The Prisoner of Arabella Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  CHAPTER ONE Untitled

  Chapter 18

  CHAPTER TWO Untitled

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Lorcans Character sheet

  Inspirations

  Glossary

  The Prisoner of Arabella

  Arabella Online: Book Two

  By Matthew Kent

  Copyright © 2019 by Matthew Kent

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Peregrine Epress

  [email protected]

  This is for my girls, Cora and Victoria. You are our future,

  and we love you.

  -Daddy

  Prologue

  The torches flickered in the damp stagnant air. The party had been lost in the catacombs for hours. They had tried marking the walls, but the rock had healed; the chalk was too hard and left but a faint line that was hard to read.

  “We’re hopelessly lost, Eric,” came the whine from one of the women in the party, she was tall, dressed in bright armor and a large shield.

  “It’s okay, Ris. We should be just close to the end,” said a man in dark leather armor. His hands hovered near the daggers on his belt.

  “You said that hours ago,” a male elf chimed in.

  The players stared off into the gloom of the tunnel but were shocked as the side wall shattered in a burst, and fearsome beasts shot out. The shock wore off quickly as they battled the creatures in the flickering lights of the torches.

  The beasts looked to be a form of mummified wolf. Ris squared up to protect the party. She used an ability to draw the monsters to her.

  Battle Cry: Enemies taunted to attack

  The four creatures attacked her en masse. She managed, though, and held them off with her shield, her sword striking out to taunt and enrage them. Eric, the rogue, leaped upon one monster’s back and plunged his blades into the dried flesh. He found it was tougher than his own leather armor.

  Backstab 4x Damage Bonus. 240 Damage.

  The warrior's blade flashed out and removed the beast's head. The mage cast spells to support the warrior while the cleric cast healing and tried to turn the undead creatures.

  Turn Undead: 150 Damage.

  Mage Fire: 95 Damage.

  A second beast fell to a combination of the mage’s fire and the warrior's blade. Even as the beast fell, a beam of dark light shot out of the gloom and struck the rogue. He fell writhing on the ground. His flesh seemed to burn off him.

  Undeath: Eric takes 500 damage and takes on the aspect of undeath.

  “No!” yelled out the cleric as a dark form stepped into the guttering torch light. “It’s time to go!”

  He screamed as the others fought the beasts. The cleric was the only one to see their friend rise, eyes burning in fiery undeath.

  “Go? Why ever should you want to go?” came a harsh voice from the figure before them. “We are just getting to know each other. You will be here for a long, long time.”

  The party looked at the humanoid form; its head was of bright bone, with red glowing eyes and wore an ancient, corroded bronze armor with a black metal circlet on its head. The lich’s head tilted forward and its mouth opened in a horrid parody of a leer.

  “Come, my servants,” it said.

  The black beams shot out, entwining Ris. She tried to fight forward, but her health bar rapidly depleted. They each fell to the ground. Ris felt her body began to putrefy.

  The elven mage readied his spells and cast Fire Strike, but the dark creature laughed it off. Once more it struck out with his ray of death. The wizard too fell, but only for a time as each of the players rose once more, their transformation over, their bodies corrupted with their dark master’s influence, eyes alight with unnatural and unspeakable energies.

  The cleric backed up and tried to cast Turn Undead once more but was struck from the rear by one beast even as his former comrade Ris slashed at him with her blade.

  Sneak Attack: You take 131 damage

  Slashing Strike: You take 153 damage

  You have died.

  2:00 hours until you may re-spawn

  X - X - X

  The facilities manager in New Jersey was about to go off shift when an alarm sounded. Jerking, he moved to inspect his board.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” he said as he tapped keys. His eyes opened wide in horror as he realized that Atlanta was no longer the only facility that had trapped players. “Why? Why on my watch?”

  He signaled for the medical teams even while he was sending a sitrep to his manager as required by the new guidelines.

  He had been so close to having his night over with, but now all he could see were hours and hours of worry and fear.

  Chapter 1

  I surveyed the site. The stone had been shattered long ago, the scorch marks of explosives had weathered away, and smears of rust still showed on the sandstone walls.

  The tumbled stone could have caused a man to weep.

  Few people in the region remembered the Bamiyan Buddah’s that had once stood here. I climbed onto the back of the truck. The sun was scorching hot even in Afghanistan's spring—sweat already covered my brow and soaked my boonie hat.

  We would start right there, I thought as I started removing the tarp from the back of the truck. The sight of the scaffolding we carried brought a smile to my face. My patron had asked me to bring back something that was lost to foolishness nearly a century ago.

  “We’ll show the world a new way,” I said as I patted the scaffolding and got down a case I would need to survey the site.

  “One month,” I said to one of the porters. “We have one month. Start unloading over there.”

  I pointed “Set up base-camp on that bit of high ground.” I turned around, not realizing someone had started to shift the load and walked into a beam…

  I woke to a world of hurt. My nose felt like it was broken, and my face throbbed in time with my heartbeat. It wasn’t an immediate awareness, as I groggily came to. The thought was foremost in my mind, that my eyes were watering and that I hurt. That day was ten years ago. I wondered why I had been dreaming of it.

  As I became more aware I started to look around my surroundings. The surface that supported my body was low slung and hung off a concrete wall that had been painted what most people would recognize as institutional white.

  It slowly dawned on me that I was in a jail cell. To be fair, my first clue should have been the bars at the front. There was a metal sink and toilet on the opposite wall in clear view of the walkway. The whole place smelled of urine, and that day old body odor smell only a poor decrepit gym can take on.

  “Well crap, I’m well and truly boned,” I said out loud.

  “Shut up, asshole,” I heard from a seemingly familiar female voice from the next cell over. “You’re not the only
one here you know.”

  At the time, I didn’t wonder why a woman was in prison with me.

  I groaned as I got up and looked around the cell. It was ten feet by ten feet, and the ceiling was eight feet high. Clearly, it had not been designed for comfort. It would provide me with just enough room to let me slowly go crazy.

  I went over to the sink and the mirror over it to look at my face. My face showed the raccoon eyes of a broken nose. As I looked at myself, my eye caught something for the briefest of seconds. I thought it had looked like a mirror reflecting another mirror into infinity, but then it was gone.

  I was already starting to wonder about my sanity. I should have—I had freed some gamers from a cyber prison, sure they had been trying to get a quest from me but doing so led to my own capture by the government. Why was the government after me? I wish to God I knew.

  Moving over to the side of the wall near the bars. I asked, “Do I know you?”

  “Yeah. It’s Agent Dabrowski.”

  “Agent?” I scoffed. “Not if you are in here with me. What sin did you commit?”

  “It’s a mistake!” she hissed back.

  “So was mine. I was innocent of any crime, and you showed up at my home seized my assets and goods all because of what?”

  “We had orders,” Dabrowski said.

  “That defense didn’t work at Nuremberg either.”

  “What? What’s Nuremberg?”

  With those words I could have wept.

  “It’s a long story from a long time ago.”

  “Well, tell it to me, it looks like we have the time.”

  I thought about it and shrugged it would give me something to do. “It happened close to one hundred and sixty years ago in Europe with the rise of a villainous degenerate into power…” I scarcely paid attention as a rat ran past my cell, its stutter step hardly registering almost as a déjà vu moment; telling the story was a good distraction indeed.

  If I had been really thinking, that rat would have been one more clue as to where we were being held. Four déjà rats later, I ended the history lesson. I imagined her mouth was agape on the other side of the wall.

  “So it ended happily ever after?” she asked.

  “No. It just ended. For some with noose around their necks. A few people escaped. Some were later caught and brought to justice. Others? Their knowledge was too valuable for death.”

  I paused, hearing the bitterness in my own voice. “Realize that the America of back then wasn’t completely blameless. We’d invented a new form of warfare that destroyed the cities and created fire storms hot enough to make cinder-blocks burn, and that was before the bomb to end all bombs.” I took a breath. “It could etch people’s shadows onto walls.” I shrugged “War. War never changes: it’s a hell on earth for the innocent as the evils of men’s hearts are loosed to torment and terrorize. It’s the true hell as the innocent suffer and are punished only to slumber until it wakes once more.”

  “That’s a profound thought,” I heard her half-whisper.

  She was right. It was when it was said in Fallout Nine. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t mine.

  “The sad thing is how easy it is to be a destroyer. I learned blacksmithing from my grandmother. There are ways to channel anger and rage into being constructive.” I looked out at the sliver of the sky presented by the windows that were high up over the next row of cells. The clouds were becoming night-darkened. I could hear other prisoners in others cells mumbling and muttering. I looked as far down the walkway as I could and saw a few cells away an old man broken down by time pushing a cart.

  He would pause at a cell and push a small box under an opening in the cell door. Then slowly move on.

  “Dabrowski, it looks like its dinner time,” I said.

  “I’m starving,” she said.

  I figured whatever we got would be no worse than what they fed a soldier on deployment or pigs. He was up to my cell and pushed the box under. I got up and looked. There was a loaf of…something. And a cup of water. I looked up at the old man

  “Qui?” I said guessing at his race.

  “Don’t ask. Just eat. You’ll be happier not knowing.”

  I sighed. Yeah, prison was going to suck. I collected my food and sat.

  “Don’t worry I’m sure you will eventually get out of here,” Dabrowski said after a moment.

  “I better, or you’re going to pay for it.” Once more I noted a rat running down the hallway, and then it was gone. It had just disappeared.

  Next thing I knew, it was running again past me. It had stutter-stepped again. I was convinced it wasn’t déjà vu. It continued in the direction that the food guy had gone. Rats, unless they were very bold, didn’t like to interact with humans.

  “Agent Dabrowski, what is your given name?”

  “It’s Anna. Why?” There was heat in her voice.

  “It will get tiring calling you ‘Agent Dabrowski’ all the time, Anna. Have you noted anything odd since you’ve been here?”

  “Just that there are too many damned rats.” I sighed and nodded.

  X - X - X

  The Traveler’s Rest was one of those small inns off a main road. It did a nice trade with customers who traveled from the city of Arabella and out to the province. There were the traders, small caravans, and the new travelers that had come to the land over the past few years. It nestled off the road in a small valley that was open for planting. The hills were tree-covered and provided a rich wealth in timber and hides from the animals, though occasionally a traveler was hired to take care of foxes in the hen house, the occasional bear, or sometimes on rare occasions a group of bandits that had set up off the road ambushing people headed to or from Arabella. The past weeks though had been much calmer.

  She was dark haired and plain dressed, wrapped in a shawl due to the nights chill air, and she stood on the veranda of the inn looking to the east.

  “It’s a nice night,” came a voice from the shadows.

  “Aye, ‘tis,” she replied laconically, glancing over her shoulder to the speaker. It was one of the travelers that had come in earlier in the evening to rest. “How be your stay, master?”

  “It would be better with some company for the night,” he replied.

  “It looks like there will be plenty of company this night,” she said as she gestured to the light far in the distance.

  “Yes, it’s a nice sunset.” Walking up to her, he smirked and tried to lay on the charm. “So you will come back to my room?”

  “Sunset,” she said looking at him. “Since when does the sun set in the east? I think there will be little sleep for any of us this night. The companions we’ll have will be with blades I fear.”

  Just then from the east came a bellow. Taken aback by her words and the great noise from the direction of the mysterious light, the traveler wheeled around and ran into the inn.

  “To arms, to arms! We have an event.” His words caused a stir for the travelers in the public house; others flashed out of existence then returned minutes later.

  Soon a group of twenty-three players were gathered.

  “So what’s the strategy?” a player dressed in wizard robes asked.

  A rogue responded. “We don’t know what it is. We need to play things loose. I’m sending out invites, then I will group you. I know Johnny5 is a tank, so he’s lead tank. All other tanks on him, rogues and DPS on me, mages on Frankie, and healers on Frista.”

  Soon they had themselves sorted out into a raid group and got ready outside the inn to receive the monsters that charged toward them from the east. The players watched the as the lights resolved themselves into torches held by individuals in the force that advanced on them. The raid members readied positions. Soon they were able to spy individuals in the oncoming horde.

  Targeting names, they noted many who seemed to be players like themselves.

  “What’s going on?” one player asked as he came out of concealment.

  “I don’t know
?” replied a rogue that quickly went into stealth.

  The large party drew near the raid, and another player called out to them. “What’s going on?”

  At those words one of the players looked up, their eyes glowing red and their leathery face fixed into a rictus of hate.

  “Attack! Attack and destroy the living!” The raid members could now clearly see the disjointed walking of the party that advanced on them.

  “Undead!” yelled the leader. “Clerics, try turning them! Mages, AOE—preferably fire.”

  The first spells began landing in the midst of the undead. Some few began falling under the fire of the raid members. A fire spell struck one of the warriors, and he blazed like a torch. Another shuddered and deliquesced as a turn undead spell took hold. But the battle was not one sided. Raid members fell; Hammertime, a tank, was borne down by the press of the undead. The other tanks tried to lure them off with taunts. The undead did leave his body on the ground as they advanced to battle the others. The players drew in a collective sigh as he stood up once more but were shocked at his ravaged visage and glowing eyes as he turned to strike out at one of the nearest players. His mighty hammer caved in the player’s shield.