Throne of the Ancients: A LitRPG Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 6) Read online

  “Okay. Response acknowledged. I understand that you may die, and therefore, I am flagging this issue as potentially life-threatening. A manager will review the request during business hours. Thank you for contacting Juniper Terrace. Apartments, and so much more. This call has now reached the maximum allowable recording length. Goodbye.”

  Devon’s phone screen went black, the connection cut. She stared at it for another few seconds, kind of dumbfounded. At least this so-called manager would be forced to listen to the recording in the morning. Er…wait. She focused on the clock in the corner of her vision, commanding her implants to pull up the calendar.

  Ugh. Of course, there was the whole weekend thing complicating the business hours statement. Since it was Friday night, that meant she had two full days to deal with her stupid window being open to the world. Any nosy jerk could walk by and laugh at her attempts at cooking, or weirder, stare at her while she lay on the couch, unmoving while she spent hours immersed in Relic Online.

  Uncool.

  For about the thousandth time in the last week, she contemplated moving. She could afford it now—her bank branch had been hassling her over messenger about doing something more with her money than letting it collect in her checking account. But opening a savings account or a money market thing or whatever they were blabbing about would require her to physically go into the branch and talk to someone. Security reasons, they claimed. Which made her wonder if her bank got its technology from the same place as Juniper Terraces.

  Anyway, moving sucked. After getting kicked out of her mom’s house—which at the time had been a monthly rental of a single room in a decaying motel—she’d been forced for years to tumble from trailer to apartment to employee dormitory depending on where the rent was cheapest. So even if her current place was crappy and apparently prone to rat infestations, it was nice to be able to stay put.

  Plus, moving would mean taking more time away from the game. Time she didn’t have right now.

  After staring at the broken blind for a few seconds, she shuffled into her bedroom and dug through the laundry basket. A bit of rooting netted her a threadbare robe and a smock-tunic thing she liked to wear when feeling bloated after eating too much bread. She toted them back to the kitchen, pulled a chair in front of the window, and managed to wedge the hems of the clothing items into the crack behind the blind housing, creating a makeshift curtain. As she hopped down to inspect her work, a message pinged her interface.

  Her heart sped up a little when she saw it was from Emerson. Of course, she knew it was dumb to get excited. They hadn’t even been on a date yet, unless you counted hanging out in their digital bodies watching drunken dwarves run through the edges of a bonfire. One of the Stoneshoulder fighters had accidentally caught a spark in his beard and was now in mourning over the lost volume where it had burned.

  Anyway, it had been so long since her last date…when was it? Just after she’d passed the GED and found a job cleaning up fur at a pet groomer’s? She remembered showing up for the blind internet date at an ice cream shop smelling like dog shampoo. But beyond that, she couldn’t recall much about how the date had gone. Not well, she gathered. Like her other scattered attempts at romance, it hadn’t worked out. There were plenty of reasons, usually involving Devon freaking out because the whole process required a bunch of small talk, which always baffled her. That and she couldn’t help thinking of the train of asshole men who had passed through her mom’s life.

  Devon’s in-person conversations with Emerson had been different. For starters, she hadn’t had to come up with random stuff to talk about, hoping it sounded interesting, but knowing it was just filler. And the whole pro-gamer thing wasn’t weird with him. Seemed that a lot of the time, people said they thought her job was cool, but when they realized she spent most of her time either in a VR pod or lying around unaware and probably drooling, they got a little weirded out. When she was feeling self-confident, she thought they might be concerned that a real-life relationship in the mundane world wouldn’t compare to the excitement of virtual reality. When her self-esteem was in the gutter, she imagined that they viewed her like a slovenly couch potato.

  Either way, her gaming wasn’t a problem for Emerson. And if a relationship ever happened, they could hang out in both real life and Relic Online.

  Great, except he was also her boss. Devon really didn’t like the way the power dynamics stacked up there. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would fire her if they got involved and it didn’t work out. But the whole “not having to worry about affording food” thing had been pretty nice for the last few months. She didn’t like the idea of risking that.

  Hey, got time to talk? the message read.

  “Yeah, sure. I was just going to microwave something to eat,” she subvocalized to send the response.

  So I’ve got these unspent attribute points…where should I put the points, you think?

  She breathed a sigh of relief at the same time she felt a little twinge of disappointment. She’d been kind of hoping he would ask about meeting up in real life—no matter what happened, she wasn’t going to have a relationship that only went on between their avatars. But she also wasn’t sure how she’d answer the request. Geeking out about stats was a way easier conversation to have.

  Spending points and making character decisions was Devon’s bane when it came to her own avatar. She was too allergic to forums and chat channels to really get into the metagame and plan her progression ahead of time—not that other players could help much with her character since she had unique classes and abilities—and character choices just felt so permanent. Basically she was afraid of commitment and screwing up.

  But when it came to someone else’s character progression, she had no problem rendering an opinion. Shuffling to the fridge, she grabbed a beer, cracked it, and dropped into a seat at the kitchen table.

  “Shoot me over your character details,” she said. “Let’s get your toon ready to kick ass.”

  Chapter Four

  FREED FROM THE jungle, Ishildar could almost be a different city. Sure, many—okay, most—of the buildings were still in ruin, gap-toothed arches hanging over leaf-strewn paving stones, courtyard fountains filled with dust. Heaps of rubble covered floors that had once been tiled with beautiful mosaics. Yet despite the centuries of decay, the city still held a stately grandeur. Before, it had been choked, suffocating. Now Ishildar was proud and ready to rise again.

  Devon leaned her ironwood bike against a pillar near the edge of the savanna and yawned as she took a deep breath of the crisp morning air. She could ride all the way to the council meeting, but she preferred taking her time and letting the city wrap around her. Awakened from the curse, the ancient metropolis seemed to shine with an energy she couldn’t quite define. A flow of…something. She’d known all along that there was power and potential here—for better or for worse, the game had totally cast her as the hero protagonist, the leader in the fight against Zaa. She was meant to do more than simply hold back the demon horde for a time, and the city’s vast sprawl somehow held the key to her chance at victory.

  But she had yet to figure out how to use it.

  In the days since Owen had established the barrier, she’d been attacking the problem on multiple fronts. It had been tempting to throw all her resources into exploring the city and searching for clues as to how they’d bring its power to bear. But since she didn’t know what they were looking for—and the game hadn’t forked over a quest or anything to help her—it seemed stupid to bet everything on finding some miracle weapon hidden in the ruins. So she’d been continuing to send scouts and messengers into the surrounding region, the historical territory that the city had ruled. Any potential allies were being called to send fighters and resources. Jarleck continued to upgrade Stonehaven’s defenses, and she’d asked her head stonemason, Deld, to begin planning out restoration efforts in the part of the city surrounding the Veian Temple.

  Still, it felt to
o much like she was just biding time. During this morning’s meeting, she planned to discuss a more aggressive defense agenda with her followers. Actually, that was the wrong term. It was time to set an agenda focused on attacking.

  As she marched toward the building they’d chosen as the council hall, Devon laid fingers over the Greenscale Pendant and activated Ishildar’s Call. Moments later, the minds of the city’s Stone Guardians connected with hers. She felt their ponderous thoughts, their ancient joy at greeting their liege. The nearest guardian, a golem she’d named Knobble Knees on account of some stone protrusions on its legs, raised a massive head over a nearby roof. She felt the question emanating from deep in its stone mind. Did she need a ride?

  She smiled and shook her head. “Not going far.”

  As she probed the Guardians’ minds, she received a faint sense of the conditions in the city. Sometimes it was hard to accept the added awareness as real since she had no similar perceptions outside the game. Maybe it was like being a psychic or something—if that were really possible and the people who claimed to have ESP weren’t total liars. Regardless, she could perceive each golem as she might sense someone sitting back-to-back with her but not quite touching her body…if she could also tell something about the unseen person’s mood and what they were looking at.

  It was weird. But cool.

  In any case, aside from a small group of NPC followers she’d sent to explore the northwestern quadrant of the city—far enough from Stonehaven that they’d brought supplies to spend the night—the city was largely quiet. Too quiet, really, for an ancient site that had supposedly just been reawakened after centuries of slumber.

  There had to be something she was missing.

  The building they’d taken to calling the council hall was fronted with a long row of towering pillars forming a grand colonnade. When standing between the columns, Devon often imagined the ancient residents of Ishildar walking before her in pairs and groups as they enjoyed warm evenings. Now, sunlight slanted into a deserted open-air corridor. Wide archways led into the hall itself. Devon hurried across and stepped through an opening.

  Inside the echoing chamber, dozens of high windows admitted beams of light that fell on a polished stone floor. A forest of immense columns supported a soaring series of vaults in the ceiling. The air smelled faintly of dust and the birds’ nests wedged between stone ribs high above. Despite the windows, the hall was dim compared to the glare in the streets outside, and Devon stood blinking while she waited for her eyes to adjust. One hundred meters long and fifty deep, the hall could host an army.

  Right now, it hosted a heavy stone table, a few benches, and a motley crew of NPCs and players that were all that stood between a demon horde and the mortal realm.

  Devon took a deep breath and glanced at her skills window, focusing on the section with the most advanced values.

  Skills - Tier 3:

  Combat Assessment: 20

  Leadership: 25

  Up until now, she’d focused on inspiring loyalty by listening to her followers and attempting to balance their individual needs with those of the Stonehaven community. She’d been kind while trying to appear confident. In peacetime, that had worked well—Leadership was her highest-rated skill.

  But war had come to Stonehaven and Ishildar, and now it was time to do more than organize. It was time to command.

  She ran her eyes over her NPC followers and player friends, calculating how best to use them as she approached the gathering. Rather than take the seat they’d left open at the head of the table, she stood, knuckles planted on the stone tabletop.

  There were nearly two dozen humans and humanoids making up her council now, the number having grown from the small handful of leaders she’d chosen during Stonehaven’s founding. Her former guildmates had joined her inner circle. More NPCs had been promoted to advanced status, allowing them to assume leadership roles not just in combat but also as heads of trade professions and construction crews. Two long-limbed and milky-skinned Esh represented the Mistwalker race, the remnants of one of Ishildar’s ancient vassal societies. A sleek-feathered raven named Gustwing, representative of the coalition of awakened corvids, perched on the table beside Hazel, Stonehaven’s petite scout and Tamer-class NPC. The other awakened race that had recently arrived in the area, a herd of fleet-footed horses known as windsteeds, had no representative in the hall, but Hazel would represent their interests and carry Devon’s commands to the alpha stallion.

  After acknowledging everyone with a nod, she turned to the newest arrival at the table.

  “I’d heard you arrived yesterday,” she said to Perlda, leader of the felsen. “Thank you for making the journey.”

  Of the five societies that once paid fealty to Ishildar, only two remained—as far as she knew, anyway. The felsen—a blue-skinned, hardy, and diminutive race—hailed from the Argenthal Mountains to the east of Ishildar. Their leader was a stringy middle-aged woman with white tufts of hair sprouting at wild angles from her scalp. She carried a gnarled staff and frequently wore a scowl. It probably didn’t help that some of Devon’s other NPC followers had adopted Devon’s nickname for the mountain folk, calling them smurfs as often as they used the proper term.

  Rather than sit on the stone bench, which would put her nose around the level of the tabletop, Perlda knelt on a thick hide that had been folded a few times to make a cushion. Her staff lay on the table before her, but she kept fingers on it as if faintly suspicious that someone might try to snatch it away.

  “The felsen”—the woman glanced pointedly around the table as if daring someone to call her a smurf—“owe you a debt that will take a generation to repay. Even if that weren’t the case, we would honor the bonds our ancestors forged with Ishildar.”

  Devon tipped her head in gratitude. “I hope it won’t strain that bond for me to ask you to bring every fighter to the field. We need each of your archers and…darters.” Was that even the right term? Many felsen were ambush fighters, using blowguns to fire darts drugged with compounds that slowed enemy movements.

  “We are ready to defend our homeland.”

  Devon hesitated a moment. The next request was kind of a big ask given what she knew about the felsen’s attitude toward their racial powers. “And I need you to speak with your ancestors. We need their help as much as we need your living fighters.”

  Perlda’s face went stony. Long ago, the working of her people’s ancestor-magic might have been a pleasant task. Requests had been made with respect. But when their civilization had fallen after the double gut-punch of Ishildar’s loss and an advancing orc army, the shamans had forcibly bound their ancestors into service as poltergeists that had haunted the mountains for centuries. The ancestors weren’t too happy with their descendants these days.

  “The consequences could be unpredictable,” the blue-skinned woman said.

  “I prefer unpredictability to the certainty of a loss to Zaa’s forces.”

  “Keeper, I understand your thinking but—”

  Devon raised a hand to silence her. She ignored the impulse to buckle under Perlda’s scowl. “This is not an indefinite binding and it’s definitely not forced enslavement. This is a plea for help ensuring the continued survival of their descendants.”

  Perlda still looked skeptical as she ran her thick-knuckled fingers over the length of her walking staff. Some of Devon’s other followers shifted awkwardly in the silence.

  Devon stepped around the bench to get closer to the table, the stone edge pressing into her thighs. She wasn’t quite tall enough to really loom over the gathering, but she imagined the angle made her look a bit more imposing. “As you already mentioned, many of your ancestors swore an oath to Ishildar.”

  “But the ones that did have drifted ever further from us, lost in time. Every year they become less substantial…less like their mortal kin and more like a collection of emotions. I don’t think that a reminder of their bond to a vanished place will serve for
anything but to recall to them the sadness of the city’s fall.”

  “But it’s no longer an oath to a lost place. Ishildar is restored, and I am its Keeper. Anyone oath-bound to the city in any age is now oath-bound to me. Your ancestors are my vassals—and I don’t believe I need to remind you that the living felsen are sworn to me as well.”

  Perlda lowered her eyes at the hard edge in Devon’s voice, her fingers now dancing back and forth across the staff.

  Shavari, Veia’s priestess and one of her chosen prophets, abruptly stood and planted her palms on the table. “Should oaths extend beyond death? Is it not enough to navigate trials of life? Death should bring rest and communion with Veia.”

  Devon shot her a hard glare. Shavari flinched as if struck; the woman clearly wasn’t used to being questioned.

  “Now is not the moment for a discussion of theology,” Devon said. “And in case it wasn’t clear, while I appreciate the wisdom and perspectives of everyone gathered here, the time for debate has passed. Bring me suggestions outside this hall if you feel the need.”

  Shavari’s mouth worked, producing silent words, and after a moment she dropped to a seat.

  You have lost reputation with Shavari: -10 Reputation.

  Devon rolled with the blow, keeping her face even as she dispelled the popup. Game mechanics mirrored real life in many ways. A player had to make trade-offs, sacrificing certain possibilities to achieve other outcomes. Shavari had brought Devon the fourth relic of Ishildar, the Ironweight Key. Without it, Devon wouldn’t have been able to take command of Ishildar. But the priestess was still just one woman. Despite her buffs and the occasional ability to see the future in visions sent from Veia, Devon couldn’t sacrifice her authority to remain in the woman’s high regard.

  And anyway, Devon didn’t need Shavari to understand the potential futures facing her settlement. Either they’d find a way to beat the demons, or Stonehaven, Ishildar, and the vast continent beyond would fall under demon control.