The Dragon's Revenge

by Conor Kostick

  ‘Progress is good, yes?’ asked Oveidio, bringing me back to the table.

  ‘Very good. Raitha and I are thirty-three already.’

  Oveidio nodded. ‘I knew you would level fast. You play like Tal, you know, the chess champion.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I felt flattered, even though I didn’t understand.

  With his severe expression turning into a smile Oveidio said, ‘Tal played always dashing. He took risks, smart ones though. And he was lucky.’

  ‘Hah, well, I’m lucky all right; if I hadn’t been turned into a vampire, I don’t know how I’d have managed to free you.’

  ‘You’d have thought of something. I know. I follow your video channel.’

  ‘What about you, what are your group like? How’s progress?’

  Glancing around the large busy room, Oveidio lowered his voice. ‘Good, mostly. Rubblethumper, the warrior, is too cautious, always against tough pulls. And he complains about you.’

  Having been feeling cheerful about my own progress and the fact that the leader of one of the toughest Epic guilds followed my video channel, I was reminded of the stress of sharing a building with Blackridge and his supporters: the atmosphere of dislike they created made entering the Yuno headquarters feel like coming out of the sunshine into the rain.

  ‘Do you want me to swap him around? Is he affecting the group spirit?’

  ‘No. We are going to deliver on time.’

  ‘Great, well, I need my sleep.’

  Oveidio offered his hand and I shook it firmly. ‘Goodnight my friend.’

  I did not, in fact, have a good night. My sleep was troubled, first from a dream that I was in school when I urgently needed to ring home. Although I ran from the classroom, the secretary’s door was locked. Outside, the one public phone left in Cabra was vandalised, and when I stopped someone I knew to borrow his mobile, it was out of battery. Having woken up, composed a text for Mum to tell her all was well, and fallen back asleep, I had a much worse nightmare. The king of England was giving out awards and I was in the audience, watching. Blackridge and Watson were in the line, both looking splendid in tuxedos, although Watson’s shoulders seemed to want to burst through the seams of his jacket and when Blackridge bent down to receive the medal, the king had some difficulty getting the ribbon over his big, square head.

  After the ceremony, there was a ball held in a room with mirrored walls. The scene was a brilliant display both of costume and reflected light from a golden candelabra. A clock began to chime and on the twelfth stroke, everyone disappeared from the mirrors except for me. Immediately, the people nearest me hissed and showed their fangs. They were vampires and I was not. Of course I ran, with Blackridge and Watson staring after me, not bothering with a chase, as if knowing what was ahead of me. At the end of a corridor was a wooden door and although I ran through it gratefully and slammed it shut, I looked up to see that I was in the library in the tower-castle of Lady Cruoris. And she was there, book in hand. I’ve never seen anyone look so angry as she did. Then again, I’ve never seen anyone with such a muscular jaw and sharp teeth. ‘You should never have left me!’ she screamed and I knew I was dead.

  The following morning, back in the game, it took me a while to warm up. By this time, though, we had the grind worked out, so that no great concentration was needed. Instead, the group chat was mostly about the loss of Port Placida and speculation on where the dragon and her armies would strike next. For me, the conversation only became interesting when my friends began talking about how they would spend their money, if they got the bonus.

  ‘This is a big “if”, there’s so much that can go wrong still.’ I was determined not to draw the attention of the Fates to us by being complacent.

  ‘I’m going to buy a new rig for gaming and blow the rest on a trip to Vegas,’ said Braja, cheerfully ignoring me.

  Raitha, who was slashing away at our mob (the dark elf assassin from the entrance to the fourth level), sounded pious: ‘I shall assist my younger brother with his studies. He wishes to go to Oxford or Cambridge and study engineering, but it is too expensive.’

  ‘Vegas,’ spat Sapentia, scornfully. ‘Is symbol of excess and crassness.’

  ‘You got it,’ chuckled Braja.

  ‘It is everything wrong with the USA in one place.’

  ‘Exactly. Bring it on!’ Our cleric refused to be shamed for his dream. ‘And what will you do with your money? Something more worthy? Save the whales that your country is making extinct?’

  There was a pause, while Sapentia finished off the battle with a blast of lightning that left us with the smell of burned toast and blinking at the afterimages: vertical, jagged, purple lines. ‘I make my office good recording place for podcasts and videos. Buy proper recording equipment. Instead of going to studio, I go solo.’

  ‘Cool. What about you, Tuscl?’ I asked, knowing better than to invite Grythiss to break his role-playing with such a question.

  ‘I think I just save it.’

  ‘Me too.’ As well, I would buy something nice for Mum, though I didn’t want to say this aloud. Take her shopping for a new coat, whatever she wanted.

  All that day we went up and down the tower as far as the first ogre, Bromgud. There was no need to risk a wipe and delays by pushing on while we were still getting good exp from the lower levels. Even the ground floor Black Yhandis were still worth something at the start of the day, although by our fourth cycle through the tower, they were no longer providing exp. Seven cycles - thirteen hours - later, we unclipped. I was level 37. The intense grind was worth the nauseating feeling I had as I adjusted to walking again in the real world.

  The following day, we broke into the sixth level of the tower. There, a large entrance hall had a strange, blue mist instead of a floor, with about thirty circular stepping stones distributed widely, leading to two exits on the right-hand side and two on the left. Whatever the challenge was, the ogres seemed to have solved it with planks of broken furniture marking a path to the near left door. That led to a series of connected rooms running clockwise around to the opposite corner of the tower (where the stairs went up again). These rooms may have had something to do with the afterlife of various pantheons, to judge by the stone relief designs on the walls. It was hard to tell as the rooms were now occupied by ogres, level 40 to 46, who had amused themselves by smashing the sculptures or adding lewd scrawlings.

  None of the melee classes among the ogres had weapons that could deal damage to me; they did, however, have a priest in one of the rooms and a mage in another, which posed a problem. Both these ogre casters had nukes that could get through my immunities. The priest with a Spirit Wrack and the mage, if he used Acid Blast. After a couple of failed experiments, involving my death and my hurrying back up through the tower, we learned to have the whole group close for those pulls, with Raitha targeting the casters and pulling them from the room while I kept their companions busy in situ.

  Again, over the course of the day, I had the unusual experience of beginning a challenge with some nervousness and an intensity of concentration but hours later, launching into battles with complacency. The loot wasn’t much use to us. All the armour and weapons were too large. And we weren’t even clearing all the way to the bottom of the tower any more to make it worth filling our inventories with clutter and selling it later. The mage twice dropped a +1 dagger, which Grythiss and then Raitha took as a backup magic weapon. The priest’s rare drop was a Potion of Moderate Healing and by the end of the day, we had three of these, passed out to Grythiss, Raitha and myself.

  We rescued a human NPC from his chains in a room the ogres had converted to a kitchen. This was poor Sir Tregar, who had been tricked by an illusion involving a maiden in distress into having to serve an ogre prince for a year and a day. After which, instead of releasing him, the ogre prince had sent him along with an expedition to find the secret of the necromancer’s tower. Tregar had been forced to use his daily heals on the ogres as well as prepare their dark elf a
nd ambrile stews. Once we had the grateful paladin following us, we cleared all the way to the exit so that he could escape the tower (Sir Tregar was level 25, so would have no difficulty returning home after that). Again, someone had to return to Carrickmor for our reward (handing in a medallion that Sir Tregar had been wearing around his neck) and since Raitha had all the ingredients for A Cure for Derforgilla by this time, he turned into an eagle and flew off on our behalf.

  Other than a decent exp gain, we got a Potion of Cure Blindness (six doses). This was potentially very useful. Via your UI, you assigned it to a command, like a finger motion, and you could swig it while blind, hopefully removing your condition. We gave it to Grythiss. That was the Derforgilla reward. For rescuing Sir Tregar, we gained a +1 longsword. Although the blade would have been useful for me, it was going to be even more valuable to Raitha. Typically, I fought with my bite attack, whereas in this tower he was using a sword most of the time, as the close-quarter encounters did not allow him to use his magical bow.

  When I reached level 39, I called a break. I wanted to speak to Watson before I hit 40. Since Raitha was on the rig next to me, I asked him to come too.

  There was one noticeable difference between Watson’s room and that of the others and it wasn’t just the quality of the view (currently, mostly dark, but with glittering lights all around us, as though giant, illuminated creatures were resting on an ocean bed). Watson had an assistant in an ante-office, who rose to greet me but who was very firm that we had to wait. He came around the desk - smartly dressed: navy jacket, light blue tie, matching glasses frames - and gestured to a coffee machine and two comfortable armchairs.

  ‘Hello Tyro and…Raitha?’

  My friend nodded.

  ‘Mr Watson will be very glad to see you. He is on an important call just now. If you’d like to wait and have a coffee, I’ll let him know you are here.’

  ‘Any idea how long he’ll take? It’s just that we are only on a short break,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  Just at that moment the interior door opened and Watson rolled into the room, looking cheerful. His shirt sleeves were folded back to his elbows, revealing his muscular arms.

  ‘Come in, come in? Coffee?’

  ‘No thanks. It causes me to take too many breaks from play.’

  ‘Hah, well then. Ever the professional.’ Watson nodded to his assistant and gestured towards his room.

  Inside, with both of us sat in front of his desk, Watson looked at me over his glasses, then raised his eyebrows queryingly.

  ‘I’m level thirty-nine,’ I said. ‘I’ll hit forty today.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Watson clasped his hands together and shook them.

  ‘I don’t want a party or a fuss.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I find it embarrassing. And anyway, everyone else is levelling just as fast. They are hitting thirty, forty and fifty and we aren’t celebrating for them. It doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘What about when you get to fifty?’

  ‘No.’

  Suddenly looking serious, Watson pressed a button on a black panel on his desk. ‘Tyrone?’

  ‘Mr Watson?’

  ‘Cancel the jugglers, the band, the cake and the champagne.’

  ‘…’

  Raitha looked at me and widened his eyes with amazement.

  ‘Hah! Just kidding!’ Watson chortled, with a genuine laugh I’d never heard from him before, a low rumble that made me want to laugh too. ‘We had nothing planned for that yet. You are progressing too fast.’

  ‘Right then. We will need a team meeting in about three days.’

  ‘Wednesday?’

  ‘I’m not sure, I’ve lost track of the day.’

  ‘What do you want the meeting for?’

  ‘We’ll be strong enough by then to raid for the Shards of the Smoke God.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  I stood up and Raitha did too.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Watson.

  ‘It is. I just didn’t want any more celebrations.’

  ‘Nothing about a bonus?’

  The room went still. ‘You thought I’d come to ask for a bonus?’

  ‘Yep. I would if I were you. You are on course to deliver the game a week early. That’s got to be worth a bonus.’

  ‘Would you like to offer us one then?’ said Raitha hesitantly.

  ‘I’m in a position to do so. Kill the dragon within two weeks and you’ll each get twenty thousand dollars on top of the other bonuses.’

  ‘Forty,’ I said firmly.

  Watson laughed. Not his sincere one. ‘This again. I know you only said that because you never take your first offer. Thirty and that’s that.’

  I sat down, then looked at Raitha until he sat down beside me. Leaning in towards him, I caught Watson’s eye. ‘I’ve been too busy to check. How’s the gamer world responding to the delayed launch of the game?’

  ‘It’s fine. People understand a few tweaks are sometimes needed. In fact, the growth of anticipation seems to be working in our favour. Yuno rig sales are soaring.’ Watson pulled back away from me, hands on his stomach, projecting an air of confidence.

  So I tried again. ‘Thirty-five, for every member of my current group.’

  ‘Thirty-five for you two and twenty for your group members.’

  ‘Deal. Put that in an email to us all today please.’

  Watson gave me a long, stern look. Then a bright smile appeared within his beard. ‘You have it. Now get out of here and kill that dragon.’

  ‘Don’t forget the team meeting Wednesday.’

  In the lift on the way back down, with a delighted smile and sparkling eyes, Raitha held out his knuckles for me to hit. I gave my friend the response he wanted, yet for some reason didn’t feel the same sense of delight with the prospect of the large bonus as he did.

  Chapter 29

  The Tower’s Secret

  The ogres kept us fully occupied for three days, during which I reached level 45 and everyone gained a Potion of Moderate Healing. We didn’t bother going all the way back down the tower any more, the Black Yhandis were no longer worth killing. At most, we dropped two floors in order to kill the dark elf captain while waiting for ogre respawns. At the end of those three days, our choice was whether to go up the stairs to the seventh level or to try the unused stepping stones in the hall of mist and cross to the unexplored regions of the sixth level.

  ‘I vote going up,’ I said, ‘it seems more likely there will be traps and magic than monsters we can get exp from if we go over those stepping stones.’

  ‘There could be quest items,’ Tuscl pointed out.

  ‘True but fun as it is to be the first to complete the tower quests, our focus has to be on exp. And that’s best acquired from a grind.’

  No one else demurred, so while my friends waited at the foot of the staircase, I went on up to a landing which had a balcony to protect me from the drop back down the stairs below. The exit from the landing was a pair of large, double doors with a classical-style triangular decoration over it, depicting a feather.

  The doors were not locked; when I pulled down the handle of the right hand one, it opened easily, swinging away from me to reveal a very large dark hall. There was the smell of death and blood here, although it all seemed clean and calm enough. Along the walls were dozens of panels, with columns between them and on top of each column, the roof was supported by a stone raven. The panels depicted the career of Notrevity, the necromancer, and from the ones I could see, they were vainglorious scenes of triumph, where those who mocked her and scorned her were brought low by armies of zombies. All very jolly. And all the kind of thing one might leave as a legacy. Presumably, up the far end, were some scenes involving the famous skull.

  I took a step into the room. A silent, stealthy step, much assisted by my magical boots. Then another. There were scratches on the polished floor here, lots of them. Another. I heard the distinct cawing of a raven and stopped. Had one
of the stone statues moved? It didn’t seem so. Another. I had the very distinct feeling I was being watched.

  ‘Hello?’ My voice echoed around the chamber. ‘Did someone order pizza?’

  Another step and another raven’s cry.

  ‘Come on then. Do your worst.’ I walked forward several steps, darkness all around me. No protection from any walls, if such walls with their pillars and ravens could offer any.

  A new sound came to me, faintly at first. The sound of wind playing over tall grass. It grew louder: wind no longer playing. Louder still, a high-pitch undulation accompanied by the sounds of a door being slammed shut, over and over. And then they were upon me, a whirlwind of giant ravens. Shiny black and purple feathers; cruel beaks and claws; rotting flesh; eyeless. These were undead too. My combat box in my UI streamed with reports, which I flicked away. The crucial issue was that my hit points were not declining. Although I was engulfed by this swirling black pillar of birds, being buffeted and torn at, I could withstand them.

  [Group] ‘I’ve pulled a hundred zombie ravens. Raitha, come up and try tag one with your bow?’

  [Group] ‘Right away.’

  A short while later, I heard his announcement. [Group] ‘Incoming, an undead raven!’

  [Group] ‘Most excellent,’ said Sapentia, ‘it is level forty-five.’

  It was disturbing, having these fierce beaks jabbing at my eyes all the time, so I shut my eyelids. It was still possible to move my focus around the UI and I rearranged the combat messages into two boxes. One was for my enemies’ attacks, which streamed by in the form:

  You have been hit by an Undead Raven for 0 damage.

  The other was for my attacks and it was empty, since I didn’t even try to bite these bloodless creatures. After a few minutes and a distinct flash (even through my closed eyes) along with a scent of ozone, a new line appeared.

  The Undead Raven is dead. You have gained experience.