Rogue Dungeon: Troll Nation (Chapters 19 - 21)

Chapter 19 

Septic Brewmaster

Zyra laughed at the sight of the gang’s culinary weapons. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with those in here. From what I’ve heard, you could barely use them when you were in a proper kitchen.”

The chef’s face turned beet red. 

“I am an Oronoro Institute-trained chef, you tasteless heathen!” he bellowed, rushing Zyra, his rolling pin brandished overhead like a Combat Cleric’s scepter.

Zyra extended her claws on both hands and dropped into a defensive stance, ready to Death Scratch the furious cook.

At the last moment, however, Kaz lurched to his feet and spun, throwing a punch that would crush the skull of a rampaging water buffalo. His fist landed with a meaty thump, blood arcing through the air as the chef somersaulted backward and toppled onto a table halfway across the room. Plates of beans and potatoes went flying.

“Do not insult Kaz’s friends!” the Mighty Gourmet roared.

The chef’s cronies looked at their leader, then at each other. As one, they charged.

“Great,” Roark said. “No weapons, outnumbered, and no respawn.” He looked at Variok. “Let us handle this. You stay here and don’t die.”

“Variok is a merchant, my friend. He does not dabble in combat.” He gestured at the melee where Kaz was busy wading through the crowd of cronies and Zyra slashed everything that moved. “Please, enjoy your fight.”

Roark vaulted across the table, wings dragging behind him. 

The crony with the stove length, an azure-skinned dark elf, ducked under a massive haymaker from Kaz laced with the jagged end of a broken cinnamon stick. A fitting shank for the Mighty Gourmet. Without stopping, the dark elf whirled toward Roark, swinging the stick of wood at Roark’s head. Roark threw up an arm and caught the blow on his triceps. Before the dark elf could pull back for another, Roark clamped his arm down around the stove length and jerked.

The dark elf stumbled toward him, but didn’t let go of the stick. Employing a trick he’d learned years ago from Danella, Roark twisted hard, dragging the dark elf in again, and used their combined forward momentum to decimate the elf’s nose with a devastating headbutt.

Stunned, the dark elf dropped to the icy floor. Roark snatched the stove length from his fist and gave him a kick in the side of the head in return. The elf wasn’t dead, but by the look of his rolling eyes, he wasn’t getting back up any time soon. Good. Roark didn’t much care for this Chef or his sycophants, but that didn’t warrant a death sentence—especially not with forever death on the line. If being a sod was all that it took to earn a trip to the gallows, then he would’ve along ago hung every councilmember in the T’verzet. 

As Roark threw himself at the crowd of goons attacking Kaz with all manner of kitchen tools, he was vaguely aware of shouting and running going on at the periphery surrounding their bubble of violence. But no one new joined the fray or attacked Variok, so Roark dismissed the din as unimportant and slammed his new weapon into the rog who had leapt onto Kaz’s back. It cracked across the rog’s spine, drawing an unearthly scream of pain. A second strike sent the rog to the ground, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his legs splayed limply. Roark cocked the stick of wood back, ready to launch another attack.

But a gray-green aura of light appeared around him, paralyzing him from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. A glance around showed that same light pulsating around both Kaz, Zyra, and their rivals. Even the chef and Variok had been paralyzed.

A dozen olm Legionnaires in shining plate and pristine tabards surrounded them, arms raised in the cast for Paralyzation.

“Prisoners, all of your fines have hereby been doubled.”

By then, it was only instinct for Roark to close the corresponding notice as soon as it appeared. 

The lead caster craned his neck to look straight up. “Overwatcher, who struck the first blow in this conflict?”

At the top level, a blue olm pointed, “The biggest one, but the other two Trolls came in a close second, and the elf was egging them on to join the fight.”

The lead caster nodded sharply. “Two days and two nights in the Freezer for egregious misconduct.”

Grim murmurs ran through the watching crowd of inmates. Sounded like none of them much fancied the Freezer. The Legionnaires casting the Paralyzation spells began to walk backward, dragging them across the cafeteria floor to the spiral walkway. 

Roark caught Yevin’s eye as they began to ascend the walkway.

“Rough luck,” the arcane paragon said. “A couple of you might live if you huddle together for warmth. If you do survive, our deal’s still good. You know where to find me.”

As the casters dragged them all up the spiral, Roark fumed silently. How in the seven hells were they supposed to escape this Freezer, grab Yevin, and break free now? He turned the problem over and over all the way up to the highest level, but still came up empty-handed. 

At the end of the transportation, the Legionnaires stopped at a solid wall of ice. As their hands were all busy maintaining the spells, the blue Overwatcher obliged them by opening the door to an icy vault.

A gust of frigid wind blasted Roark. Special air tunnels had been carved into the walls, channeling the icy ocean wind into the room. It wasn’t the chill of a pleasant winter morning in there. It was the sort of cold that froze muscle solid and cracked bone. It made the cold of the rest of Chillend seem like summer heat by comparison.

One by one, the casters stuck Kaz, Zyra, Variok, and Roark into the Freezer. Then the Overwatcher removed his hands and the last breath of not-quite-deadly cold from outside disappeared as the door slammed shut, locking them inside.

Roark scrubbed his arms vigorously, trying to fight off some of the chill. Totally useless. Already his fingers and toes felt numb. The threadbare, prison-issue rags flapped in the wind, offering no protection. Beside him, Zyra hopped up and down, and across the vault, Kaz paced restlessly, a white cloud of breath misting from his wide nostrils. Variok shivered and shook, his teeth chattering loudly.

“Be it f-f-far from Variok to cast aspersions, my friend, but y-your plan to free us from this prison s-s-seems to have hit a dead end.”

“I’m working on it, damn it,” Roark snapped, the gears turning furiously in his mind. He had to get them out of there before they all froze to death. If he couldn’t manage that, none of them would respawn. They would all be forever dead. As terrible as the situation was, however, Roark actually found it refreshing in its way. Hearthworld and its endless supply of respawns had made him soft. This was a reminder that in the fight against Marek, the stakes were much higher. Deadly. He was perversely glad that Zyra was trapped in there with him. Zyra could use a look at what life with him would be like. No fun and games, that. Just forever-death.

The merchant gave a huge all-over shudder. “Variok never thought he would meet his death of cold. An angry customer, perhaps. A burglary gone wrong, certainly. But cold?” He grimaced and shook his head.

Kaz’s onyx eyes grew wide and frightened. “Kaz doesn’t want to die here, Roark,” the Behemoth whimpered, shivering. “Kaz hates the c-c-cold.”

Roark squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his temples, desperately grasping for anything that might get them out of there. He embraced the cold, letting it invade his limbs, numbing his body but sharpening his mind. He couldn’t cast, he had no portal scrolls, the World Stone didn’t seem to have any properties that could transport them… Could he carve a blood cantrip in his arm? Would the rules that governed the prison allow that or would they see it as another spell to be stopped? He’d just have to try it. A portal spell, just as he’d done when fleeing from Marek during his botched assassination. It was risky, but perhaps whatever made the portal magic in Hearthworld so trustworthy would be on his side this time. After spending so much time working on the portal plates in the Cruel Citadel he felt up to the task. Mostly.

He opened his eyes just in time to see Zyra break into a dazzling smile.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Kaz, but we have to die here if we’re going to escape.” She quaked as she rummaged through her Inventory, her movements clumsy from the cold. “It’s the only way out.”

“What in seven hells is wrong with you lately?” Roark snapped. “Are you suicidal?”

She let out a laugh like the crack of an ice floe breaking up. “No, but I am about to become the best Septic Brewmaster in the history of the specialty.”

“What?”

“S-s-septic Brewmaster.” She produced a handful of potions. “It’s a specialty sub-class quest I unlocked while experimenting with new poisons.” She passed him a bottle with one shaking hand, then gave one each to Variok and Kaz. “I was w-w-worried you would ruin my escape plan when you invited that rog sorcerer, but now that we’re leaving him behind, I h-h-have enough for everyone again.”

Roark glared down at the potion in his hand. Its sludgy black contents oozed greasily against the glass vial.

[Sleeping Death (Newly Invented Poison, Incomparably Rare)

Uses: 1

Causes a deathlike sleep to come over the drinker for 1 hour indistinguishable from true death.]

“What is it?”

“Poison, obviously. Drink up,” Zyra said cheerful through her chattering teeth. “It’s called Sleeping Death. The drinker will ap-ap-appear to be forever dead for one hour. C-c-completely indistinguishable from real forever death.”

“How does that help us?” Roark asked, stamping his feet to bring some sensation back into them.

Zyra rolled her eyes. “Jotnars. If it’s not a power-grab, they don’t pay attention at all.” She pointed a trembling finger at the foot-thick wall of ice dividing them from the rest of the prison. “The only way to escape is through the body hole. The only way out the body hole is to die.” She shook her bottle of Sleeping Death in Roark’s face. “So we die.”

Variok raised a pale brow at the hoodless Reaver.

“You came into Chillend with these poisons?” the merchant asked.

Zyra nodded. “I didn’t think I would get a chance to use them, but I certainly hoped I would.”

Roark shook his head in disbelief. “Why? What on earth would make you want that?”

“To get my Septic Brewmaster specialty, I have to poison at least one ally with a poison of Ultra Rare or higher.” She shrugged shivering shoulders. “I was going to sneak some into your cup at a feast until I heard that the prison here had a no-respawn policy. I assumed if they had forever death here, they must have a way to keep the corpses from piling up. Though, I pictured guards just chucking them off the top. The body hole is a little more elegant a solution.” She pointed at Roark’s poison. “These won’t drink themselves, boys.”

Roark turned her plan over in his mind for several freezing seconds. A blast of wind ripped at his shaggy hair and leathery wings, sapping the last of the feeling from the twisted appendages.

“If they don’t find us within the hour, we’re likely to freeze solid and be forever dead before the fake forever death wears off,” he said, pointing out the only flaw that his cold-battered mind could find at the moment. “How do we make certain they dispose of us before that?”

“Easy,” Zyra said.

Before he could ask what she meant, the hoodless Reaver threw back her head and screamed an ear-shattering note of pure terror. The sound cut through the vault like a razor through the soft flesh of an exposed throat. Roark had to crush his hands to his ears. Variok and Kaz were doing the same. Finally, after what felt like ages, the scream tapered off.

“Bottoms up,” Zyra said, popping the cork from her poison and draining it. 

She took a deep breath, then raised bloody hell again. She reached a pitch that made the ice around them resonate like glass on the verge of breaking, then she cut off suddenly and dropped to the floor, her legs simply refusing to hold her up for one second longer. Her mismatched eyes were open, oddly glassy, her chest still, her mouth slightly agape. Her health bar showed that she was dead. Roark’s breath hitched inside his chest, the world reeling uncertainly beneath his feet. In that moment, she was Danella. Her dark midnight skin replaced by bloated, rotting flesh, her eyes and tongue pecked out by crows. 

Then he blinked and Danella was gone. Once again Zyra lay on the floor before him, still as death. This was what she would end up like if she same with him: emptied and cast aside like the poison bottle she’d dropped when she fell.

It didn’t matter that she wasn’t really dead. Roark couldn’t let her wind up like this. Wouldn’t. 

He glared down at the poison in his fist. He wished she would’ve talked through this insane plan with him; now it was too late. She hadn’t trusted him with her plan, which ironically was forcing him to trust her.

Through the thick, gray-green wall of ice, Roark could see movement. Legionnaires were coming running. He cursed under his breath. He could cry unfair later. If they survived this.

“Drink it,” he ordered the other two, opening his bottle and gulping down the ichor. 

It tasted like smoke from a crematorium mixed with rancid swamp mud, and it clogged his throat. He swallowed and swallowed, trying to force it to move faster. As soon as he woke up, he would have to drink a whole tavern’s worth of ale to wash the taste from his mouth.

Roark could see Kaz and Variok drinking down their poisons as well. Then the world around him began to blur and darken until he could hardly make out anything. The cold wind from the Freezer faded to the background, surpassed by a warm fuzz filling his limbs.

Far away, he felt his body crumple and hit something solid. Roark von Graf didn’t die. 

But it looked to all the world exactly as if he had.

Chapter 20

Co-Conspirator

Randy Shoemaker stared in disbelief as the Trolls and elf fell to the icy floor of Chillend’s notorious Freezer. They certainly looked dead, but when he checked their statuses on his admin screen, all four showed Death Sleep, Alive.

What even was this? Players and mobs couldn’t create new poisons just because they experimented with different Ingredients. If they brewed together three or more Ingredients that didn’t fall under the combinations for one of the eighty-nine prewritten potions, they were supposed to get a Potion Failed! notification, not a previously unknown potion.

And now the Troll girl even had a specialty sub-class that didn’t exist before? Randy had been following the modder this whole time. Roark hadn’t logged out or gone inactive once to create the new class. It didn’t make any sense at all. And her going completely off-script, making that logical leap that she could use her new poison in their jailbreak? What in the name of Alan Mathison Turing?

How was Roark doing it? Randy could see no logical explanation at all.

There was a sound like a refrigerator door opening behind him as the OLO Legionnaires who guarded Chillend popped open the Freezer’s door with their Hoarfrost Rings of Sealing.

As they rushed in, Randy slipped to the other side of the vault and pressed his back against the wall. His admin privileges made him invisible, but not incorporeal. They could still bump into him if he was in the way.

“What in the name of reason happened here?” snapped the olm in the lead, an Overwatcher named Grevath. “They weren’t in here long enough to freeze to death. Frostbite should’ve taken at least an hour before it got them.”

The other, a Lower Guard without a name, kicked at the Troll girl’s hand. The Sleeping Death bottle rolled across the floor with that empty glass sound. 

“Poison,” she said. Under normal circumstances, a Lower Guard like her would be the ideal way to complete the jailbreak quest. A player with midlevel Pickpocketing could steal a Lower guard’s Ring of Sealing and use it to escape. “Murder-suicide?”

Grevath’s smooth brow ridges lowered. “Or they’re having us on.” He reared back and planted a plated boot in Roark’s side. The Jotnar lay still as death. Grevath leaned in close and squinted at Roark’s empty Health bar. “Nope. Dead as a tomb.”

For a moment, the pair of olms stared down at their seeming corpses quietly, grave frowns on their humanoid salamander faces. Randy knew they were programmed to be uncomfortable about NPC death. It was really uncommon in Hearthworld, even in the pockets where it was possible like Chillend. But it still felt as if he had stumbled upon a pair of real people discovering a group suicide. 

A shiver ran down Randy’s spine at the thought.

“I’ll call the Head of Body Disposal to dump them,” the Lower Guard said after a moment, her voice subdued.

The Overwatcher Grevath gave a sharp nod.

In a few minutes, the Lower Guard was back with a cheerful olm in obsidian-accented plate mail. From what Randy remembered of the prison wiki’s Trivia section, the Body Disposal staff were the only Legionnaires in the OLO who wore black-trimmed plate mail. Every other Legionnaire wore perfectly spotless, shining silver plate, covered by the pristine tabards marking out their order and rank.

“Bring out your dead,” the Head of Body Disposal joked, elbowing the lesser guard far more playfully than the situation warranted.

Randy snorted. He’d always been fond of that reference. And in this case, Roark’s little band wasn’t really dead yet, either.

“What was that?” Grevath’s head snapped around in Randy’s direction. Whoops.

But the Head of Body Disposal misunderstood. “Just a little joke. In my line of work, it would be illogical to shun a sense of humor.”

“You hardly do any work.” Grevath sneered, superiority in the rounded contours of his amphibian face. “This is the first NPC death we’ve had at the prison in over a year.”

The Head of Body Disposal ignored the Overwatcher’s sniping; he lifted both hands, palms out and muttered a quick spell, unleashing Telekinesis to lift the corpses onto the cart. Without the spell, the feat would have taken at least four people to lift the Thursr Behemoth alone. Straining a little to keep the cart under control, the olm wheeled it down the soft decline to the body hole. 

Randy followed at a safe distance, his mind still turning over the how of Roark’s modifications to the class specialties and scripts. It was mind boggling. Simply baffling, actually. If Randy managed to find out who this Roark was, there was some small part that thought Mr. Silva, the CEO would be smart to offer the man a job. Randy had never seen a programmer or software engineer accomplish what this modder was, and Randy worked for Hearthworld—the single most advanced, groundbreaking, boundary-pushing VRMMO on the market.  

The Head of Body Disposal pressed his Hoarfrost Ring of Sealing to the disposal hole, triggering a hatch to swing open. One by one, he used the Telekinesis spell to drop Roark, his Behemoth and Reaver companions, and the elf merchant through to the waiting sea below.

The sea! Randy winced. He’d been so caught up in trying to puzzle out how the Griefer had accomplished all this without ever logging out or going inactive that he hadn’t taken into account what would happen to their party once they were dropped unconscious into the ocean. They didn’t seem to have thought that through, either, maybe because of the stress or the cold. Chances were, they would simply die and respawn. As far as he knew, forever-death was only written into the prison, but he couldn’t remember exactly where the boundaries of the prison had been coded to end. Was it the exterior surface of the compound? Fifty feet around the compound? A little bit of the sea below the compound? He wasn’t positive, and if he wasn’t positive, then that meant there was at least some chance they would perish, never to respawn.

And that, Randy suddenly decided, that was intolerable. 

For one, if this Roark really did die, all Randy’s work and sleuthing would be undone. There was also the fact that he hated to see them drown right after the Troll girl had come up with such an otherwise elegant solution to escape. He knew he was going a little native empathizing with the bad guy, but he had to admit he was also super impressed at Roark’s abilities in spite of the dirty way he was applying them to wreck the game. He was also curious to see this Troll Market place that Roark seemed so intent on setting up, and that wouldn’t happen either if Roark and his cadre were wiped. 

So no. This wouldn’t be the end to Roark or his little party. Not if Randy had a say—and he did have a say.

The Body Disposal olm was about to close the hatch.

Before he could think too much about what he was doing, Randy equipped his Waterwalking Boots and jumped through the hole in the ice.

As soon as he hit the frozen open air, he spread his Arboreal Herald’s pale gray wings and glided down to the surface of the water, landing lightly. His Waterwalking Boots held him up as if he were standing on a trampoline. He bobbed slightly, but didn’t sink. 

At his feet, the corpses of the Trolls and elf were drifting apart, Roark and the merchant facedown in the waves. Worse yet, the Behemoth had already started to sink.

Randy tried to isolate each of their code and transport them, but his admin powers wouldn’t allow him to affect the prime anomaly or any of the NPCs he’d infected with his rogue code. Looked like he would have to rescue them the hard way.

Randy found a rope in his Inventory, then went through the unconscious forms, tying Roark’s claw-tipped hand securely to the Mighty Gourmet’s, which, in turn, he tied to both the merchant and the Troll girl. Then Randy wrapped the end around his own palm a few times to make sure he had a tight hold. 

Flapping his wings with all his might, Randy pushed off the water and flew.

He grunted under the strain of lifting all for from the choppy, white-capped waves. It was a hard trip. Usually, while he was in the air, the game showed him thermals as Updrafts and Downdrafts, the Ups with cycling bright red arrows pointing up, and the downs with blue flowing downward. But out here on the Wareling Deeps, Randy was encountering only Downdrafts. He had to flap constantly, his arms, shoulders, and wings burning from the effort while sweat leaked down his face.

Arboreal Heralds weren’t made for strength, they were made for speed. Only his absurdly high character level made it possible to drag so much weight while keeping himself aloft. Twice he even had to land and walk. Without his Waterwalking boots, he would’ve been, well severely disadvantaged to say the least. Even with them, his stamina was utterly drained by the time he made it to the ice-chip piled shores of Frostrime and dragged his haul onto land.

Randy wheezed and puffed as he untied the modder and NPCs from one another. It took Randy a while to realize that even though he was physically exhausted, he was grinning. It was fun being the big strong guy who saved everyone. Even having them unconscious and unable to see that they owed their survival to him was kind of like being a superhero. They would never know his name, just that they had survived.

“Who was that caped crusader?” Randy chuckled to himself. It was a good thing he thought his jokes were funny, because he didn’t have any friends to appreciate them.

In that way, he kind of understood what the modder might be doing, creating an army of Trolls and gathering NPCs who would serve him. When you had no friends or anybody who cared about you at all, minions were better than nothing.

Finished with his heroic deed, Randy stored his rope and vanished from sight once more, then found a mound of snow to sit on while he waited for them to wake up.

Chapter 21 

A Bargain Struck

Roark shivered on the hard dirt of some back alleyway. He grabbed for the lapels of his threadbare jerkin to pull his head down inside and tried to scoot farther back against one of the buildings to escape the cutting fingers of wind. But he didn’t meet the cold, hard wall of a building. There was nothing around him.

He blinked, then shut his eyes against the blinding glare. Was that the wind he heard? It sounded more … rhythmic. Like waves? But that made no sense, considering he had never lived on the streets of a city near the sea.

With a groan, Roark pushed himself upright, leaning back on ice-chilled palms. He squintedand shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand while he took in his surroundings. Not far off, ice-capped waves rolled up the frozen beach. Just up the sand, a lighthouse jutted up from a stretch of treacherous-looking rocks. Beside his foot lay a midnight blue hand and an arm with glowing azure tattoos of power. 

Zyra. When he turned around, he found Variok behind him, and Kaz just beyond that.

They had all made it out of Chillend, then. How in the seven hells they had washed up in the same place, he couldn’t say, but he was certainly grateful they had. 

The elf’s pointed ears were beginning to twitch and his face contorted now and again as he fought to awaken from the strange poison Zyra had fed them. Variok seemed to be no worse for the wear.

But when Roark looked again, he realized Kaz was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. Roark held his breath. Kaz couldn’t be dead. Not if they had escaped the prison alive.

Finally, the Mighty Gourmet gave a sluggish blink. Roark let his breath out in a rush, his shoulders relaxing.

“Do you need a healing potion, mate?” Roark asked, groggy, words slightly slurred as though he’d spent the night drinking hard.

Kaz rolled his head toward Roark, then looked up at the sky again.

“Does that cloud look like stew meat cooking to Roark, too?” he asked.

Roark followed Kaz’s gaze. To him, the cloud looked like the crumbled ruins of a tyrant’s castle. 

“Definitely,” he said, the fog in his skull clearing a little more with every second.

Kaz nodded, satisfied. “While Kaz was in the Sleeping Death, he thought he saw a Malaika carrying them to safety. Very big, with soft, feathery gray wings. Does Roark think a Malaika returned to Hearthworld to help them?”

Roark scratched his jaw. “I think it’s more likely that Zyra’s potion has some hallucinatory side effects. I woke up thinking I was a child again, trying to sleep in an alley.”

“No!” Variok’s shout startled them both. “You are not my friend! Variok will never sell to—” The elf lurched up to a seated position, one hand clutching his chest. After a moment, he seemed to shake free of the dream and squinted at the frozen sand and crashing surf. “Ah, what relief! My friends, we have survived! Variok will not forget what you have done for him this day.”

A page of text appeared in Roark’s vision, obscuring the merchant’s toothy grin.

[Congratulations! You have completed the quest Prison Break and earned Variok’s loyalty! Variok’s loyalty includes a 10% increase to all sales prices when selling to Variok and 10% decrease to all purchase prices when buying from Variok.

Warning: Variok’s loyalty depends on your treatment of the elvish merchant. Keep him happy by offering him first crack at the weapons and armor you wish to sell or by checking his store first when you wish to buy. But remember, buying or selling to other weapons and armor merchants before consulting Variok will upset him. Do this too many times, and Variok will take his loyalty elsewhere!]

He blinked the page away. 

“All that you have done for Variok!” The merchant slapped Roark on the back. “How can I ever repay you, my friend?”

“We didn’t come for entirely selfless reasons,” Roark said. “We have a grand enterprise in mind and think you might be just the man to help us get it off the ground. We’re trying to found a mob settlement, and we need a merchant. If you’re interested in setting up shop with us, you’ll keep whatever you make on your sales plus a share of the gold we take from griefing. 

“You’ll also have your own shop building and living quarters, plus access to untold treasures from monsters all across the face of Hearthworld. And no more dealing with rude heroes that don’t value your business acumen. What’s more, as the only proper merchant in this settlement—the only mob settlement in all of Hearthworld, let me remind you—you’ll be able to command the best prices.” He shot the merchant a wink. “Barring me and my inner circle, of course.”

Variok considered this, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “This is a most intriguing offer. Yes my friends, Variok could see the benefits of such an arrangement. Yet, humble man that I am, I have a few requests. I spoke to a cook from the Cruel Citadel before I was arrested, a beautiful lady named Mai about joining. So Variok told her that he likes comfort and luxury in all things, that he would not join unless he was assured of the finest foods and softest beds. Prison was no place for a cultured elf, and so before I agree, I must make certain that I am not trading one hell for another, less captive hell.” The merchant leaned in close, his face a study in gravity. “Tell me, Roark the Griefer, do you truly have a gourmet on staff?”

“Variok,” Roark said, gesturing to the Behemoth behind him, “Meet the Mighty Gourmet.”

That toothy grin spread across Variok’s face and he let out a boisterous laugh.

“Then we are in business together, my friend! If you found a settlement, Variok is your merchant!”

[Congratulations! Variok the Elvish Merchant has agreed to join your settlement! To learn more about founding a settlement, see Settlements of Hearthworld or Growing Your Guild.]

Roark dismissed this notice as well. Gaining Variok’s allegiance was a step closer to founding their settlement, but it also reminded Roark that they had been forced to leave a valuable skill trainer behind in Chillend. He cursed silently and opened the mystic grimoire to his active quests.

Odd. Yevin’s quest wasn’t listed as Failed yet. Roark read through it once more.

                                                                             ╠═╦╬╧╪ 

Double Down?

Yevin the Arcane Paragon has offered to join your Settlement as the local skill trainer if you can free him from Chillend Prison.

Objective: Free Yevin from Chillend Prison and return him alive to the mainland.

Reward: Yevin’s loyalty, 5,000 Experience, and Unlock a Special Magical Skill

Failure: Fail to free Yevin from Chillend

Or let Yevin die in the process of being freed

Penalty: Lose Yevin’s loyalty, Training with Yevin permanently locked

Restrictions: None

                                                                            ╠═╦╬╧╪

He read and reread the message, then poured over it for a third time just for good measure.

It didn’t technically say that Roark had to jailbreak the sorcerer, only free him and return him alive to the mainland. By those parameters, Roark could just pay the rog’s fines and have him released legally. With the gold he and the Citadel were making griefing every day, coming by the money would be no issue. The handing over of the fine, however, would prove to be a bigger problem. Rebel_of_Korvo’s sudden reappearance after supposedly dying in Chillend would certainly draw attention from the strict record-keeping olms who ran the Legion of Order. The same went for Zyra, Kaz, and Variok. What Roark needed was someone the Legion didn’t recognize to act as the go-between.

“Griff,” he said, snapping his fingers. He stood up, dusting off the seat of his threadbare prison-issue pants. He turned to Kaz and Variok. “We need to get back to the Citadel.”

A soft feminine moan made the hairs on the back of Roark’s neck stand up. He’d almost forgotten that Zyra hadn’t woken from the poison yet.

At his feet, the hoodless Reaver brushed her snowy wet hair out of her face, then shoved her fists over her head and stretched like a waking feline. Though her ringlets were dripping and bedraggled by the ocean water, and her recurved onyx horns stuck up from them like bits of driftwood caught in foam, Roark couldn’t take his eyes off her. He got to see her face so rarely that he didn’t want to look away. Soon, the smooth curve of her chin and those long eyelashes would be again hidden away in her assassin’s hood.

Zyra blinked her mismatched purple and green eyes languorously and smiled up at him.

“Sleep well?” he asked, infusing his tone with enough sarcasm to turn aside any suspicions that he’d been admiring her.

Slowly, her brows furrowed with confusion.

“Why aren’t… I thought…” She shook her head and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Must have put a little too much Haint Orchid in that batch.” She glanced around as if checking that they were all there. “I see everybody drank their poison like good little Changelings.”

“We did,” Roark said. “That Sleeping Death was a stroke of brilliance, Zyra.”

Her shoulders hunched up a bit at the compliment, and Roark had the impression of a cat being rubbed against the lay of its fur. He smiled to himself.

“What’s next?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard, popping to her feet.

“We need to get back to the Cruel Citadel,” he said. “I’ve got a job for Griff, and once that taken care of, we should largely be in business.”

They made their way down the beach to the lighthouse. Not far inland lay a little fishing village named Prol, where Roark proceeded to sell off the handful of potions and odds and ends he hadn’t had to hand over to the Legionnaires before entering Chillend. With the gold he got in return, he bought a portal scroll which zipped them right back to their set respawn point—in his case, the Throne Room of the Cruel Citadel.

Griff was glad to see them back, but the grizzled old weapons trainer’s gruff smile and handshake was nothing compared to Mai’s joy. The moment they stepped into the kitchen, the buxom cook threw herself into Kaz’s enormous arms, weeping with relief that he’d made it back alive.

“Kaz is fine,” the Mighty Gourmet said soothingly, patting her blonde hair and hugging her to his chest.

“Yes, well,” Mai mumbled, regaining some measure of her poise. “Sure’s happy I am that you’re back.” She smiled up at him. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about some bread in the larder.”

Kaz frowned, confused, then all at once his features lit up with understanding.

“Oh, bread,” he repeated, winking very obviously. “The bread in the larder! Kaz forgot about that bread. He and Mai should go look at it immediately.”

Zyra, who’d traded away a few of her more common potions for a plain leather hood in Prol, turned her shadowed face Roark’s way. They both had to stifle a bout of childish snickers as the Mighty Gourmet and the buxom cook slipped out of the kitchen arm in arm.

When they were gone, Zyra announced, “I’m heading to the lab to put on some real armor and burn this trash.” She beckoned to Variok. “Come on, I’ll show you where you can put your things until the settlement’s up and running.”

Roark turned to Griff. “Are you up for another mission?”

“Got to keep the blood pumping somehow,” the grizzled skill trainer said. “What’ve you got in mind, Griefer?”

                                                                               ***

That night, Kaz and Mai threw a raucous feast in celebration of their new merchant and imminent Settlement. Apprentice chef Changelings scurried around trying to keep plates and flagons full, while an ecstatic Variok drank and haggled with Trolls looking to sell their share of the griefing loot. Considering all the griefing the Citadel was doing these days, there was a significant amount of loot to go around, and since none of the Trolls had ever bartered in the marketplace, Variok was having the time of his life. “A heavenly paradise,” he kept muttering under his breath. Mac and Zyra played their accustomed game of catch, the Young Turtle Dragon romping around the ceiling gulping down morsels the Reaver threw to him.

Roark let the happy chaos unfold around him, draining his ale whenever Zyra goaded him to drink and enjoying Kaz’s excitement over the new dishes he and Mai had prepared for the meal. Things like Biscuits and Gravy of Surpassing Stamina and Spiced Rum Cake of Invigoration.

But throughout it all, part of Roark’s mind was elsewhere, focused on an inevitable point somewhere in the future. He had made up his mind not to take any of the Trolls from the Citadel with him when he returned to Traisbin—assuming, of course, he managed to find his way back—and he wouldn’t change it. He couldn’t drag Kaz or Zyra down to the grave with him. But that smile as she woke from the Sleeping Death kept playing in his head, as if she’d just been wrapped in the arms of a lover.

He wished Griff was around to offer his advice. But when the grizzled old trainer had heard that they had another potential skill trainer for the settlement, he had taken off for Frostrime immediately, saying he didn’t want to wait for something bad to befall their sorcerer. 

After spending even a short time in Chillend, Roark could well understand the sentiment. 

The night wore on without any answers. In the wee hours of the next morning, Trolls began to wander off to their floors to spend the rest of their drunkenness in a more familiar setting—or to take their shifts at griefing. Always more griefing to do, even in the heat of a victory celebration. Variok announced his intention to retire before walking out deep in discussion with a pair of Thursr Elementals over magical weaponry. Finally, Kaz and Mai left together, forgetting to make up an excuse this time, and Zyra and Roark were left in the throne room alone.

She was still chucking scraps up to Mac as if she hadn’t noticed yet that they were the only ones there. Her face was hidden in the shadowy depths of her hood, her recurved onyx horns poking up through the slits he’d tailored for them. With those holding the hood in place, there wasn’t even a small chance it would accidentally slide back and reveal anything.

As if she could feel his eyes on her, she turned and met his gaze.

“Care for a turn?” she said, holding out a biscuit. “I think Mac’s just playing with it now, but he’s still catching it.”

“I miss being able to see your face,” Roark said, startling himself. He didn’t think he’d had that bloody much to drink. He tried to come up with a way to turn his slip into a glib joke, but couldn’t. Worse yet, he couldn’t seem to shut his mouth. “It’s been less than a day, but I wish I could see it all the time.”

Zyra froze. The damned hood cut him off from any indication of her thoughts.

“I know you don’t like what you see there, but I think you’re beautiful,” he said.

Seven hells! Had someone given him a babbling potion?

On the ceiling, Mac chirped, irritated to have his game of catch interrupted. Zyra launched the biscuit to the Young Turtle Dragon with more vehemence than required.

“What good is beauty?” she asked, her voice dripping with disgust. “It doesn’t kill your enemies or intimidate anyone into doing what you want. It’s worthless.”

Roark raked his hair out of his face. “Hells, you’re infuriating. And I’m saying it wrong. I don’t know how this is supposed to go.”

Her hood canted slightly. “How what is supposed to go?”

“I don’t know,” Roark said, frustrated. “I’ve wanted nothing but to kill the Tyrant King for so long that it’s hard to remember how to want anything else… You don’t understand why I can’t take you back to Traisbin with me. It’s not because I don’t need your help, and it’s sure as bloody hell not because I don’t want you around.”

“You need someone paranoid around who can protect you from your own cleverness, Griefer, someone to mount heads on pikes so everyone knows who the Dungeon Lord is around here.” She poked him in the chest, her poison-laced claws thudding against his dark leathers. “You need me.”

“Exactly,” Roark said. “That’s why I can’t take you with me.”

Zyra threw up her hands.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” She got up and stalked toward the door.

It was slipping away, Roark realized. Whatever nebulous idea he thought he’d been close to explaining was disappearing, and his chance to make her understand was vanishing with it.

Panic sent signals to his muscles, forcing him to his feet before he decided to move. His head spun a bit as he caught up to Zyra, but his hand was steady as he grabbed her arm.

She whirled on him, gleaming onyx claws extended. He steeled himself for the Death Scratch, but she didn’t attack.

Roark swallowed hard. “I’ve never wanted something as much as I do you. Not even revenge.”

Gradually, Zyra’s claws retracted.

“But I don’t know where that leaves us.” Roark sucked in a lungful of air and blew it back out. “Because I still have to go. And I can’t take you with me because I can’t lose anyone else I need. Not forever dead, not again.”

Moving faster than his buzzing mind could comprehend, Zyra grabbed him by the back of the neck and crushed her lips to his. She tasted like cold ale and sweet poison, and all he could think was Soft, she’s so soft.

But by the time his hands got the message to reach for her, the hooded Reaver was pulling away.

“Why do you think I want to go with you, you idiot?” Her toxic claws trailed down his jaw, scratching thin, burning lines into his skin. “I can’t protect you if I’m not there.”

She slipped out of his grasp and disappeared into an inky puff of black smoke. She flickered into sight ten feet from the doorway. Roark tried to tell her to stay, but it seemed that the message to shut up had finally closed his mouth and he couldn’t reopen it. Zyra disappeared into the shadows again, and this time she was gone.

Roark stared at the empty doorway. She would be in the laboratory. If he went after her, if he kissed her again, if he could show her instead of trying to tell her…

Eight hundred pounds of Young Turtle Dragon slammed down onto the table to Roark’s right, sending plates, scraps, and flagons flying, and startling Roark out of his fancies.

Mac chirped, blinking his big eyes slightly out of time with one another and butted his scaly head against Roark’s arm.

Roark chuckled and scratched the silly beast, slapping him affectionately on the shell. 

“What we need, mate, is a few rounds of hero-killing.”