Temple of Sorrow: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Temple of Sorrow

  Book One

  Stonehaven League

  Carrie Summers

  Prologue

  DEVON SHIFTED, HER leather armor creaking as she surveyed her companions. Their familiar faces were grim but determined. No one would turn back now.

  They’d gathered in caverns like this hundreds of times, clad in their finest armor, bodies shimmering with the magical energy of a dozen enhancement spells. For five long years, they’d fought shoulder to shoulder. But this battle was different. This would be their last.

  “Everyone ready?” Devon’s voice echoed in the stone chamber, joining the drip of water falling from hanging moss. Chill air sank through her armor, stiffening muscles she’d limbered on the journey through the forest.

  No one spoke. Around the cavern, torches blazed atop poles wedged into cracks in the natural stone floor. The flames hissed under the constant patter of water droplets.

  “I’ll miss this, you guys,” Hailey finally said. Her dark eyes were cast downward, and she twisted the toe of her snake-hide boot against the floor.

  “No goodbyes,” Devon said. “We agreed.”

  Hailey pressed her lips together. Feathers of her headdress brushed her high cheekbones as she shrugged. “I still need to cast Seal Skin.”

  Stating the obvious. Hailey did that when she got nervous. Devon nodded to encourage her. They were all worried about this fight. Devon certainly didn’t want to think too hard about it. Or rather, she didn’t want to think about the aftermath.

  “Anything else?” she said, taking in the others with a quick glance.

  Owen, their rogue-assassin shuffled before finally jabbing a hand into one of his many hidden pockets. He pulled something out, holding it in a clenched fist. “Been saving these forever,” he said with a crooked smile. “No point hoarding them now, I guess.”

  When he opened his hand, Devon’s eyes widened. She let out a low whistle. “Three? I don’t suppose you want to tell us where you got them…”

  Owen shrugged. “Oh, here and there. I’ve kept the secret for so long, it seems wrong to blurt it out now. Especially seeing as it’s useless information in less than an hour.”

  Fair enough. Devon couldn’t stop staring at the priceless treasure in Owen’s palm. In the last five years, she’d seen just one Phial of Deification. A legendary Houndmaster had popped it beneath the nostril of a doubly-legendary Hellhound. And that had been such a rare tactic that the entry she added to the Lore had been flagged as dubious. Still, people had whispered that more Phials existed. Somewhere in the vast realm of Avatharn, someone was collecting them.

  Seemed that person had been Owen…

  “Always figured you were holding out,” said Jeremy, a slight figure half-in and half-out of phase with the current plane of existence.

  Beside him, Hailey coughed and nodded. The feathers of her tunic rustled and released an unpleasantly bird-scented gust of air. It never seemed to bother her that she smelled like a budget pet store.

  “Hey!” Owen protested. “It’s just hard to decide when to use something like this, you know? No fight ever seems worthy.”

  He ran a finger over the Phials. Liquid swirled within the little glass tubes, glowing faintly with celestial light. Devon pried her eyes away. She didn’t want to seem greedy.

  “Question is, who uses them?” she asked. “I assume you’ll keep one for yourself.”

  Owen glanced toward the low passage at the far side of the chamber. The torchlight glistened off the walls but penetrated just a few paces into the tunnel. A layer of water covered the corridor’s floor. Inky. Hiding all kinds of surprises, no doubt.

  “Here’s the thing,” Owen said, looking around the group. “I’m not critical to this fight. The Phials need to go to the people who matter. We have to get Devon into position and keep her alive—that’s the whole point. We should go old-school. Keep the beast’s focus on Chen.” He glanced at a suit of mithril armor with a human somewhere in its depths. “And we can’t let Jeremy go down because we need his heals.”

  Jeremy shook his head, or at least it looked that way. Hard to tell when someone was drifting out of phase. “If I have to crack a Deification Phial, we are so deep in the shit we might as well undress and roll in the acid pools.”

  “Guess that’s a fair point.” Owen shrugged, shifty eyes glinting. “You guys fight it out then. I don’t want one. Consider them a farewell gift—”

  Devon glared. “No goodbyes!”

  He sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Devon, you have to take one. The rest of you guys can roll for them.”

  Chen shook his head, his plate helm sliding easily upon the gorget that protected his neck. His voice echoed from the depths of his armor. “I’m not really interested in experimenting after last week…”

  Jeremy snorted. “The ale, you mean? You should be proud, man. First person ever to hurl after drinking in-game grog. It’s not even real.”

  “The crap still makes you feel dizzy,” Hailey chided. “Chen’s too young to have your vast experience with intoxication.”

  Jeremy smirked. “I assume you’re sitting out from the roll, right Hailey? Catholic if I remember. Seeking deification sounds pretty sacrilegious.”

  The druid scoffed. “And two days of chanting in a pagan tongue to get my Raven Form wasn’t? Also, at least I have a faith, numbnuts.”

  Jeremy laughed, a strange warbling sound as his phase-shift wavered.

  Devon rolled her eyes. Enough of this. “Owen, you better just run the randomizer. Otherwise they’ll fight about it for hours.”

  Owen nodded, and his eyes went distant for a moment. “One to Hailey, one to Maya.”

  Hailey accepted hers with a grin, while the other woman, a halfling scarcely taller than Devon’s rib cage jerked in surprise before stepping forward.

  “Deification for the summoner. Seems a bit meta…”

  “Yeah, don’t your demons already consider you a creator goddess?” Chen asked.
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  “I prefer the term Mistress,” Maya said with a sly grin. “But yes, if you want to get technical, they do.”

  “Chen always wants to get technical,” Jeremy said. “The Lore this, the Lore that.”

  “Speaking of…” Chen said without a hint of self-consciousness. “The Lore says that a summoner is the least useful of all the specialties in this fight.”

  Maya’s hand froze at the opening to her reagent pouch. She’d been ready to deposit the Phial inside it with her precious spell components. “I don’t need to keep—”

  Devon snorted, slicing off Maya’s objection. “That might be true, Chen, but how far as the Lore gotten parties so far? The longest anyone has lasted is about three nanoseconds. In Thevizh’s case, the Lore is just guesses and interpretations of arcane fragments.”

  “Good point,” Chen said.

  A faint splashing sound came from the exit passage, followed by an air current that smelled of mildew. No, worse. It smelled like somebody had left a dead fish to rot in a shower drain. Devon grimaced.

  “This is crazy. You know that, right? Do any of you guys think we actually have a chance?”

  “Not a prayer,” Jeremy said.

  “We won’t even leave bodies to mark our resting spots,” Owen added.

  Nervous laughs filled the chamber, but after a moment, they were replaced by genuine grins.

  “We are so hosed,” Jeremy said.

  “Especially now that you guys wasted a mythical Phial of Deification on your summoner,” Maya said.

  Devon laughed. “Let’s do this. Hailey, hit us with Seal Skin.”

  As Hailey spoke the incantation, colors rippled across her flesh. Her face shifted, taking on the aspect of a drowned thing, all pale and rubbery. Her eyes filmed over. Devon turned aside—she’d always hated the visual effects of the druid’s aquatic spells. She didn’t look back until the final syllable left Hailey’s mouth and her features snapped back to normal.

  Devon sighed as she felt the spell land. Seal Skin repelled water like a mofo. She hadn’t realized how slimy the inside of her armor had gotten until the spell sucked the humidity away. Water droplets beaded on her skin and leather, sliding down to pool on the floor. No longer clammy, she felt downright comfortable. More than that, she felt impervious. With an archdruid like Hailey casting the protection spell, most water-based magic would splash right off her. It was good to have competent friends.

  “Well, once more into the breach or something?” Owen asked, rolling his shoulders.

  Devon nodded. “Once more into the breach.”

  ***

  Owen had crept off ahead. With the ankle-deep water in the passage, the rest of them had no chance of a stealthy entrance into the final chamber. Chen raised a hand for them to halt around twenty paces from the mouth of the tunnel. Sickly green light from the end of the passage leaked around his obnoxiously large silhouette.

  The warrior took a deep breath, armor plates squeaking. With a roar and a clatter, he broke into a run.

  Devon followed, trying to ignore how pathetic Chen’s yell had sounded. Down here, he couldn't even use his Power of Voice because of the echoes. It was just one of many issues with Thevizh’s Lair that made this attack so downright stupid. Bursting into the open air of the serpent queen’s chamber, Devon deftly sidestepped a few spikes of submerged rock, probably poison-coated. She gritted her teeth and dropped her hands to the pair of daggers sheathed at her hips. The rune-scribed hilts felt awkward beneath her palms. She should be entering this battle with her ebony bow and a quiver full of master-quality arrows, their arrowheads forged by the master smith of Dakonir. It was her own stupid fault for opening the chest where the daggers had hidden all these years. Bound to her soul by inseverable magical ties, the weapons burned anyone else who touched them.

  Which was why it had to be her who dealt the key blow.

  She retreated to put her back against the slick wall while she got her bearings. The cavern seemed small to hold a supposedly unkillable beast. Low rock paths divided pools of slowly churning water from others of bubbling acid. Massive stalactites hung from the high ceiling while scattered pillars of stone—some uncomfortably humanoid-shaped—rose like dead trees from in a swamp.

  Chen, living up to his record for the most-regrown-limbs-in-the-realm barreled across a slippery sidewalk of stone to the center of the cave. Pools of acid burped and steamed on either side of him. A wider lake of ink-black seawater held the bog queen.

  And she was taking her time rising from the depths.

  Devon searched the chamber for Owen, hoping the rogue had seen something before they arrived. The Lore claimed that would-be victors must hit fast and hit hard because the beast’s only weakness was her arrogance. She often delayed her more powerful attacks, leaving two or three minutes to land blows before everyone in the chamber was wiped out by an acid fog or turned to stone and made a permanent part of the scenery.

  True, monstrosities like Thevizh were unpredictable. But the enemies usually showed up for battle. Where in the hell was this legendary queen of the bog serpents?

  Hailey had stayed near the entrance to the cavern. Devon met the archdruid’s eyes, but the other woman just shrugged. Maya edged forward onto a large platform of rock halfway into the cavern and hesitantly began going through the motions of a summoning.

  That was when the screeching started inside Devon’s skull. She staggered, her breath stolen. In front of the central pool, Chen fell to a knee, free hand clutching his head. The point of his greatsword screeched as it skidded across stone. To Devon's right, their undetectable rogue stumbled from the shadows like a clumsy oaf. A whine escaped Devon's clenched teeth as her vision blurred.

  The game conveyed small amounts of pain, but combined with the godawful screeching, it was nearly unbearable. Her stomach clenched, and she lost her balance, head cracking against the wall behind her.

  The chamber began to shake. Water and acid sloshed in pools as the walls shuddered and booms filled the air, rattling Devon’s teeth. In the center of the chamber, acid sloshed over the edge of a pool and hissed when it splashed against Chen's armor. The toxic substance ate through mithril like flame through paper.

  /How. Dare. You. /

  The voice pierced Devon's skull, sounding like an ancient tongue.

  Like an erupting geyser, the beast corkscrewed from the central pool, flinging a spray of water. The attack pummeled the party, the liquid slamming into Devon like a sledgehammer. The shock vibrated her bones. She moaned. Without the Seal Skin spell, her guts would've been liquefied.

  In the distant recesses of her mind, she perceived status alerts and other information. The game interface had been piped into her senses for so long it had become second nature. A true sixth sense. And that deep awareness told her she was screwed.

  From the platform of rock where little Maya stood defiant in the face of Thevizh, squelching and sucking sounds preceded a discordant shriek as reality bent and a demon stepped forth. The thing was all claws and smoke, glowing eyes and shifting shape.

  Moments later, a cool tendril struck Devon's chest and quickly spread calm through her body. She sagged in relief as Jeremy's shield forced away the screeching and the pain.

  “Get on with it, people!” the planar priest yelled from somewhere across the cavern.

  Devon swallowed. Right. Just another monster to slay.

  Chen, his armor now looking like Swiss cheese, raised his head as Jeremy's spell connected and shielded him against the beast’s attack. Clenching his greatsword in a single massive gauntlet, he climbed to his feet and fell into a defensive stance.

  Thevizh's stench reached Devon's nose. The bog queen smelled like a swamp stirred up by a hurricane. The massive serpent was translucent, light penetrating the olive and black flesh. Hints of bones showed inside.

  Devon shook her head. According to legends, a master crafter could use a rib from the great serpent to create the Sword
of Ages. Not that it mattered anymore. This wasn’t about the loot. It was about achieving the impossible.

  Devon yelled and stood up straight, activating her master-level Lithe spell.

  Her body became feather light. Her feet scarcely touched the ground, dancing through water and across stone as if she were held up by strings. Even better, she was as bendy as those girls who spent forty hours a week in a yoga studio. She sprang to the top of a stone pillar and balanced on a point no bigger than the first knuckle of her thumb.

  Devon went preternaturally still and assessed the situation. The serpent queen towered above Chen even with half her bulk still submerged in the pool. Like a cobra in thrall to a snake charmer, her body undulated as she stared at the party's warrior.

  Thevizh opened her giant maw. A glow bloomed in her throat, backlighting pulsing black veins. A gush of water, brown and laden with filth, sprayed over Chen. The warrior dropped to a knee and raised his forearm, catching the spray and deflecting it in a wide cone around him. Devon glanced at Hailey. The druid looked positively smug at the success of her Seal Skin.

  Following the ineffective attack, the serpent stiffened and turned a single eye to the warrior. Her pupil was a vertical black slit in an orb of marbled red and green. She bent her body to the side as if cocking her head, and—unfortunately—noticed Devon perched upon the stone spire.

  Shit.

  Chen yelled, hoping to regain the monster’s attention. But without his Power of Voice, the shout had no effect. The serpent’s black tongue flicked out, tasting the air near Devon.

  Never short on courage, Chen raised his sword and sprinted forward, slamming it against the beast’s impenetrable scales. Across the cavern, a globe of shimmering air formed then streaked over the battle to envelop Devon. Devon’s stomach turned over as she phase-shifted toward the shadow plane. Her contact with the physical plane faded, and her feet slipped off the pillar, no longer able to keep purchase on the water-smooth stone. She fell, hard, the tip of the spike punching her in the gut before she splashed into the water below. Ugh. Light leather armor was a great combination with a ranger’s line of Lithe spells. But she was supposed to dodge attacks, not fall on the weapon.