duration, until death or quest completion.

  <<<>>>

  “Death-Head, eh?” Cutter asked, offering me a hand.

  “Yeah.” I accepted his hand and let him pull me to my feet.

  It was a stern reminder that the clock was actively ticking against us, and that we needed to find this book and we needed to find it yesterday. I dismissed the notice, gave a brief word of explanation to Ari and Carl, who were unfamiliar with Death-Head mode and its nasty effects, and then we continued our way into the unending maze of passages.

  For the next half hour, we encountered more pockets of resistance. Scuttling groups of Void Strikers. Prowling, hound-like [Void Kurjack]. Swarms of tiny, winged [Void Zrika], which were almost like crickets—if crickets were malicious, as smart as a pack of caffeinated toddlers, and equipped with claws and poisonous stingers. Big. Small. Feathered. Tentacled. All deadly in their own right and all absolute horror shows. I was pretty sure poor Carl would be traumatized for the rest of his days. The guy jumped at every shadow.

  Eventually, the rocky cavern-like tunnels came to an end at a set of double doors, which almost exactly mimicked the doors to the Keep above—though with a few small differences. First, instead of an enormous golden tree with boughs reaching up, up, up, these doors had an enormous silver tree with sprawling roots reaching down. Inscribed on the stone arch above the door was a verse that looked like it belonged to a poem:

  The guardian of shadow and wrath

  slumbers among the fallen leaves.

  Our resident Cleric let out a gasp and face-palmed. “Freakin’ figures,” he muttered excitedly. “As above, so below. I shoulda guessed it.”

  “Guessed what, Dwarf?” Amara asked, side-eyeing the door as though she didn’t trust it in the least. Good instincts.

  “Yggdrasil,” he replied, waving at the door with the intricate silver tree. Or at least the bottom half of it. “The tree of life—it’s uh, sort of a Dwarven thing. They’re really into it. But it’s always depicted by a huge tree with both the roots and the branches exposed. Supposed to represent Mount Svartalfheim. The Dwarves, they teach that the roots of a mountain are just as deep as its summit is high. Like a mirror, you know? As above, so below. Anyway”—he waved a hand through the air—“the point is, up topside we only saw the branches. Here are the roots. A Keep above, a Keep below. And the fact that it’s in a different realm—one of Shadow—makes even more sense.” He shook his head, a wry grin on his bearded face.

  “And the bit of verse there, friend,” Cutter said, pointing at the cursive script running above the door. “What do you take that to mean, eh?”

  “Pfft. How should I know?” the Cleric offered with a shrug. “What do I look like, some kinda Rhodes scholar?”

  “You look like a bloody damned priest,” Cutter shot back.

  “Eh. Fine, I guess that’s a valid point. But let’s not forget that I’m also the worst priest in the order.” He grimaced. Sniffed. “Boy am I kicking myself for not paying better attention, though.” He frowned and ran a hand down the length of his beard. “But at this point, I figure it doesn’t make much of a difference. In too deep to turn back.” Without saying anything else, he bounded forward, making his way up a short flight of stairs carved directly from the porous rock. When he reached the top, the silver roots slithered and writhed as though they were a brood of snakes disturbed from a long sleep. As the squirming roots finally stopped moving, the doors ghosted outward—opposite of the door above—on silent hinges.

  “Might be, I’m wrong,” Cutter said, “but it seems to me that this is the way we’re supposed to go.” He moved forward on the balls of his feet, gaze restlessly scanning for any sign of traps or the shadowy, distorted ripples in the air that typically preceded Void Terror attacks. An overwhelming sense of déjà vu settled over me. When I got to the doors, I noticed a long string of pearly runes etched into the threshold to the strange underworld mansion. I couldn’t make out more than a third of them, but a handful stuck out to me. Containment wards. Likely meant to keep the Void Terrors from the ca
vern at bay.

  That, or maybe meant to keep something even worse in...

  As Above, So Below

  INSIDE THE PALACE WAS shockingly familiar. Polished marble hallways—black stone instead of creamy white—with arched ceilings and walls scones. These, though, were gleaming silver, and the magical orbs they held shed watery light like trapped moon beams. There were nooks, crannies, and alcoves here as well, but instead of fanciful artwork, the items seemed far more esoteric. Maps, framed fragments of parchment, clay tablets with obscure pictographs or script in languages I didn’t understand.

  We even found the occasional rack of weapons or free-standing suit of armor. Those we lingered at a bit longer, inspecting each item for traps or malicious sigils, before stripping them down and throwing them into our inventories. Good stuff. All of it well made, though without an enchantment in sight. Everything was starter gear, but even starter gear could serve the Alliance.

  More interesting, however, were the rooms which branched up from the main corridor.

  The mansion above had clearly been a residence. A beautiful, sprawling, intimidating residence that could house a hundred people, easy, but a home nonetheless. True to theme, this place was just about the opposite. It was dedicated to form and function. There were no lounges. No soft sofas or leather club chairs. No grand dining halls with enormous hard wood tables and high-backed seats. Instead, there were archery ranges, agility courses, training pits, alchemy labs, and armories. This looked like the secret fortress of a general-king.

  As we wound our way through the maze of rooms and hallways, exploring its many floors, I couldn’t help but wonder whether we could lay claim to this Keep. We had Darkshard, yes, and we’d even set up a training academy of sorts down in the Darkshard mines nearby. Since time worked differently in the Shadowverse—trickling by far more slowly than it did in the Material Realm—we could squeeze untold amounts of training and crafting into a relatively limited timeframe. Still, working in the mines was an unbelievable challenge since the Void Terrors were everywhere, and respawned every eight hours like clockwork.

  It made for some serious logistical and personnel issues.

  But just like the mansion above, this place was devoid of mobs—so far, at least—giving credence to the idea that the runes by the door were indeed containment wards. So, if we could capture this place like some of the other Keeps scattered about Eldgard, it could offer us a variety of strategic advantages. Training. Security. Plus, a base in the north that no one else knew about. Definitely something to look into once I’d sorted everything out with the Doom Forge.

  We explored each of the rooms we passed, taking our time to ensure there was nothing we overlooked, but found no sign of the book we’d come in search of. We did, however, find more strange verses painstakingly etched into various areas. Clues of some kind, I had no doubt, though I wasn’t sure what exactly they corresponded to.

  In shadow and in light, we found carved into the stone mantle above a fireplace, the letters so small and so fine we’d almost missed it. Only Cutter’s sharp eye saved the day there. In an enormous war room, we found the line A cruel tormentor along the path; neatly penned at the bottom of a giant parchment map with all of Eldgard splashed across it. A bane to all unworthy thieves adorned a wobbly stone set into the floor of a decked-out alchemy lab. Amara discovered the line Weakness revealed in darkest night painstakingly scrawled onto one of the wall sconces.

  After we’d searched every other inch of the place, we headed toward the back end—where the kitchen and forge had been located in the upper portion of the Keep. The entrance to the Shadowverse had been located in the forge. Since this shadow version of the Keep so closely mirrored the version above, I suspected we’d probably find whatever we were looking for there. The last few hallways were bare, and before long we wound up in the kitchen. Except down here, it wasn’t a kitchen, but a library. And scrawled above the archway, almost like a bookend to the arch at the front entryway, was a section of verse.

  A magic touch shall not prevail;

  Although I’d never graduated from college, I remembered enough from my English Lit class to recognize a poem. And Abby, who had graduated, was smart enough to put it together in the right order, though she insisted it was something called a Sicilian Octave, and that it was missing a final line.

  The guardian of shadow and wrath

  slumbers among the fallen leaves.

  A cruel tormentor along the path;

  A bane to all unworthy thieves.

  In shadow and in light,

  weakness revealed in darkest night.

  A magic touch shall not prevail;

  Beyond the arch was the single biggest library I’d ever seen, though admittedly, I hadn’t had a chance to stop by the Grand Archives in Alaunhylles. According to Abby there were miles of books, tomes, and records there. Still, this place was impressively big—a maze of twisting aisleways and heavy-laden bookshelves loaded down with tomes and books in all shapes and sizes. Must’ve been twenty thousand books. Maybe more. It would take months to search through every title, and years to read them all.

  Even inside the Shadowverse, where time crawled along at an eighth of normal speed, we’d never have enough time to look through every text—not before the quest expired, killing me in the process.

  “Well, shit,” Forge said, drawing out the word shit as he rubbed thoughtfully at his blocky chin. “I might be outta my depth, y’all. Killing monsters. Fighting gods. Blowing up taverns. I’m all about it, but ain’t no one said I was gonna have to do a bunch of book reports.”

  “He has a point,” Cutter piped in. “Where in the bloody hells do we even start? This is like searching for a needle in a giant pile of needles.” He turned and glowered at Carl. “This is supposed to be your area of expertise, friend. So what are we supposed to be looking for, eh?”

  “Well.” The Cleric shifted awkwardly. “It’s a leather-bound book about yay big.” He held his hands apart, giving us a rough measurement. Unfortunately, his terrible description fit over half the books lining the shelves. “Says The Biographical History of Eitri Spark-Sprayer in fancy gold lettering across the front.” He shrugged apologetically. “There’s a golden handprint on the front too, if that helps any.”

  “Damnit all, Carl,” Cutter said. “Gods, but you really are the worst priest I’ve ever met. It’s no bloody wonder they tossed you out on your ear like the utter sod you are.”

  “Hey man, I never wanted to be caught up in this quest,” he shot back defensively. “My only goal was to keep my head down, make a decent living, and drink beer in my off hours. I’m not supposed to be the freakin’ chosen one, okay?”

  “Just calm down,” Abby said before things could escalate further. “There’s got to be a better way than just looking through every book. I mean stop and really look at this library. Really look at it. The aisles are crazy, a maze. But everything here’s neat. Meticulous. A place for everything and everything in its place. This collection is clearly sorted and organized, which means that whoever owned it probably had some way to search for specific volumes—a way to find the right one. It would be stupid not to have some method, right?”

  “Which means there’s probably a card catalog or maybe an index volume around here somewhere,” I said, rushing forward to envelop her in a huge bear hug. “You’re a genius, Abby. Seriously, what would we do without you?”

  “Never find the book,” she grumbled good-naturedly as I set her down. She smoothed her dress, but offered me a genuine smile.

  “There is one other possibility,” Amara said. “This book. It is a quest item, yes?”

  Carl bobbed his head.

  “Then, perhaps, it will not be on these many shelves at all. If it is a sacred tome, as your priests teach, then would it not make sense to have such a title segregated from the more common volumes?”

  “Yeah,” Abby said. “That’s a good point. Could be it’s sitting on a pedestal somewhere—or maybe hidden
behind a false wall. Something like that.”

  “Then let’s split up,” I said. “Abby, Forge, why don’t you two start looking for the catalog or the index book. Amara and Cutter, start searching for traps, hidden doors, any kind of secret mechanism. Ari, you and Carl are on the lookout for illusions. Maybe our pal Eitri used the same tricks as he did topside. In the meantime, I’ll start pawing through some of the regular books. See if anything jumps out at me. But word of warning—be careful. I know we haven’t run across anything in here that wants to eat our faces yet, but I wouldn’t get complacent. The last time I was in a library like this, I ran into Devil.”

  Everyone set off in different directions.

  I made my way into the stacks, trailing my fingers along the book spines, gaze drifting over each volume, not lingering on any title for too long. Most of them seemed pretty tame and boring. Lots of books on Eldgard history, documenting eras ranging from the rise of Rowanheath to the Merchant Council coup. I found one book that offered insight into the first invasion of the Imperials onto the continent. I plucked that one from the shelf and added it to my inventory, hoping to find some time later on to glance through the pages.

  The history of Eldgard was murky at best, and though I knew the Imperials had invaded from the east, landing on Eldgard and establishing New Viridia before making their push against the rest of the natives, there was little talk of where the Imperials had come from originally. Was it possible there was a whole other continent out there somewhere, filled with some forgotten empire that no Traveler had ever visited? If so, were there Murk Elves there? Accipiters? Dwarves? Or were there different races entirely? I didn’t know, but it might be worth exploring one day.

  I moved on into another section, this one stocked mostly with texts on magic and spellcraft. The Metaphysical Paradox of Divination. Spinners Handbook of Mystical Merchant-craft. Compendium of Tanglewood Beasts. A Conjurer’s Primer. Some of those books sent little jolts of power thrumming into my outstretched fingertips. Beckoning me. Enticing me. A tome titled Umbra Runic Transcription seemed custom tailored for me, so I added it, along with a few of the more interesting titles, to my bag. Mostly, though, I kept moving. As much as I wanted to plop down and spend the next few weeks exploring every book that piqued my curiosity, we had places to be and things to do.