The War (Play to Live: Book #6) (12 page)

The Guards of the First Temple grew pale. The intensity of the battle shook up even the most thick-skinned.

The top of the walls was luxuriously wide, 30 feet at least. Over a thousand of our tanks lined up there. Wizards bustled behind them, preparing portals to resurrection zones. Clerics formed a line, dividing the future patients among themselves.

Archers climbed the adjacent mountains trying to get the best positions. The least agile ones fell to their deaths. Rock climbing is a risky sport and a one-time venture for many.

The joyful enemy cries and the sound of Russian cussing indicated that the Lights took yet another platform. It was no longer dangerous to fall off a fortress wall; the ramp was at most ten feet lower. We could already hit the taller enemy ogres over the heads with our weapons.

The enemy was short on vials this time around, unlike the first days of the siege, so the ones they dumped on us weren’t many. I had seen this coming; it was easy to use up a whole crate of those things, but they weren’t cheap. The developers charged three times as much for abilities that were outside of a certain class’s specialization.

The ramp grew higher. Hooked spears reached our ranks, trying to catch us and pull us down into the raging crowd. Enemy trolls and ogres blindly probed the parapet with their meaty paws, leaving chopped-off fingers on the black stone and spraying it with blood.

Finally, the ramp drew abreast the top of our wall and the enemy stormed the fortress. But I realized that things weren’t so bad for us. Taking into account how we constantly rotated our warriors, we could probably last forever on these walls.

The 30-foot-wide ramp only let a dozen enemy warriors charge at any given time. Once at the top, only six of them could actually approach us because of the castellations. The Lightsters were also being heavily pressured on the flanks, the towers and the adjacent mountains.

For each one of our soldiers, the enemy lost five. They could not get into dense enough formations and therefore could not use their huge numbers to drive us off the fortress walls.

Our warriors cheered up. Frag numbers soared, new achievements poured in and loot dropped right into our pockets.

The Analyst was the first to predict a potential problem: "They’ll pile their graves on top of us."

He was right. The ramp kept getting higher due to the huge number of headstones. They had already swallowed up the castellations, allowing more enemies to come in contact with us.

Our first line was forced to move back as the pile of graves got bigger. It was now the enemy attacking us from above. The werewolves growled as they lunged at us. The heaviest members of the largest species jumped on top of us with laughter.

Our losses increased sharply. The intensity and difficulty of the battle reached a whole new level. The situation was still under control, but things were getting worse fast.

The ramp grew higher and wider, and the influx of enemies grew with it. The enemy headquarters stayed on top of the situation. They sent out mules again to aid in the process.

I transported three basilisks into our rear task force. The presence of the mighty monsters emboldened our warriors, although of course the basilisks were no match for a hundred-thousand-strong army as I had recently learned. I would have brought all twelve, but the enemy had enormous resources at their disposal and had already dispatched a portal infantry to the far end of the Valley. The King and his subjects were holding them back successfully, and I could not risk exposing that area, so I couldn’t use my reserves.

An hour passed. No one was smiling anymore. Our girls and boys wheezed like overdriven horses. Their blades slipped out of their weary blood-stained hands.

Our archers had all gotten knocked off the mountains by that time. Our casters were vomiting elixirs. No one took breaks anymore. You left your position only if you were a corpse. Alas, our corpses were many.

The warriors would come back through portals, live through another minute of brutal chopping and slicing, and leave as corpses again. The fighting area grew ridiculously small. In some spots, the gravestones were already piling up on our walls, and the fight continued atop these artificial waste banks.

The gods of Light were filled with childlike excitement. Their faces appeared from behind the clouds, radiant with joy. The Sun God’s laughter accompanied the wails of the dying.

Even our staff joined the fight. Snowie was at last fighting side by side with Bomba, covering his wife’s growing belly. Zena’s team was focused solely on helping him; they cast healing spells, covered him on all sides. I knew that their side of the wall will be the last to fall.

I was an easy target, standing in the light atop a tower. It was piled with gravestones like a burial mound, barely recognizable by now. My staff scared off any heroes eager to cross swords, but gave me away to all the wizards and archers. The air boiled with spells. Sparks flew as arrows struck each other midflight. Stealthers were trying to sneak up behind me.

The demon soul contained within the staff howled greedily as it sucked HP out of the thousands of sentient beings around us, obediently sharing it with its master.

A few local victories did not do us much good. The enemy advanced, we retreated. The casters in the rear neared the edge of the parapet. They fell off, adding to the panic with their screams and the sounds of bodies hitting the ground.

I ordered via battle chat:
Fall silently!

Our staff analysts had been advising us to retreat to the Super Nova for the past five minutes. Our current defensive position was no longer effective.

I twirled Asmodeus’ summoning ring in my fingers. I decided it was time…

The huge waste bank hanging over the fortress began to crumble. The stone avalanche knocked several of our warriors off the wall, creating a 60-foot-wide gap in our lines.

The enemy rushed toward the gap, howling with joy. Only ten of us were still standing on the moving tiles. I ground my teeth, expecting them to get crushed.

Then a shortish dwarf with a colorful beard whipped out a machinegun made of burnished steel, turned the safety off and opened fire point-blank.
Rat-tat-tat!

The mithril gun discharged one of its enormous rounds into the approaching Lights, knocking them off the wall.
Durin, have you really found the right alchemic compound?! How come you didn’t tell me, ya bastard?!

Click!
The empty cartridge hit the ground. Durin quickly reloaded, fired another round, but the gun suddenly fell silent. Durin didn’t seem worried about it though. I figured that he had simply run out of ammo. He must have grabbed grabbed whatever bullets were available, and now the party was over.

The enemy was nonplussed. They hesitated, pausing the attack. Our warriors seized the chance and restored our battle formations. The Veterans looked around, trying to spot the machinegun that was so dear to them. They sniffed the air, hoping to detect the smell of gunpowder.

But we had no time to explain. The enemy advanced, and we had to back up. We flung the last of our grenades into the crowd. A Wild Basilisk reared, leaned his front paws on the parapet and began licking off the tasty female trolls with his sticky tongue like a chameleon.

The Light gods grew tired of waiting. Or maybe they just craved to see the malignant Darksiders suffer a horrible defeat before we suddenly decided to retreat to our Super Nova. And that place had three walls, a myriad of dome shields and direct support of altars. Not that any of it made the castle invincible, but it would take more time to bring it down…

A glittering spot appeared in the sky and rapidly drew nearer. The next second, a figure in winged sandals was already circling above us. Hermes, one of the gods of the Pantheon of Light, personally came down to the battlefield.

I wondered what that Scarface was up to. Did he want to boost the Lights’ morale? Or would he be stupid enough to personally interfere? The lord of commerce, theft, intellect, alchemy, and magic was also the Sun God’s errand boy.

I saw his scepter flash and tear the fabric of reality to reveal celestial gates beaming with blinding light. Praise the Fallen One that we weren’t creatures of Darkness in the literal sense! For any real creatures of the night, this light would have done more damage than burning plasma.
But where do these gates lead?
I wondered.

The sound of battle horns and trumpets accompanied the arrival of the first guest; a mighty six-winged seraphim, clad in steel armor and armed to the teeth to fight for the righteous Cause of Light.

The beautiful yet deadly creature spread his fifteen-foot wings and landed on top of the waste bank. Sparks fell off his snow-white feathers, healing and resurrecting its comrades.

His blades whistled as they drew eights in the air at an insane speed. He brought death to the defenders of Yavanna. The seraphim showed up purple even for me, and that meant he was at least level 450.

My face growing dark, I raced toward the celestial creature, gravestones crumbling beneath my feet.
Bring it on!

But then I stopped abruptly. More figures appeared from the spatial gap. It was the Army of the Seventh Heaven in full strength.

The gust of wind from their spinning swords swept over the fortress wall. Blood flew everywhere along with the heads of my clan mates.

I scowled in anger.
You got another thing coming!
I thought, rubbing the ring and calling loudly: “Come, Asmodeus!”

Inferno’s red arch opened right across from the gleaming portal of the enemy. Asmodeus majestically stepped onto the ground of “reality 0,” reveling in the triumph of the moment. Then he froze. His eyes turned crimson as he bared his teeth. His low vibrating growl resounded through the battlefield. The age-old enemies met at last.

The Top Demon cast off his politically correct appearance of a handsome stately warrior and quickly got in his most powerful fighting shape. The 30-foot-tall demon and his army slowly emerging from the portal cleared some fighting space for themselves. They pushed the exhausted Alliance warriors out of the way and cut up the Lights.

The seraphims also lost interest in the ambiguous servants of the Dark. They found their true enemy. The original enemy. The very face of evil.

The two forces clashed. The shock wave sent everyone who was dangling on the wall falling to their deaths. The sky wept blood, disgorging a hail of chunks of bloody flesh. The two forces were killing each other.

I was writhing with pain, my spine broken. I was grateful to the soft troll on whose corpse I had so luckily landed after I fell.

The “Full Healing” scroll put me back on my feet. Very few were still alive at the foot of the fortress. They were mostly the paranoid types who never stopped wearing levitation spells, and our reinforcements huddled in small groups. There was also the Ancient Basilisk whos sat on his tail in astonishment and gogged his huge eyes at the sky.

The Wild Basilisk, however, had other concerns. He had accidentally licked a Seraphim off the wall and was now rolling on the sand, howling in pain; the angel was disemboweling the lizard from inside. It was really hard to say who would die first.

“Heal him,” I said hoarsely, nodding at the basilisk.

Still limping as my brain couldn’t accept the fact that my legs and spine were suddenly okay, I climbed the nearest mountain plateau. I wanted to see for myself what the situation was like.

Just when I had almost made it, someone at the top offered me a hand. Weary of kind strangers, I looked up. “Hey, Fall!”

This guy would definitely not let go. I took his hand, and he swiftly pulled me up.

“Hello, Macaria,” I said, bowing my head lightly.

She deigned to give me an irritated glance with a hint of hatred in her eyes. I wondered what had I done to deserve that. Had I walked in on them perhaps? I could’ve just climbed some other mountain…

The goddess hugged the Fallen One around the waist, whispered something tender into his ear, then led him further away from me. I was glad they were patching things up. We didn’t need any wuarrels in the Pantheon.

Macaria pointed her finger to something below. The Fallen One bent down, trying to see what she was looking at. The goddess passed a hand over her hair and pulled out the long hairpin. She shook her head, letting her hair drop down to her gorgeous waist.

“Forgive me, dearest. I do not want to die anymore!” said Macaria loudly and thrust the adamant needle of her hairpin into the Fallen One’s skull.

“Fall!!!”

Chapter Seven

I
raced toward the two gods, pulling out my staff and slowing down time time until it nearly stopped. Some of my molecules could not even keep up with the rest of my body, and I left a trail of bloodied flesh suspended in the air.

Macaria shifted her gaze to me, unbelievably slowly, her eyes filling with fear. I would have reached that bitch. But…A thought is faster than any action, and divine will is almost as powerful as the laws of the universe.

The air grew impossibly dense. Its atomic composition changed, forming an indestructible crystal cocoon around me. Streams of magic bound me hand and foot, stopping me dead in my tracks and once again leaving me helplessly sprawled out in midair.

I had a sense of déjà vu. Grym, a Red Bear, and now Macaria…

The Fallen One arched his back at an impossible angle with a crack as if brutally tazed. He was instantly paralyzed and fell facedown on the stone, crushing his delicate nasal bones, busting his lips and crumbling his teeth.

The needle clearly didn’t have enough adamant in it to kill the god. But the treacherous goddess had chosen an ideal spot to deal the blow. Perhaps the Fallen One himself had told her where to strike so that she could protect herself against some rapist god.
Ugh, he’s naïve like a three-year-old child!

I moaned, powerless, and tried to force my way forward, using all the resources I had to bend the goddess’s will. My muscle fibers tore, my overstrained tendons crunched, my mana hit zero and my Faith Points melted away. My Divine Spark quivered like the flame of a candle in the wind as it burned the sticky web of another creature's power.

Macaria looked at me anxiously, then at her husband. She reached for the sky and called in a loud voice: “Come, my Olympic brother!”

I heard thunder rumbling. A ray of sunlight blinded me for an instant, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut. When I opened them, there was now another on the narrow mountain landing.
The Sun God!

The Sovereign God of the Light Pantheon stood before me. He wore a self-satisfied grin. His scarred, contorted mouth was open, revealing his teeth. The stone beneath his feet was melting from drops of solar plasma that fell off him.

“I have done your will, Great One!” said Macaria. “Remember you promised to take me in and grant me a Minor Altar?”

“Yeah-yeah, I remember,” he waved her away nonchalantly. “You’ve done well.”

He hugged her around the shoulders, pulled her close and wrapped his steely fingers around her firm breasts like he owned her, then gave out a horselaugh.

The goddess wrinkled her nose dolorously. I detected a flicker of doubt in her eyes.

The Sun God turned the Fallen One over onto his side with a kick. He then knocked the Blade of Darkness out of Fall’s hand and grinned. “Well, I bet you didn’t see this coming. Betrayed by your beloved, paralyzed from head to toe, and with no one in your entire Pantheon left standing except the insane Spider Girl. Will no one run to the rescue of the hillbilly god? A shame, isn’t it? Or maybe those puny humans you love so much will blow the battle horns and race to defend the insolent AI who somehow got the idea that he’s a god?”

As if answering his question, the adamant blade slid out of the staff with a loud click as it finally managed to pierce the magic bonds.

The Sun God spun around. Macaria jumped aside and pointed her finger at me. “Kill him! He’s dangerous. Just look at how he’s ripping apart the unbreakable Chains of Hades. Once he breaks out of there, he’ll surely go to the Altar of the First Temple for help!”

The Sun God only chuckled: “And what will that get me? The deincarnation of one stupid suicide? Nah! I have much bigger plans for him. He’ll live for a long time, but in lots and lots of pain!”

I ground my teeth, straining every muscle to tear the damn chains.
Another minute, and I will cut up their hated faces!

The Sun God shook his head and slowly shifted his gaze from my distorted face to Macaria who shrunk back in fear. He was trying to decide what was more important.

Finally he pulled a face and spat: “You, darkside broad, are worth no more than a bent, tarnished, silver coin. But the baby you are carrying…Oh, what an opportunity this is!”

He turned to me and spread his hands regretfully. “Seems this wasn’t meant to be…I thought I would enjoy your piercing cries for the next two-three millennia, but things are turning out differently. But don’t feel relieved just yet. The bliss of the sentient is so strong that I have opened a channel to the plasma of the True Flame. And it can reduce to ashes more than just flesh; your soul. Be you cast into Oblivion, worm!”

The Sun God raised his hand as he strained his muscles. Throbbing veins stood out on his temples.

A tiny portal opened before my eyes. A blinding solar prominence instantly burst out of it.

The next moment felt like an eternity. My cervical vertebrae crunched as I tried to dodge the cloud of radioactive hydrogen 45,032 degrees hot.

Ssss!
My eyes began to boil.

Crack!
My flesh crackled, becoming charred.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
The precious stones on my gear burst from the heat, deafening as gunfire.

The flame wrapped around me, covering me from head to toe, melting my armor and dripping onto the mountain, turning it into magma. The True Flame destroyed even the tight bonds of magic spells. The Chains of Hades burst. My aura was losing several buffs at a time. My soot-covered greedy pig tore the scorching gear right off me and tried to save it by stuffing it in the inventory’s spatial pocket.

I stood there, blazing like a torch, and would’ve screamed at the top of my lungs if I could. But the plasma had already burned my vocal cords and filled my lungs. Amazed at my resilience like any half-witted semi-sentient substance, it wondered:
Why hadn’t the fragile flesh turned into ashes yet?

I focused my inner vision on the virtual interface window. It was the only thing that helped me remain somewhat in control of my mind.

Status alert! Revenge of a Higher Being. A “Divine Punishment” has befallen you.

Damage: 500,000.

Status alert! Blood immunity is responding.

Effect 1: divine damage decreased by 90%.

Damage: 50,000.

The Fallen One’s gift proved useful. And you would think it was a mere clip on the back of the head.

Something crunched and fell to pieces inside my right palm. It was the adamant medallion sewn into my skin, another gift from the Fallen One.

Its icy fragments sank into my flesh, freezing it and alleviating the pain. As promised, they swallowed up the 50,000 damage points and saved my blind, charred body just as my HP plummeted to 5%.
Thank you, Fallen One!
You’ve provided me with so many things, doing the best you could to save my stupid ass
.
And I will repay you right now!

Focusing on the interface, I connected to the Altar and flipped through the pages as fast as my brain and the server allowed.
Where is that damn deincarnation?!

Combining binary logic and Indian outsourcers had resulted in the most user-unfriendly menu ever. Multi-level lists popped out of nowhere, embedded in each other. Dozens of illogical checkmarks and buttons opened in new tabs and pulled up even more useless pages.

I searched as fast as I could, listening to what was taking place around me in horror. The Sun God was no longer interested in me, confident that the solar plasma would finish the job. He turned to Macaria, forcing her to take the final step.

“Pick up the Blade of Darkness. It won’t resist you! There we go, perfect. It barely has any adamant, but the runic ligature is quite intriguing. I think this artifact can decapitate this pathetic excuse for a god. Not in one effective slice, however. You’ll have to put some muscle into it. But it’s in your best interest. Well? Strike! What are you waiting for?”

Alta
r
Initiatio
n
Primary deit
y
Secondary deit
y
Setting
s
Change deit
y
Dismiss current deity

Yes!
I punched the virtual key with all my might. Had this been happening in the real world, I would’ve smashed to bits even a steel tamper-proof elevator button.

Attention! Once a deity is deincarnated, you will not be able to summon him/her again. The altar will lose one level.

Are you sure you would like to proceed? This command is irreversible.

“Macaria, don’t just stand there like the armless statue of a fallen virgin! I said strike! His paralyzed body will soon grow another brainstem or simply digest your stupid hairpin. I will be surprised if it turns out that he hasn’t installed some sort of protection on an artifact he had made himself.”

Macaria obviously felt something. I almost thought I heard a blade whistling through the air and cutting into flesh.

I hit the confirmation key again several times. Suddenly I heard the Blade of Darkness drop on the stone and a quiet: “Forgive me…I wasn’t the one I was afraid for…”

AlterWorld shook and began to weep…

Worldwide alert! Grieve, sentient beings! The goddess Macaria has left our world forever.

Her gifts will remain in AlterWorld as long as at least one of her priests remains alive. (Current value: 24/27).

Pantheon alert! Those who allowed their patron to die deserve punishment.

All of Macaria’s worshippers hereby receive a
lifelong debuff: XP loss due to death increased by 25%. Additional penalty applied to those who rise in religious rank: minus 33%.

My radar grew more sensitive due to my blindness. It showed approaching clan mates running to the rescue. I could already hear healing spells being cast nearby. Rocks crumbled underneath the warriors’ boots as they climbed the mountain as quickly as they could.

Our reality wept as a babe abandoned by its mother…

But it was too late.

The Sun God roared like a thousand storms, instantly knowing who was to blame.

The solar plasma crushed me once again. I moaned as my body crunched, leaving the vector of attack and sprinkling the mountain with pieces of charred flesh. Like a bat guided only by sound, I raised my staff, desperately trying to fight back.

Whoosh!
I heard the flame fly at me right as someone’s figure shielded me from certain death.

“
Aaah!” a female cried out in pain.

I heard trumpets signaling Total Healing. The cascade of interfaces flickered, and I could see again.

I saw a familiar figure reduced to ashes. Behind it was the Sun God’s broadshouldered frame. He raised his hand for a repeated strike.

Silently begging for forgiveness, I threw my staff right through the haze of remains of the sentient being who had saved me.

Crunch!
The pink blade adjusted its trajectory as it flew through the air and sunk into the god’s solar plexus.

The world cried, choking on its tears…

The Sun God froze, staring at his stomach in disbelief. The staff quivered, trying to go deeper into the divine flesh.

The god seized the shaft, his mouth twisting from all sorts of unpleasant sensations. He jerked the weapon, trying to tear it out. But the demon soul within the staff wasted no time. It had already wrapped the thin adamant blade around the Sun God’s spine. Have you ever tried to rip out your own backbone?

The god’s halo lost its shine and turned a blood-red color. The Sun God’s face darkened as he loured at me. A plasmic blade materialized in his hand.

I’m screwed
…
I can’t leave Fall! But who am I to fight a god?

Unsteady on his legs, the Sun God came toward me. I instinctively stepped aside, moving in a spiral in an attempt to get near the Fallen One.

Thunder rumbled overhead as two opposing forces battled in the sky. Hundreds of Alliance members stood at the foot of the mountain, squeezing their weapons so hard that their knuckles turned white. The sentient were drowning in a sea of divine will. Some would occasionally slip out of the higher beings’ control and run to save the clan leader.

The universe whimpered as it suffocated, its pitiful sobs growing quieter and quieter.

I scowled like an animal and squeezed all the strength from my Divine Spark, driving every last drop of it into my fist. I would deal only one blow. I knew I could do it. I would break his sternum and rip out his heart.

Bam!
A portal opened, and my wide-eyed stare made the Sun God look back.

Agent Winnie!

The scruffy kids’ toy bent over the Fallen One. Biting the hairpin, Winnie began to pull the adamant needle out of the god’s skull.