The group tore out of the study, and Elisabeth directed them down a long upstairs hallway. “There is a barred door at the end leading to an outdoor balcony,” she said. Magical lights hung from the arched ceiling, illuminating the clear path, but it was long.
Vithium passed the others right away. He had put many points toward Athletic and got bonuses from all his physical abilities. Wallace fell behind. She had good Strength but hadn’t spent anything in Athletic and had banes from her low Dexterity. Wearing full plate and carrying a large shield didn’t help. Elisabeth began singing an upbeat marching song, and the paladin felt her legs lighten and her pace quicken, but it wasn’t enough. She saw the other two race down the hall ahead of her, passing several bedrooms and closing in on the balcony door.
The monster was at her heels, and Wallace could feel its fearful aura tickling her Magic Defense. Brodie helped her decide what to do. {Vithium will be fine, but Elisabeth won’t to make it to the end of the hall unless you slow the monster down.}
Wallace stopped, pulled her shield from her back, and turned to face the beast. It was only fifteen feet behind her and seemed startled by her change in strategy. Without any defensive bonuses from Elisabeth, Wallace knew this would hurt and braced herself. The fiend had other ideas and flexed its powerful legs to leap over the defensive player, the arched ceiling giving it plenty of room. The paladin reacted quickly, swiping her axes at the vulnerable underbelly of the beast as it flew over, sprinkling her with more black blood but not slowing the monster.
“Vithium!” she cried. “Behind!”
The speedy monk had already reached the end of the hall, had the wooden inner door open, and was working on the iron outer door. He turned at the cry and saw in horror as the demon streaked toward Elisabeth, who was still thirty feet from him. Vithium raced back toward her, but the monster reached the woman first. She screamed as she was tackled to the ground, and the beast pulled her into one of the bedrooms.
Wallace and Vithium reached the open door simultaneously and watched the beast treat the bard like a rag doll as it dragged her through a chair, over the bed, and then out a window in a shower of glass. Elisabeth's screams filled the night, only ending when she hit the ground outside.
Both fighters followed as fast as they could. The smaller monk maneuvered the obstacles in the room more efficiently and tucked his body as he jumped out the window, rolling when he hit the ground outside and taking no damage. The lumbering paladin wasn’t as coordinated and ripped the frame out of the window as she crashed to the ground, taking more damage than she would have liked.
They saw the shadowed form of the demon sprinting across the property with the woman's limp body in its jaws. They couldn’t catch up, and when it leaped effortlessly over the distant fence and a bolt of lightning bounced off it without effect, they gave up. She was gone.
Vithium was leaning against a waist-high coral when Wallace caught up to him, heaving and puffing as if she had just run a mile. “Is that how it is supposed to go?” the monk asked.
“More or less,” Wallace replied between gasps. “I think we held our own. You have some interesting moves.”
The monk shrugged. “I didn’t do any damage. I don’t think I would ever be able to scratch that thing if I punched it a thousand times.”
“That’s not why I invited you,” she said, pausing to take a deep breath and chug another healing potion. “I don’t need you to fight that. I need you to fight something else.”
“And that would be . . .” his voice trailed off as he spotted a man approaching them from the shadows of a tree.
Wallace was staring at the ground, trying to regain her breath, when she noticed the hanging sentence and looked up. She smiled. {That is Tristan Hamley,} Brodie confirmed for her.
The young man approached them cautiously, a sword in hand. He was a level 16 spellsword, far above Wallace and Vithium. Some NPCs adjusted to the player’s level when they joined the party; others were locked in place. Tristan was the latter. If Wallace’s new plan was to continue past twelve, she hoped the brother, Thursa, would adjust to her. Having an NPC at a higher level than you sounded like a good idea, but the modules adjusted their difficulty based on the average character level, and then once the player hit level 17, the NPC was still at 16.
Tristan wore a black trench coat down to his knees over a navy blue shirt and black pants. He had another blade on one hip with a holster of wands on the other. Wallace guessed he was about 25. “You hurt the venator,” he said once he got close. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“We were trying to save your sister,” Wallace said.
Tristan hesitated. “You know who I am?”
The knight nodded. “And you know why the venator is here and what it is after,” she said, happy to have a name for the creature.
“It is coming for you next?” Vithium asked.
The young man cocked his head. “So you don’t know everything.”
Wallace decided not to interject. Her partner’s inexperience played better in the game. NPCs reacted oddly when you always knew what was going to happen.
“No, I am not next,” Tristan said. “At least, I’m not supposed to be; I still have an older brother. But I see no other way to navigate this situation now. It is better that one of us dies than both of us. I just wished my father had left me another option.”
“You could have arrived sooner,” Vithium chided. “We could have used another blade.”
The youth looked down at the sword in his hand. “No, I could not have helped. My source of power is the same as that beast’s. My magic would have been useless against it, and this sword is powerless in its current condition. My only hope was that someone could have stopped the venator before it came to this.”
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Vithium looked between Tristan and Wallace. “Someone want to tell me what he is talking about?”
Wallace chuckled. “Operator still hasn’t found it?” When Vithium scowled at her and Tristan looked confused, she didn’t press the point. Instead, she turned to the spellsword and tried to speed along the exposition part of the module. “That’s a vorpal blade, isn’t it?”
The young man looked impressed and nodded.
“It is designed to be enchanted to kill a particular type of creature. Your father gave it to you to kill the venator in case his efforts to reverse the curse he brought upon you failed. But you haven’t enchanted it yet, have you?”
The spellsword shook his head.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Vithium asked. “If we have a way to kill that thing, let’s do it. Use your magic to enchant the blade.”
“I’ve already told you my magic is useless against the monster,” Tristan explained. “And the deed to charge this weapon is darker than any I have ever contemplated. When my father told me, I laughed in his face, but he said it must be done, and I was the only one strong enough to do it.”
“The venator can’t really be killed,” Wallace said. “It can only be banished. And only when its hunger is sated. That blade can kill its hunger.”
“But it wants to feed on all of Byron Hamley’s offspring,” Vithium said slowly, getting a picture of where this was headed. “You have one brother left . . .”
Tristan nodded. “And if I kill him with this weapon, it will be enchanted to end the beast’s hunt.” He hung his head in shame. “My father told me I should have killed my uncle right away, then I could have ended this before it got this far. Garrison and Elisabeth would still be alive. But I just couldn’t. Once they started dying, I knew what had to be done to end it, but I didn’t have the strength. I came here tonight thinking that I would try to help, and if Elisabeth was going to die anyway, then it wouldn’t be such a big problem to kill her myself, but I couldn’t even go into the house. And when you two showed up, I thought that maybe . . .” His eyes drifted to where the beast had carried the woman into the woods. “But I failed in that too.”
“So now you need our help to kill your last brother,” Vithium said, not sure he liked that idea. “But, wait,” the monk turned to the paladin, “you want the brother as a companion, don’t you? He’s a druid, right?” he turned to the other two for confirmation. Both nodded their heads. “Good. Then you have a better plan to avoid all this sibling murder while still slaying that beast, right?”
Wallace shook her head. “A better plan? No, my plan is much, much worse.”
Tristan looked surprised. “There is another way? I don’t have to kill my brother?”
The paladin shrugged. “Not exactly. You see, you have another sibling. A baby sister.”
“What!” Tristan cried. “Impossible. I would have known about it. My father would have told me. Besides, he would have never cheated on my mother. I saw her at my father’s funeral. I think I would have noticed if she had a daughter.”
Wallace got stern with the young man. “Your father practiced black magic his entire life, served a chaos demon, and willingly made a deal that would kill all his blood relatives, and you think he is above sleeping around?”
Tristan wanted to lash out at the paladin, but better sense prevailed in the face of her logic. As far as Wallace knew, no one had tried this strategy in this module yet, so they didn’t know what the young man’s reaction would be. “He didn’t want you to have to kill one of your siblings,” Wallace continued. “So he reached out to a priestess of Custos to see if there was anything else he could do to protect you.”
Tristan laughed. “No, he told me he was meeting with her to find his enemy’s weaknesses. Custos and Impetus are mortal enemies. A true servant like my father would never consort with the enemy.”
“He consorted,” Wallace confirmed. “He consorted, and she conceived. Byron Hamley died shortly after, and she lied about the father, keeping the daughter secret.” Wallace turned to Vithium to bring him up to speed, assuming correctly that his operator wasn’t quick enough to bring up information on the beings they had mentioned. “Impetus is the demon Lord Byron and Tristan serve. He is aggressive and violent. Byron was an offensive mage, and his son here is a spellsword, who I’m told is a sight to behold in battle.”
The young man stood a little straighter at the compliment, unaware that the paladin had gained the information from a Wiki page, not from hearing of his exploits through the realms. “Custos is a god who specializes in defense and protection spells.”
Vithium was beginning to understand. “So their father was meeting with this priestess to see if she could develop a spell to defend against this creature we just fought.” Wallace nodded. “But instead,” the monk continued, “they got busy and produced a child.”
“My father would never . . .” Tristan declared, but Vithium raised a hand to stop him.
“You serve a demon,” Vithium said. “So did your father. You just stood by and watched while your sister was killed, and your genius plan is to kill your brother to make this all stop. You aren’t exactly a paragon of virtue here. I’m not sure your judgment is the best.”
“Well said,” Wallace complimented him.
“You aren’t off the hook here either,” Vithium added, turning to the paladin. “Your plan is to kill a baby.”
“Don’t you own a brothel?” Wallace argued back.
“Don’t change the topic,” Vithium said. “This isn’t about me.”
“It isn’t about me either,” Wallace said. “Option one is for you and me to hold down his bear of a brother – and I am talking literal bear here – while Tristan kills him. I am giving us another option where we go see if this sister exists, and maybe Tristan doesn’t have to kill his brother anymore.”
Vithium stared hard at the paladin, trying to think of another comeback. “What did you get me involved with here? Aren’t you a paladin?”
“In my defense,” she said, “this game is called the Realm of Infamy.”
Vithium threw his hands up and walked off into the darkness. Wallace gave him some time to think it over and turned to Tristan. “You said your father told you he was meeting with this priestess?” The spellsword nodded. “Then you know where she is? I have information that she exists, but I don’t know where.”
Tristan nodded again. “Yes, I can take you there. The temple is in a tiny village to the south. It is actually on the way to my brother’s mountain. We won’t lose any time once I prove you wrong.”
Wallace nodded and moved away from the house and toward the entry, hoping that Tristan had a way to unlock the gate. They picked up Vithium, who still wasn’t happy but would go along with the plan for now.
The youngest Hamley son could open the gate, and the group moved toward the travel node. On a hunch, Wallace continued past the node a few dozen feet until she left the module and entered global time. The sky grew suddenly bright, and she saw the sun a quarter of the way up. She turned back toward the Hamley estate and got the notification that no one other than Vithium was currently in the module.
“Nobody’s found it yet?” Wallace whispered.
{Not that I can see,} Brodie answered. {Two of the other NPCs that Jace released have modules in high-trafficked areas, and the chat rooms are buzzing about that, but nothing concerning this module yet. Eventually, someone will figure out where the NPCs came from, who had them last, and who else is available. But all the players good enough to give you a run for your money are probably focusing on the other NPCs. No one is wandering around Mizzeray waiting for a random quest to pop up.}
“And the first decent player who does find this quest is probably going to be smart enough not to tell anyone.”
{Right, and now that you are done with the Hamley estate portion, anyone behind you won’t know you are already inside. Either way, don’t take your time.}
Wallace nodded, returned to the group, and activated the node.