DLC: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 4) Page 4

  Krampus started to walk toward his castle. Stone demons, many of them types of goat creatures, adorned the various parapets and walks. Gaping mouthed gargoyles lined the way to the main gate. They looked like they were laughing and jeering. At first, Jack didn’t understand why they all had their mouths open.

  Then, with a chill, he realized their purpose. They were spouts. Like murder holes and machicolations, in a time of siege these monsters could rain down boiling oil or scalding water on invaders.

  Jack walked a little quicker, making sure to stick by Krampus. He didn’t think they were walking into a trap. But it never hurt to be careful, either.

  They reached the first gate, and a set of skeletal attendants opened it. Krampus’s hooves rang out on the stone floor of the hall.

  A second gate stood ahead of them, but once they passed through that, they were in the castle proper. It was at once beautiful and terrifying. Monsters of every conceivable sort had been etched into niches, carved into friezes, and set up as life-sized guardians along the way. While it was clear that Krampus favored demons of the hircine variety, he had stone representatives of every conceivable demon species here.

  Karag pulled Jack aside as they crossed the threshold to a massive dining room. “Sir Jack, you know as well as anyone that I have no love of the people of this island. But are you certain we are not making a grievous error of judgment here?”

  As with Ceinwen, Jack had three possible responses open to him:

  I understand your concerns, Karag. But you better than anyone know that no decision is black and white. I need you to trust me on this.

  What is wrong with you people? If the team wanted stupid leadership, they would have put you in charge. They didn’t. Don’t forget it.

  And,

  You’ve got a lot of nerve challenging me in front of my crew, Karag. I saved your life once. I can end it as easily. Don’t forget that.

  And as with the elven woman, he chose the first response, and Karag nodded. “I trust no one, Jack. But I afford you a greater benefit of the doubt than most. And though I do not understand your aims at the moment, never fear: you have not forfeited it.”

  Jack had no chance to respond, though. Krampus called him to sit at his right hand, at a massive wooden table. Great platters of bread and foul had already been laid out, and jugs of wine set here and there.

  Krampus took his place, and Jack and his companions joined him as a multitude of demons did likewise. The hall echoed with the sound of chairs scraping against the floor. It hummed with the eager anticipation of hungry people.

  The lord of the castle watched it all in silence, unmoving until everyone around him fell equally silent. Then, he flashed a toothy grin. “Let the feast commence.”

  It did, in a sickening fashion. The demons fell on the food in a frenzy, yanking it from the platters and even battling one another for choice cuts. Angry screeches and furious yells bounced off the high ceilings.

  Krampus watched and laughed, and then turned to his guests. “Why are you not eating? Dig in, my friends!”

  He led by example, pulling a whole duck onto his plate. The platters by Krampus were unspoiled. The demons fought among themselves but stayed well away from their lord and his food.

  Jack reached tentatively for a leg of some bird, and then Arath followed, and then Migli, and so on, until one by one everyone had dug in. Everyone but Shimmerfax, of course, who had remained in the courtyard.

  Servants stepped out of the shadows. Or maybe, Jack figured, they’d materialized. They were all supernatural beings, after all: animate skeletons, phantasms, and so on. They filled everyone’s wine glasses. Then more porters came out with fresh platters of meat. Diners tackled some of them before they even reached the table, and sent their platters and bounty tumbling to the ground. Hungry demons fell on the food in a frenzy.

  But no one interfered with the platters heading to Krampus. And platters did indeed come to the demon lord, and his personal guests – platter after platter. An endless parade of meats and cheeses, breads and rolls, pastries and sweets appeared before them. And all the while, helpful ghouls refilled their glasses. Not a sip went by, it seemed to Jack, without someone topping his wine off.

  Indeed, he was in real danger of becoming tipsy before he realized what was happening, and he made a point after that to put a hand over his glass or wave the servant away.

  “So,” Krampus said after a space, loud enough to be heard over the still raucous party, “who will you bring with you?”

  “What?” Jack asked.

  “Who will you take with you tonight? The covert sleigh is only big enough for two.” He flashed a toothy grin. “I would lend you my main one, but the flames might give you away.”

  Jack laughed. That was true enough. His mission required going unnoticed, so jetting around the sky in a blaze of fire wouldn’t be the way to go. “Only one companion, eh? Hmm…”

  “If I may offer advice, as a seasoned hand at this sort of thing…” He shrugged in a faux modest way, “if I do say so myself…choose a companion who will not suffer from any moral qualms about the mission.”

  “Good point,” Jack nodded. That automatically ruled out Ceinwen and Er’c, and probably Karag too, based on their conversation on the threshold of the dining hall.

  Krampus nodded, and for a moment Jack turned his mind to which of the two remaining humanoid companions, Migli or Arath, he dreaded spending time with the least. Then the Christmas demon sighed. “I cannot wait until I can do this myself. Until Winter’s meddling is undone, in all its entirety, and I can once again return to the vale.”

  Jack laughed nervously. He’d signed up to help, sure. But he didn’t want to think about the repercussions of that too much. He didn’t want to think that his actions would allow a malevolent, vengeful demon entry into a village that invoked supernatural defenses to keep him out. “Well…that’ll be great.”

  Krampus nodded so vigorously that his horns careened into a passing waiter. The bone man went down along with the food he carried in a terrible clatter. Then, when he realized who he’d collided with, he prostrated himself on the ground, pouring out apologies. But his master waved him away with a dismissive gesture. “Go and get more, and stop your babbling.” He turned to Jack and shook his head. “Good help: it’s so hard to come by these days.”

  He nodded too, thinking of his long travels with Migli, before he’d found the rest of his team, and of their endless squabbling since. “Tell me about it.”

  Krampus smiled. “You know, I think I shall like you, Jack. I think I shall like you very much. And I know you are eager to be on your way.

  “But when what was stolen is returned again, know that you will always have a place here. Even if you go, the way will always be open to you. Once we can open it at all, I mean.”

  Chapter Five

  Having been wined and dined like a prince, Jack headed into the courtyard with Arath at his heels. It was still snowing – a point that provoked a long rant from the ranger about the island’s abominable climate.

  But the sleigh was waiting for them: it was dark as night and pulled by another pair of magical serpents.

  “Ugly bastards, ain’t they?” the ranger said, loud enough for the snakes to hear. One turned around and hissed in his direction, upon which Arath hissed back.

  Jack frowned. “How much did you drink, Arath?”

  “Barely a sip, Sir Jack.”

  He had his doubts. Then again, he really didn’t want to spend the trip with Migli, and he couldn’t risk his other companions witnessing what he was about to do.

  Arath seemed to consider his silence as an end to the topic, and an end in his favor, because he nodded and walked to the sleigh. He got in first, and sprawled out so widely on the seat that it was only with an effort that Jack squeezed on after him.

  But Jack did squeeze in, and he picked up the reins.

  “You know how to fly that thing?” Arath asked. A wave of wine-soaked breath wash
ed over Jack.

  “No. But how hard can it be?”

  The ranger laughed, like Jack had just made the funniest joke in the world. “We’re going to join Father Winter in heaven or hell or wherever you go when you die on this place.”

  Jack considered for a second time how much his companion might have imbibed. It wasn’t too late. He could send Arath back to the feast table and get Migli.

  But, then, the dwarf had been deep in his cups too, and chatting up a beautiful half-goat, half-woman serving girl the last he’d seen him. He’ll probably be just as bad. Plus, he’ll be Migli. So Jack gritted his teeth and flicked the reins.

  The serpents slithered at a lightning pace, and the sleigh sprang forward. Both men slammed against the seatback. “Steady, Jack. I’d like to keep my spine in one piece if it’s all the same to you.”

  Jack moved the reins again, more gently this time. Krampus had advised him to guide the snakes in whatever direction he wanted to go like they were puppets on a string. So Jack tried it, ever so gently pulling upward.

  The serpents rose from the earth as if by some kind of magic, and the sleigh followed a second later. “Oh man,” he said, feeling his insides doing strange leaps and cartwheels.

  “There you go,” Arath said. “Much better. Slow and easy. But, uh, might want to go a little higher. So we don’t die.”

  Jack glanced ahead and blanched. “Sugar plums.” They were headed straight for the side of the castle. He remained frozen in place half a second too long. He remembered himself in the end, and yanked the reins sharply, but it was too late by then. They crashed into the castle wall and died.

  Jack spawned at the last checkpoint by the side of the sleigh, Arath a step ahead of him. The ranger got inside as before and sprawled out; and Jack grunted and grimaced and squeezed in afterward.

  “You know how to fly that thing?”

  “Of course.” He took the reins, glanced at the distance between themselves and the castle walls – that seemed much closer than they once had – and yanked hard and fast. The sleigh flew upward and forward at breakneck speed. Arath squealed something about sugaring his plums. Jack couldn’t hear it exactly, though, over the whistling wind that whipped past them.

  They soared over the castle walls, and went up, up, and up. Jack breathed out, a little shaken but feeling more confident than a moment before. He fiddled with the reins, adjusting their altitude so that they leveled off, and slowing their speed.

  The world below looked like a miniature playset. The village lights shone in the night like tiny points in a great, empty blackness. The homes seemed miniscule and frail and terribly far away. Even the mountains looked trivial.

  And beyond? Beyond there was nothing but endless ocean in every direction.

  Part of Jack wanted to just pick a direction and fly for as long as it took to get him back to his regular quests. But Krampus had warned him that the sleigh wouldn’t be able to leave the island. “Not until Winter’s meddling spells are lifted. You see, my friend, your interests and mine really do intersect perfectly.”

  So he headed for Pleasant Vale.

  Jack’s objectives were clear:

  Terrorize at least seventy-five percent of Pleasant Vale homes marked by stars on Father Winter’s map.

  Deliver a lump of magical coal to the remaining residents.

  Krampus had explained that those he wanted terrorized were the residents who had curried favor with the dead man. The residents by whose names Winter had penciled in a lump of coal – the strange, ink blotch-like patches Jack observed earlier – were those whose grinchy attitudes earned them the old Christmas spirit’s disapprobation. Krampus wanted to reward them for the same reasons Winter wanted to punish them: they had brought a measure of misery and chaos to the valley.

  So, in allusion to Winter’s own method of remonstration, Krampus had also chosen a lump of coal. But his would transform to gold when touched by the recipient.

  Jack had notes about his mission, too.

  You must finish your work before the timer runs out, so that you can be back to Krampus’s lair by sunrise. The more terror you spread, the better your performance evaluation will be. Try to get a perfect score for special perks.

  He cackled a little as he read those. Krampus had given him all he needed to terrorize the people of the Vale. He rooted through the bag of goodies, trying to pick which instrument of evil he wanted to begin with – and which victim.

  Finally, he settled on the mayor’s house, and the enchantment Krampus had crafted specifically for him. The mayor, after all, had sent Jack into the wilds, into the snow and cold, with not much more than an on your way. So it seemed only right that his last stop from his unfortunate entry to the Vale should be his first on the return trip.

  The serpents landed the sleigh quietly and softly in the mayor’s back yard. “It is enchanted with the darkness of night itself. It can be only seen by those meant to see it,” Krampus had told him. “You will be able to land it by someone’s front door, if you desire, and they’ll not see you.”

  Krampus had also given him a skeleton key – literally. It would both fit all the locks of all the homes of the Vale, and also was made of bone. The bow had been carved into a wide-eyed skull, each little cranial plate, and all the crevices and weird, spidery lines of a human skull meticulously etched into place. Indeed, so much effort had been put into it that Jack shuddered a little.

  But he didn’t allow himself to focus on that. He didn’t want to think too long or deeply about this. It was a lark, and that was all. And anyway, it was a videogame. None of this was real. So what if he did side with the guy who surrounded himself with demons and skeletons? Krampus was basically just a Christmas goth, anyway.

  So Jack shrugged off any moral qualms he may have felt and headed to an ornate side door. Even here, far from public view, they’d hung a wreath covered in candy canes and lights, and a big, red and green sign wishing “Good tidings!” And then, someone had stenciled icing snowflakes all over the gingerbread door.

  Jack shook his head, his moral qualms long gone. This was just too much holiday cheer. Someone needed to bring these tinsel-covered, eggnog-sucking, sugared-up nutjobs back down to earth.

  So he slipped the key into the lock. For half a moment, it seemed too big. Then, spindly, bonelike fingers sprouted from the tip of the key, filling the lock. He heard it click. Then the spindly appendages retracted into the skeleton key.

  Jack again ignored the icy prickle that ran up his spine. He refused to be creeped out by any of this. And if he was, he certainly wouldn’t admit it. So he slipped the key back into his inventory, and turned the handle.

  The door swung open, and orange light poured out into the darkness. The snow all around Jack blazed and sparkled. He crept inside quickly. Arath made a loud, incoherent noise that sounded suspiciously like a fart. Jack had been about to usher him in quickly. Now, he thought of his mission, and the long, slow crawl through the house he had ahead of him. And he whispered, “You stay with the sleigh, Arath.”

  “You mean, with the snakes?” Jack nodded, but the ranger shook his head. “Like heck. I’m coming with you.” He scurried in and pulled the door shut after them, adding, “I couldn’t let you take all the risks yourself, boss.”

  Jack cringed at the smell of alcohol on the other man’s breath, and considered arguing with him. But that would be more likely to cause problems than anything. And the clock was running.

  A point Jack hadn’t noticed until that moment. Apparently, as soon as he’d crossed the threshold to one of his victim’s homes, the clock started. Right now, he had four hours left, minus a few seconds wasted on Arath.

  So he nodded, telling the ranger, “Fine. But you have to keep your voice down. Scratch that: no talking at all.”

  Arath frowned at him. “You’re joking.”

  “No, I’m not.” And, sensing the other man was about to argue further, he threatened, “Unless you want to spend the night watching the snake
s.”

  Arath’s frown turned into a full-blown scowl, but he said nothing more. So Jack nodded and headed into the cinnamon-scented nightmare house.

  They’d stepped into a little alcove, with a rug and a pile of winter boots on the floor, and coats hanging on hooks. “Should we take our boots off, so we don’t mess up the floors?” Jack sneered.

  Arath just scowled at him, gesturing toward his closed lips.

  “Right. Sorry.” He poked his head into the hall beyond the alcove. It was clear, and he waved over his shoulder to signal Arath to follow. They crept into the hall. The smell of cinnamon seemed oppressively thick here – cinnamon and nutmeg, cloves and ginger, and a few others he didn’t fully recognize. Is that myrrh? What does myrrh even smell like?

  He wasn’t surprised by the bombardment of odors. They’d come in near the kitchens, and he expected that any place that looked like this would have kitchens that rarely slept. But they’d be asleep now.

  That’s what Krampus had said, anyway. So Jack crept on, following the smells. He picked out rosemary and sage, after a space, and then lavender. He smelled cookies and cakes, pastries and pies, breads and candies. The very air he breathed seemed laden in sugar. At first, he thought he’d imagined it.

  But, no: he could taste sweetness with each breath. He wanted to gag, but he held it together. He had a mission, and it wouldn’t do to be apprehended.

  He kept going until he reached a huge room full of ovens, stoves and enough equipment to power a dozen restaurants. But Jack could tell he’d reached his destination before he saw any of that. The mismatched bombardment of smells went from oppressive to nauseating. It was like walking smackdab into a solid, brick wall. Except the bricks were smells, all of them varied and different – and packing as much punch as any brick. He smelled spices and herbs, finished products and ingredients, sweet and savory; or rather, the smells all crashed onto his senses at once, whether he wanted to smell them or not.

  Arath made a retching sound behind him; and then there was a new, and worse, aroma in the mix: vomit.