Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series Page 5

  “We’re just passing through,” Daniel wheezed.

  “You were passing through. Now you seem to have stopped, I’d say.” Merridack smirked. “Passing through from where?”

  “We’re not… from around here,” Eric said shakily, glancing back at the four cutthroats behind him.

  “Hey Merridack,” said the grungy little thug. He was apparently finished patting down the corpse.

  “What’d you find, Rat?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Merridack turned around in surprise. “Nothing? Not a single solitary copper?”

  “Nothin’. ‘less you want this,” Rat said as he held up the ridiculous fur-trimmed hat.

  “That?! If I had a mangy, flea-bitten cur of a dog, I wouldn’t give him that hat – he’d be too ashamed to be seen in the damn thing.” Merridack looked back at Daniel and tsk, tsk, tsked. “What a waste to kill a man and not get a damn thing out of it. Although we did get peace and quiet, so I suppose that’s something.”

  He flicked his hand in the air, the one not holding his wooden walking stick. Suddenly a small throwing knife appeared between his fingers.

  “Now,” he said, leaning in closer to Eric and Daniel, “unless you two want to follow your fellow traveler into the afterlife, I’d suggest making my day a little more profitable than he did.”

  “We don’t have anything,” Eric said, his voice shaky.

  “I find that hard to believe, but I suppose we can search your body after I’m finished with it.”

  “No, seriously,” Daniel said, turning his pockets inside out. “We don’t have anything but these clothes.”

  “Well, now, there’s a pity. Two less bards in the world, coming up.”

  Merridack raised his hand –

  Suddenly a translucent text box appeared to the left of Merridack:

  New Quest: Convince Merridack to spare your life.

  The King of Thieves is planning your imminent departure from this life. Convince him otherwise.

  Challenge Level: Simple

  Reward: Life

  Punishment for Failure: Death

  “Wait!” Daniel shouted, raising his bloody hands in the air.

  Merridack glanced at Daniel’s bloody hands, then looked back at his face. “Well? I’m waiting.”

  “I want to work for you!” Daniel burst out.

  Eric turned to stare at him, stunned.

  Merridack paused.

  The entire group of robbers was silent…

  …and then Merridack started laughing. His men joined in heartily.

  “You? Work for me?!” he said with a chortle. “That corpse over there is more useful to me than you are, boy. At least he’s not breathing my air anymore.”

  “No, seriously – just before you, uh, showed up, I was saying I wanted to be a thief.”

  “Yes… I overheard that…”

  “So you guys are thieves, right? Teach me to be a thief and I’ll work for you! For, uh… a while.”

  Merridack chuckled again, but lowered the knife to his side. “You’ve missed your true calling, boy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A jester. I’ve never met a bigger fool in my life.”

  All the men on the path laughed harder.

  “What about your friend?” Merridack asked.

  Daniel glanced at Eric. “He, uh – he wants to work for you, too.”

  “I do?” Eric muttered under his breath.

  “Yeah, you do,” Daniel hissed.

  Merridack took a step back and appraised Eric’s clothes. “He’s not really dressed the part, now is he?”

  “I sort of wanted to be a mage,” Eric said hesitantly.

  “Ah – so you can follow all the real fighters around and heal them while they do the dirty work? Seems like a fitting role for a scrawny little turd like you.”

  Eric glowered but kept his mouth shut.

  “Alright, Thief… and Mage. We’ll conduct a little test. If you can steal something – anything – from the market at Blackstone without being caught by the castle guards, I’ll take you on as an apprentice,” he said, pointing at Daniel. Then he turned to Eric. “And you… well, I’ll point you in the right direction instead of slitting your throat.”

  “Yay,” Eric said sarcastically.

  Success! You have convinced Merridack to spare your life – at least for the moment!

  New Skill: Persuasion

  This skill allows you to convince non-player characters to do your bidding. Dependent on level and emotional state of NPC.

  Points Awarded: +1

  Effect: Every point equivalent to 1% chance of persuading NPCs.

  “What happens if we get caught by the castle guards?” Daniel asked, thinking that if he intentionally bungled the test, it might be preferable to spending another instant with Merridack. Maybe spend a night or two in jail…

  Merridack smiled. “Seeing as they usually execute thieves on the spot, I’d advise you not to get caught.”

  Daniel and Eric just stood there staring in horror.

  Merridack turned around. “On second thought, give me that ridiculous thing.”

  Rat threw the fur-lined hat through the air. Merridack caught it easily, then slapped it into Daniel’s chest.

  “Best wipe yourself off, boy. Don’t want the city guards finding you literally red-handed.”

  The entire group laughed again.

  “Great,” Eric muttered. “Just… great.”

  Daniel looked down at the body lying on the forest path.

  What the hell did we get ourselves into with this game?

  8

  Daniel and Eric walked down the forest path surrounded by the cutthroats. Besides Merridack and his walking staff, every one of the other men wielded a dagger. And they probably had throwing knives to boot.

  Running was not exactly an option.

  “Hey,” Daniel whispered as they walked along. “Are you seeing stats and stuff in the air?”

  “I saw one about convincing Merridack not to kill us, but that was the last one,” Eric whispered back.

  “I got the same one – but after I convinced him, I got points for Persuasion.”

  Eric looked over in disbelief. “ ‘Persuasion’? More like begging.”

  “It was persuasion,” Daniel said defensively.

  “You know how Endurance is another name for Constitution in most RPGs?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, well, in this game, I think ‘persuasion’ is another name for ‘begging.’”

  “What are you two fools mumbling about?” Merridack called out from the head of the group.

  “Uh… we were wondering why it’s called the Shattered Lands,” Daniel improvised.

  “Because of the wars, of course.”

  “What wars?”

  Merridack looked around in surprise. “Are you daft?”

  “I don’t think so,” Eric said sarcastically.

  “The Beraldian Wars? Went on for 60 years? Split up the One Kingdom into 17 smaller lands?” Merridack asked, with a tone of voice like Ring a bell?

  “So… just this area is the Shattered Lands?”

  “No!” Merridack snapped impatiently. “It stretches from the seas of Alombria to the Mountains of Morril, from the deserts of Silarta to the icy wastes of Gur. Every fool knows that.”

  “Guess we’re not fools, then,” Eric said.

  Merridack glared at him. “You have a smart tongue in that head, boy. Be careful someone doesn’t cut it out.”

  Eric kept quiet after that.

  “We’re going to Blackstone, though, right?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Besides your final resting place?” Merridack asked as his men laughed.

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  “The capital of Norumberland.”

  “Which is…?”

  “The kingdom ruled by Arnos of the house of Thane – gods, boy, are you truly this
ignorant, or are you merely trying to grate on my nerves?”

  “Sorry.”

  “‘Sorry,’” Merridack imitated him, to his men’s amusement. “You’ll have to do better than that when the Blackstone Guard catches you.”

  “Maybe you can ‘persuade’ them,” Eric whispered to Daniel with a smirk.

  “Well, since you’ll be right there beside me, maybe you can try persuading them too,” Daniel shot back.

  Eric didn’t seem so smug after that.

  They skirted some farmland on the way, passing small villages where children played and blacksmiths clanked at their forges – but mostly they stuck to the forest.

  Eventually they reached a foul-smelling stream that rushed over a landscape of stones.

  “Oh my god, what’s that smell?” Eric asked as he pinched his nose.

  “The shit and piss of every soul inside Castle Blackstone,” Merridack said. “The River Karth passes nearby, and its waters are diverted to the castle where it serves as drinking water, the source of its moat, and the city sewer. If you’re going to take a drink, do it upstream.”

  “I’m sort of wishing the sensory stuff wasn’t quite so immersive,” Eric moaned.

  “Turn it down in your game settings,” Daniel suggested.

  “Good idea,” Eric said as he motioned counter-clockwise with his hand and started stabbing invisible buttons in the air with his finger.

  If Merridack and the others noticed Eric’s strange behavior, they didn’t comment on it.

  Maybe NPCs are designed not to notice things we do for behind-the-scenes game play, Daniel mused.

  They followed the putrid stream until they finally came to a massive wall made of mortar and stones. It soared above the treetops – Daniel guessed it must have been 200 feet tall – and curved in both directions until it disappeared from sight into the forest.

  The foul-smelling stream emanated from a thirty-foot-wide moat surrounding the castle. The water was brown and covered in a viscous scum, and smelled even worse than the stream.

  Merridack led them to a large tree that had fallen across the moat. It stretched all the way across, and the tops of its branches brushed against a vertical iron-barred grate set into a section of crumbling stone wall.

  Merridack nimbly climbed up onto the trunk and started across.

  “Don’t fall in, because you won’t make it back out,” he called over his shoulder.

  Daniel wondered what he meant until he saw something pass just inches under the water’s surface. It had to have been at least ten feet long and four feet thick at its widest – but he had only seen the barest hint of an outline.

  An alligator?

  A shark?!

  “What’s in there?” Daniel asked.

  “Jump in and see for yourself.”

  There was a two-foot gap next to the grate, and they easily slid through it into the sewers. Thank God there was a raised platform next to the water that they could walk on instead of wading directly through the muck.

  “That was pretty lucky the tree fell here,” Daniel said.

  “If you call axes ‘luck,’ I guess it was,” Merridack answered as he lit a torch stashed near the iron grate.

  “The soldiers don’t know?”

  “They rarely patrol the perimeter. They’re quite confident of the city’s invulnerability,” Merridack sneered.

  “But… won’t somebody eventually find the tree and haul it away?”

  “Eventually.”

  “What’ll you do then?”

  “Cut down another one.”

  Merridack led them into the sewer. Within sixty seconds, the daylight from the grate disappeared and the darkness won out.

  Daniel eyed the murky waters of the sewer flowing past their feet. “Those things in the moat… they don’t come in here?”

  “Only the babies. So watch your toes.”

  Rats scurried out of their path. Other loathsome things crept away into the shadows cast by Merridack’s torch.

  New Skill: Night Vision

  This skill increases your ability to see in low-light situations.

  Points Awarded: +1

  Effect: Every point increases 1% ability to see in the dark. 100% allows user to see in total darkness.

  They wound their way through a labyrinth of passages until they reached another grate spilling daylight into the darkness. This one was horizontal, though, as though it were set into a street by a curb.

  Merridack extinguished the torch by wrapping it in the bottom of his ragged cloak. Though the cloth got singed, the lack of oxygen smothered the flame.

  “Well, that’s one way to do it,” Eric mused.

  Merridack stood up on a ledge beneath the iron bars, lifted the grate, and peeked out. Apparently satisfied, he heaved the grate up and to the side, then climbed up into the daylight.

  “Well, come on, then,” he ordered.

  Daniel and Eric followed him into a narrow, deserted alleyway. The ground beneath their feet was made of cobblestones and littered with trash. Stone buildings rose up on either side of them thirty feet into the air. In the distance, a muted cacophony of human voices could be heard talking, laughing, arguing, and cursing, along with the bleating of animals, the clucking of chickens, and the lively music of flutes.

  The other cutthroats climbed up out of the sewer and into the alleyway. Once they were all assembled, Rat replaced the grate.

  “Come along, Master Thief and Mage,” Merridack said as he walked towards the entrance to the alleyway. “Time to prove your worth.”

  A translucent green block of text appeared in Daniel’s field of vision.

  New Quest: Accept Merridack’s challenge to steal an item from the Blackstone Castle market

  If you steal something from the marketplace, you gain the option to join Merridack and train to be a thief. If you fail… the Blackstone Castle guards will relieve you of your head.

  Challenge Level: Moderate

  Reward: Training to be a thief

  Punishment for Failure: Death

  “You see that?” Daniel whispered as they followed Merridack down the alleyway.

  “‘Accept Merridack’s challenge’? Yeah, unfortunately,” Eric said. “But it is interesting how we bypassed all the usual RPG stuff of going around and asking NPCs ‘How do you do this? Where should I go?’”

  “Did they ask you in the set-up how experienced you were?”

  “Oh yeah,” Eric realized. “I said I was advanced – how about you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For beginning players, they must let them get used to the world slowly. I mean, basically they fast-tracked us past all the noob stuff when Merridack showed up.”

  “Just like they fast-tracked that singer guy to a quick death,” Daniel murmured.

  “Eh, he’ll respawn in an hour,” Eric said callously. “And he’ll probably be just as annoying as he was the first time, too.”

  Daniel looked sideways at Eric. “Dude – the way he died was brutal.”

  Eric shrugged. “It’s a game.”

  “A really realistic game.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why we’re playing, right?”

  “I can’t believe you’re so… blasé about it.”

  “It’s just a game. People die, they respawn. Circle of life,” Eric joked. “Which we might be about to experience in a just a few minutes, so enjoy the rat-infested sewers and alleyways while you can.”

  Daniel could see the logic in his best friend’s words, but he couldn’t be that flippant about it. He still had the bard’s dried blood caked beneath his fingernails.

  9

  They left the alleyway and wound their way through slightly wider cobblestone streets. Daniel marveled at how huge the place was. Multiple towers soared into the sky from the stone wall surrounding the city, and they all seemed at least a quarter mile away. There would be a lot of territory to explore here.

  He also watched carefully as other characters walked past. Most of
them were humans, dressed in everything from peasant clothing to cleric’s robes to the finery of aristocrats – but there were a number of short, stocky dwarves with long beards, a couple of elves with slender builds and pointed ears, and a smattering of races Daniel had encountered in other online RPGs.

  Finally they arrived at the center of the city – a massive marketplace filled with hundreds of people, maybe even a thousand. Old women hunched over tables full of scaly fish. Farmers leaning on barrels of dirt-flecked potatoes and carrots. Wooden cages fashioned from sticks and twine, filled with clucking chickens and bleating lambs. Dead game birds hanging by their feet on strings. Dogs snuffling the ground for discarded scraps of food.

  In the center of the square, a humongous fire crackled as vendors roasted fowl and hunks of meat on spits. Off to the side was an outdoor pub or beer hall, with benches full of rowdy men and dwarves drinking steins of beer, laughing and telling dirty jokes. Scantily-clad barmaids navigated the tables with trays full of food and drink.

  And there were guards. Lots and lots of guards.

  They stood around the perimeter of the square, dressed in brass armor, crested helmets, and royal blue capes. They all carried spears and shields, and most had swords in scabbards strapped to their waists. Every last one of them was tall and powerfully built – and most looked like they’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.

  Perfect for running after people and stabbing them repeatedly, Daniel thought morosely.

  The guards kept a roving eye on the square at all times. A few even ambled through the crowds, making sure everything was orderly and no one got out of hand.

  “Crap,” Eric muttered. “There’s a lot of them.”

  “That there are, little mage!” Merridack chuckled. “Be sure you don’t make their acquaintance, because they prefer sticking you with pointy objects to shaking hands.”

  “Oh man,” Daniel moaned.

  “What do we have to steal, exactly?” Eric asked.

  “Anything you’d ordinarily have to pay or work for,” Merridack answered. “Food, money, clothing… no stones, unless they’re of the precious variety. And no dog turds, either.”