Day Thirteen in Draven’s Reach

It did not take the harbinger long to wander off. I guess watching me stare off into space wasn’t much fun.

After the stygian left, I moved from worrying about the future to examining the waiting Game messages.

You have been reborn. Lives remaining: 2. Time lost during resurrection: 8 hours. Rebirth location: sector 73,102 safe zone. Two soul bond items have been restored.

You have lost knowledge of the stolen spell, death’s cacophony.

Your null death skill has increased to level 21 and reached rank 2.

Not unexpectedly, I’d gained no levels from the encounter in the canyon and only a few of my skills had advanced. Interestingly enough, the spell the harbinger had used to kill me was from the school of death magic, which perhaps explained why I had failed so utterly to resist it. But it was not my player profile or the manner of my death that concerned me. It was my gear.

Or rather, the utter lack of any.

Morosely I stared down at the two items I’d placed on the ground: ebonheart and Sunfury’s gift. The phoenix’s feather was of no use just yet, which meant I had only ebonheart and my abilities to depend on to get me halfway across the dungeon to my corpse.

A mammoth task, and that was discounting the stygians that no doubt lay in wait in the nearby fog.

I sighed. How am I going to do this?

If Ghost was still alive, she was undoubtedly frantic with worry by this point. Would the spirit wolf remain in the canyon? And if she didn’t, how would I find her?

I shook my head, setting aside the troubling thought before it could balloon into even more unanswerable questions. My first task was getting out of the fog bank. Then I would worry about Ghost and retrieving my belongings.

Strapping on ebonheart and sticking the feather in my belt, I rose to my feet and considered the encircling fog. I had no means of navigation either, but after my time in the tundra that was a state of affairs I was intimately familiar with, and I did not let it unduly trouble me.

Picking a direction at random I marched forward until I reached the edge off the fog line. The transition between the safe zone and the nether was startling. On one side the air was crystal clear, and on the other side it was opaque and tinged with a faint odor of decay.

Alright, time to find out what awaits me, I thought and opened my mindsight.

Immediately, a profusion of mindglows crowded my awareness. Not unexpected, I told myself, and patiently inspected them one by one.

The target is a stygian weaver.

The target is a stygian serpent.

The target is a stygian hydra.

...

There were over three hundred stygians, all of them gathered beyond the sixty-yard line and at what, I suspected, the harbinger believed to be the limit of my telepathy skills. I was familiar with most of the nether creature types gathered, but it was not the stygians I could see though that concerned me.

It was those I couldn’t.

And there was only one way to determine if any of those were present. Calling on the shadows, I concealed myself.

Or, tried to.

An unknown entity has detected you! You have failed to hide.

I sighed. So, there were spores present. Again, not unexpected, I told myself. Swinging right, I set off clockwise to determine how complete the stygian cordon was.

But in my heart, I already knew.

✵ ✵ ✵

My suspicions proved correct.

The harbinger had completely encircled the safe zone with high-leveled nether creatures and an unknown number of stygian spores. There would be no sneaking past.

I could try charming the visible nether creatures while secure in the safe zone and creating a gap in the cordon that way. But I suspected the harbinger would only plug the hole or shift the cordon out until the nearest stygian was out of mindsight range—and he had thousands to play with.

My jaunt around the safe zone had revealed a force of five thousand nether creatures, and those were only the ones the harbinger had deployed to imprison me. How many other stygians did the fog hide?

The next option would be to race through. I was fast enough to evade the stygians even if they knew where I was every step of the way. But this plan, too, was chancy, especially if the harbinger was close by and prepared to use his oblivion spell against me again.

And besides, once past the initial cordon, speed would be of no help. Since I couldn’t see well enough to navigate, I would have to meticulously map out my path if I didn’t want to wander in circles.

I can’t sneak past. I can’t charm my way through. And I can’t outrun the stygians.

Where did that leave me?

Without a plan, I concluded gloomily.

I refuse to be dejected, though. I will have to play it by ear, I decided, altering my plans on the fly depending on the stygians’ response. And step one, was leaving the safe zone.

Screwing up my courage, I stepped across the invisible barrier holding back the fog.

You have left a safe zone.

Warning: You have entered the nether! The nether toxicity at your current location is at tier 6. You are unprotected.

Your health, psi, stamina, and mana are degenerating at a rate of 16% per minute (damage reduced by 55% due to void armor).

Huh, that’s another wrinkle, I thought stepping back. The nether concentration was much stronger here than in any other fog banks I had been in. Why was that? It could be because the central fog bank was larger—but why was it larger? And why did this fog bank seem to feed the others.

There is a void tree here. Has to be.

It explained the presence of the spores, the seeds, the harbinger, and maybe even the nether itself. But why hadn’t the Game warned me? It had done so when I’d entered the two other nether-infested sectors I had been to. Those had been Kingdom sectors, though. Did that account for the difference?

Perhaps, I thought, returning to the rebirth well. It was time for a rethink.

✵ ✵ ✵

The presence of the void tree complicated matters.

It guaranteed that there was a large stygian nest somewhere in the fog bank and it had ramped up the nether toxicity significantly. The increased degeneration rates of my mana, psi, and even health did not overly concern me. I could renew all three whilst in the nether with my abilities.

It was the stamina drain that worried me the most.

I had no way of replenishing it, and once I ran out, I would collapse into an immovable puddle—an easy target for any stygian. This, atop the other penalties I was laboring under, made getting out… impossible.

I had already lost eight hours, and a sense of urgency drove me. I knew Ghost. She was too curious to stay idle for long. If I didn’t return soon, she would undoubtedly wander off in search of me—if she hadn’t already.

She had no way to locate me, though. Nor me, her. And once Ghost left the site of my death, the chances of us finding each other dropped dramatically.

Of course, all of this assumed Ghost was alive. But I refused to believe her dead, and until I had incontrovertible proof otherwise, I would continue to act as if she was alive. Which was why I was so keen, not just to get back to her, but to do so quickly.

That was impossible, though.

I could try anyway—take my chances and run the harbinger’s gauntlet. In ideal conditions, it would take me less than a minute to cover the half mile I estimated necessary to escape the fog. But these were less than ideal conditions.

For one, with no landmarks, I couldn’t be certain I would be running in a straight line. And for another, I could expect to be under attack the entire time. There was also the harbinger to consider. He would undoubtedly turn up at some point, adding his own nasty share of surprises to the mix.

Lastly, there was the terrain to consider. I had no idea what I would be facing once I left the safe zone. There might be rivers to ford, or cliffs to scale, neither of which would be easy to do while racing against the clock. The cost of failure would be high, too. If I died, I would lose another eight hours and be left with only one life.

So, what will it be?

Slow and sure—well, not sure, but surer—and leaving Ghost to fend for herself for days on end?

Or fast and loose and returning to Ghost as quickly as possible?

I bit my lip, thinking. As much as I wanted to protect Ghost, she was not the only one depending on me. There were others who I had made promises to. Safyre, Anriq, Saya, Elron, and two entire wolf packs. I couldn’t just roll the dice and let the chips fall as they may.

I had responsibilities.

I have to trust Ghost, I decided reluctantly. Since entering the dungeon, she had shown herself capable enough. She would manage on her own.

Slow and sure it is.

I rose to my feet. There would be no quick dash through the mist. I would be meticulous and thin the stygian numbers bit by bit. Five thousand stygians might be a lot, but by the time I was done, the harbinger would rue the day he gave me an unassailable base to operate from.

Hang in there, Ghost. I will find you—eventually.