The War (Play to Live: Book #6) (19 page)

Frankly, it wasn’t much of a fight. The goddess merely glanced in their direction and willed them dead. Their souls slipped out of their bodies instantly.

The disheveled Ruata looked at her husband. The prince of the House of Night wore crumpled armor and had the face of Bruce Willis from the battle scene of an action movie: chiseled features, manly jaw, abrasions, and bruises.

After exchanging glances, the remaining Drow stepped forward, covering me from the charging Lloth.

"To the Altar!" the prince ordered.

Some brainless troll wearing a pink House of Night livery roughly grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and flung me inside the gloomy Temple.

This really wasn’t my day. My face smashed into cast-iron braziers, knocking them down. I left thick blood stains on the floor as I furiously cussed at all those who enjoyed tossing living human beings around.

I fell before I reached the Altar. I was a big, heavy guy, and although the troll was strong, he was no catapult.

I heard Lloth quietly ordering everyone to drop their swords. Blades clinked as they hit the tiles. Very few could resist the will of a goddess.

"Die!" Lloth ordered all those who could, and I heard armored bodies hitting the floor.

I crawled forward on all fours. My body was too broken to obey me. My spine was crushed in several places and my torn liver burned like hell.

I heard Lloth’s heavy footsteps behind me. I wondered why she wasn’t in a hurry. Did she not understand what I intended to do? Or was she trying to provoke me, to get me to summon another god to make things even harder? She could not get the Altar under control without the Patriarch.

Just a few more feet.
I threw myself forward, pain shooting through my spine as something hot flowed down my legs. I slammed my stiff palm on the slab, waved away the congratulatory greeting and began pressing the keys on the service interface insanely fast.

Inhouse project…Yes, summon!

The world shook, agonizing in the throes of a new birth. To pull a god out of nonexistence isn’t as easy as sprouting a new mountain range.

Several message windows obscured my view, and I could only listen to what was going on.

First came Lloth’s cry of surprise and rage: "Eilistraee?!"

Then a voice filled with hate: "Mom?!"

Chapter Eleven

R
ussian station Progess 2 in the Larsemann Hills antarctic oasis on the shore of Prydz Bay.

The assistant station-master gazed helplessly into the darkness outside. Even the powerful searchlights could not penetrate the snowstorm. The thermometer showed a freezing
-88.6. It wasn’t the record -128.2, but given the wind speed, it meant certain death for anyone who had lost their way in the night. But would anyone travel the Antarctic?

These irrelevant thoughts prompted the assistant station-master to turn on the security system’s audio. The seismic monitor detected someone’s measured steps in the cacophony of violent noises. The dimension controllers gave an affirming signal and the thermovision cameras zoomed in on the approaching subjects.

The assistant station-master reached for the general alarm button but stopped. Biscuit crumbs tumbled out of his wide open mouth.

A snow-covered, weary camel caravan was slowly approaching the station…

The Temple walls were shaking violently. Massive statues fell from the gothic ceilings, finishing off the wounded and injuring the rest. The entire city was trembling. A web of cracks covered the buildings whose strength percentages plummeted frighteningly fast. Misfortunes never come alone; Freetown was slowly but surely turning into a field of ruins.

The outrageously powerful blows warped the astral world. Space rippled and rocked as four goddesses fought in the sky...

The battered Hestia and Fairest One had already lost personal shields and spilled blood. They feared the consequences of what has been done. Jealousy and rage feel good, but not while personal safety is compromised.

The potentially eternal beings had known death and oblivion. They valued their own lives and guarded them with trepidation. That’s why the goddesses were now more concerned with their personal safety. Carefully exchanging magic hits with female insidiousness, they were looking for a chance to leave the fight without losing face.

On a different plane of reality, at a completely different speed, Lloth was chasing her hated daughter. The legendary Moon Blade, dangerous even for a god, was the only thing protecting the Dark Maiden. The fact that Lloth had exhausted herself preparing to conquer the Temple also helped her daughter. Creating an entire army and transporting it from the Halls had seriously depleted the powers of the underground goddess.

But even given all that, summoning the goddess of the good Drow right into Lloth’s clutches was a set-up of epic proportions. And I knew I’d have to answer for it. Chaotic Good was like that, with fists of mithril…

"He-e-elp…" someone moaned in a loud, funereal voice.

Spitting blood and wheezing, I crawled to where the moan had come from, my broken bones crunching on the way.
Ruata
…

My through-the-roof regeneration barely made up for the blood loss from my torn liver. Everything else healed. I could have really used ten seconds to cast Full Healing. Then I would’ve been as good as new.

Game avatars are no rag dolls running on those stupid ones and zeroes. We had been carefully built, having the anatomy of sentient beings from the fantasy genre with every little detail thoroughly worked out. An entire university of forensic medicine worked to complete the special order which was outside of the expertise of most. And now, many wonderful discoveries awaited the beginning ripper, including everything down to the six vestigial outgrowths on the appendix of a mature ogre…

"First Priest! You promised! Help!"

The terror in the princess’s voice made me crawl faster. If only I had some help myself…No, I couldn’t go on like this. I needed a break.

I fell on the stone tiles and turned over onto my back. I pressed a hand to my liver to lessen the blood loss and to give regeneration a chance to pull my HP bar out of the red sector.

I lay still for about ten seconds, then sat up with a groan. Noticing the hesitating House of Nigth warriors nearby, I waved to them:
Help!
I am your prince too, by the way.

They gladly ran to the rescue. Standing around with no orders made them uncomfortable and left them feeling useless.

I got up, leaning on their armored shoulders. I felt like I had swallowed a crowbar. My spine didn’t respond to my will at all like it wasn’t even mine. It was unlucky to be mine anyway. After sustaining several divine punches and flying through the Temple, I got really tired of closing injury alert windows.

I wondered where our field doctors were. When you didn’t need them, they were right there, casting some exotic crap on you, upgrading your concentration or some rare result-dependent skill. Healers’ achievements were mostly cumulative, so they avidly searched for wounded soldiers or forced someone to volunteer.

By the way, a secretly cast Eagle Vision was essentially a +9 long-sightedness. And no words can describe how those under the Bass Breath spell goggle their eyes and open their mouths in a ridiculous manner. Many peculiar sensations come with a spell like that…

I patted my ammunition belt. It contained mostly broken glass by now. And they said vials were indestructible.

Feeling for my spell scrolls, I found only dust and rot. The Universe sure had a crazy interest rate on power loaned for miracles.

I heard a noise at the Temple entrance. According to the raid radar, our troops had made it to the gates and attacked the languid spiders from the back. Without the Patriarch and direct encouragement from Lloth, the arachnid army turned into a scattered crowd of dumb aggro-monsters. The instinct to destroy alone isn’t enough to fight a war.

Steel clashed against chitin with booming sounds. Gusts of magic howled furiously. A dozen green markers went out on my minimap. Then one of the first-line tanks – an orc warrior – stuck his head inside through the main entrance. Easily making out my stooping figure in the darkness, he gave a frightening smile and called to his comrades: "Commander’s in there! Get him a healer, now. DoT problem, he’s losing blood!"

I wrinkled my nose. "Better yet, give me a red vial. And break the seal on that Healing scroll, don’t be stingy!"

The orc entered the majestic Temple. The hall quickly filled with battered warriors of the Alliance and a few NPCs. They stared at the fallen defenders of the Temple and took off their helmets at the sight of the shining Altar of the new goddess. Some of the Drow began to tap with their heels, devoting their litte dancing prayer to the Dark Maiden.

"Sorry, Sir, I’m all out," the orc replied. "We’re all out of basic ammo. We made it here thanks to divine backup. These spiders are a plague. They can zero your HP in seconds. I wouldn’t be standing here if it hadn’t been for the Our Cause is Right buff."

"First Priest!" Ruata’s cry of pain and rage drowned out the talkative orc.

Startled, I looked around, trying to find her. She seemed to be in that dense group by the entrance. Healing magic flashed all around it as did staff officer badges. The location’s degree of danger had fallen below 7, and now staff officers started coming in.

Nodding my gratitude to the many healers around me, I shook my body, trying to drive away the unpleasant sensations, and hurried over to the House of Night warriors crowded around their kneeling princess.

The quiet Vet nurse barred my way. She nodded at my blood-stained side, then let her hair down by pulling out a long ribbon of white silk that held her ponytail together.

I gave her my sweetest smile and gently moved the delicate girl aside. "Not now, beautiful. Give me a minute. You can dress my wound later."

Careening like a battleship struck with a torpedo, I finally made it to the group of Drow. Unceremoniously pushing them aside, I saw the prince of the House of Night sprawled out on the floor.
So this is whom Lloth ordered to die.

Dozens of elves looked at me with sadness and hope. There were guards of minor ancestral Reapers in the warriors’ hands. The elves had failed to do their duty and now prepared to join their forefathers. A personal guardsman could not outlive his prince for long. And it wasn’t just because of the oath. It was a question of honor which was at the peak of its importance thanks to the programmers’ effort and the faith of the warriors themselves.

"Help…" Ruata said hoarsely, grabbing at the empty space before her. "He mustn’t die! Lloth had an eye on his strong soul and bound it to her Halls!"

The tension made her hands shake. Her fingernails got wrenched out of her slender fingers with a crunching sound. Blood flowed down her forearms, leaving red lines on the delicate chamois of the artifact armor.

The House of Night wizards bustled about helplessly. An exhausted ritualist sat in the middle of a complex pentagram. The hired necromancer was served drinks in expensive goblets. Empty vials and broken seals littered the floor.

None of the known resurrection methods worked, and the casters had to endure Lloth’s attacks. The Property Mark on the prince’s soul expertly fought back and thwarted all attempts to seize Lloth’s property.

I lowered my head, creasing my brow as I made an effort to see the invisible. Pain shot through my eyes. Blood flowed down my cheeks. Reality roughly altered some of my retinal cones, increasing my range of perception until I could see astral matter.

Everything has its price. Physical objects became dimmer, but the space around me became filled with life. I could now see hordes of incorporeal entities bustling about.

The spirits summoned by shamanistic rituals flashed by non-stop. The elements were rightfully outraged at the wizards for keeping them on a short leash. Souls enslaved by necromancers thrashed about in their cages of dead flesh. Mighty Egregores devoured seas of different emotions from black hatred to blinding pain. The gray-haired ancestral spirits witnessed their descendants’ glorious doings.

And Ruata…Ruata clung to the prince’s soul, preventing it from fulfilling Lloth’s will and going to her Halls to stay there forever.

I kneeled beside her and made an attempt to grab the dissolving soul. But I was on guest privileges; I could look, but couldn’t touch. Performing miracles to break the game algorithms was not an option. I was spent. There wasn’t a drop of energy anywhere in my body, not even in my skull. My poor Spark was barely alive. It cried, begging me to leave it alone and not to take whatever it had left. Even flame has a self-preservation instinct…

I saw the light of a divine being out of the corner of my eye. It was a soft green light of life.

Asclepius had followed the troops here, to the place that was his ideal environment – the battlefield. There were thousands of bleeding warriors here who desperately needed healing.

He traded divine power for human bliss at a highly profitable rate. The god beamed with delight as new energy filled him.

"Asclepius!" I cried, making even the stone gargoyles jump. "Help!"

The god frowned and his cheek twitched. The familiarity of a mortal who had reached the top of the ruling ladder clearly annoyed him. But I had no time for courtesies and obsequious gestures. Ruata was quickly growing weak and the prince’s soul was slipping from her bleeding fingers.

"Return that soul into the body! He mustn’t die!"

Asclepius assessed the situation in one swift glance, then shook his head. "You need a zombie? Ask the necromancers. His flesh is dead and his soul belongs to a different god. Resurrection won’t help, and healing is useless. I’m sorry."

I growled, brimming with fury. "What kind of a healing god are you?! We’re on the lousy third minute of clinical death here! Even our paramedics could easily pull him out!"

The god sulked and his eyes flashed with anger. "How?"

I dug through my memory, searching for everything I had ever heard, read, or seen in movies about first aid. "CPR!" I said as I grabbed the prince’s armor, tearing the magic steel like tinfoil.

Everyone gasped, growing indignant. They hardly saw giving a deceased man CPR as proper healing.

The prince’s Spark blinked with effort, barely able to resist deincarnation.

"Closed-chest cardiac massage until his pulse’s up to a 100, then artificial breathing in between sets," I explained.

The prince’s ribs crunched under my weight, which showed that I was on the right path. I remembered a scene from this endless legal TV series in which the relatives of a revived patient sued the hospital for breaking the old man’s ribs. Sure, who cares that they saved his life? That’s not the point!

The god put a hand on the back of my head, making remembering easier and even enabling me to know things I’ve never seen: handbook pages, chemical formulas, and so on. All Asclepius needed was a hint, a tiny thread which he would grasp to find all the knowledge he needed in reality’s infosphere.

As if injected with a truth serum, I pattered on incessantly: "One milliliter of adrenaline every three minutes, gradually increasing the dose, then hypophamine and atropine. Then a 200 joule defibrillator shock, increase to 400. In case of…"

"Enough!" the god interrupted and roughly pushed me aside. He crouched next to the prince’s body, placed a hand on his chest, and shocked him with something that contained both electricity and magic. The prince’s muscles contracted. His mighty figure arched back, making his armor plates creak and breaking the bracelets on his forearms.