Troll Nation (The Rogue Dungeon Book 3)
Author: James Hunter; Eden Hudson
Date: 2019-06-10 16:00:00+00:00
Keywords: cyberpunk apocalyptic dystopian quest gamelit; s adventure video game adaptations wizard; action horror dark epic metaphysical dungeon core; wizard mage shapeshifter warrior thief assassin; men&#8217
Description: Build. Evolve. Conquer. The dawn of the Troll Nation has begun … Roark von Graf—former noble and hedge-mage, current mid-level mob in a MMORPG—has taken down the Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel, but the battle has only started. Lowen, right hand to the Tyrant King, has come to Hearthworld, and he is building an army of his own. Worse, Lowen and company have taken over one of the most powerful dungeons in the game, The Vault of the Radiant Shield. Even as a Jotnar and a newly minted Dungeon Lord, Roark is supremely outclassed and he bloody well knows it. If he's going to weather what's to com
Publisher: Shadow Alley Press

Table of Contents

Summary

Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

Bloody Recon

Griefer Blues

Clockwork Killing Machine

Path to Progress

Never Gonna Give You Up

Marketplace Intrigue

Mai’s Tale

Beneath the Hood

Transmute Magick

The Hero Sieve

Rock Eggs

Favors

Legion of Sticklers

Misdirection

A Barge of Scoundrels

The Floating Isle

Blankets, Blankets, Blankets

A Handsome Profit

Septic Brewmaster

Co-Conspirator

A Bargain Struck

Life’s a Grind

Final Form

Troll Nation

Wheeling and Dealing

Battle Plan

Board Meeting from Hell

Caged Animals

Arena Ambush

Crossover

The Outcast’s Tale

The Grand Inquisition

Change of Heart

Moving Pieces

Bro_Fo Bait

Karma’s a Bitch

Home Field Advantage

The Hero Falls

The Grand Prize

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

Viridian Gate Online: Expanded Universe

Books by Shadow Alley Press
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GameLit on Facebook

Even more LitRPG on Facebook

Copyright

About the Author

About the Publisher

Summary

BUILD. EVOLVE. CONQUER. The dawn of the Troll Nation has begun ...

Roark von Graf—former noble and hedge-mage, current mid-level mob in a MMORPG—has taken down the Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel, but the battle has only started.

Lowen, right hand to the Tyrant King, has come to Hearthworld, and he is building an army of his own. Worse, Lowen and company have taken over one of the most powerful dungeons in the game, The Vault of the Radiant Shield. Even as a Jotnar and a newly minted Dungeon Lord, Roark is supremely outclassed and he bloody well knows it. If he’s going to weather what’s to come and topple the Tyrant King, he’ll have to unlock the secrets of the stolen World Stone Pendant, master his new Hexorcist class, form some very unlikely allies, and most important ... Grief some heroes. Let the games begin!

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Bloody Recon

THE VAULT OF THE RADIANT Shield was located in a sand- and wind-blasted wasteland of brilliant red rock towers that stretched up into the sky like a stone forest. Roark von Graf, most commonly known in Hearthworld as Roark the Griefer—the newly minted Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel—stood on the top of one such formation with Kaz, Zyra, and Griff. A brutal breeze pounded at him from the back, the edges of his cloak fluttering like mad as grit and dust bit at his exposed skin.

“That’s it,” Griff said, gesturing a scar-crossed hand at a golden structure built on the tallest of the towers in the distance. “Atop that hoodoo there.”

The sparkling ovoid structure had been built around the top of the rocky spire like one of the massive soldier wasp nests, which slowly took over trees back on the steppes of Traisbin. It was an opulent thing of gold, white marble, flying buttresses, peaked archways, and opal inlays that glittered brightly enough to make him squint even at this distance. Glinting winged figures, no larger than wasps from this far away, flitted in and out of holes in the sides of the Vault, completing the illusion of a massive hive.

Beside Roark, Kaz shaded his onyx eyes from the last rays of the sun and leaned toward the golden edifice. “What are those little dots?”

“Malaika Heralds,” Griff answered, clutching a bronze spyglass in his gnarled hand. He handed the glass over to the Gourmet Chef, Roark’s second-in-command. “They’re the ones I was telling you about, Griefer. Final evolution—and named—every single one of them.”

Roark scowled at the winged shapes darting through the air. Griff had been the first of them to scout out Lowen’s base of operations. When the weapons trainer had reported back that each and every creature in the Vault of the Radiant Shield was a named mob—a term Griff had taught Roark for the monsters native to Hearthworld’s landscape—the creeping suspicion Roark had that he was running out of time before things with Lowen came to a head had turned into a certainty. Worse yet, when Griff had rattled off a few of the names, Roark recognized them from home.

His true home, Traisbin, a world away.

Viago, Marek Konig Ustar’s favorite berserker. Vittoria, chief of the Tyrant King’s Inquisitors. Barazel, one of the most vicious mages in Marek’s ranks.

Somehow, Marek’s right-hand mage, Lowen von Reich, was transplanting warriors from the Tyrant King’s forces to Hearthworld. It was this revelation that had forced Roark to risk coming to the Vault himself. He had to see it with his own eyes. Had to know how Lowen was doing it.

“I don’t like it,” Zyra said, fiddling with her enchanted wrist wrappings. In the fiery sunset, the Reaver Champion’s toxic armor seemed to glow black, a stark contrast to the snowy white ringlets spilling from her hood. “They’ve got the flight advantage, and without wings, there’s only one way in.” She motioned at the wide stairs spiraling up and up and up the side of the rock tower. “And you can bet they’ve got a guard watching that at all times. It’s suicide.”

“Not for us,” Roark muttered. “Let’s go. We aren’t learning anything standing out here.”

The four of them climbed back down the rocky protrusion to the dozen high-level heroes waiting impatiently for them at the base.

As they approached, a golden-hued elf in black robes studded with emeralds stepped out to greet them. The nameplate [Braind_Fish] floated above her circleted head.

“Well, Reb, what do you think?” she asked Roark.

In his Troll form, Roark stood eleven feet tall—a ghostly pale Jotnar Defiler with twisting violet tattoos, glowing the length of his arms, and a pair of leathery wings hanging uselessly from his shoulder blades. But thanks to the World Stone Pendant around his neck, he had the ability to cast an Illusion Cloak on himself once a day. What the heroes saw approaching was not the Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel, but the lean, olive-skinned human Roark had been before jumping through the portal into Hearthworld. The illusion also hid his name under the spidery white text [Rebel_of_Korvo], which Braind_Fish seemed inclined to shorten to Reb whenever she spoke to him.

“The stairs are the only entrance accessible from the ground, but they’re hardly watching it,” Roark replied. “With your shroud magick covering us on the approach, we should be able to steal in without being attacked.”

“Saddle up, guys,” Braind_Fish said, nodding to the other heroes. “We got Heralds to kill.”

The elf, a level 31 Gravepriest, had them get into formation, then began to weave her hands in a series of intricate motions. Glowing sigils appeared in the air, a host of complicated spells—one to shield the party from Detect Life spells, another which acted as a Stealth multiplier, and even one for partial invisibility. Roark paid special attention to the sigils as she worked, curious as to how she was inscribing them on the air itself. Obviously her magick was a distant relation of Enchanting, one of his own Trade Skills, perhaps a form of Hexing. Certainly something to look into.

While she finished the Shroud, Roark settled himself at the outside edge of the group, just behind Kaz and to the left of Griff.

Already being human, Griff hadn’t needed disguising before they came on this mission, and Zyra was similarly easy. With her willowy body and the hood covering her face and the onyx recurved horns poking up from the top of her head, she could pass for a duskier-skinned version of a dark elf.

Kaz had been the tricky one.

He’d recently undergone his final evolutionary transformation, taking on the form of a Thursr Knight. And at nearly fifteen feet tall with blue-black skin and fists bigger than Roark’s head, the Troll Knight would never have passed for even the largest of Rogs. It had taken Roark most of a day to perfect the curse on the O-Rogiri armor Kaz was wearing for this mission. When worn as a set, it decreased the wearer’s size and strength by a full 30%. A devastating price for most of the heroes who roamed Hearthworld, but a negligible loss for the Mighty Gourmet.

Once again, his skill as a Hexorcist had proven to be invaluable beyond measure. Yes, it required Roark to think outside of the box, but that was precisely what he was best at.

Once the shroud was cast and the signal from Braind_Fish given, Zyra and a level 28 Blackguard Rogue disappeared into the darkness, scouting ahead for traps and ambushes. The rest of the party followed behind, winding through the forest of rock formations.

As they made their approach, the sun disappeared below the tower-studded horizon, and the sky darkened to deep purple. Overhead, the darting of winged shapes continued, but against the darkened sky, the creatures left streaky light trails behind them that faded slowly. Beautiful to be sure, but not ideal for stealth. Roark thought if he had a crossbow with appropriate range, it would be a simple matter to pick them off. Even better, a heavy ballista—or several—set up on one of the adjacent rock towers could have devastating effect if employed correctly.

He stowed that thought away for later.

Full dark fell as suddenly as if someone had snuffed out a candle, and then it happened...

The hive-like Vault began to glow a dazzling white gold like an oil lamp in the night. The gleam illuminated the canyon floor around the red rock tower, throwing long shadows in every direction.

Roark’s breath caught in his chest at the sight, and Kaz gasped audibly. It was a breathtaking display. It was also going to be a nightmare to sneak up on. Braind_Fish’s Shroud had better be damned good if she wanted her party to make it within a hundred yards of the Vault’s spire.

Either the elf’s Shroud was powerful enough to hide them all or the Heralds in the Vault preferred not to attack until their prey had been coaxed onto the spiraling staircase, because they made it to the first step untouched.

Zyra and the Blackguard Rogue appeared.

“The steps are clear of traps,” Zyra announced, pitching her voice low to avoid attracting unwanted attention from above.

“You checked all the way to the top?” Braind_Fish asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Three-quarters.” The Rogue offered a lopsided shrug. “We couldn’t go higher without being seen.”

If there were any shadows up there, Zyra could have, Roark knew, but he kept his mouth shut. They were supposed to be nothing more than mid- to high-level heroes, and as far as they knew, heroes didn’t have Shadow Stalk.

The elf nodded as she considered this. “Any kind of platform up there or will we have to run into the first room blind to keep from pushing each other off the stairs?”

“There’s a half-moon-shaped platform surrounding the entrance,” the Rogue said. “Probably ten by twenty.”

“All righty then,” Braind_Fish said, rubbing her hands together. “I want tanks first, two by two, followed by DPS. All us squishy spell casters, we’re bringing up the rear. And make sure you’re aiming. We’re gonna be in tough enough shit without hemorrhaging HP to friendly fire.” She glanced at Zyra and the Rogue. “Once we make it to the platform, you two stealth off and see if you can’t clear the first room for us. Everybody got it?”

The group muttered an affirmative, then began shifting into the new formation, bulwarks of muscle like Kaz moving to the front. Roark found his place a few rows back beside a level 28 Wrath Ronin and pulled out his Bow of the Fleet-Fingered Hunter. The comforting weight of a full quiver immediately settled against his back.

Under normal circumstances, Roark preferred slinging spells to firing arrows, but on this excursion, he was posing as a level 15 Archer. Other than the exploding tips he’d cursed specifically for this mission, he didn’t plan on using anything that might give them away as Trolls. Not until he had to, anyway.

“Let’s move,” Braind_Fish said, her tone firm and ready, but pitched low enough to avoid drawing attention from above.

The troop began the climb up the spiral, weapons in hand. Armor clinked and creaked softly, fabric rustled, and boots scuffed against the steps, the sounds strangely muted beneath the elf’s Shroud. Below, the ground began to fall away, at first a few yards down, then a few dozen, then what seemed like a hundred. Having grown up in the mountains, climbing pitched slopes and sheer rock faces, the height was nothing of great note to Roark. The Wrath Ronin beside him, however, paled visibly and inched farther and farther from the edge until he was nearly touching shoulders with Roark.

They were less than a dozen yards from the top, the ground a faraway dream at the bottom of a dizzying drop, when someone behind Roark sneezed.

Roark cringed. The sound bounced off the formations, echoing back to them even louder than the original.

“What the hell, Richard?” someone hissed.

Richard sniffed. “It’s allergy season.”

“Ever heard of Clearezitin?”

“Ever heard of mind your own business?”

“Shut it,” Braind_Fish snapped in a sharp whisper.

Flitting shadows overhead caught Roark’s eye.

It was not a flock of glowing Malaika Heralds, he saw as they dipped into the light, but a drove of stony beasts that looked as if they had been carved out of white marble. The creatures had razor-sharp tusks poking out of a boar’s mouth, wide marble chests tapering down to clawed feet, and the hunched back and muscular haunches of an enormous toad. Improbable wings of stone stretched up from the creature’s back, then flattened, sending them diving, tusks-first, toward the heroes.

Just above their heads floated spidery white text declaring them [Gargoyles].

“Overhead!” Roark shouted, lifting his bow and spinning to follow the dive of the closest creature.

The heroes turned their combined weaponry against the sky. Roark released his first shot amid a flurry of multicolored spells and thrown spears. His arrow slammed into the shoulder of a [Lesser Watching Gargoyle], detonating on impact and sending down a rain of pebbles.

All around him, heroes shouted spells and swung axes, staves, or swords. Throwing knives and ice javelins peppered the air, accompanied by a bevy of arrows.

Seeing that the Gargoyles had quite a bit of Health in their red bars, Roark switched to firing off two and three of his cursed arrows at a time. Each one struck stone with a boom like thunder and tore away handfuls of life from the flying stone beasts. Dust and chunks of rock poured down from above. Kaz and the biggest warriors were out of Roark’s sight just around the curve of the tower, but he had no trouble hearing the Mighty Gourmet give a wordless bellow. Lucky Kaz had remembered he couldn’t use his accustomed war cry, FOR THE SALT.

“Backs against the rock!” Griff roared over the frantic chaos of the attack. “Put your backs against the rock!”

Roark followed the weapon trainer’s advice, retreating a handful of paces until he was pressed to the gritty red surface of the tower. Most of the heroes, however, seemed too preoccupied with fighting the Gargoyles to hear or follow suit. Sloppy teamwork—undisciplined. No wonder these heroes were so easy to grief. A level 30 Bog Witch fired off a trio of blue-green fireballs from his Twisted Root Staff, not realizing a [Vigilant Gargoyle] was swooping down behind him. A moment later, the Vigilant slammed into the Bog Witch’s spine, knocking him off the stairs. His scream echoed up from below for several long seconds before he went silent.

As Roark spun to follow a [Lesser Watching Gargoyle] across the sky, he caught sight of Griff thrusting his old one-handed shortsword up into another stone beast’s momentarily exposed belly. The creature let out a piercing squeal, and ruby-encrusted entrails slopped from the wound. With a triumphant shout, Griff pounded his sword against his buckler and swung around to find another adversary.

A few steps above Roark, a level 26 NecroKnight screamed as she was swarmed by four Gargoyles at once. Roark peppered the largest and most vicious of them with arrows, pecking away at the beast’s Health and blowing craters into the creature’s granite hide, but he couldn’t kill it fast enough. The NecroKnight’s Health bar flashed out a warning, then hit zero just before she tumbled off the stairs into the empty air, surrounded by a halo of red.

The Gargoyle banked around and darted for Roark. Forcing himself not to rush and do something stupid like drop his arrows, Roark nocked a trio of shafts and leveled his bow, aiming the centermost arrow at the spot just between the creature’s eyes. The Gargoyle opened its tusked maw and let out a porcine screech.

Roark loosed.

The arrows smashed into the Gargoyle’s face, the explosion blowing its eyes and half its head away. Chunks of marble pelted Roark, but with a deft sidestep, he avoided being crushed by the falling stone body.

Zyra and the Blackguard Rogue appeared on the steps leading to the entrance.

“First room’s clear!” the Rogue shouted.

“Get inside!” Braind_Fish hollered, a line of brilliant crimson running down the side of her face. A reanimated Vigilant Gargoyle skewered by a multitude of ice javelins flapped and hovered by her side, a sphere of sickly green light enveloping it. As another Lesser Watching Gargoyle tried to attack, the elf’s necrotic servant ripped it to pieces. “Shake your tail feathers, people! We’ll get the rest on the way out!”

It wasn’t a wise call, Roark thought. If they couldn’t manage to dispatch the lesser creatures guarding the outside of the Vault, he didn’t know what the elf thought they could do to the higher-level ones inside.

Nonetheless, he pressed his back to the curved wall once more and began running sideways up the remaining stairs, firing off one exploding arrow after another. He had only crafted a few dozen for this scouting mission, and he was nearly out. Roark fired off his last, then turned on his heel and bolted for the gallery sheltering a wide, hexagonal opening.

As he sprinted into the Vault, Kaz and a beefy level 29 Executioner heaved shut a massive golden door. The answering metallic boom bounced off the shining golden walls of the room.

As soon as the door was shut, the Gargoyles outside seemed to lose interest in the party. A flaw in the Vault’s defense strategy, one that Lowen must not have seen fit to correct yet.

Safe inside, Roark gravitated toward Kaz and Griff.

“Kaz has never fought Gargoyles before,” the Mighty Gourmet whispered to Roark, excitement glimmering in his onyx eyes. “The way they shatter, it is very satisfying.”

“That it is,” Griff agreed, rotating his sword shoulder as if to loosen a cramp. “Shame mobs can’t gain Experience from killin’ other mobs. Otherwise, we might’ve got ourselves a few levels outta that little skirmish. Wasn’t a one of ’em under level 10. And a few were a mite bit higher, I’d wager.”

In the center of the room, Braind_Fish spoke with Zyra and the Rogue in low tones. A moment later, the stealthy pair slipped toward the far wall, where an opening stretched from floor to ceiling. An accommodation for the flying and walking alike.

“Regroup,” Braind_Fish announced to the party. She nodded to an Arcane Battle Cleric and a Lifeblood Monk. “Patch up everybody you can and buff us good, then top off your Magicka. We need to be in fighting shape if we’re going to clear this place.”

While Roark’s filigreed Health vial was being refilled, he studied the vestibule. The white-gold walls and floors emanated that bright glow from within. Even more illumination shined down from rose windows set into the ceilings, their shimmering glass scenes depicting gorgeous winged women who shined like the sun. There wasn’t a shadow in the place. Roark found himself squinting. After all that time spent down in the lower levels of the Cruel Citadel, his eyes had become sensitive to so much light.

A commotion echoed through the massive floor-to-ceiling doorway at the far end of the room. Weapons and spells leapt into hands. Roark traded his bow for a Superior Falchion of Ice, snowy crystals falling silently from the blade. It wasn’t his Slender Rapier, but it would handle nearly as well, and if he died and it was the item he dropped, he wouldn’t feel any compunction about leaving it behind to be looted from his corpse.

Running footsteps and the rustle of feathered wings grew louder and louder until Zyra sprinted into the room. She was alone, no sign of the Rogue.

“Heralds!” she shouted.

A split second later, three humanoid figures with vast feathered wings darted into the vestibule after her. Ranged attacks flew, but the Heralds avoided them easily.

One, a woman with tawny hair and ocher wings, carrying a pair of flaming scimitars, dove toward Zyra’s back while the other two shot in from the sides with shining halberds. Zyra tucked herself into a roll, narrowly avoiding the blow, which would’ve taken her head from her shoulders in one clean slice. Roark sidestepped Zyra, then lunged for the closest of the halberd-wielding Heralds.

Just before his icy falchion made contact, Roark saw the nameplate over the herald—[Nitola]. A popular girl’s name in Traisbin, though he didn’t recognize this woman’s face. His blade scored a gash down her side and molten gold dribbled from the wound, but her Health bar barely dropped a sliver.

This Nitola wheeled in the air and darted back toward Roark. He pulled his body out of line at the last moment, executing a perfect mandritto riverso, but the Herald’s halberd changed directions faster than he could. Its shining edge bit into his thigh, nearly snapping the long bone in two. His leg buckled, pain flaring up and down the appendage.

And his filigreed Health vial dropped by a quarter.

Nitola plunged again, deadly point of the halberd screaming toward Roark’s sternum. Roark pivoted sharply, knocking the attack aside with his off hand, then swiping a descending cut, fendente dalla spalla, at her overextended wing. Feathers were sheared off, accompanied by droplets of purest gold.

Nearly too late, Roark saw the ochre-winged Herald with the flaming scimitars was darting in to his left at the same time. The first attack had been to distract him from the second.

Roark spun and threw up an Infernal shield with his off hand. It would give him away as a Troll if any of the heroes was paying attention, but there was nothing to be done for that. He couldn’t die and go off for respawn leaving his friends in this death trap.

But the ochre-winged Herald blew through the violet barrier as if it weren’t there at all.

Roark had just enough time to think, Because Divine creatures aren’t affected by Infernal spells, before the flaming scimitar chopped into his shoulder. Fire sizzled in the carved muscle, and red drained from his Health vial. He was down to fifty percent. Even with his incredible Defiler’s HP-regen rate, this was a fight he couldn’t survive.

Suddenly, the clash of combat around the room filtered through the tunnel vision he’d developed. Heroes were falling left and right under the Divine creatures’ swift, brutal attacks. Worse yet, the number of their enemies had doubled. Where there had been three, there were now six winged angels of death swarming the party, and they were doing more damage than half the Trolls in the Cruel Citadel put together could’ve done.

As he watched, even more Heralds poured through the floor-to-ceiling door like those same soldier wasps when someone disturbed their nest. Most of the names hovering over their heads were common to Roark’s home world. He recognized one face—a bearded, scarred man that he’d last seen trying to chop him in half with a massive battle-axe in the tunnels beneath his family’s former home the night he tried to assassinate the Tyrant King.

Roark spun, searching the vestibule. Zyra wasn’t doing much better than he was, fighting as hard to avoid being hit as she was to score a single strike on the Herald she was facing off against. Much slower than either her or Roark, Kaz was limping along at less than a third of his Health, and Griff was holding on by the barest of threads, his red bar flashing out a critical warning.

If they stayed, they were all going to die.

Roark triggered his Infernal Invigoration, and an umbrella of claret-colored light dropped over the weapons trainer’s shoulders and healed him back up to half a Health bar before anything else could touch him.

“Zyra, Kaz, Griff!” Roark thundered, the sharp edge of his voice carrying over the din of battle. He dug into his Inventory and pulled out a single-use portal scroll. It was time to beat a judicious retreat.

When Roark broke the seal on the scroll, a sparkling blue portal opened in midair. Zyra was the first to dive through, not even a heartbeat of hesitation in her steps. Griff charged through behind her, his wiry arms pumping, his chest heaving with effort. Braind_Fish, the elf leading this party, turned just in time to see Kaz backpedal away from a cackling Herald and into the shimmering portal.

“Hey, what the balls?” she yelled, eyes locking on Roark, her face twisting in a combination of fury and outrage.

“We’re bowing out gracefully before we’re murdered,” Roark answered. “Thanks for covering our retreat, mate. We won’t forget your sacrifice.”

“You dick!” she screeched, aiming an open palm at him.

Roark jumped into the portal before she could fire the spell at him.

As the usual sensations of chill wind and being taken apart and put back together of Hearthworld portals replaced the burning flush of fighting, the ugly truth settled in Roark’s gut. Lowen was mobilizing for an attack, and with that many combatants already in place, he had to be nearly ready. Even with the help of every Troll in the Cruel Citadel, there was no way Roark could hold him off.

Griefer Blues

SCOTT BAYANI UNLOCKED and shouldered open the door of his shitty studio apartment, tossed his keys onto the kitchen table, and flung his Taco Bell visor across the dark room. It landed on the couch beside his InfiniTab, triggering the motion sensor alert system. A gorgeous, naked redhead flashed to life in midair. The holograph flickered slightly as Scott walked through it, peeling off his uniform shirt.

“Hey, sexy,” the redhead purred, tousling her long hair and batting heavy eyelids at him, “you have eight unread notifications from today. Would you like me to read—”

“Delete,” Scott snapped.

“Are you sure?” she purred, rubbing a hand along her chest.

“Yes,” he replied flatly, hardly noticing or caring about the holograph.

The notifications would all be from his stupid guild anyway wanting to know where the hell PwnrBwner had been for the last week. Or it would be Kelly and Kevin wanting him to help power-level their alts or get some stupid enchanted armor.

He shook his head. It was all so fucking stupid. Just a fucking game.

Well, Scott Bayani wasn’t playing anymore.

For all he cared, PwnrBwner_OG and his various alts could rot away in the limbo of unused characters. Let the wonder twins and everybody in his guild waste their pathetic lives in a made-up world where nothing you did mattered, and you never got any closer to winning because some modding asshole fucking cheated you at the last second. Sometimes it was a sudden evolution and overpowered spells that weren’t even a part of the game. Sometimes it was exploding weaponized severed heads. But it was always bullshit.

Scott emptied his pockets on the table, then shucked out of the rest of his clothes and left them where they fell. He needed a shower. He stunk like ground-up Chihuahua meat and the Bell’s All-New Baja Blast Twists.

“All right, sexy,” the redhead said. “Eight unread notifications deleted. Is there anything else I can—”

“No,” he said without looking over his shoulder. “Go back to sleep. No, you know what? Shut down. All the way.”

There was no reason to keep it on. He wasn’t going to be logging in anytime soon.

“Okay, sexy,” the redhead said. “Shutting down. I’ll miss you.”

The apartment went dark.

“Yeah, well, I won’t miss you,” Scott grumbled, stepping into his tiny bathroom. He had to turn sideways and edge between the toilet and the sink to get to the shower. “Probably sell you to somebody too dumb to know what a waste you are.”

He cranked the shower knob. Of course the hot water was still broken. That lazy-ass super was probably waiting around until Scott complained to the building manager again. Well, he wouldn’t have to wait long. One freezing shower and Scott would be good and ready to spam them both with complaints. Not that anybody would do anything about it. That was one thing Hearthworld and the real world had in common: a severe lack of people doing their jobs to fix the problems that came up.

Scott held his breath, shielded his junk, and ducked into the icy spray. He’d tried to brace himself for the cold, but let out a shriek anyway as it pelted his chest.

Welcome to reality. Working shitty hours to pay for a shitty apartment where you couldn’t even get a hot shower. No awesome magic flying from your gauntleted fists, no slaying hordes of evil monsters in kick-ass combat, no feeling of accomplishment from leveling up.

But also no cheating griefers.

He shivered as he raced through washing his hair. His fingertips were starting to tingle, and it felt like his skin was on fire.

Life was a system of tradeoffs, and it turned out they all sucked. But as long as that dickface Roark was out of the equation, Scott was happy.

Well, maybe not happy. Whatever he was, at least he didn’t have to listen to that fake-ass pirate accent snarking out stupid lines that ended in mate. Man, what he wouldn’t give to punch the life out of that smug Troll face with his bare hands just once—

But no. That kind of thinking just made shit worse. He was so done. That modding punk could find somebody else to kick around, because Scott Bayani was never going back.

He shut off the water with almost-numb hands, sidestepped out of the bathroom, and toweled off.

The sun was coming up outside his dirt-encrusted window, the weak light beginning to illuminate the dumpy couch, clothing-strewn floors, and old pizza boxes. Scott sighed with a combination of disgust and resignation, then began the search for some sweats that didn’t need to be washed yet.

This was his life now. Time to get used to it.

Clockwork Killing Machine

ROARK SAT DRUMMING his fingers on the arm of the carved onyx throne in the Keep, the Cruel Citadel’s lowest level. Though the Dungeon Lord’s throne was massive—made to accommodate a fully winged Jotnar Exarch half again the size of Roark’s Defiler evolution—he perched on the edge of the seat. A snoring Young Turtle Dragon was curled around him, taking up the space between him and the seat back.

Mac’s evolution had taken him from three hundred pounds of sticky, fat-padded Stone Salamander to five hundred pounds of wicked-looking spiked shell, dark ever-shifting scales, and venomous scorpial stinger. The sleeping creature chirped muzzily, stretching out his legs and accidentally slicing a series of claw marks into Roark’s boiled leather armor with his razor-sharp talons.

Roark glanced down at the slashes without really seeing them.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. Griff had said that Malaika was the final evolution for Heralds, their most powerful form, and that had proven more than true in the battle. If Braind_Fish’s party of heroes had attacked the Citadel instead, it would have taken at least twice as many Trolls to defeat them. And that was if the Trolls utilized the many traps and ambush points Roark had modified the Citadel to contain. Lowen’s Heralds had attacked them in an open chamber—no traps, no tricks, no confined spaces—and massacred them with sheer brute force.

It was much like Lowen’s spell writing. Overwhelming power, but no finesse. There had to be a way to use that against him.

Idly, Roark opened his mystic grimoire and turned to the Troll Evolution chart before finally selecting the ribbon marked Character.

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HE WAS A FULL 9 LEVELS away from his final evolution. At 36, he would have to choose between Exarch—the Jotnar path of physical strength—and Infernali—the path of Infernali Magick. Not much of a dilemma there. With his Hexorcist abilities, Infernali would undoubtedly open up an untold wealth of devious, lethal new curses. Roark had never seen an Infernali in person—none of the Trolls in the Cruel Citadel had—so he had no idea what to expect. But if the Infernali form was even half as formidable as Azibek’s Exarch form had been, he would be a leviathan of power.

Even so, that might not be enough to defeat Lowen. And if by some miracle Roark did manage to kill the ass, Lowen would just respawn in two hours like every other mob in Hearthworld. And not just Lowen, but the fighting force he’d brought into this world as well. The ensuing war would be endless until one of them figured out a way to kill the other forever. That or until Lowen found a way to break Hearthworld’s soulbound magic and take back the World Stone Pendant from Roark, which was the real reason the Tyrant King was so interested in this place.

That pendant, stolen from the Marek, utilized powers Roark still didn’t fully understand, but clearly it was worth waging an interdimensional war for. Roark strongly suspected that he’d ended up in Hearthworld partly because of the pendant, though that begged the question: how in the seven bloody hells had Lowen managed to follow him here?

Such a magical feat shouldn’t have been possible. And bringing through a small army of the Tyrant King’s underlings? Inconceivable. In Traisbin, portal magic was treacherously unreliable. Even the simplest portal spell was as likely to drop the caster into the mouth of a bubbling volcano or in midair several thousand feet above the ground as it was to deposit them unharmed a few miles shy of their target. It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow Lowen had done it. If Roark could find out how he’d managed it, maybe he could force Lowen back through to Traisbin, where he could be properly and permanently killed.

Then it would be on to finish Marek.

Roark smirked. He was getting ahead of himself. The arbitrary magicks that governed Hearthworld wouldn’t even allow him to write a portal powerful enough to attempt the trip back to Traisbin until he was able to cast level 9 spells, which was still a ways off. With his new Evolution and the Carved Ebony Wand he’d looted from a hero’s corpse, he had ten level 1 spell slots—the maximum number—six level 2’s, five level 3’s, two level 4’s, and a single level 5 spell slot. Most likely he wouldn’t see level 9 until Infernali. To get there would mean endless hours of griefing, hexing, crafting, and spell-slinging.

Of course, if he wasn’t Dungeon Lord, it would take him much, much longer to fight his way up to level 36. Now, he gained the effect Dungeon Lord’s Tax—for every hero killed in the Cruel Citadel, he received one percent of the Experience points. Better still, he earned an additional portion of experience from all heroes killed with the cursed weapons he’d made. With cursed weapons scattered absolutely everywhere in the Cruel Citadel, those points mounted quickly.

He switched over to the Dungeon Lord’s Grimoire to check on the current griefing rotation.

A group of low- to mid-level heroes was being processed in the corridors of the first floor, which Roark had turned into an intricate sorting mechanism to channel heroes on to the appropriate dungeon level. It looked as if Druz—the new First Floor Overseer he’d appointed—and her honor guard had already reduced the party, killing off the two highest-leveled warriors and leaving the corpses in the mazelike halls. Now the overseer and her underlings were filtering the remaining heroes toward a staircase connected to the second floor. There, the heroes would be decimated by a squad of Changelings fighting toward their first Evolution.

Roark used the Dungeon Lord’s Grimoire to switch views, checking to ensure that the Changeling raiding team was safely in position down on the second floor. Perfect. One lanky limbed, potbellied Troll was waiting just on the other side of a hidden punji-pit. The rest were secreted away in niches a little farther down the dark corridor, ready to spring out and finish off whatever the poison-coated sticks didn’t. And while they were taking care of that party and marking the corpses for griefing, Druz and the first-floor honor guard would return topside to process the next group of heroes.

Meanwhile, down on the third floor, a squad of newly evolved Thursrs and Reavers were taking apart the remains of a midlevel party trying to fight their way out of a massive acid pit while the bubbling liquid ate away at their flesh and Health in equal measure.

Roark smiled. He was particularly fond of that trap.

An explosion lit up the fourth floor, and a double portion of Experience points filtered in to Roark. One of the Brute Thursrs on griefing duty down there had just killed a fairly high-level War Druid with a cursed head of Roark’s design.

Roark switched views once more, just in time to watch a set of spring-loaded spear traps impale the remaining heroes, skewering them in place while Elite Reavers and Brute Thursrs cut them to pieces. The heroes tried to fight back, of course, but they were beaten. The trap destroyed their last glimmer of hope for a favorable outcome, and the griefing squad mopped them up handily, spilling blood and hewing limbs with pitiful ease. When the last drop of red drained from the final hero’s Health bar, the Trolls began the process of looting and marking the bodies for griefing so the heroes could be killed again if they came back for their dropped belongings.

The sheer, beautiful efficiency of the new griefing mechanism distracted Roark from brooding over Lowen. It worked like the perfectly fitted gears of a clock. Roark had stripped out the first floor and left nothing but a mazelike warren of tunnels and hidden passageways so Druz and her special teams could wear the heroes down and sort them into the appropriate staircase for their levels. Five sets of stairs descended into the Citadel, each letting out onto one of the primary floors, where a myriad of illusions, curses, deadly traps, and murderous Trolls in various states of Evolution waited for them.

Kaz’s kitchen, Zyra’s laboratory, the library, smithy, training rooms, and living quarters Roark had moved down to the fifth floor within easy reach of the Keep. There were a few issues with this setup, of course, the biggest being that it cannibalized the entire first floor. No one could live or fight there because he needed all the available Floor Management Points just to make the tunnels, trapdoors, and staircases work.

Which, in turn, forced all the first-floor Trolls down to the second floor with Wurgfozz’s lot ... an arrangement neither the Changelings nor their larger comrades were fond of. The Trolls of the Cruel Citadel had only been working as a team for little under a month. Many still harbored hard feelings from the backstabbing and infighting which had been the norm before Roark overthrew the former Dungeon Lord.

Once Roark found a way to solve that last spacing hiccup, though, the Citadel would be a truly elegant griefing machine.

Still, in spite of the minor growing pains and occasional petty revenge assassination, Roark was proud of how well the Trolls were adapting to this new way of life. They had come a long way in such a short time, and for the most part, they were working together with startling cohesion. So well, in fact, that the Cruel Citadel had been upgraded from a Tier Seven dungeon—out of only seven—to a Tier Six, attracting new, more powerful sets of heroes. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Roark focused on the ribbon marked Dungeon Stats, a function he’d found the day after acquiring the throne, and checked the Dungeon Leaderboard.

Hearthworld was a massive place, home to more than a thousand dungeons. The Vault of the Radiant Shield was still in the far distant lead, with several times the kills of its closest rival and an average of less than one mob death per day. Damned near unbeatable numbers. The Cruel Citadel was nowhere near the bottom of the list, due in large part to Roark’s leadership, but it wasn’t even within screaming distance of Lowen’s dungeon. The Citadel was, however, quickly gaining on the dungeon just ahead of them—Blighted Soul Hollow.

If they continued to rise through the rankings at this rate, it wouldn’t be long before they were upgraded to a Tier Five.

The problem was, even if the Citadel maintained this upward progress, there was still no way they could defeat Lowen’s dungeon. Roark had spent a day studying Deadliest Catch–Exhaustive Field Guide to the Mobs of the Vast Barren Hearthworld, a book he’d turned up in the library. Troll abilities, even at the top Evolution, barely began to touch Heralds’. One on one, they’d be massacred as soundly as those heroes had been.

Seven hells. No matter how he looked at it, Lowen had the upper hand.

Something Griff had said to Roark once before ran through his mind: If I was up against somethin’ too big to defeat alone, I’d get an opponent to team up. At least ’til we killed the bigger threat.

Sound advice, which had worked admirably against Azibek the Cruel—former Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel.

Roark’s eyes scanned the leaderboard again. If he could find a way to make allies out of a few of the other more powerful dungeons, perhaps they could all work together to grind Lowen and his forces down until Roark found a way to kill the bastard permanently. Not a great plan, but he saw no other way forward. He drummed his fingers once more, resuming his endless brooding. There just had to be a way. The question was how?

Path to Progress

USING THE TELEPATHY function of the Dungeon Lord’s throne, Roark contacted Kaz, Zyra, and Griff and told them to meet in the kitchen. Kaz was already there when Roark arrived. The Knight Thursr was nuzzling noses with Mai, the buxom young widow they had hired to train interested Trolls in the artistry of Cooking. Though it had initially looked as if there would be bloodshed between the two when Mai had insulted Kaz’s favorite chef and added additional spices to one of Kaz’s stews, they had become nearly inseparable. And sickeningly shameless about displaying their affection for one another.

They were an odd pairing, to be sure. Kaz was easily twice the size of the buxom Mai, and no one in the Citadel had ever heard of a dungeon monster and a villager having a romantic relationship. But neither seemed to notice the oddness, and if they did, neither seemed to mind.

As a round of giggling issued from the strange couple, Roark glanced around the kitchen, hoping to find Zyra skulking about, pretending to vomit. The shadows were disappointingly empty.

“What’s this all about, Griefer?” Griff strode through the door, one hand wrapped around the hilt of the shortsword at his side.

At the sound of the grizzled trainer’s voice, Mai leapt away from Kaz and began patting her hair and straightening her skirts, a bright blush filling out her pink cheeks like a young maid whose father had just caught her stealing kisses.

“Have you seen Zyra?” Roark asked.

“Just came from down that way,” Griff said, affixing Roark with his one remaining eye. “She wasn’t in the lab messin’ with her potions when I passed by, so your guess is as good as mine.”

“Is everyone waiting on me, then?” The hooded Reaver Champion in question breezed into the kitchen. She sounded a touch out of breath, as if she had sprinted to the kitchen from a good distance away. Zyra made straight for the mead in the corner and poured herself a healthy flagon before downing it in a series of painfully large-looking gulps.

“Where were you?” Roark asked.

“Gathering supplies.” She refilled the cup, then took it to the rough-hewn table and sat. “It takes a ridiculous amount of ingredients to keep this place in Health Potions and Contact Poisons.”

“Maybe we should put out a call for Trolls interested in Alchemy,” Roark suggested. Zyra was the Citadel’s only trained Alchemist, which was a bloody inefficient use of the resources. “A few apprentices wouldn’t go amiss. They could fetch ingredients and run errands for you.”

“I’m not interested in Changeling-sitting, thanks,” Zyra said.

More likely, the paranoid Reaver Champion didn’t want another Troll working in close enough quarters to stab her in the back or slip a vial of deadly Coquelicot Extract into her ale. Roark would have to prove to her that the usefulness outweighed the risk—probably more than once—before she would give in. A fight for another day.

“All right,” Roark said, folding his lean form into the bench at the head of the table. “We’ve seen what the Vault of the Radiant Shield has to offer, and one thing is abundantly clear—we can’t beat Lowen and his troops on our own.”

“What we need’s allies,” Griff said, unknowingly echoing Roark’s thoughts. “More and stronger of ’em.”

“Precisely,” Roark said, nodding in agreement. “The question is how do we go about making such allies? I’ve read up on the matter, but there’s still much I don’t know.”

“Well, is it possible for us to just invade and claim another dungeon?” Zyra asked. “Get them fighting for us that way?”

Roark frowned. “From what I’ve read in the Dungeon Lord Grimoire, such a thing is possible in theory, but wildly impractical in reality. If we take out another Dungeon Lord and occupy their dungeon, the rest of the Dungeon Lords will think we’re putting a target on all their backs, and that will ensure there will be no peaceful alliances made. It’ll spell war after war after war, and frankly, I’m bloody tired of civil wars.” Besides that, invading foreign territory and forcing its natives to fight for him felt much too close to a move the Tyrant King would make for Roark’s liking. “No, I think Griff is right on the mark. We need other dungeons to join us of their own free will. And to do that, we’ll need to provide some sort of incentive.”

“Gry Feliri calls that the Honey-Glazed Carrot,” Kaz said, lifting an enormous claw-tipped finger into the air. “He says it is much more effective in creating repeat guests of your first-time diners than the Vinegar-Laced Wine approach.”

Zyra shrugged one shoulder. “I like the Poisoned Mead for Everyone approach better. It’s faster.”

“Faster, but not a long-term solution,” Roark said. “You’ll only make enemies, and like griefing, they’ll just keep coming back. What we need is a new way of life to offer the other dungeons, something that will help them not just survive, but thrive.”

“Sounds like you got an idea,” Griff said, rubbing at his scruffy chin, regarding Roark through his squinted eye.

Roark was definitely starting to get one. He kept talking, letting the inspiration unfold as he went.

“If we can give them a chance at self-sufficiency, they won’t have to keep up the cycle of hero fighting. Skilled labor, a free market, a chance to flourish.” That had been what the Trolls of the Citadel craved. What they were still craving. A chance to live their own lives free of the invading heroes who plagued them. “What if we had a marketplace just for mobs? A place where they could gain access to Trade Skill books, training, better weapons and armor, potions, and even food. Anything that might make it possible for them to have a good life defined by more than just the heroes they’ve fought.”

“There are already marketplaces all over Hearthworld,” Mai said. “You lot go all the time.”

“We’ve got access to disguises,” Roark said. “The other dungeons don’t, and without a way to blend into the crowd, they’ll be killed on sight. But if they had the chance to access the same advantages the heroes can without the risk, they would be mad not to jump at it. If we could provide them an opportunity like that, I’d wager we’d have to beat allies away with a stick.”

“But how can Roark make a market?” Kaz asked. “What will he sell? Weapons he’s smithed?”

Griff cleared his throat. “Actually, I might know of a way. Gimme just a shake.”

The grizzled weapons trainer ducked out of the kitchen, leaving the rest of them looking at one another in confusion.

“You really think all this is necessary?” Mai asked. “Getting the mobs all riled up? Seems like it will just be a spot of trouble down the road.”

Roark nodded grimly. “The man we’re up against will wipe us out without a second thought—you and Griff included—all so he can get his filthy hands on something I have.” The World Stone Pendant felt cold against his chest, though it sat atop his dark leather armor. “He’ll murder and torture and destroy anything or anyone who gets in his way. And when he finally does have his way, he’ll take the ...” Roark faltered for a beat. “The item back to a despot even worse than he is.”

“If Roark says Lowen must be stopped, Kaz agrees,” the Knight Thursr said, puffing out his chest and straightening himself to an even greater height. “Kaz will let no one harm Roark. And if anyone even tries to harm Mai”—his blue face darkened, forehead creasing into a thundercloud of anger—“Kaz will be very upset.”

“I told you to let me sneak into the Vault and coat everything with Virulent Contact Poison,” Zyra said, fishing a poison-coated flechette from her belt and walking it idly over her knuckles.

Roark felt his insides go cold at the thought of Zyra getting that close to Lowen alone.

“He’s more dangerous than you understand,” he said. “He would gladly capture and torture any one of you if he suspected you knew me. Hells, he would probably do it just for fun even if you didn’t.”

Out in the corridor, Griff’’s boots rang on the stone floor.

“Here it is.” The weapons trainer strode back into the kitchen and tossed a clothbound tome onto the table in front of Roark. “Settlements of Hearthworld. I’ve taken to readin’ of late to help me fall asleep. This one’s all about how to found yer own settlement. Most heroes do it by having their guild take over a small town and turn it to their uses, but a person could found a brand-new one if he were so inclined. Bein’ as you can do pretty much everything else I’ve seen heroes do, I figure you might be able to take this on, too.”

Roark flipped open the book and began to scan the pages.

The key to founding a new settlement was setting up the marketplace, which called for, at minimum, six hundred thousand gold pieces—no problem at the rate they were looting corpses—eleven senior officers, a coat of arms, a charter, and a series of specific professions. Roark could fill both the position of Master Blacksmith and Master Enchanter, and at the level of Gourmet, Kaz was already more than qualified to take the spot as Master Chef.

“This says we need a Master Alchemist,” Roark said, glancing up from the page at Zyra.

“Nearly there,” Zyra said. “A few days and I’ll have it.”

Roark nodded. “We also need five distinct skill trainers. We’ve got Mai and Griff. We’ll need three more.” He traced a claw-tipped finger down the page and tap-tap-tapped. “And a dedicated Merchant.”

The too-wide smile of Variok, the weapon merchant from Averi City, flashed through Roark’s mind.

“Mai, have you talked to Variok since Kaz became a Gourmet?”

The buxom chef shook her head. “He’s been gone the last three times I went to the market,” she replied, a tinge of irritation in her voice. “I been using another merchant. Slimy filth’s been gouging us blind. No one knows a thing about where the elf, Variok, might’ve got to. That, or they aren’t saying.”

“We’ll have to find him,” Roark said. “If we can recruit him and fulfill the rest of the requirements laid out in the charter, we can officially found a settlement.” He read on. Having the marketplace would give them better prices, attract more and better skill trainers, and give a number of boosts to crafting—fewer ingredient costs, more efficient production, less waste when destroying an item, and faster crafting leveling.

“Bang-up idea all around,” Zyra said dismissively. She set her cup on the table and leaned forward. “Say we do get it up and running. How is anyone from another dungeon going to visit it? It’s not as if they can walk here. Roark’s the only reason we’re able to leave the Citadel at all. Are you going to go around making Vassals of everyone, or have you learned how to make Infinite Use portal scrolls that can be targeted from one dungeon to another?”

“Fair point,” Roark conceded, dipping his head. “That’s one obstacle I don’t have a way around. Yet. But I will find one. Everyone thought killing Azibek was a fool notion as well, yet here we are.”

“Kaz never thought such a thing!” the Knight Thursr protested, genuinely aghast. “Roark’s plans are brilliant!”

Zyra raised her flechette.

“I thought it was foolish.” Her hood turned to face Roark, and he thought he saw a teasing glint of teeth. “At times, I’m still undecided.”

“After all Zyra has seen Roark do, how can she still have no faith?” Kaz insisted.

Roark spread his hands wide to stop their bickering. “Let’s focus on the settlement. We can argue about who was right and who was wrong afterward.”

“What should we do about Variok?” Mai asked. “It’s a decent struggle to get one merchant on your side, and that’s no lie. I’ve seen a fair few heroes try and fail, and they were high-renown folks, not terrifying Dungeon Lords of deadly Citadels.” She tucked a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear and shot him an apologetic smile. “Only calling a spade a spade, mind you, I don’t mean no offense by it.”

Roark waved her apology off, but Kaz spoke up.

“Why would Roark be angry that Mai recognizes his might and excellent leadership?” the Knight Thursr asked. “Heroes should be afraid of the mighty Roark the Griefer.”

“Because humans like to look all squishy and edible,” Zyra said.

“Oh.” Kaz nodded. “It’s a cultural variance. Gry Feliri talks about those in Cooking With—”

“Of course he does, love,” Mai cut him off, patting his hand. “My point is, Griefer, I’m thinking you were lucky to get the elf to warm up to you in the first place. You may not be able to do it again, and certainly not quickly.”

Roark frowned and rubbed his temples. They didn’t have time to waste. From what he’d seen, Lowen was preparing to mobilize any day now. The bastard could have the entire Vault of the Radiant Shield knocking down their door tomorrow if he wanted. He needed allies and he needed them yesterday.

“All right,” he said finally. “It’s time we take another trip to the market. Maybe with all of us asking, one might have better luck getting information on where Variok’s gone. Failing that, we can start looking around for a backup. And while we’re there, we can start gathering the rest of what we need.” He stood and looked from Kaz to Zyra. “You’ll want your disguises.”

One way or another, they were going to found an Infernal settlement. The very first mob marketplace in Hearthworld.

Never Gonna Give You Up

SCOTT BAYANI TOSSED the cartoony fist mace onto the altar.

“Oh, an item for me, a totally human sorcerer, to enchant!” Danno the Sorceror said, hopping up and down on his penguin feet and slapping his flippers together. His fake beard slipped away from his beak, and he hurried to adjust it. “What great fun! Nwaaak! Ahem, I mean, yay, because that is how totally normal humans, like me, talk.”

Scott rolled his eyes as the penguin waved his flippers over the mace and began to sway. Kismet was such a joke compared to Hearthworld. Like, if you had ten minutes with nothing to do, it was almost a decent waste of time. Or if you were seven years old.

“The ritual is complete, thanks to me, a totally normal human sorcerer,” the penguin said.

The mace reappeared in Scott’s hand. He inspected the new bonuses.

And of course half of them were red.

The penguin shifted from flat orange foot to flat orange foot. “Even totally normal human sorcerers accidentally curse things sometimes.”

“Get bent, you fucking lame-tard,” Scott said, too bored to even really be mad. The truth was he just didn’t care about this stupid game.

He turned on his heel and stalked out of the cemetery, throwing the mace over his shoulder. The lag on the movements was un-fucking-believable. You’d think a low-res mess like this would at least be able to run halfway suitable graphics on a system with as much memory as his InfiniTab, but apparently no such luck.

“Log out.”

The corny flute music and caricature of a medieval village disappeared, replaced by a menu showing his account, Gamerscore, list of achievements, and all the games he had.

He’d already tried to get back into Aftermath: New Bangkok, StealSTUFF9, GunSlung, and even MotoXJRPG: Final Yakuza Death Race. Epic fails, each and every one. Double for Kismet. Their quests were baby play, the graphics sucked anus, the storylines sucked more anus, and most of the servers had been abandoned for Hearthworld anyway. The few people who hadn’t left were losers Scott hated.

“There’s nothing to play.” In spite of the automatic speech clarification and amplification of his CandorSight UIVR headset, his voice sounded flat. Like someone who had died of boredom. “There’s nothing to do.”

He had eight hours before he had to be at work. Eight freaking hours! What was he supposed to do, spend eight hours looking at porn?

The Hearthworld thumbnail just sat there, staring at him. Taunting him. Mocking him. You know this is what you want.

“Ugh, fine!” Scott selected it, disgust rolling through him in a wave.

Driving war drums erupted as the familiar Hearthworld loading screen appeared. His pulse sped up in anticipation, the mild self-loathing quickly giving way to the sharp edge of anticipation and white-hot adrenaline. Malaika and Infernali fought each other in the sky over the Hearth, while the mortal races duked it out below. The smell of volcanic smoke and the clash of battle filled Scott’s senses. Immediately, all the tedious frustration of the past few days sloughed away. Colors and smells and sensations became more vibrant.

“Now this is how you make a game,” Scott said, enthusiasm creeping into his voice.

The loading screen faded away and a grid with all his saved characters appeared.

“Welcome, Scott Bayani!” the announcer boomed, his voice matching the epic tone of the intro scene. “The battle awaits! Which character would you like to select?”

“OG,” Scott said.

The Level 28 High Combat Cleric flashed twice, then everything started spinning. The character selection screen disappeared and Scott found himself standing on the streets of Averi City.

He took a deep breath, absorbing the smells of spicy, sizzling meat, the clank of armor, and the rustle of fabric playing under the murmurs, laughter, and shouts of the crowd. There were a crapton of people on right now. Still, Scott couldn’t stop himself from grinning as he set off toward the marketplace. This was what he’d been missing. He felt so fucking alive. Like he’d been half asleep for the last week, checked out in every possible way, and now he was awake again and able to enjoy life.

First thing first, he was going to find the dumbest, easiest, dicking-around quest and go get it done. A palate cleanser. He had to get his last month of being jerked around out of his head. Because he was done with that cocksucker Roark the Griefer. Screw that guy. Scott wasn’t wasting another freaking second on that assclown. Sooner or later, the admins would get involved and fix the Griefer’s pipes good. Hopefully, somebody would be around to screenshot it when that dick got what he deserved.

Scott headed for the Notice Board. He’d pick up something fun and easy he could finish today before he had to go to work. He was down on both gold and gear, thanks to that stinkstar Roark—

Nope. Scott stopped himself, taking a couple of deep breaths, in, out, in, out. He was done even thinking about that loser. That douche wasn’t living rent free in his head for another second.

He cut through the crowd of newbs looking for parties and assassins looking for freelance contracts, getting close enough to read the fluttering notices and wanted posters pinned to the board.

Maybe he could go after an easy bounty. Those paid pretty well, but they took forever to complete. Plus, you almost always had to bring the prisoners in alive.

Clearing pests from a meadery sounded all right. At his level, he would probably end up mowing them down, easy-peasy. That would be pretty satisfying right now. Work out a little pent-up aggression on a bunch of measly plague rats.

Scott was reaching for the tag when he saw someone who looked oddly familiar. A lanky guy in boiled leathers with one of those crooked honkers.

It almost looked like the guy the Griefer had been posing as the last time he fucked around with Scott.

But nah. That just went to show how bad the assbag had gotten into his head.

Scott grabbed the rat-clearing tag and yanked it down. It respawned immediately.

With a renewed spring in his step, Scott put a marker on the rat-infested meadery and set off to kill some shit. A return to the good days.

Marketplace Intrigue

RANDY SHOEMAKER COULDN’T believe his eyes. He knew what he was seeing was real, but there was nothing about it that made any logical sense.

Randy twisted out of the way of a rog in Divine plate mail and an olm in mismatched red robes and a Ragged Initiate’s Cowl. The players didn’t slow their stride or say a word to him as he passed. They had no idea he was there. His brand-new admin privileges granted him the ability to wander through Hearthworld completely invisible if he so chose, and he was taking full advantage of it to follow the prime anomaly through the Averi City Marketplace.

Just ahead, Roark the Griefer wove through the crowd. Thanks to his admin tracker, Randy knew it was the Griefer in spite of some sort of illusion spell type modification Roark was using to make himself look human and hide his gamer tag.

No spell meeting that description existed in Hearthworld. Nor was there any way to modify a user’s tag. The game was specifically set up so that spoofing a gamer tag couldn’t be done. That was part of the accountability process—removing anonymity was one of the big ways to keep the community running without major hiccups. If there was any doubt before that this guy was a modder, there wasn’t anymore. Here was the proof. A player playing as a mob, making trips to the market, buying and selling, talking to NPCs—even eating food—while hiding both his appearance and gamer tag with spells that shouldn’t exist.

Even stranger, he wasn’t on his own or surrounded by PC friends he’d decked out with mods. There were two humans with him. Griff, an NPC skill trainer who was supposed to be waiting in the Sulky Selkie with a fetch quest for players who wanted training in weapons, and Mai, an NPC cooking trainer. According to the information Randy had gathered so far, Roark had somehow changed Mai’s and Griff’s scripts to relocate them from their set locations to his dungeon, the Cruel Citadel.

Holding hands with the cooking trainer was a Knight Thursr in modded armor that shrank his massive form to the size of a large rog. Another impossibility. NPCs and mobs only interacted for rescue quests, and only when a player got within range to save or ignore the attacks.

There was a second mob glued to Roark’s side, a Reaver Champion hiding her face and horns under a PC spell caster’s cloak she shouldn’t have access to. No one looked too closely as they passed—why would they? This was unprecedented, after all—and so they all missed the hints of deep, midnight blue skin and snowy white hair.

Randy scowled, a little surprised to realize he was outraged. Not just that this Roark had somehow infiltrated the project he’d spent the last eight years of his life working on, but that Roark had gone the extra creeper step and modded this female mob so he could indulge some kind of monster girl fetish. She wasn’t real—for all intents and purposes, she was just strings of code—but it still upset Randy to see some jerk using a woman. Even if she was a Troll.

Near the center of the marketplace, the Griefer and his entourage stopped, chatted for a second like a football team in huddle, then broke off, spreading through the market in each direction.

Randy tailed the Griefer, determined to find out what the modder was up to.

Initially, when Randy got his new clearance, he had tried monitoring the anomalies in the Divine dungeon. But after two days of slaving away, only logging out long enough to eat and sleep, all Randy had learned was that the Malaika Heralds, modified by another modder named Lowen, never left the Vault of the Radiant Shield. Ever. Like Roark, Lowen and his anomalies were immune to most of Randy’s admin abilities. System analytics had been worse than useless. He couldn’t boot the modders off. He couldn’t immobilize them. He couldn’t isolate their code. And the data he managed to get was so strange and conflicted he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

The best Randy could do was monitor them. That was fine for the short term.

He didn’t want to confront either of the modders yet. He wanted to know his enemy before he struck, Art of War style, but Lowen never seemed to be doing anything. Roark, on the other hand, was always writing up spells and abilities that didn’t exist in-game, crafting armor and weapons that had no basis in canon, and organizing his Infernal dungeon into a more efficient industrial slaughterhouse for heroes. It was no wonder the Griefer was killing players left and right who should be able to one-shot him; Roark had written himself in abilities that would be radically nerfed if they occurred naturally in the game.

The strangest thing of all, though, was that Roark hadn’t logged out. Not once since he’d logged on a little more than a month ago. For all practical purposes, he’d been on 24/7 for weeks with no apparent change in avatar functionality. Even if the Griefer were running a complex script for his avatar when he was AFK—and how would he even manage that?—there would be some noticeable change in avatar gameplay. But there was none. Not even a few hours’ inactivity where the guy might have been sleeping.

It was mystifying. Absolutely baffling. Frankly, the software engineer in him was begrudgingly impressed, and the programmer in him just had to know how he was doing this. Randy was sure if he just kept dogging Roark’s steps, the Griefer would eventually screw up. No one could play a perfect game forever. Then ... then Randy would have the concrete information he needed to move on.

***

ROARK FELT EYES ON the back of his neck. He had to force himself not to tense up, and he kept walking as if he didn’t notice. When he reached Mogrifa & Mogrifa, he studied the reflection of the marketplace in the glass set into the door.

The usual crowded jam of heroes filled the paths between the vendors behind him, but none of them were looking his way.

Still he felt the skin down his spine crawling. In Traisbin, when he’d felt that, it had meant it was time to move on to the next place the T’verzet needed his particular skill set.

According to the countdown timer on his Illusion Cloak, he and the others had been asking around the marketplace for twenty minutes. Maybe someone had caught on to his disguise—a hero from Braind_Fish’s party, perhaps. Or PwnrBwner_OG. As he grabbed for the door handle to the bookseller’s, Roark searched the glass once more. No one. Just the ebb and flow of traffic, the occasional press of bodies. But no lingering stares. No obvious tails.

The bell over the door rang as he ducked into Mogrifa & Mogrifa’s.

And nearly collided with Zyra.

There was a glint of wet obsidian as the hooded Reaver retracted her poisoned claws and tucked something into the folds of her cloak.

“I nearly Scratched you,” she hissed, leaning in close enough for him to hear. Her hood shifted as she looked his Illusion over from head to foot. “You look just like one of them.” He could almost hear the sneer in her voice.

For a split second, it was on the tip of Roark’s tongue to tell Zyra that he was one of them, that his Jotnar form had been forced upon him by his arrival in Hearthworld. She knew he wasn’t native to this world. But considering the nearly human face she was hiding beneath her own hood, he doubted she would be very impressed with his true form.

Then he realized the object she’d just hidden from him was a book. He took her by the arm and ducked his head until he could whisper in her ear.

“Are you stealing that?” He glanced toward the counter, where an ancient woman with cloth covering hollow-looking eye sockets stood. As if she could see them, her wrinkled face was turned in their direction. “Look at the sigils around her door.” He nodded at the wooden beams surrounding the exit, each one inscribed with dimly lit runes. He couldn’t read all of them—clearly the Mogrifas had attained a much higher level of Cursed! than he had yet—but the ones he could read involved things like Sudden Flesh Inversion. “Mogrifa has some sort of nasty curses on it, and I’d wager that it’s to stop thieves crossing the threshold with merchandise.”

Zyra twisted her arm out of his grasp. “I bought the book, if you must know. Though for that inflated joke of a price, I’d have been just as well off risking the respawn.”

Roark couldn’t see her face, but with her suddenly closed-off body language, he hardly needed to. If he asked her about the book now, he would get nowhere. Better to let her tell him when she was ready.

“Did they know anything about Variok?” he asked instead, glancing over her shoulder at the blinded hag.

Zyra straightened up, losing the defensive aura immediately.

“I was actually on my way to find you about that,” she said. “According to the Mogrifas, he crossed the Olm Legion of Order. Something about selling stolen pearls.”

“Olm Legion of Order,” Roark repeated, the words sparking something in his mind that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“Because they’re trying to crush the world under their bootheels of law and order?” she shot back, her voice frigid with disapproval. “Because they’re the ones who killed Mai’s husband? Because they’re the most dangerous force in all of Hearthworld, and they destroy anyone who stands in their way?” Zyra shrugged. “Pick your favorite.”

Movement caught Roark’s attention just before a woman in subpar chainmail, carrying an armload of books, stopped beside them.

“You guys talking about Bad_Karma?” She said the name in a breathy, infatuated voice, a giddy grin on her face. “He’s so kickass, right?”

“Bad_Karma?” Zyra asked.

“Uh yeah,” the woman said, rolling her eyes. “Only the number one player on the server.”

“Ah, of course.” Roark nodded. “Bad_Karma. No, actually, we were discussing the Legion of Order. We’re looking for a merchant who might’ve run afoul of them.”

“Oh, I gotcha,” she said. “Yeah, that’s the whole Merchant Loyalty quest line. Soon as you start it, they come up missing. It’s no big deal, though. Just a low-to-middie breakout heist.”

“Break out of what?” Roark asked.

“Like, almost always one of the OLO prisons. Here.” The woman opened the door and led them out into the street. Her books disappeared into her Inventory, and she pointed across the marketplace. “So, what you’re gonna do is go check out the Notice Board, see what your guy was wanted for—you have to read the poster or your quest won’t populate—then it’ll show up in your active quests.”

“Thanks,” Roark said, dipping his head in appreciation.

He and Zyra took their leave of the woman and wound their way between the stalls, following her directions.

As they walked, Roark’s hackles rose again. Someone was watching him. He was sure of it.

He spun suddenly on his heel, looking around as if he had missed the stall he’d been heading for.

“You felt it, too?” Zyra asked in a low voice. “Someone’s stalking us.”

“Did you see anyone?”

Her hood shook side to side and a flechette appeared in her fingers.

“Keep walking,” she said, gesturing with her empty hand as if they had come to the conclusion their destination was a little farther on.

Roark fell into step beside her, the back of his neck prickling. “We get the quest, then we find the others and get back to the Citadel. Agreed?”

“No argument here.”

On the other side of the crowded market, an assortment of heroes had gathered around a large board hung on the wall of a store. Posters and notices fluttered in the afternoon breeze. The sheer amount of paper, just tacked to the walls, was staggering to him. He’d grown used to many of the oddities in Hearthworld, but the quantity of paper wasted here—just thrown so frivolously around—was simply astounding. In Traisbin, parchment was a precious resource, worth its weight in gold, and notoriously difficult to come by. But here? Here it was as plentiful as the air in his lungs. Some things he just never thought he would grow accustomed to.

Roark was about to step forward when he saw the familiar face of his least favorite High Combat Cleric in the crowd around the notice board.

PwnrBwner_OG’s eyes froze on Roark’s face.

Every muscle in Roark’s body tensed, preparing for the Cleric’s inevitable attack. Maybe this was who had been watching him.

But PwnrBwner just grimaced, shook his head, and snatched a tag off the notice board. Without a word or a second glance, the High Combat Cleric wheeled around and disappeared into the throng.

Roark exhaled a sigh of relief and tried to relax. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered to Zyra.

They shouldered their way through the gathered heroes and began to search the notices.

PARTY LOOKING FOR LEVEL 10+ TANK, RAGE SKILL PREFERRED

Like Killing Rats? Want To Earn Gold Doing What You Love? See Norvin At Backwash Meadery For Details!

MISSED CONNECTION: You, a smokin hot dark elf with some kind of rogue class and curly white hair. Me, a ripped af wrath ronin. Our parties teamed up for a raid on Vault of the Radiant Shield yesterday, but got dead before we could talk. PM me at TmacDog. Send pics that show skin to prove you’re the one.

Roark pulled that one down and wadded it up. It was possible there were another two parties who’d joined up long enough to get killed by Lowen’s people, one of which contained a beautiful midnight-skinned, white-haired assassin who was not Zyra. But he didn’t like the odds.

Immediately, the notice reappeared. Roark scowled.

“Here it is,” Zyra said, looking up from her end of the board.

Roark started guiltily and shoved the notice into his Inventory, unable to bring himself to toss away something he’d grown up regarding as so inherently valuable as parchment, before joining her.

Zyra pointed out a wanted poster. The face sketched onto it was a perfect rendering of the elven merchant. Same wide grin, same high brow, same pointed ears and slicked-back hair. Below was his name and a posted reward of 5,000 gold pieces for his capture.

But as Zyra moved to take the poster, an olm in gold-and-silver armor, so polished that it had to be ceremonial, shouldered her aside and began clearing notices, Variok’s included.

“Excuse me,” Roark said. “We were planning to bring him in for the bounty.”

The soldier glanced down at the wanted poster, then shook his oblong salamander head.

“You’re too late,” the olm said. “This criminal has already been collared and sent to the most secure Legion prison this side of hell. Now, if you wouldn’t mind backing up so I can finish clearing these irrelevant notices?”

Roark nodded and took a step back, Zyra following suit. As they did, a page crammed with text appeared before Roark’s eyes.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Prison Break!

Variok the Elvish Merchant has been collared by the Olm Legion of Order and incarcerated in Chillend, a prison of icy death located in the dark heart of Frostrime. Infiltrate Chillend and free Variok.

Objective: Break Variok out of Chillend and return him alive to the mainland.

Reward: Variok’s loyalty, 5,000 Experience, 1,000 gold

Failure: Fail to break Variok out of Chillend

Or let Variok die before returning him to the mainland

Penalty: Lose Variok’s loyalty, 10% increase to all purchase prices when buying from Variok, 10% decrease in all sales prices when selling to Variok

Restrictions: None

Accept quest? Yes/No

╠═╦╬╧╪

Roark accepted at once. The page disappeared, leaving him staring into the shadowy depths of Zyra’s hood.

The shaggy hairs along the back of his neck prickled as if they wanted to stand on end. It was all Roark could do to stop himself from hunching up his shoulders against the unseen eyes.

“Let’s find Kaz, Griff, and Mai and get the bloody hells out of here,” he said.

Mai’s Tale

“OUR MERCHANT’S IN CHILLEND prison,” Roark said, slapping the wanted poster onto the kitchen table, deep in the bowels of the Cruel Citadel.

Kaz, Griff, and even Zyra, who’d already read it, leaned in for a closer look. Mac, who had greeted Roark excitedly as soon as they returned, gave it a once-over before deciding it wasn’t worth his time and heading over to curl up beside the cookfire, his vulnerable belly exposed to the flame, his spiked shell turned out.

Mai scowled down at the crinkled, grease-spotted parchment, furious pink spots growing in her cheeks. Roark had pulled the poster out of Averi City’s rubbish heap; she was probably angry he’d tossed the filthy thing onto her freshly scrubbed table.

“I’ve got the quest to break him out,” Roark said, plunging forward before she could admonish him, “but we need more information on the prison itself before we go running in blind.”

Roark fell silent when he realized that Griff had twisted around on the bench and was staring at Mai with concern and an imploring look. At the old man’s encouraging nod, she heaved a great sigh, her cleavage straining against her low neckline.

“I may be of some help there, Griefer,” she said. “My Colin was incarcerated in Chillend for two months, right up ’til he died.” She frowned and stuck out her chin. “And I know what you’ll all be thinking, but he was no criminal. Got in a bit of a brawl after a few pints—like any man might—and the Legion of Order snatched him up for disturbing the peace. I didn’t have the sort of money they wanted for his release.

“I begged with every adventurer who would give me an ear. Asked ’em to save my husband. To break him out or help me raise the money. I offered everything I could.” She gripped her apron in white-knuckled hands, her lips thin, her face a mask of distress. “Offered to train them in skills, make food for them. Help them in herblore. Not a soul would help. Why, that’s part of the reason I threw in with your lot—because the heroes couldn’t be bothered to do something heroic. Not for someone like me. A stupid social quest, they called it.”

Roark stole a sidelong look at Kaz, who looked like he might well explode at the utter indignity of it all.

Mai finally let her apron fall, resting one pink hand on Griff’s shoulder. He caught the young widow’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Griff, well he was the only one that helped, bless his heart. Tried to help me scrape the money together, taking fights in the arena a man of his age oughtn’t. But Colin caught the croup before we could manage it, and his lungs were never strong. Most folk don’t know this about Chillend, but if one of our kind dies there... Well, there’s no coming back.”

A tear streaked down her cheek. She hurried to swipe it away as if offended by its presence.

“That... is... awful!” Kaz sobbed, enfolding Mai in a crushing embrace. Fat tears quickly soaked the coarse hair covering his face and dripped onto the top of her head. Mai relaxed gratefully into Kaz’s arms for a moment, then stood up on her tiptoes to peck him on the cheek before pulling away.

“You won’t be needing my life story,” she said, turning back to Roark. “The important bit is I visited Colin there as often as I was able. I’ve seen the inside of Chillend.”

Excitement flared in Roark’s gut, though it was mixed with more than a little self-loathing. Considering the pain Mai had endured to come by such information, it seemed wrong to be so glad. At times, he got so caught up in the single-minded execution of his schemes that he forgot about things like basic human compassion.

“Could you describe the layout to Kaz?” he asked, shaking away his moment of self-doubt. He did feel bad for her, but there was more on the line here than one man. If the rebellion had taught him anything, it was that everyone hurt, everyone bled, everyone lost people to cruel injustice, and the only thing for it was to soldier on.

Mai dipped her head. “Aye. I can, at that.”

Kaz beamed proudly at her. In addition to becoming the first Troll Gourmet in the history of Hearthworld, he had also learned the Cartography trade skill and leveled it enough to make accurate maps based on word of mouth.

“What else can you tell us about it?” Roark asked.

“Chillend’s on an island in the high northwest, right off the coast of Frostrime,” she said.

“How big is the island? Does it have any hidden coves?” Roark asked, images of putting small boats in under the cover of darkness swimming through his mind. “Does the prison have guards keeping watch around the perimeter or patrolling the island?”

“You’ll want to slow down a bit there, Griefer,” Mai said, raising one hand to stop him. “Chillend’s not on no regular island because the Wailing Sea ain’t no regular ocean. It’s treacherous water, full of icebergs and battered by a wind that wails like the unquiet dead that went down into its depths. Chillend floats high above its surface, an ice island on an icy sea. It once was a berg of Permanent Hoarfrost plucked out of the waters by the Legion’s cleverest sorcerers and carved into a terrible, frozen prison for ‘enemies of order,’ as the Legion call them.”

“It floats above the water?” Roark repeated, dumbfounded. From the looks of Kaz and Zyra, he wasn’t the only one.

“Like an everlasting cloud of ice,” Mai said with a nod.

Roark raked his claws through his hair. “How do they get to it, then?”

“There’s a special ferry that flies right up to it like a bird,” the cook said. “Leaves twice a week from Frostrime’s docks, bringing in new prisoners and the paltry few visitors. Midnights Monday and Friday it goes, unless they’ve changed it—and that’s not likely given as how the Legion believes they’ve got everything figured out. They aren’t a moral lot so far as I’m concerned, but they are an orderly lot. Everything’s scheduled just so, if you take my meaning.”

“So, we pretend we’re visiting Variok,” Zyra said. “Get in, grab him, open a portal scroll. Simple.”

“’Fraid that won’t work,” Mai said, shaking her head. “They’ve anti-portal spells, magick-inhibiting spells, and every visitor’s required to hand over all magical items and weapons when they arrive. You don’t pick your effects up until you leave.”

Kaz hefted his Legendary Meat Tenderizer, smacking the spike-studded war mallet against his massive palm. “Then Roark, Kaz, and Zyra fight their way out.”

Mai smiled at the enormous, good-hearted chef. It was a small, sad smile. “Even if you were able to beat them all with your bare fists, love, the ferry won’t take more than one visitor to see a prisoner at a time.” She patted Kaz’s overly muscled arm.

“One of us and how many thousand of them?” Zyra asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “No, I don’t think I’ll put money on those odds.”

“Not just that, but every surface is Hoarfrost, unmeltable and unbreakable. They keep the floors polished and slick so’s no one can run, and the guards wear a special type of hobnailed boots to keep them from sliding.” Mai cupped her chin. “In any case, I don’t believe any of you’d get in as a visitor. They’ve special disguise- and glamor-piercing enchantments to reveal your true face. The guards would know soon as you set foot on the island that you were Trolls, and who in glory ever heard of a Troll visiting an elf?”

“What about sewers?” Roark asked, absently running his fingers over the surface of the table. He’d been in Hearthworld for nearly a month, eaten and drank aplenty, without having a single resultant bodily function or hearing of another Troll who did. But then Trolls didn’t sleep, either, and Mai and Griff both did. Perhaps non-mob natives to Hearthworld excreted as well?

Mai grimaced in disgust. “I never did ask, but I’m sure they have a way of... disposing of leavings.”

The gears in Roark’s mind whirled.

“If Kaz, Zyra, and I can get in and find Variok, we could make our escape via sewer tunnel,” he said.

“How exactly do you plan to get in?” Griff asked. “Just one, let alone the three of you? You heard what Mai said about the anti-glamour.”

“What are the cells like?” Roark asked, ignoring the question for now. “The doors, specifically.”

“Ice, same as all the rest,” Mai said. “Barred and locked up tight, and set up in tiers, like the stories of an inside-out tower. It’s fair crowded, too, sometimes five or more to a cell where there’s only two beds.”

“What are the odds of bribing a guard?” he asked, casting his mind back to his days in the T’verzet—the rebel resistance in Traisbin.

“None,” Mai said with a shake of her head. “The Legionnaires are as straight as a pin. The whole lot of ’em. They’re like to execute you for even trying.”

Zyra rapped her flechette on the table. The sharp noise woke Mac, the Young Turtle Dragon responding with an angry chirp before lumbering over to rejoin Roark at the table, batting sleepy, out-of-sync eyes at the Griefer.

“I’d like to echo Griff’s question,” Zyra said. “How do you plan to get the three of us in at the same time?”

“Before I came here, I did a decent bit of jailbreak work in my homeworld,” Roark said. The T’verzet utilized his skill frequently to rescue rebels who had been captured by the Ustari, usually on a tight time limit, needing to escape with his target before they were broken or executed. This was rather familiar footing for him, which was a nice change of pace, despite the difficult situation. “The fastest way to infiltrate a prison is to get locked up yourself,” he continued matter-of-factly, “then break out from inside. That’s how we’ll get in—as prisoners.”

Mac nipped Roark’s hand, demanding attention. Roark obliged with a series of hearty slaps on the beast’s dark shell.

At the table, Griff pawed at his stubbled jaw, then nodded. “Yep, I suppose that’s yer only option. And you asked about the doors to see if you could get your cell open once yeh’re inside?”

“I can pick a lock, and I can find an unlikely exit,” Roark said. “My concern was whether they had a way to seal the cells with solid walls of that unbreakable ice rather than doors. I doubt I could get out of that without use of my own spells. Though it’s possible I could inscribe a blood cantrip into my flesh if the need was desperate enough.”

“Someone needs to be the voice of reason here,” Griff interjected, raising his hands to forestall any more conversation. “This seems extremely risky to me. I’m not sayin’ it’s a bad idea, but are we sure the gamble is worth the prize?”

The weapons trainer wasn’t wrong. Roark stood, hands clasped behind his back, and paced for a moment. Back, forth, back, forth, boots clicking on the stone underfoot as he calculated.

“It is a risk,” Roark said finally. “But if we don’t find a way to unite the other dungeons, it’s only a matter of time before Lowen invades and takes this back.” He reached up and tapped the World Stone Pendant on his chest. “That is a far greater danger. And since earning the favor of another merchant seems not only time and labor intensive, but highly unlikely, I think this is our only reasonable way forward.”

“That’s the plan, then,” Zyra said, slapping her hands on her thighs and standing. “I have a few things to finish up before we go to Frostrime and get ourselves arrested, so if you’ll all excuse me...”

With a start, Roark realized her voice didn’t hold even a hint of sarcasm.

“Wait. You’re on board with this?” he asked. “The paranoid Reaver? Fine with being locked in a cage where all death is forever-death?”

Zyra shrugged. “You and the big guy will watch my back so that no one stabs it.”

“Roark and Kaz will not allow anyone to get close to Zyra’s back,” Kaz said resolutely, absolute determination etched into the lines of his leathery face.

“I know you won’t,” Zyra said. Then she turned to Roark. “I’ll need a day at least before I can go. I intend to level to Master Alchemist first, and I need to gather a few rare ingredients and make a few potions for that. Don’t leave without me.”

Roark was too engrossed in trying to figure out what the hooded Reaver Champion’s game was to respond. She was acting completely contrary to her usual cautious, skeptical self.

“Don’t worry, lass, you’ve got a good three days before the ferry leaves the docks,” Griff said. “Go now and you’ll spend it crammed belowdecks with the rest of the prisoners picked up midweek, waiting for Friday.”

“Well, that’s more than enough time, then,” Zyra said. “I’ll be in the laboratory if anyone needs me.” Without another word, she turned sharply on her heel and disappeared into the dancing shadows thrown by the cook fire, leaving behind a curl of inky smoke.

Giving himself a mental shake, Roark turned back to the rest of his inner circle.

“In the meantime, we should get to work on the bits and pieces of the settlement that we can acquire,” he said. “Griff, do you know of any other skill trainers you might be able to recruit? We could use a magician if you can find one. And having another trainer who specializes in skilled labor of some sort would be a great help.”

“Aye, I might be able to handle that,” Griff said.

“Should I do the same?” Mai asked. “Two of us could cover more ground than one.”

“No, I need you here to feed this rabble,” Roark said, waving a hand to indicate the rest of the citadel. “Your workload’s going to double for a bit because Kaz is going on a special mission. It’s dangerous, but I can’t trust anyone else to do it.”

The Knight Thursr’s enormous chest inflated with pride, his eyes glimmering, a lopsided smile on his face. “What must Kaz do? Just tell him, and no matter how dangerous, he will see it done.”

“You’ll be the chief diplomat for the entire Cruel Citadel,” Roark said. “You’ll visit the other Dungeon Lords, tell them about the marketplace we’re setting up and all the benefits it will bring them, and convince them to ally themselves with us.”

“Talking? To Dungeon Lords?” Kaz deflated, folding in on himself. Massive though he was now, Roark could see the frightened Changeling he’d been little more than a month ago. “But wouldn’t Roark be better at that? Kaz is no good with words. If Roark wanted Kaz to feed the Dungeon Lords, it would be different.”

Roark put a hand on Kaz’s shoulder and looked his friend in the eye. “Two reasons it has to be you, mate. One, the other Dungeon Lords will expect me to send a runner, just like Azibek always used to communicate with. We need to play to their expectations now to get them to trust us. And two, I need to run the citadel and put things in order so that Griff and Mai can keep it from falling apart while we’re gone rescuing Variok. Besides, you won’t be alone.” He reached down and scratched Mac on his serpentine bearded jowl. “Mac, you’re going with Kaz. Protect him.”

The scaly beast chirped and bumped his shoulder against Roark’s leg, nearly knocking him over, then crossed the floor to take a place at Kaz’s side.

Kaz frowned, huge lower lip sticking out in a pout. “All right. Kaz will do it. For the citadel. For Roark. For the salt.” It was the most uncertain Roark had ever heard the Knight Thursr sound, but he had no doubt Kaz would deliver. The Thursr had never let Roark down, not once, and he was loyal and dedicated to a fault.

“Thanks, mate.” Roark clapped Kaz on one massive shoulder. “You’ve got the hardest job of all of us, but you’re the only one I trust to do it.”

Assignments given, Kaz, Mac, and Griff headed for the staircase to the first floor, while Mai wandered away to find her apprentice chefs. Roark simply stayed where he was for a long beat, kneading the back of his neck and rolling his head on his shoulders, trying to work out the tension. Trying to found a settlement with the possibility that Lowen could attack at any moment constantly in mind had him wound tighter than a spring-loaded spear trap. A headache had begun to creep in at the base of his skull as well.

He didn’t really feel like going to the smithy without Mac tagging along, but a few rounds of griefing wouldn’t go amiss. He might not be able to kill Lowen—yet—but he could kill something. That would have to be good enough for now.

Beneath the Hood

ROARK CONJURED AN INFERNAL shield just as [Pun_Guy69], a level 30 Arcanist, hurled a dazzling blue-and-white spell at him. The light hit the violet barrier, knocking Roark back a few paces, then exploded into a rain of crackling sparks. Roark dropped the shield and countered with a blast of Infernal Torment. Plum-colored flames burst from the Arcanist’s flesh as the Jotnar spell seared him from the inside out. As the last of the red in his Health bar disappeared, Pun_Guy69 howled with an eerie combination of agony and delighted laughter.

He dropped to the floor dead, a grin on his face.

Roark scowled. This madness was becoming more and more common in the highest-level heroes he fought. Many of them were simply thrilled to be griefed by Roark and in no way shied away from showing it, even in the throes of death. It was madness and made no sense whatsoever. Why in the bloody hells would they seek death at his hands? There was no Experience in it for them, and more often than not they lost their weapons, armor, valuable items, and gold to his looting.

A warbling war cry rose behind Roark as [CleverGurl]—a level 27 Death Paladin—rushed him, legs churning, weapon raised and ready to kill. He spun away from the insane Arcanist and met the Death Paladin’s glowing green battle-axe with a glancing parry from his Slender Rapier of the Diving Falcon. Though it was nearly the size of a zweihander now, the rapier was no match for the weight of her axe, nor the momentum of the swing. The slender blade gave way under the onslaught of the heavier weapon, and the axe slammed into Roark’s hip with a meaty thump.

Roark cursed as the blow buckled his leg and spun him a half-turn; a jag of hot pain sprinted along his limbs, but he managed to keep his feet. Such was the power of a Soul-Cursed Jotnar.

Roark wasn’t the only one who’d taken damage, however. The Hex-Aura he’d cursed himself with had dealt .5 x the Death Paladin’s level in damage to her as well, eliciting a cry of pain from CleverGurl and a boisterous cheer from the crowd of watching Trolls.

PunGuy69 and CleverGurl were the last of a high-level party of eight heroes, and though the small band of Thursr Knights and Reaver Shamans griefing with Roark had fought and killed their fair share, they had slowly fallen back to observe with gleeful pleasure as he finished the final two. Roark was more than a mere Dungeon Lord now, he was their champion. A symbol that they could do more, be more, than they had before. And seeing him hew down tyrannical heroes only served to reinforce that narrative.

CleverGurl backpedaled and gave another singing shout. Green fire shot down from above and the burning spheres enveloped two of her fallen comrades—a Fire Warden and a Berserker Druid. The reanimated corpses rose, groaning, from the floor and advanced on Roark with lurching steps, flaming twin sais and staff raised.

“Clever,” Roark admitted, dipping his chin at the Death Paladin. She couldn’t attack him herself without taking damage, so instead she’d found a way to attack him using someone else.

The Death Paladin shrugged, looking pleased with herself. “It’s not just a randomly generated gamer tag.”

The Berserker and Warden picked up speed, their groans becoming howls of rage as they drew nearer.

Roark added his Outstanding Kaiken Dagger to his off hand and raised his rapier to a defensive bastarda guard. The reanimated Warden threw himself into a spin, stabbing at Roark with one flaming sai after the other.

Roark turned his body to minimize the target and pressed forward pie’ fermo, parrying the thrusts with swift fendente cuts. Several slashes landed on the Warden’s hand and bracers, laying both open, and the Hex-Aura went wild dealing back melee damage, but the moving corpse showed no sign of pain or slowing his attack.

A moment later, the Berserker Druid’s staff caught Roark in the back of the head. He cursed and spun, swiping his Kaiken Dagger downward and catching the staff midswing between his dagger and hand. The Berserker groaned louder, still trying to batter Roark with the staff.

“You’re not the brightest reanimated corpse in the graveyard, are you?” Roark asked, imbuing his words with Infernal Temptation, a spell that coaxed creatures and heroes with less than half Roark’s Intelligence into serving him. Without looking, he whipped a mandritto tondo at the Warden—the slight resistance of flesh let him know he’d made contact—then thrust it upward in an ascending imbroccotta, the blade sinking half its length into the Berserker’s rib cage. “And your Death Paladin friend is too clever by half, sending someone like you to finish the job she couldn’t.”

The Berserker stopped trying to brain him with the trapped staff and stared, mouth agape, as if waiting to hear more.

One of the Warden’s sais sank into Roark’s shoulder, stealing a hefty tenth of the red liquid from his Health vial. Lightning fast, Roark twisted his torso and sunk his Kaiken Dagger into the Warden’s throat. The sphere of green winked out and the Warden dropped to the ground.

Roark turned back to the Berserker, who still seemed to be entranced by his words.

“CleverGurl got you and your friends killed once, mate, and now she’s trying to get you killed a second time,” Roark said, his voice smooth and pleasant despite the sai still sticking into his back. “Don’t let her do this to you. Kill her before she has the chance to kill you again.”

Slowly the Berserker nodded, revelation dawning on its face. It turned away from Roark and broke into a lumbering run toward the Death Paladin.

CleverGurl scowled and began another singsong shout, but the Berserker swung his staff at her before she could finish the spell. She leapt backward and swatted the incoming staff away with her battle-axe. While she was distracted, Roark bent and hurriedly scribbled a hex on the stones of the floor.

[Would you like to Hex this surface? Yes/No?

Note: For every Hex you inscribe, Cursed! will extract a share of your Infernali Magick equal to your Enchanting level x .5 your character level.]

Roark selected yes. This time his filigreed Magick vial appeared, the purple liquid inside dipping. Right away, his Magick-Regen went to work refilling the lost liquid.

On the floor, the hex took and the inscription glowed wine-purple, shifting into a series of sharp, angular runes and stretching to fit the space. Amethyst light flared around it, then the whole thing faded, almost invisible unless you were really looking for it.

Across the room, CleverGurl finally finished her shout, dismissing her Infernally enslaved corpse servant. The green sphere around the Berserker shattered and he dropped to the floor, dead once again.

Now at less than a quarter of her full Health, the Death Paladin raised her battle-axe high and sprinted toward Roark, a war cry on her lips.

Roark raised his rapier and dagger in a clear invitation and stood his ground.

The moment her heavy plate boot slammed onto the rune he’d engraved, it exploded, taking her with it. Pieces of the Death Paladin rained down in a shower of gore, body parts, and heavy armor.

The watching Trolls let out a raucous bellow, leaping up and down and clapping wildly. And to top it all off, an ascending chime rang through the room.

[LEVEL UP!]

[You have 10 undistributed Stat Points!]

It was his second level since beginning griefing that afternoon, and though he was still seven levels from his final evolution, Roark felt much better than he had. There was something freeing about spending a day mindlessly fighting for your life.

His personal mystic grimoire appeared unbidden before his eyes, open to his character page. Roark distributed his stat points, this time leaning heavily on Intelligence. Infernal Temptation had done a good deal of the work for him this time, but if he had a higher Intelligence, he could enthrall the minds of more and more intelligent heroes and creatures.

╠═╦╬╧╪

╠═╦╬╧╪

WITH THAT DONE, ROARK closed his grimoire. Immediately, a scrap of parchment crammed with writing took its place.

╠═╦╬╧╪

World Stone Pendant

Durability: Indestructible

Level Restriction: 1

Property: Soul-Forge – Imbue the undead with life and will.

Current World Stone Authority: Greater Vassal 3/6; Lesser Vassal 49/100

Property: Glamour Cloak – Use arcane power to disguise your appearance even to the keenest of eyes. Cast 1 per day; duration, 3 hours.

Property: Transmute Energy – Meld and merge the primal energies and magicks in the world around you to your will.

Property: ???

Property: ???

Property: ???

The World Stone can bend, shape, and distort reality, allowing the bearer the power of Creation and Life itself ...

╠═╦╬╧╪

Intriguing. The memory of the Tyrant King’s ability to cast any spell he wished without following Traisbin’s basic requirements for magick returned to Roark. Perhaps Transmute Power was how Marek had done it. It certainly bore a bit more exploration.

But not while he was surrounded by Trolls who would lose their newly acquired levels if the magick backfired and killed one of them.

Roark dismissed the parchment to find that the Death Paladin’s corpse had reformed on the floor—all the better for griefing. Roark helped the Trolls loot it and the rest of the heroes, then marked their locations and respawn time for further exploitation. That done, he left them to wait for their next band of heroes and headed for the Keep, a bounce in his step. He was more than a little excited at the prospect of new magick and the accompanying abilities that might come with it. Any little edge could spell victory for him and the downfall of Marek and his lickspittle cronies.

He’d intended to head to his study straight away and spend some time experimenting with the new World Stone spell, but soon found himself lingering outside the closed door to the Alchemy laboratory.

From inside, he heard the clink of glass and sizzle of a concentrated open flame, followed by a delighted laugh. Roark grinned. The first time he’d shown Zyra her lab, she’d been as excited as a street urchin with her first ever gift. Such a departure from the cagey, acerbic assassin he’d come to know.

Roark was busy, true, but hearing that laugh, he simply couldn’t help himself. He gave a quick rap with his knuckles, then opened the door and entered without waiting for an answer.

There was a flutter of hurried movement, but by the time Roark’s eyes focused, Zyra was doing nothing more than holding a vial of some vibrant green liquid up to catch the oily torchlight from a nearby sconce.

“How went the griefing, Dungeon Lord?”

“Well enough.” Roark nodded at the potion. “What are you making?”

Her hood fell back an inch as she cocked her head, studying the potion. A sliver of sparkling midnight chin appeared. Though Roark had seen Zyra’s face once, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at the tiny revelation.

“Nothing interesting,” she said. “Just trying out a new poison mixture.”

“To become a Master Alchemist?” Roark asked.

She set the poison on a table behind her with a dozen other vials.

“It counts toward the total number of hours I’ve brewed and the ten thousand potions I need to make to become a Master, but new mixtures aren’t technically required.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It was fun, though.”

“What poison isn’t?” Roark teased, hiking himself up onto a relatively clear space on an otherwise full workbench. “How many hours and potions do you have left before you level up?”

“Sixteen more hours brewing and one thousand nine hundred eleven potions.” She rounded the table and went to a shelf along the far wall, bending down to select ingredients.

Again Roark caught himself staring. This time he hurried to look away before Zyra stood back up and turned around.

He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “You mentioned needing some rare ingredients.”

“The shell of a Rock Wyvern Egg and the petals of a Haint Orchid,” Zyra replied, straightening up and bringing the selected vials and bundles of herbs back to her worktable. “The Orchid should be straightforward enough, but the Rock Wyverns only nest on sheer cliff faces of the Star Iron Hills—which are really more like mountains.” She began stripping the leaves from a bundle of dried herbs and dropping them into a mortar. “I’m not certain I can climb the faces and get the egg while fighting off the Rock Wyverns. I’ve read that they’re quite deadly, and I have no experience with mountains.”

Roark’s ears perked up. “I grew up in the mountains, you know. I could go with you and keep an eye out for danger while you got the egg.”

Zyra stopped picking leaves off the herb. Though he couldn’t see her eyes within the shadows of the hood, he could imagine their mismatched purple and green depths studying him as she had the poison just minutes before.

“I did it for Kaz during his gourmet quest,” Roark said, shrugging as though it were nothing. Contrary to his cool exterior, however, his heart was thumping like mad. “You can ask him for my references if you’re skeptical that I’m up to the task.”

“It’s not that,” Zyra said, her voice strangely soft. Almost pensive. “Sometimes I forget that you lived a whole life before you were a Changeling.”

Roark smiled. “And you’ve spent your whole life here, fighting to survive in the shadows. What was it like?”

“What were your mountains like?” she countered.

“Snowy, cold, covered in rock fall.” Though he hadn’t run along the paths or climbed the walls of the mountains of Korvo in twenty years, his favorite hides and scrambles glowed in his mind like a comforting fire on a stormy night. “The perfect place for a child to play.”

“You sound sad,” Zyra said. “Do you miss them that badly?”

Roark opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and considered the exact nature of his melancholy.

“It’s more that I suspect I won’t see them again,” he said after a time. “When I return to my world, it will be for a tyrant’s head, and even if I succeed, his followers will never let me escape alive. Hells, a good number of them are so fanatically devoted to him that they tracked me here in spite of the risk.”

“Or they’re so frightened of him,” Zyra said.

Roark sneered. “Then the self-serving cowards deserve whatever happens to them when he tires of their sycophancy.”

Suddenly, Zyra’s hands flew back into motion, plucking at the herbs, snatching up the pestle, and grinding the leaves to a dust. Roark couldn’t see her expression, but the pestle was crushing down much harder than he would have guessed necessary for dried plant matter. When he finally realized why she might be angry, he could have kicked himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you’re not like them. You didn’t know there was another way to live, so you did what you had to do to survive. And you left Azibek’s service as soon as you spotted the better option.” He tried smiling at her. Seven hells, this was not going at all well. “Even if sometimes you’re not sure I truly was the better option.”

“Only because you’re insane,” she muttered. Still, her sharp motions smoothed and slowed. After a moment, she asked, “You hate this tyrant enough to cross dimensions to kill him?”

Roark felt his face pull into a glower. “He took everything from me. If I don’t kill him, he’ll keep taking and destroying and salting the earth behind him. That is his way.”

Zyra’s hood rose and fell as she nodded.

“I can respect a good revenge killing,” she said. “When do you think you’ll go back?”

“I’ll need to be at least at my final Evolution before I can open a portal back to Traisbin,” Roark said. “Though I suspect I’ll have to deal with Lowen before then.”

Her hood pointed unwaveringly at the herbs she was shaking into a wide-mouth flask. “What about Mac and Kaz? Will you take them with you?”

Roark frowned and shook his head.

“Not if I can help it. Griff made me promise to take him when I went,” he admitted, “but he’s got a firm grasp of what true death is, and he’s lived a full life. Mac... Kaz... all the Trolls, really... Taking them back to Traisbin with me would be a death sentence. There are no respawns there, and wherever I go, forever-death is going to follow.”

“But you can’t expect to fight a tyrant and his army by yourself!” She sounded indignant. “If I—if any of us hadn’t been here, you’d never have lasted long enough to challenge anybody.”

Roark hopped down off the workbench, hands itching to reach out to the hooded Reaver. He balled them into fists and forced them to his sides.

“It’s too much of a risk,” he insisted, willing her to understand that he couldn’t lose her or Mac or Kaz. Not now, not after finally letting them into his life. He couldn’t be the cause of their deaths.

Zyra snorted. “A risk you’ll probably ignore anyway. You’re nowhere near paranoid enough. Probably more than half the reason you haven’t managed to kill this tyrant yet.” She turned back to her flask, tipping a bottle of thick red liquid into it. “But by all means, go alone. Mac and Kaz will miss you for a little while, but I imagine they’ll get over it.”

Roark opened his mouth, fumbling for some caustic and clever reply, then closed it again and shook his head.

“Let me know when you’re ready to retrieve the Rock Wyvern egg,” he said in clipped tones. “I’ll be in my study.”

Transmute Magick

ROARK STALKED ACROSS the corridor to his study, closing the door behind him carefully. His mood was considerably blacker than it had been before visiting Zyra’s lab, but he didn’t want her to know that. No one could frustrate him like the hooded Reaver. It was as if she always knew exactly what to say to get beneath his skin. Did she think he wouldn’t take her with him if there was any other choice? Her, Mac, and Kaz? There would be nothing for them in Traisbin but death. It was bad enough that he’d been talked into taking Griff to his eventual—or, perhaps, very sudden—death.

Just how many damned deaths did Zyra want on his conscience?

The silver lining to this twice-damned storm cloud was that their little talk had put him in the mood for some cursing. He crossed the study to the desk he’d installed in the room for writing new spells and hexes. It was a black walnut behemoth, finished with a burl walnut veneer, which would’ve been the envy of any mage or scribe in Traisbin. A set of brass-handled drawers ran down either side of the desk, and twin panels protruded from both sides, filled with pigeon holes, shelves, and storage space for scrolls, inks, books, and writing implements of every sort and size.

Roark breathed deeply as he sat, running his hands lightly, almost reverently, over the wooden top. Though he’d never seen a desk quite like this, it reminded him more of home than anything else in all of Hearthworld. He could almost see his father, Sir Erick Von Graf, sitting at a desk not so different from this one, his scrolls neatly arranged before him, his serious, deep-set eyes scanning magically binding contracts, lettering writs to ensure the newly deceased of Korvo would rest peacefully in the afterlife, or deconstructing the nuanced language and punctuation of spell forms. His father hadn’t been an easy or lighthearted man, but he’d been kind in his own way and perpetually even-keeled, to boot.

That last was a trait Roark had never shared with his long-deceased father. Roark had taken instead after his mother, quick-tempered, driven, and prone to action before thought. Traits which had directly resulted in his present predicament.

Roark found himself smiling as he inhaled the heady scent of parchment and acrid smell of bottled ink. Already, the sight of shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls was driving away the irritation and uncertainty. This was a place of logic and reason. Of order. Zyra might be impossible to fathom from one day to the next, but magick always followed the same set of rules. His father had taught him as much.

In Traisbin, the rules had adhered rigidly to syntax, grammar, and punctuation. Clause upon interconnected clause, clearly defined spell parameters, effects, locations, and targets. A spell could go horribly awry with as little as a misplaced comma. Some of that seemed to have carried over to Hearthworld.

Roark could still write his spells in this dimension and carve cantrips in his flesh when necessary, though the laws that governed magick in Hearthworld put strict caps on their power, range, and duration. He could usually find a way to write around those restrictions, but the better, more permanent solution was through leveling. He’d done quite a bit of that already, bringing up his Cursing until he’d been given a new Hexorcist classification.

But Roark was certain he had only scratched the surface of magick in this dimension. PwnrBwner and that Death Knight from earlier, for example, both used vocal commands to cast spells. Braind_Fish, the elf leader of that ill-fated raid on the Vault of the Radiant Shield, had used hand motions to trace runes in the air itself. What were runes and spoken words but another way to write a spell? A faster, simplified way. Perhaps they weren’t as elegant as his scripted masterpieces, but in the end, only the effect mattered, and their spells were deadly effective. A truth he could personally testify to.

Roark leaned back in his overstuffed chair and opened his mystic grimoire, turning once again to the World Stone Pendant’s spells and abilities.

Transmute Power – Meld and merge the primal energies and magicks in the world around you to your will.

Meld and merge...

Roark didn’t understand at all how one used vocal commands to cast spells like PwnrBwner did—speech was so impermanent and conveyed intent about as well as a sieve conveyed water—but the runes and sigils he could wrap his mind around. His own Hexes became runes when he was finished inking them, and he had a library of sigils in his head from Enchanting and Cursing. If he could somehow use this new Transmute Power ability to combine the two systems of magick—his own rigid writing system and the faster, simpler series of runes and sigils—then perhaps he could create a faster, more accurate way to write spells.

With a thought, Roark closed the grimoire, then pulled his Initiate’s Spell Book from his Inventory. Numbness and tingling washed down his left hand as the book hovered open over his palm. He wasn’t certain the level spell slot he would want for this experiment, so instead he turned to the blank binding pages at the back. He was able to hex any planar surface, so it stood to reason that he should be able to hex a piece of parchment, even if it happened to be located inside his spell book.

After his unsettling conversation with Zyra, the curse at the forefront of his mind was the Icy Torrential Downpour, though he couldn’t decide which of them would benefit the most from a drenching. Probably both. With a disgruntled sigh, Roark carefully scrawled out the curse form on the end page.

An Icy Torrential Downpour falls, depleting Magick of all targets standing within a five-foot radius by (5 x Cursed! level of caster) points/second for thirty seconds.

When he finished, a scrap of parchment crammed with words appeared.

[Would you like to Hex this surface? Yes/No?

Note: For every Hex you inscribe, Cursed! will extract a share of your Health equal to your Enchanting level x your character level.]

Acting on a hunch, Roark selected No and returned to the page. This time, rather than inscribing a curse, he drew the lightning bolt shaped Yasuc, the rune that alchemically forged precious stones and weapons into one new, solid piece when Enchanting. Just below this, he wrote out the other curse bouncing around the inside of his skull, an Incendiary Burst.

The air within 15 feet of this paper compresses and expands rapidly, igniting, causing 15 points fire damage (+2 burn damage/sec for 15 seconds) to any targets within a 15-foot radius.

Once again, the option to inscribe the Hex appeared, and once again Roark declined.

Working as carefully as he would on a Legendary weapon with a Flawless gem, Roark drew a containment circle around the curses and rune. The containment circle was a complicated piece of magecraft from his home world, meant to restrict the effects of a particular spell set to a given area, or amplify and bind various textual proofs into a single coherent form. Such a containment circle wasn’t typically used for simple cantrips, but was rather reserved for the most complex forms of contract magic or sprawling, multi-mage rituals.

His hand moved with practiced ease—schooled at the academy for a handful of years under the watchful tutelage of Arch-Acolyte Sarvlax before the Tyrant King had come to power—as he wrote out the various boundaries and the binding formula.

After a minute, he lifted the nib from the page, blowing softly on the ink out of habit.

A notice materialized before his eyes, wiping out his handiwork, leaving the parchment in his spell book completely blank.

[Error! This Curse Chain cannot be created without defined (If, then) conditions.]

Curse Chain? Excitement prickled down the back of Roark’s neck, and he sat forward in his chair, eager to complete the inscription correctly and see what it would do. After some toying with the grammar and the lightning-shaped Yasuc, Roark came up with a curse that utilized the If, then format required by the arbitrary rules that governed Hearthworld’s magic.

If a living creature steps within a five-foot radius, then this hex will trigger an Icy Torrential Downpour, depleting 5 x Cursed! level of caster points/second for 30 seconds, and activate an Incendiary Burst, causing 15 points fire damage (+2 burn damage/sec for 30 seconds).

Around this, he once more painstakingly scrawled the containment circle. As soon as he closed the circle, a new option appeared.

[Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: Storm of Fire and Ice? Yes/No?

Note: There is no cost to attempt to invent Curse Chains, however not all combinations of runes and curses play nicely together. Success depends upon compatibility of runes and curses used and will not be revealed before the attempt to invent a Curse Chain is accepted. Failure comes with steep consequences.

Please inscribe responsibly.]

Roark cackled, rubbing his palms together in greedy anticipation. As if he would pass up this opportunity. The potential gains far outweighed any risk.

[Congratulations, you have unlocked Curse Chain! You may now invent Curse Chains two curses long.

The accepted definition of invented Curse Chains will be logged in Initiate’s Spell Book. Curse Chains can be inscribed repeatedly without a cooldown period for as long as they remain in Initiate’s Spell Book.]

As soon as Roark dismissed this notice, another appeared.

[Your invention of Curse Chain: Storm of Fire and Ice was successful! Accepted definition for Storm of Fire and Ice has been logged in your Initiate’s Spell Book under rune STORM OF FIRE AND ICE.]

Roark turned immediately back to his spell book. A new rune, half stylized heat waves and half snowflake, had appeared on the end page with the particulars of the effects neatly written beside it.

Kneeling, Roark copied the Storm of Fire and Ice rune onto the flagstones. As soon as he finished, a small rush of burgundy flames rolled over the rune, and it faded to near invisibility.

A moment later, the air around him erupted in a flaming explosion just as an icy rain gushed down on him from above like someone upending a rain barrel over his head. Roark yelped with surprise, delight, and a bright flash of searing pain.

He used a quick pre-inscribed Dispel Magick from his spell slots to put out the flames. Even over thirty seconds, his Health was now high enough that the flames wouldn’t kill him, but they were damned painful and distracting. With the Hex undone, he returned to the end pages of the book, a stupid grin plastered on his face.

It was runic shorthand. Brilliant. His mind was awhirl with a myriad of possibilities. The initial rune form required time and thought, but once the preparations had been made, he could inscribe the runes in a few pen strokes. And those an unlimited number of times!

He’d need to go slow, take his time and investigate the limits of this new power, but it was also possible that he’d be able to create nearly infinite strings of runic complexity with enough time and practice. For example, he thought it was theoretically possible to combine the Rune he’d just created for Storm of Ice and Fire with another manufactured Rune, creating an even more complicated and powerful sigil set. That would be far down the road, to be sure, but he was excited to get there.

Roark immediately set about writing another, slightly more complicated, Chain.

If a living creature with Strength or Constitution higher than 20 steps within a 5-foot radius, then hex will trigger Noxious Miasma, causing 10 points plague damage/second for 15 seconds to all creatures within 20 feet. If a creature inside Noxious Miasma radius steps within one foot of Miasma’s border, the floor beneath Noxious Miasma becomes a pit of sucking mud for 30 seconds, entrapping all affected creatures in the Miasma.

To this, Roark added the negative of Rorne, a rune that increased Movement Speed, in the hopes it would further slow the affected parties, and Yasuc to bind it all together, before tracing the containment circle around the jumble of words.

[Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: Sucking Miasma of Death? Yes/No?

Note: There is no cost to attempt to invent Curse Chains, however not all combinations of runes and curses play nicely together. Success depends upon compatibility of runes and curses used and will not be revealed before the attempt to invent a Curse Chain is accepted. Failure comes with steep consequences.

Please inscribe responsibly.]

Roark accepted, giddily awaiting the appearance of the new rune.

[Your invention of Sucking Miasma of Death has failed! Goodbye!]

The notice disappeared, immediately replaced by a cloud of toxic yellow fog. The fog roiled and bubbled, moving at many times the speed normal fog would waft, and Roark found himself choking and gagging as it clawed its way down his throat and bored into his nose and eyes, partially blinding him in the process. Pain ripped through his chest as if acid were eating away his lungs from the inside out. Blood spattered to the floor as he doubled over, coughing uncontrollably. The red liquid in his Health vial drained away in a madcap rush to zero.

Roark fumbled a Sufficient Health Potion from his Inventory, his hands burning and clumsy, and tried to down it, but the sugary magenta concoction did nothing to slow or stop his loss of Health.

The filigreed vial flashed out a final critical warning as he dropped to the bloody stone floor, coughing up chunks of pink lung tissue.

Roark von Graf died in horrible pain, absolutely ecstatic over his new ability. He couldn’t wait to respawn and try it again.

The Hero Sieve

WHEN ROARK RESPAWNED in the Keep’s throne room two hours later, Zyra leapt up from the formidable black-steel chest she’d been lounging against.

“Who was it?” she demanded, Poisoned Claws extended and ready to kill. “That Lowen character? One of the dungeons you sent Kaz to recruit? A holdover still loyal to Azibek? A challenger for the Dungeon Lord’s throne? Who? Just give me a name.”

Roark waved her question away with one hand. “No. It was no one.” He was already headed for the door, unable to wait a single second to answer questions. “Or rather, me,” he called back over his shoulder.

The hooded Reaver quickly caught up to his long strides and fell in beside him.

“You? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a new ability,” he said, taking a turn down the corridor.

“The Ugliest Suicide ability?” Zyra asked. “Your corpse looks as if a level 12 Fireball blew your chest apart from the inside out. I had to post a guard on your study so no little Changelings would happen by with a message and have a panic attack at the death of their dear Dungeon Lord.”

Roark barely heard her. He rounded the corner into the hall that led to the Alchemy lab and study, his boots clacking furiously on the stone as he picked up the pace. Ideas whirled around in his head like spinning tops, frantic with life and motion and possibility. There was still so much about this new ability he didn’t understand—so much he could only learn through experimentation, trial and error. And most probably, through painful death.

“I’ve figured out the citadel’s floorspace management problems,” he told her as they approached the Reaver Shaman standing watch over his study door. The hunched, wiry Shaman gave a deep bow before skittering off into the shadows. Roark held the door for Zyra, then followed her inside. “Potential combinations kept coming to me while I was respawning. The possibilities are nearly limitless. With just curses I already know, I’ve got over seventy-three thousand spell forms—though a great many of those will be death traps, I’d wager.”

Zyra perched a hip on the edge of the desk, crossing her arms, and looked down at the mangled corpse on the floor. She hadn’t been exaggerating about the extent of the damage; Roark had seen some truly horrific deaths during his years in the Resistance, but the mess on the floor was by far the grisliest scene he’d ever had the displeasure of stumbling across.

“Looks as if your first one went well,” she said.

“That was my second, actually,” Roark replied curtly. He stooped at his bloodied, acid-eaten body and gathered his belongings from the corpse. When he’d emptied them all back into his own Inventory, the corpse turned to dust and blew away on an unfelt breeze. Good riddance. “Though it was a bit nasty,” he reluctantly admitted.

Slowly, Zyra retracted her claws. “How many levels did you lose?”

“One? Two? It hardly matters.” Roark shrugged as if the detail was the least important thing in the world. He’d get the levels back. What was important was what he’d reasoned out while floating incorporeal during his respawn.

“I didn’t realize you’d damaged your brain,” Zyra said, folding her arms. “Is it permanent?”

Roark ignored her sarcasm, pulled out his Initiate’s Spell Book, and immediately began to inscribe a new Curse Chain.

“This is the solution I’ve been looking for,” he explained as he worked. “It will make griefing so much more efficient, which will, in turn, bring in a massive amount of Experience. I’ll be back up to whatever level I was in no time. Not to mention, we won’t have to cram the first floor in with the second anymore. If I can make this work, we’ll be able to streamline the griefing process and turn this place into a true clockwork wonder of death.”

“Well, I’m sure Wurgfozz and Druz will throw you a feast,” the hooded Reaver said disinterestedly. “Since this madness is apparently of your own doing and there are no assassins for me to stab, I suppose I’ll see myself off to the Alchemy lab. Those last seventeen hundred and forty-seven potions aren’t going to brew themselves.”

Roark glanced up to find her already on her feet, one hand on the study door.

“Zyra, wait.”

She turned back to him, the slant of her shoulders and hips suggesting boredom.

For reasons too slippery to pin down, he wanted desperately to show her what he was writing, to hear her thoughts on it. Maybe even to hear her praise it. Though he knew it would be smarter not to get his hopes up. She was sparse with even rudimentary compliments and wasn’t the kind to lavish praise on anyone.

But there had to be a way to make her understand the potential importance of his discovery.

“You can create new poisons,” he said, struggling to find something that might connect. “And it’s fun, you enjoy it, right?”

She shrugged. “Who wouldn’t enjoy inventing something nastier than any poison already in existence?”

“Well, this”—Roark tapped the Curse Chain page in his Initiate’s Spell Book—“this is my poison. Seeing if I can write something that outwits everything already in existence.”

Her stance softened a bit at that.

Roark plunged ahead before he lost his nerve. “Would you be interested in seeing what I’m working on?”

The moment’s hesitation before she answered almost killed him. How long had it been since he’d wanted to impress someone? Not in order to intimidate an enemy or bluff his way through a challenge, but to earn genuine admiration. Probably not since Danella.

“All right,” Zyra said finally, going back to the desk and boosting herself up onto it. “Show me what you’ve got, then.”

Roark sat on the desk next to her and turned the Spell Book so she could see his writing.

Any hero of level 7 or lower who steps on or over this plate is instantly transported to the corresponding plate on the first level of the Cruel Citadel and is Stunned! for 20 seconds.

“Obviously, this is just a rough draft,” he said, “and far too simplistic. I’ll need to figure out how to include spell parameters, level restrictions, destination designators, and portal runes, but I’m sure I can get it ironed out. Something along this line will be the first such spell parameter. Then, I’ll need to create five more, one for each of the other floors so all the Trolls can see their fair share of griefing.”

Her hood swung up to look him in the face. “I’m not sure I entirely understand. What exactly is this supposed to do? And what is this plate it mentions?”

“Well, the execution will be complex, but the result should be fairly simple, at least in theory. I’m going to smith a metal plate of sorts, about so big”—he held up his arms, hands five feet apart—“and use my Hexorcist skill to inscribe it with a complex Curse Chain. The prime transport plate, located on the first floor, will act as a sieve. If things work according to my plan, a party of heroes steps on or over the plate, and the Curse Chain activates, sorting them out by level and instantly teleporting them to the corresponding destination plates scattered through the various levels of the dungeon. And it will all happen in the blink of an eye.”

“So,” she said, “a level 20 hero might get sent all the way down to a cursed plate on the fourth floor while a level 8 gets routed to the second floor?”

“Yes. Precisely that.” Roark’s face lit up with excitement. “All the Trolls will get a chance to grief players, we won’t have to have the first and second floors merged, and there won’t be any reason for the higher-level Trolls to rotate up to the top to handle the bigger threats. It will drastically streamline the process. And, I should be able to bake a few nasty surprises into Curse Chain as well, so that not only will we be able to split and sort the parties accordingly, but the heroes will show up on a given level with a range of nasty curse effects in place.”

Zyra was nodding slowly, one slender midnight hand reaching into the shadowy depths of her hood to cup her chin.

“That ... is actually quite impressive, Griefer.” She paused. “If it works.”

“Oh, it’ll work. I’ll need to increase my Curse Chain ability significantly, but it will work.” Roark tried not to grin and failed. He could already see the plate in action, dull and unseemly, lying in a narrow corridor before an unaware party of invaders.

“And what if a hero spots the plate before their party walks over it?” Zyra asked. “They see your inscription and scratch it out with their sword? Or they smash the plate with their morning star?”

“Simple,” Roark said, pulling his Spell Book back and hastily adding a reminder to include a new clause in the final Curse Chain. “I add another condition stating that if the plate is tampered with by anyone but a Troll native to the Cruel Citadel, it triggers an enormous explosion, wiping the party out in one fell swoop.”

“And assume they see that, then turn back and walk out of the citadel? I mean, at some point word will get around about the teleportation. Could drive heroes away.”

Roark raised an eyebrow at her. “Have you seen the heroes coming into the citadel lately? They’re not going to turn back over some simple transport curse. They want to either kill me or be killed by me. And I’m more than willing to indulge them.”

“You will lose some of them, though,” Zyra said. “The smart ones.”

“Not enough to matter, and anyway, we don’t gain the majority of our Experience from the smart ones.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Zyra clapped her hands together. “All right, I’m convinced.” She hopped from the desk. “Back to work with me. And one assumes you as well.”

She was right, there was enough leveling and experimenting ahead to border on mind-boggling. It was a lucky thing Trolls never slept.

Roark followed Zyra to the door and opened it for her.

“Thank you for pretending to care,” he said.

She chuckled. “Any time.”

***

AFTER ROARK SAW HER out, time became a blur of trial and error.

First, he went to the smithy to work on the metal plate. Initially he tried to make the plate light enough that Druz and her crew could pick it up and carry it about the first floor, deploying the transport plate at random locations in order to keep the offending heroes on their toes. After seven iterations, however, he’d lost the illusion of the First Floor Overseer packing the bulky thing around with her. She had fairly decent Strength, but the weight of the plate would wreck the movement speed of whoever carried it, and no matter what material Roark smithed it out of, he couldn’t lower the weight enough. The damned thing was simply too big. And, if Druz was caught unaware, the precious few seconds between getting the plate out of her Inventory and placing it on the floor could be the difference between life and death.

Additionally, he realized, a moveable plate wouldn’t return much of the first floor to the lowest level Trolls. Most of it would still be taken up by Druz and her honor guard coaxing the heroes to cross the plate. No, what he needed was a chokepoint that heroes couldn’t gain access to the citadel without passing.

After some consideration, Roark decided on the shadowed archway aboveground in the citadel’s inner bailey. The entry opened on the crumbling staircase that led down to the first floor. If he permanently affixed the plate to the threshold, heroes would be sorted as they arrived. Those heroes of a low enough level would proceed on to the first floor, ignored by the cursed plate, where they would run aground against Druz and the other denizens of the floor.

The rest of the higher-level heroes would be teleported accordingly.

Logistic and material issues worked out, Roark set his focus on leveling up his Hexomancer abilities. In order for his plan to work, he would need to be able to create a single Curse Chain capable of supporting six or more conditions. Currently, his Curse Chain could support a mere two conditions. As with all things in Hearthworld, the best way to increase the ability was simply to practice. Well, to practice and kill. So, Roark went to work Hexing surfaces all over the dungeon—focusing predominately at the bottom of the floor staircases, which were already natural chokepoints for invading heroes.

And instead of Hexing those surfaces with run-of-the-mill Curses!, Roark used the new Curse Chain he’d created before dying horrifically, Storm of Ice and Fire. With the longform work already inscribed in his spell book, all Roark had to do was etch the new short rune-form of the chain into the flagstones. The inscription itself took a handful of moments to create, but once set, it would inflict passive damage to any hero unlucky enough to step within the target radius for hours to come. True, the new, complex Hexes would wear down eventually, but for now they chipped away at his enemies, sending a constant trickle of Experience his way and slowly increasing his skill as a Hexomancer, which, in turn, boosted his Curse Chain ability.

Curse Chains set and operational, Roark turned his full attention to the actual rune work needed to pull this off, which was easily the most complicated piece of the operation. It also proved to be rather fun in spite of Roark’s urgency to fix the final flaw in the citadel’s layout. He lost track of time hunched over his desk, shuffling around curses, hexes, runes, and containment circles.

He died once more in an explosion loud enough to bring Mai running from all the way in the kitchen, but set back to regaining his lost level as soon as he respawned. At some point, Griff came in to report on the trainers he’d talked to, but the words bounced off Roark’s focus like a willow switch off a tower shield. Zyra drifted in and then back out again without comment. A pair of Changeling apprentice chefs brought in a meal and later a second meal. Eventually, Mai came with a third and talked quite a bit before finally throwing up her hands and leaving in frustration.

Roark hardly noticed any of it.

The number of curses he could link rose steadily, and his own level climbed back to 29, where he’d been before he died in the Sucking Miasma of Death and then the subsequent failed Exploding Ball Lightning. He hurriedly reassigned his stat points, then returned to work.

Finally, after leveling up the Curse Chain for the sixth time (You may now create Curse Chains of 6 or more curses and runes and inscribe up to 6 conditions.), he took a Town Portal scroll from his Inventory, opened it, and carefully dissected the sigils required for temporal teleportation. After being immersed in rune theory for what felt like days upon end, the spell scroll was rather easy to decipher. It was a basic binding construct—fixing two points together through a metaphysical tether—powered by a rune called Nirn, which appeared to be the key to moving objects and living things from one place to another.

After working out the rest of his Curse Chain formula, and with this final piece of the puzzle, he was ready to make another attempt. Chances were high he’d blow himself up once more, but there was nothing to be done for it. He was on the verge of a breakthrough, he could feel it sitting heavy in his gut. With a trembling hand, Roark turned to an open space in the rapidly filling endpaper of his spell book and began writing.

He took the five destination plates—one for each level, two through six—and engraved a cursed rune into the surface of each one. The rune itself would act as the destination marker for the prime transport plate, and once the hero or heroes arrived, the plate would trigger, activating the predetermined curse.

One by one, Roark went through, holding his breath as he added ever increasing levels of complexity to the spell. Engraving marker runes on the destination plates, carefully designating spell parameters, tweaking the level caps, tying them all together with an ever-more complicated set of Nirm and Yasuc runes followed by interlocking containment circles. Rather than steadily relaxing, with each plate that didn’t blow up in his face, Roark felt his shoulders tighten another notch. By the final one, Roark felt like a longbow drawn tight enough to snap.

He was well overdue for a failure. And if a Curse! of this complexity failed, who knew how much damage it might do.

Gingerly, he closed the last containment circle and reviewed his overly complicated Curse Chain spell form:

[Any hero who meets the conditional requirements set on {Destination Plate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5} is instantly transported from the Prime Transportation Plate (designation = Nirn!) to the corresponding: {Destination Plate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

{Destination Plate 1: If any hero of level 7 to 12 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Rihuk, and are Stunned! for 20 seconds.};

{Destination Plate 2: If any hero of level 13 to 18 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Figrua, and suffer 20 points of Fire Damage!};

{Destination Plate 3: If any hero of level 19 to 24 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Letho, and slowed by 10% for 20 seconds!};

{Destination Plate 4: If any hero of level 25 to 30 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Wuurk, and suffer 20 points of Frost Damage!};

{Destination Plate 5: If any hero of level 30 or above steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of STORM OF ICE AND FIRE, and suffer the effects of: (Existent Curse Chain) Storm of Fire and Ice!};

If any person, mob, or hero, other than a Troll, native to the Cruel Citadel, tampers with this plate, it triggers an explosion causing 150 points fire damage (+10 burn damage/sec for 25 seconds) to any targets within a 20-foot radius.]

Another popup appeared a moment later.

[Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: The Hero Sieve? Yes/No?]

Roark licked chapped lips then, with a grimace, accepted.

“Boom!”

Roark flinched. But instead of a notice that his final Curse Chain had failed—Goodbye!—the Success page appeared before him, detailing the ins and outs of his new curse:

[Your invention of Curse Chain: The Hero Sieve was successful! Accepted definition for The Hero Sieve has been logged in your Initiate’s Spell Book under rune THE HERO SIEVE.]

A new rune promptly appeared, this one a shimmering opalescent circle that looked a bit like a wheel with six spokes radiating outward. Roark dismissed the announcement with a flick of his hand and craned his neck to glare at Zyra over his shoulder.

“Oh, I apologize, I didn’t think you could hear me,” she said, laughter shining like sunlight through her every syllable. “I take it you’re back with us, then, Dungeon Lord?”

Roark stood and stretched, the stiffness and kinks of untold tense, focused hours protesting in his back and neck. He spotted the meals long gone cold, then remembered his army of visitors the night before.

It’s sure lucky you don’t have to set aside your precious plans to breathe or you’d be long dead, Danella’s ghost whispered in his ear.

“How long have I been working?” he asked.

“Seventeen hours,” Zyra said as if she’d been waiting to answer this question. “Not counting the time you were gone for respawn. I finished my brewing time requirement and the last of my potions for Master Alchemist an hour ago. I’m down to just the ultra-rare ingredients that a certain Jotnar promised to help me gather.”

Roark nodded and gathered up the finished plates, which collectively weighed a quarter ton. “Indulge me in one last matter,” he replied with a sly grin, eager to see his handiwork in action for the first time.

***

SETTING UP THE PLATES themselves was a surprisingly simple affair, and in next to no time, Roark and Zyra were back in the Dungeon Lord throne room, so Roark could watch the mayhem unfolded from the luxury of his throne. They waited for less than ten minutes before a new party of heroes shouldered their way into the shadowy archway to the first floor’s crumbling staircase. They looked like a mixed lot, most mid-level heroes in the 10 to 14 range. A level 18 Moon Shaman called Stinky_Pinky lead the group.

“This is important,” the silk-clad Shaman said over his shoulder, “just follow my lead, do what the fuck I say, when the fuck I say, and don’t get separated. These Trolls are lower level, but if they split you off from the main party, it’s game over, son. The Griefer changed things up recently, so I wouldn’t expect to see any action until we get down to the next level, but this dude’s a tricky sumbitch, so you never—”

His words cut off abruptly as he stepped over the entryway plate attached to the threshold, vanishing in a flash of prismatic light. The others, too stupid or too greedy to turn back, followed right on his heels, charging onward. They, too, were swallowed by a shower of blinding light as the various members were sorted and teleported away. Only a single Brawler, EdgeGod, remained on the first floor, his level 11 low enough to keep the Hero Sieve from whisking him away with the others. He crept forward, uncertainty marring every step, his pitted battle-axe held in a trembling death grip.

“Alex? Bobby? Tamara?” He called out, voice quivering. “Yo, this isn’t funny, guys. Where’d you douches go?”

There was a gentle scrape of steel and the shuffle of heavy feet.

“Hello,” EdgeGod called out louder this time, his nasally voice ringing off the ceiling.

The whistle of a feathered shaft carving through the air greeted him in reply.

The arrow slammed into his neck, quickly followed by a second and third shaft. The woefully unprepared hero staggered back, eyes wide, blood drooling from his mouth as a pack of young Thursrs tore around a corner, barreling straight for him. Roark threw back his head and laughed before switching views, finding out what had happened to the rest of his unfortunate test subjects.

The higher-level Moon Shaman, Stinky_Pinky, backpedaled through a cathedralic nave, lit by the weak combination of a single glowing Infernal stained-glass oculus high on the rear wall and a dozen or so pale blue witch lights wandering between the rotting and burnt wooden pews. The third floor, then.

Hazy yellow-silver light surrounded Stinky_Pinky in a halo as he cast spell after spell at Grozka the Zealot, Third Floor Overseer. Shrugging off the hero’s attempts to stop her, the heavily armored Thursr Knight advanced, raising her spiked scepter of charred black metal. Stinky_Pinky quivered with intimidation at the sight of her. Even Roark had to admit that Grozka cut a damned impressive figure in her plate armor and stag-horn helm. The Shaman skittered back another few paces and tripped over a downed pew, landing in a sprawl of limbs as Grozka’s honor guard stood around the perimeter of the room, leering, cheering, chanting, “Finish him! Finish him! Finish him!”

The Moon Shaman raised a fist, power thrumming in his palm, an archaic chant building on his lips—

Grozka’s scepter fell, cutting the spell off in an instant. Howls of victory roared as Roark swapped the view again, this time finding the rest of the Heroes in a pitched battle in the torture chamber located on the second floor. Wrought iron cages hung from the ceiling, many of them dripping with fresh gore. Others contained grinning skeletons from distinctly nonhuman creatures. Breaking cradles, blackthorn beds, stretching racks, and grime-covered stocks were strewn around the room, interspersed with blood-soaked tables.

The party of heroes was encircled by Elite Thursrs and low-level Reavers, pressing in from all sides as the heroes screamed and fought, hopelessly outnumbered. Thoroughly pleased with the functionality of his new system, Roark dismissed the scene of carnage and chortled to himself.

“I take it things are going well?” Zyra asked.

He smiled. “It’s a thing of beauty. I just wish you could see it. Now come on, let’s go get your ingredient...”

Rock Eggs

“AND THEN KAZ MET WITH Ishri the Cunning of Bloodleech Grotto,” Kaz said, swinging his Legendary Meat Tenderizer in a wide arc that crushed the head of a [Rock Wyvernling] with a screech and splatter of blood. “And he, too, spoke of seeing action before any agreement could be struck.”

Roark ducked the geyser of acid spewed by an [Elder Rock Wyvern], then aimed his open palm at its birdlike chest and fired off a level 3 Stone Lance. Three feet of twisted stone spiral tore through his hand, eliciting a shout of pain first from him, then from the Elder Rock Wyvern he’d targeted as it pierced the breast. The creature’s Health dropped by a mere sliver.

Zyra hadn’t seemed overjoyed at the prospect of Kaz tagging along with them as they left the Cruel Citadel, but now that they were here, Roark was glad they’d brought the Knight Thursr. For one, he wasn’t sure he could’ve kept the entire flock of Wyverns distracted from Zyra by himself. And second, Kaz had returned with word from the other Dungeons, and that was news Roark didn’t want to wait on. Though, admittedly, it wasn’t the report Roark had been hoping for...

“That’s seven, then,” Roark panted. “And not a bloody one willing to say yes or no until they see a marketplace.”

The other Dungeon Lords’ demand for proof first made good sense, especially considering Roark was asking them to go to war against the most powerful dungeon in Hearthworld, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.

Kaz swatted another Wyvernling out of the sky with a crunch. With a chirp of glee, Mac went waddling after the scraggly creature to finish it off. At first, the Young Turtle Dragon had waited patiently at Roark’s side for him to bring down the much larger, frilled Elder ... until he saw that Kaz was knocking the babies off like flies while Roark was making almost no progress toward killing the parent.

“But they did sound very interested,” Kaz said, lazily smashing a third against the sparkling surface of a cliff face. “Especially after Kaz explained about skewers. Oh and salt. Ishri the Cunning seemed very much interested in learning more about salt—though only in the right amount, of course.”

The Elder Rock Wyvern swooped low and let loose another gout of acid. Roark threw himself into a roll. Rocks sizzled where he’d been as the acid ate through them. Roark targeted the creature with Infernal Torment, one of his Jotnar spells. Purple tongues of fire burned through the Elder’s pebbly skin as it was cooked alive from the inside out, but its red Health bar dropped to barely less than three-quarters full.

Roark scowled as he heard the shriek and crunch of another Wyvernling behind him. Since they’d first arrived in the Star Iron Hills, fragile Wyvernlings had been swarming the Mighty Gourmet by the tens and twenties, each one meeting with a gruesome end against the flat of Kaz’s Legendary Meat Tenderizer. The nearly unkillable Elder, however, hadn’t bloody looked away from Roark once.

“Have you got that egg yet?” Roark called up the cliff, eyes never leaving the circling, diving Elder.

“A few more feet,” Zyra’s voice came filtering down along with a dusting of pebbles.

“Has Roark noticed yet that Zyra says ‘a few more feet’ every time he asks?” Kaz asked, splattering another wyvern baby across the Star Iron–flecked rocks.

Mac clambered back over the rocks to check in on Roark’s fight. He’d been doing so every few Wyvernlings, not wanting to be left out if Roark ever finally did kill the Elder.

“The next Dungeon Lord you talk to, mention that we’ve already recruited a Book Binder, a Flesh Barber, a Bulwark Engineer and that our merchant is on the way,” Roark said. In truth, only one, Jorfas the Bulwark Engineer, was already setting up shop in the citadel, but according to Griff the other two had agreed to come as soon as Variok was in place. But that final piece of the puzzle was all but complete. More or less. As soon as they were finished with Zyra’s quest, they would be off to Chillend. “See if that doesn’t make them more willing to commit.”

As if drawn by Roark’s breathless voice, the Elder Rock Wyvern swooped, this time both spewing acid and slashing with its wickedly curved Star Iron talons. Roark dropped Infernal Torment and threw up his shield. The Elder screeched in frustration as it scraped along the violet barrier. The creature lost altitude, its smooth arc disrupted, and nearly fell prey to the jaws of a surprisingly springy Young Turtle Dragon. Mac had leapt from a boulder at the Elder like a wolf trying to snatch an eagle out of the sky. His razor-sharp beak clipped the very end of the Elder’s tail, but the creature pumped its massive leathery wings like mad, regaining the sky.

The momentary distraction, however, had given Roark time to scribble a Ball Lightning spell in one of his level 4 spell slots. He sent the spell crashing toward the Elder. A sparking ball of green-white energy and plasma slammed into the back of the creature’s neck, just below the skull.

Incensed, the Elder Rock Wyvern banked sharply and folded its wings, diving. As it approached, it extended clawed feet tipped with six-inch talons.

Roark steeled himself; this next move was going to hurt, but hopefully the pain would be worth the payoff. The Elder slashed at Roark’s eyes, opening gashes across his face and upraised arms. But the moment it was within reach, Roark tagged the creature with the flat of his hand, triggering Hex-Touch.

Hex-Touch

Lay hands on any enemy and trigger Hex-Touch; any creature with an Intelligence score lower than the caster is Cursed! for the duration of the spell. Hex-Touch inflicts a -10 against (1) Attribute Score—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence—of the caster’s choice for the duration of the spell! If the enemy dies while Cursed!, caster receives an additional 10% experience! Hex-Touch can be inscribed in a second level, third level, or fourth level spell slot. Inscribing Hex-Touch at higher level spell slots increases the duration of the Curse! Second level spell duration, 10 minutes. Third level spell duration, 1 hour. Fourth level spell duration, 8 hours.

Text appeared before Roark’s eyes.

[You have cast level 2 Hex-Touch on Elder Rock Wyvern. You may choose (1) Attribute Score to inflict a -10 penalty against for the duration of the spell, 10 minutes. Which Attribute Score would you like to Curse? Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, or Intelligence?]

Roark selected Constitution. Unfortunately, no change was immediately apparent. He hit the Elder with a second round of Infernal Torment. This time, however, its red bar drained at a more reasonable speed, the plum-colored flames licking away at its Health until less than half remained.

Encouraged by the gain, Roark traded the spells for his Bow of the Fleet-Fingered Hunter and nocked a trio of exploding-tip arrows. He could wait until the creature circled back around, but the range of the bow was more than double the range of most of his spells, plus it was always best to preserve his magick when a common attack would do the same job. His limited supply of Infernal spells simply took too long to regenerate to cast thoughtlessly.

He took a breath to still his rampaging pulse and followed the retreating Elder. With the Flawed Jade he’d added to the bow, his eyesight was Enchanted to four times its usual ability. Roark could see the ragged holes growing in the Elder wyvern’s wing, the crimp Mac’s beak had left in its tail, the slight hitch in each flap of its right wing.

From above came a shout from Zyra. Kaz cheered in response, but Roark ignored them both. He targeted the injured wing and loosed.

The trio of arrows flew true, exploding as they struck, nearly tearing the Elder Rock Wyvern’s wing completely off its body. The creature spiraled to the ground with a shriek.

Just before it hit, Mac leapt out from behind a pile of boulders and snatched the wyvern by the throat. The Young Turtle Dragon shook its prey viciously, the sound of ripping flesh filling the air.

With the sure-footed grace of a child of the mountains, Roark sprinted across the rock-strewn slope to where they’d landed, switching out the bow for his rapier and dagger. By the time he reached them, however, Mac had torn the head from the Elder Rock Wyvern.

The Young Turtle Dragon gave a proud but muffled chirp as Roark stopped by his side.

“Well done, mate,” Roark said, stowing his dagger to scratch Mac’s blood-soaked beard.

“Roark!” Kaz shouted. “Zyra did it! She reached the Rock Wyvern nest!”

Roark turned back to find the Knight Thursr leaning back and staring up the cliff at Zyra, who was clambering down much faster than she’d climbed up. A little too fast for someone with no experience in the mountains. She wasn’t testing any of the hand or footholds before putting her full weight on them, just grabbing on and going.

As soon as Roark thought this, a rock ledge crumbled in Zyra’s hand and she dropped. Roark broke into a run. He slammed into a wall of Thursr, knocking an oof from a surprised Kaz, who was also trying to catch the falling Reaver.

A moment later, a pile of long arms and legs wrapped in black leathers crashed down on top of them both, driving them to the ground and extracting a fraction of the red liquid from Roark’s filigreed Health vial.

A gray-green egg the size of a musk melon slammed into the ground beside them, erupting in a fountain of foul-smelling green yolk.

“No!” Kaz howled, trying to disentangle himself from them and get at the broken mess. “Take Kaz, but not Zyra’s quest egg! Nooooooooooo!”

“It’s all right, big guy,” Zyra said, sitting up. “I only need the shell, Kaz!”

The hooded Reaver was so busy trying to quell Kaz’s dismay that she didn’t seem to realize she was straddling Roark’s lap. Roark, however, was very aware of the fact—and of the need to get her off of him before he embarrassed them both.

“Kaz, I only need the shell,” Zyra shouted again, louder this time.

“Oh.” Kaz sighed with relief. “That is very lucky.”

Rather than make a move to stand, Zyra leaned over and started plucking eggshell from the gooey green debris.

“Zyra,” Roark said, straining to sound casual and failing by several degrees. “Could you let me up?”

The shadowy opening of her hood swiveled to look down at him, and she gave a little lurch of surprise.

“Ah—sorry.” She scrambled off him with an unusual lack of grace and no sarcastic comment at all. Her hood turned this way and that, every which way but toward Roark. “Did I hurt you? Do you need a Sufficient Health Potion?”

“No,” Roark said, standing and dusting himself off. An Icy Torrential Downpour wouldn’t go amiss, though. “I’m fine.” He hastily cleared his throat. “Now, what’s our next ingredient?”

Zyra produced a wooden rack of glass tubes and a tiny bottle from her Inventory. She set the lot of it on a flatter boulder and began to crush the Rock Wyvern Eggshell into smaller pieces in her fist.

“Actually,” she said, dropping the chunks into one of the tubes, “I obtained the Haint Orchid petals I needed while you were busy blowing yourself up last night.”

She brought out a velvet pouch, then picked a spectral blue petal from inside and dropped it into the tiny bottle. A concentrated, ghostly flame peeked from the mouth, hissing with preternatural intensity. Carefully, Zyra tipped the eggshell into the flame, then swirled the bottle’s contents. The flame shifted from green to magenta to that ghostly blue again before disappearing altogether. The hissing sound slowly tapered off.

“Done!” Zyra said. She jammed a cork into the potion bottle, then slipped it into her black leathers.

An ascending chime rang through the Star Iron Hills as she leveled up.

“And that’s done as well,” Zyra said. “Say hello to your Master Alchemist, Dungeon Lord.”

Kaz clapped enthusiastically. “Kaz knew Zyra could do it!”

She took a mock bow, one hand folded behind her back, the other sweeping out grandly.

“Congratulations.” Something was wrong with this, but Roark was having a hard time putting his finger on what exactly. “What was it? The potion?”

“Nothing,” she said dismissively. “Just another poison.”

“It must’ve been something rather special to require such rare ingredients,” he pushed.

Zyra shrugged a shoulder. “It’s not exciting for anyone but poison enthusiasts. Now,” she said, slick as spilled oil, “don’t we have a merchant to spring from jail?”

Sensing he wouldn’t get a straight answer from the hooded Reaver and newly minted Master Alchemist, Roark relented. No matter how strange Zyra was acting, she was right. The sooner they got Variok out of Chillend, the sooner they could get the mob marketplace open for business and start preparing for war.

Favors

SCOTT BAYANI RAISED his Unique Mace of Elemental Culmination, blue lightning popping and sparking between its razor-sharp flanges, and shouted out another healing spell. Blue spheres surrounded each of the party members, refilling their Health and Magick.

Of course, as soon as he did it, [Bro_Fo], the douche he was getting paid to push through the Tidal Caves, stepped right into a barrage of Venomous Sea Urchins summoned by [Sssshwsssh the Merfolk Overlord].

Scott rolled his eyes and hit the Overlord with a Lightning Lance—one of his most powerful offensive spells—then healed that dummy Bro_Fo again.

He just had to keep thinking of the money.

Five grand in gold pieces to get Bad_Karma’s newbie younger brother through some slightly harder than normal dungeons, power-leveling the entitled little nutsack to at least level 20. If not for the solid five Gs, Scott thought, he would kill Bro_Fo himself. The little asswipe was seriously the worst.

Scott hadn’t planned to go back to his guild yet, but when Bad_Karma said jump, you mashed Y like your membership depended on it. Because it did. Not only was Karma one of the guild’s founders, but he was number one on the server—and that was playing in Hardcore Mode. One death and Bad_Karma’s character would be gone forever, but the dude had gone fifty levels so far without dying. Even Scott had to admit that was impressive.

If only his moron little brother had half that skill.

The Merfolk Overlord’s HP dropped to twenty-five percent, triggering the boss bullshit. Scott braced himself for something underhanded and shitty. Fishman was a level 34, after all, so his final mode should be epic.

But the Merfolk Overlord just splayed his gill fronds, making a hissing, rattling sound like a dinosaur from that classic movie, Jurassic Park, and split into five.

Major letdown. All intimidation and scare tactics, but each copy only had a fifth of the HP the original had when it split.

Scott zapped one fishman with a Lightning Lance, one-shotting it outright, then hit another with the same, knocking its HP down to barely breathing. Bro_Fo swept in and killed the second one, soaking up that Experience he’d paid for, while the other guys in the party whaled on the rest.

Weirdly enough, he found himself comparing the Merfolk loser to that dick modder, the Griefer. Sure, Overlord Splish-splash was tough, but like only as tough as he was supposed to be. No surprises, no last-minute cheats. You got exactly what you paid for with this guy and not a penny more.

Scott hit Bro_Fo with another healing spell before the final Merfolk Overlord copy nuked him. Bro_Fo jumped into the air and slammed the fishman with a Superman-punch, his Spiked Heavy Gauntlets of Sapping stealing away its last sliver of Health. Fishman’s HP bar flashed critical, then the Overlord slapped to the ground dead.

Gold light shined off Bro_Fo in a full-body halo, and an ascending chime rang off the cavern walls. Level 15. Only five more to go before Scott could collect his paycheck.

While the kid ran around looting everything in sight, Scott leaned against a massive stalagmite near the mouth of the room. The other guys lounged around nearby, some against the wall, one sitting on a tablelike broken column swinging her feet so that her heels tinked against the stone.

“Meh,” [TankieMcTankerson, the tank on the column-table said, shrugging her shoulders. “I’ve had better.”

“Fuck you, you ain’t had any,” [BarryCuda], their Blackguard Rogue, said.

“I had your dad and your brother,” Tankie said. “Your mom asked if she could join, but I told her I don’t do donkey shows.”

The Blackguard made the Up Yours sign at her.

“I’m talking about this boss,” Tankie said. “I was expecting something cool after all these jank caverns, but that was so freaking meh. You want a legit boss fight, I got three words for you: Roark the Griefer.”

Scott flinched as if she’d hit him, then looked around to make sure nobody had seen. They were all nodding and agreeing with Tankie.

“Have you been in the citadel since they set up that teleportation thingy?” [Mark_Proper_the_Third] asked. “It’s balls crazy. Walk in and suddenly you’re somewhere else ten Trolls deep.”

“Are you guys talking about Trolls?” Bro_Fo asked, looking up from the Merfolk Overlord, but still shoveling loot into his Inventory. “I thought you guys were supposed to be serious gamers, not little baby bitches. I could one-shot a Troll like bam!”

Scott snorted. “Yeah, no you couldn’t.”

“Yes, I could. Watch me, dickweed. We’re going there next, the whatever...”

“Cruel Citadel,” Mark said.

“Sweet,” Bro_Fo said. “The Cruel Citadel. I’mma make that dive my beeyatch.”

“Have fun getting your ass handed to you,” Scott said, pushing off the stalagmite.

“Wait, where’re you going? You can’t leave! Drake—I mean, Bad_Karma told you to help me power-level. You can’t quit until I’m at 20.”

Scott stopped in his tracks and looked around at his fellow mercs. “Everybody raise your hand if you’ve made a successful run at the Cruel Citadel since Roark the Griefer set up shop there.”

Mark and Tankie both shook their heads, and BarryCuda cracked up laughing.

“Me either.” Scott looked Bro_Fo dead in the eyes. “And I’m a level 28, and I got a specialty class and a Unique weapon. I’ve played my ass off down in the citadel, and I still haven’t made it out alive.”

As he said it, Scott realized it was true. The Griefer might be a total jerkoff cheater with his fake pirate accent and bullshit OP mods, but he had forced Scott to grind harder and get more creative with his strategies than he’d ever had to before.

But Bro_Fo wasn’t having it.

“We just cleared a Tier 4,” the little douchebag said, crossing his arms and smirking. “I think we can handle a couple of bullshit Trolls.”

“Whatevs,” Scott said. He headed for the almost-hidden tunnel behind the massive treasure chest and cranked the conch affixed to the wall beside it. “I’m done with that shit. Have fun getting camped. I’m outtie five thousand.”

Legion of Sticklers

FROSTRIME WAS A PORT city locked in perpetual winter.

Its buildings ran right up to the frozen docks and traced along the waterfront in both directions. Even as it swept inland from the sea, the squat wooden structures were covered in layers of salty ice, as if the ocean spray could reach each and every one, no matter how land-locked. Massive crystalline stalactites hung from eaves, glistening in the pale yellow light of the moon. Some of these had reached the ground and formed huge, hazy columns of solid water. It was the enormous jagged icicles that didn’t touch earth that made Roark a tad nervous. These looked as if they could crush even a Jotnar of Azibek’s size flat if they happened to break off. He made certain to pass well out of their path as he slipped through the shadows, just in case.

Now and then, between the businesses and houses, Roark caught sight of the wide-open ocean to the north stretching off to the horizon. The Wareling Deeps. A dark, jagged shape floated miles off shore, well above the choppy black waves. Chillend Prison.

From this distance, Roark couldn’t gauge the island’s size, but it must have been massive. The self-taught mage in him was intrigued. His primary mission was to infiltrate the prison and jailbreak their merchant, but he would have been lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he was equally as excited to get close enough to inspect whatever spells or enchantments kept the huge chunk of permanent ice high above the surface of the water. There were untold applications for something like that. He couldn’t help but envision launching an attack against Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield from a floating chunk of rock the size of a small town and armed to the teeth with earth-work fortifications and enchanted siege weapons.

The sound of heavy boots on wood and the loud groan of the trodden frozen boardwalk brought Roark’s attention back to his first order of business. Ahead, a pair of olm Legionnaires rounded a corner and started toward him. They were odd looking creatures, olms, a strangely salamander-like folk with slimy slick heads, slightly bulbous eyes, and paddlelike tails nearly scraping the frozen ground. In some ways, they reminded Roark of Mac, albeit in his Stone Salamander form—as though, perhaps, they’d shared a common ancestor at some point in the far distant past.

The Legion of Order’s presence was heavy in the port city, patrols walking nearly every street Roark had come to so far. They were easy to identify, both because of their racial alignment and because of the blue-and-gold tabards they all wore over their armor or robes, emblazoned with a spiked crown and a heavy-headed scepter. Roark kept his head down, the hood of his cloak obscuring his face in shadow much like Zyra’s, and skirted the pair, letting them pass. When they were far enough away, Roark doubled back and tailed the pair.

A dusting of snow began to drift down from above, swirling and eddying on the wintry breeze like currents in a river. Passersby pulled their cloaks a little tighter or hugged themselves and cursed the weather. To Roark, however, the snow felt like home. If the air had smelled a little more like pine and stream than salt and fish, it would have been perfect. He could almost picture Korvo, his home city. Ghostly moonlight glimmering on the peaked rooves of the village. Women in brightly colored dresses decorated with shiny tin coins and men in dark jerkins over vibrant shirts making their way down neat, snow-blown streets.

When the Tyrant King, Marek Konig Ustar, had come to power, Korvo’s streets had filled with beggars, street urchins—of which Roark had been one—and never-ending patrols of Ustar soldiers in their snake-jawed helmets and woolen cloaks, sporting the Tyrant King’s seal, a winged serpent. Now, ghosting through the streets and alleys of Frostrime, doing all he could to avoid drawing the patrol’s notice felt brutally familiar. Though it felt like eons ago, it had been little more than a month since he had slipped through the streets of his home city avoiding the Ustars.

Of course, this time the plan was to find the most opportune time to get arrested without drawing undue suspicion rather than circumvent a group of heavily armed and armored soldiers out for his blood. And there was the matter of Kaz and Zyra elsewhere in the city, working at the same objective. Still, the feeling of having been in this exact situation before was hard to shake.

The pair of olm Legionnaires Roark had attached himself to wore gleaming silver plate mail beneath their tabards, gold-threaded cloaks billowing behind them in the wind.

From what Roark could piece together from the scenes of Hearthworld history he saw whenever he died, and what Mai, Griff, Zyra, and Kaz had told him, the Legion of Order had started out as the olms’ attempt to bring order to the chaos left behind by the great war between the Infernali and the Malaika. This was why nearly all Legionnaires in the Order were olms. As the only race who hadn’t chosen a side in what they believed to be a nonsense war, the humanoid salamanders trusted no one but themselves to govern Hearthworld with logic and intelligence. And so, they subjugated the rogs, humans, and elves of the world, killing any who wouldn’t submit while allowing those who would to remain on their thrones as puppet dictators. Apparently, there was some olm emperor out there whom all these sovereigns answered to.

“Oy, you!”

Roark froze, certain he’d been made. A dozen excuses for following the patrol sprang to mind while he searched for escape routes and readied defensive spells. He managed to quell the flight instincts, reminding himself that his goal was to be arrested, not avoid it, and put on the startled expression they would expect.

But the Legionnaires weren’t looking his way. The larger of the two, a muscle-bound male with a shining ivory buckler hanging over his shoulder, pointed into the darkened niche where two walls and an ice column formed a small windbreak. A huddled mass in rags, too lumpy and bent for Roark to discern age, sex, or race, stumbled out of the shadows.

“According to Frostrime bylaws,” the larger Legionnaire began, “section eighteen, paragraph six, line two, no living being is allowed to loiter on residential or commercial property overnight.”

“Oh no,” the mass said, waving rag-wrapped hands. “No, no, I wasn’t staying, your tidiness. I was on my way to my roosting spot, not stopping here, that’s the truth.”

“Get going,” the smaller Legionnaire snapped, raising a gauntleted fist glowing with orange magic. “Find a legal place to stay tonight, or we’ll find you a spot in the prison ferry.”

The mass nodded and bowed and backed away. “Yes, yes, of course, your very orderlinesses.”

They watched the homeless beggar go, then returned to their patrol. The foot traffic was growing heavier the farther inland they traveled. Roark followed behind the Legionnaires, watching them check the clothing and weapons of passersby as if the fate of the world depended on each and every one. Their inspections either ended in an approving nod or an order to “Get that rusty excuse for a sai refurbished, woman,” or “Faceplates independent of helmets are required by section four, subsection B, paragraph five to cover no more than one-third of the face or be removed while within Frostrime city limits, pal.” They stopped and cited an innkeeper for having a sign in disrepair—which as far as Roark could see, had little more wrong with it than a scrap of peeling paint about to chip off—and a few minutes later, a tavern musician for exceeding the local noise limit.

They even inspected the many other pairs of Legion soldiers patrolling as they crossed paths.

“Get that rivet repaired, Legionnaire!” the shorter Legionnaire snapped at one of his comrades. “If I see it hanging again, I will report you for negligence as defined under OLO uniform regulations.”

The reprimanded soldier scowled and pointed at the accusing Legionnaire’s mail. “You call that ‘polished to a shine befitting the face of progress and civilization’? Have that blemish gleaming by morning or I’ll write you up.”

Both returned to their route, amphibian noses in the air.

“He’d better have it affixed by morning,” the larger Legionnaire said. “If he doesn’t, his partner will make sure he does ... or she’ll be guilty of failure to report an egregious wardrobe malfunction.”

“She would have to have been blind not to see it in the first place,” the shorter one said. “I’m writing them both up with the Praetor when I get back.”

The larger one nodded his oblong head sharply. “Can’t have standards falling amongst the troops. We are the example for the barbarians, after all.”

Roark had seen authority corrupt otherwise normal men to executing their neighbors in the streets for speaking out against a tyrant, but he had never seen it wielded against a man who dropped a bit of trash on the boardwalk and didn’t pick it up. While the chastised hero scuttled away, muttering curses under his breath and shoving the potion cork he had failed to properly discard into his Inventory, Roark chuckled to himself. Each silent puff of breath was betrayed by a white plume of steam.

The Legionnaires had already moved on to measuring the distance between a frozen-over rain barrel and the wall of a nearby tavern with a shining golden ruler.

“Perfect,” the larger one announced, straightening back to his full height.

The shorter one nodded with satisfaction. “You can always count on Willam to keep the Ocarina in order.”

In the distance, a ship’s bell began to chime the hour.

“There’s eight bells. Care for a regulation-sized mid-shift cup and tavern inspection?”

“Always.”

The shorter one opened the door for the larger, inspecting the screws in the handle plate as his partner passed. A welcoming rectangle of light fell across the trampled snow, and a soft thread of airy music drifted out into the night. Both disappeared as the Legionnaire closed the door behind his swaying tail. Lucky for the musician it did, Roark thought, or she would have been cited for exceeding the noise limit.

Roark waited a few moments before sidling up to the door himself—though not long enough to draw the attention of other patrols. The Legionnaires he’d been following might seem like nothing more than fussy wankers obsessed with enforcing every letter of the law, but it wouldn’t do to forget that this was the same Legion of Order that had imprisoned and left Mai’s husband to die for nothing more than a drunken brawl. As harmless as they looked, he would need to stay alert and be smart.

He cast Glamour Cloak, slipped off his hood, and stomped the snow from his boots. Then he opened the door. It was time to get arrested.

Misdirection

A WALL OF HEAT AND the smoky scent of meat roasting over a woodfire engulfed Roark as he stepped into the Frosty Ocarina. He hadn’t paid much attention to the cold while he was out in it, a side effect of growing up in a similarly harsh environment and his own single-minded focus on the mission at hand, but he was grateful for the warmth. A massive firepit had been built into the floor of the tavern and lined with river stones big enough to crush a hound. The long bed of embers in it radiated bright light and heat and doubled as a cook fire. At the far end of the pit, an iron spit slowly twirled, roasting the immense shank of some unknown colossal beast. The pit was lined on each side by benches where patrons could warm themselves, share a drink, a smoke, and a story, and listen to the musician playing her ocarina.

Surrounding the benches and the firepit was a strata of tables, many of them occupied even this late at night. These weren’t the crude, rough-hewn long tables of the citadel or their grimy alternative in the Sulky Selkie and One-Eyed Unicorn. Here each table was smoothed and polished to a high shine, the chairs of the same lofty quality. There were no elaborate carvings or inlays, simply an inconspicuous tastefulness that seemed to emanate comfort and quality. Though not a carpenter himself, Roark had known enough woodsmiths to spot the telltale signs of a master crafter even at a distance.

The clientele, too, seemed to be a cut above the rabble Roark had seen in the Averi City establishments. Wealthy, refined, and reserved. The few heroes sitting in on games of cards or warming themselves on the firepit benches looked balefully out of place among the well-dressed Hearthworld natives.

Careful not to linger overlong in the doorway, Roark shook the quickly melting snow from his cloak and headed for the empty bench with the best view of his Legionnaire friends. At his full Jotnar height, he had to duck to avoid knocking into the exposed beams of the ceiling, but with the Glamour Cloak in place, none of the tavern’s inhabitants could see his true form. Once again, he looked to the rest of the world like the Roark von Graf of Traisbin—noble, rakish, perhaps just a touch down on his luck if the leathers and untailored cloak were anything to judge by.

He took a seat on the bench just in front of one of the wide timbers supporting the Ocarina’s second floor and leaned his invisible leathery wings against the wooden post where no one would trip over them and call his disguise into question.

An elderly olm glided over dressed in breeches and shirtsleeves as fine yet understated as anything his patrons were wearing. The tavern’s owner, no doubt.

“What might I bring you on this winter’s night, traveler?”

“Spiced wine, if you’ve got it.” In truth, Roark would have preferred an ale, but it wouldn’t do to be seen with a commoner’s drink in an establishment like this. The wealthier customers would notice immediately and dismiss him as beneath them, hampering his chances of pulling off this next bit in his scheme.

The olm nodded elegantly and glided away to the kitchen, his fat-padded salamander tail swishing behind him.

Roark leaned in toward the firepit, stretching out his hands and rubbing them vigorously, playing his part while he checked in on the Legionnaires he had followed. Both were at the bar, sipping from clay mugs and eyeing the patrons for anyone who might be thinking of raising their voice or setting their goblet a bit too close to the edge of the table. To all appearances, they had settled in for a while.

Good. Getting arrested without making it look as if he wanted to get arrested would probably take most of that while.

Roark turned his attention to the other occupants of the tavern. Three of the six occupied tables were deeply involved in genteel games of cards.

“Your spiced wine,” a grave voice at his right said, nearly making him jump. Roark hadn’t seen the olm returning from the kitchen. Perhaps the elderly salamander had some sort of shadow stealth ability like Zyra’s.

“Thank you.” Roark took the proffered mug, steam curling up from its wide clay mouth, and held out a pair of gold pieces in return.

The olm raised one hairless brow at the money, then met Roark’s eyes with a condescending frown. “If the young master is so much in need, consider the drink a gift.”

Roark smirked and added another three pieces of gold. “If the tavern’s in such dire straits, I’m happy to contribute more.”

The elderly salamander’s eyes flattened, clearly unamused, and he snatched the payment from Roark’s hand before returning to the bar.

Alone again, Roark held the warm mug in both hands, taking a moment to savor the dizzyingly rich aroma of blueberries and spices rising on the steam. The first sip was stronger than he’d been expecting. Obviously the wealthy of Frostrime liked their wine fortified.

He studied the card play for a few hands, sipping the warm drink. The game looked similar to Riot, a staple of his mother’s summer card parties for peers and dignitaries visiting the von Graf Manor. Of course, being only a child, Roark hadn’t been allowed to play then. He’d perfected his Riot skills later on in life, bluffing tavern regulars out of drinks and coins while he listened to the local gossip and gleaned what news he could of the Tyrant King’s movements.

The table closest the wall had the fewest players—only three—and was playing for the highest stakes. Over the course of the last hand, the gold had piled up, and when the regal-looking dark elfess laid her handful of roses on the table—every one a high card—the heavyset nobleman in the feathered cap let loose a string of profanity.

“Come now, Henri,” the elfess said, scraping her winnings into her lap. “Didn’t you pay attention to the first run? No red to be seen at all.”

“I knew they were out of reach,” the nobleman grumbled. “But I had hoped the roses would be spread a little more evenly betwixt you both.” He craned his neck and called over his shoulder, “Another drink over here, Willam! I can’t break Madera’s blasted winning streak without being decently crocked.”

The Legionnaires perked up when Henri shouted, but the feather-capped nobleman apparently hadn’t quite broken the noise limit. When he slumped back into his seat and snappishly bought into the next hand without further shouting, the Legionnaires relaxed, a shadow of disappointment in their eyes.

Roark smiled into his mug. If anyone in this tavern could be goaded into a fight, it would be Henri. He watched them play another round, this one going to the elfess as well. Henri turned a red nearly as dark as the egg-sized ruby in his ring, then put the blame on their silent third, a rog with the finest silks stretched across his muscular frame, for taking all the best cards in the leaf suit.

When he felt certain he could keep up with the game, Roark ordered another spiced wine, then made his way to the table by the wall. This drink was merely for show. The last one had numbed his skull and extremities a good deal, which would be an unexpected advantage should Henri prove a scrapper. And the vague sensation of invincibility the wine had generated did wonders for his lordly posture as he swaggered over.

“How much to buy in?” Roark asked.

The quiet rog and dark elfess eyed him shrewdly, but Henri was too far in his cups and anger to take Roark’s measure.

“Ten gold and whatever dignity you brought with you,” the feather-capped nobleman growled.

“I have no dignity when it comes to cards,” Roark said, tossing the coins on the table carelessly as if he had more than he could ever spend. He fumbled a little as he took a seat—not entirely on purpose, thanks to the wine—but the elfess and rog exchanged pleased glances, clearly thinking they smelled blood in the water. “It gets me into the odd row with my father, but only because the old blowhard can’t understand that I can’t win back what I’ve lost if I don’t play.”

This drew a chuckle from Henri. “A young man after my own heart.”

“You’re a hero?” the elfess asked, her piercing aquamarine eyes focused on a point above Roark’s head, likely reading his nameplate. “Have you played Lush before, Rebel_of_Korvo?”

“Never, but I think I can muddle along with you.”

Her face stretched into a toothy smile that she quickly corrected into something friendlier and less predatory.

“You’ll catch on quickly,” she said, patting his hand.

The rest of the players bought in, then the rog dealt five cards to each of them. Roark got an assortment of rubbish, but matched the others bet for bet. When they laid hands, the elfess tried desperately not to look too pleased.

Henri cackled openly, clapping Roark on the shoulder. The nobleman was obviously happy not to be the worst player at the table anymore.

When, in the next hand, Roark staked a small fortune on a pair of twos, the whole table had a much harder time containing their glee. Even the rog rumbled with laughter.

“Oh my dear, sweet summer child!” Henri wheezed between gales of mirth. “A hundred thirty gold on nothing more than twos! Twos! Get this boy a house in town, Madera, we’ve got to make him a regular at the table!”

Roark ducked his head in false humiliation. “I didn’t think anyone could beat them.”

“Twos!” howled the nobleman.

Over at the bar, the Legionnaires were focused once more on the boisterous Henri.

“Lower your voice, Henri,” the elfess cautioned him, though she, too, was grinning. “Those Orderlies at the bar have the look of a pair who haven’t made their nightly quota yet.”

Henri quieted, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Ah,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Twos.”

Roark scowled, playing up the guise of irresponsible young lord desperate to regain his losses. It was his turn to deal, which meant the time had come.

He tossed out cards to his fellow players, sneakily sleeving three emperors and a pair of princes. The motions weren’t terribly deft as the wine’s warm buzz was still well-entrenched in his limbs. The dark elfess’s brow creased, and her aquamarine eyes narrowed. It looked as if she’d spotted his sleight of hand, and Roark waited for her to call him out, but she gave the slightest shake of her head and returned to her own hand.

Roark staked another small fortune on this round, driving up the bidding each time it came around. The elfess’s suspicion would serve him well in these next few moments.

“That’s it,” Henri said, tossing out his last handful of coins. “Flash us your unmentionables, folks.”

While the other three fanned out their hands on the table, Roark sat back a bit and fumbled with his.

“Oops.” His cards fluttered to the floor. “Just a moment.”

Roark scrabbled his chair back and leaned down, scooping them together with one hand while he pulled the winning hand out of his sleeve with the other.

A fat pink hand wrapped around Roark’s wrist.

“Here now, what’s this?” Henri demanded. He hauled Roark up and slammed his arm on the table, scattering the high cards. “You little cheat!”

“Of course,” the elfess said, her aquamarine eyes chilling to the shade of ocean ice. “I thought so.”

Roark wrenched his hand from the nobleman’s grasp and stumbled over his chair in an apparent rush to get away. Henri lunged for him, but Roark pulled a low-level rapier and brandished it, ready for the coming brawl. For his part, Henri looked ready to leap at him, armed or not.

But before the ruddy-faced nobleman could attack, the rog stood and snapped his huge fingers.

“This trash just tried to cheat us,” he rumbled, addressing the Legionnaires evenly. “And as you can see, he’s pulled a weapon in a public tavern without provocation. I believe that’s a direct violation of bylaw nine-five B, subsection eighteen.”

“It’s subsection twelve,” the shorter Legionnaire corrected the rog with obvious relish. He slid down from his stool and leaned forward on the balls of his feet.

Roark backed up against the wall. Both soldiers were already on the move, closing in from both sides.

“If you think I’m going peaceably, you’re delusional,” he warned them, adding a dagger enchanted with a Larval Pox Curse.

“Threatening a Legionnaire, too?” The larger one chuckled, then pulled a massive cleaver with one hand and his ivory buckler with the other. “In the Holy Name of Order, I hereby place you under arrest for the breaking of numerous Frostrime and Imperial laws. Surrender now.”

“Not bloody likely,” Roark said.

The Legionnaire grinned, showing needlelike teeth, then feinted, the firelight glinting off the sharp edge of his cleaver. Roark saw it for the ploy it was, but lunged an extraordinary step in return and made an off-balance thrust for the olm’s center. Forcing himself to execute the sloppy maneuver wasn’t easy. The years of swordsmanship ingrained in his muscles screamed for him to move his body out of line and forward, executing a girata, and deliver a series of sweeping squalembrato slashes to back the Legionnaire away. He doubted whether he could sustain the clumsy moves for any length of fight without giving himself away, but it turned out not to matter.

In the midst of his first lunge, his entire body froze, icy numbness sweeping through him from head to foot like leaping into a spring swollen with fresh mountain snowmelt. A gray-green aura had enveloped him.

He had been Paralyzed.

“Threat contained,” the smaller Legionnaire said, hands enveloped by that same gray-green aura, palms aimed at Roark. “A good bit of misdirection, as always, partner.”

“And a fast cast from you, partner,” the larger one said, stowing his weapon and buckler. “To the docks?”

“Gladly.” The smaller Legionnaire nodded. He swung his body around, dragging Roark’s paralyzed form across the polished floorboards. “If you’ll just get the door...”

“Of course. Have a good night, Willam.”

It was the most maddeningly civilized way Roark had ever been arrested. The part of him that had geared up for a scrap before giving in was disappointed.

Across the room, the elfess, rog, and nobleman returned to their game as if they’d already forgotten the incident.

But just before the door closed behind Roark and the Legionnaires, cutting them off from the warmth and light of the tavern, Henri shouted over his shoulder, “Enjoy frozen hell, lad!”

Inside, Roark grinned. He intended to.

A Barge of Scoundrels

EITHER THE SPELL CASTER of the Legionnaires didn’t have the required strength to lift Roark’s Jotnar body higher than an inch or so off the ground, or the olm enjoyed bouncing Roark’s feet and ankles off every obstacle and rock between the tavern and the waterfront.

The Legionnaires dragged him down the docks, the salt-worn planks clunking beneath their boots. With the paralyzation holding strong, Roark didn’t have to attempt to hide his interest in the massive shadows lining the docks on either side. The moon had risen nearly to the highest point overhead, throwing shadows from the masts and ratlines of the dozen carracks, clippers, and junks moored there. Roark had never spent much time on the ocean in Traisbin—there was only the single known continent, and the tyrant he wanted to kill never strayed from it—but he’d always had a passing fascination with seafaring vessels. The smell of fish and salt in the air, the constant creaking of wood and rope, and the endless slapping of waves on hull were enchanting.

At the farthest end of the dock sat a bulky, unwieldly looking hulk without a single mast. A row of open portholes lurked just above the waterline, and Roark could see hands poking out of more than a few. In the moonlight reflected off the water, they looked like corpse hands grasping for living flesh from beyond the grave.

The Legionnaires brought him up a wide gangplank to a desk where another of their comrades sat making notes in an enormous ledger.

“Name?” the notetaker asked.

“Rebel_of_Korvo,” the spell caster read from Roark’s illusory nameplate. “Hero, level 15.”

“Place of arrest?”

“The Frosty Ocarina, Frostrime Main Street, Frostrime.”

“Crime?”

The larger Legionnaire with the cleaver launched into the exhaustive list of Roark’s crimes by way of the number, section, and subsection of each law he’d broken while the notetaker recorded each one. It took a full five minutes to recount his illegal exploits, the scritch-scratch of quill on parchment never ceasing. That done, they emptied weapons and armor from his Inventory, cataloguing each piece Roark had brought along, which amounted to nothing he wanted to lose. The dagger and rapier, a few changes of leathers. Nothing unusual for a level 15 hero.

They left his assortment of magical items, modest Health potions, and scrolls.

“Don’t get your hopes up, prisoner,” the spellcasting Legionnaire said. “Magical items don’t work in the ferry or Chillend. Though you might need the Health potions.”

Everything taken was painstakingly recorded, and in return, Roark was given a set of Threadbare Breeches and Footwraps. The paralyzation came off long enough for Roark to put on the meager protection against the icy clime, then went back on while the notetaker launched into a bored litany he’d clearly gone through hundreds of times.

“Prisoner, you will be detained in the Frostrime harbor until first light, at which time the ferry will depart for Chillend Prison. Your total fine is eight thousand gold pieces. If you have someone in the mainland willing to pay your fine, a messenger will be provided to you. Please note that payments are accepted through alternate characters. If you are caught attempting to escape, your fine will be doubled. If you are caught damaging prison property, ferry included, your fine will be doubled. If you attempt to incite a mutiny, either in the prison or on the ferry, via a rousing freedom speech, you will be gagged indefinitely, and your fine will be doubled. Do you have anyone you can contact for payment?”

The paralyzation spell cut off again, the gray-green aura and icy numbness going with it.

Roark shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“Very well.” The notetaker aimed the nib of his quill at a dark spot on the deck. “Deposit our prisoner in the holding cell, Legionnaires.”

They snapped off a sharp salute, heels clicking together in attention. A moment later, Roark found himself Paralyzed again. The dark spot on the deck glowed bright pink, illuminating a thick iron grate. It swung open and the spell caster Legionnaire floated Roark out over the black void and dropped him unceremoniously into the hold. Roark landed in a splash of stinking bilge water several yards below, hitting the wood hull hard enough to knock a handful of red from his filigreed Health vial. With a groan, he unfolded himself and limped to a standing position.

Huge arms engulfed him, lifting him from his feet.

“Roark made it!” Kaz squeezed Roark until ribs creaked.

“Quiet down, big guy.” Zyra’s low whisper drifted through the darkness. “And remember, he’s Rebel_of_Korvo until we’re home again.”

“Kaz feared Roa—er, Rebel was harmed or killed during his arrest,” the Mighty Gourmet said, his grip only tightening.

“But now you can clearly see that I’m fine.” Roark winced. “Put me down, Kaz, before you kill me.”

Kaz dropped him. “What took Rebel so long?”

“I had to throw a few hands of cards before I could reveal that I was cheating, or it would’ve looked suspicious,” Roark said. “How did you both get here so quickly?”

A choppy wave hit the hulk, sending it listing to one side and gushing seawater through the portholes on the far side.

Roark stumbled and nearly fell, but Zyra caught him by the elbow.

“Takes a while to get your sea legs,” she said. “We’ve got a dry spot over here. Come on.”

She led him up a steep curve in the hull to a place where it flattened out beside a porthole, then let go. The porthole let in a bright circle of moonlight, but she folded her legs and sat just outside its touch, in the shadows. Kaz sat squarely on the light, a wall of muscle blocking them off from the other prisoners.

Of which there were quite a few, Roark realized. Now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, he could see at least fifty bodies clustered around the portholes on either side of the massive hold, many of whom had just been drenched by that rogue wave. Countless other shadows skulked in the darker places. Enough to make him wish the Legion hadn’t taken his blades.

“Don’t mind them,” Zyra said, noting the drift of his attention. “They won’t dare come close again.”

“Again?” Roark asked.

“Kaz and Zyra had one run-in with a group of ruffians sent by a local chef,” the Knight Thursr explained. “But Kaz had a cinnamon stick the Legion didn’t confiscate.” He pulled out a jagged brown stick. “Kaz snapped it in half and cut two of the ruffians before they could descend on him and Zyra.”

“It was downright brilliant,” Zyra said, flashing a smile at Kaz.

“Kaz got the idea from when he was trying to mull some mead and cut himself on a cinnamon stick. Cinnamon sticks can be very sharp. If Kaz ever writes a book like Gry Feliri or Jordan Bamsey, Kaz’s will detail the dangers of cinnamon sticks.”

“Hang on.” Roark lifted one hand. “Did you say a chef sent them after you?”

Kaz nodded his massive head. “It is how Kaz was arrested. He suggested that the chef used too little salt in his stew, and that was the reason it tasted flavorless and flat, and the chef attacked Kaz in front of all his customers. Kaz only defended himself, but he was arrested as well for participating in a brawl in a public space and exceeding local noise limits.” The Knight Thursr glanced over his shoulder, then pointed a finger the size of a plantain across the ship toward a distant porthole. “That is the chef. Kaz thinks he may be holding a grudge.”

Roark sized up the hefty man in the stained white jacket and flattened chef’s toque. Even from this distance, it was clear the chef was glaring at Kaz.

“I’d say you’re right, mate.” Roark made a mental note to keep an eye on the disgruntled chef until they were safely away from him.

“I beat you both here,” Zyra said smugly. “Arrested less than an hour after we parted ways.”

Kaz frowned. “It was not a race.”

“I would say that, too, if I’d lost,” Zyra said. There was a sharp smile in her voice.

Roark turned to the Reaver’s shadowy form, intending to ask her how she’d gotten thrown in the prison ferry so fast, but when his eyes fell on her, the words lodged in his throat.

The Legion must have confiscated her armor as well, because she was dressed in a pair of Threadbare Breeches and a Threadbare Tunic. No hood. Snowy white ringlets spilled down around her heart-shaped face and over her midnight blue shoulders. His eyes traced the lines of her delicate throat, the bow of her lips, her pixielike nose, and the hint of green and purple in her mismatched eyes before rising to the pair of small recurved horns poking up from the top of her head.

Zyra caught him staring.

“They wouldn’t let me keep the hood,” she muttered. “Kaz promised not to spread the secret around.”

The Mighty Gourmet nodded solemnly. “Kaz swore it on every barrel of salt he’ll ever have.”

“Good,” Roark said, though he still doubted Zyra would have any trouble pushing around the other Trolls if they found out what she really looked like beneath her hood. Actually, now that he thought about it, she might have an easier time with the males. Roark realized he was scowling and gave himself a mental shake. He returned his attention to the now hoodless Reaver. “How did you manage to get thrown in here so quickly?”

“I followed a pair of Legionnaires for a while, nicking random bits and pieces from their Inventories until one of them noticed,” she said. “I was starting to think I’d pick their pockets empty before they caught on, but the softskulls finally realized it when I tried to lift one of their helmets off while he had it equipped.”

The memory of Danella’s body swaying from a noose flashed bright in Roark’s mind, and his scowl returned.

“What were you doing taking a chance like that?” he snapped. Then realizing what he was doing, he hurried to cover his concern. “You could’ve ruined the mission before it even started.”

Zyra laughed. “How? By being too good at pickpocketing and not getting arrested? I would’ve found another way down here if I had to stab someone.”

“Are you trying to get killed?”

“If I do, I’ll end up right back in the citadel,” she said.

“Not if you keep up this attitude once we get into the prison,” he insisted. “You heard Mai, there are no respawns for mobs inside those walls. Once we leave port, forever-death is on the line, and it’s crucial that we all remember that.”

“We were in more danger from roving gangs of chef’s minions,” Zyra said, gesturing with one claw-tipped hand at the glowering chef across the ship. “But I don’t see you lashing out at Kaz.”

“Kaz wasn’t directly targeting the soldiers. If they’d decided to kill you in the street—”

“They wouldn’t. It’s against their regulations, and a member of the Legion of Order lives for regulations.”

Roark ground his teeth, unable to make her understand the gravity of what she’d done.

Finally he said, “Before I came to Hearthworld, my... friend was hung for pickpocketing a captain of the guard.”

Zyra smirked. “Your friend must not have been as good a pickpocket as I am.”

“She was the best,” Roark snapped.

“Then I doubt they truly hung her for pickpocketing,” Zyra said, tipping one shoulder in a shrug. “Males are apt to do anything when their advances are rejected, especially males with the authority to declare that someone committed a crime.”

Roark opened his mouth to retort, but found himself at a loss as Zyra’s words sank in.

“But... but I asked the... The local jailor said...”

“Well, that settles it then, doesn’t it? Jailors never tell fibs,” Zyra said. Then with brutal clarity, she added, “Either your friend wasn’t the best pickpocket in your world, and she paid the price, or she was and they hung her for something else.”

Roark dropped back against the bulkhead, his mind reeling. If he hadn’t been sitting, he might’ve toppled over. It felt like the ground beneath his feet was shifting. He had to admit that it was possible Danella had humiliated the captain and been hung on trumped-up charges. The golden-haired thief had had a tongue sharper than a razor, capable of slicing open even the thickest of skin. More than once while they were together it had lashed out at Roark, and only his own rapier-fast wit had saved him. He could easily imagine a man with too much pride and power and too little intelligence taking offense to a harsh rejection.

“You can solve that mystery when you go back to your homeworld,” Zyra said in an overly glib voice. “It’ll be much easier without the rest of us getting in your way.”

The Floating Isle

ROARK SPENT THE REMAINING few hours to dawn pointedly ignoring the way Zyra was pointedly ignoring him. Using Danella to take a jab at his eventual return to Hearthworld was a low blow, whether she understood what Danella had meant to him or not. Worse—or equally as bad, he couldn’t decide which—was Zyra’s recklessness with her own life. They were walking willingly into a prison where death was forever, and she refused to take it seriously.

If the Reaver Champion wanted a reason he couldn’t take her back to Traisbin with him, it was that. In a land like Korvo, with a man like Marek at the helm, she wouldn’t make it a month. She would say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong set of ears, and then she would be snatched away, her feet dangling as Danella’s had—and that was the best-case scenario. The Tyrant King and his ilk had worse tortures than that for those who truly earned the ire of the Empire. No, better for her to hate him and stay.

Kaz tried to draw Roark and Zyra both into conversation several times, but received only minimal, monosyllabic answers that led nowhere. Eventually, the happy-go-lucky Knight Thursr gave up and settled into the tense silence. The three of them spent the rest of the night brooding alone together.

Just as the sky outside the portholes began to lighten enough to see the underside of the dock they were moored to, a cry went up on deck.

“Prepare for launch!”

Moments later, there was a great wooden scraping. The gangplank being pulled up.

“Casters at the ready!” The voice paused. “Depart!”

Multicolored lights flashed, the spells momentarily shifting the glow coming through the portholes into the hold from gray to flares of pink, purple, blue, orange, and red. The hull gave a great lurch, Roark rocking with the movement, and began its journey.

Though the ferry was a great, lumbering beast of a ship, whatever magic powered it kept it moving through the waves at a fast clip. Roark pressed his face up to the porthole, watching as the vessel sailed out of the harbor and into the open ocean. Sprays of salty water splashed up into his face, matting his shaggy hair to his skin, but the novelty of traveling by sea was too delightful for him to be angry. Though it was hard to forget that he was in a prison transport, on his way to incarceration, this was a dream. In no time at all, his black mood had washed away.

The farther from land they got, the higher and harsher the waves grew, until the ocean spray was a near constant thing.

A small claw-tipped hand grabbed Roark’s shoulder and jerked him away from the porthole. A moment later, Zyra was emptying her stomach out into the waves. Roark cringed as at least half of it came splashing back in to soak her.

“Shut up,” she snapped at Roark and Kaz when she dropped back into a sitting position. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach and her face was ashen beneath its deep midnight color. She dripped, shivered, and dripped some more. Even her horns seemed wilted and sick. “Don’t say a word or I’ll Death Scratch your tongues out. If you think I can’t like this, just try me.”

Kaz turned bewildered eyes at Roark and opened his mouth. Roark was certain the Mighty Gourmet was going to say that he hadn’t said anything, but instead Kaz sat down beside Zyra and began to gently pet her dripping hair like someone trying to soothe a feral cat.

Roark got out a Sufficient Healing potion for Kaz. He wanted to be ready for when Zyra made good on her threat.

But little by little, the Reaver Champion relaxed into the Knight Thursr’s side. Until eventually she put her head down on his tree-trunk-sized thigh and closed her eyes. If he hadn’t been certain by now that Trolls couldn’t sleep, Roark would have wondered if she had drifted off.

Seeing Zyra sick and vulnerable did strange things to Roark’s insides. She looked tiny just then, fragile. Some of it could have been juxtaposition with the enormous brute petting her with a hand big enough to crush her head and most of her shoulders in one squeeze, but most of it was her defenselessness. Roark stifled a smirk. Zyra hated even the appearance of weakness; if she knew seeing her like this made his urge to protect her almost overwhelming, she really would kill him.

And yet, as thorny as she could be, Kaz’s simple kindness had calmed her enough that she’d stopped being sick and threatening to poison them. Roark would have given a lot to have the Knight Thursr’s instincts when dealing with Zyra. Maybe then he wouldn’t end up fuming every time he spoke to her.

“That’s it!” a shout arose on the opposite side of the ship. “I see it!”

Bilgewater splashed as most of the prisoners on Roark’s side of the ship leapt down into the muck and sloshed across to jostle for space at a porthole. Exclamations of shock filled the hold, and the sound of pouring water roared through the space as if they were trapped inside a waterfall. There were authoritative shouts up on deck, but the words were lost in the noise below.

Though he was fairly certain no one was paying attention to them, Roark leaned toward Kaz and lowered his voice until just the two of them—and Zyra, if she was awake—would be able to hear it over the din.

“I’m going to go scout for possible escape routes. I’ll be right back.”

Kaz’s eyes went wide, not with fear, but admonition. He put a huge finger to his lips, then pointed down at Zyra. Roark raised his hands in surrender and nodded.

As Roark slipped down the curve of the wooden hill they’d climbed up to their dry spot, the forward momentum of the ship changed. The horizontal axis tilted without warning, and he fell over backward into the stinking sludge. He scrabbled for purchase on the steep sides of the hull, but a strange weight seemed to be pressing him back into the water. It was as if he’d suddenly gained a hundred pounds.

With some effort, Roark managed to jam his fingers into a crack between planks and claw his way to his feet. The climb up the opposite side of the hull wasn’t much easier, but finally he made it to a crowded porthole. With his Jotnar size, shoving his way to the circle of daylight was less of a chore. He elbowed one persistent opponent aside, then looked out.

At first, Roark couldn’t understand what he was seeing. White water churned on the surface of the ocean, and foam capped the waves. Then he spotted a dark shape covering much of the water. A shadow. But the shadow was growing smaller, and the waves getting farther and farther below.

The ship was lifting off. The churning water was being shed by its enormous frame as it pulled itself up out of the ocean. And that diminishing shadow must be...

Roark followed the shadow’s trajectory upward, and his jaw dropped.

The island glistened and sparkled like a pale gray-green ice gem in the early morning sunlight, a shockingly beautiful form in spite of its grim function. The entire structure was shaped like a bottom-heavy diamond, its lower point much wider and longer than its upper. The ferry was still at least a half-mile away, cutting a diagonal from the ocean to the island, but Roark could see tiny figures moving around inside the sea ice, distorted by the glassy exterior. The figures stayed on an invisible horizontal plane, and after a few seconds’ study, Roark realized none of them strayed outside of a small area to either side. He saw a few leaning against invisible walls.

That fit with the layout Mai had given Kaz—heavily occupied cells on multiple floors. Roark scanned the shiny gray-green exterior of the prison for openings. Sewage or trash dumps, hidden exits, anything that would get them from locked up inside to free and clear outside once they had Variok.

To the naked eye, the external, icy walls of the prison were smooth and featureless. Though he was forced to admit that could just be a trick of the ice.

The ferry closed in on a jetty poking out into the open air, where a multitude of olms in Legion of Order plate mail and pristine tabards stood waiting, their weapons at the ready. The guards. One of obviously lower rank heaved a great rope at the ferry. Roark watched it sail high above the portholes. Someone on deck must have caught it, because a few moments later, they were being reeled in toward this strange sky dock.

Roark searched the crown of the floating island for potential escape routes, but didn’t even see a single hiding place if they did manage to make it out of the prison. It was nothing but more gray-green ice, though this in a much smaller, more jagged cone than the bottom half of the diamond. The same thin, white sea-foam snow that had been covering every structure in Frostrime was dusted across the top of the island, a sharp contrast to the guards swarming toward the dock.

“’Ere now, give us a look,” growled some impatient bellend behind Roark, trying to shove him aside.

“Pick another window, mate,” Roark said, dropping his Illusion Cloak. It was going to expire soon anyway, and if Mai was right, Chillend had anti-glamour spells that would disrupt it. He whirled on the pushy rog, serrated teeth bared, twisted, leathery wings opening instinctively for maximum intimidation.

The rog stumbled backward and landed on his ass in the putrid bilgewater.

[Congratulations, you have unlocked Intimidation Level 1. With Intimidation, beings with an Intelligence of less than .25 x your Intelligence suffer Fright for 30 seconds. Sometimes a big enough bark is all you need ...]

Roark blinked away the notice, realizing as he did that across the ship, Zyra was sitting up. Seeing she had his attention, the hoodless Reaver made weak applauding motions cheering on his outburst.

Pleased in spite of himself, Roark dipped his head in a fractional bow, then turned back to the porthole. One last glance outside to make sure he hadn’t missed anything obvious that they could use during their getaway, then he left the circle of light behind. He splashed down into the filth, the cowed rog scrambling out of his way, then returned to Kaz and Zyra.

“We’ll have to find the way out once we’re inside. If there are any tunnels, hatches, or exits, they’re as clear as the walls and damn near invisible from out here.” He nodded at Zyra. “How are you feeling?”

“Like used ale,” she said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “But not quite as likely to vomit on myself as before.”

A boom echoed through the hold, startling them all, and the ferry lurched to a stop. A moment later, the grate opened in the deck and a thick barred ladder dropped down, a set of iron hooks at the top holding it in place.

“Any prisoner who doesn’t come willingly will have his or her fine doubled,” a bored voice shouted down matter-of-factly.

Slowly and with no small amount of grumbling, the other prisoners drifted toward the exit. The first to arrive, a pale elf missing the pointed half of his left ear, begrudgingly stepped up and began to climb.

Roark looked from Kaz to Zyra. In both faces, he saw a reflection of his own grim determination. In a few short minutes, they would be under lock and key in the one place in Hearthworld where mobs died forever-death. If something happened and Roark couldn’t get them free again, failing the jailbreak quest and not founding a settlement would be the least of their worries.

Roark set his shoulders and hoped he looked more confident than he felt.

“Let’s go to prison,” he said.

Blankets, Blankets, Blankets

ROARK CLIMBED OUT ONTO the deck of the prison ferry, the bright sunlight that glinted off the ice island piercing his eyes after so many hours in the near lightless dark below. Wind howled in his ears and tugged at his wings, bringing with it the hissing, scratching sound of tiny ice crystals blowing across the wooden deck.

Kaz stumbled and would have fallen if Roark hadn’t grabbed him under one massive arm and righted him. As it was, they nearly both went down under the Knight Thursr’s weight.

“It is so bright out here,” Kaz said, rubbing his onyx eyes with his enormous fists. The Mighty Gourmet tried squinting, then closing one eye while looking around with the other. “Kaz can hardly see anything.”

“Tell me about it, big guy.” They turned to find Zyra standing behind them, both arms thrown over her face to shade her mismatched eyes. “Is this what you hoodless Trolls have to deal with all the time?”

“You get used to it,” Roark said.

The hoodless Reaver didn’t look convinced.

“Prisoners disembark first,” a Legionnaire shouted above the wind. “Move to the immediate right at the bottom of the gangplank and form two orderly lines before the Intake Curator. Visitors, wait until the prisoners have been received before disembarking and seeing the Visitation Curator.”

Falling silent, they joined the slow shuffle of prisoners toward the gangplank. Several were already shivering in their threadbare rags, Kaz and Zyra included. Even Roark was forced to admit to a slight chill. They would be out of the wind once they made it inside, but he imagined the cold of the Permanent Hoarfrost would slowly seep into even the hardiest of bodies. It was no wonder Mai’s husband had succumbed.

The gangplank squealed and shifted treacherously beneath their feet. Far, far below, Roark could see the choppy waves of the ocean foaming like tiny snowcaps on distant mountains. Would it be possible to make a run for the edge of the island and leap off if they managed to escape the prison with Variok? That brought up another question they would need answered before making their jailbreak: Could Variok swim?

Moreover, if they jumped and perished in the choppy frozen waters below, would they die forever-death, or did that restriction apply only to the interior prison grounds proper? Roark had no answers, but he would before long. If his time in the Resistance had taught him anything it was how to discreetly gather information.

“I see what you’re thinking,” Zyra said from the side of her mouth as they stepped down onto the surprisingly solid ice. Her voice came muffled through her face-shielding arms. “Did the Legionnaires who arrested you use a Paralyzation Spell? The ones who arrested me did. I’d wager our jailors learn it their first day on the job.”

Roark nodded. “Just exploring every possibility to make certain we don’t miss an opportunity.” He glanced around at the other prisoners and the Legionnaires watching their progress. Several were taking note of Zyra’s strange posture. “Take your arms down. You’re drawing too much attention to us.”

She gave a grunt of disgust, then unfolded her arms and squinted at the island around them. Slowly, the watchful stares turned to other more interesting sights.

“Better?” she snapped, eyes nearly closed against the blinding light.

Roark blinked, realizing he’d been staring at the way Zyra’s skin glittered under the sun like velvety ink mixed with crushed sapphires.

“Much.” He turned his attention to Kaz.

The Knight Thursr had his enormous arms wrapped over his face in a musclebound caricature of Zyra’s pose.

“Perhaps you weren’t the one drawing attention,” Roark said to Zyra. “Kaz...”

Kaz’s shoulders slumped. “All right. But Zyra’s shading tactic was working.”

The three of them fell in with the second row of prisoners, facing a red-orange olm in plate armor so shiny that it glinted fire in the harsh sunlight. The Intake Curator.

“Prisoners, welcome to Chillend. In a moment, you will be sorted into groups of four and installed in your cells. Your cell is your home until your fine has been paid. To pay your fine, see myself or any other Legionnaire. Any misconduct will result in an immediate doubling of said fine. Mobs and NPCs, be forewarned, you will not respawn if you die in Chillend. Heroes, if you die in Chillend, you will respawn in Chillend until such a time as your fine has been paid. See that you act accordingly.”

The Intake Curator turned to a yellow olm. “Intake address completed. You may begin the sorting when ready, Cellmaster.”

“Thank you, Intake Curator,” the yellow olm said, dipping his head respectfully. He stalked down the line, counting off four prisoners at a time and assigning the groups a number.

Roark hurried to count the prisoners remaining. There weren’t enough ahead of them. If he didn’t do something, Kaz would be sorted into a different cell from him and Zyra, which could spell disaster for the party and the mission.

He leaned around Zyra’s back and tapped the shoulder of a dark elf in threadbare rags that matched his own.

“Switch places with me.”

The elf wouldn’t look at him, just stared straight ahead and mumbled, “Shove off.”

Roark pushed Zyra out of his way and took a menacing step toward the elf, spreading his twisted, leathery wings and hissing.

[Congratulations, you have successfully Intimidated a level 7 Vennexim, or dark elf. All victims of Intimidation with less than .25 x your Intelligence suffer from Fright for 30 seconds. Sometimes a big enough bark is all you need ...]

The elf scurried into the spot on the opposite side of Roark.

“You there,” snapped the Cellmaster. He had stopped dividing up groups halfway down the second row. Now he stalked toward Roark. “Troll? We haven’t had a Troll in ages. Name?”

“Rebel_of_Korvo,” Roark answered.

“Rebel_of_Korvo, your fine has been doubled for stepping out of line. You will not be released until you have paid the full amount.”

A scrap of paper with a corresponding notice announcing that Roark’s fine was now sixteen thousand gold appeared in his vision, but he dismissed it. He didn’t intend to be around long enough to pay a fine of any size.

By the time the notice was gone, the Cellmaster had already returned to his task as if nothing had happened. Eventually the Cellmaster made it to the Trolls, assigning them and a burly rog to a cell before passing on to the next group.

When he finished, he nodded to another olm Legionnaire with purple skin. “Cell assignments given. You may begin ingress when ready, Entry Supervisor.”

There was no doubt a pattern was emerging. Roark couldn’t fault their love of orderliness, but the efficiency cost of their execution was too severe to stand for.

Put me at the head of this prison and it would be running like a top in a week, he thought.

The Entry Supervisor explained in exhaustive detail how to follow him double-file through a door, then warned them once more that their fines would be doubled if they stepped out of line. Literally and figuratively, Roark gathered.

When finally the lecture ended, they followed the purple olm to a low, peaked rise of gray-green ice and down a set of stairs cut into the island. From there it was through a door made of the same glassy Permanent Hoarfrost.

Roark heard gasps coming from the front of the line as they stepped inside, but he didn’t see what the uproar was about until the pale elf in the line beside him passed through the doorway. Instantly, her shining beauty melted away, revealing a squat, green, wart-covered creature with massive forearms, tiny legs, and an arrowheaded tail. The nameplate over her head now read [Imp Enchantress].

If he hadn’t dismissed his Glamour Cloak, the same thing would have happened to him. Roark wondered idly whether the illusion dismissal was part of a Curse Chain ability similar to his, but he didn’t see any telltale runes scratched into the ice.

Beside him, the Imp Enchantress suddenly doubled over and retched brown muck onto the icy floor.

“Can’t cast anything in here,” the rog behind Roark told her. “Smack your Magick down midstream, and that”—he pointed at the muck she’d thrown up—“is your reward for trying.”

The Imp Enchantress looked at him through bleary eyes and wiped her chin before shuffling around the quickly freezing brown pool.

Roark twisted to look over his shoulder at the rog who’d been assigned to his, Zyra, and Kaz’s cell.

“Been in Chillend before, mate?”

“Just once.” The rog chuckled. “But spell casters learn their lesson pretty fast here.”

Roark grinned. “I’m happy enough to learn from others’ example.” He extended his hand. “Rebel_of_Korvo.”

“Yevin.” The rog grabbed his hand and shook. “Wait’ll you see this, Rebel.”

Roark was about to ask what he meant when their section of the line came to a curving balustrade, and he got his first look at the interior of Chillend Prison.

Mai had described the place as tiered, and she’d been mostly right—looking down, Roark could see floor after floor of cells circling the central empty space—except the floors weren’t separate. They were all connected, a part of a slow spiral curling down to a point at the bottom of the flying ice island.

The double lines of prisoners followed the Entry Supervisor down the spiral path, icy balustrade on their left and cell after cell on their right. Perfectly square cubes of gray-green ice with no obvious entry or exit. Careful not to seem as if he were looking for anyone or anything in particular, Roark glanced through each cell for Variok. Inmates paced the interiors, huddled shivering in corners, exercised, or passed the time playing cards with one another using scraps of parchment.

As they rounded the corner down to the third loop of the spiral, an elbow dug into Roark’s gut.

“Down there,” Zyra hissed, flicking a hand out as if she were throwing a knife.

Roark followed the trajectory of her gesture. Another hundred yards ahead, down on the fourth loop of the spiral, near the inner wall of a cell, sat a pale elf in threadbare rags. At first, Roark didn’t recognize him. Then another inmate crossed the cell and said something to the elf.

The elf’s face split in a too-wide, toothy grin. Variok and the other inmate began to haggle.

Roark felt his own face mirror the merchant’s. Even in prison Variok was trader to his core.

He nodded at Zyra to let her know he’d seen their target, then slipped a little closer to the cell side of the sloped walkway. As they passed Variok’s cell, Roark rapped a knuckle on the ice wall.

Variok and the other inmate looked up at him, and for a moment, the elf’s face showed nothing but confusion.

Then recognition lit his features, and he threw his arms open wide.

“My friend!” Variok’s voice was muffled through the ice. “You clean me out in Averi City, then you come to icy hell to steal my woolen blankets!” He shook his finger. “For anyone else, I charge one ration a day for three weeks, but for you, I charge only two weeks! What is wrong with me? The cold must be going to my mind, I cannot afford to take such losses on such quality blankets!”

“I don’t need a holey, moth-eaten blanket that badly,” Roark said, falling easily into the merchant’s expected back and forth. “Two weeks with one less meal a day will see my skin gnawing on my bones.”

Variok boomed laughter. “You come see Variok in the cafeteria later to take advantage of this blanket madness before he gets his mind back!”

“Prisoner!” the Entry Supervisor snapped, stabbing a finger at Roark. “Get back in line. Your fine has been doubled.”

Grinning to himself, Roark dismissed the accompanying notification and rejoined the line between Zyra and their rog cellmate.

For all his bluster, Variok was a genius. The merchant had just given Roark a time, place, and the perfect cover to meet and discuss escape at length right beneath the guards’ noses.

A Handsome Profit

HERE AND THERE THROUGHOUT the spiraling walkway, cells stood empty. Whenever they reached one, the Entry Supervisor halted the dual lines, called out four of the prisoners, then pressed his hands to the flat, glassy ice wall. Sparks popped, and a line of glowing steel-gray light etched itself into the Permanent Hoarfrost from the floor up, taking a hard right turn just before it hit the ceiling, then when it reached the width of a human’s shoulders, it took another turn and plummeted toward the floor. When the sparking, popping light sizzled itself out, a door of ice as thick as Roark’s hand swung open to admit its new inmates. The Entry Supervisor would then remove his hands and the door would swing shut, disappearing immediately, returning the gray-green ice wall to a solid sheet.

Roark, Kaz, Zyra, and the rog Yevin were placed in a cell near the bottom of the island’s inverted tower. Below them was a view of the drop to a watery death, and in front of them, at the center of the spiral, lay an open area divided by long tables. Two wide ice shelves jutted out of the walls, one on either side of their cell, clearly meant for sleeping, and a thinner shelf ran along the exterior wall, just the right width for a bench. That was it. Nothing else though. No books or tables. Not even blankets. Which explained Variok’s bustling trade, since it was cold in here, not to mention a touch damp. Now that Roark was in a cell, it wasn’t at all hard to see how prolonged time spent in this hellhole could result in a premature death.

Maybe Marek could learn a thing or two about tyranny from this world after all.

As the door slammed shut behind them, Roark studied the Entry Supervisor’s wrists and fingers. One of the purple olm’s rings or perhaps his bracers must control the magic that manipulated the unbreakable, unmeltable ice, but Roark didn’t find runes or precious stones affixed to his jewelry. Nor any set into the walls themselves. Perhaps they were etched on the inside, hidden from prying eyes that might want to duplicate the enchantment—or alter it from inside a cell.

“So, Yevin, was it?” Zyra asked, plopping on an ice shelf bed protruding from one of the see-through walls. “What are you in for?”

The rog took a seat on the bench and leaned back against the icy exterior wall, outlining himself with the sunlight glinting through the ice.

“I turned one of my apprentices into a frog and refused to turn him back,” he said, shrugging. “He did deserve it, though. That idiot could’ve taught dunce caps how to stupid.”

Roark’s ears pricked up. “You’re a trainer?”

“For magic, sure,” Yevin said. “I’m an Arcane Paragon—I specialize in alteration magic. Fancied myself an adventurer once, until some soft-brained hero shot me in the knee with an arrow. Damn thing still swells up before it rains. Training is the only real way for us lazier magic types to make a decent living. Helping heroes clear dungeons with a trick knee is a fool’s game, and I don’t have the right mentality for the service industry, so owning my own shop was out.”

“Gry Feliri says that when in doubt, kickin’ service with a smile covers a multitude of culinary sins,” Kaz offered.

Yevin nodded. “I like to think he meant the ‘kicking’ literally. I mean, seriously. The customer is always right? What if they’re a moron?”

“So you train people to use magic?” Roark steered the conversation back on course. “Do you have a base of operations? A city or settlement you work out of?”

“Used to.” Yevin snorted. “That was what landed me in here the first time.” Yevin paused, eyes narrowing in suspicion as he regarded Roark. “Why? Are you hoping to hire a magician?”

“Might be. I’m working on founding a settlement for my kind,” Roark said. “Mobs, that is. It’s a bold move, I’ll admit, and risky, but we’re closing in on success, and it will give us all an even footing with the heroes. We already have the master artisans and a few of the skill trainers required, and we’re about to get a merchant, but we could use a magic trainer.”

Yevin tugged at his chin. “What’s the pay?”

“Whatever you make training, you keep,” Roark said. “Plus a share of the money we make from griefing.”

“Aha,” the rog said, a grin stretching across his green features. “You’re not the Rebel_of_Korvo, you’re that Troll what everyone’s been talking about.” He snapped his fingers. “The one from that citadel, what’s his name? Richard? Raden? R-something.”

“Roark,” Kaz offered with a toothy grin. “Roark the Griefer, the greatest Dungeon Lord in all of Hearthworld.”

“Yep, that’s the one,” Yevin said, eyeing Roark anew, a glint of approval in his gaze. “Got to admit, I’ve been admiring your style, friend. The heroes are the dimmest embers in the fire, always trying to buy levels in idiotic magicks they’re not equipped to use and asking me if I enchant things.” Yevin rolled his eyes. “Do I look like an enchanter?”

“You won’t have to deal with them in the citadel, and you’ll have access to all the perks that come with settlements.”

“You’ve sold me,” Yevin said. “Get me out of here and I’ll do it.”

╠═╦╬╧╪

Prison Break II: Double Down?

Yevin the Arcane Paragon has offered to join your settlement as the local skill trainer if you can free him from Chillend Prison.

Objective: Free Yevin from Chillend Prison and return him alive to the mainland.

Reward: Yevin’s loyalty, 5,000 Experience, and Unlock a Special Magical Skill

Failure: Fail to free Yevin from Chillend

Or let Yevin die in the process of being freed

Penalty: Lose Yevin’s loyalty, Training with Yevin permanently locked

Restrictions: None

Accept quest? Yes/No

╠═╦╬╧╪

With a thought, Roark selected Yes.

“Wait,” Zyra said, hopping up from her seat and grabbing Roark by the arm. “You’re not considering saying yes to that, are you? We don’t even know that he’s telling the truth.”

“I already accepted the quest,” he said.

She threw up her hands. Roark was so used to reading her body language rather than her hidden face that he almost missed the faint expression of worry amid the anger in her frown.

“If five of us are going, you might as well invite the whole prison along,” she snapped, hands planted on her shapely hips. “While we’re at it, maybe the guards would like off the island as well. Have you asked them?”

From the bench, Yevin chuckled. “I like her. Fiery.”

Roark ignored the paragon.

“He’s a skill trainer,” Roark argued with Zyra, brow furrowed. “He’ll join us if we get him out of here. What possible downside can you see to that?”

Before the Reaver could answer, a trumpet blast like a war horn rang through the prison, shaking the icy walls and the floor beneath their feet.

“Inmates will now proceed to the lower floor for breakfast.” At the highest level of the prison, a Legionnaire was shouting through a cone of ice, his voice amplified and bouncing off of the gray-green walls of the cells. A slight echo followed it, less than a heartbeat behind his voice. “Any misconduct, jostling, or line-jumping will be punished with an immediate doubling of all involved prisoners’ fines.”

As the last ringing words faded from the air, blinding steel-gray light flashed and all the cell doors in Chillend swung open as one. The inmates who’d been around for more than an hour left their cells and began to descend the spiral toward the tables below.

Kaz stared at the open door as if it might be a trap, then turned to Roark.

“It’s like this every mealtime,” Yevin said, standing to his feet and heading out into the open prison. He stopped just outside the door in the flow of traffic and turned back, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the gray-green ice tables. “Food’s this way, cellies. Come fill those bellies.”

“Kaz is hungry, Roark,” the Mighty Gourmet said. “I cannot wait to see what food they are serving. Do you think it will be good? Hopefully they do not skimp on the salt.” Kaz’s face turned very serious. “Prison is one thing, but bland food is the greatest of all crimes.”

“Let’s go find out.” Roark nodded sharply. They had an appointment to keep with Variok.

The three Trolls followed the rog into the cafeteria. Plates had been arranged all down the long tables with what looked like beans that had seen far too many reheatings and a pair of mealy potatoes the size of coins.

Inmates were already taking seats at the benches running down the length of the tables and digging into the food. Yevin gave them a wink and headed off to join up with someone he knew, presumably from his previous stay.

“My friends!” Variok shouted. They found him on the opposite side of the cafeteria waving them over. “I saved seats for you! Now we can discuss business while we eat, one of the most noble mealtime pleasures—and good for the digestion, too.”

“Not if you’re still trying to charge us twice what those threadbare blankets are worth,” Roark returned at a volume only slightly lower than Variok’s shouts.

He dropped into the seat next to the merchant and dug into the food. It was cold, right on the verge of frozen.

Kaz, who’d taken the seat across from Roark, poked at his potatoes. “Jordan Bamsey says that if one cannot serve a meal at the correct temperature, one is not allowed to call oneself a chef.”

“No offense, Kaz, but I doubt whoever makes the food here is even a cook,” Roark said.

The Mighty Gourmet turned up his nose at the fare. “It is also bland.”

Zyra, on the other hand, had already scarfed hers down.

“What happened to service with a smile covering a multitude of sins?” she teased. She pointed to Kaz’s plate. “If you’re not going to eat that, I’ll just take it off your hands for you.” She scooped the bean goop onto her plate and popped the potatoes into her mouth. “It’s nothing like your feasts, Kaz, but it’s filling the hole that seasickness left in my middle.”

“My discerning friend,” Variok said, pointing his spoon at Kaz’s now empty plate, “You seem like the type of Troll who recognizes quality food when he sees it. For a very small fee—so small that it is stealing food from the mouths of my yet to be born children—Variok can get you any spice you may need to turn this rubbish into a meal you can palate.”

“Can Variok get salt?” Kaz asked.

Roark leaned forward. “The two of you can haggle for overpriced spices later. For now, we’re on a mission.”

Variok boomed laughter and slapped Roark on the back. “I see what you are doing, my friend, pretending that you do not want the salt. Very clever! Fine, Variok will drop his price even further. I must be losing my mind to go so low! You will send me straight from Chillend to debtor’s prison!”

“I’m serious,” Roark told him. “We’re here to break you out.”

Roark expected the merchant to be surprised into at least momentary silence, but this revelation didn’t faze Variok one bit.

“Ah, I knew we would be wonderful friends from the day I first laid eyes on you,” he said. “Averi City has always been a place of luck for Variok. I was arrested there, yet it was also where we met, and now it has sent you to rescue me the one time I have no way to pay my fine. Blessings be forever upon the Averi City Marketplace!”

Across the table, Kaz was nodding in agreement.

“Kaz understands,” the Knight Thursr said. “Averi City was where Kaz first met skewers, so he has similar feelings for its market.”

Variok turned to Roark. “So, my friend, how do we exit this frozen hell?”

“I haven’t quite worked that out yet,” he admitted. “We found a second skill trainer, something of a sorcerer who we’ll be bringing along as well. How many times a day are all the prisoners allowed out of their cells like this?”

“Twice,” Variok said. “In the morning to break the fast and again at sunset for the evening meal.”

Roark nodded. “And are there any sewer systems in this prison for the waste? Rubbish chutes? Anything large enough to crawl out through?”

Variok frowned, his pale brow furrowing with thought.

“There is the body hole, where the dead are tossed into the sea,” the merchant said, pointing to the far side of the room where a mound of ice rose from the floor. “But it is like the doors to our cells—only the Legionnaires are able to open it.”

“Is it their rings?” Roark asked. “I also considered their bracers. Some enchanted item of jewelry or armor that triggers a spell or hex with preset conditions, like the dimensions for a door or body-dumping hole. If we could get our hands on—”

“Oy, it’s the big-mouf critic!” The chef Roark had seen scowling on the prison hulk swaggered over, flanked on either side by cronies. “Wotcher, big mouf?” He gave Kaz’s meaty shoulder a shove, then smacked aside the plate Zyra had emptied onto hers. “You can eat this slop, but my deliciously crafted entrees don’t quite measure up to your standards?”

Kaz didn’t turn around, just frowned down at the table silently, enormous hands flexing open and closed.

“Back off,” Roark growled.

“Wasn’t talking to you, was I? Can’t you hear me, big mouf?” The chef flicked Kaz’s ear despite the fact that the Knight Thursr was easily twice the chef’s size if not more. “Your ears are massive enough you shouldn’t ’ave any trouble wif that.”

His cronies howled with laughter, but Kaz only leaned away from the chef.

Zyra was on her feet in a flash, poisoned claws extended and glimmering in the morning light. “I hear there’s no respawn here. Care to test that rumor out, or were you hoping we’d just beat you soundly again and send you to bed?”

The chef pulled out a rolling pin and slapped it against his palm. His cronies produced pans, skillets, and even a stove length of wood.

“Oh, I don’t fink you lot’ll be beating anybody this time, dearie. Not with the weapons our enterprising friend there sold us,” the chef said, nodding at Variok.

The elven merchant turned to Roark and raised one finger as if to forestall any accusations.

“In my defense,” Variok said, “I turned a very handsome profit.”

Septic Brewmaster

ZYRA LAUGHED AT THE sight of the gang’s culinary weapons. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with those in here. From what I’ve heard, you could barely use them when you were in a proper kitchen.”

The chef’s face turned beet red.

“I am an Oronoro Institute–trained chef, you tasteless heathen!” he bellowed, rushing Zyra, his rolling pin brandished overhead like a Combat Cleric’s scepter.

Zyra extended her claws on both hands and dropped into a defensive stance, ready to Death Scratch the furious cook.

At the last moment, however, Kaz lurched to his feet and spun, throwing a punch that would crush the skull of a rampaging water buffalo. His fist landed with a meaty thump, blood arcing through the air as the chef somersaulted backward and toppled onto a table halfway across the room. Plates of beans and potatoes went flying.

“Do not insult Kaz’s friends!” the Mighty Gourmet roared.

The chef’s cronies looked at their leader, then at each other. As one, they charged.

“Great,” Roark said. “No weapons, outnumbered, and no respawn.” He looked at Variok. “Let us handle this. You stay here and don’t die.”

“Variok is a merchant, my friend. He does not dabble in combat.” He gestured at the melee, where Kaz was busy wading through the crowd of cronies and Zyra slashed everything that moved. “Please, enjoy your fight.”

Roark vaulted across the table, wings dragging behind him.

The crony with the stove length, an azure-skinned dark elf, ducked under a massive haymaker from Kaz laced with the jagged end of a broken cinnamon stick. A fitting shank for the Mighty Gourmet. Without stopping, the dark elf whirled toward Roark, swinging the stick of wood at Roark’s head. Roark threw up an arm and caught the blow on his triceps. Before the dark elf could pull back for another, Roark clamped his arm down around the stove length and jerked.

The dark elf stumbled toward him, but didn’t let go of the stick. Employing a trick he’d learned years ago from Danella, Roark twisted hard, dragging the dark elf in again, and used their combined forward momentum to decimate the elf’s nose with a devastating headbutt.

Stunned, the dark elf dropped to the icy floor. Roark snatched the stove length from his fist and gave him a kick in the side of the head in return. The elf wasn’t dead, but by the look of his rolling eyes, he wasn’t getting back up any time soon. Good. Roark didn’t much care for this chef or his sycophants, but that didn’t warrant a death sentence—especially not with forever-death on the line. If being a sod was all that it took to earn a trip to the gallows, then he would’ve along ago hung every council member in the T’verzet.

As Roark threw himself at the crowd of goons attacking Kaz with all manner of kitchen tools, he was vaguely aware of shouting and running going on at the periphery surrounding their bubble of violence. But no one new joined the fray or attacked Variok, so Roark dismissed the din as unimportant and slammed his new weapon into the rog who had leapt onto Kaz’s back. It cracked across the rog’s spine, drawing an unearthly scream of pain. A second strike sent the rog to the ground, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his legs splayed limply. Roark cocked the stick of wood back, ready to launch another attack.

But a gray-green aura of light appeared around him, paralyzing him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. A glance around showed that same light pulsating around Kaz, Zyra, and their rivals. Even the chef and Variok had been paralyzed.

A dozen olm Legionnaires in shining plate and pristine tabards surrounded them, arms raised in the cast for Paralyzation.

“Prisoners, all of your fines have hereby been doubled.”

By then, it was instinct for Roark to close the corresponding notice as soon as it appeared.

The lead caster craned his neck to look straight up. “Overwatcher, who struck the first blow in this conflict?”

At the top level, a blue olm pointed. “The biggest one, but the other two Trolls came in a close second, and the elf was egging them on to join the fight.”

The lead caster nodded sharply. “Two days and two nights in the Freezer for egregious misconduct.”

Grim murmurs ran through the watching crowd of inmates. Sounded like none of them much fancied the Freezer. The Legionnaires casting the Paralyzation spells began to walk backward, dragging them across the cafeteria floor to the spiral walkway.

Roark caught Yevin’s eye as they began to ascend the walkway.

“Rough luck,” the arcane paragon said. “A couple of you might live if you huddle together for warmth. If you do survive, our deal’s still good. You know where to find me.”

As the casters dragged them all up the spiral, Roark fumed silently. How in the seven hells were they supposed to escape this Freezer, grab Yevin, and break free now? He turned the problem over and over all the way up to the highest level, but still came up empty-handed.

At the end of the transportation, the Legionnaires stopped at a solid wall of ice. As their hands were all busy maintaining the spells, the blue Overwatcher obliged them by opening the door to an icy vault.

A gust of frigid wind blasted Roark. Special air tunnels had been carved into the walls, channeling the icy ocean wind into the room. It wasn’t the chill of a pleasant winter morning in there. It was the sort of cold that froze muscle solid and cracked bone. It made the cold of the rest of Chillend seem like summer heat by comparison.

One by one, the casters stuck Kaz, Zyra, Variok, and Roark into the Freezer. Then the Overwatcher removed his hands and the last breath of not-quite-deadly cold from outside disappeared as the door slammed shut, locking them inside.

Roark scrubbed his arms vigorously, trying to fight off some of the chill. Totally useless. Already his fingers and toes felt numb. The threadbare, prison-issue rags flapped in the wind, offering no protection. Beside him, Zyra hopped up and down, and across the vault, Kaz paced restlessly, a white cloud of breath misting from his wide nostrils. Variok shivered and shook, his teeth chattering loudly.

“Be it f-f-far from Variok to cast aspersions, my friend, but y-your plan to free us from this prison s-s-seems to have hit a dead end.”

“I’m working on it, damn it,” Roark snapped, the gears turning furiously in his mind. He had to get them out of there before they all froze to death. If he couldn’t manage that, none of them would respawn. They would all be forever-dead. As terrible as the situation was, however, Roark actually found it refreshing in its way. Hearthworld and its endless supply of respawns had made him soft. This was a reminder that in the fight against Marek, the stakes were much higher. Deadly. He was perversely glad that Zyra was trapped in there with him. Zyra could use a look at what life with him would be like. No fun and games, that. Just forever-death.

The merchant gave a huge all-over shudder. “Variok never thought he would meet his death of cold. An angry customer, perhaps. A burglary gone wrong, certainly. But cold?” He grimaced and shook his head.

Kaz’s onyx eyes grew wide and frightened. “Kaz doesn’t want to die here, Roark,” the Knight Thursr whimpered, shivering. “Kaz hates the c-c-cold.”

Roark squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his temples, desperately grasping for anything that might get them out of there. He embraced the cold, letting it invade his limbs, numbing his body but sharpening his mind. He couldn’t cast, he had no portal scrolls, the World Stone didn’t seem to have any properties that could transport them... Could he carve a blood cantrip in his arm? Would the rules that governed the prison allow that or would they see it as another spell to be stopped? He’d just have to try it. A portal spell, just as he’d done when fleeing from Marek during his botched assassination. It was risky, but perhaps whatever made the portal magic in Hearthworld so trustworthy would be on his side this time. After spending so much time working on the portal plates in the Cruel Citadel he felt up to the task. Mostly.

He opened his eyes just in time to see Zyra break into a dazzling smile.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Kaz, but we have to die here if we’re going to escape.” She quaked as she rummaged through her Inventory, her movements clumsy from the cold. “It’s the only way out.”

“What in seven hells is wrong with you lately?” Roark snapped. “Are you suicidal?”

She let out a laugh like the crack of an ice floe breaking up. “No, but I am about to become the best Septic Brewmaster in the history of the specialty.”

“What?”

“S-s-septic Brewmaster.” She produced a handful of potions. “It’s a specialty sub-class quest I unlocked while experimenting with new poisons.” She passed him a bottle with one shaking hand, then gave one each to Variok and Kaz. “I was w-w-worried you would ruin my escape plan when you invited that rog sorcerer, but now that we’re leaving him behind, I h-h-have enough for everyone again.”

Roark glared down at the potion in his hand. Its sludgy black contents oozed greasily against the glass vial.

[Sleeping Death (Newly Invented Poison, Incomparably Rare)

Uses: 1

Causes a deathlike sleep to come over the drinker for 1 hour indistinguishable from true death.]

“What is it?”

“Poison, obviously. Drink up,” Zyra said cheerfully through her chattering teeth. “It’s called Sleeping Death. The drinker will ap-ap-appear to be forever-dead for one hour. C-c-completely indistinguishable from real forever-death.”

“How does that help us?” Roark asked, stamping his feet to bring some sensation back into them.

Zyra rolled her eyes. “Jotnars. If it’s not a power-grab, they don’t pay attention at all.” She pointed a trembling finger at the foot-thick wall of ice dividing them from the rest of the prison. “The only way to escape is through the body hole. The only way out the body hole is to die.” She shook her bottle of Sleeping Death in Roark’s face. “So we die.”

Variok raised a pale brow at the hoodless Reaver.

“You came into Chillend with these poisons?” the merchant asked.

Zyra nodded. “I didn’t think I would get a chance to use them, but I certainly hoped I would.”

Roark shook his head in disbelief. “Why? What on earth would make you want that?”

“To get my Septic Brewmaster specialty, I have to poison at least one ally with a poison of Ultra Rare or higher.” She shrugged shivering shoulders. “I was going to sneak some into your cup at a feast until I heard that the prison here had a no-respawn policy. I assumed if they had forever-death here, they must have a way to keep the corpses from piling up. Though, I pictured guards just chucking them off the top. The body hole is a little more elegant a solution.” She pointed at Roark’s poison. “These won’t drink themselves, boys.”

Roark turned her plan over in his mind for several freezing seconds. A blast of wind ripped at his shaggy hair and leathery wings, sapping the last of the feeling from the twisted appendages.

“If they don’t find us within the hour, we’re likely to freeze solid and be forever-dead before the fake forever-death wears off,” he said, pointing out the only flaw that his cold-battered mind could find at the moment. “How do we make certain they dispose of us before that?”

“Easy,” Zyra said.

Before he could ask what she meant, the hoodless Reaver threw back her head and screamed an ear-shattering note of pure terror. The sound cut through the vault like a razor through the soft flesh of an exposed throat. Roark had to crush his hands to his ears. Variok and Kaz were doing the same. Finally, after what felt like ages, the scream tapered off.

“Bottoms up,” Zyra said, popping the cork from her poison and draining it.

She took a deep breath, then raised bloody hell again. She reached a pitch that made the ice around them resonate like glass on the verge of breaking, then she cut off suddenly and dropped to the floor, her legs simply refusing to hold her up for one second longer. Her mismatched eyes were open, oddly glassy, her chest still, her mouth slightly agape. Her Health bar showed that she was dead. Roark’s breath hitched inside his chest, the world reeling uncertainly beneath his feet. In that moment, she was Danella, her dark midnight skin replaced by bloated, rotting flesh, her eyes and tongue pecked out by crows.

Then he blinked and Danella was gone. Once again Zyra lay on the floor before him, still as death. This was what she would end up like if she came with him: emptied and cast aside like the poison bottle she’d dropped when she’d fallen.

It didn’t matter that she wasn’t really dead. Roark couldn’t let her wind up like this. Wouldn’t.

He glared down at the poison in his fist. He wished she would’ve talked through this insane plan with him; now it was too late. She hadn’t trusted him with her plan, which ironically was forcing him to trust her.

Through the thick, gray-green wall of ice, Roark could see movement. Legionnaires were coming running. He cursed under his breath. He could cry unfair later. If they survived this.

“Drink it,” he ordered the other two, opening his bottle and gulping down the ichor.

It tasted like smoke from a crematorium mixed with rancid swamp mud, and it clogged his throat. He swallowed and swallowed, trying to force it to move faster. As soon as he woke up, he would have to drink a whole tavern’s worth of ale to wash the taste from his mouth.

Roark could see Kaz and Variok drinking down their poisons as well. Then the world around him blurred and darkened until he could hardly make out anything. The cold wind from the Freezer faded to the background, surpassed by a warm fuzz filling his limbs.

Far away, he felt his body crumple and hit something solid. Roark von Graf didn’t die.

But it looked to all the world exactly as if he had.

Co-Conspirator

RANDY SHOEMAKER STARED in disbelief as the Trolls and elf fell to the icy floor of Chillend’s notorious Freezer. They certainly looked dead, but when he checked their statuses on his admin screen, all four showed Death Sleep, Alive.

What even was this? Players and mobs couldn’t create new poisons just because they experimented with different ingredients. If they brewed together three or more ingredients that didn’t fall under the combinations for one of the eighty-nine prewritten potions, they were supposed to get a Potion Failed! notification, not a previously unknown potion.

And now the Troll girl even had a specialty sub-class that didn’t exist before? Randy had been following the modder this whole time. Roark hadn’t logged out or gone inactive once to create the new class. It didn’t make any sense at all. And her going completely off-script, making that logical leap that she could use her new poison in their jailbreak? What in the name of Alan Mathison Turing?

How was Roark doing it? Randy could see no logical explanation at all.

There was a sound like a refrigerator door opening behind him as the OLO Legionnaires who guarded Chillend popped open the Freezer’s door with their Hoarfrost Rings of Sealing.

As they rushed in, Randy slipped to the other side of the vault and pressed his back against the wall. His admin privileges made him invisible, but not incorporeal. They could still bump into him if he was in the way.

“What in the name of reason happened here?” snapped the olm in the lead, an Overwatcher named Grevath. “They weren’t in here long enough to freeze to death. Frostbite should’ve taken at least an hour before it got them.”

The other, a Lower Guard without a name, kicked at the Troll girl’s hand. The Sleeping Death bottle rolled across the floor with that empty glass sound.

“Poison,” she said. Under normal circumstances, a Lower Guard like her would be the ideal way to complete the jailbreak quest. A player with midlevel Pickpocketing could steal a Lower Guard’s Ring of Sealing and use it to escape. “Murder-suicide?”

Grevath’s smooth brow ridges lowered. “Or they’re having us on.” He reared back and planted a plated boot in Roark’s side. The Jotnar lay still as death. Grevath leaned in close and squinted at Roark’s empty Health bar. “Nope. Dead as a tomb.”

For a moment, the pair of olms stared down at the seeming corpses quietly, grave frowns on their humanoid salamander faces. Randy knew they were programmed to be uncomfortable about NPC death. It was really uncommon in Hearthworld, even in the pockets where it was possible like Chillend. But it still felt as if he had stumbled upon a pair of real people discovering a group suicide.

A shiver ran down Randy’s spine at the thought.

“I’ll call the Head of Body Disposal to dump them,” the Lower Guard said after a moment, her voice subdued.

Overwatcher Grevath gave a sharp nod.

In a few minutes, the Lower Guard was back with a cheerful olm in obsidian-accented plate mail. From what Randy remembered of the prison wiki’s Trivia section, the Body Disposal staff were the only Legionnaires in the OLO who wore black-trimmed plate mail. Every other Legionnaire wore perfectly spotless, shining silver plate, covered by the pristine tabards marking out their order and rank.

“Bring out your dead,” the Head of Body Disposal joked, elbowing the lesser guard far more playfully than the situation warranted.

Randy snorted. He’d always been fond of that reference. And in this case, Roark’s little band wasn’t really dead yet, either.

“What was that?” Grevath’s head snapped around in Randy’s direction. Whoops.

But the Head of Body Disposal misunderstood. “Just a little joke. In my line of work, it would be illogical to shun a sense of humor.”

“You hardly do any work.” Grevath sneered, superiority in the rounded contours of his amphibian face. “This is the first NPC death we’ve had at the prison in over a year.”

The Head of Body Disposal ignored the Overwatcher’s sniping; he lifted both hands, palms out, and muttered a quick spell, unleashing Telekinesis to lift the corpses onto the cart. Without the spell, it would have taken at least four people to lift the Knight Thursr alone. Straining a little to keep the cart under control, the olm wheeled it down the soft decline to the body hole.

Randy followed at a safe distance, his mind still turning over the how of Roark’s modifications to the class specialties and scripts. It was mind-boggling. Simply baffling, actually. If Randy managed to find out who this Roark was, there was some small part that thought Mr. Silva, the CEO, would be smart to offer the man a job. Randy had never seen a programmer or software engineer accomplish what this modder was, and Randy worked for Hearthworld—the single most advanced, groundbreaking, boundary-pushing VRMMO on the market.

The Head of Body Disposal pressed his Hoarfrost Ring of Sealing to the disposal hole, triggering a hatch to swing open. One by one, he used the Telekinesis spell to drop Roark, his Knight Thursr and Reaver companions, and the elf merchant through to the waiting sea below.

The sea! Randy winced. He’d been so caught up in trying to puzzle out how the Griefer had accomplished all this without ever logging out or going inactive that he hadn’t taken into account what would happen to their party once they were dropped unconscious into the ocean. They didn’t seem to have thought that through, either, maybe because of the stress or the cold. Chances were, they would simply die and respawn. As far as he knew, forever-death was only written into the prison, but he couldn’t remember exactly where the boundaries of the prison had been coded to end. Was it the exterior surface of the compound? Fifty feet around the compound? A little bit of the sea below the compound? He wasn’t positive, and if he wasn’t positive, then that meant there was at least some chance they would perish, never to respawn.

And that, Randy suddenly decided, that was intolerable.

For one, if this Roark really did die, all Randy’s work and sleuthing would be undone. There was also the fact that he hated to see them drown right after the Troll girl had come up with such an otherwise elegant solution to escape. He knew he was going a little native empathizing with the bad guy, but he had to admit he was also super impressed at Roark’s abilities in spite of the dirty way he was applying them to wreck the game. He was also curious to see this Troll Marketplace that Roark seemed so intent on setting up, and that wouldn’t happen either if Roark and his cadre were wiped.

So no. This wouldn’t be the end to Roark or his little party. Not if Randy had a say—and he did have a say.

The Body Disposal olm was about to close the hatch.

Before he could think too much about what he was doing, Randy equipped his Waterwalking Boots and jumped through the hole in the ice.

As soon as he hit the frozen open air, he spread his Arboreal Herald’s pale gray wings and glided down to the surface of the water, landing lightly. His Waterwalking Boots held him up as if he were standing on a trampoline. He bobbed slightly, but didn’t sink.

At his feet, the corpses of the Trolls and elf were drifting apart, Roark and the merchant facedown in the waves. Worse yet, the Knight Thursr had already started to sink.

Randy tried to isolate each of their code and transport them, but his admin powers wouldn’t allow him to affect the prime anomaly or any of the NPCs he’d infected with his rogue code. Looked like he would have to rescue them the hard way.

Randy found a rope in his Inventory, then went through the unconscious forms, tying Roark’s claw-tipped hand securely to the Mighty Gourmet’s, which, in turn, he tied to both the merchant and the Troll girl. Then Randy wrapped the end around his own palm a few times to make sure he had a tight hold.

Flapping his wings with all his might, Randy pushed off the water and flew.

He grunted under the strain of lifting all four from the choppy, white-capped waves. It was a hard trip. Usually, while he was in the air, the game showed him thermals as updrafts and downdrafts, the ups with cycling bright red arrows pointing up, and the downs with blue flowing downward. But out here on the Wareling Deeps, Randy was encountering only downdrafts. He had to flap constantly, his arms, shoulders, and wings burning from the effort while sweat leaked down his face.

Arboreal Heralds weren’t made for strength, they were made for speed. Only his absurdly high character level made it possible to drag so much weight while keeping himself aloft. Twice he even had to land and walk. Without his Waterwalking boots, he would’ve been, well severely disadvantaged to say the least. Even with them, his stamina was utterly drained by the time he made it to the ice-chip-piled shores of Frostrime and dragged his haul onto land.

Randy wheezed and puffed as he untied the modder and NPCs from one another. It took Randy a while to realize that even though he was physically exhausted, he was grinning. It was fun being the big strong guy who saved everyone. Even having them unconscious and unable to see that they owed their survival to him was kind of like being a superhero. They would never know his name, just that they had survived.

“Who was that caped crusader?” Randy chuckled to himself. It was a good thing he thought his jokes were funny, because he didn’t have any friends to appreciate them.

In that way, he kind of understood what the modder might be doing, creating an army of Trolls and gathering NPCs who would serve him. When you had no friends or anybody who cared about you at all, minions were better than nothing.

Finished with his heroic deed, Randy stored his rope and vanished from sight once more, then found a mound of snow to sit on while he waited for them to wake up.

A Bargain Struck

ROARK SHIVERED ON THE hard dirt of some back alleyway. He grabbed for the lapels of his threadbare jerkin to pull his head down inside and tried to scoot farther back against one of the buildings to escape the cutting fingers of wind. But he didn’t meet the cold, hard wall of a building. There was nothing around him.

He blinked, then shut his eyes against the blinding glare. Was that the wind he heard? It sounded more... rhythmic. Like waves? But that made no sense, considering he had never lived on the streets of a city near the sea.

With a groan, Roark pushed himself upright, leaning back on ice-chilled palms. He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand while he took in his surroundings. Not far off, ice-capped waves rolled up the frozen beach. Just up the sand, a lighthouse jutted up from a stretch of treacherous-looking rocks. Beside his foot lay a midnight blue hand and an arm with glowing azure tattoos of power.

Zyra. When he turned around, he found Variok behind him, and Kaz just beyond that.

They had all made it out of Chillend, then. How in the seven hells they had washed up in the same place, he couldn’t say, but he was certainly grateful they had.

The elf’s pointed ears were beginning to twitch and his face contorted now and again as he fought to awaken from the strange poison Zyra had fed them. Variok seemed to be no worse for the wear.

But when Roark looked again, he realized Kaz was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. Roark held his breath. Kaz couldn’t be dead. Not if they had escaped the prison alive.

Finally, the Mighty Gourmet gave a sluggish blink. Roark let his breath out in a rush, his shoulders relaxing.

“Do you need a healing potion, mate?” Roark asked, groggy, his words slightly slurred as though he’d spent the night drinking hard.

Kaz rolled his head toward Roark, then looked up at the sky again.

“Does that cloud look like stew meat cooking to Roark, too?” he asked.

Roark followed Kaz’s gaze. To him, the cloud looked like the crumbled ruins of a tyrant’s castle.

“Definitely,” he said, the fog in his skull clearing a little more with every second.

Kaz nodded, satisfied. “While Kaz was in the Sleeping Death, he thought he saw a Malaika carrying them to safety. Very big, with soft, feathery gray wings. Does Roark think a Malaika returned to Hearthworld to help them?”

Roark scratched his jaw. “I think it’s more likely that Zyra’s potion has some hallucinatory side effects. I woke up thinking I was a child again, trying to sleep in an alley.”

“No!” Variok’s shout startled them both. “You are not my friend! Variok will never sell to—” The elf lurched up to a seated position, one hand clutching his chest. After a moment, he seemed to shake free of the dream and squinted at the frozen sand and crashing surf. “Ah, what relief! My friends, we have survived! Variok will not forget what you have done for him this day.”

A page of text appeared in Roark’s vision, obscuring the merchant’s toothy grin.

[Congratulations! You have completed the quest Prison Break and earned Variok’s loyalty! Variok’s loyalty includes a 10% increase to all sale prices when selling to Variok and 10% decrease to all purchase prices when buying from Variok.

Warning: Variok’s loyalty depends on your treatment of the elvish merchant. Keep him happy by offering him first crack at the weapons and armor you wish to sell or by checking his store first when you wish to buy. But remember, buying or selling to other weapons and armor merchants before consulting Variok will upset him. Do this too many times, and Variok will take his loyalty elsewhere!]

He blinked the page away.

“All that you have done for Variok!” The merchant slapped Roark on the back. “How can I ever repay you, my friend?”

“We didn’t come for entirely selfless reasons,” Roark said. “We have a grand enterprise in mind and think you might be just the man to help us get it off the ground. We’re trying to found a mob settlement, and we need a merchant. If you’re interested in setting up shop with us, you’ll keep whatever you make on your sales plus a share of the gold we take from griefing.

“You’ll also have your own shop building and living quarters, plus access to untold treasures from monsters all across the face of Hearthworld. And no more dealing with rude heroes that don’t value your business acumen. What’s more, as the only proper merchant in this settlement—the only mob settlement in all of Hearthworld, let me remind you—you’ll be able to command the best prices.” He shot the merchant a wink. “Barring me and my inner circle, of course.”

Variok considered this, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “This is a most intriguing offer. Yes, my friends, Variok could see the benefits of such an arrangement. Yet, humble man that I am, I have a few requests. Before I was arrested, I spoke to a cook from the Cruel Citadel—a beautiful lady named Mai—about joining. So Variok told her that he likes comfort and luxury in all things, that he would not join unless he was assured of the finest foods and softest beds. Prison was no place for a cultured elf, and so before I agree, I must make certain that I am not trading one hell for another, less captive hell.” The merchant leaned in close, his face a study in gravity. “Tell me, Roark the Griefer, do you truly have a gourmet on staff?”

“Variok,” Roark said, gesturing to the Knight Thursr behind him, “meet the Mighty Gourmet.”

That toothy grin spread across Variok’s face and he let out a boisterous laugh.

“Then we are in business together, my friend! If you found a settlement, Variok is your merchant!”

[Congratulations! Variok the Elvish Merchant has agreed to join your settlement! To learn more about founding a settlement, see Settlements of Hearthworld or Growing Your Guild.]

Roark dismissed this notice as well. Gaining Variok’s allegiance was a step closer to founding their settlement, but it also reminded Roark that they had been forced to leave a valuable skill trainer behind in Chillend. He cursed silently and opened the mystic grimoire to his active quests.

Odd. Yevin’s quest wasn’t listed as Failed yet. Roark read through it once more.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Double Down?

Yevin the Arcane Paragon has offered to join your settlement as the local skill trainer if you can free him from Chillend Prison.

Objective: Free Yevin from Chillend Prison and return him alive to the mainland.

Reward: Yevin’s loyalty, 5,000 Experience, and Unlock a Special Magical Skill

Failure: Fail to free Yevin from Chillend

Or let Yevin die in the process of being freed

Penalty: Lose Yevin’s loyalty, Training with Yevin permanently locked

Restrictions: None

╠═╦╬╧╪

He read and reread the message, then pored over it for a third time just for good measure.

It didn’t technically say that Roark had to jailbreak the sorcerer, only free him and return him alive to the mainland. By those parameters, Roark could just pay the rog’s fines and have him released legally. With the gold he and the citadel were making griefing every day, coming by the money would be no issue. The handing over of the fine, however, would prove to be a bigger problem. Rebel_of_Korvo’s sudden reappearance after supposedly dying in Chillend would certainly draw attention from the strict record-keeping olms who ran the Legion of Order. The same went for Zyra, Kaz, and Variok. What Roark needed was someone the Legion didn’t recognize to act as the go-between.

“Griff,” he said, snapping his fingers. He stood up, dusting off the seat of his threadbare prison-issue pants. He turned to Kaz and Variok. “We need to get back to the citadel.”

A soft feminine moan made the hairs on the back of Roark’s neck stand up. He’d almost forgotten that Zyra hadn’t woken from the poison yet.

At his feet, the hoodless Reaver brushed her wet snowy white hair out of her face, then shoved her fists over her head and stretched like a waking feline. Though her ringlets were dripping and bedraggled by the ocean water, and her recurved onyx horns stuck up from them like bits of driftwood caught in foam, Roark couldn’t take his eyes off her. He got to see her face so rarely that he didn’t want to look away. Soon, the smooth curve of her chin and those long eyelashes would be again hidden away in her assassin’s hood.

Zyra blinked her mismatched purple and green eyes languorously and smiled up at him.

“Sleep well?” he asked, infusing his tone with enough sarcasm to turn aside any suspicions that he’d been admiring her.

Slowly, her brows furrowed with confusion.

“Why aren’t... I thought...” She shook her head and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Must have put a little too much Haint Orchid in that batch.” She glanced around as if checking that they were all there. “I see everybody drank their poison like good little Changelings.”

“We did,” Roark said. “That Sleeping Death was a stroke of brilliance, Zyra.”

Her shoulders hunched up a bit at the compliment, and Roark had the impression of a cat being rubbed against the lay of its fur. He smiled to himself.

“What’s next?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard, popping to her feet.

“We need to get back to the Cruel Citadel,” he said. “I’ve got a job for Griff, and once that’s taken care of, we should largely be in business.”

They made their way down the beach to the lighthouse. Not far inland lay a little fishing village named Prol, where Roark proceeded to sell off the handful of potions and odds and ends he hadn’t had to hand over to the Legionnaires before entering Chillend. With the gold he got in return, he bought a portal scroll, which zipped them right back to their set respawn point—in his case, the throne room of the Cruel Citadel.

Griff was glad to see them back, but the grizzled old weapons trainer’s gruff smile and handshake was nothing compared to Mai’s joy. The moment they stepped into the kitchen, the buxom cook threw herself into Kaz’s enormous arms, weeping with relief that he’d made it back alive.

“Kaz is fine,” the Mighty Gourmet said soothingly, patting her blonde hair and hugging her to his chest.

“Yes, well,” Mai mumbled, regaining some measure of her poise. “Sure’s happy I am that you’re back.” She smiled up at him. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about some bread in the larder.”

Kaz frowned, confused, then all at once his features lit up with understanding.

“Oh, bread,” he repeated, winking very obviously. “The bread in the larder! Kaz forgot about that bread. He and Mai should go look at it immediately.”

Zyra, who’d traded away a few of her more common potions for a plain leather hood in Prol, turned her shadowed face Roark’s way. They both had to stifle a bout of childish snickers as the Mighty Gourmet and the buxom cook slipped out of the kitchen arm in arm.

When they were gone, Zyra announced, “I’m heading to the lab to put on some real armor and burn this trash.” She beckoned to Variok. “Come on, I’ll show you where you can put your things until the settlement’s up and running.”

Roark turned to Griff. “Are you up for another mission?”

“Got to keep the blood pumping somehow,” the grizzled skill trainer said. “What’ve you got in mind, Griefer?”

***

THAT NIGHT, KAZ AND Mai threw a raucous feast in celebration of their new merchant and imminent settlement. Apprentice chef Changelings scurried around trying to keep plates and flagons full, while an ecstatic Variok drank and haggled with Trolls looking to sell their share of the griefing loot. Considering all the griefing the citadel was doing these days, there was a significant amount of loot to go around, and since none of the Trolls had ever bartered in the marketplace, Variok was having the time of his life. “A heavenly paradise,” he kept muttering under his breath. Mac and Zyra played their accustomed game of catch, the Young Turtle Dragon romping around the ceiling gulping down morsels the Reaver threw to him.

Roark let the happy chaos unfold around him, draining his ale whenever Zyra goaded him to drink and enjoying Kaz’s excitement over the new dishes he and Mai had prepared for the meal. Things like Biscuits and Gravy of Surpassing Stamina and Spiced Rum Cake of Invigoration.

But throughout it all, part of Roark’s mind was elsewhere, focused on an inevitable point somewhere in the future. He had made up his mind not to take any of the Trolls from the citadel with him when he returned to Traisbin—assuming, of course, he managed to find his way back—and he wouldn’t change it. He couldn’t drag Kaz or Zyra down to the grave with him. But that smile as she woke from the Sleeping Death, as if she’d just been wrapped in the arms of a lover, kept playing in his head.

He wished Griff was around to offer his advice. But when the grizzled old trainer had heard that they had another potential skill trainer for the settlement, he had taken off for Frostrime immediately, saying he didn’t want to wait for something bad to befall their sorcerer.

After spending even a short time in Chillend, Roark could well understand the sentiment.

The night wore on without any answers. In the wee hours of the next morning, Trolls began to wander off to their floors to spend the rest of their drunkenness in a more familiar setting—or to take their shifts at griefing. Always more griefing to do, even in the heat of a victory celebration. Variok announced his intention to retire before walking out deep in discussion with a pair of Thursr Elementals over magical weaponry. Finally, Kaz and Mai left together, forgetting to make up an excuse this time, and Zyra and Roark were left in the throne room alone.

She was still chucking scraps up to Mac as if she hadn’t noticed yet that they were the only ones there. Her face was hidden in the shadowy depths of her hood, her recurved onyx horns poking up through the slits he’d tailored for them. With those holding the hood in place, there wasn’t even a small chance it would accidentally slide back and reveal anything.

As if she could feel his eyes on her, she turned and met his gaze.

“Care for a turn?” she said, holding out a biscuit. “I think Mac’s just playing with it now, but he’s still catching it.”

“I miss being able to see your face,” Roark said, startling himself. He didn’t think he’d had that bloody much to drink. He tried to come up with a way to turn his slip into a glib joke, but couldn’t. Worse yet, he couldn’t seem to shut his mouth. “It’s been less than a day, but I wish I could see it all the time.”

Zyra froze. The damned hood cut him off from any indication of her thoughts.

“I know you don’t like what you see there, but I think you’re beautiful,” he said.

Seven hells! Had someone given him a babbling potion?

On the ceiling, Mac chirped, irritated to have his game of catch interrupted. Zyra launched the biscuit to the Young Turtle Dragon with more vehemence than required.

“What good is beauty?” she asked, her voice dripping with disgust. “It doesn’t kill your enemies or intimidate anyone into doing what you want. It’s worthless.”

Roark raked his hair out of his face. “Hells, you’re infuriating. And I’m saying it wrong. I don’t know how this is supposed to go.”

Her hood canted slightly. “How what is supposed to go?”

“I don’t know,” Roark said, frustrated. “I’ve wanted nothing but to kill the Tyrant King for so long that it’s hard to remember how to want anything else... You don’t understand why I can’t take you back to Traisbin with me. It’s not because I don’t need your help, and it’s sure as bloody hell not because I don’t want you around.”

“You need someone paranoid around who can protect you from your own cleverness, Griefer, someone to mount heads on pikes so everyone knows who the Dungeon Lord is around here.” She poked him in the chest, her poison-laced claws thudding against his dark leathers. “You need me.”

“Exactly,” Roark said. “That’s why I can’t take you with me.”

Zyra threw up her hands.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” She got up and stalked toward the door.

It was slipping away, Roark realized. Whatever nebulous idea he thought he’d been close to explaining was disappearing, and his chance to make her understand was vanishing with it.

Panic sent signals to his muscles, forcing him to his feet before he decided to move. His head spun a bit as he caught up to Zyra, but his hand was steady as he grabbed her arm.

She whirled on him, gleaming onyx claws extended. He steeled himself for the Death Scratch, but she didn’t attack.

Roark swallowed hard. “I’ve never wanted something as much as I do you. Not even revenge.”

Gradually, Zyra’s claws retracted.

“But I don’t know where that leaves us.” Roark sucked in a lungful of air and blew it back out. “Because I still have to go. And I can’t take you with me because I can’t lose anyone else I need. Not forever-dead, not again.”

Moving faster than his buzzing mind could comprehend, Zyra grabbed him by the back of the neck and crushed her lips to his. She tasted like cold ale and sweet poison, and all he could think was Soft, she’s so soft.

But by the time his hands got the message to reach for her, the hooded Reaver was pulling away.

“Why do you think I want to go with you, you idiot?” Her toxic claws trailed down his jaw, scratching thin, burning lines into his skin. “I can’t protect you if I’m not there.”

She slipped out of his grasp and disappeared into an inky puff of black smoke. She flickered into sight ten feet from the doorway. Roark tried to tell her to stay, but it seemed that the message to shut up had finally closed his mouth and he couldn’t reopen it. Zyra disappeared into the shadows again, and this time she was gone.

Roark stared at the empty doorway. She would be in the laboratory. If he went after her, if he kissed her again, if he could show her instead of trying to tell her...

Eight hundred pounds of Young Turtle Dragon slammed down onto the table to Roark’s right, sending plates, scraps, and flagons flying and startling Roark out of his fancies.

Mac chirped, blinking his big eyes slightly out of time with one another, and butted his scaly head against Roark’s arm.

Roark chuckled and scratched the silly beast, slapping him affectionately on the shell.

“What we need, mate, is a few rounds of hero-killing.”

Life’s a Grind

GRIFF RETURNED TWO days later with Yevin in tow. The rog magic trainer looked a sight more impressive in his silver-starred azure cloak and sorcerer’s robes than he had in the threadbare prison-issue rags. Over the next few days, the other skill trainers Griff had recruited filtered into the citadel one by one. And just like that, they had done the seemingly impossible: assembled all the pieces for a mob settlement, save for one. A charter. Naturally, with all the base requirements met, Roark wanted to craft it immediately, but Griff stopped him.

“No offense, Griefer, but you’re not exactly the top of the food chain. If ya found this settlement, then invite a bunch of other Dungeon Lords in, every one of ’em at the top level of their Evolutionary path, they’ll eat ya alive.” The grizzled weapons trainer sized Roark up with a skeptical eye. “How many levels have you got to go before you reach yer top Evolution?”

The advice grated on Roark’s nerves—he was a man of rash nature and not prone to patience—but he had to admit that Griff had a solid point. Though taking another dungeon by force wasn’t practical, especially for him, it was possible. And if he invited a mass of potential enemies into his midst, it could quickly lead to the downfall of his short-lived regime. Considering just how paranoid, power hungry, and bloodthirsty some Dungeon Lords could be, perhaps waiting until he had a tad more power was the smart play.

In truth, he really wasn’t far from his final evolution. With the Experience from completing the Variok and Yevin quests, the constant influx of points from the Dungeon Lord’s Tax, and the Curse Chains Roark had been feverishly crafting on everything he smithed since returning from Chillend, he had been gaining levels like mad. Currently, he was sitting at level 32 and still a Defiler. He checked the Troll Evolutionary Paths in his mystic grimoire, rubbing at his chin as he looked over the various branches.

╠═╦╬╧╪

╠═╦╬╧╪

“FOUR,” HE FINALLY ANSWERED, shutting the book.

Griff sucked his teeth thoughtfully.

“When you found this mob settlement, an announcement’s gonna go out to all a’ Hearthworld with yer name on it, and right behind that’s gonna be your level. Now, I ain’t sayin’ you have to put it off until after your final Evolution, but if you don’t, you’re gonna be fighting mighty hard to correct any assumptions the Dungeon Lords make from seeing ‘Roark the Griefer, Jotnar Defiler - Level 32’ instead of ‘Roark the Griefer, Jotnar Infernali - Level 36.’”

Roark sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “You’ve sold me,” he agreed reluctantly. It was only a handful of levels, but it could mean the difference between their allying with him or joining Lowen. “My father used to say the only way to gain a treasure worth keeping is with sweat and hard work. No shortcuts.”

He looked to Mac, who was curled up in his seat on the throne.

“What do you say, Mac?” The Young Turtle Dragon’s head lifted and he blinked sleepily at Roark, scratching at his beard with one clawed forepaw. “Want to try out that maneuver we’ve been practicing against some live heroes?”

With an excited chirp, Mac launched himself off the throne and bounded—well, waddled quickly—out the throne room door, his claws clicking on the stone.

Several hours later, Roark, Mac, Kaz, and Griff were scattered around the incoming portal plate in the Keep’s foyer, neck deep in pale elves.

[MILFenwyn], a pale elf in with bloodred hair and matching robes launched Incendiary Lava Blast after Incendiary Lava Blast at Roark. He threw up an Infernal Shield spell, the violet barrier protecting him from the exploding molten rocks and their shrapnel. Not deterred, MILFenwyn snapped her hands out straight, then slashed them through the air at descending angles.

A sound like ripping metal rent the air, and slices appeared in Roark’s Infernal Shield. Suddenly holding it together was draining his filigreed purple Magick vial at twice the rate it should have.

With a flick of his wrist, Roark dismissed the shield. MILFenwyn hurled a wrist-thick column of red fire at him, but Roark pulled his body out of line, letting it slip by harmlessly. Spell book levitating above his left hand, he cast a hasty fireball, which slapped against her shoulder, erupting with a blinding flare that did little real damage, but which did buy him a moment to maneuver. He slipped right, planted one foot, and lunged pie’ fermo, his sword flashing.

MILFenwyn backpedaled, narrowly escaping Roark’s Slender Rapier. But mid-backstep, she stumbled, her eyes going wide and her arms wheeling for balance. It was too late. She tumbled backward over an invisible obstacle, landing on her hands and knees, hair in her face.

Roark thrust his sword toward her, but instead of impaling her, he cast Infernal Torment, channeling the energy down the length of his extended blade; she threw up one hand at the last moment, encasing herself in a brilliant glowing red sphere ten feet across. The plum-colored flames zinged along the surface of the shield—crawling, searching, hungry—but couldn’t find their way in.

MILFenwyn jumped back to her feet, one hand maintaining the red shield.

“Oh yeah, take that, loser,” she sneered.

Roark laughed. “Enjoy your respawn.”

Her bloodred brows knit together, creasing her pale forehead.

Mac dropped his camouflage just inside her shield, opened his beaked maw, and belched green-laced acid flame. MILFenwyn screamed as the deadly emerald fire ate through her hip and thigh, taking a good chunk of her abdomen as well. Her red Health bar plummeted and the shield dropped. She threw lava, fire, and rock spells at Mac, but he just pulled his head most of the way into his shell, rolls of neck fat protecting him from her best-aimed strikes, and kept blasting her with those green-edged flames.

Meanwhile Roark slipped up behind her and impaled her on his Slender Rapier. The last of MILFenwyn’s Health drained away and she dropped to the flagstones, dead, a look of shock tattooed onto her face.

Mac popped back out of his shell and trotted over to Roark, his spike-studded snapping turtle tail slapping against his shell with happiness.

“I’d say we’re getting quite good at that,” Roark said, giving the beast a quick scratch around the beard. MILFenwyn was the eighth hero who’d fallen for their trip-up attack. It was proving quite effective. Since most shield spells seemed to encompass quite a large area, but didn’t exclude foes, Mac could simply hide inside their guard, biding his time for an opportune moment to attack.

From the other side of the room, the clash of wood on steel rang out. With his buckler, Griff bashed a pale elf with icy-blue hair under the nameplate [MuthrTruckr43]. The battered wood of his shield rasped against her gritty Fulgurite armor, taking only a sliver of her red Health bar with it. At the same time, Kaz darted in and took her knees out with his Legendary Meat Tenderizer, bellowing his now-famous war cry as the hit landed, “FOR SALT!” Another handful of red drained from her bar.

Alone, neither strike did much damage, but Kaz and Griff had been wearing the elf down the whole time Roark was fighting MILFenwyn, and now MuthrTruckr43 was down to less than five percent of her red bar.

The elf swung her sparking, frost-enchanted zwiehander in a huge arc at Griff, the weapon’s blade edge glimmering with deadly streaks of golden magick. The weapon trainer ducked under it, bashing the blade this time with his buckler, then striking out with his much faster shortsword. Griff’s weapon wasn’t fancy like the pale elf’s. It was pitted, worn, and ugly. But it was damned effective, especially in Griff’s sure hands. The pale elf grunted as the weapon trainer’s blade found its mark in her lower belly, between plates of gritty gray armor. Her Health bar flashed out a critical warning.

“Got one here for ya, Griefer,” Griff hollered, slipping away before she could retaliate, leaving an opening wide enough for Roark to drive a horse cart through—or a Young Turtle Dragon. “Ripe for the pickin’.”

Roark nodded at Mac. His scaly companion rippled and went invisible once more.

Just as the elf was staggering to her feet, eight hundred pounds of beak, claw, and scales slammed into her, throwing her onto her back. Roark was by Mac’s side in a heartbeat, cutting away the last of the elf’s life with a few deft strokes. Her Health bar flashed out a warning, then emptied as she died.

“What was that?” Griff asked, wiping his shortsword clean on his pants. “Twelve heroes today, all over level 30?”

“Thirteen,” Kaz said. “But none can stand up to the Legendary Meat Tenderizer’s Shank o’ Lamb attack.”

“Aye,” Griff said appreciatively, “Knocks ’em right off their feet.”

In truth, killing so many heroes, especially at their relatively high levels, was a truly impressive feat. The dungeon was attracting far deadlier heroes than ever as its fame grew and spread, and if not for the teleporting plate system—which automatically sorted the heroes, breaking up their carefully balanced parties—they likely would’ve been ground into the dust by now. But Roark was realizing that the greatest weakness of these heroes was their inability to “solo,” a term he’d learned from Griff. Most of the various hero classes were so specialized that they required support of one sort or another, so breaking their teams up and forcing them to contend against a superior force alone almost seemed unfair.

Which was precisely the reason Roark liked the tactic.

The portal plate sizzled and cast the room in blue light as it dumped another hero into the Keep. A level 31 Arboreal Druid.

“Back to work, boys,” Griff barked, swinging his shortsword.

“For Roark! For the Cruel Citadel! FOR SALT!” Kaz charged, Meat Tenderizer raised high.

“Oh, shit!” The Arboreal Druid threw up his palms. Brambles and roots shot up between the cracks of the flagstones, whipping around the Knight Thursr and anchoring him in place.

Roark cast Infernal Torment, the flames licking up through the Druid’s flesh. He screamed and grabbed for a Health potion, losing concentration on the thicket spell. The vines withered and Kaz tore free, rushing toward the Druid once more.

Green light flared and the vines and thorns from the thicket spell shot through the air, converging on the Druid to become thorny armor. During Kaz’s charge, Griff had snuck around back, but as his shortsword lashed out, a whip of vines shot out of the Druid’s armor, smacking the blade away. Kaz attacked, but a branch as thick as a full-grown tree erupted from the armor, handily blocking the Meat Tenderizer’s crushing blow.

“Woohoo!” cheered the Druid. “I knew that Command Plants would eventually come in handy! In your face, Darren, wherever you are!”

While Kaz and Griff traded blows with the Druid’s plant-armor, Roark pulled out his Initiate’s Spell Book and scribbled [All plant matter within a ten-foot radius catches fire and burns to ash] in one of his empty level 6 spell slots.

The spell took, Hearthworld’s unknown magical rules assigning its values:

[Congratulations, you have inscribed Forest Fire in the Initiate’s Spell Book!

Forest Fire can be cast (1) time per inscription!

Base Damage: 120 HP to anyone in contact with plant matter, +10 Fire Damage/sec until blaze burns out.

Cooldown period between casting Forest Fire and re-inscription: (2) hours!]

Griff battled with a series of tentacle-like vine whips while Kaz smashed pieces off of a branch that kept regrowing despite his best efforts.

Roark took advantage of the distraction to creep within range and cast the Forest Fire spell.

Flames erupted from the Druid’s plant armor with a huge whoomph, black smoke rising in a plume. It burned merrily while the Druid ran around screaming counter spells, but none could touch the conflagration. Within minutes, his red bar had burned down to nothing and he dropped to the floor, a charred, smoldering corpse.

An ascending chime rang through the air.

LEVEL UP!

Final Form

THE SOUND OF DRIVING war drums filled the room and Roark was engulfed in a cloud of roiling amethyst smoke, followed by a short prompt.

[You have reached Level 36! You may choose to Evolve into a Jotnar Exarch or a Jotnar Infernali!

Warning: Troll Evolution is irrevocable. Once an evolutionary path has been selected, a Troll cannot change to another path. Select “Yes” to choose the Exarch path; select “No” to choose the Infernali path.

Note: The Exarch path is the primary evolutionary path of the Jotnar, and those who select Infernali do so at their own risk! Unlike the Exarch evolution, each Infernali evolution is unique and based entirely on the individual Jotnar; spells, skills, and appearance all may vary.

Evolve into Level 36 Jotnar Exarch? Yes/No]

Roark read and reread the message, making sure he understood what it was saying. After a third read, he seriously considered selecting the Exarch form. He’d seen Azibek, the former Dungeon Lord, in action, and that Exarch had been an impressive creature to behold. True, it was possible the Infernali would be even better, but from the sound of things, it might also be worse.

Did he take the sure bet, or roll the dice as he had so often before, hoping for a greater return?

He thought about it for a moment longer, worrying on one lip, before finally selecting “No.” He was the underdog—had always been the underdog—and playing it safe wasn’t the way to victory. As soon as he selected “No,” arcs of magenta electricity crackled through the cloud, giving off the scent of molten metal and hot slag.

Time seemed to lurch and slow as a new prompt appeared, this one different from any other prompt he’d seen before. An image of himself floated in the air, rotating slowly, and next to the ghostly image were a variety of horizontal bars with words floating above them: height, weight, skin tone, hair, tattoos. On and on they went. Experimentally he tweaked a few of the bars; his eyebrows rose sharply as the floating image before him shifted and changed. His skin lightning or darkening. His tattoos glowing in different colors, shifting in design and form—though perhaps not in function. His hair growing longer, shorter, changing color.

Seven hells, he could actually choose what he wanted to look like, at least within limits. He couldn’t become human, but after a little tweaking and adjusting he looked far closer to himself than he had in ages. His skin was skill unnaturally pale, but with a tinge of olive he could almost pass for human. He adjusted his hair and played with his facial features until they were more or less in the right proportions—deep-set, brooding eyes, slightly hooked nose, sharp jaw—though he couldn’t get rid of the serrated black teeth in his mouth. The wings behind his back no longer looked like crippled, shriveled things, but fully functioning appendages. He added a few glowing runic tattoos and some barbed spikes along the edges, which seemed like they might prove deadly.

Roark examined himself for a long beat, fairly satisfied with the new look. Intimidating. Deadly. Human, but more. Better. With a final thought of Zyra, he added a set of curling horns to his head, similar to hers though bigger, more pronounced. With a thought he hit accept.

[As a Jotnar Infernali you have unlocked your ultimate race ability!

Hearthworld is a sprawling planet filled with many varieties of deadly Infernali and Malaika chimera, and each of those chimera—from the lowliest Dungeon Troll to the exalted NecroDragon of the Deamonhold Deeps—has a variety of unique powers, special abilities, and spells accessible only by their specific creature class. Each power, special ability, or spell falls into one of eight categories: Transmutation, Infernal/Divine Conjurations, Otherworldly Elementalism, Necromantic Shackling/Divine Resurrection, the Art of Glittering Eyes, Shadow/Light Binding, and Wounding Power.

As a Jotnar Infernali (Subclass Hexorcist) of the highest order with a thirst for knowledge and magical prowess, you have earned the right to select (2) Infernali Grimoires, which will bind with your Initiate’s Spell Book. When you interact with other chimera of Hearthworld, be they Infernal or Divine, you have a 25% chance to learn any unique powers, special abilities, or spells they use in your presence—so long as the power, special ability, or spell falls within one of the two classifications you have chosen! Once learned, you will be able to cast those restricted abilities as regular spells! But be warned: Once chosen, your Grimoires cannot be changed. Please choose (2) Grimoires from the list below:

- Change Yourself, Change Your Friends, Change the World: Transmutation Tricks

- Conjurers’ Field Guide to Summoned Chimera: Gotta Catch ’Em All!

- Harnessing the Arcane Elements: Which Arcane Power is Right for You? (All of Them!)

- Raising Your Loved Ones or Enslaving the Dead - You Decide!

- Skin Deep: The Art of Glamorous Makeovers

- Embracing the Darkness Inside! Goth Teen Edition

- Tome of Wounding: That will Show ’Em who’s Boss!]

Roark quickly scanned the titles—they were quite strange for mystic grimoires of supposedly untold power, but then Hearthworld was a strange place—reading over the brief description that accompanied each book. They didn’t reveal much, and this seemed like a large decision he did not want to take lightly.

If he was understanding this correctly, he would be able to learn restricted abilities from some of the most powerful creatures in Hearthworld. That could be a tremendous edge, especially considering the fact that he was about to broker a deal with a handful of powerful Dungeon Lords. Dungeon Lords with unique abilities that he might well be able to pilfer for himself. But what to choose?

He quickly ruled out Embracing the Darkness Inside—the idea of a Shadowmancer just felt used somehow—and Tome of Wounding he skipped past, since he already had some very formidable damage-oriented spells as a Hexorcist. Likewise, Harnessing the Arcane Elements seemed like a skill set he could replicate with his current powers. Raising Your Loved Ones or Enslaving the Dead - You Decide! had some appeal, true, but the idea of necromancy, no matter how powerful it might be, simply didn’t sit well with him; as a noble of Traisbin, one of his family’s primary jobs had been to ensure that the dead stayed dead and enjoyed a peaceful afterlife. He couldn’t in good conscience dabble in such dark arts.

That left him with three books to choose from:

Change Yourself, Change Your Friends, Change the World: Transmutation Tricks—Turn your skin to literal stone, petrify insolent would-be upstarts, grow a set of fangs and fur. Need a few party tricks? Well, turn your assistant into a bunny, or turn yourself into one for that matter! The art of physical, transformative magic!

Conjurers’ Field Guide to Summoned Chimera: Gotta Catch ’Em All—Who doesn’t need a little help once in a while? Well, as a summoner you can get as many helping hands as you need—though be warned, a summoned monster may also help themselves to a bite out of you!

Skin Deep: The Art of Glamorous Makeovers—Reality is vastly overrated, and though you might not be able to change it, you can certainly put a better face on it. Illusions and Glamours for the win!

Though all were good options, he ultimately decided to go with Transmutation Tricks and Glamourous Makeovers. Illusion magic was powerful stuff, and his own limited ability to cast glamours had already been invaluable. Without his ability to pass as human, he never would’ve gained the ability to leave his dungeon, infiltrate Averi City, recruit Griff, or form the Troll Marketplace. Expanding on that ability seemed like the logical next step with potentially unlimited benefits.  Transmutation Tricks, on the other hand, he chose because physical magic and raw strength were his weakest areas as a Jotnar Infernali. Augmenting a potential shortcoming was always a wise course of action.

With his choices made, he accepted all changes and dismissed the text.

Time resumed its normal flow in a rush. His black hair whipped around his face, which twisted and shifted, adjusting to the proportions he’d input. His muscles strengthened, and his body elongated. His head pounded as if his skull were about to crack open, and horns burst forth from his scalp, curling and growing. The purple tattoos of power twining up his arms and shoulders pulsed in time with the war drums as Roark felt the bones in his wings stretch and twist, gaining solidity and wicked spikes. The membrane between them caught a gust of sweltering air, and suddenly Roark realized he was aloft. He twitched a muscle deep in his shoulders, and the wings answered easily, raising him higher.

He was flying.

Slowly, the war drums faded, and the smoke cleared. The smell of molten metal was driven away by the stink of burnt flesh and wood.

Roark folded his wings, dropping to the floor awkwardly. That would take some practice, it seemed.

Kaz was staring open-mouthed, and Griff was nodding in appreciation at Roark’s Final Evolution. Neither spoke.

Something crunched behind Roark.

He turned to find Mac munching his way through the charred corpse’s ankle, completely unconcerned with the dramatic display. As if realizing he was being watched, the Young Turtle Dragon looked up at Roark guiltily, crunched through one final bone, then leaned back his head and shook the now dismembered foot down his gullet.

Roark grinned. “I can fly.”

“Roark can fly!” Kaz boomed, clapping.

“Can you actually fly?” Griff asked, scratching his chin. “The way Heralds can fly? Or can you just glide?”

Roark’s mind flashed back to Azibek the Cruel. The Jotnar Exarch had been able to leap into the air and flap his wings, staying aloft for a few moments before slamming back down to earth. But was that the same thing as the sustained flight of the Heralds? He wasn’t sure.

Roark opened his mystic grimoire to the character page.

╠═╦╬╧╪

╠═╦╬╧╪

WHAT A CHANGE.

Griff had been right to push him to achieve his final evolution. Roark’s stats had shot skyward. His speed had increased dramatically, both his Health and Magicka levels were untouchable, and every other measurable ability had increase by an order of magnitude that bordered on incomprehensible. He could now deal 1225 damage, and his Critical Hit Chance had increased to twenty-two percent, while his Critical Hit Damage had swollen from two hundred percent to two hundred and fifty percent! His Stunning Blow Chance had increased by two percent as well, and he was now seventy-five percent resistant against normal weapons.

And most impressive of all? Not only did he see the two grimoires added to his special skills, but he’d also earned an ability called Ariel Wing ...

He closed the character page with a flick of his hand and offered Griff a deadly grin. “No, mate. I can actually fly.”

He gave a few hardy pumps of the great leathery appendages, lifting from the ground while wind swirled around his feet.

“Well, that will be one hell of a tactical advantage,” Griff said, returning the grin.

“And founding the settlement will be our strategic advantage. Let’s go.” Roark stowed his slender rapier and headed for the throne room, shouting at a passing Thursr Knight, “Heroes in the foyer who need to be looted and marked for griefing.”

From the Dungeon Lord’s throne, Roark sent messages to all of the skill trainers, Variok, Zyra, and Mai to meet him in the throne room. He’d already bound the arrivals to his cause as Greater Vassals, utilizing his World Stone Authority, and now the lot of them—including Roark, Kaz, and Griff—would make up the eleven senior officers required to found a settlement.

As the others drifted in, part of Roark wondered whether Zyra would show. Since the feast, it seemed like she had been avoiding him, hiding out in her laboratory.

But she stalked in last with the Herblore trainer Griff had recruited, a bent, warty little hag leaning on a Gnarled Root Staff.

“What’s all the hubbub, Dungeon L...” Zyra began, her tone sashaying along the line of impertinence, as always. But when her gaze landed on him, the words died on her tongue. Her hood followed his lean form up to the freshly minted horns curling around his head. Though Roark couldn’t see her face, he imagined her jaw had dropped in disbelief. “You’ve Evolved ...” She trailed off. “Jotnar Infernali,” she finished in a near whisper.

Roark grinned. He couldn’t resist a little teasing. “Careful, your awe is showing.”

Zyra shook her head. “My shock, more like. I honestly never thought I’d see the day,” she claimed, though she didn’t sound at all displeased.

“Tell that to your voice,” Roark returned, smirking. “Because it sounds bloody damned impressed with someone.” This gained him the rare dusky laugh from the hooded Reaver. Satisfied, he turned to face the gathered officers of his new settlement. “And that’s not the only good news. We meet all the prerequisites. All that’s left is to sign our charter. Then we can begin to build.”

Kaz was nearly shaking with excitement as Griff brought the document around.

“What will Roark name the first mob settlement in Hearthworld?” the Mighty Gourmet asked eagerly.

“The Troll Nation, of course,” Roark said.

Troll Nation

ROARK WAS THE LAST to sign the charter. As soon as he put the final flourish on “von Graf,” a notice opened before his eyes, accompanied by a regal blast of trumpets.

[Congratulations! The fifth and sixth floors of the Cruel Citadel have been upgraded to the Troll Nation, the first mob-ruled settlement in Hearthworld! For creating a world-first, the Troll Nation will receive an extra 1200 Building Points to distribute and 120 new building options. To access building options or begin building your settlement, take a seat on the Troll Nation Throne (formerly the Dungeon Lord’s Throne).]

After a glance at the expectant faces surrounding him, Roark went to the Dungeon Lord’s Throne—now the Troll Nation Throne—and sat. A grimoire appeared opened to a page showing maps of the citadel’s fifth floor and the Keep.

Roark studied the images, so intent that he hardly noticed when a large scaly beast scrabbled up behind him, shoving and burrowing until it was comfortably taking up most of the seat.

By focusing on one spot on the map, Roark was able to bring it closer until it filled his entire field of vision or back it off until he could see the entire floor. Each time he focused on one point, however, a glowing red square bordered the space, and the message [Construct central marketplace here? Yes/No Note: Once you have constructed the central marketplace, it cannot be moved.] appeared.

The marketplace was the most important feature of the settlement, and incidentally, the place that would be most vulnerable to attack should any heroes manage to get in. He couldn’t just make it inaccessible—according to the arbitrary rules that governed Hearthworld, every room in a dungeon had to be accessible. However, as he knew from his Curse Chain teleportation experiments, a portal counted as an access point.

If he put the marketplace far back in the southeast corner, just beyond the river that flowed through the fifth floor, it would already be farther than most heroes ever considered venturing. Add to that walling the entire marketplace off and putting a portal plate outside specifying that natives of the Troll Nation would be transported to a plate inside, and the market would meet the dungeon requirements while also protecting its customers and vendors from raiding bands of heroes. He couldn’t wall it off until he’d built the portal plates, but that was the work of a few hours at most. Until then, he could send a patrol of higher-level Trolls to keep watch for heroes.

He focused once more on that southeast corner.

[Construct central marketplace here? Yes/No Note: Once you have constructed the central marketplace, it cannot be moved.]

With a thought, he selected Yes, then closed the Settlement Grimoire. The ten other senior officers of the Troll Nation were still staring at him.

“It’s up,” Roark said, grinning. “By tomorrow, I’ll have added walls around it to cut it off from heroes, but you should be able to go there now and furnish your shops and buildings. Do what you need to, but I want the marketplace up and running by tomorrow night.” He stood up. “Kaz, I need you to come with me.”

On the way to the smithy, Roark gave Kaz seven single-use portal scrolls and laid out the plan for the Mighty Gourmet’s next diplomatic trip.

***

ROARK STOOD AT THE northern end of the Troll Nation Marketplace, a slab of steel etched with runes lying ten feet in front of him against the northern wall. He dusted a bit of forge ash from the shoulder of his dark leathers, then clasped his hands behind his back. The light armor was polished to a dull shine, his ghostly pale Jotnar skin nearly glowing against it. His leathery wings ruffled impatiently. Mac had stood around waiting for about three minutes before wandering off to find something more exciting, leaving Roark wishing he could join him.

The sounds and smells of a busy marketplace drifted over to him. Merchants hawked their wares. Meat sizzled. A smith’s hammer rang out—one of the apprentice blacksmiths hard at work in Roark’s absence. But not on Roark’s anvil, if they knew what was good for them.

A forest of colossal phosphorescent mushrooms towered high overhead, lighting the market with their ambient glow, but if he shut his eyes and just listened, he might not be able to tell the difference between the Troll Nation’s marketplace and Averi City’s.

He shifted feet, his wings shuffling again. What was taking so long? The sun was down already. The first Dungeon Lords should be arriving.

From behind Roark, soft music tinkled and the disturbed grass shimmered violet.

“Blasted plant,” Zyra said. “You can’t sneak up on anyone down here without Shadow Stalking.”

Roark smirked. “Were you going to stab me in the back?”

“I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” the Reaver Champion said. Her hood shifted as she sized him up. “Don’t be nervous. They’ll smell it on you.”

“I wasn’t until you showed up. Dungeon Lords don’t worry me. They’re all just overly ambitious Jotnars in different bodies.”

“Then you should know exactly what they want to hear,” she teased, a smile evident in the lilt of her voice.

The Curse Chain rune on the portal plate began to glow blue.

“I’d better get back to my station,” Zyra said. “Don’t make any of them mad enough to kill you.”

Roark chuckled. “I don’t intend to.”

The grass sighed out more tinkling music as she started to leave.

“Zyra?” Roark said. “I’m glad you’re still talking to me.”

For a moment, a leather-wrapped hand slipped into his and squeezed. Then she was gone, leaving a curl of inky smoke in her wake.

A shimmering blue portal opened just above the plate, and a half-snake, half-woman Naga as tall and lean as Roark slithered out. Coppery red scales covered her body from tail to just below her breasts, where they faded gradually to smooth skin of the same color. [Shess the Shrewd], according to her nameplate.

“Welcome to the Troll Nation, Dungeon Lord of the Culling Swamps,” Roark greeted her, his tone welcoming, yet infused with authority. He didn’t bow or even incline his head. He didn’t want any of the other Dungeon Lords getting the impression that he would play subservient to them. They were in his domain, and he was the ruler here.

The Naga looked around with lidless eyes, her vertical pupils barely touching on anything for more than a moment. “I wasss expecting sssomething... bigger. More impressive.”

Roark schooled his features into a pleasantly condescending smile.

“We’re at the outer edge,” he said. “When the rest of our guests have arrived, we’ll go into the marketplace proper.”

Behind her, the runes began to glow again.

“You may want to come this way a bit,” Roark said.

As the Naga slithered over to stand beside him, another shimmering blue portal opened above the plate. A huge, blocky creature made of emerald green beryl shot through with veins of red stepped out, his crystal joints grinding. [Beryl King the Severe] from the Gardens of the Deep.

No sooner had Roark greeted the Beryl King than the portal plate spit out another Dungeon Lord, [Gevaudan the Terrible], who looked to be some type of wolf-bear-man hybrid. The remaining four came through in quick succession. [Ishri the Cunning], an enormous Bloodleech with wings to rival Roark’s and a circular mouth ringed with needlelike teeth; [Rohibim the Deceiver], a Void Djinn whose body shifted and roiled like smoke; [Drokara the Gullet], a Harpy Queen with a scattering of tattered, mangy feathers; and [Ko the Faceless] a Mind Mantid with hanging scythe-like arms and an iridescent plate of chitin where her eyes and mandibles should have been.

When the final greetings had been made, Roark addressed them as one.

“You all traveled here today by single-use scroll, and you’ll travel home the same way. But keep in mind as we tour the marketplace that if you choose to ally your dungeons with the Troll Nation, you’ll be given a portal plate with infinite uses to transport any of your dungeon’s mobs—yourself included—here at any time of the day or night.” It was like the fountain court in Averi City, though nowhere near as fancy. Yet.

With that, Roark turned on his heel and led them to the lush garden on the outskirts of the marketplace. Nearby stood a shack on chicken’s feet, bobbing almost imperceptibly. On its porch sat the bent little hag in a rocking chair, her Gnarled Root Staff across her lap.

“This is the Herbalist’s Garden.” He gestured to the hag. “And this is our Herbalist, Emala. She sells herbs and ingredients and provides training in Herblore.”

Gevaudan, the wolf hybrid Dungeon Lord, lifted his snout and sniffed at the air.

“Are you growing Fangbane, old woman?”

Emala nodded her wrinkled head. “Seven gold for a pound, Dungeon Lord. Picked fresh before your eyes.”

“How did you come by it? It only grows in the Deathwail Caverns.”

“I get around.” The hag cackled softly, rocking in her chair.

Roark hid his smile as Gevaudan pulled out seven gold and handed it over. The first foreign transaction of the Troll Nation market.

Their next stop was Zyra’s shop. Each individual trainer, master, or merchant in the settlement had been allotted 150 points to furnish their shops with, and the Reaver Champion had set hers up in much the same fashion as her lab in the Keep. Magical fires burned under bubbling flasks, metal tubing dripped strange-smelling potions into tiny cauldrons, and shelves of various and sundry ingredients lined the walls. In deference to the nature of the market, however, Zyra had added a seller’s counter, which she leaned on grumpily as if she’d been in the trade her whole life.

The Naga, Shess, slithered over to a multicolored display of potions and picked up an Ample Health Potion. A calculating expression crossed her face, one Roark recognized. She was realizing that what she held in her hands could completely shift the balance of power in her fights against invading heroes.

“How many of thessse do you have available to purchassse at one time?”

Zyra shrugged. “I have seventy-five at the moment, but they’re nothing to whip up. I also have Sufficient and Modest Health potions for the lower levels, Magicka potions for spell casters, and a lovely assortment of the deadliest poisons in Hearthworld.”

Shess hissed. “A Naga needsss no poison beyond the venom in her fangsss.”

But the serpentine Dungeon Lord continued to admire the Health potions until Roark led them back outside. The smithy was next door to the Alchemist, a bit of settlement design Roark had tweaked himself, bumping the more logical choice of Yevin’s school of magical training across the street.

The Bloodleech, Ishri, seemed especially interested in the armor being crafted. His people used their teeth and parasitic abilities to latch onto and drain heroes, but their bodies were soft and slimy. Easily pierced. Protection from heroes’ weapons would make an immeasurable difference.

By then, they were deep into the marketplace, and the street between both rows of buildings was filled with other merchants Variok had recruited—and the man had been busy. Apparently, he’d sold the idea of the Troll Nation Marketplace as easily as he sold everything else. Brightly colored tents, wooden stalls, and vendor spaces displayed every type of ware anyone could hope to find. The dungeon lords wandered through the aisles, inspecting, touching, and even buying. There was some good-natured haggling, and though Roark briefly worried that the stony Beryl King might upend a table covered in precious gemstones, the incident passed without actual violence.

Always a good sign, that.

When they finished their tour of the outdoor market, Roark led them across the street to the engineering trainer. Nathan, a burly, gregarious man, showed them the gleaming metal weapons and contraptions he crafted. Crossbows, mechanical traps, and even an enormous metal bull.

“What is it for?” the Beryl King asked in a voice like grinding rocks.

“Is for riding!” Nathan said, slapping the bull’s flank. “A mount, for when you don’t want to walk no more, yes?”

“How much weight can it carry?”

Nathan put up two fingers. “Two tons. More than twice what the strongest living mount in Hearthworld carries. And best part? Never tires. As long as you keep feeding wood into firebox, mount keeps going.”

From there, they went to Griff’s outdoor training area to watch him teach a small group of Changelings fighting tactics. All of the Dungeon Lords took special interest when one of the scrawny Changelings, a level 3 Roark had specifically selected because of how close she was to reaching 4, leveled up and Evolved into a musclebound Thursr.

“Our final stop is the Troll Nation Inn,” Roark said, leading them inside. “Where you can order stat-boosting meals prepared by our Troll Gourmet or purchase cooking skill training to bring food to your very own dungeon.”

Kaz shot Roark a nervous smile as their Dungeon Lord party took seats at the long table at the center of the common room. None of the Dungeon Lords looked very impressed by the idea of food.

Until they took their first bite.

***

HE’S DONE IT, thought Randy Shoemaker as he trailed Roark the Griefer and the seven Dungeon Lords through the mob marketplace. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but he’s done it.

The Trolls populating the place weren’t fighting or killing anything. They shopped, talked, worked together, bought skill training. It was fascinating. They were performing complex actions and having organic conversations that Randy could never have imagined coding them for. It defied all sense of logic or reason.

Why? Why set up a marketplace for mobs, then essentially lock out every hero? It didn’t fit with the modder’s griefing reputation. As far as Randy could tell, Roark had no plans to even tell the other players in the game that this existed. So what was the point of creating it? Money? A modder this talented could write himself in infinite gold. The same went for getting his hands on Unique and Legendary weapons. There was no point to going to all this trouble when you could just code in your own.

Randy shook his head as he followed along behind the Griefer. He was supposed to be following the modder to get answers, but it seemed like everything he saw just left him with more questions.

Wheeling and Dealing

THE DUNGEON LORDS ATE everything Kaz and Mai laid out for them, their faces lighting up with amazement at every new taste and texture. They gulped down spiced meads, ales, and wines, smacking their lips and sighing with pleasure. Even Ko the Faceless somehow made her food and drink disappear, then sent satisfied and impressed messages to all of their minds.

“How is it possible that we have gone our entire lives without knowing we were hungry?” Drokara the Gullet croaked, tossing back a full Lemongrass-Stuffed Buzzfish.

Roark just smiled. He remembered the amazement and excitement that accompanied Kaz’s first taste of food. The inn might very well turn out to be the crowning jewel of the Troll Nation Marketplace.

When at last even Drokara the Gullet was too stuffed to eat another bite, a somber hush fell over the table. The Dungeon Lords looked at Ko for several long seconds.

Roark wondered whether the Mind Mantid was conversing with them telepathically. He drained the last of his flagon and waited.

Finally, the Void Djinn Rohibim spoke.

“We have seen many amazing things, I will admit. This place”—he waved around a smoky arm covered in hazy tattoos of Infernal power not unlike Roark’s own—“is grander than I would’ve imagined. I am among the oldest of the Dungeon Lords, and it is a thing I have never seen. Never envisioned. But there are issues, Roark the Griefer. To travel here from our dungeons is a very dangerous trek, even for ones so powerful as us,” he said, his misty gray-black body roiling indolently. “Our lowest-level mobs cannot even cross the threshold into the outside world. Though this might be a boon to us, it needs to be accessible by even the lowliest members of my dungeon. You mentioned portals, but this is magic I am unfamiliar with. How would this work, eh? Will the user have to infuse it with magick?”

“No, no. Not at all,” Roark replied. “This is another perk of our alliance. I will provide the magick required for you and your minions to access this place. My portal plates are a bit like portal scrolls, except they can be reused an infinite number of times. All the traveler has to do is step on the plate, and they’ll be transported to the corresponding plate here inside the marketplace walls. And because of my class as a Hexorcist, I can ensure that the marketplace is inaccessible to even the most intrepid heroes. It will be safe for every level of Infernal creature, from yourselves to the most vulnerable members of your dungeons.”

The Void Djinn grunted and bobbed his head, a greedy gleam in his eyes.

“Even ssso,” Shess said, drawing out the susurrus. “We Dungeon Lordsss know that nothing isss free. Not in thisss world. You take usss through your market. You tempt usss. Entice usss with potionsss and succulent foodsss. But to what end? Your messenger”—she bobbed her head toward Kaz, who was standing nearby, watching the feast with a critical eye—“he mentioned an alliance, but he conveniently forgot to mention who you would have usss ally against. I would know more. What would you gain from thisss, and what would we would pay for our allegiance to this strange new endeavor?”

Roark offered her a tight-lipped smile. Apparently, Shess the Shrewd was aptly named; she’d seen right through his showmanship and to the crux of the real issue at hand.

“Simple,” Roark replied, maintaining his confident tone. “There’s another dungeon out there, the Vault of the Radiant Shield, led by a man named Lowen. He’s building up his forces for an attack on the Troll Nation. In exchange for giving any dungeon who aligns themselves with us access to our skill trainers, merchants, and crafting, allies would have to agree to help us attack and defend ourselves against Lowen’s dungeon.”

“It will not require much defense,” the Beryl King ground out. “This Lowen would have to attack you alone. Dungeon Lords are the only beings who can travel outside their dungeons. I have heard rumors of the Vault and its formidable powers, but one rogue Dungeon Lord could not possibly threaten you here, in the seat of your power. Though you are only level 36, your dungeon design is impressive for one so weak as you.”

“Not so weak as you might suppose,” Roark replied with a deadly grin as he pulled his spell tome from his inventory, allowing it to float above his outstretched palm. “I may be the lowest-level Dungeon Lord at this table, but I have skills, abilities, and spells that none of you have ever seen. Magicks that you couldn’t dream of. There’s a reason my name is on the lips of every adventurer, Beryl King, and why the Cruel Citadel is advancing in rank faster than any other dungeon in Hearthworld.” He stared the rocky golem down, refusing to drop his gaze. If he had learned anything dealing with Azibek it was that he needed to display strength here, not vulnerability. If he faltered, the other Dungeon Lords would likely turn on him like a pack of feral dogs.

Finally, the Beryl King dipped his head a fraction of an inch. “Point taken.” Not an apology for the slight, but as close to a concession as Roark was likely to get from him or any of the others.

“You say that only Dungeon Lords are able to cross the threshold out into the world,” Roark continued, not bothering to acknowledge his minor win, “but the underlings in the Vault aren’t mobs like in your dungeons. They’re men and women brought here from another dimension, like the heroes. They can travel anywhere in Hearthworld they choose. So my battle will not be against Lowen alone, but against his sizeable forces.”

You want our help fighting another dungeon. Ko spoke to his mind, and by the nods around the table, the minds of the other Dungeon Lords. You cannot beat him because you are weaker than he is, so you wish to bolster yourself with our strength.

“You misunderstand,” Roark said. “None of us could beat him, not with the full force of his dungeon behind him. The Vault of the Radiant Shield is currently the top-ranked dungeon in Hearthworld, and Lowen and every one of his army is at the top of their Evolutionary Path.”

“Ko’s right,” Gevaudan growled, pulling a leaf of fresh Fangbane from his Inventory and breathing in its scent. “You talk big. Waving around your spell book. Boasting of unmatched power with one side of your mouth while admitting weakness out the other side.” He lifted his muzzle to the air, sniffing deeply, lips pulled back from deadly fangs. “I smell lies. Trickery in the air, barely concealed by the scent of meat.

“You wish to impress us, to frighten us into submission, but everybody knows that Trolls are the least powerful of all the mobs. Baby heroes cut their teeth on your kind, yet you would demand our loyalty and seek to be the head of this alliance? Any one of us sitting at this table could shred you like prey in our teeth.” The wolfman cocked his head, ears laid back flat. “In fact, what is to stop me from challenging you here and taking this marketplace and citadel for my own?”

“The deadliest poisons in all of Hearthworld,” Zyra said, appearing next to the Gevaudan, a gleaming black-edged dagger pressed firmly into the side of his shaggy-furred throat. “One nick and you won’t go four paces before you’re dead.”

Roark smiled at the hooded Reaver, then waved for her to put the blade away. “As you can see, my generals are loyal. But I have no fear of you. You’re welcome to try it.” Roark smirked. “Azibek thought he could crush me, too, and now I run his dungeon. I’ll be happy to introduce you to forever-death as well, mate.”

“Besting one of us in your own territory would prove little,” Ishri the Cunning said. “There is, however, a way you can prove much.” The Bloodleech paused, glancing at each of her fellow Dungeon Lords in turn. After a moment they all nodded. “We want you to kill a hero...”

The coordination. The baiting. The posturing. This whole thing had been a setup, designed to push Roark into action. And the impossible labor they wanted performed in return was a dead hero? Roark was almost disappointed.

He laughed. “Do you even know what ‘Griefer’ means?”

“You’ve killed small heroes,” Gevaudan growled. “Puny pups compared to the one we want you to kill. His name is Bad_Karma.”

The name touched off a spark of recognition in Roark’s mind, but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before.

Ko sent him a picture of a woman in low-quality chainmail carrying an armload of books out of Mogrifa & Mogrifa’s, the scene taken straight from his memory. “He’s only the number one player on the server,” the woman said to Roark as if he should already know.

“Bad_Karma isss the highessst-level hero in Hearthworld,” Shess said. “He has causssed more lossst levelsss than any other. You will never meet hisss equal. But he hasss the fatal flaw shared by all heroesss...”

“Hubris,” Rohibim finished for her. “He exists in Hearthworld under a special set of conditions that only allow him to die once. It is called Hardcore Mode. If he dies, he’ll be gone forever.”

“Simple, then,” Roark said, shrugging. “I’ll kill him, problem solved.”

“Not so simple,” Drokara crawked. “For he’s survived thus far without dying long enough to reach level 50.”

We want his head, Ko sent, showing Roark a picture of a severed head leaking blood onto a silver plate. You want our swords in battle, the strength of our arms, our magicks at your back? Show us you can use your sword. Show us you are worthy to lead and worthy of following. If you can do this thing, kill the unkillable, we will give you what you want.

“If you can bring down Bad_Karma, we’ll join you,” Gevaudan said, once more twirling that Fangbane leaf beneath his nose. “And not just us. Kill him and another half-dozen dungeons around the world will be knocking down your door to join, too.” He hooked a clawed thumb toward his chest. “I’ll personally make sure of it. You only got three days to prove your worth, though, fast talker.”

“And if you fail after three days’ time,” the Beryl King said, “you’ll never have another chance. This is our only offer. Agree to it or we are finished here.”

╠═╦╬╧╪

Karma’s Head

The Dungeon Lords have spoken. They won’t ally their dungeons with yours unless you kill Bad_Karma, the top-rated hero in Hearthworld, within three days.

Objective: Kill Bad_Karma and present the Dungeon Lords with his head within the time limit.

Reward: The Dungeon Lords will ally their dungeons with the Troll Nation, 70,000 Experience, and The Eternal Blessing of the Seven

Failure: Fail to kill Bad_Karma within the allotted three days or fail to return his head to the Dungeon Lords within the allotted three days.

Penalty: Alliance with the Seven Dungeon Lords permanently locked.

Restrictions: None

Accept quest? Yes/No

╠═╦╬╧╪

Roark didn’t even have to consider it. There was no other way to gain their allegiance. Besides, he’d killed plenty of heroes beyond his level since coming to this world. What was one more?

“It’s a deal,” he said, selecting Yes.

Battle Plan

ONCE THE DUNGEON LORDS had all returned to their own territories via single-use scrolls, Roark called Kaz, Zyra, Griff, and Mai together in one of the upper rooms of the inn. Mac returned from his adventures as well and was busy rubbing phosphorescent spores from his beard and head onto the legs of Roark’s leathers. Apparently, he’d spent the night playing in a field of fungi.

“It seems fairly straightforward,” Roark said after he explained the Dungeon Lords’ quest. “Just kill this Bad_Karma bellend, then we can get on with preparing to fight Lowen.”

The agreements Roark expected never came. Instead, his friends looked from one to another with grim frowns.

After an uncomfortably long moment, Mai threw up her pink hands. “Sure, and none of you are going to tell him? You’re just going to let him walk into this?”

“Now, Mai,” Griff said, his tone appeasing. The grizzled old trainer took a breath and turned to Roark. “I don’t think ya understand, son. Bad_Karma is walkin’, talkin’ death. Unstoppable. No mob nor player has ever killed him.”

In spite of the fact that Mac clearly wouldn’t fit on the chair by himself, let alone behind Roark, he shoved his head between Roark and the chair back, digging and pushing until Roark stood up and let him have the seat. The Young Turtle Dragon settled down with a sighing chirp of contentment, half his shell hanging off the front.

“I put down Pwnrbwner_OG like the dog he was twice,” Roark said, dusting the glowing spores from Mac’s shell. “I killed Azibek and half the Trolls in this damned citadel on my way to Dungeon Lord. And that was all well before I hit my final evolution. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, level 36, and a Jotnar Infernali and Hexorcist with skills no one has ever seen. And you lot are telling me I’m supposed to be afraid of some hero just because nobody’s killed him yet?”

Griff raised a hand to stop him. “Say for a second that ya could kill him. Won’t matter, ’cause gettin’ to him’s the real problem. He’s a level 50, is Bad_Karma. I know the citadel’s the talk of the town at the moment, but this kid would never set foot here. It’s a low-level dungeon for beginners, and no matter how big it gets, he’ll always see it as such.”

Roark shrugged. “So, I go to him.”

“Convenient,” Zyra said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “Do you have a silver platter to serve yourself on or are you going to smith one before you leave?”

The skepticism in his abilities was starting to annoy Roark. First from the other Dungeon Lords and now from his own mates, who should believe in him more than all others.

“I will kill him,” Roark insisted. “Doubt me if you want, but it’s going to happen. I just need to know where to find him.”

Griff sighed. “Well ...” He trailed off, fiddling with the handle of his shortsword. “Though I think it’s ill advised, I know how ya might get at him if yer determined. Bad_Karma has a standing appointment at the arena. Does battle once a week like the overconfident little jackdaw he is. With my connections, might be I could smuggle you in.”

“You’re going to help him with this... this suicide?” Mai asked. “Kaz, he’s your best friend. Aren’t you going to stop him?” she pleaded, eyes big, hands outthrust.

The Knight Thursr raised his huge chin and set his enormous fists on his hips.

“If Roark says he can kill Bad_Karma, then Kaz believes him. Roark has done everything else he said he would. He defeated the first floor Overseer, Ugoraz, when no one thought he could. He won Zyra to our cause. Earned the trust of Trolls everywhere. Killed Azibek. Built a Troll Marketplace and founded the first mob settlement in all of Hearthworld. He even brought us the wonders of food! Kaz believes.”

“Do what you will, then,” Mai fumed, crossing her arms over her ample bosom. “I’ll not be crying when you’re off for respawn, Dungeon Lord. And don’t be expecting me to keep your meal warm, either. The Infernali take you all.”

“I’m on your side, Mai,” Zyra said. “I’m placing my bets on the Griefer respawning before dinner. Might see if I can’t get over to the arena and place a little gold on the match.”

Roark smirked nastily at the hooded Reaver, but she just shrugged as if the outcome of his face-off with Bad_Karma was a foregone conclusion.

On the other side of the circle, Kaz tried to put his arm around Mai, but she shrugged his enormous arm off. The Knight Thursr’s eyes grew wide, and his lower lip quivered at the rejection.

“Mai darlin’, go easy now,” Griff said, patting her arm. “It ain’t gonna matter what we say, nobody’s gonna be able to talk the Griefer out of goin’ after Bad_Karma. Sometimes a young man just has to learn for himself.” The old arena hand trained his one piercing blue eye on Roark. “Not an old man, though. We don’t get old by ignorin’ common sense and runnin’ in to certain death, you ken?”

“Understood,” Roark said, nodding. “Now, how do we get to him?”

“Not we,” the weapons trainer said. “You. Getting everyone in will never happen. You’ll be on your own. Karma usually faces off against other heroes. Way I hear it told, there’s a waitin’ list as long as my arm of folks who want to fight him just for the pleasure of sayin’ they died by his hand. But it ain’t unheard of for him to warm up against scads of captured mobs. Usually low-level creatures taken in off the plains, but I’ve seen higher-level creatures in there a time or two. If you could disguise yourself as something else, it’d be a big help. Can your illusion spell do that? Make you look like a different kind of mob? Because if so, I reckon I can get you thrown in with the other mobs.”

Roark nodded. It would be pushing the limits, but maybe with his new Skin Deep: The Art of Glamorous Makeovers Grimoire, he’d be able to arrange something.

“Give me a few hours and I should be able to manage it. How soon can you get me in?”

Griff leaned back in his chair and cupped his chin in his scarred hand, staring off while he did the calculations.

“It’s only a shake of the kelpie’s tail to midnight. If we head over first thing in the morning, I reckon we can get you into the mob cages in time for the day’s fights.”

“Good,” Roark said. “Prepare to leave come first light. I’ll be handing this Bad_Karma bloke’s head to the Seven Dungeon Lords before sunset.”

But first, he needed to find a suitable illusion to mask his appearance.

***

ROARK STALKED FORWARD on silent feet, rounding a snaking bend in a shallow tunnel with rough earthen walls. Behind him, Zyra ghosted along, invisible though he could feel her presence like a reassuring hand clutched in the black of night. It had taken him hours of scouring the seemingly infinite pages marked with the “Wiki” ribbon in his Mystic Grimoire to find a creature suitable for his purpose.

At first, he was sure that he would need to find a master of illusion for Griff’s plan to work, but research proved that to be rather problematic. His own Illusion Cloak, provided by the World Stone Pendant, allowed him to assume his human form, but he couldn’t tailor it at will, which meant he needed a chimera capable of casting such elaborate illusions. It turned out that there were a fair number of such creatures roaming Hearthworld’s caverns, tombs, and dungeons, but few had the specific type of effect he needed. Those who did have illusory spells or abilities powerful enough to achieve the desired effect were creatures of enormous strength and renown. Dungeon Lords and Ladies who would be able to rip him apart with a thought or the twitch of a claw.

Ancient Dragons, it seemed, were the most likely source of illusion magick, followed in short order by various named demonic lords, undead liches, vampire monarchs, djinns, and rakshasa. It seemed the power of illusion was incredible deadly and hoarded by some of the fiercest monsters in Hearthworld. Roark was already running low on goodwill with the other Dungeon Lords, so simply asking for a favor seemed unwise, especially since he was trying to prove he was powerful enough to govern without their aid.

With that avenue of research thoroughly exhausted, they turned instead to creatures that didn’t rely on glamour or illusion to hide their form, but rather utilized bodily transmutation to survive and kill. A skill Roark could potentially learn since he had chosen the Change Yourself, Change Your Friends, Change the World: Transmutation Tricks Grimoire with his final Evolution. There were a number of these, most of them lower level—everything from Selkies and Barguest to Doppelgangers and Werewolves—but none were quite right. Not for this. But after a bit more digging and a helping hand from Griff, who was basically a compendium of monster lore thanks to his time in the arena, they found an acceptable alternative.

His quarry was an exceptionally odd creature known as a Grapple, a close relative to the Mimic. Mimics, it seemed, were far more commonplace than their lesser-known brethren, disguising themselves as treasure chests, tables, and even loot items such as swords or shields, only to transform into monsters of fangs and claws when heroes unwisely got too close. Genius, really. Roark had employed trapped treasure chests filled with spikes or acid to great effect, so he could admire the workmanship of a fellow hero-killer.

The Grapple, however, utilized a bit of a different strategy to kill its prey.

By all accounts, they were far deadlier than mimics, though less intelligent and driven almost entirely by hunger.

Finding one had not been easy, but if the eye-witness accounts from the Wiki pages of his grimoire were to be believed, there was likely one in this rudimentary cave system, which was home to a group of creatures not so different from the Changelings that inhabited the first floor of the Cruel Citadel.

The tunnel let out into a ragged, dome-shaped cavern, the ceiling above covered with long, dangling roots from some massive tree outside the cave system proper. A burbling creek carved its way through the center of the cavern, watering the patchy brown grass and stunted trees flanking either side of the slow-moving creek. Luminescent green mushrooms—smaller versions of the capped fungus found in the lower levels of Roark’s dungeon—sprouted from the walls, casting the whole scene in ghostly emerald light. Little huts of mud and sticks peppered the cavern’s interior, sheltering the dungeon’s inhabitants.

One of the chittering creatures spotted them and slipped from a squat home with no door.

The creature was three or four feet tall at most, its skin a putrid green a shade darker than the fungus, its arms too long, its legs too short. It moved with a waddling hop, using its arms as often as not. It had a pinched reptilian face with cold beady eyes that seemed to catch everything. It wore crude leathers and carried a sharpened stick instead of any sort of proper weapon. According to the spidery text floating over its head, it was a [Kobold].

Having already talked his way past their lookouts on the first floor without inflicting any casualties, Roark knew that though these Kobolds were aggressive, as good and proper mobs should be, they weren’t unreasonable. Simple creatures, true, but not animals. And he felt a particular affinity toward them. He’d started out just as these poor souls, trapped in a scraggly, awkward little body and struggling to survive, and he would help them if he could. In fact, he fully intended to offer the Dungeon Lord—if they had one—a diplomatic olive branch.

“Hello there,” Roark said, raising his claw-tipped hands, showing he held no weapons.

“Watcha want, huh?” the creature growled at him, his beady eyes narrowed, fangs protruding from his reptilian jaws. “You mob like us? Why you here? Challenge? We have no lord. No ruler. No challenge. You, go away.” He shooed at Roark with a free hand.

“No, mate,” Roark said. “I’m not here to challenge. I’m actually here to help you, I think. I’m looking for a creature... a thing that doesn’t belong. I have reason to believe it may have moved into your cave system. It’s a mob that might look like you but is not one of you.” He paused, edging closer. “I’ve heard that it might be hurting your people.”

The Kobold retreated a step, cocking his head to one side as he considered Roark’s words, spidery fingers drumming on its stick. “The outsider? What you want with outsider, huh?”

“I’m hunting it. If I manage to kill it, it will respawn away from your cave system. It will move on, find a new dungeon to hunt. You and your kinsmen will be safe. And then my companion and I will be out of your hair.” He eyed the Kobold’s scaly, bald head. “So to speak,” he added with a grin.

The Kobold dithered, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot before finally nodding its assent. “Okay. I show you. But be careful. Dangerous.” The kobold turned, waved for them to follow, and hobbled off deeper into the cave system, past the rest of the little mud huts, and toward another branch, which ran away from the far side of the cavern proper. Distrustful eyes followed them, peeking from doorways. Kobolds watching the strange procession.

Their guide led them for another five minutes down the winding tunnel until it finally came to a deep fissure in the cavern wall that connected to a wide, circular hollow twenty feet across. Inside, there were no quaint homes of mud and sticks, no campfires burning, no streams burbling. There were bones, though. Piles and piles of them strewn among other bits and pieces of debris. Many of those bones appeared to be from heroes, unlucky enough to stray this far into the tunnel system, but others were smaller, more reptilian. Kobold remains, at a guess.

In the center of the hollow, staring at them through the fissure with sunken, beady eyes, was a Kobold, no different from the others Roark had seen.

Their guide faltered outside the fissure; its inhuman face was hard to read, but Roark thought he saw fear etched into its scaly features.

“Me will go no farther.” The Kobold grimaced, shook its head, then turned and left them to the timid-looking creature in the cave beyond.

“Have you ever fought a Grapple?” Zyra asked quietly, pulling her Cursed Longknives from dual sheaths.

“No,” Roark replied. “The eyewitness reports weren’t very clear, but I’m sure we can take it. Though try not to kill it too fast—I need it to transform in front of me if I’m going to gain its special skill.”

“Kill, but slowly,” she said in confirmation. “I can do that.”

Together they padded through the fissure, Roark ducking his head to avoid scraping his horns on the craggy surface of the low ceiling.

“Not sure if you understand me,” he said, raising his hands to show he meant no harm, just as he had with the other Kobolds. “But I don’t mean you any harm. I was hoping to talk with you. Maybe ask a small favor of you.”

The lone Kobold didn’t shuffle forward, didn’t make any sort of aggressive movements. Instead, it hooted affably, offering Roark a toothy smile as it waved him on with one hand. He glanced at Zyra over one shoulder, shrugged, and edged a little closer, his boots crunching on chips of yellowed bone. The creature hooted more energetically, seemingly ecstatic about Roark’s approach. Roark faltered for a beat, one hand instinctively dropping to the pommel of his rapier. He licked his lips, deliberately pulled his hand away, and pressed on. He didn’t want to alarm this thing, not if he could avoid it—though as he got closer and closer, worry bloomed inside his gut like a rose on the high steppes.

This thing looked benign, but every survival instinct in him screamed that he should be running, not drawing closer. There was nothing for it, however. If he wanted to see the creature’s transmutation in action, he would have to risk getting within striking distance.

He was five feet out when the odd Kobold stopped its energetic chirping, its arms falling limply by its sides. Its sinuous smile slipped from his face, replaced instead by a look that Roark could only describe as hungry.

In an instant the creature surged forward on all fours, changing as he moved: growing and bubbling out, its arms and legs expanding by the second.

Roark leapt back, scrambling for his rapier, but the Grapple was ungodly fast and plowed into him before he could free his blade from its sheath. The creature, no longer a Kobold, but a blob of gray skin and black shifting light, hit him like a battering ram, blasting Roark from his feet and hurling him through the air. Zyra danced out of Roark’s way just the barest instant before he could sideswipe her. She darted in, her longknives flashing with deathly light.

Roark slammed into the stone wall of the hollow. The breath rushed from his lungs all at once, and he crumpled to the floor in a heap, stars dancing at the edges of his vision.

A message appeared as the white starbursts finally stared to wink out and die away.

[You have witnessed the special Grapple ability Polymorph: Shape Form, Kobold. Would you like to add this special ability to your Change Yourself, Change Your Friends, Change the World: Transmutation Tricks Grimoire? Yes/No?]

Roark grinned despite the pain in his chest and back. Success.

He accepted and dismissed the parchment with a thought, then struggled to his feet. In front of him was the Grapple, now fully transformed. Roark had seen any number of odd creatures during his time in Hearthworld, but this was by far the strangest.

A blob of translucent sludge, more or less man-shaped, though it had four arms instead of the customary two, and no two limbs were the same. One arm looked like it might’ve belonged to a wolfman, while another had an enormous crab claw jutting from the end. A third had long, webbed, batlike fingers, and the final one kept shifting between the arm of a rog and the azure skin of a dark elf. One leg could’ve come from a Behemoth Thursr, while the other was the tail of a Naga. Patches of fur in various hues sprouted from random places, and a horde of bones floated inside its goopy torso without any real rhyme or reason. It boasted a tooth-filled maw located beneath a single ruby eye the size of Roark’s fist. Another entry for his nightmare vault.

Zyra, though, seemed entirely unconcerned.

She danced around the grotesque, slashing it with her blades and raking at it with poisoned claws, eating through its glowing Health vial with ease. The creature hit hard, but it was ponderously slow—at least in comparison to Zyra’s lithe movements and uncanny grace. Roark had simply been caught off guard, but now that he’d earned what he’d come for, it was time to put the thing down and get back to the citadel.

He summoned his Initiate’s Spell Tome, the pages flipping to his fifth-level spells. He had the perfect spell, ready and waiting. Aiming an open palm at the creature, he unleashed Rain of Fire. A red thunderhead appeared above the Grapple, swirling and churning, crimson lightning arcing in the unnatural cloud.

A pained howled ripped through the air as molten rain fell and the creature burned.

Board Meeting from Hell

THE ALARM RANDY SHOEMAKER set for himself began beeping in his ear just as Roark the Griefer was gathering up the five anomalies he spent the most time with. It seemed like one of those Gathering of the Team moments from movies, where everybody talks over the plan, then they all get geared up and go defeat the big bad.

Randy would’ve liked to listen in. There was something so addictive about following around a group of friends. Listening to their banter and discussions. Sharing in their inside jokes—like the ongoing tension between Roark and Zyra or the friendly comradery between Kaz and Mac, Griff and Mai. It was almost like having friends yourself.

But he had to tear himself away because today he somewhere to be. That alarm was his two-hour warning before the board meeting. It had been a week. Now it was time to give an update to the board.

Randy logged out, then climbed out of the Deep Dive capsule, standing beside it for a few minutes with one hand on the console to steady himself. It always took him a little bit to readjust to the pull of gravity and get his equilibrium reacquainted with the real world.

When the floor finally stopped reeling uncertainly beneath him, he took a quick scan of the VIP lounge, searching for any new—and potentially unfriendly—faces. Thankfully, the room was empty.

Not totally surprising, since this lounge was a special place, reserved only for the most important people: VPs, executives, or high-profile clients the top brass hoped to woo.

Plush carpets in deep grays lined the floors, while the walls were immaculately white, accented with clean lines of gray, black, and chrome. The furniture was all white—posh and terribly uncomfortable looking, though undoubtedly expensive. The wall adjacent to the entryway door was one giant Vidscreen, though it was currently off since the room was unoccupied. A fireplace, lifeless and cold, was built into the left wall; in front of it were a pair of white-leather club chairs and a shaggy black rug as big as Randy’s living room. The right wall boasted a full bar along with a sleek chrome expresso machine, perfect for an afternoon pick-me-up.

It was nothing even remotely similar to the employee lounge. They were planets apart.

Frankly, Randy didn’t care for the modern décor, nor the classy furniture. But the line of Deep Dive pods, like futuristic coffins, running off to the left of his pod, made this strange place a treasure more valuable than even the best loot Hearthworld had to offer.

When he could walk around without tripping, he hurried into the executive bathroom, which was equipped with a number of private showers. He slipped into a marble-and-glass monstrosity that was larger than his entire bathroom and tapped the button for the preprogrammed Shower Option 1, a quick, but thorough wash. When he was done, he stepped out of the shower cubicle, dried off, and dressed as quickly as he could in a spare set of clothes he’d brought with him from home. He dressed plainly. Dark, professional no-nonsense slacks, a cream button up, and brown penny loafers. He also sported a clear pocket protector, crammed with pens and markers, but he’d been wearing it long before they were “ironically” hip.

He stopped by the VIP bar and found a variety of snacks, ready and waiting. There were pre-sliced bagels, along with a black automatic toaster, some blueberry muffins, and several yogurt containers chilling in a white bowl full of ice.

He opted instead for a package of cold Pop Tarts, a request he’d made upon earning access to the lounge. No better way to start the day than a Pop Tart.

He checked his watch and bolted the Pop Tarts down one right after another.

That last bit started to seem like a mistake as soon as he finished the second pastry. The sugary food sat like a stone in his gut as he left the lounge and made his way back to his glass-fronted office, where he should be gathering and compiling his notes for this morning’s meeting. Except, he didn’t really have notes to compile; there were statistics, yes, and data points worth touching on... but it was all raw information, with no conclusions. He had no idea what he was supposed to tell the board. They were going to expect concrete answers, but after a week observing and gathering information on the modders, Randy had more questions than ever.

He considered himself a man of logic and order. He was a huge fan of inductive reasoning. You gathered data, and that data led you to conclusions. That was how the world should always work. But Randy had gathered and gathered and gathered the pieces of this puzzle, both from a detective standpoint and the standpoint of a programmer, and still none of the pieces fit together.

There was something missing. Some bit of information that would complete the puzzle and make all the rest of the pieces fit together logically. He just had to find it. Once he had that missing piece, he could go about figuring out how to fix the anomaly.

Randy kept his head down, trying to avoid eye contact as he made his way past the staff lounge, which was directly adjacent to his office. Unlike the chic and sleek VIP lounge, the employee lounge housed the ping-pong table, an oversized leather couch, and a seventy-inch vidwall. It was a place employees went to “unwind.” A place to play video games. To “hang out.” Or “jam.” Frontflip Studios was one of those types of companies. A place where there was no formal dress policy. Where people wore blue jeans and flip-flops to work. Frontflip insisted it “inspired an atmosphere of creativity.”

At least, that was how it was pitched to the worker bees, like Randy. He didn’t expect to see a flip-flop anywhere in sight during this morning’s brief—just expensive suits and angry scowls.

He grabbed his coffee cup off his desk, filled it up, and gulped the scalding hot liquid down while he logged into his InfiniTab Office Pro. Quickly, he scrolled through the notes he’d sent himself while in-game, searching for any connections he might have missed. But there was nothing. No smoking gun. No flash of brilliance or insight. He sighed, printed off a few pages so he at least had the appearance of preparedness, then headed out of his office.

Danny, the sharp-dressed, ever-popular Marketing director, ambushed him as he stepped into the corridor.

“Heyo, Rando!” he said, leaning out of his door and shooting him with a finger gun. “Lame board meeting today. Such a drag, amiright?”

“Whatever, Danny,” Randy mumbled under his breath.

Danny stepped out of his office, cocking an ear toward him. “What’d you say?”

Randy’s face flamed. “Nothing. Just clearing my throat.”

“Well, grab a lozenge, bud, it’s your party today,” Danny said, slapping him on the back too hard to be friendly. “Can’t have a frog in your throat for your big report.”

“Right,” Randy offered weakly, icy fingers of dread creeping through his system as he headed for the conference room and his almost certain doom.

“See you in there, buddy,” Danny called after him. “Save me a seat!”

The receptionist, a young man named Berkley with a haircut that cost more than the best suit in Randy’s closet, sent him in straight away. This was an emergency meeting with only one item on the agenda, so there wasn’t any chance he would overhear important stockholder information.

Randy took a seat near the middle of the table, far enough back that he was certain he wasn’t taking any of the regulars’ seats, and went over his notes again one final time while the board filtered in. None of them spoke to Randy. He wasn’t important enough to attract their notice or ballsy enough to talk to them first like Danny, who came in and immediately went up to Mr. Silva, the CEO and majority shareholder of Frontflip Studios, shaking his hand and talking about a great golf game he’d had.

Opposite Randy sat the company’s COO, Asif Kamal Totah, in quiet discussion with Paula Menchaca, their CFO. Eventually Danny took a seat next to the head of HR, Susan Span, and started flirting with her.

The most powerful people in the company were all sitting in this room, waiting to hear from him. Randy swallowed hard. Right then, facing down a dungeon full of Final Evolution Bloodleeches seemed like a much less intimidating way to spend the morning.

At exactly 9:05 a.m., Mr. Silva rapped his knuckles on the table.

“I’ve got a flight to Hong Kong in two hours, so let’s get right into it.” He pointed down the table at Danny. “How are we sitting with the Hearthworld numbers?”

Danny clicked his pen and sat forward. “No change, sir. We haven’t started losing money—yet—but it looks like that initial spike of new subscriptions has hit the plateau. We’re expecting it to fall off the cliff any day now.”

Mr. Silva nodded. “Shoemaker. How close are we to eliminating these modders?”

“Uh, well, sir,” Randy started. “You see, the way the modders are interacting with the established code—”

“I don’t want to hear about the anomalies in the code,” Mr. Silva cut him off. “I want timeframes to fixes. Do you have a timeframe, Shoemaker?”

“I—without knowing exactly what the modders are—”

“So no timeframe,” Mr. Silva said. He grabbed up a piece of paper and checked something. “You logged a hundred and eleven hours this week, fifty-eight of them overtime. What the hell were you doing in there, Shoemaker? Playing on company time?”

“N-no, sir, I—”

“Because for a hundred and eleven hours—fifty-eight of which I’m paying you time and a half—I expect results, not”—he threw the paper back down—“fuck all.”

Randy swallowed past the sharp lump in his throat. “Sir, there is still the option of making the areas around the Troll Nation and the Vault of the Radiant Shield into restricted areas.”

The CFO sat forward, a shake of her head flipping shining brown hair over her shoulder. “Excuse me, but what is the Troll Nation? Your original report says that the Vault of the Radiant Shield and the Cruel Citadel were the locations of the prime anomalies.”

“They were, ma’am,” Randy said. “And the citadel still is, but this Roark the Griefer changed it. He founded a settlement there for the Trolls whose code he’s infected and named it Troll Nation.”

Danny snorted. When he saw everyone looking at him, he straightened up. “It’s such an obvious gamer name. He’s trolling us, so he puts himself in the game as a literal troll and makes a settlement called Troll Nation.”

“He founded a settlement?” Mr. Silva said, his eyes like chips of diamond, cold and hard. “Why?”

Though he remembered what they said, Randy glanced down at his notes so he wouldn’t have to hold the CEO’s intense gaze.

“At first, I thought money or laundering Unique or Legendary weapons,” Randy said. “But for a modder of his skill, writing in his own would be much faster than waiting for them to come through a marketplace.” He scrolled down a bit. “The other possibility was so that he could spread his infected code even faster. From some of the things the Griefer has said, he and the prime anomaly in the Radiant Shield, the modder named Lowen, are in a sort of virtual arms race. I think things are about to come to a head soon. But so far, none of the NPCs or mobs who’ve gone through the Troll Nation marketplace have been infected.”

“So, what you’re saying is you’ve been following this Griefer around for a week, and in that time, you allowed him to take over the Cruel Citadel, change its name, found a settlement where he’d have access to an exponentially higher number of people and creatures, and turn my game into a virtual grudge match between himself and this Lowen character?”

Randy’s mouth opened and closed as his brain struggled to find a way to explain. Technically, everything Mr. Silva had just said was true.

“All of this on your watch.” Silva’s voice dropped to frigid. “And you want me to pay you for this.”

Randy’s throat went dry. “S-sir—”

“You’ve got three days to get me hard answers, Shoemaker. If you don’t, I’ll find someone else who can and you can find another job. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Randy whispered.

After the board dismissed, Randy left the conference room with his head down and steered straight for the bathroom. He just barely made it to a stall in time. Strawberry Pop Tart flavored vomit sprayed into the stripped-down, streamlined, hypermodern toilet. A few good heaves and the last of the breakfast pastry was floating in the funnel-shaped bowl, pinkish bubbles speckled with tiny yellow and blue sprinkles floating on a greasy, sticky sea of strawberry red.

Randy leaned back against the stall door and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. It was soaked with sweat. More slicked his limp hair to his forehead and plastered his shirt to his back and armpits. Felt like the thing was choking him. He undid the top button. Whether it was reality or psychosomatic, the change made it a little easier for him to breathe.

Randy flushed the toilet and left the stall. He went to the sinks, white basins jutting up out of black marble, and ran cold water over his wrists to cool himself off. Then he splashed some on his face and slurped a little from his hand, swishing it around to rinse the strawberry vomit taste from his mouth.

It wasn’t even the ass-chewing that bothered him the most. It was the prospect of being fired. He loved Hearthworld, and he loved his job. He as good at it, too. There was no engineer at Frontflip better than him. But most importantly, he wanted to figure out what was going on here. He’d never met a problem he couldn’t unravel given enough time and information. It was what he did. Finding answers was who he was. Everything else came in a distant second.

He needed to solve this, but Mr. Silva had just put him on a severely short deadline. Which meant he was going to have to step up and take more direct action.

Caged Animals

ROARK HUDDLED IN THE corner of a massive cage, disguised as a bent little kobold in a sea of larger creatures. They were belowground, beneath the arena. Griff’s contact had led Roark down and locked him in just before sunrise that morning. Now only the smallest strips of sunlight shined through cracks in the ceiling above. The iron bars of the cage rattled constantly, trembling beneath the stomping of feet and the roaring of the raucous crowd.

It was dark. It stunk of offal, gamey animal sweat, and unwashed bodies. His fellow mobs paced the cage, scared and angry, lashing out at one another or railing against the bars. Beasts with claws and fangs, others with fur or feathers. Some walked upright like men, while others prowled on all fours, tails lashing as they moved. According to Griff, most of the mobs who were captured for sport came from the wilds and had been found roaming free, unaffiliated with any particular dungeon. Most appeared to be mid- to high-level creatures, ranging from levels 10 to 20, but relatively unintelligent, only a step or two above wild animals. Nothing like the dungeon-based mobs Roark was used to.

Another tidbit he had learned from Griff was that mobs who spawned in dungeons tended to show higher levels of humanity since they lived and Evolved in a community. Something about being a lone wolf seemed to strip the mobs from the wilds of their higher mental faculties.

One creature, however, stood out. A frail-looking individual in flowing blue-black robes called a Nocturnus. It had eight sparkling sapphire eyes, a pair of curved mandibles sprouting in place of a proper mouth, and masses of segmented tentacles hanging around its face like hair. Four arachnoid legs sprouted from its back, moving independently of one another or reaching over his shoulder to aid his humanoid hands, covered in black chitin like the rest of him.

Like Roark, the Nocturnus didn’t pace the cage or snap at his fellow captured mobs. Instead, he sat quietly studying each of the creatures in turn, his canny, eight-eyed gaze landing finally on Roark.

Roark shifted uncomfortably. The Nocturnus’s gaze seemed too intelligent, as if it saw straight through Roark’s Transmutation, though that couldn’t be possible. Unlike Illusion magick, which could be pierced with high-level spells or dispelled altogether with certain magical items, the Transmutation was a real, physical change; to any onlooker, he would be indistinguishable from a typical kobold. Though, Roark supposed, it was possible that his personality and overall disposition might mark him in some way.

After several minutes’ uninterrupted staring, the Nocturnus scooted across the cage and sat beside Roark.

“You are not what you seem, kobold.” The creature’s voice was low and rasping, like insect legs being rubbed together. The Nocturnus leaned in closer, forcing Roark to lean back. “Who are you really? What are you really?”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Roark said, playing stupid. He tried to remember the odd dialect that the kobolds he’d met had used. The diction had been stilted, broken, but he couldn’t recall it well enough to mimic with any sort of accuracy. He decided not to bother. “I am nothing more than I appear to be. Now, if you’ll give me some space.”

“Hmm... Ick understands well the need for secrecy,” he rasped, nodding his tentacled head, completely ignoring Roark’s request. “I was once of a mighty dungeon, until my mistress cast me out...” One of his spider legs reached over his shoulder and scratched the weak chin below his fangs. “We are fated to fight Bad_Karma, you know. Chosen to die. You seeming as a lowly kobold, me as the humble and dejected Nocturnus that I am. Yet your secrecy, your speech, and most of all your lack of surprise that we will face the greatest hero in Hearthworld... It makes me wonder. Makes me wish to fight alongside you. I doubt it will be enough to save us, but perhaps working together we can accomplish the impossible. And if not?” He shrugged narrow shoulders as though it were of little concern.

Roark supposed it wasn’t, not really. When these creatures died, it would not be forever-death. They would simply be sent for respawn, scattered to the expansive plains, dark caverns, and tangled jungles of Hearthworld.

Bright sunlight lanced through the dark, drawing Roark from his thoughts. At the end of the sloping tunnel connected to the cave, a pair of doors was opening. A pair of heavily armored guards stalked down, setting off a flurry of snarls and growls. Some of the wilder mobs even threw themselves against the bars in an attempt to break out and rip apart their captors.

“Yeah, yeah,” one of the guards yelled. “Keep barking, little doggies.”

The guards stopped at a bank of levers several feet from the cage.

“Is it this one or the third one?”

Ick the Nocturnus leaned closer to Roark and whispered, “It is the second one. Two for up, four for down.”

“This one,” the other guard answered, throwing the second lever. “Remember? Two for up, four for down, same as the number of letters in the word.”

Roark raised an eyebrow at Ick. With the mandibles it was hard to tell, but from the twinkle in the Nocturnus’s eyes, he thought Ick might be smiling.

Before Roark could accuse the Nocturnus of being more than he let on, metal clanged and chains clinked. The floor lurched beneath Roark’s feet, and the cage began to move. They were rising. The thin crack bisecting the ceiling grew wider and wider, pouring in sunlight, until the expanse of cloudless blue sky was all that lay above them.

The cage rose up into a dirt-floored arena, surrounded on all sides by stone walls and a colosseum packed with bodies. They cheered, and the whole arena shook.

“Aaaaand here comes your champion,” a melodious voice called out, carried around the arena by some sort of amplifying magic, “Baaaaaaaad_Karmaaaaaaaaa!”

The screaming and cheering rose to a fevered pitch. Several of the spectators leapt onto their seats, howling and clapping and stomping their feet until Roark feared they would bring the arena down.

The grinding sound of wood against stone undercut the roaring crowd as a gate opened on the far side of the arena. Out into the sunshine strode a living incarnation of death, a level 50 Ascended Blood Sentinel.

The sun glinted off horned plate armor so deep crimson that it was nearly black. In his right hand, the Sentinel carried a malignant-looking Billhook Polearm of Lifeblood the same bloody red color as his eyes.

Bad_Karma raised the billhook over his head and turned in a slow circle, pumping his arm at the screaming crowd, whipping them into a frenzy.

“Lllllllllet’s get ready to baaaaaattllllllllle!” the amplified voice yelled, the sound reverberating off the stadium seating and high stone walls.

Suddenly the iron bars surrounding the mobs dropped, a bit of dusty sand whirling up at their disappearance. The cage-mad mobs roared, lowering their heads and charging at the only hero they could reach. No plan, no strategy, just pure animal fury bent on murder. A very energetic start, Roark had to admit, though a terrible strategy overall. If they truly worked together, perhaps they would stand some chance against this “unkillable” hero, but alone as they were, they would be little more than cannon fodder.

Calmly, almost leisurely, Bad_Karma set his feet and jutted the billhook out in front of himself, bracing it for the first impact. A wall of muscle and horns—a level 11 Bullbear—slammed into the Blood Sentinel, impaling itself on the billhook. Bad_Karma used the creature’s momentum to toss it over his shoulder like a fork of hay into a wagon. A cloud of blood flowed from the Bullbear’s wound and into Bad_Karma as he turned back toward the wall of beasts charging him.

A trio of rampaging Saber Boars yowled as they pounded across the dirt to kill the Blood Sentinel, but Bad_Karma whipped his billhook in a complicated pattern, drawing out a sigil Roark didn’t recognize. The crimson symbol hung in the air like a cloud, burning with unnatural light. With a roar, he stabbed the blade at the oncoming Saber Boars. The beast in the center simply exploded, blood gushing through the air toward Bad_Karma. Rather than absorbing it, the Sentinel made another quick motion with his billhook, and the blood boiled and rolled, forming a massive [Summoned Blood Golem].

The Blood Golem collided with the remaining two Saber Boars, crushing bones and ripping limb from body until the creatures were nothing more than a gory pile of twitching body parts scattered around the dirt.

The carnage only escalated from there. Roark hung back with Ick and watched as Bad_Karma and his Summoned Blood Golem slaughtered that first unthinking wave of mobs outright.

Roark had to admit he’d underestimated the hero. Dozens of monstrous creatures lay in pieces at Bad_Karma’s feet, and yet the hero hardly seemed winded. He turned to the second wave with a grin on his face.

The Sentinel seemed to use all blood-based magic, Roark observed. The golem, the life blasts that blew apart creatures with lower Constitutions, Health absorption from his kills, and blood fortifications for his armor strength.

Roark had come prepared with a full stock of cursed exploding heads, his usual slew of nasty prewritten spells, and his slender rapier and Kaiken Dagger—though he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. His blades couldn’t hope to overcome Bad_Karma’s billhook for reach, leverage, or strength. In open physical combat, Roark was certain to lose. He’d wanted to bring Ample Health potions by the score, but Griff had let him know the guards would search him beforehand and take away anything that broke the rules of the arena—recovery potions and stat-boosting food. Roark had tried to smuggle some in anyway, but the guards had found them.

Luckily, Roark had brought a ready-made escape route along just in case everything else failed him. A Gauntlet of Fast Travel, close cousin to the portal plates he had installed around the citadel.

He had learned his lesson from his last tangle with Marek—always have an exit plan.

As the second wave of mobs attacked, Roark stayed well out of reach and studied Bad_Karma’s strategy. If he couldn’t cheat his way to victory, then he would have to outsmart his opponent.

Unfortunately, Bad_Karma seemed to have more than just overpowered strength and spells at his disposal. The hero was a calculating, intelligent fighter. When waves of mobs attacked as one, the Ascended Blood Sentinel used his ranged Life Blasts to blow up the weakest and thin the crowd, while sending his Summoned Blood Golem after the strongest. Of the remaining mobs, Bad_Karma drained the Lifeblood from the fastest beasts, both slowing them down and using it to boost his own armor and energy. Finally, Bad_Karma took the charge of any mobs that managed to get within striking distance on his billhook, using their own headlong rush to run them through, then tossing them aside quickly and efficiently, soaking up their Health to boot.

It was a frustratingly well-planned strategy, hardly a motion or spell wasted, and Bad_Karma executed it without a flaw. In next to no time, every captured mob from the cage lay in pieces around the hero and his Summoned Blood Golem except for Roark and the Nocturnus Ick.

Bad_Karma wrenched his Billhook Polearm of Lifeblood from the corpse of a level 18 Glacial Griffin Coastbreaker. Crackling, steaming blue blood poured from the wound and soaked into the hero’s chest.

Slowly, Bad_Karma turned to face Roark and Ick. He braced his billhook against his boot, a lopsided grin pulling at his features, and he beckoned them forward with one red-black gauntlet.

In the stands, the spectators went wild for the overconfident gesture, once more shaking the entire arena to its foundation.

“Let’s go, ladies,” Bad_Karma said, feeding off their adoration like a parasite. “Step up and take your turn.”

Roark laughed. “Careful what you wish for, mate.”

The crowd gasped, then fell silent as Roark released his Transmutation, sloughing off the guise of the bent, scared little kobold to reveal the deadly winged Jotnar Infernali beneath.

Arena Ambush

BAD_KARMA JERKED HIS chin at Roark. “Who the balls are you supposed to be?”

“Based on the insults I’ve heard since coming to this world, I believe the appropriate answer is your mother.” Roark pulled the nose ring from a cursed head and launched it at the hero’s feet.

The moment the head touched the dirt, it detonated, setting off a modified version of the Curse Chain Storm of Fire and Ice. From nowhere, an Icy Torrential Downpour crashed down on the Ascended Blood Sentinel while the air within a fifteen-foot radius around him imploded and caught fire. The curtain of flame and rain completely obscured Bad_Karma.

His Summoned Blood Golem splattered to the ground, killed instantly by the splash damage from the explosion.

The crowd fell silent. Roark pulled out another cursed head and shifted to the balls of his feet, ready and waiting.

Bad_Karma strode out of the fire and ice storm without a scorch mark, his red-black armor gleaming and wet. The Health bar over his helmet looked untouched.

The stadium erupted in howls of adulation, fans leaping to their feet by the score, fists pumping madly in the air.

The Blood Sentinel gave a complicated twist and thrust of his Billhook Polearm of Lifeblood, then whirled it in a circle over his shoulder.

Blood flowed out of the piles of dismembered mobs, spinning into a ruby orb the size of a Behemoth in the air, which promptly split into three Summoned Blood Golems.

“Seven hells,” Roark growled. The Icy Torrential Downpour portion of the Curse Chain should have sapped the hero’s Magick, but that seemed completely unaffected as well.

The Summoned Blood Golems broke into a lumbering run on a straight path for Roark.

Roark cast a prewritten level 4 Immunity on himself, then a level 4 Sucking Mud at his feet. A bog of gooey muck thirty feet across opened beneath the soles of his leather boots, though he walked across the surface as though it were solid ground.

Two of the three Blood Golems were sucked into the pit up to their waists. The mindless creatures still slogged and fought toward him, but the mud had reduced their movement speed by 45%.

The third was too far outside the radius of the spell to be caught in the mud. Roark aimed a palm at it and cast Infernal Torment. Plum-colored flames flared up along the surface, sending up wisps of oily black smoke; unfortunately, burning from the inside out didn’t slow the hulking creature’s charge.

Roark backpedaled, this time casting his final prewritten level 4, an Ice Javelin. The frozen spear slammed into the chest of the oncoming Blood Golem, clots of red spraying out its back and over the sandy arena floor. The creature’s red body flashed momentarily blue, then frosted over.

Immediately, its movement slowed to a crawl. Roark pulled his Slender Rapier of the Diving Falcon and Kaiken Dagger and darted toward it, using the Whirling Off-Hand Combo he’d learned from Griff. The blades bit into the frozen blood with a sound like shattering glass, carving away at the Blood Golem’s Health until it lost all ability to hold itself together and splattered to the dirt.

Bad_Karma smirked and waved him on. “Bro, that’s all you got? Let me show you how it’s really done. Bring it.”

“Gladly.” Roark broke into a sprint, his long legs eating up the distance between them.

With a wordless shout, Bad_Karma stepped forward and stabbed the billhook at Roark like a spear.

Though the weapon didn’t connect, lava raced through Roark’s veins. In places his skin blistered and cracked, and he stumbled, struggling to keep his feet. The red liquid in his filigreed Health vial dipped, but thankfully he didn’t outright explode like the Saber Boar had.

Bad_Karma braced the billhook’s butt against his boot, lowering it into a charge defense position.

Directly in front of the hero, a red up arrow appeared.

[Updraft: Winged creatures may utilize updrafts for lift during takeoff and flight, but beware of blue downdrafts!]

Roark threw his wings wide and leapt into the air, pumping with all his might. The hot breeze snapped the leathery folds of his wings taut, and he soared over a dumbfounded Bad_Karma.

Grinning, Roark banked and lobbed another cursed head at the Ascended Blood Sentinel. Bad_Karma slapped it aside with his billhook, the head flying into the stands and sending several rows of spectators diving away. It exploded, sending tiny ice javelins in every direction.

Roark caught another red-tinged updraft and rode it higher. On the ground, the Ascended Blood Sentinel was up to something. Roark swept around to get a better look, pulling a few more heads from his inventory and chucking them down, though they seemed to have no tangible effect on Bad_Karma. Hopefully they would buy Roark a little time to think and reevaluate. As the plumes of smoke and dust finally settled, Roark caught sight of the hero. Sweeping the billhook in a wide arc, Bad_Karma spun and thrust it at the piles of dismembered mobs. Fountains of blood gushed from the remains and flowed in intricate patterns around the hero’s chest and arms.

Vast crimson wings sprouted from Bad_Karma’s back.

Bad_Karma chuckled at Roark’s disbelief.

“What’s the matter, dickweed? Thought you were the only one who could fly?” He pumped his blood-wings and leapt into the air, riding an updraft skyward to meet Roark.

Roark pulled his rapier and dagger. He certainly hadn’t wanted to fight the Ascended Blood Sentinel hand-to-hand, but it didn’t look as if he would have a choice.

From below, a deep, buzzing rumble filled the courtyard. The sound was so low that it vibrated inside Roark’s bones, and the wavering pitch made him a touch dizzy.

A metallic black aura oozed over his body, and with it came a rush of power and strength. Roark felt his muscles growing larger, bulging beneath his dark leather armor. In his hands, the Slender Rapier of the Diving Falcon and Kaiken Dagger each darkened to that same shining black and doubled in size.

[You have been temporarily Fortified! Dexterity and Strength increased by 50% for 26 seconds.]

Down below, still within a few yards of the cage the mobs had been released from, Roark caught a glimpse of Ick. The Nocturnus stood with hands upraised and mandibles open wide, bellowing out the throat-singing fortification spell.

Interesting. Apparently, Ick’s talk hadn’t just been talk after all. Perhaps that one could make a handy ally.

Roark turned back to the hastily climbing Bad_Karma. With a twitch of his muscles, Roark pinned his leathery wings to his back and dove at the hero. They clashed together with the ring of metal on metal, billhook on rapier.

Bad_Karma cursed as Roark’s head bashed against his red-black helmet; his curling horns crushed the nose guard inward, laying open the hero’s cheek and shaving off a tiny fraction of his Health bar. They bounced off one another, then darted in again. Roark put his fortified Dexterity to good use, pulling his body out of line at the last second and narrowly missing Bad_Karma’s attempts to hook him with the billhook blade of his polearm. Roark planted the Kaiken Dagger in the hero’s kidney as he passed, driving the blade home then twisting to inflict maximum damage. Bad_Karma ripped the dagger from his back and launched it at the ground, his Health bar dipping by a handful of points.

At the same time, Roark’s filigreed Health vial lost twice that. Bad_Karma’s armor must have been enchanted to rebound damage onto the dealer. Cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner, Roark cast Hex-Aura on himself.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Hex-Aura

Those who would dare lash out at the Hexorcist best be ready to taste the sting of Cursed! retribution. The caster emits a 30-foot-radius aura, which moves with them for the duration of the spell and affects all allies in the area. Enemies take .5n Damage (where n equals character level of the Attacker) when they deal physical melee damage to those protected by Hex-Aura. Hex-Aura is a level 2 spell and can only be inscribed in level 2 spell slots; Duration, 2 minutes.

╠═╦╬╧╪

With the level 50 Ascended Blood Sentinel’s Health-regen, it would hardly do enough to kill Bad_Karma, but Roark would take every little bit of help carving this hero up that he could.

Bad_Karma whipped his billhook around and shot toward Roark’s gut like a loosed arrow, ready to skewer him on the polearm.

Roark angled his body, narrowly avoiding the thrust, and knocked the billhook up with a parry from his rapier, the blade tearing open his shoulder rather than running him through. A cloud of Roark’s blood misted up from the wound and flew to Bad_Karma, restoring the small amount of Health lost to the Hex-Aura’s curse.

As the Ascended Blood Sentinel banked on his huge crimson wings, Roark traded his rapier for his Initiate’s Spell Book and a pen. He couldn’t win this fight blade-to-blade, not since Bad_Karma could fly, too.

In an empty level 6 spell slot, he inscribed a hasty Ice Storm, then immediately cast it at the oncoming Ascended Blood Sentinel. A gust of frozen, snow-filled air slammed into Bad_Karma, slowing the beat of his crimson wings, but not stopping him outright. Bright blue downdrafts appeared hard on the heels of Roark’s attack. Bad_Karma dropped a few feet, but the endless flapping of his blood-wings kept him aloft.

Determined to get the bastard out of the sky, Roark followed with an Ice Javelin. The frozen lance speared through Bad_Karma’s shoulder and left wing, the blood of the wing flashing blue before freezing altogether. The Ascended Blood Sentinel flapped fruitlessly and tumbled like an injured bird.

Roark darted in, pulling his slender rapier once more, ready to shatter the frozen wing as he’d done with the Summoned Blood Golem. Once he drew within striking distance, however, Bad_Karma’s struggle stopped.

The hero grinned.

“Gotcha, loser.” With a flick of his wings, the icy frost covering the left one exploded off in a spray of icy shrapnel, revealing a perfectly unaffected appendage. Seven hells, he’d been baited.

Roark wheeled hard right, fighting to gain some distance, but the Ascended Blood Sentinel hooked him around his own wing and shoulder with the Billhook Lifeblood Polearm. Roark tried to slice and cut at Bad_Karma, but the hero batted his rapier away easily. It was as if the Blood Sentinel had been toying with him all along; now Bad_Karma had grown bored of the game and intended to finish it. The hero folded in his wings, letting their combined weight drive them toward the ground at lethal speed.

Roark braced himself for the impact, already anticipating the shattered bones and punctured organs that were sure to follow.

Below, Ick’s buzzing throat singing changed pitch. A sphere of that metallic black light surrounded Roark. A moment later, they slammed into the dirt, sending up a cloud of dust. But the impact only stole away a cupful of the red liquid in Roark’s Health vial, far less than he’d expected from the breakneck plunge. Ick’s shield sphere had saved him from death on impact. Even with that save, however, he was teetering below 30% Health.

Still on top, Bad_Karma threw his weight behind his polearm, pinning Roark to the ground and tearing a shout of pain from him. His Health dropped to 25%.

“Welp, that was fun for about five minutes,” the Ascended Blood Sentinel said, climbing to his feet. “Now it’s time for night-night.”

He yanked the polearm out, the billhook on the blade tearing a good chunk of Roark’s flesh and bone with it and knocking off another ten percent of his Health. Bad_Karma raised the weapon for another blow—

Suddenly the sun went black and a blast of pale, silvery moonlight shot across the arena. It engulfed the Ascended Blood Sentinel in silvery flames that ate away his crimson wings and a quarter of his red Health bar.

“You little ho-bag!” Bad_Karma leapt off Roark, wheeling around to face Ick. “You want in on this? Fine, it’s all yours.”

Bad_Karma spun and thrust his billhook at the Nocturnus. Ick opened his mandibles, roaring out another ear-thrumming, throat-singing spell. A metallic black bubble appeared around him, but not before the spell sliced off the Nocturnus’s left ear and a few tentacles.

The Ascended Blood Sentinel advanced on Ick, launching thrust after magical thrust with his billhook. The metallic shield held for the first few attacks, but quickly began to weaken, cracks spreading along the surface, leaking out watery silver light like captured moonbeams.

Roark rolled onto one hand and both knees, his other hand busy holding in his entrails, which kept trying to escape through the hole Bad_Karma had carved in his gut. He could certainly have used a Sufficient Health potion right then. His Health was regenerating, but too slowly to do any good—there also seemed to be some sort of malevolent blood magick at work against him, actively draining his Health and working against his advanced Regen rate.

When Roark finally staggered to his feet and looked up, Bad_Karma had backed Ick up against a wall of the arena. The shield had failed, and several of Ick’s back arms had been hacked off. The humanoid ones, which were still attached to his body, were thrown up in a defensive gesture.

The Ascended Blood Sentinel was winding up for a killing blow.

“Damn it all,” Roark groaned, knowing he couldn’t just leave the Nocturnus who’d helped him to die at Bad_Karma’s mercy. The creature had proved to be a deadly spell caster in his own right, and quite loyal to boot. If Ick’s story held true, that he had indeed been cast out from his own dungeon, then it was possible the spell caster could be swayed to Roark’s cause. An asset like that was too valuable to pass up.

He pulled his Bow of the Fleet-Fingered Hunter and fired off an exploding arrow. It thunked neatly into the hero’s throat and detonated. It didn’t kill Bad_Karma, but it did take out another handful of his Health and knock him from his feet.

While Bad_Karma was distracted, Roark sprinted across the arena floor to Ick and slammed the Gauntlet of Fast Travel onto Ick’s upraised hand. The moment it locked into place, a violet shimmer covered the Nocturnus from head to foot. In a heartbeat, it was gone, taking Ick with it, teleporting him to the safety of the Cruel Citadel. Hopefully.

A sickening roar of pain exploded through Roark’s back and legs as Bad_Karma’s billhook plunged into his kidney. He’d saved Ick, but now he was going to die.

Nothing for it but to go down fighting. Roark pulled his rapier once more and spun around.

“Eat billhook, a-hole,” Bad_Karma said, slashing at his face.

Roark ducked the first slice clumsily, his arms and legs numb from the lost blood and Health. He lunged distesa with his right foot and made a last-ditch tondo at Bad_Karma’s throat, but the Ascended Blood Sentinel countered this easily and chopped through Roark’s neck.

With detached fascination, Roark alternated between flashes of churned-up dirt and the sight of his headless body as it dropped to its knees, blood gushing from the ragged place on his neck where his head used to sit. The last of his Health drained from his vial as his head came to a rest at Bad_Karma’s feet, and Roark the Griefer died. Again.

Crossover

“WELCOME, RANDY SHOEMAKER!” The Hearthworld announcer’s voiceover boomed. “The battle awaits! Which character would you like to—”

Before the voiceover got its last word out, Randy scrolled over to his Arboreal Herald and selected it. He didn’t have time to wait around for the full script. The clock was running.

Luckily, Randy had a plan.

It was strange. This whole week he’d been observing, waiting and watching, an invisible spectator, but now that he’d decided it was time for action, he just jumped right into it. He could never do something so impulsive IRL. He’d need data, a backup plan, a risk assessment, and built-in contingencies for his contingencies. In Hearthworld, though, Randy could do anything he wanted. Even when he didn’t have access to the admin perks, his Herald was a level 40—the coolest of the cool and baddest of the bad. He was a boss, not some underpaid, overworked underling.

That was where he had gone wrong before, he realized. Trying to solve a Hearthworld problem like it was a real-world problem. Utilizing caution instead of charging in sword drawn and chopping the head off the hydra.

So his admin abilities wouldn’t work on Roark the Griefer or the affected anomalies. So what? His Arboreal Herald’s special attacks and abilities sure as heck would. Maybe he couldn’t get the answers he needed from the shadows, but in a one-on-one confrontation he could pummel Roark into the ground—no matter what tricks the modder had up his sleeves. If he went with the one-two punch of admin invisibility and his class specialty’s Razor Leaf Whirlwind plus the bonus Deep Wounds damage his Scion Blades dealt, he could easily kill the modder before Roark even knew what hit him. But what purpose would that serve? It wouldn’t get him any closer to understanding how or why Roark had done any of this, and it wouldn’t tell him how to fix the corrupted code.

In spite of the violent metaphor, head-chopping wasn’t the fastest way to defeat this hydra. No, what Randy was going to do was even crazier. He was going to capture the Griefer.

Randy giggled, letting off a little of the excess nervous excitement as he input the coordinates for his spawning location. Normally, he started in the estate he’d built on the Whispering Steppes, but today he had other places to be.

It was the perfect plan, and nobody was better equipped to do it. He’d been following Roark for the past week, observing his movements, unknowingly casing the Cruel Citadel as he shadowed the Griefer. If anybody could capture the modder, it was Randy Shoemaker.

He couldn’t do it alone, though. And he couldn’t go to Frontflip and requisition players to help him; he was already on thin ice with them, as evidenced by his three-day time limit.

Luckily, he knew just the player. A guy who had more experience with the Griefer than anyone else... and the most outstanding complaints against the Griefer.

Randy dropped into the game in Averi City’s fountain court. Rather than going invisible, he stayed out in the open and headed down a side street. Before this whole Griefer debacle, Randy hadn’t come to Averi City often, but when he had, he’d tended to frequent the Sulky Selkie, a tavern he’d helped name but never gotten any credit for.

Today, however, he was headed for the One-Eyed Unicorn, named for a joke Randy had always found childish by a dev who had gotten credit.

But as Randy stalked through the streets, the bitterness and frustration of day-to-day life melted away. He was on the hunt and, he had to admit, already having fun.

***

SCOTT BAYANI SAT IN the One-Eyed Unicorn drinking a beer after a hard day killing Merfolk and holding hands with that little dickweed Bro_Fo, escorting him through dungeons too big for him, power-leveling the douchenozzle because his stupid big brother had decreed it so. It’d been a long one, and all he really wanted was to get in-game hammered before he had to log out for his next shift at the Bell back IRL.

The tavern door opened, and a dude with some crazy weird specialty character came in. Scott checked out his stats—a level 40 Arboreal Herald. His armor was seemingly made entirely of leaves, vines, and branches, all worked together into a living tapestry of elaborate loops and swirls. Pretty badass for somebody with little bird wings.

But as the guy crossed the floor, he started to veer toward Scott’s table. He didn’t turn away at the last second and join another group of people or head to the bar and order a drink. Nope, he just walked over and sat right down at Scott’s table like he belonged there.

“The hell do you want?” Scott snapped. The last time some stranger had bothered him here, it had been that Griefer asshole in disguise.

“Can I buy you a drink?” the guy asked.

“I don’t swing that way,” Scott said. “Not even in RPG mode. Flutter off, little butterfly.”

The guy rolled his eyes. “I just want to talk to you about someone named Roark the Griefer.”

Scott drained the last of his beer.

“You can want whatever you want.” He let out a belch. “But I’m done with that asshole. I’m not talking about him, thinking about him, screwing with him, nothing. Done. Finito.”

“Of course,” the guy said, reaching into his Inventory and producing an admin badge. “You couldn’t have dropped the issue before I had to read all eight hundred ninety-five messages you spammed Customer Service with.”

That, at least, made Scott chuckle. With all the pissed-off frustration of the last month or so, knowing that somebody had had to go through every one of the complaints he’d set his InfiniTab to send every hour was exactly as satisfying as he’d thought it would be.

“So you guys are finally getting off your asses and doing something about the Griefer?” Scott snorted. “Took your sweet time. Fine, keep me in beers and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“You’ve got it. I’m Randy, by the way.” The guy held out his hand to shake.

Scott ignored it. “And I’m thirsty.”

“Oh, right.” The guy, Randy, hustled off to the bar. When he came back he had two flagons of beer. He set them both in front of Scott.

Despite the fact that this guy was both an admin and a player with a much higher level, the dude caught on quick who the real alpha dog was.

Scott took a long pull off the first beer, then sat back in his chair.

“So, what’re you people going to do about this dickhole?” he asked, wiping foam from his upper lip with the back of one hand.

“I’ve been investigating him,” Randy said. “You’ve logged the most complaints against Roark the Griefer since he appeared. You’ve also had the most single-player encounters against him and the record high number of deaths at his hands. My ultimate goal is to put a stop to what he’s doing, but I can’t do that alone. You’re the one player with enough face-to-face experience with the Griefer to help me.” He faltered, the slew of words winding down. “So, uh, will you?” he finished lamely.

Scott grinned. Maybe he wasn’t done with that fake-pirate turd after all.

“All right,” he said. “I’m in. What’s the plan?”

The Outcast’s Tale

TWO HOURS LATER, ROARK respawned in the Keep throne room wearing nothing but a threadbare loincloth and the World Stone Pendant. His Initiate’s Spell Book, soulbound like the World Stone, was still in his Inventory, but everything else he’d taken into the arena with him that morning was on his corpse, probably still lying in pieces in the dirt.

And there it would stay. It bloody hurt to lose his Slender Rapier of the Diving Falcon—it was the first weapon he’d ever looted from PwnrBwner—but walking back into the arena to retrieve it would be suicide. Even if Bad_Karma had left, everyone else in Hearthworld who wanted a piece of him would be camped out and ready to grief the Griefer. As much as he wanted his gear, he wouldn’t give them that satisfaction.

Cursing under his breath, Roark headed for the Blacksmith Shop and Armory in the Troll Nation Marketplace.

Once he was properly outfitted in a set of Peerless Leather Armor—dual-enchanted with a Dexterity bonus and Movement Speed—and armed with a new Peerless Slender Rapier and Peerless Kaiken Dagger, he headed for the inn. He kept adjusting the rapier at his side, though it rode perfectly on his hip. He’d smithed and enchanted the weapon himself, giving it another dose of Dexterity, then adding a Flawless Ruby, granting the weapon a seven percent chance to inflict Bleeding Wound. It was of better quality than his old Slender Rapier of the Diving Flacon had been. But it just wasn’t the same.

He tried to shove the thought from his mind as he jogged up the inn steps and let himself inside.

A Knight Thursr in an enormous white chef’s toque and apron waved at him from across the common room, which was filled with Trolls eating, talking, and laughing.

“Roark is back!” Kaz said, delighted, weaving through the tables toward him, a plate of some strange meat strips in hand. “Roark will not believe the amazing new food Kaz has learned of in his absence!”

Before Kaz could make it to him, however, a cannon blast of scales and shell hit Roark in the back of the legs, taking his knees out and slamming him to the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of him and stole away a sliver of his newly refilled Health vial. Mac trotted up his back on fat, clawed feet and nuzzled his beak against Roark’s face.

Roark chuckled and tried to shove the Young Turtle Dragon away. “If you want me to pet you, you’ll have to get off me, Mac. I can’t bend my arms that way.”

Obligingly the heavy beast clambered off Roark. Roark rolled onto his back and sat up. A moment later, Mac was in his lap play-biting at Roark’s face and arms while Roark wrestled with him. They scrapped, knocking over chairs and bumping against benches, Roark happy to forget for the moment that he’d just lost his favorite rapier and been decimated by a hero he was supposed to kill, all in one fell swoop.

Until a dusky feminine voice said, “This is the sort of professionalism you can expect from the Dungeon Lord and founder of the Troll Nation.”

Zyra was on the common room stairs with a frail-looking Nocturnus in blue-black robes.

“Ick,” Roark said, grinning as he took in the Nocturnus’s repaired form. “The gauntlet worked, then. I wasn’t sure what might happen if someone who wasn’t native to the citadel used it.”

Ick inclined his head a touch, his tentacle-hair sliding over his shoulders. “Many thanks for your sacrifice. My suspicion that you were more than you let on proved correct, but I had no idea you were the Griefer of rumor.”

“Roark must see what Ick brought with him to the citadel,” the Knight Thursr said, shoving the plateful of crispy meat in Roark’s face. “Saber Boar Bacon! He is wonderful, Roark! Invaluable!”

On the stairs, the Nocturnus tipped his head modestly. “I had the foresight to know that looting a bit during the fight would come in useful later, but I did not realize it would have quite so much impact.”

“Roark must try a bite,” Kaz insisted. “It is... Dare Kaz say it?” The Mighty Gourmet stood up straighter and looked off into the distance heroically, the picture of integrity. “Yes. Yes, Kaz must tell the truth. This bacon, Roark, it is better than even skewers!”

Roark had to take a strip of the boar bacon or risk having its grease smeared all over his face by the overeager Knight Thursr. The moment Roark reached for it, however, Mac took advantage of his distraction and clamped down on his forearm. The bite was friendly, but the tip of his beak punctured Roark’s armor and drew a bit of blood. Roark twisted his arm out of the Young Turtle Dragon’s mouth and shoved him off, slapping him affectionately around the shell, then scratching his scaly head to let him know they were done roughhousing. As a peace offering, he ripped the bacon in half and gave the smaller piece to Mac. Then he popped the other half in his own mouth.

The flavor exploded like an Incendiary Blast across his palate. Salty, smoky, crispy, yet simultaneously chewy. He closed his eyes and savored its perfection. He forgot sometimes how something as simple as good food could blow away the tension and frustration of an otherwise awful day.

When he opened his eyes again, Kaz’s nose was almost touching his, awaiting his reaction. Roark flinched back, startled.

“What does Roark think?” Kaz asked, eyes shining with anticipation, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. “Does he love bacon or does he adore it? Because Kaz adores it.”

“It’s brilliant, mate,” Roark said honestly as he stood up and inched back to a comfortable distance. “You’re every bit the Gourmet from your title and then some.”

Kaz gave an elated shiver and clapped his hands with glee. “Ick brought this wonderful food to us! Say that he can join the Troll Nation, Roark, oh please!”

Eyebrow raised, Roark turned to Ick. “It’s up to him, Kaz, not me.”

The Nocturnus shrugged. “It has been many years since I was part of a dungeon. But you are formidable, Roark the Griefer, and I wish to join your crusade against both the heroes and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. I can offer my skills as a Witchdoctor to your cause, as well as pledge you up the ranks of Night Magick.”

“I explained to him that we already had an Arcane Paragon who could train people in magic,” Zyra said flatly, clearly not as impressed with the Nocturnus as Kaz was.

“Forgiveness,” Ick said, “but I also explained to her that a Paragon is quite different from a Witchdoctor, and one cannot train in the other’s skill set. A Paragon trains in Light Magicks. Only a Witchdoctor can train in Night Magick.”

Roark recalled the metallic auras and Health spells the Nocturnus had cast during their ill-fated fight with Bad_Karma, not to mention that sun-hiding silvery blast of moonlight and flame. Support like that would come in handy, and Ick was a powerful combatant. Truth be told, the Nocturnus was growing on Roark. Even his too-perceptive eight-eyed gaze. Once Zyra saw him in action, as he had, Roark was sure she would come around to the strange little creature. If there was one thing Zyra valued, it was competence, and Ick seemed to have that by the bucketload.

“You’re welcome in the citadel for as long as you follow the rules,” Roark said. “No killing natives or customers of the marketplace.”

Ick’s mandibles clicked together, and his eyes glimmered. The Nocturnus version of a beaming smile. “Many thanks.”

“With that out of the way,” Zyra said, “on to more important matters.” She turned to Kaz and held out her hand. “Roark was sent for respawn before supper. I believe you owe me one hundred gold.”

Kaz scowled and started unloading handfuls of coin into Zyra’s waiting hands.

“The fight was probably very close,” the Knight Thursr grumbled.

“You didn’t put money on close, big guy,” Zyra said. “You put it on victory.”

Roark’s mood darkened once more, and he slumped into the table in the far corner, which had become theirs, reserved for the Dungeon Lord’s inner circle by unspoken agreement.

“It wasn’t close,” he admitted. Mac shoved his way under the table, bumping and jostling it with his spiked shell as if he didn’t realize he was nearly too big to fit beneath, then laid his head in Roark’s lap and promptly fell asleep. Roark scratched the Young Turtle Dragon’s scaly head absently as he thought back on the fight. “Bad_Karma was nearly impossible to wound, and every time I managed to do damage, he reflected most of it onto me.”

A little Changeling chef’s apprentice raced by and dropped off Roark’s preferred ale unbidden, then scampered away without a word to see to the other customers. Condensation beaded on the side of the flagon. Roark picked it up and took a deep drink of the cold amber liquid. Being Dungeon Lord did have a few perks.

“Not to mention that every time he landed a strike, it refilled his Health by absorbing mine,” Roark added, returning his flagon to the table and wiping a bit of foam from his mouth.

“We discussin’ Bad_Karma, then?” Griff asked, coming down the staircase. The grizzled weapons trainer sauntered over and lowered himself into a chair with a groan and popping of old joints. He checked under the table, then propped his foot up on Mac’s shell. “Caught your fight, Griefer. Nasty stuff. You did all you could, but like as not, you won’t stand a chance of beatin’ him without bein’ at least his level.”

“So Roark griefs more heroes,” Kaz said with a shrug of his massive shoulders. “Kaz will help funnel them toward Roark again. It was very fun last time, and we can bring bacon for a delightful snack between heroes.”

Trying not to get his hopes up, Roark pulled up his character sheet and did the math. Even if he disrupted the portal plates for the next three days and griefed every player who came into the citadel, one after another, there was no way he could reach level 50 before the quest timer ran out. He was only level 36 now, and that had taken a month or more in Hearthworld time of strenuous effort and brutal campaigning. And to make matters worse, earning each new level became exponentially more difficult. Now that he’d hit his Jotnar Infernali form, any death would automatically reset him to level 36.

“It’s a mathematical impossibility.” He scrubbed his hands across his face. “Even if we had the full seventy-two hours left, I couldn’t make level 50 in time.”

Zyra grabbed a chair from an unoccupied table nearby and spun it around, sitting on it backward.

“What about contact poison?” she asked, folding her arms over the seat back. “Something Unique and Virulent. I’ve got some of each in the shop, but given a few hours, I could probably whip up a poison that fits both qualifications into one bottle.”

“Apologies.” Ick shook his head, tentacles sliding over his shoulders. He’d sidled closer to the table as silently as Zyra could when Shadow Stalking. “But Blood Magick users spawn with full immunity to all poisons and venoms. Contact poison would have no effect.”

“What if I used Clotwart to counteract his immunity?” the Reaver asked.

“In the poison?” Ick clarified, blinking a few of his outer eyes.

“The poison he’s immune to,” Zyra said, her voice taking on a rare self-deprecating edge. She bumped the heel of her hand against her hidden forehead. “Right. Of course it won’t work.”

Roark raked his claws through his hair. “Any other ideas?”

Griff scratched at his bristly jaw. Kaz opened his mouth, then deflated and shut it again. Zyra’s hood was trained on the floor, her hand inside cupping her chin.

Roark sighed.

“It’s fine,” he said, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt. “We’ll figure it out. I just need some time to think it over. Regroup.”

In spite of his effort to reassure them, a heavy silence fell over the table. Mac squirmed in his sleep as if he could feel its uncomfortable weight pressing down on him.

After a few moments of this, Zyra stood up with a scrape of her chair. “Well, boys, as much as I enjoy these depressing little get-togethers of ours, I’m going to go do literally anything else. Maybe there’s some sort of lethal concoction or a different delivery system we’re overlooking. I’ll be in the shop if you need me.”

Kaz fidgeted as he watched Zyra go.

“What is it, mate?” Roark asked wearily.

The Knight Thursr’s ears sagged like a fretting puppy. “Kaz doesn’t want to leave Roark... Especially not after such a defeat.” He glanced around the quickly filling common room. “It’s only that, with the inn doing such good business around mealtimes, Mai will be needing Kaz’s help in the kitchen. One must stay ahead of the dinner rush while still providing pristine, delicious meals if one hopes to remain in business,” the Mighty Gourmet quoted.

Roark didn’t bother asking which of Kaz’s culinary heroes he was quoting, though he felt he’d heard enough of both chefs by now to be fairly confident it had come from Jordan Bamsey.

“Don’t worry about it, Kaz,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We’ve got to keep this place running smoothly, present a confident public face, or the other Dungeon Lords will smell blood in the water. Go ahead.”

With one last worried glance his way, Kaz disappeared into the kitchen, ducking to avoid knocking the enormous white Gourmet’s toque from his head on the doorframe.

Roark leaned back in his seat and took a long draught of cold ale.

“You’ve got the right idea, Griefer,” Griff said. “Nothing tastes better after a hard day in the arena than a cold drink.”

The weapons trainer raised a scar-crossed hand and got the attention of one of the little Changelings sprinting around the common room.

“Bring us a scotch when you’ve got a minute,” Griff said. Then he glanced over at the Nocturnus and shoved an empty chair toward him. “Rest your shanks, Ick. You had a rough one, too. What’re you drinkin’?”

“Many thanks.” The Nocturnus sank into the chair with a grateful half-bow. “I have heard endless good things about the Mighty Gourmet’s spiced mead.”

“It’ll set you right,” Griff agreed. “One of each, if you please,” he said to the Changeling, dropping a palmful of gold in the little creature’s hand.

With a sharp nod, the Changeling sprinted off for the springhouse at the back of the inn, where the drinks and meats were kept cool. Moments later, the three of them had a drink in hand.

Griff took a sip of his scotch, then sighed in appreciation. “That hits the spot, for certain.”

“The notes of cinnamon and honey are highly refreshing as well,” Ick agreed, swirling the mead in his goblet.

Roark glared down into his flagon, unable to shake his gloom long enough to agree.

A rough hand slapped him on the back. “Truth be told, Griefer, you lasted longer against Bad_Karma than I expected you to. Taking to the air was a smart play. And I thought you had him with the ice spear through the wing—the move was a peach. Could see clear as day that he never expected something like that from a mob. Truth be told, he had me fooled as much as he had you fooled.” Griff chuckled.

A fraction of the tension in Roark’s shoulders and neck loosened. He took a deep breath and blew it out.

“Were you ever up against someone like him in the arena?” Roark asked. “A level 50?”

The weapons trainer waved his scotch dismissively. “Bah, this level, that level, this class, that class. I’ve fought a fair few of ’em over the years, but after a while, all them high-falutin’ heroes just start to look like obnoxious little pricks.”

Roark choked, snorting ale up into his sinuses. Across the table, Ick was clicking his mandibles together and his sapphire eyes were sparkling as if the Nocturnus, too, were struggling to contain his mirth at Griff’s pronouncement.

“The both of you ought to be right proud of your fight today,” Griff said, tapping a blunt finger on the tabletop in emphasis. He turned his single eye to Ick. “That was some mighty fine support castin’ I saw out there. Where’d you say you hailed from?”

The Nocturnus set his goblet on the table and stared down at it. “At one time, I was happily entrenched in the Jungles of Eternal Night.” Ick’s rasping voice had softened and taken on an almost melancholy tone.

“Hope you don’t mind my askin’,” Griff said.

“No offense was taken, friend,” Ick assured him, though the many spidery legs jutting from his back wriggled. “It is a place of surpassing beauty, and I am proud to have spawned there.”

“You mentioned you were cast out into the wilds by your mistress.” Roark sat forward a bit, resting his elbows on the table. Mac chirped grumpily under the table at his moving pillow, but Roark ignored him. “What happened?”

Ick’s mandibles clicked, and his eight-eyed gaze became faraway. A Nocturnus’s version of a sad smile, if Roark had to guess.

“She was a beauty to behold,” Ick said fondly. “And the severest conquistador ever to serve the Nocturnus Empire. Under her generalship, we soon counted every inch of the Jungles as ours. I was her personal Witchdoctor in battle, chosen by her own many hands from the creche and assigned as her support during our now legendary raids of the Underworld Cairns. But I soon discovered that I was not chosen for my abilities—though I hope you will not think I am inflating myself if I say that they are more than worthy of such. No indeed, my mistress was using me to make a play for the Overlord’s Web.” Ick paused a moment, blinking his many eyes. “Your equivalent, I believe, would be called a Dungeon Lord’s throne.”

Roark nodded to show that he was following, but remained silent. He didn’t want to interrupt the Nocturnus’s story now that Ick had begun to open up.

“It goes against the pride, to learn that you are nothing more than a puppet dancing to another’s strings when you believed you meant so much more,” Ick said bitterly. “I confronted her too late. The night I did, she tore the head off the Overlord, ate his corpse, and took the Web. Out of deference to our... bond... she cast me out rather than kill me and set a lifetime prohibition against my return to our Jungles.”

As the story came to a close, Roark stared down into his flagon. It was nearly empty, but he felt soberer than when he’d begun drinking. Ick’s story of his ambitious mistress had hit Roark a little too near the mark.

So often he held his own actions up against the horrors of the Tyrant King’s rule, excusing his own maneuvering and determination because it wasn’t as bad as the things Marek had done. But before coming to Hearthworld, he’d made no real friendships, only strategic alliances that could bring him one step closer to assassinating the despot. Anyone who had failed him or questioned his methods had been cast aside as callously as Ick. Everything, everyone was just a means to an end. And could he truly say he’d changed since coming to Hearthworld? Sure, he’d made friends he would lay down his life to protect, but when all of that decoration was boiled away, wasn’t all of this—and even them—still just more means to his ultimate end of killing Marek?

“Griefer,” snapped Griff sharply, banging his empty cup down on the table.

Roark jumped, startled from his brooding.

The grizzled old weapons trainer pierced him with a knowing look. “I see the wheels turning, and I know what direction your cart’s headed. There’s a time for self-examination, but this ain’t it. After a defeat like today, anything you take out and turn around right now’s going to look skewed and rotten. I suggest you put it away for the time being. Focus yourself on what you can change in the here and now, problems you can solve.”

The corner of Roark’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “Like how do I kill an unkillable hero.”

Griff raised his empty cup to Roark and blinked his one eye. It took a moment for Roark to realize it was the one-eyed man’s version of a wink.

“Excellent advice, as always.” Roark drained the dregs of his ale, then pushed back his chair and stood. Mac chirped angrily at being so rudely awoken, but a few hearty head-scratches soothed his ruffled spikes. “Thank you for sharing your history with us, Ick. Kaz is right, you’re a great asset to the Troll Nation. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a few minor Dungeon Lord tasks to attend to before I try to make another run at Bad_Karma.”

The Grand Inquisition

ROARK LEFT THE MARKET and headed for the fifth floor’s throne room with a mind to make the rounds of each floor to see how the portal plates were holding up. As nothing of the sort had been crafted in Hearthworld before, Roark wasn’t certain how many uses they could withstand before the Curse Chains began to degrade, but he wanted to stay ahead of it.

And, if he was honest, the wandering and potential for some physical labor held much appeal. Perhaps he could find Trolls with weapons in need of repair or armor that needed tailoring. Anything to keep his hands busy while his mind worked through the problem of how to kill a virtually unkillable hero.

The portal plate beside the river on the fifth floor was in good shape. He spent a few minutes talking to the griefing squad on duty, listening to their exploits and congratulating the newly Evolved Thursr Elemental in their group, before detouring for the Keep. He would check that plate, then maybe he could find Zyra and run some ideas for mass attacks on Bad_Karma by her.

Roark had just let himself into the Keep and was heading for the portal plate in the foyer when a shimmering violet portal opened. Not over the portal plate—which would have glowed blue when activated—but in the open air beside the wall. His mind fumbled for a solution, trying to understand just what he was seeing and why, but nothing would come. Like Bad_Karma, this seemed like an issue without any readily apparently solution. The griefing squad—a Jotnar Soul-Cursed, a pair of Thursr Elementals, and two Reaver Champions—stepped forward, weapons drawn and spells readied.

“Wait,” Roark said, raising a hand. “This isn’t a hero raiding party.”

He pulled his new Peerless Slender Rapier and Kaiken Dagger and raised them in a ready stance, facing the portal as uncertainty and a thread of fear roiled in his gut. Could this be Lowen’s doing? What if the slippery little eel had finally decided to make his play?

No one stepped out.

Roark cocked his head slightly. He heard the rasp of metal on metal less than a heartbeat before a cold steel band closed around his neck.

“Got him!”

Roark whirled, but found nobody to go with the disembodied voice. An invisibility spell? The griefing squad were searching the room and sniffing the air for the invisible assailant.

“Show yourself,” he growled, one hand tearing at the steel collar. He couldn’t break or bend it, and his clawed talons didn’t even scratch the surface. Angular ridges of script he didn’t recognize scraped against the pads of his fingers and palm of his hand. “Stop hiding like a coward.”

“Show him, Randy.”

Roark’s lip curled into a snarl. Now that was a grating voice he knew well, and it certainly didn’t belong to Lowen.

At once the invisibility dropped, revealing PwnrBwner_OG with a wide grin on his face.

“Boo, motherfucker.”

“You just don’t learn, do you, mate?” Roark raised his new rapier and tried to advance on the High Combat Cleric.

But the collar yanked him backward, choking him. Even with his arm extended, the tip of his blade barely scraped the surface of PwnrBwner’s breastplate.

“How you like that shit?” the High Combat Cleric sneered. “Admin privileges, boy!”

Roark lunged pie’ fermo, but the collar jerked him back again, clenching down on his throat like a mad titan’s fist. He strained against the metal band though it was strangling him. The imminent strangulation would be worth wiping that smug look off PwnrBwner_OG’s ugly face.

But another shimmer of violet light flared to life behind Roark. A new portal. Without warning, Roark found himself dragged backward into it.

An icy breeze blew across his skin and ruffled his shaggy hair. Goosebumps prickled down his back and arms, and he gave an involuntary shiver.

Then he fell backward onto his ass on a stone floor. He was in a windowless, doorless stone cell, less than ten feet across in any direction. And he wasn’t alone.

A gray-winged Arboreal Herald in a type of plant-based armor—curling vines, blooming flowers, and saw-toothed leaves edged in silver—with matching silver hair and eyes stood by, clutching a metal wand with a small, rune-etched skull perched on the end. Though Roark didn’t recognize the second man in the strange armor, the wings jutting from his back reinforced the idea that he was somehow associated with Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield.

A moment later, PwnrBwner_OG stepped through the portal, and the shimmering tear in space closed behind him.

The High Combat Cleric grinned maliciously. “Welcome to hell, mate.”

“No thanks,” Roark said. “I’ve just been to the icy version, and it wasn’t for me.”

He traded his rapier for his dagger and raised it to his throat. He didn’t know how many cuts it would take to kill himself, but getting taken alive by the enemy wasn’t for him, either. Not by a Tyrant King who tortured as gladly as he breathed and not by a bellend like PwnrBwner_OG, who had obviously thrown in his lot with Lowen.

“Hang on,” the Herald said, taking a step forward, his chainmail clinking softly. “You don’t want to do that. See this?” He held up the wand. “It’s a specialty item called a Lightning Rod, part of a set with that collar. I tracked them down and confiscated them from a modder last year, using them to... Well, to do some pretty bad stuff.”

The Herald jammed the wand into the wall. There was a flash of light, and it sank into the stone, the little skull on top seeming to grin mockingly at Roark.

“It’s called a Lightning Rod because it attracts the collar to it,” he said. “As long as you’re wearing the collar, you’ll respawn wherever the Lightning Rod is, and you can’t really move from the spot unless I move you. You can hex, curse, cut, and smash the collar as much as you want, but it’s indestructible. It’s magically locking, so there are no tumblers to pick. It’ll only come off if I say the right words.”

“So, no matter how many times you kill yourself, you’ll end up right back here, prick,” PwnrBwner said. He had produced a flanged mace and slapped it against his gauntleted palm. A smile stretched across his face when he saw Roark’s eyes following the motion. “Like this bad boy? It’s no Unique Rose Mace of Thorns, but we’ll see how much that matters to you when you’re spitting teeth out the side of your head.”

Roark’s grip tightened on the dagger until the leather bindings creaked. In all of his worst nightmares back in Traisbin, he had never imagined being trapped so badly that even death couldn’t save him. They had him, and that smug bastard PwnrBwner knew it.

“What did Lowen offer you, an hour with me chained up like a dog?” Roark smirked at the High Combat Cleric’s darkening expression. “Better enjoy it while it lasts, mate, because it’s the only way you’ll ever beat me. And when the Tyrant King—”

PwnrBwner’s mace flashed out, the razor-sharp flanges tearing into Roark’s face, pulverizing his jaw, and ripping off half his cheek. Stars exploded across his field of vision, pain lancing through his head. Blood poured in a river down the chest of his dark leather armor, and a few white slivers of broken teeth flowed with it.

“Hey! Don’t!” The Arboreal Herald had PwnrBwner by the mace arm and was dragging him back. “He was about to give us a name. That’s what we’re here for, remember? Information.”

PwnrBwner shook the Herald off. “Fine, who the hell is this Tyrant King douche? Another one of your modding friends?”

Roark spat in PwnrBwner’s eye, the bloody wad landing with a satisfying slap. “I’d see everyone he’s killed die again before I aligned myself with that despot!”

“Augh! You gross little shithead!” The High Combat Cleric swung the mace back for another blow.

Roark braced himself to lose another chunk of flesh, but the Arboreal Herald stepped in front of PwnrBwner before he could strike, gray wings twitching nervously as he pushed the Cleric back against the far wall.

“Stop letting him get to you,” the Herald insisted. “If he goads you into killing him, we’ll have to wait two hours for him to respawn. I recruited you to help me fix things, not make things worse, and I only have so much time.”

Roark chuckled. “So you’re on a deadline, too, eh?” His torn, bleeding face and broken teeth made speaking painful and garbled, but he forced the words out anyway. “How long did Lowen give you before he takes over and finishes the job?”

The Herald crouched in front of Roark, his chainmail clinking.

“Lowen, the other modder, right? From the Vault of the Radiant Shield.” His gray eyes searched Roark’s, alight with something more akin to curiosity than sadism. If Roark didn’t know any better, he’d say this man seemed genuinely uncomfortable with the idea of torture. “Are you guys having some kind of flag war or just seeing how much of Hearthworld you can take over or what?” he asked.

Like a gristmill grinding to life, Roark’s mind fought to process what the Herald was asking. It didn’t make any sense. If the Herald was one of the Tyrant King’s men sent through the portal to back Lowen, then he would already know why they were after him. The past few minutes ran through his head again. The questions about Marek, the strange accent that matched PwnrBwner’s...

“You’re not from Traisbin,” Roark said. “How did Lowen recruit you?”

“I kill modders, I don’t buddy up to them,” PwnrBwner scoffed.

The Herald, however, remained calm. “I work for Frontflip, part of the Hearthworld Admin staff, not Lowen.” He pulled out a platinum-and-copper badge and held it out as if Roark should recognize its significance. “I’ve been investigating your activity, trying to find a way to isolate the spread of the code you’re using. It’s corrupt, you know? If I can’t stop it, it could take down the whole game. Is that intentional? Are you trying to crash Hearthworld?”

Roark shook his head, the unfamiliar words rolling meaninglessly off. Frontflip? Admin staff? Corrupt code? None of this made any sense. But Roark was smart enough to piece together that whatever this Herald was about, it didn’t have anything to do with Lowen—at least not directly. It seemed, rather, that he was investigating Roark and Lowen’s presence in this world. But how to explain something as complicated as that? After mulling it over for a minute, he sighed and decided he might try some measure of the truth. What else could he do at this point?

“Listen, mate, I’m not even supposed to be here. Portal magic in Traisbin... where I’m from... is dangerous. It spat me out in Hearthworld at the Cruel Citadel”—he gestured at himself—“as a Troll.”

PwnrBwner rolled his eyes. “Drop the role-playing pirate bullshit already. It’s not funny and you’re not cool. Just tell the guy how to fix what you screwed up before you wreck the only good thing online.”

Roark leaned back against the stone wall and rubbed his eyes.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No duh, dickbrain.”

Seeing he wouldn’t make any headway with the High Combat Cleric, Roark turned to the Herald. That one, at least, seemed capable of reason.

“You heroes come from another dimension, correct? You’re not native to Hearthworld. Well, neither am I. Where we seem to be misunderstanding one another is that I’m not from your home world, either. I’m from a country called Traisbin on a planet called Earth. I didn’t know there was a Hearthworld—or any other dimensions at all—until I came through a faulty portal after my assassination attempt against the Tyrant King, Marek Konig Ustar, went awry. I suspect my untimely arrival here has something to do with a powerful artifact, called the World Stone, which I stole from Marek during my attack. I’ve been trying to get back home ever since, but Lowen, who works for Marek, somehow managed to follow me here along with several more of the Tyrant King’s lickspittles.”

“Cute story,” PwnrBwner said. “You make that up playing D’n’D in your mom’s basement?”

But the Herald didn’t dismiss it immediately. “A parallel Earth?” He tugged at his chin, then shook his head as he broke into a restless pacing, back and forth, back and forth. “Or another planet called Earth.” He was mumbling, more for himself than for anyone else’s benefit. “There’s no reason a similar race wouldn’t give a planet with similar life support systems the same name.”

“You’re actually buying this crap?”

The Herald put up a hand. “I’m just considering it from every angle. Occam’s razor says the simplest answer is the one that fits all the facts. You haven’t seen the code behind these anomalies, and you haven’t been following the Griefer around for the past week. I am very good at my job, and I can’t find any logical explanation for what is happening here. So, if there isn’t a natural explanation, perhaps the easiest explanation is a supernatural one.”

“You’ve been spying on me?” Roark asked, simultaneously impressed and disgusted. And a bit uncomfortable, considering the number of less-than-shining moments he’d had over the past seven days and nights.

“He hasn’t logged out or gone inactive once to write in the new stuff he and his infected NPCs keep creating,” the Herald continued, eyes unfocused as if he were talking to himself. “And that more than anything would be impossible if he was a modder. In more than a month, he hasn’t stopped playing to eat, sleep, or do anything, which would be impossible if he were a human in a headset or even a Deep Dive capsule. And that’s only one issue.” He ran a hand through his silver hair. “The code. The mechanics. The classes and changes to the game he’s managed to make. Literal magic may be the single best explanation I’ve heard so far.”

Roark nodded. None of those words made any sense to him, but he got the bent of the man’s thinking.

“Bullshit!” PwnrBwner said, throwing up his gauntleted hands. “Magic isn’t real. Taco Bell is real. The congestion on the 5 is real. But magic wizard pirates from a different dimension? That’s just fucking stupid. Just because you want his story to be true doesn’t mean it is.”

“What I want doesn’t matter,” the Herald said flatly. “Data doesn’t lie.”

“Best listen to your friend, mate,” Roark said to PwnrBwner. “Because what I’ve told you so far is only half the story. The second half goes like this—Lowen takes the World Stone Pendant from me and brings it back to his master, the Tyrant King. The Tyrant King finds out there’s not just one other dimension he can crush under his boot, but two, and he comes for Hearthworld first. The magic here is incredible, powerful, and unfortunately reliable. He’ll conquer it in a matter of weeks at the most. Then he’ll use Hearthworld’s inherent magic to find a way to your dimension and conquer it as well.”

Truthfully, Roark wasn’t certain Marek could find a way to a third dimension, but he had managed to send Lowen and an army of his loyal followers to Hearthworld, so he must have some way of ensuring safe travel through portals. Marek was a power-hungry tyrant. If he knew there was another world with people in it, he wouldn’t rest until he found a way to expand. Especially if it meant more magic and power. And if he could find a way to harness the magic and enslave the natives of this world, he wouldn’t just have more power, he’d have untold power.

“I’ve seen what the Tyrant King can do,” Roark said. “I’ve watched him trample every good thing in my world. If you don’t want to see him crush your world, too, you have to help me stop him.”

“Prove it,” PwnrBwner said, crossing his arms, eyes narrowed. When the Herald’s and Roark’s gazes snapped up to his face, he shrugged. “You want me to believe you’re an alien from another dimension, prove it. Do something.”

“Do what?” Roark couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice.

“Like Randy said, do something you couldn’t do without logging out to make it. Show me the video evidence.”

“Video?”

PwnrBwner nodded. “Yeah, I want to see it happening with my own two eyes. Foreign planets, Tyrant Kings, the whole nine yards. You want me to believe you, then make me believe.”

Roark’s brow furrowed.

PwnrBwner’s booted foot snapped out, catching Roark under the ribs. The air whoofed out of his lungs, and he doubled over, clutching his gut.

“Now, dickbreath! Not when you’ve had enough time to cook up some fancy mod bullshit on your second keyboard. Show me right now, while you’re on the spot.”

What magic could he do? What spell could prove the veracity of his words?

There was an ancient spell and blood rite the magistrates of his world occasionally used when trying a criminal for capital offenses. The magic was ancient, dangerous—drawing on forces not even the most powerful mages of his world understood—and liable to kill whoever it was used on, hence the reason it was only employed in capital cases where certain death was already on the line. But here in Hearthworld, where death was simply a minor inconvenience, there was little harm in trying it. Chances were it wouldn’t work and would instead boil his brain inside his skull until it cracked open like an overcooked egg, but if it did work ...

“All right. Just give me a moment to carve the spell. The magick of my world is a fickle thing, based around the written word.” His lips pressed into a thin line as he took the tip of his dagger and painstakingly carved the ancient and complex runes of the Ennus-Merkki ritual into his arm. The ritual was most often used to prove a man’s innocence by tapping into the memory of the caster, conjuring the events for all to see. Irrevocable proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, though the spell was prohibitively dangerous with so many variables that could go wrong that only a wrongfully condemned man on the edge of the gallows would ever dare pay the price.

Luckily for Roark, lives came cheap in Hearthworld.

While he cut jagged slashes that had no known meaning in his home tongue, he envisioned the scene he wished to project. The death and bloodshed and pain of the event that irrevocably shaped his life: von Graf Manor during Bloedrige Noct.  He finished the line of twisting, jagged, ancient script, blood leaking down his arm and pattering onto the floor below. As he accented the last rune, the line of text running over the inside of his forearm flashed, golden light bleeding from his body.

A feminine scream cut through the room like a knife.

The tiny stone cell wavered, then melted into the residence wing of the manor.

Bodies lay strewn across the hall, blood pooling beneath his cousin Dirk, his aunt Caena. A boy with olive skin and dark hair watched as his uncle Gareth pulled himself across the wood floor after one of the Ustars, leaving behind a streak of red as he tried to avenge his murdered wife and son with his last breath. Down the hall, fire flew and walls exploded as Erick von Graff battled the Tyrant King, trying to defend Roark’s mother and little sister, Talise. Roark’s father was a brilliant mage, his spells known throughout Traisbin, but his quick pen was no match for Marek’s lawless magic.

An invisible blade tore through Erick’s neck, beheading him where he stood.

Marek stepped over Erick’s corpse and raised a hand. A moment later, Roark’s mother and Talise were dragged out of the bedroom by invisible chains, screaming and fighting but unable to escape.

An Ustar soldier came around the corner from the other residences, blood dripping from his snake-fanged axe. Terrified, the eleven-year-old Roark grabbed the hunting knife from his cousin’s limp fingers and carved his first blood cantrip into his forearm.

I am invisible.

The boy vanished as the spell took, and the scene shifted. In the courtyard, Ustars executed the remaining women and children of the von Graf household. Roark watched the scene unfold from the hidden window off the secret passageway to the blue sitting room, seeing it as he had that night just before escaping into the tunnels beneath the manor. He looked on as, beside the well house, an Ustar’s axe sliced down through the air, and his mother threw herself over Talise.

But the scene didn’t end as it should have when the boy turned and ran down the stairs into the darkness.

For the first time, Roark watched the Ustar kick his mother’s still-twitching corpse off of Talise and raise his axe once more. The little girl scrambled to her feet, dazed. The blade fell, and Roark braced himself to see his sister’s skull split open.

Instead, when Talise cried out and threw her hand up, bright orange light flared in a dome around her. The snake-fanged axe hit the barrier and shattered.

Talise’s knees buckled, and the dome disappeared. She fell into the snow, shoulders heaving with exhaustion or tears or both.

Marek stalked across the courtyard, eyes as wide as saucers, his fine furs whispering across the snow. Talise wailed in fear and scrambled backward, trying to get away.

As the Tyrant King closed with her, she threw her hand up once more. Orange light flickered and failed.

Marek grabbed her by the back of the neck. Talise kicked and scratched him like a feral cat, but amber light flashed on Marek’s chest, the World Stone enacting its strange magic, and she went rigid.

Roark remembered the spell. Marek had used it in an attempt to torture the Rebel Council’s location out of him. He’d nearly given it up just to stop the pain, and he’d been a grown man at the time. His blood boiled and his mind went red with fury at the sight of the bloody bastard using the spell against his six-year-old sister.

When Marek stopped, Talise was shaking and hysterical, promising to be good. The Tyrant King set her on his hip like a kindly grandfather and, flanked by his Ustars, walked out of the courtyard into the night.

The vision wavered and disappeared, leaving behind the small stone cell.

Roark’s mouth hung open. He stared through the Arboreal Herald in front of him, stunned. His heart pounded like a smith’s hammer against the wall of his chest. That wasn’t right—Marek had butchered everyone. Cold-blooded. No survivors. Talise couldn’t still be alive. Everyone in Korvo said Marek had wiped out the von Graf family that night, save for Roark. And that flash of light when she threw up her arm, the dome protecting her... No paper, no writing utensils... It wasn’t possible. It flew in the face of every law of magic governing Traisbin.

The world spun and he barely noticed his two captors until PwnrBwner broke the stunned silence left in the wake of the vision casting ritual.

“What. The. Actual. Fuck,” PwnrBwner said, his mouth hanging open. “Seriously. Holy shit. What was that? Was that the...” He trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words for the first time Roark had ever seen.

“Was that...” The Herald swallowed, the dry click in his throat audible. “Was that the Tyrant King?” Without waiting for Roark to answer, the Herald grabbed PwnrBwner by the shoulder. “Uh, my colleague and I need a minute to discuss something. We’ll be right back.”

With that, he opened a portal in midair and pulled PwnrBwner through, leaving Roark alone in the stone cell, images of his little sister on the Tyrant King’s hip replaying in his head.

Change of Heart

SCOTT BAYANI AND HIS Admin accomplice, Randy, teleported away from the boxy room where Roark was bound, back into the basement of Randy’s sprawling estate on the rolling slopes of the Whispering Steppes. Begrudgingly, Scott had to admit that the place was slick as hell. A work of art, really. Not that he’d ever tell Randy that. Scott had seen a big chunk of the place when Randy led him through the first time around, and it was clear the estate had been assembled over months or maybe even years of gameplay.

Whether that gameplay was Randy’s or Randy’d just been given it for working in Hearthworld Admin, somebody had put in the work, and it showed. Scott could respect that.

The basement was the plainest of the estate’s many rooms by far, but even it was impressive, with high ceilings, the forge and smithy tucked away in the corner, and the shelves and chests filled with rare loot. Several wall plaques and display stands littered the room, showcasing a variety of hard-won items. Scott didn’t recognize all of them, but he knew a few on sight and would’ve given his left nut to get his hands on any of them.  The gleaming Bloodcursed Impaler, won from the Arch-Demon Lords of The Damned and the Restless quest line. The gold and azure Dragonmaw Warhammer, pilfered from the corpse of the Red Lord. Even the incomparably rare Casque of Holy Protection—only a .02 percent drop rate—retrieved from the winding heart of the Stonemire Labyrinth.

Randy may have been a dork, but Scott had his suspicions that not all of this had been forked over to the Herald as fringe benefits of the job. And if he’d won even a little of this shit on his own, then the dude could game like a mofo.

But none of the impressive treasures on display held Scott’s attention this time around. He wasn’t an introspective guy by nature, but after seeing that... whatever the shit that had been... all this loot felt shallow somehow. After all, this crap was just code. Somebody made it up. What the Griefer showed him had been real people. Or aliens. Whatever they were, they’d been cut down, slaughtered. Maybe that dickface Roark had crafted some kind of elaborate cut scene or something, but Scott doubted it. Nah, he’d just seen real magic. And watched real people die. That was some edgelord bullshit he didn’t want any part of. But some small piece of him also felt a thrill race through his body. Another world. A place with real magic. With real evil. With real heroes—not just the wannabes of Hearthworld playing pretend.

Scott glanced at Randy, who seemed to be in a state of shock. He didn’t seem to be in a particularly talkative mood. Scott decided to break the ice and get the ball rolling.

“Did you see that crap, dude? So like”—he shrugged, his armor clinking lightly—“I guess that fake pirate asshole is actually a real pirate asshole. How ’bout that shit.”

“I... that’s...” Randy fumbled for words, sounding both frantic and awed. “Well... I suppose that would be my conclusion, too. Yes.”

“I mean it has to be real,” Scott replied, frustrated by the realization. All this time, that asshole had been griefing him with cheater magic. He should probably forgive the dude since he was like an interdimensional refugee or whatever, but it was still some world-class cheating bullshit. Still, he felt vindicated that Roark hadn’t beaten him fair and square. There was a serious asterisk next to all those losses. “So what does that mean? Like, what do we even do with that?”

For a moment neither of them said anything, both just grappling with the weight of the impossible situation.

“This is the quest,” Randy finally said, his voice more confident than it had ever been before, like he actually owned a pair of balls. “This is our chance, Scott. You’ve logged a lot of hours in Hearthworld.” Not a question, just a fact. Scott had spent a buttload of time inside these servers, working on both his main character and his various alts. It was pretty much his life, as far as he was concerned. IRL was the real grind, filled with petty bullshit and pointless relationships that he couldn’t care less about. Out there, he was an NPC, working just hard enough so he could eventually make his way back into the game.

“Why?” Randy asked, his gaze oddly intense. “I’ll tell you why. Because the real world is meaningless and terrible. Because it’s just awful bosses. It’s bills that won’t pay themselves. It’s living your life like a rat running around in a wheel, always moving, but going nowhere.”

Scott shrugged, but said nothing. The dude wasn’t wrong.

“But not in Hearthworld,” the admin continued. “In Hearthworld, you’re someone, and there’s always more going on than meets the eye. There are quests to finish, levels to earn, mobs to grind. In here”—he swept an arm around—“things make sense. You put in the work and you get rewarded. In here you can be anything if you have enough dedication. In here there’s magic. Except...”

Randy faltered and glanced down, losing some of his steam and confidence as he shifted from foot to foot. After a beat he glanced back up. “Except none of it’s real. It might look real and even feel real, but at the end of the day you have to log out and go back to the real world. You have to go back to your terrible job and the bullies and the jerks who take all the credit for your hard work and dump all the blame on you. At the end of the day, it’s all fake. The monsters. The quests. The heroes.” Randy looked back up at him, his silver eyes so intense that the dude looked more than a little cray-cray. “But not this time, Scott. We could be real heroes. We could actually take down a World Boss and make a difference in the lives of millions of people.”

“Or aliens,” Scott interjected.

Randy went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Instead of pretending to exist in a world of magic”—he lifted a hand and foliage burst from his palm, vines curling, flowers blooming—“we could be a part of the real thing.”

Scott put his hands up.

“Okay, spaz. Enough with the rousing speeches.” Truthfully, he felt more alive than he had in years. More excited and hopeful than he ever had before. Ever. But he couldn’t say any of that to Randy. “I get it. Real magic. We can be heroes. Avengers assemble. Blah, blah, blah. I’m in. Just shut your stupid geek piehole before I vomit in my mouth. Now what the fuck do we actually do? It’s fine to talk, but we need a plan to execute.”

The admin’s face went blank, as though he were just now considering that for the first time. After a moment he shrugged. “Maybe we should go ask the magic guy from another world?”

“Well, come on,” Scott said. “Get us back there already.”

With a little Admin power and fairy dust, Randy shifted them back into the stone box with Roark. The Griefer was on his knees where they’d left him, glaring down at the floor like he was trying to cut a hole in it with some faulty laser vision.

Scott had come around to the idea that this guy was a legit wizard, but he had to admit he felt a small surge of satisfaction about Roark getting some well-deserved payback. Until he heard the guy’s ramblings. The dude was mumbling softly about how “It’s not possible” and “Everyone died. They couldn’t keep a secret like that. Could they?”

Almost against his will, Scott saw flashes from the fucked-up vision again. Roark had probably lived a pretty messed-up life, so maybe he could be a little bit less of a dick about the whole griefing thing.

After a second, Roark shook his head, gaze coming back into focus like he’d finally realized they were back.

“Well,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Have you decided what you’ll do with me then?”

Scott crossed his arms, planting a disdainful expression on his avatar’s face. “Fine, brohole, you’ve officially convinced us you’re from another stupid planet or whatever. Congratulations. We believe you.”

“You believe me?” the Griefer said, looking from Scott to Randy, then back again. “Both of you?”

“Yeah, dickface, we believe you—even if your accent is stupid as balls.”

“And we’ve decided,” Randy jumped in, scooting up next to Scott and dropping a hand on his shoulder, “to help you. But if we’re going to do that, we need to know the whole story, and where to start.”

Scott shook Randy’s hand off. Yeah, they were in this together, but he was still the alpha here.

Roark grimaced and picked at the collar encircling his throat. “Well, I suppose you can start helping me by taking this bloody damned collar off.” He nearly growled the words.

Scott watched as Randy blushed like crazy, his face turning caught-farting-in-school red. To get that kind of avatar response, the admin must’ve been in one of those uber Deep Dive capsules. The fifty-grand models that came with every bell and whistle on the market. Scott was even more jealous of that than he’d been of the guy’s estate or his badass collection of gear.

“Yeah, sure, sorry,” Randy mumbled. He pressed his thumb to the metal and mumbled, “‘AssMan_69 is one classy motherfucker.’”

Immediately, the collar opened and fell away.

“Okay. You’re free. So what are we waiting for?” PwnrBwner asked, bringing one hand to rest on the mace head tucked into his belt. “This tyrant asshole needs killing. Let’s go asshole hunting.”

***

RANDY DIDN’T HEAR A word the Griefer was saying, not really. He caught the vague impression of an imminent war between the Cruel Citadel and the Vault of the Radiant Shield, as well as an alliance among Infernal Dungeon Lords. His brain also registered when Scott jumped in with relevant questions—while simultaneously filtering out his perpetual onslaught of douchebag comments—but for the most part, Randy’s brain was in another world.

Specifically, the world Roark the Griefer had come from.

There was a whole other dimension out there, one where magic wasn’t just real but commonplace. As an engineer and scientist, he’d always hoped... but he could never quite believe. Part of him still wanted to say this was all some trick cooked up by a modder who’d anticipated their moves far enough ahead to create a cutscene of carnage and violence so well made that it could’ve been news footage from some war-torn country mid-regime change.

But the absolute disbelief and devastation on Roark’s face when he saw that little girl taken by this Tyrant King... Randy wasn’t great with people, but even he could tell the Griefer wasn’t acting. Anyway, who would go to all the trouble to fake evidence of a whole other world just so they could pretend not to have known about half of it? Randy thought he could probably have dismissed this whole thing as a lie if not for that.

Another dimension... And why not? If technology had advanced sufficiently for Frontflip to create a pocket dimension called Hearthworld where strings of code lived and humans visited, then there was no logical argument against the existence of a whole other dimension. It did beg the question of who or what had created it, though. What if Earth was the video game of some whole other hyperintelligent society and humans were just the NPCs populating it and sending those otherworldly players on quests?

That was a disconcerting thought. Randy grabbed his head and tried to blink away a sudden wave of vertigo.

“...and the only way they’ll agree to it is if I bring them Bad_Karma’s head,” Roark’s voice filtered through Randy’s momentary existential crisis.

“Dicks,” PwnrBwner said.

Roark shrugged. “It’s strategically smart. If I can’t kill him, then they’ll know I’m not strong enough to lead them and that they can afford to ignore me. If I can kill him, then he’ll be out of their hair and they’ll have my word that I won’t come for them next.”

“Wait,” Randy said. “Did you just say you were supposed to kill Bad_Karma? Highest-level player on the server, sixteen hundred hours Hardcore Mode Bad_Karma?”

“What the hell, Randy, were you not listening to any of the last ten minutes?” PwnrBwner said. “Roark has a quest to kill Karma. If he does, the other dungeon bosses will help him fight this Lowen asshole. Then he can go back to his home world and kill the Tyrant King.”

“But”—Randy checked Roark’s stats—“you’re only a level 36 Troll. I know you’ve killed players double and triple your level before, but you can’t kill Bad_Karma. He’d massacre you.”

The Griefer smirked. “He did. You lot caught me just out of the respawn.”

“What are you going to do?” Randy said. “You can’t finish the quest.”

“That’s what I told him.” PwnrBwner turned back to Roark and started ticking items off on his fingers. “Karma’s got unique class spells and perks and special abilities out the ass. Plus, people will do anything for him. He founded my guild. He’s got about a billion seed followers streaming his every move. He’s so fucking popular that his brother’s popular just because they’re related. I escorted that little dickface through a dungeon, and twelve thousand new accounts followed me. That’s how popular BK is, and it’s all because he’s a badass. You’ll never kill him in a fair fight.” PwnrBwner snorted. “Hell, you’ll never kill him in a rigged fight. You’re massively screwed, dude.”

“I don’t intend to fight him, not truly,” Roark said. “That was my mistake the first time around.”

“This place isn’t like IRL,” PwnrBwner said. “You’re not just gonna sneak up on this guy while he’s asleep and take him out. That’s not how it works in games.”

“There are lots of ways to take someone off guard. Maybe I can’t beat him as a hero would, but I’m not a hero. I’m a Dungeon Lord, and that is my true strength.” Roark glanced around at the small room, his eyes burning with a plan. “If I can get him to fight on my territory, I might have an idea about how to win.” Roark looked dead into Randy’s eyes. “But I will need your help to do it.”

Randy blinked. “I’m sorry, for a second it looked like you were talking to me.”

“That badge you showed me. It means you’re one of the authorities of Hearthworld, correct?”

“I mean...”

“You can follow someone for days without being seen, open portals barehanded, and you have access to special items too powerful or dangerous for this world.”

“But I can’t use those to run around killing players. I mean, I could, but I would lose my job.”

As he said it, Randy realized the utter ridiculousness of that line of protest. He was going to lose his job either way. No way was he going to be able to explain any of this to the board. What would he say? An interdimensional being asked him to help kill the most powerful and popular player on the server so he could unite the Infernal Dungeon Lords against a whole dungeon of interdimensional invaders? Silva wouldn’t just fire him, he would have Randy’s Hearthworld account deleted, blacklist him throughout the rest of the tech community, and probably have him put in the loony bin while he was at it.

On the other hand, if he kept his mouth shut and went back to the board without any answers or solutions, he’d definitely still get fired, but he might get to keep his Hearthworld account.

It came down to whether he would rather be fired for doing nothing or for helping someone stop a murdering tyrant. After the speech he’d given to Scott—something so unlike him it was almost hard to comprehend—Randy knew the answer without a shadow of a doubt. He was scared, but after witnessing the carnage Roark had showed them, who wouldn’t be? At the same time, Randy also felt good. This was it. This was the moment his life had been building toward. Randy wasn’t the type of person to believe in destiny, but if there was real magic, then why not?

He was done living his life as a pushover. Done living as a coward and a doormat for other people. So what if he got fired? So what if he lost his account and had to start from scratch? If Roark could get hurled through an interdimensional portal, wind up as a level 1 Troll in a world he didn’t understand, and still fight on, then what excuse could Randy possibly come up with?

“Whatever we do, it’ll have to be fast,” Randy said. “I’ll only have my Admin privileges for two more days. But I’m in. All in. I’ll even kill Bad_Karma for you, if you want.”

“Reel it back in a little, tiger.” PwnrBwner snorted. “You sound like you’re trying to join a cult.”

Randy felt his face and ears heating up, but he stood up taller and ignored the High Combat Cleric. He’d meant what he said, and he was going to stand behind it. He was a hero now. That was the kind of thing heroes did.

Luckily, the Griefer seemed to be ignoring PwnrBwner’s snide remarks, too.

“It has to be me,” Roark said. “And I have to do it alone or the other Dungeon Lords will never respect me enough to follow. What I need from you is crucial, though—information. Never underestimate the power of proper foresight.” The Griefer rubbed his hands together, clearly eager to begin. “Now time is running out, and there’s a lot to do, so it’s best if we get to work.”

Moving Pieces

THE HANDINESS OF PORTAL travel made itself evident when rather than having to make the trek from the strange containment cell back to the citadel, Randy just reopened the shimmering violet tear in space and the three of them stepped through into the Keep’s throne room.

The troubling revelations provided by the Ennus-Merkki ritual still weighed heavy on Roark’s mind—namely that his sister could possibly be alive—but he pushed those from his mind. He was letting his shock affect his judgment. The vision, whether it was true or false, didn’t change anything. He still couldn’t get back to Traisbin, and even if he could, he would never get close enough to Marek to kill him without taking out Lowen first.

And to do that, he first needed to kill Bad_Karma. Which meant he needed unwavering focus.

“Where has Roark been?” Kaz bellowed, ecstatic. “The griefing Trolls from the Keep said evil heroes abducted him.”

From behind Roark, PwnrBwner_OG snapped, “Hey, get the fuck off!”

Inky black smoke was still curling upward when Roark turned. Zyra had one of her cursed longknives to the High Combat Cleric’s throat and the other to his groin.

“What is this hero scum doing in our Keep?” the hooded Reaver hissed, her words as cold as the holding cells in the Chillend prison.

“Saving your shit,” PwnrBwner said. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“He’s on our side now,” Roark said. “So is the Herald.”

“What Herald?”

At her side, Randy dropped his invisibility. Zyra backed up a step, dragging PwnrBwner with her to put the High Combat Cleric between her and the silver-winged Herald. Startled, Kaz drew his Legendary Meat Tenderizer and crept forward in a defensive stance.

Before blood could be spilled and his secret weapons sent for respawn, Roark said, “Put him down, Zyra. They’re working with us. As asinine as it sounds, I swear it’s true.”

Slowly, warily, the Knight Thursr and the Reaver lowered their weapons.

“You have ten seconds to explain,” Zyra growled. “Then I’m sending them both for respawn.”

“You can try,” PwnrBwner sneered.

“We need them to kill Bad_Karma,” Roark said, stalking to the Dungeon Lord’s throne. “And however unlikely it may seem, after a long and difficult discussion, these two have come around to our cause against Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. You’ll just have to trust me on this one. Now, where’s Griff?”

“In Averi City, digging for information on who might have you,” Zyra said.

Roark sat and used the Dungeon Lord’s Grimoire to send off a message to Griff letting him know he was back and to meet him in the Blacksmith shop.

With that done, he checked the disbursement of building points for the Troll Nation. It would take some serious work, and he would have to temporarily strip down most of the second floor, shifting the natives to the third floor, but yes, he could do it. Closing off the level so that Bad_Karma wouldn’t be able to get free would be a challenge, but he could manage it with the portal plates, which the dungeon counted as access points. It would take some work and a significant amount of time in the smithy, however.

He hopped off the throne and headed for the Blacksmith’s shop.

Zyra jogged to catch up with him. “Where are you going?”

“To prepare for Bad_Karma,” he said. “I made a mistake last time by confronting him. I acted like a hero, relying on my own raw physical strength and the might of my combat magic. But in all of those arenas, Karma has proven to be my superior.” He laughed. “I don’t know what sort of brain damage I must have sustained to try to take him on in a fair fight. I can’t beat him in a stadium filled with spectators, but I can most certainly defeat him inside the walls of my dungeon, where I have every underhanded trick and advantage I can lay my hands on.”

“You mean the plan is to cheat,” PwnrBwner said.

“Yes,” Roark said. “Obviously.”

He glanced over his shoulder, gaze falling on the Herald—Randy, his name was—who was keeping pace with him. “Do your Admin abilities allow you to see a hero’s active and passive abilities as well as what enchantments a hero has on their items and the items in their Inventory?”

“Ad-min?” Zyra repeated, puzzled.

“He’s a type of enforcer working for the Hearthworld gods,” Roark explained, eyes still fixed on Randy, waiting for an answer.

Randy blinked. “Uh... yeah, um, from in-game, I can see what enchantments are on a player’s gear, but only if I have a visual lock on him. To do it remotely, I would need to be at a terminal.”

“How long does it take you to get to one of these terminals?” Roark asked.

“About ten minutes out and back in.” Randy pointed over his shoulder as if alluding to one of these mysterious places. “Do you want me to...?”

“Yes,” Roark said with a nod. “I’ll need to know every natural ability he might be able to pull on as well as every potential enchantment he’ll have access to. I want a comprehensive list, understand?”

“How will knowing his abilities and enchantments help?” Zyra asked.

PwnrBwner snorted. “Is that a serious question?” He hooked a thumb at Roark. “This asshole TPKed me and my friends with a frikkin’ dungeon boss last week. I don’t know what he’s got planned, but if you don’t think he can swing it, you haven’t been watching long enough. Not that I’m complimenting you,” he finished, shooting a glare at Roark.

Zyra’s hood swiveled toward the mouthy hero. Roark couldn’t see her icy glare, but he could feel the temperature in the room drop.

“It’s my job to point out when he does something insane,” she told PwnrBwner. “It’s his job to make his idiocy work in spite of my skepticism.”

Randy shook his head. “They’re engaging in peer review? This is incredible.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be going somewhere?” Zyra’s voice dripped venom.

“Right. Sorry.” Randy stepped back. “I’ll be right back.”

He looked up as though praying to his devs, then disappeared.

Zyra pointed her longknife at where he’d been. “For the record, I don’t like any of this.”

PwnrBwner snorted. “Whoop-ti-do. We’re not hyped out of our socks about it, either, sister, but here we are. You need some killing done, you need us.”

The hooded Reaver took a menacing step toward him, but Kaz stepped between them, facing PwnrBwner with one huge sausage finger held high in query.

“Would the esteemed hero like to try a wonderful new invention called bacon?” the Mighty Gourmet asked.

PwnrBwner shot Zyra a grin and said, “Hell yeah, the hero would.”

With a grunt of disgust, Zyra crouched and disappeared into the shadows. Smoke curled in her wake.

“Come on,” Roark said to the High Combat Cleric. He turned and headed for the Troll Nation Marketplace. “We’ll be in the smithy, Kaz.”

The Knight Thursr nodded an affirmative before hurrying off toward the inn.

“So, what’s the plan, Cheaty McCheaterson?” PwnrBwner asked as he caught up to Roark.

“To strip him of every possible benefit he has, putting us on equal footing. But to do that, I need him here in the dungeon, where I control the terrain.” Roark paused, drumming his fingers on his leather-clad leg. “How well do you know Bad_Karma?”

The hero shrugged. “I say hey when I see him around the guild, but we’re not feeling each other up and shit.”

Roark spent a moment processing the strange adage, then nodded.

“Can you get in touch with him?”

“Like PM him? Sure, but it’d be a month before it got through. I told you, the dude’s a popularity god.” PwnrBwner shrugged. “In Hearthworld, anyway. IRL, he’s probably eight hundred pounds and so fat he can’t climb the stairs out of his parents’ basement. With the number of hours he’s spent online, there’s no way he’s got a real life.”

Roark raised an eyebrow. “Has he spent more or less time ‘online’ than you?”

“Wow.” The High Combat Cleric snorted. “It’s like you don’t have a level cap on your asshattery.”

“I’m only making an observation. Randy said I couldn’t possibly have spent this much time in Hearthworld without logging out, and from what I’ve seen you’ve been in Hearthworld most of the time that I have.”

PwnrBwner rapped his knuckles on his breastplate. “I’ve got a life, okay? A freaking amazing one with an awesome job and a hot girlfriend. I only play as a hobby. Which is pretty lucky for you, since you can’t pull this PK off without me. So, one, you’re welcome, and two, what exactly is the plan?”

As they ducked inside the Blacksmith shop and went to Roark’s anvil, the hellish heat of the forge washing over them, he explained PwnrBwner’s part in Bad_Karma’s downfall. The High Combat Cleric listened intently, piping up once with a key piece of information Roark couldn’t have gotten without him.

“That’s brilliant,” Roark said sincerely.

“Well, yeah,” PwnrBwner said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Randy reappeared while Roark was hammering out the newest addition to his portal plates.

“Bad_Karma has everything,” the Arboreal Herald declared. “I mean, virtually everything. He’s got half a dozen different passive resistances, some crazy buffs at his disposal, and some of the rarest items in the game, which seem like they cover just about every possible contingency any player might face.” Already in the meager few seconds he’d been in the smithy, sweat cascaded down his temples and dripped into his silver eyes. He swiped it away with the back of his bracers. “And even if he doesn’t have the items equipped, he has a host of other items stowed in his Inventory—thanks to the fact that he has nearly a three-thousand-pound carrying capacity, which is borderline preposterous. And that’s not even counting his alts. Here’s a complete list.”

The Admin pulled an elaborate scroll from the air and handed it over to Roark.

╠═╦╬╧╪

╠═╦╬╧╪

ROARK GRIMACED AS HE read over the list, quickly scanning the description of each ability.

“You weren’t joking, were you, mate?” he mumbled. “This tosser really does have just about everything under the sun. Even has water breathing equipped.” He thought back to the Boots of Water Breathing he’d earned weeks ago—the enchantment had seemed rather worthless at the time, though he’d been so hungry to increase his Enchanting, he’d learned the rather simple spell anyway. He did notice one particular point that offered a small glimmer of hope: -25% Resistance Against Normal Weapons.

Bad_Karma, it seemed, did have a weakness after all—just not one that anyone would ever expect.

The hero was nearly immune to magical weapons and completely invulnerable to poisons of all types, but normal, run-of-the-mill steel would hurt him. In a way, it was perfect really. After all, any hero low enough to use a normal weapon would never stand a chance against a hero like Karma, and any hero or mob powerful enough to actually challenge him would never think to use an unenchanted weapon. But Roark could fill the entire dungeon with regular, yet deadly weapons at will. Yes, he could make this work, though the hours he’d have to spend in the forge were going to be nigh legendary.

A puff of smoke went up to reveal Zyra perched on the workbench, leaning back and bracing herself on her arms. “I don’t know what exactly you’re planning, Roark, but it could all be ruined if he shows up with reinforcements. Have you even thought of that?”

“Doubtful,” Roark replied, pulling a bulky plate away and inspecting his handiwork. “Bad_Karma doesn’t seem like the kind of man to share credit with anyone. It would wound his pride to ask for help of any sort. Though I have been wrong about him before, so I have a backup plan.” He tapped the plate. “That’s where this comes in,” Roark said, moving the unfinished plate to the workbench and laying it beside her hip. She didn’t scoot over to give him more room.

“Only heroes over level 49 will be transported into the room,” she read.

“And since he’s the only hero in Hearthworld at level 50,” Roark replied with a grin, “he’s the only one that will be able to access the room.”

“No matter who he brings as backup, they’ll pass over without being affected.” Randy’s eyes shone with admiration as he inspected the plate. “It’s genius.”

“Sure, it’s bloody brilliant considering how well your first fight with Bad_Karma went. And that was with Ick support casting on your side.” Zyra pulled a sack of coins from her Inventory and tested its weight. “I think I’ll find Kaz and see if he feels like going double or nothing. I could use a new set of Titration Pipes for my shop.”

Roark glanced up from the plate, locking on the place he was certain her purple and green eyes sat hidden in the shadows of her hood. “This is only the first step, Zyra. Like I said, I have a plan. How about you make your wager with me this time. If you win, I’ll buy you all the Titration Pipes and Alchemy equipment you desire.”

“And if that isn’t what I truly desire from you?” she asked, her dusky voice sending chills down his spine.

Roark could feel the intensity of her gaze boring into him.

“Then hope I win,” he said with a smirk.

“Oh, gag me!” PwnrBwner broke in.

Zyra perked up visibly and said over Roark’s shoulder, “Thought you’d never ask. I just invented a lovely poison called Screaming Silence that’s perfect for you. I haven’t tested it on anyone yet, but the effect is supposed to be immediate and incredibly painful.”

“Anything but more of this”—the High Combat Cleric pointed back and forth between Roark and Zyra—“whatever the crap this is.”

“All right,” Roark snapped, leaving the workbench and selecting a set of black Peerless Leather Armor, Gloves, and Boots from the armory chest in the corner. “You’re both equally annoying. Can we get on with the matter at hand?”

“Sure, if you guys can stop eye-sexting each other for a few seconds,” PwnrBwner said. He hooked a thumb at the Arboreal Herald. “You’re making Randy uncomfortable.”

Randy held up his hands, his cheeks coloring brighter red than the heat of the forge could account for. “I’m not—I mean, as long as she’s not just some preprogrammed—uh, that is... If I still thought you were a modder, I would’ve been really upset with you using her for...” He shook his head. “You know what, never mind. I’m not uncomfortable. That’s the point.”

Shaking his head, Roark turned toward the door. He would need to use the Enchanting Table in his study for the next bit of work. Before he could leave, however, a Changeling apprentice scurried in, leading Griff into the forge, followed by a bacon-bearing Kaz.

“Aw, hells yes, it’s bacon time.” PwnrBwner went straight for the Mighty Gourmet’s proffered platter and began scarfing down the crispy rashers. He sighed in appreciation. “Damn, dude.”

Kaz beamed. “It is the most delicious meat that Kaz has learned of so far. He cannot see why Gry Feliri and Jordan Bamsey did not include whole chapters on it.”

The weapons trainer skirted around them, eyeing PwnrBwner suspiciously with his one good eye, and joined Roark at the workbench. “You were lookin’ for me, Griefer?”

Roark nodded. “I have a plan to take down Bad_Karma, but it’s going to require a lot of moving pieces to come together at once.” He pulled a portal scroll and handed it to Griff. “And I need you to go back to Frostrime. Pwnr, you know your part. Zyra, I had a question for you. Is there any chance to craft a poison that isn’t actually a poison? You mentioned earlier a substance called Clotwart, which might temporarily counteract his immunity. Instead of mixing that with a poison, would it somehow be possible to add it to a healing potion of sorts?”

The hooded Reaver froze, her body unnaturally rigid. “He’s immune to poison, but Clotwart technically isn’t a poison. It’s an additive. He’ll reject the Clotwart inside a poison, but inside a Health potion?” She shook her head. “It’s a bit of a long shot, but it’s possible. It’ll take some time, but I’ll get working on it now.” Her voice sounded sharp and deadly as a razor blade.

“Brilliant,” Roark said with a genuine smile. “Now, Randy, any chance you know how to work a forge?”

The Herald dipped his head. “Fifteenth level Blacksmith actually, and a level 10 Enchanter.”

“Perfect,” Roark replied. He pulled out a variety of blueprints. “Then I need you to get working immediately. I’ll need about thirty of these, and all primed for curses—so only use the best metal and the best gemstones.”

He handed them over and headed for the door.

“Sure,” Randy said, confusion filling his face as he shuffled through the blueprints. “But what are you going to do?”

Roark stopped mid-stride.

“Me? I need to get the second floor prepped for our guest, and then I need to see a man about a Selkie.”

Bro_Fo Bait

SCOTT BAYANI FOUND Bro_Fo and the poor saps his big brother Bad_Karma had paid to finish the power-leveling job in the One-Eyed Unicorn. It hadn’t taken a lot of detective work to find them; Karma and the OGs in the guild had actually made a deal a while back with the owner, and now everybody in good standing with their guild got a discount on drinks and food from the Unicorn. Not potions, though. Even Karma’s influence had its limits.

Scott scanned their little group as he walked over. Looked like TankieMcTankerson and BarryCuda the Blackguard Rogue had stuck it out so far to level 19 with the little asswipe. Mark_Proper_the_Third was long gone, proving what Scott always suspected—that Mark was the only one in that group with half a brain.

“Fancy meeting you all here,” Scott said, yanking out a chair and sitting by Tankie uninvited. “How’d that raid on the citadel go?”

BarryCuda made a fart sound and gave him a thumbs-down.

“Because these losers couldn’t keep up with me,” Bro_Fo sneered. “I lost like four levels and my Ultimate Carry Greaves.”

“I told you it transported you to a different level than us,” Tankie said, tapping her thumbnail against her beer stein. “There wasn’t any keeping up involved.”

“Okay, sure,” Bro_Fo said in that snotty little brat teenage voice that made Scott want to knock his helmet off his head.

“Hang on,” Scott said. “You guys didn’t go in the front way, did you? That’s suicide.”

Tankie glanced sidelong at him. “There’s only one way in.”

“If that’s true, then what way did I just go in?” Scott said. “Because I walked right into the final floor and fought the boss without having to go through all the teleportation and Troll cheating bullshit.”

“Sounds like you were dreaming,” Tankie said, going back to her beer.

“The hell I was. Check this shit out.” He PMed her a screenshot of himself and Roark locked in some epic-looking combat. The timestamp in the corner showed it as only three hours earlier. “I’d have hooked up with you guys earlier, but I had to wait to respawn. The dickface pulled some lame auto-targeting weapon on me at the last second.”

“Auto-targeting?” Bro_Fo leaned in.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “He’s supposed to be the dungeon boss, so he made himself a piece of badass loot to boss it with. It’s a total cheat, though. The kind of item that would automatically make like anybody the best player in Hearthworld.”

Scott watched the wheels turn in the little brat’s head. He was thinking how when a dungeon boss died, they dropped all their loot, and how a guy who had to pay people to help him power-level could go from loser to best player on the server if he just so happened to pick said overpowered loot up.

“Guys,” Bro_Fo said. “I want to go back to the Cruel Citadel. You can show us the back way in, right, Pwnr?”

“Yeah, sure, but there’s no way us three are gonna be able to kill this boss alone,” Scott said.

“I can message Yakonoclast, Frond, and Country_n_Vestern and have them meet us there. We might need... nah...” Bro_Fo shook his head, and Scott could tell he was trying to keep the party small so he wouldn’t potentially lose the auto-targeting weapon to somebody stronger than him. “No, six of you guys will have to be enough.”

“Well, all right,” Scott said, “but it has to be in the next hour or so. I’ve got to work all weekend, so I won’t be back online until Monday.”

It was almost too easy. Bro_Fo stood up, his chair scraping along the wooden floor.

“Let’s go,” he said, eyes shining with greed. He looked around their table. “Does anybody have a portal scroll?”

BarryCuda slammed his forehead down on the table.

Tankie sighed. “I do. But we’re going to need a shitton of Health potions. I’m not going back in there without a stock.”

“Like it matters,” BarryCuda said, his voice muffled against the tabletop.

Scott had to hide his smirk. Barry was right, it wouldn’t matter.

“We’ll get some on the way,” Bro_Fo snapped, his voice cracking with urgency. “Come on, move your asses or you’re not getting those five large Drake promised you.”

“Hey man, I’m not going anywhere unless I get paid up front,” Scott said. After his walkout earlier, it would be suspicious if he didn’t have any objections.

“The fuck you’re not.” Bro_Fo leaned down in Scott’s face, bracing both hands on the table. “If I tell Bad_Karma that you refused to do what I say, he’ll throw you out of the guild. Just see how much hate spam you get then. Oh yeah, and all the PvP you take from my seed followers. Hope you like respawning, loser, because it’ll be all you do in Hearthworld from now on.”

Scott’s lip curled up in a contemptuous snarl he didn’t have to fake. As if he needed another reason to hate this little shit.

“Fine,” he growled. “Whatever. It’s bullshit, but whatever. Let’s just go get your stupid Health potions so we can kill this asshole Griefer already.”

They followed him out of the tavern and through the streets to the marketplace. It took about ten minutes altogether to get everybody stocked on third-tier Health potions. Then they made their way to the fountain court, already lit up with shimmering violet portals. The other three members of their party met them on the eastern side of the fountain, where the spray reached the farthest because of the breeze.

Scott could feel the misting droplets speckling his cheeks, cool and comforting. This was about to be very, very fun.

If Mark_Proper_the_Third had been with them, Scott might’ve almost felt bad about leading them into the trap because Mark was a good guy and he’d gone along with the first raid on the Cruel Citadel when Scott had been out for Roark’s blood. But when Scott had sent the notice out for guild members to help him crush the Griefer, Karma had done a hard pass and jerkwad sycophants like Tankie and BarryCuda had passed, too, because suddenly a good ol’ fashioned dungeon raid wasn’t cool enough anymore. If Karma had gone—or any of his high-level hangers-on—Scott could’ve slapped Roark down.

Well, in about thirty minutes, they could all suck on it. Karma most of all, but definitely Tankie and BarryCuda, too.

“Everybody ready?” Tankie asked.

BarryCuda pulled his weapons and shook his head.

“Popping off.” Tankie cast the portal scroll, adding another tear in space to the several existing ones scattered all around them. She stood back and indicated the violet shimmer with both hands, like one of those prize ladies from that old game, except in heavy plate mail rather than a skintight evening dress.

Bro_Fo jumped through first, and Scott followed close behind, pretending to want to protect him and make back that five-G paycheck he’d forfeited when he left them the first time.

Cold air rushed around them, ruffling their hair and chilling them pleasantly. Scott stepped out of the portal and into the graveyard along the west wall of the Cruel Citadel’s aboveground ruins. [Shambling Revenants] roved between the tombstones, moaning low in their throats while Scott grabbed his Unique Mace of Elemental Culmination and went to work. Blue lightning arced between its razor-sharp flanges as he put down Shambling Revenant after Shambling Revenant. The Griefer hadn’t mentioned slaughtering a graveyard full of low-level mobs, but Scott didn’t mind making the judgment call himself.

One by one, the rest of the raid team filtered through the portal and joined the fight. Pretty soon, they had killed everything in the graveyard.

“Come on, it’s this way,” Scott said, leading them to the yawning mouth of a mausoleum. Its stone door had been knocked off its hinges sometime in the distant past, way back when the devs were still building the place from the one-zero up.

Bro_Fo kept right on his heels the whole way, even as Scott ducked into the near pitch-black darkness of the mausoleum.

“Yep, this is it,” Scott said, pretending to reach for something on the wall, just in case that little shit had dark vision or something.

Click!

“What the hell?” A torch appeared in Bro_Fo’s right hand as he tugged at the metal collar around his throat with his left. “Is this some kind of trap?”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Duh.”

As he said it, Bro_Fo pulled his Fulgurite Sword and tried to rush Scott. But the collar yanked him back, sitting him down on the dust and cobweb-covered floor with a thud.

“That’s not going to work, mate,” Roark the Griefer said, appearing as Randy dropped the concealment. He held up the Lightning Rod. “For as long as you’ve got that collar on, this decides where you go, and right now the answer is ‘not far.’”

“It’s a trap!” Bro_Fo bellowed out the door for his hired guild mercs. “Kill everybody, guys! Strafe this place!”

Shouts and the sound of combat filtered in from outside. Lights flashed fire-orange, ice-blue, and a nasty yellow as spells were cast. Then, just as fast as it had started, everything went silent.

That Troll assassin hottie came into the mausoleum followed by a horde of big ugly tank Trolls and little scrawny spell caster types. She dropped an armload of severed heads on the floor. Yakonoclast, Tankie, Frond, Country_n_Vestern, and BarryCuda. They rolled right up to Bro_Fo’s feet. He eeped and jumped back a step before the collar jerked him back.

“How you like my new guild, assface?” Scott could feel the big, shit-eating grin as it stretched across his face. “Now, let’s talk about who you can call to actually get you out of this mess.”

Karma’s a Bitch

“ALL RIGHT, KIDDIES,” Drake Carmichael, aka Bad_Karma, said as he waded through the tidal slime of Bloodleech Grotto. “We’re out here on the northeastern coast of Hearthworld, about five klicks outside of Wargentine Shores, about to go after the”—he checked his active quests for the name—“Ancient Claddagh of the Fleeing Light. It’s supposed to be with some deeb named Ishri the Cunning. One assumes ol’ Ishri’s the chief of this lovely abode, and there’s a whole storyline about him once being a man whose beloved committed suicide. It’s all very Romeo and Juliet, but you peeps can look that up in the WikiLore on your own time if you’re into backstory. Me, I’m into one-shotting some bosses.”

Down in the corner of his HUD, Drake could check the number of viewers watching his livestream via seedFeed. He glanced at it surreptitiously as he ducked under a stalactite glowing green with Filthy Nitre. Ticking up over twelve thousand. Not even close to the number of followers he had, but give the diehards a minute to get the notification that he was live and his numbers would soar.

Even as he thought this, the ones column started reeling, then the tens and hundreds, driving to twenty thousand at a headlong rush. They rounded a hundred grand a few seconds later. Drake grinned. He was soloing tonight, like he did every Thursday, and his fans loved that. If he didn’t hit a solid mil before he logged off, he’d eat his Lifeblood Billhooked Polearm. Heck, give it another five minutes and his followers would probably crash the feed like they did last month when he hit up that world-first new release Rogs of the Great Plains expansion pack dungeon.

“It’s Thursday night, kiddies, and you know what that means,” Drake said, giving his polearm a twirl. “Karma’s going solo. That’s right, nobody but you, me, and What’s-His-Nuts, the bloodleech guy. Ishri.”

He paused at the mouth of an open room. Inside a trio of low-level [Face Suckers] were waiting for a player to come in and draw their aggro.

“Looks like we’ve got mobs up ahead. Nothing too big yet. What’d’ya say we just wade right in there and—”

The Live Call ping sounded in his ear and a little thumbnail of Darren’s face appeared in the upper right corner of Drake’s vision along with the tag [Bro_Fo]. The smile froze on Drake’s face. That little dickbrain! He knew Drake was livestreaming right now. He was totally trying to mooch off Bad_Karma’s viewers, again.

Darren was only two years younger than Drake, but the little wad was always copying him and following him around. He’d even followed Drake into Hearthworld and set up his whole gaming account because he couldn’t be bothered to find a personality of his own.

He should hang up on Darren and teach him a hard lesson. But... on the other hand... if Darren had found something really, supremely cool or rare, Bad_Karma’s viewers would go apeshit over that. He really should check just to rule it out.

Drake selected the thumbnail, and it jumped up to cover half his screen.

“What’s up, you crazy Bro_Fo?” he asked with false good cheer.

But Darren wasn’t tricked out in his coolest gear and ready for his closeup. He was scowling into the camera in some half-lit stone room, arms crossed over a Threadbare Shirt.

“Dude, I got jumped by that a-hole from your guild, PwnrBwner, and some jerk Troll named Roark the Griefer who says he fought you in the arena yesterday. These assholes are working together apparently. I would’ve killed ’em both, but they snuck up behind me, took out my party, and locked me into this weird respawn-binding necklace.” Darren thumbed a metal band sitting just under his angled Adam’s apple. “So, I guess this is a hostage situation.”

Down in the viewer corner of the HUD, the numbers were spinning like crazy. Word must be spreading that Bad_Karma’s little bro had gotten himself kidnapped.

Drake squinted into his own camera. “What do they want?”

“This Troll is the one who died like a little bitch when you laid the smackdown on him, remember?”

“Yeah.”

From somewhere off camera, Drake heard a grating laugh. “You did die like a little bitch. I saw the replay footage over on the Highlights board.”

“Get stuffed, mate,” an accented voice replied.

Onscreen, Darren said, “He wants a rematch with you. One on one. And he wants you to stream it for everyone to see. They said if you don’t come face him, they’ll start griefing my main, and I can’t get away because of this stupid freaking bind necklace—it’s some kinda bullshit mod thing, I guess.” That whine that drove Drake crazy was starting to creep into his brother’s voice. “So you coming or what?”

As soon as Darren asked, Drake’s viewer numbers slowed to a crawl. They stopped right at 999,999.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Drake said under his breath. It was like they were waiting for him to answer. In his private mode, he flashed over to the H-boards real quick. The whole place was lit up with posts like “KARMA VS GRIEFER ROUND 2 ZOMGGGG!!!!” and “Get around @Bad_Karma’s livestream rtfn! He’s going after the modder!”

This could put him through the roof on followers. And truth be told, he was more than a little cheesed off that somebody would have the balls to go after his little brother—the little brother of the best player on the whole freaking server. It was like... disrespectful or some crap.

“Karma?” Darren whined.

“Yeah,” Drake said, glaring. “Yeah, bro, I’m coming. You tell that Troll to listen up. Can you hear me, Griefer?” He pointed his finger at where he thought the middle of the camera was for maximum dramatic effect. “You best beware, buddy-boy, because in Hearthworld, Karma ain’t a bitch. In Hearthworld, you’re Karma’s bitch.”

Home Field Advantage

ROARK FINISHED INSCRIBING the last Curse Chain rune onto the walls of the citadel’s second floor, accepted it, then stood back to admire his handiwork. Rings of the sharp, stilted lettering circled the room, nearly invisible to the naked eye, ready to be activated. The lines of runic script were everywhere throughout the level: engraved into pillars, scrawled across the walls, even encircling the entire perimeter of the second level.

And those weren’t the only changes. The whole floor had undergone a total transformation in the past eight hours. Gone were the open lava pits and the hanging cages, along with the torture tables and Blackthorn coffins. What remained was a sleek labyrinth of stone hallways, punctuated by hidden hallways, secret traps, and even more teleportation plates. All of which Bad_Karma would have the pleasure of experiencing in short order.

Even with the bevy of deadly changes, Roark wasn’t sure it would be enough.

He turned and leaned nonchalantly against a stone column as wide as a tree trunk, his gaze locked on the portal plate near the far wall.

Not an easy feat with the wired energy running up and down his limbs. If Bro_Fo’s furious ranting about how they were all “dead meat” could be believed, then any minute now his elder brother Bad_Karma would step across the new transport plate Roark had installed on the citadel’s threshold only to be redirected here, to the second floor, which was currently devoid of all life save for himself. He crossed his arms, then propped one foot against the pillar like Zyra often did. After a moment, he decided such a pose wasn’t for men and returned his foot to the floor. He took a deep breath and blew it out.

Everything was in place. There was nothing to do but wait. And think about all the ways his plan could go wrong.

Roark had embedded layers upon layers upon layers of curses into the foundation of the second floor, but because Curse Chains didn’t play nicely together, he hadn’t been able to jam them all together in one neat little runic script. And because Curse Chains further had a certain radius of effect, he’d had to place each new layer with pinpoint precision so the effects of one Curse Chain wouldn’t trigger the others—causing an explosion that would surely kill Roark, though maybe not Bad_Karma.

As a result, Roark would be forced to lead Bad_Karma on a merry chase throughout the floor, activating each Curse Chain in passing, until the hero was finally weak enough for his final surprise to work.

If Bad_Karma managed to kill him any time before the Curse Chains he’d laid out were active, it would negate all the work he’d done, and he seriously doubted he would be able to lure the hero into another trap if this one failed. Bad_Karma was powerful, and his power made him careless, but it wouldn’t make him stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice.

Roark shifted feet and took another deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. He didn’t have to kill the hero by force of arms, he reminded himself. This time would be different; he just had to survive long enough to let his dungeon do the brunt of the heavy lifting. If he could manage that much before Bad_Karma killed him, then he would succeed.

The flare of blue light from the portal plate sent Roark’s heart thundering in his chest. He pasted a self-satisfied smirk on his lips and faced the incoming hero.

The level 50 Ascended Blood Sentinel appeared on the portal plate, Lifeblood Billhooked Polearm in hand, his face a mask of confusion.

“What. The. Balls?” Bad_Karma looked around the radically different floor plan. “Bro_Fo? Where you at?”

“By now, I’d say he’s somewhere between an aerial battle over a volcano and a bustling city marketplace with a warning that he’s about to respawn.” Roark pushed off the column, slapping his hand against a bloody red rune—the prime activator—setting off the script around the perimeter of the floor. A lethal containment ward that would prevent teleporting outside of the dungeon. One down.

“You again?” The Blood Sentinel’s confusion twisted into a snarl.

“I did specify that it would be a one-on-one duel,” Roark said, pulling out a cursed head.

Bad_Karma glanced down at it. The head had come from one of the female heroes from Bro_Fo’s party that Zyra had beheaded, as by now all the Trolls who didn’t support him had either left the citadel or been killed. The long red hair dangled down past Roark’s hand.

“All right, psycho,” the Ascended Blood Sentinel said. “I guess now’s as good a time to kill you as any.” He looked down and to the right as if he was checking something. “Hope you like humiliation, ’cause you’re about to get your ass beat to the tune of one point five million viewers.”

“Is it true that you won’t respawn?” Roark asked casually, arching an eyebrow. “I’ve heard rumors that one kill will end you forever.”

Bad_Karma threw his arms open. “Try it. I’ll give you a free shot.”

With a shrug, Roark pulled the earring from the redhead’s ear and lobbed it at Bad_Karma.

The hero caught it one-handed. It detonated in his gauntleted fist in a blast of fire and bony shrapnel. Shards of the skull embedded in the wall around him. Only a quick Infernal shield saved Roark from being peppered.

The red in Bad_Karma’s Health bar barely twitched.

“Dude,” the Blood Sentinel said, stalking forward. “I’m freaking invincible. Literally nothing you can do will kill me.”

Roark grinned. “You’re basically invincible now—let’s revisit that in ten minutes or so.” He slapped his hand on an invisible pressure plate set into the wall behind him, triggering the first in a long series of traps. “I only survived this long by cheating, mate, and I don’t intend to stop now.”

The grating sound of stone on stone filled the air as a series of panels lining the walls flipped open, unleashing a hail of crossbow bolts. The firing mechanisms weren’t enchanted, nor were the bolts themselves, ensuring they had the best possible chance of landing a clean hit. A barrage of bolts peppered Bad_Karma from either side, many ricocheting harmlessly off his dark crimson armor. Not all of them fell uselessly away, however. With the sheer volume of arrows in the air, some were bound to land critical hits, and so they did—punching through the armor in places and jamming into unprotected joints.

Bad_Karma barely slowed down. He swept his free hand down his chest like a man sweeping away crumbs after a meal and broke the shafts off.

“Bro, I don’t know who you think you are, but a couple of bolts aren’t gonna put me down,” he sneered. “Especially cheap-ass bolts without any effects.”

Roark slowly backpedaled, watching as Karma’s life bar flickered above his head. The hero hadn’t lost a sliver of Health. If anything, the minimal damage Roark’s first severed head had dealt disappeared, bringing the hero back to full life. Perfect.

“Oh, there was an effect, mate.” He held up one of the arrows, the tip gleaming with a light veneer of red. “A Health potion, made with a few curious ingredients.” He pulled another head from his Inventory, this one an elf with long white hair and glazed-over eyes. He pulled the cursed earring and hurled the head underhanded, sure that Karma would catch it just as he had before.

A man’s cockiness could be exploited to great effect, as Roark had learned many times firsthand.

“You already tried this move, loser,” Karma said, catching the head and rolling his blood-rimmed eyes. “How ’bout you Git Gud and stop pulling the same lame tricks?”

Before Roark could respond, the head exploded. This time instead of releasing an eruption of fire and shrapnel, toxic green gas billowed out in a cloud. Above Karma’s head, his filigreed Health vial flickered and turned green, perhaps for the first time in the hero’s life.

Roark grinned with satisfaction. The Health potion on the bolts had been laced with Clotwart, courtesy of Zyra. Not enough to allow something like contact poison to kill the Ascended Blood Sentinel in an instant, but enough to reduce his immunity from 100%. The potion-induced weakness wouldn’t last for long, perhaps ten minutes at most, but if Roark couldn’t finish this within ten minutes, odds were high that he’d already be dead.

Bad_Karma staggered for a moment, reeling uncertainly.

“What the fuck?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused. “How did you even...” He trailed off, clearly examining the strange status effect. There were potions that could remove an effect like that, but thanks to Randy, Roark knew the man didn’t have any such potion in his Inventory. Why would he? Who would carry a potion for a disease they thought they were immune to?

“If you can defeat me, I’ll tell you,” Roark taunted. “Unless you’re afraid to see what I can really do.” He cast a level 1 Hazy Smoke Spell to obscure his movements, then wheeled around and darted down a narrow hall, only a few feet long.

“I’m gonna make you eat your own asshole,” Bad_Karma called, heavy footfalls following as he charged into the smoke. The fool never saw the metal plate across the threshold of the short hallway. There was a flash of opalescent light as the hero disappeared, carried to a small room deeper in the dungeon.

Roark stamped his foot on a smaller one-off teleportation disk on the floor; the smell of ozone filled his nose as the world shimmered and distorted. He reappeared a second later in the same room as his victim, though he’d arrived in a very different location inside the cramped space. Roark stood on a narrow stone walkway running along the right-hand wall, which connected back to the main corridor that snaked its way through the heart of the second level. Bad_Karma, however, had been unceremoniously dumped into a pool of burbling green acid, whiffs of white steam curling up from the roiling concoction.

According to Randy, Blood Sentinels had a particular weakness to acid-based attacks, which was precisely why Bad_Karma was waist deep in a pool of the deadliest corrosive Roark could find.

“You little ass-nugget, come and fight me fair and square!” the hero hollered, trudging toward the edge of the pit, pulling himself along with massive arms while acid sizzled, popped, and chewed at his armor and exposed flesh.

Roark laughed.

“Not a chance, mate.” With a muttered word and a flick of his wrist, he activated a rune-engraved metal plate next to the door. The plates were built from solid silver and had a Flawless Pearl the size of a chicken’s egg—a beautiful blue stone, shining with oil-slick translucent colors—embedded in the center. Power rushed out from his palm, filling the plate with a buzzing blue-white light. Identical plates, one affixed to each wall, and another, larger plate on the ceiling burst to life with magical power. These particular plates had no active effect, rather they had a very specific purpose: dramatically amplifying the effects of any given spell cast in the AoE while the plates were active.

Crafting them had been beyond tricky and prohibitively expensive, but the effect would be worth it.

While Bad_Karma swore and struggled his way toward the edge of the sucking acid pit, Roark summoned his Initiate’s Spell Book above his left hand and cast a fairly standard Slow spell.

[Selected target is Slowed! Movement speed reduced by 45% for 30 seconds.]

The magick exploded from Roark’s outthrust right palm, a globe of white light that slammed into Karma like a feather pillow. But the second the spell hit, the plates arrayed around the small room erupted in blinding light. Roark squinted and shielded his eyes with his free hand. The light died a second later, the plates becoming inert and lifeless—they were good for only a single use, but the effort had still been worth it. He received a notification:

[Spell Amplifier! Selected target is Slowed! Movement speed reduced by 85% for 12 minutes.]

Among the other things Randy had told him, Roark had learned that Bad_Karma had a ridiculously high movement rate bonus. Though this Slow spell wouldn’t drop him to the level of a normal player, it would go a long way toward hobbling one of the hero’s biggest advantages.

And now was the time to exploit just such an advantage.

Roark slapped yet another plate on the wall, this one positioned beside the first, which was now dull and lifeless. The new plate burst to life, and its brothers burned with blue life all around the room. Yes, not one set of spell-boosting plates, but two. Overkill was a term Roark had recently learned from PwnrBwner, and he felt it suited the situation well.

He pulled an unenchanted Peerless Slender Rapier of plain steel from his hip and padded forward along the walkway, gaining the measure—guadagnare la misura, entrare in misura—then lunging in fast and deadly, stoccata, driving the tip of his blade between the creases of Bad_Karma’s left pauldron from above. The hero moved to slap the thrust away, but a moment too slow. The blade slipped through the heavy plates and bit into yielding flesh below.

The instant his sword penetrated, Roark triggered his second spell, this one granted by his Hexorcist Class: Hex-Touch. Though Bad_Karma was at a far higher level, his skill points were heavily distributed in favor of Strength and Constitution, so his Intelligence was lower than Roark’s.

The hero’s arm batted Roark’s aside, tearing the rapier from his shoulder. At the contact, the spell took hold like an iron fist.

Roark had slotted the Hex-Touch in a fourth-level spell slot, extending the duration of the spell to eight hours. He focused on the attribute he wished to curse—Constitution—as stomach-churning power, like raw sewage, rushed out through his knuckles, down his sword, and into the Ascended Blood Sentinel’s body. A notice followed as soon as the spell landed.

[Spell Amplifier! Selected target is Cursed! Constitution Stat reduced by 60 Points for 12 hours.]

Roark almost cackled as he pulled his sword free and backpedaled out of the room.

Furious, Bad_Karma howled and cursed, finally pulling himself free from the burbling acid pit that had claimed a fair bit of his overall Health. Between Roark’s attacks, the poison working through Karma’s system, and the acid pit, Roark had managed to whittle down a fifth of the hero’s substantial Health bar. Roark lingered at the door, dropping to a knee with an engraver’s awl in hand. On a square of stone just inside the room was a mostly finished Curse-Chain—one that had proven to be particularly deadly, though effective. With a few quick marks, a notice appeared.

[Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: Sucking Miasma of Death? Yes/No?

Note: There is no cost to attempt to invent Curse Chains, however not all combinations of runes and curses play nicely together. Success depends upon compatibility of runes and curses used and will not be revealed before the attempt to invent a Curse Chain is accepted. Failure comes with steep consequences.

Please inscribe responsibly.]

Roark accepted, knowing exactly what would follow.

[Your invention of Sucking Miasma of Death has failed! Goodbye!]

The notice disappeared, immediately replaced by a cloud of toxic yellow fog. The fog churned and bubbled, moving at many times the speed normal fog would waft, but unlike the first time—when this very same spell had killed him in such a grisly fashion—Roark was ready. He slipped a transport gauntlet on over his right hand, instantly whisked away from the death-trap room and into the next chamber in his elaborate cogwork death machine.

This room looked much the same as a the first, a rectangular space with one hallway leading away at the far end. Directly in the center of the room, however, was a large statue that resembled none other than Kaz the Gourmet. The statue was solid stone, a gray so dark it was nearly black. Roark broke into a steady trot, positioning himself behind the stone Kaz’s giant back, holding his breath as he waited for what would come next. Secretly, he was praying the Sucking Miasma of Death curse would kill Bad_Karma just as it had killed Roark what felt like a lifetime ago.

But a second later there was a flash of light, and the hero appeared in the room, alive—though he looked far worse for the wear. His armor was heavily scorched, even cracked in places, and steam rose off him in waves. His overall Health had dropped by a full quarter, putting him down around seventy-five percent. Not even close to death, but far more damage than Roark had managed to do doing their time in the arena together, and Roark hadn’t suffered a single point of damage yet.

“You keep running, dickweed,” Bad_Karma growled, clearly no longer having fun. “Your traps are gonna run out eventually. And when there’s no place left for you to run, I’m gonna hack you into pieces and camp this stupid dungeon until you give up on the server.”

“Best of luck,” Roark said, leaning out from behind the Kaz statue. “Let me know how that goes. In the meantime...”

There was an audible click as Karma stepped on a pressure plate running the length of the floor. The Kaz statue’s mouth unhinged and dropped open, belching out a column of blue flame that burned like the surface of the sun and smelled curiously of bacon.

Bad_Karma flicked up a bloody shield to defend himself against the devastating attack; he was so distracted, however, that he didn’t even see the two gleaming hammers, far larger than even Kaz could’ve handled, swing down from the ceiling. They hit with a clang, sandwiching the hero in between their blunt faces, then promptly exploded, sending fire and shrapnel spinning through the room.

Roark, thankfully, was protected by the enormous statue in front of him.

“I’M GONNA MURDER YOUR BITCH ASS!” Bad_Karma hollered at the top of his lungs, miraculously still alive.

Roark just smiled and slipped from the room.

The Hero Falls

SO IT WENT FOR THE next several minutes—though the time seemed to stretch and drag, oddly distorted by the intensity of the experience—Roark leading Bad_Karma from room to room, hallway to hallway, trap to trap. Acid-tipped darts in one section, poison-laced spike pits in others. There were deadfalls, razor-sharp pendulum axes, exploding heads, and of course Curses! All of the Curses!, Curse Chains, and Hexes Roark could possibly muster, each one designed not only to chip away at Bad_Karma’s Health, but more importantly to eat away each and every one of the hero’s natural advantages.

A Curse-Chain of Withered Adroitness, crafted from a gold plate studded with jade and amethyst stones: -13% Dexterity.

A Hex of the Unholy Lich, robbing Bad_Karma of the beneficial effects from his Blood of the Damned, Necrotic Persistence, and Necropolis Commander passive abilities.

Curse! of the Blunted Blade, which whittled down both his attack speed and overall attack power.

Roark had thrown everything he had on this plan, sparing no possible expense. He’d spent all of the floor’s points and had used every crafting ingredient the dungeon had available, plus a fair number of items Randy had donated to the cause. The type of curses he’d created were unparalleled in their effectiveness, but they hadn’t come cheap. Roark didn’t have an ingot left to his name, and every precious stone was gone. Lapis lazuli, ruby, jade, amethyst, diamond, opal, topaz, and pearl—all used. Not so much as a blemished stone lined the shelves of his Enchanter’s vault.

Most of these items couldn’t be retrieved or reused, which was a true shame. But if it allowed him to kill Bad_Karma, broker the alliance with the other dungeons, and take down Lowen, Roark would spend it all over again in a heartbeat.

Roark stepped across the final teleportation plate, which teleported him into a boxy space at the very pinnacle of the fatal warren of rooms and passages. The room appeared to be completely closed off, no way in or out, though there was actually a small hidden passageway in the wall immediately behind him. It was impossible to find unless one knew it was there or was a master rogue.

Bad_Karma didn’t know, and he was a far cry from a fleet-fingered sneak thief.

Other than that, the room was rather plain. No columns, no pits, no obvious traps. Though every inch of the walls and ceiling were covered with hair-fine containment script and rune-etched plates, in many ways the humble room looked like the crypts and tombs littered about Hearthworld. Fitting, since one way or another, someone would die there today.

Roark flexed his fists and braced himself. This was easily the most dangerous part of the plan. The runes in this room were the most complicated of the lot and needed to be set off in a precise order. One misstep and he ran the risk of killing himself without springing the true trap at all.

The trick would be setting them off perfectly while staying alive. In such a small, confined space, Bad_Karma could easily kill him.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself for what was to come, and drew his steel rapier, dropping into a terza guard, a knuckle down position that offered great flexibility whether on the attack or defense.

Light flashed and Bad_Karma materialized before Roark, his face a twisted mask of hate, his billhook drawn and ready to kill. The Blood Sentinel took a quick scan of the room, clearly wary of whatever fresh hell this place contained, then smiled as he realized the truth: there was nowhere here for Roark to run. This was it.

“End of the line, you modding piece of shit.” Bad _Karma circled left as he swung his weapon in deadly looping arcs.

“It certainly is for one of us,” Roark returned grimly. He followed the Ascended Blood Sentinel’s lead, circling slowly.

“Gotta admit, you gave me a pretty good show,” Bad Karma said. “Maybe I should thank you. My numbers are through the roof, but Doctor Karma’s tired of playing around. It’s time for your one-shot. Say goodnight to my fans, loser.”

“Goodnight,” Roark snapped, shooting in, rapier lashing out, left to right in a horizontal tondo.

Bad_Karma rushed forward, bloodred billhook meeting Roark’s forged steel with a clang that resounded off the walls.

Even with all of the Curses! arrayed against him, Bad_Karma still hit like a ballista. Roark barely turned the hooked blade, then dove right, narrowly avoiding another vicious swipe. He came up on his feet, but instead of turning to face the hero, he spun on his heel and bolted for the far wall, triggering the first part of his trap.

Bad_Karma’s billhook snagged his ankle as he ran, carving a terrible gash into his leg. He tripped and stumbled, shoulder ramming into a simple steel plate.

The runes on the ceiling and floor flared to brilliant life with amethyst-colored light.

Roark whirled and ducked in, knocking aside a vicious overhand strike that nearly took the head from his shoulders. But Roark was stronger than he’d ever been, barely a sliver of his own Health had drained away, and he could feel just how weak Bad_Karma had become. He forced Karma’s polearm aside, lunged in, and drove an elbow into the hero’s face. The Ascended Blood Sentinel stumbled back, one hand coming loose from the polearm and pinwheeling as he fought to keep his balance.

Roark took the opportunity to dart across the room. One final plate sat flush with the floor, this one a disk as big around as a wagon wheel.

He dropped low, trading his Kaiken Dagger for an enchanter’s awl.

His hands flew through the motions, etching the last line of text, binding this plate to one that Griff had already placed in the depths of the Wareling Deeps, outside of Frostrime.

But he wasn’t fast enough. Just before he finished the last jot, the crimson billhook slammed into his back, pushing through Roark’s gut and pinning him to the floor. A spike of pain ripped through his body, his limbs spasming like mad as Bad_Karma’s magic went to work, siphoning his blood away, feeding it to the Ascended Blood Sentinel.

“So close,” Bad_Karma said, leaning over, his face hanging upside down above Roark’s, clearly savoring in his inevitable victory. “Any last words you want to want to share”—he tapped at the edge of his eye, perhaps indicating those “viewers” he’d mentioned—“before I take your head off and turn it into a trophy?”

“Yes,” Roark croaked, blood leaking from his lips as his HP dropped faster and faster, down to fifty percent now. “Never gloat.” Pushing past the agony, Roark slashed the awl across the plate, finishing the final mark and accepting the Curse Chain before Bad_Karma could stop him.

A new set of glowing runes exploded to life along the walls, these pulsing with a sea-foam green glow. There was a crack, and then icy salt water gushed in from the ceiling and walls as a portal opened to the bottom of Frostrime’s bay.

The surge of seawater blasted Bad_Karma from his feet, slamming him into the far wall. The hero somehow managed to keep hold of his weapon, tearing the hooked blade free from Roark’s gut in the process. Roark was down to thirty percent Health, but his filigreed vial was no longer plummeting like a stone.

With a groan, Roark pushed himself up, struggling to regain his feet under the onslaught of water. Across the small room, Bad_Karma was having an equally hard time standing under the deluge.

Squinting through the water, Bad_Karma stabbed his billhook at Roark. Lava flowed through Roark’s veins as the attack tried to boil his blood and failed.

Roark threw back his head and laughed. “You’re a bit of a one-act play, aren’t you?”

With a roar, the Ascended Blood Sentinel rushed Roark, charging through the icy water, arms and legs pumping as he fought through the surge. The water was churning around their waists and slowing Roark’s movements. His curses had taken a toll on Bad_Karma, but still, the hero was ungodly fast. The Ascended Blood Sentinel cut through the waters like a knife, throwing rooster tails of spray up on either side.

Roark readied his rapier and pulled free his Kaiken Dagger, adding the short blade to his off hand as he set himself for the coming onslaught. He was so close to victory now. Just a little longer and it would be too late for Bad_Karma.

Bad_Karma swept his billhook at Roark’s throat, but Roark pulled his body out of line at the last moment and hit the hero with an Off-hand Combo. His spin was slowed by the rushing water quickly rising past his chest, but the first strike made contact. A bright red line appeared across Bad_Karma’s cheek, but his Health bar barely moved.

The hero whipped his billhook around faster than Roark could backpedal, slashing the blade in a downward diagonal, laying open Roark’s jaw and biting into his collarbone with a sickening crunch. Troll blood poured into the icy spray as it crept up to his throat. Over half of the red liquid remaining in Roark’s filigreed Health vial drained away from the single hit. Down to a mere fifteen percent—just a single strike or two away from death.

But now even Bad_Karma was struggling to move in the rising waters. While the hero fought to move his billhook and arms in the cast for what would undoubtedly be the Summoned Blood Golem spell, Roark pulled an Absolute Health potion from his Inventory and downed the sickly strawberry-wine-flavored brew. Brought to you by Coca-Cola! Thanks for drinking! His Health vial refilled to the top just a moment before blinding pain pierced his chest. Bad_Karma had speared him through with the billhook once again.

It hurt like seven hells going in and double that when the Ascended Blood Sentinel ripped it back out. But the water had risen over their heads, leaving them both afloat in the little cell.

Roark ducked under, reaching for another Health potion.

[Action failed! You cannot drink while underwater.]

He would have to surface if he wanted to heal. Whatever Bad_Karma had torn out of him on the end of that polearm must have been vital—he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. But that didn’t matter. He didn’t have to fight. The water was about to take care of the Ascended Blood Sentinel for him.

He used his wings and one arm to pull his head up out of the water, coming up halfway across the crypt from Bad_Karma. The hero looked on the verge of panic, struggling to keep his face above water as he fought against the heavy plate mail weighing him down.

“What the fuck did you do to me!” Bad_Karma screamed. “Why won’t my Water Breathing work?” There was an edge of genuine panic underlaying his words as though he finally realized just how dire his circumstances were.

“Because that was my final curse, mate!” Roark crowed, bobbing on the far side of the room. He spat a mouthful of water out so he could add, “This whole room is cursed. Any items with the Water Breathing effect are rendered useless for five minutes—more than enough time to drown you.”

“You fucking pyscho!” the Blood Sentinel yelled, trading out his billhook for a Town Portal scroll.

“I have one for that, too,” Roark called triumphantly, treading the water with overlong arms and powerful legs. “Second to last.” Roark choked, a bit of blood trickling from his lips. “Portal magic only works into the room, not out.”

As he said it, the hero ripped the seal off the scroll. Violet light flared up, then fizzled out.

“See?” Roark said before tipping back the Absolute Health potion. The chunk of missing flesh in his chest repaired itself with a painful but fast knitting sensation, and feeling returned to his legs. He gave his arm and wings a rest and kicked to stay afloat for the final few minutes of Bad_Karma’s life.

“You’re crazy!” Bad_Karma pressed his face against the ceiling, trying to stay within the air bubble until the very last of it was consumed by the water. “You’re going to drown in here, too!”

Roark chuckled. “Afraid not, mate.” Still kicking furiously, he pulled out his grimoire, fighting to keep the pages in the rapidly diminishing air. “One last trick.”

He cast his final spell, a Transmutation cantrip he’d picked up just a few hours ago. As the words of the incantation left his mouth, his legs twisted and shifted, forming into a powerful tail capped by a broad fin that glimmered with blue-green scales. His arms thinned out, webbing sprouting up between his fingers while his wings vanished and gill slits bloomed on either side of his throat like strange flowers.

His transformation to a selkie took less than a few seconds.

Selkies didn’t have the most versatile range of transformations—basically they could take the shape of a human or revert into their natural monster form. No more, no less. But since selkies could breathe underwater without any form of enchantment, they were perfect for this last leg of combat.

A moment later, the icy water closed over their heads. Roark let himself drift, weightless. It was actually quite relaxing underwater when one didn’t need to surface for air. He had wondered what it would feel like to breathe underwater while he hunted down the selkie off the coast of Epsor Loch—whether it would be similar to when water went up your nose while swimming—but the sensation was more like breathing in a damp spring fog. Cool, wet, even refreshing.

Across the crypt, Bad_Karma was clawing at the ceiling. His cheeks and chest were puffed out, holding in his final breath. Overhead, the Ascended Blood Sentinel’s Health bar flashed and shook as if it were the creature that needed to breathe. With every second, another little slice of red was carved away.

When Bad_Karma glanced his way, Roark smiled and waved a webbed hand at the hero. Then he took an exaggerated breath and let it out. Little currents disturbed the water in front of his face, but they were lost in the rushing swirl of the water still pouring into the crypt. Bad_Karma’s face twisted with hatred, but he turned back to his attempts to escape. Quickly realizing the futility of trying to scratch his way out of this watery grave with his gauntleted hands, the hero pulled his polearm and dug the billhook into the space between stones, trying to pry one free.

Roark’s brows rose. He hadn’t considered that possibility. But this was why Bad_Karma was the top hero in Hearthworld. He was nowhere near as stupid as the rest of them.

Roark pulled his dagger once more as he swam over to the Ascended Blood Sentinel. He didn’t know what would happen if Bad_Karma got a stone loose in the ceiling—whether his Curse Chain would be destroyed as the surface it was inscribed in was destroyed or the water would gush out the top, bursting through the weakened point—but he had seen Kaz nearly punch a hole through a wall before, and he couldn’t take the chance this close to victory. Already the Health bar over Bad_Karma’s head had dropped below fifty percent. He just had to keep the hero there for another thirty seconds...

But as Roark swam up, Bad_Karma whirled and jabbed the billhook into Roark’s guts, tearing out a chunk of vital organs and muscle as he ripped the hooked blade back out. Underwater, Roark’s vocal cords didn’t make a sound though he felt the scream as the blade tore it from his throat. The liquid in his Health vial dropped below half once more, but he forced himself forward. Bad_Karma’s was at a quarter, even bolstered by the bit of Health he stole from Roark. Fifteen more seconds...

With the water hampering his every movement and his flagging oxygen quickly killing him, Bad_Karma’s next swipe of the billhook was clumsy and slow. But Roark wasn’t moving much faster with his guts torn out and spilling into the water. The billhook tagged him just above the left hip, stealing a much smaller fraction of his Health this time. Roark’s filigreed vial dropped by a handful, no more.

A flurry of bubbles escaped Bad_Karma’s mouth and nose as he exhaled for his last time in Hearthworld. Less than a tenth of the red bar over his head remained. It was flashing out a critical warning. The Ascended Blood Sentinel cocked back his billhook for a final plunge through Roark’s heart.

But just before the hero did, the last of his Health bar expired. Bad_Karma’s eyes rolled back in his head, his body going limp. Slowly, dreamily, the dark crimson plate mail dragged his corpse to the floor of the room like an anchor.

Aching, cold, exhausted, and full of holes bleeding little clouds of selkie green into the icy seawater, Roark kicked his way down to the corpse and removed the helmet. He got a fistful of Bad_Karma’s hair and started sawing his way through the hero’s neck with his Kaiken Dagger. It was no easy task, removing a head underwater, but eventually he cut through the last string of muscle holding it to the body.

Prize in hand, Roark swam to the portal plate that had transported Bad_Karma into the crypt. With his free hand, he flipped it over. Another Curse Chain was inscribed on the back. Not a destination definition, but a transport chain connected to a portal plate in the Dungeon Lord’s throne room. This one affected only Jotnars level 36 and above.

The Grand Prize

ROARK HAD HOPED TO arrive in the throne room with a little more ceremony, but with the entrails spilling out of his gut and the rush of seawater that was transported through the portal along with him, he spilled out onto the floor like a fish from an overturned barrel. And since he was still in selkie form, the comparison was even more apt. Reversing the Transmutation magick, Roark quickly found himself back in his own shape, though covered from head to toe in frigid water, his armor smeared with blood and guts. He floundered to his feet, water sheeting from his badly damaged wings.

A scaly mass of shell and claws sprinted across the floor and skidded to a stop at Roark’s side, for once not taking him to the ground. Roark grabbed onto one of Mac’s larger shell spikes with his free hand to hold himself up. Bloody hells, he needed a Health potion.

A throat cleared impatiently. Thirteen Infernal Dungeon Lords—the original seven had invited friends, it seemed—lounged on the multitude of cushions once occupied by the Troll High Court, staring at Roark.

“The head of Bad_Karma, as promised,” he choked out.

Roark tossed the head to Shess the Shrewd, wincing at the pull of his torn abdominal muscles even though his Rapid Regeneration was already working desperately to repair the damage. The snake woman caught it easily, inspecting the thing as if to make certain it was no trap. Maybe she’d heard about his cursed heads. Hells, since Bad_Karma hadn’t been able to shut his mouth about viewers, it was possible she’d even seen the fight firsthand.

“It isss him,” she hissed, turning to the other Dungeon Lords. “Sssee for yourssselvesss.”

While the head was being passed around for verification, an Absolute Health potion appeared in Roark’s wavering vision.

“Drink this before you fall over, Dungeon Lord,” Zyra whispered, her voice both pleased and teasing.

He accepted the brew gladly and downed it, so grateful he hardly grimaced at the taste. His hanging guts all pulled themselves back into their proper positions, and the hard muscles of his stomach laced themselves up tight. He sighed with relief as the pain disappeared and his filigreed Health vial topped off.

“Thanks,” he told the hooded Reaver.

But she was stepping away from him like a servant being dismissed. He started to move toward her, but Mac began to growl at something behind him.

A deep, raw voice like river stones rasping over one another spoke up.

“Roark the Griefer, Lord of the Troll Nation,” Beryl King the Severe intoned, his crystal joints grinding as he held up the head of Bad_Karma. “On this day, we the Infernal Seven hereby swear to fight alongside you as allies.” He swept one crystal hand at Gevaudan the Terrible, Ishri the Cunning, Shess the Shrewd, Rohibim the Deceiver, and Drokara the Gullet, all of whom were nodding. Ko the faceless had no face to nod, but she projected a feeling of agreement into Roark’s mind. The Beryl King turned and indicated the unknown Dungeon Lords, a variety of creatures that looked like they’d crawled out of the depths of someone’s worst nightmare vault. “We bring many mighty associates to join in your war as well. Will you have them?”

“Of course,” Roark said, patting Mac’s scaly head to let him know this wasn’t an enemy. “As long as they follow the laws of the Troll Nation and agree to aid us in battle, they’re welcome to join.”

[Congratulations! You have completed the quest Karma’s Head! You have made an alliance with the Seven Dungeon Lords, gained 70,000 Experience, and received the Eternal Blessing of the Seven!

To Maintain the Alliance: Allow the subjects of the Seven Dungeon Lords to shop, trade, train, and dine at the Troll Nation Marketplace.

To Break the Alliance: Bar the subjects of the Seven Dungeon Lords from the Troll Nation Marketplace, or challenge one of the Seven for Dungeon Lord of their native dungeon.]

As Roark closed his mystic grimoire on this page, a scrap of parchment appeared, this one with a much shorter note.

[You have received the Eternal Blessing of the Seven! Recruit willing monsters from any aligned dungeon, adding them to your permeant roster.

Congratulations! You have leveled up your Troll Leadership Skill to level 5! Even other Dungeon Lords recognize your authority and unparalleled leadership! Infernal monsters across Hearthworld hold you in the highest regard and will flock to your cause!]

And as he put that scrap of parchment aside, an ascending chime rang through the throne room and golden light shined from his skin.

LEVEL UP!

Not wanting to spend too much time with his face in his mystic grimoire while the rest of the Dungeon Lords were waiting on him, Roark quickly glanced over his character page.

╠═╦╬╧╪

╠═╦╬╧╪

ALONG WITH NOT ONE but two new levels, Roark had also received new spell slots—including, finally, his first level 9. His heart raced, pumping burning blood through his body, as he realized he could write a portal spell back to Traisbin right then. The image of Marek putting Talise on his hip and walking out of the gates of the von Graf Manor played through his mind like a snatch of haunting melody he couldn’t shake. He could go back tonight—if the portal didn’t kill him horribly—and find out the truth about what had happened. He could finally have his revenge on the Tyrant King for everything the bastard had taken.

Except, he realized, it would be a pointless endeavor while Lowen was still out there. Roark could jump back and forth until his luck ran out with portals, but that horse’s ass would thwart his every attempt to kill Marek. It was the reason the Tyrant King kept him around. Besides, Roark couldn’t leave the Cruel Citadel unprotected—Lowen would attack sooner or later, and if he found Roark gone, there was every chance he would use Roark’s friends as leverage to get the World Stone Pendant. And truthfully, if Zyra or Kaz was in Lowen’s hands, Roark wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay away.

No, the only way past Lowen was through him. Roark would have to kill the mage and secure Hearthworld against further invasion before he could take down Marek Konig Ustar.

An impatient throat clear snapped Roark’s attention back to the Keep’s throne room. He would have to assign the points later, when he wasn’t entertaining thirteen Infernal Dungeon Lords who wanted to pledge their allegiance to him.

He closed his mystic grimoire, and one by one, he accepted the pledges of each of the Dungeon Lords in the throne room, blessing them with his Lesser Vassal Authority, ensuring they would be well and truly bound to his cause. Mac stayed at his side, the dutiful guard dog protecting his master until he was certain none of the new arrivals would try to attack. Though most of them barely glanced at the Young Turtle Dragon before continuing with their pledges, Roark let the bloodthirsty little beast think it was him they were afraid of.

When the oaths of fealty were finished, the throne room’s doors opened and a Knight Thursr in a white chef’s toque appeared.

“The celebration feast for Roark the Griefer’s victory is now served in the Troll Nation Inn and Café, if the Dungeon Lords would like to retire to its common room.” Kaz caught Roark’s gaze and grinned. “The meal features the newest discovery of the Troll Gourmet and that greatest of all savory meats: bacon.”

Mac chirped gleefully at the word bacon, then looked up at Roark, tail slapping against his shell with enthusiasm.

Roark chuckled. “Let’s go, mate.”

The Young Turtle Dragon let out a joyful bark and bounded toward the door, nearly knocking Kaz off his feet.

The Mighty Gourmet huffed indignantly, then raised his chin and proceeded to lead the way out of the Keep and across the fifth floor, his white hat a beacon to the following Dungeon Lords. There was much excitement among the ones who had tasted food before, and many of the Seven spent the walk to the Troll Nation Marketplace explaining to their new associates about eating. Ko the Faceless in particular seemed overjoyed, her scythe-like mantid hands scraping over one another eagerly as she projected food-related emotions to the new Dungeon Lords.

Roark hung back, letting the lot of them draw ahead a good distance before following. Though he’d tried to push it back, thoughts of his eventual return to Traisbin kept churning to the surface of his mind.

“Look, dude”—PwnrBwner_OG fell in beside him, dragging his focus back to the present—“you’re still a major pain in the balls for griefing me all those times, and a total dickhead, and nobody but a total tard would buy your fake pirate accent...”

“If this is your attempt at flattery, I think you’re misunderstanding the concept,” Roark said.

They stepped onto the transport plate outside the settlement walls and were instantly teleported into the outskirts of the marketplace.

PwnrBwner snorted. “What I’m trying to say is, from one gamer to another, your skills are pretty decent. Especially considering you’re not even from a place with video games. And the way you killed Karma? Pretty epic.”

“So, what’s next?” another voice asked.

Roark managed to stifle his reflex to cast an Infernal Torment, but only just, as Randy the Arboreal Herald Admin appeared at his opposite side.

“Could you give me some warning when you’re about to do that, mate?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Randy blinked owlishly.

Roark paused, surveying both heroes carefully. After a long beat, he extended his hand. “I wanted to thank you both. I know this has been difficult, but I couldn’t have accomplished any of this without you.”

“You’re damn right you couldn’t,” PwnrBwner said, shaking his hand.

Randy was a bit more gracious. “I’m happy to do it. To actually make a difference for once, I mean. I think... I think you’re doing something good, and I’m glad to be a part of it.”

“Be that as it may,” Roark continued, “you both took tremendous risks to help me, and I know there are likely going to be consequences for your actions. Betraying your guild’s founder won’t win you any favors, PwnrBwner, and Randy, going against the gods of Hearthworld themselves...” Roark shook his head in awe. “Although it’s a bit unorthodox, I want you both to know that you have a place here in the Troll Nation. And to that end, I have a gift to bestow. I’m not sure what exactly this will do to heroes, I’ve only ever tried it on Hearthworld beings, but if you would let me, I would knight you both as my Greater Vassals.”

“Greater Vassal,” PwnrBwner said, rolling the words across his tongue. “Not sure I like the sound of that. I mean, we’re like cool or whatever, but I ain’t your bitch, dude.”

“What would that entail, precisely?” Randy asked, ignoring the High Combat Cleric.

“Honestly,” Roark replied with a shrug, “I’m not sure exactly. It’s magick of the World Stone Pendant”—he pulled the amulet out from beneath his armor—“but Kaz, Zyra, Griff, Mai, even Macaroni, they are what they are in large part because they became Greater Vassals. As I said, I’m not sure what effect it will have on beings from your dimension. You both already have awareness and abilities. Maybe it will do nothing, though I wouldn’t put my money on that outcome.”

Randy dropped to a knee at once, bowing his head.

PwnrBwner remained firmly standing, arms crossed, a glower plastered on his face. But after a handful of seconds, he too nodded in agreement.

Roark placed one claw-tipped hand on each hero and focused his will, his intention. The World Stone Pendant burned ice-cold through his leathers, and tawny light flared from the stone and from beneath each of his palms. When he let go of the pair, the glowing imprint of his hand remained for several seconds before disappearing.

“Huh.” PwnrBwner stared at his until it disappeared. “Weird.”

“So, what do we do now?” Randy asked, getting to his feet. “Do we go after Lowen right away? Or do we have more prep work to do?”

They resumed their trek into the marketplace.

“We won’t go after Lowen tonight,” Roark said. “Tonight, the troops need to celebrate their victory.”

They stopped outside Kaz and Mai’s inn. As if to punctuate Roark’s claim, the chaos of the cheerful celebration inside spilled out into the street in the form of several drunken low-level Thursrs and high-level Changelings crowing a bawdy song at the top of their lungs. While the door stood open, the merry din of laughing and shouting from the common room washed over them. Inside, Roark could see Kaz and Mai making eyes at one another as they bustled around with plates of sizzling bacon. Overhead, the spiky mound of Mac’s shell traversed the ceiling of the common room while Changelings and Dungeon Lords alike tossed morsels of food up to him. Roark searched for Zyra’s dark hood and snowy curls among the throwers, but couldn’t find her.

Roark’s expression darkened along with his grim vision of the battles to come. Even with their wave of new allies, he felt certain the Troll Nation wouldn’t have much cause for revelry once the war began. Lowen would make Azibek look like a childhood bully.

“Tomorrow we’ll prepare for war,” Roark said. “It’s time Lowen fell on his blade and drowned in his own blood. And when that’s done, I intend to head back to Traisbin and bring the battle to Marek.”

“Sweet,” PwnrBwner said, smacking a gauntleted fist into his palm. “Asshole hunting season’s about to open.”

“Wow,” Randy said. “I don’t know. You might want to rephrase that. It sounds... gross.”

“Shut up, Randy.”

The Arboreal Herald muttered something under his breath.

Roark smiled. “Why don’t you enjoy the feast, gentlemen,” he cut in before a real fight could break out between the two heroes. “You earned this as much as anyone.”

“I’m already late for work,” PwnrBwner said. “Might as well go full hooky and skip tonight. You in, Randy?”

“Eat, drink, and be merry, gentlemen, for tomorrow we might be fired,” Randy said with a wry shrug.

“Whatever, weirdo. Come on.” PwnrBwner nodded at Roark. “Catch you inside, jerkbag.”

“That’s Dungeon Lord to you, Greater Vassal,” Roark said with a smirk.

PwnrBwner held up his middle finger in a way Roark sensed was supposed to offend him.

With that, the High Combat Cleric and the Arboreal Herald climbed onto the inn’s porch and made their way past the group of raucously singing Trolls to the feast inside.

A curl of inky smoke wafted over Roark’s shoulder.

“Are you going to make an appearance at the festivities, Dungeon Lord, or just stand out here and brood all night?”

Roark turned to face Zyra. “I haven’t decided yet. If I’m honest, neither sounds particularly appealing.”

The hooded Reaver ghosted up to him on silent feet.

“Then allow me to suggest a third option,” she said, taking hold of him by his rapier’s belt and pulling him closer. “Collect on your bet.”

The bottom dropped out of his stomach and his throat went dry, but he slid his arms around her waist as if he had all the confidence in the world. She leaned into him, warm and soft, her lips a breath from his. The scent of sweet, poisonous blossoms filled his nose.

“You don’t know what I want yet,” he said.

She nipped his bottom lip, then pressed a kiss to it. “I’m willing to go double or nothing with you that I can guess.”

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

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Looking for more litRPG and need it right this minute? Check out James A. Hunter’s Bestselling litRPG epic, Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm (Book 1)! Or keep reading to take a sneak peek!

***

An extinction-level asteroid is blazing toward Earth. Collision, imminent. The world is doomed, and only a select few lottery winners will be saved.

UNFORTUNATELY, JACK Mitchel—a down on his luck EMT from San Diego—isn’t one of those winners.

Still, there might be a way for him to survive the impending cataclysm: a slim chance, requiring a radical leap of faith. Through a connection at Osmark Technologies, Jack’s acquired a NexGenVR capsule and with it, a one-way ticket to the brand-new, ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online. Taking that leap of faith, though, means permanently trapping his mind in the game, killing his body in the process.

Worse, one in six die during the transition, and even if Jack beats the odds, he’ll have to navigate a fantastical world filled with vicious monsters, domineering AIs, and cutthroat players. And when Jack stumbles upon a secret conspiracy to sell off virtual real estate to the ultrawealthy—transforming V.G.O. into a new feudal dark age—the deadly creatures inhabiting Viridian Gate’s expansive dungeons will be the least of his concerns.

If Jack can’t game the system, he’s going to be trading in a quick death for a long, brutal one ...

***

ONE: Beginning of the End

I TOOK ONE LAST GLANCE around my apartment. A tiny studio flat, just under five hundred square feet, which still cost me a sizeable chunk of change every month. It didn’t help that the cost of living had skyrocketed over the past few years while my meager paycheck had remained rock steady. Which is to say, low. Being an EMT doesn’t pay what it used to, not that it’s ever really been a lucrative career field—kids flipping burgers at most fast-food joints made what I did, despite the demands of the job. Working grueling shifts. Saving lives. Watching people die.

Still, even in spite of the pay, it was good work. Fulfilling.

My little slice of paradise had a small kitchen, a nearly microscopic bathroom, and a living room that doubled as my bedroom, office, dining room, and pretty much everything else. I’m something of a minimalist, I suppose. Someone less generous might say I was poor. Everything I owned was old, worn, and just this side of broken: a dented stove, a bulky white fridge that’d certainly seen better days, a used brown sofa I’d picked up from Goodwill a couple of years ago. The couch was heavily stained, the cushions deeply creased and sagging. A full mattress in the same condition bordered the far wall, near the door to the bathroom.

The TV was nice at least—a hulking seventy-five-inch Shintaro with a nano-crystal screen and multi-zone backlighting. My VR headset, a matte black helmet with a sleek viewing screen, sat on the floor next to the massive television. I smiled looking at it. Lots of good memories.

For a moment, I stood there staring, swaying slightly on my feet. I frowned, trying to decide what to do next. As an EMT I know what shock looks like, and I had it bad, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I briefly considered going around my apartment and unplugging the appliances, just to make sure the place didn’t catch fire and burn to the ground. No point in that, though. A house fire was the least of my concerns at this point.

So instead, I shrugged numbly, readjusted my bathrobe, shuffled over to the cramped kitchen, and poured myself a cup of day-old joe, strong enough to knock teeth out.

The coffee was tepid at best, so I stuck the mug in the barely serviceable microwave, hit the auto start, and headed over to the front door. The only door. The only way in or out, save the windows, but I was four stories up, so that wasn’t a huge concern. I checked the lock for what was probably the hundredth time. Still shut nice and tight. The deadbolt was engaged, the hanging chain in place. Then, I rechecked the shoddy wooden chair I’d jammed up under the knob—in case someone decided the lock wasn’t enough of a deterrent.

That was fine, too.

The microwave sounded, beep-beep-beep, letting me know my formerly lukewarm coffee was ready to go.

I retrieved my cup, now steaming, took a few tentative sips, and headed over to the far window overlooking the street below. I didn’t open the blinds—didn’t want anyone to see my apartment was occupied, since that might mark me as a target—but instead peeked through one of the plastic slats. A quick gander. It was getting dark, and the streetlights were starting to kick on; not that the streetlights needed to be on, what with the fires raging all over the city. Sooty orange-and-yellow light littered the skyline, plumes of smoke drifting, rising, visible even against the darkening sky.

A man in a hockey mask strode by on the street below, a pump-action shotgun clutched in his hands, a bag of looted toilet paper slung across his back in a duffel bag. The strobing lights of an empty police cruiser washed over him in splashes of red and blue. Toilet paper. His prize loot is toilet paper. Maybe the world deserves to die. I shook my head, then took another sip of coffee, letting the bitter liquid wash down my throat and hit my belly with a surge of delicious warmth and caffeine.

I turned away from the window and fixed my gaze on the brand-new, state-of-the-art NexGenVR capsule—a coffin of glossy black plastic and sleek chrome. Really, it looked more like a high-tech suntanning bed, but, all things considered, it sure felt like a coffin. A host of tubes snaked away from the capsule to a hefty generator powered by a renewable hydro-cell. The capsules drew far too much power to operate on the city grid, so they needed their own private source, and that generator could keep my VR capsule up and running for a solid month. Not that I needed a month.

Seventy-two hours would do it.

I paused and ran a hand over the surface of the capsule, feeling the smooth plastic. Honestly, I was lucky to have the thing—a good friend of mine from college was a program developer at Osmark Tech, and she’d hooked me up big time. Of course, that’d been before the news about Astraea. I tapped the surface, fingers drumming out a staccato rhythm as I took another sip of coffee. Almost time. I brought the cup away and realized my hand was trembling. Yep, almost time. But not yet. I still had a little longer. Long enough to finish my joe—it’d be the last cup of coffee I’d ever have, so I figured I should really enjoy it.

I turned, refusing to look at the capsule, feeling a wave of guilt rise from my gut and claw its way upwards. I shoved the feeling away and ambled over to the couch, plopping down on the well-worn cushions just like I had a million times before. Just survivor’s guilt, I reminded myself; there was no reason to feel that way. I hadn’t done anything wrong. This was the end, and I needed to do what I could for me. I didn’t have a girlfriend. My parents were across the country, and with air services shut down they’d never make it out here. Not in time for it to matter. We’d already Interfaced and said our goodbyes.

I took another swig and glanced down, realizing my cup was already half empty. I swirled the mug, watching the black liquid dance. Better make it last.

“Sophia,” I said.

“Yes, Jack, how can I help you?” The voice, polite, vaguely British, and female, resounded from a small black speaker shaped like a hockey puck attached to the side of the television. Sophia was a limited AI controller—an automation system that ran my home.

“Turn up the thermostat to seventy-two and please put on Cartoon Network.”

“Of course, Jack, my pleasure.” The heat kicked on a second later, a rush of warm air flooding in through the vents while the TV blinked to brilliant life. They had classic reruns on: Courage the Cowardly Dog shrieked, his eyes bulging out as a talking tree spouted sage advice. I wasn’t in the mood for Courage, but neither did I feel motivated to look for something else, something better. Most of the stations would be covering the flaming death-ball anyway, and I sure as heck didn’t feel like watching any more of that circus.

So, I sat and watched Courage’s shenanigans, chuckling tiredly as I slowly polished off my drink. Enjoyed every sip. After half an hour, though, my cup was empty and the anxiety was coming back with a vengeance. “Sophia, find me news coverage,” I said reluctantly. The channel switched in a blink. Courage was replaced by a pair of news anchors, one a forty-something guy with too-white teeth and well-coiffed hair, the other a cute black woman with a short bob cut and a pink blazer.

“We here at Channel 9 will continue to monitor the news right up until the very end, folks,” said the woman in the blazer. A countdown timer in the corner of the screen spun merrily away: nine days, four hours, and thirty-two minutes left until impact. “Scientists from NASA,” she continued professionally, “along with astronauts and researchers from the US-European think tank AIDA—Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment—are working around the clock on a viable solution to either destroy or divert asteroid 213 Astraea, the nine-mile-wide chunk of rock and ice currently predicted to land in the North Atlantic near the coast of Greenland.

“Although few specific details have been released about AIDA’s plans, our sources say the best hope we have is to nudge Astraea into the stable orbit of the Moon. With that said, we are told scientists and government officials overseeing the project do not seem optimistic at the prospect. Local A.R.C. lottery winners are being directed to rally at the Osmark Football stadium as quickly as possible. But any travelers, be warned, looters are out in force and you will need credentials, two forms of identification, and Lottery vouchers to get past the Guardsmen holding the stadium. All vouchers are nontransferable and are invalid without proper identification.”

“In other news,” said the man with the well-coiffed hair, “Osmark Technologies is still accepting people at their secure facility in the Silicon Valley. Those slots are limited, however, and are filling up quickly, so if you’re prepared to make the leap into Viridian Gate Online, you shouldn’t delay any longer. The company is urging private citizens with access to NexGenVR capsules to stream live as soon as possible. According to our sources inside Osmark Technologies, complete interface integration usually takes seventy-two hours, but apparently it can take longer, so they are advising people not to wait.

“For those without A.R.C. vouchers and no plans to upload into Viridian Gate Online, the National Guard is recommending you get to a secure basement and store at least one gallon of water per person per day for a minimum of five days. Also ensure you have any necessary life-saving medications on hand since emergency services will likely be off-line for quite some time after—”

“Turn it off, Sophia,” I said, with a wave of my hand. The TV died with a single final flash of light. Then darkness. A preview of the world to come: one big bang, then black.

I set my mug down on a stained and scratched coffee table and rubbed slick palms along the legs of my sweatpants. My hands trembled noticeably. No point putting it off any longer—there was nothing left for me to do now, and if I had any chance of surviving Astraea, it was going to be inside that capsule.

I stood with a groan, went over to the NexGenVR, and reverently touched the machine, keying the manual power button on the control console. Immediately, it hummed to life, accompanied by a strobe of neon-blue light the color of a bug zapper. I swallowed hard, my hands now shaking so badly I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to operate the controls. Thankfully, Sophia would help with the rest. I flipped open the lid and placed a modified version of the familiar VR helmet on my head, before carefully lowering myself onto the stiff memory-foam mattress lining the capsule’s interior.

The lid automatically closed, leaving me in a cramped space filled with a pulsing light. My heart labored in my chest, thumping against my ribs, beating a million miles a minute. At this rate, I’d have a coronary, which would put me down long before that stupid meteor ever got here. No, I’ll be fine. All I needed to do now was give Sophia the command, tell her to initiate Viridian Gate Online, and that would be that.

Except, I couldn’t make my lips form the words.

Once I did, I’d be committed. And I might die. That was one thing they weren’t telling people on the news: one in six who attempted full integration died during the process. And those that did “survive” would live on as virtual avatars in a virtual world. Was that really even living? I didn’t know. I also didn’t know if I had the guts to pull the trigger—this was like playing Russian roulette.

I shuddered. Shivered. My brow broke out in claustrophobic sweat.

Yeah, this process might kill me. Might, I reminded myself. When Astraea hit, though, I’d be one hundred percent dead. No question in my mind about that. “Sophia,” I said, voice quivering, “please run Viridian Gate Online.”

“Of course, Jack,” she replied calmly. “Please lie as still as possible.”

The machine let out a click-buzz—the lid locking mechanism—followed by the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of a whirling MRI. Abruptly, everything went black as the VR headset engaged, but the black was soon replaced by a white loading screen. A video popped up in front of me, filling my vision, featuring a man with shaggy hair and wire-rim glasses, wearing black slacks and a dark navy turtleneck.

“Hello, I’m the CEO of Osmark Technologies, Robert Osmark, and I’d like to personally welcome you to Viridian Gate Online,” he said, “the most advanced full-immersion video game in the world. Viridian Gate Online is truly the first of its kind. And that’s not the typical hyperbolic language so cavalierly tossed around in tech circles. No, I can assure you, I truly mean this is the first of its kind.

“Our revolutionary work with massive memristive neuromorphic computing systems has created a paradigm shift in AI technologies, and the result is an experience second to none. Moreover, through Osmark’s patented NexGenVR capsule you will experience a whole new world as though you were there in the flesh. Even the pain is real.”

There was a pause—Robert froze with a stupid grin on his face. “Patch 1.3 update announcement,” Sophia intoned.

The screen blinked and Robert resumed speaking. “If you are watching this,” he said gravely, “it means you have a very real, very hard choice to make ahead of you. The imminent arrival of asteroid 213 Astraea has changed everything. Though it’s possible, likely even, that human life will continue in some form or capacity after the asteroid’s impact, many, if not all of you watching this, will die. That’s a somber, hard truth, and at this stage it’s a truth which shouldn’t be sugarcoated. But there is another way. A way that you might live—and I’m extending that invitation to everyone watching this.

“Our NexGenVR capsules work by injecting microscopic nanobots into your bloodstream. The nanobots migrate north and map out your mind in precise detail. These extraordinary mechanical marvels survey each of the major portions of your brain—the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brainstem—and chart each of your neural pathways, which is no small feat. They’re the secret behind our system’s full integration: they actually stimulate the nerves in your brain, allowing you to experience the game with lifelike sensation. The information gleaned by the nanobots is then uploaded to one of several deep-earth servers, located in secure bunkers all across the globe.

“Truthfully, that’s far more candid than I ever expected to be about how the process works, but this is the end of the world.” He offered a tired, lopsided smile. “The system is perfectly safe—under the right conditions. During our clinical trials, we discovered that if this uploading process continues for longer than seventy-two consecutive hours, the body shuts down and the physical brain goes into a state of catatonia. After that, without proper life-support measures, the body simply dies.”

He folded his hands, lips pressed into a tight line. “But that map the nanobots uploaded,” he continued after a beat, “will continue to exist indefinitely within the game server. And that map is, for all intents and purposes, you. It’s your thoughts, emotions, experiences, personality. A digital copy of you within the game world of Viridian Gate Online. Originally, we installed neural inhibitors into all the capsules, which automatically logged players out after six hours of game play, but Patch 1.3 has changed all that. The neural inhibitors have all been disabled and, after twenty-four hours of in-game time, the logout button will permanently disappear, leaving you stranded in the game.

“If you choose to upload yourself to Viridian Gate Online, you have a chance at surviving Astraea, at least in a digital form. Now, let me take a moment to address some of the concerns circulating around the internet rumor mill. First, I can personally assure everyone listening to this message that Patch 1.3 is our last major update—the game is locked and all essential functions are now being administered by the AI controllers.

“Second, contrary to what some fearmongers have reported online, once you are uploaded, no hacker or Osmark Tech employee will be able to delete your profile. All permanent user profiles are immediately encrypted using asymmetric key cryptography and then circulated continuously and randomly through all of our linked databases, ensuring no person will ever be able to access your digital identity. Not even I could manage to do it. And really, this is as much for our protection as yours—we don’t want a way to delete players because that’s a two-edged sword, which could easily be wielded against us.

“No, I can assure you, once you’ve successfully transitioned to a digitized form, you’ll be safe and secure for as long as V.G.O. exists. With that said, I won’t lie to you, this process isn’t without risks. Not everyone successfully transitions. There is a one in six chance you will die during the process. One in six. But for the vast majority of you, there is a one hundred percent chance you will die if you fail to take the risk. By watching this warning, you hereby remove all liability of damages from Osmark Technologies, its corporate owners, and its subsidiary entities. Would you still like to proceed?”

His terrible question hung in the air, heavy like a storm cloud. Did I want to proceed? Would existing in a video game really be better than dying? Than seeing what came next?

“Yes,” I said. “Proceed.” The machine kicked into overdrive, the whirling picking up in intensity. WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH.

“Traveler,” boomed a hard-edged male voice, “prepare to enter Viridian Gate Online!”

TWO: V.G.O.

The white loading screen gave way and, in an eyeblink, I found myself standing on the rocky slope of a gigantic mountain, snow and ice underfoot, a tremendous valley stretching out before me. The sight was breathtaking, amazing—the lush forests and rolling plains below so lifelike I could’ve sworn I was standing high in the Rockies or maybe the Swiss Alps. A slapping wind bit at my hands and face, plastering crude, scratchy, homespun garments to my body. I reached tentative fingers up to my cheek, feeling the prick of rough stubble running along my jawline.

Wow. I dropped to my ass, my legs too weak to support me. The chill from the snow instantly hit me as water soaked into my threadbare pants—I scrambled back to my feet in a hurry, eager to be away from the cold. I glanced down and saw a divot in the fresh powder. Wow. This was incredible. I’d been involved in VRMMORPGs for as long as they’d been around, but there’d never been anything like this. Never. Not even close. The graphics quality was unmatched, indistinguishable from IRL, even. The frigid snow and the blades of grass poking up from below were as real as the saggy couch in my apartment.

And the sensations ...

I could really feel here. I wasn’t sure what’d I’d expected when I’d first heard about the NexGenVR capsule’s NerveTech features, but it hadn’t been this. I could smell the fresh pine wafting from the towering spruces and sprawling evergreens dotting the mountainside around me. On a whim, I bent over and scooped up a handful of powder and took a bite—cold, faintly flavored with ozone and cedar. The snow melted in my mouth, water trickling down my throat and hitting my belly with a cool splash. Robert Osmark certainly hadn’t been exaggerating—this was definitely a first-of-its-kind game.

Still, as amazing as this was, could I live here forever? Guess I didn’t have much choice at this point.

That thought vanished as a semitranslucent display popped up. A hazy image of myself—an average looking guy with sandy brown hair, a medium build, and a slightly pinched faced—floated in the air. Except, I was no longer wearing my ratty old bathrobe and sweatpants; now, I was sporting a tattered burlap-looking tunic with rough stitching, a pair of equally uncomfortable trousers, held up with a length of rope, and some fur boots that weren’t doing much to keep the chill out. An interface bar with a variety of options—race, build, sex, face, name—trailed down beside my floating avatar.

I glanced up at race, and immediately a new options menu appeared on my right, hovering in the air like a specter. A list of available, playable races. I scanned the first one, Hvitalfar. Immediately, my avatar’s image changed; sandy brown hair was replaced by platinum blond locks, and my skin took on a golden hue while my ears elongated, slimming to narrow tips. It was still me, though, my face and body providing the underlying framework for some new and strange costume. A prompt popped up and lingered at the bottom of my vision:

<<<>>>

Hvitalfar (Dawn Elf): The elves of the Shining Plains, also known as Hvitalfar, make excellent Clerics and Sorcerers. Due to their natural affinity for spellcraft and the restorative arts, they receive a 5% bonus to starting Spirit. With their affection for nature and close kinship with animals, they also make admirable Rangers, excelling in the Shaman kits.

<<<>>>

I immediately scrolled down, gaze landing on the next race in the list—Dokkalfar. My avatar changed again, this time the skin darkening to a dusky gun-metal gray, my hair going a glossy raven’s-black, which looked almost blue from a certain angle. This race also had pointy ears and I could tell they hailed from the same family as the Dawn Elves I’d just looked at. After a moment, a new text box appeared:

<<<>>>

Dokkalfar (Murk Elf): The Murk Elves of the Storme Marshes are a tough and often unlikeable people. Many Dokkalfar prefer to keep to their own kind and rarely venture outside their boggy home lands. A lifetime of living in the dangerous and predatory swamps of Eldgard makes them excellently suited to be Rangers. They also excel in the Rogue class—particularly as assassins, Sicarii, since they possess a 20% resistance to poison and disease—or as mysterious Dark Templars, the enforcers of the Shadow Pantheon.

<<<>>>

There were several other races to choose from.

The Svartalfar, short and squat, who resembled the typical dwarf and excelled in Smithing, Enchanting, and Merchant-craft. They also sported a hefty 50% resistance to fire, probably on account of their forge work. Next came humanoid creatures with dark, Middle Eastern features and pronounced wings jutting from their backs. They looked like living angels. The Accipiter, who could fly apparently, had a few race-restricted specialty classes, and a sizeable bonus to Dexterity.

Two varieties of humans followed: the Imperials—vaguely Roman looking with short, wavy hair and Mediterranean complexions—and the Wodes. The Wodes, big and blond-headed, looked like the Germanic barbarians of ancient history. Neither of the human races had any extra racial bonus or resistances, but there was a note, which read, “humans can assume any profession or nonrestricted class without penalty,” which was probably a big advantage early on.

Last came the Risi—a meaty looking humanoid loaded down with thick muscle, faintly green-tinged skin, and a pronounced underbite studded with protruding fangs. Some variety of Troll or Ogre, if I had to guess. The Risi, more than any other race, appeared excellently suited for heavy melee combat and tanking, but I knew without hesitation I wouldn’t be going that route. First, I found brawlers and fighters were great early on, but were often lacking at higher levels. And second—the more important factor—I refused to look like that monster for the rest of my life, no matter what racial bonuses might sweeten the pot.

I quickly went back through my options, eliminating the Dawn Elf and the Dwarf—being a glass-cannon mage didn’t suit my play style, and I certainly wasn’t a crafter by nature—which left the Murk Elf, the bird-winged Accipiter, and the two human races. I saw a wiki icon and immediately brought up a search menu. “Look for class kits,” I said.

“Certainly, Jack,” Sophia answered, which was a pleasant surprise. Hearing her voice was a small point of comfort. Unfortunately, the search yielded a whole bunch of nothing, so I closed out and went back to my character creation screen.

Usually, in MMORPGs I played as a Cleric/healer, but a mixed class like a Paladin or Dark Paladin might serve me well in this new frontier where I didn’t have a clan, didn’t know the rules, and might have to go it alone for a while. I paused, rubbing at my chin—Rogues were also highly versatile for lone wolf players, so that might be an option to consider, though that certainly wasn’t my preferred class.

Finally, I scrolled over to the Murk Elf.

That 20% poison and disease resistance was too good to pass up. Plus, superficial as it may have been, he looked badass and the only other character I could reasonably see myself as was the Accipiter—except I wasn’t so great with heights. So, I selected the Murk Elf, then scrolled through the other creation features, tweaking my appearance a bit—adding some extra muscle here, opting for a short beard there, picking a few swirling tribal tattoos—before final selecting the “create,” option. A new screen appeared asking me what name I’d like for my character. Jack didn’t seem like an appropriate name for a high-fantasy elf, but it was my name, and I was hesitant to give it up.

Everything else was changing. My face, my body, my world. But I could keep my name, or at least a variation of it. Grim_Jack was my gaming handle, so if I went with that, it would kind of be the best of both worlds. “Grim Jack,” I finally said, decided.

“Are you sure you would like to create Grim Jack the Dokkalfar?” came the booming baritone voice from before. “Once you create a character, you will not be able to change your racial identity or name. Please confirm?”

“Yes,” I said again, trepidation mounting in my stomach, not knowing what came next.

***

<<<>>>

Quest Alert: Continue Reading Viridian Gate Online Cataclysm

CONTINUE WITH JACK to find out what happens next!

Quest Class: Rare, Class-Based

Quest Difficulty: Easy

Success: Read on to continue the adventure!

Reward: 15,000 EXP; Title: The Traveler

Accept: Yes/No?

<<<>>>

Viridian Gate Online: Expanded Universe

Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm (Book 1)

Viridian Gate Online: Crimson Alliance (Book 2)

Viridian Gate Online: The Jade Lord (Book 3)

Viridian Gate Online: Imperial Legion (Book 4)

Viridian Gate Online: The Lich Priest (Book 5)

Viridian Gate Online: Doom Forge (Book 6)

***

Viridian Gate Online: Side Quests (Anthology)

Viridian Gate Online: The Artificer (Imperial Initiative 1)

Viridian Gate Online: Nomad Soul (The Illusionist Book 1)

Viridian Gate Online: Dead Man’s Tide (The Illusionist Book 2)

Viridian Gate Online: Firebrand (The Firebrand Book 1)

Viridian Gate Online: Embers of Rebellion (The Firebrand Book 2)

Viridian Gate Online: Vindication (The Alchemic Weaponeer Book 1)

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Rogue Dungeon: The Rogue Dungeon Series (Book 1)

Civil War: The Rogue Dungeon Series (Book 2)

Troll Nation: The Rogue Dungeon Series (Book 3)

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War God’s Mantle: Ascension (Book 1)

War God’s Mantle: Descent (Book 2)

War God’s Mantle: Underworld (Book 3)

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Denver Fury: American Dragons (Book 1)

Cheyenne Magic: American Dragons (Book 2)

Montana Firestorm: American Dragons (Book 3)

Texas Showdown: American Dragons (Book 4)

California Imperium: American Dragons (Book 5)

Dodge City Knights: American Dragons (Book 6)

***

Dungeon Bringer 1

Dungeon Bringer 2

Dungeon Bringer 3

Urban Fantasy

Strange Magic (Yancy Lazarus Episode One)

Cold Hearted (Yancy Lazarus Episode Two)

Flashback: Siren Song (Yancy Lazarus Episode 2.5)

Wendigo Rising (Yancy Lazarus Episode Three)

Flashback: The Morrigan (Yancy Lazarus Episode 3.5)

Savage Prophet (Yancy Lazarus Episode Four)

Brimstone Blues: A Yancy Lazarus Novel

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MudMan (A Lazarus World Novel)

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Two-Faced: Legend of the Treesinger (Book 1)

Soul Game: Legend of the Treesinger (Book 2)

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Copyright

Troll Nation: Rogue Dungeon 3 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by James A. Hunter, eden Hudson, and Shadow Alley Press, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher, subject line “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.

JStrode@ShadowAlleyPress.com

About the Author

I am invincible. I am a mutant. I have 3 hearts and was born with no eyes. I had eyes implanted later. I didn't have hands, either, just stumps. When my eyes were implanted they asked if I would like hands as well and I said, "Yes, I'll take those," and pointed with my stump. But sometimes I'm a hellbender peeking out from under a rock. When it rains, I live in a music box.

But I'm also a tattoo addict, coffee junkie, drummer, and aspiring skateboarder. Jesus actually is my homeboy.

About the Publisher

We love books and we are crazy-passionate about publishing the best adult Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Action-Adventure around.

Though our stories can be thought provoking at times, our primary goal is to entertain readers with wild stories and interesting characters you can’t walk away from. We want to whisk readers into a different world where the impossible is possible, where monsters lurk around every corner, but so do heroes, always ready to swoop in and fight back the dark.

We are also deeply dedicated to the authors we work with. For us, publishing is less about individual titles and more about supporting the authors we love. We want our writers to succeed, to thrive, to sell books, and to pursue their fiction passionately. We also want ALL writers to succeed and achieve their dreams of crafting excellent books and connecting with an audience who will love what they do. We firmly believe there has never been a better time to be an author. We also believe publishing is not a zero-sum game and that a rising tide lifts all boats. For that reason, we offer a variety of writing resources for folks looking to grow as wordsmiths or publish their books independently.

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