This sample hasn't gone through proofreading and final edits, so it may have tyops and not be identical to the final version.
Arbiter Vicesimo – government name Larry Maurice Higgins – had seen a lot in his life. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be surprised, only that he hated surprises.
Born in the glory days of the 23rd Century – he had been a teenager during the Alien Singularity – he had watched everything he had taken for granted be destroyed, been one of the lucky few who survived the change, and been one of the unlucky who landed at the bottom of the new hierarchy. For the last six thousand years, he had done the equivalent of custodial work. He had more power than any superhero in the old movies he loved, but he mostly used it to clean up the messes created by mortals, gods who went off script, fellow Arbiters who forgot their mandates, and, worse, the Makers of Universes themselves.
The most recent mess was… confusing more than anything else. It annoyed him that Arbiter Primus had put him in charge of dealing with it, but he’d learned better than to question orders. Arbiters who did that got reassigned to the Realm of Gates. Vice had done a few tours in the Breach. The first one had been enough to convince him that anything was better than that.
“Hey, Vice!” Arbiter Nonaginta said, materializing in front of him. “Heard you could use some help.”
“Yeah,” he told her, creating a hologram pillar for her; showing was easier than telling. “One of the new recruits is pushing the envelope. From the new batch, of course.”
Nona’s smile disappeared. “Oh. One of them. Who thought it was a good idea to drop sixty thousand Eternals into the Realms?”
Instead of saying anything, Vice pointed up and then used his fingers to pull the corners of his mouth into a distorted grin. He was reasonably sure that nobody was watching them, but Somebody might be listening.
“Oh,” Nona repeated. “Say no more.”
“You hadn’t heard about the newest project?”
“I know we need more cannon fodder for the Breach.” They both shuddered at the name. “But this seems excessive.”
“Yeah. Nobody asked us, of course. We just get to wipe the blood off the floor and walls when a brilliant strategy fails.”
Nona sighed. “Anyway. Who is making waves?”
“This guy.” The 3D image showed a seemingly ordinary denizen of the Realms. A guy in armor.
“Let’s see… Half-Elf, Paladin – no, Twilight Templar and Monster Trainer. They are handing Elite classes to first-timers now?”
“Look again, Nona,” Vice said. “You were right the first time. He arrived at the Realms as a Paladin. Turned into a Twilight Templar a few levels later. He’d been active for under a week.”
“Switched Classes? How?”
“Divine intervention. All legal, just unusual as hell.”
“Freaking gods. Another brilliant idea, to bring Hyper-Jungian Archetypes to the Realms and expect them to follow orders. They had to know those entities would have their own ideas on how to run things. Anyone who’s been worshipped for thousands of years is going to resent being told what to do!”
Vice shrugged. They and other Arbiters had had that very conversation for literal centuries. Arbiters had more raw power than gods, but the old bastards weren’t pushovers. A few Arbiters had been perma-killed in the line of duty. More than a few gods had gone bye-bye as a result, of course: there was a reason Zeus and Jupiter were no longer in the Realms, and that their place had been taken by the more archaic Shining Father. Most of the pantheons had gotten the message and no longer challenged the Arbiters. Not openly, anyway. The gods had other ways to throw monkey wrenches into the works, however.
“Anyway, the same guy has also started Mana channeling, about ten levels too early. And just became Ruler of a Town.”
Nona squinted at the armored figure in the hologram. “Switched Classes in a week, now he runs a town. How long has he been down there?”
“Not even a month.”
“I can see why Primus wants to keep an eye on him. He’s going to be trouble.”
“We are going to increase the Mana levels in the local zone. It already had a Necromancer Stronghold, a Lair, two Dungeons and a Labyrinth; everything is getting boosted. Things were already ramping up, on account of the Necromancer eating a bunch of Eternals, but now it’s getting pumped up even more.”
“Why? Whatever doesn’t kill that Eternal is only going to make him stronger.”
“Primus wants to put pressure on him. If he makes it, we can use him in the Higher Realms.”
“And if he doesn’t, he’s not our problem anymore,” Nona said. “Gotcha.”
“Hawke Lightseeker is his name. He’s surprisingly hard to keep under surveillance, too. One of his patrons is Tenebra.”
“She doesn’t do anything without at least three schemes in mind. This is going to be tricky.”
* * *
Kaiser Wrecker, Guild President of the Nerf Herders, was not having a good day. That was unusual. The past few months had been very good to him.
“Where is he? Where is Hawke Lightseeker?”
The highest rated spell-slinger in the Guild, Aristobulus Highgarden (Level Fourteen Mage and Scryer), looked downright terrified, but he knew sugarcoating the truth would be worse than giving bad news to the boss. Kaiser knew better than to terrorize his underlings into lying to him. That had been the downfall of many a ruler. He had no intention to undergo any sort of fall.
“He’s got some means to block divination spells,” Aristobulus said. “If he is in Gallia Nova, I should be able to get his general location, within a hundred miles at least. And if he isn’t in Gallia Nova, I should be able to sense that, too. My best ritual – cost almost a hundred gold in materials and a permanent Mana sacrifice – worked about as well as a freaking magic 8-ball. It makes no sense.”
“All right,” Kaiser said, forcing himself to adopt a more relaxed posture. Aristobulus exhaled in relief. “Can we hire someone higher-level to try?”
“That might work, but it would be extremely expensive. Our best shot would be to get a twentieth level Scryer to do the job. That’s the best we could find here in the Common Realms. As far as I know, there is only one of those in Akila. Maybe half a dozen in all of the Ruby Empire. The local one is a Grandmaster of the Council of the Wise.”
“And they don’t care much for us,” Kaiser said. “As in they hate our guts.”
And that was my own fault, he admitted to himself.
He had antagonized the mages’ society by refusing to have his pet spellcasters pay their union dues. At the time, the nascent Nerf Herders had been strapped for cash and he’d had better things to do than bend over for a pack of rent-seeking NPCs. He had overreacted, and the Herders had turned the Council into an enemy. Kaiser had two concurrent programs in the works to deal with that situation: one to smooth the Council’s ruffled feathers, and another to wipe it off the board.
“All right,” he told the Mage. “We’ll try again when we get you to fifteenth level. I’ll put you on the fast track for the Malleum Mallum. One run through that Labyrinth should be more than enough.”
Aristobulus went white as a sheet. The Malleum Mallum Labyrinth had zeroed out three Nerf Herders already. Kaiser didn’t care. He’d made one run himself, and hit level fourteen thanks to it. Great rewards required great risks.
“Unless you would decline the honor,” he told the magician. “That would be disappointing. The Herders are building a reputation as go-getters. A can-do attitude is paramount. But if you’d rather concentrate on crafting, say the word.”
“No, no, sir. I’ll be happy to join a Party.”
“Glad to hear it. On your way out, let Girlhas in.”
Kaiser smiled as Aristobulus all but ran out of his office. People always started to sweat when he brought up the Crafting Center. Probably because once you went in, you only came out feet first. As far as Kaiser was concerned, a little hard work didn’t kill anybody, but people from Earth were too soft. Put them in a harsh environment like the Realms and most of them wilted like so many hothouse flowers exposed to the wild.
Case in point: Rowena, Kaiser’s personal servant, who entered his office along with his next appointment. Rowena had been a casual gamer who’d caught the hype for Eternal Journey Online and, under normal circumstances, would have played for a couple of months before rage quitting and badmouthing the game on social media for assorted real or imaginary offenses.
Circumstances had been anything but normal, of course, and Rowena (born Meadow April Durham) had found herself in the same swamp where Kaiser and several other unlucky players woke up, unclothed, scared and with nothing but each other and an idiotic Quest notification beamed directly into their brains by some bastard going by the name of Arbiter Primus.
They had survived – after a few deaths and other mishaps – and reached civilization. Kaiser had been among the first to make it there, as well as the quickest to understand the situation and take advantage of it. He rebuilt his own Guild, not because he had any affection for the name – he hated it, actually – but because a few other members had also shown up in Akila, and the stupid Star Wars reference would serve to attract the attention of other castaways from Earth. Kaiser wanted to take as many of them as he could under his wing. Or dispose of them otherwise.
At first, Rowena had been enthusiastic about Kaiser’s reform plans. But her ideas had focused on dismantling the admittedly patriarchal system in the Ruby Empire. Kaiser had no intention of upsetting the local social structure, however. He wanted to co-opt it. Rowena saw reason after being subjected to a number of object lessons. The bruises had faded away, eventually; the lessons he had taught her had not. Now she was a part of the patriarchal order, as well as his concubine and personal servant. A number of magically-enforced oaths ensured her obedience. Rowena brought him a glass of chilled wine and sat on his lap, just like she’d been taught. Good girl.
The short, dark-haired woman that followed Rowena into the office was completely different. She didn’t care about changing society. Her only concern was amassing power, and she had decided that the best way to do so was to hitch her wagon to Kaiser Wrecker’s rising star. She also greatly enjoyed hurting people. Kaiser was okay with that, within reason.
Girlhas Noname bowed before him. She was a Rogue and Shadow Assassin, an elite class that was outlawed in Akila. Her secret was safe among the Nerf Herders, of course. Nobody in the Guild gave a damn about the laws of the Empire.
Her name still made Kaiser cringe, though. Yes, he also had picked a dumb name for his first EJO character. Why not? He rarely used early characters in a game for long; he was an alt-character maker, always chasing a new and different power trip. Nobody had known their first choice would be their only one until Final Death took all choices away. But his name had been nowhere as bad as hers.
The player in question had been a George R.R. Martin fan. Somebody in the game had already snagged the character name she wanted, so she’d gone with the character’s iconic saying instead. She had even used the character creator in the game to make her look as much as her idol as possible. Unoriginal and silly, but nothing else about Girlhas was silly. She had dropped over a hundred bodies in the two months since her arrival, and those were the ones Kaiser knew of.
“What’s the good word?” he asked her. While Aristobulus had been using magic to find the damn Paladin, Noname had been doing some old-fashioned sleuthing.
“I have two separate witnesses saying that the subject claimed to come from Herona, a port in the east. I have dispatched four agents there to see if they can pick up his trail.”
“But you don’t think he’s there. You’d have gone there yourself, otherwise.”
She shook her head. “He was very careful. Why give away his point of origin? It smells like a cover story. It’s still worth checking out, of course.”
“What else have you got?”
“I turned my attention to two Eternals he was seen talking to the day before he visited the compound,” she said.
Her voice had an emotionless inflection that set people’s teeth on edge. It was as if she was an alien trying to pass for a human being and not quite pulling it off. She must have been a delight on Earth.
“I have positively identified them: Desmond the Destroyer, a Warrior, and Nadia Morganna, Elven Sorceress. They were given an entry interview at the gate, but there was an incident and they left before it was complete. It was Gerrod, getting handsy with the woman, just the way he gets with every female he runs into.”
“That idiot should have never been on gate duty,” Kaiser growled.
He didn’t mind if members in good standing indulged in their hobbies or vices, but not during gate interviews, when the Herders were trying to convince people to come in of their own free will. You wanted to put your best foot forward for that, and Gerrod was definitely the wrong man for the job.
Little Gerry and the moron who had assigned him to gate duty were off in the Labyrinth, grinding levels and getting killed on the regular; last he’d checked, Gerrod’s Identity had dipped below eight and the guy could barely remember Earth, or his old name. That was fine with Kaiser; owning a level fifteen Warrior who had forgotten most of his old life would come in handy, moving forward.
Girlhas went on: “Yesterday, I was able to confirm that Desmond and Nadia spent the night at an inn with a third party who paid for their room and board.”
“Hawke.”
“Can’t confirm it. He was wearing civilian garb at the time, but the general description matches. The next day, they left. I have a possible sighting of them in Dwarven Hills. That’s where the trail has led so far.”
Kaiser grimaced. The Guild didn’t have a lot of connections with the damn Oompa Loompas, mainly because the only Eternal player who had picked a Dwarf for his character’s race had gone native. Attempts to recruit him had ended poorly; now nobody in the Hills wanted anything to do with the Nerf Herders. Being too proactive could backfire sometimes.
“What is it going to take to learn more?”
Girlhas thought about it. “Two hundred gold denars in bribes. I’ll have to go through intermediaries, but I already have a few assets with access to the Hills.”
“Any other news from the Oompa Loompas?”
“Word is that someone was recruiting miners for a hush-hush project. They were also hiring mercenaries for a war with a Goblin Horde off to the west. I will look into both events, just in case they are related to the target.”
“This is a Priority-One project. That bastard made a fool out of us in the middle of our compound. The only way I will live that down is if he doesn’t live any longer than it takes to find him.”
“I’ll find him,” Girlhas said. “And I’ll bring him to you.”
“Don’t underestimate him. I did. A vocational school grad managed to waltz in and out of here, and sent two of my best bodyguards off to respawn. He is a lot smarter than I thought.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Hawke Lightseeker said as the giant shadow monster prepared to crush him like a bug.
<You were bored and decided a battle to the death was just the thing to entertain yourself,> his talking sword and future wife Saturnyx whispered into his mind. She was a Fury, a human soul turned into an avenging angel, and had been doomed to (or chosen to; she was vague on the details) inhabit a sword and give it all sorts of deadly powers.
He was going to need every one of those abilities to overcome the Guardian of the Mana Node he was trying to claim.
It was the biggest critter he had encountered so far. Fifteen feet tall, maybe twenty feet wide, with four elephant-like legs supporting a barrel-shaped torso from which four tentacles protruded, each tipped with a sharp pair of pincers. And it was solid black, a thing made of pure Darkness. The only reason Hawke could see it against the equally black background was that he had Dark Vision, courtesy of his Half-Elven heritage. Anybody else challenging the Guardian of that Mana Node would have been effectively blind and helpless while the monster sliced and diced them to death.
Darkness Guardian (Shadowling)
Level 12 Elemental (Elite)
Health 1200 Mana 600 Endurance 1200
The Shadowling roared a challenge, a sound like nails on a chalkboard turned up to eleven. Instead of quailing in fear, Hawke used that time to trigger Analyze, one of the abilities of his Monster Trainer Class. In the course of three seconds, he had a clear understanding of the creatures’ Attributes (its most impressive scores were Strength and Constitution, at 58 and 60, respectively), weaknesses (not surprisingly, Elemental Light topped that list), and enough information to let him write an entire Wiki article about it, if the Realms had a Wiki page and he had access to a computer. Just as he was finished analyzing it, the Guardian charged.
The monster covered the two hundred feet separating it from Hawke at the speed of a runaway train, or maybe a runaway elephant. Hawke spent the first couple of seconds buffing himself. Energy auras made of Light stabbed into the surrounding shadows. The Guardian hesitated when the inimical power revealed itself, but only for a moment. It soon resumed its rush, pincer-tentacles cocked back and ready to lunge from thirty feet away to crush, render and flail the Half-Elf who had dared challenge it in its domain.
At ninety feet, Hawke unleashed Dazzling Light, a blinding flash that would stun most creatures, with much greater effect against nocturnal targets and even more against beings of Darkness. The Guardian’s Elemental Resistance levels were high, however: the flash disoriented it for a couple of seconds, nothing more.
Next, Hawke pointed with the short sword in his left hand and a Hammer of Light sprang to life and darted towards the Guardian faster than a crossbow bolt, followed by a Hammer of Twilight, which did half Light, half Darkness damage, and, less than a second later, by a Burning Light, a cone spell that did less damage than his Hammers but affected an entire area. The trio of attacks tore huge chunks of dark matter from the monster. Its Health dropped below eight hundred before it could recover from the first spell.
Under different circumstances, Hawke would have followed the devastating volley of spells with his go-to move, Twilight Step, which allowed him to teleport behind his victims and deliver a devastating double backstab. Unfortunately, the spell didn’t work in a battleground made of Darkness. Saturnyx had tried to explain the dimensional mechanics involved; he had smiled, nodded, and forgotten all about it afterwards. He was a doer more than a thinker. As long as something worked, he didn’t care much about the details.
So, instead of rushing towards the monster, he cast Consecrated Ground under his feet. The spell would supplement the continual healing of one of his other buffs, Aura of Light, and between them he might be able to survive the pounding he was about to receive.
The monster shook its whole body the way someone would shake his head, maybe because it didn’t have a head to shake. It charged on, and its depleted Health began to tick upwards at a rate of 10 Health per second. Annoying. The cooldowns on his offensive spells reset just as the Guardian whipped its tentacles at him. Missiles and waves of Light and tentacles of Darkness flew by in opposite directions. All his spells landed on their target. He ducked one of the tentacles but the other three tore into him like so many cannonballs, each doing enough raw damage to cut down his 312 Health by more than two thirds. Luckily, he had a few buffs on his side, including a Shield of Light that reduced all damage by 42 points, and a Bulwark of Light that could absorb another 210 damage, all of that before the pincers hit his Armor of the Battle-Mage with all its resistances and damage reduction bonuses.
He still got whacked for over a hundred points of damage. Worse than that, one of the pincers grabbed him by the waist and began to crush him. Grimacing in pain, Hawke cut at the limb with the Saturnyx Twins, as he called the paired-sword set that currently held the soul of the Fury. Each slash, imbued with extra light damage, fortified with a lightning aura, and delivered with enough strength to cut clear through both ends of a suit of steel plate armor, tore deeply into the tentacle’s fleshy darkness. He didn’t quite sever the limb, but the sudden agony forced the monster to release him while its other tentacles descended on him with their pincers closed, seeking to pummel him to death.
Hawke activated his newest Elemental Path sword power: Dome of Force. The semi-sphere of Light Energy only lasted three seconds, but during that time it would stop any attack inflicting fewer than four hundred and twenty points of damage. The tentacle-pincers smashed ineffectively against the energy barrier while Hawke cast a couple of healing spells on himself and then opened up with his three-spell offensive combo. Even with its regeneration, the Guardian’s Health had been reduced by two-thirds by the time the dome disappeared and a fully-healed Hawke rolled into melee range and stabbed the monster’s underbelly with both blades. He landed three solid stabs – one of them a critical for 104 damage – before he had to duck away from the stomping trunk-like legs of the Guardian.
The Darkness monster was an Elemental, and they didn’t suffer from low morale, fear, or any foibles affecting mere flesh-and-blood creatures. It still was slowed down by the massive amount of damage and the corresponding pain it had suffered. Hawke tried to finish it off by summoning a copy of the creature, another Monster Trainer trick he’d been dying to try out since he’d become a member of that Class.
Summoning Failed! No entities may be brought into a Mana Node Challenge.
<That was somewhat dishonorable,> Saturnyx told him. <You issued the challenge; bringing a summoned entity into it is considered to be cheating.>
Hawke didn’t have time to argue with his sword. The Guardian came at him, ready to stomp, pummel or rend him to death. He remained on the move, dodging tentacle strikes and alternating between slashing at the monster and burning it with his spells. Eliminating the last third of the Guardian’s Health was the toughest part of the fight. It became a deadly dance where a small misstep meant getting hit on the head with a hundred-pound pincer and a big misstep would end with said pincer closing around your neck and popping your head like a cork. Another new spell, Healing Blows, restored fourteen Health every time he landed a hit with his swords. Between that and his other healing abilities, he kept just ahead of the damage the monster was inflicting. It still hurt like hell, of course: few things compared to having an arm breaking in three places and then having it spring back into shape, with tortured nerve endings screaming until they finally realized the damage was gone.
It was painful and terrifying – and Hawke loved every last moment of it.
One of the Guardian’s legs collapsed after being crippled by multiple slashes, and the giant creature staggered and fell. Hawke leaped a full twenty feet into the air, propelled by a strength than on Earth would have earned him a cape and a movie deal with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and delivered a double blow onto the monster’s back. It only had a sliver of Health left when Hawke, struck by a sudden burst of inspiration, directed Hammer of Light through both of his twin swords, something he had never done before. At first, the spell sputtered; some instinct made him pour more power on it, and it went off. The Mana cost of the spell exploded from 2 to 37 Mana, nearly draining his energy to dangerous levels, but a giant-sized energy hammer exploded through the monster, inflicting double the spell’s normal damage. That did the trick. The Shadowling dissolved into a tar-like puddle; he barely had time to leap away before sinking into the ensuing mess.
Hawke laughed out loud. He had never imagined how great it felt to win a fight until being brought to the Realms. On Earth, he’d been in a couple of adult brawls, and he’d just been angry, scared, and drunk. Very little joy there. But here, the contest of skill, strength and willpower made him feel alive like nothing he’d ever experienced as Ben Velasco from Ohio. The only other thing he enjoyed as much involved the two gorgeous women in his life, including the one inhabiting his paired swords.
He had spent over a week in one meeting after another, trying to get a town of almost two thousand people back into working order after its previous Ruler had sold them out to a Necromancer. It had been useful, important work, and he had helped a lot of people, but there was a part of him that demanded action, driven by an addiction to adrenaline that people on Earth would have deemed toxic and unhealthy.
As the monster died, several notification prompts appeared on the right corner of his field of vision, demanding his attention. He waited until the shadows dissipated and he was back inside the hidden cave where the Mana Node and his Reincarnation site were located. Then he started opening messages. In this world infused with game-like rules, he was constantly bombarded with text messages from the Arbiters, entities that even the gods feared. Most of the notifications were clearly automated. Hawke suspected the Arbiters were, like a computer nerd buddy of his had once explained, SysOps Administrators, watching over the system while they let it run itself most of the time:
Congratulations! You have learned: Dual Casting I (Mana Channeling Ability)
By infusing your spell with Mana, you can now double its effect by casting it with both hands. At your current level, the Mana cost of a Double-Cast spell is multiplied by ten before any other modifiers. As you improve, you can reduce that cost. This is a prerequisite for the Mana Channeling Ability: Chakra Casting I.
A few weeks ago, although it felt like a lifetime and a half, he had sort of eaten a Mana Core of Darkness, even though his body was attuned to its opposite Element. He had nearly died in the process, and not just ‘I’ll respawn later’ died, but ‘throw dirt on your face, worms will now eat you’ died. It had been a big gamble, but it had paid off. Among several other things, Hawke had gained a much deeper understanding of how Mana worked in a living body. He had been a plumber on Earth, having decided that going to college and becoming mired in debt wasn’t for him, and his understanding of the flow of water through pipe networks had turned out to be surprisingly useful in controlling the force that permeated the multiple worlds known as the Realms, the bizarre universe where he and thousands of gamers from Earth had been dragged off to without their knowledge or consent.
One of the reasons he was devoted to increasing his power was simple: he wanted to find the person or people who had thought it was a good idea to do that. And make them pay.
<Guard your thoughts, Hawke, lest they become a Quest for all the Arbiters to examine.>
I know. I’m still a bug and they are elephants.
But I’m growing up.
More notifications, lots of them, demanded his attention:
For slaying your foe, you have earned: 100 Experience.
Notice: Most of the Guardian’s energy (experience) has returned to the Mana Node.
Current XP/Next Level: 15,113/16,000
“This is total BS,” Hawke muttered. A monster that size, an elite monster at that, should have netted him close to a thousand XP, maybe more. Early on, he had learned that ‘experience’ was just how his gamer perspective had perceived the flow of energy that defeating an opponent granted the victor. That energy allowed you to become more powerful. To level up, in other words. In this case, the ‘XP’ from the Guardian had been returned to the Mana Node. The Mana Node he now controlled:
Congratulations! You Have Claimed: Level 10 Mana Node (Darkness).
You have earned: 1,000 Experience
You have gained: +200 Mana as long as you are within 1 mile/level from the Mana Node.
Congratulations! You have reached Level Thirteen!
You have gained 6 Attribute points to distribute (12 unspent points total).
New Darkness, Life, Light and Twilight spells available.
New Darkness Spells Acquired: Dark Tendrils, Shadow Transformation
You are now a Level One Node Master! New Abilities Available.
Current XP/Next Level: 16,113/18,000
“Who is your daddy?” Hawke yelled at the top of his lungs.
<Not you. Otherwise, what we do most nights would be a great sin in the eyes of gods and men.>
“Thanks for ruining that phrase forever.”
<If you never utter that phrase again, I will be well-thanked.>
“Deal. Okay, scratch ‘Claim Node’ from the to-do list.”
It was a long list. The top entry still remained ‘Kill the Necromancer and Save the Gamers’ but there had been too many other urgent matters to take care of. The only reason claiming the Node had been moved up was that he’d had a free day to run to the hidden cavern and challenge the Guardian. He had a Town Council meeting that evening; the next day he and a group of Adventurers were going to a Lair to clear it and maybe claim its Mana Node as well.
A day or two after that, if all went well, he and several dozen volunteers would march up to the Sunset Range and clear out the Necromancer and its Undead and Arachnoid servants. He was terrified of the battle to come, not out of concern for himself but for all the non-Eternals who only had one chance at life and for whom death was permanent. He had thought about reducing the size of the expedition but all the information they had indicated they would need as many troops as they could get.
<Most of them will not need to fight,> Saturnyx told him. <We will need them to secure fallback positions, watch areas we have taken, and convey supplies forward. The burden of battle will fall mainly on you and your fellow Adventurers.>
“I wish it was just us,” Hawke said as he sent his armor and other equipment to his Bonded Vault, the magical inventory space that he could access with his mind and could hold as many items as he could fit in its thirty-two slots. Naked, he waded into the small lake that filled a third of the cave, and swam past the waterfall that concealed it from prying eyes. If he got killed, he would be reborn there, minus all his Experience and a piece of his Identity, the combination of memories and life experiences that made him who and what he was. If his Identity ever went down to zero, he would suffer the Final Death.
<Don’t forget to pick up you first Node Master Ability, my Paladin.>
“Paladin Ninja,” he told her as he waded ashore and got dressed.
<The images your mind conjures when you think of that word are rather silly. These Ninja seem to be both the most skilled fighters and assassins of your world, but at the same time they persist in wearing extremely noticeable black uniforms even when it is not at all convenient to do so.>
“It’s part of their tradition,” Hawke explained.
<And they also seem to die in droves when confronted with even a single one of your great heroes.>
“Also part of their tradition. They are the best cannon fodder there is.”
<Idiocy.>
As he walked and began looking at his options regarding his new Mana Node, Hawke kept an eye out for the local wildlife. Not because he was worried – the deadliest creature he had encountered there, a Dire Bear, would pose little danger to him now – but because he wanted to find a likely pet. He had chosen Monster Trainer as his second class, and most of its abilities required him to find and train a beast companion.
<Your other fiancé has called ‘dibs’ on the first Dire Bear you encounter,> Saturnyx reminded him.
“I know.”
No bears of any kind showed themselves, so Hawke looked at the options menu under Node Master. There were three abilities to choose from:
Node Empowerment: Once per day, you can draw power from the Node, increasing your Mana Pool by fifty Mana per level of the Node. The range of this ability is one mile per Node Mastery level.
Node Recall: Once per day, you can instantly transport yourself to any Mana Node under your control. The range of this ability is fifty miles per Node Mastery level. Cost: 150 Mana.
Node Travel: You can travel instantly from one Mana Node to another Mana Node or Core under your control. Node Travel costs 100 Mana. Current travel routes available: One (Orom).
“Choices, choices.”
Node Empowerment was the worst of the bunch; he already had plenty of Mana, thanks to his killer gear and choice of Classes. That left the two teleport abilities. Hawke had grown to love teleporting. His short-ranged Twilight Step had saved his ass a bunch of times already. Being able to go back and forth from Orom to his Respawn point had lots of uses, but being able to teleport to the Node from anywhere, with a current range of fifty miles, was too good to pass up. He picked up Node Recall.
“Always good to have an escape option available,” he told Saturnyx as he reviewed his updated character on the way home.
Name: Hawke Lightseeker. Race: Half-Elf, Eternal. Classes: Twilight Templar, Monster Trainer. Level: 11 (Level 12 and 13 unclaimed)
Experience/Next Level: 16,113/18,000
Attributes:
Strength 26(41), Dexterity 20(37), Constitution 31(45), Intelligence 20(22), Spirit 20(24), Perception 18, Willpower 18(22), Charisma 19
Characteristics:
Health: 312 (15.5/min)
Mana: 348(648) (16.4/min)
Endurance 277 (15.5/min)
Identity: 23
Skills
Blacksmithing 2, Climbing 2, Dodge 7, Lore 3, Shield 7, Spear 4, Stealth 4, Survival 3, Sword 7(19), Swimming 2, Tracking 1
Languages: Common Fey, Vulgate, Lesser Celestial
Perks
Dark Vision, Speed-Casting (Life and Light Magic), True Sight, Undying, Unlimited Potential
Spells
Animate Shadow, Armor of Life, Aura of Light, Bless Crops, Bolt of Darkness, Bolt of Life, Bulwark of Light, Burning Light, Consecrated Ground, Dark Step, Dark Tendrils, Enlightenment, Gift of the Martyr, Growth, Hammer of Light, Hammer of Twilight, Healing Blows, Healing Wave, Lesser Healing, Sense Life, Shadow Leech, Shadow Step, Shadow Transformation, Shield of Light, Shroud of Darkness, Shroud of Twilight, Touch of Light, Transference, Twilight Mantle, Twilight Step
Special Abilities
Analyze Monster, Evolve Monster, Greater Bond, Mana Channeling II, Node Mastery I (Node Recall), Stop Monster, Summon Monster, Tame Monster
Arcane Vocations
Blacksmith (Level One), Mining (Level One), Skinning (Level One), Steward (Level Two)
The new spells he had learned were nothing to sneeze at, either:
Dark Tendrils
Time to Cast: 5 seconds (Instant). Cooldown: 10(8) seconds. Cost: 10(7) Mana. Duration: 10 seconds. Range: 75 feet. Effect: Any enemies in a fifteen-foot radius are ensnared by gripping tentacles of Darkness. The tendrils inflict 2(3) points of damage per level of the caster upon releasing the spell, as well as every second the target is ensnared. Breaking free is possible, with a base chance of 5% for every point of Strength above 25. Large or giant creatures have a +15% and 30% bonus, respectively.
Shadow Transformation
Time to Cast: 8 seconds (Instant). Cooldown: 30(24) minutes. Cost: 25(19) Mana. Duration: 5 minutes. Range: Self. Effect: Become a Shadowling for the duration of the spell. During that time, your weapons and equipment will be absorbed into the Shadow Form and you will retain all their bonuses and defensive values. You will become invisible in any area not exposed to direct light, and be able to travel through any cracks or crevasses large enough to let light through. The Shadow Form can cast any spell that does not take time to cast, at double normal Mana cost before any modifiers are applied. It can attack physically, inflicting a maximum of 1 point of Darkness damage for every level of the caster’s Intelligence, Willpower and Spirit.
The Shadow Form takes half damage from Physical attacks and double damage from Light and Fire attacks. All other Elements and Forces work normally.
He was advancing on the Path to Power. The only question was whether he’d advanced enough to do everything he had to.
A week ago:
“This is going to take some work,” Hawke said after his first look at the Town Interface.
The map hanging from the wall of the former Prefect’s office was far more than a tapestry; it was in fact a Mana construct, nearly indestructible for as long as the town of Orom stood. It gave the town’s Ruler (currently one Hawke Lightseeker) access to a lot of information on the town, as well as control over a lot of raw power and a lot of choices about what to do with said power.
Town of Orom (Level Two Township)
Current Population/Maximum Pop.: 1,738/5,000
Warning: If the Town’s population decreases below 1,000, the Township’s Level will be reduced to One.
Available Mana/Mana Pool:1,738/1,738
Mana Recharge/Day: 200 (100 for Keep, 100 for Temple of Shining Father)
Current Mana Expenditures: 150/day (Undead, Demonic and Fae Wards)
Town Enchantments Available: Arcane Appointment, Call to Arms, Demonic Ward, Empower Champions, Fae Ward, Undead Ward.
Current Morale: -10 (Discontent)
Ongoing Projects: 0
Resources: 236 gold, 20,000 Daily Rations (Private Stores), 12,000 Daily Rations (Town Stores).
Building Materials: Stone 65, Wood 400.
Income: 40-50 gold a month
Taxes: 31 gold/month, 900 Daily Rations/month (collected Seasonally; Next Harvest Season in 2 months)
Fees and Duties: 10-20 gold/month.
Expenses: 80 gold a month
Town Guard: Guardsmen (20): 18 gold/month, 600 Daily Rations/month. Sergeants (4): 8 gold/month, 240 Daily Rations/month, Captain (0): 0. Stables (8 mounts, 4 servants): 12 gold a month. Total: 38 gold a month
Upkeep: 24 gold a month
Civilian Salaries (8): 18 gold a month
Town Buildings and Projects:
Buildings: 5 Apartment Buildings, 1 Barracks I, 12 Homes, 3 Inns, 1 Keep I (1003/2500), 8 Manors, 218 Shoddy Homes, 8 Shops, 1 Smithy, 1 Temple I (983/1250), 3 Workshops.
Appointed Positions Vacant: Guard Captain, Magistrate, Master of Coin, Town Clerk.
Arcane Professional Slots Available: 12
Hawke mentally ‘clicked’ on different entries to learn what they meant beyond the simple descriptions. He soon figured out that buildings without a level were just that, simple structures that did the same their equivalents on Earth would. Then there were structures with levels, which went from I to X in fancy Roman numerals for 1 to 10. Clicking on them revealed their special abilities and possible upgrades:
Barracks (Level I)
Provides housing, an armory, and a training area for the settlement’s garrison. At Level I, the Barracks can house up to 50 guards, 5 officers and 5 servants. To raise a Barracks to the next level, you need to add three Upgrades.
Current Upgrades: 0/3
Available Upgrades: Advanced Training Grounds (250 Mana), Expanded Barracks (120 Mana), Magical Armory (350 Mana), Fortify (150 Mana), Garrison (150 Mana), Strongpoint (300 Mana).
Keep (Level I)
The seat of government of a village or town, the Keep is usually fortified to serve as a refuge of last resort. It also holds the Core of the settlement, which generates Mana at a rate determined by the Keep’s level. To raise the Keep to the next level, you need to add four Upgrades.
Current Upgrades: 0/4.
Available Upgrades: Fortify (150 Mana), Garrison (150 Mana), Mana Lens (350 Mana), Node Connection (300 Mana), Observatory (350 Mana), Expanded Prison (150 Mana), Ritual Circle (300 Mana), Strongpoint (300 Mana).
Temple of Shining Father (Level I)
A temple provides a link between mortals and the pantheons they worship. The gods gain the devotion of their worshippers, which they can return in the way of Mana and even miraculous gifts. At Level I, the Temple provides the settlement with 100 Mana per day. To raise the Temple to the next level, you need to add four Upgrades. Note: The Arcane Official in charge of the settlement must have no worse than a Neutral Reputation with the deity or pantheon in question.
Current Upgrades: 1/4 (Monument I).
Available Upgrades: Holy Grove (200 Mana), Monument II (200 Mana), Observatory (350 Mana), Priesthood School (200 Mana), Reliquary (150 Mana), Sacred Vessel (250 Mana).
As if that weren’t enough, there was a list of Available Projects as well: additional Temples, as well as Craft-specialized buildings: Arcane Alchemist Laboratory, Enchanting Emporium, Leatherworking Shop, Smithy. There was even a Mage’s Tower, which brought back to mind the giant structures he had seen in Akila. Unfortunately, building one cost 1,500 Mana or about the same amount of gold in labor and materials, with the latter also requiring four months of construction. Mana could substitute for both labor and materials, but unless he wanted to cancel the wards keeping most types of monsters out of the town, Orom only regained Mana at the rate of 50 points a day.
“I can’t use my own Mana on Town spells, can I?” he asked Saturnyx.
<The energy used in such projects is different than that used in common magic. Higher-level Stewards can use their personal Mana to speed up projects, but it is an advanced ability that you currently lack.>
“That sucks.”
He decided to wait a few days before spending any power, except for 50 points he put into fixing the Keep; he would do that every day for now, repairing the damage while keeping the town’s energy pool at maximum.
“Having fun?” Nadia Morganna, level four Elven Sorceress and fellow Eternal from Earth. said behind him.
Nadia looked a lot surer of herself than she had when Hawke had first seen her. He had known her before being taken to the Realms, but only through her character and social media; in many ways, he hadn’t known her at all. Whatever she had looked like on Earth, Nadia now was a somewhat short Elf – five inches below their six-foot average – with pale skin and jet-black hair that made an exotic contrast with her pale blue eyes.
“I never got into resource management games,” Hawke admitted. “And doing it for real isn’t much better.”
“Just think about all the lives you will be affecting. Breathing, living beings, human and otherwise. You took over the town, so now you have responsibilities to go along all the cool powers.”
“It was the only way to get rid of all the Undead in town.”
“I know. And I’m only teasing, really. I know you are trying to do the right thing. I knew it back in Akila, when you got on Desmond’s case about calling Realms people ‘NPCs’.”
That had set him off. NPCs – non-player characters – was what you called computer-controlled cartoons that existed only as decorations or to interact with players in assorted ways. In games. This world might have a set of rules overlaid on top of it, but the people who lived there weren’t game pieces.
“We can’t let that sort of attitude spread around,” he said. “I saw it with Kaiser Wrecker and the Nerf Herders. They won’t even accept non-Eternals in their ranks. They figure they’re better than anyone else because they have a handful of extra lives.”
“And that’s why following you here was the right thing. You don’t think like that.”
“I try not to. And now I have to figure out how to run the town. Or at least, how to leave people alone to run their own affairs as much as I can. I want to keep them safe and maybe improve the general quality of life, but that’s about it.”
“Which is why I’m here. Patros is setting up in the meeting room.”
“All right, let’s get that done and over with.”
Hawke hated meetings, but he had a feeling he would come to hate them a lot more with all the extra practice.
Still the week before:
Hawke turned to the basics:
“Okay, it looks like there is enough money and food to keep things running for a bit,” he said after going over the numbers. “And there is money coming in through taxes and other extorsion rackets, just not enough to pay for everything, and the Prefect didn’t leave a lot of gold in the treasury, either.”
“Some of that money may be in his mansion,” Patros said.
“Yeah, we found a vault there, but it will only open for the rightful heir of the family. Trying to find whoever that is. We need a Magistrate, a Master or Coin, and assorted other town officials. More money to pay up, I guess. Although the Prefect doesn’t get a salary, which is funny.”
“It is an unpaid position,” said Patros, Priest of Shining Father and the closest thing Hawke had to a town clerk so far. “The expectation is that a Prefect must be a person of means, and that he or she will use their position to improve their fortunes.”
Hawke frowned. “By skimming a little off the top, taking bribes, unofficial protection rackets, and so on. Is that right?”
“That’s how premodern societies worked,” said Nadia.
Hawke had drafted her since she had been a store manager before diabetes-induced illnesses had forced her to work from home as a telemarketer, and also because her 21st-century perspective and gaming experience would give her a leg up in understanding the ins and outs of running a town in a fantasy universe.
“In Ancient Rome, for example, most public positions had no salary. And this place was founded by Ancient Romans. The names alone are a dead giveaway.”
“Ancient Romans with magic, cultural influences from Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and a whole bunch of other nonhuman civilizations, and a class/level game overlay,” Hawke said.
“And polygamy and polyandry,” Nadia added with a smile. He smiled back at her; after the meeting was over, they were going to be addressing that particular social institution.
“Anyway. Money is a little short, but once everybody is paying their fees and duties, things should balance out. Food production looks good.”
The farmlands around Orom were worked by about two hundred extended families, adding up to fifteen hundred people; a few lived in the city but most of them stayed in farmhouses next to their fields. At first, Hawke had been surprised that so few people produced enough surplus food to supply a town of almost two thousand, but magic played a big role in the process. For example, he had learned that the local wheat fields produced around fifty bushels per acre, which according to Nadia, who had taken some history courses, was a lot higher than in premodern times on Earth. The local Alchemist and Priest helped with crops, but there were also some fifty Arcane Farmers who had spells that sped growth, added nutrients to the soil, and influenced the weather to minimize losses due to unseasonal rains or harsh winters. Despite being surrounded on three sides by mountains, the weather around Orom was fairly warm, similar to California or Spain. It rarely snowed in the valley proper, allowing for subtropical crops like olives to flourish. Nadia had also noted that a lot of crops the Romans never had were in use here: everything from corn to tomatoes and potatoes. As long as there was enough peace to plant and harvest crops, people didn’t go hungry there. His job was to keep that peace.
“Anyway, I guess the most important thing now is to fill the town vacancies and put the new city officials to work. Delegate,” Hawke concluded, leaning back on his chair and putting his feet on the new table he’d purchased for the meeting room.
“I volunteer for nothing,” Nadia said. “I’m going to be too busy learning magic, herbalism, and alchemy. And I’m supposed to join the Lair-cleaning party.” Her smile wavered after thinking about the prospect of violence. Unlike Hawke, she found no joy whatsoever in fighting, although when the chips were down she had done what she needed to do without flinching.
“I must also decline any such appointments,” Patros said. “I am still needed to provide healing as well as spiritual succor to the townsfolk. And find a new Novice.” Patros’ last student had died in the zombie mini-apocalypse that had struck Orom.
“Of course,” Hawke told them. “Patros, I was hoping you could help me find worthy candidates. And Nadia, I just want you for your expertise and math skills. You know I need a calculator to double check my guesstimations, and they don’t have calculators around here.”
“Well, they do have abacuses, but I haven’t figured out how they work,” Nadia admitted. “But I can balance a checkbook. I’ll help any way I can.”
“Good. Okay, for Guard Captain, I want Markos. He stood by the town, he is a good fighter, and he now belongs to an Elite Class.”
“All true,” Patros conceded. “But the man is something of a brawler. He will take bribes and even squeeze outsiders for a bit of extra coin. And… well, it takes one to know one. He is a drunk. Much as I am.”
“I appreciate your candor,” Hawke said, feeling disappointed. Admitting that he had a problem couldn’t be easy for the Priest, although it wasn’t exactly a secret to anybody familiar with the local gossip. “Crap. Sucks about Marko, though. I really figured he was the man for the job.”
“He is a good Sergeant. But he needs an officer to rein him in,” the Priest said. “Brunes mostly let him do what he wanted, much to his detriment. But Brunes was a bully and cared not a whit about the town’s welfare.”
“Yeah. Nobody seems to miss that guy.”
Hawke had dealt with the Guard Captain the old-fashioned way, by teleporting behind him and stabbing him with his paired magical swords. Not sporting, but fights weren’t tennis matches or any kind of sport. The dead Captain’s Enchanted-Quality plate mail armor was currently being worn by Desmond, the other Eternal in town, along with his Masterwork two-handed sword.
“Do you have any suggestions?”
“I believe Kinto would do an admirable job. He served as a military scout in Akila, many years ago, which makes him familiar with military discipline. And he is not only well-regarded by most, after he helped save the town, but he is your future father-in-law. His family connection will add more weight to his position.”
The locals didn’t see anything wrong with nepotism. In fact, they saw it as the best way to find people you could depend on. You mostly trusted your relatives and put their welfare ahead of everyone else. Hawke hadn’t even considered the Hunter, but it seemed like a perfect fit. Kinto wouldn’t take crap from anybody and had seen enough in his decades as an Adventurer to know when someone was trying to B.S. him.
“I’ll talk to him first, but assuming he says yes, the job is his. I still want to do something for Marko, though.”
The sergeant had saved his life. That was another fact of life around here: you always paid your debts.
“Make him First Sergeant, under Kinto,” the Priest suggested. “It will garner him a pay raise, and he is likely to feel both honored by the promotion and obligated not to let you down.”
“Maybe you should be running this town,” Hawke said.
“I would make a poor Prefect, I’m afraid. I am keenly aware of my many faults.”
“You kept most of the townspeople alive, your holiness. You did far better than most would have under those circumstances.”
“At times of crisis, sometimes one finds the strength to do what’s needed. But from one day to the next, in the drudgery of normal times? I fear I would stumble and likely fall.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short, but okay. Moving on…”
Patros suggested a few names for the other positions. Two were merchants in the town: Antana Setes and Markello Dometes. The other was a retired guardsman known as Oras Pertinos; instead of a surname, his second name simply meant ‘Stubborn.’ Hawke agreed to hold interviews in the following days and to have the vacancies filled before he went off to clear the Lair. With that, the meeting was officially over and Patros left.
The Elf smiled at him, with just a hint of nervousness. “Alone at last,” she said.
He smiled back.
They sat there in silence for a few awkward moments.
Hawke spoke first: “I like you, Nadia.”
There was a lot more than that, but he wasn’t good with words. There were her Elven features, impossibly beautiful, with eyes slightly too large for a human being and a body that seemed both soft and almost fragile but which he knew was shockingly strong. His Half-Elven side found her irresistible in a primal way. He wanted her.
“And I like you, Hawke. You’ve got the rugged good looks of a softcore romance novel character, and the way you look at women and smile… Well, let’s just say if you were onstage in a theatrical production, there wouldn’t be a dry seat in the house. And, honestly, I was never lucky in that department, back on Earth. Even before I became obese and diabetic and lost a leg.”
Her story, and her reasons for continuing to play Eternal Journey Online even after it became clear that doing so could make you vanish into thin air, had hit Hawke hard. He felt bad for her, but also admired the way she’d just out and said it. He valued honesty quite highly. He’d much rather someone told him a truth he hated than a pack of lies to try to make him feel better.
“Nadia…”
“So yeah. Jump my bones, dude! Tava told me she wants us to. Legally, she said I would be your mistress and that you cannot propose to me until after you two get married. Fine with me. I’m tired of sleeping alone, and I’m not looking to get hitched to the first dark and handsome guy who comes along. Although she keeps hinting at some secret I need to be let into before I agree. So spill the beans and let’s do it. Us.”
“That’s more of a show rather than a tell kind of thing.”
“Oh, really?”
Under the banter, Hawke got the feeling that Nadia was more than a little nervous and trying her best to hide it. He walked over to her and took her lightly in his arms. She was almost a head shorter than him, which made her well below average for an Elf. Her slender frame was surprisingly strong, however, and she held on tightly to him. She leaned back against his arms as he kissed her.
“Is that it?”
“Well, no. Just trying to break the ice. Now, and this isn’t a crude come on, I need you to touch my sword.” She giggled. “By which I mean the actual weapon.”
“Does it get bigger, like the Thundercats’ sword?”
The only Thundercats Hawke knew of was a crap show on the Toon Network, but he just said, “Not exactly,” and placed the hilt of one of his blades on her hand.
A moment later, she and him were somewhere else. The first time Hawke had entered the pocket dimension Saturnyx called her home, it had been a flat disk surrounded by a red mist. It had been pretty disconcerting, to say the least. Since then, Tava had been helping the Fury do some decorating. Hawke had no idea where the curtains turning the disk into an enclosed space came from, or the bed and mattress set, or the carpets. Neither of the women had seen fit to answer his questions, and he hadn’t cared enough to push. The place now looked like a nice bedroom floating in he middle of nowhere.
Sitting on the bed was Saturnyx. Her bright red hair was neatly parted down the middle and someone – Tava, most likely – had braided it. She was a muscular, powerful woman with impressive breasts and piercing eyes that always seemed to be burning with pent-up anger, even when she was smiling broadly. Which she was. The Fury was doing her best to make a good first impression. She was even wearing clothes for the occasion, although the sheer shift she had on did little to hide her figure. It was also thin enough that both Hawke and Nadia could see that she was either very cold or fairly excited.
“Hi,” Nadia said uncertainly.
“Nadia, this is Saturnyx. My sword, yeah, swords, but there is only one of her. We are in her domain. She is also my second fiancée.”
“Holy shit.”
“Greetings, Nadia Morganna,” Saturnyx said. “After watching you during these past days, I hold you in high esteem. You have courage and dedication, and exhibit none of the innate treachery of your Fae ancestors. I think you would be a valued sister-wife, should you ever decide to join our union.”
“Uh, thanks?”
Nadia looked at Hawke with a clear ‘I can’t even’ expression on her face.
“I think we need to go back to the real world, Saturnyx.”
“Of course.”
They returned to the office. Nadia was still sitting on his lap and clinging tightly to him.
“Are you okay?”
“That was… She is a… what?”
“A Fury. She was human, a few thousand years ago, but then her soul was transformed and she became like an avenging angel for the gods.”
“I know what Furies are. The Kindly Ones, the Greeks called them, and it was meant very sarcastically. There were three of them.”
“From what she’s told me, there were more than three of them but those were the first ones and the leaders of their club or military unit. We haven’t really spoken much about her life back then.”
“And you are engaged to her, as well as Tava.”
“Perfectly normal for this culture.”
Nadia rested her head against his chest. “Hearing your heartbeat makes me feel better, I don’t know why.”
He kissed the top of her head. “It’s a complicated situation. I totally understand if it’s too complicated for you.”
“How do you do it? Handle being with two women at once, and now me?”
“Well, I don’t want to sound arrogant, but you wouldn’t believe the things you can do with a Constitution of forty-four. It’s sort of like overdosing on Viagra, minus the bad side effects.”
“Okay, then,” she said, squirming a little on his lap. “I’m beginning to get it.”
She squirmed a little more, the kind of contact that got you charged Champagne Room rates at strip clubs back on Earth.
“Okay. I’m willing to be your mistress, for now. With an option to upgrade.”
“Sounds great to me.”
“And I would like our first night together to be, well, just us. Is that okay?”
He smiled. “You might want to tag in Saturnyx at some point, but I’ll be happy to oblige if you don’t.”
<You have grown conceited, Hawke,> Saturnyx chided him as he kissed Nadia again.
It was a good first night. And Saturnyx got tagged in by the third quarter.
Back to the present:
Hawke watched Orom rising from behind the low hills of the Highlands Forest.
His walk back to town followed almost the exact path he had taken the first time he had made it there, a few weeks ago, although it felt like it had been a lifetime. The woods that gave way to pastureland and tilled fields hadn’t changed, and seemingly neither had the walled settlement in the distance. Hawke knew that wasn’t true. When he first arrived at the town, its population had been over six hundred greater than it was now. Some had left for nearby villages and were slowly returning, but most of the missing were gone for good, dead at the hands of Orom’s former Prefect or his Undead minions. Ultimately, at the hands of the Necromancer.
He was going to fix that, Hawke promised himself. He was going to…
An arrow struck the back of his head.
The impact didn’t penetrate his helmet, but it made it ring painfully. He rolled away a fraction of a second later, his blades out, and wrapped two defensive spells around him as he looked for a target for his Hammer of Light.
“You were thinking instead of paying attention to your surroundings!” a familiar voice called from a copse of trees.
“Damn it, Tava!” he said. “You know it’s dangerous to sneak up on people like that! I could have blasted you before I knew it was you.”
“Could you, now?”
He still couldn’t see where she was. “I could just blast all those trees with Burning Light. See how you like getting a nice million-lumen sunburn. Or…”
Without dropping a beat, Hawke unleashed a Dazzling Lights spell at the area where Tava’s voice was coming from. “Or I could do this!” he shouted. No answer, but she had to be stunned and blind for a few seconds. He rushed towards the trees.
And tripped on a snare somebody had hidden at ankle level. Hawke fell on his face and felt someone land on his back.
“Dead,” a soft voice said as the point of a dagger tapped the side of his helmet. Another tap followed, this one on the base of his neck. “Dead.” And finally, a third fake stab clicked against the base of his spine. “And dead.”
“Women will be the death of me,” he said without bothering to get up.
Alba Bastardes
Level 4 Shadow Assassin
Health 63 Mana 39 Endurance 60
Her stats didn’t seem very impressive, but the amount of damage she could generate when striking out of ambush or if given time to coat her blades with poisonous Mana would impress anybody she didn’t kill outright. If she had been attacking Hawke for real, he would be down a couple hundred Health already. After a few seconds straddling him, she rolled off of him so he could get up. She looked very different from the friendly brunette who had tended tables at the Copper Kettle. Then, her long light brown hair had been held back by a simple ponytail; now it was tightly wrapped in a bun under a leather helmet that hid her Mediterranean features, leaving only her hazel eyes uncovered. Her strong and curvy body was equally covered by the rest of her leather armor. No chain mail bikinis in the Realms; leaving skin exposed was a sure way of having it pierced, burned, cut, or worse. She no longer looked like a happy go-lucky barmaid but what she had become: a deadly Shadow Assassin.
“Tava was right. You are a grand fighting man and a fearsome magic-user, but also a, what was that Eenglees term? Ah, yes. A dumbass,” Alba said sweetly. “A dumbass with a nice body, although it was far more pleasing to be on top of it when you were wearing less ironmongery.”
“Don’t you start now,” Hawke said, getting up.
He and Alba had had a one-night stand on his second day on the Realms. However, despite what some might think, he wasn’t trying to marry or sleep with every desirable women he met, saw, or heard about. He and Alba were just friends, as well as mentor and mentee. Hawke was helping her master the ways of the Ninja. Which was why the fourth-level Shadow Assassin had managed to get the drop on him. He was a damn good teacher.
<Keep telling yourself that,> Saturnyx said. <One day, you might come to believe it.>
Quiet, you.
“Okay, I give up. Where is Tava?”
“Look to your left,” Tava said.
He did, following the sound of her voice, and saw nothing but an orchard about two hundred feet away, with only an expanse of grass in between. Grass that someone’s sheep had eaten nearly to the roots. There was no way…
Another blunt arrow smacked him on the back of the head. It had come from his right.
“Okay, smartass.”
Tava appeared out of thin air, standing in the middle of an open field. She looked like some magnificent hybrid between a Miss Universe contestant and a mixed martial artist champion, with wavy brown hair and wide green eyes that currently sparkled with amusement as she unstrung her Enchanted-quality longbow, a gift from her father. Her fire lizard leather armor was tight in all the right places, serving as a visible reminder of just what a lucky man Hawke was.
Tava Kintes (Human)
Level 8 Ranger
Health 130 Mana 159 Endurance 125
“How do you like my Ring of Ventriloquism, darling?” she told him.
All the Adventurers involved in overthrowing Prefect Felix had gotten some nice magical items as part of their rewards. Tava had refused to tell him what her magical doodad could do. Throw her voice around seemed to be the now-obvious answer. Sounded like a neat trick to open up an ambush, if you could conceal yourself.
“And who taught you to turn invisible?” he said. “Kinto?”
She shook her head. “My seventh-level gift, Camouflage. It is a Nature spell. I wish I could share it with you.”
“And you do not need to ask me where I learned Shroud of Twilight, my esteemed teacher,” Alba added.
“Yeah, that one’s on me.”
One of the first things he had asked all of his friends was to cross train with each other. Most special abilities in the Realms were spells, and members of different classes could learn those spells, provided they had access to the proper Elements or Schools of Magic. It took time and effort – about twenty hours of mental training – to pass on the knowledge, but the benefits were certainly worth it. The biggest hurdle was unlocking new Elements or Schools. Nobody he knew had figured out how to do it other than by gaining them as part of their Class or, in his case, absorbing an Element-attuned Mana Node. Only a few spells had been shared so far, but as they went up in levels, Hawke hoped that would improve.
The only Adventurers who had refused to participate in the spell-exchange program had been the Sterns, the Dwarves who had followed Hawke to Orom in the hopes of acquiring mining rights as well as power and treasure. Their clan had strict rules about teaching their magic to outsiders; at the least, they were obligated to charge extortionately high prices for their lessons. Hawke hadn’t pushed the issue.
Tava skipped towards Hawke to give him his customary hug and kiss. “Did you succeed?”
“What do you think? I own that Node now. And hit level thirteenth.”
“Well done. You are fortunate we are here to humble you once and again, or your arrogance would know no limits.”
“Yeah, it’s a valuable service,” he said absently, thinking mostly about how good it felt to hold her in his arms. Life was good.
And he was prepared to do anything to defend what he had.
* * *
Fighting the Guardian, taking over the Node and getting ambushed by a couple of deadly hotties had been Hawke’s version of a vacation. As soon as he crossed Orom’s main gate, waving away the salutes and other shows of deference from everyone he met along the way, his real work began. Tava kissed him goodbye and headed off to her father’s hunting lodge. Now that Kinto was the next Guard Captain, she and her brother had to take care of the lodge’s dogs, and vegetable garden. Life went on, and Hawke kept getting surprised by how much work it took to get anything done in a world without power tools, phones and the Internet. You literally had to walk a couple of miles just to move around town, burning tons of calories and wasting a lot of time.
He started by paying a visit to Katros the Smith. Hawke wished he could take the time for more lessons in Arcane Blacksmithing, but his visit was to check on the status of the new pump parts he had ordered for the town. One of Orom’s wells had gone dry when the ancient pump system working it had broken down. Hawke had figured out what the problem was, but was waiting for a few pieces to finish the job. Katros had plenty of excuses but no parts; the smith promised he would have them made by the end of the week. Hawke sighed and went back to the Keep.
First Sergeant Marko was on duty. The second-level High Guard saluted him. “My Lord Prefect,” he said formally.
“Save that stuff for parades and formal occasions, Marko,” Hawke told him, not for the first time. “I still remember you shaking me down for some coppers, back when I was a broke-ass Adventurer.”
“And you will never let me forget, Your Eminence,” the guard said with a rueful smile.
“All part of the job,” he said on his way to his office, where his new Mistress of Coin awaited.
Hawke had not met Antana Setes until after he’d helped liberate Orom from the Undead. The merchant and co-owner of Orom’s largest general store and workshop had not crossed paths with him during his visits to the town. He had spent most of his time at the Copper Kettle, his favorite tavern and inn, with visits to the Temple of Shining Father and Katros’ Smithy. If he had been there for more than a handful of days, he would have probably visited the Setes Warehouse, where people went to buy all kinds of useful goods: threads, fishing hooks, earthenware plates and bowls, preserved foods, and a few high-ticket imports from faraway places like Akila to the east or Alpinia to the southwest.
Antana was a middle-aged woman with the tanned and lined face of someone who had spent a lot of time out in the sun. The merchant was often on the road, taking the few exports the town produced and bringing back new goods to sell at the store she and her sister ran. Her reputation as an honest trader and the recommendation of several people Hawke respected had gotten her the job. She looked up from a pile of papers on her desk when Hawke came in. She worked out of the former Prefect’s office now.
“Your Eminence,” she said formally.
“Your Coin Star,” Hawke replied.
Antana grimaced, but she’d given up on trying to convince Hawke to stick to formalities. “You have an appointment with the prospective Town Clerk in an hour,” she told him.
“I know. Anything I should know before I spend some Town Mana?”
“Tailor Decimo’s heirs have sold his store but are asking for an extension on the Town’s fees.”
“Sure, give them an extension. Would six months be enough?” Hawke said.
“That would be ample time, your eminence.”
The tailor had been murdered, along with his wife and children, on Hawke’s first night in Orom. He hadn’t been able to save them, but he sure as hell could try to make their surviving family’s life a little easier.
“Anything else?”
“There are still fifteen vacant buildings in town – four hovels, six homes, two warehouses, and three villas – as a result of the recent unpleasantness,” the Mistress of Coin went on.
Antana had spent the brief but deadly zombie apocalypse holed up in the general store, along with a small army of neighbors and servants. They had fought off three Undead attacks on their own. If she wanted to refer to those terrifying days as ‘the unpleasantness,’ she had earned that right.
“Not including the Prefect’s manor and my villa, right?”
Among the abandoned buildings was a nice ‘villa’ on the southern hills section of town, a short walk from the Shining Father Temple. Hawke had purchased it from the town for fair market value (fifty gold denars, based on the town’s tax assessment records). The three-bedroom (and two servant bedrooms, plus a central courtyard that would be great for barbeques as soon as he had a grill made) house was being cleaned and furnished by a small army of townsfolk under Tava’s direction, since as his fiancée it was her house as well, and she cared more about that sort of thing than he did. The only thing he’d asked for was an oversized bed.
Felix’s manor was even nicer, but although the former Prefect did not have any immediate family in Orom, the town records mentioned an uncle living in a village several days to the south of town. A message had been sent with a traveling farrier that frequented that route. Until word got back, the Pontes’ palace remained vacant. A search of the place hadn’t found anything incriminating, but there was a vault in his basement, magically sealed to that only his heirs could open it. Hawke intended to be at the opening, to make sure there was nothing there that could threaten the town.
Antana nodded. “We do not expect any news from the Pontes family, if any of them remain, for at least another week. As to the other properties, there are no heirs on record. According to the law, they devolve to the Town to sell or use as you see fit.”
“We could always use more cash. On the other hand, maybe we can use them to entice more people to move back into Orom. Have we gotten any offers?”
“One of the warehouses abuts the Petros Bathhouse; he has indicated a willingness to purchase it from the town to expand his business,” Antana said with a sniff.
Hawke hadn’t even known there was a bathhouse in town. The place wasn’t big, but its hot- and cold-water baths were popular with the town’s well to do. Several of Petros’ attendants, both male and female, also had side jobs as prostitutes, which wasn’t illegal but considered to be distasteful by some, Antana among them.
“Sounds good,” he told her, ignoring her disapproving expression. “Let’s make that happen.” Something occurred to him. “Is one of the homes in a good location for a Temple? I would like to build one dedicated to the Triune Goddesses.”
A second Temple would not only be a source of spiritual and magical help, it would increase the town’s Mana generation capacity. Everything ran on magic in the Realms. Finding a Priest to take over the job of running the Temple would be a complication, but maybe if you built the Temple, the gods would send him a Priest.
<That has been known to happen,> Saturnyx told him. <Although the gods provide as they see fit rather than according to our wants.>
“I think a couple of places are likely candidates. I will send one of my assistants to do a survey tomorrow. As to bringing in more citizens, they are more likely to come here if we had more in the way of trade. Without mining, Orom has little to offer. Furs, olive oil – but only one press currently working on producing it – and some rare woods and herbs. To exploit the woods would require a lumber camp in the Highlands Forest or the Shadowy Foothills, both of which are rather hostile to intruders. When the mines were a going concern, things were different.”
“The Sterns are working on that,” Hawke said.
The Dwarven clan had sent five Adventurers to Orom, all Arcane Miners. There were major gold, silver and other metal deposits throughout the Sunset Range west of the Auric river, but that area had a slight Necromancer and Arachnoid problem. If everything went according to plan, that would be over by the end of the week. Meanwhile, the Dwarves had explored the hills to the south and were planning on doing more prospecting there before the expedition to the west.
“I would suggest tabling any further discussions on how to proceed until that situation is resolved, then,” Antana said. “Meanwhile, I will expedite the sale of the warehouse.”
“Good. I’ll be with the big map.”
Just before Hawke could access the Town Interface, however, a Town guardsman came rushing in.
“Your Eminence! There’s been an attack.”
Hawke gritted his teeth. “Tell me.”
Congratulations! You have learned the Riding (Horses) Skill at Level 1!
Hawke had ridden horses a couple of times on Earth, but only the sort of tame and gentle critters they let tourists play with. Between that know-how and his Unlimited Potential Perk, he found that he could keep his seat and even not bounce up and down like an idiot as he followed a couple of town guardsmen toward the scene of the crime.
Normally he would have run there, but now that he was the Prefect, he had access to a whole stable full of horses, and time seemed to be of the essence, so he had gotten on, actually remembering at the last second not to screw up and end up facing the wrong way, and had gotten the horse, a fairly placid bay mare, to go the way he wanted. He didn’t think he was ready to go jousting any time soon, but being able to ride from point A to point B at a good fourteen miles an hour was nothing to sneeze at. He only wished he were riding toward something good, and not a farmhouse full of murdered people.
Most farms around Orom were large, with properties marked by stone fences built from the rocks that apparently rose to the surface every few years. The place in question had been six miles west of town, near the hilly scrublands that separated the fields from the Highland Forest. It had belonged to the Caseres family, led by an old Arcane Farmer by the name of Morio and his wife Luca. Other inhabitants included their two sons and two daughters, and their spouses, as well as twelve grandsons, one of whom had recently married. They lived a multi-building ‘greater villa,’ with a main house built around a courtyard and a handful of smaller homes for younger family members and servants. One of the guards, a sergeant by the name of Clado, told Hawke the details as they rode there.
Sometime last night, raiders had struck the farmhouse and murdered the whole family and three servants. Twenty-six people in total, dead.
The walled villa looked intact. The attackers had put out the fires that normally burned in a home twenty-four-seven and which, if left unattended, would have probably burnt down the whole place. Nobody had noticed anything was wrong, not until early that morning. A neighbor had found a stray calf and tried to return it, only to find the victims.
“Nobody has done much more than take a quick look,” Clado said as the three horsemen slowed down at the open gate of the compound. “Normally we wouldn’t bother you, Prefect, but your orders…”
“Were that any attacks or disturbances should come straight to me. You did the right thing,” Hawke said, dismounting. His legs were a little shaky despite the short ride. He had been gripping the horse’s sides with his legs, straining muscles he normally didn’t use when walking. The first thing he saw through the open gate didn’t help his mood. The attackers had taken Farmer Morio’s head and hung it from one of the pillars on the front porch. That was just the first of many horrors to be seen in the blood-splattered villa.
He didn’t focus on the grisly sights scattered throughout the farmhouse, but on trying to find information. It took him all of five minutes to figure out who had been responsible. The tracks on the ground had been made by triple sets of spiky feet. He had seen those tracks before, on his very first day on the Realms. Murk Arachnoids. The victims’ wounds included spear stabs, but most had been hacked down by heavy blades or axes. He remembered the spider-people’s Warriors had wielded those weapons.
We are on our way to you, Tava sent to him through Saturnyx. She must have just reached the sword’s telepathic range, about five miles.
“Good,” he said.
“Your Eminence?”
“Nothing, Clado. Just thinking out loud. You two, keep watch on the farmhouse until someone with a legal claim to it can take possession of it.”
And if there was nobody to claim the farm, the Town would get it. Hawke was getting sick of profiting from the suffering of innocent victims. Sick of standing over the bodies of people he had a duty to protect.
“You can take my horse back with you when you get back.”
“What about Your Eminence?”
“I’ll be traveling on foot from here. I’m gonna hunt down the Arachnoids who did this. None of them is going to live long enough to reach the Auric.”
The expression on Hawke’s face made Clado go pale and take an involuntary step back.
* * *
Congratulations! Your Tracking Skill has risen to 2.
He met the other five members of the hunting party a few minutes later.
Tava led the way, followed closely by Desmond and Alba, with Nadia and Gosto in the rear. That should be a big enough group to do the job. Nadia and Desmond were fifth and sixth level, respectively, and Alba was only fourth but was also an elite Shadow Assassin. Desmond’s gear was top-notch, since Hawke had made sure Brunes’ Warrior-specific weapons and armor ended in the hands of Hawke’s fellow Eternal.
Desmond had become a formidable fighter in the past few days:
Desmond the Destroyer (Human, Eternal)
Level 6 Warrior
Health 251 Mana 47 Endurance 231
Alba was riding on Desmond’s shoulders, which added to the Warrior’s armor and gear meant he was carrying almost two hundred pounds worth of stuff without slowing down. She waved as Hawke as the group reached the clearing where he’d been waiting. He waved back and smiled. A few days ago, he’d thought Alba would be good for Desmond, who didn’t have a good track record with the ladies back on Earth and had developed some bad attitudes as a result. He was glad the two had hit it off without him doing or saying anything.
<Of course you didn’t. Tava and I took care of it, foolish male.>
Of course, Hawke realized as the Warrior walked over and high-fived him; the two gauntleted hands made a loud gong when they met. Alba, still perched over the Warrior, jokingly squeezed her thighs tighter around Desmond’s uncovered head.
“We’ll get them,” Desmond said as he ran a hand over his girlfriend’s muscular leg.
“You said it.”
<Alba finds the man a suitable match. Strong and on the path to power and riches, and easily smitten by her. He is already making inquiries about how to propose.>
That was fast, he said, temporarily forgetting that he’d gotten engaged twice after spending less than a month in the Realms.
<She is experienced in how to please men, and he does no question where she learned her skills, which most people in Nova Gallia would. Your people care not about consorting before betrothals, which Alba finds refreshing. Their union is unorthodox, but he does not seem to care.>
Tava gave Hawke a hug and he made his helmet disappear so they could kiss. “I heard it was the Caseres,” she told him.
He nodded. “Everyone at their villa.”
Tava shook her head. “They were good folks. I learned my letters with two of their grandsons. None of them deserved any of this.”
“We’ll make them pay. Arachnoids hate sunlight and travel only at night. They couldn’t have made it to the farmhouse and back to the mountains last night, so they are holed up somewhere nearby. I couldn’t follow their tracks, but you can.”
“I’m sure she can,” Nadia said, approaching them while also giving Desmond and Alba a wide berth. “But has it occurred to anybody that this might be a trap?”
Nadia Morganna
Level 5 Sorceress
Health 53 Mana 163(203) Endurance 74
“The Elf is right,” Alba said before she somersaulted away from Desmond’s shoulders. “Not even a drunken fool strikes a blow and expects no reaction. They provoked us to a fight. I’d wager they expect to win it.”
Hawke wanted to disagree with both of them, but he couldn’t. The raid could well be designed to trick Orom’s defenders into an ambush.
“Well, if it is a trap, we’ll have to smash our way out of it,” he said instead.
“You are very brave,” Tava told him.
“And very handsome,” Nadia added.
Desmond grinned. “Oh, I know the next line. And very stupid!”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Hawke said after everyone was done laughing at him. If he was ever in danger of letting his new position as Prefect go to his head, all he had to do was spend some quality time with his friends.
“I’ll track them down,” Tava said. “We will on our guard. Alba should follow us from a distance, using her abilities to be out of sight. If something goes wrong and she cannot help us, at the very least she can go for help.”
“I was going to suggest something like that anyway.”
“Or,” Desmond said. “We could get Korgam and his boys to join in. Eleven is better than six.”
Hawke shook his head. “I want them in Orom, in case this is a feint and they try something while we’re away. Between Kinto and Korgam’s people, the town should be safe.”
“Fair enough.”
“Father will not be easily fooled,” Gosto said. The Druid had done a lot of growing up in the past month, but he still trusted his father with the conviction of someone younger than sixteen.
Gosto Kintes (Human)
Level 7 Druid
Health 123 Mana 245 Endurance 176
Hawke included everyone except Alba into his Party Interface. She would be able to do so after she reached fifth level.
You have formed an Adventurers’ Party: all members gain a 10% bonus to all tasks, ability or spell effects, damage, and morale.
As a Party Leader, Level Ten or higher, you can choose to devote a percentage of the Party’s XP towards developing Leadership Abilities.
Assign XP? Y/N
He selected ‘Yes’ and a new prompt asked him to select a percentage. He figured ten percent wouldn’t kill anyone and it would have long-term benefits.
“Anything else? Okay, let’s go get them.”
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