“Why did you do that?”
Isolde’s voice stopped Romulus as he stepped toward the arched gate of the Argent Estate, bringing him up short. He turned slowly after stopping, meeting the imperious blonde’s hard gaze. She stood with her arms folded, a frosty look on her beautiful features and a still-present pink tinge to her cheeks.
“What are you referring to?” Romulus asked carefully.
“The request to court me!” She spat. “You don’t even know me!”
“I wasn’t aware that was a requirement with the nobility.” He answered with forced calm.
“You aren’t a noble!”
“If I succeed, I have no doubt I will have more than enough status to attempt.”
“My father would never allow a Traveler to take my hand.” She said haughtily.
“You’re probably right about that.” He conceded with a shrug. “Not that it matters.”
Surprise flitted across her face, and then she furrowed her brow. “What?”
“I don’t have the desire or time to talk about this, Isolde.” He said while turning away.
“Wait!”
Romulus ignored her and started thinking in terms of logistics as he moved through the access point and past the walls of the estate, turning left toward the looming spectre of the massive citadel. He had considered going and finding health potions, mana potions, a magic teacher, or any other number of complicated and epic things that any real story protagonist would likely search out, stumble upon, or bumble into… But none of them would really be all that helpful.
He wasn’t going to conquer the keep, after all. He suspected that he had exactly no chance against whatever was within. He was gambling quite literally everything on what the Dark Lady had told him when he freed her: Death was her domain. If some spectre or creature of the Revenant-King’s era haunted the halls of the Necropolis, he had to rely on his [Mark of the Dark Lady] to see him past its wrath.
Otherwise he had no real hope of achieving his goal in any reasonable timeframe.
The sound of clicking, armoured footsteps caught his ears and he glanced behind him to see Isolde stalking along in his wake, her eyes trained determinedly on his back. He sighed at her doggedness.
“What is it going to take for her to leave me alone?” He muttered to himself, receiving a sympathetic pulse from Lightsbane in response. A few minutes of silent walking later, the final hurdle loomed before him as he approached the Necropolis; noting the closed portcullis — which itself was reminiscent of massive fangs when combined with the skullhead gatehouse — that barred further entry into the gargantuan fortress.
When he finally approached the gates, the wardens on duty eyed him askance while they looked from his simple clothes to the lone sword on his hip and his complete lack of anything resembling armour. He had expected that much, at least. He looked like a suicidal idiot to them, most likely.
“Greetings!” He said in his most confident and charming corporate voice. “I’m here on a mission from His Grace the Duke. He’s tasked me with resolving the issues inside the citadel.”
“And why would the Duke trust such a task to a vagrant?” One of the wardens asked boredly.
“I’m a Traveler.” Romulus said with an easy smile while ignoring his trepidation.
“Of course you are, and I’m—”
Whatever the man had been about to say was cut off as both he and his partner snapped to attention at the arrival of Isolde, slamming their fists to their breastplates in salute. Romulus sighed and turned, looking at the blonde as she came to stand beside him.
“You’re going to fail.” She said flatly. “No one that’s ever gone in there has come out. No one.”
“Then why are you so worried?” He asked with what he hoped was a casual tone.
“Because you’re a Traveler.” She said flatly. “For all I know, you’re going to pull off some trick and prance into the estate telling my father you succeeded, and then I’m going to have to put up with you slobbering all over his boots for a chance at my hand.”
“You certainly have a way with words.” Romulus said while reaching up to rub his forehead. “So the task your father the Duke—” he emphasized the title “—set for me, that being to resolve the issue inside this keep, is apparently futile.”
She nodded haughtily.
“Yet you’re still worried I might succeed?” He continued with a raised eyebrow. “I can’t tell if you’re underestimating me or overestimating me.” He shrugged. “Besides, if it’s as impossible as you say, then once I enter the halls I’ll be out of your lovely hair forever.”
The blonde pinked again at the word ‘lovely’, and then cursed under her breath. She lifted a mailed finger to point at him accusingly. “Stop that.”
He turned to the wardens instead of responding to her. “Is this proof enough for you?” He asked casually.
Isolde blinked and then seemed to finally realise they had an audience, looking to the two wardens in alarm. For their part both men were wisely silent, though the one who’d initially mocked Romulus nodded. “Yes, Sir Traveler. The Captain’s word is enough. We shall accede to the Duke’s wishes.” He turned toward the portcullis and shouted “Open it!” before resuming his quiet vigil, and very clearly avoiding Isolde’s stare.
Romulus smiled in relief. As he’d hoped, Isolde couldn’t do anything about it if it was confirmed the Duke had directly ordered Romulus to enter the citadel. The fact she didn’t even try appeared to further validate his assumption, and he turned back to Isolde. “Thank you for your help, Captain.”
Isolde looked livid.
“You baited me!”
“I did.” He confirmed with an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“You’re going to die.” She repeated again, though she sounded perhaps a smidge less certain this time. “Nobody survives this place.”
“Then I guess this is goodbye, Captain Argent. Best of luck with everything.” Romulus said as he turned away from her and hurried through the open portcullis, glancing up at the looming teeth of the entrance as he moved into the darkness of the passage. He glanced back as he did, spotting Isolde watching him consideringly as he walked, and sighing in relief. He’d been worried the stubborn woman was about to follow him into the cursed palace.
At least she wasn’t stupid.
“Just you and me now, Lightsbane.” He said as he patted the sword.
It pulsed with a sense of eagerness in response.
When he emerged out of the gate a few moments later, a low whistle escaped him at the scene beyond. A massive circular courtyard paved in white dominated the area, with a black obelisk nearly thirty feet high at its centre and ascending stairways connecting to the rear of the circle. The courtyard itself was large enough for nearly thirty people walking side by side around its circumference, and was framed by high walls connected to those branching out from the gate behind him.
The twin stairways at the rear of the courtyard beckoned to him and he walked toward them, marvelling at the beauty of the architecture and the sheer immensity of the area as he approached the leftmost stairwell. A large block of marble ran between both sets of stairs, separating them with a wall too low for more than functional segregation, though the massive spikes of obsidian metal affixed along it allowed for a more lethal enforcement of the separation.
“Bottleneck.” He murmured as he started up the stairs, impressed by the mix of beauty and ruthless pragmatism inherent to the design. The entire entry area was a mix of elegance and brutality, with a clear emphasis on defensibility given to the design of the construction.
It took him several minutes to ascend the stairs, and as he did he took the time to appreciate the towering statue of a runeblade-wielding Death Knight standing vigil at the peak of the segregated stairwells.
“God their weapons and armour look cool.” He murmured to himself, and smiled when he received a pulse of happy agreement from Lightsbane. Clearly the sword shared his view of the ancient, ominous warriors and their aesthetic. He’d never thought the hard goth route was for him, but he had to admit there was a certain elegance to the way the skulls and animal furs were displayed on the imposing bulk of the carved marble.
Romulus stepped past the statue and along the new plateau in silence, looking around him at a much smaller and more straightforward square courtyard. There was no obelisk nor decoration to be seen in contrast to the lower one, only the curved tiered stairs leading to the ominous pair of double doors offering entrance to the fortress.
The doors themselves were set into the superstructure of the fortress proper, and stood behind a roman-style overhang held up by several large pillars. This combined with sun’s rotation from east to west meant that no matter the time of day, the entrance to the fortress was shrouded in darkness.
There was no hint of what lay beyond the open and forbidding doors.
Romulus approached the entrance with several long and deep breaths, schooling himself to calm and reminding himself it was a game he was playing. This wasn’t real life, no matter how real it felt. It was a pixelated facsimile of a different reality. A very, very convincing facsimile, but false all the same.
The self-reassurance helped a little, but not much.
“Ready Lightsbane?” He said into the silence, his right hand resting on his sword hilt.
The sword pulsed its confidence at his question, and in doing so helped stir his own.
Romulus forced a smile onto his face as he ascended the marble steps toward the fortress’ entrance, looking up at the doors. They were big enough for two elephants to enter while stacked on top of each other, and wide enough for twenty people across. His heart raced as he considered why they would need to be that big, and then he shook his head.
“No cave trolls here. No balrogs. Just video game suspense.”
Releasing another shuddering breath, Romulus steeled his nerves and strode into the double doors with determination. The moment he breached the limits of the entrance, blue fire erupted from large sconces set along the walls of what appeared to be a colossal entrance hall. Above his head, massive chandeliers burst into flame as well, casting a cold blue light across the interior of the space.
Romulus hesitated momentarily as the light erupted into being, but dismissed his concerns almost immediately. If what he’d been told was true, he had far more to be worried about than a little fire. His footsteps echoed within the hall as he walked, his eyes sweeping the interior in quiet appraisal and noting the hints of intricate scrollwork and beautiful artistry along the distant walls.
As he walked he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and a strange pressure settled over him. He could feel the presence of someone or something watching him, as clearly as if they were breathing down the back of his neck. Fighting the urge to call out or run, Romulus kept his head up and his hand on his sword as he walked, taking comfort in the steady thread of what seemed to be contentment echoing from Lightsbane.
When he reached the foot of the grand staircase, a flash of something caught his eye and he looked up toward the left branch at the first landing of the stairwell, raising his eyebrow.
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That hadn’t been a coincidence. He’d played enough games to know he was being guided.
“At least I’m not being gutted. I’ll take guidance over a brutal death…” He muttered as he took the hint and ascended the stairwell, taking the first twenty steps at a measured pace and turning left at the landing to take the next twenty up and to the left. A crunch of something brittle underfoot echoed loudly in the area when he reached the top of the stairs and Romulus winced.
A glance down at his feet told him he’d crushed some long-dead person’s bones, and he let out a shuddering breath as his heart raced in his chest. The dust, the crunch, the texture of bone under his boot… It all felt so real. He swallowed down his nerves again and continued on, walking along the corridor the stairwell led him to and glancing up as more sconces and chandeliers immolated to guide his passage.
When the light died suddenly halfway down the passage, and a pair of torches lit up over an open doorway to his right. Taking the hint in stride as best he could, Romulus turned with little hesitation entered the doorway into another corridor. This one ended three quarters of the way down, and he took another right into yet another corridor.
When he glanced at his map at the end of the latest detour before taking the illuminated left, he realised he’d been guided to a place that was in line with the entrance hall at the front of the Necropolis, though it was situated on a higher level than the foyer. The left took him down another corridor that looked as if it were a continuation of the entrance hall, if not for the difference in elevation.
The new corridor was the largest one yet, and when he reached the end he was greeted by a massive pair of double doors with a crowned skull emblazoned across them.
When the doors didn’t open automatically, Romulus glanced around awkwardly before looking back to them. There was no other path or entryway in the entire corridor. He could turn around, but that seemed to be opposed to whatever had guided him to that point.
“Fuck it.” He muttered in an echoing grunt.
Reaching out with both hands, Romulus pushed against the doors and almost jumped when they gave way, opening with twin groans of weight that set his hair on end from the sheer volume of the noise. In the silence of the Necropolis, it was akin to someone smashing a drum right next to his ear.
When he finally pushed the doors all the way open, he stepped through and stopped dead as the torches and chandeliers lit once more. The sight beyond the doors floored him.
A massive throne room with vaulted ceilings, black flooring, and what appeared to be a white throne of bleached bones topped with a dragon’s skull greeted him. The entire area was open, with no pillars or needless ostentation present. Tattered banners hung along the walls, and most stunning of all was the fact that the throne wasn’t empty.
Romulus walked forward in shocked silence as he beheld the being on the throne.
The best way to describe it was a being of flame and black steel. Its head was blue fire in the shape of a skull, with a loose solidity to its form and an endless mist that seemed to bleed from the top of its head and the joints of its armour. A crown of white bone was present atop its flaming skull. The skull itself sat above a gorget and obsidian breastplate, its pauldrons home to a pair of horned skulls akin to the heads of classical demons, and encased in the black metal of its armour.
The cuirass itself was elegantly worked, and formed a solid shape that tapered down to a sharpened point over where its upper groin would be. Blue fire occupied the empty space beneath the chestplate, with a pair of thick cuisses connecting to legplates with human skulls over the kneecaps. The sabatons were spiked along the sides, and the shins and calves were protected by wolfhead skulls wrapped in fur, ending in taloned sabatons.
The being’s gauntlets were worked with vicious spikes over the knuckles, and it held the hilt of a shattered Revenant Runeblade, the sword’s blade ending half a foot from the elongated skull adorning the crossguard. Blue fire comprised the rest of the sword, resting over the creature’s knees.
“At last you have come.” The creature said into the silence as Romulus halted a dozen feet from the throne, having found himself approaching without realising it.
“You knew I was coming?” Romulus asked, before instantly feeling stupid. It was a game. This was probably a scripted event.
“I knew She of the End would send someone eventually. The Dark Lady would not allow Herself to be chained for eternity. I did not expect you to be a boy pretending to be a man, but I will not begrudge Her the choice of champion. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“A boy pretending to be a man?” Romulus asked in surprise.
“You think your veneer can fool me, boy?” The creature asked with a hint of cold amusement. “I have lived for over a thousand winters within this place that is both my home and my tomb. For all that your father taught you, you are a boy still, and woefully unprepared for the burdens you will face. Be it your father’s company, your family’s legacy, or ruling the Midnight Court.”
“Wait, what?” Romulus asked as his blood ran cold. “How can you know about—”
“This world is a game to you, Traveler, but that is your mistake. For all you may believe this place to be little more than an idle amusement, it is far more. You dwell within a realm that has experienced more time and existence than you can plausibly fathom. Eternus is only a curiosity for your kind at present, but soon it will be more. Far, far more.”
“I don’t understand.” Romulus said, his heart racing and his fear forgotten.
“I know.” The creature said simply. “You will in time. For now, there are things that must be done, and time is not our ally.”
“Hold on a minute, you still haven’t told me—!”
“There will be time for that later.” The creature said firmly, the force of its words causing Romulus’ jaw to click shut. “First we must proceed with the reason for your coming here.” It lifted its left gauntlet and opened its fingers, conjuring a flash of blue fire that resolved itself into an ornate book with black metal for its cover, bound shut by chains of silver. “The Dark Lady’s scripture. You were sent for this, were you not?”
Romulus nodded mutely, staring at the book in surprise.
“It is the task of Her Avatar to safeguard and keep this tome, and disseminate its knowledge to Her faithful. A god’s Avatar is both their Champion and their Divine Messenger. Even the High Priest or High Priestess of Her faith will answer to Her Avatar, for their word is Her word.”
“That makes sense.” Romulus said, clearing his throat as he spoke.
“My duty as Her last Avatar has had me here, bound to this place for centuries beyond count. You have Her Mark, but are you truly prepared to do what you must for Her return? Are you prepared to unleash a tidal wave of blood and death, and paint the continent in terror for Her sake? Are you prepared to become the spectre of Death that haunts the minds of children late at night?”
Romulus stared at the creature, the Revenant-King, in silence at his questions.
The more he interacted with the world of Eternus Online, the harder it was becoming to fully remember it was a game. It had been growing harder to disconnect, in a lot of ways, from what was happening. Serving a Dark Goddess? That at least was fantastical enough to keep him grounded. Wielding a sentient sword? No problem, that was part of a lot of game tropes. But in the relatively short time he’d spent inside Blackstone, he was finding it harder and harder to not take things more seriously. The smells, the lifelike details, the feel of the world… He still viscerally remembered the crunching of bone beneath his feet, the very real fear churning in his gut.
In the short time he’d spoken to the Revenant-King, his immersion into the world had grown even more intense. The undead Avatar knew things about him, about his life, about his origins. He stripped him bare and cut layers away from him at the core. His questions didn’t feel rote or scripted, they felt real. Weighty. Impactful. The Revenant-King wasn’t offering him a quest reward, he was offering him a warning. He was giving him a chance to truly confront what it was he was doing.
“Cogito, ergo sum…” Romulus muttered without thinking.
“So you understand.” The Revenant-King said in a tone that seemed satisfied.
Romulus started at the Avatar’s words and then nodded slowly. The phrase translated, roughly, meant ‘I think; therefore I am’ and was attributed to Descartes. The phrase was the result of a search for something beyond doubt or question, and Descartes had arrived at it as an absolute. It had become the measure of true life in many philosophical debates, especially surrounding artificial intelligence.
I think; therefore I am. If that held true, then he truly had to take what the Revenant-King said seriously. The NPCs in Eternus Online, following that line of thought, weren’t simply strings of code, not in the same way as more generic virtual constructs… they thought, and thus they were. They were, in every way that had been seen to truly matter, people. The world might have been built artificially at first, but did that prevent its development from becoming something more?
Eternus was populated by self-deciding AI. They were shackled by the limits of the world, but that was no different to humanity in many ways. They too were shackled by the laws of reality that governed Earth and its Universe. More than one scientific mind had postulated that humanity was itself the product of a gigantic simulation. There was no tangible means to discern the truth one way or another, but therein lay the crux of the matter: Eternus Online was no different.
To the beings in the VRMMO, the world was their home. Whether it be biological process or lines of code coming together, they reproduced. They had children.
They thought; therefore they were.
What the Revenant-King asked him was not merely a script to scare him.
It was a true test of his mettle. He would not simply be fighting players or washing away NPCs, he would be killing people. The only difference was that, with some exceptions, the residents of Eternus would not come back once slain. Travelers would. He hadn’t simply logged into another VRMMO, he had transitioned to a living and breathing world, and been given a body compatible with it.
As long as his consciousness remained the same, even having a new character would not change that fact: He was one person, and no matter what his Eternus body looked like, he would remain the same person.
A perfect example of having a soul.
“Holy shit.” He said as he reached up with a shaky hand to brush back his long, blond hair. “Holy shit.”
The Revenant-King was silent upon his throne, watching intently.
“I…” Romulus sighed wearily. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I want to do that. You’re right, this was just a game to me, but… I can’t just…” He closed his eyes, his forefinger and thumb rubbing at them as he tried to order his thoughts. “When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’d be having an existential crisis on the legitimacy of life in Eternus.”
“The calling is never easy.” The Revenant-King said simply. “But it calls regardless. The Dark Lady gave you the choice, and you still must make it. Freeing her was the first step, and bonding with Lightsbane the second. Yours was the first essence it reaped, allowing it to act as a secondary safety net. So long as that blade exists, you cannot be permanently killed. It will grow as you grow, and it will be an anchor point for your resurrection should you fall in battle.”
Romulus looked down at the weapon in silence, and felt a pulse of resolve from it.
“The third and final step is to take the Liber Nox and Ascend. Claim your place as Her Avatar, and all the burdens, glories, and horrors that come with it. I cannot tell you it will be either easy or fair. The path before you is terrible, even compared to that which I walked in my own life. At least I lived in a world that knew of Her glory. This one does not. You will face resistance, hatred, and fear at every turn.”
“I’d be expected to become a mass murderer…”
“You would be expected to become a King.” The wraith responded coldly. “Death is not an evil, no matter what the arbitrary alignments of the gods decree it to be. It is necessary. It is natural. The truly selfish cannot master power over Death, for to understand Death one must understand mortality. To understand mortality means to love mortality, not to flee from it as lesser servants of the Dark Lady seek to. You will unleash a tidal wave of blood, but so too will the shadow of your power be a shelter for those that can find succour nowhere else.”
Romulus bit his lip as he listened, feeling his Earth-born hesitance falling away.
“The Dark Faith is about strength, boy. Strength of body, mind, and spirit. The strong dictate the path, but strength of one facet alone is not enough. You must embrace your sins, and be the master of them, not beholden to them. Build the Empire you want to see through your own power. Only the Dark Lady can offer you that freedom, and only you can choose to make use of it.”
Romulus took a step forward as he listened, eyes flitting to the Revenant-King. “So with enough power, I can dictate the way everything goes? That’s what you’re saying?”
“The privilege of power is being able to wield it however you see fit.”
“What if I’m not strong enough?” He finally asked.
“You will never know if you never try.”
At that moment, Romulus felt something click.
Hadn’t he wanted an adventure like no other?
His resolve hardened immediately.
“Have you ever regretted becoming Her Avatar?” He asked the wraith.
“Not for a single moment of my existence.” The Revenant-King replied.
Romulus ascended the throne several moments later, coming to a halt before the spectre. The brighter light within the fire skull’s eye sockets watched him unblinkingly. Romulus felt himself smile as he stared at the Liber Nox. All his life, he’d been told what to do, how to do it, and why. He’d never chosen for himself, not really. Not until he won the coffin. Not until he’d freed Lilith.
Whatever came next, it was his choice.
“Alea iacta est.” Romulus said softly. The die is cast.
He took the Liber Nox in his hands.
Pain exploded within him, and the world turned white.