Viridian Gate Online: Schism: A litRPG Adventure (The Heartfire Healer Series Book 2)

by E. C. Godhand

  “True undead are fallen that reject death and become monsters. The sons and daughters of Cernunnos. They are as formidable as any person, because in a way, they still are. One hopes we never meet someone with the strength of will to become undead. They can leave the dungeons.”

  I thought back to the kobolds earlier. That didn’t seem to fit the explanation. They seemed more lost and confused. Not harmless, not by a long shot, but certainly not creatures who told Death to take a hike and kept walking around as a monster. More like animals, with thoughts and feelings. Cian and his Darklings seemed to fit that bill better, but not really. It just seemed easier to think of them as monsters, rather than people who made a deal with a literal devil.

  “What about the Compact, though? The truce between Aediculus and Cernunnos. Men to the cities, monsters to the wilds.”

  “Yes, little sister, I know what the Compact is.”

  “You weren’t there, too, were you?”

  “I’m not that old,” she muttered.

  “If the monsters aren’t permitted to enter the city, then are we really worried about them overtaking Ascomere?”

  “You ever been besieged?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to be?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the “also no” caught in my throat. I cleared it and nodded in understanding.

  Bri’jit overheard us and started into her own sermon on undead vs re-dead. I ignored her and sent a private message to the Commissar to update her. I wasn’t keen to fight more zombies, and Bri’jit had reassured me earlier that the quest involving the sunflowers was situational and I couldn’t just carry around a sunflower in a pot as a familiar who blasted my foes with holy light. As much as I loved that idea, like my other dreams, it wasn’t meant to work out.

  I got a reply almost instantly again:

  <<<>>>

  Personal Message

  Disciple Chen,

  I see an opportunity for the both of us here. I am aware of your situation and know that you are looking for friends with long memories of who has helped them, as well as some additional funds. If you retrieve the dungeon heart, High Commander Carrera will be most grateful. I’m not at liberty to go into specifics, but with that, we would be able to establish a faction for the Inquisition. You’d greatly help the fight against this rebellion and give us an edge to help restore order and peace to our Empire.

  Maybe there’d even be a permanent position with us for you. I know how much you like being a hero to the people.

  Signed,

  Commissar Cecilia, Imperial Inquisition

  <<<>>>

  A quest popped up like it fell out of the message:

  <<<>>>

  Quest Alert: From Hell’s Heart

  Commissar Cecilia has offered you a chance to gain favor with the Imperial Inquisition. If you pluck the dungeon heart from the Heroes’ Rest as soon as it’s formed, and return it to her, you’ll be heralded as a hero by the Inquisition.

  Quest Class: Uncommon, Paid

  Quest Difficulty: Infernal

  Success: Deliver the dungeon heart to Commissar Cecilia

  Failure: Fail to deliver it within 12 hours.

  Reward: 1,000 XP, 50 Renown, 50 gold, Increased reputation with the Imperial Inquisition

  Accept: Yes/No?

  <<<>>>

  I stared at the message. Last time I was asked to get something because the Inquisition would be so totally grateful, it didn’t work out so well, what with the excommunication threats and all. Though technically, that wasn’t the Inquisition itself offering. Still, it felt like sometimes the quest system was a way to manipulate labor out of people, especially on behalf of the gods.

  Bri’jit continued her sermon as she performed more rites, which she explained would weaken the monsters below us. The smoke from the brazier would carry her spells as if through a ventilation system. She was in a hurry to complete the quest, but not so much she wanted to fight the re-dead directly.

  I turned to Keres. I wasn’t sure how to answer this quest. “If the dungeon heart powers the dungeon, once it forms, can one just take it out? No more dungeon, and now you have a heart?” I asked.

  Keres snatched me by the collar of my robes and shoved me against the wall by the bench. My feet dangled in the cold night air and my breath caught in my chest as I flashed back to when Exarch Jericho held me in a similar fashion on the steps of the temple... right before he dropped me.

  “Never think like that!” she yelled, her voice echoing in the small greenhouse. “To steal from Cernunnos, the Lord of the Forest? To rip a heart from his chest when he provides so much for us?” She pressed her elbow against my collarbone to pin me and slammed her first into the wall. I got the feeling she wanted to let me know the wall could’ve been me.

  “Every dungeon is a child of Cernunnos. And he protects his children. Taking the dungeon heart after it’s started beating would kill it. Do you understand me? It’d be murder,” spat Keres. “He’d pull all the beasts from the forest, fill it with monsters, and starve us out. You’d damn our whole city if you did that.

  “You’re a priestess,” she said, her tone more stringent but her voice eerily calm. “You claim to know the Compact, but growing cities and trying to wipe out all dungeons and use the hearts was what sparked the war between Aediculus and Cernunnos. There has to be balance, and respect, and—"

  “Drop her, Keres,” said Bri’jit from her position at the brazier. A purple magic I’d never seen before swirled from the oily smoke of the fire and wafted into hidden holes along the ceiling.

  Keres let me go, though she made sure I was still six inches from the ground when she did. “She shouldn’t be here. How can she call herself Hvitalfar? I bet she’s never even heard of the Falling of the Leaves.”

  She had me there. I had never heard of that outside of autumn, and I was only a Dawn Elf because V.G.O. let me choose. I wasn’t born into it. I didn’t learn the customs from a parent. That wasn’t anything new to me, though. To look like a group of people and only barely fit in and still feel entirely out of place.

  “She’s an orphan, like me,” said Bri’jit, twirling her hand in the smoke so it snaked around her arm, never taking her eyes off it. “She never got to learn our culture or history. She truly doesn’t know what insult she said.”

  Keres narrowed her eyes.

  “Tell her the tale of Castien the Pariah,” said Bri’jit. “This will take a few more minutes.”

  The Intercessor sucked in air through her teeth. “Oh. Him. Right,” she said. She planted a hand on my shoulder. I thought it was her way of apology until she pushed me back to the bench.

  She laced her fingers together and stared at the floor for an uncomfortable amount of time, until she began her story.

  “Castien was an Elder and an En’Etaila. He wanted to start a faction for us Hvitalfar, believing we should inherit the Tanglewood and leave the Viridians the eastern continent for themselves. To do this, he stole the dungeon heart in the Catacombs of the Forsaken, believing that he would reclaim the city from the Wodes in the process. Especially by turning our risen ancestors against the Wodes.”

  “Cernunnos, Father of Justice, sought to right this wrong, this insult to his sovereignty, and appeared as a creature of vines before Castien when he returned to the Whispering Grove. Cernunnos commanded him to return the heart, but the Elder refused. As punishment, Cernunnos marked him for death. He sent an Aetherlicht after him. From that moment, every breath that the Elder took was cursed. Every creature of the forest followed Castien wherever he went, taunting him, tormenting him, telling him ‘Give it back, or this won’t end.’ Castien was forbidden from entering the city, or any settlement, for fear the Aetherlicht would follow him. Those that met him in the wilds fled for fear that the Aetherlicht wasn’t far behind.”

  “What in Morsheim is an Aetherlicht?” I interrupted.

  A shadow fell over her face. She dipped her head and lowered her voice. “A
terrible, nightmarish monster. No one knows monsters better than their Father. It doesn’t so much move as hide and skitter in the shadows. An amorphous blob of flesh that hates, with long tendrils with their own teeth and eyes. It only knows to hunt. There is no bargaining or mercy to be had. If you get marked, you must find a weapon, or poison, anything to grant yourself a swift death before it finds you.”

  Keres groaned and rubbed the ridge of her nose. “Finally, driven to madness by his sin, Castien returned the dungeon heart to the Catacombs.”

  I gulped. I definitely didn’t want to accept that quest now. As much as they felt colder and terser with me, fifty gold wasn’t betray-my-new-allies’-trust money. I especially didn’t want to betray Cernunnos, a god. Not if that was his reaction. As much as I wanted to meet any god in V.G.O., even if they’d kill me for the audacity, it wasn’t worth it. At least not until I knew if the mark lasted through death, which I imagine it would.

  I moved to dismiss the quest when a part of me remembered Keres mentioning undercutting the market. For a moment, I thought about creating my own faction of healers. It’d certainly get me the attention of the gods, good or bad. I wasn’t unused to acting up for attention, though I had hoped I’d outgrown that bad habit since high school.

  Not turning in my homework was one definite way to get my mother’s attention. Sure, when the teacher finally graded it, I got a good score, because of course I had done it with Mama staring at me through the crack of my door. But when I did well, my mother would look at the report card and say it was “as expected.” Why should I get any extra attention or rewards for doing what was expected?

  Getting in trouble, getting caught smoking, or staying out late, that got an emotion out of my mother. It proved she cared enough to give a damn. Looking back, my mother had a point about the grades. It wasn’t the right way to get her attention, but I wished I had her affection. I wanted the hugs and “I love yous” I saw the other kids get on TV shows. Maybe in her own way, she showed she cared by encouraging me to get into a good school and bringing me snacks, but I wanted more.

  I wish I’d had more time with her back on Earth. Our last conversation was cut short as I had her escorted to what was hopefully safety in China.

  Gaia’s attention felt like the legendary vodka aunt who would send gifts for the holidays and teach you how to dodge taxes, but never really spoke to you. Or maybe Gaia was answering my prayers after all. And maybe that answer was “no.” Maybe she was using me, just like Jericho and the Inquisition were. I had been so earnest to help, why not take it? I only had two days to transition, and was set up to not make it anyway, so maybe I was useful but expendable. Where was that divine protection and fervent devotion that Keres and Bri’jit felt?

  I believed in Gaia, but maybe Gaia didn’t believe in me.

  God, that was a dark thought...

  Bri’jit’s voice broke me out of my trance.

  “Finally. Let’s go,” she said. She pulled a golden key off her belt and slipped it into a thick wooden door behind the brazier. To her surprise, there was no satisfying click.

  “It’s unlocked?” she gasped.

  Keres stood. “It had to be, or else the ancestors would’ve broken it, right?”

  Bri’jit glared at her. Keres held her hands up. “Don’t look at me. We locked up last time,” she said. “I saw you do it,” she added, pointing her finger at Bri’jit.

  The truth sunk in at once for all of us, like cold in our bones. We had just been too tired to realize it. Bri’jit’s fury boiled over as she slammed her fist against the door frame.

  “Who the hell broke into my catacombs?” she screamed into the dark stairwell. “You come into MY temple, disrespect MY honored dead...”

  Snitches Get Stitches

  No power in Falas Alferra could keep Bri’jit from barreling deeper into the crypt. Keres tried in vain to calm her lover, telling her she loved seeing her fired up with the spirit, and that we’d kick their asses when we found them, but to lower her voice so we didn’t alert them and lose any advantage, or alert the walking dead.

  “Walking dead are what they’re going to be if they don’t get off my holy ground!” was the kindest response we got for our efforts.

  Bri’jit huffed and paused, finally. “I am not prayed up for this,” she muttered as she buffed us with a 5% bonus to Spirit and Intelligence for 30 minutes. She did this by anointing my forehead with an oil taken from the ashes of the mausoleum’s brazier that smelled vaguely of frankincense and myrrh. Keres finally convinced Bri’jit to let her take point. I followed next, creating light in my hand for us to see, just as Hector had done back at the Black Temple. We had five people to the party then, but Bri’jit seemed ready to do as much damage as three people by herself.

  Beyond another door at the end of the staircase, this one bashed in, was a narrow stone passageway leading to a small sanctuary. The brazier there held a weak fire, stronger than the first, though with a Burned Rat on a Stick still crackling across it. The floor was littered with rat droppings, dead insects, and leftover camping refuse. Someone had been here, and recently.

  “How’d they even get past the dead?” I wondered aloud.

  Bri’jit pinned up her braid in a crown on her head like mine and scowled. “I’ll ask them when we see them,” she grumbled.

  She directed us down another spiraling staircase to a hallway lined with pillaged burial crypts. Some doors were worn and eaten by time itself behind faded tapestries of familiar familial crests, while others had their doors splintered from the inside, with bloody handprints on the frames where the zombies had pulled themselves out.

  There were two paths to take, left or right, at the end of this series. Bri’jit chose the left. Unlike the straight and narrow hallways we had seen so far, this one twisted and turned. At the end was a demolished door and a broken sign that once said DON’T OPEN. I didn’t recognize the crest, but Bri’jit did.

  “Saurspring,” she gasped. The fire in her faded, replaced by fear. Her eyes darted around the hall, looking for clues, as her lower lip trembled.

  “Liset, do you have any more berries, by chance?”

  “What do you need berries for—” I started to say, then I saw her face. “Yes, of course. Here,” I said, handing them over.

  She mashed them into a paste with her mortar and pestle and mixed it with her anointing oil. She brushed the red mixture on the lintel above the door, then led us back to the first section to do the same for the other doors that were busted open.

  I looked to Keres for an explanation with a quizzical look and an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders.

  “As it becomes a dungeon, it will try to protect itself from the blight and intruders,” said Keres. “If the heart beats, any one of these rooms becomes a spawn point to turn our honored dead into monsters. Her marks will buy us time.”

  “Isn’t it weird?” I asked. “All these empty crypts, and we haven’t run into any un—” I glanced at Bri’jit. “—risen dead yet.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Keres. “And hopefully we don’t run into the Saursprings. Nasty family.”

  I leaned in closer.

  “Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” she whispered, though I wasn’t sure who could hear. Possibly the ancestors. “I’m just telling you so you can pray for their souls, okay? But Elder Saurspring was said to be a Black Priest who followed Serth-Rog. Now, little sister, you know we Hvitalfar don’t go against our Elders...”

  I stared at her in horror. The sign made sense now. Meeting Cian and his group of Serth-Rog followers was bad enough. A whole family who chose to follow him, though?

  Bri’jit came out of a room and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a red streak of paint. “I can’t find the bones,” she announced.

  “You what?” I said.

  “The bones. First Saurspring is gone, and now I can’t find anyone’s bones. I mean, if they were all up and walking, we’d have met them by now. There weren’t that ma
ny on the lawn, just the oldest,” she said. She looked lost. “Keres?”

  Keres pinched her chin in thought. “A man that devoted, that evil... it’s possible he had a phylactery made. We weren’t allowed in the crypt to check. If that’s the case—”

  “We’ll have to find it and destroy it. Got it,” said Bri’jit, heading down the hall, to the right this time.

  This hallway was straight and lined with similar crypts with broken doors, which Bri’jit marked as quickly as she could. Eventually we made it to a grand metal door that blocked our path. My hand illuminated countless runes along the frame, though when I touched them, Acuity told me there was no magic activating them. Not yet.

  “That door’s open, then,” said Bri’jit, reaching for the handle. I held my hand out to stop her. I heard muffled fighting on the other side.

  We opened the door to a frenzied battle. A Wode and a Dokkalfar did their best to fight off five zombies. Acuity told me they were low on Health. I popped a shield on them and tossed a HoT to save them. Keres tossed out her holy fire, which chained between the zombies, burning them in a DoT. We assumed our roles.

  The Wode spotted us, our robes, and clanged the hilt of his sword against his shield to draw attention. The Dokkalfar rogue slipped into stealth and attacked the zombies from behind to protect his friend from getting overwhelmed.

  The tank didn’t do so great to protect us, though. Despite Keres’ best efforts, Bri’jit got bit, Keres herself got clawed, and I took a spray of flies and dust puked at my face. I shielded myself to eat the damage and cast my newest spell to heal us all.

  After a short battle finished off the dead, the Wode caught his breath while the rogue wiped his brow and sighed.

  The Wode said, “Thanks for—”

  Bri’jit stepped forward and smacked the Wode in the chest with her staff. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my crypt?”

  “Wait—” protested the Wode.

  “I am not waiting for shit. Sit down!” commanded Bri’jit, pushing him back into the wall until the man slid to his heels.