Black Flame in the Barren Steppe: Epic LitRPG (Realm of Arkon, Book 8)

by G. Akella

  The shed ended up being larger than it had appeared at a distance, and a total wreck. The door was barely hanging on, the wooden porch was discolored from time, with rotting steps and beams—that was all that remained of the handrails. Large cracks ran lengthwise along the wall, the windows gaped empty save for pieces of dusty glass, and the chimney was almost fully collapsed. Was this a forester hut whose owner had long passed? A shelter for shepherds?

  "Get inside already!" A low dry voice sounded from inside the house. "We're short on time!"

  So, I was at the right place. And from the look of things, another secret of this realm was about to be revealed to me. Another bloody secret to add to my already considerable headache. But at least no one here was intent on killing me, or so it seemed. Thank Hart for small favors. With a shrug and a sigh, I headed into the tumbledown shed.

  The inside of the shed looked just as rundown as the outside. A table covered with cracks, two billets in place of chairs, a flimsy cot across a hearth filled with rocks, and an old man in a worn gray robe...

  He looked to be about... Oh, hell, I couldn't begin to guess his age. In a world where sentients didn't age at all or aged according to different rules or algorithm, guessing somebody's age was a fool's task. With shaggy gray hair, an unkempt beard beneath a hooked nose beneath a pair of deep gray eyes, it was as if the man had stepped off a war propaganda poster from the previous century. There was neither a name nor an HP bar above his head.

  "Greetings, Dreamer," he said quietly, and gave an inviting gesture. "Make yourself at home."

  "Good morning," I offered a wary greeting, taking a seat on one of the billets. I couldn't help but feel like an amateur actor in some cheesy play.

  The house smelled of mold and emptiness. I couldn't really describe how emptiness smelled, but this was the exact description that came to mind. It was obvious from the start that this was no ordinary man, but why had he been waiting for me here? Surely it wasn't his actual home. I doubted that it was anyone's home, in fact. At least for the past century or so.

  "My name was... is—Merdoc," taking a seat on the other billet, the old man put his hands on the table and fixed me with an intent stare.

  "You're a Dreamer, too? I've heard a lot about you."

  "No... not anymore," Merdoc gave a bitter chuckle. "When a new Dreamer arrives, the old one is... retired. It won't be long now before you lose this ability... this curse that Providence has laid upon you. But let's change the subject—we have too little time."

  "I'm listening."

  The surface of the billet was uneven, and sitting on it was less than comfortable. Hell, it was unpleasant even being in this dump, dream or no dream. But none of that mattered. There was a reason why I was here, given that nothing ever happened to me "just because."

  "You are headed to the orcs, are you not? You must hurry. Very little water remains in the clepsydra of the Great Celestial Dragon," the man spoke in a listless voice, staring at a point above my head. "Ignore Vill, he is not your enemy. He is but a puppet in the hands of a wandering puppet master. It is the Ancients who are the main threat to this world."

  "I know that."

  "You know nothing," Merdoc shook his head angrily. "If they reach the source, they will create a new god who will absorb their warped consciousness and hatred for this world. Though he might send them back thereafter, he himself would remain here. Help the Great Forest... In so doing, you will not only save yourself, but also half of your Destiny. Farewell, Dreamer... Burn the flint... in the hearth."

  Having finished speaking, Merdoc put his elbows on the table, and laid his head down.

  "Burn what?" I asked, but the old man wasn't responsive anymore.

  Was he asleep? Well, shit. Zero clarity added, and zero entertainment value, too. A new god... Could that be Cheney? Someone from his crew? Could the game even pull something like that off? A scenario in which the Ancients, upon reaching the locked location, would create some kind of a new Beast that would absorb all their filth? Was that the reason behind the design of this source in the first place? I didn't give one damn about Cheney and his cronies, but what would happen to Arkon? First, the Ancients would mow down the Great Forest and the Kraet Peaks, then Vill would stir up shit with the humans and orcs, and the end result would be the appearance of some new entity of unprecedented nastiness? Curse this bloody prophecy! But the old man was right—I had better hurry to Kargalar to liberate my wife, so that together we could start scouring the Ancients Paths for the White Dragon. All the while fending off the Ancients and Vill. Enemy or not, I would sooner see him dead. A walk in the park for a superstar team of avengers like us. But that was in the long-term. In the short-term, I should be getting out of here. Back into my bed, preferably. I got up, walked over to the sleeping old man, and touched his shoulder carefully.

  "Excuse me, but how do I get—"

  The words got stuck in my throat when the head of the man sitting before me fell off, its skin and hair turning to ash. The suddenly naked skull rolled on the table and stopped, empty eye-sockets staring up at the ceiling. His bones rattled down to the floor, his robe growing covered with holes. Within a few seconds, a heavy silence fell upon the shed.

  I stood there for several more moments with an outstretched hand, then sighed, walked over to the decrepit hearth, and produced from it a flint wrapped in leather.

  Once outside, I lingered for a few minutes, watching the sun rising above the shoulder of the mountain. Then, I collected a small heap of wooden chips, and started a fire on the porch.

  The shed caught fire at once. As I watched the flames devour the rotting wood, I pondered the old man's words. When a new Dreamer arrives, the old one is retired... If that was true, I just hoped I would finish my business before I was "retired."

  I came to in my bed, and lay there for half a minute, staring stupidly at the ceiling plasterwork. I could still smell the wood burning, could still see the dancing tongues of flame. Hart! Was this ever going to end? Or was I to eat shit from this horn of plenty in perpetuity? Shut up with your whining, I scolded myself. I should have known that those blasted Ancients would eventually cross my path after seeing that battle near the Great Forest in a vision way back when. Yet, even ignoring all the basic questions like "How, pray tell, are we supposed to fight those bastards?", I couldn't really be in several places at once. Did that mean that Vill could team up with the Ancients for a joint attack? And what was this half of destiny Merdoc had mentioned? Could my life be split in half? Or was it my demonic constituent? A woman, perhaps? Jaelitte? To hell with all the questions! Even a joint attack might not mean a simultaneous one. I would deal with each threat as it arose. And as those threats were dealt with, all the questions would fall away automatically.

  I sat up in the bed and reached for my pipe, then recoiled to the bedpost and whipped out my sword. The hell is wrong with this game, scaring me like that! In the center of the room, no more than seven feet from the bed, a woman hovered in midair. Or something that had once been a woman. Presently, it was a translucent silhouette in a cerement, with empty eye-sockets and a darkly gaping mouth hole. In life, she had been called Sally. The phantom displayed no aggression—it simply hovered in place, its head slightly cocked, studying me. As far as I could interpret the "gaze" of those empty eye-sockets as "studying," anyway. What was this? Some kind of local attraction on a courtesy visit? An unfaithful wife strangled by a jealous husband? There was no exclamation point above her head, but that hardly mattered anymore—the quest could appear after our conversation or upon completing certain conditions. The bigger issue was that I didn't want any more of these damned quests—I would sooner offload some of my current ones. And besides, this was entirely too many dead people for one night of sleep. Donning my equipment quickly just in case, I moved to the edge of the bed, and asked wearily:

  "Well, what do you want from me?"

  The phantom didn't answer, but gave a barely visible nod, then floated toward the door.
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  Follow her, suggested my spouse, waking from her "slumber."

  Yeah, yeah, I'm not an idiot. With a heavy sigh, I got up from the bed and followed after the phantom.

  I was in no mood to aimlessly roam the castle at night, but there was a chance that this wasn't some random throwaway quest. She hadn't appeared to Donut and Masyanya, for instance, or to Bonbon. It would have been nice to have Vaessa with me as a specialist in all these undead entities, I thought while walking after the floating silhouette. But I didn't want to disturb my companion, and I doubted that Sally would wait while I sought the magus' expert opinion. Upon descending to the ground floor, we turned right and headed down a long corridor, passing the dining hall that was still filled with voices, then took a staircase leading into the basement. We passed by several soldiers on the way, but their behavior suggested they didn't see my phantom guide, and I couldn't impart my hallucinations to them even if I wanted to.Once in the basement, we kept walking, passed by a few oaken doors and then turned right. It was there that Sally finally stopped, nodded at me, and floated into the wall on our left. I wasn't going to start looking for a door or breaking through stone. Instead, I used Step through Darkness, and ended up in a small chilly space. Six oaken barrels sat on racks by the right wall, alongside shelves with other produce and dried meat hanging off the ceiling. The scent of smoked ham permeated the air. I smiled at the thought of someone walking in here and catching a prince red-handed in the cold cuts section. "Oh, it's not what you think! I was just following a phantom, and ended up here!" Speaking of the phantom, she seemed not at all concerned with the meat. The woman floated to the far wall, turned around, and vanished behind the brickwork.

  "Sure, I don't feel like eating, either," I grunted, waited for the spell's cooldown to reset, and followed after.

  The aroma of the pantry was instantly replaced with the heavy stench of decomposition, signaling that our destination had been reached. Roughly fifteen by fifteen feet, the crypt had no visible entrances. Four russet magic lanterns illuminated a cobweb-coated stone sarcophagus standing atop a broad marble pedestal. And that was it—nothing else in sight. Sally turned her head to me slowly, pointed at the sarcophagus, and dissipated into thin air.

  Yeah, like I needed her to point it out. As if she had brought me here to catch spiders. I took a skeptical look around the room, then back at the centerpiece. Whatever awaited inside, I highly doubted it was untold riches. It would hardly be expected of a mysterious phantom to bring a stranger here just to give away treasure. Not even if said stranger was the first player to set foot in the castle. I thought back to Daenic mentioning that this castle was actually very old. In that case, why hadn't the deceased been buried in Helstaad? Or were they recently departed? Well, let's find out. I walked over, cleaned the sarcophagus of cobwebs, and carefully slid aside the stone lid. A terrible stench struck my nostrils, forcing me back. I looked frantically for a particular vial and rubbed the salve under my nose, cursing myself for not thinking of it sooner.

  Judging by its appearance, the corpse had been lying here for much more than a century. Yet, perhaps it was because the sarcophagus had been perfectly sealed and hence air-proof, the stench was unbearable even for me. Four curious items lay inside the sarcophagus, covered by a layer of dust and disintegrated bones: a golden medallion grown dim with time, two leather-bound notebooks, and a small jewelry case made of wood that seemed to defy the ravages of time. The notebooks and the medallion were highlighted by the System, so after collecting all the items, I moved back into the corner of the room, and went to open the jewelry case first. Well, what do you know! There was indeed some treasure here for me. Several dozen rings, earrings and other such decorative baubles. Gold, silver, fairly large gemstones... Probably close to three thousand gold coins' worth.

  Hefting the jewelry, I gave a shrug and transferred everything back into the case, put it back into the sarcophagus, and closed the lid. I didn't want anything that didn't belong to me. The crypt was located on the territory of a brother of the same order, and taking something from friends and allies without asking was something I would never stoop to.

  I stood there for another half a minute, studying the sarcophagus, then nodded into nothingness and left this forsaken tomb.

  Why was it that my private room was never available when I actually needed it? How was I supposed to make sense of all these new riddles without fresh coffee? But you can't argue with reality. I put away the medallion, threw both notebooks on the desk, hung the lantern by the entrance, and walked over to the open window. The moon and the stars had vanished from the sky, as lightning forks flashed to the east. The perfect weather to dig into the notes of someone long departed.

  Despite the wind howling outside the window, there was the distinct stench of the graveyard. Just one of the notebooks recovered from the tomb would be enough to ruin the appetite of a battalion of ravenous soldiers, if not two battalions, and this being a small space besides... I rubbed some more of Vaessa's magic salve under my nostrils, took a seat at the desk, lit up, and grabbed one of the two notebooks. The cover displayed a bald severed head lying in a pool of blood. The mouth was open in a mute scream, the face twisted in indescribable rage. Back in the old world, directors of horror flicks just loved putting images such as this on the cover. A peculiar pattern ran along the edge, and the upper right corner bore some kind of a black sunflower. I'd wager one hundred gold pieces against a dented brass penny that the contents were the furthest thing from a manual on breeding pink flying ponies.

  I opened the first page of the notebook, and winced. The feelings evoked by the very first image weren't altogether different from those I had experienced in the sixth grade when opening an anatomy textbook for the first time. And what would you feel looking at a human body sawed in half, enclosed by a pentagram with strange symbols on all sides? If you are holding this book in your hands, Worm, then you have merited to know... The beginning bored me already. Completely unoriginal. Let Vaessa deal with this trash—I had no interest in messing around with Necrophilia for Dummies. Just in case, I scanned the notebook for any lines highlighted by the System, finding nothing but ghastly images of dismembered freaks. Then again, I wasn't looking with any particular interest. Putting the notebook away, I opened the other, thinner one, and realized at once that I was looking at a woman's diary. Which was actually more or less in line with what I had expected, and yet the thought of digging through somebody's dirty laundry was enough to make me want to howl at the moon. And it didn't matter that the diary belonged to an NPC long gone—everyone had skeletons, as well as the right to have them. One might argue that committing those secrets into a diary or a phone, for instance, was completely inane, but that didn't change the situation. Fine, if the System wants me to read it so bad, then read it I will. Principles were all fine and good, but not appropriate in every case. I took a deep drag on my pipe, then a gulp from the flask, and turned the page...

  "...a strip of my beloved's bloodied tunic into the medallion he had given me. I hope that his recovery will be swift...

  ...am so greatly burdened by the role of a mistress...

  ...Yes! Edgar finally proposed! I am elated! Baroness Salphine an Sharen will soon be the Duchess of Arkaetania. I can spend hours admiring the ring he gave me, it's so...

  ...discovered an old barrow on the edge of a swamp, inside the warden's territory. Edgar headed over there with Father Darren and two dozen soldiers. I tried to talk him out of it, but it was no use. My beloved simply smiled, assured me that nothing can threaten him with a priest of Myrt by his side, kissed me on the cheek, and ordered the groom to saddle his horse, Serryk...

  ...Darren is dead! He was such an amusing old man... Edgar is withdrawn, not speaking much at all. The priest had fallen into a trap at the barrow. Gods! Thank you for keeping my future husband safe...

  ...I am frightened by that ghastly book he's always carrying with him these days. I had never seen him with it before...

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sp; ...haggard and aloof, he barely even looks in my direction anymore. We've been sleeping in separate bedrooms for a week. And every morning he looks as if he'd spent the whole night with his books...

  ...wedding has been postponed till autumn...

  ...he doesn't need me!...

  ...That cursed book! This is all happening because of the book! Edgar had found it back in that barrow...

  ...hear a wicked, sinister whisper at night in the castle halls...

  ...ordered to hang all the criminals held captive in the castle cells...

  ...soldiers started cutting down one another in the courtyard without any cause...

  ...Araetania announced it was separating from Erantia, and immediately declared war on the Empire. What is he thinking? King Erast has a whole army...

  ...He is not Edgar anymore. My beloved has turned into a monster...

  ...ordered to hang anyone caught fleeing the city...

  ...hit me today! I will NOT tolerate this anymore...

  ...if I could only save my beloved's soul...

  ...filth doesn't burn! But at least I have it now! I must show it to Tyreah. Edgar has been unconscious for two days now, so there won't be a pursuit right away. In any case, no horse from the duke's stables can catch Bianca...

  ...Edgar has fallen under Rakot's rule! He wants to offer all of us to him as sacrifice! I have never seen the witch so terrified...

  ...the Dark God promised aid to the duke...