“Let’s go find out.” Roark nodded sharply. They had an appointment to keep with Variok.
The three Trolls followed the rog into the cafeteria. Plates had been arranged all down the long tables with what looked like beans that had seen far too many reheatings and a pair of mealy potatoes the size of coins.
Inmates were already taking seats at the benches running down the length of the tables and digging into the food. Yevin gave them a wink and headed off to join up with someone he knew, presumably from his previous stay.
“My friends!” Variok shouted. They found him on the opposite side of the cafeteria waving them over. “I saved seats for you! Now we can discuss business while we eat, one of the most noble mealtime pleasures—and good for the digestion, too.”
“Not if you’re still trying to charge us twice what those threadbare blankets are worth,” Roark returned at a volume only slightly lower than Variok’s shouts.
He dropped into the seat next to the merchant and dug into the food. It was cold, right on the verge of frozen.
Kaz, who’d taken the seat across from Roark, poked at his potatoes. “Jordan Bamsey says that if one cannot serve a meal at the correct temperature, one is not allowed to call oneself a chef.”
“No offense, Kaz, but I doubt whoever makes the food here is even a cook,” Roark said.
The Mighty Gourmet turned up his nose at the fare. “It is also bland.”
Zyra, on the other hand, had already scarfed hers down.
“What happened to service with a smile covering a multitude of sins?” she teased. She pointed to Kaz’s plate. “If you’re not going to eat that, I’ll just take it off your hands for you.” She scooped the bean goop onto her plate and popped the potatoes into her mouth. “It’s nothing like your feasts, Kaz, but it’s filling the hole that seasickness left in my middle.”
“My discerning friend,” Variok said, pointing his spoon at Kaz’s now empty plate, “You seem like the type of Troll who recognizes quality food when he sees it. For a very small fee—so small that it is stealing food from the mouths of my yet to be born children—Variok can get you any spice you may need to turn this rubbish into a meal you can palate.”
“Can Variok get salt?” Kaz asked.
Roark leaned forward. “The two of you can haggle for overpriced spices later. For now, we’re on a mission.”
Variok boomed laughter and slapped Roark on the back. “I see what you are doing, my friend, pretending that you do not want the salt. Very clever! Fine, Variok will drop his price even further. I must be losing my mind to go so low! You will send me straight from Chillend to debtor’s prison!”
“I’m serious,” Roark told him. “We’re here to break you out.”
Roark expected the merchant to be surprised into at least momentary silence, but this revelation didn’t faze Variok one bit.
“Ah, I knew we would be wonderful friends from the day I first laid eyes on you,” he said. “Averi City has always been a place of luck for Variok. I was arrested there, yet it was also where we met, and now it has sent you to rescue me the one time I have no way to pay my fine. Blessings be forever upon the Averi City Marketplace!”
Across the table, Kaz was nodding in agreement.
“Kaz understands,” the Knight Thursr said. “Averi City was where Kaz first met skewers, so he has similar feelings for its market.”
Variok turned to Roark. “So, my friend, how do we exit this frozen hell?”
“I haven’t quite worked that out yet,” he admitted. “We found a second skill trainer, something of a sorcerer who we’ll be bringing along as well. How many times a day are all the prisoners allowed out of their cells like this?”
“Twice,” Variok said. “In the morning to break the fast and again at sunset for the evening meal.”
Roark nodded. “And are there any sewer systems in this prison for the waste? Rubbish chutes? Anything large enough to crawl out through?”
Variok frowned, his pale brow furrowing with thought.
“There is the body hole, where the dead are tossed into the sea,” the merchant said, pointing to the far side of the room where a mound of ice rose from the floor. “But it is like the doors to our cells—only the Legionnaires are able to open it.”
“Is it their rings?” Roark asked. “I also considered their bracers. Some enchanted item of jewelry or armor that triggers a spell or hex with preset conditions, like the dimensions for a door or body-dumping hole. If we could get our hands on—”
“Oy, it’s the big-mouf critic!” The chef Roark had seen scowling on the prison hulk swaggered over, flanked on either side by cronies. “Wotcher, big mouf?” He gave Kaz’s meaty shoulder a shove, then smacked aside the plate Zyra had emptied onto hers. “You can eat this slop, but my deliciously crafted entrees don’t quite measure up to your standards?”
Kaz didn’t turn around, just frowned down at the table silently, enormous hands flexing open and closed.
“Back off,” Roark growled.
“Wasn’t talking to you, was I? Can’t you hear me, big mouf?” The chef flicked Kaz’s ear despite the fact that the Knight Thursr was easily twice the chef’s size if not more. “Your ears are massive enough you shouldn’t ’ave any trouble wif that.”
His cronies howled with laughter, but Kaz only leaned away from the chef.
Zyra was on her feet in a flash, poisoned claws extended and glimmering in the morning light. “I hear there’s no respawn here. Care to test that rumor out, or were you hoping we’d just beat you soundly again and send you to bed?”
The chef pulled out a rolling pin and slapped it against his palm. His cronies produced pans, skillets, and even a stove length of wood.
“Oh, I don’t fink you lot’ll be beating anybody this time, dearie. Not with the weapons our enterprising friend there sold us,” the chef said, nodding at Variok.
The elven merchant turned to Roark and raised one finger as if to forestall any accusations.
“In my defense,” Variok said, “I turned a very handsome profit.”
Septic Brewmaster
ZYRA LAUGHED AT THE sight of the gang’s culinary weapons. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with those in here. From what I’ve heard, you could barely use them when you were in a proper kitchen.”
The chef’s face turned beet red.
“I am an Oronoro Institute–trained chef, you tasteless heathen!” he bellowed, rushing Zyra, his rolling pin brandished overhead like a Combat Cleric’s scepter.
Zyra extended her claws on both hands and dropped into a defensive stance, ready to Death Scratch the furious cook.
At the last moment, however, Kaz lurched to his feet and spun, throwing a punch that would crush the skull of a rampaging water buffalo. His fist landed with a meaty thump, blood arcing through the air as the chef somersaulted backward and toppled onto a table halfway across the room. Plates of beans and potatoes went flying.
“Do not insult Kaz’s friends!” the Mighty Gourmet roared.
The chef’s cronies looked at their leader, then at each other. As one, they charged.
“Great,” Roark said. “No weapons, outnumbered, and no respawn.” He looked at Variok. “Let us handle this. You stay here and don’t die.”
“Variok is a merchant, my friend. He does not dabble in combat.” He gestured at the melee, where Kaz was busy wading through the crowd of cronies and Zyra slashed everything that moved. “Please, enjoy your fight.”
Roark vaulted across the table, wings dragging behind him.
The crony with the stove length, an azure-skinned dark elf, ducked under a massive haymaker from Kaz laced with the jagged end of a broken cinnamon stick. A fitting shank for the Mighty Gourmet. Without stopping, the dark elf whirled toward Roark, swinging the stick of wood at Roark’s head. Roark threw up an arm and caught the blow on his triceps. Before the dark elf could pull back for another, Roark clamped his arm down around the stove length and jerked.
The dark elf stumbled toward him, but didn’t let go of the stick. Employing a trick he’d learned years ago from Danella, Roark twisted hard, dragging the dark elf in again, and used their combined forward momentum to decimate the elf’s nose with a devastating headbutt.
Stunned, the dark elf dropped to the icy floor. Roark snatched the stove length from his fist and gave him a kick in the side of the head in return. The elf wasn’t dead, but by the look of his rolling eyes, he wasn’t getting back up any time soon. Good. Roark didn’t much care for this chef or his sycophants, but that didn’t warrant a death sentence—especially not with forever-death on the line. If being a sod was all that it took to earn a trip to the gallows, then he would’ve along ago hung every council member in the T’verzet.
As Roark threw himself at the crowd of goons attacking Kaz with all manner of kitchen tools, he was vaguely aware of shouting and running going on at the periphery surrounding their bubble of violence. But no one new joined the fray or attacked Variok, so Roark dismissed the din as unimportant and slammed his new weapon into the rog who had leapt onto Kaz’s back. It cracked across the rog’s spine, drawing an unearthly scream of pain. A second strike sent the rog to the ground, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his legs splayed limply. Roark cocked the stick of wood back, ready to launch another attack.
But a gray-green aura of light appeared around him, paralyzing him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. A glance around showed that same light pulsating around Kaz, Zyra, and their rivals. Even the chef and Variok had been paralyzed.
A dozen olm Legionnaires in shining plate and pristine tabards surrounded them, arms raised in the cast for Paralyzation.
“Prisoners, all of your fines have hereby been doubled.”
By then, it was instinct for Roark to close the corresponding notice as soon as it appeared.
The lead caster craned his neck to look straight up. “Overwatcher, who struck the first blow in this conflict?”
At the top level, a blue olm pointed. “The biggest one, but the other two Trolls came in a close second, and the elf was egging them on to join the fight.”
The lead caster nodded sharply. “Two days and two nights in the Freezer for egregious misconduct.”
Grim murmurs ran through the watching crowd of inmates. Sounded like none of them much fancied the Freezer. The Legionnaires casting the Paralyzation spells began to walk backward, dragging them across the cafeteria floor to the spiral walkway.
Roark caught Yevin’s eye as they began to ascend the walkway.
“Rough luck,” the arcane paragon said. “A couple of you might live if you huddle together for warmth. If you do survive, our deal’s still good. You know where to find me.”
As the casters dragged them all up the spiral, Roark fumed silently. How in the seven hells were they supposed to escape this Freezer, grab Yevin, and break free now? He turned the problem over and over all the way up to the highest level, but still came up empty-handed.
At the end of the transportation, the Legionnaires stopped at a solid wall of ice. As their hands were all busy maintaining the spells, the blue Overwatcher obliged them by opening the door to an icy vault.
A gust of frigid wind blasted Roark. Special air tunnels had been carved into the walls, channeling the icy ocean wind into the room. It wasn’t the chill of a pleasant winter morning in there. It was the sort of cold that froze muscle solid and cracked bone. It made the cold of the rest of Chillend seem like summer heat by comparison.
One by one, the casters stuck Kaz, Zyra, Variok, and Roark into the Freezer. Then the Overwatcher removed his hands and the last breath of not-quite-deadly cold from outside disappeared as the door slammed shut, locking them inside.
Roark scrubbed his arms vigorously, trying to fight off some of the chill. Totally useless. Already his fingers and toes felt numb. The threadbare, prison-issue rags flapped in the wind, offering no protection. Beside him, Zyra hopped up and down, and across the vault, Kaz paced restlessly, a white cloud of breath misting from his wide nostrils. Variok shivered and shook, his teeth chattering loudly.
“Be it f-f-far from Variok to cast aspersions, my friend, but y-your plan to free us from this prison s-s-seems to have hit a dead end.”
“I’m working on it, damn it,” Roark snapped, the gears turning furiously in his mind. He had to get them out of there before they all froze to death. If he couldn’t manage that, none of them would respawn. They would all be forever-dead. As terrible as the situation was, however, Roark actually found it refreshing in its way. Hearthworld and its endless supply of respawns had made him soft. This was a reminder that in the fight against Marek, the stakes were much higher. Deadly. He was perversely glad that Zyra was trapped in there with him. Zyra could use a look at what life with him would be like. No fun and games, that. Just forever-death.
The merchant gave a huge all-over shudder. “Variok never thought he would meet his death of cold. An angry customer, perhaps. A burglary gone wrong, certainly. But cold?” He grimaced and shook his head.
Kaz’s onyx eyes grew wide and frightened. “Kaz doesn’t want to die here, Roark,” the Knight Thursr whimpered, shivering. “Kaz hates the c-c-cold.”
Roark squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his temples, desperately grasping for anything that might get them out of there. He embraced the cold, letting it invade his limbs, numbing his body but sharpening his mind. He couldn’t cast, he had no portal scrolls, the World Stone didn’t seem to have any properties that could transport them... Could he carve a blood cantrip in his arm? Would the rules that governed the prison allow that or would they see it as another spell to be stopped? He’d just have to try it. A portal spell, just as he’d done when fleeing from Marek during his botched assassination. It was risky, but perhaps whatever made the portal magic in Hearthworld so trustworthy would be on his side this time. After spending so much time working on the portal plates in the Cruel Citadel he felt up to the task. Mostly.
He opened his eyes just in time to see Zyra break into a dazzling smile.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Kaz, but we have to die here if we’re going to escape.” She quaked as she rummaged through her Inventory, her movements clumsy from the cold. “It’s the only way out.”
“What in seven hells is wrong with you lately?” Roark snapped. “Are you suicidal?”
She let out a laugh like the crack of an ice floe breaking up. “No, but I am about to become the best Septic Brewmaster in the history of the specialty.”
“What?”
“S-s-septic Brewmaster.” She produced a handful of potions. “It’s a specialty sub-class quest I unlocked while experimenting with new poisons.” She passed him a bottle with one shaking hand, then gave one each to Variok and Kaz. “I was w-w-worried you would ruin my escape plan when you invited that rog sorcerer, but now that we’re leaving him behind, I h-h-have enough for everyone again.”
Roark glared down at the potion in his hand. Its sludgy black contents oozed greasily against the glass vial.
[Sleeping Death (Newly Invented Poison, Incomparably Rare)
Uses: 1
Causes a deathlike sleep to come over the drinker for 1 hour indistinguishable from true death.]
“What is it?”
“Poison, obviously. Drink up,” Zyra said cheerfully through her chattering teeth. “It’s called Sleeping Death. The drinker will ap-ap-appear to be forever-dead for one hour. C-c-completely indistinguishable from real forever-death.”
“How does that help us?” Roark asked, stamping his feet to bring some sensation back into them.
Zyra rolled her eyes. “Jotnars. If it’s not a power-grab, they don’t pay attention at all.” She pointed a trembling finger at the foot-thick wall of ice dividing them from the rest of the prison. “The only way to escape is through the body hole. The only way out the body hole is to die.” She shook her bottle of Sleeping Death in Roark’s face. “So we die.”
Variok raised a pale brow at t
he hoodless Reaver.
“You came into Chillend with these poisons?” the merchant asked.
Zyra nodded. “I didn’t think I would get a chance to use them, but I certainly hoped I would.”
Roark shook his head in disbelief. “Why? What on earth would make you want that?”
“To get my Septic Brewmaster specialty, I have to poison at least one ally with a poison of Ultra Rare or higher.” She shrugged shivering shoulders. “I was going to sneak some into your cup at a feast until I heard that the prison here had a no-respawn policy. I assumed if they had forever-death here, they must have a way to keep the corpses from piling up. Though, I pictured guards just chucking them off the top. The body hole is a little more elegant a solution.” She pointed at Roark’s poison. “These won’t drink themselves, boys.”
Roark turned her plan over in his mind for several freezing seconds. A blast of wind ripped at his shaggy hair and leathery wings, sapping the last of the feeling from the twisted appendages.
“If they don’t find us within the hour, we’re likely to freeze solid and be forever-dead before the fake forever-death wears off,” he said, pointing out the only flaw that his cold-battered mind could find at the moment. “How do we make certain they dispose of us before that?”
“Easy,” Zyra said.
Before he could ask what she meant, the hoodless Reaver threw back her head and screamed an ear-shattering note of pure terror. The sound cut through the vault like a razor through the soft flesh of an exposed throat. Roark had to crush his hands to his ears. Variok and Kaz were doing the same. Finally, after what felt like ages, the scream tapered off.
“Bottoms up,” Zyra said, popping the cork from her poison and draining it.
She took a deep breath, then raised bloody hell again. She reached a pitch that made the ice around them resonate like glass on the verge of breaking, then she cut off suddenly and dropped to the floor, her legs simply refusing to hold her up for one second longer. Her mismatched eyes were open, oddly glassy, her chest still, her mouth slightly agape. Her Health bar showed that she was dead. Roark’s breath hitched inside his chest, the world reeling uncertainly beneath his feet. In that moment, she was Danella, her dark midnight skin replaced by bloated, rotting flesh, her eyes and tongue pecked out by crows.
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