Evolution Read online

  And I have no minions.

  “Damn it,” Jason muttered.

  “What do we do now?” Riley asked cautiously, watching him with a concerned expression.

  Jason’s eyes traced the line of footprints that led further down the beach. As he contemplated his next steps, he could feel a familiar chill energy claw and scrape its way up his spine. “There is only one thing we can do,” he finally replied. “We go find Frank and the sailors, and we get them back – one way or another.”

  Riley and Eliza nodded quietly, and the group set off down the beach. After half a mile, the footprints veered back toward the tree line. Jason hesitated as his gaze shifted to the forest. A stone roadway had been carved through the dense vegetation. The rock was worn and crumbling, and the forest had begun to overgrow the road, yet the craftsmanship didn’t look like it had been created with the crude tools he had seen the lizardmen using.

  “Look at this,” Eliza said, pointing at an impression further down the beach.

  Riley approached the water mage, swiping away the sand and revealing a massive block of patchy gray stone buried under the beach. “Why are the stones buried?” she asked aloud. “And why is there a road here?”

  “Maybe this used to be a dock of some kind?” Eliza suggested cautiously. “This might have been where ships anchored when they were visiting the island.”

  Riley and Jason glanced at the mage in surprise, and her gaze immediately dropped to her hands. “We’re assuming that there is some sort of temple here. Maybe the lizardmen weren’t the first ones to inhabit the island.”

  “That sounds right,” Jason replied. It was consistent with the brief visions of the Keeper he had witnessed. “Let’s keep moving,” he continued, gesturing at the roadway. “Try to stay quiet as we move forward. The lizardmen might post sentries along the road, and we can’t afford a confrontation right now.”

  With that, the group continued further inland, following the ancient roadway. As they traveled, Jason noticed that they gradually began to walk against a steepening incline, the road making a beeline for the serpentine tower of stone that loomed on the northern end of the island. He was beginning to suspect that this was where they would find the temple – and likely Frank and the undead sailors.

  After the group had traveled nearly a mile along the road, Riley held up a hand. Jason and Eliza immediately froze, and Riley motioned quickly toward the trees along the side of the roadway. They just barely made it to the tree line before a pair of gargantuan snakes appeared around the bend in the road ahead of them. Riding atop each serpentine mount was a lizardman, a crude spear held at the ready. The two creatures hissed at one another amiably as their mounts slithered forward, the sounds vaguely familiar to Jason’s ear. He thought he could almost detect distinct words.

  They don’t look very alert, Jason thought. Not that I blame them with that tentacle creature guarding the island. Maybe we can get closer to the temple.

  “Do we attack?” Riley whispered, her hand clutching at her bow.

  Jason’s hand rested on the dark archer’s. “Not yet. We must be close to the temple if we are running into a patrol. Let’s proceed more cautiously once they pass and get a sense of what we’re facing.”

  “What about Eliza?” Riley replied. “She doesn’t have Sneak.”

  Jason glanced at the water mage, wracked by a moment of indecision as he considered what to do. Eliza was a bit of a liability at the moment. Perhaps they could leave her here – hidden in the trees – while he and Riley investigated the temple.

  “I might be able to help with that,” Eliza began, sticking her hand into her pack. “I have a potion that can turn me invisible, but I only have one, and it only lasts for about thirty minutes. If I use it with another potion that increases Dexterity, I should be able to move more quietly too.”

  Jason’s eyes widened in surprise, and he inspected the mage with renewed interest. The idea of an invisibility potion wasn’t unique – he had encountered similar items in other games. Yet, with AO’s heightened realism, utility items took on a greater importance. He would have been cursing at himself during the encounter with the players outside of Falcon’s Hook if he hadn’t thought to purchase some rope.

  “That should work,” Jason finally replied. “Will we be able to see you while you’re invisible?”

  The girl shook her head in response.

  “Okay, then stay close to Riley and me. You might also want to give me one of your Dexterity potions too. I’m not the sneakiest person,” he added with a grin.

  Eliza kept burrowing in her pack in search of the potions. A moment later, she pulled out three vials. Two glowed a sickly green, and the other seemed to be empty. She handed one of the emerald potions to Jason, and he promptly popped the cork and downed the concoction. It was only after he had swallowed the contents that he considered that it might be poisonous. Yet his nervousness eased as he saw a notification appear in his peripheral vision.

  System Notice

  Your Dexterity has been increased by 100 for the next hour. Your blood toxicity has also increased by 15%. You may experience some secondary effects from the potion.

  Jason raised an eyebrow at the mention of “blood toxicity.” He hadn’t seen that sort of notice before when using regular health potions. Was that a way for the game to restrict how many enhancement potions a player could consume? He decided to shelve that question for later as he saw the lizardmen patrol disappear down the road in the direction of the beach.

  Eliza unstopped her two potions and swallowed them quickly, her nose scrunching up with distaste at the bitter flavor. Then her skin began to shimmer and slowly turn transparent. A moment later, the water mage had disappeared entirely – two foot-shaped impressions in the dirt the only evidence that she still stood beside them.

  “That’s a cool trick!” Riley whispered. “Remind me to order some of those potions when we get back.”

  “They’re rather difficult to make,” Eliza replied, her voice seemingly coming from nowhere. “Alma only had a few Chameleon Cloves. We would have to go find more.”

  Riley smiled in the girl’s direction. “Well, I’m willing to go hunting if those things can turn me completely invisible.”

  “I may take you up on that,” Eliza replied.

  “Okay, the lizardmen are gone. Let’s go,” Jason interjected.

  Riley and Jason immediately dropped into Sneak and started moving along the roadway. The pair now hugged the tree line, ready to dart for cover if another patrol passed.

  A few minutes later, the group rounded another bend in the roadway. The temple itself loomed before them – a collection of massive stone blocks piled high to form a makeshift wall. An arched passage had been carved into the barrier, two lizardmen standing guard beside the entrance. Behind the hulking creatures, the serpentine spire towered into the sky, casting a long shadow along the road.

  More disconcerting were the stakes that had been planted into the ground around the wall. Atop each wooden spear hung a bleached white skull – a distinctly human-looking skull. Jason supposed that answered one of the questions that had been bothering him. Some explorers must have made it through the mists, only to be slain by the lizardmen. Perhaps Lord Baen’s son had met a similar end. It also seemed like compelling evidence that these creatures were not friendly. Although, kidnapping Frank and the undead sailors had already tipped them off on that point.

  As Jason looked at the walls of the temple, the image suddenly blurred and stuttered, a strange scene overlapping the one before him as the Keeper’s vision took hold once more.

  He walked with unsteady steps along a stone roadway. In contrast to the crumbling wreckage that Jason had witnessed only moments before, the stones were still intact, and the forest’s dense vegetation had been carefully trimmed back away from the road.

  Jason flinched as a stabbing pain rippled through his abdomen. It was growing worse with each passing minute. He reached a tentative hand toward his s
tomach, his fingers coming away covered in slick black blood. Jason quickly wiped the offending substance on the hem of his cloak. It wouldn’t do to let Noah know of his injury, and there wasn’t anything to be done without healing supplies. They had been forced to leave the ship in a hurry and had only barely made it to the island. Besides, they had enough to worry about at the moment.

  The fate of their race hung in the balance.

  “The humans have reached the shore,” his son reported, breathing heavily and glancing anxiously over his shoulder toward the beach behind them. “It looks like they brought three full battalions.”

  Jason could detect the hopelessness in Noah’s voice. “Likely, they plan to complete the Purge. We must keep moving forward. If we can reach the temple and activate its defenses, the relic will be safe.” He patted his hand against the book hidden underneath his cloak.

  “So you say,” Noah scoffed. “Yet that capricious god doesn’t seem to be the type to plan for defense. Wouldn’t he just accept his own defeat?” His son spoke the word “accept” with poorly-concealed disgust.

  “Then we will have to rely on hope. We have little choice at this point,” Jason said quietly, his voice hoarse with age and pain. He could feel his own end nearing. He just hoped that he had enough time to complete his goal – to protect the Kin.

  As quickly as the vision overcame him, it abruptly vanished. Jason was left blinking in confusion, staring once again at the lizardmen guarding the entrance to the temple. Riley was watching him expectantly. He must have missed her last question while under the throes of the vision.

  “What did you say?” Jason asked.

  “Do we go through them or around them?” Riley whispered quietly, her brow furrowed in confusion as she examined Jason closely.

  Instead of answering Riley, Jason glanced around them. A moment later, his Perception skill highlighted the impression of Eliza’s footprints a few feet away. “Eliza, are you here?”

  “Yes,” the girl replied timidly.

  “Can you inspect the lizards?”

  “Give me a second,” Eliza said distractedly. A moment passed before she spoke up again, “High constitution and strength, quite a large health pool and, I’m also picking up a resistance to poison.” The water mage said this last part a bit despondently.

  “Well, damn,” Jason said. He had been hoping the water mage might be able to knock out the guards with her poisonous mist. “I guess that means we need to go around them.”

  “We could probably scale the wall,” Riley suggested, pointing west along the wall. “I could climb up and drop a rope for you and Eliza.”

  Jason didn’t exactly have a better plan in their current predicament. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  The group crept along the wall until the lizardmen guards were out of sight. Then Riley dropped Sneak and began scaling the wall. The ancient rock was riddled with cracks and crevices, allowing the archer to make her way up the surface quickly. A moment later, she disappeared over the edge of the wall, and a rope dropped down to Jason and Eliza.

  “Invisible water mages first,” he offered with a grin.

  He received a quiet chuckle from the girl – one of the few times he had heard her laugh. “Such a gentleman,” Eliza said quietly. The rope suddenly jerked as it was grabbed by invisible hands. Jason waited patiently until it stopped swinging, hoping that meant Eliza had made it safely to the top of the wall. Then he quickly scaled the rope.

  “Stay quiet,” Riley whispered urgently as Jason’s head crested the lip of the wall. He tried his best under the circumstances, grunting softly as he pulled himself up onto the wall. It was in moments like this that he regretted spending all of his stat points on Willpower. A little more Strength would sure be useful right about now.

  Once he was atop the wall, Jason surveyed the interior courtyard of the temple. He immediately froze, his mouth drifting open in surprise. The ancient stone wall encircled a massive courtyard nearly the size of a football field. Lizardmen filled the area. Crude wooden huts had been erected along the wall, and Jason spotted a few of the creatures lounging on the rocks, basking in the sun. Meanwhile, others cooked what appeared to be some sort of large boar over an open fire.

  On the far end of the courtyard, Jason could see the façade of what must have once been the temple, enormous colonnades supporting a tiled stone roof. However, the structure had seen better days – rubble and debris were piled in front of the temple’s entrance. He felt his stomach lurch at the sight. It would take hours to clear the wreckage – assuming that the entrance hadn’t been completely caved in.

  In front of the temple, a massive jagged hole had been gouged into the courtyard, with cracks and fractures radiating outward from the opening. Standing around the pit, their hands bound behind their backs, were Frank and the undead sailors. Jason breathed a short sigh of relief when he saw that they were unharmed. Maybe they still had a chance at making it back to Falcon’s Hook.

  Several lizardmen stood around the prisoners, the tips of the creatures’ spears leveled at the bound men and women. Frank glared at one of the monsters and grunted against the cloth gag that had been stuffed in his mouth as a lizardman hefted the barbarian’s axes experimentally.

  “There must be hundreds of them,” Riley murmured, her eyes skimming across the courtyard.

  “Maybe more,” Eliza added. As she spoke, the air next to Jason began to shimmer, the mage’s body slowly revealing itself once again. The water mage gestured towards the side of the courtyard, where the temple wall abutted a cliff face. “What is that?” Even as she posed the question, lizardmen stepped out of a hole in the wall of the temple.

  “I see claw marks around the entrance to the tunnel,” Riley offered, sighting along one of her arrows. “Maybe the creatures dug some sort of cave to use as their lair?”

  That wasn’t good news. It meant that the lizardmen in the courtyard were likely only a fraction of the total population occupying the temple. It was clear that they were greatly outnumbered, and Jason didn’t have any way to summon new minions. A frontal attack was obviously out of the question. Eliza’s inspection had also indicated that they couldn’t poison the creatures reliably. His mind wheeled as he considered how to proceed.

  “Jason,” Riley said sharply, pointing toward the tunnel carved into the stone wall.

  A strange lizardman had emerged from the cave entrance. In contrast to the other creatures, this lizardman walked with slow, languid steps and the others parted before it. Its skin was worn and cracked with age, and crude tribal bands encircled its arms and legs. A crown made of bleached bones rested atop the creature’s head, small ivory spires reaching into the air. The lizardman shuffled toward the prisoners on the far end of the courtyard, several other warriors taking up positions around it.

  “Maybe that’s their leader,” Eliza suggested quietly.

  “It almost looks more like a religious figure – sort of like a priest,” Riley added, noting the way that the other lizardmen deferred to their leader.

  “The real question is what the hell they’re planning to do with the prisoners,” Jason added.

  The group stood in nervous silence, looking on anxiously as the ancient lizardman approached the captives. There was little they could do but watch at this point.

  The lizardman leader gestured to one of the undead sailors, and two warriors stepped forward, grabbing the dead man’s arms. They glanced down at their hands in what appeared to be disgust as pus drained from the zombie’s arm – evidence of the zombie’s decay now that they were no longer aboard the Marietta. They dragged the undead man in front of the ancient lizardman. The other creatures in the courtyard had grown quiet, observing the scene carefully.

  “We makes sssacrfice,” the creature hissed, its voice carrying over the courtyard. Jason’s eyes widened in surprise. The leader placed heavy emphasis on each “s,” which made it difficult to understand its words, but it was definitely speaking his language.

  “Ass
s it hasss alwaysss been, our god demandsss foodsss,” the creature continued. “In thessse timesss of hardssship, thisss rotting one mussst do.”

  With a sharp gesture from the leader, the two warriors shoved the sailor into the pit. Jason’s minion accepted its fate impassively, not putting up any protest as it plunged out of sight into the darkness. After several anxious moments, Jason still hadn’t heard the man hit the bottom of the pit. He could only wonder how deep it must be.

  “What do we do?” Eliza asked anxiously. “We can’t just let them kill Frank and the sailors.”

  The chill energy of Jason’s mana throbbed and pulsed in his veins as he frantically considered how to proceed. This wasn’t a fight that they could win – either directly or by using underhanded tactics. They were simply outnumbered. Which meant he needed to try something different. As he frantically considered his options, the semblance of a plan flitted through his mind’s eye. Jason glanced at Alfred perched beside him, the cat giving him a curt nod in acknowledgment. They really only had one option left.

  “We need to negotiate,” Jason said quietly. “That’s the only way.”

  As soon as Jason finished speaking, several of the former slaves standing near the pit exploded, their flesh erupting and showering the nearby lizardmen in sticky, clotted blood. Their bones whipped through the air in a frenzy, condensing and collecting into three ivory discs that shot through the air toward Jason and his group on the wall at the far end of the courtyard.

  Jason rose to his feet while tugging at the lip of his hood. “Stay close to me,” he whispered to Eliza and Riley. Riley’s mouth was pressed into a grim line, crimson vines already stretching away from her irises. Eliza gulped hard, her knuckles white around the shaft of her wand as she adjusted her glasses with her free hand.