The Clan (13 page)

I closed the chat windows
. Finally I could have a good look around. The inner court of the fortress had been marked with the imprint of the dragon's enormous wing bones. If you looked at it from above, you could see clearly the position the dragon had been lying in when his heart had ceased beating.

The undead stopped ambling around and began gravitating toward me, even though they didn't dare overstep some invisible line
that only they could see. They would come close and stop dead in their tracks, their empty eye sockets staring at me. Should I summon my zombie to keep them company? Having said that, I'd rather not. I could be the proud mark-bearer thanks to my secret supporters, but I couldn't predict the local skeletons and Liches' reaction to my humble pet.

I walked through their ranks, expecting the strong stench of dead flesh, but time must have picked their bones clean of meat, so they didn't smell at all. I kept going until I'd left the
piles of bones behind me. Here the canyon split, revealing a rather green valley specked with wild flowers. Whatever monster inhabited it apparently didn't lay claim to the green bit. I glanced at the white expanse of the map which was rapidly filling with schematic hills, brooks and other special signs.

Then I saw the first specimens of what passed for the local fauna: a level 160 zombie grizzly bear and a mutant reindeer, his antlers glowing the same acid green. He wasn't radioactive
, surely? A Geiger counter would have come in handy: I didn't wish to share the dragon's fate.

Th
e reindeer noticed me and froze just like the skeletons back in the fortress, apparently unable or unwilling to flee. Gingerly I approached him, running my hand along the beast's warm side, as he snorted, shuddering, his berserk bloodshot eyes squinting at me. I reconsidered and stepped back. No need to upset the critter. His upper lip rose, exposing some definitely non-herbivore canine teeth that added conviction to my decision.

I walked along a barely discernable road reduced to a trail by earth deposits
and a riot of greenery. Occasional ruins studded my path: watch towers atop of some strategic high points; the crumbling shells of inns and taverns clinging to the roadside where they'd once promised shelter and food to tired wayfarers. All the buildings were in various stages of decay. And if you shook your head, switching from high-fantasy mode to today's realities, you could discern the stitches of automatic weapons that had once ripped through the walls and the petals of shrapnel left by every caliber shell under the sun.

I walked over to the pockmarked ruins of a tower and rummaged through a heap of rubble at its base. Soon a piece of shrapnel lay in my hand, silver and purple, its edges ragged and incredibly sharp. It didn't look as if time had any power over
this once-deadly piece of metal. Once I had rubbed it free from dust, it glistened in the sun just like it must have done eons ago. I attempted to read its stats.

Mithril Ore. Metal content: 8%. Weight: 0.22 Lbs
.

Jesus. May I have two, please? So those steel invaders used depleted mithril to knock up their missiles? That was rich! I thought I knew why the Titans hadn't been back yet: they must still be sitting next to a mithril Everest even now, smearing the desperate tears from their greedy faces knowing they couldn't stuff it all in their pockets.

If you remembered that mithril was ten times the price of gold, my little find could easily cost anything up to eighty
gold. I liked this kind of math. I stood on the hilltop, looking over the unfolding panorama of several busted ruins and a few promising shell holes, long collapsed and overgrown with grass. For all I knew, it could have been a tree uprooted a hundred years ago, having shifted a good dozen cubic feet of earth in its fall. Then again, the bottom of the hole could conceal the mithril tail fin of a five-hundred kilo bomb...

The gold rush got the better of me. I spent the next half-hour crawling on all fours at the foot of the tower. Finally, I slumped onto a cleaner strip of grass and poured out my finds in front of me. Eight glistening fragments, sharp and angular, weighed in at about six hundred grams: a Klondike times Eldorado. They didn't happen to have a fifty-ton tank buried here somewhere, did they? Had I had a dozen diggers complete with spades, I'd be driving a Ferrari by this time tomorrow. Having said that, I wouldn't have changed Hummungus for any kind of Rolls Royce. But then again, there had to be some mithril bear item recipes around, surely? It was about time I got myself a cool set of purple armor, too. Having said that, it all depended on the resulting item's stats. Probably, I'd be better off finding some way to use mithril to upgrade the already existing items. In any case, with my negligible forging and enchanting skills, I'd have to pick the experts' brains.

I carefully poured my finds into my bag, added a placemark to my map, cast a concerned look at the sun and started out for the valley below.

After another hour of watchful walking, I climbed another hill. A breathtaking view opened out before me, revealing a huge fortress, apparently very ancient
—older than the dragon and in about the same state.

"Holy cow. Stalingrad, January 1943," I muttered.

The outside walls formed an octagon three stories high, each of its eight sides about half a mile long, studded with towers every two hundred feet or so. I estimated the total length of the walls at about two miles, times the density of the soldiers needed to defend the fortresses' seventy towers under attack. The resulting figure made me feel sick. This fortification had been designed to accommodate one hell of a crowd. That's not even counting the second row of walls that showed behind the first one, while the third and final line of defense loomed up at the heart of the castle.

The road snaked downhill toward a small fort
that arched over the once-busy trade route, covering the access to the main gates against any potential enemy. At close range, the fortress turned out to be in an even sadder state: the proverbial Reichstag building after the storm. The once-unscalable walls grinned through their missing teeth exposing dark gaps and crumbling drops. I passed the fort and dived into the gateway. The walls' sheer thickness was astounding.

Congratulations! You have discovered a castle!

Class: Super Nova

The capture of the castle is impossible due to irreparable damage to the Control Room.

I paused, imagining myself to be the proud owner of that behemoth. The Black Lord in his gloomy citadel. While it sure tickled my vanity, I had my doubts I'd be able to keep such a juicy morsel. I dreaded to think of the sums the Admins would demand just for buying out the land and buildings.

The road took a ninety-degree turn, taking me to a littered passage between the two walls. That was clever: in case the attackers did break through, they would have to cover another few hundred feet under crossfire, losing speed, manpower and enthusiasm. Did I say a few hundred feet? I
had to walk well over a mile tracing the 180-degree curve of the wall until I finally saw the gates which led inside the second line of defense.

That must have been some blood-bath, I tell you. I stared at two-feet deep chips in the walls generously pockmarked by automatic guns and streaked with molten stone
—the latter, if the truth were known, could have been left by the defenders as well as the attackers. The picture was complete with a couple of petrified mountain trolls. Their massive bodies, perforated by some large-caliber quick-firer, had frozen the moment death had looked into their glazed eyes.

One of them held an interesting weapon. Collapsing on one knee as he died, he leaned against his club, trying to regain his balance. Even now the club
still glistened purple. Most of all it reminded me of the torn-out barrel of a tank turret with its recognizable fat thermal sleeve and a rather battered loading mechanism that the troll must have used to bash the enemy with.

A prompt popped up:

Depleted mithril ore. Metal content: 1%. Weight: 1628 Lbs.

Visibly disappointed, my inner greedy pig
poked at his calculator. The resulting figure sent him into a stupor. Seventy-four thousand gold! Immediately that raised a lot of questions. I didn't for one moment doubt the existence of various ore benefication methods that would leave me with a nice neat fifteen-pound ingot of pure mithril. The questions started with the costs, the losses of the valuable ore, as well as logistics and shipping. And how I was I supposed to cut it up or shove the ten-feet barrel into a furnace? Besides, it was breaking my heart robbing the beautiful death statue. No sculptor in the world could recreate the tragedy of the piece, the last exertion, the forehead wrinkled with effort as the troll attempted to force himself back to his feet and onto his enemies. It commanded so much compassion and respect... As far as I was concerned, it would be the last item to end up in the furnace.

I nearly broke my legs scrambling through the debris before I got to the gates of the second line of defense. The third wall loomed up about a hundred feet away, taller and even more impregnable than the first two. I turned my head this way
and that, looking for the gate. WTF? Was I supposed to go on another two-mile hike? How had whoever'd lived here managed to get in in times of peace? There had to be something there that I didn't yet know. This was logistics' worst nightmare. They had to have had some magic elevators or teleports.

It looked like the mysterious invaders had shared my indignation, unwilling to traipse another half-hour in the walls' artificial shade. A few hundred feet further up, I
stumbled across an artificial mound of broken stone. The whole part of the inner wall lay in ruins. Still, climbing it wasn't as easy as walking up the stairs to the third floor. I had to work hard getting to the top of that manmade hill secured by deformed lengths of construction steel.

The top offered an excellent view of the citadel which was the reason for the
complex defense structure. The First Temple. Even now, with one third of it destroyed and its top stories collapsed, its tower spires molten, its wall gaping with a huge breach instead of a doorway, it commanded reverence and admiration. Its almost-Gothic style blew your mind away with millions of distracting little details. I know it sounds weird but it felt as if I stood below an enormous organ suspended high in the air, its keys transcending the sonic barrier in their solemn prayer. Eight spike-shaped wings emanated from the central building: some little more than fragments of the bearing walls, others perfectly unscathed. The whole architectural group could accommodate thousands of people. A truly enormous potential.

Gravel rustled underfoot as I gingerly slid down the slope, grasping at the rusty steel bars and braces. After five minutes of picking my way through the debris, I approached a gap in the Temple wall
that opened up the way deep inside. I just hoped that the altar was somewhere other than the destroyed roof or top stories: most likely, they housed the catapults and the fortress control room. Which made sense because any invaders would storm the building from bottom to the top, not the other way round. So the altar had to be downstairs. All public religions shared the same logic.

I stepped in and gasped. The interior of the Temple looked like an open-hearth furnace laid up for maintenance. There had been a quality fire burning there for a long long time. I got the impression that, once the fire had exhausted all the combustibles, oxygen included, it had made a real effort and kept going for another couple of days, melting granite by the force of its pride alone. The
vitrified floor and dripping walls had fused, wax-like, revealing a pristine slab of the altar barely shimmering in the center of the Temple.

My steps echoed flatly across the empty hall. I ascended some one-time steps, molten into the semblance of a volcanic staircase. The altar. A half-inch crack ran across it from corner to corner. The stubborn stone had chipped in the middle, the shape of the chip vaguely familiar. Without looking, I reached into my bag for the Large Fragment. It seemed to fit perfectly. Should I do it? I made a mental sign of the cross
and, holding my breath for no known reason, placed the fragment onto the slab.

Gong! My ears rang; my
knees hit the ground. My entire field of vision became cluttered with admin messages,

Universal alert! The Fallen One is back! The Dark Ones have restored the First Temple, allowing the Fallen God to break his fetters and regain control over a part of reality.

Effect 1: +7 to XP bonus to all worshippers of the Fallen One. The bonus is calculated by the formula of 1% per each level of the First Temple plus another 1% for every temple consecrated to Dark gods.

Effect 2: The possibility of restoring the Dark pantheon and summoning new gods to serve the Fallen One.

Effect 3: The Dark One is back in power. Now his worshippers will have the option of dedicating themselves to one of the pantheon's junior gods by offering sacrifices and receiving religious ranks. Every god has his or her own choice of gifts and skills available for their followers.

Warning! People of Light, to arms! In a month's time, the First Temple will lose its immunity. By that time, you will need to find and destroy the spawn of the Dark!