Dreadknights

By Tony Breeden

Experience the glory and drama of Impworld's Guild Wars!

The future can be a dark place, but when a teenage girl gets the chance to play her Ogress Bloodskull character for the Dreadknights in Guild Wars, she also finds that she has a shot at a real future playing the game she loves on a terraformed alien world. Of course, nothing is a sure bet in Guild Wars. To win the prize, Bloodskull and her teammates will have to beat out rival guilds like the Golden Gears, Neverdeath and her old cronies in Doomsmack. Through betrayal, friendly fire, sabotage and impossible odds, Christine must prove she has what it takes both in and out of the game. But will she seize the prize or wind up toiling away in her aunt's earthbound dream of farm life?

Shake the pillars of Hades! The Dreadknights are coming!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Breeden
• Release date: Jan 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310398322

Tony Breeden

Tony Breeden is a storyteller, public speaker, vocalist and artist from West Virginia, home of Mother's Day, the Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster.He got the writing bug as a child when his late aunt Sharon helped him make his very first book about dinosaurs, vigorously illustrated in crayon. His spirit animal is Ray Harryhausen. He is weirdly related to the Mothman.He published his first book, Johnny Came Home, on September 28, 2012.Luckbane, the first novel in the Otherworld series, was published on Friday 13th of September '13. He also received his Bachelor's in Communications on a Friday the 13th, so there's that...You can find out more about his books and what he's currently writing at http://TonyBreedenBooks.com and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tonybreedenbooksRead excerpts of his books at http://wattpad.com/TonyBreeden

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DREADKNIGHTS

Dreadknights:

For the Love of the Game

By Tony Breeden

Dreadknights #1

Øtherworld #0.5

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art by Gremlin Graphix © 2015

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Copyright © 2015 Tony Breeden

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means–electronic, mechanical, recording, scanning, or other–except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the author.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental. All other characters are Copyright and Trademark their respective owners.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This story occurs before the events of Luckbane by Tony Breeden.

DEDICATION

To Jesus Christ, my Creator, Savior & King

To Angie, my wife, best friend and soul mate.

To my boys, Justice, Bill, Henry & Jack.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1: Golden Gears

1 – Next of Rank

2 – Nest

3 – AFK

4 – Plug and Play

5 – Gearing Up

6 – Tesla

7 – Calabus

8 – Bellamy Bridge

9 – Fire Fields

10 – Capture the Flag

Part 2: Neverdeath

11 – Suspended

12 – Farm Girl

13 – Trollbogies

14 – Rosco

15 – Tour

16 – Jones

17 – Level Up

Part 3: Doomsmack

18 – Rogar

19 – Ogre’s Choice

20 – Maggie

21 – On the Fence

22 – Bitter Pill

23 – Gauntlet

24 – Devilpede

25 – Doomsmack

26 – Tower

27 – Hurtlocker

28 – Farewell to Impworld

Read the first three chapters of Luckbane

1 – Thief

2 – Dragon

3 – Bait

Guild Rosters

-Dreadknights

-Golden Gears

-Neverdeath

-Doomsmack

About the Author

Also by Tony Breeden

PART 1: GOLDEN GEARS

[Back to Table of Contents]

1 – NEXT OF RANK

Christine Johanssen growled in frustration as she was forced to duck for cover once more. The Golden Gears had her team pinned down and nothing was going according to plan.

The gravelly voice of Guildmaster Trollbogies barked into her commset. Hannibal, status report!

Christine glanced down at a pachyderman crumpled like a rag doll at the bottom of the tower stairwell. The elephant man warrior called Hannibal wouldn’t be answering Trollbogies’ hail anytime soon, if ever. The only thing that gave her hope was the fact that her heads-up display wasn’t yet confirming Hannibal’s death. Still, unconscious was often as good as dead in a situation like this.

She started to head down the stairs, in the hopes of reviving him.

The whistle of a cannonball alerted her to the next threat. The sniper must’ve seen her shadow, or just made a lucky guess, because he almost scored a direct hit. Christine threw herself down on the ground and covered her head and neck with her big meaty paws just before the shell impacted. Rubble and debris bounced harmlessly off her broad thick-skinned back. As she rose to her feet, she shook her head. Even though she knew none of this was real, it certainly didn’t feel that way.

Her virtual ogre character turned her head this way and that at Christine’s mental command. The nodal implants at her temples made her gaming experience fully immersive. The technology accessed her brain itself, allowing her to see, feel, hear and smell the virtual world of her choice. At the moment, her hearing was significantly muted from the explosion, but she could still smell the smoke from the shell’s impact and taste the blood on her tongue.

Most folks went full skin in these games, diving into the first-person experience GameComm made available through alternate reality programs like Impworld and Guild Wars, but Christine preferred the tactical advantages of the heads-up display. For example, right now it let her to know there was no longer any point in trying to reach Hannibal. The quartermaster was officially game-dead.

Taking a quick personal inventory, she realized that a strap had come loose on the fittings of the metal brazier that served as her breastplate. She’d also managed to smash her bottle of happy water. She sighed heavily as she emptied her pocket of glass. The healing potion’s all-too-familiar smiley face logo was still recognizable amongst the fragments. It was a heavy blow. Without happy water, there’d be no second chances if she got badly hurt.

After she’d adjusted the brazier’s straps, Christine crept up the tower’s stairwell, away from the window. Only when she was relatively sure she was out of the sniper’s range, did she reply to her guildmaster’s hail.

Bloodskull responding, she said, giving her character’s name. The Quartermaster is out. The Gears sent a sniper.

He’s out of respawns. You’re next of rank. her guildmaster acknowledged. Christine watched her status change from Vanguard to Man-at-Arms on her heads-up display. Simultaneously, their current MA’s status was exchanged for Hannibal’s Quartermaster rank. Is the sniper alone? Trollbogies asked. Has he alerted the Gears to your position?

Not sure yet.

Then find out.

Christine bit back a retort. It already sounded like Trollbogies was cross – even for a troll! She didn’t want her guildmaster’s anger directed at her personally. Especially since the trolls were practically her only allies within the guild. While no one could dispute that she’d legitimately made the cut to join the Dreadknights of Outland, she remained on the team at Trollbogies’ good pleasure – and there were already several members of the guild who wanted her gone. She understood their reluctance, to a point. After all, she was recruited from Doomsmack, one of the Dreadknights’ top rivals. There was bad blood between the Dreads and the Dooms, no lie. Still, the Guild Wars had taken their toll on every guild. At this stage in the competition, it was hard to find a team that could boast even eighty percent of its original roster. Player shuffling had become the norm as each guild tried to gain some advantage over the other finalists.

On it, Christine said. Putting thought to action, she charged up the stairwell at full speed.

To anyone watching the livecasts on her guild’s channel, Christine’s character must’ve been an impressive sight indeed. Ogres were massively muscled and stood several heads taller than a human. It was said that pound for pound, an ogre could best its weight in dragons. Their skin was like armor. Their teeth and bones were some of the strongest stuff in Impworld. Her character was a female of the species, which meant that she was less heavily jawed and was forced to wear a ridiculously large-cupped brazier rather than a breastplate. Generally, she-ogres were considered far more attractive than their male counterparts, and Bloodskull certainly had her share of amorous fans. Doomsmack had even rendered her character as a pin-up on their calendar. Christine personally thought her character’s ferocity and trademark crimson face paint made her seem far scarier than any male ogre she’d ever encountered. Besides, females were always the deadlier of the species.

As she emerged onto the top of the tower, she was forced to wave off an ever-vigilant Tantrum Bloodfire. Behind the other ogress, Christine could see Killmore and the Dreadknights’ trademark battle flag. Appropriately enough, Killmore boasted more kills than any other member of the guild. Unfortunately, the other ogre seemed to loathe Bloodskull’s very presence.

For crying out loud, Bloodskull! Tantrum snapped, lowering her weapon. I almost took your head off just now. Would it frag you to give us some warning?

Christine snorted. Tantrum was good but she was just a raider, though a blasted good one for certain. Bloodskull had begun her contract with the Dreads at the rank of vanguard, a level above raider, and technically she should’ve been ranked higher than that; she’d been Doomsmack’s quartermaster, but had agreed to a reduced rank when she switched sides. She thought about Hannibal lying at the bottom of the stairwell below. Thanks to his death, she was now one step closer to regaining her former rank. Now she just had to prove she deserved the promotion before some of her guildmates’ resentment turned into friendly fire.

No luck on the door mechanism then, I take it? Christine asked, jerking her head back toward the entry.

Castle Odious wasn’t a typical castle. It was built by technomancers and, as one might expect of such architects, their design sported a lot of magically-enhanced mechanical inventions. Both the elevator and the door to the top level of this tower had been damaged in previous guild wars.

Tantrum shook her head.

Christine sighed. She’d really been hoping they’d have the door working by now.

Where’s Hannibal? Killmore asked. Any word from Mike?

MikeMonkeyMike had volunteered to set up an ambush at ground level. Everything was going according to plan until Mikey didn’t check in when he was supposed to. Christine’s heads-up display confirmed that MikeMonkeyMike was still in the game, so he was either keeping quiet to keep from being exposed or he’d been incapacitated with a sleep spell or something. Christine and Hannibal had been descending the tower to determine why MikeMonkeyMike wasn’t answering his hails when the sniper attack came.

There weren’t a whole lot of spellcasters on the Gears team. If memory served – and Christine had, admittedly, only skimmed the brief on this mission – there were two magus in the enemy guild. The first was a winged clockwork called Helena Helstrom, who was modeled after the Icarii. The Icarii were a rare race of bird-men. The game’s most famous Icarii was Harper Angelos, the rumored long-lost heir to her fallen empire’s throne and Christine’s inspiration for playing the game in the first place. The other magus on the Gears team was an odd-looking mechanical called Pod. Pod looked like a round metal ball with stick-like arms and legs. He looked harmless enough but he was supposed to be full of surprises. Helstrom was never far from her guildmaster, Goldenboy, so if there was a spellcaster out there mucking up their plans, it was probably Pod.

Hannibal’s out, Christine said. Sniper. We got separated before we ever made contact with Mikey. Trollbogies wants to know how many Gears are out there.

Killmore glared at her with as much contempt as his ugly mug could muster. Shoulda been you.

She frowned and took a step towards him. I am next of rank. I need that count.

Killmore bristled, the coarse hairs of his mohawk rising in response to his agitation. Christine readied an over-sized war cleaver, just in case. She didn’t want to put Killmore down, but she couldn’t afford a loose cannon in their midst.

Tantrum appeared between them. Just the one so far, Tantrum said, giving Killmore a scathing glance over her shoulder. The mission specs call him Skuttle.

He’s the flamethrower crab-thing with the cannon on his back, right? Christine asked.

Killmore sneered. I see someone skimmed the briefings. Again.

Christine ignored him.

That’s the one, Tantrum said.

Christine sighed. Right. Like every other member of the Golden Gears, Skuttle was a clockwork machine. Some of the mechanical warriors in the Gears’ ranks were steam-powered, while others were brought to life with magical soulstones or technofaeries fused into their creative matrix. The bulk of the Dreads’ roster was made up of ogres and trolls, so this Guild Wars match was being billed as Monsters v. Machines for those watching the livecasts.

Another explosion rocked the tower.

We need to take this guy out before that racket draws every Gear within earshot, Killmore said.

Christine shook her head. Who says he’s alone? He could just be trying to draw us out so his buddies can pick us off.

Killmore scoffed. "You’re a coward. We don’t even know if there are any other Gears out there. We need to take him out now."

We have our orders. Trollbogies wants a count. She took a deep breath before she spoke her next words. I need you up in the Nest.

You’re kidding me right?

It’s the only way we’ll get a clear view. When Killmore opened his mouth to protest, she added, And you know it.

Then you do it.

Christine considered ordering him to go anyway, but he knew how Killmore felt. If Skuttle was even a halfway decent sniper, the Nest would be near certain suicide. Everyone knew how Killmore felt about her. When Bloodskull signed on with the Dreadknights, he took a bump in seniority, despite that rather impressive kill record of his. If she gave him this one-way ticket, the others would probably accuse her of killing off her biggest critic on purpose. If she didn’t want to have to watch her back for the rest of her contract with the Dreads, she needed to win Killmore over. She’d settle for just not being the reason he got fragged.

Fine. I’ll do it, but I need a distraction.

"Oh, so now you want me to try to take out Skuttle," Killmore said, crossing his arms over his massive chest.

Maybe. She turned away from him and tried to hail MikeMonkeyMike again. Mikey, if you’re out there, we need a distraction. I need to use the Nest.

Silence answered her. She bit back a curse. OK, Plan B…

Draw Skuttle’s fire, Mikey said. I’ll take care of the rest. His voice was barely a whisper, but it was unmistakably him.

Be ready for it, Christine said.

He didn’t respond this time, but just knowing that he was out there was enough to boost her confidence. She turned back to her team. OK, Tantrum will stay here as our last line of defense. Killmore, I need you to–

No, wait. Send me, Tantrum said.

Christine shook her head. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you’re just a raider. Killmore’s vanguard.

Which is why we need him here as our final defense instead of out there as cannon fodder.

Christine sighed. She genuinely liked Tantrum, but there was no denying either her logic or that endearing look of resolve on her ogrish face. Bloodskull turned to Killmore. You OK with that?

Killmore shrugged. Just remember to shout out when you come back up the stairs, he warned Tantrum. He glanced at Christine. If that’d been me guarding the door a few minutes ago, Bloodskull’s life sauce would soak the ground.

Noted, Tantrum said, sounding impatient with Killmore’s posturing.

Shake the pillars of Hades, kid, Christine said.

What?

Sorry. It’s just something we used to say back in my old guild.

Nodding, Tantrum took a deep breath, then descended the stairs with an eager grin.

When Christine turned to face Killmore, he was watching her quietly. I’ve seen the vids, he said. I know why you Dooms used to say that.

Old habit, she said, and I’m not with Doomsmack anymore.

You think you just gave her a one-way ticket.

Mikey will look after her.

Sure. Of course. He didn’t look convinced.

I’d better get going, she said. Keep working on this door. Taking a moment to ready herself, she got down in a sprinter’s stance.

Shake the pillars of hades, Bloodskull, Killmore said.

Christine ignored his open leer.

[Back to Table of Contents]

2 – NEST

Christine took off like a shot, running across the tower’s top level as fast as she could. At the last second, she leaped between two merlons and over the defensive battlements. She felt her stomach flip-flop as she dropped. Even though she knew Bloodskull’s ogre body could take the fall, her real-life human side just saw a suicide dive. Her aim was true. She landed two levels below on the broken span between her tower and the next nearest one. She broke through the wooden hoardings on impact and landed on the stone bridge itself.

The flurry of action immediately drew Skuttle’s fire, as she knew it would. She ran back to the entrance of her tower to escape the blast of an exploding shell, but then dug in her heels and ran back the way she’d came. The bridge between the two towers had been partially destroyed in some other guild battle. No human, orc or dwarf could span the gap, but it was an easy, if impressive-looking leap for an ogre.

No other cannon shells harried her progress. Before she entered the next tower, she peered through the hoardings to check on Tantrum’s progress. Sure enough, the other ogress was running through the rubble strewn ruins of Castle Odious, drawing Skuttle’s fire like a pro.

Castle Odious was now a castle in name only. Scores of guild battles had reduced the once-glorious structure to a sprawling, war wrecked ruin of barely standing walls and mostly roof-less buildings. Some of the steampunk machines still worked. Most didn’t. Skuttle had taken up position atop what remained of the castle’s great hall in a cathedral-styled window.

A shadow she recognized as MikeMonkeyMike stealthily moved into position directly beneath the mechanical flame crab. Mikey was a troll. Trolls weren’t quite as big as ogres, nor as strong, but they had their advantages. For example, MikeMonkeyMike could see as well at night as he could in the day. Personally, she thought trolls looked more human than ogres – something like overgrown, thickly muscled Neanderthals, whereas ogres were more like a gorilla parody. A lot of the differences had to do with their character races origins. Both races were Corrupted Elders, races created by balrogs of the Netherworld as fodder for their armies. Trolls were corrupted from dwarves, which explained why they were so thick and strong. Some thought ogres were corrupted from human stock. Others thought they were perverted versions of a lesser race of cloud giants known as the Summa or Anakim.

She watched Mikey stroke his lush black beard once before reaching up and grabbing one of Skuttle’s legs. With effort, the troll dragged Skuttle from his perch and hurled him to the ground below. With a laugh, Mikey leapt from his perch after the mechanical flamecrab, his over-sized metal mace raised high to pound the Gears sniper into shrapnel. Christine entered the next tower with a grin on her ogrish lips.

She made her way to the top of the tower with as much speed as she dared. Normally, she took her time, even in Guild Wars. Careless haste almost always led to ruin. Even if the building was clear of enemy guild members, the Gamelords liked to toss in the occasional random hazard or roaming monster to make things more interesting. In this case, she was painfully aware of the fact that her window of opportunity to safely use the Nest was closing. Skuttle had seen her on the bridge. He had to know what she was after. If Skuttle survived Mikey’s attack, the Gears’ sniper would be keeping a weather eye out for her.

Unlike the other tower, this one still had a vaulted wooden roof. At the top of the tower was an arcane mechanical device, the work of technomancers. At the center of the machine was a big metal cage. She ran for it without hesitation, sweeping the room with her eyes