The War (Play to Live: Book #6) (11 page)

I wondered if gods felt the same way every time we cast carnivorous looks at their throbbing veins.
Forgive me, Fallen One! I am ashamed of myself!

The Portal Master reported: "Takeover is complete. I can hold the spell for seven hundred beats. It’s important to keep in mind that the original ligature of magic formulas was sloppy and irrational. The small corrections I’ve applied helped decrease expenditure by forty percent and gave an extra function."

"All right, shut up!" Asmodeus cut him off, not willing to listen to his bragging. The Top Demon then turned to me and said proudly: "He’s a real talent. I pulled him out of the underworld. Paid a dozen first-class souls!"

I grew tense, realizing that before me was yet another true creature from Hell. I took a deep breath to calm down and explained the situation: "My troops are slowly retreating. At this rate, the Lights will reach the portal arch in four minutes. I suggest we wait for the first scouts, or better yet, for some fast-moving clan which will burst in here right through the open portal."

Asmodeus grinned and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He clearly liked the idea.

"In any case," I continued, "start deploying Bundles of Nerves in eight minutes. Let them enjoy our hospitality!"

"You got it, partner! I won’t let you down! Let me remind you that you can use the Summoning Ring at any moment. The power that the artifact had accumulated along with your invitation will help me break through the barrier between the worlds."

I nodded, waved goodbye, then followed my ear-choppers into the new portal. We had to hurry while we still had control over the territory where the arch was.

The desert of the Frontier met us with a hundred percent humidity and bloody dust suspended in the air. The “hydraulic angle grinder” turned out to be both showy and effective.

"Thirty-seven, twenty to your right. Open!"

"Done!"

The portal opened. A 300-foot jet of water shot out of it with a roar.

"They can’t hold it," Aulë’s deep voice commented behind my back.

I turned around. The gods from our pantheon stood nearby. Feeling my eyes on him, the Fallen One nodded hello and kept the conversation going: "Yep…"

Aulë’s face lit up with hope. "Let me help!" He raised his hand belligerently. Feeling that it was empty, he looked at it in perplexity, then slapped himself on the forehead and whispered something quietly. The divine hammer returned to its master.

I could only imagine how much this must have upset the dwarves. They had been fastening that artifact to the temple wall with their tongues hanging out.

The Fallen One shook his head. "You can’t, Aulë. This isn’t our battle, and you can’t interfere directly. Besides, you’re not a god of war, but a crafter and a lord of stone. Use your head for thinking, not for ramming it into walls! Do as Yavanna does. Strategy of indirect actions. Damn, sorry for bringing this up…"

"Yavanna," Aulë whispered sadly, drawing into himself. "You’re right! I’m the master of the stone, and it obeys me. There’s no glory in crushing enemy troops just to get your brain splattered all over the astral world when the Great Equilibrium recoil kicks in!"

"He finally gets it," the Fallen One grumbled.

But Aulë wasn’t listening. The eyes of the Great Blacksmith sparkled with zeal. "I won’t lay a finger on them. But I will build a fortress strong enough to stop a hundred-thousand-strong army of Lights!"

"Aulë!" said the Fallen One in alarm.

But it was too late.

The astral world groaned as the god wrung it out like a rag with his willpower. An incredibly powerful mana current flowed through the god, transformed by his power. It reshaped the local structure of the world.

The stone moved around, changing its molecular structure and its shape. A 150-foot-tall wall of smooth basalt rose from the canyon floor. Towers and negative angles formed. A spike-filled trench took shape, then the breastworks, the parapets, and the wide fence roofs to protect from missile weapons. It was a strong, monumental, and practictally eternal creation.

"By the name of Yavanna!" Aulë smiled happily, bloody foam forming on his lips, and fell unconscious. He had a seizure. A bloody sweat stood out on his bronzed skin.

"What the hell?!" cried Fall in alarm, rushing to his fallen brother-in-arms.

"Thanks," I whispered, knowing the price of the god’s gift. I then passed an order via staff chat: "Assume new positions! The fortress’s name is Yavanna! Praise the gods, they need it! The gods of our pantheon are working their fingers to the bone trying to help us win this battle. Do not hold back your words of gratitude! Do not forget what kind of world we live in!"

I kicked a couple of officers who had fallen into a religious stupor and ran over to Aulë. "How is he?"

"Same as Yavanna. Only worse ’cause he’s thickheaded and has this wounded male vanity. It will take him years to regenerate."

The Fallen One smashed his fist into the ground in rage, leaving an imprint in the stones.

I held Aulë by the shoulders as his seizure slowly subsided. "We should take him to the Crypt. He’ll stay in bed, then be back on his feet in a few days with Chronos’ help."

“Hmm…" Fall fingered his chin pensively. "That could work. Chronos won’t notice him until he comes to. Last thing we need is a revived titan! In order to keep Aulë from waking up early or from letting the shadows of his dreams into the world, I will put him into an artificial coma. He may think himself extremely smart, but I still have the keys to his offline shields."

The Fallen One cracked his fingers and closed his eyes, preparing to influence the mind of a high-order being. I sat down and stared at my hands. Divine blood glistened on them, tempting me.
Ooh…No! Quiet, greedy pig!

I glanced at Fall. He seemed to be in a trance. In a flash I brought my palm to my mouth and licked off a drop of blood.

Status alert! You have tasted divine…

Bang!
A hard blow to the back of my skull made stars explode inside my head.

"I see everything! Feel the wrath of god!" warned the Fallen One, making a pun.

Status alert! The divine essence particle is reacting to the first hostile impact and is dissolving in your aura in order to preserve itself and its bearer.

Partial divine damage immunity received: 90%.

Chances of getting a crit and an injury are reduced threefold.

I rubbed my head and smiled to myself.
Not bad!

Chapter Six

C
roaking and tearing my back muscles, I barely managed to pick up the unconscious god. He felt like he was made of lead. My strength was way over 2,000, and yet lifting Aulë still felt like giving birth.

Screenshot!
I saw Grym slip by.

National Art Gallery. A work by an unknown artist. Circa 7th century of the rule of Laith the Two-Faced, the Era of the Uprising of the Young Gods.

"Sorrow." Laith carries Aulë’s son off the battlefield after the latter has been heavily wounded in a fight with his father.

The staff portalist transferred us to Station 0. Every few seconds portals to and from the Crypt would appear in this place. I handed the comatose god to an orc who grunted under the weight. Then I recited a series of instructions to the senior officer accompanying the orc and let them take the god away.

Hurrying to get back to the battlefield, I dove back into the portal that was considerately opened for me. It was best to act while I could still feel the enemy’s next move and while the small details were fresh in my mind.

Our warriors left cover before the wall of fire reached them. They hurried to retreat and take new positions.

Our covering team wasn’t just a formality; blurry shapes of enemy stealthers would flash here and there amidst the raging flames. There was no friendly damage in AlterWorld, and the enemy took full advantage of it.
Damn bug users!

On my command, dwarf masters came out of the portals, carrying quality timber. It made for a peculiar obstruction on the Frontier sands. As a barrier, it had an efficienty of zero point zero. But once it would catch fire, enemy assassins wouldn’t feel so safe anymore. Accidental death by fire was more dangerous than death by an enemy arrow as the former counted as carelessness and took away precious XP.

I had no clue which plane of reality Aulë had copy-pasted the fortress from. But my hat went off to the unknown architects; the edifice was stunning with its hundred-fifty-foot walls and its sixteen-story-high roof. Look down, and you could shit your pants.

I didn’t even want to know what the enemy leader must’ve felt like. The fortress marker read: "Created by a god. Indestructible." That meant that you couldn’t just zero the HP of one of its segments, break through fifty feet of basalt and be on your way.

Hitting us from the ground was also impossible. Those on the walls would be out of shooting and magic range. But we, as owners of the game bonus "+1% range for every yard of elevation," would unleash our entire arsenal on them. And not just the arsenal, but the contents of the closest stone quarry as well; the portals allowed us to transport heavy objects with little effort. The dwarves were already working their pickaxes, and the five-ton mules prepared their bags, accepting buffs.

At last, Lightsider rangers counted the total numbers of our cover force. They passed the info to their leaders. The latter gave new orders which were passed down to the executing officers.

The enemy force that had accumulated under the cover of the wall of fire finally charged, easily crushing our defensive formations. They made a few attempts to take prisoners.
Good luck with that!
The times when some of our warriors were not devoted to Macaria were long gone now.

Enemy wizards stopped burning mana in vain. The veil of magic disappearead, and we felt shivers run down our spines. The entire canyon was teeming with enemy soldiers. They jammed into the pass, intent on killing us.

"Boys, where’s the ladies room around here?" whispered a svelte female archer whose armor was covered with phone numbers.

"Don’t sweat it, girl!" grinned the orc standing next to her. "Look at it this way; we’ve got countless loot and frags coming our way, just asking to be butchered!"

A small and always gloomy halfling armed with a sling spat on the ground. "Yeah, right! And how much [beep] loot have you [beep] gotten so far?"

The orc barely held back from laughing, then put a hand on his chest and confessed: "Sorry, Junior! I feel for you! To get digitized in such a tiny body and with a mandatory admin curseword filter – that sucks! But don’t give into pessimism now."

"I don’t give a [beep]! [Beep] you and [beep] pessimism!"

Everyone around them was already chuckling. The halfling turned red with anger and started talking back with one "beep" after another, making the warriors erupt with hysterical laughter. A fierce-looking mercenary NPC elf looked at the guffawing Immortals and could barely maintain his usual mask of arrogant imperturbability.

Slightly shaking his head, he turned to the female archer. "Lady Amy Astan, allow me to show you to the ladies’ section of the Fortress and watch over you as long as you need."

The girl nodded, took his arm and followed him, carrying herself majestically. As they were about to disappear inside the tower, she looked back and stuck her tongue out at her stunned fellow warriors.

The Alliance members quickly made themselves at home in the divine fortress. A few optimists were already writing
Tsoi lives!
on the walls.

The former Sullen girls built fires, eager to try shish kebabs from marble unicorn fillets. The scent was truly something. The meat sparkled with many colors, indicating that the dish had magic buffs.

A quarrel started in one of the towers; two homeless clans were trying to claim the free property.

I sent Fuckyall with some reinforcements to handle the situation. A fight between allies in the middle of a war was no better than treachery. It needed to be stopped as soon as possible, in the strictest way possible.

The enemy army trampled over the lonely portal as they advanced. Of course there were a few curious ones. They pushed each other out of the way to get inside the arch first and become the next Darwin Awards nominees. I bet that even if I had left a huge red button labeled
Will explode when pushed!
it would take less than thirty seconds before the slippers of some curious fellow would go spinning through the air.

The enemy soon figured out where the portal led. The cries of the souls that Asmodeus captured must have had a sobering effect on the Lights. The demon would never miss an opportunity like this. Of those who dove into the arch, none came back.

Some tried to step aside, but were accidentally pushed inside the portal by the charging army. The warriors shrieked in horror as they stumbled into the opening, where their cries died down forever.

After a few minutes of demonic feasting, the first Bundle of Nerves squeezed out of the iridescent film of the portal.

Have you ever heard the roar of a stadium full of fans? Now picture them all wheezing in pain. That’s the sound that the arrival of this creature induced.

The first Bundle of Nerves was followed by a second, third, fourth…The sensations they caused quickly intensified to the point where the body could no longer cope. The soldiers dropped their weapons and fell to the ground. Twisting into fetal positions, they croaked and their exhalations sounded like they would never end.

The bundles nearly choked on the abundant victims, hurrying to swallow the lavish gifts of reality plane "zero." Their gluttony killed them. For the first time in their lives, these creatures ceased to feel hunger. Plus the warm, bloodied sand of the Frontier was more difficult for them to move over than Inferno basalt.

Hell’s creatures grew heavy and began to slow down. At last they stopped, feeling stuffed, and went into hibernation. They pupated, preparing to give rise to new life. The aura of contentment emanating from them wrapped around the nearby mountains, bringing the fighters to their senses.

Direct fatalaties were few; barely a thousand enemy warriors. But those who had lost all patience were many. Portals began to pop up everywhere as entire clans left the giant horde. About 7-8 percent of Lights deserted from the invasion army for good.
Not bad!

The enemy closed ranks. Craving vengeance like a beaten weakling, they started violently tearing Bundles of Nerves to pieces, making them screech.

Trampling their remains into the scarlet sand, the horde charged again, driven on by scathing hatred. We were able to bring something personal into the conflict, making all the superficial aspects recede into the background. And we were about to be generously repaid.

After all the pain, fear, and material damage, the enemy wished to get even. They wanted to destroy our towns and rape our women.

We heard claws striking stones; that meant our hounds gave in under the mental pressure and abandoned their positions. Draky and Craky who were perched on two projecting towers began to whimper sadly.

Vertebra roared from the sky, and the little ones took wing, escaping into the depths of the Valley where it was still safe.
All right
…
We started this war, we are gonna finish it…

The enemy fell on the wall, helplessly clawing the stone in blind rage. The numerous instruments of death were already falling on them from above. We dumped everything on the Lights that we could find: stones, logs, burning barrels with flammable liquids…Archers on both sides fired non-stop, wizards drove off stealthers, and ogres competed for the highest DpS against each other.

The fortress was safe indeed, but rather cramped. It was only 200 feet wide plus the area inside the towers and the three-story fighting grounds and the space behind the extra arrowslits. Our 500 warriors were elbowing each other.

The attackers painted Yavanna’s walls with their own blood, paying for their fury with their guts, then stepped back, leaving a hundred fresh graves in their wake.

It was a shame we hadn’t killed more. It was hard to even aim at any single individual in such a crowd, much less employ efficient tactics. We couldn’t spot the healers so we were unable to break neither casts nor portals. We also couldn’t make out the enemy commanders. We just blindly threw heavy objects into the sea of assailants, hoping for the best.

After pulling back their reconnaissance party, the enemy leaders took a short break. Unfortunately for us, they reached a decision rather quickly. They passed an order through their public channel so that we couldn’t hear. Their soldiers began to undress, reluctantly at first, but then much more decisively.

I looked at my officers in bewilderment. "Any guesses as to what the striptease is for?"

Most only shrugged in response. Only the analyst lieutenant looked down, then surmised: "Maybe they want to build a ramp out of gravestones?"

Someone scoffed. I paused, weighing it up. A headstone was six inches thick, so it took two headstones per foot and therefore three hundred headstones to climb to the top of our walls. Assuming the ramp could be up to 30 feet wide, one stair would need a few thousand graves. And there would need to be almost a hundred stairs total. So about half a million headstones… It sounded a bit out there, but then everyone could simply die five times to get it built.
Whoa, what if it works?!

But the enemy had something even more creative planned. Clan mules raced between their lines to collect all gear. After that, the Lights started stuffing their inventories with sand and stones.

It looked like they would fit the entire canyon into their pockets. If each one weighed 500 pounds, then a hundred would weigh 50,000.

"They’ll build a ramp by filling up the canyon," concluded the leader of the Vets, General Frag.

It felt like I was dreaming. The crowd of almost completely naked people charged at the fortress, carrying thousands of pounds of rock in their spatial pockets.

"Screenshot…" muttered Grym in astonishment. He had somehow managed to get inside the fortress.

This was the strangest siege I’ve seen in my entire life. We chopped them up by the thousands. The bare bodies easily gave under the steel, accepted all crits and burned like logs under the magic napalm.

The hateful horde roared with pain and spouted millions of curses which slowly materialized into a fierce-looking tornado over our heads. This road was being built from blood and gravestones. In three hours, when the graves get sent to the cemeteries, this road will be gone. But we might be gone too.

Only fifteen minutes into the massacre, the ramp was already half the height of our wall. The enemy jammed the lower level embrasures with stones.

Most clans could fire accurately at a distance of 75 feet. We could no longer burn the enemies like ants through a magnifying glass and get away with it. They hit us back hard.

It was clear that our pressure on the enemy wasn’t very efficient anymore. The Lightside commanders had made the right choices, and now the assault forces were regrouping and rebuffing right in front of us.

There seemed to be too many of them. Did they already start believing that they could win again? Did the craftier and more careful ones return to deal the final blows and partake in the looting? Probably…

They were 30 feet from the top of the wall. There was a short yet bloody fight on the first defensive tier. Alas, the fighting platforms were under three feet wide. A hundred of our guards got splattered all over the walls. The mules were fearsome to look at as they joined the massacre, literally tearing our warriors to shreds with bare hands.