Civil War

by James A. Hunter

  The scene shifted to the base of the mountains. Without the surrounding terrain and the remnants of the walls, Roark wouldn’t have been able to tell the smoldering rubble was Graf Manor. As he watched, Ustari troops sowed the earth where his family manor had once stood with salt.

  Then he was in a torture chamber that Wurgfozz would’ve adored, staring at the overweight innkeeper Bran, a member of the Rebel Council. Bran wailed in agony as one of the Tyrant King’s Investigators led a young girl in the bloom of youth into the room. Roark recognized her as Bran’s eldest daughter. While the innkeeper begged and pleaded for his child’s life, the Investigator shoved the girl into a blackthorn bed and began to close the viciously spiked lid.

  Without any corporeal body, Roark knew the feeling of nausea was only an extension of his imagination. But the knowledge that this was his fault wasn’t his imagination. The members of the T’verzet had warned Roark not to make an attempt on Marek Konig Ustar’s life while he was in Korvo. They had predicted retribution unlike any the Butcher of Korvo had mustered so far, and they had been right. Roark had failed, and now the Tyrant King was destroying everything in his fury. He had escaped, but he’d left his home and the innocent people of Korvo behind to suffer in his stead.

  Though the bloody images faded to black, Roark knew he would be seeing them in his nightmares from now on.

  “Someone had to pay for your crimes,” a bored aristocratic voice agreed from the darkness.

  Roark’s blood—nonexistent for the time—couldn’t rage and burn, but fantasies of bloody, violent, and lingering deaths exploded through his consciousness at the sound of Marek Konig Ustar’s voice. Awful, appalling things he would do to the Tyrant King if Marek didn’t leave what few people of Korvo remained in peace.

  “It’s too late for them,” Marek’s disembodied voice said. “You sealed their fate when you snuck into Graf Manor, boy.”

  Revenge, then, Roark thought. If he couldn’t have one, he would settle for the other.

  “Not terribly noble of you, but an understandable sentiment,” Marek drawled. “If I were you, however, I would be thinking about the rest of Traisbin. I have the manpower to raze it one town at a time, torturing and murdering and salting the earth as I go. And if you think I’ll just visit these horrors on just the centers where I believe the Rebel Council to have taken refuge before, you’re wrong. I’ll kill every one of my subjects. They mean nothing to me. I’ll pay out the cost in blood so many times over you’ll drown in it if you ever set foot here again. Or …”

  Hope leapt eagerly at the carefully dangled bait. Roark hated himself for responding to it just like the tyrant must have known he would.

  “Or,” Marek continued, “you can deliver the World Stone safely to my envoy, Lowen, and all of this unnecessary destruction and death can be avoided. I won’t even ask you to turn yourself over to him.” The tyrant chuckled. “You can stay wherever you are and rot for all I care. Hand over the World Stone, and you’ll go free. That’s a better offer than anyone’s ever gotten from me before, boy. You would be wise to take it.”

  From everywhere and nowhere at once, the sound of driving war music swelled again. Roark thought he could almost see the golden text that usually appeared just before the darkness turned to the bustling marketplace, though it was too far away to be sure.

  “The sooner you accept my offer, the fewer people die,” Marek said, his voice fading. “Hand over the World Stone while you still can. My patience is not infinite and already my servants assemble. It is only a matter of time before I win this little game we play one way or another …” Then it was gone.

  Throngs of people crowded through the Averi City streets, chatting and shopping, oblivious to the bloody war Marek had just declared on his own subjects. Roark saw their laughing faces and carefree motions as grotesque and infuriating. He had to get back to Traisbin and end Marek Konig Ustar once and for all.

  But as Hearthworld’s unique version of death flew him through the marketplace, the cold fury in Roark’s mind began to ebb, and some measure of reason returned.

  How could he be certain any of what he’d seen had been real? Marek couldn’t even have spoken to him without powerful magicks. Those same mages who would’ve helped the Tyrant King find a way to contact him could have woven the scenes of torture and pillaging to drive him to taking drastic action without thinking. He doubted Korvo had survived untouched, but there was also a chance Marek hadn’t completely destroyed it. That the entire conversation had been concocted to send him running home like a chicken with its head cut off.

  There was no way to know for sure, and before Roark could come to any conclusions, the marketplace vanished in a swirl. Blackness surrounded him. A single bloodred word appeared in the void:

  Respawning…

  FORTY:

  Champion

  Roark respawned on top of the altar in the fourth-floor throne room, wearing nothing but the World Stone Pendant and a dirty loincloth. A quick check of his Inventory showed his Initiate’s Spell Book was still at hand. Like the World Stone, it was soul-bound and couldn’t be removed from him even in death. He selected the tome and his quill and inkpot. The palm of his left hand tingled as it appeared, levitating open above his hand, and he inscribed a spell in the first level 4 slot.

  Whether they’d been real or fabrication, the images of torture and destruction had lit a burning urgency in Roark’s bones. He didn’t have friends in Traisbin to protect. He didn’t have family. The only thing tying him to that world was the desire to see Marek dead, to make the bastard pay for his crimes. His thirst for revenge had brought hell down on the innocent bystanders of Korvo. Meanwhile, he’d been transported to Hearthworld safe and sound, where he’d brought the same fight to a new tyrant. Azibek.

  He would have to kill one to get to the other, and the longer he waited, the stronger both grew. It was time to see this done.

  But he wasn’t going into any fight without as many dirty, underhanded tricks in his pocket as possible.

  The spell he’d been writing took, shifting and changing until it appeared in the tome along with its specifics.

  [Congratulations, you have inscribed Guiding Light in the Initiate’s Spell Book!

  Guiding Light can be cast (1) time per inscription!

  Effect: Creates a ball of light that leads caster to a specific location, item, or being.

  Guiding Light does not work on locations, items, or beings behind locked doors or gates.

  Cooldown period between casting Guiding Light and re-inscription: (2) hours!]

  Roark grinned. He hadn’t been certain the seemingly arbitrary laws governing Hearthworld’s magick would let him inscribe a tracking spell. Now to see if it would let him cheat further. He turned to one of his level 3 slots and started writing again.

  A moment later, this spell took as well.

  [Congratulations, you have inscribed Beast of Burden in the Initiate’s Spell Book!

  Beast of Burden can be cast (1) time per inscription!

  Effect: Target’s carrying capacity is increased by (100) for (60) minutes.

  Cooldown period between casting Beast of Burden and re-inscription: (2) hours!]

  The slapping of sticky feet pulled Roark’s attention out of the spell book. When he looked up, Macaroni was running across the throne room’s dirt floor—almost galloping on his thick legs—mouth open as if in a wide smile. Mac’s sticky black tongue shot out and smacked against Roark’s chest, almost jerking him from his feet as it drew back in.

  Roark laughed.

  “Glad to see me, then?” He knelt and grabbed the creature’s beaked, reptilian head, wooling it around and scratching both sides heartily. “Do you want to go on another quick jaunt outside the citadel?”

  Mac chirped excitedly, whipping his lethal scorpion-like tail back and forth.

  Roark gave him a last scrub about the head and neck, then stood back up.

  “We’ll pick up my things from my corpse on our way
out,” he said, turning toward the tunnel that led toward the fifth floor.

  “Any interest in telling your paranoid assassin where you’re going?” A curl of smoke followed Zyra as she stepped out of the shadows.

  “Where we’re going,” Roark said. “My paranoid assassin is coming with me. We’re going to need all the carrying capacity we can get. I’d take Griff and Mai, too, but someone’s going to have to stay here and watch the floor.”

  “Carrying capacity?” she asked.

  “For the last pieces of our dirty trick. As many as we can carry.”

  Roark started down the tunnel with Mac trundling along by his side, but a sudden realization stopped him. He turned back to Zyra. He’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t really noticed her.

  She was taller, willowier. Her armor had grown a variety of spikes, barbs, straps, and pouches, and somehow shrunken back down to mere scraps, revealing an extremely impractical amount of skin. Though he couldn’t complain about the view, he would have to see if he could craft her something more functional. Her skin was now a shade of blue so dark it glowed with radiant darkness, save for the places marred by glimmering silver tattoos of power, which looked like trapped moonbeams. The white ringlets spilling from inside her hood made for such a stark contrast against it that they seemed to vibrate.

  “You evolved?”

  “Not long after I got back to the Alchemy lab.” Zyra held up one hand before her hood as if to study it. She spread her fingers and her black claws extended from the tips with a metallic scrape. “I can see why you covet the Trade Skills so fervently—easy levels.” She dropped her hand. “I think Champion Reaver suits me. I thought about going the way of the Shaman, but decided against it. Not nearly stabby enough for my tastes.”

  Roark opened his mystic grimoire to her character page. With her evolution, she had earned a new ability—Death Scratch, which allowed her to apply poison to her newly extendable claws for use in unarmed combat.

  “Good.” With a thought, he shut the book. “We’re about to end this war, and I don’t want you losing any more levels than you have to if the plan goes horribly wrong and you die.”

  “To quote the Lord Overseer of the fourth floor, I don’t intend to die.” The teasing lilt in her voice made it clear that there was a smile hidden in the depths of her hood.

  Roark paused, canting his head at her as he studied the hood. There was something … off about it. It lay wrong, too high and awkwardly perched.

  “There’s something wrong with your hood,” he said after a beat. He took a step forward, hands extended, intending to adjust it.

  She slipped backward, hands instinctively shooting toward the hood. “Yes. About that. My final evolution came with one other change.” She faltered, fidgeting with the edges of the hood, trying to get the material to rest correctly. “Horns,” she finally finished. “Reaver Champions, apparently, aren’t meant to go hooded.” Though it was clear she was trying to sound flippant, her voice was tinged with anger and worry.

  “I could fix it for you,” Roark offered. “We wouldn’t even need to head over to the forge.” He opened his Inventory and pulled out a set of shears and a sewing kit—a staple of his Tailoring Class—used to make simple adjustments and repairs while out in the field. He couldn’t Improve the cloak, but he could at least alter the hood enough to accommodate for her new horns.

  She shifted uncertainly, taking another step away, and Roark realized why she was so hesitant.

  “I won’t say a word about what I see,” he promised. “I swear it on my everlasting soul.”

  A handful of heartbeats passed in silence.

  Then she stuck one black-clawed finger in his face. “If you tell anyone what I look like, Griefer—anyone—I’ll coat everything in your world with contact poison and spend every breath in my lungs laughing at you as you go for respawn. Understood?”

  Roark nodded. He didn’t show it on his face, but his gut roiled in hungry anticipation. Just what was she hiding under there?

  Slowly, almost timidly, she lowered the hood.

  The breath caught in Roark’s chest. He’d been expecting her to have some hideous deformity, but just the opposite was true. She was beautiful. Or maybe cute was the more appropriate word. A round face, with smooth cheeks punctuated by adorable dimples and a slightly upturned nose that was rather pixy-like. Her skin was dark and flawless—her white ringlets framing everything in—and the only oddity at all was her mismatched eyes, one emerald, the other an arresting purple. Striking, really. Rising from her mass of white curls were a pair of recurved horns, which shone like polished ebony.

  Roark stared, realizing he was doing it, but unable to stop. He was simply flabbergasted.

  “I don’t understand,” he finally choked out. “You’re … You look …”

  “Like a human,” Zyra growled. “Puny and weak. No more intimidating than Mai or Griff. Do you have any idea how hard it is to coerce other Trolls when you look edible? Impossible. If you value your life or my ability to push around your subjects and do what needs to be done, Lord Overseer, then no other soul in this dungeon can ever know.”

  “Strange,” Roark said, fighting the urge to smile. “You’d think an assassin with this much to hide would stop calling the one Troll who can expose her Lord Overseer like he asked.”

  Zyra’s mismatched eyes narrowed, and she held up a hand, extending her claws with a metallic sshing.

  Roark chuckled. “Joking.”

  As she retracted her poisoned claws, he moved around behind her and went to work with shears, needle, and thread. In no time at all, there were two perfect holes in the hood, which would accommodate the sleek horns sprouting from her head. A few snips and stitches and the hood was ready to go. He’d need to touch up his handiwork later on, once he had access to the equipment at the forge, but yes, this would do fine for now.

  “All done,” he said, stepping away.

  With a quick snap of fabric Zyra settled the hood back in place, her face hidden in the shadows once more, her horns poking up.

  “Thank you,” she muttered.

  “Think nothing of it,” Roark said as he ducked into the tunnel. “Now, let’s get moving, shall we?”

  Zyra took a step into the shadows, then appeared beside him in a puff of inky smoke, while Mac scampered up the wall and followed from overhead.

  “Did Kaz make it downstairs?” Roark asked.

  The Champion Reaver’s hood dipped as she nodded. “The loyalists didn’t seem to have any misgivings about accepting him once they saw the kill. Especially after he fed them your little explanation. They’re nearly as trusting as you are.”

  “There’s a difference between trusting and willing to gamble with your life,” Roark said.

  “I’m not talking about your stupid quest, Griefer. I’m talking about trusting Kaz with this vital mission. Trusting outsiders like Mai and Griff to train us.” Zyra took a step closer, until she was nearly pressed against his side, then tapped his bare throat with one claw. “Trusting assassins like me to get close enough to tear out your throat with their poisoned claws.”

  The smell of deadly coquelicot blossoms bloomed in Roark’s head and the spot where she’d touched his chest burned, but he couldn’t tell whether that was from skin contact with the poison or just an internal reaction to her touch. Griff’s talk of weighing the price of loneliness and his certainty that people always found a way through your defenses flashed through Roark’s mind.

  “It’s worth the risk,” he told Zyra, glad to hear that his voice didn’t sound strained. “In fact, I’d like it even better if you got closer, but I understand that you’re afraid.”

  This last stopped the Champion Reaver in her tracks.

  Roark kept walking, unable to suppress the self-satisfied smirk at tripping her up. Then he snapped his fingers as if he’d just remembered something.

  “Paranoid,” he called over his shoulder, pretending to correct himself. “I forgot you prefer to call it
paranoid.”

  If Zyra had anything cutting to say to that, it was lost in a gurgling growl from Mac. The Turtle Dragon had found Roark’s bloody, hacked-apart corpse in the tunnel ahead. Roark bent to retrieve his gear from the lifeless form. The quest they were about to head out on wasn’t his, but he damn sure meant to see it finished today.

  FORTY-ONE:

  The Mighty Gourmet

  Four hours later, Roark, Zyra, and Mac returned to the citadel with each of their Inventories filled to capacity. They moved at a crawl down the staircase, through the antechamber, and down the stone corridor to the kitchens. Despite the cool, damp air belowground, Roark was sweating and his breath came heavy from the exertion. In the lower portion of Roark’s vision, the same thin white letters flashed over and over again:

  [You are overburdened. Movement speed reduced by 50%. To restore movement speed, drop or sell some items from your Inventory.]

  He had used all of his spell slots casting Beast of Burden on himself, Zyra, and Mac, and the last spell had run out while they were still a mile from the citadel. It had been a bloody long walk from there.

  “Welcome back,” Druz said, tossing them a cheerful wave from the midst of a griefing party. “Kaz has been looking for you, Lord Griefer. He said to send you straight to the library when you got back.”

  Roark shook his head. Black spikes of sweat-soaked hair slapped against his forehead, and a salty drop rolled into his eye. He scrubbed at it with his sleeve, but didn’t stop moving forward. If he did, he would never get moving again, he’d have to unload right there, and that wasn’t part of the plan.

  “Kitchen,” he wheezed at Druz. “Tell Kaz. Meet us.”

  With a shrug, the first-floor Overseer turned to the closest Changeling and jerked her head toward the corridor leading to the library. The scrawny blue Troll trotted off to find Kaz while Roark headed the opposite direction, through the great hall toward the kitchens.