Troll Nation Read online

  Roark felt his face pull into a glower. “He took everything from me. If I don’t kill him, he’ll keep taking and destroying and salting the earth behind him. That is his way.”

  Zyra’s hood rose and fell as she nodded.

  “I can respect a good revenge killing,” she said. “When do you think you’ll go back?”

  “I’ll need to be at least at my final Evolution before I can open a portal back to Traisbin,” Roark said. “Though I suspect I’ll have to deal with Lowen before then.”

  Her hood pointed unwaveringly at the herbs she was shaking into a wide-mouth flask. “What about Mac and Kaz? Will you take them with you?”

  Roark frowned and shook his head.

  “Not if I can help it. Griff made me promise to take him when I went,” he admitted, “but he’s got a firm grasp of what true death is, and he’s lived a full life. Mac... Kaz... all the Trolls, really... Taking them back to Traisbin with me would be a death sentence. There are no respawns there, and wherever I go, forever-death is going to follow.”

  “But you can’t expect to fight a tyrant and his army by yourself!” She sounded indignant. “If I—if any of us hadn’t been here, you’d never have lasted long enough to challenge anybody.”

  Roark hopped down off the workbench, hands itching to reach out to the hooded Reaver. He balled them into fists and forced them to his sides.

  “It’s too much of a risk,” he insisted, willing her to understand that he couldn’t lose her or Mac or Kaz. Not now, not after finally letting them into his life. He couldn’t be the cause of their deaths.

  Zyra snorted. “A risk you’ll probably ignore anyway. You’re nowhere near paranoid enough. Probably more than half the reason you haven’t managed to kill this tyrant yet.” She turned back to her flask, tipping a bottle of thick red liquid into it. “But by all means, go alone. Mac and Kaz will miss you for a little while, but I imagine they’ll get over it.”

  Roark opened his mouth, fumbling for some caustic and clever reply, then closed it again and shook his head.

  “Let me know when you’re ready to retrieve the Rock Wyvern egg,” he said in clipped tones. “I’ll be in my study.”

  Transmute Magick

  ROARK STALKED ACROSS the corridor to his study, closing the door behind him carefully. His mood was considerably blacker than it had been before visiting Zyra’s lab, but he didn’t want her to know that. No one could frustrate him like the hooded Reaver. It was as if she always knew exactly what to say to get beneath his skin. Did she think he wouldn’t take her with him if there was any other choice? Her, Mac, and Kaz? There would be nothing for them in Traisbin but death. It was bad enough that he’d been talked into taking Griff to his eventual—or, perhaps, very sudden—death.

  Just how many damned deaths did Zyra want on his conscience?

  The silver lining to this twice-damned storm cloud was that their little talk had put him in the mood for some cursing. He crossed the study to the desk he’d installed in the room for writing new spells and hexes. It was a black walnut behemoth, finished with a burl walnut veneer, which would’ve been the envy of any mage or scribe in Traisbin. A set of brass-handled drawers ran down either side of the desk, and twin panels protruded from both sides, filled with pigeon holes, shelves, and storage space for scrolls, inks, books, and writing implements of every sort and size.

  Roark breathed deeply as he sat, running his hands lightly, almost reverently, over the wooden top. Though he’d never seen a desk quite like this, it reminded him more of home than anything else in all of Hearthworld. He could almost see his father, Sir Erick Von Graf, sitting at a desk not so different from this one, his scrolls neatly arranged before him, his serious, deep-set eyes scanning magically binding contracts, lettering writs to ensure the newly deceased of Korvo would rest peacefully in the afterlife, or deconstructing the nuanced language and punctuation of spell forms. His father hadn’t been an easy or lighthearted man, but he’d been kind in his own way and perpetually even-keeled, to boot.

  That last was a trait Roark had never shared with his long-deceased father. Roark had taken instead after his mother, quick-tempered, driven, and prone to action before thought. Traits which had directly resulted in his present predicament.

  Roark found himself smiling as he inhaled the heady scent of parchment and acrid smell of bottled ink. Already, the sight of shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls was driving away the irritation and uncertainty. This was a place of logic and reason. Of order. Zyra might be impossible to fathom from one day to the next, but magick always followed the same set of rules. His father had taught him as much.

  In Traisbin, the rules had adhered rigidly to syntax, grammar, and punctuation. Clause upon interconnected clause, clearly defined spell parameters, effects, locations, and targets. A spell could go horribly awry with as little as a misplaced comma. Some of that seemed to have carried over to Hearthworld.

  Roark could still write his spells in this dimension and carve cantrips in his flesh when necessary, though the laws that governed magick in Hearthworld put strict caps on their power, range, and duration. He could usually find a way to write around those restrictions, but the better, more permanent solution was through leveling. He’d done quite a bit of that already, bringing up his Cursing until he’d been given a new Hexorcist classification.

  But Roark was certain he had only scratched the surface of magick in this dimension. PwnrBwner and that Death Knight from earlier, for example, both used vocal commands to cast spells. Braind_Fish, the elf leader of that ill-fated raid on the Vault of the Radiant Shield, had used hand motions to trace runes in the air itself. What were runes and spoken words but another way to write a spell? A faster, simplified way. Perhaps they weren’t as elegant as his scripted masterpieces, but in the end, only the effect mattered, and their spells were deadly effective. A truth he could personally testify to.

  Roark leaned back in his overstuffed chair and opened his mystic grimoire, turning once again to the World Stone Pendant’s spells and abilities.

  Transmute Power – Meld and merge the primal energies and magicks in the world around you to your will.

  Meld and merge...

  Roark didn’t understand at all how one used vocal commands to cast spells like PwnrBwner did—speech was so impermanent and conveyed intent about as well as a sieve conveyed water—but the runes and sigils he could wrap his mind around. His own Hexes became runes when he was finished inking them, and he had a library of sigils in his head from Enchanting and Cursing. If he could somehow use this new Transmute Power ability to combine the two systems of magick—his own rigid writing system and the faster, simpler series of runes and sigils—then perhaps he could create a faster, more accurate way to write spells.

  With a thought, Roark closed the grimoire, then pulled his Initiate’s Spell Book from his Inventory. Numbness and tingling washed down his left hand as the book hovered open over his palm. He wasn’t certain the level spell slot he would want for this experiment, so instead he turned to the blank binding pages at the back. He was able to hex any planar surface, so it stood to reason that he should be able to hex a piece of parchment, even if it happened to be located inside his spell book.

  After his unsettling conversation with Zyra, the curse at the forefront of his mind was the Icy Torrential Downpour, though he couldn’t decide which of them would benefit the most from a drenching. Probably both. With a disgruntled sigh, Roark carefully scrawled out the curse form on the end page.

  An Icy Torrential Downpour falls, depleting Magick of all targets standing within a five-foot radius by (5 x Cursed! level of caster) points/second for thirty seconds.

  When he finished, a scrap of parchment crammed with words appeared.

  [Would you like to Hex this surface? Yes/No?

  Note: For every Hex you inscribe, Cursed! will extract a share of your Health equal to your Enchanting level x your character level.]

  Acting on a hunch, Roark selected No and r
eturned to the page. This time, rather than inscribing a curse, he drew the lightning bolt shaped Yasuc, the rune that alchemically forged precious stones and weapons into one new, solid piece when Enchanting. Just below this, he wrote out the other curse bouncing around the inside of his skull, an Incendiary Burst.

  The air within 15 feet of this paper compresses and expands rapidly, igniting, causing 15 points fire damage (+2 burn damage/sec for 15 seconds) to any targets within a 15-foot radius.

  Once again, the option to inscribe the Hex appeared, and once again Roark declined.

  Working as carefully as he would on a Legendary weapon with a Flawless gem, Roark drew a containment circle around the curses and rune. The containment circle was a complicated piece of magecraft from his home world, meant to restrict the effects of a particular spell set to a given area, or amplify and bind various textual proofs into a single coherent form. Such a containment circle wasn’t typically used for simple cantrips, but was rather reserved for the most complex forms of contract magic or sprawling, multi-mage rituals.

  His hand moved with practiced ease—schooled at the academy for a handful of years under the watchful tutelage of Arch-Acolyte Sarvlax before the Tyrant King had come to power—as he wrote out the various boundaries and the binding formula.

  After a minute, he lifted the nib from the page, blowing softly on the ink out of habit.

  A notice materialized before his eyes, wiping out his handiwork, leaving the parchment in his spell book completely blank.

  [Error! This Curse Chain cannot be created without defined (If, then) conditions.]

  Curse Chain? Excitement prickled down the back of Roark’s neck, and he sat forward in his chair, eager to complete the inscription correctly and see what it would do. After some toying with the grammar and the lightning-shaped Yasuc, Roark came up with a curse that utilized the If, then format required by the arbitrary rules that governed Hearthworld’s magic.

  If a living creature steps within a five-foot radius, then this hex will trigger an Icy Torrential Downpour, depleting 5 x Cursed! level of caster points/second for 30 seconds, and activate an Incendiary Burst, causing 15 points fire damage (+2 burn damage/sec for 30 seconds).

  Around this, he once more painstakingly scrawled the containment circle. As soon as he closed the circle, a new option appeared.

  [Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: Storm of Fire and Ice? Yes/No?

  Note: There is no cost to attempt to invent Curse Chains, however not all combinations of runes and curses play nicely together. Success depends upon compatibility of runes and curses used and will not be revealed before the attempt to invent a Curse Chain is accepted. Failure comes with steep consequences.

  Please inscribe responsibly.]

  Roark cackled, rubbing his palms together in greedy anticipation. As if he would pass up this opportunity. The potential gains far outweighed any risk.

  [Congratulations, you have unlocked Curse Chain! You may now invent Curse Chains two curses long.

  The accepted definition of invented Curse Chains will be logged in Initiate’s Spell Book. Curse Chains can be inscribed repeatedly without a cooldown period for as long as they remain in Initiate’s Spell Book.]

  As soon as Roark dismissed this notice, another appeared.

  [Your invention of Curse Chain: Storm of Fire and Ice was successful! Accepted definition for Storm of Fire and Ice has been logged in your Initiate’s Spell Book under rune STORM OF FIRE AND ICE.]

  Roark turned immediately back to his spell book. A new rune, half stylized heat waves and half snowflake, had appeared on the end page with the particulars of the effects neatly written beside it.

  Kneeling, Roark copied the Storm of Fire and Ice rune onto the flagstones. As soon as he finished, a small rush of burgundy flames rolled over the rune, and it faded to near invisibility.

  A moment later, the air around him erupted in a flaming explosion just as an icy rain gushed down on him from above like someone upending a rain barrel over his head. Roark yelped with surprise, delight, and a bright flash of searing pain.

  He used a quick pre-inscribed Dispel Magick from his spell slots to put out the flames. Even over thirty seconds, his Health was now high enough that the flames wouldn’t kill him, but they were damned painful and distracting. With the Hex undone, he returned to the end pages of the book, a stupid grin plastered on his face.

  It was runic shorthand. Brilliant. His mind was awhirl with a myriad of possibilities. The initial rune form required time and thought, but once the preparations had been made, he could inscribe the runes in a few pen strokes. And those an unlimited number of times!

  He’d need to go slow, take his time and investigate the limits of this new power, but it was also possible that he’d be able to create nearly infinite strings of runic complexity with enough time and practice. For example, he thought it was theoretically possible to combine the Rune he’d just created for Storm of Ice and Fire with another manufactured Rune, creating an even more complicated and powerful sigil set. That would be far down the road, to be sure, but he was excited to get there.

  Roark immediately set about writing another, slightly more complicated, Chain.

  If a living creature with Strength or Constitution higher than 20 steps within a 5-foot radius, then hex will trigger Noxious Miasma, causing 10 points plague damage/second for 15 seconds to all creatures within 20 feet. If a creature inside Noxious Miasma radius steps within one foot of Miasma’s border, the floor beneath Noxious Miasma becomes a pit of sucking mud for 30 seconds, entrapping all affected creatures in the Miasma.

  To this, Roark added the negative of Rorne, a rune that increased Movement Speed, in the hopes it would further slow the affected parties, and Yasuc to bind it all together, before tracing the containment circle around the jumble of words.

  [Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: Sucking Miasma of Death? Yes/No?

  Note: There is no cost to attempt to invent Curse Chains, however not all combinations of runes and curses play nicely together. Success depends upon compatibility of runes and curses used and will not be revealed before the attempt to invent a Curse Chain is accepted. Failure comes with steep consequences.

  Please inscribe responsibly.]

  Roark accepted, giddily awaiting the appearance of the new rune.

  [Your invention of Sucking Miasma of Death has failed! Goodbye!]

  The notice disappeared, immediately replaced by a cloud of toxic yellow fog. The fog roiled and bubbled, moving at many times the speed normal fog would waft, and Roark found himself choking and gagging as it clawed its way down his throat and bored into his nose and eyes, partially blinding him in the process. Pain ripped through his chest as if acid were eating away his lungs from the inside out. Blood spattered to the floor as he doubled over, coughing uncontrollably. The red liquid in his Health vial drained away in a madcap rush to zero.

  Roark fumbled a Sufficient Health Potion from his Inventory, his hands burning and clumsy, and tried to down it, but the sugary magenta concoction did nothing to slow or stop his loss of Health.

  The filigreed vial flashed out a final critical warning as he dropped to the bloody stone floor, coughing up chunks of pink lung tissue.

  Roark von Graf died in horrible pain, absolutely ecstatic over his new ability. He couldn’t wait to respawn and try it again.

  The Hero Sieve

  WHEN ROARK RESPAWNED in the Keep’s throne room two hours later, Zyra leapt up from the formidable black-steel chest she’d been lounging against.

  “Who was it?” she demanded, Poisoned Claws extended and ready to kill. “That Lowen character? One of the dungeons you sent Kaz to recruit? A holdover still loyal to Azibek? A challenger for the Dungeon Lord’s throne? Who? Just give me a name.”

  Roark waved her question away with one hand. “No. It was no one.” He was already headed for the door, unable to wait a single second to answer questions. “Or rather, me,” he
called back over his shoulder.

  The hooded Reaver quickly caught up to his long strides and fell in beside him.

  “You? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a new ability,” he said, taking a turn down the corridor.

  “The Ugliest Suicide ability?” Zyra asked. “Your corpse looks as if a level 12 Fireball blew your chest apart from the inside out. I had to post a guard on your study so no little Changelings would happen by with a message and have a panic attack at the death of their dear Dungeon Lord.”

  Roark barely heard her. He rounded the corner into the hall that led to the Alchemy lab and study, his boots clacking furiously on the stone as he picked up the pace. Ideas whirled around in his head like spinning tops, frantic with life and motion and possibility. There was still so much about this new ability he didn’t understand—so much he could only learn through experimentation, trial and error. And most probably, through painful death.

  “I’ve figured out the citadel’s floorspace management problems,” he told her as they approached the Reaver Shaman standing watch over his study door. The hunched, wiry Shaman gave a deep bow before skittering off into the shadows. Roark held the door for Zyra, then followed her inside. “Potential combinations kept coming to me while I was respawning. The possibilities are nearly limitless. With just curses I already know, I’ve got over seventy-three thousand spell forms—though a great many of those will be death traps, I’d wager.”

  Zyra perched a hip on the edge of the desk, crossing her arms, and looked down at the mangled corpse on the floor. She hadn’t been exaggerating about the extent of the damage; Roark had seen some truly horrific deaths during his years in the Resistance, but the mess on the floor was by far the grisliest scene he’d ever had the displeasure of stumbling across.

  “Looks as if your first one went well,” she said.

  “That was my second, actually,” Roark replied curtly. He stooped at his bloodied, acid-eaten body and gathered his belongings from the corpse. When he’d emptied them all back into his own Inventory, the corpse turned to dust and blew away on an unfelt breeze. Good riddance. “Though it was a bit nasty,” he reluctantly admitted.