Troll Nation Read online

  Slowly, Zyra retracted her claws. “How many levels did you lose?”

  “One? Two? It hardly matters.” Roark shrugged as if the detail was the least important thing in the world. He’d get the levels back. What was important was what he’d reasoned out while floating incorporeal during his respawn.

  “I didn’t realize you’d damaged your brain,” Zyra said, folding her arms. “Is it permanent?”

  Roark ignored her sarcasm, pulled out his Initiate’s Spell Book, and immediately began to inscribe a new Curse Chain.

  “This is the solution I’ve been looking for,” he explained as he worked. “It will make griefing so much more efficient, which will, in turn, bring in a massive amount of Experience. I’ll be back up to whatever level I was in no time. Not to mention, we won’t have to cram the first floor in with the second anymore. If I can make this work, we’ll be able to streamline the griefing process and turn this place into a true clockwork wonder of death.”

  “Well, I’m sure Wurgfozz and Druz will throw you a feast,” the hooded Reaver said disinterestedly. “Since this madness is apparently of your own doing and there are no assassins for me to stab, I suppose I’ll see myself off to the Alchemy lab. Those last seventeen hundred and forty-seven potions aren’t going to brew themselves.”

  Roark glanced up to find her already on her feet, one hand on the study door.

  “Zyra, wait.”

  She turned back to him, the slant of her shoulders and hips suggesting boredom.

  For reasons too slippery to pin down, he wanted desperately to show her what he was writing, to hear her thoughts on it. Maybe even to hear her praise it. Though he knew it would be smarter not to get his hopes up. She was sparse with even rudimentary compliments and wasn’t the kind to lavish praise on anyone.

  But there had to be a way to make her understand the potential importance of his discovery.

  “You can create new poisons,” he said, struggling to find something that might connect. “And it’s fun, you enjoy it, right?”

  She shrugged. “Who wouldn’t enjoy inventing something nastier than any poison already in existence?”

  “Well, this”—Roark tapped the Curse Chain page in his Initiate’s Spell Book—“this is my poison. Seeing if I can write something that outwits everything already in existence.”

  Her stance softened a bit at that.

  Roark plunged ahead before he lost his nerve. “Would you be interested in seeing what I’m working on?”

  The moment’s hesitation before she answered almost killed him. How long had it been since he’d wanted to impress someone? Not in order to intimidate an enemy or bluff his way through a challenge, but to earn genuine admiration. Probably not since Danella.

  “All right,” Zyra said finally, going back to the desk and boosting herself up onto it. “Show me what you’ve got, then.”

  Roark sat on the desk next to her and turned the Spell Book so she could see his writing.

  Any hero of level 7 or lower who steps on or over this plate is instantly transported to the corresponding plate on the first level of the Cruel Citadel and is Stunned! for 20 seconds.

  “Obviously, this is just a rough draft,” he said, “and far too simplistic. I’ll need to figure out how to include spell parameters, level restrictions, destination designators, and portal runes, but I’m sure I can get it ironed out. Something along this line will be the first such spell parameter. Then, I’ll need to create five more, one for each of the other floors so all the Trolls can see their fair share of griefing.”

  Her hood swung up to look him in the face. “I’m not sure I entirely understand. What exactly is this supposed to do? And what is this plate it mentions?”

  “Well, the execution will be complex, but the result should be fairly simple, at least in theory. I’m going to smith a metal plate of sorts, about so big”—he held up his arms, hands five feet apart—“and use my Hexorcist skill to inscribe it with a complex Curse Chain. The prime transport plate, located on the first floor, will act as a sieve. If things work according to my plan, a party of heroes steps on or over the plate, and the Curse Chain activates, sorting them out by level and instantly teleporting them to the corresponding destination plates scattered through the various levels of the dungeon. And it will all happen in the blink of an eye.”

  “So,” she said, “a level 20 hero might get sent all the way down to a cursed plate on the fourth floor while a level 8 gets routed to the second floor?”

  “Yes. Precisely that.” Roark’s face lit up with excitement. “All the Trolls will get a chance to grief players, we won’t have to have the first and second floors merged, and there won’t be any reason for the higher-level Trolls to rotate up to the top to handle the bigger threats. It will drastically streamline the process. And, I should be able to bake a few nasty surprises into Curse Chain as well, so that not only will we be able to split and sort the parties accordingly, but the heroes will show up on a given level with a range of nasty curse effects in place.”

  Zyra was nodding slowly, one slender midnight hand reaching into the shadowy depths of her hood to cup her chin.

  “That ... is actually quite impressive, Griefer.” She paused. “If it works.”

  “Oh, it’ll work. I’ll need to increase my Curse Chain ability significantly, but it will work.” Roark tried not to grin and failed. He could already see the plate in action, dull and unseemly, lying in a narrow corridor before an unaware party of invaders.

  “And what if a hero spots the plate before their party walks over it?” Zyra asked. “They see your inscription and scratch it out with their sword? Or they smash the plate with their morning star?”

  “Simple,” Roark said, pulling his Spell Book back and hastily adding a reminder to include a new clause in the final Curse Chain. “I add another condition stating that if the plate is tampered with by anyone but a Troll native to the Cruel Citadel, it triggers an enormous explosion, wiping the party out in one fell swoop.”

  “And assume they see that, then turn back and walk out of the citadel? I mean, at some point word will get around about the teleportation. Could drive heroes away.”

  Roark raised an eyebrow at her. “Have you seen the heroes coming into the citadel lately? They’re not going to turn back over some simple transport curse. They want to either kill me or be killed by me. And I’m more than willing to indulge them.”

  “You will lose some of them, though,” Zyra said. “The smart ones.”

  “Not enough to matter, and anyway, we don’t gain the majority of our Experience from the smart ones.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Zyra clapped her hands together. “All right, I’m convinced.” She hopped from the desk. “Back to work with me. And one assumes you as well.”

  She was right, there was enough leveling and experimenting ahead to border on mind-boggling. It was a lucky thing Trolls never slept.

  Roark followed Zyra to the door and opened it for her.

  “Thank you for pretending to care,” he said.

  She chuckled. “Any time.”

  AFTER ROARK SAW HER out, time became a blur of trial and error.

  First, he went to the smithy to work on the metal plate. Initially he tried to make the plate light enough that Druz and her crew could pick it up and carry it about the first floor, deploying the transport plate at random locations in order to keep the offending heroes on their toes. After seven iterations, however, he’d lost the illusion of the First Floor Overseer packing the bulky thing around with her. She had fairly decent Strength, but the weight of the plate would wreck the movement speed of whoever carried it, and no matter what material Roark smithed it out of, he couldn’t lower the weight enough. The damned thing was simply too big. And, if Druz was caught unaware, the precious few seconds between getting the plate out of her Inventory and placing it on the floor could be the difference between life and death.

  Additionally, he realized, a moveable plate wouldn’t return
much of the first floor to the lowest level Trolls. Most of it would still be taken up by Druz and her honor guard coaxing the heroes to cross the plate. No, what he needed was a chokepoint that heroes couldn’t gain access to the citadel without passing.

  After some consideration, Roark decided on the shadowed archway aboveground in the citadel’s inner bailey. The entry opened on the crumbling staircase that led down to the first floor. If he permanently affixed the plate to the threshold, heroes would be sorted as they arrived. Those heroes of a low enough level would proceed on to the first floor, ignored by the cursed plate, where they would run aground against Druz and the other denizens of the floor.

  The rest of the higher-level heroes would be teleported accordingly.

  Logistic and material issues worked out, Roark set his focus on leveling up his Hexomancer abilities. In order for his plan to work, he would need to be able to create a single Curse Chain capable of supporting six or more conditions. Currently, his Curse Chain could support a mere two conditions. As with all things in Hearthworld, the best way to increase the ability was simply to practice. Well, to practice and kill. So, Roark went to work Hexing surfaces all over the dungeon—focusing predominately at the bottom of the floor staircases, which were already natural chokepoints for invading heroes.

  And instead of Hexing those surfaces with run-of-the-mill Curses!, Roark used the new Curse Chain he’d created before dying horrifically, Storm of Ice and Fire. With the longform work already inscribed in his spell book, all Roark had to do was etch the new short rune-form of the chain into the flagstones. The inscription itself took a handful of moments to create, but once set, it would inflict passive damage to any hero unlucky enough to step within the target radius for hours to come. True, the new, complex Hexes would wear down eventually, but for now they chipped away at his enemies, sending a constant trickle of Experience his way and slowly increasing his skill as a Hexomancer, which, in turn, boosted his Curse Chain ability.

  Curse Chains set and operational, Roark turned his full attention to the actual rune work needed to pull this off, which was easily the most complicated piece of the operation. It also proved to be rather fun in spite of Roark’s urgency to fix the final flaw in the citadel’s layout. He lost track of time hunched over his desk, shuffling around curses, hexes, runes, and containment circles.

  He died once more in an explosion loud enough to bring Mai running from all the way in the kitchen, but set back to regaining his lost level as soon as he respawned. At some point, Griff came in to report on the trainers he’d talked to, but the words bounced off Roark’s focus like a willow switch off a tower shield. Zyra drifted in and then back out again without comment. A pair of Changeling apprentice chefs brought in a meal and later a second meal. Eventually, Mai came with a third and talked quite a bit before finally throwing up her hands and leaving in frustration.

  Roark hardly noticed any of it.

  The number of curses he could link rose steadily, and his own level climbed back to 29, where he’d been before he died in the Sucking Miasma of Death and then the subsequent failed Exploding Ball Lightning. He hurriedly reassigned his stat points, then returned to work.

  Finally, after leveling up the Curse Chain for the sixth time (You may now create Curse Chains of 6 or more curses and runes and inscribe up to 6 conditions.), he took a Town Portal scroll from his Inventory, opened it, and carefully dissected the sigils required for temporal teleportation. After being immersed in rune theory for what felt like days upon end, the spell scroll was rather easy to decipher. It was a basic binding construct—fixing two points together through a metaphysical tether—powered by a rune called Nirn, which appeared to be the key to moving objects and living things from one place to another.

  After working out the rest of his Curse Chain formula, and with this final piece of the puzzle, he was ready to make another attempt. Chances were high he’d blow himself up once more, but there was nothing to be done for it. He was on the verge of a breakthrough, he could feel it sitting heavy in his gut. With a trembling hand, Roark turned to an open space in the rapidly filling endpaper of his spell book and began writing.

  He took the five destination plates—one for each level, two through six—and engraved a cursed rune into the surface of each one. The rune itself would act as the destination marker for the prime transport plate, and once the hero or heroes arrived, the plate would trigger, activating the predetermined curse.

  One by one, Roark went through, holding his breath as he added ever increasing levels of complexity to the spell. Engraving marker runes on the destination plates, carefully designating spell parameters, tweaking the level caps, tying them all together with an ever-more complicated set of Nirm and Yasuc runes followed by interlocking containment circles. Rather than steadily relaxing, with each plate that didn’t blow up in his face, Roark felt his shoulders tighten another notch. By the final one, Roark felt like a longbow drawn tight enough to snap.

  He was well overdue for a failure. And if a Curse! of this complexity failed, who knew how much damage it might do.

  Gingerly, he closed the last containment circle and reviewed his overly complicated Curse Chain spell form:

  [Any hero who meets the conditional requirements set on {Destination Plate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5} is instantly transported from the Prime Transportation Plate (designation = Nirn!) to the corresponding: {Destination Plate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

  {Destination Plate 1: If any hero of level 7 to 12 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Rihuk, and are Stunned! for 20 seconds.};

  {Destination Plate 2: If any hero of level 13 to 18 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Figrua, and suffer 20 points of Fire Damage!};

  {Destination Plate 3: If any hero of level 19 to 24 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Letho, and slowed by 10% for 20 seconds!};

  {Destination Plate 4: If any hero of level 25 to 30 steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of Wuurk, and suffer 20 points of Frost Damage!};

  {Destination Plate 5: If any hero of level 30 or above steps on or over the Prime Transportation Plate, then they are instantly transported to the corresponding plate, equaling the value of STORM OF ICE AND FIRE, and suffer the effects of: (Existent Curse Chain) Storm of Fire and Ice!};

  If any person, mob, or hero, other than a Troll, native to the Cruel Citadel, tampers with this plate, it triggers an explosion causing 150 points fire damage (+10 burn damage/sec for 25 seconds) to any targets within a 20-foot radius.]

  Another popup appeared a moment later.

  [Would you like to Transmute Inscription to invent Curse Chain: The Hero Sieve? Yes/No?]

  Roark licked chapped lips then, with a grimace, accepted.

  “Boom!”

  Roark flinched. But instead of a notice that his final Curse Chain had failed—Goodbye!—the Success page appeared before him, detailing the ins and outs of his new curse:

  [Your invention of Curse Chain: The Hero Sieve was successful! Accepted definition for The Hero Sieve has been logged in your Initiate’s Spell Book under rune THE HERO SIEVE.]

  A new rune promptly appeared, this one a shimmering opalescent circle that looked a bit like a wheel with six spokes radiating outward. Roark dismissed the announcement with a flick of his hand and craned his neck to glare at Zyra over his shoulder.

  “Oh, I apologize, I didn’t think you could hear me,” she said, laughter shining like sunlight through her every syllable. “I take it you’re back with us, then, Dungeon Lord?”

  Roark stood and stretched, the stiffness and kinks of untold tense, focused hours protesting in his back and neck. He spotted the meals long gone cold, then remembered his army of visito
rs the night before.

  It’s sure lucky you don’t have to set aside your precious plans to breathe or you’d be long dead, Danella’s ghost whispered in his ear.

  “How long have I been working?” he asked.

  “Seventeen hours,” Zyra said as if she’d been waiting to answer this question. “Not counting the time you were gone for respawn. I finished my brewing time requirement and the last of my potions for Master Alchemist an hour ago. I’m down to just the ultra-rare ingredients that a certain Jotnar promised to help me gather.”

  Roark nodded and gathered up the finished plates, which collectively weighed a quarter ton. “Indulge me in one last matter,” he replied with a sly grin, eager to see his handiwork in action for the first time.

  SETTING UP THE PLATES themselves was a surprisingly simple affair, and in next to no time, Roark and Zyra were back in the Dungeon Lord throne room, so Roark could watch the mayhem unfolded from the luxury of his throne. They waited for less than ten minutes before a new party of heroes shouldered their way into the shadowy archway to the first floor’s crumbling staircase. They looked like a mixed lot, most mid-level heroes in the 10 to 14 range. A level 18 Moon Shaman called Stinky_Pinky lead the group.

  “This is important,” the silk-clad Shaman said over his shoulder, “just follow my lead, do what the fuck I say, when the fuck I say, and don’t get separated. These Trolls are lower level, but if they split you off from the main party, it’s game over, son. The Griefer changed things up recently, so I wouldn’t expect to see any action until we get down to the next level, but this dude’s a tricky sumbitch, so you never—”

  His words cut off abruptly as he stepped over the entryway plate attached to the threshold, vanishing in a flash of prismatic light. The others, too stupid or too greedy to turn back, followed right on his heels, charging onward. They, too, were swallowed by a shower of blinding light as the various members were sorted and teleported away. Only a single Brawler, EdgeGod, remained on the first floor, his level 11 low enough to keep the Hero Sieve from whisking him away with the others. He crept forward, uncertainty marring every step, his pitted battle-axe held in a trembling death grip.