Demonborn's Fjord

by Dante Sakurai

  This Undead was missing its jaw entirely—and three of its front teeth. It had a look of senility. A left cheekbone and much of the scalp was exposed, an ear missing, its neck vertebrae protruding. It was somewhere between a zombie and a skeleton.

  A skombie.

  And on cue, its description window changed.

  Undead Human, Skombie (Level 13)

  Health: 46%

  Tip: You may assign special type-names to targets visible to you and your party. This system is smart, taking your naming intentions into account.

  Good tip in the heat of battle.

  And the skombie followed up with an upper-cut smash.

  Rowan drew Moonfyre and deflected with the flat of the blade. His feet shuffled, his stance transitioning into an improvised Ox Guard and immediate circular cut. He could barely feel the resistance of old flesh.

  An arm dropped to the floor.

  Then another, Rowan slashing sideways with a redirection of momentum in his arms.

  The skombie went for a kick.

  Rowan jumped back. “Thrustra.” He lunged, both hands on Moonfyre’s pommel, and one hellfire lance eviscerated rotting remains of its heart and lungs. Easy.

  His sword fighting ability was improving vastly. He could feel the weapon’s innate magic feeding back into his mind during every bout. Now, the blade was a natural extension of his hand to the point that he would feel off without it, exposed and vulnerable. The way it was meant to be. The way of the Myrmidon. Zaine had been right on all counts.

  He was tempted to leave behind the wooden board in his growing confidence. A distant wise voice in his mind reminded him: the line between confidence and arrogance is thick but very faint—a quote from a game he couldn’t recall. Perhaps a rogue-like RPG.

  This dungeon certainly felt rogue-like. All that was missing were random merchants waiting every third hall.

  Another four minutes were wasted away in retrieving the board. A previous corpse was undergoing massive decomposition without necromantic magics preserving its flesh and bone, falling apart at liquefying tendons. The smell up close was bad enough that Rowan was forced to hold a breath, but even the odor particles in the air were rapidly decomposing. Ambient magics subtly fed new stale air into these halls. He thanked whichever god that had created this dungeon; no one wanted to breathe crud for hours.

  Down the left route once more, treading carefully in dimmer light, Rowan’s stomach grumbled. Hunger rustled him more than it should’ve. The last thing he had eaten was half a slice of Gabrielle’s cake. Why did she have to sneak bites? Naughty girl.

  But he would not have her any other way. Hopefully she was safe without him. He typed her a message.

  Rowan LeMort (To Gabby LeMort): Yo, how’s it going at the base?

  For thirty seconds her reply didn’t come. Not after sixty. Not after two minutes. Or three. Rowan off-handedly blasted an Undead crossbowman with hellfire, staring at the chatbox with rising concern. A cold lump slithered down his throat.

  He walked into a dead end, his nose bumping painfully. “Damn,” he growled, turned on his heel, eyes back on the chatbox. Her reply was still missing. She hadn’t ever ignored him like this. Something bad happened.

  He tried again.

  Rowan LeMort: If Skylar or Zaine made a move on you, I’m going to turn them into soup and leather.

  Her reply still didn’t come. Beep-less minutes passed like hours.

  Then finally, when he was making his way down the right path, her message slid up.

  Gabby LeMort: So sorry! Workin’ hard!

  That was all?

  Fingers on facial pressure points, Rowan calmed himself with slow breathing through the nose. It could’ve been worse.

  Rowan LeMort: Is Zaine still bitching about his arm?

  Gabby LeMort: Yup.

  The skin on his forehead became mountainous.

  Rowan LeMort: Really? Tell him to man the fuck up.

  She wasn’t saying something here—to keep him from worrying. He trusted her, so he didn’t dwell on whatever was happening back there.

  Then thump! His nose hit another dead end, hard. Warmth radiated from his mid-face, blood on his lips. This was not right. He was absolutely sure there were no other paths.

  No. I didn’t mess up.

  He’d walked down every corridor, cleared every hall, slain every walking corpse. Every door had been magically sealed.

  The thought smacked him like one of Gabrielle’s hot frying pans. Every door had been left sealed.

  Every door.

  Doors lead to places. Especially locked ones.

  “I hate doors!” Rowan bellowed, pulling hair, doubling back down the corridor the nearest door at top speed.

  His stamina bar dipped to seventy percent before he slid to stop. He drew from his racing heart, and unleashed a deluge of hellfire, and the door’s magic amazingly resisted, resisting its erasure. He pushed harder, drew even more power. And even more as the door fought back with everything it had.

  “More!” he hissed.

  Like all things, the enchantments themselves burned and gave way. Abyssalnite melted into nothingness. This tug of war was won. Rowan cut off the flow, his mana at sixty percent. Flames vanished. His eyes readjusted to the sudden darkness, and shock ripped through his gut.

  Behind the door hid more rock.

  He blasted again for a dozen seconds and a dozen more until he was over three yards deep.

  His eyes adjusted to the sight of—

  More rock.

  A feeling of horror and claustrophobia crept up his sides, up his neck, tingling on his scalp. “What the hell is this?” His legs sprinted by themselves, bringing him to another door fifty yards down the corridor. His palms unleashed hellfire at maximum power, slowly washed away the enchantments, then the door itself.

  Only rock.

  His body ran, his mind a daze.

  Behind the next door was more rock.

  He ran for hundreds of yards to the next. He unleashed hellfire.

  More rock.

  He jogged, his muscles begging for a reprieve.

  Another door. More rock.

  “What. Is. This?” he huffed in between strained panting. He’d never seen anything like this before. He did not comprehend the point behind all these fake door. There had to be one—even if they were just for decoration. But the enchantments? Why?

  Did one of these fake doors lead somewhere?

  Or were they magic doors? Like portals behind keys.

  Or was it one big puzzle? A secret. It had to be.

  But there wasn’t time to check them all—even if he had infinite points in Flow. There simply wasn’t enough time left. Two hours and seventeen minutes.

  Think, dammit. Think.

  A maelstrom churned in his head. A flurry of rhetorical questions lead to no plausible answers. No particular door stood out among hundreds. No particular hall out of a dozen, but none of the halls had doors inside, he recalled with decent clarity—a clue. There were exactly eleven halls.

  How many doors?

  Greater than a hundred for sure. Perhaps two to three hundred. Eleven squared was one-twenty-one. Multiples of that were two-forty-two and—

  No, that was stupid.

  The lit runes on the walls were clues, but he couldn’t read even one symbol. Was the dungeon gated behind Enchanter levels? It couldn’t be; the keystone assured a dungeon appropriate for his level. Including profession levels?

  Too many variables were at play.

  A thought struck—the rubble by the reception area. That likely was leading to something.

  He ran with minimal drain on his reserves, doors passing every dozen seconds. One door, two close together there, a trio of doors there. One. Two. One. Four. He did not decipher a pattern. Every door was the same down to the decorative floral carvings at the corners. What kind of goddamn troll designed this place?

  Familiar rotting corpses passed by his feet, and eventually, after what felt
like days of jogging, he neared the entrance. Every fiber of muscle tissue in his body was on fire, and his airways were coated with the gunk of decay. Putrid sweat drenched his linen garb.

  Was he regretting this escapade? He couldn’t say, but he felt alive. He was an adventurer delving unexplored depth. A little discomfort was merely an occupational hazard.

  He went on, and when he was moments from collapsing, pieces of smashed desk laid before his worn sandals. The first Undead looked up at him with cloudy eyes of sadness, as though accusing Rowan of murder.

  Oh, the first rusty mace was here as well, equally sad.

  There, almost in the shape of a scowling visage, the rubble blocking the tunnel was taunting him to erase it from reality. He did so with pleasure, bathing it with his cleansing fires of hell. No enchantments resisted. He was through in seconds.

  A sub-zero wind blew from the other side.

  His feet walked on their own. His eyes transfixed on starry white-blue dots of light.

  The frozen chamber was huge, a hemisphere at least a hundred yards in diameter. Beautiful crystal formations gave off twinkling light. Wisps of mana spiraled around them.

  Crystal Ice

  Type: Crafting Material

  Faenin’s headless corpse was saved.

  He nearly slipped on patches of frost as a feeling of deep sadness brushed his throat—from a jagged pillar of blackish ice at the center. He approached with Moonfyre held ready.

  Navy-black mana swirled in the ice, and the ice was polished, reflective as a mirror. He saw his own face, slightly bloody under the nose and below the left cheekbone. His crimson cat eyes widened horizontally.

  Inside the ice Gabrielle was smiling in perfect clarity.

  49

  The scene inside the ice zoomed out from Gabrielle’s face. She was wearing a black gown over a fabric tunic woven from a mix of blue threads and tiny interlinked reddish-black circles, and in her right hand was a sword forged from similar metal but perhaps a shade or two lighter. The gown covered the hilt down to the guard and few inches of the rune-etched blade.

  She giggled. Her lips said something without sound.

  The blade ignited with black and red mana that shone like a dim fluorescent tube, giving her gown a maroon sheen. With her free gloveless hand, she pulled her hood over her forehead. Gold trimmings weighed down the cloth over her eyes, but Rowan knew she could still see. She was not that silly.

  This wasn’t real, obviously—perhaps another vision of times to come.

  The scene further zoomed out and panned left. She was standing atop a plateau over a canyon. These lands were barren, cracked, and deformed. Not a single cactus or shrub was in sight. A haze of sickness hung over twisted rock formations.

  There, across the plateau, someone else faced her. He wore an identical gown and held an identical blade imbued with identical mana. The scene zoomed in on him. Those lips were slightly chewed. He was Rowan LeMort.

  A jump cut to low-angle view placed Rowan and Gabrielle at opposite ends of the scene. Without warning, they dashed at each other, closed the distance in a fraction of a fraction of a second. Their blades clashed, then clashed again. And again.

  The air atop the plateau shuddered with every parry. Impossible speed, they danced around each other, their blades and legs a flurry of action that Rowan’s untrained eyes could not follow, but it was more than clear who was husband and who was wife, and not just because one hooded figure was taller than the other.

  Gabrielle’s fighting style was fast and acrobatic, reliant on rapid spins, jumps, and somersaulting cuts that made her look far more impressive, far more practiced, than her opponent. Her strikes were unending, her assault so vicious that it looked as though she were hellbent on killing him.

  Was she trying to kill him?

  Was this a future contest for power?

  Rowan could only guess from outside the ice. He could only admire his future self fend off his crazed lover with admirable style and grace.

  Back straight, only one arm in use, his fighting form made him seem as though he weren’t trying at all, playing with her, mocking her overzealousness. A single flick of his wrist blocked a wide slash. A quick side-step effortlessly missed a lunge, and a simultaneous uppercut into a series of rapid slashes put her on the defense.

  It was measured grace against chaotic ferocity.

  And despite the difference in their fighting forms, they were evenly matched. Every advantage one gained over the other was reversed a beat later. Every strike was either dodged or parried. Neither made a single blunder; neither fell for subtle feints and obvious redirections of momentum.

  The duel continued for the slowest minutes, and they appeared to tire. Both only grew in speed and strength. The intensity was blinding, each clash of their blades flashing darkness. Cracks spread across the rock a particularly violent parry. They were a storm of crimson and black across the plateau top, bouncing from one edge to other then back again infinitely.

  They started making use of Static Step. They teleported with scratchy magical effects every ten seconds. A ten second cooldown, Rowan guess. It was long enough that the flow of battle was not altered in any significant way, but the blink-type skill did work to Gabrielle’s advantage much more than Rowan’s. Her acrobatic moves benefited far more.

  Midway through a somersault, she disappeared and reappeared behind him, nearly catching him off guard. He dodged with his own Static Step. But she was already on him, and he could only now back-step into the corner with her cutting off his every attempt to flee.

  She was on then brink of victory.

  Then, as he was yards away from the edge, his blade flourished with a pattern reminiscent to a figure eight crossed with a clover leaf. He stabbed forward, a fencing move.

  A wave of his Demonic mana blasted outward. She was sent flying backward. She bounced across the plateau like a stone skipping across still water.

  He appeared before her. His blade was inches above her head. He did not strike.

  It was finished, their blades dispersing of mana one after the other.

  The scene zoomed in on them as she elbowed to her feet. She unhooded herself, pouting. There was no audio, but her lips said it all: she was not happy with that last move. It had only been a practice fight and not a real duel. Meanwhile, he was smirking as usual at her plight.

  Phew. I thought we were really having a scuffle there.

  The scene faded to black, leaving only swirling mana in the ice. The vision did not replay no matter how much Rowan wanted it. At least this was all recorded; the red dot was blinking away at the top-right. Good enough. Gabrielle was going to love this.

  An echoing, quiet voice said from behind, “Demons lesser than you have went mad where you stand.”

  Rowan spun around, muscles lashing. His gaze focused on a youngish Lunar Elf with kind of spiky white hair and yellow eyes. He was in plate armor. A greatsword was at his back. No helmet, oddly enough. Maybe rendered invisible via enchantment. There didn’t appear anything special about those pointy ears.

  ? : Lunar Elf (Level 56)

  Health: 100%

  So this was the elite boss. Level fifty-six. In this low-level dungeon? How?

  Rowan’s chin lifted. “And you are?”

  “Voron Cairen. Necromancer.”

  “A Necromancer with a sword?” Rowan could help but ask.

  There was a pause. Voron’s head tilted. “Demons lesser than you have been much more knowledgeable of the dark arts.”

  “I’m an adventurer. Do you know what that is?”

  Surprise glimmered. “It has been… many seasons.”

  “You’ve been here the whole time?” That couldn’t be right.

  “I am the guardian of this temple.”

  “Oh, I thought you were the cleaner.” Rowan smirked.

  After a long pause, Voron’s eyes narrowed. “Amusing. Why have you come?”

  There was more than one reason? Rowan considered his answer b
ut found no hitch-up. “Loot and experience, obviously.”

  “You arrived through keystone?”

  Rowan nodded. “From the Arctic.”

  “That is unfortunate.” Voron exhaled, head shaking. “For we are on one of Sortis’ moons.”

  That was… one of the last things Rowan had expected to hear. He was in space! Well, not technically in space. Still, he was an astronaut in this fantasy world. He saw no reason to believe this to be a lie; however…

  “Why is this unfortunate?”

  “There are only few ways to reach this place. You will likely not be able to return here.”

  “Why?” He frowned.

  “As you said, you have come via keystone. The chances of you returning with another is not in your favor.”

  Oh. “Why would I wish to return?”

  “Your reason is your own.”

  “Does it have something to do with this pillar of ice?”

  “That would depend on your reasons.”

  “Does it show the future?”

  “That is for you to decide.”

  “You’re saying the future is uncertain, that I can make this come true?”

  “In a way.”

  Rowan’s teeth grit. “Let me guess. You’re here to stop it from coming true?”

  Voron’s face was blank for over half a minute. He was looking at the pillar, which was not active. “You… You say you are from the Arctic.”

  “I did. What did you just see?”

  “Nothing spectacular. Do you know there will be an eclipse over the arctic soon?”

  “I think I read it somewhere.” No lies.

  “Oh, I am surprised.” A mischievous smile grew. “How about a riddle? What breathes, drinks, moves, makes a sound, but always sleeps?”

  Riddles were not Rowan’s strong suit. He thought through possible answers and kept cool with steady breaths. Keeping cool in here was not difficult; the ambient chill helped. “Honestly, I’m not good with riddles. I’d say it’s a tree, but trees don’t really sleep. I doubt I know what it could be. I don’t know much about this world yet, so let’s be straight with each other here, eh? What did you see?”