Rogue Dungeon: Troll Nation (Chapters 7 - 9)

Chapter 7  

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 onceover 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 equal parts concern and imploring. 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 swam 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 belowdeck 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 Behemoth’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 sound the Behemoth, 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 massiveshoulder. “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.

Chapter 8

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 battleax 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 gamertag.”

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 ribcage. “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 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 battleax. 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 a less than a quarter of her full Health, the Death Paladin raised her battleax high and sprinted toward Roark, a warcry 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 magic 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 cagy, 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 Maser 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 work table. “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 them 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.”

Chapter 9

Transmute Magick

Roark stalked across the corridor to his study, closing the door behind him carefully. His mood 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 draws 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 any thing else in all of Hearthworld. He could almost see his father, Sir Erick Von Graf, [JH1] sitting at a desk not so different from this one. His scrolls neatly arranged before him, his serious, deep set eyes scanning property contracts or deconstructing the nuanced language and punctuation of spell forms. His father hadn’t been an easy man, or a light-hearted one, 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 was often quick tempered, emotional, and prone to action before thought. Traits which had directly resulted in his present predicament. 

The Griefer found himself smiling as he thought of his father and 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 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 perimeters, 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. 

He could still write his spells here 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 spell-work masterpieces, but in the end, only the power—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 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 Spellbook 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 spellbook.

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, he ever-so-carefully scrawled out the curse form on the endpage.

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 typical 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 for several years under the watchful tutelage of Arch-Acolyte Sarvlax—as he wrote out the various boundaries and 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 handy work, 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. Any risk far outweighed the potential gains.

[Congratulation, 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 Spellbook. Curse Chains can be inscribed repeatedly without a cooldown period for as long as they remain in Initiate’s Spellbook.]

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 Spellbook under rune STORM OF FIRE AND ICE.]

Roark turned immediately back to his spellbook. A new rune, half stylized heat waves and half snowflake, had appeared on the endpage 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 it wouldn’t kill him, but they were damned painful and distracting. With the Hex undone, he returned to the endpages of the book, a stupid grin plastered on his face. 

It was runic shorthand. Brilliant. His mind was a whirl 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 a way 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 them all, 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. Wheezing 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.