Dverger a deckbuilding l.., p.1
Dverger: A Deckbuilding LitRPG (Goblin Summoner Book 6), page 1
Dverger
A Deckbuilding LitRPG
Tracy Gregory
P.W Hillard Fiction
Copyright © 2023 P.W Hillard Fiction
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Get Covers
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
A Note from the Author.
Goblin Summoner – The Rules
Wake the Dead- Preview Chapter
Chapter One
Fires burnt around Henig, the air filled in equal parts with smoke and screams. The entire main boulevard was burning, the orange light of the flames glowing against the black of night. Henig opened his deck box and held his hand out before him, cards adding to the illumination. He looked down at the floating images, depictions of his magic made manifest. A selection of elemental creatures hovered by his pale fleshy fingers. That wasn’t right. Henig shook his head, his long hair swishing as he did. He didn’t have time to ponder what was happening. The city was under attack and Henig was sworn to protect it. He could worry about his personal circumstances later.
Overhead something hovered in the darkness, a shape that Henig couldn’t quite make out. Whatever it was had waited until the night of the new moons before attacking, shrouding itself against the night. Whatever it was, it was enormous, dominating the skyline for milots around. Its shape was uneven, smooth and curved in some places whilst unsettlingly bulbous in others.
A shriek caught Henig’s attention, causing the priest to spin around on his heels, his sandals kicking up some of the thin layers of soot that were settling on the pavement beneath him. That felt wrong. Henig hadn’t worn sandals for a long time, he was certain. Without the sensation of pain, he didn’t need shoes to protect his feet anymore. Or at least, that was the thought that had floated to the front of his mind.
The source of the sound was a human woman running down the street towards Henig, her hands outstretched. Her white robe was stained black with soot, the colour matching the raven hair that flowed down her shoulders. She was panting, her feet pounding the pavement as quickly as they could carry her.
“High priest!” the woman exclaimed, twisting around Henig and gripping his robes. She shook as she peered out from behind him. “They’re coming!”
“Who is?” Henig said, his voice sounding slightly off to him. “Who’s coming?”
The priest’s question was answered quickly. A crowd of shapes shambled out from amongst the cloud of soot and ash and into the street. They were bizarre things, humanoid in shape but misshapen and malformed. They looked almost skeletal, though the presence of ashen grey skin clinging to what looked like fused ribs puzzled Henig. Some of the creatures sported mechanical limbs, steam hissing as it escaped from their joints. The bottom half of their faces were covered with metal grills whilst the top half revealed a sunken skull-like visage. The creatures lacked eyes, a pair of black pits dominating their faces. One of them raised its arm and pointed it toward Henig, its hand replaced by a large set of clacking metal pincers.
“What are these things?” Henig muttered to himself. The odd fusion of metal and flesh reminded him of the Thot-Ankorians though Henig wasn’t sure if the organic part of the creatures was alive or dead. There certainly didn’t seem to be any of the tell-tale purple glow of necrofungus. “No matter.” Henig reached up with his free hand, mana orbs casting a pale blue glow against him as he adjusted his robe. “Halt! This place is sacred, protected by her holiness Magdalena. Cease this assault.”
The lead creature let out a long chuckle, a sound that sounded like a box of screws being rattled around. It snapped its pincers, steam escaping from the joint as it did.
“I see no goddess here? If this place is so sacred, where is she? Where is your saviour?” The creature’s voice sounded like a coin being dragged across a cheese grater. “She has abandoned you! Abandoned this world to fight some battle beyond reality. Or so she claims. There is no afterlife, not for your kind. Not for blasphemers.”
Zealotry. Henig had come across it enough to understand the problems it could cause. He knew he wasn’t immune from it, after all, he had given his life to act as the eternal protector of the tower at the heart of the city. The difference was he knew his goddess was real. He had seen her, spoken with her, and walked with her along the boulevard. Henig had witnessed miracles with his own eyes and his faith in her had been rewarded when she had returned. He wondered where she was. Magdalena had returned to the ruins with her new friends in tow. Ruins. The thought danced through Henig’s mind. The city was under attack certainly, but it was still mostly intact. Why did he think it had been destroyed?
The creatures rushed forward, or as close to that as they could muster. The misshapen things stumbled as they moved, wobbling from side to side as if they were unsure about their own bodies. Their twisted forms were working against them, weakening the impact of their charge.
Henig took advantage of the brief window he had. His fingers danced across his cards, selecting every monster he could summon as quickly as he could. Three Dryad Warriors took shape before him. Women with pale green skin and armour of wood and leaves each carried a shield made of woven vines in one hand and a long whip of plant matter in the other.
“Defend the city!” Henig barked, the summoned monsters understanding his orders implicitly.
Vine met claw as the dryads engaged the monstrosities bearing down on Henig. The leader monster with the steam-driven pincer tried to dodge but his stumbling movement made him an easy target for the dryad that had picked him as their prey. A whip of vines slashed across his chest, thorns digging deep and tearing a great gash that gushed with black ichor. He fell forward onto the ground, the fatal blow robbing his lifeless body of any impetus.
Arkos Soldier defeated.
63 experience points gained.
More notifications floated into Henig’s vision as the other creatures fell. He had heard that name before, Arkos, though he couldn’t quite place where. Henig’s memory was a fragile thing, the ages taking its toll on him. Even as an immortal being, there was a limit to what the mind could hold. It was a miracle that he had remembered his purpose, though Henig suspected that his dedication simply refreshed the memory each day, his constant reaffirmations enough to keep it at the forefront of his mind.
Henig looked around himself at the burning city. This was all wrong. Nothing was as it should be. The buildings around him, the skin on his hands, the woman clutching his robe from behind. None of it should be there. Something was drastically wrong in a way that the priest couldn’t articulate.
“High priest! Look out!” The woman standing behind Henig pulled so hard on his robe that he spun around. She pointed up into the sky at a shape coming towards them.
Something with thick leathery bat-like wings was headed Henig’s way. As the light from the flames washed over the thing it became apparent that the appendages had been fused to the creature, not unlike the ones that had just been defeated. The wings replaced its arms whilst each foot had been swapped for a set of brass talons.
With the last of his mana at his command Henig selected the lone spell that he had drawn. It was lucky he had, the Grasping Vines card could only target creatures that could fly.
From an outstretched hand a storm of vines exploded, the tendrils racing out into the sky. They twisted around one another as they moved, the storm of green slamming into the flying creature. They arced downwards, knocking the monster from the sky and pushing hard into the ground with a thud. Their work done the vines vanished in a puff of green smoke.
Arkos Glider
78 experience points gained.
There was that name again. Arkos. There was something lodged in the back of his skull, but Henig couldn’t quite get it loose. It was a frustrating experience.
“What is happening here, madam?” Henig said to his ward. “What are these things?”
“The Arkos, High Priest,” the woman said, a look of confusion settling on her face. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes, it’s just the uh, shock of it all,” Henig said. The woman was clearly shaken and
“You have no idea I don’t know how I’m supposed to know, High Priest.”
“It was a rhetorical question,” Henig said. “Come. We need to get you to the tower. Its wards may yet hold. There is no safer place in the city.”
From the massive shape above Henig could make out more of the glider’s launching out into the night. All around him were sounds of battle, of spells being cast and monsters being summoned. The city had its fair share of duellists so whoever and whatever the creatures attacking were they were in for a fight. There was no sign of Luthor in the sky, the dragon conspicuous by his absence. Henig shook his head at his own thoughts. Why would there be a dragon? There were some in the jungle outside the city but they wisely kept their distance.
“We should move,” he said, pointing down the boulevard to the tower. “The dryads will protect you. Stick close to them.”
The woman nodded meekly, her eyes washing over the summoned creatures around her. She had spent all her life around duellists but rarely had she seen them exercise their powers. They seemed so real.
“We will watch over you. Trust in us.” One of the dryads said. Whilst monsters speaking was infrequent it happened more regularly amongst the priesthood. Especially amongst those who dwelled where the goddess’s power still lingered. Rumour had it that Henig was old enough to have seen the goddess in person, that he had lived for centuries. He certainly looked good if that were true.
“I will,” the woman replied. She was looking up at the dryad, the elemental taller than she was.
Henig nodded to his summons and began to run behind them as they headed to the tower. Its wards were in full effect, rivers of arcane power being drawn from the leyline and launched outwards from normally hidden runes. The bolts were arcing through the air and striking the gliders as they filled the air, the occasional shot making its way to the bigger object. Troublingly they seemed to have no obvious impact, though the effect on the Arkos was more impressive, the creatures exploding from the force in a show of grey viscera.
“Go, through the doors, quickly now,” Henig said as he watched the tower do its work. It was ancient now, the wards probably decayed. He hadn’t been sure it could do it anymore. Why? Why wasn’t he sure? The city wasn’t that old the wards were supposed to last millennia. Why was everything so confusing?
With the woman safely inside Henig stepped past his summons and through the great stone archway.
The clack caught his attention first, the sound of his feet hitting the tile. He looked down and a set of bony appendages sat before him. The lich turned his attention to his hands and was relieved to see phalanges wiggling as he moved them. Henig had spent more time as a skeleton than he had a flesh and blood person and he hadn’t realised he had gotten so used to his body in that form.
He spun around to look back through the door and the light of day danced off his skull. The pink crystal houses spun by the elemental spiders who had moved into the lands around the tower filled the space where burning buildings has been. The sky was mercifully free of the Arkos and their mysterious object.
“Henig?” Magda said. She had just stepped off the lift in the centre of the tower as the lich had come rushing into the building. “Are you ok? Why is your deck box open? What’s with the monsters?”
“I, I uh, am not certain.” Henig’s dryads were standing beside him though the splashes of black gore that had covered them were gone. “I think something is terribly wrong with me.”
***
Magda passed the cup over to Henig, steam rising from its lip. Within was a tea brewed from nettles in the jungle. It had become a popular drink amongst the residents of the growing settlement around the tower and whilst Henig did not need to eat or drink it felt like the right thing to do. The Lich was shaken by what he experienced and Magda felt a great deal of worry for him. Henig had seemed unflappable since she had met him, and Magda had grown fond of the talking skeleton.
“This is all so wrong,” Henig said as he took the cup in his hands. He was sitting in the stone chair in his office, his legs placed on a stack of books. Around him, Magda and her friends had assembled. Sarkuran was leaning against one of the great glass windows of the chamber, whilst Imelda had taken a seat on a precarious pile of tomes. Gareth was standing next to Magda, his eyes locked on the lich.
“It sounds almost like it was a dream.” Gareth waggled his hand as he talked, a habit Magda had come to notice now she had been spending more time alone with him. “A pretty frightening one, but dreams are harmless.”
“Perhaps, but I haven’t dreamed in a long time. Thousands of years, perhaps. Honestly, I simply do not remember. I assume it was when I was alive. Now I have this form sleep isn’t something I require. No sleep, no dreams.”
“That doesn’t sound healthy. Aren’t dreams like, the brain's way of organising information?” Gareth tapped his left temple to make his point.
“I do not have a brain,” Henig said. “They rot remarkably quickly.”
“Right. Gross. That’s not quite what I meant. You might not have the physical organ but you’ve still got a mind, just one that’s formed of magic rather than meat.”
“The fact that Henig struggles with memory as I do would seem to indicate that the spell that binds his soul to the tower has formed a reasonably accurate simulacrum,” Sarkuran said. He was the only member of the party even remotely close to Henig’s age and even then, the Lich had a few thousand years on him. Sarkuran’s old life before being sent to Acamida had long been forgotten but he clearly remembered most of his reign. “At least I’m assuming that’s how it works. It’s a common theme through spells that raise the dead or reanimate them.”
“Unless there’s some weird fungus involved,” Imelda muttered under her breath.
“You know I think Sarkuran might be on to something,” Magda said.
The demon king snorted. “I do occasionally have a good idea.”
“Only occasionally. I mean if the magic here is acting as a kind of brain, maybe it’s not a dream?” Magda stepped over to the window and looked down at the town of crystal below her. “You said you saw buildings outside, right? And not the spider ones?”
“That’s correct,” Henig said with a nod, “they matched the architecture of the tower.”
“So, could it have been a memory?”
Henig thought for a moment, the idea bouncing around inside his skull. “It’s certainly an interesting thought. If we assume for a moment that was correct, what could have possibly caused it to become so vivid? And if it’s a memory I assume that it is one of the city that used to surround the tower.”
“They city under attack too,” Gareth said. “I would have thought that would have been something difficult to forget, even over however many thousands of years it is.”
“Would it be? If I’ve forgotten it, how would I know? There might be hundreds of battles or invasions I have no knowledge of.”
“Wouldn’t it be written down somewhere? In one of the books in here? I have to imagine someone made a record of it.” Gareth gestured to the library that surrounded him. Henig’s collection of books and scrolls was extensive.
“Not in here. I’ve been through these books a dozen times,” Magda said. She had searched long and hard for information on the godswords, ancient relics built by her past self to defeat the gods who had seized control of reality. “I would have thought that would have come up.”
“Not if the city lost,” Sarkuran said. “It’s conceivable there was no one left to record it. We know that Henig’s civilisation fell eventually. They’ve left ruins across the world around the teleport platforms and there’s none of them left save our skeletal friend. Perhaps this was a memory of the fall of his people? Perhaps it was simply the final blow in a long campaign? The temples we’ve seen have seemed different in construction, it’s entirely possible some parts of the empire fell before the others.”
“You know, I have never felt like my failing memory has been a bother,” Henig said, placing the cup atop a stack of books. They wobbled and the Lich steadied them with a bony hand. “My faith has remained resolute, I have never once forgotten my missions or reason for being, but the idea I might have forgotten a tragedy that befell my people unsettles me. Their pain, their plight, their history, all lost to time. It is not right.”
