Asphodel - Sixth Age - Third Year - First Sun

Fire erupted from Mary's hand, licking the onyx stone wall in front of her. The flames struck the wall at the exact location that her research had revealed. As a Warden she chose to focus on medieval weaponry, twenty first century fire arms, and advanced light weight armor skills, but everyone except for Warrior class users had basic spells at their disposal. The flames wouldn't do much damage to a combatant, 2 hit points per second, but it did have other uses. For example, she could use it to light the path in front of her for twenty seconds, or have it reveal hidden Wrathic text.

Wrathics were user based only. There were no non-playable characters (or NPCs) flying around Asphodel spewing molten death, and in fact, their existence was a great topic of debate in Asphodel. Wrathics were an extremely rare creature form of the Shifter class, so rare in fact that no user had been recorded transforming into one in Asphodel’s sixty years online. There was written text and myth passed down from NPCs and found scattered throughout the world, but no video evidence existed to corroborate the myth. Depending on who you talked to, they were merely a twisted prank made up by Asphodel’s creator Tomas Hidarian. Wrathics were based off of his obsession with dragon and wyvern lore. They were supposedly modeled to be large, destructive lizards. Instead of having front legs, they had massive wings akin to a bat. The wings had hooked claws at the elbows that allowed them to climb walls or crawl around when not in flight. While most believed they never existed to begin with, Mary knew better. She believe that the cave before her was the key to finding a live Wrathic.

Mary stared at the onyx wall as it glistened in the moon light. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. After a minute, a portion of the wall above Mary's head started swirling and shifting. Letters began to form, the stone turned to liquid and shifted in place like some oily substance. Without warning the area burst into flames revealing beautifully angular symbols. There were swoops, curves, and aggressive, pointed tails to each symbol. The individual characters looked like some simplistic design of a Wrathic moving through the stone surface. The phrase, whatever it said, gave the feeling of a massive battle between supremely strong creatures, with each letter displaying another combatant. In its current form, the text was unreadable. Since no Wrathics had ever been found in Asphodel, the language had never been translated. There was no scroll, elder or spell found that was able to decipher the text. Until now.

Unclasping the top section of her chest armor, Mary reached down between the titanium plated mail and pulled out a ring. It was attached to an old silver chain that held no value save for personal. She undid the clasp, and let the ring slide down to her open palm before tapping the menu beacon inside her forearm twice, and tossing the necklace into the air. It disappeared into her inventory.

The ring itself was onyx, like the wall to the cave, but turned blood red when it made contact with Mary’s skin. It was thicker than a normal ring both in band weight and width. There were waves that swirled around the outside with the ends of each unique section raising off the band and coming to a point. The design of the ring matched the fiery Wrathic text on the wall almost perfectly.

Mary brought the ring up to her face and examined it as she had many times before. The inside was an intense orange color, with a thin yellow band in the center. She had tried to find the origin of the ring by hiring various vendors across the land, but no one knew where it came from or could determine if it was imbued with any sort of power. She spent close to a million credits on reveal potions and mythical relics that would claim to pull stats from any artifact in Asphodel, but nothing worked. Then, six months ago, Mary found information about the ring’s origin hidden in Wrathic myth via a complex code. The information was a set of numbers, coordinates in fact. Those coordinates led her to the ominous rock face before her.

It was a translation ring, Mary knew it the second she discovered the location. She had dealt with similar relics in the past and the area she stood in drew all the earmarks of her previous experiences. A secluded location that required time, supplies, planning and a strong will to locate. She was in the Barren Wastes, a burnt section of the world that offered no discernible value to anyone. Nobody was going to stumble across the cave, and they certainly weren’t going to open it without a way to translate the text; which was hidden. Plenty had tried to decipher the language over the years but there weren't enough examples found to help the cause. The phrase before Mary on the dark stone was now one of three phrases ever found.

Before trying to use the ring, Mary took one last look around to ensure that no one had followed. Behind her was a waste of black sand, with the occasional dead shrub or pile of animal bones that stretched beyond he view. She stared for several minutes, studying each detail in an attempt to locate any indication that she was being trailed. Satisfied that no one was behind her, Mary turned to the left of the wall. There was a burnt forest, the trees blackened and covered in ash from a fire long since gone. Her assessment of that area took a little longer, as the dead plants swayed in gusts of wind and made it more difficult to locate any potential threats. Nothing. Lastly, a dark ocean lay to the right of the wall. The water inky and eerily still, without a single wave or indication of possible life below. Mary was excited about the potential breakthrough that she was about to discover, but had no desire to linger longer than she needed to in such a dismal location.

"Here's to hoping," Mary said as she slipped the ring on.

It settled on the base of her finger, and reduced in size to fit snugly against her skin. “Interesting,” she said to herself. Four of the pointed tips around the ring rotated and clamped down, two on the front and two staggered from their location on the back. They dug through her skin, causing blood to pool and run down her hand. Mary winced as the tips burrowed until they made contact with bone. She held back a wail of pain to the best of her ability as the ring ignited and seared the flesh beneath it. As she had many times before, Mary had to remind herself, ‘Everything in Asphodel comes at a price’.

Looking down to her forearm, Mary saw her menu beacon flashing. Instead of the light green color she had chosen on the day she gained access to the beacon when she reached level 5, it was deep red. This was the first time that she had seen it change in all the years she’d spent in the game. The pain around her finger intensified as the ring continued to burn. She reach down to touch the glowing red dot.

Instead of Mary’s menu appearing as a white, holographic interface a foot in front her, red text emblazoned the air. It said, ‘Sample confirmed: User accepted’. With that, the ring immediately cooled around her finger. Mary could see the message fading as the flaming Wrathic text on the wall began to swirl and shift. It was replaced by a phrase in the common tongue that said, ' Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...'

Mary smirked. "Dante. Cute."

Without warning the text disappeared. A rectangular section of the wall started to glow yellow, then orange, before it burst into flames and extinguished within a matter of seconds. The area cracked, turning an ashen gay color and hissing as if there was pressure pushing against the rear of it. The area imploded in a cloud of smoke and debris, and as the dust cleared, a hidden, pitch black tunnel was revealed behind the onyx wall. Mary raised her hand, and rotated her flat palm up to the entrance. Heat swelled around her wrist and traveled up to her fingers tips, before forming an apex of power in the center of her palm. The sides of the tunnel flashed bright yellow as her fireball tore through its threshold. The spell took more mana than your run of the mill flame spell that she had used to reveal the text, but Mary came prepared. She was stacked with mana and health potions, amongst a wide array of other supplies. There was no telling what she’d encounter inside.

The fireball streaked forward twenty feet then sank toward the ground before disappearing beneath the sand floor. The tunnel tilted downward, into the earth. There was nothing she make out, save for jagged onyx walls and a black sand covered floor. Given the amount of work it took to find the ring, the cave, and figure out how to get the tunnel open, Mary assumed there wouldn’t be much resistance inside. Still in a world where dying meant starting from scratch, she get to level 75 without being cautious.

Opening up her menu, Mary navigated to her inventory and selected all. She scrolled to the bottom and equipped a customized, level 90 M4 assault rifle with an attached grenade launcher, not her primary weapon of choice, but the versatility it provided couldn’t be looked over. Technically she shouldn’t have been able to equip it, but several months back she found a magical pendant that allowed her to use weapons that were fifteen levels above her current one. Wrathics were born in fire and their skin was like steel, so Mary selected high velocity tungsten rounds that dealt 20% freezing damage, and loaded acid bombs into the launcher.

Content with her primary weapon, she equipped two level 85, X8 laser pistols and corresponding leg holsters. Since she had no clue what she was going to encounter in the cave, it felt best to cultivate different weapons with various damage effects and multipliers. Every player, every creature or NPC in Asphodel had their weakness. It was just a matter of figuring out what they were.

Mary finalized her weapons kit with two level 89 kukri blades the were cross sheathed on her back. They were both imbued with additional bleed damage at 10 hit points per seconds for 30 seconds after each hit. Originally, she favorite straight blades, but a fellow Warden and friend of hers swayed her opinion during a particularly heated training session where he demonstrated the kukri’s lethal flexibilities.

Satisfied with her weapons loadout, Mary assessed her armor. The long road it took to find the cave was riddled with danger, so the armor she had equipped was already was top of the line for her level. It was a mesh of medieval designs and more futuristic ballistic styling with highly lightweight and dense alloys. The helmet she chose completely enclosed her head and was buffed to provide fire protection, while the rest of the armor was impenetrable to most known blades. To round out the kit and help with any attacks, she selected a set of combat gloves that added 20% percent to her firing and reload speed.

Last but not least, she navigated to her potions and selected one titled ‘Predatory Instincts’. It provided an hour of night vision. She also selected a mana potion. They both appear on her belt as small orbs, three inches in diameter. One at a time, she smashed them against her chest. The clear housing decomposed into a white dust and floated into the air. The blue and purple contents of each orb splashed across her chest and the viscous liquids spread across her armor. The tunnel became clear day, and her mana was completely restored.

Mary stared into the now illuminated tunnel. Most of her life had be spent searching for proof that the Wrathic myth was no mere story. She spent centuries in Asphodel searching, killing, and scavenging for information. It all led to this moment. Mary took a knee before entering. “Dark Angel, look over me.”

She stood with renewed vigor, the weight of the assault rifle a comfort despite her uncertain future. If death was all that awaited her in the cave, then she wouldn’t go without a fight