Civil War

by James A. Hunter

  At Roark’s side, Zyra panted. “Can’t even Shadow Stalk when I’m overburdened. Ridiculous.”

  “Almost there,” Roark said.

  Just ahead of them, Mac seemed to be listing side to side under the extra weight. The formidable Turtle Dragon bumped into the wall of the stone corridor and scraped along it, then tottered back to the left and bumped into that wall.

  When they made it to the kitchens, Mai was leaning headfirst into a barrel, feet nearly off the ground. With a shimmy of her legs, she tipped herself backward out of the barrel and stood up with the last of the apples in hand.

  “What mischief are you lot up to?” she asked, quirking a knowing eyebrow as she examined their bent backs and sweat-soaked forms.

  Roark didn’t bother answering. He, Zyra, and Mac began emptying their Inventories as quickly as they could manage. Soon cream-colored orchids with lush green pods covered every surface. They even had Mai replace her barrel’s top so they could cover it with the sweet-smelling plants.

  The clunk of heavily armored boots echoed in the hallway.

  “Roark, Kaz has …” The Behemoth Thursr’s voice trailed off as he stepped into the kitchen and saw the hundreds of thousands of orchids. His eyes went as round and wide as saucepans. “Vanilla orchids.”

  “Hopefully not just vanilla,” Roark wheezed, once more swiping an arm across his brow. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of using a spell to trace your ingredients earlier. It wouldn’t show us which one was the chocolate orchid, but it led us to the patch. We picked the whole thing just to be safe.” Just like with the crocuses and the truffles, they all looked alike to Roark. “Somewhere in here should be at least one chocolate orchid.”

  “Roark found these … for Kaz?” the mighty chef whispered, his huge bottom lip trembling.

  “Not just me, mate. Zyra and Mac, too.”

  Over by the keg in the corner, Zyra saluted the Behemoth Thursr with the flagon of ale she’d just drawn herself, then went back to drinking it down.

  Kaz looked from her to Mac and back to Roark, taking a faltering step in each direction, as if he weren’t sure which one to hug first.

  “Later.” Roark gestured to the sea of orchids. “Go on, finish your quest. Become the first Troll Gourmet and make us all proud.”

  Fat tears rolled down Kaz’s cheeks.

  “Yes.” He sniffed hard, then nodded, a wide grin on his face. “Kaz will make you so proud.”

  Kaz moved through the kitchen, stooping to examine every bloom and pod with reverent care. Mai watched in awe, the apples in her hands forgotten, as the mighty chef sniffed and prodded and studied. It seemed he went through every single plant twice, moving from one end of the room to the other and then back, even employing his old crocus trick of licking the occasional petal.

  Roark was just starting to relax when Kaz let out a strangled cry. The Brute stood up from his crouch beside the hearth, one of the cream-colored flowers with its attached cluster of bean pods held triumphantly overhead.

  “Chocolate orchid bean pod!” Kaz crowed. Mai gasped and clapped her hands with excitement. “Roark found a chocolate orchid bean pod!”

  “No, I found a hundred thousand flowers that all look exactly alike,” Roark said. “You looked through them and found the one you needed. It was all you, Kaz.”

  This time there was no forestalling the hug. Kaz scooped Roark up in his huge arms and shook him back and forth like a dog with a shank of meat.

  “Well, what’re you waiting for?” Mai asked, beaming. “Finish it!”

  Kaz set Roark down, then with a shaking breath, carefully placed the chocolate orchid’s bean pod cluster into his Inventory.

  The low rumble of a kettledrum filled the room, then a blinding white light flashed in front of Kaz. His customary feathered headdress vanished, consumed by the light, and was replaced by an off-white chef’s toque, protruding up like a drunken chimney. Above the protruding hat appeared a new nameplate: [Kazko the Mighty Gourmet]

  A brown burlap sack appeared on the bed of orchids covering the rough-hewn table, alongside a thick leather-bound volume edged in gilt and a mammoth warhammer with two heads, both ends flat and covered in squared spikes like a butcher’s meat mallet.

  “The Legendary Meat Tenderizer,” Kaz whispered.

  As he ran his fingers along the hammer’s handle, red sigils danced across its surface. Roark recognized the runes for absorbing stolen Health and for accelerated swing speed. He leaned in to get a closer look at the weapon’s details.

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Legendary Meat Tenderizer

  Unique, Legendary

  Damage: 76 - 106

  Durability: Indestructible

  Level Requirement: 10

  Strength Requirement: 36

  Maul Class Weapon – Enchanted

  +25% Swing Speed

  +25% Absorb Damage Done as Health

  Touching any food item with the Legendary Meat Tenderizer includes a 5% chance (x Cooking Trade Skill Level) to raise item’s stat boosts to Gourmet level.

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Roark closed out of the information to find his friend had already moved on to the book.

  “The Hell’s Kitchen Guide to Gourmet Troll Cuisine by Jordan Bamsey.” Kaz flipped it open, riffling through page after page of intricately illuminated recipes. “So many Gourmet Foods. The White Truffle-Infused Bread of Life, Hearty Buzzfish Caviar Stew, Saffron Meat Pies for Thought, the Death by Chocolate Experience—Kaz will start cooking right away!”

  “Before you do,” Roark interrupted. “About your trip down to the lower floors …”

  Kaz reached into his rune-covered obsidian breastplate and pulled out a fistful of wide scrolls.

  “Kaz mapped them in the library where there would be less distraction,” he said, shoving them at Roark, then turning back to his cookbook. “He even gained a level from making them.”

  “Did you run into any trouble down there?”

  Kaz’s face was bent to the recipes, his nose nearly touching the pages.

  “Kaz,” Roark said, raising his voice.

  The mighty Thursr jumped and looked up from the recipes. “Hmm?”

  “Did anyone realize what you were up to, looking through their corridors and secret passages?” Roark asked.

  “No, no. Kaz was very nonchalant, so casual. None of Azibek’s supporters suspected a thing,” he said, turning back to his book. He nodded vigorously and tapped a page with one claw-tipped finger. “Kaz has all of those ingredients. This is what Kaz will make first.”

  Roark began to roll the maps out on the table, but Mai bustled over.

  “You’re crushing perfectly good vanilla orchids,” she scolded him, scooping the flowers delicately into her apron. “And at four gold apiece! It’s not any cook off the street what can afford such niceties, I’ll tell you that much. Glory, the pastries we’ll have!”

  Once Mai had cleared the table of the orchids, Roark spread his maps across the rough-hewn surface and leaned over them, studying the perfect layouts of the fifth and sixth floors. Kaz had done a beautifully thorough job. Every passage—secret and otherwise—every shortcut, and every room had been painstakingly marked on each floor.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Roark asked, leaning in closer, examining the chutelike passageway coming out the back of the fifth floor behind the Keep.

  Kaz glanced over.

  “Yes. It is the tunnel connecting the Keep’s throne room to the outdoors,” the Behemoth Thursr said, returning to his book. “A Reaver Shaman told Kaz that heroes use it if they defeat Azibek. Heroes don’t like going back through all the floors just to leave the citadel, oh no.” He shook his head.

  “And where does it come out?”

  Kaz waved a hand vaguely over his shoulder. “The graveyard outside the bailey.”

  The last pieces of the puzzle snapped together in Roark’s mind. That tunnel would save him a whole floor’s worth of work.

  �
��All right,” Roark said, gathering up the maps. “Kaz, how soon can you begin crafting Gourmet foods?”

  The Behemoth Thursr’s eyes shined. “Kaz already has already found two dishes he has all the ingredients for. And one dish called Burning Heart Chili that he can almost make. Kaz has everything but Fire Wren Flakes.”

  “I can run to the marketplace and get you a pouch from the spice seller,” Mai offered brightly. “Won’t take me but two shakes of a kelpie’s tail.”

  “Excellent. You two get started on that.” Roark turned to the Champion Reaver finishing off her ale. “Zyra, are you rested?”

  “And back in top form.” She dropped her empty flagon on the table and wiped a bit of foam from her lips with the back of one hand. “What’s my assignment, Lord Overseer?”

  “I need you to run messages to Druz, Wurgfozz, and Grozka,” Roark said, heading for the door. He glanced back at the beefy Turtle Dragon hanging over the dancing flames of the cook fire. “Mac, if you’re hoping to curl up on the throne with me, this might be your last chance. Once this plan’s in motion, I won’t rest again until I’m Dungeon Lord or dead.”

  As if he understood, Mac skittered out of the fireplace and up to the ceiling, following Roark and Zyra out into the corridor. The smaller distortion of a female Stone Salamander passed him going in the opposite direction, but Mac wasn’t distracted from his purpose. He only turned and watched her go for a moment before catching up.

  On the way to the throne room, Roark outlined the plan for Zyra.

  “It’s certainly efficient,” the Champion Reaver said when he finished. “But what if he suspects what you’re doing?”

  “Which one?” Roark asked.

  “Either.” She shrugged. “Both.”

  “They won’t.”

  Zyra fiddled with her hand wrappings, but didn’t answer.

  As they rounded the final corner and walked through the open portcullis into Druz’s empty throne room, Roark looked sidelong at Zyra’s hood. Without the benefit of seeing her face, he couldn’t tell whether her silence was doubtful or contemptuous.

  “It’ll work,” he insisted.

  Zyra stopped where she was and turned to face him. “He’s a level 46. Azibek. Or he was when I left, anyway.”

  With a start, Roark realized she was worried. Worried that he couldn’t defeat Azibek and she’d thrown her lot in with the wrong Jotnar? Or worried that he would be killed, forever-dead? Strangely, he found himself hoping it was the latter.

  “Then the sooner I take him down, the better,” Roark said as if there couldn’t possibly be any other outcome. “Before he finds a way to gain any more levels.”

  Zyra stared at him for a moment longer, then turned toward the stairs down to the second floor to carry his message to the other Overseers. Without another word, she stepped into the shadows and disappeared, leaving behind a curl of inky black smoke.

  Roark shut his eyes, focusing on the memory of the man he’d once been, and triggered his Infernal Glamour Cloak …

  FORTY-TWO:

  One-Eyed Unicorn

  Roark von Graf sat in the One-Eyed Unicorn, a popular tavern in Averi City, drinking alone and anonymous for the first time since he’d come through the portal into Hearthworld. Just a regular man, no visible talons or glowing tattoos or fanglike canines to prove the contrary. There was something comforting about wearing his true face, even if he’d had to resort to a glamour to get it. Though he had to sit with his back to a wall to make sure no serving maid or passerby bumped into his invisible stunted wings. But so far, none of the heroes or tavern staff had given him a second glance.

  Higher-level heroes frequented the Unicorn, downing drinks and rehashing their latest quests, most of them well within Roark’s earshot. While he sat patiently awaiting his true prey, sipping a flagon of ale, he was also able to catch up on the local gossip about the Cruel Citadel and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. Depending on whom one listened to, he and Lowen were either friends and partners who’d come to Hearthworld to ruin its economy or hated enemies trying to take over as much of the land and chimeras as possible before going to war with one another.

  There was also talk that while the Griefer had altered the usual business of the Cruel Citadel by changing the actions of the chimeras already stationed there, the Vault’s changes were taking place in the chimeras themselves. From what Roark could gather, it seemed the Divine creatures native to the Vault had once been tiered like the Trolls—albeit much higher levels—but now were almost all at their highest evolution. Even the most powerful parties were unable to make it through a single floor without being killed.

  It was troubling information. Could Lowen have somehow found a way to magically evolve the chimeras under him? Or could he have given them all a relatively simple quest stocked with Experience? A few heroes spoke of “devs” and their capricious temperaments, implicating them in the changes and dismissing Lowen and the Griefer as more of the same. Though Roark hadn’t come across any reading about these devs, he wondered whether they were the common-knowledge gods or demons of Hearthworld, and therefore the natural scapegoats for any sort of disagreeable misfortune. In Traisbin, something as insignificant as inclement weather was often blamed on mischief-making demons or a vengeful deity.

  Was it possible that Lowen had found a Divine spell that forced one of Hearthworld’s devs to do his bidding?

  Roark had been in the Unicorn for the better part of an hour, brooding over this new information and sipping at his drink, when the High Combat Cleric he’d been waiting for finally stalked in.

  PwnrBwner_OG wore the blue-black set of scale mail under the heavier flame-crested plates of the pauldrons, cuirass, bracers, and greaves that he’d worn during their last confrontation, but now tongues of azure fire circled his shoulders and helmet like a guardian presence. Perhaps the Cleric had unlocked a property of his flaming armor since dying. He’d raised himself to level 28 since their last meeting, and was being followed by a party of heroes nearly as high— [KellieTheDeathless], a level 24 Elemental Warlock, a hairy, musclebound level 21 Bloodfury Savage named [Mike_T_Boarkiller], and a level 23 Druid Scout called [JohnJon].

  The group settled at a table not far from Roark’s and gave their orders to the serving maid. Ales, meads, and a glass of mulled wine for KellieTheDeathless.

  The serving maid nodded agreeably to each of the heroes until JohnJon ordered a Hog’s Head Stout.

  “Now, love, ya know I can’t get ya that,” she said, wagging a finger at him. “You ain’t near the legal age for drinkin’ in your country or mine. How’s about a nice cuppa warm milk instead?”

  The other heroes snickered as JohnJon slumped in his seat.

  “Just bring me a cider,” he grumbled.

  She tickled the Druid Scout under the chin, then bustled off toward the bar.

  “What, do you think if you ask often enough one of these times the NPCs won’t notice your account settings?” KellieTheDeathless said.

  “I changed the age last week!” JohnJon crossed his arms over his vine-tooled armor. “It should’ve let me.”

  “The admins probably flagged you,” Mike_T_Boarkiller said. “You’ll never get a beer now, even after you do turn twenty-one.”

  “Can you idiots focus?” PwnrBwner snapped, slamming down a gauntleted fist on the wooden tabletop. “You’re all going to have to step up your game before we go after the Griefer. That slop in the Barrow of the Damned isn’t gonna cut it. And when the hell is Kevin supposed to be here?”

  KellieTheDeathless looked up and to the right, her eyes blurring for a moment as she read something Roark couldn’t see.

  “He has to walk his pug, but then he’ll be back on.”

  “Jeez.” PwnrBwner’s brows drew low over his eyes. “Tell that little tard he’d better be logged in as Gazebo_Goatee this time or I’ll gank him myself.”

  “I’m not your secretary, ass. Message him yourself.”

  The serving maid returned with the
ir drinks, first collecting their gold, then passing the cups and flagons around.

  After she left, Mike_T_Boarkiller turned to the heroes at his table.

  “Think they sell any potions here? I’m all out of Health.”

  “Yeah, if you want to pay like ten gold apiece for a crap lowbie potion.”

  The Bloodfury Savage sucked his teeth and shook his head. “Screw that.”

  “Either cough up the gold or go back to the marketplace,” PwnrBwner snapped. “We’re leaving as soon as our doofus Blessed Paladin gets here, and none of us is lending you anything. We’re going to need it.”

  “I just sat down, dude!” Mike_T_Boarkiller threw up his hands.

  PwnrBwner took a gulp of his mead, then slammed his flagon down. “I didn’t ask you for your life story, Mike, I told you how it was gonna be. If you didn’t want to roll with us, you shouldn’t have answered the message. We didn’t spend all day grinding so we could not go kill that Griefer taintwipe. So, if you’re gonna wuss out on me, tell me now so I can get Irena to replace you.”

  “Fine!” With a frustrated grunt, Mike_T_Boarkiller shoved his chair out, downed his drink, and then tromped out of the Unicorn, presumably to go buy cheaper Health potions somewhere else.

  Spotting his opening, Roark slipped out of his chair and over to the party.

  “Did you lot mention the Griefer?” he asked, nodding at PwnrBwner. “That bellend from the Cruel Citadel?”

  “Yeah,” JohnJon said, wiping a bit of cider from his upper lip. “We were just—”

  “Talking about how nosy assholes should mind their own business,” PwnrBwner snapped, turning back to his drink.

  “Oh, for frick’s sake.” KellieTheDeathless rolled her eyes. She smiled at Roark. “Ignore Scott. He’s a pathological dickhead.” She paused, eyeing his nameplate. The Glamour Spell had allowed him to change even that, hiding him under the banner [Rebel_of_Korvo]. “ So, you got screwed over by the Griefer too, huh?”

  Roark took the empty chair next to her, ignoring PwnrBwner’s narrowed glare.

  “That poncy bastard killed my whole party,” he said, pasting a scowl on his face. “I just respawned, but none of my mates will go back in with me for our gear. Cowards.”