Lord of the Flame: A LitRPG novel (Call of Carrethen Book 2) Read online

  But the world began to form beneath me, warped and compressed like it had been stuffed into a sphere of glass. It expanded, flattened as the portal walls peeled away. I expected to feel hard ground beneath my feet, but as portal space vanished, I found myself plummeting towards the ground.

  I slammed down face first and ate dirt. It wasn’t a far fall, and thankfully my health didn’t move. I had precious little left as it was.

  Why did that happen?

  I hadn’t even had a chance to catch my breath and my mind was swirling like a tornado of unanswerable questions.

  What were those high level monsters doing back there? Why was my inventory blank? What had happened to the world!?

  Too many questions—no answers.

  “Here,” a voice spoke above me. A trade window opened in front of me, with two Peerless Health Kits inside. I hit the confirm button immediately and heard the satisfying “ding” of the items entering my inventory. “It’s all I can spare right now.”

  Quickly, I used a charge from one, restoring my health to just below full. Then, I rolled onto my back and looked up to face whoever it was that had just saved my ass.

  “I felt it!” I gasped, on the verge of panic. “Pain! How did I feel pain!?”

  The man who’d rescued me just looked down at me like I’d lost my mind. “And how did you do that? Pull me through Portal Space with you!?”

  “Are you…all right?” he asked slowly, sounding concerned.

  “No!” I cried out. “No, I’m not all right. What the Hell is going on!?”

  The sky roared with a tremendous roll of thunder as I struggled to catch my breath. Real physical effects in Call of Carrethen?

  The man who’d saved me was staring down at me like I was a mental patient.

  “Thank you!” I blurted out, doing my best to maintain my composure.

  “Not a problem,” he replied with a slight bow of his head. He was wearing some kind of cloth armor, but by the looks of it, it was stronger than anything a mage would wear. It almost resembled leather, but hung differently and had a texture similar to chainmail, like it had been woven from some sort of strong fibers. He extended a hand and I took it.

  “Kodiak,” he said. His voice was strong and unafraid.

  “Ja—D,” I replied as he helped me to my feet.

  Wait a minute, I thought. What was that?

  My voice—it sounded different. Wrong. Not like my character at all. Not even a guy’s voice. In fact, it sounded just like my real voice!

  “D, huh?” he asked, looking me up and down. “Short for Daphne? Denise? Dianne?”

  “Oh, no…” I groaned, looking down at my hands for the first time. They weren’t D’s hands. They were a girl’s hands. They were my hands.

  Slowly, I reached up and ran my fingers through my hair. It was long, hanging down just above my shoulders. It wasn’t D’s hair. It was a girls’ hair. It was my hair.

  “Do I—do I look like a…girl to you?” I asked hesitantly. I don’t even know why I asked as I already knew the answer. Kodiak cocked his head to the side and frowned.

  “Is this a trick question?” he asked.

  “Gah,” I groaned, hanging my head. Obviously, something had gone wrong with my Wellspring device, or with Wintermute’s root program, or with the Call of Carrethen engine itself, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I was no longer D—I was Jane.

  “You all right?” the man asked.

  Not really, I wanted to say. I felt lost, naked and exposed, as though my armor had been stripped away from me and I was lying vulnerable beneath the tumultuous sky of a new, unknown world. But the last thing I could do at that moment was show weakness, so I took a deep breath and looked up at him.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, my name is…Jane. What’s yours?”

  “Kodiak…” he repeated slowly, looking at me with concern. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Well, I’m alive,” I shrugged, slumping down on a fallen tree trunk that lay on the ground beside me.

  “That was reckless,” he remarked. “Diving off that cliff like that. What were you doing messing with those Arugians anyway?”

  “Arugians?”

  Again, a questioning look from Kodiak. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Okay, no!” I snapped back. “No, I’m not okay! I have absolutely no idea what’s going on or where I am or what the Hell an Arugian is!”

  It took Kodiak a minute to speak, but when he did, I felt as though I was a child and he was my father trying to explain to me how the world worked.

  “Arugians are those big blue guys with the bows that were chasing you,” he told me. “And this is The Dark World. How—how could you not know this?”

  “The Dark World,” I said slowly, more to myself than to him. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. The terrain looked like we were somewhere North of Stoneburg, but I couldn’t say exactly where. The sky still swam with gigantic black clouds stacked together like bubbles of hard soot. Lightning cracked and spread like electric fractals above us. Even the grass seemed to be less green than I remembered, as though the very ground beneath it had turned crimson and dark.

  “Some people say it’s The Electronic Void,” he continued, his eyes fixed on me. “But I don’t believe that.”

  “The Electronic Void…” I muttered. I forced myself to look at him. He’d saved me, but something about him still scared me. “Why—why don’t you think that?”

  “Well, for one, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would The Ripper scare us by telling us we’d be brain dead and lost forever, when really we were just going to another version of Carrethen?”

  “Yeah…”

  “And what would be the point of that anyway? Wasting resources to run an entire other world for the dead?” he continued. “I just don’t buy it. If you ask me, The Ripper is just toying with us. The whole thing’s one big game, and eventually he’ll show up and send us all home.”

  “No,” I replied instantly. “No, The Ripper is dead.”

  My words hung in the air for an uncomfortably long time before Kodiak frowned and replied.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Because,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I killed him.”

  3

  Ruins of Memories

  Kodiak stood motionless, his eyes fixed on me. I could see his mind working, trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth or not. Thunder clapped overhead, and I felt the first drops of rain start to fall from the sky. It rarely rained in Carrethen, but it seemed as though here, in the Dark World, nature had been amped up into overdrive.

  “You killed him?” Kodiak finally asked, his voice filled with skepticism.

  “Yes!” I snapped, getting to my feet. “I know, I know. A girl killed The Ripper? Impossible, right? I must be lying—”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all!” Kodiak replied defensively, waving his hands. “There’s plenty of good gamer-girls out there. I’m friends with a few, okay? I just—I don’t understand how that could be. If you killed The Ripper…how are we here?”

  “Because this is not Carrethen,” I replied. “Not really.”

  “Well, I figured that. But what is it then?” Kodiak asked.

  “A backup created by Wintermute, an artificial intelligence program from the original game engine.”

  “Wintermute?” Kodiak replied slowly. “Like…from Neuromancer?”

  I nodded, impressed. “That’s right. You a sci-fi fan too?”

  “I mean, I’m a gamer, right?”

  A small smile crept across my lips, but I was still too amped up to let my guard down, and I needed answers.

  “All right,” I said, trying to get my thoughts together. “So, you call this place the Dark World?”

  “That’s right,” he nodded. “And you can see why.”

  He gestured to the sky and the world around us. It was like a virus running rampant through the code of what was once Car
rethen. What was once an inviting world of adventure and discovery was now a hostile place filled with traps and hidden dangers.

  “It must have corrupted somehow when Wintermute backed it up,” I thought. Then, an idea sprang into my mind and I leapt to my feet. “Wintermute!?” I called out.

  Surely he—was that the best way to refer to an A.I.?—surely he would have left a method of communication between us.

  I looked at the sky and screamed. “Wintermute!?”

  Kodiak looked up with me, but no response came. A streak of lightning cut through the clouds above us, splitting into a thousand tiny strands that cascaded out for a few seconds before bursting out of existence with a clap of thunder. I felt Kodiak looking at me.

  “Nothing?” he asked.

  I shook my head slowly. “Nothing.”

  “Explain to me how all this works,” he told me. “Because I’m lost.”

  “I killed The Ripper,” I told him, thinking back to that fateful day up North. Jack was by my side then. I knew he was here somewhere, trapped in the Dark World, but my heart still ached when I pictured his lifeless body back there, lying in the snow. I’d watched him die, and the pain of that memory was still fresh in my mind. “Then, I was given admin powers and freed everyone that was still stuck in the world before I went home. I recovered and all that, and then Wintermute contacted me on my computer.”

  “An artificial intelligence,” Kodiak remarked, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I was as surprised as you,” I replied. “He—it? Told me that he’d backed up Call of Carrethen at a certain point and started transferring players there when they died. But he had no way of returning them to the real world. He needed me for some reason.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t explain how,” I admitted. “He rooted my Wellspring device and I dived back in. I spawned up there by the cliff where you found me, got jumped and just ran for it.”

  “Wow,” Kodiak replied, taking a seat on a tree stump in front of me. I could see him mulling over what I’d just told him. “So you just got here.”

  “How long have you been here, Kodiak?” I asked him, inspecting him.

  Kodiak—level 80.

  “A few weeks,” he replied with a chuckle. “Got squashed by a Stone Golem back in Carrethen.”

  “Up by the Iron Mountains?” I asked him.

  He looked up and nodded. “Yeah, how’d you guess that?”

  “You were with Bleed,” I said, my eyes narrowing, remembering the horde that had chased us when we were on our way to the Crimson Catacombs.

  “Not by choice,” he replied quickly, his voice stony and cold. I could see the anger there, like I’d touched on an old wound. “You remember their motto, don’t you?”

  “Join or die,” I muttered.

  “Join or die,” he repeated angrily. “They came into Cragrock with at least fifty men. I was with a small guild back then. We didn’t have a chance. One of us tried to fight and…”

  “I understand,” I told him. “Human nature can be a terrible thing. I guess The Ripper showed us that.”

  “That it can.” Kodiak nodded. “But then again, here you are. You came back to help your friends. That’s admirable.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. If this was real life, I would have been blushing.

  “Also a little bit stupid,” he chuckled. “But we’ll ignore that for now.”

  I smiled and looked around us to see if I could pick out any landmarks I could use to figure out where we were. But there was nothing.

  “So, where are we?” I asked. Kodiak’s Bindstone floated beside us, but I saw no buildings or NPCs like there normally would be around a stone in the middle of nowhere. “And where are the NPCs? This stone’s just out here by itself?”

  “Yeah, NPCs in the Dark World are a little wonky, to say the least,” Kodiak replied.

  “Wonky?”

  “Sometimes, they’re just not where they’re supposed to be. Other times, they’re there but they’re not responsive. And on rare occasions, they’re hostile.”

  “Hostile NPCs!?” I couldn’t believe it. NPCs in Call of Carrethen were vulnerable to attack, of course, and would fight back if provoked, but were never allowed to openly attack players. Another bug in Wintermute’s backup world apparently.

  “Yup.” Kodiak nodded. “They’re also not respawning when you kill them.”

  “So did there used to be stuff here?” I asked him, looking around. Aside from the Bindstone, there was really nothing of note, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be bound out here in the middle of nowhere.

  “Back in the original Carrethen, there was a traveling merchant here with a tent,” he explained. “Someone either killed him, or he ran off, or just didn’t spawn at all.”

  “Are we North of Stoneburg somewhere?”

  “Northwest,” he said, nodding.

  “We should probably head there now,” I said. “I have absolutely no gear on me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Kodiak replied hesitantly. “The last time I was there, it was a ghost town.”

  “Any NPCs?”

  Kodiak shook his head. “I think there was one mage selling scrolls and low level wands, but that was about it.”

  “Damn it!” I cursed angrily. Kodiak had pulled me out of the frying pan, but we were still dangerously close to the fire. Without any gear, I was a sitting duck. “Well, we have to try something. Let’s go.”

  “All right, boss,” Kodiak said with a grin. “Don’t worry, m’lady. I’ll protect you!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and glared at him. “Don’t do that. I might just throw up.”

  Kodiak suppressed a smile and nodded.

  4

  The Shadows of Home

  As we trekked through the Dark World, I slowly began to get a handle on where we were. I began to make out familiar shapes in the landscape, and eventually realized we were getting close to the Bandit Tower where I had first taught Jack how to control his character in game.

  “I recognize this area,” I said as we came to the crest of a small hill. Camps of Horngrin lay beneath us, but like the ones back at the basin, they were somehow different. Their movements were clunky, almost like they were unfinished, or were something out of an earlier version of the game, and upon inspection, I saw they were twice the level they were supposed to be.

  “Yeah, Stoneburg’s not too far from here,” Kodiak said.

  “Hey, Kodiak? What’s the deal with the monsters here? Those Horngrin should be level 5, but they’re level 10.”

  “You noticed that, huh?”

  “Yeah, and that Lake Beast was level 250! I didn’t think any monsters existed past level 126, the max level.”

  “Another one of the Dark World’s many surprises,” he scoffed. “Max level has doubled, and so have the monsters and player levels.”

  “Jesus…”

  “Tell me about it.”

  How could Wintermute’s backup have gone so awry? Everything felt wrong. It was like stepping into a memory of Carrethen—or maybe a dream.

  A nightmare.

  But we pressed on, and after a few minutes, came upon the Bandit Tower, or at least, what was left of it.

  Alfred wasn’t there, not that I’d expected him to be, but that wasn’t the weird part. The tower itself had been destroyed. Well, not quite destroyed—more like left incomplete. It was as though someone had started to sketch the tower on a piece of paper and then been attacked midway through, causing their pencil to scatter all over the page.

  The foundation was there, the front door and two walls, but about half way up, everything but the internal skeleton vanished and you could see right through to the other side.

  “Wow,” I remarked as we walked up to it, circling wide around the Horngrin camps to avoid an unnecessary skirmish.

  “Let the Force flow through you.”

  That’s what I had told Jack before that Horngrin Ravager killed him and sent
him spinning back to the Stoneburg Bindstone. I felt a pang in my chest as I was instantly taken back to that moment.

  Where are you now, Jack? I thought as I looked at the ruins of the memory in front of me.

  “Kodiak, where are the others?”

  “Others?”

  “Yeah, the other players,” I asked him. “The rest of them.”

  “Well, I don’t know about everyone, but I’d imagine most of them are still down in Sheol.”

  “Sheol?” I replied, an ominous tone in his voice. “What is that?”

  “I didn’t know either,” he replied. “But I ran into someone who told me it was from the Hebrew Bible. A place where the dead go.”

  “That’s…terrifying.”

  Kodiak nodded grimly. “Remember back on day one, when The Ripper said dead players’ character models would end up in a special Bindstone he’d constructed at the center of the map? That’s Sheol.”

  “Why aren’t you there?”

  “I was one of the lucky ones who spawned outside of Sheol,” he said. “We call ourselves the Unchained.”

  “Why don’t the others just leave?” I asked. “Are they trapped there?

  “Sort of,” Kodiak said. “The Lord of the Flame. He guards the exit to Sheol.”

  “The Lord of the Flame,” I repeated.

  Kodiak nodded. “He’s a player—or at least we think he was. Level 250. Impossible to beat. Attacks anyone who tries to go in or out.”

  “Why doesn’t everyone just gang up on him and kill him?”

  “Maybe they have.” Kodiak shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I won’t go near that place.”

  “Do you think—could he be The Ripper?”

  “You said you killed The Ripper,” Kodiak replied.

  “I did!” I said indignantly. “But I also thought everyone was dead until Wintermute contacted me, so right about now I’m thinking anything’s possible.”

  “Well, make sure you don’t die here in the Dark World,” Kodiak said firmly. “You won’t like it.”