by J. A. Hunter
The next ten minutes passed by much the same as I wandered aimlessly, selecting rows at random, hoping raw instinct would guide me where I needed to go.
I was halfway down another unremarkable aisleway when a purple glimmer, radiating from the spine of a book, caught my eye. The mark wasn’t big, just an odd circle with too many loops, swirls and lines jutting off. Upon closer inspection, I realized it wasn’t a proper rune at all, but rather, an ancient Dokkalfar symbol I’d seen a handful of times before. The symbol of the Dark Templar. The mark of the Maa-Tál. Chief Kolle had a mark like that on an amulet he always wore, and so did the other Murk Elf chieftains who made up the Dark Conclave.
It instantly set my gamer sense to tingling. Bingo.
I inched over to the shelf, hooked the top edge of the book with one finger, and gave it a gentle pull. The tome resisted my attempts to remove it from the shelf. I pulled harder, but still nothing. Next, I ran the pad of my thumb over the glimmering rune. A faint jolt of power sprinted up my arm, and the handprint on my forearm suddenly burned with arctic power, cold and raw and biting. Something that only happened in the presence of potent Umbra Magic. Usually potent ritual magic. Working on intuition, I pressed my thumb against the odd rune and fed in a trickle of Spirit.
The sigil flared, a pulse of light so bright I had to shield my eyes against it, and a second later, there was a click and a groan as a section of bookcase in front of me lurched inward. A false wall, though this one was clearly meant to be accessed only by someone with the power of shadow. That was incredibly suspicious. Sophia had said that Overmind interference was strictly limited given the nature of the quest, but what were the chances that we would stumble on a place like this? A Keep that would require the skill set of both a Cleric and a Dark Templar?
Impossibly unlikely. Unless...
Unless Sophia and the other Overminds had been manipulating me from the very beginning.
When I’d first meet Sophia—just after earning my place among the Ak-Hani as a Shadowmancer—she’d told me I’d be her pawn. What if she’d been true to her word? Moving me, step by step, this whole time. Offering me the illusion of choice, while subtly forcing me to follow the path she’d been laying out for me. She’d made me her Champion. She’d put Vlad into my path, ensuring we’d take Rowanheath, which in turn had led me to the Quest of the Jade Lord. She’d called me into the Realm of Order and pitted me against the Lich Priest, Vox-Malum, who just so happened to have the first Doom-Forged relic.
And now, here I was. At her insistence. After she’d pointed me toward Carl like a hunting dog set on the trail of a deer. Carl, the only person who could’ve guided me here.
The section of bookcase came to a stop, revealing a shallow alcove with a high ceiling. The far wall was plaster, not stone, and on it was a breathtaking fresco. A portrait of Eitri—in this one he was in a dark forest, his leather armor black as wet tar, a heavy warhammer not so terribly different from my own resting against one shoulder. A bit of light reflected from his right hand: a ring, embedded into the plaster, wrapped around his finger. In the center of the nook was a marble pedestal, and etched along its edge was the final line of the poem: the beginner’s blade can tip the scale.
I only had eyes for the thing resting on the pedestal, though. A book. A book with an odd golden lock, protecting its secrets from unwanted eyes, and a golden handprint splayed across the front.
A handprint that instantly reminded me of the one on my arm.
After thinking about Sophia, and the way I’d likely been manipulated, I was tempted to turn around and leave the book be just to spite her. But the tome called to me. In some way, it felt like destiny as I stepped into the hidden chamber. Like my whole time in VGO had set me on the path to this place. To put the clues together. To assemble a weapon, created before the game had even gone live, which could save the world.
In the end, however, it was my sheer curiosity as a gamer that pulled me across the threshold.
I reached out a trembling hand, pressing it against the palm print on the cover, briefly thinking of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, with its mirrored branches and roots. As above, so below.
My hand burned.
Not with fire but with impossible cold, which traveled up my arm and into my chest, surrounding my heart, reaching icy fingers into my lungs. The lock securing the book sprang open, Umbral light spilling from between the pages. I lifted my hand, and the book burst open, the pages fluttering madly like the rustling of fall leaves, bleeding preternatural light into the air. I heard an audible click and the grinding of shifting stone, but the sound was distant and unimportant. So, so far away.
And, in short order, all of that faded as I fell forward, swallowed into the pages of the book.
Through the Looking Glass
I SWAYED AND LURCHED, woozy and a little nauseous from my trip down the rabbit hole. I glanced left and right, trying to figure out where in the heck I was, because one thing was certain, I wasn’t in the underground library anymore, but in an enormous cavern. The walls were deep, red-brown stone, natural, uncut, and studded with raw gemstones: fist-sized rubies, emeralds, diamonds, topaz, and sapphires. Interspersed among the gems were great veins of raw ore: iron here, silver there, gold in a third spot, a jagged skein of jade.
The legion of precious stones and the huge veins of metal ore glimmered in the burning orange light of a colossal forge, bathing the mosaic floor in a warm, welcoming glow. The mosaic underfoot depicted a Murk Elf woman with raven-black hair and blazing emerald eyes, a sad half smile on her lips.
The forge itself was like nothing I’d ever seen. Protruding from the far wall was a statue, sculpted directly into the cavern face: a phoenix the size of a battleship with wings spread wide, its beaked maw lifted up in defiant triumph. Resting at the mythic bird’s clawed feet was a sea of burbling red-gold magma, wisps of steam and heat drifting up like a cloud. Nearby was a flawless obsidian anvil, larger than a dinner table. Curiously, however, there were no tools. No hammers, swages, awls, or even quenching barrels. Nothing to work metal with.
A bear of a man loomed above the magma pool, though man probably wasn’t strictly the right word to use. He was fifteen feet tall if he was an inch, so heavily muscled he was nearly deformed, and made from gold. His whole body. Just pure gold, glimmering in the dancing forge light. His hair, woven from a sheet of silvery metal, was long and pulled back into a braid, and a massive beard of literal fire trailed down his chest. I watched in unsettled awe as he dipped one hand into the magma and pulled out a dollop of lava the size of my head.
If that wasn’t Khalkeús the forge godling, I’d eat my boot. Which meant this was my first look at the vaunted Doom Forge of legend.
Begrudgingly, I had to admit it did indeed look legendary. The Devs—or more likely, the Overminds—had gone all out, and that was saying something considering everything else I’d seen in Eldgard.
Khalkeús tromped over to the obsidian anvil and slammed the hunk of liquid death onto the surface with a splat. He sat down on a natural chunk of rock jutting up from the ground, dug his fingers into the burning metal, not concerned in the least by the heat, and began to knead it. Working his fingers and palms in. Pushing. Pulling. Stretching. Rolling. The metal as pliant as a clump of bread dough.
I pulled my eyes away from the spectacle as the click-clack of approaching footsteps drifted through the cavern. A moment later a young man, maybe late twenties, stepped into view. Though nowhere near as tall as the figure hunched over the anvil, the newcomer stood head and shoulders above me. I recognized him at once as the man from the portrait. Eitri Spark-Sprayer. He glanced in my direction, but his eyes slid over me without so much as a pause. He threaded his way over to the anvil and leaned against the nearby wall, arms folded, black cloak trailing down his back.
He said nothing.
“So that’s it then, eh, lad?” Khalkeús said, his voice deep and unnaturally gruff. Like boulders grinding together. “Ya think ya’re ready
tae go out into the wild world.” Not a question but a statement of resigned fact. As he spoke he worked the slab of metal. Fingers digging in, dimpling the slag as he drew it out into a long thin bar. With a pinch, a twist, and a deft pull he formed a handle.
“Well past time,” Eitri said, his voice lacking the Scottish burr of his father. “I’ve been cooped up too long, Father. It’s high past time I went out and met my people. My other people.” He paused and glanced at the floor, eyes skipping over the picture of the woman in the mosaic. “It’s what she would’ve wanted, you know.” He lifted one arm, and pulled back a cuff, revealing a handprint identical to my own. “This was her final gift for a reason. This is what she wanted for me.”
“Aye. Ah know it,” Khalkeús replied, voice surprisingly soft and tender. He shaped the other end of the glowing metal, sculpting it like clay into a boxy hammerhead. “Always knew this day would come, lad. Just seems so soon. Too soon.” He scooped out a gob of metal, formed a ridge with one thumb, then squeezed and eased a spit of metal into a wicked spike on the back before doing the same on the top.
The metal—if it was actually metal—still glowed with impossible heat, but now the shape was clear. A warhammer. The golden god leaned forward and blew gently onto the metal, the motion surprisingly tender. It hardened in a flash, intricate red-fire runes glowing along the handle and swirling over the hammer’s blunt face. “Ya will be needing this, Ah reckon.” He stood and hefted the flawless weapon. A miraculous vision.
“The world, it’s moved on since yer mother passed, lad. Different days.” He trundled over, his footsteps heavy and ponderous. “If my acolytes speak true, there be war brewing in the land. Between your mother’s kinfolk and the Imperials to the east.” He paused, brow furrowing, his mouth disappearing into his bearded face as he grimaced. “Just be careful out there, eh lad? It’s a dangerous world fer a child of the betwixt. Might be they’ll try to suck you into their machinations. If you let ’em. Hear me, lad—dinnae let ’em because ya are nae invincible. Dinnae think it.” He held the dazzling weapon out for Eitri, pride and fierce love burning in the forge god’s face.
I had to admit, Khalkeús was nothing like what I’d expected. I mean, on the surface he was exactly like what I was expecting. But the affection for his son? The obvious care and even gentleness? It was odd to think that this was the same being who’d crafted a weapon capable of murdering the gods.
The world shivered, dissolving around me as the floor trembled like mad. Living in San Diego, I’d experienced more than my fair share of earthquakes, but this was far worse than anything I’d experienced IRL.
Everything exploded in a shower of light and swirling chaotic motion before resolving once more into a jungle. One I recognized at once from my long hours spent in the Storme Marshes. A thick tangle of trees and waterways stretched off in every direction. Towering cypresses, droopy-leafed willows, unbending elms, and creeping mangroves. Fat, twisted roots jutted up from sludgy water, and the leafy canopy overhead blocked out the sunlight, casting everything in perpetual gloom and deep shadow.
The thunderous crack of a tree bough startled me, and I twirled just in time to see Eitri spring off of a mangrove branch overhead. Twisting in the air, he fired an Umbra Bolt from his left hand at someone or something just out of view. He landed in a crouch, light as a cat and just as gracefully, left hand held at the ready, right hand wielding the immaculate warhammer his father had made for him what seemed like only a moment before.
“You’re fast, Eitri,” boomed a voice from overhead as another man flipped into view from the inky shadows of the canopy. “But your speed won’t save you, not this time.” Unlike Eitri, the newcomer landed like a meteor, the loamy earth cratering out around him. He stood with a wry grin on his face, a hefty sword clasped in his hands. My breath caught in my throat. He was taller than me with broad shoulders and a swath of ebony hair. He stared at Eitri with dark eyes like chips of burnt coal, which sat above a hooked nose. His black plate mail pulsed with violet runes of power that matched the blade in his hands.
I knew him just like I knew these were the Storme Marshes. The Jade Lord, Nangkri, in the flesh. Or at least he would be the Jade Lord eventually. He looked much younger than when I’d crossed paths with him in the Twilight Realm, and he didn’t yet have the crown of the Jade Lord. Which meant his battle against Arzokh the Sky Maiden probably hadn’t happened yet. Early days, then. Still, I’d never forget that face. Not in this lifetime.
Nangkri charged, sword lashing out in a vicious arc.
Eitri danced back, his steps light, deflecting the blow with a flick of his hammer before sending another Umbra Bolt directly into Nangkri’s gut, doubling the man over, though only for the briefest of moments. Eitri charged, the spiked tip of his hammer thrust forward, but Nangkri had already recovered. The future Jade Lord parried the thrust, shot inside Eitri’s guard, and delivered a punishing elbow to the throat that would’ve killed a lesser man. Eitri gasped and tottered—his HP didn’t dip more than a fraction of an inch—his weapon dropping low just long enough for Nangkri to make a move.
Nangkri thrust his sword out and the blade seemed to melt and stretch, forming a violet tentacle, which wrapped around Eitri’s broad shoulders like a constricting python. With a flick of his wrists, Eitri was flying through the air, tumbling head over heels on a crash course with a wide-trunked willow. Until he was simply gone. Disappeared in the span of an eyeblink. A single blink later, he reappeared, no longer in flight, but standing directly behind Nangkri, the spike of his hammer pressed against the side of the Jade Lord’s exposed throat.
Nangkri sighed and held up his sword. “I yield.” He smiled as the spike retreated. “You are improving every day, Eitri.” He turned and walked toward a clear path of bog as he withdrew a ribbon-bound scroll from his pouch. “It won’t be long until you can give Chao-Yao a challenge. Keep at it, and you might be the most powerful Shadowmancer in a thousand years.” He glanced over his shoulder as he broke the ribbon on the scroll, summoning a shimmering portal. “Doesn’t hurt that you’re the scion of a god, though. Where I come from, we call that cheating...”
My head swam as I replayed the conversation. Eitri was a Shadowmancer? I’d known coming into this place that the demigod had been a descendent of the Murk Elves. But knowing that he shared a class with me was a revelation. Suddenly, the Shadowverse-bound mansion made so much more sense. It also made me wonder about the silvery disks, which granted long-term access to the Shadowverse. There was one in the Darkshard mines outside of Yunnam and one in the forge above. They weren’t natural occurrences. No. Someone had built them, and I was starting to suspect that someone may well have been Eitri.
I wondered briefly if I might discover that secret somewhere down in this library. Being able to make these little pocket portals into the Shadowverse would be an unparalleled trump card.
But then, just as I started dwelling on the potential implications, the world shifted away once again. This time the swampy bog was gone, and before me was a campfire. Night bugs buzzed and chirped in an oppressively dark sky, held at bay only by the light of the fire. Despite the deep gloom, the folk around the blaze seemed like a happy bunch. Nangkri lounged on the far side of the fire, lying on a colorful Murk Elf blanket, propped up on one arm. He was older now, though, closer to the man I remembered, with gray streaks at his temples and the hint of crow’s-feet forming at his eyes.
Eitri was there, too. He hadn’t aged a day as far as I could tell.
Several of the other men ringing the fire I vaguely recalled from my time in the Twilight Realm as well. All hard-faced Dokkalfar. A few were big and bulky: bruisers and tanks in heavy plate mail, with brutal two-handed weapons riding their backs. One was whip-thin—built with the hard lines of a razor blade—wore dark leather armor, and had a beefy warhammer that could’ve been a twin to my own. A Shadowmancer, for sure. Others sported the flowing robes of mages, while another still was decked out in conjured armor built fr
om yellowing bones.
I thought they were probably Nangkri’s brothers—the long-dead chieftains of the six named Dokkalfar clans.
It was the woman reclining near Eitri, though, that stood out the most. She was the only female for one, and for another, one of her hands was intertwined with Eitri’s. She wore patchwork leather armor, studded with bits of bone and covered with intricate runic script. She was younger than the rest of the chieftains, maybe in her late teens or early twenties, and bore a striking resemblance to Amara. The same lithe lines to her body. Same short-cut black hair, shaved down to the skin on one side. Same slightly canted emerald eyes.
Not identical, but they could’ve passed as cousins.
“And what say you, Isra?” Nangkri asked, though what the topic of discussion was I couldn’t say.
“I don’t know, Uncle.” She shook her head and pursed her lips in faint disapproval. Even sounded a bit like Amara. “We need the gold for the war with the Imperials, but the presence of the dragonlings changes things. There are easier ways to fund our campaign.” She paused, stealing a sidelong glance at Eitri, who looked... troubled, to say the least. “Trifling with such an ancient creature as the Sky Maiden can only spell dis—”
Before she even finished speaking, the world shifted again, blurring around the edges as things spun topsy-turvy like a carousel going at full tilt. Flashing faster and faster, little snatches of imagery flying out at me like bullets.
Eitri in a high-ceilinged temple, standing before a panel of stern-faced men and women who didn’t look even remotely human. Horns. Hooves. Silvery skin. The slit eyes of a snake. Each was finely dressed and radiated power, just as Khalkeús had. “You push too far, Scion,” a black-haired woman with horns said, “and there are dire consequences for interfering unduly. You of all people should—”