Chapter 84

  Echoes of a Dead World, Part III

  (In the Shadow of the Serpentine Lord - 1)

  We’re just steps from the swirling mouth of the portal when Liv grabs my arm.

  “Wait.”

  I flinch. “Wait? Seriously? I just psyched myself up to agree to… Whatever it is we agreed to. And you want to pump the brakes, now? Liv, it’s OK if you’re afraid and want to hang back. I know you don’t have much experience entering Gates.”

  Liv rolls her eyes. “I’m not afraid… Well, not that afraid.” She pulls her phone out. “But we need to leave a message for Mom and Dad. Unfortunately, Samsung doesn’t have inter-dimensional roaming.”

  “Sure. ‘Hey Mom, off with Joe to go save an Undead World. Might be back in time for dinner. But don’t microwave the leftovers.’ She’ll totally understand.”

  “I said I had to attend to some Guild matters for a few days,” she says, thumbs tapping at light-speed. “Told them you’d be helping me.”

  I blink. “You lied to them?”

  She shrugs. “I used... creative phrasing. Ya know, I may be your younger sister, but I’m no baby, Joe.”

  I sight. “I’m so proud of you,” I say, voice mock-choked with emotion.

  Something triggers my [Perception] and the hairs on the back of my end stand on end as the feeling of something, or someone, watching me runs down my spine like a chill. I glance towards the portal to see a skull poking back out onto our side of the Gate. Walter clears his throat, despite lacking the essential organs for throat-clearing.

  “Everything alright?” he asks.

  “Almost,” Liv says, holding up a finger to the skeleton summoner. She turns to me. “What about the Guild, actually?”

  “What about the Guild?” I ask. What did me entering this Gate matter to the Harvest Guild and their open invitation to join their ranks?

  “I’m technically on their roster, and they’re gonna notice I’m gone.”

  Oh, right. She was talking about her Guild internship, of course.

  “You didn’t think about that before agreeing to enter a Gate for some indeterminate amount of time?”

  She jumps with nervous energy as a realization strikes her. “We get a pass for Gate entrance. Part of training. They actually expect me to participate in clearing at least a few Gates during my summer. I have a provisional license that allows me to enter any Gate with a Guild-licensed individual.” She smirks. “That counts you now, right?”

  I hesitate.

  “Not really,” I admit. “But I’m pretty sure that sugary old man would vouch for me if I needed…” I trail off. Labonte’s round face flashes in my head—grinning, dripping in sweat, a towel around his shoulders, surrounded by flying sugar-pixies. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’d relish the opportunity to vouch for me.

  “Y’know what?” I grin. “Fuck it. Let’s get going.”

  “Language,” Walter mutters.

  I ignore the skeleton, snagging Jelly Boy off the ground. The round, basketball-sized slime buzzing with absolute excitement in the crook of my arm. I reach a hand out to my sister. “Ready?”

  She eyes the swirling portal for one, final moment, before taking my hand.

  “Ready.”

  Then we step through.

  The familiar sensation of traveling through a Gate hits me instantly. That same old tingling in my fingers and toes as I approach the swirling surface of light—and then bam! right behind the bellybutton. The infamous yanking sensation. Like someone attached a grappling hook to my insides and gave it a tug, ripping my entire essence into the void.

  There’s a flash of light. All sound is sucked away.

  For a moment, I feel like I’m falling.

  Not for long. Just enough to make me regret having anything in my stomach.

  The sensation is over just as quickly as it started, and as the white light feeling my vision fades, I regain awareness of the rest of my body, and my other senses quickly follow.

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  Entering Dead World #13…

  When my vision finally comes back, the first thing I notice is that my feet are wet. And not like oops-stepped-in-a-puddle wet. No. We’re talking sock-destroying, boot-squelching, I-might-grow-fungus wet. It has to be one of my least favorite sensation.

  With a quick mental command, I equip my gear (with the exception of my cursed Daisy Dukes, which the System kindly auto-equipped for me upon entering the Gate). My wet socks and shoes are instantly replaced with the dry and surprisingly comfortable feeling of my System-enhanced boots.

  The second thing I notice is that I’m standing ankle-deep in swamp muck, the air is humming with the drone of a thousand invisible insects, and the sky looks like it’s been smudged with charcoal.

  “Uh…” I say, glancing around at the foggy, waterlogged hellscape. “Where’s the castle?”

  Preston spins in a lazy circle in the fishbowl helmet, which glows faintly green in the gloominess we find ourself standing in. The diving suit body moves across, as through scanning our immediate surroundings.

  “We are, I’m afraid, quite a ways from the castle,” the zombie goldfish says in his upper-crust British accent. “We are in the territory of the Serpentine Lord. Specifically, this is the Miredrake Marsh. The Outer Ring.”

  I blink. “Serpentine Lord?” Why does that sound familiar?

  Walter—top hat slightly askew, suit now soaked and clinging to his bones like wet tissue paper—waves a dismissive skeletal hand. “It’s not my fault! My teleportation magic doesn’t work inside actively hostile zones. The Hollowroot Bastion’s buried right in the middle of the Miredrake Marshes. Best I could do was a nearby leyline. I don’t make the rules!”

  “Just follow them to the tee,” says Preston.

  This elicits a rattling chuckle from the skeleton.

  Liv groans as she lifts one leg out of the mucky water to reveal soaking shoes and a drenched pantleg, which has gone from deep green to a shade I can only describe as “drenched goblin snot.”

  “You teleported us into a swamp,” she says.

  “System-enhanced gear should be pretty water-proof,” I say, tossing my blue cape over my shoulder for emphasis.

  “Good to know,” she says. “For when I get some!”

  “Oh. Shit,” I say. “Not even your starting gear?”

  She shakes her head, stepping closer to me, where the water is shallower. “I haven’t had any of that for a while now… I use equipment temporarily provided by the Guild, but usually return it.”

  “Damn…” Then, an idea hits me. “Wait, here ya go!”

  I strike a dynamic pose, casting [Levitate].

  I feel the Spell target her, and a mental strain in my brain as she naturally resists the Spell. “Don’t fight it!” I exclaim.

  “Oh! Sorry!”

  Her resistance stops and I feel the Spell take purchase. Liv is lifted from the murky, green waters and floats above the surface of the water, about three feet high.

  “Woah!” She scrambles to right herself, arms and legs kicking awkwardly as she’s suspended there in place.

  “There,” I say. “Now we just need to avoid low-hanging branches.”

  “I… I can’t move,” she says. “I’m stuck.”

  “Oh…” I mutter. I think for a moment. Then, I summon my staff. “You’ll need to hold onto this.”

  Jelly Boy buzzes in my arm, and I think he also wants to be levitated. I glance down at the little guy. “Sorry man, you’ll have to settle for being carried.”

  Liv grabs hold of the top end of my staff. I take a few steps forward, and she’s pulled along with my staff. I successfully solved the ‘Liv in a Swamp’ puzzle!

  Walter’s been laughing at the entire scene.

  “So,” I say, turning to the skeleton accountant. “You can create portals to other worlds, but can’t create a portal directly to the System Seed because of… reasons?”

  “I’m not some all-powerful godlike being!” Walter snaps. “The summoning circle I used before was keyed to ‘ally who owes me a debt.’ That’s the only way I could punch through to your Realm.”

  I squint at him. “Your magic has some shoddy logic.”

  “Yes, and let me tell you,” he says, straightening his hat, “the mana cost for cross-Realm retrieval is no joke. Preston had to loan me most of his reserves for the casting.”

  “Don’t remind me,” the goldfish mutters. “I’m still recovering. My mana recovery is not what is once was…”

  Grush, the giant Frankenstein man in WWI combat gear, says nothing. He just wades through the mire like a green, undead tugboat.

  That’s when I feel a pulse in my skull. A thrum of energy that tickles my brain stem and makes my teeth buzz.

  Ding!

  A translucent window pops into view in front of me:

  NEW QUEST!

  New Quest: Echoes of a Dead World

  Description: You have agreed to help the inhabitants of Dead World #13. The Realm’s System World Seed has been reawakened and is suffering from corruption. If the fragmented Seed is not removed from this Realm, the volatile seed of power will continue to degrade until causing a World-ending Cataclysm. The System World Seed is located within the Hollowroot Bastion, an area currently locked away. Only Active Participants in the Games are capable of opening the doors to the Hollowroot Bastion.

  OBJECTIVE: Open the doors to the Hollowroot Bastion for the inhabitant of Dead World #13.

  Reward: Return Ticket x1, the Gratitude of the Undead.

  BONUS OBJECTIVE: Successfully access and remove the System World Seed fragment from this Realm.

  Reward: Legendary Spellcaster’s Chest.

  BONUS OBJECTIVE: Learn the history of this Realm and uncover the cause of this problem.

  Reward: Advanced Seeker’s Chest.

  I sigh. “I should’ve known this was coming.”

  I quickly re-read the words floating before me. The baseline objective is simple enough, and exactly what I had agreed to do. Though it’s hard to tell if Gratitude of the Undead was some kind of System joke, or an item description.

  The Bonus Objective are… Interesting. And if the rewards they offer are any clue, extremely dangerous. I glance at Liv, who’s sitting cross-legged in the air, eyes slightly unfocused. She’s probably reading the same Quest message. I can’t risk anything that will be too dangerous for her. Help Walter and Preston get inside the Hollowroot Bastion, then leave. That’s it. That’s the plan.

  Walter steps up next to me, the muck sloshing around his bony knees. “Thank you, by the way. There’s been word of other Adventurers in parts of our world, but it’s not like activate Participants are sprouting from the ground.”

  Grush lets out a low, echoing groan.

  Preston lets loose a tiny, dignified burp.

  And somewhere, in the depths of this fetid, fog-shrouded hellhole, something hisses.

  “Great,” I say. “That’s not ominous at all.”

  Walter grins. “Welcome to Necrovia, kid.”

  “Nothing in the Outer Ring should pose too much of a threat,” says Preston. “Until we reach the Guardians, we shouldn’t need to worry.”

  The hissing in the distance stops, as though affirming the goldfish’s assessment of our current situation.

  “Well, that’s good,” I say, chuckling with relief.

  Before the water beneath me explodes, large jaws filled with yellowed, razor sharp teeth opening around me.