CHAPTER 59

Red Harbor, Winter

Dear Diary,

it’s been three days since the city guard asked us to catch the serial killer. We’ve been stalking his haunt by the wharfs, me and Trugnar inside a dingy warehouse and Val stalking the rooftops outside in the rain, bless him. Three days and we haven’t found a hint of a clue, though the bodies keep turning up like clockwork, savaged by rats and left to rot…

One thing I notice immediately, it’s awkward browsing through a book with only one hand. The second thing is, Lysander and Valkas used to be close. Valkas’ name appears close to the start of the diary and remains constant for a good portion of it. Trugnar must be Trugnar Giantsblood, whose depiction I’d seen in the Challenge.

I take care to leave the water running in the bath while I page through Lysander’s notebook. Will he sleep all day? Doubtful. The elf seems too impatient, too eager to ease off his planning for long, even if he spent a night boozed up and without sleep. I hunt back and forth for the best and most telling entries, trying to find the most useful information in the shortest span of time possible, before I’m forced to return the notebook to its place.

My eyes flit through the pages, looking for names, for times, for places…

There.

Mentions of Dungeons start cropping up. First, a casual remark by a local, then a meeting with a Champion who refused to tell them more. The investigations deepen as Lysander’s troupe travels, quests, and has adventures…

Olvion, Spring

Cloak and dagger! We met the source in the carnival. It was wonderful. Val and I were very stylish, if I can say so myself. He with a white shirt, a sable cloak, and a grim crow’s mask – the locals’ depiction of Death. I gave it my best during shopping yesterday. I fought a matron for a fire-red mantle and a little boy for a pair of yellow slippers. What I paid for the mask could have bought me a Ring of Protection back in RH. Oh, but it was worth it. I was dazzling as the Phoenix, and judging by the glances I got I’m the only one to think so…

The source wasn’t very happy that all eyes were on me, like he was afraid to be seen with “Godtouched”, the local’s jealous moniker for such as us. He gave us the Dungeon’s location and then, looking bored and distant in a drab seagull costume, “If you hurry, you might still catch up with your friends.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Valkas asked, What friends?

“Your people. I met with them two days ago. They were looking for the Dungeon too.”

Suddenly, all hopes were dashed. The old idiot had given Kord’s people the location. Val looked like he was about to strike the old man down there and then. I tried to convince him. One Dungeon lost, who cares, I said. But the old Valkas wasn’t home anymore. He dragged me away from that wonderful carnival, and into the wilds we went…

Kord and the Dungeons in close association. I feel the tingle begin at the top of my spine, a pleasant feeling spreading down my neck.

Olvion, Spring

We split up when we reached the valley. The old man’s instructions were imprecise, the valley bigger than we imagined. Val ran up and down the embankment like a crazed dog, while Trugnar did his thing through the center of the valley. I thought Kestrel had the right idea searching the places where forest became rock, so while he took the South side, I took the North.

I confess I wasn’t trying very hard. I’d left my mount down in the forest and was walking along a trail – moping and kicking rocks and such, still wearing bits and pieces of my costume, which only made everything worse – when I rounded a bend and found it.

The temple was somber, dug or grown into the rock, barely illuminated, but the thin edges and slight curves made it elegant, like a natural part of the landscape. I went inside by myself, my little punishment to Val.

There were writings on the walls. One, in Common, warned that the Challenge awaited inside. Another, Elvish, in their (our?) soppy poetic style, that the Mihr-haed (Trial, I would say, not Challenge) separated wheat from chaff. Many other warnings existed, etched into the walls of a long corridor that led down, down into the earth. The words were illuminated, the only source of light in the place apart from me – by this point I had Light on, to try and keep my bravery up.

The corridor led into a circular room, grander and well illuminated. Four statues were arranged around the room, their features indistinct.

Here, a later hand had corrected, in the margins:

The crowns were distinct: 1, a rough circle of rock; 2, an iron circlet, forged from some other shape; 3, a dainty circlet of gold; 4, a proper kingly crown.

Two doors led away from the central chamber. Or should I say: one portal led away, swirling white, and the shape of another door existed, though filled the place where the cavity should be.

I’m lucky that I’m not so petty (perhaps so brave?) as to simply go into the portal, caution and Val be damned. I’m lucky that I merely decided to linger, looking at the statues, taking a tour of the room, deciding to take a little while longer before I made my way to the group and announced my discovery.

While my back was turned, there was a sound, and a golden light illuminated the room for an instant. When I turned, the light had gone out, but in front of the empty doorway there was a shape I recognized at once. Kord, our rival.

He was shaking on the floor. Raving.

“They’re all dead,” he said, and then repeated his groupmates’ names, one by one.

I tried to snap him out of it. Told him he was being crazy, that they’d be back on their respawn spot. He was freaking me out. That’s when I saw his injury. Something jagged had struck Kord just below his pretty blue eye and carved a bloody path into his scalp. Disgusting, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. The difference here was, the wound wasn’t healing even thought he was out of combat. The blood mixed with tears on his face, and I waited, and waited, but still the wound did not heal and Kord wouldn’t stop screaming, naming his teammates. I used a piece of my mask to staunch the bloodflow. The phoenix-red turned dark drown while I screamed for Valkas, for anyone.

When they found me, I had to convince them not to go into the Dungeon, begged them not to. I was as frantic as Kord was. Valkas called me a coward. We ended up riding back to Olvion.

I was right. Kord’s eye did not heal. They’re dead. All dead. Never respawned.

Olvion, Spring

Something weird is going on.

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We walked past one of their Champions on the street. Big guy, human, one of the self-stiled Champions we keep running into. He laughed and asked Kord how his teammates were doing. Clearly the story of the “Godtouched” who died in the Dungeon had spread already.

Kord stopped. He looked at the man and his eyes shone golden. He said something strange. “Your courage dries,” or similar. Immediately, the man stopped laughing. He seemed like a lost child, looking at us as if we were monsters. Then he ran away.

When we asked Kord what he’d done, he wouldn’t – couldn’t? – tell us.

The same later hand had penned in the word “geas” next to this entry.

The fuzzy feeling increases, coursing up and down my spine like pleasantly warm lightning, and I need to put my thoughts in order before continuing.

The next few pages detail the days after the catastrophe. The news spreading. Valkas debating whether they should attempt the Dungeon or not. Kord abandoning the group one morning, disappearing entirely. Then, entries become spotty, telling of seemingly unrelated events. “Winter” entries lead to “Summer” ones, detailing only particularly important events in this time, or at least those that Lysander considered important.

Dark Lord Obrein’s death, in my mind the occasion that had established the Black Sword guild’s legitimacy, a battle of yet-unseen proportions that ended with the slaying of the ruler of the land, was puzzlingly laconic:

Obrein is dead. Blasted him through the eye.

Rumors of a Dungeon up North, past Eddarbridge. Exactly where reports place Kord a few days ago.

Shortly after in the notebook, though possibly years past that particular victory:

Hollor’s Fall, Autumn

Valkas has grown happy in his reign. Things have become ordered, simple. The guilds’ plan of dismantling the Dungeons went too well. Even Kord and his King’s Guard went along with it. After the initial offensives against the Champions, they wised up and disappeared, so now all that’s left within the borders that our levels allow us is peace. Immortal, poisoned contentment.

More and more, I find myself spending time at Hollor’s Fall. When I first appeared here, I was scared out of my wits. It wasn’t until after the old troll had killed me a couple of times, after I saved the villagers from the bandits, after I ran into Val and we partnered up that I realized that I wasn’t scared anymore. Every day I was glad to wake up, eager to start the day, to try and fail and try again, to fall in and out of love, to kill and be killed.

Now that I’m back, I find that that magnificent feeling has dwindled and disappeared. The old troll is still there. He’s a nice guy, all things considered. Bandits still roam the land, still steal cows and purses, and sometimes lives. I find it hard to care.

I’m tired. I’m afraid again. Years ago, that fear came from a place of ignorance. Now, it comes from too much knowledge, too much cowardice. I should have seized my chance when it came, when I found Kord lying in a puddle of his own blood, the portal swirling white behind him. Right then, that was when the world began contracting, stifling our movements, fear draping over the land like a blanket. We thought we’d evaded death, but this is not living.

I have decided. I don’t want to go back to Red Harbor. I’ll build a house outside the village, and I’ll… Well. I’ll fight their bandits, I suppose.

Hollow House, Spring

Dear Diary,

I had a surprise today. I had almost forgotten the feeling. I’d spent all day in the study, getting drunk and rereading the same books. Now night approached, and with it rogue stormclouds. I put the book down and watched the sunset and Amelia’s shades coming out to play.

Lightning flashed, and thunder followed soon after. I idly considered going up on the roof and bring a steel pole with me. I haven’t died from lightning strike yet. It flashed again, and the rumble was right on its heels. The room felt very cozy, and I finally resolved to sit back and watch the spectacle when I realized I could still see the sunset, a line of orange in the sky under the clouds. Which meant the thunderclouds were right, and only, above our heads.

There was no interval between the next blinding strike and the ground-shaking sound. A streak of golden light fell from above and crashed into the earth. When I’d blinked away the afterimages, I saw a man. He was approaching the house, leaving a crater behind him.

Amelia, to her credit, acted fast. The shades converged, but there was too much light. It streamed from above, mixed with lightning, and it issued from the man as well in long rays, golden and entrancing.

I rushed out of the study. I grabbed the Leaf Shield from the corridor, the Ring of Ghosting from its hiding place, and other bits and pieces on my way. I yelled at Amelia to get back and stay back. I cannot fully describe my emotions in that period. I knew I wouldn’t die, couldn’t die, but for a moment it didn’t matter because the fear and the excitement were the same as if the stakes had been real. I like to think I ran out of the house as an avenging god, though I probably looked more like a barefoot drunk, a washed up Godtouched.

The man had dispatched as many nightmares as had dared to approach. His silver helmet was figureless and molded to his face. His shield bore golden wings. His sword crackled with pale flames. A Champion, I knew then. And then II rushed him.

My burst of magical flame hit his shield without leaving a mark. He jumped high, too high, and brought his sword down, but I used the Ring to fade a few meters away. Frost clung to my clothes and hair as I turned, shield in front of my body. The diamond in its flared, and thorns shot out of the ground to wrap around the man’s legs. He slashed his sword downward and drew a line of fire in the ground that shone, grew, and soon blocked him from view.

He burst from the fire like an avenging angel or a golden demon, already slashing. But I wasn’t there. A flash of another diamond, this one around my neck, and I was transported to the mansion’s roof. Lightning magic is difficult to aim, at least if you’re just a measly Mage and not a Stormrider. If it hits, it does a good deal damage, but it’s the hitting that’s the trouble. That all becomes moot when there’s an actual thunderstorm, however. The only direction that matters then is down.

I called the lightning down, and for the second time that night, it struck my garden. The light blinded me, the shockwave threw my off my feet. When I opened my eyes, half blind, I found the silver shape of the man’s face was looking down at me. Slowly, it melted away, revealing a familiar face, a pretty blue eye I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Lysander,” he said. “Good to see you’re still limber.”

“Kord?”

Though his youth remained complete, his face bore the unmistakable heaviness of maturity. He had aged decades since we’d last seen each other.

And then his eyes shone golden, and he spoke.

“Your fear is gone, and passion rushes to fill the void it left.”

And he changed my life.

I turn the page to find another paragraph detailing the encounter. The pages immediately following that one have been ripped away, leaving jagged edges behind. The next bit of information comes in the form of columns and rows.

Archetype tops a column, followed by a densely packed list. There seems to be no end to them. Another row details the Archetype’s rarity. I notice that there are many Commons at the top near the beginning of the list, while closer to the bottom the Uncommons reign. The list continues in the next page, and the average rarity increases accordingly. The last entry, Inquisitor, is labeled as Epic, though it’s certainly not the only one.

The second-to-last column is labelled Mechanics, and a list of nouns follows. Priest, the Uncommon Archetype, is identified with Oath? Vow? Pledge?

The final column is only a list of names. I place my finger on the page and follow the names until I run into Amelia, who occupies the entries Shadowmage, Necromancer, and Night Witch. Mossgreen is in Druid, an Uncommon Archetype, and in a host of others, though in these the name is always followed by an interrogation mark. It seems Lysander isn’t sure where to place the troll.

Biting my tongue with frustration, even as I feel energized by the revelations buzzing around in my brain, I shoot the ripped pages a look of pure fury and read the final section of narration.

We talked a long time that night. He told me that after leaving us, he’d dedicated himself to finding more Dungeons. They weren’t that hard to find, he said, when you knew what you were looking for.

“I wanted to die, Lys,” he said.

But death hadn’t come. Instead, he’d only grown more powerful. His efforts continued until, he said evasively, “someone took pity on me.” And “The Dungeons made me want to live again.”

“But,” I pointed out. “You were the one who suggested dismantling them to the guilds. Why?”

I said it with some poison. I hated Kord for what he’d done, I realized in that moment. What he’d stolen from us.

“Yes. I gave them all that I knew of. Someone asked me to.”

He wouldn’t say any more about that. And then slowly, but convincingly, he outlined his plan.

The page ends. I come back to the world to hear feet in the corridor, passing by. Outside my window, Ged is stretching in the sunlight. He sees me looking and waves. I wave back. Time to rejoin the world of the living.

Before bathing, I return the notebook to its drawer. And only then, safe from the consequences of my little crime, sinking in the warm water, do I bring up the misty pages.

The Right Way

Kord, Godtouched and leader of the King’s Guard guild, was the one responsible for unmaking the old Dungeons. Kord convinced Lysander that the Dungeons were the way to rekindle his love for life. Now, Lysander has found a Dungeon, intact and undisturbed. He plans to attempt the Challenge and either die or be liberated.

What is Kord’s plan?

Why did he buy Katha of Reach?

You have unveiled part of the truth!

You may select an Inquisitor Perk from the following list.

INQUISITOR PERKS – 1 Secret

Apprentice Torturer

Disciple of Fire

Disciple of Illusion

Infiltrator