Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) (5 page)

"Do my ears deceive me?" tearing himself away from the toad's body for a moment, Reece shot a look of incredulity at the grinning warrior. "Or did Iam just employ sarcasm in a sentence? I'm impressed," with a snort, he returned to his task.

"There's one thing I don't understand," Salta said musingly. "The way you are with these frogs, I've never seen you so focused, so eager... Not even with all those, um, let's call them 'patients' of yours. The ones you kept treating for migraines every night. We've already lost half an hour on account of your new hobby."

"That's the straight-arrow archeress we all know and love," the mage gave a heavy sigh, slicing brownish warts off the amphibian's carcass. "What a pure soul, unclouded by realities of life. Tell me, sunshine, did you ever stop to think what ingredients might be used to brew elixirs against Nature magic? Or poison antidotes? But what am I saying—thinking is the prerogative of the few..."

"In some countries," I noted, holding back the indignant archeress, "the legends say that a frog might actually be a princess under a hex. And in order to dispel the hex, the frog must be kissed on the mouth."

"Ah, that makes more sense," said Salta, suddenly calm. "I'm sorry, Reece—seems we've just exterminated all your potential mates. But don't fret, we should find plenty more in the cave."

"I fear that these here frogs," the mage surveyed the dead toads piled up outside the cave, "would make rather unusual princesses. So, I think I'll hold on to my kisses for the time being. Besides, what would a humble mage like me do with a princess? I'll leave all that stuff to noble princes—not that I could forbid them at any rate." Reece shot me a slanted glance, and pulled on his right earlobe for some reason.

I snorted, shaking my head, then sat down on the grass next to my clanmates. Try as you might, you can't correct the son of a succubus—Reece was a scoundrel through and through, and I viewed that as a good thing. I felt a bit ashamed of my recent tantrum when I had threatened to rip his ears off for joking about me, but what's done is done. Apologizing for it wouldn't change anything—and besides, I suspected my apology would go in one ear and out the other anyway.

Eighteen days had passed since my party conquered Feator, fifteen of which had been filled with monotonous extermination of undead swarming the neighboring zones. With all the upgrades to skills and gear—even the worst-equipped member of the clan was still rocking three rare pieces of equipment—this process now resembled a combine reaping a harvest. I had leveled up to one sixty five, and my companions were getting close to one eighty, having long acquired their combat form. As a result, we were dispatching whole packs of undead within two-three minutes. The clan's level had grown to four, and our treasury was overstuffed with all the junk we had been getting while grinding. The smithy in Feator had become our unofficial headquarters, where veritable pyramids of steel bars, silk reels and the like were being produced from the raw materials looted off the mobs.
All this will need to be transported to Xantarra and sold,
I reminded myself, looking at the strange, vine-covered stone figures towering on either side of the entrance to the catacombs. We didn't need any more of these materials—all my clanmates had already maxed their professions for their level, which presented me with yet another challenge of supplying them all with horses. And mounts were anything but cheap in this world.

Their acquaintance with combat form had been rather amusing. Iam had been the first to shift, and it had happened while we were fighting a random pack of undead. The demon suddenly exploded in height and shoulder-width, sprouting dark green spikes from his armor that had expanded seamlessly to accommodate his increased body mass. Even his horns had grown considerably, in proportion with the rest of him. The youth didn't even realize what had happened until after the pack had been wiped out; hearing exclamations of shock, he turned to survey his companions' bewildered faces, his eyes emitting a sinister yellow glow.

"Handsome!" Reece guffawed, incorrigible as ever. Then, shooting a mocking glance at Reena, he commiserated, "Better keep it gentle between the bedsheets from here on to avoid irreparable damage. Unless you
want
her stuttering for life."

The young woman, however, paid no mind to the mage, perhaps for the first time ever. Staring at her transformed beloved with unblinking eyes, she approached him slowly and traced a gentle palm across his cheek. Then she turned around to the others and simply smiled, saying nothing but
glowing
with jubilation. I caught myself smiling back at her.

Demon combat form lasted fifteen minutes and reset after one hour. Oddly, unlike with males, combat form made demonesses
more
physically attractive. Even with the quiet and laid-back Hagedia, her facial features took on the hard, sovereign expression of a supreme predator, while her figure—growing more curvaceous in all the right places—invariably drew attention to itself. Or maybe that was just the demonic constituent in me talking...

"How long do you need, Reece?" I asked the alchemist, hard at work over his portable lab. "Not till dusk, I hope?"

"About thirty minutes more," the mage gestured toward several dozen tubes half-filled with a murky brownish substance peeking out of special racks. "The bile needs time to turn. Then I'll mix in some wild rosemary extract and it'll be ready for consumption!" he grinned.

"Spare us the details," Reena frowned. "Or my stomach will be the first to turn," she turned away from the amphibian corpses emphatically, closing her eyes and resting her head on Iam's shoulder.

"It'll taste like chicken stock in the end, trust me," the alchemist assured her. "Now why don't you make yourself useful and gather some blue moss to help the common cause? Instead of turning up your nose at us peasants..."

"You're right," the girl sprang to her feet easily, touched her black-haired beau's shoulder, and gave me a questioning look.

"Go on," I dismissed them. "You have half an hour, no more. Don't go too far."

"Uh huh," the mage snorted, keeping his eyes on the tube, its contents boiling on the burner. "They're off to gather moss, they'll have you believe... Won't you send Aritor and Zara for raspberries while you're at it, dar? I'm sure they'll bring back enough to feed the whole clan..."

"Why are you always such a sourpuss?" Salta sighed heavily. "Why do you care what they do?"

"But Salta should go by herself. Maybe she'll kill some critters and finally find peace," turning around, Reece winked at the grim huntress.

Clearing the swamp cave was the final stage of the quest given by Gvert, the elder of Ballan. Once done here, I planned on taking my clan to Xantarra. Our treasury now counted nearly twelve thousand old bones, which needed to be turned in to the city's quartermaster for another quest. We had also compiled a ton of rare and uncommon quality items that we couldn't use—so much, in fact, that I was starting to fear we simply wouldn't be able to carry it all, not even with the help of the residents of Ballan whom I had promised to lead to a safe place.

We had liberated Uriatta the day before yesterday, after clearing the whole zone of the undead that had swarmed it. The strategy had remained unchanged: just like with Feator, we first picked off all archers and mages, then drew the remaining fifty or so warriors into a nearby ravine where, after creating a choke point, we proceeded to massacre them from high ground with ranged attacks. Their boss—wedged in on all sides—was the first to fall.

Our party had spent all of yesterday burying the fallen Uriattans and transporting trophies to our permanent base. This morning we had finally made it to the cave marked on the map, where we were welcomed by two packs of huge horned frogs, each the size of a small horse. The very first specimen had dropped a recipe for an elixir against Nature magic. The fortunate drop had forced us to make this impromptu stop to allow Reece to brew enough elixirs for the whole party on account of our severely lacking Nature damage resistance. I hadn't doubted that we would sweep through the dungeon even without it, but there was no sense in being reckless and risking the lives of my clanmates. The instance was designed for a party of five to ten players, but we were heading in all together. I was perfectly happy to sacrifice experience under the game's laws in order to maximize our chances of clearing the dungeon with zero casualties. Besides, the rewards for being the first to clear it would most certainly make up for it.

Reece had been right on the money with his estimate, as the elixirs were ready in exactly thirty minutes. But he
had
lied about the taste, and what a vicious lie it was! Chicken stock my ass! It was all I could do to keep myself from puking after downing the muddy liquid with a yolk-like consistency that reeked of something terribly, repugnantly rotten. It took three deep breaths and sheer force of will to keep it down. Why oh why were elixirs necessary to consume while potions were sufficient to simply break open? Sure, they had a longer duration and it was assumed that they would be drunk in a calm atmosphere out of combat, but then why the utterly repulsive taste? Then again, considering the ingredients that went into this particular concoction, perhaps it could have been even worse.

"Everybody ready? Let's go!" Fixing the sword at my waist, I patted the razorback on the withers as he rose sharply at my command. "Wait for us here, Gloom. We won't be long."

"Go on, sweetheart. Eat some acorns," Salta scratched the beast behind the ear as he screwed his eyes shut with pleasure, then motioned at a nearby oak.

"Ha! What kind of idiot do you take him for, settling for acorns after his royal diet of apples and plums?" I grunted. Then, casting one final glance at the stone monsters depicting fish reared on webbed feet, I shook my head and entered the dungeon first.

An underground river rumbled somewhere ahead. Moss and lichen glimmered off the cave's walls in uneven green patches. Stalagmites stood tall, radiating an inner azure glow that was at once soft and powerful enough to illuminate the space up to fifty yards. Falling drops ricocheted melodiously off the walls and disappeared in the thick velvety moss carpeting the floor. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling was concealed by the darkness. To the fore, maybe a hundred feet away, the cave's denizens hung around in packs of four-five.
So it's their blood that Master Skyle asked to bring back,
I noted to myself. Each pack included a pair of horned frogs that we'd already met, while the other mobs were carbon copies of the statues that stood at the cave entrance, and were called starx. The fish people wielded long silver tridents and, just like the frogs, were level 170.

"What beauty..." Zara whispered in awe, as if afraid of disrupting the fragile balance of sound.

"Right on," Aritor echoed his girlfriend, then tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to the right wall. "That there is an ore outcrop, dar. The one the blacksmith mentioned," the demon added in his signature deep voice.

"Go on," I nodded to him, then turned toward the rest of the party. "Buff up!"

Fishing a pickaxe out of his inventory, which looked like a tennis racket in his massive hand, the miner waddled over to the dark patch on the wall and, with a short swing, plunged the tool into the bedrock. The noise from the impact resounded off the walls in a dull echo, as chips sprayed in all directions. Reece, rubbing his cheek after catching one such ricochet, proclaimed with sorrow in his voice:

"Anybody else wondering why I took up alchemy? On the one hand you have a noble science, a delicate pursuit of the nimble mind. On the other, metal banging against rock..."

"Oh, sure," Aritor chortled without interrupting from his work. "Rummaging in frog guts is as delicate a pursuit as I've seen..."

"Since when have you gotten so smart?" the mage smiled. "Don't get too excited now or you'll cut another way to the surface. You're just smart enough to do that..."

The miner retorted with something of his own, but I didn't hear him, distracted by movement just ahead and to my right. A creature clothed in a black robe had emerged from the darkness suddenly, startling me. The stranger wobbled maybe five yards, panting as he moved, then turned around slowly, letting his eyes flash crimson from under the hood. Reeling like a drunk, he spread his arms wide, one of them gripping a kris the color of midnight. Then he brought his hands back together in what seemed like a monumental effort, releasing a clot of crimson energy that lunged my way. My body reacted all by itself: with a cry of alarm, I dropped like a rock onto the moss, letting the projectile swoosh overhead and crash harmlessly into the rippling screen of the portal that separated the dungeon from the rest of the world.

The stranger was gone, with only a soft air disturbance remaining where he had just stood.

"What happened, Krian?" There was great concern in Salta's voice.

"Did anyone else see that?" I asked, getting up off the ground and sheathing my sword. My mates were on full alert, weapons drawn.

"No..." Iam shook his head. "What were we supposed to see?"

"A necromancer just walked by," I said, my expression dour. "At least I saw him walk by. And he fired something at me... Never mind, let's pretend it was all my imagination."

"You can see all sorts of things in places like this," Reece noted. I glared his way, but there wasn't a hint of mockery in his face or voice. He looked toward the passageway obscured by darkness. "Who knows what vile things await us further..."