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

  “What happened?” she asked.

  With a groan, Torald clambered to his feet, then stooped and grabbed his helm. He stuffed the armor piece into his Manpurse of Holding, and his eyes went distant for a moment. Devon guessed he was making a quick check through his inventory to see which item the game’s death penalty had randomly stripped from his possession and left at the site of his demise.

  “Torald?” she prompted.

  Torald shook his head and blinked. He pressed the tips of his armored fingers to his forehead. “We didn’t have any warning. I was polishing my armor and waiting for the parade when the first pillar of hellfire erupted so close. Maybe thirty feet away.”

  “Hellfire?” Hailey asked.

  Torald blinked again. “It was surreal. Like it wasn’t happening. At least that’s what I thought before the heatwave knocked me flat. Have you ever smelled molten earth? The ground turned to liquid, white-hot glass.”

  Devon glanced from Hailey to Owen and back. Both her guildmates shrugged. Devon stepped forward and grabbed the big paladin by his soot-stained shoulder plates. “You’re in shock, Torald. But we need answers. Who was it? Demons?” She glanced again at Owen, whose barrier had been holding back the horde for the past few days.

  The man closed his eyes. “The Illumin curtain is undisturbed.”

  “Did it extend underground?” Hailey asked, putting a voice to Devon’s internal frustration that she hadn’t taken more action to figure out the source of the earthquakes. Given the intensity of the tremors that had hit just before the smoke appeared, Devon was now sure they were related.

  Owen shrugged, a troubled expression crossing his face. “I guess I don’t know.”

  “I couldn’t get a proper con on him,” Torald said, referring to the Combat Assessment skill in old-school gamer vernacular. Con was short for Consider, which had once been the common name for a similar skill. Coming from anyone but Torald, the usage wouldn’t even snag Devon’s attention. Because the paladin so rarely broke character, the word sounded almost foreign.

  “A con on who?” she said.

  “It said Archdemon Gaviroth. No other information. Not even a level or a skull and crossbones.”

  “Great,” Hailey said.

  “Do you recognize that name, Owen?” Devon asked, hoping the man’s experience in the demonic plane would be some help here. But even as Owen slowly shook his head, the ghost of a memory scratched at the back of Devon’s mind. Owen wasn’t the only one who’d spent time with his mind trapped in the hell plane. In the early months of Relic Online, the demonic AI, Zaa, had used Devon’s unconscious mind while she slept, co-opting her mental processing to control and develop a demon war priestess, Ezraxis.

  Devon might not recognize the name, but she sensed that Ezraxis did. The emotion the name conjured was something like fearful reverence.

  She shivered.

  “There were maybe half a dozen lower-level mobs with the archdemon.”

  Torald’s eyes turned to the shrine as more figures began to materialize. He shook his head in dismay.

  “So to sum up,” Hailey said, “you guys got hit by a hellfire-wielding archdemon and maybe six of his lackeys.”

  Torald nodded somewhat dumbly. Devon had never seen him like this. Maybe he’d taken his role-playing a step too far and now couldn’t handle a confrontation with his creator goddess’s nemesis.

  Or maybe he’d already grasped something that Devon’s mind was working around towards. With a spell that could melt stone and a challenge rating too high for whatever scale Combat Assessment used, what the hell good were Stonehaven’s defenses? It sounded like the only saving grace they might have was the repelling effect from the Shrine to Veia. At the very least, this archdemon would need to hammer at Veia’s protections for a little while before smashing Stonehaven flat.

  “Infernal Tyrants and Demonic Ravagers they were called,” Torald said. “The lackeys, I mean.”

  Devon shook her head. Details didn’t matter. Dragging the paladin by the elbow and motioning for the others to follow, she dashed toward the front of the settlement.

  The movement seemed to jar some sense back into Torald’s skull, and by the time the small group had reached the stairs leading up to the palisade’s wall-walk, his eyes seemed brighter. He shook his head and muttered something under his breath. Devon caught the words divine light and benevolent creator and felt mild relief that her friend was at least back to his old self. The stairs shuddered under their feet as the group sprinted up the steps to join Jarleck at his post.

  For a moment, Devon couldn’t speak. She was glad that the player camp was a couple of miles away, too far to make out details, because the truth had to be horrific. Burned-out husks of structures were just barely visible on the edge of the pool of what looked like slowly cooling lava. Heat shimmered the air, and flames ate at the grass surrounding the former camp. Each puff of wind tore scraps of cinders from the blazes, tossing them deeper into the savanna.

  At the forward edge of the camp, between the molten earth and Stonehaven, a massive figure cut a dark and wavering silhouette from the glow of the fire. Before it, rising no more than thigh-height on the monster, figures cavorted. But the archdemon wasn’t advancing. Not yet.

  For at least thirty seconds, no one spoke. There wasn’t much to say.

  “Maybe our defenses are better than we think,” Dorden finally said. “Maybe the shrine can keep them back now that Ishildar is awake.”

  Devon wanted to believe that, but she couldn’t quite have faith.

  “You with us enough now to answer some questions?” Hailey asked Torald.

  Torald shrugged, then nodded. “I serve Veia and Devon for as long as I walk this realm. Any answers I can produce are yours.”

  Hailey hesitated a moment, seeming unsure how to respond to flagrant role-playing in this situation. “You said they surprised you. Didn’t the camp set a watch?”

  A faint line formed between Torald’s eyebrows as he considered the question. “Now that you mention it, yes. I don’t see how that beast could have approached without being seen.”

  “You didn’t even hear anything? Nothing seemed out of the ordinary?”

  He shook his head, but then seem to reconsider the answer. “During the last couple of quakes, I thought I heard howls rising from the earth. I was sure it was my imagination.”

  Owen cursed under his breath. “The creases in the pattern make sense now. The opposing Esh faction. I thought some might have escaped, but I assumed they could do no harm.” His eyes went distant, and a parade of expressions crossed his face. “And now I wonder…”

  Devon didn’t have a chance to ask what he wondered because as the man trailed off, a mighty earthquake shook the settlement. The wall shuddered, foundation stones grating against one another. She flung her hands out to grab the railing and still struggled to keep her balance.

  With a roar, a massive pit opened in the savanna ahead, pulling down a wide section of cobblestone road that connected Stonehaven and the player camp. Shrieking and howling, demons began to pour from the crater.

  Her breath locked in her chest, Devon watched in horror as similar pits opened all across the savanna. Between them, sunken trenches formed as subterranean tunnels collapsed. Within two or three minutes, the area writhed with demon flesh.

  Chapter Nine

  HAILEY AND OWEN were talking in clipped tones, Hailey asking why he couldn’t just cast an Illumin barrier around Stonehaven, Owen answering that it couldn’t hold against this, not for long, and speculating that the demons had left his other barrier alone because they wanted the element of surprise.

  Devon listened, but only intently enough to catch the gist. The roar in her head consumed the rest of her attention, the despairing thoughts tumbling one over the other.

  There had to be hundreds…no, thousands of demons out there. Stonehaven and everyone in it were totally and completely hosed. There just wasn’t
a freaking chance. The situation was so bad that she wasn’t sure whether to cry or laugh or throw herself off the wall. So instead, she grabbed the Starlight Rod from her Sparklebomb Backpack. Focusing on a random demon, some new variety with mottled, skin-colored wings, she held the rod up and activated its special ability. A bolt of pure-white light lanced from the heavens and speared the demon through the chest, leaving a smoking hole. The monster toppled.

  You receive 5500 experience.

  As she let her arm fall to her side—the rod had a cooldown of ten minutes and was useless until that was over—Devon stared despondently over the field. Her eyes unfocused as self-pity washed over her in full force. When a glow appeared before her, she assumed it was Hailey or Owen performing some equally futile casting.

  The glow booped her nose.

  “I abandoned my game of Lord of the Rings Risk for this? Really? You’re now officially the Keeper of Ishildar, and you’re standing here like a brainless toddler while Zaa’s army prepares to obliterate all life in this part of the mortal plane? I am seriously disappointed in you. Actually, that doesn’t begin to express the depth of emotion I’m working with here. I’m tragically frustrated. Inconsolably demoralized. Righteously—”

  “Did you have something useful to say, Bob?” Devon said, batting at the wisp as it danced in front of her eyes. “Or did you just come to gloat about how I wasn’t worthy of restoring Ishildar? Because if so, let me help you out. Yup. You called it. We lost. Now if you wouldn’t mind shutting your trap, I’m guessing I have about five more minutes to enjoying the settlement I’ve built from nothing. Five minutes and ten seconds if we try to fight back.”

  “For once, I don’t disagree,” the wisp said.

  “Good. Then why don’t you get back to defending Middle-earth and leave me to wallow in my misery.”

  “Uh…because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment? You do remember that Ishildar was going to be critical in this war, right?”

  Devon balled her fists and pressed them against the top of the waist-high parapet. “And I wasn’t quick enough or smart enough to figure out how to use its resources. I get it.”

  “Hey Dev,” Hailey said. The woman was still standing beside Devon. Out of the corner of her eye, Devon saw her friend make an absent motion with her fingers. Just beyond the cleared area outside Stonehaven’s curtain wall, an imp fell under Hailey’s Charm spell and shrieked while it tore into one of its comrades. Two more down. Just a few thousand to go.

  An imp fluttered over what seemed to be the boundary where the Shrine to Veia’s ability to weaken the demons cut a line in front of the settlement. It screeched as its wing beats slowed, gravity dragging it toward the earth.

  Settlement has come under attack by an invading force.

  Stonehaven’s ownership is now: Contested 0.5%.

  This couldn’t be happening, but it was. Devon growled and pummeled the falling imp with a Flamestrike, ending its pathetic life. But another demon, a low-level thrall, edged a toe over the boundary, shrieking in fury at the debuff but still advancing.

  “Yeah?” Devon said, turning a shoulder toward Bob in what a sane being would recognize as a dismissal.

  “Never mind,” Hailey said. “I was noticing that none of the tunnels passed under Stonehaven. At least, none of the tunnels that collapsed did—there aren’t any trenches within twenty feet of the walls. I was going to say that they weren’t advancing out of the grass.”

  “Owen, can you reinforce the shrine’s barrier?” Devon asked. “Use your Illumin to create a secondary wall? Maybe we can hold them off.”

  “And what?” Hailey asked. “Wait for them to starve us out?”

  An arrow streaked from the battlements and impaled the advancing thrall through the eye. It fell, half in and half out of what seemed to be Stonehaven’s region of control. A status bar had popped up in Devon’s interface indicating the contested status. Across the line, low-level demons kept shoving at the barrier. Crossing it, dying, but slowly pushing back the line of control.

  “Whoa now,” Bob said. “Getting from ‘five minutes’ to ‘long enough to starve’ is kind of a leap, don’t you think?”

  Devon turned a glare on the wisp. “Seriously, I know you’re some freaky fragment of a self-creating AI hive mind, but you really could be a little more sensitive here.”

  “I’m just saying, if you stand around waiting for Stonehaven to burn, two things will happen. One, Stonehaven will burn. But on the bright side, two, you’ll be dead so you won’t have to witness it.”

  “Technically, we’ll probably be caught in a death-respawn loop back at the shrine once they get control.”

  Devon spun to see Chen, a few steps down the stairs. She glared at him for stating the obvious.

  “I don’t know whether it’s better to be stuck in a spawn loop or just plain dead,” she said, thinking of all the basic NPCs who depended on her for their lives. She turned again to the battlefield, arrows now peppering the advancing demons non-stop. For every hellhound or imp or thrall that fell, another just climbed over the corpse and advanced on the walls. And behind the ranks and ranks of cannon fodder, the darkness-cloaked form of Archdemon Gaviroth advanced, his lackeys forming a crescent before him.

  Near the center of the fortifications, the barrier appeared to buckle as squealing demons pushed forward in a slavering crowd. Spells from half a dozen casters slammed down on the group, momentarily popping the line back into place, but within a few seconds, it had buckled all over again. Devon dropped a Wall of Ice in the path of the advance, the frozen barrier spanning the cobblestone road that led up to Stonehaven’s drawbridge.

  A tongue of flame licked out from a Demon Conjurer’s raised hand, reducing the ice to a puddle.

  The advance pressed onwards until an imp was shoved forward by its companions to die, arrow-quilled, on the drawbridge.

  Stonehaven’s fortifications have come under attack.

  Structure is contested: Drawbridge - 10%

  Stonehaven’s ownership is now: Contested 2%

  Devon shook her head as heavy lances from the ballistae speared the horde, some flying straight through one demon and into another. Ichor sprayed, but still, the demons came.

  Her makeshift army didn’t stand a chance against this.

  “We’ve already lost,” she said, voice flat but certain. Penned into a settlement with no escape, an unbeatable force bearing down. Unless…

  “You have the spyglass?” she asked, whirling on Jarleck. The man stood looking over the parapet with the same despondent expression that had likely been on her face just a couple minutes ago.

  He slowly turned his attention to her, face slack with shock and despair, as he pulled the device from a holster on his belt. It was one of Stonehaven’s most prized communal items, purchased from a sailor refugee who had come from a village near an inland sea north of Eltera City. The brass of the lens housing was cool against her palm.

  Devon raised the glass to her eye and peered toward Ishildar. Over the heads of the horde and through the cloud of imps fluttering above it, she spotted untouched grassland, a strip maybe fifty or a hundred yards wide. One of her early quests, which she had only recently finished, had been to restore Ishildar’s Veian Temple. When she’d completed the quest, everyone in the area had received the buff that increased their combat stats versus demons. There’d been no mention of a shielding effect, and Shavari hadn’t yet reported on her assigned investigations. But due to that empty strip, Devon had to assume it existed. More, she assumed the shielding was much stronger than that offered by the small Shrine to Veia. Strong enough to provide sanctuary for a time.

  She dropped the spyglass from her eye and stared at the road that joined Stonehaven to the ancient city. Part earthen wagon track and part cobblestone pavement, it was now entirely thronged with demons. She shook her head slowly. Even with bikes or windsteeds and with every fighter riding out as a shield to try to defend the non-
combatants, there was no way she could get the population across the miles of the savanna. Most likely, even the best fighters would fail to run that gauntlet with no one to defend but themselves. But provided the defenses could hold for a little while longer, there was still a chance to get her followers to safety.

  Bob hung expectantly at the edge of her vision, vibrating with what appeared to be a tremendous effort to keep quiet.

  Devon glanced back toward the shrine, taking an indulgent moment or two to let her gaze linger on the streets and buildings and life that filled Stonehaven. She’d built this place plank by plank, stone by stone, decision by decision.

  Behind her, out on the savanna, a howl went up from the demon horde. Thousands of voices shrieked and wailed, and above it all, she heard a rasping, two-toned voice that some deep part of her recognized as Archdemon Gaviroth.

  “Forward, worms!”

  Clenching her fist around the Starlight Rod, Devon sprang for the stairs. She whirled to face the defenders, focusing on Owen. “Lay whatever barriers you can. Make them fight for every inch of ground.” When her guildmate nodded, she turned to Jarleck. “Shoot anything that comes within range, but as soon as you see my signal, I want you to pull everyone off the wall. Fall back to the rear of the settlement, and herd any stray citizens who are lingering too long. We’ll gather at the shrine.”

  Bob executed a loop the loop but made no other comment. Hailey followed its glow with her eyes before turning back to Devon. “I’m guessing you have a plan?”

  Devon nodded. “Fetch Hezbek, and help her bring every mana potion in our stock.” To Torald, she said, “Tell the respawning players to spread the word through the settlement. Villagers should grab whatever they can: food, clothing, weapons. But only what they can carry. We have to be quick.”

  ***