The Mists of Erantia (Realm of Arkon Book 7) Read online

  The Mists of Erantia

  Chapter 1

  "Would you quit cuddling him already? He's not a teddy bear, you know!"

  "Are you still pissed at me?"

  Alyona slipped Gloom another piece of fruit, dusted off her hands, then patted the boar on the side and finally returned to the campfire.

  "Seriously, just let it go! You know full well that we cannot go with you to Vaedarr. You have your duty to perform, and we have ours."

  With a shrug, she took a seat to my right, folded her hands on her knees, and gazed into the logs crackling in the flames.

  "It'll be an eternity before those Ancients of yours get here! I've seen those beasts just as clearly as I see you now!" I looked at all the fighters gathered around the fire, stopping my eyes at Max. "Understand, we're talking about two thousand miles! And their speed is rivaled only by pregnant cows!"

  "Let's not start this again, Roman, eh?" Max sighed, lighting his pipe from a thin branch pulled out of the fire. "How do you know they're on foot?" The warrior took a deep pull, exhaled the smoke, and met my eyes again. "A gazillion entities have left their marks on both of us. How many of them even know what 'on foot' means?"

  "Like Kirana's temple is some magical solution!" I set my jaw, fighting down a fit of rage that would be altogether misplaced under the circumstances. "Let's say you do find it. How are you supposed to stop this bloody invasion?"

  "I already told you that—"

  "Let it go, Max," my friend was interrupted by Bonbon, sitting on his right. "Your argument is futile for the simple reason that Roman understands perfectly that you're right. Only he still can't accept it, unfortunately. That happens... You rave and rant only because you know you're powerless to impact the situation in any way." The warrior nodded in the direction of Kan, who, along with the rest of my people, was listening attentively to the Blades' commander at the adjacent campfire. Then he looked back at me, and added: "Compared to them, we are nothing. Less than nothing. Your century would wipe the floor with any existing clan. But tell me, Krian, will that matter one bit when you face off against the Twice Cursed God himself?"

  "It's not my century," I grumbled.

  "What difference does it make?" Bonbon shrugged. "You're worried for your sister and friend. But, given the circumstances, they will be in far greater danger being at your side than almost anywhere else in this world."

  Well, damn. There was nothing I could say to refute that logic. Indeed, I was much higher on Vill's shit list than all of them put together. And thinking that I was strong enough to oppose a god would be downright foolish of me. Star fever was a dangerous thing, especially when it could hurt the people you cared about most... Still, I couldn't stomach the thought of leaving them again!

  "Oh, do whatever you want!" I sighed, stuck a pipe in my mouth, lit up and stared into the flames in silence.

  "Come on, Roman," Alyona nudged me gently with her shoulder, and tried to peer into my eyes. "We'll try to be careful. I promise!"

  "Yeah, yeah, I know all about your promises. Like the one to wait for me in Ellorian. And what now? You've managed to get dragged into every possible mess! And now this one is a bloody gray cat! What, will my nephews be kittens now?"

  "Oh, you should talk!" Max exclaimed indignantly from the other side of the campfire. "We got dragged into shit, but you're swimming in strawberry jam? Have you looked in the mirror lately? What happened to your eyes? And those horns?"

  "For my kind, horns are a sign of power," I replied, struggling to hold back a smile. "At least that's what my wife said."

  "Oh, sure, women say that all the time. I should introduce you to a buddy of mine..." Bonbon interjected with a deadpan expression.

  "W... what did you just say?! You're married?!" Alyona didn't let him finish. Is it one of them?" She turned to the women at the adjacent fire, shifting her eyes from one to the other, then punched me gently in the side. "Well, out with it!"

  "Our prince's spouse is a is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma!" Reece whispered conspiratorially in the silence hanging over the campfire. "Nobody has seen her except for our valiant leader. In those visions of his."

  Hart take that scoundrel! Though it was my fault for letting that nugget slip.

  "Is he for real, Roman?" Alyona asked in a tone that suggested she didn't believe a word uttered by the garrulous mage.

  "Yes, he is for real," I confessed. "But I'm not going to get into it now, so don't bother grilling me."

  "Fair enough," she said amenably, surprising me. "Frankly, I'm less interested in hearing about your wives than about those dragons..."

  "I'll tell you tomorrow, on the way to that rock of yours. It's late, and I still have things to ruminate on before bed."

  Rising to my feet, I gave a nod to the party gathered around the fire, and started toward my tent at an even pace. Some rest would indeed do me good after the nonstop, dizzying action of the past three days.

  How strange human nature is! You miss a person, worry about them nonstop, wondering what they're up to and how they're getting on without you, yearning for the day when you're finally reunited, never to be separated again, expecting to do nothing but sit there beside them and gaze lovingly upon that dear face... But the moment your dream comes true, the anticipated eternal bliss lasts only a short while, growing duller with each passing minute. No doubt, I was happy as a pig in muck that I'd finally found Alyona and Max... And yet, my head was already elsewhere.

  After only two days with my sister and friend, our paths were diverging once again. Max, you really are something else. Even back on Earth I'd noticed his knack for surrounding himself with quality people. Though his social circle was small—not counting his wife, naturally—everyone in it had never let him down, at least in my memory. And once, a passing acquaintance with close ties to the government had even helped him out—completely gratis, without asking for anything back. That kind of thing just didn't happen to ordinary people. Luffy, Teetotaler, Alex, Bonbon, Masyanya, Donut... How many people were capable of bringing together such solid individuals in such a short time, considering how different they all were? Why did I consider them solid? Well, who else would you to the end of the world, despite all the hardships portended by such a path? To be sure, looking at the situation from another angle, "solid" could easily be synonymous with "stupid" given the circumstances. Still, the fact was they all followed my friend, the freaking Gray Cat! I couldn't hold back a grin. It was funny how life had changed for us both in a matter of only a few months! And there was no going back—not that I would want to. Yes, I was loathe to part ways with my sisters again, but I had no choice but to make peace with it. Bonbon was right—she would be safer with Max... Of course, everyone was a sage when it came to advising others! Bonbon was still headed to Vaedarr in search of his wife, and Donut and his blond girlfriend were together as well. The rogue claimed to know the inhabited areas of the catacombs like the back of his own hand, while admitting that he had never seen the gate from the vision. Of course, I doubted that any player had ever actually seen it. The area underneath Vaedarr was divided into zones, just like everywhere else, and the zones leading to the grave of the forgotten god were likely beyond the reach of any gaming community. Truthfully, I wasn't crazy about the notion of dragging others there with me, but a friend's request weren't mere empty words to me. Besides, they were my clanmates, and I couldn't leave them behind. They would just have to stay out of fights too dangerous for their level—thank Hart, we had enough level-appropriate folks to bear that burden.

  Halting next to my tent, I glanced up at the moon creeping onto the sky above, and gave an exasperated sigh. The
old habits just wouldn't die even in my new, virtual form—no way I would fall asleep before processing all that was presently weighing on my mind. But the spartan interior of the foxes' tent wasn't very conducive to thinking. It reminded me of an army tent, which made perfect sense—why would a small mobile squad bother lugging around the extra weight? Field palisades and grand officer tents were the luxury of large legions. Rationality above all else.

  I sat down on a log near the entrance and lit my pipe, then fished for a flask in my bag and took a few swigs. Gloom, barely walking straight after stuffing himself on some local fruit, plopped down on the ground next to me and quickly drifted off to sleep. I didn't mind that—somehow his rhythmic puffing made it easier to focus.

  Last night, Max and I must have talked for at least five hours—first about all the pertinent issues, and then about everything else. Everything else—or, rather, everyone else—joined us shortly thereafter, forcing me to start from the top regaling a whole new audience with tales of my adventures in the game. I omitted only certain details, such as my marriage and a few other private nuances that were nobody's business. There was no sense in hiding anything else. Donut and the Amerikan ranger knew this game world better than the rest of us put together, and it would take a special kind of idiot to neglect that fact.

  The truth of my assumptions became evident almost at once. It was Donut who proceeded to grill me about this, and subsequently advising to enter the city through the catacombs. Apparently, there were several unguarded entrances.

  The Untainted ought not be taken lightly. The Impending Dawn's hatred toward me should vanish upon my handing Ulrich's melted amulet to their leader, Father Sebastian. I just needed to find a way to get to him in one piece, seeing as I was unlikely to be welcomed at the city gates with bread and salt. It was safe to wager that the streets of Vaedarr were presently teeming with the Untainted. Though I knew that the thousands of players that had suddenly descended on the city posed no threat to Erantia whatsoever, the order surely didn't. And it didn't matter that it had been half a year since the patch—national security services were only buffoons in trashy spy novels. And killing its agents was ill-advised—the reputation hit would plunge you into "hatred" territory in no time, and regaining the faction's good graces would be anything but quick and easy. The most ingenious—and absurdly simple—solution was initially proposed by Reece: to have Kan deliver the champion's badge to the head of the Fellowship of the Untainted. Quite an elegant solution—and yet none of the players thought of it! And not because we were stupid. Simply, such an option couldn't have been conceived by our thought patterns. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Though I could pass the amulet to anyone, the item would magically lose its two molten stripes the moment strange hands touched it. Now, we could try sending a messenger to try and get the man to grant me an audience... but that wouldn't work, either. There was no cheating the System, and I wasn't going to bother trying. Donut had mentioned that, according to the devs, the catacombs even had entry points into the Royal Palace, and claimed to have an approximate idea about the entrance to the temple of the humans' supreme deity. It wasn't firsthand knowledge, but came from a trusted source—one of his sisters. That turned out to be an explosive revelation, as nobody in the group had apparently known about the rogue's twin sisters. Aside from Max, of course. Who confessed to everything at once. As always. And so the plan was hatched. We would set off to Vaedarr, and try to make it to the temple of Myrt by way of the catacombs. It was idiotic on the fact of it—something straight out of The Avengers—but it was the least shittiest plan out of all proposed. The worst thing about it was that I would need to leave the party on the border of Erantia. A raid party's reputation was gauged by its leader, and I couldn't transfer leadership to anyone, being a freaking prince and all... No, that kind of cheap tactic wouldn't fly in this world—the highest rank on the local hierarchical ladder was the leader by default.

  With a sigh, I flicked the sleeping boar on the snout, and reached for my flask. The moon had concealed behind the clouds, and the wind had picked up, blowing warm air scented with rotting weeds from the swamp. Yes, I had recognized that our paths must diverge quickly into my conversation with Max. And yet, as Bonbon had shrewdly noted, understanding was one thing, but accepting was something else entirely...

  I had taken all of Max's friends into my clan. Truth be told, I wasn't burning with desire to start stocking the clan full of players. NPCs were incapable of betrayal—for now, at least—but I couldn't say the same for my compatriots. Call me paranoid, but given the recent developments and all the moving pieces in this increasingly intricate game of chess, I wasn't about to start trusting unvetted people. These people, however, were anything but unvetted. They were with Max, and that told me everything. The calculation was clear and unequivocal, like a geometrical axiom. And so my seventy four percent bonus to damage output was augmented by their twenty percent. And that wasn't counting the bonuses for my rank of captain or the forty percent boost from the Order of the Two-Faced Goddess. All in all, one hundred and forty four percent to damage output! An impressive number, to be sure. And yet I wasn't squealing with delight like Alex and Donut. Why? Because for all of my great victories, there wasn't a single one for which I could rightly claim credit. Nerghall was slain primarily by the undead army, Shaartakh by Altus, and Rgharg by the dragons. Even Yllial I had killed—just barely—thanks to the potion. Would all these fancy numbers mean against the dark gods and Cheney? I could only hope that they would, but I had my doubts.

  Moreover, it had become painfully clear that I had managed to get myself into another hot mess. The Ancients had awoken—this was now a fact. Somebody had stirred the beasts from their slumber. And I had a pretty good idea how that might have happened.

  Taking a deep drag on my pipe, I exhaled through clenched teeth, ran my palm across the sandpapery hint of my sword, and thought back to the vision.

  At once, the Great Forest appeared before my mind's eye, ablaze in bright flames. A vast territory blanketed with a grayish darkness. Rifts in the earth, wings at the back, and three colossal shapes of the ancient gods. A churning sea of the transformed, and the legions of dwarven and human soldiers bristling with pikes like monstrous motley porcupines.

  For crying out loud... I pulled off a gauntlet, wiped the cold sweat off my brow, steadied my breath and took a look around. No, everything was fine. The guys were all sitting around campfires, Gloom was sleeping, and the moon was still hiding behind the clouds... The scene simply flashed before my eyes. Flashed and disappeared. But now I knew for sure that these Ancients weren't advancing on the Great Forest willy-nilly—no, there was some kind of power source hidden at the Kraet Peaks that they were after. As to the nature of this source or what they might want with it, I hadn't a clue. I took one last drag, knocked out the pipe against the trunk, and cast a contemplative gaze west, toward the Great Forest. History may be silent on the matter, but there was a certain valley there, nestled amid the mountains. And the white-haired bastard that had awakened those monsters was acting at the behest of the bastard who had ordered me to design that very valley. Was that a coincidence? Perhaps...

  The moon had peeked out from behind the clouds, and the wind had picked up, carrying in notes of rot. Something had definitely croaked upwind. Which wasn't especially surprising under the circumstances—the surprising part was that it hadn't yet been consumed after croaking. I shifted my gaze to the gauntlet in my lap, and gave a satisfied smile.

  Ingvar's Gauntlets of Valor

  Wrists; plate.

  Durability: 3788/4000.

  Epic scalable. An item from the Ingvar's Valor set.

  No minimum level.

  Armor: 765.

  +255 to strength.

  +255 to constitution.

  +12.75% to armor class.

  +12.75% to physical damage.

  Weight: 2.6 lbs.

  2 item set bonus: 20% to constitution.

  From the armor set of Ingv
ar the Warrior God.

  Shaped like an hourglass, the monolithic plate gauntlet covered the wrist and the metacarpal bones. Unlike my previous pair, here the fingers were protected by coils. Just above the knuckles, an additional curved section of plate was affixed. The base layer was made from some kind thick leathery material, soft and pliable yet amazingly durable. Looking up from the matte black metacarpal bones of each hand was the scowling muzzle of a wolf. Magically, I could both smoke and drink with gauntleted hands. To say nothing of handling a sword, which felt as if I were holding it with a bare hand. In a word, it was a work of wonder more than a pair of gauntlets. Slipping a hand into my bag, I produced an earring, and set to carefully studying the black fox cradled in my palm. A fluffy tail, a set of pointy ears, and a calm, slightly anxious gaze of those lifelike eyes.

  She hadn't forgotten... I gave a heavy sigh, then a bitter chuckle. The farewell present of a goddess. A trifle to remember her by...

  The item had no stats, but Max did say... Oh, what did it matter what he said? Even if he had said nothing, I'd still be wearing this earring.

  "Because I hadn't forgotten, either..." I smiled at the fox in my hand, and carefully slipped the earring into my ear.

  ? ????? ???? ??????? ?????????? ?????? ?? ????????? ? ????? ?????

  My body went numb for a second, but the world returned back to normal shortly after. You can't expect me to keep being surprised at not knowing what the hell is happening, I thought, studying the system message. Max had mentioned that Sata had grossly violated some law in rescuing her foxes, and that she could no longer be certain of her own survival... But I wouldn't let that happen. And not because of any promise or solemn vow I might have made. No, I just wouldn't, and that was that.

  And when did my gentleman of a husband manage to get into a goddess' pants?! The sarcasm in Jaelitte's voice was mixed with equal measure of incredulity.