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

  A snowball flew from the shining fog, landing at her feet. Too late, Ashley realized it was just a distraction. As her eyes followed the missile, she lost focus on her surroundings.

  The fairy laughed as she materialized and sliced through the tendons in the back of Ashley’s knee. Growling, Ashley spun and slashed with her primary hand, her blade catching on something. But before she could focus on her target long enough to get a Combat Assessment, the fairy flitted back into the fog. Another debuff appeared.

  Ability: Hamstrung

  -7 Agility

  Another puff of wind stirred the air, the only warning before a barrage of dagger-like ice crystals streaked down from above. If Ashley had been prepared, she might have been able to dodge. Still reeling from the strike to her knee, she took the brunt of the attack, a dozen icicles piercing her flesh.

  Ashley’s health fell to half.

  “Damn it,” she cursed as she started to run into the haze, hoping to get clear of the fog before the fairy struck again.

  “Sounds like someone can’t handle a little teasing,” Nil’s voice boomed. “Toughen up, Ash.”

  “Can you just shut up for a minute?” she said, pissed at herself for forgetting she had her voice chat toggled. “I’m trying not to die.”

  “Ah. In over your head again. Got it.”

  Ashley’s boot slipped on a patch of blue ice, and with her knee rendered unstable by the fairy’s slicing of the tendons, she couldn’t recover. She went down hard, her face scraping across a section of the sun-pitted glacier. Another barrage of icy needles flew down from above. She felt one sink through her neck, the frigid dart just missing her spine.

  Another 15% of her health disappeared.

  Unwilling to give up, she scrambled awkwardly to her feet and started running again.

  She didn’t see the crevasse until it was too late, the void opening below her foot. She pitched forward, cracking her knee on the far rim of the yawning crevice. Still quick, even with the debuffs, she stabbed down with her daggers on the glacier on the far side. The points of her blades bit into the ice for a moment, catching in a small fissure. Yelling through gritted teeth, she pressed harder on the hilts, willing the metal to grip as her body slammed into the wall of the crevasse.

  Arms trembling, she paddled her feet against the glass-smooth ice. One of her daggers squealed as the point slipped, and then caught again.

  A tinkling laugh filled the air.

  Ashley looked up as the fairy once again appeared from the fog, small wings stirring the suspended ice crystals as they slowly fluttered. The fairy’s fine features twisted into a grimace, baring a row of perfect white teeth. She kicked, hard, knocking Ashley’s blades from the ice.

  She fell, at first slowly, then sliding faster and faster. Bouncing off one and then the other side of the crevasse, she winced as her skull cracked against ice.

  The crevasse faded from icy white to velvet blue then black. And then the walls disappeared altogether as they drew back into a wide, subterranean chamber.

  Ashley’s shout echoed before she slammed down on the bedrock beneath the glacier.

  You have been slain by the ground.

  Respawning…

  “Oh, shit,” Nil’s voice filled her ears moments later. Not the booming god-voice of the chat program, but his character’s semi-annoying nasal whine. He laughed. “Guess you were busy, huh?”

  She opened her eyes to the guild longhouse and the bindstone near the blazing hearthfire.

  She sighed. “Yes, and now I’m not. So what did you want?”

  “Good news,” he said. “You remember Stonehaven.”

  “Yeah…?” The man had an unhealthy obsession with that stupid player city. That and an irrational hatred for the woman, Devon and her friend Hailey, both of whom had been key in defeating the guild when they’d tried to take the settlement. As far as Ashley was concerned, it was a waste of time to keep going after that crew, especially since the game seemed to be handing them unfair advantages.

  “Well, seems their fortunes have changed. I’ve just learned that Stonehaven is exceedingly vulnerable at the moment. We strike at Devon and her friends now, and they won’t stand a chance. Sweet revenge, my friend.”

  Okay so, Ashley was not Nil’s friend. But as for the vulnerability…now that sounded interesting.

  “Do we have a plan?”

  “It’s…coming together. You’ll get details on your part as soon as they’re ready.”

  Well, that was unsurprising. Nil believed the best way to control a guild was to control the flow of information. As long as he made it seem like he was the only person who could run things, he didn’t have to contend with threats to his position. For about the hundredth time in the last week, Ashley considered pulling up the guild interface and clicking the ‘Leave’ button. But seeing as the next-best PvP guild was basically a group of incompetent noobs, she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  Yet.

  Every day, she put out little feelers with her guildmates, looking for would-be defectors. If she could just splinter off something like thirty percent of the membership, they could get out from under Nil’s thumb. But so far, she wasn’t getting much traction. The other members basically considered her a peer, not a leader. Which was why she needed to stay on Nil’s good side and get that lieutenant promotion. And staying on his good side meant walking a fine line between kissing ass and acting tough.

  “Care to clue me in on when we plan to move? Because if I’m going to do my part”—she made air quotes as she said the last words—“it would be easier if I weren’t frantically trying to repair my gear because my guild leader distracted me in the middle of a hard fight and got me killed.”

  He sneered at her, curling his lip and adjusting his ugly-ass evil-druid tunic. “Don’t blame your failures on me. And we’ll leave as soon as my inside guy gets me the information I need on the vulnerabilities in Devon’s current status. We aren’t going in until we know exactly where and when to strike. Because this time, we aren’t going to stop attacking until we’ve killed every one of her NPC followers and we have every one of her player friends spawn camped.”

  An inside person, huh? Nil had been busier than Ashley thought. Of course, he’d had the guild harassing the streamer chick, Hailey, for weeks. But ever since the woman closed comments on her stream and stopped going active on messenger, she’d assumed there hadn’t been much action against the Stonehaven people. Which honestly had been a relief. Ashley had never been cool with the out-of-game harassment. Nil claimed it was an intimidation tactic that made the targets less effective in PvP combat. But that was bullshit. Nil was just an asshole.

  An asshole she still needed.

  She forced herself to nod appreciatively. “Sounds like I should stick close then.”

  He grinned, oblivious to the forced enthusiasm in her tone. “I’m hoping we’ll be dancing on their corpses by this time next week.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Hi Emerson,

  While processing payroll, our system came back with an error when attempting an electronic deposit to a contractor, Hailey Landers. The bank rejected the deposit, saying the account had been transferred to a charitable trust, and that deposits are blocked until the new administrator takes possession as-is or consolidates the balance into one of their existing accounts.

  Sorry to bother you with this, but the contact information for Ms. Landers seems to be out of date. The message we sent to her bounced. You’re listed as her direct supervisor. Any idea on how to get in touch?

  Thanks!

  Shauna Johnson, Payroll Specialist

  E-Squared Finance & Accounting

  Message: sjohnson@e_squared

  Voice: x2910

  Emerson yawned and brushed the message out of his vision. He could deal with it during the work week. Maybe by then, Shauna Johnson would have figured out the problem on her own. It wasn’t like Hailey was incommunica
do—work had kept him busy lately, so he hadn’t logged in much, but he definitely remembered spotting her recently. Once, she’d been coming out of Stonehaven’s Tailoring Workshop, and another time she’d been bent over an old scroll in one of Ishildar’s courtyards.

  So she hadn’t been abducted by aliens or anything. Even if accounting couldn’t figure out how to navigate their own records, Hailey would surely notice if her paycheck went missing. Neither Shauna Johnson nor his player employees needed him to act as a secretary.

  He yawned again, absently scratching at the stubble on his cheek while he stirred his Cheerios. The weak January sun fell through the glass doors that led to his modest patio where dust collected at the base of the white stucco walls and a potted cactus stood forlornly on the brick-red ceramic tile. When he’d bought the condo, there used to be a little breakfast table out there, but the chair had attracted birds, and he’d gotten tired of cleaning up their droppings.

  He’d never been much of a breakfast eater, but today was the start of a three-day weekend with no looming work obligations. The demon threat had temporarily been dealt with, which meant he could find some baddies to slaughter—NPCs he could actually defeat for experience rather than attacking as a human sacrifice to gain his higher-level friends the advantage of distracted enemies.

  Imagining the battles to come, he finished fueling for the challenge, then dropped his bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. Dusting off his hands and grinning with anticipation, he shuffled to his recliner. The faux-leather upholstery squeaked as cushions rubbed together when accepting his weight. Sighing, he tugged the handle to extend the footstool, closed his eyes, and activated Relic Online.

  His condo faded to black, and then Emerson was burning.

  Flames covered his body, his skin blackening and bubbling. He gasped, and furnace-hot air seared the inside of his lungs. He tried to scream, but his vocal cords were already incinerated.

  You have been slain by hellfire.

  Respawning…

  “Ow,” he said as he fell to his knees in the grass. He curled his knees to his chest and clenched his eyes shut.

  “Got another here,” someone shouted. “Okay, dude, let’s get you up.”

  Emerson felt hands snaking around his body, trying to get a grip. He forced his eyes open and saw white light shimmering in a curtain a few yards away. Beyond that, demons howled and raked claws against what had to be a magical barrier. Blinking, Emerson looked up at the person who was trying to help him. He didn’t recognize the face, but it was human, at least. Nodding, he climbed shakily to his feet.

  Standing beside the Shrine to Veia, Owen had his eyes closed and his hands outstretched. Emerson glanced from him to the barrier and back, then noticed the Veian prophetess NPC standing nearby. A radiant halo surrounded her, and streams of light flowed off it, traveling across the ground to bolster Owen’s shield.

  “Uh?” he asked the man who had helped him stand. “Er?”

  “Someone can explain on the other end. For now, we need to get you on the taxi out of here.”

  A message appeared in his vision.

  Hezbek is inviting you to join her group.

  Accept? Y/N

  “Okay, I guess?” he said. So much for leveling up today.

  Chapter Twelve

  “SO IT’S REALLY gone? I mean, not gone, but lost, I guess?” Emerson asked.

  Devon had spotted his character wandering around Ishildar’s Temple Square with a bewildered look on his face. Throughout the afternoon, players had been logging in, dying in a pool of hellfire-melted glass, and respawning in the tiny safe area around the Shrine to Veia. But now that the flow of incoming players had slowed, Devon had left the teleportation duties to Hezbek. She had work to do here: a secure camp to establish, followers to reassure, and after that, she needed to craft a plan for the future.

  “Well, it’s technically contested. They still need to finish capturing a few buildings. Not sure what criteria the game uses to determine that. Maybe they have to perform some sort of demonic ritual to finalize it or something. Anyway, we still hold the area around the shrine thanks to Owen’s newest barriers and its natural defenses. But that won’t last forever.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “It seems like whenever they capture a structure, the status goes to neutral, and a countdown timer starts. If we attack and, you know, shift the line of control to include any of the structures before the timeout, we can flip them back to contested. Anyway, the longest timer I’ve seen so far is on the main palisade. They have to keep it out of the contested state for two days or something. Then it becomes theirs. I guess the whole settlement becomes neutral once all the structures have been captured.”

  He reached out and touched her hand. “I can see all that info in my interface. What I mean is, do you think there’s no hope of taking it back?”

  She felt the blood rush to her face. Duh. Of course he could see that. She would have realized that if she weren’t so frazzled. Devon sighed. “I don’t know. I have no clue how we fight that archdemon. He’s too high level for us to get a Combat Assessment.”

  Emerson gazed around the square. She guessed he was taking in the chaos of the refugees as the situation sunk in. “I’m sorry. I wish…I just wish I could do more.”

  She blinked away the sting of frustration from her eyes and started walking again. “Maybe we can rebuild once we figure out how to take the settlement back. I just wish I had a clue how to do that. I guess the only good thing right now is that we saved most of the people. My teleport spell sucks, but I’m glad I have it.”

  Still, though she tried to be positive about the lives they’d saved, Devon couldn’t help thinking back to those gaps in the line of defenders on Stonehaven’s palisade. Basic NPCs who had been killed in the attack were never coming back. Many had left spouses behind, and at least one had had children. Most people would laugh at her for even worrying about the losses. They were just NPCs, after all. Devon knew Emerson understood, though. His beliefs about the NPCs’ level of sentience were the same as hers. For a moment, Devon considered opening up to him and telling him about the ache in her lungs when she thought of the fallen fighters, but she was afraid she’d break down. Maybe they could talk about it after she’d finished the mountain of tasks before her.

  “But you think we’re safer here? I mean, I’m not questioning you. I’m sure we are. It was just…well, I’ve never been killed by hellfire before. It wasn’t very pleasant.”

  Devon smirked. “And you are the settlement’s expert on death.”

  Emerson scratched the back of his neck, the gesture he used when he was slightly embarrassed. She nudged him with her elbow. “Hey, so, I never got to formally thank you for the kamikaze runs. You know they made a big difference, right?”

  Under the tutelage of Greel, who had never been particularly concerned with the psychological effects of his actions upon others, Emerson had been granted a unique class, Frenzy. He wasn’t required to die over and over, but his ability set made him rather effective at charging into unwinnable situations and scoring more blows than an average fighter would. Emerson really had helped in the final stages of her quest to restore Ishildar and push back the demons, so as long as he wasn’t too traumatized by his repeated deaths, she had to admit that Greel had trained him well.

  “A noob has to find some way to help out, right?” he said with a shrug. Emerson nodded toward a quiet alcove opening off the temple square where Hailey sat on a stone bench. Bob bounced in the air before her face. “Looks like your wisp has found someone else to pester. Speaking of…do you ever contact Hailey out of game? Someone at corporate was trying to reach her, but apparently the messenger contact the company has is invalid.”

  “Not often. I thought you had her contact in your personal list?”

  Emerson shrugged. “When I originally got in touch to hire her, she gave me a temporary handle. Said that her livestream sometimes attracted wei
rdos, so she preferred to stay semi-anonymous. I’d assumed HR got actual information out of her, but I figured it wasn’t my business to ask for personal info. The handle I had expired a while back.”

  Devon shrugged. “Well, lately it seems like she’s on all the time. If somebody really needs to get in touch, they should send a GM to talk to her avatar.”

  Emerson nodded. “I’ll pass that along.”

  They’d nearly reached the far side of the square, and Devon slowed, chewing her lip. “I’m trying to be strong, you know. But it’s kind of hard. I keep thinking about how this is all Bradley Williams’ fault. He could have shut down Zaa’s server cluster, but he let this happen. Makes me want to head down to HQ and punch him in the teeth or something.”

  Emerson stopped, planting his feet. His avatar, all six-and-a-half feet of solid game flesh seemed to vibrate with contained frustration. “I know. I can’t stop feeling like I should have been able to do more. I mean, this is ridiculous—a full-on, brutal invasion. Do players really like this kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, challenge is cool. I get that Bradley thinks this good-versus-evil war is like the best content ever, but if we can’t stop the demon army, I don’t know who will. Seems like a great way to permanently break the game.”

  Devon ran her eyes over the activity in the square. Across the open space, people were erecting makeshift tents and organizing the meager provisions they’d brought along. She shook her head—such a ragged group. But at the same time, her followers didn’t show the despair Devon felt. Despite being forced to abandon their homes, they seemed to believe that she would somehow save them.

  But how? Unless Ishildar offered up a miracle in the next few days, Devon had no clue what they would do. They might be able to pull the same sorts of teleport evacuations, her followers fleeing the leading edge of the army as it spilled across the continent. But what about when they reached a far shore?