The Once King Read online

  SilentBlayde shot the commander a furious look for skipping over the vows he’d so obviously given the man to read. Garrond glared right back, clearly at the end of his patience. Fortunately, Tina knew this part already.

  “I do,” she said confidently. “I take him to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for rich or for poor, and forsaking all others for the rest of my life.”

  Garrond nodded like that was a good answer and tossed the paper away. “You may now exchange the symbols of your promise to one another.”

  His hands trembling, SB took her left hand in his, then they both stopped to laugh when they realized she was still wearing her armored gauntlet. She was shaking so badly that SB had to help her remove the plate glove so he could slide the ring onto her finger. Then their roles reversed, and she almost dropped his ring while waiting for SB to take off his gloves for her. They made it through in the end, though, their bare hands locked together with gold rings gleaming as they turned back to Garrond.

  The paladin moved his hands over their heads, and Tina shivered as she felt warm magic fall over her like a blanket. “A promise made in daylight can never be broken,” Garrond proclaimed in a ringing voice. “Let none deny what has been joined in the Sun’s light! In the presence of those who stand here as witness, I hereby acknowledge you as husband and wife. Blessings be upon your days and your children.”

  “May I kiss the bride?” Blayde asked hopefully.

  Garrond huffed impatiently through his mustache. “If you must.”

  SB smiled and pulled Tina into a happy kiss. “I love you,” he said, the words barely audible as the raid behind them erupted in applause.

  “I love you, too!” Tina shouted back, hoping he could hear her over NekoBaby’s incredibly loud whoop whoops.

  He must have, because suddenly he was kissing her again, moving with that lightning speed she didn’t know if she’d ever get used to. The roar from the Roughnecks grew louder and bawdier as she grabbed him back, kissing him with everything she had. Overhead, sparks flew across the gray sky as Sorcerers got carried away and ripped off magical fireworks. Garrond shouted at them to stop wasting mana and stomped back to his men, muttering under his breath about players making a mockery of the Sun’s sacred ceremonies. He had a great deal to say on that subject, actually, but Tina didn’t bother to listen. She was too busy trying to keep hold of her new husband as the whole raid surged in to congratulate them.

  “I have to say, I’m a little jealous,” Zen confessed, clapping Tina on the shoulder as she muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “never a bride.”

  “What?” Tina asked, struggling to hear the Ranger over NekoBaby’s ongoing “I’m so right” dance.

  “I said ‘You look very happy,’” Zen said, flashing her a rare, wide smile. “Congratulations.”

  Several more people rushed in after that. Honestly, Tina found it all a bit overwhelming. Being a guild leader was one thing, but being the center of attention like this, especially when all her guildmates were so huge now, made her want to shrink away. Fortunately, SB had her back as always, though he was dealing with his own problems.

  “What the hell, man?” Killbox said, socking SB hard in the arm. “No bachelor party? You’re killing me!”

  “This was just a battlefield wedding,” SilentBlayde assured him. “When we’re not at war and things are rebuilt, I want to have a real ceremony in Bastion.”

  Tina shot him an amused look. “Going for extra-married?”

  “I’ve always dreamed of marrying you in the royal cathedral,” he replied in all seriousness. “No reason I should give up on that vision yet.”

  “I can’t say no when you say it that way,” she said, squeezing his hand. Then she leaned in and hugged him, because she could do that now—just hug him or kiss him or hold his hand whenever she felt like it. She was seriously considering trying all three at once when a horn sounded from the Order of the Golden Sun’s camp. The roar of men’s voices filled the air a second later, and Tina sighed.

  “Looks like the party’s over,” she said as she tugged her gauntlets back on. “Back to business, people!” she yelled to her guild. “We’ve got a world to save!” When they were all scrambling at acceptable speeds, she turned back to SB. “And a hell of a lot to live for.”

  Her husband smiled back and grabbed her armored hand again, pressing the articulated metal to his lips as they turned together to face the black spire of the Once King’s Dead Mountain.

  Chapter 12

  James

  A few hours earlier

  Predawn in the Deadlands looked like midnight anywhere else.

  Standing together in the pitch dark of the broken road, James and Fangs in Grass craned their necks back, staring straight up at the imposing, ghostfire-lit battlements of the Dead Mountain Fortress. The Once King’s citadel rose so tall that its jagged peak was hidden by clouds. Even so, James could see a single point of bright blue-white light flickering through the haze at the very top. It was a light so intense that it could only be the Great Pyre, source of all ghostfire.

  “So,” Ar’Bati said, clearing his throat to hide the tremor in his voice. “What’s your plan for getting in?”

  James dropped his eyes to where the road they’d been following dead-ended at the fortress’s massive doors, a three-story wall of black metal crisscrossed with flickers of blue-white magic from the raid-level ward that kept them sealed.

  “I was thinking we’d knock.”

  He could hear the scowl in his brother’s voice. “Sneaking would be more prudent.”

  “It would,” James agreed. “But sneaking is for thieves and assassins. We’re here to talk. Polite discourse requires polite introduction.”

  Fangs heaved a long sigh and motioned for James to lead the way.

  Ears flat, James crossed the last dozen feet of the road and climbed the short steps to the massive door. This whole thing had been his idea, but that didn’t make walking up to the towering undead fortress any easier. It didn’t feel familiar, either, which was strange. James couldn’t count how many times Tina had dragged him to the DMF to heal her raid, but while the large details were the same—the terraced battlements that divided the mountain’s rise into tiers, the sheer black slopes without a single leaf of vegetation, the blue-white ghostfire sconces that danced and whispered on the endless wind—everything was so much…bigger, and not just in physical size. The fortress in front of him no longer felt like an art asset for bored gamers to play in. It felt like a castle, the seat of a king.

  A dreadful, lonely, terrible king.

  “Right,” James said, swallowing against the sudden dryness in his throat. “Let’s give this a try.”

  Trying not to cringe from the unnatural cold that oozed off the black metal like blood, James took a moment to brush the dirt off his armor and straighten his fur. When he was as presentable as he could manage—and, more importantly, out of viable stalling tactics—James lifted his staff and knocked, rapping the Eclipsed Steel politely against the ghostfire-lit metal doors.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  The metallic sound echoed through the silent valley. Lowering his staff, James squared his shoulders and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  “This is not working,” Fangs said, stepping back to glare up the slope. “The peak is very far. Maybe he can’t see us down here?”

  James shook his head. “There’s an army camped on his doorstep. He has to be watching.”

  “So knock again.”

  “But it’s rude to knock repeatedly.”

  Fangs gave him a scathing look, and James raised his hands. “What? He’s a king. An old king. That’s two levels of stickler for decorum.”

  “Then knock again respectfully,” his brother snapped, fur prickling. “We are not schtumple merchants hawking wares. We are princes of the Savannah! He’s not the only one who’s owed decorum.”

  That was a good point. They certainly
weren’t getting anywhere by waiting here. Glaring at the door, James steeled his courage and pulled himself to his full height, taking a deep breath to make sure he projected his words.

  “Hear me, oh great king of old!” he cried in his best “herald” voice, using the old elven word for “king” that was the Once King’s true name. “We are Fangs in the Grass, eldest son of Lord Rends Iron Hides of the Claw Born clan of the Savanna, and James of Claw Born, second son of Rends and adviser to the Holy King of Bastion! We have traveled many days and through great hardship to accept your offer of an audience!”

  James ended with a bow, sweeping his head low to hide the nervous trickle of sweat that was making its way down his cheek. He didn’t actually know if that was the proper way to make a courtly announcement, but it must have been good enough. The echoes of this voice were still bouncing across the valley when the flickering ward that guarded the door shifted, the ghostfire coalescing until the gathered flames formed the vague image of an elven face.

  “I grant you the right to appear before me, sons of Claw Born,” it said, speaking in a booming voice that made them both jump. Then they jumped again as the doors opened with a deafening boom. “Follow the torches to my court, but take care to stay in the light. Your safety is not guaranteed should you stray.”

  The way he said that made James’s fur stand on end, but it was too late to back out now. The huge doors were trundling open with a grinding sound, revealing the cavernous entry hall James remembered from the game. When they were fully opened, the magical ward covering the doors snuffed out, taking the face with it.

  Back when this had been a raid dungeon, the front hall had been a giant room full of skeleton patrols moving in a complicated pattern of interlocking circles that turned just fast enough to force raids to kill all of them if they didn’t want to be surprised from behind. Now, though, the airfield-sized, black-stone room was empty and silent. The only things that moved in the dark were the blue-white dots of the ghostfire sconces attached to the support columns that sprouted like stone trees from the paved floor at regular intervals. Several of the lights went out as James watched, leaving only the sconces in the center of the room, which stayed lit in a line to form a blue-white path through the dark, just as the Once King had promised.

  “Well,” James said, nodding at the remaining lights. “I guess we go that way.”

  Quiet as two cats, James and his brother crept through the door and into the first of several circles of light, if ghostfire could even properly be called light. The blue-white radiance was more like a different form of dark than a proper torch, but at least James could see well enough not to stub his toes.

  “I don’t like this,” Ar’Bati growled under his breath.

  James snorted. “Which part?”

  “Take your pick,” his brother said, glaring up at the dark above their heads. “We came here precisely because we knew the Once King had sent his army away, but I did not expect there to be no undead at all. No soldiers I can understand, but all kings have servants and attendants.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t need servants,” James said, ears swiveling. “It sounds empty.”

  “If he is truly alone here, then why is our safety in question if we leave the lights?”

  James had no answer to that one. He could only follow the lit path through the room’s center. Beyond the circle of the ghostfire’s light, the shadows were so deep and black even his natural low-light vision couldn’t pierce them. There could be an army hiding just a few feet away, and he wouldn’t even know.

  “Come on,” he said, picking up the pace. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Unlike other parts of the world, the Dead Mountain Fortress’s layout still closely resembled how it had looked in the game. It had grown in scale, of course, but not nearly as much as the Grasslands or Bastion had. The rooms were also still in the same order that James remembered. The huge entrance hallway ended at another pair of massive doors, thankfully open, that led into the wide, open-air courtyard that had been Grel’Darm the Colossal’s boss room. Back in the game, raiders would have had to kill the giant skeleton and all of his undead boar patrols to gain access to the next part of the fortress. Now, though, the giant paved space was as empty as everything else. There weren’t even ghouls in the ghoul-pits off to the side that Grel liked to bash players into.

  At least the emptiness made for fast going. Running on all fours, James and Ar’Bati followed the ghostfire torches across the courtyard and up the stairs to the more reasonably sized castle complex built into the mountain itself. They passed through several more boss rooms, each as empty as Grel’Darm’s had been. But while the general layout continued to be the same as it was in the game, James quickly learned that the devil was in the details. Big things like the encounter rooms and zombie storage warehouses were all still where he remembered, but there were countless smaller caves and passages that he knew hadn’t been there before.

  If it weren’t for the ghostfire torches, they would have quickly gotten lost. But while James appreciated the Once King’s thoughtfulness, he didn’t like how they were being led deeper and deeper into a fortress that famously had no back door. He just hoped the king stuck to his self-imposed rules of hospitality, because they were in way too deep to turn around if the torches were leading them into a trap. Not that the Once King needed a trap to kill them, of course, but that knowledge didn’t keep James from feeling like a very small mouse running headlong into a very big cage. He compensated for this by keeping his eyes on the floor in front of him, which was how he almost ran headfirst into a wall when the torchlight he’d been following suddenly ended.

  “Whoa,” James said, scrabbling back on all fours.

  The “wall” he’d narrowly avoiding cracking his skull on wasn’t actually a wall at all. It was another pair of giant doors. Stone ones this time, their surface carved into a blood motif so realistic James swore he could see them dripping. Artistry aside, though, they weren’t that different from all the others doors they’d run through on their way up here, except that these doors were closed.

  “This is Sanguilar’s room,” James said, running his fingers over the beautifully carved stone blood splatters.

  “Are you sure?” Fangs asked.

  James nodded. “I was in Tina’s raid the first time they beat him. It took us seven attempts, and we had to do the stupid mini-game that opened the doors each time. No way I’d forget this place.”

  “Well, can you do it again?” his brother asked, jerking his head at the sealed doorway.

  “I don’t think that’s an option anymore,” James said. “Even if we still had the interface to start the event, Sanguilar was the one who sent out the zombies we needed to kill in order to get the quest items, and he’s not even here.”

  “Then why is the door closed?”

  James had no idea. There was no ward like there’d been on the fortress’s front gate, but none was needed. The huge slabs weighed so much it would take a crane to get them open. He dug his claws into the tiny crack to try anyway, but he couldn’t even get the door to wiggle.

  “Is there a way around?” Ar’Bati asked, looking back at the line of ghostfire torches that had led them to this dead end.

  “There wasn’t during the game,” James said, panting with effort as he let the door go. “Sanguilar was the last boss before the Once King. You had to go through his room to get to the stairs that lead up to the Once King’s throne room and the Great Pyre on the peak. I don’t know if that’s true anymore, of course. It does seem really strange that the Once King would lead us all the way here just to stop before the end.”

  Fangs looked at him with new appreciation. “Have you fought the Once King?”

  “Once or twice,” James said, moving over to poke at the walls beside the giant doors. “I went on a few of Tina’s raids against him as a healer. Really hope he doesn’t hold that against me.”

  His brother looked impressed by this new information. For his
part, James didn’t want to think about it. The Once King fight had been everything he’d hated about raiding: stressful, hypertechnical, and super unforgiving. Even when you did everything exactly right, the Million Damage Blast killed you anyway the moment the Once King reached thirty percent. Talk about depressing. He’d never been to a Once King fight where everyone didn’t leave pissed as hell. And Tina wondered why he never wanted to go with her.

  “Look at this.”

  Startled out of his memories, James looked over to see his brother crouched a few feet away, staring at something metallic on the floor. Moving closer, James saw that it was a dagger. He didn’t remember the item’s name because Naturalists couldn’t use daggers back in the game, but he remembered SilentBlayde carrying that exact weapon for months before he scored his silver swords.

  “Lucky!” James said, picking up the darkly glittering dagger with his claws and offering it to his brother hilt first. “Here, you should use it. I’ve already got a top-tier weapon, and this dagger will hit way harder than your low-level sword.”

  Ar’Bati’s expression turned sour. “No thank you. First, I like my sword. Second, I am level fifty. That dagger is for certain meant to be used by a level eighty. I’ll not take the risk.”

  “Fair enough,” James said, eagerly accepting the priceless dagger. “I could use a weapon that’s actually made to stab things.” Slinging his black staff onto his back, James cupped his new knife in both hands. When he reached out with his mana to bind the enchanted weapon to his magic, though, he stopped with a jerk, making his brother jump.

  “What’s wrong?” Fangs demanded.

  “I can’t bind it,” James said, holding the weapon away from himself with two fingers. “It’s still bound to someone else.”

  “Who?” his brother asked. “The Red Sands reported that all players raiding the Dead Mountain died during the transition. Not that I put much faith in that CincoDeMurder brigand, but we certainly haven’t seen anyone.”