Queen of Blood and Shadows: A LitRPG Adventure (The Godkiller Chronicles Book 2), page 1
Queen of Blood and Shadows
The Godkiller Chronicles, Book Two
By C.J. Carella
Copyright @ 2021 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact cjcarella@cjcarella.com
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This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Books by C.J. Carella
The Godkiller Chronicles
Goodkiller Mode
Queen of Blood and Shadows
Roguelike Goddess (Forthcoming)
The Eternal Journey
Twilight Templar
Lord of the Dead
Labyrinth to Tartarus
Guilds at War
Court of Thorns
Siege (Forthcoming)
Warp Marine Corps
Decisively Engaged
No Price Too High
Advance to Contact
In Dread Silence
Havoc of War
Warp Marine Corps (The Complete Series)
The Bicentennial War
To the Strongest
They Shall Not Pass
Victory or Death
The Bicentennial War (The Complete Series)
New Olympus Saga:
Armageddon Girl
Doomsday Duet
Apocalypse Dance
The Ragnarok Alternative
New Olympus Tales:
The Armageddon Girl Companion
A Crucible of Worlds
Outlands Justice
Short Story Collections
Land of Gods and Monsters
Heroes and Rogues
Beyonder Wars:
Bad Vibes (Short Story)
Shadowfall: Las Vegas
Dante’s Demons
One: This Ain’t Kansas, and it Ain’t Oz, Either
Caitlin Strange looked down upon the sprawling city of the dead and felt a shudder run down her back.
It all had come down to this. Just a few weeks ago, Caitlin Sera had been a freshman in college, bummed out after a breakup and trying to relax on a weekend by playing a MMORPG. One mouse click later, she’d appeared in a universe where magic worked, gods could intervene in the lives of mortals, and people went up in levels and accumulated gear to become super-powerful. The universe of the game she’d been playing, as a matter of fact.
That wasn’t the end of her troubles, either. Instead of a tutorial, she’d ended up trapped in an energy bubble along with dozens if not hundreds of other players, waiting in line to be devoured by an insane Blood Goddess. If some uber-powerful entities known as Arbiters hadn’t decided to help her out, she’d have died on arrival. Instead, she’d killed the goddess and stolen her Core, the very essence of the deity’s power, or something like that. Caitlin was still figuring out her new abilities, which no mere mortal was supposed to have.
After making it to the Common Realm with the God Core stuck inside her head, Caitlin and a number of new friends and allies had several ‘adventures’ in their brave new home (or rather, had survived a bunch of dangerous and traumatic events). One of them had involved running into a magical Stone Sphinx, a statue about twice the size of the one on Earth, except this one was hollow and could teleport along ley lines, mystical energy conduits that crisscrossed the planet she’d been on. She’d accepted becoming the Sphinx’s new Rider.
Problem was, the governing intelligence in the Sphinx – its Overseer – only needed a Rider to jump to another Realm and planned to turn Caitlin into a lobotomized zombie in the process. Caitlin had managed to escape that fate, but not in time to prevent the Sphinx – loaded with all her friends – to travel to its intended destination, the Realm of Cities known as Megalopolis. The Eternal Dynasty’s Capital, to be precise.
To make matters worse, from what Caitlin could see through the giant eyes of the Sphinx, the Capital had undergone some radical changes. As in the whole city being in ruins and seemingly infested with the living dead. A Necropolis. Not anybody sane’s idea of a tourist destination.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” said Inglix, Goblin Priest of Gufti. “I don’t like it one bit.”
“I’m sorry,” Caitlin replied. “So sorry.”
The dour Goblin gave her a look clearly meant to convey ‘I told you so’ but before he said anything, his friend Dan-El spoke:
“You didn’t bring us here, Caitlin. The Overseer did, and for that she has paid the ultimate price. Assigning blame serves no purpose,” he added, looking at Inglix until the Goblin shrugged. “We must put our minds and hearts to the purpose of leaving this accursed land.”
“Can we even get out of this thing?” Crunch (level 14 Orc Shifter) asked.
Like Caitlin and Tilly, he was an Eternal, a player from Earth who had been brought to Realms. Eternals could respawn after death, but each time they did they lost Identity points, which if depleted would eventually cause severe amnesia and, upon reaching zero, perma-death. Crunch had been an eighteen-year-old high school senior by the name of Joey Hughes before getting isekai’d to the Common Realm. He looked as confused and scared as Caitlin felt.
Except I can’t let them see that or we’ll have panic.
The other Earthlings in the crew – Sir Lootzalot, Spongebob, and Tranaxx – were all freaking out a bit. They’d been promised a ride in a wonderful teleporting Sphinx, not being abducted and dragged to a high-level zone. The non-Eternals – Allastan the Elf, Dan-El, Eshai, and Inglix – seemed slightly calmer, but that could just be them trying to present a brave face in the midst of a disaster. Which Caitlin had to do as well.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said confidently. “The Overseer is gone, and I’m still the official Rider of this oversized lawn ornament,” she added, pointing at her floating nameplate, which had her Rider title prominently displayed. “All I have to do is get on the driver’s seat…”
Caitlin drifted off when she remembered that the ‘driver’s seat’ had been a g-darned sarcophagus that she had escaped by bursting out of it while in the shape of a cloud of variable-density shadow, one of the many tricks she had picked along the way. The Rider’s coffin was in pieces, none larger than a fist. So was the bizarre modern-art-looking device that had housed the Overseer and probably ran most of the Sphinx’s systems. And a lot of the other devices had sustained some damage from the exploding coffin.
“Um, let’s see,” she said, trying hard not to show how out of her depth she was. From the wide-eyed looks she was getting, she needed to try harder. She decided to cheat by using some of her God Core abilities.
“System Check,” she said in her godly voice, spending 1 Quintessence – the super-Mana that empowered her godlike powers – and aiming the command at the scale model of the Sphinx in the center of the control room.
She had no idea what to expect; the floating screen that appeared in front of her was startling enough to make her stumble and nearly fall on her butt.
Sphinx of Bakenrenef
Current Crew: 1/24 (Rider)
Structural Capacity: 8,211/25,000
Mana Capacity: 321/25,000
Mana Generation: 200/day (1,000/day when solar collectors are deployed).
Mana Expenditures: 30/day (3 Demon and Undead Wards).
Systems:
Cross-Realm Teleporter: Destroyed.
Demon and Undead Wards: Control Room (Active), Living Quarters (Active), Mess Hall (Active). All Others (Inactive or Destroyed).
Side Exit: Operational (Closed).
External Sensors: Inactive.
Full Reanimation System: Disabled.
Internal Sensors: Control Room (Active). All Others (Inactive or Destroyed)
Ley Line Teleporter: Operational. Currently Off-Line.
Mana Node Secondary Generator: Online (Node Level 2: 200 Mana/day).
Mouth Access Staircase: Operational (Closed).
Overseer Soul Cradle: Destroyed.
Rider’s Station: Destroyed.
Cargo Hold Elevator: Disabled.
Solar Collectors: Operational. Currently Off-Line.
Weapon Systems: Destroyed.
“Are you guys seeing this?”
“If you mean the big blank screen, yes,” Tilly told Caitlin.
I guess only crew can see the writing on the screen.
She half-expected the Overseer to respond to her thought, and was obscurely disappointed when nothing happened. Her life had become so weird that she was getting used to having voices in her head.
“Do you see something on the magical tablet?” Dan-El asked her.
“Yes. The status of the Sphinx. She’s um, a bit of a fixer upper.”
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” Sir Lootzalot said.
“Well, I just need to go over everything. It may take a little work.”
“What if we got some spare parts from those other Sphinxes?” Spongebob asked. The portly spellcaster was still looking out of one the e ye-shaped windows on the face of the Sphinx.
“What other Sphinxes?”
“Over there, on the left,” he said, pointing.
There was a small stampede toward the windows as everyone went to take a look. Sure enough, several Stone Sphinxes were arranged in two rows about three hundred yards to the left of their teleporting statue. There were enough spaces for twenty giant statues, but only eight were occupied. Two of the Sphinxes were missing their heads and a third was broken into several pieces, but the others appeared to be relatively intact, although a couple had pronounced leans to one side or the other. It was the magical statue equivalent of an aircraft parking lot. Or maybe graveyard.
“Perfect!” Caitlin said, grasping at the sight like a drowning man grabbing a piece of flotsam. “This Sphinx remained operational even after centuries of neglect. I bet those others are in better shape.”
“They don’t look well-cared for,” Lootz commented.
“We won’t know until we take a better look,” she insisted. “Maybe we can just commandeer one of them. If not, we’ll replace the damaged components on this one, like Spongebob said.”
Inglix looked dubious, as usual, but everyone else seemed, if not excited, at least more hopeful than they’d been a moment before.
“Very well,” Dan-El said. “We will examine those Sphinxes, but will proceed as if venturing into a dungeon.”
With his Leadership currently at level two, he could bring up to ten people into a party, giving everyone instant access to the members’ position and status, very important bits of information when moving through a dark and dangerous area. Which appeared to describe the entire ruined city around them.
“Sir Lootzalot, Crunch and Tilly will form a triangular perimeter toward the front, Caitlin right behind the point of the triangle, the casters behind her, and I will bring up the rear. Let us apply our blessings and other defensive magicks and then we’ll leave.”
Less than a minute later, Caitlin sent a mental command and the mouth of the Sphinx opened, unfurling a long staircase leading the ground. The party descended and swiftly assumed their positions in the marching order.
Time to visit the Necropolis.
Two: A Challenging Walk
“How big are those things?” Tilly wondered, gesturing toward the skeletal fliers in the distance.
“Hard to tell,” Caitlin said.
Thanks to the Dark Vision she had stolen from an Elf not too long ago, she didn’t need to wait for a sporadic bolt of red lightning to show her one of the winged creatures, but guesstimating their actual size wasn’t much easier for her. It depended on how far they were. At the very least, they were too far for their stat bars and nameplates to be visible, which for her meant no less than two hundred feet and change. The city seemed to go on for miles, though, and some of the critters were clearly a mile or more away, which meant they were pretty big. Like dragon big.
Maybe they won’t see us.
Their Sphinx had popped up in the middle of a cleared circle with a floor made of fitted stone slabs, just wide enough to fit the enchanted statue’s three hundred and fifty foot length. Maybe it was the teleporting version of a landing pad. As they headed toward the parked Sphinxes, she noticed a second circular pad lay between them. Walking through a clear area with flying creatures around made her nervous.
Apparently, Dan-El was concerned as well. “We’ll move alongside those buildings,” he said, pointing to a handful of boxy structures lined up along one end of the circular pads. They’d once been warehouses or barracks, maybe. The group moved to the closest building and stopped near a closed door on its side.
“Maybe there is some loot there,” Crunch said. “Should we take a peek?”
“Maybe it’s full of undead soldiers,” Tilly replied. “We really need to grab what we need and get the hell out of here. We’re not ready for a level 20-40 zone.”
“What’s the big deal? I mean, if we get killed we’ll just respawn in Tirazis,” the Orc said.
Tilly looked like she wanted to use her mace to knock some sense into him. “Not everyone, remember?”
“Oh. Sorry. I forget, sometimes.”
Caitlin wondered how long that kind of attitude would persist among Eternals. The ability to come back from the dead made it easy to treat the whole situation as a game – and view the inhabitants of the Realms as NPCs, there to be used as the ‘immortals’ saw fit. She worried a lot of them would never grow out of it. Feeling superior to others was a common human trait, unfortunately.
Setting the gloomy thoughts aside, she concentrated on the current situation. The party moved past the buildings, ignoring the closed doors, peering briefly into open ones to make sure nothing dangerous lurked there.
The overcast skies provided very little light, only a reddish haze that Allastan claimed to be a reflection from some great fire somewhere in the distance. The group didn’t dare using one of their light spells or enchanted runes; in the surrounding darkness, they would act as a beacon for anyone around. Instead, Dan-El used a new spell-song he had acquired, Cat’s Eyes, that gave everyone improved night vision. It wouldn’t help Allastan, the Goblins, or Caitlin, but everyone else benefitted.
They were two-thirds of the way there when they reached another building, one consisting of two blocky structures joined in the middle by a smaller square entrance, flanked by a pair of obelisks. Faded paintings on the walls featured several animal-headed creatures that Caitlin thought were Egyptian (or, as they were locally known, Kemetite) gods. That must be a temple.
There was no door blocking the entryway. The group paused while Caitlin and Tilly looked in. She saw a long hallway leading into the darkness – and moving forms emerging from the gloom. Bare chested figures with tattered long skirts staggered forward, their movements jerky and uncoordinated. Zombies!
“Undead,” Inglix called out from the rear at the same time Caitlin saw them. The zombies must have entered the area of effect of one of his detection spells.
“Fighters, make a stand at the doorway,” Dan-El said. “Allastan, guard our back.”
The orders were given in a low voice; no sense making too much noise when more enemies might be around. Luckily, the shambling zombies were utterly quiet except for the sound of their bare feet dragging on the stone floor.
Desecrated Acolytes (Undead)
Level 20 Risen
Health 720 Mana 800 Endurance n/a
The creatures paused at fifty feet and proceeded to spit gobs of green goo at the front ranks of the party. Tilly had created an energy shield that protected them; the green go hit the transparent yellow barrier and sizzled against it, draining its Durability. If the noxious stuff hit flesh, it would probably melt it right off.
The party retaliated with spells: a pair of Fireballs and a Mass Blast Undead. The effects left a lot to be desired, however: the flames inflicted less than a hundred damage each, and Inglix’s spell, which should have burned off a third of the creatures’ Health, inflicted less than a fifth of it. Higher-level creatures gained a bonus to all their resistance values, weakening the party’s spells. None of the creatures fell.
On the other hand, levels didn’t affect divine attacks. Caitlin spent 100 Health and Endurance to create a cone of blood that ‘healed’ the closest five zombies for over 700 points of damage. Against the Undead, her blood acted like acid. That was more than enough to melt away the already damaged creatures. Another half dozen zombies continued moving forward, spitting corrosive mucus at them. Tilly’s energy shield fell apart and Crunch howled when he got splashed by the green stuff, which burned him for over 100 damage. The Orc transformed into a bear a moment later and pounced on the closest monster – only to find that his claw attacks were only inflicting minor wounds on them, barely a dozen points of damage apiece. A punch from the zombie sent the massive bear reeling.
Luckily, Caitlin’s second blood splash destroyed the monster and damaged the rest while also healing her fellow Eternal. The mages’ follow-up spells finished the job. Inglix and Eshai healed the wounded – besides Crunch, Tilly and Lootz had gotten splashed in the brief but brutal engagement – and also restored some of her lost Health. She fixed the rest of her self-inflicted bloodletting by spending Mana. She hadn’t spent a single Q-point in the fight for a change.
