Throne of the Ancients: A LitRPG Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 6) Page 7

  A structure’s ownership is now neutral: Drawbridge - Time remaining: 1 day, 4 hours

  If the original owner does not restore the contested state, ownership will transfer to the captor when the timer expires. Captors may lower the delay by making improvements to the structure.

  Structure is contested: Moat - 30%

  Structure is contested: Outer gate - 5%

  Stonehaven’s ownership is now: Contested - 3%

  The citizens of Stonehaven streamed toward the shrine carrying their belongings in their arms. Despite the sunny day, it felt as if a storm hung over the region. The roars and howls of the demons were wind lashing the town, and the attacks against the walls—rocks thrown by cackling imps, gushing hellfire that washed against the Illumin barrier and rippled the air with unimaginable heat—were thunder and lighting. Smoke filled the sky over the savanna, black and choking.

  A storm of destruction. A demon apocalypse.

  Devon was barely holding herself together.

  Standing alongside one of the wider village paths, she waved the villagers on, urging them with words that came out too curt and clipped. Jaw aching from clenching down hard on her panic, she swallowed and kept glancing toward the palisade. Stonehaven’s soldiers still lined the battlements, but now there were a few holes in their ranks. The demons couldn’t physically pass the shrine’s and Owen’s defenses, not yet. But a few clever imps had discovered that Illumin did nothing to stop their hurled rocks or thrown lances.

  Few of the settlement’s fighters were advanced NPCs—she had only been able to promote twenty-five of her followers. If any of the advanced citizens died, she’d be able to resurrect them at a Veian shrine. But for the basic NPCs now missing from the soldiers’ ranks, death was final.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, scarcely able to handle the thought.

  Clenching her fists and straightening her shoulders, she peered again through the streets. Aside from a few stragglers trying to drag along too many possessions, the evacuation of the forward areas of the settlement was nearly complete.

  Laying her hand against the back of a woman she recognized as a shopkeeper, a seller of enchanting reagents, she pressed gently, urging the woman to hurry. Raising her other hand high, Devon cast Glowing Orb. When the blue-white light appeared in her palm, she tossed it up high then targeted it with her wind spell, Downdraft. The gust sent the orb flying over the rooftops, and when it reached the height of the wall-walk, she targeted it with Flamestrike. A column of fire appeared in the air over the city, harmless due to the precise targeting, but bright enough to capture the attention of the men and women on the wall. If not for the circumstances, she might have taken a congratulatory moment or two to pride herself on the improvised flare.

  Using Ventriloquism, Devon projected her voice to the area beside Jarleck. “Now. Retreat, and quickly. Carry the stragglers if you have to.”

  Smoke had begun to drift and billow over the wall, and it was growing harder to make out crisp details, but Devon thought she saw the man nod. Moments later, fighters began to file toward the staircases, firing arrows and bolts and ranged magic only when the procession slowed or stopped as those near the front of the line negotiated the stairs.

  From out on the fields beyond the walls came shrieks of triumph, the demon horde rejoicing in the defenders’ retreat.

  Devon told herself that the stinging in her eyes was from the smoke, and maybe that was partially true. Either way, she wiped away the water that threatened to spill over her lower eyelids and turned for the shrine, spine straight.

  Stonehaven was lost, but the demons wouldn’t have any more of its citizens. Not while Devon could still do something to save them.

  She dashed through the grass at the edge of the footpath, tossing words of encouragement as she sped past the procession of villagers. At the Shrine to Veia, Chen, Hailey, and Owen stood together. Hezbek sat on a low, rounded boulder rubbing her walking stick between her palms. The twirling motion of the staff had drilled a shallow hole in the earth before the stone.

  “Where’s Torald?” she asked. She hoped the paladin hadn’t snuck off to do something stupid.

  Structure is contested: Moat - 45%

  Structure is contested: Outer gate - 15%

  Structure is contested: Curtain wall - 2%

  Stonehaven’s ownership is now: Contested - 3.5%

  Chen pointed toward the farm plots and the warehouse that had recently been constructed near them. Torald and Bayle, one of Devon’s original NPC followers who was both a fighter-class citizen and one of the town’s farmers, stood in the wide double door that led to the darkened interior of the storage building. The woman appeared to be pouring the contents of some grain sacks into Torald’s Manpurse of Holding. Devon’s eyes widened. The idea was genius. She might have to stop making fun of his manpurse.

  When she spotted Tom, Bayle’s husband and the town’s most senior cook, standing nearby, she shrugged out of her Tiny Sparklebomb Backpack of Sub-par Holding and pressed the straps into his hand. The cook stared at her, a startled look on his perpetually sunburned face.

  She nodded toward the warehouse. “My bag can’t fit nearly as much as Torald’s, but you have five minutes to grab as many ingredients as you can stuff inside. Choose whatever supplies will stretch the furthest, not what will taste the best.”

  The man blinked and ran a hand over his balding skull. He appeared to have forgotten his sunhat in his hasty dash to the shrine—if this escape plan worked, she’d have to make sure to get one of the crafters to improvise another for him. The man seemed to turn into a lobster if exposed to moonlight. She didn’t want to know what would happen to him after an afternoon under the actual sun.

  She nodded encouragement. “That’s all. Get to it.”

  Jerking straight, he gave a little salute and ran off, bound for the storage shed near one of the town kitchens.

  Devon turned to Owen. “We’ll need time. Can you cast concentric shields around the shrine area? I want them to have to break through one at a time. And I’m hoping the shrine’s power strengthens the closer we get to it.”

  “Hey, Devon?” Hailey said. “We’d be more help if we knew what was going on.”

  Devon hesitated a moment. Had she not told them? As if in answer to her unspoken question, Greel snorted. She peered over Hailey’s shoulder and spotted the man herding a flock of chickens forward with a stick. The birds were his pride and joy, the only creatures that experienced the pleasant side of his personality. Well, them and the windsteed he’d persuaded to carry him around sometimes, a fact that irked her a little because no amount of sweet talking had convinced any of the horses to give her a chance.

  “Have you ever known our illustrious leader to be clear in her communications? Or even more uncommon, do you recall her asking for advice about a situation?” the lawyer snapped.

  “Dude, it’s really not the time,” Hailey said.

  The man raised an eyebrow. “I think it’s precisely the time. The decisions made in the next few minutes will likely determine the fate of everyone here. If I were ever to decide to hold my tongue out of fear of being called abrasive, now would certainly not be the most opportune moment.”

  Devon sighed and then blinked as she realized something. The last time she’d seen Greel, he’d been racing from the council hall in Ishildar to the edge of the city. Despite his twisted spine, the man was fast when he wanted to be. She assumed he’d been not far ahead of Hazel, and that the two of them must have reconsidered the suicide mission once they got a better look at the remains of the player camp. A retreat to Ishildar would have been the safest ploy, especially for a man who had repeatedly claimed that he only remained in Stonehaven out of self-interest.

  Or so he said. Devon had seen him put himself at risk for her and her followers enough times to know the truth.

  “Where’s Hazel? And if you have something to say, be quick. We don’t have time to listen to one
of your lectures.”

  He curled his lip, then circled his hand in the air. “I believe you were going to elucidate regarding your plan. And I haven’t seen Hazel since the council hall.”

  “Ill-loosa-what?” Hailey asked.

  Bob abruptly popped into view from somewhere in the vicinity of Devon’s feet. The wisp shimmered as if in pleasure. “Tell me you play Scrabble,” it said, swirling around Greel’s head. “My sibling-selves are sorely lacking in skill.”

  Devon glared at the wisp. “Elucidate is a snobby word for explain. And the plan is simple.” She nodded toward Hezbek. “We’re leaving.”

  Her friends’ eyes turned to the medicine woman. “I don’t get it,” Hailey said.

  “The word’s origin is sometime in the mid-16th century of the starborn realm, deriving from the Latin—”

  “Bob! Shut up!” Hailey and Devon said together.

  Hezbek planted her walking stick and pressed up off the boulder. Setting her feet, she then used the butt end of the stick to drag forward a sack of clinking potions. “I believe Devon plans to use me as what you starborn sometimes call a taxi.”

  Comprehension dawned on Hailey’s and Owen’s faces, but Greel looked completely mystified.

  “How many points is the X worth in Scrabble?” Chen asked. “Because I’m guessing by the look on the lawyer’s face that he’s never heard the word taxi before.”

  Bob rose about three inches in the air and seemed to notice Chen for the first time. The wisp slowly drifted closer to the teenager, whispering to itself.

  Devon batted at it, hoping the annoying ball would just dematerialize or something. “It’s starborn slang for someone who has a class ability that allows them to teleport other people. Hezbek can evacuate groups then come back alone to gather more passengers. I’ll help too, once I’m sure everyone is behind Owen’s barrier.”

  “All right. I’ll admit it seems like a reasonable plan given the circumstances.” Greel ran his eyes over the settlement as if abruptly coming to terms with its loss. He blinked a few times—was he banishing tears? Devon glanced away to give him privacy. “But where to?”

  With her group teleport, Hezbek would be able to take the citizens of Stonehaven anywhere in the world that she’d previously traveled, limited in range only by the scaling mana cost that increased with distance.

  But Devon wasn’t ready to give up entirely. Stonehaven was lost, but Ishildar wasn’t. And since Hezbek could only transport one group at a time, mana was a concern.

  “The Veian Temple,” Devon said. “It’s our best hope, the strongest protection we have. I can only teleport between bindstones, so I’ll lead my groups south from the edge of the Stone Forest.”

  “And the livestock?” Greel asked, nudging his chickens into a tighter circle with his stick. “Where do they fit in your little plan?”

  Devon stared down at the birds. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, but if it came to it, humans would take precedence over poultry. Fortunately, she didn’t have to tell that to the lawyer because Tom’s arrival with her obnoxious glittering backpack gave her an idea. Taking it from the cook’s hand, she bent down and started scooping chickens into the bag.

  Greel opened his mouth as if to protest, then clapped it shut.

  “Are we ready, then?” the medicine woman asked.

  “The sooner, the better.”

  Hezbek grunted as she hefted the bag of mana potions. Fishing through it, she pulled out a small pot, tossed it to Devon, then retrieved another and tossed that as well. Shuffling toward the shrine, she started tapping people on the shoulders and motioning them to follow. Once a small party had congregated within spell range, Hezbek closed her eyes while light flowed from her hands. Moments later, the group vanished in a flash.

  Stonehaven’s exodus had begun, and not a moment too soon, because as citizens shouted in surprise to see some of their number vanish so abruptly, shrill screams rose from the edges of the crowd.

  A young man in the apron of a leatherworker’s apprentice climbed on a stump and pointed, his eyes wide with fright.

  A demon had reached the top of the palisade.

  Chapter Ten

  Warning: Attacking this creature will cause your alignment to shift toward evil. Many residents of Aventalia’s settlements and cities can recognize evildoers by their auras. You may be refused entrance to these hubs, and in some cases, you may be killed on sight.

  Ashley snorted as she dispelled the pop-up. What was it with this game and its attempts to be her conscience? If the designers or the content-creating AI or whatever didn’t want her grinding XP on a bunch of giggling Glacial Fairies, why make them so easy to kill? And anyway, it didn’t matter if she was flagged kill-on-sight by the major city factions. Either she’d wait to visit those places until she was high enough level to fight off the guards, or she simply wouldn’t bother. Yeah, maybe it meant missing out on vendor access—if she cared about collecting and selling loot in an economy that was designed as a constant cash sink to keep players on the grinding treadmill. But for someone smart enough to see through this artificial alignment crap, it was way easier to steal whatever gear and consumables she needed from the NPC villages she cleared. Like, for instance, the glittering set of miniature ice palaces she’d glimpsed on the surface of the glacier ahead. There was probably some pretty unique loot inside. Ashley just had to get rid of a few fairies to get it.

  Starting with the so-called Glacial Fairy Guard sitting dead ahead.

  Placing her feet carefully, Ashley advanced the final few steps to get in range of the fairy’s back. The gossamer-winged woman hummed to herself while she wove what looked like ice-worm silk into some sort of blanket. Nearby, the fairy’s Neve Moth companion dozed in the arctic light, its wings flapping languidly.

  If these were the guards, clearing the icy village ahead was going to be even easier than the camp of fairy scouts she’d wiped out at the toe of the glacier. She probably didn’t even need her Stealth skill here.

  Honestly, Ashley had never really liked grinding out experience on easy mobs. This was a game after all—the whole reason she played was to have fun and challenge herself. But just like in every other game she’d played, the biggest challenge of all was player-versus-player combat. And the leader of Ashley’s PvP-focused guild had big plans for the coming weeks. Phase one of which was getting everyone leveled up ASAP.

  Adjusting her grips on her dual-wielded daggers, she raised her arms high and aimed for twin points just behind the fairy’s collarbones. The NPC wore some kind of tunic that most likely had inherent armor and resistances despite the insubstantial appearance. But against a level 23 player with a brand-new Assassin specialization and a Backstab skill in the tier 4 range, it wouldn’t matter.

  “Hello,” Ashley said in the split-second before her daggers bit into porcelain-white flesh. Her lips pulled back from her teeth as she felt the blades make contact, first the faint resistance of the armor, then the grating of a knife against bone.

  And then the resistance suddenly vanished.

  Ashley fell forward, her blades screeching as they skittered across the hard ice where the fairy had been sitting. She recovered, ducking her shoulder and turning her head to the side to roll out of the missed attack. She came up quick, her Agility and Focus scores granting reflexes far beyond what her real-life body could manage, even after a decade of martial arts training.

  She whirled to face the spot where the fairy had been, squinting against the blue-white glare of the sun reflecting off the glacier’s surface. Her target and the moth had both vanished. Some sort of teleportation? A phase effect?

  Ashley smiled. Okay, so maybe this wouldn’t be as boring as she’d imagined.

  Tinkling laughter filled the air, seeming to echo off the jagged peaks that hemmed the river of ice. A cloud of ice crystals abruptly coalesced from the polar air, hazing the scene and tickling Ashley’s skin where they melted and beaded up in droplets th
at ran down her face.

  “You can come out now,” she called, blades raised.

  A gust of wind stirred Ashley’s hair as a shadow passed overhead. The moth? She crouched, tense, and activated her Heightened Perception ability. No way was the fairy going to beat a stealth-heavy class at her own game.

  “Hey. Ash. Status report?” The voice seemed to roll over the landscape, booming from the high mountain ridges.

  Most obnoxious voice-chat setting ever. Only the moderators of the guild channels could use it, a configuration called god-voice or something. Seriously, Nil could be such an asshole. But he was also her guild leader and the only person that could sign off on her promotion to the lieutenant level.

  “Kind of in the middle of something here,” she muttered, mentally thumbing the toggle to send her voice through the chat.

  “And you can’t handle multitasking? I thought women were supposed to be pros at it. Seeing as you have to nurse babies and cook dinner at the same time.”

  Ashley gritted her teeth. Yeah, Nil might pretend to be joking, but he said that kind of shit often enough that she had to think he partially believed it.

  A spray of ice jetted through the crystalline fog, too quick for Ashley to dodge. It plastered the side of her face, filled her ear, and cracked her neck as it whacked her head to the side. A dull ache filled her skull as a few hitpoints fell away from her health bar, but the real problem was the debuff that sprang up in the upper corner of her interface.

  Ability: Deadened Senses

  An icy cold has sunk into your body, chilling your awareness.

  -35% Perception | -20% Dodge

  Ashley shivered as the crust started to slide off her cheek, the ice inside her ear trickling down deeper into her ear canal. She rose onto her toes as she spun at the waist, searching the glittering haze for movement. The fog only seemed to thicken, muting sounds and obscuring the scenery. Directly above, a faint hint of blue sky showed through, but everywhere else was white, white, white.