The floor ahead was a shade darker, almost imperceptibly so. A perfect line divided the regular floor from the darker one.
Curious, I kicked some dirt at the strange-colored floor, and the dirt changed its color. I tried something similar with my sword, and the blade got darker as soon as it entered the area, going back to normal as I took it back.
There clearly was some magic at work there, but I would be damned if I knew what kind of magic it was. Could I say it used the darkness element because it made things darker? It sounded lame when I thought about it that way.
Wondering if my mind's eye could help me understand it, I closed my eyes and saw nothing in the gray. Exactly nothing. In the place where I should have seen more grayness, where the gray bubble should have existed, only the common blackness of my closed eyes was visible, as if the bubble had been cut where the darkness started.
Intriguing. A trap? Something different?
Taking a deep breath, I pushed my hand over the threshold. My darkness spheres blinked out of existence, and I felt something. As if a hand, hot and cold at the same time, was holding my throat. Only it wasn't my throat, but something inside it, something invisible. My soul.
No message explained to me what was happening, but a black 'M' icon appeared above my HP bar. I focused on it.
Total Magic Lockdown (level 10 – max)
Until you leave the Disruptive Zone, you:
» Cannot use magic
» Cannot use enchanted items
» Do not regenerate MP
» If you have the Mage trait, you cannot rest
What the hell?!
That was ridiculously powerful. Only physical weapons would be useful inside that while all pure mages would be useless. I took my hand out, and the status disappeared. For science, I created a darkness sphere and sent it inside. It also disappeared. But as soon as it did, other things appeared.
Two black cloaked people appeared out of nowhere once more. This time, though, the point of a thin long blade was millimeters away from my neck. Strangely enough, I still could see nothing inside the hood, even that close. Under the cloak, the Blackguard wore badass looking black leather armor, with gloves and all; no skin was visible.
"Deathlord. How dare you attack the Fortress of the Devourer?" It was a female voice this time.
I lifted my hands. "Sorry, sorry. I never saw this Disruptive Zone before; I was just testing its boundaries. I had no intention of attacking the land of the very being I came to see." I remembered the previous guard's words. "I come in search of enlightenment and strength from the Devourer, being the weak mage I am."
"You are weak, but not enough to be ignored as a threat." She put her blade back inside the cloak. "I am giving you your first warning. If you are seen illegally attacking again, the Blackguard will kill you." With these as parting words, both people disappeared. But this time, since I was so close, I saw them fade away fast instead of simply blinking out of existence.
Stealth!
It was pretty obvious if I thought about it, but I hadn't expected to see so many NPCs with that high level of stealth, enough to disappear right in front of a player with fourteen points in perception, counting the circlet bonus. Becoming invisible in plain sight was not that easy.
Those were tough guys; I'd better not mess with them.
I entered the Disruptive Zone, and the same soul crushing sensation came to me. I ignored it as best I could and walked to the front of the big metal wall. When I got close to it, I noticed that the center of the symbol on the metal, where all the spiral paths met each other, looked even blacker than the metal, as if there was no ending to the vortex, but the darkness swallowed it instead.
There, looking at the symbol with the magic lockdown weighing on me, it didn't felt like it was such a good idea to go inside. If this was the door, I would be as much locked inside as I was locked outside.
But I had nowhere else to go. I touched it and pushed with all my force, but it didn't budge.
"You who enter the domains of the Devourer, abandon all hope," came a whisper in my ear. I looked around but saw no one. The wall moved.
It didn't open like a door, but slowly slid back, and I accompanied it. Rails were underneath it, but I could still hear the sound of metal scraping on metal as it moved five, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred meters, until it finally stopped. The Disruptive Zone extended all the way in.
On the left wall, a small square entrance of about two meters was revealed right before the wall stopped sliding. The room inside was about five meters by five. As soon as I walked inside it, three visible Blackguards appeared, swords out. I thought about leaving, but another one materialized right behind me. The black wall began to move back.
"The doors to Ter'nodril are the purposefully weak points of our first defenses," said one of them, a man. "They have only twenty meters of darksteel, more vulnerable than the two hundred meters of stone around it to be a better option, but still robust enough to be an annoyance to any invader, especially when taking the Disruptive Zone into consideration."
The scraping sound continued behind me as more metal was passing by.
"The rails are not there to make the door easier to slide, but to make it easier to maintain the ground beneath it. It is not possible to move so much weight without damaging the floor." The big block of metal finished passing by, and the view behind it was even more impressive.
A long and thick metal bar was attached perpendicularly to the block with big handles all over it. Dozens of big ogres – yellowish-gray fat humanoid creatures with a single eye – pushed the handles to move the door.
"That's the workforce needed to move the wall. Even so, if the enemy managed to counter it, he'd still need to destroy stone, either here or at the end of the way. The passage, as you will see when you leave here, is too small for an invading army." The man got closer to me. "So I give you two pieces of advice: never attack us; and get yourself a proper backpack. It's embarrassing to see you with that big ball of clothes on your back." They vanished.
Wait, what? What the hell is wrong with these people and this backpack talk of theirs? And with this vanishing act? Do they think they look cool or something?
Well, they did look cool, but when cool people knew how cool they were, they became unbearable.
I left the room as soon as the last ogre passed by. Some fifty meters ahead the corridor became two meters by two for the rest of the way.
Finally, I got to the end. Just before the exit, a new cloaked figure waited for me.
"Don't look around, don't talk to them. Just walk straight ahead. Don't stop," he said before disappearing.
I didn't have a clue what that was about, but I guessed I was about to find out. I stepped out of the corridor and the sensation from the Disruptive Zone left me, immediately replaced by fear.
Drow. Drow everywhere. A horde of almost black, slightly blue elves with white hair, all wearing chain armor, was before and around me, so many I couldn't see the end of them. I summoned three darkness spheres and looked at them.
I cannot stop. I cannot stop. I repeated it like a mantra. Those had been the words from the Blackguard. I forced myself to move.
One step. Two. Don't stop. Three. All of them were looking at me, but there was something wrong in their eyes, in the way they looked at me and moved. Something beyond all having red scars on their necks as if they had been hanged. Cannot stop. Four.
On the fifth step, one of them moved, the one straight ahead of me. He moved back exactly as much as I did in his direction. On the sixth step, two more moved away. On the seventh, even more. On the twelfth step, I was surrounded by drow.
They stood about one meter away from me, as if an invisible force was repelling them. As I walked, space opened before me and space closed behind. The smell of body odor was unbearable.
Keep walking. Don't stop.
I had been walking for one minute when I noticed the meter of distance had become a little less. One more minute,
they were closer. I was getting desperate when finally, after the third minute the mass of drow ended.
It felt like getting to the surface of water after being too close to drowning. I wanted to run away but wasn't sure if the drow would chase me down.
Two steps later, I froze in awe.
Not because of the cave, even though it was the biggest I had seen until now, without end in any direction but behind me. Nor because of the almost endless fields of mushrooms ahead of me and the countless drow in white clothes harvesting it. Not even because of the massive black metal walls far ahead in a circular format that hinted at an enormous city.
No, even though everything since the Disruptive Zone was a declaration of power in a magnitude I didn't expect to see in some underground caves, all of that paled in comparison to what I could see floating above the city.
It was like seeing a black sun up close, so big it was; as large as the city itself. Floating rivers of darkness appeared and disappeared all around it. Sometimes it was possible to see them being created, streams of darkness leaving the sun in a place and connecting back to it someplace else. Other times a river partially disconnected from the mass, becoming evident and binding to the mass again after some time. The mass also revolved around itself, liquid darkness in a never ending spin, not fast nor slow.
Pure Darkness. Alive.
The Devourer, I realized.
"Do not stop yet, deathlord. The thralls can still smell your fear. You can stare at God from a safer distance," a female voice snapped me out of my trance.
I looked at the source of the sound and saw a drow with gray hair wearing a gray robe. Her hair was styled in a bun, and her dark blue face was beautiful. On the front of the gray robe, there was the same vortex I had seen on the massive wall. I now recognized it as the symbol of the Devourer, a being of darkness, devouring everything around it in an endless hunger. That place wasn't called the City of Darkness for no reason.
"Thanks," I began to walk again, and she joined me. "I didn't expect..." I found myself at a loss for words for defining the big dark ball and just gestured at it instead.
"I'm told all foreigners react the same way to God. Not all of them have an Enlightened to save them from the thralls. You were lucky I saw your darkness magic and came to your rescue, I doubt the thralls would have held a minute more."
"Thralls?" I looked back at the hundreds of drow. "What are they?" The drow army I had seen before was closer than I remembered, their mouths open revealing pointed teeth with saliva dripping from them. "What the hell?!"
"Betrayers, all of them. The Ways are merciful and on the first betrayal, they are hanged and resurrected. They are forbidden to heal the scar of the rope and have to bear their shame for the rest of their lives. On the second betrayal, they are deemed unworthy of their bodies. Therefore, they are enthralled and perfected for combat to serve God in a small way."
"People sure seem to betray you a lot."
"They don't. But we are numerous and live a very long time."
"If you say so. And how smart is it to turn betrayers into a mind controlled army? No way that could backfire, right?"
She sniffed. "Even though they are vigorous and ferocious warriors, they are only fodder. Ter'nodril's true champions are the Faithful and the Blackguard. Especially the Faithful. We protect the enemies with our lives."
"You mean you protect the city," I corrected her.
"I mean what I said, deathlord. We fight, so God doesn't. Should He engage a numerous enemy, their souls would be forever lost, consumed, devoured, and his hunger would be far from satiated. He would look for more before He is ready. We serve God above all, but until it is His own will to lay judgment upon all creation, we stop His hunger from consuming everything. He knows the Day All Things Will End, but He can't deny His nature. That's why the Faithful exist: to protect Him from Himself. And that means protecting our enemies from Him."
This makes no sense at all, I thought. But her voice had been becoming a little agitated at the end, in a fanatical and scary way. "It makes perfect sense," I said. "I thank you for your wisdom, Enlightened. Sorry, what was your name again?"
"I have no name, it has been devoured, and I have not yet deserved a new one. But I congratulate your wisdom; not many foreigners can see the perfection of the Ways on their first contact with it."
"Well, I'm a darkness mage, after all. I can feel the Devourer in my soul." And the strange thing was that after saying that, I noticed I actually could. Like a second gravity pulling me towards the big floating black ball, not physically, but in some other sense related to the way I crushed small lifeforms and gathered darkness from the shadows.
"So you can."
We walked side by side through the mushroom fields. "Not much variety, huh?"
"This is the Underworld," she answered simply.
"Still, I bet you could grow some other stuff."
"We could." It seemed she was not a talker for anything besides the Ways, whatever it was.
"Don't you ever get tired of eating mushroom?"
"The Firsts traded many things for power when we abandoned the old ways of the surface. Among the things we gave away was our sense of taste. We know when a thing is sour or sweet, but that is all. If we get tired of mushroom, we put sugar or salt on it, or bake it differently, and it suffices."
I feel depressed just hearing about it. I wonder how the drow players cope with it.
"That's impressive. I've no need for food myself, but how do other species deal with it?"
"I don't think they do. No one comes to Ter'nodril unless they have no choice, and we like it that way. Makes it easier to protect them if they aren't in danger. You must have been exceptionally desperate running from your fellow deathlords' hunt to come here, unbound."
I stopped walking, and the Enlightened must have been expecting that, because she stopped with me.
"Oh, you thought you were smart with your flattery. It might have worked when you were human, but this is the Underworld; if your words are working too well, be sure that you're being cheated in a way you cannot even being to guess. Your naivety is going to be the end of you." Resuming her walk, she left me dumbfounded behind.
I'm already being hunted by the bound deathlords? How do they even know I did anything? And how the hell do the drow already know about me?
Someone knew these things and was a teller. It was evident I was on someone's agenda. I wondered whose.
No, wait. I'm reading too much into these things. This is a game; I'm just following a script. Damn, it's well written. It felt like a coincidence that I got to this city, but this was the plan all along, huh?
Those thoughts made me relax. Yes, this was a game. It was damn easy to forget it, all my senses being affected, even senses I didn't have in the real world. Too damn easy.
Had I been allowed, I would've left the game for a few hours now, just to get some air and clear my head. But the Challenge had been accepted, and there was no turning back from it now.
Deep down, though, I began to hope for death so that I would be freed from my own pride.
Taking a deep breath, I resumed my journey to the city. I felt curious; the black metal walls were so high I couldn't see anything inside. The Devourer seemed bigger every step I took, but I was getting used to his presence.
Open metal gates greeted me. A male child stood there. He had with white hair and wore white clothes with the black Devourer symbol sewn on it.
"Greetings, deathlord. The Faithful welcome you to Ter'nodril. The toll for opening the city doors is five gold pieces, and for entering the city, you must pay three more."
It felt like a stab to the guts, only worse. I thought about talking my way in, but the Enlightened's words were still fresh on my mind.
Thanks to my parents I knew the best way to handle this situation; not wanting to use their skills, instead I chose to play dumb.
"As you probably already know, I have no money. Tell me what can be done."
&
nbsp; The kid smiled in a creepy way no child should smile. "He learns. Good. But too blunt. For that, I charge you an extra gold coin."
What the hell?! I bit my tongue not to lash some deserved words at the kid, who just looked as if expecting something. After a few seconds, the smile got even worse.
"Right. You now owe the Dark Temple ten gold coins." He increased the fee for no reason. "You do well not bartering with me, but since I want to get paid someday, I strongly suggest you do banter with the merchants to save some money."
And how the hell am I going to find ten gold coins in a city? He's making me a prisoner! Swallowing, I said nothing. He had all the power in the situation, and if I talked, I might just make the things even worse. I simply entered the city.
"And be more polite. Eleven gold coins. Oh, and this bag of yours is just deplorable. Get yourself a proper backpack. I put it back to ten gold coins out of pure pity."
I had just been extorted by a kid. Worst of all was that it was my fault. It was pretty obvious, if I thought about it, that no city would open those titanic doors for free. Also, tolls for entering cities were common in medieval games.
But there was no point in arguing prices after I was already locked in an impregnable fortress, full of unseen cloaked guys all around me, with an army and an unmovable metal wall between myself and freedom. Yes, taking it silently was better. For now.
And what the hell is this about backpacks? Seriously.
Ter'nodril was a city without straight lines. The walls that encompassed the city made a circle and the street I saw myself now in turned to the left after a sharp right by the entrance. All the constructions I saw had two floors, were made of black stone, and were unlit inside.
Drow walked everywhere, most of them in plain white robes, which in my opinion was out of character for them; they should just wear black too and be done with the theme. Very few of the white clothes had the Devourer symbol on them, but it was present on the few gray robes that could be seen. Curiously I noted that the gray robe wearers also had gray hair.
Unbound Deathlord: Challenge Page 14