The party of four moved slowly back to the lich’s throne room after Jace had finally devised a plan. He didn’t like it, but he had one. Despite her claims to be able to control the growing power within her, Draeklynn had been in agony most of the time Jace and Esther had talked. Once they were finished and Gracie confirmed that the young mage was Balanced, Jace used his mana to heal her. It wasn’t much, but it helped with the pain, and she could walk. They decided to save Snowy’s last heal of the day for an emergency.
Gracie had briefly run down the woman’s stats with Jace. It was nothing impressive. She had 12s for Strength and Constitution, 14s for Dexterity and wisdom, 18 for Intelligence, and 16 for Spirit. They were high for a level 9 character, but Jace was used to at least two 20s on the character sheet, and it was clear Draeklynn was designed more within the rules.
Her only important stat right now was her mana pool at 171. She needed to use this to control the dragon core growing inside her. Jace asked Gracie for constant updates. As they walked down the hall, it was at 50. Most things in the game doubled or halved over time, but this seemed to be growing logarithmically, and Gracie hadn’t been able to decipher the formula and thus couldn’t tell Jace how much time she had left. Once the core grew over her mana limit, she would lose containment, and it would start to burn her inside out. Depending on how mighty the dragon had been, it could increase to 4,000 or more. It would kill her long before that but might also use her expiring life energy to explode to its full strength in seconds, incinerating everyone in range.
“Are you sure you know what to do?” Jace asked Esther as they neared their destination. He was almost carrying Draeklynn as the young woman walked beside him, barely conscious.
Esther nodded. “Don’t worry about me; I’ve got it under control.”
Jace wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t seen her reach for the undead stone in a while, but once they got back in the presence of Elconoric, all bets were off. He hoped she would be able to make it through this mission okay. He was done underestimating the infamous qualities of the realms, however. There was no such thing as an easy quest.
The lich waited patiently for them and drew back from the group when he reached out to Draeklynn. “What is wrong with the girl? There is a fire inside her.”
That ruse didn’t last long, Jace thought.
“Yes,” Esther agreed and stepped between Elconoric and Draeklynn. She raised her hands which were still burnt from when she had thrown fire in her undead state. “She is a fire mage. We fought. She lost. Now her mana is regenerating. We should do this quickly.”
The lich didn’t look convinced. He turned his gaze on Jace, who now appeared human but still bore the same magical signatures as before. “I do not trust you,” he said. “No one can do what you say. I still believe you are trying to deceive me. Give me the stones, and I will perform the ceremony.”
“No,” Jace said, propping up Draeklynn’s weak form against Snowy so he could stand straight against the lich. “I have the stones. We must do this my way if it is going to work.” Jace held up the life stone. “I have the power of life.”
“You lie!” Elconoric said. “Give me the stones, and I will let you live. This is not a negotiation.”
“Enough,” Esther said, reaching into her gem bag and pulling out a stone. It was blue.
“Esther,” Jace said. “What are you doing?”
“Making the hard decisions you can’t. It is the only way.” She turned toward Elconoric and tossed him the mana stone.
He smiled. “Yes, my child.”
“Esther, no! This is not part of the plan.”
“Your plan was stupid!” she spat back. She turned back to Elconoric. “I will serve your purposes.”
“Show me.”
Easter spun in a flourish toward Jace and stalked toward him.
“Esther, what are you doing? He’s gotten in your head. You know there is another way.” Easter didn’t flinch in her approach, no weapons in her hands. Jace drew Diamond Etcher. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Do what?” Esther said. “You could never beat me.”
At Level 12, the vampire had initiative, and the game forced Jace to wait until Esther had a chance to act first. She grappled his arm, and it was all over. Maybe if Jace were at level 12 with his Athletic boon in place, he would have had a chance, but he failed the defensive check critically, and Esther had him in a chokehold and wrestled him to his knees. He was Helpless and at her whim. His weapon fell to the ground and clanged on the stone floor.
“Kill him!” the lich demanded.
Esther’s face plunged toward Jace’s neck, blood flying from the bite as her hunger took her. His level and HP plummeted once again. Draeklynn looked on in shock as Snowy did nothing to stop it. The violence of the act woke the young woman from her agony-filled malaise, and she struggled to stand on her own, barely keeping her balance.
After several rounds, Esther dropped Jace to the ground and stepped over his limp body. Only then did Snowy mosey over to her master and nuzzle his still form with her nose. Esther didn’t pay attention and walked over to her new master holding the life stone aloft. “Is that what you wanted to see?” she asked as she closed on the handsome lich.
Elconoric didn’t get a chance to answer as Esther sauntered up and kissed him passionately. The level 40 character was shocked by the bold move and had no defense for the sultry woman’s charm. Jace’s blood was still on her lips, and the lich was overcome with desire for her. “I will be your queen,” she whispered in his ear, her breath tickling his dead skin. “We will rule.” She pulled away and offered the life stone to him.
The undead mage took several stumbling steps back. “I can’t touch it,” he said. “I normally have the sacrifice do it.” He looked over at Draeklynn, who was trying to crawl away. “You must get her.”
Esther smiled and kissed him again. “Get into your chamber, master. I will take care of everything.”
Elconoric obeyed and moved up the steps toward his sarcophagus. He stopped before entering and turned to watch Esther run over to the young mage.
“What are you doing?” Draeklynn asked, struggling but having no chance against Esther’s superior skills. She looked over at Jace, still lying motionless. “You killed him.”
Esther only smiled. “It was all part of the plan.” She hauled her back toward the steps.
“But Jace said it wasn’t the plan.”
“That was also part of the plan,” Esther quipped. She lifted the light woman easily up the stairs and placed her in the other sarcophagus.
“I don’t want to die,” Draeklynn cried.
Esther placed a hand on her chest and pushed her against the back of the vertical coffin. “Just focus on what we talked about,” she advised before closing the lid, completely unaware that the young woman had been too consumed with her struggling against the dragon core and had heard nothing of the plan.
The vampire turned to the lich and saw him still hesitating. “This won’t work unless you are inside too,” she said. She moved to close his capsule as well, and he let her. She moved to the center console between the two coffins and loaded the life stone into the machine. She had to fully release it before retrieving the undead sphere from her inventory. It tugged at her soul, but she managed to let it go and shoved it in place.
The machine came to life. Behind her, the pool glowed a vibrant blue as the mana stone charged the sacred liquid. The cables and pipes stiffened as energy rushed into them, waiting to rip the power from one sarcophagus and infuse it into the other. Esther’s hand poised over the lever momentarily before pulling it down.
Thirty feet back, on ground level, in front of the pool, Jace stirred.
{You guys like to cut it close, don’t you,} Gracie said.
Jace’s head throbbed as he tried to push himself off the ground but failed. He had felt weak after having been drained to level 9, but this was completely different. How far had she taken him? He checked his stats. “Level 2! That was definitely not part of the plan.”
{I guess she felt she needed a little extra mana for that All-In Charm spell she dumped into the lich. It’s not every day that a level 12 character successfully charms a 40.}
“I imagine Gandhi gave her a few circumstantial bonuses. Did she at least load the stones backward?”
Gracie laughed. {What, you don’t trust her?}
“Trust but verify. How’s our newest member doing?”
{Her dragon core just jumped to 160. It’s about to get real for her. I hope this plan of your works.}
“So do I.”
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Inside the smaller sarcophagus, Draeklynn was confused. She had drank the vial without thinking as if compelled by some unknown entity. As terrifying as being loaded into the coffin to have her life sucked away was, she had come to an eerie peace about it. But now, as energy rushed into her body at a rate she would have never imagined possible, she found new strength and purpose, her scripted, resigned attitude toward death gone. Her body was weak, but her mind and spirit were strong. At this point in the module, her character was usually dead. A few changes had been made to her backstory to accommodate Jace’s arrival, and now those hastily coded scripts came to life. The experiments she had run with Master Dayrin were unique to this MIM, and she drew upon those fake experiences to make them a reality.
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Stealing life from a pig or cow only got her 300 to 500 mana, and it was far too small ever to tame the power of a mature red dragon. Even months after its death, with only scales and dragon blood to draw from, Draeklynn and Dayrin had always been overwhelmed. But now, thousands of points of mana flowed into her body every few seconds, and the infant dragon core inside her seemed small by comparison. It doubled from 80 to 160 and then tripled to 480, but the young mage squeezed it tight with ten times that much mana, building a solid ring of energy around it that threatened to squash it out of existence.
The dragon fought back, growing to 1,500 and then 3,000 in strength. But the energy from the lich seemed limitless, and it efficiently handled the expanding core. The growth rate of the dragon’s essence was already fading as it climbed to 3,700 and then 4,000. But the undead energy that flowed through the life stone, transferring it into pure, life-giving mana, wouldn’t stop. The dragon core climbed a few final points to 4,200, and then it was done.
The lich wasn’t.
Already Draeklynn had secured her new core with the limitless power at her disposal, building a hardened structure of magic around it like a dwarven smith’s kiln containing a superheated fire. She ensured it would never rupture or lose stability. It would stay there as long as she lived. She had also used thousands of the life-infused mana to heal and strengthen her body, but still more came.
She had been filthy, and the water had cleansed her. She had been thirsty, but now she was quenched. A fire had raged inside her, and she had tamed it. But the dam was broken, and the flood waters continued to roll in. She would drown if she didn’t find another use for the water.
The dragon inside her spoke up. I have a suggestion.
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Jace was struggling to his feet with Snowy’s help, watching the water in the pool boil like a pressure cooker about to explode. The two coffins glowed with unimaginable intensity, one like a black hole, the other like a green supernova.
{Jace, you need to get out of there now!} Gracie said. {In a few seconds, this place will be ground zero, and nothing will survive.}
Jace was sitting on 36 Hit Points and didn’t need to be told twice. “Esther,” Jace shouted. “We need to go.”
The woman stood just before the boiling pool, watching the show, hoping she hadn’t messed things up. Now she turned to see Jace, only casually noticing that he was alive. Draining him below half his level – nine after her previous level drain – put him into a death spiral. So as soon as she had gotten to 4, he had the potential to die, but she had trusted Snowy to save him. After all, that had been the plan.
“But Draeklynn is still in there,” she shouted.
“You’ve done all you can,” he shouted above the machine’s thrum and the hissing water. “Now we need to save ourselves.”
Esther took one last look at the young woman’s sarcophagus, saw the smoke billowing out of it, and listened to her leader. She bolted from the room, running back through the entrance toward the mummies. Snowy was by her side like a streak of white lightning. After a few seconds, she noticed that Jace was not. After doubling back, Esther saw him take three awkward steps and fall to the ground. He looked in pain and shoved her off, but she didn’t listen. “I suppose this is my fault,” she said, “but you taste so good.”
Stooping over him, Esther wrestled Jace’s pride into submission and picked him up. The size difference between the characters made it awkward, but at least he wasn’t an orc. Behind them, the thrum of the machine turned into a high-pitched squeal, and she took off again, only much slower this time.
As the ground began to shake, Esther tried a new tactic and began to use her boots’ Shadow Step ability to move from shadow to shadow up to the distance of her stealth skill. Now each stride was a new world record long jump as she moved 36 feet at a time through the poorly lit halls where shadows were in no short supply.
The throne room exploded.
Esther couldn’t possibly go any faster, and as the roar of the flames grew behind her, she turned a corner and finally saw the lantern light from the mummy room. Four more leaping strides brought her to the expansive hall, and she made a sharp left-hand turn, throwing Jace in front of her and then leaping after him. Snowy was right beside them, and a moment after they were clear, a jet of flame shot out of the tunnel as if a dragon had stuck its head out of the passage and released all its fury.
The massive wave of energy finally found a chamber large enough to expand and dissipate. Once it discovered the infinite blackness of the chasm, all the flame and heat was sucked into nothing. It was hard to breathe for a while, and all three living companions sucked at whatever oxygen they could find.
Eventually, their breathing slowed, but Esther’s turned to sobs. “Why couldn’t we save her? I thought we would save her. Did I do something wrong?”
Jace picked himself off the ground and crawled over to his companion. “You did nothing wrong,” Jace said. “You were amazing.”
{Oscar-winning performance,} Gracie agreed even though she knew Esther wouldn’t hear her and wouldn’t understand the reference anyway.
“But she’s gone,” Esther said, tears rimming her eyes.
“I don’t think she is,” Jace said. “I never got a notification that she left our party.”
Ester looked confused at the literal game-speak.
Jace clarified. “I think she’s still alive.”
{Agreed,} Gracie said. {She is at full health and has some new kick-ass stats.}
“But how?” Esther asked.
“She threw that fireball,” Jace said. “She used the excess energy from the lich and turned it into fire. You did the same thing against that shambling mound. Did it hurt you?”
She looked down at her charred hands but understood what Jace said. She had only hurt herself then because she was undead. As long as the energy flows out of you, it doesn’t hurt you. “Then we need to go to her.” She got up and was ready to run back. “Will it be safe for us?”
“I think so,” Jace said. He tried his balance again and found that the level-drain sickness was beginning to wear off.
They moved back through the corridors they had just sprinted through at an urgent but less magical pace. Esther wasn’t an infinite well of mana, and now that they were out of combat mode, she didn’t regenerate as quickly. Jace was amazed that the path was still intact. Burn marks covered the walls, but no stone was out of place. He asked Gracie about it.
{Most structures and rooms have infinite hit points, or the world would break down. Prison cells wouldn’t work if you could just punch a wall until its hit points ran out. The massive demon trapped in your stronghold’s basement could escape easily by just pummeling the stone around him with damage spells. So, it doesn’t matter how massive that fireball was; it can’t damage infinite walls.}
This meant that when they arrived in the throne room, it was much as they had left it. None of the statues had toppled, and the ceiling had not caved in. Of course, the impenetrable walls had only intensified the explosion, as it had nothing to absorb it until it made it to the chasm. The pool was empty, and the machine was destroyed beyond repair. Everything else just looked like it had been painted black by a four-year-old with a can of spray paint. Esther ran to Draeklynn’s sarcophagus, but Jace was more interested in Elconoric’s. He opened it and found nothing. Not even ash.
Esther opened the other coffin, and the young woman collapsed into the vampire’s arms. Her hair and eyes were no longer brown but a vibrant red. She looked more robust too, but Jace would go over her character sheet with Gracie later, assuming the game let him keep her. He imagined it had no contingencies for when the girl survived the ordeal, so nothing should be pulling her in another direction. Of course, the game never had contingencies for what Jace did. Gracie proved him wrong about that seconds later.
{Jace,} she chimed in. {About those infinite HP walls. It turns out the lich’s magic held up their existence. I’m reading a lot of instability in your surroundings. I hope you guys are up for running again. You need to get out of there quickly before the game deletes you with your surroundings.}
“Esther,” Jace said. “We need to go again. Can she walk?” Jace remembered that when Esther had cast a massive Death spell from excess mana, she had been unconscious for over an hour.
Draeklynn wasn’t unconscious and didn’t look weak, just shocked at the turn of events. As soon as she understood the lich was dead and they were free to go, a new sense of confidence flowed through her. Her body shimmered with fire mana, and it looked like she had grown an inch or two. “I can run if you need me to.”
“Good,” Jace said. He wished he could. “Let’s go.”
“The stones,” Esther cried. The machine was destroyed, but the stones were not. Esther found them quickly, their magical signatures standing out clearly to her supernatural nature. She made sure to store each one before picking up the next, and in a few seconds, they were moving away from the throne room again.
Jace was able to keep up a better pace this time. Soon he was jogging and then running. Behind them, a deep sense of doom hung in the air. It was like running from the Nothing from the Never-Ending Story, but Jace didn’t want to bring it up so Gracie could make fun of his age again.
It was smooth sailing through the mummy room and the burned-out forest, but Jace stopped the group at the floating pedestal, hoping they had a few moments to think about this one. “How does this normally work?”
“How should we know?” Draeklynn said.
“No,” Esther corrected her. “He’s talking to Gracie.”
“Who’s Gracie?”
Jace ignored them and focused on his operator.
{When the lich is recharged, all of these trials reset. The bridge is repaired with the empty totem in it. You are supposed to load the mana stone in it and run like hell as mummies start popping out again. A small collection of vines sprout at the next bridge. You put the life stone in them, and a forest grows behind you as you leave. When you get here, the platform is recharged with mana. You put the undead stone on the pedestal, and the bridge to the far side extends.}
That all made sense to Jace, but he wanted to keep the undead stone. Even if he didn’t, he knew the platform only had seconds of mana left in it, and if they waited for the far bridge to unfold toward them, they would all fall into the nothingness below and be deleted.
Esther seemed to understand the problem too. “I can fly you over,” she said, pulling the obsidian sphere from her bag but controlling it enough for now not to transform instantly.
“Not all three of us,” Jace argued. Because he was still in his human form, Snowy was actually the heaviest.
“I think I can do two of you for a short period. Do you think Snowy can jump?”
“With a little help, yes. Can you give her your necklace?”
Esther had a pendant that increased her Athletic skill by six. She removed it and fastened it around the wolf’s neck.
“And the diamond I gave you,” Jace added. Jace had gotten an Athletic boon spell at level ten and could raise the skill by ten. With Trixna’s help, they had made a ward on a diamond so Esther could cast the spell on herself in a pinch. It was a one-time use, and Jace would have to refill it when they returned to the stronghold, but it made Esther nearly invincible.
Esther dug the diamond out of her gem bag and offered it to Snowy. The wolf had eaten magical objects like this before, and she knew she would get it back. Once the familiar had it in her mouth, Jace guided her into putting some of her own mana into it. A shiver went through the winter wolf, and her muscles tensed.
Behind them, the sound of nothing grew closer.
Esther turned to Draeklynn, who seemed perplexed by everything. “I’m going to change now,” she said. “Don’t be frightened.”
She took the obsidian stone and tucked it in her vest. As Esther’s skin changed and wings grew out her back, there was no chance of Draeklynn not being scared, but she hung on anyway, as the three characters raced across the first bridge holding hands with Esther in the middle. Snowy was right behind them. When they hit the platform, they got three good running steps in, and the floor gave way. Esther took to the air, hauling the others up with her. It was only fifty feet to the far side, and with all her effort, she managed to get halfway, swing them down beneath her, and throw them the rest of the distance as she tumbled through the air and crashed into the ledge.
Jace hit the ground, tumbled to a stop, and then canceled the rest of his illusion spell. As an orc, he rolled back to the ledge and extended his long arm. Snowy had made a desperate leap once the hexagonal stones started to fall beneath her, but it was almost sixty feet, and she would come up just short. Jace found a solid rock to hook his massive foot to and extended another dozen inches over the edge. Snowy clamped down hard on Jace’s hand, doing enough damage to almost kill him. It was over half his Level 2 max HP, but he easily made the saving throw to stay conscious. With a heave of his enormous strength, he managed to pull the wolf to safety.
Draeklynn picked herself off the stone, looked at Esther, a tangle of bat wings and veiny skin, and then at Jace, an orc with a bloody hand that Snowy was licking clean, and she passed out.