Lich Hollow: An Apocalyptic LitRPG Adventure (Fae Nexus Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Our Story So Far

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  Books by Black Forge

  LitRPG on Facebook

  Even More LitRPG on Facebook

  GameLit and Cultivation on Facebook

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  A LICH, A STORM DRAGON'S claws, and a battle for freedom.

  Gage has a week to rescue his loved ones before they're sacrificed, but if he's going to fight through an army of demons to get them out of the prison camp, he's going to need a powerful weapon.

  An ex-Demon Hunter turned lich is rumored to have just the thing: the claws of an ancient storm dragon that will give Gage the powers of a Storm Lord. But the lich was banished into the Dreaming a century ago, so tracking him down won't be easy.

  Stealing treasure from a lich is no simple task, but if he has to, Gage will pry the weapon from the monster's cold, undead hands.

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  Our Story So Far

  AS GAGE WAS CAMPING with his friends in the Ozark Mountains, the Aurora Borealis stretched across the sky and descended to the Earth’s surface, reconnecting our world with the Fae Nexus. It brought magic in the form of Fae powers, and an explosive update to the laws of physics. Oh, and a bunch of demons poured through portals in the sky, invading their hometown of Clearwater.

  The Fae Nexus System offered Gage and his friends a chance to pick Player Classes. Gage became a Wizard, with the ability to create Spells based on Dream or Storm Fae. His friend Peri chose Fighter and his brother, Seth, became a Ranger.

  They didn’t have to wait long to try out their new abilities. A demonic slave hunter attacked their camp, and after defeating him, the friends carried out the hunting tradition of taking a bite from the raw heart of their kill. The demon heart nearly poisoned them, but when they survived, they were offered the profession of Demon Hunter.

  Rushing home, they found Gage’s and Seth's grandma and Peri's dad alive but trapped in the prison camp the demons had erected. The sheriff, Alan Lennox, had betrayed the townspeople and handed over Clearwater and its residents to High Priestess Alikari in exchange for horrifying mutant powers.

  Gage and his friends narrowly escaped Sheriff Lennox’s clutches, fleeing down the river in a leaky wooden canoe in a raging storm. They hiked up Lightning Creek toward an old speakeasy to find shelter. Along the way they rescued Annie, an old-fashioned moonshiner, and Shirrana, her granddaughter, from a fluffle of mutant rabbits.

  When they all finally made it to the old speakeasy, a ghostly gunslinger named Tasch challenged them, but as Demon Hunters they staked their rightful claim to the hideout. Knowing Sheriff Lennox wouldn’t give up the hunt, they spent their time setting traps and leveling up their powers. Gage added Workshop Fae to his repertoire, along with a healing Spell based on Duct Tape called Redneck Stitches.

  Before long, Sheriff Lennox and his minions attacked. In an epic zipline battle, Gage and his friends defeated the sheriff’s underlings, but the sheriff chased the friends into the speakeasy. Although Tasch was a fierce and powerful defender of their hideout, Lennox had a trick up his sleeve and banished the old gunslinger. As Tasch disappeared, he tossed Gage an iron key and then unloaded a ghostly double-barreled shotgun blast into Lennox, providing enough of an edge for Gage and his friends to eke out a victory over the tentacled horror of a sheriff.

  After the battle, a doorway appeared leading deep under the caverns of the speakeasy. The iron key fit the lock, but had Tasch meant them to go down the stairs, or did he want them to make sure the door stayed locked?

  It's time to find out...

  Chapter One

  GAGE was trapped between wakefulness and sleep. He tossed and turned under sweat-soaked blankets, tangling them ever tighter around his throat. Desperation for answers fought against exhaustion. Should they rush to Clearwater to free their loved ones, or delve beneath The Speakeasy, not knowing if Tasch’s doorway led to a solution for their problems or to a quick death?

  Tendrils of Dream Fae responded to his subconscious demands, creeping into his ears, nose, and mouth. As they slipped through his meridians and into his cores, darkness enveloped him, and Gage went still.

  A starry night sky wavered into view. In it, a thin crescent moon hung like a cat’s claw, and a falling star streaked overhead, quickly followed by three more. The stars vanished behind the same huge black obelisk that had brought the demons to Earth. The Sigils lining it flickered, and the sight sent a chill through Gage. Were they out of time already?

  Below him sat Clearwater’s modest church. The stone spires around it had grown, and now met above the church steeple. A sickly green gemstone balanced on their sharp points, pulsing with power.

  The walls of the small building were scorched black, and charred earth formed a circle in front of it, in stark contrast with the winter snow. Hooded and robed figures stood along the perimeter, and in the center was none other than High Priestess Alikari.

  She snapped orders at a dozen slaves who bore an altar made of pale stone and covered with intricate engravings. Gage tried to focus on them, sure they would be people he knew. But their faces distorted, like he was seeing them through heat waves rising off summer blacktop.

  The only figure he could make out in sharp detail was Alikari. Crimson patches mottled her alabaster skin, and she had decorated her jet-black horns with iron rings. Lines of scars ran in patterns down her face and neck, and even in the depths of winter, diaphanous robes flowed around her like smoke.

  He examined the altar more closely and recoiled. It wasn’t stone at all. It was carved from a single piece of bone, but what could produce one that size?

  And why was Alikari in focus when nobody else was?

  Suddenly, Gage became sure that this vision was a premonition. The stronger the probability, the clearer each part became. She was clear because this event centered on her. The blurry figures at the periphery were less important, and
less certain.

  After placing the altar within the charred circle, the slaves backed away with their eyes on the ground. Guards took charge of them, lighting up the red Sigils on their collars to force them into a waiting wagon, drawn by a huge six-legged lizard.

  All of them made it inside except one.

  “Bring him.” The High Priestess pointed.

  A guard fetched the slave she had chosen and dragged him back into the charred circle.

  Alikari pushed the prisoner over backward onto the heavy bone slab. Gage strained to see who it was, but the man remained blurred and unrecognizable.

  He kicked out at the priestess, and she barked a command. His collar lit up like a ring of burning embers around his throat. Lines of fire ran down his body, and he arched backward, his face twisting in a rictus of pain.

  She drew forth a strange knife that glinted in her hand. It resembled a sharpened garden trowel, and she pressed it below the convulsing man’s sternum. With a toothy smile, she shoved it into his belly, angled up beneath his ribs.

  Dark blood and guts poured over Alikari’s hands as he died. It made her smile, revealing her sharp teeth. She twisted the shovel-like blade, severing connecting veins inside of the prisoner before scooping out his heart.

  Filled with dread, Gage focused his will on seeing who was being sacrificed. But the dead man’s face remained unfocused. A spike of agony shot through Gage’s head. The harder he struggled to clarify the vision, the more pain and exhaustion he felt. It was no use.

  Hefting the heart in her hand, Alikari turned and signaled. Three of her sycophants scurried to kneel behind her, chanting and tracing Sigils in the blackened earth with their claws. A seedling burst forth from the ground and grew to chest height in seconds. Leaves covered in spikes extended from the plant’s thick stalk, and a large black bud opened into a lotus blossom with velvety petals.

  As it bloomed, one of the three demons faltered in her chanting, coughing wetly as she lost control of the Spell. Blood spattered from her mouth and onto the flower, which drank it in eagerly. She backed away in panic, but it lashed out with a spine-covered tendril, seizing her. It drained her in seconds, leaving only a desiccated husk behind.

  Alikari laughed in delight. “That will increase the potency nicely.”

  She tilted her head back, watching the sky. Gage’s blood turned to ice as her black eyes stared straight through him, but she gave no sign that she’d noticed his presence. After a moment, she snapped at a tall, thin demon who was frantically twisting dials on a brass device mounted on a tripod. “You said they would appear every few seconds! If you lied to me again—”

  “They will be here,” he assured her, his voice quavering. “Our charts were millennia old. I am confident we’ve made the proper adjustments.”

  He didn’t sound very confident, and Gage was certain the tall demon would be the next one bent over the altar if his promises did not come to pass.

  Alikari’s scowl cleared as another falling star streaked across the sky. “At last.”

  She chanted in a low, guttural language and tossed the heart into the center of the lotus flower. The entire ring of sycophants joined in her chant. Astonishingly, the star changed course, arcing toward the church.

  It should have been a simple meteorite, but Gage sensed power, vast and incomprehensible, coming from it. The falling star streaked into the center of the black lotus, and the flower began glowing white hot. The petals closed around the heart and the star and squeezed with horrible squelching sounds and pulses of energy.

  When the pulses slowed, Alikari used a bone knife to slash the lotus flower open, revealing its contents. The heart had quadrupled in size and now throbbed with a strange triplet rhythm. It dripped with black ichor, and tendrils of green and yellow Fae crackled around it with each thudding beat.

  The High Priestess turned and shoved it back inside the prisoner’s chest, plunging her arm in to the elbow.

  Gage stared in astonishment as the corpse quivered and power coursed through the bone altar. The prisoner took a deep, shuddering gasp and then loosed a scream as his body snapped and twisted, breaking and reforming as the strange Fae poured into him. His bones thickened and stretched. Thick ropes and slabs of muscle wound around the man’s gigantic skeleton, and he gained hundreds of pounds of flesh in an instant as he was transformed into a twelve-foot-tall monster.

  A rush of air, cold as the void of space, blew through the clearing. Half of the High Priestess’s sycophants tumbled to the ground, their blackened bodies rime-frosted and split open.

  Alikari kept chanting, her gaze locked onto the mutating prisoner. A torrent of power flowed from the lotus, still glowing hot despite the icy coldness surrounding the church.

  The captive now had limbs so long he could drag his knuckles along the ground if he were standing up. His skin turned a deep orange and grew ridges of tough scar tissue to cover it like armor. Steaming blood, both red and black, covered the pale surface of the altar, running thick and hot in the grooves. A few moments later, the transformation slowed, and then stopped.

  Gasping for breath, the man staggered to his feet and stood, swaying and glancing about. His eyes locked onto Alikari, disorientation replaced by recognition, and then rage. With a snarl, the monster swung one of his toaster-sized fists at her. Gage would have cheered if he’d been able to make a sound.

  The blow didn’t even come close.

  Around his tree-trunk throat, the collar, now the size of a weightlifter’s belt, flared red and the massive beast collapsed onto the ground, mewling like a cub caught in a bear trap.

  Gage watched in disgust as Alikari sidled over and patted it on the head. She whispered in its ear, and it nodded. The red Sigils faded, and the creature stood and waited for instructions, its hideous face a mixture of horror and fury.

  Alikari barked out, “Arm him.”

  Nervous-looking guards strode forward, carrying a sword and shield, both sized for the gigantic monster. While they armed him, she glanced up and smiled at the sight of several more stars streaking across the sky.

  The thin demon with the brass device looked relieved as she stalked past him without a word and gestured to the guards. One let out a piercing whistle, and another wagon trundled forward, bringing dozens more prisoners with it.

  A shudder ran through Gage as a wave of power swept over him, changing the scene. The heat shimmers were more intense this time. Even Alikari was nearly unrecognizable. A pillar of green fire now shot down from the obelisk in the sky, linking it to the spires surrounding the church. The gem focused the flames into a portal, and on the other side, an army gathered on a jagged obsidian plain.

  In front of the church, dozens of the orange-skinned monsters formed ranks, waiting.

  Gage spun. In Clearwater, all he could see were dark shapes moving through the streets. Flames and smoke rose above the town, but from where he could not tell. He stared toward the prison camp. Lights still shone on the guard towers surrounding it, but like a mirage, the image kept vanishing and reappearing.

  Pain shot through his head as he reached his limit, and the scene shattered like glass.

  Chapter Two

  GAGE sat bolt upright in his cot with his blankets twisted around his throat. He tore them free and gasped for breath, feeling like he’d clawed his way up from the bottom of a deep, frigid lake. It took a few minutes before his heart stopped racing and his breathing returned to normal. In his peripheral vision, he noticed several unread lines in his combat log.

  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

  Gage ==> Focus Check (WIL 3 vs CR 12)

  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

  Rolling: 1d20 + 1d8

  Results: 13, 6

  Total: 19 (Success!)

  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

  You have added Prescience (First Order) to your Dream Fae Aspects!

  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

  +1 Experience Point (305 remaining until Level 4)

  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

  “Whoa
,” he breathed. “I got a new Aspect in my dreams?”

  He turned on [Fae Sense], rolling a high enough Perception Check to see the tendrils of Dream Fae retreating into the walls of his tiny room. “What the...”

  Gage could only stare at the stone where they’d vanished, wondering how and why they had appeared.

  The details of his vision were already becoming hazy, so he seized a scrap of paper and jotted down notes. As he scribbled the words, “falling stars on a moonless night,” he furrowed his brow. The Aspect he’d gained was Prescience. He’d seen the future. But how far away? Last night, the moon had been nearly full. Could the Fae Nexus have thrown off the moon’s orbit?

  Suddenly anxious, he decided to go outside. Just to see the sky. I could use a breath of fresh air, anyway. Quietly, he stood and pulled on clothes and picked up his jacket and boots. He didn’t want Seth’s sharp ears to catch him leaving. His brother would turn this into yet another argument, and Gage could use some time to think.

  He paused at his door and listened, waiting to see if anyone else was stirring. His brother’s familiar snore echoed down the hallway. He stepped out and crept to the main chamber of The Speakeasy, where a bar stretched along the cavern wall. A stage and dance floor took up one end, and a dining area in front of an immense stone fireplace occupied the other. Nothing remained of their fire but dimly glowing embers, and the Fae lamps were little more than night lights.

  The darkness didn’t bother him. Gage’s [Eyes of the Demon] Feat let him see just fine. But The Speakeasy was dying, and that bothered him. When they’d first found it, the cave had been lighter, warmer, and drier. Benefits of Tasch serving as a conduit to the currents of Fae infusing the world. Without him, the cavern was reverting to its natural state.

  The heavy wooden bar, covered in over a century’s worth of gouges and stains and stories, no longer responded to their commands. It refused to light up and show them The Speakeasy’s defenses, or a map of their surroundings. Also dormant were the antique silvered mirror that had served as a viewscreen and above it, the steer’s skull, which transformed into the head of a magnificent dragon carved in crystal.