[Scattershot Arrow] = Stick (Base+2, 0.65-1m) + Metal (Base, Arrowhead, 0.55-0.7kg) + 3 Feather (Base, 0.1-0.15m) + Twine (Base, 0.2-0.3m) + [Knife] (Base+1) + [Workbench] (Base)
----------------------------------------
Nightrealm – The planes beneath realities, composed of pure thought.
The Guide’s meager description did not do that place justice. If Annwyn, Earth, and any other world were little more than structured dreams that formed their own realities, then the Nighrealm was the waves they rode around on. When divorced from the structure, their matter, and the logical consistency that held them all together, what would be left?
Chaos. Pure, undefinable mayhem. Solid matter flowing like water. Twisted flora that covered the landscape. Creatures and structures with shapes that had no right to exist. A dark sky, devoid of light.
Nightmares unleashed.
Jay had experienced this place only a few times before, a consequence of the [Forbidden Knowledge] skill that pulled him out. He’d been driven too close to insanity to truly appreciate it all.
And yet, as Jay huffed for air and sprinted with all his might and Trish by his side, he could not help but take in these surroundings with fresh eyes.
Though it didn’t help that they were being chased by a three-headed spider with far too many limbs. It hissed mercilessly, slobber falling from two of its three heads while the last had a hooked tongue spinning around.
Just need to get a little further, Jay kept telling himself. Then we’ll be out. This corrupted bubble couldn’t last forever!
But the further they moved, the more their environment distorted under this lens. Everywhere they looked, the jungle had become corrupted.
This was bad. Very, very bad. When Viktor dropped a satchel filled with hundreds of monster cores into the cairn’s Seam, it bubbled out, swallowing the surrounding area. Once their hiding spot got covered, they’d lost track of its size and shape, now buried under a black, starless sky, even though the sun still shone through.
Just how much of the island had been covered?
They turned a corner, and his heart sank.
A creature stood in front, its elongated body covered in obsidian scales, and feet anchored into the ground. But though it held the shape of a lizard, its face was humanoid and smooth, almost like a baby fresh from the womb. Its lidless eyes focused on them, an opaque ebony above drooling lips.
And another Expat gasped where the monster had ensnared him. His armor was broken and body mangled, a dozen arms wrapped around where they’d sprouted from the monster’s chin, as if they’d been strands of hair in place of a beard.
The Expat held up a hand for mercy, fingers twitching as he locked eyes with Jay.
The monster bit his head off and tossed the body aside.
No sooner did it finish than the spider rounded the corner, now locking them in on two fronts.
“Cover me,” Jay said, pulling his bow out. He’d swapped in beryls for the elemental frost damage today, and kept his highest upscaled sleepgrease on hand. The plan had been another Hail Mary to use against Viktor should he have become too slow. Throw in as much cold and sleep damage as possible into an elemental bow, packing enough kick to bring a bull elephant down.
But this would work too.
He took aim at this strange lizard monster at once, drawing a [Scattershot Arrow] to ensure he could not miss. Before the creature could move, he fired right for its baby-like face.
A single of its many arms flinched, grabbing the arrow mid-air. The tiny muscles flexed, and the arrow shattered, the monster completely unharmed.
He gaped. That should have done something…
The creature began to limber forth, blood still spilling from its lips. Behind, the spider closed in, its tongue spinning ever faster.
With another hiss, the tongue shot out. Trish shouted as it wrapped around her leg. Another second, it recoiled, dragging her right into it.
All in one motion, Jay ditched his bow for his sword, [Quickstepped] the distance, and followed with a [Rend], his blade cleaving through the spider’s tongue while knocking Trish free.
But no sooner had he done that than the other two heads opened their mouths, more tongues spinning for another attack. The lizard creature hands also tittered in exhilaration, waiting for the prize to soon come.
Jay and Trish gripped their weapons tight, now blocked on both sides. They only had seconds left to get out…
Thunder rang, the dark land suddenly flashing bright as scales exploded from the lizard monster’s leg. It stumbled, opaque eyes somehow wider than before.
Naomi flew into the open, her body glowing with magenta essence as she took aim with her rifle. Jay gaped, recognizing a weapon art on sight.
It was as if the entire area become enveloped in a storm made of lead the second she pulled the shot. Shrapnel clattered against the dried, corrupted mud. Fires sprung up. And the Nightrealm monster shrieked as ichor erupted from a hundred wounds. It fell with a smash, dark eyes collapsing inward.
But Jay and Trish had been too transfixed by this creature’s death to see the spider close in so much. Its mouths slathered mindlessly, trapped in its chaotic bloodlust.
Until a golden flash bisected its twisted body, turning pitch black a second later. The spider monster tried to howl, but no sounds came out. Not when two of its heads had been cleaved down the middle. The black sheet persisted like a solid block, even as the spider fell crashing down.
And another man stood behind, his golden axe glowing with the runes he’d used, and bearded face as hard as stone.
“You two alright?” Desmond asked, gripping his weapon tight.
“Thought I told you both to stay put while we figured this out,” Naomi said.
Jay breathed deep. “Easier said than done. That spider-thing got the jump on us right after you left, and we’ve been looking for cover ever since.”
Trish hacked the tongue from her leg and dusted herself off. “Can someone tell me what the hell’s going on!? What are these things? Where did they come from?”
“They were already here,” Jay started, unsure how else to explain it. “Check your Guide.”
She did, but her brow merely furrowed more. “What’s with the Updates? Why aren’t we taking the Rule 5 hit after all the shit we just pulled? Aren’t those supposed to be universal for this world?”
“Ain’t it obvious, love?” Desmond asked. “We aren’t in that world no more.”
“What!?”
“Seams act like doorways between Annwyn and the Nightrealm,” Jay said. “When Viktor dragged a bag filled with monster cores through that door at once, it exploded in size, covering everything nearby. We got sucked into that, so now we’re in a place where Natura can’t see us. It holds no power in the Nightrealm.” He stroked his chin. “But neither do we, so we’d better find where the Seam ends before these monsters kill us.”
Desmond shook his head. “It ain’t that easy, fam. Seams grow the more that cores pass through. Monsters and Expats both. So when it started spreading beyond the cairn’s boundary, anything nearby powered its expansion further. That fucker must have had hundreds of ‘em to cause it to blow up so quick.”
“…Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“The whole island’s fucked, mate. Trust me, I was keeping watch in a cave on the other side with a dozen others, and the damned thing turned into a giant flesh monster the second the Seam passed through.”
Jay grimaced. “At least tell me that others got out.”
“Nay.” He frowned. “Barely made it out of there, meself. Those who escaped the cave didn’t last long either. They just weren’t ready for this one.”
“Let me get this straight,” Trish said, rubbing her scalp. “You people are telling me that Viktor, while slowly dying of poison, somehow managed to weaponize a portal in a dungeon to become so powerful that it transformed the entire island into the magical equivalent of Chernobyl? Is that what you’re seriously telling me happened here?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
She groaned. “How do we close this Seam thing?”
“Normally, I’d just take me axe and hit it with Lux-aligned Runes. These Seams are steeped with Tenebrae and Vacuus essence, so a little light is all you need to break ‘em up. Piece of piss when you’re going through a cairn, anyway. But with one this big?” Desmond spun around, taking in miles and miles of ruined landscape. He scratch his neck. “Bloody hell, I’m gonna need a bigger axe.”
“We can help with that,” Sayid said, stepping into the open. He wasn’t alone either. A half-dozen Expats were to his back, with Ben and Hyuk manning the rear. A squad of Ben’s constructs covered their flanks, their weapons coated in blackened gore.
Naomi breathed easy. “Thank God you’re alive.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Sayid said. “We can thank Ben for his quick thinking.”
He nodded. “I fell back straight to my camp when the Seam opened. Thankfully, I’d kept my constructs nearby, loaded up with some homebrew Lux flares to act like an advanced warning system, should Viktor make a break for it. When shit hit the fan, one of them self-destructed on the retreat, turning the entire area back to normal for a couple minutes.”
“I believe if we get enough of these armaments together and drop it into the space where the Seam originated, we could seal it back up. I managed to do something similar perhaps a month back on the other island, and the entire cairn shuddered from the effect.”
“Not bad thinking,” Desmond said, “but there’s also the chance we’d get stuck inside with this one. It’s too big.”
“And didn’t you say that only lasted a couple minutes?” Trish echoed. “How do you know it would close for good?”
Jay stepped in as well. “If we’ve got a weapon powerful enough to close this Seam, then we have to be careful with it. We may only have one shot to make something like that work.”
Ben stared blankly. “I’m sorry… But does anyone in this crowd – and I mean anyone – have a single clue about how this actually works? No? Because I, for one, have never been in the Nightrealm until today, and the last time we saw a Seam blow up like this, it covered a couple acres of territory. You know what our solution to that problem was? We just decided we’d never go to that part of the island again.
“I have chests filled with diamonds in my mine that we can refine into bombs because they contain so much Lux essence, and as far as I can tell, that is the tool we’re supposed to use against these Seams. So unless anyone has a better idea, then I vote for throwing a bunch of light essence into the belly of this beast and hoping it goes away.”
Everyone stared from one to the next along with the swirling darkness above, slowly consuming the world around them. Whether anyone liked it or not, this was their best bet.
With the plan together, the group made for the island’s center, where Ben had relocated after fleeing the harbor. There was a small army of them, all armed to the teeth as they cut through this nightmarish jungle.
It was slow going. Because the Nightrealm distorted distances and angles the closer they drew, they could not travel the same path for long before having to readjust. Cliffs seemed to shift with the horizon, and rivers ebbed and flowed as they cut through moving fissures. More than once did they have to pause and craft a bridge to get past.
And there were casualties too. With so many Expats collected in one place, hoards of vaporous phantasms chased them down, their shadowy bodies latching onto anything that fell too far behind. Gear became broken the longer they moved, and fresh Wounds formed. Some people simply did not have the means to survive the assaults, their weapons insufficient. Others wandered too far from the group as their sanity fell low, only to get pulled into dark crevices by spindly fingers. The poor souls kicked and screamed as they disappeared into the shadows, never to be seen again.
Thankfully, Jay could keep his cool with the power of his Nightmarish armor set that negated this sanity loss, so he kept close to Naomi’s group as they bulldozed everything in their path.
And the island fought back against this incursion as well. They weren’t the only ones pulled through this Seam. All the monsters that had otherwise made this place their home were victims too. Jay watched as a family of quickfire quill pigs eviscerated fleshy spiders, some komodo dragons swallowed phantasms in a single gulp, and direboars rammed everything in their path. He saw these creatures fight with the same veracity against their mutual enemy as they’d done to him.
Only now could he understand the meaning behind the words of that sprigg scout he’d met.
Wyrms seek to break all cycles, Dyrk had said. Instead of let us live in peace, they want to infect cycles with their own will, corrupting all they touch.
That was what had been unleashed here, more than anything else. If the Wyrms made their home in the Nightrealm, then this was what their will looked like once projected into other worlds. The cycles that Annwyn’s creatures went through didn’t matter. Hell, the Expats’ own struggles didn’t matter either. They were all just fodder in this conflict. No more than creatures to be absorbed by monstrosities driven by an endless hunger.
And who was to stop them in their domain?
No, when push came to shove, their destructive power would never be enough. Not here. Not in this corrupted realm, where existence broke down into incomprehensible shapes, an affront to rational thinking until nothing but madness remained.
Because if everything they’d ever known had been based on dreams, then this place was where nightmares dwelt.
There could be no victory here.
They reached Ben’s base, blue alchemic light burning bright in a sea of growing blackness. Despite the degradation of all else, turrets still held strong, spraying shrapnel into anything that drew too near. They averted their barrels as the group closed in, no doubt due to Ben’s presence.
Jay experienced a sense of normalcy as he passed through the boundary to Ben’s mine. Worked stone lined the floors. Wooden beams held the walls in place. Minecarts and tracks snaked around in natural shapes, highlighted by an array of sconces. Though the shadows were strongest in the corners, the light seemed to drive them back, an anchor of stability in an otherwise maddening realm.
But then they happened upon the constructs…
Specializing in Tinkering with a Sub-Craft for Constructs gave Ben access to a versatile group of alchemic robots. Some made for excellent fighting companions, behaving with mechanical precision in combat. Others were more like mindless drones, continuing on a loop as they expanded his operations. All of them made for a devastating force at this Rank, however, because even if Ben was fundamentally weak, he still had an army willing to sacrifice itself in defense of their coveted master.
As the group gazed upon the shattered remains of Ben’s main force, they all realized that they’d been beaten here.
And more than that…
“You’ve got to be shitting me…” Ben cursed, studying the empty stockpiles where he must have kept his supplies.
“The diamonds?” Sayid asked.
His face turned bright red. “They’re gone. They’re all gone! The dynamite too. How the hell did these things figure out what we were up to!?”
“They didn’t,” Jay said with a sigh, running his fingers against one of the downed constructs. He traced its frost-coated surface. “This was someone else.”
Their radios suddenly erupted to life, whirring against chaotic white noise as another voice chimed in.
“Well…” Viktor wheezed. “Here we are… At the end of world… It is almost poetic… No?”
Ben punched the wall. “That son of a bitch!”
Coughs echoed through the radio, distorted against the static. “But… You all make critical mistake and forgot the easiest Rule of all… Come and see… I will remind you!”
The ground quaked. Instinctively, the group rushed outside. It took a second to catch the pillar of smoke, along with the ‘V’ balloon floating above, but with the way the land bent and blurred in this nightmarish land, no one could ascertain the distance. Their opponent could have been a hundred yards or miles away for all they knew.
But it was close enough for Viktor’s tastes.
Jay narrowed in with his spyglass. A scarlet red stained Viktor’s shirt and beard, and his skin had grown unnaturally pale, but he still managed to squeeze out a smile, smoking a cigarette with one hand while holding a stick of dynamite in the other. When he saw the group enter the open, he lit the fuse with his cigarette and tossed it aside.
Right onto a pile of gemstones, with diamonds conspicuously glittering on top.
Fire and smoke erupted where the gemstones had once been, their essences mingling through the air before dissipating. The Nightrealm momentarily gave way to the sparkles of gemstone dust, but the fire had disintegrated most of them, so the pocket became short-lived, once again swallowed by the cloud of magical darkness.
And Viktor grinned wide, holding the radio close.
“Rule 9…!” he coughed out.
Everyone watched powerlessly against the hopelessness of it all, remembering what that Rule had meant.
No one gets to leave until Viktor says.
Name: Jay Reis (Copper Age)
Vitality – 99/99
Hunger – 60/72
Thirst – 21/24
Fatigue – 19/24 (Poorly Rested+2)
Sanity – ??/110
Main Crafts: Alchemy 2, Armor Crafting 2, Base Building 3, Cooking 2, Jewelry 2, Medicine 2, Tailoring 2, Tool Crafting 3, Tinkering 1, Vehicles 1, Weapon Crafting 2.
Weapon Crafts: Axes 5, Bows 9, Clubs 5, Daggers 5, Spears 5, Swords 11.
Armor Crafts: Heavy Armor 5, Light Armor 5, Medium Armor 8, Shields 6.
Sub-Crafts: Curved Swords 5.
Character Skills:
[Forbidden Knowledge]
Armor Skills:
Heavy Armor: [Push], [Stampede]
Medium Armor: [Recover], [Leap], [Waterform], [Quickstep]
Light Armor: [Dash], [Feather Fall]
Shield: [Brace], [Track], [Break]
Weapon Skills:
Axes: [Chop], [Whirlwind]
Bows: [Sharpshooter], [Longshot], [Scattershot Arrow]
Clubs: [Bash], [Paralyze]
Daggers: [Slice], [Flourish]
Spears: [Thrust], [Sweep]
Swords: [Power Attack], [Slash], [Rend], [Shirk], [Violent Storm]
Armor:
[Copperplated Hat+3] (Nightmarish+5), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+1)
[Copperplated Coat+2] (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+2)
[Copperplated Leggings+3] (Nightmarish+6), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+1)
[Copperplated Shoes+2] (Nightmarish+3), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+1), (Reinforced)
[Copperplated Gloves+1] (Nightmarish+2), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+1), (Reinforced)
[Silver Ring]: Socketed with [Chipped Beryl] (Frigus)
[Silver Ring]: Socketed with [Chipped Beryl] (Frigus)
Weapons:
[Copper Scimitar+6] (Nightmarish+8), (Sharpened+4), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+2), (Stable+2)
[Treated Bow+1] (Hardened+1): Socketed with [Chipped Beryl] (Frigus)
[Basic Leather Quiver]: Contains 17 [Silver-tipped Arrows] (Elemental+2), (Stability+3) and 2 [Scattershot Arrows] (Elemental+2), (Stability+4)
Tools:
[Copper Knife+3]
[Copper Axe+3]
[Copper Hammer+3]
[Copper Pickaxe+3]
[Copper Shovel+3]
[Basic Grappling Hook]
Boons:
[Minor (Speed)] (x3), [Minor (Sanity)]