Viridian Gate Online: Darkling Siege (The Viridian Gate Archives Book 7)

by James Hunter

  “Phft. Give me a real challenge, Jack,” he said with an easy grin. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of a Lorekeeper myself, but one of my boys’ll turn something up. Give me a day, two tops.”

  “Excellent.” I ran a hand along my chin, feeling the rough stubble beneath my fingertips. “Okay,” I said, mind working through all the obstacles in our way. “In the meantime, we need to set up some kind of overwatch.” I hooked a thumb toward Berrick and his crew. “I think Amara is right. Berrick’s okay, but he’s not going to be down here policing his men night and day. Those guys are going to have a lot of unsupervised leeway, and it would be easy for one of them to do something shady. Especially if Senator Caius were to slip them a bag full of gold.”

  “But they’re Inquisitors,” Abby said. “You don’t really think they’d take a bribe to massacre a bunch of innocent civilians, do you?”

  “Carrera was an Inquisitor, too,” I said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Bloody true,” Cutter said, “and I can tell you from personal experience that the Inquisitors as a whole are not above bribery. Someone like Berrick, sure, but most of those knobs have mouths to feed and rent to pay just like everyone else.”

  “Do not worry about the Inquisitors,” Amara said, her voice cold steel. “Leave them to me. I will reach out to Baymor and recruit some Ak-Hani Rangers to our cause. They will stay hidden, shadows in the night. We will keep these Inquisitors honest.”

  “Perfect. We’ll probably have to reach out to Sandra and Otto, too,” I said. “If we have a bunch of women and children running around here, there’s an even money chance that there are more of them in Oxrus and Einnheimr. I want to make sure everyone knows what the play is—I don’t want a massacre on our hands, even if it’s not in our city.”

  “It will be done,” Amara said with a grim nod. “Come, my love”—she threaded her fingers through Cutter’s—“we have work to do. Grim Jack, Abby,” she said with a nod.

  “Jack, don’t forget you still owe me a bloody drink,” Cutter shouted as Amara dragged him away.

  Abby and I stood together, wrapped in our thoughts as we watched them go, vanishing around a corner, hand in hand, smiles on their faces. They seemed so happy together, despite everything that was going on. Seeing them like that stirred up a lot of mixed emotions. I was thrilled for them, but their obvious love was a bitter reminder of my own situation with Abby.

  Abby seemed to feel the same way, since she turned on me, her face grim. She looked like a woman squaring up for a battle. “Hey, do you mind if we talk for a minute? Just kind of touch base.”

  “Sure? What’s up?” I replied, though I knew exactly what was up.

  “I just...” She trailed off. “Well, we never really had a chance to discuss what happened the other night. On the balcony. We’ve been so busy doing all this”—she swept her hands around, gesturing at the city—“but I haven’t been able to get that argument out of my head. I know we have bigger fish to fry, but I also think we need to focus on the small things. Like us. It’s important to me, Jack. We need to make time for it. Is that okay?” she asked, the heat slipping out of her voice as she searched my face.

  Something pinged in my ear. A new quest alert from Sophia.

  No, no, no. This was the worst possible timing.

  <<<>>>

  Quest Alert: The Path to Victory Part 3

  A group of Imperials is pinned down in a canyon not far from Idruz and requires immediate assistance! One of those Imperials is Page-Citizen Gnaeus Gessia. Save him at all costs, or risk losing a key Imperial ally in the Senate, which could compromise the war effort. Make your way to Gnaeus’ location as soon as possible. Go by foot and go alone. Time is critical!

  Quest Class: Rare, Champion-Based

  Quest Difficulty: Infernal

  Success 1: Take the gatehouse and capture Idruz before Thanatos can muster a counterstrike from his capital.

  Success 2: It’s possible the Vogthar are more than they seem; find a Vogthar Lorekeeper to get the answers you seek. They may just hold the key to toppling Thanatos.

  Success 3: Save Page-Citizen Gnaeus Gessia within 28 minutes!

  Success 4: ???????

  Success 5: ???????

  Success 6: ???????

  Failure: Fail to complete any of the objectives.

  Reward: ???????

  <<<>>>

  Map Update

  Congratulations! Your in-world map has been updated with a new location: Page-Citizen Gnaeus Gessia!

  <<<>>>

  A countdown timer immediately popped up in the corner of my vision, seconds flying by at a preternatural speed. Great. So not only did I have a new mission, but I was supposed to go by foot and go alone—right when Abby was trying to have a heart-to-heart with me.

  “Jack,” Abby said, her voice rough and deeply disgruntled, “do you have your interface open right now? Dammit, Jack. This is important. You get that, right? I mean, I know we’re both busy, but we can’t just pretend like nothing happened the other night. We need to work through this like adults.”

  I heard her but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the steadily ticking timer. I had no idea who Gnaeus Gessia was or why he was important, but if Sophia told me I needed to save him, then I needed to save him, and my time was running out.

  “Abby, I am so sorry about this,” I said, pulling away from her. “I really am. You’re right, we do need to talk, but now isn’t a good time. I just got a quest from Sophia, and it’s got a timer. Down to twenty-seven minutes and counting.”

  “Fine. Then let me come with you at least?” she pleaded, reaching out to me with one hand.

  Go by foot and go alone. It was like Sophia was purposely trying to sabotage my relationship with Abby. She and I were going to have a long talk about timing and personal boundaries the next time we saw each other.

  I shook my head, face flushing in shame. “I’m sorry, Abs. I can’t bring you with me. I know this is going to sound unbelievable, but it’s something I have to do alone.”

  Her face darkened as I spoke, eyes narrowing in anger. “Sure. Of course it is,” she said, her words full of venom. “Fine, do what you need to do, Jack,” she said, throwing up her hands, “but you can’t avoid this forever!”

  “I swear, I’m not trying to avoid anything,” I said, gaze flickering to the timer spinning away. This was going to be close, and I couldn’t afford to lose any more time. “It’s just a timed mission. There’s an Imperial unit pinned down, and the prompt says I have to go alone. I’m sorry, Abby. I am. We’ll talk, I promise, just as soon as I work through this quest.”

  Without any further explanation, I turned my back on her and took off at a sprint, heading for the barrens outside of Idruz as fast as my feet would carry me. Inside my head, an all-too-familiar mantra played on repeat, like a song I’d heard too many times: Sometimes there is no winning. To save the world, you must first give up that which matters most in your world...

  Imperial Rescue

  I TRACKED THE TIME out of the corner of my eye. Eighteen minutes and counting. God, but I hated timed quests. And this felt simultaneously like a timed quest and some sort of bizarre escort quest, which made it even worse.

  Full dark had already come, and a sickly moon hung overhead, jeering down on the world with its weak, watery light. The corpseglow from Idruz drifted up, painting hazy streaks of green across the sky, blotting out most of the stars. Not that I could see a whole lot of the sky to begin with.

  I was in a winding, narrow gorge that had been carved into the earth by some ancient river that had dried up long ago. The sheer walls of the gorge rose up, up, up, curving in near the top so only tiny patches of night peeked through. If not for my racial Night Eye ability, navigating the passage would’ve been impossible without a torch to light the way—and using a torch in a place like this would’ve drawn mobs to me like moths to a flame. A thin dusting of snow crunched softly beneath my boots as I padded forward, trailing one hand along the face
of the gray stone wall to my right.

  When I was sixteen, my family went on a summer road trip to Arizona. My dad was a camping fanatic and loved uprooting us at least a few weekends every year to go explore some new wonder of nature. That summer, the feat du jour was the Antelope Canyons, situated on a Navajo reservation due east of Page, Arizona. We’d explored a number of different canyon systems before, but the Antelope Canyons were in a league of their own. Twisting, sheer walls of red, orange, and yellow stone so smooth, flawless, and flowing they looked like they’d been sculpted by the hands of a giant. Twisting rock spire arches. Shafts of sunlight peeking through the shady passageway, creating pools of colored light along the dusty ground.

  We spent a week there, tent camping at night, my dad playing an acoustic guitar and badly belting out old classic rock while we sat around a fire, roasting marshmallows. Whenever I saw something like this, I always thought of my parents and regretted that they hadn’t made the leap themselves. V.G.O. was a brutal place at times, but it was also deeply beautiful.

  This place was Antelope Canyon’s equal in every way, though a tad creepier. There was also one other major difference between the two.

  Antelope Canyon had been warm. This place? Yeah, not so much.

  I wrapped my arms across my chest, hunching my shoulders and curling in on myself. Didn’t help. I shivered, teeth chattering from the frosty fingers of cold clawing at every inch of exposed skin. Intellectually, I’d known full well that Morsheim was cold. But, apparently, I’d been spending too much time down in Yunnam, because I was wildly unprepared for exactly how cold it was. Or exactly how miserable tramping through ice and snow in the dead of night was. I’d equipped a heavy cloak and a pair of leather gloves, but the strangely silent wind cut through my woefully inadequate clothing like a wet towel.

  I was sorely missing Abby’s presence for a variety of reasons, but foremost among them was that I was never cold when she was around—one of the many perks of having a Firebrand on the team. A wave of embarrassment and shame washed through me like the incoming tide as I thought about Abby and the way I’d just left her hanging back there. I felt like an asshole. But what option had I had? She wasn’t wrong—we did need to talk and work through things—but we were also in a war zone, and I had quests to run.

  Lives were on the line and every second mattered. There had to be a balance there, but damned if I knew where it was. What I knew for sure, however, was that I hadn’t handled the situation well. At all. She was going to be pissed at me, and rightfully so. No use beating myself up about it now, though—what was done was done. With an effort of stubborn will, I pushed thoughts of Abby to the back of my mind and picked up the pace, eager to get the mission over and done with.

  I gritted my teeth and tromped on at a near jog, working through the claustrophobic press of the walls as I kept one eye fixed on the timer. After another ten minutes, the gorge thinned dramatically, tapering into a craggy fissure just wide enough for me to shimmy through sideways. Despite my high-flying antics with Devil, I wasn’t a huge fan of heights, and I was even less of a fan of constricting narrow passages where I might get stuck. Besides, this seemed like an awfully good place to stage an ambush. True, I hadn’t seen a single mob since entering the canyon, but that only made me more suspicions.

  I took a moment and pulled up my user interface, trying to catch my breath while I double-checked my map. This place was in the middle of nowhere, but sure enough, a quest marker blazed not far off. Only seven minutes left, but I was in striking distance.

  Although I was exhausted from the day and highly unamused, I closed out of the map and forced my way deeper into the fissure. Sucking in my stomach, I pressed my back flat against the rough stone wall and edged inward, inch by terrible inch. The passageway was so tight in places I thought at times I’d have to turn back and call it quits. The stubborn gamer in me flatly refused. Not after smashing the self-destruction button on my personal life in order to be here.

  I was going to rescue Gnaeus Gessia even if I had to blast my way through this canyon with wave after wave of Umbra Fire.

  Like the rest of the gorge, the passage twisted and snaked, doubling back a number of times before finally dumping me into a natural bowl-shaped cavern. A crescent-shaped opening in the rocky ceiling overhead let in a brilliant shaft of moonlight, illuminating the cavern. Opal light painted the landscape and splashed over the derelict exterior of some ancient temple, gouged directly into the face of the far side of the cavern. I’d watched so many pulp classics with my dad that it was impossible not to see the uncanny resemblance between this place and the Treasury Temple from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

  There among the rocks and stone and snow was the lost platoon of Imperial soldiers I’d come searching for. And I’d made it with two minutes to spare. Though, truthfully, I wasn’t sure this group had two minutes. They were locked in a deadly battle of survival against five hulking creatures carved from the same pale gray stone as the cavern walls, and they were losing. Badly. The creatures—clearly temple guardians—were top-heavy monstrosities, nine feet tall, half as wide, and vaguely man-shaped. With arms and legs as thick as telephone poles, these things were built for strength not speed, and from the look of things, they were mean.

  [Keepers of the Lost]

  Over half the Legionnaires were already down, several lying on their backs with severe breaks or blood running freely from vicious lacerations or deep puncture wounds. One man, his face waxy and sweat-slick, had a broken leg, the limb jutting off at a queasy, unnatural angle. A woman in lorica clutched one arm to her chest, her forearm curved like an S, a shard of bone poking through the skin. A single Legionnaire—a kid, all of fifteen or sixteen—tended the wounded, hastily trying to patch them up with bandages, but it was obvious he was no healer. From the state of things, it was safe to assume they were out of Health regen potions.

  Only three of the Imperial squad still fought, all of them decked out in custom gear that set them apart from the other Legion fighters, who wore standard issue Imperial armor.

  Probably Travelers, then.

  A Dwarf in a shirt of heavy chain mail, so long it nearly brushed the ground, was acting as a tank, taunting the creatures mercilessly, absorbing thunderous blows on a pair of kite shields, each as large as he was. A pure tank. I’d seen other Dwarves up north carrying dual shields, but I’d never seen one in action.

  “Come at me, stony boi!” the Dwarf bellowed, his voice oddly light coming from such a powerful, stocky frame. One of the Keepers lunged in; the crunch of gravel and the grating of boulders filled the air as it moved. The Keeper threw a wild haymaker, its enormous fist transforming midflight into a spike-covered wrecking ball. The Dwarf brought his shields together with a resonating clang just as the mace slammed into him. A hit like that should’ve bowled the Dwarf over like a set of pins, but a wall of silver force exploded out on impact, knocking the creature back by five or six feet.

  Meanwhile, the other two members fought to contain the other four Keepers.

  A Wode, dressed in heavy furs and wearing an antler helm, chanted ceaselessly. Her hands wove complex patterns in the air, summoning a wall of wrist-thick black vines studded with inch-long spikes from the snow-sprinkled earth. The plants formed a flexible barrier, six feet high and three feet across, sequestering the stone golems from the injured party members. Safely behind the wall of conjured vines, a High Elf in tan and brown leather armor darted across the cavern, his bow a blur of motion as he let loose arrows tipped with marbled-sized vials of green goop. The shafts exploded on impact, splattering the lumbering creatures with biting acid that chewed through stone with ease.

  The Imperial fighters were holding the line—barely—but they weren’t dealing nearly enough damage to put the creatures down for good, especially since I knew for a fact that these things weren’t run-of-the-mill dungeon mobs. For one, they weren’t inside the ruins, which is where you would expect to run across deadly monsters, but ra
ther were trying to keep the invaders from entering altogether. Their name also sparked a dormant memory from my early days in V.G.O. I’d run across Keepers not so different from these before.

  But only once.

  Darkshard Keep hadn’t always been the seat of the Crimson Alliance; originally it had been a decrepit set of ruins, presided over by a fearful guardian so powerful the local Dokkalfar wouldn’t go within a mile of the place. Getting Chief Kolle and Amara to lead us there had been like pulling the teeth of an especially grumpy crocodile. And, admittedly, for good reason, since the Keepers and the Darkshard Guardian, Brewald, had almost turned our entire party into meat paste. Only having an unbound Faction Seal had saved us in the end.

  A lot had changed since then, however, and I figured I had a pretty good chance of leveling the playing field.

  I pulled out my weapon, the metal and stone rasping along leather as it left my belt, and surged into action. Quick as a thought, I conjured Umbra Bog. Tentacles of lashing shadow reached up from stone and snow, hopelessly miring the creatures and buying me a few moments. A shocked mutter rose from the Legion troops, who hadn’t noticed my arrival yet, but I paid them no mind. I sprinted toward the downed Imperials huddled against the cavern wall and fished four Health potions from my inventory.

  “Gnaeus Gessia,” I yelled. “Which one of you is Gnaeus Gessia?”

  The kid tending the others raised a tentative hand. “I am, sir,” he said, voice sure and steady despite the circumstances.

  “I don’t know who you are, kid, but apparently you’ve got some friends in high places.” I tossed him the vials. “Get everyone patched up! Now!”