Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) (7 page)

The Fallen One's fingers dug into the hammer, forever deforming the mithril with the imprint of his hand. He wrought the weapon easily out of Aulë's hands and flung it aside.

Bang!
With a short swing of the Fallen One's arm, a perfect right hook to Aulë's jaw sent the shaggy god flying backwards to the Altar. He landed ignominiously on his butt and shook his head like a dog, trying to focus.

The Fallen One approached unhurriedly. He grabbed Aulë's throat and lifted him in the air with his outstretched arm like a naughty kitten. "Enough, Vala Aulë. The time of the Last Battle hasn't yet come."

Croaking, the mountain god clutched the Fallen One's hand trying to unclench his adamant grip. "I hate you..."

The Fallen One shook his head in disapproval. "Don't be stupid. This is a different world with its own set of laws. The knowledge of your previous incarnations is pointless here — deceitful even. Once you learn a bit more about the deeds of the so-called Gods of Light and compare them to those of the other side — you'll know what I mean. Just take a look at my First Priest and his life path! I know you can!"

Aulë glared at him. "Never! Never have I been a servant of the Dark! Fourteen incarnations in all sorts of realms, forty thousand years of my fighting evil! It's not going to happen now!"

"You idiot! What evil are you talking about? Look around you! Actually, you think you can tell me how many of those fourteen avatars are still alive and kicking?"

Aulë twitched in his grip but didn't back off. "Yes, I'm alone, so what! When the Last Battle comes, Great Eru will summon me again!"

Struggling to turn his neck, Aulë looked over the kneeling dwarves who were pouring their hearts out in prayer. "I'm sorry, my children... Your time hasn't yet come..."

Reality shuddered again, ringing like a hundred thousand broken crystal glasses. The god's figure slackened and blurred, losing brightness and color.

He was disembodying! Wretched Bigfoot! A god's disembodiment caused his altar to lose one level. In our case, it meant simply resetting it back to zero, leaving us with fuck-all and presenting us with another enemy race.

Plan B!

I yelled at the top of my voice right into his fading eyes already staring into the eternal void, "Aulë, I'll summon Yavanna for you!"

For an instant, the celestial spheres stopped their quivering. The last spark of understanding in Aulë's eyes glinted with frustration and hope. "Come again!"

"Please stay with us! Help us stand up for the right cause! And I will summon Yavanna, your beloved wife, from the depths of eternity for you!"

Actually, I'd already been considering summoning his better half as our answer to Lloth in our struggle for Elven hearts and minds. The mighty goddess who'd created all fruits and growing things, animals and birds. As the one who'd made the forests of the Middle Earth, she was a ready-made patron goddess to worship for all the Elves, especially the druids.

"You think you can do it?"

I cast an apologetic glance at the Fallen One. Okay, so I hadn't put him in the picture. I had this passion for keeping trump cards up my sleeve. Carefully I pulled the second fragment of the Heart of the Temple from my pocket.

"There! All we need do is finish decorating the Temple to her liking — with plants and emeralds and all sorts of flowers, you know. How many times out of those fourteen incarnations have you actually been together?"

"Only once," he whispered, coming back to reality while shedding a solitary tear onto the floor.

A huge translucent gem bounced over the marble tiles. This time I didn't goof up. Promptly covering it with my foot, I stashed it away in my pocket together with the second Heart fragment.

Then I brushed my hands free of dust and proffered one to him. "Let's do this again, shall we? I'm Max, the First Priest of the Dark Pantheon. Pleased to meet you."

Chapter Four

T
ime: Ten days after the clan's return from the frontier raid.

Place: The Remote Post situated in the bottleneck passage between the Dead Lands and the Valley of Fear, three hundred feet away from the castle of Tianlong — the ever-vigilant guard of the First Temple.

Three guards were sheltering from the scorching midday sun under a flimsy awning. Apparently, the clan's leader could afford neither money nor the manpower to build something more substantial, all of his resources tied up in the restoration of the mammoth hulk of his Super Nova castle.

So far, the watch had been uneventful. They had only stopped a few lone wishfuls wanting to join the clan, an uneasy ranger who couldn't fool anyone with his apparent attempt to map out the area, and a cheeky warrior who'd demanded they let him through because "he had things to do over there and it's a free world, ain't it?" They'd just let the idiot through without even trying to talk him out of it.

Tianlong had welcomed the rare chance to have some fun. He told the skeletal archers on his walls to hold their fire, then opened his enormous jaws just slightly. The dragon had plenty of mana but not enough entertainment. He gobbled up the daring warrior's identity and digested it whole, providing himself with enough food for thought, then spat out the hapless freedom seeker onto the dusty sand. Once he'd recovered a bit, the warrior scrambled back to his feet and began poking at a small flat charm, activating a portal artifact. He hadn't even said goodbye to anyone.

Their service wasn't that hard. They enjoyed excellent living quarters, five-star buffet meals and a constant variety of tasks. The next day, for instance, their group was supposed to join the Vets over at the field of Gigantic Fly-Traps to defend the farmers who harvested it — and, most importantly, do their own bit of leveling while mopping it up. The clan took good care of their combat section and their growth in game. Also, mini raids like that one allowed one to keep virtually all of the loot, provided the player paid the inevitable 10% clan tax. How cool was that? Free chow and a place to hunt with guaranteed support from clan buffers, an anti-PK team and on-call clerics ready to resurrect any casualties. And later in the evening, free entertainment and a soft bed in your own palace quarters. Too good for words.

The post's functions were merely administrative which might explain why the sentries treated their job with a certain lack of fervor.

One of them made himself comfortable by the bonfire, busy leveling two professions at once: cooking — by churning out jerboa hamburgers that no one could look at anymore — and alchemy, obsessively producing vial after vial of Fish Breath, the cheapest albeit the most boring way of leveling the skill. It only had one side effect: whenever the chemicals from his Small Camp Alchemy Kit failed to react properly, they produced a foul green cloud reeking of old fish.

The second guard was reading some sci fi. From time to time he startled and sat up, casting anxious looks around. Recently, Russian politicians had passed a law banning the use of any non-Russian operation systems on personal computers — apparently, in order to support the country's economy and protect its citizens from foreign spies. Strangely enough, they came up with quite a decent alternative: the OS PolarBear 1.0. It was fast, easy to use and register, and not too buggy. Those guys could do it when they wanted to!

Still, everyone celebrated a little too soon. The polar teddy came with a small secret. For the first six months, the new OS did its job ratting on everybody to the secret services, leaking any illegal contents of their computers to the federal servers, complete with any relevant logs, search queries and screenshots using a special built-in camera.

Then it all came to a head. Thousands of arrests began on a daily basis, starting from the very top of the Internet illegal network: the owners of pirate libraries and trackers, the most notorious releasers and warez sites. Everyone had reasons to be fearful — after all, we all sin in good company. Especially when the wave of arrests and court cases began to reach deeper, trapping even the smallest fry into the net of copyright fines and dues.

This guard too, a perma with nothing to lose, was now trying to catch up on everything he'd missed out IRL. Oh well — some yearn for freedom even when it's little more than anarchy.

The third guard, who'd just lost two extra watch rotas in a poker game, stood guard, peering deliberately in front of himself while in fact flirting in a chat with one very curvaceous Elfa. He had no idea that the only reason she had deigned to accept an X-rated conversation with a greenhorn was her own old age. This ancient lady who had gone perma in an attempt to cheat her own death just couldn't break the ice and go the whole hog, giving her rusty libido a warmup via chat boxes.

The radar's paranoid whining awoke the guards to the sight of an enormous ogre clomping down the road. He was marked neutral blue on the mini map — like most vendors, guards and all sorts of quest NPCs.

The guards stood up and unhurriedly checked their weapons. Switching over to service and combat tabs, they walked out to meet the new visitor. Their job description didn't include the need to fight to the bitter end like the three hundred Spartans had done at the narrow mountain pass (which, if the truth were known, had in fact been defended by nine thousand people). The purpose of the Remote Post was simply to meet any newcomers, sort through them, explain a few things to them and, if bad came to worst, raise an alarm.

The earth shuddered slightly with the rock ogre's footsteps: a ten-foot two-ton bulk of seasoned level-250 warrior, covered in numerous dents and fractures. Oh yes, this one could cross the Dead Lands on his own easily.

The guards exchanged anxious glances. They didn't have a hope in hell against him if it came to close-range combat. The three of them could only last a minute at the most.

Quite a few of the clan members had already had the chance to face the two matured Phantom Dragons in the Arena — in teams of five, mind you. Although not quite yet reaching the uncategorized status, the baby dragons had grown impressively, allowing the clan Analyst to assess their level as "two hundred freakin' plus".

What I want to say is that there weren't many teams that had emerged victorious from those friendlies. That's considering the Dragons' combat abilities were common knowledge among our warriors who indulged in lengthy discussions on the best tactics, gear and the team's composition. And still Draky and Craky were in the lead with an impressive 42:5 score.

The ogre stopped a few paces away and reached his powerful paw behind his back into his inventory, producing a standard-looking parchment used to exchange hard copies of gaming messages.

"A personal message for the clan's leader Laith!" his voice rumbled deep within his rocky barrel-shaped chest.

"He's not here."

"I can wait."

The guards exchanged glances. Finally, the senior one decreed, "Send the message through the mill. Let them sort it out."

For the next ten minutes, the ogre stood motionless, leaning against his club fashioned from an enormous slab of red granite.

The portal circle, roughly marked out with a string of red and yellow stones, rumbled, swelling up into an iridescent arch. That was Laith arriving with his ubiquitous bodyguard: an albino troll armored to the teeth and sporting a small gold medal on his chest, shaped like a collapsing gate tower: "The first warrior to enter the enemy's castle".

Snowie enjoyed his fellow clan members' unreserved respect. Many of them had fought next to him shoulder to shoulder — and the story of his courting of the sad wise Bomba had left no one cold.

On seeing their commander, the guards slumped to attention and saluted. Slowly but surely Laith was introducing the military discipline which he copied shamelessly from the Vets.

The senior guard nodded meaningfully at the stony messenger. The clan leader strode toward him and reached out a demanding hand. The watchful Snowie took up his position next to him, making a show of shoving the Torch of True Flame into the sand, then looked around himself warily.

A few days previous, he'd received a gift from Dan: a digitized media package entitled Bodyguard's Crash Course. Snowie had taken it very seriously. Already he was pestering Max for resources in order to start forming an inner circle defense group.

He'd have loved to also introduce the other two — the middle and the outer defense circles: all those blocked points of access, crossbowmen lurking on the roofs above the leader's route, flank patrols and recce teams. With his fat unyielding fingers Snowie would draw block schemes of enemy attacks and shield configurations while trying to mentally breach the steel box of trolls bristling with mithril, their broad backs shielding the customer while he was being ported to safety.

The ogre raised his hand level with his shoulder and twitched it with a somewhat elegant flourish, allowing the scroll to unfold to its full length. Thank God for gaming technologies! This was quite a functional document — a screenshot of a page from some online news site complete with an active link and an iridescent seal in the shape of the Israeli Tavor assault rifle.

After the recent Three-Day War its unique bullpup profile was instantly recognizable. The picture of General Aaron with a Tavor slung across his chest peering through binoculars at the mushroom cloud rising over the Golan Heights had long dominated the front pages of all media. Admittedly, this time the Israeli had really pushed their luck.