by A. J. Markam
And a whirling ring of fire appeared in front of me.
“Whoa,” I murmured.
Within the sparking circle of the ring were dark purple skies with shimmering clouds of phosphorescent green like the Aurora Borealis.
I expected to see the glowing orange buildings of Abaddon rising high into the air – towers and castles and ramparts –
But something was wrong.
All across the ground was glowing orange rubble, the color of superheated iron being worked by a blacksmith. Not a single building taller than 20 feet still existed. Everything else were ruins, like they had been destroyed in a WWII aerial bombardment.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
“Did you choose Abaddon, or somewhere else?” the elf asked. I could tell from his tone of voice that he hadn’t expected this, either.
“Abaddon!”
“Then something is gravely wrong,” he said. “Let us see what has happened.”
And with that, we stepped through the portal into the Hell of Astoroth – and into the fresh hell of what remained of Abaddon.
8
The elf and I picked our way through the ruined streets. Dead demons lay everywhere amongst the debris in a scene of total death and destruction.
Even though I knew it was all a video game – and even though the victims looked like they belonged in a Gumby short film, with their bright colors and blocky bodies – it was still terribly affecting. Like witnessing firsthand the atrocities of war.
“…Ian…?” a weak voice whispered from the wreckage.
I whirled around to see a blue demon crawl out from behind a pile of wreckage. He was thin and hunched over, with a lizard’s face and a crest like a triceratops.
“Grok?!” I cried out as I raced over to him.
I’d fought side by side with Grok when we escaped from the slave pits. After we had led the rebellion and overthrown Malfurik, I had left him in charge of implementing the Constitution. He was effectively one of the founding fathers of Abaddon’s new government.
I knelt down beside him. Since I’d freed him with the Scepter of the Servant, a gift from a goddess, he wasn’t bound to me; my Self-Sacrifice powers wouldn’t work on him. But I still had healing potions, and I pulled a flask out of one of the bags hanging from my belt.
“Here, drink this,” I said, putting the bottle to his lips.
“It won’t do any good,” the elf said somberly.
“What are you talking about?”
“Those are human potions. They might have had some effect on him back in Exardus, but they won’t affect a demon while in Astoroth.”
He was right. The red liquid flowed into Grok’s mouth, but it did nothing for his Health.
The demon smiled wanly. “…thank you, Ian… but I fear it is too late for me…”
“What the hell happened here?!”
“…airships attacked us…”
“When?”
“…three days ago…”
“Why?”
“…I do not know… but they were led by a warlock… a creature of shadow with the form of a man…”
A warlock in a world of demons.
Goddammit.
“Was he trying to enslave you guys again?”
“…no… there were no demands… he just destroyed Abaddon… and gave no quarter…”
‘No quarter’ was a military term for ‘no mercy.’ Kill everybody and take no prisoners, even if they surrendered.
In other words, a war crime.
But why?
“Did he plunder the city? Is that it?”
“…he took… nothing… but he left… that…”
Grok lifted one clawed finger and pointed at the tallest remaining building in the city – although the upper half of it had still been destroyed.
Then he breathed his last and collapsed in my arms.
I stared at the ruined tower. Twenty feet above the ground, someone had gouged words big enough to read from 200 feet away. The letters were black and jagged against the glowing orange, like someone had carved through the embers in a dying log and revealed the wood underneath.
2
HE WHO IS COMING AFTER ME
IS MIGHTIER THAN I
The words seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them.
And what was with the ‘2’ at the top?
All I could feel was disbelief and anguish.
I knew in my brain that none of what I was seeing around me was real –
But it felt real.
And it was overwhelming.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked out loud.
The elf didn’t realize it was a rhetorical question.
“It appears someone wanted to leave a message.” He glanced around at the ruins and bodies. “A very extreme message.”
He was right –
And I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence.
After all, there were no coincidences in OtherWorld.
The game tailored everything specifically to the player’s experience…
…so the odds were 99 to 1 that this was all meant for me.
A seriously disturbing message, from someone who was seriously disturbed.
But why?
Who would have killed all these people and caused all this devastation just to send a message to me?
I thought back to what Grok had said.
A warlock…
And just like that, I knew.
It should have been obvious from the get-go. I probably hadn’t thought of it already because of my shock at the devastation all around me.
“Motherfucker,” I growled as I pulled up my list of quests.
I navigated to the oldest one still in the queue:
One Down, Eight to Go
Help Alaria avenge herself against her eight ex-masters.
I’d received it right after we’d killed Jastoth, Alaria’s first master.
Below the quest were a list of all her other ex-masters, along with their status:
Ex-Masters:
Odeon- Completed
Tarka- Not Completed
Saykir- Completed
Orlo- Completed
Zali- Completed
Hritch- Completed
XXXXX- Not Completed
XXXXX- Not Completed
I stared at the final two names – or ‘groups of letters,’ if you will, since I don’t think ‘XXXXX’ qualifies as a name.
I could have sworn I’d seen names there in the past – I just couldn’t remember what they were.
What happened?
Had the game erased them?
I needed to ask Alaria what the hell was going on.
“I need to get back to Exardus,” I told the elf. “Like, right now.”
“I’m afraid that is impossible.”
“What?!”
“Once you have selected a target for the Hell’s Pont, you must complete the trip.”
“I did! We came here!’
“No – this is the halfway point.”
Ohhhhh…
Yeah, that made sense, especially with the ‘2.5’ on the ring menu icon…
“Your original target was the place you chose back at the temple,” the elf explained.
Shit.
I’d already chosen Fernburg.
“I can’t change my mind?” I asked.
“Not as an apprentice. You must complete the Hell’s Pont.”
“After we go to Fernburg, can we go back to Exardus immediately?”
“Of course. But that will require casting your second of three portals for the day.”
Great.
Not exactly the best use of resources.
But it had to be done.
I looked down at Grok, lying dead on the ground, his eyes staring out into eternity.
“Whoever did this… I’ll make them pay,” I promised, rage welling up inside me.
I punched the ring icon button on my menu.
The counter dropped from ‘2.5’ to ‘2’ –
A whirling ring of fire appeared before me –
And a whole new scene of devastation appeared.
9
I couldn’t believe my eyes as I stepped through the ring into Fernburg –
Or what remained of it.
The ground was scorched.
All the trees’ branches and leaves were gone. Their trunks had been reduced to splintered husks like they’d been hit by bombs.
Charred skeletons – both human and livestock – were strewn across the ground.
And every building as far as the eye could see had been completely destroyed…
All except one.
The chapel where Alaria and I had fought Jastoth.
Most of it was burned, with beams and rafters jutting out like the blackened ribs of a half-cremated body…
But the front remained intact.
And across the white clapboard was another sentence in blackened letters:
1
I AM A VOICE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS
What the actual fuck?!
“It seems we have another message,” Captain Obvious stated.
He who is coming after me is mightier than I…
I am a voice crying in the wilderness…
Were they riddles I was supposed to solve?
If so, I had no idea what the fuck they were supposed to mean.
Instead, it was the numbers on the riddles that finally sparked a connection in my mind.
I was reminded of what Hannibal Lector wrote on the FBI map of all the Buffalo Bill victims who had been found, numbered by the order in which they had been discovered.
Clarice, doesn't this random scattering of sites seem DESPERATELY random – like the elaborations of a bad liar?
Except what I was seeing wasn’t random at all.
I realized that when I’d started my QC job, I’d visited Fernburg first –
And Abaddon second.
And after that…
…Exardus.
SHIT.
“We have to get back NOW!” I shouted.
“Fine. Choose the temple as your destination.”
Fuck that – I was taking us right to Meera’s apartment.
When I looked at the menu, I noticed a counter that hadn’t been there before.
It was at 23:42:17 and dropping second by second.
My 24-hour cooldown until I refreshed my next three portal spells, apparently.
I zoomed out the map until I found Meera’s building, selected it, then hit the ring icon.
Then I chose Abaddon.
The sparking wheel materialized in front of us, revealing the orange debris I’d seen just seconds before.
I leapt through and hit the ring icon again, noting that the number on the button changed to ‘1.’
Another fiery circle appeared before me, and inside it I saw –
A gleaming luxury apartment building.
Nothing had changed.
“That isn’t the temple,” the elf said grumpily.
I ignored him as I stepped through the portal onto the marble streets of Exardus and looked all around me.
No airships…
No shadowy warlock…
Just plumes of smoke rising in the distance.
Which, after all that I’d just witnessed, seemed quaintly harmless.
“Wait here,” I said to the elf, who had followed me through the ring. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
“No need – your training is complete. There is no more to teach you at your current level of apprentice.”
“Then thanks,” I said as I summoned my flying carpet.
The elf grumbled and summoned his own flaming portal, then disappeared.
I had no time for hurt feelings – I had to make sure Alaria and Meera were okay.
I had the carpet zoom me up straight up like an express elevator. I could have gone through the lobby and used their magic portal to Meera’s front door, but then I would have had to interact with the building employees, and I was too freaked out to bother.
As the air whipped over me, I thought frantically about what I had seen.
All these coincidences – seeing Grok in the ruins; just happening to choose both Fernburg and Abaddon – weren’t really coincidences.
Okay, maybe choosing Fernburg and Abaddon were.
But in OtherWorld, the game engine is God, and the God of the Game can rewrite all of reality on the fly.
Yeah, it just so happened that I’d visited two of the first places I’d been as a Warlock – but if I’d chosen Asterwaite or Vos instead, the game might have altered things to fit those choices.
I don’t know how it would have arranged to get me to Astoroth if I’d chosen one of the other Hells. Maybe grey out the other options so I couldn’t choose them? Who knows.
But once I was in Abaddon, it had arranged for me to encounter Grok.
For what purpose?
The only reason I could come up with was To set up the next ex-master.
The magic carpet reached the top of the building, zipped over the roof, and down the stairwell to Meera’s private hallway. It disappeared in a puff of smoke, depositing me right outside Meera’s door – which I burst through like a SWAT team.
Both Meera and Alaria looked over at me in surprise. They were seated at Meera’s dining table and eating breakfast delivered by room service. Alaria was buck naked; Meera had on a tiny robe that came down to her thighs. Normally I would have enjoyed the scenery, but at the moment it barely registered.
“Ian, what’s wrong?” Meera asked fearfully, her eyes wide.
I pointed at Alaria. “Who are the eighth and ninth masters on your list?”
“Huh?”
“All your ex-masters we’re supposed to kill – what’re the names of number eight and nine?”
Alaria looked off to the side like she was trying to recall. “Uhhhhh…”
“Don’t you know?!”
She stared at me blankly. “Um… this is very strange… but… I can’t remember.”
“It’s YOUR list! I mean, it’s YOUR ex-masters!”
“I know it is, I just can’t remember!” she snapped.
Shit.
So the game was intentionally hiding the names.
Alaria’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Did you mess with my memory like that time you interceded with the gods?”
She was talking about when I’d persuaded one of Westek’s programmers to change her coding to make her more monogamous. Which had not worked out well.
“What?! No!” I sputtered.
“Then why are you freaking out?”
“Abaddon’s been destroyed.”
“WHAT?!”
“And Fernburg, the place I first summoned you? Wiped out.”
“What happened?!”
“I saw Grok – he was the only survivor I saw – ”
“You mean everyone’s dead?!” she cried out.
“Yeah, in both Abaddon and Fernburg. Grok said a warlock had come with a bunch of airships and wiped out everything.”
Alaria looked horrified. “You think this has something to do with my ex-masters?!”
“I’d bet a lot of money on it.”
Meera looked back and forth between us. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“You know that we’re on a quest to kill nine of Alaria’s ex-masters,” I said.
The angel nodded.
“Well, two of the first places Alaria and I went together have been obliterated. And somebody left weird riddles on the wreckage.”
“What riddles?”
I tried to remember the exact wording. “‘He who is coming after me is mightier than I’… and, uh, ‘I am a voice crying in the wilderness.’”
“What does that mean?” Meera asked.
“I have no idea.” I turned to Alaria. “I was hoping you could shed some light on it.”
She shook her head in a
daze. “I don’t have any idea, either.”
“Great…”
“Wait,” Meera said, “are you thinking that whoever did those things is coming to Exardus?!”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“But Ian,” Alaria said, “we didn’t come to Exardus directly after Abaddon. First you followed me to Kvartos – then after you saved me on Tarka’s ship, we went to the Northern Barrens.”
Oh crap –
She was right.
Kvartos was where I’d hired a bad Han Solo parody to track down Tarka. The Northern Barrens was the homeland of Saykir and the frost elves.
Suddenly there was a ping!
It was a somewhat familiar sound – an alert, but one I hadn’t heard in a while.
All I knew was that something had changed on one of my menus, so I enabled my HUD (‘Heads-Up-Display’) so I could see everything at once.
“Uh, what’s he doing?” Meera whispered to Alaria.
“I dunno,” she answered, bored. “Some sort of weird warlock shit.”
I’m sure I did look kind of odd, staring into thin air, peering at something that no one else could see.
At first I didn’t know what had changed –
And then there was another ping! as something changed in my field of vision.
On my demon menu bar, Krug’s icon dimmed.
Which meant he’d just died.
Another ping! and Shee the banshee’s yellow face turned slightly paler.
Then I got assaulted by a flurry of notifications.
Ping ping ping ping ping ping ping!
All the demons who had crewed the Revenge were getting massacred.
Within 15 seconds, all 50 demons were dead.
“What the HELL?!” I exclaimed.
“What?” Alaria asked.
“Every pirate on the Revenge just died!”
“How do you know?” Meera asked.
“Warlock shit,” Alaria answered, then turned back to me. “How did they did? Did the Revenge get blown up?”
“I don’t know – let’s ask.”
I hit Krug’s icon.
Suddenly there was a burst of smoke, and a ten-foot-tall grey demon with a lantern jaw and barrel chest was standing in Meera’s living room. He wore black pants, boots, and a belt – and that was it. He had a cutlass in his hand, which he whipped through the air as he staggered backwards.