Viridian Gate Online: Dead Man's Tide Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Eldgard

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Viridian Gate Online: Expanded Universe

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  litRPG on Facebook

  GameLit on Facebook

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  VIRIDIAN GATE ONLINE is more than just a game... and now, it's Alan Campbell’s whole world.

  Recently deceased and squishy as hell, Alan, a newly minted Illusionist, is forced to flee for his life. He needs time to deal with his loss, both in-game and IRL, but first he’ll have to escape his crazy ex, the treacherous Firebrand, Thalia Daceran.

  On his way to safety and revenge, he’ll team up with Titus, the Imperial spymaster, as well as a crew of pirates, commandos, and even a shapeshifting Mimic with a taste for blood. His path leads to Wyrdtide, a gaslit city hidden in mists and governed by dark demigods.

  But even with Alan dead, the world marches on. Will the government seize control of V.G.O.? Did Horace, the blind beggar, really die? And whatever happened to Jeff? Find answers, new purpose, and the machinations of the gods in this action-packed continuation of the Illusionist Series.

  From James A. Hunter—author of Viridian Gate Online, Rogue Dungeon, War God's Mantle, and the Yancy Lazarus Series—and D.J. Bodden, author of The Black Year Series, comes an epic new entry into the Expanded Universe of Viridian Gate Online that you won't want to put down!

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  Eldgard

  One

  GAIUS WITHDREW A FRESH sheet of vellum from the pile and squared it on the desk before him. Next, he selected one of his finer quills, a thin white shaft made of a stripped crow feather. He sharpened the tip with a small paring knife.

  He was fresh from the blooding and the unexpected elevation of his new agent, Alan Campbell, to the rank of Citizen by an extraordinary vote of the Senate. He’d led the procession through the streets to the Heights, showing the people of New Viridia their leadership was fit to defend them, and they’d been greeted by cheers, thrown wreaths, and the palpable relief of the middle and lower classes. It was a significant political victory. He felt young and energized like he was fresh from the parade ground with a pretty girl to come home to. And once he’d moved beyond the eyes of the masses, he’d returned to the palace, bathed privately, and changed into a fresh tunic and toga, ready to do the emperor’s work.

  Dear Senator Gessia, it was brought to my attention, Gaius wrote in tight, neat loops, stopping intermittently to dip his quill in the inkpot, that your second eldest son seeks placement in the Legion. The scratching of the nib calmed him. It was the sound of the Viridian Empire’s administration, impersonal and relentless in the service of its citizens. While there are no command roles available at this time, a tour as a page for Sir Berrick of Harrowick will form—

  Decimus, Gaius’s senior bodyguard, barged into the room.

  Gaius rose, face calm, pen palmed and nib pinched between index and thumb, as a weapon.

  “Intruder in the palace, sir,” Decimus said, standing so his body would shield Gaius from the window.

  Gaius stepped around his desk and headed out the open door, following one of his junior bodyguards. It was inconvenient, but being the most powerful man in the Western Empire, or at least the one able to direct the most military force, had the unwelcome side effect of making total strangers want him dead. Most of them were lone lunatics, with a rare, genuine attempt by professionals no more than twice a year. And once, almost twenty years ago, there had been a professional posing as a lone lunatic. He had gotten the closest, by far.

  The procedures were straightforward and well-rehearsed. He was escorted to the guard mess hall in the center of the palace, near the dormant Keep command room. One way in, one way out. “Make way!” Decimus bellowed, opening a path for them through a squad of sharp-eyed triarii, the heavy-armored elite of the Legion, and a pair of Imperial sorcerers. “We’re here, sir,” Decimus said seriously.

  “I can see that, Decimus,” Gaius answered. His senior bodyguard was big enough to go toe-to-toe with a Risi and loyal. In a world full of mirrors, sharp tongues, and hidden blades, Decimus was a blunt object. “Find out what the ruckus is about.”

  “Yes, sir!” Decimus said, bringing his fist to his chest. His eyes went blank as he started messaging the guard posts scattered throughout the palace.

  Gaius stepped through the archway into the guard mess hall, then froze as the sharp, cool edge of a sword flashed across and stopped, pressing lightly against his throat.

  Two

  GAIUS COULD FEEL THE intention of the swordsman through the razor-sharp edge at his neck. The blade didn’t bite or tremble; he was dealing with someone strong, focused, and skilled. The unseen swordsman tilted the blade down a fraction, then dragged it upward, scratching his skin without breaking it, until the edge was under his chin, lifting, bringing him onto his toes. This was showmanship, and maybe punishment. He still had the quill in his hand. He only needed an opening, a single error on the swordsman’s part and he would—

  A woman’s laugh and the blade was withdrawn. He turned and saw it was Enyo, Overmind of Discord. She looked young again, early forties and ten years his junior. Before riots broke out in his city, she’d been a wizened crone. He scowled.

  “This is why I love you, Gaius. No pleading. No bluster. You’re all claws and no squawk. You were going to attack me, weren’t you? With what? Is that a quill?”

  “How many of my guards have you killed?” he asked.

  She waved her hand. “I incapacitated fifteen of them. I killed one.”

  “Why?”

  “He ran from me. I did you a favor.”

  “I mean why are you here?”

  “Making sure you’re adequately protected isn’t reason enough?”

  “It isn’t.” Gaius clenched his jaw. “He was probably going to get backup like a good soldier should.”

  Enyo flipped the sword forward in her hand and slammed it home into the scabbard at her right hip. “Then why didn’t you? You were in a doorway, Gaius. All you had to do was take a step back, just this once, and it didn’t even cross your mind.”

  Gaius’s upper lip twitched.

  She smiled at him. “Let’s have lunch.”

  He stepped away from the entrance and clasped his hands behind his back. “I’d like you to leave.”

  For a moment, he almost thought he saw her flinch. “Offer me a glass of wine, at least.”

  “I’d rather—”

  “Gaius Considia,” she cut him off. “You will offer the goddess who preserved you and many of your soldiers through a lifetime of war an oblation as is her due!” Her voice was the bark of distant cannons. He smelled gunpowder and blood.

  Gaius stiffened. If she’d threatened him, he migh
t have chanced her wrath, but House Considia paid its debts. Always. “Decimus!” he snapped.

  His senior bodyguard ran to the sound of his voice. Decimus had one foot in the room when his eyes widened, and he flash-stepped forward, appearing at Enyo’s side with his sword drawn and pointed at her face. “What—”

  “Put it away, Decimus,” Gaius said.

  The bodyguard obeyed without question.

  “Stand down the palace guard. Get us two glasses and a bottle of wine, and not that expensive fruit juice the praetorians drink. I want field wine in an unlabeled bottle. If we don’t any in the palace, have them send a runner from the camp.”

  “Yes, General!” Decimus said, and ran off, giving Enyo one last look.

  “You approve?” Gaius said.

  “I might steal him from you.”

  “I meant the wine, Enyo,” Gaius said. He walked to the head of the long table and pulled the chair out for her.

  She gave him another smile. “Just like old times.”

  She sat, and he slid the chair in behind her. Then he walked to the far end of the table and sat opposite. Her eyes shone in the lamplight, and his chest tightened. Oldest of friends, dearest of enemies. “You look well,” he said.

  “This city has been kind to me, of late.”

  “The city could do without your kindness.”

  She slouched in her chair slightly and looked at the wall hangings. “Don’t blame me for my sister’s plots. At least with me, you know who your enemy is.”

  “Everyone.”

  Enyo smiled. She drummed her fingers on the table.

  Decimus returned with the wine faster than expected.

  “Yours?” Gaius asked.

  Decimus blushed. Legionaries’ tent-brewed wine was frowned upon by most officers. “Got used to the taste.”

  “Good man. I’ll give you one of mine.”

  Decimus broke into a wide grin. He poured a glass for Gaius, then for Enyo. “Leave the bottle,” she said.

  He set it in front of her, then looked at Gaius. “You can wait outside, Decimus.”

  “Yes, General.”

  When his bodyguard was gone, Gaius looked at his guest, raised his glass, and said, “To peace!”

  “And other childish notions,” Enyo finished.

  They knocked their glasses back. Enyo refilled hers and kept the bottle to herself.

  “Why are you here, Enyo?” Gaius asked.

  “This is a war council, Gaius. The Viridian Empire is going to conquer the rest of Eldgard, and you are going to lead its armies.”

  Gaius chuckled. “Speaking of childish notions. Why would I do that?”

  “Because you love your son.”

  PROVUS CLOSED THE DOOR to his quarters behind him. As a senior tribune working directly under Legate Aurelius, Provus was entitled to a two-room apartment in the praetorian barracks, with a small sitting room, a separate bedroom, and a steward.

  He’d declined the manservant and had the more ostentatious, fragile furniture removed from the sitting room, installing a sturdy table on which he could spread a map and meet with the senior officers of the duty cohorts. Said maps were kept locked, trapped, and warded in a fifteen-drawer flat file cabinet whenever not in use, although Provus had been known to leave out false information to expose or confuse spies. A few sets of armor, some weapon racks, and two travel chests had taken over the far left corner of the room. Provus’s collection wasn’t as extensive or rare as his uncle’s, but anyone who’d seen both men’s working spaces would note the similarities. While Provus had suffered from the controversy of his alleged parentage, he had no qualms about being compared to the Griffin of New Viridia.

  He walked through the sitting room into the bedroom and removed his dirty clothes, then ran himself a bath. The praetorian barracks had both hot and cold water running on tap, thanks to a nearby water tower and the attentions of the Legion’s Firebrands. It was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself. He got the water steaming hot and let the heat work its way into his aching muscles.

  The hunt had been an unmitigated success. Men and women had died, but none of them sitting members of the Senate or foreign dignitaries. By shedding blood—their own and the forest creatures’—the nobility of New Viridia reaffirmed the link between citizen and Empire. It was barbaric and wildly superstitious, but it worked, and if the commoners would serve the nation without bloodshed or gods, there would be no need for the nobility or the priesthood.

  Provus stood and toweled off. He was in his late twenties, well-muscled, and his skin was tight with few blemishes. His palms had thick calluses, and faint scars crisscrossed his fingers and knuckles. He smiled at the vanity of it, but he was content. He’d become, and was still becoming, the man he’d always wanted to be.

  He donned the medium armor of a decurion of the antesignani, a short coat of overlapping scales over a thick tunic and riding breeches, and twin short swords at his hips. He strapped a quiver of javelins to his back, but left the customary short lance on its hooks; he wasn’t planning on fighting anymore today. Then he tucked a reinforced metal helmet with a single red plume under his arm and headed for the door. It was the seventh day of the Imperial week, Enyo’s day, normally a day of rest and remembrance. Since he was free from his regular duties, he’d arranged to take a small troop of scouts on a fast ride around the city walls.

  He heard shouting and the sound of running feet as he opened the door.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, stopping Appius Fabius, a fellow nobleman and praetorian who’d just returned from a tour on the mainland of Eldgard.

  “Call to arms, Tribune! The barracks are under attack!”

  Provus grinned, donning his helmet. “It’s a good day then, Appius. It’s not often the enemy saves us the trouble of finding them.”

  The men and women of the Praetorian Guard poured out of their barracks like angry ants, shields raised against a hail of crossbow bolts, stones, and incendiaries. There were close to 240 officers, staffers, and team leaders lodged in the praetorian barracks, enough to lead the three cohorts of legionaries, specialists, and city watchmen who formed the home guard of the city. They faced a crowd of over a thousand angry residents. Damn it, Provus thought. He’d expected assassins or irregulars, not his own people.

  Provus ducked a thrown paving stone. The line of praetorians flexed as the mob surged forward, and Provus instinctively put his shoulder against a fellow legionary’s back and helped push. “Form up! Form up!” he shouted. A flaming bottle of spirits flew through the air and exploded against the front face of the building. The mob cheered. The legionaries shouted commands and obscenities at the gathered rabble, and the first rank laid in with the flats of their blades and the edges of their shields. Provus gritted his teeth. The legionaries would get injured or killed by holding back.

  A man next to Provus went down with a crossbow bolt through the throat, and a Legion Healer dragged the legionary back to save his life. Provus’s eyes narrowed. There were agitators and sharpshooters in the crowd; the residents were being used as a weapon against the Legion.

  “Antesignani, on me!” he bellowed, drawing his swords. It was time to break the stalemate.

  “Right behind you, Tribune,” Appius said, placing a hand on Provus’s left shoulder. Another hand fell on his right as the shock troops of the Legion formed up behind him.

  “Who stands before the banners?” Provus shouted.

  “Antesignani!” the half dozen legionaries with him shouted, letting their comrades in the ranks know what was coming.

  Provus charged.

  Phalanx tactics, and the melee in general, hinged on subtle changes in the opposing formations. At the call of “Antesignani,” the two columns of legionaries in front of Provus split, bunching to their left and right as the tribune and his men ran through. The regulars turned their shields inward, providing a smooth corridor eight men deep that the mob, under the press of the people behind them, spilled into. Under ordinary c
ircumstances, the legionary formation would have been split, surrounded, and overwhelmed.

  Provus triggered Meteor Charge and Impact at the same time. He didn’t benefit from the multipliers he would have for wearing a full suit of heavy armor or a tower shield, but against untrained civilians and braced by the legionaries pushing at his back, the paired abilities hit like a cannon blast. Then he triggered Blinding Scissors, crossing his short swords on either side of the lead rioter’s neck and pulling them apart with a scrape of steel on steel, decapitating the screaming commoner and showering the people behind her with blood and bright sparks. That procced his passives as a tribune of the antesignani, inflicting horror on enemies within five feet, and the mob recoiled from the gap.

  Provus and the antesignani poured into that opening, hacking and stabbing without a care for who was on the other end. For every consecutive blow Provus landed while dual wielding, he got a ten-second, five percent increase in attack speed, stacking up to six times. Every time he killed someone with an active skill, he inflicted horror on the crowd around him. The world slowed to two-thirds of its normal speed as he opened wrists and elbows, slashed and stabbed exposed necks, throats, guts, and groins, and cycled through his dual- and single-sword actives as fast as his cooldowns would allow. He stomped on toes, collapsed knees, and snapped his elbows into noses in the half-beat between strikes, inflicting more debuffs on the crowd and creating a two-rank-deep pool of crippled targets to choose from. His Stamina drained like water from an upended canteen.

  Appius, who’d fought with the likes of Provus before, stood at the tribune’s back and spread his fellow antesignani into the breach, forming a half circle of cleared ground in front of the praetorian lines. Each man or woman fought alone, a five-foot radius of mayhem and depleting Stamina. When the shock troops were fully committed, and it seemed like they would either have to detach from the other legionaries or fall back, Appius waved his weapon at the legionaries behind them and yelled, “Triarii to the fore!”