Civil War

by James A. Hunter

  A high-pitched battle cry echoed through the nave, then a flood of fresh Elite Thursrs and Reavers from the second floor tore through the room, Wurgfozz at their center, finishing off the remaining troops in effective but gratuitously nasty ways.

  Roark slumped against the wall as the second-floor relief troops cleaned up the last of the Azibek supporters. He wasn’t dangerously injured anywhere, but he was exhausted. The battle had been a near thing, and the only reason they’d won at all was their vastly superior numbers. But hells, had it been costly. He glanced around. Trolls lay dead everywhere. Mac appeared soon after, standing upside down on the wall beside Roark. The gore-splattered beast’s sticky black tongue shot out and slapped Roark’s hand. With a tired chuckle, Roark scratched the Elite Salamander between his shoulder blades. It was one of the few places not covered in blood.

  A moment later, the still-grinning Grozka joined them.

  “Well, Griefer, you proved yourself more than equal to your word,” the Zealot said. She slapped him on the shoulder, knocking a sliver of red from his filigreed vial. “It was a pleasure.”

  Roark scowled.

  “It was a waste of time.” He stopped scratching Mac and straightened up—Mac chirping in protest—and strode to the nearest corpse, that of a fallen Thursr Elemental. A quick looting brought him five gold pieces and two Cracked Sapphires. He held them up for the third-floor Overseer to inspect. “This is all we have to show for beating this wave—no Experience, no levels, and Azibek knows it. In fact, that’s why he did it—why he’ll keep doing it.”

  Zyra stalked out of the shadows nearby.

  Roark pointed at her. “How many Trolls from our floor are respawning now?”

  “Six Thursrs and three Reavers by my count,” she said. “Also, three of the Reaver Bats. I can’t be certain how many of the Stone Salamanders came down, but I count four of their corpses.”

  “Sixteen casualties from the first floor alone.” Roark pitched the handful of gold and precious stones at the floor. They bounced off, jingling away. He returned his glare to Grozka. “Likely more on your and Wurgfozz’s floors. And now that we’re down on numbers, Azibek will attack again. He’ll keep us busy fighting down here so we can’t grief heroes up there because he knows if we can’t grief heroes, we can’t level up. If I can’t level up, I can’t challenge him without dying.”

  It was dirty and underhanded, an unfair trick Roark wished he’d been in a position to pull. Unfortunately, all avenues of retribution that he could see at the moment played along with the game Azibek had set up.

  “If only we could plant contact poison on his throne,” Zyra sighed, fiddling with her new leather hand wrappings. “That’s a sight I would pay good gold to watch.” Seeing Roark’s suddenly hopeful look, the hooded Elite Reaver shook her head. “Azibek never leaves his throne unless heroes make it down to the Keep. Or he’s challenged.”

  “Seven hells take it,” Roark grumbled. He ran his claw-tipped fingers through his shaggy black hair, mind racing. “We’ll have to change the rotation, push a few rounds of Changelings through evolution, then set up shifts. A group down here with Grozka’s and Wurgfozz’s lot, a group upstairs griefing. And a third set training as soon as the ones who died down here respawn.”

  Grozka nodded her approval. “Saved me the trouble of demanding that you keep a company down here. We love a good fight, but we’re not your slaughter fodder. I lost three of my honor guard in this skirmish, and that’s three too many. I’ll have to post replacements for the two hours they’re off respawning.”

  As the final enemy died, Wurgfozz minced over to join them, opening and closing a wide, blood-covered push dagger with a pair of extra blades that extended outward like eviscerating flower petals whenever he squeezed his hand shut.

  “Good fun, Griefer,” the second-floor Overseer said in his high-pitched voice. “Not terribly filling, but a nice whetting of the appetite. Have we a second course on the schedule?”

  “That depends,” Roark said. “Do you have any qualms about looting your own kind?”

  Wurgfozz’s nose wrinkled, the spike through it moving. “It’s very … tedious. Not at all the sort of work an Overseer looks forward to.”

  “Then have your underlings do it,” Roark snapped, stalking to the next corpse over, a gutted Reaver Champion. “But I’ll be damned if this first battle yields us nothing. We’ll split the spoils between our floors.”

  “If you insist.”

  Between the few remaining Infernal chimeras of the first floor, Wurgfozz’s relief troops, and the portion of Grozka’s honor guard still standing, they looted the twenty-three Azibek supporters who’d fallen in the nave. They came up with a hundred and eleven gold, six gemstones, a scattering of potions and ingredients, a whip-bladed Rare Urumi of the Wind, a set of Humanbone Greaves, and a pair of Bleeding Gauntlets glowing red and lined with jagged blades.

  Roark inspected the Bleeding Gauntlets. A page of his mystic grimoire appeared, showing him the attributes of the Enchanted pieces of armor.

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Bleeding Gauntlets

  Armor Rating: 48

  Durability: 46 of 60

  Level Requirement: 16

  Strength Requirement: 21

  +10 Bleeding Damage inflicted when blocking or punching without equipped weapon

  Absorbs 10% of Health Stolen from Target

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Both Grozka and Wurgfozz’s eyes glittered with greed when they read the gauntlets’ description.

  “Those look just my size,” Wurgfozz purred.

  Grozka snorted. “You’d only hurt yourself with a toy like that.”

  “I don’t see how that’s a deterrent.”

  “They’re made for a Knight. Just look at the level requirement.”

  “They’re made for a torture chamber, and since you can’t stomach the finer arts—”

  “Neither of you can have them,” Roark said, storing the gauntlets in his Inventory. When they opened their mouths to protest, he barreled on. “This Health Stealing Enchantment is too precious to waste. I’m going to disenchant them. By tomorrow I’ll have forged you both an identical pair imbued with the same Enchantments.”

  Roark wasn’t actually certain he could match the Absorb 10% of Health Stolen without raising his Enchanting several levels—so far the best he’d managed was a 7.5% Enchantment, and that had been a low-level Fire Damage—but he claimed he could do it with enough confidence that Wurgfozz and Grozka accepted his order with minimal complaints.

  A page of text appeared before his eyes.

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  A Troll of His Word

  You have promised to forge (2) identical pairs of Bleeding Gauntlets for Wurgfozz the Sadistic and Grozka the Zealot by tomorrow. You must deliver on your promises to gain Troll Leadership Level 4: A Trusted Leader. Fail and you will lose a level, falling back to Level 2: A Persuasive Speaker.

  You have 23:59:58 hours remaining.

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Roark dismissed the page with a thought and squeezed the bridge of his nose. This leadership role was getting damned complicated.

  After dividing the loot up with the other two Overseers, Roark and his remaining handful of first-floor Trolls trekked up the stairs. Zyra and Kaz walked beside him when the corridors and rooms provided enough room to walk abreast, and Mac shadowed them from overhead, leading the remnants of his Stone Salamander pack.

  “We should push you through as many evolutions as we can,” Zyra said, breaking the silence as they came out in the second floor’s main torture chamber. “Get you to Exarch so you can challenge Azibek before he manages to kill you again.”

  It was tempting, but Roark shook his head. “It sounds reasonable when you say it like that, but think of all the low-level Trolls who’ll be dying down on the third floor while I grief all the heroes. Eventually, Azibek’s army will push through, take the third floor, take the second, and be knocking at our door
. Who knows if I’ll even be to Soul-Cursed before they get to us? They’ll wipe the first floor out, and then we’ll lose whatever progress we’ve made. Better to level the Changelings as evenly as possible—you and Kaz, too—so we have a chance to hold the lower floors back. Azibek’s going to attack us as many times as he can, as fast as he can muster the troops to wear us down.”

  “Roark,” Kaz said hesitantly. “Kaz doesn’t want to complain … but when Kaz overheard Roark talking to the Overseers about shifts … there didn’t seem to be any time scheduled for finishing the gourmet quest?” This last bit ended on an upward lilt, turning it into a worried question.

  “This isn’t the time for trivial side quests,” Zyra said baldly, saving Roark from having to break the news to the softhearted Elite Thursr. “Azibek’s started a war, and unless we figure out a way to get ahead fast, we’re going to lose everything. All it will take is one bad loss to prove we’re the weaklings here and turn the citadel on us.”

  Kaz looked to Roark, his big onyx eyes wide and chin quivering. “But Roark, gourmet foods provide boosts to many different stats—the cookbook says so. This could be just the thing to provide Roark’s Trolls with an advantage over Azibek’s.”

  The wheels creaked to life inside his skull. There was a certain logic to it, Roark thought. An army well-fed on Strength-, Intelligence-, and Constitution-boosting foods could perhaps even be boosted enough to stand against the highest-level Trolls of the citadel. And even if such food only gave them a small edge, any edge was invaluable at this point. Still, the memory of the timer counting down on the Troll of His Word quest dragged Roark back to reality. Much as he wanted to indulge Kaz, he couldn’t afford to lose his allies, and gaining Troll Leadership Level 4 would doubtlessly be a boon as well.

  “We can’t tonight, Kaz,” he finally said. “We have to divide up the Changelings, then I’ve got to get to the smithy—”

  “Griefer!” The sound of running footsteps and jostling armor echoed up the stairs hard on the heels of the shout. “Griefer, come quickly!” A Thursr Behemoth rounded the corner into view, wheezing with exertion. “Azibek’s sent a second wave up from below! They’re making another push for the nave!”

  TWENTY-FIVE:

  The Gears of War

  For a full day, Azibek threw wave after wave of Trolls at the third floor with barely a pause between attacks.

  Roark and his guard could no more make it up the stairs than a messenger from one of the allied floors came running to demand they return and assist in fighting off the latest incursion. Grozka’s good humor wore thin quickly, and Wurgfozz admitted he’d had his fill of non-torture-related violence after the third clash. By then, Roark had run out of Evolved Trolls he could bring down from the first floor to help and had to resort to bringing down Changelings, nearly all of whom were slaughtered as soon as they entered the battlefield. One held out long enough to hamstring a Thursr Knight, then was chopped in half by the Troll it had lamed.

  All their hard-earned levels gone. Wasted.

  It was during the interlude after that round of battle that Roark insisted he be left alone long enough to organize his Lesser Vassals upstairs into a griefing rotation optimal for expedited leveling. Grozka made a few complaining noises about holding off the Azibek loyalists with no aid but Wurgfozz’s lot, so Roark left Kaz and Zyra with her as a concession. Roark found he wasn’t very surprised when a few hours later, in the midst of outfitting a newly Evolved Thursr with Enchanted weapons and armor, the hooded Elite Reaver respawned wearing a dirty loincloth, a ragged corset, and a scowl.

  Without saying a word, Zyra snatched the pair of Cursed Longknives out of his hand and stalked back downstairs.

  As soon as the first full group of Changelings had made it to evolution, Roark led them down to the third floor and rejoined the battle, sending Zyra up to regain the levels she’d lost with the next shift on griefing duty. Kaz wanted to stay with Roark, but Roark sent him up to train with Griff and Mai. The whirlwind of battle was so consistent and intense that first day that Roark didn’t even think of the Troll of His Word quest until a scrap of paper cramped with text appeared before his eyes in the midst of an attack.

  [Oh no, you have failed the Troll of His Word quest! Your twenty-four hours has run out without presenting Wurgfozz the Sadistic or Grozka the Zealot with their Bleeding Gauntlets!

  Penalty: -1 Troll Leadership Level

  New Troll Leadership Level: 2; Trolls who were Receptive to your Leadership will become Supportive of your Leadership when spoken to face-to-face.]

  Roark dismissed the page, cursing under his breath, and threw himself into the swarm of Azibek supporters with renewed vigor.

  But, as always happens with repeated tasks, no matter how violent or taxing, the cycle of war eventually fell into a routine.

  Roark would take an eight-hour stretch in the nave with Mac and a small band of first-floor chimeras, fighting the Dungeon Lord’s relentless assaults with Grozka and Wurgfozz’s troop rotations. Eventually, he’d be relieved by either Kaz or Zyra and their respective squads when it came time for their turn below. Then eight hours of griefing heroes upstairs—frequently with second- and third-floor Trolls mixed in amongst his first-floor natives. And finally, eight hours crafting in the smithy and training with Griff before bolting some of whatever Kaz, Mai, or their kitchen apprentices had cooked up that day.

  Then he was promptly back downstairs for another shift in the nave and it all started again.

  Roark had never been a part of open warfare before, only guerilla-style attacks with the T’verzet. The constant grind was both mind-numbing and physically exhausting, and he found himself slipping into bad habits such as inscribing the same spells several times a day simply because he was too worn out mentally to come up with new ones. And it wasn’t only him. Morale was low all around. He and his honor guard kept up their rotation so that at least one familiar face was down below leading the first-floor natives at all times. The rare moments he caught with Zyra now found the hooded Elite Reaver less teasingly sarcastic and more downright scornful of everyone and everything. Even Kaz’s indomitable spirits began to bow under the strain.

  He needed to find a way to break the siege or at least shift the momentum in their favor. He needed to find a way to kill the fourth-floor Overseer, and the sooner the better.

  But how? That, he didn’t know.

  The one bright lining to the cursed cloud of this civil war was that the unvarying routine of griefing, crafting, and training brought in a consistent flow of Experience points. Though the fighting in the lower floors was fruitless and frustrating, the heroes raiding the citadel now were all in the double digits for levels, and with the aid of the second- and third-floor Trolls, even the most formidable of them could be griefed. What’s more, Roark’s Cursed items were deadly effective, far more than he could’ve ever dreamed of. In no time, he ensured at least every third Troll carried a Cursed item. And when they died—which happened all too frequently for Roark’s liking—the hero unlucky enough to loot the corpse would suffer mightily.

  Plagues of flesh-eating locust descending in a cloud.

  A rain of acid, scorching earth and melting through armor.

  Bodies turned into gruesome bombs of fire, gore, and bone shrapnel.

  The Cursed items also had a secondary effect that Roark hadn’t known about or been prepared for: as their creator, he earned 10% of all Experience from every single victim. That—when combined with his extra 7% Experience gain from his Signet Ring of the Initiate—had him earning unprecedented levels at breakneck speed.

  Within a few days, Roark managed to gain five more levels, bringing himself up to 18, and forcing yet another evolution—this time to the exalted Soul-Cursed Jotnar. He’d been hunched over the enchanter’s table, tinkering away on a new curse when an influx of Experience and power flowed in thanks to another one of his Cursed items claiming the life of some loot-greedy adventurer. One moment, he was carving a line of text with
his awl, the next he was hanging in the air, surrounded by golden light, which was quickly swallowed by a cloud of churning purples and angry blacks.

  War drums resounded throughout the forge, bold and pounding furiously.

  His body changed, growing even longer, his muscles strengthening, his teeth sharpening, while pulsing, violet tattoos appeared along his skin. Twisted, swirling marks of power sprinted along his arms and legs, swooping over his shoulders and covering his chest. Chillingly cold infernal fire raced from his belly outward, zagging through his veins and nerves until it crackled in his fingertips and toes and eyes. The stubs of bone protruding from his back lengthened and folded, turning into stumpy flaps too warped to be called wings, but only just.

  When the drums and purple light finally receded, and the scent of slag burned away, Roark found himself standing at nearly nine feet tall—now of a size with Kaz, though Kaz was still far broader in the shoulders and chest.

  The real gains, however, were not in his appearance or sheer mass but rather in his stats. He’d gotten his standard allotment of points, of course, most of which he dumped into Intelligence, but it was his other stats—Health, Health Regeneration, Attack Damage, Armor Rating, and Movement Rate—which were the biggest winners.

  All of those abilities had leaped forward with the evolution, far outpacing what he’d been able to do as an Elite.

  Additionally, his chance at landing a Stunning Blow—a natural attack that would temporarily stagger an opponent—had increased from 12.5% to 15% and his movement rate had jumped to 1.25 x the speed of his opponent. During one of their training sessions, Griff had briefly explained that the majority of chimera stats existed as variables in relation to their heroic opponents. If their opponents were faster or stronger, the mobs would “scale,” likewise becoming faster and stronger at a rate specified by their current evolutionary form, ensuring all dungeons could provide some level of challenge even to more advanced heroes.