Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) (7 page)

Plate Chestguard of Raging Elements.

Chestguard: plate.

Durability: 2427/2500.

Epic.

Minimum level: 200.

Armor: 400.

+250 to intellect.

+150 to spirit.

+100 to constitution.

+50% to spell power.

+5% to chance to hit critically with a magic attack.

Weight: 10 lbs.

This chestguard was recovered by Magus Diarten in the Ruins of Yumia.

Oh, cruel fate! The zone's governing AI must have gifted me this marvelous present in an apparent act of mercy. Only he must have overlooked the build I was playing, which made this present as useless to me as a white crayon. Oh well, so the chestguard would be gathering dust in the clan treasury alongside piles of other junk, to be awarded to Reece when he reached level 200—the kid had already earned it as far as I was concerned. No doubt, any players above would write me off as a loon for such a decision, but I didn't give a damn. Case in point, if I hadn't been equipping my people my way, we most certainly would have lost the battle with this raid boss simply for lack of firepower. And besides, I never was much of a loot whore. A piece of gear ought to be where it is most useful. So, assuming this here mage would make it to level 200, he had a pretty rad epic piece waiting for him.

As my eyes fell on Magus Diarten's kris, its corrugated blade rippling with darkness, I suddenly felt a pang of that very hankering that, were I to act on it impulsively, could rightfully be dubbed loot-whorishness. The guard was shaped like an opening flower, and the hilt, with its tough sandpapery finish, seemed to be tailor-made for my hand. The epic kris was as if studying its new master—cautiously—as something resembling soft currents of electricity shot up my arm.

Hanteryon's Claw.

Dagger: one-handed.

Durability: 1788/2500.

Epic.

Minimum level: 220.

Damage: 320-380.

+350 to intellect.

+200 to spirit.

+100% to Dark magic spell power.

The creatures you summon or resurrect receive a 20% increase to their physical and magic damage, and a 15% increase to their constitution, armor and all resistances.

Weight: 2 lbs.

Carved by an unknown craftsman from the claw of the Great Bone Dragon.

Its damage is similar to an uncommon quality two-handed sword around level 220,
I thought with a sigh, putting the dagger away. I refused to entertain the possibility of keeping the weapon or selling it for cash, though it would surely fetch a pretty penny in the upper realm or in the real world. When you knew that the goddess of justice was watching your every move, pulling such antics would be the acme of foolishness. But even if she weren't watching, I would still return the dead magus' dagger to his daughter—anything else would be stealing, and my parents had raised me better than. End of discussion.

The recipes were all above our current profession skill levels. A pair of tailoring recipes for rare quality level 200 mantle and trousers that none of us would use on account of them being cloth. (If we managed to procure young wyvern tendons somewhere, which was one of the main ingredients, perhaps Hagedia could sew them for profit?). One excellent recipe for a level 200 plate helm. And our biggest win of the day—an epic scroll of the Elixir of Possibilities, which would allow an alchemist to learn all of said elixir's tiers all the way through level 500 of his profession.

"This helm is going to require mithril," Aritor declared, glancing at Reece who seemed ready to explode with glee. "We're going to make it to Gilthor eventually, aren't we? Supposedly there's plenty of it up in Aerimean Mountains."

"Don't worry about mithril—even if we don't find it, we'll buy whatever you need," I assured him. I handed a dropped epic Potion of Greater Healing to a priestess closest to me.

As for everything else—uncommon quality scrolls, recipes, reagents and other junk—I simply dumped it all into Iam's inventory. I had neither time nor interest to deal with it, but the kid was smart and responsible enough to distribute everything fairly and sensibly.

There was just one drop left to process—the small triangular pyramid. It was a quest item that ostensibly contained the answer to the magus' final words before his suicide. At this point I was experienced enough to guess what might happen when I picked up the item. Bracing myself mentally for what was to come, I sat down on the floor next to the necromancer's body and, with a fatalistic sigh, clasped the teeny pyramid firmly in my fist...

"Great Darkness!" Magus Diarten leaned against the sticky trunk of a pine tree alongside a footpath, catching his breath. He turned back, toward the smoke rising above the forest. Back there, General Korg's legionnaires were squashing the last remaining pockets of resistance in Suonu, still defiant even in the face of certain doom. The necromancer drew a heavy sigh, wiped the tar off his hand with an embroidered handkerchief, and continued westward, careful not to trip on the roots sticking out of the ground. Diarten was trying not to think about the fate that awaited the residents of the sacked city. Everybody ended up in the Gray Frontier sooner or later, and he had already done the impossible for many by giving them a shot at resurrection. Bound by the Great Arkan, Nerghall would have simply devoured the souls of half the city, casting them into the eternal Void. Diarten brushed the soulstone hiding in his pocket, feeling the pulse of the Great Darkness.
Oh, you don't like that, do you?
The necromancer chuckled as he walked.
Well, tough cookies. Soon we'll be in a place where not even your master can find you!

The magus was afraid. He knew that he had started on a path that had only one outcome. No, he wasn't afraid of death—how could you be afraid of something you've long mastered? But to spend an eternity in agony, holding back the Soul Devourer—he wouldn't wish that upon his mortal enemy. The magus knew the stakes and didn't regret his decision one bit. Yes, the essence of the Lord of Darkness would eventually overpower and take control of his body and mind, but the ritual would be complete by then, and the Ancient Beast would be imprisoned. And he wasn't going to give up so easily anyway—not after dedicating his whole life to mastering Dark magic.

There was only one Darkness, even if there were infinite shades of it. But Death that preceded it—in most cases—varied quite a bit. Celphata, the Goddess of Death and his mistress, did not approve of the methods of that degenerate Vill, who loved to torture his victims before killing them. As a result, their souls were broken upon reaching the Gray Frontier, and required much time and mending before their next incarnation. The bastard disturbed the Universal Equilibrium by his very existence, which explained why he and his adherents were hunted incessantly.

When the Master of Death, magus of dark magic and necromancy Diarten had set out on yet another campaign south, he couldn't have imagined that Erisjat, the wise and just ruler of Craedia, would ally himself with the Twice Cursed god, whose arrival in Craedia was arranged by Diarten's own pupil. The magus hadn't been blind to Belvert's intemperate lust for power, but he could never have guessed that it would drive him to betray their mistress and don the gray hood of the disavowed. By the time the necromancer had returned to Craedia, it had been too late. And he wouldn't have survived the betrayal if it hadn't been for an old servant who had sensed something rotten and had egressed his daughter to their estate in a Xantarrian suburb after leaving a note of warning for the magus.

The footpath sloped sharply upward, the ground wet and muddy from a recent downpour. The magus struggled to keep his balance and not slip as he walked.
How much longer?
The magus wiped his brow with his sleeve, still wet from the rain, and pressed on. Before long he reached an elevated platform, and stopped to rest. He wasn't afraid of a pursuit—the squad of legionnaires he had destroyed, deployed by the legate to catch any citizens fleeing Suonu, had provided the magus with plenty of additional, albeit inexorably waning strength. His head was throbbing from the sinister whisper that was gradually rising in intensity and volume. The magus was certain that he was going to make it. More than that, he felt that his entire life—all of his pursuits, accomplishments and failures—had been lived precisely for this path, a paltry fifty miles on foot. And he wasn't going to let it go to waste. He wasn't going to stop. The only thing he regretted was that his daughter, the only person in the world he truly loved, would never learn of her father's lot.
How much longer? Who cares! I will not stop, no matter how long!
Diarten took in the mighty pines that succeeded the mixed wood, and continued his uneasy trek to the Cave of Wisps.

Forewarned is forearmed. The magus had escaped Craedia, leaving behind a half a dozen corpses of the disavowed who had been sent to assassinate him. After a sleepless night in Xantarra, talking strategy with Satrap Gorm, he had led a small squad to intercept a group of missionaries serving the Twice Cursed god who had turned up in the satrapy. The magus felt a certain sense of responsibility for the hardships that had befallen his princedom, and so, after eradicating the mission of the disavowed and leaving his daughter in Gorm's custody, he'd headed straight for Suonu.

By the time he arrived, the city's mayor, Satrap Ohten, had already fallen under the degenerate god's influence. Thankfully, the spell of manipulation had been cast on Ohten in haste, and it hadn't taken Diarten too much effort to dispel it. What followed was what came to be known as the Night of the Great Bonfire, when the scumbags who had sold out to Vill were burned alive in the city square. And ten days after that momentous night, General Korg's First Legion showed up outside Suonu's walls.

As day broke, sunlight flooded in. Diarten pressed on to his destination, stumbling, muttering warding-off spells with a voice that had fallen to a hoarse whisper. They were hardly useful anymore, incapable of stemming the torrent of horrifying images flooding his mind, each worse than the next. And yet, thankfully, with them also came indifference. He could barely feel anything anymore, including anxiety. The physical pain that was ripping his flesh apart had become distant, as if happening to someone else. All his organs seemed to be dormant somehow. Only by sheer force of his will—honed and tempered with years of training—did he keep pushing his body forward, well past the point of physical and mental exhaustion.
Just a little longer,
the magus kept repeating to himself, like a prayer.
The river in the cave loops, and the cycling water will weaken the Ancient Beast's burden on the mind. I just need to make it.

By midday he came upon a small pond in the woods, and bent over it for a drink. His reflection in the calm water caused him to recoil in horror. His features had grown sharp, hawk-like, and his eyes glowed a bloody crimson color. Diarten had half-expected this kind of development, but not that it would happen so quickly. His hoarse, croaking laughter ruptured the serene quiet blanketing the woods. After drinking his fill, the necromancer struggled back to his feet and resumed his grueling journey. The ice-cold water lent a temporary respite from the pain, expelling the hellish whisper from his consciousness, and the necromancer's thoughts skipped back to the previous day...

Over the past ten days the citizens of Suonu had rebuffed six attacks and had razed nearly all the siege towers besetting the city of the punishers. Every combat-ready man, woman and child had taken to the walls, preferring death in battle to being slaughtered on one of the mad god's many altars. But today, the attackers' strategy had shifted. After falling back and leaving yet another hundred or so corpses piled up outside the walls, the disavowed tapped into the emanations of fear and pain soaring over the city to summon Nerghall. Diarten knew then that his time had come. Two hundred years in the service of his mistress had earned him the right to summon her—once, just once—and this was exactly the moment that called for it.

To stand a chance against the Lord of Darkness you had to be a Lord or... a god. Diarten knew the price he would have to pay for summoning his mistress—his life. But he didn't doubt his decision for a second. Standing in the square, across from the main gates, before the eyes of the city's worn-out defenders, the magus slit his wrists with his trusty kris, then threw up his hands and began to sing the summoning chant, feeling his life fleeting away with every drop of blood trickling from his veins.

The city gates collapsed with a deafening crash. The hoisting chains clanked and rattled, tearing like worn threads, as the Ancient Beast emerged from billows of dust and entered the city. Nerghall moved his massive head to his left, then to his right. The black pools of his eyes—oozing a boundless, everlasting hunger—stopped on the tiny tifling standing tall across the main gates. Having identified the enemy without error, the Lord of Darkness shook off the wooden and stone debris, and roared triumphantly, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth as long as a man's arm. Shards of glass burst from a dozen windows of nearby houses, spraying the streets. The defenders fell from the walls like flies, their bodies convulsing in anguish. The magus felt an excruciating pain grip his body, but he didn't wince or move an inch. What was pain to a man who had already crossed the threshold between life and death? His chanting continued uninterrupted. The enraged monstrosity shrieked to the skies, and charged the insolent tifling, claws shattering the pavement. When no more than twenty yards separated the two, there was a tear in the fabric of this realm, as rays of Primordial Darkness smashed into the Ancient Beast's chest.