Troll Nation Read online

  Nonetheless, he pressed his back to the curved wall once more and began running sideways up the remaining stairs, firing off one exploding arrow after another. He had only crafted a few dozen for this scouting mission, and he was nearly out. Roark fired off his last, then turned on his heel and bolted for the gallery sheltering a wide, hexagonal opening.

  As he sprinted into the Vault, Kaz and a beefy level 29 Executioner heaved shut a massive golden door. The answering metallic boom bounced off the shining golden walls of the room.

  As soon as the door was shut, the Gargoyles outside seemed to lose interest in the party. A flaw in the Vault’s defense strategy, one that Lowen must not have seen fit to correct yet.

  Safe inside, Roark gravitated toward Kaz and Griff.

  “Kaz has never fought Gargoyles before,” the Mighty Gourmet whispered to Roark, excitement glimmering in his onyx eyes. “The way they shatter, it is very satisfying.”

  “That it is,” Griff agreed, rotating his sword shoulder as if to loosen a cramp. “Shame mobs can’t gain Experience from killin’ other mobs. Otherwise, we might’ve got ourselves a few levels outta that little skirmish. Wasn’t a one of ’em under level 10. And a few were a mite bit higher, I’d wager.”

  In the center of the room, Braind_Fish spoke with Zyra and the Rogue in low tones. A moment later, the stealthy pair slipped toward the far wall, where an opening stretched from floor to ceiling. An accommodation for the flying and walking alike.

  “Regroup,” Braind_Fish announced to the party. She nodded to an Arcane Battle Cleric and a Lifeblood Monk. “Patch up everybody you can and buff us good, then top off your Magicka. We need to be in fighting shape if we’re going to clear this place.”

  While Roark’s filigreed Health vial was being refilled, he studied the vestibule. The white-gold walls and floors emanated that bright glow from within. Even more illumination shined down from rose windows set into the ceilings, their shimmering glass scenes depicting gorgeous winged women who shined like the sun. There wasn’t a shadow in the place. Roark found himself squinting. After all that time spent down in the lower levels of the Cruel Citadel, his eyes had become sensitive to so much light.

  A commotion echoed through the massive floor-to-ceiling doorway at the far end of the room. Weapons and spells leapt into hands. Roark traded his bow for a Superior Falchion of Ice, snowy crystals falling silently from the blade. It wasn’t his Slender Rapier, but it would handle nearly as well, and if he died and it was the item he dropped, he wouldn’t feel any compunction about leaving it behind to be looted from his corpse.

  Running footsteps and the rustle of feathered wings grew louder and louder until Zyra sprinted into the room. She was alone, no sign of the Rogue.

  “Heralds!” she shouted.

  A split second later, three humanoid figures with vast feathered wings darted into the vestibule after her. Ranged attacks flew, but the Heralds avoided them easily.

  One, a woman with tawny hair and ocher wings, carrying a pair of flaming scimitars, dove toward Zyra’s back while the other two shot in from the sides with shining halberds. Zyra tucked herself into a roll, narrowly avoiding the blow, which would’ve taken her head from her shoulders in one clean slice. Roark sidestepped Zyra, then lunged for the closest of the halberd-wielding Heralds.

  Just before his icy falchion made contact, Roark saw the nameplate over the herald—[Nitola]. A popular girl’s name in Traisbin, though he didn’t recognize this woman’s face. His blade scored a gash down her side and molten gold dribbled from the wound, but her Health bar barely dropped a sliver.

  This Nitola wheeled in the air and darted back toward Roark. He pulled his body out of line at the last moment, executing a perfect mandritto riverso, but the Herald’s halberd changed directions faster than he could. Its shining edge bit into his thigh, nearly snapping the long bone in two. His leg buckled, pain flaring up and down the appendage.

  And his filigreed Health vial dropped by a quarter.

  Nitola plunged again, deadly point of the halberd screaming toward Roark’s sternum. Roark pivoted sharply, knocking the attack aside with his off hand, then swiping a descending cut, fendente dalla spalla, at her overextended wing. Feathers were sheared off, accompanied by droplets of purest gold.

  Nearly too late, Roark saw the ochre-winged Herald with the flaming scimitars was darting in to his left at the same time. The first attack had been to distract him from the second.

  Roark spun and threw up an Infernal shield with his off hand. It would give him away as a Troll if any of the heroes was paying attention, but there was nothing to be done for that. He couldn’t die and go off for respawn leaving his friends in this death trap.

  But the ochre-winged Herald blew through the violet barrier as if it weren’t there at all.

  Roark had just enough time to think, Because Divine creatures aren’t affected by Infernal spells, before the flaming scimitar chopped into his shoulder. Fire sizzled in the carved muscle, and red drained from his Health vial. He was down to fifty percent. Even with his incredible Defiler’s HP-regen rate, this was a fight he couldn’t survive.

  Suddenly, the clash of combat around the room filtered through the tunnel vision he’d developed. Heroes were falling left and right under the Divine creatures’ swift, brutal attacks. Worse yet, the number of their enemies had doubled. Where there had been three, there were now six winged angels of death swarming the party, and they were doing more damage than half the Trolls in the Cruel Citadel put together could’ve done.

  As he watched, even more Heralds poured through the floor-to-ceiling door like those same soldier wasps when someone disturbed their nest. Most of the names hovering over their heads were common to Roark’s home world. He recognized one face—a bearded, scarred man that he’d last seen trying to chop him in half with a massive battle-axe in the tunnels beneath his family’s former home the night he tried to assassinate the Tyrant King.

  Roark spun, searching the vestibule. Zyra wasn’t doing much better than he was, fighting as hard to avoid being hit as she was to score a single strike on the Herald she was facing off against. Much slower than either her or Roark, Kaz was limping along at less than a third of his Health, and Griff was holding on by the barest of threads, his red bar flashing out a critical warning.

  If they stayed, they were all going to die.

  Roark triggered his Infernal Invigoration, and an umbrella of claret-colored light dropped over the weapons trainer’s shoulders and healed him back up to half a Health bar before anything else could touch him.

  “Zyra, Kaz, Griff!” Roark thundered, the sharp edge of his voice carrying over the din of battle. He dug into his Inventory and pulled out a single-use portal scroll. It was time to beat a judicious retreat.

  When Roark broke the seal on the scroll, a sparkling blue portal opened in midair. Zyra was the first to dive through, not even a heartbeat of hesitation in her steps. Griff charged through behind her, his wiry arms pumping, his chest heaving with effort. Braind_Fish, the elf leading this party, turned just in time to see Kaz backpedal away from a cackling Herald and into the shimmering portal.

  “Hey, what the balls?” she yelled, eyes locking on Roark, her face twisting in a combination of fury and outrage.

  “We’re bowing out gracefully before we’re murdered,” Roark answered. “Thanks for covering our retreat, mate. We won’t forget your sacrifice.”

  “You dick!” she screeched, aiming an open palm at him.

  Roark jumped into the portal before she could fire the spell at him.

  As the usual sensations of chill wind and being taken apart and put back together of Hearthworld portals replaced the burning flush of fighting, the ugly truth settled in Roark’s gut. Lowen was mobilizing for an attack, and with that many combatants already in place, he had to be nearly ready. Even with the help of every Troll in the Cruel Citadel, there was no way Roark could hold him off.

  Griefer Blues

  SCOTT BAYANI UNLOCKED
and shouldered open the door of his shitty studio apartment, tossed his keys onto the kitchen table, and flung his Taco Bell visor across the dark room. It landed on the couch beside his InfiniTab, triggering the motion sensor alert system. A gorgeous, naked redhead flashed to life in midair. The holograph flickered slightly as Scott walked through it, peeling off his uniform shirt.

  “Hey, sexy,” the redhead purred, tousling her long hair and batting heavy eyelids at him, “you have eight unread notifications from today. Would you like me to read—”

  “Delete,” Scott snapped.

  “Are you sure?” she purred, rubbing a hand along her chest.

  “Yes,” he replied flatly, hardly noticing or caring about the holograph.

  The notifications would all be from his stupid guild anyway wanting to know where the hell PwnrBwner had been for the last week. Or it would be Kelly and Kevin wanting him to help power-level their alts or get some stupid enchanted armor.

  He shook his head. It was all so fucking stupid. Just a fucking game.

  Well, Scott Bayani wasn’t playing anymore.

  For all he cared, PwnrBwner_OG and his various alts could rot away in the limbo of unused characters. Let the wonder twins and everybody in his guild waste their pathetic lives in a made-up world where nothing you did mattered, and you never got any closer to winning because some modding asshole fucking cheated you at the last second. Sometimes it was a sudden evolution and overpowered spells that weren’t even a part of the game. Sometimes it was exploding weaponized severed heads. But it was always bullshit.

  Scott emptied his pockets on the table, then shucked out of the rest of his clothes and left them where they fell. He needed a shower. He stunk like ground-up Chihuahua meat and the Bell’s All-New Baja Blast Twists.

  “All right, sexy,” the redhead said. “Eight unread notifications deleted. Is there anything else I can—”

  “No,” he said without looking over his shoulder. “Go back to sleep. No, you know what? Shut down. All the way.”

  There was no reason to keep it on. He wasn’t going to be logging in anytime soon.

  “Okay, sexy,” the redhead said. “Shutting down. I’ll miss you.”

  The apartment went dark.

  “Yeah, well, I won’t miss you,” Scott grumbled, stepping into his tiny bathroom. He had to turn sideways and edge between the toilet and the sink to get to the shower. “Probably sell you to somebody too dumb to know what a waste you are.”

  He cranked the shower knob. Of course the hot water was still broken. That lazy-ass super was probably waiting around until Scott complained to the building manager again. Well, he wouldn’t have to wait long. One freezing shower and Scott would be good and ready to spam them both with complaints. Not that anybody would do anything about it. That was one thing Hearthworld and the real world had in common: a severe lack of people doing their jobs to fix the problems that came up.

  Scott held his breath, shielded his junk, and ducked into the icy spray. He’d tried to brace himself for the cold, but let out a shriek anyway as it pelted his chest.

  Welcome to reality. Working shitty hours to pay for a shitty apartment where you couldn’t even get a hot shower. No awesome magic flying from your gauntleted fists, no slaying hordes of evil monsters in kick-ass combat, no feeling of accomplishment from leveling up.

  But also no cheating griefers.

  He shivered as he raced through washing his hair. His fingertips were starting to tingle, and it felt like his skin was on fire.

  Life was a system of tradeoffs, and it turned out they all sucked. But as long as that dickface Roark was out of the equation, Scott was happy.

  Well, maybe not happy. Whatever he was, at least he didn’t have to listen to that fake-ass pirate accent snarking out stupid lines that ended in mate. Man, what he wouldn’t give to punch the life out of that smug Troll face with his bare hands just once—

  But no. That kind of thinking just made shit worse. He was so done. That modding punk could find somebody else to kick around, because Scott Bayani was never going back.

  He shut off the water with almost-numb hands, sidestepped out of the bathroom, and toweled off.

  The sun was coming up outside his dirt-encrusted window, the weak light beginning to illuminate the dumpy couch, clothing-strewn floors, and old pizza boxes. Scott sighed with a combination of disgust and resignation, then began the search for some sweats that didn’t need to be washed yet.

  This was his life now. Time to get used to it.

  Clockwork Killing Machine

  ROARK SAT DRUMMING his fingers on the arm of the carved onyx throne in the Keep, the Cruel Citadel’s lowest level. Though the Dungeon Lord’s throne was massive—made to accommodate a fully winged Jotnar Exarch half again the size of Roark’s Defiler evolution—he perched on the edge of the seat. A snoring Young Turtle Dragon was curled around him, taking up the space between him and the seat back.

  Mac’s evolution had taken him from three hundred pounds of sticky, fat-padded Stone Salamander to five hundred pounds of wicked-looking spiked shell, dark ever-shifting scales, and venomous scorpial stinger. The sleeping creature chirped muzzily, stretching out his legs and accidentally slicing a series of claw marks into Roark’s boiled leather armor with his razor-sharp talons.

  Roark glanced down at the slashes without really seeing them.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. Griff had said that Malaika was the final evolution for Heralds, their most powerful form, and that had proven more than true in the battle. If Braind_Fish’s party of heroes had attacked the Citadel instead, it would have taken at least twice as many Trolls to defeat them. And that was if the Trolls utilized the many traps and ambush points Roark had modified the Citadel to contain. Lowen’s Heralds had attacked them in an open chamber—no traps, no tricks, no confined spaces—and massacred them with sheer brute force.

  It was much like Lowen’s spell writing. Overwhelming power, but no finesse. There had to be a way to use that against him.

  Idly, Roark opened his mystic grimoire and turned to the Troll Evolution chart before finally selecting the ribbon marked Character.

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  HE WAS A FULL 9 LEVELS away from his final evolution. At 36, he would have to choose between Exarch—the Jotnar path of physical strength—and Infernali—the path of Infernali Magick. Not much of a dilemma there. With his Hexorcist abilities, Infernali would undoubtedly open up an untold wealth of devious, lethal new curses. Roark had never seen an Infernali in person—none of the Trolls in the Cruel Citadel had—so he had no idea what to expect. But if the Infernali form was even half as formidable as Azibek’s Exarch form had been, he would be a leviathan of power.

  Even so, that might not be enough to defeat Lowen. And if by some miracle Roark did manage to kill the ass, Lowen would just respawn in two hours like every other mob in Hearthworld. And not just Lowen, but the fighting force he’d brought into this world as well. The ensuing war would be endless until one of them figured out a way to kill the other forever. That or until Lowen found a way to break Hearthworld’s soulbound magic and take back the World Stone Pendant from Roark, which was the real reason the Tyrant King was so interested in this place.

  That pendant, stolen from the Marek, utilized powers Roark still didn’t fully understand, but clearly it was worth waging an interdimensional war for. Roark strongly suspected that he’d ended up in Hearthworld partly because of the pendant, though that begged the question: how in the seven bloody hells had Lowen managed to follow him here?

  Such a magical feat shouldn’t have been possible. And bringing through a small army of the Tyrant King’s underlings? Inconceivable. In Traisbin, portal magic was treacherously unreliable. Even the simplest portal spell was as likely to drop the caster into the mouth of a bubbling volcano or in midair several thousand feet above the ground as it was to deposit t
hem unharmed a few miles shy of their target. It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow Lowen had done it. If Roark could find out how he’d managed it, maybe he could force Lowen back through to Traisbin, where he could be properly and permanently killed.

  Then it would be on to finish Marek.

  Roark smirked. He was getting ahead of himself. The arbitrary magicks that governed Hearthworld wouldn’t even allow him to write a portal powerful enough to attempt the trip back to Traisbin until he was able to cast level 9 spells, which was still a ways off. With his new Evolution and the Carved Ebony Wand he’d looted from a hero’s corpse, he had ten level 1 spell slots—the maximum number—six level 2’s, five level 3’s, two level 4’s, and a single level 5 spell slot. Most likely he wouldn’t see level 9 until Infernali. To get there would mean endless hours of griefing, hexing, crafting, and spell-slinging.

  Of course, if he wasn’t Dungeon Lord, it would take him much, much longer to fight his way up to level 36. Now, he gained the effect Dungeon Lord’s Tax—for every hero killed in the Cruel Citadel, he received one percent of the Experience points. Better still, he earned an additional portion of experience from all heroes killed with the cursed weapons he’d made. With cursed weapons scattered absolutely everywhere in the Cruel Citadel, those points mounted quickly.

  He switched over to the Dungeon Lord’s Grimoire to check on the current griefing rotation.

  A group of low- to mid-level heroes was being processed in the corridors of the first floor, which Roark had turned into an intricate sorting mechanism to channel heroes on to the appropriate dungeon level. It looked as if Druz—the new First Floor Overseer he’d appointed—and her honor guard had already reduced the party, killing off the two highest-leveled warriors and leaving the corpses in the mazelike halls. Now the overseer and her underlings were filtering the remaining heroes toward a staircase connected to the second floor. There, the heroes would be decimated by a squad of Changelings fighting toward their first Evolution.