The Greystone Chronicles Book Two: The Dire Lands Read online

  They continued on for another hour this way, Max grabbing nearby mobs and the group killing them as carefully as possible. After they took down a large boar nearly the size of Brick’s battle boar, Bacon, they each gained a level.

  Level up! You are now level 31!

  Your wisdom has increased by +1. Your intelligence has increased by +1

  You have 21 free attribute points available

  Deciding to take a break before continuing, they found an area with a fallen tree near some large stones that would provide them some cover. Sitting for a few minutes, they reached into their packs for biscuits or fruit, whatever they’d each brought for travel rations. Kai took a seat next to Alexander. “I noticed you were a bit limited in your damage when fighting those beasts,” he said.

  “Normally, I’d burn them with wizard’s fire,” Alexander responded. “But Lainey won’t get much use from scorched hides.”

  “Have you no other offensive magic?” the dragon asked.

  “I have earth magic, which I use to trap or block enemies. I’ve used that twice to cause explosions that did damage. Once it killed a room full of imps. And I have a magic shield, which I’m afraid is not very effective yet.”

  Kai looked thoughtful for a moment. “How do you feel about other schools of magic? Specifically, light magic?”

  Alexander began to get excited. “I wish to learn as much as I can about magic. All magic!”

  Kai placed a hand on Alexander’s head. “As we are headed to the former abode of a necromancer, I think this might be appropriate.”

  Alexander felt pain similar to that first time when Fitz burned a group of spells into his brain. Though this time the pain grew stronger. Once again, he closed his eyes and embraced the pain, accepting it and let it flow past him. When Kai removed his hand, the pain subsided. His UI told him he’d learned the spell ‘Ray of Light’.

  Why did it hurt so much this time? Not able to discover an answer on his own, he decided to ask the dragon.

  “Thank you, Kai. If you don’t mind me asking, learning that spell was a bit more… painful than others I’ve learned recently. Would you know why?”

  The dragon shook his head. “My apologies, I should have warned you. I assumed that working with Fitz, he’d have taught you this. The spell I just gave you is from a different school than the others you’ve learned so far. Future spells within the light magic school will come to you more gently.”

  Lainey plopped down next to Kai. “I don’t know about magic schools. I have a shock spell that I can either fire as a lightning bolt, or imbue into an arrow. And I have a minor healing spell that seems like a white light when I use it. Are those both light magic?”

  Again Kai shook his head. “In your case, those are both Holy spells, gifted to you by Odin. Valkyries are the favored daughters of Odin, and are imbued with certain abilities at birth. Others, you will grow into as you become stronger. I can teach you some light magic if you’d like. Be warned though, as you saw from Alexander, it can be… uncomfortable.”

  Lainey snorted. “If pansy-boy there can handle it, so can I! Please, I’d like to learn.”

  Alexander gave her a look that was half indignant, half concerned. He didn’t think she fully comprehended the level of pain that was imminent.

  Kai placed his hand upon Lainey’s head, and closed his eyes. Her face scrunched together as she gritted her teeth against the pain. Both fists were clenched so tightly her nails were beginning to draw blood. After what seemed like forever to Lainey, but was really only ten seconds, Kai removed his hand.

  “Holy shitballs!” Lainey gasped, collapsing off the log onto the ground. “That frigg’n’ hurt! I think I just peed myself a little.” Kai chuckled as he extended a hand to help her up.

  “As with everything worthwhile in life, knowledge has its price.” He smiled at her with his dragon teeth.

  She looked to Alexander, who was grinning unashamedly at her reaction to the pain. “You felt this too, just now?”

  “Yup.”

  “I take back the pansy-boy comment.”

  Laughing, he asked, “So what did you learn? Show us!” Lainey took a moment to pull up her UI. Smiling, she withdrew her belt knife and stuck into Alexander’s arm, then yanked it out.

  “Ow! Shit! What was that for?” he demanded.

  “I was right the first time, pansy-boy.” She grinned as she covered the wound with her hand. A white light glowed for a few seconds. When she removed her hand, the wound was healed. “It’s called ‘mend’. Says it will heal up 300hp.”

  “You know you didn’t have to stab me before casting that, right?” he growled at her.

  “But how would I know if it worked unless there was something to heal?” she asked innocently.

  Max and Brick were both outright snort-laughing, while Sasha just grinned. Even Kai had a slight smile on his face, though he was kind enough to try and suppress it.

  “Alexander, one important thing you need to know. All of you, actually. Not all light spells will heal. The one you’ve just learned will only do damage. It will also dispel opposing effects, like curses or damage over time spells, created with dark magic. But if you were to cast it at one of your friends right now, it would damage them.”

  Alexander immediately flung a hand up at Lainey, who squeaked and dove behind Kai. Laughing, he put his hand down and pulled up his UI.

  Ray of Light: Generates a beam of light will that will burn a target, doing variable damage, dependent upon the amount of mana used in the casting. Range: 50 yards. Minimum mana cost: 30.

  Stepping away from the log he’d been sitting on, Alexander held out a hand and cast a minimal ray with 30 mana. A beam of light shot from his hand, striking the log and leaving a small, perfectly round, smoking hole in the wood about an inch wide and two inches deep.

  “Huh,” he said. “Everybody step back for sec. That was a minimum cast. Only 30 mana. I’m going to try it with … 300.”

  Holding up his hand again, he focused on building up mana while holding the spell in his mind. When the casting bar on his UI had counted up 300 mana, which took about 5 seconds, he let go of the spell. The beam struck the log and made it shudder. There was now a wider hole in the log, and the beam had passed all the way through the wood and into the ground behind it.

  “Ye just shot a friggin’ laser!” Brick pumped his fist in the air. The others grinned as Sasha gave a little golf clap.

  Kai looked puzzled. “How much mana did you put into that?” he asked.

  “Three hundred. It took a while to build up before I released it.” Alexander answered.

  “That is meant to be a channeled spell. There shouldn’t be a ‘release’ as you put it. The spell is supposed to emit a steady ray, the damage increasing as the duration increases. You have somehow modified it into a single-charged burst. Interesting.” Kai rubbed his chin.

  Sasha spoke up. “Since we’ve been reborn, we have each figured out how to… modify our magic in small ways. It has actually helped us work as a team.”

  Kai stepped up next to Alexander. “Well, you certainly found an effective modification. Let me show you something. I will use the same amount of mana you just used.” He extended a hand, and a steady beam of light stretched from his hand to the log. He kept the spell going for about 5 seconds, then let it end, dropping his hand.

  “That was cool!” Sasha cheered. The rest of the group nodded their heads.

  “Yes, well, take a look at the log.” Kai instructed them.

  Upon inspection, the surface of the log had been burned in a line that curved around several times in a roughly circular pattern. Almost like someone had tried to burn a spiral into the wood. The marks only went a fraction of an inch deep.

  “If I were to cast this at one of you,” Kai explained, “it would do significant burn damage. But when channeling, it is difficult to hold one’s hand perfectly still. So the impact point shifts around as the spell continues. The further away the target, the great
er the movement. So the spell may fail, for example, to penetrate armor.”

  Kai motioned to the hole Alexander had created in the log. “You have solved that problem with your… I’m going to call it ‘burst modification’. All of the heat goes instantly to one point, providing considerable penetration. How did you figure out the change?”

  Alexander looked guilty. “I didn’t. I didn’t realize from the description of the spell that it was to be channeled. I just envisioned it the way it would be on our world, where we have weapons that fire bursts like this. So that’s how it came out. Lainey came up with her stun arrow the same way. She just didn’t know any better.”

  Kai looked to Lainey. “Show me”.

  Lainey lifted her bow and drew an arrow. Infusing it with her shock spell, she shot Alexander in the leg, stunning him. And causing Brick to nearly fall off the stone he was sitting on.

  When the stun wore off, Alexander was furious. “That’s twice! What the hell-” Though he kept shouting, the sound of his voice was cut off when he was hit in the same leg with a silence arrow from Max. Followed by a heal from Sasha. Brick was now rolling around on the ground, helpless with laughter.

  Realizing he’d been silenced, Alexander stopped yelling and resorted to hand gestures that made it very clear what he was thinking, which caused everyone, including Kai, to laugh out loud.

  When the stun wore off, he simply growled, “I hate you all,” and sat back down.

  Kai was the first to speak. “I’m fascinated by the changes you’ve all made to your various types of magic. I have never seen this before, in all my time on Io. Though, now that I see them, I wonder why no one discovered them earlier.”

  “We’re just awesome like that!” Sasha declared, taking a small bow. “Wait until you see us fight critters that Lainey doesn’t want to skin. Then you’ll REALLY be impressed!”

  On that note, they all did a quick gear check, and resumed their march toward Dire Keep. It was approaching noon as the Dire Falls came into view. The group had worked their way through the remainder of the forest, pulling and killing as they went. All that could, gained another level and Lainey’s bag was getting full of animal hides. Brick had collected twenty more dire wolf pelts, which oddly enough, when looted from the wolves, still allowed Lainey to skin them and take viable hides. Alexander had made a note to check with the devs to see if that was intentional. Though with all the folks watching them play, he was pretty sure someone was already asking the question.

  The group paused when they reached Dire Falls. The forest had ended about two hundred yards from a sheer ridgeline that, if you were to follow it, would eventually lead to Broken Mountain. From the top of the ridge, a series of waterfalls fell 600 or so feet down to a wide lake. The lake, carved out of the bedrock by eons of falling water, was deep and clear, with flashes of silver in its depths as fish swam about. Its waters fed a wide creek that ran south toward the ocean. There was an old stone bridge that spanned the creek several hundred yards downstream from the lake.

  Deciding to have lunch by the lake, the group crossed the bridge and walked north along the creekside to a spot that had a nice, gradual grassy slope down to the edge of the lake. They were far enough from the falls that they could hear each other’s voices, and also avoid most of the spray from the water striking the rocks.

  Lainey made a quick fire, and Sasha cooked up one of Lydia’s boar stew recipes that awarded stamina and regen buffs. They all refilled their water flasks from the lake, with Brick and Max only committing a few ‘accidental’ splashes at each other.

  Sasha, Lainey, and Kai all renewed their party buffs, and the group set out toward the ruins just a quarter mile away. There was what remained of a road stretching from the bridge to the ruins. Now, it was just a mostly clear trail among the tall grass and shrubs that had taken over in the 200 years since the keep fell. The group followed the road to the main gate of Dire Keep.

  The keep itself had been built right into the rock of the ridge above. The outer walls were mostly intact, not having been damaged in Fitz’s rampage. They were missing a few stones here and there, carved out of the wall by storms or ice. A few had been pushed out by plants that had wormed their way into the mortar between the stones. The thirty-foot high walls ran in a half-circle, extending from the ridge to the east of the keep, and curving around to connect back with the ridge on the west side. What they could see of the keep’s main tower was partially collapsed, the missing sections exposing doors and hallways cut into the mountain. The tower, when it was whole, must have risen a good hundred feet above the ground.

  The iron portcullis at the outer edge of the bailey, left closed by Fitz and the king’s men as they departed 200 years ago, had long since rusted into piles of scrap. The inner bailey, however, was sealed with a pair of enormous stone doors, with stone hinges much like those Brick had learned to craft for the homes at Whitehall.

  “Aye, makes sense.” Brick nodded his head. “This keep were crafted by dwarves, hired by the baron. Dwarves build things to last millennia, not just decades or centuries.”

  As they stood inside the bailey tunnel examining the doors, Alexander looked up to see a series of spouts and murder holes. Any enemy who breached the outer portcullis would be stuck in here trying to open the doors while hot oil and arrows punished them from above. It would quickly become an oven, roasting any who remained.

  “The doors were sealed from this side,” Kai observed, looking at the two spikes driven into the stone with a chain woven in between. The padlock securing the chain was the size of a Christmas wreath, and looked shiny and new.

  “Was someone here recently?” Max pondered aloud, looking at the lock.

  “The lock and chain are enchanted,” Kai replied. Stepping forward he touched the lock and closed his eyes. A moment later he chuckled. “Fitz. Not only did he protect the lock, he added a warning that appears to any who touch it. “No treasure here. Big scary monsters that will eat your face. Turn around and go home.” Most of the group chuckled along with Kai, hearing the warning in the wizard’s voice.

  Alexander, though, had just thought of something. “Fitz said he and the king’s men came back and cleared the keep, and the mine, of all the undead. I would assume that they also took anything of value back to the king as payment for taxes owed. From the way he described it, Fitz burned out or otherwise demolished most of the inside of the keep. So why seal it up like this?”

  Max, always one to focus on the potential for loot in any situation, said, “Well let’s get inside and find out. I’ll bet ten gold there are secret rooms or hidden chests that Fitz didn’t bother to look for. After all, he WAS in a hurry to get back to his hot young lady friend…” Max winked at Lainey.

  “How do we open the lock?” Brick had been examining it. “Max, can you do this?”

  “No need,” Kai said as he stepped sideways to the right-hand door. Rather than work on the magically protected lock, he simply grabbed one of the two spikes that secured the chain to the doors. With a grunt, he ripped the spike free from the stone. Dropping it to swing below the other spike, he then pushed on the massive door. The stone-on-stone hinges groaned, but the door swung open enough to allow the friends to walk through. Kai closed the door behind them. “To make sure we have no unannounced visitors,” he explained.

  The group found themselves in a large courtyard. Straight ahead was the main structure of the keep, with the tower above. To the right were what had to be stone stables, a wide opening in the nearest wall where wooden doors must have hung. To the left was a two-story guard house. Through the open doorway they could see a wide open first floor. Maybe it served as a storehouse as well?

  Heeding the captain’s repeated advice about not leaving un-cleared rooms behind them, the group split up. Max and Lainey went to check the stables, while the others entered the barracks building.

  The interior was dim, but enough sunlight streamed through the door and windows that Alexander could see nearly the entir
e first floor. There were piles of dust on the floor along both walls that might once have been crates or bags of supplies. At the opposite end of the long room there was a small office. Just to their left as they stood near the main entry was a stone staircase leading up to the second floor. Under the staircase was another door, presumably leading down. The door was iron, and still mostly intact, having been protected from the weather.

  Deciding to wait for the others before going up or down, Brick trotted across the room to check the first floor office. Peeking through the doorway, he saw nothing that posed a threat. He stepped inside, poked around a bit, and came back out, declaring the room empty.

  Alexander moved over to examine the iron door. There was a heavy layer of dust, rust and windblown leaves on the floor at its base. Clearly the door had not been opened for a very long time.

  Max and Lainey arrived and reported nothing of interest in the stables. Sasha asked, “So, up, or down?”

  “Up first,” Max replied. “I don’t want to be underground and get trapped by beasties drifting down from above.”

  Nobody having any argument for his logic, they proceeded up the stairs to the second floor. As expected, this was a guard barracks. Room after room with stone bunk beds. Six per room. Each room had a weapons rack, some of which still had spears or swords scattered among the debris. The weapons were rusted, and of little value. At the end of the hall they found a larger set of two rooms, likely the office and living quarters of the commander. Surprisingly, there was an intact ironwood door standing between the rooms.

  “Enchanted,” confirmed Kai. “It has been spelled for strength, and sealed. Coded to open for someone specific. Likely the commander.”

  “I love a challenge!” Max grinned as he crouched in front of the door lock. “I told you there’d be a room Fitz didn’t check!”

  “Or it was checked, and somebody simply closed the door behind them as they left, causing the spell to activate.” Sasha poked him in the back.