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

by G. Akella

  "Thank you, sir, but you must place your hand on the altar," a pleasant female voice noted from behind me.

  I turned and nodded silently as she approached. She was an attendant of the temple, a tall, dark-haired woman dressed in a black-and-white cloak, her face lightly kissed by curiosity.

  "I am Elise, prioress of this temple," she said politely. She was about to continue when her eye happened upon my earring.

  Despite the limited lighting, I could see her go pale. She recoiled in mute panic, covering her mouth with both hands and staring at me with unblinking, gaping eyes.

  "Prince Krian of Craedia," I introduced myself. “How can I help you?”

  "You... you have the talisman," Elise whispered, brushing the tears from her eyes. “A piece of the goddess' soul! Do you know where our Mistress is, demon? Why does she refuse to answer our call?”

  Hart's ring doesn’t work in temples, I noted to myself, shaking my head at Elise.

  "I am sorry, my lady, but I do not know where your Mistress is. I would be grateful if you could tell me what has happened."

  "Of course," she nodded, having recovered fully from the surprise, then touched my sleeve and gestured towards one of the benches along the wall.

  The visitors eyed me curiously as I walked that way, glancing at a painting where Sata was explaining something to a thin, one-armed peasant. We sat, and Elise folded her hands in her lap.

  "I do not know how that talisman works, prince, I can sense that it is alive. Our Mistress has not left this world. Providence has brought you here, for which I am glad."

  "What happened to her?"

  "I do not know. No one does." She shook her head. “Back in February, hundreds of pink chrysanthemums bloomed in our gardens. Half of the city came to witness the miracle. For exactly one week they bloomed, though no one had ever planted them.” She drew a breath and gazed down at the floor. “They disappeared during the night, and when morning came, we could no longer sense our Mistress. Marek, a novice at Sata's Sanctuary in Callidan, came here one month past and told us the same thing had occurred there. Regrettably, that is all I know.”

  February. Of course. I kept my eyes on the statue of the goddess.

  "The chrysanthemums bloomed to tell you the fox people had been saved. In February, Sata appeared to me and my friend. The beast summoned by Hallot has been destroyed, and now no one threatens the foxes."

  She answered nothing, and I was about to say goodbye when...

  Well hello there, Dark One! The voice in my head was soft and throaty, in a familiar way. You're here, so we still have a chance.

  I turned towards Elise. The prioress had frozen, her hands on her lap, her eyes gazing into the altar and glowing a magical green.

  This is a stored message, Sata explained. No need to reply—I cannot hear you anyway. I have left these messages in each temple, so let me get down to business. Listen carefully, Krian, for this is crucial for us all. The Gods of the Sequence of Worlds depend on prana. It is like energy or mana for the sentients, but prana is much more complicated. As long as a Great Essence performs its tasks, the prana is never depleted. But in battle, or in cases where a god interferes in the plans of Providence, prana is spent. Our astral projections depend on it, and it regenerates at a very slow pace. Prana can be restored by means of a phylactery, or collected from a slain enemy. Also, each of us has a way to restore it quickly, but that is usually a very risky endeavor. After all, if a god uses up all of their prana, they are as sure as dead. Their enemies will take immediate advantage of their weakness. Thus, the gods only meddle in the affairs of the sentient races in the most extreme cases. This is why we did not pursue the Ancients as they fled south three thousand years ago, for example. The damned Great Balance keeps us from doing many things we wish we could do. I tell you this so that you may know you cannot expect any help. You must remember one thing: it is best to not encounter Vill, but if you do encounter him, you must not let him escape. That is crucial!

  Sata's voice in my mind sounded distant and dry. Only towards the end did the goddess add inflection to her speech. The people in the temple gave Elise and me occasional looks, but none were much too interested. So the prioress' eyes were glowing green—who would ever be surprised by that in this world?

  After a short pause, Sata continued. As for me, I felt great guilt over my perishing people and put their lives above my own, executing a crude intervention in the course of events. Once I realized your friend's potential, I gave up nearly everything I had to ensure that he intercepted the monster devouring my people. I had already lost the greater part of my astral body, but then, before Python died, I met you...

  As I said before, each god has a way to quickly restore their prana and the astral projection associated with it. It was my opportunity to play a high-stakes game with Providence. After all, the higher the stakes, the greater the reward. You know that as well as anyone. When I met you, I saw my chance, and I decided to bet everything I had left. Now, I reside in my phylactery, directly in the path of the monster we discussed. I have not tried to hide—that would not be betting everything I have left. That's all I wish to say, Krian... Well, I wish to say one more thing, the most important thing for me, and likely the most important for you. But I cannot bring myself to it. You will find out should we ever meet again. Good luck, Dark One, and farewell.

  Sata's voice fell silent. Elise shuddered, breathed heavily for a moment, and then stared at me, dumbfounded.

  "I... the Mistress just..."

  I nodded. "Sata just spoke with me through you. She said she has been drawn away on some divine affairs for a time and asked you to behave while she's gone."

  "Will she really return, prince?" Hope and joy mingled into tears flowing from her eyes.

  I rose, smiled, and touched her shoulder. "Of course she will. She'll never leave us. Tell everyone you meet. Now, farewell."

  With a nod goodbye, I adjusted my scabbard and left the temple and the prioress alone with her thoughts.

  Chapter 7

  Outside, the sun still shone, the pigeons still sat along the fence, and the people still walked about the park. But something had changed. Another piece fit into the puzzle now, and I understood more of the world. I no longer wanted to walk, so I left the temple grounds, consulted my map, and headed towards the inn as Sata's words swirled about in my head.

  It's strange how we can accept things without ever considering why they happen. Rayan I had mobilized his troops in response to Vill’s invasion. And why was that necessary? Because their gods couldn’t be bothered! They could have easily driven the bastard god and all of his minions from Karn, and prevented him from ever returning. Myrt could have opened the Tomb of Arkam and destroyed Teiran singlehandedly. Similarly, why had Celphata placed Nerghall in a soulstone instead of simply killing him?

  Much of what Sata had said I still did not understand, but I could draw at least a few conclusions. Not very comforting conclusions, mind you. The gods had great restrictions placed on their actions, and they had much to lose. I remembered the feelings of great power that had visited me twice now. Feelings that stood on great sacrifice.

  Deep in my thoughts, I nearly bumped into two comely young women when they abruptly stopped right in front of me to look at something in a shop window, out of which vivacious child's laughter could be heard. I excused myself and crossed the street. The girls giggled, and one shouted for me to come to the central square late that evening, since she was very interested in "how demons work." I grinned and continued on my way. I had forgotten that the temple pulled my disguise off of me, and had neglected to put it back up. Dara had said something similar, a long, long time ago, to a certain light one after he just happened to pop into her establishment. Would that she could see that "light one" now. I may still be half-human, but I hadn't heard anyone refer to me that way in ages.

  I pulled my thoughts back to the present as I took in the smell of some more freshly baked bread from a corner bakery. This V
enern is a pretty cool place. And the fox hasn't forgotten me...

  Maybe I should go walk around the central square this evening, after all. Just walk. No investigations, no adventures. When was the last time I had just relaxed? I was tired of the road going ever on and on! Even when we all got together in the evenings, there were always too many things to think about. I wasn't whining at that—some things simply fell to our lot, and we had no choice, but... How I envied those who could switch their minds to rest mode and leave all of their problems behind for a time. I never was capable of doing that.

  Lilit had been right. When that conversation had occurred in Craedia, at the time besieged by undead, only Sata had really needed me. Now, Celphata probably had need of me, too, and, of course, Lilit. But though I had earlier hoped that all of the Great Essences who had marked me would come to my aid in the final battle, now I saw that was very unlikely. They had rules to follow. They had limits. The rules were complicated and took a while to figure out. Vaessa's father said that Vill had broken some kind of rule by summoning the morts, allowing the goddess the right to respond. How did that make any sense? Vill had spent prana to summon the morts. Did Celphata not need to spend any in order to react? It would appear so. But I was starting to comprehend how Cheney kept the white-haired bastard on a leash. It wasn't the White Dragon's blood, which was already at Vill’s complete disposal. Was it some item that regenerated prana? No. It was probably someplace in Azure Valley concealed from RP 17, someplace where prana regenerated instantly. Cheney must have been holding the key to that place. At least, it was the only explanation I could think of.

  I didn't bump into anyone from my party back at the inn. They had all gone out on the town. And no wonder—it was such a beautiful day, and staying inside would have been nuts. I went to my room and drank a mug of cold dwarven beer, then smoked my pipe and reclined onto my bed, planning to think over the events of the day—when sleep took me unawares.

  ***

  "Hart!" Gurkass exclaimed, frowning as pain lanced through his left shoulder. Leaning against the stone wall and clenching his teeth, the orc gasped for air and, anticipating another attack, moved further down the corridor, fading into the darkness.

  The cursed poison had awoken at the worst time possible. Now pain would strike and recede over three whole days. Of course, if his chainmail armor had been anywhere but on him, he would have passed on to the Land of Eternal Hunt in the place of the sharp-eared bastard sent by his two-faced mistress to kill him.

  Every cloud has a silver lining, though. The poison which the blade had delivered into the wound changed the shaman's astral body, and in the Great Forest they decided that the perished scout had nevertheless fulfilled his mission. The elf, as he died, had pronounced that the poison in his body would prove to be the harbinger of his death. Ridiculous. This was the twelfth attack since, but he was alive and well, and would keep on living without giving a damn about the prophecies of enemies he had sent to the afterlife. So many of them... some had given him strength in the torture room, and others had simply been dispatched straight beyond the barrier. He could barely remember any of their names, only their faces. Humans, elves, drow, and demons. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they were gone, and he was still here, walking this corridor, listening to the faint babbling of a brook cutting across the way nearby.

  Up ahead, a small cloud of bluish mist climbed up the moldy wall. The shaman smiled and generously poured his power into a small phantasmal spider. For near fifty years now, Gurkass had not seen this mildew- and mushroom-rotted corridor, but the tiny guard of the place had neither left for greener pastures nor for the Astral. After such a generous offering, he would remain for a few more centuries. But the shaman doubted he would need to make use of this passageway again. Soon, everything would be over. In less than a decade, Rehan's dynasty would come apart, and Gurkass would help with its ruin. He had waited sixteen long centuries, and now the moment was nigh. The light-haired god was coming to the steppe with his army, which meant that at long last Kyrta and the rest of their tribe would be avenged. As the orc gazed into the darkness, vague images appeared before his eyes.

  The mudflow coming down Dragon's Mount had wiped out the Gray Knives’ barley fields and six of their camps. Hunger threatened to eliminate his whole tribe. His father and his brothers had been taken to their ancestors, leaving him as the last orc of the ruling family. He enlisted the support of the elders of the last surviving camp, and led the fighting orcs to the northern tract, which ran along the border of their land and that of the Rock Warg Clan.

  They captured a small southbound caravan without any losses, and never imagined that it could be carrying some silver from the royal mine in Anu. Tribune Karlash and his thugs showed up in their camp a month later, during the barley festival. What could a half-century do to a half-legion of well-fed punishers armed to the teeth? His tribe was wiped out that day. Rehan's warriors showed no mercy. For all of his life since, his memory had been haunted by the sight of his tribemates’ disfigured corpses being dragged to the center of the camp by the thugs, to be offered to the sacred idols of their ancestors. Kyrta, his wife, perished right before his eyes, her body severed in twain by Karlash’s monstrous scimitar, her head later put on a stake. Gurkass himself was cruelly tortured, then according to their custom his stomach was ripped open and he was dragged a hundred yards away from camp and abandoned on the steppe so that his life could set with the sun.

  "Hope that bastard Vill is happy to see you, whelp," the tribune snorted as he kicked Gurkass in the side. “Scum should be happy to see scum, right? And pray to your pathetic ancestors that you die before the moon rises. I haven't fed my wargs yet.”

  "You animal... I'm going to kill you. You and your kha’an..." Gurkass croaked, most likely too quietly to hear, at the departing punisher.

  His memories re-echoed as pain through his shoulder. The shaman steadied himself with his right hand against the mold-slippery wall and held a deep breath. Just three hundred more yards, and they would arrive. He had served Rehan for five hundred years, and he knew every last crack of this corridor.

  Gurkass was no lover of pointless risk. The portal from the city could be detected by shamans of the Elemental Circle, but this passage he had found by exploring an old royal residence. He had purchased the land and built a house on top of it. The corridor ended four hundred yards outside of the city wall. From there, he could safely go anywhere in Arkon.

  After catching his breath, he pushed carefully off the wall, moving unhurriedly the same way he had been walking before the attack. They said time could heal all wounds, but not for him. As the years passed, his sense of loss became only stronger. He was the last of his line, damned to loneliness forever. He would never find a woman to replace Kyrta. Gurkass tried to keep his emotions in check and remember that day as little as possible, but now that only a matter of hours remained until the story reached its conclusion, his memories kept taking him sixteen centuries back, over and over again.

  For two hours the young orc had sat there, delirious, unable to move. His slain relatives flashed by him, severed heads held in their hands. Visions, pain, a bloody fog. Gurkass watched the sun setting into the sea of fog and wheezed. He prayed to his ancestors—no, he did not ask for a quick death. Hatred and a thirst for revenge consumed every part of his being. He begged not for his death but for theirs, from the kha'an to the lowest farmhand.

  At some point in the evening the fog dissipated, and Gurkass saw a figure in a gray, hooded cloak. On a nearby rock sat a stranger, watching the orc silently, unmovingly. Gurkass had no idea if the figure was real or not—his cloak obscured the face. All that the orc knew was that he had not departed this world yet. The pain digging its claws into him, and the bitter taste of the yellow lotus petals that his tormentors had forced down his throat back in the camp, kept him from losing consciousness. The suffering stretched on for an eternity. When Gurkass knew that he was dying, the man in the clo
ak stooped down and touched him. The orc smelled the warmth of bitter wormwood, and the pain left him. The wound in his abdomen vanished. He shuddered and sat up, speechless, staring at the stranger.

  The man slowly drew his hood back, revealing light-colored shoulder-length hair—almost white. His face was triangular, his chin pointed, his eyes a cold blue. Had this meeting occurred before, Gurkass would have frozen in terror. But on this day, he had already lost everything, so he only nodded in gratitude to the god seated on the stone.

  "You have pleased me, orc," Vill said as his lips curled upwards into a slight smile. “You know, sometimes wishes make themselves come true. You wanted death for them all, did you not? That is easy to arrange, but it must be done the right way. They're good fighters. But no one is allowed to call me neither scum nor bastard without suffering for it.”

  Vill stood from the rock and nodded towards the camp, where the punishers had settled down for the night. He raised his brow.

  "Are you with me?"

  The shaman pushed the memories away yet again and stepped over the threshold into a large square room covered in a mosaic of thin silver platers. Gurkass looked around thoughtfully, then waved his hand and entered the portal that appeared in the center of the room. He found himself in the ruins of an old castle. It was a dungeon that had partly collapsed. Bindweed, green moss, wormwood, and tulips bright as blood drops covered the walls and ground. Through the open gateway lay the ruins of an ancient city wrecked by the gods many years ago and long reclaimed by the grass. Vill and his ally Syrat had been compelled to retreat a thousand years ago. But what was a thousand years to a god? Gurkass inhaled deeply the bitter fragrance of the steppe's grass and glanced at the setting sun. He had seen a hundred thousand sunsets since the "last sunset" they had set him before so long ago. Now, just a little more waiting and the fair-haired Vill would come find him, his servant.