As Roark opened the grimoire to his Character page, a new notice greeted him:
[You have 20 undistributed Stat Points!]
He dismissed this notification only to have another box appear in its place.
[You have reached Level 4! You may choose to Evolve into a Thursr!]
[Warning: Troll Evolution is irrevocable. Once a Primary Evolutionary Path has been selected, a Troll cannot change to another Path.]
[Evolve into Level 4 Thursr? Yes/No]
The Thursrs’ size and strength were nothing to sneeze at, but brute force would only get him so far in a place like the citadel. Ugoraz the Moron, complacent perpetual leader of the first level, was proof of that. No, in order to achieve what he needed to and return back home, Roark would have to be patient. And prepared.
After another second of thought, he selected No, and the box disappeared. He had just started fiddling with his newly acquired Stat points when he heard wet sniffling. Confused, he closed out of the grimoire.
On the opposite side of the dead mage was Kaz, tears of joy running from the Changeling’s bulging eyes, his bottom lip quivering as he took a shaky breath.
“Such a dream … Kaz always wished but never believed … Level four! Evolution!” The Changeling searched the empty air in front of his face with a look of pure euphoria on his face, and Roark realized with a start that Kaz was reading the Character page of his own mystic grimoire.
Then suddenly Kaz’s eyes snapped to Roark, the overjoyed excitement banished by a dutiful expression.
“What should Kaz do, Roark? May Kaz evolve?”
Roark grabbed the Changeling by the shoulders, shaking him gently in an attempt to get this point across for good.
“We’re partners, Kaz. I’m not your boss or overseer or master. You can do whatever you like. It’s your choice. Yours.”
Kaz sniffed again and his face broke out in a beatific smile. The Changeling’s eyes lost focus as he returned to his Character page.
“Yes!” he shouted, presumably at the Evolution query.
Immediately, a deep indigo halo of infernal energy radiated from Kaz’s skin, sparking and popping with electrical arcs. The smell of ozone filled the cell as the halo grew darker and darker, finally obscuring the features of the Changeling from view and leaving only an inky silhouette. As the arcs crackled and the midnight blue radiance consumed all light in the room, the bass roll of kettle drums and the throaty groan of a war horn resounded off the stone walls.
The shadowy form at the center of the roiling indigo mass stretched first one way, then the other, elongating, then widening, as if some unseen baker were rolling out a pat of dough. Cymbals clashed as the rumbling music reached a climax. Roark had to throw himself backward into the wall to avoid the wild arcs of raw power leaping from the hulking shadow at the center of the storm. The last blast of the war horns slowly faded.
The crackling indigo energy dissipated, blowing away like smoke. In its wake stood a six-foot-tall Thursr with arms as thick as logs, shoulders half a man across, and a toothy grin wide enough to bite Roark’s head off. His skin was still leathery and blue, but was now decorated with a light coat of white fur. Where once there had been a leather band studded with bobbling, moth-eaten feathers, now there was a headdress of long blue-black plumage sweeping back from a pair of budding antlers. The big lug was bouncing from foot to foot and grinning madly.
Roark couldn’t help but smile at the sight. He opened his mouth to ask Kaz whether Evolution was everything he’d dreamt it would be, but before he could, the Changeling turned Thursr smashed a mighty fist the size of a muskmelon into the wall. Rubble and mortar dust flew.
“Kaz is strong!” he crowed in delight. “No more bullies picking on weak little Kaz!”
“I should say not,” Roark said, inspecting the hole in the wall. “Unfortunately, there’s no rest for the rebel. Let’s see if these heroes left us anything useful, then I’ve got an overdue tryst with a roomful of books. I’d like to be back here before they respawn. They might not fall for the traps a second time, but perhaps we can come up with some other nasty surprises.”
Though Kaz was a hulking Thursr now, and supposedly afraid of nothing, he was still severely reluctant to loot the corpses of the fallen heroes. Taboos were powerful things, Roark knew. The longer you’d lived with one, the longer it took to square with breaking it. It had taken him months of living on the streets with nothing but the clothes he’d escaped Bloederige Noct in and the onset of the cruel Korvo winter before he’d gotten desperate enough to take a ragged pair of boots off the corpse of a beggar. Kaz would come around eventually.
Not wanting to waste time in the interim, Roark looted the bodies himself. The mage and the new rog had only dropped a piece of gold and one item each—a Powder of Dried Irukandji and a Fine Kimono—but the heroes they’d slaughtered twice now were full of valuables. Roark gathered up 171 gold, a full suit of Divine Elven Plate Mail, a set of Light Leather Armor, a boxy set of O-Rogiri Wooden Armor, a Folded Steel Katana, a sickled Khopesh, two longswords, a Bow of the Fleet-Fingered Hunter, another shoddier bow that looked like it would be more comfortable lying across a cookfire, and a handful of scrolls, arrows, potions, and ingredients.
Roark inspected the intricately carved stopper of a magenta potion.
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Modest Health Potion
Restores 25 HP
Uses: 1
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There were six of the Modest Health Potions, one lime green Antidote, and a yellow Draught of the Smith, which claimed to make the drinker a 22% more effective blacksmith.
When Roark selected the Divine Plate Mail from his Inventory, a warning appeared.
[Divine Elven Plate Mail is an alignment-based item. Players with an Infernal alignment will take (.05 x character level) Damage/sec as long as Divine Elven Plate Mail is equipped.]
He dismissed the warning and left the plate mail alone for the time being. The O-Rogiri and Light Leather armors were unaligned, so he handed off the huge wooden armor to Kaz, along with the Folded Steel Katana, Khopesh, and longswords.
Though the decrepit library was tugging at his attention, Roark turned to the handful of scrolls. They appeared to function much like the magick of his home world, a piece of paper with the function of the spell printed clearly inside. Fireball would blast the target with a punishing ball of flame. Spectral Hands created a set of incorporeal hands controlled by the caster in exchange for a small amount of HP. Warrior Strength gave the target a temporary boost of Strength. And Town Portal opened a gateway to the marketplace in the nearest city.
Those would come in very handy. Roark smiled as he tucked the scrolls back into his Inventory, then quickly turned to distributing his Stat points. With access to a library full of parchment just down the corridor, he was tempted to spend the lot of them on Intelligence. But he still needed to survive long enough to make Jotnar, a task which would grow exponentially harder with every level he gained. Feeling as if he were making a moral compromise, Roark reluctantly added only nine points to his Intelligence, then gave five whopping points each to Constitution and Dexterity. The last one went into Strength so he wouldn’t be relying entirely on Kaz’s Thursr abilities for brute force. Allies could be useful, but in Roark’s experience, they tended to meet with bad ends.
Roark checked over his Character page one final time, then accepted the changes and dismissed the grimoire.
Kaz was bouncing the weighty metal lid of the Blackthorn Bed in his hands, spikes up, and watching with delight as the muscles in his meaty Thursr arms bulged and knotted. When he saw that Roark had put aside his Character page, Kaz lifted the lid on one hand like a servant’s platter and grinned.
“Remember how Kaz and Roark struggled to drag this up from the torture chamber? How we heaved on the rope to get it into position?” The blue-black plumage in Kaz’s headdress wobbled as he hefted the lid over his head. “Now Kaz can lift it himself!”
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“You certainly made the right choice of evolution.” As soon as the words left this mouth, Roark felt an unaccustomed twinge of guilt. Snide remarks were such a habit at this point that he rarely thought before rattling one off, but Kaz had done nothing to deserve scorn other than be extremely helpful and friendly. Roark scratched the back of his head—surprised once again to find hairless leathery skin rather than the scruff of close-cropped hair he was accustomed to—and hurried to add, “Especially if you’re having this much fun with your new abilities.”
“Kaz is having the most fun!” The Thursr beamed, clearly oblivious to the backhanded compliment and its poorly executed concealment. “What is next? Kaz could smash something if Roark needed him to.”
Before Roark could answer, his stomach growled. Unlike the guilt, this was familiar territory. Oftentimes when he was working toward a goal, he forgot about necessities like food and rest. One particularly beautiful golden-haired acquaintance had oft remarked that it was lucky Roark didn’t have to set aside his plans and projects to breathe or he’d have died long ago. Thinking back now, the last time he could remember eating had been when the rumor reached him that the Tyrant King was on his way to Korvo. Had that been a day ago? Two? At least one day in Traisbin because he’d had to ride up all the way from Eltze. After that he’d been too busy to think about eating.
How long it had been since arriving in Hearthworld was anybody’s guess.
“Where can we find some food?” Roark asked Kaz. “Something simple we can take along with us.” He didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary. Then as an afterthought he added, “And that won’t damage the books.”
“Food?” Kaz cocked his large head, sending the plumage on his headdress wobbling again. “Trolls feed only on the Infernal energies of this place and the life force of the heroes.”
“But there’s ale here,” Roark said, remembering the Changelings stumbling around drunkenly with sloshing flagons.
“Infernal energy, life forces, and ale,” Kaz amended, shrugging. Then his protruding brow lowered in confusion, and he grabbed his wide stomach. “But Kaz is hungry … very hungry … This … This is new … What should we do?”
Roark thought for a moment, rubbing idly at the pendant around his neck. “Not get stoked on ale,” he muttered. “The World Stone must be responsible for this change in your anatomy. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.” He pressed his thin lips into a tight line. “But I suppose finding food will just have to wait. I need to get a look at those books before our three hours is up and those damned heroes return. Come on.”
He snatched the iron mask off the floor—if he could find a forge in this citadel, perhaps he could repair the thing—then left the room.
Kaz followed, rubbing his stomach and looking distinctly disappointed.
THIRTEEN:
Ancient Tome
Roark and Kaz crept back through the corridors, ears cocked toward the entrance for sounds of battle. Just because PwnrBwner_007’s raiding party wouldn’t respawn for nearly three hours didn’t mean other bands of heroes wouldn’t attack the citadel in the meantime. Though Roark didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary fighting heroes when he could be sifting through books and parchment, he had to admit he was interested to see what Kaz’s new muscle could do in a brawl.
In spite of the citadel’s natural attraction for raiders, they made it to the library unmolested and found the haphazard ruins of shelves and books untouched. Roark immediately set to gathering the ancient tomes from the floor and rifling through their pages before stacking them wherever he could find room on the dusty wooden table.
Kaz wandered behind him looking lost for several minutes before finally asking, “What is Roark looking for?”
“A writing utensil and some empty parchment would be a good start, but if I have to, I’ll use corners and margins from these.” Roark picked up a large volume that had been dropped pages-down on the stone floor. Its crumbling leather spine crackled as he eased it closed. “I can inscribe spells on my flesh, but that’s a painful death waiting to happen. It’s much less dangerous if I put them down on paper. The portal spell specifically could do with as much stability as possible.” He went to set the leather book down on top of a stack, then lifted it back up to inspect the board-bound book beneath. The Saucy Milkmaid. “Huh. I’m fairly certain we have this one back in Traisbin.”
Kaz eyed the book without enthusiasm. “Reading is not Kaz’s favorite.”
“If it’s the same version we have, then there’s not much to read. Mostly pictures,” Roark said, dropping the flaking leather-bound volume from the floor on top of it. “Though I’m sure some fool somewhere has tried to transcribe it before.”
“Kaz will go look for writing utensils.”
Five minutes and several dozen books later, the floor had been cleared. In an effort to follow some sort of logic, Roark started at the far left-hand corner of the book-covered table and began investigating the contents of each tome more closely.
Some, like the illuminated manuscript Xratzotl’s Exhortation, Vol III, were a type of wisdom literature.
Do not pursue anything, my son, as you pursue the twins Logic and Reason. They bring nimbleness to the thoughts, strength to the mind, truth to the lies, and structure to the chaos. They are the lovers of the olm soul, the fiery passions of our intellect. Forget not the teachings of your people, my son. There is no greater wisdom than that you should seek the twins first, forsaking all others…
Others were historical tomes, such as Infernali and Malaika: Hearthworld’s First Peoples.
… Just as she’d issued forth the fertile crust of earth, the Hearth spewed up first moonstone, then jet from the deepest parts of the Core. When the stones touched the open sky, they sprouted wings, followed by bodies, arms, legs, and heads. The older brothers which sprang from the moonstone were as bright and zealous as the scorching summer sun, the younger, from the jet, as dark and jealous as the creeping shadows cast in its wake …
These he set aside to study later—if time allowed, of course.
Still others were volumes of verse. Rogiri haikus seemed to dominate this category. He flipped through a few pages in Towering Clouds Bring Cool Relief of Shade, Then Battering Storm, trying to find something useful. Nothing but atmospheric imagery and emotion. These he tossed onto the pile that he wouldn’t mind sacrificing for scrap paper.
As it turned out, in Hearthworld, The Saucy Milkmaid was not a picture book. Someone had managed to transcribe it after all. Roark wished the poor fool much happiness with his insatiable lover and her stable full of backdoor suitors as he tossed the board-bound manuscript onto the scrap pile.
One book, Metallurgy as the Vennexim Do, posed a conundrum. When Roark opened the book, rather than a page full of text explaining the smithing practices of the dark elves, a box appeared.
[Metallurgy as the Vennexim Do is a skill book. Reading will provide a permanent boost to your Blacksmithing Skill. You cannot read Metallurgy as the Vennexim Do. You have not learned the Trade Skill Blacksmithing.]
“Four years’ trade craft at the academy and two years working smithies in exchange for room and board begs to differ, mate,” Roark muttered. “Though the mage smith I was first apprenticed to might back you on that. Crotchety old hag.”
He tried to peer around the edges of the box, but there was some sort of ward preventing him from seeing the letters. He dropped the book into his Inventory for later and turned to Kaz, who was rooting around in a pile of debris near the stone altar.
“How does one learn a Trade Skill?”
“Trolls cannot learn a Trade Skill,” Kaz said matter-of-factly.
“A day ago they couldn’t loot heroes’ corpses or eat food, either,” Roark replied, a touch of irritation in his voice. “Either because of the World Stone pendant or because I’m not from Hearthworld, I can do whatever the heroes do. So, how do they learn a Trade Skill?”
“Such a skill mus
t be learned through apprenticeship with one of the Guilds or by reading special magical tomes,” Kaz said.
“Apprenticeship takes time we don’t have.” Roark rubbed his stubbleless blue jaw, recalling the bustling bazaar from his first brush with death. “Give me a book over hard labor any day. If we can’t find a special Blacksmithing tome in here, we may have to visit the marketplace at some point.”
Kaz’s huge onyx eyes grew even wider. “But Trolls cannot—”
“Maybe other Trolls can’t, but you and I can do whatever the bloody hells we please,” Roark said, returning to the remaining unread books before him.
When he exhausted the books on the table without coming across another magical tome or any information on portals, Roark began searching the decaying and burned shelves that lined the walls. There he found A Modern Traveler’s Guide to Hearthworld—another skill book he couldn’t read because he hadn’t learned the Cartography skill. Into the Inventory it went.
The next several minutes went to sorting through multiple volumes of Rishi and the time of O’ichi’i: Epic saga of the lost Illexim vinechief, each volume a different size, shape, and color, as if whoever had amassed them had done so over a period of years from various and sundry sources. He was tempted to give that particular shelf up for a waste of time, but stopped short when he came to a bulky tome shoved into the corner.
The book was covered in dust and streaked with scorch marks, but its soft gray leather binding seemed to have protected the rough-cut pages from harm. Roark ran his hand across the velvety cover, then carefully slid one thumb over the strange raised runes worked into the spine. He could feel the thrum of arcane energy radiating up and into his flesh. Magick. Power. Hope. This was what he’d come looking for. Quickly, he accessed the books properties:
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Initiate’s Spell Book
Rogue Dungeon Page 9