by James Hunter
The walls were solid ice—crystalline, beautiful, and glowing with electric-blue light—while the floors were covered with a thin layer of powdery snow that crunched softly under my boots. My breath misted in front of my face as a shiver rode its way through my body, raising goosebumps along my arms and legs. I wasn’t a winter person—San Diego never got cold enough for snow—and I’d spent the vast majority of my time in V.G.O. trekking around in the Storme Marshes or trudging through arid deserts, so I was thoroughly unprepared for this.
“Bollocks, it’s cold down here,” Cutter muttered under his breath, rubbing his arms furiously as he glanced around the stifling tunnel. “We should’ve picked a different dungeon, eh?” He eyed Jo-Dan, who didn’t seem to be bothered in the least by the snow or the cold. “Don’t suppose there’s a nearby dungeon that’s based on a balmy tropical location with beautiful women for guards, is there?”
Jo-Dan snorted and shook his head. “Keep dreaming, buddy. And trust me, this one is the best in the area. The next closest lair is the Ironbark Labyrinth, and you don’t even want to imagine the kind of horrors down there. This place is great, trust me.”
“Great or not,” Cutter growled softly, “I just wanna get my arse outta here and in front of a warm fire. Let’s get movin’—the sooner begun, the sooner done, as Gentleman Georgie used to say.” He shouldered his way past Jo-Dan and me, taking point so he could inspect the way for any of the various traps that festooned most dungeons like ornaments on a Christmas tree. But before he could make it more than a few feet, Jo-Dan’s hand shot out, latching onto the thief’s shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.
“What’s the big idea, eh?” Cutter said, offering the boss a nasty glower.
“Hold up, just a second,” Jo-Dan replied, cocking his head to one side as though hearing something no one else could. “Oh crap,” he said. “The dungeon knows we’re here, and we have incoming.” A second later an alarm bell sounded deep inside the icy complex, its clarion call bouncing off the crystalline walls and reverberating in my bones. The alarm kept right on blaring, clang, clang, clang, but the sound was quickly drowned out by howls and yowls as a swarm of Vogthar tore around a bend in the corridor fifty feet ahead.
These looked identical to the blue-skinned guards Cutter and I had taken out near the entrance: Vogthar mobs with heavy icy-crusted armor and upraised weapons.
“Perfect,” Cutter said with a scowl as he pulled free his twin daggers and gave them an elaborate twirl.
“I’m weak outside my dungeon, so I’ll play a combination of Cleric and summoner,” Jo-Dan shouted, backpedaling. He thrust one hand out, palm up. With a flash of jade light and a pop, his wicked scythe—all yellowed bone and gleaming black steel—appeared in his outstretched palm. He slammed the base of the scythe against the ground, and instantly three jade-green rifts opened in the floor, pulsing like giant oozing wounds as a pair of skeletons and an armor-clad Revenant Knight pulled themselves into existence.
“Hang on one more second,” Jo-Dan muttered, tracing a strange pattern against the floor with the butt of his weapon. Wherever the weapon touched, green light appeared, bleeding from the snow as though it were a living thing. In seconds, he completed the work, leaving a pulsing rune etched into the floor. Renewed power rushed into my body like a whirlwind, filling me with life, strength, and raw energy. Wow. Though I had some very pressing things on my mind—like a small army of howling, incoming maniacs—I couldn’t help but pull up my active effects:
<<<>>>
Buff Added
Necromantic Strength: Restore 250 HP over 30 seconds. Increase Health Regen by 20. Base Strength increased by (10) points, base Vitality increased by (5) points, base Constitution Increased by (3) points. Base Damage increased by 35%. Duration, 5 minutes.
<<<>>>
Holy crap, that was one heck of a good buff spell—maybe it was time to recruit a competent Cleric. No, scratch that, it was well past time, but that was a concern for later. For now, there were things to kill, experience to gain, and loot to earn.
“You’re good,” Jo-Dan hollered, waving us on with his free hand. “I’ll keep you both alive, you two just take care of them.” He thrust his scythe toward the horde of Vogthar. He shot a look at his trio of minions, and though he said nothing, they immediately broke into a lumbering run, blundering toward the Vogthar.
“Cutter, keep behind us,” I called, immediately following after the three undead creatures. I wasn’t a tank by any stretch of the imagination—speed and agility were my best traits by far—but I could take a heck of a lot more damage than Cutter could. All of a sudden, I was sorely missing Forge, who was not only a proper tank but a competent one.
I pulled my warhammer free and briefly considered summoning Devil, but then dismissed the idea. These tunnels were narrow as hell—Devil would just get in the way and make it nearly impossible for anyone else to engage. But the Void Watchers could pull their weight. I flicked out a hand, releasing the shadowy power flowing through my body in a burst. An inky cloud filled the air as Nikko and her underlings, Kong and Mighty Joe, ripped their way through from the Shadowverse. They chittered and chattered, their purple eyes burning, their lips pulled back in snarls.
Jo-Dan’s undead minions crashed into the incoming Vogthar like a tsunami, momentarily halting their rush.
“Attack,” I shouted, jabbing one finger toward the horde. Nikko and her kin let out terrible shrieks, before vanishing from view in a puff of sooty smoke. The Void Watchers might not have had Devil’s size, strength, or raw damage-dealing potential, but they had some formidable gifts of their own. For one, because of Nikko’s Pack Animal ability, all three Void Watchers could be out at once, and, for another, the simian creatures could Shadow Stride, just like me, which made them wickedly challenging to kill.
The apes appeared an eyeblink later, exploding from the air and throwing themselves at the Vogthar, slashing at skin, digging their teeth into exposed necks, flailing wildly at noses and eyes. Sowing chaos in their wake as they danced among the creatures, disappearing and reappearing at will. Meanwhile, the skeletons lashed out with rusty swords, keeping the invaders at bay. I thrust one hand out, conjuring Umbra Bog in a blink: inky black tendrils erupted from the floor and walls, wrapping around arms and legs, further miring the monsters in place. And I was happy to see Umbra Bog completely ignored Jo-Dan’s undead warriors, since they were now friendlies.
Which meant I could use Night Cyclone without a worry.
I grinned like a little kid on Christmas morning and thrust my warhammer forward, triggering the new spell, which I’d been jonesing to use since I’d unlocked it. Arctic power—so cold it burned inside my chest like a volcano—exploded out from my center and raced down my arm like a bolt of lightning. The head of my warhammer glowed with preternatural purple light. The air above the Vogthar shimmered, bulged, and ripped, momentarily revealing a glimpse of some night-dark place filled with floating purple clouds and ginormous black twisters tearing across an endless desert of cracked yellow hardpan.
I’d never seen anything like it, but then the landscape vanished as one of those twisters rushed through the tear and into our plane, closing the rift behind it. The cyclone touched down in the midst of the Vogthar and went to town like a rampaging Godzilla.
Despite the Umbra Bog holding most of the Vogthar in place, the ferocious winds picked up more than a few of the creatures and hurled them into walls with bone-breaking force. Meanwhile, tendrils of black lashed out from the twister like living serpents. Whenever one of those shadowy tongues landed, there was a sharp thundercrack, a strong scent of ozone, and a flash of brilliant purple light as a Vogthar keeled over, eyes gone, burned from their skulls. Bolts of blue-black power also sprinted across the floor in the twister’s wake, doing significant damage to anything that managed to live through the initial touchdown.
Some part of me knew instinctively that I should’ve been in there, laying into the Vogthar with my hammer while they were
bogged down and highly distracted by the rampaging death tornado carving a path through their formation. Intellectually, tactically, I knew that, but I could only stand there and watch in awe. The Night Cyclone was amazingly destructive, and the fact that its slapping winds, flailing shadow tentacles, and brutal lightning discharges completely ignored the skeletons and chimps was even more satisfying.
It wasn’t hard to see why this spell had a ten-minute cooldown timer—it cost a lot of Spirit, sure, but if a player could spam an attack like that, they’d be unstoppable.
I briefly wondered how drastically the gameplay would change once more players started reaching the higher levels and unlocking overpowered abilities like this.
I could only shake my head at the notion.
Finally, the cyclone dissipated and disappeared with a boom, vanishing back to whatever corner of the Shadowverse it’d come from. I scanned the field, noting the sheer devastation left behind. Though not all the Vogthar were dead, many of them were, and more lay on the ground, severely wounded or dying. Jo-Dan’s skeletons and my Void Watchers maneuvered through the crowd, mauling those still alive but too weak to fight back.
“Shite,” Cutter said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Now that’s the way to kill some bloody monsters, Jack. Let’s just have you do that from now on, I think. Save us all quite a lot of trouble.” He smirked and glanced around, hands planted firmly on his hips. “If this is all that’s waiting for us”—he nodded at the downed minions—“then maybe this won’t be so bad after all, eh?”
FOURTEEN_
Dungeon Dive
“Incoming, Jack!” Cutter called out, his voice slicing through the din of battle. I narrowly diverted a wicked axe head with my warhammer and wheeled around just in time to see a cannonball of blue ice careening toward me, courtesy of one of the Vogthar Ice-Lancers stationed throughout this place. I threw out a hand on instinct, ready to summon my Dark Shield spell, but I was half a beat too slow. Cold shadow power crept into my palm in the same instant the cannonball of ice smashed into my chest like a sledgehammer before exploding like a hand grenade.
Light filled my eyes, bits of razor-sharp ice shrapnel cut into my cheeks, and my HP bar dropped by over half. On top of that, the force of the blast lifted me from my feet, hurling me into a tunnel wall. My head snapped back, slamming against the unforgiving ice, and I crumpled to the floor, white pinpricks swimming across my vision, accompanied by a nasty combat debuff:
<<<>>>
Debuffs Added
Concussed: You have sustained a severe head injury! Confusion and disorientation; duration, 1 minute.
Frostburn: You have sustained Frostburn damage! Movement rate reduced by 25%; duration, 2 minutes. 2 pts Burn Damage/sec; duration, 30 seconds.
<<<>>>
I just lay there for a moment, blinking away the stars as I pushed myself up onto my elbows. Maybe this won’t be so bad, that’s what Cutter had said. Rarely had Cutter been so massively wrong in his assessment of any situation. Sure, the Vogthar on the first couple of floors were pushovers that might’ve posed a challenge for travelers leveled twenty-five or below, but certainly not for our little group. Jo-Dan was only level seventeen, but dungeon levels didn’t translate well, and Cutter was thirty-six.
The lower levels of the Frozen Warrens, however, were clearly not for lowbies looking to grind out some easy EXP. The standard Vogthar gave way to powerful creatures with specific class specializations. There were thieves and tanks, healers and casters, summoners and archers. Every single Vogthar seemed to have a specialty—and the accompanying skills—which only reinforced the idea that these things were less like traditional dungeon monsters and more like a locked race, coming to the surface for the first time.
There was one interesting fact: all of the warriors in this dungeon had blue skin and seemed to favor ice-based attacks.
“Don’t worry, Jack,” Jo-Dan shouted over the fray. “I’ve got you covered.” Suddenly, a column of pale green light burst from the floor, lifting me back to my feet as Necrotic energy seeped into my body, knitting together lacerated skin and wiping me of the costly debuffs while simultaneously boosting my HP back up to three quarters.
As the light faded, I fished out a Health Regen potion and downed it, topping off my life. “Thanks,” I said, shooting Jo-Dan a nod and a finger gun, then tossing the bottle aside and turning my full attention back to the battle at hand. Everything was a mess. We were in a large, natural cavern, the floor covered in snow heavily stained with blood; giant frozen stalagmites protruded from the floor while formidable stalactites hung from the ceiling above like vicious teeth.
There were Vogthar corpses everywhere, some missing limbs, others missing heads, a few impaled by spits of ice. But there were still a fistful more to fight. The initial wave of cannon-fodder troops had absorbed my Night Cyclone, leaving me with a long cooldown and all the heavy hitters unaffected. What remained were three huge, beefy warriors—eight feet tall in plate mail so heavy I couldn’t even put it in my inventory without becoming over-encumbered—and casters. Almost a half-dozen casters in total, ranging from summoners to ice-lancers.
Cutter danced and weaved among the warriors, dealing out pitifully ineffective wounds while dodging death-dealing power attacks. Jo-Dan’s skeletal troops were busy battling with a trio of frozen yeti-like creatures, conjured forth by a Vogthar caster in deep blue robes. Meanwhile, my chimps were harassing the crap out of the rest of the casters, popping into existence just long enough to disrupt spells, then disappearing in blinding puffs of sooty smoke. We were winning, but it was a near thing.
I threw my left hand out, unleashing a barrage of Umbra Bolts at the casters toward the back of the room. A few of the bolts landed hard, knocking off HP with every hit. None of them were affected by confusion, but that was okay. I wasn’t trying to hurt them. I was trying to distract them. A heartbeat later, a wall of flickering blue shields popped up, rendering my Umbra Bolts useless. Exactly according to plan. As long as they were casting defensive spells, they weren’t hurling offensive spells. With the shields in place, I ceased my attack and triggered Shadow Stride, slipping into the Shadowverse with a step.
I quickly edged my way around the dead bodies, past Cutter—frozen mid-leap, a hail of conjured black blades leaving his palm—and over to the Ice-Lancer, who had so kindly blasted me into the wall. She was willowy thin and wore white robes with a stole of silver fur draped around her shoulders. Her spell shield was up and blazing, but most conjured barriers were directional, which meant she was safe from the front, but open to attack in the back. I stepped through the shield and the caster, appearing behind her.
I brought up my weapon, flipped it around, spike out, and stepped from the Shadowverse, swinging my hammer with every ounce of strength I could muster—putting my whole body into the attack. The spike slammed into her unprotected temple, and her eyes rolled back into her head as her body convulsed and toppled, Critical Hit flashing above her. That, at least, was one of the good things about these folks. The casters hit hard, but, so far, they were all glass cannons, highly susceptible to good ol’-fashioned physical attacks.
“Behind us!” one of the Vogthar casters shrieked, dropping his shield and spinning around, his staff outthrust.
He wasn’t even close to fast enough, however. I ducked the sloppy attack and darted forward, thrusting the top of my spike into his exposed throat; his HP sunk like a rock, though not quite enough to one-shot him. He sputtered in shock as I pulled the spike free, one hand groping uselessly at his neck. I swung the hammer again, but before I could strike, Mighty Joe appeared in a flash, digging his formidable claws into the man’s eyes, dragging him to the ground with a ferocious screech.
I sidestepped another incoming blow—this one from a cudgel burning with cerulean power—twirled my hammer again, and slammed it into the exposed kneecap of a nearby warlock. The creature went down with a scream, dropping his weapon as he grabbed his busted leg. One more follow-up strike p
ut him down for good. I pulled my weapon free and stood, breathing hard from the fight and the Stamina loss. Nikko slammed a furry shoulder into my side, knocking me to the ground just as a barrage of deadly ice spears, each as big around as my wrist, sailed through the space I’d been in a moment before.
The impact jarred my shoulder, sending a brief flash of pain sprinting through my body, there then gone.
I scrambled back to my feet, shooting a glance over my shoulder as I moved.
My heart froze in my chest. Nikko wobbled drunkenly not far away, a pair of glimmering ice spears protruding from her chest while dark sludgy blood ran down her front, matting her fur. She toppled over, her body hitting the floor with a wet thud, followed up by a flare of inky smoke as she disappeared, vanishing back to the Shadowverse for respawn. A pair of howls ripped through the air as Mighty Joe and Kong were pulled back from the Material Realm.
Without Nikko and her Pack Animal ability in play, both creatures weren’t allowed to be in the Material Plane at the same time.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” I shouted, unleashing a gout of Umbra Flame the size of a telephone pole. The Vogthar yowled, hands beating at his skin and robes as purple flames crawled over his body like a swarm of ants. He toppled a second later, rolling madly on the ground, trying to extinguish himself, but failing miserably as I continued to pump more and more fire from my outstretched hand. After a few seconds he finally stopped moving. And just in time, too. My Spirit bar flickered and hit zero, the Umbra Flame vanishing as though someone had abruptly turned off a fire hose.
The two remaining casters were already breaking for cover, retreating down a hallway that ended at a heavy steel door with a meaty lock set into the surface. “Not on my watch,” I growled, downing a Spirit Regen potion, then casting Umbra Bog—the cooldown timer had finally expired—which stopped the pair dead in their tracks, held in place by merciless tentacles of shadow. They fought and thrashed at the sticky strands, but nothing they did worked, and in three long strides, I closed the distance.