Rogue Dungeon: Troll Nation (Chapters 31 - 33)

Chapter 31

The Outcast’s Tale

Two hours later, Roark respawned in the Keep throne room, wearing nothing but a threadbare loincloth and the World Stone Pendant. His Initiate’s Spell Book, soulbound like the World Stone, was still in his Inventory, but everything else he’d taken into the arena with him that morning was on his corpse, probably still lying in pieces in the dirt. 

And there it would stay. It bloody hurt to lose his Slender Rapier of the Diving Falcon—it was the first weapon he’d ever looted from PwnrBwner—but walking back into the arena to retrieve it would be suicide. Even if Bad_Karma had left, everyone else in Hearthworld who wanted a piece of him would be camped out and ready to grief the Griefer. As much as he wanted his gear, he wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. 

Cursing under his breath, Roark headed for the Blacksmith Shop and Armory in the Troll Nation Marketplace.

Once he was properly outfitted in a set of Peerless Leather Armor—dual-enchanted with a Dexterity bonus and Movement Speed—and armed with a new Peerless Slender Rapier and Peerless Kaiken Dagger, he headed for the inn. He kept adjusting the rapier at his side, though it rode perfectly on his hip. He’d smithed and enchanted the weapon himself, giving it another dose of Dexterity, then adding a Flawless Ruby, granting the weapon a seven percent chance to inflict Bleeding Wound. It was of better quality than his old Slender Rapier of the Diving Flacon had been. But it just wasn’t the same.

He tried to shove the thought from his mind as he jogged up the inn steps and let himself inside. 

A Behemoth Thursr in an enormous white Chef’s Toque and apron waved at him from across the common room, which was currently filled with Trolls eating, talking, and laughing. 

“Roark is back!” Kaz said, delighted, weaving through the tables toward him, a plate of some strange meat strips in hand. “Roark will not believe the amazing new food Kaz has learned of in his absence!”

Before Kaz could make it to him, however, a cannon blast of scales and shell hit Roark in the back of the legs, taking his knees out and slamming him to the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of him and stole away a sliver of his newly refilled Health vial. Mac trotted up his back on fat, clawed feet and nuzzled his beak against Roark’s face.

Roark chuckled and tried to shove the Young Turtle Dragon away. “If you want to me to pet you, you’ll have to get off me, Mac. I can’t bend my arms that way.”

Obligingly the heavy beast clambered off Roark. Roark rolled onto his back and sat up. A moment later, Mac was in his lap play-biting at Roark’s face and arms while Roark wrestled with him. They scrapped, knocking over chairs and bumping against benches, Roark happy to forget for the moment that he’d just lost his favorite rapier and been decimated by a hero he was supposed to kill, all in one fell swoop.

Until a dusky feminine voice said, “This is the sort of professionalism you can expect from the Dungeon Lord and founder of the Troll Nation.”

Zyra was on the common room stairs with a frail-looking Nocturnus in blue-black robes.

“Ick,” Roark said, grinning as he took in the Nocturnus’s repaired form. “The gauntlet worked, then. I wasn’t sure what might happen if someone who wasn’t native to the Citadel used it.”

Ick inclined his head a touch, his tentacle-hair sliding over his shoulders. “Many thanks for your sacrifice. My suspicion that you were more than you let on proved correct, but I had no idea you were the Griefer of rumor.”

“Roark must see what Ick brought with him to the Citadel,” the Behemoth said, shoving the plateful of crispy meat in Roark’s face. “Saber Boar Bacon! He is wonderful, Roark! Invaluable!”

On the stairs, the Nocturnus tipped his head modestly. “I had the foresight to know that looting a bit during the fight would come in useful later, but I did not realize it would have quite so much impact.”

“Roark must try a bite,” Kaz insisted. “It is … Dare Kaz say it?” The Mighty Gourmet stood up straighter and looked off into the distance heroically, the picture of integrity. “Yes. Yes, Kaz must tell the truth. This bacon, Roark, it is better than even skewers!”

Roark had to take a strip of the boar bacon or risk having its grease smeared all over his face by the overeager Behemoth. The moment Roark reached for it, however, Mac took advantage of his distraction and clamped down on his forearm. The bite was friendly, but the tip of his beak punctured Roark’s armor and drew a bit of blood. Roark twisted his arm out of the Young Turtle Dragon’s mouth and shoved him off, slapping him affectionately around the shell, then scratching his scaly head to let him know they were done roughhousing. As a peace offering, he ripped the bacon in half and gave the smaller piece to Mac. Then he popped the other half in his own mouth.

The flavor exploded like an Incendiary Blast across his palate. Salty, smoky, crispy, yet simultaneously chewy. He closed his eyes and savored its perfection. He forgot sometimes how something as simple as good food could blow away the tension and frustration of an otherwise awful day.

When he opened his eyes again, Kaz’s nose was almost touching his, awaiting his reaction. Roark flinched back, startled.

“What does Roark think?” Kaz asked, eyes shining with anticipation, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. “Does he love bacon or does he adore it? Because Kaz adores it.”

“It’s brilliant, mate,” Roark said honestly as he stood up and inched back to a comfortable distance. “You’re every bit the Gourmet from your title and then some.”

Kaz gave an elated shiver and clapped his hands with glee. “Ick brought this wonderful food to us! Say that he can join the Troll Nation, Roark, oh please!”

Eyebrow raised, Roark turned to Ick. “It’s up to him, Kaz, not me.”

The Nocturnus shrugged. “It has been many years since I was part of a dungeon. But you are formidable, Roark the Griefer, and I wish to join your crusade against both the heroes and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. I can offer my skills as a Witchdoctor to your cause, as well as pledge you up the ranks of Night Magick.”

“I explained to him that we already had an Arcane Paragon who could train people in magic,” Zyra said flatly, clearly not as impressed with the Nocturnus as Kaz was.

“Forgiveness,” Ick said, “But I also explained to her that a Paragon is quite different from a Witchdoctor, and one cannot train in the other’s skill set. A Paragon trains in Light Magicks. Only a Witchdoctor can train in Night Magick.”

Roark recalled the metallic auras and Health spells the Nocturnus had cast during their ill-fated fight with Bad_Karma, not to mention that sun-hiding silvery blast of moonlight and flame. Support like that would come in handy, and Ick was a powerful combatant. Truth be told, the Nocturnus was growing on Roark. Even his too-perceptive eight-eyed gaze. Once Zyra saw him in action, as he had, Roark was sure she would come around to the strange little creature. If there was one thing Zyra valued, it was competence, and Ick seemed to have that by the bucketload. 

“You’re welcome in the Citadel for as long as you follow the rules,” Roark said. “No killing natives or customers to the Marketplace.”

Ick’s mandibles clicked together, and his eyes glimmered. The Nocturnus version of a beaming smile. “Many thanks.”

“With that out of the way,” Zyra said, “On to more important matters.” She turned to Kaz and held out her hand. “Roark was sent for respawn before supper. I believe you owe me one hundred gold.”

Kaz scowled and started unloading handfuls of coin into Zyra’s waiting hands.

“The fight was probably very close,” the Behemoth grumbled.

“You didn’t put money on close, big guy,” Zyra said. “You put it on victory.”

Roark’s mood darkened once more, and he slumped into the table in the far corner, which had become theirs, reserved for the Dungeon Lord’s inner circle by unspoken agreement.

“It wasn’t close,” he admitted. Mac shoved his way under the table, bumping and jostling it with his spiked shell as if he didn’t realize he was nearly too big to fit beneath, then laid his head in Roark’s lap and promptly fell asleep. Roark scratched the Young Turtle Dragon’s scaly head absently as he thought back on the fight. “Bad_Karma was nearly impossible to wound, and every time I managed to do damage, he reflected most of it onto me.” 

A little Changeling chef’s apprentice raced by and dropped off Roark’s preferred ale unbidden, then scampered away without a word to see to the other customers. Condensation beaded on the side of the flagon. Roark picked it up and took a deep drink of the cold, amber liquid. Being Dungeon Lord did have a few perks.

“Not to mention that every time he landed a strike, it refilled his Health by absorbing mine,” Roark added, returning his flagon to the table and wiping a bit of foam from his mouth.

“We discussin’ Bad_Karma, then?” Griff asked, coming down the staircase. The grizzled weapons trainer sauntered over and lowered himself into a chair with a groan and popping of old joints. He checked under the table, then propped his foot up on Mac’s shell. “Caught your fight, Griefer. Nasty stuff. You did all you could, but like as not, you won’t stand a chance of beatin’ him without bein’ at least his level.”

“So Roark griefs more heroes,” Kaz said with a shrug of his massive shoulders. “Kaz will help funnel them toward Roark again. It was very fun last time, and we can bring bacon for a delightful snack between heroes.”

Trying not to get his hopes up, Roark pulled up his character sheet and did the math. Even if he disrupted the portal plates for the next three days and griefed every player who came into the Citadel, one after another, there was no way he could reach level 50 before the quest timer ran out. He was only level 36 now, and that had taken a month or more in Hearthworld time of strenuous effort and brutal campaigning. And to make matters worse, earning each new level became exponentially more difficult the higher he went. Now that he’d hit is Jotnar Infernali form, any death would automatically reset him to level 36. 

“It’s a mathematical impossibility.” He scrubbed his hands across his face. “Even if we had the full seventy-two hours left, I couldn’t make level 50 in time.”

Zyra grabbed a chair from an unoccupied table nearby and spun it around, sitting on it backward.

“What about contact poison?” she asked, folding her arms over the seat back. “Something Unique and Virulent. I’ve got some of each in the shop, but given a few hours, I could probably whip up a poison that fits both qualifications into one bottle.”

“Apologies.” Ick shook his head, tentacles sliding over his shoulders. He’d sidled closer to the table as silently as Zyra could when Shadow Stalking. “But Blood Magick users spawn with full immunity to all poisons and venoms. Contact poison would have no effect.”

“What if I used Clotwart to counteract his immunity?” the Reaver asked.

“In the poison?” Ick clarified, blinking a few of his outer eyes.

“The poison he’s immune to,” Zyra said, her voice taking on a rare self-deprecating edge. She bumped the heel of her hand against her hidden forehead. “Right. Of course it won’t work.”

Roark raked his claws through his hair. “Any other ideas?”

Griff scratched at his bristly jaw. Kaz opened his mouth, then deflated and shut it again. Zyra’s hood was trained on the floor, her hand inside cupping her chin.

Roark sighed.

“It’s fine,” he said, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt. “We’ll figure it out. I just need some time to think it over. Regroup.”

In spite of his effort to reassure them, a heavy silence fell over the table. Mac squirmed in his sleep as if he could feel its uncomfortable weight pressing down on him.

After a few moments of this, Zyra stood up with a scrape of her chair. “Well, boys, as much as I enjoy these depressing little get-togethers of ours, I’m going to go do literally anything else. Maybe there’s some sort of lethal concoction or a different delivery system we’re overlooking. I’ll be in the shop if you need me.”

Kaz fidgeted as he watched Zyra go.

“What is it, mate?” Roark asked wearily.

The Behemoth’s ears sagged like a fretting puppy. “Kaz doesn’t want to leave Roark … Especially not after such a defeat.” He glanced around the quickly filling common room. “It’s only that, with the inn doing such good business around mealtimes, Mai will be needing Kaz’s help in the kitchen. One must stay ahead of the dinner rush while still providing pristine, delicious meals if one hopes to remain in business,” the Mighty Gourmet quoted.

Roark didn’t bother asking which of Kaz’s culinary heroes he was quoting, though he felt he’d heard enough of both chefs by now to be fairly confident it had come from Jordan Bamsey.

“Don’t worry about it, Kaz,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We’ve got to keep this place running smoothly, present a confident public face or the other Dungeon Lords will smell blood in the water. Go ahead.”

With one last worried glance his way, Kaz disappeared into the kitchen, ducking to avoid knocking the enormous white Gourmet’s toque from his head on the doorframe.

Roark leaned back in his seat and took a long draught of cold ale.

“You’ve got the right idea, Griefer,” Griff said. “Nothing tastes better after a hard day in the arena than a cold drink.” 

The weapons trainer raised a scar-crossed hand and got the attention of one of the little Changelings sprinting around the common room. 

“Bring us a scotch when you’ve got a minute,” Griff said. Then he glanced over at the Nocturnus and shoved an empty chair toward him. “Rest your shanks, Ick. You had a rough one, too. What’re you drinkin’?”

“Many thanks.” The Nocturnus sank into the chair with a grateful half-bow. “I have heard endless good things about the Mighty Gourmet’s spiced mead.”

“It’ll set you right,” Griff agreed. “One of each, if you please,” he said to the Changeling, dropping a palmful of gold in the little creature’s hand.

With a sharp nod, the Changeling sprinted off for the springhouse at the back of the inn where the drinks and meats were kept cool. Moments later, the three of them had a drink in hand.

Griff took a sip of his scotch, then sighed in appreciation. “That hits the spot, for certain.”

“The notes of cinnamon and honey are highly refreshing as well,” Ick agreed, swirling the mead in his goblet.

Roark glared down into his flagon, unable to shake his gloom long enough to agree.

A rough hand slapped him on the back. “Truth be told, Griefer, you lasted longer against Bad_Karma than I expected you to. Taking to the air was a smart play. And I thought you had him with the ice spear through the wing—the move was a peach. Could see clear as day that he never expected something like that from a mob. Truth be told, he had me fooled as much as he had you fooled.” Griff chuckled. 

A fraction of the tension in Roark’s shoulders and neck loosened. He took a deep breath and blew it out.

“Were you ever up against someone like him in the arena?” Roark asked. “A level 50?”

The weapons trainer waved his scotch dismissively. “Bah, this level, that level, this class, that class. I’ve fought a fair few of ’em over the years, but after a while, all them high-falutin’ heroes just start to look like obnoxious little pricks.”

Roark choked, snorting ale up into his sinuses. Across the table, Ick was clicking his mandibles together and his sapphire eyes were sparkling as if the Nocturnus, too, were struggling to contain his mirth at Griff’s pronouncement.

“The both of you ought to be right proud of your fight today,” Griff said, tapping a blunt finger on the tabletop in emphasis. He turned his single eye to Ick. “That was some mighty fine support castin’ I saw out there. Where’d you say you hailed from?”

The Nocturnus set his goblet on the table and stared down at it. “At one time, I was happily entrenched in the Jungles of Eternal Night.” Ick’s rasping voice had softened and taken on an almost melancholy tone.

“Hope you don’t mind my askin’,” Griff said. 

“No offense was taken, friend,” Ick assured him, though the many spidery legs jutting from his back wriggled. “It is a place of surpassing beauty, and I am proud to have spawned there.”

“You mentioned you were cast out into the Wilds by your mistress.” Roark sat forward a bit, resting his elbows on the table. Mac chirped grumpily under the table at his moving pillow, but Roark ignored him. “What happened?”

Ick’s mandibles clicked, and his eight-eyed gaze became faraway. A Nocturnus’s version of a sad smile, if Roark had to guess.

“She was a beauty to behold,” Ick said fondly. “And the severest conquistador ever to serve the Nocturnus Empire. Under her generalship, we soon counted every inch of the Jungles as ours. I was her personal Witchdoctor in battle, chosen by her own many hands from the creche and assigned as her support during our now legendary raids of the Underworld Cairns. But I soon discovered that I was not chosen for my abilities—though I hope you will not think I am inflating myself if I say that they are more than worthy of such. No indeed, my mistress was using me to make a play for the Overlord’s Web.” Ick paused a moment, blinking his many eyes. “Your equivalent, I believe, would be called a Dungeon Lord’s Throne.”

Roark nodded to show that he was following, but remained silent. He didn’t want to interrupt the Nocturnus’s story now that Ick had begun to open up.

“It goes against the pride, to learn that you are nothing more than a puppet dancing to another’s strings when you believed you meant so much more,” Ick said bitterly. “I confronted her too late. The night I did, she tore the head off the Overlord, ate his corpse, and took the Web. Out of deference to our … bond … she cast me out rather than kill me and set a lifetime prohibition against my return to our Jungles.”

As the story came to a close, Roark stared down into his flagon. It was nearly empty, but he felt soberer than when he’d begun drinking. Ick’s story of his ambitious mistress had hit Roark a little too near the mark. 

So often he held his own actions up against the horrors of the Tyrant King’s rule, excusing his own maneuvering and determination because it wasn’t as bad as the things Marek had done. But before coming to Hearthworld, he’d made no real friendships, only strategic alliances that could bring him one step closer to assassinating the despot. Anyone who had failed him or questioned his methods had been cast aside as callously as Ick. Everything, everyone was just a means to an end. And could he truly say he’d changed since coming to Hearthworld? Sure, he’d made friends he would lay down his life to protect, but when all of that decoration was boiled away, wasn’t all of this—and even them—still just more means to his ultimate end of killing Marek?

“Griefer,” snapped Griff sharply, banging his empty cup down on the table.

Roark jumped, startled from his brooding.

The grizzled old weapons trainer pierced him with a knowing look. “I see the wheels turning, and I know what direction your cart’s headed. There’s a time for self-examination, but this ain’t it. After a defeat like today, anything you take out and turn around right now’s going to look skewed and rotten. I suggest you put it away for the time being. Focus yourself on what you can change in the here and now, problems you can solve.”

The corner of Roark’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “Like how do I kill an unkillable hero.”

Griff raised his empty cup to Roark and blinked his one eye. It took a moment for Roark to realize it was the one-eyed man’s version of a wink.

“Excellent advice, as always.” Roark drained the dregs of his ale, then pushed back his chair and stood. Mac chirped angrily at being so rudely awoken, but a few hearty head-scratches soothed his ruffled spikes. “Thank you for sharing your history with us, Ick. Kaz is right, you’re a great asset to the Troll Nation. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a few minor Dungeon Lord tasks to attend to before I try to make another run at Bad_Karma.”
 

Chapter 32

The Grand Inquisition

Roark left the Market and headed for the fifth floor’s throne room with a mind to make the rounds to each floor to see how the portal plates were holding up. As nothing of the sort had been crafted in Hearthworld before, Roark wasn’t certain how many uses they could withstand before the Curse Chains began to degrade, but he wanted to stay ahead of it.

And, if he was honest, the wandering and potential for some physical labor held much appeal. Perhaps he could find Trolls with weapons in need of repair or armor that needed tailoring. Anything to keep his hands busy while his mind worked through the problem of how to kill a virtually unkillable hero.

The portal plate beside the river on the fifth floor was in good shape. He spent a few minutes talking to the griefing squad on duty, listening to their exploits and congratulating the newly Evolved Thursr Elemental in their group, before detouring for the Keep. He would check that plate, then maybe he could find Zyra and run some ideas for mass attacks on Bad_Karma by her.

Roark had just let himself in to the Keep and was heading for the portal plate in the foyer when a shimmering violet portal opened. Not over the portal plate—which would have glowed blue when activated—but in the open air beside the wall. His mind fumbled for a solution, trying to understand just what he was seeing and why, but nothing would come. Like Bad_Karma, this seemed like an issue without any readily apparently solution. The griefing squad—a Jotnar Soul-Cursed, a pair of Thursr Elementals, and two Reaver Champions—stepped forward, weapons drawn and spells readied.

“Wait,” Roark said, raising a hand. “This isn’t a hero raiding party.”

He pulled his new Peerless Slender Rapier and Kaiken Dagger and raised them in a ready stance, facing the portal as uncertainty and a thread of fear roiled in his gut. Could this be Lowen’s doing? What if the slippery little eel had finally decided to make his play?

No one stepped out.

Roark cocked his head slightly. He heard the rasp of metal on metal less than a heartbeat before the cold steel band closed around his neck.

“Got him!”

Roark whirled, but found nobody to go with the disembodied voice. An invisibility spell? The griefing squad were searching the room and sniffing the air for the invisible assailant.

“Show yourself,” he growled, one hand tearing at the steel collar. He couldn’t break or bend it, and his clawed talons didn’t even scratch the surface. Angular ridges of script he didn’t recognize scraped against the pads of his fingers and palm of his hand. “Stop hiding like a coward.”

“Show him, Randy.”

Roark’s lip curled into a snarl. Now that was a grating voice he knew well, and it certainly didn’t belong to Lowen. 

At once the invisibility dropped, revealing PwnrBwner_OG with a wide grin on his face.

“Boo, motherfucker.”

“You just don’t learn, do you, mate?” Roark raised his new rapier and tried to advance on the High Combat Cleric.

But the collar yanked him backward, choking him. Even with his arm extended, the tip of his blade barely scraped the surface of PwnrBnwer’s breastplate.

“How you like that shit?” the High Combat Cleric sneered. “Admin privileges, boy!”

Roark lunged pie’ fermo, but the collar jerked him back again, clenching down on his throat like a mad titan’s fist. He strained against the metal band though it was strangling him. The imminent strangulation would be worth wiping that smug look off PwnrBwner_OG’s ugly face.

But another shimmer of violet light flared to life behind Roark. A new portal. Without warning, Roark found himself dragged backward out into it. 

An icy breeze blew across his skin and ruffled his shaggy hair. Goosebumps prickled down his back and arms, and he gave an involuntary shiver.

Then he fell backward onto his ass on a stone floor. He was in a windowless, doorless stone cell, less than ten feet across in any direction. And he wasn’t alone. 

A gray-winged Arboreal Herald in a type of plant-based armor—curling vines, blooming flowers, and saw-toothed leaves edged in silver—with matching silver hair and eyes stood by, clutching a metal wand with a small, rune-etched skull perched on the end. Though Roark didn’t recognize the second man in the strange armor, the wings jutting from his back reinforced the idea that he was somehow associated with Lowen and the Vault of the Radiant Shield. 

A moment later, PwnrBwner_OG stepped through the portal, and the shimmering tear in space closed behind him. 

The High Combat Cleric grinned maliciously. “Welcome to hell, mate.”

“No thanks,” Roark said. “I’ve just been to the icy version, and it wasn’t for me.”

He traded his rapier for his dagger and raised it to his throat. He didn’t know how many cuts it would take to kill himself, but getting taken alive by the enemy wasn’t for him, either. Not by a Tyrant King who tortured as gladly as he breathed and not by a bellend like PwnrBwner_OG, who had obviously thrown in his lot with Lowen. 

“Hang on,” the Herald said, taking a step forward, his chainmail clinking softly. “You don’t want to do that. See this?” He held up the wand. “It’s a specialty item called a Lightning Rod, part of a set with that collar. I tracked them down and confiscated them from a modder last year, using them to… Well, to do some pretty bad stuff.”

The Herald jammed the wand into the wall. There was a flash of light, and it sank into the stone, the little skull on top seeming to grin mockingly at Roark.

“It’s called a Lightning Rod because it attracts the collar to it,” he said. “As long as you’re wearing the collar, you’ll respawn wherever the Lightning Rod is, and you can’t really move from the spot unless I move you. You can hex, curse, cut, and smash the collar as much as you want, but it’s Indestructible. It’s magically locking, so there are no tumblers to pick. It’ll only come off if I say the right words.”

“So, no matter how many times you kill yourself, you’ll end up right back here, prick,” PwnrBwner said. He had produced a flanged mace and slapped it against his gauntleted palm. A smile stretched across his face when he saw Roark’s eyes following the motion. “Like this bad boy? It’s no Unique Rose Mace of Thorns, but we’ll see how much that matters to you when you’re spitting teeth out the side of your head.”

Roark’s grip tightened on the dagger until the leather bindings creaked. In all of his worst nightmares back in Traisbin, he had never imagined being trapped so badly that even death couldn’t save him. They had him, and that smug bastard PwnrBwner knew it.

“What did Lowen offer you, an hour with me chained up like a dog?” Roark smirked at the High Combat Cleric’s darkening expression. “Better enjoy it while it lasts, mate, because it’s the only way you’ll ever beat me. And when the Tyrant King—”

PwnrBnwer’s mace flashed out, the razor sharp flanges tearing into Roark’s face, pulverizing his jaw, and ripping off half his cheek. Stars exploded across his field of vision, pain lancing through his head. Blood poured in a river down the chest of his dark leather armor, and a few white slivers of broken teeth flowed with it.

“Hey! Don’t!” The Arboreal Herald had PwnrBwner by the mace arm and was dragging him back. “He was about to give us a name. That’s what we’re here for, remember? Information.”

PwnrBwner shook the Herald off. “Fine, who the hell is this Tyrant King douche? Another one of your modding friends?”

Roark spat in PwnerBwner’s eye, the bloody wad landing with a satisfying slap. “I’d see everyone he’s killed die again before I aligned myself with that despot!”

“Augh! You gross little shithead!” The High Combat Cleric swung the mace back for another blow.

Roark braced himself to lose another chunk of flesh, but the Arboreal Herald stepped in front of PwnrBwner before he could strike, gray wings twitching nervously as he pushed the Cleric back against the far wall.

“Stop letting him get to you,” the Herald insisted. “If he goads you into killing him, we’ll have to wait two hours for him to respawn. I recruited you to help me fix things, not make things worse, and I only have so much time.”

Roark chuckled, the sound wet and red. “So you’re on a deadline, too, eh?” His torn, bleeding face and broken teeth made speaking painful and garbled, but he forced the words out anyway. “How long did Lowen give you before he takes over and finishes the job?”

The Herald crouched in front of Roark, his chainmail clinking.

“Lowen, the other modder, right? From the Vault of the Radiant Shield.” His gray eyes searched Roark’s, alight with something more akin to curiosity than sadism. If Roark didn’t know any better, he’d say this man seemed genuinely uncomfortable with the idea of torture. “Are you guys having some kind of flag war or just seeing how much of Hearthworld you can take over or what?” he asked.

Like a gristmill grinding to life, Roark’s mind fought to process what the Herald was asking. It didn’t make any sense. If the Herald was one of the Tyrant King’s men sent through the portal to back Lowen, then he would already know why they were after him. The past few minutes ran through his head again. The questions about Marek, the strange accent that matched PwnrBwner’s …

“You’re not from Traisbin,” Roark said. “How did Lowen recruit you?”

“I kill modders, I don’t buddy up to them,” PwnrBwner scoffed.

The Herald, however, remained calm. “I work for Frontflip, part of the Hearthworld Admin staff, not Lowen.” He pulled out a platinum and copper badge and held it out as if Roark should recognize its significance. “I’ve been investigating your activity, trying to find a way to isolate the spread of the code you’re using. It’s corrupt, you know? If I can’t stop it, it could take down the whole game. Is that intentional? Are you trying to crash Hearthworld?”

Roark shook his head, the unfamiliar words rolling meaninglessly off. Frontflip? Admin staff? Corrupt code? None of this made any sense. But Roark was smart enough to piece together that whatever this Herald was about, it didn’t have anything to do with Lowen—at least not directly. It seemed, rather, that he was investigating Roark and Lowen’s presence in this world. But how to explain something as complicated as that? After mulling it over for a minute, he sighed and decided he might try some measure of the truth. What else could he do at this point?  

“Listen, mate, I’m not even supposed to be here. Portal magic in Traisbin … where I’m from … is dangerous. It spat me out in Hearthworld at the Cruel Citadel—” He gestured at himself. “—as a Troll.”

PwnrBwner rolled his eyes. “Drop the role-playing pirate bullshit already. It’s not funny and you’re not cool. Just tell the guy how to fix what you screwed up before you wreck the only good thing online.”

Roark leaned back against the stone wall and rubbed his eyes.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No duh, dickbrain.”

Seeing he wouldn’t make any headway with the High Combat Cleric, Roark turned to the Herald. That one, at least, seemed capable of reason.

“You heroes come from another dimension, correct? You’re not native to Hearthworld. Well, neither am I. Where we seem to be misunderstanding one another is that I’m not from your home world, either. I’m from a country called Traisbin on a planet called Earth. I didn’t know there was a Hearthworld—or any other dimensions at all—until I came through a faulty portal after my assassination attempt against the Tyrant King, Marek Konig Ustar, went awry. I suspect my untimely arrival here has something to do with a powerful artifact, called the World Stone, which I stole from Marek during my attack. I’ve been trying to get back home ever since, but Lowen, who works for Marek, somehow managed to follow me here along with several more of the Tyrant King’s lickspittles.”

“Cute story,” PwnrBwner said. “You make that up playing D’n’D in your mom’s basement?”

But the Herald didn’t dismiss it immediately. “A parallel Earth?” His tugged at his chin, then shook his head as he broke into a restless pacing, back and forth, back and forth. “Or another planet called earth,” he was mumbling, more for himself than for anyone else’s benefit. “There’s no reason a similar race wouldn’t give a planet with similar life support systems the same name.”

“You’re actually buying this crap?”

The Herald put up a hand. “I’m just considering it from every angle. Occam’s Razor says the simplest answer is the one that fits all the facts. You haven’t seen the code behind these anomalies, and you haven’t been following the Griefer around for the past week. I am very good at my job, and I can’t find any logical explanation for what is happening here. So, if there isn’t a natural explanation, perhaps the easiest explanation is a supernatural one.”

“You’ve been spying on me?” Roark asked, simultaneously impressed and disgusted. And a bit uncomfortable, considering the number of less-than-shining moments he’d had over the past seven days and nights.

“He hasn’t logged out or gone inactive once to write in the new stuff he and his infected NPCs keep creating,” the Herald continued, eyes unfocused as if he were talking to himself. “And that more than anything would be impossible if he was a modder. In more than a month, he hasn’t stopped playing to eat, sleep, or do anything, which would be impossible if he were a human in a headset or even a deep dive capsule. And that’s only one issue.” He ran a hand through his silver hair. “The code. The mechanics. The classes and changes to the game he’s managed to make. Literal magic may be the single best explanation I’ve heard so far.”

Roark nodded. None of those words made any sense to him, but he got the bent of the man’s thinking.

“Bullshit!” PwnerBwner said, throwing up his gauntleted hands. “Magic isn’t real. Taco Bell is real. The congestion on the 5 is real. But magic wizard pirates from a different dimension? That’s just fucking stupid. Just because you want his story to be true doesn’t mean it is.”

“What I want doesn’t matter,” the Herald said flatly. “Data doesn’t lie.”

“Best listen to your friend, mate,” Roark said to PwnrBwner. “Because what I’ve told you so far is only half the story. The second half goes like this—Lowen takes the World Stone Pendant from me and brings it back to his master, the Tyrant King. The Tyrant King finds out there’s not just one other dimension he can crush under his boot, but two, and he comes for Hearthworld first. The magic here is incredible, powerful, and unfortunately reliable. He’ll conquer it in a matter of weeks at the most. Then he’ll use Hearthworld’s inherent magic to find a way to your dimension and conquer it as well.” 

Truthfully, Roark wasn’t certain Marek could find a way to a third dimension, but he had managed to send Lowen and an army of his loyal followers to Hearthworld, so he must have some way of ensuring safe travel through portals. Marek was a power-hungry tyrant. If he knew there was another world with people in it, he wouldn’t rest until he found a way to expand. Especially if it meant more magic and power. And if he could find a way to harness the magic and enslave the natives of this world, he wouldn’t just have more power, he’d have untold power.

“I’ve seen what the Tyrant King can do,” Roark said. “I’ve watched him trample every good thing in my world. If you don’t want to see him crush your world, too, you have to help me stop him.”

“Prove it,” PwnrBwner said, crossing his arms, eyes narrowed. When the Herald and Roark’s gaze snapped up to his face, he shrugged. “You want me to believe you’re an alien from another dimension, prove it. Do something.”

“Do what?” Roark couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice.

“Like Randy said, do something you couldn’t do without logging out to make it. Show me the video evidence.”

“Video?”

PwnrBwner nodded. “Yeah, I want to see it happening with my own two eyes. Foreign planets, Tyrant Kings, the whole nine yards. You want me to believe you, then make me believe.”

Roark’s brow furrowed.

PwnrBwner’s booted foot snapped out, catching Roark under the ribs. The air whoofed out of his lungs, and he doubled over, clutching his gut.

“Now, dickbreath! Not when you’ve had enough time to cook up some fancy mod bullshit on your second keyboard. Show me right now, while you’re on the spot.”

What magic could he do? What spell could prove the veracity of his words? 

There was an ancient spell and blood rite the magistrates of his world occasionally used when trying a criminal for capital offenses. The magic was ancient, dangerous—drawing on forces not even the most powerful mages of his world understood—and liable to kill whoever it was used on, hence the reason it was only employed in capital cases where certain death was already on the line. But here in Hearthworld, where death was simply a minor inconvenience, there was little harm in trying it. Chances were it wouldn’t work and would instead boil his brain inside his skull until it cracked open like an overcooked egg, but if it did work … 

“All right. Just give me a moment to carve the spell. The magick of my world is a fickle thing, based around the written word.” His lips pressed into a thin line as he took the tip of his dagger and painstakingly carved the ancient and complex runes of the Ennus-Merkki Ritual into his arm. The Ritual was most often used to prove a man’s innocence by tapping into the memory of the caster, conjuring the events for all to see. Irrevocable proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, though the spell was prohibitively dangerous with so many variables that could go wrong that only a wrongfully condemned man on the edge of the gallows would ever dare pay the price. 

Luckily for Roark, lives came cheap in Hearthworld.

While he cut, the jagged slashes that had no tangible meaning, but he envisioned the scene he wished to project. The death and bloodshed and pain of the event that irrevocably shaped his life: von Graf Manor during Bloedrige Noct.  He finished the line of twisting, jagged, ancient script, blood leaking down his arm and pattering onto the floor below. As he accented the last rune, the line of text running over the inside of his forearm flashed, golden light bleeding from his body.

A feminine scream cut through the room like a knife. 

The tiny stone cell wavered, then melted into the residence wing of the manor. 

Bodies lay strewn across the hall, blood pooling beneath his Cousin Dirk, his Aunt Caena. A boy with olive skin and dark hair watched as his Uncle Gareth pulled himself across the wood floor after one of the Ustars, leaving behind a streak of red as he tried to avenge to his murdered wife and son with his last breath. Down the hall, fire flew and walls exploded as Erick von Graff battled the Tyrant King, trying to defend Roark’s mother and little sister Talise. Roark’s father was a brilliant mage, his spells were known throughout Traisbin, but his quick pen was no match for Marek’s lawless magic. 

An invisible blade tore through Erick’s neck, beheading him where he stood. 

Marek stepped over Erick’s corpse and raised a hand. A moment later, Roark’s mother and Talise were dragged out of the bedroom by invisible chains, screaming and fighting but unable to escape.

An Ustar soldier came around the corner from the other residences, blood dripping from his snake-fanged axe. Terrified, the eleven-year-old Roark grabbed the hunting knife from his cousin’s limp fingers and carved his first blood cantrip into his forearm.

I am invisible.

The boy vanished as the spell took, and the scene shifted. In the courtyard, Ustars executed the remaining women and children of the von Graf household. Roark watched the scene unfold from the hidden window off the secret passageway to the blue sitting room, seeing it as he had that night just before escaping into the tunnels beneath the manor. He looked on as, beside the wellhouse, an Ustar’s axe sliced down through the air, and his mother threw herself over Talise.

But the scene didn’t end as it should have when the boy turned and ran down the stairs into the darkness. 

For the first time, Roark watched the Ustar kick his mother’s still-twitching corpse off of Talise and raised his axe once more. The little girl scrambled to her feet, dazed. The blade fell, and Roark braced himself to see his sister’s skull split open.

Instead, when Talise cried out and threw her hand up, bright orange light flared in a dome around her. The snake-fanged axe hit the barrier and shattered.

Talise’s knees buckled, and the dome disappeared. She fell into the snow, shoulders heaving with exhaustion or tears or both.

Marek stalked across the courtyard, eyes as wide as saucers, his fine furs whispering across the snow. Talise wailed in fear and scrambled backward, trying to get away. 

As the Tyrant King closed with her, she threw her hand up once more. Orange light flickered and failed. 

Marek grabbed her by the back of the neck. Talise kicked and scratched him like a feral cat, but amber light flashed on Marek’s chest, the World Stone enacting its strange magic, and she went rigid.

Roark remembered the spell. Marek had used it in attempt to torture the Rebel Council’s location out of him. He’d nearly given it up just to stop the pain, and he’d been a grown man at the time. His blood boiled and his mind went red with fury at the sight of the bloody bastard using the spell against his six-year-old sister.

When Marek stopped, Talise was shaking and hysterical, promising to be good. The Tyrant King set her on his hip like a kindly grandfather and, flanked by his Ustars, walked out of the courtyard into the night.

The vision wavered and disappeared, leaving behind the small stone cell.

Roark’s mouth hung open. He stared through the Arboreal Herald in front of him, stunned. His heart pounded like a smith’s hammer against the wall of his chest. That wasn’t right—Marek had butchered everyone. Cold blooded. No survivors. Talise couldn’t still be alive. Everyone in Korvo said Marek had wiped out the von Graf family that night, save for Roark. And that flash of light when she threw up her arm, the dome protecting her… No paper, no writing utensils… It wasn’t possible. It flew in the face of every law of magic governing Traisbin.

The world spun and he barely noticed his two captors until PwnrBwner broke the stunned silence left in the wake of the vision casting ritual.

“What. The. Actual. Fuck,” PwnrBwner’s said, his mouth hanging open. “Seriously. Holy shit. What was that? Was that the …” he trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words for the first time Roark had ever seen.

“Was that…” The Herald swallowed, the dry click in his throat audible. “Was that the Tyrant King?” Without waiting for Roark to answer, the Herald grabbed PwnrBwner by the shoulder. “Uh, my colleague and I need a minute to discuss something. We’ll be right back.”

With that, he opened a portal in midair and pulled PwnrBwner through, leaving Roark alone in the stone cell, images of his little sister on the Tyrant King’s hip replaying in his head.

 

Chapter 33 

Change of Heart

Scott Bayani and his Admin accomplice, Randy, teleported away from the boxy room where Roark was bound, and back into the basement of Randy’s sprawling estate on the rolling slopes of the Whispering Steppes. Begrudgingly, Scott had to admit that the place was slick as hell. A work of art, really. Not that he’d ever tell Randy that. Scott had seen a big chunk of the place when Randy lead him through the first time around, and it was clear the estate had been assembled over months or maybe even years of game play. 

Whether that gameplay was Randy’s or Randy’d just been given it for working in Hearthworld Admin, somebody had put in the work, and it showed. Scott could respect that. 

The basement was the plainest of the estate’s many rooms by far, but even it was impressive, with high-ceilings, the forge and smithy tucked away in the corner, and the shelves and chests filled with rare loot. Several wall-plaques and display stands littered the room, showcasing a variety of hard-won items. Scott didn’t recognize all of them, but he knew a few on sight and would’ve given his left nut to get his hands on any of this. The gleaming Bloodcursed Impaler, won from the Arch-Demon Lords of The Damned and the Restless questline. The gold and azure Dragonmaw Warhammer, pilfered from the corpse of the Red Lord. Even the incomparably rare Casque of Holy Protection—only a .02 percent drop rate—retrieved from the winding heart of the Stonemire Labyrinth. 

Randy may have been a dork, but Scott had his suspicions that not all of this had been forked over to the Herald as fringe benefits of the job. And if he’d won even a little of this shit on his own, then the dude could game like a mofo.

But none of the impressive treasures on display held Scott’s attention this time around. He wasn’t an introspective guy by nature, but after seeing that … Whatever the shit that had been … All this loot felt shallow somehow. After all, this crap was just code. Somebody made it up. What the Griefer showed him had been real people. Or aliens. Whatever they were, they’d been cut down, slaughtered. Maybe that dickface Roark had crafted some kind of elaborate cut scene or something, but Scott doubted it. Nah, he’d just seen real magic. And watched real people die. That was some edgelord bullshit he didn’t want any part of. But some small piece of him also felt a thrill race through his body. Another world. A place with real magic. With real evil. With real heroes—not just the wannabes of Hearthworld playing pretend. 

Scott glanced at Randy, who seemed to be in a state of shock. He didn’t seem to be in a particularly talkative mood. Scott decided to break the ice and get the ball rolling. 

“Did you see that crap, dude? So like”—he shrugged, his armor clinking lightly—“I guess that fake pirate asshole is actually a real pirate asshole. How ’bout that shit.”

“I, that’s…” Randy fumbled for words, sounding both frantic and awed. “Well … I supposed that would be my conclusion, too. Yes.”

“I mean it has to be real,” Scott replied, frustrated by the realization. All this time, that asshole had been griefing him with cheater magic. He should probably forgive the dude since he was like an inter-dimensional refugee or whatever, but it was still some world-class cheating bullshit. Still, he felt vindicated that Roark hadn’t beaten him fair and square. There was a serious asterisk next to all those losses. “So what does that mean? Like, what do we even do with that?”

For a moment neither of them said anything, both just grappling with the weight of the impossible situation.

“This is the Quest,” Randy finally said, his voice more confident than it had ever been before, like he actually owned a pair of balls. “This is our chance, Scott. You’ve logged a lot of hours in Hearthworld.” Not a question, just a fact. Scott had spent a buttload of time inside these servers. Working on both his main character and his various alts. It was pretty much his life, as far as he was concerned. IRL was the real grind, filled with petty bullshit and pointless relationships that he could care less about. Out there, he was an NPC, working just hard enough so he could eventually make his way back into the game. 

“Why?” Randy asked, his gaze oddly intense. “I’ll tell you why. Because the real world is meaningless and terrible. Because it’s just awful bosses. It’s bills that won’t pay themselves. It’s living your life like a rat running around in a wheel, always moving, but going nowhere.” 

Scott shrugged, but said nothing. The dude wasn’t wrong. 

“But not in Hearthworld,” the Admin continued. “In Hearthworld, you’re someone, and there’s always more going on than meets the eye. There are quests to finish, levels to earn, mobs to grind. In here”—he swept an arm around—“things make sense. You put in the work and you get rewarded. In here you can be anything if you have enough dedication. In here there’s magic. Except…” 

Randy faltered and glanced down, losing some of his steam and confidence as he shifted from foot to foot. After a beat he glanced back up. “Except none of it’s real. It might look real and even feel real, but at the end of the day you have to log out and go back to the real world. You have to go back to your terrible job and the bullies and the jerks who take all the credit for your hard work and dump all the blame on you. At the end of the day, it’s all fake. The monsters. The quests. The heroes.” Randy looked back up at him, his silver eyes so intense that the dude looked more than a little cray-cray. “But not this time, Scott. We could be real heroes. We could actually take down a World Boss and make a difference in the lives of millions of people.”

“Or aliens,” Scott interjected.

Randy went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Instead of pretending to exist in a world of magic”—he lifted a hand and foliage burst from his palm, vines curling, flowers blooming—“we could be a part of the real thing.” 

Scott put his hands up.

“Okay, spaz. Enough with the rousing speeches.” Truthfully, he felt more alive than he had in years. More excited and hopeful than he ever had before. Ever. But he couldn’t say any of that to Randy. “I get it. Real magic. We can be heroes. Avengers assemble. Blah, blah, blah. I’m in. Just shut your stupid geek pie-hole before I vomit in my mouth. Now what the fuck do we actually do? It’s fine to talk, but we need a plan to execute.”

The Admin’s face went blank, as though he were just now considering that for the first time. After a moment he shrugged, “Maybe we should go ask the magic guy from another world?”

“Well, come on,” Scott said. “Get us back there already.”

With a little Admin power and fairy dust, Randy shifted them back into the stone box with Roark. The Griefer was on his knees where they’d left him, glaring down at the floor like he was trying to cut a hole in it with some faulty laser vision. 

Scott had come around to the idea that this guy was a legit wizard, but he had to admit he felt a small surge of satisfaction about Roark getting some well-deserved payback. Until he heard the guy’s ramblings. The dude was mumbling softly about how “It’s not possible” and “Everyone died. They couldn’t keep a secret like that. Could they?” 

Almost against his will, Scott saw flashes from the fucked up vision again. Roark had probably lived a pretty messed up life, so maybe he could be a little bit less of a dick about the whole griefing thing. 

After a second, Roark shook his head, gaze coming back into focus like he’d finally realized they were back. 

“Well,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Have you decided what you’ll do with me then?”

Scott crossed his arms, planting a disdainful expression on his avatar’s face. “Fine, brohole, you’ve officially convinced us you’re from another stupid planet or whatever. Congratulations. We believe you.” 

“You believe me?” The Griefer said, looking from Scott to Randy, then back again. “Both of you?”

“Yeah, dickface, we believe you—even if your accent is stupid as balls.” 

“And we’ve decided,” Randy jumped in, scooting up next to Scott and dropping a hand on his shoulder, “to help you. But if we’re going to do that, we need to know the whole story, and where to start.” 

Scott shook Randy’s hand off. Yeah, they were in this together, but he was still the alpha here.

Roark grimaced and picked at the collar encircling his throat. “Well, I suppose you can start helping me by taking this bloody damned collar off.” He nearly growled the words. 

Scott watched as Randy blushed like crazy, his face turning caught-farting-in-school red. To get that kind of Avatar response, the Admin must’ve been in one of those uber Deep Dive capsules. The fifty grand models, that came with every bell and whistle on the market. Scott was even more jealous of that than he’d been by the guy’s estate or his badass collection of gear. 

“Yeah, sure, sorry,” Randy mumbled. He pressed his thumb to the metal and mumbled, “‘AssMan_69 is one classy motherfucker.’”

Immediately, the collar opened and fell away.

“Okay. You’re free. So what are we waiting for?” PwnrBwner asked, bringing one hand to rest on the mace head tucked into his belt. “This tyrant asshole needs killing. Let’s go asshole hunting.”

                                                                                  ***

Randy didn’t hear a word the Griefer was saying, not really. He caught the vague impression of an imminent war between the Cruel Citadel and the Vault of the Radiant Shield, as well as an alliance among Infernal dungeon lords. His brain also registered when Scott jumped in with relevant questions—while simultaneously filtering out his perpetual onslaught of douchebag comments—but for the most part, Randy’s brain was in another world.

Specifically, the world Roark the Griefer had come from. 

There was a whole other dimension out there, one where magic wasn’t just real but commonplace. As an engineer and scientist, he’d always hoped… but he could never quite believe. Part of him still wanted to say this was all some trick cooked up by a modder who’d anticipated their moves far enough ahead to create a cutscene of carnage and violence so well-made that it could’ve been news footage from some war-torn country mid-regime change.

But the absolute disbelief and devastation on Roark’s face when he saw that little girl taken by this Tyrant King… Randy wasn’t great with people, but even he could tell the Griefer wasn’t acting. Anyway, who would go to all the trouble to fake evidence of a whole other world just so they could pretend not to have known about half of it? Randy thought he could probably have dismissed this whole thing as a lie if not for that.

Another dimension… And why not? If technology had advanced sufficiently for Frontflip to create a pocket dimension called Hearthworld where strings of code lived and humans visited, then there was no logical argument against the existence of a whole other dimension. It did beg the question of who or what had created it, though. What if Earth was the video game of some whole other hyperintelligent society and humans were just the NPCs populating it and sending those otherworldly players on quests?

That was a disconcerting thought. Randy grabbed his head and tried to blink away a sudden wave of vertigo.

“…and the only way they’ll agree to it is if I bring them Bad_Karma’s head,” Roark’s voice filtered through Randy’s momentary existential crisis.

“Dicks,” PwnrBwner said.

Roark shrugged. “It’s strategically smart. If I can’t kill him, then they’ll know I’m not strong enough to lead them and that they can afford to ignore me. If I can kill him, then he’ll be out of their hair and they’ll have my word that I won’t come for them next.”

“Wait,” Randy said. “Did you just say you were supposed to kill Bad_Karma? Highest level player on the server, sixteen hundred hours Hardcore Mode Bad_Karma?”

“What the hell, Randy, were you not listening to any of the last ten minutes?” PwnrBwner said. “Roark has a quest to kill Karma. If he does, the other dungeon bosses will help him fight this Lowen asshole. Then he can go back to his home world and kill the Tyrant King.”

“But”—Randy checked Roark’s stats—“you’re only a level 36 Troll. I know you’ve killed players double and triple your level before, but you can’t kill Bad_Karma. He’d massacre you.”

The Griefer smirked. “He did. You lot caught me just out of the respawn.”

“What are you going to do?” Randy said. “You can’t finish the quest.”

“That’s what I told him.” PwnrBwner turned back to Roark and started ticking items off on his fingers. “Karma’s got unique class spells and perks and special abilities out the ass. Plus, people will do anything for him. He founded my guild. He’s got about a billion seed followers streaming his every move. He’s so fucking popular that his brother’s popular just because they’re related. I escorted that little dickface through a dungeon, and twelve thousand new accounts followed me. That’s how popular BK is, and it’s all because he’s a badass. You’ll never kill him in a fair fight.” PwnrBwner snorted. “Hell, you’ll never kill him in a rigged fight. You’re massively screwed, dude.”

“I don’t intend to fight him, not truly,” Roark said. “That was my mistake the first time around.”

“This place isn’t like IRL,” PwnrBwner said. “You’re not just gonna sneak up on this guy while he’s asleep and take him out. That’s not how it works in games.”

“There are lots of ways to take someone off guard. Maybe I can’t beat him as a hero would, but I’m not a hero. I’m a Dungeon Lord, and that is my true strength.” Roark glanced around at the small room, his eyes burning with a plan. “If I can get him to fight on my territory, I might have an idea about how to win.” Roark looked dead into Randy’s eyes. “But I will need your help to do it.”

Randy blinked. “I’m sorry, for a second it looked like you were talking to me.”

“That badge you showed me. It means you’re one of the authorities of Hearthworld, correct?”

“I mean…”

“You can follow someone for days without being seen, open portals barehanded, and you have access to special items too powerful or dangerous for this world.”

“But I can’t use those to run around killing players. I mean, I could, but I would lose my job.”

As he said it, Randy realized the utter ridiculousness of that line of protest. He was going to lose his job either way. No way was he going to be able to explain any of this to the board. What would he say? An interdimensional being asked him to help kill the most powerful and popular player on the server so he could unite the Infernal dungeon lords against a whole dungeon of interdimensional invaders? Silva wouldn’t just fire him, he would have Randy’s Hearthworld account deleted, blacklist him throughout the rest of the tech community, and probably have him put in the loony bin while he was at it.

On the other hand, if he kept his mouth shut and went back to the board without any answers or solutions, he’d definitely still get fired, but he might get to keep his Hearthworld account.

It came down to whether he would rather be fired for doing nothing or for helping someone stop a murdering tyrant. After the speech he’d given to Scott—something so unlike him it was almost hard to comprehend—Randy knew the answer without a shadow of doubt. He was scared, but after witnessing the carnage Roark had showed them, who wouldn’t be? At the same time, Randy also felt good. This was it. This was the moment his life had been building toward. Randy wasn’t the type of person to believe in destiny, but if there was real magic, then why not?

He was done living his life as a pushover. Done living as a coward and a doormat for other people. So what if he got fired? So what if he lost his account and had to start from scratch? If Roark could get hurled through an interdimensional portal, wind up as a level one Troll in a world he didn’t understand, and still fight on, then what excuse could Randy possibly come up with? 

“Whatever we do, it’ll have to be fast,” Randy said. “I’ll only have my Admin privileges for two more days. But I’m in. All in. I’ll even kill Bad_Karma for you, if you want.” 

“Reel it back in a little, tiger.” PwnrBnwer snorted. “You sound like you’re trying to join a cult.”

Randy felt his face and ears heating up, but he stood up taller and ignored the High Combat Cleric. He’d meant what he said, and he was going to stand behind it. He was a hero now. That was the kind of thing heroes did.

Luckily, the Griefer seemed to be ignoring PwnrBwner’s snide remarks, too.

“It has to be me,” Roark said, “And I have to do it alone or the other Dungeon Lords will never respect me enough to follow. What I need from you is crucial, though—information. Never underestimate the power of proper foresight.” The Griefer rubbed his hands together, clearly eager to begin. “Now time is running out, and there’s a lot to do, so it’s best if we get to work.”