The city of Gershire differed greatly from Cepton, where the Strength trials occurred. That had been a quaint northern village on the edge of civilization. Gershire was a thriving city with tall buildings, vast bridges over the river that ran through the center, and an extensive oceanfront development filled with docks and warehouses at the river’s mouth but also with restaurants and beaches further north. Even with his Environment settings turned down, Jace could feel the warm weather, implying they were much further south on the continent than his stronghold just north of Crestfall.
Jace understood that while this copy of the city was his own private version, it existed in a real location on the global map. He could return here as often as he liked, and while he could only get the Intelligence benefit once, there were several quests to complete. Once you finished all the quests, there was an option to get one of the mages at the academy to join your party. Most NPC companions came from SIMs (Single Instance Modules), so there was only one version of that NPC walking around the game, but in this MIM (Multiple Instance Module), a generic mage with a different name, race, and sex was created for each instance, and you could customize them to your liking once they joined your party. Jace had no interest in a “generic” mage that everyone had access to, but returning to the academy in the future to get magical items or advice would be beneficial.
Jace appreciated these MIMs where there was no chance of them running into any PCs that would recognize them. Other than the looks a beautiful woman like Esther and an impressive wolf like Snowy would typically get, they moved through the city without incident.
The Magisterium Academy was the most prominent building in the city, with a vast stone foundation covering over two city blocks and towering spires capped with crenulated parapets or silver and gold domes. Stained glass, usually reserved for cathedrals, broke up the monotony of a few walls, marking where the audience chambers were, while other areas had walls six feet thick and housed training rooms where students cast fireballs and tidal wave spells.
Jace had little to no exposure to spellcasting so far in the game. His one offensive spell that only worked half the time was a simple touch spell with no range or spread. Esther now had fire magic but wasn’t designed to be a mage and would still primarily be a melee fighter. The entry for this module had consisted of a Dumbledore-type character in Olympus telling them that the Academy needed adventurers to solve a problem. They were to enter the school and would be given more instructions.
No one approached them as they walked along the cobblestone path lined with statues of former teachers leading to the massive front doors. The entry was elevated with a dozen stone steps and led into an enormous entry hall that appeared mostly empty. A few robed figures moved over the tiled floor beneath a skylit vaulted ceiling, but no one stopped to greet them. Jace felt a heavy sense of dread in the room that couldn’t be toned down with any of his game filters.
{This isn’t the dragon module,} Gracie said after they had stood there for a few moments.
“How can you be sure?” Jace replied.
{At the beginning of that quest, the activity in the Academy is maddening. Everyone has been made aware that the dragon has awoken in the mountains to the west, and they are all running about preparing potions, spells, and a plan to defend the city. It’s like walking into a barracks as the soldiers prepare for war. This isn’t that.}
Jace hadn’t had enough time to read through all the possible quests he could take for this Intelligence trial and had only studied enough to know that the dragon was the hardest. Then he had focused on the actual encounter when you had to outsmart the magical creature and convince him not to attack the city. The adventurers were supposed to be the last-ditch effort by the Academy to prevent an attack. While Jace wasn’t familiar with the beginning of that quest, he had to agree with Gracie’s assessment that this did not look like a wizard’s school preparing for a dragon.
Eventually, one of the robed figures spotted them and approached. He was a young man wearing traditional wizard robes. He moved with enough confidence to be a teacher at the school, but his youthful face implied he might still be a student.
“Welcome, adventurers,” he said with a slight bow and solemn tone. “Please come with me.”
That’s it? Jace thought. No introduction. No explanation of why they had been summoned. While he got no information from their host, who led them through the entry hall, into a side passage, and up a winding flight of stairs, Jace heard Gracie chuckling.
{I knew it,} she said with a subdued sense of triumph. {It’s the lich quest. Gandhi is a cruel mistress indeed.}
“You don’t know that for sure,” Jace said under his breath as he led Esther and Snowy up the stairs after the young wizard. He tried to sound more confident than he was, but he didn’t really know. He assumed Gandhi would give them the most challenging trial, so he had spent all his time on that. Other than knowing the lich was supposed to be the easiest, he didn’t know much about it.
{You’ll see,} she replied. {You may have lost confidence in my finding abilities, but I still know my stuff.}
Their trek upstairs lasted for several floors before they found themselves at the top of one of the more prominent spires. Views out the window were dizzying. The room waiting for them already held two wizards, neither of whom bothered rising when they entered. They were both much older than their guide, one man and one woman. “I have brought the adventurers we asked for,” the young man said.
He turned to regard Jace and his companions. “Thank you for coming. I apologize for the cold greeting, but these are trying times when difficult decisions must be made.”
“Enough, Dayrin,” the older woman spoke and rose from the table. “The decision has already been made. It was made hundreds of years ago. It only falls on us to carry it out. There is no need for theatrics.”
The young mage bowed humbly and took a seat at the table. The woman continued. “I am Mistress Ellonna.” She motioned to the older man beside her. “This is Master Tang. You’ve already met Master Dayrin, one of the youngest teachers here at the Academy. We are the Trinitarians, the three wizards in charge of running this school. We are subservient only to the Merlin, who is too important for such an ordinary task as this.” She said this as she cast a scowl at Dayrin and his contrary assessment of the severity of this situation. She turned back to the visitors. “Even so, you can surely feel the aura encompassing our Academy.”
Jace didn’t know how to answer, but as he focused on Ellonna’s eyes, he saw she wasn’t looking directly at him. He followed his gaze to his left.
“It feels like someone has died,” Esther said, responding to the Mistress’s prompt. “Or possibly someone is about to. Or maybe they have died but have risen again.”
The woman smiled at the answer and took a seat. Dayrin looked impressed by the response, and his gaze on Esther turned more intense, really seeing the attractive woman for the first time. Master Tang is the one who spoke. “You are correct on all counts. We don’t usually get such adept magic users when putting a call out for help. Have you had training?”
“I have a unique relationship with death,” Esther replied cryptically. When she saw Dayrin’s puzzled expression at her response, she winked at him.
Master Tang didn’t have time for riddles. “Indeed. So do we. What I am about to tell you can’t leave this room. Few know the truth, and if you tell anyone, we have ways of tracking you down.”
{They aren’t lying,} Gracie said. {Players have been known to be killed in their sleep by mage assassins if they handle these quests wrong. I know you will try and break this, but be careful.}
“We can be trusted,” Jace advised after hearing both Gracie’s and Tang’s warnings.
“Good,” the old mage said. “This academy is centuries old, and its history was not always pristine. In the early days, one ambitious wizard delved into the black arts and tried to convince the other teachers that there was power to be had in the realms of the undead. His peers refused to follow him and were prepared to expel him when he performed a daring experiment to try and convince everyone he was right. It didn’t go well.”
“He turned himself into a lich,” Ellonna said, picking up the tale. “And a powerful lich at that. It took the strength of every teacher here and most of the students to subdue him and eventually trap him deep within the catacombs beneath this Academy. Little did he know that when they imprisoned him, the teachers managed to tap into his immense power and use it to feed this school.”
The two elderly wizards smiled at this revelation as if they thought the double cross was especially clever, but Jace looked at Dayrin, who scowled. As a new teacher at the Academy, he was probably learning many of the ancient secrets of this place, and if immersing himself in fantasy lore had taught Jace anything, magic always came with a price.
“However,” Tang continued, “the mana we steal from him is not free. Elconoric, as he calls himself now, wakes up every fifty years and demands a sacrifice. He needs satisfaction for the power stolen from him over the past five decades.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“And if it isn’t given to him?” Jace interrupted, wanting to know this answer before hearing the price he was expected to help the school pay.
“Then you have this,” Ellonna said, gesturing to the air in the room. “This feeling of death. This feeling of sorrow and moroseness. The longer the sacrifice is delayed, the greater this sense of foreboding. If we wait too long, students will eventually go mad, commit suicide, or worse. Trust me,” her face changed to that of an endearing grandmother to forestall any thoughts that she might actually be a horrible monster, “we have tried everything.”
“And really, it is out of our hands,” Tang continued. “The portal opens within the school and calls out. We do not send anyone down to this lich. The selection process happens automatically. Only the student fated to answer the call responds. Regretfully it is usually one of our brightest, most promising students. The nature of the calling demands that it be someone of power. It is only fortunate this time that it took-”
“Enough!” Dayrin slammed his fist on the table, and sparks flew from the impact, fires burning behind the powerful young man’s eyes. “You act as if you are pleased she is gone. Draeklynn was more powerful than any of you. You feared her. She was destined for greatness.”
“She was destined to get herself killed,” Tang bit back in subdued rage. “Which is precisely what she did. The experiments the two of you were running were reckless and ignorant. Her massive displays of power likely woke the lich in the first place. He is two years early.”
Dayrin scowled at the rebuke but respected his elder for now and stayed silent.
Ellonna allowed the two men to calm down and then turned to Jace with a forced look of grief. “It is true that Draeklynn has gone missing, and we can sense her power now below us in his presence.”
“Then what do you need us for?” Jace asked. “The lich will feed on her, satisfy his cravings, and you can continue to steal his power for another half century.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Dayrin said, staring at the table. “It’s not that simple.”
Tang smiled at his colleague’s reluctant acceptance of reality. “Elconoric is not some vile vampire-” Jace felt Esther stiffen beside him “-who feeds frivolously on the blood of his victims and then discards the rest. There is power in the blood, but so too in the bones and muscles and flesh and life. The sacrifices are transformed into pure energy and fed to the lich by a machine. Three magical stones power this device. Currently, these stones are maintaining the lock keeping him imprisoned. We need you to venture into the catacombs and unlock these stones, thus delivering them to Elconoric. Then, after the ceremony is completed, return the stones to their proper place, and seal the lich in his tomb. Return to us when it is done, and you shall be rewarded.”
“With what?” Jace asked. He was so used to playing as a paladin in other games that demanding a reward for his efforts still seemed unnatural.
“The very process of navigating the locks usually increases your ability to process information naturally,” Ellonna said.
{She’s talking about the +1 you will receive to your Intelligence,} Gracie advised.
“But we can also bring an item from our crafting students. Perhaps we can have a selection you can pick from. That is, unless you prefer to be paid in coin?”
Jace shook his head. “A magical item to help us would be better. Is there something we should know about freeing these stones? If they are locked in place, it might not be so easy to extricate them. We are not experts at picking locks.”
Tang laughed. “They are not so crudely secured. They can be freed through intellectual means. More than that, I cannot tell you, for I do not know. No one from this school can make the journey. We have all been feeding on the lich’s power for so long that if we came face to face with the source . . .”
“The temptation would be too great,” Ellonna stepped in. “It must be done by an outsider.”
{They are simple riddles,} Gracie said. {You should be able to figure them out easily. If you can’t, I have all the answers.}
“You should leave at once,” Tang said. “The longer we wait, the more we tempt fate. Dayrin will lead you to the entrance of the catacombs. Return quickly. Make sure you put the stones back in their locks, or something unpleasant will follow you out.”
“Yes,” Ellonna agreed. “Please lock the door on your way out.”
{They’re serious,} Gracie said. {If you keep the stones for yourself, the lich follows you and kills you, but not immediately. It lets you think you’ve gotten away and then breaks into your stronghold a day or two later, killing everyone. If you try to sell the stones, he will track you down and the person you sold the stones to. Someone tries it every month. It never works.}
Jace nodded, watching the group’s youngest member rise reluctantly and motion for them to follow him again. Jace trailed a bit so he could talk quietly with Gracie. “So, tell me about this. I didn’t read up on this one. Also, I assume I can always return here later and do the dragon quest?”
{Yes, you can come back later. Gandhi is just being an ass because she knows what you want. She also wants to see if you will kill the girl.}
“So, I assume there is no way to save her? There is no way to kill the lich?”
{Dayrin will give you a vial of holy water before you go into the catacombs. He will tell you that if you can convince the lich to drink it, he will die. That’s a fool’s errand. No one has successfully convinced the lich to drink from a strange vial. Maybe it is possible, but I doubt it. The mage will also tell you that if you get Draeklynn to drink the holy water and then the lich drains her life energy, that will kill him too. That seems more likely, but no one has gotten that to work either. If you have the girl drink it, Elconoric will sense the power of the water inside her and flip out. He will kill one of your party members and then cast a spell to purge the girl. He is level 40, so he has enough mana to cast a death spell on anyone he wants.
{People have run experiments and found that if they pump a spell to a Difficulty of 100, he will fail some of the time, meaning he has a Magic Defense of around 85 to 90, which is REALLY low for someone as powerful as him and must be a result of him being hungry. It is also probably Gandhi playing with people and tempting them to fight the lich. A maxed-out level 9 mage might have +40 to Spell Difficulty, but even that is pushing it. To get to 100, they would have to spend 250 mana and have virtually nothing left to do damage. As a level 9 shaman with 17 Spirit, you only have 225 mana. If you cast an offensive spell or attack him, he will instantly kill everyone in your party. The device to transfer power from the girl to the lich is made from two sarcophagi linked by an unholy altar. The girl gets in one, the lich gets in the other, and you have to throw the switch.}
“Who loads the stones in the device?”
{They are loaded when you arrive at the bottom. In order to free them from the lock, you need to drop them into a chasm, and they are collected magically by the lich. One is a life stone, one is an undead stone, and the third is a mana stone. The mana stone powers the machine. There are two more sockets: one input and one output. The life stone is loaded into the input, and the undead stone is loaded into the output, so the machine will suck energy from the living person and deposit it into the undead one. But all you need to do is throw the switch. The stones are locked in place until the process is over. The lich has to be in his sarcophagus before the switch is thrown, which is why you need to be there.}
“And if I refuse to throw the switch?”
Gracie sighed. {Then he steps out of his coffin, kills one of your party members, and asks again, only he says ‘Please’ this time. I’m sure you will find a way, but no one else has.}
Jace was silent for the rest of the trip, lost in thought. Dayrin led them back down the stairs, through the entry hall to another stairwell, and then much deeper into the Academy. They emerged in a dank cellar and had to cut through several thick cobwebs as they traversed long, low corridors before they made it to a round stone door covered with ghastly engravings. Jace guessed no one came down here except once every 50 years.
Dayrin stopped before the door and turned, reaching into his cloak and removing a vial of glowing red liquid.
{That isn’t holy water,} Gracie commented.
Dayrin took a deep breath before speaking. “The others don’t know about this, and they would likely expel me from the Academy if they knew I was going to give it to you. This is a dragon elixir. Before you arrived, we had a problem with a dragon to the west, but some adventurers came and were actually able to slay it. Draeklynn and I harvested this energy from it.”
{Gandhi is a real bitch, isn’t she?} Gracie laughed in Jace’s head. {There is no dragon in your version of this MIM. They already killed it.}
Jace tried to ignore his operator, realizing that the AI in the game was messing with him, but he refused to make it easy on her and focused on what the young mage said.
“I know it is a long shot, but if you can get the lich to drink this, it will create a dragon mana core inside him, and he will be incinerated in seconds.”
“And if I can’t convince the lich to drink it?” Jace asked.
“Then,” he swallowed hard, “get Draeklynn to drink it.”
{He’s in love with her, by the way,} Gracie stated the obvious.
“Ellonna and Tang are right. We have been doing some dangerous experiments in the last few weeks. We were trying to harness the power of the dragon. We took animals already headed for the butcher and tried to steal their life energy. I know that vampires and succubae can steal energy from people and hold it in reserve even if it exceeds their mana capacity. In order to properly harness this energy,” he held up the vial, “you need more mana than any of us are capable of. You need to be an elder elf who devoted your whole life to cultivating your spirit. We wanted to see if we could cheat, but we failed. Our efforts probably woke the lich, and Draeklynn’s familiarity with manipulating life energy made her more susceptible to the calling.”
“Can she drink the elixir and survive?”
Dayrin shook his head. “No. Not even close. But she should be able to last long enough for you to load her into the device and throw the switch. Once the transfer starts, Elconoric won’t be able to stop it, and he will die in a massive fireball.”
“But so will Draeklynn.”
Dayrin fought back tears and nodded. “I don’t know if there is anything I can do to save her now. But if you can kill the lich . . .” he swallowed his pain and grew stern. “If you can end the scourge that’s plagued the Academy for centuries, her death will not be in vain. I don’t care what they do to me afterward.”
Jace nodded solemnly but still hesitated in taking the vial. “Wouldn’t holy water be safer? I mean, it wouldn’t hurt Draeklynn.”
Dayrin shrugged. “If I didn’t have this, I would give you holy water instead, but it probably wouldn’t work. The undead hate fire and are highly susceptible to it, but holy water is on another level. Elconoric would probably be able to sense it from a mile away. Draya at least has a chance of masking the dragon fire.”
“Draya?” Jace asked with a smirk.
“I’m sorry,” he cleared his throat and tried to regain his professional pedigree as a teacher in the Academy. “I meant Draeklynn.”
Jace felt sorry for the grieving young man and took the vial, storing it in his inventory. “We will do everything in our power to save her.”
{You do realize what Gandhi is doing?} Gracie asked. {She is giving you a realistic way to kill the lich, allowing you to keep the insanely powerful stones. There will be no need to lock the prison if the undead mage is gone. But to do that, you will have to kill the girl.}
Yes, Jace realized that, and his mind was working overtime to solve the problem.
Dayrin turned to the door behind him, charged it with mana in a specific sequence, and the stone rolled to the side, revealing a long dark tunnel. He stepped to the right and said nothing other than motioning inside. Jace looked over at Esther and Snowy. His two trusted companions nodded, and the three of them ventured forward.