--- Atrog ---

It was early in the morning, two days after their talk in the bar.

Atrog was looking forward to finally being on the road again. Life in the underground city had not appealed to him at all, and he welcomed the fresh air.

He signed some paperwork with the guards before leaving, and then they moved past the war golem that defended Northpass. The golem was a remnant from before the Cataclysm, constructed during the Great War, and incredibly powerful. War machines like these could not be built anymore, nowadays. They lacked both the knowledge and the industrial basis for it. The golem rendered Northpass immune to attack practically all on its own. The enormous and unfortunately named "Cataclyst" cannon mounted on its shoulder represented more firepower than dozens of mages.

Technological progress across the world had been very slow for millennia. Then Oruk's Ministry of Culture changed the way research was conducted, with greater sharing of knowledge and more reproducible results. The result was a massive tech lead for Oruk.

Science had been horribly inefficient before, for reasons that were not entirely clear. Around five thousand years ago it was discovered that a global conspiracy of druids, who believed in the natural order and disliked all technology, had been assassinating anyone who threatened the status quo for millennia. But even after this conspiracy was wiped out and people began to be on guard for this sort of thing, technological progress did not noticeably increase.

It was a popular theory that the so called Circle of Stagnation was still around, and the druids had simply gotten even better at hiding. But Atrog did not put much stock in that theory. It seemed more likely to him that this was simply a case of the Tragedy of the Commons: Mages kept discoveries to themselves, and saw no reason to share them. At least until the Ministry of Culture introduced great incentives to do so a few hundred years ago, and thereby started a golden age.

As they exited the city, they were greeted by the familiar if slightly disturbing sight of the perpetually burning capital. The flames illuminated the horizon in the distance, like a minor second sun. If he squinted, Atrog thought he could just make out the Ivory Tower in the middle of it. The tallest building in the world had been an important landmark with a vital economic function before the Cataclysm, but now it was inaccessible due to the eternal fire storm it was surrounded by. It was a testament to Orukian enchantment and engineering that the building was still standing.

The firestorm that had swallowed the capital was the largest of the Cataclysm Containment Zones in the country.

It was unknown what had caused the Cataclysm. The gods presumably knew, but one of their many treaties prevented them from talking about it. One day, during the Great War, every major population center on the planet had been hit by a calamity within hours of each other. The strangest thing was the inconsistency and variety of the destruction. Some cities had been crushed by meteorites. Some experienced an outbreak of an extremely virulent disease. In one notable case, a city had been cursed with bad luck, and everyone in it died through a series of unlikely accidents.

Magic like this was far beyond what any mage could do, with the possible exception of Denissa Mardok, the most powerful being on Hyd.

The Living City might also be at that level, but thinking too much about that place was bad luck. Literally. The city was cursed with a powerful mind control effect that subjugated anyone who spent too much time interacting with it in any capacity. That was why House Mardok had purged even the name of the place from history, so that it was only known as the Living City.

Fortunately, the containment area they were headed towards was one of the less dangerous ones. Greenwatch had been covered in an extremely poisonous miasma that killed anything living in seconds. Unlike the capital with its perpetual fire storm, the miasma in Greenwatch had partially receded since the Cataclysm. The purple gas was easy to spot and only moved slowly across the city, spreading and disappearing again seemingly at random. By now, it was thin enough that it was considered reasonably safe to venture into the area, so long as you kept an eye out for it.

The miasma mostly just meant that staying in one place for too long was impossible. It would probably take several hundred years before it was completely gone and Greenwatch could be resettled.

Atrog had asked his employers if the miasma shouldn't have killed whatever biological research had been conducted in the facility they were sent to investigate. The representative of House Erundir had explained that this had been their assumption so far, and that it was the main reason they had never mounted an expedition into the area before. But they could not know for sure.

The nobility in Oruk worked differently from other countries. Nobles did not hold land, nor did they have an army of their own. Instead, a noble title was bestowed in recognition for an outstanding achievement. It came with a monopoly in that field, and it was tied to an obligation of continued success. A noble who failed to perform would see their title revoked by their superiors. Nobles had practically no hard power, but their monopoly gave them plenty of soft power, as well as a continuous income.

The whole system really had very little to do with the nobility of other countries. The intricacies of it went over Atrog's head, but the founder Oruk had judged it politically convenient to hand out titles.

House Erundir was one of the most powerful and oldest houses in Oruk, and they were in charge of medicine. They decided which drugs and treatments were legal and which were not, and they also regulated the education and practice of healing magic. Atrog had had to get certification from them before he was allowed to use his divinely granted ability to cure wounds with a touch. It seemed somewhat ridiculous to him, but he did acknowledge that it made sense to regulate these things in principle. Many abilities that could be used for healing could also be used to cause harm.

Having control over practically all medicine gave House Erundir enormous influence. Everybody wanted to be healthy after all, and even the most ambitious noble would really rather not risk that his personal physician might be reassigned by House Erundir for some made up reason.

In contrast, House Darklight was very similar to the noble houses of other countries. They had their own territory they were responsible for, as well as their own soldiers. Their job was to secure the underground border of Oruk against the Realms Below. Their soldiers were heavily specialized for exactly this role, and they were relatively ineffective against other threats. House Darklight was careful to keep it that way, as any attempt to build a more traditional military would be viewed with suspicion and could easily make them the target of other nobles.

The only noble house in Oruk that was allowed to have a military was the crown itself. To prevent betrayals by ambitious generals, the founder had gone a little overboard on the regulations and checks and balances that governed the military. To say they were complicated would be quite an understatement. The end result was that Oruk had several military bases throughout the country that nowadays worked largely as mercenaries for other countries, or financed themselves through taxes. The difference between taxes and protection money was something of a gray area for a country without a government.

Atrog was annoyed that neither House Erundir nor House Darklight had seen fit to lend his team some of their specialists, but he could hardly blame them for it. Entering a Cataclysm area was dangerous, even if Greenwatch specifically was not as bad as others. His reputation as a paladin ensured that they trusted him not to lie about what he would find. They therefore chose not to risk any of their own people on what could turn out to be a suicide mission.

The party was traveling in Galanys' carriage. It was large enough to seat all four of them, although that got very cramped. The woman had an absurd number of items in her carriage, the purpose of many of which was unclear to Atrog. They might be toys, or they might be experiments that could explode at any moment.

Over the past week in Northpass, in between her performances and her experiments, Galanys had finally put her necromancy license to good use.

Thus the carriage was being pulled by the animated skeletal remains of a horse.

Unlike live horses, necromantic constructs did not need to eat, or sleep, or rest. They were utterly stupid automatons that often got stuck or stopped working entirely when left unsupervised, but they could keep going forever without a minute of rest. This was why most modern civilizations used skeletons for manual labor, and not for combat. A soldier who understood how they worked could easily exploit the stocky movements of skeletons and defeat dozens of them without ever being hit, simply by moving in the right patterns. In contrast, a skeleton working a mineshaft was as productive as several miners, since it did not need to rest.

Atrog sat next to Galanys in his full armor and kept watch while Galanys guided the skeletal horse. Galanys had exchanged her normal attention grabbing outfit for an equally attention grabbing military uniform. Or rather, for a piece of clothing that very much looked like a military uniform to a casual observer, but that wasn't actually a uniform, and was therefore legal for Galanys to wear. She had explained that this would make any bandits think twice about attacking them.

Balron and Rania were resting in the back of the carriage, so that they would be able to take over later in the day. Balron knew how to guide the necromantic construct, and despite her scatterbrained nature Rania was extremely perceptive when on watch.

Atrog was more than experienced enough as an adventurer to keep attentive watch while also letting his thoughts drift, and so he ruminated again on a discussion they had had yesterday, after their training exercises.

They had all sat down together to talk to Rania about her strange behavior. It had not quite gone as expected.

He had explained to Rania why Tonos was not a great god to pray to. The god of stories was known to twist things and manipulate probabilities in order to make stories more likely to come true. Many young people thought that meant that they could be like the great heroes from books and legends. That Tonos would keep them safe from random traps and arrows, because he wanted them to survive to fulfill their destiny.

That wasn't even entirely wrong. Tonos did sometimes do that.

But what young adventurers often failed to realize was that for every hero who achieved great things, there were a thousand nameless corpses who existed as background characters. Tonos would ensure that the last survivor of a village would get his comeuppance, no matter the odds. But quite often he was also responsible for the village's destruction in the first place. After all, to tell a story about righting a wrong, somebody needed to commit a wrong first. Tonos was all too happy to make that possible.

It was often difficult to tell what Tonos was and was not responsible for. Some of his actions were more subtle than others, so the line between divine intervention and coincidence was sometimes quite thin. The general agreement among academics was that he was actually quite weak and held little influence. But by the very nature of his influence as the god of stories, people talked about his actions a lot. That gave the impression that he was a great source of help for young adventurers. But the reality was that he rarely acted at all, and when he did then it was often harmful.

He had given talks like this before. It was something that many young adventurers needed to hear, but it was always difficult to do. Most people really did not react well to being told that they might not be the heroes of their own stories.

He had been quite surprised at Rania's reaction.

She did not care about Tonos at all, she said. But many of her spirit friends cared about stories, too. They liked to talk about the world as if it was a play, and they were the ones making sure that the play went off without a hitch. Tonos had nothing to do with that. Most of the spirits actually thought he was kind of a hack, because his stories lacked subtlety. The spirits thought that subtlety was very important. Actors should not break character. Rania didn't share that opinion though, because she did not see the point in subtlety herself.

Atrog had never heard anything about spirits thinking in these terms before, and neither had the others.

He had wanted to press that point and find out more, but then Rania had rambled on about a great revelation she had had: Balron would need to be careful not to let the rest of them learn too much from him. If he did, then he would become a mentor figure, and those always died at dramatically appropriate moments in the story. She was worried that it might counteract his immortality from successfully surviving the week before his retirement.

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Surprisingly, Balron actually did not dismiss the idea out of hand. He made it clear that he obviously would not be hiding information from them. That would be stupid, and that sort of twisted thinking was the reason why Tonos cultists were so widely reviled.

But he said that Rania's remark about stories and subtlety seemed interesting to him. He had actually met someone before who was very obviously heavily influenced by Tonos, and that experience had stayed with him. He had met Lilian Weaver, the world famous bard and author of "Lilian's unlikely adventures". The woman was cursed by Tonos to perpetually show up as a side character in other people's adventures. She kept getting kidnapped on a regular basis, and just as regularly would get rescued by random parties of adventurers. Her curse was ridiculously strong, far beyond what Tonos normally did.

As a result, she was extremely well connected and the constant danger had actually turned her into a powerful adventurer herself. Unfortunately, the divine intervention of Tonos ensured that she always happened to encounter adversaries that were somehow immune to her vast array of abilities. If it wasn't so, then she could not play the role the god intended for her, after all.

In the books she wrote about her travels, it came off as comedic. She always had the worst timing in the world. Fortunately for her, all of her many dangerous escapades always ended up without permanent harm to her. So by now she just took her crazy life as an unchangeable thing, and simply went with the flow. It was quite funny to read about the time where a cult abducted her, and she simply told them who she was, and convinced them that a band of heroes was probably already on its way, sending them all into a panic. One of the cultists actually asked her for an autograph.

Atrog had thought the books were an exaggeration, but Balron claimed that he had met her, and that she acted like it was all true.

In Balron's opinion, this was proof that Tonos really did have no sense of subtlety at all. Maybe being known for his actions was necessary for the god of stories? It sounded very different from how Rania described the spirits, who wanted to remain hidden.

It was at this point that Atrog heard a woman's scream in the distance, shocking him out of his thoughts.

"Get the others! I'm checking it out!" He shouted to Galanys. Then he rushed off ahead in the direction of the scream, trusting that his friends would not be far behind.

He soon came across a panicked looking half-drow woman, who was running straight at him at a dead sprint.

"Help! It's a basilisk!" she managed to shout out, before she collapsed in front of him in exhaustion.

Atrog took one look at her crumpled form, and recoiled in surprise.

She looked exactly like Lilian Weaver did on the cover of her books.

Well, so much for Tonos, timing, and subtlety, Atrog thought.

He recovered from his surprise quickly, and shouted to the others: "There is a basilisk! Avert your eyes!" He quickly moved to check Lilian for a pulse and to make sure she would not asphyxiate in her passed out state. Then he readied his weapons.

Basilisks were enormous snakes, large enough to swallow a person whole. On top of that they could turn people to stone with their gaze. It was not instantaneous, but the longer you looked at them the weaker you got. They also were not native to Oruk, and Atrog had no idea how one of them could possibly have gotten here.

Most importantly, they were extremely powerful. Atrog unfortunately had not studied them in depth since he had never expected to encounter one. What he did know was that the military classified them as a platoon level threat. It was possible to defeat one with fewer people than that, but a platoon was what was considered necessary to hunt them with minimal casualties. The chances that a group of four could kill one were extremely low, even for experienced adventurers.

"A basilisk?" Balron responded, as he got closer. "Don't worry. I have something for that."

He then opened a compartment of his freakishly oversized backpack and pulled out a dozen tiny mirrors.

"Here," he said, while handing them out. "You can attach these to your clothes with the pins on the back. Basilisks will avert their eyes from reflective surfaces, so we won't have to close our eyes during the fight."

"Impressive." Atrog said while quickly attaching the mirrors to his clothes. "How did you know you would need these?"

"I didn't. But you never know when you might run into a basilisk or a medusa, so I always carry these with me."

Atrog wanted to note that neither basilisks nor medusae were native to Oruk and there should be no reason to expect to encounter them, but at that point he noticed movement from the direction Lilian had come from.

The basilisk was enormous, and quite fast for a creature of its size, and it was barreling directly at them.

Atrog wasted no time and ran to meet it head on. If he did not, the animal might follow its instincts and go after the unconscious Lilian instead, for an easy meal. He dodged the basilisk's first strike with its maw, and bashed it with his shield to disorient it and to keep its attention on him.

The basilisk had closed its eyes when it saw its own reflections in the mirrors they were wearing. Its natural advantage had been turned against it. Even so, they were still dealing with an incredibly large and powerful foe.

He bashed his sword against his shield to draw its attention through the noise. Unfortunately, he had poor timing. The basilisk opened its eyes briefly. Not long enough to risk being affected by its own gaze, but enough to quickly survey its surroundings. It noticed Balron, and it immediately switched targets to pounce on the dwarf.

Balron had the physical training of a wizard and the short legs of a dwarf. On top of that, he was weighed down by armor and a bag full of tools that was almost as large as he was. He had no chance of evading the attack.

Atrog watched as the enormous jaws of the beast engulfed Balron whole.

Or rather, as they attempted to do so.

A spherical force field had sprung up around the dwarf when the jaws closed around him. The sphere was too large for the basilisk to swallow. Balron hung suspended in the middle of the basilisk's mouth while it tried and failed to crush him. After some thrashing and several failed attempts at swallowing or crushing the dwarf, the basilisk attempted to spit him out. But unfortunately for it the telekinetic force bubble was large enough that it got stuck on the creature's teeth. It was unable to spit him out either.

Balron started laughing. "Quick, hit it while I have it distracted! It can't bite anyone else while I'm stuck in here."

Atrog hit the thrashing basilisk with his sword, but did not manage to cut it. He watched as Rania's arrows bounced off on its scales to equally little effect.

"Basilisks are creatures associated with the earth." Balron calmly commented from within the creature's mouth. "Their skin is exceptionally tough."

Atrog tried to hit it again, aiming for a spot that looked somewhat weaker, but it still had no effect. He watched Rania's arrows sail past Balron and into the creature's mouth, where they hit its flesh. Yet somehow even the inside of its mouth appeared to be armored, and it suffered no damage from the attack.

"I wonder if a blunt weapon would be more effective?" The dwarf mused. Some of the basilisk's saliva dropped on his face, and he gave an annoyed sigh as he wiped it away.

Atrog reacted immediately. He put away his sword, dropped his shield, and hefted the enormous warhammer he had strapped to his back as a backup weapon.

He knew that this was the only remaining chance they had. If this couldn't hurt it, then nothing they had could do the job. He called upon the gods. All of the dozens of divine beings that he worked for, and whose domains he resonated with. Their power came at his call and flowed through him and into the weapon. It would be enough for a single strike.

He gave one mighty heave, and hit the creature in its midsection. The blow was far more powerful than anything a humanoid should be capable of, stronger even than the strikes of a biomancer. When it hit, the energy surged out of the hammer and into the creature, causing additional damage as the magic ravaged its body and burned it from the inside. The blow shook the earth, and was loud enough that Atrog lost his hearing for a few seconds.

The massive basilisk was launched five meters into the air before it came crashing down again. It lay still for a few seconds. But then it slowly began to move again and resumed its thrashing as it tried to swallow Balron.

That had been the best Atrog could do, and it had not been enough.

"Does it need to breathe?" Shouted Galanys.

"Why yes, it does!" Responded Balron. He seemed to be unperturbed by his situation, despite the basilisk's constant thrashing as it tried to dislodge him from its mouth. "Fascinating creatures, really. While basilisks are distantly related to... oh she has already run off."

Galanys was running in the direction of her carriage. "Rania, with me! I have a plan!" She instructed. The elf darted after her and quickly overtook her.

The next few minutes were some of the most stressful in Atrog's life. He had put almost all his mana into the blow. He might just barely be able to pull off a second, weaker attack like that. The only chance it would have to hurt the beast would be if he managed to find a weak spot.

Balron did not seem to share his rising panic. The dwarf was busy channeling his mana to reinforce his barrier as he continued to explain details about the basilisk's anatomy and habits. None of which was at all helpful for killing the beast.

After several minutes of trying and failing to find a weak spot to attack, Atrog was suddenly treated to the sight of Rania sailing over the basilisk's head out of a running jump. She threw a large bag at it, and despite the basilisk's continued thrashing and unpredictable movements the bag landed directly in the creature's mouth.

Several seconds later, its thrashing intensified. Atrog watched as some sort of white, viscous liquid began bubbling out of its mouth.

The substance was blocking the monster's throat, making it unable to breathe.

Its thrashing began to slow down, and after about a minute it slumped over and stopped moving entirely.

Atrog moved to help Balron out of the creature's maw. The dwarf was thankfully unhurt. Galanys arrived shortly afterwards, visibly out of breath.

"What was that?" Asked Atrog.

"Baking soda." Replied Galanys. "Some other stuff as well to ensure it gets harder to dislodge. But mostly baking soda and vinegar."

Atrog took a few seconds to absorb that.

"Did you just kill a monster that is considered a platoon level threat with a fucking fourth grade science experiment?" He asked.

"Of course not." Replied Galanys. "Rania did."

"It was a team effort!" Rania beamed.

"Also, It's only a science experiment if you don't know what will happen beforehand." Galanys continued. "This was for a show I had planned, not for an experiment. But yes, it was for a soda volcano."

"Nice one!" Said Balron, seemingly no worse for wear after his harrowing experience. He was busily casting one cleaning spell after another on himself. After spending several minutes in the maw of a basilisk, the man smelled like death and it would probably take a while to get rid of the stench.

"Guys!" Shouted Rania. "There is still someone who needs help here!"

Atrog briefly chided himself for forgetting about Lilian. Seeing Rania be more responsible than any of them was perhaps the most depressing part of the day for him. It would likely haunt him more than the feeling of powerlessness that he experienced as he spent several minutes watching Balron almost get eaten.

He walked up to the half-drow that was still lying unconscious on the ground. Channeling some of his remaining mana into a healing spell, he reinvigorated the woman and coaxed her back to consciousness.

"Ow. My head is killing me." Lilian said as she woke up. She looked at Atrog standing above her. She looked around. Her eyes rested briefly on the basilisk's enormous corpse, but she didn't really react to the sight. If the woman's autobiography really wasn't exaggerated, then this was probably just another Tuesday for her, Atrog thought.

"Right. That happened. Thank you for saving me." She said. "My name is Lilian Weaver. You may have heard of me?" She added questioningly.

Balron nodded. "I have. You probably don't remember me, what with your busy life, but we met before. I'm Balron Irwin. Professor for abjuration and security in Northpass."

Lilian scrunched her face in concentration for a moment, then said "I do remember you! Your abjuration runes got triggered by that weird artifact I had with me, and it ended up scattering half my belongings in the astral plane."

Balron winced at that. "I apologize again. I still don't know what caused that. I went over the spell schematics so many times, and I do not understand what went wrong."

"I don't blame you." Lilian replied. "Divine intervention, you know?"

Spoken as if that were an everyday thing, Atrog thought. Then again, for her it might be.

"Are you really Lilian Weaver?" Rania interrupted excitedly. "I am your biggest fan! Can I have your autograph?"

Rania held a book towards Lilian, titled "Rania's top secret diary". Lilian chuckled, and put her signature in it. Atrog had not known about this diary. He noticed that Galanys seemed very interested in the book.

After that, the five of them went back to Galanys' carriage and resumed their journey. They stopped briefly to harvest materials from the basilisk's corpse. Some of those should be worth a lot of money. The rest of the day's journey was unexciting, a fact that actually seemed to surprise Lilian, who spent the whole ride looking like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Rania wanted to ask Lilian a lot of questions, but Atrog explained to her that the woman was in no condition to talk. Magical healing could only do so much for a person who had literally dropped unconscious from exhaustion. Atrog found it endlessly amusing to watch the elf visibly restrain herself from asking Lilian any questions during the rest of their journey to Bells End.

After arriving in the town, the party split up. Atrog and Galanys went to introduce themselves to the town guard and discuss their plans. Meanwhile, Balron and Rania escorted the exhausted Lilian to the inn. Atrog was looking forward to Balron's report on what was going on there.

The discussion with the town guard did not yield much useful information. They didn't know anything that they hadn't already written about in their reports, and the frequency of attacks had not changed since their call for help.

After they concluded their discussion, Galanys asked the head of the guard if he wanted to "discuss things more vigorously and in greater depth" somewhere more private, to which the young elf gave his enthusiastic consent.

Really living up to the human stereotype there, Atrog thought. Galanys had hit on him in the past as well, but she stopped when he explained that he found strength attractive, as nearly all orcs did. She was far too thin for his tastes. In contrast, many humans found nearly every other sapient species attractive for some reason.

When one talked of a "half orc" or a "half drow", as in Lilian's case, it was an unspoken assumption that the other half was probably human.

Humans had a reputation for it, but actually any pair of sapient species could have mixed children with each other. Strangely, after a few generations, one of the species' genes would randomly reassert itself and the child would be a pureborn member of that species again. All traces of the other species disappeared from one generation to the next. It was called the Law of Purity, an unfortunate name that had led to a lot of bloodshed over the millennia.

It made no biological sense. Nobody could explain it, just like nobody could explain the Law of Adversity, the phenomenon that adventuring made people more powerful. Although Atrog had heard rumors that the Shan Kingdom had made a lot of progress in genetic research in recent years. It all went over his head, but he figured that since the Shan Kingdom was located right in the middle of the Cursed Lands, it would probably end in disaster in some way.

In any case, what or whom Galanys did in her free time was none of his business, so long as she wasn't too tired to work in the morning.

Atrog opened his journal to go over his plans one last time. As team leader, he saw it as his responsibility that all of them made it back home alive.