The War (Play to Live: Book #6) (21 page)

"Get lost!" The druid gave him the finger. "The only sparrow in the world is priceless, like a Stradivarius violin!"

The sparrow, who had been fearfully looking at one sentient after another, assumed a proud air and chirped affirmatively.

"And by the way, Sir!" the falconer said, turning to me. "Some greedy Ukranian type had been trying to sell a Husky via public chat. He said it’s the only one in all of the virtual world. Fully vaccinated and has a GLONASS biochip in its hide. The bastard wanted a million gold for it!"

A husky,
I thought dreamily. There were no normal dogs in AlterWorld for some reason. They were either teddy bears, mere accessories for fun, or MOB mutants best suited for farming. The gnolls are better left unmentioned.

Basically there was absolutely nothing even remotely close to "man’s best friend" or a "hunting" or "guard" dog.

"Cool…But outrageously expensive," I replied with a sigh.

The druid brightened up. "That’s what the boys thought! They decided to check him out and met with him in the guise of potential buyers."

"And?"

"So they’re bringing him here now!"

"Whom, the husky?" I asked, confused.

"No, the Ukranian himself! Our terror group is dragging him here with his virtual bag and the dog kennel he’s got stashed in there."

"Thugs," I said, smiling approvingly.

I wiped the watermelon juice off my face and turned to the enchanter who was already pulling out a second watermelon. More and more people were coming up to him, wanting to taste the real-world delicacy.

"Where did you get it?" I asked, nodding at the striped fruit.

The elf smiled. "You won’t believe it, Sir! We were just driving the spiders out of town when we reached the market square. An NPC was sitting there, buggy like that sparrow. He’s an Arabic-looking old man, dressed like he came straight out of a fairytale. He had a whole cart of watermelons for sale. At first, he asked for paper money, but then accepted silver. We bargained to our hearts’ content. He’s got cantaloupes as well. And right nextdoor is a bakery. I didn’t see the baker, but that scent! I drooled all over the place!"

I exchanged glances with my staff officers and shook my head wearily. What an idiot. He should’ve played as an ogre, not a top elf.

"Bring that old man over here!" I ordered. "Quickly but politely. Looks like we just got your regular watermelon stand."

Chapter Twelve

S
aint Petersburg. Peter and Paul Fortress.

Captain Akimov, the leader of a firefighter squad, sat on the footboard of an ambulance. His absent gaze was locked on the raging flame. He didn’t even flinch when the male nurse sprayed his burned back with aerosol.

"It’s impossible…" the captain whispered, watching the firefighters back away from the wall of flame.

A category 5 fire is enough of a threat on its own without anything mystical. But this fire seemed to…have a mind of its own.

This thought made Akimov shiver. He looked at the site again. The fire counterattacked from the sides. It crept quietly over the timber roof and swiftly surrounded its enemies. It reached the operational rear through the basements, the sewage and the cable pits. Its sparks merged into flocks as the smoke formed runes of an unknown alphabet in the sky.

The captain, his mind poisoned with combustion products, saw dancing figures amidst the flames and heard the echo of inhuman laughter. He could have sworn that the quick-moving, evil shadows were real. During the fight, he had flown into a rage and personally poured gallons of foam on one of the lithe translucent figures. The hallucination was so real that Akimov even bent down to get a closer look at the defeated nemesis.

He would never give away what he found among the moist ashes. He would it pass it on to his grandchildren on his deathbed. For if not for that odd pendant on a thick green chain, he would’ve never left the burning building alive.

The teams from departments three and nine were still giving him distrustful looks. And for a good reason; after the roof had collapsed, he spent almost two minutes wandering amidst the flames, searching for a way out.

The rumble of a massive fire-fighter helicopter sounded overhead. Hovering over the building, it promptly dumped three tons of water on the fire from the tank it was carrying. The flame gave a roaring sound and dropped for a second before a dense stream of fire jetted out of it, attacking the cable on which the tank hung. The cable was all steel, so there wasn’t much to burn. But it went up in flames anyway.

The captain smiled crookedly. The flame DID have a mind of its own, but it wasn’t very smart. It should have attacked the helicopter which was now fleeing in panic. Instead, the fire went for the tank, like a dog biting the stick when it really should be going for the man who is using that stick to beat it.

Another ambulance turned on its siren. A pale EMERCOM colonel was being carried away on a stretcher. How he got burned while standing almost 200 feet away from the fire was a mystery.

Akimov gave a weary sigh and counted in his head how many commanders remained on site. He was the most experienced of all the officers present. The rest were taken out by the raging fire.

He rose, decidedly put on the gold pendant, took out his walkie-talkie and gave orders: "Captain Akimov here, taking command. Listen up: the water is ineffective. Use light foam instead. If you see transparent figures in the fire, you better believe your eyes! Attack them in teams of four or five. Oh, and…Does anyone know an exorcist?"

The flame roared. The walkie-talkie crackled with strange, otherwordly voices. The artifact shone brightly on the captain’s chest.

Amulet of a Fallen Salamander.

Effect 1: +70 fire immunity, +200 HP.

Customization: This is a unique item, the only one of its kind in the current plane of reality.

Effect 2: 5,000 fire damage points will be absorbed. Recharge: 24 hours.

Two heavy golems brought the obstinate melon vendor to us. These were distinguished fellows, bearing marks like For Heroism, Breach of Enemy Formation, and One’s As Good As One.

Very few knew who was actually behind the stern-looking golem exterior riddled with battle scars from the character generation stage. It was really just two under-age boys, gone perma from juvy. AlterWorld accepted just about everybody, allowing them to have a fresh start in life, to build a new biography.

I had actually sent five warriors to get the man a it was dangerous to roam the city in smaller groups. The majestic capital of the cluster was quickly succumbing to anarchy. Surviving spiders who had broken off Lloth’s leash now patrolled the empty streets. The monsters soon adapted to the situation and obeyed their instincts, trying to break out of their stone prison.

Strange eyes peered out of dark corners. Their heavy, evil stare could make your spine cold and your legs numb. The hole-ridden astral world and the horrid spatial gap leading to Lloth’s Halls would cost all of AlterWorld’s sentients their blood for some time to come.

Crazy PKs were trying their luck in the chaos of the split worlds, shooting at others out of broken windows or using stealth to creep up on the wounded and finish them off.

Since my guys made up most of the city’s population at that moment, they ran into trouble too. It was hard to keep formations and fight monsters while someone was recklessly shooting at you with a crossbow from behind. In a situation like that, you had to throw yourself to the spiders when your HP neared zero, because that way you’d die at the hands of a mob and save your precious corpse in pricey armor from being looted by a bunch of nasty punks.

This mutual hatred knew no bounds. The city’s air felt poisoned. It was so dense with black rage and purple fury that you could easily touch it and cut it in layers with your blade.

It was frightening. The world had just been born. It was young and supple like an infant. Our actions and emotions were shaping it right here and now. But humans will be humans. Neither love nor the joy of creation were among some of the things that we so generously shared with this new world…

How does that song by Russia’s beloved Vysotsky go?

Hatred disfigures the faces of young ones,

Hatred is bursting its banks,

Hatred longs to get drunk

On enemy blood that blackens our ranks…

The city saw nothing but death. Gravestones blocked the streets like antitank obstacles. Obeying game mechanics and resisting the physics of the new world, the graves needed to touch but a single pixel of their location to stay upright. They stood neatly and securely on just about everything: thin balcony fences, the tips of fence posts, and even fragile cottonwood branches where enemy archers had been positioned, adroitly keeping their balance.

The ex-game NPCs were going nuts. Everyone drew their aggro because of some algorithms only the NPCs themselves knew about. Reality lifted the primitive behavior scripts. This ocassionally led to unusual situations, making anyone from a street sweeper to a mighty emperor of many capitals go berserk.

The remainder of my guards became inadequate and got killed off as they tried to disarm and arrest my soldiers, citing some shady royal edict to justify their actions. Some of my guys even ended up in damp torture chambers and had to break out by using the gift from the untimely departed Macaria. And that was the least scary scenario. The worst rumors came from the City of Light where permas were heavily outnumbered by NPCs.

"Your precious old vendor, Sir!" the sergeant reported somewhat resentfully. "We had to leave three warriors to guard the melon stand to get this mujaheddin to come along."

Whack!
The old man gave him a good clip on the back of the head.

"Ahmoq ekansan, ahmoq! Maniy ham zhahlim chekib ketdi!” snapped the vendor indignantly and, stretching his hands out to the sky, apologized to the gods.

The built-in translator crackled and gave us its version with effort: "Fool, you’re a fool! I’ve had just about enough of you!"

Yeah, my warrior wasn’t much of a diplomat. A human warrior, fist line tank. No small guy to begin with, and now super-tall and muscle-bound due to high Strength and Constitution stats. He was holding the vendor by the front of his shirt, shaking him like a guard dog and looking at me with hope, awaiting the "attack" command.

"Shoo! Damn…I mean leave the old man alone!" I said as I approached the aksakal and bowed to him. "Forgive their hotheadedness, sir. They just got off the battlefield, hadn’t had time to calm down. I’m sure you understand."

This guy musta fought in World War I,
I thought, looking at the old vendor who had more wrinkles than a dried prune.

The old man squinted his narrow eyes, taking a good look at me. Cussing under his breath, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of ancient glasses with muddy lenses and temples of different colors. Slipping on the antique item, he carefully looked around, frowning as he grew even more irritated.

The old man felt the self-crafted breastplate of the warrior who had brought him here. It was made from the shell of a Relict Turtle. The aksakal shook his head in amazement. It was quite an original piece. Could’ve made the Ninja turtles jealous. And it had this particular smell…Rare artifact making techniques are not for the squeamish.

"Allah has truly made Muscovites insane. My old lady was right, may her beauty forever shine upon Heaven’s groves!"

"Um…Muscovites? Sir, do you have any idea where you are?"

My head tilted to the side, I watched the real-world old man with curiosity. He had gotten torn out of reality along with a trashcan and a piece of litter-covered pavement from the Golden-domed city of Moscow itself.

The system ran into a few glitches but managed to label him as a level 10 neutral player. His class was either hidden for real hardcore players or undefined for guest and demo ones respectively. The aksakal had health problems; as we talked, a red number one appeared three times over his head. Had he a disease? Fallen prey to DoT? Or had the overzealous warriors given him a good beating before they brought him here?

My inquisitive mind begged for experiments. What if I buffed the gramps? Or slipped a bracelet on his skinny wrist with a neat +90 Strength bonus? What would that do to his stats? And what if I let him in the group and level him up? Did he have access to interfaces, or maybe even some kind of connection with the real world?

Where was his respawn point? In Moscow? In a kishlak near Samarkand? Either would work, for we had so many letters we need to send to the real world! But if any of the Olders or other influential persons found out, they’d tattoo their reply right on the poor old man’s back, then chop his head off; go respawn! A small sacrifice for the sake of the billions stranded on Earth.

The vendor finally stopped looking around and hesitantly answered my question: "I’m in Moscow, no? My grandchildren moved here Allah knows how many years ago. Now I have great-grandkids. I came to see them before I pass away. I’ve been dreaming of my wife lately. The hag won’t let me go and keeps calling me…But I can’t visit my grandkids without any gifts. So I harvested some melons and asked to join the caravan that passes through my neighborhood every month. They helped me out. Gave me and my melons a ride in the back of a truck, and the next day I was getting off at the market square. Sales went well…”

The aksakal glanced at the Temple’s steeples, then at the 30-foot-long spider corpses. He looked suspiciously at the stocky dwarf mules. These guys were all built alike: 4.5 feet tall and 4.5 feet wide in the shoulders. They had faces rough as half-finished granite statues.

The old man turned back to us. "Boys, where am I really?"

I sighed and gently put my arm around his shoulders, then looked up his name again under his status. "Aybak, I’m afraid your family reunion is temporarily postponed. Allah has sent you to a faraway land. I don’t yet know if it’s possible to leave here…We’re trying, sir, we’re trying…"

I was pretty sure the old man had figured it out already. He looked ancient but not dumb. He was just trying to hold on to reality up until now, refusing to believe his eyes and trying to trick himself into denial.

But by the time I finished, the vendor looked like someone tore his spine out. Realizing what I just said, he sat down on the ground, clasped his hands over his head and began to rock monotonously, wailing and cussing.

Thanks to my long elven ears, I overheard a part of the conversation between a cleric and an analyst who stood nearby:

"I wonder, if he has a stroke, can he be resurrected?"

"That would be a very interesting experiment, partner."

Boy, were these guys far from reality. They weren’t cruel. They just had the new world mentality. For them, there was no perma death. The spilled enemy entrails smelled of loot and victory, and the process of extracting ingredients from the innards of the troll you had chopped up with your own hands was almost like a fishing trip:
Will I catch something valuable today?

"Aybak…" I sat down next to the distraught old man. "You hang in there now. We’re looking for a way back. With the help of gods, we’ll solve this, I promise. But for now…why don’t you join us for some rehabilitation? There’s an elven forest, clean velvet sheets, good food, and a magic services complex."

The old man looked at me with unbearable anguish in his eyes. I realized that I needed to mention other things: "There are also kids, many of them without parents…And folks your age, desperately trying to go perma to be with their grandkids. About forty cheerful granddads and peppy sharp-tongued grannies. The others got ejected into the real world today. They’ll all run their heads into the noose…We all need you, even these tough guys in epic armor. They’ve gotten way outta hand without dads’ belts whacking their butts. So, will you come?"