Mark of the fated 3 a li.., p.36
Mark of the Fated 3: A LitRPG Adventure, page 36
“How do you know if you don’t try? We’ll wait here for you.”
“Are you serious? Or teasing me?”
“I’m teasing, but I still need to find a way inside.”
“We could just head for the monastery instead. It’s the only thing the quest mentions. The queen doesn’t factor into it at all,” explained Cris.
I noticed Lucien was rubbing at his beard, thoughtfully. “What?”
“There is another way, but it’s… troublesome.”
“In what way?” I asked.
Lucien grimaced. “In that it’s absolutely foul. Death would be preferable.”
“We can deal with foul,” replied Cody.
“After what we’ve seen and been through, there’s nothing we can’t handle. What do you have for us?”
“You flew past it in the dead of night. A culvert, thirty feet above the low tide. The bastion’s waste flows through, and if the wind blows in the wrong direction, it’s not just rotting fish the locals have to contend with. The breaking waves only clean halfway up the rocks. You can’t miss the… umm, the dark stain. Follow it up and you’ll find the iron grating.”
“A drain?”
“Yes, Mark.”
“And this drain’s big enough to crawl through?” I asked, not relishing the prospect but seeing no other way.
“It’s big enough to walk through,” he replied, then sized me up again. “Maybe at a crouch on account of your height.”
“Do you know if it stays that big? I might get to the end and find it’s only a tiny shitting hole in the queen’s bedchamber.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do. Will you take the chance?”
“I don’t see any other way to get to her without alerting everyone in the bastion. We need answers, it’s as simple as that.”
“Will you all go?”
Cris made to reply yes until I stopped her with a shake of the head. “No. I’m going to go alone, no argument. Will my companions be able to stay here while I go trudging through lakes of shit?”
“Of course. It would be my honour to host your friends. We can discuss magic while you’re gone,” he replied, standing up with his chair and shuffling to Cris’s side. He plonked his seat down with a thud.
I ground my teeth and glared at the mage. He’d gone from upset at his student’s betrayal to pervy in double-quick time. “You can also discuss getting the rest of the heralds here to help us fight this war. Your power will be really helpful.”
Lucien went from pervy to sad once again. “I wish I could offer that help, Mark. We’ve been disassociated from the wars of men for many centuries.”
“Yet you train their nobles?” I argued. “How is that keeping out of it?”
“It is just the way things are. The other Heralds will never agree to become involved.”
“And you?”
“I wish I could help. Truly, I do.”
My anger flared, as much by his refusal as my frustration at the convoluted world. I thought we’d left that behind in Osterland. “So you are all cowards.” He began to bluster, growing red in the face. I cut him off. “You’d better pray to whatever god you have that we can stop this then, otherwise the darkness will come to your island and tear you apart.”
Cris almost interjected, but she remained quiet when the truth of my words hit home. We were risking our lives, and they were cowering on their estate.
I stormed out before my natural inclination to apologise could undo the barb. I wanted Lucien to sit on it and squirm. My quest log pinged, and I pulled it up.
Quest – Investigate the bastion (Optional)
Description – Break in to the queen’s citadel and see what you can uncover.
Reward – + 20 Realm Points
Once again, the quest didn’t specifically mention the queen. Whether that was an oversight, or on purpose, time would tell. The cold, dark street welcomed me with the chime of the closing door. A disgusting journey awaited.
Chapter 45
I smelled the location before I found it, just as Lucien had suggested I would. After the Osterland sewers, it wasn’t as bad as I’d been expecting. Or perhaps my sense of smell had been so battered and bruised it had given up trying to warn me. The culvert was located a half mile from our landing location at the southern tip of the dockyard. The ocean was at low tide, the moonlight shimmering on the surface a good distance away. I walked the soft, wet sand in my Silkweb set, the only clue of my passage were the sunken depression of my boots. The beach turned to seaweed-covered stone, and I picked my way over the gently falling rocks, scanning the rising cliff face. It wasn’t long before the stink of bodily waste washed over me and I found the grate.
The outlet in the distance was forming a lake of its own in the rocky troughs below. Water and worse poured out in frequent bursts, a telling reveal of just how many people were located in the bastion. The dwarven engineers had picked a section of cliff to locate the outlet. The sheer, vertical face offered a good defence against incursion. I activated my Arachnid Setules and found a place to begin the climb. The damp stone hadn’t felt enough sun to dry it from the last tide, and the slimy coating made my ascent more difficult. After clearing the dark line of the wave’s eternal kiss, the cliff dried out a little. Reaching the required height, I began to move sideways until I came across the rusting grid.
Maintenance had obviously gone out of the window. The once thick bars had rotted through almost completely in places. It only took one god-enhanced pull for the rest of the frame to crumble. I kept hold of it, just in case, and climbed through the opening. Trying my hardest to avoid looking at what was flowing around my feet, I placed the rusting remains back in place as best I could. One knock and the entire thing would topple, but I didn’t want to risk a guard patrol noticing it missing. Something told me there hadn’t been an inspection for many years, but it would be just my luck that today the paranoid royal decided to reinstate them.
“Here we go,” I muttered.
A mile of tunnel lay before me, and every inch would see me battling the noxious flow. Ignoring the gentle thumps of the lumpier filth, I moved deeper inside.
Cris’s warning as I’d left echoed in my head. Get yourself killed and I’ll kill you. I left aside the irony of her warning and used the loving tone in which it was delivered to warm my way. I’d left my party behind because it wasn’t a fight I was looking for at journey’s end. I admitted that it was also a smidgen to do with keeping them safe too. From chronic faecal infection, as well as sword and musket. There just wasn’t a need for more of us to brave the vile drain.
Left alone with my thoughts and the half-light of my Night Eyes, I tried to puzzle through the news we’d received. Hamon’s family had been killed. The thing I was desperate to know was whether that had occurred as a result of the undiscovered betrayal, or as a precursor to it. That would shed a bright light on the motivations of the necromancer. If I was being honest with myself, the thought of having a family with Cris and then having it snatched away already left a dull ache in my stomach. That was simply the thought of it, and I couldn’t conceive of how much worse it would be to actually experience the loss. Would I raze an entire kingdom to the ground in an effort to seek revenge?
“Probably,” I admitted to the floaters that bobbed past.
Definitely, was the real answer. I would try to minimise civilian casualties, but with my life at an end, would I really give a shit? The answer to that was an actual yes, but I wasn’t Hamon. I hadn’t lived his life. Or walked in his shoes. Especially now that he was dead. Or undead.
That left many unanswered questions, some of which I hoped lay at the end of my current odyssey through the stinking mire.
How were The Seven involved?
What was happening with the tithe, especially the people?
If they were vampires, how did they come and go during the daylight?
Were they a Snipesesque style daywalker?
Why was Abby really targeted? I didn’t buy the peasant fear bullshit any more. Selene may have been a patsy, but deep down she must’ve known killing the child would achieve nothing. It had been in the back of my mind ever since Cris picked up on the child’s conflicting aura. There was something more to her presence and my dropping at Feltham at the perfect time to rescue her. I decided to try my luck.
Bart?
Hello, Mark! How are you?
Ankle deep in royal shit. How about you?
Well, I’m certainly not covered in biological leavings, that I can assure you. It’s been a while. I was beginning to worry about you.
I guess you’re like my old comfort blanket. I needed you in the beginning, but as I move through the horror, I don’t feel the need to waste your time as much.
You could never waste my time. I’m your sponsor, after all.
True, but unless you can give me answers, I don’t really need you for anything. I felt his telepathic distress and quickly continued. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s more that you’re a distraction. A reminder of my world and the danger it’s in. It just doesn’t help me mentally to dwell too much on it.
I understand. Would you like me to try and bring Honey and Marco through at some point? A morale booster. When you’re in a less… aromatic location.
I’d love that, but no. It just makes me miss them even more. You could ask your wanker bosses if we can get more than an hour’s break next time. Talk about a fucking bullshit reward. We spend days and weeks in these trials of yours, to get a paltry sixty minutes? Sort your shit out.
You seem… angrier than I remember.
What did you think would happen? That I would still be the same man that entered the tutorial? I didn’t even want to kill the rats for fuck’s sake. I’ve been forced to kill more than just monsters now. I’m becoming whatever your bosses wanted.
They wanted you to become a light for your world!
Then they shouldn’t have put us in the deepest, darkest shitholes they could find. Goodbye, Bart. This time I severed the link. He tried to come back, but I slammed the door in his face. Thoughts of home were one thing. Thinking of the aliens and their role in my predicament was enough to have my blood boiling and I needed to stay cold and calculating.
The incline of the drain started to rise dramatically, and I could see the vague outline of the bastion’s rooms coming into view on my minimap. They could be kitchens, bedrooms, communal shitters, anything, so I slowed my pace to minimise the sloshing splash of my stride. The drain had a knack of creating an echo and the last thing I needed when I finally stuck my head out through the grotty toilet hole was to get shot point blank in the face by a waiting guard.
The increasing angle became a precipitous, vertical shaft roughly four feet in diameter. A torrent of muck was streaming down the walls and splashing into the water around my feet. At that moment, I questioned every life choice I’d ever made. There was no way to get higher without climbing straight up, directly through the waterfall of waste. This was no tropical location with pristine, frothy water and lazily swaying palm trees. This was from the deepest bowels of hell. A torture for the worst sinners to stand in.
Stop fucking around.
I changed into some leather armour I had laying around in my pack. It provided at least some waterproof properties with which to brave the deluge.
Taking a tentative step forward, I activated my setules again and started to climb. I’m not sure if I was just lucky, or if Bart had come to my rescue, but the amount of filth flowing down the drain dropped off to a slow drizzle. About twenty feet into the climb, I came upon the first spike. It was angled downward, the sharpened tip nothing more than a rotted nub that was more likely to leave a bruise than poke a hole in someone. They were slick with the same filth that ran over my hands. I climbed around the first and tried to pull on it. The thicker end cemented in the wall broke away without offering much resistance. I couldn’t very well just drop it, so I popped it in my stash with a filthy grin. I hoped Varg’Plag would pick it up from the cosmic conveyor belt, not quite understanding what was oozing through his tentacles. Followed by the sudden realisation and projectile vomiting of the whole crew on duty.
It was the little things that kept me on an even keel.
I reached the first inlet a few minutes later. Wherever it led was bathed in complete darkness. Moving into the narrower tunnel branch, I wriggled closer to the grate. Checking up through the bars, I could just make out the first of several doors. The smell was different here, and I’d experienced it before. It was piss, shit, rank sweat, hopelessness, and misery.
The dungeon.
I found the cells packed with icons, confirming what Molly had said about the people of Tulahr being snatched up for protesting. There was no way to safely rescue them. Even if I could secure a long enough rope for them to use, there was little chance they would have the strength to climb down. From there, the cliff awaited, with absolutely zero chance of them reaching safety. They could wait for the tide and jump in the water, which would only result in a mass drowning. I hated to leave them, but their fate was reliant on the wider quest taking place.
Shuffling back out into the main drain, I climbed up to the next level. The strong updraughts in the tunnel pulled in the smells of the bustling kitchen. The room was well lit, with a multitude of chefs and servants working in a frenzy. None of them were covered in freshly drained blood, only flour. One of the serving girls hurried over with a bucket and tossed the contents straight on top of me.
I picked off the peelings and said a silent thank you. The dirty washing water was a million times more preferable to the toilets.
I backed out once again, and carried on my ascent, avoiding the slightly more intact spears that lined the chute.
Gotta be in the penthouse.
It was the case in my world, and it was likely the same in Tulahr. Lofty lodgings for the richest. Royalty looking down on the peasants from on high.
Looking down their noses more like.
Several more levels saw me at the final inlet. The room beyond brought with it the sweet scents of flowers and perfume. I looked upward, and the drain’s vent rose through the mountain. A faint spot of sky could be seen, high above. Listening carefully at the grate, I couldn’t hear anything from the quarters beyond. I wrapped my fingers around the bars and tried to shift it. The mortar was firm, but my muscles were firmer. I felt the slightest give in one direction and started to work at it, wiggling it back and forth. Streamers of pale grit started to drop onto my face, so I turned away to let it fall on my leather helmet instead.
After a minute of increasing flexibility within the stone bed, the steel frame came away in my hands and I pushed it up, gently sliding it out of my way. I shuffled further up and came to my knees, doing my best impression of a meerkat.
Peering around, I found myself in a bathroom fit for royalty. I climbed out, marvelling at the splendour. A massive bath, formed of smooth blocks, the petal-laden water murky and cold. A commode style, thronelike toilet, finished in gold. Mirrors, mounted on silver chains. Flowers in vases all around the colourfully tiled walls, providing the pleasing scents that filled the room. A huge fireplace sat empty, the ashes spilling out onto the floor. To my left, an arch led onto a balcony over which I could only see the Tulahr sky.
My minimap was glitching again, showing icons that then vanished like static. Before I could investigate if they were real or not, muffled voices carried through to me from somewhere nearby. Two of them, maybe more. The thick curtains that provided privacy to the bathing queen were drawn, stealing my ability to eavesdrop.
I made for the doorway and hesitated. As much as I hated to admit it, the stench of my climb would give me away instantly to anyone with a nose. Hell, even people with no sense of smell would pick up on the stink waves rising from me like a cartoon character.
I stashed everything, leaving myself fully naked, and headed for the bath. Hooking one leg over, the frigid water made goosebumps rise all over my body. The cold was almost enough for me to abandon the attempt.
Man up and get in! People jump in ice lakes for fuck’s sake! This is room temperature.
My motivational speech was enough to have me step inside with both feet. I took a few deep breaths before kneeling. I took a shitload more when the chilly bathwater lapped at my old feller.
Just do it already!
I slipped under silently, though I wanted to cry out from the sensation. Once the initial shock had worn off, I lay with my back to the solid floor and popped a piece of stone on my chest to keep me under. Being exceedingly careful not to splash, I washed off the filth from any area that hadn’t been protected by my armour. In a few moments, I felt almost human again and pocketed the heavy stone, rising slowly to join the rose petals.
The voices were no closer as I climbed out. Knowing that time was not on my side, I didn’t bother towelling dry and just threw my Silkweb set on.
It was time to go and see the queen.
Chapter 46
I crept through the curtains and found myself in the royal lounge. A fire burned in the hearth, surrounded by plush sofas. Every appointment was the epitome of luxury. Stunning paintings hung all around the chamber. Torches fluttered in their sconces, staining the wall and ceiling black. The same balcony I’d seen in the bathroom was accessible from this room. The thick curtains billowed inward under the force of the mountain winds.
Moving against the wall, I could hear the voices coming from the next archway. I slipped slowly sideways, ensuring my armour kept up with the concealment. I made the decision to hope the chilly breeze would keep the queen and her guest inside the room. When a strong gust lifted the drapes, I ducked under them and walked onto the balcony. As I’d suspected, another arch led out from what could only be the royal bedchamber.
I couldn’t resist the glow that lit up the underbellies of the clouds above. Stepping slowly, I approached the low parapet and looked out on the bastion below. The royal quarters were close to a half mile above the citadel itself, giving me a spectacular view of the mountains to my back and both sides, as well as the city. Wayworth Vale lay outside the walls, muted green in all directions. The buttressing rocks to my right hid Twilshawl, but I could just make out the ocean on which it sat far to the north east. Peering over the wall, I found the many different levels of the main keep, all well-lit against the gloom of the early evening.
