by James Hunter
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Vogthar Gutting Blade
Weapon Type: Bladed; Dagger
Class: Common, One-handed
Base Damage: 25
Primary Effects:
+5 to Strength
+2 to Dexterity
+10 pts Disease Damage
Restriction: Players without an “evil” alignment suffer 5 pts Disease Damage/sec while this weapon is equipped.
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I closed out from the screen and examined the armor, which looked equally well made, but had the same sort of restrictions in place, rendering it useless to the faction. We needed to get this stuff back to Vlad and see if there was some way to remove the restriction—either that or salvage it for parts. On the plus side, there was a unique ring, called the Warfist Signet, which gave me a hefty +10 to Strength, +10 to Vitality, and a +5% increased chance to Critical Hit. I slipped that bad boy on without a second thought, then moved on to the other bodies.
The rest of the loot from the invaders was remarkably similar: a pocketful of boxy gold coins and restricted armor and weapons. Several of the skeletons and zombies hadn’t fared so well during the encounter either, and I couldn’t help but loot them too. So far, the creatures from this dungeon had been of the peaceful variety, but they were still dead monsters with valuable items we could use. Most of the undead paid out a few silvers and some rare crafting materials—[Skeletal Dust], [Flesh Salve], [Mud Sage]—which Vlad would, no doubt, lose his mind over.
“If you’re all done,” Lowyth called out as I stood and brushed my hands free from a thin layer of grime clinging to my gloves, “we really ought to be moving on. We wouldn’t want to keep our host waiting.” With that, she turned on her heel and headed into the yawning mouth of the crypt, quickly disappearing from view.
ELEVEN_
The Dungeon-Hearted
My footsteps echoed off the gray stone walls as I trudged down a circular staircase that drilled deep into the mausoleum. The passageway was lit with more wall-mounted torches that burned with sickly green flame the color of rotting flesh. A hand fell on my shoulder, and I was so keyed up from the battle, I spun, reaching for my weapon while simultaneously preparing to unleash a torrent of Umbra Flame. But I relaxed when I saw it was only Cutter—except he looked worried, uncharacteristic fear etched into his usually easy-going features.
“Hold up a minute, friend,” he whispered just loud enough for me to hear. “I think we might be in real trouble here. That gear back there”—he jerked his head toward the doorway, which was now out of sight—“it belongs to the Vogthar. The Vogthar, Grim Jack.”
That name again. It sounded familiar, and I was sure I’d heard it before, though I couldn’t quite place it. “What are the Vogthar?” I asked.
“Old creatures,” Cutter said, glancing around nervously as though afraid of being overheard. “They’re about as old as legends go. Way, way back in the day—’bout eight or nine hundred years this was—the Vogthar ruled most of Eldgard with an iron fist. No one remembers much about ’em except that they were supposed to be a right lot of nasty bastards who worshiped Serth-Rog. And this was all theirs until my people came down from the frozen reaches in the far north and waged war against ’em for reasons no one is entirely clear on. But what everyone does agree on is that it was an ugly war that ended up with the Vogthar wiped off the face of the map and their cities razed to the ground.”
“But if the Wodes exterminated these things, then how are they here?” I asked.
“Some people, they say the Vogthar were powerful beings of Flesh and Spirit,” Cutter offered, absently running one hand through his dirty blond locks. “After my people killed ’em, their souls were banished to the tundra of Morsheim, the realm of the dark god Serth-Rog. Legend holds they have been trapped there for the past nine hundred years, biding their time. Waiting for a chance to escape. But what if all these Black Priests of Serth-Rog found some kinda way to bring ’em back?” Cutter said, sounding more nervous by the second. “If that’s the case, Jack, this could be bad for everyone. This could change everything, Jack. Everything.”
I paused, thinking over everything I’d heard. “Okay,” I finally replied in a soft whisper, “we don’t know anything for sure yet, so let’s just wait until we have more facts before we start freaking out. Lowyth brought us to this place for a reason, and that seems to be tied to those things. So let’s just keep our heads on straight and see if we can get some answers here. Sound like a plan?’
Cutter grunted noncommittally and nodded, but I could still see the fear wriggling away inside him, just below the surface. Cutter wasn’t ever scared by much, so seeing him shaken was deeply troubling. Still, there was nothing I could do about it for the time being, so instead, I turned and followed the corkscrewing stairs down, down, down, my steps echoing in the cramped stairwell. Eventually, the stairs dead-ended at a graceful stone archway, which connected to a large chamber where the Spider Queen waited for us.
I paused before entering, though, reading the inscription carved into the stone above the entryway: Catacombs of the Forsaken. That was charming and not in any way foreboding.
I pushed my nervousness away and headed into a rectangular room with sandstone walls studded with stained-glass windows. Despite the fact windows were pretty useless in an underground tomb, they certainly added a menacing atmosphere to the place. Each one was a work of art that rightly belonged in a medieval cathedral, except these didn’t depict saints in supplication but rather unearthly scenes of the dead. In one, a zombie clad in heavy armor fought off a horde of living invaders, while another featured a busty woman with unnaturally pale skin wielding a wicked scythe.
A black wrought iron chandelier dangled from the vaulted ceiling overhead, casting flickering green light over Lowyth, but she wasn’t alone. Oh no. There were monsters galore here, mostly skeletons and the shambling, recently dead zombies I’d seen above. They milled around, clumped together in little pockets, as they eyed me with a mixture of outright fear and morbid curiosity. They certainly left me shuffling on uncertain feet, but none of them made a move to attack or even showed an inclination toward hostility.
“Bollocks,” Cutter said as he entered and slid up next to me, one hand automatically darting toward his dagger.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Lowyth offered offhandedly. “They won’t attack so long as they have no provocation. So, I wouldn’t give them any cause to think you’re hostile. This way.” She turned and stalked into a connecting hall. I was irritated she wouldn’t just tell us what all this was about, but I was curious enough to follow and find out more. We headed into an arched hallway lined with burial niches, each housing an unmoving corpse—though I had a sneaking suspicion they were only unmoving because we were guests and not trespassers.
We exited into another sizeable chamber, this one littered with blocky columns, angry green torchlight, and a whole new batch of strange mobs. There were a few of the basic Skeletons and Zombies I’d seen topside, but this room was primarily dominated by the elite, heavily armored Revenant Knights who’d been so effective against the invaders. I also spotted a handful of the hulking, lionesque Corpse Hounds crouched down in pockets of deep shadow. I swallowed hard, hands balling into tight fists, but tried to appear relaxed and calm otherwise.
A pair of hallways shot off to the left and right, but we kept on straight ahead.
“Well, this place is fun,” Cutter muttered as we headed through another connecting passage—the walls dotted from ceiling to floor with chalky white skulls—which let out into another square room with more stained-glass windows, more undead, and more snaking passageways. A few of those hallways connected to viewing galleries, filled with stone caskets and treasure chests, while others led to an assortment of different rooms. Everything from libraries to a huge room filled with creeping vines, stagnant pools of water, and sinister-looking flowers.
. “Seriously, though, this place gives me the willies,” Cutter mumbled
again, his gaze constantly roving. “And why is it here, anyway? Ravenkirk’s the closest city, and it’s over an hour away.” His voice rang off the high ceilings, and the mobs in the room glared at us, as though perturbed by the unwelcome sound, but made no move.
“The Catacombs of the Forsaken were not always as you see them now,” Lowyth said casually, her feet click-clacking against the stone floor as she walked. “You see, Ravenkirk was once one of the few Dawn Elf settlements on this side of the continent. And though now it’s little more than a quaint town overrun by Wodes, it used to be so much more. Once Ravenkirk was a grand city. Beautiful and mighty.
“A place to rival Rowanheath or even the Imperial capital of West Viridia. Its borders extended all the way to the southern edge of these woods. That time is ancient history, but this place”—she flashed a hand around the room—“is a part of that history. The Hvitalfar respect their ancestors, yet loathe death and the dead. Therefore, the Dawn Elves have strict religious ordinances about where and how the dead can be interred.
“These catacombs used to be the primary place where the dead of Ravenkirk were brought, but as the city withered and died under a series of incompetent rulers and costly wars, the crypt was eventually abandoned. Forsaken. And since the living no longer performed the ancient rituals to appease the ancestors, the dead began to stir. To rise. To live again, pulled back from paradise by the unfaithfulness of their offspring, who eventually abandoned the town to foreign settlers—the Wodes.”
She fell silent as we passed into a vast chamber with clay urns edging the perimeter of the room. Ancient runes, written in brown-red blood, decorated the floors and walls. A giant overhead chandelier, built entirely from yellowed bones, was riddled with melting candles that all burned with green fire. Against the far wall was a wrought iron portcullis glowing with spectral light, which guarded a descending staircase. As ominous as the décor was, however, it was the guardian lurking in the corner of the room, staring at us with death and murder carved into every line of its formidable body, who caught my attention.
[Ravaging Devourer]
The creature was a lopsided Frankenstein zombie, fifteen feet tall, crudely stitched together with black catgut sutures, and built along the same lines as a male silverback gorilla. Its head was misshapen and bald, with a thick maw filled with far too many fangs. Its arms were the size of small tree trunks, covered in shards of blackened bone, and capped by car-tire-sized hands and beefy fingers as long as my forearm. It was bare-chested and broad across the shoulders, with a giant barrel gut, stitched right up the center.
As we got a bit closer, it growled at us, a deep primal noise like an earthquake given life. It didn’t attack, however. It merely glowered at us with its beady eyes and waved a fleshy hand toward the metal gate, which lurched up with a groan, granting us access to the stairwell beyond. The stairs drew us down and into another new section of the dungeon, much like the first, but with far more twists, turns, switchbacks, dead ends, and traps. So. Many. Traps. Cutter was kind enough to point all of them out, even though they seemed dormant and relatively harmless for the time being.
There were spiked pits. Lethal pressure plates. Exploding skull piles. Magical flamethrowers. Plus, more mobs, these even deadlier than those above.
But here too, the dungeon creatures seemed content to let us be, and Lowyth led us unwaveringly onward as though she knew this place as well as her own lair. After ten minutes of steady hoofing, we hooked left through a broken section of wall, which let out in a cavernous natural space, which was yet another Boss Room. The walls were all rough red bedrock, the ceiling littered with hanging stalactites. I paused and squinted at one of those stalactites as it twitched and wriggled. Those weren’t rock formations at all—they were giant bats.
[Ravenous Flyer]
Amazing.
I tore my eyes away from the dread bats and surveyed the room, which was filled with lush grass and towering glowing mushrooms the size of small trees. Those mushrooms quivered with life and washed the room in seedy neon light. Here too, there was a heavy-duty metal portcullis at the far side of the room, and flanking it were a pair of women I immediately recognized from many of the stained-glass windows decorating the catacombs above. They were not nearly as tall as the Franken-Zombie, but they looked deadly all the same.
[Avenging Reapers]
Both had creamy, flawless skin and bright red eyes the color of a broken blood vessel. Their hair was black, short, and spiky, and their armor was dark as the ocean at midnight and looked heavy enough to stop an artillery round. Skulls and bony protrusions studded the shoulder pads and the vambraces they wore. Each wielded a long scythe with a wicked half-moon blade covered in burning runes, which radiated arcane energy palpable even across the room. Just like with the first-floor boss, they gave us a stern glare then waved us through, to yet another descending staircase, which let into what could only be the remains of a sunken church.
We headed down a badly decaying hallway—the stones cracked, broken, and overgrown with roots and tangled vines—for fifteen feet before the hall curved and jettisoned into a circular hollow with a huge stone fountain in the middle, its water long since dried up. Zombies, Skeletons, Revenant Knights, and Corpse Hounds stood guard, eyeing us with vicious snarls, their weapons clenched in tight grips, ready to attack the second we stepped out of line.
Past the fountain room was a rectangular room with a short set of upward sloping steps, guarded over by an amorphous creature that looked like it had been crafted from red clay. [Blood Golem] appeared over its head, and I instinctively realized it wasn’t clay at all, but congealed blood. We silently slipped past the creature, up the stairs, and into a hallway festooned with more stained-glass windows burning with ghostly light and trimmed with tattered flags that hung from the ceiling rafters. At a glance, those flags seemed to be battle standards—probably taken from the intrepid adventurers who’d fallen victim to this place.
I shuddered as I counted those flags. There were a hundred or more, easily.
Finally, the hall dumped us into what had to be the final Boss Room: a giant cavernous cavity, part chapel, part graveyard, with stony-faced statues marching off along the walls. The statues were motionless, but unnerving all the same. The loamy black ground was covered with bulky tombstones, poking up like rotten teeth. And on the far side of the room lay a jagged pit, which radiated the same awful green light I’d seen burning in the torches throughout the dungeon. But my gaze immediately fell on the giant table sitting next to the pit, loaded down with food and drinks.
It was a veritable banquet.
“Well don’t just stand there, guys,” boomed a disembodied voice from all around us. “I’m sure you folks are hungry, am I right? And the food here in V.G.O. is so good—like crazy good. I don’t think I ever ate as good back IRL as I do here.”
I thought my jaw might hit the floor. “You’re a traveler?” I asked incredulously.
“Totally,” the voice boomed back, and even though I couldn’t see the speaker, I could hear the smile in his voice. “Hold on one sec, I’ll manifest my avatar. It’s hard to do—takes a lot of concentration—but it’ll be worth it so I don’t have to scream at you.” The light seeping up from the pit swirled and changed, compressing and intensifying, until a body began to take shape, floating above the chasm like an unholy angel. The light grew in intensity—brighter and brighter until I had to shield my eyes—and then in a blink, it was gone, and a man stood next to the table.
Except he wasn’t any of the races I’d seen in V.G.O.
He was maybe six one and wore dark purple robes covered by heavy plate mail built entirely from gleaming bone inscribed with emerald runes. Chief Kolle was a necromancer, and his conjured armor looked similar to this, though less badass. This guy—or whatever he was—had a dark cowl pulled up over his head, but where his face should’ve been was just a gaping black hole that was like staring into a deep chasm. Bony wings protruded from his back as if he were a
n Accipiter that had died and molted, and he carried a wicked scythe in one gauntleted hand.
When I looked at him long and hard enough, an honest-to-god tag appeared briefly over his head before vanishing:
[Joseph the Gravemonger]
“I’m Joseph, by the way,” he said, swinging his arms, his voice oddly chipper, “though my friends call me Jo-Dan. Well, they’d call me that if I had any friends. I don’t, but a guy can dream, am I right? So, anyway, you all wanna eat or what?”
TWELVE_
Encroaching Darkness
“I still can’t believe it,” I said, dipping a buttery roll into the juicy grease decorating my metal plate. “You’re from the other side, but you’re a dungeon monster. How does that even happen?”
“Well,” the faceless man said from across the table, “technically I’m not just a dungeon monster. I’m the whole dungeon. Like all of this is an extension of me. As to how it happened …” He faltered, deflating a little. “It was a giant mistake. Huge.” He reached up and rubbed the back of his cowl. “So, back before the world ended, I was just some dumb seventeen-year-old kid from Atlanta. The bad part of Atlanta, living in a transitional foster home.
“When I found out about the asteroid, I packed up and left—tried to get to the Osmark facility in Dallas, but it was crazy. I never made it. Got as far as Shreveport. But by then, everyone was looting and rioting. Half the city was burning. The highways were jam-packed with traffic and busted cars. Making it that last two hundred miles to Dallas was next to impossible. Might as well try and get to the moon. But …” He trailed off and shrugged again.
“Well, I hacked into the Osmark delivery database and got a shipping roster, which listed every location they’d offloaded NextGenVR capsules at. One of those locations was pretty close. In Lake View, just outside Shreveport. Kind of a swanky, upper-class part of town. When I got there, though, most of the building was wrecked. Someone had torched the place.” He shook his head.