“Aniram, where’s the object?” Trying for an affectionate tone, I carefully extricated my appendage from her grasp.
“Which object? Ah, the object… A kiss, and I will tell.” The drunk released my tail and slapped me painfully on the buttock. “Come here!”
“How about you kiss me later?” I snarled, hearing the horn again.
“I want to now!” In a heartbeat she rose up and locked herself onto my lips. It took no small effort to release myself. “Do you refuse me?” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Where’s the object?!” Eredani and I shouted in one voice.
“Wasteling!” The affronted demoness pushed me away so hard I nearly flew to the other side of the island. It was a good thing one of the columns got in the way. “You will rue your rejection of me! What a… You don’t deserve me! I’m leaving!”
“Aniram, you can’t leave. I haven’t dismissed you. Where’s the object? You swore on the Abyss,” I answered severely.
“Ha!” In a wink she was by my side, tottering, the tip of her tail describing pirouettes, like that of a rabid cat. “You have made a mistake, ex-master! Now nobody can forbid me anything! I am strong enough to destroy Ireness and take her place, you traitor! I remember my word, wasteling! Do you see that sign?” She pointed to an arrow-like symbol carved into one of the columns. “That is the sign of G’Rot. He was here and he took the object. Back to his lair. If you need it, follow the arrows. They will lead you to him. I have honored my oath and said what was demanded of me. Nothing can stop me now. Farewell, ex-master! When I become a higher, I shall return to suck out your soul, and you will be my slave!”
The beastie flapped her wings and disappeared with a deafening clap.
Notification for player Kvalen
The archdemoness Aniram has consumed the essence of a higher demon and ruptured the bonds between you. In order to use demonic abilities, you must dive into the Abyss again for a new demon. Your bonus for random generation has been used, and you have access to a rank-1 demon.
“Oh, Brody, Brody. Who wines and dines a girl without planning to sixty-nine her?” Eredani said, at which I couldn’t contain myself and burst out laughing.
“Do you need support?” He continued to scoff. “Or can you cope alone?”
“Alone,” I confirmed, struggling to suppress my mirth. I had no desire to argue with the system. They took her, and that was fine. I’d find myself a demon hamster or toad and be thankful for small mercies.
“If you say so. Let’s go. It’ll be better to greet the demons where we found the dwarf. We can take them one at a time.”
It was a fair point. We swam quickly to the shore, dressed, and only then noticed something was amiss. “Where’s the dwarf?” The piedmont personage was nowhere to be seen. We peaked down into the shaft — everything was clear until level two. The demons hadn’t reached and the cave yet.
“Tracks!” My eagle-eyed partner saw footprints disappearing into the shadows. Curiosity got the better of us, and we followed them. Behind a rock we found a small cave, and we crawled after the dwarf, flat on our stomachs. The narrow passage wound, and overhanging rocks threatened to fall and crush us, but when the black hole ended, we came out onto a flat area under the sky. The dwarf lay with its face to the dull sun, and hadn’t noticed the long caravan of demons scrambling up the mountain behind its three archdemon leaders a stone’s throw from us. By the looks of it, the fourth hadn’t survived the standoff at the frontier, but it was cold comfort to us.
Beasties fell and stones slid, causing rockfalls, but the demons clambered tenaciously upward. Split into groups of ten or fifteen, half the troops had passed the first milestone and almost reached the snowline. Hidden conveniently behind some large boulders, Eredani and I lay on our stomachs and observed the beasts of the abyss. I wasn’t convinced the training camp would hold out if it was attacked by that army.
“Wow! They’re here too?!” Eredani whispered and elbowed me. At the very end of the cohort, riding atop strange creatures, was a pair of painfully familiar level-fifteen players.
“They’re not just here, they’re in command,” I said, noticing the Vartalinskys’ instructive gestures to the archdemons. “Oh yeah, I completely forgot. Meet Arthur Vartalinsky, twenty years of age, single, dumb, has a relatively rich daddy. The youngest and least prosperous son of a second-rate small-town businessman. He really does have an elder brother, but it’s not Kurtune, who I don’t think is actually any relation to the Vartalinskys. The devil knows what was on their minds when they were choosing a name. Anyway, the eldest son is the pride and hope of the family and daddy’s business. He’s with daddy: his right-hand man in the business, and in the clan, which was established several years ago and is successfully run by his esteemed father, Andrew. In a nutshell, that’s it.”
“That’s pretty much what I thought,” said my partner. “Sonny boy swipes daddy’s ring from the safe. Daddy gets wind of it and gets mad… That’s all very well, but as yet useless. If they come after us when we’re done with the nursery, we’ll think about it. Should anything happen, we can use jealousy and envy toward the elder brother. Arthur will do anything to show his father he’s worth something.”
“Who are you?” The deep voice from behind us came so unexpectedly we nearly jumped. The dwarf had recovered consciousness and was looking distrustfully at us two tieflings. Experience had taught it that horned and tailed beasties didn’t bring happiness or good luck, but our behavior did not measure up to its expectations — we ourselves were hiding from demons.
“Be quiet!” hissed Eredani. “We’re not your enemies.”
“But you’re not friends either.” It demonstrated incredible shrewdness for a witless dwarf.
“We’re demon destroyers,” I explained. “We just don’t look like it.”
“You’re pretty cruddy destroyers. The demons are over there, and you’re over here,” it said, casting a sidelong glance at the climbing beasties.
“Y’know, Kvalen, maybe we should return the honorable gentleman to the cage we so pained ourselves to free him from?” The dwarf started and took a step back. The stones beneath its feet crackled treacherously, and I hurried to calm the NPC.
“He’s just joking. Nobody’s going to send you anywhere. But be quiet! Don’t disturb our recce mission.”
“So you’re spies?” It was overjoyed. “I’m… I’m… My name’s…” The dwarf blushed and choked up, digging around in its memory. It remembered how to speak, but not its name. All in a day’s work for an amnesiac.
“Kvalen, a sign.” Eredani was pointing at the overhanging wall of the peak closest to us. There, standing out vividly, bang in the centre and pointing south, was the symbol of G’Rot.
“Aniram wasn’t lying. The object really is in the dungeon.”
A prolonged howl came from the passage we’d recently crawled through.
“The first wave of demons has reached the lake. How long will it take them to find the tunnel?”
“Give me a hand.” The dwarf rushed to the entrance and pointed at a small rock, saying, “Strike here!” Hoping the child of the hills knew what it was doing, I gave the stone a hoof. A rumbling came from the depths of the mountain, and the dwarf covered the entranceway with its body and said, “Pile on me!” Eredani and I flattened it against the rockface. There wasn’t enough of it to seal the opening, so we were bombarded from all around by gravel and dust. Its HP dropped. When the dust had settled, we dragged the martyr out of the hole. Its back was covered in welts and scratches from the sharp stones. I carefully cleaned it up and fed it a restorative potion. We couldn’t lose such a useful NPC at the very start of the journey. “They won’t find it now,” it smiled sluggishly and switched off.
“Bad timing,” whispered Eredani. We left our savior to regain its consciousness and went to evaluate the situation again. The Vartalinskys continued their ascent, following the archdemons. Their transport creatures took on the crags no worse than mountain goats,
bringing trouble nearer. A guard of five dozen magi tailed the players relentlessly as their personal bodyguards. The archdemons waited for the Vartalinskys to reach the first milestone, before heaving their wings and flying to the cave entrance.
“The frontier’s occupied, we can’t leave the dwarf there.” I looked at its lifeless body. “Can we put it in the inventory?”
“It’ll perish. The higher their intelligence, the less time mobs can spend in there. We’ll carry it in turns. You first, I’ll repel.”
“Okay. Did you see the sloping path? Do we take that or go straight up?”
“All the demons are on the mountain, so we’ll risk the path. Let’s go.”
I hoisted the dwarf onto my shoulders, and we slid down the scree slope. Stones skidded down to the foot of the mountain, making a fearful racket.
“Run!” Eredani shouted, setting off southward at full steam. The horn blared again, and I had a gut feeling of someone’s hostile glare boring into my back.
“Three kilometers! We have to hold out for three kilometers!” my partner shouted, just before we heard a blood-curdling howl. He turned around and bared his teeth: “Dogs! A pack of lower demons, fifty of them. They’ll be on us in five minutes. Get moving!”
For the second time in as many weeks I ran like a bat out of hell. Against my better judgement, fear simmered inside me. Not because I might be reborn, but because of bad luck. We had been given too much to deal with in the dungeon, and to lose it all because of an NPC would hurt. The howling was gaining quickly on us, and we could distinctly make out the snapping of jaws and the scraping off claws on stone. One level-seven demon dog would do us no serious damage, but a pack of fifty, when one bite would remove one HP, could easily hamper our plans by simply delaying us. Plus we couldn’t forget about the Vartalinskys, who were also no doubt hot on our tails. That was a force against which we had no cogent argument. Apart, that is, from the Glaive of Seth, but I didn’t want to lose the character, because I already had too many bonuses. It would be a shame and not very practical.
“Run, I’ll hold them up!” Eredani came to a screeching halt and summoned his fish. The howl of the dogs changed key. At first joyful (the prey entering their chops by itself), then surprised (it beginning to bite back), and towards the end — frightened and charged with pain. Each demon strike removed one beastie, but it wasn’t enough for my partner. Swiping the glaive from side to side, he hurtled through the pack like a hurricane, scattering demons asunder.
“I said run!” he shouted, noticing I had slowed down to watch the fight. A deceleration scroll appeared in his hands, and the dogs turned into crawling tortoises. He hoofed the nearest one away, jumped aside, and activated Retreat. Now I knew for sure those two actions worked together. In that free space, the tiefling flew thirty meters and almost caught up to me. The horn blast repeated, and the main cavalcade of demons appeared from behind some trees. Up ahead, traitors that they were, galloped the Vartalinskys.
“Mire! Run!” Eredani all but kicked me to spur me on. In front of us was a vast, even plain, bordered on all sides by mountains. The standard landscape of the location, in shades of blood. The rocks, the sand, the mountains — everything was red. With the exception of the plain, which was an intense black, making it similar to the River of Darkness. The map gave it a simple and unpretentious name: Mire, and our path led directly into it. It was time to choose between the lesser of two deaths: suffocation by oxygen deficiency, or dismemberment alive by cankered beasties. Help came from where it was least expected — my shoulder. The dwarf had had the grace to wake from its blackout, and it now whispered:
“It’s safe on the bubbles. Walk over the bubbles.”
Hoping that, despite forgetting its name, the mountain child might still be an orienteering star, we pelted across the swamp, leaping from bubble to bubble. The debuff on the dogs ended, and they resumed their pursuit. Only they couldn’t follow our tracks anymore, because there weren’t any in the mire. They charged straight ahead and didn’t get ten yards before sinking beneath the dark surface with a dull “glug”.
“Two hundred meters!” I reminded Eredani of the magi’s shooting distance, while seeking out my next bubble. The mire was loath to let go of our hooves, the marshy ground being viscid and syrupy. We had to fight for every step, but we had done enough. The mire swallowed the next wave of pursuers, making the demons tarry. The system interpreted the effort we’d expended as a maximum-level battle, and flashed a warning. Planting the dwarf down on a neighboring patch of bubbles, I sat down in the sludge. I urgently needed rest. Thirty minutes.
The Vartalinskys dispatched the next cohort after our heads, but the unwitting demons merely upped the mire’s victory count. It was happy to accept any and all. The cumbersome archdemons rose into the air and tried to fly at us, but Eredani’s frost strike relieved them of that particular desire. The spell struck the nearest boss from fifty meters. It nosedived into the mire like a plane shot down, and the remaining two suddenly had a much bigger problem than us. They dived to fish out their partner, while their compadres kept their distance from us.
“Tieflings, we must talk!” shouted Braksed. “Return the ring!”
“Perhaps it’s not the Mahan’s after all, but the Absolute’s?” I muttered. “We should have tested it in the lava.”
“One ring to rule them all,” said Eredani. “Dreams, dreams, dreams. It’s a pity the Mahan hasn’t read The Lord of the Rings.”
“Dismiss your demons!” I shouted. “We’ll talk.”
The Vartalinskys really could command the beasts of the Abyss. The latter stepped unquestioningly back from the edge of the mire, leaving us alone with the assholes. I approached to fifty meters from the shore and stopped. Any further and I might have been within range of their scrolls, which I certainly didn’t need. Eredani remained standing where he was.
“Return the ring!” repeated Braksed.
“What do we get in return?”
“Are you taking the piss? We’re gonna get you and…” Kurtune was fuming, but Braksed assuaged him:
“Shut up! Ten thousand! Here and now.”
“Are you having a laugh? You’ve been chasing us around for three weeks for ten thousand?”
“Twenty! That’s twice the value of the ring. We get the ring, you keep moving.”
“I seem to remember you asking a hundred thousand for it,” I said.
“That was my mistake, it can happen to anyone.” Even from fifty meters we could hear the player gnashing his teeth in ire. Nevertheless, he was exercising self-restraint.
“I’m not really interested in money.” I read aloud Eredani’s message. “I need information.”
“What information? Just say the word and you will receive it.” The real Vartalinsky agreed like a shot and stretched his mug out into a smile.
Eredani: We’re leaving. It’s a trap!
Kvalen: Why? I can’t see anything amiss.
Eredani: The kid screwed up. He’s making concessions too quickly. Let’s get out of here.
“Where are you going?! Stop, motherfuckers!” Braksed yelled, losing all sense of aplomb in a split second. Which gingered me up. Seizing the dwarf, I hightailed it toward the mountains, whereupon the mire bristled.
“Get down!” Eredani shouted, throwing himself face down in the muck. I followed his example, allowing a wave of fire to pass above my head. Acrid steam rose. The dwarf considered delirium the best cure for surprise, and promptly nodded off. I would now have to keep pouring restorative potions into it, as the volatile mire had inflicted considerable damage. A tailed figure flickered in the green haze, and I was a hair’s breadth from blasting it with my glaive, when I recognized Eredani’s crooked right horn.
“What was that?!” I threw the dwarf to him. “How did they do that?”
“Run! They’re draining the swamp. Let’s move!” He took off along the bubbles with the frolic of a kid goat. I followed close behind, but choosing my own route — after be
ing used once, the bubbles burst, and you had to find new ones.
“We’ll get you anyway!” Braksed’s threatful cry carried through the mist. “It’s not going to be easy!”
“You asked what they hit us with? I tell you I have no idea. Some local version of a meteorite shower. It wasn’t a scroll. The Vartalinskys sacrificed their entire guard by sending them up against that strike. I’m a little concerned by their abilities. It looks very like they’ve found some version of the Glaive of Seth.”
“I thought about that too. But they didn’t find it, they bought it. Or took it from their father. Damned donators!” I pronounced this last word aping Maestro’s accent. He had literally spat it out, expressing his disdain for misfits pouring their own money into the game.
The mire wasn’t big, approximately five kilometers in length, but we were forced to waste several hours on it. There were no opponents, other than the tacky gloop. We even took rests, when the system began chewing away at five percent of our HP. The distant specs of the Vartalinskys and the demons embarked upon a circumvention of the mountains. You couldn’t get through from the side of the Abyss, because the mire bordered too close on it.
A Second Chance Page 37